The Moose That Roared: The Story of Jay Ward, Bill Scott, a Flying Squirrel, and a Talking Moose

By Keith Scott

For those of us who love The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, these names conjure up memories of some of the wittiest, most inspired, and relentlessly hilarious half-hours of animation ever produced. There was a kind of gleeful magic to the shows, a cumulative joy that transcended the crude animation and occasionally muddy sound, and it's this quality that was the essence of the legendary Jay Ward and Bill Scott.

Jay Ward was the magnificent visionary, the outrageous showman who lobbied Washington for statehood for Moosylvania, and invited the press to a picnic on the floor of the Plaza Hotel's august Grand Ballroom. Bill Scott was the genial, brilliant head writer, coproducer, and all-purpose creative whirlwind, often described as the "soul" of the shows. In fact, Scott even provided the voices for most of the star characters, giving life to Bullwinkle J. Moose, Mr. Peabody, Dudley Do-Right, and George of the Jungle. From their tiny, oddball animation studio, Jay Ward Productions, they created some of the most memorable animation of all time, and gave birth to a family of characters whose undying popularity has cast them forever into the pop culture firmament. With their distinctively unorthodox, artist-friendly philosophy, Ward and Scott attracted some of the most talented writers and voice actors in the industry, and for a time, Jay Ward Productions was a kind of Camelot of cartoons. Now, through exclusive interviews with Bill Scott, Tiffany Ward, June Foray, and dozens of others intimately involved with the Ward epoch, as well as access to original scripts, artwork, story notes, letters, and memos, Keith Scott has created the definitive history of Jay Ward Productions, including episode guides and voice credits for all the Jay Ward cartoons.

From the first "Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of a hat!" to the last "Watch out for that tree!", The Moose That Roared is not only the record of a legendary chapter in animation history, but also the story of a rare and magical relationship between two artists who were wildly, exuberantly ahead of their time, and the fascinating story of the struggle to bring their vision of bad puns and talking animals to unforgettable life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Apr 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781466867437

Keith Scott

Keith Scott, Newcastle University, UK

Book preview

Copyright © 1960 by Ward Productions, Inc. Courtesy of Universal Studios Publishing Rights, a Division of Universal Studios Licensing, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Foreword by Chris Hayward

Introduction

1. WATCH ME PULL A RABBIT OUTTA MY HAT,

or Here’s Lookin’ Up Your Ancestors

2. CRUSADER RABBIT: HIS RISE AND FALL,

or You Are Now Entering Frostbite Falls

3. TIME FOR THAT JOLLY JUGGLER, BULLWINKLE,

or Bill Scott, Moose of Letters

4. THE ROCKY ROAD TO TELEVISION,

or That Voice, Where Have I Heard That Voice?

5. SPONSORED SQUIRREL,

or How Green Was My Contract

6. HOW TO CUT CARTOON CORNERS,

or Mexico City Mishmash

7. GRINGOS, HEPATITIS, AND MUCHO LOMA,

or You Can’t Make Fun of Pancho Villa

8. SQUIRREL ON THE TUBE,

or Watts Gnu with You?

9. STARRING THAT SUPERSONIC SPEEDSTER,

or Time for That Dancin’ Fool, Bullwinkle

10. AND A HOST OF OTHERS,

or Now It’s Time for Another Special Feature

11. 1960: PONSONBY, PILOTS, AND A SUPER PULLET

12. AD AGENCY, NETWORK, AND SPONSOR,

or You Think I Want Every Tom, Dick, and Gordon In On the Plot?

13. 1961: BULLWINKLE HITS THE BIG TIME,

or Don’t Go Getting Swelled Antlers

14. BULLWINKLE MEETS THE PRESS,

or All the Moose That’s Fit to Print

15. 1962: IT’S MY PARTY AND I’LL LAUGH IF I WANT TO,

or Moosylvania Mania

16. 1963: A DAY AT THE NUT HOUSE,

or What Do They Do on a Rainy Night in Coney Island?

17. SILENTS IS GOLDEN,

or The Greatest Waste of TV Time Since: The Bullwinkle Show (Fractured Flickers)

18. BULLWINKLE’S LAST STAND,

or It’s a Frog-Eat-Frog World

19. THIS IS WHAT I REALLY CALL A MESSAGE!

or ’Twas on the Good Ship Guppy (The Quaker Commercials)

20. TV OR NOT TV,

or Watch Out for That Tree!

21. OUR FEARLESS LEADER,

or What Was Jay Ward Really Like?

22. WELL, BULLWINKLE, IT LOOKS AS IF OUR TIME HAS JUST ABOUT RUN OUT,

or But, Rock, I Need Retirement Like a Moose Needs a Hat Rack

Appendix 1. A Who’s Who of Jay Ward Productions

Appendix 2. Revisiting the Jay Ward Recording Sessions

Notes

REFERENCE SECTION

Synopses and Voice Credits for the Jay Ward Cartoons

Fractured Flickers Episodes and Voice Credits

On-screen Credits

Miscellaneous Material and Extra Show Animation

Pilot Films

Miscellaneous TV Commercials

Commercials for the Quaker Oats Company

Glossary of Animation Terms

Bibliography

Index

Copyright

Courtesy of Bill Scott

For Bill Scott (1920–1985)

YOU GOT THE CREDITS, BULLWINKLE?

or Here Are a Few of the People Who Made This Impossible! (Acknowledgments)

This book has been an eight-year labor of love. It’s also been a difficult one to write simply by dint of geographical distance, and more than most authors I have needed the transoceanic help of others to bring the book to its final stages.

It’s obviously somewhat presumptuous to attempt to chronicle twenty-five years in the life of a cartoon studio, particularly when one was not there at the time. Which is why those who were there will always do the best books on animation (the lively memoirs of Shamus Culhane, Chuck Jones, and Jack Kinney provide ample proof). The job itself becomes even more of a jigsaw puzzle with the death of several key participants. Until recently, in fact, those brave souls who wrote about any aspect of animation history had very little in the way of reference material or even basic starting points. The task involves much primary research, and, regrettably, various pioneers are now gone to the big storyboard conference on high. Fortunately, I got off to a great start in 1970 when I began my correspondence with the late Daws Butler, Bill Scott, and Paul Frees, and the still highly active June Foray.

