27 September: Top Cat

The début of TV's cartoon Top Cat was 50 years ago today in 1961. Here are 10 things you might not know about Top Cat:

1. There was only ever one series, although that series did have 30 episodes.
2. The premise of the show is a gang of New York alley Cats, led by Top Cat (TC) who are always trying to earn a quick buck, usually through illegal scams. Their protagonist is the local cop, Officer Charlie Dibble, who tries to get them evicted from the alley and prevent them from using the police phone.
3. The gang consists of Top Cat, a Yellow cat who wears a mauve pork pie hat and a matching waistcoat and is the charismatic gang leader; Benny, a Blue cat who wears a White  sports jacket and is TC's somewhat naive right hand man; Choo-Choo, a Pink cat with a white turtleneck who lives at the fire house; Brain, an Orange cat in a Purple T-shirt with a Black line. The name Brain is ironic, since he's actually the dimmest member of the gang. He stutters and cannot keep a secret; Fancy-Fancy, a Brown cat with a white scarf, laid-back, sweet-talking, handsome, and kind-hearted, and is often seen chatting up female cats before leaving them when the dustbin lid call signals the gang to convene. His look and voice is based on Cary Grant; and Spook has Olive green fur and a torn black tie, a sweet-talking cat who talks like a beatnik, interjecting the word "like" frequently.
4. In the very first episode, Benny wins a trip to Hawaii and the rest of the gang join him by stowing away. Officer Dibble is on board the ship as well, investigating a suitcase of counterfeit money, leading to the gang being thrown in the brig as suspected counterfeiters. Top Cat helps Officer Dibble catch the real counterfeiter and prove the gang's innocence.
5. The show was conceived as a parody of The Phil Silvers Show. The voice actor playing TC, Arnold Stang, imitated the voice of Sgt Bilko. Benny is voiced by Maurice Gosfield who played Private Duane Doberman on The Phil Silvers Show.
6. Top Cat was the second cartoon series to premiere on American prime time television, the first being The Flintstones. There was even some cross over between the two. In one episode of Top Cat, Benny spends the night in a museum. When he returns he has somehow managed to get an antique scarab attached to him. The gang try to return it and get mistaken for jewel thieves. There are two statues of prehistoric men in the museum – Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble. In turn, Officer Dibble appears as a policeman from the future in a time travelling episode of The Flintstones.
7. In the UK, the title was changed to Boss Cat, because there was a brand of cat food called Top Cat. However, the theme song and dialogue remained unchanged and contained countless mentions of "Top Cat", making the title change pointless.
8. Officer Dibble's wife was frequently mentioned, but never shown.
9. The DVD version credits Kin Platt with writing all the episodes. In fact, he only wrote a couple of them. The same closing credits were mistakenly used for every episode on the DVD and it happened to be from one of the shows he wrote. Other scriptwriters were Barry Blitzer and Harvey Bullock.
10. The Original TV Soundtrack was written and recorded by Hoyt Curtin.

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