Tralfaz

He Didn’t Hate Dogs

2012-03-07T12:03:00.001-08:00

W.C. Fields was one of filmdom’s most talented and iconoclastic stars. His movies were little more than short comedy scenes linked together by a pretty bare plot—“It’s a Gift” (1934) is probably my favourite. Fields was a tremendous writer as well. The book W.C. Fields by Himself contains his detailed outlines for a number of his movies, all of them better than what ended up on the screen after tinkering by higher-ups at whichever studio he happened to be working (the book also features his blunt letters to the studio giving his opinion about the tinkering).

Fields is quoted as saying “Anyone who hates dogs and kids can’t be all bad.” Apparently, his dislike was all a put-on. Sure, he poured gin into scene-stealing Baby Leroy’s milk, which unexpectedly stopped production on one of their movies until the youngster stopped staggering around. But that was just for fun. He was, by all stories, kind and friendly to young Freddie Bartholomew when the two made “David Copperfield” (1935).

And it seems he liked dogs, too. At least, he purported to in this United Press story from 1935.

W. C. Fields Is Just the Man To Reform Drunken Canine
By Virginia MacPherson
HOLLYWOOD, Oct. 26 (UP) — Bulbous-nosed W. C. Fields today offered a congenial home to Pepe, the dog drunk who gets the blind staggers on muscatel, and said he’d “reform” him from a wine to a martini hound.
“I’m a martini man, pure and simple,” drawled the comedian who uses quart jars for cocktail glasses. “And any dog that drinks with me can’t drink wine.”
Fields said he read about Pepe in the newspapers after police picked him up as a confirmed wino who was using alcoholic barks to tip off his human friends that the cops were approaching.
“I understand this dog needs a good home,” the neon-nosed actor added, “Well, I do, too. If this canine will meet me halfway, we can make a deal.”
Friends said he was being .kicked out of his famulous house, which has a billiard-table in the middle of the living room and a portable refrigerator well stocked with liquids. It’s mounted on wheels 30 he always has a drink handy when he gets thirsty.
Pepe and I could hunt .for a home together,” Fields said. Seems my lease on this place has expired—or something.”
His secretary reminded him that Pepe was undergoing scientific treatment of chronic alcoholism.
“I’ll breathe on him,” Fields declared. “That’ll cure the cur.”
Fields said he’d like to go down to the animal shelter, where Pepe was recovering from a hangover, but didn’t have time.
“I’m working on my notes for a temperance lecture I have to give soon,” he wheezed, reaching for the quart jar. “And tonight my writers are coming to work on a radio script.”
As soon as he’s kicked out of his house he’s moving into Las Encinas sanitarium in Pasadena, Calif.
“Going over for a short cure,” Fields grinned. “It’s the only place I can find to live for a while. Pepe might as well come along to keep me company.
The police booked Pepe yesterday when they found him staggering around Los Angeles streets. It wasn't the first time, either.
They picked him up a month ago, lapping wine from an old tomato can and barking an alarm to two-legged friends who were already five or six tomato cans ahead of him.
That time his friends sobered up and bailed him out with a dog license.
When police chased him again yesterday Pepe fell flat on his face in a drunken stupor.
“A condition I understand perfectly,” commented Fields. “This mutt is a dog after my own heart.”
Fields hasn't gone to the dogs, yet, he added. But in the case of Pepe he’s willing to make an exception.

While Fields’ quotes make this a light story, it really was sad. And I don’t mean the story of the alcoholic dog. Fields himself was on the losing end of his battle with the bottle, and the sanitarium mentioned in the story is where Fields went to live until he died 14 months later on Christmas Day, 1946.

Fields left behind some great movies. Audiences couldn’t help but love him. He played a man who just wanted to enjoy life but met with unfairness and stupidity, two things the average viewer can still identify with. It made his triumph (such as at the end of “It’s a Gift”) all that much better.

Like many ex-vaudevillians, Fields made short films before going into features. You can watch three of them cobbled together below.

Daffy Duck Hunt Takes

2012-03-06T08:38:00.001-08:00

Bob McKimson is notoriously known for “calming down” his animators once he became a director at Warner Bros. in the ‘40s. McKimson had been handed animators from the Bob Clampett unit, whose drawings were the least calm of any at the studio. After all, McKimson’s kind of animation involved intricate acting and that’s what he wanted out of his animators, though he also seems to have been obsessed with action in perspective just for the sake of it.

Still, the spirit of Clampett occasionally shone through. “Daffy Duck Hunt” (1949) contains a few takes that would be right at home in a Clampett cartoon, even with the absence of Clampett’s most outrageous animator, Rod Scribner.

Manny Gould, John Carey, Chuck McKimson and Phil DeLara were the credited animators here. Gould left the studio after a few more cartoons and the remainder were all immersed in the comic book industry within a few years.

The cartoon also features a couple of scenes of heads poking toward, and filling, the camera, with arms thrashing around. McKimson seemed to love this kind of stuff and had Gould do it in this cartoon, according to copies of studio records in the hands of Thad Komorowski. That phase seems to have lasted as long as McKimson had animators who could handle it.

Wags To Riches Opening

2012-03-05T08:12:00.003-08:00

The MGM milking stool must have appeared at the story meeting for ‘Wags to Riches’ (released in 1949). Tex Avery and writers Jack Cosgriff and Rich Hogan milked just about all they could out of the opening sequence, where the estate executor (played by Pat McGeehan) lists all the attributes of the dog that will inherit the estate of his late master.

Naturally, the over-confident Spike is smoking on a cigar while Droopy just sits immobile with his usual sad expression. Spike then acts out the attributes while the executor reads them.

Good-natured.

Smart.

Talented.

Clean-Minded,

But an eye for beauty.

Sober,

But one of the boys.

A good scout,

But brave as the Knights of Olde.

Avery varies the animation. The juggling and horse-riding (four drawings) are on ones, the staggering and blackboard-writing are on twos and there are a few static drawings to allow the word-gag to sink in.

Bob Cannon, Walt Clinton and Grant Simmons also have animation credits on this, but another name is buried in the cartoon as an inside gag.

The Will bears the name of Bill Higgins, who was in Avery’s unit at the time; an assistant animator, I suspect. I don’t recall seeing his name credited on any cartoons.

They Had Two Shows

2012-03-04T00:33:00.008-08:00

One of countless minor running gags on Jack Benny’s show was that Dennis Day had two shows. Beginning in 1946, he starred in ‘A Day in the Life of Dennis Day.’ But Dennis wasn’t the only Benny supporting player to get his own starring sitcom that year. So did bandleader Phil Harris. And so did the Man of a Thousand Voices, Mel Blanc.

Ask old-time radio fans which is the best of the lot, and they’ll likely pick Harris. He had a fairly well-defined character and excellent supporting players in Elliott Lewis and Walter Tetley. Day’s show ran for a number of seasons while Blanc was off the air by the following summer.

1946 also marked the debut of New York Herald-Tribune critic John Crosby. He reviewed all three of the new shows and found them all lacking. Let’s look at what he had to say.

‘The Mel Blanc Show’ debuted September 3, 1946. The following May 17, Colgate-Palmolive announced it was withdrawing its sponsoring ship on June 24. The review is from September 21th.

Radio Review
A VOICE GETS A PROGRAM
By JOHN CROSBY
Mel Blanc could only have happened in the last two decades, of the 20th century. In the 19th century, he would perhaps have been a ghost writer. Today, with the decline in popularity of the printed word and the simultaneous rise of the radio and the movies, he is a ghost voice. The requirements for a ghost voice are about the same as those for a ghost writer. You must have great assimilative powers, enormous versatility but no fixed personality.
Though you may never have heard of Mel Blanc you have unquestionably heard his voice. Out of his skilled larynx have come the voices of the train announcer on the Jack Benny program, Pedro on the Judy Canova show, Hubert Peabody on the Jack Carson program and Bugs Bunny and Porky the pig in the animated movie cartoons. He was also Private Snafu in those Army training films and did more performances for the Armed Forces Radio Service than anyone else.
After supporting virtually everyone in prominence in radio, Mr. Blanc now has his own program (CBS, 7:30 p.m., Tuesdays) in which he operates a fix-it shop. (“You bend it—we mend it.”) I’m pleased to see Mr. Blanc break into the big time but I advise him to hang on to his other contracts.
PERSONALITY LACKING
Mr. Blanc has thrown himself so wholeheartedly into the portrayal of Porky the Pig and his other voice characterizations that he doesn’t seem to have any personality of his own. He reminded me of a certain great actress who was seated at dinner one night next to a producer I know. The next day the producer complained that the lady seemed to have no personality and employed instead bits and pieces from her various stage roles.
“During the soup course, she was the Duchess of Malfi,” he said. “When we got to the filet mignon, she’d become Candida. For desert she played one of those cockney guttersnipes.”
It was a magnificent performance, he said, but he suffered from acute indigestion for three days.
In addition to schizophrenia the Mel Blanc program is afflicted by most of the cliches of radio comedy. As a fixiteer, Blanc is a sort of helpless pawn of society, whom I wouldn't trust with an electric toaster. He has a girl named Betty who is just everyone's kid sister. Somewhere along the way the night I listened, he was assaulted by a burlesque queen named Fifi.
VOCAL CHESS GAME
“Come on, sugar boy,” is Fifi’s approach to the male sex. In other words, the Mae West gambit.
“Ba hup ba hup ba hup,” stutters the male in question, which is known as the Bert Lahr return to the Mae West gambit.
“We’re all alone and after all you’re a man and I’m a woman,” was Fifi’s next move. That play is optional. Some students of this pastime prefer “Come up and see me sometime” or even “Beulah, peel me a grape.” Frankly, I’m not qualified to express a preference one way or the other. I haven’t seen a burlesque show since 1931 and I have only the dimmest recollection of what they’re like. Maybe burlesque queens act that way.
Later on, Mr. Blanc tangles with an efficiency expert who messes up his fixit shop in what sounded like one of Bert Lahr’s old revue sketches. Among the other worn characters on this program is Uncle Rupert who has all the characteristics of Uncle Amos in the comic strips and talks like the Great Gildersleeve.
“Look at the cigar butt on the floor, Uncle Rupert. That’s yours,” says Blanc sternly.
“No, you saw it first,” says Uncle Rupert genially.
I don’t object to a certain amount of kleptomania in radio shows but the Mel Blanc program has much too much of it. The authors have tried to cram too many old ideas in one half hour instead of being content with just one or two. About all I can say for the show is that it’s good-natured and that the sound effects were wonderful.

The F.W. Fitch Company had sponsored two shows in the 1945 radio season, one being a Sunday night musical show called ‘The Fitch Bandwagon’ that NBC tried cancelling before the season began. After the season began, the sponsor doesn’t appear to have been happy. A check of its magazine ads shows Dick Powell was moved from ‘Rogue’s Gallery’ during the season to front the ‘Bandwagon.’ The following year, Fitch went a different direction, and Phil Harris and Alice Faye were signed to do a domestic sitcom, and sing a couple of songs over the music of Walter Scharf. It debuted September 22, 1946. Critic Crosby found it a little too domestic for his liking. The Faye-Harris review is from October 5th.

Radio Review
PHIL HARRISES AT HOME
By JOHN CROSBY
If the domestic felicity of Phil Harris, his wife, Alice Faye, and their daughter, whom they refer to as Baby Alice, as presented in a new comedy series (NBC, 4:30 p m. Sundays) is a reasonably accurate portrayal of what goes on after dark in Hollywood, we've all been grossly misinformed by the movie magazines.
I was under the impression, gained largely from a national movie magazine, that the movie folk spent most of their evenings at immense parties where they wore funny clothes and threw one another into the swimming pool. According to this new and intensely conjugal radio program it isn’t like that at all.
In the new series, Harris kissed Mrs. Harris with a great deal of noisy enjoyment about 12 times.
Virtually every line exchanged between this devoted couple ended with the words “lover,”
“baby” or “honey.” Harris favored “honey” almost exclusively though Miss Faye used all three impartially. “You ain’t givin’ honey,” murmured Phil after one of the early kisses. So they tried it again.
This marital concupiscence so stimulated Miss Faye that she sang “They Say It’s Wonderful.”
"Oh, honey, it’s wonderful,” breathed Harris.
"Look honey, something awful has happened," exclaimed Miss Faye, getting the plot into motion.
BREAKING THE ICE
She explained that, in a moment of flagrant carelessness, she had run over Ingrid, Baby Alice’s deeply beloved doll, and smashed it to bits. The task of breaking this news or somehow talking their way out of it was turned over to the man of the house. Hams shouldered the responsibility and went looking for Baby Alice, who was in the back yard making mud pies.
“Hello, Baby Alice,” he said carefully
“Hello Daddy.”
After beating around the bush a bit, Daddy told Baby Alice her dollie had fallen sick and had gone to the hospital. “When Ingrid comes home from the hospital, will she have a little dollie?” inquired Baby Alice.
“Why . . . no.”
“Well, when Mummy goes to the hospital . . .”
“That’s not the same thing,” cried the desperate father.
The crisis was averted only temporarily. Baby Alice insisted on talking to her dollie in the hospital. A subterfuge was arranged but the clever child detected almost immediately that she wasn't talking to the nurse at the hospital but to Mummy on the upstairs extension.
BIG PROBLEM UNSOLVED
The scene switched to dinner which Miss Faye apparently cooked and served with her own hands (Don't worry. They’re probably heavily insured). From the grunts of enjoyment emitted by Harris it must have been quite a feed. But the problem of Ingrid still remained, and after dinner Mr. and Mrs. Harris repaired with heavy hearts to the nursery, where a child’s music box played softly in the background.
“How are my little girls tonight?” asked Miss Faye. (Don’t ask me how that plural crept in. I don’t know).
“Fine, Mummy,” said Baby Alice.
To postpone the news about Ingrid just a moment longer, Harris told the story of Jack and the Beanstalk with minor variations, though nothing that would upset any modern child. After that the deed couldn’t be postponed any longer.
“Baby, I have a confession to make,” said Harris “Ingrid, your little dollie, is not in the hospital.”
SHE’S SOME KID
“I know,” said the child casually. “I just didn’t want Mummy to feel badly.”
“Awwwww,” said Alice, deeply moved.
“That’s my sweet little girl,” cried Phil, overwhelmed.
“Good night, Mummy! Good night, Daddy!”
“Good night, you little rascal you!”
That was about all. Alice and Phil, each busy with his or her separate thoughts, returned to the flickering fireplace. Alice, knowing full well what the answer would be asked Phil how he would like to spend the evening.
“I’d just like to sit here with you,” replied her husband. “Let's get cozy.”
There was the sound of a lingering kiss, the first one in 15 minutes, and the music rose to a throbbing crescendo.
Has anyone got a handkerchief?

