TV critics managed to find ways to watch The Quick Draw McGraw Show even when they didn’t have to.
Larry Thompson of the Miami Herald outlined his subterfuge in his column of December 6, 1960. At least one of his kids didn’t appear to be too happy about it.
Psychology in Action
THIS WOMAN was company for dinner, and we sat around in the front room making small talk until I looked at my watch.
I called to my wife: "Don't forget, this is Quick Draw McGraw night. We'd better start dinner soon or the children won't have time to see it."
"And what," asked the lady, "is Quick Draw McGraw?"
"That," I explained, "is a cartoon character on TV. He's on every Tuesday night. So are Doggie Daddy, and Snooper, the cat detective. Our kids love the program."
"It is very considerate of you to try to arrange the dinner schedule so they can see it," the lady said.
"Oh, yes," I said. "I believe in letting the children see the programs they enjoy, as long as they are uplifting, amusing, or wholesome. A parent can't be too careful about the TV programs his children watch."
We were called to dinner, and, as usual, the children dawdled over the food.
* * *
“IF YOU DON'T HURRY," I said, "you'll miss Quick Draw McGraw. Remember, the champion gets to turn on the TV.”
"Aw, you're always the champion on Quick Draw night," said Carl.
I turned to the company.
"That is part of my child psychology," I explained. "I try to cultivate the competitive spirit — in a sportsmanlike, mannerly way, of course — by pretending that I'm in the contest with them. That way they feel that I am sharing their interests."
"Very commendable," said the lady.
“I’m the champ!" I shouted, as I swallowed the last bit of my milk. "I'll go turn on TV. Nobody else can come until they've finished."
I give the lady a knowing glance and she nodded approval at my applied psychology. It was only a few minutes before the children joined me in front of the TV:
* * *
LATER, after the children were in bed, our company commented on my excellent behavior as a father.
"Mrs. Thompson," she said, "you are most fortunate to have a husband who takes such an interest in his children. I have never seen a better example of child psychology in action."
"You mean about Quick Draw McGraw?" asked my wife, and the lady nodded.
"He does that every Tuesday night," my good wife said. "Only child psychology has nothing to do with it. He likes Quick Draw McGraw. He acts the same way when Huckleberry Hound is on."
* * *
AND I REALLY do feel sorry for grown-ups who don't have children to give them an excuse to look at those funny cartoon programs.
Thompson never really explained the “contest” or “champion” part. Maybe someone had to finish their dinner first.
Perhaps the story was in conjunction with a visit to Miami by costumed Hanna-Barbera characters. The Herald published the photo shoot below on Dec. 11.
Quick Draw was featured on the front page of the TV section of the Vallejo Times-Herald of December 31, 1960. Looking at the gopher, I wonder if this publicity art was drawn by Gene Hazelton. The story on the next page is short but explains Quick Draw’s appeal.
Quick Draw Held Funniest Cowboy
This TV fast gun is a horse.
Television watchers have grown to love this western hero with the four legs. His name is Quick Draw McGraw, at 6:30 p. m., Thursday, Channel 2. There's affection, too, for his fearless but slightly dumb sidekick named Bobba Looey. Mr. Looey is a Mexican burro.
Quick Draw and his pal are the animated cartoon creations of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, whose success on TV was already assured when they introduced such stars as Ruff and Ready [sic], Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear.
The creators feel an important reason for their success is the good taste in their productions. Parents and PTA groups have yowled long and loud over the sadism, violence and sex innuendos permeating most of the ancient theatrical cartoons rerun on TV the past several years.
HURT PRIDE
When "Quick Draw McGraw" shoots a bad man, usually just his pride is hurt, or the seat of his pants is singed. It's doubtful either that you'll ever find him casting lecherous glances at some Betty Boop saloon hostess.
In spite of such distillation, Hanna and Barbera have injected enough western satire into "McGraw" to make him palatable to adults, who make up 60 per cent of their audience.
