A Fun Announcement for Tomorrow

 With May about to wrap up, I figured now would be the perfect time to announce my plans for this blog in the month of June. To make it short, next month will be dubbed "Jetsons June"! Look forward to plenty of posts related to the first family of the future all throughout the month. That being said, this blog won't be just Jetsons stuff for the next thirty days. While that will be the focus, you 'll also get your regularly scheduled posts about classic cartoons. I've got some fun stuff in store for this month, so I hope you all will be as excited for this as I am!

Classic Cartoon Voices in Advertising: A Multitude of Mel Blanc

 Today marks a special day for all of us classic cartoon aficionados out there. On this day in 1908, Mel Blanc, the man of a thousand voices was born. To celebrate the occasion, here are a couple of TV commercials Blance appeared in over the years. First up is an ad he did for American Express, although I cannot find when exactly he did it.

Next up is a bumper he did for CBS in 1986, which appeared during their Looney Tunes 50th anniversary special. 

Last is a commercial for Oldsmobile he did alongside both his son Noel, and several of the classic Looney Tunes characters he gave life to. Airing in 1989, this was the last onscreen performance Blanc did before his death that July.

Happy 115th birthday, Mel! Though he may no longer be amongst the living, he'll no doubt continue to inspire future creatives for decades to come. That's all for today, folks!

And Now, A Less Than Stellar Review of The Flintstones

 The Flintstones might be considered a cartoon classic these days, but it that wasn't always the case. Back when the show was new, reviews were anything but glowing. Probably the most notable review was in Variety, which dubbed the show a "pen-and-ink disaster", a statement Joe Barbera would often mention in the following years. These negative reviews continued even into the show's second season. Today, I share with you a review of the second season premiere in The Tulsa Tribune from September 16th, 1961. The piece was written by Bob Thomas, and actually reviewed a couple of fall premieres. I'll only include The Flintstones section since, well, that is what this blog is about! 

    Another Friday night debut was the second season return of "The Flintstones." This prehistoric cartoon is TV's Piltdown Man—a fraud
    It's a cartoon, but it has no action and no comedy to speak of, or at least to laugh at. The background is stone age, but the idiom is modern.
    What is it?
    It's an unfunny "Honeymooners." Close your eyes and dim your ears and the voices of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble could be Jackie Gleason and Art Carney. But the humor is not up to the "Life of Riley" level.
    To demonstrate its affinity to the situation comedy show, "Flintstones" Friday night had a guest star, Hoagy Carmichael. Even drawn in cartoons, he seemed embarrassed at the material he was handed.
    I realize that "Flintstones" was last season's success and started a rash of other nighttime network cartoons. The term is advisable   

    

    

Hoagy Carmichael Comes to Bedrock

 In the fall of 1960, The Flintstones premiered on television and soon became a cultural phenomenon. It wasn't long before a second season was commissioned, and for the first episode of this new set, Hanna-Barbera chose to do something that the series had yet to do: feature a celebrity guest appearance. As most of you probably know, this role went to musician Hoagy Carmichael, who got to sing alongside Fred and Barney in the episode, "The Hit Songwriters." Being that this was the first time the show ever did such a thing, a lot of press was generated by his appearance. Here are a few newspaper excerpts previewing the episode, featuring quotes from Carmichael and some rare photos of him in the HB studio!

First up is a piece from The Hutchinson News, dated September 2nd, 1961. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any author attributed to the story.

Hoagy Plans On Stoneway

    Did you know cavemen made music too?

    Yes, you'll soon find out that Tin Pan Alley started all the way back in the Stone Age. This fall's first installment of "The Flintstones," that animated study of Neolithic manners, will give a full description of the song business back there then. Guest star of the episode is a prehistoric tunesmith named Hoagy.

    If you're wondering why this Bedrock musician looks familiar, he's patterned after a certain Machine Age Hoagy, named Hoagy Carmichael. The modern-day Hoagy is providing the voice of his Neanderthal counterpart, and has penned a song for the show titled "Yabba Dabba Do," with lyrics by Fred Flintstone.

    The handsome, greying Carmichael has high hopes for "Yabba Dabba Doo." "With Fred Flintstone singing the song," said Hoagy (Carmichael, that is), "I wouldn't be surprised if it got on the Pilt Parade's top ten. After all, it's written in rocks-trot tempo."

