Are we ever, EVER, going to see The Quick Draw McGraw Show on any kind of home video format?
I get asked that a lot.
Let’s hear from someone who should have an answer.
First, the background.
A wonderful man named Earl Kress had been hired to help get Hanna-Barbera’s early half-hours out on DVD. In 2005, the first season of The Huckleberry Hound Show was released. Earl had searched through the studio’s records, finding things he said they didn’t know they had. He found cue sheets, episode guides, footage lists for opening credits, even footage itself; all kinds of great things.
Unfortunately, Huck didn’t sell as well as was hoped. But Quick Draw was put on the list for release.
Then the project went nowhere.
At the time, Earl told readers of the Golden Age Cartoon forum that the half-hour shows were not intact that he could find (in colour, anyway), some of the bridges could not be found, and some of the footage was not in the best condition.
But the main problem was music rights.
When the Hanna-Barbera studio opened in 1957, the most inexpensive way to include background music in a film was to license a stock music library. Hanna-Barbera signed television deals for two very popular ones—the Langlois Filmusic library, “composed” by Jack Shaindlin, and the Capitol Hi-Q library, created in 1956 from the works of numerous composers, but updated by Capitol record every year. Ruff and Reddy cartoons used these libraries. So did three of the four seasons of The Huckleberry Hound Show and two of the three seasons of The Quick Draw McGraw Show. (Afterwards, Hoyt Curtin was hired by Hanna-Barbera to compose cartoon cues that belonged to the studio).
When the Huckleberry Hound DVD was released in 2005, Capitol still had rights to the stock music and a deal was struck to clear it for home video use. That soon changed. The music, as Earl explained, had reverted to the composers or their heirs, and trying to get it approved for DVD was thwarted by demands from two estates. He rather forlornly expressed the feeling the odds were against Quick Draw cartoons—at least the ones with the Shaindlin and Capitol music—ever being released on home video.
We’re getting close to 20 years later. There’s still no Quick Draw home video, excepting a small number of cartoons with Curtin’s cues on compilation discs.
Enter George Feltenstein.
Among animation fans, George is best-known for his years with the Warner Home Archive, overseeing releases of various Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes. Hanna-Barbera now falls under his company’s eye. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve read a promotional puff piece about some H-B series or specials I think are really lame and yelled “What about Quick Draw!?!”
George has answered that question in an interview with music expert-turned-author Greg Ehrbar.
You can hear the full interview here. Here’s what Mr. F. told Greg.
“What we face with music clearance on television programming is pretty horrific. Thankfully, most Hanna-Barbera productions don’t have music clearance issues, thanks to the late, great Hoyt Curtin. His work-for-hire compositions that were so unforgettable, those are not a problem. It’s when something else was introduced from outside the bubble, that’s where things get complicated.
“Of course, the early years when they didn’t have work-for-hire compositions in the very, very early shows; for example, that’s why there’s no Ruff and Reddy DVD.
“Well, we would like to change that, and we’re now finding ways to make some of those things happen. You take everything a step at a time. I don’t give up easily. [...]
“I still will pursue the projects I would like to see. All four seasons of Huckleberry Hound. I would like to see Quick Draw McGraw. I’d like to see New Adventures of Alice in Wonderland. But, in the meantime, we have such a gold mine of treasures that are clear, that are ready for release, or that can be made ready for release, and that’s the direction we’re taking right now.”
So George’s attitude is “never say ‘never’.” But it’s more of a hope than anything else. There’s no indication from him anything has actually been done about Quick Draw (or Huck), or whether he has to convince management to agree to demands of the stock music rights holders (which was done for the Warner Bros.’ “Seely Six” cartoons from 1958) as the decision certainly wouldn’t be his alone. But those two fine series ARE on his wish list and he’s pledging to work to get them out. Just not now. For now, we can expect to see Blu-rays of cartoons from the ‘80s. Well, I guess someone likes them.
In the meantime, you’ll have to continue to enjoy Quick Draw McGraw bootlegs, as slightly murky and defaced with TV bugs as they are.
Incidentally, this should be a good year for early Hanna-Barbera fans when it comes to books. Greg has written Hanna-Barbera: The Recorded History. Greg certainly is the right person to write this, as he knows more about H-B Records, Colpix and the Golden Records that featured Hanna-Barbera characters than anyone I can think of. And there’s a bit on music used in the actual cartoons.
And Kevin Sandler and Tyler Williams have written Hanna and Barbera: Conversations, which should be out in May. I intend to talk to Kevin and post the interview here as we get closer to the publication date. When it comes to the early days of the studio, there are fewer and fewer people around to converse with. I had the great pleasure of chatting with layout man Jerry Eisenberg and writer Tony Benedict some time ago, as well as retired KFWB disc jockey Elliot Field, who provided voices for the studio in 1959 before moving to Detroit. I’m looking forward to both books.
Oh, and a fruitful conclusion to George Feltenstein’s idea to let us all see Quick Draw McGraw in his pristine glory.
By the way, George, if you’re reading and would like send me scans of Quick Draw cue sheets, I’ll happily accept them.
P.S.: People also ask me about the status of this blog. I honestly don’t have time to write a lot now. I’m on to other things in real life. However, I have put together a number of posts and there’ll be something once a month for the next number of months, the same as last year, but the blog is pretty much retired.
Blogging can take an awful lot of time, and I suspect that’s why a blog that I enjoyed reading went silent several years ago. The blog belonged to cartoon writer Earl Kress, who passed away a week ago today.