Colgate-Palmolive announced in July 1946 it was replacing Bob Burns with Dennis Day, who debuted October 3, 1946. The company maintained sponsorship of his show into the early ‘50s. It’s interesting Crosby’s review of November 12th compares Day to non-singing, non-mimicking Alan Young, who was on the air for rival Bristol-Myers, but it was for good reason.

Radio Review
Innocence Their Forte
By JOHN CROSBY
Somewhere in the first minutes of the new Dennis program (NBC, 6:30 p.m., Thursdays), Day, who works in the drugstore in Weaverville, gets the rat poison mixed up with Mrs. Anderson’s cough medicine.
“Which one will make me stop coughing?” asks Mrs. Anderson.
“They both will,” say Day.
“Young man, I never expected to see such stupidity in this store.”
“You couldn't help it. I’m here all the time.”
Dennis Day is, of course, that nice, under-paid tenor who has been pushed around these many years on the Jack Benny program. From the scrap of dialogue above, you’ll observe he hasn’t changed a great deal on his new program. (Incidentally, the word “new” is used in the sense that anything less than five years old on the radio is new. Mr. Day has been around for some time.)
PATTERN IS RIGID
"A Day In the Life of Dennis Day," a title which I suppose was inevitable, follows a pattern as rigid as the Greek unities and almost as old. Mr. Day plays the part of a dewy-eyed, open-hearted young man whose innocence perpetually gets him into trouble, something like the Victorian heroines of yore, though naturally the trouble is of a different nature. The same formula is used with varying success on the Alan Young show, the Eddie Bracken show and a number of other radio series whose names I can’t at the moment recall.
Assisting Mr. Day into and out of his difficulties are Mr. Willoughby, the druggist; Mrs. Anderson, the strong-willed mother of Dennis’ girl; her weak-kneed husband, and a villain named Victor. The last time I paid attention, Dennis was involved in trying to get a room in Mrs. Anderson's boarding-house. After that rat poison incident, Mrs. Anderson was naturally reluctant to have him around. Somehow Dennis got talked into climbing a ladder into Mrs. Anderson’s room, leading to one of those P. G. Wodehouse situations of misrepresented identity. Mrs. Anderson mistakes him for a burglar and tries to rouse her husband to combat.
COMEDY SAMPLE
“Let’s not be hasty, dear,” says that unfortunate. “He may be armed.”
“Oh, no, sir!” says Dennis.
“You stay out of this,” snaps the husband.
That's a fair sample of the comedy which is intermittently funny. Besides a pretty flair for comedy, Day has a couple of other assets. One is a knack for imitations, which is worked into the script as often as is decently possible, and the other is a pleasant tenor voice, a refreshing change from all the baritones on the air.
Like all these programs, the Day show could stand a touch of tartness to counter-balance all that sweetness and light. The writers ought to take a trip out to Weaverville sometime and meet some of the unpleasant people like old Ben, the sourpuss who runs the store, or Harrigan, the bartender who hates everybody.
If you listen closely, you can detect about one degree of difference between the Alan Young show (NBC 8:30 p.m., Fridays) and the Day show. Mr. Young got there fast and his program is tuned a little more sharply. Its nonsense is more outrageous than the Day program and consequently funnier. It also boasts the presence of Herbert [sic] Updike III, a Harvard snob, with an intense distaste for the lower classes.
GEE WHIZZ SCHOOL
“Alan, hand the butler your hat and coat so he can boil them,” he’s likely to say. “I want you to meet Mother and Dad. They’re out in the garden letting the orchids smell them.”
Young, one of the younger and more promising comedians in radio, adheres to the “Gee whizz” school of comedy and is just as guileless as Day or any of the rest of those young men. He’s a very good comedian, however, and his program is an amiable half hour, if you don’t hear it too often.
These programs are all more or less interchangeable like some car parts and there isn’t much point in listening to more than one of them. In fact, if something happened to Mr. Young unexpectedly, I imagine Mr. Day could be rushed into his place at a moment’s notice without anyone outside of the studio audience detecting the difference.

Fortunately for Crosby, the Harris show evolved past the saccharine lovey-dovey stuff, and started figuring out the direction it wanted to go in, with Lewis and Tetley added to the cast before a switch of sponsors and then writers.

The reason the Harris show succeeds for me (though I still have some problems Phil’s “domestication”) because is it built on the Harris scenario from the Benny show, not just the character. If Harris were to have his own show, we’d expect a retired-from-pictures Alice there. And a boozy, dumb Frank Remley. And they’re there, so the show has a familiarity from the start. Day is like he’s in an alternate universe. I’d love to have heard a show including Verna Felton as his mother and built around that. Instead, he’s in a different town, with a different occupation, with a bunch of radio clichés as supporting characters. Crosby hits on the problem with Blanc’s show. Blanc’s character is a zero. You know a show’s in trouble when it has to open by reminding the audience the star is a funny guy. There’s not a lot for Blanc to do than his accents and cartoon voices, and this show isn’t the framework for it. Supporting characters are tired, one-dimensional types heard everywhere on radio comedies, including Alan Young’s show.

Oh, there was someone else connected with the Benny show to get his own show in 1946. We’ll look at that failure in another post.

George Pal and Sex

2012-03-03T06:04:00.003-08:00

A couple of months ago, we posted about George Pal, maker of the imaginative Puppetoons released by Paramount in the 1940s. I’ve dug out another newspaper piece on Pal, this one from 1945. It was written about the time a new season of shorts was hitting theatres, beginning with ‘Jasper and the Beanstalk’ on October 19.

Producer Pal Explain How Wooden Puppetoons Work
By VIRGINIA MACPHERSON
Hollywood, Oct. 25. (BUP)—Producer George Pal is our candidate for the man who works harder than anybody to put sex in the movies.
Usually it’s a simple thing for an actress to wiggle her torso. But when Pal’s ladies do it that means 25 extra wooden figures.
Pal is the ex-architect who turns out Pal’s Puppetoons, those little three-dimensional people.
It takes, he explained today, 14 different puppets to show one step.
Just the same. Pal thinks he’ll keep on using his bosomy ladies with the shapely legs.
“I tried one out in one of the Jasper puppetoons,” he said. That was the first time we’d ever had a fling at wooden sex. And she seemed to go over quite well.
And he makes that statement, he grinned, just a few days before the Hollywood chamber of commerce will present him with a bronze plaque (we still think it should, be wooden) commemorating his five years in Hollywood and his long record of clean entertainment.
“But when I say I’m going to keep sex in I don’t want you to get the wrong idea,” he explained. “Because every puppetoon we turn out has to be passed by the censors first.
Started in Hollywood
Pal has been working with “his little blockheads” for about 12 years now. He started out in Holland as an architect. Then he decided drawing animated cartoons would pay better.
“But it didn’t,” he said. “At least, not much. So I started carving out my puppets and making three-dimensional cartoons of them.
The puppets went over big with the advertising companies.
“Then five years ago, I got an offer from Hollywood,” he said.
“Then one day I, was sort of doodling away,” he said, “and I hit on the idea of a little colored boy. We called him Jasper. Then we got a colored scarecrow and perched a crow on his shoulder.”
From there on in Pal was in business. Right now he’s turning out a new puppetoon every six weeks.
It takes about 3,000 different puppets for a seven-minute short, and about 22 weeks to draw whittle, shoot and record it.

Someone knowledgeable about Puppetoons can comment about what short involving a “bosomy lady” he’s talking about. I wonder if it’s ‘Hatful of Dreams,’ released earlier in 1945. Boxoffice magazine gave it a “superior” rating in its review.

One of the most colourful and imaginative of the series to date, this subject shows how Punchy, a pathetic little ragamuffin in love with his unattainable Judy, is given a magic hat by a cab hose. The hat’s magic transforms its wearer into whatever he or she secretly dreams of being. Thus, the spavined, knock-kneed nag becomes a Derby winner. Punchy becomes Superman, and others who do the magic skimmer undergo a surprising change. After many complications, the nag gets back his hat, Judy gets her Punchy and Punchy gets—more Punchy.

The Winter 1985 edition 14 of Animator had a nice article about Pal. You can read it HERE.

Moo Moo Moo! Baa Baa Baa!

2012-03-02T06:01:00.000-08:00

I still laugh every time I watch “Drag-A-Long Droopy” and see the scene where the steer goes “Moo, moo, moo! Baa, baa, baa!” to the wolf. It’s just so silly. But it makes perfect sense. How else would a bull communicate that sheep eating all the landscape are coming?

Oh, that’s right. He can communicate in English. “Sheep, ya durned fool!”

Give Tex a Western setting and he’ll come up with a funny cartoon. It’s the Law of the West, you know.

Here’s the Johnny Johnsen background just before the bull enters, running in perspective at an angle along the road toward the camera.

A fine team of animators worked on this one—Mike Lah, Walt Clinton, Grant Simmons, Bob Bentley and Ray Patterson, on loan from the Hanna-Barbera unit. Tex himself plays the wolf and the steer, with Bill Thompson as Droopy.

Canned Feud Zap

2012-03-01T09:40:00.001-08:00

One of Sylvester’s best acting jobs is in “Canned Feud,” where he’s desperate to eat anything but needs a can opener that a sadistic mouse won’t let him have. There are great drawings all over the place.

Sylvester gets shocked with electricity in one scene. It starts out with drawings on twos. None are really a take because they aren’t seen long enough to establish. Combined, they show Sylvester being flung all over the place.

Then the fur fries off him on ones. Finally, all that’s left is the white poof at the end of his tail. And after just enough time, the poof goes ‘poof.’

Five animators get credit on this one—John Carey, Art Davis, Ken Champin, Virgil Ross and Manny Perez. Evidently Sid Farren was an assistant on this because his name is hidden in the title card, over which is played Raymond Scott’s ‘Huckleberry Duck.’

Tell it to Groucho

2012-02-29T07:30:00.000-08:00

Groucho’s always been my favourite of the Marx Brothers (sorry, Zeppo) and he had the longest career, thanks to hooking up with producer John Guedel and starring in one of the funniest radio/TV game shows ever. “You Bet Your Life” had a perfect (and necessary) mesh of components—Groucho’s one-liners, a duck falling from the ceiling, a “secret woid,” smooth and friendly George Fenneman to lend a bit of sanity, and contestants who were either uncomfortable or unintentionally funny, but always real people the audience couldn’t help but like.

Death comes, as it does to all television shows, and so it came to “You Bet Your Life.” Guedel shrewdly repackaged the old shows as “The Best of Groucho” and successfully launched them in the syndication market. In the meantime, the original show was dismantled and put back together again. But the perfect mesh was no longer there, so viewers watched something else.

But, as you can tell in this article by the Associated Press in 1962, there were high hopes for it. And as Groucho used a quiz show as a springboard for his comedy, so the AP’s entertainment writer used a quiz show to get Groucho’s feelings about television comedy, which makes for a better story.

