Honey Halfwitch as she appears in her first nine animated shorts (left) and her final four animated shorts (right).
Honey Halfwitch is an American cartoon character. She appears in thirteen animated shorts that were initially released by Paramount Pictures between 1965 and 1967. She is a little girl witch who has limited powers of witchcraft. In all of her appearances, she is voiced by Shari Lewis.
The character, originally simply called "Halfwitch", first appeared in the animated short Poor Little Witch Girl. The short, directed by Howard Post, was released in April 1965 as part of Paramount Pictures' Modern Madcap series. The action of Poor Little Witch Girl appears to take place in a fantasy world at some indeterminate point in the past. In the short, Halfwitch lives in a small cottage in the forest that she shares with her Cousin Maggie (a much older witch) and a bat named Fraidy Bat (whose accent suggests that he comes from Transylvania). Halfwitch is unhappy because her Cousin Maggie will not take her along on a flight on her magic broomstick. Cousin Maggie says that Halfwitch cannot fly on the broomstick until she grows up. Halfwitch knows that will not be for a long time because it takes five hundred years for witch children to grow up. While Cousin Maggie is out, Fraidy Bat tells Halfwitch to use Cousin Maggie's book of magic spells to make herself bigger. Halfwitch grows to a gigantic size. At the end of the cartoon, Cousin Maggie returns Halfwitch to her normal size and allows her to fly on the broomstick.
In the first eight cartoons of the Honey Halfwitch spin-off series, the setting is still in a quasi-medieval fairy tale fantasy world. Honey Halfwitch interacts with giants and dragons. The first cartoon in the series, Shoeflies, introduces the character of another little girl witch named Teany Meany. A recurring character in the 1965 and 1966 cartoons is an incompetent wizard named Stanley the Sorcerer, whose appearance and voice are modeled on those of the American film comedian W.C. Fields.
The final four cartoons in the series, all of which were released in 1967 and which were produced and directed by Chuck Harriton and Shamus Culhane, are significantly different from the previous ones. Honey Halfwitch and Cousin Maggie were completely redesigned for those animated shorts. Cousin Maggie's skin, which is a natural tone in the first nine cartoons, becomes green in the final four. The action takes place in the present-day United States. Although Cousin Maggie and Honey Halfwitch still live in an old-fashioned cottage, the cottage is now perched on the top of a skyscraper. Honey Halfwitch is still voiced by Shari Lewis in the final four cartoons, although her voice sounds very different from the one which Lewis gave her in the earlier shorts. Animation fans generally consider those final four cartoons to be the best ones in the series.
Filmography
- Poor Little Witch Girl (1965)
- Shoeflies (1965)
- Baggin' the Dragon (1965)
- From Nags to Witches (1966)
- The Rocket Racket (1966)
- Trick or Cheat (1966)
- The Defiant Giant (1966)
- Throne for a Loss (1966)
- Potions and Notions (1966)
- Alter Egotist (1967)
- Clean Sweep (1967)
- High But Not Dry (1967)
- Brother Bat (1967)