Hmm...Could Be

Artie Auerbach died in 1957, but his catchphrase lives on.

Auerbach was a newspaper photographer who met a man in Bronx. When Auerbach became a radio actor, he created a Jewish character based on the man, and called the character “Kitzel.”

On the air with Jack Haley, then Al Pearce, he was given several recurring lines, including “Mmm...could be!”

Yes, cartoon fans, that’s where the line you’ve heard for years comes from.

Tex Avery was particularly fond of it. Bugs Bunny said it in a A Wild Hare (1940). You can hear it Screwball Football (1939), Holiday Highlights and Ceiling Hero (both 1940).

It also turns up at the end of The Peachy Cobbler (released by MGM in 1950), with the story by ex-Warners writer Rich Hogan. A sick, destitute cobbler gives his last crust of bread (“whole wheat”) to poor, hungry snowbirds, who turn out to be happy, little shoemaker elves who surreptitiously make shoes and boots for the man to sell.

The shoemaker (played by Daws Butler) wakes up and jitterbugs happily with his wife (to the sped-up strains of “Running Wild”). They stop. “Mama,” he says to his wife, “I wonder if them little birds had something to do with this.” Cut to the birds, putting on their shoemaker hats, giving a stereotypical palms-out shrug and say the Kitzel catchphrase.

Avery used Kitzel’s other phrase of the period—“Hmm...it’s a possibility!”—to end Blitz Wolf (MGM, 1942).

Other directors used “Could be” as well. Bob Clampett ended Slap Happy Pappy (1940) with it, and so did Bob McKimson in Rebel Rabbit (1949). I suspect both cartoons were written by Warren Foster.

Incidentally, when Auerbach brought Mr. Kitzel to the Jack Benny show in 1946, the writers decided to develop their own catchphrases, so “Could be” was abandoned. Auerbach continued to appear on the Benny show, radio and television, until his death.

Normally, I don’t like lists on this blog, but if anyone reading can add another cartoon to the list, especially from a studio like Lantz or Screen Gems, or the Snafu shorts, please leave a note in the comments.

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: A Visit to Santa

Some fine Christmas films have been made over the years. Perhaps you have some favourites.

And then there’s A Visit to Santa.

If it were a professional film it would be pretty easy to laugh at its incredible ineptness. But it seems to me that it was made by an amateur as kind of a glorified home movie to entertain family and friends, so picking on it may be unfair.

Stiff acting, a music soundtrack of someone playing a melody with one finger on an electric organ (and some basic chords), a suburban living room masquerading as Santa’s castle, an elf’s outfit that looks like someone’s mother made it, stock footage from who knows where, shots inside a department store, the list goes on. It has to be seen to be believed.

The opening credits say “Clem Williams Films presents.” This was an actual company based in Pennsylvania and was functioning as early as 1933. A story in the Pittsburgh Press in 1948 called it “the largest distributor of Religious Films and Equipment in the state” and that it was a rental outlet for movies by Cathedral Films.

The Syracuse Post-Standard, in 1989, published a feature story about movies being shown free outside an elementary school that were rented from Clem Williams, including classics like Dumbo and Bambi, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Groups could also rent highlight films of the Pittsburgh Steelers narrated by the great John Fazenda.

Also in its catalogue was 1970’s The Watermelon Man, sent by mistake to an elementary school in Cape Coral, Florida. Its racial stereotypes and profanity were not quite appropriate for the audience.

A. Clement Williams, Sr. died in Seminole, Florida, on June 27, 2001. He had moved there from Pittsburgh in 1979 and had sold his company. His obit mentioned he was married for 67 years and had been a member of Franklin-St. John’s-Trinity Masonic Lodge No. 221 in Pittsburgh for 57 years.

With that bit of background out of the way, you can watch the film below.

Jack Benny, 90 Decembers Ago

The Christmas holidays in 1934 seem to have been pretty good for Jack Benny.

Besides his radio show beaming out on the NBC Blue (WJZ) network, his musical comedy Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round (see it here) was on screens.

Jack had started out the 1934-35 radio season with a new sponsor—General Foods, makers of Jell-O. The contract must have been a comparatively good one. Radioland magazine at the end of 1933 didn’t list Jack among the top ten money earners when he was sponsored by Chevrolet. Things were different a year later, as reported by the Associated Press.

