“Think Pink!: The DePatie-Freleng Story”

Chapter Excerpts from the Book

By Mark Arnold 

BAILEY’S COMETS

Judged by some to be one of the worst concepts that DePatie-Freleng ever conceived of that actually made it on the air, it was also the first DFE series to not air on NBC, airing instead on CBS, being given the green light by the VP of CBS programming, Fred Silverman.

The show was also a ratings disaster, and was shifted from the Saturday morning schedule and moved to Sunday after only four months on the air. Its bombing kept DFE out of commission with any new series until 1975, including the cancellation of a proposed animated Evel Knievel series for the 1974-1975 season, announced in January 1974.

As a result, only two new DFE produced specials debuted in 1974 that were both sequels to other DFE projects: Clerow Wilson’s Great Escape and The Magical Mystery Trip Through Little Red’s Head.

Announced in December 1972, Bailey’s Comets is about 15 competing roller derby teams, skating around the world for a prize of a hidden treasure. 16 shows were produced consisting of 32 episodes. Joe Ruby and Ken Spears created this show for DFE and it turned out to be their last for the company, for obvious reasons. They went on to start their own animation studios, with much greater success than this show.

There were also two commentators named Gabby and Dooter Roo.

Martin Strudler remembers, “Bailey’s Comets was a roller derby. That almost killed us. It was only on for one year and it almost broke the studio. It was a disaster. It was six teams on roller derbies and each team had six members. There were witches and one with hillbillies, etc. and you had to do them roller-skating. You had to animate six characters roller-skating right and then six characters roller-skating left and then six characters skating towards the camera and then six characters skating away from the camera on six different teams. So, we were animating forever with that because there had to be stock footage while they were racing around the world. Then we had to do the backgrounds because the race went to Paris and we had to do Paris backgrounds. Getting the stock footage for that show was a disaster.

“Today they would do it with a computer and it would be five times as fast, but this was all hand animated; six characters and eight drawings for each foot. It was 16 drawings before you could start a repeat and six different teams. It was a huge amount of work. I don’t think they realized that when they got started. They signed on for it and then they had to do it. Dave DePatie had a fit. He was on the business side. The art directors did it in order to sell it and I don’t think he knew what he was getting into when he signed on for that. Boy, it was a toughie.

“They became a producing concept studio of just the two of them. Someone would come up with concepts or ideas and we’d sketch them. If they sold a concept, then they’d find a studio to produce it, and DePatie-Freleng was one of the ones they used. And Bailey’s Comets, that was a time when roller derby was a big deal and it sounded like a great idea, so would you like to do it? I mean, you had no idea about the panic that set in on a time schedule where the stuff had to get done. You had the whole animation staff working on stock footage and it couldn’t move without it. 

Art Leonardi continues, “I did titles, storyboards and animation but Bailey’s Comets was a nightmare because there were groups of roller-skating teams and they’d be running and there were these villains and cars and all this stuff going on. The problem with that was say you were animating the show as a group of kids like Scooby-Doo or something. They’re just standing there talking. You cut to this one. You cut to that one. You cut to the other one. But these guys were always skating, so you had to keep them moving like they’re rolling and the backgrounds had to keep moving. It was a lot of extra work. They never stopped. They were always roller skating.

“It was a crazy show. I was doing storyboards on it and one time the scripts called for a scene for which I said, ‘This is insane to do this. There’s a lot of production.’ You’ve got to have five or six or four or whatever it was people roller skating. The villains are in a stagecoach and with contraptions on it and there was a chase where it was snowing and I remember it said on the script that you have to illustrate the characters chasing the stagecoach, they had to crash into the stagecoach and they all break up and tumble around and another one was an avalanche where you want to see all these people be covered by snow. I went to them and I said, ‘You know, there’s an easier way to do this and we’ll still get the impression across without doing all this work for the animators and everybody in Ink and Paint to show six people on roller skates crashing into a stagecoach with horses and all that and actually animate the crash.’ I said, ‘I can do it and make it exciting by having quick cuts of the Bailey’s Comets coming towards you and they got a shocked look on their face. You see the back of the stagecoach and you see the shock on them as the camera is moving back on them and then back to the Bailey’s Comets, back to the stagecoach and then a big explosion. Then, slowly pan across the Bailey’s Comets half in and half out of those clumps of snow, the wagon all beat up with a wheel spinning, so the audience would swear that they saw the contact and crash the way you shoot all these quick shots and the explosion and sound effects and you get the same effect without all the work.’ They said, “No, no, we want you to do the storyboard like our script. I refused to follow that section of the script. This was the first time that I didn’t complete an assignment! What they asked for with their version added unneeded production cost. The Bailey’s Comets series became a financial problem for DFE!.”