    Having Hoagy play Hoagy is somewhat of a departure for Hanna-Barbera, producers of "The Flintstones," who have never used living guest stars before. But they figured a good-natured spoof of the music business needed a real live composer. Hoagy, with his famous voice, was the natural choice.

    The only hitch in the operation was a jurisdictional problem. Carmichael had to join ASCAP. It stands for Antediluvian Society of Caveman, Authors, and Petractadyls.

Next is a piece that showed up on September 10th in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. This was one of several writings that appeared in a feature titled, "Look and Listen With Rowe." Some of this piece is identical to the above story, so for the sake of brevity, I decided to cut that section out.

    HOAGY CARMICHAEL will appear—in spirit, so to speak—as a guest of The Flintstones when ABC's animated series starts its second TV season at 8:30 Friday night.

    Via the art route, Hoagy is back in the Stone Age and working as a songwriter in the company of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble. The song is "Yabba Dabba Do."

    The cartoon feature also will have Hoagy Carmichael dabbling, uncharacteristically, in rock 'n' roll and a world of champagne music with a bubble-blowing baby elephant. Now what Saturday night TV cornball could be the object of that satirical punch?

    Also promised is a new set of atrocious lyrics for the nostalgic classic that is Carmichael's "Star Dust."

    "Sometimes I think this sort of outlandish treatment is good for a song and the people who love it. It gives them an opportunity to get a little outraged." That's Hoagy Carmichael's dry-witted analysis of the situation.

    

The More The Merrier!

Time for a new post, this time highlighting the season two premiere of The Flintstones back in 1961! Here's an excellent excerpt from the June 11th edition of the Evening Star, discussing what the season's first episode will feature, and some short quotes from Joe Barbera himself. 

I also find the art used in this piece to be pretty interesting. I've seen it many times before, but never with any of the non-Flintstones characters featured. For comparison, here's the version you've probably seen before.

The Voices of Hanna-Barbera in Advertising

 While the majority of us think of their many cartoon voiceover roles when we think of the actors Hanna-Barbera routinely used throughout their shows, that was far from the only thing the majority of them did. Many of them had backgrounds in radio, theater, and several credits across live-action film and TV. However, what most people forget is that several of their voice actors also were featured in many TV commercials over the years. So how about I spotlight a few of them? Today, in what I plan to be the first in an ongoing series, I'll share three commercials and highlight the actors who starred in them!

First up is Jean Vander Pyl. She voiced many characters for Hanna-Barbera over the course of thirty years, but she's best remembered for voicing both Wilma and Pebbles in The Flintstones. The same year that show premiered, Miss Vander Pyl starred in a commercial for Joy Dishwashing Liquid. Kind of reminds me of the season two Flintstones episode "A Star is Almost Born", where Wilma was scouted for a lotion commercial.

Next up is Jonny Quest himself, Tim Matheson. Matheson has had arguably one of the most diverse careers of any Hanna-Barbera actors, and that includes commercials. Here he is in a 1992 ad for Ford.

Last but certainly not least is the voice actress for everybody from Judy Jetson to Penelope Pitstop, Janet Waldo. Waldo was featured in several commercials back in the fifties and sixties, but the most well-known of these would have to be this one for Anacin in 1964.

That, of course, is only scratching the surface. There are plenty of other commercials out there with these voice actors, and I plan on covering as many as I can across this series. If you have any you're aware of and would want to see covered here, why not drop a comment on this post? I'd love to see if there's any I haven't found prior.

A Tale of Two Georges

It's time for another post here, and today, we're looking at two Georges: Jetson and O'Hanlon. I'm sure you're all familiar with the former, but Mr. George O'Hanlon might not be as recognizable. George O'Hanlon provided the voice of George Jetson, the only cartoon voice he ever provided, but that's not to say he wasn't busy. O'Hanlon's career dates back all the way to the 1930s, and he did everything from acting to writing over the course of his over fifty-year career. Outside of The Jetsons, O'Hanlon is best remembered for playing Joe McDoakes in the Warner Bros. shorts from 1942 to 1956. If you've never seen any of them, I highly recommend checking out the ones available on Youtube to get a feel for them. All of the shorts are also available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive Collection, although copies can get pretty expensive nowadays.

