Our Seasonal Best to You

I am not a celebrator of holidays. But some of you are, I suspect, so my season’s greetings to you. Thanks for reading. We’re about to end posts indefinitely again.

I do like some Christmas cartoons and have posted frames from them over the years here. And I have a soft spot for A Charlie Brown Christmas, which turned 60 this year. I was a big Peanuts reader at the time it premiered, cutting strips out of the paper and pasting them into scrapbooks, and buying all the Fawcett paperbacks.

The special was enjoyable, though the music was a little odd to nine-year-old me, as I expected cartoon music.

The reviews were mostly favourable. Jerry Coffey in the Dec. 11, 1965 edition of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram said, in part:

It really is impossible to do justice to this delightful show by summarizing the story. Indeed, any attempt to reflect the elusive charms of the “Peanuts” people in mere words is doomed to frustration.
But at least it can be said that the TV version was remarkably true to the original. The reason undoubtedly is that creator Schulz himself prepared the script, from familiar material.
The transition from print to TV was less exact in the animation—or, as the credits grandly put it, "graphic blandishment"—than in spirit and characterization, but the drawings were quite good enough.
The mischievous wit, gentle satire and touching warmth of the story were admirably supported by interesting and well integrated original music. The use of piano and percussion only was just the right touch.
"A Charlie Brown Christmas" was shown in kiddie prime time, but I suspect the program appealed to adult viewers even more than youngsters.
In any case, it clearly was a high point on the holiday TV schedule, and I imagine Charlie Brown will be with us on the tube from now on.

Anne Miller Tinsley offered this review in the same edition:

Good grief. I was as startled last night as Charlie Brown is every day when I switched on the television set to watch Charles Schulz's animated Peanuts perform in "Charlie Brown's Christmas."
I have long been a loyal reader of Schulz's precocious moppets who gaze clear-eyed at the ferocious world around them.
But somehow I have never thought of them as kids. They're too much like too many adults.
So it struck me as extremely odd when I heard sweet, child-like voices coming out of those animated little mouths.
Although it was a highly entertaining 30 minutes, I think I get more pleasure from reading the comic strip. That way I can imagine that Lucy the fuss-budget has a shrill and flippant voice, that Linus doesn't speak with a lisp, and that Snoopy really does hum when he dances on the piano.

Our custom is to give the gift of one of the Seven Liberal Arts—music. Vince Guaraldi’s light jazz score is a beloved part of the Peanuts special. Much of it seems wintery, as opposed to Christmassy, and is enjoyable year-round. Here are some of the instrumentals you have heard over and over for years, but I’m sure you won’t mind hearing yet another time.




O TANNENBAUM


LINUS AND LUCY


CHRISTMAS TIME IS HERE


SKATING


CHRISTMAS IS COMING

Granny's Holiday Home

Granny (Bea Benaderet) will force the Christmas spirit on Sylvester (who has tried and failed to eat Tweety) and her bulldog (who has tried and failed to eat Sylvester) whether they want it or not in Gift Wrapped, a 1952 Merrie Melodies cartoon.

The short ends with Granny playing a secularised version of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” at her old organ.



Cut to Tweety happily singing.



Cut to Tweety, and a glowering Sylvester and dog. There’ll be no more swallowing now. Fade out.



Whoever animated this has the characters’ turning from side to side and up and down a bit to ensure the scene isn’t static.

Ken Champin, Manny Perez, Virgil Ross and Art Davis are the credited animators for director Friz Freleng with fine backgrounds by Irv Wyner. If I had to pick a favourite Warners Christmas cartoon, this would be it.

Cartoon Video News

It’s always a good day to read about restored cartoons that can find their way to your home.

Once again, the Warner Archive Collection is coming through with what you see on the right as of March 24th. You can see the list of shorts HERE.

There’s a lot of Chuck Jones in this two-volume set, but there are some cartoons by Art Davis, one by Tex Avery (The Heckling Hare) and even two of Norm McCabe’s efforts (the less than exciting Hop and Go and the in-need-of-restoration The Daffy Duckaroo). And there’ll be a clean, clear version of Jim Backus as the Hubert Updyke III genie in Bob McKimson’s A Lad in His Lamp that was last seen on laser disc.

Don’t expect Bosko or Buddy to show up here.

If you’re a fan of Famous Studios, you’ll be happy to hear word from Cartoon Logic that a 1940s collection will be distributed soon by ClassicFlix. There will be more about this in the new year.

