Wally Gator
Wally Gator is an American animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions that originally aired as one of the three segments from the syndicated block The Hanna-Barbera New Cartoon Series. The other two segments that compose the series are Touché Turtle and Dum Dum and Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har. The segment consisted of 52 episodes that aired from September 3, 1962, to August 26, 1963.
Wally Gator appears in the HBO Max series Jellystone!, where he is portrayed as the town ditz and voiced by Jeff Bergman.
Plot
Wally Gator is an anthropomorphic, happy-go-lucky alligator who wears a collar and a pork pie hat. Although his catchy theme song describes him as a "swingin' alligator of the swamp," his home is in the city zoo. Mr. Twiddle is the zookeeper who keeps a close watch on Wally, who likes to check out what life is like in the outside world.Analysis
Animation historian Christopher P. Lehman noted that Wally Gator follows the formula that Hanna-Barbera established in the previous series, such as the Yogi Bear series. The set up in which these shows placed an animal character within a human-controlled environment and had these characters deal with the social boundaries placed and enforced by humans. An example being: Yogi lives in a park under the care of a park ranger; Wally lives in a zoo under the supervision of a zookeeper. The theme that drives the series is Wally's desire to escape the zoo, a derivative of the Top Cat series, where the titular character keeps trying to get away from life in the alley.Lehman notes a rather depressing underlying theme: the zoo and life in captivity seem to be the proper place for Wally. No matter how much he struggles to fit in the society of the outside world, Wally remains an "Other" and is doomed to fail. The status quo follows every unsuccessful attempt at change.
Voice cast
- Daws Butler as Wally Gator
- Don Messick as Mr. Twiddle
- Mel Blanc as additional voices, such as Colonel Zachary Gator