Peter Cullen Hits the Big Time

 Last month, the one and only Peter Cullen passed away at the age of 85. Though most will remember him best for characters like Optimus Prime and Winnie the Pooh's Eeyore, his earliest roles were actually at Hanna-Barbera. Starting off with minor roles in 1979's Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo, Cullen would have a recurring presence in their productions until The Pirates of Dark Water concluded in 1993 (acting against type, he voiced the villainous henchman Mantus). His voice could be found in many of their shows during that time, including The Smurfs, The Snorks, The Jetsons, and even the infamous rival of The Transformers, Challenge of the GoBots.

Normally, I don't talk a lot about Hanna-Barbera productions of the 70s and 80s, but there's no denying that the studio was still full of talent during this period, and Peter was no exception. He's voiced countless characters that have entertained generations, and today, I'm honoring him by looking back at an often forgotten portion of his career.

Below is a piece on Cullen that ran in the January 7th, 1974 edition of The Gazette, a paper from Cullen's birthplace, Montreal, Canada. You won't see any mention of cartoon voice-acting here. Rather, the focus is on Cullen's move away from CBC radio work to hitting it big on The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour. Peter was one of the many regulars on the show, joining a cast that included other greats like Steve Martin and Teri Garr. Certainly not a bad beginning for what would become quite the career if you ask me.

Cullen: Starting to Hit it Big

By L. Ian MacDonald

    It is going on three years since Montreal comedian Peter Cullen gave up on the CBC and gravitated to Los Angeles, where he now works steadily on the Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour and the Bobby Goldsboro Show.
    He knew he was beginning to hit it in Hollywood this fall, when they invited him to play in a celebrity golf tournament at Pinehurst, North Carolina.
    This was before the fuel shortage forced airlines to curtail service and, for the occasion, 65 actors and their families were ferried across America in a chartered 727. 
    Peter Cullen, who plays to a 15 handicap, found himself paired with Roberto Di Vicenzo, the magnificent Argentinian player who once lost the Masters by marking down the wrong score.
    "I said, "Hey Roberto, you want me to keep score?" Cullen recalled the other day at the end of a Christmas visit with his family. 

    When it came time to perform at an elaborate dinner, nobody wanted to go on first. "I said, 'You want an icebreaker, I'll break the ice," said Cullen, who went out and broke up the place with his impressions of Richard Nixon and Howard Cosell. 
    This sort of willing attitude comes from working at the CBC, where all performers are underpaid and nobody is a star. Paradoxically, the CBC rehearsal hall mentality that drives our pest people out of the country, prepares them well for the Big Apple.
    If you can survive on a show with $7,000 budget, as Cullen did on a successive CBC comedy series, you can flourish on a $200,000 weekly production like Sonny and Cher.
    Having started as more or less as an announcer and a glorified extra, Cullen is beginning to find his level on America's top-rated and best produced variety series. On last week's show, he was given four minutes solo with the Cosell number. He has an offer to do a guest shot with Mary Tyler Moore. And he's involved in one or two series pilots with Blyebearde Productions, who put the Bonos on the TV map.
    So it's evident that if the bottom fell out of the Sonny and Cher market tomorrow, Cullen wouldn't lack for work.
    But at 32, Cullen apparently wants a bit more than that. Privately, he talks about putting aside enough money so that in a few years he might come home and go into the film business.
    California lifestyle, he says, is nothing beside his own city.
    And he asks about the CBC.
    "Tell me," he says, "is there anything for me here?"

An Ode to the Hanna-Barbera View Master Reels

 Out of all the old-school pieces of Hanna-Barbera merchandise that exist, I think the most charming of the lot has to be the Hanna-Barbera View Masters. What's so great about these you may ask? Instead of using traditional artwork to bring these characters and worlds to life, these reels used models and miniatures. Years before CGI was a thing, these reels were as close as you got to seeing these characters for real, and they are absolutely spectacular to look at.

I dig these View Masters a lot, but unfortunately, I haven't really talked about them on this blog. So today, I'm going to share some of my favorite images found in these reels. Starting off with a literal bang, we've got this still of Yogi drumming away. I love how much Yogi pops against that red background, and the designs of the people wouldn't look too out of place in an actual Hanna-Barbera cartoon.

