 | Klondike KatOriginal Medium: Television animation Produced by: Leonardo Productions First Appeared: 1963 image: © Leonardo Productions. |
Klondike Kat's series was about a cat constantly chasing a mouse, but it didn't have anything like the impact of Tom & Jerry. It was about a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted
| … Police, but it wasn't nearly as famous as
Dudley Do-Right. It took place in the
Frozen North, but it wasn't even as big a deal as Breezly & Sneezly, and that one was
extremely minor among 1960s Hanna-Barbera productions. It was merely a
minor back segment from a minor animation studio, but it did last
longer than most because it was a back segment in more than one
show.
As a Mountie, Klondike took his orders from Major Minor (but not the Major Minor who was out to put Snagglepuss's head on his wall). The "man" Klondike always got was cheese thief Savoir Faire, a mouse, whose catch phrase, rendered in an appropriately cheesy French accent, was "Savoir Faire is everywhere!" Rounding out the cast was Malamutt, a dog. Klondike's voice was done by Mort Marshall, a face actor who did do a little voice work for this one studio. Major Minor was Kenny Delmar, whose radio character, Senator Claghorn, was Mel Blanc's inspiration for Foghorn Leghorn. This segment started off filling the empty minutes of Tennessee Tuxedo's 1963 Saturday morning show,
alongside reruns of Tooter Turtle and
The Hunter from the old King
Leonardo show. There was another new segment in the
rotation, The World of Commander
McBragg. The production company, formerly known as Total
Television, had been renamed Leonardo Productions after its earlier
success. The practice of re-using back segments was continued in the studio's next half-hour show, Underdog, which is how Klondike Kat came to last as long as he did. After it moved to CBS in 1966, the Underdog back segments included Klondike Kat along with a new segment, Go Go Gophers, a miniature western with a two-Indian tribe versus a two-cavalryman Army post. In 1968, the Gophers got their own show, with the same tired old Klondike Kat episodes as a back segment. It lasted one season, and that was the last time Klondike Kat was seen. |
