By the time this calendar was published in late 1997, I’d left Hanna-Barbera for Frederator. But, not without a lot of pride in the great, original series that were finally getting under way from our first shorts program, like Dexter’s Laboratory, Cow & Chicken, and Johnny Bravo. And, lo and behold, to this day Cartoon Network Studios has kept up my tradition of cool calendars for their friends.
Whenever I get a little free time (like now, on vacation) I pull crap off of my shelves and scan it for posterity. Like these two Hanna-Barbera Cartoons calendars from the 90s (I posted 1995 on last summer’s vacation).
Over the years I’ve collected all sorts of stuff that have pop culture images printed on them (skateboards, glasses, calendars, et cetera) and when I got to Hanna-Barbera it seemed to me the studio was in need of some image repair. Calendars were my obsession of that moment, so we put together some incredible design talent and photographers (SpotCo and Mark Hill for 1994, HB in-house talent in 1995) and spiffed ourselves up a little.
Artist (and RAW member) Chris Battle posted this photo on RAW the other day with a few folks identified. The Sherlock Holmes in me was intrigued, because not only was this the last all studio portrait ever, but the first (and last) one after my tenure of running the studio. My colleague Eric Homan called upon his community of HB friends*, and between us all we’ve filled in the names of almost 100 of the intrepid. If you know any of the missing faces, please let us know.
…..
This photograph is the last all-studio portrait taken at Hanna-Barbera Cartoons. Time Warner had bought Turner Broadcasting (owner of HB) and folded the studio into Warner Bros. Animation. WBA chief Jean MacCurdy made the decision to fold HB. Eventually, it resurrected as Cartoon Network Studios. Luckily, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera were able to sit for this last portrait of the company they founded.
1 Jim Hearn
2 Paula LaFond
3 Jim Stenstrum
4 Mark
5
6 Vaughn Tada
7
8 Nora Johnson
9 Vincent Davis
10 Paul McAvoy
11 Maxwell Atoms
12 Chris Bracher
13 Steve Marmel
14 Mike Ryan
15 Robert Alvarez
16 Patricia Gatz
17 Jeff Collins
18 Ed Collins
19 Carlton Clay
20
21 Hugh Saunders
22 Sergio
23 Gilbert Quesada
24
25 Gary Olson
26 Al Gmuer
27 Renaldo Jara Jara
28 Sandy Ojeda
29 Susan DeChristofaro
30 Mimi Magnuson
31 Harry Nicholson
32
33 Louis Cuck
34 Marc Perry
35 Linda Barry
36 Pat Foley
37 Kerry Iverson
38 Paul Douglas
39 Julie Humbert
40 Jim Moore
41 Tim Iverson
42 Van Partible
43 Bodie Chandler
44 Joseph A. Bova
45 I can’t count
46 Keith Copsin
47 Kris Lindquist
48 William Parrish
49 Colette Sunderman
50 Carol Iverson
51 Nancy Grimaldi
52 Davis Doi
53 Melissa Lugar
54 Joanne Halcon
55 Nelda Ridley
56 Diane Kianski
57 Sandy Benenati
58 Barbara Krueger
59 Alison Leopold
60 Linda Moore
61 Diana Stolpe
62 Eleanor Medina
63 Janet Mazzoti
64 Genndy Tartakovsky
65 Craig McCraken
66 Jean MacCurdy
67 Joe Barbera
68 Maggie Roberts
69 Frederick Flintstone
70 Bill Hanna
71 Iwao Takamoto
72 Wanda Smith
73 Paul Rudish
74
75 Andy Bialk
76 Chris Battle
77 Nancy Sue Lark
78 Michael Shapiro
79 Zita Lefebvre
80
81
82 Craig Kellman
83 Luz Leon
84
85 Diana Ritchey
86 John McIntyre
87 Pat Lawrence
88 Amy Wagner
89 Brian Miller
90 Victoria McCollum
91 Rob Romero
92 Sharra Gage
93 Charlie Desrochers
94 Iraj Paran
95 Sami Rank
96 Jason Butler Rote
97 Liza Ann Warren
98 Chris Savino
99 Scott Setterberg
100 Donna Castricone
101 Sue Mondt
102 Martin Ansolabehere
103 Kevin Kaliher
104 Summer Wells
105
106 Ray Garcia
* Photo supplied by Chris Battle,
kindly identified by Chris Battle, Eric Homan, Marc Melocchi, Fred Seibert & Amy Wagner
Mailed out the week of December 10, 2007
This card is the first in our series of “Original Cartoon Inspirations” (I’ve got no idea what the others will be or when we’ll publish them). Because on a few different levels Joseph Barbera & William Hanna fit that description to a tee.
