The MGM Cartoons That Never Were

They aspired to be the next Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. Instead their teaming is a very obscure footnote in ‘60s animation history.

They’re Phil Duncan and Herb Vigran.

The combination was certainly unusual. Duncan was an ex-Disney animator who had also worked for commercial studios. Vigran wasn’t an animator at all. He made his moolah voicing television spots after his radio acting jobs dried up (his continued to do bit parts on TV comedies and dramas). His animation experience mainly consisted of providing voices for John Sutherland Productions’ industrial cartoons in the early ‘50s. However, the two hooked up, and they approached MGM in 1965 about making animated cartoons.

At this point, Metro was doing pretty well in the animation business. It had announced a new animation/visual arts subsidiary in late December 1964 under Les Goldman and Chuck Jones. The operation was, in essence, Walter Bien’s SIB Productions, which had financially collapsed after making seven Tom and Jerrys for MGM; Metro took over its staff and offices. Apparently, the Goldman/Jones cartoons cost $35,000 each to make; at least, Jones was citing that figure while criticising others for cheapening out and making limited animation at $10,000 a cartoon.

But it appears Metro was quite interested in cutting Jones’ cost. And that’s where Duncan and Vigran enter the picture.

They formed a company to find a buyer for cartoons using a “die-cut adhesive” method instead of the traditional drawn and inked system. The “Duncan Process” was supposedly patented but, unfortunately, I have not been able to find a patent for it on-line. Duncan and Vigran went to MGM, proposed making cartoons with the new method, and worked out a deal for a pilot cartoon called “The Invisible Mouse” at a cost of $10,000. MGM would supply storyboards, character drawings and other artistic materials free of charge to Duncan-Vigran.

A carbon copy of the proposed contract between the two companies ended up in the hands of late animation writer/historian Earl Kress. You can read all ten pages below.



You can see the agreement is dated September 17th. On September 9th, Daily Variety reported (UPI later picked up the story):

MGM-TV and CBS have set two animated pilots for series planned in 1966. Cartoons, titled "Goldielox And The Three Yanhs" and 'The Invisible Mouse" go into production this month at MGM's animation-visual arts division, with producer Les Goldman supervising and Chuck Jones directing.
Division has recently embarked on a large expansion program, including new releases of the "Tom & Jerry" cartoons and an animated short based on Norton Juster's book, "The Dot And The Line."

MGM gave up on the idea of releasing new Tom and Jerry shorts in 1969. That year, Jones, in the middle of a two-year contract, busied himself with Pogo and Horton TV specials, the feature The Phantom Tollbooth and main titles for The Strange Case Of...!#*%? before jumping to a job with the ABC TV network the following year.

What became of Duncan and Vigran’s company, and the projects mentioned in the Variety story, are mysteries (at least for now). Vigran died in 1986, Duncan passed away in 1988.

Three Weeks For a Cow

Horace Horsecollar is taking Clarabelle Cow to a barn dance, featuring all kinds of public domain tunes, in the 1930 short The Shindig. His motorcycle (with a rag tied around the front tire because of a flat) barely gets him to the Cow residence.



There’s a funny gag when it turns out the door bell at Clarabelle’s place is actually her cowbell, and the rope pulling it is her tail. The Disney story people top it by having Clarabelle get caught by the camera reading Eleanor Glyn’s sex novel “Three Weeks,” and hiding it in embarrassment. Karl Cohen’s book “Forbidden Animation” quotes a New York Times report that the cartoon was banned in Ohio for that reason.



The rest of the cartoon is blah—dancing, cycle animation, the inevitable wiener dog and obese pig, several razzberries by an obxious kid (but no outhouse or spitoon jokes).

Booby Traps Brushwork

Snafu tries to escape from some booby traps (from the cartoon of the same name). Some admirable brushwork here.



Multiple eyes, and feet outlines, too.



This cartoon has close-up dialogue where you can see Snafu’s molars, a nice little hop/walk cycle, the “Endearing Young Charms” joke that Friz Freleng later used (Warren Foster at work?) and a booby trap made up of a woman’s...well, I suspect Bob Clampett sniggered at that one.

