Michael Hirsh: 'Babar,' 'Star Wars' shows were sometimes too edgy

LOS ANGELES, July 22 (UPI) -- As an animation producer and animator since the '70s, Michael Hirsh brought long-running stories of Babar, The Berenstain Bears, Inspector Gadget and many more to children's homes.

However, their viewers never or rarely got to see some stories. Hirsh tells about many of those in his memoir, Animation Nation , available Tuesday. He spoke with UPI in a recent Zoom interview.

"It's the ones that get away that are always interesting," Hirsh said of tales that never made it to the screen or disappeared after broadcast.

Hirsh's Babar series, broadcast in the U.S. by HBO, was a passion project for Hirsh, who grew up reading the elephant books in his local library.

The first Babar episode was a rarity because it adapted the original Jean de Brunhoff book. Hirsh said because his company, Nelvana, adapted the story of the death of Babar's mother, the episode was deemed too sad for repeats.

"That episode was done so well that HBO wouldn't air it again after that, nor would CBC, which was our Canadian partner," Hirsh said.

Hirsh said the 60-plus episodes Babar mixed original stories with adaptations of novels. One of Hirsh's inventions was having an older Babar tell his children these stories.

"Babar would bookend the series by having his children gather around him," Hirsh said. "They'd have some sort of event that happened that causes him to tell them a story about when he was young so they'd learn a lesson from it."

Hirsh faced other challenges from broadcast networks producing early Star Wars series Droids and Ewoks . Though the live-action films were rated PG, he said network standards and practices departments objected to showing laser blasts and lightsabers chopping up people on Saturday mornings for young viewers.

"So, basically, our weapons looked like vacuum cleaners," Hirsh said.

Still, he produced an animated series based on the horror comic book Tales from the Crypt . Tales from the Cryptkeeper was produced in conjunction with the live-action horror series on HBO, but tamer for Saturday morning broadcasts.

"We chose stories that we thought would work best for kids because we were a Saturday morning show," Hirsh said.

Later in Hirsh's career, he produced Netflix's 2017 Castlevania animated series . For the streaming service, Hirsh could adapt the horror video games with no standards and practices restrictions.

"Standards and practices were risk-averse," Hirsh said. "So, they were worried about everything a kid might do or imitate."

Looking back, Hirsh said working within those limitations still was worth it to reach the audience network series are able to reach.

Some changes were not due to issues of violence. Nelvana was brought onto Inspector Gadget after DIC Entertainment produced a pilot.

Inspector Gadget was a robotic detective full of mechanical devices he could deploy every week. But DIC's first artwork of Gadget never made it to air.

"He had a mustache in the pilot," Hirsh said. "It made him look too much like Peter Sellers."

Hirsh dabbled in live action, too, which he discusses in the book. He retains producing credits on the thriller, Malice, and the comedy, Burglar.

Burglar , based on the Lawrence Block books, was intended to be a vehicle for Bruce Willis, with Whoopi Goldberg as his sidekick, before he starred in Die Hard . Without Willis, Goldberg became the lead, but the film did not become a franchise.

"He was kind of like a modern Cary Grant character," Hirsh said. "He was cool, he was hip and he was at the same time a burglar."

Not all of Hirsh's animated pitches made it to completion, either. A Batman animated series was canceled at Warner Bros. before the 1989 live-action film was produced.

Hirsh also tried to make a feature film of the song "Puff, the Magic Dragon."

"[Composer] Peter Yarrow was just a terrific artist to work with, inspiring," Hirsh said. "We just couldn't get a script that we could get a distributor to get excited by, so it was just sad."