The Ruff and Reddy Show
| The Ruff and Reddy Show | |
|---|---|
 The show's title card. | |
| Genre | Cartoon series, cliffhanger |
| Directed by | Bob Hultgren |
| Presented by | Jimmy Blaine (original run) Robert Cottle (reruns) |
| Voices of | Daws Butler Don Messick |
| Country of origin |  United States |
| No. of seasons | 3 |
| Production | |
| Producers | William Hanna Joseph Barbera |
| Running time | 30 min. |
| Original release | |
| Network | NBC |
| Release | December 14, 1957 – April 2, 1960 |
The Ruff & Reddy Show is a Hanna-Barbera animated series starring Ruff, a cat voiced by Don Messick, and Reddy, a dog voiced by Daws Butler. First broadcast in December 1957 on NBC, it was the first television show produced by Hanna-Barbera.
History
William Hanna and Joseph Barbera entered the television field fresh from serving as the heads of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation department, which shut down in June 1957. Unlike its successor The Huckleberry Hound Show, Ruff and Reddy featured a live action host, Jimmy Blaine, and various theatrical cartoons from Columbia Pictures' Screen Gems library including The Fox and the Crow and Li'l Abner filling up the rest of the half-hour.
Messick's "Ruff" voice characterization was very similar to the one he would later use for Pixie the mouse. Butler used his tried-and-true southern drawl for "Reddy", a voice that would later become mainly identified with Huckleberry Hound. A supporting character in some episodes was the tiny-sized Professor Gizmo (also voiced by Don Messick). The show's episodes borrowed from the serialized storytelling format of such shows as Crusader Rabbit by making extensive use of cliffhanger storylines. The episodes were not much longer than four minutes, including an opening song and much repetition of preceding events.
Ruff and Reddy was broadcast in black and white until fall 1959, when it went to color. Actor/singer and Storyteller:Jimmy Blaine served as the series' first mc with Puppeteers:Rufus Rose And Bobby Nicholson providing comedic relief. NBC cancelled the show at the end of the 1959-1960 season, and was later rerun in 1962 with Captain Bob Cottle as the second and last live-action host. When NBC cancelled the series, Screen Gems syndicated the cartoons to local TV stations.
The characters next appeared on The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie, in the episode Yogi's Ark Lark (which featured almost every Hanna-Barbera animal character that existed at the time). Since then, they haven't been used in anything new.
Episodes of Ruff and Reddy later appeared on one volume of the Hanna-Barbera Personal Favorites home video series called Animal Follies, along with Yippee, Yappee and Yahooey, Touché Turtle, Augie Doggie and Snagglepuss.
Computer game, Ruff and Reddy in the Space Adventure was released in 1990 for Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, Amiga and Atari ST.
The Ruff & Reddy Show in other languages
- Brazilian Portuguese: Jambo & Ruivão
- French Canadian: Pouf & Riqui
- Macedonian: Жолтко и Лутко (Zoltko i Lutko)
- Spanish: Ruff y Reddy
- Serbian: Жутко и Љутко (Jutko i Ljutko)
- Japanese: つよいぞラフティ