Howard Fein
02-19-2002, 01:59 PM
NBC showed Walter Lantz cartunes from 1970 to '72, then reran it in 1976-77. I was never much of a Woodpecker fan, so pretty much ignored him until fall 1977 when the Lantz package went into daily syndication.
What I'm wondering is, for the 1976-77 season, were only the shorts from the fifties and sixties shown? NBC might have been pretty squeamish about showing the aggressive forties' version of Woody. He also looked too primitive prior to 1955 (when he still had distinctive colored irises) to be shown on a major network Saturday morning program. Many prints of the pre-'55, and especially forties, shorts seemed of rather poor quality when aired in syndication.
There seemed to be enough Woody shorts circa 1955-65 (although most post-'60 shorts were suppressed until Universal finally released them to TV in 1982) and Chilly Willy shorts to round out a 13-week rotation. I can't imagine NBC carrying the Andy Panda shorts in 1976 either. The latest (up to 1966) Chilly shorts in the original package seemed to fit Saturday AM fairly well due to their limited animation and jazzy Walt Greene score, which was a staple of the Pink Panther cartoons immediately following on the schedule.
What I remember seeing from the few times I glimpsed the package (usually while channel-surfing from THE TWEETY & SYLVESTER SHOW on CBS) were parts of THE BIRD THAT CAME TO DINNER ("He walks, walks, walks, and he pecks, pecks, pecks."), BATS IN THE BELFRY (the shell-shocked butler) and one of the Gabby Gator shorts. The original threatrical credits must have been left out (as with all theatrical cartoons rerun on network TV), because the end titles had 'gang credits' and listed in very small print the titles of all the shorts just shown that half-hour. At the time I was just starting to recognize writers' names, and was amazed to see Mike Maltese, whom I associated only with Bugs Bunny and Quick Draw McGraw.
Lantz has stated that NBC edited his cartoons, so a lot of them must have been very short (the same way ABC treated the Warner shorts when it acquired them from CBS in 1985). Even the maligned-as-bland fifties and sixties' titles could be pretty gruesome and violent:
-REAL GONE WOODY, written by Maltese: Woody, in drag, prepares Buzz Buzzard an explosive 'banana split' with 'whipped cream' (petro jelly), 'nuts' (bullets) and 'banana' (TNT stick).
-SQUARE SHOOTING SQUARE, also by Maltese: Western outlaw Dooley being shot or dynamited numerous times. Even Woody takes a shot to the head, ending up looking similar to the edited-by-CN image of Daffy in AIN'T THAT DUCKY.
-HOW TO CATCH A WOODPECKER: The phone company president hides in a high-voltage box and emerges as a squiggle of ash. :eek:
-FODDER AND SON: The Jackie Gleason-esque Papa Bear disturbs a worm sleeping in an apple and gets blasted in the face.
-Professor Dingledonger falls victim to an exploding cigar and string-rigged shotgun in one short; in another, Woody puts him through a furniture mill and then pecks him into the shape of a fancy table!
-Woody pulls a ridiculously small gun on an overly intrusive bird watcher with the result of the entire landscape resembling the aftermath of a nuclear explosion.
-In one Chilly short, Smedley falls for the toy-gun's-no-toy bit and ends up not only smoldering and frazzled, but with a gag 'BANG!' flag sticking clear through his head!
I'm just curious as to how NBC handled these and other potentially touchy scenes. Does anyone remember this series? Was Culhane's wolf-eating Woody part of it? Were the Maw and Paw shorts? Or the four Avery shorts?
For what it was worth, NBC didn't seem to edit the Daffy and Speedy shorts it showed from 1978-82. Daffy and Sylvester suffered dozens of explosions pursuing the mouse, and they all seemed to be left in. When CBS started showing those late WB/DFE/Hendricks shorts, they received the same hack job as had already been done on the Bugs/Tweety shorts it had been carrying since 1975. :mad:
What I'm wondering is, for the 1976-77 season, were only the shorts from the fifties and sixties shown? NBC might have been pretty squeamish about showing the aggressive forties' version of Woody. He also looked too primitive prior to 1955 (when he still had distinctive colored irises) to be shown on a major network Saturday morning program. Many prints of the pre-'55, and especially forties, shorts seemed of rather poor quality when aired in syndication.
There seemed to be enough Woody shorts circa 1955-65 (although most post-'60 shorts were suppressed until Universal finally released them to TV in 1982) and Chilly Willy shorts to round out a 13-week rotation. I can't imagine NBC carrying the Andy Panda shorts in 1976 either. The latest (up to 1966) Chilly shorts in the original package seemed to fit Saturday AM fairly well due to their limited animation and jazzy Walt Greene score, which was a staple of the Pink Panther cartoons immediately following on the schedule.
What I remember seeing from the few times I glimpsed the package (usually while channel-surfing from THE TWEETY & SYLVESTER SHOW on CBS) were parts of THE BIRD THAT CAME TO DINNER ("He walks, walks, walks, and he pecks, pecks, pecks."), BATS IN THE BELFRY (the shell-shocked butler) and one of the Gabby Gator shorts. The original threatrical credits must have been left out (as with all theatrical cartoons rerun on network TV), because the end titles had 'gang credits' and listed in very small print the titles of all the shorts just shown that half-hour. At the time I was just starting to recognize writers' names, and was amazed to see Mike Maltese, whom I associated only with Bugs Bunny and Quick Draw McGraw.
Lantz has stated that NBC edited his cartoons, so a lot of them must have been very short (the same way ABC treated the Warner shorts when it acquired them from CBS in 1985). Even the maligned-as-bland fifties and sixties' titles could be pretty gruesome and violent:
-REAL GONE WOODY, written by Maltese: Woody, in drag, prepares Buzz Buzzard an explosive 'banana split' with 'whipped cream' (petro jelly), 'nuts' (bullets) and 'banana' (TNT stick).
-SQUARE SHOOTING SQUARE, also by Maltese: Western outlaw Dooley being shot or dynamited numerous times. Even Woody takes a shot to the head, ending up looking similar to the edited-by-CN image of Daffy in AIN'T THAT DUCKY.
-HOW TO CATCH A WOODPECKER: The phone company president hides in a high-voltage box and emerges as a squiggle of ash. :eek:
-FODDER AND SON: The Jackie Gleason-esque Papa Bear disturbs a worm sleeping in an apple and gets blasted in the face.
-Professor Dingledonger falls victim to an exploding cigar and string-rigged shotgun in one short; in another, Woody puts him through a furniture mill and then pecks him into the shape of a fancy table!
-Woody pulls a ridiculously small gun on an overly intrusive bird watcher with the result of the entire landscape resembling the aftermath of a nuclear explosion.
-In one Chilly short, Smedley falls for the toy-gun's-no-toy bit and ends up not only smoldering and frazzled, but with a gag 'BANG!' flag sticking clear through his head!
I'm just curious as to how NBC handled these and other potentially touchy scenes. Does anyone remember this series? Was Culhane's wolf-eating Woody part of it? Were the Maw and Paw shorts? Or the four Avery shorts?
For what it was worth, NBC didn't seem to edit the Daffy and Speedy shorts it showed from 1978-82. Daffy and Sylvester suffered dozens of explosions pursuing the mouse, and they all seemed to be left in. When CBS started showing those late WB/DFE/Hendricks shorts, they received the same hack job as had already been done on the Bugs/Tweety shorts it had been carrying since 1975. :mad: