The Moose That Roared: The Story of Jay Ward, Bill Scott, a Flying Squirrel, and a Talking Moose [Hardcover]

Keith Scott (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0312199228 | ISBN-13: 978-0312199227 | Publication Date: June 7, 2000 | Edition: 1st

For those of us who love The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, these names conjure up memories of some of the wittiest, most inspired, and relentlessly hilarious half-hours of animation ever produced. There was a kind of gleeful magic to the shows, a cumulative joy that transcended the crude animation and occasionally muddy sound, and it's this quality that was the essence of the legendary Jay Ward and Bill Scott.

Jay Ward was the magnificent visionary, the outrageous showman who lobbied Washington for statehood for Moosylvania, and invited the press to a picnic on the floor of the Plaza Hotel's august Grand Ballroom. Bill Scott was the genial, brilliant head writer, coproducer, and all-purpose creative whirlwind, often described as the "soul" of the shows. In fact, Scott even provided the voices for most of the star characters, giving life to Bullwinkle J. Moose, Mr. Peabody, Dudley Do-Right, and George of the Jungle. From their tiny, oddball animation studio, Jay Ward Productions, they created some of the most memorable animation of all time, and gave birth to a family of characters whose undying popularity has cast them forever into the pop culture firmament. With their distinctively unorthodox, artist-friendly philosophy, Ward and Scott attracted some of the most talented writers and voice actors in the industry, and for a time, Jay Ward Productions was a kind of Camelot of cartoons. Now, through exclusive interviews with Bill Scott, Tiffany Ward, June Foray, and dozens of others intimately involved with the Ward epoch, as well as access to original scripts, artwork, story notes, letters, and memos, Keith Scott has created the definitive history of Jay Ward Productions, including episode guides and voice credits for all the Jay Ward cartoons.

From the first "Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of a hat!" to the last "Watch out for that tree!" this is not only the record of a legendary chapter in animation history, but also the story of a rare and magical relationship between two artists who were wildly, exuberantly ahead of their time, and the fascinating story of the struggle to bring their vision of bad puns and talking animals to unforgettable life.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Although Rocky and His Friends remains the cleverest and best-loved cartoon series of the baby boom era, information about the creation of the program is notoriously hard to come by. Jay Ward declined to give interviews in his later years, key artists have died, and virtually nothing survives from the hastily organized studio in Mexico City where much of the animation was done. Despite these handicaps, Australian actor Keith Scott, the voice of Bullwinkle in the 2000 film, has assembled an impressively complete studio history.

Unlike other television cartoon producers, Ward and his partner, writer and voice actor Bill Scott, insisted on making shows they thought were funny. The witty scripts, read by a cast of superb voice artists, remain as entertaining today as they were when Rocky debuted in 1959. And, as Scott documents, what occurred off-camera was often just as zany. The Coney Island Film Festival, a lavish publicity stunt to promote "Fractured Flickers," Ward's send-up of silent films, turned into a spectacular disaster when a rainstorm drenched the park--and the guests. The book has some weaknesses: there are only a few black-and-white illustrations, and Scott fails to address the impact of the cartoons--Matt Groening has frequently cited them as an influence on The Simpsons. The often repetitious text would have benefited from judicious editing. These caveats aside, The Moose That Roared will delight the legions of vociferous fans whose love for Rocky, Bullwinkle, Boris, Natasha, Dudley Do-Right, George of the Jungle, Super Chicken, Fred, and the rest of the Jay Ward characters continues, 40 years after Rocky began its initial run. Also available: the original cartoons on VHS, the large-format episode guide The Rocky and Bullwinkle Book, and Fractured Fairy Tales, updated by an Entertainment Weekly writer. --Charles Solomon

From Publishers Weekly

Cross-marketing efforts are seldom worthwhile, but this cartoonish history of Rocky and Bullwinkle is a fabulous exception. Scott, a lifelong "cartoon junkie" and the voice of Bullwinkle in the upcoming film from Universal Pictures, delves deep into animation lore to reveal the magic and mayhem that went into the most irreverent and grown-up cartoon until The Simpsons. Rocky and Bullwinkle were invented in 1957 by two perpetually goofy guys named Jay Ward and Bill Scott (no relation to the author). When the two men persuaded a distribution company to fund a series based on their characters, a legend was born. The Rocky and Bullwinkle adventures were unlike any cartoon on TV: topical (the Cold War was a favorite subtext), self-referential ("Have you forgotten, BullwinkleAwe're TV heroes!" cries Rocky in one episode) and unapologetically sophisticated (references to Dostoyevski and Aesop were not atypical). But above all, Scott insists, the Rocky and Bullwinkle show was often outrageously, sometimes painfully, funny. The mismatched duo (a squirrel and a moose) entertained adults and children alike for six years and 326 episodes. Although Jay Ward and Bill Scott created a gaggle of other popular cartoon charactersAincluding Dudley Do-Right, George of the Jungle and Cap'n CrunchARocky and Bullwinkle were always their favorites. Scott's enthusiasm for his subject is infectiousAwhen he veers into giddiness, it's forgivable, perhaps even appropriate to this delightful salute to the most famous flying squirrel and dimwitted moose in history. (July) FYI: The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, starring Robert De Niro, Rene Russo, George Alexander and the author, will be released June 30.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; 1st edition (June 7, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312199228
• ISBN-13: 978-0312199227
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,840,132 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Funny & Enchanting in Places, But Largely a Chore to Read, August 12, 2000

