Zoinks! The TMI twosome take a ride in the Mystery Machine as they explore 55 years of Scooby-Doo and his human pals. You'll learn how a misheard Frank Sinatra lyric inspired the name of the titular pooch, the '50s sitcom that helped shape the teen characters, and why Velma has been embraced by the LGBTQ+ community — plus discover the origins of the hated Scrappy Doo character, the behind-the-scenes studio battles that erupted as a result of the big screen version in 2002, and the show's bizarre connection to Charles Manson.
Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret histories and little known fascinating facts and figures behind your favorite TV shows, movies, music, and more. We are your two teen detectives of trivia, your filthy Beatnikes.
Of fascinating bits and bobs, your great Danes of great decisions. I'm Alex Sigel.
You're meddling kids of key points.
I guess that's fine, that's possible.
And my name is Jordan run Talk.
And today, Jordan, we're talking about one of the great American cultural legacies of the twentieth century. Not homophobia or institutionalized racism or trickle down economics, the rather Scooby Dude. Since September of nineteen sixty nine, Scubert Doolittle is that's not actually his name, I think it is. It's Scubert, but scuber Do. Scubert Do, his loyal human companion Shaggy, and the rest have been taking to a stinking windowless van called the Mystery Machine to solve various real estate and petty theft related crimes. The initial animated series Scooby Doo, Where are.
You question mark or no question mark.
You know, I've been googling so many different spin offs of this show. You could just tell me it was called like Scooby Doo Electric Boogoloo. Yeah, that's what I spent That's what I spent six hours. No it is. Yeah, it's got a solely an exclamation point without a question. Stupid, stupid country that originally air Saturday mornings on CBS lasted two seasons and twenty five episodes. But from that original seed, over a dozen different TV series and specials, two live action movies, twenty five direct to DVD movies, and over twenty video games were born. Kevin Sandler and Arizona State University professor Working Arond, a book about the show, considers it the most spun off show in television history. What do you say about that?
I mean that scans like we were talking about before taping this, it just when you mentioned Scooby Doo, my first thought was just what of it? Like, there's just it just seems to be this this giant wall of media.
He's like the Liberty Bell or Rocky or.
Something that's not in phil Yeah, the cheese steak.
Oh No, wait, I do remember watching this growing up. I think I saw a lot of the Hand and Barbara stuff when it was on reruns in various different places. I definitely remember Space Ghost, This, Super Friends, Ah, and then in my teens they started getting recycled into the stoner comedy stuff that Adult Swim was doing, like Space Ghost, Coast to Coast and Harvey Birdman Attorney at Law.
I was a big sea lab of twenty twenty one guy, Yes, that was that your.
With my pench my youth full pinschon for spookery, I'd love it. Scooby Do in his pals were on the surface concerned with vaguely supernatural situations, even if they always turned out to be an old white man and a rubber mask.
That's the true dark heart of America. It's always an old white man in a rubber mask. Was there, ever, Webber He's wearing like a Nixon mask, like that that crime movie. What was that movie where they're all wearing like presidential masks and.
Point break point break.
Oh, yeah, that's the one.
Just watch that movie recently still holds up.
You know, I didn't really watch Scooby Do very much, despite the fact that it has all the hallmarks of things that I love, which is like toothless sixties, psychedelia mysteries and just sort of a generic mid century cred. You know. I was more of a Flintstone's Jetson's guy when it came to the Hannah Barbera collection, They're ovra ouva.
Those are the ones that I found boring, right, I mean again, bat bat scans, I also say, and I'm really I'm afraid to this the waters that I'm about to wade into right now.
I sort of have a thing against cartoon dogs for some reason. And I know that this is in the DSM five under the entry for a bad person or a sociopath. I'm aware of that, but I really think it was There was a scene, and I think it was in All Dogs Go to Heaven, that Don Bluth trauma trigger movie from the late eighties where some dog like eats pizza really disgustingly, and I think, in my young mind it came down to, well, do I want pizza to be ruined for me or dogs? And I think I just made the judgment called I'm just going to decide to hate dogs.
As a result of this. Not dogs cartoon, Dogs cartoon dogs.
Yeah, I mean, you're objectively wrong, Lady in the tramp Oliver and Company. I mean, come on, dude, Peanuts like Peanuts, you hate Snoopy.
That's a different kind of dog. But I guess I'm talking about like big, like Bulto like dogs.
Yeah, Balto and Marmaduke.
Yeah, the dog from All Dogs Go to Heaven, which I think was like a German shepherd.
German shepherd.
Yeah.
So you just don't like large animated dogs.
Maybe it's because I grew up with Dublin pinchers.
Oh god, what did you grow up in the sas.
Were huge?
Yeah, now, I guess I get that, but I don't know. You're on your own there as as far as you know. Well, from the show's root says counterprogramming to the perceived violence of other Saturday Morning cartoon programming, to the detested scrappy Doo, the role of old Blue Eyes, and the creation of a famous cartoon dog, here's everything you didn't know about Scooby Doo. So pass forwarding or rewinding back to Jesus, I don't even know what direction time goes in anymore. Rewinding back to the late sixties as hilarious, the quaint as they may seem. Currently, some of the slate of the iconic Canna Barbara cartoons you may know, were actually quite controversial for their perceived violent content. You know, at this point, with the influence of sci fi and I think particularly the Batman show that had been going on a lot of Saturday morning cartoons were derided as just being excuses for like action and biff bam pal stuff and not being sufficiently educational or gentle. Part of this was due to the tenor of shows that were being broadcast. One was particularly bizarre. It was called Super President, a show that depicted the national Commander in chief as a secret superhero ready to battle any threat as milk toast as that sounds. The National Association of Broadcasters derided it as an all time low in bad taste. NBC was responsible for this direct ideological approach to totalitarianism. We fear that may be other broadcasters who are irresponsible enough to keep it in circulation, pause and realize the time when people were concerned about the creeping representation of fascism in American media, but many fans where many people were also appalled that the show was broadcast not even four years after JFK's assassination.
Not faster than the speeding bullet was waiting.
To see if you were going to take that one.
It was there, It was there.
In nineteen sixty eight, a grassroots group called Action for Children's Television or ACT, was founded by Peggy Charon and a group of housewives and mothers in Newton, Massachusetts, and they chose to their target not only the content of the crop of Saturday morning cartoons like Space Goes and Birdman, but the number of commercials broadcasts during these shows, which was actually, on average found to be almost double the number of commercials that were allowed during so called adult programming.
That's wild, that's really that feels wrong to me.
It was something like nine minutes in adult programming and then sixteen in kids program Oh.
My god, wait per hour or per half hour, that was per hour.
Sorry, that's still that's still really crazy.
Wow.
Yeah. So ACT and others of their ILK put enough pressure on broadcasters so not only cancel you'd swaped these cartoons by nineteen sixty nine, but also to drastically cut down in the commercial time allotted. Plus by the time that Scooby Doo aired nineteen sixty nine in the country had Weathered nineteen sixty eight, which has any time capsule television special worth its salt will tell you was a transformative one American history with the Vietnam War, the riots for the Democratic National Convention, and the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Junior, who come mano sub in thank you, I pride myself with my fog. You might also sub in a footage of soldiers trudging through Vietnam to the sounds of dud du that was all along the watch shower. The some of them legally available. Use that we can yes seriously demand for more family friendly TV contact resulted in the bizarre moment American history when Bob Montana's Archie Comics achieved multi platform cultural domination. Not just content and their mastery over the print, the Archie Gang had to also take over the TV airwaves by a filmation's animated series for CBS, and then the nation's radio waves via their hit that you may remember called Sugar Sugar, which was written explicitly to capitalize on the monkeys and topped the pop charts in nineteen sixty nine for four weeks to become the highest selling single of the year.
That's insane.
It beat out songs by the Beatles, the Stones, the those first Jackson five singles, Elvis, David Bowie, Stevie Wonder. I also found out this afternoon that Wilson Pickett does a version of Sugar Sugar, which.
That poor guy, we had him do it all kinds of right the end of his career. We really beat that man down, which is something considering he was a boxer. There's a sneak case for this archie comics being like maybe the most influential comics in history, with this music situation, all the stuff that was copying off of them in animation, and now with Riverdale having had like a ten year run and launching a bunch of now famous actors. I'm not going to make that argument though I have never I don't think i've ever read a I think when I was a kid into comic books and people would be like, like, hay me an archie comic, I would like stealthily throw it away behind their back.