Santa Gives Radio Stars Fat Contracts
By C.E. BUTTERFIELD
NEW YORK, Dec. 20 (AP)—Santa Claus has dropped in already on many of the top-notchers of radio.
It isn’t the old gentleman’s dropping in alone that has ushered out a burst of early Christmas cheer—it’s the breath-taking contracts he’s dropped into many a prematurely hung sock or stocking.
To Eddie Cantor has gone the bulkiest gift of the lot to date. When the heavy-browed comedian returns to the air in February, he will top them all with a contract calling for $10,000 a Sunday—divided $7,000 for himself and $3,000 for needed program make up.
This figure isn’t so far above the amount due Kate Smith beginning with her new series, Christmas Eve. Altogether she will be making $7,150 per week, $5,000 for a Monday night show, $1,500 for a local station appearance and $650 for her Wednesday matinee.
The Revelers’ Quartet will rate $1,500 per microphone singing. Edwin C. Hill can figure up approximately $2,500 for four programs a week as commentator. The highest paid orchestra on the networks is declared to be the Fred Waring group at $6,000 for one program, or $10,000 for two a week.
It was in this $6,000-a-week class that Santa already has placed Will Rogers, Ed Wynn, Jack Benny, John Charles Thomas and Morton Downey. Out of his $6,000 for two programs Downey must pay the orchestra and narrator.
Santa has not done so badly by some others, too, as the following list shows:
$5,000—Phil Baker and his accordion; Rosa Ponselle, operatic soprano.
$4,500—Grace Moore, soon to start a new series; Bing Crosby and Lawrence Tibbett.
$3,500—Guy Lombardo’s Orchestra and Fred Allen.
$3,000—Roxy (S. L. Rothafel), Burns and Allen, and Joe Penner.
$2,800—Rudy Vallee.
$2,500—Helen Hayes, beginning a new series soon, and Nino Martini.
$2,000—Stoopnagle and Budd and Alexander Woollcott.
$1,200—Gertrude Niesen.

More stations continued to pick up Jack. KSTP in Minneapolis-St. Paul added his show on December 16. A few weeks earlier, his reach extended across the Pacific as he was heard on KGU in Honolulu.

A survey in December by the Cleveland Plain Dealer ranked Jack the No. 1 radio entertainer and his show as No. 3 (One Man’s Family was number one). And he continued to get fan mail. A blurb published in the Latrobe Bulletin of December 28 claimed Jack made a chart of every thousand fan letters he got. The breakdown was this:
343 requests for photos.
281 telling him that he was swell.
196 seeking charity.
72 offering advice on investments.
37 constructive criticisms.
17 offering their services as writers of humorous material.
37 wanting to know how to break into the ranks of radio comedians.
4 claiming that they were distant relatives.
11 reporting that they had heard his gags before in some way or another.

Jack’s show was on the air two nights before Christmas. Here’s a summary from the December 23 edition of the Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin.

The Christmas spirit will run wild as Jack Benny is heard over WIBA tonight at 6 o’clock, with Mary, Frank, Don, and Don Bestor’s Orchestra. Jack will receive a lot of silly present[s] from Mary, Frank and the two Dons. Nothing will surprise him, however, and Jack may even have a card or two up his sleeve. Mary has had the true Christmas spirit for about a month and has written another poem. Whether this ever reaches the microphone is highly problematical, but she’s ready for it.

Apparently Mary’s poetic muse ran wild on the show. A copy of the script has disappeared from various collections, but Kathy Fuller-Seeley points out it was recorded for posterity in this article of the same day in the Pittsburgh Press.

Mary Chimes In With Her Ode To Xmas
She’s a Bit Early But If You’re Healthy You Can Stand Her Poem
Mary Livingstone thinks it’s all right to give father applause for Christmas and let him pay the bills.
Ever since Mary broke out with her “Oh Labor Day, Labor Day,” she has been laboring under the delusion that folks wanted more of her poetry. She got by with one on Thanksgiving Day, feeling sorry for the turkey as she pushed it in the oven.
“And now,” as the announcers say, here’s Mary saying “I’m a couple of days early with my Christmas poem but what do you care as long as you’re healthy?”

CHRISTMAS
By Mary Livingstone

Xmas time arrives once more
Just as you and I expect it.
And we’re happy as of yore
‘Cause we have not been neglected.

We get stockings from our brother
And more stockings from Sis and mother,
Stockings from our friends and bosses—
We wish we had four legs like hosses.

And our boy friends—they get neckties.
Everybody gives them neckties,
Purple, brown, pink, blue and yellow.
What else can you give a fellow?

