Through the Courtesy of Fred’s ...What?

Complete this sentence:

“Flintstones. Meet the Flintstones. They’re the .....”

You probably didn’t just finish the words. You probably sang them.

“Infectious” may not quite be the right word to describe Hoyt Curtin’s theme songs for all those early Hanna-Barbera cartoons, but everyone of a certain age remembers them and has a sense of delight whenever they’re heard.

And I’m not alone in feeling this way, obviously. The theme to The Flintstones has just been named the most memorable tune in cartoon history—in a survey in England. Read HERE. The irony is even Bill Hanna admitted people didn’t understand what was being sung in the line “Though the courtesy of Fred’s two feet” (mainly, I suspect, because the phrase is so fast and the accents on the syllables of the words don’t follow the beat of 4/4 time).

The article is a bit hasty. The Flintstones don’t turn 50 until September 30th.

For me, what makes the song, and the themes to Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, the Jetsons and Top Cat so memorable—Top Cat placed second, by the way—is the ability to easily sing along with them. They are deceptively simple songs with simple though, at times, indistinguishable lyrics. You can just mumble the part you don’t know and everyone will understand why.

Hanna cited another reason for the theme’s popularity in his autobiography:

I imagine that a big part of it certainly has to do with Hoyt’s bright melody with its distinctive octave leap that really made the thing stick in your ear.

Bill also wrote:

Hoyt and I collaborated on most of the main title themes for our cartoon shows, and the majority of them had been done under the most informal circumstances. I would generally compose the lyrics in my head, and jot them down on a sheet of note paper, give Hoyt a call at his home and recite them over the telephone. Almost invariably, Hoyt would call me back within a day or so with a musical composition and sing the thing to me complete with my lyrics.

What’s remarkable is the song wasn’t the original theme. A pleasant and typically upbeat Curtin number called ‘Rise and Shine’ opened the first two seasons. Hanna doesn’t explain in his book why it was changed, but it obviously was the right decision.

There’s biographical material about Hoyt Curtin to be found on the web, so I needn’t repeat it all. He provided a few scores for UPA cartoons (the studio had no music director like the others did; it hired different freelance composers on an individual cartoon basis). Bad science fiction film fans will point out his contributions to the stellar Howco Productions feature Mesa of Lost Women (1953). You can click HERE to learn a bit more about Hoyt from the fine folks at Spaceagepop.com.

Curtin originally wrote the Hanna-Barbera themes and the underscores for the little segments between the cartoons on the Huck, Yogi and Quick Draw shows. He started compiling his own in-house stock music cues for Loopy De Loop (1960) and his material soon replaced the production library music that the company had in the background of its cartoons since 1957.

The most famous singers you’ve never heard of, the Randy Horne Singers, belted out all the first H-B themes. But my favourite version of the Flintstones theme is probably the one sung by the original cast members, with an extra verse written by, well, I don’t know. I don’t have that for you for now, but I’m going to give you something else. The proprietor of the ‘I’m Learning to Share’ music blog has linked to a bunch of bridges and tag music used on The Flintstones. He invented his own names for them but what I’ve done is dug up the original names listed on The Pic-a-nic Basket Set in 1996. The links aren’t mine so please don’t blame me if you click on them and they won’t work in your computer’s default mp3 player. If they do, you’ll recognise all of them.

Late Yowp note: I see the music links are now blocked for some users but work if you to go the re-directed download page. Sorry.

WORKING IN THE GRAVEL PIT
BRIDGE 1
CUE 1-70
WALK AND TALK
BRIDGE 9
WALKING
BUTTON
BUTTON CUE AL-6
CHASE
BUTTON CUE AL-7
WALK AND TALK #2
CHASE WITH DRUM BREAK
FLINTSTONE DRUNK WALK
UP TEMPO WALK
FLINTSTONE MARCH CUE 6-20
BUTTON

Oh, if you’re wondering, the rest of the top 10 in that survey—because you know you want it—was filled by (remember, this is an English survey) Grange Hill, Jim’ll Fix It, Danger Mouse, Bagpuss and Rainbow, in that order. Frankly, the theme to the Yogi Show should have made it—but with that new 3-D movie coming out, Yogi’s got enough to worry about.