This season the boys got away from their exclusive diet of talking animals to take on “The Flintstones," a talented bunch of cave dwellers of the Stone Age. But that's another story.
Indeed. The Flintstones’ success all but killed feature stories on the Emmy-nomimated Quick Draw. Prime time is prime time, after all.
Still, the Kelloggs affiliate in St. Louis took out a two-page ad in the Post-Dispatch for a Quick Draw contest.
The Oregonian’s Harold Hughes fit in Quick Draw in part of his column of December 26, 1960. After talking about how former Portlander Bill Selleck set up a really low-budget commercial animation studio (25 frames a minute for $900 a minute), Hughes has some thoughts on Hanna-Barbera. Story missing conjunctions, other words.
BEST WAY to watch old Huckleberry Hound is to stretch out on the floor with the kids. The wind-up Yogi Bear strip is a riot. Maybe Forest Service should recruit army of wind-up Smokey Bears, put them to work fighting forest fires.
BILL HANNA AND JOE BARBERA are the heads behind Huck Hound, The Flintstones, Ruff 'N' Ready [sic], Quick Draw McGraw and the like. They plan series next year built around Yogi Bear, and there is report of full length movie on Yogi.
HANNA AND BARBERA were unemployed three years ago, like Selleck, came up with a cheaper way of producing cartoons by cutting the number of frames per minute, thus reducing the vast amount of drawing that Disney does. But both Bill and Joe worked 20 years doing cartoons for MGM, gave birth to cat-and-mouse team known as Tom and Jerry.
JOE ATTENDED banking school, took up doodling, became "cartooner." Bill studied engineering and journalism in college, worked as a structural engineer before joining Leon Schlessinger's [sic] cartoon company. Both are doggie daddies, trapped in the suburbs.
Since we’re looking at December 1960, there was merchandise just in time for Christmas, with Knickerbocker plush dolls of Quick Draw, Baba Looey, Snooper, Blabber (and, of course, Huck and Yogi).
But the one I kind of like is the Quick Draw McGraw Private Eye game, with 4 player tokens on plastic stands, 48 cards, a spinner and a 15¾ by 18½ inch folding board. One store was selling it for $1.98. Quite a while ago, I posted pictures of various H-B games. I decided to check eBay to see if one of these private eye games was for sale. I found several.
Hanna-Barbera may have ended production of new Huckleberry Hound cartoons in 1962, but he was still deemed a big enough star that box ads were taken out in newspapers that year for his half-hour show.
Here are a few. These chatty ones are for a TV station in Indianapolis.
This is one for a station in Amarillo. I think. The ad doesn't mention a station or channel.
Flint, Michigan to the left; Roanoke, Virginia to the right.
Cincinnati.
It is only appropriate that Huck is seen and heard in North Carolina, where his accent should be familiar to viewers.
Portland, left; Tulsa, right.
Sioux Falls, above; Atlanta, below. They had trouble spelling Huck's name in South Dakota.
This is for Miami, Nov. 29, 1962. Whose brilliant programming idea was it to run Huck opposite The Jetsons? Maybe it was "Bobb."
There are other ads, but this is good enough for now.
If Huck wasn’t on your TV set, you could get your blue hound fix at home by watching him on a Give-a-Show projector by Kenner. It wasn’t a home movie like, say, a Super-8 of Woody Woodpecker. It was a strip of slides. That had to suffice for us kids in the ‘60s. There was no sound so we could practice our impressions of Daws Butler doing Yogi. Look at the price!
Jon B. Knutson in Olympia had a wonderful blog with links to Give-a-Shows he had put together with Capitol Hi-Q music in the background. We had linked to it here in 2010, but it seems to have died the following year. Too bad. There’s so much on the internet that has disappeared. We are still here, however.
The Yowp blog is supposedly on hiatus, but we do have some new posts that will appear periodically (closer to monthly instead of weekly), we hope, through to Christmas, which has been our traditional H-B music post.
The last of Hanna-Barbera’s voice actors from the 1950s has passed away.