And our mothers—what do they get?
Checks for twenty, should be fifty
Or a hundred if you’re working.
It’s your mother, so be gift-y.

Now comes father, poor old daddy.
For him, what has Santa Claus?
He pays all the bills for Xmas
So we all give him applause.

So—come on, folks—get the spirit;
Do things in a great big way.
Now’s the time to give the presents.
Not on good old Labor Day.

Somehow, Jack and Mary fit in a live performance over the holidays. Jack was greeted by the mayor of Jersey City on the 28th before he and Mary and their revue hit the stage at the Stanley Theatre that evening.

The only down-side of December for Jack was his attempt at going on the legitimate stage. Producer Sam Harris had signed Jack to star in a satire written by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind called “Bring on the Girls.” It opened December 13 at Parsons’ Theatre in Hartford. Despite the big names, the play never really worked. Critics liked the first act but, despite re-writes, Kaufman and Ryskind couldn’t get the rest into shape. You can read more about the failure in this post.

As 1935 began, Jack carried on with entertainment career. It had only another 40 years to go.

"D" Stands For "Don't Get Residuals for Christmas"

“It should be an annual video classic,” decided Arlene Garber of the Citizen-News of Los Angeles 60 years ago. And she was right.

Two evenings earlier (December 6), she watched NBC’s General Electric Fantasy Hour which featured a stop-motion version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, produced by Videocraft International, which we know today as Rankin-Bass Productions.

Jay Ward saved money with runaway animation, with Gamma Productions in Mexico hired to make some of its cartoons. Videocraft saved money with runaway acting, employing Ontario actors with stage and CBC experience to voice its characters, the recording sessions supervised in Toronto by Wayne and Shuster announcer Bernard Cowan (later the narrator on Rocket Robin Hood).

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer includes some of my favourites—Carl Banas, Paul Soles, and Paul Kligman, none of whom I associate with animation, as they did many things in Canada. Also in the special is another actor—Larry D. Mann, who played Yukon Cornelius (writer Romeo Muller used Johnny Marks’ song as a starting point for his story and created a whole new world, including Cornelius).

The first time I remember Mann is from when he played Butterball in a spy send-up episode of My Favorite Martian. He did much, much more, and his career went back quite a way in Canada; he had a radio show on CHUM in Toronto in 1949 and then went into newscasting.

The Star Weekly profiled him in a feature story in its Sept. 28, 1963 issue. Ten years earlier, he and Monty Hall hosted a programme called Matinee Party, but was aiming for another job at the Mother Corp.

