Loopy De Loop
| Loopy De Loop | |
|---|---|
Title Card
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| Directed by |
William Hanna Joseph Barbera |
| Produced by | William Hanna Joseph Barbera |
| Written by |
Michael Maltese Warren Foster Tony Benedict Dalton Sandifer |
| Starring | Daws Butler |
| Music by | Hoyt Curtin |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by |
Columbia Pictures (Sony Pictures Entertainment) |
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Release date
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November 5, 1959 – June 17, 1965 (48 shorts) |
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Running time
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7 minutes per short |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Loopy De Loop was the only theatrical cartoon short series produced and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera after leaving MGM and opening their new studio, Hanna-Barbera Productions. The series, distributed to theatres by Columbia Pictures, ran from November 5, 1959 to June 17, 1965.
Loopy is a gentleman wolf who mangled the English language in his bid to converse in a bad French-Canadian accent, and always wore a characteristic tuque knit cap. A self-appointed good Samaritan, he dauntlessly fought to clear the bad name of wolves and would open every episode with his trademark introduction "I am Loopy De Loop, the good wolf." Though he was always kind and helpful, his exploits usually got him beaten up or chased out of town by the very people he had helped, all for no other reason than the prejudice of being a wolf.
The character's name was an inspired combination of a play on words:
Animation historian Christopher P. Lehman places the Loopy De Loop character and series in the context of their time. Loopy is a wolf devoted to improving the largely-negative image of his species. He does not want to be another Big Bad Wolf and chooses to be good. He performs (or attempts to perform) good deeds for other people in a recurring show of generosity. Yet the people he tried to help would be ungrateful, turning on him, and attacking him. Loopy is a character suffering persecution because of his looks and the bad reputation of his entire species, not because of his deeds or his personality. Lehman connects Loopy's fate to the then-contemporary struggles of African Americans to integrate into the wider society of the United States, while facing racial stereotypes which were socially ingrained. Black people were variously stereotyped at the time as humble servants, oversexed brutes, and childlike simpletons. Like Loopy, African Americans had to struggle and overcome the negative reputation of their entire kind.
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