An Actor Playing Comedy, Arnold Stang

Which name doesn’t belong on this list—Frank Sinatra, James Dean, Leif Garrett, Arnold Stang?

Okay, this is a trick question. They all belong on the list. They were all teen idols.

Yes, it’s true Stang was no Aaron Carter. Or Aaron Burr for that matter (look it up). But it seems he got wild support from young people for his role of Gerard on The Henry Morgan Show on radio. It’s where Stang first made his name, before going on to aggressively berate Milton Berle on TV.

Gerard was a wonderful character, and I’m sure he was a stand-in for part of Morgan’s own personality. He didn’t have much respect for anything.

Here’s a great piece from Swing, a magazine published by WBH radio in Kansas City back in the days when radio stations wanted to entertain listeners instead of endlessly self-promote. You can ignore Stang’s age reference in this piece from the June 1951 issue. He lied about his age for years and was born in 1918, not 1922. It helped him get kid parts when he was younger.

When you’re finished reading this, you can find more Stang posts on the blog HERE, HERE, and HERE. Sorry, no Leif Garrett posts, even though he was made for dancing, I once heard. (Now, if Arnold Stang sang that when he had his RCA record contract, it’d be a scream).

EVERYBODY LOVES GERARD
Arnold Stang steals the show from stellar comedians; and his eventual triumph as a top-rank comic in his own right is predicted.
by JAY ARROW
HE HAS fan clubs in Detroit, Hollywood, Chicago and New York — but millions of Americans never heard of him. Bobbysoxers chase him in the streets, but in his own words, "I look like a scared chipmunk who forgot to come out of the rain."
He is the world's greatest exponent of "Brooklynese" — and a native son of Chelsea, Massachusetts. Famous as being one of the best, if not the top, comedy stooge in the business, he hates being considered a stooge. Because he is often funnier than the stars he works with, he sometimes finds it tough to get a job.
That's Arnold Stang — better known to Henry Morgan fans as "Gerard", whose cracked-voice "Hi-ya!" is a signal for mirth from coast to coast. Television fans are also getting to know Stang through his frequent guest shots on the Milton Berle show. Stang, who commands higher pay than many stars, was until recently relatively unknown. Yet he's appeared with all the yuk masters — Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Fred Allen, Kay Kyser, Eddie Cantor, Groucho Marx, Ed Gardner and the late Al Jolson.

There are two kinds of comics, according to Stang. Those that can pay him, and those that can't. There are two other kinds, those who will risk hiring him, and those who won't. Stang is a show stealer. Not deliberately, perhaps, but too many top comics have complained, "This boy is too funny." One frankly told Stang's agent he wouldn't hire him for that reason.
Like the platypus, Stang seems born to be laughed at. Nature endowed him with a ridiculous appearance, and added the "insult" of a comical voice. Stang improved on Nature by using a bow tie and horn-rimmed glasses as his trade mark. Added to his solemn face and stunted toothpick figure, these help him resemble nothing so much as a starved baby owl.
Stang was very much upset when the director of "Sailor, Beware", which hit Broadway in 1944, refused to allow him to wear glasses in the featured role he was playing. Before the show opened, Stang went to the Brooklyn Navy Yard to play in a benefit. Having a late supper with the C. O., Stang demanded, "Are sailors allowed to wear glasses?"
"Over three hundred of them at this base do," acknowledged the Commander.
"Put that in writing", Stang ordered. He bore the Commander's note triumphantly to the director of "Sailor, Beware". When the show opened, Stang was wearing glasses.
The glasses he wears have empty rims. His prize pair are the specs Harold Lloyd used in making his famous silent, "The Freshman". Lloyd gave them to him when a deal was pending for Stang to play Lloyd's old part in a remake of the film. Though the movie was never made, Stang kept his treasured gift. The veteran Lloyd's glasses have symbolic importance to the little comic, because Lloyd was his ideal from the start of his career, and unquestionably influenced Stang's concept of comedy.
Apart from Harold Lloyd's artistry, one of the great comedian's attributes which appeals strongly to Stang was his ability to parlay laughs into a million dollars. "I asked myself", Stang recalls, "how did all those other actors get rich — Lloyd, Chaplin, Hope and so on? You know how? Each built up a popular character in the public mind, a character everybody can identify — a simple little guy, very appealing, who gets kicked in the teeth, but who always comes out on top because he doesn't know when he's licked!"
In "Gerard", Stang has perfected his theatrical alter ego. He is a little guy against the whole world. His greatest defense against society is his refusal to be impressed by anything or anybody. If Henry Morgan boasts of having shaken the President's hand, Gerard answers, "Big deal". If someone explains something that is obviously over his head, Gerard mutters darkly, "Whassamatta, y'a wise guy?" If another character reacts with surprise at something he has said, Gerard explodes, "I tell him yes; he tells me no!" And in those eight words, his scratchy voice ranges up and down the entire musical scale.