The many interviews and meetings with these giants of the cartoon-voice field formed the basis of this book. June Foray has been a wonderful friend for twenty-five years. It was truly one of those magic moments that happen once in a lifetime when I finally worked with her in early 1992, on recording sessions for Universal’s Rocky and Bullwinkle theme-park shows.

In 1973 I met the supposedly elusive Jay Ward; he was a great help for the next twelve years, especially in fleshing out innumerable details that form the historical chapters within these pages.

Particular mention must be given to Skip Craig, a most loyal friend, who has been unfailingly helpful, meticulous, and patient, and happily blessed with an extraordinary memory. Skip, Jay Ward’s chief film editor from 1959 to 1984, is already well known to several entertainment researchers for his incredible help on books concerning Spike Jones and old-time radio; his enthusiasm is unflagging, and he’s truly one of the gentlemen of this world.

Above all it was Bill Scott who proved truly invaluable, taking me under his wing—or antlers—by inviting me to Jay Ward recording sessions, writing newsy letters, and supplying research materials. Bill selflessly spent ten years loaning—or simply giving me—copies of his files, correspondence, master tapes, and cels (long before animation art was known to be a hot item); not to mention the many hours I got to spend in his hilarious company. His patience with a decade’s worth of often arcane questions knew no bounds, and it is to him that this book is fondly dedicated.

Of tremendous help in verifying facts and fleshing out much needed background were the many other people who were there when Jay Ward Productions was happening. My heartfelt thanks to the following for giving of their time and memories: Alex Anderson, Roman Arambula, George Atkins, Gerard Baldwin, Bruce Burness, Allan Burns, Lucille Bliss, Howard Brandy, Myrtis Butler, Frank Comstock, the late William Conrad, Trilby Conried, Helen Craig, Jim Critchfield, the late Shamus Culhane, Sam Clay-berger, Dennis Farnon, Stan Freberg, Mr. and Mrs. David Frees, Fred Frees, Joy Terry Frees, Alan Foshko, Rose Frees Ginsberg, William Hanna, Helen Hanson, Chris Hayward, Linda Hayward, Jim Hiltz, Bill and Mary Hurtz, Chuck Jones, Francy Jones, Chris Jenkyns, the late Lew Keller, Leonard Key, Ted Key, Bob Kurtz, Bill Littlejohn, Bob Mills, Alice Morita, Charlotte Morris, Luther Nichols, Gary Owens, Peter Piech, Don Pitts, Erv Rosenfeld, Dorothy Scott, John Hamilton Scott, Al Shean, Shirley Silvey Berg, George Singer, Fred Steiner, Darlene Turner, the late Lloyd Turner, and Al Wilson. (If the elusive Bill Oberlin and Chris Allen are still alive, please contact the author!)

For reasons that go beyond this book, I owe enormous thanks to Ramona and Tiffany Ward, who now run Jay Ward Productions in its fortieth year.

Others who helped in generous fashion, beyond the call of duty, include the regular band of dedicated animation enthusiasts: Karl Cohen, Fred Patten (both of whom had already conducted splendid research on the Crusader Rabbit era), Charles Ulrich, editor of the newsletter The Frostbite Falls Far Flung Flyer, Robert L. Stone, David Mruz, Duane Dimock, Ronnie Wise, Mark Evanier, Jerry Beck, Leonard Maltin, Steve Worth, Peter Greenwood, Raymond Cox, Hames Ware, Graham Webb, Mike Barrier, and the indispensable Mark Kausler. Institutional help came from the Margaret Herrick Library at the Center for Motion Picture Study and the USC Cinema-Television Library’s energetic curator, Ned Comstock.

Supplying endless tapes and rare recordings were John and Larry Gassman, Ted Hering, Dick Mullins, Don Aston, and undoubtedly the world’s most painstaking recording perfectionist, my funny friend Ken Greenwald. Always there in the nick of time with much needed assistance on additional audio and video material were two of the best in the business—the ineffable Brian Bogle and the gifted voice artist Corey Burton (whose taste and judgment concerning voice work and Jay Ward cartoons are second to none).

Special thanks also to Debbie Cohen, Bart Pierce, Michelle Katz, Nancy Cushing-Jones, and Cindy Chang (Universal City Studios Publishing Rights), Neil Rosini, and especially my literary agent, George Wieser, for hanging in there. My splendid editor, Barry Neville, made a large-scale, judicious decision regarding a total reorganization of the chapters; the result is a much better book. (I would like to thank the copy editor, Adam Goldberger, too, as well as Brian Mulligan for the great design job and Elizabeth McNamara for her help with legal matters.)

A tip of the hat to the following organizations for providing invaluable contacts and permissions: AFTRA, the American Federation of Musicians, Dubs Inc., 5-2-5 Post, the Performing Rights Society (London), the Screen Actors Guild, the Screen Cartoonists Guild, the UCLA Animation Department, the Writers Guild of America, West, 20th Century–Fox (Ashley Simmons), Newsweek (Randy Shapiro), the Los Angeles Times (Permissions Counsel), Quaker Oats Company (Janet Silverberg), and Variety (Gene Byrne).

The generosity of various individuals above extended to their loaning research materials, artwork, and valued photographs; those who agreed to interviews made the project come alive with their memories and gave the book the human touch needed to prevent its becoming a mere catalog of names and dates. The book will gush occasionally; if at times it reads more like a fanzine, I make no apologies.

Finally, to my wife, Sue, whose love and patience helped me through the rough spots, and whose forbearance in teaching me to handle the intricacies of that modern minefield, the PC/word processor (when I still have trouble with leaking ballpoint pens), was worthy of a medal.

FOREWORD

(or Glancing Backward) by

Chris Hayward

My writing tends to be economical. Depending on the occasion, bordering on the cusp of terse. Yet when the subject of Jay T. Ward is broached, launching warm reflections of my halcyon years laboring under Jay’s nutty auspices, I can get downright verbose. Stay tuned.

