Just as theatrical cartoons were disappearing, leading lights of the dying animation studios teamed up to produce the most famous cartoon stars ever to make their way to television. When former MGM directors Bill Hanna and Joseph Barbera formed a studio in 1957 for the purpose of producing TV cartoons, a new era complete with those stars began.
In 1958, Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear appeared, and Quick Draw McGraw followed them. In classic cartoons from 1959 through 1961, this bumbling sheriff became the third member of Hanna-Barbera’s all-star trilogy. And now Quick Draw and his deputy, Baba Looey, are returning to television via MeTV Toons starting today.
Hanna and Barbera created Quick Draw, a white horse in western garb, and his sidekick, a burro in a sombrero named Baba Looey. The creative pair had an extensive history working with pairs while at MGM, beginning with Tom and Jerry. They handed scriptwriting duties to Michael Maltese, one of Warner Bros.’ most talented writers. The character’s designs were courtesy of Ed Benedict, formerly of Universal and MGM.
TV audiences took Quick Draw and Baba Looey to heart. Maltese had created a spoof of the ever-present TV westerns of the late 1950s. Quick Draw, according to his theme song, was the “high falutenist, fastest shootenist, cowboy you ever saw,” but struggled to pull his gun from its holster. He repeatedly shot himself when he did (“Oooh, that smarts!), and although convinced of his own superior mental abilities, anyone who broke the law constantly outwitted him. Baba Looey was much smarter than Quick Draw. Still, his warnings about potential dangers always went unheeded, leaving Baba Looey to witness one offscreen catastrophe after another while making comments to the viewers.
Quick Draw was at his best, and most popular, as the masked, caped hero El Kabong. Maltese drew the character from memories of silent Douglas Fairbanks films and the swashbuckling hero Zorro. But instead of using a rapier, El Kabong bashed bad guys over the head with his “kerbonger, an out-of-tune guitar.
It took very little time for Quick Draw to become a star, and hundreds of TV stations carried the silly stallion, often in prime time. Quick Draw merchandise filled toy aisles everywhere. The beloved character also appeared in TV commercials for sponsor Kellogg’s. Quick Draw McGraw graced the cereal boxes of Sugar Smacks for several years.
Over nearly seven decades, the character never truly disappeared. Many later Hanna-Barbera TV characters of the 1960s and 1970s eventually faded away, doomed to exist only as snarky memes. However, Quick Draw continues to reappear in reboots, tributes, and guest appearances to the delight of his original – and newer audiences.
His ongoing popularity is a tribute to Quick Draw’s endurance. Consider that the show featured mainly two characters, with one person writing all episodes. The animation crew, background and layout artists had little variation in producing the cartoon. The cartoon never strayed from its Old West setting, and Westerns oversaturated TV at the time.
And here comes the whole series on blu ray on October 20th.
Quick Draw and Baba Looey were an outstanding team. When Quick Draw admonished Baba Looey with “I’ll do the thinkin’ ‘round here and doooon’t you fergit it!” viewers, like Baba, knew that disaster lay ahead. His bravado was matched only by his incompetence; Quick Draw’s foibles made him lovable and relatable to audiences.
Some detractors point out the limited animation, overuse of slapstick, and the violent gunplay, but “now hold on thar!” Quick Draw McGraw was funny, popular, and congruent to its time. MeTV Toons made an excellent choice in resurrecting his original cartoons for a new generation that may enjoy the adventures of Quick Draw and Baba Looey just as we old-timers did. KA-BONG!
Martin Goodman is a veteran writer specializing in stories about animation. He has written for AWN and Animation Scoop – and lives in Anderson, Indiana.
Oh, I will definitely be watching later this afternoon for “the Quick Draw McGraw show“ on the MeTV TOONS broadcast. But the big deal to me will be getting it on physical media, on Blu-ray, the entire series! So great! Such a big part of my viewing when I was a child.
Westerns peaked on American television during the 1958-59 season, with no fewer than thirty prime time horse operas airing on the Big Three networks every week. All that, in addition to the more than thirty theatrical Westerns that were released during the same time period. Hollywood must have had a veritable army — I should say, cavalry — of horses to be fed, watered, and shoveled up after.
Detective shows and family sitcoms were equally popular, which explains the presence of Snooper and Blabber, and of Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy, on the Quick Draw McGraw Show. If television was our “window on the world,” as the expression went, then the Quick Draw McGraw Show was a window on that window.
In just a few years, Hanna-Barbera’s cartoon stars would become just as ubiquitous. One of my earliest childhood memories is of walking down the vast canyon of a supermarket aisle, surrounded on all sides, as far as the eye could see, by cereal boxes bearing the likenesses of Hanna-Barbera characters. I think I might have had a Quick Draw McGraw Little Golden Book, or maybe my brother did; I know I had other volumes devoted to Magilla Gorilla, Peter Potamus, Wally Gator, etc. Then, too, there were all the toys, games, View-Master slides and whatnot, that we played with until they disintegrated.