I liked them because I thought that they had ties to the fifties and sixties, and I was obviously into all that. Yes, it's kind of my it's kind of my bit.
Yes, So the Archies were the brainchild CBS's head of daytime programming at the time, a guy named Fred Silverman, and his next move was to envision a cartoon that would cross the popular nineteen forties radio program I Love a Mystery about Three Detectives, the nineteen forty eight comedy horror movie Abbot Gassella Met Frankenstein, and the nineteen fifty nine sitcom The Many Loves Adobe gillis about a scatterburan teenager and his friends.
Fred Silverman I feel like he cropped up in something we did recently. I can't really remember what, but he's a big deal because he was one of the only TV executives of that era, the sixties and seventies, or maybe even any era, to work at all three major networks CBSABC and NBC, and the late great SNL writer Michael o'donahue ended up getting fired from SNL for skewering Silverman with a sketch called Silverman's Bunker, which is kind of legendary and SNL comedy nerds circles because it compares the flagging NBC network to the last days of Germany in World War Two, Silverman's Bunker obviously being a play on Hitler's Bunker, and I don't think the sketch was ever aired and he was fired for it. But Silverman, on the plus side, he also gave us all the Family and Charlie's Angels, so I give him a pass for that time. Magazine called him the Man with the Golden Gut in nineteen seventy seven, which.
It's so weird, didn't meet I thought, yeah, nope, sugar. On back to the edit, Silverman told MeTV Legends that I had always thought that Kids in a Haunted House would be a big hit.
It's so executive brain that's like something vague and unoriginal. I think it would be great, and I mean, to his credit it was.
But he said, as a kid, I would go and look at Abbott He's SELLO meet Frankenstein movies like that. I was convinced that this was going to be the biggest hit we'd ever had, even though nobody knew what the hell it was.
What, so where's that coming from? Like? Wh what are you basing that on?
Bro his gut? Let the man cook. So Silverman farmed this project out to Hannah Barbara rather than filmation this time, and producers William Hannah and Joseph Barbara consequently kicked it down to a team that included writers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, as well as artist Iwow Takamoto. He had come to Hannah Barbara from Disney, where he worked under one of the company's legendary Nine Old Men of animation, Milk call.
I actually don't know much about this nine Old Men thing. I think you mentioned it on a few episodes where we touched on animation or Disney stuff, and it sounds fascinating unless they're old men in rubber masks. I mean, not that I don't want to put you on the spot, but what is the deal with the Nine Old Men?
So they are basically the people who are responsible for like a half century of animation, And that was a nickname coming from Walt himself that I think came from nine Angry Men or something like that. The core nine was in place by the time that Snow White and Seven Dwarfs came out in nineteen thirty seven, and the last one of them left after the Great Mouse Detectives in nineteen eighty six. So fully one of them was in place for fifty years of Disney and they were collectively either as producers or directors or animators, responsible for basically every Disney animated film that came out in that time. They because of the way Disney worked at the time, they'd be working on multiple projects at once. And obviously there were nine of them, so you're talking everything from Cinderella ban the one hundred one Dalmatians on way up through all this stuff. But one of their bigger legacies is as educators, because two of them published a book called Disney Animation The Illusion of Life that really laid out the company's approach to animation with like nine tenets of how they animate and draw characters. And then when Disney died, when Walt died, a huge chunk of his trust went to funding cal Arts's character animation program, and a bunch of those guys taught there. And then basically the generation of animators that came up through the late seventies were now we're talking about guys like Brad Bird and Tim Burton and those guys. They all they came out of cal Arts and then usually either out of cal Arts or just somewhere else. Uh, they are most of them. A lot of them were apprentices of different members of the Nine olvent.
I feel like animation more than so many other areas of filmmaking, or maybe it's just more visible, relies more on mentorship and apprenticeships than a lot of other things, a lot of other, you know, areas of production that I can think of. Maybe it's just the like you know, they're more mythologized and high profile.
Yeah, I mean, it's uh, it just seems a very insular world. I think it's like SFX and that one. I was just gonna say, yeah, yeah, guys, who know, guys, thank you for that love.
I love you how much you know about animation.
It's that and like special effects are two things that I know absolutely nothing about. And I love the death that you go movie magic.
I love movie magic. At Disney, the animator EO. Takamoto, who had been in internment camp for the duration of World War Two. He worked on a lot of the stuff like I mean, he worked on Cinderella, Peter Pan, Lady in the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, one hundred and one, Dumbination, and then when he came over to Hanna barbera other than Scooby Doo. He worked on The Jetsons, and he also co directed Hanna Barbera's nineteen seventy two adaptation of Charlotte's Web? Did you know that that the guy who drew Scooby Doo directed Charlotte's Web?
I didn't know that.
It'll get more granular, don't worry. Why do we get to the Manson family? The Sam's initial conception for the show was called Mysteries five and featured five teams Jeff, Mike, Kelly, Linda and Linda's brother w W and their dog too Much, who were all in a band called the Mysteries Five. Even the dog who played at the.
Bongos dog was called too Much.
That's correct?
So was this some kind of terrible one note psychedelic sized version of Who's On First? Where there was like, you know, that's too much?
Man?
I know, baby, but what's the dog's name?
Like you know that kind yeah, or something like they've taken too much?
Oh, oh oh my god.
Yeah, kids learn about snarcan.
Wow, that's that's terrible. That that's worse than the Golden Gut.
So between their musical gigs, the gang was out solving spooky mysteries involving ghosts, zombies, and other supernatural creatures. As is pretty much obvious to anyone who cares about this kind of thing. The character who became Shaggy was a straight ripoff of Maynard G. Krebs from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. He was the stereotypical bongo playing beatnick in that show, and they basically just made him a hippie.
He was played by Bob Denver, who later played Gilligan from Gilligan's Island, and I kind of always assumed that Gilligan was Maynard G. Krebs who'd like grown up and like to make money being a hippie, just like lived by the water and did the three hour tour just to make some money during the day. That was my unified theory of Bob Denver.
It's the shared Denver cinematic universe.
Yeah. Did you ever watch The Many Loves of w Gillis?
Absolutely not.
Oh, it was a really good show. I had Tuesday weld on a big crush on Tuesday. Well, there it is. Refining the dog concept though took work. They were torn between the comedic possibilities of a large cowardly dog or a small feisty one, and settled on the former, though eventually that cautrapoint would be used for the much hated and scrappy in the late seventies. Initially they were concerned that a Great Dane would be seen as a marmaduke rip off. They presented a sheep dog version to Fred Silverman, who, in turn, concerned that the dog would then be compared to the Archie's own sheep dog, told them to change it back to a great Dane. What would you have done? Would you have done a small feisty one or a large cowardly one? I see you as a small feisty.
You mean me as a dog? No, how I would have developed the show?
Why can't it be both?
I think it would have been funnier if there were a cat, because cats are useless, so you could do all kinds of throwaway gags about them being like, hey, you know, miss Mittens, what do you think that is? And the cat's just like staring intently at a corner smoking a cigarette. Yeah, I just so, that's my take. Scooby Doo should have been a cat.
Again. We're gonna start elevator pitchon sequels right now, this is this is good. This is good.
We're such a good reboot.
We are such good executives.
Sadly we are we are, we are I know.
The animated Takamoto created Scooby Doo's features after finding out from a Hannah Barbara coworker who bred Great Danes. What made for show winning features on these animals, Takamoto told Cartoon Network. She showed me some pictures and talked about the important points of a Great Dane, like a straight back, straight legs, small chin. I decided to go to the opposite and give him a hump back, bowed legs, big and such. Even his color is wrong, hilarious. Yeah.
I love to imagine that coworkers appear seeing the finished product and was like, what this is all wrong?
Maybe thought it was an insult to like the dogs she was breeding.
Do I hope? So? I mean, all that stuff is why they're why they're dead, Like, don't live past the age of a second grader at this point.
Oh, the inbreeding of the fact that they're huge, it's like the movie.
My Giant inbreeding. It's like any of those breeds like pugs or German shepherds. They've all been so inbred that for specific features that they can barely function like the Windsors, Yes, very much so can we not?
I don't know.
