Among my favorite shows when I was a kid was Crusader Rabbit, which was more or less the first cartoon series produced for television. The adventures of the plucky hare and his pal, Ragland T. Tiger, were done in two batches. In 1948, Jay Ward and Alex Anderson produced 195 four minute cartoons in black-and-white. In 1957, a company called TV Spots did around 200 more cartoons in color. The photo above is from the opening of the first series and you can see what I believe is the opening episode of that run over at this link.
But let us concern ourselves with the second batch. Among the stations that carried those cartoons was the local NBC affiliate in Los Angeles, which is now called KNBC but was then KRCA. The channel's afternoon programming was all locally-produced and on Monday through Friday, most of it consisted of a gentleman named Tom Frandsen. His show changed formats and lengths from time to time but during the period I'm recalling, he presided over an odd array of elements that really didn't go together.
The main part of his show was an afternoon movie which would be interrupted every three minutes for commercials and so he could interview in-studio guests. Then after the movie, he'd host an old episode of the prime-time TV series, Hennesey, which was a great show…I think. I have one episode here — the only one I've seen in 40+ years — and it isn't very good, but I'm willing to assume it's an exception. It was an "adult" situation comedy, which meant only there was no laugh track and no one got dressed up in funny costumes or hit with pies, but I recall its star (Jackie Cooper) being very funny and his co-star (Abby Dalton) being very lovely.
Hennesey was on in prime-time for three years (1959-1962) but I think the period I'm describing here was around '61, before it went off the network. Frandsen was showing episodes from its first two seasons and after each, he would introduce the day's installment of Crusader Rabbit. (And as if this aggregation of programming wasn't odd enough, the Crusader Rabbit cartoon led into the afternoon newscast. So Channel 4 would segue from the bunny and Rags the Tiger trapped in a mine to a police shootout in the City of Industry.)
The cartoon was, of course, why I watched. I was home from school by that time…or if I was at a friend's house, I made them turn it on. Couldn't miss Crusader Rabbit…though once in a while, I did and it wasn't my fault. Frandsen's movie would occasionally run long because a guest got wordy or because of an interruption for breaking news coverage. When that happened, guess what would get bumped. I was quite unhappy when this occurred, even though Frandsen would promise us that we wouldn't miss an installment; that today's would be run tomorrow. I didn't see why the 5:00 News couldn't start at 5:07.
What I really couldn't miss was Crusader Rabbit on Sunday morning. Like I said, there were approximately 200 of these cartoons produced. I'm not sure of the precise math but I'm guessing there were either 195 or 208 because I do know they formed thirteen separate serialized storylines. The production company made them available in two forms and your local station could air them in either format or both. One was the way Mr. Frandsen ran them Monday through Friday — one standalone chapter per day. The other was how KRCA ran them very early (around 7 AM or 8 AM) on Sunday morning, which was with an entire storyline edited into an hour-long "movie."
Absent was all the recapping, along with the portions where the announcer would tell you to "tune in tomorrow" for another exciting chapter of Crusader Rabbit. The customary main title of Crusader riding up in shining armor on a white horse was gone…which was fine with me since it was just confusing. In the cartoons, he never rode a horse or dressed as a knight. Instead on the quasi-features, there was a new main title with full credits that made what you were about to see look kind of like a theatrical film. Along with the names, you saw still shots of Crusader and Rags posed around an animation studio, acting like they were drawing and photographing their own adventures.
I loved those Crusader Rabbit "movies." The animation looked like it was done on shirt cardboards but the stories, many of which were written by the late Chris Hayward, were very clever and engrossing, especially in that edited/tightened format…though (again) it's been a long time since I've seen them. One of the reasons for this post is to ask if anyone out there has copies or even if the "feature" versions still exist. In all my travels in and around the animation community, I've never seen one or even heard anyone besides me mention them. There have been some legit video releases and a lot of free-floating bootlegs of the serial versions of Crusader Rabbit but I've never seen the longform versions. Has anyone else?
Anyway, here at long last is today's video link. It is, appropriately, the opening of the color Crusader Rabbit series, complete with the bunny who never dressed in armor or rode a horse in the body of the cartoons dressing in armor and riding a horse. I still don't understand that or why he was dressed that way in the opening and also on the covers of the Dell comic books. Just another one of those mysteries of childhood.
