September 13, 2022 • 13 mins
On this day in 1969, the cartoon series “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!” aired for the first time on CBS.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that unmasks history one day at a time.
I'm Gabe Louzier, and today we're celebrating the birth of
a pup name Scooby Doo. His rise to cartoon stardom
wasn't as clear cut as you might expect, So grab
(00:23):
yourself some Scooby Snacks and will unravel his mysterious origin together.
The day was September nineteen sixty nine. The cartoon series
Scooby Doo, Where Are You? Aired for the first time
(00:43):
on CBS. The show introduced viewers to the cowardly great
Dane Scooby Doo and the rest of the Mystery Inc Crew,
Fred Daphne, Velma, and Shaggy. The original series ran for
two seasons and produced a total of twenty five episodes,
which were originally aired on Saturday mornings. The concept and
(01:05):
character proved so popular that they were eventually spun off
into a host of other cartoon series, as well as movies,
video games, theme park attractions, and a plethora of merchandise
tie ins. Today, more than fifty years later, the Scooby
Doo franchise is still going strong, outlasting both its creators
(01:26):
and the studio that made it. No TV series is
created in a vacuum, but Scooby Doo in particular was
a direct response to the times in which it was made.
In the late nineteen sixties, the United States was in
the midst of unprecedented political and social strife. From the
Vietnam War to the assassination of MLK to civil rights
(01:49):
protests in the streets. There were signs of violence and
division everywhere you looked. The reporting of these traumatic news
events led many American viewers to question their Emiley's media
diet for the first time. They began to notice that
it wasn't just the news that was getting more violent.
Scripted dramas, and even children's programming, We're getting more brutal
(02:11):
as well. The tipping point came in June of nineteen
sixty eight, when New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Just a few hours after Kennedy was shot, President Lyndon B.
Johnson established a National Commission on the Causes and Prevention
of Violence. Faced with pressure both from the government's investigation
(02:33):
and from media watchdog groups, TV networks and studios pledged
to tone down the violent content. They promised that by
the nineteen sixty nine season, their schedules would focus less
on action and more on music, comedy, and other forms
of family friendly programming. Particular care was given to show's
(02:53):
aim towards children. Some action adventure cartoons remained on the air,
but studios like Hannah Barbera began developing new, more comedic
series that didn't rely on superheroes, spies, or aliens. Enter
Scooby Doo, a show about a friendly group of teens
and their dog, solving mysteries and bringing bad guys to justice,
(03:15):
not with their fists, but with their wits. The original
concept for the show was developed by TV producer Fred
Silverman and was closely patterned after CBS's filmation cartoon The
Archie Show that was the breakout series of the nineteen
eight season, showcasing the Riverdale teens from Archie Comics as
(03:35):
a bubblegum pop band, complete with a large sheep dog
mascot named hot Dog. Silverman sought to copy much of
that dynamic for his own show, except with a spooky
horror twist. In his initial conception, the main characters were
a traveling band who would make their way across the
country in a big van called the Mystery Machine. Each
(03:58):
episode would find the band performing at a different venue,
only to be sidetracked by some kind of mystery that
only they could solve. Silverman pitched the idea to Hannah Barbera,
and while the studio accepted the proposal, they also had
a few notes. The main concern was that the show
as described was too scary and didn't have enough potential
(04:19):
for comedy. To solve the problem, the studio handed the
reins of development to Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, a
pair of cartoon writers who were tasked with retooling the
show to make it more comedic and less frightening. At first,
the duo kept the idea of a touring band composed
of four teens and a large talking dog. The band
(04:40):
and the show itself went by the name Mysteries five
that implied equal billing for each member of the band,
but at the time the dog character, a sheep dog
named too Much who played the bongos, was only written
as a sidekick, not a lead player. Somewhere along the way,
it was decided that the concept is a little too
(05:00):
close to the Archie show, right down to the dog breed.
With that in mind, Ruby and Spears dropped the rock
band element and brought the mystery component to the forefront.
