Fifty years ago yesterday, a new era in the field of animation began. NBC telecast the first episode of the first show produced for television by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, Ruff & Reddy.
It was not the first cartoon produced for television but it was darn close. More importantly, it was the business role model for all that followed. Bill and Joe showed there was money to be made in TV animation and others followed.
Ruff & Reddy wasn't a great show, especially compared with what followed. Today, the animation looks primitive even by Hanna-Barbera standards and the narrative seems a bit leaden. Still, the show had intriguing stories and colorful characters, as well as the expert voice work of Daws Butler and Don Messick, and I wasn't the only kid hooked from the start. I'm pretty sure I saw that first broadcast, which was hosted by a gentleman named Jimmy Blaine, assisted by two bird puppets, Rhubarb the Parrot and Jose the Toucan. That week and each week for years after, he showed two episodes of a Ruff & Reddy serial along with a vintage theatrical cartoon produced by the Columbia Cartoon Studio (usually, a Fox & Crow short).
I remember the impact on me of new cartoon characters. I was five and a half years old at the time but already, I had a lot of the constantly-repeating Bugs Bunny and Heckle & Jeckle cartoons committed to memory. Ruff the Cat and Reddy the Dog were new friends, so appealing that I didn't notice that they didn't move as smoothly or as much as other animated superstars. Or if I did, I didn't care. The following October, Bill and Joe introduced their second show, which was even better and all-cartoon…Huckleberry Hound. Before long, they were the kings of Childrens' Television.
When I'm around cartoon buffs and the topic turns to Hanna-Barbera, I hear two distinct reactions, sometimes from the same folks. One is negative, especially from those who began watching cartoons when the H-B output consisted of things like Scooby Doo and The Smurfs and Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch. The other is positive, fixing on how many people loved the shows and how many animation folks bought homes and fed their families thanks to Bill and Joe. Some called them the guys who saved the animation business when theatrical animation was dying out. There's some truth to all of that but it's especially positive to those of us who remember those early Hanna-Barbera shows and discovered them when they firsy debuted…starting with Ruff & Reddy.
Here's the opening of the show…
