The Dick Tracy Show

Shortly after the deal for the The Mr. Magoo Show, Saperstein approached Chester Gould and his syndicate, The Chicago Daily Tribune, with the idea of producing Dick Tracy in animation. Gould made a visit to the studio and an agreement for 130 Dick Tracy shorts was soon in place. Abe Levitow served as Supervising Director for the series. Dick Tracy, however, was only a nominal reason for the existence of the cartoons. He begins every episode behind his desk briefing his team on the mission ahead, leaving his able bodied lieutenants to actually do the “crime stopping”. In rare instances, he would show up at the end to assist in the arrest. His ethnically diverse team of gumshoes included Heap O’Calory, an overweight Irish cop with a voice reminiscent of Andy Devine; Joe Jitsu, a caricatured Japanese detective who always got his man through tenacity; Go Go Gomez, a broadly caricatured Mexican detective voiced by Mel Blanc, repurposing his classic radio Mexican accent and Hemlock Holmes, a bulldog in a Keystone Kop hat who vaguely sounded like Cary Grant. The antagonists were an assortment of Gould’s trademark villains-Flattop, Pruneface, Mumbles and Itchy as well as several others. Hank Saperstein sold both the Magoos and Dick Tracys to the networks and into the syndication market, where they could be run as individual cartoons or as a half hour package. The half hour blocks were usually run in the early evenings and turned out to be hugely popular.