The Hanna-Barbera Happy Hour

The Hanna-Barbera Happy Hour
Genre Comedy
Variety show
Directed by Jim Washburn
Joe Layton
Bob Mackie
Voices of Udana Power
Wendy McKenzie
Daws Butler
Don Messick
Country of origin United States
Original language(s) English
No. of seasons 1
No. of episodes 5
Production
Executive producer(s) Joseph Barbera
Producer(s) Ken Welch
Mitzi Welch
Joe Layton
Running time 60 minutes
Production company(s) Hanna-Barbera Productions
Distributor Warner Bros. Television
Release
Original network NBC
Original release April 13 – May 11, 1978

The Hanna-Barbera Happy Hour is an American television comedy-variety show produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions which aired for five consecutive weeks on NBC from April 13 to May 11, 1978.

Overview

The show was hosted by two life-size female puppets named Honey and Sis: Honey (voiced by Udana Power) is a 19-year-old willowy tall blond who thinks of herself as a gifted performer, while her 17-year-old red-headed sister Sis (voiced by Wendy McKenzie) is actually the talented one. On each episode, Honey and Sis sang, danced and participated in comedy sketches as "The Disco of Life" where they interacted with people at a disco club and "The Truth Tub" where they relaxed in a hot tub and parodied TV shows such as Laverne & Shirley and Three's Company.

The guest stars during the five-week period included Melissa Sue Anderson, Tom Bosley, Gary Burghoff, Charo, Leif Garrett, Melissa Gilbert, Dan Haggerty, Linda Lavin, Peter Lupus, Gavin MacLeod, Tony Randall, Connie Stevens, The Sylvers, Twiggy, Abe Vigoda, Betty White and Anson Williams. The stars introduced themselves rather than by an announcer. Costumed actors impersonating Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters such as Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound and Snagglepuss (all voiced by Daws Butler) made cameo appearances.

Honey and Sis were designed by Hanna-Barbera animator Iwao Takamoto and their costumes created by fashion designer Bob Mackie. They were manipulated by a team of six puppeteers who would wear full-body blue leotards in front of a blue screen, so that the two characters would be chroma-keyed on a different background.

Production credits

Reception

Although only scheduled for a five-week test run, The Hanna-Barbera Happy Hour failed in the ratings as it competed with ABC's Welcome Back, Kotter and What's Happening!! and was replaced in its timeslot with reruns of CHiPs.

Home Media releases

The show has never been officially released yet on DVD by Warner Home Video or Warner Archive.

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 7/21/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.