Obviously, Eric and I started our cartoon careers at the Hanna-Barbera Studios, working alongside of Joe and Bill. There really wasn’t any better inspiration than that experience. To be able to have long, first hand, conversatons about making Tom & Jerry, or The Flintstones and The Jetsons gave us insight on everything from the creative process, to setting up the most successful production shop in history, to just the everyday interaction among the very talented and very human characters that populated the building over the decades. Sitting in a car or a plane with Bill for hours at a time, hearing him reminisce about going fishing every year with Tex Avery… there’s really nothing I can say to recreate those moments. And, of course, that’s on top of being glued to the TV set for days at a time when the original HB shows hit the air in the late 50s.
This photograph was taken in 1995 by Jeff Sedlik, as part of my ongoing effort to give Joe and Bill (and the whole studio) the respect they deserved. I knew Jeff as an LA based photographer primarily known for sittings with jazz musicians (I already owned Miles Davis and BB King portraits) and I think he did a fabulous job with the guys. I think the session was their last formal sitting.
PS: Eric scheduled this card because December 14th’s the 50th anniversary of the debut of the first Hanna-Barbera Productions TV series, The Ruff & Reddy Show. It’s worth commemorating.
Frederator Postcards Series 1, 1998
Frederator Postcards Series 2, 1999
Frederator Postcards Series 3, 2000
Frederator Postcards Series 4, 2003
Frederator Postcards Series 5, 2004-2005
Frederator Postcards Series 6, 2007-2008
Click a card to see the whole set.
As I was getting together the post about The Hanna-Barbera Treasury, I realized I’d added some rarities from my collection to my personal website and never mentioned them here or at RAW.
My close colleagues from over the years can attest to my obsessions of collecting printed artifacts with pop culture illustrations or photographs, like posters, calendars or skateboards. So in the early 1980s, when Yazoo Records commissioned R. Crumb to come up with his “Heroes of Blues, Jazz, & Country” for collector card boxes I thought it would be cool to apply the concept to cartoons.
From Hanna-Barbera’s founding in 1956 until 1992 (the studio was effectively closed by it’s latest owner Warner Bros. in 1997) the studio had no sense of its place in popular culture. When Ted Turner bought the company in 1991 he and Scott Sassa installed me as the president and we started to blow the roof off the sucker. There were many of us working at the company who grew up with it’s radical and wonderful innovations and wanted to finally gather up the respect we thought the place was due.
I figured collector cards would be a quick way to gather up a lot of the wonderful characters in our library (while we were busily trying to come up with new ones) in a way that would show them off in the hippest, most contemporary way possible (short of Frank Kozik’s posters). They were never sold at retail; they were for our various business associates and staff. Actually, I had no idea how bloated the bureaucracy at the studio ahd become and that it would take over two years to get both these sets out.
It was particularly satisfying to me that we were able to go into the never publicaly seen before archives and pull presentation art, storyboard frames, and work sketches and include some in the adventure set.
In retrospect, my biggest disappointment with these boxes is that they happened before I gained full appreciation of the way the HB art had changed over the years. Starting in the mid 1960s the original, funky, post UPA, designs of the classic characters (like Huck, Yogi, The Flintstones, and the like) started to cute-ify and became rounder, less raw, and overall less distinctive. When I asked about it at first I was told there was a need to standardize the models because the original animation was all over the place. There are some who claimed the changes began with the ascent of Iwao Takamoto to design director, but, not being there at the time I don’t know; however, it’s clear to all that everything that was done happened with explicit consent from Joe (in particular) and Bill. Eventually, it became clear to me that the prevailing winds just disliked the original art and there was a 30 year effort to actually deny its existence. I wasn’t able to do all that much about it until near the end of my tenure when we hired Craig Kellman to vintage up The Flintstones; but that’ll be another day of scanning and posting.
By the way, I can’t for the life of me remember why I was convinced The Flintstones should be included in the “Adventure” cards. Maybe it something to do with the movie… Ah well, such are the paradoxes that make collectors happy.
……
Hanna-Barbera Trading Cards
Hollywood, 1993
Credits (from the box):
Special thanks to all those people who made The Hanna-Barbera Trading Cards possible!