I don't know the health status of half the royal family right now. I love either going like fools of Prude or on that poor woman's like family photo. Oh yeah, like I saw people instagrammed like I swear there were like fifteen points on this damn photo of irregular pattern fingers that don't line up Jesus Christ. So that is the look of the creature we now know as Scooby Doo. But how did the beloved CA nine get his name? Well, it came from show godfather, shall we say grandfather Scooby do Grandfather Fred Silverman, TV executive Fred Silverman, the guy who thought that kids in a haunted house would make for a winning combination. The idea came to him on a plane. He said, I booked a red eye and I couldn't sleep talking to the television academy. I'm listening to music as we're landing. Frank Sinatra comes on and I hear him say Scooby Dooby Do. It's at that point I said, that's it. We'll take the dog. We'll call it scooby Doo. It's hilarious because that's not what Frank Sinatra actually says. In reality, he sings Shooby dooby doo, and it's at the end of Strangers of the Night.
I would assume shooty dooby doo.
Yeah, okay. So the writer Mark Evaner, who would write several Scoop We Do teleplays and comic book scripts, told The Cartoon Review that the name scooby Doo came from a different misheard lyric. The nineteen sixty three eighteen do wop hit Denise by Randy and the Rainbows. Chorus goes, Oh, Denise shooby Doo, I'm in love with you, Denise shooby Doo.
Was that song sung in a greeting Frankie Valley esque falsetto?
Yeah actually, okay, yeah, that's.
What I said, Oh, dn shooby doo.
Movie right, that's actually that's fairly enjoyable coming from you. I have to say it.
Sucks to Frankie Valley should have been the only guy allowed to do that, and Smoking Robinson a couple other guys on Motown. That's it.
Brian Wilson, absolutely not. I think Frankie Valley's retiring soon. We should see him.
Yeah, why not?
Great Italian American.
Great Italian American. Ball about Rushmore? Yeah him, Bartis Scorsese, Frank Sinatra and me.
We got movies, we got podcasting, we got music. What's a great Italian American on the TV?
On the TV? James Gandolfini.
Oh yeah, there you go, all right, very good, we got.
Him, good, all right, good good.
Italian writer Matt Mario Puzo.
I think it's like Mario Pooso.
Yeah, yeah, it's all right. So we got the dog, we got how he looks, we got the name. Now we got to have his damn kids around them. The animation team whittled down their initial concept from five to fourteens, and they called them Jeff, Kelly, Linda and w W. The most unwieldly series of initials, and they eventually became Ronnie, Daphne, Velma and Shaggy getting Closer. And these took fairly explicit inspiration from the aforementioned the many Loves of Dobie Gillis.
It really is wild when you see them, like like especially Daphne, uh, just like the plaid skirt, sweater, look like it's just it's today.
Well yeah, well, well Hanna Barbara would do that. They did the Flintstones was was the honeymooner across the board? Ronnie the handsome male lead on the show, I get me call him that, right? Yeah? I was renamed Fred in honor of Fred Silverman, the TV executive who soft pitched them this idea. And so there you have the human elements of the Mystery Mystery Team. What the hell are they called the mystery brigade, Mystery Mystery squad?
No, mystery machine is the car?
What were they know?
Now?
Collectively keep going?
What were they called the mystery scruping shotson?
Fred Silverman presented a pilot premise called at the time, Who's Scared?
Several s's with dashes?
Yeah, I should have said the scoop Staffel, because that's what there.
Are two s's in that. Yeah, you're right, right hah to CVS executives as the centerpiece for their upcoming nineteen sixty nine and nineteen seventy Saturday Morning cartoon block, but CBS executives felt that the presentation artwork was too frightening for young viewers and thinking of the show would be equally scary, decided to pass on it, which is surprising when it was being presented by a fairly high ranking executive at the network. But okay, without a centerpiece for their Saturday morning cartoon lineup, Fred Silverman went back to Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, the animation team, and they retooled the pitch to focus more on the dog and soft touching more of the scary elements, and then they repitched it to the CVS executives, who approved it.
I read somewy that they took it like fifteen rounds, and I'm not sure if that was not present not presentation, but like drafts of the pilot script.
I mean this with all respect to everybody who Scooby Doo seems like a first draft idea.
You don't really think it's a you don't really think it stood up to fifteen rounds. Ever Rebreads. I don't know.
I said this.
Pretts you do on your scripts.
It implies that I finished them. I said this before we started taping. I don't think I've ever seen a full episode of Scooby Doo. I've definitely never sat down intentionally watched it. I yeah, this is this is sort of a I mean agauess. One of things I love doing the show is that it helps me find you, found appreciation for things that I previously ignored. Last week it was you with Billy Joel, and this week we're getting there with Scooby Doo for me.
Oh, we'll get it out of here.
We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more too much information in just a.
Moment, onto the non canine parts of the show. Legendary voice actor Frank Welker, one of the most famous voice actors in the industry, with over eight hundred and fifty acting credits on his IMDb page, Wow, received his first ever cartoon acting voice acting gig. I think first ever voice acting gig period. I think. He said he had done commercials before this at twenty three years young, as the ascot wearing Fred Jones.
I love how often you shout out the as Scott. I love how much you hate the ascott.
It's extremely dumb. No one makes them look good. You just immediately look like a sex pest.
Are you saying that because I recently shared a PROMP photo of me and my friend both wearing ascots.
I'm not not saying it for that reason. You're reinforcing my decision. I could barely read the copy and didn't know which end of the mic was electrified, which explains why shock therapy had no effect on me. Welker quipped to Verbicide Magazine in two thousand and six, Joe Barbera was fantastic and really gave me a chance. He would give me the opportunity to read for all the characters, not just Fredd, and that really opened things up for me. Welker has voiced Fred in every Scooby series except for a pup named Scooby Doo. Welker told Entertainment Weekly in twenty eighteen that he didn't even want the role of Fred. Originally, he was angling for the role of Shaggy because he wanted to do more more comedic work, while Casey Kasem, who was eventually cast as Shaggy, wanted the role of Fred for the opposite reason he was tired of doing comedies. In the same interview, Welker described the voice of Fred as basically my voice plus about five cups of coffee. Welker further recalled to USA Today that the advice he got from Joseph Barbara was literally, just you know, you're kind of the same age they are, not I think Fred was supposed to be seventeen. Just do your own voice and think Jack Armstrong, the all American boy. You're the leader of the gang, and you got a driver's license. That was pretty much it. That's all I took in the sixties a different time. Fred and Daphne's constant breaking off to search whatever they were environ they were investigating as a couple wasn't so that the teams could indulge in their normal hormonal urges, but rather because the writers found them so dull that they broke them off as much as they could to focus on the funny characters. Bizarrely, in a twenty twelve read at Ama, Shaggy, actor Matthew Lillard additionally revealed that the original cut of the two thousand and two Scooby Doo live action film had Fred revealed to be gay and say his love of the ascot, and that Freddy Prince Junior had actually portrayed him as such throughout the film. Lillard may have been screwing with everyone, though Prince has said in interviews that he regrets doing the Scooby Doo films, only elaborating there was just too much bait and switch on the first one. The studio was not honest with me in any way, shape or form. Was he referring to pay or the decision to straight wash Fred perhaps won't ever know.
I think I remember hearing that the live action Scooby Doo from two thousand and two was meant to be more winky and like a parody, kind of like the Brady Bunch movies were in the nineties, and then they ended up just playing it straight when they released it in the final cut, in the literal and euphemistic sense.
It took until nineteen ninety seven, though, for the Fred to nod at Fred and Depney being a couple, and it didn't even happen in their own series. It happened on the show's crossover with Johnny Bravo Bravo doob Doo in July of nineteen ninety seven. Other team ups have included with Batman, The Adams Family, the long running WB series Supernatural, The Band's Kiss, and multiple projects involving the World Wrestling Federation and Then Entertainment, the last of which I cannot find any justification or explanation of this is actually the second time I've gone down this rabbit hole, because I remember seeing it was like the WWE and Scooby Doo like the Gang solves the Ministery at WrestleMania, and I tried to get more info about it, and I could not. Even the original announcement on the WWE's page goes to a deadlink. So, but it happened twice, there's two of them.
Well, didn't the Flintstones have some kind of connection to the WWE, So maybe there's some kind of hand of Barbara WWE crossover thing.
Yeah, sure, I didn't know the Flintstones crossed over one point. That's yeah.
I think it might have been like a bam bam thing. I yeah, I'm not sure. That's weird.
What's even weirderh Igill tell us bonus.
Fun fact on the nineteen seventy two episode Wednesday is missing a pre taxi driver. Jody Foster supplied the voice of Pugsley Adams Cademy Award winning Jody Foster with an early role as the boring teenage son of the Adams family.
