Between 1962 and 1964, the U.P.A. cartoon studio — best known as the purveyors of Mr. Magoo — produced a syndicated cartoon series called The Dick Tracy Show. I was ten when this thing came on and even then, I looked at it like I'd just seen a chicken with lips or a cat with antlers. Many years later when I worked in the animation business and met some of the folks who'd worked on this show, I asked them what was on anyone's mind and I always got pretty much the same reply: "I still don't know."
If you've never seen one, I've embedded a typical episode below. As you'll see, the famous Mr. Tracy carried almost none of the action. He'd not only do the same thing in every episode, they'd usually use the same animation, often with his mouth hidden to make it easier to insert different dialogue. Each cartoon would open with Tracy hearing of a crime and passing it on to one of his team of detectives and officers.
None of these law enforcement figures were the kind of cartoon characters who belonged in Tracy's world. One, Hemlock Holmes, was a talking cartoon bulldog who sounded like Cary Grant. Another was a broadly cartooned guy named Heap O'Calorie whose voice was an impersonation of Andy Devine. (One of the producers told me that when the show went on the air, they got a call from Andy Devine asking why they hadn't just hired him.)
Then you had an Asian stereotype (Joe Jitsu) and a Hispanic stereotype (Go-Go Gomez) and occasionally someone else, equally unlike anything Tracy's creator Chester Gould ever drew.
The crime at hand was something being perpetrated by two (occasionally, one) of the villains from Mr. Gould's strip — Pruneface, Itchy, Mumbles, Flattop, B-B Eyes, Stooge Viller, The Brow, Oodles, The Mole, Sketch Paree, etc. Tracy's operative would chase them about in a world that contained almost no other characters to animate, almost get killed and then triumph in the end.
Somewhere in the middle, Tracy's man would often freeze the action for a moment and check in with Tracy via two-way wrist-radio, which was kind of the iPhone of its day. At the end, Tracy would either show up to congratulate the officer or do so via the wrist-radio. They made 130 of these 5-minute cartoons which were shown in various packagings on TV stations across the land.
I see one every so often and I still wonder the same thing: Why? Why do you get the rights to Dick Tracy and then not put Dick Tracy in the show but use him to anchor cartoons about a talking bulldog? I can imagine doing a show about Tracy. I can imagine doing one about these weird law enforcement officials. I just never quite got the mix.
And there's another mystery. People are always asking me who did which voices. Well, some of them are known. The great dramatic actor Everett Sloane voiced Tracy. "Uncle" Johnny Coons, once a prominent kid show host in Chicago, spoke for Heap O'Calorie. Benny Rubin supplied the voice of Joe Jitsu. Jerry Hausner (who also voice-directed) was Hemlock Holmes. And Paul Frees and Mel Blanc split the role of Go-Go Gomez.
Okay, so who did the villains? For years, I puzzled over this until I finally realized three things that didn't dawn on me at first. If you're one of those folks who, like me, likes to identify voices, put your detective skills to work on this series but remember three points…
- As far as I can tell, all of the voices in the show were done by the above-named actors. Some historians say Don Messick, June Foray and Howie Morris were in the cast. Howie, I know wasn't, though he later turned up in some U.P.A. productions. I've never heard a voice in one I thought was Messick and I'm not sure there was ever a female voice in any of these, though perhaps I haven't seen all 130.
- Unlike most cartoon characters, many of the villains had rotating voices. This is why it's hard to make up a list of who played which ones and why it differs every time someone attempts such a list. Flattop was always a Peter Lorre impression but sometimes it was Frees, sometimes it was Blanc and sometimes it was someone else, probably Hausner. Brow and B-B Eyes had at least two different actors trying to approximate the same voice in different episodes and so did Itchy and probably others.
- A lot of those villains — especially Pruneface, Sketch Paree and Stooge Viller — were voiced by Everett Sloane. Somehow, this did not dawn on me when I first tried to figure it out. I assumed he just did Tracy…but no. U.P.A. was a frugal studio and I guess they had to get their money's worth out of the guy. Every source I've ever seen credits his roles to others but listen with him in mind. You'll hear it.
Here's a fairly typical episode with Benny Rubin as Joe Jitsu, Everett Sloane as Tracy and the old man and Paul Frees as B-B Eyes and Flattop. If you don't like this cartoon, there's no point in ever watching another one because this is as good as they get. And as racially-sensitive…
