Spotlight on The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with Jim Fanning

A richly detailed look at one of Hanna-Barbera's most innovative and spectacular TV classics, The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the first weekly series ever to combine live-action with animation, with special guest author/historian Jim Fanning.

Episode Transcript

(00:10):
Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, we love Hanna
Barbera. Welcome to the fantastic world
of Hanna and Barbera, a celebration of Bill, Hannah,

(00:31):
Joe, 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, thank
you all for podcasting in or whatever you call it.
I'm Greg Airbar, author of HannaBarbera, the recorded history

(00:51):
book. Today we're going to do one of
those fun examinations, celebrations of one of Hanna
Barbera's finest series. But before we get to that, I
want to introduce my very good friend, Mr. Jim Fanning.
Thank you for having me, Greg. We were just talking off mic a
little bit about how long I've known you and how long you've

(01:13):
been in California now. And you know what I always say
to you? You'll never get away from me.
No matter where you go, I'll find you.
I'm not going to stay in this place another minute.
Well, we're already quoting, butyou know, it's such a great
show. But before I get to it, let's
remind everyone what you've beenrecently working on and how they

(01:36):
can access the wonderful world of Jim Fanning.
Well, my latest publication that's sort of accessible
because I do a lot of work for overseas, so listeners in the
United States probably wouldn't have access to none.
But the publication that is mostout there and easy to find is
Drawing 100 Years of Wonder, which was published last year

(01:59):
for the Disney 100 celebration. That book is available wherever
books can be found. And my ongoing project that I
hope everyone will definitely TuneIn for is my YouTube
channel, which is tolgy with TV.There's a new video every
Tuesday. Some of the videos are shorts.
We have had a good number of, you know, full length quote UN

(02:20):
quote videos on there. So if you haven't checked out
told you with TV on YouTube yet,please do.
There's quite a good number of videos on there and speaking.
I'm shorts, including a YouTube short about The New Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn. Yes, there's always new things
to learn, and that's what's so fun about this.
Nobody knows everything, and whowould want to?

(02:44):
It's told you what TULGEY would on YouTube, and it's wonderful,
fascinating, all kinds of different subjects, including
the program we're going to be talking about today, which is
Hanna Barbera's The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
or Huck Finn if you have the comic book, which you do have.
That's right. Yeah.

(03:05):
There was only one, and it was alandmark show, as Hanna Barbera
did quite a few landmark shows. It was the very first weekly
series that combined live actionand animation.
Some people say it was The Banana Splits, which also
premiered in 1968, But The Banana Splits was either an
animated segment or a live action segment, but they didn't

(03:28):
blend the two, right? And this was a very, very
expensive and very ambitious undertaking.
It was on Sunday nights on NBC. It was on before The Wonderful
World of Disney in 1968. So in 1960, 62, you had The
Jetsons competing with Disney and also Lassie and Dennis the

(03:49):
Menace on CBS and then Gene Kelly's Jack and the Beanstalk,
which led to Huckleberry. Finn's show was on in place of
The Wonderful World of Disney. But for this season, they were
sort of the companion to the Disney show, and this is only a
few years after Mary Poppins hadbeen released with its jolly

(04:10):
holiday sequence. So I want to hear you explain to
me what the premise of this showis, because I still can't
completely understand it. In the Hanna Barbera tradition,
it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it's kind of
wonderful in that way. We have trouble explaining it to
each other and we love and treasure it.

(04:31):
What about people that have never heard of it?
So first of all, you know everyone listening, be sure you
realize we're not saying the NewAdventures of Huckleberry Hound.
We're we're saying the New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
So Hanna Barbera took the classic characters from Mark
Twain's books, both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, his

(04:53):
monumental literary achievements.
So Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and Becky Thatcher and sort of
started the story that is part of the Tom Sawyer book that
Engine Joe was convicted of murder because Tom had witnessed
the murder in the graveyard thatEngine Joe had committed.

(05:16):
Unfortunately for this trio, they decided to take a shortcut
this one stormy night through the graveyard and there's Engine
Joe lurking about. So he says that he's going to
take his vengeance on them, especially Tom.
The three kids escape and they run into The Cave.
Now so far this is all marked way, but suddenly it diverges

(05:38):
into Hanna Barbera land. I thought Tom and me knew this
cave, but we got all mixed up this way.
No, that way. Get away from me.
No matter where you go, I had a funny feeling he was right, that

(06:01):
we'd see him again. Suddenly they find themselves in
a fantasy world, which is the animated world that Hanna
Barbera created so beautifully. And week after week they find
themselves in a brand new setting, often based on a
literary property like Don Quixote or the Arabian Nights.

(06:21):
They encounter all kinds of dangers and thrills, and the
villain is always an animated version of the engine.
Joe, wonderful voice of Ted Cassidy.
Week after week, they kind of resolved that adventure.
Then the next week they're on toanother and they're always
trying to get back to Hannibal. They're always trying to get
back to their hometown. How this happened, why?

(06:44):
It's some sort of like wormhole or time warp or something that
in that key and they ended up inthis fantasy world.
But as you were saying earlier, Greg, this is animation combined
with live action. So the three kids are always the
live actors, Michael Shea playing Huck, Kevin Schultz
playing Tom, and when Haslam as Becky, and they are always live

(07:08):
action. But the rest of it is animation
and beautifully planned out and beautifully achieved.
Each show with its unique setting has a unique production
design. It's a whole new world in every
single episode. To steal the phrase from a lad.
So did that take like 10 minutesfor me to explain it?

(07:30):
The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has something
in common with Shazam in that itrequired a prologue.
Hanna Barbera shows are even with their most convoluted give
you the 60 seconds to get the premise and then you're done.
And then just enjoy and don't ask too many questions because
this is the way Barbera sold it and somehow they work.

(07:52):
But in the case of Shazam, it had the theme song and then it
had the prologue in this case. And as a kid I was still shaking
my head but loving the show. There were at least 2 prologues.
1 which was in the premiere episode has the very odd crane

(08:13):
shot. I don't know, it seems like
someone was coming down a stairway or going down to Dan
Polly and Missus Thatcher who are outside a sort of a country
home. Children.
Are so late, what could have happened now?
Don't worry, Mrs. Thatcher, they'll be along any minute.
And I? Know the boys will take.
Care of Becky, Tom, Huck. So you see that about every

(08:39):
other show. And then the cuts to what you
describe, the narration by Huck that explains it.
Sometimes it went right into that.
Well, you know another thing about the crane shot, though.
Parenthetically, it does show how expensive the show was, Yes.
Would it really have mattered ifthey did do that crane shot?
No. And they trouble in expense of

(09:00):
doing it just for that one shot of these characters that really
don't have anything to do with the rest of the series.
That's a lot of expense they're pouring into it.
Yes, And the transition from live action to animation is also
very magical. How it's just slightly becomes
and then it cuts and then suddenly The Cave, which I don't
know if it's Bronson cave or whatever it is or maybe it's a

(09:21):
set how it sort of becomes animated with each successive
shot. And then even the live action
engine Joe, he's trying to get across on the log and also it's
become animated and we don't know why.
You know, the Wizard of Oz look does not have a dream frame
story. Dorothy just went there, and MGM

(09:44):
decided to add the dream to it so that audiences would accept
that Dorothy was in this land because they didn't quite think
that anyone would. I think we've returned to that
kind of thing because in a lot of our fantasy films, they're
very, very literal. Everything has to be explained
instead of being granted. The best example wealth to my

(10:06):
son is the Paddington movie, a very good feature film, but they
felt it necessary to explain howPaddington learned to talk.
And the charm of the book is he just does.
Yes, get a lot of very literal vice presidents involved and.
Yeah. And I think you and I both have
heard that one time or another, they're not going to get it.

