Hanna-Barbera had been the huge success story with The Huckleberry Hound Show winning an Emmy and The Flintstones winning hearts in prime time. Some commercial houses hoped they could duplicate H-B’s triumph. Format Films got The Alvin Show on the air in 1961. Creston Studios (spun off from TV Spots) put Calvin and the Colonel on the schedule the same year. Both shows struggled and neither went into a second season of new half-hours. Format sub-contracted some mediocre theatrical shorts while Creston seems to have faded away.
Another commercial studio overcame failure after failure to land a show on Saturday morning. But it couldn’t parlay that into bigger things and the series was eventually removed after being accused of being one, big cereal commercial.
The three soon tried to branch out into cartoon programming based on Bob and Ray’s radio characters. One was The Kertencalls, based on Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife (a spoof of the soap Mary Noble, Backstage Wife). Another featured an animated Lawrence Fechtenberger and his aliens from the planet Polaris (Bob and Ray’s takeoff on Tom Corbett, Space Cadet).
Graham’s six-year relationship with the comedians fell apart. He went solo. Graham was doing business with General Foods, producing animated commercials for Post featuring characters on the company’s cereal boxes. From this came a half-hour Saturday morning show that debuted in fall 1964. But this turned out to be Ed Graham Productions’ only TV show. By August 1967, Television Age magazine reported he was going to the McCann-Erickson agency as the creative director of its Los Angeles office.
Television Age profiled Graham’s journey in its March 2, 1964 edition, including the drawing below. You’ll notice the absence of Sugar Bear and the presence of the Jack E. Leonard version of the postman seen in commercials. Lovable Truly was re-designed for the series and voiced by Bob McFadden.
Graham talks about original music. While Hoyt Curtin got a screen credit on some of the shows, Johnny Mann is listed in the ASCAP database as the composer of incidental music. Stock music libraries were also used; the So-Hi theme was in a library used (probably not coincidentally) on the Bob and Ray radio show on CBS.
AN ANIMATED CHARACTER
Now you’d think that anyone who had a solid commitment from CBS-TV and a good budget from General Foods to make an animated series of half-hours for daytime airing starting this fall, already would be counting his money on the way to the bank.
Ed Graham, a mild-mannered writing son of a J. Walter Thompson executive, finds himself and his production company in that fortunate position. But instead of listening for the sound of manna from Heaven, he lets out a worried look occasionally cross his brow and he talks of going to Hollywood, to supervise production, as though he can’t quite believe it all.
But considering his 10 years of creations in animation for production of commercials, his concern would seem to be as meaningful as that of a manager of the New York Yankees. He spent much of the past decade in a partnership with Bob (Elliott) and Ray (Goulding) and put funny words into the mouths of characters like Bert & Harry Piels (beer).
Even on his own, he has pleased a company like General Foods with his talented and profitable creations of Linus, King of the Beasts, for Crispy Critters; So-Hi, the Chinese boy, for Rice Krinkles, and Rory Racoon, for Post Toasties. These cartoon creatures are the core of that fall series.
Yet Ed Graham persists in his vague feeling of uneasiness. “With my past history” to consider he says, “I’m concerned.” What is this deep dark secret that haunts this man?
Way back in 1955, Ed went to Sylvester L. (Pat) Weaver, then head of NBC-TV, and sold him on five-minute Curtain raisers that would lead into the 8 o’clock prime time period. NBC-TV gave Ed $20,000 and he finished the initial production around Thanksgiving. But suddenly Pat Weaver wasn’t at NBC-TV any more and the new NBC-TV president Bob Kintner “didn’t want anything to do” with the pilot. The network still had an option on the series and, by the time it lapsed, no one was interested.
Fortunately the commercials business was booming, “so we paid everybody a three months bonus and decided to make five-minute creations on our own” about a space cadet. They made two pilots and never showed them; “we didn’t like them.”
Then they wrote some more five minutes about the Madmen from Polaris, whose voice hysterically resembled that of a noted personality. But about the time they were to have been ready, the personality became seriously ill and therefore could no longer be considered a humorous subject.
