#hoppity hooper

[oldshowbiz]

1964.

Jay Ward's Hoppity Hooper

[not-wholly-unheroic]

What’s your thoughts on the late Hans Conried and the late Bill Thompson’s portrayals of Captain James Hook and Mr. Smee?

Love, love, LOVE them! They ARE Disney’s Hook and Smee, and I can’t imagine anyone else filling the roles. While Corey Burton & Jeff Bennett are great, they obviously have based their interpretations of the characters on Conried & Thompson’s original work. The characters wouldn’t be who they are without those two. Even their body language and facial expressions are based off of Conried and Thompson’s live-action reference model recordings. (You can see just how many traits Hans and Hook share in common here.) I really wish we still had access to those original recordings and not just the stills but even they are pretty awesome.

I don’t know how Hans and Bill felt about working with one another, but I suspect by the time they finished recording, they were good friends because only those who get along so well in real life can play off of one another on screen the way Hook and Smee do and make it sound believable. They later worked together again for Disney in the early production of Sleeping Beauty and you can still hear them as Kings Stefan (before Hans was replaced as the voice actor) and Hubert in this unused song and once again, it sounds like they’re having a blast. I don’t know why they ultimately recast Stefan but you don’t cast two actors as a dynamic duo like that twice (even if it was just in the early days) unless their chemistry is good.

Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, who animated Hook and Smee respectively, were also good friends in real life. There’s a great documentary about their many contributions to Disney history called Frank and Ollie and you can absolutely tell how much they cared about each other not just as coworkers but as best friends. They occasionally joke around and poke fun at each other and I think some of that warmth definitely made it into the film as well.

It’s interesting to me that Hook and Smee have a different dynamic than most villains and henchmen. While most villains could honestly get along fine without their henchmen and the henchmen are only begrudgingly doing their job because they’re afraid of the consequences, Hook can’t function without Smee. He NEEDS him, whether or not he admits it. And Smee, although intimidated by Hook, also seems to genuinely care about him when no one else does. It’s one of the many things I love about these characters.

When Corey Burton & Jeff Bennett were interviewed about how they handled Hook & Smee in Jake and the Neverland Pirates, Corey reported that they decided to play the characters as a sort of vaudeville comedy team. While he didn’t expressly mention it, I suspect he may also have drawn inspiration for Jake’s version of Hook from Conried’s work in the animated show Hoppity Hooper, in which he plays the role of Waldo Wigglesworth, a scheming snake oil salesman who always has a new plan up his sleeve that he seems to think is flawless but which inevitably ends up backfiring. Waldo even has a Smee-like companion, Fillmore, and the titular character, Hoppity Hooper, is somewhat reminiscent of Jake at times—a kid who is a bit too trusting of “Uncle Waldo” but often ultimately bringing out the best in him. If you haven’t ever seen the show, check it out and you’ll see what I mean. Meanwhile, Jeff Bennett has said of his Smee, “[He] has that bumbling way about him. He's always trying to keep up and wants to try to make everybody happy—like the Mom who wants everybody to stop fighting and be friends and make nice and for the world to be every color of the rainbow. But every once in a while, you'll hear—and I try not to do it too often—that little edge of ‘Boy, this job is really hard and I am a little tired of it.’” I think they both do an excellent job of keeping the heart of the characters Conried & Thompson brought to life, and the original voice actors would be proud.

[chililizardsplayhouse]

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[penguinofspades]

Sometimes you get the urge to fuse a vocaloid song with an obscure cartoon from the 1960s and you just have to act on it.

Hoppity Hooper Playlist

[bakertoons]

Hoppity Hooper

Why yes, I drew a "Hoppity Hooper" fanart in 2024.

[total-television-productions-act]

ugh, i wrote that last post, found a playlist of jay ward cameos in other shows, saw hoppity hooper in it (weird choice, btw), watched hoppity hooper, and now i wanna write an essay abt the relationship of those three :[

[avengedog]

Hoppity Hooper fanart in the year of our Lord 2023? It's more likely than you think.

[sptoastaddict]

Found Brett in an old 60s cartoon