Roar! Roar! Roar! 46 years ago Linus the Lionhearted came on the air

[Steve Carras]

An early casualty of the FCC and cereal companies, this series debuted this day [also the anniversary of Sherwood Schwartz's "Gilligan's Island",1964, and "The Brady Bunch", 1969], and was produced by the Ed Graham Studio and Format Films ["The Alvin Show",most of the 1960s TV "Popeye",the ones produced & directed by Disney director of Goofy Jack Kinney,& those dreadful mid 1960s Roadrunner/Coyote and a few Speedy/Daffy shorts from the era with DePatie-Freleng and Warner Bros.] , for General Foods/Post, it featured already existing characters like Linus, Sugar Bear who EVERYBODY knows, various birds like Billy and Claudius, Rory Roaccoonnice Southern mailman Loveable Truly, and So Hi.

Linus hawked Crispy Critters, Sugar [debuted after season 1] of course Sugar now Golden Crisp, Rory Racoon, the keeper of the cornfield, and his unbilled costar Claudius Crow,[season 1 only] the plague of the cornfield, Poast Toasties-think their answer to Kellog's Corn Flakes;, Loveable Truly carried one of the few other products besides Sugar alias Golden Crisp that is still avaible to a bowl near you, Alpha Bits [and boy did I eat that as a 60s kid], and So-Hi the politically incorrect post-mortem Chinese Boy, Frosted rice.

An extremely interesting and excellent old school voice cast were heard in the show, shown throughout most of the sixties, on CBS then on ABC, including gangster comic and dramatic character movie and radio actor ["hey Buddy, c'mere" on legendary comedian Jack Benny's old radio show] turned mult-faceted television Emmy winner Sheldon Leonard ["Danny Thomas","That Girl","Gomer Pyle","Andy Griffith","I Spy","Dick Van Dyke",etc.,etc.] provided the voice for Linus the Lionhearted, who ruled from-get this-a barber chair, his buddy and soon to be even more famous later, and the studio [Ed Graham Prods.] own Mel Blanc, Carl Reiner, played many of Linus's loyal subjects as well as support segment lead Loveable Truly and Rory Raccoon, standup comc Gerry Matthews the one surivivor, the soulful sole survivor, Sugar Bear, veteran character actor and star of Maytag Laundromat television commericials, Jesse White, as the wiseguy Crow in the Rory segments, Claudius, veteran funny lady and "Laugh-In" regular later in "Linus's" run Ruth Buzzi played Sugar Bear's sometime adversary Granny Goodwitch, and Terrytoons voice Bob McFadden, revealing the New York coproduction of this, played So Hi the Chinese boy. Its 1969 cancellation was due to the FCC only for 1980s shows to have all kinds of commercial origins! Unfortunately, even by the time "Linus the Lion-Hearted" had ended its run, fun was almost soon ending..who can enjoy My Little Pony, G.I.Joe,etc.? But Linus had excellent writing, and unqieu character design. An artist named George Canatta is credited for the character models; Gene Schinto, an adman in NYC in the 50s, was the creator of many if not all of the characters, longtime Paramount cartoon director Irv Spector, who also on the west coast wrote Porky Pig's farewell for years in 1965, "Corn on the Cop", with Daffy, also a farewell for a team with comic sparks before that horrible pairing with Speedy [see Looney Tunes outlawed thread currently on],
was head director for first season, with possibly since Format had anonymously produced it, UPA producer Herb Klynn being involved, and Hoyt Curtin, the composer of the good, the great, the bad, and the ugly [read anything after 1968 or so but other composers were more involved by then] in Hanna-Barbera ,did the music for almost the entire show [not creditedi n first season the first season-only Rory segment. YouTube has some..amazingluy in public domain..so does TV4U. As for Ed Graham studios, the studio did othe, though independent productions..

[howilu]

I remember watching the reruns of Linus the Lionhearted when they were on Sunday mornings on ABC. What an outstanding voicecast of Sheldon Leonard, Jonathan Winters, Carl Reiner and the show's producer Ed Graham. It's a shame that overcommercialization forcd the show off the air.

[TV Knowledge Fan]

....wanted their Post Cereals division to sponsor their own weekly cartoon series- as Kellogg's and General Mills had already accomplished with great success. And, with the success of their own "Crispy Critters" cereal, introduced in 1963- which featured "Linus the Lionhearted" on the box- GF decided to build an entire series around Linus and his fellow "subjects" featured on other Post cereal boxes {"So-Hi" actually represented "Rice Krinkles", not "Frosted Rice"}. It was quite successful on CBS' Saturday morning schedule at 11am(et) during its first season (1964-'65), and 10:30am in its second...however, competition from ABC's "THE BEATLES" [which became #1 in its time period] in the fall of '65 forced the series to move to 12:30pm in mid-season, after which General Foods, who owned the series as well, decided to end production after 39 episodes. Then, in January 1967, the show was revived in repeats (in color, as CBS telecast the original episodes in black and white) on ABC's Sunday morning schedule...and those would have lasted at least five years if the FCC hadn't decided to separate cartoon stars from their endorsements of the sponsor's product[s] after 1969.


Sure, I watched it when it was first on- I even got a pack of "Crispy Critters" playing cards (with Linus on the front) by mail for at least one box top [and some change] because of watching the commercials on the program...