Elliot Field was 97. He died last Monday, the 23rd.
Elliot was the afternoon drive jock at KFWB in Los Angeles when Joe Barbera hired him to play the voice of Blabber Mouse opposite Daws Butler in the Snooper and Blabber segments of The Quick Draw McGraw Show. This was back in a wonderful era in radio when disc jockeys invented characters and did their voices on the air. What became the Blabber voice was apparently one of them.
The Snooper cartoons where you can hear him are Puss N’ Booty, Switch Witch (he also plays the witch, another radio voice), Desperate Diamond Dimwits and Real Gone Ghosts (he is also one of the ghosts). He was also the narrator in the Quick Draw cartoon Scary Prairie, the first cartoon put into production on the series.
Elliot explained to me that soon after being hired, he had to be hospitalised for an illness. At that point, Daws took over both Blab’s role. That wasn’t the end of his time with Hanna-Barbera. Flintstones fans will know him as Alvin Brickrock, the Alfred Hitchcock-esque neighbour. He was also a newscaster on the Superstone episode and provided several voices in Flintstone and the Lion.
Elliot was involved in a strike at KFWB in 1961 and, soon after, took a management job at a radio station in Detroit. He came back west in the late ‘60s and settled in Palm Springs. He served on the city council and was acting mayor at one point.
Being a disc jockey in the 1970s (and briefly again in 1988 before going back into news), I enjoyed Elliot’s stories of life on radio. There was plenty of creativity on the air and in promotions back in those days before consultants, computerised playlists and liner cards.
Below is an interview with him about his career. Unfortunately, he starts talking about his Hanna-Barbera career at the end when it's cut off. There doesn't seem to be a Part 2.
My thanks to Jeff Falewicz, who maintains some web sites and is one of those veterans who truly loves radio, for passing along the sad news. My sympathies go to Elliot’s family.
My favourite Hanna-Barbera series first appeared on television screens 65 years ago today.
The Quick Draw McGraw Show was Hanna-Barbera’s attempt to gently lampoon the types of shows popular on television at the time—detective series, the family sitcom, and the ubiquitous Western.
The name “Quick Draw McGraw” pre-dates the series. It was the name of a character (who doesn’t appear) in the Ruff and Reddy episode “Slight Fright on a Moonlight Night,” which aired March 15, 1958. As the dialogue on the series was written by Charlie Shows, it may be safe to assume that he came up with the name.
Mike Maltese arrived at Hanna-Barbera from Warner Bros. in November 1958. The Quick Draw series was already in development—model sheets were made by Dick Bickenbach, dated Nov. 25—and Maltese ended up writing all 78 episodes of the first season of the series. In one interview he said he was doing two and later three stories a week for the studio.
Kellogg’s agreed to sponsor the show, and it was originally sold on a barter basis to stations across the U.S., the same as The Huckleberry Hound Show (stations got the show for nothing, but had to run the half-hour intact, including the commercials for Kellogg’s). KTTV in Los Angeles, WNAC-TV in Boston, KSD-TV in St. Louis and WTTG Washington, D.C. were among the stations which put Quick Draw on the air on September 28, 1959. Sponsor magazine that month said 150 stations had signed to air Quick Draw (compared to 175 for Huck).
Both Huck and Quick Draw were nominated for Emmys that season, with Huck winning.
The show’s theme song, “That’s Quick Draw McGraw,” was copyrighted on August 24, 1959, with the lyrics credited to Joe Barbera and the music to Hoyt Curtin and Bill Hanna.
There were two slight differences between the two shows. In the press, Joe Barbera said he was looking for new voice actors for the studio; Huck had pretty much exclusively employed Daws Butler and Don Messick in the 1958-59 season. He found some. Hal Smith, Jean Vander Pyl and Julie Bennett show up on a regular basis on Quick Draw’s first season. Barbera cast two new regular voices as well. KFWB disc jockey Elliot Field was hired to play Blabber Mouse opposite Daws Butler’s Snooper, and Daws recommended truck driver and ex-radio actor Doug Young to be Doggie Daddy.
