Time to clean out the old computer and post sundry Hanna-Barbera-related pictures corralled from various parts of the internet over the last few years. My apologies if any of these are yours and I haven’t credited you. Ardent fans have likely seen these posted elsewhere but it’s nice to look at them again. You can click on any of them to make them bigger.
I can’t say that I watched ‘The Mighty Mightor.’ It debuted at 11 a.m. on a Saturday morning in fall 1967 as part of a show called ‘Moby Dick.’ The idea of a crime-fighter whale (weren’t there “teen companions” on that one?) would have been too ridiculous even for 10-year-old me. I see the competition on the tube where I lived were ‘The Beatles,’ ‘Top Cat’ and ‘Spider Man.’ I probably watched ‘The Beatles’ if anything (‘George of the Jungle’ was the lead-in), though during baseball season, Dad took over the TV.
The drawing above is by Alex Toth and the date gives you an idea when the show may have been put into production.
My favourite H-B cartoon. I’ve rummaged through my head trying to think of an episode where Quick Draw was on roller skates. I can’t think of one off-hand, and the production number has me baffled (the Quick Draw show cartoons all started with “J”). Note: See the answer in the comment section.
Lovely drawing of El Kabong. My less-than-educated guess is it was for promotional purposes.
This sheet by Dick Bickenbach is dated almost ten months before “The Quick Draw McGraw Show” debuted. The show was in production by December 16, 1958, as that’s when Daily Variety reported production on it would be halted over the holidays.
A cel from the closing animation for “The Quick Draw McGraw Show.” There’s cycle animation of the characters riding the stagecoach but none of it contains a drawing where Baba has his feet together and Quick Draw’s whip has two loops under his hand. The closest I can find in the closing animation is when the stagecoach emerges from its little side-journey and rejoins the galloping horses that are supposed to be pulling it.
Two sheets of Ranger Smith. The top one is from after “The Yogi Bear Show” went on the air. The second one is from 1963, so I gather it’s for the Yogi Bear movie. The design hews closer to what Gene Hazelton et al were using in the Yogi Bear newspaper comics. It’s initialled by Alex Lovy.
Layout of Reddy. He seemed to have his fists up in a bunch of episodes, so I can’t guess which one this is from.
Yogi and Cindy have procreated in this 1962 drawing. If anyone knows the origin of this drawing, let me know.
I’m pretty sure I’ve posted this story sketch before. It’s from one of the cartoons-between-the-cartoons on “The Huckleberry Hound Show.”
More artwork from a cartoon-between-the-cartoons on “The Huckleberry Hound Show,” as best as I can tell.
And this neat drawing is by Gene Hazelton. Gene loved golf and lived adjacent to a golf course. Gene ended up being in charge of the Hanna-Barbera comic strips syndicated by McClatchy. He had worked with Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera at MGM (and Tex Avery as well) and also spent time in the 1940s at Disney and Warner Bros. Gene was respected and admired by his co-workers. Bravo for Gene.
There are probably a few more wayward drawings buried in old files. I’ll try to post them when I get a chance.
There are Hanna-Barbera treasures many of will never see. Unless, perhaps, we’re all named Scott Shaw!
Instead of wondering whether his son has an exclamation mark at the end of his surname, too, we instead had a Facebook conversation about a recent store of layouts he had been shown, some by Ed Benedict, some by Dick Bickenbach, and some by Gene Hazelton. I’m afraid they’re not available to post, but I do have a few things to present.
I’ve always been curious which specific early Hanna-Barbera cartoons Gene laid out or storyboarded because I don’t recall ever seeing his name on credits on the Quick Draw or Yogi Bear shows.
Gene, however, did have more than a passing acquaintance with Yogi. We’ll get to that in a second. I, first, want to plug an inactive blog dedicated to Gene that you may not have visited. Gene moved into a house once the home of Margaret Marker and her little on-line tribute can be found by clicking HERE.
