Magilla Gorilla

Magilla Gorilla is a fictional gorilla and the star of The Magilla Gorilla Show by Hanna-Barbera that aired from 1964 to 1966.

Character description
Magilla Gorilla (voiced by Allan Melvin ) is an anthropomorphic gorilla who spends his time languishing in the front display window of Melvin Peebles' pet shop, eating bananas and being a drain on the businessman's finances. Peebles (voiced by Howard Morris and later by Don Messick) marked down Magilla's price considerably, but Magilla was invariably only purchased for a short time, typically by some thieves who needed a gorilla to break into a bank or by an advertising agency looking for a mascot for their new product. The customers always ended up returning Magilla, forcing Peebles to refund their money. Magilla often ended episodes with his catchphrase "We'll try again next week."

Many of Hanna-Barbera's animal characters were dressed in human accessories; Magilla Gorilla sported a bow tie, shorts held up by suspenders, and an undersized derby hat.

The only customer truly interested in obtaining the trouble-prone Magilla was a little girl named Ogee (voiced by Jean Vander Pyl and pronounced "Oh Gee!"). During the cartoon's theme song, "We've Got a Gorilla for Sale", she asks hopefully, "How much is that gorilla in the window?" (a twist on the old standard, "(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?"), but she was never able to convince her parents to let her keep Magilla.

In Yiddish, a megillah is a long tedious or embroidered account, from the Hebrew megillah, a story written in a scroll. One episode has Magilla saying, "Such a megillah over a gorilla."

Inception
As pointed out on the Rhino Records' CD liner notes for their collection of Hanna-Barbera theme tunes, part of Magilla's purpose was to sell likenesses of himself. The show was sponsored by Ideal Toys, which produced a Magilla stuffed toy.

Other appearances

 * Magilla Gorilla appeared in the medium of comic books. From 1964 through 1968, he appeared in a series published by Western Comics; the series ran 10 issues. Also in 1964, he appeared in a one shot comic called The Magilla Gorilla Kite Fun Book from the same publisher. From 1970 through 1971, he appeared in a series published by Charlton Comics which ran 5 issues.
 * Magilla Gorilla appeared on both the 1972 made-for-TV movie Yogi's Ark Lark and the 1973 spin-off Yogi's Gang series, where he would run the treadmill that powers the Ark as long as there are plenty of bananas.
 * In the 1982 special Yogi Bear's All Star Comedy Christmas Caper, Magilla Gorilla (alongside Wally Gator and Yakky Doodle) was unable to help Yogi and his friends locate J. Wellington Jones.
 * Magilla appeared in the 1985-1988 syndicated series Yogi's Treasure Hunt.
 * Magilla made a cameo appearance as an HB reporter in the 1988 TV-movie The Good, the Bad, and Huckleberry Hound.
 * Magilla Gorilla appeared in A Yabba-Dabba-Doo Celebration! 50 Years of Hanna-Barbera.
 * In the "Fender Bender 500" segment of the 1990 series Wake, Rattle, and Roll, Magilla Gorilla was partnered with Wally Gator as they rode a monster truck called the Swamp Stomper.
 * In Yo Yogi!, Magilla appeared as superstar rapper Magilla Ice (a spoof of Vanilla Ice).
 * Magilla Gorilla appeared as Sinbad on the 1994 TV special Scooby-Doo! in Arabian Nights.
 * In Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law, Magilla Gorilla (voiced by Maurice LaMarche) made several cameos through the show, sometimes appearing as a homosexual prison inmate who is frequently seen stalking the main character Harvey Birdman. In the 2005 episode "Free Magilla," Magilla is kidnapped by radical animal rights activists, causing Mr. Peebles (also voiced by Maurice LaMarche) to sue them. Magilla is quickly abandoned by the activists after they grow sick of his many puns. During the course of the episode, Mr. Peebles confesses to having grown attached to Magilla.
 * Magilla Gorilla made a cameo in a 2012 MetLife commercial entitled, "Everyone".
 * Magilla and Mr. Peebles make cameos in the 2013 direct-to-video film Scooby-Doo! Mask of the Blue Falcon as images in the Hanna-Barbera convention.
 * In 2018, DC Comics rebooted Magilla Gorilla into a less cartoonish character and featured him in a crossover with Nightwing.

Cultural references

 * Magilla Gorilla was once mentioned in a Ricochet Rabbit & Droop-a-Long cartoon which was a segment of his show. In that cartoon, a criminal named Rocky Rattler said, "If I want laughs, I watch Magilla Gorilla on TV."
 * Da Lench Mob mentions Magilla Gorilla (as well as fellow cartoon simian The Grape Ape) in the title track of their 1992 album Guerillas in tha Mist.
 * In the X-Men comics, Hank McCoy (Beast) was nicknamed "Magilla Gorilla" in high school.
 * Brazilian boxer Adilson Rodrigues is nicknamed Maguila after his workmates when he worked with construction likened him to Magilla.
 * The Howard Stern Show co-host Robin Quivers was nicknamed Magilla Gorilla by comedian Bob Levy.
 * Comedian Rondell Sheridan has repeatedly joked about his resemblance to Magilla Gorilla, dating back to being teased for it as a child.
 * In the second-season finale of Lost, Sawyer refers to Hurley and Kate as "Magilla Gorilla and Pippi Longstocking".
 * In the Australian National Basketball League, the Hobart Devils import Jim Havrilla in 1993, was nicknamed 'Magilla the Gorilla', due to his force in smashing backboards with his slam dunks.
 * In a season 18 episode of The Simpsons titled "Ice Cream of Margie (with the Light Blue Hair)", Marge makes a giant sculpture of Homer out of popsicle sticks, to which he gleefully proclaims, "You made me a sculpture of Magilla Gorilla!" He's also referenced in the season 10 episode "When You Dish Upon a Star", where Homer dreams he is Magilla and mauls Mr. Peebles after he takes his banana.
 * In the comedy album Family Guy: Live in Las Vegas, Magilla Gorilla is cited as an example of cartoons being dicks; according to that song, he is responsible for bringing AIDS to the human population.

Interpretation
According to one reading of the show, the trials of Magilla mirrored the attitudes that some American citizens had towards racial integration during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Christopher P. Lehman, in his 2007 book American Animated Cartoons of the Vietnam Era: A Study of Social Commentary in Films and Television Programs, 1961-1973, writes that The Magilla Gorilla Show perpetuated the idea that non-whites should be segregated, with Peebles selling Magilla (the gorilla iconography thus evoking a reference to 19th-century racist artwork portraying blacks as subhuman primates) to white customers who would invariably return him to the pet shop by the end of each episode.

Magilla Gorilla in other languages

 * Brazilian Portuguese: Maguila, o Gorila
 * Spanish: Maguila Gorila
 * Japanese: ゴリラのゴンちゃん (Gorira no Gon-chan)
 * Finnish: The same as in English
 * Hungarian: Magilla Gorilla
 * Italian: The same as in English
 * Polish: Goryl Magilla (pronouncing with double "l")