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The Beginning
In the late 1960s, several parent groups were boycotting many Saturday morning shows due to what they deemed violent content. Most of these shows were Hanna-Barbera productions such as Space Ghost or The Herculoids. Obviously, by today’s standards, those shows are not considered violent. In fact, t
As a result, CBS canceled most of these shows. Fred Silverman, then a programming executive for CBS, began looking for suitable programming to replace them.
One of the hit shows that remained was a cartoon based on the comic book Archie. This adaption had the Archie kids as a musical group with a pet dog named Hot Dog. The Archie Show is at least somewhat credited with starting the musical kids’ cartoons that would inspire several other shows like Josie & The Pussycats, The Brady Kids, and such. Coincidentally, Archie has been remade again recently for CW as Riverdale.
Silverman was a fan of the I Love A Mystery radio show from the 1940s. He went to Hanna-Barbera with the idea of a musical group of crime-solving teenagers. Two writers for Hanna-Barbera, Joe Ruby
After a few rewrites, Ruby and Spears retained the pet dog concept from The Archies but opted to draw inspiration from an earlier CBS live-action show The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. That show ran from the late 50s to the early 60s and featured four teenagers. One of whom was played by a young Bob Denver.
Dobie was remade into Fred Jones, Thalia Menninger into Daphne Blake, Zelda into Velma Dinkley, and Maynard G. Krebs into Shaggy Rogers.
The show was originally titled The Mysteries Five, with the premise of a teenage band who solved mysteries in their spare time. Sometime before getting pitched to CBS, it was renamed Who’s S-S-Scared? to reflect the mystery aspect. This pitch was rejected by CBS out of concern the show might be too scary to air on a Saturday mornings.
Ruby and Spears went back to work and re-tooled the show to be more comedic. They also ditched the musical aspect and simply depicted the cast as detectives. Around this time, Silverman heard the classic Frank Sinatra song “Strangers In The Night”, which had the line “do be do be do”. This is where the name Scooby-Doo came from.
The final pitch to CBS emphasized the dog, now officially named Scooby-Doo, and the title was changed again to Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? to reflect the mystery-solving premise. CBS agreed, and a classic was born!
Several cast members became a who’s who of voice talent. Scooby was voiced by Don Messick, Fred by Frank Welker, and Shaggy by future Radio Hall Of Famer Casey Kasem.