Tom & Jerry: Joe Barbera, with partner Hanna, made Saturday mornings fun

Yabba-dabba-do!
By TONY BROWN

Those of us born in the late 1950s and early '60s are often called space-age babies, with John Glenn as our hero.

But you could just as easily call us children of the TV-cartoon era. A man who made that era possible has gone on to everlasting syndication in the sky, no rocket needed.

Joe Barbera, who with partner Bill Hanna essentially created made-for-TV cartoons and most famously created The Flintstones, died Monday at age 95.

(Making the sad news sadder Tuesday for former Saturday-morning-cartoon freaks, the New York Times obituary page announced the Nov. 20 death of The Bullwinkle Show writer Chris Hayward. He was 81.)

To today's fans of The Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park and Beavis and Butt-head who have never heard of Barbera, one can only say:

"Meet the Flintstones."

He and Hanna (who died in 2001) started working together in the 1940s at MGM, where they produced dozens of the still-popular (and nowadays controversially violent) Tom and Jerry (inspiration for Itchy and Scratchy of The Simpsons).

The cat-and-mouse chase scenes won seven Oscars.

Hanna took care of the comic timing and Barbera — one of the most talented animators in the business — drew the characters and came up with the jokes. Back in the "T&J" days, that meant painstakingly painting individual cels, or celluloid frames, high-quality enough for movie screens.

But Hanna-Barbera Productions, formed in 1957 (the same year the Russians sent into space a dog named Laika who may have been an antecedent of another dog named Astro), revolutionized cartoons with two innovations.

Both allowed cartoons to be made directly for the still-new medium of television.

And they allowed parents to sleep in on Saturdays while the kids remained glued to the television and buzzed on the sugary cereals promoted thereon.

First, Hanna-Barbera developed a process that allowed the largely pre-drawn characters to move on generic landscapes with only the moving parts (such as mouths, hands and arms, and even these were done with templates) changing from moment to moment.

Second, they adapted cartoons to the half-hour sitcom format of television (complete with commercial slots) instead of shorts or full-length features.

Cartoon aficionados criticize Hanna-Barbera because its work didn't have the artistry of the Walt Disney and Warner Bros. studios' animation, made for the big screen and only later shown on Saturday mornings, and because the jokes tended to be stereotypically dumb.

What they lacked in artistry, however, they made up for in fan appeal.

After starting with The Ruff & Reddy Show, Hanna-Barbera hit pay dirt with the first prime-time animated TV series, 1958's The Huckleberry Hound Show, about a Mark Twainish, powder-blue Southern dog who couldn't sing.

A spinoff character, Yogi Bear, would later score his own series.

But Huck was just a warm-up for the pair's most famous creation, the first prime-time animated series with people as characters, The Flintstones, in 1960. It finished the season in the Top 20 ratings.

In an interview years later, Barbera admitted that he and Hanna simply set the The Honeymooners in the Stone Age, with Fred as the blowhard, Ralph Kramden character and Barney as the lovably doofus sidekick, a la Ed Norton.

The pair even bowled and submitted to regularly being outsmarted by their clever wives, Wilma and Betty.

Barbera said the point was to use anachronisms to make fun not of cave men but of modern culture.

Ann-Margrock sang in Viva Rock Vegas. Fred gobbled Brontosaurus Burgers. And Fred and Barney sported the Don Johnson, unshaven look (still favored by Brad Pitt, et al.) way before Miami Vice, largely because their "electric" razors were clamshells with bees buzzing inside.

This formula worked so well that Hanna-Barbera did almost exactly the same thing with a new series in 1962, but with a future spin, The Jetsons.

And with almost every series thereafter.

Their most famous work already done, Hanna and Barbera continued to crank out series after series, eventually totaling in the hundreds, even after their production company was gobbled up by Turner Broadcasting, which was eventually gobbled up by Time-Warner.

Some favorites: Quick Draw McGraw (which preceded The Flintstones by a year and featured an alter-ego character named El Kabong), Top Cat, The Adam Ant/Secret Squirrel Show, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, The Smurfs and The Powerpuff Girls.

Until a revival in later years, quality did decline and some of the shows were just plain stupid (the live action Banana Splits is a prime example).

But Hanna and Barbera won a slew of Emmys, and their characters' witticisms entered the lexicon.

Most familiar, of course, is "yabba-dabba-doo" (invented by original Fred voice artist Alan Reed).

But there is also: "Smarter than the average bear" (Yogi), "Heavens to Murgatroyd!" (Snagglepuss), "Ruh-roh!" (Astro and Scooby), "Scooby snack" (Shaggy) and "I'll do the thin'in' around here, and don' you forget it" (Quick Draw).

The heirs of Hanna and Barbera will reap many, many millions, not only from syndicated repetition but also from the licensing of products, many of which are still market leaders, including
chewable vitamin pills for children.

Barbera, Tuesday's news reports said, died at home in Los Angeles of natural causes with his wife, Sheila, by his side.

If Snuffles the dog had been there, he no doubt would have floated heavenward with Barbera's spirit while Snagglepuss delivered the benediction:

"Exit, stage left, even."