Snooper and Blabber — De-Duck-Tives

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation – Carlo Vinci; Layout – Paul Sommer; Backgrounds – Dick Thomas; Story – Mike Maltese; Story Director – Alex Lovy; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Snooper, Blabber, J.B. Sportley – Daws Butler; Duck – Red Coffey.
Music: Phil Green, Jack Shaindlin.
First Aired: 1961?
Episode: Quick Draw McGraw Show M-030, Production J-92.
Plot: Snooper and Blabber hunt for a rare Tralfazian duck.

Oh, no. Not that duck again!

Well, not only is the future Yakky Doodle constantly bawling for his mama more than a Connie Francis song in this cartoon, he’s incredibly stupid as well. He can’t tell the difference between his own mother and a wooden decoy, or a mouse with a feather-duster for a tail spouting Al Jolson.

So it is that Mike Maltese takes the endless parental caterwauling of the duck and turns it into a central point of a cartoon. And, as usual, a character who has a chance to put the feathery thing out of its misery doesn’t have the heart to do it. And, also as usual, Maltese embroiders the story with funny turns-of-phrase and gets bonus points for incorporating everyone’s favourite word “Tralfaz” into the cartoon.

Oh, we get Carlo Vinci, too. Not the really quirky Carlo of 1958. But the studio’s workload hasn’t knocked all the distinctiveness out of him. Here’s one his famous big sideways mouths.



And here’s a stretched-dive exit by the duck.



You’ll notice the duck in this cartoon is green. Paul Sommer, the layout designer in this cartoon, also made him green in another cartoon that season, Augie Doggie’s “Let’s Duck Out” where, yet again, Little Biddy Buddy was whining for his mother.

Maltese’s opening is pretty standard. There’s an opening shot of the private eyeball, this time on a window. Snoop answers the phone with a rhyme like Archie the Bartender on Duffy’s Tavern: “Snooper Detective Agency, forget your blues, we’ll find the clues.” As usual, Blab makes an aside to the audience about detective work while the phone call is in progress. This one is: “The mark of a good private eye is to make the most of an opportunity.” That’s because Snoop has been offered $30,000 for a duck. Snoop responds with “What’ll ya give me for two elephants?”



The next scene is in the “featheralistic” trophy room of J.B. Sportley, who has the English hunter’s voice (and moustache) from the popular Yowp cartoons. Perhaps because Yowp failed to catch a duck two years earlier, Sportley had hired Snooper and Blabber to capture a rare Tralfazian duck, discernible by its distinctive quack. The name “Tralfaz” was later recycled on The Jetsons as Astro’s original name, but has a long animated history, going back to the Snafu cartoons made during the war at Warners.

Snoop and Blab park themselves in a lake with a “genuine imitiation” decoy. Enter the little green duck, wailing for its mama. Snooper has to rescue his decoy after the stupid duck takes off with it, mistaking it for his mother (“I’m excruciated with joy,” Snooper facetiously says, after Proto-Yakky asks him if he’s happy to see the duck reunited with his mother). “Leave us retrench to our cabin,” Snoop says to Blab and that’s where the rest of the cartoon takes place.

“We’ll try it again at the crackle of dawn,” says Snoop. There’s a knock at the door. “Be hasty pudding and see who it is,” he tells Blab. Guess who? The pathetic duck wants to say goodbye to his mama. Snooper kicks him out, but he comes back through the chimney and wants “mama” to tell him a bedtime story. “Leave me tell one,” says the annoyed Snoop. “Once-t upon a time there was a pesky duck who was put out of the house.” Snooper drops him out the door. “And Snoop lived happily ever after. Heh heh. Chuckle, chuckle.” Cut to the pissed off duck on the porch. “Aw, I don’t like that story at all, at all, at all.”



