Not to take away from tomorrow's extravaganza on Shokus Internet Radio but I did a short interview this afternoon about Joe Barbera with my pal Paul Harris, who's heard on KMOX, the voice of St. Louis. You can hear it over on this page at Paul's site — and while you're there, look around a little. Paul's one of the best interviewers I've found and he has a knack for getting guests who are...well, let's just say they're generally more important and/or interesting than I am. And yes, I know that doesn't exactly thin out the herd much. Anyway, we chatted about the late 'n' great Joe B. for a bit.
I also did two separate interviews for BBC Radio and a couple of others...and I'll tell you how stupid I can be at times. When you do these by-phone interviews, they call you and as you wait to go on, you're usually listening to the station. Waiting for Paul to introduce me, I'm hearing a traffic report that the 270 Southbound is jammed due to heavy holiday traffic and an overturned vehicle...and I think, "Ooh...better stay off the 270 Southbound." Of course, two seconds later, I realize that I'm not likely to be travelling the 270 Southbound in the next hour or so since it's in St. Louis and I'm in Los Angeles. I don't know why I keep falling for this...only that I do.
I will be back on Shokus Internet Radio tomorrow (Wednesday) from 4 PM to 6 PM Pacific — that's 7 PM to 9 PM for you Right-Coasters — and the topic will be Joe Barbera! Stu Shostak and I will spend two hours talking about J.B. and taking phone calls and I think Stuart will even be playing some rare Hanna-Barbera records. You can call in and ask a question or just listen. Either way, I assure you you'll get to know more about the extraordinary world of H-B than you ever did before. I may even let Stuart goad me into telling the tale of the birth of Scrappy Doo.
You can listen to Shokus Internet Radio from the comfort of the chair you're sitting in, tuning in via the computer upon which you're reading these words. Just click here to go to the Shokus site and pick an audio browser. And you don't have to do that only when I'm on there. You can listen 24/7. Here's a link to their schedule.
Here are some more remembrances of Joe Barbera, who died yesterday at an alleged 95 years of age. (At least one animation historian is certain Joe was two years older than his official bios claimed.) I suppose we're engaged in two channels of mourning here...one for the man himself and another for the last real "relic" — I don't mean that word in a bad way — of a studio that meant so much to so many cartoon watchers as well as cartoon makers. And maybe we're also mourning the end of an era, as I can't name another living person who was as much a presence in theatrical animation. either. We lost a lot when we lost Joe, as these folks are noting...
Paul Dini likens J.B. to Sinatra...and if you knew how much Paul loves Sinatra, you'd know what a nice, apt comparison that is.
Voice guy Howard Hoffman talks about the honor of meeting and working with Mr. B.
Brent McKee is a child of television and he has a good assessment of Joe's contribution to the medium.
Peter Farnsworth, one of the talents behind Wallace and Gromit, speaks of how Joe Barbera influenced his work.
And Tom Sito, an animator and Past President of The Animation Guild, has his own memories of Joe.
And today's video link comes equipped with another Joe Barbera anecdote. This one is a story that has been told a couple of times in various venues and occasionally mauled or distorted in the process. I've even told it once before on this blog but unlike some others, I got it right. So I'm going to tell it again...
There are two participants in this story, one being — of course — Joe Barbera. The other is Howard Morris, the brilliant comedy actor who is probably best known today for his many years as a sidekick on various Sid Caesar TV shows and for playing the irrepressible Ernest T. Bass on The Andy Griffith Show. Howie also had quite a career doing voices for cartoon characters including Jughead and several others on the Archie cartoons, Wade Duck on Garfield and Friends, Gopher in the Winnie the Pooh shorts and Beetle Bailey in the cartoon series of the same name. For Hanna-Barbera, he voiced — among many I could name — Atom Ant, Mr. Peebles on Magilla Gorilla, and Breezly Bruin in the "Breezly and Sneezly" cartoons.
Howie's career at H-B ended in 1966 when he had an argument with Joe. What it was about is immaterial now but if you absolutely have to know, I explained it here the last time I told this anecdote. All you need to know is that it ended with Howie telling Joe, "Go f*** yourself!" Once that instruction was delivered, Howard Morris walked out of the building...and forever out of the employment of Hanna-Barbera. Or so he thought at the time.
Around ten years later, to his utter amazement, Howie got hired to do some voices for another H-B project. Given the number of ex-wives he was supporting, he could not afford to turn it down, so he timidly reported for work at the Hanna-Barbera Studio. All through the session, he was nervous about what might happen if he ran into Joe Barbera. He was afraid Joe would slug him or have him removed bodily from the premises...or maybe it would just be a lot of ugly yelling and screaming. He managed to get through the recording without encountering J.B. but as he headed out of the building, he found himself walking down a hallway...with Guess Who coming his way. "Howie," he heard Barbera call out. Howie froze in fear...but Barbera came up to him, gave him a big hug and told him how happy he was to see him again after too long an absence.
"You're not going to throw me out?" he asked Joe.
"Of course not, Howie," Barbera replied. "Why would I throw you out?"
Howie stammered, "Well...the last time I was here, I told you to go f*** yourself."
Barbera grinned and said, "I took your advice."
And now you know one of the reasons that so many people, including those who fought with him and quit and got fired, loved Joe Barbera.
Which brings us to the video clip, which is from the second episode of The Jetsons. It first aired on Sunday evening, September 30 of 1962 and it features the first thing that Howie did for the studio. They cast him as the teen idol of the future, Jet Screamer, and had him introduce the immortal rock 'n' roll classic, "Eep Opp Ork Ah-Ah." According to Howie, J.B. personally selected him and directed him, the selection being because Barbera always liked Howie's performances as one of the Haircuts, the singing group on various Sid Caesar programs. (One of those numbers was our video link earlier this year.) Here's Jet...
This article by George Packer is difficult to summarize. It's about a gentleman named David Kilcullen who has an intriguing view of how the Iraq War could and perhaps should be handled.
December 20, 2006
