Saturday, April 16, 2016

Saturtainment: Yakky Doodle (1961)

Yakky Doodle made his debut in a back-door pilot episode of Augie Doggie & Doggie Daddy on Quick Draw McGraw, then was spun off into his own feature on The Yogi Bear Show in 1961.

Yakky, voiced by ventriloquist Jimmy Weldon, was based on Weldon's own puppet, Webster Webfoot, but also had his roots with a similar character created as a supporting character for Tom & Jerry over at MGM. Most of the time, if Yakky got in trouble, he got help from Chopper (Vance Colvig), but Chopper is not in this next video.

In "Hasty Tasty", Yakky has to avoid Fibber Fox & Alfy Gator (both voiced by Daws Butler), who seem to have 1) a similar dislike for Yakky's poor a capella singing skills, and 2) a mutual hunger for duck.

While Alfy was modeled after filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock (and Butler did a Hitchcock mimic), that collar & bowtie look awfully familiar. That's because H-B similarly outfitted Wally Gator (no relation?) the following year.

Edit, 10/3/16: Unfortunately, "Hasty Tasty" was deleted by Dailymotion due to a terms of service violation. In its place is a sample intro:




Weldon's only other notable voice credit at H-B is well known to DC comics fans. He was the voice of Solomon Grundy on Challenge of the Super Friends (1978). Funny thing was, while Weldon was available to reprise as Yakky when he appeared on Yogi's Gang (1973) and Scooby's All-Star Laff-a-Lympics (1977), other actors essayed the part. Don't ask.

Rating: A-.

3 comments:

Mr. Sig said...

Jimmy Weldon can also do a close impression of Daffy Duck, as evidenced in that 7D episode, Bing Bong Beans, in which he performs Whoopty Doopty Schmoodily Duck.

hobbyfan said...

So he's still active. Wow.

Mr. Sig said...

After a bit of research, I discovered that Jimmy actually voiced the bean salesman while Maurice LaMarche voiced WDSD. Given that ol' Mo-Mo is an accomplished voice actor, I can definitely imagine him being able to pull off a Daffy Duck impression (he did voice one of the Platypus Bros. in Taz-Mania). I apologize for bringing up the false information more than two years ago.