The Classics Meet Magoo

The eyes rolled again. Young me boo-ed at the television screen.

I had just finished watching Mr. Magoo misread a sign and mistake something for something else for the umpteenth time.

“Are they ever,” I asked myself, “going to do something different?”

Well, it turns out, they did.

Hank Saperstein gutted the creativity out of the UPA cartoon studio after taking it over, it is said. The TV Magoo cartoons mentioned above are a prime example. But a brainstorm was also sparked—the first, prime-time, made-for-TV animated Christmas special in 1962 called Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol (Saperstein took credit for it. In an interview with NEA syndicate columnist Edgar Penton in 1962, he said he was inspired after seeing a performance of Oliver! in London). It still is popular among a segment of cartoon fans.

After checking the ratings, and then seeing the special had more viewers the following Christmas, Saperstein decided to expand on that. What about putting Magoo in other classic (public domain) tales? The potential highbrow-ness would ward off people like Newton Minow and parents groups that complained about "violent” and banal programming aimed at children. So it was announced on February 4, 1964 by NBC that it had purchased 26 half-hours of The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo. A month later, Libby’s picked up partial sponsorship. The show premiered in prime time, on Saturday, September 19, 1964, at 8 p.m. Quincy Magoo, miraculously with unimpaired vision, was plopped into Shakespeare, and novels such as Don Quixote, the Three Musketeers, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Frankenstein.

All this was good news for Jim Backus. He was still making money on Magoo, voicing him for a series of light bulb commercials on TV. This was also the year Sherwood Schwartz added an ‘n’ to Newton Minow’s name, put it on a wrecked pleasure boat, and had Backus and six others stranded on an uncharted desert isle.

Here’s what he had to say about Magoo’s new venture. This syndicated piece turned up in the Dayton Daily News of Sept. 19, 1964. More to the point, here’s what his wife said about it:

BACKUS, WIFE STAR
New 'Mr. Magoo' Series on NBC
HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 19—Dear nearsighted “Mr. Magoo" trots through literary public domain Saturday nights this fall on NBC, following 26 minutes of cuteness with a dolphin called “Flipper.”
Jim Backus is the voice of "Mr. Magoo," and the cartoon character portrays such legendary personalities as Rip Van Winkle, Robin Hood, Gunga Din, Noah, Frankenstein or one of the “Three Musketeers."
Every alias is familiar and "Mr. Magoo" treats most with due respect, playing it straight and serious on occasion. The series will be in color.
"WE'RE DEALING with the classics," says Jim's quick-witted wife, Henny. "It's cheaper that way, we don't have to worry about paying off the writers.
Henny gets most of the wife voice parts. "I'm Noah's wife, Ham's wife, Mrs. Rip Van Winkle," she says. "Everybody doubles on this show."
JIM, Everett Sloane, Dennis King, Jr., Marvin Miller, Henny and Henny's favorite new actress, Joan Gardiner, do all the voices, and the group has become so competent they are often able to run through a sound track in an hour and three-quarters without rehearsing.
On the old "Mr. Magoo" cartoons Backus used to go over story-boards with writers and artists, making ad-libs and changes in dialogue before cutting the sound track.
Backus knew the character so well, he had the right to the last word. Now, even this procedure has been bypassed and necessary changes can be made at the taping.
JIM AND the other three men have the fat parts. "Notice how few women's roles there are," says Henny. "I'm on the prowl for more. Of course, Jim and I could do Nell Gwynn and King Charlie."
When Backus finishes hobnobbing with the classics Saturday nights, he immediately follows himself on another network in a shipwrecked island comedy, called "Gilligan's There is pressure on Jim to tape a spot suggesting fans switch stations to catch Jim's next show, but, the honest comedian refuses. This stand represents a major victory for actors.
WHILE JIM golfs, wife Henny reads, paints or does sculpture. She has a splendid mosaic of her husband on the living room mantle, "Backus the Great" with golden light surrounding the noble head.
The current project for the Backus couple is a Broadway musical comedy and production of a picture if they can find the right property to star Jim. Married for 22 years, the two obviously prefer each other's company to others, shunning local custom.
"JIM'S THE funniest man I know,” says Henny, a very fast woman with a line herself. "He can go to the market, do 20 minutes and just slay me.”
The two generally have dinner in bed and then turn to writing, talking over ideas before Henny is forced to type one finger at a time. "Jim works on the first draft," says Henny, "and that's all. I do the editing. I tell you I couldn't write without him. One starts a sentence and the other finishes it—that's how well our minds work together."

It would appear Magoo’s audience watched the live-action Jim Backus as Thurston Howell III on Gilligan’s Island instead of the cartoon one. The two Backus shows aired at the same time as of Jan. 2, 1965. A columnist for one of the Omaha papers in January 1965 noted a recent Neilsen ratings report stated that the Magoo TV series was 83rd in the ratings. The show was cancelled.

Backus went on to another season as a castaway. Magoo went on to more G.E. TV commercials, appeared in a comic strip in the Chicago Tribune (the designs look more like Hanna-Barbera than UPA) and showed up on the small screen again at Christmas time. And there were still reruns of those post-theatrical-era cartoons that Saperstein churned out with misread signs, something being mistaken for something else and a pig-tailed guy shouting “Mistah Magloo.”