They also shifted focus to the two funniest members of
the crew, Shaggy, who was patterned after a beat Nick,
and his cowardly canine companion, who had been changed from
(05:21):
a sheep dog to a great dane. One of the
final pieces of the puzzle was supplied by Fred Silverman.
All of the human characters had undergone a name change
during the show's development, and Silverman thought too much the
dog needed a new name as well. Inspiration apparently struck
during a red eye flight to Los Angeles when Silverman
(05:42):
just couldn't fall asleep. According to him, quote, as we're landing,
Frank Sinatra comes on the p A and I hear
him say Scooby Dooby Doo. I said, that's it. We'll
call it Scooby Doo. Silverman is, of course referring to
Frank Sinatra's song Strangers in the Night, though it's worth
(06:02):
noting that Sinatra actually sings Doobie, not Scooby. But again,
it was a red eye flight after he landed, Silverman
suggested calling the dogs Scooby Doo and making him the
main character of the show. The studio agreed, and at
last all the pieces were in place. On Saturday morning,
(06:23):
September nineteen sixty nine at ten o'clock am, Scooby Doo,
Where Are You aired it's very first episode. The perpetually
Scared Scooby Doo or Schubert if you want to get formal,
was joined by a team of four inquisitive teenagers. There
was Fred, the straight arrow leader, Daphne, the enthusiastic but
(06:45):
clumsy beauty, Velma, the bookish detective, and Shaggy, the laid
back pal of Scooby Doo who always had a case
of the munchies. Together these amateur sleuths made up the
team of Mystery Ink, which traveled from one creepy location
to the next, and their trademark Mystery Machine, a holdover
from the touring band concept. Each episode, the teens investigated
(07:10):
supposedly supernatural sightings, but inevitably the witches, monsters and ghosts
always turned out to be a greedy human in disguise.
After laying out the villain's fiendish plan at the end,
of the episode, which typically involved scaring someone away for
the sake of money, the teens would unmask their foe,
proving to the locals and to the young viewers at
(07:32):
home that there's no such thing as monsters. At that point,
the only thing left to do was for the captured
criminal to deliver one of the show's most enduring catchphrases,
something to the effect of I would have gotten away
with it if it weren't for you, meddling kids. The
design of the main characters was the work of Japanese
(07:52):
American artist Ewow Takamoto, a former Disney animator who joined
Hanna Barbera in nineteen sixty one. One of his first
jobs for the studio had been to design Astro, the
talking family dog of the Jetsons. That made him a
natural choice when it came time to perfect the look
of Scooby, not to mention his human pals, Takamoto took
(08:14):
an unusual approach to the assignment by first studying the
anatomy of a great Dane and then drawing the opposite.
As he later told Cartoon Network Quote, there was a
lady that bred great Danes at Hannah Barbera. She showed
me some pictures and talked about the important points of
a Great Dane, like a straight back, straight legs, small
(08:34):
chin and such. I decided to go the opposite and
gave him a humpback, bowed legs, big chin and such.
Even his color is wrong. Takamoto reasoned that those changes
would make the dog funnier and also more distinct from
other Great Dane characters, such as comic strip star Marmaduke.
(08:55):
Once the look of the characters had been finalized, Hannah
Barbera hired a cast of voice actors to bring the
designs to life. For the role of Scooby Doo, the
studio turned to their resident dog guy, Don Messick, who
also supplied the voice of canine characters like Astro and Muttley.
Scooby Scarity cat partner Shaggy was voiced by Casey Caysum,
(09:16):
a popular Michigan DJ who was eager to expand into
voice acting. Velma was played by Nicole Jaffee, a Canadian
actress who never returned a voice over work after the role.
The character of Daphne was voiced by Stephanieanna Christofferson for
the first season, and by soap opera actress Heather North
during the second season. Lastly, the part of Fred went
(09:40):
to Frank Welker. He was an unknown talent at the time,
with Fred being his first major voice acting role, but
in the decades that followed, Welker became a living legend
of his industry and one of the most prolific too.
