April 4, 2025 • 37 mins
Hanna-Barbera and Disney story artist KIRK HANSON visits to talk about his work on numerous Hanna-Barbera cartoons as well as animated features from the Disney “Rennaissance” era features, and his own all-time favorites.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, we love Hanna
Barbera. Welcome to the Fantastic World
of Hanna and Barbera, a celebration of Bill Hanna, 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.
Welcome to the fantastic world. Our guest this week, Kirk
Hansen, story artist, a storyboard artist, a layout
(00:52):
artist, and just an all around great artist with a vast career.
Almost every major studio has worked with characters like
scooby-doo and Tom and Jerry andthe Jetsons and Yogi Bear and
The Smurfs and Animaniacs. Some of the features he's worked
on, Aladdin, The Brave Little Toaster, Pocahontas, Toy Story
2, even the scooby-doo on ZombieIsland that we talked about a
(01:16):
few weeks back. Welcome to the show, Mr. Kirk
Hanson. Thank you, Greg.
So what, George Fenneman is not your announcer anymore?
Did George fire not happen? Not say the secret word.
Say the secret word. Our answer is Chris Anthony, who
I think is much lovelier than George Fenneman.
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She was Barbie. What do you mean she was Barbie?
I mean, when children would get Barbie toys and they would talk,
it would be her. When there were commercials,
premiums, hundreds of Barbie things for many, many.
Well, she was like the voice of Barbie.
The voice of Barbie, the secret voice of Barbie, because she
wasn't allowed to say back then.But there only have been a
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handful of Barbie voices and under, of course, there were
Barbie records with different Barbies, too.
Let's start with where'd you come from?
Where'd you go? Where am I going?
Well, watching Hanna Barbera cartoon on our 12 inch 13 inch
Packard Bell black and white TV,you know the kind you had to
turn the converter on to get it to the I don't remember if we
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were watching VHF or UHF, but grew up in Bakersfield, CA.
We had three channels, we had the three network.
That was enough for me. And so, you know, I drove
watching early HP stuff, all thefunny animals talk, you know,
and then stuff on Saturday morning was no more expensive
than prob Mighty Mouse Playhouse.
There might have been a SaturdayCaptain Kangaroo.
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I don't remember, but I rememberbeing Acbs kid for the most part
on Saturday. But of course I love the prime
time stuff and I remember half Cat Jets and Flintstones all the
way through that. And then Johnny Quest in 64,
which made my little 6 year old mind explode.
I just drew what I saw, you know?
(03:05):
And I'd draw that stuff. I'd draw Fireball.
I felt 5 all the time. And the Seaview.
I liked all that stuff. I liked action adventure and
sci-fi and that sort of thing. Lone Ranger.
In fact, I just watched a coupleLone Rangers this morning.
I found The Lone Ranger again ona channel called Grit and it's
all western stuff. And so, you know, Bakersfield to
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me was like Riverdale, it's my hometown and grew up there, had
a happy childhood, went all the way through high school there.
Would enter art shows for like the fair and the school would
have art shows, things I was always participating in, that
sort of thing. Then when you get into high
school, you get drafts, you know, to do student body
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president signs and posters and things like that.
So I was doing that. My formative trip to Disneyland
was 1970, so I'm 12. And that changed the course of
my life because I thought as I was growing up, I was going to
go work for Hanna Barbera Production, even though I didn't
know where it was or what I would be doing or anything.
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And then we somehow were in LA, my mom, the kids and my folks.
My dad had to go to a conferencein Hollywood at the old Holiday
Inn, which is now the Renaissance Hotel at the
Hollywood Highland right there. But it's the same hotel that was
there. And so we had to pick our way
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down through traffic in LA. And so we are going back NI
forget what we were going to do while he was at the conference
all day. I think maybe we went to
Universal. But on the way we passed HB on
Kawanga and I was like, I'll just stop in and give a tour.
But my mom couldn't be persuaded.
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I clued in on where it was. But anyway, as I was saying, I
thought I was going to be working at HB after whatever I
needed to do because I thought the Hanna Barbera, the 60s was
going to be the Hanna Barbera forever.
I thought that was going to be it.
And little did I know that was just a wink of an eye, you know?
Then Disneyland just enlarged myworld completely.
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And it was like, and I found outall about that stuff.
And later after school, I went to Calarts and later I was like,
you know what? You can do both.
They're essentially with what I want to do, which is show and
writing and doing story. They kind of evolve out of the
same kind of thinking process and everything.
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And things like attractions start like a film.
You know, they start like a little story like a film and you
boredom and that kind of thing. And in some cases, the ones Mark
was doing, Mark Davis, it's gags.
It's like doing a bunch of gags and then kind of arranging them.
Like Exitencio would kind of arrange them in a, in a pleasing
way, way to kind of tell a story, but you find that out as
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you go. But I got into the business
actually doing layout was the first thing that I did once I
was out of school, and that was on Brave Little Toaster.
And that's the one I never like to mention when I start a new
job and I'm surrounded by young people because it's like when
they hear that you worked on brave little poster, it's like,
you know, it's you just get peppered with questions and.
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Yeah, it's legendary. Yeah, yeah.
We just had a 25th. I think we had a 25th
anniversary probably since the last time, you know, I got
together, I think, and Jerry Reese, who was the director of
the of the picture, who's a small guy, put this reunion
together. And I think we had it over at
Tina Price's place over in Burbank at the CTN Studio.
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There, that's really nice. So that was fun, but I did
layout for a little while and then broke into HB, Finally got
in over there and I was doing character design.
I was hired by Mike Takamoto, son of EWO and Mike.
He was lead of the model department for Flintstone.
Kids. Got to do that and then Jetsons
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was kind of on the heels of that, but worked on Jetsons and
eventually moved my way into doing boards and never looked
back. I've done boards exclusively
now. At least the animation going all
through when it went to Disney features at the end of the 80s
8990 and then was there through the the Renaissance.
You know, the I guess a rebirth is the Renaissance, right?
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You know, is it the Silver Age, I guess.
They called the Renaissance or the Second Golden Age, or, you
know, you mentioned Hanna Barbera's era changing by the
time you got there, but so did Disney's.
Maybe not so dramatically, but the TV was 10 times as quick to
change and to cut the budgets asfilms were.
But Disney films of the 70s werevery different than the first
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Golden age and then one, Yeah. Just like Hanna Barbera,
everybody retired or died. And I didn't realize that the
house style was going to change so much because Alex Toast isn't
there anymore. Or Willie Edo or Jerry Eisenberg
or, you know, the funny guys, Big pick and back.
Any of those guys were all gone.And of course we had Benedict.
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You know, he was long gone. And then the same thing happened
at Disney because the Golden Ageanimators, they were all kind of
peeling away as they went. And mid 70s when The Rescuers
were in production, you know, Frank and Holly were retiring
and I think Milt had been gone. No Milt, that was no class
picture. And changes with people, you
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know, the people make the style.Yeah, the marketplace changes
and the way people consume things changes and what
audiences are going to changes. It's but it does go in cycles.
It absolutely goes in cycles. And that era in the late 80s
through the about the 1st 2/3 ofthe 90s was truly a great period
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for Disney. Starting What a great mouse
detective. Well, you could say.
That you could say great mouse detective over Oliver and
company. Those were stepping stones to
getting to Little Mermaid. What Little Mermaid did was what
Pixar did too, back to what madethe original first features.
They were strong on story and they used music effectively.
And that was what Howard Ashman brought in.
