Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, we love Hanna Barbera.

Welcome to the fantastic world of Hanna and Barbera, a celebration of Bill, Hannah, Joe, Barbera and the thousands of people, past and present who have shared in their entertainment tradition.

And now your host, Greg Airbar.

Thank you, Chris Anthony.

Welcome to the fantastic world of Hannah and Barbera.

And I am Greg Airbar, author of Hannah Barbera, the recorded History from Modern Stone Age to Meddling Kids today.

We have a person who just embodies the and of Hanna and Barbera because this show is dedicated to, as you heard Chris Anthony say, the thousands of people who made it great.

And Bob, I can call you Bob, right?

Well, yeah, almost no one does, but you may call me Bob Robert.

Well, then I'll call you Robert.

Robert Alvarez, animation director, has not only worked for Hanna Barbera for many years and some of their greatest projects and seeing the transition of Hanna Barbera into its various phases, also worked for Disney, has won Emmy Awards, been nominated for even more of them.

I mean, the programs he's worked on are so iconic and there's so much to talk about.

I don't think we can fit it into one show.

But first and foremost, welcome to the fantastic world, Robert Alvarez.

I'm glad and happy to be here.

Thank you.

What we usually do, especially with such a vast body of work and I don't know if you mind me saying it's over 50 years of experience in the industry.

I'd like to start back when you began your interest in art and animation and how you got into the business.

I had an interest in animation from an early age because I like most kids from my era.

I watched a lot of television and I watched a lot of cartoons and I also read comic books and I liked comic books and I was watching cartoons a lot as well as old movies.

And then my parents moved to California from New York in 1959.

I still have the interest and all that.

And I met a good friend of mine who you probably have heard of, Tim Walker.

We met in the 7th grade and Tim knew where Hanna Barbera was and we would constantly ride our bikes after school to Hanna Barbera UPA format films and just look through the trash.

And whatever was in the trash that we found, we would take as far as drawings and cells and all that.

And that kind of got me motivated thinking about, you know, animation might be something fun to do or might be something I could do.

And eventually in 1967, I was accepted to Shannard Art Institute 2, which is now called Cal Arts.

But this Chenard school was downtown, and Tim and I both started there at the same year in 67.

And in 1968, while I was still at Chenard, I got my first job in animation, working at Fred Calvert Studio on the Banana Split Show, which had Arabian Nights and Three Musketeers as the cartoons.

And that was where I started in 1968.

For those who aren't as familiar with the Banana Splits Adventure Hour, the Banana Splits for live action and they did comedy routines and songs between what was largely animated shows.

The show was about 80% and I would say 70 because there was Arabian Nights, 3 Musketeers and later micro venture and also danger Island, which was the Richard Donner directed the adventure series.

Very groovy, Lots of zooms, but it was mostly animated and gosh, that's quite a way to get started.

Is on a.

It was just lucky because a friend of mine who was also going to Shanar at the same time and was a bunch of us that went to the same high school and just happened to get into Shanar.

He called me up 1 summer, it was in 68 and he said hey, you still want to get into animation?

I said sure.

And he's the one that was already working at Fred Calvert's and he said come on over and meet Fred, which I did.

And he just sat me in a room with two drawings and two extremes and said yeah, you do the in between.

He came back in and checked in in about 20 minutes or half an hour.

I said OK, you can start tomorrow and that's how I got in.

I didn't realize they did additional animation and banana splits, but that's pretty common.

Disney would farm out where is far back as the 30s.

Farm at work.

Yeah that's surrounding studios because the load was so huge.

Also Fred Calvert that year I believe Hot Wheels was one of their shows.

Well, he didn't do Hot Wheels pantomime pictures.

Did.

Oh, sorry.

Pantomime did Hot Wheels and Skyhawks and they set up a little studio for anyone that's listening to this that is familiar with North Hollywood.

They had us a secondary studio set up above the El Portal Theater on Lancashire Blvd.

where Skyhawks and Hot Wheels were done.

And I remember going over there once to see if I could maybe get some freelance.

I didn't get any freelance, but I know some people that worked on those shows and they were low budget shows, you know, limited the amount of cells that they were going to be used and all that.

And I never worked on it and I don't believe Fred had anything to do with it.

Fred Calvert did then, I know this for sure, the Rodger Ramjet show a couple of years before.

Yeah, He was production manager on Rodger Ramjet for pantomime, and they were at a different location.

And that was after he had already left Disney because he and his wife Kimmy were assistants at Disney in the 50s.

After Rodger Ramjet, just about that time, shortly thereafter he set up his own studio and then he was like doing all kinds of things and commercials and, and the year before I started in 67, he did subcontract work on the George of the Jungle show for Jay Ward.

How did you get involved in Yellow Submarine?

Because I was working at Fred Calvert and it was just being in the right place at the right time.

There were two animators that were there, Ron Campbell and Dwayne Crowler, and they got subcontracted work from the production company in England because Ron had actually worked on The Beatles TV show while he was still in Australia and so they already knew him.

So they subcontracted work to Ron and Dwayne and what happened with those guys was they tended to be two false, you know, if they would do other things.

Dwayne was notorious for that, doing whatever he needed to get done at the last possible moment.

So because I was at Fred's and they got behind schedule, it was like a thing where I guess as a favor to Ron and Dwayne, I don't know how they worked out the pay on that, but he said, OK, everybody's got to jump on and help these guys out.

So there was a short period of time where I worked on Yellow Submarine doing in betweens.

It was just being in the right place at the right time.

Do you remember the sequence you worked on or sequences?

