For more than sixty years, Bill Hanna has made entertaining children and the young at heart his "business." In A Cast of Friends, he offers an engaging look at his decades in animation and at the people who helped make it all possible. Hanna shares his memories of the tough and wild years at the beginning of animation, working with such legendary colleagues as Tex Avery and Friz Freleng. He describes as only he can the hard work and determination it took to make Hanna-Barbera Productions a success, with unforgettable behind-the-scenes stories of Daws Butler, Alan Reed, Mel Blanc, Casey Kasem, and other voiceover magicians. Throughout it all, he was determined to be a family man with his wife and their two children, to live a life different from Hollywood standards--and this adds a singularly personal aspect to Hanna's very special insider's look at the history of animation.