STANG considers himself first an foremost an actor playing comedy. He emphasizes that his approach to comedy is through characterization, not gags. For that reason he likes to sit in on the writing of all shows in which he is scheduled to appear; so that his role, as written, will be consistent with the character, Gerard.

Although Stang's appearance by itself can provoke belly laughs, the secret of his success is his voice. He uses it as Heifetz uses a violin. Stang is a master of mimicry, speech rhythm, intonation, pronunciation and voice curve.
Stang's Brooklynese is considerably toned down from the Kings County English. "Nobody could understand it otherwise," he explains. "Furthermore, it isn't a Brooklyn dialect. You can hear exactly the same kind of speech in Jersey City, Chicago and a dozen other cities. The dialect really represents the slovenly speech of the average tenament district."
Stang didn't know he was a born comedian until he tried out for a serious role in a school play. "I walked on stage", he recalls, "burning with an artist's desire to emote. Inside of two seconds, I was just burning. I didn't even get a chance to open my mouth, and the faculty dramatic coach was laughing. I ignored him and read the role with real intensity. By the time I finished, the coach and everybody else was rolling in the aisles. So that's how I got the lead. The comedy lead, that is, in another play."
Realizing that comedy was his forte, Stang decided to try for an audition on Horn and Hardart's "Children's Hour." He won a nod simply by sending a postcard to the New York radio station airing the show. Money he had saved for his mother's anniversary gift bought him a ticket from Chelsea, Mass., to New York. The year was 1934; Stang was twelve.
At the audition he felt extremely nervous, probably because the audience was composed of hostile mothers and their equally hostile progeny. He delivered a soliloquy in dialect, and won laughter in all the wrong places. He left the station discouraged, sure he'd lost out. But he received word to report back for comedy roles.
Stang stayed on the "Children's Hour" for three years. He was paid ten dollars a week, less his agent's 10 per cent. For this net take of nine he was required to rehearse Fridays and Saturdays, and broadcast on Sundays. But the show gave him an opportunity to branch out as a radio type on other programs. Any director with a script calling for a horrible brat with a Satanic sense of humor put a call in for Stang. He was "That Brewster Boy", and Seymour in "Rise of the Goldbergs". There was only one voice like his in all radio.
Stang soon found himself tapped for Broadway. After "Sailor Beware", he was cast as a little guy from the Bronx in "All in Favor". After that he was featured in "Same Time Next Week", a first-class flop which proved expensive to the show's angel, Milton Berle. For a long while afterward Berle complained, "It cost me $25,000 just to get to know Arnold."
Stang recalls that on opening night of the Berle show, the prop phone in the stage set booth didn't ring on cue for an important bit of exposition. After stalling desperately, Stang ad libbed, "I think Til call So-and-So." Finding himself without a nickel, he dialed anyhow. Whereupon the ear-piece fell apart. Struggling with it, Stang managed to stammer his necessary lines into the mouthpiece. During which the phone bell suddenly rang shrilly. Shaken, Stang hung up, and the earpiece promptly fell apart again.
"It's a wonder Berle didn't lose $50,000", Stang sighs.

