[Here’s a nice obituary for Lou Scheimer from 18 October 2013, which you can find here. Some nice comments by others who dug Filmation, too. Enjoy!]
I’m sorry to report that Lou Scheimer, co-founder and president of Filmation Studios, has passed away. He was 84.
You can trace a pretty direct line from Lou Scheimer’s work animating DC’s superheroes to my sitting here typing these words to you. It was the Filmation cartoons that were my original gateway drug to DC Comics, and that’s what led to, well, everything else. First The New Adventures of Superman, and then The Superman/Aquaman Hour.
Those were the ones that really imprinted on me, when I was seven years old. And today, over forty years later, I can still pull those DVDs off the shelf and feel something of the same visceral thrill I used to feel watching the opening credits of the Superman cartoon. Aquaman, too.
Sure, looking at those old cartoons today, all the seams show. They re-used shots, they had two or three actors doing a multitude of voices (sometimes it felt like the entire Filmation voice pool was Ted Knight and Melendy Britt) and the animation was so limited it was barely a half-step up from a slide show.
But I didn’t care about that when I was seven. Because for me it was all about story and imagination and those cartoons had it in spades. Alien invasions and otherdimensional travel and secret conspiracies reaching back hundreds of years. Filmation didn’t just introduce me to DC superheroes. It was also my road to Jules Verne, though their version of Journey to the Center of the Earth.
And to Isaac Asimov by way of their adaptation of Fantastic Voyage.
On a lighter note, Filmation’s also how I found out about Archie, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Josie and the Pussycats.
This indirectly led to my Cartooning class corresponding with Dan and Josie DeCarlo, decades later. (Some day I really am going to write up that story, it’s a good one.)
And of course there’s the Filmation version of Star Trek, which had some of the very best Trek stories ever done … I’m thinking in particular of “Yesteryear,” “Mudd’s Passion,” and “The Magicks of Megas-Tu,” though you might have other favorites.
Speaking of science fiction, I have very fond memories of the Filmation forays into live-action SF on Saturday morning. Jason of Star Command …
Along with Space Academy and Ark II.
I didn’t love them as much as I wanted to — but I did like them, and they hold up pretty well today considering they were shot on a budget of about eleven dollars an episode, Ark II in particular.
Filmation was responsible for the single most faithful adaptations of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan and the Alex Raymond Flash Gordon ever done in either live-action or animation, too.
Filmation also gave us the live-action Shazam and The Mighty Isis, two shows that apparently imprinted on the generation after mine as hard as their versions of Superman and Aquaman did on me.
And the generation after THAT had He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, along with She-Ra, Princess of Power.
Filmation Studios showed up in my life over and over again one way or another. Years after I had become a professional writer and artist myself (in large part because of what Lou Scheimer and his crew triggered in my childhood) I moved to Seattle and got a job teaching at the Alki Art Studio. It turned out that one of my studio colleagues was Barbara Benedetto, who had spent years as a background painter for Filmation.
She was largely retired by then, happy to spend her days painting landscapes and occasionally exhibiting at local galleries. I tried several times to persuade her to come and talk to my Cartooning kids, but she was horrified at the idea of getting up in front of a crowd — even a crowd of twelve-year-olds that would have thought she was a goddess. But she did give me a bunch of old cels and background paintings that I still use in class today.
When Filmation director Hal Sutherland was in town for Emerald City a few years back I told him that he and his colleagues were responsible for a huge part of my life. He laughed and said, “God, I hope you don’t regret it.” I assured him I didn’t and thanked him profusely for his part in shaping what ended up being a life spent around comics and cartoons. He signed a print of the animated Enterprise for us that we had framed. It’s hanging just in front of me in the office as I type this.
I knew Lou Scheimer was doing conventions too, and I had nursed the hope that maybe someday I’d be able to get him to sign our Trek print as well, and to thank HIM for what Filmation Studios did for me and mine. Sadly, that’s not going to happen now.
I do regret that … but at least I got to thank him here, sort of. Rest in peace, Mr. Scheimer.
*
There’s lots more about Scheimer and Filmation in the wonderful book he did with Andy Mangels from TwoMorrows, Lou Scheimer: Creating The Filmation Generation.
Very much recommended.
See you next week.
I’m a little bit younger than Greg was; but, Filmation (and Hanna-Barbera, Rankin-Bass and the Krofft Brothers) was a big part of my childhood. I recall watching the Batman/Superman Hour and The Batman Adventures, when it was shown solo, plus stuff like the various Archies shows, Sabrina and the Groovie Goolies, Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle, Tarzan and the Super 7, The Young Sentinels/Space Sentinels (first they were the Young, which is why their belt buckles had the big Y on them…then they changed the title to emphasize space, because of some obscure sci-fi film, from 1977), The Adventures of Zorro, The New Adv of Batman, Blackstar, and, my personal favorite, The New Adv of Flash Gordon. Plus, The Brady Kids, Mission Magic, The New Adv of Gilligan’s Island, Gilligan’s Planet and even the infamous Uncle Croc’s Bloc (which got them kicked off ABC, when it tanked, horribly).
I wasn’t as fond of the live action shows, though I hardly saw most of them, thanks to them being primarily on CBS, a network whose local affiliate was far enough away to be hard to tune in. I saw a little of Shazam, while staying at a friend’s house (they had an exterior antenna) and Isis (which I was just old enough to appreciate Joanna Cameron’s beauty) and did like what little I saw of Space Academy and Jason of Star Command (the latter was a bit more exciting). ArkII I think I only ever saw one or two episodes, while visiting relatives.
Greg kind of left out Jane Webb as the voice on so many Filmation shows. She voiced both Catwoman and Batgirl and a slew of other female characters, before retiring. Alan Oppenheimer, the former Rudy Wells, was another who voiced many villains and supporting characters, but excelled as Ming The Merciless and Skeletor. Alan Melville, who played Sam the Butcher, on The Brady Bunch, did some voices for them and Robert Ridgely (Boogie Nights, Beverly Hills Cop II) voiced Tarzan and Flash Gordon.
In terms of the best, after Flash Gordon, I would have to put up the Shazam cartoons, from the Kid Power Hour, with Shazam and Hero High. Because the old Fawcett stories were rarely violent, they were able to adapt a lot, without as many compromises as with the New Adv of Batman or that H-B had with the Super Friends. They had great voice artists and scripts from people like Don Glut and a young Paul Dini!
Filmation was cheap, using silhouettes and stock shots to save money and going to town on backgrounds, but they took care with story. Not so much with actors, though. When they renewed the Brady Kids, they did so without a voice or two, because they felt they deserved a raise and Lou Scheimer’s son and daughter took over from Barry Williams and Maureen McCprmick. Jackson Bostwick, who played Captain Marvel on the live-action Shazam, quit/was fired in a money dispute (he says quit, Scheimer said fired) and was replaced by the less imposing John Davey. James Doohan and Nichelle Nicols got to voice two characters, but they didn’t have a budget for Walter Koenig, though they did for Majel Barrett (help’s to be the spouse). Koenig did at least get paid for a script.
Still, lots of fun memories. I can still picture the Dick Tracy cartoons they had, on Archie’s TV Funnies.
we have much the same areas of childhood viewing, though growing up in England meant I missed a lot of 1960s stuff. The Flash Gordon show was a blast — I got the DVDs eventually.
Bit younger than you Fraser… 70s child… but I remember Tarzan (a staple of weekends and school holidays, it seemed) and Batman shows.