The 1970 animated sitcom Where’s Huddles? was a ten-episode highlight showcasing virtually all the flaws of then-contemporary Hanna-Barbera scripting and animation. If there was an example of lazy, wasted effort by the venerable Saturday Morning kings of animation, Where’s Huddles? was likely it. In all fairness, the half-hour, ten-episode show was a summer replacement for The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, which aired from July 1, 1970, to September 2, 1970, during prime-time hours.
One can easily imagine that the production values would be low, considering the time frame. Still, the plots (most of them borrowed from other H-B productions, most notably The Flintstones) and the scribbly, limited animation doomed any idea of expanding the series into a regular show. The irritating laugh track did not help. Once considered a test run for a prime-time show possibility in 1971, H-B mercifully dropped the idea.
Joseph Barbera and William Hanna served as the show’s directors. R.S. Allen, a successful TV sitcom writer, penned all ten episodes along with Harvey Bullock. (Notably, Bullock wrote eleven episodes of The Flintstones.) The characters were designed by H-B’s go-to designer, Iwao Takamoto, who defined the H-B house style during the 1960s and 70’s. These were clearly not their best efforts.
“Where’s Huddles?” was a standard family sitcom centered around a professional football quarterback for the Rhinos, Ed Huddles, and his neighbor, Bubba McCoy. Marge Huddles and Penny McCoy were their respective spouses. Mad Dog Mahoney coached the team, which also included Freight Train. Sarcastic neighbor Claude Pertwee supplied nasty comments to all. Rounding out the crew was Huddle’s baby daughter Pom-Pom, The Huddle’s requisite dog Fumbles, and Pertwee’s unfriendly cat, Beverly.
The ensemble cast reunited many former players from The Flintstones, making it even more apparent where the show’s bones came from; Where’s Huddles? was basically the former show in football uniforms. Most of the shows focused far more on domestic situations than football-based plots. Episode Eight, “To Catch a Thief,” was virtually a direct steal of the 1961 Flintstones episode “Wilma’s Vanishing Money.”
The voice cast also reflected its Flintstones ancestry. Alan Reed voiced Coach Mad Dog, Mel Blanc served as Barney Rubble clone Bubba McCoy, and Jean Vander Pyl performed as Marge Huddles and her toddler Pom-Pom. Other voice artists included Cliff Norton as Ed Huddles, former Duke Ellington vocalist Herb Jeffries as Freight Train, Marie Wilson as Penny McCoy, and Don Messick, H-B’s funny animal specialist, as both Fumbles and Beverly. Dick Enberg (as himself) announced the Rhino’s games. Paul Lynde, who supplied many sterling performances for H-B, including Templeton the Rat in Charlotte’s Web and Hooded Claw in The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, voiced Claude Pertwee to perfection.
Anyone watching an H-B production could expect limited animation, but Where’s Huddles? combined it with shoddy, scratchy animation that further cheapened the show. It’s one thing to give the world a lesser copy of The Flintstones; it’s another thing entirely to imbue it with inferior artwork and animation. A pity; some prominent animation veterans contributed to the show, including Ed Barge, Dick Lundy, Walt Peregoy, John Sparey, and George Goepper.
Hanna-Barbera had certainly done far better, less derivative work than Where’s Huddles?, and there were still better days ahead for the studio. Still, it is instructive to animation aficionados and historians to revisit H-B’s lesser, even disposable works when evaluating the history of television animation.
Courtesy of Mark Christiansen here is the rare Where’s Huddles? pilot from 1970. What you’ll see are full color storyboard drawings by Iwao Takamoto, Jerry Eisenberg and Willie Ito that were filmed and set to a complete soundtrack in order to demonstrate to CBS what the series would look like. Some of the character voices were changed once the series went into full production. Any glitches or imperfections you notice were on the original source tape. Enjoy! Includes the vocal talents of Cliff Norton, Mel Blanc, Paul Lynde, Nancy Kulp, Joe Besser, Don Messick and Allan Melvin.
Where’s Huddles can be seen each week – Monday mornings at midnight (12 AM) – on MeTV Toons.
Martin Goodman is a veteran writer specializing in stories about animation. He has written for AWN and Animation Scoop – and lives in Anderson, Indiana.
