Hanna Barbera Cartoons
William Denby Hanna and Joseph Barbera have had a powerful and
lasting impact on television animation. Since the late 1950s,
Hanna-Barbera programs have been a staple of television
entertainment, and many of the characters originally created by
Hanna and Barbera for the small screen have crossed into film,
books, toys, comics and have become cultural icons.
The careers of comedy writer Bill and cartoonist Joe merged in
1940, when they were both working in the cartoon department at MGM
(Their first joint effort was a Tom and Jerry cartoon). When the
studio closed its cartoon unit, the duo decided to try their hand
at creating material for television. In 1957, they produced Ruff
and Reddy, a cartoon tale about two pals- one a dog and the
other a cat.
In late 1958, Hanna and Barbera launched Huckleberry Hound.
This half-hour syndicated program featured, in addition to the
title character, such cartoon favourites as Yogi Bear, Pixie and
Dixie, Augie Doggie, and Quick Draw McGraw (who went on to an
enormously successful series of his own).
In 1960, a survey revealed that more than half of Huckleberry
Hound's audience were adults. So Hanna and Barbera turned
their efforts toward creating a cartoon for prime time. The result
was The Flintstones.
The Jetsons, a "space-age" counterpart to The
Flintstones, joined its predecessor in prime time in 1962.
Unlike The Flintstones, The Jetsons lasted only
one season in ABC's evening schedule. However, in the late 1960s
both programs became extremely popular in Saturday morning cartoon
line-ups and subsequently in syndication.
The programs were so successful as reruns that in the 1980s, 51
new episodes of The Jetsons were produced, as were TV
specials and movies based on both The Flintstones and The
Jetsons. Other popular Hanna-Barbera series have included
children's cartoons such as Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? , The
Smurfs (based on a Belgian cartoon series) and Pac-Man
(1982)
Hanna-Barbera Productions (now a subsidiary of Turner
Broadcasting) boasts a library of several thousand cartoon
episodes.
Since the 1970s Hanna-Barbera has produced, in addition to the
cartoons, a number of films and specials for television including The
Gathering (1977), The Stone Fox (1987), and Going
Bananas (1984), as well as live-action feature films including
The Jetsons: The Movie (1990), The Pagemaster (1994)
and The Flintstones (1994).
|