Sadly, Jay is no longer with us. Prolific Bill Scott predeceased Jay. Even boon companion Lloyd Turner is trouting on that heavenly lake in the sky. Contemplating these losses, I suddenly realized that at long last, sans emotional restraints, I could now set the record straight—tell the truth about the working environment, the creative restrictions Jay imposed. Aside from monetary considerations (which Uriah Heep would have envied), there were none.

It was an insane but joyous atmosphere.

Al Burns, George Atkins, Chris Jenkyns, Alex Anderson, Jim Critchfield, Jim MacGeorge, Al Shean, Pete Burness—all were freewheeling, outrageously independent talents, each contributing to that madcap era when limited animation—in the right hands—could be unlimitedly funny, refreshingly original, and, wonder of wonders: timeless.

Allow me to reflect. Briefly. Back in the early 1960s, Lloyd Turner and I had three things in common (besides writing for Jay Ward Productions): insatiable thirsts, the capacity to make Jay howl with glee, and a bum left arm.

Lloyd’s was the bummier. He had lost most of it below the elbow in a woodworking class. No, sir, that table I’m making doesn’t have five legs—one of them belongs to me. As for myself, as an eight-year-old, I chased one of my sisters through a sliding glass door. The door was closed when I reached it, but not after I went through it. I came out of the episode with my left arm atrophied for life, which meant that thirty or so years later, Lloyd Turner and I couldn’t row a boat.

But physical limitations didn’t prevent us from playing golf. Particularly when Jay would command us to participate in one of his maniacal golf tournaments. On one special occasion we were instructed to be packed and waiting at the curb. Jay would pick us up. However, since he had designated this a mystery tournament—destination unknown—what the hell were we supposed to pack? Slickers? Luau shirts? We endeavored to outwit him. Our unworthy opponents—a foursome from San Francisco and lifelong buddies of Jay’s—were scheduled to join us at the ultimate playing site.

We got lucky. The first airline we contacted at LAX confirmed that Jay had arranged a transfer for the northern contingent to a smaller aircraft destined for Phoenix. We packed for heat. It was one of the few times we ever got the better of Jay. Oh, we lost to the guys up north.

ADRIFT ON LAKE ARROWHEAD

CHRIS HAYWARD

Chris Hayward is one of the veterans of TV comedy. His impressive résumé includes scripting classics of the genre like Get Smart and Barney Miller, not to mention The Smothers Brothers Shows, He & She (for which he won an Emmy), and, in his own words, the all-time TV stinker, My Mother the Car.

INTRODUCTION

In the entire history of TV cartoons, there has been only one show which could boast dialogue like this:

Rocky: Bullwinkle, you know what A-bomb means!

Bullwinkle: Sure! A bomb is what some people call our program.

Rocky: I don’t think that’s so funny.

Bullwinkle: Neither do they, apparently.

Puns, satire, irony—the TV shows featuring the earnest young hero Rocky the Flying Squirrel and his slightly dim-witted sidekick Bullwinkle J. Moose are today the most beloved and respected cartoons from the period that has officially been designated the baby boom era.

The Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons have attained legendary animation status, helped along at first by film festivals and cult retrospectives dating from the mid-1980s, when those baby boomers’ offspring began to come of age. The phenomenon became especially apparent with the release of the Disney–Buena Vista videocassettes in early 1991: their instantaneous leap to the top of the Billboard video sales charts was both a joyous vindication for toon cultists, and a sad reminder of television’s lack of progress over the last thirty years. Indeed, even when Rocky and Bullwinkle’s adventures first aired, from 1959 to 1964, TV was being criticized for its follow-the-leader mentality (everyone remembers FCC chairman Newton Minow’s famous remark about television’s vast wasteland).

This abiding popularity is easily explained. The squirrel and moose, thirty-nine years old as this is being written, have hardly dated. Even acknowledged live-action comedy classics from TV’s Hall of Fame, though still hilarious and as popular as ever, can be said to be showing their age. Today’s viewers have to adjust their mind-set, in a sense casting themselves back in time à la Mr. Peabody, to enjoy much of old television in context. To appreciate certain vintage shows involves overlooking deficiencies in technical quality and near-alien cultural references. Mostly the effort is well worth it, particularly as a fascinating sociological mirror of the times. Some old masters like Jack Benny, Dick Van Dyke, The Twilight Zone, and The Honeymooners have proven spectacularly successful, with books devoted to the series, and healthy sales of home video reissue packages.

Of course, the flip side of this equation reveals that, in truth, the list of great old TV shows ripe for revival is not an overly long one. In fact, with various noble exceptions, much early television now seems quaint, or, to be charitable, historically interesting at best. And some shows were, frankly, abysmal: how many people, apart from terminal couch potatoes, would truly sit still in today’s high-tech TV climate with its endless viewing choices—satellite, cable, DVD, interactive—through even one episode of My Little Margie, Tales of Wells Fargo, or The Tab Hunter Show?

Happily, Rocky and Bullwinkle belong to the classic pedigree. The unassuming moose and squirrel—along with their cohorts in cartoon mayhem and glorious hyperbole, like Dudley Do-Right, Peabody and Sherman, Boris and Natasha, and the rest—work just as well now as they did three decades ago. The cartoons dared to be smart and funny. They still come across as smart and funny, reminding us of a time when the sole purpose of cartoons was laughter—not tie-ins with unprepossessing plush toys, or the dictums of network censors concerned with cutting jokes and substituting tedious new age relevance.

Today, with the sole exception of The Simpsons, the Jay Ward cartoons remain a pillar of comic sophistication in the mainly witless animated pantheon of Beavis and Butt-head, Biker Mice from Mars, and environmentally concerned Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue. The adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle taught an entire generation the art of parody. While most early TV cartoons involved mice belting cats with mallets, or bears stealing pies from a windowsill guarded by a bulldog, the hip young moose and squirrel were concerned with Congress, the cold war, and TV itself. And let’s not forget those deliberately dreadful puns—people and places like Doctor Bermuda Schwartz, Maybe Dick the Wailing Whale, Wossamotta U., art critic Sir Rulion Blue, Whynchataka Peak, Sir Hillary Pushemoff, the Guns of Abalone, the village of Daniels on the Rocks, and Upper Whatchacallitstan.

