The Moose Who Came in From the Cold

Now it can be told: the true story, of the conspiracy to kill moose and squirrel. 

The Bullwinkle Show, "Moosylvania Parts 3 & 4"
OB: January 18, 1964, 12:30 p.m. EST, NBC
I was four days old when this episode first aired.

When I was sitting in my local multiplex, the Premiere 16 in Gadsden, Alabama, waiting for "Mr. Peabody and Sherman" to start, I watched a number of previews to upcoming movies (all computer animated just like this one). Aside from the fact that they were nearly all either sequels or (again, just like this one) a remake of an earlier idea, one other thing jumped right out at me: why can only celebrities supply animated voices anymore? "Mr. Peabody and Sherman" included voices like Ty Burrell and Stephen Colbert--don't get me wrong, men whose live-action work I enjoy a lot. But do they all have to be, say, Tom Hanks and Tim Allen? What about the Paul Frees', the Daws Butlers and the Don Messicks?  The June Forays and the Bea Benederets? the Mel Blancs? What about the character actors like the Hans Conreids, the Alan Reeds or the Allan Melvins and Howard Morrises? Are John Ratzenberger and the cast of The Simpsons as close as we'll ever get anymore?

I always brace myself whenever a beloved childhood favorite of mine is remade for the big screen. I know they can't all be as good as "The Fugitive," and on the other hand, surely won't be the name-only ripoff that the "Mission: Impossible" movies turned out to be. But I must say, for a modern-era movie, I liked what they did with "Mr. Peabody and Sherman." They expounded on their backstories, and instead of their relationship from a dog and his pet boy, they emphasized their original relationship of dog and adopted human son, for emotional resonance. Also, there's a lot of poop and butt-sniffing jokes that you know Jay Ward would've used had it not been for the censors.

Sherman's character was fleshed out surprisingly well (and he gets a romantic interest!) and the genius dog Mr. Peabody stayed faithfully in character from his 55 year ago TV days, really bad puns and all. They kept in everything, from their penthouse home to the little cleaning man at the end. Of course, I always knew the animation couldn't possibly be worse than the original (and it's in 3D!), and of course, I knew I'd never be able to experience Jay Ward's subversive, near-anarchic satire...but then again, will we ever again? (Mr. Peabody actually bites someone at one point...but it's the movie itself that doesn't have the overall bite of the original show.)

The last few times Hollywood took a crack at Jay Ward Studios, the results were mixed--1991's "Boris and Natasha," 1999's "Dudley Do-Right" and 2000's "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle" were big-budgeted disasters (even with Robert De Niro giving a committed performance as "Fearless Leader" in R&B), while "George of the Jungle" did surprisingly well. So it was nice to see "Mr. Peabody and Sherman" atop the box office.

That makes it even more successful than the characters' original 1960s parent show.

Rocky: Bullwinkle, do you know what an A-Bomb is?
Bullwinkle: Sure, a bomb is what some people call our show.
Rocky: I don't think that's very funny.
Bullwinkle: Neither do they, apparently.

...But that doesn't mean it wasn't loved or didn't have a following. In fact, the whole genius of Rocky and His Friends (as it was known on ABC) and The Bullwinkle Show (its NBC title) was that the most subversive characters weren't necessary Pottsylvania's Slavic-accented Boris and Natasha...the biggest subversives were the writers, producers and creators, the ones who brought our cold-war hero moose and squirrel to life. Their satire didn't use needles, they used spiked clubs, on subjects ranging from advertising to Disney princesses to classic literature to U.S./Soviet tensions. And they did it with the worst puns imaginable. All of that added to the show's charm.

Bullwinkle (to the head of a shipping line): For someone who's supposed to be a really big magnate, you sure don't pick up things very fast!

The writers made it clear: they were very well-read on the classics of world literature...but that was simply more stuff to tear apart with goofy cartoons and silly voices. That's how a Peabody & Sherman adventure about Sir Francis Bacon's allegations that he was getting ripped off by William Shakespeare, for instance, would include the line "Bacon, you'll fry for this!" It's also how the show's fifth and final season, the one in which I was born, came to include a plot about Bullwinkle's discovery of a much-sought-after toy boat encrusted with jewels, known as...wait for it..."The Ruby Yacht of Omar Khayyam." (That could be both the worst, and greatest, pun in television history.)

When I was watching the show as a child, it was in full reruns. Its first run ended in 1964, at which point ABC picked up the reruns for Sunday mornings, where it stayed until 1973 and syndication. During that time, I heard works of classic poets for the first time, usually read in Bullwinkle's goofy voice and illustrated with sight gags. I saw the same fairy tales retold to me time and again by parents, grandparents, and teachers, retold in a perverse and hilarious way (via "Fractured Fairy Tales" and "Aesop and Son") that I knew even then, were just wrong. (Obviously I couldn't get enough of them.) And to add to the wrongness of it all...I didn't always get to see the show because of church. So if I was watching it at all, I had some nagging guilt I might go to hell for missing God's Word to hear Mr. Know-It-All lecture us on "How to get into the movies, without worrying about being caught by an usher."

With animation that was just barely of enough quality to be watchable and hold children's attention, and humor that went right over their heads and landed bullseye on their parents, our fearless heroes revolutionized and pioneered the sophisticated satire that wouldn't become commonplace on TV until the debut of The Simpsons (whose creator, Matt Groening, was inspired to get into animation by Rocky and Bullwinkle themselves and often pays tribute to them on his own show). It's likely more than one baby boomer thought, "It was the first time that I can recall my parents watching a cartoon show over my shoulder and laughing in places I couldn't comprehend." But the person who actually said that was none other than movie mogul Steven Spielberg.

The creators of Rocky, Bullwinkle and their post-McCarthy, cold-war influenced universe, were simply looking for a road less traveled in television animation. They didn't want adventure or a sitcom; they didn't want necessarily the cuteness of Disney or the brashness of Warner Brothers (though both are in the mix, make no mistake about that), and certainly not the by-the-numbers assembly line of Hanna-Barbera. They followed the leads of era comedians like Stan Freberg and Bob Newhart (most of the voice people worked extensively with Freberg, in fact), and went with droll satire.

And they went with dialogue unique to that one and only series...because no other series in history could possibly get away with this dialogue, again from the show's 1963-64 season, in which they find Natasha, dressed as a school cheerleader, weeping on the campus of ...wait for it...Wossamotta U:

Rocky: Hold it, Bullwinkle! That sounds like a lady in distress!
Bullwinkle: So?
Rocky: Gee, didn't you ever read the Hero's Handbook?
Bullwinkle: I can never get past the picture of General MacArthur on the cover.
Rocky: Well, chapter two says we should always help ladies in distress.
Bullwinkle: Hi, there, lady! Are you in distress?
Natasha: This dress, that dress, who cares? I'm distraught!
Bullwinkle: Do we help ladies in distraught?

That dialogue comes from the show's last legendary storyline, 1964's plot about Rocky and Bullwinkle playing football at Wossamotta U. Written for Jay Ward's love of college football, the story assails the whole institution--Wossamotta U continues to fall apart with outdated books and equipment even as its football team becomes a well-financed powerhouse. And a jingoist Southern colonel shows up out of nowhere to object to the term "civil war" being used, followed by any use of the word "civil"...perhaps a shot at NBC's rocky relationship with some of its southern affiliates.

If the writers and producers read up on classics of literature for much of the show's inspiration, they also read Time and Newsweek. Boris and Natasha, and their boss, Fearless Leader, hail from the mythical eastern European (I guess) country of Pottsylvania, suggesting they're stand-ins for the Soviet-bloc leaders of the Cold War. Rocky and Bullwinkle stood for the good guys--Rocky, perhaps, even for our military--but the whole attitude behind the stories, and the fact that things worked out due to a really dumb idea from Bullwinkle ("And once again, Bullwinkle's stupidity has saved the day, for at that moment..." is a line that came from the narrator more than once)--suggests jingoism wasn't a destination for the writers, but perhaps a target, or even something to run over on the way where they were going. It's telling (aside from their friendship being described in such sweet, poignant terms) that it's always Rocky who kicks butt and protects Bullwinkle from everything...but considers Bullwinkle his hero. Whenever Bullwinkle says something dim-witted that inspires Rocky to day-saving action ("Bullwinkle, that's it! Bubblegum is the answer!"), Rocky does his deed and gives Bullwinkle all the credit.

Bullwinkle: Humble, that's me... Mr. Modesty. When it comes to humility, I'm the greatest!

Although the show appeared in different formats over the years--there's even a syndicated version that only runs 15 minutes per show, from the series' ABC years--each show typically begins and ends with the latest chapters in a Rocky and Bullwinkle storyline. Showing a clear influence from movie serials and old time radio, they're done in chapters with cliffhanger endings. Borrowing an idea from radio's Adventures of Sam Spade, the announcer usually gives "our next exciting episode" a double title, only this time in really bad pun form: "A Stitch in Time, or Suture Self" for example. (Other examples: "The Vanishing American or No Moose Is Good Moose," "Under Bullwinkle’s Bowler or The Wide, Open Spaces," and "Too Much Too Moon or What Makes Lunatick?")

In between those chapters are self-contained segments: Rocky and Bullwinkle in "Poetry Corner" or "Mr. Know-It-All," the latter with our great, dumb moose trying to give us a disastrous lecture about how to do or not to do something; "Peabody's Improbable History," or our favorite doofus Canadian Mountie, "Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties," co-starring Dudley's horse, the inspector, Snidely Whiplash, and love interest Nell); and either "Fractured Fairy Tales" or "Aesop and Son," which re-tell beloved tales of our childhood in perverse, wonderfully cynical ways.

Little Jack Horner (sticking in his thumb and pulling out a plum): What foods these morsels be!

The roots of all of this subversity come from three men, and their contributions have often been debated. But make no mistake, Jay Ward (the driving visionary behind this enterprise), Alex Anderson (the man who created so many of these characters, including our favorite moose and squirrel) and Bill Scott (the man who gave a moose a voice, and something to say with it) are the three fathers of these children who kept so many of us glued to their sets with such limited animation. Keith Scott (no apparent relation to Bill, though Keith did supply Bullwinkle's voice in the 2000 movie) did a yeoman's job unearthing the show's behind-the-scenes history with his book, "The Moose That Roared: The Story of Jay Ward, Bill Scott, a Flying Squirrel and a Talking Moose," and that book is the lead reference source for this post.

J. Troplong Ward originally intended to go into his father's real estate business, and was actually standing in the front doorway of that Berkeley, California office when he was the victim of a freak accident: a truck crashed into that very office, pinning him against a far wall. While he was recuperating he heard from his old friend, Alex Anderson, who wanted his help with a novel idea: cartoons especially for television. This was the 1947, and that hadn't been done yet. Anderson got his start working for his uncle--who just happened to be Paul Terry of Terrytoons studios, the firm that gave the world Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle. So, the two got together--Anderson creating the characters--and came up with the first-ever TV cartoon, the "limited animation" classic Crusader Rabbit.

Those cartoons can be jarring to watch now, with animation so limited that often the scenes have characters that don't move, just basically one long shot of a stationary cartoon. But, as would be the case with so many Jay Ward productions, the stories more than made up for it: the rabbit, and his friendly sidekick Rags the Tiger, went far and wide to bring justice and right wrongs. If you came for movement, you'd be disappointed, but otherwise, the cartoons are still somewhat engaging to watch. Crusader was one of three characters featured in a "comic strips for TV format," with the other two being rejected. And one of those other two just happened to be the earliest incarnation of none other than Dudley Do-Right.

Crusader Rabbit premiered in first run syndication in 1950, under the sponsorship of Carnation milk and pet food. After two seasons, however, and some production problems, the show wasn't renewed. In fact, Ward and Anderson would eventually lose control not only of the films, but the characters themselves. They did get paid off, however, and did get to keep all undeveloped properties from their former production company. One of those unsold projects, created in 1950 as a possible follow-up for Cruasder Rabbit, was "The Frostbite Falls Revue." All of the characters were animals--including a fox and a bear--and there were a moose and a squirrel in the mix. Bullwinkle and Rocky were the ones in this mix, and except for Rocky's mission to save the day, they were a little different than they would be when we'd first meet them on the air.

Bullwinkle was named for Clarence Bullwinkel, a Ford dealer whose car lot was just down the street from Ward's studios. Anderson came up with the character after a bizarre dream about a talking moose who did card tricks and came with him to a party. During the long hiatus after Rabbit--and the sight of a new production company producing new, now color Rabbit cartoons, without them--Ward and Anderson began developing the format of what would become Rocky and His Friends. And that's what brought Bill Scott under the Frostbite Falls umbrella.

A jack of all cartoon trades who bounced from studio to studio, Scott was a native of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. But a bout with TB brought him to Colorado as a teenager. In World War II, the cinema-minded Scott was drafted into the army and found himself reporting to none other than Ronald Reagan, before being assigned to a film crew. That was enough to get him hired at Warner Brothers' animation unit, where he worked for a year and even worked on Daffy Duck, before he wasn't renewed. A stint at Paramount ended with his being fired, which simply freed him up to work for UPA, a burgeoning, creative studio that gave him the opportunity to work with Mr. Magoo, even writing stories for the shorts. But that only lasted a short time before Scott began a financially rewarding--but soul-crushing--stint making educational, corporate training and propaganda films. His disillusion after being exposed to the ugliness--and as he put it, the flat-out dishonesty--of executive America led him to walk away from a profitable enterprise. And that attitude flavored much of his later work.

Scott worked at the short-lived Gerald McBoing-Boing Show, again for UPA, before his brief time at the animation studios of the (reportedly rather difficult) Shamus Culhane united him with Jay Ward for the first time. After they left, Ward lured him over to work on his new ideas in 1957, the idea of reviving two characters from "The Frostbite Falls Review," Rocky and Bullwinkle, in their own show. During a rather harrowing whirlwind of production activity, Ward set up studios in Mexico, purportedly to save money but ironically, it turned out to be costly and messy. (The behind-the-scenes, rather shady story of how it all worked with the sponsor's approval, would have been a worthy Mad Men episode, in fact.) The premiere of what would be Rocky and His Friends was actually delayed twice due to massive production problems, but the show's network, ABC, and its primary sponsor, General Mills, stuck by the show. Ultimately it became a big daytime hit for ABC, appearing one afternoon a week after American Bandstand and even became the number one daytime show.

Bill Scott, who spent more time writing than voicing, was a superb voice artist. He voiced Bullwinkle and would go on to voice Mr. Peabody (modeled after Clifton Webb's "Mr. Belvedere" character from the movies) and Dudley Do-Right. June Foray, quite possibly the greatest female voice artist of all time, is our pal Rocky, as well as Dudley's love Nell Fenwick, and so many of the great fussy old broads, laughing witches and Bronx princesses that made up the "Fractured Fairy Tales." Paul Frees added his talents, as did an uncredited Daws Butler, who was still working for Hanna-Barbera at the time. Character actor Hans Conreid was Snidely Whiplash and a few other characters, which character actors Edward Everett Horton narrated the "Fractured Fairy Tales" and Charles Ruggles played the first title role in "Aesop & Son."

The production problems worked themselves out over the course of the season, with many of the "Fractured Fairy Tale" segments being produced in Hollywood by Ward himself. The show's first adventure did something no other cartoon did at the time: mirrored America's collective anxiety over the "space race" with the Soviet Union. Bullwinkle's family recipe for mooseberry pie causes an explosion that puts his and Rocky's stove on the moon, and they have to build a rocket ship to get it. Of course, the recipe itself actually makes an advanced rocket fuel formula, which brings out the evil Boris and Natasha, clearly on the "wrong side" of the Cold War.

During the first two seasons, we saw our heroes weather the trials and tribulations of the counterfeit boxtop caper (and the censorship-minded attitudes of General Mills and its ad agency--it wasn't really the box tops that bothered them as much as a gag about a "goof" from the "Great Spirit" that sends Rocky, Bullwinkle, Boris and Natasha falling off a mountain). And we saw them deal with the season one "moon men" again as Bullwinkle inherits a mine full of the anti-gravity material "Upsidasium." At one point the moon men start damaging TV antennas, leaving Americans cluelessly staring at nothing, and one man even watching the window of a front-loading washing machine ("Love these sea stories!"). Leave it to Ward and company to make sure they made fun of everyone, even their own viewers.

That "make fun of anyone" approach was the source of much of the censorship friction; Ward and company were often called on the carpet for over-the-top foreign accents, for example. Patriotic General Mills executives also objected to Peabody and Sherman segments that ridiculed our founding fathers; they managed to get in digs at Ben Franklin (and his kite experiment), Paul Revere and the Battle of Bunker Hill (where the "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes!" order is confounded when the Tories show up all wearing sunglasses). But then, the Big G finally pulled the plug on one script in which Mr. Peabody helps Francis Scott Key write the "Star Spangled Banner" during the Battle of Fort McHenry. (I know that one had to be hilarious, and I probably seem like a "bad American" for saying that.)

Had Rocky and Bullwinkle been living beings instead of brush-and-ink creations, they likely would've endured a lot of friction that could've split them up like Abbott & Costello or Martin & Lewis. But the duo managed to remain caring friends, not only through all the nightmarish production difficulties of season one, but the super-heavy workload of season two. And then there's a tiny matter of billing: Bullwinkle became the breakout star, and the new episodes introduced on a new network in season three would find a tiny little change in billing: now it was the sweet but daffy moose who would be center stage--literally, in a new set of opening credits that show him dancing in a spotlight and tipping a hat.

