Dave Marron wrote to ask…
What do you think Mr. Hanna and Mr. Barbera would've thought about the updating (sexual and otherwise) of the Scoobies?
Ordinarily, I'm leery of questions that involve mind-reading, especially mind-reading of the deceased. But in this case, I talked to Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera enough about this topic when I was working at their studio that I'm fairly confident of my response. Both men knew I was a huge fan of their early work and I was frequently involved in talks about reviving and revamping those old properties.
With one category of exception, I think they'd have disliked what some have since done to classic Hanna-Barbera properties. It wouldn't be just a matter of deciding that this character was going to suddenly be gay or that one was going to be somehow deformed. It would mainly be a matter of thinking there was nothing wrong with the old version — or at least nothing wrong that couldn't be fixed with some fresh minds and fresh ideas applied to tried, tested and true formats. I know Mr. B. privately hated almost every new variation on Yogi Bear, The Flintstones and other characters of that era.
But there was that single exception: In their eyes, you could do just about anything to any past H-B property if the alternative was not selling new product.
Some who witnessed this attitude thought it was a matter of putting the making of money ahead of anything else but I really don't think it was that…or at least not just that. Bill and Joe took enormous — and by "enormous," I mean something like the scale of The Great Grape Ape — pride in building a company of that size, keeping it up and running and providing jobs and financial security for so many creative people, including people in their own age bracket.
When I worked there, I was often in my office after hours, after most folks had gone home for the day. Working for H-B was usually my "moonlighting" job, meaning that I'd work all day for the Kroffts or Dick Clark or someone else and then go to the H-B studios and do work there while the janitors were starting to tidy-up. Several times, Bill Hanna — who came to work early and left late — would wander the halls, sometimes with a drink in hand, and stop in for a chat.
We'd get to talking about the latest show-in-trouble in the building — there was always at least one — and Bill would say something like, "I know you think we shouldn't sell so many shows but you're not the one who has to go tell [NAME OF VETERAN ARTIST] that we have to lay him off. He's got a family to support." I did understand that but I also thought there were ways around that.
By the time I worked for them, Hanna and Barbera no longer owned Hanna-Barbera. They'd taken what I guess felt to them at the time like All The Money In The World and sold the company, staying on to run it but now required to somewhat appease new owners with no particular pride or affection for what had gone before. And to hear either Joe or Bill tell it, the new owners really only cared about being the biggest studio in town, occupying as many hours per week of network real estate as possible. When I was in charge of the H-B comic book division, I dealt directly with some of those folks and I don't think that characterization was wrong.
I'm not saying the money didn't matter to Bill and Joe; just that the studio had reached a certain size and so many people were dependent on it for their incomes that maintaining that size seemed vital. I sometimes heard both men speak fondly of the days when the place was smaller…but even then, selling that next show or getting that next deal was often a matter of livelihood-or-death for their people. So if some buyer was insisting on turning Yogi Bear into a cross-dressing moose, Yogi was going to wind up with antlers and dressed like Mrs. Doubtfire.
Anyway, that's my answer. They probably wouldn't have liked it but they probably wouldn't have stopped it…which is kind of the deal you accept when you sell your business.