Yeah, it was the splotching sequence at the end of the film where the roses start popping up on Max and Cheap Rumini.

I don't have a lot of vivid memories of the actual work, but I do remember drawing those tiny roses on the characters.

We're talking now 55 years ago or more, You know, let's do the math.

68 from where it is now, it's like it's over 55 years.

Wow though, that being attached to something that iconic, That's pretty cool though.

Then you worked on the backgrounds for a personal favorite of mine, Winky Dink and You in 69.

That was just being in the right place at the right time.

And it wasn't like they were a complicated subject matter because they were really simple.

The background, they were done with markers.

So, you know, you go from the layouts and you trace layout and you're coloring with Marcus.

It was really simple stuff.

I didn't do a real lot.

It's just that, once again, right place at the right time and helping out some people that were already working.

Fred Calvert's was set up originally.

It was a small house, not too small, but it was a small house that was originally a farmhouse.

And on the same piece of property, there was a apartment building that had two units up and two units down.

So people rented space there.

That's why Ron and Dwayne rented a room and Norm Godfritsen, Al Wilsbach, lots of other people would come and go and rent space there and do their work.

Fred got the contract, I guess, to do, because I don't remember all the details to do those.

I can't remember who it was, but from New York to do the stuff, it wasn't very long.

It was a short period of time and I don't think anybody that was working there at the time really cared very much about the project.

But for me, in those days, I didn't care what I was working on.

I just wanted to work.

I wanted to get into the business which I was in and I just was having fun because I finally got into what I wanted to do for a long time.

Wiki Dink was a unique show.

First of all, it was made originally 1957.

It was a live show with Mae Questel as Wiki Dink's voice and Jack Berry is the host.

And it was not even really animated, they just moved cutouts around and you you bought a magic screen by mail.

Sometimes they sold them in the stores and a set of crayons, magic crayons and filled in.

It was unbelievably cool at the time, filling in like a bridge if they needed to walk across.

And then 69 when it was, it was even cooler because it was a color cartoon made at rock bottom prices.

Yeah, like you said, you could tell.

But it is sort of charming.

Magic Marker backgrounds, you know, lines and colors and one voice actor, Lionel Wilson, who was all the voices on that and on Tom.

Terrific.

No music except a theme that came off an old Decker record with Jack Berry singing.

Al Cazal I think was the.

Al Cazal.

Cazal, Yeah.

Yeah, he was from New York.

Yeah, So it was a New York production, but they formed out that animation.

I never knew that.

I never knew that the animation was done in LA, but it's on video.

It's probably on YouTube.

Raise my kids on it another generation.

They called it the first Interactive TV show.

Winky Ding and you Winky Ding and me always have a lot of fun together.

Winky Ding and you.

Winky Ding and me.

We.

Are.

I haven't seen any of that stuff in, well, it's 100 years.

It's not elaborate, but it's kind of cute.

I have artwork from the stuff that was done at Fred Keller's.

I have some backgrounds and some cells and stuff, but it's not something I'm dying to see again.

Because what happens a lot of times, at least for me, in animation, you work on what's presented to you, what's in front of you, not necessarily what you would like to do.

And then years go by and you might see something on television and you go, oh, God, that looks awful.

And you know, it might bring back memories.

But for me, that was just another opportunity.

I only worked for Calvert for two seasons, 68 and 69.

And for all you boys and girls out there are listening to this, he was not the most honest guy.

I was grossly underpaid the first year, but I was so naive and wide eyed at Babylon I didn't realize what I should have been paid.

I don't believe Calvert ever did anymore work for Disney unless it might have been a commercial or something, which I don't think he did, but he did other things based on some other live action shows.

And the last project I know because I did a little bit of work for him on it was the Muhammad Ali show.

I am the greatest for NBC, which was terrible.

And he did I guess the unforgivable thing as far as NBC was like he pocketed too much the money and then they were not pleased.

And that was the last animation project to the my nose, except for when we Fast forward.

He was a guy that worked with the bonding companies for features because he did that for one of the Hannibal Bears features.

So the last thing I know he had anything to do with animation was when he got control of the thief and the cobbler because the insurance company took it away from Dick Williams.

Because Williams have worked on it for so long and spent so much money, they finally said that's it, you're done.

And Calvert got the gig and finished it up in North Hollywood.

But I didn't do any work for him on that.

So I just worked for him on 6869 and then that little bit of work on Muhammad Ali's show and that was it.

In 1970 I started working for Tony Love, Bill Hutton and Ed Love.

Even the cobbler had a long and painful history.

It was the pet project of Richard Williams and he was so meticulous that it never really got done.

And then it was finished without him.

And I think originally they called it Arabian Nights to tie in with Aladdin.

It had a different title originally.

I think the final release was Thief and the Cobbler.

But there's a lot of stories about, you know, depending on who you listen to about Richard Williams.

You can look at a lot of videos on YouTube about them, but you're not going to get the real story about the real man.

I think.

I think he was a victim of his own doing because he was constantly changing and changing and changing stuff and doing stuff and working on it.

And he spent, I don't know, maybe 20 plus years working on a thing.

They finally said that's it.

Yeah, just like you're mentioned earlier, procrastination, being too OCD on a project and not letting it get done can be devastating as well.

And it's kind of a balancing act to say I got to step back now because this has to get done otherwise it can fall or your your organization can get in trouble for that.

It's different in TV animation.

You don't have the luxury of time.

Everything I've ever worked on in TV, most of my career was TV.

I think I worked maybe 5 or 6 features, none of which were except for Yellow sub.

