Here's a story I don't think I've told here. For many years, I worked for Hanna-Barbera Studios in two capacities. I was the editor of their comic book department and I was the story editor of the Saturday morning Richie Rich cartoon show. Three capacities, actually, because I also wrote freelance scripts for shows other than Richie Rich.
Those may sound like a few full-time jobs but actually during this time, I was also usually writing a prime-time show or special for (a) Sid and Marty Krofft, (b) Dick Clark or (c) Alan Landsburg and also writing a comic book for DC or a couple for Eclipse or I was working on Groo the Wanderer for whichever company was then publishing it and hadn't yet gone out of business. There were also animation scripts for other studios.
So I was only in the Hanna-Barbera building for maybe ten hours a week, if that much. I actually did most of the comic book work and Richie Rich out of my home (or offices elsewhere) so I told H-B not to give me a big, fancy office. They, of course, gave me a big, fancy office.
That office moved from time to time. At Hanna-Barbera, the floor plan moved more than the cartoons and was often funnier. Where they put me for the longest time was a good office, well situated between the Xerox room and the office of a wonderful producer-artist named Doug Wildey. Mine sat empty and locked much of the time. In fact, most of the time.
I kept suggesting I be relocated to some small, crummy spot upstairs and that the big, conveniently-located room go to someone else. This was not just selflessness on my part. I actually thought it would be better for me to be where everyone wouldn't notice how often Mark Evanier's door was locked and he wasn't on the premises. Certain folks would not think, "Oh, he must be doing most of his work at home." They'd think, "Oh, he sure isn't working very hard on our show."
The certain folks who'd think that way would be the people in Business Affairs who were in charge of saying no when a writer's agent asked for more money. Why give them that as a reason to do what they did so well and so often?
The Office Manager Lady did not move me. I mean, physically but also emotionally. Every so often, she'd assign someone to share the place, which was fine with me. It meant my door wouldn't be locked as much when Business Affairs people passed by. It was also usually fine with my roommate since I was so rarely there. Then they'd move that person out and I'd have the place to myself for a while so the door would again be locked a lot.
It was actually a great place during one season when Jonathan Winters was a regular on The Smurfs. When recording sessions let out, everyone exiting the sound studio had to pass by my office. If I was there — and I tried to be when Smurfs was taping — I usually had a gang of other writers in there with me, plotting against management. Mr. Winters loved an audience so he'd appear in my doorway and I'd say something like, "Hello. You were Atilla the Hun's pool boy, right?" Without missing a beat, Jonathan would slide into the appropriate accent and describe the problems of keeping Atilla the Hun's pool clean. One was that it was always full of dead Visigoths.
But that's not the story I wanted to tell. One day, the Office Manager spotted me in the parking lot on the way in and told me, "We just moved someone into your office to share it with you." I said that was fine with me. She didn't tell me who it was so I headed inside to see which lowly, unimportant figure in the animation business was bunking with me now. And there, occupying the west half of what was now our office was Frederick Bean Avery.
You might know him better as Tex Avery, director of some of the funniest, greatest cartoons ever made.
He had been retired but some combination of restlessness, family problems and money woes had prompted him to get back into the game. He had long had a standing offer from Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera to work for them and he'd taken them up on it.
Tex was a great guy and we got along fine. It didn't bother me that absolutely no one was coming into that office to see me anymore. They flocked there from every corner of the building to meet Tex, to praise Tex, to get a sketch from Tex, to learn from Tex and to be able to say, "I was talking with Tex Avery yesterday…" Bill and Joe had him developing some new shows and adding gags to ones that were currently in production and in need of First Aid. I was almost disappointed he was never assigned to mine.
He worked a lot with another clever old-timer who was on staff, a veteran Disney expatriate named Chuck Couch. One day when I came in, Tex said to me, "Hey, I hope you don't mind but I've asked if they can move me into an office I can share with Chuck. We're doing a bunch of projects together and it makes sense." I said, "Hey, you two can have this place." And off I went to the Office Manager to suggest I take one of the small, cramped offices upstairs and that Tex and Chuck share the big one. She said she'd do just that.