CBC’s MR. EVERYTHING
photostory by GIL TAYLOR and BILL MARSHALL
TORONTO
TEN YEARS ago Larry Mann tried to get a job as a TV news announcer for CBC. The producer who interviewed him said, “You’re going bald, you’re too fat and you just don’t look the type. Take my advice — forget about television and get out of show business.”
Today Mann is balder, fatter and 40. He’s also Canada’s most versatile TV and radio performer. Although Mann still hasn’t done TV news, it’s about the only thing he’s missed in his push to the top of Canada’s entertainment industry. He has a weekly TV show, Midnight Zone, for late-night Toronto viewers; he is the off-stage host of two CBC network shows, Front Page Challenge and Flashback, where his main job as “warm-up man” is to relax the audience and encourage it to applaud; he is seen, even if his versatility makes him unrecognizable, in enough character parts in CBC drama to win him awards the last three years in a row, he is heard as the “Answer Mann,” answering listeners’ questions on CBC radio’s Audio, and as the No. 1 interviewer for Countdown, a show for teenagers. Other fields in which he has built a solid reputation include school broadcasts, comedy guest spots on variety shows, playing little old ladies for films and as the catchy voice of scores of products in commercials.
Being a one-man carousel of talents has brought Larry Mann a large degree of success. A recent survey placed him in the top 10 money earners in Canadian show business, estimating his take at $35,000 a year. This means that he is often criticized for being interested more in money than the creative aspects of his craft. Says Mann, “I’m not sure I could do any of my assignments better if I cut out all the rest—and I know I wouldn’t make as much money.” The point critics miss is that everything Mann does is based on acting. There is just as much the actor in Mann the pitchman and Mann the interviewer as there is in Mann the dramatic star or Mann the comedian. They are all different roles in an all-round actor’s repertoire.
This is borne out in Mann’s lack of the entertainer’s worry about over-exposure in broadcasting. His versatility means that his audience changes from role to role and nobody really gets a chance to tire of him.
Strangely enough, the work Mann gets the biggest kick out of is his warm-up chore. “I enjoy walking out and meeting 150 people for the first time and, in half an hour, turning them into friends. It’s probably the toughest challenge I face on a regular basis and I still enjoy it after six years. I also give warm-ups credit for building up my self-confidence and teaching me a little gall.”
But there’s little likelihood that Mann has ever had a lack of gall. He joined the RCAF during World War II, planning to become a pilot. The air force didn’t agree and he ended up doing broadcasting work for the service. After the war, he was a freelance broadcaster in the eastern United States [Rochester, N.Y.], then came back to Toronto to try out for TV news. When that fell through, he stumbled into TV via children’s shows like Uncle Chichimus and Howdy Doody, over his own protests that “I’m not an actor. Honest. I’m a news announcer.”
He’s given up protesting long since and has adopted acting as part of his life. But only part. Larry Mann stresses continually that he has the greatest respect for the dedicated work of specialists who have made acting their life, “but I wouldn’t give you a quarter for their home life. I happen to have a very square approach to this business and I like very square things like taking my family to hockey games and going to the cottage. I love my work but I’m not giving up my home life for anything.”
Life in Mann’s household is not quite as zany as you would expect and that’s probably due to the stabilizing effect of his wife, Gloria. The Manns have four boys: Danny, 15; Ronny, 12: Ricky, 9, and Jeffrey Brian, 3. They’re not strikingly different from anyone else’s children, mainly because of their mother’s level-headed bringing up of a celebrity’s family and their father’s matter-of-fact introductions of stars at home.
From this attachment to his family stems Mann’s major irritation in his career. “The thing I can’t stand,” he says, “is the constant pressure to go to the United States to work. By not specializing in one aspect of performing, I make good money and I get to stay here. I like Toronto. My family likes Toronto. Why should I move?”
People in the entertainment business respect his opinions and agree that Larry Mann is unique in Canadian broadcasting. Who else can change in three hours from a polished, tuxedoed master of ceremonies to a relaxed suburbanite lying on the living room floor after a roughhouse session with his sons, looking for all the world like a beached whale?

But move, he did. Good money? You be the judge. The Toronto Star’s Roy Shields explained in his column datelined Hollywood on March 22, 1967:

Larry Mann...in a scant year and a half has become Toronto’s acting ambassador to the land of Hollywood. His only regret is that he didn’t come here 10 years ago. The very idea of so much money lying around for so long, waiting for someone like himself to pick it up, touches a nerve in him. In his first year in Hollywood he made $80,000 as a character actor, nearly triple his earnings in Toronto where he did everything from voices in commercials to warming up studio audiences prior to the taping of TV shows.[...]
Mann made the jump to Hollywood in July 15 when a new theatre was due to open on Mount Pleasant Rd. and Mann was offered an acting assignment in it. “They phoned me and said they pay me $125 a week,” Mann recalled. “I put down the receiver and said to Gloria, ‘well, honey, that’s it I’ve reached the top.’ Then I picked up the phone again and called (director) Norman Jewison in Hollywood. He said he’d introduce me to an agent.
“So I flew down and met Wilt Melnick. We fell in love and were married. He’s a great guy, not at all like the usual image of a Hollywood agent. He has never once called me ‘Lar baby,’ ‘sweetheart,’ or told me to ‘go get ‘em tiger’.”
Three days later Mann called his wife and told her to put their house up for sale, even though they had spent loving care on it for years, making it into their home for a lifetime. “But,” says Mann, “I had already decided California looked like a nicer place to be unemployed.”
Within a week of his arrival in Hollywood. Mann was given a role in Ben Casey. His training and vast experience at the CBC opened doors for him everywhere.

While Mann was a regular on NBC’s Accidental Family (originally named Everywhere a Chick, Chick), he wasn’t quite through with Canada. He appeared as an office boss in a series of telephone commercials across the country in the ‘80s. And in the late 1970s, he had a weekly role in the Toronto-filmed Police Surgeon. Clyde Gilmour, known best in Canada for his national CBC music show in the 1970s, was also a columnist for the Star. He talked to Mann about his career, but the interview bypasses any mention of animation.

Here’s a portion, published July 20, 1974.