The concept of different roller-skating teams competing in a race around the world to different locations searching for clues that will lead them to the million-dollar prize sounds exactly like the reality show Amazing Race (2001-present)…except the roller-skating part. Also, like that show, the teams interfere with each other and there are outside forces and subplots that step in to hinder the racing teams’ progress.

This series owes a lot to Jay Ward’s Tom Slick, Blake Edwards’ The Great Race and of course Hanna-Barbera’s Wacky Races. Don Messick, Bob Holt, Daws Butler and Frank Welker return to DFE to voice. Sid Marcus and Bob McKimson directed the series and Doug Goodwin provided the music.

DOCTOR SNUGGLES

Possibly the oddest of DePatie-Freleng ventures was Doctor Snuggles. It was an animated series created by Jeffrey O’Kelly based on artwork by Nick Price. The show was a co-production between British and Dutch producers.

Snuggles has unusual adventures with his friends, featuring scenarios which usually involved Doctor Snuggles inventing something outlandish such as a robot helper, a time machine or a diamond-making machine. Snuggles travels by means of a talking pogo-stick/umbrella and a spacecraft made of wood called the Dreamy Boom. Most of his friends were anthropomorphic animals. He lived in a comfortable home with his housekeeper, Miss Nettles. His arch enemy was a crazy magician named Professor Emerald.

There were English, Dutch, German and Spanish language versions. For the English-language version the title character was narrated by veteran actor Peter Ustinov, who as previously mentioned was supposed to be the original Inspector Clouseau before Peter Sellers took the role. The show debuted in 1979, but the Ustinov version did not appear until 1980, and consisted of 13 half-hour episodes.

Two episodes (#7 and #12) were written by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, both dealing with ecological issues. Adams is best-known for his Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series and his work with Monty Python.

Although most of the cast and crew were British, the animation company was based in the Netherlands, and this is also where Doctor Snuggles had its world premiere. The show was shown during October 1, 1979 – August 21, 1981, on AVRO.

In the UK the show featured as part of the Watch It! strand for children on the ITV network and later got repeated on Channel 4 and in Ontario, Canada, on TVO. It also aired on the ABC in Australia and ran from 1982 to 1991.

The Dutch dubbing was directed by Frans Voordrecht, by with voices by Jules Croiset, Trudy Libosan, Dick Scheffer and Rupert van Woerkom.

A German dubbed version was also produced, starring Walter Jokisch as Doctor Snuggles, produced by the Bavaria Atelier GmbH, that premiered in June 1981.

The Swedish version features John Harryson and the French version Roger Carel as Doctor Snuggles.

In the US, Doctor Snuggles was first shown on the cable channel Home Box Office (HBO) in July 1981. It was shown on multiple nights of the week usually at 5:00, 5:30, or 6:00 p.m., and often in one-hour blocks (i.e. two episodes per night).

The show entered syndication in September 1981, and after the initial run (September 13 – December 6, 1981), the same 13 episodes were shown continuously Sunday mornings until September 1983. The airdates listed here are the first-run syndication airdates on network television. It should be noted, however, that the airing order was not the one that has subsequently become the conventional order among fans: episodes 10–13 were shown first, and then episodes 1–9. The series also aired on Nickelodeon’s Nick Jr. block.

Creator Jeffrey O’Kelly discusses his creation on the official Doctor Snuggles website, “It was in 1966, at the Regents Palace Hotel in London and I was having a cup of tea in the lobby when the idea came to me. I started to write on the back of an envelope, and I got through quite a few envelopes and old theatre pamphlets from my pockets before the porters kindly gave me some paper. But they probably regretted the idea when I was still writing at midnight! I had a chameleon which I called Mooney Snuggless, which gave me the idea for the name. He had quite a character. Once he ran away and I couldn’t find him anywhere. I had almost given up looking for my little green lizard when I spotted him clinging to the curtains. The curtains were green and yellow, and so we he! I was most impressed. Later, at the home of Ted Hughes, where I was writing my first film, I completed the philosophy of Doctor Snuggles being a benign little character, an eternal optimist who wants to make the world a better place and solve the problems of mankind as I saw then.

