Hey, Boss, Lemme Watch Huck!

Huckleberry Hound didn’t need a lot of hype to become a hit. People found the show upon its debut in 1958 (in some cases because of newspaper ads placed by local TV stations) and critics discovered it, too. They liked it. They were tired of old theatrical cartoons and perhaps the gentle humour of Huck and his friends elsewhere on the show fit the sedate suburban ‘50s.

We’ve reprinted a bunch of stories from critics-turned-Huck-fans from the show’s first season. Here’s one more from the Boston Globe of March 14, 1959. You likely won’t understand the local reference jokes. In case the reference to Fred Allen puzzles you, Daws Butler used his Allen voice as a narrator in the cartoon where Huck is quelled by mosquitoes. The Phil Silvers voice was heard in Little Red Riding Huck.

The critic goes on to say he likes Huck better than Tom and Jerry. The same opinion was made by no less a person than Bill Hanna, though we suspect Bill had a vested interest in promoting his new cartoon series. You can read about it in this post.

Adult Cartoons Now
Huckleberry Hound New TV Funny "Man"
By ROBERT P. ALLEN
DEAR BOSS—This may be a strange request, but what are the chances of sneaking out of the office a little earlier than usual on Thursday nights?
I gotta get home to a house that was never going to be ruled by television, scrub up and eat supper without bolting my food—all before 6:30.
That's "Huckleberry Hound" time, and I've gotta be ready. It's important.
If you haven't had a chance to catch hilarious Huck and his flip-talking pals on Tee-Vee, you're missing what's probably the funniest show ever—particularly if you're a push-over for "adult" cartoons.
This Huckleberry Hound bit—supposed to be the first all-animated, half-hour program ever produced specifically for television— should have you in stitches.
It does all of us at our house.

If Huckleberry himself won't get you roaring, the antics of Yogi Bear, Boo-Boo Bear, the mice Pixie and Dixie, the cat Mr. Jinks or some of his other furry and feathered friends will.
Should you find I'm wrong and you don't howl most of the 30 minutes except for the commercials, I'll promise to put in a full day on Thursday in the future and live, as I do now, real dangerously on that day.
In order to watch Huck and his pals—providing I can't sneak out earlier—I've got to:
1. Race that convertible 'round the corner right in front of the Quincy Police Station on two wheels without cutting my speed.
2. Leap the sometimes-open draw bridge at Fore River.
3. Ignore the oft-red traffic light in front of the Hingham Police Station.
4. Tear through Cohasset like I did something wrong.
5. Flop down at the supper table without scrubbing my hands—let alone taking off my overcoat and snowshoes.
6. Bolt that food, tote that barge, lift that bale.
And even with all this hustle, there's a chance I might miss the first few minutes of Huckleberry. You know as well as the next boss that things like that don't make for a happy, well-adjusted employee.
Of course, if you let me sneak out, you'll probably have to let some of the others sneak out, too.
I'm not the only Huckleberry Hound fan around.
If you've got a minute, let me tell you what little I know about the show.
It was first introduced last September, and now some 180 TV stations through the country carry it each week.
The characters' "voices," like the ones resembling Art Carney's, the late Fred Allen's and Phil Silvers', are tremendous.
But it's the dialogue that causes the fractures. The episodes are spiced with such ticklers as: "We gotta outwit that nitwit" and "How's that for size blue eyes?"

Huckleberry's cartoonists—William Hanna and Joseph Barbera—have faced each other daily over twin desks for 20 years.
When they began working together in motion pictures, Hanna was an idea-and-production man supervising photography and physical preparation, and Barbera was a sketch artist.
Cartooning was a sideline with them both. We should have such a sideline.
It developed into the Tom and Jerry cartoons. They turned more than 200 films detailing the adventures of the mischievous rodent, the bungling feline and, of course, the ferocious bulldog, Spike.
The creative routine which began with Tom and Jerry is now applied to Huckleberry Hound and his friends.
But there's one difference—Huck is twice as funny.
In the Hollywood offices of Hanna and Barbera's recently formed H-B Enterprises, there's only one set rule: "Always start the day with a laugh."
That's a pretty good rule.
Results of this rule are on Channel 7 Thursday at 6:30 p.m.
So can I sneak out early, huh?
Yrs.
HUCKY'S PAL.

We now have a late bonus, thanks to Jerry Beck. It’s, well, I’m not sure what exactly it is, but it must have been on toy store shelves close to when Huck was created, as you will note the presence of everyone’s favourite cartoon dog that speaks only one word.



A late note: reader Keith Semmell says it’s part of a toy put out by Knickerbocker in 1959.



Let’s finish our post with an endless loop from the first Huck cartoon that aired, Huckleberry Hound Meets Wee Willie (it was the fifth Huck put into production). There are loads of money-saving cheats in this cartoon, including a cel of a police car with the background by Sam Clayberger moved behind it. The car and Huck don’t move; you can see the wheels don’t even turn.