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It's true he brought a contemporary Broadway
sensibility, but he also broughtback with Snow White and
Pinocchio and Bambi and Dumbo. And to a degree, Fantasia had
Howard. Saved Disney Feature Animation
There's no he and Allen saved with an A noble assist from Ron
and John, of course, but Howard role in the first three of those
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movies that he was involved withLittle Mermaid, Beauty and the
beast and Aladdin is he did the story based on turn based on
where the songs were gonna drop.He'd layout the thematic
timeline and the emotional timeline based on the song
dealing with his characters emotion about this here.
(10:00):
And so here's an idea for a songfirst.
And that's what did it. But part of your world saved.
And yet some wanted to cut it. When I hear stories like that,
all I do is quote Tom Bosley saying that's Hollywood.
Hollywood bitchy. Would you go out and mow the
lawn, Mary? Well, see, you see, I think of
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wait till your father gets. Home.
Whatever. Whatever.
Yeah. Janie Jane.
Gerber, Joan. Gerber.
Gerber. Yeah.
Joan Gerber. Yeah, Irma, Irma.
And then wasn't Jack Burns wasn't.
He the he was the he was the Kramer.
Crazy Kramer. Not to be confused with Perkley,
(10:45):
who was on Where's Huddles? Savages?
Savages, you know. See, that's the thing.
We're talking about it. A lot of people who saw those
shows remember those characters.Yeah, regardless of because, as
I contended, there was awfully strong soundtracks.
Maybe there would be limits in animation, but the casting and
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the music and the soundtrack carried an awful lot.
Yeah, and Bill. And Joe and Cat, Joe would
direct, right? Joe would direct the actor.
Yeah. I I still to this day, like I
would just marvel at the things that they did.
Who would think to take Joe Friday radio partner and make
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him a 200 foot tall genie, right?
That's Barney Phillips. Who was Ed Romero, right?
It was Joe Friday's partner on radio or the series star.
You know, the TV series star, the first one, the black and
white one. Rescue us.
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My young masters caged this willnever do.
And they got Barney Phillips, who was a veteran.
He did so many things and whoever it was, Bill and Joe or,
you know, they thought he might be a good possibility for this.
You know, they did the same thing with I'm sticking to the
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67 here. Paul Stewart, who was part of
Orson, Well, Mercury Players Theater and he plays my tour,
the Stony superhero. We make a.
Good team, right? My tour.
Right, Little Rock. Thanks again.
My tour. Come on, Tom, let's.
Take the shortcut back to the village.
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Who would think that, you know, the think of this guy who was
play acting with with Orson Welles would be doing cartoons
Saturday morning. I love them.
Yeah. I was just watching Space Ghost
and Dino Boy and Johnny Quest recently, and they're just so
much fun. They're so much fun.
Their comic books come to life. There's delightfully no logic to
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them. You don't know why Space Ghost
is. He just is.
You don't. Need to.
You don't need origin stories onany of that.
Sometimes they would give you a little tiny one, like at the
beginning of Shazam. You get, after the main title,
you would get kind of a little back story thing of like, you
know, they're in a cave in Maine, OK.
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And they found two halves of therings in a little treasure
chest. Curiosity makes them put the
rings together and whisks them back to the days of the Arabian
Nights and everything. It's like, OK.
And then ostensibly they're supposed to be looking for the
rings over, you know, and once they return it.
But those series never did a finale.
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The idea might have been that they will do a second season,
but they were never doing secondseason unfortunately through
those two or three years till scooby-doo.
Then they started doing second and third and fourth season.
Never got a second season of Wacky Races.
Never got a second season of Herculoids or Frankenstein
Junior. Any the ones really like?
Sometimes they would give them eight more episodes of a series.
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Space Goat did that and they didit with the Council of Doom and
it was a 6th theory. It was a 6th episode theory and
it was intended to introduce allthe new 67 sixth episodes.
Four of them featured the new heroes for 67, the Herculoids,
Zandor and Chavan, and Moby Dickand Michael Face.
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Ghost interacts with all of them, and then he gets back to
the fight. The, you know, the Council of
Doom is like the Injustice League, like the rogue gallery
of all the greatest villains that he had to deal with.
I remember it being shown Fridaynight before all those new shows
were going to premiere. And I lost my head.
My head blew up. And then later those episodes
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kind of worked their way in. I think most of the time, at
least in the 70s, they were morelikely to either spin off or
reformat. Like, for example, Josie and the
Pussycats. If they had made more of those.
They couldn't promote anything about, oh, new episodes, but if
they put in an outer space, theycould promote a brand new
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series. And that's what they kept doing
with Scooby. They did do a second season of
Scooby's, but then when they went to the movie format, that
was a way of promoting somethingnew, and I think that became the
norm after a while. Do something crazy.
The Flintstones for sure. There's something weird to him.
Yeah, but Scooby was. Interesting in that it was 2
completely new seasons 691970 scooby-doo movie.
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There's the wrinkle, you know, special guest * Sandy Duncan or
Batman or Robin or whoever it was.
And then Scrappy Doo. Everybody's favorite.
Everybody loves Scrappy Doo. And by love I mean hate, and
that's too bad. He's kind of a fun little guy
with Lenny Weiner doing his voice.
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Unless Scooby Dum followed Scrappy I I kind of lose track
in the But of course that doesn't count.
All the other like Funky Phantomand Goober and the Ghost Chaser.
You know the variance on the scooby-doo thing.
But I was out of cartoons by then.
I wasn't watching cartoons afterthe Harlem Goldtrotters.
I wasn't watching anything. I left Josie.
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But did you? Watch the Scooby-doo movies and
now, in retrospect, is somebody who was a You mean the.
Old ones or the new? Well, the. 1972 ones special
guest * Sonny and Cher, that kind of thing.
Yes, one of the things about that that is interesting is.
They. Had yeah, they had to do what in
a way what they had to do with The Flintstones initially they
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had to take a 30 minute sitcom, but make it work in animation,
which is not just a matter of taking a six or seven minute
cartoon and expanding it. It's a lot more than that.
You got to balance visuals with dialogue and all that stuff and
have the commercial breaks. Scooby-doo movies as far as I
know, is the first weekly one hour 1 story animated series.
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Was it 1? Hour.
I don't remember. One hour.
Yeah, I'll be done. I would love.
To know the challenges of, I mean, you could just say, well,
they just padded it with Scooby and Shaggy gags, but they also
had to kind of reformulate it. How it would structure, where
the brakes would be, where the story plots would advance
because no one had ever done anything every single week like
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that. That's when the studio was was
running on all cylinders gettingstuff.
Done. I don't, I don't remember that,
but what they do or they do 26, they were probably still doing
26. Well, they did.
About I think about 16 or 17, the 1st and then there was a
second season that was TV money actually in.
Those days they'd repeat for a whole season.
(17:47):
They repeat the next year. Yeah.
They wouldn't make new episodes.No, not.
Always, I know. They're 17 now.
Because I was doing an in house guide on all the action
adventure shows. Somebody asked me to do it like
the publicity department. They knew I was kind of a geeky
fan and so I wrote little synopsis.
Great thing was I got every episode on cake.
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This is 1990. I guess 1989.
It's right before I went over toDisney and I sat down and I
watched everyone of them and I did a little synopsis with the
title and turned those all in and it was great.
Didn't do a Fantastic Four, but did all the other ones, the NBC
and CBS, and realized that, well, if CBS was indeed the
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Tiffany Network, they were the Tiffany shows.
