Scooby-Doo creator Passes Away
Iwao Takamoto had an amazing life, he was born in 1925 in Los Angeles and his family was from Japan. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor his family like many Japanese-Americans, was sent to an internment camp. It was there that Takamoto received basic illustration training from a couple of friendly co-internees. Takamoto got his big break after the end of the war when he was hired as an assistant animator by Walt Disney Studios in 1947:
“Iwao Takamoto, the animator who created the cartoon canine Scooby-Doo as well as characters on such shows as “The Flintstones” and “The Jetsons,” died Monday after suffering a massive coronary, a spokesman said. He was 81. Takamoto died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he was being treated for respiratory problems, said Gary Miereanu, a spokesman for Warner Bros. Animation.
Takamoto designed Scooby-Doo, his equally famished and cowardly master Shaggy, and their pals Velma, Daphne and Fred in the late 1960s while working at the Hanna-Barbera animation studio. The Great Dane’s name was inspired by an improvised line at the end of Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night”.”