Is that funnier? Less funny? Or equally funny as Billy Joel's pre fame heavy metal band Attila.
Oh it's much less funny, okay. The show's various iterations have since expanded on these rather thin initial character sketches. For example, Daphne was eventually revealed to have come from a rich and privileged background. Although her family money funds Mystery, Inc. She forsook the trappings of her family and dynasty to fort turea path that's placing her on the same disadvantage financial ground as the rest of the game.
So she's basically the Mystery Gang's Patty Hurst.
That's great, okay. That is the only interesting thing I could learn about Daphne. She was referred to unofficially as Daphne in Distress for a long time because of her being basically the person that would fall into a trap or get spooked or kidnapped. But I guess she knows martial arts.
Now.
They tried. They threw, you know, second wave feminism a bone. That's the thing with all the timelines of this show, there's like seven different timelines of reboots and things, and I guess in some of them, Daphne has become a badass.
The core Scooby cast assembled in the recording booth, where they were encouraged to add lib and play off each other, even taking turns voicing different villains from week to week. I like that in the Latin two, and they had the whole whole cast and a big room together to record, which is.
Pretty rare, pretty rare.
Yeah.
I think the only other ones that do it are Simpsons in Futurama.
Right right, right. Welker, who voiced Fred, recalled that two of Velma's iconic catchphrases came from these sort of quasi collaborative vocal recording sessions. Velma, he said, who was portrayed by Nicole Jaffe back in the early days, was the one who said jinkies. Then the cast started trying to do our own little things. Mine was hold the phone. Could have gone better there, but not great, Welker, I could try harder on that one. Meanwhile, Velma's famous line my glasses, I can't see without them wasn't.
A line in the script for Velma.
Originally. It was actually something that was said for real by voice actress Nicole Jaffe at the very first table reading, and the writers thought that it was cute and fit the character, so they kept the Lime and Nicole Jaffe, the voice of Velma, had them playing Peppermint Patty in You're a Good Man Charlie Brown before being cast as Velma.
As you put it, yes, she portrayed two of the most closeted lesbians in television history cartoon history.
Yeah, huh, that's that's interesting. But she apparently was not happy with getting cast in this deathless enduring cartoon franchise. In a twenty eleven interview, she said she was hoping to become a Daniel day Lewis esque actor, and she found voice acting. Yeah, kind of silly quote. It was like getting on a soap opera when you wanted to be in a Scorsese film. I don't know what voice people are like today, but in those days I thought they were kind of weird. I've heard that. I remember that came up during the Rudolph the Red Noose Reindeer episode. We did too that back then. I think now voice acting has a much better reputation.
Yeah, Robin Williams who legitimized it basically, Yeah, and Gully and Aladdin, But yeah, they were. It was a weird, sort of ghetto for a long time.
She continued, somebody of forty was playing somebody of twenty, somebody was playing a dog.
But when you break it down.
Here, yeah.
Fun.
In the same interview, she mentions Lauren Hill at one point somehow meeting her at a I can't even begin to imagine how they would have crossed paths. But apparently Lauren Hill was a big fan of Scooby Doo. So that's that's cool.
I just love that. Yeah.
Do you think that Lauren Hill went to like some kind of like cartoons, like comic con convention.
I like to think so. I can't imagine. I can't imagine that's what that's going to be.
I almost could. It's just weird enough.
Yeah, that's true.
Velma's look was another direct rip from the Many Loves of Dobie Gillis TV show from the fifties. There was a character on Dobie Gillis called Zelda Gilroy, and she was frequently shown wearing sweaters and plaid skirts, and she was kind of a nerd. The most interesting thing about Velma to you is the long standing coding of her character as a lesbian. Fred and Daphne had each other, as did Scooby and Shaggy. Now, by that logic, Scooby and Shaggy, you get your mind.
Out of the gut cow, all right.
Velma, according to Matt Lipp, who runs the Scooby Doo History account on Twitter, Velma quote has never really had a main love interest, he continues, to The New York Times, she had occasional flirtations and brief relationships, notably with Johnny Bravo and a nineteen ninety crossover, but even when the writers attempted to pair her up with Shaggy at one point, Lipp continued, it's something that doesn't feel natural for them both.
This guy is really humanizing these cartoon characters.
Hey, that's what you gotta do. James Gunn, the Guardians of the Galaxy Autur now running the DC Cinematic Universe, co wrote the Big two thousand and two live action Scooby Doo film and originally turned into version that got an R from the MPAA. In twenty twenty, he tweeted that Velma was explicitly gay in my initial script, but the studio just kept watering it down and watering it down, becoming ambiguous for the version shot. Then nothing least version and finally having a boyfriend. The sequel, the original film's director, Raja Gosnell said that further retooling and cutting was necessary to get the script down to a PG for a PG thirteen, explaining that some of the things that they had to lose were some winks to Velma's sexual orientation and more pot jokes. The studio Gospel continued to e wanted to sell the movie to what the current demographic of Scooby Doo was, and that was young kids and parents. A test screening in conservative Scottsdale, Arizona didn't play well at all, he said, and that started the first scramble to take out all of the Isbelma gay references. We just had to do our best to protect the movie and make the best movie we could under newer guidelines, ma'am. And this is funny to me that there was a scene actually in the film that was shot but cut in which Daphne played by Sarah Michelle Geller, and Velma Linda Carlini kiss, which must have fulfilled a lot of long standing fantasies held by some of the creatives on this project. Sarah Michelle Geller, though, were called to sci fi Wire that it was actually a plot device. It wasn't just like for fun. Initially, in the soul swapping scene, Velma and Daphne couldn't seem to get their souls back together in the woods, and so the way that they found was to kiss, and the souls went back into proper alignment, to which I say, sure, Jan, I.
Have a question for you. He do you get your soul in alignment.
Drinking avant garde jazz?
For me, it's abba.
Yeah. All that said, Velma did finally get her queer moment, albeit one revealed retroactively. In twenty twenty, Tony Servone, the co creator Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated, a twenty ten series on Cartoon Network, posted an image on Instagram of Velma standing in front of a Pride flag, writing, we made our intentions as clear as we could ten years ago. Most of our fans got it. To those that didn't, I suggest you look closer. Responding to a fan of the comments, he said, specifically, Velma in Mystery Incorporated is not by she's gay, So at least one timeline definited. Lee got Vilma somewhat out of the closet.
Anyway, Scooby Doo premiered the Year of Stonewell, like probably I think three months after the Small Riots. So those are the human members of the gang. Now we got to talk about Scooby Doo. The voices for Scooby Doo and the much maligned Scrappy Doo are all done by one man named Don Messick. Now Mesic is something of a Saturday cartoon icon. Aside from the aforementioned Doues Messrs Do and Do, he voiced Bam Bam, Rubble and the Flintstones, Astro and the Jetsons, Boo Boo Bear and Ranger Smith and the Yogi Bear Show, Sebastian the Cat and Josie and the Pussycats, Gears, Ratchet and Scavenger and the Transformers, Papa Smurf and Azerrol as a Reel Azarel in the Smurfs, and Doctor Benton Quest in Johnny Quest. So he gets stuck with all the like annoying characters. He's like the gist that I'm getting that's.
Looking at it.
Yes. He also voiced a few characters in the first animated adaptation of The Hobbit I Rank in Bass in nineteen seventy seven. Shortly before his death, he claimed that giving up smoking had robbed him of the rasp in his voice that he needed to voice Scooby Tragic. Scooby's speech disorder, which really boils down to his excessive use of the letter R, is called rodicism. I'm told, I'm now being told, hear I have it in. I'm breaking, I'm getting something in my ear. Scooby's speech disorder is called has a name, according to speech pathologist, according to speech methol, according to somebody who could probably help me, say speech pathologist, doctor Stephen Long was referred to quote Stevie's.
We're Suffering.
I would refer to Scooby's disorder as phonological as opposed to a phonetic disorder, and that he shows a pattern of substituting and adding sounds in his speech, rather than just distorting sounds. Scooby's error pattern doesn't have a specific name, at least, it's not one that we commonly use in clinical practice.
Messick, the voice of Scooby Doo.
Told the Asbury Park Press that there was an interesting genesis to his rhodic pattern. Astro from the Jetsons preceded Scooby Doo Messick said, I had to come up with what I call growl talk. Joseph Barbara liked things starting with RS for the dogs especially. He got that from watching Sooopy Sales, who was a kids show host. Sales had an off screen dog. All you would see was the Paul and he would talk with our talk. So Joe Joseph Barbara decided that Astro should have that kind of attitude. But then along came Scooby Doo, my favorite voice. So then when we were doing later Jetson's episodes, I had to pitch Astro a little bit higher because Scooby had the growl talk, though his was more of a barrel chested thing.
