I turned Jules down because my last fee had been toward $50,000 – cash – for an Italian outfit; but Jules was persistent: “Just get over here,” he said. “What else are you doing?”
Indeed, what else was I doing – other than lying around in gorgeous Portugal?
A few days later I was lying on an uncomfortable bed in a crappy NY hotel and wondering what the hell I had done and how little Rankin Bass must think of me to put me up in such a dump. I went to the office in a dark frame of mind and reacquainted myself with Lee Dannacher, whom I had met briefly during Dorian.
She was Rankin Bass’s gofer, anchor, priceless resource – often, between productions, their only employee. A wonderful and ultimately tragic figure without whom I don’t believe a single episode of ThunderCats would have been produced. When I arrived, she was managing the writers, overseeing the art, editing the storyboards, recording the voices, ramrodding the animation taking place in Japan. Actually, doing just about everything and without, even then it seemed to me, much respect being shown her. At this distance, I truly believe that the intense pressure she endured for those years greatly contributed to her early death.
I owe Lee more than I can ever explain. More than I ever let her know. Perhaps more to the point ThunderCats owes her and it’s a disgrace that she never saw a dollar of the participation agreement she signed. Nor did I, by the way, but for every dollar I never received, she should have received ten.
Day one, they introduced me to the show: Len Starr’s bible, some Mike Germakian designs and a couple of scripts which didn’t impress me. Day Two, “Get started.” 
And so I began to write my first animated script and the first thing I ever wrote for the kids’ audience. It appeared as Episode 15, The Time Capsule. Not my finest work!
An aside: investigate ThunderCats on Wikipedia and similar resources and – in my opinion – 50% of the information is bullshit and almost none of it gives sufficient credit to the driving forces that developed the show: Len Starr, Mike Germakian, Lee Danacher and Jules Bass himself. None of them save Jules received anything like the rewards they deserved but, probably more important to them, none of them received the credit they deserved. I find it very interesting that the various subsequent attempts to capitalize on the original… subsequent series, movies, etc., never involved the original team which made the show a huge international success. None of them, in my view, really understood ThunderCats. But that’s this business. As William Goldman said, so often quoted ‘No one knows anything.’ Least of all I.
More next week…