Following the last post, which celebrated the birthday of Bill Scott and the amazing work of Jay Ward Productions (Rocky & Bullwinkle, Fractured Fairy Tales), am wondering if there were any animated TV series, even one, that proved fundamentally satiric in tone in the same sense as the Jay Ward Productions shows.
Bob Clampett Productions’ Beany & Cecil was contemporaneous with the aforementioned Jay Ward TV series, but not necessarily satiric in approach, the creative use of genius monologuist/performer/vocalist Lord Buckley in the following cartoon notwithstanding.
Until a group of animated TV series that premiered in the late 1980's - the Ralph Bakshi produced Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures and The Simpsons, soon followed by King Of The Hill, The Critic - it’s tough to think of any highly satiric 1960's and 1970's TV-toons offhand other than those of Jay Ward Productions, except one. . . Pantomime Pictures’ Roger Ramjet, created by former UPA director Fred Crippen.
Gene Moss and Jim Thurman were the writers of the series. Paul Shively wrote the lyrics for the show's theme song.
The show featured a very talented cast and crew.
- Gary Owens – Roger Ramjet
- David Ketchum - Narrator
- Bob Arbogast – General G. I. Brassbottom, Ma Ramjet, additional voices
- Dick Beals – Yank and Dan of the American Eagles
- Gene Moss – Doodle of the American Eagles, Noodles Romanoff
- Joan Gerber – Dee of the American Eagles, Lotta Love, Jacqueline Hyde
- Paul Shively – Lance Crossfire, Red Dog the Pirate
- Jim Thurman - additional voices
- Ken Snyder – additional voices
The last time Roger Ramjet received a TV run was on Cartoon Network in the latter 1990's.
Both silly and satiric, this series, starring a nincompoop superhero much funnier than live-action TV's Mr. Terrific and Captain Nice, clearly regards treating the "we have no budget for animation, NONE, so let's write incredibly witty scripts in mass quantities and get a crew of very talented comic actors to put 'em over" reality as a mission - and remains one of our favorites at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog.
Thinking of Roger Ramjet brings to mind the topic of today's post, Gene Moss and Jim Thurman, the two excellent comedians and voice-over actors who wrote many episodes of the series, and, along with fellow voice artists Gary Owens, Joan Gerber, Dick Beals and Bob Arbogast, got big laughs.
Typically, the usual gang of idiots at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog start posts by asking if anyone has penned books, articles or blog posts on today's topic. Comics artist and writer/director Mark Evanier wrote two very good articles about Thurman and Moss, Roger and Me and Gene Moss and Shrimpenstein, on his News From Me website.
Along with Mr. Evanier, rating high among the usual suspects regarding who has authored pieces on topics we like very much would be Don M. Yowp, Devon Baxter, Steve Stanchfield and especially WFMU's Beware Of The Blog.
WFMU, consistently a source of rather amazing material on many topics way back in the oughts, not at all surprisingly, posted the comprehensive Spooky and Kooky: The Career of Gene Moss. Even less surprisingly, the author of the piece is Kliph Nesteroff, chronicler of American standup comedy, mid-20th century pop culture (including roadside hotels) and Canadian culture par excellence.
From Kliph's article, we see that Gene Moss, among numerous showbiz accomplishments, was responsible for the very entertaining DRACULA’S GREATEST HITS album.
Asking what Moss and Thurman did after 156 episodes of Roger Ramjet and Dracula’s Greatest Hits brings us to The Shrimpenstein Show (1967) an extremely funny and original piece of kidvid produced for KHJ-TV (channel 9 Los Angeles), featuring Gene Moss as Dr. Rudolph Von Schtick and Jim Thurman as Shrimpenstein. The puppet was designed by the legendary Wah Chang. There was even a record, Dr. Von Schtick and The Tijuana Bats, associated with the show.
Produced by Michael Dormer and Lee Teacher, the series, in the Jay Ward Productions and Pantomime Pictures tradition, is designed as much to make the cast and grownups laugh as their kids. Don’t know how long The Shrimpenstein Show was on the air in 1967-1968, but it definitely and emphatically bears the signature of the guys who wrote the Roger Ramjet cartoons. Here is one of the few complete episodes we found posted on YouTube, Daily Motion, Archive.org, Vimeo, etc.
Jim Thurman subsequently worked for many years for Sesame Street and the Children's Television Workshop. Producers of Sesame Street for PBS worked within those rules estabished by Action On Children's Television as best as possible, as did the Schoolhouse Rock series. Thurman and Moss contributed to one of the Children's Television Workshop's very best series, Square One Television, which taught basic math concepts a la Schoolhouse Rock. While generally going more with more sketches than animated cartoons, Square One TV did feature an animated segment that the Roger Ramjet crew - everyone from director Fred Crippen to many of the show's voice artists - worked on. That would be Dirk Niblick of the Math Brigade!
For more, read Amid Amidi's Remembering Fred Crippen: The Iconoclast Creator Of ‘Roger Ramjet’ Dies At 90 from Cartoon Brew, Gary Owens’ “Roger Ramjet” (1966) on Record by Cartoon Research correspondent Greg Ehrbar and Jim Knepfel's piece, Roger Ramjet Was A Subversive Cartoon Classic. And, by all means peruse the following You Tube playlist, Remembering Jim Thurman, which features quite a few highlights from his lengthy career.
Closing today's post: the question of whether there were any precedents to The Shrimpenstein! Show. The only one I can think of is Ernie Kovacs’ The Kapusta Kid in Outer Space. This Kovacs kidvid adventure aired on his NBC show on December 19, 1955. Wonder if Gene and Jim knew Ernie; they were on a similar wave length.
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