Hey Arnold!
Encyclopedia
Hey Arnold! is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 animated television series created by Craig Bartlett
Craig Bartlett
Craig Michael Bartlett is an animator best known for writing for Rugrats and creating the television series Hey Arnold!.-Career:...

 for Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (TV channel)
Nickelodeon, often simply called Nick and originally named Pinwheel, is an American children's channel owned by MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom International. The channel is primarily aimed at children ages 7–17, with the exception of their weekday morning program block aimed at preschoolers...

. The show's premise focuses on a fourth grader named Arnold
Arnold (Hey Arnold!)
Arnold is a fictional character and the titular protagonist in the Nickelodeon animated television series Hey Arnold!. His head is shaped like an American football, thus earning him the nickname "Football-Head", by Helga. Throughout the series' run, he was voiced by at least five different voice...

 who lives with his grandparents. Episodes center on his experiences navigating big city life while dealing with the problems he and his friends encounter. Certain episodes focus on the lives of other supporting characters, such as the tenants of the boarding house Arnold's grandparents own.

Bartlett came up with the idea for the show based on a minor character named Arnold who he created while working on Pee-wee's Playhouse
Pee-wee's Playhouse
Pee-wee's Playhouse is an American children's television program starring Paul Reubens as the child-like Pee-wee Herman. The show was developed from Reubens' popular stage show and the one-off TV special The Pee-wee Herman Show, produced for HBO, which was similar in style but featured much more...

. The executives enjoyed the character, and Bartlett completed the cast of characters by drawing inspiration from people he grew up with in Portland
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

, Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...

. He created the first episode in his living room in 1993, and official production for the show began in 1994. The animators worked to transform Arnold from clay animation
Clay animation
Clay animation or claymation is one of many forms of stop motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable"—made of a malleable substance, usually Plasticine clay....

 to cel animation.

The series aired on Nickelodeon from October 7, 1996 until June 8, 2004. Hey Arnold! received generally positive reviews from critics, with many praising the show for its character development and the quality of its animation. Over the course of its eight year run, the series aired one hundred episodes. A feature film based on the series, Hey Arnold!: The Movie
Hey Arnold!: The Movie
Hey Arnold!: The Movie is a 2002 animated film based on the 1996-2004 Nickelodeon animated television series Hey Arnold!. The film was released in theaters on June 28, 2002...

, was released in 2002 to generally negative reviews. After the show's run finished, Bartlett created the show Dinosaur Train
Dinosaur Train
Dinosaur Train is an American animated series created by Craig Bartlett. The series features a curious young T. rex named Buddy who, together with his adopted Pteranodon family, takes the Dinosaur Train to meet, explore, and have adventures with all kinds of dinosaurs.It was the second show by The...

for PBS.

History

Hey Arnold! was created by animator Craig Bartlett
Craig Bartlett
Craig Michael Bartlett is an animator best known for writing for Rugrats and creating the television series Hey Arnold!.-Career:...

. He graduated from Anacortes High School and obtained a degree in communications from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington
Olympia, Washington
Olympia is the capital city of the U.S. state of Washington and the county seat of Thurston County. It was incorporated on January 28, 1859. The population was 46,478 at the 2010 census...

. During high school and college, he studied painting and sculpture at the Museum Art School
Portland Art Museum
The Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon, United States, was founded in 1892, making it the oldest art museum on the West Coast and seventh oldest in the United States. Upon completion of the most recent renovations, the Portland Art Museum became one of the twenty-five largest art museums in...

 in Portland
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

, and his first job after college was at Will Vinton Productions, a clay-animation house. Originally, Bartlett intended to become a painter "in the 19th-century sense", but became interested in animated films during a trip to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

. In 1987, he began working on Pee-wee's Playhouse
Pee-wee's Playhouse
Pee-wee's Playhouse is an American children's television program starring Paul Reubens as the child-like Pee-wee Herman. The show was developed from Reubens' popular stage show and the one-off TV special The Pee-wee Herman Show, produced for HBO, which was similar in style but featured much more...

, creating claymation clips about a character named Penny and her friend Arnold. Six years later, Bartlett was teamed up with five writers from Rugrats
Rugrats
Rugrats is an American animated television series created by Arlene Klasky, Gábor Csupó, and Paul Germain for Nickelodeon. The series premiered on August 11, 1991, and aired its last episode on June 8, 2004....

