Don Messick

Buffalo, New York, USA

Biography

Movies

Sabrina the Teenage Witch (titled Sabrina and the Groovie Goolies or The Sabrina Comedy Hour during its first season and promotionally referred to as The Sabrina the Teenage Witch Show or The Sabrina Comedy Show) is an American low-budget animated sitcom television series produced by Filmation that aired on CBS from 1971 to 1974. A spinoff of The Archie Comedy Hour, the show featured new episodes of Sabrina along with the Groovie Goolies. The series follows a teenage witch who likes to hanging out and fight darkest enemies using her magical powers. This series was aimed primarily towards young boys ages 6 to 14, and contained an adult laugh track. Following its first season, the series was reduced to a half-hour when the Goolies spun off into their own show. The show's opening strapline is: Once upon a time, there was the witches, who lived in the little city of Greendale. Two aunts, Hilda and Zelda are chosed the ingredients to create the evil wicked witch. But suddenly, Zelda bumped right into Hilda and accidentally added a beautiful girls' stuff as an extra ingredients. Thus the grooviest teenage witch was born, she has a white hair with a pink headband, and blue eyes. She wears a blue dress with a black belt and black shoes. She loves to goofing off and battling evil forces using her ultra magical powers. It so happens that this is the first bewitching american superhero — Sabrina, the teen-age witch! Filmation animated Sabrina once more in 1977 with The New Archie and Sabrina Hour.

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The Archie Comedy Hour
1969

Famous Classic Tales is a series that airs cartoons from production companies such as Filmation, Rankin-Bass, Ruby-Spears, Air Programs International, Hanna-Barbera, Hanna Barbera Australia, and Southern Star Group. Famous Classic Tales was shown on CBS, and distributed by Kids Klassics Home Video and Storybook World. It had cartoons from API's Family Classic Tales. Featured cartoons included adaptions of classic literature such as Gulliver's Travels, Treasure Island, Black Beauty, Moby-Dick, and many others. The creation of a series of animated features based on classic children's stories was conceived by Jack Thinnes, Media Director at Sive Advertising in Cincinnati, Ohio. The series was created for a Sive client, Kenner Products, and each program was fully sponsored by Kenner on CBS Television Network on Sunday, late afternoon or early evening, during the prime toy selling season before Christmas. The idea to use classic children's books sprang from Thinnes' viewing of a two minute demo of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, which was produced by Walter Hucker's studio, API, of Sydney, Australia. API was purchased later by Hanna-Barbera Studios after Thinnes introduced the owners of the studios to one another. After the series ran on CBS for nearly ten years, it was moved into local syndication by Sive's syndication department. However, their adaptation of A Christmas Carol was such a favorite that it continued to run on the network for fifteen years.

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Famous Classic Tales
1970