“Where’s Huddles?” was hyped as thoroughly as any new network show. I was enthusiastic about the prospect of animation returning to prime time television after a hiatus of several years, so I tuned in to the premiere with a keen sense of anticipation. The first episode was about Huddles and Bubba sharing the ownership of a swimming pool, and the conflicts arising from this arrangement — the very same thing that had happened to Fred and Barney in an early episode of “The Flintstones”. It was obvious to me, even as a nine-year-old boy, that we were covering some very familiar territory. The trouble was, all of the similarities to “The Flintstones” — the format, the stories, the voice actors, the music — did not succeed in raising “Where’s Huddles?” to the level of its modern stone age predecessor; instead, they only made the new show suffer all the more by comparison. I don’t remember how many episodes I saw in the summer of 1970, but I’m sure I lost interest long before the tenth one aired.
Still, I’d have to say I liked “Where’s Huddles?” a lot better than another Hanna-Barbera series that ran on Saturday mornings around this time, namely “The Roman Holidays”, which was essentially the Flintstones in togas.
Penny McCoy was the final role for Marie Wilson, who had starred as “My Friend Irma” on radio, in films and on television, before her untimely death from cancer. Thirty-five years earlier, while still a teenager, she made her film debut as Mary Quite Contrary in the perennial Christmas classic “Babes in Toyland”, starring Laurel and Hardy
To this day it puzzles me why H-B settled on the title “Where’s Huddles?”, as though he were some elusive character like Waldo or Carmen Sandiego. Huddles never went missing, and he was never hard to find; in fact, he was in practically every scene of the show. By the time the new fall season came along, audiences might well have asked “Who’s Huddles?” Fifty-five years later, we’re still wondering “Why Huddles?”
Ed Huddles always looked like Walter Matthau to me. I kept expecting Matthau’s voice to come out of his mouth.
I’m with David Chavers – Ed Huddles had to have been based on Walter Matthau! Have always thought so!
In his autobiography Iwao Takamoto says the design process did indeed start with a caricature of Matthau.
“Where’s Huddles” appears to have been a bit of a “rush job.” Some of the episodes are virtual rewrites of Flintstones episodes. But it should be borne in mind that in those pre-home video days, all that could be watched was whatever was on, and unless one had a photographic (plus auditory) memory, a show-to-show comparison was difficult if not impossible. Thus, a plot from an earlier show could be reworked without necessarily triggering automatic awareness of the source material.
As a kid, I found much to enjoy and appreciate in this summer replacement series. The football motif informed most aspects of the show, including the design of the house as well as their mailbox. The character, voice, and personality of Freight Train (Night Train in the pilot episode) was a welcome and refreshing addition to the standard H-B formula, and the fact that he and the other two leads often formed a threesome in the scrapes they got into, instead of only always Ed and Bubba, further distanced the series from the Flintstones/Honeymooners template. Plus, Paul Lynde’s over-the-top performance as Claude Pertwee added some hysterically funny moments. (I note that the name was pronounced differently by different characters. Ed always said “Pert-wee,” while Marge generally said “Per-twee”.)
Thanks for posting the original pilot episode. While much of the premise remained intact, it’s interesting to note how the personalities and designs for Marge and Penny were later switched. It was definitely more fitting for the wife of the lead character to have the wise-cracking lines, and for the wife of the secondary character to be more of a supporting role. I liked Nancy Culp’s interpretation of Penny/Marge. And although Jean Van Der Pal certainly brought a Wilma Flintstone feel to the role when she took over for the series, her voice work was solid as always.
The series’ final episode did leave one major question dangling–was Penny’s baby going to be a boy or a girl? (And if a boy would he have super-strength?) I would love to know what the writers had in mind in developing that storyline.
Such a nothingburger of a cartoon… I actually fell asleep while being shown an episode!
Originally airing in primetime, it used a special version of the Hanna-Barbera “zooming” box logo similar to the ones previously used in their “Jack and the Beanstalk” special and the primetime “New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” series, but this time with the standard 1968-74 logo music. It’s retained on the Warner Archive DVD series, but TV broadcasts use late 80s – early 90s syndication masters with the CGI “Swirling Star” logo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkUyDDmQyn0
“Hanna-Barbera had certainly done far better, less derivative work than Where’s Huddles?, and there were still better days ahead for the studio.”
What better days? They were about to be at the mercy of the parent code and were starting to outsource animation to various results.