The duck comes back in and steals the blanket from the bed where Snooper and Blabber are sleeping (still wearing their trench coats and hats) because “mama” is cold (the duck first stands on its head and wiggles its toes for the decoy). Snooper’s had enough. He clues in the clueless duck that his mama is made of wood. With the soothing strings of Phil Green’s “And They All Lived Happily Ever After” playing in the background, Hanna-Barbera’s King of Self-Pity starts crying. But wait! He’s crying like a rare Tralfazian duck, worth “30 thousand grand dollars” dead. To quote Mike Maltese’s dialogue from a famous Warners’ cartoon: Now’s your chance, Hawkeye—Shoot ‘im, shoot ‘im!! But no. Sentimental Snoop decides to forego the money and “give the broken-hearted little trike a live mother.” Cut to the final scene where Blab is poorly disguised as a duck. “Climb upon my knee, Sonny Boy,” says Blab. If the duck can be convinced a wooden figure is his mother, he can be convinced by Blabber’s disguise that even Mr. Magoo should be able to see through. Blab gets kissed by the duck and avoids the temptation of breaking into something the Al Jolson song book.



“Sometimes, bein’ a private eye assistant has its compensations,” he tells us as the closing iris signals it’s time for the pre-Yakky to appear on another H-B episode before changing colour and getting his own series.

The sound-cutter doesn’t generally change cues in mid-scene. However, he back-times the woodblock-and-flute music so it ends with the cartoon.

A late Yowp note: Mark Evanier reports that “Daws told me that Snooper's voice was more inspired by character actor Tom D'Andrea...but a little by Ed Gardner.” Well, you can’t disagree with the guy who invented the voice. D’Andrea was on “The Life of Riley” TV show and if you have a chance to see any old episodes, you can hear he and Snooper have similar vocal qualities. But anyone familiar with Duffy and the show’s writing will notice the similarities there, too. I thank Mark again for his always helpful knowledge. There’s always something to learn.

0:00 - Snooper and Blabber Main Title theme (Curtin, Hanna, Barbera).
0:24 - GR-93 DRESSED TO KILL (Green) – Office scene, Sportly conversation scene.
1:38 - GR-90 THE CHEEKY CHAPPIE (Green) – Snoop and Blab in boat, duck shows up, Snooper shoots rifle.
2:56 - SIX DAY BICYCLE RACE (Shaindlin) – Decoy rescue scene.
3:18 - GR-155 PARKS AND GARDENS (Green) – Snoop reads paper, kicks out duck twice.
4:28 - GR-453 THE ARTFUL DODGER (Green) – Snoop in bed scene, “Check!”
5:44 - GR-459 AND THEY ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER (Green) – “That is a fake wooden duck,” Snoop promises duck will get a mother.
6:32 - tick tock/flute music (Shaindlin) – Blab is mommy duck.
7:09 - Snooper and Blabber End Title theme (Curtin).

The Judy and Elroy Show

Class! Today’s lesson. This is “The Flintstones.”



This is not “The Flintstones.”



This, of course, is from “The Pebbles and Bamm Bamm Show,” which was one of the nails of the proverbial coffin for me when it came to Hanna-Barbera cartoons. As a viewer, I decided the studio had completely run out of ideas. It had already tried regurgitating “The Flintstones” as football players in the sorry “Where’s Huddles?” (1970). Now, it regurgitated “The Flintstones” again and added it to a regurgitation of the comedy teenager concept (“Archie” anyone?) and a funny animal sidekick (the original “Jetsons”, among others). On top of that, I wasn’t interested in Pebbles or Bamm Bamm as toddlers and was less interested them in klutzy high schoolers. And Ted Nichols or someone at the studio became enamoured with blowing a whistle in theme songs around this time, and it was enough to make you, well, regurgitate.

How little did I realise then how much the studio into reusing ideas. Recently, my attention was brought to one of H-B’s numerous proposed series.

This is “The Jetsons.”



This is not “The Jetsons.”



This is Hanna-Barbera out of ideas.

Apparently, the studio decided if it could age Pebbles and Bamm Bamm and hand them their own show, it could do the same thing with Judy and Elroy Jetson. It seems in 1973, the studio came up with the concept but it didn’t sell. Writer-designer-director Scott Shaw comments about the above drawing thusly:

Grown-up Judy here was intended to be working as a journalist; like Lois Lane, I guess that was to propel her into "adventures".

