TRIBUTE TO JAY WARD: COMPILATION TAPE INCLUDING RARE PILOTS OF FANG, THE WONDER DOG, SUPER CHICKEN, RAH RAH WOOZIE, A BULLWINKLE SHOW HOSTED BY BULLWINKLE PUPPET, ETC (TV)
Summary
A compilation of television episodes and clips created by producer Jay Ward. First is the episode “Rocky and the Rock or Taken for Granite” of “The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle” segment of “The Bullwinkle Show,” wherein Rocky and Bullwinkle narrowly avoid falling prey to a trap set by Boris and Natasha, and in the process Boris is crushed by a huge boulder. Bullwinkle rescues him, but in doing so affects his memory and personality, turning him temporarily nice. In his confused state he decides to disobey his orders, which proclaim that Rocky and Bullwinkle must make it to their destination safely, and prepares to blow them up with TNT. In “Fractured Fairy Tales,” the story follows the witch Grizelka, who cursed a number of famous fairy-tale figures, including Sleeping Beauty and the Frog Prince. Her witchery falters when she falls in love with a handsome prince and starts making mistakes in her spells. She is sent to see a psychiatrist, and concludes that she can make the prince fall in love with her via a magic potion to change herself into a beautiful princess. She does so and visits the prince during a royal ball, and he instantly falls in love with her and proposes marriage. However, they are constantly followed around by Grizelka’s broom, despite her efforts to rid themselves of it. She eventually hits upon the solution of purchasing a “gride,” or dustpan, for her broom, and is able to get married peacefully. In “Peabody’s Improbable History,” Sherman and Peabody travel back in time to 1914 in Newcastle, England to meet Mata Hari. They are unable to stop her from sabotaging a large English sailing vessel and causing it to sink, and report the incident to Scotland Yard. However, there they discover that Mata Hari has made off with secret plans vital to the war effort. They chase her to an optometrist’s office, but she manages to get away. They try to chase down her plane, but a mishap causes them to crash in the middle of a battle on the German lines. However, Peabody concocts a clever misdirection in order to apprehend Mata Hari. In “Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties,” Dudley is bringing Snidely Whiplash in after apprehending him for one of his crimes. However, Whiplash easily escapes when Dudley accidentally locks himself in the post’s jail cell, only to be stopped by Dudley’s horse. Dudley stands vigil over Whiplash, who hatches another plan to lure Dudley out to his sawmill. To do so he first kidnaps Dudley’s horse, and then Nell when she goes looking for him. Soon Whiplash has captured Inspector Fenwick and a number of other Mounties, but Dudley has still not arrived, still lost inside his own base. Eventually he gets Whiplash’s message and exchanges himself for everyone else’s lives, but manages to avoid death by tricking Whiplash, only to fall victim to his own stupidity. In the “Rocky and Bullwinkle” episode “Trouble Upstairs or Bats for Boris,” Rocky and Bullwinkle rest in a shack by the railroad tracks, and Boris seals them in with barbed wire. He attempts to blow them up with dynamite, but Fearless Leader interferes and uses one of his spy satellites to drop a brick on Boris’s head, causing him to fumble the dynamite and free Rocky and Bullwinkle. He is also sent catapulting into the next county, where the impact restores him to his usual personality. Next is the pilot of the unproduced series “Fang the Wonder Dog,” about an unusually large, strong, and clumsy farm dog. The story begins on the family-owned Appleknocker Farm when the father heads into town to buy groceries, leaving only Freddy, his grandfather, and Fang behind, which proves to be troublesome. Grandpa falls into an abandoned mineshaft, and Freddy summons Fang to help with the rescue. However, the overzealous Fang accidentally knocks Freddy into the mineshaft as well. Fang keeps attempting to help, going into town to fetch some assistance and getting himself into further trouble. Through his mishaps, he manages to cause a fire truck and a police car to both crash into the mineshaft, stranding the officers and firemen down there with Freddy and Grandpa. He inadvertently gets everyone out of the mineshaft when he drops a lit stick of dynamite into it. Next is the pilot to the unproduced series “Rah Rah Woozy,” about a pair of laboratory mice, Hamilton and Maury, at a college who surreptitiously try to help their football team. At Woozy State College the day of their big game against Wrecker Tech approaches, and Hamilton notices Coach Mudbank looking miserable. Maury reasons that it is because he is about to retire having never won a game before, but he intends to fix that with