Courageous Cat & Cool McCool = Kane Cartoons
by David Krell
david@davidkrell.com
Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse broadcast in first-run syndication in 1960. First-run syndication occurs when a show is sold to individual stations or a station group owning more than one station.
Bob Kane created Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse as a parody of his mega successful Batman character. Kane made no pretenses about borrowing from his creation for the takeoff. Gotham City became Empire City. The Batcave became the Catcave. And while Batman had his utility belt, Courageous had something akin to fellow feline Felix the Cat’s tail and its power of metamorphosis. Hal Erickson explains in his 1995 book Television Cartoon Shows, 1949-1993.
Courageous Cat had a gimmick. You couldn’t miss it. It was pulled out and played beyond its worth at every opportunity. The gimmick was Courageous Cat’s Catgun, which with a flick of the trigger could be converted into a parachute, an umbrella, a bulletproof shield, a ladder, a can opener -- and on rare occasions, a gun.
Kane also borrowed devices used in the crime films of the 1930’s and 1940’s for Courageous Cat. Radio bulletins and newspaper headlines often advanced the stories and informed the cat-and-mouse crime fighting duo of the police department’s need for assistance.
While Batman and Robin battled Joker, Riddler, Penguin, et. al. in Gotham City, Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse contended with Empire City’s gallery of rogues -- Flat Face Frog (real name: Chauncey) and his able lieutenant, Harry the Gorilla, are two of the many villains defeated by the cat and mouse heroes.
Frog bore a striking, deliberate, and impacting resemblance to an actor who became famous in the cinema’s crime genre a quarter of a century prior. Kane paid homage to tough guy Edward G. Robinson by using a Robinson characterization as Frog’s voice-personality. Other Courageous Cat villains included Professor Shaggy Dog, Black Cat, Rodney the Rodent, and Professor Noodle Stroodle.
Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse finished with 100 five-minute cartoons.
Kane contributed another parody to 1960’s popular culture.
Animators drew on the spy guy genre popular during the era. While the big screen had James Bond et. al. and live-action television had Maxwell Smart et. al., cartoons gave us Cool McCool et. al.
Cool McCool was a well-intentioned, somewhat bumbling agent who answered to his superior, Number One. The opening of Cool McCool directly referenced James Bond by spelling out the title character’s name C double oh L. McCool’s slogan was Danger is my business!
Each Cool McCool show consisted of two stories starring the agent with a third story featuring Cool’s father, Harry. Harry McCool was a member of a cop trio with his partners Tom and Dick. Reminiscent of the Keystone Kops, the police troika bumbled and stumbled through each adventure. They eventually solved the case in question.
Cool introduced the segments by strumming a guitar and singing wistful lyrics, e.g., My pop, the cop.
Erickson notes Kane’s artistry and his influence on the show’s animation.
The series was occasionally effective in invoking the ‘film noire’ milieu and forced-perspective art of its mentor Bob Kane. At other times, the backgrounds were too busy for the audience to appreciate what was going on in the foreground -- a surprisingly clumsy graphic choice from the series’ British animation staff at TVC Studios, who’d done such excellent work on [Executive Producer Al] Brodax’ The Beatles.