King Leonardo and His Short Subjects

genre	Animation
runtime	30 minutes
executive producer	Peter M. Piech
producer	Joe Harris Treadwell Covington W. Watts Biggers Chet Stover
voices	Jackson Beck Delo States Sandy Becker George S. Irving Kenny Delmar Ben Stone Allen Swift
narrated	Allen Swift ("The King and Odie" segments) Kenny Delmar ("The Hunter" segments)
theme music composer	Winston Sharples
composer	Winston Sharples
company	Total Television Leonardo Television Productions TV Spots, Inc. / Creston Studios (seasons 1–2)
country	United States
language	English
network	NBC
first aired	October 15, 1960
last aired	December 23, 1961
network2	CBS
first aired2	September 28, 1963
last aired2	March 21, 1964
num episodes	The King and Odie: 104 The Hunter: 65 Tooter Turtle: 39
list episodes	List of King Leonardo and His Short Subjects episodes

King Leonardo and His Short Subjects (also known as The King and Odie Show) is an American Saturday-morning animated television series that aired on NBC from October 15, 1960 to December 23, 1961; the original Short Subjects package last aired on the network on September 28, 1963, when new segments of The King & Odie and The Hunter aired as part of Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales. The show was initially sponsored by General Mills. It was produced by Total Television Productions and Leonardo Productions, named after the main character, and has been referred to as the second original color Saturday-morning cartoon program after The Ruff and Reddy Show. Leonardo Productions was actually Producers Associates for Television, aka P.A.T.[1]

Plot

The show focuses on Leonardo Lion (voiced by Jackson Beck), the well-meaning but often inept king of the fictional African nation of Bongo Congo which is known for its bongo products.[2]

Other segments

Each half-hour episode of King Leonardo consisted of five animated segments. Each half-hour included a two-part King and Odie episode, with other characters featured in between:

Another segment of the original King Leonardo show was Twinkles, an orange elephant who served as the mascot of Twinkles Cereal, a product of the show's chief sponsor, General Mills.[6] The 90-second Twinkles segments continued to air in syndication during the 1960s, and were presented in a 15-minute format under the title The King and Odie with George S. Irving narrating each segment. It later phased out after a firefighter character replaced the elephant as the cereal's mascot. The segments also appeared during some NBC network rebroadcasts of Underdog. The Twinkles segments were not included when King Leonardo And His Short Subjects was syndicated in a half-hour format during the 1980s.

Early in the series' NBC run, selected Columbia Pictures theatrical cartoons were aired on the program, some featuring The Fox and the Crow and Li'l Abner; these shorts were added to fill time when production of the early shows was delayed. The Columbia cartoons were featured during NBC showings of Hanna-Barbera's The Ruff and Reddy Show, but not included in subsequent syndicated versions of the series.

The animation for the show's early segments was produced by TV Spots, with later episodes by Gamma Productions, the same Mexican studio that did much of the work for Jay Ward Productions. For this reason, and due to shared sponsorship by General Mills, Gamma has often been associated with both Total Television and Jay Ward Productions. TV Spots was primarily a producer of animated commercials, but also was contracted for some segments of Rocky and His Friends for Jay Ward Productions.

Tooter Turtle: The adventures of a turtle (voiced by Allen Swift) who has Mr. Wizard the Lizard (voiced by Sandy Becker) transport him to various settings only to realize he was better off at home after all. When Tooter was trapped in a situation he couldn't get out of, he would call to the wizard who sent him home with this incantation: "Drizzle drazzle druzzle drome, time for this one to come home."[5]

The Hunter: A Southern-accented, crime-fighting bloodhound detective (voiced by Kenny Delmar, reprising his Senator Claghorn voice from The Fred Allen Show) chases after a criminal fox named The Fox (voiced by Ben Stone). The Fox would often commit a scheme which always ends with him being apprehended by The Hunter in the end as The Hunter would be praised by Officer Flim Flanigan (voiced by Kenny Delmar).

King Leonardo and His Short Subjects

Plot

Other segments

Later appearances

Episodes

Cast

External links

References