My longtime buddy Pat O'Neill wrote to ask…
No comments on the long-held theory that the human characters of Scooby-Doo are based on the cast of Dobie Gillis?
I kinda dealt with that theory back in this message in 2002…for which I made the graphic that I'm reusing below this paragraph. Basically, the theory is true…or at least, they used the Dobie Gillis show as a starting point. Everyone understands the connection between The Honeymooners and The Flintstones or Sgt. Bilko and Top Cat or Masterpiece Theater and The Wacky Races but they should also know (a) that other cartoon studios besides Hanna-Barbera did this, (b) that other non-cartoon studios and many writers do this and (c) often, the development of a show starts with the template from some pre-existing property but it evolves so much that little of the source from which they "borrowed" winds up in the final product.
For instance, it's kinda obvious that the H-B series Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels used Charlie's Angels for the "angels" part but not so obvious that the "caveman" part of it started with someone's decision to do a character like Yosemite Sam. In sketches and discussions, he got hairier and hairier until someone suggested making him a caveman instead. (I didn't work on that show but folks who did told me of its evolution.)
It's like if you and I decided to write a story for kids that was something like Little Red Riding Hood and you said, "But let's make the main character a guy" and I said "Fine…and I think wolves have been overused so let's make the villain a bounty hunter because they're popular on TV these days!" And we both agree that if the villain is a bounty hunter, Big Bad Bart (that's what we rename Red) shouldn't be transporting a basket of goodies and you say, "How about if Bart's a driver for Amazon and he's bringing Grandma a new computer?" And I say, "That's good…but a Grandma wouldn't need a new computer and we could use some romance in this story so let's make her a young woman that Bart can fall in love with…"
…and before long, there's very little trace of Little Red Riding Hood in our story — certainly not enough to be called plagiarism. This happens a lot with committee-created projects and most cartoon shows have been committee-created projects in some sense, even if there was one person who clearly deserved the credit, "Created by…" Of course, sometimes there are enough remnants that a connection is visible. If Shaggy didn't have the beard of Maynard G. Krebs, I don't think anyone would ever notice any similarity to The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, which is what that series was actually called.
But if we're going to note that at one point in the development of Scooby Doo there was such a parallel, it's interesting to point one thing out. Fred kind of started out with Dobie in mind, Shaggy came from Maynard, Daphne came from Thalia and Velma was vaguely based on the character of Zelda…
…and Zelda was played by a fine actress named Sheila James who is now Sheila Kuehl, a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. As Wikipedia notes — and this is one time it's right — "Kuehl was California's first openly gay state legislator, having previously served in the California State Senate and the California State Assembly, where she was the Assembly's first female speaker pro tem."
This is obviously a real stretch. The connection between Zelda and Velma is very, very remote and hardly worth talking about. But if people are going to say that Velma "was always" gay…well, maybe there's something there worth noting. Maybe.