I appreciate the thought that went into this voice.
I just got distracted with becoming adjusting my life goals to becoming the first ever person diagnosed with scoob be speech disorder, like convincing everyone that it just happened to me one day, and then like faking that you'd never I don't even know what Scooby do is. I've never seen an episode. I just I've never ever even read an eperthro Rush start rocking like rish run day.
No, No, here's the movie it's yesterday, but with Scooby Doo. Instead of the Beatles never existed. Scooby Do's never existed. And then you just start talking like that and you become famous for some reason. Oh sure, yeah, it's one and the same. In twenty twenty four, this brings us to Scubert. Ken Spears, one of the animators on the show, said, Scubert, which is Scooby's Christian name, the name on Scooby's birth certificate dogs at birth certificate. It's right, Scubert wasn't our doing. It's talking to Scooby addicts dot com. We don't know who came up with that. We wouldn't have. Co creator and writer Joe Ruby immediately said after him, neither was Scrappy Doo. We didn't like him either. I don't know much about Scrappy did. I guess what we're gonna hear more about scrappy Do later.
He's divisive. He's basically like if you picked like an annoying He's sort of like the Great Gazoo in that he's like, uh, it's like a late stage addition to try and sort of save the ratings and everything.
But he's cousin Oliver.
Yeah, and he's like so brash and annoying and brave that it just throughout the whole dynamic. It's just obnonxious. Meanwhile, another fun Scooby fact, the dog is positive as being seven years old, which is kind of depressed and considering that the average lifespan of Great Danes is eight to ten years old, meaning that Scooby is spending his waning years hanging out with a bunch of teenagers being scared out of his wits. Fred and Jaggy are supposedly seventeen, Daphnie is sixteen, and Vilma is fifteen?
Did I send you that? On the other show I'm working on the Paul and ka talk show, we interviewed the singer Tony Orlando, and Tony Orlando and Paul Anka were tight with the wrap pack and they knew Dean Martin. Did I send you this clip?
Oh?
Yes, they did about how Dean Martin was like just what they would see him in a restaurant. He would just be like I'm waiting to die.
Yeah, you go, they go to Dean Martin at these these little Italian places in Hollywood, and you need to be sitting there by himself toward the end of his life. Hey Dean, how you doing? Just waiting to die? Pally waiting to die?
So that's that's where Scooby was at.
Yeah, that's true.
That's that was the tie in.
And now, friends, we must move on to the true reason of this episode. Casey Kase has Norville Rogers aka Shaggy.
That's the name that sounds like he came from money.
Yeah, right. As mentioned, Shaggy was a very explicit rip off of the pet Nick parody Maner G. Crebs in The Many Lives Adobe Gillis and Shaggy also has mentioned, was not the role that Kasum won it when he auditioned for the show. When I auditioned for Shaggy, they should be a picture, so I knew he was supposed to be a hippie case I'm told cartoon research, I combined two voices, sort of an attitude of Dave Hull, who is disc jockey on KRLA, or the actor who played on our Miss Brooks, Richard Krenna, whose character spoke in a high, squeaky voice and was always very breathy. It may shock some of you to know, as I do. Richard Krenna, who I am most aware of because he was Rambo's handler in the Rambo movies. Was once on a dumb sitcom and talked like this, I've just finished another article about you with the Madison Monitor. You see My Favorite Teacher.
By Walter Denton. It's very complimentary. Yes, I can imagine your last article.
About me was complimentary to the point of embarrassment. I wish you wouldn't print that wall.
Hear me, it don't be so modest.
I'll look at the notice I attack on the bulletin board.
Tell Jerry Lewis, Richard krennaman Friggin' Colonel Troutman depressing. Case did admit that certain parts of the character came pre envisioned. They gave me the word zoincs and having him say like, I guess because of the hippie aspect. I did come up with the scoob old buddy of mine, old pal thing, but I have never used the word zoincs ever in my everyday conversation. I like, I'm like, I'm suddenly defaulting to like a very low and gravitas voice for Casey Kasem, despite the fact that we all know he sounds like a gravelly voiced elf total aside. But Joseph Barbara seems like kind of a dumbass. He dispassionately broke down the dynamic between Shaggy and Scoomy and interview with the Television Academy, saying, Scooby would eat anything anywhere at any time. Shaggy would eat anything anywhere anytime. So you had this competition between them as far as eating. They would eat waxed fruit off the table. Those two guys, You know, that became a funny gimmick that the kids must have liked and bought. Otherwise we wouldn't be going today, just like the stupidest possible boiling out of that relationship.
Do you think he hates the show like you know?
I think he's just I think he's a dumb ass, because listen to his pit.
Give an example of what I'm if I ever can get to it, I want to do. Scooby Doo goes to the Woodstock and he ended the gang are going up in this little van and there they're a group. Now they have instruments, and they arrive at Woodstock and there's nobody there, just this dark, empty feel, and then the zombie show up. I'm sorry, I forgot the zombie would sick. They go to the woodside, not knowing its a zombie would stock and the zombies show up. They're doing this, you know, the whole bunch, and then one arm falls off or whatever is necessary, and then they won't let them go. They wanted to keep playing and they got to out trick them somehow or so it's a perfect vehicle for them, especially with Scooby jumping in his arms.
They get there, there's nobody there and there's zombies.
And zombies are saying, you know whatever it is. Zombies say like, oh, trying to grab them because and then they go to leave after they played their son. Zombies don't want them to leave. It's just like a drunk guy like Pitchese. I love it, Joseph Barbara very funny. Jordan tells about Casey Kasem.
Casey Ason wound up voicing Shaggy from nineteen sixty eight to nineteen ninety non stop. And in the seventies, Casey Caason became a vegetarian and by the eighties he refused to do any commercials for clients that sold meat, fish, poultry, or dairy products.
So wow, he sounds like more of a vegan. It's hardcore.
As Caseon remembered a Hanna Barbera, I asked the director at the time, it would be possible to quietly make Shaggy and Scooby vegetarians in the series She goes with Ahollle Hippie Thing. The director of the shows at the time, Gordon Hunt, Helen Hunt's father. Helen Hunt's father directed Scooby Doo for a time. I'd sure, Casey, we can do that. So when Scuoby and Shaggy had a pizza instead of pepperoni, they would put vegetables on it. Instead of a hamburger, they would have an elaborate peanut, butter and jelly sandwich. The only time Casey Kaseum didn't provide Shaggy's voice during this time period was for a couple of Burgerkan commercials. I said, I couldn't do it. It was against my conscience to promote something that I myself wouldn't eat. So I told Hannah Barbera, I couldn't do it. They were willing to understand after playing Shaggy for those three hundred shows in a couple of movies that I turned them down on one commercial. This was you say nineteen ninety five, and Casem did indeed sit the roll out until two thousand and two.
Uh.
Casum apparently at least officially said that he was unaware of one of the most universally picked up on aspects of the character. Asked by Newsweek in two thousand and two if he was aware of the subtext that Shaggy was a major stoner, Casum responded, there wasn't anything like that at all, and quote, we never even thought of it. He added that he never observed anything of his colleagues making a joke about Shaggy smoking marijuana, explaining, I guess it's because I don't know. It was a wholesome show from beginning to end.
I tried to find that original interview so hard and couldn't much at all I have is in Yeah, I couldn't find the original Newsweek, so I just have to take a bunch of other sites word for it. But it can some. Being the guy who asked Casey Casem if he picked up on the fact that one of his most durable creations was a pothead and him just being like straight to your face, like no.
According to Casey Caysm, he said he wasn't even aware of this until the interviewer brought it.
Up to him, which is high Laurius.
I mean, you gotta think he's making that.
Up and putting the guy on. Yeah, I hope so.
Yeah.
But Kasem, who if one very famous on air freak out, is any indication I would assume had something of an ego doing it? Oh? Yeah, they have, like a he took a letter about like somebody who was like planning for a funeral or something, and then they like played some like really uptempo song afterwards, and he melted it down.
Oh, we're up to our long distance dedication and this one is about kids and pets and the situation that we can all understand whether we have kids or pets or neither. It's from a man in Cincinnati, Ohio, and here's what he writes, Dear Casey, this may seem to be a strange dedication request, but I'm quite sincere and it'll need a.