Please read Scott’s insight in the comments section about the genesis and background of the idea. I appreciate his knowledge on this.

One of the on-line animation auction has some sketches of the characters, including a kid version of Astro. About all I can say is it’s better than Orbitty from the later Jetsons incarnation.





You’ll notice Willie Ito has signed one of the drawings. Willie had been Ken Harris’ assistant animator at Warner Bros., then headed to Bob Clampett’s Snowball studio to work on Beany and Cecil before winding up at Hanna-Barbera around 1961. He worked on layouts on the original Jetsons series. I don’t know whether this is one of his drawings but it’s pretty neat.



It’s probably just as well that the Judy and Elroy show didn’t sell. The best thing about “The Jetsons” was the futuristic gadgets and I suspect they wouldn’t have been given a lot of priority on new show, just as the Stone Age gadgets took a back seat to contrived teenaged antics on “Pebbles and Bamm Bamm.” Judy’s character would have to have been changed; she was boy-crazy and not much more in the original show. Who knows what would have happened to Elroy’s persona, who inherited a bit of Augie Doggie’s boy genius personality on the original show. After all, the only distinguishing thing Bamm Bamm had as a little tyke was his strength, but it inexplicably evaporated when he morphed into a teen on his own show (as least on the shows I watched before I lost interest in the series). And because there were no takers on the show, we were likely spared theme song lyrics such as:

You’ll see Jane and George, too.
(O’Hanlon, speaking): Ooba-dooba-doo!
On the Judy and Elroy Showwwww.
(long, insufferable whistle screech).

Still, it could have been worse. Let’s hope the old Hanna-Barbera files don’t have a proposal to make George, Jane, Spacely and Cogswell into seven-year-olds.

Huckleberry Hound — Hillbilly Huck

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation – Hicks Lokey; Layout – Paul Sommer; Backgrounds – Vera Hanson; Written By Warren Foster; Story Director – Alex Lovy; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Huckleberry Hound, Zeke Doodleberry, Jurors – Daws Butler; Narrator, Lafe Doodleberry, Clem Doodleberry, Jurors – Don Messick.
Music: Bill Loose-John Seely, Jack Shaindlin, George Hormel, Spencer Moore.
First Aired: week of February 13, 1961 (rerun, week of July 10, 1961).
Episode: Huckleberry Hound Show K-051.
Plot: Huck gets involved in a mountain feud between his ancestors and the Doodleberrys.

The most convoluted Huckleberry Hound logic of all time is in this cartoon. Huck justifies being shot at, and almost killed, by a hillbilly feuding with his family.

Huck: These mountain folk are a bit edgy about strangers, and I don’t blame ‘em. First thing you know, your still is shot full of holes and the corn-squeezin’ is pouring down the creek. Makes the fish belligerent. They climb out of the creek and snap at the children’s legs. That feller’s just makin’ sure the fish don’t get all riled up.

Pure Warren Foster, isn’t it?

I suppose it was inevitable to plunk Huck in an ersatz version of the Hatfield/McCoy feud. Huck’s accent is slow and rural, and about the only thing more slow and rural than that are hayseeds in the hills. Most of the usual clichés are here—long beards, shootin’ irons (well, it is a feud), extreme poverty, everyone being related—though we’re missing a passel of farm animals because, well, you’d have to animate them and that costs money. Still it all works pretty well.

Foster has set this cartoon is the non-existent Pennsyltucky Mountains, which are apparently standing in for the Ozarks. Nice rolling hills and, I guess, cottonwood trees. The backgrounds in this short are by the former Vera Ohman of the MGM cartoon studio, now married to Hanna-Barbera Production Supervisor Howard Hanson. Vera appears to have freelanced on this cartoon; in 1961, she worked on a Yogi, a Snagglepuss which aired when Yogi got his own show and a couple of Loopy De Loops. I wish I could snip the full background together without the tint changing.



Here are Vera’s drawings of the cabins of the warring factions with lettering by Art Goble.




And here are her interiors of the Huckleberry family mountain home.