Subversive and irreverent, multilayered and surreal, topical and rapid-fire: these amazing little cartoons consistently burst the balloons of pomposity in all walks of life. In the flurry of articles which appeared following the astonishingly rapid success of the video releases, such notables as Steven Spielberg, Matt Groening (creator of The Simpsons), and author Ray Bradbury effusively sang the praises of Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Thanks to our furry heroes, the world of TV animation was given a breath of fresh air, and those who were seduced by the peculiar comedic charms of producers Jay Ward and Bill Scott were changed forever. This book presents the full story behind these witty cartoon shows and their peerless creators.

*   *   *

Before heading into the saga of these animated iconoclasts, I feel that a personal note is in order for those readers about to embark on this journey into the zany land of Jay Ward Productions. What better way to start than by saying that I love Jay Ward cartoons, and have yet to meet a fellow enthusiast who can match my not-quite-sane level of worship. Let me explain this unabashed addiction.

Australia, for various reasons including our much smaller population, was a good eight years behind the U.S. media revolution: we didn’t begin receiving television broadcasts until 1956. By 1960, my family had had TV in our house for about twelve months, when suddenly Rocky and His Friends arrived down under. I had already fallen in love with American cartoons like Crusader Rabbit, Huckleberry Hound, and Tom Terrific, and by then (although just six years old), I sensed my life was going to be inextricably bound to Hollywood cartoons, for which I was showing an awareness beyond my years. I harbored an especially keen interest in the funny voices heard in these animated baby-sitters.

In fact, I was exhibiting the symptoms of the classic cartoon junkie at this tender age. Compared to my contemporaries, who were getting a life by tearing up the football field or discovering go-carts and pogo sticks, I was one of that odd flock who were drawn, like moths to a flame, to comic books (I was a budding cartoonist), comedy, and TV animation. So when Rocky and Bullwinkle entered my life, I felt like I’d reached a nirvana-point of no return. Never again would I find a cartoon series like this: it was truly different. Although aware that many of the jokes were beyond my comprehension, I knew that this singular TV show would become a lifelong study. Of course, when something has that kind of impact on one’s formative years, it’s very hard to shake. Even then, while a mere schoolkid, I had made up my mind that one day I would enter the field of animation, comedy, and voice impersonations. As to how, I had not the slightest idea.

Over the next ten years, my interest in Rocky and Bullwinkle became more and more scholarly. The bottom line: I was hooked beyond help, obsessed with finding out all I could about Jay Ward Productions. I started writing letters. I wrote to TV stations, radio stations. And I found myself desperately wondering about such earthshaking matters as: Where was Jay Ward Productions located? Who or what was P.A.T. (listed in the credits)? What did the voice actors look like? Who, in fact, did each voice? Even more to the point, who was the mysterious Jay Ward? And most intriguingly, who wrote all that funny dialogue?

My ear was especially taken with actors Daws Butler and Paul Frees, and I determined to meet these heroes of mine. They held me enthralled the way football stars and giants of the music world appear to people with possibly saner tastes. I thought of writing to these legendary voice actors. But at that unworldly point in my life I was so in awe of them that the thought of sending letters filled my insides with butterflies.

Then, just as I was entertaining thoughts of giving up this insanity and settling down to be a teacher, a high school friend’s father, on a whim for which I’ll always be thankful, loaned me the double Capitol record album The Best of the Stan Freberg Shows. This contained beautifully written comedy highlights from Freberg’s fifteen-week 1957 summer radio show on CBS. I was as entranced by his humor as I was by Jay Ward’s. Within the album covers, lo and behold, were pictures of Daws Butler and June Foray. They looked human, even friendly.

That did it—naively I wrote to Daws Butler care of Screen Gems TV, which distributed Hanna-Barbera’s The Huckleberry Hound Show. And in December 1970 I received a long and warm letter from him. I was dumbfounded: here in my own room was a reply from the voice of Yogi Bear! In it, he enclosed extras I hadn’t thought of requesting, like photos and drawings of all his characters. Best of all, he filled me in on who did the various other voices in Jay Ward’s cartoons.

Daws mentioned Bill Scott, who of course only appeared on the Bullwinkle titles as coproducer, never taking a voice credit. I had no idea he did voices. I wrote to Bill Scott in 1971, and was again amazed to receive a long letter, plus many cels and photos, again unsolicited. I wrote back, and he encouraged me to correspond. A couple of years later I enclosed some amateurish but detailed episode guides to the Jay Ward cartoons which I’d been working on for several months; Bill wrote back, telling me he was now using them as reference in his office. (Years later he told me the reason he’d originally replied to me was because he’d seen in my first epistle exactly the same obsessive enthusiasm he’d had for cartoons as a seventeen-year-old.)

To top all this, he copied my latest letter and sent it to June Foray. Fate stepped in—she had just met someone exactly like me, the poor sap. He was about my age and lived in California. His name was Corey Burton, and he too was obviously as far off the deep end as I, having shared my lifelong fascination with these voice people and Ward cartoons. June Foray was the catalyst for the erudite letters we sent each other beginning in August 1971. Corey has remained one of my close friends for these twenty-eight years. I must admit to being jealous of him in the first year of our acquaintance: he had been taken by June Foray to actually sit in on several Jay Ward recording sessions for Cap’n Crunch and Quisp-Quake commercials.

Meantime, my other vocal hero, Paul Frees, had made contact and sent me a personalized tape from his home studio. It wasn’t too long after this that Corey and I began the long process of getting our feet in the door of professional voice-acting work in our respective countries. By then I’d met Bill Hanna and worked at his new Sydney Hanna-Barbera wing for six months; one of his animators—bless him—gave me my first voice-over assignment in late 1972. But the best was yet to come.