From the research I've conducted, interviews with O'Hanlon are rather hard to find, and ones related to The Jetsons are even harder, if not nonexistent. That's why I was beyond ecstatic to find this interview he did in the pages of Thousand Oaks' News Chronicle. Dated June 13th, 1988, this is likely the last interview O'Hanlon ever gave, and in it, he reflects on his relationship with Hanna-Barbera, his many struggles, and his career in Hollywood in general. From the article, you really get the sense that George O'Hanlon was as charming offscreen as he was on it, injecting plenty of humor through the piece with his quotes.

Sadly, George O'Hanlon passed away on February 11th, 1989, right after finishing a recording session of Jetsons: The Movie. Joe Barbera was quoted as saying after his death that he died doing what he loved, and from this article, I have no doubts he was telling the truth.

'Jane, Jane, Stop this crazy thing'
By John Mitchell
News Chronicle

    When George Jetson speaks, so does George O'Hanlon.

    Jetson is the hero of the futuristic Hanna-Barbera cartoon series, "The Jetsons." O'Hanlon is the 75-year-old veteran actor who is Jetson's voice.

    The fact that O'Hanlon can still speak for Jetson, let alone travel from the Conejo to the Hanna-Barbera Studios in Hollywood for taping sessions, borders on the miraculous. The 19-year-resident of Westlake Village has suffered four heart attacks and a major stroke, is legally blind, has limited mobility and has undergone a series of operations that would have put many good men down for the count.

    But since 1985 he's been healthy enough to have made 51 half-hour "Jetsons" episodes, two TV movies and he is now looking forward to doing a feature-length movie for release in theaters. "No problem; it's like doing three half-hour shows and then stringing them together," he says.

    O'Hanlon's relationship with Hanna-Barbera actually began with a rejection, he says. In 1959, he was the choice of Joe Barbera to be the voice of Fred Flintstone in "The Flintstones." He made a tape which Barbera liked, but network executives in New York did not. O'Hanlon was dropped and Alan Reed got the part.

    A couple of years later, Barbera came up with an idea for "The Jetsons," a spin-off of "The Flintstones." Again he tapped O'Hanlon for the lead role and this time he got it.

    Unfortunately for O'Hanlon, in the fall of 1962, ABC-TV dropped "The Jetsons" into a Sunday slot against "The Wonderful World of Disney." After 24 episodes, it was canceled.

"But you know something, even though only 24 episodes were made, "The Jetsons" never were off the air for the next 22 years," says Nancy O'Hanlon, the actor's wife.

    A few years later, in the middle of a two-year writing stint for "The Jackie Gleason Show" in Florida, O'Hanlon suffered and recovered from his first heart attack. After Gleason's show got the axe, he moved on to a variety of writing and acting jobs.

    In June 1976, his life almost ended. He had just completed a role in "Rocky" — he's the television commentator  — when he suffered another heart attack. Not realizing its severity, he didn't go to the hospital until the following day. After tests, doctors recommended he undergo bypass surgery. He agreed to do it, but only after he saw his daughter graduate from Agoura High School the following week.

    

    During the bypass surgery, which was done at Los Robles Regional Medical Center, he suffered a stroke and went into a coma for a week. "When he woke up, he had trouble putting sentences together, he couldn't read, distinguish colors and, sometimes, he couldn't remember my name," says Nancy.

    "I was a broccoli." O'Hanlon grins.

    After a period, including a second trip to intensive care because of a collapsed lung, he was transferred to the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital in Calabasas. At the time, he required constant care.

    "Just before Labor Day he tried to 'escape,'" says Nancy. "He got past security and out the door and started towards the freeway. Then he came back, tried to get in, but the door had locked behind him.

    "Later, he said to me, 'Please get me out of here.'

    "The doctors had told me that I'd never be able to take care of him at home, that the nurses and security could barely control him in the hospital. He couldn't even go to the bathroom alone. When I told George I couldn't take him home, he said, 'I'd do it for you.'

    "That did it. I told the doctors I wanted to take him home for the weekend. They said they'd let me do it just so I could see for myself that I wouldn't be able to take care of him."

