Posted By Dan Greenfield on Jan 25, 2025 | 7 comments

Here’s something we know you’ll really like!

By PETER BOSCH

It’s National Moose Day, which occurs every January 25! And get this — National Squirrel Day was four days ago, on January 21! What better way to celebrate than by honoring the greatest moose-and-squirrel team of them all — Bullwinkle and Rocky!

Jay Ward’s Rocky and His Friends or, more popularly, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, had its debut a little more than 65 years ago — Nov. 19, 1959, on ABC. And what a show it was! The format was steady throughout the five-year run of the series: the opening and closing segments were devoted to an ongoing adventure of Rocky and Bullwinkle. In between were cartoons of the hilarious Fractured Fairy Tales, followed by the time-travelling Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman in Peabody’s Improbable History, as well as a couple of brief moments of Bullwinkle reading a poem or giving unhelpful advice to the viewers.

In the second season, two more features were added, Aesop and Son and Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties, which would alternate with Fractured Fairy Tales and Peabody’s Improbable History.

(Rocky and His Friends was originally broadcast in black and white and the first few episodes featured a laugh track.)

(As a sidenote, an earlier incarnation of Dudley Do-Right appeared in Ward’s 1948 TV show called The Comic Strips of Television.)

Each episode of Rocky and His Friends was an incredible delight in its own special way, especially for the use of the many puns throughout.

And that was just a sample. Will these great story titles ever be forgotten? “Rue Britannia,” “Asphalt Bungle,” “The Ruby Yacht of Omar Khayyam,” and the classic “Wossamotta U.”

In 1961, NBC picked up the series and changed the name to The Bullwinkle Show.

However, what is nearly forgotten today, because they got dropped from syndicated packages later, were humorous intros by a Bullwinkle hand puppet:

To commemorate the 1961 season on NBC, a statue of Rocky and Bullwinkle was unveiled outside the Jay Ward Studios at 8218 Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. Even back then, Ward was playing one of his many jokes, as you will see in the below video, with the statue mimicking a Vegas showgirl statue at the Chateau Marmont across the street. Jayne Mansfield did the unveiling (of the Bullwinkle statue, that is).

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The studio was definitely a playhouse that resembled the great Jay Ward’s joy-filled, childlike personality. There were candy and popcorn machines, as well as a soda fountain.

Ward’s background was in real estate but his heart was firmly in show business. He was known as a wonderful boss, surprising his studio staff with gifts and taking them on trips. And there were his wild, humorous gags. He would heavily bombard newspaper editors and media critics with funny promotional material:

Another time had him trying to buy an island in Minnesota, with the intention of renaming it “Moosylvania” and then applying for statehood. He didn’t get to buy an island, but he did get to lease one for three years!

(And in case you’ve always wondered what the “J.” in Rocket J. Squirrel and Bullwinkle J. Moose stood for, it was “Jay Ward.”)

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THE PERFORMERS

June Foray: Well-known voice artist for the classic-era animated movies and cartoons of Walt Disney, Walter Lantz, and Warner Bros., Foray was the voice of Rocket J. Squirrel, Natasha Fatale, and Nell Fenwick.

Bill Scott: Scott was not only co-producer with Jay Ward, as well as the head writer and a director, he also voiced Bullwinkle, Mr. Peabody, and Dudley Do-Right.

Paul Frees: Frees’ career as a voice actor included narrating a number of movies and sometimes even dubbing for an actor. On Rocky and His Friends, he was the baddest of bad guys, Boris Badenov, and Dudley Do-Right’s Inspector Fenwick.

William Conrad: Conrad was well-known for playing intimidating characters on the big screen (including one of the title characters in the 1946 film noir, The Killers). On radio, he was the voice of Matt Dillon in the Gunsmoke series. And, of course, he became most recognized as private investigator Frank Cannon on television. But he was also the narrator of the Rocky and Bullwinkle series and, he later said, “It was the most enjoyable show I ever did in my life.”

Great comedic film actor Edward Everett Horton was the narrator of Fractured Fairy Tales, with longtime movie star Charles Ruggles voicing Aesop and Daws Butler (better known to many as Yogi Bear) as Aesop, Jr. Walter Tetley was Sherman. And the cherry on top of the cake was the wonderful Hans Conried as Snidely Whiplash in the Dudley Do-Right segments.

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THE WRITERS

Many of those who worked in the cubbyholes turning out the scripts for the moose and squirrel would go on to impressive credits. Lloyd Turner wrote for Get Smart, All in the Family, and Mork & Mindy. Allan Burns became partners with fellow Rocky writer Chris Hayward and they created The Munsters and worked together on He & She (winning an Emmy Award). Burns went on to write for Room 222 and co-created The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, Phyllis, and Lou Grant. (For trivia fans, Burns also created the cereal character Captain Crunch.) Animation for the series was produced in Mexico by Gamma Productions.

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TIE-INS

While it is good they didn’t entertain the thought of selling top hats…

…the show did inspire toys and games, as well as the inevitable comic books, first at Dell and then at Gold Key, with many drawn by Al Kilgore.

Four Color #1128 (Aug.-Oct. 1960). Cover artist unconfirmed.

Four Color #1275 (Dec. 1961-Feb. 1962). Art by Al Kilgore.

The Bullwinkle Mother Moose Nursery Pomes (May-July 1962). Cover artist unconfirmed.

Rocky and His Fiendish Friends #1 (Oct. 1962). Art by Kilgore.

Rocky and His Fiendish Friends #2 (Dec. 1962). Unconfirmed cover artist. This issue included stories drawn by Jerry Robinson — co-creator of Robin and the Joker.

Kilgore also wrote and drew a newspaper comic strip based on the series, from 1962 to 1965:

Sept. 22, 1962

The NBC series ended in mid-September 1964, then moved back to ABC, which aired reruns from ’64 to 1973.

Their popularity has never diminished. A long run in syndication (as The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends), plus a new TV series, and a movie have kept the squirrel and moose very much in the public eye. (Boris and Natasha also got a live-action movie.)

There have also been Bullwinkle’s restaurants and amusement centers in various states since 1982. Add to that, new comics came from Charlton, Marvel, and IDW. And let’s not forget the 1993 pinball machine that would have been perfect inside the Jay Ward Studios of the Sixties!

But now, it’s that time:

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— THE TERRIBLE TRIO: Inside the Wackiest Filmation SUPERBOY Cartoon of Them All. Click here.

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13th Dimension contributor-at-large PETER BOSCH’s first book, American TV Comic Books: 1940s-1980s – From the Small Screen to the Printed Page, was published by TwoMorrows. (You can buy it here.) A sequel, American Movie Comic Books: 1930s-1970s — From the Silver Screen to the Printed Page, is due in 2025. (You can pre-order here.) Peter has written articles and conducted celebrity interviews for various magazines and newspapers. He lives in Hollywood.