And I thought NBC kind of got, Ithought NBC had better shows the
year before. I thought Space Cadets was a
better show. The Birdman Space Cadets is a.
Great show that's not remembered.
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Who did the great kid voice, really?
Chris. Allen.
Chris Allen was the other kid voice.
They didn't. Usually do a lot of young young
kids did they? They did young teenager guys
other other than Tim and and Danny were doing Johnny Quest.
Of course, of course, Tim grew up.
His voice changed during the endof that show, by the way, you
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can hear those later. Johnny.
He's a little deeper. Did you know he was driving to
work when he founded young? He was like old enough to be
driving. He was in high school.
Yeah, his. His voice is in Space Ghost and
Sinbad. Yeah, Jay and especially Samson
because he he dials up. I'm Samson.
Oh, that. Was Yeah, that's the other one.
Young Samson. Yeah, the same year as space
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cadet. Young Samson speaking.
Of Space Ghost and Tim Matheson,I'd like to mention Jenny Tyler
because she didn't do it time, yeah, but she got to do a lot of
other voice. She got to do a villain The
Black. Widow, the Black Widow.
Oh, Black Widow. We'd meet Gary once or twice a
year for a few years, a bunch ofus cartoony geeky guys, and we'd
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go out to lunch at or dinner at the smokehouse.
We always say, OK, Gary, we're taking you this time.
We're springing. He'd rebuff us and Oh no, boys.
And we wanted Gary in the secondToy Story.
We wanted him for the Ultra BuzzLightyear figure.
We didn't want to do Tim Allen again.
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We wanted Space Goat coming out of the Ultra Buzz 'cause he was
a taller figure and you more powerful I guess.
Gary was a scream. He was so fun to know you
worked. On the Buzz Lightyear of Star
command, direct to video. Oh.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Schooler and the Corkle, then
the. Kicker at the end was having
William Shatner speak Sing the song to Infinity.
(20:57):
Oh, I don't. I don't remember that.
OK, got what, Around the end title.
Yeah. And he doesn't like Rocket Band.
Yeah, he doesn't like his famousRocket Man.
I. Did some super friends, you
know, with super friends that a kid at school was doing stuff
with the Hotman love. He was picking up from Hotman
love. And so that was my introduction
to it. And the fact that you could do
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stuff on the, you know, you could do stuff at night and on
the weekend from Super friends. I always like Olan Filet.
Yeah, because he was the Batman on the 1st filmation path and a
guy more unlikely to play Batman.
You could never find an Olan Filet.
This any bespectacled guy who was, if I remember, he was the
choir direct for Mayberry, and he's the guy who had to tell
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Barney he couldn't sing with. I remember him.
He did a lot of Jack Webb Dragon, but he was a classic
voice. And then do you remember who
Robin was? It was gays he gave him.
Yeah, gays he gave him Golly Batman, Holy the Batman.
And I was the biggest Hanniburg Vera guy.
And then later I kind of found out that they did the Tom and
Jerry's that I was seeing on Sunday morning.
(22:05):
Remember the great title intros?They had like 3 different ones.
You know who put those together?Chuck Jones, Yes.
He. Chose all the clips and then he
did a little bit of new animation to do the title
introduction. And then when one of the
cartoons that would come on thathad a clip that was in the
opening, it was always fun to see him, whether it was the
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little Canary or the big inner tube rubber band.
And Tom is trying to teach Tom Junior.
He's trying to learn him how to catch mice.
Remember, he's a professor with a mortar board hat, you know,
And the cartoons just had a title card where they'd be able
to get to the cartoon faster. Like I didn't remember if it had
credits at the end. Bill and Joe even got a credit.
(22:46):
They did, but it was. Pretty much a one card set of
credits and it had their names on it and then the animators,
but it was on for a few seconds and I remember seeing William
Hannon, Joseph Barbera and thinking those are the same guys
that make this and I and there was really no books about this.
So you didn't know. How did they get from this to
this? What's the story?
(23:07):
It's more well known now. They used that theme in
syndication for a while too. When Tom and Jerry was revived
in like the early 80s, late 70s,early 80s on on local stations.
They used the Chuck Jones open and close, OK.
Well, that that was that's the television package.
Here's one that'll. Speaking of syndication
packages, here's one that will amaze you.
(23:28):
Do you remember when they were putting all the superheroes
together into Hanna Barbera's world of Super Adventure?
Remember that? Yeah.
And the title sequence is reallynicely done.
It it's another clip thing. It's probably Bill Perez because
he did all those, but the score to it is like really, this is
really interesting. It doesn't sound anything like
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what they were doing and it's 1978, so you got to compare it
to, but this thing is a completely a standalone thing.
Found out a toy curtain who did the in the World of Super
Adventure title sequel World of Super.
Adventure featuring the most fantastic collection of macular
(24:12):
super heroic stars ever assembled.
They will take you on adventure,cordic lands and fantastic
plates of fancy, to jungle, planet and mysterious invaders
to prehistoric times and super forces, to modern winged
(24:35):
Avengers, to child terrifying creatures against primitive
power in space, land, sea and air.
It's a variety of stars, mighty,musical, athletic,
extraordinary, from fantastic tothe fantastic, where amazing
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weapons, men and robots meet in combat in the far outreaches of
the universe. Dedicated to protecting the
beasts, these fantastic heroes defend the weak, right the
wrong, and battle against the forces of evil everywhere.
And now it's take off. Time for the gathering of the
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greatest and a barbarian world of super adventure.
Well, there was a. Special theme for Remember Fred
Flintstone and Friends. That was a Monday to Friday
syndicated thing, and it was allthe Screen Gems half hours that
had Hanna Barbera Screen Gems characters in it.
So you had Flintstone. Well, you didn't have
Flintstones. You had Pebbles and Bam bam.
(25:44):
You had Partridge Family 2020, 200 AD Genie and I think they
had some of the Flintstone Comedy Hour in there.
So that would be the Flintstone thing and Goober and the Ghost
Chasers because that had the Partridge Family kids on it.
So anything that had a connection.
And then what they would do is it had its own theme song and
Fred was like in a control room,Henry Cordon and he would
(26:06):
introduce them, but they would stagger the shows.
The 1st 15 minutes like on Monday of like Jeannie and then
the 2nd 15 minutes on Tuesday tokeep you watching all week.
It was a very strange way to do it.
I'll be doing. There's no weed and Jesus.
(26:44):
There's three. And adventure.
(27:14):
I so that's another syndication that was kind of their bread and
butter in the late 70s, early 80s where the syndication.
We tried it again when I was there, a thing called the shake,
rattle and roll. It was live action wrap around
with a robot character, I think.And then, and then we did do
this shake, rattle and roll, which was 3 ghosts.
(27:37):
They're kind of like the three Stooges, I think.
And and when I was working thoseyears, I was heartbroken because
we couldn't do real Hannah Barbara cartoon.
Can we at least get the old Johnny Quest music out or
something and like look at the old shows and kind of lay them
out like this or well, that raises.
It one of the things I wanted totalk to you about, you worked on
the new Yogi Bear show, OK. And what was interesting about
(27:59):
that is I know that there was a lot of effort to make the
Jetsons revival as close to the original as possible and it.
Was well, they Yeah. That's a long that's a show in
itself. But the new Yogi Bear show,
those are probably, to me anyway, you know?
And for what it's worth, they were as close as they could come
(28:19):
in that era. It's 86, I think.
I don't know who was behind this, but the first 10 cartoons
they did for the new Yogi Bear show had Hoyt Curtin music,
which was so cool. The license fees, the union fees
and everything had changed by then.