Huck: “Split-level floor, air conditioned roof. It’s just like I pictured. They shore know how to live down here. Everything is so functional. None of your modern gimmicks.”



Huck: “When they hit the hay at night, they hit the honest-to-doo-dad hay.”

John Kricfalusi says when Vera retired from animation, she opened a cuckoo clock store in Solvang, California. Vera Ohman Hanson died in 1993, two days shy of the New Year, at age 69.

There’s a huge plot hole in the cartoon. Don Messick’s earnest narrator voice tells us the old feud between the Huckleberrys and the next-mountain-over Doodleberrys is over “because there is only one left of either family.” But that’s not true. There are seven Doodleberrys in this cartoon, three named and four on a jury, and all of them point their rifles at Huck at the end of the cartoon. Well, the “one” the narrator is referring to is Lafayette “Lafe” Doodleberry, who has that ornery country voice that Messick recycled a bunch of times, infamously for that skunk-hatted guy in that Yogi Christmas special. Anyway, Lafe tells us the feud’s still on.

We cut to Huck walking along, singing “Clementine,” and paying his first visit to the “friendly” hills. Huck keeps emphasizing how friendly folks there are when, even after Lafe calls him a “lily-liver, dog-faced city dude.” “Now, you notice the quaint way they express theirselves down here. It’s just a pose, you know, to mask their big-heartedness.” Of course, the gunfire begins once Lafe learns who Huckleberry is. He even gets shot inside his home while strumming a banjo and singing off key (“That’s what started the feud in the first place,” complains Lafe). “I cain’t believe you’re carryin’ a grudge for som’pin what happened way back when great-great-great-great grandpappy’s time.” Blam! “Course, some people have right-good memories.”



Huck goes to complain to the sheriff—Lafe’s look-alike cousin Zeke. Poor Zeke has “the miseries” so he assigns his deputy to bring in Lafe—naming Huck his deputy. We get old cartoon gags. Huck acts like a carnival target going back and forth every time Lafe hits him with a bullet (“Homesteader Droopy” has the gag, among other cartoons) and then when Huck claims he’s got the “po-liceman’s grip” on him, the two emerge from the Doodleberry cabin with Lafe carrying Huck.

So Huck, Lafe and Zeke all mosey on down to the courthouse, where look-alike cousin Clem calls Huck a “varmint” and tells him shooting Huckleberrys isn’t a crime, it’s a sport. The look-alike cousins on the jury agree. Huck’s surrounded by rifles. “Even Perry Mason’d get beat here,” he says before beating a retreat out the door. “If anybody watchin’ is plannin’ on a trip to these friendly Pennsyltucky hills,” he advises as he runs away from bullets, “I suggest you change your name to Doodleberry. It’ll make for more togetherness.”



Maybe the rural music in the Hi-Q library was too Western for the sound-cutter to use. Instead, he sticks with familiar cues, some of which don’t quite fit the scene, like Jack Shaindlin’s “Grotesque No. 2” during the struggle scene inside the Doodleberry cabin. Huck’s banjo can’t be from a library; it sounds like someone went onto the sound stage and strummed some notes, the same way the studio created sound effects.

0:00 - Huckleberry Hound Sub Main Title Theme (Curtin).
0:17 - ZR-50 UNDERWATER SCENIC (Hormel) – Narration, shot of Lafe.
0:37 - LAF-4-6 PIXIE PRANKS (Shaindlin) – Narrator talks to Lafe.
1:07 - Clementine (Trad.) – Huck sings.
1:14 - TC-436 SHINING DAY (Loose-Seely) – Huck talks to audience, knocks on door.
1:41 - L-81 COMEDY UNDERSCORE (Moore) – Lafe opens door, “One of your people.”
2:00 - LAF-10-7 GROTESQUE No. 2 (Shaindlin) – Lafe invites Huck inside, “I’m a Huckleberry.”
2:18 - L-78 COMEDY UNDERSCORE (Moore) – Lafe outraged, fires gun at Huck.
2:25 - L-1154 ANIMATION COMEDY (Moore) – Huck in bush, walks.
2:46 - C-3 DOMESTIC CHILDREN (Loose) – Huck outside cabin, inside cabin shots.
3:08 - banjo strumming – Shot of Huckleberry cabin, Lafe gripes, shoots at Huck.
3:42 - LAF-7-12 FUN ON ICE (Shaindlin) – Huck with shot banjo, says he’ll see sheriff.
4:29 - LAF-25-3 bassoon and zig zag strings (Shaindlin) – Huck talks to Zeke, appointed deputy, knocks at door.
5:17 - ZR-47 LIGHT MOVEMENT (Hormel) – Huck runs for door, punch, carnival target gag.
5:52 - LAF-10-7 GROTESQUE No. 2 (Shaindlin) – Out of ammunition, judge scene.
6:42 - LAF-2-12 ON THE RUN (Shaindlin) – Perry Mason reference, Huck runs.
6:57 - Huckleberry Hound Sub End Title theme (Curtin).

