Warner Home Video has just released a DVD of Yogi Bear's All-Star Comedy Christmas Caper, a prime-time special produced in 1982 and written by me in, believe it or not, two and a half days. If I'd had a month, I'd have taken a month. I had two and a half days.
A year or two earlier, Hanna-Barbera had signed with CBS to produce a half-hour prime-time Yogi Bear special for Christmas of '81. This was a very big deal for the studio and for Yogi. The show was to feature a large batch of early H-B characters like Quick Draw McGraw, Huckleberry Hound, Snagglepuss and others, plus an appearance by Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble. It was to be called what it wound up being called. Beyond that, no one had any idea what it would be about.
A script was written. The network hated it. Another script was then written. Mr. Barbera hated it. Yet another script was then written. The network and Mr. Barbera both hated it. There was now insufficient time to get the show written again and produced for its scheduled December airdate so the decision was made to postpone 'til December of '82.
More writing ensued but no useable script emerged, at least in the view of Mr. B. and the folks at the network. As July arrived, H-B once again suggested postponing the special until the following year. Someone at CBS said, "No…either we do it for this year or the deal's off." Arguments ensued. Meetings were held. On a very hot day in the first week in July, I was summoned to the office of Joe Barbera and asked how fast I could write a script. I'd have to work fast because every day I took was a day the animators wouldn't have and there was already a genuine fear that they could not get it done in time. To make matters even more precarious, the Animation Union was probably going to go on strike as of July 31. The animation would be done in Australia so the strike wouldn't affect that…but all the storyboarding and character design were to be done in-house and they'd have to be completed by 7/31 — a little more than three weeks off.
I got the script done in, like I said, two and a half days and it was recorded by a real all-star lineup of cartoon voice actors. Daws Butler played Yogi, Snagglepuss, Huckleberry Hound, Augie Doggie, Hokey Wolf, Snooper, Blabber, Dixie the Mouse, Mr. Jinks and Wally Gator. Don Messick played Boo Boo, Ranger Smith and Pixie the Mouse. Henry Corden and Mel Blanc played Fred and Barney. Allan Melvin played Magilla Gorilla. Jimmy Weldon played Yakky Doodle. John Stephenson played Doggie Daddy. And all those folks played other roles, as did Hal Smith, Janet Waldo and Georgi Irene. Steve Lumley directed and most of the storyboard was done at the very last minute (after the first board guy botched it up and was fired) by a great veteran director named Alex Lovy. I am still amazed the show was done on time.
Well, actually it wasn't. A couple of scenes were never finished and some animation errors stayed in because there literally wasn't time to redo them. But it did air as scheduled on 12/21/82 and if you knew how impossible and unlikely that was, you'd be real impressed.
Being so close to the trees, I make no claim as to how funny it is…but the DVD is probably worth buying for a special feature that's included — Yogi Bear's Birthday Party, a 1961 syndicated special that few cartoon fans have probably seen. If you'd like to order a copy from Amazon, here's a link.
I haven't seen one yet so I don't know if it contains the bleep. This is a bit of TV history. Cartoon shows are censored all the time but this was the first time (I believe) that they actually bleeped a word of dialogue. What's more amazing is that the word wasn't a naughty one from George Carlin's infamous list. The word they bleeped was "Chanukah."
I am not kidding. I wrote a line where Snagglepuss said, "Merry Christmas! Season's Greetings! Happy Chanukah even!" Everyone who had to approve the script — which was a whole lot of people — approved it and it was recorded that way and the animation was done accordingly.
In December when the last minute edits were being done, someone at CBS decided that the reference to Chanukah had to go. I do not know precisely why. At the time, and later when I wrote one article about this, I didn't know even if it had been done at CBS or if someone at Hanna-Barbera had been responsible…but then a friend at the network showed me a memo he'd dug out of the files. It merely said that CBS was insisting on the deletion, no explanation given. Anyway, there was no time to redub the line so they just bleeped the word and it sounded like an audio flaw. It has been absent whenever Cartoon Network or Boomerang have aired the show so it may have been removed from the master and is therefore absent from this DVD. Or maybe they did their transfer from an uncircumcised copy, I don't know. I'll let you know once I hear from someone or get a copy myself.
This may involve me finding some nice, considerate person at Warner Home Video who'll send me a couple of free ones. I know some of them read this site. Ahem.