And they couldn't always use theoriginal music, so they must
have got enough to use for 10 shows.
(28:41):
And after that it changed to, you know, the latter day kind of
music. But they were pretty close to
the originals. I'm trying to remember who the
producer was on it and I and I am blanking, but he was an
animator on Fantasia, on the dinosaurs.
That's how we knew him. And at Hanna Barbera he worked
for a Woolly. I think his name is Kay
(29:02):
something. OK.
Right, OK. Right.
Yeah, well, maybe. That has something to do with
why that that surprised me. How there was an effort made to
make those cartoons all fit together production wise, you
could tell. But still, it had the music.
How nice it. Had the music and it also had
here you go, This is what pulledyou sponge texture backgrounds.
(29:24):
Yeah, Algamir's background department, they really tried to
match the Mont Lagre look from those first days of Yogi and
Huck and that kind of thing. So they practice doing the
sponge texture stuff and it was cute stuff.
I have a few, uh, colors Xeroxeson the background of our own.
Hey, it's kind of neat. And they, and then they would do
color line on it. Probably Crayola, you know, like
(29:46):
crayons and stuff. Like go through a pine tree or
something. It's, oh, it looks like Anna
Barbera. We're talking about trying to
replicate a style and a musical background.
The Tom and Jerry spy quest wereyeah, Tom.
And there again is an effort to visually, especially at the
(30:06):
beginning, create the look and feel of an MGM cartoon.
There was a concerted effort, obviously, to give it that kind
of look and feel of a Tom and Jerry look and sound.
And then you go into the creditsand you've got the Johnny Quest
credits, and then Tim Matheson plays the president in.
That was the. Music like Quest I, I've never
(30:29):
seen it. It was sort.
Of there's nothing like the original Quest music, but it it
would had a jazz feel to it. There was effort made to do it,
but it was especially noticed atthe beginning.
The Yeah, well, that's. That Spike rant Spike is he
believes in integrity and he he'll push it as far as he can
take it. I mean, it's short of like going
(30:50):
to the balls and pulling the music.
I he that would have been his preference.
I think it would be done that. But you know, it's funny because
the boards I did for that, that one, they're big in My
Portfolio. Whenever somebody wants to do My
Portfolio, I did it as close to a 1964 Doug's Wildy episode as I
(31:12):
could. And in fact, I did not use the
new models. I didn't use the new Johnny
models or the new Haji models orthe new race models.
I used Doug's models to do it. And then the background's the
same thing. I find similar things.
I'd literally pull them out. I'd do a cream grab of a beach,
you know, like the beach from like the tree people or
(31:33):
something. That seemed like, oh, that'd be
good for this action. They end up on Zen's Island, you
know? And I thought, what if he had a
gauntlet of monsters who guardedthe perimeter?
So that meant like a, a squadronof robot spies And he had the
monsters from Terror Island, youknow, the oversized Godzilla.
(31:55):
And we did the invisible monster.
I didn't tell him I was going todo this.
I just did a sequence where theyhad to like penetrate through
the outer defenses that were being manned by the monsters,
had the invisible monster, had them all.
And it got cut, of course. But boy did I have fun doing it.
Well, at least we know that the effort is made.
(32:18):
Sometimes it succeeds, sometimesit doesn't.
Yeah, sometimes it's the labor alone.
So you know, and that's, that's when it's the most fun.
That's when it's the best, yeah.There are projects that you do,
and it's like, yeah, OK, this isnice.
And then there were those ones where I can kind of put my heart
and soul into this and yeah, that's the best.
(32:40):
Those are the best. Yes, yes.
Yes, yeah. And there's something about
this. Happy circumstance, this
happenstance of all these, and I'm talking about Hannah Barbera
and how all these divergent people from other places,
another walk or the division of Bill and Joe, I think who pulled
(33:00):
it all together. But the best example to me of
just how Hannah Barbera was moresophisticated, snappier than
anything was if you go to YouTube and you look at that
animated sequence that opened upthe, the short Sinbad the Sailor
cartoons, you know, Sinbad Junior cartoon and the first
(33:22):
one, they're AIP, right? They're they AIP?
Owned it and had Sam Singer do it originally and then Sam.
Singer did it, and they're wretched, right?
They're wretched and I don't know how many they did and I
don't know what the happenstanceis that the next go round they
brought Bill and Joe in to do them.
But just the two title sequences, one after the other.
(33:45):
It's like night and day. And because it's toys, music and
it's the sound effects and it cuts the way a Hannah Barbera
thing is cut and and he's sword fighting with a bunch of funny
pirates. And even to how the camera moves
where it cut, he pulls the belt and becomes, you know, Timbad
Junior. Cut to the pirates who just
(34:06):
running along the deck looking over their shoulder because here
he comes on a, you know, on a rope and he kicks them.
And it's so beautifully timed over the panning background, you
know. Yeah, it's just excellent.
Those guys just knew how to use the camera and to take
advantage. We used to call it in art
school. It was exploitation of a
(34:27):
limitation. And they did it better than
anybody. Even when it's Johnny, like
sliding in after Bandit and it'sjust a sliding self, doesn't
matter. But the pose is so great.
He's, you know, he slides in on his, you know, it's a close up
of the back of his feet and shoes and everything.
Perfection comes from imperfection.
Like what you said. I, I love that phrase and I
(34:48):
think you've expressed it so beautifully.
And you use the exact example I knew.
I knew you'd say Sinbad Junior. Because no matter what age you
are and you watch the differencebetween the two, you go wow.
And probably the same budget, the same circumstances, the same
speed, because they had to make 65 or something.
But if you go on YouTube, there's not a lot of them there,
(35:12):
but there are enough where you can get exactly what you were
describing. I remember.
Thin, bad, being disappointed ifit was the other one, if it was
the same thing. But now Hanna Barbera was slick.
They were slick and sophisticated.
We do kind of go down the rabbitholes on some of these old shows
that the younger people are going to.
(35:34):
What are they talking to me? That's an opportunity because if
somebody who's younger says I don't know what that is, and
then it's like we have this Internet and we have this Google
and we have YouTube and we have videos.
So much of this stuff is accessible.
Maybe they'll look it up and go,that's really cool.
(35:54):
And then they'll go, I want to see more of this.
What else did these people do? Oh wow, this is really fun.
I had no idea that existed. I'm so glad that we've had this
time together, just to have a laugh and sing a song.
But. I'm.
Glad we had this time together. I appreciate you taking the time
(36:18):
to share so much and this this pop culture extravaganza that
you were so much a part of and that we were all able to enjoy
on the fantastic world of Hannahand Barbara.
Because we're talking about the people as well as the name, as
well as the company that we existed from 57 on.
(36:38):
We're talking about Tom and Jerry, which was before talking
about Irv Spence and Tony Siguri.
News. All those.
People are and bars. And people.
Like you, we are grateful too, and I'm very grateful that you
joined us. Oh gosh, I'm making you blush.
Golly I want to thank. Everybody for listening and for
(37:00):
all the nice things you say about us and please join us
again. But until then, bye bye, we
hope. You enjoyed the fantastic world
of Hannah and Barbera with Greg Airborne.
Please join us again and Many thanks for listening.
Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, we love Hanna
Barbera. Welcome to the Fantastic World
of Hanna and Barbera, a celebration of Bill Hanna, Joe
(00:31):
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.
