They Decorated My Life.

Now my final thoughts on Hanna-Barbera.

Bill and Joe created a multitude of unforgettable characters. They entertained me on my good days, cheered me up on my bad days, and seemed to be there whenever my TV set was on. In short, these cartoons were like animated comfort food. And I had the good fortune of actually meeting Joe at an animation art gallery here in Boston. He gave me a small autographed "group picture" of the studio's best-known characters. That gallery has long since closed, sad to say.

But they were present in much more than TV shows and movies. There were PSA's and TV ads. In the late 70's, some of them introduced the live action shows "Time Out," and "Ask NBC News." They could be found in books, comic strips, comic books, coloring and sticker books, T-shirts, coffee mugs, drinking cups, and even on a wide variety of lunchboxes. Not to mention a theme park ride that I went on several times before it closed. And of course, there were all those Hanna-Barbera toys, which I've been buying for myself, or getting as gifts ever since the mid '60's. BTW, I never took Flintstones vitamins, or had Pebbles or Smurfberry Crunch cereals for breakfast.

H-B also animated the opening sequences of "Bewitched," and the live action film "Popeye." Plus, they produced many live action TV shows and movies not covered in my previous threads. These included the series "Benji, Zax, And The Alien Prince," and "Going Bananas," and the live action movies like "The Gathering," "C.H.O.M.P.S," and the infamous "KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park."

But Bill and Joe didn't do it alone. They had on hand artists like Dan Gordon, Marty Murphy, Iwao Takamoto, and my all-time favorite, Alex Toth. Music men Hoyt Curtin, Paul DeKorte, and Ted Nichols. Writers Mike Maltese, Warren Foster, Joanna Lee, Ed Brandt, Dalton Sandifer, Walter Black, Tony Benedict, Joe Ruby, and Ken Spears. Additional staffers Roberta Gruetert, Robert "Tiger" West, Star Wirth, Joed Eaton, and Volus Jones. And last, but not least, the voice actors, including Mel Blanc, Daws Butler, Don Messick, Alan Reed, Jean Vanderpyl, Janet Waldo, John Stephenson, Henry Corden, Mike Road, Paul Winchell, Frank Welker, Casey Kasem, and countless others.

If I could upload a musical tribute to them like Fluidgirl did, my song of choice would "You Decorated My Life," by Kenny Rogers. Listen to the lyrics, and you'll agree it's more than appropriate.

Cheers to Hanna-Barbera!

During their heyday, around 1975, Hanna-Barbera was airing ten cartoon series across the Big Three networks. Bill Hanna mentions in his biography that he was compelled to scour the Earth for overseas studios, because Hanna-Barbera and Disney and Warner Brothers had pretty much tapped out the local crop of talent. Ruby-Spears studios got their start with HB, as did Southern Star. Television is always ravenously hungry for content, and Hanna-Barbera discovered early that feeding the TV monster is a good way to keep animation alive and profitable.

Also, part of the difficulty of naming a defining series for Hanna-Barbera is that they refused to be pigeonholed into one or two milieu. They had haywire comedy series, domestic comedy, romantic comedy, dramatic-comedy, and a few straight dramatic series. They ran to cave-man days, early history, recent history, present day, and future-speculative. The characters played out their comedy / drama on land, under the sea, flying among the clouds, rocketing through outer space, deep in the concrete jungle, out on the farm, or deep in the wild. It's almost like they were aiming for every conceivable permutation of cartoon scenario. Clearly, Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna never met a cartoon they didn't like.

And lest I forget, the theme songs, underscores, and sound effects are available on a four-CD set from Rhino.