The show was in prime time on NBC beginning in 1961; perhaps that new opening (which I remember so much from my childhood) was meant to evoke the many variety shows on network TV at the time. It could even be a gentle knock at the "Overture! Dim the lights!" opening to The Bugs Bunny Show, itself premiering in prime time a season earlier. There was also a Bullwinkle puppet, filmed live-action, who hosted each show. If the cartoon Bullwinkle was a sweet simpleton, the puppet Bullwinkle was a smartass, taking digs at the network and even the show that came on right afterwards. Once he declared it was time to go because "Mr. Disney has just arrived in the studio, and he's holding a baseball bat." Another time he pretended to be unfamiliar with Walt Disney's name, declaring "He'll never get anywhere with a handle like that one!" In one of the earliest shows, he told children in the audience to remove the channel knobs from their TV sets, so they can "be with us again next week, and the next week, and the next week..." Irate mail that flooded NBC resulted in Bullwinkle coming back the following week, telling everyone to glue the knobs back on.

The NBC prime time incarnation opened to rave reviews and disappointing ratings; our beloved moose and squirrel had to compete with a beloved collie, Lassie on CBS (which in turn, had another beloved animal as a lead-in, Mister Ed the talking horse). Another difference: "Aesop and Son" replacing "Fractured Fairy Tales," and the premiere of Alex Anderson's one other great creation, Dudley Do-Right. (Anderson worked as a consultant as the show was being developed in the late 1950s, but wasn't further involved in the show. It was after Ward's death, and his not being mentioned in an entire documentary, that Anderson went to court to finally get his rightful credit as the creator of Rocky, Bullwinkle and Dudley.)

Plus, we found out, as sweet and cheerful as they appeared, Bullwinkle and Rocky (and even Dudley Do-Right) made lots of trouble. First, there were lawyer's letters swapped over the caper about the "Kirwood Derby," the hat that made dumb people suddenly very smart when they wore it. It was a play on the name of announcer Durward Kirby, who, despite being the sidekick of comedian Garry Moore and co-host of Candid Camera, didn't find much humor in the joke. (Or did he? I suspect Kirby had the letters sent just to get in on the joke, but that's just my humble opinion. In any event, the threat of a lawsuit didn't get anywhere; Ward even begged Kirby's attorneys for one, for publicity's sake.)

NBC objected to a show that depicted Rocky and Bullwinkle being possible victims of cannibals, despite the fact that eating a moose and squirrel is, by definition, not cannibalism. And when  Dudley Do-Right short featured a bear named Stokey who "went bad" and set forest fires instead of preventing them, the U.S Forest Service was so hot they actually threatened criminal action, saying Smokey was "protected by Congress." "Stokey's" adventure, consequently, was buried for years. But now, you can see it again without any irate forest rangers trying to put you in jail for it.

While the shows often barely made their deadlines during the earliest years, in later years they were produced well ahead of schedule. So much so, in fact, that the soundtracks to the 1963-64 season were already recorded at the end of 1962, with the animation taking up 1963.

When Bullwinkle returned for the 1962-63 season, it was out of prime time again, now on late Sunday afternoons. The following season it would be moved to Saturday mornings. That season, with quality a bit more inconsistent than earlier seasons, still yielded some classic adventures: "The Bumbling Brothers Circus," for instance, as well as the aforementioned "Ruby Yacht" and "Wossamatta U"  stories. There was also an epic sci-fi tale, "The Pottsylvania Creeper," modeled after the movie "The Blob" and Roger Corman's cult favorite, "Little Shop of Horrors." And then, there was one whose roots go back to one of the scariest moments of American history...and how Jay Ward and company forever became wrapped up in it.

Ward, always coming up with wacky promotional ideas (like the Hollywood Boulevard street dance to celebrate the unveiling of the Rocky and Bullwinkle statue...for that matter, the statue itself), decided he wanted to buy an island and name it Moosylvania. So he found one in north Minnesota, not far from the Canadian border, and leased it, then decided to petition for statehood for it. So the otherwise shy Ward put on an funny hat and Napoleon outfit, with his publicist, Howard Brandy, dressed in a Dudley Do-Right Mountie outfit, and NBC publicist Pat Humphrey (daughter in law of Senator Hubert Humphrey, himself from Minnesota), and they took off for a 22 city tour. They traveled in a tricked-up Ford Econoline van that played calliope music over a loudspeaker, as the trio went town to town, appearing in parades and news conferences. Ward often spoke of Moosylvania being our 52nd state, since he heard "Mississippi will be our 51st any day now." Then they made one last, eventful stop: the White House.

