Quick Draw McGraw, or just Quick Draw, is a fictional anthropomorphic horse and the protagonist and title character of The Quick Draw McGraw Show. He is depicted as wearing a red cowboy hat and light blue bandana. He was voiced by Daws Butler. All 45 of his cartoons that originally aired between 1959 and 1962 were written by Michael Maltese, known best for his work at the Warner Bros. cartoon studio. The cartoon was one of six TV shows to win an Emmy Award in 1960.
Quick Draw was usually depicted as a sheriff in a series of short films set in the Old West. Quick Draw was often accompanied by his deputy, a Mexican burro called Baba Looey (also voiced by Daws Butler), who spoke English with a Mexican accent and called his partner "Queeks Draw". In the Spanish American version, Quick Draw (Tiro Loco McGraw) speaks in a very English-influenced accent, and Baba Looey (Pepe Trueno, or Pepe Luis in some episodes) speaks in a very Mexican accent, so it was clear that Quick Draw was the alien, and there was no need to adapt any feature of the story. In the Brazilian version, however, Quick Draw speaks in a drawling Portuguese which along with his hispanized name (Pepe Legal) would suggest he was either a Texan-American or Mexican cowboy.
Quick Draw satirized the westerns that were popular among the American public at the time. His character was well-intentioned, but somewhat dim.
Another featured character was Snuffles, the bloodhound dog that would point to his mouth and "ah-ah-ah-" when he wanted a biscuit, then hug himself, leap up in the air, and float back down after having eaten one. In several cases when Quick Draw did not have a dog biscuit to offer, or if he tried to give Snuffles the reward cash for capturing an outlaw, Snuffles would either shake his head and say "Uh-uh" or grunt to himself and mumble "Darn cheapskate!" In his first appearance, "Bow-Wow Bandit", he was trying to find Quick Draw's assistant Baba Looey, which was kidnapped by a bandit that thinks that he has a tattoo of a map on his back. When he was not called Snuffles, Quick Draw sometimes called him "dog deputy".
Personality[]
Quick Draw was himself a horse caricature that walked on two legs like a human (as did Baba Looey), and had "hands" that were hooves with thumbs and could hold objects such as guns. This did not stop the show's producers from depicting him riding into town on a realistic horse, or as seen in the show's opening credits, driving a stagecoach pulled by a whole team of realistic horses. This aspect was made light of in the 1980s made-for-television film The Good, the Bad, and Huckleberry Hound, which featured Quick Draw.
El Kabong[]
In certain cases, Quick Draw would also assume the identity of the masked vigilante El Kabong (a spoof of Zorro). His introduction went as follows – "Of all the heroes in legend and song, there's none as brave as El Kabong". As El Kabong, Quick Draw would attack his foes by swooping down on a rope with the war cry "OLÉ!" and hitting them on the head with an acoustic guitar (after shouting "KABOOOOOONG!"), which is always referred to as a "kabonger", producing a distinctive kabong sound and usually destroying the guitar in the process. The "guitar" was usually drawn as a four stringed quatro. On the cartoon's soundtrack, the "kabong" sound effect was produced by a foley artist striking the detuned open strings of a cheap acoustic guitar.