I would consider none of them very good.

But in TV it's always the deadline and you've always got to finish your work by a certain amount of time because things have to get finished.

Shortly after I was started working, things got sent to overseas studios to get finished and all that.

You just have to meet your deadlines and you don't have the luxury of a feature where you can spend two to three years.

In TV, an animated half hour show might get animated and fully animated by a good group of animators probably in two weeks and it was into assistant work, and then after that it was ink and paint and all that.

You just don't have the luxury of time.

One of the things that I had heard from, I think it was Spike Brandt about some of the direct to video features is that it is misunderstood that everything on ATV or direct to video project is animated overseas for the really intensely crucial intricate things.

Some of Hollywood's best animators will still do animation, maybe not the in betweens.

And that's why when you watch a feature length TV budgeted thing, there are moments that are fluid, moments that are not.

I would say at least, at least and probably more.

90% of anything that's TV animated, especially nowadays, it's not done here in LA.

It's just not done.

It's too expensive, the things that he's talking about.

He might be talking about something where they were producing a long form and they had the ability and the budget to hire in some guys to come in and do some animation that's not TV animation, even though it might show up eventually on Warner Station or something like that.

In TV animation, especially nowadays, it's just not the way it's done.

You have your pre production and then the animations done in some other country and then post production done back here that started way back.

Well, Jay Ward was the first one that started it in 59.

And then it became the norm in the in the late 60s it started more and then by the 70s it was being done almost everywhere with the exception of maybe filmation.

They were the last hold out.

And then eventually before they closed down, they were sending their ink and paint out.

But it's just not done here anymore.

And so if he's talking about a long form where they've got the money and the time to do some animation here, but that's.

I think you're saying it better than I did.

I think what he was saying was we were specifically talking, I think now that I remember, about Tom and Jerry, Willy Wonka, and he said if for the Slugworth sequence, which is a standout sequence, that was Dale Baer.

And I think that was the example of, yeah, it's farmed out, But in those kind of features, Well, you worked on Scooby-doo on Zombie Island, which had some incredible sequences and also had standard animation, and that was a feature length.

Well, that was done before Cartoon Network opened up and was in the late 90s.

Hanna Barbera had been moved off the lot because unfortunately Ted Turner merged with Time Warner and that was the downfall of Hanna Barbera as far as I'm concerned.

And so we were on the 14th floor of the Imperial Bank building and the producer that was Davis Doy and I had done a lot of work with Davis.

So we did it just like we had done all the other stuff.

Pre production stuff was like, you know, models, scripts, storyboards, direction and all that.

Color keys, you know, BG keys and all that in LA.

And I don't know where it was sent because I don't remember.

And it was the same thing.

Came back and then edit it and maybe it was sent to a studio that did excellent work.

Honestly I haven't seen that in so long I can't even remember anything about it.

But that was just like ATV show pre production, work overseas somewhere and then post production.

You'd be surprised how many people really love that film.

I was at Malton Fest that is run by the Malton family, Leonard and Jesse and Alice.

And they screen films that they feel need to be seen more, you know, lesser known, wonderful films from different eras.

And there was a whiteboard outside the Egyptian Theatre, and they said put down your requests.

And I was surprised because I was thinking maybe Zombie Island might be something, and someone had already written up there to screen that in the theater maybe more than once.

So wow, that was kind of a nice thing.

Anyway, When did you get to Hanna Barbera originally?

Well, I did all of my work starting in 68 and through the 70s was Hanna Barbera work.

I did some work for other places, but I was doing a lot of work in the 70s for Tony Love, Bill Hutton.

They would do work for other places, which because I was doing work for them, I got to work on those projects.

But in 1983, Hannah changed the way things were getting done and he decided he wasn't going to use subcontractors in town.

Prior to that, there were like four or five subcontractors and I was doing work for about three of them.

And he said, OK, just bring them in on staff, the animators.

So in 83, I went on staff to Hanna Barbera, but I was still working at home through the 80s and into the early 90s.

When I got the phone call from Bill Hannah, he wanted me to help him do retakes on the Jetson feature.

And then I started working in and then.

So from that point on, I was working in at Hanna Barbera until we moved off the lot and all that.

And then when we started Cartoon Network, from day one I was working in there.

So the firm that you work for, mostly that was Tony Love, who was part of Hanna Barbera.

And did they become independent at that point?

What happened was Tony's father was Ed Love.

Ed Love was a great old animator that started at Disney in 1930 and he was a fantastic animator, did a lot of work for Walter, Lance, MGM and a lot of other places in 1970.

I think what happened was probably Tony Love and Bill Hutton said, hey look, Hannah's subcontracting worked out.

We can do this.

We can make a lot of money because what they did was Hannah would pay X amount of dollars per foot to get work done.

So those guys were taking X amount of dollars off the top and then paying a few whatever it was, per foot to get the work done by people like myself.

So they opened up their subcontracting company with Ed.

For a couple years.

Ed was a partner, but then somehow they pushed Ed out the door even though he continued working for him because Tony was his son.

And they did a lot of work for Hannah Barbera through the 70s and maybe into the early 80s, I can't remember.

And then they also did a lot of work for other places.

And they also did some of their own stuff that they got on to syndication.

I did a lot of work for them during that decade of the 70s.

I think Ray Patterson may have done that too in the 60s because yes he did.

Alice in Wonderland has in the credits Grant Ray, which I think is Lawrence.

Yeah, he had a his partner and they had a company they started and I think it was in the late 50s, but he closed up, you know, when they did the Spider Man show.

I think they went belly up after that.