CREATORS
Wiliam Hanna, Joseph Barbera
DESIGN
Roy Guzman, Bobbi Jankovich
WRITERS
David Burd, Marty Pekar
THE HANNA-BARBERA CREW
Models
Linda Moore
Dana Granger
Barbara Kruger
Donna Zeller
Marcus Nickerson
Bob Onorato
Pete Alvarado
Xerox
Star Wirth
Martin Corssley
Richard Wilson
Danny Conté
Ink & Paint
Alison Leopold
Suzette Darling
Joanne Plein
Christine Kingsland
Nelda Ridley
Lori Hanson
Lydia Swayne
Creative Services
Curt Covert
Lynn Domenico
Mary DeMarle
Shannon Dashiell
Jill Jones
Sue Doc
Betty Tropp
Research
Iwao Takamoto
JeffEckert
Hillary Dunchak
Glenn Leopold
Jerry Eisenberg
Marketing
Fred Seibert
Sally Prendergast
……
Hanna-Barbera Adventure Cards
Hollywood 1995
©1994, Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, Inc.
…..
Credits (from the box):
Special thanks to Fred Seibert, William Hanna, Joseph Barbera, and to all those people who made The Hanna-Barbera Adventure Cards possible!
DESIGN
Jill Jones
Ray Guzman
Bobbi Jankovich
WRITERS
David Burd
Marty Pekar
THE HANNA-BARBERA CREW
Models
Iwao Takamoto
Ric Estrada
Tony Sgroi
Ron Roesch
Barbara Krueger
Donna Zeller
Scott Awley
Xerox
Star Worth
Martin Crossley
Ink & Paint
Alison Darling
Suzette Darling
Joanne Plein
Chirstine Kingsland
Nelda Ridley
Lori Hanson
Lydia Swayne
Backgrounds
Bonnie Callahan
Jim Hickey
Ruben Chavez
Jerry Loveland
Craig Robertson
Richard Daskas
Art Services
Mary DeMarle
Shannon Dashiell
Liz Watson
Scott Miller
Betty Tropp
Creative Services
Sue Doc
Research
Jeff Eckert
Hillary Dunchak
Scott Awley
Tom Barreca
Lance Falk
Marketing
Sally Prendergast
Stephanie Sperber
When I was seven years old “The Huckleberry Hound Show” made me fall in love with Hanna-Barbera cartoons forever. So when I accidentally became President of the studio in 1992 I was naturally biased towards honoring the classic characters that made me a fan in the first place.
It took us a few years to get it together on a lot of fronts (saving the studio from extinction was job one) but by 1995 we had key initiatives in place, including licensing Creative Director Russell Hicks, Animation Art head Tom Barreca, and business head Alan Keith. The whole studio was constantly disappointed with the lack of cool stuff from our licensees so we decided to take matters into our own hands. We began with building and stocking a retail store right in the studio with the merchandised we wished someone else would do (maybe if we sent sample to a licensee they’d see the wisdom in our way and make the product for mass consumption). And soon, the idea percolated up, in those pre-Ecommerce days, we should have a high end catalog to make the best stuff available to the general public.
Russell, Tom, Animation Art Creative Director Eric Homan, and AA Director David Barenholtz put their teams to work developing contemporary merch we thought was worthy of our classic characters, and conceiving a catalog to showcase the stuff properly. I got heavily involved (frankly, I probably would’ve taken the job as catalog chief if they’d asked in 1992; I had an unhealthy obsession with catalog selling). By 1996 everything was ready.
And then Ted Turner sold the company.
The dingbats from Warner Bros. (the division Hanna-Barbera was attached to in the merger) were of a classic corporate take-over mold. They completely flamed everything Hanna-Barbera. Whatever we did was considered sub-standard, everything they did was great (of course, who could forget Histeria?). Dump the crap, shred the catalog, please listen to what we want you to do. It was little consolation that Peter Starrett, the head dingbat at the Warner Bros. stores, was summarily corporately executed as his grand vision of retail went down in flames.
…..
Hanna-Barbera Creative Director: Russell Hicks
Animation Art Creative Director: Eric Homan
Written by Marty Pekar
Designed by Susan McIntyre
Animation Art Vice President: Tom Barecca
Animation Art Director: David Barenholtz
From Eric: “We should see some of the cards’ backs. People loved those, and every time I showed them to someone, I’d always be asked, ‘Do they make a puzzle?’ ”
They’re in the same album on RAW, but here’s one as a teaser.
When I first got to Hanna-Barbera in 1992 the studio was nine years past it’s last big success (The Smurfs) and Ted Turner was on the verge of closing the place (producer David Kirschner [Pagemaster, Cats Don’t Dance] convinced Ted to keep the doors open, primarily to save production of his ultimately doomed features). I had absolutely no idea how to turn the studio around –I wasn’t even a novice when it came to making cartoons– but I certainly knew how to resurrect the image of the place. We’d start the turnaround there.
