The Perils of Penelope Pitstop
The Perils Of Penelope Pitstop was an American animated cartoon television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Studios that premièred on CBS on September 13, 1969. The show lasted for two seasons, with 17 half-hour episodes produced.
The title was a reference to a silent movie era melodrama cliffhanger movie serial, The Perils of Pauline. While the earlier Wacky Races series the heroine came from looked to be set contemporarily in the 1960s, most of the automobiles and clothing of The Perils of Penelope Pitstop gave it the look of being set in the 1920s.
The series was a spin-off from Wacky Races and featured race driver Penelope Pitstop (voiced by Janet Waldo). She wore a bright pink auto-racing outfit. Pitstop was constantly being chased by the villain Hooded Claw, aka Sylvester Sneekly (voiced by Paul Lynde) who wanted to get rid of her in order to get her inheritance. Penelope was often rescued from peril by the Anthill Mob, a group of diminutive gangsters led by Clyde, a charicature of Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar. The Mob consisted of 7 very short characters with exaggerated personal traits-- for example one was always giggling, another always crying, another always sleeping-- clearly owing quite a bit to the characters of the Seven Dwarfs in the Walt Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
The Hooded Claw, aided by his identical set of henchmen, the Bully Brothers, concocted needlessly Rube Goldberg-like plots to kill Penelope (such as a device to drop her from an airplane, cut her parachute, and then have her drop into a box of wildcats). While the Mob often rescued Penelope, as often as not Penelope needed to rescue the Mob from the unintended effects of their attempts to rescue her. While Penelope was curiously helpless whenever The Hooded Claw grabbed her, once he left her tied up for his fiendish plans to take effect she was quite resourceful and ingenious, often coming up with McGyveresque methods of escaping her peril.
Other voice artists in the series included Mel Blanc as some of the Mob and assorted other voice and Gary Owens as the narrator. Writers included Warner Brothers veteran Michael Maltese.