Though it’s not currently available where I live, I’m happy for everyone who is now able to watch these cartoons on MeTV Toons. Consider yourselves as lucky as those of us who grew up with them — and don’t you forget it!
Though born a little late for the first wave, I recall Quick Draw as a firm fixture on Saturday mornings. I didn’t understand why Baba Looey had the accent, as I was too young to understand about ethnicities, but I still adored the cartoons. The comic book pictured above was the first comic book I ever owned, and this was before I could read, so I had to have it read to me, but I loved it. And I definitely remember the image of Quick Draw on the box of Sugar Smacks. I can recite the commercial jingle to this day.
I respectfully disagree that the other segments–Snooper and Blabber, Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy–were less appealing or less memorable. To me, the whole package was what I looked forward to every week. A few other Hanna-Barbera stars were also introduced on the show, including Snagglepuss, Mr. and Mrs. J. Evil Scientist, and Snuffles the dog. The urban and sometimes interplanetary settings of the two sub-series provided some variety from the Western setting–but everybody ended up in the stagecoach in the closing credits. (I was also too young to appreciate the “S’all right” gag at the close of the end credits, but I get it now!)
I had a Huckleberry Hound / Quick Draw McGraw lunch box when I was a young boy going to elementary school. Nostalgia for the characters is strong: As I write this, a specimen of that same lunch box, rusty on the inside, is on sale on eBay for $200!
Along with Douglas Fairbanks, a more immediate inspiration for El Kabong would have been the Disney Zorro series starring Guy Williams. It ended its run just as Quick Draw first aired, so it’s highly likely that Maltese and the rest of the H-B staff watched it regularly.
Mike Maltese’s best writing for Hanna-Barbera! Talk about prolific, doing a great job for all three Quick Draw segments. Snooper & Blabber and Augie Doggie were two of HB’s finest, funniest co-series. Quick Draw’s show equals the original Huckleberry Hound show for best HB program ever.
It should be mentioned that at this same time, the great early television comedian and technical innovator Ernie Kovacs was also taking satirical potshots at the “too many Westerns” syndrome in American network programming. One sketch of his was about a gunslinger who visits a psychiatirist! Medical dramas were also flooding the screen in the early 60’s, so Ernie must have thought, “What would happen if I put them and the Westerns together?”
Unfortunately, none of this material seems to be available on the web (for copyright reasons, I’m sure), but there’s the excellent six-CD boxed set of digitally restored Kovacs shows that were saved from destruction by his dedicated widow, Edie Adams. Not an inexpesive item, but well worth owning.
Always liked Quick Draw McGraw. As a tail-end boomer old enough to remember the original shows, my feeling was he got a raw deal, forever ranked behind Yogi and Huck, and maybe even Magilla Gorilla in merchandise, comics, etc. In the Yogi Bear newspaper strip I remember a single generic walk-on, and thereafter he was only seen in old reruns or newer shows featuring “the whole gang”.
A bit of weirdness that never hit me until recently: The opening and closing titles had McGraw driving a stagecoach pulled by “real” horses. On reflection, were there any “human” animals besides McGraw and Baba Louie themselves in their cartoons?
There were several Quick Draw episodes with talking anthropomorphized animals, most notably the embryonic Snagglepuss. And there was a recurring villainous Quick Draw lookalike, Horse Face Harry. Other shorts feature Yippee Coyote, inspired by Jerry Lewis, and a chicken hawk speaking like boxer Maxie Rosenbloom.
This is my first post to CR.
I saw the Show this afternoon. Bad news/good news:
Bad—there were no interstitials, like MeTV Toons has for Huck & Yogi, although definitely many were produced. YouTube has a few.
Good—the three main cartoons seem to be intact, with no editing for time. I guess it’s one or the other.
Also, Weigel IMO did a good job at editing on both the opening AND closing, removing Kellogg’s references without it looking sloppy.
I pre-ordered “The Quick Draw McGraw Show” multi-disc Blu-Ray set some time last month. It was supposed to have been released Sep. 29, but got delayed three weeks. Just patience…
The overworked Mike Maltese is the real hero of the Quick Draw Show. How he churned out all those stories, I’ll never know.
Noted critic John Crosby took Maltese’s work seriously enough in 1959 to interview him. You can click here to read the column.
I have a soft spot for the bad-guy orange version of Snagglepuss. It’s understandable his personality had to change when he starred in his own series but it gave Maltese chances to pull off some wordplay.