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| Cartoon Stars Re-Animated |
When people think of Hanna-Barbera animated sitcoms, most people thiunk of The Flintstones and The Jetsons. But there was another that came in between.
In 1961, one year after The Flintstones debuted, Hanna-Barbera debuted a prime time sitcom about a fast-talking, con artist alley cat and his loyal gang of underlings and cronies as they tried to employ their wits to make a fast buck or a quick meal. The show and main character were named Top Cat (also known as “T.C.” to his friends, provided it's said with dignity).
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| Top Cat with Logo |
Top Cat has two sources of inspiration. One is the East Side Kids film series, which was about a group of rascally kids in New York City (all played by fully grown adult comedians). The other is The Phil Silvers Show, commonly referred to as Sgt. Bilko. Sgt. Bilko is about the titular Sgt. Bilko who runs cons in the U.S. Army camp where he's stationed and tries to get the better of his superior officers. The connection to that show will prove to be more important later on.
The basic set-up of the show is as follows: Top Cat lives in a trash can in Hoagy's Alley in the 13th precinct of New York City. He's joined there by his gang of alley cats. There's the quick-thinking and wise-cracking Choo Choo, dimwitted but loyal Brain, slang-spouting Spook, smooth-talking ladies' man Fancy Fancy, and the child-like and naive Benny the Ball. Rounding out the cast is Officer Charlie Dibble, the police officer on the beat. Dibble and Top Cat are often at odds but not really enemies. Dibble often threatens to bring in Top Cat for his numerous offenses, the most common of which seems to be using the police-only phone that's stationed in the alley. But really he'd rather see the gang straighten up and fly right. Top Cat seems to like Dibble enough as a person but isn't about to let him get in the way of their latest plan. Despite his constant scams, neither Top Cat or his gang are really bad people (er . . . cats), though Top Cat will often be the last to give in to his better angels if it means missing a payday (One of the best examples is an episode titled “T.C. minds the baby” in which the gang try to adopt an abandoned baby they find). In most episodes the gang tries to pull some sort of get-rich quick scam with the scam often going sideways because of some sort of sitcom shenanigans. These include misunderstandings, mistaken identities unforseen circumstances and any number of other things.
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| Top Cat and the gang |
In many ways, Top Cat was very much Joe Barbera's series, reflecting elements of his youth growing up in New York City. In his autobiography, Barbera says that he thought it was one of the most sophisticated series they made. Sometimes a bit too sophisticated. He reports that there was at least one time that his writers got so invested in writing witty dialogue that he had to remind them to actually remind them to write some visual gags into the script so there would actually be something cartoony in their cartoon. Beyond the writers, there was a great cast of voice talent. Top Cat himself was voiced by Arnold Stang, who started out the series doing such an on-point Phil Silvers impression that he got told to tone it down because, according t shows sponsor, they had paid for Stang not Silvers. There was also Marvin Kaplan as Choo Choo, John Stephenson as Fancy-Fancy, Leo De Lyon as both Spook and Brain, and Allen Jenkins as Officer Dibble. It's probably Maurice Gosfield as Benny the Ball that really stands out seeing as it's where the show really wears its inspirations on its sleeve. Gosfield had played the character of naive Pvt. Doberman on The Phil Silvers Show, and he basically just played the same character as a little purple cat when playing Benny on Top Cat. The music and score was also notable in Top Cat. The music was composed by Hoyt Curtin, who had already worked on The Flintstones. Top Cat was where Curtin really got to start playing around with jazz orchestration, though. As a composer for cartoons, Curtin is probably best known for his work on Jonny Quest, but his work on Top Cat was likely a necessary step to get up to that level.
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| Benny the Ball, voiced by Maurice Gosfield |
So, Top Cat was another one of those shows that when most Gen X and younger folks saw it, it would have been packaged with other Hanna-Barbera cartoons on kid-centric TV channels. So, what, if anything, earmarked Top Cat as being for adults in that era before The Simpsons was a thing. Well, the music was particularly well-orchestrated. The dialogue was rather snappy compared to other animated kids' stuff. But if I'm going to pick one thing that stands out, it might be . . . how much Top Cat and his gang were motivated by sex.
Okay, maybe that sounds bad. But hear me out.
