Research Guru / Moderator
Posted:
May 5, 2008, 2:20 PM
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Peabody and Sherman creator Ted Key dead at 95
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Cartoonist Ted Key, creator of time-traveling dog scientist Peabody and his boy Sherman, died Saturday at his home in Tredyffrin, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia. He was 95.
He had been in failing health since he was diagnosed with bladder cancer in late 2006 and had a stroke last September.
Peabody and Sherman have been pop culture favorites since they first appeared in the "Peabody's Improbable History" segment of animation producer Jay Ward's Rocky and His Friends in 1959. (Ward was a childhood friend of Ted's brother Leonard.)
Featuring the voices of Bill Scott (Mr. Peabody) and Walter Tetley (Sherman), "Peabody's Improbable History" appeared in 91 four-minute segments. A major live-action motion picture of their adventures is in production.
Key also created the cartoon character Hazel, a popular feature in the Saturday Evening Post since 1943. The wisecracking maid became a regular feature in the magazine.
Later, Hazel appeared in books collecting the cartoons, a syndicated newspaper strip, and a live-action sitcom which ran for four years on NBC and one more on CBS. Shirley Booth, the TV show's title character, won two Emmy awards for her performances.
The author of four children's books (one of which was made into a movie), Key wrote the storylines of four live-action Disney films: The Million Dollar Duck (1971), Digby, the Biggest Dog in the World (1973), Gus (1976) and The Cat from Outer Space (1978).
Key's biggest success -- financially speaking -- may have been "Positive Attitude Posters," a series of motivational posters that he neighbor Milton Fox-Martin created for the Economics Press Inc. Published bi-weekly for about 30 years, they contained a sentence or two about how to behave. The copy was humorously illustrated by a Key cartoon, often featuring children.
He created the comic feature Diz and Liz, which ran in popular children's magazine Jack and Jill from 1961 through 1972.
Ted Key was born Theodore Keyser in Fresno, California on August 25, 1912. Graduating from the University of California at Berkeley in 1933, he moved to New York, freelancing cartoons for magazines and occasionally writing for radio. Eventually, he headed to Philadelphia, continuing to draw cartoons and write stories.
Although he retired in 1993, King Features still syndicates the Hazel strip, using material that he prepared for his retirement.
Ted Key's first wife, Anne, died in 1984. He is survived by his second wife, Bonnie; sons Stephen of Providence, Rhode Island, and David and Peter of Philadelphia; and three grandchildren.
Services will be private. In lieu of flowers, the family requested that donations be made to the American Cancer Society.
(This post was edited by eminovitz on May 5, 2008, 4:57 PM)
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Directing Animator / Contributor
Posted:
May 5, 2008, 2:50 PM
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Re: Peabody and Sherman creator Ted Key dead at 95
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"Hazel" ran from 1961 to 1966. Hazel worked as a maid for The Baxter Family- George (Don DeFore), Dorothy (Whitney Blake), and son Harold (Bobby Buntrock). DeFore and Blake left the series in the final CBS 1965-1966 season, with George and Dorothy going on a world wide trip and leaving son Harold behind for Hazel to take care of.
Shirley Booth's final acting credit was as the voice of Mrs. Santa Claus in the 1974 Rankin-Bass stop-motion Christmas special "The Year Without a Santa Claus". She died in 1992. She won an Oscar for the film "Come Back Little Sheba".
Whitney Blake later co-created with her third husband Alan Manings, the 1970s sitcom "One Day At A Time" (Bonnie Franklin as an Indianapolis divorcee living with two teenage daughters (MacKenzie Phillips, Valerie Bertinelli)). Blake's daughter from a previous marriage is actress Meredith Baxter of "Family Ties".
Bobby Buntrock was killed in a car crash at age 21 in 1974.
In the film "The Cat From Outer Space", Ronnie Schell (Rick Raccoon on "Shirt Tales", Gilly the Photographer on "Goober and the Ghost Chasers") provided the voice of Jake the alien cat.
(This post was edited by artytoons on May 5, 2008, 3:08 PM)
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Research Guru / Moderator
Posted:
May 5, 2008, 11:08 PM
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Re: Peabody and Sherman creator Ted Key dead at 95
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Two other Saturday Evening Post cartoonists whose works appeared in animation:
Carl Anderson
His mouthless creation "Henry" first appeared in the magazine in 1932. Henry's only animated appearance was in the 1935 Fleischer studios cartoon "Betty Boop With Henry."
Marjorie Henderson Buell
As "Marge," she created Little Lulu in a series of single-panel cartoons. These were commissioned by the Saturday Evening Post to replace Henry, which had been picked up by King Features. Little Lulu ran in the "Satevepost" from 1935 to 1948. She then appeared in two dozen Famous Studios cartoons, starting with "Eggs Don't Bounce" (1943). ABC used Little Lulu in two weekend specials in 1978 and 1981; in 1995, Tracey Ullman voiced her in "The Little Lulu Show," a CINAR Animation series on HBO. (Lulu was also in the 1976 Nippon Animation series "Little Lulu To Chicchai Nakama".)
(This post was edited by eminovitz on May 5, 2008, 11:09 PM)
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Research Guru / Moderator
Posted:
May 6, 2008, 6:31 PM
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Re: Peabody and Sherman creator Ted Key dead at 95
[In reply to]
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Ted Key never wrote any scripts for the Peabody and Sherman segments on Rocky and His Friends, and didn't get screen credit for creating the characters.
His son Peter told the Los Angeles Times that Mr. Peabody and Sherman are even more famous today than "Hazel" for many people.
"I think they were popular just because they were so wild," he said. It was "the inherent insanity of what they were and what they did, combined with that sort of adult sophistication that the Ward cartoons had."
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Directing Animator
Posted:
May 8, 2008, 8:21 AM
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Re: Peabody and Sherman creator Ted Key dead at 95
[In reply to]
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"Hazel" ran from 1961 to 1966. Hazel worked as a maid for The Baxter Family- George (Don DeFore), Dorothy (Whitney Blake), and son Harold (Bobby Buntrock). DeFore and Blake left the series in the final CBS 1965-1966 season, with George and Dorothy going on a world wide trip and leaving son Harold behind for Hazel to take care of.
Didn't Hazel, at one point in the TV series, go to work for a different couple who were related to the Baxters? I believe this couple had two children, unless one of them was Harold. The opening live-action main-title sequence was also changed, with different theme music.
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