Lot if you play it.
Recently, there was a death in our family.
He was a little dog named Snuggles, but he was most certainly a part of Let's go start again. I'm coming out of the record. Play the record, Okay, see when you come out of those uptemple damn numbers. Man, it's impossible to make those transitions, and then you got to go into somebody dying. You know, they do this to me all the time. I don't know what the hell they do it for, but damn it, if we can't come out of a slow record, I don't understand. And I want a damn concerted effort to come out of a record that isn't a fucking up tempo record. Every time I do a damn.
Depth dedication, it's a god last damn time. I want somebody to use a brain to not come out of a damn record that is uh, that's uptempo. And I gotta talk about a dog dying.
I enjoy that.
It's so funny because his voice is so like robotic and just smooth and modulated that when you hear it break containment and start delivering profanities, it's like hearing like series starting person or something.
Yeah, that's pretty good. Guy's got power. Yeah, Casey gives him, not somebody who wanted to mess with Guy. It's got kind of an ego, but he was aware that he his character, I should say, Shaggy was second banana to the dog, Scooby. He said, what was the star of the show. The Shaquillo o'neel of the show.
Which is hilarious because depending on which phase of Shaquill O'Neil's career, it gets fun you're and funnier, like Shaquille O'Neil with the with the Orlando Magic, Shaquille O'Neil when he was arguably battling Kobe for a title of most Valuable Laker, or Shaquille O'Neal the Commentator era. Now it just gets funnier and funnier Shaquille and eel Becauzam.
Yeah, that's how I'm choosing to believe it.
Yes, Kasem continued. People love animals more than they love people. Am I right or wrong? They give more love to their pets than they give to people.
Maybe, and I should know it because I've killed many dogs.
I'm Casey KAYSM. Scooby is vulnerable and lovable and not brave and very much like the kids who watch Oh that's a harsh truth, Casey, But like kids, he likes to think he's brave. Casey Cassum's view of the human condition is is is troubling. I am legally obligated to mention the bizarre circumstances of Casey Kaysum's death, or rather his post death. When the beloved tal forty DJ died in twenty fourteen at the age of forty two, a fierce feud erupted between his adult children and his second wife, Geene Thompson, an actress who had a recurring part on the sitcom Cheers. Citing disagreements over the funeral arrangements and millions of dollars worth of life insurance benefits, Thompson had Casem's remains transported from Washington State to Montreal and finally to Freggin' Norway, where he was ultimately buried in Oslo. For some reason that I don't fully understand. It's a great controversy more than six months after his death. It kept him on ice for six months and shipped them all around God's Green Earth.
Honey, I finally want to see Normay. I don't care how you get Beata.
I want to be buried by the Fiords.
The show also had a fairly insane roster of guest stars, including Sonny and cher In the Secret of Shark Island, which Cher had such a good time doing that she returned to the franchise in twenty twenty one.
It's fifty years later, how good a times fat.
You know, Sometimes sometimes actors take a long time to come back to their most favorite the roles that took the most out of them. Don Knotts joined The Scooby Gang for two adventures, playing a detective who looks exactly like Don Knots in Guess Who's Not Coming to Dinner and I guess you can take a wild guess at how that's spelled. And then he also returned for a fairly obvious writ of his Andy Griffith Show character in The Spooky Fog of Juneberry. Probably my favorite of these. Mama Cass Elliott showed up in The Haunted Candy Factory. Not I mean she was in a Haunted Candid Factor, but the name of the episode was the Haunted Candy Factory. She owned the Haunted Candy Factory, which was the title of the show.
I don't like, well, you give Mama Cass a candy factory owner.
Oh, she just deserves better than that.
Also, The Three Stooges appeared on two, nineteen seventy two, TV movies, while Laurel and Hardy long after their deaths, popped in for the season one episode Ghost of Bigfoot. Other notable guest stars included Dick Van Dyke, the Harlem Globetrotters, Country Shred guitarist Jerry Reid, and in more recent years, Steve Buscemi and Woopy Goldberg. Also or legend, Vincent Price got his own standalone movie, thirteen Ghosts of Scooby Doo in nineteen eighty five. Lastly, for this section, anyway, when we arrive at the gang's faithful Steve and they're wreaking home away from Home, the Mystery Machine, the green Van was eventually given a history of its own in the fifth episode of the two thousand and two incarnation of the show on the WB What's New Scooby Doo, The previous owners of the band were revealed to have been a popular family band known as the Mystery Kids, with the van being plainted by Flash Flanagan, the band's pianist. In the episode, the van, currently owned by the actual Mystery Gang, seems to be possessed by Ghost until what else it is revealed to have been the machinations of the mother of the Mystery Kids sabotaging the van in an attempt to bring the band back to fame. Anyway, as far as what kind of van the Mystery Machine could actually be, the fine folks at Autumnweek broke it down far better than people like you and I who don't actually know the right end of a dipstick could. In the early run of Scooby Doo, Where Are You, the van was either a mid sixties Chevy G body panel van or Dodge A one hundred. Both of these look similar to the Mystery Machine and both have round headlights. The forwarda Cottle Line is also a model mentioned frequently by fans. It had round headlights, but a distinct housing to those headlights that disqualifies it. Yeah, that was.
Always my assumption. That was a Ford Aconoline van. That was what my dad had in the early seventies, and he tricked it out by cutting a skylight in the roof and putting a bubble window on it, and he put shag carpeting all along the walls and ceiling and put a bed back there. And he called it Marrigold the Octopus. That was what he called his van. Because it was nineteen seventy three. I have so many unanswered questions, but.
I don't think we're going to get there. No, yeah, it's probably prob best we don't. Maybe just keep that one for therapy. In the late nineties, Scooby Doo on Zombie Island, a director video feature film, the van looks more like a minivan, perhaps a Chevy Astro or a GMC Safari, and it's painted as a news van for Daphney Blake's fictional show Coast to Coast with Daphney Blake. Fred is her producer. In two thousand and eights directed DVD animated movie Scooby Dooo and the Goblin King, the Mystery Machine is turned into a monster called the Monstrous Machine, so there you have it. In two thousand and two, for the live action movie, the Mystery Machine is portrayed as a nineteen seventy two Bedford CF. Bedford was a brand manufactured by Vauxhall. It's never mentioned how an allegedly seventeen year old teen would have gotten his hands on an imported van, but Bred and Daphne do travel to Australia in the aforementioned Coast to Coast with Daphney Blake so maybe the Bedford is a nod to that particular continuity. Now, obviously, there have been many fan made versions of the Mystery Machine throughout the years, but perhaps the most famous one may have been driven by fifty one year old Sharon Turman, who led police on a chase in twenty sixteen while high on math driving amnivan styled just like the Mystery Machine. She was sentenced to over two years in prison.
Ma'am, I'm sorry. This man is just too cool to be sweet legal. I'm so sorry. I have not heard that, and that's very much seems like something I would have heard of.
That's incredible.
I'm sure she's. If she's not, she won't be the last.
I'll just say, yeah, to lead police on a high speed chase in a mystery machine? Yeah, no, I mean trust me, no one else will. I will. That's how I'm going up.
As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with more too much information after these messages.
Now, we're going to a section we like to call Scooby Doo.
Be sound interesting.
Historical note, Scooby Doo was actually the first Saturday Morning cartoon to feature a laugh track. To make sure television audiences laughed at the you know in quotes right moments and did some proper levels and volumes. TV producers in the fifties started substituting their own canned laughter using a laughing machine invented by Charles Douglas that came to be called the laugh box laugh with two f's. This is shocking to me because I assumed it was just something that they just dubbed it in posts and really wasn't that complex. But it was a literal machine. Well, the Flintstones also used the laugh track. Scooby Doo holds the distinction of being the first Saturday Morning cartoon to harness the canned laughter. Hy'll tell us about the laugh box, not to be confused with Peter Frampton's squawkbox.
Ha ha ha ha that's a talk box. Oh yeah, wrong, awk. The history of the laugh box is amazing. Charles Douglas had a team of certified laugh boys and you bet it, you bet your bottom dollar, buddy. Laugh Boys is spelled with two f's.
Are we the laugh boys?
Yes, yes we are. Uh the They were certified texts who were allowed to operate the laugh Box in his absence allowed Well, Douglas had this thing, had the laugh game laugh track game on lock throughout the seventies, and he basically took this thing and it was over two feet tall in an exterior box, occurred with padlocks, and one of the descriptions that I read operated like an organ. I don't quite know what that means, but basically Douglas would roll this thing into you know, studio, and the producers would say, okay, we need a subdued laughter there, we need the quiet tittering there, and Douglas would go to work on it in private to guard his techniques and technology.
