I got what was almost certainly the last interview Jay Ward did. And he didn’t even know he granted it.
It happened in the summer of 1986 while TV critics from newspapers and magazines from all over everywhere were gathered in Los Angeles to screen the forthcoming fall shows and interview stars, producers and network execs.
With a few critic pals in tow, including David Bianculli, who still covers TV for public radio’s Fresh Air, I took a morning off to visit the Dudley Do-Right Emporium, a little shop on Sunset Boulevard dedicated to preserving and merchandising the memory of the eccentric crew of cartoon characters that Ward brought to TV between 1948 and 1967.
In addition to Dudley, an incorruptible, oblivious Canadian Mountie, those characters of course include Bullwinkle Moose and his quick-thinking little buddy Rocket J. “Rocky’’ Squirrel; Mr. Peabody, the Einstein of canines; and George of the Jungle.
Ward’s characters and absurdist comic vision — as obvious as a Red Skelton pratfall one moment, as sly as a Woody Allen aside the next — were as essential to the world-view formation of square-peg kids in the ’50s and ’60s as Mad Magazine.
For many of us, it was our first encounter with social satire, not to mention outrageous puns. There was a college called “Wossamatta U.’’ and a Russian spy named “Boris Badenov.”
Ward and his writers refused to take anything too seriously — not history, not even fairy tales. Time-traveling Mr. Peabody taught his “pet boy’’ Sherman about Sir Issac Newton and his forgotten brother, “Fig.’’ Fairy tales were gleefully “fractured’’ with hip dialogue and ironic twists.
The cliffhanger serials featuring Rocky and Bullwinkle in particular were laced with social satire. When Wossamatta U’s trustees decided that the university needed a football team to achieve big-time status, they financed the program by firing five English teachers.
“Parents come in and say how they’re enjoying the show even more now with their children,’’ Ramona “Billie’’ Ward, Jay’s wife, told us.
We’d have been content just talking to her and browsing the wristwatches, lunch pails, T-shirts, Viewmaster reels and other branded merchandise. Billie minded the store, which was only open three days a week, and was happy to talk shop.
She told us, for instance, that The Bullwinkle Show, which was still being shown via syndication, was commissioned by its original sponsor, General Mills. “We don’t get anything from that,’’ she said.
Likewise, ABC, which commissioned George of the Jungle, retains the rights to the episodes.
“But they don’t own all the rights,’’ Billie added. “We have the rights to the characters themselves. Now, people come to us, wanting to put Bullwinkle on items.’’
She said her husband hadn’t produced new cartoons since the 1970s, when his company produced animated Cap’n Crunch and Quisp & Quake cereal commercials for General Mills.
‘’It’s very hard to sell networks things,’’ Billie said. “And Mr. Ward is one who does not like to be told what he has to do. When they insist on changing things, it’s no fun. He just said, ‘I’m not going to do it anymore.’ He’s very independent.’’
As we chatted, a portly older man with a mustache was puttering around the store. He looked like the little man who push-brooms the litter at the end of Peabody’s Improbable History episodes.
“Is that Jay?” I mouthed to Billie as the man disappeared into a storage closet.
She knew we were newspaper folks. She told us we could engage Jay in conversation but that we should put our notebooks and tape recorders away. She reminded us that he’s shy and reclusive. He wouldn’t talk if we started taking notes.
Billie called Jay over to the display counter we had gathered around. She introduced us a devout fans. We told him how we’d never stopped loving his work, and we started asking questions.
Jay told us that when he came back from World War II to his native Berkeley, Calif., he planned to make real estate his career. But one day, as he stepped out of his office to meet the postman, he was hit by a runaway truck.
“It tore up my knee,’’ said Ward. “And like Bill Scott (the voice of Bullwinkle and other characters) used to say, ‘A real-estate man who can’t run is hopeless.’”
That was in 1948. While he was recuperating, he and Alex Anderson, a chum from college, created the first made-for-TV cartoon series, Crusader Rabbit. Jay wrote, and Alex drew.
Crusader Rabbit chronicled the misadventures of a brainy bunny and his bigger, slower-thinking pal, Rags the Tiger. The series, syndicated out of San Francisco until 1951, set the style and tone for Ward productions to come — limited but clever animation, short segments with cliffhanger endings, unbridled word play.
Crusader and Rags outfoxed foes like Arson-Sterno, a two-headed dragon who got along miserably with himself, and Dudley Nightshade, an oily villain. Another Ward-Alexander pilot, featuring a hapless Canadian Mountie, didn’t sell in 1948. But Dudley Do-Right finally got to television in 1959 as an element of Rocky and His Friends, an ABC Saturday morning series in which Crusader and Rags were reincarnated as Rocky and Bullwinkle and Dudley Nightshade as Snidely Whiplash.
Rocky and His Friends, renamed The Bullwinkle Show, moved to prime time on NBC for the 1961–62 season, running on Sunday nights at 7. The show bounced around NBC and ABC’s Saturday and Sunday morning lineups until 1973, then went into national syndication.
Ward obviously relished that prime-time year, when he and his cronies met NBC’s meddling with increased mischief.
The Bullwinkle Show always worked on two levels, cartoon fun for the kiddies, satire for the adults. Once, Ward recalled, Bullwinkle and Rocky needed fuel for a jet plane. Reasoning that a jet engine expelled hot air, Rocky made it go by reading to it from the Congressional Record.
Ward noted, however, “It’s hard to be topical with a cartoon series because it takes so long to make. So we got the idea of using a hand puppet of Bullwinkle at the top and bottom of the show. That lasted about two weeks.’’
At Thanksgiving, Ward said, he had the Bullwinkle puppet roasting the NBC peacock on a spit. “They were very proud of their peacock then,’’ Ward said, smiling at the recollection.
‘’Another time, the puppet told the kids, ‘If you like this show, there’s a little knob on your TV set with numbers on it. Pull it off, and you’ll be all set to see the show next week.’’
He said NBC got about 10,000 calls.
“We were just too crazy for them,’’ Ward said, the erupted in laughter.
Billie Ward broke up our gabfest, saying they needed to get back to business. There were other customers in the store.
We thanked them profusely for their time, gathered up our purchases, and left. Outside, we sat on a bus-stop bench and scribbled down every line we could remember.
Jay Ward died in 1989. The Emporium closed its doors in 2004. Ramona “Billie” Ward passed away in 2015.
Bullwinkle and Rocky still show up in commercials, and the 15-foot tall statue of the duo that once stood in front of the Emporium now graces the corner of Sunset and Holland in West Hollywood.
Author’s note: This article is excerpted from A Man of His Words, a sampling of my journalistic work from 1972 to the present. It’s set for publication in 2025.
Awesome stuff, Noel! We are SO enjoying the Rocky repeats on MeTV Toons.
As usual!
Wonderful!