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| Crusader Rabbit and his sidekick, Ragland T. Tiger. |
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| The characters of The Frostbite Falls Revue: Rocky, Oski, Bullwinkle, Sylvester, Blackstone and Floral. |
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| The revised cast (from top left): Snidley Whiplash, Rocky, Bullwinkle, Mr. Peabody, Sherman, Horse, Nell, Dudley Do-Right, Boris Badenov, Natasha Fatale and Fractured Fairy Tales fairy. |
As Anderson was secure in his job
and had no interest in relocating from San Francisco to Los Angeles to work on
the show, he contributed some consultations in the early stages before bowing
out entirely; although he did write a few scripts for the show when it was
underway. Ward brought in writer Bill Scott to help him shape and mold the
concept into a salable pilot. They did facsimiles of the character voices they
wanted while crafting the pilot script, leading Ward to discover that Scott was
perfectly suited for voicing Bullwinkle and gave him the role. Filling out the
remainder of the cast was Paul Frees, June Foray and Bill Conrad. They recorded
the pilot, Rocky the Flying Squirrel, in 1958 and Ward established his
new studio: Jay
Ward Productions.
Key shopped the pilot around for
sponsors while forming a production company with former journalist Peter Piech,
called Producers
Associates for Television (PAT), to finance the production of the series.
That October, advertising agency Dancer Fitzgerald
Sample (DFS) presented the pilot to their biggest client, General Mills. Wanting something to
compete with rival Kellogg’s own
offerings from Hanna-Barbera,
they agreed to sponsor the series as long as it was aired in the late-afternoon
where kids would be likely to see it. This “cartoons are just for kids” mindset
would find Ward and his writing staff constantly at odds with DFS and General
Mills over the content of the show; namely jokes being too offensive
(particularly pokes at American history and the military), stereotypical
accents used for various characters, or the scripts being too sophisticated to
be understood by a younger audience.
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| The town of Frostbite Falls. |
Part of the appeal of the Rocky concept
for DFS was the promise from PAT of its budget per episode being remarkably
low. A big percentage of that would come from outsourcing the animation duties
to either Japan or Mexico. A deal to have the show animated in Japan fell apart
when it was discovered that the animation studio they were offered didn’t
exist, and that they were counting on the Rocky deal to finance its
creation. Instead, they turned to wealthy general contractor Gustavo Valdez in
Mexico, who desperately wanted to get into the animation business. He quickly
established Val-Mar
Productions. PAT became partners in the studio and convinced General Mills
that they could get a tax break by investing in the studio and that could also
use it for cheaply made animated commercials (many of which featured Rocky and
Bullwinkle pitching their products during the show’s broadcast).
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| Teaching the future spies of Pottsylvania their craft. |
Unfortunately, the animation skills
of the Mexican staff were comparatively primitive to anything coming out of the
United States at the time, and because of time and budget constraints they were
not given adequate training time. Episodes would frequently be turned in with animation
mistakes, poor character poses, film errors and more; necessitating reshoots to
meet Ward and Scott’s exacting standards of quality (or some facsimile thereof).
Various American animators were sent down to try and get the studio into shape
on a rotating basis; including Bill Hurtz, Pete Burness, Dun Roman, Rudy Zamora, Gerard Baldwin
and Jim Hiltz,
among others. Ward, who originally wanted to handle production in Hollywood,
was able to have the storyboards and several segments done there in order to
speed up the process. Within a year, Val-Mar was able to shake off its rocky
start and produce decent work. That first year also led to a name change: Gamma Productions.
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| Rocky and His Friends ad. |
After two delays because of the
animation difficulties, Rocky and His Friends finally debuted on ABC on November 19, 1959; airing twice a week on
Tuesday and Thursday afternoons following American
Bandstand. Along with Scott and Anderson, the series was written
by Chris
Jenkyns, George
Atkins, Chris
Hayward, Lloyd
Turner, Allan
Burns and Jim
Critchfield. The original theme was composed by Frank Comstock.