Because I remember when I was trying to get into the business in 67, I was already starting.

I knew where their studio was.

It was on Lancashire Blvd.

right across the street from Universal, and I went knocking on the door.

Of course, no one was there.

I didn't realize that they had closed.

And then I think he might have freelanced around doing various things, and eventually he came into Hanna Barbera when Nick Nichols left to go to Ruby Spears.

And then he basically took over what Nick was doing.

But yeah, he had his own company for a brief period.

It's kind of cool when you think about you had UPA, which was I think the building's still there.

No, it's gone.

Oh, it's gone.

It used to be behind the smokehouse.

It was right next to the smokehouse, right next to the parking lot there.

And what happened to UPAA, lot of people don't realize is that building was designed by a very famous architect, John Lautner, who was a student of Frank Lloyd Wright.

And it was an unusual studio.

And it was really nice if you could see inside, and I've got a book, a lot of photos of the interiors.

It was not like any other animation studio.

Roy Disney Junior bought the place when Hank Saperstein was basically closing everything down and selling the property.

Disney basically leveled it and put up another building, something else.

So that building is long gone, but it's in the same spot where UPA used to be, which is right next to the Smokehouse, which is right across from Warner Brothers.

So that's where Shamrock Holdings was the.

Yeah, thank you, Roy, for destroying a piece of art.

Well, he helped restore Disney.

At least.

You know, it keeps getting restored every few years.

But at the time, that's what he was doing, and he did it two times.

But the Smokehouse is where Jim Backus and the artists would go to have drinks before a session or have lunch.

It's still really good.

It's a historic place.

And you mentioned also where format was Playhouse Pictures.

Playhouse was in Hollywood format.

Films used to be on like Laurel Canyon, right near the corner of Laurel Canyon and Riverside Dr., which was right near Tim's house.

So it was really simple for us.

We could ride our bikes over there, go back, and they actually were nice because they actually let us in once to watch them work.

And so they were really pleasant people there.

And it was a small studio, two-story building, but we would go there periodically to check the dumpster in the in the parking lot to see if there's anything.

I have a few drawings that I pulled from that period.

And, but they weren't the only place that we would go to.

But sometimes, like my dad drove us once on a Saturday afternoon down to Hollywood so we could jump into the dumpster at Clampett Studio and pull drawings out.

And I still have those drawings.

And he also would drive us sometimes on a Saturday over to Hanna Barbera so we didn't have to ride our bikes and, you know, get stuff.

But we were constantly doing that.

And then once we had our our own license, you know, we could drive then it was like, you know, we sometimes would drive over.

We were in high school by that time.

But sometimes like we would drive over on a Saturday or something that and check some stuff out.

But when we were young we were doing that constantly, riding our bikes to those studios.

The idea of dumpster diving sounds odd perhaps to some, but it was a thing that a lot of people did because at the time, and this is also historic, a lot of The MGM library is, I think the four O 5 or the one O 1.

You know, it's paved, It was paved over, they destroyed it.

A swimming pool was loaded with old materials and a dumpster dive you'd yield not only sells original production cells, but sometimes real bills of film.

They didn't have places to store them and they didn't think it would matter.

You know, sales were a dollar at Disneyland.

They were not a thing by the 80s and suddenly you're getting catalogs of it and now it's another industry.

At the time, it wasn't as big of a deal.

No, the only place that kept stuff consistently was Disney.

But all the other studios, it was of no value to them so they would throw stuff.

I'm sure there were plenty of times if we had had the knowledge to get driven down to some of the other studios we would have found a lot more stuff.

But they threw the stuff away.

Hanna Barbera would throw their cells out as soon as a show aired.

Then they knew it was safe.

They didn't have to keep the artwork.

They threw in the dumpster cells constantly, but for some reason, I don't know why, and they obviously threw it away eventually They didn't throw the paper drawings out.

What they did with that I don't know, but eventually they must have got rid of it because I know when I was working in Hanna Barbera, they had a warehouse next to the studio there and it would have been there.

You would have been able to find the stuff UPA was throwing paper drawings out, but they almost never threw cells away.

On rare occasions you would find something that they would throw away on a cell format was the same way, paper drawings all the time.

But I never saw any cells in the trash.

And I'm saying it never happened.

And I'll tell you something about The MGM which you mentioned.

In the early 70s, there was a security guard.

This is a story that was explained to me and and my friend Tim and my other friend Mark Hauser.

We would all go to Eddie Brandt's, which was a place that I don't think exists anymore and his original location was on Lankershim and we were buying lobby cards and movie posters, all that.

But a security guard somehow connected up with, I think Eddie, and he had recovered in a bunch of the animation art from the old MGM studio, because it was probably still sitting around and they were going to throw it away.

And he brought it to Eddie and probably sold Eddie.

And then Eddie was selling it to guys like Tim and and Mark.

But that stuff, you know, all the stuff that was done at MGM was eventually probably trashed.

The same thing happened at Warner Brothers.

Warner Brothers eventually burned a lot of their artwork in the early 60s because they wanted to make room for some accounts or something.

They got rid of the stuff so most places were throwing it away because it had no value to them and the only one that really cared about it was kids like myself.

Yeah, and Disney more than any other company.

And starting in 1970 when Dave Smith started the archives, they have worked really hard to not only restore things, but locate things, catalog things because there are assets and all these assets can be monetized over and over again.

So it was wise.

Now, the building you're describing, that was kind of the warehouse to the left of the studio, and that's the LA Fitness now.

LA Fitness was the annex, and that was a pretty good that was production.

