TITANS OF TELEPHEMERA: FILMATION - part 1

TITANS OF TELEPHEMERA: FILMATION – part 1

Written By:

Alan Boon

Ah, telephemera… those shows whose stay with us was tantalisingly brief, snatched away before their time, and sometimes with good cause. Dedicated miners of this fecund seam begin to notice the same names cropping up, again and again, as if their whole career was based on a principle of throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. What’s more, it isn’t all one-season failures and unsold pilots, there’s genuine gold to be found amongst their hoards; these men are surely the Titans of Telephemera!

Filmation

Having formed a partnership when they were working at Larry Harmon Pictures on the televised Popeye cartoons in the late 1950s, Lou Scheimer and Hal Sutherland founded Filmation Associates in 1962, along with former radio DJ Norm Prescott. The nascent studio’s first credits were on the production of Rod Rocket a year later, a project they inherited from former employees SIB Productions. After struggling for years to complete an adaptation of The Wizard of Oz (and failing to sell to sell their first original cartoon, The Adventures of Stanley Stoutheart), they were about to close the studio down when DC Comics’ Mort Weisinger approached them to produce a cartoon based on DC’s most famous character.

The New Adventures of Superman debuted in 1966, just as Batman-fever was taking hold of the US, turning Filmation into a major player almost overnight. More DC comics ‘toons and adaptations of film properties Journey to the Center of the Earth and Fantastic Voyage followed, with The Archie Show, The Hardy Boys, and Will the Real Jerry Lewis Please Stand Up? leading into a massively prolific 1970s. By that time, the company had been sold to the TelePrompTer Corporation, who themselves were bought by Westinghouse in 1981. It was Westinghouse who closed Filmation in 1989, shortly before selling the properties to French make-up firm L’Oreal. The closure came one day before a new law would have given employees two months’ notice, but by that point Scheimer was the sole founder left at the company. He went into retirement soon after but did make one last feature in 1999; Robin and the Dreamweavers, a Dutch-backed erotic space adventure, was sadly never released, although it can be seen on YouTube.

The Telephemera Years has already featured many of Filmation’s most-famous shows but no true round-up of the world of disposable televisual entertainment would be complete without investigating the balance of the studio’s work. With that guiding us, this is the story of four shows from their first decade of hits…

The New Adventures of Superman (CBS, 1966): Created by two shy friends from Cleveland in 1938, it took Superman just three years to transfer to the moving picture in a series of (still) critically acclaimed theatrical shorts produced by the Fleischer brothers. A live-action serial followed in 1948, with a live-action TV show starring George Reeves arriving in 1952.

Adventures of Superman enjoyed a six-year run, but the Man of Steel was absent from TV screens until 1966 when, as part of a drive led by CBS’ head of daytime programming Fred Silverman to transform Saturday mornings on the network into a superhero adventure block, DC Comics approached Filmation with the opportunity to turn its comic book character into cartoons, an offer eagerly accepted by the struggling studio. There was just problem: Silverman wanted to visit the Filmation Studios first but there wasn’t a Filmation Studios in the physical sense, at least not until Norm Prescott, Lou Scheimer, and Hal Sutherland called everyone they knew to come to their offices and pretend to be a bustling studio!

Satisfied, CBS gave Filmation the green light to begin production and Scheimer took the lead, working closely with DC Comics on character design (predominantly using comic artist Curt Swan’s art as model sheets) and bringing in several veterans of the Fleischer cartoons, including Bud Collyer and Joan Alexander as the voices of Superman/Clark Kent and Lois Lane. With scripts wholly or co-written by Weisinger, The New Adventures of Superman debuted on September 10^th 1966 with a pair of stories that saw the Last Son of Krypton tackle aliens and mermen, sandwiching a single outing for the hero’s teenage self in The Adventures of Superboy.

Comic book villains Lex Luthor, Titano, Brainiac, the Toyman, the Prankster, and Mr Mxyzptlk all made appearances in the eighteen-episode first season, airing in a block that also featured Mighty Mouse, Underdog, Frankenstein Jr & the Impossibles, Space Ghost, and The Lone Ranger. To say the show was a success would be an understatement and the show was extended to an hour for its second season, bringing in more of DC’s colourful characters.

Retitled The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure, each episode featured four stories, with oen each starring Superman and Superboy joined by an Aquaman segment and a revolving fourth feature, which spotlighted the likes of The Atom, The Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, and the Teen Titans. Only Batman (whose live-action show was airing on ABC) and Wonder Woman (subject of a live-action pilot by Batman’s William Dozier) were missing from the line-up of DC’s heaviest hitters, but Batman finally made an appearance in time for season three, again retitled as The Batman/Superman Hour.