WHEN the little comedian's stage work won him a movie contract, in true Gerard fashion he refused to be impressed by Hollywood. On the first day, a pompous producer took him in hand and taught him technique for a solid half-hour while everyone on the set waited. "I mean it was solid", Stang recalls. "He didn't even give me a chance to say yes, no, or even what. Just kept telling me to look through the camera at this, look through the camera at that, and sounding off nonstop like a very big wheel".
Finally he ran out of breath and snapped, "Well, is it all clear now?"
It was the first chance Stang had had to open his mouth. So he said, "Wait till I get my glasses, and you can explain it again. I couldn't see a thing". The producer didn't talk to him again for three weeks.
Stang worked with Rosalind Russell in "My Sister Eileen", and Bob Hope in "They Got Me Covered". While appearing in "Seven Days Leave" with Victor Mature and Lucille Ball, he and Mature toured the local cafes as a team. He would step out from behind the shadow of Mature, who bulked approximately one hundred pounds heavier than Stang. The act was introduced, understandably, as "Mature and Immature".
During the war, Stang toured Army camps with the Kay Kyser show as a replacement for Ish Kabibble. The unit flew around the country in beat up Army planes, whose engines had a disconcerting habit of catching fire. "As Gerard would say", Stang recalls with a shudder, " 'Oooo, I'm dyin'!" The little comic, who doesn't smoke, kept his grateful father supplied with cigarettes during the tour.

In 1949, Stang married an ex-girl-reporter from the Brooklyn Eagle, JoAnne Taggart, who had once interviewed him four years before. JoAnne had switched to publicity when they met again. She acquired Stang as a client, and he took her as his wife. They were married between rehearsals for the Henry Morgan show, with Stang insisting on time out because he "had to have it". Morgan only found out why during the broadcast, and the news almost broke up the show.
Recently JoAnne visited her doctor for a "rabbit" pregnancy test. She phoned Stang at their apartment to tell him that they were going to have a "little rabbit". Stang chatted casually with her, hung up, then went in to take a shower. It was while standing under the water that his eyes suddenly glazed and he fainted. When he came to, he had a tremendous bump over one eye, plus a severe headache, and had to go to bed.
"Probably the longest double-take on record", he muses with a pardonable touch of professional pride.
Stang's greatest source of annoyance is the fact that every time he switches his allegiance to a new comedy star, he wins a fresh burst of enthusiasm as a talented "newcomer". Until recently nobody ever seemed to know his real name . . . or care. Arnold Stang is a relative unknown compared to his creation, Gerard. And few radio or television fans identify Gerard with any of Stang's other comedy characters in his sixteen-year career.
Still, Stang gets comfort from the fact that his fame is beginning to take root. There is a definite boom of Stang fan clubs, to whom he is a figure as heroic as Sinatra to his coterie. Little-girl squeals of adoration follow Stang's appearance on any stage, and teen-agers trail him for blocks after the show, begging him to part with tie, handkerchief or shorts.
Stang's eventual triumph as a top-rank comic is taken for granted by most of show business. Not willing to trust to luck, he continually perfects his talents as "an actor playing comedy". For the time being, he is content to let the stars twinkle in their firmament — as long as they remember to reward him handsomely for his help in keeping them there.

Tex, I'll Have Leon's Ham and Eggs

There was a lot of borrowing going on in Tex Avery’s One Cab's Family (1952). The basic concept of the disobedient little car trying to beat a train was lifted from Friz Freleng’s 1937 Warners cartoon Streamlined Greta Green. And Avery borrows from himself, lifting a gag from A Feud There Was (1938).

A hillbilly fires a huge assault cannon. Cut to a pig and a chicken eating feed from a plate. Kaboom! They turn into ham and eggs. Not only did Avery have the plate, ham and eggs drop from the sky in both cartoons, he had the camera pull in for a close-up.



You can see the later version of the gag in this post.

Tubby Millar gets the story credit on this cartoon; Rich Hogan and Roy Williams got it on the latter.

