Top Cat: The Complete, Hanna-Barbaric Series: Opening (Video)

[“Chuck Jones (1912-2002): The Evolution of an Artist (Short, Brilliant Video about Bugs Bunny Director)”]

Warner Bros.

“The smooth-talking New York City cat, known as T.C. to his kitty cohorts Benny the Ball, Choo-Choo, Spook, The Brain and Fancy-Fancy, is always on the make toward a big score or swindle. And the bothersome—and ever exasperated—Officer Dibble is relentlessly on his case (although always one step behind) throughout 30 fast, funny episodes. This deluxe five-disc set offers terrifically top Bonus Extras as befit, so the swinging theme song immortalizes, ‘the chief. He's the king, but above everything: he’s the most tiptop Top Cat!’”

N.S.: The inspiration for the patter and the cohorts would have been a cross between Damon Runyan characters and Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack.

William Hanna and Joseph Barbera started out as a team doing MGM cartoons, which played between movies and other entertainments in theaters during the 1940s-mid-1950s. A full program would include a “B” picture (e.g., a 60-minute Western), a serial (e.g., a short Batman and Robin mystery or Leon Errol comedy), a follow-the-bouncing ball sing-along, a newsreel, and an A picture (e.g., a musical or romantic comedy running 80-110 minutes). Hanna and Barbera’s trademark was their sophisticated use of music to accompany the comic action.

The studios’ secret to success was their monopoly of all levels of the business (“vertical integration”). Each major studio owned its own chain of theaters and production facilities (sound stages and backlots), and had all the creative and technical talent under contract. This set-up guaranteed its profits. Writers typically speak of a “Big Five” of studios, but rarely name them. Actually, there were consistently four big studios: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount, 20th Century Fox and Warner Brothers. Other studios came and went from major status. Universal and RKO were sometimes major studios, but periodically suffered from mismanagement, which dragged them down, and in the case of Howard Hughes, destroyed RKO. Columbia began as a Poverty Row studio, but through the will and brilliance of co-founder Harry Cohn and his sacreenwriter-director team of Robert Riskin and Frank Capra, which dominated the 1930s, attained major studio status.

On May 4, 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court ended that system, ruling that it violated the federal anti-trust laws, even as Congress gave big-league baseball a waiver unto today from having to obey said laws. The High Court forced the studios to divest themselves of their theater chains.

Hanna and Barbera’s first success was making theatrical MGM shorts featuring Tom & Jerry, about a cat and mouse in a middle-class household, with a negro housekeeper. They drew up their independent partnership following MGM’s 1957 decision to stop producing cartoons. Hanna and Barbera’s series included The Huckleberry Hound Show, Yogi Bear, Jonny Quest, Scooby-Doo, Super Friends, The Smurfs, Peter Potamuss,Magilla Gorilla, The Flintstones, The Jetsons and Quick Draw McGraw.

During the 1960s, Hanna-Barbaric came to dominate the TV market, cranking out one crudely drawn cartoon series after another. When I was six or seven years old, on weekend mornings, I’d see shows like a cops-and-robbers cartoon, in which the chief bad guy was “the Frog,” who was clearly based on heavies Edward G. Robinson had played in 1930s,’ Warner Brothers’ gangster pictures. Whenever someone was driving in that series, the road would move, while the car would stay in place.

Hanna-Barbera founded the tradition, whereby producers would devote great talent to coming up with a snappy opening theme, but care little about high-quality animation or storytelling. This was not the case with Warner Brothers cartoons under creative lights like Chuck Jones.