By 

Richard E. Hegner (Columbia, MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Moose That Roared: The Story of Jay Ward, Bill Scott, a Flying Squirrel, and a Talking Moose (Hardcover)

I once read a review that began: "This book told me more about penguins than I ever wanted to know about penguins." Similarly, I'm tempted to say that this book told me far more about Jay Ward, Bill Scott, and the ups and downs of their years in show business than I ever wanted to know--and far less about one of the favorite t.v. programs of my long-ago adolescence, Rocky and Bullwinkle. (The book spends a lot of time discussing Ward's and Scott's other ventures into cartoon series, including Crusader Rabbit, Hoppity Hooper, and George of the Jungle as well as ads for Captain Crunch and other Quaker cereals.) If you venture into this book expecting it to be as full of zany humor and excruciating puns as Rocky and Bullwinkle were--as I did--you are in for a disappointment. While parts of the book are quite absorbing, it is on the whole a chore to read. The book badly needs edited down, especially given its repititiousness. The author tends to be a bit too gushingly adulatory of the work of Ward and Scott, too; while they were comic and artistic geniuses, they did misfire a few times.

There are gems along the way--including the origin of the name Bullwinkle, the real identity of Ponsonby Britt, how the names Gidney and Cloyd were chosen for the moonmen, and the never-ceasing wars between Ward and Scott and their sponsors and networks--but you have to sift through a lot of gratuitous detail to find them. One of the most engaging parts of the book is the Reference Section. (Curiously, the reference section, the appendices, and the index account for 128 pages of the book's total 442 pages.) In the Reference Section, the reader finds synopses of all the episodes of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Fractured Fairy Tales, Bullwinkle's Corner (aka, Mr. Know-It-All), Mr. Peabody's History, Aesop and Son, and Dudley Doo-Right. Just glancing through the names of the Rocky and Bullwinkle episodes is a delight (e.g., "A Creep in the Deep, or Will Success Spoil Boris Badenov?" "Fast and Moose or Charlie's Antler"). It is a reminder, too, of how much funnier and more engaging this book might have been if better focused and better written.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A detailed history of Bullwinkle and his creators, February 22, 2001

By 

Kevin W. Parker (Greenbelt, MD) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Moose That Roared: The Story of Jay Ward, Bill Scott, a Flying Squirrel, and a Talking Moose (Hardcover)

There are probably only three truly great houses of animation: Disney (of course), Warner Brothers, and Jay Ward Productions. Of the three, the latter seems to get the least attention, something this book attempts to remedy.

This is a history of Bullwinkle and his creators, from when they first got into the business until their last creative efforts, i.e., pretty much up until the George of the Jungle movie, though there is mention of the Rocky and Bullwinkle movie as forthcoming.

Though Ward and his cronies were comparatively good at keeping to their artistic vision despite outside pressures, there were enormous complications of business and dollars-and-cents issues that dogged them throughout. Most notably, much of the detailed animation of their key show was done in Mexico City. The goal was to save money, though all it accomplished in the short term was to reduce the quality of the product.

This book covers those issues in detail, which are significant but not that interesting. More interesting is to hear about the madcap antics of Jay Ward, Bill Scott, and the others as they work together and play practical jokes on one another. Ward in particular has a gift for publicity, sending out bizarre weekly notices to the press to publicize the show via mock-pyramid schemes and other parodies of mail-order silliness.

It's harder than usual to make a judgment about this book. Casual readers like me would probably have been happier if it had skimped on the business issues, sticking just to the creative aspects. People wanting to know how showbiz really works, on the other hand, will probably be fascinated by the business details described here, as unbelievable as they frequently are.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful book for Rocky, Bullwinkle, Jay Ward fans, August 2, 2000

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[e-mail] (Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Moose That Roared: The Story of Jay Ward, Bill Scott, a Flying Squirrel, and a Talking Moose (Hardcover)

If you are a fan of Jay Ward and Bill Scott's zany animated creations, you really owe it to yourself to read this book. "The Moose That Roared" is filled with entertaining and enlightening quotes, observations, tales and all kinds of enjoyable information about the voice artists, writers, musicians and other folks responsible for these unforgettable programs. I can't imagine any author doing a better job at presenting the vast amount of material Keith Scott has compiled. In short, this is a terrific book.