WILLIAM HANNA

You know, it is a funny thing, but 'The Flintstones' was bought by ABC and the sponsors when they discovered adults were watching and enjoying 'Huck Hound' and 'Quick Draw McGraw.'

You know that Yogi and Huckleberry didn't just belong to the kids. Grownups know all about our animal friends.

Initially, it was sort of devastating to lose full animation and go limited.

I think we had made 160 'Tom and Jerry' cartoons.

I was never a good artist.

In 'Tom and Jerry,' there was hardly any dialogue at all. It was all action. It required a great many drawings to make.

We are trying to build a family image of wholesome movie entertainment.

We became very good in developing comical sight gags when we made 'The Flintstones.'

We almost decided on a dog and a fox before we hit on the idea of using a cat and mouse.

Today's youngster has a more highly developed mind, and if you start to play down to them, you lose them.

You can compare Fred and Barney Rubble with Gleason and Carney.

I was attracted to Joe right away. He was and is one of the greatest cartoon artists I've ever met. I was able to do the timing, and Joe with his draftsmanship could make the storyboards. There were things I could do that he couldn't and vice versa.

On the 'Tom and Jerry's,' Joe and I would sit across a desk from each other and develop the story. Joe would do the storyboard and I'd do the timing and the direction of the animation.

The concept of the characters in animal skins and us satirizing modern technology made it fun. But the voices we cast and the characterization of Fred Flintstone had a lot to do with it.

The early years of Hanna-Barbera were more fun than the later ones. I was working more in the creative areas of timing and direction then. But as the studio grew, I became more involved in administration and got away from the creative aspects.

We used to make a 'Tom and Jerry' short every six weeks and they were about six minutes long, so we were producing about a minute of animation a week.

I started out with three creative jobs - painter, janitor and gag writer.

I enjoyed doing the 'Tom and Jerry' cartoons, and if we had never done anything else, I would have been perfectly satisfied.

We moved amazingly fast because our product was acceptable to a broad market: tots, teenagers, adults. Even to some people who never before liked cartoons. When we started we knew Disney already had the kids. So we figured we should be broader.

The novelty business is astounding. We can't keep up with it.

We all can't stay busy doing exactly what we want to do.

We've never tried to educate children. We've never tried to preach to them, just entertain.

Italian work is excellent but it takes them six months to do what we do in a week.

We're delighted that Freddie Flintstone and his friends have made such a hit. The comedy is not the old cartoon slapstick. Most of it is situation stuff and dialogue.

Our stuff is made strictly for fun. We're not out to give a message.