Snagglepuss
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mountain cat of Hanna Barbera fame, borrowed his voice from Bert Lahr… who
also played a famous, heavy-footed mountain cat exactly 20 years
earlier?
See, voice Daws Butler studied Lahr’s Cowardly Lion voice in
1939’s The Wizard of Oz and enlivened Snagglepuss with the same lazy-yet-manic
drawl in his 1959 debut as a nemesis to Quick Draw McGraw.
With a voice
so distinct, is it any wonder he became a prized supporting player for Hanna
Barbera staples like Augie Doggie & Doggie Daddy and Snooper &
Blabber?
He may have made an impact as an antagonist, but some
believe that he’s not the same character whose show launched his own sub-series
to The Yogi Bear Show in 1961. After all, the character who cropped up in
Augie and Snooper was called Snaggletooth, not Snagglepuss–even
though, in every other way, the two cats were completely
similar.
Regardless of your views on that issue, it’s pretty
widely agreed that Snagglepuss is one of the most memorable cartoon cats in the
history of our pop culture. After all, two of his catchphrases have become part
of our lexicon: “Heavens to Murgatroyd” and “Exit, stage left” (used to quickly
flee a precarious situation, instead of its original intent as a simple stage
direction).
We may still be at a loss about who or what, exactly,
Murgatroyd is, but we know Snagglepuss has been featured in comics, on
lunchboxes, as a guest in other Hanna Barbera shorts and features… and our
childhood memories ever since the ’50s.