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| Fearless Leader REALLY doesn't like failure. |
At the core of the show were the
adventures of Rocket J. “Rocky” Squirrel (Foray) and the good-natured but
dim-witted Bullwinkle J. Moose (Scott), residents of Frostbite Falls,
Minnesota. The pair often found themselves at odds with the villainous spies Boris
Badenov (a pun on Boris
Godunov, voiced by Frees), a master of disguise, and Natasha Fatale (a pun
on “femme fatale”, voiced by Foray). They hailed from the fictional nation of
Pottsylvania where they were under the command of the dictator known only as
Fearless Leader (Scott). The designs for Boris and Natasha were inspired by
Gomez and Morticia Addams from The
Addams Family comic strip, while Boris’ temper and accent were
inspired by Akim Tamiroff
and his role in The
Great McGinty. Conrad served as the narrator, with characters
often breaking the fourth wall to interact with him or recognizing that they
were in a show in general. Other characters included moon men Cloyd (Frees) and
Gidney (Scott), whose names were based on the most boring ones in Ward’s mind,
“Sindey” and “Floyd”, and incompetent sailor Captain Peter “Wrongway” Peachfuzz
(named for producer Piech and voiced by Frees, who initially had him sound like
a parrot but later adopted a voice modeled after Ed Wynn).
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| Bullwinkle and Rocky with Captain Peachfuzz. |
Rocky and Bullwinkle was
played like chapters in a continuing cliffhanger serial, which would comprise a
longer story arc. Two of those arcs were present in the first season, seven in
season two, four in season three, five in season four, and ten in season five
(the sponsors asked for shorter arcs to make the show easier to present in
reruns). Taking a cue from The
Adventures of Sam Spade radio shows, Conrad would often announce
the next episode’s title in a “this” or “that” format; such as “Bullwinkle’s
Ride, or Goodbye, Dollink”. The only episodes not to feature this titling
format are the first chapter of the overreaching arc. Each arc ended with Rocky
and Bullwinkle riding off into the sunset with Conrad urging viewers to “tune
in next time” for the next set of adventures; as a result, the first episode of
each story arc was usually given the title of that arc. Because the titles
typically referred to the characters’ predicament at the end of a segment
rather than anything that happened in the next chapter, some have come to
regard them as simply the segment’s final gag rather than the actual episode
title. The titles were never seen on screen until the series entered syndicated
reruns, which saw the addition of title cards.
Peabody’s Improbable History centered
on a genius talking dog named Mr. Peabody (Scott, who named the character after
his dog) and his pet boy, Sherman (named after UPA director Sherman Glas, voiced by Walter
Tetley). The pair would often use Peabody’s WABAC machine (pronounced
“wayback”, a spoof of early computer names like UNIVAC) to travel back in time
and discover the real story behind historical events. Sometimes it was
necessary for them to push things along so that events would play out as they
had been recorded. The concept was created by Key’s brother Ted, who
noticed how cats seemed to run their households (as any cat owner can tell
you). Ward and Scott added in the time travel element. Each segment would end
with some of the most intentionally cringe-inducing puns ever committed to film
(often, scripts would start with the pun and work backwards).
Bullwinkle’s Corner was a
segment starring Bullwinkle alone attempting to introduce “culture” into the
program. He did so by reading and acting out poems, such as Edgar Allan Poe’s
“The Raven”,
and nursery rhymes, such as Mother Goose’s Little
Miss Muffet; often humorously butchering them in the process. At the
behest of DFS, this segment was replaced by the shorter Mr. Know-It-All, where
he was presented as an authority on a variety of topics and usually foiled by
Boris in multiple roles. These, in turn, were also replaced by a series of shorts
promoting their fan club.
Two segments dedicated to
presenting altered, updated and humorous version of classic children’s tales
was Fractured Fairy Tales and Aesop & Son. Fractured, narrated
by Edward Everett Horton, often took well-known fairy tales and turned them on
their head; such as their take on Sleeping Beauty
saw the prince, rendered in a caricature of Walt Disney (a
favorite target of the Ward and company), building a theme park around Beauty
instead of waking her up. Fractured was inspired by a spoken-word album
Daws Butler and Stan Freberg
did together, “Little
Blue Riding Hood”, which presented the classic story as a spoof of cop show
Dragnet. DFS
felt this segment wasn’t popular and wanted it replaced by Aesop. Aesop
had the titular Aesop (Charlie Ruggles, uncredited) reading a fable to his
son (Butler, uncredited due to working on shows by the sponsor’s competition)
to teach hm a lesson, and his son often subverting the moral with a pun. It
turned out that DFS’ estimation was wrong and Fractured was one of the
more popular aspects of the show, resulting in its being reinstated after all
of the Aesop shorts had been exhausted.
Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties was
a remnant of the original pitch that led to the creation of Crusader, known
as The Comic Strips of Television. Done as a parody of early 20th
century melodrama and silent film serials, particularly The Perils of Pauline,
the segment followed the adventures of the hapless Canadian Mountie, Dudley
(Scott, doing a combined imitation of Nelson Eddy and Olympic swimmer
Johnny Weissmuller),
as he attempted to constantly foil the villainous schemes of his rival, Snidely
Whiplash (Hans Conried). Snidely’s design was inspired by those same films,
having him sport the traditional black top hat, cape and handlebar mustache typical
of their villains. The usual damsel-in-distress, and the object of Dudley’s
affection, was Nell Fenwick (Foray), the daughter of his boss, the
long-suffering Inspector Fenwick (Frees, impersonating Eric Blore). However, Nell
often disregarded Dudley in favor of his horse, aptly named Horse, who was truly
the active hero of the stories. Any success on Dudley’s part was by pure luck.
To further the parody, the Dudley Do-Right segments featured a piano
background music track, making it one of the few Ward cartoons to utilize music
in that way, and has character (and sometimes location) “actor” credits as the
silent films would with silly names or subtle puns. Frees served as the
narrator for the segment, except for several times where Conrad performed the
duty. One episode of Dudley, “Stokey the Bear”, was only aired once as
its lampooning of Smokey the
Bear had the Forest Service
threatening Ward with jail. The negatives for that episode were reportedly
destroyed at the behest of the sponsor.
Despite Rocky and Friends becoming
the #1 daytime show for ABC, the network only begrudgingly took it at the request
of General Mills. They never really put any promotion behind it, and Ward had
taken note that primetime animation seemed to be on the rise. After
negotiations between the studio, the sponsors, and Ward’s sales agents,
Neufeld, Rosen and Bash, the more prestigious NBC acquired the rights to air a Rocky
spin-off called The Bullwinkle Show, giving top-billing to
Bullwinkle (the name may have changed, but it was basically the same
program). The show had been produced in color from the outset, but it
was only finally broadcast in it with the network change. The move also granted
Ward and Scott the leeway to produce the kind of adult-geared humor they wanted
to without obstruction. Beginning that August, Ward and Scott launched a series
of marketing pushes to get people aware of the show and to get opinion makers
interested.
Along with a new opening title
sequence and music by Fred
Steiner (at the behest of General Mills, as well as Ward’s desire to retain
publishing rights), Scott would operate and voice a live-action Bullwinkle
puppet at the beginning and end of each episode (the closest Ward ever came to
producing a puppet show, which he had tried to in vain throughout Rocky and
Bullwinkle’s production). Unlike the cartoon version, the puppet was snarkier
and often lampooned celebrities, current events and the network. The
notoriously conservative NBC hated the puppet sequence, and the final straw
came after one gag went too far. NBC claimed that they received complaints that
an estimated 20,000 children had followed Bullwinkle’s instructions to rip the knobs off of
their television sets so that they could catch the following week’s show. The
next week, the puppet “apologized” by telling the kids to glue the knobs back
on—and to make sure they were stuck onto the channel. When Ward followed it up
with a press release saying NBC should give them a commendation for the ratings
they would get while parents were waiting on TV repairmen, the network dropped
the axe and the puppet segment was ended. However, the puppet was later re-used
in a segment called “Dear
Bullwinkle” where he would humorously answer fan mail.
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| The WABAC Machine. |
Bullwinkle’s ratings
suffered as it went up against CBS’ Lassie. DFS
and General Mills were annoyed that NBC put it at 7:00 instead of the agreed
upon 5:30, and started considering a potential move to CBS. This caused NBC to move
the program to up to 5:30 the following season, and then to Saturday mornings
for the final season. Ward and crew continued their intensive marketing for the
show throughout its run; featuring a variety of stunts such as massive
lunch-ins, getting a Bullwinkle
balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving
Day Parade, and commemorating a statue
of Rocky and Bullwinkle outside of their studio (a parody of a showgirl statue
across the street advertising the Sahara
Hotel in Las Vegas). NBC cancelled the program in 1964. The producers
attempted to return to ABC for another season, but the network wasn’t
interested. They did air reruns of the show on their Sunday morning schedule
until 1973 when the series entered syndication.
The show was included in numerous
rerun packages under different names. A 15-minute version titled The Rocky
Show aired alone or combined with an equally truncated version of Total Television’s King
Leonardo and His Short Subjects called The King and Odie.
