Quotes from William Hanna

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

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.

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.

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.'

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

In my opinion, animation will continue to thrive as long as there are children, parents, television, movies and the need to laugh.

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.

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

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.

'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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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