He's Bringing Back Some Chuckles to Sensitive TV
By CYNTHIA LOWRY
NEW YORK, Jan. 21 (AP)—After one of the shortest retirements from weekly television on record, mustached Groucho Marx has come back with a new show, “Tell It to Groucho.”
Well, it’s sort of a new show. Its name is new, it’s on another network — CBS — after 11 years on NBC, and as Groucho explains, “We’ve discarded some of the things associated with the old shows — the duck, the secret word and George Fenneman, our announcer — but it’s recognizable.”
It’s still a game show with nominal amounts of “money” at stake, but Groucho’s game has always been a flimsy, unimportant framework to support his humor, and the contestants have always been human walls off which the comedian bounces his irreverent, sometimes fierce and always distinctive shafts.
“I never intended to stay away,” remarked Groucho during a recent visit to New York. “I’ve saved my money, sure, but you must have a dominant force if yon want to be happy and not get bored. And with me, it is working.
“I read a lot, but you can’t spend all your time reading. I don’t have any flair for wood carpentry and there are no power tools in my cellar—to be truthful, I don’t even have a cellar. I never play cards, and although I like golf, I couldn’t make a career out of it. So—I work.”
Marx is a thoughtful, pleasant man of 66 who, like most top comedians, does not feel the compulsion to perform off-camera as well as on. A performer for more than 50 years (He started as a soprano in a boy’s choir and graduated at 11 to a vaudeville troupe), Groucho believes that no comedian should do a show on his own every week—about once a month at the very outside.
“It’s entirely different in my case,” he added, lighting a fresh cigar. “Because I’m working with the help of the format of the show—the contestants coming in with ridiculous problems and we can discuss them facetiously.”
Groucho, like all the other performers with sharp wit and opinions of their own, is concerned about the steadily shrinking freedom in TV for the play and flash of humor and satire.
“There’s so little left that you can satirize in television,” he mourned. “The theater is the only place left where it can really be done—it’s the only place left where they aren’t scared, where they don’t care if some toes get stepped on.
“Way back in the 1920s when Franklin P. Adams was writing his column he complained that the only thing you could attack without fear of protest was the man-eating shark. Today, I imagine, there’s a society to protect the reputation of man-eating sharks.
“I doubt very much whether Fred Allen could get away with his characters in ‘Allen's Alley’ today—he’d surely hear from the South about Sen. Claghorn. And I remember I had some words with Fred once about Mrs. Nussbaum—I didn’t like it because I thought he was portraying a Jewish woman as a caricature.
“On one of my shows I had a plumber, and, of course, I made some jokes about forgetting his tools. I immediately got all sorts of angry letters, including one from the head of the plumber’s union. I even got angry letters after mother-in-law jokes.
“But now I feel that comedy is losing a great deal because of these restrictions. They are confining the whole field. I think, perhaps, that I can get away with it—perhaps a little better than most. I’ve been around for a long time, people are accustomed to laughing at outrageous things I say so—once in a while I can sneak a truth or a bit of real satire in.
“One of the things is that people don’t remember the bad things you do for any length of time—they remember the good things. That’s what permits us to survive.”
The show staff scouts for people with light-hearted problems—a woman so tiny she fits only into children’s clothes, including underwear; a woman with a husband who snores; a widow who lives alone and has no one to pull up back zippers.
Filming the show occupies Groucho one evening a week at the studio from 7:30 to 10:30 firing questions and wisecracks. Before that he works over his material. Although he does not meet the contestants ahead of show time, he knows something about them, and anticipates what they’ll be saying.
The show, in its final half-hour form, represents a heavily-edited version of the interviews—the good material is left, the lesser stuff deftly excised. Thus, out of every five minutes worth of dialogue, the home audience sees perhaps two or less.

“Leave it to Groucho” debuted on Thursday, January 11 (9-9:30). By May, The New York Daily News had announced its cancellation and the last show was scheduled May 30 (some stations delayed it and ran it on weekends). One critic of the day summed up the problem: the first show featured a mother and daughter who were both looking for husbands, ones who had to cope with their 13 cats. There were only so many of those kinds of people around. The critic avoided mentioning the fact that the amateurish young lady who was now performing Fenneman’s old role was little more than decoration for the male audience, something evident whenever she opened her mouth.

Groucho was replaced by “Brenner,” which had already failed on the network twice. And his AP interview proved to be amazingly psychic. People don’t remember the bad TV show Groucho did. “Tell it to Groucho” is long-forgotten. Instead, they remember his wit in those brilliant movies of the ‘30s and an 11-year quiz show. It’s why Groucho is still loved today. You can bet your life on that.

Go On And Hiss

2012-02-28T07:09:00.000-08:00

Plenty of cartoons were made with characters or things coming right at the audience. It seems that half of the Harman-Ising shorts for Warner Bros. had Bosko or someone running with an open mouth to the camera and “swallowing” it.

Leave it to Tex Avery to do it in reverse in the great “The Blitz Wolf” (1942). Look at the arc on 12 frames.

Animation credits go to Ray Abrams, Irv Spence, Preston Blair and Ed Love.

Elmer Fudd Itch

2012-02-27T07:35:00.001-08:00

Today’s stretch in-betweens are brought to you by the unit of Bob Clampett, who seems to have given animation credits only to Bob McKimson and Rod Scribner around this time (1943).

“An Itch in Time” is best-known for two things—the song ‘Food Around the Corner’ (even sped-up, you can tell Sara Berner is singing as the flea), and the dog’s hyper remark to the camera as he stops dragging his butt for a moment. But there are a couple of animation effects that I like. One is how the dog turns becomes brushed lines of colour between two drawings, and another is the bit near the end when the flea has evidently jumped from the dog to Elmer Fudd, judging by the way Elmer is scratching and twists from pose to pose (being a Clampett cartoon, a butt is involved in this as well).

This is where the stretch in-betweens come in to make the movement quick and fluid. Observe.

And then the dog when he realises he’s no longer flea-bitten.

I’ll leave it to the experts to suugest who was doing this type of drawing for Clampett about this time.

The Perturbation of Jack Benny

2012-02-26T07:35:00.002-08:00

It seems impossible there could be an interview with Jack Benny that didn’t talk about being cheap, bad violin playing, age 39, driving a Maxwell or Mary Livingstone. But all of this was an invention (over time) of Jack and his radio writers, starting in 1932. Jack had a fairly lengthy career in vaudeville prior to that and none of this was part of his persona. He was thought of an easy-going stand-up comedian by the end of the 1920s.

That’s how we find him in a rare interview in 1930 by a writer for the National Enterprise Association, a feature service for small newspapers. I don’t know whether he was interviewed any earlier. Broadway columns (and those out of Hollywood) generally consisted of little squibs about people and places, not a profile of one individual. But here’s one.

IT’S EASIER TO AMUSE WOMEN
Jack Benny, Talkie Comedian, Thinks an Audience of Men Is the Coldest Proposition in the World
By DON ROBERTS
HOLLYWOOD, March 31 — Women are easier to please than men —particularly from a comedian’s standpoint.
This is the theory of Jack Benny, for years one of vaudeville’s best known comedians, who now is making a name for himself in this audible picture racket.
“If I had my way about it, I never would play before anything but a mixed audience.” Benny declared. “But if I had to choose between masculine and feminine, I would take the women every time. There is no audience in the world tougher than a strictly stag aggregation.”
As a rule Jack is just as funny off the stage as he is on—maybe a little funnier. But he wasn’t yesterday as we sat in the Brown Derby. He was perturbed, trying to make up his mind whether to accept a vaudeville engagement in New York or to stay here for a legitimate show and take his chances on getting a picture at the same time. Now that he has gotten a pretty good start in pictures, he doesn’t like to get 3,000 miles from the center of things.
Getting the Gags
“I wish I could just press a button and make myself funny,” Benny remarked. “But I can’t. I’m not in the right mood I couldn’t pull the funniest gag in the world so that it would get a laugh.”
“Where do you get the gags for your monologue, Jack?” we inquired.
“I write most of them myself,” replied the actor. “Occasionally I get some from a man with a really good sense of humor. I think most of my own gags are pretty terrible so when I do write one that sounds good to me I generally can depend upon it going over. Once in New York I bought 15 joke books, hoping to get something new for my routine but I didn’t find a single gag I could use.
“Naturally all comedians can’t use the same type of material. A gag with which someone else could make an audience howl would fall absolutely flat if I tried to use it.”
Benny came out here under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to act as one of the masters of ceremonies in “The Hollywood Revue.” Following that he made “Chasing the Rainbow” [sic] with Bessie Love and Charles King. That was the first picture in which he really played a part, his role in it being that of a wise-cracking stage manager. Now he is free lancing, which is the reason for his perturbation. When he gets two offers simultaneously he never can make up his mind which to accept. And that worries him.

His comedy philosophy here is interesting, considering how his career developed. His feeling that certain routines work for certain people likely prompted him to craft his character on his radio show. And his assessment proved to be correct. There are things that Jack Benny came to do that no other comedian would have been able to get a laugh with. In a way, that was a hindrance to his movie career, as audiences expected to see something akin to his Benny character on the screen.

Of course, it never hurt his overall career. In 1965, people knew who Jack Benny was. Charles King wasn’t so lucky.

Trigger Joe

2012-02-25T13:20:00.000-08:00

You can probably divide the cartoons of the Golden Age of Animation into two categories—theatrical and non-theatrical. Theatricals are, of course, Looney Tunes, Mickey Mouse, Woody Woodpecker, Popeye and so on, seen on TV by several generations. Non-theatricals are more obscure because, conversely, they have never been seen on TV by several generations. Some are industrial films, like some of the lovely and amusing cartoons from the John Sutherland studio paid for by companies or institutions to push their particular point of view. And then there are cartoons designed strictly for military use, especially during World War Two.

The ‘Snafu’ series is probably the best-known, brought to light by fans of the great Warner Bros. cartoons who wanted to see how their favourite directors and animators handled instructional subjects for a military audience. But there were others, some of which were made by the military itself in the First Motion Picture Unit studio at the old Hal Roach studio.

One series of these starred Mel Blanc as “Trigger Joe”. At least some were directed by Frank Thomas of the Disney studio and the animation staff included John Hubley, Bill Hurtz and Willis Pyle. Hurtz describes Joe as “kind of based on Bill Bendix, a heavy Brooklyn type” (Enchanted Drawings, Charles Solomon); Bendix was best known as the star of “Life of Riley” on radio.

Interestingly, “Trigger Joe” was featured in the Hollywood column in papers subscribing to the National Enterprise Association. It was a bit of wartime propaganda itself, with a message to people who felt that if you weren’t a G.I., you were an unpatriotic slacker.

In Hollywood
By Erskine Johnson
(NEA Staff Corespondent)
Hollywood—The screen has a new feminine star—a streamlined, glamorous lady called the B-29.
We’ve just seen her first starring picture, “Target Tokyo,” and she’s a killer-diller.
You fly with her on the world’s longest bombing mission — 10,000 miles—from Grand Island, Neb., to Tokyo. You see how men are trained to fly her and to man her guns.
No other wartime motion picture has seen quite as exciting, or timely, with wonderful scenes of these giant Superfortresses in formation flight, landing on Saipan’s airstrip, flying over Iwo Jima and dropping bombs on the heart of Tokyo.
History of the first B-29 group to bomb the Jap capital, the film is another Army Air Force documentary filmed in the manner of “The Memphis Belle.” Eight Army cameramen and two writers made the 10,000-mile trip to get the celluloid story, which you’ll be seeing soon in your neighborhood theater.
We saw the picture after signing our life away at a guarded gate and putting on a big “VISITOR” badge at the 18th Army Air Forces Base Unit (Motion Picture Unit) at Culver City, Calif.
Comedy Center
Before the war this base unit was the Hal Roach studio, home of slapstick comedy. Last time we sat in a projection room there we saw Stan Laurel throwing a custard pie at Oliver Hardy. There were photographs of girls in bathing suits on office walls and members of the “Our Gang” comedy studied in a little red schoolhouse next to Stage 3.
Now the Army boys there have produced 230 training and documentary pictures since October of 1942—more than any other Hollywood studio. The bathing suit photographs on office walls have been replaced with photographs of guys wearing oxygen suits and of airplane wings and motors and machine guns.
The B-29 is the current big star of the lot. She just completed another role in a movie a half hour longer than “Gone With the Wind.” You will never see it, though. It’s a maintenance-instruction film for B-29 mechanics and crew members only. There’s so much to learn from the picture that it is being shown as a six-part serial.
But speaking of stars, the studio boys won’t let you overlook “Trigger Joe,” an animated cartoon character dreamed up by the studio for “position firing” training films. “Position Firing” is the latest wrinkle in air combat, but it is so intricate that Army instructors were taking 14 days to teach its finer points.
Time Slashed
The Air Corps brass hats said this was much too slow, so the Motion Picture Unit dreamed up “Trigger Joe” and starred him in a 12-minute instruction film. What took 14 days to learn is now learned in 12 minutes.
Naturally, most of the work done by the Motion Picture Unit is secret. Some of the Hollywood lads have taken a ribbing for fighting the war on a sound stage in Culver City. But brother, when a little thing like “Trigger Joe” can cut a training schedule from 14 days to 12 minutes, the boys behind the camera are helping win the war, too.

We can’t postulate how entertaining Joe was, but he certainly was effective. A study was done in 1947 comparing instruction using the Trigger Joe cartoon, a 50-page pocket-sized manual and a half-hour lecture with 19 slides made from illustrations in the manual. Tests on cadets showed Trigger Joe was far superior in teaching position firing than the other two media. And, to quote one source:

Amusingly enough, when Trigger Joe was put in the ten-cent viewing machines in the Fort Meyers commissary, soldiers preferred watching it to the Dinah Shore films that were also available.

A shame it isn’t readily available for animation fans to see.

Tex Avery Lion Roars

2012-02-24T06:49:00.000-08:00

Tex Avery’s love of crazy takes may have reached its peak in “Slap Happy Lion,” released in Seotember 1947. It features three of Avery’s typical themes—a role-reversal at the end, the tormented can’t escape his tormenter, and toothy wide-open mouths with jagged tongues expressing fear or horror.