Tony, which way you're looking at it from the street or the parking lot?

If you're looking from the parking lot, it's the building on the left, which is now completely different.

They eliminated the warehouse and made it into a thing called Orbit City, but originally it was the warehouse.

And in the warehouse, sometimes would probably furniture and all kinds of stuff.

But Hanna Barbera just did not keep a lot of the stuff because it was of no value to them.

I guess if they tried to store everything that they ever did, they would need a warehouse just for all that stuff.

There was no value so they just tossed everything.

They were always moving at such a clip.

You know, Hanna Barbera moved as fast as the 101 traffic through production and they didn't stop to, I think really craft their brand and their history enough.

They tried, but there was other things they had to do.

You know, there were other companies that had dedicated people to that that wasn't so, you know, would cost money and it would again, would they got to keep the doors running.

They got to keep people working.

There were certain people that worked all the time at the studio because they were considered that, you know, I'll give you an example.

Ewo Takamoto, I guarantee you, after he established himself there, he wasn't getting laid off when there was between seasons because he would be developing stuff.

There were a number of other people just like that, but it was all about getting the work done as quick as they could and under budget or within the budgets.

And then and then back in when, when I started, the way the show's work was like this, you'd work six months and you'd be off 6 months collecting unemployment.

Or if you went around town and maybe hustled and found some commercial house that was in, get some work on a commercial or something.

But not everybody worked all year long.

And that didn't start changing until probably later on in the late 70s.

But even into the mid 80s, it was still seasonal.

Because I remember probably like 85 and 86, I was working on Hannibal Bear shows, but I would get laid off when there was nothing to do and you'd wait for the shows to start up again the following year.

It's.

Kind of like actors in a series that they're not sure if it's going to get picked up again or there's going to be a new series and you have that hiatus period and they're hustling to do pilots.

You're always trying to get your next gig because it's a gig system and hoping that things will come along.

So it's a great career, but it takes the fortitude of living that way.

I do think that they became more like that when Taft bought them around 67, because according to the Hanna Barbera Conversations book, they found out when Taft bought them that while the company had a lot of monetization potential, they also kind of did what Disney did.

They spent way too much money on especially the prime time shows, and so they had to find ways of making the animation even more modest, especially after Huck Finn, which was wildly expensive.

So that's kind of why you saw that change in the 70s.

For that reason, they had to answer to, I mean, Hanna and Barbera were in charge, but they had to defer to the networks and the Taft and all that.

You lived through some pretty dramatic moments because Taft became Great America, and then that folded, and then the first step was Turner coming in and buying the library and hiring a boss over Hanna Barbera.

Yeah, when Turner came in, that's when Fred Cyber came in to run the studio.

But Bill and Joe was still there.

Is this?

But they really had no say in anything.

They were getting paid and the studio was being run by Fred.

Jane Barbera was still there for a while and then they pushed her out the door and they got rid of the writers.

And prior to that, the writers were king going way back to, you know, the 60s.

They were deciding everything.

And then Fred changed all that and he started eventually having artists create stuff and produce things.

And the writers went out the door and they merged with Time Warner.

And then you could see the handwriting on the wall, how it's going to change.

Because then Warner Brothers became the studio that was in charge or the company that was in charge.

And right after that, they sold the property and they moved us all out of the Hannah Barbera, off that lot to Sherman Oaks, where Warner Brothers was already established.

Yeah, and the 1A cartoon series that Fred developed was going to be artist driven in the way the cartoons used to be.

And those really, really popular series originated at the Hanna Barbera studio.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, I worked on a lot of those shorts.

I probably worked on more of those shorts than anybody else because I was there already directing.

And so I would get assigned to people's shorts to direct them because they were novice.

They didn't.

They wouldn't know how to do it.

And then I also did two of my own shorts there and that's where you got the series like Dexter's lamp, pop up Girls, Cow Chick and Johnny Bravo, Kurtz the Cowardly Dog.

They all came out of what, a cartoon series?

Why don't we talk about the stuff that you look back on and say that was kind of cool to work on?

Well, early on, even the stuff that I look at now that I don't think is all that great, it was fun at the time because I was enjoying the career of working in animation, which I had wanted to do when I was in the 7th grade, that I wanted to become an animator.

And it was fun.

But when I look back on my past, there's some shows that I I liked more than others.

I worked on a lot of stuff that I did not like.

A lot of stuff.

Pick any of the shows that I worked on for Filmation and I, I don't care for those.

I did not like work for that studio because I always tell people Filmation was like high school with ashtrays.

They were very strict, especially the last location they were in.

There was only two doors, a front one and a back one and everybody had a card key and that was your time card and if you were 5 minutes late you were docked and you couldn't make up the time.

And they were just ridiculously strict.

I didn't particularly like any of the product that I ever worked on for them.

But and Hanna Barbera, I liked The Smurfs.

I thought it was a an easy show to work on and I like that.

I like the water cartoon series because that was a good I like the two shorts that I got to do that were my own creation.

I enjoyed working on Dexter's Lab and Powerpuff Girls and Cow and Chicken.

They were all excellent shows.

I especially like my favorite show probably I worked on was Samurai Jack and I liked Star Wars Clone Wars for Gendi, Symbiotic Titan for Gindi, and then when he came back to the studio to revive Samurai Jack to finish off the story, I worked on that.

So there are a lot of shows that I worked on in the past that I like very much, but I would say that I can't recall anything in the 70s that I worked on.

I'm like, wow, that was great.

It was just keeping your head above water and working because I think a lot of the stuff that was done in the 70s was really not very good, even into the 80s, But I was working and that's all I cared about.

