The World of Ward, 1967

Am I the only one who regrets there were not more cartoon series from Jay Ward Productions?

Perhaps it’s just as well, because they may have just kept repeating that they had done before. But what they had done before was fun, and smart kids picked up on the humour. The cartoons were never a straight narrative. Characters commented on the action. They commented on the dialogue. They commented on the TV network. They talked to the narrator or the viewing audience. They playfully punned. They were irreverent, not in-your-face just to be rude. Each cartoon was half the length of an old theatrical short, so the pace quickened, adding to the humour.

Jay Ward and Bill Scott’s last hurrah was George of the Jungle in the 1967-68 TV season. Some fans feel the Super Chicken segments were funnier than George. Super Chicken had a rather lengthy gestation period, as we read in this feature story from the Bell-McClure Syndicate, July 5, 1967.

Super Chicken Helped Jay Ward Conquer Censors
By Richard K. Shull
THE name has been changed out of professional courtesy to all network programing executives everywhere, but Hunt Strongbird, jr., finally made his debut on network television.
The tale behind Strongbird (no pun intended) is itself the makings of a major TV drama.
It started back in the early 1960s when James T. Aubrey, jr., was the reigning president of CBS television and Hunt Stromberg, jr., was his West Coast programing executive.
In reaching around for shows calculated for bigger and better ratings, the CBS executives had their attention captured by Jay Ward, the zany producer of such items as Bullwinkle Moose and Fractured Flickers, kiddie shows with an irreverent adult sense of humor.
Ward was commissioned to do an hour-long pilot film for CBS of something to be called Jay Ward's Nuthouse—a gathering of human and cartoon characters in blackouts and sketches reminiscent of the old Olsen and Johnson and Spike Jones routines.
Ward labored mightily and produced an hour of what he thought was great good humor. Then the CBS minions sank their hooks into it.
Out went a brief act in which a bespectacled pitch woman stepped on stage and declared “I’d like to show you the new Maidenform bra,” while she shucked her blouse.
Also out went all the scenes in which a gorilla walked through with the CBS eye attached to his derriere.
Also out went a sketch in which a poor commuter was trampled flat by the far-out habitues of a subway coffee house.
And still more. When the censors had finished snipping, less than half of Ward’s show remained.
Also out were any hopes for a weekly series, although CBS did get salvage money by broadcasting a tamed-down version of Ward’s pilot film on a hot August evening when only Ward’s immediate family was watching TV.
It was about this time when Ward got an idea for a new cartoon series—Super Chicken, with an addlepated rooster named Hunt Strongbird, jr. Merciful heavens, Ward denied, there was no connection between his disastrous relationship with CBS executives, such as Stromberg, and the new cartoon series.
But even the other networks shied away from Super Chicken a year ago. Possibly the executives saw a little of their own images mirrored in the gleam in Ward’s eyes.
Now, Super Chicken, with a new name, finally has been purchased and is scheduled to go on ABC’s Saturday morning line-up next fall, but not even the title is seen in the program logs.
Super Chicken has been submerged and concealed as a segment within a new cartoon series titled George of the Jungle, a take-off on Tarzan with a narcissistic boob in a leopard skin.
But how can anyone who knows the story, as you do, ever look at Super Chicken, without thinking of Hunt Strongbird, jr.?

Jay Ward had more to say to Mr. Shull, who set it aside for another column published in mid-October. Ward griped for the umpteenth time the network suits didn’t like his shows and avoided putting them on the air. (Fractured Flickers, for example, aired in syndication).