Cooking the Flintstones

How did Fred and Wilma Flintstone get their first names? Neither Bill Hanna nor Joe Barbera explain it in in their autobiographies, both of which go into detail about the evolution of “The Flintstones” series before it finally debuted. However, the answer seems to be supplied in a paid obituary that ran in the New York Times on February 22, 2010. It’s for a fellow named Joe Cook. You can read it in full here but the relevant portions state that Cook wrote the first two episodes of “The Flintstones” and that Fred was named for his father-in-law, while Wilma’s name came from his P.T.A. president.

You may be thinking the same thing I thought when I read this: Joe who?

Unfortunately, the original credits for the first season of the show were shorn from the cartoons when they went into syndication in 1966, so the cartoons themselves don’t reveal their writers. But the exhaustive website Webrock Online matches each cartoon with its writer and Cook’s name doesn’t appear. People have been known to make spurious claims about working on cartoons. Could Cook have done the same thing?

The answer would appear to be “no.”

The Knickerbocker News of Albany, New York ran a feature story on “The Flintstones” on June 11, 1960, a good 3½ months before the show debuted on ABC. And the information about the coming series came from Joe Cook. It’s evident in reading the story that Cook had to be in on the early development of the show. Some of the elements seem left over from the original “Flagstones” concept, such as the cartoon being set in “Rockville Vista.” And the publicity drawing supplied to the newspaper features some of the early Ed Benedict designs that were soon modified. Here’s Cook’s concept of the show:

Spoofing the Spoofers
Situation Comedy Animated
By WALTER HAWVER
WHEN YOU HEAR an announcer this fall proclaiming the merits of “The Dinosaur Show,” don’t make the mistake of thinking he slurred his words and meant “Dinah Shore.”
And if he should mention “Rockville Vista,” he will be referring not to the famed Wistful Vista of Fibber McGee and Molly but the cave city of Fred and Wilma Flintstone.
The Flintstones are the brainchildren of Joe Barbera, originator of the “Tom and Jerry” movie cartoons. In case anyone among my readers is unfortunate enough not to be acquainted with Barbara’s other animated creations, let me say right now you should get to know Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, Yogi Bear et al.
HUCK AND McGRAW and Yogi are all characters who can be a joy to the youngster and understood by the adult. I have said more than once that they deserve to be seen in a little later time period than the supper hour, which is their fate in most areas.
The Flintstones (previously “The Flagstones” until the author of the comic strip, “Hi and Lois,” exercised his prior rights) will have a later spot. To be exact, 8:30-9 p. m. on Friday’s TV’s first half hour animated situation comedy series.
It’s a little early for either ABC or Hanna-Barbera Productinos (William Hanna is the business half) to start beating the drums, but the other day I ran into Joe Cook, author of the first episode. To borrow a well-worn phrase, he gave me a Cook’s tour of the program.



