Trivia: The son of a construction superintendent for the Sante Fe railway stations, William Hanna was obliged to move around quite a bit as a youngster. Influenced by the preponderance of professional writers on his mother's side of the family, Hanna gravitated towards the creative arts in high school. He played saxophone in a dance band, then majored in journalism and engineering at Compton (California) Junior College. While looking for work in the early stages of the Depression, he landed a backstage engineering job at Hollywood's Pantages Theatre. Hanna's brother-in-law, who worked for a Hollywood lab called Pacific Title, tipped him off to a job opening at the Harman-Ising cartoon studios. From 1931 onward, Hanna contributed story ideas to Harman-Ising's Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series, produced on behalf of Leon Schlesinger and Warner Bros. He also wrote the music and lyrics for several of the catchy tunes heard in these animated endeavors. When Harman-Ising moved to MGM, they took Hanna along as a story editor. And when MGM formed its own animation department in 1937, Hanna was hired by department head Fred Quimby. It was while under the MGM banner that Hanna formed a copacetic (and, as it turned out, lifelong) partnership with cartoon director Joseph Barbera. While both men did a little bit of everything in their cartoon collaborations, Hanna regarded himself as the director and story man, while Barbera preferred to work out the various gags. Hanna-Barbera's most lasting contribution to the MGM operation was their "Tom and Jerry" series, which earned seven Academy Awards over a 20-year period. In 1957, MGM disbanded its cartoon unit, whereupon Hanna and Barbera formed their own company for the purposes of turning out TV animation. No one who has been born after 1950 needs to be reminded of the vast Hanna-Barbera TV output: Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Jonny Quest, The Banana Splits and Scooby-Doo constitute but the tip of the iceberg. Busy as they were with their TV commitments, Hanna-Barbera occasionally found time to return to theatrical-feature work, including A Man Called Flintstone (1966), Charlotte's Web (1972) and Heidi's Song (1982). Even after selling their studio, both Hanna and Barbera remained active in the cartoon field; as recently as 1993, Hanna served as co-producer for the animated feature Once Upon a Forest. Though he's received a multitude of industry honors, it is said William Hanna is proudest of his 1985 "Distinguished Eagle Scout" award from the Boys Scouts of America, an organization with which he'd been associated since 1919.

Trivia: Janet Waldo was a star of radio in the mid-1940s (at age 23) in the role of Corliss Archer, a typical American teenager. Twenty years later, Waldo became identified for another generation (or two) as the voice of the quintessential teenage girl Judy Jetson on the prime-time cartoon show The Jetsons. Born in Yakima, WA, in 1918, Waldo had a love of theater and acting from an early age, and while growing up, she participated in plays put on by her church. Her family had an artistic bent on both sides: her mother was a singer trained at the Boston Conservatory while her father, a railroad executive, was a descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and her sister Elizabeth was later a violin virtuoso who also appeared in movies. Waldo attended the University of Washington, where she engaged in student theatricals and won a special award in her freshman year. A distinguished alumnus -- Bing Crosby -- was visiting at the time, and they met when he presented her with the award. With him was a Paramount talent scout, ever on the lookout for new additions to the studio's stable of actors, who got Waldo signed up for a screen test and a role in the Crosby comedy The Star Maker. She was soon a bit player at the studio, but still waiting for her big break. That break ended up coming from radio rather than movies, however, on the Cecil B. DeMille-produced Radio Theatre, working with Merle Oberon and George Brent. Waldo's voice and range as an actress seemed to blossom when heard over the airwaves, and by 1943, at age 23, Waldo was starring or co-starring in Meet Corliss Archer, One Man's Family, The Gallant Heart, and Star Playhouse, as well as playing the cigarette girl on both The Red Skelton Show and People Are Funny; she also played roles on the Edward G. Robinson series The Big Town. Over the ensuing final great decade of radio, she worked on Dr. Christian, Silver Theater, Ozzie & Harriet, and Railroad Hour, although she never took as many roles as she might have. Waldo married writer/director/producer Robert E. Lee, who later achieved renown in the theater as the co-author, with Jerome Lawrence, of Inherit the Wind, First Monday in October, and Auntie Mame. The couple soon had a family to raise, and she turned down a great number of roles after that, even declining the offer to play Corliss Archer when the series jumped to television at the start of the 1950s. Waldo continued working in radio and subsequently did voice-over work in addition to returning to the theater. In the early '60s, as an established voice artist, she was chosen to portray the role of Judy Jetson in the prime-time cartoon series The Jetsons, produced and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Waldo took on the role, and has been known to a generation of baby boomer cartoon fans as Judy Jetson ever since, even returning to the role for later episodes of the series shot in the ensuing decades. She also made headlines in 1989, when, in a decision made by Universal Pictures and William Hanna, her voice was wiped from the audio track of Jetsons: The Movie so that she could be replaced by the singer Tiffany. Waldo got in the last word, however, in 2004, when, at age 83, she provided commentary for two episodes on The Jetsons: The Complete First Season DVD set from Warner Home Video. Waldo died in 2016, at age 96.

