Creative Credit

Obits for Iwao Takamoto (like this one) are all over the web and some of them are pretty loose with their assignment of credits. Most say Iwao was the creator of Scooby Doo…an honor that has also been (at different times) claimed by or attributed to Joe Barbera, Fred Silverman and the writer-producer team of Joe Ruby and Ken Spears. As far as I know, Iwao himself never claimed to have done any more than design the look of that show and its characters…and even then, he was the main designer, not the only one.

Several wire stories also say that Iwao named the dog, having been inspired by the portion of the record, "Strangers in the Night" where Sinatra warbled, "Scooby dooby doo…" I don't think Iwao did that and I don't think Iwao ever claimed he had. Everyone has always given credit for the naming to Fred Silverman, who was then the CBS exec in charge of Saturday morning. (And I've always wondered if he isn't misremembering; if the record in question wasn't "Denise," a medium-sized hit by Randy and the Rainbows. Here's a link — which may not work for all browsers — to a few seconds of that classic recording. What Frank sang in "Strangers in the Night" sounded more like "Shooby dooby doo…")

In any case, I wish people didn't use words like "creator" and "created by" so casually. To give someone credit for something they didn't create is to deny it to someone who did. That has personal ramifications and these days, it may also have legal and compensatory ones, as well.

Iwao was a brilliantly talented artist. It's too bad more of you haven't seen his original concept and presentation drawings, which often far exceeded anything that made it onto your TV screens. And he did come up with the basic and/or final design of more popular TV cartoon characters than almost anyone else. He never wanted, nor does his memory require credit for things he didn't do.