In 1963, Hanna-Barbera entered into a deal with Ideal Toys that resulted in two programs — The Magilla Gorilla Show and The Peter Potamus Show — being produced for syndication. Both were initially loaded with plugs for Ideal's line and both were decent shows, not as good (in my opinion) as what H-B had done before but better than much of what would follow. As a fan of the studio's work at that age — I was 11 — I was excited about the new shows…
…and what really got me excited was a little documentary that aired the day before the first of these shows (Magilla's) debuted. It featured clips of the upcoming series and also from the feature the studio was then working on, Hey There, It's Yogi Bear. Best of all though, it had a little tour of the then-new Hanna-Barbera studio with Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera and their staff re-creating a creative meeting in which they came up with the idea for the Magilla Gorilla cartoons. I kinda doubt it actually happened that way.
The voice recording sequence is also pretty fake. They had two artists (or two someones) play the voice actors without showing their faces. Then they dubbed in the actual voice tracks for the cartoon in question. The voices were actually by Allan Melvin and Doug Young but that wasn't Allan or Doug in the mini-doc — a deception I think I even figured out at that age.
Still, now that I'd had a peek inside that magical place, I spent no small amount of time imagining what it might be like to work there…and around thirteen years later, I did for several years. In fact, I worked with Bill and Joe and some of the other folks seen in this video. Here's a shot of three artists who were very important in the look of Hanna-Barbera cartoons and the design of key characters…
Other folks in this who I knew and/or worked with are Jayne Barbera, Tony Benedict, Alex Lovy and Lew Marshall. There's also a moment with Joe Barbera's secretary Guyla, who I knew later when she was still Mr. B's secretary and was also married to artist Alex Toth.
The special was called Here Comes a Star and it aired, at least in some cities, on January 14, 1964. The next day — again, in some cities — the first episode of The Magilla Gorilla Show debuted on the same stations. The host for Here Comes a Star was TV personality George Fenneman, best known as Groucho Marx's announcer/foil on You Bet Your Life. He had recently hosted a game show for CBS called Your Surprise Package and a prime-time show for ABC called Your Funny, Funny Films.
This is not the entire show. A couple of musical scenes have been edited out, presumably because someone didn't want to pay someone else for music rights. But there's enough here you should find fascinating. I miss those days, those people and that building. The reception area when Mr. Fenneman enters looks exactly as it did the first time I set foot in that building around 1974…