In this cartoon, there are takes everywhere, starting with the lion, then reactions to him, then the lion reacting to the mouse. I didn’t even try counting them at the end because there’s one after another after another that kind of numb your mind after awhile. Too many to post. But what you see below is from the second scene, where Avery comes up with different after-effects for each lion roar (followed by some kind of take and gag by other animals in reaction). The inside-out lion and the lion-as-a-ball go together.

Then the mouse scares the lion. Here are a couple of reaction drawings on ones. The second one is an in-between as the lion raises his head before a cut to a body shot and a scream take.

The animators credited on the cartoon are Bob Bentley, Walt Clinton and Ray Abrams. The character models (the lion’s apparently named ‘Flagada’) were by the great Irv Spence, drawn in July 1945, giving you an idea how long it took the cartoon to be released.

Bugs Bunny, Rah, Rah, Rah!

2012-02-23T05:44:00.003-08:00

Stretch in-betweens are one of several things that was under experimentation in the Chuck Jones unit at Warner Bros. before 1945. “The Dover Boys” (1942) has the best-known examples but they crop up in other cartoons. You can spot them in three scenes in “Super Rabbit” (1943), twice very quickly and then near the end of the cartoon in the cheerleading scene. Here are some consecutive frames as Bugs moves from one side of the screen to the other.

Ken Harris gets the animation credit on this cartoon, and he used stretch in-betweens a number of years later in “No Barking,” but it’s felt by some that Bobe Cannon was exclusively drawing them in the Jones unit at this period.

A Career Mashed By a Monster

2012-02-22T07:55:00.000-08:00

Dear Aspiring Actors,

Please do not become famous and then complain how you’re tired of your role, or fed up with being typecast. It is an occupational hazard. And a pretty common one.

You become famous and popular because people like seeing you as the character you are performing. And they want to see more of it. Over and over and over until they get tired of it and want someone new. That’s an occupational hazard, too.

Just about every famous film actor has been typecast. All you have to do is say their name and an image pops into your head. John Wayne. Clint Eastwood. Cary Grant. Edward G. Robinson. You don’t picture any of them as “The Disorderly Orderly,” do you?

And what about Boris Karloff? Just like all great actors, he could have played a variety of roles but people remember him for one (well, maybe two, but only when cartoons are on around Christmas). And when the genre he was typecast in died away, pickings became pretty slim (at least he didn’t end up starring in movies about plans from outer space). But he became philosophical about it, as this Associated Press interview from 1949 showed:

HOLLYWOOD, Feb. 21.—(AP)—The ghost of Frankenstein’s monster still hovers over Boris Karloff.
The noted actor is back to playing a boogyman, this time with Abbott and Costello in “A. and C. Meet the Killers.” “But I think they’ll probably scare me more than I will them,” he remarked.
No matter where Karloff’s acting career takes him, he always seems to return to the spine-tinglers. He has tried Broadway plays. One lasted five performances. Another folded last month after six tries.
It’s ironic that his only Broadway success was in “Arsenic and Old Lace,” in which he played a madman with a haunting resemblance to the movie actor, Boris Karloff.
Last year he had a run as Indian chief in the movies “Tap Roots” and “Unconquered.” (Actually, his tanned face resembles an Indian more than the English gentleman he is.) He had other offers to play redskins, but turned them down to avoid being typed.
Karloff used to turn down horror roles, too, but he told me he has a new philosophy.
“I have refused many roles in the past two years because I didn’t think they were good enough,” he said. “I think now that was a mistake. From now on I shall take everything that comes along. Out of all that, something ought to turn out to be outstanding.”
The actor hasn’t played Frankenstein’s monster in 15 years, but the shade of the satchel-footed dim-wit still follows him around. He still gets fan mail about it.
When he was in New York, kids asked him for his autograph and said how much they liked him in “Abbott and Costello Meets Frankenstein.” (Glenn Strange played the role.)
Actually, he doesn’t resent the monster.
“It’s good for an actor to have a role in which he can make a name for himself,” he said.
“I’ve been pretty lucky. I haven’t played the monster in 15 years, and yet I’ve managed to keep working.” He tapped the nearest piece of wood.

That’s Why They Call it A Drooler’s Delight

2012-02-21T08:04:00.000-08:00

Let other sites intellectualise about the use and effect of female impersonation in animation. I’d rather just post consecutive frames from one of Woody Woodpecker’s drag acts from “Drooler’s Delight” (1949). The gag’s pretty self-explanatory.

The credits say Ed Love animated this cartoon himself. The director was Dick Lundy, who employs a lot of camera movement in the short. He moves in on a closer shot of the bear-trap in the gag above. Lionel Stander plays Buzz Buzzard to perfection. Bugs Hardaway, who I really dislike as Woody, turns in a decent performance. I don’t know who the mock NBC announcer (we hear three chimes before he speaks) is at the start.

Three Pigs, Three Gags

2012-02-20T07:47:00.000-08:00

Something good came out of the weak Warners musical cartoons around 1934 and 1935, the ones the directors disliked because the music got in the way of developing a plot. One was some of the Warners-owned songs were really great and are classics of popular music today. And the other was young director Friz Freleng learned how to marry animation to specific music, which helped in later years when he was able to use better gags, put on the screen with better animation.

‘Pigs in a Polka’ (1943) is really a funny cartoon. As a kid, I didn’t realise there was some Disney referencing going on. I just thought it was funny. There are three little moments (out of many more) I’d like to pick out.

A great throw-away gag is when the wolf appears on the scene. He’s evil, but law-abiding enough to signal left when he’s turning (even though no traffic is behind him to see the signal). And he doesn’t interrupt his Russian dance while doing it.

Friz’ timing is perfect when the two gullible pigs are lured behind a rock, there’s a fight and they suddenly jump out as grinning, dancing gypsy women. It’s completely unexpected, which makes it all the more funnier. The rassin’-frassin’ Blue Ribbon re-release of the cartoon has divested it of its credits, but I can’t help but think Mike Maltese wrote it. At Warners and even at Hanna-Barbera in Quick Draw McGraw cartoons, he’d have characters jump somewhere and come out with a comic costume change.

And I like the fake snow gag. It’s been done in other cartoons, probably done to death to anyone who has dined on animation for decades, but I don’t think it was done any better than in this one. Give credit to Carl Stalling and Milt Franklyn. The pathetic first violin solo really augments the fact the wolf is a complete fraud. It shows you why the Warners cartoons are so great. All the elements—drawing, movement, sound—work together and enhance each other.

Walt Lee’s Reference Guide to Fantastic Films (1974) says Gerry Chiniquy received the animation credit on this short, but the Freleng unit was using the talents of Manny Perez, Dick Bickenbach, Gil Turner and Ken Champin, and occasionally Jack Bradbury, around this time.

Uncle Miltie, the Crook

2012-02-19T08:11:00.000-08:00

So, was Milton Berle’s reputation as the Thief of Bad Gags deserved?

The answer’s “yes,” if you talked to just about anyone, even before Berle was at his peak in the early time of television. John Crosby, syndicated from the New York Herald Tribune, took a stab at the topic in his column of April 9, 1947. But unlike anyone else, he doesn’t blame Berle for doing it.

THERE’S NO MYSTERY IN BERLE’S LIFE OF CRIME
Milton Gayly Continues His Bold Thieving
By JOHN CROSBY
For the last couple of weeks on the new Milton Berle show (NBC 8:30 p.m. Tuesdays), the announcer, man named Gallup, has been introducing, much against the wishes of Berle, a quartet with a high-flown, Russian name. “Stop that noise!” shrieks Berle. “Quiet!” All season long on the Jack Benny show, another announcer named Don Wilson has been bringing in, much against the wishes of Benny, another quartet. “Stop it,” yells Benny. “Stop it.”
Later on the Berle program, the orchestra played a truncated version of “Blue Skies.” “That was ‘Blue Skies,’” announced Berle. “Sort of an eclipse—by Ray Bloch and his orchestra. The only reason they still have their instruments is that Jamaica Park isn’t open yet.”
Well, let’s see now. Way back last fall, if memory serves, Fred Allen interrupted the orchestra with the words: “That was just a smattering of ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’ played by Al Goodman and 25 men who followed him home from Belmont Park last night.”
Jack Benny has for years been kidding his announcer, Don Wilson, about his sumptuous waistline. Berle jibes at his announcer, that man Gallup again, because his waistline is so skinny. A switcheroo, as they call it in radio.
BOTH FUNNY
Then there is a man in the show called Fulton Drew Gilbert “bringing you the news from Washington” and contradicting himself in every sentence. It’s pretty funny and it was pretty funny a couple of weeks ago when Peter Lind Hayes did it on the Dinah Shore show.
And so it goes. If you can find anything on the Milton Berle show, which doesn’t remind you of somebody else’s show, don’t blame Milton. He’s doing his best. Over the years, Berle has built up a towering and quite justifiable reputation as the Raffles of show business and he’s not going to risk it by fooling around with any dangerous originality. Just the same, in spite of all his vigilance, I’ll bet a new idea slips in there some day. A man can’t keep his guard up forever.
Apart from grand larceny, the Berle show is a great improvement over the Rudy Vallee show which it replaced, though that’s not much of a compliment.
GOOD PERFORMER
Berle plays the part of a timid soul who is browbeaten by his announcer, his wife, his child, his sponsor and his advertising agency. Making the star the butt of all jokes is hardly a new idea, but Berle goes considerably further with it than any one else. He is not just insulted; he is lampooned, derided, degraded, starved and all but beaten to death by the people around him. Much of this is funnier than it ought to be because Berle, a man of the old school, is a great performer no matter what you think of his material.
However, I’d like to interject a note of mild protest about the sketches that end the show. The other day Berle did a sketch about a man who drives into a gas station in a hurry for gas. The attendants — stop me if you’ve heard this — clean windshield, change the oil, pump up the tires, marcel his hair, put on a floor show, do everything, in fact, except give him gas. Well, it had a certain vestigial charm if only as a reminder of the good old days. But isn't there a statute of limitation on these things?
Oh, yes, and there’s a singer on the program named Dick Farney, who sings in a soft, tentative style as if he were afraid of waking the baby. Sometimes I think singing is dying out entirely and perhaps it’s just as well.
Copyright, 1947, for The Tribune

Berle jumped into the radio game in 1933 as part of the Fred Waring Show for Old Gold. He starred in his own show in 1939 for Quaker Oats but bounced around from show to show, season to season. Paul Ackerman of Billboard explained why in the April 26, 1947 edition.

Milton Berle, recognized as perhaps the fastest man in night clubs and vaude, has on this NBC series failed to impress as a top radio comedian. Impression one gets is the master of the bistro and boite simply can’t break loose from his script. This is tough, for inasmuch as the script must keep within the radio limits, Berle can’t cash in on what admittedly is one of his strong points—blue stuff. This doesn’t necessarily mean that radio is out of Milton’s reach. It just means that as of now the comedy writers and doctors simply haven’t found a formula. For Berle on the air doesn’t sparkle and crackle with audiences know he does on the boards. It’s all quite discouraging—what with every web and ad agency in the business looking for comics. And it’s not comforting to know that in the past Berle has not been able to do well on the air.

The show for Philip Morris had top writers—Nat Hiken and Aaron Ruben. It was originally intended to be similar to Ozzie and Harriet and included Berle’s wife Joyce and Joe Besser as a stooge but, evidently, changes were made at the last minute. Meanwhile, Berle was about to open at the Copa in New York for $12,500 a week.

Berle’s life changed when his television show debuted for Texaco on September 22, 1948. He didn’t need the blue material that Ackerman talked about. Instead, he dug into his old vaudeville grab bag of broad comedy and mugging and by December, had the biggest audience of any programme in history, including radio, remarkable considering he was only seen in 24 cities. Berle was eventually rewarded with a 30-year contract by NBC before the inevitable (to everyone but NBC) ratings slide. People were tired of the old frantic routines in the calm, suburban ‘50s. But, like when was not A-listing in radio, Berle remained a constant presence on television for years to come, trading on his reputation as show biz’s biggest heister of humour.

Daffy Dittys

2012-02-18T13:02:00.000-08:00

Cartoon fans the world over have heard of Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes. They may have heard of Silly Symphonys (I don’t recall ever seeing the name when I was a kid). But you can be sure they haven’t heard of the Daffy Dittys, let alone seen one

There was a time when the big movie studios had full schedules of productions, not only feature films, but a wide variety of shorts—things like news and sports reels, travelogues, musical numbers, two-reel comedies and cartoons. The biggest studios had them because shorts involved a huge cash outlay for very little return; they made money on features but realised a good short could entice people into the theatre—and they all owned theatres. The small studios couldn’t afford it so they stuck with their programme of low-budget features; Monogram and Tiffany never got into the cartoon business. Then there were others in between that were in and out of the shorts business. United Artists was one of them.

U-A had released Walt Disney cartoons from 1932 to 1937 but generally stayed out of the shorts business after that; a two-reel documentary series called ‘The World in Action’ during the war being an exception. But then it decided to get into animation again. Or, more specifically, it decided to release animated shorts produced by someone else. That someone else was John Sutherland and Larry Morey.