Quick Draw McGraw — The Lyin’ Lion

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Animation – George Nicholas; Layout – Walt Clinton; Backgrounds – Art Lozzi??; Story – Mike Maltese; Story Sketches – Dan Gordon; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson. (no credits).
Voice Cast: Quick Draw, Baba Looey, Snagglepuss, Wooly Boy – Daws Butler.
First aired: week of Feb. 29, 1960 (rerun, week of Aug. 29).
Plot: Snagglepuss tries to con Quick Draw so he can steal Wooly Boy the sheep.

It’s tough to decide what’s the best part of this cartoon because there are so many great things going on here. First, we have the smart-ass orange Snagglepuss as the bad guy. Then we have a raft—nay, even two rafts—of puns, clever dialogue and a great ending by Mike Maltese. And we have some stand-out expressions on Snag by George Nicholas. They’re different than what you normally see out of Nick because the layouts are done on this cartoon by Walt Clinton. The characters are made of up different shapes or angles than when Bick Bickenbach did the layouts. And there are no clouds in the sky; Clinton’s the only layout guy I can think of who would avoid clouds on occasion.

Because Snag and Quick Draw have enlongated snouts, Nicholas can’t give them the same kind of big, open-mouth expressions like he originally gave Yogi. Instead, he has them talking out of the side of their faces in ‘U’ and oval shapes. We see that at the start when the scene opens outside Snagglepuss’ cave. Snag pops his head out to spy the morning paper in his mail box. Nicholas follows the voice track as Daws Butler lets out a Bert Lahr-like vibrato on the word ‘salubrious’. He moves Snag’s head up and down to the vowel changes in the letter ‘u’.


Here’s an odd bit of animation. Snag’s talking with the Nicholas-style floppy tongue movements but it was decided to add a slurpy tongue before he says “Here’s some tasty news.” It means there are two sets of tongues on the lion, one inside his mouth and the other around his upper lip, though it happens so fast you won’t see it on the screen.

We see the newspaper story about a huge sheep appearing at the County Fair. “Wooly Boy is a cinch for a large than average roast pan, too,” exclaims the lion. “Snagglepuss, it looks like your sheep has come in at last.” So we know what he has in mind. Off he goes to the Fair in one of Nicholas’ leaping walk cycles. It’s four drawings on twos, but Nicholas gets the leap effect by having some of the Snagglepuss cells higher on the background. The blue glow above the backdrop is a nice effect. Did Art Lozzi do the backgrounds in this one?

Snag (singing): I’m going to the fair. ’Cause Wooly Boy is there. He’ll soon be in my roasting pan. Without his woolly hair.




Meanwhile, at the Fair, Quick Draw and Baba are guarding the sheep. A poster explains why. I love the way the sheep on the poster is looking up at Snagglepuss.


We get a couple of Nicholas standards here when Snag arrives. Below left is the floppy tongue as Quick Draw says “Hold on thar!” Below right is the beady eye look registering shock as Quick Draw promises “I’ll have you canned like a kipper.” Snag’s response “Am I my brother’s kipper?”



Snag: I’m not Snagglepuss. I’m his honest brother, Snaggletooth.
Quick Draw: Garsh, I’m sorry. But there is a strong fam-bly resemblance.
Snag: True. But I have kinder eyes.

And his eyes instantly grow lashes and bats them for the audience, three drawings in ones. This has been slowed down.



Lo! Maltese borrows from the wonderful 1949 cartoon Rabbit Hood (which he wrote) in which Bugs would point and shout to the Sheriff: “Lo! The King Approach-eth!” When the Sheriff asked where, Bugs answered “There! O’er yon flowered bank!” or “O’er yon chevy chase!” This cartoon, however, is set in the old west, so when Snag points and claims Snagglepuss has arrived and says “Even now he approach-eth” and Quick Draw asks “Where?” he replies “By yon yucca tree.”

Now’s a bit of fun, where Snagglepuss rushes back and forth behind a tent to play the roles of “the scapegrace brother” and Snaggletooth. We even get a Lahr-like “nyah, yah, yah” (below right).



After running around, Quick Draw’s attention is arrested by the sound of Wooly Boy bleating and running away, with suspicious orange legs underneath. Quick Draw finally figures there’s something suspicious and pulls Snagglepuss from out of the mass of wool. Snagglepuss is now pretending to be himself. “Here,” he says, “Take your sheep. And when I catch that snitcher of an honest brother, Snaggletooth, he’ll rue the day. And the night, even.”

We get an “Exit, stage right.” Look at the angles Nicholas draw on Snagglepuss.



