Fewer Drawings, More Gimmicks

Adult humour today isn’t what it was 60 years ago.

Today, “adult” humour brings to mind a lot of sexual references and crudity. In other words, the stuff 12 year old boys sniggered at 60 years ago because it was “forbidden.” 12 year olds, the last I checked, are not adults.

60 years ago, adult humour covered a different swath but, simply, it was funny or amusing material aimed at the grown-up crowd, not kids.

The Flintstones was constantly advertised in the lead-up to its debut in 1960 as an “adult” cartoon series. Some critics complained after the first episode that the show was no more adult than Huckleberry Hound, which they all loved. No less than Joe Barbera switched gears and then explained in print that it wasn’t an adult show; that was just a publicity thing.

Huck’s name came up in a number of articles dealing with the impending arrival of the Modern Stone Age Family. Here’s one from the Arizona Daily Star of August 26, 1960. There always seems to be something that makes me sit up and think “WHAT?!” when I read some claim by Bill Hanna or Joe Barbera. In this article, it’s a note that Hanna-Barbera spent two years to cast the show. That means the two were working on The Flintstones before the Huck show debuted. I don’t buy it.

This is the second article where I’ve seen Barbera gripe about the original designs of the characters looking like something from animated commercials, which tended to be a lot more stylised. Ed Benedict once claimed Barbera hated stylised cartoons, meaning he had to tone down his designs for The Flintstones.

'Huckleberry Hound' Fans Will Flip Over 'Flintstones'
Situation Comedy Goes To Stone Age
By HAL MARSHALL
Star Staff Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD, Aug. 25—They're going back to the Stone Age to provide what many person In Hollywood think is a big step forward in television.
If that isn't confusing enough, try this: A nighttime situation comedy series of CARTOON characters.
Sophisticates that go mad over "Huckleberry Hound" will probably go berserk when they see "The Flintstones," the adult cartoon series that dawns Sept. 30 on ABC-TV (Channel 9).
The cautious middle-of-the-roaders in the vineyards here say this new concept in evening entertainment will be a smash or the biggest flop in the industry.
Hanna and Barbera Productions, which enlightened TV with "Huckleberry Hound," "Ruff 'N' Ready" [sic] and "Quick Draw McGraw," is taking the big step.
Three years ago Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna, cartoon creators of "Tom and Jerry," saw movie cartooning hit a low as all the major studios were cutting back or discontinuing cartoon departments. After 20 years at MGM, the two went out on their own and became giants in what was then a dying industry.
The Emmy Award winning "Huckleberry Hound," ostensibly for kids, is a sample of their craftsmanship. The program prompted the Navy to name an island after it near the South Pole. Schools such as Ohio State used it as a homecoming theme and the fan mail included a plea from six scientists at White Sands to schedule the program later In the day so they could see it regularly.
"The Flintstones" may be the answer to the scientists' dilemma. If you don't think so, a brief conversation with Joe Barbera erases all doubts.
A suave super salesman, who looks more like the leading man type than a cartoonist, Barbera explains "The Flintstones" as a fun-provoking satire on modern life. Fred and Wilma Flintstone have the same problems that the avenge couple experiences. Their Stone Age location gives wider range to the comedy.
Fred works at a dino (dinosaur-powered crane) operator. He and his neighbor, Barney Rubble, belong to the YCMA (Young Cave Men's Assn.).