Was Boo Boo a Boo Boo?

Did Yogi Bear really need Boo Boo on his show? Before we look at that, let’s look at Boo Boo in one of those little cartoons between the cartoons on the Yogi Bear Show. He looks like he’s in pain sliding down the pole. The oval eyes and heavy eyelids make me think Don Williams animated this.



By this time, Boo Boo was firmly entrenched in Yogi’s world, along with Ranger Smith and Jellystone Park. But that wasn’t always the case.

Yogi first appeared on the Huckleberry Hound Show in 1958 before getting his own spin-off series in early 1961. The first Yogi cartoon put into production was Pie-Pirates. Boo Boo tagged along as he and Yogi tried to steal a pie from a rural home. Boo Boo didn’t warn “Mr. Ranger won’t like it” because there was no Mr. Ranger. Not many of the cartoons that year took place in Jellystone Park and Ranger Smith had not been invented yet.

During the rest of the season, Yogi appeared in a number of different situations without a “bear-type buddy.” Several of the cartoons were in a spot gag format which suited Yogi pretty well. Charlie Shows provided dialogue in the 1958-59 season with former New York animator Dan Gordon coming up with storyboards for his old buddy Joe Barbera who was involved in the story process, too.

Boo Boo or not, Yogi proved to be an incredibly popular character. The opening animation to the Huck show was changed in 1959 where Yogi now joined Huck in carrying the sponsor’s banner into the first scene. There was a change in the writing department as well. Shows went to work for Larry Harmon and Warren Foster was brought in from John Sutherland Productions. Foster got a full “writer” credit and was given the responsibility for all the cartoons on the Huck show. A decision was made to make Boo Boo a permanent sidekick, that a ranger be created as an antagonist and to centre the plots in Jellystone Park. The format limited Yogi an awful lot—no more spot gags or adventures with woodland creatures—but it arguably gave Foster a base to work with and Yogi became so popular, he was spun off into his own show.

Boo Boo was a solid character. Don Messick found an ideal voice for him. But if you’ve been reading the Yogi Bear newspaper comics we’ve posted here, Gene Hazelton and his writers didn’t deem Boo Boo essential and Yogi was involved in situations involving other character.

Personally, I like some of the Boo Boo-less cartoons of the first season (note that Boo Boo and Yowp never appeared together) and the Yogi/spot gag format. But the little bear is etched in the minds of pretty well all Yogi Bear fans, so perhaps it’s best that he became a permanent member of the TV cast.

Yogi Bear Weekend Comics, June 1970

Yogi Bear’s world is filled with good intentions but things don’t quite work out for him in the newspaper comics this month 49 years ago. He tries to help Ranger Smith wake up, he comes up with an idea to save a wedding and he finally protects other animals in Jellystone Park from a jerk.

You can click on the comics to enlarge them.


June 7, 1970. An owl is perched on the ‘Yogi’ sign in the opening panel and there are two silhouette panels. This is Mr. Ranger’s only appearance this month.


June 14, 1970. Me see-um stereotypes from reservation at Jellystone. Lonesome Coyote’s plan does have a certain type of logic to it.


June 21, 1970. Yogi is back to talking in rhyme. His attempt to be helpful isn’t appreciated. Hey, he did better than any of the humans did; why dump on him?



June 28, 1970. Talking squirrel last week, talking bird this week. Anyone hear Allan Melvin as the biker? A lot of detail in the long panel in the second row. I admire how the artist can draw cartoon-style animals and a realistic-looking motorcycle.

Boo Boo has the month off.

Mark of the Carlo

Limited animation at Hanna-Barbera didn’t necessarily mean an eye blink or a mouth changing shape while a character’s body remained rigid. Not when you had Carlo Vinci at work in the early days.

There’s a scene in the 1959 cartoon Mark of the Mouse where Mr. Jinks (played by Daws Butler) pretends to be afraid of Pixie (played by Daws Butler) who is disguised as the Zorro-like Mark of the Mouse (not played by Daws Butler).

Here are some frames as Jinks moves from pose to pose. Carlo did his own in-betweens and animated the whole cartoon (Mike Lah took on segments of some of the early H-B cartoons, but not this one). Jinks isn’t just inked on one cel with maybe an arm moving. Carlo has his whole body shifting. Complete drawings, just like in full animation.



Jinksie pauses to talk to the audience watching at home. “Am I overacting?” he asks. (He is). His right hand is at the left side of his mouth to make sure Pixie can’t see he’s talking to us.



“Gracious me! I must flee for my life!” exclaims the thespiating cat. Carlo limits his animation during the dialogue by only moving the head. Then Jinks turns and has a neat little half-eye-closed laugh toward the audience in a small cycle.



