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"Linus the Lionhearted" questions

C

cd637299

Guest
Well, seeing "The Lionhearts" thread, it reminded me to ask about the classic cartoon "Linus the Lionhearted".

Was wondering:

(1) Not that Linus is that rare a name, but did Charles "Peanuts" Schulz have issues with the name Linus being used?

(2) That show had a lot of big-name talent voicing the characters. Was there a reason behind that? I figure that quite a bundle of loot was blown on this talent. (Having watched some episodes recently after many years, I never thought of the cartoons to be that funny, or possibly somewhat adult/for-all-ages in nature, to warrant that expensive talent!)

(3) Why was this even syndicated after its network run, if the FCC laid down the law about cartoon characters shown on Post Cereal boxes? Some characters were still on the boxes (even besides Sugar Bear), no? I remember seeing it in 1980 on ch 25 in Boston.

(3) And....wasn't the closing theme the saddest music in cartoon history? Creepy for kids, I'd say....

cd
 
Re: talent, there appears to be connections between most of the actors (Sheldon Leonard was exec producer of more than a few shows of that era including The Dick Van Dyke Show with Carl Reiner. Jonathan Winters worked with everyone as did Bob McFadden, though most of his work was voiceover (The First Family, When Your In Love The Whole World Is Jewish). I'm guessing it was just some fun and an extra payday for them.

The Fcc didnt crackdown on the cartoons on cereal boxes till1969 some three years after the last original episode.

My take? Sugar Bear was the coolest, but there was something else in that Sugar Crisp he was so fond of...
 
I've mentioned this before, but "Linus" was aired on WJAN-TV 17 in Canton, Ohio as part of a local kid show called "Milton The Milkman" which ran afternoons from about 4-5PM during the 1970's. What was unique about this was they used absolutely horrible looking prints of the show..The show probably came cheap to them, as they couldnt often afford top line programming..
 
The deep pockets behind "Linus the Lionhearted" belonged to General Foods (then parent of Post Cereal).  The end frame of each cartoon feature included "Copyright General Foods Corporation."  Most every character in the bunch were mascots of Post cereals (Lovable Truly the "Post"-man for Alpha-Bits ... the now politically-incorrect So Hi for Rice Crinkles ... etc.), so GF spared no expense in making sure this was a first-rate production.

From the few 16mm kines of LTL I've seen, it WAS good -- far better than the typical made-for-TV animation (Hanna-Barbera, Gamma, Total).    And the closing theme music cracks me up, with all the characters sobbing as if their best friend had died.  I imagine it must've upset at least a few kids who watched it at the time.

My favorite part: the dour 'janitor' bird who literally mops the spotlight from the stage, taking it to black.    Clever.

--Russell
 
cd637299 said:
Well, seeing "The Lionhearts" thread, it reminded me to ask about the classic cartoon "Linus the Lionhearted".

Was wondering:

(1) Not that Linus is that rare a name, but did Charles "Peanuts" Schulz have issues with the name Linus being used?
cd
Click to expand...

I'm almost sure you can't copyright a name. If that were true, Charles Schulz would have had a bigger problem with the Coasters' hit song Charlie Brown, which came out in 1959, years after the Peanuts comic strip started.

My father was an animator who did some work for Total Productions. IMDB states incorrectly that the Total shows were produced by Jay Ward (Bullwinkle), and that's inaccurate - though the producer - Peter Piech -had a longtime association with Ward. The Bullwinkle character Captain Peter "Wrong-way" Peachfuzz was Ward having fun with Piech's name.

It was not unusual - even in those days - for "big names" to do cartoon voices, especially "big name" actors who were a bit past their prime, professionally. Among the people who did voices for Jay Ward shows were Hans Conreid (Snidley Whiplash), Charlie Ruggles (Aesop), and William Conrad (narrator on Bullwinkle)

Even the professional voice-over artists of that day who did cartoon voices (Daws Butler, Paul Frees, etc) were no slouches. They were highly successful professionals who became very wealthy from their voiceover work. If you were an amination producer, it was really no more expensive to hire a big name actor than one of the voice-over pros. And actors like doing that work - it's easy, doesn't take much time, and pays well.
 
Lkeller said:
cd637299 said:
Well, seeing "The Lionhearts" thread, it reminded me to ask about the classic cartoon "Linus the Lionhearted".

Was wondering:

(1) Not that Linus is that rare a name, but did Charles "Peanuts" Schulz have issues with the name Linus being used?
cd
Click to expand...

I'm almost sure you can't copyright a name. If that were true, Charles Schulz would have had a bigger problem with the Coasters' hit song Charlie Brown, which came out in 1959, years after the Peanuts comic strip started.
Click to expand...

Not only Schultz, but blues singer Charles Brown, who was fairly well known by the time the Coasters had their hit.

My father was an animator who did some work for Total Productions. IMDB states incorrectly that the Total shows were produced by Jay Ward (Bullwinkle), and that's inaccurate - though the producer - Peter Piech -had a longtime association with Ward. The Bullwinkle character Captain Peter "Wrong-way" Peachfuzz was Ward having fun with Piech's name.
Click to expand...

Wasn't some of Ward's and Total Television's animation work done by Gamma Productions in Mexico? I recall seeing that name in the credits of both studios' work.

And since some of the Jay Ward "back segments" were run on Total Television shows, and vice-versa (IIRC, Total's Commander McBragg and Ward's Fractured Fairy Tales showed up on the other's shows - at least in syndication), maybe that's where the confusion started. Their drawing styles were similar as well.
 
Keith4 - I'm sure you're correct about the cooperation between studios. Being LA based, the work my father did for Total was done at home out of his home "studio" - Total was based in New York. Yes - the drawing styles were very similar.