* * *
IN JOE’S words, The Flintstones will have something for everybody. “It’s a flat-footed beer drinkers’ show,” he said. “New Yorker readers will probably find more in it than is really there. The kids’ll go for it, simply because it is a cartoon. Nuance-wise—now there’s a word—Barbera is, in effect, spoofing all situation comedy.
“He’s one of the swingingest, most creative people I ever met. He gets up at 5.30 a. m. and when others fog out on him at 11 p. m., he wonders what’s wrong.
“When he got the idea for The Flintstones, he called one of his animators on the phone and dictated the storyboard. They put together a 4-to-5-minute episode and sold the whole show on this basis.”
* * *
THE FLINTSTONES will have four major characters and I’ll let Cook describe them:
“Fred Flintstone: He’s an awfully nice, loveable, albeit charming, oaf. Sort of a cross between Jackie Gleason and Edgar Kennedy. You might call him the William Bendix of 1000 B.C.
“Wilma Flagstone [sic]: She’s an Audrey Meadows type, smart, sarcastic. She knows everything about her husband and doesn’t think he knows anything about anything.
“Barney and Betty Rubble: They’re the Flintstones’ next-door neighbors. Barney is the most charming idiot you can imagine. Betty is so sweet she makes you sick.”
THE SHOW will be loaded with gimmicks, but the basic one is the superimposition of the language and behavior of modern-day suburbia on the settings, costumes and props of prehistoric times.
The Stone Age city of Rockville Vista will have real streets and motor cars with fins (it hasn’t yet been decided if they will have motors). The Flintstones and the Rubbles will watch TV and go to ball games. When Betty lights Barney’s cigaret she’ll use a modern-type lighter, but when she pushes down two little sticks will rise up and rub together to produce a flame.
Cook said there are “no holds barred” for the writer. “You name any situation that can happen in a town and we’ll have it. Teen-age problems, municipal graft and bribery, people with all sorts of foibles. We’ll have a YCMA (Young Cave Men’s Association) and a businessman who owns the firm of ‘Rock & Quarry’.”
* * *
OCCASIONALLY, prehistoric animals will be introduced but Cook said there will be “less of Alley Oop than the Honeymooners.” And when a dinosaur or a tyrosanous [sic] reappears, they will be of the pet variety. “No 1,000,000 B. C. fights,” Cook pledged.
The decision to have the Flintstones as cave people instead of Westchester Countyites was made for Barbera, Cook said. “One of the hardest things for a cartoonist is to animate human beings, particularly the mouth. If you remember Snow White and the Seven dwarfs, you know that the dwarfs were more realistic than Snow White.”
Cook, who will write five more episodes for The Flintstones, has been associated with dozens of network television and radio shows and personalities in his career. Among them: Paul Winchell, Arnold Stang, Bert Parks, the Margaret Truman-Mike Wallace “Weekday” radio show, the Tony Bennett-Jaye P. Morgan summer replacement program for Perry Como and special material for Bob Hope, Will Jordan and other comics.

The story creates another mystery. When did Cook arrive at Hanna-Barbera, when did he leave and why? Why were Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera quick to credit Warren Foster with writing much of the first season of the show but never mention Cook? (Foster wrote “The Swimming Pool,” the episode which had its basis in the short Flintstones pilot.) Perhaps one of our readers may have the answers.

Yogi Bear Weekend Comics, June 1963

Attention Continuity Freaks: Ranger Smith’s first name is Charlie. Well, it is for one Sunday comic 50 years ago this month. Actually, Charlie appears to be a popular name as it appeared for characters on two consecutive weekends in June 1963.



Charlie No. 1 is a ranger who appears in the June 2nd comic. There are fine poses of Yogi and Boo Boo in the final panel. A couple of silhouette drawings in the middle row for variety. I’ll avoid getting into what me thinkum about the native Indian stereotypes. Ranger Smith seems oblivious to the fact Yogi is cooking something with a frying pan. I’ll bet it’s not nuts and berries.



June 9th features “Charlie” Smith. Notice how all the trees are at a bit of an angle? Harvey Eisenberg liked drawing those; they’re more interesting visually than regular straight-up fir trees, though the TV cartoons went in for more stylised trees at times.