the aid of his latest invention, a radio-controlled football which moves in accordance with voice commands. During the game Woozy State is down and Maury and Hamilton manage to switch the ball during a time-out. This causes a reversal of fortune and Woozy State starts to catch up. Hamilton accidentally destroys the ball, but Maury inflates Hamilton with an oxygen tank to turn him into a “substitute ball.” They manage to help them score the winning point. Next is the unproduced pilot to “Hawkear – Frontier Scout,” about a clueless 19th-Century frontiersman and his misadventures. The story begins in 1813 in Fort Knight in the Northwestern Territories, where Hawkear is called upon to track down a woman’s baby (who has been missing for forty years). He and his Native American companion Pierced Arrow find the trail leading to Awapahoe Village, where they are soon captured. Hawkear tries to prove his identity by demonstrating his keen hearing to them. He passes their tests and discovers that the chief is the missing baby, and tries to persuade him to return to Fort Knight with him. However, Hawkear discovers that the missing baby was actually a girl, and the chief, angered by the incident, uses it a pretext to declare war. The “Bullwinkle Show” pilot “Jet Fuel Formula” follows, wherein Rocky and Bullwinkle are stuck on the moon and try to return in a rocket ship, sparking panic when the general public believes that “moon creatures” are invading. They arrive and reveal their true identities, sparking further interest when it comes to light that they’ve discovered a new and super-efficient rocket fuel. Their adventure began when Bullwinkle was attempting to bake a quick-rising cake a few days earlier, which launched their stove and later themselves into space by rising with explosive intensity. Bullwinkle is made the “Head of Guided Moosles” as Boris and Natasha attempt to extract the formula from him before eliminating Bullwinkle. She discovers that Bullwinkle has lost part of the cake recipe, and in response she and Boris plan to kill him with a bomb disguised as a present. In “Fractured Fairy Tales,” the tale of “Slow White and Nose Red” is told. A miller in the woods notices his daughters Slow White and Nose Red have grown up; the former has a penchant for extreme slowness, while the other’s nose turned red after eating vast quantities of apples. One day they find a bear sleeping in a pile of mud and, feeling sympathy for it, decide to take it home and put it in their father’s bed. However, the miller discovers this when he tries to go to sleep, and is forced to sleep outside. For the next few years, Slow White and Nose Red befriend animals everywhere, who eat them out of house and home and render them broke. He makes a deal with them: he will see that the animals are fed if they move out and get married. Their efforts to woo men at a local bachelor’s ball and bachelor’s picnic end in disaster. Finally they see a marriage counselor, who sends them to meet two brothers who are “perfect” for them: a man even slower than Slow White, and his brother with a green nose. In “Peabody’s Improbable History,” Sherman and Peabody travel to Florence, Italy in the year 1506 to visit Leonardo da Vinci. They are confused when they find that da Vinci is busy painting simple signs to earn a “fast buck.” He reveals that he has ceased his production of masterpieces since his subject for the Mona Lisa refuses to smile, frustrating him to no end. Peabody meets Mona Lisa and deduces that she cannot smile due to a toothache. They take her to a dentist, who uses some rather extreme methods to loosen the tooth, all of which end in failure. Peabody comes up with a solution and takes Sherman and Mona Lisa out to lunch, which results in her giving her famous smile for da Vinci’s painting. Peabody reveals to Sherman how exactly he got her to give her famous smile. In “The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle” episode “Bullwinkle’s Ride or Goodbye Dollink,” Boris and Natasha’s plan to kill Bullwinkle fails when she becomes locked in with them, causing her to throw the bomb out the window. Knowledge of Bullwinkle’s “jet fuel formula” affects scientific learning across the world as others take up baking to try to duplicate his feat. Rocky and Bullwinkle attempt to recreate the cake in the government lab, but unbeknownst to them an alien presence has them in its sights. In “Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties,” Nell wants to go into business, against the wishes of her father. She disguises herself with a mask and performs in Snidely Whiplash’s amateur hour, where her awful singing puts the crowd to sleep. Whiplash decides to take advantage of this and proclaims that she has “won,” taking her on tour so that he can put audiences to sleep and steal from them. The Mounties