“I mainly played baddies for a long time on TV in Hollywood—gamblers, Mafia men, swindlers, con-men, hired killers, you name it.[...]
For example, just recently the Canadian actor depicted a shady evangelist in Black Eye, a crime melodrama starring Fred Williamson. Mann’s character wound up shot to death in that one, a fate that has often overtaken him. He estimates he has died violently at least 80 times in his bad-guy roles.
“I have been beaten to death, kicked to death, strangled, thrown off cliffs, trapped in burning cars, punctured to death with darts, dynamited, and fed into a pool of hungry piranhas. Once I was ever spun to death, which isn’t easy. They strapped me down on a circular table and then electrically rotated it until I was spinning like a top, faster than the eye could see. A nasty way to go.”
Mann said his place often used to be taken by a look-alike stuntman double in perilous scenes. But he does all his own stuff in Police Surgeon.
“Some of it looks risky, and I get by without a double.”
His first full-screen movie role after going to Hollywood was that of a music publisher in The Singing Nun, starring Debbie Reynolds. That, in fact, is by no means the non-criminal he has played, although it’s often the bad guy parts that people remember.
In Caprice, with Doris Day, Richard Harris and Ray Walston, Mann portrayed a Russian Interpol agent stationed in Paris. He was “the village idiot” in Norman Jewison’s The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming. In The Appaloosa, he was Marlon Brando’s priest. In Angel in My Pocket, he was Andy Griffith’s bishop.
“For a special reason,” said Mann with a grin, “I enjoy playing clergymen.
Every time I do, I receive a nice deadpan letter of congratulation from my old friend Norman Gallagher, the Roman Catholic bishop of Thunder Bay. I once served with him—with no distinction whatsoever—in the city of Toronto Squadron 400, Royal Canadian Air Force. If I play a bishop, he addresses me by that rank.
“But I didn’t hear from him at all after I played the ultimate role of God in a CBC stage radio play a long time ago. Frankly, since then everything has been a bit of a comedown.” [...]
Last year he turned down the offer to join the cast of Busting, a crime comedy-drama staffing Elliott Gould and Robert Blake as Los Angeles vice-squad cops. Mann’s role would have been that of a lecherous dentist [Yowp note: no word if his name was “Hermey”] who has intercourse with a call-girl in his dental chair.
The Canadian’s name is always Larry D. Mann in casting credits, although the middle initial is fictitious. This is because there already was a Lawrence Mann on the Screen Actors Guild rollcall when Larry arrived in Hollywood. He chose the central D. in memory of his father-in-law, David Kochberg.
“But get this,” said Larry D. Mann with an air of incredulity, “Lawrence Mann’s REAL name is Leslie Scruggs. Why, that’s a marvellous name, especially in westerns. Can you imagine the guy actually deciding to change it? Not me. I’d have stayed good old Leslie Scruggs forever.”

As for Mann’s feelings about Rudolph, we’ll snip a piece of a feature story on Christmas television Christmas specials with a Canadian connection. It was published in the Ottawa Citizen on November 28, 1998.

There’s no gold in them thar’ reruns: Throughout the hour-long Rudolph, Yukon Cornelius is constantly sinking his prospector’s pick into bits of rock, sampling the assays with his tongue, and pronouncing dejectedly, “Nothin’.” Larry Mann, who voiced Cornelius as well as six other characters in the film, knows the feeling.
For more than 30 years, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer has been a TV staple in scores of countries around the world. And for more than 30 years, Mann and the other Canadians whose voice characterizations provide at least half the charm of the film have not seen a penny in residuals.
A miffed Mann says he figures that’s why Rankin/Bass came north in the first place; it would be easier to stiff Canadian actors. Mann says he once phoned Rankin/Bass looking for a plum from their Christmas pudding, but instead got the heave-ho-ho-ho.
“Now, whenever I see that show, I wince,” says Mann from his home in Los Angeles.
Sprinkle with Canadians, then bring to a Burl: Burl Ives, the late balladeer and Oscar-winning actor who voiced the narrator, Sam the Snowman, was not part of the original production, according to Mann. NBC (the series’ original broadcaster) wanted a name star in the credits. So Rankin,Bass axed several songs that had been originally sung by Mann and others, and handed them over to Ives in separately produced segments that were appended to the original story.

If Mann thought Canadian voice actors were the only ones losing out on cash, he should have talked to Jean Vander Pyl. She sighed in 1994 if she got residuals from The Flintstones, she would own San Clemente instead of live in it.

Mann died in Los Angeles on January 6, 2014 at age 91. The lead line in the Associated Press obit mentioned his best-known role, one he performed once but has been seen by children for 60 years every December.