Now, Snag ducks back and forth and side-to-side on the tent housing Wooly Boy, staging a fight between Snagglepuss and the non-existent Snaggletooth. For whatever reason, the background colour changes to grey for this scene.

I love this line:

Baba: Quicks Draw, don’t you thin...
Quick Draw: Keep out of it, Baba. It’s a fam-bly affair.



Normally, the line means Snag could wear himself out while Quick Draw does nothing, but our hero doesn’t take his own advice. “Hold on, thar! Have mercy on an honest wretch,” he says. Snagglepuss agrees to stop chasing “Snaggletooth,” provided he gets Wooly Boy in return. But Quick Draw has a plan. He dresses up in a sheep costume and pretends to be Wooly Boy. I love Nicholas’ expressions on Snag.



But then Snagglepuss realises he’s been had.



Snag carries Quick Draw to a cliff. And we get a groaner.

Snag: Wooly Boy, no more sheep stealin’ for me.
Quick Draw: Well, woolly for you, Snagglepuss.
Snag: In fact, I’m dropping it right now.

And he drops Quick Draw over a cliff. Then he rushes to the tent and grabs the real sheep. Another great expression, this time on the hapless sheep. And it appears someone has a familiarity with someone else from the old west: Yosemite Sam.

Quick Draw: Stop, you varmint!
Snag: I’m not a varmint. So why do I stop?
Baba: There he goes, Quicks Draw. Into that cave.
Snag: A cave indeed. For a knave in need.

Now comes a great bit as Snagglepuss puts Wooly Boy in the roasting pan and then acts like a barber (even putting a bib around the sheep like a customer) to “trim you of your woolly locks.” Snag engages in barber-type banter.

Snag: Would you like a little off the top, sir? It’s a little long in the sides. How are the wife and kids? How are the Dodgers doin’?

Then we get the Nicholas stunned look on Snag, who realises Wooly Boy is “a mutton nuttin’”—all wool with no meat to eat. He returns the scrawny sheep to Quick Draw outside the cave.



Ah, no matter. Snagglepuss gets out a spinning wheel, he decides to make weave himself a cosy “haversacker.” Then we get a line where there must be a reference that’s lost on me. Snag looks the camera in three-quarters view and says “That’s why I spin. And spin. And spin.” I haven’t a clue where that comes from.

It’s a shame the “real” Snagglepuss wasn’t as expressive visually when he got his own series on The Yogi Bear Show. Of the first six cartoons, three were animated by Lew Marshall, the others were by Brad Case, Art Davis and Don Patterson. Certainly none of those three are bad animators; Davis and Patterson were good directors, too. They helped make the character memorable (though one could argue Butler and Maltese were mostly responsible). But there seems to be something a little extra in these orange Snagglepuss outings that presaged his own show.

This is one of those rare cartoons where all the voices are done by Daws.

As you might expect, the music is by Jack Shaindlin and Phil Green, with the main cue from Green’s ‘Big City Suite No. 2’ getting prominent play. Because this isn’t a western cartoon, we don’t get a lot of western style or tension music. But we do get several of Shaindlin’s comedy and circus-band cues. Sorry I don’t have the names for them.

0:00 - Quick Draw sub main title theme (Curtin).
0:16 - GR-99 THE DIDDLECOMB HUNT (Green) – Snagglepuss reads the paper.
0:56 - CRAZY GOOF (Shaindlin) – Snag walks, shot of County Fair.
1:15 - GR-472 HICKSVILLE (Green) – Quick Draw and Baba guard Wooly Boy, Snagglepuss says he’s Snaggletooth; darts behind tent.
2:27 - GR-248 STREETS OF THE CITY (Green) – Snagglepuss waves to Quick Draw, hides in sheep, “Exit, stage right.”
3:32 - GR-248 STREETS OF THE CITY (Green) – Fake Snagglepuss vs Snaggletooth fight, Quick Draw agrees to hand over Wooly Boy.
4:35 - jaunty bassoon and skippy strings (Shaindlin) – Quick Draw disguised as sheep, Snag drops Quick Draw over cliff.
5:24 - circus running music (Shaindlin) – Snag grabs Wooly Boy, runs into cave.
5:48 - tick-tock/flute music (Shaindlin) – Quick Draw at cave door, Snag sheers Wooly Boy.
6:28 - GR-75 POPCORN SHORT BRIDGE No 1 (Green) – Snag hands Wooly Boy to Quick Draw.
6:40 - circus music with trombone line (Shaindlin) – Snag spins wool.
7:01 - Quick Draw sub end-title theme (Curtin).

