CHAPTER TWO

Now then. When we last left me, I was lunching with Joe Barbera at the Villa Capri restaurant in Hollywood, being charged with my mission: To write a Scooby Doo script that would introduce the character of Scrappy Doo. I had to make Scrappy "work," at least on paper, so the good folks at ABC would invest in another season of the series. Mr. B. had sketches of Scrappy — mostly by Iwao Takamoto, I believe — and a rough idea of who the character was. As he told me what he had in mind, it sounded to me like he was trying to avoid saying two words. The two words were "Henery Hawk."

It is not uncommon for a new creation to start with what some might call a reference point or some element of inspiration. We all know about The Honeymooners turning into The Flintstones or Sgt. Bilko being a jumping-off point for Top Cat. Some are less obvious and there are also times in the development process when you start with one idea and by the time it reaches the air, it bears so little resemblance to that idea that it really qualifies as a new creation. The Scooby Doo show itself started out with the template of the old Dobie Gillis show and morphed into something altogether different.

There was at the time at ABC, a senior exec who (it was said) could best be sold a new series if he perceived some lineage to the classic Warner Brothers cartoons. Years later, I discussed this with the exec and became convinced his passion in this area was greatly exaggerated. But at the time, many of the folks whose livelihoods involved selling shows to him believed it, and so would laden their pitches with WB references — "This character is like Daffy Duck crossed with Wile E. Coyote" or somesuch gobbledygook. There was also a special sales magic to obtaining the services of Mel Blanc to voice a new character.

Not long before, H-B had tried to sell a series to ABC featuring a hero whose body was mostly mustache, a la Yosemite Sam. The network was only semi-interested so more sketches were done and the concept was changed a bit…and the character got hairier and hairier. At some point, he was so hirsute that they decided to make him into a caveman and that's when ABC bought the show. Soon after, he made his debut: Captain Caveman…with a voice provided by Mel Blanc.

I was startled when an H-B exec told me this. The two characters have zero in common apart from hair and Mel. It's one of those cases where Yosemite Sam was a jumping-off point but he jumped so far that he became a wholly new entity. Still, the WB connection (and Mel) were of some import in the sales of the series.

As Mr. Barbera told me how he saw Scrappy Doo, I kept thinking of Henery Hawk. Barbera never said that name and may not have even realized he was describing the pint-sized chicken hawk from several WB epics. But that's what it sounded like they wanted. So I went home and wrote a short scene, imagining Scrappy to have Henery Hawk's voice and swagger, and when Mr. B. read it, he called and said, "You've nailed it. That's exactly what I had in mind."

So that was Hurdle #1. The next hurdle was to come up with a ghost and mystery for the script. For this, I decided to steal from myself. I looked back over the issues of the Scooby Doo comic book I'd written a few years earlier, selected a couple of my favorite ideas and typed up short summaries. Someone at ABC picked the one they liked best and I went ahead and wrote the script in about a week. The hardest part of it was that every day, some Hanna-Barbera exec or agent (though never Joe) would call me and try to convince me how vital it was that the script be strong enough to convince ABC that Scrappy was viable. They all had a way of saying it as if they expected me to go, "What? You want it to be good? Well then, maybe I'd better take out all the recipes I'm putting in and insert some jokes instead!"

I handed the script in on a Friday and it was simultaneously distributed to all the important folks at H-B and sent to the folks over at the network. Over the weekend, Barbera called to say he was very happy with it. He had a few notes but not many and he thought we were in very good shape. Monday morning, I got a call from a rival producer, the one for whom I'd done another pilot that ABC was considering for that season. He "jokingly" told me that I did too good a job for Hanna-Barbera. He'd just heard that the show I'd developed for him wasn't going to make it because ABC liked my Scrappy script. (I put "jokingly" in quotes because the truth is that the guy was pissed.) Later that day, someone called from Hanna-Barbera to say that I was a hero and that Scooby Doo was being picked up for another season.

I was happy, of course. Little did I know my troubles were only starting.