Rocky & Bullwinkle

The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show is the collective name for two separate American television animated series (Rocky and His Friends (1959-1964) and The Bullwinkle Show (1961-1973)) that originally aired from 1959 to 1964. more...

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Rocky & Bullwinkle enjoyed great popularity during the 1960s, and is still found in re-runs in the United States.

Much of the success of the series was due to its ability to work on two distinct levels. As an animated series with zany characters and plots, it appealed to children; its clever use of puns and topical references appealed to adults. The animation is quite limited and choppy while the scripts and audio are inventive and sometimes sophisticated. Some critics at the time described the effect as being like a well-written radio program with pictures.

History

The series, inspired by an original property called "The Frostbite Falls Revue," was created by Jay Ward and Alex Anderson, who had previously collaborated on Crusader Rabbit. Ward wanted to produce the show in Los Angeles, and Anderson, who lived in the San Francisco Bay area, did not want to move south, so Ward was joined by Bill Scott, who became head writer and co-producer at Jay Ward Productions, and wrote all of the "Rocky & Bullwinkle" segments. Another notable writer was Allan Burns who later became head writer for MTM Enterprises.

The series got its start as a pilot, Rocky the Flying Squirrel. The voice actors (June Foray, Paul Frees, Bill Scott, and William Conrad) recorded their dialogue in February 1958. Eight months later, General Mills signed a deal to sponsor the cartoon, to be shown in a late-afternoon time slot targeted at children.

Ward then hired the rest of the production staff, which included writers and designers but no animators. Friends of Ward's at Dancer, Fitzgerald & Sample (an advertising firm with General Mills as a client) had bought a studio in Mexico called Gamma Productions S.A. de C.V. to produce the animation; this outsourcing had made the deal financially attractive to the sponsor. Scott, when interviewed by animation historian Jim Korkis in 1982, described their work:

We found out very quickly that we could not depend on the Mexico studio to produce anything of quality. They were turning out the work very quickly and there were all kinds of mistakes and flaws and boo-boos. They would never check. Mustaches popped on and off Boris, Bullwinkle's antlers would change, colors would change, costumes would disappear. By the time we finally saw it, it was on the air.

The show started in fall 1959 as Rocky and His Friends on the ABC television network. In 1961 the series moved to NBC and was renamed The Bullwinkle Show. The show moved back to ABC in 1964 and was canceled that same year, although episodes continued to be aired on ABC until 1973 when it went into syndication. An abbreviated fifteen minute version also aired in the 1960s under the title The Rocky Show which ran in sydnication..sometimes in conjunction with another fifteen minute version of Total Television's King Leonardo and His Short Subjects under the alternate title The King and Odie also sponsored by General Mills with the animation work also farmed out to the Gamma studios in Mexico.

Read more at Wikipedia.org