Top 33 William Hanna Quotes

I think that – whether I should admit this or not – Joe and I, going back to ‘Tom and Jerry,’ have been very lucky in being able to do cartoons that have universal appeal.

I think ‘The Simpsons’ is in the right time slot because it’s not a show for kids. It’s too vulgar. And ‘Ren and Stimpy’ is worse. We would never do anything like that.

I saw one of the old ‘Tom and Jerry’ cartoons the other day. I hadn’t seen it for 30 years and I didn’t remember it. We made 160 of them! I thought it was a very funny cartoon.

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

‘Tom and Jerry’ seemed to be as well liked by adults as by children. ‘The Flintstones,’ of course, was geared more to adults, but I guess we were just lucky that the kids seemed to enjoy ‘The Flintstones,’ too.

I used to watch ‘The Honeymooners’ and laughed so much I’d fog up the inside of the lenses of my glasses.

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.

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.

It takes four people to lay out the ‘Flintstones.’

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

We work in vertical and horizontal planes. We avoid depth characteristics as much as possible. This reduces the number of pictures in a five minute segment from 12,000 to 1,200. And the public likes the technique better.

‘The Flintstones’ was the first animated series to appear on nighttime TV.

Disney did well with human characters but only in dramas, not comedy.

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.

I was never a good artist.

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

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

Cartoons ran into trouble when they became too much like real life images. Cartoons had become poor imitations of the real thing.

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

Greatest thing in our partnership is the sharing of responsibility; if one of us has to go away, we always know someone vitally concerned is on the spot.

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

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

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

We wanted a world that looked like our world. In the original ‘Flintstones,’ low flat buildings filled the city and suburbs. Now, high-rise buildings and apartments exist next to the family neighborhoods. Part of the ‘Flintstone’ fun remains its parallel of our world.

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

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

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

We never realized how much money there was to be found in character products.

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

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.

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.’

When we were at MGM, we never did much about merchandise tie-ups There were too many executives and lawyers to go through.