The next time I came in, which was a few days later, I asked the receptionist where my office was now. She said it was in the same place. I went to it and, sure enough, there was all my stuff…and none of Tex's. I found him and Chuck crammed into one of those small, cramped rooms upstairs with no idea what had happened. I went to the Office Manager and she had no idea, either. She gave the order to swap us around.
Chuck, Tex and I went to lunch. By the time we got back, they had the big office downstairs and I had the tiny one upstairs…for real. Done and done.
A few weeks passed. I was almost finished with Richie Rich for the season and the Office Manager came to me and said, "We're going to need your room for someone else. The minute you finish the last script, we'll need you to vacate." She'd forgotten I was still editing the comic books but I did so much of that work at home, I decided I didn't need an office there at all. We settled on a date when I would be out of my little cubicle.
She warned me. "Now, if you leave anything in there after that date, we're going to throw it in the dumpster." I said, "Anything I leave behind, you can throw away."
A week or two later on a Thursday, I handed in the last Richie Rich script for that season and took home everything I needed to take home. On Friday, I got on a plane and flew east to spend a few days in New York.
Some time on Friday, the Office Manager turned to one of the young men who ran errands and moved furniture and supplies about and said, "Check to make sure Mark Evanier is out of his office."
The Young Man was in a rush that day to get everything done so he'd be able to leave on time. He was about to go on vacation, too. He looked at the staff list to determine which office was mine. Unfortunately, the list hadn't been updated for a while so he wound up going to the large office, the one that now housed Tex and Chuck. He peeked in and reported back to the Office Manager. "Evanier's office is full of stuff." She told him to throw it all out.
He went back to the office to do so but noticed that the boxes and drawers were full of a lot of original artwork and sketches and scripts. He went back to the Office Manager and told her that the stuff in Evanier's office looked like it was important and maybe valuable. Exasperated, she told him, "Okay, then. Get his home address from the files. Box it all up and take it over to his house."
And that's what he did. He packed the contents of the office — this is the Tex Avery-Chuck Couch office we're talking about here — in about six large crates and drove it over to my house. No one was home so he left it all in my enclosed patio. Then he went back to Hanna-Barbera, finished his other labors for the day and began driving to Yosemite National Park (not Jellystone) to spend a week.
Monday morning, Tex Avery arrived at work, walked into his office and found…
Nothing. No files. No art. No sketches on the walls. No sign of what he and Chuck had been working on all the previous week.
A few minutes later, Chuck walked in and found his partner standing in a bare office. There were two desks, one waste basket, a battered sofa and nothing else. "Tex," he gasped. "What happened?"
Tex said, "I'm not sure but I think we've been fired."
They hadn't, of course, but throughout the day, no one could figure out what happened to their stuff. They searched everywhere.
Well, everywhere except my front porch. No one knew that's where it all was and, of course, neither did I. My housesitter came on Saturday and Sunday but she'd gone in the back way to put out food for the stray cats and had forgotten to check out front for mail.
Finally, late Monday, someone figured out where Tex's and Chuck's papers and files might be. A different Young Man drove over to my house, found it all on my porch and since no one was home, just took it all back to the studio. He must have left with it all not long before the housesitter came by and did check outside for mail.
I got back late Wednesday night. Thursday morning, I got a call from Tex Avery. He said, "I have a crate of comic books here that belongs to you. It's from Marvel Comics." At the time, I did get a monthly crate of all the new Marvels but I couldn't figure out why they'd sent it to Hanna-Barbera instead of, as usual, my home address. I drove to the studio to get it and was baffled to see that it had my home address on it. It took us a while to figure out why Tex had it.
You see, when the second Young Man went to my porch on Monday afternoon to fetch the boxes from Tex's and Chuck's office, he took all the boxes he found there…