I'm not sure what they thought would happen when they went to the gate and demanded to see President Kennedy so they could hand over a 30,000 signature petition for Moosylvanian statehood, or when they insisted after a Secret Service agent demanded they leave (Secret Service agents notoriously don't have a sense of humor on the job...I found that out years ago), or when they simply took their colorful Econoline to another gate...but they probably weren't ready for an agent to unsnap the holster holding the gun. So they left the White House, taking the photos they'd just taken to the local AP office...where they were told, a situation we now know historically as the Cuban Missile Crisis was just unfolding, and President Kennedy was getting ready to make a speech.

So, a year and three months later, in January 1964, we finally got to see the movement for Moosylvanian statehood play out on our televisions, at least the ones whose antennas hadn't been eaten by the metal-munching moon mice. On January 11, parts one and two of the "Moosylvania" storyline had a bored Boris impressing Natasha with a sudden jolt of brilliance: a essay contest called "I like being evil in 25 words or less..." It becomes a national mania: two orbiting astronauts conspire to keep it a secret that the world is really flat, and a gun-wielding robber tells a jeweler it's nothing personal, he just wants to win the contest. The jeweler is understanding, since he's been selling fake jewelry all week with the "real stuff" at home with his wife. But his wife is writing him a letter, saying by the time he reads it, "I will be gone with the swag and maybe first prize in the contest."

But Bullwinkle is the winner: he wrongly thinks he's writing about weevils and says he has the exclusive rights to them in Moosylvania. Boris conspires to get those "exclusive evil distribution rights" as we hear about Moosylvania: no population or industry; Bullwinkle is governor, superintendent, owner and janitor of the island, which has been in his family for generations. And it got rooked out of being a state as far back as the American Revolution, when it almost became the 14th state (until Betsy Ross threatened to charge George Washington extra for adding a star to the flag). We're then told to tune in to our next episode, "Resign Your Fate to a 52nd State, or Moosylvania Mania!"

So, on January 18, 1964, as that next episode begins, Rocky and Bullwinkle are on a train to Washington to petition for statehood. "That way it can set an example for Texas!" says Governor Bullwinkle, but the unlikely tones of narrator Bill Conrad (who sounds nothing like radio's Matt Dillon or television's Cannon or the Fat Man here) tell us they're actually headed to Butte, Montana. It's been disguised as Washington, complete with thin, phony facades, by Boris and Natasha. Of course, since Boris and Natasha are evil, naturally Frankenstein's statue is atop what's supposed to be the capital dome. The denizens of what's presented to us as the "small town" of Butte, Montana, have been asked to play along. "Someone asked me to wear this Supreme Court robe," says a man at the feed store, getting the reply, "I know, Selwyn...I used to want to hit you in the mouth, now I just want to impeach you!" Another old man is upset because his TV antenna is now bent to where Channel 4 gets nothing but presidential press conferences. B&N apparently told a farmer's wife she's now the new curator of the Smithsonian.

Rocky: Doesn't it kind of give you a special feeling?
Bullwinkle: Yes it does, Rock, almost like the time I first saw Butte, Montana.

They pull into the train station, whose sign up top reads "Washington, Dee See." Boris, posing as a cabbie, offers our heroes a ride, leading to this all-time classic exchange of dialogue:

Rocky: That voice, where have I heard that voice before?
Bullwinkle: In about 320 other episodes. I don't know who it is, either!

The "cabbie" drops off our heroes at a building, where he proclaims, in sing-song fashion, "Thees is where all mooses and squirrels file for statehood!" But "little do our heroes know" that "at that very moment," Natasha is swinging an ax to cut a rope that causes the capitol facade to start to fall on our heroes. Rocky yells at Bullwinkle to run for it. "Rocky, you mean our nation's capitol isn't really made of one quarter inch beaver wood with plastic clips?" Bullwinkle asks.

Rocky: Run, Bullwinkle!
Bullwinkle: I thought you only ran in Washington every fourth year!

...and this is where the segment ends, as  the narrator tells us to tune in for the next episode, "Bad Day at Flat Rocky, or a Record in Bullwinkle's Blot."

One thing about the show and its segments: they've been spliced apart and reassembled numerous times for Saturday and Sunday morning reruns and for syndication, almost like someone shuffled two or three decks of cards together then lost a few. So Keith Scott, and the DVD company that remastered the show, again did an excellent job of TV archaeology in reassembling most of them, even the "Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!" segments. That being said, even though the Rocky and Bullwinkle adventure is new for this date, as is the Mr. Know-It-All segment, the "Fractured Fairy Tales" and "Peabody's Improbable Adventure" segments are actually rerun from previous years.