Welcome to the fantastic world. Our guest this week, Kirk
Hansen, story artist, a storyboard artist, a layout
(00:52):
artist, and just an all around great artist with a vast career.
Almost every major studio has worked with characters like
scooby-doo and Tom and Jerry andthe Jetsons and Yogi Bear and
The Smurfs and Animaniacs. Some of the features he's worked
on, Aladdin, The Brave Little Toaster, Pocahontas, Toy Story
2, even the scooby-doo on ZombieIsland that we talked about a
(01:16):
few weeks back. Welcome to the show, Mr. Kirk
Hanson. Thank you, Greg.
So what, George Fenneman is not your announcer anymore?
Did George fire not happen? Not say the secret word.
Say the secret word. Our answer is Chris Anthony, who
I think is much lovelier than George Fenneman.
(01:38):
She was Barbie. What do you mean she was Barbie?
I mean, when children would get Barbie toys and they would talk,
it would be her. When there were commercials,
premiums, hundreds of Barbie things for many, many.
Well, she was like the voice of Barbie.
The voice of Barbie, the secret voice of Barbie, because she
wasn't allowed to say back then.But there only have been a
(01:58):
handful of Barbie voices and under, of course, there were
Barbie records with different Barbies, too.
Let's start with where'd you come from?
Where'd you go? Where am I going?
Well, watching Hanna Barbera cartoon on our 12 inch 13 inch
Packard Bell black and white TV,you know the kind you had to
turn the converter on to get it to the I don't remember if we
(02:22):
were watching VHF or UHF, but grew up in Bakersfield, CA.
We had three channels, we had the three network.
That was enough for me. And so, you know, I drove
watching early HP stuff, all thefunny animals talk, you know,
and then stuff on Saturday morning was no more expensive
than prob Mighty Mouse Playhouse.
There might have been a SaturdayCaptain Kangaroo.
(02:44):
I don't remember, but I rememberbeing Acbs kid for the most part
on Saturday. But of course I love the prime
time stuff and I remember half Cat Jets and Flintstones all the
way through that. And then Johnny Quest in 64,
which made my little 6 year old mind explode.
I just drew what I saw, you know?
(03:05):
And I'd draw that stuff. I'd draw Fireball.
I felt 5 all the time. And the Seaview.
I liked all that stuff. I liked action adventure and
sci-fi and that sort of thing. Lone Ranger.
In fact, I just watched a coupleLone Rangers this morning.
I found The Lone Ranger again ona channel called Grit and it's
all western stuff. And so, you know, Bakersfield to
(03:26):
me was like Riverdale, it's my hometown and grew up there, had
a happy childhood, went all the way through high school there.
Would enter art shows for like the fair and the school would
have art shows, things I was always participating in, that
sort of thing. Then when you get into high
school, you get drafts, you know, to do student body
(03:48):
president signs and posters and things like that.
So I was doing that. My formative trip to Disneyland
was 1970, so I'm 12. And that changed the course of
my life because I thought as I was growing up, I was going to
go work for Hanna Barbera Production, even though I didn't
know where it was or what I would be doing or anything.
(04:11):
And then we somehow were in LA, my mom, the kids and my folks.
My dad had to go to a conferencein Hollywood at the old Holiday
Inn, which is now the Renaissance Hotel at the
Hollywood Highland right there. But it's the same hotel that was
there. And so we had to pick our way
(04:32):
down through traffic in LA. And so we are going back NI
forget what we were going to do while he was at the conference
all day. I think maybe we went to
Universal. But on the way we passed HB on
Kawanga and I was like, I'll just stop in and give a tour.
But my mom couldn't be persuaded.
(04:53):
I clued in on where it was. But anyway, as I was saying, I
thought I was going to be working at HB after whatever I
needed to do because I thought the Hanna Barbera, the 60s was
going to be the Hanna Barbera forever.
I thought that was going to be it.
And little did I know that was just a wink of an eye, you know?
Then Disneyland just enlarged myworld completely.
(05:15):
And it was like, and I found outall about that stuff.
And later after school, I went to Calarts and later I was like,
you know what? You can do both.
They're essentially with what I want to do, which is show and
writing and doing story. They kind of evolve out of the
same kind of thinking process and everything.
(05:36):
And things like attractions start like a film.
You know, they start like a little story like a film and you
boredom and that kind of thing. And in some cases, the ones Mark
was doing, Mark Davis, it's gags.
It's like doing a bunch of gags and then kind of arranging them.
Like Exitencio would kind of arrange them in a, in a pleasing
way, way to kind of tell a story, but you find that out as
(05:59):
you go. But I got into the business
actually doing layout was the first thing that I did once I
was out of school, and that was on Brave Little Toaster.
And that's the one I never like to mention when I start a new
job and I'm surrounded by young people because it's like when
they hear that you worked on brave little poster, it's like,
you know, it's you just get peppered with questions and.
(06:22):
Yeah, it's legendary. Yeah, yeah.
We just had a 25th. I think we had a 25th
anniversary probably since the last time, you know, I got
together, I think, and Jerry Reese, who was the director of
the of the picture, who's a small guy, put this reunion
together. And I think we had it over at
Tina Price's place over in Burbank at the CTN Studio.
(06:44):
There, that's really nice. So that was fun, but I did
layout for a little while and then broke into HB, Finally got
in over there and I was doing character design.
I was hired by Mike Takamoto, son of EWO and Mike.
He was lead of the model department for Flintstone.
Kids. Got to do that and then Jetsons
(07:06):
was kind of on the heels of that, but worked on Jetsons and
eventually moved my way into doing boards and never looked
back. I've done boards exclusively
now. At least the animation going all
through when it went to Disney features at the end of the 80s
8990 and then was there through the the Renaissance.
You know, the I guess a rebirth is the Renaissance, right?
(07:28):
You know, is it the Silver Age, I guess.
They called the Renaissance or the Second Golden Age, or, you
know, you mentioned Hanna Barbera's era changing by the
time you got there, but so did Disney's.
Maybe not so dramatically, but the TV was 10 times as quick to
change and to cut the budgets asfilms were.
But Disney films of the 70s werevery different than the first
(07:51):
Golden age and then one, Yeah. Just like Hanna Barbera,
everybody retired or died. And I didn't realize that the
house style was going to change so much because Alex Toast isn't
there anymore. Or Willie Edo or Jerry Eisenberg
or, you know, the funny guys, Big pick and back.
Any of those guys were all gone.And of course we had Benedict.
(08:12):
You know, he was long gone. And then the same thing happened
at Disney because the Golden Ageanimators, they were all kind of
peeling away as they went. And mid 70s when The Rescuers
were in production, you know, Frank and Holly were retiring
and I think Milt had been gone. No Milt, that was no class
picture. And changes with people, you
(08:33):
know, the people make the style.Yeah, the marketplace changes
and the way people consume things changes and what
audiences are going to changes. It's but it does go in cycles.
It absolutely goes in cycles. And that era in the late 80s
through the about the 1st 2/3 ofthe 90s was truly a great period
(08:54):
for Disney. Starting What a great mouse
detective. Well, you could say.
That you could say great mouse detective over Oliver and
company. Those were stepping stones to
getting to Little Mermaid. What Little Mermaid did was what
Pixar did too, back to what madethe original first features.
They were strong on story and they used music effectively.
And that was what Howard Ashman brought in.