Cat Love a Duck

By 1955, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera were having troubles trying to keep the Tom and Jerry series fresh. On top of that, animation had changed. The great Disney-type personality movement that made the cat and mouse so appealing in the ‘40s was being replaced, partly thanks to UPA. By the mid-‘50s, The two seemed to stare with their lower lip out a lot of the time.

In the ‘40s, Hanna and Barbera had used a Beulah-type maid as a third character for Tom and Jerry to play off. That type of character was o-w-t in the ‘50s. Bill and Joe used a menagerie of other animals but became obsessed with a little duck, who was plotted into at least seven cartoons.

I loathe this character.

In That’s My Mommy, the stupid duckling believes Tom is his mother (the duck has a mommy fixation in most of his cartoons), even after Jerry points out in a book what a mother duck and a mother cat look like (he actually never catches on during the whole picture).

Here are some drawings from the one real take in the short, when the duck realises he’s the key ingredient in his mommy’s duck stew. It ain’t ‘40s-type Tom-and-Jerry animation by a long shot, let alone something outrageous like Tex Avery would have tried.



Now a head shake and another take.



The cartoon ends with Tom taking pity on the pitiable duck (rivers of tears flow from the cat’s eyes) and deciding not to eat him. The last scene shows Tom swimming with him, just like a loving mommy.



The duck, of course, was re-used by Hanna and Barbera in the Yakky Doodle series, and there was even a cartoon where Fibber Fox decides not to eat the duck, but be his mommy instead.

The Quiet Life of a Radio Star

How many stars would greet people at the door in a bathrobe? Jack Benny would. And did.

Actually, he did this for ages. There have been several newspaper columns we’ve spotted over the years where Jack did his interview wearing his bathrobe in his hotel room. Evidently, Jack liked to be relaxed after a stressful week of putting together a radio show from nothing.

His wife Mary Livingstone remarks about that during her own interview with Hollywood magazine which appeared in the June 1937 issue. While it’s true the two of them threw large parties at their home, indoors and outdoors, Jack seems to have liked a quiet life at home.

So, here’s the article. The reference to the “Bee,” for those unaware, involves the feud Jack and Fred Allen had just begun over the air. It was sparked over whether Jack could actually play Schubert’s “The Bee” on the violin. The feud moved on to other topics after about three months, but the “Bee” began it all and caught the imagination of the public. There are “bee” references in the popular press about this time when referring to either Allen or Benny, and the storyline of a Columbia “celebrity caricature” cartoon even contained it (with the Schubert piece in the background).

Mary Puts the “Bee” on Jack Benny
By WHITNEY WILLIAMS
“HMMMMMMM... what can you make of a fellow who greets callers in an old red bathrobe and older slippers?”
No, children of wonder-wonderland, it isn’t Aunt Libby touching upon Uncle Oscar’s eccentricities . . . the above momentous words are uttered by no less authority than Mary Livingston, of that immaculously-groomed — in public — Jack Benny.
Mary, you see, happens to know whereof she speaks. Mary is Mrs. Jack Benny, a star in her own right insofar as radio audiences are concerned, and Jack’s own best pal and severest critic. She knows what she knows and she sees what she sees, and Jack . . . well, naturally, he’s a bit of a pet of hers. But . . .
"Honestly," she says, "I never know what Jack’s going to do next.
"Take the time we were married. I was engaged to be married to another man. The wedding was to take place sometime in March. Early in January I went east from Los Angeles to Chicago, to visit with my sister before the event. I arrived at my sister’s on a Sunday. Friday, I was Mrs. Jack Benny. "How’d it happen? Well, I’d like to know that, myself. Jack must have done some fast talking, or something.