This "Fractured Fairy Tale" has Edward Everett Horton retelling "Beauty and the Beast." In this version (which the network very much didn't like), the Beast can't get a pretty girl to kiss him and make him a prince again. "I'm really a prince, but I'm all fudged up like this because of witchcraft," he reminds us. We see him get doors slammed on his nose and foot, having a kissing booth close in his face, gets a wedding cake thrown at him when he waits in line to kiss the bride at a wedding. "I'm just a no-good beastnik," the seemingly hopeless beast declares, before a woman comes by who warms up to him, and kisses him. "Better try again, baby, that one didn't take," says the unchanged beast, so she kisses him again; nothing. "Well the script says you turn back into a prince. You really are a prince, aren't you?" inquires our narrator, Horton. "Listen bud, you get kissed your way, I'll get kissed my way!" he shouts back. So the woman clubs him. End of story, for our ugly, serial sexual harrasser.

"Fractured Fairy Tales" was one of my favorite parts of the show. In his book, Keith Scott quoted people who went as far as to suggest many of them were high-quality enough to have been released as theatrical shorts...and I agree. One legendary fracture from season one retold a perverse "Sleeping Beauty"--in this one, Prince Charming, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Walt Disney, decides that awake, she's just another princess, but asleep, she's a gold mine. So he lets her sleep and charges admission to "Sleeping Beautyland." In a retelling of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," it's all about a wicked witch with dire self esteem issues, and a group of dwarfs who keep exploiting that fact to sell her stuff. Bill Scott's bad experiences in big business and advertising likely added to the tone of some of these tales.


The "Mr. Know-It-All" segment, as I said earlier, is original to this episode, and is a random, Monty Python story from out of nowhere...and perhaps not my favorite. While I do love the title ("How to Remove a Mustache Without Getting Any Lip"), it's as if the writers came up with that and didn't know what to do next. First, Bullwinkle has to buy a mustache since he doesn't have one. "Which would you like," asks the clerk at the mustache store, "the thousand dollar type" (genuine mink) "or the 999 dollar type (wash 'n' wear Dacron)?"  "I'd like something in the middle, say a buck and a half?" our hero says back. They only sell expensive mustaches, so Bullwinkle goes to Bank of Podunk and uses a frowning Rocky as collateral for a $1000 loan. But he spills ink all over robber, and then, well-meaning, says "Here, let me hold your gun." Then the cops show up. "But your highness, this is all a mistake!" he implores the judge as he gets 99 years. Back on stage, Rocky suddenly notice Bullwinkle has a mustache, so Bullwinkle snatches a can of "mustache remover" and pours it on himself. But Rocky says "that's vanishing cream!" "Now, he tells me," Bullwinkle's floating mustache seems to say.

Then Bullwinkle says "Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!" and proceeds to pull out a growling bear. These segments, believe it or not, were actually meant as timefillers during the first season on ABC, when the network began demanding more content as the lab was too slow in getting completed product back from Mexico.

"Peabody's Improbable History" is a rerun from the first season...and the animation looks shockingly cheap, as if the whole thing was drawn with sidewalk chalk. (Again, this is during the problem, shakedown period with Gamma Productions in Mexico.) It's a jaw-dropping sight to behold considering the modern day Sherman and Peabody we just saw computer animated on modern movie screens, in some cases even in 3D.

"This is the WABAC machine, and this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman."
"Hello."
"Good boy."

That's Bill Scott we hear as Peabody (and we'd hear as many of Ward's other starring characters, like Dudley, George of the Jungle, etc.), and Walter Tetley as Sherman. He made a career, well into adulthood, out of sounding like a little boy, and did so all throughout the golden days of radio. He was Junior, Gildy's nephew, for years on The Great Gildersleeve.

The WABAC takes us to 1810 Paris, back to Napoleon, who's in a crisis: "The imperial braces" are gone, namely his suspenders. Why are they important? Because they hold his pants up. "I cannot order the troops forward, I cannot even salute! As for making a speech, impossible!" the French leader laments.

It turns out they were swiped by Pierre La Como (a play on fellow NBC personality, singer and variety show host Perry Como), his personal assistant, who ran off to a pirate ship with the royal braces in hand.

Peabody throws a rope to the ship so he and Sherman can climb aboard (similar to a stunt in the 2014 movie, in fact...which actually has a segment set in the French Revolution). They see Pierre and his conspirators discussing how the lack of suspenders make Napoleon helpless; "France will fall...like Napoleon's pants!" they laugh. Sherman and Peabody grab the suspenders and run, fighting off pirates in the process. Sherman's even in a swordfight at one point.