I wasn’t too crazy about the now-classic 70s HB logo (I know a lot of you disagree) because I felt the studio had turned its back on the powerful heritage they had making cartoons (I was insulted by the way that the prior regime had continued producing junk-for-revenue like Yo! Yogi and numerous pale Flintstones specials). I much preferred the graphic vibe of the 50s and I was determined to reclaim it. I turned to my pals Tom Corey and Scott Nash who had developed the Nickelodeon logo and gave them my rap. I also handed them Iraj Paran’s re-drawing of the vintage HB script. Tom and Scott agreed with my basic philosophy that contemporary trademarks should be kinetic in conception and presented dozens of logos that incorporated the classic characters (and not only the usual suspects, but Muttley, Barney, Secret Squirrel, Jonny Quest, and others) and Iraj’s script, and they added in the elemental shapes of ovals, circles, squares, and rectangles. I’m not sure we caught the exact spirit I was looking for (that would have to wait until Craig Kellman’s reclaiming of The Flinstones art authenticity) but I felt like we were ready to rock.
When it came to business cards (I’ve posted autographed versions from our founders Joe Barbera & Bill Hanna), I was still smarting from 12 years of purchasing bureaucrats at MTV Networks who’d constantly thwarted my efforts to make dozens of simultaneous business cards from dozens of variations of MTV and Nickelodeon logos. I thought it would be fun and make the brands sing, the company thought it would be wasteful. So, now I was in charge of a company, and multiple, collectible business cards were the order of the day; in fact, my ‘President’ cards were actually printed with the legend “Collect all 8″. The only person who was skeptical was by partner Jed Simmons because he loved making notes on the backs of his cards, and printing the character pictures frustrated his efforts. He got over it.
They were a big hit; when we were at business functions we all quickly ran out of cards. Soon, lots of companies in the entertainment business followed suit with fun collections of business cards (even MTV and Nickelodeon).
If only we could figure out how to make hit cartoons.
Ricochet Rabbit illustrated by Lou Brooks
Occasionally, I post some essays from Hanna-Barbera in the 90s. Everyone at the studio greatly admired what Joe and Bill had accomplished through the decades but strongly felt many of their milestones had gone uncommented beyond the aficionados. I commissioned HB Creative Director Bill Burnett to slightly rectify the situation.
ENTERING THE CULTURE
The true test of popularity is when the catch phrase of a cartoon becomes part of the language. “Yabba-dabba-doo” is one good example, but others like Astro’s “Rats rall right Reorge,” and of course, Yogi’s “smarter than the average bear” have become universal as well. (…continues here…)
We’d finally gotten the “shorts” program approved by my Turner bosses Scott Sassa and Ted Turner, and convinced the person running Cartoon Network it was actually her idea to produce 48 ‘classic length’ cartoon shorts over two years. If only I was right and the talented people in animation really wanted to make cartoons.
Blog History of Frederator’s original cartoon shorts.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10. Part 11. Part 12. Part 13. Part 14. Part 15. Part 16. Part 17. Part 18. Part 19.
Everyone at Hanna-Barbera Cartoons and Turner Broadcasting who cared fanned out across the globe to spread the word we were serious about making cartoons. Serious in every way. We were making 48 short cartoons over two years in a back-to-the-future kind of unit production way. Each “classic length” (7 minutes) short would debut, by itself, as a stand-alone cartoon on Cartoon Network. Each one would be a product of one cartoonist’s vision (or a self-selected team), produced the way the creator saw it. There was no concern on our part what an eventual series would be “about;” the short had to be great on its own without any allegiance to some preconceived “bible”. We didn’t care what the sitcom trends were, what Nickelodeon was doing, what the sales departments wanted. Even the music would be individually crafted scores, individually tailored to the film at hand, no stock library, pre-fabbed “beds” here. We wouldn’t ‘develop’ them; we wanted to make the cartoon the creator(s) wanted to make, not some executive idea of what they thought kids would like. And we wanted them to be laugh out loud funny.
We wanted cartoons.
Getting original cartoons into the studio and onto television required an army’s worth of work to begin with. Even those who thought this might be a good idea were hard pressed to explain it outside our BS sessions, and since not one person in the world had exactly been waiting for us to show up (at least, not consciously) it was going to require us to explain what we were talking about, explain it again, call back to cajole, convince artists that had never put together one classic cartoon idea from scratch (remember, studios and networks thought cartoons were hopefully passe´, animated sitcoms were where it was at) to put together a pitch storyboard. And, oh yes, the odds, as always in any entertainment project, were we were going to say “No” to their idea.