“My favorite episode is “Doctor Snuggles and his Remarkable Wormobile,” where the inventor journeys to the Amazon and meets Snarky Quark, and where Uncle Bill is turned into a butterfly and the Great Llama helps them in their quest. My favorite invention is The Dreamy Boom Boom rocket and the Multi-Wherabouts Machine, but I also like Mathilda Junkbottom and all the other inventions which Dennis and the animals build with the help of the Badergraph.”

Animator and cartoonist Charles Brubaker describes the show, “This is an unusual work from DePatie-Freleng. Doctor Snuggles is a Dutch series about a scientist and his friends. It was produced by Polyscope Production, but they contracted out animation. The first seven episodes were sent to Japan at Topcraft Studio (the same company that Rankin-Bass used). The remaining episodes were sent to DePatie-Freleng; however, this was right around the time the Cartoonists Guild went on strike, so before that happened David DePatie arranged Nelson Shin to go to South Korea and set up a team so that they could make Snuggles over there. An early example of outsourcing animation to Korea.”

Incidentally, Topcraft studio eventually went bankrupt in 1985, but it reorganized and became Studio Ghiblii, a studio known for My Neighbor Totoro, Swept Away and Kiki’s Delivery Service.

Barbara Donatelli recalls working on Doctor Snuggles, “Yes, I do remember that. That was at DePaties towards the end. It came from the Netherlands and this was the most complicated disaster for me as a checker. Everybody hated working on this show. It’s my own opinion. I disliked working on it. It had actor Peter Ustinov. Peter Ustinov was the voice of Doctor Snuggles and he talked in such a manner that you couldn’t really understand what he was saying. It was just not my favorite. We did work on it. Some people liked it, some didn’t.

“I’m not sure, but I think David may have a deal to have it sent it over and we were supposed to try to put it together but I can’t exactly remember how. Just so many things were missing. I think they wanted our camera department to film it at that time at the end, DePatie hired Ray Lee, Steve Willsbach, Bob Mills and Ralph Migliori as the camera department. Johnny Burton had his own separate camera room. Johnny did the special stuff and the TV series was shot by the other camera guys. Now that you’re talking about it, it’s hard to remember. I believe that the Netherland studio sent the work over to us, but so many things were missing. They didn’t have the backgrounds and cels weren’t there and there were just a lot of technical problems. It was a series that wasn’t one of our favorite things to work on.” 

The entire series was released on DVD in the UK in 2005 by Firefly Entertainment. It has not been officially released on DVD in the US except on VHS. A new series pilot was made in 2002 by Animatrix, Ltd.

Mark Arnold is the host of the wildly popular Pop Culture podcast Fun Ideas. He is also the author of several books on Pop Culture:

• The Best of The Harveyville Fun Times!
• Created and Produced by Total TeleVision productions
• If You’re Cracked, You’re Happy, Part Won and Part Too
• Mark Arnold Picks on The Beatles
• Frozen in Ice: The Story of Walt Disney Productions 1966-1985
• Think Pink: The DePatie-Freleng Story
• Pocket Full of Dennis the Menace
• The Harvey Comics Companion
• Long Title: Looking for the Good Times; Examining the Monkees’ Songs (with Michael A. Ventrella)
• Aaaaalllviiinnn: The Story of Ross Bagdasarian, Sr., Liberty Records, Format Films and The Alvin Show
• Headquartered: A Timeline of The Monkees Solo Years (with Michael A. Ventrella)
• The Comedy of Jack Davis
• The Comedy of John Severin
• The TTV Scrapbook (with Victoria Biggers)
• Pac-Man: The First Animated TV Show Based Upon a Video Game
• Stars of Walt Disney Productions
• Not So Happy Together: The Turtles A to Z (AM Radio to Zappa) (with Charles F. Rosenay!!!)
• Unconditionally MAD, Part 1 and Part B

And the forthcoming  Crazy: The Magazine that Dared to be Dumb (With Mark Slade)

Visit: http://funideas.50webs.com for more Fun Ideas Productions!