(09:17):
It's true he brought a contemporary Broadway
sensibility, but he also broughtback with Snow White and
Pinocchio and Bambi and Dumbo. And to a degree, Fantasia had
Howard. Saved Disney Feature Animation
There's no he and Allen saved with an A noble assist from Ron
and John, of course, but Howard role in the first three of those
(09:38):
movies that he was involved withLittle Mermaid, Beauty and the
beast and Aladdin is he did the story based on turn based on
where the songs were gonna drop.He'd layout the thematic
timeline and the emotional timeline based on the song
dealing with his characters emotion about this here.
(10:00):
And so here's an idea for a songfirst.
And that's what did it. But part of your world saved.
And yet some wanted to cut it. When I hear stories like that,
all I do is quote Tom Bosley saying that's Hollywood.
Hollywood bitchy. Would you go out and mow the
lawn, Mary? Well, see, you see, I think of
(10:23):
wait till your father gets. Home.
Whatever. Whatever.
Yeah. Janie Jane.
Gerber, Joan. Gerber.
Gerber. Yeah.
Joan Gerber. Yeah, Irma, Irma.
And then wasn't Jack Burns wasn't.
He the he was the he was the Kramer.
Crazy Kramer. Not to be confused with Perkley,
(10:45):
who was on Where's Huddles? Savages?
Savages, you know. See, that's the thing.
We're talking about it. A lot of people who saw those
shows remember those characters.Yeah, regardless of because, as
I contended, there was awfully strong soundtracks.
Maybe there would be limits in animation, but the casting and
(11:07):
the music and the soundtrack carried an awful lot.
Yeah, and Bill. And Joe and Cat, Joe would
direct, right? Joe would direct the actor.
Yeah. I I still to this day, like I
would just marvel at the things that they did.
Who would think to take Joe Friday radio partner and make
(11:27):
him a 200 foot tall genie, right?
That's Barney Phillips. Who was Ed Romero, right?
It was Joe Friday's partner on radio or the series star.
You know, the TV series star, the first one, the black and
white one. Rescue us.
(11:49):
My young masters caged this willnever do.
And they got Barney Phillips, who was a veteran.
He did so many things and whoever it was, Bill and Joe or,
you know, they thought he might be a good possibility for this.
You know, they did the same thing with I'm sticking to the
(12:10):
67 here. Paul Stewart, who was part of
Orson, Well, Mercury Players Theater and he plays my tour,
the Stony superhero. We make a.
Good team, right? My tour.
Right, Little Rock. Thanks again.
My tour. Come on, Tom, let's.
Take the shortcut back to the village.
(12:34):
Who would think that, you know, the think of this guy who was
play acting with with Orson Welles would be doing cartoons
Saturday morning. I love them.
Yeah. I was just watching Space Ghost
and Dino Boy and Johnny Quest recently, and they're just so
much fun. They're so much fun.
Their comic books come to life. There's delightfully no logic to
(12:55):
them. You don't know why Space Ghost
is. He just is.
You don't. Need to.
You don't need origin stories onany of that.
Sometimes they would give you a little tiny one, like at the
beginning of Shazam. You get, after the main title,
you would get kind of a little back story thing of like, you
know, they're in a cave in Maine, OK.
(13:16):
And they found two halves of therings in a little treasure
chest. Curiosity makes them put the
rings together and whisks them back to the days of the Arabian
Nights and everything. It's like, OK.
And then ostensibly they're supposed to be looking for the
rings over, you know, and once they return it.
But those series never did a finale.
(13:38):
The idea might have been that they will do a second season,
but they were never doing secondseason unfortunately through
those two or three years till scooby-doo.
Then they started doing second and third and fourth season.
Never got a second season of Wacky Races.
Never got a second season of Herculoids or Frankenstein
Junior. Any the ones really like?
Sometimes they would give them eight more episodes of a series.
(14:03):
Space Goat did that and they didit with the Council of Doom and
it was a 6th theory. It was a 6th episode theory and
it was intended to introduce allthe new 67 sixth episodes.
Four of them featured the new heroes for 67, the Herculoids,
Zandor and Chavan, and Moby Dickand Michael Face.
(14:28):
Ghost interacts with all of them, and then he gets back to
the fight. The, you know, the Council of
Doom is like the Injustice League, like the rogue gallery
of all the greatest villains that he had to deal with.
I remember it being shown Fridaynight before all those new shows
were going to premiere. And I lost my head.
My head blew up. And then later those episodes
(14:49):
kind of worked their way in. I think most of the time, at
least in the 70s, they were morelikely to either spin off or
reformat. Like, for example, Josie and the
Pussycats. If they had made more of those.
They couldn't promote anything about, oh, new episodes, but if
they put in an outer space, theycould promote a brand new
(15:12):
series. And that's what they kept doing
with Scooby. They did do a second season of
Scooby's, but then when they went to the movie format, that
was a way of promoting somethingnew, and I think that became the
norm after a while. Do something crazy.
The Flintstones for sure. There's something weird to him.
Yeah, but Scooby was. Interesting in that it was 2
completely new seasons 691970 scooby-doo movie.
(15:36):
There's the wrinkle, you know, special guest * Sandy Duncan or
Batman or Robin or whoever it was.
And then Scrappy Doo. Everybody's favorite.
Everybody loves Scrappy Doo. And by love I mean hate, and
that's too bad. He's kind of a fun little guy
with Lenny Weiner doing his voice.
(15:57):
Unless Scooby Dum followed Scrappy I I kind of lose track
in the But of course that doesn't count.
All the other like Funky Phantomand Goober and the Ghost Chaser.
You know the variance on the scooby-doo thing.
But I was out of cartoons by then.
I wasn't watching cartoons afterthe Harlem Goldtrotters.
I wasn't watching anything. I left Josie.
(16:18):
But did you? Watch the Scooby-doo movies and
now, in retrospect, is somebody who was a You mean the.
Old ones or the new? Well, the. 1972 ones special
guest * Sonny and Cher, that kind of thing.
Yes, one of the things about that that is interesting is.
They. Had yeah, they had to do what in
a way what they had to do with The Flintstones initially they
(16:40):
had to take a 30 minute sitcom, but make it work in animation,
which is not just a matter of taking a six or seven minute
cartoon and expanding it. It's a lot more than that.
You got to balance visuals with dialogue and all that stuff and
have the commercial breaks. Scooby-doo movies as far as I
know, is the first weekly one hour 1 story animated series.
(17:03):
Was it 1? Hour.
I don't remember. One hour.
Yeah, I'll be done. I would love.
To know the challenges of, I mean, you could just say, well,
they just padded it with Scooby and Shaggy gags, but they also
had to kind of reformulate it. How it would structure, where
the brakes would be, where the story plots would advance
because no one had ever done anything every single week like
(17:25):
that. That's when the studio was was
running on all cylinders gettingstuff.
Done. I don't, I don't remember that,
but what they do or they do 26, they were probably still doing
26. Well, they did.
About I think about 16 or 17, the 1st and then there was a
second season that was TV money actually in.
Those days they'd repeat for a whole season.
(17:47):
They repeat the next year. Yeah.
They wouldn't make new episodes.No, not.
Always, I know. They're 17 now.
Because I was doing an in house guide on all the action
adventure shows. Somebody asked me to do it like
the publicity department. They knew I was kind of a geeky
fan and so I wrote little synopsis.
Great thing was I got every episode on cake.
(18:10):
This is 1990. I guess 1989.
It's right before I went over toDisney and I sat down and I
watched everyone of them and I did a little synopsis with the
title and turned those all in and it was great.
Didn't do a Fantastic Four, but did all the other ones, the NBC
and CBS, and realized that, well, if CBS was indeed the
(18:34):
Tiffany Network, they were the Tiffany shows.
