Beginning in 1980, Hanna-Barbera produced a Richie Rich cartoon show that aired on Saturday Mornings on ABC. The show ran through four seasons and three names. Fred Silverman, who was then in charge at the network, liked to "marry" two or more unrelated shows to create a block. The theory was that while you might be inclined to watch a half-hour of Richie Rich followed by a half-hour of Scooby Doo, you were less likely to change channels during the one-hour Richie Rich/Scooby-Doo Show. I have no idea how valid this theory was.
So the first and second seasons, it was The Richie Rich/Scooby-Doo Show which ran an hour and gave each element thirty minutes. The third season, it was The Pac-Man/Little Rascals/Richie Rich Show, which was a 90-minute show with each component getting 30 minutes. And the fourth season, it was The Monchhichis/Little Rascals/Richie Rich Show with the Monchhichis getting half the hour and the other half being split between The Little Rascals and Richie.
The show was developed for television by a fine gentleman named Norman Maurer, who had drawn comic books before he moved to Hollywood, managed The Three Stooges, produced movies and worked on other cartoon shows. Norman was the story editor the first season and I wrote several episodes for him. When the second season started, Norman was too busy with his ninety-six different other endeavors so the story editor job was given to a very funny man named Bob Ogle.
Bob and the folks at ABC didn't get along and after a few weeks and by mutual agreement, he was rotated to another show on another network. Replacing him was Jack Mendelsohn, another former comic book guy and another fine gentleman. I didn't work on the second season.
When the third season started, Jack was brought back as story editor and went to work but after about two weeks, CBS picked up Meatballs & Spaghetti, a cartoon show that Jack had created for Marvel Productions. Jack wanted to go work on that so he asked out of his Richie Rich contract and ABC said they'd release him if — and only if — an acceptable alternative could be signed in his place. They gave Hanna-Barbera a list of acceptable alternatives and the only one on it who might be available was Yours Truly.
"Might be" is right. At the time — this would be February of 1982 when I got the offer — I was a staff writer on That's Incredible!, which was an hour-long (and pretty popular) weekly show on ABC's Monday night schedule. By any standard, that was a full-time job but I was also still doing a few comic book scripts for various publishers as well as animation scripts for Ruby-Spears, plus occasional shows for Sid and Marty Krofft. I still don't know why I said yes except that Jack asked me real nicely.
But I said yes on one condition, which was that I wanted to be paid by the show instead of by the week. H-B usually paid their story editors by the week and that might sound like a better arrangement for the story editors. If the network started demanding lots of rewrites or they completely rejected scripts, a job that might have taken twenty weeks to complete could stretch to twenty-five or more. So didn't it make more sense to get paid per week? I decided it didn't, at least for me.
A story editor's contract there did not specify a minimum or maximum number of weeks. It just said you'd work until all the episodes for the season were declared done in the opinion of…someone. While freelancing for the studio, I had observed that Bill Hanna, who was in charge of schedules, often manipulated them to cut down on how long his company would be paying you. His right to adjust those schedules was absolute…and it kind of had to be.
Once a script was completed and approved, it went to an assembly line of artists, some in the H-B studio, others around the globe working in studios that had subcontracting deals with H-B. Wherever they were, they were being paid by the hour or the week. To Bill Hanna and his associates, there was no greater disaster in the vast H-B production machine than artists sitting around on the payroll with nothing to draw.
So let's say I was three weeks ahead on Richie Rich scripts and suddenly, the Scooby Doo show was having trouble getting scripts approved by the network. There might suddenly be a day when the artists working on Scooby — who might be in the H-B building or might be in Korea or the Philippines or anywhere — would have nothing to animate. They couldn't allow that to happen so Mr. Hanna, without consulting me or anyone, would send all the available, approved Richie Rich scripts — or whatever other scripts he could find — off to be done by the Scooby crew.
The next morning, I'd get a memo that my show was no longer three weeks ahead. It was now, shockingly, a week behind so I suddenly had to work like crazy. If I was going to be juggling so many different jobs, I needed to cut down on that kind of surprise and I thought getting paid by the show might do it. It would give Mr. Hanna some incentive to rush some other story editor since he wouldn't be saving money by rushing me.
It was not a bad idea but it led to a very messy, protracted negotiation over my fee since H-B had either never done that before or hadn't done it lately. Finally though, I got roughly what I wanted and I went to work.
This has been Part One of the story. One of these days — no promises as to when — I'll get around to writing Part Two.