Creation of the series has taken several years, including two years to cast voices. "We had to create a set of new stars and come up with something new and began drawing characters, but they were all lukewarm. They looked like (animated) TV commercials until we put them in (Stone Age) skins.
"Take a cartoon car," Barbera said. "It's nothing, but when it's prehistoric, it has something." The Flintstone's piano will, naturally, be called a "Stoneway."
"Fred will even have an electric razor," he said. "It's a clam shell that closes over a bee. Then it starts to go buzzzzzz." Barbera held an imaginary razor to his cheek.
An example of the sight gags is a shot of Fred and Wilma on the freeway near their city of Bedrock. A car goes by with a lizard pushing it. Fred says: "Look there's one of those new cars with the engine in the back."
When Hanna and Barbera first tried to sell TV on the idea of cartoons, those in the know scoffed at the idea because cartooning had proved to be too expensive.
Barbera will agree that cartoons had gotten to the place where they were like motion pictures or live persons. Every movement was shown and it took "zillions" of drawings.
The team of H & B eliminated a lot of these superfluous drawings, substituted partial drawings and quickened the pace in scenes.
An example Barbera cited in explaining the reduction in drawings, is that of a person in a room. Instead of making a number of drawings to show the man walking into the door, there's a cut shot to the face as he walks, then a cut back to the full view showing the man at the door. The drawings showing his every movement as he crossed the room to the door are eliminated, but the fact that he gets to the door is easily and quickly conveyed.

To be honest, I prefer the Huck show over The Flintstones. Granted, the voice casting was excellent (until Bea Benedaret was let go) and some of the talking animals were really good. Dino could be funny. But the series went downhill in the third season in my estimation; I’ve gone through the reasons before on this blog so there’s no need to repeat them all. Huck and his gang were pleasantly amusing or funny most of the time. They were likeable characters; even Mr. Jinks you couldn’t hate despite picking on Pixie and Dixie. Kids knew it. Adults knew it, too. The Huck show is still adult humour as far as I’m concerned.

Buy Huck, Buy Often!

H-B Enterprises (Hanna-Barbera Productions by August 1959) didn’t waste any time pushing its brand-new characters in front of the public by means other than animated cartoons. We’ve documented toys, games, dolls, Hallowe’en costumes; all kinds of things (and that doesn’t include comic books and records) after The Huckleberry Hound Show debuted in September 1958. In fact, Huck and Mr. Jinks were featured on the cover of the March 1960 edition of Toys and Novelties magazine. The industry knew they were marketing major domos.

We have another little collection here, mostly from 60 years ago.



Some time ago, we posted this birthday paper plate set from Futura, sold in 1959. This wasn’t the only one the company manufactured.



The biggest disappointment, naturally, is Kapow is now in the lower right-hand corner replacing everyone’s favourite loveable, one-word dog. Pfft. I was in three cartoons. He was in one. Li’l Tom Tom is also added, as Cousin Tex has been tossed out, too. Still included are Iggy and Ziggy the crows, the mosquito that annoyed Huck in Skeeter Trouble and Iddy Biddy Buddy, who later became Yakky Doodle.

Let’s see what else we can find....



Multiple Products of New York 11, New York didn’t know how to spell Mr. Jinks’ name (neither did Bill Hanna in his autobiography, but I digress), but it featured the stars of the Huck show on a drawing set. Just turn the wheel on the side to bring up the character you want in the window, then draw funny stuff on him with the powder pencil. I presume the powder wiped off. This is also from 1959.



These place mats are from the early ‘60s, manufacturer unknown. Yes, Quick Draw is pulling a wagon like a, um, a horse. I don’t know what company made them. Who doesn’t love blue cacti?

May we have a moment of silence for Transogram? The company made all kinds of toys and games you could find in department stores in the 1960s before going bankrupt in 1971. They all featured a little cartoon character with a crown named Transy. Some had the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval or the Parents Magazine guarantee seal, which were almost ubiquitous on children’s products way-back-when.

Transogram got licenses from Hanna-Barbera for a bunch of things. Below is a Juggle Roll game from 1959 or 1960. It’s fairly straight-forward. I can imagine kids getting bored with it after a while, but don’t they with all games? In addition to the star characters on the Huck show, there are also Boo Boo and Li’l Tom Tom. Notice the beams are made of sturdy masonite!

The Estelle Toy Co. of Victor, N.Y. came up with Silly Sun Pix in 1964. It came out with a Magilla Gorilla set, a Flintstones set and a Huck set. It looks like you combined different strips of film to create your own version of the Hanna-Barbera characters and used sunlight or a lamp to view them.



