Forgot to mention: Among the people I ran into at the P.P.B. luncheon was Chuck McCann, who mentioned that a crew is currently prepping a little documentary on him that will be included on the forthcoming DVD release of all the Cool McCool cartoons. Also ran into voice actor supreme Wally Wingert, who is heading up that crew. (Wally is responsible for the extras on the new DVD of The Groovy Goolies.)
Cool McCool was a very silly animated series that ran on NBC for 20 episodes, the first of which aired in September of '66. McCool was a suave but occasionally inept detective who looked like Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau but acted more like Maxwell Smart, whose series had been the big prime-time hit of the previous season.
The show also had enormous overtones of Batman in it, presumably because Bob Kane was one of its two creators. That's right: Two. Kane is almost always referred to as the sole creator but the on-screen credits said the series was the concoction of Kane and Al Brodax, who was the producer of most of the King Features animated efforts of the sixties such as the Beatles cartoons. Cool McCool was one of the methods by which Kane cashed in on the success of the Batman TV show, the one with Adam West. It went on the air in January of '66 and was an immediate hit. He and Brodax must have whipped up Cool McCool and sold it right away in order for it to debut on NBC when it did. Most of the villains McCool chased down were thinly-veiled knock-offs of Batman villains. The Penguin was turned into The Owl. The Joker was turned into The Jack-in-the Box. The Riddler became the Rattler and so on.
The late Bob McFadden was the voice of Cool McCool. That's Mr. McFadden in the photo above. He was a New York-based stand-up comedian, actor and voice performer who did thousands of commercials in his time and an awful lot of cartoons. He was heard on the Linus the Lionhearted show and Milton the Monster and umpteen others. He even did the Karloff-type voice of Frankenberry in that cereal's commercials. (He had a long association with monsters. In addition to Milton and Frankenberry, McFadden had a hit novelty record — "The Mummy," which he performed with Rod McKuen. Dr. Demento still plays it several times a year.) McFadden passed away in 2000.
The female voices on the show were provided by Carol Corbett and the male voices not done by McFadden — which included all the villains — came out of Chuck McCann. I'm afraid I don't know much more than that about the show. One of the reasons I'm eager to get this forthcoming DVD whenever it comes out — I don't think there's a release date yet — is to read the credits and find out who was responsible. By the way: The DVD pictured above is not the DVD that Wally's assembling. That's the cover of an old British release. It's hard finding visual material on this show.
Another reason I want to get The Complete Cool McCool (or whatever they call it) is to see if, like the Peter Falk show I just mentioned, it's still good. Not everything I liked when I was younger is. Every time The Man From U.N.C.L.E. pops up on a channel I get on my satellite dish, I try an episode and find myself wondering what I ever liked about that show. Same with the Raymond Burr Perry Mason shows and about 80% of all the Woody Woodpecker cartoons that were ever made. Matter of fact, I think some of those shows have been quietly remade to lower their production values and quality. They couldn't have looked that bad when I was a kid. We'll see if Cool McCool is still cool.