Joe Ruby, a Creator of ‘Scooby-Doo,’ Is Dead at 87

The directive, which came from Fred Silverman, then the head of daytime programming at CBS, also asked that a pop song be embedded in each episode, as was done on “The Archie Show.” The idea was for the new series to be soothing and nonviolent, an answer to the moral panic about violence in the media in the wake of Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination, said Kevin Sandler, an associate professor of film and media studies at Arizona State University.

The pop song part didn’t work out. But Mr. Ruby and Mr. Spears hit all the other marks by writing an adorable half-hour comedy-mystery with a lovable and hapless Great Dane — a character modeled, they often said, on the character Bob Hope played alongside Bing Crosby in the “Road” movies. After 15 or so drafts, they realized that the dog, Scooby-Doo, was the star. (The artist was Iwao Takamoto, another Hanna-Barbera veteran, who died in 2007.)

A half-century later, episodes of “Scooby-Doo” are still being broadcast, and it is considered the most spun-off series in the history of television, having spawned other series as well as feature films, video games, comic books and other merchandise, said Mr. Sandler, who is working on a book about the show. In 2004, the show beat “The Simpsons” to set a Guinness record for “most prolific cartoon,” at 350 episodes.

It has inspired fans in every decade, who cleaved to characters like the beatnik slacker Shaggy (based on Maynard G. Krebs from “Dobie Gillis”) and the bespectacled brainiac, Velma, who would become a lesbian heroine.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/31/arts/television/joe-ruby-dead.html