(10:28):
You've got to make it clear they're not going to get it.
And I'm like, oh, who are they? And give them some credit.
Exactly. And engage the imagination.
Yeah. So the fact that it doesn't make
any sense makes it a little bit more enchanting in a way.
So we don't see where they go inThe Cave, but you see them going

(10:48):
off in the distance, which is a really impressive shot off into
the distance, almost into Infinity, like the time tunnel.
And then the series opens. And to my knowledge, this was
the first Hanna Barbera series that when the title came on,
they didn't always put a title, but this had a title with the
writer and the director in the format of a live action

(11:10):
primetime show. They started crediting writers,
I think it was about 7879, something like that.
I thought it was cool when they started doing that.
Yes. And they had Joanna Lee and a
lot of top Hollywood writers andpeople who'd worked with them
before, and people who had not. Hollingsworth Morse directed
quite a few of them. He was the director of Mchale's

(11:32):
Navy. And then HR Puff and stuff and
the film version. So it was all top flight people.
You mentioned the crane shot andI mentioned the runoff into the
distance. Land of the Giants was its
competition also. That's one of the reasons it
didn't last. Land of the Giants in 68 was a
very successful show that was onABC, and Land of the Giants was

(11:54):
the most expensive Irwin Allen series because even though it
might not have seemed that way, they had to put cameras up in
the rafters a lot. They had to have two angles
throughout that show, a floor angle for the Giants and a
ceiling angle for the little people, and sometimes a medium
angle. It just depended.

(12:15):
That is difficult because you'vegot a plan each shot, you've got
a light each shot. Then of course, in Atlanta, the
Giants had to build all the props and all of those things.
Case of Huck Finn, if you look at a live action animated
sequence in a film such as Bed Dumps and Broomsticks, Mary
Poppins, for the most part they're sort of touring through

(12:38):
the animated land. But there isn't a whole lot of
cuts on Huck Finn because it wasessentially like Johnny Quest.
Yeah, it's an action adventure. Yeah, there were a lot of edits.
It's a very fast-paced show witha lot of action sequences
without dialogue. There's a lot of sight gags, a
lot of things happening. That means a setup for every

(13:01):
live action over the blue screen.
It was a blue screen then, so apparently it took about four
hours to shoot, but probably weeks to plan the live option.
Yes. And I think when you really stop
and think about it, you can see that it is the art of the
storyboard, because this must have been extensively
storyboarded, probably even moreso than the typical Hanna

(13:24):
Barbera animated show. Everything had to be carefully
planned. And yes, indeed, some shots are
just animation. Some shots with the animated
background, it's maybe a close up of Huck, and then the next
shot is the three kids interacting with an animated
character. And then on and on.
They interact with props, they interact with their setting.

(13:47):
As you say, it's so fast-paced because it is an action
adventure show. That's what it is.
The things in Mary Poppins that you mentioned, one reason they
are completely different is because they're musicals.
Jolly Holiday and Supercalifragic.
Those are musical numbers, and it's a completely different
feeling and a completely different way of approaching

(14:08):
material. This is our heroes and all kinds
of danger chase, being chased, finding some kind of treasure or
tracking down some kind of secret and every single episode.
And when you add live action into that, Oh my gosh, it has to
be extensively planned. As is typical with live action

(14:30):
combined with animation. Obviously live action was shot
first, 1st, so that was all done.
I almost think I was going to look this up because I do have a
document. I think it was shot the year
before. I think it was shot in 67.
Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure this was planning for a
long time. Yeah.
And then when you go back and look at some of the

(14:51):
announcements about what Hanna Barbera had in the future, if we
go back to 67, this was in the planning stage.
And so it had to be. But you know, what other show,
what other TV show has that muchlead time, that much planning
involved? I'm sure both A and NBC knew
what they were getting into. If they were getting into this.

(15:12):
It had to be the way it is. It had to be expensive.
And a lot of that expense was the planning, sure that the kids
knew exactly what to do and how to do it.
And it's beautifully, beautifully done.
It may not be the most elaborateanimation.
And what have you. And occasionally you can see
like a seam or something doesn'tquite match up.

(15:35):
But overall it's extremely well done in.
The acting is very good. They never crack, they're always
right there and they're always in character and there's some
subtleties involved with all three of them.
It's extremely well done. So I think it was a matter of
their talents plus the director.They were very good.
Yeah, they never lose their individual characters.

(15:57):
They differ a little bit from the Mark Twain's portrayal.
You know, I can't help but make comparisons because only five
years later the Sherman Brothersmusical Tom Sawyer was in the
theaters and I went to see it and I loved it, and I still love
it. How?
I had to get used to Johnny Whitaker because I was used to

(16:18):
Kevin Schultz as Tom. Ah, Tom on the TV show was
almost like the Tom at the end of the movie.
He was more well read. He was the guy with the ideas
and Huck was the neer do well who didn't go to school enough
and all of that. He was Tom at the beginning of
the movie. It is 1968, so they're starting

(16:40):
to explore giving Becky her own adventures as much as they
could. You know, it was just beginning.
And there are some moments wherethey're like, you're just a girl
kind of things, but then she gives it back to them.
I guess girls are just smarter, you know, that kind of thing.
That's a really good point aboutthe Becky character, and it's
also interesting that they decided very deliberately,

(17:00):
obviously, to make it a trio. I mean, it could have been just
Huck and Tom and they were sort of an established team more so
than Huck, Tom and Becky. But really fun that it's a trio
and that of course, she is a female character.
And yeah, definitely, she often has her own little subplot and
her own thing. I guess perhaps the way they

(17:22):
were looking at it, maybe she would be more empathetic.
So she's very empathetic to the little character, but not always
little. I guess I'm thinking of the
leprechauns, but to the characters that she meets even
when she's threatened, like in the kind of Arabian Nights Swan.
That's the third one, the terrible tempered khalif.

(17:43):
That's it. So the the Khalif obviously is
engine Joe. Yeah.
He's threatening her. It's the whole idea.
Tell me a story or. And if I don't like the story,
you know you're done. You'll be executed.
Even in the dangerous situation she's in.
And he's very threatening. She has an empathy for him and
an understanding that he wants to hear the story.

(18:04):
So she's handling it much different than and if it had
been Tom or Hawk and. That situation, I think you're
right. I think a lot of care went into
who's going to be the one of thethree who has the thing happened
because like Dark Shadows, whichalso was very popular at the
time, which went through every book that was ever, you know,

(18:26):
Jekyll and Hyde and Dracula and turn to the screw.
This show in 20 episodes does Moby Dick, Prince and the Pauper
and Gulliver. That's a really good episode
too. That's one of the strongest for
sure. And that's Huck.
It would make sense for that to be Huck because Tom would be a
little bit too a little too savvy in that situation where

(18:48):
Huck has the sense of wondermentand what's going on kind of
thing. Tom gets sick in one episode and
they have to rescue him. Obviously, it wasn't just a flip
of the coin. Who was going to be the central
person who needed the rescuing or was the focus of the
adventure? And the three of them really did
make a nice Kirk, Spock and McCoy, so to speak.

(19:11):
That's awesome. And they really were beautifully
cast because I did as a kid, really feel like I know it isn't
Mark Twain. And a lot of critics were, the
critics mostly like them, but there were a few that were
saying, you know, it's not Mark Twain, but there are a lot of
references here and there to thecharacters because the story she

(19:32):
tells them are about Hannibal, yes.
It's quite. Lovely.
And one of the strangest moments, and this is in the last
episode, which was the Atlantis one.
I mean, they just pretty much ran the gamut.
This gave me a chance to swim around underwater in the last
Atlantis. And then you got the Prince and
the Pauper because Huck looks like the king.
They switch places and then theyget to put Michael Shea and this

(19:56):
Hannah Barbara Vera designed outfit because he was live
action. They weren't going to animate
his clothes. So it kind of looked like what
somebody would look like from a Josie and the Pussycats villain
episode, you know, if they wore those clothes.
But at one point they find out Huck is not the real king
because the Ted Cassidy character puts him under this

(20:18):
Ray and is reading his thoughts and it goes back to their lives
and Hannibal. That's right.
And we see actually. They reversed it.
You see Tom painting the fence and Huck is telling him what to
do sitting under the tree and you see them playing leapfrog.
But what's interesting about it is Hannibal's anime.

(20:40):
That's a production thing. The only place that's shot on
the show on a either a set or a back lot is The Cave and the
forest and and Polly's house. And so for them to go for that
short instance to set up those shots on a back lot, you know,
they couldn't do it. But maybe, you know, we can play

(21:00):
the game. We play this kids.
Let's fill in the blanks. His memories are cartoon like.
It works. It was kind of fun.
Then at the end of each show, they wave goodbye.
Sometimes the friend they made helps them find their way and
you get that sort of, OK, here we go.
And then the theme music kind ofgoes into step and they go

(21:23):
walking off of saying bye bye into the sunset.
And of course, in the next episode, they're in a storm or
they're washed up on the shore or something.
They're back in that situation again.
The thing that really throws me,though, is the end credits,
where they're on the riverboat waving to all of us at home like
the Clampetts do, and the Beverly Hillbillies, which I

(21:45):
find ingratiating and delightful.
Yes, I have heard some people say that their take on that when
they were originally watching the show is that Hanna Barbera
was saying to the audience, don't worry, they do make it
back to Hannibal. Here they are after all their
adventures and they're safe and sound and back where they need
to be. I mean, I never looked at it

(22:06):
that way, but who's to say that's not what it is?
Because what are they doing on that Steamboat on the
Mississippi? Who knows?
But it does give you a good feeling.
And they're happy. And it dovetails with the happy
ending of each episode of the story.
It's a neat thing. And of course, the theme song.
The theme song is one of the best ever of any TV show.

(22:28):
That alone Hanover bear. She is.

(22:49):
She's just waiting to be. Who wrote the theme song?
While the music, this really wasa showcase for Ted Nichols.

(23:10):
He composed it. And I wouldn't doubt for a
moment that Bill Hannah wrote the lyrics for it.
He was the house lyricist with Barbera assisting.
It doesn't say, but it does say music by Ted Nichols.
And here's the interesting part about that theme.
First of all, yeah, I love this theme song.

(23:30):
Probably the guys that were the eligibles and the way outs,
maybe some of those guys. But I'm also wondering if they
got like Gene Merlino and some of those studios male choir
singers that also did the Gilligan theme because it has a
more robust sound to it. The vocal arrangement so good.
Panna Barbara themes were so good.
Anyway, this one, you cannot getit out of your head.

(23:53):
And especially they hear that whistleblow, hear that paddle
go. Who knows what we're heading
toward, which is the essence of the series.
And that's where we got back to that part about what is the deal
with the riverboat. Is the riverboat taking them to
some other adventure or is it taking them home?
We don't know because that Mississippi, she is a mystery.
She's just awaiting there to be explored.

(24:13):
The Mississippi could be so mysterious that these strange
dimensions could be out there. I don't quite know is it, are
they dreaming this? But that for some reason makes
your imagination get more stimulated.
This was a great show for grade school kids because kids that
were 78910, they were reading the Arabian Nights.

(24:35):
They were reading mythology. I was reading mythology in the
5th and 6th grade. A lot of the stuff that they
made stories out of the kids were reading in school, so this
really stimulated and brought that stuff alive.
It is very much the stuff you'd find in a school library, yeah.
Yeah, very true. As far as Ted Nichols

(24:56):
contribution, it is enormous because the music is wall to
wall as it is in many Hanna Barbera shows.
But in this case he composed a lot of cues, especially for the
show. I mean, I would have to go
through like Nick Raineri did when he put the Johnny Quest
soundtrack, parse out which one is from which because you can

(25:16):
tell some of them are from Johnny Quest and Michael
Flintstone because Ted Nichols did the scoring for that and
some of the others. But for the most part, a lot of
these were originally written cues, and two episodes in
particular, I think almost completely scored from scratch.
The premiere episode, which you revealed I did not know was not

(25:38):
the premiere episode, which was the magic show lately.
And Pirate Island. Pirate Island has two of the
most recognizable cues. If you watched Hanna Barbera
shows in the late 60s, early 70s, including Josie and
scooby-doo and all of those. Now I'm going to play two of
them. I took these both off of Pirate

(26:00):
Island and I think you're going to go, Oh yeah, when you hear
these trying. To escape with you.

(26:28):
Right. We've heard so many.
Times and other things, but it originated with this episode of
Huckleberry Finn. And what makes me certain that
those two in particular, just like the premiere episode of
scooby-doo Night for a Night, isthat Ted Nichols would
interpolate public domain songs he interpolated into that

(26:48):
scooby-doo episode. So when they use that music
somewhere else, you just sort oflet it just play.
But when you see it in that episode, Shaggy's getting into a
plane. When you here, off we go.
Well then this next cue. If you watch the Pirate Island
episode, you will see this match.
And yet this is one of the most used cues after the series.

(27:42):
Thanks. Used so often and chase scenes

(28:08):
and where all kinds of crazy things were happening.
I do think Josie and the Pussycats in particular use that
a lot. They did, and that that's
because Yo Ho ho in a bottle of rum and you can see it matching
exactly. This is the climatic chase
aboard the ship. The whole thing is so crazy.
But as soon as you hear that music, you know that is a

(28:30):
really, really used piece of music that Ted Nichols created.
What the editors would do is they would mind these scores for
cues. It's like loopy de loop in a
way. Without Huck Finn, we wouldn't
have had all those great cues. Yeah, and they spent so much
money on it, it had to pay off in other ways.

(28:51):
And that's one way it provided this whole library of cues, as
you say. And you hear a little bit, a few
notes of the theme. So when you're watching your 70s
Hanna Barbera shows and you heara little bits and pieces, that's
sometimes the giveaway is it wasa cue from.
This. It is a Tour de force for Ted

(29:13):
Nichols, who isn't as recognizedbecause he had to follow the IT
was a tough act to follow Hoy curtain, yet his music was so
pure Hanna Barbera goodness thatwe didn't even know there'd been
a change. That's true.
It's very much of that. It's like when different
composers came into the Disney World, you know, like George

(29:34):
Bruns and Buddy Baker and so forth.
They were standing on the shoulders of those who had gone
before, like Paul Smith, for example, and others.
But it had that Disney feel evenwhen they were doing new things.
So I guess this is similar. It just has that Hannah Barbera
sound and kept building. Yeah, this was made in 1968 and

(29:54):
of course we just mentioned music composed, arranged,
conducted by Ted Nichols. The same year, Hanna Barbera
Records had folded, but they hadsigned a contract with Liberty
Records to make new cartoon related albums for them.
It only resulted in two very nice LP's, Shazan on the Evil

(30:15):
Gesture of Masira and the Flintstones Meet the Orchestra
Family, which is a magnificent fully orchestrated musical album
with the original Flintstone cast.
That's sort of like Tubby the Tuba on side one introducing the
instruments of the orchestra. And on side 2, they have this
adventure where Pebbles and Bam Bam have helium balloons and

(30:36):
they go off in the sky and the orchestra uses, and this is such
an audio magic. They use the instruments, tones,
you know, what does Mr. Orchestra say?
Don Messick on wings of Sound. So they're using sound to get
Fred and Barney up high enough so they can get them.
And the harp is the one that cando it the most because it can
swoop. Again, premise Santa Barbara,

(30:59):
but side one of the record wherethey introduced each of the
family in their different rooms,their chambers or whatever.
At the end, they go out on the lawn and they play this little
melody that they've been playingall through.
Good Morning Mr. Flintstone, Good Morning Mr. Rubble and
Pebbles and Bam bam too. It's a little short piece of

(31:19):
music to give each one of them something to play at the very
end. It has the same button that Huck
Finn has. It makes me wonder if it was the
same session, perhaps even 1st. I'm going to play the theme song
so you can hear that ending in particular.

(31:49):
Now. This is the Good Morning Mr.
Flintstone melody as played at the end of side one by the
orchestra. Note how it ends.
It's almost identical. I love this.

(32:29):
The. Oh yeah, it's definitely the
same as the button, as you say, of the theme song for Huck,
right? It's a great, great theme.
Let's talk about a couple of ourfavorite episodes.
Do you have one or two or five or?
Yeah, there were 20 in all, so probably, oh, you know, 18 or 19

(32:53):
are my favorite because we were mentioning earlier, each episode
has a whole different setting and a whole different look,
therefore a whole different story.
So our wonderful friends Huck, Tom and Becky, and they are all
three of them, so lovable. They're plunged into these new
adventures. So it's almost like apples and

(33:13):
oranges. How can you choose between them?
They're also wonderful. But Pirate Island is definitely
one of my favorites and one of the interesting things about
that. Compare it to Huck of La Mancha,
which is the Don Quixote premise, and I think Don Quixote
is very well done as a character, but they don't mess

(33:34):
with the premise too much. Pirate Island is sort of the
premise of Treasure Island, but they add in the gorillas.
That's very Hanna Barbera, and it's very delightful and it's
imaginative. Who's expecting to see gorillas
in the story? One of the gorillas takes a real

(33:56):
liking to Huck. You know, Huck is very innocent
and naive, and maybe they were just saying, well, he's one of
their own. And plus, I think they have a
kind of reddish orange fur, so maybe they like his red hair.
But anyhow, they really take a liking to him and sort of adopt
him, and that's a part of the story.

(34:16):
So I find that whole thing, pirates and Treasure Island and
gorillas and Huck Finn all mixedtogether.
How can you resist? Plus, it should be noted you had
mentioned directors earlier. It's directed by Byron Haskin,
who directed Walt Disney's Treasure Island.
That had to have been on purpose.
Yeah, that they said, let's get the director of Treasure Island.

(34:39):
Walt Disney had his version. Now we have ours.
Isn't that remarkable, though? It's Byron Haskin, yeah.
Really. Is it?
It's. It sounds like a tale, Barbera.
You know, if he didn't say put adog in it, he said wouldn't it
be fun if we threw in some gorillas?
And because you know that this required a lot of story meetings

(35:02):
to come up with gags. This is a great example of how
Hanna Barbera developed and perfected the 30 minute
television episode form, which is not a six or seven minute
short and not a feature film. It has to break for commercials
and has to have enough characterdevelopment and enough dialogue

(35:25):
to make up for whatever animation they don't have.
And in this case they do a lot of things on the screen because
they have a little bit more money.
But also it does have animation.So it's going to have animation
type gags. And in this case, they're going
to make the live actors interactwith cartoon like gags, which
also requires them sometimes to be hoisted on things or if they

(35:46):
have to be behind something that's got to be figured out,
what's going to mask it? And like you said, it isn't
always Florida State perfect, but nine times out of 10, it is
awfully good. And yeah, in those days they
didn't have the materials or thetime necessarily to get it
flawless because it's not a feature film.

(36:07):
But I have a question for you about that.
Doesn't it seem to you that taking an animated character and
putting them in a live action setting seems to be a simpler
matter than putting human and beings, especially when you've
got to have a lot of different setups in an animated location?
And perhaps that's why in RodgerRabbit, the Toontown sequence is

(36:29):
not very long, and the rest of the film, even as astonishing as
it is, would probably have been more difficult to do had the
whole thing taken place in Toontown, don't you think?
Oh, I do agree, yes, because I'mspeculating that the big reason
is when you're putting a cartooncharacter in a live action
setting, if you have live actionsetting, boom, it's there, it's

(36:52):
real, it's done, and you film itand you're done.
If the other way around, it's not only the planning, but it
has to be created. You have to draw it and paint it
and plan it, and that may be many months after the live
action has been shot. You have to plan for the
relative sizes too of the characters and the settings and

(37:12):
in a couple of episodes you had leprechauns and you had little
people so you had to plan for that as well.
It is exhaustive amount of work.So you got to forgive what
limitations, and however quaint it might seem by today's
standards, I think looking at itagain, especially because as you

(37:34):
mentioned, and you're absolutelyright, each episode has a
different color scheme, has a different palette, and that
alone takes an enormous amount of time.
Usually a series has a fairly consistent look to it.
They really challenged themselves.
They set up a lot of challenges just in the what the show is.
Yeah. Like, for example, no matter

(37:54):
where Johnny Quest goes, it's the same style, it's the same
approach, and as you say, the same color scheme, this one
drastically different in some cases.
So we had mentioned the episode which was used as the premiere
episode, the Magic Shilali. That's definitely one of my
favorites. You know, leprechauns are always

(38:15):
wonderful and they're very well done.
They're very well designed. The voice cast is excellent,
headed by Dennis Day, and I speculate that that's one of the
reasons they did have it as a premiere, because there was a
guest star to promote, whereas Idon't think any of the other
episodes have that. They have excellent voice casts,

(38:36):
usually prominently the Hanna Barbera Stock Company that we
all love so much, and of course the wonderful Ted Cassidy, who's
a story unto himself, playing whoever the villain happens to
be. The Magic Shillelagh is
extremely well done. It has an original song as well
and I remember TV Guides listening pointing that out.

(38:58):
Dennis Day sings the song The Magic Shillelagh, and there is a
moment where it Harkins back to Kelly dancing with Jerry again.
Not nearly as meticulous as whatMGM could do in those days, but
charming and lovely. And at one point they circle

(39:20):
each other, which is hard to do.They threw in those little
touches that they really did nothave to do.
Even they could have left that out if they wanted to, but they
went to the time and trouble andexpense of doing that and
planning the animation so that it worked with Becky dancing.
And it's so delightful that Becky has her own little story

(39:42):
with the leprechauns. It's really very sweet and she
connects with them. And that's all summed up in this
wonderful little dance. So that was another promotable
thing. This was more of this episode
was more of a wow. To start with, what was supposed
to be the first one? Well the first one filmed is the
Eye of Dorga. That ended up being the 13th

(40:05):
episode show. It's very high on adventure.
The Eye of Dorga is a jewel. It's been stolen from a temple
and Tom and Huck have to go and find it.
Becky is left to deal with this sort of God, Dorga, and again
she establishes this relationship with him.
He's this giant idol. She really has this wonderful, I

(40:29):
don't know what other word to use, relationship with him and
understands him. So she's there at the temple
with this giant idol that's missing its eye and has some
scenes where she's interacting with him as another character.
Yes folks, you do have to see the show.
None of this is easy to explain.Tom and Huck have some

(40:50):
incredible adventures as they'regoing off to try and steal back
the idols eye. The jewel that's been stolen.
One thing that's always botheredme about this episode is that in
one scene, and it's very suspenseful, Tom and Huck have
been captured. So their hands are tied
together. And in order to free themselves,

(41:10):
which they must because they're going to be killed, they have to
get ahold of this dagger that one of the guards has.
And the guard has fallen asleep.So Tom's like, Huck, have you
still got that magnet in your pocket?
I Rick and I do. Yeah.
So there's this giant magnet that Huck just happens to have

(41:31):
in his pants pocket. He's able to use it to draw the
dagger to them. And then they get the dagger,
and they can cut the ropes. But it kind of bothered me
always that. Wait a minute.
You know, it's funny to use it at the context of this show, but
it's very cartoony. And it's a live action magnet
when Huck is holding it. And then when they show it
another scenes, it's animated and that was their MO.

(41:53):
That's what they always did. But really, he's carrying this
thing around for 13 episodes. But the minute you find out that
it was actually the first one filmed, it kind of takes the
curse off that. Because if that was the first
episode you saw, you might just say, oh, Huck just happened to
have a magnet in his pocket and they used it in this episode and

(42:15):
then they ran off and they didn't have it anymore.
As opposed to thinking, oh, for 13 episodes, he's I'm carrying
around that magnet and he never mentioned it before.
To me, that's a funny thing about that actually being the
first episode. If that was the first one,
that's only one aspect of the series.
Because I mean, not only is the premise odd, but every episode

(42:39):
is different, not just visually,but in tone.
You know, there's some fairy tale type episodes.
There's some high adventure ones, there's exotic locales,
there's straight adventure, there's even a science fiction
episode. So if you started right
out-of-the-box with action, thenpeople would think, well, it's
Johnny Quest with live actors init.

(43:00):
And it's not really that. It's a lot of things.
I agree with you. I think that is another reason
they chose the magic Shilali, because it has a more fanciful
and as you say, fairy tale feel to it.
There certainly is adventure. It's one of the ones where,
again, the trio is split up. So Becky has her story with
leprechauns. Meanwhile Tom and Huck have been

(43:23):
captured by the bad guy and they're in this wagon driven off
and they're locked inside. Well, how are they going to get
out? And it's wonderful to see the
inside of the wagon because on the outside it's animated, but
inside it's a full on live action set with everything
painted as if it was an animatedversion of that.

(43:45):
So there's lots of pots and panshanging up and they're all
bright primary colors. And I love the way that looks
every time they cut back inside.I just think it looks so great.
Then finally, Huck takes one of the pans by its handle, opens up
this little slot behind the Engine Joe villain character and
clobbers him over the head with it.

(44:05):
But when he sticks it outside, it's animated.
Yeah, I always love that contrast.
Yeah, it's suspension of disbelief.
Nobody is trying to fool you into thinking that's not a live
action interior. Of course it is, because you can
paint it as brightly as you can and that's hard to do.
Also lighting it and finding thecolor scheme that'll somewhat

(44:28):
match the look of the animation.You know how the Disney artists
worked to make the live set pieces, particularly the
carousel horses, look as bright as they could to blend in.
Not that they were supposed to look animated, but that they fit

(44:49):
with the animation. That's it.
And that's. Really hard to do the Mary
Poppins reboot that was done a few years ago, Mary Poppins
Returns, which had a fantastic animated sequence in it that was
done by Ken Duncan Productions in Pasadena.
They did certain things to the set pieces to add like lines to

(45:10):
them to make everything seem almost like that scritchy line
of Xerox. There were things done that you
could do now with digital where you could make the two elements
seem part of each other. But any time you combine live
action and animation, except in very rare cases, you are aware
that it's Tooting things. That's part of the novelty.

(45:32):
What's impressive about this show is, like you said, the art
direction of every episode, the fact that they're almost
self-contained each time, and the number of impressive setups
and masks. And there's so much of that.
They have to be pulled out of holes and they have to be
broader. That all has to be engineered to

(45:53):
do. I love the ones that you
mentioned. I like magic.
Shalali because I'm Dennis Day. You know, he's so magic too.
Johnny Appleseed and oh, Dennis,you know, how can you go wrong?
I also love the strange experiment one because that is
so off the wall. All of a sudden they're doing
the haunted house with the shrinking thing and the doggy

(46:15):
and all of that it. That's why the show, they would
do anything and suddenly they'redoing the mad scientist episode
with the shrink ray. Huck shrunk down to tiny size.
So it's the incredible shrinkingHuck, I guess you could say.
Yeah. And then in Captain Mordecai,
when they go in the belly of thewhale, that also is a lot like

(46:36):
Fantastic Voyage because the backgrounds are kind of
psychedelic, certainly not accurate.
They're wacky. They're pop artist.
You know, it's not supposed to be a lesson in what's inside it.
It's not magic School Bus, that's a cool looking episode as
well. It is hard to narrow them down.

