I’ve said it before. No matter how brilliant the voices or compelling the scripts, ThunderCats simply would not have happened without great recording, animation and production crews. Sadly, so far, I have not been able to track down the key PAC artists and animators to ask them to add their comments, but at least most of the studio crew will feature. (Still a couple missing but perhaps they’ll respond when they see this.)
Everyone says Larry Franke was the prince of the engineers and crew that put ThunderCats’ tracks together. I only met him a couple of times – which seems hard to believe – but when we opened this conversation, which rambled far and wide beyond ThunderCats, I was fascinated. Though we worked – and work – mostly in two different areas of what’s laughingly called ‘the Entertainment Business’ we have many parallel experiences and views.
Larry writes: My first real job was at A&R – Arnold and Ramone – where Rankin/Bass recorded their shows, voice tracks and music. ‘The Last Unicorn’ was the first R/B show I worked on. 
Bernie Hoffer was their go-to composer, an original talent, prolific. Surprisingly easy going and great to work with.
A&R was famous for training recording engineers. I could not have had a better start and as I went along, I worked on sessions with John Lennon, Steely Dan, Bill Joel and on Frank Sinatra’s ‘LA’s My Lady’ project among many others. Imagine that. Stars dropped in and out, Michael Jackson just one of them. What a perfect start to a career, except perhaps for Phil Ramone’s crazy scheduling. One time we were simultaneously recording Paul Smon, Get Wet, and Billy Joel – with Karen Carpenter on deck! Incidentally, I rehearsed Karen’s songs with her, in Phil’s house, before she went on to record the solo album in the studio.
It all became too stressful and I was on the point of leaving when John Curcio called to tell me that Rankin/Bass had a new project, an animated series called ThunderCats. They were recording in a studio tailored for them by Howard Schwarz. Trying to persuade me, John said It would be an easier ride – little did we know! – and a lot more money. The only problem, I would be recording dialogue, something I had not done before and, hubris calling, felt was below me. Hell, I was a music engineer! Worked with Lennon and Sinatra!
Fortunately, my wife Sharon suggested it would be a great move. Once more she proved a better judge than I and it was one of the great decisions of my life – not least because John Curcio became something of a guru and straightened me out pretty damn quickly: voice recording was just as much an art as working with music. It turned out, too, to be an easier ride than A&R, not because of a lighter workload but because a great crew came together.
One of those serendipitous things almost impossible to plan. As others have noted, the working day became one extended laugh track.
But we got the work done – and to an unmatched quality.
I feel that the art of voice recording has been lost in the welter of digitization, new technologies and now AI. How often we watch movies and shows and have to resort to subtitles to follow badly recorded dialogue. This isn’t just a perfectionist talking – though I am one; it’s an experience shared by many people.
PL: hearing Larry’s views about current voice recording, whether big Hollywood movies or regular TV shows, was a great relief. For years I wondered if I was going deaf despite the fact that watching movies and shows was the only area in which I seemed to have hearing problems even though the systems I was using were reasonably sophisticated. It’s something of a diversion but watch 20 Feet From Stardom, a brilliant documentary about back-up singers, now more or less disappeared, exiled by autotune and the soulless precision of AI-backed technology. Thus we lose the ‘perfection of imperfection’ – that feeling that you’re in reality rather than an aseptic sound clinic.
Larry: Back to Curcio. He knocked the hubris clean out of me and I learned. And learned. You didn’t just set the levels and sit back. ‘Ride the fader!’
ThunderCats became one of the great working experiences of my life. Talking to others, crew, actors, writers, artists, production staff – even all these years later so many who worked on these shows will tell you they’ve never had a better working environment.
Great work, a great crew and a lot – a lot – of laughs. The laughs, of course, compensated for those moments of horrible pressure. 
The schedule sometimes seemed impossible; Jules Bass was a talent but certainly not all sweetness and light. He put Lee Dannacher under immense pressure; and yet she maintained her passion for the work and her humour despite a workload that would have broken just about anyone else I’ve known. It seems to me that the studio became a home away from home for Lee. An escape. A place she could exercise her creative skills without constant oversight – whereas back at ‘the office’ she was constantly under the pump.
PL: Gathering these stories, I’ve learned that Lee could be a hard, difficult boss. It’s a great testament to the people under her cosh that they have asked me not to write about that aspect of ‘the work.’ They prefer to recall the best of the ThunderCats experience – and everyone agrees that the studio was indeed Lee’s refuge. Here’s an example of the pressure she was under at the office. PAC sent the storyboards to New York for comments – those comments largely, or at least initially, being Lee’s responsibility. With everything else that she had in hand, she sometimes fell behind with the boards which in turn threatened the schedule and the vital delivery to broadcasters. On one occasion, having pressed for the corrected boards – several times – Jules stormed into her office, picked five or six of them off her desk and threw them in the waste bin. “Right. Now you’re back on schedule.” I don’t recall which shows they were but they were animated to those original, uncorrected boards, Lee’s copies never retrieved from the waste bin.
Larry: But it wasn’t just the laughs. There was something about ThunderCats that engaged us. Or perhaps not just the show, which at first seemed like standard kids’ action/adventure, but something about the crew. 
John Curcio. John Crenshaw. Mike Ungar. Steve Gruskin. Matthew Malach. Tony Giovanelli. Not to mention the actors – talented, funny and totally on the mark. Give Earl Hyman a one-line pick-up and he took that as seriously as any stage play he’d starred in. Seems like every company claims ‘we’re family’; our crew really was like family. Despite all the hours we spent together working, we also hung out. Sharon still says that Matthew and Karen’s wedding was one of the most beautiful she’s been to. Not to mention the Halloween parties!
Lee bought us a rowing machine because she thought we were getting too fat – a direct result of Rankin/Bass picking up all our meal tabs. At one point, Tony, or maybe it was Lee herself, told us Rankin/Bass was cracking down on the food bills. They presented me with an $800 overage which I was to pay out of my own pocket. Luckily, at the point at which I was about to have a stroke, they couldn’t keep straight faces.
Really, every session was a laugh factory but, by Thundera, we got the work done. And to a very, very high standard. An unmatched experience in a long career.