March 17, 2025 • 55 mins
The newest Hanna-Barbera Blu-ray releases—and the details of how they were made—are discussed by Warner Bros/Disovery Library Historian GEORGE FELTENSTEIN, including Magilla Gorilla, Tom and Jerry, Frankenstein Jr & The Impossibles, and Wait Till Your Father Gets Home.
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Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, we love Head of our
Mirror. Welcome to the Fantastic World
of Hannah and Barbera, a celebration of Bill, Hannah, Joe
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Barbera and the thousands of people, past and present who
have shared in their entertainment tradition.
And now your host, Greg Airbar. Thank you, Chris Anthony, as
always, thank you for being our wonderful announcer.
Thank you all for listening. This is the fantastic world of
Hannah and Barbera. I am your host, Greg Airbar.
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I am the author of Hanna Barbera, the recorded history,
which is now on audio, which is very exciting.
But we're also very excited to welcome back our good friend
George Feltenstein, who is, what's your title again?
I am the Warner Brothers Discovery Library historian.
That's what I was going to say. Yes, really.
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He is the patron St. of getting stuff out there that looks great
and is accessible. We hang on his every word and
his every news flash and we're thrilled to have him back.
We're going to talk about some currently issued titles and at
least one that's on the way. But first of all, welcome to our
show again, George. Well, thank you, Craig.
It's a pleasure to be with you. Well, let's start a little bit
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before we get to Blu rays. You know, Hanna Barbera, it's
kind of a little bit of a renaissance among us who love
it. You know, we've got a more Blu
rays than we've had in a long time and we've got me TV tunes
and they've just started the House of Hanna Barbera.
It's an embarrassment of riches.As they say.
Well, it's like after being in the desert for too many years.
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I think the biggest take away from everything that's
happening, and it's something I have been campaigning for for a
long time, but it's finally happening, is all of the shows
are being put back together the way they originally were.
This is something, with rare exception, that nobody has had
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the fortitude or determination or discipline to do for over a
half century. Those original Canna Barbera
series that we grew up with, that we loved like Huckleberry
Hound and Yogi Bear and Click Drum McGraw and of course the
half hours like Flintstones and so forth, But particularly the
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segmented shows were bastardizedfor syndication in the late 60s.
And then it got worse and worse and nobody took care of the film
elements properly. Nobody kept the proper
inventory. The ownership bounced 3 or 4
times before it landed at Turnerin the early 90s, and that's
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when there was a beginning of aneffort to try to pay a little
more attention to things. That's where we saw the original
theme for the early seasons of The Flintstones finally
surfaced. There were some things done.
There were also no protection film elements ever made on most
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of the Hanna Barbera cartoons. There was the original negative,
if it still existed, but they haven't made interpositives in
many cases. And in the mid to late 90s there
was no digital preservation yet.There was no scanning like we
have now. Everything had to be done
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photochemically. But thank goodness, because I'm
a big believer in physical preservation.
I have a little bit of fear whenit comes to digital only
preservation. But a very concerted effort was
made by Turner to make interpositives on a lot of the
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Hanna Barbera series, and that hadn't been done in prior
decades. But bridges and bumpers and
everything was thrown into a VATthat was labeled and I'm not.
This is the actual name of it inthe inventory.
HB bits and pieces. And there is no description for
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half of the material in there. And I am not exaggerating when I
say, given that I've been with this part of the library for 28
years, since the beginning, I kept digging in there looking
for things. My work with the company was
restricted to theatrical catalog.
That was my area of oversight. But due to the work I did with
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Jerry when I was at MGMUA with all the Looney Tunes and with
the Tom and Jerry, the family kids group within Warner Home
Video brought me in to basicallyconsult on how Looney Tunes and
Tom and Jerry would make their debut on DVD.
And I helped wherever I could. But the Hanna Barbera DVD
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releases of the early odds were not handled in the way I would
have handled them. To put out Miguela Gorilla
without the theme song, that's just insane.
But that's the way they went out.
It was terribly disappointing. So what's happening now?
It's a company wide effort to put these shows all back
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together correctly. And the beneficiaries are the
House of Hanna Barbara at Me TV Tunes, the ME TV Tunes
Initiative itself, which is a joint venture between Warner
Brothers Discovery and Weigel Broadcasting.
This is not for children. The target audience is people
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like ourselves that grew up withthese cartoons.
And it isn't just Warner own material, it's material from
other studios as well as it should be.
But this is really a home on broadcast television.
The difference of that and what was Cartoon Network, let's say
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20 years ago, or Boomerang, is that there's actual care being
taken on trying to present everything with great quality as
it originally was seen. That's what I'm particularly
excited about and the amount of research and work that went into
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and is going into, because this is still ongoing, reconstructing
the shows. It's enormously problematic
because we found, for example, that there were certain bridges
and bumpers for these series. They were all thrown into the
inventory with just numbers. You didn't know what anything
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was. But very sadly we found picture
and the magnetic soundtracks hadgone vinegar to the point where
they were unplayable. The oxide had flaked off, not
for everything, thankfully, but for certain things.
And that to me is just an utter tragedy.
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So we're grateful for what we were able to put together.
And again, this is still an ongoing process.
People have seen, I believe we're just at the beginning of
this. They've seen Magilla Gorilla,
the Yogi Bear show, They're finally getting to hear the
theme songs again. And we have announced the
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Magilla Gorilla Show for a March25th St. date on Blu-ray.
And I'm happy to say that it's all the original 23 half hour
shows with bridges, bumpers and the ideal toys, main and end
titles, which was very importantto me personally.
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We did that several years ago. I would say close to 10 years
ago, maybe more for Peter Potamus, we put the Peter
Potamus show on DVD and we foundthe curtain call and the
original Ideal toys open and close, and we were able to
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reconstruct those shows. And of course, there's that
thing between Peter Potamus and McGill Gorilla 'cause they
switched around the orders of Reasley and Sneezy and Ricochet
taking places in the other shows.
We also did not have the proper documentation from the period of
production of what exactly is supposed to go where,
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particularly in terms of the bridges and the bumpers, those
that still were usable and existing.
We looked at music cue sheets and we looked at everything we
could find to try to do that. But it's been a Herculean task.
And so many people, Archival Sound Department, One Brothers
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Motion Picture Imaging, the preservation department, and
I've been running over there constantly to look at things and
say, no, this doesn't go with this, it goes with that.
And it's not just for what I'll be able to release as a Warner
Archive title on Blu-ray. It's about what is good for the
whole company and what we will be able to do to not only
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preserve the material and the content so that people can enjoy
it, but also to leave very detailed notes in the files and
in the systems. So when future generations come
to this, as we are now, the information will be there so
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that they don't have to reinventthe wheel.
And I think that is really one of the most gratifying things.
It's something that's very, veryimportant to me because that's
part of my my job as the companyhistorian.
Yes, I also oversee Warner Archive for home entertainment
releases, but the other part of me is in corporate legal,
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working on copyrights and clarifying what goes where and
making sure that things are straightened out in the world's
largest single entertainment company library, that it's
documented properly so that everybody knows what we have,
what are our rights, what are the hang ups, what are the
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problems, what film elements arewe missing?
It's an enormous task to undertake, but thanks to the
wonderful determination and focus of my colleagues, we're
all getting it done and it's been a real team effort.
What you're doing is as much fortomorrow as it is for while
you're there. The care is, you don't want it
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to all fall apart again. You want them to be able to go
back and find easily. Is this being done, Do you know,
at other companies that have a lot of content from the past?
Disney and MGM were the only studios to have nitrate to
safety conversion programs in the 1960s.
No other studio did that. Warner Brothers didn't do it
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because Warner Brothers didn't own any of its nitrate content
until we ended up buying Turner in 1996 and getting the library
back. Once Warner Brothers bought
Turner, The MGM preservation program, which was then carried
on by Turner Entertainment Company, that then got adopted
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by Warner Brothers Entertainmentand has been continuously going
on and growing. So what started as nitrate to
safety conversion, protection, preservation at MGM in the 60s,
now more than 50 years later, that continues within Warner
Brothers. And it's something that I'm very
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proud to be a part of. But taking on the Hanna Barbera
library, that was so just, it was, it's, it's heartbreaking to
think of how little care was taken with what they made.
And nobody questioned the fact that, Oh well, we've got 48
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Libby the Lion cartoons and it doesn't matter what we have,
whatever we have is good enough.And a great deal of the Hanna
Barbera productions that people have been seeing for the last
several decades are one inch videotapes that were made in the
mid to late 80s and they have not been upgraded since.
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The work that's being done now, particularly on some of the
things I just mentioned, nobody bothered to actually take the
time to reapproach these and to rebuild when they were part of
1/2 hour of programming. They never bothered to put the
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shows back together as they wereoriginally made.
A perfect example is something like the Magilla Gorilla show.
There was a syndication version that had the main title and the
end title. It just eliminated the Ideal Toy
sponsorship. Ideal Toys has been long out of
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business. Their trademark is no longer a
protected trademark. They were bought out by Hasbro,
so some of the toys and games that they created at Ideal are
still trademarked and protected and so forth and so on.
But for all intents and purposes, Ideal doesn't exist.
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When we did the restoration of The Jetsons the original season,
because I people still say we'reseason 2 and three, it's like
that was a reboot. It was different and mostly
finished a videotape. Sadly.
When we did the Jetsons for Blu-ray, I think that was about
5 or 6 years ago, we got permission from Scotch tape and
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Colgate toothpaste to be able touse their little bumpers and
that was very important to me. We got permission from the
companies. I mean, it's free advertising,
right? Why would they say no?
But we asked, they didn't even know about it and they said
sure, fine. And we got it all legally taken
care of. Those things are very important.