The two were employed for Walt Disney but decided to strike out on their own in 1944. They evidently hoped to duplicate the success of George Pal’s stop-motion shorts released by Paramount. Top Cel, the newsletter of the New York local of the Screen Cartoonists Guild, announced in its edition of July 14, 1944.

New method of producing animated cartoons with plastic models and characters will be utilized by Plastic Cartoons, organized by L. Morey, John Sutherland and John Landis in Hollywood. Use of plastic models for animation, combined with color photography, gives third dimensional effect which is not possible generally in the regular cartoons. Plastic process was developed by Lion, and allows for molding characters in large numbers, utilizing one for figure in each frame of film, with change in movement flexible through workability of the plastic material used. Figures are set up from pencil animation, miniature sets are used and cartoons shot in stop motion as is the rule with this type of production. This films will be released by United Artists with whom the outfit has signed a contract. Four pictures will be released each year. The title of the first will be “The Cross-eyed Bull”.

How do you make plastic cartoons? Popular Science devoted space to answering that question in its May 1946 issue, complete with pictures.

Sutherland and Moray had a pretty ambitious schedule. The Motion Picture Herald spoke in 1946 of a 13-picture deal. Only six were made. Boxoffice magazine reveals in its edition of January 25, 1947:

United Artists to Drop Daffy Dittys Shorts
Because of mechanical and labor problems, these are trying times for the independent producers of short subjects, most especially those who use color photography. Resultantly, United Artists is losing another series of briefies, the Daffy Dittys, which have been produced by John Sutherland, whose pact with UA was terminated by mutual consent. Sutherland has one more of the current series to deliver, after which he will devote his time exclusively to commercial and educational films.

There isn’t very much information about the Dittys themselves out there. Boxoffice reviewed a few of them.

The Cross-Eyed Bull. Not reviewed. Released October 21, 1944.

The Flying Jeep. Not reviewed. Released August 20, 1945.

The Lady Said No [Short released April 26, 1946]
UA (Daffy Ditty) 9 Mins.
Excellent. This clever offering bodes well for the new series of Technicolor puppet cartoons produced by Moray and Sutherland. Photography, animation and the characters warrant praise. A gay but naïve caballero courts a provocative senorita who persuades him marriage is the best policy. After a variety of little caballeros have been delivered he realizes the bliss of batcherhood. (Boxoffice, April 27, 1946)

Choo Choo Amigo [released July 5, 1946]
UA (Daffy Ditty) 9 Mins.
Tops. This extremely imaginative and entertaining color cartoon employs model miniatures to excellent advantage. It is the story of a little Mexican locomotive, beloved by the natives for its kindly deeds. After long years of faithful service Choo Choo Amigo, replaced by an ultra-modern super-streamliner, is condemned to be converted into scrap. Its last-minute reprieve is complete with smiles and suspense. Highly recommended. (Boxoffice, July 20, 1946)

Pepito’s Serenade [released August 16, 1946]
United Artists (In Color) 10 Mins.
Excellent. A Latin subject, built into a sock bit of entertainment for all. Deals with a puppet character who, advised to become better perfected as a musician, in order to win his sweetheart, goes through some horrifying experiences with a teacher. Trick lightning, unusual animation help make this a top subject. (Boxoffice, September 14, 1946)

The Fatal Kiss, Not reviewed. Released August 28, 1947.

The Dittys slowly faded away. They were still appearing on screens as late as Christmas 1948.

Sutherland hired first-rate people. One of them was Frank Tashlin after finishing a third go-around at Leon Schlesinger’s studio. The book Frank Tashlin, written by Roger García and Bernard Eisenschitz (published in 1994), reveals:

When Tashlin arrived at Morey and Sutherland in September 1944, planning began for the third Daffy Ditty, The Lady Said No. The next two films, Choo Choo Amigo and Pepito’s Serenade (often mistakenly listed as simply Pepito) are generally attributed to Tashlin although definitive credits and production dates may never be established since the company’s records and many of its films are said to have been destroyed in a fire in the late 1940s.

A book listing movies in the public domain lists credits for the final short. “The Fatal Kiss” was directed by Sutherland stalwart George Gordon, and animated by Pete Burness and Irv Spence, all formerly at the MGM studio. Tashlin evidently had left for live-action films by then.

The cartoonists union newsletter Top Cel (Jan. 19, 1945) mentioned Ken Darby was handling vocal arrangements for “Choo Choo Amigo. It would seem that the Radio Guide was referring to The King’s Men when it blurbed in a 1945 edition that some vocalists

have taken night lessons in Spanish and are polishing up a repertoire of Spanish folk songs an ballads which they'll record as background music for a forthcoming Morey and Sutherland Daffy Ditty Cartoon, with locale in Mexico.

A chap named Zon at the Smarter Than The Average blog has cobbled together addition information about the Dittys. You can read about it HERE and HERE.

You likely have noticed five of the six Dittys involve characters in Mexico. The studios had a fascination with Latin America during World War Two. The two Walts—Disney and Lantz—made jaunts south of the border (Lantz went “down Mexico way” as the song says) and no doubt cartoon fans know about Disney’s “Saludos Amigos.” MGM produced at least one cartoon for the Latin American market. No doubt this stemmed from U.S. government policies designed to win support for the American Way of Life over Nazism.

The end of the Dittys didn’t end United Artists’ or John Sutherland’s involvement with theatrical cartoons. Sutherland and Morey were still releasing industrial cartoons at the time of the Dittys. Their company changed from “Plastic Productions” to “Morey and Sutherland Productions” by June 1945, and Top Cel mentioned on July 1, 1946 the two had signed six-picture deals with both Harding College and Proctor and Gamble. But Moray decided to go back to Disney. Sutherland struck out on his own, producing a 62-minute feature called ‘Lady at Midnight’ starring radio actor Richard Denning, and carrying on with his industrial business. Several of those cartoons were released theatrically by MGM, starting with ‘Make Mine Freedom’ on March 10, 1948, allowing Fred Quimby to dissolve the Preston Blair-Mike Lah unit and save cash.

U-A started releasing Lantz’ cartoons in 1947 after a hastily-constructed deal which resulted in the Lantz studio closing temporarily within two years and it getting out of the animation business for awhile. U-A had its greatest success with cartoons in the dying days of the Golden Age of Animation when it released what some consider the most entertaining shorts of the ‘60s—the Pink Panther series. By then, the Daffy Ditties were long forgotten.

Bad Luck Blackie Whitewash

2012-02-17T06:41:00.000-08:00

Another take from one of Tex Avery’s greatest cartoons, “Bad Luck Blackie.” This is when the white cat realises he’s no longer black and his power to inflict bad luck is gone. Seven drawings on ones. It goes by so fast, you don’t notice the cat is doing a little dance step.

Grant Simmons, Louie Schmitt, Preston Blair and Grant Simmons are your animators. I’d sure like to know who the assistants were in his unit at the time. Jim Escalante and Bill Higgins were probably among them.

Why, oh why, aren’t Avery’s cartoons on DVD?

Flying Chicken Leg in Perspective

2012-02-16T09:02:00.000-08:00

Cartoon directors seem to have given in to the tempation of animating little bits in perspective just for the hell of it. Bob McKimson did. He’d have characters run toward and away from the camera whether it added anything to the cartoon or not. And Rudy Ising once said Hugh Harman was “a nut” which it came to perspective animation.

The motivation in some cases might have been simply to break up the monotony of the look of the cartoons. Maybe that’s the case in Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera’s “Part Time Pal” (1947). It’s not a great cartoon—Barbera seemed to think just the idea of Tom being drunk could carry a whole short—but we get a flying chicken leg animated in perspective. Tom swats it out of Jerry’s hand.

The credited animators are Mike Lah, Ed Barge and Ken Muse. I’m not sure if this is Lah’s work here; it looks a lot more like Lah at the end of the cartoon when Tom’s banging the umbrella and climbing the stairs. A shame Irv Spence isn’t here; he would have done a great job in the scene with Tom tripping over the milk bottles.

The Inexhaustible Bob Hope

2012-02-15T10:54:00.000-08:00

People want to see the stars. If they didn’t, there wouldn’t be a plethora of gossip web sites and TV shows shoving people from Show Biz Land in your face, drowning us all with the minutest insignificances about their lives.

Such would seem to be an obvious fact. But it seems to have shocked radio writer John Crosby that fans would actually want to watch a radio and movie star in the flesh. Maybe he forgot that vaudeville houses were once packed for that very same reason. Or why film and radio-dom’s elite visited military bases during World War Two.

In reading Crosby’s column of March 2, 1949, I couldn’t help but think of Dave Thomas, a noted Hope impersonator among many things, meeting Old Ski Nose for the first time and how, after some pleasantries, Hope asked him bottom-line questions about SCTV’s production. Thomas realised he wasn’t talking to Bob Hope, star, but Bob Hope, president of Hope Enterprises. And, as Crosby reveals, Hope had the bottom line squarely in his sights when he embarked on a jaunt across the U.S. (I have some reason to suspect the “Crosby” referred to in the column is not “John.”)

Radio In Review
BY JOHN CROSBY
Gold In The Hinterlands
BOB HOPE, the distinguished financier of the films and radio, has just discovered a new method for turning a fast buck.
He appears before people in the flesh! Hope’s 33-day touring vaudeville show took $612,000 off the hands of some 300,000 people. Never before has he earned that much money that rapidly.
“You can’t make money like that on Broadway. You can’t make Crosby money like that anywhere,” Hope declared in a telephone interview from Palm Springs. “I was offered so much money to appear at the Capitol in New York I’m ashamed to tell you the figure.”
Yet the comedian said it was chickenfeed next to the grosses piled up on his tour.
THE HOPE TROUPE—40 persons in all—avoided theaters, the avarice of theater owners being what it is, and played stadiums and auditoriums where Hope Enterprises took 75 percent of the gate.
People paid as high as $6.10 a seat to see a two-and-a-half-hour show which is little more than an extension of Hope’s radio show.
When the comedian returned to Hollywood, his pockets bulging with large denominations, a great many intellectuals said: “Well!” They were too flabbergasted to get much beyond that word.
There has been a deeply entrenched suspicion in Hollywood that the big money lay in the mass media—the movies or radio—where you don’t get the live actor, but you can spread him among an awful lot of people.
Then Mr. Hope revived the ancient one-night stand and, brother, how the money rolls in.
ALREADY THIS has led to real restlessness among the other actors.
“I’ve talked to Jack Benny and Al Jolson,” Hope said, “and they’re all fired up to do the same thing.
“We’re going to hit the road again ourselves — probably in April. I want to keep that Providence date. (Fog grounded the troupe in Pittsburgh, causing cancellation of the Rhode Island stop-over.) We also plan to go to Rochester, Syracuse, Erie and Toronto and, of course, a lot of other places.
“I think the success of this tour proves the people want to see the actors. It shows what a great thing television is going to be.
HOPE ALSO thinks it proves the road is anything but dead, that people in the hinterlands are starved for live entertainment. Virtually everywhere he went he approached or smashed house records.
Hope played 38 performances in 34 cities in 33 days. In addition he gave his radio shows in four of the cities, and this involved rehearsals.
It sounds grueling, but, as Hope pointed out, the troupe had only one performance a day—with the exception of one day when it gave a matinee and an evening performance—whereas in a theater it would have been required to give five or six.
“You never get tired unless you stop and take time for it,” he explained. Hope never has taken time for it, and as a shrewd observer once said, he works better under almost continuous pressure.
A COUPLE OF YEARS ago Bing Crosby told me he had dug out of the Bible a quote that fits Hope perfectly: “For wherever two or three are gathered together . . . there I am in the midst of them.”
He certainly is. Hope starts to entertain automatically whenever a crowd—and three or four makes a crowd—surrounds him. They supplement each other — Hope and the crowds. The bigger the crowd, the better is Hope. The better is Hope, the bigger the crowd.
On this trip, the news that he was flying in his rented DC-6 attracted throngs to the airport. Hope usually threw in a 15-minute show free at the air terminals—unwilling to let a crowd escape without flinging a couple of jokes at it.
TEN YEARS AGO Jimmy Cagney observed, unsagely: “Bob Hope is going to kill himself with these personal appearance tours.”
This could go down along with the prediction of Thomas E. Dewey’s election as one of the worst bits of crystal-gazing of modern times.
There is a tale, probably apocryphal, that an eastern potentate once took over the upbringing of 300 babies; he ordered they be given the utmost care but that not a word be spoken to them.
The potentate wanted to know what language they’d talk when and if.
According to legend, the babies all died within six months for want of affection.
Seems to me if Hope were deprived of an audience for six months he’d die of starvation.
(Copyright, 1949, New York Tribune)

Hope once talked about his money with that aw-shucks intellectual, Dick Cavett. Considering that Hope’s TV specials degraded into a melange of cue cards, marching bands and breasts, it’s nice to see him in the stripped-down, relaxed atmosphere of the Cavett show. Take a look.

A Lotta Actors Were Outta Woik

2012-02-14T07:38:00.000-08:00

Warren Foster wrote a life story for Bugs Bunny and Bob McKimson filmed it in “What’s Up Doc?” There are some sequences I really like, and a great one is when Bugs is on a park bench with other unemployed vaudevillians, hoping to get a break from the shining star of the big time, Elmer Fudd.

The caricatures of Al Jolson, Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor and Bing Crosby couldn’t be much better, and the animation of them auditioning for Fudd is perfect. I especially love Jolson. Whoever did this scene captured him beautifully (see the comments for the answer). You have to watch how he turns and looks pleadingly desperate as the snobbish Fudd passes by him. And Bing’s mouth movements singing “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby” are fun.

The kicker is Fudd’s line: “Bugs Bunny! What are you hanging around with these guys? They’ll never amount to anything!” Of course, the joke is that they did. They had been stars for more than 20 years by the time the cartoon was released. And they were really stars until the day they died; all but Cantor were still working.

Jolson’s voice in the cartoon is provided by Dave Barry, who worked on the Jolson radio show.

Animators came and went in McKimson’s unit. Credited on this one are Bill Melendez, Chuck McKimson, Phil De Lara and Pete Burness, the last time his name appears on a Warners cartoon. Jack Carey and Emery Hawkins had been doing work in the McKimson unit but went from director to director, wherever needed.

Bully For Multiples

2012-02-13T07:57:00.000-08:00

“Bully For Bugs” contains the kind of stop-and-let-the-drawing-sink-in posing Chuck Jones is noted for, but it also a couple of scenes where you can find head multiples, as a character moves from one pose to the next.

This is after the bull enters and stops after running in perspective to the camera.

And here’s where Bugs says “pardon me” while standing behind the bull.

It appears different artists in the Jones unit had different ways of moving characters. If you watch “Long-Haired Hare” (1949), for example, you’ll notice smear drawings, where an arm is moved from top to bottom of the frame by, in essence, connecting the two positions together into one long, wide arm. On the other hand, “Rabbit Seasoning” (1952) has odd multiples. I’ll put some up in a future post.

Jack Benny on the 38th

2012-02-12T07:25:00.000-08:00

Nostalgia tells us World War Two was a fun time in Hollywood. The stars were entertaining “our boys” overseas, with a happy collective camaraderie as they jaunted from place to place around the globe. The exuberance of patriotism to help win that clear-cut fight with the Nazis (never the ‘Germans’) and the Japs (always the people and not their government).

Korea was a lot different. The world was still worn out from the last war. And it was a war that was more ideological than personal. Sure, the entertainers made their trips to brighten the lives of “our boys” but it seems to have been done out of a sense of obligation than anything else.

Jack Benny toured overseas during World War Two. He kept a little diary and while there’s a sense of weariness at times, the entries leave you with the impression he was enjoying himself some of the time. You don’t get that sense from his trip to Korea, certainly not from this United Press column which appeared in newspapers starting September 14, 1951.

Jack Benny Finally Is Feeling His Age
By VIRGINIA MacPHERSON
U. P. Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD, (UP) — Jack Benny confessed today he’s about through telling people he’s 39. That last trip to Korea made him feel every day of his 58 years.
“I came home completely worn out,” the comedian said. “And it kinda scared me. That was my fifth trip to the wars—and I think it was my last.”
Feeling 58 came as something of a shock to Benny, who doesn’t think he looks it. (He’s right. He doesn’t.)
“Mentally, you feel the same at 58 as you do at 39,” he said grinning. “But after weeks of slogging through that Korean mud and sleeping only four hours a night I couldn't kid myself any more.
“From here on in I’m gonna have to let the younger kids entertain the troops. There’ve been a few other signs that made me think I’m not 39 any more, but Korea convinced me.”
Benny starts his 20th year in radio day after tomorrow. And all the old gang’s back with him. The only one who gave any trouble was his own wife.
“Mary wants to quit,” he said. “She doesn't like show business and we have a heck of a time signing her up every year.
“She refused to do any television with me. Doesn’t think she’s any good. But, although she does less comedy than anybody on the show, she’s one of the top favorites with the fans.”
So Benny backed her into a corner, shoved a pen in her hand, and made her sign on the dotted line. She still isn’t happy about it, though.
Jack doesn't blame her. He’d like to retire himself.
“I’ve been at this for 40 years,” he said, gazing at the shimmering swimming pool two decades of gags have paid for. “But I know I could never quit show business for good.
“I’d like to semi-retire. Do maybe 13 weeks of radio and six weeks of TV and then play theaters in England and Australia. I could squeeze long vacations in between each of these.
“I’d like to do a Broadway play, too, but I can’t. I’m stuck.”
The only reason Benny’s “stuck” is that he’s too good. He has a big staff that earns fabulous dough helping him be funny every Sunday night. And if he quits now, he said, they’ll have to hunt for new jobs. Some of them after 18 years with him.
“But if there's any quitting,” he said, chuckling, “I want to do it myself. I don’t wanta hang around until they fire me.”

“Our boys” may have had more fun that Jack did. When he arrived for his first show on the front line on July 4, he was greeted with a huge, red-lettered sign that read “Welcome, Fred Allen.” He left California at 2 a.m. on June 27 for a five-week tour, along with Errol Flynn, Benay Venuta and Marjorie Reynolds, stopping at the Travis Air Force base in California and several bases in Hawaii before heading to Korea.

MacPherson’s column touches on two other things. Evidently, it wasn’t commonly known at the time that Mary wanted off the show. Anyone who has listened to the Benny show realises quickly her own assessment of her ability was wrong. But perhaps hanging around Hollywood’s elite all those years gave her a feeling of inferiority.

And while Jack wearied of the show-biz grind, he kept himself interested by doing different things. He had moved from vaudeville to radio to television (with some slight overlapping). Then he did Vegas shows. And then switched his focus altogether by taking part in charity symphony performances. And, had he lived longer, he might have revived his dormant movie career, having been cast in “The Sunshine Boys” (today, six sequels would have been planned before shooting even began). Show business never fired him. And he never quit. He was there until the very end.

G-E-C

2012-02-11T12:43:00.000-08:00

“The internet,” said a greying philosopher, “is a land where people go to have their idiosyncrasies validated.” Buried beneath the porn and advertising (which can be the same thing) are virtual oases which cater to every conceivable arcane interest. And where one learns that, yes, someone else delights in the same arcane interest, too.

There isn’t just one, but several web sites devoted to a familiar sound on radio and television for decades—the NBC chimes. During my boyhood, they accompanied the network’s letters slithering into formation on the screen. A generation earlier, they ended every radio broadcast. In fact, they were even parodied in animated cartoons going back to the early ‘30s.

There’s likely more esoterica about the chimes on the internet than you’d probably want to know. But allow me to add some more.

Out of curiosity, I decided to hunt through some old newspapers to find the earliest reference to the notes that ended each NBC network programme. So here are some clippings.

Winnipeg Free Press, Jan. 4, 1930
B.C.L. writes in the Milwaukee Journal:
“You listeners-in must have noticed the chimes now being used by the NBC for station identification. It’s a great relief from the old hackneyed “A brief pause for station announcement” but it’s rather wearing on the announcers. For these individuals the musical notes mean GET IN FRONT OF THAT ‘MIKE.’ Wherever they go chimes are sure to ring out. One announcer recently attended a formal dinner and the hall clock chimed the hour. The announcer is said to have revived some 15 minutes from the fit of coughing which overook him as he almost swallowed his soup spoon when the chimes startled him.
Imagine the embarrassment of an announcer in church when the chimes ring out, wake him from a half slumber and he suddenly rises from his seat and delivers the station call letters.”

San Antonio Express, Nov. 16, 1930
...one day when the hammer that is used to sound those terrible NBC chimes which mark the 15-minute periods was mislaid, [Neel B.] Enslen grabbed a pipe out of Ed (Engineer) Knapf’s mouth and boomed away . . . said Announcer Enslen as he returned the improvised hammer . . . “that was a pipe.” . . . O-w-w-w-w-.

Tralfaz says: Enslen had been at NBC since 1929. He had been a baritone with the American Opera Company. He committed suicide, age 38, on May 22, 1938, sticking his head in a gas oven. He had been battling alcoholism and had returned to work after four months off dealing with it. With that pleasant report, let us continue.

Wisconsin State Journal, Dec. 14, 1930
The chimes used by the National Broadcasting company every 15 minutes as cues for network stations to make their local announcements, are heard on an average of 141 times a day. There are 143 synchronizations each weekday and 128 on Sunday.

Wisconsin State Journal, Dec. 20, 1930
Following a recent argument in the Chicago NBC studios, Walter Lanterman, studio engineer, made a rather interesting discovery about the four-note chimes now being used between programs in national broadcasts. By mathematical computation, he has found that 87,296 different combinations are possible with the chimes now in use.
It is improbable that NBC will experiment with all the possible combinations, for it would take a man more than a week to try them all out, allowing five seconds for each combination.
If NBC ever did desire to use sufficient chimes every day, however, the possible combinations would be sufficient, to last for more than 200 years without repetition.

Peter Dixon, Beacon Syndicate, Nov. 1, 1931
It remained for Ray Perkins to stage the best gag around the NBC chimes. In a recent program Perkins built up a very “English” atmosphere and then said:
“In a moment you will hear the sound so dear to every Englishman, the chimes of Big Ben.”
And then the NBC chimes rang out.

Tralfaz says: Perkins emceed an amateur show on CBS through the ‘30s, became a reserve in the Army Intelligence Service, moved to Denver where he worked in radio, then TV. He’s noted for the words “In case of a tie, duplicate judges will be awarded.”

Associated Press, July 22, 1932
By C.E. BUTTERFIELD
New York, July 22—(AP)— The day of the announcer-operated chimes on the networks may soon be at an end. An electrical device has been designed to do the job.
At the same time there will be eliminated the “sour” notes that often materialized when the announcer failed to hit the three-note xylophones used to produce the chimes in the proper sequence or with the right force.
The new device is a development of Capt. R. H. Ranger, radio engineer, noted for his work on the electric organ and in facsimile radio transmission.
All the announcer need do is press a small button. That not only “rings” the chimes but cuts them into the proper network.

Oakland Tribune, Nov. 4, 1934
The old tradition of the theater, “The show must go on,” holds good in radio, too. On a recent Friday night the “One Man’s Family” episode was one long agony for Minetta Ellen, who has the role of Mrs. Barbour, gentle voiced, kindly mother in the Carlton E. Morse serial of American family life.
Although she was suffering from a severe case of ptomaine poisoning, she went through with her part. She collapsed as Announcer William Andrews was striking the NBC chimes at the end of the drama. She was taken to the hospital and on the following night, when the serial went on the air for Eastern ears, Verna Felton doubled for her.

Syracuse Herald, March 9, 1936
To countless listeners all over the world, the NBC chimes are three melodious notes heard before local station identification, To operators at NBC associated stations they are the unerring signal to announce identifying call letters and to the telephone repeater station operators to break down existing network set-ups and reestablish new connections.
To the engineering and musical experts who designed them, however, they are not chimes at all, but electrically and musically perfect tines which vibrate at the touch of a button on an announcer’s studio panel.
It has been four years since the old hand-struck chimes were used. They varied too greatly in volume. If the announcer struck them too lustily with his padded hammer, the sound would blast annoyingly through loudspeakers and sometimes circuit breakers would snap out. If they were sounded softly, operators at relay points along interconnecting lines might miss the cue to throw switches for local announcements and network realignment.
To thrust such irregularities definitely into the past, the NBC engineering department, under the supervision of O. B. Hanson, chief engineer, and Capt. R. H. Ranger, inventor, designed and created the mechanism now relied upon for its smooth and constant volume.
When the announcer touches the button on his panel in a studio, a relay clicks floors away and the chimes machinery starts, A motor turns and two second after the button is pushed, the first gong sounds. The two other follow at one second intervals.
The metal tines which produce the chime tones are not struck. They are plucked by pins on a motor-driven drum. That particular part of the chimes operation suggests the workings of an old-fashioned music box.
What listeners believe they hear when each of these notes is struck is a melodious tone like that of a perfectly tuned bell. What they actually hear for each is the harmony of eight of these metal tongues, plucked in union by pins on the revolving drum.
The first of each series of tongues is the fundamental. The other seven are harmonics which give the richness to the tones. The fundamentals sound in order. G below middle C; E above middle C, and middle C. Considerable tuning and balancing of the harmonics was required before the chimes could be brought to their full richness.
When these series of tunes are struck, they are barely audible to the ear. The vibrations are fed into the circuit by utilization of the electro-static principle. Close to each tuned tine is an untuned tine. As the tuned tines vibrate, the electrical capacity between it and the untuned tine varies, thus inducing electric vibrations which finally are translated by the listener’s receiver into a musical tone.