Both programs were sponsored by General Mills and animated at Gamma. The
syndicated version of The Bullwinkle Show comprised the story arcs from
the first two seasons with the accompanying segments aired out of their
original broadcast sequence, while the package that included later arcs
repeated those segments. Reruns were also paired up with additional Total
Television productions, with The World of Commander McBragg from Tennessee
Tuxedo being added to the mix as a segment, while the supplemental segments
were incorporated into reruns of Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales. Ward’s
next production, Hoppity Hooper, also made use of these segments. Other
syndicated packages were aired under the titles The Rocky and Bullwinkle
Show or The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (sometimes with the
names reversed), The
Dudley Do-Right Show and Dudley Do-Right and
Friends. In 1992, restored prints of the show aired on Nickelodeon’s Nick
at Nite and Nickle-O-Zone
programming blocks under the title Moose-a-Rama, and
on Cartoon Network beginning in
1996. It later briefly went to Cartoon Network’s sister channel, Boomerang,
in 2011.
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| Dudley reporting to Inspector Fenwick. |
The series first came to home media
in the early 1980s when RCA
released two compilation CED
Videodiscs during the rise in the
format. They contained complete, uncut story arcs with alternating segments
and bumpers. Buena
Vista Home Video released episodes of the show across 12 volumes on VHS,
Betamax and LaserDisc in the early 1990s. Rocky and Bullwinkle chapters
were sometimes edited together into a single episode with the titles for the
next entry removed, and removing several chapters from the overall story. In
the years following these releases, a number of gray market
unofficial VHS collections saw release. In 2002, Jay Ward Productions entered
into a partnership with Classic Media (now DreamWorks Classics) called Bullwinkle
Studios. They released the first
3 seasons onto DVD through Sony
Wonder as Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends for legal reasons. In
2005, Classic Media released “best of” compilations grouped
by characters. It took until 2010 for season
4 to be released. In 2011, they released the complete
series, which included season 5 for the first time. Season
5 was also released in its own volume. All of these later releases were by Vivendi Entertainment.
The episodes were altered from their original broadcast to feature the new
title, a William Conrad sound-alike to announce it, segments moved around from
their original airing order, different opening sequences and Comstock’s music
was replaced with Steiner’s. When the show was made available for
streaming on Hulu, the DVD versions were
used rather than the syndication prints. In 2012, Classic also released The
Complete Fractured Fairy Tales which contained all of the Fractured
segments. The season sets were re-released in 2018 by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment along
with Mr.
Peabody & Sherman WABAC Adventures. The complete
series was re-released in 2019 to celebrate the show’s 60th
anniversary, as well as Mr.
Peabody & Sherman: The Complete Collection.
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| Rocky, Bullwinkle and Fearless Leader Funko Pops. |
Rocky and Bullwinkle was
heavily merchandised over the years, with toys, stuffed
animals, clothing,
and other items. In 1971, Ward opened Dudley Do-Right’s Emporium
on Sunset Boulevard a right next door to the studio, which sold this
merchandise and other souvenirs until its closure in 2005. For a time, there
was even a chain of Bullwinkle-themed
restaurants and a stage
show at Universal
Studios Orlando. From 1962-65, Bell Syndicate ran a daily
newspaper comic strip titled Bullwinkle. The series has been adapted
into comic book form by several different companies: Dell Comics in four
issues of Four Color from 1961-62 and an ongoing series until 1980; Charlton Comics from 1970-71; Whitman from 1972-80; Marvel Comics from 1987-89 and 1992; Blackthorne 3-D
specials in 1987 and 1988; IDW Publishing in 2014; and American Mythology in 2017 and 2019. Golden Records released
a record, Rocky
the Flying Squirrel & His Friends, in 1961 featuring the
voice actors performing various songs. Three of them were later collected on
the 1972 compilation Cartoon
Favorites (titled Music and Stories from Original Hit T.V.
and Movie Cartoons on the sleeve). Golden also released a single under the
title Rocky
and His Friends.
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| Sega Genesis game box. |
In 1993, THQ released The Adventures of Rocky
and Bullwinkle and Friends for the various Nintendo systems, while Absolute
Entertainment released a
version for the Sega
Genesis. That same year, Data
East released a pinball
machine based on the show. In 1998, the computer trivia game Rocky & Bullwinkle’s
Know-It-All Quiz Game was released by Media Station, Inc.
Ten years later, Zen Studios released Rocky and Bullwinkle
and a virtual pinball
table as downloadable games for Xbox Live Arcade.
