Entries tagged with hal sutherland

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1980's SMHRS FRIDAY FILLER POLL: The Many Works Of Hal Sutherland

I'll be wrapping up Hal Sutherland Week with this simple poll, I swear! We'll be back to our regularly scheduled 1980's Saturday Morning Memories & Reviews come Monday,but for now... the man deserves tribute. SO our poll today is all about those cartoons of his that were in heavy circulation in the 80's! Please note that I *know* Star Trek, Waldo Kitty and Fat Albert are technically 70's cartoons, but they all had heavy circulation in the 80's so I'll allow it - Filamtion DC Super Hero stuff, however, had extremely limited distribution in the 80's due to the Super Friends owning that at the time...

[Poll #1953495]

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Confirmation: Hal Sutherlnd is indeed Dead :(

I finally have confirmation (via Jerry Beck of the Cartoon Research website) through Hal's daughter, Lisa, that he has indeed passed away. Not wanting to pry or seem insensitive, I haven't yet asked for the actual date or cause of death.

To those of us who worship 80's cartoons, Hal Sutherland will forever be remembered for three things:

Having his name turn in to The Sorceress...

Making Space-Cowboy He-Man...

... And being the animating force behind all the re-run filler that ran on your local stations while the NEW cartoons played on the Big Three (ABC, NBC, CBS). Stuff like Star Trek, The Archies, The Batman/Superman/Aquaman cartoons that didn't seem to fit in with the versions you saw on the Super Friends, and those weird Popeye cartoons that weren't like the REALLY old ones they played along with vintage Tom & Jerry, Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckyl cartoons but weren't as mind-numbingly awful as the "All New Popeye Adventures" over on CBS.

As the story goes (and I may be misremembering this and/or mixing up multiple versions of the same story), Filmation became a company kind of by accident. Hal Sutherland and Lou Scheimer were both animators working for various production studios when one of those companies just had too much work and not enough budget. Hal and Lou said "Well heck let's make a little limited partnership that can take over some of these jobs for a few weeks". They finished up the work and were prepared to be unemployed again when Norm Prescott called and said "Hey you guys wanna take a crack at making a Superman cartoon?" and they said "Meh, sure, why not, got nuthin' better to do right now".

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1982 10:30 on CBS: GILLIGAN'S PLANET

Gilligan's Planet was on your local CBS affiliate at 10:30 in 1982 (and at Noon in the Spring of 1983) that featured nearly the entire cast of the original 1964 sit-com "Gilligan's Island", the only exception being Tina "Ginger" Louise, who even after nearly 20 year was still upset at having been "tricked" in to taking the roll on the original show (luckily, Dawn "Mary-Ann" Wells was able to fill in and provide the voices for both roles).

Much like the original Gilligan' Island theme song had done, the intro to this cartoon summed up the entire back-story and plot in one compact snippet. They're castaways on an island, they build a rocket, they're now stranded in space.

Produced by Filmation (in conjunction with MGM/United Artists), Gilligan's Planet was the last cartoon series that Filmation produced for Saturday mornings. After this point, it's all syndicated stuff. It was also the first Filmation series to feature the Lou Scheimer "signature" credit (as opposed to the rotating Lou Scheimer/Norm Prescott "wheel" credit which had been used since 1969).

And of course, it was directed by my close personal friend, Hal Sutherland (and by "Close Personal Friend", I mean "I bought an animation cell of Orco from him at a comic book convention and had him sign it for me")