Not Plane, Nor Bird, Nor Even Frog

This was going to be a post about Wally Cox’s cartoon career. But it won’t be. You can blame Wally Cox.

Somewhere, I thought, Cox might have been interviewed about his role as Underdog, Total TeleVision’s big entry into Saturday morning cartoons beginning October 3, 1964. Maybe TTV, I hoped, issued a news release quoting Cox in an attempt to get publicity for the show. If any of this happened, I haven’t found it. Perhaps it’s no surprise. Saturday morning cartoons were generally ignored by the press because they were aimed at kids, and what kid reads a newspaper?

United Press International put out a story about Cox in November 1964, but there’s no mention of Underdog in it at all. Such is the respect Saturday morning cartoons got in the mid-‘60s until the kids who watched them became adults who wrote books and newspaper columns about them. Unless there was an angle (studio profits, “educating” children, etc.) for mom and dad, the news columns were silent. TTV did get some ink around this time, and we’ll get to that in a moment because I do want to write something about Cox.

The earliest mention of him I’ve found is in Bert McCord’s column on New York’s café life in the January 5, 1949 edition of the New York Herald Tribune. Cox made his professional debut that night on the stage of the Village Vanguard. Several days later, Danton Walker of the New York Daily News explained: “Max Gordon has gone into the talent-discovering business again at his Village Vanguard. His latest is an ex-dogface with a professorial appearance who is a silversmith by day and, by the grace of Gordon, an impressionist by night. Wally Cox, 24-year-old who designs costume jewelry, has been painting word portraits of typical neighborhood characters (the candy store owner, the ex-pug, et al) at parties for several years. Max attended one of his performances at a village soiree recently, and en[j]oyed it well enough to insist the young man try his humor out on his sophisticated customers at the Vanguard. Net result: A new discovery and a new career.”

Before the end of the month, Cox was cast on the DuMont network’s School House, along with Arnold Stang and “schoolmaster” Kenny Delmar (a last-minute replacement for Peter Donald, who decided to pass on the show). It was a disaster. Cox emerged to star in a non-disaster at NBC, Mr. Peepers, followed by The Adventures of Hiram Holiday (featuring the Capitol Hi-Q production library).

Let’s skip ahead to Underdog. There is no better source on Total TeleVision Productions than Mark Arnold’s book. It quotes TTV’s Tread Covington as saying “We were delighted to get Wally Cox. We wanted a shy, timid character and he had been on a successful series for a while, and wanted that kind of personality for Underdog. By that time, we were established. I called Wally Cox’s agent, and we got together....

“We enjoyed having him work for us very much. He was very friendly and nice and easy to work with. I think he was sort of typecast in his personality. We told him at the outset, we wanted Underdog to be a nerd-like character. I don’t know if nerd was a word then—a nerd-type character that would come to the rescue at the last minute and do heroic things. If he was aiming for a perfect landing, he’d hit the wall instead. Anyway, everything always worked out. Then he was sort of authoritative in spite of all the screw-ups along the way. So a lot of it really was the way Wally was and his interpretation was one that we liked.”

Cox extremely disliked Mr. Peepers and, in interview after interview, wanted people to forget the Peabody Award-winning show. Evidently, Cox had a higher opinion of Underdog than Peepers. An unbylined story, apparently from the Copley News Service, in 1970 noted that whenever Cox was introduced in the warm-up for Hollywood Squares, he would quote Underdog’s famous motto: “There’s no need to fear. Underdog is here!” Children in the audience would cheer. Adults, it ruefully noted, thought of Mr. Peepers.

The only other quote I’ve found from Cox about the cartoon is in a 1972 syndicated “TV Answer” column. He purportedly said he “had been an underdog” all his life and that was it. No source was given.

One person who did talk about Cox was Peter Piech, who was part of Producers Associates for Television, the company behind the financing of Rocky and His Friends and later the executive producer of Underdog through his part-ownership in Total TeleVision. This unbylined story appeared in several newspapers in March and April 1965.

There's No Set Pattern For Writing Children's Humor
“There is no set pattern or guideline for writing humor for children, particularly in cartoons. The only thing we are concerned about is producing a good cartoon sequence.”
So says Peter Piech, executive producer of NBC-TV’s color cartoon series, Underdog.
One of the most experienced men in cartoon production, Piech has produced approximately 3,000 minutes of cartoons since 1959, more, he claims, than any other animation studio in the world. Among his creations are Rocky, Tennessee Tuxedo, Leonardo the Lion [sic], The Hunter, and Go, Go Gophers.
Piech believes that both children and adults are fascinated by the supernatural and super powers. Underdog fits into both of these categories because of his super abilities and the supernatural powers of his enemies.
While he feels that there are no guidelines for writing humor for children, Piech is quick to add that there are definite elements that a cartoon should have to capture their interest and imagination.
“Children are paradoxical in that they are captivated by both the familiar and the unknown,” says the cartoon producer. “They know, for instance, that Underdog is always going to catch the bad guy and bring him to justice in the end. They also know that he is going to rescue the heroine, Polly, from the teeth of a whirling circular saw or from the beam of villain Simon Barsinister’s snow gun. That they know this doesn’t make the final rescue any less exciting.”
Kids love repetition, according to Piech, “but a producer can’t just come up with one formula and then keep using it indefinitely. However, repetition is important, because it takes awhile for a child to identify with a personality, whether he is live or animated.”
The producer also maintains that children appreciate the same elements of humor that makes adults laugh. They love Wally Cox as the voice of Underdog because it is very comical to hear such a meek voice coming from such a super-powered hero.
They also like the unexpected situation that pops up, and this too is an element in all forms of humor.
Says Piech, “Children today are much more sophisticated than they used to be, and demand more from cartoons than they used to, because they want to use their knowledge more. It’s no longer enough, to give them a Felix the Cat or a Farmer Brown musical cartoon with singing flowers and cows that kick over milk buckets. Today’s kids are science-oriented and they want to use this knowledge. They can do this while watching Underdog fight the underwater Bubble-Heads and their tidal wave machine, but they can’t if all they see is Felix trying to catch a mouse.
Piech is adamant is his feelings that there are many topics that cannot be animated, and anything that can be done using live actors and live situations should not be done in cartoon form. “In cartoons, everything is much bigger than life, very exaggerated,” he says.
“Can you imagine Underdog being played by a real dog, like Lassie?” asks Pete. It would be impossible! And it would be just as ridiculous if Mr. Novak were a cartoon instead of a live person.”

