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"The Frantic Ferret Show", Episode One Script
In the mid-1950s, Paramount looked to save its floundering investment in DuMont Laboratories and the DuMont Television Network, the more so since it had lost Jackie Gleason to CBS in 1952, and its rights to the NFL had been lost to NBC and ABC in 1955. In a bold move, Paramount decided to bet heavily on animation, utilizing the long experience of its staff at Famous Studios, augmented by a bold raid in early 1955.
The raid was on MGM, which was in the process of dismantling its long-successful animation operations, a move that would soon leave Bill Hanna and Joseph Barbera without a job. Paramount negotiated a deal with MGM where Hanna and Barbera's contracts were purchased.
At the same time as the West Coast operation was being built up, to complement Famous' East Coast operations, Paramount decided to retain its library of short subjects, and turned around and purchased the short subject library of Warner Bros., including the pre-1948 holdings of cartoons. In a further bold move, and under the nose of CBS, Paramount bought out the Terrytoons studio in New Rochelle, New York, adding a third studio's library and production line, along with a number of characters.
Paramount then built out the operations of the new H-B Enterprises by both shifting some personnel from Famous and Terrytoons, and by conducting further raids on other studios. Most notably, H-B Enterprises was able to lure away writers Warren Foster and Michael Maltese from Warner Bros. Cartoons.
The first project H-B Enterprises produced, on a somewhat crash basis for a fall, 1956 premiere, was the child-oriented "Ruff and Reddy," which proved to be popular in its afternoon slot. This prompted the full-scale development for what would become "The Yogi Bear Show" and "The Huckleberry Hound Show," which debuted in the fall of 1957. Along with "The Cartoon Carnival," which combined Popeye, Betty Boop, Mighty Mouse, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny, this allowed the owned-and-operated DuMont stations to take the lead in afternoon programming, and allowed for lucrative syndication of "Carnival," which brought in badly needed money to DuMont. (It directly led to the network being able to finance its nightly newscast, "Paramount Television News," which quickly began to challenge NBC's new pairing of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley.)
Flush with this success, Hanna and Barbera proposed to Paramount and DuMont that something new be tried: an animated, half-hour situation comedy, but in prime time, and pitched slightly more toward adults. This, apparently, was the idea of Foster and Maltese, who thought the show could catch the public's eye, and differentiate DuMont's offerings.
And so, with a planned fall 1958 debut, "Frantic Ferret, Family and Friends" (or "4F" as it was jokingly called in the media) began its production, with work split among Hollywood, New Rochelle and Manhattan. To a certain extent, Foster and Maltese took their cue from Frank Tashlin's film "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" and set the show in a mixture of Manhattan skyscrapers and suburban Connecticut homes, with Frantic Ferret attempting to balance his shaky career at the Maskonsett Syrup & Fondant Company with his equally shaky home life with his mate and two kits, with the "help" of a slightly shady "friend," who works for a rival firm.
To do the voice work, H-B hired a number of veterans. The most difficult job was to persuade Warner Bros. to amend Mel Blanc's exclusive contract, the negotiations for which were expensive and protracted, but it was felt by all involved that Blanc's distinctive voice was needed for a secondary, but crucial, role. The final cast was as follows:
Frantic: George O'Hanlon
Gertude: Penny Singleton
Julie: Janet Waldo
Buster: Daws Butler
Dinkley: Mel Blanc
Kelly: Jean Vander Pyl
In a blaze of publicity, the show debuted, on time, in September, 1958. The distinctive jazz-influenced theme music, "5:39 from Grand Central," was specially composed by Raymond Scott, the only time he would actually create music directly for animation.
While the show was not the breakout hit that Paramount, H-B and DuMont had hoped for, the ratings were strong enough to convince Studebaker-Packard Corporation to renew its sponsorship for a second season. This also convinced the parties involved that the concept of animated prime-time series was sound, and "The Flagstones" was put into production for a September, 1960 debut.
That show would debut, but for ABC, not DuMont. In the early spring of 1960, that network suddenly collapsed, when a major scandal emerged regarding DuMont's game shows in prime time. The shows were shown to have been fixed, and the resulting fallout crippled the ability of DuMont to make deals; it also led directly to the resignation of a number of top officials at Paramount, and led to FCC investigations that seriously threatened the status of the owned-and-operated stations (which, in the event, survived to become Metromedia Corporation after Paramount and DuMont sold their stations in 1962).
Legend has it that, in a fit of pique, Paramount caused every bit of surviving material from the DuMont Television Network to be dumped into the waters of New York Bay, thus making any broadcasts from that network rare, indeed. This included, unfortunately, the master copies and nearly all of the production material for "Frantic Ferret," which, uniquely, had been stored in New York and not at H-B's facilities. This event prompted Hanna and Barbera to demand that Paramount sell out their cartoon holdings, and in 1962, in the same week as "The Jetsons" debuted on ABC, H-B Enterprises was listed on the American Stock Exchange, having been spun off by Paramount. H-B, of course, would go on to dominate Saturday morning cartoons well into the 1980s, before it was purchased, ironically enough, by Ted Turner's revivified Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corporation.
As for "Frantic Ferret," only fragmentary material survives, including this first episode script and a publicity drawing, showing the cast of the show. Only one of the fifty-six produced episodes has surfaced; apparently, it was given by then-Vice President Richard Nixon to General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev during the former's visit to Russia in 1959, with an eye toward a possible broadcast on Soviet state television. However odd this gesture might have been, it did ensure that at least one episode survived. - E.O. Costello
Created by
EOCostello and 
tegerio, with input from 
Walt46 and 
steamfox.
