TCM Salutes Hanna-Barbera, Week 1

This is a great week for the Hanna-Barbera legacy! Today, the dream-come-true comprehensive six-disc Tom and Jerry: The Golden Era Anthology (1940-1958) is available on Blu-ray (plus a five-disc DVD version available in retail stores). December 16, the recent Touche´ Turtle Blu-ray is joined by a new Wally Gator Blu-ray and a new Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har Blu-ray.

Jacqueline Stewart and Greg Ehrbar

And for the next two Wednesdays (December 3 and December 10), the Turner Classic Movies network’s Jacqueline Stewart welcomes me and my book to Warner Bros Studios to discuss six films created by Hanna-Barbera Productions, all TCM premieres. They are followed each week by rarely screened live-action H-B films and renowned MGM musicals featuring animation by Bill and Joe’s stellar team. (See below for the complete schedule.)

We will be discussing the first three films, all of which are TCM premieres. It is also the first time in television history that great Hanna-Barbera works are being presented in a curated, in-depth discussion format.

Jacqueline Stewart hosts TCM’s weekly “Sunday Night Silents,” as well as many other classic movies, providing insightful context and background information that increases our knowledge and enjoyment of art that we may have never seen. Recently honored with the Distinguished Career Achievement Award by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Ms. Stewart was a Professor at Northwestern University and Chicago University, the inaugural artistic director and later President of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, and a three-time appointee to the National Film Registry. It is a thrill that she presents these Hanna-Barbera classics in such an enthusiastic and scholarly manner.

I cannot even describe my elation when Ms. Stewart and I turned to the cameras as she spoke intros like, “And now… The Man Called Flintstone,” “Here now is… Charlotte’s Web.” Exhilarating to know this is happening for such a monumental studio.

The entire production process took about two and a half hours. I was assigned a dressing room where the wardrobe staff reviewed the shirts and ties that looked best alongside Ms. Stewart’s outfit. The plan was for me to change the tie and shirt for each week, with the same shoes, slacks and jacket for each “week.” As it turned out, we became so engrossed in our lively discussion, there was no time for me to change, and that was no problem.

Nothing seemed to be a problem for this fantastically professional and efficient staff. I have worked with many film and TV crews over the decades. I never worked with a bad one, but some were better than others. They were among the kindest, sharpest, and fastest-moving teams I have experienced, yet never appeared to be rushed or stressed.

Ms. Stewart and I conversed for two hours, surrounded by massive lights and reflectors, so much so that I really could not see the cameras. It was just a marvelous talk about a subject that, to my delight, Ms. Stewart enjoys as much as we do here at Cartoon Research.

Regular TCM watchers know the format well. The intro provides background for the upcoming film, as well as a few things to look for while viewing. After the screening, the outro provides additional commentary and historic facts. I love this format because the intro gets me excited to see the film, and the outro is something to look forward to after “The End.”

These are the three films premiering Wednesday, December 3. Please check your local listings and/or channel guides for specific times, because they vary by region. And of course, it’s handy to DVR them just in case. The following notes for each film may or may not be repeated in my onscreen comments, as I have not seen the final edits. The intros and outros are only a few minutes long, so I will be seeing how they turned out at the same time as all of you who graciously tune in.

HEY THERE, IT’S YOGI BEAR (1964)
Hanna-Barbera’s first theatrical feature kicks off the event. It’s distinguished by the amount of full animation it contains, as well as some breathtaking backgrounds. Several Disney veterans worked on the movie, as well as Bill and Joe’s friend Friz Freleng, when he was between the close of the Warner animation unit and the opening of DePatie-Freleng Enterprises. It was Freleng who recommended songwriter Doug Goodwin to co-write the songs. Goodwin wrote (and often sang) several DePatie-Freleng theme songs. For more about the soundtrack album, please see this Animation Spin.

THE MAN CALLED FLINTSTONE (1966)
During the countless matinees when I sat in awe of this big-screen version of original Flintstones, I never would have dreamed that TCM would give it such a gratifying berth in its programming. Alan Reed gets star billing, co-starring Mel Blanc, followed by an onscreen list of some of animation’s finest actors. John McCarthy, who wrote the fine songs with Doug Goodwin, wrote the two original tunes for the TV episode, “Christmas Flintstone.” Louis Prima is heard on the soundtrack one year before The Jungle Book. He also did a Greatest Hits album for H-B’s record label. More at this Animation Spin https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/the-man-called-flintstone-on-records/.

A CHRISTMAS STORY (1972)
This is the 2025 holiday season’s first Christmas film on TCM. In the early seventies, Hanna-Barbera began to ramp up its number of original specials. Like this one, most were shown in syndication on local stations. H-B’s burgeoning educational materials division also released many of them as 16 millimeter film rentals to schools. Listen for Paul Winchell, Daws Butler, Janet Waldo, and others, as well as the debut of some Hanna-Barbera holiday songs that, like those beloved music cues, reappeared in subsequent specials, like A Flintstone Christmas, Casper’s First Christmas, and Yogi’s First Christmas. The main theme has the same melody as the Happy Land of Hanna-Barbera Enchanted Voyage attraction that opened the same year at Kings Island in Ohio. It was written by Bill Hanna, music supervisor Paul DeKorte, and Kings Island executive Dennis Spiegel, who I interviewed on this episode of my podcast, The Funtastic World of Hanna and Barbera.

These films are followed by three TCM favorites from the grand days of MGM studios, produced when Hanna, Barbera, Tex Avery, and their animation artists were working on the same lot.

ANCHORS AWEIGH (1945)
Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, and Pamela Britton (My Favorite Martian’s Mrs. Brown) star in the film that is highlighted by the live-action/animated sequence, “The King Who Couldn’t Dance,” featuring “The Worry Song,” which was interpolated into Tom and Jerry cartoons by Scott Bradley. This sequence has lost none of its astonishing precision and stands as one of history’s finest examples of live-action and animated.

DANGEROUS WHEN WET (1953)
Esther Williams meets Fernando Lamas and loooooks mahhvelous in this entry into her pantheon of synchronized swimming musicals. She falls asleep reading a Tom and Jerry comic book and dreams up an underwater ballet with Tom and Jerry, romantic tension with an amorous octopus (voiced ‘mahhvelously’ by Fernando, you know), and a gag-filled shark chase that anticipates a sequence over 35 years later in The Little Mermaid, which was also, you know, mahhvelous.

INVITATION TO THE DANCE (1956)
What Walt Disney’s Fantasia is to classical music and Powell/Pressburger’s Tales of Hoffmann is to opera, Gene Kelly’s Invitation to the Dance is to themed cinematic dance. The three sequences tell their stories without dialogue: “Circus,” “Ring Around the Rosy,” and the live-action/animated sequence “Sinbad the Sailor,” perhaps the most ambitious of the golden age Kelly-Hanna-Barbera collaborations. While the film and this sequence may be lesser known, the degree to which the artists push their capabilities with the tools at hand is astonishing.

NEXT WEEK: We go behind-the-scenes with TCM for another lineup of films for their second lineup of superb films from Hanna-Barbera, including one that I must admit I have never seen