This site gets results. When people ask me why I do this thing, I tell them stories like this.
Yesterday, I posted a piece about the "longform" versions of the old Crusader Rabbit cartoon series and how I loved watching them when I was a wee lad. I described the opening titles — which I haven't seen in more than forty years — from memory and said I'd love to see those episodes again.
Ask and ye shall receive. Ron Kurer, who operates one of the best animation-related websites called ToonTracker, responded by posting the opening of one to YouTube. Here it is. Watch it and then we'll discuss it after the fold…
Just as I remembered it. And the best part was being able to read the credits. Let's point out a couple of those names…
"Story" is credited to Barbara Chain and Chris Bob Hayward. We wrote about Mr. Hayward here. Barbara Chain — referred to by some as the first woman animation "storyperson" — also wrote for UPA cartoons and has the teleplay credit on the immortal Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. "Story sketch" is by Jack Miller…and since someone will write and ask me, I oughta say that this is not the same Jack Miller who edited and wrote comic books for DC and also wrote some of the Filmation Superman cartoons…although this Jack Miller also wrote for Filmation (and Warner Brothers and DePatie-Freleng and other studios.)
Voices were by GeGe Pearson, Roy Whaley and Vern Louden. As I understand it, Pearson was Crusader Rabbit (replacing Lucille Bliss, who did the role in the first series), Whaley was the narrator and Louden was Ragland T. Tiger and everyone else.
Sound effects by Ray Erlenborn and Gene Twambley? Boy, those are superstar sound effects guys. Those two men were the top guys for making noises on all the major radio programs of the forties, including Burns & Allen and The Jack Benny Program. Gene actually spelled his name either "Twomby" or "Twombley," depending on his mood that week. And someone here will probably be interested to know that he was married to Bea Benaderet.
There's John Sparey's name among the animators. Was there a TV cartoon show produced in Los Angeles that John Sparey didn't work on? He was even on Garfield and Friends, where he was one of our most valuable artists. And there's Chuck McCann as one of the editors…not the same Chuck McCann who worked in front of the camera, of course. This Chuck McCann was, among other credits, the editor for Bill Melendez on so many of the Charlie Brown cartoons.
Many of the other names are familiar to me — a lot of them worked on Calvin and the Colonel or King Leonardo — but the ones I cited are the ones that jumped out at me. Their credits didn't mean a thing to me when I last saw those titles but they do now.
Anyway, thanks to Ron of ToonTracker. You have no idea how much I enjoyed seeing that little bit of video again. (By the way, Ron says on this page that there were 260 episodes in this series and he has a list so I guess he knows what he's talking about.) I hope viewing this title sequence did something for someone else reading this, as well. Now, if I could only get copies of some of the complete hours…