, to develop animation projects for Nickelodeon. These meetings were generally difficult and the writers became frustrated; Bartlett recalled, "Our ideas were OK, but such a large and motley group couldn't get far at pitch meetings. Network execs got migraines
Migraine
Migraine is a chronic neurological disorder characterized by moderate to severe headaches, and nausea...

 just counting us coming in the door." As a last resort, Bartlett played some of the "Penny" tapes, intending to highlight the Penny character. However, the executives were more impressed by Arnold, despite him being a minor character.

After the meeting, the group began developing Arnold
Arnold (Hey Arnold!)
Arnold is a fictional character and the titular protagonist in the Nickelodeon animated television series Hey Arnold!. His head is shaped like an American football, thus earning him the nickname "Football-Head", by Helga. Throughout the series' run, he was voiced by at least five different voice...

, creating his personality and evolving him from claymation to cel animation. Bartlett stated, "We did a lot of talking about who Arnold is. We came up with a reluctant hero who keeps finding himself responsible for solving something, making the right choices, doing the right thing." After creating ideas for Arnold, Bartlett began work on the supporting characters, drawing influence from his childhood: "A lot of the characters are an amalgam of people I knew when I was a kid. The girls in Hey Arnold! are girls that either liked or didn't like me when I was in school." He created the first episode of Hey Arnold! in his living room, and showed it to producers at Nickelodeon. A year later, the network decided to begin work on the series. The character was previously featured in a Sesame Street
Sesame Street
Sesame Street has undergone significant changes in its history. According to writer Michael Davis, by the mid-1970s the show had become "an American institution". The cast and crew expanded during this time, including the hiring of women in the crew and additional minorities in the cast. The...

short titled "Arnold Rides a Chair", as well as an eight-minute short shown in theaters before Nickelodeon's first feature film, Harriet the Spy
Harriet the Spy (film)
Harriet the Spy is a 1996 comedy-drama and mystery film adaptation of the 1964 novel of the same name by Louise Fitzhugh, and starring Michelle Trachtenberg as the title character....

.

Production

Apart from the animation style, Nick's Arnold now wears a sweater, with his plaid shirt untucked (resembling a kilt
Kilt
The kilt is a knee-length garment with pleats at the rear, originating in the traditional dress of men and boys in the Scottish Highlands of the 16th century. Since the 19th century it has become associated with the wider culture of Scotland in general, or with Celtic heritage even more broadly...

). Only Arnold's cap remains from his original clay-animation wardrobe. Arnold comic strips also appeared in Simpsons Illustrated
Simpsons Illustrated
Simpsons Illustrated was a companion magazine to the American animated television show The Simpsons. It featured, among many other things, articles and interviews about the show and comics based on the Simpsons universe...

magazine. (Matt Groening
Matt Groening
Matthew Abram "Matt" Groening is an American cartoonist, screenwriter, and producer. He is the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell as well as two successful television series, The Simpsons and Futurama....

, the creator of The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...

, is Craig Bartlett's brother-in-law.) Hey Arnold! was pitched to Nickelodeon in the fall of 1993, a pilot was produced in the spring of 1994, and the series was greenlit in January 1995. Hey Arnold! was in production continuously from 1995 to 2001, culminating in a TV movie originally titled "Arnold Saves the Neighborhood", which ended up being released theatrically as Hey Arnold!: The Movie in June 2002. Production of Hey Arnold! wrapped in May 2001.

The show also aired on "Nick on CBS" from 2002 up until September 2004.

A film was planned in which Arnold searches for his lost parents, but it was abandoned after Craig Bartlett
Craig Bartlett
Craig Michael Bartlett is an animator best known for writing for Rugrats and creating the television series Hey Arnold!.-Career:...

 left Hey Arnold! for a new project.

In 2011, the Canadian television channel Teletoon Retro
Teletoon Retro
Teletoon Retro is a Canadian English language Category B specialty channel based on the Teletoon programming block Teletoon Retro. The service consists of animation series from Canada and around the world, all of which commenced production at least 10 years prior to their exhibition...

 began airing reruns.

In September 2011, TeenNick
TeenNick
TeenNick, formerly The N, is an American television network aimed at the teenage market. TeenNick is owned by the MTV Networks subsidiary, Viacom. The channel was originally known as The N from its April 1, 2002 launch until September 28, 2009....

 brought back Hey Arnold and other shows for The 90's Are All That programming block.

The entire series is currently available via Netflix instant streaming.