While it is true that Top Cat and the gang were more motivated by money (another earmark of a more grown-up cartoon), the show made few bones about the fact that the gang was made up of fully grown male alley cats who had their eye out for female cats to woo. At least three episodes centered on plots that happened because one of the gang had fallen in love. In numerous more episodes, it would be worked in as a side detail. One episode about Top Cat thinking he had come into some money, or rather, had been extended unlimited credit, had him showing it off by driving around a couple of girl cats in a little car he had bought. Heck, one member of the crew, Fancy-Fancy, was directly characterized as a ladies' man. Whenever Top Cat called a meeting and they showed Fancy-Fancy rushing away from what he was doing to attend, he'd be shown chatting up some young tabby he had met. This colony of tomcats was, well, a colony of tomcats. Just with the implications left to the imagination (near as I can tell, there are no episodes where Top Cat or Fancy-Fancy meet their illegitimate kittens). This is very rare for Hanna-Barbera talking animal characters. Most of those characters, being more childlike in their characterization, have little interest in romance. There might be one episode where they get struck by cupid's arrow but that's it. Yogi Bear acted like a little boy who was just barely out of the “girls are icky” phase. Sure, he liked Cindy Bear, but he wasn't sure what to do about it and the minute Cindy started talking about some sort of romance Yogi would take to his heels and run away. Same goes for Snagglepuss and his female counterpart Lilah (Note: which likely led to people making jokes or having headcanons that these characters are gay. Something that I'm pretty sure wasn't intended by either Hanna or Barbera seeing as it was the early 60s, but public image develops in its own way as time passes).
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| One of the many "ladies" of the Top Cat series |
So, was Top Cat a big hit like The Flintstones was?
No. Not really. It lasted one season.
I think it kind of failed to find its audience. It was meant to be for a primetime audience that included adults. However, unlike The Flintstones which touched on the troubles of working suburban adults, Top Cat was about a bunch of talking animals pulling scams. Sure, there was the Phil Silvers inspiration, but The Phil Silvers Show was set on an army base and playing to an audience that included a fair share of former servicemen who had served in World War II or the Korean War and liked to see the top brass get fooled by Bilko. By contrast, Top Cat was about a bunch of talking animals who were trying to fool humans. It would be moved to Saturday mornings on NBC in 1965 and while a bit more popular there, wouldn't be a runaway hit. The prime audience for talking animals on Saturday mornings, children, probably didn't take to it because the plots and dialogue were a bit above their level (and the fact that they were written as a bunch of flirty tomcats as I noted above probably didn't mtter either way, even if it's something I noticed).
It did take off overseas, though. In the UK, the show became popular under the title Boss Cat. It was renamed because there was already a cat food brand named Top Cat in the UK. But it really took off in Latin America. There, it's called Don Gato y su Pandillo, which translates to “Don Gato and his Gang”. Top Cat is so popular in Mexico that he's as recognizable as a character like Homer Simpson. Top Cat is so popular and iconic there that two animated movies were made just for the Latin American audience. Top Cat: The Movie in 2011 and Top Cat Begins in 2015. Neither really did that well critically. But it does show that Top Cat struck a chord with Latin American audiences. Maybe they like the city setting. Maybe they like characters that get by using their wits. Either way, it works for them. Granted, the fact that it aired constantly on TV over there probably helped.
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| Top Cat the Movie with its Spanish title |
Beyond that, Top Cat mainly continues on in the form of cameos and parts of much larger ensembles. He was a sort of "handler" character in the show Yogi's Treasure Hunt, giving the characters their missions. There was also a TV movie titled Top Cat and the Beverly Hills Cats in the late '80s. And just recently in 2021 he and the gang were part of a much more expansive cast in the cartoon Jellystone! I think that's as close as we'll get to a Top Cat revival in the U.S.
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| Top Cat and the Beverly Hills Cats |
So, that was Hanna-Barbera's second attempt at a prime time animated sitcom. I'm not sure I'm any closer to seeing why people blame Hanna-Barbera for making cartoons a kids-only affair. But we did see the case of something failing in prime time and being ported over to Saturday mornings. I think that's going to be important.
Stay tuned and the next installment of Cartoon Stars Re-Animated will take us into the future. Bye for now.
