As Bill Hanna said in his book, A Cast of Friends, "….two talented writers named Ken Spears and Joe Ruby in the late sixties came up with a set of characters and accompanying story premise for a cartoon show that was to become one of one of our most popular and successful series for Saturday morning television. Scooby Doo premiered in September 1969…"

That pretty much tells the tale in a nutshell. But there was a whole bunch of interesting stuff that happened that was part of the Scooby Doo story. And this is what it was….

It was fall 1968. We were in Joe Barbera's office and had just wrapped up going over the thinking on developing Penelope Pitstop into a new CBS show, "The Perils of Penelope." Maybe you remember it: Penelope, teamed up with the Ant Hill Mob (both from the "Wacky Races") pitted against the evilest of evil foes, the nefarious Hooded Claw, who'd stop at nothing to do Penelope in…for good!

Out the door we headed to get started putting it all down on paper. Just then, in comes H-B agent Sy Fischer who asks us, "Did Joe tell you about the mystery show Freddy wants?" We tell him "no," so Sy shoves us back into JB's office and asks Barbera to tell about the mystery show "Freddy" (that's Fred Silverman, head of CBS daytime) wants. Barbera, busy on an important call, says to Sy, "You tell 'em."

So Sy quickly explains what Freddy is looking for, namely a cross between "I Love a Mystery" and "Armchair Detectives," two old but very popular radio shows from the late forties, but which would star contemporary teens, maybe like the Dobie Gillis gang, or the Archie's.

So, info in hand out we go again to get started right away on the "mystery show." But before getting but a few steps away, we have a thought, and sticking our heads back inside we ask Barbera, "We know Freddy loves dogs, so do ya' think it's OK to put a dog in the show?" "Do whatever you want" replies Barbera.

Within a day or two we put together a concept for the show. Its initial version was more like the "Archie's"… fifteen-minute cliff-hanger episodes with love interests, jealousies, parents, school, etc. And our kids were musicians who played at beach parties and the like. And as for the dog, we decided it was either going to be a big comically cowardly dog or a small feisty dog. The choice was easy. A big comically cowardly dog was going to be a lot more fun to write. But what was he going to really be like? Well, we remembered the old Bob Hope movies in which Bob often played a coward, (like "Ghost Breakers"). But when there was danger, as scared as he was, he always came through. And that's how we made our dog. Bob Hope was the inspiration. Our first choice for the dog was a big Great Dane, 'cause there's nothing bigger, nor goofier. But we were worried about being too close to "Marmaduke." So we instead made him a big shaggy dog, wearing sunglasses, and called him "Too Much"…a popular kid slang term at the time…who played the bongos in our kid's band.

But after working on the initial concept for several days it was clear to us the "Archie" angle wouldn't work - too much going on to allow a fun mystery also. So we toss out everything but our four main kids and "Too Much" the dog. We call them the "Mystery's Five," a rock group that travels from gig to gig in their souped up van called the "Mystery Machine," and who are always stumbling into another mystery!

We started out naming our four kids Geoff, Kelly, Linda and "W.W." But after a lot of refinement, both personality and relationship-wise, we eventually ended up naming them Freddy, Daphne, Velma and Shaggy. Also, while writing up the relationships we gravitated toward the comedy relationship of Shaggy and Too Much. We made them like "two peas in a pod" - both scaredy cats but comically brave, both chowhounds, and most of all, very best buddies.

So we submit our concept to Joe Barbera, who really likes what we came up with, but wasn't so keen on the sheepdog. We explained that we really wanted a Great Dane, but were concerned about "Marmaduke." Barbera assured us that wouldn't be a problem and we changed "Too Much" back to a Great Dane.

So the concept was finalized, but as we were fleshing out several story premises, etc., we realized the stories had to be a half hour long to get everything in. Finished, it was submitted to Fred Silverman, who had flown into town and was staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Silverman came over to H-B the next day, and to our great relief, absolutely loved the whole package. But he hated the title "Mystery's Five." For the next three hours we all sat in Barbera's office trying to come up with a name. Silverman shot down every suggestion, and rightfully so - they were all pretty lame. Further and further we slumped. We thought the show was a goner without a great title. Finally, Silverman suggested "Wh..wh..wh..who's. ..sca..sca..scared!" We all thought it was perfect!