San Mateo News Leader, Dec. 2, 1937
Temperament gum-shoed its ugly way into the joint and everything went to blazes! Last Thursday night a great and glorious tradition crashed ‘round the heads of Bing Crosby and Bob Burns when, at the halfway mark in the broadcast, Ken Carpenter refused to ring the NBC chimes.
This coming on the heels of guest star Chester Morris’ remark that above and beyond Bing’s singing and Bob’s bazooka-ing, he enjoyed the way Ken rang the bells, was a rude awakening indeed for Music Hall veterans.
While stooge and star alike stood agape and a shocked nation refused to believe what it all too plainly heard, Ken, in tones flat with despair, said, “I just don’t feel like it tonight. I’m not in the mood.”
And there just weren’t any bells!
Obviously, this can’t go on. Bing’s Music Hall must have bells ringing somewhere along the halfway mark.
Will this Carpenter lethargy linger? Did Chester Morris’ praise too much for Carpenter, the artist. If so, will a committee have to be appointed to wait upon Mr. Carpenter and coddle him into a bell-ringing mood?
Whatever has to be done, must be done. Bing, you’ve got to see to it. It’s your hall, they’re your bells and Ken’s being paid good money to ring ‘em.
We’ve grown mighty attached to their merry little pong! pong! pong! We wait impatiently each week for Ken’s masterful rendition. In fact, we’re inclined to agree with Chester Morris that it’s the best part of the show.
Yes, this Ken guy has sure got a touch!
While the spotlight of attention flickers with a questioning light on the moody Carpenter, Edward Arnold and Barbara Weeks, both from the screen, and Joseph Knitzer, American violinist, will rally ‘round to lend moral support to a nervous and over-anxious cast.
Ken’s just got to ring them bells! (KPO, 7 p. m.)

Connesville Daily Courier, August 18-19 1938
By JOE CARSON
You’ll soon be able to compete with KEN CARPENTER, chime-ringer extraordinary for the Bing Crosby show, right in your own home. Ken has created such hullabaloo over chimes in the last few months that now NBC has arranged a tie-up with a bell manufacturer to put a set of standard NBC chimes on the market. It’s all part of a deep dark plan to make America chime-conscious . . . Why? I don’t know.
More about chimes tomorrow!
* * *
The NBC chimes, most-famous of musical trade marks, will begin sounding the hour for the thousands of New Yorkers and out-of-town visitors who daily pass through Radio City and the adjacent plaza and walks of Rockefeller Center.
Synchronized with one of the large ornamental clocks overlooking the Sunken Plaza, the familiar chimes which have identified the two networks of NBC for more than a decade, will mark each hour between 8 A. M. and 1 A. M. for all in the vicinity of Radio City.
Only recently extended to use outside radio, the chimes have already been adopted by three large American railroads. For several weeks travelers on the Baltimore & Ohio and Alton systems have been called to meals in the dining cars by the sound of the melodious chimes. This week they were adopted by the New York Central Railroad for the same purpose, and 150 sets of hand operated chimes are now being placed in. service on that road.
To make the chimes sound in the streets about Radio City, a system has been set up including a loud speaker, three small clocks, and the large ornamental clock in the south facade of the International Building.

Madison Capital Times, June 30, 1940
The dedication of a new, six-foot square, three-quarter-ton, NBC-chimed clock and the broadcasting of the first sounding of the chimes which are expected to become as familiar to visitors o£ Chicago’s Loop as Big Ben’s chimes are to Londoners will be presented as part of the Merchandise Mart's Tenth Anniversary celebration during the National Farm and Home Hour program at 10:30 Monday morning over Station WIBA.
The celebration will open with “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” current theme tune of the National Farm and Home Hour, followed by “Over the Waves,” which was the theme 10 years ago when the Farm and Home Hour moved into new studios in the penthouse of the Mart, world’s largest building. A dramatic review of the history of- the building will serve as an introduction to the presentation of the clock. The ceremonies will be broadcast from the North Bank Drive entrance way of the building.
During the presentation, Frederick D. Corley, president of Marshall Field & Co., and Edward J. Kelly, mayor of Chicago, will speak, and the noon chimes, and the striking of the clock, will, be heard.
The unit, of the clock which regulates the NBC chimes was made especially by NBC engineers and will be housed in a special studio on the fourth floor of the Merchandise Mart.

Associated Press, Jan. 22, 1944
By C.E. BUTTERFIELD
NEW YORK, Jan. 22 (AP)—Three notes of the NBC chimes—G E and C—have now acquired voice and have joined the fourth War Loan campaign. They say: “Buy War Bonds.”
The chimes, which signal time or station breaks on the network, have “learned” to talk or rather sing, with the aid of three notes struck on an organ, a feminine voice and a device known as a sonovox. The engineers describe the effect as “voice modulated tones.” It is this same equipment which makes trains, musical instruments or other gadgets talk, and has come into wide use for radio sound effect purposes.

Associated Press, Dec. 11, 1945
By C.E. BUTTERFIELD
New York, Dec. 11 (AP)—Those chimes in Walter Winchell’s latest ABC broadcast—and they were NBC chimes by the way—didn’t bong on purpose. It was just one of those odd studio incidents that occur on occasion. The ringing did blot out item a twenty-seven word brief about a marriage.
ABC leases studios from NBC. The panel which announcers for both networks use has a pushbutton which automatically operates the three-note chimes NBC rings at station breaks but ABC does not. It was this button that announcer Ben Grauer accidentally hit shortly after the broadcast started.

After Bill Paley’s talent raids in 1948 netted him Amos ‘n’ Andy and Jack Benny, Broadway columnist Earl Wilson joked in print that the NBC chimes weren’t going to be changing networks.

There’s oodles of information about the chimes at THIS web site, and you can hear the famous radio version of them, circa 1949, by clicking on the button below.

Hardaway Sign Language

2012-02-10T07:13:00.000-08:00

Shamus Culhane hated Bugs Hardaway’s signs.

Culhane arrived at Walter Lantz’s studio as a director and found Hardaway had a penchant for writing stories with “thirty or forty feet of bad puns lettered somewhere on the background.” Culhane tried to find ways of getting rid of the worst ones, realising he was stuck doing a pan over Phil DeGuard’s backgrounds because it saved money (no animation).

Hardaway actually had two types of sign puns. Some were names of businesses that were plays on words.

Ration Bored (1943)

The Loan Stranger (1942). “Hudson C. Dann” will go over a lot of heads today.

Woody Woodpecker (1941). This one’s so stupid, it’s funny. And are those construction lines I see?

Then there’s the type Culhane cringed at, when the camera stops to let the audience read each groaner. They’re so bad, I’m only going to give a couple of examples.

The Hollywood Matador (1942).

The Dizzy Acrobat (1943).

All these were made before Culhane arrived. In some cases, Culhane’s signs are even worse because Woody (played by Bugs Hardaway) stands there and stiffly tells us what they say. We can already see them. Why is he reading them aloud?

Someone loved “Prof. Bernie Burny.” A different circus sign by Brunish with him on it showed up in the 1952 cartoon “The Great Who-Dood-It,” written by Homer Brightman.

Hardaway arrived at Lantz in 1940 and stayed until the studio shut down at the end of the decade. After that, he managed to sell one story to his former employers at Warner Bros. but work was fairly slim. He might have done well in television with limited animation on the horizon but he died before it ever really got off the ground.

Here’s his obit from the Los Angeles Times, February 6, 1957.

Joseph Hardaway, Bugs Bunny Originator, Dies
Animated Cartoon Story Man, Pioneer in His Field, Also Worked in Television
Joseph Benson (Bugs) Hardaway, 66, animated cartoon story man who was instrumental in originating Bugs Bunny, died of a heart attack Monday night at his home, 11211 Kling St., North Hollywood.
Mr. Hardaway, onetime cartoonist for the Kansas City Post, served as Capt. Harry S. Truman's top sergeant in the 129th Field Artillery during World War I.
Early in Animation Field.
He was one of the early arrivals in Hollywood's animation field. He was a story man for Leon Schlesinger, Warner Bros. cartoons, from 1933 to 1939. His own nickname was adopted from the subsequently famous rabbit character.
In 1940 he went to work for Walter Lantz, aiding in the development of Woody Woodpecker. Recently he had been doing stories for Temple-Toons Productions [sic] for television.
Member of Guild.
He was a longtime member of the Screen Cartoonists Guild. He leaves his widow Hazel; a son, Robert, of 1907 N. Highland Ave.; a daughter, Mrs. Virginia Kirby, of Lafayette, Cal.; a brother, Frank, of San Francisco; and three sisters, Mrs. Ella Mitchell, of Bronson, Mo.; Mrs. Louise Vogel, of Fresno, and Mrs. Elizabeth Killinger, of Visalia.
Funeral arrangements are pending with Forest Lawn Memorial Park.

Cinderella Meets Wolf

2012-02-09T04:59:00.000-08:00

Tex Avery packs so much into “Swing Shift Cinderella,” it’s hard to even figure out where to begin to describe it. The action’s so fast at times, characters seem to zoom from one place to another in less than a second. But that’s what makes it funny.

He heaps on routines of his that became standard but never lost their impact in the ‘40s. Lots of sex and scare takes by the wolf. Running past a title card during the cartoon. Characters in the wrong picture. Ridiculously long cars. Corny puns that tell you they’re corny puns. Scott Bradley playing “The Trolley Song” from ‘Meet Me in St. Louis.’ Oh, and Preston Blair’s Red, er, Cinderella floor show.

How about some of the drawings of the wolf when Cinderella opens her front door? Here are some of them.

Did Ed Love animate this? The drawings are staggered on ones and twos, something Love loved to do even with limited animation at Hanna-Barbera. Ray Abrams gets the other animation credit.

Oh, and it appears there’s a surprise cameo in two frames. Does the taxi driver look familiar?

Sara Berner gets to show off several voices, including her mock Bette Davis and what she later used for Mabel Flapsaddle, one of Jack Benny’s phone operators. Frank Graham is the wolf, and Keith Scott reports Graham also does the off-camera emcee who sounds like George in the George and Junior cartoons. Imogene Lynn sings for Red, er, Cinderella.

Billy Haines and Laurel and Hardy

2012-02-08T13:03:00.000-08:00

Sorry you can’t see the caricatures of Laurel and Hardy very well, but I’ve never seen them in a newspaper ad and thought I’d pass this one on. It’s from April 5, 1931.

The short features Mae Busch and is a re-make of a 1927 film.

The feature is also a re-make of a silent, from 1922. It stars William Haines, who soon was forced to give up stardom and become a much-in-demand interior designer. Hedda Hopper, in her pre-gossip column days, plays a snooty society woman.

Drunk Turtles

2012-02-07T07:40:00.000-08:00

Ah, there’s nothing like a Don and Waffles cartoon. Four of them were made by Van Beuren in 1930. They’re all strange, which is what makes them fun. Take, for example, “The Haunted Ship.” How many characters are chased in the sky by a bolt of lightning which grows jagged arms and legs? Or bizarre, scaly sea creatures swimming past the camera? Or skeletons? Okay, they seem to have appeared somewhat regularly in Van Beuren cartoons, even after Don and Waffles became Tom and Jerry.

But what can beat singing turtles? Thanks to animation, not only can they breathe underwater, but they can drain beer at a submerged ship’s bar, then launch into a fine chorus of ‘Sweet Adeline.’ The outlines of their mouths shake when they hold a note in vibrato.

The turtles return at the end of the cartoon to do a final chorus of the song. Then their wrinkly heads stretch right into the camera and fill the frame, as the background goes black. A lovely cartoon ending.

John Foster and Mannie Davis were the animators on this and Gene Rodemich supplies one of his enjoyable scores.

I Got Plenty of Rats

2012-02-06T07:14:00.000-08:00

Everyone seems to sexually analyse Frank Tashlin’s “I Got Plenty of Mutton” but I’d prefer to do something else.

There’s a wonderful set of drawings when the hungry wolf sneaks to a pot and attempts to make a weak meat broth, only to have rats gobble it down. There are some great drawings of the wolf shooing away the rats, some of which lunge in perspective past the camera.

Tashlin doesn’t really use a cycle. Some of the drawings repeat in order but not all of them so he avoids a feeling of repetition. Here are a few of them.

You can see outlines of the wolf’s head are used to add a speed effect.

Izzy Ellis gets the animation credit on this cartoon but I wonder if Art Davis did the angular wolf going to the safe just before this scene. Cal Dalton was in the Tashlin unit at this time and George Cannata (Sr.) got an animation credit in “Swooner Crooner,” the next Tashlin cartoon to be released.

Jack Benny’s Jolly Good Show

2012-02-05T07:06:00.001-08:00

It seems appropriate that, on July 4, there would be a newspaper column about an American conquering the English. No Revolutionary War story here, though it had been joked the man at the centre of all this had been around since then.

July 4, 1950 is when Broadway columnist Earl Wilson wrote about Jack Benny’s victory on the stage of the Palladium in London. Earl—and it must be nice to have this kind of job—was a first-hand viewer.