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We have a little bit more flexibility on what we can offer
the collectors with presenting these programs as full series on
Blu-ray. And when we were doing some of
the earlier DVD releases that one archive put out, you know,
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10-12 years ago, basically I went after anything that hadn't
already been brought out into the market.
And in some cases we were able to do what I call low cost
remastering. It was not Blu-ray quality, it
was for DVD. So there were occasional amounts
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of film damage and so forth, which we will not allow in the
Blu-ray. The Blu-ray and the HD master
has to be pristine. But what we were able to bring
to DVD was 10 times better than what was created for the USA
Cartoon Express, you know, in the late 80s.
So there is a progression and now we're at a point where so
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much careful work is going into the way these things are
presented. And people have seen a little
taste of it. They've seen on me TV tunes.
And I think when the Blu rays that we've announced and the
ones that we haven't announced yet, it's going to make a lot of
people really, really happy. I would imagine that another
reason is you can't have an ideal or catalogs or any kind of
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a sponsor mentioned in a broadcast show that isn't really
sponsored by them when they haveother sponsors paying for it
too. So well, exactly, yes.
And so you need to have that flexibility.
You know, originally Bill and Joe thought of that because they
created non ideal toy version versus ideal toy version.
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Just going through the film elements for Top Cat, I found
this was obviously for reruns, but there were Transigram toy
company sponsorships and I was like, wow, I didn't know about
that. I wonder what that was used for.
And they've been out of businessfor decades.
I haven't heard that name since I was a kid, but you know, there
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we are. It is a tremendously exciting
time we have so far. Lippy the Lion and Hardy, Har
Har touché Turtle and Wally Gator.
Those shows were all produced as16mm camera positives.
They were not produced in 35mm and not all the original first
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generation materials survived, but they've done the best they
can with what we have and the amount of film damage cleanup,
and I'm very careful about this.We do not clean up sell dirt.
We do not clean up sell dust. How it was made and originally
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produced is what we want to bring to the consumer.
We don't want things to look like they were made on a
computer yesterday. We want them to look like they
did when they were finished being made and produced.
So we take care of all film damage, but we leave anything
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that was on the animation cell intact.
Yeah, it's like sawing a wobbly table.
You're going to keep sawing the legs off till there's no legs
left, right. And that's something that I have
to lecture people about and say,no, that's supposed to be there,
but it's distracting. There are scratching, I said.
That's the way it looked on the movie screen.
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You know, this comes up particularly with the Looney
Tunes. You would see a spot on a cell
for a few frames that would go away.
Should we change the film from the way it was made?
No, we need to keep it as it was.
If there are scratches in the film, negative, should we take
care of that? Damn right.
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So it's knowing what to do and to make sure that we're keeping
the integrity of the animation and the artwork intact with
Magilla Gorilla and with Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound.
At least from the DVDs that I'vegot, there are, for one reason
or another, the cartoons got shuffled around, perhaps because
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the productions, some were done sooner, some were done later.
So they would toss in an old oneand a new set of three.
And then, unlike Megillah, there's a handful of independent
ones, and then there's about four of them on Peter Potamus.
How can you reconstruct those ifthey're sort of loose like that?
Well, the decision that we made was there were 23 Magilla
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Gorilla half hours created for the original run with Ricochet
Rabbit and with Mush Mouse and Pumpkin Puss.
There were eight additional Magilla Gorilla cartoons made,
which were interspersed with reruns of other cartoons
because, as you know, Magilla started in syndication, then
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moved to ABC. And then went back to
syndication. So, you know, they peppered in a
few new shorts along the way. They're being presented on the
Blu-ray as bonus cartoons. We're not going to recreate what
was ostensibly reruns. That doesn't work.
I think the most efficient thingis to give people what
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originally was created and to address as best as we can.
To clarify, these bonus cartoonswere used as new material to
Pepper, which were basically a balance of reruns, and that was
done for both Magilla and to a lesser degree, for Peter.
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He just wasn't as popular. You know, I always think of them
in the same thought process. I was under the impression that
I could be wrong about this, that Magilla came out first
because in that, yes. And then Peter Potamus came
later. And then Ideal maybe has said,
well, Gee, we're not getting much of A merchandise kick on
Magilla, so let's not put anything because there are
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hardly any Peter Potamus things.There were no records for sure.
Magilla got his share of stuff. Oh yeah, and comic books and
toys and all sorts of things. They were produced around the
same time. They were part of the same deal
for sponsorship. If my memory is correct, I think
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McGill premiered in January of 64, and then like September of
64 was Peter. Yeah.
In the film with George Fenneman, which I'm assuming is
going to be on the Here Comes the Star.
Yeah. I think Bill Hanna says
something. And then we got another one
that's coming along in a few months, but he doesn't say what
it is. Right.
They were really part of the same.
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I'm sure Joe Barbera sold them together and they just put the
focus on on Magilla first. It's kind of like VHS versus
Beta. You know, Magilla had a lead at
the beginning and Peter could never catch up.
But now, you know, in retrospect, 50 plus years later,
that's frightening to say. Or I should say, 60 years later,
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we can watch all these shows andrealize all the great talent
that were dedicating themselves to making these cartoons because
they're not babysitter kids stuff.
They're not as sophisticated as Flintstones, but they're more
along the lines of, let's say, 1950s Looney Tunes.
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And some of the writers were thesame than they were for what you
would find hitting Saturday mornings in the late 70s and
early 80s, which were very much geared towards young children,
with all the restrictions that the government and the concerned
parents put on the production companies making animation by
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that time. Yeah, there are a lot of
elements. And folks, you can identify them
for your own selves because we don't have to make a list here.
But there are things in some of these cartoons that you probably
wouldn't have seen on Saturday morning a few years later.
Nothing naughty, but just some stuff that became off limits on
Saturday morning. And some more in jokes, I think
more of the nods to the adults jokes about like the military.
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You know, every hand of barbariccharacter is like, just like
Lucy ends up in the military by accident.
You know, that kind of thing. So we can look forward to the
pristine perfection of the Magilla Gorilla Show.
March 25th is the street date and as you've told me, you can
watch these all you want and enjoy them on TV.
But TV is compressed, so you will never see it the same way
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as if you have a Blu-ray, right?That's true for television.
Whether it's over the air, whether it's cable, whether it's
streaming, the files are compressed and nothing will give
you the quality of when you're in HDA, Blu-ray Disc or if
you're in 4K, a 4K disc. Physical media is still not only
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the most reliable, nobody can take it away from you, but it's
also the best quality. The beauty of having these
wonderful animated classics on television is people can find
out what they like and what theydon't like and then make the
decision, you know, I like this so much, I want to own it and
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it's a wonderful marriage. This is all coming from the same
team here at Warner Brothers, both in terms of marketing,
sales, restoration, preservation.
Everybody's working together as we are a united company to bring
as much of our library to consumers in as many ways as
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possible. I agree.
I think that there is no mutually exclusive way of just
saying, oh, well, if it's on, should I have my own copy?
It's two different ways to enjoyit.
As a friend of mine once said, Ilove to watch it with America
when it's being broadcast. And also you have that
atmosphere in your home of this running cartoon parade going on
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because I leave that on. But when you have when we were
growing up and a Flintstones or a Bewitched or a genie, oh, it's
the one where a Gilligan, it's the one where it's on.
It's on in the episode of The Flintstones with Gus Schultz.
I missed the adulation then. That was your chance to see it.
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And then it wasn't going to be on until they decided to show it
in the syndication run. Having your own copy gives you
that ability, right. And I mean, you know, I, I look
back at my childhood. It was such a real treat to be
able to have that 39 minute reduction of The Wizard of Oz as
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a record. You could experience the movie
in a brilliantly compressed form.
It was really interesting how they did that album, but that
was what could keep you in your Oz head until that special time
each year when the film would beon network television in the
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world, or our country at least, would be experiencing it, as you
said, as a communal thing that other people are watching.
There's a magic to that, and I think that is really, we don't
see that much of it anymore. But the fact that Charlie Brown
Christmas and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and How the
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Grinch Stole Christmas are on network television every year, I
find somewhat reassuring. As we're seeing those particular
kinds of media facing difficult headwinds.
I think choice is really important and we want to create
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something that you can put on your shelf and treasure as more
than just something that you watch.
But it's something that you cherish because it's a part of
your life that you can experience with your children or
your children and your grandchildren and pass on the
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entertainment value. Because ultimately the great
thing about the golden era of Hanna Barbera is the humor holds
up, the animation holds up, the shows hold up.
A lot of people, you have to explain to them the name Yogi
Berra. You know, they don't know who
Yogi Berra was. That was just the way Bill and
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Joe thought where they very muchof the moment.
And you know, it's like Frankenstein Junior and The
Impossibles. The Impossibles were their
response to The Beatles and the kind of music that was being
made in 1966. So much of what they did was
reflective of the era in which their work was produced, and I
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think that's. Very, very important.
Yeah. We should mention the current
titles too, because FrankensteinJunior and The Impossibles has
currently been released on Blu-ray, and that is a really
cool show. It has its own special following
both of those. It's funny reading the comments
on Facebook, some people say, Gee, I wish there were two
Frankenstein's and one Impossibles.
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And then there's another school of thought.
People have their favorites but I like them both and they knew
how to combine. The cartoons complemented each
other really well. Absolutely, absolutely.
And that's why I was so pleased when we were able to do that
series. We had released it on DVD.
It was not remastered for the DVD release.
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There were some standard definition digital remastering
done by Turner before we bought Turner, right around 199596.
There were several Hanna Barberaseries that got an upgrade from
the one inch analog masters and so they were perfectly fine for
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a DVD release. But now we're going back to the
original camera negative, scanning them at 4K.
It's amazing the differential inquality as well as the sound
quality. The picture and the sound are
restored and cleaned up, and it's wonderful that the colors
are bold and just as the artistsoriginally envisioned them.
