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Top Cat - Definition and Overview |
| Related Words: Vip, Acme, Agate, All, Apex, Apical, Apogee, Ball, Baron, Bat, Beat, Best, Better, Blocks, Bonnet |
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Top Cat (also known for a while as Boss Cat in the United Kingdom) was a Hanna-Barbera prime-time animated series which premiered in 1961 and ran for 30 episodes.
The show remains one of the studio's most enduring creations.
Its central character, Top Cat - his friends call him TC - is the leader of a gang of Manhattan alley cats: Fancy Fancy, Spook, Benny, Brain, and Choo Choo. There are distinct resemblances to the popular US sit-com The Phil Silvers Show (on which the cartoon is said to have been loosely based) in the relationships between the characters. Arnold Stang's voicing of Top Cat strongly resembled Phil Silvers' voice as well.
A frequent plotline revolved around the local patrolman, Officer Dibble, and his ineffective attempts to evict the gang.
In the United Kingdom, the show was renamed Boss Cat (by means of a crudely substituted title card) when it was first aired on BBC1 because Top Cat was the name of a brand of cat food. Of course, the dialogue still referred to the character by his original name. Now Cartoon Network UK airs the show as Top Cat (as all of their copies of the series were recorded in the USA in the 1990s).
Voice artists
- Top Cat: Arnold Stang
- Benny the Ball: Maurice Grossfeld
- Choo Choo: Marvin Kaplan
- Fancy Fancy: John Stephenson
- Spook: Leo De Lyon
- Brain: Leo De Lyon
- Officer Dibble: Allen Jenkins
External link
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