The Ruff and Reddy Show

The Ruff and Reddy Show
The show's title card.
Genre	Comedy
Written by	Joseph Barbera Charles Shows
Directed by	William Hanna Joseph Barbera Bob Hultgren (NBC sequences)
Presented by	Jimmy Blaine (original run) Robert Cottle (reruns)
Voices of	Daws Butler Don Messick
Narrated by	Don Messick
Theme music composer	William Hanna Joseph Barbera Hoyt Curtin
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	4
No. of episodes	13 (52 Sub-episodes)
Production
Producers	William Hanna Joseph Barbera
Running time	30 Minutes
Production companies	H-B Enterprises, Inc.
Original release
Network	NBC
Release	December 14, 1957 (1957-12-14) – April 2, 1960 (1960-04-02)

The Ruff & Reddy Show is a Hanna-Barbera animated series starring Ruff, a cat voiced by Don Messick, and Reddy, a dog voiced by Daws Butler. First broadcast in December 1957 on NBC, it was the first television show produced by Hanna-Barbera and presented by Screen Gems, the television arm of Columbia Pictures.

History

William Hanna and Joseph Barbera entered the television field fresh from serving as the heads of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation department, which shut down in June 1957. Unlike its successor The Huckleberry Hound Show, Ruff and Reddy featured a live action host, Jimmy Blaine (an announcer at WNBC Radio, New York), and various theatrical cartoons from Columbia Pictures' Screen Gems library including The Fox and the Crow and Li'l Abner filling up the rest of the half-hour.

Messick's "Ruff" voice characterization was very similar to the one he would later use for Pixie the mouse. Butler used his tried-and-true southern drawl for "Reddy", a voice that would later become mainly identified with Huckleberry Hound. A supporting character in some episodes was the tiny-sized Professor Gizmo (also voiced by Don Messick). Villains Ruff and Reddy faced included Harry Safari (Daws Butler), Captain Greedy and Salt Water Daffy (Daws Butler and Don Messick) and western outlaws Killer and Diller (Daws Butler and Don Messick). The show's episodes borrowed from the serialized storytelling format of such shows as Crusader Rabbit by making extensive use of cliffhanger storylines. Each story had 13 episodes, two airing per show. Don Messick was narrator. The episodes were not much longer than four minutes, including an opening song and much repetition of preceding events.

Ruff and Reddy was originally broadcast in black and white until fall 1958, when it went to color, although all of the animated episodes were filmed in color from the start. Actor/singer and Storyteller Jimmy Blaine served as the series' first emcee, with Puppeteers Rufus Rose and Bobby Nicholson providing comedic relief as Rhubarb the Parrot and Jose the Toucan. NBC initially cancelled the show at the end of the 1959-1960 season, later reviving it in the spring of 1962 (although the Ruff and Reddy segments were repeats) with Captain Bob Cottle as the second and last live-action host. When NBC finally cancelled the series in September 1964, Screen Gems syndicated the cartoons to local TV stations. Warner Bros. Television now owns the distribution rights to the series.

Episodes

• Night Flight Fright
• Planet Pirates
• Whama Bamma Gamma Gun
• Hocus Pocus Focus
• The Mad Monster of Muni Mula
• The Mastermind of Muni Mula
• Creepy Creature Feature
• Muni Mula Mix-Up
• The Creepy Creature
• Crowds in the Clouds
• Reddy Rocket Rescue
• Surprise in the Skies
• Last Trip of a Ghost Ship
• Pinky the Pint Sized Pachyderm
• The Irate Pirate
• Dynamite Fright
• Marooned in Typhoon Lagoon
• Scarey Harry Safari
• A Creep in the Deep
• Bungle in the Jungle
• Jungle Jitters
• Hot Shot's Plot
• The Gloom of Doom
• The Trapped Trap the Trapper
• Pot-Shot Puts Hot Shot on Hot Spot
• Slight Fright on a Moonlight Night
• Westward Ho Ho Ho
• Asleep While the Creep Steals Sheep
• Copped by a Copter
• The Two Terrible Twins from Texas
• A Friend to the End
• Heels on Wheels
• Killer and Diller in a Chiller of a Thriller
• Ship-Shape Sheep
• The Boss of Double-Cross
• The Whirly Bird Catches the Worms
• Hot Lead for a Hot-Head
• The Goon of Doubloon Lagoon
• Tootin' Shootin'
• Blunder Down Under
• The Late, Late Pieces of Eight
• The Metal Monster Mystery
• Big Deal with a Small Seal
• The Goon of Doubloon Lagoon
• Two Dubs in a Sub
• A Real Keep Submarine
• No Hope for a Dope of a Periscope
• Rescue in the Deep Blue
• A Whale of a Tail of a Tale of a Whale
• Welcome Guest in a Treasure Chest

Stations

Alphabetized by city.

• KCOP-TV / Channel 13• Los Angeles, California
• WTMJ-TV / Channel 4• Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Other appearances

The characters next appeared on The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie, in the episode Yogi's Ark Lark (which featured almost every Hanna-Barbera animal character that existed at the time). Since then, they haven't been used in anything new.

Ruff made an appearance in the Yogi's Treasure Hunt episode "Goodbye Mr. Chump" as a newspaper vendor.

Episodes of Ruff and Reddy later appeared on one volume of the Hanna-Barbera Personal Favorites home video series called Animal Follies, along with Yippee, Yappee and Yahooey, Touché Turtle and Dum Dum, Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy and Snagglepuss.

The computer game titled Ruff and Reddy in the Space Adventure was released in 1990 for Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amiga and Atari ST.

The Ruff & Reddy Show in other languages

• Brazilian Portuguese: Jambo & Ruivão
• French Canadian: Pouf & Riqui
• Italian: Ruff e Reddy
• Macedonian: Жолтко и Лутко (Zoltko i Lutko)
• Spanish: Ruff y Reddy
• Serbian: Жутко и Љутко (Jutko i Ljutko)
• Japanese: つよいぞラフティ

See also

• List of works produced by Hanna-Barbera
• List of Hanna-Barbera characters

External links

• The Ruff and Reddy Show at Big Cartoon DataBase
• The Ruff and Reddy Show at IMDb
• Template:Tv.com show
• List of episodes @ Wingnut
• Toon Tracker: Ruff & Reddy
• Toonopedia's Ruff & Reddy entry
• Theme song and sample episode