Jinks turns and then zips out of the scene. Again, these are full drawings. There are no short cuts, other than theatrical animation might be a bit more fluid (and slower as extra drawings take up screen time). See how Carlo moves Jinks’ right hand to the left side of the face and then over. I don’t know what other animator would have thought of doing that.



Carlo seems to have been let loose to do his thing in this cartoon. There are some unique cycles and I really like the shock drawings in the climax of the cartoon. You can see his work in this post.

Rolling Through Jellystone

One thing kids couldn’t appreciate when they first saw The Huckleberry Hound Show in 1958 was the colours in the cartoons. The show was aired in black and white in its original run sponsored by Kellogg’s but Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera wisely had the artwork in colour. The NBC peacock had debuted a couple of years earlier, so Hanna and Barbera must have known colour would soon take over the small screen.

The use of colour is really good in these early cartoons. There wasn’t just one shade of green or brown or whatever in background paintings. There were a number of dues and its makes the artwork more attractive.

Here’s an example from Yogi Bear’s Big Break, the first Yogi cartoon to air. See how the insides of the fir trees are a different shade of green than the outer area. I like the nice shades of browns, reds and orange in this background, too. The trees and plateau in the foreground are on a cel overlay.



Hanna found ways to cut corners in the earliest cartoons. In-betweens were deemed unnecessary; characters jump from position to another. They don’t really move a great deal so it doesn’t look abrupt. Also in this cartoon, there are several times where cars are immobile on a cel. It stays put while the background moves slightly.

We all know how Pixie and Dixie run past the same light socket or lamp over and over and over. It happens in Yogi Bear’s Big Break. It takes 48 frames for the drawing with the cars on it to reach the end of the background and start over again in an endless loop.

You’ll notice to the right an inside joke from a piece of background art (by Frank Tipper). The exterminator in the Yellow Pages is named Montealegre. Fernando Montealegre was an assistant animator for Hanna and Barbera at MGM before he was moved to the background department. His name is on the credits of this cartoon, though the artwork reminds me more of Bob Gentle. Monty loved stylised art—you can see it in his cartoons for Mike Lah at Metro—but he toned it down at H-B.

Perhaps my favourite piece of his work on the Huck show is the establishing shot in the Pixie and Dixie cartoon Little Bird Mouse.



We posted a bit about him in this post and Kevin Langley’s site still has a nice collection of his H-B and MGM art if you click here.

The High Fallutin-est

My favourite Hanna-Barbera cartoon series turns 60 years old this September 28th. Quick Draw McGraw debuted on that date in 1959 on KTTV Los Angeles and other stations (though it aired on other days of the week elsewhere, depending on what time Kellogg’s could purchase).

“There’s a western craze, so we created a western cartoon in Quick Draw,” Joe Barbera told the Los Angeles Times at the time. There was more to Quick Draw than that, though. Writer Mike Maltese loved Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckler epics from the silent era, so he added that to the mix and Quick Draw became El Kabong. Maltese found the concept of an amoral dog who went into ecstasy over dog biscuits funny, so he came up with Snuffles. And along the way he invented an orange mountain lion with a touch of Bert Lahr. So it was that the original Snagglepuss appeared on a few occasions on the Quick Draw show before eventually getting a make-over and his own segment with Yogi Bear.

The series aired a year after Huckleberry Hound’s debut. By this time, critics had become huge Hanna-Barbera fans, praising the Huck show for its gentle satire that was adult-friendly (and the fact they weren’t old theatrical cartoons). Some were a little bit TV snobbish, so they appreciated the fact that someone was taking shots at the industry’s clichés (such as detective series and somewhat-incompetent father sitcoms).

Here’s a little summary from the Des Moines Register of November 22, 1959.

TV's '98th Western"
Kids the Other 97
(Exclusive Dispatch to The Iowa TV Magazine)
NEW YORK, N. Y.—Hanna and Barbera, the team that created "Huckleberry Hound" and "Ruff and Reddy," now have a third series on the home screens. It's titled "Quick Draw McGraw" and is a takeoff on westerns, whodunits and situation comedies. The humor appeals to adults. "Quick Draw" is the ninety-eighth western on television. Unlike its predecessors, it's guaranteed to be like all the others, except that it's not self-conscious.
To the despair of his sensible sidekick, Baba Looey, a Mexican burro with a Cuban accent. Quick Draw almost never gets his man.
Second part of the half-hour series features "Snooper and Blabber," a cat and a mouse who wear trench coats and gum soled shoes and run a detective agency.
Hero of the third part, a situation comedy, is Augie Doggie, a dear, cuddly little fellow who is always buttering up Doggie Daddy, an old vaudeville performer with a low boiling point.
Augie brings home such cute playmates as an old beat-up pony or a little Martian boy, and Daddy is so nice about it that Augie calls him "the Daddy of the year."
"Quick Draw" is now being seen on 150 stations. It's not network, and it's not syndication. It's what the sponsor calls "spot-work," and it involves a larger lineup of stations than most network shows.
(In the area served by the Iowa TV Magazine, "Quick Draw McGraw" is seen on eight stations. On Monday it is shown by WOC-TV and WOI-TV. Tuesdays: KMTV, KROC-TV, KVTV and WMT-TV. Wednesdays: KMMT and WGEM-TV. Times vary and are listed in the individual station logs elsewhere In the magazine.)

