Cartoon Network to Offer the Best in Cels-Manship

Admit it. There have been times you’ve wanted to spend a Saturday just watching cartoons but haven’t, because you’re not 8 anymore.

Well, go to it Saturday. No need to feel guilty or embarrassed--as long as you’re watching Cartoon Network’s marathon “The 50 Greatest Cartoons of All Time.”

Kick back on the couch for eight hours and say you’re studying opera with “The Rabbit of Seville,” literature with Daffy’s “Book Revue,” science with “Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century” and history--television history--with “The Flagstones.”

In between the classics, beginning at 11 a.m., there will be interviews with the experts: voice actors June Foray (Rocky the Squirrel and Cindy Lou Who) and Charlie Adler (Buster Bunny), movie critic Leonard Maltin, directors Chuck Jones and Joe Barbera and background artist Maurice Noble.

Cartoon Network’s programming staff had been kicking around the marathon idea for a while. They decided to do it in March, before the Oscars, when everyone is thinking about “the best,” said program director Dea Perez.

They started with selections from Jerry Beck’s book “The 50 Greatest Cartoons” (Turner Publishing, 1994), whose choices were made with input from 1,000 animation professionals.

They also used the book’s runners-up in the pool and chose some shorts for their historical significance. (“Ruff and Reddy” from 1957 was Hanna-Barbera’s first cartoon created for television, and “The Flagstones” was a two-minute 1959 pilot for “The Flintstones.”)

Unlike in Beck’s book, there are no Disney works in the Cartoon Network lineup--no “Steamboat Willie” or “The Three Little Pigs.”

Cartoon Network was hoping to include them, Perez said, but in the end, Disney decided against it. Disney fans will have to settle for “Bambi Meets Godzilla.”

There will be cartoons from Warner Bros., MGM, Paramount, United Artists and other studios spanning most of the century, from 1914 (“Gertie the Dinosaur”) through 1994 (“Bob’s Birthday”).

On Sunday starting at 7 a.m., the station will show its animated Top 10 in a two-hour special.

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DETAILS, DETAILS: Which actress went by the name Cherie Moore when she provided the voice for one of the singers in “Josie and the Pussycats”?

Answer to last week’s quiz (What San Francisco-set series did Raymond Burr go on to after “Ironside”?): “Kingston: Confidential,” which aired for a few months in 1977.

Set Your VCR

In the same week that Lucille Ball baby-sits the three Marquis Chimps on “The Lucy Show” (Monday at 7:30 p.m. on KDOC Channel 56), she hosts a “Three’s Company” tribute (Wednesday at 5:30 a.m. on TBS). You decide which trio makes the better actors.

Catherine quits her shallow ways after her life is saved by a man-beast from down under--New York City, that is--in the pilot for “Beauty and the Beast” (today at noon on WGN).

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9”The 50 Greatest Cartoons” air Saturday on the Cartoon Network:

11 a.m.-noon

* “Rabbit of Seville” (Warner Bros., 1950)

* “Little Rural Riding Hood” (MGM, 1949)

* “A Dream Walking” (Paramount, 1934)

* “Peco’s Pest” (MGM, 1955)

* “Pink Phink” (United Artists, 1964)

* “Quasi at the Quackadero” (Cruikshank, 1975)

Noon-1 p.m.

* “Senor Droopy” (MGM, 1949)

* “Hair-Raising Hare” (Warner Bros., 1946)

* “Peace on Earth” (MGM, 1939)

* “Book Revue” (Warner Bros., 1947)

* “Superman” (Paramount, 1941)

1-2 p.m.

* “Corny Concerto” (Warner Bros., 1943)

* “Gertie the Dinosaur” (Windsor McCay, 1914)

* “Feed the Kitty” (Warner Bros., 1952)

* “The Cat That Hated People” (MGM, 1948)

* “Ruff and Reddy” (Hanna-Barbera, 1957)

* “The Flagstones” (Hanna-Barbera, 1959)

* “Dough for the Do-Do” (Warner Bros., 1949)

* “Betty in Blunderland” (Paramount, 1934)

2-3 p.m.

* “Ali Baba Bunny” (Warner Bros., 1957)

* “Spud Dud” (Hanna-Barbera, 1960)

* “Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor” (Paramount, 1936)

* “The Scarlet Pumpernickel” (Warner Bros., 1950)

* “Tweetie Pie” (Warner Bros., 1947)

3-4 p.m.

* “Rabbit Seasoning” (Warner Bros., 1952)

* “I Love to Singa” (Warner Bros., 1936)

* “Cat Concerto” (MGM, 1947)

* “The Dover Boys” (Warner Bros., 1942)

* “Who Killed Who?” (MGM, 1943)

* “Daffy Duck Slept Here” (Warner Bros., 1948)

4-5 p.m.

* “Little Red Riding Rabbit” (Warner Bros., 1941)

* “King-Size Canary” (MGM, 1947)

* “The Big Snit” (National Film Board of Canada, 1985)

* “Duck Amuck” (Warner Bros., 1953)

* “One Froggy Evening” (Warner Bros., 1955)

* “Northwest Hounded Police” (MGM, 1946)

5-6 p.m.

* “Beep Prepared” (Warner Bros., 1961)

* “Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century” (Warner Bros., 1953)

* “The Cat Came Back” (National Film Board of Canada, 1988)

* “You Ought to Be in Pictures” (Warner Bros., 1940)

* “What’s Opera, Doc?” (Warner Bros., 1957)

* “Bad Luck Blackie” (MGM, 1949)

6-7 p.m.

* “A Wild Hare” (Warner Bros., 1940)

* “The Great Piggy Bank Robbery” (Warner Bros., 1946)

* “Red Hot Riding Hood” (MGM, 1943)

* “Felix in Hollywood” (M.J. Winkler, 1923)

* “The Big Snooze” (Warner Bros., 1946)

* “Bambi Meets Godzilla” (International Rocketship, 1969)

* “Screwball Squirrel” (MGM, 1944)

* “Bob’s Birthday” (National Film Board of Canada, 1994)