(46:58):
I also, as far as we were talking about the characters and
their relation to one another, the Conquistador curse, which
was like Treasure of Sierra Madre or that episode of
Twilight Zone where the thieves took the gold and had to go
across the desert. And they start turning on one
another, getting greedy. And what are they going to buy

(47:19):
with it at all? And you had Becky being the
voice of reason and Tom and Hucksuddenly becoming greedy enemies
again. It could be a Star Trek episode.
I like episodes that play with the characters and their
relationship and that one reallydoes well too.
Yeah, well, that's a good point,Greg, because you can do that in
episodic television. You can take the relationships

(47:41):
apart and then put them back together.
It's probably my least favorite episode, maybe only because it's
disturbing to me to see Tom and Huck being so mean to each other
and to see the characters be so greedy.
And we know that is not who theyare.
And of course, it's only becauseof the curse of the gold that's
making them act that way. So I admire how clever the

(48:04):
premise is, and I admire that it's so different from the other
episodes in terms of the characters.
So you have to have some varietywhen you're doing episodic
television. It can't be the same thing over
and over again for 20 episodes. So to have the characters act so
differently was quite clever. But at the same time, you know,
I don't really like it. It's written by Tom Helen August

(48:27):
and they are the writers. Isn't it the monkey's uncle that
they wrote the screenplay for? And they wrote for Mickey Mouse
Club as well. Was it the Annette serial and
perhaps the Hardy Boys? What's interesting about Tom and
Helen August is, from what I'm understand, that's not their
real names. And that's correct.
They were blacklisted in the 50sand Walt Disney still hired them

(48:53):
to write some of his films and television shows.
Their real names are Helen Levitt and Alfred Lewis Levitt,
but they went by Tom and Hell inAugust, just like a lot of other
people used assumed names or hadto work in Europe and that sort
of thing. But there were there were also
people within the industry who were helping them get work so
their families could eat. Because it was, it was a

(49:15):
dreadful, dreadful period. And I, you know, I don't want to
get into the weeds with this, but I do feel like this is
partially because social media has that tendency.
Just a few words say that aren'taccurate or something comes out
that isn't and then it just spreads like wildfire.
And I think Walt Disney's memorynot fairly treated.

(49:35):
You have so much experience as aDisney historian.
I mean, I became a fan of yours with Disney Family Album because
that was such a great show on the IT really, really was.
He was not perfect, none of us are, but the names that are
called to him and the things that are accused, it almost
borders on slander and could be almost an actionable thing

(49:56):
because we know of factual things that dispute it.
Absolutely. So back to Conquistador Curse.
You mentioned that's the sort ofthing you can do in a series.
And that is so true because if you didn't know Tom, Huck and
Becky well enough, you wouldn't get the impact and perhaps the
unpleasant feeling of seeing them that way.
That is something that the Tom and Jerry cartoons did

(50:18):
beautifully, too, and that's oneof the things that made them so
great. It wasn't just a cat chasing a
mouse. It was that personality of Tom
and the personality of Jerry. And in the case of the Truce
Hurts, it was also Spike they make up.
And what makes that cartoon funny is how overly sweet they
are to each other. The faces that the coy faces.

(50:42):
It is so way over the top. That's why it's funny.
But if you didn't know their relationship, it wouldn't be as
funny. And it's the same thing here.
When characters sort of break character in an episode of a
show, maybe pretending to do something else or they're
putting on an act for someone, it can be very, very funny, but
only if you follow the other episodes.

(51:05):
They did a pretty good job of establishing these three
characters in only one season of20 episodes, and even got a
little bit of Hannibal in there.Yes.
And again, going back to the whole idea that really
everything in the show is designed.
They each have their very distinctive look, their very

(51:25):
distinctive costume. And what I always thought was
interesting is that Luann had blonde hair, Kevin had brown
hair. But in real life, Michael Shea
was also LeBlanc. They dyed his hair red so that
there would be a blonde, a brunette and a redhead.
And of course, Huck's going to be the redhead.

(51:46):
And there is a tradition of portraying Huckleberry Finn with
red hair. Certainly both Mickey Rooney and
Eddie Hodges in two very different MGM films, but to my
knowledge, Mark Twain never saidthat Huckleberry Finn was a
redhead. I think that just became like a
tradition. There was a color scheme for Tom

(52:07):
and Becky, and it's wonderful that there's even that detail.
Yeah. I guess Michael Shea was
probably the most established ofthe three actors.
And one interesting thing is he was on an episode A2, part
episode of The Wonderful World of Disney in 1969, Ride a
Northbound horse with Carol O'Connor.

(52:28):
And you know, as the kids often were in Disney productions, he's
really the main character. So that means that on, for
example, March 16th, 1969, you could watch The New Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn starring Michael Shea and then
immediately following Wonderful World of Disney Ride a
Northbound Horse starring Michael Shea.

(52:51):
So it was like Michael Shea FilmFestival on those nights.
And then also on March 16th, 1969, Huckleberry Finn repeated
the episode of The Magic Shilaily.
So on Saint Patrick's Day Eve, they had that sort of Saint
Patrick's Day themed episode because it's about leprechauns

(53:11):
the night before Saint Patrick'sDay that year.
These are all fun little connections.
Yeah, all three of them were experienced with advertising,
you know, had started very young, had done a lot of
television and commercials and things like that.
Kevin Schultz was on the Monroe's.
That was a series, I think that lasted the season.

(53:32):
Yeah, he's a twin. He has an identical twin
brother. I believe they were both on that
show. They were both actors.
Yes, yeah. Oh, that's right.
And they both tried out for thisseries, and Kevin got it.
But they continue to be top Hollywood photographers, the
both of them, the Schultz brothers.

(53:52):
Yes, indeed. They really went on to fame and
fortune, quote UN quote in that profession.
They must have a really wonderful relationship to have
been together all those years inthat field.
I believe that Luann went on to be a teacher as an adult and
that Michael Shay continued acting.
He plays Dick Van Dyke's son in the new Dick Van Dyke show.

(54:16):
That's the one where Hope Lang played his wife.
He wasn't in every episode of that because the character was
away in college. He's only in certain episodes,
but you can see him with his blonde hair on the new Duke Van
Dyke Show. Then as an adult became an LAPD
police officer. Very, very highly regarded in

(54:37):
that service career. So it seems like they all did
very well for themselves. Yeah.
Oh, and and he's also related tothree lionesses, Christopher
Shea, which it was the first lioness I believe, and then Eric
and I think Steven also, I thinkthey all played lioness at one
point. Eric was on on a lot of he was a

(54:58):
beside adventure and he was in the Anna and the King series
they did with Will Brenner. The Shea family had quite a bit
of show business kids in it. Yeah, and as you say,
Christopher was the first Linus,and he's the gold standard
because of his wonderful recitation of the Gospel passage

(55:20):
in A Charlie Brown Christmas, the 1st special.
And then, of course, he has so many lines and so many Linus
lines, and it's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.
You know that obviously he's themain character in that episode.
It's wonderful to hear Chris Shea perform that role because
he's such a good actor and as you say, the whole family must

(55:41):
be. Now you say that Michael's
related to them. How?
How was he related? Now I could be wrong because
this is this is IMDb but IMDb issaying relatives Eric,
Christopher and Steven were siblings and then there are two
other Shays that are nieces and nephews but says the three.