The Quick Draw McGraw Show came to Canada on January 4, 1960. CBC stations broadcast it at 5:30 p.m. on Mondays. Bob Blackburn of the Ottawa Citizen editorialised about the series on January 12th. He’s one of those guys who kind of approves of it, but wants “adult whimsy.” That sort of thing was tried on the Boing Boing Show on CBS that he lauds. The only problem is kids don’t want “adult whimsy.” They want to laugh.

Cartoons In The TV Age
TV has given the animated cartoon a new look, but it isn't new enough.
I give you as a sample, Quick Draw McGraw (CBOT, Mon. 5.30), who is a cousin of Huckleberry Hound (CBOT, Wed. 5.30).
McGraw just hit the air last week, and already, evidently, has staked a claim on local viewing habits.
McGraw is a horse, and his claim to fame, as I caught it on last night's show, is that he can draw a gun faster than anyone else in the west. Just give a pencil and paper and watch him go. Well, this is a gag that could wear thin after a while, but I'm sure they won't lean on it too long.
Thing is, the show is a hearty spoof of westerns, and it's a spoof that amuses even small kids, and I think this is a very healthy move. I was delighted that (a) the spoofing was going on, and (b) the kids were amused by it.

Better yet, this is not just a simple spoof of one type of show. It's a follow-up to Huckleberry Hound, which is still going, and it spoofs 'em all westerns, adventure, private eye, and the rest. It encourages the kids to develop a good sound derision for all the junk they see on TV.
The fact that Quick Draw McGraw is a simultaneous sequel to Huckleberry Hound indicates that this expensive technique is feasible for TV. Before these series, the animated stuff we had on TV was nothing but the aged movie-house fare that would no longer even serve to divert the youngsters at a holiday Saturday morning cartoon show. They used the hopelessly outdated Felix The Cat things, and only on a Disney-controlled show would you see more recent efforts.
There's a temptation here is reminisce about the movies a few years back, when people who are now grandparents would judge the merits of a movie-house bill considering whether it included a "Silly Symphony" or a "Mickey Mouse" (almost any cartoon was a "Mickey Mouse") before settling on the evening's schedule.
A New And Mobile Peanuts?
More interesting, I think, to note that there's a new era developing in the animated cartoon field, and the above-mentioned programs are the pioneers.
At first look, they're not too encouraging. They're picking up where the movies put childish things behind them and launched adult whimsy of the Gerald McBoing-boing, Mr. Magoo, and that there apartment-house janitor type. They start just below the Tom And Jerry level. The technique is the most modern . . . they produce cheaply but without eyestrain ... but the content regresses a little.
That's okay. They've learned to make the least animation look like the most. Instead of inventing story lines, they satirize the standard TV series, which beg for it. They don't create characters, but father imitations. Augie Doggie's pop sounds like Durante. McGraw's buddy is a natural for Desi Arnaz. Blabber Mouse (I think ... I'm getting all these mixed up) is George Gobel. Yogi Bear is . . . well, listen spot 'em for yourself.
All these are money-saving shortcuts that make original cartoons for TV possible, and they serve very well for the juvenile market that's aimed at right now.
But now that it's been proven feasible to present this type of art on TV, it shouldn't be too long until they start tailoring cartoons for adults (ideed [sic], Quick Draw McGraw and friends come out with some pretty sophisticated lines). Cartoons are the comic strips of TV, and any day now I hope that a Shulz [sic] or a Feiffer or a Kelly is going to emerge in this field, as they did in the comic-strip field and help us see the humor in our daily antics. The way has been paved.

My one regret about Quick Draw is the series never got a DVD release. A few cartoons from the show ended up on Hanna-Barbera compilation discs. The late Earl Kress was working on the project and found not only were some of the connecting materials on the half hours either missing or in poor shape, the music rights had reverted to the composers or their estates and clearance for some of the cues would have been cost-prohibitive. He also mentioned the Huckleberry Hound Show DVD didn’t sell as well as Warner Bros. hoped and that discouraged the company. I’m not holding out any hope we will see a release (though there are enough cartoons without music rights issues to fill a DVD with individual cartoons) but unexpected things can sometimes happen in the corporate headquarters of Show Biz Land.