Mike Lah and His Cousin Tex

Since the modest beginning of this blog, a startling number of people have decided to drop in here for a look, thanks in part due to quite unexpected (and unsolicited) write-ups on Jerry and Amid’s must-see web site ‘Cartoon Brew,’ Mark Evanier’s always-interesting ‘News From Me’ and, more recently, one of John Kricfalusi’s blogs. Readers are going back and exploring old posts made when we were younger, so much younger than today. And we’ve needed help from people to identify artists and fill in bits of information that we simply just don’t know.

Bill in Buenos Aires recently commented about the early Pixie and Dixie cartoon Cousin Tex so a link was provided for a early post on the blog about it. Reader David has responded by commenting a whole chunk of the cartoon appears to have been done by Mike Lah and, in looking at it again, though I’m no expert on this kind of thing, I’d say he’s right.

Lah seems to have done a scene or two in some of the first cartoons that he didn’t animate himself. You can see his thick-lined work in the Yowp debut Foxy Hound-Dog, as well as The Stout Trout, High Fly Guy and others. Anyone who has arrived on this blog must know Lah’s history. He was at Disney before moving to MGM, getting his own unit with Preston Blair in the later ‘40s, then animating for Tex Avery before taking his unit when Tex left to direct at Lantz. When MGM closed, he went on to a lengthy career at Quartet Films, where he eventually took over as president. Steve Worth of ASIFA tells me he simultaneously worked at Hanna-Barbera; Lah did some work for H-B on Ruff and Reddy and The Huckleberry Hound Show. Let’s look at some of Lah’s work from Cousin Tex; David says Lah picks up the scene after Jinks is hog-tied (at the 4:54 mark if you’re watching at home).

Tex gets out a hot branding iron from who-knows-where, and announces he’s going to use it on Jinks. “Back home, we brand all strays.” If Lah’s got dialogue when the head is in three-quarter view, the head generally stays stationary. No nose bobs like Lew Marshall or angular ticks like Carlo Vinci. He animates the mouth movements around the side of the face. You can see this same shape for the letter “o” that Tex has below on Yogi in Pie-Pirates.



Jinks looks horrified. “Well, stay away from this cowboy!” Then he turns to make his escape. The pose below is held for three frames.



The cat tip-toes away, with wooden clattering on the sound track. I love the tail bend. Jinks, in defiance of a cardinal principle of Hanna-Barbera animation, passes by the same chair only once. What a rebel, that Mike Lah!



A wooden crate is used to catch Tex. Jinks sits on it. “How do you like them apples, Wyatt Burp?” he sneers, with his eyelids going up and down when he says “Burp.” Here’s the end of that sequence slowed down, five drawings on twos. It starts with the smirk and the almost closed eyelids and ends with the smirk and the half-closed eye-lids.



Jinks is pleased with himself. The bulldog in Pie-Pirates had the same type of jagged teeth.



But then he smells burning. Tex is inside the crate, using the branding iron to make a hole.



The branding iron does its job. It burns through to Jinks’ fur. He takes off into the air.



There are eight drawings on twos. Here they are slowed down. Notice that Lah has the branding-iron on a little glowing cycle, like a neon light.



Lah takes it into the next scene when Jinks is cooling off in the sink. Then everyone’s favourite meece-hating cat gets a brain-storm and rushes off scene. Does this pose remind you of something in a Tex Avery cartoon?



Carlo Vinci picks up the scene at the telephone; the enlarged head when Jinks shouts and the wide mouth are giveways.

By the way, here’s a drawing of Jinks in the previous scene just before he’s hog-tied.



Lah was from Hammond, Indiana. On June 14, 1934, the Hammond Times had this front page story:

MIKE LAH’S PEN DRAWS PICTURES OF MICKEY MOUSE
Three years ago during his school days at Hammond High, Michael “Mike” Lah used to tell his friends that he hoped some day to work for “Mickey Mouse,” the most comical animal on the silver screen.
They laughed and scoffed then, and retorted that the leading cartoonist of the high school would probably end up digging ditches as seems to be the lot of most artists these days.
Mike’s ambitions came true, however. Today he has a position as one of the assistant animators at the Mickey Mouse studio in Los Angeles, and he has every reason to believe that a wonderful future lies ahead of him.
Lah was graduated from the Hammond High school in 1931. In high school he drew cartoons for the Calumet Herald, the students’ weekly newspaper, and for The Dunes, the yearbook. He was also a member of the high school’s swimming team.
After graduation he worked for the E. C. Minas company as an assistant
show-card writer. About a year ago he went out to Hollywood.
Mike’s present address is Bimini Lodge Hotel, 155 Bimini Place, Los Angeles, Cal.