Uber-cute kid alert! The kids in the Yogi comics always seem to be wearing rouge on their cheeks. We get one on June 16th. Neither the kid nor blonde Mrs. Smith have names. Nice angles on Yogi in the final panel. Wonder why the toothpaste looks like candy canes? When this comic came out, one of the more heavily-advertised toothpastes on TV was Stripe, which came out of the tube with thick red lines of something in the middle of the white cream. I don’t know if it’s still made.



Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy make an appearance on June 23rd though Yogi (as he did in an earlier Sunday comic) insists on calling Daddy “Augie.” This is the first time I’ve seen Yogi’s cave built on a flat-topped bluff, but it’s required for the gag to work. Harvey Eisenberg’s angled trees appear again. Look at the thought that goes into the layouts. Yogi just isn’t standing next to Daddy in the final panel; he’s crowding into his space to accentuate his annoyance. Masterful work.



So you wondered where Jellystone Park is? Easy. It’s in Monona County. At least it is in the June 30th comic. I love the design of the dilapidated truck in the upper and middle left-hand panels. The layout is really nice in the whole comic; the foreground and background (and in between) are used really well. The panels never look cluttered, even with four or five characters and a vehicle in them. The second-last panel has chattering teeth and shaking. There are a couple of weak Yogi rhymes, but that’s almost to be expected. The mountain with the jagged snow-cap is something else Harvey Eisenberg liked tossing into his backgrounds.

As usual, click on each cartoon to enlarge it.

Pixie and Dixie — Mouse For Rent

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation – Bob Carr; Layout – Tony Rivera; Backgrounds – Dick Thomas; Written by Warren Foster; Story Direction – Alex Lovy; Titles – Lawrence Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Jinks, Dixie, Tabby O’Flaherty, Alfred – Daws Butler; Pixie, Charlie, Cicero – Don Messick.
Music: Jack Shaindlin, Bill Loose-John Seely, Geordie Hormel, Spencer Moore.
First Aired: 1961.
Episode: Huckleberry Hound Show K-52.
Plot: Jinks rents Pixie and Dixie to neighbourhood cats.

This cartoon is little more than a re-working of the concept of “Lend Lease Meece.” That’s where Jinks loans Pixie and Dixie to the growly-voice brown cat next door, who isn’t really serious about chasing them but does it for recreation. In this cartoon, Jinks gets the idea of renting the meece to other cats in the neighbourhood.

The gag is the cats are pretending to catch the meece so their owners will think they’re useful and necessary around the house, and their shouts at Pixie and Dixie are really intended for the owners to overhear. We get the same gag three times. Unfortunately, writer Warren Foster doesn’t build on it each time, other than the third cat throws stuff. The best gag is unintentional, the sole result of Hanna-Barbera’s penuriousness. Even casual cartoon viewers know that Jinks chases the meece past the same furniture over and over and over. This time, all three cats do the same thing. And each of them has the same furniture in their homes!



That’s right. The biggest gag in the cartoon is Bill Hanna saving money because Dick Thomas didn’t have to draw as many backgrounds (there are something like six in the whole seven minutes). And you’ll notice animator Bob Carr pretty much gave the same run cycle to all three cats. Check the position of their feet.

Carr’s animation is so sloppy at one point, that drops of water from Jinks’ broom stay in position for eight frames, looking like they’re hanging in mid-air.

Jinks and the meeces are friends in this one and he’s chasing them merely for show at the start of the cartoon. He tells them to take five while he chats with Charlie, the growly-voiced brown cat with the Yogi Bear collar. They talk about how a cat’s “economic-cac-cle status is in jeopardy” if there isn’t a mouse in the house to guarantee him a good home. “It sounds like we mice are very important to you cats,” says Pixie. If this were a Warner’s cartoon, the meeces would blackmail Jinks into giving them stuff and humiliating himself so they won’t leave. But it’s not. Instead, Jinks comes up with a meece rental service for cats to make sure they won’t lose their home. Jinks cons Pixie and Dixie into going along with the idea with this bit of convoluted logic: “When cats lose their home, they start wandering the streets. The more cats that stay home, the safer you guys are.” The profits are split three ways—50% for Jinks, 10% for the meeces, and 40% for Jinks.