From 1959 comes Karbon Kopee from Wonder-Art of Boston. You could trace on top of panel cartoons of Huck, Jinks, the meeces, Yogi and Boo Boo to create your own carbon copy. Or is that Karbon Kopee? No paints! I wonder if you got a carbon-y mess from this toy. A real movie, free inside? Kind of. You could create a flip book by cutting on the dotted lines around drawings of a hula-hooping Huck.



The Su-Prize Cup was manufactured in 1960 by Ideas, Inc. of Des Moines. This one features Huck; there was a Mr. Jinks one, too. This was for recalcitrant children. Say they don’t want to drink their milk. You place a coin inside the cup, fill it with milk, and when they drink it all, the coin pops out of the bottom.

If you want a closer look at these pictures, you can click on them.

The Voice Man We All Loved

For a while, it seems like it was impossible to turn on a television set on any given day and not hear Daws Butler. Even in the pre-home video, pre-specialised cable channel days, Hanna-Barbera or Warner Bros. or Jay Ward cartoons were on the air somewhere. Of course, you’d only hear Daws. You wouldn’t see him.

Daws seems to have shied away from being on-camera. In the ‘50s, he appeared on rare occasion on Pantomime Quiz. That was during a time when anybody on radio was expected to make the transition to television. But 40 years ago, he consented to go in front of the camera.

Here’s an unbylined blurb from the Fond Du Lac Commonwealth Reporter of October 12, 1979. This had to be written from some kind of news release because I’ve found Daws’ quote at the end in no fewer than three newspaper stories in three different years. I didn’t see this special so I can’t tell you if it was any good, but I’ve always cringed when TV stars never associated with animated cartoons suddenly pop up as a “host.” “What are they doing there?” I’d always ask myself. After all, would Walt Disney emcee a retrospective on My Favorite Martian?

He's the voice behind Yogi Bear
Huckleberry Hound can't say a word, Yogi Bear is speechless, Quick Draw McGraw has absolutely nothing to say, and Augie Doggie is mute unless Daws Butler is around.
The shy, diminutive 5'2" Butler is a little man with a very big voice, indeed. It is Daws Butler's voice, personality, comedic sense and innate acting ability that has enlivened the popular animated characters of Yogi and his cartoon cohorts, as well as such pen-and-ink performers as Blabber Mouse, Peter Potamus, Super Snoop and Cap 'n Crunch, plus scores of others.
For more than 20 years since William Hanna and Joseph Barbera founded Hanna-Barbera, their highly successful animated production company, Daws Butler has been widely heard but seldom seen in his special world of artistic fantasy. He makes a rare on-camera appearance when he joins host Bill Bixby in a behind-the-scenes visit to the Hanna-Barbera cartoon kingdom on "Yabba Dabba Doo 2," live-action and animated special to be broadcasted Friday on the CBS Television Network.
Being known only as a voice, throughout a professional career that has spanned nearly four decades in radio and in motion pictures and television animation, could cause an ego problem for most performers, but Butler is philosophic about his lack of visibility.
"I've always considered myself a complete actor, he says. "I become the character in expression, gesture and physical action when I am supplying the voices."

Daws was quoted further in a 1982 piece promoting Yogi Bear’s All-Star Comedy Christmas Caper:

In the early stages of development of cartoon personalities, Butler works closely with the animators, who incorporate his facial features into their drawings. Butler creates characterizations; the artists translate them into pictures.
"There was a time in my early career," Butler admits, "when I resented the prospect of going through life known only as Yogi Bear. I got over the resentment long ago. After all, Yogi is still a star, long after hundreds of others have faded away.
"And he needs me," adds the actor. “To Yogi Bear, at least, I am indispensable. That's a nice feeling.”

The Daws Butler PR Machine was pretty busy 40 years ago. Here’s another story about him, again unbylined, published in several newspapers starting around October 21, 1979. I like how Daws did the voice of a Ford on a show sponsored by Chrysler.

