"Aww, Billy! Don't make me watch Hercules and Xena. Those historical inaccuracies drive me plumb loco!"
Billy the Kid and Belle Star were antagonists in the 1975 Live Action Filmation Saturday Morning kids' series The Ghost Busters. Like most antagonists and as the show's name implies, they were ghosts, returned to the land of the living on a quest. They appeared in the show's 9th episode "They Went Thataway".
Biography[]
Returned old west outlaws named Billy and Belle appear in the show's ubiquitous cemetery, hungry for cattle and needing to put together a gang to rustle some. They quickly prove to be both not as savvy as their historical counterparts, but dumb even by the standards of a pun-driven, low-budget slapstick show. Billy loses a bucking bronco battle with an imaginary horse, and Belle is able to heat up a pot of cowboy boot soup without any flame by leaving it over the non-fire for a longer time. The Ghost Busters are in their usual form, with the antics of Eddie Spencer and Tracy The Gorilla annoying Jake Kong until he chases them out to get their next assignment. At the usual pawn shop, Tracy plays the tape, this recorder in the form of a mounted deer head that explodes when hidden employer Zero finishes his vague message of warning, telling who they are after but not really why Billy & Belle have returned. For their part, the outlaws plot to find a gang capable of rustling but dumb enough to follow them. As one might imagine, 1975 was not a good year for finding unemployed cattle rustlers, so they are stymied.
At the Ghost Busters' office, Eddie and Tracy try to learn all they can about their opponents—by watching cowboy shows on TV. When Jake wants to search for the outlaws, Tracy pantomimes the suggestion that the two want to rob a stagecoach - which the other two quickly realize has not run for about a century. Resorting to stalking the cemetery, the two groups finally encounter each other, with Billy & Belle thinking (based on the Busters' brain-dead conversation) that they've found their rustlers. Realizing their ghost-kit is not right on them, the Ghost Busters make for a run and evade the ghosts. Regrouping, the trio (about as effectively as they ever do, and making Boris Badenov and Team Rocket ashamed) disguise themselves as free-lance cattle rustlers, with Tracy wearing antlers as their captured steer. Actually fooling the equally gullible ghosts, Jake uses the distraction to grab their ghost gear while Eddie makes the sentimental outlaws cry with a wretched rendition of 'Home On The Range'. Their disguise is finally broken by Billy eating a banana that Tracy steals. By this point, though, they get the drop on Billy, using the Ghost De-Materializer to banish him.
Belle vanishes and goes into hiding, but the heroes literally smoke her out by cooking up some meat that she appears and gulps down, actually grateful that she's no longer returning hungry. She even returns her plate.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- It nearly goes without saying that the characters here have only a name relation to their historical counterparts, who may never even have met, and were only roughly contemporaries. Billy The Kid aka Henry McMarty or William Bonney, was born 11 years after Belle Star (born Myra Shirley) and died 8 years before her. Neither are depicted having or using firearms of any kind, in keeping with the standards of kids' shows of the day.
- In fiction, Belle & Billy have met several times; once on the 1960's James Garner show Maverick, played by actors Jean Willes and Joel Grey.
- Billy was played by actor and voice artist Marty Ingels, the late husband of TV Mom Shirley Jones. He played a villain named 'Diaper Dan', an industrial spy who bugged the home of TV witch Samantha Stephens on Bewitched, exposing Darrin's advertising secrets to competitors and nearly the secret of Samantha's powers and heritage. He was also the voice of the villain Autocat in Autocat and Motormouse, a series of Hanna-Barbera shorts that was essentially Tom and Jerry with motorbikes. (Source Wikiepedia and IMDB)
- Belle was played by Brooke Tucker, who, despite her aging makeup, was the daughter of Jake Kong actor Forrest Tucker, and whose mother was also from a prominent acting family. (Source Wikipedia and IMDB)