Mr. B.

joebarbera05

A large, loving crowd of animation folks gathered this afternoon in a too-small conference room out at Warner Brothers TV Animation in the valley.  The event that brought them together was a party for Joe Barbera, who will be 91 years of age tomorrow.  It was wonderful to see him surrounded by a whole generation of writers and artists who grew up on and were inspired by H-B cartoons, plus a few of his long-time associates like master artists Iwao Takamoto and Jerry Eisenberg.  Iwao and Jerry were the key designers of Hanna-Barbera shows of the late sixties and early seventies, among their other achievements, but it was the "mix" of generations that I found most assuring.

Matter of fact, if you analyzed that party, I suspect you'd find a lot of folks who got into cartoons because they were 7-12 years old when Quick Draw debuted, and another whole gaggle of people who were inspired by Scooby-Doo (1969) and even those motivated by the studio's 1979 or '89 offerings.  I couldn't even begin to quantify how many lives Joe Barbera has impacted, just among those who now make their livings in animation, let alone all those in allied fields.

The party took place at Warner Brothers TV Animation because, alas, Hanna-Barbera no longer exists except as a trademark of Time-Warner.  Once upon a time, we thought of Bugs, Daffy, Porky and the WB characters as one family and the H-B characters — Huck, Yogi, Fred Flintstone, et al — as another.  Today, thanks to a maze of corporate acquisitions, they're all kissing cousins and J.B. has an office at Warner's, where he consults and contributes to new projects.  One artist I chatted with at the event mentioned to me how he still couldn't quite believe that he could do a drawing of Scooby-Doo, get paid for doing it and even walk down the hall to show it to Joe Barbera.  Having worked for Hanna-Barbera for several years, I know exactly how he feels.  It's like painting an egg and then taking it to the Easter Bunny to pass inspection.

One thing that amused me occurred when we all sang a lusty, heart-felt rendition of "Happy Birthday."  When you hear food servers perform it in a restaurant, they often don't know the name of the honoree so they fake the third line: "Happy birthday, dear [mumble]…"  Today, of course, everyone knew the identity of the Birthday Boy but to some, he was "Joe" and to some, he was "Mr. Barbera" and to still others he was "Mr. B," a common nickname.  When we got to the name part of the tune, everyone sang their own term of address for Joseph Barbera and it sounded like a jumble, like we weren't sure of his name.  Joe chucked and said, "You all know who I am."

Yes, we do, Mr. Barbera.  And we hope you know we'll never forget it.