He’s been called the “lovable lawman with a badge of tin and a heart of gold.”
That’s how the announcer introduced the title character in each week’s opening of TV’s The Deputy Dawg Show, produced by Terrytoons, the studio famous for theatrical shorts featuring Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle.
The Deputy Dawg Show ran on CBS from January 1960 to December 1964. It was extremely popular, inspiring numerous pieces of merchandise from coloring books to lunchboxes and is fondly remembered by the generation who grew up with it and those who discovered it during its syndication run afterward.
The plots of each Deputy Dawg cartoon centered on the title character, a simple-minded, lantern-jawed white dog who served as second in command to a human sheriff of a small town in the South.
The other characters in the show – Muskie Muskrat (with his catchphrase “It’s possi-bull!”), Vincent van Gopher, Ty Coon, and Pig Newton – would usually spend each cartoon trying to pull one over on the dim-witted deputy. Other supporting players on the show included Deputy Dawg’s doppelganger little nephew, Elmer, and a space alien named Astronut, who proved so popular he eventually got his own spin-off series of theatrical cartoon shorts.
Paul Terry sold Terrytoons to CBS in 1955, and several years later, business manager and executive producer Bill Weiss fired creative director Gene Deitch and pointed the studio in a new direction. In his book Enchanted Drawings: The History of Animation, author Charles Solomon noted: “Weiss also encouraged the writers and directors to create new characters, ostensibly for theatrical shorts, but with an eye to television production.”
One character to come from this was Deputy Dawg, the brainchild of Larz Bourne, a veteran writer in the animation industry working with Terrytoons studios at the time.
In his book, Terrytoons: The Story of Paul Terry and His Classic Cartoon Factory, author Gerald Hamonic wrote of Deputy Dawg: “Much of the humor in the cartoons is sight gag based with some jokes focused around humorous accents and stereotypical southern characteristics.”
This can be seen in such Deputy Dawg shorts as Heat Wave, where Muskie and Vincent attempt to get into the sheriff’s icehouse as they try to cool off during rising temperatures while Deputy Dawg looks to protect the store of ice.
Another, The Yoke’s on You, has the Deputy protecting the hen house. In Little Red Fool House, Deputy Dawg is the truant officer who tries to get Muskie and Vince to stop fishing and return to school where they belong.
In addition to taking opportunities for sight gags and slapstick in these situations, there are innocent jokes, most featuring Deputy Dawg and his lack of intelligence, as the butt of them.
In Little Red Fool House, the sheriff asks, “How much education have you had?” In response, the Deputy answers, “I can read anything as long as it isn’t written.”
Dayton Allen
Allen had gotten his start in radio and had a tremendous talent for voices and characters. He appeared and provided voices on the children’s shows Winky Dink and You and Howdy Doody and also appeared on The Steve Allen Show.
In addition to the Deputy Dawg characters, Allen voiced Heckle and Jeckle for Terrytoons. He also provided the voice for the main character in the Saturday morning live-action series Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp.
Deputy Dawg also provided a big break for a young animator named Ralph Bakshi, who worked on the show years before directing such films as Fritz the Cat (1972) and later, Lord of the Rings (1978).
Deputy Dawg was so popular at the time that some of the cartoons were shown in theaters. This wasn’t as successful as hoped, as author Hamonic noted: “Unfortunately, the cartoons looked unfinished and inexpensively produced on the wider screen.”
Like so many TV shows, Deputy Dawg has become relatively obscure over the years. Historians have noted the character and the series’ place in time in animation history, and Deputy Dawg has been covered several times here in Cartoon Research:
In an insightful 2016 Cartoon Research article, “Segregation and the Selling of Deputy Dawg,”, Christopher P. Lehman (author of the books American Animated Cartoons of the Vietnam Era and The Colored Cartoon) discussed the backdrop that Deputy Dawg debuted against.
Writer and historian Greg Ehrbar, who has authored the upcoming book Hanna-Barbera, The Recorded History: From Modern Stone Age to Meddling Kids, wrote about Deputy Dawg on records for Cartoon Research in 2016. In that article, Ehrbar delves into how the story structures of the cartoons carried over to records.
