Monday 13 May 2013

Not the Flintstones

Forgotten on lists of Stone Age cartoons made before the invention of “The Flintstones” at Hanna-Barbera in 1960 is the Bob McKimson short “Wild, Wild World,” released earler in the year. It’s another one of Tedd Pierce’s painful TV parodies where turning the name “Dave Garroway” into “Cave Darroway” is considered funny. Ouch. The olive in Tedd’s martini must have gone down the wrong way that day.

This was the second time McKimson and Pierce got together to foist on us the plot of a lost reel of film from the caveman era being discovered. The first was in the extremely unfunny “Pre-Hysterical Hare” (1958). At least this cartoon has the benefit of a nice score by Milt Franklyn featuring a couple of tunes by Raymond Scott. Layout man Bob Gribbroek and background artist Bill Butler got together on this one (Dick Thomas had left for Hanna-Barbera by this time). Here are some of the character designs.



The stone skyscrapers are reminiscent of Tex Avery’s “The First Bad Man” at MGM a few years earlier.



Cary Granite?! What about Stoney Curtis? (“Cary Granite” is such an obvious pun, I suspect it’s a coincidence it was later used in “The Flintstones.”)

McKimson’s credited animators in this one are Warren Batchelder, George Grandpré, Ted Bonnicksen and Tom Ray.

3 comments:

  1. Clampett also used Dino Saur as a pun on "Beany & Cecil". There must have just been something in the water in the late 50s-early 60s.

    The end sign gag nowadays is only fathomable to people over 40 or so or coffee history aficionados (and who leaves that much of a gap between the elevator and the elevator opening? If I saw that big a space up there, I never would have gotten in the thing in the first place).

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    1. At least I liked it (perhaps they ought to bring back "Good til the last drop" again).

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  2. It still was way better that Pre-Hysterical Hare, I think someone in the dubbing studio in my country must have thought that Bugs short was so awful it didn't deserved to be dubbed, so it didn't had a Spanish version until 1998!

    Anyway, I think the best joke in this one is when a caveman pass a cave-like department store, takes a look to some cavewoman mannequin with a "fashionable" leopard fur dress, and just said "Eeaaghh!" It's not clear whatever he thinks is tacky or sexy, but the way he said it when grimacing always cracks me up.

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