(56:02):
If the Shay family, you know, writes to us and says Nah then
sorry. Well.
I never knew that, but I'm not saying I would have known it.
I'm not saying it's wrong. I just never.
It's funny that the. Brothers were all actors.
And that Michael Shay doesn't have that Linus voice.

(56:22):
I mean, we didn't hear him the way he spoke for real on Huck
Finn, but there is a very distinctive voice that the
original Linus has had. Agree.
So maybe, maybe he's a cousin. Or, well, like the Schultz's
only one got to do. That's got to be difficult when
you're in the same family and you're going for these roles and

(56:43):
maybe it gives you a certain amount of character.
I don't know. It depends on the parents too,
about whether or not a fuss has to be made about one or the
other. As I say, they went on to many
decades of this professional partnership as photographers, so
it must not have damaged them inany way.
I don't know what was happening at the time, obviously.

(57:04):
You know, the series lasted a season and it was highly
publicized. The three of them were in a lot
of teen magazines. It wasn't a matter of did people
not know it was there. It was replaced by Wild Kingdom,
which was a much less expensive program to make.
That was generally what always would happen with these series.

(57:24):
This thing with Huckleberry Finnwas here is an expensive show
every week and what did they replace it with?
Something that they could probably get about the same
amount of ad revenue for at a much lower payout.
You know, most television shows are done at deficits.
It's the sponsor money and the merchandise and all that
ancillary stuff. So it was expensive.

(57:47):
And in fact, Land of the Giants was also.
That may have gone on for another season, but I think the
expense and then sometimes is they cut the budgets.
Outer Limits completely changed in its second season.
Here come the brides. They cut back on how many brides
there were in the second. There is an obvious change

(58:09):
sometimes when they want to keepa show on, but they have to do
something. And in the case of this one, I
think also if people tuned in tojust one and thought, oh, that's
what the whole series is. Wow.
It's not. It's 20 different shows.
As we said, it's also Huckleberry Finn, but it doesn't
take place in Hannibal, MO. And it's not a particularly

(58:33):
country or rural show. It's a fantasy that's absolutely
everywhere. Huckleberry Finn is kind of the
hook of the familiar characters who are rendered quite well and
memorably. But they said who could, who
pull from literature, who go on adventures, who we could do this
with her are well known that have a name.
It's like Disney with Snow Whiteor Alice in Wonderland.

(58:55):
If these are well known characters, let's do this cool
thing. It lived on because even though
a Hanna Barbera series and Saturday morning series didn't
have a lot of episodes, what they did was in syndication they
would play 1 episode per week oncertain days.
So this was on the Banana Splitsand Friends in like 7778, and

(59:16):
this might have been, I don't remember, maybe on Tuesday or on
Wednesday. And another day you would have a
Banana Splits episode that was cut into pieces, which is why
it's hard to reassemble them now.
And another day you'd get the Adventures of Gulliver series,
which is a fine series. And I have to wonder if they
were considering doing the same thing with Gulliver originally,
maybe using a live action Gulliver every week.

(59:39):
But clearly that didn't happen. But a lot of people who know
this show know it from syndication.
Yeah. So, yes.
And I was very confused by that for a good number of years when
people would say it's from the Banana splits.
And I was like, no, it's not. It was its own separate trial.
I didn't know for years because I never saw the syndicated
Banana splits. So I didn't know what they had

(01:00:01):
done with it, but finally when Ifound out, I was like, OK, that
makes sense. I think probably more people saw
it in The Banana Splits than they did as its own separate
show. As you said earlier, Huckleberry
Finn had stiff competition. A lot of people never saw it.
It's interesting to go back to your idea about that.
It's not very Mark Twain and it's not very country.

(01:00:22):
The show itself, the characters really are.
They're the essence of the Twaincharacters, even though they're
somewhat different as we had Disgust.
But when you really stop and think about it, the show begins
and it's this beautiful Steamboat on the Mississippi, or
it's supposed to be with this wonderful theme song that does
have that feel. And then you're punched into

(01:00:45):
this incredible, wildly imaginative adventure set in
this animated world. What?
So you had the beginning with the theme song and the
Steamboat, and then you have theprologue, and then you have
another incredible adventure setin an animated world.
It's a hard show to explain and it's a hard show to kind of
catch. You said it brilliantly, Greg.

(01:01:08):
The next week you're like, wait a minute, what?
I thought they were in the worldof the Arabian Nights.
Now it's completely different. So I think all that, even though
so imaginates have been creative, it worked a little bit
against the success of the show.But thank goodness we had Huck
and Becky and Tom. But I also wanted to mention
that this is what Hanna Barbera was into in this era.

(01:01:30):
You mentioned the Adventures of Gulliver.
There was also Moby Dick and other shows that they were doing
that were adaptations of the premise of some of these very,
very famous stories that the Hanna Barbera eyes, I guess you
could say. And I never had a problem with
it. I was never offended by Moby

(01:01:51):
Dick that it, you know, was taking this masterpiece of
American literature and then making into this action
adventure with all these crazy monsters and things.
It never occurred to me again, it's its own thing.
And is Moby Dick in the Hanover Bear version supposed to be the
Melville Moby Dick? I don't think so.

(01:02:12):
He's a white whale. And I always assumed that the
kids, Tom and Tub, they called him Moby Dick because they were.
He's a white whale. How else would they know his
name? He didn't talk.
So he can say I'm Moby Dick. No, he's not really Moby Dick.
He's a white whale and the most famous white whale is Moby Dick.
So they called him Moby Dick. Were there other series I would

(01:02:34):
like there? Were there other series that
they took a famous property and since it was in the public
domain they made they made it something else?
Well, you do raise an extremely important point.
Huck Finn was sort of the foundation of the adaptation and
animation of a lot of great classics because Banana Splits

(01:02:54):
had, in addition to Major Island, they had The Three
Musketeers and Arabian Nights. That's right.
And that was also a step towardswhat was coming later because in
72 they did that sort of musicalized Oliver and the
Artful Dodger on the Saturday Superstar movie, which had like
Richard Dawson in it and Pamela and Ferdin.

(01:03:16):
And that was also kind of an experiment of can we do sort of
a book musical, sort of sequel to Oliver.
So they were getting into literature adaptations that
really took full bloom when theycreated the Australia studio
using a lot of the people from API, because Air Programs
International was the Australianstudio that was doing those

(01:03:38):
Kenner Family Classics series that they played during the
holidays. And once Hanna Barbera started
doing it, then they were making those hour long and they were
always epic adventure literature.
Generally it were adventure, they weren't fantasies.
So you had leather stocking tails, a lot of Jules Verne, 5
Weeks in a Balloon journeyed thecenter of the earth.

(01:04:01):
And when Hanna Barbera started doing that because they had that
studio, they did 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Black Beauty.
And then that company I think became Southern Star and they
still kept doing those hour longliterature adaptations.
So it really kind of goes back to this 6869 where they did
Gulliver and Huck Finn and Moby Dick.