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| Rocky and Bullwinkle with Natasha, Boris and Fealress Leader in the "real world". |
Because of the enduring appeal of
the show, it had been adapted multiple times into other media. Boris and Natasha: The
Movie was a 1992 live-action movie from Management
Company Entertainment Group centered on the two spies played by Dave Thomas and Sally Kellerman, with a cameo
appearance by Foray. The film was originally intended for a theatrical release,
but instead became a Showtime original. A Dudley Do-Right
film from Universal Pictures
followed in 1999, starring Brendan
Fraser (who also starred in George of the Jungle
two years prior), Sarah
Jessica Parker and Alfred
Molina in the lead roles. A newly-created Fractured Fairy Tale short
accompanied the film. Dudley was a
critical and commercial flop; making only $10 million against its $70 million
budget. Universal tried again the following year with The Adventures of Rocky
and Bullwinkle, starring the moose and squirrel as computer
animated characters created by Industrial Light
& Magic. Foray returned to voice Rocky and the animated Natasha, while Keith Scott (no relation to Bill) voiced
Bullwinkle and the animated Fearless Leader and Boris (and also penned the Jay
Ward Productions retrospective book The
Moose That Roared). The live Boris was played by Jason Alexander, Natasha by Rene Russo, and Fearless Leader
by Robert De Niro. It was
also a critical and commercial bomb, earning just $35.1 million against a
budget of $76 million. It would take 14 years for the next film based on the
franchise to hit theaters: Mr.
Peabody & Sherman. It was a computer-animated film starring Ty Burrell and Max Charles as the title
characters. Despite earning $275.7 million, the film underperformed at the box
office and DreamWorks Animation
reported a $57 million loss. A Rocky and Bullwinkle animated short
starring Foray and Tom Kenny
was made to appear in front of the Mr. Peabody film, but was held over
for the 3D
Blu-ray release instead.
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| Bullwinkle was almost a football star. |
With the show running strong in
reruns, consideration was given several times to a revival of some kind. Ward
and Scott considered doing a holiday special that could be aired every year,
but instead of a major holiday it would be a made-up one like President Millard
Fillmore’s birthday or an April IRS Day.
They settled on a parody of the Super
Bowl called The Stupor Bowl, written by Scott and developed by
Anderson. Pre-production work was completed and ABC gave it a green light, but
objections from the NFL because of the comedic
depiction of actual team owners led to it being cancelled. Another revival, The
New Bullwinkle Show, would be a one-hour series that featured a blend of
classic material with characters from Ward’s unsold pilots. At one point,
legendary animator Friz Freleng
was attached to produce with production being done at DePatie-Freleng
Productions. However, it never got off the ground. Tad Stones and Michael Peraza Jr. pitched The Secret
Adventures of Bullwinkle to Disney, who was distributing the show on VHS,
which would see the return of most of the classic segments with the addition of
Fractured Scary Tales as a parody on horror films. Unfortunately,
Disney didn’t have the rights to the show beyond home video and the idea was
abandoned. Ultimately, the first new Bullwinkle content on broadcast television
would come in the form of commercials for Hershey, Taco Bell, and
Bullwinkle’s own vitamin
drink, among others. Comedian Dave
Coulier also did his part keeping Bullwinkle in the public consciousness by
doing frequent impersonations of him on the sitcom Full House and
in his stand-up routine.
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| Promo image for Amazon's Rocky and Bullwinkle revival. |
It wasn’t be until the age of
streaming that the Rocky and Bullwinkle franchise would see new
programs. The Mr. Peabody movie led to a spin-off television
series, The Mr.
Peabody & Sherman Show, which was a co-production of DreamWorks and
Jay Ward Productions. It featured digital hand-drawn animation by DHX Media
(now WildBrain) and aired on Netflix for four seasons between 2015 and
2017; airing only 52 of the ordered 78 episodes. Charles reprised his role as
Sherman from the film, while Chris Parnell
took over as Mr. Peabody. Finally, a proper revival of the franchise came in
2018, again from DreamWorks and DHX Media but this time airing on Amazon Prime Video.
The Adventures of
Rocky and Bullwinkle abandoned the traditional variety show
format to instead just focus on Rocky (Tara
Strong) and Bullwinkle (Brad
Norman) going against Boris (Ben
Diskin), Natasha (Rachel Butera)
and Fearless Leader (Piotr Michael).
To emulate the earlier series, each half-hour episode was broken up into
multiple chapters. It only ran a single season of 26 episodes.
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