Ward would have preferred to do the actual animation work locally, but his shows (and I believe Total's as well) were funded by General Mills who didn't want to spend the money on expensive American animators, so it was given to Gamma in Mexico for a fraction of the cost. Yes, folks - "outsourcing" and "off-shoring" are not entirely recent concepts.

Occasionally, a few bits of the Ward cartoons were animated locally, and you can really tell the difference, if you're watching. My father even told me how to tell the work of separate animators apart. For example, one of the Ward animators loved doing hands, so when you see his work, the hands of the characters are much more animated.
 
"Linus" wasn't the only animated show of the time that had
a maudlin signoff; ABC's "The Porky Pig Show" had its characters
in a funk until Barbara Cameron's theme song reminds us that
next week "we'll all have more fun, watching Porky, Porky Pig,
he's the barnyard's Mr. Big."

As for comments about voice actors, former radio actors were
especially in demand; it's not as easy as it looks to read lines off
a piece of paper with a minimum of rehearsal, and the animated
shows tended to work this way. For instance, the original principal
voices of "The Flintstones" were radio vets: Alan Reed ("Life With
Luigi"), Jean Vander Pyl (Margaret Anderson on the radio version of
"Father Knows Best"), Mel Blanc and Bea Benaderet (practically every
show on radio). Likewise, "The Jetsons": George O'Hanlon had his own
"George O'Hanlon Show" on Mutual in the early '50s; Penny Singleton played
Blondie in both movies and radio; Daws Butler worked with Stan Freberg; Janet
Waldo played Corliss Archer. And lest we forget, Arnold Stang ("Top Cat") worked
with Milton Berle on both radio and television; and other radio veterans such as
Jim Backus and Marvin Miller made good money doing cartoon voices.
 
Oh yes, the Ward cartoons had great voice talent....I put the writing quality of them way above LTL, but hey that's subjective. It sure made up for the animation!

I do have a DVD of that 60s Porky Pig....I'll have to view that one again.

And I do recognize anything animated by Gerard Baldwin at Ward.....the main feature is a "rubbery mouth" as if it were on a spring or something! I figure he did most, if not all, General Mills commercial animation.

cd
 
cd637299 said:
Oh yes, the Ward cartoons had great voice talent....I put the writing quality of them way above LTL, but hey that's subjective. It sure made up for the animation!

I do have a DVD of that 60s Porky Pig....I'll have to view that one again.

And I do recognize anything animated by Gerard Baldwin at Ward.....the main feature is a "rubbery mouth" as if it were on a spring or something! I figure he did most, if not all, General Mills commercial animation.

cd
Click to expand...

Yes - the Jay Ward stuff was exceptionally well written. A few of the writers (Chris Hayward, Alan Burns, etc) went on to work in sitcoms and films. Bill Scott (voice of Bullwinkle, Mr. Peabody and Dudley Doright, among others) was also a very talented writer.

I had forgotten the Gerard Baldwin's rubbery mouths, but he was also the animator who was into hands, according to my father.
 
Mr. Baldwin is still with us---

www.gerardbaldwin.com

He did a small number of Hanna-Barbera shorts in his early days, and he was back at H-B for "The Smurfs," and maybe others I don't know about.

cd
 
Russell W. said:
My favorite part: the dour 'janitor' bird who literally mops the spotlight from the stage, taking it to black. Clever.
Click to expand...

That was an old Emmett Kelly routine.
 
FreddyE1977 said:
Russell W. said:
My favorite part: the dour 'janitor' bird who literally mops the spotlight from the stage, taking it to black. Clever.
Click to expand...

That was an old Emmett Kelly routine.
Click to expand...

Didn't Carol Burnett do a variation of this on her last show of each season, where her charwoman character would be shown sweeping down the studio for the summer break?
 
Was this a big hit? I grew up in Chicago and never heard of it before and I just watched a clip of it on YouTube.

It's interesting to see the amount of violence in it, compared to now.
 
I had forgotten all about "Linus the Lionhearted." Went back and saw some YouTube clips. Hilarious. I seem to recall that Jack E Leonard had voiced Lovable Truly but he was not listed on the credits. Turns out he had voiced commercials for Alpha-Bits as the postman but this was before the actual series began. I also seem to recall a character named Sasha Grouse in the series that was also very funny. Don't know who voiced him.

What was so great about shows such as 'Linus', the UPA and Jay Ward productions is that the writers and actors were genuinely funny. They didn't self-consciously try to be funny and hip to adults while creating gags for children as is the sad case with cartoons today (probably the closest example now of the old classic style of cartoon writing and voice performance is 'Sponge Bob'). I don't think the writers back then even gave a thought as to which age bracket would laugh at which gag. If it was funny they put it in and if nobody got it, so what?

And having Thurl Ravenscroft sing this over-the-top sad song at the end of each show was pure genius.

Incidentally, in 1974 I attended a lecture given by Bill Scott at UCLA on TV animation. He was a big guy and his natural speaking voice closely resembled Bullwinkle. It was a little eerie but fun to listen to him.
 
I couldn't find the closing to Linus on YouTube. I've heard the audio to it (and the opening) on toontracker.com though.

ixnay
 
Just played the links. Thanks Tim and Mitchell. I hadn't seen Linus since its ABC rerun run. :-[ YouTube nation is very resourceful.

On a happier note... I liked the Ed Graham logo, then and now.

Didn't WBAL-1090 Baltimore have a jock named Ed Graham back in the late '70s? When I first heard him and his name, I immediately thought of Linus.

As for the cereals they pitched, I grew up on the occasional Alpha Bits and Golden, er, Sugar Crisp. Can't recall if I had Crispy Critters, though.

ixnay
 
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