And only three Gold Key comic book appearances–two standalone issues and Hanna-Barbera Fun-In #9. Plus Ed Huddles cameoed in issue #12 Marvel’s Laff-a-Lympics book (he’s in the stands sitting with Hair Bear and the Funky Phantom).
Despite hating all sports since childhood I somehow have pretty strong memories of this show. It was promoted very heavily prior to its first airing and I recall parts of at least the first few episodes as well as its quick cancelation. I can only chalk up my awareness of the series to the fact I grew up in a household where the TV was essentially wallpaper and always playing in the living room and kitchen.
Despite my complete ignorance of sports, I do remember pro football having its big, omnipresent pop culture moment around this time and it seemed to be constantly all over the media regardless of the season. Vince Lombardi, Joe Namath and Alex Karras (not to mention sports announcers like Howard Cosell) were all household names even to a bookworm. My impression at the time (I was already a well-seasoned cynic courtesy of MAD magazine) was that the show was something of a pathetic fad-driven cash grab.
Most of the kids I knew talked abut how quickly Saturday morning was going downhill at this time and that Hanna-Barbera was not just the worst offender but utterly shameless about it. “Wait Till Your Father Gets Home” just two years later seemed to be a slight attempt at a course correction despite being an obvious “All in the Family” rip-off. Unfortunately an especially heinous laugh track and inconsistent writing doomed the effort, although it remains a curio worth a glance. Still, it was vastly superior to the dreck they were peddling on Saturday mornings that somehow got exponentially worse with every passing year.
I might be different here since I enjoyed Huddles. The football games are probably the best parts especially if they take place near the end of the episode (the Rhinos winning the game using parts of Pertwee’s broken car stays a classic).
In my opinion the animation, design and backgrounds for HUDDLES were superior by H-B standards. All of those elements seemed to improve in 1968 on shows like NEW ADVENTURES OF GULLIVER, CATTANOOGA CATS, DASTARDLY & MUTTLEY, PENELOPE PITSOP, HARLEM GLOBETROTTERS and this show. The presence of Disney designer Walt Peregoy might be a contributing factor. The characters and stories were pretty bland, with Paul Lynde stealing every scene he was in. (Somehow, every character played by Lynde in H-B shows is designed to resemble him, with Pertwee being the most obvious.) The derivativeness was very obvious, with reruns of THE FLINTSTONES constantly aired to form a point of reference. Hot-tempered but good-hearted lead character. Exasperated, but loving wife. Somewhat dim sidekick. Cute, nondescript baby. Comic relief pet. Blustering boss. Endless get-rich-quick schemes framed with harmless slapstick. Similarly sports-themed GLOBETROTTERS would premiered on the tails of HUDDLES, but the latter had more interesting characters (the Meadowlark-Curly interaction was often hilarious) and off-the-wall comedic adventures.
It is notable about this series that it was the first ever prime time animated series with an African American regular character. Freight Train was also voiced by a Black actor. He was designed by Iwao Takamoto as a Black man, not as an exaggerated caricature. As far as the similarities to earlier shows and story lines, it must be noted that this was ten years after The Flintstones on the more fledgling ABC in prime time, which was more eager to embrace what was essentially a breakthrough experiment.
Hanna-Barbear was now owned by Taft and under scrutiny by the sponsors, the network, and various groups supervising all creative because it was a family show. Therefore, the use of tried-and-true was, historically, often out of the hands of the writers and artists. This has always been the world of television.
I particularly liked that the wonderful Marie Wilson was cast, and enjoyed the episode in which they sang “I Wanna Play Football with You.” Sure the series is justifiably not to par with others, but please consider the realities of doing business in the industry/
These character designs would be vastly improved of these characters had larger, fully colored eyes.
Since “The Flintstones” was airing in syndication at the time, it would have been a mistake for H-B to assume that audiences wouldn’t remember the reused plots. In fact, in the first city for which I looked up the TV listings, the same station that aired “Where’s Huddles?” in prime time was also broadcasting reruns of “The Flintstones” five days a week in the afternoon.
Thanks to Martin Goodman for “telling it like it is” regarding this series. I was only six years old when this summer series originally aired and even as a young boy I thought it was poorly produced. Looking back, I feel that “Where’s Huddles?” had a similar playbook to another series “Hong King Phooey”, which aired just a few years later. Both of them had very interesting intros with catchy theme songs. But once the intros were over and the episode got underway, neither seemed worth watching.