esvJoseph Barbera (left) and William Hanna
December 14, 1957: The Ruff and Reddy Show premieres on NBC. It was the 1st animated series made by Hanna-Barbera Productions, beginning a cartoon empire.
The series follows the adventures of Ruff, a smart and steadfast cat; and Reddy, a good-natured, brave, but not overly bright dog. It runs for 3 seasons, and is not nearly as well-remembered as some other Hanna-Barbera creations.
William Denby Hanna (1910-2001) grew up in Los Angeles. Joseph Roland Barbera (1911-2006) grew up in Brooklyn, and moved to Los Angeles as a young man. They met in 1937, while working in the animation department at Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. They worked on the Tom & Jerry cartoons in the 1940s and '50s, and founded their own production company on July 7, 1957, when MGM shut their animation department down. It would eventually show cartoons on all 3 major networks then in operation: NBC, CBS and ABC.
The Ruff and Reddy Show was a blip on the history of animated television. In 1958, Hanna-Barbera premiered The Huckleberry Hound Show. In addition to the titular hillbilly dog, it included segments starring Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinks, two mice and a cat; and Yogi Bear. In 1959 game The Quick Draw McGraw Show, which also included Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy.
In 1960, they created The Flintstones, a caveman-era ripoff of The Honeymooners. In 1961, they gave Yogi Bear his own show, which also debuted the lion Snagglepuss; and premiered Top Cat. In 1962, they debuted the space-age series The Jetsons. In 1963 came The Magilla Gorilla Show; in 1964, Jonny Quest and The Peter Potamus Show; in 1965, The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show. In 1966, they debuted their 1st superhero, Space Ghost. In 1968, they introduced The Banana Splits, 4 guys in big animal costumes, who ran skits and introduced previously-produced Hanna-Barbera cartoons.
In 1968, The Wacky Races was launched. Three of the 11 cars in the races saw their occupants appear in spinoffs debuting the next year. The Perils of Penelope Pistop featured the titular Southern belle in a parody of silent-film "damsel-in-distress" serials, aided by another group of Wacky Racers, the Ant Hill Mob, dwarves who were parodies of 1920s gangsters. And Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines featured the Races' chief villain and his not-so-faithful dog, apparently set in World War I, fighting for Germany, trying to stop an American messenger -- a bird known as the Yankee Doodle Pigeon.
The Wacky Races and its spinoffs began a new era for Hanna-Barbera, highlighted in 1969, with Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! The cowardly Great Dane and his 4 crime-fighting teenage cohorts started a trend in cartoons, with talking animals and people working together. In 1970, with The Archies already a cartoon hit, Hanna-Barbera merged that concept with Scooby-Doo, and premiered Josie and the Pussycats: A cartoon teenage rock band, animals, and crime-fighting.
This would be followed by such shows as a series based on the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team (with fanciful stories involving them fighting crime), The Funky Phantom in 1971, The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan in 1972 (inspired by the Charlie Chan stories), Speed Buggy in 1973, Hong Kong Phooey in 1974, and Jabberjaw in 1976.
In 1975, they brought back their first project, with The New Tom & Jerry/Grape Ape/Mumbly Show. Mumbly was a dog in a trenchcoat who solved crimes, and, except for his coloring, was just like Dick Dastardly's dog Muttley. The problem was, while they had gained the legal rights to Tom & Jerry, they had lost the rights to Dastardly and Muttley. So a new character had to be created.
In 1976, they launched The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour. In addition to new adventures for Scooby and the gang, it introduced a new superhero. As he had for Space Ghost, the great Los Angeles disc jockey Gary Owens (best known as the announcer for Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In) voiced the Blue Falcon, a Batman ripoff who built his own Robin, a robot dog named Dynomutt, voiced by Frank Welker, who voiced Fred on Scooby-Doo and lots of cartoon dogs, including Astro Jetson -- but not Scooby, at least until original voice Don Messick died.
These last 2 series inspired their biggest project, in 1977: Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics. There were 3 teams: The Yogi Yahooeys, captained by Yogi Bear, and consisting of Hanna-Barbera characters of the 1960s, including Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw; the Scooby Doobies, captained by Scoopy and consisting of Hanna-Barbera characters of the 1970s, including Blue Falcon and Dynomutt; and the ever-cheating Really Rottens, captained by Mumbly, who as professional wrestling fans would say, "turned heel" for this show.
Most of the Rottens were new characters, some human, some monster. Among the humans was the Dread Baron, an evil pilot obviously based on Dick Dastardly, another character for whom Hanna-Barbera had lost the legal rights.
A few years later, after they regained the rights to Dick and Muttley, a graphic novel was released, with a time-travel plot (enabling the inclusion of both the Flintstones and the Jetsons) that brought all the Hanna-Barbera characters yet used together for one great climactic adventure, preceding DC Comics' Crisis On Infinite Earths by a few years, and Marvel Comics' Infinity Saga by several years. In that graphic novel, it was revealed that Dick Dastardly and the Dread Baron were identical twins, and that Muttley and Mumbley were also litter brothers.
Like most Hanna-Barbera shows were at this point, the Laff-A-Lympics were on ABC, and ABC's show Battle of the Network Stars was more of an inspiration than the actual Olympic Games.
There would be further Hanna-Barbera shows in the 1980s, including cartoons based on ABC sitcoms Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, and Mork and Mindy; and adapting The Smurfs for American TV. The last show by Hanna-Barbera Productions was The Powerpuff Girls, which ran from 1998 to 2005, and had the animation style and the feel of a 1970s' cartoon.
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December 14, 1957 was a Saturday. Baseball was out of season. There was 1 game played in the NFL: The Chicago Cardinals beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 31-27 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia.
There were 3 games played in the NBA:
* The New York Knicks lost to the St. Louis Hawks, 136-124 at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis.
* The Boston Celtics beat the Philadelphia Warriors, 112-94 at the Boston Garden.
* And the Syracuse Nationals beat the Cincinnati Royals, 104-100 -- at the Rochester Community War Memorial in Rochester, New York, which had been the Royals' home in the 1955-56 and 1956-57 seasons, before moving to Cincinnati. (It is now named the Blue Cross Arena.)
And the NHL's entire "Original Six" were in action:
* The New York Rangers and the Detroit Red Wings played to a tie, 4-4 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.
* The Boston Bruins and the Montreal Canadiens played to a tie, 1-1 at the Montreal Forum.
* And the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 4-1 at Maple Leaf Garden in Toronto.
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