While a fourth season of re-runs of Superman and Superboy segments did appear in 1969, a combination of pressure from the Action for Children’s Television group and falling ratings led Silverman to pivot away from superheroes for the 1970 season. The Man of Tomorrow wouldn’t have to wait long for a comeback, though, returning with his Justice League pals in Super Friends in 1973, but from Filmation’s chief rivals Hanna-Barbera. No matter, Scheimer and company had plenty to keep them busy…

Journey to the Center of the Earth (ABC, 1967): First published in 1864, Voyage au Centre de la Terre was the third of fifty-four Voyages extraordinaires written by Jules Verne before his death in 1905. Journey to the Center of the Earth, as it was known in English, told the story of an eccentric German scientist who is convinced there are volcanic tubes that reach the centre of the Earth, and who embarks on an adventure to discover them with his son and an Icelandic guide.

Given that Verne’s earliest works entered the public domain in the US in the 1920s, it’s remarkable that it took until 1959 for Hollywood to adapt Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Written by The King and I producer Charles Brackett, and directed by experienced hand Henry Levin, the movie was a financial success, earning three times its budget at the box office, although critics were mixed on its creative merits.

Brackett’s script took some liberties with Verne’s novel, adding in a villain, a love interest, and a duck, amongst other changes, and when Filmation came to produce a Saturday morning cartoon it was the 1959 movie that they took as their starting point, rather than adapt the novel anew. Almost a sequel to Brackett and Levin’s film, former Disney animator and comic book artist Don Christensen came up with the plot that saw Professor Lindenbrook, assistant Alec McEwan, and guide Lars (Hans in the movie, although his duck remains) trapped in the underground world, valiantly searching to find a way back to the surface.

Unlike the film (or, indeed, the original text), they are accompanied by Lindenbrook’s niece Cindy, and all have been trapped by a landslide caused by the evil Count Sacknussem and his henchman Torg. Over the next seventeen episodes, the intrepid quartet must negotiate all manner of threats, including pterodactyls, giant cavemen, Wolf Men, and human/spider hybrids, and avoid the traps set by Sacknussem and Torg, all in the hope of returning home.

Journey to the Centre of the Earth debuted on ABC on September 9^th 1967, opposite the second season of Space Ghost on CBS and NBC’s new biblical superhero Young Samson. Despite its fantastic setting, the cartoon could be slow at times and ABC declined to option a second season, leaving the Professor and his comrades stranded under the Earth for all time. A year later, Filmation embarked on another Fantastic Voyage, adapting the 1966 movie about a miniature submarine and its crew stranded inside the body of an injured scientist, again with several changes.

Shazam! (CBS, 1974): In 1968, Hanna-Barbera produced two live-action/animation hybrids – The Banana Splits Adventure Hour and The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – for the Saturday morning market to mixed reviews. Hanna-Barbera went right back to what it knew best but by 1974 it was ready to dip its toes in the live-action market again, with Neanderthal drama Korg: 70,000 BC. Coincidentally (or not, depending on your view of such things), chief rivals Filmation were also preparing a live-action show for Saturday mornings, teaming back up with former partners DC Comics for a show based on one of the Golden Age of comic books’ greatest heroes…

Like many of the Golden Age’s publishing houses, Fawcett Comics looked on enviously as National Comics Publications (later DC Comics) enjoyed unparalleled success with a series of superhero titles, notably those starring Superman and Batman. Staff writer Bill Parker was tasked with developing Fawcett’s own superheroes, coming up with Ibis the Invincible, the Spy Smasher, Dan Dare (no relation), and others for a comic provisionally Flash Comics. He also created one of comics’ first superhero teams, a six-man crew each with a power inspired by a Greek god, but his boss decided that it might work better if it were one man with all those powers.

Teaming Parker with artist CC Beck led to the creation of Captain Thunder but it was discovered that both the Flash Comics and Captain Thunder (and alternate Thrill Comics) were already in use after an ashcan edition had already been published to establish copyright. Thus, the renamed Whiz Comics #2 (continuing the numbering after the ashcan edition) saw the debut of Captain Marvel, an orphaned boy named Billy Batson given amazing powers when he says the word “Shazam!” (each letter corresponding to one of six mythological figures providing his abilities).