As you can see, and as we mentioned on the blog before, Gene drew the Yogi and Flintstones newspaper cartoons for McNaught Syndicate, taking over from Harvey Eisenberg, another talented ex-MGMer from the Hanna-Barbera unit. So, on this Sunday, have a look at the Sunday comics that appeared on 38 years ago last Friday. Sorry they’re not in colour. (See the note from Mark Christiansen in the comments).
We also mentioned on the blog that Gene came up with the delightful character, the Gas Genie, used in ads by the natural gas industry in Canada and the U.S. The Genie was so popular, dolls were made of him in the early ‘60s that you could buy (since someone will ask, no, the dolls didn’t emit gas). Here’s a drawing of the Genie from an ad from January 12, 1961.
And you can see some of Gene’s cute variations on the Genie elsewhere in the ad.
We’ve got some more of Gene’s work coming up later in the month, but I’d like to hear from anyone that can tell me which of the early H-B cartoons he worked on. Even if you don’t have an exclamation mark at the end of your name.
There’s something fascinating about seeing cartoon characters in development before they hit the screen—model sheets, storyboards, conceptual drawings and that sort of thing. Thanks to the web and the old-fashioned printing press, we can get a peek at something more than the finished product in the first Hanna-Barbara cartoons.
A while ago, a site called Comicrazies re-posted a bunch of stuff the Cartoon Network had on its site at one time. Included is this early drawing of Quick Draw McGraw and Baba Looey.
You have now reached the part of the blog where you will shake your head in disgust and mutter “Is he stupid? Can’t he tell?” I am presuming this is an Ed Benedict drawing, though it’s not initialled. The site also has this 1958 model sheet by Dick Bickenbach.
The actual design process at H-B is still a little unclear to me. I don’t know if Bick and Ed worked independently, or if one worked on the other’s designs, or if it varied from series to series.
Even more interesting is some of Ed Benedict’s work featured at Mike Van Eaton’s on-line gallery.
We all know that Snagglepuss appeared as a naked orange mountain lion on several different cartoons before he got his own series and his starched theatrical collar. It isn’t clear whether this drawing was of the original Snag or the series Snag (note the lack of a collar).
Mike’s site also has these great design drawings for Yogi Bear. The final one is the most puzzling.
The last one is supposed to be of Yogi, Boo Boo and Cindy. But by the time Cindy showed up, Yogi had been on the air for two seasons. Why H-B would consider changing the design at that point is a puzzler.
There’s lots of great stuff, some of which found its way into Jerry Beck’s The Hanna-Barbera Treasury, which never surfaced in my local book store (grrrr). Included are storyboard pages, like this:
The story board is the work of Warren Foster for the 1961 cartoon Ice Box Raider. The credits on the H-B cartoons are a little confusing to an outsider like me. Paul Sommer is listed as the story director on that cartoon (Alex Lovy got a “story director” credit on others) but I don’t know what the story director actually did.
The Comicrazy site has some great story panels as well.
This one is for Slick City Slicker. Mike Maltese wrote the story but Dan Gordon was credited with “story sketches” on some of the other series on the Quick Draw show. However, someone over on John Kricfalusi’s website says this board was done by Gene Hazelton who, of course, worked on cartoons with Joe and Bill (and Tex) at MGM. Writer Jeff Lenberg claims Hazelton was at Hanna-Barbera when the studio started in 1957 but I don’t recall seeing him credited anywhere and am at a loss to explain exactly what he was doing there.
Of course, we have far more knowledgeable people reading this blog and I’m sure they can comment and fill us in.Yowp Note: As an added bonus for you Hazelton fans, here is a newspaper ad from April 1962 featuring the Gas Genie. Hazelton developed the cute character in 1957 for the natural gas industry to be used in newspapers and on billboards. Click to enlarge and see the “©GH”.
Hazelton, according to Billboard
of May 20, 1957, was creative supervisor of Grantray-Lawrence, known in the 1960s for the cheesy TV Spiderman
cartoons. The same edition notes Lew Marshall had been added to the staff of Animation, Inc., run by Earl Klein. Marshall couldn’t have been there long as he, presumably, was at the newly-formed H-B Enterprises that year.