We’re going to make a detour from Cox and Underdog. Besides Piech, the connection between Total TeleVision and the Jay Ward Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons is Gamma Productions in Mexico. It animated some of the Ward cartoons, especially the earliest ones, and just about all of TTV’s output. One of the syndicated newspaper services came out with a story about Gamma about how it made its cartoons. This appeared in a paper, pre-Underdog, on June 8, 1964. You can chuckle over the spin about why the cartoons were made in Mexico.

Zebra Stripes - - - A Mexican Import
By JACKIE PETERSON
Copley News Service
MEXICO CITY—How many stripes has a zebra?
What shape is a walrus tail?
Does a porcupine have lashes?
Sounds like shop talk at the zoo, but it's all in a day's work at Gamma Productions, an animation studio here.
Behind the austere facade of an office building, three Americans and 77 Mexicans are busy plotting laughs for millions of children (and adults) in the United States.
Gamma Productions turns out 11 serialized cartoon shows for coast-to-coast U.S. television now and is preparing two more.
One of these efforts, a series about Tennessee Tuxedo, a penguin with a bow tie, has a nationwide standing of No. 2 on the Neilsen kiddie ratings.
Bullwinkle, a moronic moose with an erudite story line, has—much to Gamma's amazement—college fan clubs in the United States.
Surprisingly, only five of the people at Gamma speak English.
Co-owners of the 24-hour-a-day operation are Harvey Siegel, a former New York conmercial artist, and Jaime Torres Vasquez, a Mexican.
Siegel, who still maintains he's "just an artist," runs the production end of the business while Torres acts as the firm's traveling troubleshooter.
Siegel says his principal reason for locating Gamma here is the known dexterity of Mexican workers who do the intricate drawing and inking.
"People probably thought we came here for cheap labor," he says.
“But the fact is our drawers and inkers, paid on a piecework basis, earn up to 100 pesos ($8) a day, far more than other youngsters of their age usually earn in Mexico.”
Other aspects of production costs are somewhat lower than in the United States. Customs duties and time-consuming red tape involved in doing business south of the border virtually wipe out these advantages or any tax gain that might actually accrue from a venture in a foreign country.
Gamma has stepped up its viewing time to 12 minutes a week and is heading toward a goal of 18 minutes.
It takes about 2,500 drawings, approximately 150 scenes, to make a nine-minute cartoon. At the current rale of speed, the studio turns out a daily average of 1,000 "cells" or drawings in color on celluloid squares.
Gamma can't take all the credit for its stable of stars. They are "discovered" by writers in Hollywood and New York, where the shows are written.
Gamma gets a phonograph of the sound track— the animals may have such distinguished voices as those of Hans Conreid, Edward Everett Horton or Wally Cox—plus a long work sheet giving the scene-by-scene direction and rough drawings of the characters.
The studio takes it from there, deciding on the visual personality of its menagerie of actors, dubbing in special sound effects and background music, and shipping off the completed movie to the TV networks in New York.
After getting some sketch ideas from the boss himself, the disc, direction sheet and a Spanish translation of the story line go to Joe Montell, layout and design chief, who formerly worked with Metro-Goldwyn Mayer in a similar job. He composes the frame of the film, insuring for example, that characters are drawn in scale for close-ups and long shots.
Then the package moves to the drawing board of Sam Kai, a native of San Francisco, Calif. Kai, with 20 years in the business, has worked at Paramount Studios on such personalities as Popeye.
“You have to go overboard on movements and gestures for cartoons," Kai says. "Far more so than in a live-action comedy."
Once these details are set, the film is ready to be drawn, inked and colored. The deft young Mexicans who turn out the sketches wear gloves on their drawing hands so they won't fingerprint the "cells."
The figure then goes to the background department, and finally to the camera.
Problems like the number of the zebra's stripes are settled easily without reference to zoology books.
The animated cartoonist, naturally, would put polka dots on the zebra, a tail-concealing Brooks Bros, suit on the walrus, and, yes, the porcupine will wear dark glasses.

Total TeleVision produced The Beagles for the 1966-67 and (in repeats) 1967-68 seasons, then could sell nothing else to the networks and closed. As for Cox, he died at age 48 on Feb. 15, 1973 of a heart malfunction. At the time, Underdog was still in reruns, and carried on living through home video.