Dick Dastardly and Muttley were familiar cartoon characters for kids growing up in the late 1960s and early '70s. They were the stars of the famous cartoon, Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines - better known as Stop the Pigeon!
The cartoon was produced for American TV by Hanna-Barbera Productions and was broadcast on the CBS network, with the first episode aired on 13th September 1969. It was also broadcast every Saturday morning in the UK by the BBC.
Origins
It wasn't the first time Dastardly and Muttley had been on television. Previously, they had starred in the 1968 Hanna-Barbera animated series, Wacky Races, in which they played the villains of a car race.
Wacky Races was as a spoof of the 1965 film, The Great Race, starring Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon. In the New York to Paris car race in the early 1900s, contestants were competing to win The World's Wackiest Racer trophy.
Dastardly's character was based on the "cad" persona portrayed by English actor Terry Thomas in many British films of the mid-20th century.
A lot of the Wacky Races' characters went on to star in Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines, which was also based on an actual film - Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. This 1965 British film depicted the pioneers of aviation and starred Terry Thomas and James Fox.
Slapstick action
In Stop the Pigeon, the action was zany and non-stop slapstick, just like Wacky Races. Dastardly and Muttley were World War I fighter pilots in the Vulture Squadron and they were trying to stop the homing pigeon, Yankee Doodle Pigeon, from delivering messages to HQ from the Western Front.
This was common practice in real life, before the days of digital telecommunications. Carrier pigeons would carry vital messages from the height of the conflict to the operations centre. Although it was never actually specified, the implication was that the Vulture Squad were Germans.
Dastardly's famous cry of, "Stop the pigeon!" was uttered so often that viewers believed it was the show's official name. His other famous catchphrase was, "Drat, drat and double drat!" when his strategies went wrong - which happened all the time, of course.
Muttley has a famous sniggering laugh that sometimes sounds like a squeaky toy!
It goes without saying, Dastardly and Muttley have many mishaps along the way and they never stop the pigeon.
Voice actors
Interestingly, although there were many characters in Stop the Pigeon, there were only two voice actors who played every role: Paul Winchell played Dick Dastardly and the General and Don Messick played Muttley and Yankee Doodle Pigeon.
They divided all the other roles between them, including the narrator, the aircraft and weapons designer Klunk, terrified pilot, Zilly (who confesses to being "chicken") and all of the other crazy pilots.
Both Winchell and Messick were well-known voice actors of the 1950s and '60s, with Messick a veteran for his performances in Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Winchell also had his own TV show, The Paul Winchell Show, in the early 1950s.
Only 34 episodes of Dastardly and Muttley were ever made and the series ended in 1970, but almost 50 years later, it is still cult viewing and is re-run on cable channels across the globe. It seems we just can’t get enough of this bungling duo!
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