Santa in Candyland

Cartoon studios didn’t waste time when Walt Disney’s exclusive contract to use full Technicolor in theatrical animation expired on September 1, 1935. A story in Variety dated the previous May 28 said Leon Schlesinger and Max Fleischer had signed deals to make three-tint cartoons, while “Radio” (i.e., Van Beuren) and Charles Mintz were almost signed to do the same.

Mintz had begun his version of Disney’s Silly Symphonies in 1934 with the Color Rhapsodies in two-component Technicolor. Now the artists at the Screen Gems studio could try to match Disney, not only in elaborate animation, but in hues.

Bon Bon Parade was officially released on December 5. Several print stories at the time said it was perfect for the holiday season, with the plot revolving a poor child being granted his wish to go to Candyland. It’s not really a Christmas cartoon, despite the appearance of Santa and his reindeer, and Joe De Nat using “Jingle Bells” on the soundtrack; the Easter Bunny and a 4th of July scenario also appear.

St. Nick is made of gelatin.



The star of the cartoon isn’t the child or Santa Claus. It’s Technicolor. Colours constantly change and director Manny Gould uses as many as he can. Balls are shot into the air from a cannon, explode and fall. The colours change with each explosion.



One of the balls evidently thinks it’s in the Bronx instead of Candyland. It gives the local cheer, transitioning from blue to purple to red, then exploding again.



At the time of the original release, trade papers rated the cartoon “splendid” and “excellent.” But that’s because those dazzling colours (outside of Disney) were new on the screen. The novelty, of course, eventually wore off, and when the cartoon was re-released in the late 1940s, The Film Daily rated it “fair.”

Strip away the colours, and the problem with the cartoon is easy to see. There’s no story. After the kid is shrunken and seemingly imprisoned forever in Candyland, it’s just what the title says—a parade of things made out of candy to a male chorus singing about it (Ben Harrison is credited with the story). The idea of candy-as-objects wasn’t original, even during the original release.

Still, the use of colour and the effects animation are ambitious, and a restored version of the short is worth a look. A shame only Gould is credited.

Fashionable Fur Filtched

A familiar gag ends Tex Avery’s Christmas cartoon One Ham’s Family (released nowhere near Christmas in 1943). There’s been a violent fight off-screen between the Mean Widdle Pig and the Big bad Wolf disguised as Santa. The noise awakens Junior’s parents who come downstairs to investigate and discover a huge mess. But they forget about it when Junior offers his mother a Christmas present.



Mother Pig opens the parcel. “A fur coat!”



Mother models the fur, and reveals a bandaged tail—the same bandaged tail the wolf had before the fight. “Why, this coat is just what I need,” she exclaims.



The half-naked wolf jumps into the scene, grabs his fur and says “You and me both, sister.” The wolf is a sound-alike for radio’s Great Gildersleeve, and turns to the audience makes out with the Gildersleeve laugh.



With that he bounds out of the pig home carrying his fur.



He reaches in and slams the door shut. Avery’s shot moves quickly in on the door so we can easily see the sign gag to end the short.



Avery uses the “corny” routine later in Red Hot Riding Hood and Swing Shift Cinderella (complete with a cornstalk).

Junior was inspired by Red Skelton’s Mean Widdle Kid character on radio, but he also has some Bugs Bunny in him by telling the audience “I bang and crash him like this all through the picture.” And then there’s the pie-baking scene that’s similar to Bugs’ cake-baking sequence in Rabbit Hood some years later.

Kent Rogers is the Skelton pig and the Gildersleeve wolf. Pinto Colvig does a combination of Disney’s Practical Pig and Andy Devine as the father and Sara Berner is the fur-less mother.

Mister Rogers

The world would be a better place if we listened to Fred Rogers.

He may have been the kindest, calmest man in children’s television programming. He always came across as trust-worthy and caring.

Before his long run on PBS (starting in the network’s NET days, with the house logo I always liked), he was on the CBC. The Mother Corp specialised in low-key children’s shows in those days. There was The Friendly Giant. There was Chez Helene. A little more boisterous was Razzle Dazzle with Howard the Turtle. And later came Mr. Dressup.

The CBC version was called Misterogers. It debuted on October 15, 1962 (check your local listings for time). It appears the network sent out a news release because I’ve found the same unbylined story in several Canadian newspapers days before the first airing.

