Cartoon Origins: Scooby-Doo

Produced: September 13, 1969 – Present.
Inspiration: The Archies TV Series (1968-69)

In 1967, parent-run organizations such as Action for Children’s Television (ACT) began to protest against what they saw as a rising trend towards violence in Saturday morning cartoons. They particularly cited Hanna-Barbera cartoons such as Jonny Quest, Space Ghost and The Herculoids as the main offenders, and put pressure on the studios to replace them. As a result, Hanna-Barbera began 1969 with most of their shows having been canceled, with members of some of these pressure groups having been installed to monitor all subsequent production. Fred Silvermann, the man in charge of children’s programming on CBS, saw a need to revitalize Saturday morning cartoons and commissioned The Archie Show, based on Bob Montana’s teenage humor comic book “Archie,” and was primarily a sitcom about a pop band and their attempts to get recognition in a similar way to The Monkeys’ TV show – which had ceased production only the previous year. The show was a success, and spawned many hit singles such as “Sugar, Sugar” which was the most successful Billboard number-one hit of 1969. The Archies ran from September 14, 1968 to August 30, 1969 and directly lead to: Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (1971-1974) and The Groovie Goolies (1971-1972). The series was created by Filmation, a company which had already achieved a level of success with the Superman cartoons of 1966, and would go on to greater success in the 1980s.

After The Archie Show, Fred Silverman approached William Hanna and Joseph Barbera with the idea of creating a ‘mystery show’ featuring five crazy kids in a teenage rock group and their efforts to solve mysteries and foil crimes. The job of designing the show was handed to story writers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears and artist Iwao Takamoto, who’s initial designs were rejected by Silverman who felt the plot was becoming “too scary,” and feared a backlash from the various action groups of the time. To make the concept less scary, Joe Barbera came up with the idea of including a dog as a main character and as a foil for the show – in the same way as Muttley had been used in Wacky Races. The second concept design saw the working title changed to ‘Mysteries Five,’ and featured: Geoff, Mike, Kelly, Linda, Linda’s brother “W.W.” and their dog, a Great Dane named “Too Much” – who were all members of a rock band called Mysteries Five. Still the project was rejected by Silverman, who influenced even more control over the third draft of the concept. Now called Who’s S-S-Scared, and without much of the rock band element, Geoff and Mike were merged into one character named Ronnie, who was later renamed again to Fred Jones at the request of Silverman, who portrayed the dim boyfriend in the show. Kelly was renamed to Daphne Blake, the attractive girlfriend of Fred. Linda was now called Velma Dinkley, the brains of the outfit who would put together the clues. “W.W” was renamed Norville “Shaggy” Rogers and was no longer Velma’s brother, but was now a more hippie-like character to fit the free-thinking feelings of the late 1960s.

By 1969 the concept of the show had moved on to revision #4, and now the designs were almost complete it was time to implement the personalities and attributes of the characters. An inspiration for this came from an earlier CBS show called The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959-1963), where Fred was based on Dobie, Velma on Zelda, Daphne on Thalia, and Shaggy on Maynard, as well as various elements from Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books. Shaggy and Too Much were developed as cowardly types, with the same capacity to “eat anything, any time” shared by Muttley on Wacky Races. Don Messick was asked to voice Too Much, with legendary radio DJ and entertainer Casey Kasem as the voice of Shaggy, and with Nicole Jaffe providing the voice of Velma Dinkley. Late into final production, and after hearing Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers In The Night” (1966) on the studio radio, Fred Silverman fell in love with the “doo-be-doo-be-doo” scat at the end of the song and changed the dogs name to “Scooby-Doo,” and the show’s title to Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! The final product was first aired September 13, 1969 and lasted two seasons on CBS before switching channels for a further nine seasons on ABC, with spin-off shows airing in the 1980s and a revival attempt in the 2000s.


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