These shorts really needed loving care; it seems the versions I’ve seen are either faded or turning a shade of pink. In fact, the TV prints I watched in the ‘60s don’t strike me as being all that great.

You can watch a clip below. The restoration is exemplary.

Snowy Stinking Skunk

For whatever reason, Tex Avery and gagmen Rich Hogan and Heck Allen set Rock-a-Bye Bear (released by MGM in 1952) in the winter.

It’s a typical Avery string-of-gags outing involving a character trying to sleep, while another character tries to force a third character to make noise to wake him. The third character runs out into the distance to be noisy. It’s similar to the later Deputy Droopy and my favourite late Avery cartoon, The Legend of Rockabye Point for Walter Lantz.

One sequence in Bear involves Cartoon Rule 514: All skunks smell.



“P.U,” says Spike (played by Tex Avery).



And it’s back to the house for the next gag.



Walt Clinton, Mike Lah and Grant Simmons animated this short. Pat McGeehan is the bear and dog pound officer.

Cubby and the Code

“Pre-Code” does not mean “Pre-Code.”

The Motion Picture Production Code did not suddenly appear in 1934. There was a code in 1930, and other measures going back to the silent era. It’s just that enforcement was lax until 1934.

One wonders if a gag in The Last Mail, a 1933 Van Beuren cartoon, would have gotten past the Code if it were made a year later. It stars Cubby Bear as a mail deliverer on a sled pulled through the snow by squirrels. The film cuts to a scene of beavers building a snowman. Emotion lines indicate they see something in the distance and they run away. It turns out to be Cubby.



Cubby and his sleigh plough through the snowman.



Here’s where the Code comes in. The snowman comes to life and checks his privates. They’re gone!



The snowman runs into the distance, a standard Terry/Van Beuren scene-ender going back to the silent days.



Somehow, I don’t think the Code would go for a Cubby Castration™.

Mannie Davis is the director of this one.

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: A Coronet Xmas and a Christmas Tree

Coronet Films is known best known for films telling weenie-roast-loving “swell” teenagers to change their behavior, maybe using a list. But social guidance wasn’t their only interest.

Here’s a Christmas short from 1955. Reader Jim Engel points out “Mrs. White” is actually Fran Allison, which is why the performance is very professional (she’s no Nick Baxter in Coronet’s What To Do on a Date).

This may be a little sugary for some viewers, but you can’t disagree with messages like helping the less fortunate. If you do, maybe one of those kids can treat you like a piñata.



If you’re going to hire someone to play a cartoon Santa, who would hire? At one time, the answer was likely Hal Smith.

He was Santa on the Flintstones Christmas episode in 1964. He was Santa in Tony Benedict’s Santa and the Three Bears.

It also turns out he is Santa—and the narrator, along with other male voices—in a 1959 animated short from the Soviet Union called A Christmas Tree.

It’s possible this got TV airplay. Shows like Captain Sailorbird and the The Nutty Squirrels filled half-hours with cartoons from eastern Europe, dubbed into English. Sorry for the battered print.

Jack Benny's Gift to War Vets

Christmas is a time of giving, the cliché goes, and one person who knew that was Jack Benny.

It seems every time I look up what Jack was doing over the holiday season, he was performing, often for charity.

75 years ago, he was one of a number of entertainers who went to San Francisco in December to perform for wounded veterans. He told columnist Herb Caen “When I saw then, I could have cried—except that I was supposed to make them laugh.”

Caen’s paper, the Examiner, sponsored the shows. This story appeared in the Dec. 22, 1950 edition.