So it was on to the next step of the series development. The HB design department was given the development so they could start designing all the characters for the show. And we started to write a "mini-pilot" sequence to highlight the interplay of characters, comedy, mystery, etc. (It was the "flour sequence" with Shaggy and Scooby that became part of the episode "Mine Your Own Business")

Soon, all the characters had been designed. It was thrilling to see that the designs captured visually everything we imagined in the development, especially the Great Dane "Too Much." The series was coming together just great! Not long after, the "mini-pilot" (now in storyboard form) and the final designs were shipped back to Silverman for his approval.

The following week Silverman was back in town again, and arriving at H-B he happily exclaimed that that not only was he delighted with everything sent to him so far, but it was plain to see that our dog was turning out to be the star of the show! So he wanted us to make our Great Dane the focus of every story. And not only that, but Silverman also had come up with a great new name for the dog - "Scooby Doo" and wanted the show title be changed to "Scooby Doo Where are You" (Silverman came up with the Scooby Doo name from listening to the Frank Sinatra song "Strangers in the Night" while flying out for the meeting.)

After that, we began writing the pilot episode, while Barbera and the design department worked on the customary artwork pieces that were to be presented to the "big wigs" at CBS, which was the prerequisite to a series pickup. Artwork finished, Barbera flies back to New York and makes the presentation. Disaster. The heads of CBS think the artwork is too frightening for our 6 to 12 year-old audience and thus the show must be also! Barbera promises it won't be and vows to revise the art to more accurately reflect the comedy-mystery aspect of the show.

So the artwork was redone featuring Scooby throughout, and re-presented to the CBS top brass. Then the nervous waiting began. Finally, after work one evening in the HB conference room, Sy Fischer got on the phone with Silverman as Barbera and us looked on. It was an incredibly exciting moment when Silverman told Sy that they were buying "Scooby Doo!"

Now the hard work really got started - writing the scripts. For the next twenty weeks or so we worked on Scooby, writing and story editing the first five episodes and fourteen of the first year's total of eighteen episodes. To feature Scooby, we immediately dropped the music group angle, then had to come up with story points that allowed us to split the gang up. At first we sent Freddy and Daphne going off in one direction, and then followed Shaggy, Scooby and Velma going off in the other direction. After a while, we ditched Velma and stuck mostly with our comical duo, Shaggy and Scooby.

We really knew we were on the right track right from the get go when Silverman sent us each a telegram that read, "Dear Joe and Ken: I read the first two Scooby Doo scripts and think this will be the best and most successful show we've ever done. Congratulations on a fantastic job. Regards, Fred"

And then came the premier of "Scooby Doo," in September of 1969, going head to head against "The Hardy Boys." In spite of Silverman's optimism, we were nervous as heck that we were going to get creamed in the ratings. After two weeks "Scooby" charged into the ratings lead and never looked back…scoring an unbelievable 65 share at it's highest! It was just the beginning of an incredible run.

So here we are, more than 33 years later and "Scooby" is more popular than ever! As Sy Fischer would always say, "You gotta come up with a home run." And we're happy to say we did.

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POSTSCRIPT

From 1969 thru 1970, twenty-five episodes of Scooby Doo were produced, which we wrote and story edited all but four episodes. After we departed HB in 1971 to become producers at rival studio, DePatie-Freleng, HB produced the "Scooby Movies" which lasted only one year and were replaced by the original twenty-five Scooby's, which ran continually for the next four years on CBS.

In 1975, Fred Silverman became head of ABC and immediately bought an order of new Scooby Doo's for the 1975 through 1977 seasons. He also brought us aboard to create new shows for ABC and, most importantly, to supervise all the writing and production on the new Scooby's.

And it was during one of the Scooby recording sessions at HB that Joe Barbera presented to each of us a Scooby Doo watch, saying, "This is the least I can do for you guys. After all, you did create Scooby." We still treasure those watches to this day.

And finally, in 1983 when our own Ruby-Spears Productions became a "sister company" to HB (both of us owned by parent Taft Broadcasting) we produced the Scooby series for HB, that ran on ABC.

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