Oh, Magoo, You've Sold It Again

UPA went from a studio that was about expanding the art form of the animated cartoon into being all about the bucks.

You can thank new owners for that. Hank Saperstein was not an artist or an animator. He was a distributor of a TV bowling programme when he took control of the studio in 1960. His interest in UPA’s main asset, Mr. Magoo, was solely how much money he could suck out of it.

Here’s a story from the July 6, 1964 edition of Sponsor magazine. Magoo is treated as both a product and a seller of products. No love is expressed for animation or entertainment, other than how it can be used to make money. But it’s an interesting look at how one cartoon series was sold and then marketed.

Actually, here are three stories. Two sidebars accompanied the main article.

Still, just because management’s sole interest is counting beans doesn’t mean creative people are banished to the Old Animators Homes. Some solid people worked on the series, including Abe Levitow, Bob McKimson, Jacques Rupp and the staff at Grantray-Lawrence (the Ray Patterson-Grant Simmons studio). And Marvin Miller, Paul Frees and Howie Morris were hired to provide voices.

Inside Magoo — or, what makes a top tv sales personality click
Without seeing a pilot, NBC-TV signed for a new Magoo show for fall, sold half of it to Libby, McNeill & Libby. General Electric will renew its Magoo campaign
■ HE’S HARDLY a “typical tv star.” Elderly, dogmatic, somewhat crotchety, old-fashioned, forthright, a Rutgers “old grad,” and so myopic he often can't see the side of barn (and much less hit it), he’s the opposite of the clean-cut, clear-eyed male protagonist.
Yet Quincey Magoo — born as anonymous supporting player in a 1948 UPA theatrical cartoon called “Ragtime Bear”—is carrying a king-sized load of advertising dollars on his shoulders this fall.
• He’ll have his own half-hour weekly series, in color, on NBC-TV (Saturdays, 8-8:30 p.m.) starting September 19. Libby, McNeill and Libby, making a return to nighttime network tv programing (in which LML has been relatively inactive since it was a sponsor in the 1950's of the Sid Caesar-Imogene Coca series), will be the major sponsor, having signed for an alternate week position.
• He’ll also continue as the star merchandising symbol for the household lamp activities on tv of giant General Electric, which plans a network-and-spot tv campaign built around Magoo which will cost in excess of $1 million (see page 46).
The fact that there is a Magoo series at all on NBC-TV during the 1964-65 season proves the point that a successful entertainment property, particularly one involving a highly characterized personality, can bypass the usual drawn-out process whereby a pilot film or tape must be produced and shown to a network before the show will be bought. The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo was sold on a sight-unseen basis.

