Beany and Cecil
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| Beany and Cecil | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Animation |
| Created by | Bob Clampett |
| Voices of | Jim MacGeorge Irv Shoemaker |
| Country of origin |  United States |
| Original language | English |
| Production | |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Original release | |
| Network | ABC |
| Release | January 6 – June 30, 1962 |
Beany and Cecil was an animated cartoon series created by Bob Clampett, who had previously worked for Warner Bros.. As a puppet show entitled Time for Beany, it originally aired in 1949, with the animated series first appearing in Matty's Funday Funnies in 1959, later renamed Matty's Funnies with Beany and Cecil and finally Beany and Cecil in the USA. Another season was produced in 1988.
Along with The Jetsons and The Flintstones it was one of the first three color television series on the ABC television network (the initial season, though, was originally shown in black and white, as ABC was unable to telecast color programs until September 1962).
History
Beany and Cecil was created by animator Bob Clampett[1] after he left Warner Bros., where he had been directing theatrical cartoon shorts. Clampett had already come up with the idea for Cecil when he was a boy, after seeing the top half of the dinosaur swimming from the water at the end of the 1925 film The Lost World.
Clampett originally created the series as a puppet show called Time for Beany,[2] which ran from February 28, 1949 to 1954. Time for Beany featured the talents of veteran voice actors Stan Freberg as Cecil and Dishonest John, and Daws Butler as Beany and Uncle Captain.
Clampett revived the series in animated form, though Freberg and Butler did not reprise their roles. On 11 October 1959, the animated show was introduced as Matty's Funday Funnies. named for "Matty Mattel" the animated spokesperson for its primary sponsor Mattel Toys. The program was later retitled The Beany and Cecil Show, airing prime time on Saturdays during the 1962 TV season, on ABC Television. The newer cartoons replaced the Famous Studios cartoons of Casper the Friendly Ghost and Little Audrey among others packaged under the previous title Matty's Funday Funnies.
After 1962, the 26 shows (including 78 cartoons) were repeated on Saturday mornings for the next five years. The cartoon featured Beany, a boy, and Cecil the Sea-Sick Sea Serpent embarking on a series of adventures, often to discover ancient civilizations and artifacts. These escapades were rife with cartoon slapstick and puns.
Prior to the animated series, but concurrent with the puppet show, Clampett created a comic-book series of Beany and Cecil adventures for Dell Comics. The artwork for this series of comics, running from 1951-54, was drawn by Jack Bradbury.
In 1988, the show was revived as The New Adventures of Beany and Cecil by DiC. Only eight episodes were ever made, and only five episodes ever aired. This incarnation of the show was produced and directed by John Kricfalusi, who would later create Ren and Stimpy.
Characters
Main characters
- Beany Boy - A young, cherub-faced boy with a propeller beanie that allows him to fly (the "Beanycopter", complete with helmet and propeller, became a popularly marketed novelty). Beany is a good-hearted, upbeat lad, and is somewhat obnoxious at the same time. In most episodes, Beany would be kidnapped by the villain, crying "Help, Cecil! Help!" to which Cecil would reply "I'm a-comin', Beany-boy!" as he raced to the rescue. This has become something of a catchphrase. Beany was originally voiced by Jim MacGeorge, later by Mark Hildreth.
- Cecil (or "Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent") - A large green sea serpent with a slight lisp. He is fiercely loyal to Beany but not terribly bright. Cecil's trusting good nature invariably winds up with him being taken advantage of by the bad people, and he often ends up absorbing a great amount of physical abuse (getting smashed flat, losing his head, having his skin burned off, being shattered to pieces), all within the laws of cartoon physics. The end of Cecil's tail was never seen; it always extended off-screen, or was hidden behind an obstacle. This is likely a joking reference to the original Cecil, a hand puppet whose tail was likewise hidden (because it didn't exist). Cecil also has a superhero alter-ego known as Super-Cecil. In this guise, he wears a modified Superman shirt (complete with cape). Cecil was originally voiced by Irv Shoemaker, later by Billy West. It was Cecil who cried "A Bob Clam-pett car-tooooooo-OOOOOOOOON!"
- Captain Horatio Huffenpuff - Also called "Uncle Captain", he is Beany's kindly uncle and the Captain of the Leakin' Lena, which takes the pals from one destination to the other. The Captain is always willing to instruct Beany and Cecil on their latest assignment, but is rather cowardly and refuses to put himself in any personal jeopardy, locking himself below deck or under a box labeled "Capt. Huffenpuff's Hiding Box" for most of the episodes. Uncle Captain was voiced by Jim MacGeorge.
- Crowy - The navigator of the Leakin' Lena. He is a crow, and unsurprisingly spends most of his time in the crow's nest. He speaks in a squawky voice and has a tendency to faint dead away whenever the ship encounters some sort of hazard. Voiced by Jim MacGeorge.
- Dishonest John (or "D.J.") - The villain of the piece. He is dressed like a Simon Legree character, and he is constantly scheming to foil Beany and Cecil's adventures. His catch phrase is a sinister "Nya-ah-ãhh!", and he occasionally refers to Cecil as as a "tall toad" or "big salami" (referring to his big, limbless body). Whenever Dishonest John's schemes are revealed to the heroes, Cecil tends to respond with an aghast "What the heck! D.J., you dirty guy!". When Dishonest John receives his inevitable come-uppance, it is usually just as painful as the abuse Cecil has endured in the rest of the episode. Dishonest John also has a supervillain alter-ego known as The Bilious Beetle. In this guise, he can fly under his own power and sports a painful stinger. "D.J." also appeared disguised on occasion as the mechanical robotic octopus "Billy The Squid" usually in haphazard attempts to simulate seastorms to scare away the crew of the Leakin' Lena when on a treasure hunt. Dishonest John carried a business card that read: "Dirty deeds done dirt cheap. Special rates for Sundays and holidays". He was originally voiced by Walker Edmiston, later by Maurice LaMarche.