Goulding, Elliott & Graham thereupon made an important decision—to hell with five-minute short subjects. “Somebody told us they wouldn’t work and we had plenty of experience to back them up,” Mr. Graham said. They tried a 15-minute production about Test Dive Buddies “but we cut so many corners that everybody in the cartoons wound up talking behind menus.” From there, they went on to Group Productions which agreed to do a pencil test of Racketeering Rascals for them. To finish the test, Group had to have some more money “but at the time, we didn’t have any.”
In came Pat Weaver again, with an idea for an hour special to include animation in a complete Bob and Ray Show. He couldn’t sell it, “because everybody who loved Bob and Ray said they didn’t have any popular appeal.” After that, “I got California National (the NBC west coast production arm at the time) to put up $40,000 for a half-hour pilot.” Perhaps this would have worked if The Flintstones hadn’t led a parade of cartoons into prime time; The Flintstones made it but nothing else did and, meanwhile, California National went out of existence.
Ed Graham is most sorry this pilot, Bob & Ray’s Hollywood Classics, didn’t make it. “It was unlike the others, because it didn’t resemble a situation comedy. If it had, things might have been different, at least for us,” says Ed Graham.
About that time, the relationship between Bob & Ray and Ed Graham turned sour as they accused one another of allowing $300,000 to go down the drain and hanging on to one another’s apron strings. Today Ed Graham says: “They really are terribly talented and now that the fire has died down and we’ve each done well in our own separate ways I really would like to work with them again sometime.”
On his own, Ed Graham associated himself with Dan Curtis, who had been California National sales manager and later an MCA man. Mr. Curtis took another pilot idea to General Foods and, when the company turned it down, he said, well, what do you want? They told him and, together with creator Gene Shinto, Ed Graham Productions at last was able to come into its own in show business.
“We’re pulling a Hanna-Barbera in reverse. Their characters started in show biz and eventually went into the commercial. Ours are coming from the advertising message into programming,” Ed Graham said.
Now everything would be just fine, if Ed Graham did not have a few admitted “bad” habits. He likes to work with the best—why take somebody less than a Mel Blanc, Carl Reiner, Sheldon Leonard or Jack E. Leonard for your characters’ voices, if you can get the best. Why mimic Chinese music, if you can get some original material? Ed Graham prefers the original, even for children’s cartoons. This can all add up to a lot of money, even more than General Foods if willing to spend. And that’s what really worries Ed Graham.
Can Ed Graham really overcome the “jinx” and his own very fine taste? Tune in at 11 a.m. Saturdays on CBS-TV in the fall and see.
ANIMATED FOOTNOTE
Animation has not been forgotten by the nation’s programmers. In addition to Ed Graham’s Linus, King of the Beasts, for General Foods and CBS-TV next season, Johnny Quest [sic] action adventure is committed to prime time on ABC-TV and Mr. Magoo from UPA has a similar arrangement on NBC-TV. Screen Gems, which has Hanna-Barbera turning out its work, practically can survive on animation alone. Besides Johnny Quest, and the Magilla Gorilla Show, which was placed on 150 stations this year by the Ideal Toy Company, Screen Gems has made a similar arrangement with the advertiser for a series of half-hours called The Peter Potamus Show.
There’s more on Linus in this 2018 post.
Just out of curiosity, does anyone know if LINUS still exists or have any idea who owns it? It's a series I've always been curious to see. You always hear good things about it from people who remember it.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the mention of cartoons built around Bob and Ray's radio characters, I remember reading once that, in the short-lived prime time cartoon boom of the early '60s, there was fleeting talk of reviving several old radio properties as TV cartoons, including Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Fibber McGee and Molly, Duffy's Tavern, the Great Gildersleeve, Baby Snooks, Red Skelton's "Junior, the Mean Widdle Kid," and the Shadow. I suspect that most of these were never any closer to reality than out-of-work old radio actors' wishful thinking.
There's a nice home-made set I've bought on ebay. While it's far from perfect (the majority of the videos are 640x480) it satisfies a need well enough.
DeleteI enjoyed the series far too much to pass it by.
Bob Clampett made some progress on the Bergen/McCarthy cartoons but I think the lack of enthusiasm of TV after the 1961 failures and Snowball (Clampett's studio) having network troubles with Beany and Cecil quashed it.
DeleteRandy, YouTube has a lot of them. I was a kid when it was on, and I watched it..and enjoyed it..!
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