Care for some "inside dirt" on your favorite CN shows? As I posted on previous threads, I used to work as in-betweener and animator in Fil-Cartoons, which for the longest time was a direct subsidiary of Hanna-Barbera. Bill Hanna used to visit the studio a lot, and he was one of the nicest men on the planet.
Anyway, we did the premiere episodes of Cow and Chicken,
PP girls, Dexter's Lab,Cow other shows for the "What a Cartoon" block, some of which got their own series, while others didn't make the cut. One of the shows that hit it big was Dexter's Lab, as you all know. Well, one story goes like this. Our GM at the time (a Mr. Bill Dennis),got the go signal to make all the first season episodes for Dexter's Lab. We already did a few, if I remember correctly, like the first appearance of Mandark, and so on. During a casual conversation with series creator Gendy Tartakovsky, our GM asked, innocently enough, whether he (Gendy) got the idea for Dexter from an old Felix the Cat character called Poindexter, who was portrayed as some kind of boy genius/scientist, who had a big pair of glasses on all the time, very much like Dexter. Insulted (or so the story goes), Tartakovsky left in a huff, and consequently demanded that all Dexter shows be pulled out from Fil-Cartoons. We never did an episode of Dexter after that.
Nice guy, huh?
Another story is more on Hanna-Barbera itself, and the Walt Disney studios, and has little to do with CN in general. A grade school in the US had a great idea to have their kids pull out their paintbrushes and decorate the school walls with their favorite Disney characters (you know, Mickey, Donald, etc.), much to the delight of the kids. Well, one entity that was NOT delighted was Walt Disney Studios. Seems one of their bright corporate lawyers had the idea that it would be in the company's best interest, in the name of intellectual property, to demand that the school erase all likenesses of their characters from the school's walls, which the school did, much to the dissapointment of the kids, who worked so hard on their paintings. Well, one of the people who heard about this was Bill Hanna, who immediately after sent a bunch of his best artists over to the school, and had them paint all the major HB characters on the school's walls, with the participation of the kids.
The paintings, I believe, are still there today.
That man sure had class. It's pretty sad that he passed away a year or so ago. As for Disney, I think the Magic Kingdom should ban all their lawyers, and re-assess what their company stands for.