Trivia: African-American actress Lillian Randolph is best remembered for starring in the radio series "Beulah." On radio, she also worked in "Amos 'n' Andy" and "The Great Gildersleeve." In film, Randolph played character roles in many films including those in the Great Gildersleeve series of the '40s.

Trivia: Former radio actress Martha Wentworth played the Duchess, Allan Lane's robust-looking aunt, in seven of Republic Pictures' popular Red Ryder Westerns from 1946-1947. The original Duchess, Alice Fleming, had left the series along with William Elliott, who was being groomed for Grade-A Westerns. As the new Duchess, Wentworth joined Lane, Elliott's replacement, and little Bobby Blake (later Robert Blake), the former Our Gang star, who played Indian sidekick Little Beaver in all the Republic Red Ryder films. For a great majority of the series' fans, the Lane-Wentworth-Blake combination turned out the quintessential Red Ryder films, the trio becoming one of the most successful combinations in B-Western history. Republic sold the Red Ryder franchise to low-budget Eagle-Lion in 1948 and four additional films were produced, but Wentworth was replaced with former silent-action heroine Marin Sais. In her later years, Wentworth did quite a bit of voice-over work for Walt Disney.

Trivia: Best known for his satirical recorded send-ups of everything from popular songs to American history and as the father of funny television commercials, Stan Freberg is truly one of comedy's great geniuses. Born in Pasadena, CA, Freberg felt the performing bug's bite early on. He launched his professional career in 1943 performing vocal impressions on Cliffie Stone's radio program. In the mid-'40s, Freberg made a name for himself as a voice artist for such major animation studios as Warner Bros., Disney, Paramount, and Walter Lantz; he and fellow voice artist Daws Butler were both regulars on the Time for Beany show. During the '50s, Freberg began making his famous song parodies of such hits as "The Yellow Rose of Texas," "The Great Pretender," and "Banana Boat (Day-O)." These and others not only made fun of the tunes, they also skewered pop culture and history, as in his famous "Dragon-Net" send-up of Jack Webb's long-running television show. As an actor, Freberg has only appeared in a couple of feature films making his debut in Callaway Went Thataway (1951). He has also done work on Broadway and continues to occasionally make appearances on television shows such as Roseanne. In 1997, he became a regular on the CBS children's program The Weird Al Show. As a member of the advertising world, Freberg made many inroads toward making commercials genuinely entertaining. His television campaign for Sunsweet Prunes -- "Today the pits; tomorrow the wrinkles" -- is still considered one of the best of the 1970s. In 1988, Freberg published his autobiography, It Only Hurts When I Laugh.

