Cool McCool

When BATMAN became a TV phenomenon in 1966, its creator BOB KANE also launched his zany animated spy spoof COOL MCCOOL, a bumbling secret agent who spoke in JACK BENNY-esque tones and gave headaches to both the underworld and his excitable (though never fully revealed) boss NUMBER ONE. Other than human wind machine HURRICANE HARRY and the slithery, plant controlling RATTLER, the colorful cast of cackling criminals were reminiscent of Gotham City's baddies, from PENGUIN knock off THE OWL and JOKER-like prankster JACK IN THE BOX to MAD HATTER clone DR. MADCAP. Voice pros BOB MCFADDEN and CHUCK MCCANN provided the show's punchy personalities...MCCOOL's oft repeated "That will NEVER happen again, Number One!" and "Danger is my business!" smacked appealingly of Agent 86's best known tag lines. Featuring high tech gizmos including the mustache phone and Lassie-loyal Cool Mobile, this inventive, gag heavy toon (with its snappy, guitar driven theme song) was a notch above most Saturday morning fare of the sixties.

Well, actually the organisation he worked for was "Secret Inc.," but never mind - this was one seriously funny spy spoof ("Created By Bob Kane And Al Brodax," the opening would blare - cartoons with "created by" credits were rare back in the '60s; must have been Bob Kane's cachet). Our hero, the mustachioed, trench-coat wearing spy Cool McCool - "Danger is my business" - fought the likes of Hurricane Harry, the Rattler, Jack-in-the-Box, the Owl (and the Pussycat in one episode) and Madcap; invariably he managed to come out on top, but never without fumbling along the way, and each cartoon ended with his irate - and never seen by us - boss Number One ejecting him from the office, despite crying his other catchphrase ("That will NEVER happen again!")

In between his adventures (two per show), poor Cool would reminisce about his dear old dad Harry McCool, who in days of yore was a cop right at the top of the league... cue the supporting cartoon, with Harry and his partners Tom and Dick (you saw that coming, didn't you?) as equally clumsy but also triumphant policemen. It all made for cheaply animated but frequently entertaining viewing, marred only by the fact that I'm convinced the King Features logo frightened me as a child. But apart from that, this is far more fondly remembered by me than some better known cartoons.

Delightful series, but let's get something out of the way from the start: you do NOT watch this for the generically Saturday morning limited animation.

Instead, you watch it for the inventive fun the writers had with the over-the-top eccentricity of the villains: witty asides of social commentary (for the time), shameless puns, parodic elements no child could possibly have noticed, and the occasional innuendo slipped past censors because who censors dialog between a green-complexioned mad scientist/sorcerer with a hat obsession and his lisping femme fatale with green hair and a ghost white death pallor? After all, does anyone think the creators of this cartoon expected the children in the audience to recognize Bob McFadden's homage to Jack Benny in the voice he gave to Cool McCool?

It's never laugh-out-loud funny, but it brings a constant smile to one's face.

Cool McCool comes from the same Saturday morning tradition as Inspector Gadget, The Inspector, and Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp, all of whom are spiritual descendants from the live-action TV series Get Smart and the film series The Pink Panther.

However, unlike the rest of them, Cool McCool has a touch of heart to him. When Cool accidentally hurts Number One, R&D techie Riggs, or his assistant Breezy, he comes across as genuinely remorseful, and he clearly loves his sapient car the Coolmobile like a pet. He has an entire segment devoted each week to his love and admiration for his father, and he introduces the segment with a song in which he regrets how often he disappoints cantankerous father-figure Number One. (Many sequences end with Number One admitting, once Cool is out of range of hearing, "I love that boy!")

In contrast, Inspector Gadget and Inspector Clouseau remain cheerfully oblivious to the feelings or needs of almost anyone else (with the obvious exception of niece Penny), while Lancelot Link and Agent 86 will lie to and manipulate their closest friends to shore up their slipping self-delusions of competence. Cool shows more affection to his car than Inspector Gadget shows to his dog Brain!

Other enjoyable aspects of this series include fun that the animation artists and the voice actors (Chuck McCann and Carol Corbett) have with the villains in ways that are easier to pick up now as an adult than they had been as children in the 1960s.

Mad scientist/sorcerer Doctor Madcap a.k.a. Professor Madcap and femme fatale lover Greta Ghoul flirt in parodic fashion -- he seduces her with "sweet nothings" by purring as he holds her in his arms, "Your eyes are like nothing! Your lips are like nothing! Your face is like nothing!"

The Owl is inspired by both Batman's foe The Penguin (in terms of bird mania) and Spider-Man's foe The Vulture (in terms of The Scheming Old Banker type and the fact that both have the means to fly). Of course, his partner in crime is The Pussycat, a Mae West-voiced version of Catwoman. Despite the superficial similarities to The Penguin, The Owl's plots seem more inspired by McCann's voicing of the character in imitation of Lionell Barrymore's scheming banker Mr. Potter from It's a Wonderful Life. (Thanks to this series, I hear Barrymore's Potter voice in my head whenever I read The Vulture's dialog in a Spider-Man comic!) (One amusing visual effect is that the two owls on The Owl's shoulders blink in unison with him.)

Hurricane Harry is inspired by the appearance of Goldfinger and the voice of Sydney Greenstreet (but with an out-of-place lisp) but otherwise has nothing in common with them. The Rattler and Jack-in-the-Box also also have voices inspired by celebrities.

The animators manage to have a lot of fun with the free-for-all deforming movements of the villains despite the limited animation. Rather than the usual static figures of this sort of animated cartoon, Jack-in-the-Box is constantly springing and swaying, The Rattler is continually coiling and slinking, and Hurricane Harry inflates and deflates even while laughing and talking.

As fun as this series is, it has become more of an historical artifact than a series that will attract many new viewers. The moments of witty social commentary have become outdated as well as turned hackneyed from being repeated endlessly in hundreds of cartoons series since this series came out. The parodic elements will probably mean nothing to modern audiences, most of whom have no idea who Jack Benny or Lionell Barrymore might be. Innuendo is a lost art today and thus unrecognizable to most modern viewers, who either never recognize it or imagine it everywhere.

As a friend pointed out to me when I showed him this series, even styles of humor wax and wane in popularity, and this style of humor, a quirky blending of vaudeville and campy absurdism and urban wit, so prevalent among live-action and cartoon TV series of the 1960s and 1970s, has not been in style for more than a decade now.

Nonetheless, for those of us who still appreciate that style of humor and who can enjoy the charms of a hero with heart despite the Saturday morning limited animation, this remains a delightful series.

The show is a blend of Get Smart and Batman in the style of the Beatles cartoons (all shows that also were airing at the time). Making the character sound like Jack Benny was a clever way of giving him a vocal inflection similar to Maxwell Smart without imitating Don Adams directly. All of these then-current references were readily apparent at the time even to kids, but because of them, the show is now dated and mainly of historical interest.

I loved this show as a young teen. I was a fan of Batman from way back, and it was either created or written by Bob Kane, the creator of Batman. It featured a humorous James Bond-like trenchcoated spy-private eye (McCool), who fought villains very closely based on Batman's foes: Jack-in-the-Box (Joker), the Owl (Penguin), Dr. Madcap (Mad Hatter). I wish I could remember more about it.