A Banner Day for Rocky, Bullwinkle

Hey, Rocky, watch how they pulled this rabbit out of the hat!

Bullwinkle would have been delighted at how the trick finally worked when one group of Los Angeles residents decided to use an annual art show to honor the memory of a beloved neighbor.

Along with huge banners celebrating fine art and emerging young artists, residents of Park La Brea have placed a giant Rocky and Bullwinkle banner atop one of their 14-story towers.

It’s a tribute to pioneering television cartoon producer Jay Ward, whose famed “Rocky and His Friends” and “The Bullwinkle Show” entertained generations of adults and children alike.

Ward was a longtime resident of the sprawling Fairfax district complex when he died in 1989. His widow, Ramona Ward, still lives there.

But apartment dwellers who stage a yearly “Art in the Park” celebration to raise money for local school programs had to pull strings in order to hoist moose and squirrel onto their roof.

The legacy of Rocky and Bullwinkle has been closely protected since Ward’s death. Things only got more complicated when Universal Studios began planning two new Rocky and Bullwinkle-themed movies expected to be released this fall and sometime next year.

Apartment art show planners had hoped to surprise Ramona Ward by including Rocky and Bullwinkle among the art banners hung last year at the 3rd Street residential complex.

“But we couldn’t get Universal to sign off,” said Pasqual Bettio, a professional photographer who is founder of the sponsoring Park La Brea Arts Council. When they decided to try again this year, they enlisted Ramona Ward’s help with the studio.

“We begged,” Bettio said Wednesday. “We waited and waited, and finally Universal said yes.”

Studio officials, who have filmed “Dudley Do-Right,” starring Brendan Fraser and Sarah Jessica Parker and are working on “Rocky & Bullwinkle,” featuring Robert De Niro, Jason Alexander and Rene Russo, did not return phone calls Wednesday.

Ramona Ward was thrilled with the banner, however.

“I went to all the windows in my apartment to see if I could see it,” she said. “I’m absolutely delighted--it’s beautiful. I thought how pleased my husband would be if he could see this.”

Jay Ward’s witty, pun-loving cartoon characters included bumbling Canadian Mountie Dudley Do-Right and ill-fated spies Boris and Natasha as well as Rocky and his pal Bullwinkle, who was perpetually unsuccessful in his effort to pull a rabbit out of a magician’s hat.

Ward himself started in television by accident. He was a Berkeley real estate agent in 1948 when he was hit by a careening lumber truck. During the painful convalescence that followed, Ward conceived the cartoon characters Crusader Rabbit and Rags the Tiger--the forerunners of Rocky and Bullwinkle.

The 25-foot-wide cartoon banner is one of four displayed for this year’s arts festival, scheduled for 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. Festival leaders hope to raise $10,000 for school enrichment programs with the event.

Others feature art by fourth-grader Luke Gasperik, 9, of Larchmont Village; Dan Field, a personal trainer who lives at Park La Brea, and art student Nicole Stanton, 21, of Long Beach.

The four, along with 18 smaller hand-painted street banners, will remain up through Labor Day, according to Park La Brea officials.