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Top Cat
Top Cat is an American animated sitcom produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions and originally broadcast in prime time on the ABC network. It aired in a weekly evening time slot from September 27, 1961, to April 18, 1962, for a single season of 30 episodes. The show was a ratings failure in prime time, but became successful when repeated on Saturday morning television. The show also became popular in Latin American countries (especially Mexico) and the United Kingdom.
Top Cat was created as a parody of The Phil Silvers Show (1955–59), a successful military comedy whose lead character (Sergeant Bilko, played by Silvers) was a fast-talking con artist. Hanna-Barbera sold the cartoon to ABC based on a drawing of Top Cat. Arnold Stang's vocal characterization of the main character was originally based on an impression of Phil Silvers's voice. During the original network run, the sponsor objected to the Silvers impersonation—insisting that it was paying for Stang, not Silvers—so in later episodes Stang modified his characterization, bringing it closer to his own voice, though still copying Silvers. Additionally, Maurice Gosfield, who played Private Duane Doberman in The Phil Silvers Show, provided the voice for Benny the Ball in Top Cat, and Benny's chubby appearance was based on Gosfield's. Top Cat and his gang were also inspired by the East Side Kids, roguish, street-smart characters from a series of 1940s B movies.
This was only the second original cartoon series to premiere on prime time network television in the United States. Top Cat was conceived along the lines of a traditional, live-action situation comedy, and Hanna-Barbera recruited top sitcom writers of the day to furnish scripts, including Barry Blitzer (a Phil Silvers Show veteran), Harvey Bullock, and Kin Platt.
The title character, Top Cat (T.C.), is the leader of a gang of Manhattan alley cats living in Hoagy's Alley: Benny the Ball, Brain, Choo-Choo, Fancy-Fancy and Spook.
The gang constantly hatch get-rich-quick schemes through scams but they usually backfire, and a frequent plot thread revolves around the local police officer, Charles "Charlie" Dibble (voiced by Allen Jenkins), ineffectually trying to either arrest them, evict them from the alley, get them to clean the alley, or stop them using the policebox phone.
Like The Flintstones, all the episodes feature a cold open, which is a small scene from the episode that takes place in medias res, and after that, a long flashback that leads to the scene begins with the series' theme song "The Most Effectual Top Cat" and features Top Cat's misadventures that happen before the scene from the beginning plays. The story then continues from where it left off. In some episodes, the flashback stops near the middle when the same scene plays.
Top Cat aired on Wednesday nights in prime time at 8:30 pm. Hanna-Barbera created 30 half-hour episodes. The show was broadcast in black-and-white but was created in color. The show aired on Saturdays in 1962 and 1963 on ABC, and was then rerun (now in color) in various Saturday-morning slots on NBC from 1965 to 1969, and occasionally in the 1980s.
Reruns of the series aired on Cartoon Network from 1992 until 2004, and on Boomerang from 2000 to 2014 and again from November 26 to 29, 2020. Reruns later returned to Boomerang on April 4, 2023. The show began airing on MeTV Toons on June 29, 2024.
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Top Cat
Top Cat is an American animated sitcom produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions and originally broadcast in prime time on the ABC network. It aired in a weekly evening time slot from September 27, 1961, to April 18, 1962, for a single season of 30 episodes. The show was a ratings failure in prime time, but became successful when repeated on Saturday morning television. The show also became popular in Latin American countries (especially Mexico) and the United Kingdom.
Top Cat was created as a parody of The Phil Silvers Show (1955–59), a successful military comedy whose lead character (Sergeant Bilko, played by Silvers) was a fast-talking con artist. Hanna-Barbera sold the cartoon to ABC based on a drawing of Top Cat. Arnold Stang's vocal characterization of the main character was originally based on an impression of Phil Silvers's voice. During the original network run, the sponsor objected to the Silvers impersonation—insisting that it was paying for Stang, not Silvers—so in later episodes Stang modified his characterization, bringing it closer to his own voice, though still copying Silvers. Additionally, Maurice Gosfield, who played Private Duane Doberman in The Phil Silvers Show, provided the voice for Benny the Ball in Top Cat, and Benny's chubby appearance was based on Gosfield's. Top Cat and his gang were also inspired by the East Side Kids, roguish, street-smart characters from a series of 1940s B movies.
This was only the second original cartoon series to premiere on prime time network television in the United States. Top Cat was conceived along the lines of a traditional, live-action situation comedy, and Hanna-Barbera recruited top sitcom writers of the day to furnish scripts, including Barry Blitzer (a Phil Silvers Show veteran), Harvey Bullock, and Kin Platt.
The title character, Top Cat (T.C.), is the leader of a gang of Manhattan alley cats living in Hoagy's Alley: Benny the Ball, Brain, Choo-Choo, Fancy-Fancy and Spook.
The gang constantly hatch get-rich-quick schemes through scams but they usually backfire, and a frequent plot thread revolves around the local police officer, Charles "Charlie" Dibble (voiced by Allen Jenkins), ineffectually trying to either arrest them, evict them from the alley, get them to clean the alley, or stop them using the policebox phone.
Like The Flintstones, all the episodes feature a cold open, which is a small scene from the episode that takes place in medias res, and after that, a long flashback that leads to the scene begins with the series' theme song "The Most Effectual Top Cat" and features Top Cat's misadventures that happen before the scene from the beginning plays. The story then continues from where it left off. In some episodes, the flashback stops near the middle when the same scene plays.
Top Cat aired on Wednesday nights in prime time at 8:30 pm. Hanna-Barbera created 30 half-hour episodes. The show was broadcast in black-and-white but was created in color. The show aired on Saturdays in 1962 and 1963 on ABC, and was then rerun (now in color) in various Saturday-morning slots on NBC from 1965 to 1969, and occasionally in the 1980s.
Reruns of the series aired on Cartoon Network from 1992 until 2004, and on Boomerang from 2000 to 2014 and again from November 26 to 29, 2020. Reruns later returned to Boomerang on April 4, 2023. The show began airing on MeTV Toons on June 29, 2024.