A Reaction to Funny (but Frustrated) Jay Ward
Tears of Mirth, Tears of Miffed
By RICHARD K. SHULL
HOLLYWOOD, Calif.—Take a visit to Jay Ward's little loonybin on Sunset Strip and you come away with tears on your cheeks. There are tears of mirth because Ward and his crew are funny men.
There are also tears of anguish because Ward and his wildmen never get a chance to show their stuff on prime network television time.
After nearly a decade of trying, Ward has concluded the networks are trying to tell him something. His problem is that he's unpredictable, he's genuinely funny, and he's never content to cash in on someone else's cliche.
For each and all of those reasons, he's a dangerous man so far as the networks are concerned.
OR HAVE you taken note that the nets go for the "Gilligan's Islands" of the industry, those nice, lathery little situation comedies in which every outburst of the laughing machine is as predictable as Old Faithful?
"The real trouble with TV is that everyone is trying to please someone else," Ward said, sitting on the back of an armchair with his feet in the seat where his seat should have been.
"We've stopped going to the networks. They're friendly and nice, but we never get an affirmative answer. I really can't blame the network men. I go in to see them with some far-out thing and they have so many nice, slick shows from Universal or MGM. They go the safe route.
"Any idea you take to a network has to go through 15 guys. Fourteen of them may like it, but if the 15th says no, they all want to hedge and take a second look. If it's something wild, they back off.
"THEY NEVER give upon Westerns. If one bombs, they try something else the next time until they get one that sticks. But, on original comedy, if one fails, that kills it for all of them," Ward said. He was laughing all the way of course, but then, Ward would see the humorous aspects of his own funeral.
Mind you, he's not completely washed out of the business. His animated cartoon, "George of the Jungle," is a Saturday morning feature on ABC, and his "Bullwinkle Moose" and "Rocky and his Friends" shows probably will play forever.
"I think maybe the kids are the most intelligent audience for TV anyhow. We go our happy way with our cartoons," he said.
His fortunes how are tied to the Quaker Oats Co. which sponsors some of his cartoon shows on the air and uses his characters on the cereal packages.
"They're gentlemen with a sense of humor," Ward said.
Ward was making his observations as we sat in his office, a second floor apartment in a Moorish apartment building down the street from an old house which is his studio, which is around the corner from the minuscule reception office on Sunset Boulevard, a prestige address.
(He's not allowed to have an office in the apartment building where it is located, but so far, the landlord hasn't been able to prove he does any business.)
IN ADDITION to his cartoons—which, if you've ever noticed, play at two levels with amusement for the kiddies overlaid on swinging adult humor—Ward is busy putting together a feature film from the great moments in Buster Keaton's silent pictures.
And he's also in the mod record business. That division of his enterprises is called the Snarf Co. which records under the label of Mother's Records. That division of his enterprises is called the Snarf Co. which records under the label of Mother's Records.
"My first record was by Teri Thornton," Ward said. "I put Laurel and Hardy on the cover of the jacket and a scene with Rudolph Valentino and Vilma Banky on the back.
"But the kids wouldn't buy it. They like the record but it's serious business to them. We changed to a plain wrapper and they began, buying."
Actually, you can't blame the networks entirely for their failure to recognize Ward. He brought some of it on himself. For example, there was the time when the N. B. C. brass wouldn't see him. So he hired some bums, put them in Salvation Army uniforms, gave them musical instruments, and camped them outside the N. B. C. headquarters in Rockefeller Center to serenade the network.
And then there was the time when a deal with C. B. S. fell through. At the time, the network's West Coast vice-president for programming was a fellow named Hunt Stromberg Jr. Coincidentally, a short time later Ward had put together a cartoon series titled "Super Chicken.” The hero was named Hunt Strongbird Jr.
But, for his over-all outlook on T.V., Ward says, "Actually, we aren't making shows anymore. We're trying to track down Nielsen's 1,100 rating families."
Network television may not yet be ready for Jay Ward, but they need him.

Ward had other programmes in development, but nobody wanted to put them on their network. And pretty soon, he gave up producing commercials for Quaker Oats because he thought the fun went out of them.

In some ways, Ward is enigmatic. Producers like Fred Quimby and Eddie Selzer are, correctly, not praised for the cartoons from their studio. Yet Ward is, even though he couldn’t draw and, creatively, merely sat in on voice sessions. He was alternately an introverted man and an extroverted promotor. Ward’s main contribution, in reading Keith Scott’s wonderful book on his studio, was creating an atmosphere of fun and silliness which fostered creativity and humour. That accomplishment deserves praise for him and his wonderful little cartoons.