Dave Marron just wrote to ask me this…
What's your opinion of the Hanna-Barbera Laurel and Hardy cartoons? Were they faithful to the Boys, or are they an abomination that should never see the light of day ever again?
My answer would fall somewhere between those two extremes. I covered this matter here back in 2007 but I wouldn't expect anyone to wade through the 31,949 messages on this site — that's the actual number as of this minute — and indeed, few have so I get asked this a lot.
I have a kind of two-tier answer here: The cartoons themselves are as good or bad as anything Hanna-Barbera was producing at the time. They're competent. They have their moments. I don't think they're anyone's favorites. They don't have that much to do with the real performers on whom they're technically based.
I feel almost the same way about the Abbott & Costello cartoons that H-B produced, though the ones of Bud and Lou had a slight edge since they did have Bud Abbott supplying his own voice. Also, Lou Costello was a little more of a cartoon character in real life, his humor depending less on gestures and certain subtleties that were vital to Stan and Ollie. You weren't going to get those gestures and subtleties out of Hanna-Barbera…or probably any animation studio then in operation.
So I don't hate the H-B Stan and Oliver cartoons. They're about on a par with the studio's Lippy Lion and Hardy Har Har cartoons…and similar enough to make it credible that, as rumor has it, they used leftover or recycled Lippy and Hardy scripts. (I just typed "L&H scripts," then realized the initials apply to both. So did the level of comedy.)
So that's one tier of my response. The other has to do with what a shame it was that producer Larry Harmon obtained and exploited the names and likenesses of my two favorite performers. I had some run-ins with Mr. Harmon and didn't like him…which is odd because throughout my life, I've been criticized for liking people that others abhor.
Mr. Harmon, may he rest in peace, came across like Sgt. Bilko without the charm or occasional benevolence, always trying to hustle me into writing something for him for deferred income — or no promise of any ever, no matter what. A lot of folks seems to think that he cheated the heirs of Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy and while I have no direct info on what was signed or what was paid on that matter, I had my own sense of his integrity. It, not the cartoons themselves, colors that whole body of work for me.