The raid was on MGM, which was in the process of dismantling its long-successful animation operations, a move that would soon leave Bill Hanna and Joseph Barbera without a job. Paramount negotiated a deal with MGM where Hanna and Barbera's contracts were purchased.
At the same time as the West Coast operation was being built up, to complement Famous' East Coast operations, Paramount decided to retain its library of short subjects, and turned around and purchased the short subject library of Warner Bros., including the pre-1948 holdings of cartoons. In a further bold move, and under the nose of CBS, Paramount bought out the Terrytoons studio in New Rochelle, New York, adding a third studio's library and production line, along with a number of characters.
Paramount then built out the operations of the new H-B Enterprises by both shifting some personnel from Famous and Terrytoons, and by conducting further raids on other studios. Most notably, H-B Enterprises was able to lure away writers Warren Foster and Michael Maltese from Warner Bros. Cartoons.
The first project H-B Enterprises produced, on a somewhat crash basis for a fall, 1956 premiere, was the child-oriented "Ruff and Reddy," which proved to be popular in its afternoon slot. This prompted the full-scale development for what would become "The Yogi Bear Show" and "The Huckleberry Hound Show," which debuted in the fall of 1957. Along with "The Cartoon Carnival," which combined Popeye, Betty Boop, Mighty Mouse, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny, this allowed the owned-and-operated DuMont stations to take the lead in afternoon programming, and allowed for lucrative syndication of "Carnival," which brought in badly needed money to DuMont. (It directly led to the network being able to finance its nightly newscast, "Paramount Television News," which quickly began to challenge NBC's new pairing of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley.)
Flush with this success, Hanna and Barbera proposed to Paramount and DuMont that something new be tried: an animated, half-hour situation comedy, but in prime time, and pitched slightly more toward adults. This, apparently, was the idea of Foster and Maltese, who thought the show could catch the public's eye, and differentiate DuMont's offerings.
And so, with a planned fall 1958 debut, "Frantic Ferret, Family and Friends" (or "4F" as it was jokingly called in the media) began its production, with work split among Hollywood, New Rochelle and Manhattan. To a certain extent, Foster and Maltese took their cue from Frank Tashlin's film "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" and set the show in a mixture of Manhattan skyscrapers and suburban Connecticut homes, with Frantic Ferret attempting to balance his shaky career at the Maskonsett Syrup & Fondant Company with his equally shaky home life with his mate and two kits, with the "help" of a slightly shady "friend," who works for a rival firm.
To do the voice work, H-B hired a number of veterans. The most difficult job was to persuade Warner Bros. to amend Mel Blanc's exclusive contract, the negotiations for which were expensive and protracted, but it was felt by all involved that Blanc's distinctive voice was needed for a secondary, but crucial, role. The final cast was as follows:
Frantic: George O'Hanlon
Gertude: Penny Singleton
Julie: Janet Waldo
Buster: Daws Butler
Dinkley: Mel Blanc
Kelly: Jean Vander Pyl
In a blaze of publicity, the show debuted, on time, in September, 1958. The distinctive jazz-influenced theme music, "5:39 from Grand Central," was specially composed by Raymond Scott, the only time he would actually create music directly for animation.
While the show was not the breakout hit that Paramount, H-B and DuMont had hoped for, the ratings were strong enough to convince Studebaker-Packard Corporation to renew its sponsorship for a second season. This also convinced the parties involved that the concept of animated prime-time series was sound, and "The Flagstones" was put into production for a September, 1960 debut.
That show would debut, but for ABC, not DuMont. In the early spring of 1960, that network suddenly collapsed, when a major scandal emerged regarding DuMont's game shows in prime time. The shows were shown to have been fixed, and the resulting fallout crippled the ability of DuMont to make deals; it also led directly to the resignation of a number of top officials at Paramount, and led to FCC investigations that seriously threatened the status of the owned-and-operated stations (which, in the event, survived to become Metromedia Corporation after Paramount and DuMont sold their stations in 1962).
Legend has it that, in a fit of pique, Paramount caused every bit of surviving material from the DuMont Television Network to be dumped into the waters of New York Bay, thus making any broadcasts from that network rare, indeed. This included, unfortunately, the master copies and nearly all of the production material for "Frantic Ferret," which, uniquely, had been stored in New York and not at H-B's facilities. This event prompted Hanna and Barbera to demand that Paramount sell out their cartoon holdings, and in 1962, in the same week as "The Jetsons" debuted on ABC, H-B Enterprises was listed on the American Stock Exchange, having been spun off by Paramount. H-B, of course, would go on to dominate Saturday morning cartoons well into the 1980s, before it was purchased, ironically enough, by Ted Turner's revivified Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corporation.
As for "Frantic Ferret," only fragmentary material survives, including this first episode script and a publicity drawing, showing the cast of the show. Only one of the fifty-six produced episodes has surfaced; apparently, it was given by then-Vice President Richard Nixon to General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev during the former's visit to Russia in 1959, with an eye toward a possible broadcast on Soviet state television. However odd this gesture might have been, it did ensure that at least one episode survived. - E.O. Costello
Created by
EOCostello and 
tegerio, with input from 
Walt46 and 
steamfox.
Category Story / General Furry Art
Species Ferret
Size 120 x 95px
File Size 30.2 kB
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