At the time of recording, Welker has just under nine
hundred different credits to his name, includeing a ton of
(10:00):
animal characters and even a couple transforming robots like the
original sound Wave and Megatron. Frank Welker has also continued
to voice Fred in nearly every series since the original
Scooby Doo, and as of two thousand two, he's taken
over as the voice of Scooby as well. Of course,
we can't talk about the sound of Scooby Doo without
(10:23):
mentioning it's iconic theme song. Arguably one of the most
famous in cartoon history. It was written by Ben Raleigh
and David Mook and was performed by Larry Marks during
the first season and by Austin Roberts during the second.
Here's a clip from the first season, where aren't you
(10:43):
we got some work now? Scooby Dooby Doo Where Are You?
With its not too scary storylines and slapstick comedy galore,
Scooby Doo Where Are You was an instant hit with
its target audience. The show was quickly picked up for
(11:04):
a second season and then continued to air reruns throughout
nineteen one. A year later, the characters returned in a
new hour long show called The New Scooby Doo Movies.
Each episode saw the gang joined by a different celebrity
guest star, such as the Harlem Globe Trotters, The Three Stooges,
and Batman and Robin. The show proved to be the
(11:27):
first of many sequel series for the Scooby Doo franchise.
More than a dozen other series would eventually follow, as
well as a number of TV specials, three theatrical films,
and nearly forty direct to video films as of two.
It's remarkable that a cartoon created in response to the
political and social shifts of the nineteen sixties has remained
(11:50):
relevant and profitable for more than half a century. But
with the spooky season upon us once again, now is
the perfect time to catch up with Scooby in the
and discover their appeal all over again, there is definitely
no shortage of mysteries to choose from, but I do
recommend avoiding anything featuring Scooby's pint sized nephew, scrappy Dude.
(12:12):
The less said about that guy, the better. I'm Gabe
Lousier and hopefully you now know a little more about
history today than you did yesterday. If you want to
keep up with the show, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at t d i HC Show, and if
you have any comments or suggestions, you can always send
(12:35):
them my way at this Day at I heart media
dot com. Thanks to Chandler May's for producing the show,
and thank you for listening. I'll see you back here
again tomorrow for another day in History class.
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that unmasks history one day at a time.
I'm Gabe Louzier, and today we're celebrating the birth of
a pup name Scooby Doo. His rise to cartoon stardom
wasn't as clear cut as you might expect, So grab
(00:23):
yourself some Scooby Snacks and will unravel his mysterious origin together.
The day was September nineteen sixty nine. The cartoon series
Scooby Doo, Where Are You? Aired for the first time
(00:43):
on CBS. The show introduced viewers to the cowardly great
Dane Scooby Doo and the rest of the Mystery Inc Crew,
Fred Daphne, Velma, and Shaggy. The original series ran for
two seasons and produced a total of twenty five episodes,
which were originally aired on Saturday mornings. The concept and
(01:05):
character proved so popular that they were eventually spun off
into a host of other cartoon series, as well as movies,
video games, theme park attractions, and a plethora of merchandise
tie ins. Today, more than fifty years later, the Scooby
Doo franchise is still going strong, outlasting both its creators
(01:26):
and the studio that made it. No TV series is
created in a vacuum, but Scooby Doo in particular was
a direct response to the times in which it was made.
In the late nineteen sixties, the United States was in
the midst of unprecedented political and social strife. From the
Vietnam War to the assassination of MLK to civil rights
(01:49):
protests in the streets. There were signs of violence and
division everywhere you looked. The reporting of these traumatic news
events led many American viewers to question their Emiley's media
diet for the first time. They began to notice that
it wasn't just the news that was getting more violent.
Scripted dramas, and even children's programming, We're getting more brutal
(02:11):
as well. The tipping point came in June of nineteen
sixty eight, when New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Just a few hours after Kennedy was shot, President Lyndon B.