"You see, I had first met Jack about four years before, when he was playing the Orpheum in Los Angeles and I was a buyer in the lingerie department of May’s, a large department store almost directly across the street from the theatre. My sister, the same sister I visited in Chicago, introduced us one night backstage — Babe was an actress herself — and we went out together after the show.
"The next day, who should enter my department in the store but Jack. He and another man walked in and started to ask for things. Then, they’d go off and come back, asking to be directed to something else. And whenever I waited on them, Jack, in a very loud tone, would begin to find fault. It was only an act, I knew, but it began to get my goat. All the girls and some of the customers were watching, to make matters worse.
"This kept up all morning, with me doing a slow burn. I think Jack knew I was getting mad, for he began to make it even more embarrassing for me. Finally, he asked me to go out to lunch.
"After that introduction to the Benny wit and manner, I didn’t see Jack again for a year, when he returned to Los Angeles on his tour of the circuit. Every year, then, for three years, I’d see him for a few evenings while he was in town, then forget all about him.
"That’s why it was all the more surprising, then, when I discovered my-self married to him. He was stopping at the same hotel in Chicago as my sister, and naturally, I saw him as soon as I arrived back there. But when he showed up on the scene, he was just a friend whom I hadn’t seen for a long time. I still can’t figure out what happened."
JACK entered the room at that moment, greeted us cheerily, and flashed "Doll" — that’s Mary, whom he’s called that ever since they were married — a bright smile.
"Where’s Joanie?" he asked.
Joanie, or Joan Naomi, is their small daughter, dainty in a Dresden-like way and ruler of the household, whom the Bennys adopted several years ago. After he had left the room in search of the cherub, Mary continued. . . .
"Jack’s simply crazy about our little daughter, and whenever he’s home she’s seldom out of his sight. No matter in how brooding a mood he may be, when he sees her he seems to brighten up and is a new man.
"I’m frequently asked if Jack wisecracks as much and is as funny around the house as he is over the radio and on the screen.
"I can only reply that Jack is a very quiet man. He’s not over-talkative as are so many men and frequently, like all comedians, he’s moody. Humor and comedy, you know, are hard work, much harder than most people realize.
"Occasionally, we have Burns and Allen and the Marx brothers and their wives over for dinner. The majority of people, I honestly think, would like to believe that the evening was one wild, raucous affair. Actually, instead of the Marxes climbing atop the piano, Burns and Allen going into their act and the Bennys trying to compete, the party is little different from that held in anybody else’s house, with the exception, possibly, that no liquor is served. Anybody can have it, of course, but nobody in that group touches it. Jack and George go over in one corner and play Casino, Gracie and I engage in Russian Bank and the Marxes play Bridge. Exciting, isn’t it?
"But that’s the kind of an evening Jack likes. We go out very little — just a dinner once in a while at some friend’s house, and the Trocadero once a week. Jack works too hard for us to be constantly on the go, even if we wanted to. But there’s no telling about that man of mine."
And there never was, for that matter.

THE lure of the theatre got into his blood back in Waukegan, Ill., when he headed a small orchestra and played at school dances. His mother had presented him with a violin one birthday, and Jack, after taking lessons, had thought it would be nice to play the instrument in a band.
Deciding to take his orchestra into Waukegan’s only theatre, Jack got only as far as the front door. He was made the doorman. Then, he tried the back door and was made property man. Finally, after much pleading, he reached the orchestra pit and spent several months fiddling. He learned to play "The Bee." (Page Fred Allen.)
When the Waukegan theatre closed of old age, Jack teamed up with a piano player and appeared in vaudeville for four years.
Then came the World War. Jack always had wanted to see the world from a porthole rather than a stage door, so he joined the Navy . . . and was placed in the Navy Relief Society. Instead of going overseas, his duties consisted of entertaining.
His first appearance was at the Great Lakes Naval Station. He played his violin for a show called The Great Lakes Review.
Returning to vaudeville after the War, Jack’s violin thereafter spent most of its time under his arm instead of under his chin. In time, he became one of the smartest monologists in the show business.
January 12, 1927, is the red-letter day in Jack Benny’s life. It was that day he took unto himself Sadye Marks — or Mary Livingston, as she’s known today — as wife. Ten years wed last January 12th, the Bennys today are among the happiest married couples in Hollywood.
JACK entered motion pictures during that period when Hollywood producers were raiding the legitimate and vaudeville stages for talent.

