The Quickest Draw in the West

 In the second installment of "Scrapped September", I thought I'd highlight an unmade project regarding one of my favorite Hanna-Barbera shows and characters, Quick Draw McGraw! I haven't really talked about him on this blog yet, so it's well past time I fixed that. This silly sheriff has actually been involved in a few canceled projects over the years, but for today, I'm highlighting the 1989 TV movie that never was: The Quickest Draw in the West.

The saga of The Quickest Draw is a short one, but it's an interesting one nonetheless. The film was the brainchild of two animation writers: Tom Ruegger and John K. Ludin. These writers would later rise to prominence through their work at WB Animation, working on shows such as Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain, but at this time, the two were stationed at Hanna-Barbera. They worked on several shows, including The Smurfs, Flintstones Kids, Pound Puppies, and more, but the two had an idea for a TV movie starring Quick Draw McGraw. Both were big fans of the character, and since Hanna-Barbera had several TV movies in the works at the time covering a variety of different franchises, they hoped one of them could be given to McGraw. At this point, Quick Draw had been mostly relegated to cameos and supporting roles in crossovers with other Hanna-Barbera characters, so this would have been his biggest outing since the end of the original series. Not much is known about what their pitch for the movie contained, but there was at least one piece of art created for the pitch, which you can check below. This comes courtesy of a 2020 listing on Heritage Auctions, for those curious.

While I and I'm sure many others would have been intrigued by the prospect of a Quick Draw movie, there was one person who wasn't quite feeling it, and that was none other than Joe Barbera himself. He wasn't that into the concept, and steered Ruegger and Ludin into another direction, leading to the creation of The Good, the Bad, and the Huckleberry. That was the end of the Quick Draw film, but I am confident a few ideas from the movie were remixed for the one we got. Sadly, it wouldn't be the last time Quick Draw McGraw would get a movie pulled out from under his hooves, but that's a story for another day.

Beyond the piece of art accompanying this article, all of the information featured here comes courtesy of Tom Ruegger's blog, Cartoonatics. It doesn't get a ton of updates these days, but if you are a fan of his animation writing, I cannot recommend it enough. As a starting point, I suggest you check out this post, as it's where the info regarding this movie comes from. It also features some fascinating details behind the production of the film we did get, including a photo of the script signed by the legendary Daws Butler.