Fred Rogers, of CBC-TV’s Misterogers puppet show for children, makes no attempt to hide himself or his lip movements as he talks for puppets on the TV screen.
It is his philosophy that children should not be fooled, even though his program is set in a fantasy neighborhood where most of the neighbors are puppets.
“From the beginning, I want young viewers to know that this is a land of make believe. We are all playing. The human link helps children put the fantasy in its proper perspective, yet they still believe in the fantasy characters,” he says.
His show, Misterogers, will be seen Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 2:30 p.m. beginning Oct. 15 on the CBC-TV network.
Most of the “neighbors” are puppets, except for Rogers and a live guest who assumes a neighborhood character role.
Misterogers evolved from a program, called Children’s Corner Rogers had in Pittsburgh for seven years. He introduced his first puppet, a tiger named Daniel. “The tiger was so warmly received by viewers,” says Rogers, “I decided to increase my puppet population, and it’s been growing ever since.”
Puppet characters appearing in Misterogers include King Friday XIII, Daniel Striped Tiger, a family of talking furniture, Lawrence Light and his wife Lydia Lam-Light, Philodendron and his wife Rhoda, his talking gramophone, and a book worm that lives in an encyclopedia.
Other neighborhood characters popping in and out of the series include Edgar Cook, Lady Elain Fairchilde and her husband Cornflake S. Pecially, X Owl, Henrietta Pussycat, Nine Nice Mice, and Grandpere who lives in the Eiffel Tower.
Fred Rogers started composing music even before he mastered his multiplication tables. He received his Bachelor of Music degree from Rollins College, Florida, and composes all the music for his show as well as writing the lyrics and script.

Rogers’ stay in Canada was short. He quit the CBC and returned to Pittsburgh in 1964, and the show went off the air in July. The Canadian network wasn’t through with him. The Montreal Star of March 17, 1965 reported he was now part of the Canadian School Telecasts that aired weekdays starting at 10 a.m. Rogers evidently shot the episodes in Pittsburgh. It was a short run, the Gazette reported the show would be on only four more weeks. In the meantime, the CBC had been syndicating the show in the United States starting in 1964.

Back in the States, the June 23, 1965 edition of the Pittsburgh Press reported Misterogers’ Sunday Show would air for a half hour on WTAE, Channel 4, as of Sept. 19, while a ten-minute Monday through Friday version would begin Nov. 15. Judging by newspaper ads, the Joseph Horne Co. paid costs to air them. Whether these were old CBC broadcasts, or new ones filmed in the U.S., or a combination of both, is unclear.

Rogers told TV Guide in September 1968 the show ran out of production money in summer 1966. American backers stepped in. On November 21, 1966, he returned to WQED, Channel 13 in Pittsburgh, with a half-hour Misterogers’ Neighborhood, originally seen at noon and 4:30, as Emilie Brontesaurus brought a lion cub to visit with Mr. Rogers. The Joseph Horne Co. took out an almost full-page newspaper ad to herald the show. Along the way, the Sears, Roebuck Foundation awarded him a $150,000 grant (then another in August 1968) and the Neighborhood was seen on WGBH in Boston and other NET stations.

This profile was published in newspapers beginning December 14, 1967.