Plenty of people who worked in the Golden Age of Cartoons were still in animation when Earl started in the business and I’d love to have read what he knew about them, or what they told him about working at MGM, Warners, Lantz or Fleischer. Earl talked a bit about it on his blog.
His blog’s URL has been taken over and now defaults to a new location, Earl Kress.com (you can click on the name to get there). We’re being promised Earl’s stories and I’m looking forward to reading them.
However, I’m scooping the website by re-printing one of Earl’s tiny tales about television’s greatest voice actor, Daws Butler. Some people are tempted to play a “who’s better” game involving Daws and Mel Blanc, which is kind of like comparing the ’27 Yankees with the ’78 Yankees. They were both great teams, but they played under different conditions in different eras. Mel had a 15-year head-start on Daws in network radio and rode that to fame, along with an exclusive voice credit at Schlesinger and Warners that put his name on the screen for more than 25 years (and then several times a day on television decades afterward). Daws got in on the last good decade of theatricals, didn’t voice any real high-profile film characters and had his name absent (thanks, Mel) from his work at Warners in the ‘50s (he did get credit at Lantz and UPA).
Mel’s face got known by appearing periodically on the Jack Benny TV show; he had slowly become almost a weekly supporting player on the Benny radio show by the late ‘40s. Daws was on live action TV, too, probably more than Mel, but he was hidden very uncomfortably behind a set with his upright arm manipulating various puppets on Beanie and Cecil.
Daws had his big chances to appear on camera. Once was on that American Express commercial shot years ago—by Mel Blanc. Earl related a story about it on his blog on June 14, 2006 that I had never heard before; certainly it was never mentioned in Mel’s autobiography. Here’s Earl:They originally wanted this commercial to be both Mel Blanc and Daws Butler together on an airplane. Between the two of them, they’ve done the voices for more major characters than the whole rest of the industry put together. But Daws turned them down. 
Some of his students (Daws used to run a voice workshop), myself included, tried to talk Daws into doing the commercial. It was one day’s work. He still refused. He said there was too much sitting around on film sets and he just didn’t want to do it. Plus, he would have had to fly to another city to shoot it. The producers of Barney Miller, one of Daws’ favorite shows, also wanted him to do a part and he turned them down, too. And that one was shot right here in Hollywood. It’s too bad. Daws was such a great actor, it’s too bad he didn’t get some of the recognition that Mel got by being on shows like Jack Benny and doing the AMEX commercial. We can hope other little nuggets like this about the actors, writers, animators and producers of cartoons will soon pour (if nuggets could, in fact, pour) from Earl’s tribute spot.
There’s only one thing wrong with the site. Mark Evanier has graciously termed your Yowping scribe an “animation historian.” While I’m interested in the medium’s past (certainly far more so than the present), my knowledge is lacking in far too many areas to enable me to be legitimately labelled an “historian,” certainly in comparison to the published authors on cartoons who I’m sure you’ve read.
Well, there is something else wrong with the site. Earl isn’t here to share his stories with us any more. But I hope this is the next best thing.
One of the unexpected pleasures of putting out the dusty old bits and pieces and musings that you read here is that there are others who want to take time out of whatever they’re doing to help.
I’ve been very fortunate that one of those was Earl Kress.
Earl passed away of cancer this morning.
That’s Earl you see in the picture with the world’s perennial teenager, Janet Waldo, at ComiCon last year.
Unlike other obits you’ll read on the net, this writer had never met Earl, never worked with him, and didn’t really know anything about his career; the cartoons I like most are of a vintage before Earl started writing them. But he really loved the old Hanna-Barbera cartoons and the studio.
Fans who have DVDs, or have watched cartoons on the internet ripped from the DVDs, of the Huck and Yogi shows, the Flintstones and Top Cat, can thank Earl for his work in getting them released, and with extras we might never have seen otherwise. He worked on a Quick Draw McGraw DVD which, sadly, we likely will never see. Quick Draw was Earl’s favourite character and he was always a little sad that, first, restoration, and then music rights issues got in the way of it being released.
I suspect few media executives know, or care, about production library music from the 1950s. But Earl did. When the Rhino discs of Hanna-Barbera themes and music came out in 1996, he managed to get included nine Capitol Hi-Q pieces by Phil Green that fans had never heard without dialogue over the top. He did it with a “hey, listen to this” sense of glee. Earl had gone over the cue sheets for a bunch of the cartoons in the Hanna-Barbera library, made some notes, and off he went. He saw Ole Georg at Capitol, where someone went into their archives, found the music he was looking for—including a piece by Hecky Krasnow—and played it for him. He went to Cinemusic where they told him even they didn’t have some of Jack Shaindlin’s music any more, but gave him the address of someone who had preserved the cues on film. Even then, he couldn’t find everything he was hoping for, including the original version of his favourite Shaindlin cue, ‘On the Run.’ After all that, only a deal could be worked out for Green’s music. I remember being astounded and really excited when I heard the cues for the first time. I had been trying to track down the library for more than 20 years and here was some of the music I was looking for. Others wanted to hear it, too. They’ve even come to this blog to do it. Credit Earl.
Earl was a friend and student of Daws Butler. And he personally knew an awful lot of old-timers who had worked on many of his favourite Hanna-Barbera cartoons, which must have been a real treat.
Quite unexpectedly one day, Earl dropped me a note about the cartoon music cues and asked me if he could help me with any of them. And that’s the way he was. He generously shared information and offered things from his collection when he didn’t have to. But we both liked the same cartoons and he really wanted to help. And he did.
Earl had many great, supportive friends and they’re all suffering a sad loss today.
Thanks so much for everything, Earl. I’m going to miss you.