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Yeah, I think that's the thing that bowls you over the most is
that, well, back in the day whenwe had TV's that had the line
scan, you didn't. You never had the color that
these were supposed to be. You could turn up the red maybe,
but that wouldn't help much. The other thing I noticed in
seeing the ones with title cards.
They had to be careful about what is it that they what they
call. TV safe, TV safe, You know how
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they have the guardrail around the screen when they're filming?
That's why the titles are sort of squished in the middle,
because TV's would sometimes magnify too much.
They were all different. Yeah, we find this a lot.
You know, if you're looking on the actual negative,
particularly on live action, on animated programming, if we look
at the camera negative outside of the TV safe, we see the
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animation stand because that wasactually captured in the full
aperture of the negative, you know, but never intended to be
seen. So the colorist does his or her
sizing, the raw negative is scanned and they apply the color
correction and the clean up and all that's done and as well as
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the framing to make sure it's proper.
And we very often will use, justfor framing purposes, a release
print. There are 35mm prints of the
cartoons that were made in 35mm and how they look 'cause they're
not a direct duplicate off the negative necessarily.
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It just really helps us keep theframing proper and everybody's
very, very meticulous about how to handle these things.
The results are very, very gratifying.
Another title that has been getting a lot of surprise
attention is Wait Till Your Father Gets Home, which is yes,
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the least. Many people hadn't seen it since
it was on. Many people never saw it and are
amazed that wow, there was a prime time adult series that had
this kind of writing and had this unusual look.
Then remastering it like that. I always think of the look the
Marty. Look that they brought in.
I think that that might have been Barbera sort of reliving
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the days when he was doing 1 frame gags for Colliers.
You know, it looks like one of those come to life because
something in The New Yorker, in a vignette, it doesn't go to the
end of the frame at all. And that's the way it looks.
It looks like a Hazel cartoon, Yes.
I mean, my wife and I have been watching it and cannot get over
how, yeah, it's dated. Oh, for gosh sakes, it's dated
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just like Norman Lear shows are dated, which inspired it.
But how much prescience it had and how much of what we still
say about prices and about the world in general and, you know,
the middle class and having kids.
And it reminds me of all of the primetime shows of now.
What I love about it the most, though, is my favorite of the
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prime times of today is Bob's Burgers.
Because there's a sweetness to Bob's Burgers.
And Bob's not an idiot. He's confused by it all, and he
doesn't get listened to, but he tries to be the voice of reason
and everything swirls around himjust like Harry.
And at the end of the episode, there tends to be this moment
where the little light bulb goesoff and a very sweet moment
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occurs. And that happens a lot.
And wait till your father gets home.
And my former colleagues and we used to have three divisions.
We had theatrical, new release, theatrical catalog.
And then TV and family. That was another division.
And we had an executive here fora long time and she oversaw live
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action television. Her group marketed Wait Till
Your Father Gets Home Season 1 on DVD, not the Kids family
group because it was considered more of an adult sitcom than a
kids and family kind of thing. They never got past the first
season, though. They never did the second season
and that was always kind of a thorn in the side.
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We had some clearance issues we had to deal with, but we got
them done and the surprise to mewas I had remembered that it
never looked particularly good and I think that was part of the
design. It was very sparse animation,
but I did not know that in the second season some of the
episodes were farmed out to a Canadian animation house and the
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original negatives are 16mm. So when you're watching our new
Blu-ray set, you'll notice degrading quality in certain
episodes. Visually, they're grainier and
they don't look as colorful as the others.
That's because they were produced in a more inexpensive
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way in 16mm, and at the time, they were distributed to
television stations for the first run syndication half hour
at 7:30 on weekday nights with 16mm prints.
So nobody really cared about those things in those days, but
we do now and we did the best wecould with.
We have all the original negatives, but some of them were
(35:01):
produced in 16 millimeter. Yeah, the first season was done.
The Hanna Barbera had just actually Bill Hannah had just
gone to Australia and started upthe animation there, right.
Some of those are when you see Zoran Zhangjic on there, you
kind of know that the Scooby-doomovies and the Josie and Outer
Space, those ones were produced there and they were sort of
(35:21):
getting their feet wet in the way of doing animation, The hand
of Barbara Way. It's what's also cool about them
is it's first of all, it's written by or produced by a
Harvey Bullock and Rs Allen. So it has that sitcom feel.
They wrote the man called Flintstone screenplay as well.
So it's got very snappy writing,laugh out loud dialogue and it
(35:42):
has a great cast. Tom Bosley right before happy
days, the wonderful Joan Gerber playing Irma and Joan Gerber was
just a ubiquitous in the 70s. You know, Judy Frog on HR pop
and stuff and Lancelot link. I mean you heard her everywhere.
And Christina Holland from Courtship of Eddie's father
playing their daughter. And Lenny Wine Rib.
(36:04):
Lenny Wine Rib. Oh, yeah, Yeah.
And I don't know why they replaced Chet, the teenage son's
voice, but Lenny Wine Rib does such a convincing job of
sounding like a teen at first. It's like, oh, that is him,
isn't it? And Richard Dawson's in it.
And Pat Harrington, what I'm responding to now in today's
time is you have Ralph play Perfectly by Jack Burns and if
(36:26):
you remember it, Burns and Schreiber.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course thatthey do on the cartoon.
And Ralph, from whatever point of view you come, Ralph will
become very obvious what point of view he comes from.
But what stands out about it is that Harry is in the middle of
that. You know, he's got the new way
of thinking with his kids. You know, Daddy, everybody's
(36:48):
doing this now. And then he's got Ralph, who's
on the other end, and he's just trying to balance things.
But he's not out in that rejecting.
He's a very loving and liking guy.
And that's kind of a hard road to hoe nowadays.
You know, that's what I get out of the show now.
He'll make wisecracks to both sides, but he doesn't reject or
(37:08):
say, I'll never speak to you or anything.
And no, it's nice to look back at another time when those were
not easy times. And that was reflective of the
times. And it also was Hanna Barbera's,
if you could call two seasons and a few extra episodes,
longest running, almost prime time show since The Flintstones.
Because, yeah, it did run for two seasons.
(37:31):
And then there were a few extra episodes that were sort of a
third season. I think the third season was
reruns and the four new ones. That's my opinion, but I always
thought of it as a two season show.
Prime time access was something that the government, yeah, they
wanted to give 1/2 hour programming each night back to
(37:53):
the local stations. The goal of which was that the
local stations would make local programming for those
municipalities so that it wasn'tnational network content.
But what happened was productioncompanies sweeped in and came up
with the nighttime Price is Right and the nighttime Jeopardy
(38:15):
and the nighttime Wheel of Fortune.
Wait Till Your Father Gets Home was, I think, one of the few
things that was animated. There was a reboot of Doctor
Kildare made in Canada last yearwith Gary Merrill as Doctor
Gillespie, that came through MGMTelevision.
There were all sorts of things that were dredged up for it.
The only survivors that have retained being on air are
(38:41):
Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. They're a byproduct of that Lost
Network half hour. The intention was community
affairs programming. I grew up in New York.
There used to be a show on the NBC local station called New
York Illustrated. They used to run it on weekends.
The idea was that they would putit on during the week, but that
(39:02):
didn't happen. Yeah, we had a show in Miami
called Montage on WTVJ, and it was a magazine stories, but it
was in South Florida and it never made it into date that
period. It was on Saturdays or Sundays
before the prime time. So I guess you remember Doctor
Simon Locke with that was another one of those shows.
(39:23):
Exactly, Exactly. Yeah.
The Truth or Consequences rebootwith Bob Barker.
That was something that ended upin that time slot.
And everything was different in every market.
There were a lot of shows that we're seeing in other parts of
the country that we never got. This was the opening for Wait
Till Your Father Gets Home and it really has not gotten the
(39:48):
showcase, but they started usingthe new masters on ME TV tunes
and people can see it there. And now people can own the
entire series and enjoy guest stars like Don Knotts and Monty
Hall, which is kind of cool. And I'm just delighted that
we've been able to bring it out and it it's a fascinating
(40:09):
timepiece and very entertaining.Yeah, yeah, it actually is.
And in our, let's say, Easter basket, hint, hint, if you're
buying for yourself or for others and looking for an
excuse. There's also new to Blu-ray, the
Tom and Jerry Complete Cinemascope Collection.
It's a huge success for us. It was an idea that came to me
(40:30):
just one day. I was like, wouldn't it be cool
if we did this? I got to say I'm.
I'm just delighted that I thought of it.
Yeah. And there's some real good ones.
And this is the era. This is the pre MGM layoff.
And then they go right into the rough and ready and Huckleberry
Hound. So there is a stylistic boy.
And this was just the way thingswere in the 50s.
(40:54):
It was a combination of the UPA look and the prices going up
that even Disney was changing the way they were doing films
for the screen. And Bill and Joe were running
the unit towards the end as well.
Oh yes, they were. Fred Quimby was gone and Bill
and Joe were running The MGM cartoon department.
(41:17):
And as you know, probably betterthan anybody on the planet, they
went to MGM as the animation department was closing and said,
hey, we could do limited animation for television.
And the geniuses that were running MGM in the late 50s,
there were none, I assure you ofthat.
They said, no, we're not interested.
(41:37):
And MGM's television department overall was almost always a
woulda, shoulda coulda. They had very few successes.
There were a few, like Doctor Kildare and Medical Center and
Courtuvetti's five to three seasons.
Doctori There were a few that really hit big, and then of
(41:59):
course Chips in the 70s, but they tried a lot of things that
just didn't work and it's very sad, but it was really like the
studio itself. There were a few big monster
hits, Doctor Zhivago, Ben Hur, but everything was on the
downslide to me. In my mind, the studio started
(42:20):
going downhill when they kicked LB Mayer out.
