Cartoon voice actor Doug Young died January 7 at the age of 98. He was heard in many Hanna-Barbera cartoons between 1959 and around 1965 but is surely best known as the voice of Doggie Daddy in the Augie Doggie cartoons on the Quick Draw McGraw series. When the show was created, Joe Barbera and the writers decided that Augie's Dear Ol' Dad should sound like Jimmy Durante. They furthermore decided that Daws Butler — who played Augie and every other recurring character on that program — would supply that voice.
It was Daws who decided the part should be played by Doug Young. Daws was capable of playing both roles as he proved on the 1965 record album, Doggie Daddy Tells Augie Doggie The Story of Pinocchio. But that kind of voice was hard on Butler's vocal cords and he decided to tell Hanna-Barbera to get someone else for the job. Before he could do that, he ran into Doug Young in a record store.
Doug had been a working actor in the days of radio dramas — among many other shows, he was heard on The Cisco Kid, Red Ryder, Sherlock Holmes, The Lux Radio Theatre and The Whistler — but had not made the transition to television. Daws knew him from at least one of those shows on which they'd worked together and he remembered that Young did great impressions and could easily handle the kind of roles that voice actors called "throat-rippers." He also thought that Doug should be back in show business. So they went into Daws' home studio, put together a new demo tape…and that's how Doug Young became Doggie Daddy. I thought the result was one of the most memorable characterizations ever done for a TV cartoon.
Doug was in H-B cartoons for much of the sixties — he was Hokey Wolf's loyal sidekick, Ding-a-Ling, Yippee in "Yippee, Yappee and Yahooey," plus he played tons of supporting roles on The Flintstones and other shows including Jonny Quest and Hanna-Barbera's Laurel and Hardy cartoons. In '68, he moved to Seattle where he became very active with several groups there that keep alive the art of radio-style dramas and comedies. In one of these groups, he met and became friendly with my pal Frank Buxton, who sadly left us a few days before Doug did.
It was Frank who put me in touch with Doug for some long, pleasurable phone conversations, including one that took place on Stu's Show. I enjoyed chatting with him and letting him know how many of us there were around who loved his work. That is, whenever I could get him to stop telling me how much he loved Daws.
My thanks to Georgi Mihailov for letting me know about Doug's passing.