In 2021, cartoonist Charles Brubaker shed light on how the character came to be in “The Secret Origin of Deputy Dawg” and a “Deputy Dawg Follow-Up”.
As we head into these dog days of summer, and things get as lazy as the small Southern-town this canine lawman presided over, it could be the perfect time to discover, or re-discover, Deputy Dawg.
Michael Lyons is a freelance writer, specializing in film, television, and pop culture. He is the author of the book, Drawn to Greatness: Disney’s Animation Renaissance, which chronicles the amazing growth at the Disney animation studio in the 1990s. In addition to Animation Scoop and Cartoon Research, he has contributed to Remind Magazine, Cinefantastique, Animation World Network and Disney Magazine. He also writes a blog, Screen Saver: A Retro Review of TV Shows and Movies of Yesteryear and his interviews with a number of animation legends have been featured in several volumes of the books, Walt’s People. You can visit Michael’s web site Words From Lyons at: 
Oh, do I remember this short film! I regularly watched the show on local television when it was around. My hopes, of course is that eventually, MeTV cartoon channel will acquire it. I was not aware that Dayton Allen did so many voices. Amazing! As far as the cartoons, seeming unfinished on the big screen, that might be possible, but this is an interesting stylized animation. There were times when I thought the violence happening off screen was funnier than the violence you saw on screen. How did they display that? Well, when something happened off screen, there was a lot of the shaking of the camera. To me the special effect worked quite well. Also, around this time, Terrytoons adapted some interesting sound effects. All in all, a very memorable cartoon series.
Years ago I bought a cheap five-volume DVD collection mainly because it contained some great old Warner Bros. cartoons like “Book Revue” and “Mexican Joyride”. I was a little disappointed to discover that it also contained an awful lot of Deputy Dawg cartoons as filler, but I gave them a chance, and little by little they grew on me like so much Spanish moss in a Southern cypress swamp. I’m particularly impressed by Dayton Allen’s versatility in voicing every single character. He, along with Jack Mercer and Allen Swift, was one of the East Coast’s great voice artists.
During the run of The Deputy Dawg Show, Dayton Allen was best known as the “Why not?” guy. In an improvised sketch on the Steve Allen Show, he played the senator from the new state of Alaska being interviewed by Pat Harrington Jr., who asked a question that Allen (Dayton, not Steve) couldn’t think of an answer for. So he merely said “Why not?” and the audience erupted in hysterical laughter, more at his delivery than at the line itself. Allen knew he was on to a good thing, so from then on he worked the line into every sketch he did. When he later guest starred on “The Munsters”, playing nearsighted Dr. Willoughby (in his flawless Groucho Marx impersonation), he still managed to incorporate “Why not?” into his shtick.
Allen exploited his catch phrase’s popularity for all it was worth, and it was worth a fortune. He wrote a “Why not?” book, recorded a “Why not?” comedy album, made a lot of “Why not?” commercials and sold scads of “Why not?” merchandise. In the early 1960s, “Why not?” was on everybody’s lips. If you’re ever watching a sitcom from that period, and you hear Lucy or Viv or Mr. Mooney say “Why not?” in an exaggerated, drawn out sort of way, and the line gets a much bigger laugh from the studio audience than you think it warrants, you can rest assured that Dayton Allen is responsible. Even Deputy Dawg says it from time to time. And why not?
I grew up watching “Deputy Dawg” in the 1970’s on WSNS-44 here in Chicago (now Telemundo) – had the original bumpers and closing credits, not just the shorts themselves.
I always thought it was “It’s possi-boo.” And wasn’t there a possum character who also said it? (It’s been a while.)
You’re probably thinking of “Possible Possum”, another Terrytoons creation from around the same time that used that catchphrase.
The article “The Secret Origin of Deputy Dawg” linked above gives a detailed explanation about the confusion, but in short the muskrat character was likely going to be a possum before changing species late into the series’ development due to some more than passing resemblance to Walt Kelly’s Pogo.
I thought Deputy Dawg originally aired on NBC.
The Deputy Dawg Show was packaged (with openings and bumpers) and was syndicated in 1960. At the same time it also appeared on CBS Saturday mornings in the Fall of 1960, from my research. It showed up on NBC Saturday mornings in 1971.