Minor characters
- Davey Cricket - A frontier cricket with a coonskin cap who lives in the backwoods of Eight-Nine-Tennessee, parodying American frontiersman Davy Crockett and specifically Walt Disney's popular TV miniseries based on Crockett's life which aired on the Disneyland TV show. In Cricket's self-titled episode, Dishonest John tries unsuccessfully to sign Davey to a lucrative Hollywood movie contract. Cecil persuades Davey to come to Hollywood after introducing him to an attractive "leading ladybug". Davey's coonskin cap was actually a live raccoon that rested on top of his head.
- Go Man Van Gogh - A stereotypical cartoon beatnik who lives in the jungle and often paints various things with his paintbrush, including paintings, vines to swing on, and fake backdrops to fool enemies (ala Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner). He also often plays a set of bongo drums, and scat-sings and speaks with various beatnik stereotype slang. Though he did not appear in many episodes, he was somewhat of a recurring character in the bumpers. He was originally voiced by Lord Buckley in "The Wildman of Wildsville", a 1959 theatrical short that aired as an episode of the TV series, and then by Scatman Crothers after Buckley's death in 1960.
- Harecules - A rabbit version of Hercules who accessed super mental powers by wearing a helmet called a Thinking Cap and traveled in the Guided Muscle, a rocket shaped like a muscle man's arm with a clenched fist.
- Jack the Knife (or "Jacques the Knife") - A friendly, jazz-singing sawfish with a heavy French accent and stereotypical Rat Pack personality; a parody of singer Bobby Darin and his iconic 1959 big-band rendition of the song "Mack the Knife". His sawlike nose is used like a sword in helping Cecil defeat Dishonest John in the episode "Hero by Trade".
- Little Ace From Outer Space - An astronaut mouse. In his self-titled episode, he was used by the people at Cape Banana Peel to see "whither or whether there was any weather." Cecil and Dishonest John competed to get Little Ace back to Cape Banana Peel. In "Rat Race From Space," he was sent in a rocket to be the first mouse on the moon only to end up in the ocean. Voiced by Paul Frees.
- Tearalong the Dotted Lion - A muscle-bound lion obsessed with exercise and vitamins, a possible parody of fitness guru Jack La Lanne, who had a popular TV exercise show around the same time as Beany and Cecil. His name is a pun of the phrase "Tear along the dotted line", but Tearalong himself wasn't spotted. He spoke with a Southern U.S. accent similar to the Warner Bros. animated character Foghorn Leghorn. One of the original characters on the Time for Beany puppet show.
- Careless the Mexican Hairless
- William Shakespeare Wolf
- Beepin' Tom - A diminutive alien who flew about in an open-top flying saucer. Named for his habit of making beeping sounds. When he spoke, he would hum the first line of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and then sing his phrase to the tune of the next line. A high pitched, sped up voice similar to the Chipmunks was used for the character and the words he sang/spoke appeared as a rebus in a word balloon over his head.
Music
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One episode ("Beanyland") featured Tchaikovsky's instantly recognizable celesta piece, Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy, from The Nutcracker. Other famed pieces of the Nutcracker were used in the series as musical interludes such as the Chinese Dance and Dance of the Reed-Flutes. Many other well-known classical music pieces were featured in the show as well, including The William Tell Overture (in the episodes "Beanyland" and "The Phantom of the Horse Opera"), Ride of the Valkyries and Flight of the Bumblebee. Some of the background music was also recycled from Leave it to Beaver and some early Walter Lantz cartoons.
Influence
The AC/DC song "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" is titled after the business cards of character Dishonest John, which read "Dirty deeds done dirt cheap. Holidays, Sundays and special rates."
The puppet origins and the form of Cecil inspired the famous science fiction author Larry Niven to invent an important extraterrestrial race called Pierson's Puppeteer within his Known Space series of novels and short stories.[3] Beany and Cecil was also an inspiration for Joel Hodgson to create the show Mystery Science Theater 3000.[4]
The artists
- Executive Producer: A.C.R. Stone
- Producer: Robert Clampett
- Animation Directors: Jack Hannah, Dick Kinney
- Story Material/Storyboards: Bob Clampett, Eddie Maxwell, Al Bertino, Jack Bonestell, Dale Hale
- Layout: Terrell Stapp, Willie Ito, Tony Sgroi, Homer Jonas
- Master Animator: Art Scott
- Animators: Lou Appet, Harry "Bud" Hester, Bill Nunes, Al Stetter, Frank Gonzales, Bill Southwood, Carl A. Bell
- Backgrounds: Curtiss Perkins, Robert Abrams, Marie Reed
- Music Underscore: Bob Clampett, Sody Clampett, Hoyt Curtin, Jack Roberts
- Music Published by Merrifield Music Co., Inc. (ASCAP)
- Production Assistants: Dick Elliott, John Soh, Jeanne Thorpe, Mike Sweeten
- Voice Talents of Jim MacGeorge, Irv Shoemaker, Walker Edmiston
- A Bob Clampett Production, in association with Television Artists and Producers Corporation
The credits of the show did not show traditional job titles, but pictorial icons indicating their jobs. Bob Clampett's writing credit was indicated by a typewriter typing out the words "...by Bob Clampett", for instance.
References
- ^ Beany and Cecil at IMDb
- ^ Beany and Cecil at IMDb
- ^ As originally stated in "The Soft Weapon" and repeated in other Known Space works.
- ^
""20 Questions Only Joel Hodgson Can Answer about MST3K"". Special Feature. Satellite News. January, 1999. Retrieved 2007-03-12.
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