hear of this and Inspector Fenwick charges Dudley with apprehending the masked singer, as he is the only one “square” enough to withstand her dreadful singing. Sure enough, Dudley enjoys her singing and she reveals her identity to him, helping him bring Whiplash in. However, he escapes when Nell provides a demonstration of her singing to her father. In “Aesop and Son,” Aesop relates to his son the story of a married couple of tigers who move into an abandoned grass hut in the woods. They have the bad habit of throwing the bones from their meals out the window, until eventually the bones pile so high that it obscures their view. Neither of them want to clean it up, and so they throw them out the door, piling up the bones to the degree that neither of them can leave the house. The lady tiger prepares to leave, fed up with the situation, but a rare bone-eating porcupine sets up outside the house and starts eating all the bones. They believe their troubles are solved, but the porcupine keeps them awake with his constant gnawing, and refuses to listen to them. Their attempts to get rid of the porcupine end in failure, and so they move to the North Pole. They continue their habit of throwing bones out the window, and soon attract a bone-eating penguin, thus leaving them no better than when they started. Aesop’s son concludes that “people who live in grass houses shouldn’t throw bones.” In “George of the Jungle,” George insists that his pet elephant Shep is actually a dog, much to Ursula’s frustration. A pair of explorers, Charlie Parlor and African Rose, plan to steal Shep and sell him for millions, owing to the fact that he trumpets in a different key than all other elephants. They incapacitate Ape and make off with Shep in their truck, and George attempts to pursue them. He eventually catches up with them, and accidentally summons a flock of woodpeckers, who free Shep from his cage. However, the thieves lose interest when they realize that Shep’s voice is changing; George continues to insist that Shep is a dog. In “Superchicken,” Eggs Benedict of the self-proclaimed “World’s Largest Chicken Coop” suffers from “chicken fatigue” and goes insane. He calls Superchicken and threatens him, and Superchicken foils his attempt to rob a bank. Eggs is sent to a state penitentiary, but doesn’t mind, as this is part of his plan. When he gets out he runs a dog-smuggling operation, but Superchicken catches him again and he is sent back to prison for another fifteen years. He calls Superchicken, threatening to rob the United States Mint. During Eggs’s incarceration, Superchicken has developed narcissistic tendencies over the ease of capturing Eggs. During the mint robbery, Eggs frames Superchicken for the crime, but Superchicken manages to convince the police of his innocence and gets Eggs sent to jail for ninety-nine years. Additional highlights include: a live-action comedy sketch involving a soldier’s increasingly-surreal attempts to record a voice message to send home to his mother; humorous music videos for the songs “These Boots are Made for Walkin’” and “California Here I Come” composed of old film clips; several cereal commercials produced by Ward; and a selection from “Fractured Flickers” entitled “Dinky Dunstan, Boy Cheerleader,” featuring a comedic re-dubbing of scenes from the 1923 “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” film. (Credits are available only for the first “Bullwinkle Show” section.)
Details
- NETWORK: N/A
- DATE: November 30, 1999
- RUNNING TIME: 0:60:00
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: B:09635
- GENRE: Comedy
- SUBJECT HEADING: Comedy
- SERIES RUN: N/A
- COMMERCIALS:
- TV – Commercials – Cap’n Crunch breakfast cereal
- TV – Commercials – Cheerios breakfast cereal
- TV – Commercials – Cinnamon Crunch breakfast cereal
- TV – Commercials – General Mills breakfast cereal
CREDITS
- For "The Bullwinkle Show"
- Ponsonby Britt … Executive Producer
- Jay Ward … Producer
- Bill Scott … Producer
- Bill Hurtz … Director
- Pete Burness … Director
- Ted Parmelee … Director
- Lew Keller … Director
- Sal Faillace … Director
- Gerard Baldwin … Director
- George Singer … Director
- Gamma Productions … Animation
- Chris Hayward … Writer
- Lloyd Turner … Writer
- Chris Jenkyns … Writer
- George Atkins … Writer
- Al Burns … Writer
- Dennis Farnon … Music by
- George Steiner … Music by
- Fred Steiner … Theme Music by
- Bill Conrad … Narrator, For "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle"
- Edward Everett Horton … Narrator, For "Fractured Fairy Tales"
- June Foray … Voice, Rocky, Natasha Fatale, Nell, Various
- Bill Scott … Voice, Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-Right, Fearless Leader, Mr. Peabody, Various
- Paul Frees … Voice, Boris Badenov, Various
- Hans Conried … Voice, Snidely Whiplash
- Walter Tetley … Voice, Sherman