It's like the Wizard of Oz.
Yeah, only his immediate family who would inside the inside of the machine looked like and it was referred to one point as allegedly the most sought after but well concealed box in the world never find Yeah, I guess. So my guess is that this thing, when they say it operates like an organ, it's just triggering different tapes that he would combine. Yeah, like a mellow Yeah essentially. Anyway, one of these was discovered and put on Antique's roadshow. At one point they said you can probably get around ten grand for it, So those your belongs in a museum segment for this episode.
There's an episode of the dakoder Ring podcast. There's a whole half hour episode about this machine. Wow. Yeah, I want to check this out later. This is really wild looking. Yeah, and I remember I think it was I think it was Andy Kaufman or somebody who pointed out that part of their hatred of laugh tracks, in addition to it just being an authentic was that the voices that you're hearing were recorded many, many, many decades ago, and that they were just all dead by that point, which added a whole other level of creepiness to the mechanical laughter.
I think I read that Chuck Plank book.
Oh maybe that was it, which.
Is sort of the most normy ault Dickhead to have been reading as a teen. Anyway. As for the non dialogue sounds of Scooby Doo, as you might have guessed for the show originally pitched as a rip off of the Archiees, there were a number of musical considerations that went into the Gang's adventures. The original theme song for the show wasn't even the one that people are familiar with today. Scooby Doo, wherever you got some learning to do, or Now. It was basically sounded like the Monster's theme ah.
Which then got sampled by Fallout Boy and Uma Thurman.
Yeah Scooby Dell, where are you?
However, this version, the instrumental version, only appeared in the first two episodes because the network thought that it was too spooky for children, so this was replaced by a more kid friendly theme now. This is an example of the insane timelines that this used to operate under the original version. That song is almost lost to history because when the original show the original two seasons were remastered and re released in nineteen ninety eight for home media, they used the second incarnature of the theme song for every episode, almost losing this first one for history. And that instrumental was written by a guy named Ted Nichols who worked at Hannah Barbera for nearly a decade contributed to a ton of the company shows. Just a fun note about him, He used to sing in a barbershop style Dapper Dan quartet at Disneyland, and he got his gig at Hannah Barbera when a member of the church choir who was musical director of introduced him to him.
The show's more familiar theme song, the one you so indelibly sang a moment ago I was written by David Mook and Ben Raleigh. Raleigh seems to be the more famous of the pair, having written hits like Wonderful, Wonderful for Johnny Mathis, tell Laura I love her. You know, one of those great classic teen death songs of that era, and similar you'd say, Drek, I say classics for Leslie Gore. According to Rosemarie Mook, David Mook's widow, he had done some work for Hannah Barbera before when they assigned him the role of a new theme song for Scooby Doo with Dan Raleigh. The two men met on a Tuesday and completed a new draft of the song in time for the episode that aired that Saturday. They met on a Tuesday, it was on the air on Saturday. It means they wrote it and recorded it, mixed it, mastered it, stuck it on the episode. That's insane, that is totally nuts. It was sung by a guy named Larry Marx. That's the voice who sings the famous Scooby Doo theme. Marx have been working for Lee Hazelwood. Of all people, who was to me best known, I mean has a lot of great mid sixties production partnerships, but the most famous ones with Nancy Sinatra. Yeah, so so gold that's nuts to me and known for his three and a half octave voice. Larry Marx came in and knocked out the Scooby Doo theme on a Wednesday, the day after the two guys wrote it, and it was in place for the series in time for the third episode airing that Saturday.
That is just nuts. Yeah, he had this three and a half after voice. Or he's saying male and female parts in falsetto just every part on.
That track.
Is wid and Jordan. Yes, this will interest you. Before the Manson murders, Mook's widow recalled David telling her that Charles Manson had come into David's office pedaling demos he'd written. Yeah, she said in an interview, David looked at him and thought, this is a very strange person. I've got to get him out of my office.
They all say that I think he was much more connected to the sixties music industry than people won a lot on The only guy who admits that he was like really ingrained in the scene was Neil Young. Everybody else tries to like whitewash him out of the picture. But he was. He was hanging out with a lot of I mean the beach boys, Brian Wilson, Dennis Wilson's the most famous. I think he was hanging out with some of the mamas on the papas.
Like, no, Mason Manson was in the scene. But whatever. Scooby Doo guy.
Larry Mark's version of the of the Scooby Doo theme song was replaced by a newer version, a better version, a faster version, sung by George A. Roberson junior stage named Austin Roberts, who also sang some of the chase music in a second season of the show.
That's the music that kicks up when they're running in between the hallways and out of doors.
Can you do it? No, I'm such a Scooby Doo nube. I'm not tall lo sure what it is like. I can kind of approximate it.
Though.
Danny Jansen was the producer for the show's music at that point, and he was already an industry event. He'd written Come On and Get Happy for the Partridge Family and was involved in Josie and the Pussycats. Supposedly he threatened to walk away from the latter because the network was leary of one of the singers he wanted, Patrese Holloway, who'd become the first ever African American woman to star in a cartoon.
I just want to stress how cool this guy Danny Jansen was. He threatened to walk away because they weren't going to let a black woman onto it cartoon show. And he produced Kurt Russell's nineteen seventy self title record, What What.
The What is Kurt Russell's records sound like? I Is it like a I think yeah. I mean I've never heard him saying I didn't know he's saying. I hope it's like himing a guitar.
Baby Believe Me is one of the songs.
Oh so he's in his Disney phase. Okay, yeah, okay. That's the craziest thing I've learned on this.
I just love how the these industries were so connected. I mean, that's the truly if there's any truly magical magic in LA it's that you can have. You know, a guy who made cartoon history by pushing for the first black representation on a cartoon show and working on something that was written by another guy who been pitched by Nansen and sung by another guy who did guide vocals for Kurt Russell's a What a wacky What a Wacky town.
Now we're heading into a section that you call Scooby Doobie reception. Ken Spears, one of the producers of the show, said, we were worried it wouldn't last but one season, much less than thirty eight years. It was up against the Hardy Boys on NBC, and we thought we'd get clovered in the ratings. This did not happened. Nielsen Ratings reported that as many as sixty five percent of Saturday morning audiences were tuned into CBS when Scooby doo was being broadcast. Insane market. Yeah, that's that's ridiculous. At the end of the first season, the original voice of Daphney Stephanieanna Christofferson, which definitely seems like a made up name, retired and was replaced by Heather North.
Who voiced the character until nineteen ninety seven.
The show was such a success that it stopped being a ripoff of The Archies and Dobie Gillis and became a trendsetter of its own. Hannah Barbera and its rivals produced a glot of animated programs that also starred teenage detectives solving mysteries with a pet or mascot. These shows included Josie and the Pussycats, The Funky Phantom, The Amazing Chan Chan and the Chan Clan, Goober and the Ghost Chasers, Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels. One of these is a fake, I know one of these. You put it in here.
Actually, it's about saying I was just about to say, those are all real shows.
In the fall of nineteen seventy two, Hannah Barbera and CBS embarked on a new format one hour episodes called the New Scooby Doo Movies, which started the Parade of guest stars. After two seasons and twenty four episodes of the New Movies format in nineteen seventy two, in nineteen seventy three, CBS began airing reruns of the original Scooby Doo Where I Use series until its option on the series expired in nineteen seventy six. That was around the same time that Fred Silverman, who we mentioned earlier in the episode kept jumping TV networks during the seventies, became president of ABC moving from CBS to ABC, and Silverman made a deal with Hannah barbar to bring Scooby Doo to ABC along with him. Began airing in nineteen seventy six, and it was around this era that Scooby was joined by a new Hannibar Bear show, Dyno Mutt Dog Wonder, to create the Scooby Doo Dyno Mutt Hour. What are you having me read?
I just want you to keep reading obscure sixties and seventies cartoons cold. It's the biggest joy of my day.
Joe Ruby and Kevin Spears, some of the creators of Scooby Doo, who are now working for Fred Silverman and supervisors of the ABC Saturday Morning cartoon lineup, returned the program to its original format half hour, notably adding Scooby's dim witted country cousins Scooby.
Dumb also not a thing we made up.
