I’ve got a buddy in Philadelphia with whom I’ve been chums since the seventh grade, and he can be counted on to send me freakish snapshots of back-alley Philly, links to badly-dubbed kung fu movies, wisecracks about his latest serial killer obsessions, and clips of politically incorrect comedians. Sometimes I have to be careful not to open his mail too close to breakfast.
Last night, just before bed, he sent this, and it propelled me back across the decades.
Even not having seen the cartoon since childhood, it’s etched into my brain. Who could possibly forget Super Chicken and his sidekick, Fred the Lion? (“You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred.”)
Henry Cabot Henhouse III is the Boston equivalent of the kind of fop long familiar from Zorro and “The Scarlet Pimpernel;” but in times of crisis, he downs his Super Sauce from a martini glass to become Super Chicken. His Super Suit resembles a D’Artagnan cast-off, supplemented with a domino mask. Fred, his manservant, wears his sweater inside-out. Note the backwards “F.”
Super Chicken was part of the Fred Ward stable of freewheeling cartoons produced by Jay Ward of Rocky and Bullwinkle fame. Ward was the inexhaustible genius who also gave us Dudley Do-Right, Mr. Peabody and Sherman, Crusader Rabbit, Hoppity Hooper, Tom Slick, and George of the Jungle
I learned something this morning, through a quick Google search, as there was a rival company, Total TeleVision, which produced Underdog, Tennessee Tuxedo, Klondike Kat, Commander McBragg, Tooter Turtle, and Go Go Gophers. For my entire life, I thought these were Ward productions. The confusion is understandable, since they were all animated in Mexico by Gamma Productions and shared a similar vibe.
Somehow, the primitive animation worked with the concepts in ways they did not in your average, corner-cutting Hanna Barbera cartoons. The humor was offbeat, but knowing and referential, and it didn’t talk down. These were cartoons you could watch with your parents, and they would laugh too.
The theme song was written by Sheldon Allman (lyrics) and Stan Worth (music). In one afternoon, they knocked out the insinuating introductions for “Super Chicken,” “Tom Slick,” and “George of the Jungle.”
“Stan came over to my house,” Allman recalled. “We started at 1 o’clock, and by 4 o’clock we had the three songs.”
Allman, quite a multi-talented fellow, died in 2002. I found this obituary in the Los Angeles Times.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-feb-08-me-allman8-story.html
Bonus points for the “Super Chicken” opener featuring headshots of John Barrymore, Douglas Fairbanks, Valentino, and Boris Karloff! Watch it again. You know you want to.
If Gilbert & Sullivan had lived in the 20th century, they might very well have contemplated the very model of a modern clucking super chicken!
Super Chicken transformation compilation:
