KEY CREW BEHIND THE STAR: Jim Backus (voice); John Hubley, Pete Burness (directors), Phil Eastman, Millard Kaufman, Dick Kinney, Bill Scott (writers)

CAREER HIGH: MR. MAGOO'S CHRISTMAS CAROL (1962) - A charming, tuneful adaptation of Dicken's classic with Magoo perfectly cast as Scrooge.

The humor in Mr. Magoo cartoons derives from his physical handicap of not being able to see things clearly and how he triumphs over situations and people despite this obstacle. His near-sightedness often seems to border on blindness as he stumbles through life mistaking animals for old school chums, inanimate objects like stoplights and coat racks for policemen or sales clerks and misreads signs and store logos.

Such activity would bring instant disaster to any other person. But Magoo's stubborn determination that he is right in his assumptions seems to protect him from all harm while often bringing destruction to anyone and anything else in the immediate vicinity. In a sense, Magoo has found how to survive and flourish in an insane world by living happily in his own personal reality.

Magoo is unique among cartoon characters for many reasons but in particular because he behaved as a real human. Unlike other cartoon stars he did not get smashed, stretched, sliced or blown up. In fact, some early critics compared him to the live action comedian W. C. Fields. Both characters had bulbous noses, fought against mindless authority, and had a blustery behavior when challenged.

However, unlike Fields, Magoo genuinely loved the world and was a man of principle. Especially in the later cartoons, trouble usually began because Magoo was trying to help someone not because he was trying to take advantage of a situation or a person.

MEET MR. MAGOO

In a way, Mr. Magoo owes his existence to Walt Disney. In the 1940s, some of Disney's key animation personnel were dissatisfied with Walt's method of operation. They eventually formed their own animation company, United Productions of America (UPA), and produced educational films. In 1948 this new studio, now headed up by Stephen Bosustow, obtained a contract with Columbia Pictures to produce animated shorts for theaters. Promising a fresh start for animation, talent began pouring in to the studio.

Rather than relying on the cute funny animals that were the staple of other larger animation studios, like Disney and Warners, UPA decided to create distinctive human characters. They wanted to experiment with animation and personalities. The new studio flourished as critics and the Motion Picture Academy heaped praise and Oscars on them.

The first and perhaps the most successful of these creations was the catastrophically myopic Mr. Quincy Magoo. He made his first appearance in the theatrical short RAGTIME BEAR (1949) where he mistakes a bear for his raccoon coated nephew, Waldo. That first short, written by Millard Kaufman, was directed by John Hubley, an innovative animator. Hubley later went on to receive several Oscars for films he did for his own Storyboard Inc. His name will always be one of those closely associated with the beginnings of Magoo.

Magoo's creation was the result of the contributions of many strong and talented people. Supposedly, Hubley originally based the character on a bullheaded uncle of his named Harry Woodruff who could not be convinced he was wrong once he had made a snap judgment. Jim Backus, who was hired to provide the voice for the character, saw elements of his own father in the character, a man who was almost personally isolated from the rest of the world. To achieve that effect, Backus utilized the voice of one of his earlier voice creations from a popular radio show. The character was "The Man In The Club Car," a loud mouthed businessman filled with misinformation. All of these elements helped form Magoo's personality.

"We made up a complete biography for the little jerk," commented Backus. "He graduated from Rutgers in 1901. Magoo studied to be a zeppelin commander, but never made the grade. He's a card carrying Republican and was on the Committee to Re- elect William McKinley."

Despite Backus' success in other areas including his visibility as the millionaire on GILLIGAN'S ISLAND, he was always haunted by the fame of Magoo. "I'd like to bury the old creep and get some good dramatic roles in movies. He is a pain in the posterior. Every time I start to be a serious actor I lose out because someone - usually a producer - says I'm Magoo." Yet despite those feelings, Backus for many years drove around Hollywood with the license plate "Q MAGOO."

MAGOO BECOMES A STAR

Having had a success with RAGTIME BEAR, UPA used Magoo on and off. However, he quickly became the most popular of the UPA creations. Columbia Pictures, who released UPA cartoons in theaters demanded more. Director Pete Burness, who later worked for the Jay Ward Studios was made responsible for several Magoo shorts a year, including the two Academy Award winners, WHEN MAGOO FLEW (1954) and MISTER MAGOO'S PUDDLE JUMPER (1956).

