J Troplong "Jay" Ward
J Troplong "Jay" Ward was born September 20, 1920 in Berkeley, California. His first name was just the initial "J" with no period after it. He died of kidney cancer in Hollywood, California on October 12, 1989.
Jay Ward's star is located at 7080 Hollywood Blvd. It was paid for as part of the publicity for the live-action and animation film The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle on June 21, 2000.
He was the creator and producer of TV cartoons. Some of his series included Crusader Rabbit, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-Right, Peabody and Sherman, Hoppity Hooper, George of the Jungle, Tom Slick, Super Chicken, and the animated Fractured Flickers. His company, Jay Ward Productions, also designed the trademark characters for Cap'n Crunch, Quisp and Quake breakfast cereals and made commercials for those products, among others. Ward produced the non-animated Fractured Flickers series that featured comedy redubbing of silent films.
Crusader Rabbit was the first cartoon made for TV.
He had an MBA from Harvard University. Even when his animation company was at the height of its success, he continued to own his own real estate firm as a "fallback" business.
In a running joke tribute to Jay Ward, many of his cartoon characters had the middle initial "J", presumably standing for "J" (his first name, although this was never stated explicitly). One person wrote to Jay Ward in 1961 and asked him what the J stood for in Rocket J Squirrel and Bullwinkle J Moose. Ward wrote back that the J stood for George. Cartoonist Matt Groening later gave the middle initial "J" to many of his characters as a tribute to Jay Ward: Bartholomew J. Simpson (Bart), Homer J. Simpson, and Abraham J. Simpson (Grandpa). I have the middle initial "J" too.
Rocket J "Rocky" Squirrel and Bullwinkle J Moose were from Frostbite Falls, Minnesota. They were endlessly pursued by "no-goodnik" spies Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale, always under orders to "keel moose and squirrel."
Ward fought many heated battles over content with the network and sponsor, but had little fear of censorship or lawsuits. In fact, he begged organizations to sue him, quipping, "We need the publicity."
An eccentric and proud of it, Ward was known for pulling an unusual publicity stunt that happened to coincide with a major national crisis. Jay Ward bought an island in Minnesota near his home and dubbed it "Moosylvania," based upon the home of his most famous TV character Bullwinkle. He and publicist Howard Brandy crossed the country in a van, gathering signatures on a petition for statehood for Moosylvania. They then visited Washington, D.C. and attempted to gain an audience with President John F. Kennedy. Unfortunately, they arrived at the White House just at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and were escorted off the grounds at gunpoint.
In 1962 he created a 33⅓ RPM record (that was the size of a 45 RPM record) called Moosylvania Jazz Festival to compliment his "Moosylvania for Statehood" campaign.
Frostbite Falls is based on a real place, International Falls, Minnesota.
Jay Ward and Alex Anderson knew a man with the last name of Bullwinkel (not a typo). He owned a Ford dealership down the road from where they animated Crusader Rabbit. The man had a big nose and a funny personality. After Ward and Anderson talked for a while, they thought 'Bullwinkle' would be the perfect name for their dimwitted moose.
Boris Badenov's name was really a pun from Mussorgsky's opera titled Boris Godenov. The Russian last name sounds like "bad enough," yet another pun.
Before the Lucky the Leprechaun came along, Boris and Natasha were the spokesmen for Lucky Charms breakfast cereal (from 1959 to 1964).
Peabody (Mr. Peabody character) was the name of Bill Scott's dog.
Ponsonby Britt, O.B.E., the accredited executive producer of Rocky and Bullwinkle, doesn't exist. When the series first became famous, many reporters contacted the studio and asked for the staff's biographies. Rather that tell them about their normal suburban lives, they often sent out the bio for Ponsonby Britt O.B.E. It was embellished with a life filled with adventure and excitement (think Forest Gump). O.B.E. was an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. The scam worked perfectly as they saw the biography of a fake person grace the media. It was an inside joke that the cast remembers fondly.
In the Missouri Mish Mash story line, everyone is searching for The Kirward Derby. This is a hat that supposedly make the wearer extremely smart, but is later reveled to make you stunningly stupid. The name Kirward Derby is really a pun of Durward Kirby, the co-host of Candid Camera from 1961-1966. Mr. Kirby tried to sued Jay Ward Inc. for the parody of his name. In reply Ward said, " Please sue us, we love the publicity."
Boris and Natasha were based on the Addams Family comic strip characters Gomez and Morticia.
Boris and Natasha are Pottsylvanian, not Russian.
Bramwell Smith Jr., the guy that played thet rumpet in the Dudley Do-Right theme song, played in the the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Band.
The Bullwinkle Studios website has biographies of Ward's characters like this one for Mr. Peabody:
The brilliant and slightly egotistical beagle known as Mr. Peabody has long been recognized as the world's most intelligent dog-despite his penchant for making the worst puns in the history of wordplay. During his youth, Mr. Peabody was sent to the Canine Academy for the ARFS (Affection, Retrieval, Frolicking, and Sitting), where he was quickly recognized as a puppy prodigy when he recited Fredrich Nietzche's "Beyond Good and Evil" by memory in Latin, Russian, and his native tongue, Dog.
Tired of living alone in his lavish penthouse apartment, Mr. Peabody decided to adopt his own boy. A young orphan named Sherman became his faithful companion following a lengthy custody battle-which Mr. Peabody won because of his unfathomable legal knowledge. In order to exercise Sherman and keep him off his furniture, Mr. Peabody built the WABAC machine, which holds the distinction of being the world's first working time travel device invented by a dog.
When not correcting the course of history on his trips through time in the WABAC, Mr. Peabody practices both yoga and judo, writes sonnets in Sanskrit, and composes twelve-tone duets for swinette and glockenspiel.
Jay Ward is buried in Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery. (photos)
Links
• Bullwinkle Studios (official site)
• Jay Ward page at IMDB
• Hokey Smoke (fan site)
• Frostbite Falls Page (fan site)
• Jay Ward Studios Ephemera (catalog and advertisement)
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