There are certain cartoon openings where you only need the first few seconds before the entire show comes rushing back, and Top Cat is definitely one of those for me. The limousine, the fancy restaurant, T.C. helping himself to somebody else’s lunch and then heading back to the alley told us almost everything we needed to know about him before the episode even started
What I didn’t realize back then was how much Top Cat owed to another television comedy. T.C. was essentially Hanna-Barbera’s cartoon answer to Phil Silvers’ fast-talking Sergeant Bilko, always working another angle and trying to stay one step ahead of authority. They even brought over Maurice Gosfield, who had played Private Doberman with Silvers, to voice Benny the Ball, whose appearance was partly modeled after Gosfield. Arnold Stang gave T.C. that unmistakable voice, while Allen Jenkins became Officer Dibble
The theme is another big part of why this opening stuck with us. Hoyt Curtin, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera are credited on “The Most Effectual Top Cat,” which managed to introduce T.C.’s personality and his position as leader of the gang in less than a minute. Curtin, of course, was also behind music for an amazing number of Hanna-Barbera favorites
And here’s something I think many of us forget: Top Cat wasn’t originally a Saturday-morning cartoon. It premiered in prime time on ABC in 1961 and lasted only 30 episodes. Those episodes found a much longer life in reruns, and the show became especially beloved outside the United States. In Britain it was even called Boss Cat because a cat food already had the Top Cat name, while in Mexico Don Gato became popular enough to eventually inspire feature films
Did you watch Top Cat during its original prime-time run, or do you remember T.C. and the gang mainly from Saturday-morning reruns?
