The Head Mooseketeer
My interview with Rocky & Bullwinkle creator Jay Ward
I got what was almost certainly the last interview Jay Ward did. And he didn’t even know he granted it.
It happened in the summer of 1986 while TV critics from newspapers and magazines from all over everywhere were gathered in Los Angeles to screen the forthcoming fall shows and interview stars, producers and network execs.
With a few critic pals in tow, including David Bianculli, who still covers TV for public radio’s Fresh Air, I took a morning off to visit the Dudley Do-Right Emporium, a little shop on Sunset Boulevard dedicated to preserving and merchandising the memory of the eccentric crew of cartoon characters that Ward brought to TV between 1948 and 1967.
In addition to Dudley, an incorruptible, oblivious Canadian Mountie, those characters of course include Bullwinkle Moose and his quick-thinking little buddy Rocket J. “Rocky’’ Squirrel; Mr. Peabody, the Einstein of canines; and George of the Jungle.
Ward’s characters and absurdist comic vision — as obvious as a Red Skelton pratfall one moment, as sly as a Woody Allen aside the next — were as essential to the world-view formation of square-peg kids in the ’50s and ’60s as Mad Magazine.