Captain Marvel became an immediate smash, attracting the attention of DC Comics, who launched a lawsuit claiming he was overly derivative of Superman which eventually was settled in Fawcett’s favour in 1951. That verdict was overturned a year later, by which time Fawcett (and the rest of the US comics business, save for DC) had largely gotten out of the superhero market; they agreed to shutter production of Captain Marvel comics (and, eventually, all comics), sending the character into limbo for almost two decades. In 1972, DC reached an agreement with Fawcett to license the character, but in the intervening years, Marvel Comics had published their own Captain Marvel, gaining copyright on the name, at least for title purposes, and so the Big Red Cheese was re-introduced in Shazam! #1 in January 1973, sharing a cover with his former courtroom foe.

Around that time, Filmation came calling at DC in the hopes of rekindling a relationship that had put the studio on the map. Unfortunately, the lion’s share of DC characters had been licensed to Hanna-Barbera for their Super Friends cartoon, but having newly acquired Captain Marvel, the publisher offered that property to Lou Scheimer and company, who eagerly took it on. Filmation prepared an animated pilot for Fred Silverman at CBS, but he asked them to do a live-action show instead, perhaps aware that ABC and NBC were both going with some live-action shows in their Saturday morning line-ups for Fall 1974.

Filmation reworked the concept into Shazam!, slightly altering the comic book’s premise to eliminate the wizard that gives young Billy Batson his powers in favour of the six mythological figures themselves, all imparting advice to a teenage boy travelling the US in a motorhome with a mentor figure named, erm, Mentor. Former Brian Keith Show regular Michael Gray was cast as Billy, with Jackson Borthwick stepping up from bit parts to play his muscled alter-ego.

The first, fifteen-episode season of Shazam! did well enough that a second of seven episodes was commissioned for 1975, with the hero paired with Isis, an Egyptian themed superheroine created by Scheimer. As part of their agreement, Isis (who you can read about in our 1975 feature) appeared in DC Comics and has since become part of their canon. The Shazam!/Isis Hour returned for six more episodes in 1976, and all twenty-six episodes are now available on Blu Ray. Filmation did eventually get a chance to do that animated Captain Marvel show and you can read about that in our 1981 feature here.

Ark II (CBS, 1976): After the success of Shazam!, Filmation continued to make live-action programming for the Saturday morning market, producing the less-remembered The Secrets Lives of Waldo Kitty and Ghost Busters in 1975. A year later, they debuted a new show on CBS, created by Martin Post, a veteran scriptwriter who got his start on Glenn Miller Time in 1961.

Post was teamed with Hang ‘Em High, Magnum Force and Beneath the Planet of the Apes director Ted Post, and their Noah-inspired Ark II told the story of the titular mobile base, a surviving repository of all of mankind’s knowledge from before the fall of civilisation on a near future Earth. Its mission is to travel the wastelands searching for the last remnants of humanity, tasked with the mission of rebuilding what has been destroyed.

At least, that was more or less the gist of the opening narration provided by Filmation’s Lou Scheimer, who – possibly as much as a cost-cutting exercise as any desire to perform – had moved into providing voices for much of the studio’s output. The young crew of Ark II were led by Terry Lester’s Jonah, and also included Ruth and Samuel, played by Asian American actress Jean Marie Hon and the Mexican American José Flores, respectively, filling out an admirably racially diverse cast (with a nod to our primate cousins given by the addition of chimpanzee Moochie).

Premiering on September 11^th 1976 as part of a ninety-minute CBS block with The Shazam!/Isis Hour, Ark II got a fifteen-episode run, during which guests stars such as Jim Backus, Jonathan Harris, Malachi Throne, a young Helen Hunt, and Robby the Robot (from Forbidden Planet) appeared. Groups of feral children, an authoritarian Baron, rogue AIs, and a futuristic Robin Hood are all encountered along the crew’s journey to, well, they never really said (and the series ended before they got there). Before a second season could enter production, Hollywood was awash with talk of a new sensation named Star Wars, and rather than stay Earthbound, Filmation opted to go galactic for their next live-action production, Space Academy.

Next time on Titans of Telephemera: More Filmation classics from their second decade and beyond, including the show that changed the cartoon and toy business…

Check out our other Telephemera articles:

The Telephemera Years: pre-1965 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1966 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1967 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1968 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1969 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1970 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1971 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1973 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telephemera Years: 1974 (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

The Telephemera Years: 1975 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)

The Telphemera Years: 1976 (part 1, 2, 3, 4)