Mr. Peabody and Sherman: The Complete Collection

Mr. Peabody and Sherman: The Complete Collection
1959 – 1.33:1
Universal – DVD
Starring Bill Scott, Walter Tetley, Paul Frees, June Foray 
Written by Ted Key
Directed by Jay Ward, Bill Scott

Hector J. Peabody is an American-born multi-hyphenate who graduated from Harvard at the age of three and conquered Wall Street when he was five. His later accomplishments were no less astonishing: visionary scientist, Nobel laureate, virtuoso musician, and five-time Olympic Champion in fetch, rolling over, and playing dead. Six decades in the spotlight have not dimmed his appeal—commoners and kings remain fascinated by this brilliant, bespectacled beagle. Talk about animal magnetism.

Peabody is not just a world traveler but a time traveler, the inventor of the WABAC Machine, a portal that propels Peabody and his adopted son Sherman back to key moments in history. Those expeditions are science fact, not science fiction, and they became the subject of over 90 documentaries produced by Jay Ward and Bill Scott, two television producers whose impertinent humor might have seemed at odds with Peabody’s stoic worldview.

Those brief but educational films—better known as Peabody’s Improbable History—first appeared in an unlikely venue; a twice-weekly, late afternoon cartoon show called Rocky and His Friends. Premiering on Thursday, November 19, 1959, the show starred a diminutive but fearless flying squirrel named Rocket J. Squirrel, and his steadfast pal, Bullwinkle J. Moose—slow out of the gate but with a heart of gold. Each week brought a new cliffhanging adventure with moose and squirrel and their most frequent adversaries, Boris Badenov, a pint-sized foreign agent with a talent for shooting himself in the foot, and Natasha Fatale, a tall drink of Vodka with a mean (really mean) sense of humor.

The rest of the program was a carousel of comedic shorts; Fractured Fairy Tales, was a satirical take on Mother Goose, Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties starred a lantern-jawed crime-buster, and in Aesop and Son, the legendary storyteller turned his fables into life lessons for his inquisitive offspring. Each segment was connected by brief interludes with the multi-talented moose; Bullwinkle’s Corner and Mr. Know-it-All. Each of these characters have their own devoted fans but to the immodest Mr. Peabody, he was clearly Best in Show.

Though an enthusiastic provocateur, Jay Ward was still a producer at heart. To insure his new project would be profitable he arranged for the animation to be done on the cheap at Gamma Productions in Mexico City. Much was lost in translation… dialog was out of sync and arms and legs sometimes disconnected from their owners. But the cartoon’s primitive nature only enhanced the show’s punk rock aesthetic. It also reflected the rebellious nature of its creator: in a world where Walt Disney ruled, Ward’s motto could have been “No Kings.” Ward waged his most fervent protest with an episode of Fractured Fairy Tales in which Sleeping Beauty’s story plays out in a theme park—her prince is the spitting image of Disney.

Though the animation was hobbled, the wit galloped; the jokes ran circles around most of their live-action competition and adults were as enthralled as their children. A sophisticated burlesque of everything under the sun, it was as if Jonathan Swift had written Hellzapoppin.’ It was in fact written by, among others, Chris Hayward (He & She, Barney Miller) and Allan Burns (Get Smart, The Mary Tyler Moore Show). Their dialog was brought to life by some of the most uniquely memorable voice artists in Hollywood; June Foray (Rocky, Natasha), Bill Conrad (the show’s narrator), Hans Conreid (Dudley’s bête noire, Snidely Whiplash), Charlie Ruggles (Aesop), and the astounding Paul Frees (Boris and just about all the other voices). Bill Scott added an uncanny imitation of the real Peabody and Walter Tetley performed Sherman to a T.

While Ward and Scott called the shots for the majority of show, cartoonist Ted Key conceived Peabody’s Improbable History. Key was, and is, best known as the creator of Hazel but his work on those improbable histories revealed a different kind of artist, someone closer to Krazy Kat than Family Circus. Each episode begins with our explorers discussing the men and women who transformed the world—but the perspicacious pooch doesn’t just teach history, he makes it. Each episode finds Peabody shaping future events by fiddling with the past, helping Da Vinci with Mona Lisa’s smile, insuring that Shakespeare title his play Romeo and Juliet, not Sam and Juliet, and saving Lucretia Borgia’s marriage (her husband is weary of the daily poisonings). As if to underline the baggy pants nature of his work, Key ends each episode with an outrageous pun—the more painful the better.

The series was the definition of formulaic, but the fun never lagged and if Mr. Peabody ever had an issue with the liberties taken with his actual adventures, we may never know; in January of 2025, Mr. Peabody and Sherman vanished. His housekeeper found a note in the laboratory; he had decided to reverse course and send the WABAC machine into the future, perhaps never to return: “I’ve already seen Attila The Hun, Ivan the Terrible, and Caligula in action, and have no wish to repeat the experience.” 

Universal has served up all 91 episodes of Peabody’s adventures in one package called Mr. Peabody and Sherman: The Complete Collection. It’s a nostalgic blast to revisit these shows, the humor remains fresh as the day they were broadcast. It’s also nostalgic to experience the show on the DVD. And not in a good way. Though the look of the show is crude, there’s no reason to think that the lower resolution of DVDs would suffice. Time for Jay Ward fans to start their own protest—4K for Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends.