Quincy, Hush and Shamus.

Q.T. HUSH

Medium: TV animation
Produced by: Animation Associates
First Appeared: 1960
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A surprising number of early humor/adventure animated TV series were built around the template of a "Mutt-&-Jeff" pair of heroes, that is, a short guy teamed with a tall guy. Crusader Rabbit with his pal, Rags the Tiger, was the first, followed by Ruff & Reddy, Rocky & Bullwinkle, etc. Here's one where the tall one and the short one were sort of the same guy. Q.T. Hush was a little …

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… guy who, like most such people at certain times of day, cast a tall shadow — and the shadow led an independent existence as Quincy, Q.T.'s partner in adventure.

Q.T.'s adventures came to him through his work as a private eye for The Finkerton Detective Agency (no relation to Inch High's outfit). Also part of the team was a private nose, Shamus the bloodhound, who could walk on his hind legs and talk like a man as well as sniff out anything, anywhere. Q.T., Shamus and Quincy shared their stories in the form of 3½-minute serial chapters, broadcast one per day, starting September 24, 1960. The only other regular character was Muldoon, the police chief, who was sometimes an ally and sometimes a rival of the heroes, typical of a cop in the detective genre.

Presumably, the Q in Q.T.'s given name stood for "Quincy" (no relation), and that's why the shadow used that as his monicker. But maybe not — he was certainly independent enough to have used a different one. So independent, in fact, he even had his own office at Finkerton's. He was much more independent than the later Spy Shadow (no relation), hero of Super President's back segment, who also used the schtick of a shadow functioning as a separate adventurer from the guy who cast him, but didn't get as many laughs out of it. Quincy also had The Thin Man's ability to slip under doors.

The series, like those of Col. Bleep and Bucky & Pepito, was designed to be plugged into one of the many locally-produced kids' TV shows, where a host would introduce cartoon shorts, that proliferated during the early days of television. Old theatrical cartoons sold to TV, such as Popeye and Daffy Duck, were the mainstay of such shows, but original properties like Clutch Cargo and this one quickly joined them. Each serialized Q.T. Hush story lasted ten episodes, that is, two weeks of Monday through Friday broadcasts, but they were sometimes packaged as half-hour shows.

Production was done by Animation Associates, which isn't credited with any other show. Dallas McKennon, voice of Homer Pigeon and Sinbad Jr., spoke for Q.T. Other voices aren't credited; but TV animation budgets were small back then, and it's likely McKennon did them as well.

Q.T. Hush was produced in color, which was not a universal situation back then. Thus, it achieved popularity that monochrome cartoons couldn't. A total of 10 stories, totalling 100 episodes, were made. But while they were clever enouh to capture the imaginations of young viewers, their crude production values resulted in their looking very dated within just a few years. By the late 1960s, they were seldom seen. They haven't been re-run in a long time.

— DDM

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Text ©2007-09 Donald D. Markstein. Art © Animation Associates.