In the first cartoon, Magoo thinks he is in a movie theater when he has actually just boarded an airplane and is thrust into a real life adventure concerning an escaped thief. Needless to add, Magoo enjoys the "movie" although he regrets that the "theater" didn't show a cartoon before the "main feature."

In the other cartoon, Magoo and his nephew Waldo have a harrowing time in a newly purchased electric car. Magoo promptly guides it off the road and under water.

Magoo's success outside the studio was not a source of joy inside UPA. The studio had originally formed to create avant garde and experimental shorts similar to the strongly dramatic TELL TALE HEART (based on the short story by Edgar Allen Poe) and the whimsical UNICORN IN THE GARDEN (based on James Thurber's short story). Now, like the other major studios, they were forced to "churn out" one Magoo after another for financial survival.

Just as other cartoon characters got rounder and cuter, Magoo also softened but the softening was not just in the design of the character but in his personality. As created by Hubley, the character, even if he had been able to see, would still have been a bullheaded, opinionated old man constantly in some trouble because of his stubbornness.

Veering away from this angry origin, writers and directors concentrated more and more on the nearsightedness and made him more lovable and sentimental. Years later, director Burness wondered in an interview if the character might have been even more successful if Magoo had remained "crotchety, even somewhat nasty."

In the early UPA cartoons, the style is darker and more angular and the pacing slower and more deliberate. TROUBLE INDEMNITY (1950) had Magoo so wrapped up in a crime novel he was reading that he took on the persona of a private detective to save Waldo. Waldo only needed a hundred dollars to repair his father's car but found himself caught up in Magoo's film noir world. Jim Backus, himself, came up with a storyline for a Magoo cartoon, DESTINATION MAGOO (1954). In the story, Magoo mistakenly gets in a rocket built by an old school friend who is now a famous scientist. The rocket lands in the LUNA amusement park and Magoo mistakes his own image in a fun house mirror for an alien and the rest of the park as the moon's surface.

The later Magoo cartoons have a brighter color scheme and lighter story lines. BWANA MAGOO (1959) was one of the last theatrical Magoo cartoons. In the story, Magoo mistakes a lion for Waldo and traps Waldo in the cage.

Magoo was extremely popular, sometimes getting billing over the main feature. Like Mel Blanc, Backus traded a raise in salary for billing on the cartoons and became even more famous. (His wife Henny was brought in to provide the voice for Mother Magoo, Magoo's 85 year old mother.)

In the late 1950's, when UPA stated to diminish its output and closed its New York Studio, the California branch sustained itself by producing material for television and commercials. Magoo became a key marketing device, shilling light bulbs for General Electric. ("It's easy to see, the best bulbs are G.E.!") MAGOO'S FEATURE DEBUT

It was somewhat natural that when UPA decided to produce its first full length feature film, Magoo would be called upon to render service. Two proposals were developed. One was based on the novel **Don Quixote** and boasted a script by famed author Aldous Huxley (**Brave New World**). However the book was not as well known as the other project, so A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS (1959) became UPA and Magoo's first feature. Regular Magoo director Pete Burness was set to direct, but left in the middle of pre-producton. Disney animator Jack Kinney stepped in to take control. Abe Levitow was head animator.

In the story, Magoo played a bumbling Baghdad lamp dealer named Azziz Magoo. He wants his carefree nephew, Aladdin, to get married and settle down. Aladdin falls in love with the beautiful Princess Yasminda who is about to wed the Wicked Wazir. The Wazir craves power and wants a magic lamp that is buried in a treasure cave. Only Aladdin, seventh son of a seventh son, has the power to open the cave. The Genie in the lamp helps Aladdin win Yasminda. Unfortunately, Magoo, who is unaware of the magic of the lamp, turns it over to the Wicked Wazir. However, Magoo constantly upsets the Wazir's schemes and helps to finally defeat him.