Some people say MGM started on the decline when Irving Thalberg
died. I think that's a little bit of a
diversion, but my point is is that MGM was a great place for
Bill and Joe to hone their craft.
The work they did there with Tomand Jerry was wonderful, and the
(42:43):
fact that they were able to build an empire of their own and
really plow new ground for television animation in a
revolutionary way is a wonderfulpart of film and entertainment
industry history. Oh yeah.
(43:03):
I'm just going to point out a couple of the shorts on this set
in specific ways. They're kind of cool.
For example, The Vanishing Duck,if I'm not mistaken, that's
George O'hanlon playing George, and that's only a few years
before he was George Jetson. You've also got Julie Bennett
doing the voice of the worst babysitter ever up Till Hand
(43:26):
Rocks the Cradle. Oh, you've got a lot of little
quacker ended up being yeah, youdo.
And if you're really nitpicking itty bitty buddy sometimes
referred to, but there were two two of the duck voices.
There was red coffee and then later it was Jimmy Weldon.
But what's interesting about those cutie ducks that could do
(43:49):
that is that unlike Donald, Donald always was limited, but
what he could say because not everybody understood him, but
these ducks could be understood completely, which really worked
well in TV. So you can kind of see the
development of the cute, adorable duck.
One of the last things Bill Hannah worked on, I think it was
Hard Luck duck. Again, cute, adorable ducky.
(44:11):
Oh, and then flying sorceress June for a June for a doing that
witch voice, which she did for Disney in 52 as witch Hazel and
then eventually moved over to Warner with the same character
because I guess you couldn't copyright a household product.
And so and then flying sorceress, she's doing the same
voice and that's always a delight.
(44:31):
There's a lot of really good ones and plus you got that great
Scott Bradley music. So this just fills up your TV
screen. The cartoons look terrific
because we basically did new color correction and clean up on
them and the audio is cleaned upand three of the cartoons are in
genuine stereo. The first 3 because MGM was
(44:55):
recording them with the intention of four track magnetic
stereo releases. I don't think that ever
happened. The weird thing is that the
early scope aspect ratio was 2.55 to 1, so you had room for
the magnetic soundtrack. We looked at the camera
negatives of these cartoons and they are 235 to 1.
(45:18):
So it doesn't seem that there was ever an actual intention to
follow through with magnetic stereo release prints.
But we have the magnetic music stereophonic scoring sessions of
Scott Bradley and we did remixed3 of the cartoons back in the
(45:39):
90s for laserdisc and those tracks now carry through the
cartoon. touché Pussycat was missing the part where the
little mouse sings for Jacques as he's painting Tom on the wall
with little paintbrush. We fixed that so that now the
audio track is correct. Speaking of stereo, and this is
(46:02):
not a new release, but I've always wanted to thank you for
releasing through Warner Archivethe stereo version of Heidi's
song. Oh, of course it had to be.
I mean, I saw it in the theater and it was in mono, and I've got
the album. But that problem with the album
is not a problem. It's made for children, so it's
mostly dialogue. The only complete song is owed
(46:25):
to a rat. But hearing that big swore, you
know, that's the biggest orchestra Henna Barbera ever put
together with Hoyt curtain arrangements and Burton Lane
Sammy Khan score. You know, that is incredible.
We just recently watched it again.
I watch it a lot and though it'snot a perfect film and 1982 was
(46:45):
not the year for it, you know? No, I think it sat on the shelf
for a long time. If I'm not mistaken, I think
they actually completed it in the late 70s.
Paramount didn't really know what to do with it and they kept
Charlotte's Web, but they did not have any hesitation to not
(47:06):
keep Heidi's song, so it reverted back to Hanna Barbera.
I wish Charlotte's Web had done that, but Paramount has always
seen that as a money making machine.
They were trying really, really hard and you have to just sort
of give them a pat on the back at least for the attempt to do
an enormous amount of full animation and a feature,
(47:29):
probably more than any they had done.
And the backgrounds and the artwork and all of that are
superb. Is there any chance of that
getting to a Blu-ray? At the moment it's not on our
docket, but I would never say never, you know, if we can get
support. What's very difficult is that if
something was mastered in high definition and our television
(47:54):
division can market it as such legitimately, which they can,
the Heidi Sung master we have isnot up to Blu-ray standards.
It's not cleaned up the way it should be, but it's good.
It looks nice. DVD and standard definition will
hide a myriad of sins, but put that on a high definition
(48:16):
television from a high definition master and you're
going to see dirt and scratches and all that kind of stuff,
which is just unacceptable to me.
Not every company is as fastidious as we are about
quality. I would say that with the ever
expanding opportunities for animation that we're
(48:38):
experiencing now, because it's not just ME TV Tunes and it's
not just what we see on our Max subscription service, it's also
many other clients of our television distribution group
who are looking for animation. It just may be that people
decide, hey, we need to give Heidi Song the A+ treatment and
(49:00):
if that happens then there'll bea Blu-ray.
So I wouldn't say that it will never happen.
It's just not on the docket at the moment.
Maybe internationally there could be a market for it.
Would surprise me as I always, after watching a film, like to
look up various reviews and stuff.
And the user reviews on IMDb were incredible, you know?
(49:20):
Yeah, people love the movie. Yeah.
This Paramount didn't. Yeah.
And Barbera was kind of ticked at that because they.
Yeah, they buried it. You know, when you change
management within a motion picture company, the new team
doesn't usually like to be associated with something the
old team did that they don't go for.
(49:41):
Yeah. A lot of films have suffered
because of that kind of thinking.
That's true. That's that's historically NTV
series have two. Yep.
I'm only going to bring up the other two because they're
brought up a lot and it's just what's on the barometer with
these two. OK, Quick Draw, McGraw got to
ask. People are going to want me to.
How's that going? I'm very optimistic.
You know, we've got a lot to untangle there because there's
(50:05):
music and there's mastering, butI'm feeling very optimistic for
Quick Draw and Baba Louie, so keep fingers crossed.
And and then my personal favorite, Alice in Wonderland,
or what's a nice kid like you doing in a place like this?
I'm pushing for that too. It's a little bit easier because
it's a single production, so therestoration would not be
(50:29):
tremendously expensive, but we've got to do some legal
clearance to get that freed up. I haven't seen it since
childhood, so I would very much enjoy doing so.
Wow. You haven't seen it since then.
Wow, no. And then on the horizon, I know
you have to keep things under wraps, but there are more Hanna
Barberas in the pipeline. Oh, yeah, most definitely.
(50:54):
And I will say this, I think that as we continue to bring
these things forth, it will openthe door or other series because
people want more choice. They'll have watched series X or
Y, which is brand new, you know,in terms of restoration right
now. But then they're going to say,
(51:15):
hey, you know, we've seen this. You've run it twice, three
times. How about something else from
the fantastic world of Bill Hannah and Joe Barbera and will
come through. I really believe that it is an
embarrassment of riches, our animation library.
If you think about it, the Hugh Harmon Rudolf Ising Happy
(51:37):
Harmonies have never made the leap to HD.
They're still looking like dirt.I think that should be done.
That is not something that most people know about.
You have to be an animation aficionado to know about that.
I would like to continue restoring the 1950s Popeyes.
(51:57):
I would like to have the 1930s and early 40s Fleischer Popeyes
completely redone because they, you know, that was a huge effort
on our part. It was something I was involved
with for years and years, clearing that up with King
Feature Syndicate because we owned the cartoons, but we
didn't have the right to home use.
(52:19):
So it was a long time negotiating that agreement.
We finally did it. We finally got Paramount to
allow us to reinstate The Mountain, which was
contractually forbidden. And we got them out there when
DVD was still a massive multi billion dollar business.
But now they need to enter the world of high definition and
(52:41):
meticulous quality, and that's going to be very expensive.
And I'm just hoping we can get the funding to do that.
So there's so much in our library that needs TLC.
It's overwhelming in the amount of television content, feature
films, of course, short subjects, animated short
(53:01):
subjects, animated television. It's enormous what is ahead of
us? Which is why I can't wait to get
to work every day. And we can't wait to you do too.
And also be very careful crossing streets and drive
carefully on the freeways and look after your health because
we can't lose you, George. Well, I ain't going nowhere if I
(53:23):
have something to say about it. Again, I'm thrilled that you
joined us. I hope everybody had a great
time listening and want to pointout that you have the power of
your vote with these titles always.
If you can pre-order, that's thebest thing.
If you could get them within what, two weeks or so of the
street date, is that best? Oh yeah, yeah, because that will
(53:46):
register with the finance peopleand all that.
People really want these and there's a market for them and
it's going to lead to more of this wonderful stuff.
I couldn't thank you enough for saying that because it's true.
I, if I can go to finance and say, look what we did here and
we can do it again with this andthat.
That's how new projects get funded and we bring them out to
(54:09):
the public that wants them. I know what the public wants and
I hope we're able to continue tohave a very broad supply of
entertainment for everybody. So y'all out there, you make a
difference and you can enjoy these things.
Many more coming and hope to talk to you again soon.
George with even more Hanna Barbera and other video and DVD
(54:33):
and Blu-ray things. Thank you so much.
Oh you are very welcome. I thank you and I look forward
to the next opportunity to chat.Thank you all for listening.
Thanks for the likes and the subscribes.
Please keep doing that and untilnext time, bye bye.
I hope you enjoyed the fantasticworld of Hannah and Barbera with
Greg Airborne. Please join us again and Many
(54:54):
thanks for listening.
Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, we love Head of our
Mirror. Welcome to the Fantastic World
of Hannah and Barbera, a celebration of Bill, Hannah, Joe
(00:32):
Barbera and the thousands of people, past and present who
have shared in their entertainment tradition.
And now your host, Greg Airbar. Thank you, Chris Anthony, as
always, thank you for being our wonderful announcer.
Thank you all for listening. This is the fantastic world of
Hannah and Barbera. I am your host, Greg Airbar.