Characters and Cast

Hey Arnold! stars nine-year-old Arnold and his neighborhood friends. Bartlett drew inspiration from people he grew up with when creating the characters for the show. Arnold's best friend is Gerald, a street-smart African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 boy who generally serves as the leader of the group. Many episodes detail Arnold's relationship with Helga Pataki, a girl who acts cruelly towards Arnold in order to cover up her secret affections towards him. He lives with his eccentric but loving grandparents, who own a boarding house
Boarding house
A boarding house, is a house in which lodgers rent one or more rooms for one or more nights, and sometimes for extended periods of weeks, months and years. The common parts of the house are maintained, and some services, such as laundry and cleaning, may be supplied. They normally provide "bed...

 called Sunset Arms; several storylines involve Arnold's interactions with the house's tenants. Other characters include teachers at P.S. 118, parents, and citizens of the town. Also, these characters are known to, but limited to be voiced by the fallowing people:
Toran Caudell
Toran Caudell
Toran Caudell is a former actor, voice actor, and musician from the United States.He played Rod on 7th Heaven, an American television series about a Protestant minister's family living in the fictional town of Glenoak, California....

 and Phillip Van Dyke
Phillip Van Dyke
Phillip Van Dyke is an American actor best known for his role as the goblin Luke in the first two of the Halloweentown movie series.-Private life:He was born in San Francisco and currently resides there....

 as Arnold,
Spencer Klein, Jamil W. Smith, Francesca Marie Smith, Justin Shenkarow
Justin Shenkarow
Justin Moran Shenkarow is an American actor best known for his roles of Matthew Brock in Picket Fences, Simon Holmes in Eerie, Indiana, and the voice of Harold Berman on Hey Arnold!.-Life and career:...

, Christopher P. Walberg, Christopher Castile
Christopher Castile
Christopher Jon Castile is an American actor from Orange County, California. He is best known for his roles as Ted Newton in the movies Beethoven and Beethoven's 2nd, playing the voice of Zachary Sellers and Nick Mulligan in Focus on the Family's Adventures in Odyssey, as well as playing Mark...

, Ben Diskin, Olivia Hack
Hey Arnold!
Hey Arnold! is an American animated television series created by Craig Bartlett for Nickelodeon. The show's premise focuses on a fourth grader named Arnold who lives with his grandparents. Episodes center on his experiences navigating big city life while dealing with the problems he and his friends...

, Dan Castellaneta
Dan Castellaneta
Daniel Louis "Dan" Castellaneta is an American actor, voice actor, comedian, singer and screenwriter. Noted for his long-running role as Homer Simpson on the animated television series The Simpsons, he voices many other characters on The Simpsons, including Abraham "Grampa" Simpson, Barney Gumble,...

, Tress MacNeille
Tress MacNeille
Tress MacNeille is an American voice actress best known for providing various voices on the animated series The Simpsons, Futurama, Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Disney's House of Mouse, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Rugrats, All Grown Up!, Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, and Dave the...

, Craig Bartlett
Craig Bartlett
Craig Michael Bartlett is an animator best known for writing for Rugrats and creating the television series Hey Arnold!.-Career:...

, Maurice LaMarche
Maurice LaMarche
Maurice LaMarche is an Emmy Award winning Canadian-American voice actor and former stand up comedian. He is best known for his voicework in Futurama as Kif Kroker, as Egon Spengler in The Real Ghostbusters, Verminous Skumm and Duke Nukem in Captain Planet and the Planeteers, Big Bob Pataki in Hey...

 and Christine Cavanaugh
Christine Cavanaugh
Christine Cavanaugh is an American former voice actress who had a distinctive speaking style and had provided the voice for a large range of cartoon characters. She is best known as the voice of Babe in the hit film, Babe, Chuckie Finster on Rugrats, and Dexter for the original Dexter's Laboratory...

.

Plot

The show stars fourth grader Arnold
Arnold (Hey Arnold!)
Arnold is a fictional character and the titular protagonist in the Nickelodeon animated television series Hey Arnold!. His head is shaped like an American football, thus earning him the nickname "Football-Head", by Helga. Throughout the series' run, he was voiced by at least five different voice...

, a boy who lives with his paternal grandparents, Phil and Gertrude, proprietors of the Sunset Arms boarding house
Boarding house
A boarding house, is a house in which lodgers rent one or more rooms for one or more nights, and sometimes for extended periods of weeks, months and years. The common parts of the house are maintained, and some services, such as laundry and cleaning, may be supplied. They normally provide "bed...