It happened soon after the start of 1964, when NBC-TV program executive Ed Friendly and UPA executive producer Henry G. Saperstein were having a meeting (actually, they were driving in a car and just talking) about future program plans. A UPA-produced special, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, had recently had its second annual exposure on NBC, and had drawn both ratings and critical acclaim.
Friendly wanted to know if Saperstein had another special up his sleeve. Saperstein didn't — at least, not exactly. He had been thinking about a possible Magoo series, in which the near-sighted, animated old gentleman would play pivotal roles in adaptations of literary classics.
Friendly liked the idea, and asked Saperstein if he could deliver a series on short notice. Saperstein replied that if NBC management would green-light the project before January 15th, he could do it.
Friendly carried the idea to a reality stage before the deadline, and the deal was on, even though no pilot was ever filmed.
Libby, McNeill and Libby, through J. Walter Thompson, bought the show on the basis of a “presentation film” which was a semi-pilot. In reality, it was a cut down version of Christmas Carol, edited to a half-hour show to demonstrate how Magoo would operate as a character in literary master piece.
Magoo’s own strong image—he’s probably as defined in the public's mind as most “personality” actors are ever likely to be—can do an image-building job for others, or so tv executives associated with Magoo projects believe.
“Our company has been considerably revitalized recently, and has image-building to do as well as to sell food products,” Sponsor was told by Walter Kaiser, assistant ad manager of Libby, McNeill and Libby. “We have an aggressive new president (Ed. Note: Robert L. Gibson, Jr.) who is determined to shake us out of any doldrums. He’s solidly behind our stepped-up campaign. We plan to spot-light a number of our key food products - such as tomato juice, fruit cocktail and corned beef hash — on the Magoo tv series, and backstop it with spot tv in a dozen markets where we feel we need the push.”
In the big Chicago food packing firm bothered by the possibility of “waste circulation” in the Magoo tv audience, since youngsters are known to be fond of the near-sighted cartoon character and are a sizable component of audiences for the 8 p.m. slot in which Magoo is scheduled?
Not at all.
“Our commercials, which we plan to film in color, will be aimed at women as the principal buyers of our products,” said LML ad-man Kaiser. “We’re aware that kids have a lot of control of tv sets at time periods such as the one we’ll occupy. However, we feel that lots of adults — particularly mothers — will be watching on an ‘over-the-shoulder’ basis with the kids and that we’ll reach the audience we want.”
Henry G. Saperstein, executive producer of the new network Magoo series, put his views on the show's audience-attracting capabilities to Sponsor in these informal-but-pointed words:
“We're going to do the big job on Saturday nights in our time period. We'll get the young adults of 20 to 35, and their kids of five to 12. On ABC-TV Outer Limits will be reaching the teenagers, and on CBS-TV Jackie Gleason will be reaching the nostalgia clique. We'll have the audience that really counts for our sponsors.”
Saperstein's optimism is based in fact, as far as he's concerned — the fact of Magoo’s dollars-and-cents success is an entertainment personality. He is no stranger to tv audiences, even apart from five seasons of General Electric “Magoo” commercials. For the past four years, UPA has syndicated its own series of five-minute Magoo cartoons, made specifically for tv. Latest market count: 139 U.S. markets, plus 14 foreign countries.

Magoo is an established success in theatrical motion pictures. More than 50 color cartoons have produced and distributed, several of which have won awards up through the Oscar level. There has been a successful Magoo feature-length cartoon. Also, Magoo's services have been available for public service films.
Although Magoo animated films don't have any budget problems for sets and other inanimate production values ("If we need a prop, we just draw one," says Saperstein), they're far from inexpensive. A small army of artists, animators and other production staffers — some 250 in all — are required to produce the new tv series. Costs are "comparable," according to Saperstein, between the half-hour Magoos and star-name situation comedies, i.e. about $60,000 per episode.
Breaking even on such a big nut is not easy, Saperstein admits. “Syndication is an absolute must on this series,” he told Sponsor. “Our first network run is expected to be a no-profit situation on the new series, but we're confident that the profit will be there in the long haul through syndication, and through foreign sales. We have already sold the new series in Japan, England and Australia, and have orders pending for Latin America and Germany.”
UPA has a built-in source of revenue in the Magoo series: tv commercials. “So far, the sponsors for the new series aren't merely in favor of using Magoo in commercials — they insist on it as part of the deal. He'll be available to Libby, McNeill & Libby and to all other ‘substantial’ purchasers of the show for commercials and for other promotional tie-ins.”
Saperstein, incidentally, is the one who makes the decision on whether a sponsor is spending enough to warrant being granted the use of Magoo as a direct sales weapon. There's no firm yardstick as to what is, or isn't, a substantial purchaser of the show, but Saperstein says “it won't be a short-term advertiser buying something like alternate-week minutes.”
Sponsors have a tendency to stick close to Magoo in tv. Timex for instance, sponsored the 1962 and 1963 showings on NBC-TV of Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol via Warwick & Legler. Timex will again sponsor a 1964 exposure (on December 11, 7:30-8:30 p.m.) as part of a five-year deal the watch company has for the special. Not generally known is the fact that General Electric and Libby, McNeill & Libby both made offers to Timex to buy part of the Christmas season show. GE, in fact, is understood to have offered to pay up to three-fourths of the costs for half the show, but Timex declined with thanks, preferring to maintain its full sponsorship identification.
UPA feels, despite this clear-and-present evidence of a bullish market in Magoo, that the little near-sighted cartoon character is a long range investment and should be treated with care.
“We don't want to milk Magoo for a fast buck,” says Saperstein. “We’re in no hurry to arrange ‘character merchandising’ deals all over the place, even though ancillary benefits are important to tv producers. There’ll be some books, records, a few toys, some clothing items this fall, but there’ll be no flood of Magoo merchandise around during the Christmas season. We think his value as a performer, and as a sales personality, is greater if we keep careful control over his exposure.” ■