The following year, those two, Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, left to start their own studio in nineteen seventy seven as competition against Hanna Barbera, which I'm kind of shocked that they didn't have that in their contract not to do. And this is when things started to go downhill for poor Scooby and his friends. By nineteen seventy nine, ratings were so low that the series was nearly axed, so Joseph Barbera and Mark Evner developed Scrappy Do, Scooby's nephew, to prevent ABC from canceling the series. The character, obnoxiously brash and fearless, though physically small, was the other rubric pitch for Scooby Doo before they ultimately went with large but scared as the core and really only personality traits. Sixteen episodes of Scooby Doo and Scrappy Doo aired during the nineteen seventy nine nineteen eighty season, but ABC ultimately felt that Scrappy was not a positive influence on kids. Evanor wrote about the experience on his blog, quote it dawned on ABC broadcast, then maybe Scrappy was a bad role model for the kiddos. He was, and one person in that department actually used this term to me, quote too independent. The network also thought Scrappy was quote too rebellious. But all that said, Scrappy did exactly what he was supposed to do. As Evanor wrote, he got Scooby Doo renewed for another season. More Scooby Doo came from the blood of Scrappy Doo. In case you haven't figured this out, Scrappy Doo was fairly hated among Scooby Doo heads. Series creators Joe Ruby and Ken Spears have gone on the record about having hated him, and so did animator i Will Takamoto, who described Scrappy as quote definitely not my favorite member of a Scooby family. In two thousand and four, when Scooby Doo received acclaim for being the animated show with the most episodes, was the movie before the Simpsons took that record over. Fans congratulated the show but didn't hide their vitriol for Scrappy, with comments like please let Scrappy get caught by the Dogcatcher and any true Scooby fan would have to disregard all the episodes featuring the terrible Scrappy do. It's just too painful. Clearly, they made their opinions very clear.
I just love I love how much I love when people get out of pocket about things that do not matter.
Hey, that's the name of this show, that's sure. James Gunn, who we mentioned earlier, wrote the live action Scooby Doo movie once so far as to call Scrappy Do quote a little piece of this in his movie's twist, ending Scrappy actually winds up being the villain. The film's director Rajah Gosnell told E Scrappy ruined the series. So it's just a brainstorm between James and I where we were trying to figure out the final twist. So just out of the session, it was like Scrappy. I know people younger on us that really like Scrappy. The twist was widely debated on what era of Scooby you watched, but enough people hated Scrappy we were mostly applauded. Scrappy Dow was eventually killed, at least non canonically in twenty eleven in a work of online fan fiction which tied the show to Dexter, the show about a serial killer with a heart of goal.
Question mark, that's why I love fanfic.
Yeah. Yeah. By twenty fourteen, the out of context line Scrappy Do found dead in Miami has become a Twitter choke.
I don't remember that.
You're much more online than me. You remember that.
No, I don't remember this. One in particular. But I find it so amazing to recap someone online was writing fanfic Dexter fanfic and the murder that Dexter is investigating on Scrappy do them. I love the Internet.
Also in twenty eleven, in an episode of Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated, Scrappy appeared in a brief cameo when Fred and Daphne visited a museum celebrating their exploits, to which Fred claims, we all promise each other that we would never speak of him.
It's hard to pin a straight narrative onto the decline and subsequent expansion of Scooby Doo, simply because, as you may have gleaned already, the show was mercilessly shoved in any direction that whoever owned it at the time thought could make them money. The last incarnation of the show on ABC was called a pup named Scooby Doo and wrote on the then prevalent trend of making established children's television characters young a la Muppet Babies. After the show's first season in nineteen eight eighty eight, Tom Ruger, who had previously been the head story editor on Scooby Doo, since i'ont eteing eighty three took much of his team to defect from Hannah Barbera to Warner Brothers to develop Steven Spielberg presents Tiny Toon Adventures and later Animaniacs and Pinky in the Brain. So that's just a fun historical note that this weird guy worked on two different things about making cartoon characters babies and had enough people on the team to want to continue doing that with him.
I just love that Steven Spielberg felt strongly enough about Tiny Tin Adventures.
To get branded with his name on it. Yeah, Yeah, I just jesus. This infantilized Scooby marched on until nineteen eighty one, but following the success of the show's reruns and live action film, the next version was What's New Scooby Doo, airing on Kids WB from two thousand and two until two thousand and six. From there, the franchise is travel to cartoon network Boomerang, which is a cable and streaming app that apparently exists, and finally HBO Max, where Mindy Kaling's adult oriented Velma. A rebooted version of the show centered on that character, premiered in January twenty twenty three. There's also an entire cottage industry of comic books and video games based around Scooby Doo that we will not be mentioned.
I feel bad taking Alex's fan theory corner from you do you want to do this?
No? Go ahead, go ahead?
Okay. One thing we did want to note is some of the more hilarious fan theories about Scooby Doo. For example, there's a theory that Scooby Doo is able to speak English because he was part of a Soviet experiment. I like that one. Or that the gang is actually constantly on the move in the Mystery Machine because the draft Dodgers avoiding the Vietnam War.
I like that one too.
That's why I.
Also liked that one.
Yeah, But the award for the most as you describe it, baroque theory goes to the one that posits that the characters were based on the five college consortium. Where did you find this? Amherst College has a very preppy reputation, so that represents Fred Hippie Shaggy is Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College matches upper class upper crust, Daphne Smith College is Nerdy Velma, and Scooby is UMass Amhurst, which is known for partying. Yes, it is a lot of friends who went there. However, FactCheck Hampshire College didn't even open until one year after Scooby started airing Yeah it is, you prove the stuff. One of the animators shot down the rumor in his autobiography, writing I don't think I could have named five colleges in the Boston area, let alone been familiar enough with them to copy their styles busts.
So there you have it, folks. We will chase down any dumb thing that shows up at alistical. I'm not even sure how that the genesis of that theory, but we will run it down at fact check it for you anyway. Despite its massive success, Scooby Doo has only been nominated for two major awards, Daytime Emmy in nineteen ninety for a pub named Scooby Doo and another in two thousand and three for the voice of Velma Mindy Khn for Outstanding Performance in an Animated Program. It's not like the property was ever going to be a critical darling. Ao. Scott want snifted in The New York Times that Scooby Doo was quote one of the cheapest, least original products of modern American juvenile culture.
Ouch. I mean, I'm not a huge fan, but it's got to be way more deserving targets than Scooby two.
Just like that that he went for that one.
Yeah, that is personal. That feels like that feels like a hymn problem.
Honestly, I would though. A good counterpoint comes from other other than Carl Sagan, who in his last book hyped Scooby Doo as approaching the supernatural with a healthy degree of scientific skepticism, which he said the X Files did not do. He called Scooby Doo a public service which paranormal claims are systematically investigated and every case is found to be explicable in prosaic terms. Thank you, Carl.
Billions and billions of ghosts.
Obviously, Scooby Doo's massive success has more to do with its impact on culture. I mean, you look at something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is one of the biggest television hits of the waning days of the twentieth century into the twenty first, and that is explicitly modeled after Scooby Doo by Joss Whedon. Admittedly that the game even calls themselves to the Scoobies. Yeah, I read an interesting think piece in The Atlantic which you'll probably never hear me say again about some of the societal underpinnings of the gang. Fred and Daphne, with their implied couple them and relatively straight appearances minus the Ascot, represents the upstanding mainstream America, while Shaggy and Velmo, with their implied drug habits and obscured sexuality, are the products of the counterculture. Writer Christopher Orr continues, the show's longevity demonstrates that the metaphor works equally well as outsiders versus popular kids, or most primarily, as children versus parents, And I think that really gets at the essence of Scooby Doo. Like another tootemic illustrated work, Calvin and Hobbes, it captures a representative handful of American archetypes and their companions as they navigate the adult world. Scooby Doo's ultimate lesson, though, I think, is far more cynical than anyone ever let on the fun evils of the world, like ghosts, vampires, and ghouls are ultimately all in our heads, and growing up means learning that every spooky thing haunting your imagination via the dark hallways of the world. Is, in the end, just another greedy adult in a cheap mask. But there's a silver lining in that it also teaches us we'll always have our friends, animal and otherwise, a good sandwich or two and a pretty sweet van with a custom pain job to help us model our way through. Folks, Thank you for listening. This has been too much information. I'm Alex Sigel.
And I'm Jordan run Tagg. We'll catch you next time.
We're right your next time.
Too Much Information was a production of iHeartRadio.
The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtogg.
The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June.
The show was researched, written, and hosted by Jordan Runtog and Alex Heigel.
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