After eighteen months of correspondence and much trading of cartoon sound tracks and record albums featuring Jay Ward voice actors, Corey Burton and I met. I’d entered a quiz in the local TV Times (one of those win a trip to Hollywood contests, in which the questions involved movie trivia). I came home to find a letter from the magazine telling me I had won the trip. I made careful plans and was soon on my way. I spent the most amazing four weeks of my life in Los Angeles, thanks mainly to the unbelievably gracious hospitality of Jay Ward, Bill Scott, Daws Butler, June Foray and her terrific late husband Hobe Donovan, Paul Frees, and Chris Hoppity Hooper Allen.

This occurred in April 1973, when all these people were active and highly visible in the industry. I’d assumed they wouldn’t have the schedule or the inclination to spend time with some punk kid from seven thousand miles across the Pacific. I was wrong. When these people heard I was in town, they went out of their way for me. Bill Scott took me to lunch at the old Frascatti’s restaurant (opposite Jay Ward’s studio); I curse the fact that I didn’t take a cassette recorder—he talked for three hours on the history of Jay’s cartoons, and finally asked me to write this book. Daws Butler invited Corey and me for a whole day at his home recording studio. I met the hilarious Paul Frees at a voice-over job at the late Radio Recorders, then Hollywood’s oldest sound studio. June Foray took me to a recording job presided over by animation legend Chuck Jones, still another of my heroes. And I was invited to a session at Hanna-Barbera’s studio, where I met Tom Bosley and other cartoon actors. All these voice people loaned us rare tapes from their private collections.

And then there was Jay Ward Productions. Before I won the trip, Corey Burton had told me about the store Jay had opened just a year earlier. Tantalizingly, it was called Dudley Do-Right’s Emporium. He mentioned something which had me salivating—the shop sold cassettes of genuine old radio shows featuring Paul Frees, Bill Conrad, and others from Jay’s cartoons. Obviously, this would be my first port of call. The day after we arrived, I left my parents scratching their exasperatedly tourism-oriented heads and caught a bus down to Jay Ward’s store. Jay’s wife, Ramona, who won’t remember this incident, was working behind the counter and told me that the catalog of radio shows was put together by one Skip Craig.

Of course, being an avid watcher of the Bullwinkle credits, I recognized Skip’s name as the film editor. Mrs. Ward informed me that he worked in the building behind the store. I met Skip Craig five minutes later and discovered to my delight that he, too, had been like me as a youngster—his obsession had been with Spike Jones and the City Slickers. I was crazy about Spike Jones, too, so Skip and I quickly ended up friends; he has since proven to be one of the most generous people I’ve ever met.

Most rewardingly, I met Jay Ward himself and was instantly charmed by his jolly and easygoing nature. He was sharp: he picked up on my fan worship and wasn’t threatened by it. Instead, he patiently answered myriad questions with his razor-sharp memory. Looking back now, I believe—as corny as it sounds—that trip was meant to be. I returned home with a sense of professionalism, a seriousness of purpose that seemed to go full circle back to those heady feelings I’d experienced as a six-year-old cartoon buff.

In the years that followed, I became established in Australia as a cartoon and commercial voice actor, and stand-up mimic. During this time I kept corresponding with the Jay Ward folk. Later, I regularly visited Corey Burton in California, and we reverentially kept up our Holy Grail–like visits and interviews with these comic masters until their untimely deaths. In those years I was able to sit in on some of Ward’s recording sessions as a pro, not just a gee-whiz fan.

Finally, in 1992, Corey Burton and I received the ultimate reward for our lifelong championing of Ward Productions: we got to work together in some Hollywood recording sessions with our heroine, June Rocky Foray. We were the actors chosen to re-create the voices from The Bullwinkle Show. It was as if Bill Scott and Paul Frees had yelled from their resting place, Oh, damn, let these guys have the job or they’ll never shut up. They sure as hell didn’t when we were there.

By the time Jay Ward died in 1989, I had amassed a vast collection of research material on his studio and professional life. I determined to write this book as a thank-you for the hundreds of hours of pleasure he gave me and thousands of other cartoon buffs, and for the fact that I feel he was largely responsible for my career. This, then, is not a biography of Jay Ward; rather, it’s an affectionate appreciation of his legacy and a history of his television career.

My biggest regret is not doing this book years ago, when my idols were still around. Although Bill Scott had asked me to write it during my 1973 visit, I procrastinated, knowing I wasn’t really ready. In the two and a half decades since, my enthusiasm has never waned, and in the actual process of putting the book together I have been delighted to meet many more players from the Jay Ward story, particularly his splendid writers and artists. I’m even more delighted to report that they are as fascinating and funny a bunch as I’d suspected.

And of course to this day, I’ll drop everything for a tape or TV showing of a Jay Ward cartoon. So, as a certain flying squirrel would have it, Now here’s something we hope you’ll really like!

1

WATCH ME PULL A RABBIT OUTTA MY HAT,

or Here’s Lookin’ Up Your Ancestors

He was a guerrilla fighter armed with humor and art, leading the fight against boredom.

—Luther Nichols, on his lifelong friend Jay Ward

For one brief decade, 1959–68, the funniest, all-stops-out zaniest cartoons ever made for television emerged from a tiny building on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. This was the home of Jay Ward Productions, undoubtedly the most eccentric animation house in the movie capital. Visitors were greeted by a sign on the door proclaiming, The only animation studio certified by the Pure Food and Drug Administration. But eccentricity aside, Jay Ward Productions, while never a household name on the Disney scale or even the Hanna-Barbera scale, became a Hollywood success story boasting some of animation’s all-time beloved characters. Most satisfyingly, Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Bullwinkle J. Moose, and the other great toon stars from this studio represent the all-too-rare triumph of comic integrity over TV expediency.

When Rocky and His Friends burst onto America’s home screens at 5:30 P.M., November 19, 1959, it was seemingly just one more in a mushrooming number of TV cartoons. But it soon became apparent that this show, starring the unlikely combination of a moose and squirrel hero-team, had something totally different about it. It was off-center: funny, very sharp, and, in the opinion of several television people, almost too good—i.e., too hip, too sophisticated, and certainly too fast-paced for the majority of TV watchers.