World of Children Shown On Unique TV
By RUDY CERNKOVIC
PITTSBURGH (UPI)—Fred Rogers slipped unobtrusively into a rear seat of a classroom in a Pittsburgh elementary school. His presence did not go unnoticed long.
A boy sitting nearby recognized him as the conductor of “Misterogers’ Neighborhood,” a children’s program shown five days a week over WQED, the first community-supported educational television channel in the United States.
“My teddy bear lost his ear when I put him in the washer,” the boy later told Rogers.
“Sometimes that happens with toys,” Rogers said. “Did your mother sew it back on? You can do things like that to toys, and sometimes doctors can do it for people.”
Studies Children, Environment
The visit to the school was a routine event in Rogers’ study of children and their environment.
“Misterogers’ Neighborhood” is a creation of a mind that under stands the special world of children. The program deals with everyday situations and problems children face—the doll that breaks, fear of the dark, the arrival of a new baby, going to a hospital or taking a bath.
Rogers, tall, lean and soft spoken, believes television is an intimate medium, which can deal with the inner needs of children. To help children learn about their world, he seeks to create a real atmosphere which they can recognize and relate to their lives.
“We try to learn from children,” he said. “We don’t super-impose our own ideas upon them. We treat them with respect, because they are individuals who are growing up. We try to give them on our program an environment in which they can feel accepted as they are. Once accepted, they can begin to grow.”
Communication Important
“We are serious about communicating with children, it’s a real mission with us.
“We divide reality from make believe. We understand childhood fantasy and deal with it in a real way. In the neighborhood of make believe, everything is possible.
Rogers says many children’s television programs today appall him.
“They convey an excess of violence, as well as stifle the child’s imagination by forcing him into the role of a passive, fearing spectatator,” he said. “So few programs really reach into the child’s world.
“The first thing I’ve done in preparing children’s programming is to listen with my ears and eyes, even with my nose, to know what is appropriate for them.
“I’m committed to doing good children’s programs, working and playing with them face to face and then building programs and writing songs and stories for them. I don’t want anything else.”
Puppets Participate
There are several puppet characters in “Misterogers’ Neighborhood.” King Friday the 13th is very proper and pompous. Daniel, a striped tiger, who is tender and tame, lives in a clock. Grandpere is a warm, human character who gives the right advice.
The set for the show includes a living room and a kitchen. “Most families, regardless of how rich or how poor, have kitchens, and children can associate their environment with the program,” he said.
At present the show is taped for viewings in 19 cities and is highly popular in Boston where 9,000 people waited in line last year to greet Rogers on a personal appearance.
Currently, Rogers is preparing a new series of programs for National Educational Television (NET) which will be beamed over 120 stations beginning next February.
The father of two, Rogers is an ordained minister of the United Presbyterian Church. He earned a degree in music at Rollins College in Florida.
In preparing his programs, Rogers consults with Dr. Margaret McFarland, associate professor of psychology of the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine.
“Young people tend to respond to ‘Misterogers Neighborhood’ as though it were an interaction between themselves and Rogers,” she said.

The TV Guide article mentioned above concludes:

For Rogers, his life-long goal to “create an atmosphere where children are accepted and allowed to grow” has gained national attention, with the results beginning to show. As one mother put it: “When Misterogers looks out from the television screen and says, ‘You're a very special person and I like you just the way you are,’ my little boy, who has big ears, glasses and an unruly cowlick, just beams. He accepts himself and feels stronger for it.”

Considering the bullying and bigotry in the world, nothing better could be said to an innocent and doubting child than “You’re not worthless.”

Fred Rogers is gone, but it’s a message that is needed today.

Bedtime for Sniffles Backgrounds

Bedtime For Sniffles has a low-key charm that makes it one of Chuck Jones’ early directoral successes.

The story is simple and logical, and Sniffles’ behaviour is natural and understandable. The plot is that Sniffles decides to wait up for the arrival of Santa Claus but, as time passes, he becomes sleepy.

The cartoon was released about a month before Christmas 1940. At that time, Paul Julian was responsible for Jones’ backgrounds with John McGrew providing scenic layouts. They try to avoid stagey settings. Here’s an overhead shot.



During 1939 and into 1940, Rich Hogan and Dave Monahan got alternating story credits on Jones’ cartoons, with Bob Givens’ name added in the rotation between them several times. Hogan has the screen credit in this cartoon, but you can see Julian managed to put Monahan’s name into the cartoon. (Monahan moved into the Freleng unit credit rotation before going into the service in World War Two).

Shots looking up and down at Sniffles' radio.



A pun in the background, logical for the Sniffles home.



McGrew and Julian put this background scene on an angle.



Cartoon Rule No. 5214 says “Things inside a mouse home must have been repurposed from elsewhere.” Thus, we get eyedroppers as hot and cold water taps and a hollowed-out walnut shell as a garbage can. Jerry of “Tom and” and, later, Pixie and Dixie did this all the time, where a thimble would be a bedside table, that kind of thing.

Here’s a lovely shot that Jones pans left to right. The bed is made from an Acme comb, and is on an overlay. There are punny college pennants. You can click on it (and any pictures on the blog) to enlarge it.



The final shot is a pan to a window. The window frame is on an overlay, allowing the artist to animate Santa and his reindeer in silhouette to come into the picture to end the cartoon, as the Sportsmen Quartet sings “Joy to the World.”



There always has to be a Grinch or Scrooge out there. The anonymous manager of the Park Theatre in North Vernon, Indiana opined to the Motion Picture Herald of Dec. 7, 1940: “Merrie Melodies—One of the poorest in this series of cartoons. Very appropriate for Christmas season, however.”

Well, I’m neither a Sniffles nor Christmas nor deliberately-paced early-Jones aficionado, but this is a well-made, gentle short that holds up, even today.