Johnson established a National Commission on the Causes and Prevention
of Violence. Faced with pressure both from the government's investigation
(02:33):
and from media watchdog groups, TV networks and studios pledged
to tone down the violent content. They promised that by
the nineteen sixty nine season, their schedules would focus less
on action and more on music, comedy, and other forms
of family friendly programming. Particular care was given to show's
(02:53):
aim towards children. Some action adventure cartoons remained on the air,
but studios like Hannah Barbera began developing new, more comedic
series that didn't rely on superheroes, spies, or aliens. Enter
Scooby Doo, a show about a friendly group of teens
and their dog, solving mysteries and bringing bad guys to justice,
(03:15):
not with their fists, but with their wits. The original
concept for the show was developed by TV producer Fred
Silverman and was closely patterned after CBS's filmation cartoon The
Archie Show that was the breakout series of the nineteen
eight season, showcasing the Riverdale teens from Archie Comics as
(03:35):
a bubblegum pop band, complete with a large sheep dog
mascot named hot Dog. Silverman sought to copy much of
that dynamic for his own show, except with a spooky
horror twist. In his initial conception, the main characters were
a traveling band who would make their way across the
country in a big van called the Mystery Machine. Each
(03:58):
episode would find the band performing at a different venue,
only to be sidetracked by some kind of mystery that
only they could solve. Silverman pitched the idea to Hannah Barbera,
and while the studio accepted the proposal, they also had
a few notes. The main concern was that the show
as described was too scary and didn't have enough potential
(04:19):
for comedy. To solve the problem, the studio handed the
reins of development to Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, a
pair of cartoon writers who were tasked with retooling the
show to make it more comedic and less frightening. At first,
the duo kept the idea of a touring band composed
of four teens and a large talking dog. The band
(04:40):
and the show itself went by the name Mysteries five
that implied equal billing for each member of the band,
but at the time the dog character, a sheep dog
named too Much who played the bongos, was only written
as a sidekick, not a lead player. Somewhere along the way,
it was decided that the concept is a little too
(05:00):
close to the Archie show, right down to the dog breed.
With that in mind, Ruby and Spears dropped the rock
band element and brought the mystery component to the forefront.
They also shifted focus to the two funniest members of
the crew, Shaggy, who was patterned after a beat Nick,
and his cowardly canine companion, who had been changed from
(05:21):
a sheep dog to a great dane. One of the
final pieces of the puzzle was supplied by Fred Silverman.
All of the human characters had undergone a name change
during the show's development, and Silverman thought too much the
dog needed a new name as well. Inspiration apparently struck
during a red eye flight to Los Angeles when Silverman
(05:42):
just couldn't fall asleep. According to him, quote, as we're landing,
Frank Sinatra comes on the p A and I hear
him say Scooby Dooby Doo. I said, that's it. We'll
call it Scooby Doo. Silverman is, of course referring to
Frank Sinatra's song Strangers in the Night, though it's worth
(06:02):
noting that Sinatra actually sings Doobie, not Scooby. But again,
it was a red eye flight after he landed, Silverman
suggested calling the dogs Scooby Doo and making him the
main character of the show. The studio agreed, and at
last all the pieces were in place. On Saturday morning,
(06:23):
September nineteen sixty nine at ten o'clock am, Scooby Doo,
Where Are You aired it's very first episode. The perpetually
Scared Scooby Doo or Schubert if you want to get formal,
was joined by a team of four inquisitive teenagers. There
was Fred, the straight arrow leader, Daphne, the enthusiastic but
(06:45):
clumsy beauty, Velma, the bookish detective, and Shaggy, the laid
back pal of Scooby Doo who always had a case
of the munchies. Together these amateur sleuths made up the
team of Mystery Ink, which traveled from one creepy location
to the next, and their trademark Mystery Machine, a holdover
from the touring band concept. Each episode, the teens investigated
(07:10):
supposedly supernatural sightings, but inevitably the witches, monsters and ghosts
always turned out to be a greedy human in disguise.