They were partly right: hip and fast it was. Yet somehow this wickedly witty animated potpourri proved accessible to all manner of viewers, from toddlers to grandparents. Still, during Rocky and Bullwinkle ’s first two seasons, the corporate powers—sponsor and network—kept asking, How is this possible? They kept interfering too, to no avail.

After all, this was unheard-of. Satire was normally frowned upon as a dicey prospect in the world of mass entertainment; but in a children’s cartoon series? Predictably, the suits regarded it as axiomatic that a TV show boasting such perception and wit would only appeal to a so-called elite. But the nervous pundits had missed the point. Producers Jay Ward and Bill Scott weren’t concerned with being clever. They simply wanted two things: a high-quality show and one that was consistently funny. This was a tall order in the fiercely competitive rat race of network television, yet they did the show they wanted year after year. In 1961 Ward told an interviewer, We aim at neither adults nor children. Our goal is to achieve the ultimate in comedy, including subtleties which escape the youngsters but which evoke response from adults.

Speak to anyone who worked with Jay Ward and you get the same fact over and over: he simply went about his creative way quietly and determinedly, remaining steadfast in his one abiding conviction—no one would interfere with his artistic control. Essentially, Ward was a gentle maverick with an enormous sense of fun, although he could be tough. His many admirers labeled him a visionary.

Not that talk of grand visions took place at Ward’s studio; as writer Allan Burns hastens to explain, Jay would have punctured that balloon very quickly. Actress June Foray, famous as the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel, noted, Jay was a very perspicacious man who always knew precisely what he wanted. Invariably what Ward wanted was something funny, which is what the viewers got: the shows were funny all right. But beyond this they felt oddly different from any competing cartoons. Each element within the Rocky show was informed by a mind-set and comic sensibility then unique to TV. The writers didn’t talk down to the audience, yet they didn’t talk up either. Although brilliantly satirical, there was nothing self-conscious or highbrow about the shows. Indeed, a salutary self-deprecation was always lurking in the scripts.

In a nutshell, then, Messrs. Ward and Scott were two producers who cared not a jot for statistics showing what the viewers might accept. Not for them the cold, by-the-numbers findings of market research; rather, they flattered their audiences by presuming that people who watched television actually had brains. The audience, in turn, recognized a truly rare bird among TV shows—one that didn’t insult their intelligence.

And so it remains today: Rocky and His Friends and The Bullwinkle Show are regarded as the most hilarious cartoons from television’s golden age. International animation journals still place the moose and squirrel at the top of polls listing the hundred best TV cartoons of all time. While there have been other sharp satirical cartoons (like Roger Ramjet, one of Bill Scott’s all-time favorites), no one quite brought off animated satire with the aplomb of Ward and Scott, who laced it with subtlety and a quirky charm. George Atkins, a writer of the Fractured Fairy Tales segment, opined, "The show was always the very special province of the brighter, more aware young viewer who cherished Bullwinkle’s irreverence; the range of its satire, the presumption of the viewer’s higher intelligence, the urgency and seriousness of subject matter—ever thickly encased in utter ridiculousness, and the always convincing high quality of its voice-work."

The sheer breadth of subject matter in one of Jay Ward’s TV offerings was also unique. Consider the format of most half-hour cartoon shows; They’re either sitcom oriented, from The Flintstones all the way through The Simpsons, or they’re in the adventure genre, from Jonny Quest through Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (imagine the latter satirized by the Ward crew). And if they were anthologies they featured endless variations on one theme.

What Ward and his hardy band of iconoclasts offered was essentially an animated variety show: the mock adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, in which public and private institutions were lampooned gently but soundly, sat cheek by jowl with fairy tales and fables, history and poetry, melodrama, and even the TV format itself. And all in a breathless thirty minutes. It was enjoyed by older viewers who discussed the show’s witty cultural allusions the next day over coffee breaks. Meantime their kids had eagerly lapped up the adventure angle and were recounting the cartoons in the playground. Two audiences in one; it would be thirty years before The Simpsons repeated this phenomenon.

As well as being years ahead of their time, it was their ability to appeal to both age groups—albeit on different levels—that truly set the Rocky and Bullwinkle shows apart. The vast majority of TV cartoons are too childish for parents to sit through, and the genre has acquired a deservedly low reputation. Of the hundreds of animated series aired since 1959, most have proved unimaginative and predictably repetitious. How many times can a cat outwit a dog, or a bunch of one-dimensional teenagers outrun a ghost? Leonard Maltin, in 1975, aptly described them as assembly line shorts grudgingly executed by animation veterans who hate what they’re doing. Rocky and Bullwinkle stood out as a welcome oasis in a mostly mirthless desert.

Without intending to, Jay Ward and company gave comedy fans a cult series boasting the twin stamps of intelligence and plain silliness from the first episode to the last. This is a pretty rare achievement in the advertising-and-ratings-driven world of TV: a show which generates the feeling of a fun-filled secret (This is ours and nobody else gets it) for aficionados while being thoroughly enjoyed by the mainstream audience.

As Bill Scott saw it, "All smart people loved Bullwinkle. The Bullwinkle Show has the most loyal and the most intelligent audience, but it was never number one. It’s a special show for special people and it’s long-lived and always funny, but never the number one [ratings] grabber."

A few weeks before his death in 1992, Lloyd Turner, one of Ward’s top writers, reflected, You know, when our little gang of misfits were running amok pissing out all that uninhibited, unsupervised, completely unique unsalable piffle (unsalable to anybody but Jay that is), we had no idea we were making thunder. Out of the lack of good sense to know any better we were idea alchemists making magic. It was a time of enchantment. We created Saint Elmo’s fire that is burning as brightly today as it did thirty-three years ago.