(00:54):
I am the author of Hanna Barbera, the recorded history,
which is now on audio, which is very exciting.
But we're also very excited to welcome back our good friend
George Feltenstein, who is, what's your title again?
I am the Warner Brothers Discovery Library historian.
That's what I was going to say. Yes, really.
(01:15):
He is the patron St. of getting stuff out there that looks great
and is accessible. We hang on his every word and
his every news flash and we're thrilled to have him back.
We're going to talk about some currently issued titles and at
least one that's on the way. But first of all, welcome to our
show again, George. Well, thank you, Craig.
It's a pleasure to be with you. Well, let's start a little bit
(01:37):
before we get to Blu rays. You know, Hanna Barbera, it's
kind of a little bit of a renaissance among us who love
it. You know, we've got a more Blu
rays than we've had in a long time and we've got me TV tunes
and they've just started the House of Hanna Barbera.
It's an embarrassment of riches.As they say.
Well, it's like after being in the desert for too many years.
(02:01):
I think the biggest take away from everything that's
happening, and it's something I have been campaigning for for a
long time, but it's finally happening, is all of the shows
are being put back together the way they originally were.
This is something, with rare exception, that nobody has had
(02:23):
the fortitude or determination or discipline to do for over a
half century. Those original Canna Barbera
series that we grew up with, that we loved like Huckleberry
Hound and Yogi Bear and Click Drum McGraw and of course the
half hours like Flintstones and so forth, But particularly the
(02:44):
segmented shows were bastardizedfor syndication in the late 60s.
And then it got worse and worse and nobody took care of the film
elements properly. Nobody kept the proper
inventory. The ownership bounced 3 or 4
times before it landed at Turnerin the early 90s, and that's
(03:09):
when there was a beginning of aneffort to try to pay a little
more attention to things. That's where we saw the original
theme for the early seasons of The Flintstones finally
surfaced. There were some things done.
There were also no protection film elements ever made on most
(03:33):
of the Hanna Barbera cartoons. There was the original negative,
if it still existed, but they haven't made interpositives in
many cases. And in the mid to late 90s there
was no digital preservation yet.There was no scanning like we
have now. Everything had to be done
(03:54):
photochemically. But thank goodness, because I'm
a big believer in physical preservation.
I have a little bit of fear whenit comes to digital only
preservation. But a very concerted effort was
made by Turner to make interpositives on a lot of the
(04:15):
Hanna Barbera series, and that hadn't been done in prior
decades. But bridges and bumpers and
everything was thrown into a VATthat was labeled and I'm not.
This is the actual name of it inthe inventory.
HB bits and pieces. And there is no description for
(04:38):
half of the material in there. And I am not exaggerating when I
say, given that I've been with this part of the library for 28
years, since the beginning, I kept digging in there looking
for things. My work with the company was
restricted to theatrical catalog.
That was my area of oversight. But due to the work I did with
(05:03):
Jerry when I was at MGMUA with all the Looney Tunes and with
the Tom and Jerry, the family kids group within Warner Home
Video brought me in to basicallyconsult on how Looney Tunes and
Tom and Jerry would make their debut on DVD.
And I helped wherever I could. But the Hanna Barbera DVD
(05:26):
releases of the early odds were not handled in the way I would
have handled them. To put out Miguela Gorilla
without the theme song, that's just insane.
But that's the way they went out.
It was terribly disappointing. So what's happening now?
It's a company wide effort to put these shows all back
(05:50):
together correctly. And the beneficiaries are the
House of Hanna Barbara at Me TV Tunes, the ME TV Tunes
Initiative itself, which is a joint venture between Warner
Brothers Discovery and Weigel Broadcasting.
This is not for children. The target audience is people
(06:12):
like ourselves that grew up withthese cartoons.
And it isn't just Warner own material, it's material from
other studios as well as it should be.
But this is really a home on broadcast television.
The difference of that and what was Cartoon Network, let's say
(06:35):
20 years ago, or Boomerang, is that there's actual care being
taken on trying to present everything with great quality as
it originally was seen. That's what I'm particularly
excited about and the amount of research and work that went into
(06:59):
and is going into, because this is still ongoing, reconstructing
the shows. It's enormously problematic
because we found, for example, that there were certain bridges
and bumpers for these series. They were all thrown into the
inventory with just numbers. You didn't know what anything
(07:21):
was. But very sadly we found picture
and the magnetic soundtracks hadgone vinegar to the point where
they were unplayable. The oxide had flaked off, not
for everything, thankfully, but for certain things.
And that to me is just an utter tragedy.
(07:45):
So we're grateful for what we were able to put together.
And again, this is still an ongoing process.
People have seen, I believe we're just at the beginning of
this. They've seen Magilla Gorilla,
the Yogi Bear show, They're finally getting to hear the
theme songs again. And we have announced the
(08:05):
Magilla Gorilla Show for a March25th St. date on Blu-ray.
And I'm happy to say that it's all the original 23 half hour
shows with bridges, bumpers and the ideal toys, main and end
titles, which was very importantto me personally.
(08:26):
We did that several years ago. I would say close to 10 years
ago, maybe more for Peter Potamus, we put the Peter
Potamus show on DVD and we foundthe curtain call and the
original Ideal toys open and close, and we were able to
(08:47):
reconstruct those shows. And of course, there's that
thing between Peter Potamus and McGill Gorilla 'cause they
switched around the orders of Reasley and Sneezy and Ricochet
taking places in the other shows.
We also did not have the proper documentation from the period of
production of what exactly is supposed to go where,
(09:10):
particularly in terms of the bridges and the bumpers, those
that still were usable and existing.
We looked at music cue sheets and we looked at everything we
could find to try to do that. But it's been a Herculean task.
And so many people, Archival Sound Department, One Brothers
(09:32):
Motion Picture Imaging, the preservation department, and
I've been running over there constantly to look at things and
say, no, this doesn't go with this, it goes with that.
And it's not just for what I'll be able to release as a Warner
Archive title on Blu-ray. It's about what is good for the
whole company and what we will be able to do to not only
(09:56):
preserve the material and the content so that people can enjoy
it, but also to leave very detailed notes in the files and
in the systems. So when future generations come
to this, as we are now, the information will be there so
(10:17):
that they don't have to reinventthe wheel.
And I think that is really one of the most gratifying things.
It's something that's very, veryimportant to me because that's
part of my my job as the companyhistorian.
Yes, I also oversee Warner Archive for home entertainment
releases, but the other part of me is in corporate legal,
(10:41):
working on copyrights and clarifying what goes where and
making sure that things are straightened out in the world's
largest single entertainment company library, that it's
documented properly so that everybody knows what we have,
what are our rights, what are the hang ups, what are the
(11:02):
problems, what film elements arewe missing?
It's an enormous task to undertake, but thanks to the
wonderful determination and focus of my colleagues, we're
all getting it done and it's been a real team effort.
What you're doing is as much fortomorrow as it is for while
you're there. The care is, you don't want it
(11:24):
to all fall apart again. You want them to be able to go
back and find easily. Is this being done, Do you know,
at other companies that have a lot of content from the past?
Disney and MGM were the only studios to have nitrate to
safety conversion programs in the 1960s.
No other studio did that. Warner Brothers didn't do it
(11:46):
because Warner Brothers didn't own any of its nitrate content
until we ended up buying Turner in 1996 and getting the library
back. Once Warner Brothers bought
Turner, The MGM preservation program, which was then carried
on by Turner Entertainment Company, that then got adopted
(12:09):
by Warner Brothers Entertainmentand has been continuously going
on and growing. So what started as nitrate to
safety conversion, protection, preservation at MGM in the 60s,
now more than 50 years later, that continues within Warner
Brothers. And it's something that I'm very
(12:32):
proud to be a part of. But taking on the Hanna Barbera
library, that was so just, it was, it's, it's heartbreaking to
think of how little care was taken with what they made.
And nobody questioned the fact that, Oh well, we've got 48
(12:53):
Libby the Lion cartoons and it doesn't matter what we have,
whatever we have is good enough.And a great deal of the Hanna
Barbera productions that people have been seeing for the last
several decades are one inch videotapes that were made in the
mid to late 80s and they have not been upgraded since.
(13:16):
The work that's being done now, particularly on some of the
things I just mentioned, nobody bothered to actually take the
time to reapproach these and to rebuild when they were part of
1/2 hour of programming. They never bothered to put the
(13:37):
shows back together as they wereoriginally made.
A perfect example is something like the Magilla Gorilla show.
There was a syndication version that had the main title and the
end title. It just eliminated the Ideal Toy
sponsorship. Ideal Toys has been long out of
(13:57):
business. Their trademark is no longer a
protected trademark. They were bought out by Hasbro,
so some of the toys and games that they created at Ideal are
still trademarked and protected and so forth and so on.
But for all intents and purposes, Ideal doesn't exist.
(14:17):
When we did the restoration of The Jetsons the original season,
because I people still say we'reseason 2 and three, it's like
that was a reboot. It was different and mostly
finished a videotape. Sadly.
When we did the Jetsons for Blu-ray, I think that was about
5 or 6 years ago, we got permission from Scotch tape and
(14:41):
Colgate toothpaste to be able touse their little bumpers and
that was very important to me. We got permission from the
companies. I mean, it's free advertising,
right? Why would they say no?
But we asked, they didn't even know about it and they said
sure, fine. And we got it all legally taken
care of. Those things are very important.
(15:03):
We have a little bit more flexibility on what we can offer
the collectors with presenting these programs as full series on
Blu-ray. And when we were doing some of
the earlier DVD releases that one archive put out, you know,
(15:24):
10-12 years ago, basically I went after anything that hadn't
already been brought out into the market.
