[1][2] Curtin composed many of the theme songs for Hanna-Barbera's cartoons, including The Flintstones, The Jetsons, The Huckleberry Hound Show, The Yogi Bear Show, Quick Draw McGraw, Top Cat, Jonny Quest, Space Ghost, Super Friends, Josie and the Pussycats, The Smurfs, and The New Scooby-Doo Movies.
Curtin's experience in advertising jingle writing honed his work in creating animation show theme songs.
[5] Hanna-Barbera creative director Bill Burnett praised Curtin's work, saying "Music is so fundamentally important to cartoons.
[1] Composer John Debney said of Curtin, "Hoyt was a jazzer, he was a keyboard player for one of the big bands and he was in the service.
[1] During his senior year, Curtin wrote and conducted new arrangements of show tunes from the movie Down Argentine Way during the school's annual musical extravaganza.
Naval Reserve with the rank of LTJG and served aboard a destroyer in the Pacific during World War II.
[12][14] After WWII ended, he returned to the University of Southern California, earning a master's degree in music.
Bill, and the man who enters you asked me why I was going to Juilliard when USC had people like Ernst Toch and the biggies at the time.
...So I called up my friend who let me enroll late at USC and drove back there at about a hundred miles an hour and went to lake my masters degree.
Curtin's score music was later reused in the Ed Wood film Jail Bait (1954, credited as "Hoyt Kurtain").
[17][18] He conducted a 38-piece orchestra while recording the score we composed for the company's film Thrillarama Adventure, a Cinerama style travelog which used two cameras and two projectors.
[19] Curtin also composed two of the tunes heard in the background in Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), although he was embarrassed by the film's poor quality.
His first musical score was for Arthur Babbitt's 1950 The Popcorn Story, one of the Jolly Frolics series cartoons.
[21] Curtin scored the 1954 cartoon When Magoo Flew which helped the work win an Academy Award for Best Animated Short.
I called back in 5 minutes and sang it to them ... silence ... uh oh, I bombed out ... the next thing I heard was a deal to record it - The Ruff & Reddy Show!".
No longer needing to use "needle drop" music from sources such as the Capitol Records Hi-Q library allowed Hanna-Barbera to save money.
[26] Curtin would refer to pre-production storyboards or watch film and videotape previews to make sure his scores fit and enhanced the Hanna-Barbara cartoons' action and mood.
[25] Cartoonist Mike Kazaleh praised Curtin’s talent which provided editors a novel way to construct cartoon soundtracks.
[25] Curtin composed the music for nearly 250 of Hanna-Barbera's cartoon series, as well as many of the cartoon series' theme songs, including The Flintstones, Top Cat, The Jetsons, Jonny Quest, Super Friends, Josie and the Pussycats, The Smurfs, and The New Scooby-Doo Movies and all its spinoffs until 1989.
The song, written in 1962 by Hoyt Curtin, William Hanna and Joseph Barbara is considered one of the first music videos.
[28] In 1986, 24 years after it's original release, the song reached Number 9 on the Billboard Top 100 sales chart, having been "rediscovered" by radio stations throughout the US.
The new recording featured many of the musicians that played on the original theme song, including trumpet soloist Pete Candoli.
Curtin recalled the Jonny Quest recording sessions took place at the Hollywood RCA studios using "...a regular jazz band of 4 trumpets, 6 trombones, 5 woodwind doublers, 5-man rhythm section including percussion.
[32] In 1965, Curtin left Hanna-Barbera over a rumored dispute regarding ownership f his musical work and residual payments.
In 1977 producer Sandy Frank negotiated the rights to the Japanese anime series Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (1972).
[33] While adapting the series, Frank renamed it Battle of the Planets and planned to expand the existing usable 85 episodes for international markets.
[34] Original composer Bobu "Bob" Sakuma's existing Science Ninja Team Gatchaman score didn't have enough content to cover the planned expansion of episodes.
[36] Curtin's later film score credits include Joniko and the Kush Ta Ka (later retitled The Wilderness Journey (1969),[37] Timber Tramps (1975), C.H.O.M.P.S.
The promotion was meant to "concentrate national attention on quality music on TV for the enjoyment of children".
[39] Curtin was granted six US utility patents for his inventions of water-tight pipe couplings for irrigation and sprinkler system plumbing.