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: 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: 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: While few filmgoers or TV fans have ever seen June Foray, a healthy majority of them are quite familiar with her work. June Foray was one of the leading voice artists of the golden age of animation, working with both the Warner Bros. animation department and the Disney studios, and later gained her greatest fame as the voice of Rocket J. Squirrel on the classic television cartoon series The Bullwinkle Show. Born in Springfield, MA, on September 18, 1917, Foray began her career as an actress at the age of 12 -- appropriately enough, by appearing in a radio drama at a local station in Springfield directed by her voice teacher. By the time Foray was 15, she was a regular at Springfield's WBZA, and two years later she was living in Los Angeles, hoping to break into the big time as an actress. At 19, Foray was both writing and starring in a radio series for children, as Miss Makebelieve, and soon became a frequent guest performer on a number of top-rated radio shows, working with the likes of Danny Thomas and Jimmy Durante. It was in the mid-'40s that Foray finally broke into the movies, but while she scored occasional onscreen roles (most notably as High Priestess Marku in the exotic drama Sabaka), she soon discovered there was a ready market for her vocal talents in Hollywood. Her first animation voice work was for Paramount's Speaking of Animals comedy shorts, in which animated mouths were superimposed on live-action footage of animals. The Speaking of Animals shorts spawned a series of records for children, recorded with a number of other noted voice actors, including Daws Butler and Stan Freeberg. The records made her a hot property with casting agents for cartoon voice work, and she found herself working for many of the biggest names in animation. For Chuck Jones at Warner Bros., Foray provided the voice of Granny in the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons, as well as the cackling Witch Hazel and dozens of other female characters. She recorded voices for several Tex Avery cartoons at MGM, as well as some Woody the Woodpecker shorts for Walter Lantz. And she made her debut at Disney as Lucifer the Cat in Cinderella. With the rise of television in the 1950s, a new market for cartoons appeared, and Foray's career kicked into high gear. She was cast as Rocky on The Bullwinkle Show, and also voiced a number of female characters on the series (most notably the villainous Natasha); she was also the voice of sweet-natured Nell Fenwick on the show's side series Dudley Do-Right. Foray stayed busy doing voice work on a number of other cartoon series as well, including Hoppity Hooper, Yogi the Bear, George of the Jungle, and the new Tom and Jerry shorts produced for TV in 1965. In addition, Foray did occasional work on The Flintstones, though she was passed over for the role of Betty Rubble after voicing her in the show's pilot. (Foray also appeared, uncredited, as the voice of Cindy Lou Who in Chuck Jones' classic animated version of How The Grinch Stole Christmas). In the 1980s and 1990s, at an age when most actresses would consider retirement, Foray was still one of Hollywood's busiest vocal talents, recording voices for everything from The Smurfs and Garfield to Duck Tales and The Simpsons. Foray also made a return to prestigious big-screen animation as the voice of Grandmother Fa in Mulan, and revisited her most famous role with vocal work in 2000's mixture of live-action and computer animation, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. In semi-retirement (though she still takes the occasional job that strikes her fancy), Foray is an active member of the International Animated Film Society, as well as the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

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: 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.