Dayton Allen was a versatile genius, and one of my all time favorite voice artists. He did all the Deputy Dawg characters (regulars and one shots) as well as everyone on Lariat Sam. He once fooled the whole blindfolded What’s My Line panel into thinking he was Groucho Marx. That accurate impression also showed up in a few Heckle & Jeckle shorts.
Actually he fooled the panel on “I’ve Got A Secret”. Not “Whats My Line?”
Mike Abrams, you are correct. I tend to get those 2 game shows mixed up.
Pig Newton wasn’t a regular character. I think he only showed up once to antagonize Deputy Dawg…maybe twice. The Space Varmint wasn’t on much either, although at least he evolved into The Astronut. Ty Coon just sort of disappeared after awhile, no explanation offered. I recently watched the whole series on a set of bootleg dvds.
With the following Deputy Dawg has received since the 60s, how would you guys rank him among the Terrytoons cast? For me, I’d put him on the same level as Sidney the Elephant and Gandy Goose. A solid A-minus grade.
Loved all of Paul Terry’s cartoons
There’s quite a bit about Dayton Allen on the Howdy Doody show in “Say Kids! What Time is It?” by Stephen Davis, particularly the bawdy backstage behavior of the male crew, with Allen as the ringleader. A reminder that what was considered acceptable in the 1950s is radically different than today.
Is that why Dayton was later replayed by Allen Swift as the voice of Howdy Doody?
Dayton Allen said in an interview that he, Bob Keeshan and Bill LeCornec were fired in 1953 after they demanded more money, thinking that the show couldn’t go on without them. (It could and did.) Allen was never the voice of Howdy Doody — that was Buffalo Bob Smith himself — but he voiced most of the other puppet characters.
I don’t really remember Deputy Dawg. The Terrytoons character that I really enjoyed watching was Sydney the Elephant on KCOP Channel 13 in Los Angeles in the late ’70s. Plenty of them have surfaced online but not my favorite one, “To Be or Not to Be,” where Sydney is tired of being an elephant and asks his fairy godmother to turn him into different animals, finding out eventually that he’s better off being an elephant. Interestingly every time he calls on her she’s busy knitting. He makes the mistake of blaming his fairy godmother for all that happened to him and she literally turns him into nothing as punishment for his criticism of her. After Sydney fades away, she says to the audience: Maybe now I can get my knitting done 😄.
I didn’t know that the Silly Sidney adventure you describe was ever an actual cartoon, but it was most certainly a storybook with an accompanying 45 rpm record narrated by Soupy Sales. I had it, and I shall never forget the song that Soupy sang at the end:
“To try to be what you aren’t,
Isn’t very smaren’t.
If you try to be a-happy with a-who you are,
And you try to be a-happy with a-what you do,
You’ll have a lot more fun,
And you’ll have a lot more friends,
And you’ll see that what I say is true:
That the most enjoyable thing you can be is you!
Th-that’s YOU!”
Thanks for a very informative column and for mentioning mine. I appreciate it.
Christopher,
Your article was SO great! What research! I went down a “rabbit hole” of your other Cartoon Research articles as well, and I just ordered your “Vietnam Era” book and can’t wait to dive in. Thanks for your nice words. Cheers!
Deputy Dawg was popular enough in the UK to stay on mainstream Television through to the 90s. There was even a well known comedian (Eddie Large, part of the double act Little & Large) who counted Deputy Dawg among his trademark impressions; that seemed like kind of a stretch even at the time, but it helped keep them on TV for well over a decade so someone must have been taken with it.
i don’t ever rmbr this as a network show…only syndicated. (VERY popular in mid-La., back then!)
I don’t remember it fondly. Pure crap. Didn’t like Hector Heathcote, or Underdog. I must have been an animation aficionado and didn’t even know it. Didn’t care that much for Mighty Mouse (except the earliest ones), or Heckle and Jeckle. They could have saved the cartoons by being funny, but they weren’t. They were in color. Big deal.
Thank you for spoiling a perfectly good blog post, you nut… 😒