Judging by the paper, Mike wasn’t exactly in touch with the folks back home too often. From the Times of October 10, 1937:

RECENT word of the whereabouts of MICHAEL LAH...has come the way of this column. A fair Hammond visitor to Hollywood this summer reports that Michael, who is an artist superior, has been working as an animator in the Harmonizing studio in Hollywood.

Big plans were made for Lah’s 30-year High School Reunion in 1961, but the Times notes that no one had an address for him. Perhaps the organizing committee should have checked the Van Nuys Valley News of September 28th that year. You won’t be able to see this well, but Lah is the guy with the thin moustache, second on the left.



Hey, doesn’t “Little Sam” look like a close relation to the Snap, Crackle and Pop?

So thanks to David for commenting about Mike Lah’s work in this cartoon. Yes, I know it doesn’t measure up to the stuff he did for Avery (or the hilarious puppet dance sequence in the Barney Bear cartoon Impossible Possum for Dick Lundy), but he shows with limited animation, he can come up with some funny moments adding to an enjoyable cartoon.

P.S.: We’ll have a Quick Draw cartoon on the blog tomorrow. No Lah animation there, I’m afraid.

Check Your Local Listings

I’ve yowped on the blog about on-line databases and Make-it-up-pedias where anyone can post whatever they want on them—guesses, joke entries, or unimpeachable fact backed up by time-consuming research. It’s difficult to accept them as authoritative sources in some cases.

Let me be blunt. Whoever put together the Wikipedia episode guide for the second and third seasons of The Huckleberry Hound Show is talking through the wrong part of their anatomy. Someone seems to have assumed all the second-season shows were aired in consecutive weeks in the order you can find them on a downloadable torrent on the internet. Newspaper listings of 40 years ago tell a completely different story.

Yes, Huckleberry Hound was syndicated and therefore didn’t air the same day on every station. But a comparison of TV listings in newspapers in several different cities reveals a show aired sometime during that same week, presumably because the cartoons were shipped that way by the distributor. That’s not necessarily proof they aired the same way everywhere, but they did in Chicago and Los Angeles, judging by what was printed in the papers (Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune by name), and some smaller spots. So the following are the second season episodes for the Huck show. A Monday date is used to represent the week. New cartoons are in bold, the others are repeats.

