Scooby Doo initially started as a cartoon by
Fred Silverman as a show about a bunch of teenagers wandering around solving mysteries in the
Mystery Machine. It was a cross between two popular shows, a radio program called
I Love a Mystery and a TV sitcom called
The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. First called Mystery Five and then Who’s Scared, it was rejected by CBS on principles of being too
scary for children. At that time, the teenagers were simply accompanied by their
great dane. After being rejected, the show was re-tooled as the great dane being the lead character and the teenagers in supporting roles. At the time, Silverman was listening to
Frank Sinatra singing
Strangers in the Night and it was re-named
Scooby Doo, Where Are you?
After becoming more humorous than scary and the artwork toned down, CBS bought the show and it was first aired in 1969. The original voices of the case were Don Messick as Scooby Doo, Casey Kasem as Shaggy, Nicole Jaffe as Velma, Heather North as Daphne and Frank Welker the voice of Fred. David Coulier also worked on various voices in the show starting at age 18.
In 1972 the Scooby Doo movies were released. In 1976 the show moved to ABC for the Scooby Doo/Dynomutt Hour. And in 1977 it became the firs two hour Saturday morning cartoon called the Scooby's All-Star-Laff-a-Lympics. 1979 saw the first television special called Scooby Goes to Hollywood and the character Scrappy Doo was introduced. Other characters were also developed such as Scooby-Dum, Whoopsy-Doo, Skippy-Doo, Scooby-Dee, Yabba-Doo, Howdy-Doo and Dooby-Doo. Guests such as Josie and the Pussycats, Batman & Robin, The Harlem Globetrotters, The Three Stooges and The Addams Family had roles in the later shows.
There are 86 villians in the Scooby-Doo series, a few of which are Jeepers! It's the Creeper, the Demon Shark, the Ghosts of Geronimo, the Headless Horseman and Redbeard’s Ghost.
The most memorable things to come out of Scooby Doo include the infamous Scooby Snacks, Scooby's "bark", Zoinks!, Jeepers!, theories as to Fred’s and Velma’s sexuality and of course, what exactly were Scooby snacks made of and why did shaggy always have the munchies.
Currently Warner Brothers has a movie in the words with Freddie Prinze Jr. as Fred; Sarah Michelle Gellar as Daphne; Linda Cardellini as Velma Dinkley; Matthew Lillard as Shaggy and Scott Innes as the voice of Scooby Doo.
A photo can be seen of the cast at http://www.corona.bc.ca/films/details/pictures/scoobycastphoto.jpg