The first customer is Tabby O’Flaherty, with one of Daws Butler’s Irish voices. “My set up at home is getting shaky. I’m even afraid to sharpen me claws on the furniture any more.” Tabby asks if the meece are lively and they respond by doing a dance to a banging of drums and cymbals. So Tabby pays $2 for an hour’s rental. Now, you may be wondering if Tabby has an owner, why he would need money to buy anything. Wouldn’t the owner take care of it? And who would pay a cat cash? The answer is simple. This is a cartoon.



The second customer is Cicero, who looks more like Fibber Fox than a cat. Jinks is ecstatic. He’s a “business typhoon.” Cicero has a bit of a snooty voice. The third customer is Alfred, with one of Daws’ New York voices he used on Fractured Fairy Tales. An annoyed Jinks investigates when Alfred doesn’t return the meece on time. Alfred said they left an hour earlier. Jinks becomes worried that the meece are missing but not through any friendship. He’s worried he could lose his home. There could have been a nice bit of hammy acting by Jinks but the scene lasts a mere nine seconds which leaves time for nothing. There’s a cut and Pixie and Dixie are standing there greeting Jinks. The cat rushes toward them (almost flying at them) but skids to a stop. Foster’s pulled a switcheroo. The meeces have decided to cut out the middle man, er, cat, and rent themselves out to cats—at $5 an hour. Jinks needs the meeces, so he forks out the cash. The cartoon ends with Jinks chasing them with a wet broom as we hear a Bilko-like military shout and “At least for an hour, I can hate you meeces to pieces!”



All your old Pixie and Dixie musical favourites are on the soundtrack, including Jack Shaindin’s meece-chasing “Toboggan Run” (my favourite) and “On the Run” (the favourite of the late Earl Kress). There’s also an appearance by a part of Shaindlin’s odd cue with a flute and a muted trumpet that sounds like it’s quacking.

0:00 - Pixie and Dixie Main Title theme (Hanna-Barbera-Curtin-Shows).
0:13 - LFU-118-5 TOBOGGAN RUN (Shaindlin) – Jinks chases meeces, skid to stop.
0:28 - zig-zag strings and bassoon (Shaindlin) – Jinks tells meece to take 5, talks to Charlie, talks to meeces, shakes head.
1:24 - LAF-7-12 FUN ON ICE (Shaindlin) – Jinks decides to rent meece, works out deal.
2:22 - ZR-52 LIGHT QUIET (Hormel) – Jinks hawks meeces, “…a couple of meeces, Bud?”
2:32 - TC-303 ZANY COMEDY (Loose-Seely) – O’Flaherty and Jinks talk about renting.
2:58 - drum kit effect – Meeces dance, “They’re lively alright.”
3:01 - TC-300 ECCENTRIC COMEDY (Loose-Seely) - O’Flaherty agrees to rent meeces, Jinks says he’ll be affluent.
3:37 - comedy flute and quack cue (Shaindlin) – O’Flaherty talks to meeces.
3:51 - ZR-47 LIGHT MOVEMENT (Hormel) – Meece start running, chase.
4:09 - TC-201 PIXIE COMEDY (Loose-Seely) – Jinks-Cicero scene.
4:41 - LFU-118-5 TOBOGGAN RUN (Shaindlin) – Cicero chases mice.
4:49 - TC-202 ECCENTRIC COMEDY (Loose-Seely) – Cicero talks to Jinks, customer waiting.
5:07 - LAF-2-12 ON THE RUN (Shaindlin) – Alfred chases meece.
5:22 - L-78 COMEDY UNDERSCORE (Moore) – Jinks annoyed with Alfred, Pixie and Dixie waiting for Jinks.
5:57 - ZR-48 FAST MOVEMENT (Hormel) – Jinks runs toward meeces, stops.
6:05 - zig-zag strings and bassoon (Shaindlin) – U-Chase Mouse Rental booth, Jinks wets broom, meeces run off camera.
6:40 - LAF-72-2 RODEO DAY (Shaindlin) – Jinks chases meece with broom.
6:58 - Pixie and Dixie End Title theme (Curtin).