When I was a kid, I bought every record album I could find that featured characters from my favorite cartoons. Often, I'd get burned because I'd buy a Huckleberry Hound record, get it home, put it on my record player and discover to my youthful horror that Daws Butler, who did Huck's voice on the cartoons, wasn't on it. Some hapless mimic was doing his best to replicate Daws as Huck…and doing a very poor job of it. (Actually, I'm not sure if there was or has ever been any Daws Impersonator who could have satisfied me at that age.)
To me, it was like if you bought a Frank Sinatra record, took it home and found out it was some guy imitating Ol' Blue Eyes. That was the kind of unhappiness I experienced when I ordered a set of two Movie-Wheels, which as far as I know were the only ones produced.
A Movie-Wheel had a cardboard sleeve the size of an LP record but the actual record in it was a smaller flexi-disc made out of bendable plastic or rubber or some amalgam. In the cardboard sleeve, there was a little window with a dial as as you played the record, you would advance the dial when you heard a certain sound effect. Each time you advanced it, you'd see a different image in the little window, illustrating what was happening in the record at that moment. Since records and record sleeves have two sides, there would be two short stories on each wheel. You'll understand all this better if/when you watch the video below.
The two Movie-Wheels were sold as a set on local kids' TV shows. I think I saw the commercial on Skipper Frank's show on KTLA Channel 5. This was 1960 and I think it was something like $4.00 for the pair. One was Felix the Cat and it was faithful to the Felix cartoons that were then running on local TV. The voices were all done by Jack Mercer, who did almost all the voices in the cartoons, including Felix. The drawings were credited to Joe Oriolo, who was the main designer of those cartoons as well as the owner of the studio that did them.
The other record was Huckleberry Hound on one side, Yogi Bear on the other. As mentioned above, Daws Butler was not on the record. The voices were done by — amazingly — Jack Mercer along with an announcer-type gent named Jim Sparks. I know nothing about Mr. Sparks. The drawings were done by Frank Little and I don't know anything about him either except that he obviously never worked on the cartoons. I was disappointed in the art as I was by the absence of Daws.
And both records were written, produced and directed by Paul White and Ruth Roche. Mr. White is unknown to me but Ruth Roche was active in the comic book field as a writer and editor. Starting around 1940, she worked for the Eisner-Iger Studio, mainly on comics published by Fiction House like Phantom Lady and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.
I still have my Movie-Wheels…somewhere. But thanks to my friend Greg Ehrbar, who assembled video versions of one side of each. Here's the Huckleberry Hound one. Jack Mercer was great as the voice of Felix and the voice of Popeye but I don't think Huck and Yogi were in his wheelhouse. I'll post the Felix one tomorrow and you'll hear him being more properly cast…