Here's a story about Joe Barbera, followed by an old Kellogg's cereal commercial.
In the mid-seventies, CBS commissioned Hanna-Barbera to do a pilot for a series that, if accepted, would run Monday-Friday early in the morning. At the time, that's when they aired Captain Kangaroo…but the good Captain was holding out for higher pay and the network would need a new show for that slot if they couldn't come to terms. If nothing else, they thought, the fact that they were making a pilot might frighten Bob Keeshan, who owned and played C.K., and cause him to temper his demands.
So Joe Barbera supervised this pilot…and it came out rather well, despite the fact that it was produced for little more than pocket change. A guy in a Yogi Bear costume played a part in it, and there wasn't enough money in the budget to pay to have Daws Butler come in and record two Yogi lines that were called for in the script. So Mr. Barbera, for just the two lines, did the voice of Yogi Bear. He did a pretty good imitation of Daws.
J.B. was proud of the finished product and confident that once the CBS execs saw it, they'd close down the Treasure House, retire Mr. Greenjeans and mount Mr. Moose's head on their wall. Instead of just showing them the finished product, he arranged a small party in a fancy conference room at the facility where the editing was done. He had his favorite restaurant of the moment, the Villa Capri, send over a bartender and a sumptious supper buffet for about ten people. What Barbera was thinking was that he'd wine them and dine them, and then he'd run the pilot for them and they'd be so happy and/or drunk by then, they'd buy it. Not a bad idea but it didn't work out that way.
No one from CBS ever showed. Ten minutes after the scheduled arrival time, someone phoned to say that the network and Bob Keeshan had come to terms…so there was no available time slot for the new series and no rush to view the pilot. The execs there were busy so instead of trekking over to Burbank for Mr. B's little party, they wanted him to just send over the tape. They'd watch it — or not — when things were a bit less hectic.
Barbera told the bartender and the catering folks to go home. Then he called upstairs to an editing room where I was working. I had not worked on the pilot that had just met a probable demise. I was there laboring over another Hanna-Barbera pilot which would eventually meet a similar fate. Its producer and I were in the middle of an editing session when Joe phoned and asked me to please come down to the conference room. When I got there, he told me his pilot had just been shot down without anyone seeing it, and that he needed my help. "You want me to help you on a rewrite?" I asked.
He said, "No, I want you to help me on this dinner." He began loading a plate for me with pasta and veal from the spread. "We're going to eat as much of this as we can, you and me. And then we'll pack up what's left and you can take it home, stick it in your freezer for a few months and then throw it out when it gets too old." I guess I had a sad look on my face because he added, "Don't be down. This is a celebration!"
"A celebration? Your pilot didn't sell," I reminded him. "Just what is it you're celebrating?"
Joe picked up a bottle of wine, took a long swig and replied, "I'm celebrating that I'm not going to have to go around for the rest of my life with people pointing at me and saying, 'That's the man who got them to cancel Captain Kangaroo!' Here — have a canneloni."
That's today's Joe Barbera story. Now, here's Yogi Bear (with his real voice, the voice of Daws Butler) selling cereal…