My closest studio co-conspirator during the run up to the shorts was the studio’s new head of production, Buzz Potamkin. We’d worked together on MTV in New York when he was an independent producer and he’d given me years of Hollywood cartoon biz insight which helped me get started at HB. Buzz could articulate better than I our strategy of re-creating the unit production system that had fueled the golden age, and suggested Larry Huber as the supervising producer for the new shorts unit (a role, among others, he’s successfully navigated through all 138 Hollywood based shorts we’ve produced). Buzz unsuccessfully suggested we make a short with Bill Plympton (it took me 20 years to get smart/brave enough to do it), but brought dozens of other creators to the table. Later, we’ll tell the story of how he convinced Ralph Bakshi to join our group of first-timers.
At Cartoon Network, founding programmer Mike Lazzo rallied his troops behind our efforts. He’d been managing Turner’s cartoons at Superstation TBS and TNT since he was, I don’t know, maybe two years old, and a uniquely brilliant blend of creative thinking and analytical programming. Mike was the person I turned to for inspiration, network thinking, and plain old jawing about cartoons.
The Hanna-Barbera development department (after slashing and pruning of about a dozen staff development writers –an extremely painful task– it was now primarily Jeff Holder, Ellen Cockrill, Margot McDonough, and Dan Smith) had a tough task. They needed to persuade folks that Hanna-Barbera was earnest about giving creative people a chance to do their own work. For decades HB had been a shop where you started or ended your career, but if you had creative ambitions you steered clear. I knew that to reverse the fortunes of the place, to keep Turner from closing the production studio altogether, we had to change that perception. Our shop had to become the place talent was clawing their way into. Hah!
And I was making the development job even harder. I didn’t want “development,” at least in the way they’d been trained, I just wanted them to go out and find hit cartoon creators (much easier typed than done, of course), people who could make a hit and sustain it no matter what happened to the executives or networks who discovered them in the first place. “Development” across television had become a haven for executives who had never produced anything themselves, or had washed out of the dog-eat-dog show biz environment, to take a fairly risk-less path to getting their own ideas out. A D-exec could lean back in their salaried chair and bark dictums (”make it funnier!” was a favorite of mine from an HBO executive) until an exciting, original piece of material resembled nothing more than a piece of product for the junk heap. When instead, they tried to bring me around to their point of view –why were they being paid as ‘development’ execs if their input wasn’t needed– I asked them a couple of simple questions.
“If there’s a successful cartoon series, who deserves the bonus? The creator or the executive?” “Both of us,” was the reply. Fine, and if there’s a failure, who gets fired? That wasn’t a question anyone wanted to answer. I was interested in a clear path back to a successful film, I wanted to know if the credit was “Created by Ray Sturgeon” it didn’t really mean “Created by Ray Sturgeon and a pack of execs.” Besides, I knew the average life of a development executive at studios was actually shorter than the time it took to get a hit series to air. If that was the case, and the exec was partially responsible for success, we were screwed if key members of the creative development worked for the competition by the time of the show. It had always struck me as a bogus approach anyway. William Shakespeare, Leonardo DaVinci, and Duke Ellington, had all made great, popular art with a singular vision. We could do it too. (Please don’t ras me with my artistic comparisons; I aim high.) When it was all said and done, our development folks bought the program, for as long as they were with us anyhow, and walked the walk and talked the talk.
So, anyway, all of us fanned out everywhere we could spreading the message, telling our story. Any way we could, we tried to put our money where our mouth was. We went to schools, we started a high visibility storyboard contest, we talked to union groups. We all had individual meetings with every artist in the studio who would be patient enough not to laugh in our faces. (Not a few came in ready to participate only to find out they wouldn’t be paid to create their storyboard. After all, all across the world entertainment business a creative idea was developed in free time, the creator got a royalty participation in all future success after all; no risk, no reward. But in animation, where it had always been “we have the ideas, you be the hands” it was pretty confusing to a lot of veterans.) We placed stories in the press in the US, Europe, and Asia. We were relentless in looking for talent. After all, we had 48 cartoons to make from a dead stop.
(More next time.)
Blog History of Frederator’s original cartoon shorts.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10. Part 11. Part 12. Part 13. Part 14. Part 15. Part 16. Part 17. Part 18. Part 19.