When the two return with the suspenders, they get a parade...but not the admiration of the French people, who beg him not to return the suspenders. "Today has been the first day in 33 years there has been peace and quiet in France," "This is the first day the cannons have been silenced in years, no boom boom boom!" they tell him. A little girl says it's the first time in 33 years she's seen her daddy...who is Napoleon.

"There didn't seem to be any reason to return the suspenders to Napoleon...so we didn't. There they are," Peabody says as he points to the framed royal braces. It seems all the times we see Napoleon with his hand in his coat, he's really holding up his imperial pants. This is one of the few Peabody adventures that doesn't end with a terrible pun, but there's another one just a few episodes away that has two.

Bill Conrad then sets the scene for the final Rocky and Bullwinkle installment of "Moosylvania." (His voice evolved over the years and got progressively higher and goofier. Conrad was quite a skilled voice man; this same season, a different sounding Conrad can be heard dramatically narrating the first season of The Fugitive.)

"In our last spleen-shaking episode..." Conrad begins as he wraps up the previous installment, explaining why a facade that looks like the U.S. Capitol building is about to fall on Rocky and Bullwinkle. But fortunately, they make it past the falling facade. This leaves Boris and Natasha, simply devastated.

Natasha: Where did we fail?
Boris: And I always try so hard to do the wrong thing.

Rocky laments that that they can't apply for statehood in Butte, Montana anyway, "or was it?" as the narrator inquires. That's because the Butte, Montana lumber company facade that was behind the capitol facade, falls too, revealing it was a facade.

Rocky: What do you say to that, Bullwinkle?
Bullwinkle: What else? Timber!

Turns out Washington DC had been disguised as Butte, Montana by a lobby for the Montana Mushmelon Trust. "We made Washingon D.C. look like Montana and you're still voting against the mushmelon bill?" asks the lobbyist. The politician responds, "Son, I even voted against Medicare, and they wrapped 54 million Band-Aids on the Washington Monument!" (Medicare wouldn't be passed until 1965, but the word was already common as Ronald Reagan and others spoke out against the idea.)

So, we found out there were subversives in the capitol, or at least there were this time, for Boris is pretending to be a clerk, in a special window devoted to Moosylvania. He says they better hurry as they're about to close in honor of Aaron Burr. "Hey, isn't he the one who shot Alexander Hamilton?" he's asked. "That's why the window is closing, I've got to warn him to get out of town!" Boris then assures Natasha he's pulling it off just fine.

Rocky tells Bullwinkle to give him the petition, so Bullwinkle tells Rocky to "hold this first" and hands Boris the paper; Boris says "Now Moosylvania will never have statehood!" "Bullwinkle, we gave them our petition and they were fake!" Bullwinkle says don't worry, they still have that "gift" from the New Mexico Dynamite and TNT Trust. It turns out Bullwinkle handed over the wrong paper, "Once again, Bullwinkle's incredible stupidity had saved the day, for at that very moment, a blinding flash covered the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area and parts of Alcove, Nevada as well," sending Boris and Natasha orbiting the earth every seven minutes, because it was an explosive issue.

As they drop off the petition at the real statehood petition filing place, Bullwinkle wonders if they have a chance. As he looks hopefully at the audience, Rocky says, "That all depends on whether good Americans get behind it, Bullwinkle!" And so, they've done it, not an irate Secret Service agent in sight. Or have they?
"But will Rocky and Bullwinkle be joined in support by people everywhere? Or will the same sinister forces that defeated the Snooky Lanson presidential boom be at work again? Perhaps we'll find out more in further adventures of Rocky Squirrel and Bullwinkle J. Moose!" And so it ends, with a random name-dropping of a regular singer from Your Hit Parade.

Just a few weeks later, NBC would air its last ever first run Bullwinkle Show. In that last adventure, once again set in Moosylvania, Rocky and Bullwinkle find themselves on the island spending their vacation, when it begins to sink under the weight of emergency supplies sent because word got out Rocky and Bullwinkle were stuck there. The show ends with the narrator saying, "It is, the end! But watch for another episode soon, of Rocky and Bullwinkle!"
Bullwinkle: It may be a little hard to find, but don't give up.
Rocky: We're not!


Availability: the entire series is on DVD and Hulu, minus Fred Steiner's 1961-era theme song and Bullwinkle's dancing open.

Next time on this channel: The Garry Moore Show.