The screenplay was by Czenzi Ormonde. The film featured an extremely strong voice cast including Kathryn Grant (Princess), Dwayne Hickman (Aladdin), Hans Conried (Wazir), Herschel Bernardi (Genie), Daws Butler and Alan Reed.

This film promoted the largest array of Magoo merchandise ever offered including a hand puppet (in gown and fez), a lifesize rubber mask of Magoo, a lapel pin, a felt fez (with Magoo's name on it) and a flying carpet toy powered by a balloon. At the time, Magoo was the spokesman for General Electric and they announced "one of the most ambitious campaigns ever undertaken by a major manufacturer and a motion picture company." Starting with a full page ad in Life Magazine, to publicize the film. GE's 300,000 dealers received window streamers and promotion kits with the Genie of the lamp holding a box of GE's Soft White light bulbs.

To further publicize the film, arrangements were made so that Magoo in his 1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS outfit sponsored U.S. Savings Bonds. 40,000 U.S. Post Office delivery trucks, thousands of banks and countless local businesses had a poster of Magoo stating that Bonds were "Your magic carpet to the future!"

Despite all this effort, the film was not a success and is little remembered today.

MAGOO ON TV

UPA now devoted more time to television production. Between 1960 and 1962, the studio produced 130 individual sequences of Magoo adventures for television. (They also did an equal number of Dick Tracy cartoons at the same time.) The cartoons were first released as a half-hour series. Some shorts didn't even star Magoo, focusing instead on various secondary characters. In between the shorts there were small animated lead-ins in which after an initial gag a character would announce a cartoon was coming up. Some of these shorts, especially the ones starring Magoo, are highly entertaining although obviously done with budget restrictions.

In 1962, during the Christmas season, UPA produced the first animated television Christmas special: MR. MAGOO'S CHRISTMAS CAROL. Directed by Abe Levitow, the story concerned Magoo making his Broadway stage appearance as Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens' classic Christmas tale.

Certainly a high point in the old geezer's colorful career, the special featured many memorable songs by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill. When the special once again received high ratings the following year, NBC decided it was a good concept for a series.

For the network, UPA developed a prime time program entitled THE FAMOUS ADVENTURES OF MR. MAGOO. Premiering on September 19, 1964, the series ran for 26 episodes and cast Magoo as a key character in stories based on famous novels. Magoo was Captain Ahab, Long John Silver, Dr. Watson and a host of other characters. Obviously Magoo was merely playing a role because none of the characters suffered from near-sightedness nor were confused old men like Magoo himself. Several episodes of this series have been retitled and issued to syndication seperately, such as MR. MAGOO'S TREASURE ISLAND.

Strangely, in the middle of its first season, the show was moved to a new time slot opposite GILLIGAN'S ISLAND (in its first season) where Jim Backus was making cult TV history. Audiences obviously had loved MR. MAGOO'S CHRISTMAS CAROL for other reasons than seeing Magoo play a famous role. The series was canceled after one season, while the original Christmas special continued to run for many years. Magoo basically disappeared from new productions until 1970 when he appeared in an hour long TV special entitled UNCLE SAM MAGOO, again directed by Levitow. It was a series of vignettes detailing the history of America.

DePatie-Freleng obtained the rights to revive the character in 1977 for an all new Saturday morning television show called WHAT'S NEW, MISTER MAGOO? on CBS. Magoo was given a talking white dog named McBarker (also voiced by Backus) and nephew Waldo returned. Magoo was once again up to his old antics of mistaking construction equipment for a used car lot with typical disastrous results or detouring from his class reunion to a zoo and never noticing the difference. The show lasted one season. Each half hour contained two adventures and only 13 half hours were made.

In 1987, Warner Brothers announced a live action feature based on the Magoo character. Some insiders were hoping that Jim Backus would portray the character. However when Jim Backus succumbed to Parkinsons disease in 1989 that hope also died.

The Magoo library (along with a number of other UPA properties) was acquired by Morrison Entertainment Group in early 1989. Plans began to re-market the shorts and characters. Announced plans included a 40th birthday special for Magoo, that never materialized, and a possible Halloween special. However, the Fall of 1989 saw Magoo return to TV in re-runs on the USA cable network. Talk of the live action feature continued.

