Cartoon Did You Know

Speaking of Mel Blanc, after his near fatal car crash, he only responded when the doctors called him Bugs Bunny. And even though Daws Butler voiced Barney for a handful of episodes, eventually the cast of "The Flintstones" recorded their dialogue in his room.

DYK? Bill Hanna started as a janitor in the studio of Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising. Bill's interest in animation eventually led to his debut cartoon "To Spring." Ultimately, Bill would partner with Joe Barbera to found Hanna-Barbera Studios, to date the single most prolific animation studio, which still survives as Cartoon Network Studios.

DYK... Carl Stalling was an accompanist for silent films in Kansas City, where he met Walt Disney.

"The Amazing Chan And The Chan Clan" started out with real Asian actors voicing the characters. But, with the exception of Keye Luke, they were replaced by American actors, since the original voice actors had thick accents that were hard to understand.

Frank Tashlin once claimed in a 1971 interview with Michael Barrier that one of his favorite things to do when he briefly worked at Disney Studios was to throw Clarence Nash, the voice of Donald Duck out the window.

“They didn’t know what to do with a fellow by the name of “Ducky” Nash—Clarence Nash, he was the voice of Donald Duck—because when they weren’t recording Donald Duck, what do you do with the fellow who’s the voice of Donald Duck? Ducky had an office in this building, a little tiny office where he would come over and go to sleep. These were hillside places, and the ground beneath his window was maybe twelve feet. Roy Williams, this big fellow, and I, when Ducky was asleep—and he slept just like a duck, he made funny sounds—in this big wicker chair, we would take this chair, with him in it, and we would hold it out the window, and drop him. This chair would hit, and because it was wicker, it sort of had a recoil, you know, the legs went out like this. He’d start quacking away down there, and he’d come up, dragging this chair with him. This happened many times, and it was a high point of humor—you know, you want to talk about low humor, that’s what we thought was funny.”

When Jack Mercer was deployed for military service during World War II, Mae Questel voiced both Popeye and Olive Oyl! Talk about a busy woman.

DYK..... The clip shown during the closing credits of "Jonny Quest" of two men fleeing from natives on a hovercraft was from a promotional film for an animated version of "Jack Armstrong."

Both Laurel and Hardy were already dead by the time their animated series from Hanna-Barbera premiered.

DYK? The first Tom And Jerry cartoon, "Puss Gets The Boot" was almost a one-off. Producer Fred Quimby had rejected the idea of a cat-and-mouse cartoon, believing that this mechanism was overused and cliché. Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna had faith in their proposal, and animated the cartoon nonetheless. Quimby scolded them for subverting his wishes, but the feedback on this cartoon was too positive to warrant punishment. However, when MGM's largest distributor came by to collect the latest features, he asked of Quimby, "When y' gonna make another one?" Which compelled Quimby to demand, "Well, don't just stand there; make another one." One hundred fifteen "another one"s followed under the MGM logo; more would come as other studios acquired the rights to these characters.

The song "It's A Hap-Hap-Happy Day" from "Gulliver's Travels" was subsequently used in Paramount Famous Cartoons, particularly those starring Herman and Katnip.

Also, the movie's plot and characters were reused for the Casper short "Boo Moon."

For "Challenge Of The Superfriends," Catwoman and Joker were to have been part of The Legion Of Doom. They were scrapped due to their use on Filmation's "The New Adventures Of Batman."

"The Dick Tracy Show" of 1961 had no characters from the comic strip other than Tracy and the villains. It wasn't until the strip became part of "Archie's TV Funnies" that Tess, Sam, Junior, Moon Maid, and others were included.

Sonny and Cher often showed animated music videos of classic '70's songs on their variety show. These included "Bad Bad Leroy Brown," "Big Yellow Taxi," "One Tin Soldier," and Cher's own solo hit, "Dark Lady."

Here's one for Black History Month: Of all the African American cartoon characters, the Harlem Globetrotters were animated the most often--six times! They had two animated series, three guest appearances on "The New Scooby-Doo Movies," and the TV special "The Harlem Globetrotters Meet Snow White."

Yep, there were originally four siblings--Yakky, Smakky, Wakky, and the proto-type for Dot.