In Appreciation Of | Joe Barbera

Originally Posted 12/18/06 by Jeff Harris

"Joe Barbera?!?" "Who's that?"

That exchange of dialogue came from Bravo Dooby Doo, a episode of Johnny Bravo where the titicular character helped solve a mystery with the Mystery, Inc. gang, who you know as Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby-Doo. That exchange may be what's currently taking place to readers of the site who's reading this words of appreciation to Joseph Barbera, who died December 18 at the age of 95, but don't know exactly who he really was. Let me put it to you plainly.

Without Joseph Barbera, there would be no Cartoon Network.

No, I'm not metaphorically speaking, it's the truth. If it wasn't for the decades of shows and shorts created and produced by Mr. Barbera and his creative partner William Hanna, there would be no Cartoon Network. There'd be no Scooby-Doo movies coming out every year. There'd be no Flintstones vitamins and Pebbles cereal. There'd be no Johnny Bravo.

Mr. Barbera bridged into every generation of animation. In the Golden Age, he worked at Van Beuren and Terrytoons before he moved to Metro Goldwyn Mayer where he and Mr. Hanna created a story about a gray cat named Jasper who had problems with a small brown mouse in Puss Gets The Boot, the very first Tom and Jerry cartoon and his very first Oscar nomination. He won seven Academy Awards for Tom and Jerry shorts. They quietly entered the silver age of animation (which ran concurrently with the Golden Age of television) by animating the titles for a new show at the time called I Love Lucy. After MGM shut down their studios in 1957, Mr. Hanna and Mr. Barbera's side project, H-B Enterprises, was renamed Hanna-Barbera Productions. where they began churning out hit after hit from Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear to The Flintstones and Jonny Quest to Top Cat and Scooby-Doo, which became one of their biggest franchises.

During the bronze age of animation, which kind of began with Scooby-Doo until about 1990, Hanna-Barbera ruled animation, with shows on every channel at the time. Hanna-Barbera also worked beyond Saturday morning with animated films like Charlotte's Web and live-action fare like The Banana Splits Show (which introduced the world to Sid and Marty Krofft) and the live-action film C.H.O.M.P., though I'm sure Mr. Barbera would rather you forget that one.

Mr. Barbera helped bring the Smurfs to the public eye in the 80s turning the popular European comic into the most popular series (and most imitated) on Saturday mornings. By the turn of the decade, Hanna-Barbera was sold to Turner Entertainment. Ted Turner, who previously bought MGM/UA only to sell off the actual studio and keep the library (including the Tom and Jerry shorts Mr. Barbera and Mr. Hanna worked on), bought the company and library to build content to create the world's first all-animation channel, Cartoon Network. Mr. Barbera and Mr. Hanna were brought onboard as network consultants.

A genre-based channel using experts of the field as advisors? Unthinkable!

They were also instrumental in the What A Cartoons project which began at Hanna-Barbera. While Mr. Hanna developed two new concepts (Hard Luck Duck and Wind-Up Wolf), Mr. Barbera directed a pair of Dino-related shorts. They continued to be a major part of Hanna-Barbera serving as producers of numerous projects based on their properties, most notably the animated and live-action Flintstone movies (the property they feel is their biggest television accomplishment; they appeared in speaking cameos in both the first live-action movie and the animated movie with the marriage of Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm) and the revitalized Scooby-Doo animated movie franchise.

Mr. Barbera continued to be a vital part of the day-to-day at Hanna-Barbera throughout the '90s, even appearing in an unspoken cameo on Johnny Bravo, which I mentioned earlier in the column. In 2001, a little over sixty years after they first formed their partnership, William Hanna died and Hanna-Barbera shut down permanently, becoming fully integrated into Warner Bros. Animation and no longer controlled by Turner while its successor, Cartoon Network Studios, was born. Mr. Barbera continued to serve as a creative advisor at Warner Bros. Animation as well as executive producing projects based on the characters he and Mr. Hanna created and produced almost a half a century ago, including What's New, Scooby-Doo?, Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get A Clue, and Tom and Jerry Tales, which restored the franchise and characters back to its original incarnation for the first time in almost 50 years. His final theatrical short, The Karateguard, came in 2005, which brought him back full circle as a creator, storyboard artist, and director at an age where many of his contemporaries were either retired or deceased.

That's who Joe Barbera is.

That said, a moment of silence for Joseph Barbera, the other half of one of America's greatest animation studio. Although Time Warner has tried to get rid of Hanna-Barbera from the public eye (from the name of the studio to the building that housed the studio to the library of shows not limited to just Scooby-Doo to its legacy), generations of viewers will never forget what Mr. Barbera gave us.

We, the fans, thank you, Mr. Barbera.