What?

Were the the two specials that were yours?

Oh, you mean what?

A cartoon.

There were two that you created.

Yeah, the first one I did was called Pizza Boy, and the title of it was No Tip.

And for anyone listening to this and they haven't seen it, you can go to YouTube and find it.

It's on YouTube.

We've got to deliver these pizzas anywhere in 5 minutes or less.

Hey, hey, no, no, no, not around the block, but anywhere.

If you expect to make big chips, make big, big chips like this, then you've got to deliver these pizzas in 5 minutes or less.

Make big chips.

Do you hear me?

Yes, Dan.

And the other one was Tumbleweed Texts and the title of his cartoon was School Days DAZE.

And now class.

Today we will start with arithmetic.

Timmy Precious was 5732 * 26149 thousand 32.

Sure, you give the easy ones to this little buckaroo.

Damn.

Fair.

All right.

Fire door?

What is 1 + 1?

One take away plus care finger add the thumb.

That's a tough one.

Say Timmy, can you help me?

What's the correct solution to that mystery 55 you?

Didn't do the homework.

I wrote them, I did the storyboards, I art directed them, character design, more than half of the layouts which were practically animating it and I also directed them.

So that was a lot of fun because once you got greenlit, it was like something that you created and no one was going to tell you you can't do that.

So that was really enjoyable.

I like doing that.

Isn't that something that every once in a while, those little golden moments of bliss when you get a project where it's like this is coming along so beautifully and I feel like so fulfilled because a lot of projects are either very fast or it gets changed where you don't recognize it that.

I'll tell you something I would tell a lot of young people when they would come into my office when I was working in at Cartoon Network, they would always bring in the new interns to talk to me because I was the old Fossil I'd been around so long.

And I would always tell them the same thing.

Once you get into the business, you don't always work on something you like.

You work on what is available and what's presented to you.

If you only work on shows that you like, you're going to be very poor because that's just not the way the business is.

Some people might be enjoying every little thing that they do and thinking every little thing they do is great.

But I worked on a lot of shows that I forgot.

I simply forget about them until someone says it and I go, Oh yeah, I worked on that.

It was terrible.

You just do what you can.

I also did half hour specials and one of them was I think nominated and I watched this every year.

The town that Santa forgot with Dick Van Dyke.

Yep, Davis Doy was the producer of that.

When I worked with Davis at Hanna Barbera, it was always the same crew he was producing.

Bob Onorado, who has since passed away, was working on it myself.

I was doing the animation direction.

Jim Stenson would be Lance Fawk, and the usual suspects were always working on whatever the projects were.

That was nice.

I like that.

Come here, my little ones, Come take my hand.

I think you're both old enough to understand this Christmas story I want to tell.

So listen, grandchildren, and listen well about a boy not much older than you who wanted everything from Santa, too.

It was enjoyable.

It was OK.

And the same is true of when I worked for Davis when we did Capital Critters because that was slightly different in the sense that we were now working in connection with 20th Century Fox or I should say Steven Bochco production.

And I worked with the executive producer closely.

Nat Malden and I would have meetings all the time over at on the Fox lot with Nat Malden going over the storyboard.

I enjoyed that.

I'm not saying it's a great show, but I I enjoyed working on it.

I I enjoyed working on SWAT casts with Davis, another show that I don't think is particularly all that great, but there are a lot of people out there that like it and.

Are fancy and.

People.

Who absolutely love it.

That has a huge following.

You know, I will say something about because when you were talking about scooby-doo and Zombie Island, I think you were bringing up, I tell this about Scooby all the time to people.

Scooby is like a vampire.

You can't kill it.

It's never gone away and it never because it makes money.

I never liked working on Scooby.

I animated on some Scooby shows, I worked on directing on a number of them and I never, especially when I had to draw those characters, I never liked them.

Once again, just another job of what was presented in front of you and you just do the work.

Yeah, but scrappy.

I hated him, didn't like them.

Think about this.

Scrappy Doo is really small in stature compared to all the other characters.

So when the characters are walking, the human characters walk at a certain pace and so does Scooby and all that.

But because Scrappy is so short, his legs have to move a lot faster to keep up with everybody else.

You know, you're always figuring this stuff out, especially if it's on a pan, because you have to figure out the pan speed for all the characters and they're not all walking at the same rate.

Because if the distance between the front foot and the back foot on, let's say Shag is of inch and Scrappy Doo is so small his feet got to move left it, it was just like a math problem.

I just never cared for those characters.

But I think I would have liked them if I was like a really young person when they first came on telling because I know to this day there are people, I see them on Facebook all the time that worship scooby-doo and think it's still the greatest thing ever.

But by the time Scooby came out in for the first time in.

69.

Oh see, I was already 2021 so it just didn't appeal to me because I wasn't a little kid.

But I can understand why other people like it.

Scooby has the durability and there are some that say, oh, it's always the same, but that's actually formula worked real well for the B movies in Hollywood.

And the entry and a mystery is a formula.

The inherent mystery and the horror like Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein is a surefire thing.

And I think the combination of two and sometimes the self parody of the ability to laugh at the format, it just goes on and on and on and on.

So I think that's why.

But you worked with other classic characters.

You did, Yogi.

The Easter Bear and the Jetsons the later Jetsons.

Yogi, the Easter Bear special was once again with Davis.

It turned out nice.

I see clips of it every once in a while and it's like nice animation.

I don't think Mr.

Ranger's going to like this, Yogi.