And I thought NBC kind of got, Ithought NBC had better shows the
year before. I thought Space Cadets was a
better show. The Birdman Space Cadets is a.
Great show that's not remembered.
(19:05):
Who did the great kid voice, really?
Chris. Allen.
Chris Allen was the other kid voice.
They didn't. Usually do a lot of young young
kids did they? They did young teenager guys
other other than Tim and and Danny were doing Johnny Quest.
Of course, of course, Tim grew up.
His voice changed during the endof that show, by the way, you
(19:26):
can hear those later. Johnny.
He's a little deeper. Did you know he was driving to
work when he founded young? He was like old enough to be
driving. He was in high school.
Yeah, his. His voice is in Space Ghost and
Sinbad. Yeah, Jay and especially Samson
because he he dials up. I'm Samson.
Oh, that. Was Yeah, that's the other one.
Young Samson. Yeah, the same year as space
(19:47):
cadet. Young Samson speaking.
Of Space Ghost and Tim Matheson,I'd like to mention Jenny Tyler
because she didn't do it time, yeah, but she got to do a lot of
other voice. She got to do a villain The
Black. Widow, the Black Widow.
Oh, Black Widow. We'd meet Gary once or twice a
year for a few years, a bunch ofus cartoony geeky guys, and we'd
(20:13):
go out to lunch at or dinner at the smokehouse.
We always say, OK, Gary, we're taking you this time.
We're springing. He'd rebuff us and Oh no, boys.
And we wanted Gary in the secondToy Story.
We wanted him for the Ultra BuzzLightyear figure.
We didn't want to do Tim Allen again.
(20:35):
We wanted Space Goat coming out of the Ultra Buzz 'cause he was
a taller figure and you more powerful I guess.
Gary was a scream. He was so fun to know you
worked. On the Buzz Lightyear of Star
command, direct to video. Oh.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Schooler and the Corkle, then
the. Kicker at the end was having
William Shatner speak Sing the song to Infinity.
(20:57):
Oh, I don't. I don't remember that.
OK, got what, Around the end title.
Yeah. And he doesn't like Rocket Band.
Yeah, he doesn't like his famousRocket Man.
I. Did some super friends, you
know, with super friends that a kid at school was doing stuff
with the Hotman love. He was picking up from Hotman
love. And so that was my introduction
to it. And the fact that you could do
(21:19):
stuff on the, you know, you could do stuff at night and on
the weekend from Super friends. I always like Olan Filet.
Yeah, because he was the Batman on the 1st filmation path and a
guy more unlikely to play Batman.
You could never find an Olan Filet.
This any bespectacled guy who was, if I remember, he was the
choir direct for Mayberry, and he's the guy who had to tell
(21:42):
Barney he couldn't sing with. I remember him.
He did a lot of Jack Webb Dragon, but he was a classic
voice. And then do you remember who
Robin was? It was gays he gave him.
Yeah, gays he gave him Golly Batman, Holy the Batman.
And I was the biggest Hanniburg Vera guy.
And then later I kind of found out that they did the Tom and
Jerry's that I was seeing on Sunday morning.
(22:05):
Remember the great title intros?They had like 3 different ones.
You know who put those together?Chuck Jones, Yes.
He. Chose all the clips and then he
did a little bit of new animation to do the title
introduction. And then when one of the
cartoons that would come on thathad a clip that was in the
opening, it was always fun to see him, whether it was the
(22:25):
little Canary or the big inner tube rubber band.
And Tom is trying to teach Tom Junior.
He's trying to learn him how to catch mice.
Remember, he's a professor with a mortar board hat, you know,
And the cartoons just had a title card where they'd be able
to get to the cartoon faster. Like I didn't remember if it had
credits at the end. Bill and Joe even got a credit.
(22:46):
They did, but it was. Pretty much a one card set of
credits and it had their names on it and then the animators,
but it was on for a few seconds and I remember seeing William
Hannon, Joseph Barbera and thinking those are the same guys
that make this and I and there was really no books about this.
So you didn't know. How did they get from this to
this? What's the story?
(23:07):
It's more well known now. They used that theme in
syndication for a while too. When Tom and Jerry was revived
in like the early 80s, late 70s,early 80s on on local stations.
They used the Chuck Jones open and close, OK.
Well, that that was that's the television package.
Here's one that'll. Speaking of syndication
packages, here's one that will amaze you.
(23:28):
Do you remember when they were putting all the superheroes
together into Hanna Barbera's world of Super Adventure?
Remember that? Yeah.
And the title sequence is reallynicely done.
It it's another clip thing. It's probably Bill Perez because
he did all those, but the score to it is like really, this is
really interesting. It doesn't sound anything like
(23:49):
what they were doing and it's 1978, so you got to compare it
to, but this thing is a completely a standalone thing.
Found out a toy curtain who did the in the World of Super
Adventure title sequel World of Super.
Adventure featuring the most fantastic collection of macular
(24:12):
super heroic stars ever assembled.
They will take you on adventure,cordic lands and fantastic
plates of fancy, to jungle, planet and mysterious invaders
to prehistoric times and super forces, to modern winged
(24:35):
Avengers, to child terrifying creatures against primitive
power in space, land, sea and air.
It's a variety of stars, mighty,musical, athletic,
extraordinary, from fantastic tothe fantastic, where amazing
(25:00):
weapons, men and robots meet in combat in the far outreaches of
the universe. Dedicated to protecting the
beasts, these fantastic heroes defend the weak, right the
wrong, and battle against the forces of evil everywhere.
And now it's take off. Time for the gathering of the
(25:23):
greatest and a barbarian world of super adventure.
Well, there was a. Special theme for Remember Fred
Flintstone and Friends. That was a Monday to Friday
syndicated thing, and it was allthe Screen Gems half hours that
had Hanna Barbera Screen Gems characters in it.
So you had Flintstone. Well, you didn't have
Flintstones. You had Pebbles and Bam bam.
(25:44):
You had Partridge Family 2020, 200 AD Genie and I think they
had some of the Flintstone Comedy Hour in there.
So that would be the Flintstone thing and Goober and the Ghost
Chasers because that had the Partridge Family kids on it.
So anything that had a connection.
And then what they would do is it had its own theme song and
Fred was like in a control room,Henry Cordon and he would
(26:06):
introduce them, but they would stagger the shows.
The 1st 15 minutes like on Monday of like Jeannie and then
the 2nd 15 minutes on Tuesday tokeep you watching all week.
It was a very strange way to do it.
I'll be doing. There's no weed and Jesus.
(26:44):
There's three. And adventure.
(27:14):
I so that's another syndication that was kind of their bread and
butter in the late 70s, early 80s where the syndication.
We tried it again when I was there, a thing called the shake,
rattle and roll. It was live action wrap around
with a robot character, I think.And then, and then we did do
this shake, rattle and roll, which was 3 ghosts.
(27:37):
They're kind of like the three Stooges, I think.
And and when I was working thoseyears, I was heartbroken because
we couldn't do real Hannah Barbara cartoon.
Can we at least get the old Johnny Quest music out or
something and like look at the old shows and kind of lay them
out like this or well, that raises.
It one of the things I wanted totalk to you about, you worked on
the new Yogi Bear show, OK. And what was interesting about
(27:59):
that is I know that there was a lot of effort to make the
Jetsons revival as close to the original as possible and it.
Was well, they Yeah. That's a long that's a show in
itself. But the new Yogi Bear show,
those are probably, to me anyway, you know?