Date	Yogi	Meece	Huck
Sep. 14, 1959	Show Biz Bear	Hi Fido	Ten Pin Alley
Sep. 21/59	Lullabye-Bye Bear	Rapid Robot	Grim Pilgrim
Sep. 28/59	Bear Face Bear	Sour Puss	Jolly Roger and Out
Oct. 5/59	1st season rerun
Oct. 12/59	Hide and Go Peek	Boxing Buddy	Tough Little Termite
Oct. 19/59	Yogi Bear’s Big Break	Cousin Tex	HH Meets Wee Willie
Oct. 26/59	Papa Yogi	King Size Poodle	Somebody’s Lion
Nov. 2/59	Stranger Ranger	Mighty Mite	A Bully Dog
Nov. 9/59	Slumber Party Smarty	Judo Jack	Lion-Hearted Huck
Nov. 16/59	Pie Pirates	Kit Kat Kit	Tricky Trapper
Nov. 23/59	Rah Rah Bear	Bird Brained Cat	Nottingham and Yeggs
Nov. 30/59	Bear For Punishment	Batty Bat	Huck the Giant Killer
Dec. 7/59	Big Bad Bully	Jinks’ Mice Device	Sir Huckleberry Hound
Dec. 14/59	Foxy Hound-Dog	Pistol Packing Pirate	Sheriff Huckleberry Hound
Dec. 21/59	Nowhere Bear	Lend-Lease Meece	Cop and Saucer
Dec. 28/59	Wound-Up Bear	A Good Good Fairy	Pony Boy Huck
Jan. 4/60	Big Brave Bear	Scaredy Cat Dog	Rustler Hustler Huck
Jan. 11/60	1st season rerun
Jan. 18/60	Bewitched Bear	Heavens to Jinksy	Pet Vet
Jan. 25/60	Hoodwinked Bear	Goldfish Fever	Piccadilly Dilly
Feb. 1/60	1st season rerun
Feb. 8/60	Baffled Bear	The Ghost With the Most	Two Corny Crows
Feb. 15/60	Snow White Bear	Pushy Cat	Wiki Waki Huck
Feb. 22/60	Space Bear	Puss in Boats	Huck’s Hack
Feb. 29/60	Brave Little Brave	The Ace of Space	HH Meets Wee Willie
Mar. 7/60	Yogi Bear’s Big Break	Jinks Junior	Fireman Huck
Mar. 14/60	The Stout Trout	Cousin Tex	Dragon-Slayer Huck
Mar. 21/60	The Buzzin’ Bear	Jinks the Butler	Lion-Hearted Huck
Mar. 28/60	Slumber Party Smarty	Jinks’ Flying Carpet	Hookey Days
Apr. 4/60	The Runaway Bear	Judo Jack	Skeeter Trouble
Apr. 11/59	Be My Guest, Pest	Puppet Pals	Tricky Trapper
Apr. 18/60	Pie Pirates	Mark of the Mouse	Sheepshape Sheepherder
Apr. 25/60	Duck in Luck	Kit Kat Kit	Barbecue Hound
May 2/60	Bear on a Picnic	Dinky Jinks	Sir Huckleberry Hound
May 9/60	see Sept. 14, 1959
May 16/60	see Sept. 21, 1959
May 23/60	see Sept. 28, 1959
May 30/60	see Oct. 26, 1959
June 6/60	see Nov. 2, 1959
June 13/60	see Nov. 23, 1959
June 20/60	see Nov. 30, 1959
June 27/60	see Dec. 21, 1959
July 4/60	see Dec. 28, 1959
July 11/60	see Jan. 18, 1960
July 18/60	see Jan. 25, 1960
July 25/60	see Feb. 15, 1960
Aug. 1/60	see Feb. 22, 1960

Starting on the week of August 8th, first season shows were rerun again until the third season began in September.

Oinks and Boinks with Yogi Bear did not air in the second season, despite what some places on the web insist. It was on the third season of the Huck show. And on-line sources are wrong if they say Hokey Wolf replaced Yogi in September, 1960. Yogi didn’t leave until he got his own show the following January.

You’ll notice an awful lot of reruns. Only 13 new shows in the series were made that season and the last aired the week of February 20, 1960 so seven months went by before a new cartoon. This was not lost on viewers. A letter to the entertainment section of the Tri-City Herald (Washington State) of July 20, 1960 read:

What’s insulting to the public is the ancient movies, the depressing soap operas and the annoyance of repeating such good programmes as Huckleberry Hound so many times.
—Irma Perkins, Richland

Thanks to reader Billie Towzer for the newspaper clippings

The Improbable Voice of Mr. Jinks

To your right, you see a picture of the man who voiced Mr. Jinks in the Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

You are probably saying to yourself “That doesn’t quite look like Daws Butler.” And you’re right. It isn’t. It’s that famous cartoon voice actor Rojay North.

No, we don’t mean Jay North, who had a brief career with Hanna-Barbera in the early ‘70s. We mean Rojay North.

You are likely, and rightfully, still puzzled. Never fear. Yowp is here to enlighten you, as best we can. What follows is a tale of dashed dreams along the jagged rocky coast on the netherland of fringe show business, a sad tale which managed to envelope an orange cartoon cat.

The city of Spokane, Washington was abuzz in 1979. For that was the year a Ms. Janet Garland decided she no longer wished to be a registered nurse. She would become, she vowed, a movie producer. Being a nurse was not deemed an obstacle in reaching her goal. After all, she was the staff nurse for the production company of the MGM film ‘Why Should I Lie?’ being shot in Spokane. As she explained to the Spokane Chronicle of November 16, 1979, she had been around show business for 22 years “and suddenly one day decided I perhaps was smart enough to be a producer.”

Yes, folks, movie-making is just that easy.

But Ms. Garland needed a partner. And she found one. Riding into Spokane-town, “disenchanted,” he said, with Hollywood, came than none other than Mr. Jinks, the multi-hyphenated talent, Rojay North.