And in some cases we were able to do what I call low cost
remastering. It was not Blu-ray quality, it
was for DVD. So there were occasional amounts
(15:48):
of film damage and so forth, which we will not allow in the
Blu-ray. The Blu-ray and the HD master
has to be pristine. But what we were able to bring
to DVD was 10 times better than what was created for the USA
Cartoon Express, you know, in the late 80s.
So there is a progression and now we're at a point where so
(16:13):
much careful work is going into the way these things are
presented. And people have seen a little
taste of it. They've seen on me TV tunes.
And I think when the Blu rays that we've announced and the
ones that we haven't announced yet, it's going to make a lot of
people really, really happy. I would imagine that another
reason is you can't have an ideal or catalogs or any kind of
(16:35):
a sponsor mentioned in a broadcast show that isn't really
sponsored by them when they haveother sponsors paying for it
too. So well, exactly, yes.
And so you need to have that flexibility.
You know, originally Bill and Joe thought of that because they
created non ideal toy version versus ideal toy version.
(16:57):
Just going through the film elements for Top Cat, I found
this was obviously for reruns, but there were Transigram toy
company sponsorships and I was like, wow, I didn't know about
that. I wonder what that was used for.
And they've been out of businessfor decades.
I haven't heard that name since I was a kid, but you know, there
(17:17):
we are. It is a tremendously exciting
time we have so far. Lippy the Lion and Hardy, Har
Har touché Turtle and Wally Gator.
Those shows were all produced as16mm camera positives.
They were not produced in 35mm and not all the original first
(17:42):
generation materials survived, but they've done the best they
can with what we have and the amount of film damage cleanup,
and I'm very careful about this.We do not clean up sell dirt.
We do not clean up sell dust. How it was made and originally
(18:03):
produced is what we want to bring to the consumer.
We don't want things to look like they were made on a
computer yesterday. We want them to look like they
did when they were finished being made and produced.
So we take care of all film damage, but we leave anything
(18:24):
that was on the animation cell intact.
Yeah, it's like sawing a wobbly table.
You're going to keep sawing the legs off till there's no legs
left, right. And that's something that I have
to lecture people about and say,no, that's supposed to be there,
but it's distracting. There are scratching, I said.
That's the way it looked on the movie screen.
(18:44):
You know, this comes up particularly with the Looney
Tunes. You would see a spot on a cell
for a few frames that would go away.
Should we change the film from the way it was made?
No, we need to keep it as it was.
If there are scratches in the film, negative, should we take
care of that? Damn right.
(19:06):
So it's knowing what to do and to make sure that we're keeping
the integrity of the animation and the artwork intact with
Magilla Gorilla and with Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound.
At least from the DVDs that I'vegot, there are, for one reason
or another, the cartoons got shuffled around, perhaps because
(19:30):
the productions, some were done sooner, some were done later.
So they would toss in an old oneand a new set of three.
And then, unlike Megillah, there's a handful of independent
ones, and then there's about four of them on Peter Potamus.
How can you reconstruct those ifthey're sort of loose like that?
Well, the decision that we made was there were 23 Magilla
(19:53):
Gorilla half hours created for the original run with Ricochet
Rabbit and with Mush Mouse and Pumpkin Puss.
There were eight additional Magilla Gorilla cartoons made,
which were interspersed with reruns of other cartoons
because, as you know, Magilla started in syndication, then
(20:15):
moved to ABC. And then went back to
syndication. So, you know, they peppered in a
few new shorts along the way. They're being presented on the
Blu-ray as bonus cartoons. We're not going to recreate what
was ostensibly reruns. That doesn't work.
I think the most efficient thingis to give people what
(20:38):
originally was created and to address as best as we can.
To clarify, these bonus cartoonswere used as new material to
Pepper, which were basically a balance of reruns, and that was
done for both Magilla and to a lesser degree, for Peter.
(21:01):
He just wasn't as popular. You know, I always think of them
in the same thought process. I was under the impression that
I could be wrong about this, that Magilla came out first
because in that, yes. And then Peter Potamus came
later. And then Ideal maybe has said,
well, Gee, we're not getting much of A merchandise kick on
Magilla, so let's not put anything because there are
(21:22):
hardly any Peter Potamus things.There were no records for sure.
Magilla got his share of stuff. Oh yeah, and comic books and
toys and all sorts of things. They were produced around the
same time. They were part of the same deal
for sponsorship. If my memory is correct, I think
(21:42):
McGill premiered in January of 64, and then like September of
64 was Peter. Yeah.
In the film with George Fenneman, which I'm assuming is
going to be on the Here Comes the Star.
Yeah. I think Bill Hanna says
something. And then we got another one
that's coming along in a few months, but he doesn't say what
it is. Right.
They were really part of the same.
(22:04):
I'm sure Joe Barbera sold them together and they just put the
focus on on Magilla first. It's kind of like VHS versus
Beta. You know, Magilla had a lead at
the beginning and Peter could never catch up.
But now, you know, in retrospect, 50 plus years later,
that's frightening to say. Or I should say, 60 years later,
(22:28):
we can watch all these shows andrealize all the great talent
that were dedicating themselves to making these cartoons because
they're not babysitter kids stuff.
They're not as sophisticated as Flintstones, but they're more
along the lines of, let's say, 1950s Looney Tunes.
(22:51):
And some of the writers were thesame than they were for what you
would find hitting Saturday mornings in the late 70s and
early 80s, which were very much geared towards young children,
with all the restrictions that the government and the concerned
parents put on the production companies making animation by
(23:12):
that time. Yeah, there are a lot of
elements. And folks, you can identify them
for your own selves because we don't have to make a list here.
But there are things in some of these cartoons that you probably
wouldn't have seen on Saturday morning a few years later.
Nothing naughty, but just some stuff that became off limits on
Saturday morning. And some more in jokes, I think
more of the nods to the adults jokes about like the military.
(23:35):
You know, every hand of barbariccharacter is like, just like
Lucy ends up in the military by accident.
You know, that kind of thing. So we can look forward to the
pristine perfection of the Magilla Gorilla Show.
March 25th is the street date and as you've told me, you can
watch these all you want and enjoy them on TV.
But TV is compressed, so you will never see it the same way
(23:58):
as if you have a Blu-ray, right?That's true for television.
Whether it's over the air, whether it's cable, whether it's
streaming, the files are compressed and nothing will give
you the quality of when you're in HDA, Blu-ray Disc or if
you're in 4K, a 4K disc. Physical media is still not only
(24:21):
the most reliable, nobody can take it away from you, but it's
also the best quality. The beauty of having these
wonderful animated classics on television is people can find
out what they like and what theydon't like and then make the
decision, you know, I like this so much, I want to own it and
(24:41):
it's a wonderful marriage. This is all coming from the same
team here at Warner Brothers, both in terms of marketing,
sales, restoration, preservation.
Everybody's working together as we are a united company to bring
as much of our library to consumers in as many ways as
(25:02):
possible. I agree.
I think that there is no mutually exclusive way of just
saying, oh, well, if it's on, should I have my own copy?
It's two different ways to enjoyit.
As a friend of mine once said, Ilove to watch it with America
when it's being broadcast. And also you have that
atmosphere in your home of this running cartoon parade going on
(25:24):
because I leave that on. But when you have when we were
growing up and a Flintstones or a Bewitched or a genie, oh, it's
the one where a Gilligan, it's the one where it's on.
It's on in the episode of The Flintstones with Gus Schultz.
I missed the adulation then. That was your chance to see it.
(25:46):
And then it wasn't going to be on until they decided to show it
in the syndication run. Having your own copy gives you
that ability, right. And I mean, you know, I, I look
back at my childhood. It was such a real treat to be
able to have that 39 minute reduction of The Wizard of Oz as
(26:07):
a record. You could experience the movie
in a brilliantly compressed form.
It was really interesting how they did that album, but that
was what could keep you in your Oz head until that special time
each year when the film would beon network television in the
(26:29):
world, or our country at least, would be experiencing it, as you
said, as a communal thing that other people are watching.
There's a magic to that, and I think that is really, we don't
see that much of it anymore. But the fact that Charlie Brown
Christmas and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and How the
(26:50):
Grinch Stole Christmas are on network television every year, I
find somewhat reassuring. As we're seeing those particular
kinds of media facing difficult headwinds.
I think choice is really important and we want to create
(27:12):
something that you can put on your shelf and treasure as more
than just something that you watch.
But it's something that you cherish because it's a part of
your life that you can experience with your children or
your children and your grandchildren and pass on the
(27:33):
entertainment value. Because ultimately the great
thing about the golden era of Hanna Barbera is the humor holds
up, the animation holds up, the shows hold up.
A lot of people, you have to explain to them the name Yogi
Berra. You know, they don't know who
Yogi Berra was. That was just the way Bill and
(27:55):
Joe thought where they very muchof the moment.
And you know, it's like Frankenstein Junior and The
Impossibles. The Impossibles were their
response to The Beatles and the kind of music that was being
made in 1966. So much of what they did was
reflective of the era in which their work was produced, and I
(28:17):
think that's. Very, very important.
Yeah. We should mention the current
titles too, because FrankensteinJunior and The Impossibles has
currently been released on Blu-ray, and that is a really
cool show. It has its own special following
both of those. It's funny reading the comments
on Facebook, some people say, Gee, I wish there were two
Frankenstein's and one Impossibles.
(28:38):
And then there's another school of thought.
People have their favorites but I like them both and they knew
how to combine. The cartoons complemented each
other really well. Absolutely, absolutely.
And that's why I was so pleased when we were able to do that
series. We had released it on DVD.
It was not remastered for the DVD release.
(29:01):
There were some standard definition digital remastering
done by Turner before we bought Turner, right around 199596.
There were several Hanna Barberaseries that got an upgrade from
the one inch analog masters and so they were perfectly fine for
(29:24):
a DVD release. But now we're going back to the
original camera negative, scanning them at 4K.