Daws Butler Is A Man Of A Hundred Voices
HOLLYWOOD—Chicago couldn't always tell the difference between Daws Butler and the engine of a cold Model T.
That unique confusion pushed Butler into a 40-year career that has seen the diminutive character actor give voice to some of the most famous cartoon creatures in the world of animation, including Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, and Huckleberry Hound. His vocal artistry will again be on display when he "speaks for" Raggedy Andy in the upcoming animated Halloween special, "Raggedy Ann & Andy in the Pumpkin Who Couldn't Smile," Wednesday, Oct. 31 on the CBS Television Network.

A shy youngster who was ill at ease in large groups, Butler took public-speaking lessons to buoy his self-confidence and "graduated" to doing impressions (from his own written material) in amateur contests around his native Chicago. In spite of a repertoire that was limited to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rudy Vallee and the aforementioned Model T, he began to win some prizes and a modest following. Then, he formed an act with two other amateur contest veterans. As The Three Short Waves, they specialized in impressions of radio personalities and movie greats.
Butler served in the U.S. Naval Reserve intelligence branch for four years during World War II and then brought his family to Hollywood, where he broke into radio, working as a dramatic actor and capitalizing on his versatility at "doubling" a variety of voices.
In 1948, Butler starred with Stan Freberg in the West Coast's first television puppet show, the multi-Emmy winning "Time for Beany." Also with Freberg, he co-wrote and co-voiced comedy records, including "St. George and the Dragonet," the first comedy recording to sell more than one million copies. Butler's voice has been "behind" hundreds of radio and animated television commercials, and he created the vocal characters for many world-famous stars out of the animation production houses of Hanna-Barbera, Jay Ward and other companies.
Butler conducts an actor's workshop in his home and at several adult schools in the Los Angeles area, sharing his expertise on acting, in general, and the special art of dialect and voice characterization, in particular.

There was more of Daws on television that year. Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear was broadcast on a number of stations. And there was Daws on the radio, too. He and other fine actors were hired for Sears Radio Theatre, a series evoking memories of drama on the old networks. Unfortunately, the old networks had affiliates which broadcast these kinds of shows. Sears couldn’t clear enough air time to make the show profitable.

It’s impossible for me to put in words how much I’ve admired and enjoyed Daws’ work over the years. He finally got the tribute he deserved in the documentary Daws Butler: Voice Magician which you should be able to watch below.

Flintstones Weekend Comics, July 1970

Dino gets a showcase in the comics this month 49 years ago. Three of the four comics are house-bound, the last moves to the golf course.

We’ve mentioned before that Mr. Slate was not Fred’s boss in the comics for reasons, I suppose, have been lost to time.

Barney and Betty get the month off.

Three of the comics have the same Flintstones logo, while the fourth has the name hanging down on a sign.


July 5, 1970.


July 12, 1970.


July 19, 1970.


July 26, 1970.

More Costly Than Dobie Gillis

“Adult cartoon” was a sales pitch bandied about in 1960 as The Flintstones was about to debut. And it only made sense.

Animated cartoons were something found in kiddie matinees at theatres and on children’s shows on daytime TV. If you want to broaden your demographic, then you’d better say your cartoon series isn’t just for the youngsters.

Granted, The Flintstones featured a plot about having a baby and made gentle fun of suburban living. But it wasn’t over the heads of kid viewers, any more than old Warner cartoons about Bugs dressing as a woman to fool Elmer Fudd. They flocked to the show. And it’s the kids of the 1960s that still fondly remember the series today.
Reviews after the first show were mixed. You’ll recall the “inked disaster” quote from the New York Times and (legitimate) complaints about the superfluous sitcom laugh track. However, the Pittsburgh Press liked the show and looked past the debut to the second show, noting kids had already decided it was something they wanted to watch. This appeared in the edition of October 7, 1960.

CARTOON SERIES
'Flintstones': TV's Costliest Half Hour
$65,000 Per Week
By FRED REMINGTON
If any of the season's new TV shows can be called a sure-fire success on the basis of only one exposure, it would be "The Flintstones."
It made its first appearance last Friday night. It appears to have been widely viewed and favorably talked about by the people who make or break most TV offerings, the young. When a show wins acceptance among the youngsters, it's in.
We'll be getting our second look at this "adult cartoon series" tonight (Channels 4 and 10, 8:30) so here's a little background on it:
There is a general belief that a cartoon show is cheaper to produce than one with live actors. This is not so. "The Flintstones" is the most expensive regularly scheduled half hour show ever offered on television. The ABC network pays the Hanna Barbera Enterprises $65,000 for each "Flintstones" episode.