*   *   *

So just who was the elusive Jay Ward, besides being prime perpetrator of all the animated nuttiness? He was born J Troplong Ward in San Francisco on September 20, 1920. The unusual middle name was French in origin, being his mother’s maiden name; the J had no period after it, so that he could choose a name he wanted later (it was originally to be Joseph, his father’s name). A gifted student, Ward grew up to become a kind of kooky David O. Selznick of animation, and an enigma to all but his closest associates and friends. Of all the legendary names in the labyrinth of cartoon history, Ward is the least chronicled. He is also the one whom animation buffs most want to know about.

Veteran cartoon director Lew Keller lunched with Jay Ward for years, even after the studio ceased activity. He spoke of Ward’s childhood: Jay’s parents separated when he was young. His father was in real estate and he lost a lot of money in the depression; then he moved to New York and became a wine wholesaler. Jay was an only child and was brought up by his mother, Juanita—they were very close. She had a rooming house on College Avenue, and she was a well-known singer-dancer who loved to travel. [Her professional performing name was Juanita Holmes.] It was only years later, after Jay was married, that he finally met up with his father again.

One of Ward’s closest friends from the age of six was Luther Nichols. As next-door neighbors, they went from grammar school through high school and on to college at the University of California, at Berkeley. He recalls, "Jay and his mother were not well off. The rest of us were comfortably middle class, but Jay had a mainly improvident childhood. And it affected him. This and the lack of a father figure were really what imbued in him that extreme independence. Jay was very proud, and he had a strong sense of needing to make it on his own, and on his terms alone. The estrangement with his father was a major—the major—influence in his life."

During his college years, Jay Ward, in collusion with pals Nichols and Alex Anderson, was a principal founder of a mythical institution called the Meadowbrook Athletic Club. Nichols explains, Meadowbrook was dedicated to the proposition that inferior athletes could, on a given day, beat superior athletes if they had a certain amount of luck, guile, and Jay on their side. We played baseball and basketball for endless hours at Emerson and other playgrounds in the city, and when we weren’t playing we were betting on our favorite big-league teams. Jay had a gambler’s instinct even then; in fact I was his prime source of income in those early days. Anderson adds, The perpetual trophy of the UC gym still bears the Meadowbrook name, attesting to Jay’s success. Ward’s loyalty to UC Berkeley remained throughout his life. He made regular donations to the Bancroft Library, and was a chairman of the Robert C. Sproul Club and an honorary member of the Cal marching band.

Nichols recalled some early examples of Ward’s lifelong fun-oriented nature. Jay was noted for his prodigious consumption of ice-cream sodas. Never vanilla, that wouldn’t be Jay: as you would expect, he went for the offbeat flavors like pistachio and rainbow specials. I remember when Jay got one of his first sports cars; it was a real pretty MG with a right-hand drive. At the time Jay owned this huge Saint Bernard dog named Brandy, and he’d place the dog in the left-hand side of his car. Then he’d slide down the seat as far as he could while he drove, so it looked like the dog was driving! People would see this big dog with its huge tongue hanging out and brown hair flying about. Wherever they went people were startled and Jay would get these double-take reactions that he just loved. This was an early indication that Jay was going to be creatively different—one of the great gag men of our time.

Intriguingly, the story of Jay Ward’s outstanding career in animation—via his first star character, the legendary Crusader Rabbit—is a classic example of how showbiz immortality can often hinge on the twin intangibles of good timing and fate.

Ward completed his undergraduate work at UC Berkeley, receiving an A.B. in May 1941. Following this, he commenced postgraduate studies in business management at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. These were interrupted when, despite his poor eyesight, he was drafted. During World War II Jay Ward served in the Army Air Corps. In 1943, after two years of service, he married his wife, Ramona (or Billie, as she had been known since childhood). They had met in Massachusetts while Jay was attending Harvard.

Ramona Ward explains, After the war, [Jay] took his army shirt off and never put on a uniform again. Returning to Boston, he completed his remaining year at Harvard while earning some income as a floorwalker in a department store. Even after he returned to Berkeley, he never wanted to work for anyone but himself, despite a lot of good offers. He decided on real estate.¹

In 1972, Ward, interviewed for the Southern California newspaper The Tattler, explained, I was going into the real estate business in Berkeley, California. I wasn’t too crazy about real estate, but I had to eat. In fact, young Realtor Ward might have continued plying this halfhearted career choice for years, but for a freak accident that was about to change everything in his life.

At the age of twenty-six, Jay Ward, recent recipient of a February 1947 master’s degree, went to work. The postwar housing boom was strong, and J. T. Ward Realty and Insurance Company was soon open for business at 3049 Ashby Avenue, Berkeley, near the majestic old Claremont Hotel. He worked from a small green cabin that boasted a bright majenta door—the color magenta was to be Jay’s sales gimmick. The rustic building was situated adjacent to a babbling brook.

Ramona Ward recalls, It was only his first day in the office, and that afternoon he was stepping out the door for the mail. As Jay stood chatting with the postman, a nearby lumber truck lost brake power, went out of control, and careered crazily down steep Tunnel Avenue. With the lights against him at the Ashby Avenue intersection, the driver suddenly lurched to his right. Ward caught the full force of the truck as it crashed, full-speed, through the front window of his office, crushing him under the vehicle and pinning him against a wall.

Seconds before being hit by the runaway truck, Ward was reading a poem to his mailman. This was part of a letter he had just received from his close friends Milton and Barbara Schwartz. Barbara had composed the verse as a good-luck gesture to Jay on his first day in the new business. Jay’s lifelong pal Alex Anderson recalls, Barbara felt guilty for a long time afterward, along the lines of ‘If only I hadn’t written that poem.’

As a Los Angeles Times retrospective article reported, Hauled out of the ensuing carnage, it looked as though Ward would be blinded and crippled for life. As it turned out, the result could have been even worse. Still, the impact broke one of Ward’s knees and caused much further damage, not the least of which was psychological: as Ward’s animation director Bill Hurtz maintains, That was the start of Jay’s lifelong claustrophobia—it haunted him the rest of his days. Ward sustained terrible muscle injuries and was temporarily blinded by grains of the sand which bordered the nearby brook.