Near-sighted Magoo was far-sighted GE tv buy
■ Not only is Quincey Magoo far from the pattern of tv's hero types, he's hardly what you'd expect optometrically as a top salesman for a product like General Electric light bulbs. But, in a manner befitting Gilbert & Sullivan's "ingenious paradox," Magoo — who is classically nearsighted — manages to sell the concept of better sight through better light so well that GE is a prime Magoo booster.
“We've had excellent consumer and dealer response to our Magoo television commercials, ads and promotions,” Norman Townsend, supervisor of GE's residential lamp advertising, told Sponsor. “We’ve had a phenomenal use of point-of-purchase Magoo material, especially in food stores, in fact, the pickup by dealers has been over 90 percent.”

This fall, General Electric will roll into its fifth season of Magoo commercials. There'll be a total, according to Townsend, of 10,000 Magoo-GE tv spots in 200 markets, plus participations in NBC-TV’s Tonight and a quartet of daytime television shows. (The only reason GE didn't buy into the new Magoo nighttime series, according to both GE and UPA, is that GE’s budgets were fully committed before the show deal was made.)
Budgeting for the Magoo tv promotions (including the follow-through at point-of-purchase) occupies "considerably more than half" of the total advertising dollars GE spends for its light bulbs.
The successful commercial blend of Magoo and GE came about largely by accident. It happened five years ago when BBDO’s Arthur Bellaire was casting around for some kind of theme to tie all the GE bulb promotions in one package.
“There were lots of sales features in the bulb line, but we needed an interest element, a character to relate everything,” Bellaire recalls. “I felt that Mr. Magoo would be ideal for this purpose. I’m glad to say our client thought so, too.”
The only initial problem BBDO and GE had when the Magoo campaign was first proposed was whether or not Magoo's nearsightedness would be improved by the use of GE bulbs. One faction felt it should be; others didn't.
Final upshot, which has the basic “gimmick” in GE commercials to the present: Magoo achieves quite obviously everything he wants in the way of improved lighting with GE bulbs — only it doesn't work for him.
It works, however, for GE.
The new fall campaign for Magoo will revolve around a presidential election tie-in. Magoo will function as campaign manager to "Betty Bright," a pert woman presidential candidate. In typical Magoo fashion, he never lets the poor girl get a word in edgewise — although the GE sales message comes through loud and clear. Four years ago, during the last presidential election, there was also a spoof campaign of “Magoo For President.” Nobody took it very seriously—until the results came in. It turned out some 40,000 had been cast for the little cartoon character. ■



The man who makes like Magoo

"There's no problem in playing it straight when it comes to adapting literary classics for our new Magoo series," executive producer Henry G. Saperstein told Sponsor last week. "We just give Backus a straight line, and when he reads it, it usually comes out funny. Around the studio we say that he 'Magoo's' it."
The man who "Magoo's" the most straight-forward English prose at the drop of a director's signal is an accomplished actor in his own right. He is Jim Backus, a Clevelander who has been in the theater since the age of 14 when he had a bit part in a "White Cargo" production that starred the late Clark Gable.
He has been in countless radio shows, including a two-year stint as star of his own comedy program. He has made nearly 100 pictures. He has been the voice of "Magoo" from the start.
This fall, he'll again voice Magoo.
He'll also be seen on CBS-TV in another new show, Gilligan's Island, thus becoming the first tv actor to be launched in two new series at that same time in the same season.