Back in the early 1960s, when it was considered risky to trust anyone over 30, a silly, satirical cartoon series poked fun at the Cold War and stalwart Canadian Mounties, skewered fairytales and built entire episodes around world-class puns.
Some thought the social satire of "The Bullwinkle Show" was mildly seditious. Others were offended. Rumor had it that the series was a sinister CIA attempt to make the Russians look bad. And because of one character, Canadians never saw the series at all.
But fans thought the adventures of Rocket J. "Rocky" Squirrel and Bullwinkle J. Moose, Natasha Fatale and Boris Badenov, Dudley Do-Right and Snidely Whiplash were funny. The more you knew about world affairs, the funnier they were.
As it turned out, it was creator Jay Ward himself who briefly got in trouble at the White House. More about that later.
This week, in "Of Moose and Men: The Rocky and Bullwinkle Story" (Tuesday at 10:15 p.m. on WETA, Thursday at 11 on 22/67), viewers who watched Jay Ward and Bill Scott's characters get a look at the people who made the series work.
Rocky and Bullwinkle debuted in "Rocky and His Friends" during ABC's 1959-60 afternoon lineup. That series ran until September 1961, then became "The Bullwinkle Show" on NBC Sundays at 7 from 1961 to '62, moving to Sunday afternoons and then to Saturday mornings from 1962 to 1964. The series returned to ABC on Sunday mornings until September 1973, then switched to Saturday mornings on NBC almost a decade later, the 1981-82 season. WTTG airs the cartoons from 6 to 7 a.m. on most Saturdays.
A typical episode was almost a grab-bag of characters. In addition to the all-American flying squirrel, always wearing his aviator's cap, and the moose from Frostbite Falls, Minn., there were the bumbling Russian spies Boris (voice of Paul Frees) and Natasha; Canadian Mountie Dudley Do-Right and his nemesis, the evil Whiplash (voice of Hans Conried); an intelligent and somewhat condescending dog named Mr. Peabody and his adopted boy Sherman (voice of Walter Tetley), who traveled on historical adventures via Peabody's Way Back Machine.
Like most retrospectives, this one has lots of original clips and interviews. Film historian Leonard Maltin puts the series in perspective as an outsider. But most of the remarks are from people who worked on "Bullwinkle": June Foray, who voiced Rocky, Natasha and Nell, Do-Right's sweetheart; writers Alan Burns and Chris Hayward, and publicist Howard Brandy.
"Our idea was to take examples of cartoons and then talk to the creative staff and find out what was going on here," said producer Benjamin Brady Magliano. What was going on was apparently a lot of fun. Narrator William Conrad told Magliano that the series was "the only thing I really cared about" in his 40 years in the business.
Those who worked with the creators fondly recall the rotund pair, both now deceased. Ward was a shy man with a devilish sense of humor; Scott, the extroverted animator/writer who voiced Bullwinkle, Dudley and Peabody, had a flair for the outrageous and for promotion.
Tiny, energetic Foray cheerfully acknowledges that the impertinent series provoked a lot of people. "We offended nations, politicians, schoolteachers, weather people," she says.
One television personality, Derwood Kirby, threatened legal action over a storyline featuring the "Kerwood Derby," a black bowler that could make its wearer highly intelligent.
"Jay sent him back a letter saying, 'Yeah, please sue us. We need the publicity.' Of course, we never heard from them again," said Brandy, the series' publicist.
The special shows how the series' humor spanned generations. "The animation was for the kids," Brandy said, "but the dialogue and the humor are all geared for anybody who could laugh, whatever age."
Canada never saw "Bullwinkle" because its broadcasting executives feared the character Dudley Do-Right would be offensive to Canadians and harmful to the image of the Mounties. Do-Right was a noble, fearless, wholesome, handsome, do-gooding moron of a Mountie.
Magliano of Georgetown Television Productions here, who produced the special with writer/director Marino Amoruso, said with a laugh: "We told the stations along the {Canadian-American} border to tell the Canadians that they're going to see something they've never seen before."
And then there were the Soviets, who displayed a lack of humor over Boris and Natasha. The spies were nominally from a place called Pottsylvania. "Yeah, sure," chuckled Magliano. "The Russians very mildly said the whole thing was a CIA conspiracy."