    While O'Hanlon had been in the hospital, Nancy had rented a new house. "As we were driving there I told him over and over — he had a tiny attention span then — that it would be a different house. I asked him if he understood and he said, 'Yes.' Then when I stopped in front of the house, got out and walked over to unlock his door, he said, 'Just one question: Who are you?'"
    O'Hanlon has come a long way back since then, to about a 90 percent recovery says his wife, though he still goes to the Motion Picture Hospital three times a week for "therapy and socializing."

    In 1985, Hanna-Barbera decided to make new episodes of "The Jetsons" for television syndication. Because of his poor eyesight, O'Hanlon is unable to read a script and he must do his taping separate from the cast. The director speaks the line with voice inflection, and O'Hanlon, with the same inflection, speaks it into the microphone.

    "It only takes a half-hour and we're out of there," says O'Hanlon. "In the early days a taping like that would take all day. Now when we get done we feel like celebrating, so we'll go out to lunch."

    Although O'Hanlon's involvement with "The Jetsons" began a quarter-century ago, it has become the capper on a show biz career that stretches back to the early 1930s. That's when the native of Providence, R.I, came west for fame and fortune via the silver screen.

    Early on, he gained steady employment as an extra in many movies, including the Busby Berkeley musicals for Warner Brothers. Later, he had character roles in "Jezebel" and "June Bride" with Bette Davis, "The Hucksters" with Clark Gable, "The Tanks Are Coming" with Steve Cochran and other flicks.

    However, O'Hanlon will be most recognizable to moviegoers of the 1940s and 1950s as Joe McDoakes, the hero of a series of 10-minute comedy shorts. Each short opened with McDoakes behind a giant eight-ball, then featured a wacky routine about how the "average man" dealt with one of life's problems.

    Also in the 1950s, O'Hanlon starred in his own radio show, "Me and Janie," with Lurene Tuttle.

    "We were on the Mutual Network for a year, then Tums bought the show and moved us to NBC where we replaced "The Alan Young Show," he says.

    For all the ups and downs of a checkered career, the O'Hanlons regard their current involvement with "The Jetsons" as extra special.

    "Doing the show is very good for him," says Nancy. "It's as good as medicine. He was dying of boredom until they called."

    "Yeah, it appeals to the ham in me; I get it all out of my system," says O'Hanlon with a grin.

    "Not all," quickly corrects his wife.

    

Coming Fall 1961

 Hey everyone! I'm currently researching a post I'm working on, but I found this short newspaper article that you all might find interesting. From The Sacramento Bee, here's a sneak peek at that fall's cartoon lineup, featuring Rocky and Bullwinkle, Top Cat, Ludwig Von Drake, and the second season premiere of The Flintstones. Here's a hint about that article above I'm working on: it's got something to do with one of these cartoons!

Revenge of the Fifth

 Because I'm feeling generous, I thought I'd drop one more Star Wars-related post to cap off this week. This time, we have a series of concept sketches done for Star Wars: Clone Wars, a micro-series developed by Genndy Tartakovsky and Cartoon Network that aired from 2003 to 2005. These appeared in an interview with the show's art director, Paul Rudish, which was featured in Star Wars Insider 69. Look below to see Rudish's earlier takes on Jedi Knights Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, and Qui-Gon Jinn!

If you enjoyed this particular series, you're in luck, as I plan on having an entire week of posts in November dedicated to the show and its 20th anniversary. But until then, we'll return to our regularly scheduled HB and classic cartoon posts next week.

Happy Star Wars Day From Fred Flintstone

 May the Fourth, also known as Star Wars Day, is today, so I thought I'd celebrate the occasion with this neat clip. This is a small promo that aired in the middle of CBS' premiere of the original Star Wars on the evening of February 26th, 1984, the first time the film ever aired on network TV. In it, Fred Flintstone, voiced here by Henry Corden, reminisces on watching the film when he was younger as he now watches the film with his family. Enjoy, and may the fourth be with you all!

Cartoon Network Stickers, 1992

 A new week has started, and with it comes a new blog post. Unfortunately, I don't have anything particularly exciting to share with you today. Don't worry though, as I am definitely working on some exciting pieces that should be due out sometime soon! In the meantime, here's another piece of early Cartoon Network promo material I have stumbled across. From 1992, it's an assortment of stickers featuring the faces of some of Hanna-Barbera's most famous characters. I have no idea if more were created or if these were all they made, but I do think they look pretty nice! Check 'em out below!