This next one focuses on Quick Draw McGraw, and boy do I love how this one is staged. It's got a lot of energy, between both the lasso and the expression on the cow's face. With only a dozen or so images included in each reel, the artists behind these did an amazing job making you feel like you got your money's worth with images like these.

This Flintstones reel has more going on in it than most of these do, but it still has all the quality and charm you'd expect from these. I love Bamm Bamm pulling Fred off the ground with just a finger, and you've gotta love Barney's head poking out.

If you'd like to know more about these reels and more importantly the people behind them, check out this great blog post on Florence Thomas, who did many of the models for the images seen above. I've also done posts showcasing sketches for both the Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear reels, which I'd also recommend to fans of these. While there's been lots of Hanna-Barbera merchandise over the years, I don't think any has come close to capturing the spirit of these characters the way these View Masters did. I'd love to see an animated project of some sort take inspiration from these models. If nothing else, it wouldn't be worse than some of the directions they've taken the characters lately!

My Favorite Don Messick Roles

 I'm not quite done with talking about Don Messick just yet. Consider this post a fun bonus if you will. Back in 2024, I put together a list of my top five favorite Daws Butler roles. Now, I'm doing the same for his frequent co-star. These are, in no particular order, my favorite voices Don Messick did for Hanna-Barbera. As I'm only including five, there's going to be more than a few great characters that won't make the list. I implore you to share some of your personal favorites in the comments below, no matter how well known or obscure they may be. Now, with that out of the way, let's get into the list.

Scooby-Doo

This one is a no-brainer. If you've been following this blog for long enough, you probably know I'm not the biggest Scooby-Doo guy these days, but it would feel almost criminal to not include him on this list. He's easily the most popular of the characters Don voiced, and for good reason. While he may be cowardly, when push comes to shove, he'll do what is right and stand up for his friends. As Don himself often pointed out, "He's got human foibles. He gets into problems, but he always lands on his feet."

Astro

Moving on from Scooby, we have his predecessor, Astro, who I honestly like more than ol' Scoob. His relationship with the Jetsons family is great stuff, particularly those with Elroy and George, which couldn't be more different from each other. Despite being very similar to Scooby, Astro does have plenty of qualities unique to him, one of those being Don Messick's performance. Like the character himself, Don's performance is more over the top and exaggerated, unlike Scooby-Doo, who is more cautious and unsure. You've also gotta hand it to Astro for being the only Jetsons character to have a spin-off series, for whatever that's worth.

Boo Boo

I ranked him as one of my favorite HB characters, so of course Boo Boo had to show up here as well. Boo Boo is the perfect accomplice to Yogi, and likewise, Messick's performance is perfect alongside Daws Butler as Yogi. Whereas Yogi's voice is big and over the top, Boo Boo is more quiet and cautious. He's very much the straight man in the duo, and though another actor could have made that quite boring, in the hands of Don Messick, he's anything but. It's hard not to think of his voice when seeing the character, and in my book, that's the mark of an extraordinary voice actor.

Benton Quest

While Don Messick wasn't the actor who originated the part of Dr. Benton Quest (that honor goes to the great John Stephenson), he's without a doubt the man who made him one of the more memorable fathers in animation history. While the voice of Benton isn't too different from Don's normal voice, there's a lot more to voiceover work than doing crazy voices. Messick brought Dr. Quest both a warmness and intelligence that was vital to the character. Beyond that, the fact that the show was an action-adventure series gave Messick the opportunity for some more serious character work, which is also appreciated. Besides, who wouldn't want their dad to be a genius that takes them all over the world?

Muttley

Last but not least, I've got to give props to Dick Dastardly's nasty accomplice, Muttley. Though he's another canine character like Astro and Scooby, he might be the most unique fellow out of all of these guys. He doesn't have the character of someone like Dr. Quest or Scooby, nor does he have much of a vocabulary. Despite all that, Messick makes the character memorable with one of the most recognizable laughs in animation history. While Muttley wasn't the only character Messick played to have that distinct laugh, it's hard not to think of him when you hear it. How many other characters can you think of that are remembered from just a simple laugh? The character was a terrific sidekick to the also memorable Dick Dastardly, and their hijinks were definitely a high point of Wacky Races. Muttley is proof that a great actor can make even the simplest of roles ones worth remembering, and I think that's one of the great things about Don Messick. Just like Daws Butler and Mel Blanc, he created so many characters that endure to this day. No matter where you go, people know not just who Scooby-Doo is, but what he sounds like. If that's not an impressive legacy, I don't know what is.