Elliot explained to me his Blabber career (he did incidental voices as well) ended not long after he was hired as he got sick. A decision was made to have Butler do both voices, though Field came back for a Flintstones episode before moving to Detroit. Young imitated Jimmy Durante. Daws had done the same imitation for Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera at MGM but felt his voice wasn’t up to it and suggested Young, who gave winning performances. Mark Evanier mentioned that Peter Leeds, who was in Stan Freberg’s voice stock company, had auditioned as well, and you can hear him narrating the Quick Draw cartoon “Scat, Scout, Scat.” And Vance Colvig, Jr. shows up in the Quick Draw cartoon Bad Guys Disguise more than a year before he returned to the studio to play Chopper.
The Augie Doggie/Doggie Daddy relationship was based more on Garry Moore and Jimmy Durante's interactions from their variety show on radio for Camel cigarettes than any TV sitcom (which tended to include long-suffering wives and bubbly-but-angst-ridden teenage daughters). “Dat’s my boy who said dat!” Durante would bark to the audience about Moore. Baba Looey sounded like Desi Arnaz’s Ricky Ricardo on I Love Lucy, except Baba substituted ‘thinnin’ for ‘splainin’ (Arnaz actually talked that way. Before Lucy, he was known for singing "Babalú," hence the character's name). Snooper was a take-off on Ed Gardner’s Archie from Duffy’s Tavern, though Daws insisted there was some of actor Tom D’Andrea in the voice. Quick Draw was just another Western dullard, like Red Skelton’s Clem Cadiddlehopper. [Note: Joe Bevilacqua has written saying Daws created Quick Draw's voice by adding a western twang to Charlie Butterworth. As Joe was a long-time friend of Daws, I don't doubt that's correct.]
The other difference is one you may not have noticed. Hanna-Barbera had been utilizing the brand-new Capitol Hi-Q production library for both Ruff ‘n’ Reddy and The Huckleberry Hound Show. Hi-Q was also heard on Quick Draw, but there appears to have been a deliberate attempt to use different music than what was heard on the other two series. Many of the cues were composed by Englishman Phil Green, and were originally pressed on 78s in the EMI Photoplay library. Like the other two shows, the Langlois Filmusic library, which credited Jack Shaindlin as the composer, was also used.
While Quick Draw was on drawing boards in November 1958, and production of the Quick Draw and Snooper and Blabber cartoons was underway in December, Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy needed a bit of time in development. Variety reported on January 8, 1959 that Screen Gems had approved production of the father-and-son series Pete and Repete. By January 28th, the characters were now, according to Variety, Arf and Arf. The March 23rd edition of Television Age mentions the segment was named for Augie Doggie; Augie was named for an in-law of Mike Maltese. Production numbers suggest the Augie cartoons were started well after the other two segments of the Quick Draw show.
Maltese came up with memorable side characters for the show as well. A pink mountain lion named Snagglepuss shows up to heckle in all three segments; in the Quick Draw cartoons, he’s animated by George Nicholas. Quick Draw was assisted in his sheriff-ing by Snuffles, who loved dog biscuits so much he’d float into the air in ecstasy after eating one, and do the bidding of whoever had them, hero or villain. And Maltese told columnist John Crosby he was inspired by the silent Doug Fairbanks’ movie The Mark of Zorro (1920) to invent Quick Draw’s alter ego of El Kabong.
Two cartoons Maltese wrote for Augie and dear old dad featured one of Bill and Joe’s favourite characters—the duck that would become Yakky Doodle, voiced by Red Coffey.
Why do I like Quick Draw? The characters make comments to the viewer, there are lots of wisecracks and puns, Quick Draw is incompetent but enthusiastic about righting wrongs, which makes him likeable.
Now if only the series was available on home video.
{Late note: Jeff Falewicz has written to say that Elliot Field passed away last Monday at the age of 97. He was the last of the studio's pre-Flintstones voice actors].