(01:04:23):
And like that those films could be marketed anywhere.
They could be put into series, they could be put onto video
individually. Hanna Barbera had an educational
division, so some of their filmswere also distributed to
schools. So it opened up a big market for
them outside of just series and things like that.
This kind of was the beginning of all of that.

(01:04:45):
Charlotte's Web was based on a book and so was Heidi, and those
are the most elaborate adaptations.
Especially Heidi had a much larger budget.
Charlotte's Web had a fairly large budget but was a
masterpiece which I could go on for hours about.
Of course, of course it should. But yeah, they of course were
faithful adaptations to the original source.

(01:05:06):
So yeah, I mean, at that point they were like, well, let's do
the real thing instead of the quite fanciful adaptations we've
done before. Oh, and then Cyrano.
Cyrano was, I think, nominated for an Emmy, and Jose Farrar not
only played Cyrano, but he directed The Voice Guest.
Isn't that one That is fantastic.

(01:05:27):
That in itself is so great. They were always trying to reach
as high as they could under the circumstances they did.
They were still making attempts to bring as much quality as they
could to everything they were doing.
It's important to note that I think.
Yeah, it really is. It really is.

(01:05:47):
And The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is kind of an
oddity in that, first of all, it's so different from
everything else and it has this wild premise, but it's still to
this day not very well known. Thank goodness.
It's been put out on DVD and looks wonderful.
And hopefully they're doing the high def thing and we'll see it
eventually on ME TV tunes, whichwould be wonderful.

(01:06:10):
Yeah, it would. It would be nice to see fully
color corrected. DVD's look pretty good.
In fact, when we're watching theBanana Splits and stuff, those
were probably 16 that were bicycled from place to place.
You know, that was back when they were using film at local
stations. So they didn't look great.
And then in 68, it was as good as the TV you had, and that was

(01:06:32):
when the TV had the lines, you know, and so you didn't have the
definition. I know that high def might
betray some of the seams and theeffects, but what it will also
bring out is what the high def has brought out in a lot of the
Hanna Barbera stuff. The art, the stuff is gorgeous
to look at and that's what SpaceGhost showed.
And The Jetsons, they look beautiful and you really get

(01:06:55):
what they were going for and youjust couldn't get that on your
TV in those days. I should say when I say the DVD
looks great, it certainly looks better than anything we had seen
yet. So in that sense and you can
really see the art. But as always, DVDs and Blu rays
betrays things that aren't meantto be noticed.
Well, first of all, I think another great thing about the

(01:07:15):
way that the characters are portrayed in The New Adventures
of Huckleberry Fit in is that Huck is barefoot.
So that certainly distinguishes him from Tom and Becky because
they're wearing shoes. And in some episodes like Menace
and the Ice, Oh my gosh, you can't help but feel for poor
Huck because it's this entire snow landscape.

(01:07:36):
And it's another one, like Pirate Island where he meets
these monsters and they really, really like him.
They kind of adopt him. And he's standing there not only
freezing, but he's standing in the snow for the entire episode
in his bare feet. So that's just fun.
But the reason I bring that up is Huck to being barefoot when
they run through The Cave in thelive action epilogue, you can

(01:08:00):
see, which I never noticed before until I saw it on DVD,
that Michael Shea is wearing these kind of flesh colored
sandals because they wanted to protect the live action actor's
feet as he was running through what I think you had mentioned.
I think that's a real cave. I think it's that cave that they
used for everything. So there's all this dirt and

(01:08:23):
stones and such on the ground, and they were like, well, he's
supposed to be barefoot, but we don't want him running across
those in his bare feet. In the animation, of course, it
was easy to control because you never saw what he was actually
standing on. So anyhow, it seems like there's
always these little things that pop out to you now that we can
really see. That's true.

(01:08:45):
That's true. Well, you know, if the whole
thing is a dream and they just fell asleep in The Cave and they
dreamed the whole series, then it would make sense for him to
be anywhere and bare feet. There's a movie called The
Swimmer with Burt Lancaster, which has a very dreamlike, is
this all in his mind kind of thing?
Because the movie is very strange and surreal and he has

(01:09:06):
bare feet all through it and he's running through forests
and, you know, shrubberies and he never once steps on anything
that makes him go out. And I know it's Burt Lancaster
and all that, but nevertheless, how strong?
That's a great example that I never would have thought of, but
you're right. But in the case of Huckleberry

(01:09:26):
Finn, yes, they're in a fantasy world anyhow, so they don't have
to worry too much about the reality of this poor guy with
his bare feet in the snow escape.
And Speaking of being underwaterand swimming, that episode that
you had mentioned earlier, all whirlpools lead to Atlantis.
They're underwater quite a bit. And, you know, you could say,

(01:09:49):
well, they come up for air at certain points, but you know,
that's not meant to be focused on how are these humans able to
stay underwater and swim throughthese oceans at great lengths.
It's a fantasy world. So none of that really matters.
And it's a Hanna Barbera production, which means don't

(01:10:10):
ask too many questions. Because I asked Gary Owens once
why Space Ghost Jan and Jason Blip didn't need helmets.
You know, they were suspended inspace, floating around out there
constantly shooting lasers and all that stuff, but didn't seem
to bother them that they were indeep space.
And he was like, you know what to say?

(01:10:31):
He probably was thinking that's a stupid question, which it is,
because how does Superman do it?He just does it.
It's a cartoon. It just have fun.
Just run with it. And the wonderful concept art
that they always created, that'swhat it showed.
It showed them swimming around. It's a fantasy world and it's
all fun, as you said, and it's fun.
Talk about when do I ever get a chance to talk about The New

(01:10:54):
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? So I'm so grateful to you for
having invited me to be part of.This.
I'm so grateful that you did, and you're the perfect person to
talk about it because you know it so well.
Like you said, I wish more people would.
I'm glad we went into The Cave, into the cartoon together.
Jim Fanning. I agree.
I feel the same way, Greg. And I have to paraphrase Huck

(01:11:15):
and say to you from the Little People episode where he says,
and I'm paraphrasing, he says it's a pleasure to meet you
King, because I say to you, it'sa pleasure to know you, the King
of Hanna Barbera. Thank you not only through this
podcast, but your brand new bookwhich everyone must get and

(01:11:39):
devour as it's available now. Yes, it is.
And so is yours and many other books.
Look up Jim Fanning's name because there's an awful lot of
high quality. It's like if it says Mattel,
it's swell. You know, if Jim Fanning wrote
it, it wasn't just something that he picked up somewhere and
said, oh, I think I'll dabble inthis.
He did the research and it's as reliable as it can be.

(01:12:01):
And there are a lot of historians out there, but there
are not a lot of Jim Fanning's. Well, thank you, Greg.
Thank you all for joining us on this journey down the
Mississippi, which is a mystery.Thank you for listening and and
until next time, bye bye. We hope you enjoyed the
fantastic world of Hannah and Barbera with Greg Airbar.

(01:12:23):
Please join us again and Many thanks for listening.