And for what it's worth, they were as close as they could come
(28:19):
in that era. It's 86, I think.
I don't know who was behind this, but the first 10 cartoons
they did for the new Yogi Bear show had Hoyt Curtin music,
which was so cool. The license fees, the union fees
and everything had changed by then.
And they couldn't always use theoriginal music, so they must
have got enough to use for 10 shows.
(28:41):
And after that it changed to, you know, the latter day kind of
music. But they were pretty close to
the originals. I'm trying to remember who the
producer was on it and I and I am blanking, but he was an
animator on Fantasia, on the dinosaurs.
That's how we knew him. And at Hanna Barbera he worked
for a Woolly. I think his name is Kay
(29:02):
something. OK.
Right, OK. Right.
Yeah, well, maybe. That has something to do with
why that that surprised me. How there was an effort made to
make those cartoons all fit together production wise, you
could tell. But still, it had the music.
How nice it. Had the music and it also had
here you go, This is what pulledyou sponge texture backgrounds.
(29:24):
Yeah, Algamir's background department, they really tried to
match the Mont Lagre look from those first days of Yogi and
Huck and that kind of thing. So they practice doing the
sponge texture stuff and it was cute stuff.
I have a few, uh, colors Xeroxeson the background of our own.
Hey, it's kind of neat. And they, and then they would do
color line on it. Probably Crayola, you know, like
(29:46):
crayons and stuff. Like go through a pine tree or
something. It's, oh, it looks like Anna
Barbera. We're talking about trying to
replicate a style and a musical background.
The Tom and Jerry spy quest wereyeah, Tom.
And there again is an effort to visually, especially at the
(30:06):
beginning, create the look and feel of an MGM cartoon.
There was a concerted effort, obviously, to give it that kind
of look and feel of a Tom and Jerry look and sound.
And then you go into the creditsand you've got the Johnny Quest
credits, and then Tim Matheson plays the president in.
That was the. Music like Quest I, I've never
(30:29):
seen it. It was sort.
Of there's nothing like the original Quest music, but it it
would had a jazz feel to it. There was effort made to do it,
but it was especially noticed atthe beginning.
The Yeah, well, that's. That Spike rant Spike is he
believes in integrity and he he'll push it as far as he can
take it. I mean, it's short of like going
(30:50):
to the balls and pulling the music.
I he that would have been his preference.
I think it would be done that. But you know, it's funny because
the boards I did for that, that one, they're big in My
Portfolio. Whenever somebody wants to do My
Portfolio, I did it as close to a 1964 Doug's Wildy episode as I
(31:12):
could. And in fact, I did not use the
new models. I didn't use the new Johnny
models or the new Haji models orthe new race models.
I used Doug's models to do it. And then the background's the
same thing. I find similar things.
I'd literally pull them out. I'd do a cream grab of a beach,
you know, like the beach from like the tree people or
(31:33):
something. That seemed like, oh, that'd be
good for this action. They end up on Zen's Island, you
know? And I thought, what if he had a
gauntlet of monsters who guardedthe perimeter?
So that meant like a, a squadronof robot spies And he had the
monsters from Terror Island, youknow, the oversized Godzilla.
(31:55):
And we did the invisible monster.
I didn't tell him I was going todo this.
I just did a sequence where theyhad to like penetrate through
the outer defenses that were being manned by the monsters,
had the invisible monster, had them all.
And it got cut, of course. But boy did I have fun doing it.
Well, at least we know that the effort is made.
(32:18):
Sometimes it succeeds, sometimesit doesn't.
Yeah, sometimes it's the labor alone.
So you know, and that's, that's when it's the most fun.
That's when it's the best, yeah.There are projects that you do,
and it's like, yeah, OK, this isnice.
And then there were those ones where I can kind of put my heart
and soul into this and yeah, that's the best.
(32:40):
Those are the best. Yes, yes.
Yes, yeah. And there's something about
this. Happy circumstance, this
happenstance of all these, and I'm talking about Hannah Barbera
and how all these divergent people from other places,
another walk or the division of Bill and Joe, I think who pulled
(33:00):
it all together. But the best example to me of
just how Hannah Barbera was moresophisticated, snappier than
anything was if you go to YouTube and you look at that
animated sequence that opened upthe, the short Sinbad the Sailor
cartoons, you know, Sinbad Junior cartoon and the first
(33:22):
one, they're AIP, right? They're they AIP?
Owned it and had Sam Singer do it originally and then Sam.
Singer did it, and they're wretched, right?
They're wretched and I don't know how many they did and I
don't know what the happenstanceis that the next go round they
brought Bill and Joe in to do them.
But just the two title sequences, one after the other.
(33:45):
It's like night and day. And because it's toys, music and
it's the sound effects and it cuts the way a Hannah Barbera
thing is cut and and he's sword fighting with a bunch of funny
pirates. And even to how the camera moves
where it cut, he pulls the belt and becomes, you know, Timbad
Junior. Cut to the pirates who just
(34:06):
running along the deck looking over their shoulder because here
he comes on a, you know, on a rope and he kicks them.
And it's so beautifully timed over the panning background, you
know. Yeah, it's just excellent.
Those guys just knew how to use the camera and to take
advantage. We used to call it in art
school. It was exploitation of a
(34:27):
limitation. And they did it better than
anybody. Even when it's Johnny, like
sliding in after Bandit and it'sjust a sliding self, doesn't
matter. But the pose is so great.
He's, you know, he slides in on his, you know, it's a close up
of the back of his feet and shoes and everything.
Perfection comes from imperfection.
Like what you said. I, I love that phrase and I
(34:48):
think you've expressed it so beautifully.
And you use the exact example I knew.
I knew you'd say Sinbad Junior. Because no matter what age you
are and you watch the differencebetween the two, you go wow.
And probably the same budget, the same circumstances, the same
speed, because they had to make 65 or something.
But if you go on YouTube, there's not a lot of them there,
(35:12):
but there are enough where you can get exactly what you were
describing. I remember.
Thin, bad, being disappointed ifit was the other one, if it was
the same thing. But now Hanna Barbera was slick.
They were slick and sophisticated.
We do kind of go down the rabbitholes on some of these old shows
that the younger people are going to.
(35:34):
What are they talking to me? That's an opportunity because if
somebody who's younger says I don't know what that is, and
then it's like we have this Internet and we have this Google
and we have YouTube and we have videos.
So much of this stuff is accessible.
Maybe they'll look it up and go,that's really cool.
(35:54):
And then they'll go, I want to see more of this.
What else did these people do? Oh wow, this is really fun.
I had no idea that existed. I'm so glad that we've had this
time together, just to have a laugh and sing a song.
But. I'm.
Glad we had this time together. I appreciate you taking the time
(36:18):
to share so much and this this pop culture extravaganza that
you were so much a part of and that we were all able to enjoy
on the fantastic world of Hannahand Barbara.
Because we're talking about the people as well as the name, as
well as the company that we existed from 57 on.
(36:38):
We're talking about Tom and Jerry, which was before talking
about Irv Spence and Tony Siguri.
News. All those.
People are and bars. And people.
Like you, we are grateful too, and I'm very grateful that you
joined us. Oh gosh, I'm making you blush.
Golly I want to thank. Everybody for listening and for
(37:00):
all the nice things you say about us and please join us
again. But until then, bye bye, we
hope. You enjoyed the fantastic world
of Hannah and Barbera with Greg Airborne.
Please join us again and Many thanks for listening.
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