Don't worry, Boo Boo boy, I'm only borrowing it for a little while.

Besides, where's your Easter spirit?

I've got the Easter spirit, I just don't want to get into trouble.

You worry too much, boob.

Easter is a celebration, Yes, Celebrate springtime with life starting anew.

It also happens to be the start of camping season.

But it's not the campers that make you happy, Yogi.

It's their picnic baskets.

Right you are, chum.

But right now I'm in the mood for some Easter candy.

The Ranger won't like you taking that candy, Yogi.

Yeah, I'll only take what they can spare.

Now it's lunchtime for this Easter bear.

Yeah.

I have a feeling that that animation on that was done at Cuckoo's Nest in Taiwan.

I can't really recall, but yeah, that was nice.

And I worked on the the newer Jetsons that were done in the sometime in the early 90s.

I can't remember maybe.

It was like 85 and then the movie was I think 90 or.

90 Well, I worked on this stuff that was the new syndication stuff and not very good because they only did a few of them in house and then it was strictly directing stuff.

I did animate and work on the Jetson feature, but I also work a lot with Bill Hannah.

I was at working at home one day and the phone rings and I pick out and it's Hannah.

I later found out he got my number from Ray Patterson because I've been doing a lot of work with Ray.

And Hannah said his typical voice is, hey, would you mind coming in and helping me out on the Jetson feature?

Well, asking you was like really telling you when it came from Bill Hannah.

So I said, yeah, sure.

So then I started work inside the studio and I would meet with him usually on every day, and he would go over whatever the dailies were for the feature on the flatbed, and he would tell me what he wanted change.

And then I would have to get those scenes and change them.

Which presented a problem down the road with one animator who had a really bad fit came into my room and yelled and screamed at me.

But I worked with him on the Jetson feature and it was nice.

At that point, Hannah was already slipping because, you know, he had Alzheimer's.

But he was the exceptions of the rule with most people.

The Alzheimer's, he was really pleasant at that point.

He wasn't agitated, he didn't get angry or he was really nice.

So when I worked with him on the Jetson feature, he was really the pleasant Mr.

Hannah, as opposed to when he was rough and tough in the earlier days.

Yeah.

So I worked on those and it was OK.

I also want to talk to you about my son's favorite animated show.

1 of it.

He loves several, but the Regular Show?

I worked on the Regular show with JG and I had a really good time working on that series because JG is genuinely one of the nicest people I've ever worked with.

I've never seen him angry.

He is really, really nice.

He would give young people or novice people opportunities that no one else would.

He would see their artwork and say, hey, do you want to take a test and see if you want to work in it.

He would give people chances.

I always enjoyed working with him.

I worked on every episode of the Regular Show, the exception of 1, and that was freelance to somebody else.

That particular person now is doing what I used to do at Cartoon Network because you know, Regular Show is being done again.

And that person is basically replaced me because I had retired.

Although JG asked me if I would consider coming out of retirement to do it and, and I told him and I'll be brief about this because I don't want to bring down the audience, but I said no, I've got some health issues.

I went through something serious in the end of 2022.

And I said no, you know, I'm, I'm done.

I don't want to have to deal with the dress anymore, thank you very much.

But I, I just don't want to work anymore.

But I, I really liked the Regular Show because it was an easy show.

At times.

It actually made me laugh when I would listen to the animatics and some of the characters.

It was pleasant.

I enjoyed it.

I think that comes across, you're mentioning JG Quintel.

Was it?

Yes.

The general low key pleasantness of the series and how the construction, it was like a classic sitcom.

It was like an I Love Lucy.

It would build with practically nothing.

We're setting up chairs for an event or you know, we're looking at Avhs tap and it would build to complete insanity.

Sometimes it would go way off into the Galaxy, but it was so beautifully story constructed and the characters were fun and gosh, we both really liked it.

The only sad thing is they never released the complete series.

I'm sure it's on streaming but in the movie and my son talks about this all time they showed the complete set on screen as if they were going, you know like hint hint but it did not exist.

I'm sure that eventually, especially because of the new series Got that's they're doing 20 half hours of new half hours, which will be 40 episodes because they're 11 minute episodes and they'll probably be on in 2026.

They'll probably release it.

But you know, I'm kind of surprised that there's nothing available on DVD.

I would have thought there are.

But they'll release that stuff eventually because, look, Discoveries wants to make money, and if they can make money over that, they will.

I always got the impression with Regular Show that Adventure Time was sort of the breakout and got a lot of attention, and that allowed Regular Show to quietly more do what it wanted to do.

I'll tell you an interesting story about the Regular Show and how I got on it.

They were doing a new series of shorts at Cartoon Network at the time, and they're called the Cartoon Institute.

And JG pitched his Regular Show thing and was going to do it as a pilot.

And I was working on those at the time.

And so I was talking to them one day down in the lobby and I said, hey, I heard you're going to do a short, and I look forward to working on it.

And he said to me, oh, I'm sorry, I've already got somebody else that's going to direct it, which was a kind of an embarrassing situation.

So later on that afternoon, I went up to his office and I said, Gee, I'm sorry, I want to apologize.

They want to embarrass you and make you feel weird or anything like that.

I'm you know, and I left it at that.

So they started working on the pilot and the guy that was going to do the animation direction on it did the first half and then for some reason couldn't finish.

So then they came to me and said, Hey, would you do the second-half?

And I said, sure, why not?

And then that was what opened the door for me because when the the pilot came back and he had to start calling retakes, he called me into the editing room with him to help him call retakes, which then launched me into doing work on the show.

Just luck to some degree.