He was doing his regular vaudeville act — probably you old-timers will recall it — in Los Angeles, when several Metro-Goldwyn executives, preparing to make a musical revue on the screen, noticed how clever this fellow was as a master of ceremonies. A day later, and Jack Benny signed to play one of the leading roles in Metro’s Hollywood Revue of 1929, coming through with flying colors. More recently, you’ve seen him in such pictures as Broadway Melody of 1936, The Big Broadcast of 1937 and College Holiday.
Admittedly the most popular figure on the air, film audiences now are clamoring for more pictures in which this star of both the radio and the screen appears. Only recently, Benny and his wife gave a Command Performance — or should I say Command Broadcast? — for the English king, George VI. The British Broadcasting Company finally selected the Benny program from all other American broadcasts with which to entertain their monarch.
No wonder Mary Livingston looks proudly at Jack Benny and complacently leans back and murmurs, "Hmmmmm . . . what can you make of a fellow who greets callers in an old red bathrobe and older slippers?" She has no wish to change the life and habits of her lovable lord and pal.

Jay and Bill vs Bill and Joe

Bill Scott and Jay Ward weren’t impressed with either Walt Disney or Hanna-Barbera, but for different reasons. And they expounded on their opinions in an interview published in the November 12, 1961 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The two really had no business criticising anyone when it came to animation. Their characters were engaged in minimal, jerky movement, and held drawings with eye-blinks. But, in Ward’s estimation, it was better minimal jerky movement than Hanna-Barbera’s (evidently animator/director Gerard Baldwin agreed; he left Hanna-Barbera in 1959 to join the Ward operation). The cartoons certainly looked better in 1961 than when the studio first set up shop two years earlier. And while Ward’s cartoons may have been funnier, the shorts were half the length of Hanna-Barbera’s. They were ideal for the quip-cut-quip-cut-pun-cut dialogue that Scott and his team of writers developed. Hanna-Barbera’s talk was less brash and flippant; there’s no way you’d find a Snagglepuss soliloquy in a Ward cartoon.

Still, Ward and Scott raise some valid points in their interview. I’m pretty sure some of this was quoted in Keith Scott’s fine book “The Moose That Roared” but you can read it in full below.

"Bullwinkle Show" Creators Hate a Strong Story First
By HARRY HARRIS
A YEAR ago, just before the debut of 'The Flintstones," Joe Barbera of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon factory that also grinds out "Huckleberry Hound," "Yogi Bear," "Quick Draw McGraw" and the new "Top Cat," sounded off to us at great and amusing length about long-reigning cartoon king Walt Disney's "outmoded" concepts.
Nowadays, Jay Ward and Bill Scott, representing an even newer "new wave" in the TV animation field, needle Disney and Hanna-Barbera.
Native Californian Ward and Philadelphia-born, Trenton-reared Scott are partnered in the production of NBC's 'The Bullwinkle Show," Sundays at 7 P. M. (Channel 3), an outgrowth of "Rocky and His Friends," being aired on Channel 6, via syndication, daily at 7:30 A. M. and Wednesday and Friday at 5:30 P. M. Earlier, Ward created "Crusader Rabbit," still going strong under other auspices.
"We don't really needle the others," Ward demurs. "We just think they have the wrong concept.
"We believe that animated cartoons should have a strong story first. Then you work the animation in. "Disney uses full animation because he doesn't really believe in the story. He lets the animators make wonderful pictures instead."
"Disney mistrusts writers," opines Scott. "He's actually said things like 'Wait till the animators get hold of that idea' and 'With sufficient acting, it'll be fine.' It's like a Broadway producer's saying, 'Who cares what the play is; we have Laurence Olivier!' "
"Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera," Ward continues, "believe in the same kind of animation, but they've come up with economical short cuts for TV.
"Their idea of movement, for instance, is to keep heads nodding the same way, no matter what the characters are saying. We call that 'the Hanna-Barbera palsy.'
"We believe in devising a funny story and then animating to fit the story with classic poses, held drawings, funny walks. Every word should have appropriate animation."
"Until about 1948 or 1949," says Scott, "dialogue in cartoons was frowned on. The ideal cartoon was one with no words at all. That was a holdover from newspaper and magazine cartoons; the funniest ones didn't need words."
" 'Crusader Rabbit' started adding dialogue," says Ward.
Scott again: "Doing an animated cartoon without dialogue is like proving how far you can walk on one leg. Sure it can be done, but why?