After laying out the villain's fiendish plan at the end,
of the episode, which typically involved scaring someone away for
the sake of money, the teens would unmask their foe,
proving to the locals and to the young viewers at
(07:32):
home that there's no such thing as monsters. At that point,
the only thing left to do was for the captured
criminal to deliver one of the show's most enduring catchphrases,
something to the effect of I would have gotten away
with it if it weren't for you, meddling kids. The
design of the main characters was the work of Japanese
(07:52):
American artist Ewow Takamoto, a former Disney animator who joined
Hanna Barbera in nineteen sixty one. One of his first
jobs for the studio had been to design Astro, the
talking family dog of the Jetsons. That made him a
natural choice when it came time to perfect the look
of Scooby, not to mention his human pals, Takamoto took
(08:14):
an unusual approach to the assignment by first studying the
anatomy of a great Dane and then drawing the opposite.
As he later told Cartoon Network Quote, there was a
lady that bred great Danes at Hannah Barbera. She showed
me some pictures and talked about the important points of
a Great Dane, like a straight back, straight legs, small
(08:34):
chin and such. I decided to go the opposite and
gave him a humpback, bowed legs, big chin and such.
Even his color is wrong. Takamoto reasoned that those changes
would make the dog funnier and also more distinct from
other Great Dane characters, such as comic strip star Marmaduke.
(08:55):
Once the look of the characters had been finalized, Hannah
Barbera hired a cast of voice actors to bring the
designs to life. For the role of Scooby Doo, the
studio turned to their resident dog guy, Don Messick, who
also supplied the voice of canine characters like Astro and Muttley.
Scooby Scarity cat partner Shaggy was voiced by Casey Caysum,
(09:16):
a popular Michigan DJ who was eager to expand into
voice acting. Velma was played by Nicole Jaffee, a Canadian
actress who never returned a voice over work after the role.
The character of Daphne was voiced by Stephanieanna Christofferson for
the first season, and by soap opera actress Heather North
during the second season. Lastly, the part of Fred went
(09:40):
to Frank Welker. He was an unknown talent at the time,
with Fred being his first major voice acting role, but
in the decades that followed, Welker became a living legend
of his industry and one of the most prolific too.
At the time of recording, Welker has just under nine
hundred different credits to his name, includeing a ton of
(10:00):
animal characters and even a couple transforming robots like the
original sound Wave and Megatron. Frank Welker has also continued
to voice Fred in nearly every series since the original
Scooby Doo, and as of two thousand two, he's taken
over as the voice of Scooby as well. Of course,
we can't talk about the sound of Scooby Doo without
(10:23):
mentioning it's iconic theme song. Arguably one of the most
famous in cartoon history. It was written by Ben Raleigh
and David Mook and was performed by Larry Marks during
the first season and by Austin Roberts during the second.
Here's a clip from the first season, where aren't you
(10:43):
we got some work now? Scooby Dooby Doo Where Are You?
With its not too scary storylines and slapstick comedy galore,
Scooby Doo Where Are You was an instant hit with
its target audience. The show was quickly picked up for
(11:04):
a second season and then continued to air reruns throughout
nineteen one. A year later, the characters returned in a
new hour long show called The New Scooby Doo Movies.
Each episode saw the gang joined by a different celebrity
guest star, such as the Harlem Globe Trotters, The Three Stooges,
and Batman and Robin. The show proved to be the
(11:27):
first of many sequel series for the Scooby Doo franchise.
More than a dozen other series would eventually follow, as
well as a number of TV specials, three theatrical films,
and nearly forty direct to video films as of two.
It's remarkable that a cartoon created in response to the
political and social shifts of the nineteen sixties has remained
(11:50):
relevant and profitable for more than half a century. But
with the spooky season upon us once again, now is
the perfect time to catch up with Scooby in the
and discover their appeal all over again, there is definitely
no shortage of mysteries to choose from, but I do
recommend avoiding anything featuring Scooby's pint sized nephew, scrappy Dude.
(12:12):
The less said about that guy, the better. I'm Gabe
Lousier and hopefully you now know a little more about
history today than you did yesterday. If you want to
keep up with the show, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at t d i HC Show, and if
you have any comments or suggestions, you can always send
(12:35):
them my way at this Day at I heart media
dot com. Thanks to Chandler May's for producing the show,
and thank you for listening. I'll see you back here
again tomorrow for another day in History class.
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