And I'm glad it worked out because I had a really good time working with JG and the other people on the show.

And I think it's one of the good shows.

And one of the episodes, I can't remember which one, won an Emmy.

Yes I do, it was the egg one my favorite.

Good morning, Sir.

Are you ready to order?

The excellent challenge, please.

Sir, while I am contractually bound by the laws of this restaurant to bring you the omelette, I highly suggest ordering something else.

Bring me the omelette.

Good luck.

Thanks.

No, don't.

Let him finish.

Step aside.

Why don't you make us bro?

All right, keep him away from Mordecai.

Sorry Sir, time is up.

That was always my stand out.

Yeah.

You know, look, it's always fun to win an Emmy.

That's an enjoyable experience.

Having gone to the Emmy Awards, being nominated a number of times.

It's no fun when you go there and you don't win, and then you see somebody else win and you know, they're dancing around and holding their trophy and you go, Gee, I wish I had won and get depressed and all that.

But once you win, it's great.

And I was very fortunate that I won six times.

Yeah, Star Wars Clone Wars was another one.

Samurai Jack and Star Wars Clone War were the first two on these.

I won in the same night.

Wow.

And you've also benefited from the fact that they come back to you.

They want your expertise.

And with some of the reboots, they don't always do that or they might do it sparingly or they won't do it at all.

And I would think that's another piece of wisdom.

Have people who could at least take a look at it and say, you know, you know here how I can solve that, that problem because we had that.

I was very lucky because especially once I was at Cartoon, I did a lot of directing.

When I was already at Hanna Barbera, it was like, especially a Cartoon Network.

I was established as a director there.

And so people would come to me and ask me to work on their show or work on a pilot, whatever.

And I would say sure.

I would always say yes.

And I had a standard thing.

I would always tell them, I'll do whatever you want, tell me what you want.

I never went in there saying, OK, you got to do this, you got to do that, and I'm going to check.

I never pushed them around.

I always gave them what they wanted, even if I thought what they wanted was something I didn't necessarily agree with.

But it was their show, not mine.

So I got a lot of people coming to me because they would see something that was already a success that I had worked on.

So they figured, OK, let's ask Robert.

So I've got a lot of work that way because I had a lot of experience.

I'm very grateful for that.

I know I was already looked and I'm happy that I had all those opportunities.

So the message to the young eager people is be prepared to be delighted as well as bored with projects you're not necessarily thrilled with.

But take them.

Take them eagerly.

Be sure to choose your battles and defer as much as you possibly can.

It's very hard to do because you get attached to your work and they're in charge and you have to respect that.

What I found is you can offer explanations of a choice or offer another solution, but if they're set on it, don't push, but don't whine later.

It's a big mistake.

I tell people, especially young people that want to get into businesses, First off, showing up as half the battle.

Make sure you're there, show up on time, do your work, don't miss your deadlines, don't take long lunches, and don't goof off.

And you have to have discipline.

You get stuff done by sitting down at the desk and doing the work.

And here's an important thing, try not to get people angry at you for at least the 1st 20 years of your career, because after that you're established.

But you don't want people being angry at you for something that you may or may not have really deserved or done because you're going to work with the same people over and over and over again.

But there's no avoiding if somebody dislikes you for no explainable reason.

And that happened to me over several times over my career.

But you just have to get along with everyone, especially if you don't like them.

Do the job and get it done on time and don't make trouble.

And for those who are going through that, there's a lot of good books on it.

Sometimes just holding your teeth closed when you would rather say especially something clever, not a good idea.

I know you have a great presence on the social media sharing a lot of your art and the things you've done.

What else can we talk about?

How people can enjoy what you're doing now and the stuff that you've done.

Well, the only thing I could say is I do have that Facebook page, which you've obviously seen and I post on the Facebook page just from my collection animation art that I've accumulated over the past going back to 1961, places I've worked and all that.

I don't do political stuff on my Facebook page.

I have a political point of view in my life, but I don't express that and I don't allow anyone else to express their political point of view on my Facebook page because to do I just delete it or I will make sure that you're blocked if you can be a nuisance.

It's just strictly for people who have appreciation and love with the animation art.

And sometimes I tell stories about places I've worked or how I acquired the art or something like that.

I'm not really on anything else.

I'm not on Instagram, I'm not on anything.

And your audience has to realize something.

I'm an old fossil.

I'm 77 years old, so I'm not the most tech savvy person when it comes to computers and all that.

Facebook's easy to do and I have those two shorts.

If they want to look them up on YouTube that I mentioned, they can reach me on Facebook if they want to look at my stuff and send a frame request.

And also I'll answer questions if they send me questions through messaging.

As long as that's anything that's ridiculous, you know, like I'm not going to tell you what I was paid to work on any particular show or anything like that.

I would tell the story of what my first salary was because it's funny now, but send me questions and I answer people's questions all the time and give advice all the time.

I'm always happy to talk about the career history of animation stuff that I've done.

Well, you're very generous with all of this and you have been blessed.

But we've been blessed with all the great work you've done and the kind of person that you are.

And I'm so happy and so grateful that you took the time to share so much of it.

You're very kind and and nice to ask me to do this and I feel like you.

I feel very blessed that I had a very nice, good career and I consider myself very lucky.

I thank also everybody for listening.

I thank you for subscribing wherever you subscribe and liking where you like and writing nice reviews.

All of that means so very much.

And all I have to add now is until next time.

Bye bye.

We hope you enjoyed the fantastic world of Hannah and Barbera with Greg Airborne.

Please join us again and Many thanks for listening.