Wounded Vets Cheered By Jack Benny, Troupe
Comedian Joins Examiner Fund Show For Bay Region War Hero Patients
The kid in the wheel chair didn't feel much like smiling.
None of the guys lying on beds, or sitting in wheel chairs, in the ward at Letterman Hospital yesterday felt much like smiling.
They were all just back from Korea. And they were all amputees, some with one, some, like the kid in the wheel chair, with two legs missing.
They were waiting, their expressions solemn, yesterday afternoon, to see the Examiners War Wounded Fund Show. Jack Benny, they had heard, was coming, and Constance Moore, the musical comedy star, and a lot of other top entertainers.
FAMILIES THERE
The wives and children of some of the wounded men were there. A tall blond sergeant who lost his right leg in the battle near Yongdang on September 24, sat quietly on his bed, his arm around his 4 1/2 year old daughter. The pretty blonde little girl sat gingerly on the big hospital bed, looking from time to time to her father for reassurance.
Suddenly, somebody shouted, "here he comes" and the wounded soldier applauded as Jack Benny stepped to the microphone in the center of the ward.
"Hiya, fellas," Benny said and the show was on.
Slowly the atmosphere of tension, of solemnity, began to break. The kid in the wheel chair rolled himself up closer to the entertainers, a small smile on his face.
ALL LAUGHING
Before long Benny had the whole ward shouting with laughter.
And when Constance Moore invited her audience to join in on the chorus of "Harvest Moon," they did, even the kid in the wheel chair.
It was a big show. Besides Benny and Miss Moore there was the impressionist, Arthur Blake; singers Katy Lee, Bob Hamma, Russ Byrd and Harry "Woo Woo" Stevens; dancers Charlie Aaron, Tony Wing, Toy and Wing, and Earl "Happy Feet" Burrows with the Four Naturals. The wounded soldiers cheered for more.
SHOWS TODAY
Benny and The Examiner troupe played the wards at Letterman yesterday afternoon, then gave an evening performance at the Letterman Theater for ambulatory patients last night with Walt Roesner and his band joining the show cast.
Benny will journey this morning to the Travis Air Force Base at Fairfield for a 10 a. m. show. He will entertain at 2 p. m. at Matte Island Hospital and will give a third performance at the Marine Hospital tonight. His final performance with The Examiner troupe will be tomorrow afternoon at the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital at 2 o'clock.
Harold Peary, "The Great Gildersleeve," and Movie Starlet Marylou Gray will join the troupe for an extra noon show tomorrow in the wards and the theater at Travis Air Base.
Benny was met on his arrival here yesterday by Col. John S. Mallory, special service officer of the Sixth Army; Lt. Cmdr. William G. Palmer of division of welfare of the Twelfth Naval District, and George Heinz, producer-director of The Examiner shows. Also with Benny are Charlie Bagby and Frankie Remley of his CBS radio show.

Benny and his troupe whirled through three more performances the next day, cheering audiences at the Travis Air Force Base, Mare Island and Marine Hospitals. The next afternoon, on December 23, he put on his act at the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital.

Out of curiosity, I looked up what Jack was doing 100 years ago at Christmas. That week, he was appearing at the Orpheum in Kansas City. Among the other acts was Benny Rubin. The Journal-Post reviewed him on Dec. 20, 1925.

A few minutes with Jack Benny are as many minutes of hearty humor. His comedy is of a lingering kind. There is so much real humor and such a variety of fun in his work that the result is not merely passing laughs but laughs his audiences take home with them.

As for charity work, sure enough, I found this in the Star of December 24, 1925:

Actors from various Kansas City theaters will join tonight in an entertainment for the United States veterans hospital. The entertainment, which will begin at 6:30 o’clock, will be preceded by a dance and the distribution of gifts given by patriotic organizations associated with the veterans’ hospital.
Among the actors who will entertain the veterans are Jack Benny, who is appearing at the Orpheum theatre, and the Marcell Sisters from the Pantages theatre, Ray Stinson’s orchestra will play. The Red Cross at the hospital is in charge of the program.

The next day, the Kansas City Times reported he “jested and played the violin.”

(Did Rubin appear? I dunno).

After K.C., Jack was off to Madison, Wisconsin for another vaudeville stop—and more of a long career that included giving morale to those who needed it.

SIDE NOTE:
Jack was mentioned in Dorothy Kilgallen's Christmas column of 1954. Oddly, fellow What's My Line? panellist Fred Allen was omitted.

Cartoons on TV, Christmas 1965

60 years ago, Christmas fell on Saturday. And you know what that meant in 1965. Cartoons on TV!

Christmas cartoons fell into two categories, from what I recall. There were the prime-time specials earlier in December. In 1965 that meant Magoo’s version of “A Christmas Carol” (didn’t see) and the new A Charlie Brown Christmas (which I watched after anticipating it with excitement). And then there were old theatricals, some set during Christmas, others with Christmas gags. Included in this would be the touching and gentle classic Mice Meeting You with Herman and Katnip.

I don’t recall any others, but my memory is mistaken, or there were shows I didn’t watch. CBS sent a release to newspapers outlining its programming plans that morning. There were Christmas cartoons on shows made for TV.

