I'm not sure what, if anything, I want to write about Bill Hanna, who died — not unexpectedly — this morning. Like many who will read this, I was reared on Hanna-Barbera cartoons and loved at least the early ones — Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, Yogi Bear, The Flintstones — dearly. And before that, he and partner Joe produced and directed millions of Tom & Jerry theatrical cartoons, most of which compare favorably to any animation ever done. My feelings about the man are more varied when I look at the latter half of his career. He became the "production" half of the team: For the most part, it was Joe Barbera who sold the shows and supervised — sometimes from afar, sometimes not — the creative end, such as it was.
Hanna was in charge of getting the episodes made on time and on budget. Way too often, there wasn't enough of either to do the job properly. Most of my personal encounters with Bill when I worked there were of the kind that prompted many a staff artist to caricature him yelling, "Faster! Cheaper! Faster! Cheaper!"
But there is one evening that sticks in my mind. I was toiling way after hours on the Richie Rich show and figured I was alone in the building. I wasn't, as I discovered when Mr. Hanna came into my office. (He and Joe both worked very hard, even long after each had a bank account that made Richie look like a pauper.) He wanted to put a script into production before I thought it was ready and, when we argued — politely — he said that if he didn't send something to the studio in Korea by a certain date, dozens of artists over there would get laid off, and he might even have to cut a few working there at the H-B Studio. He got to talking about how proud he was of all the employment he and Joe had provided for people, and how they'd kept the animation industry up and functioning when theatricals died out. As a Depression-era child, that was very important to him.
Historians of the future will view and assess the incredible body of work that bears the co-credit of William Hanna. My guess is they'll find it wildly variable, including some of the best and worst animation of its day. But I hope they'll also give a little weight to the staggering number of people who bought homes and groceries for 30-some-odd years working for Bill. And I hope they'll give him some credit for an entire generation of us who got into writing and/or drawing because, back when we were small, we loved watching The Flintstones.