Trivia: A descendant of both Daniel Boone and Judge Roy Bean, Fred "Tex" Avery enjoyed on-the-job art training when he was assigned to illustrate his high school annual ("The only guy there who could handle a pencil") Avery left his home in Dallas to take a three-month course at the Chicago Art Institute, then headed for Hollywood, to look for work in the animation field. Contrary to previously published reports, Avery did not get his start at Terrytoons or Van Beuren, instead, he "met a fella who knew a girl" in charge of inking and painting at the Walter Lantz Studio. From 1929 to 1934, Avery animated scenes for other directors, and also dabbled in gag writing. Seeking out a better-paying job, Avery wangled a job with Warner Bros. animation producer Leon Schlesinger after convincing Schlesinger that he'd directed two cartoons at Lantz. He hadn't, but that didn't stop Schlesinger from appointing Avery head of his own unit at "Termite Terrace," populated with such animation wizards as Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett and Bob Cannon. At the time, Warners' Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoon series were dying because the animators were attempting to emulate industry leader Walt Disney. Reasoning that he'd never be able to match Disney in terms of technique, Avery decided to simply concentrate on making his cartoons funnier. During his six-year (1936-41) tenure at Warners', Avery sped up the pace of the studio's product, stepped up the gag supply, and sharpened and defined the personalities of such characters as Porky Pig, Daffy Duck and especially Bugs Bunny. Many of Avery's Warners efforts--Porky's Duck Hunt, The Shooting of Dan McGoo, All This and Rabbit Stew--are among the best cartoons ever made. It is no exaggeration to say that Avery poured his heart and soul into his work, not to mention his voice (that inimitable, gut-deep guffaw!) and his idiosyncratic, off-screen catchphrases ("What's Up, Doc?", "I can't do it! I just can't do it!" etc.) On the debit side, many of Avery's Warner cartoons are repetitious--notably his "spot gag" travelogue parodies--while his seeming fascination with the character of Egghead (a cretinous precursor to Elmer Fudd) bogged down many an otherwise excellent film. When producer Schlesinger insisted upon altering the ending of Avery's 1941 Bugs Bunny effort Heckling Hare, Tex left Warners in a huff. In collaboration with two old Universal cronies, Jerry Fairbanks and Bob Carlysle, Avery developed the Speaking of Animals short subjects series at Paramount, then moved to MGM in 1942, where for the next twelve years he would turn out his finest work. Though the set-up at MGM was more strictured than at Warners'--Avery was given a set amount of footage for each cartoon, while producer Fred Quimby, a man with zero sense of humor, would nitpick and bean-count over each project--Tex produced some of the wildest, wackiest, least-inhibited cartoons in the business while under the imprimatur of Leo the Lion. The Avery ouevre included far-out visual puns, hyperbolic facial and physical reactions (elasticized eyeballs, precipitously dropping jaws, bodies stiffening suggestively in mid-air at the sight of feminine pulchritude) and "everything including the kitchen sink" payoff gags. The mere mention of titles like Who Killed Who?, Batty Baseball, Bad Luck Blackie, Red Hot Riding Hood and King Sized Canary are enough to send Avery's devotees into uncontrollable paroxysms of mirth, while dyed-in-the-wool cartoon buffs still greet one another on the street with such Averyisms as "Pretty darn long, huh?" and "Which way did he go, George, which way did he go?" In addition to his one-shot cartoons, Avery created such deathless characters as The Wolf, The Girl (an impossibly sexy lass, usually known as "Red"), Droopy the Dog ("Hello, you happy people"), and the short-lived but unforgettable Screwball Squirrel. When MGM made noises about folding its cartoon division in 1954, Avery returned to his old boss Walter Lantz. His five directorial efforts under the Lantz banner have their moments (especially Crazy Mixed-Up Pup), but they lack the production finesse of the MGMs. Retiring from theatrical films in 1955, Avery set up his own Cascade Productions for the purpose of producing animated TV commercials. Tex's principal achievement during his Cascade years were his classic "Raid" commercials and his "Frito Bandito" spots. Retiring in the mid-1970s, Avery returned to the fold at the personal invitation of his old MGM colleagues, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. Avery died in 1980, before his one Hanna-Barbera project, the weekly series Kwicky Koala, could reach full fruition. The Tex Avery tradition lives on, however, not only in his vintage cartoons but also in such recent theatrical features as Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and such every-man-for-himself TV cartoon series as Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs.

Trivia: The career of American comic actor Billy Bletcher stretched from the silent era through the late 1960s. He began performing in vaudeville at age 19 and began his screen career at the Vitagraph Studios, Brooklyn in 1913. While there, he sometimes directed John Bunny comedies. He and his wife Arline came to Hollywood in 1917 where he became a stock comic for Mack Sennett's troupe and played in many two-reelers. Bletcher's career didn't really take off until the early 1920s when he teamed up with Billy Gilbert. Together they appeared in a number of Hal Roach two-reelers. Bletcher later appeared as Spanky's father in the "Our Gang" shorts. He also provided voices for Disney cartoon characters and in features such as The Wizard of Oz (as a Munchkin). Bletcher also did voiceovers on television. His last film appearance was in 1969.

Trivia: The son of a Buffalo physician, Sorrell Booke was encouraged from an early age to entertain his relatives with jokes, songs, and imitations. An inveterate radio fan, young Booke would send away to the major networks for copies of scripts, then act out all the parts -- a different voice for each character -- in the privacy of his room. He turned his hobby into a vocation after high school, appearing with frequency in locally produced dramatic radio programs. While attending Columbia and Yale, Booke spent his summers playing old men in various stock companies, then appeared with the Provincetown Playhouse in Massachusetts. During the Korean War, Booke spent two years in counterintelligence, where his mastery of five languages came in handy. After making his Broadway debut in 1955, Booke understudied Tom Bosley in Fiorello! and created the role of bombastic white supremacist Ol' Captain Cotchipee in Ossie Davis' Purlie Victorious, repeating the latter assignment in the 1963 film version. For all his greyed-up character parts, Booke's most fondly remembered role of the early '60s was the mentally retarded brother of Martin Balsam in an episode of TV's Dr. Kildare. Likewise essayed with unexpected subtlety and sensitivity were his characters in the theatrical features Bye Bye Braverman (1968) and Up the Down Staircase (1970). But neither subtlety nor sensitivity were required for Booke's signature role: the lovably larcenous Jefferson Davis "Boss" Hogg on the weekly adventure series The Dukes of Hazzard (1979-1985). Sorrell Booke's last film assignment was a typically blustery voice-over in the animated feature Rock-a-Doodle; he died of cancer in 1994, just one month after his 64th birthday.