It's amazing the differential inquality as well as the sound
quality. The picture and the sound are
restored and cleaned up, and it's wonderful that the colors
are bold and just as the artistsoriginally envisioned them.
(29:44):
Yeah, I think that's the thing that bowls you over the most is
that, well, back in the day whenwe had TV's that had the line
scan, you didn't. You never had the color that
these were supposed to be. You could turn up the red maybe,
but that wouldn't help much. The other thing I noticed in
seeing the ones with title cards.
They had to be careful about what is it that they what they
call. TV safe, TV safe, You know how
(30:06):
they have the guardrail around the screen when they're filming?
That's why the titles are sort of squished in the middle,
because TV's would sometimes magnify too much.
They were all different. Yeah, we find this a lot.
You know, if you're looking on the actual negative,
particularly on live action, on animated programming, if we look
at the camera negative outside of the TV safe, we see the
(30:30):
animation stand because that wasactually captured in the full
aperture of the negative, you know, but never intended to be
seen. So the colorist does his or her
sizing, the raw negative is scanned and they apply the color
correction and the clean up and all that's done and as well as
(30:53):
the framing to make sure it's proper.
And we very often will use, justfor framing purposes, a release
print. There are 35mm prints of the
cartoons that were made in 35mm and how they look 'cause they're
not a direct duplicate off the negative necessarily.
(31:14):
It just really helps us keep theframing proper and everybody's
very, very meticulous about how to handle these things.
The results are very, very gratifying.
Another title that has been getting a lot of surprise
attention is Wait Till Your Father Gets Home, which is yes,
(31:36):
the least. Many people hadn't seen it since
it was on. Many people never saw it and are
amazed that wow, there was a prime time adult series that had
this kind of writing and had this unusual look.
Then remastering it like that. I always think of the look the
Marty. Look that they brought in.
I think that that might have been Barbera sort of reliving
(31:59):
the days when he was doing 1 frame gags for Colliers.
You know, it looks like one of those come to life because
something in The New Yorker, in a vignette, it doesn't go to the
end of the frame at all. And that's the way it looks.
It looks like a Hazel cartoon, Yes.
I mean, my wife and I have been watching it and cannot get over
how, yeah, it's dated. Oh, for gosh sakes, it's dated
(32:22):
just like Norman Lear shows are dated, which inspired it.
But how much prescience it had and how much of what we still
say about prices and about the world in general and, you know,
the middle class and having kids.
And it reminds me of all of the primetime shows of now.
What I love about it the most, though, is my favorite of the
(32:44):
prime times of today is Bob's Burgers.
Because there's a sweetness to Bob's Burgers.
And Bob's not an idiot. He's confused by it all, and he
doesn't get listened to, but he tries to be the voice of reason
and everything swirls around himjust like Harry.
And at the end of the episode, there tends to be this moment
where the little light bulb goesoff and a very sweet moment
(33:05):
occurs. And that happens a lot.
And wait till your father gets home.
And my former colleagues and we used to have three divisions.
We had theatrical, new release, theatrical catalog.
And then TV and family. That was another division.
And we had an executive here fora long time and she oversaw live
(33:28):
action television. Her group marketed Wait Till
Your Father Gets Home Season 1 on DVD, not the Kids family
group because it was considered more of an adult sitcom than a
kids and family kind of thing. They never got past the first
season, though. They never did the second season
and that was always kind of a thorn in the side.
(33:52):
We had some clearance issues we had to deal with, but we got
them done and the surprise to mewas I had remembered that it
never looked particularly good and I think that was part of the
design. It was very sparse animation,
but I did not know that in the second season some of the
episodes were farmed out to a Canadian animation house and the
(34:18):
original negatives are 16mm. So when you're watching our new
Blu-ray set, you'll notice degrading quality in certain
episodes. Visually, they're grainier and
they don't look as colorful as the others.
That's because they were produced in a more inexpensive
(34:39):
way in 16mm, and at the time, they were distributed to
television stations for the first run syndication half hour
at 7:30 on weekday nights with 16mm prints.
So nobody really cared about those things in those days, but
we do now and we did the best wecould with.
We have all the original negatives, but some of them were
(35:01):
produced in 16 millimeter. Yeah, the first season was done.
The Hanna Barbera had just actually Bill Hannah had just
gone to Australia and started upthe animation there, right.
Some of those are when you see Zoran Zhangjic on there, you
kind of know that the Scooby-doomovies and the Josie and Outer
Space, those ones were produced there and they were sort of
(35:21):
getting their feet wet in the way of doing animation, The hand
of Barbara Way. It's what's also cool about them
is it's first of all, it's written by or produced by a
Harvey Bullock and Rs Allen. So it has that sitcom feel.
They wrote the man called Flintstone screenplay as well.
So it's got very snappy writing,laugh out loud dialogue and it
(35:42):
has a great cast. Tom Bosley right before happy
days, the wonderful Joan Gerber playing Irma and Joan Gerber was
just a ubiquitous in the 70s. You know, Judy Frog on HR pop
and stuff and Lancelot link. I mean you heard her everywhere.
And Christina Holland from Courtship of Eddie's father
playing their daughter. And Lenny Wine Rib.
(36:04):
Lenny Wine Rib. Oh, yeah, Yeah.
And I don't know why they replaced Chet, the teenage son's
voice, but Lenny Wine Rib does such a convincing job of
sounding like a teen at first. It's like, oh, that is him,
isn't it? And Richard Dawson's in it.
And Pat Harrington, what I'm responding to now in today's
time is you have Ralph play Perfectly by Jack Burns and if
(36:26):
you remember it, Burns and Schreiber.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course thatthey do on the cartoon.
And Ralph, from whatever point of view you come, Ralph will
become very obvious what point of view he comes from.
But what stands out about it is that Harry is in the middle of
that. You know, he's got the new way
of thinking with his kids. You know, Daddy, everybody's
(36:48):
doing this now. And then he's got Ralph, who's
on the other end, and he's just trying to balance things.
But he's not out in that rejecting.
He's a very loving and liking guy.
And that's kind of a hard road to hoe nowadays.
You know, that's what I get out of the show now.
He'll make wisecracks to both sides, but he doesn't reject or
(37:08):
say, I'll never speak to you or anything.
And no, it's nice to look back at another time when those were
not easy times. And that was reflective of the
times. And it also was Hanna Barbera's,
if you could call two seasons and a few extra episodes,
longest running, almost prime time show since The Flintstones.
Because, yeah, it did run for two seasons.
(37:31):
And then there were a few extra episodes that were sort of a
third season. I think the third season was
reruns and the four new ones. That's my opinion, but I always
thought of it as a two season show.
Prime time access was something that the government, yeah, they
wanted to give 1/2 hour programming each night back to
(37:53):
the local stations. The goal of which was that the
local stations would make local programming for those
municipalities so that it wasn'tnational network content.
But what happened was productioncompanies sweeped in and came up
with the nighttime Price is Right and the nighttime Jeopardy
(38:15):
and the nighttime Wheel of Fortune.
Wait Till Your Father Gets Home was, I think, one of the few
things that was animated. There was a reboot of Doctor
Kildare made in Canada last yearwith Gary Merrill as Doctor
Gillespie, that came through MGMTelevision.
There were all sorts of things that were dredged up for it.
The only survivors that have retained being on air are
(38:41):
Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. They're a byproduct of that Lost
Network half hour. The intention was community
affairs programming. I grew up in New York.
There used to be a show on the NBC local station called New
York Illustrated. They used to run it on weekends.
The idea was that they would putit on during the week, but that
(39:02):
didn't happen. Yeah, we had a show in Miami
called Montage on WTVJ, and it was a magazine stories, but it
was in South Florida and it never made it into date that
period. It was on Saturdays or Sundays
before the prime time. So I guess you remember Doctor
Simon Locke with that was another one of those shows.
(39:23):
Exactly, Exactly. Yeah.
The Truth or Consequences rebootwith Bob Barker.
That was something that ended upin that time slot.
And everything was different in every market.
There were a lot of shows that we're seeing in other parts of
the country that we never got. This was the opening for Wait
Till Your Father Gets Home and it really has not gotten the
(39:48):
showcase, but they started usingthe new masters on ME TV tunes
and people can see it there. And now people can own the
entire series and enjoy guest stars like Don Knotts and Monty
Hall, which is kind of cool. And I'm just delighted that
we've been able to bring it out and it it's a fascinating
(40:09):
timepiece and very entertaining.Yeah, yeah, it actually is.
And in our, let's say, Easter basket, hint, hint, if you're
buying for yourself or for others and looking for an
excuse. There's also new to Blu-ray, the
Tom and Jerry Complete Cinemascope Collection.
It's a huge success for us. It was an idea that came to me
(40:30):
just one day. I was like, wouldn't it be cool
if we did this? I got to say I'm.
I'm just delighted that I thought of it.
Yeah. And there's some real good ones.
And this is the era. This is the pre MGM layoff.
And then they go right into the rough and ready and Huckleberry
Hound. So there is a stylistic boy.
And this was just the way thingswere in the 50s.
(40:54):
It was a combination of the UPA look and the prices going up
that even Disney was changing the way they were doing films
for the screen. And Bill and Joe were running
the unit towards the end as well.
Oh yes, they were. Fred Quimby was gone and Bill
and Joe were running The MGM cartoon department.
(41:17):
And as you know, probably betterthan anybody on the planet, they
went to MGM as the animation department was closing and said,
hey, we could do limited animation for television.
And the geniuses that were running MGM in the late 50s,
there were none, I assure you ofthat.
They said, no, we're not interested.
(41:37):
And MGM's television department overall was almost always a
woulda, shoulda coulda. They had very few successes.
There were a few, like Doctor Kildare and Medical Center and
Courtuvetti's five to three seasons.