"We don't insist that each line be a smash. We use throwaways along with hits on the head—'inside' jokes, puns, wild lines, wisecracks. Where Hanna-Barbera go off is that they try to use stand-up comedy routines, and it turns out dull.
"Disney gets so worried about dialogue that sometimes he spends a full day recording two or three minutes of talk, trying to get subtle nuances."
"After 10 takes," Ward suggests, "no one knows the difference."
"It's like tracing a tracing of a tracing," says Scott.
"We have the strongest writing staff in the business," Ward claims. "Our emphasis is on writing because Bill and I were both writers; Hanna and Barbera were primarily animators.
In the past, animators have always been the key men.
"I don't think many people turning out cartoon series really understand stories. That's why so many of the shows, like 'The Flintstones,' are merely copies of stories for human characters.
"Television and pictures try to use established properties because they feel that if people already know about them, it's a head start.
"But that stifles creative thinking. Why rehash 'Mutiny on the Bounty'? Why do old 'Amos 'n' Andy' scripts and call it 'Calvin and the Colonel'? We loved Amos 'n' Andy on radio, but because you can't have colored characters in a cartoon is no reason to make them animals. "We were invited to do the 'Calvin' animations, but turned it down.
We've been asked to do cartoons based on 'Lum and Abner' and 'Fibber McGee.' They've already announced series about the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy.
"We're interested in fantasy and whimsy, a step above reality—and you can't do that if you're using old established characters."
Hanna and Barbera are peeved with them, they report, because—asked by a reporter what they thought of "The Flintstones"—they replied succinctly, "Mediocre, but at least it opened night hours for cartoons."
"We got a sharp note from their press agent," says Scott," but we got even. We spread a rumor that Hanna and Barbera are married to each other."
The zany duo operates out of three adjacent houses on Hollywood's Sunset Blvd. Ward rented an apartment in one of the buildings two years ago as living quarters, but soon converted that apartment and several nearby into workshops and offices.
A huge statue of Bullwinkle was erected, with much hoopla, outside the principal building last September. Other wacky gimmicks abound. Thus, a la the Grauman Chinese Theater's famed footprints, and signatures in cement, Ward and Scott have designated an area for imprints of celebrities' elbows.
From these offices emanate the most imaginative—and most uninhibited—press releases ever to leaven with levity a TV columnist's mail.
Thirty-odd some very odd people are employed at the Hollywood headquarters, though rarely are more than 10 or 11 on the premises.

"The others—writers, directors and story line people—often work at home," Ward explains. "They're free to come and go as they like. One even lived in Italy for six months and submitted his material by mail.
"The animation is done by about 180 artists in Mexico City. We started that as an economy measure; now, there's a shortage of animators in Hollywood. We wouldn't bring the work back anyway; we're pleased."
Scott writes the episodes starring Bullwinkle J. Moose and his sidekick, Rocky J. Squirrel, in 'The Bullwinkle Show," and provides the voices of Bullwinkle and of Dudley Doright, who figures in spoofs of melodramas.
"Bill's one of the top voice people in the business," says Ward.
"Jay's very big for crowds and applause," Scott counter-compliments.
"He's a great mumbler!" Both have been married 18 years; each has three children. Ward's are 15, 13 and 12; Scott's, 14, 11 and 5. "My kids love 'Bullwinkle,' " says Ward. 'They're loyal. I beat 'em!"
"But my youngest," Scott says dolefully, "prefers Popeye! What a shock!"
Teen-agers constitute a sizable Ward & Scott cheering section. Their particular favorite: the "Bullwinkle" baddie, Boris J. Badenov.
"Teen-agers like Boris, whose slogan is 'Somebody down there likes me,' because they're rebels," Scott suggests.
As for adult rooters, they're all over the place. Example: Us.