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.
“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.
The Quick Draw McGraw Show was bought and paid for by Kellogg’s, so the cereal maker made sure it had its imprint in the opening and closing animation.
As the Randy Horne Singers cheerfully bleated out “(That’s) Quick Draw McGraw,” the star drove a stagecoach through the plateaus of the American Southwest.
The camera cuts to a close-up of Quick Draw cracking his whip. Rather cleverly, the whip returns to spell the sponsor’s name with the letter-style familiar from cereal boxes.
But hold on thar! Quick Draw’s rope trick is only temporary. The letters fall and drop around his snout.
Quick Draw cracks the whip again. The force causes his head to swirl around, giving him multiple eyes and some funny expressions which viewers don’t see because of the pace of the animation.
The letters on the whip resume their correct form.
Some years later, Hanna-Barbera put out both the Huck and Quick Draw series into syndication, but without Kellogg’s participation; stations could sell the spot-break time that had been used to sell Sugar Pops or Corn Flakes. This also meant changes in the openings and closings to remove all references to Kellogg’s.
This annoyed me as a kid. “They’ve cut out Baba Looey on the stagecoach,” I grumbled loudly at the TV set.
I was also irritated about the changed opening to the Huck show. “Where’s the rooster?” I wanted to know. Years later, when Huck came out on DVD, the rooster footage returned and I satisfied myself it wasn’t something my childhood imagination had dreamed.
Animation director Robert Alvarez has these layout drawings in his collection. I presume they’re the work of Dick Bickenbach as his personal collection of H-B artwork ended up being auctioned on line. (Mr. Alvarez clears up the origin of these drawings in the comments. While Bick's artwork was auctioned, that is not the source).
I couldn’t tell you who animated these opening and closing sequences. I’m pretty sure the backgrounds are by Joe Montell, who worked for Tex Avery at MGM and later for John Sutherland Productions and Jay Ward in Mexico.
Now, thanks to the collection of the late Earl Kress, a little appropriate music. Here is the Kellogg’s “Good Morning” jingle on a xylophone. I’ve snipped out Hoyt Curtin’s slate and instructions. The xylophone player is named Chuck. There are three versions at different tempos. These were made at Western Recording on August 26, 1960. At the same session, by the way, Curtin recorded the vocals for the “Happy Anniversary” episode of The Flintstones.
GOOD MORNING XYLOPHONE
GOOD MORNING XYLOPHONE FAST
GOOD MORNING XYLOPHONE FASTER
And, because you want it, here is Hoyt Curtin scatting how he wants the Kellogg’s jingle to sound.
GOOD MORNING by HOYT CURTIN
Ah, but that’s not all!
Also buried in Earl’s audio collection are the opening/closing Kellogg’s billboards for Top Cat. Weekly Variety reported on March 1, 1961 the series had been sold to the cereal company and Bristol-Myers (makers of Ban deodorant and Bufferin) on an alternate-weekly sponsorship basis.
TOP CAT OPENING BILLBOARD
TOP CAT CLOSING BILLBOARD
This is the point in the post where I make my usual lament that Quick Draw isn’t on DVD (except for several episodes from the last season where music rights aren’t an issue) and that the Top Cat DVD has the same closing credits on all 30 episodes. (Kin Platt did not write the whole series, on-line "research" notwithstanding). We know from Variety’s review of Oct. 4, 1961 that Harvey S. Bullock wrote the debut “The $1,000,000 Derby” and Mike Maltese told interviewers he also supplied at least one story).
Kellogg’s deserves some credit for the success of the Hanna-Barbera studio. In 1958, H-B Enterprises was only turning out Ruff ‘n’ Reddy for NBC. Joe Barbera or Screen Gems’ John Mitchell or both managed to convince Leo Burnett, Kellogg’s agency, to replace one of its syndicated half-hour live-action strips with The Huckleberry Hound Show. Huck’s incredible success resulted in the birth of Quick Draw and the expansion of what became a cartoon empire.