HISTORY PAGE

V O I C E S
Daphne : Heather North
Freddy : Frank Welker
Scooby-Doo : Don Messick
Shaggy : DJ Casey Kasem
Velma : Nicole Jaffe

The original Scooby Doo has starred in 310 animated episodes of shows ranging from Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! to Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics to The Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show.
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HANNA BARBERA HISTORY HERE

Scooby Doo first aired on CBS On Saturday morning, September 13, 1969, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! premiered. produced by Fred Silverman who was the head of Daytime Programming for CBS at that time. Silverman was looking for a show that would lead the network away from the superhero cycle and take them into an area of comedy and adventure. The combination of Carleton E. Morse's 1940's popular radio program I Love a Mystery, in which three detectives roamed the world solving crimes and mysteries, and the 1959-1963 television sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, about a scatterbrained teenager and his friends, was the look Silverman was after. Silverman's quest was brought before Hanna-Barbera who assigned writers Ken Spears and Joe Ruby to create the characters, plots, and many of the story lines. The show actually started out revolving around four teenage detectives who traveled the country in a van, called the Mystery Machine, solving mysteries in dangerous situations. A Great Dane accompanied the foursome but was not a promient character. The show was first known as Mysteries Five and later changed to Who's Scared? The show was then presented to the top CBS management and president Frank Stanton as a new Saturday morning cartoon for the fall of 1969. There was one problem: the artwork was very frightening which led Stanton to reject the show. Silverman immediately flew back to Los Angeles that night. While listening to the earphones on the flight back, Silverman was relaxing to Frank Sinatra singing Strangers in the Night. The phrase 'Scooby-dooby-doo' struck Silverman so much that he went back and said 'We'll call the show Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? and we'll make the dog the star of the show.' And with those words Scooby-Doo was created with the other characters supporting him. Iwao Takamoto, the art creator of the Scooby Doo The new show was now more comical then mysterious. Don Messick became Scooby with his trademark laugh and scratchy voice, Top-Forty DJ Casey Kasem became Shaggy who was always in a constant state of panic and hunger which also served as Scooby's partner, Frank Welker became blond Freddy, Nicole Jaffe became brainy and bespectacled Velma, and the trouble-prone, sexy, Daphne was the voice of Heather North. Don Messick, voice of Scooby-Doo. There were other voices that supported the main crew. One worth mentioning is
David Coulier who is the star of America's Funniest People and Full House. The teenage Coulier made a voice tape that told a story and mailed it to Hanna-Barbera on a Friday. The next Monday Hanna-Barbera called Coulier and said "We have work for you on Scooby-Doo." Coulier was only 18 years old! Dave Coulier The original Scooby Doo series enjoyed wide popularity from the time of its premiere in September of 1969. The original Scooby Theme Song has an interesting story behind it....this is how the Scooby Doo Theme originated: According to Larry Marks, Ben Raleigh was one of the writers of the original theme. Ben had written some early rock and roll songs from Tin Pan Alley. Larry was a music exec and studio singer. When they first played the song for him - Larry suggested they add the line Scooby Dooby Doo - Where are you? -because they needed some words for that line! Although the song was written ahead of time- it was recorded on the Wednesday --just a few days before the first ever episode aired on the Saturday! Larry Marks sang both the original theme and all of the background parts! --Pam Marks, Larry's wife By 1972 CBS decided that a change in the format should arrive which gave birth to the Scooby Doo movies incorporating the voices of such guest stars as Phyllis Diller, Tim Conway, Jonathan Winters, Don Knotts, the Addams family, and Laurel and Hardy. In 1972, this show became The New
Scooby-Doo Movies, which were hour-long episodes in which the gang teamed up with famous animated stars and celebrites to solve mysteries. This format aired until 1973. After seven years with CBS, Scooby moved to ABC to start the Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour which saw the rise of the two canine characters Scooby-Dum and Scooby-Dear. The following year saw the first two-hour Saturday morning cartoon show in the network history, the highly successful Scooby's All-Star Laff-a-lympics. In 1978 more episodes of Scooby-Doo were added to a smaller version of Laff-a-lympics which was renamed to Scooby's All-Stars. 1979 was the year of Scooby's first television special, Scooby goes to Hollywood which combined slapstick and parody with a sprinkling of music. 1979 was also the year Scrappy-Doo was introduced (it was a bad year) the less said about scrappy the better.. The eighties showed various combinations of Scooby and his friends that continued to entertain children and adults of all ages. Why is Scooby-Doo so popular?
Don Messick
(the voice of Scooby) sums it up real well....."I've loved Scooby from the inception, and so has everyone else. I think it's because he embraces a lot of human foibles. He's not the perfect dog. In fact you might say he's a coward. Yet with everything he does, he seems to land on his four feet. He comes out of every situation unscathed. I think the audience - kids and more mature people as well - can identify with Scooby's character and a lot of his imperfections."

In 1979, the Scooby-Doo series changed forever. Even though Scooby had occasionally met up with his relatives, such as cousins Scooby-Dee and Scooby-Dum, the gang in the Mystery Machine could not have known what to expect from the arrival of Scrappy-Doo. Feisty, fearless, and prone to yell "Puppy power!", Scooby's young nephew got the gang in loads of trouble. Instead of running from ghosts like Uncle Scooby, Scrappy would meet them head-on and, more often that not, need to be rescued. In 1980, Scrappy dominated so many episodes that Fred, Daphne, and Velma could retired temporarily from active duty at Mystery, Inc. With their exit from the series, The Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show, as it was now called, featured the two dogs and dog's best friend Shaggy.

The trio of Scooby, Shaggy, and Scrappy continued in such series as Scooby, Scrappy and Yabba-Doo, a wild-west show featuring another of Scooby's country cousins, and The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, in which Daphne came out of retirement to join the trio for a new set of mysteries.

The original Mystery, Inc. team finally reunited (sans Scrappy) in 1988, when A Pup Named Scooby-Doo premiered. That show, set in 1963, featured a young Fred, Velma, Daphne, Shaggy, and Scooby solving grade-school mysteries in their hometown of Coolsville.

Scooby-Doo was so popular to Hanna-Barbara that it spawned many different cartoon series throughout the 1970's and the early 1980's. These shows were as follows: The Scooby Doo Show, a revamped format of this show, Scooby and Scrappy-Doo, which introduced the character Scrappy-Doo, The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo, and the last incarnation, A Pup Named Scooby Doo, which featured the cast as kids. After more than a decade-long absence of original weekly shows, a new series, What's New Scooby-Doo?, began airing in September 2002.

Most recently Scooby and the gang have made their debute on the the silver screen with a movie starring Sarah Michelle Gellar as daphne, Freddie Prince Jr. as Freddie

MORE HISTORY HERE

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* Now a sequel is released in Theaters
May 11, 2004.
Scooby Doo II : Monsters Unleashed.

* A Major Motion picture was completed starring Freddie Prince Jr as Fred Jones
and Sarah Michelle Gellar.
Released in Summer 2001.

Special Thanx to

Fred Silverman and his
son Iwao Takamoto
(Scooby Doo Artists)

Jack Angel - Additional Voices
Stefanianna Christopherson - Daphne Blake (1969-1970)
Nicole Jaffe - Velma Dinkley
Casey Kasem - Shaggy
Don Messick - Scooby-Doo
Heather North - Daphne Blake (1970)
Frank Welker - Freddy
Larry & Pam Marks
(Scooby theme musicians)

Warner Brothers
&
Cartoon Network

S C O O B Y    D O O

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