Ramona Ward recalls that horrific day: she was about to walk their first child when she received an ominous telephone call from the police, informing her that Jay had been rushed to nearby Alta Bates Hospital, at Ashby and Regent Street. As the facts became clear (the mailman had been thrown forty feet upon collision), one rather callous female neighbor answered Ramona’s anxious question concerning her husband’s whereabouts with a dismissive, Oh, he’s dead!

The convalescence proved long and painful: Ward wore a cast for the next six months, followed by leg braces. Indeed, during the first few days a doctor seriously considered amputating one of Jay’s legs. Upon his recovery Ward returned to real estate, this time at a new address, 2 Tunnel Road, Berkeley. But this stint didn’t last long. Within a short time Jay would be the manager of a company pioneering cartoons for the embryonic medium of television. This rather amazing career switch teamed Jay Ward with his first partner in the animation field and his friend since childhood, Alex Anderson.

Also born in September of 1920, fifteen days before Jay, Alexander Hume Anderson, Jr., was a native of the Bay Area. He and Ward were friends from the age of nine. As Anderson recalled, Jay was a unique individual. At school he always gave the impression he knew more than the teachers. Just before they separated, Jay’s parents had taken him on a round-the-world trip for about six months; he came back very sophisticated compared with all us other kids. Jay devoted enormous time and energy to his love of sports—tennis, baseball, softball, track and field, basketball, bowling. How he managed to maintain a high grade average and combine this world of sport, I’ll never know. He was always very sharp. Later in life he struck me as P. T. Barnum, the ringmaster, with the world as his circus. Jay is the most memorable character I ever knew.

They attended elementary school and high school together, ending up as fraternity brothers at Cal. In their junior and senior high school years in the 1930s they sold wreaths and Christmas trees each December. Anderson quipped, It was a seasonal business.

Alex Anderson came from an artistic family. Two of his uncles were cartoonists, one of them being the famous Paul Terry, head of the New York–based Terrytoons studio. Terrytoons’s three decades of theatrical animation had produced such stars as the popular Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle, and Gandy Goose. During boyhood summers before enrolling at UC Berkeley, Alex, having displayed early artistic ability, apprenticed at Terry’s studio. Here he learned the animation business thoroughly in all departments. I was sort of the heir apparent. My uncle got me started in the whole idea of making cartoons. Even as a young man, Anderson knew he was more interested in writing than drawing. (Nevertheless, Bill Scott maintained, Alex was one of the finest and funniest animation artists around, and a wonderful draftsman. His storyboards are just a delight to work from.)

While in his early twenties Anderson saw Walt Disney’s newest film, The Reluctant Dragon (1941). The movie contained a sequence in which humorist Robert Benchley previewed a cartoon featuring the genius infant Baby Weems. Unlike traditional full Disney animation, the Baby Weems episode was presented via storyboard sketches which were bolstered by strong narration. The segment was highly effective and left a big impact on Anderson, who felt that this method could be employed as a viable form of animation: The sequence was done with stills, production shots, and so on—it resembled a moving comic strip, and had a lot of vitality. He believed he could produce a cartoon series in this simplified visual style if the story was worth telling.

Little did Anderson realize at the time that his moving-comic-strip idea would finally evolve into what is popularly called limited animation. The Disney film, along with Alex’s talks with veteran Terrytoons artists (who demonstrated cutout animation and other artistic shortcuts learned in the silent era) proved influential. They instilled in Alex Anderson his eventual idea of producing cartoons for the emerging medium of television. TV was already being regarded as the entertainment big time of the future, and Anderson quickly saw vast potential in employing this simplified method of animation for the home screen. Most importantly, it could be specifically designed for a small budget. In 1946, following college graduation and World War II service in naval intelligence, Alex Anderson commenced another stint at Terrytoons in animation and story editing. This time he broached his idea to his famous relative, Paul Terry.

Uncle Paul, however, wanted no part of this—his cartoons were distributed internationally by 20th Century–Fox, and he told his nephew, If I have anything to do with television, Fox will dump me just like that. Terry received the lion’s share of his funding from the giant movie company. At the time, the film studios looked on TV with a paranoid fear. They regarded the upstart medium as archenemy number one, feeling certain that the death knell of the motion picture industry was about to be rung. Anderson adds, Uncle Paul was actually very sweet about it; he told me he understood my enthusiasm, because I was the same age as he was when he’d started Terrytoons. He encouraged me to go ahead, even offering me the use of his camera department.

Undaunted, Alex Anderson decided to proceed. With several cartoon concepts brewing in his fertile imagination, he felt determined to give it his best shot. One of these concepts led to Crusader Rabbit. It resulted from the talks between Anderson and Terrytoons background artist Arthur Bartsch. Wood-shedding new ideas for a cartoon series, they especially liked the feel of a two-character team: We felt the main character should have a strong personality within a little body. Then we partnered him with a kind of passive, amiable buddy who was encased in a large, threatening body. This was effectively a comedy team in the classic tradition of physical mismatch, such as Laurel and Hardy or, more recently, Basil and Sybil Fawlty. From this point, the characters became animals, and finally, a rabbit and tiger were chosen.

In early 1948 Anderson left Terrytoons and returned to the Bay Area. He said, "I was in New York at the time Jay had the truck crash accident. He was recuperating;

Reviews for The Moose That Roared

[nickhowes · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Not only a detailed history of the development as well as Jay Ward successors to Rocky and Bullwinkle, but an insightful story about the made-for-TV animation industry. Rocky/Bullwinkle had humor potential that appealed to both kids and adults and ensured it's survival for decades when stuff like Mighty Mouse and Beanie and Cecil were forgotten. Naturally, there were run-ins with the censor, some of which are pretty dumb. ("Cannibalism? How can it be cannibalism if a squirrel and a moose are in the cooking pot?") I remember as a kid hearing this distinctive voice on many movie trailers and it stuck with me. It turned out it was Alan Frees, the voice of Boris Badenov, as well as a prolific voice-performer playing the Pillsbury Doughboy among others along dubbing Japanese kaijira movies like Rodan. This is a terrific book on Jay Ward and his creations that I highly recommend.

[Jan Dumas · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I had to stay up until 1:30 am to finish this book.