This is in contrast to the $36,000-$39,000 per half hour for films such as "Dobie Gillis," "Alcoa Presents," and "The Tom Ewell Show." Half-hours with big name stars like "General Electric Theater" and "My Three Sons" run around $50,000, where "Leave It To Beaver" comes in for $30,000.
"The Flintstones" is the latest cartoon series of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, whose "Huckleberry Hound" won an Emmy this year. They also created "Tom and Jerry," "Ruff and Ready" [sic] and "Quick Draw McGraw." They are veterans of 20 years at MGM, which tried unsuccessfully to match Walt Disney's success with animated motion pictures. MGM ultimately threw in the sponge, and Hanna and Barbera struck out on their own.
They presently employ 150 people, many of them former associates from the MGM animation studios.
"It is said we are doing for television what Disney did for pictures," Joe Barbera said one day recently. "Disney started a family of cartoon characters, like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, who became almost national institutions."
Hanna and Barbera plan to pull Yogi Bear out of the "Huckleberry Hound" cartoon and develop a series with him as its central character. They also have in the works a 75-minute animated feature for theaters starring Yogi.
They see "The Flintstones" as a more adult show than their previous creations.
"We feel the sight is for kids and the sound is for adults," Joe explained. "We were a year casting this show, only instead of interviewing live people, we interviewed drawings."
Joe is a lean man with curly dark hair and flashing white teeth. He is handsomer than most leading men and looks about 27. Then he knocks you off your chair by referring casually to his grandchildren.
"I married young," he explains.
Among the people providing voices for the Hanna-Barbera animations are Mel Blanc, who has been the voice of Woody Woodpecker, Porky Pig and Bugs Bunny, and Daws Butler. Daws' salary and bonuses from Hanna-Barbera last year totaled $80,000.
Hanna and Barbera have greatly streamlined the animation process brought to such brilliant perfection by Walt Disney. So painstaking is Disney that for his big hits like "Snow White" and "Cinderella" he has had live actors and actresses play the parts, then translated the films to animation.
A "Flintstones" episode represents around 8000 individual drawings for the half hour of film. A Disney half hour would use at least 17,000 drawings, to achieve the marvelously graceful movements of characters, or of leaves turning gently in the breeze that are the Disney trademarks.
This is why Disney cartoons have to go into theaters before they come to TV. No sponsor could handle their original cost.

Yogi Bear Weekend Comics, July 1970

We don’t generally see too many other bears in Jellystone Park. Boo Boo, yes. Maybe the occasional rival for Yogi. (My favourite is the hammy bears at the start of the animated “Be My Guest Pest” in the first season of the Huck show). But we get a couple of comics with bear extras in the month of July 1970.


I’m really believin’ Yogi gets even. Okay, Yogi doesn’t have one of those hokey rhymes in the July 5th comic, but Yogi gets his revenge on a practical joker. Cigars? Firecrackers? Great things to have in a national park, Chuck.


Yogi’s French is très magnifique in the July 12th comic, which has a nice punch-line. His French is better than when he caused an international incident of “fillet mignonnies” in “A Bear Pair,” Warren Foster’s light satire on diplomacy. Incidental character bears are chowing down on unidentified berries in this comic.


“Refrig”?! Who says “refrig”? Yogi does in the July 19th comic. Anyway, the Baydos only have themselves to blame for Yogi snipping out parts of the carpet. If they had told him where the diapers were, it wouldn’t have happened. I like the silhouette panel with the fox trotting along on all fours.


More bears chowing down on berries in the July 26th comic. Except Yogi, naturally, which is the punchline here. Excellent perspective on the final panel.

Click on any of the comics to make them bigger.