Doctori There were a few that really hit big, and then of
(41:59):
course Chips in the 70s, but they tried a lot of things that
just didn't work and it's very sad, but it was really like the
studio itself. There were a few big monster
hits, Doctor Zhivago, Ben Hur, but everything was on the
downslide to me. In my mind, the studio started
(42:20):
going downhill when they kicked LB Mayer out.
Some people say MGM started on the decline when Irving Thalberg
died. I think that's a little bit of a
diversion, but my point is is that MGM was a great place for
Bill and Joe to hone their craft.
The work they did there with Tomand Jerry was wonderful, and the
(42:43):
fact that they were able to build an empire of their own and
really plow new ground for television animation in a
revolutionary way is a wonderfulpart of film and entertainment
industry history. Oh yeah.
(43:03):
I'm just going to point out a couple of the shorts on this set
in specific ways. They're kind of cool.
For example, The Vanishing Duck,if I'm not mistaken, that's
George O'hanlon playing George, and that's only a few years
before he was George Jetson. You've also got Julie Bennett
doing the voice of the worst babysitter ever up Till Hand
(43:26):
Rocks the Cradle. Oh, you've got a lot of little
quacker ended up being yeah, youdo.
And if you're really nitpicking itty bitty buddy sometimes
referred to, but there were two two of the duck voices.
There was red coffee and then later it was Jimmy Weldon.
But what's interesting about those cutie ducks that could do
(43:49):
that is that unlike Donald, Donald always was limited, but
what he could say because not everybody understood him, but
these ducks could be understood completely, which really worked
well in TV. So you can kind of see the
development of the cute, adorable duck.
One of the last things Bill Hannah worked on, I think it was
Hard Luck duck. Again, cute, adorable ducky.
(44:11):
Oh, and then flying sorceress June for a June for a doing that
witch voice, which she did for Disney in 52 as witch Hazel and
then eventually moved over to Warner with the same character
because I guess you couldn't copyright a household product.
And so and then flying sorceress, she's doing the same
voice and that's always a delight.
(44:31):
There's a lot of really good ones and plus you got that great
Scott Bradley music. So this just fills up your TV
screen. The cartoons look terrific
because we basically did new color correction and clean up on
them and the audio is cleaned upand three of the cartoons are in
genuine stereo. The first 3 because MGM was
(44:55):
recording them with the intention of four track magnetic
stereo releases. I don't think that ever
happened. The weird thing is that the
early scope aspect ratio was 2.55 to 1, so you had room for
the magnetic soundtrack. We looked at the camera
negatives of these cartoons and they are 235 to 1.
(45:18):
So it doesn't seem that there was ever an actual intention to
follow through with magnetic stereo release prints.
But we have the magnetic music stereophonic scoring sessions of
Scott Bradley and we did remixed3 of the cartoons back in the
(45:39):
90s for laserdisc and those tracks now carry through the
cartoon. touché Pussycat was missing the part where the
little mouse sings for Jacques as he's painting Tom on the wall
with little paintbrush. We fixed that so that now the
audio track is correct. Speaking of stereo, and this is
(46:02):
not a new release, but I've always wanted to thank you for
releasing through Warner Archivethe stereo version of Heidi's
song. Oh, of course it had to be.
I mean, I saw it in the theater and it was in mono, and I've got
the album. But that problem with the album
is not a problem. It's made for children, so it's
mostly dialogue. The only complete song is owed
(46:25):
to a rat. But hearing that big swore, you
know, that's the biggest orchestra Henna Barbera ever put
together with Hoyt curtain arrangements and Burton Lane
Sammy Khan score. You know, that is incredible.
We just recently watched it again.
I watch it a lot and though it'snot a perfect film and 1982 was
(46:45):
not the year for it, you know? No, I think it sat on the shelf
for a long time. If I'm not mistaken, I think
they actually completed it in the late 70s.
Paramount didn't really know what to do with it and they kept
Charlotte's Web, but they did not have any hesitation to not
(47:06):
keep Heidi's song, so it reverted back to Hanna Barbera.
I wish Charlotte's Web had done that, but Paramount has always
seen that as a money making machine.
They were trying really, really hard and you have to just sort
of give them a pat on the back at least for the attempt to do
an enormous amount of full animation and a feature,
(47:29):
probably more than any they had done.
And the backgrounds and the artwork and all of that are
superb. Is there any chance of that
getting to a Blu-ray? At the moment it's not on our
docket, but I would never say never, you know, if we can get
support. What's very difficult is that if
something was mastered in high definition and our television
(47:54):
division can market it as such legitimately, which they can,
the Heidi Sung master we have isnot up to Blu-ray standards.
It's not cleaned up the way it should be, but it's good.
It looks nice. DVD and standard definition will
hide a myriad of sins, but put that on a high definition
(48:16):
television from a high definition master and you're
going to see dirt and scratches and all that kind of stuff,
which is just unacceptable to me.
Not every company is as fastidious as we are about
quality. I would say that with the ever
expanding opportunities for animation that we're
(48:38):
experiencing now, because it's not just ME TV Tunes and it's
not just what we see on our Max subscription service, it's also
many other clients of our television distribution group
who are looking for animation. It just may be that people
decide, hey, we need to give Heidi Song the A+ treatment and
(49:00):
if that happens then there'll bea Blu-ray.
So I wouldn't say that it will never happen.
It's just not on the docket at the moment.
Maybe internationally there could be a market for it.
Would surprise me as I always, after watching a film, like to
look up various reviews and stuff.
And the user reviews on IMDb were incredible, you know?
(49:20):
Yeah, people love the movie. Yeah.
This Paramount didn't. Yeah.
And Barbera was kind of ticked at that because they.
Yeah, they buried it. You know, when you change
management within a motion picture company, the new team
doesn't usually like to be associated with something the
old team did that they don't go for.
(49:41):
Yeah. A lot of films have suffered
because of that kind of thinking.
That's true. That's that's historically NTV
series have two. Yep.
I'm only going to bring up the other two because they're
brought up a lot and it's just what's on the barometer with
these two. OK, Quick Draw, McGraw got to
ask. People are going to want me to.
How's that going? I'm very optimistic.
You know, we've got a lot to untangle there because there's
(50:05):
music and there's mastering, butI'm feeling very optimistic for
Quick Draw and Baba Louie, so keep fingers crossed.
And and then my personal favorite, Alice in Wonderland,
or what's a nice kid like you doing in a place like this?
I'm pushing for that too. It's a little bit easier because
it's a single production, so therestoration would not be
(50:29):
tremendously expensive, but we've got to do some legal
clearance to get that freed up. I haven't seen it since
childhood, so I would very much enjoy doing so.
Wow. You haven't seen it since then.
Wow, no. And then on the horizon, I know
you have to keep things under wraps, but there are more Hanna
Barberas in the pipeline. Oh, yeah, most definitely.
(50:54):
And I will say this, I think that as we continue to bring
these things forth, it will openthe door or other series because
people want more choice. They'll have watched series X or
Y, which is brand new, you know,in terms of restoration right
now. But then they're going to say,
(51:15):
hey, you know, we've seen this. You've run it twice, three
times. How about something else from
the fantastic world of Bill Hannah and Joe Barbera and will
come through. I really believe that it is an
embarrassment of riches, our animation library.
If you think about it, the Hugh Harmon Rudolf Ising Happy
(51:37):
Harmonies have never made the leap to HD.
They're still looking like dirt.I think that should be done.
That is not something that most people know about.
You have to be an animation aficionado to know about that.
I would like to continue restoring the 1950s Popeyes.
(51:57):
I would like to have the 1930s and early 40s Fleischer Popeyes
completely redone because they, you know, that was a huge effort
on our part. It was something I was involved
with for years and years, clearing that up with King
Feature Syndicate because we owned the cartoons, but we
didn't have the right to home use.
(52:19):
So it was a long time negotiating that agreement.
We finally did it. We finally got Paramount to
allow us to reinstate The Mountain, which was
contractually forbidden. And we got them out there when
DVD was still a massive multi billion dollar business.
But now they need to enter the world of high definition and
(52:41):
meticulous quality, and that's going to be very expensive.
And I'm just hoping we can get the funding to do that.
So there's so much in our library that needs TLC.
It's overwhelming in the amount of television content, feature
films, of course, short subjects, animated short
(53:01):
subjects, animated television. It's enormous what is ahead of
us? Which is why I can't wait to get
to work every day. And we can't wait to you do too.
And also be very careful crossing streets and drive
carefully on the freeways and look after your health because
we can't lose you, George. Well, I ain't going nowhere if I
(53:23):
have something to say about it. Again, I'm thrilled that you
joined us. I hope everybody had a great
time listening and want to pointout that you have the power of
your vote with these titles always.
If you can pre-order, that's thebest thing.
If you could get them within what, two weeks or so of the
street date, is that best? Oh yeah, yeah, because that will
(53:46):
register with the finance peopleand all that.
People really want these and there's a market for them and
it's going to lead to more of this wonderful stuff.
I couldn't thank you enough for saying that because it's true.
I, if I can go to finance and say, look what we did here and
we can do it again with this andthat.
That's how new projects get funded and we bring them out to
(54:09):
the public that wants them. I know what the public wants and
I hope we're able to continue tohave a very broad supply of
entertainment for everybody. So y'all out there, you make a
difference and you can enjoy these things.
Many more coming and hope to talk to you again soon.
George with even more Hanna Barbera and other video and DVD
(54:33):
and Blu-ray things. Thank you so much.
Oh you are very welcome. I thank you and I look forward
to the next opportunity to chat.Thank you all for listening.
Thanks for the likes and the subscribes.
Please keep doing that and untilnext time, bye bye.
I hope you enjoyed the fantasticworld of Hannah and Barbera with
Greg Airborne. Please join us again and Many
(54:54):
thanks for listening.
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