. In each episode, Arnold often helps a schoolmate solve a personal problem, or encounters a predicament of his own. The show also focuses on Arnold's classmate, Helga, who often treats Arnold cruelly and bullies him constantly. However, a recurring theme of the show is the fact that Helga pretends to dislike Arnold to hide the fact that she is secretly in love with him.

Many episodes involve urban legends, often told by Arnold's best friend, Gerald. These episodes often feature over-the-top events such as those that involve superheroes
Superhero
A superhero is a type of stock character, possessing "extraordinary or superhuman powers", dedicated to protecting the public. Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes — ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas —...

 or headless horsemen.

Setting

Hey Arnold! takes place in the fictional American city of Hillwood. Craig Bartlett stated in an interview that the city on the show is based on large northern cities, which includes Seattle (his hometown), Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

 (where he went to art school) and New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 (from which many landmarks were borrowed), also with references to Nashville, TN Grand Ole Opry
Grand Ole Opry
The Grand Ole Opry is a weekly country music stage concert in Nashville, Tennessee, that has presented the biggest stars of that genre since 1925. It is also among the longest-running broadcasts in history since its beginnings as a one-hour radio "barn dance" on WSM-AM...

; as well as Hawk Mountain
Hawk Mountain
Hawk Mountain is a mountain ridge, part of the Blue Mountain Ridge in the Appalachian Mountain chain, located in central-eastern Pennsylvania near Reading and Allentown. The area includes 13,000 acres of protected private and public land, including the 2,600 acre Hawk Mountain Sanctuary.The River...

 near Allentown, PA, as mentioned in the Sally's Comet Episode. Bartlett, having grown up in Seattle, bases many of the show's events on his own experience growing up in the city. The Pig War
Pig War
The Pig War was a confrontation in 1859 between the United States and the British Empire over the boundary between the US and British North America. The territory in dispute was the San Juan Islands, which lie between Vancouver Island and the North American mainland...

 mentioned in the episode with the same title took place on the boundary between what is now the State of Washington and British Columbia. Evan Levine of the Houston Chronicle
Houston Chronicle
The Houston Chronicle is the largest daily newspaper in Texas, USA, headquartered in the Houston Chronicle Building in Downtown Houston. , it is the ninth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States...

commented "With its backdrop of dark streets, nighttime adventures and run-down buildings, all seen from a child's point of view, the series combines a street-smart attitude with a dark comic edge."

Feature film

In this 2002 theatrical feature film, Arnold, Helga, and Gerald set out on their quest to save their old neighborhood from a greedy developer who plans on converting it into a huge shopping mall. This film was directed by Tuck Tucker, and features the voice talents of Jennifer Jason Leigh
Jennifer Jason Leigh
Jennifer Jason Leigh is an American film and stage actress, best known for her roles in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Single White Female, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Georgia and Short Cuts...

, Paul Sorvino
Paul Sorvino
Paul Anthony Sorvino is an American actor. He often portrays authority figures on both sides of the law, and is possibly best known for his roles as Paulie Cicero, a portrayal of Paul Vario in the film Goodfellas and Sgt. Phil Cerreta on the police procedural and legal drama television series Law...

, and Christopher Lloyd
Christopher Lloyd
Christopher Allen Lloyd is an American actor. He is best known for playing Emmett Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy, Uncle Fester in The Addams Family and Addams Family Values, and Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He played Reverend Jim Ignatowski in the television series Taxi and more...

.

DVD and digital releases

Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...

 released the first two seasons on DVD through its CreateSpace program in August 2008. The remaining seasons were released in later months. The DVDs are sold as "burn on demand" items. Some episodes have also been released on iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....

 as well as Netflix
Netflix
Netflix, Inc., is an American provider of on-demand internet streaming media in the United States, Canada, and Latin America and flat rate DVD-by-mail in the United States. The company was established in 1997 and is headquartered in Los Gatos, California...

. Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...

 has officially, with the announcement of Shout Factory producing their own DVDs, ceased to sell the CreateSpace DVDs.
Create Space Hey Arnold Releases| Release dateDiscsEpisodes
Season 1 (1996–97) August 21, 2008 4 20
Season 2 (1997–98) August 21, 2008 4 19
Season 3 (1998–99) December 7, 2009 6 27
Season 4 (1999–2000) November 27, 2009 4 19
Season 5 (2001–2004) December 4, 2009 4 15

Shout Factory Hey Arnold Releases| Release dateDiscsEpisodes
Season 1 August 9, 2011 4 20
Season 2 TBA 4 19
Season 3 TBA 4 27
Season 4 TBA 4 19
Season 5 TBA 4 15

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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