Video of the Week: A Don Messick Demonstration

 To close out this week long celebration of Don Messick, I've got quite the video for you all to check out. This comes from the late Paul Maher's great archives, and showcases Don at what I believe is a charity event from the late 1980s. It's a pretty long video, and throughout Messick discusses everything from his early work to The Duck Factory. He also demonstrates many of his voices, including the New Zealand kiwi bird that was mentioned in Monday's post. Give it a look down below!

Don Messick Tributes

 On October 24th, 1997, Don Messick passed away at the age of 71 following a stroke. His passing was a huge blow to the animation world, and an outpouring of support from the community soon followed. Today, I'm sharing several of the great tributes that were put out in honor of the one and only Don Messick.

Here's a tribute from the year 2000 by Brett Rogers, a freelance writer who often wrote for Animation World Magazine. It also features some fantastic quotes from Messick, originally sourced from an interview Rogers conducted with him back in 1995. 

Scott Innes, who took over the role of Scooby-Doo following Messick's retirement and knew him in his later years, wrote this poem in honor of the vocal giant.

Hanna-Barbera themselves put out this touching piece in Don's memory, featuring Shaggy and Scooby-Doo in mourning. The artwork was drawn by Iwao Takamoto, a Hanna-Barbera mainstay and character designer for the Scooby-Doo cast.

Lastly, Mark Evanier, a man who has written many a comic book and cartoon, put together this extremely well written piece on Messick shortly after his passing. Though Don Messick passed away almost thirty years ago, his legacy will no doubt endure for years to come, and not simply because of his characters. It is the memories and the ways he impacted the lives of so many that I personally think will be his greatest legacy of all.

Messick Enters The Duck Factory

 Don Messick could be found in cartoons, radio, and commercials, but in his career that spanned over fifty years, Messick only had one major on-camera role. That, my friends, was The Duck Factory.

Never heard of it? That's for good reason. It was a sitcom that aired on NBC for only three months in 1984. It follows the employees of the titular Duck Factory, an animation studio behind the popular in-universe animated series, "The Dippy Duck Show." Messick plays, rather fittingly, a voice actor known as Wally Wooster, allowing Messick to show his vocal talents even in a live-action setting. 

The show in general had quite an impressive ensemble cast. Jay Tarses, a writer for The Bob Newhart Show, portrays a writer at the studio. Jack Gilford and Clarence Gilyard Jr. both play artists, while Teresa Ganzel, another HB voice actor, is Sheree Winkler, who runs the company. And for the lead role of cartoonist Skip Tarkenton, we have some guy named Jim Carrey. Never heard of him before. 

While this all sounds fun and it definitely has the makings of a sitcom classic, the show itself is just kind of fine. It's nothing horrible for sure, but it's also not that great, either. But if you'd like to judge the show yourself, check out the first episode below. The other twelve are also available online, as the show has unfortunately never been released in full on home video. It's certainly not the best show, but it's great to see Messick perform a role for once rather than simply hear him. 

Don Messick Commercials

 As yesterday's post pointed out, in addition to his work in cartoons and radio, Don Messick was also often heard in many commercials throughout the years. Today, I'm going to share three of them, all from different eras of Don's career.

Starting off, here's Don (sounding a lot like Droopy) being heard in an international highway signs public service announcement from the 1960s. However, he's not alone here. Tell me if the other voice in this clip sounds familiar?

Jumping forward to 1981, we can hear Messick in this Green Giant commercial, voicing Mr. Owl (no, not that one). No longer informing viewers about traffic safety, Messick instead tells them about the wonders of Green Giant Niblets Corn.

Finally, you can't really talk about Don Messick without talking about Scooby-Doo, and over the years, Messick voiced the character in plenty of commercials. This one aired on Cartoon Network in 1994, and as you can guess, is a commercial promoting the show airing on the channel. Once again, Messick is joined by one of his frequent animation costars. This time, it's Casey Kasem as Shaggy. Definitely a short promo, but a sweet one all the same.