Sure, North’s no Francis Ford Coppola or Steven Spielberg, but he listed his show-biz credentials for the Chronicle. He was an actor, playing heavies on ‘The Virginian,’ ‘Bonanza,’ ‘The Bold Ones’ and ‘The Mod Squad.’ Mind you, the story doesn’t explain whether these roles involved being more than a non-speaking extra. He did outline he had a co-starring role in the movie ‘Boz,’ which I haven’t been able to track down. And he explained he had been associated with Universal, Columbia and 20th Century Fox, though he never defined what “associated” meant. Rojay listed a string of behind-the-scenes positions he held, “learning all the little goodies,” he piously pronounced, “so when God wanted it to be my turn, I would be prepared.”

North came to Spokane with a trilogy of films already conceived starring former NFLer and wrestler H.B. “Hardboiled” Haggerty and Dog (that’s all the dog was named). And he was lining up the stars. Bob Crosby’s one-time vocalist Gloria DeHaven was “a confirmed maybe.” There were plans to have Peter Falk and John Cassavetes make cameos, though Rojay admitted they had “not yet been totally confirmed”—but revealed noted TV bad-guy actor Leo Gordon was on board.

And North was going to employ lots and lots of Spokaneans. Of course, he needed the Spokane business community to help him out with some cash to make his dazzling screen dream come true—implying they’d better sign up or the “money people dealing with this” would pack up and move to Utah. Such a prospect left Rojay aghast, categorically telling the newspaper on September 21: “I don’t want to prostitute the film” by making it in Utah.

With a heavy heart, I regret to inform you that you will never have the chance to illegally download H.B. and Dog and the Skinners. It appears Rojay’s envisioned trilogy never made it into a can of film. Ms. Garland diagnosed her burgeoning career as a film producer as terminal and pulled the plug on her partnership with North. About a year later, the Chronicle revealed the movie would, instead, soon be shot near Prichard, Idaho and that Rojay promised to hire lots and lots of Prichardeans for it.

It seems, however, he gave up his artistic vision of a movie series about a wilderness man and his Frank Inn-trained dog to snap up the role of a life-time as Chuck Pierce in the 1983 chiller Bog, starring his old friends Gloria DeHaven and Leo Gordon, fending off a prehistoric gilled swamp monster obsessed with feasting on female blood. Spokane is no doubt still in mourning this epic film was shot in Wisconsin. Reviewers have compared its production adroitness to that of Ed Wood’s, without Wood’s sincerity—which is all Wood had going for his movies. In other words, Bog is either abysmal or comically abysmal, depending on your point of view.

However, you shouldn’t expect one individual to be limited only to adeptness at producing, writing, directing, acting, scoring and understand the wishes of God. For Rojay was a record executive, too. On his own Cherry Pie label, he sang tunes composed under his real name, Robert J. Youngs; memorable melodies such as “I Fought the Bottle (But the Bottle Won)” and “Get My Act Back Together: Never Took an Ugly Woman to Bed in My Life.” Copies of some of his country ditties, such as his paean to Prichard, Idaho, can no doubt be found sprinkled around the internet. By one admiring account, Rojay’s singing came “straight from the heart,” which is more than one can say about some of those autotune-assisted types populating the music world today.

Whether he’s the same Robert J. Youngs who wrote the book “Quinine, Whiskey and Molly B’Damm” is unclear as of this writing.

Oh, yes, Mr. Jinks.

Contained in Beverly Vorpahl’s Chronicle story of Nov. 16, 1979 is this curious paragraph about North:

He moved to California in 1963 and landed his first job with Hanna Barbera as the voice of Jinx the Cat. (Remember Jinx’s classic lines of “Heavens to Murgatroyd?” and “Exit Stage Left?”—That’s Rojay).

Evidently Beverly didn’t remember them well enough, as she would have recalled they belonged to Snagglepuss and not Jinks, who had been on television for about five years by the time 1963 and Rojay rolled around.

So what’s the story? Did Rojay pad his resumé, thinking no one in Spokane, circa 1979, would have heard of Daws Butler? Did he dress as Jinks and make appearances at shopping centres? Did he actually do a cartoon character voice on a record, or maybe imitate it for some radio station’s commercial? Or was he simply misquoted? And where is he today? Perhaps we’ll never know the answers to any of these solemn questions.

What we do know is a singer of haunting country melodies with gauzy dreams of unadulterated success as a cinematic mogul in the Inland Empire town that begat Chuck Jones has a tenuous connection to a meece-hating cat. It’s something that, perhaps, could only happen in the world of animated cartoons.