A host of Christmas-morning presents will be offered on the CBS Television Network and WHBL-TV [Columbus, Georgia] today in the form of Christmas cartoons, Christmas stories and Christmas songs. The network is presenting five and one-hall hours of daytime holiday fare starting at 8 a.m.
There's a song-filled Christmas in (Captain Kangaroo's) Treasure House, from 8 until 9 and a jolly Christmas with “Tennessee Tuxedo” at 9:30. The precocious penguin and his walrus pal Chumley cut some hilarious Christmas capers in "Tree Trimmers," a cartoon created especially for the occasion.
Those who prefer a whimsical Christmas can watch 'So Hi's Nite Before Christmas" on “Linus the Lionhearted,” which presents the loveable Chinese boy in a charming Yuletide tale at 10:30 a.m.
At 11 a.m. the cat-and-mouse team of “Tom and Jerry” take over not only to deck the halls with fun and frolic, but also to turn halls, trees, walls and Santa himself topsy-turvy.
On a more serious note, "The Mighty Mouse Playhouse" at 10 a.m. offers a poignant story that expresses the true meaning of the day. Boris Karloff narrates the award-winning cartoon, "Juggler of Our Lady," based on the classic French fairy tale, "The Juggler of Notre Dame."

There were other TV Christmas cartoons. A week before Christmas, ABC advertised an hour-long special featuring “the yuletide adventures of Hoppity Hooper, Commander McBragg and Dudley Doright.” Hoppity was involved in a four-part holiday sequence. I never had a lot of interest in the frog and the cartoon series is the only one produced by Jay Ward I stopped watching. McBragg was even less entertaining.

Newspaper listings include the generic title Christmas Cartoons with no specifics. You have to wonder if the stations got their hands on syndicate-packaged chestnuts like The Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives, the Fleischer’s Christmas Comes But Once a Year with Grampy, or public domain shorts like Iwerks’ Jack Frost, or any cartoon with a flake of snow in it. Today, whole playlists of these can be found on the internet.

While I have a strong affection for that bygone period before endless bombardment of cartoon cable channels, I admit that there are probably more animated cartoons made up to 1965 available to watch today than back then, thanks to companies of all sizes restoring them. We can only hope that continues in the new year.

To Get to the Other Side?

Why is a chicken carrying an umbrella on a frozen pond?

No, this isn’t a joke. And there isn’t really a joke in this scene from the Terrytoon The First Snow. It’s just an oddity.

The hen is run down by a tobogganing dog. Then, as it staggers out of the way, its eggs are run over by another sledding dog. They skate around (without wearing skates) in a figure 8 and the scene’s over.



Here’s an incongruous character I quite like. A giraffe sucking on a pipe?



It would seem Phil Scheib is into his Silly Symphonies mode as he gives us several original songs. Young dog-lettes hold hands and frolic around a snowman. The female chorus sings:

Building up a snowman out of snow and ice.
When we’re all finished it’ll look mighty nice.
Coal for his eyes and a carrot for his nose.
He’s all dressed up in his Sunday clothes.

Then the snowman with the usual Terry tenor voice happily warbles:

I’m all dolled up like a Christmas tree.
Look what you kids have done to me!
Let’s get together and offer in rhyme
Good old winter time!

There’s a dramatic rescue on a waterfall at the end; Scheib’s music is quite effective. The cartoon ends in song:

This little pig fell in the lake
Upon a winter’s day.
And these little doggies saved her life
Let’s shout hip-hip-hooray!

There’s cycle animation aplenty. Some characters crash through the ice into the lake but silently. The beloved Terry Splash™ hadn’t been invented yet.

The cartoon was released on January 11, 1935. The studio was still churning out a new Terrytoon every two weeks.

What'd He Say?

Barney Bear matches wits with a silent snowshoe rabbit in The Bear and the Hare, a 1948 MGM release from the Mike Lah/Preston Blair unit.

One gag has the rabbit juggling snowballs then batting them at the bear with his ears.



Barney responds. Evidently it was not a family-friendly response as the voice has been replaced with a trombone. The last word is “you.” We’ll leave it for you to look at the mouth movements of the first two frames below to figure out the first word. (Please, no foul language in the comment section in response).



Don Patterson, Ray Abrams, Irv Levine and Gil Turner are credited with animation. There’s no story credit. I had always thought Jack Cosgriff wrote for the Lah/Blair group. Cosgriff was a UC Berkeley grad who returned to MGM after the war; he had been a chief specialist for the Navy based in San Diego.

This was the second of three cartoons completed by the Lah/Blair unit. Thad Komorowski found two other shorts were assigned titles and production numbers but not completed. Producer Fred Quimby decided it was cheaper releasing propaganda cartoons from John Sutherland Productions than paying for a third unit.