MAGOO'S CO-STARS

Over the decades, a host of supporting characters appeared and disappeared. Perhaps the best remembered character was Waldo, Magoo's lanky, goofy nephew who was often an unwitting participant in his uncle's escapades. With his upturned hat and protruding upper lip, he was a parody of the college teen characters of the period. In the Sixties, he was given a girlfriend named Millie and a best friend named Prezley who really resembled a cartoonish W. C. Fields.

Magoo had a variety of pets including Bowser the cat who Magoo believed was a watchdog. Later, talking dogs like Caesar and McBarker came on the scene. He also had Hamlet, the Hamster, who battled Caesar in a series of shorts that were part of the 1960's TV group.

Like many superstars, Magoo acquired a never ending supply of relatives including Tycoon Magoo, an extremely rich and amoral man. He would send his unfortunate butler, Worcestershire, to try and prevent Magoo from inadvertently interfering with his projects. Mother Magoo was a very hip woman in her late Eighties. She was involved in activities like racing cars but had to endure the misguided attentions of her well meaning son who thought she was a helpless, old fashioned widow.

Taking care of Magoo's two story house was Charlie, a Chinese servant. His ethnic stereotyping, which included huge, buck teeth, might be unappealing for modern audiences. Like the other characters in the series, Charlie often did the physical suffering for "Mr. Magloo's" (sic) self-incurred disasters. (The shorts that aired on the USA cable network had Charlie redubbed to a standard anglo voice.)

Magoo drove a 1913 Stutz Bearcat automobile which proved as durable and memorable as the character himself. It was the one item which appeared frequently in the many versions of his adventures, except for his more literary episodes.

MAGOO'S OTHER SIGHTINGS

Magoo, unlike other cartoon superstars did not have an extensive life outside his animated antics. He appeared in a handful of comics in the early 1950s and then briefly again in the early 1960s. The late 1960s saw a Magoo newspaper comic strip that did not receive wide distribution. There were later some paperback books issued containing collections of this strip. There has been some nominal Magoo merchandising, but nothing compared to his fellow superstars. (One exception occured during the promotion of his feature, 1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS in 1959.)

However, Magoo's film life is easily obtainable. A large majority of his theatrical work, including his feature, have been on videotape for some time. Recently Kid Flicks began issuing the TV shorts, including the lead-ins, on video.

SUPERSTAR QUALITY

Magoo's career has spanned over 40 years. When he first began to receive recognition, it was reported that Walt Disney asked rhetorically, "How long can one actually look at Magoo's antics?" Luckily this is one time that Disney was wrong. Even though Magoo is basically a one-joke comic, his determined personality has kept him entertaining audiences for decades. Like his limited eyesight, Magoo hasn't let his somewhat limited cartoon lifestyle get him down.

CREATORS QUOTES

"The only thing left to do is an X-rated Magoo!" - Jim Backus, Magoo's voice

"My favorite Magoo is FUDDY DUDDY BUDDY where he is playing tennis with a walrus and we wrote a scene where Magoo realizes he is nearsighted and says, 'Gee, I don't care. I like him.' We never did that again... [Hubley] felt we ruined the character." - Bill Scott, UPA storyman

"The Magoo character epitomized what everybody wanted to do. People would like to accomplish things by luck, by chance, by circumstance, but without working for it." - Stephen Bosustow, President of UPA

"Magoo, according to Jim, is a raunchy, lecherous, ultra- conservative, mildly racist, skirt chasing, old bastard." - Henny Backus, wife of Jim Backus

"The important thing was Magoo's absolute self confidence, the absolute certainty he feels that he is right at all times." - Pete Burness, director

"We had a running gag with Magoo in which he carried a cane and would lash out at what looked like a dog, crying, 'Down! Down!' ...sometimes it was a fireplug; sometimes something else." - Stephen Bosustow, President of UPA

"We've always felt that an X-rated Magoo, done with a bit of taste, would be a blockbuster. Can you imagine that nearsighted old curmudgeon mistaking a house of ill repute for a car wash?" - Henny Backus, wife of Jim Backus