Almost nothing was sacrosanct to Ward and Scott. Even classic stories got twisted, under the titles, "Fractured Fairytales," narrated by Edward Everett Horton, and "Aesop and Son," with Charles Ruggles as the voice of Aesop. When the creators ran out of fairytales, they made some up.
But there wasn't much danger of extreme political tilt, said Magliano. "Ward was a conservative Republican and Scott was a liberal Democrat," he said. "So it was a great little time capsule."
To hear Magliano tell it, making a special out of "Bullwinkle" clips was a project of devotion.
"I thought they were hysterical," he said. "Seeing them again is like you're being let in on the joke. What's interesting is the level of the humor. There are some obvious sight gags, but it's the puns ... The one that always stuck in my mind, when I was 9 years old there was an episode in which they were in a boat and it was listing. Natasha said it was listing to port and Boris said, ''Tis better than muscatel, my dear.' I have a theory that if you want to get to 9- or 10-year-old kids, this isn't a bad way. It's sort of the way 'The Simpsons' is now."
He also included part of an episode about a boat called "The Ruby Yacht of Omar Khayyam," obviously written merely to support the title pun.
Brandy, who was the model for Dudley Do-Right, tells stories on camera about some of the zany things Ward and Scott did to publicize the series.
"In the fall of 1962, Jay Ward bought an island off the Minnesota shores and called it Moosylvania and started this appeal for statehood," said Magliano. "He and Howard Brandy bought this van and put a calliope in the back and went around the country. Jay Ward was dressed up as Napoleon and Brandy was dressed up as Do-Right.
"The last stop was Washington, D.C. The NBC press rep was Pat Humphrey, Hubert Humphrey's daughter-in-law, and she was riding with them in this van and she's got her face covered, she's so embarrassed. They drive up to the White House and Ward says he wants to see President Kennedy, and the guards tell them to get out of there and start to unbuckle their guns. So they go into the Associated Press office with their publicity pictures and discover that it was the day of the Cuban missile crisis and they were the only people who didn't know!"
Brandy, whom Magliano described as "up in years," is a private man who eschews press contacts and is reluctant to talk about his friend Ward. "A couple of times he was close to tears on camera," said Magliano.
Two of the series' writers, Alan Burns and Chris Hayward, went on to sitcoms, Burns to "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and Hayward to "Get Smart!" and "Barney Miller."
"They said working on 'Bullwinkle' taught them so much because Jay Ward was saying, 'Don't write down to the audience. Write for yourself.' They would just top themselves with these godawful puns," said Magliano. "None of them made much money off of this. The writers and directors always said they didn't make any money until they left Jay Ward."
But PBS stations hope "Of Moose and Men" will make money for them. Michael Soper, PBS' senior vice president for development, said that during pledge period, station programmers choose specials that "are memorable and emotionally involving for those people most likely to contribute" -- typically over 35 and well-educated. About 5.2 million families nationwide contribute, he said, accounting for about 22 percent of a typical PBS station's budget.
"'Rocky and Bullwinkle' was a part of American culture," Soper said. "You could watch it at two or three different levels, and there are a lot of people who could remember that and are fascinated with it. This is a look at a piece of Americana, and it also will attract people who are a little younger."
Magliano said he thinks the show is part of a shift in PBS programming.
"I personally think it's the smartest thing they could do, to expand the audience," he said. "I think there's a place on public television for American popular culture."
Currently, "Rocky and Bullwinkle" videos released by Walt Disney's distributor, Buena Vista, are climbing the sales charts. Jay Ward sold the rights to the videos to Disney, said Magliano.
"The home videos were supposed to have been released 2 1/2 years ago, but Disney was busy releasing their own animations, so they kept pushing back 'Bullwinkle,'" he said.
Not long ago, he said, representatives from Buena Vista called Magliano to say they'd heard he was doing a "Rocky and Bullwinkle" documentary. He was initially concerned, he said, because "Disney is very protective of their material. But they turned out to be very supportive."
This special, he said, "has been a lot of fun to do. Every couple of years you come across a project where there's just a glow from all the participants. I've never met a nicer group of people."