British Love Jack Benny
By EARL WILSON
London — Jack Benny stands there on the stage and says, “In Scotland, they think I’m quite a spendthrift. . .”
And the English, some of them well-to-do, some of them in evening clothes, smoking their cigarets and cigars as they sit in the stalls at the Palladium Theatre, go mad with delight, for Jack Benny is as popular in England as American money.
I think he’s even more appreciated than he is at home.
For we take him for granted back home; here they only hear his broadcasts — without commercials, yet! — during the war, and saw him two years ago at the Palladium, so he’s a great, great luxury.
“I’m a collector of rare coins,” he says.
“Of course they weren’t rare when I collected them”.
And they roar again.
The Londoners go to either the “first house” at 6:15, or the “second house,” at 8:45, and they have a drink in the saloon in the back at intermission. And sitting in the audience as the Beautiful Wife and I did, hearing the laughter of that friendly audience, you can begin to feel something new about the greatness of the English language and its power to communicate.
(There, there, Wilson, don’t get serious. You’re a jerk from Ohio remember?)
For they’re hep here. They laugh just at the mention of Fred Allen, and cheer the name of Danny Kaye.
They know about Jolson. Jack — as a gag — said that Jolson got paid $5-000 to work at a N Y. benefit.
“Jolson needs $5,000 like Jane Russell need falsies,” Jack said “They’re both loaded.”
They adore Phil Harris’ singing and bragging, as when he pretends he’s the top man and says superiorly to Benny, “Glad to have you with me.”
And when Rochester says he has no objection to his salary “but I’m the only man who can cash my pay check on a tram,” well they’ve had it — as everybody says here.
How the critics raved! The Daily Express’ John Barber said:
“Oh Good, Mr. Benny. Oh, Very Good!”
And here’s a clue to Benny’s likely greatness on television in this line: “The famous deadpan’s face is never still. Radio audiences miss the best of Benny.”
I think so, too, but only discovered it here. Jack is one of the greatest muggers — yet it’s an underplayed mugging; he’s really a “facial expressionist,” with about the greatest timing to be found today.
At intermission, I went to investigate a great jam in an aisle, thinking it was Ava Gardner’s fans, but they were packed around Cesar Romero and Mary Benny for their autographs, Quel adoration for Romero.
Afterward we went into the bar off the royal box that Val Parnell, owner of the Palladium, fitted up for the King and Queen, then we were off to the “21 Room” for a party where the guests, including the Robert Sherwoods and Sam Goldwyns, cheered Benny when he came in.
Characteristically, Jack, after his triumph, talked about somebody else—about Danny Kaye and Dinah Shore phoning him from Hollywood and the Wiere Brothers from St. Louis.
And he told Bob Sherwood about Barney Dean, a writer for Hope & Crosby on the coast, whom he greatly admires for his wit.
“Somebody asked him how he liked his writing job,” Jack related, “and he said, ‘Fine, except every once in a while when they ask me to write something.’”
“How I know that feeling!” Sherwood said.
Me too. Right now.

Jack returned to the air on September 10 and the first-half of the show involved dialogue dealing with the trip. Interestingly, Jack and his writers admitted in the second half that radio was finished. Benny and his troupe are shunted around the CBS building because all the radio studios are now being used for television. Within two months, Benny’s TV show would debut from New York.

What Can You Do With Mickey Mouse?

2012-02-04T16:46:00.000-08:00

So much has been written and said about the Disney studio and its resultant empire that there isn’t really much I can add. And that’s all just as well, because I’ve never been as into Disney, or fascinated by the whole aura that built up around what’s now just a brand-name, as many others.

I liked seeing the kindly version of Walt Disney on camera and watching on Sunday nights (what else was on?) only if some funny cartoons were being shown (or Ludwig Von Drake). And, once in a while, I’d tune in the opening of the Mickey Mouse Club to see what happened to Donald Duck and the gong. By that time, the commercials would be over on Channel 12 and I could turn there and watch Bugs, the Fleischer Popeye and the really funny cartoons.

Disney himself has been analysed to death by people expert on the subject so there’s no point in me doing it. Instead, let me pass on this wire service story from 1950. It provides a bit of insight from Walt himself about why he turned away from cartoon shorts and on to other interests.

Yes, Disney Has Trouble With Animal Actors, Too
By Bob Thomas
HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 6 (AP) — Alfred Hitchcock, the director who has called actors anything from children to cattle, once remarked that Walt Disney has the ideal relationship with his stars: He can erase them if they get out of line.
When I told Disney this, he replied: “We have trouble with our actors, too.”
For instance, there is Mickey Mouse. The famed rodent has been brought back more times than Sarah Bernhardt. Several times Mickey has faded and his sentimental creator has revived him in a new vehicle.
“The trouble is,” Disney explained, “that Mickey isn’t funny himself. He has to be surrounded with comic situations. That takes a lot of trouble.”
Minnie Mouse has suffered an eclipse for the same reason. “There’s no action connected with Minnie,” the cartoon man said, "and we have given up the subtle stuff.”
“The duck (Donald) and the dog (Pluto) are funnier characters in themselves, but even they can get out of line. We get so busy with what we’re doing that we lose perspective. We have to stop and see what is happening to the characters.”
Disney has taken on a new set of actors who are even more unmanageable than his film veterans. He has started a series which he calls “true-life adventures,” starring the wild life of North America.
The first of the series was called “Seal Island” and it chronicled the life of seals on an Aleutian island. It won an academy award. The second is “Beaver Valley,” which is currently winning much praise throughout the country. Among the fan letters Disney has received is one from a justice of the U. S. supreme court.
“Beaver Valley,” as you might suspect, stars the Beaver. “He is a fantastic animal,” Walt said. “All he does is eat, sleep and work. He never seems to play at all. The work he does is of utmost importance in conserving the land in the western United States. The government even transports beavers into areas that needed conservation.”
Supporting the dam-builders are a lively bunch of otters, who believe in all play and no work. They are as funny a set of comedians as Disney has ever offered. The rest of the cast includes the villain—a coyote, plus various moose, crickets, frogs, salmon, ducks, bears, etc.
The films run a half-hour and are Disney’s answer to the double-feature. He feels audiences will get more enjoyment out of watching nature’s actors than in sitting through a B picture that accompanies the major film.
“These pictures aren’t cheap to make,” he told me. “They cost at least $100,000. I have to send a cameraman into the wilds for about nine months in order to get what we’re after. I now have a man on the Olympian peninsula in Washington filming the elk. Coming up is what I call ‘Nature’s Half-Acre.’ A study of every living thing on and under an average half-acre of land.”
He is also contemplating a starring vehicle for the otters. I highly recommend it. They’re as funny as Donald Duck.

A Necessary Evil

2012-02-03T13:30:00.000-08:00

“Is This Trip Really Necessary?” says the sign. “Sure, it’s necessary,” Woody Woodpecker says to us. Then he pokes his head at the camera. “I’m a necessary evil.” I love the evil expression.

I wish I could tell you who’s responsible for this piece of animation. Bob Bentley gets the animation credit. Animator Emery Hawkins gets his first of two co-direction credits on this one; the studio personnel was in a state of flux and Alex Lovy had left.

The cartoon is ‘Ration Bored’ (1943). It has the good and bad of the early ‘40s Lantz. Woody should be a frantic character like Daffy Duck; instead, a good chunk of the cartoon consists of inflating body-parts sight gags. But I like the design of early Woody, though a transition was afoot. Or a-hand. Woody’s got glove-like white hands.

Warners was experimenting with smear animation about this time. Lantz is still stretching characters in between poses. Here’s one that would be a smear if Virgil Ross or Bobe Cannon were drawing him.

At least one of the animators (or assistants) on the Lantz staff about this time used thick action lines, with outlines filled in by brush-work. I’ve seen it in a couple of cartoons. There’s a drawing like that here.

Darrell Calker’s score is really good in this one. He uses a kettle drum as Woody’s car rolls between hills to a stop. The start of ‘The Alphabet Song’ is used behind the ration book gag (as the gas station attendant reads the letters in the book). He uses a solo clarinet going up and down part of the scale when lumps of gas move along a hose into Woody’s jug. And I like the cuckoo sound with woodwinds when Woody’s “driving” the cop who has tire tubes around his arms and legs. Woody’s irises and pupils turn into bullet-shapes when he realises what’s at the bottom of a hill (the camera then cuts to it).

Woody dies at the end of the cartoon but, of course, he’s back in a few months in another cartoob.

This was a last cartoon of sorts. It’s the final time Woody’s original design would be used. Art Heinemann brought in a new design for the next cartoon. It was last Woody directed by a make-shift team. Shamus Culhane was hired for the next cartoon. And it was the last cartoon where Kent Rogers voiced Woody. He was off to war duty (he was killed) and Lantz elected to go with Bugs Hardaway as the woodpecker until the studio closed at the end of the ‘40s. Dick Nelson is the cop. Lantz had a pretty polished group of voice actors the rest of the decade (Hardaway’s monotone notwithstanding)—Hans Conried, Jack Mather, Harry E. Lang, Walter Tetley and Lionel Stander among them. Oh, and Lantz’s wife got in a couple lines here and there. We’d hear a lot more of Grace Stafford in the ‘50s. Lantz hired her to be Woody. Just a coincidence, said Lantz. He wouldn’t make up stories, would he?

Hound Hunters

2012-02-02T04:17:00.000-08:00

The George and Junior series of cartoons had to be Tex Avery’s weakest at MGM, unless you want to count the “...of Tomorrow” shorts. “Lucky Duck” was a success because it was George and Junior vs a duck. The conflict was focused; there wasn’t even dialogue to get in the way or slow it down. And then the conflict itself became irrelevant for much of the cartoon as Avery interrupted the chase for gag after gag.

In “Hound Hunters” (1947), the conflict between George, Junior and a teeny dog gets muddled when Avery tosses other characters into it and the little dog vanishes. There’s not one but three costume gags. And one gag ends with Junior shivering in George’s arms, which he’s already done in the picture to set up a situation, not as a gag.

Maybe the story’s a little out of whack because the cartoon was originally named “What Price Fleadom.” There is no flea in this story, unless Tex was referring to the dog which is small but not flea-sized. So it could be the story underwent a major overhaul and not all the kinks were worked out of it.

Still, Tex always manages to do something inventive. One thing I did like was in the cat dress-up sequence. George and Junior get inside a lumpy cat costume, one in front, the other in back. Tex pulls off a surprise take, but adds vibrating words on the screen. And when you’ve read the first line and it sinks in, a second one pops up. I think it’s Walt Clinton’s writing.

Naturally, it wouldn’t be a Tex Avery cartoon without big-mouth fear takes. With teeth.

But where’s the little dog in all this? Isn’t the cartoon about catching him? Oh, well.

The designs are by Irv Spence and the animation credits went to Clinton, Preston Blair, Ed Love and Ray Abrams.

Porky Pig Underwater

2012-02-01T11:41:00.000-08:00

Chuck Jones started out 1942 with several lacklustre cartoons featuring Conrad the Cat. By year’s end he started making some funny cartoons while layout man John McGrew started fussing around with the look of them.

“The Dover Boys” gets all the plaudits as critics talk about art and animation technique instead of comedy, but I’d rather watch “My Favorite Duck” instead. Daffy’s funny in this and there’s lots going on around the plot. There’s even a benign battle of song going on. Daffy casually sings “Blues in the Night” through the picture while Porky croons “On Moonlight Bay.” Daffy temporarily wins the musical fisticuffs when Porky starts singing his song. What else do we get? Porky AND his camping gear hang in mid-air. An imaginative burn take. ‘Duck Season’ signs, predating a trio of cartoons Mike Maltese wrote for Jones in the ‘50s. Porky says “Fillagadushu.” And Maltese throws in an Avery-esque film-break at the end. In other words, Daffy is fun. Conrad is ... uh, who was Conrad again?

Oh, McGrew’s at work here, too. There are overhead shots and up shots and angular movement and character close-ups. But none of that is my favourite visual from the cartoon. I’ll take a great scene—I’m presuming it’s Bobe Cannon at work—where Porky sets up his campsite under water. Porky doesn’t realise he’s in a lake until a fish swims by. There’s a stare take then four drawings as Porky collects his stuff before going back onto dry land. They’re on ones.

I suspect Ace Gamer or someone else in effects was responsible for the bubbles.

Cannon got credit on “The Dover Boys” so Rudy Larriva gets it here. Jones’ unit also consisted of (if other credits around this time are any indication) Ken Harris, Phil Monroe and Ben Washam.

The Unforgettable Carol Channing

2012-01-31T00:50:00.000-08:00

The show biz world is full of combinations that you can’t picture apart. And then there are some that just don’t seem to fit at all.

George Burns and Gracie Allen were a perfect match. It’s hard to fathom that when Gracie quit show business in the late ‘50s, Burns chose Carol Channing as his partner for his show on the Vegas strip.

Burns, as everyone knows, was ultra low key and personable, churning out a joke pulled from a dusty vaudeville trunk, puffing on his cigar until the audience got it, then rolling on to the next one. No one has ever accused Channing of being ultra low key. She and Ethel Merman strike me as the two stars of Broadway musical comedy who utterly dominated a stage through sheer force of personality, not exactly a trait you’re looking for when doing a two-hander in front of an audience. But Burns knew all the tricks of the show biz trade and was smart enough to ensure he wouldn’t be overpowered in front of the footlights. It helped, too, that Burns had been known by audiences for years; in 1959, Channing was still reasonably new and not yet the huge star she became. “Hello Dolly” was still a few years away, though she was known to audiences from the Broadway hit “Lend an Ear” and through newspaper columns that reported on the Great White Way.

Art loosely imitated life on the George Burns TV show on January 6, 1959. The plot—Burns signed Channing for a nightclub engagement and then joined the act himself. That’s what’s being plugged in this column in the Tucson Citizen from January 3rd. The writer clearly took the angle that his readers had no idea who Carol Channing was; the description would be quite superfluous today. This great caricature accompanied the story.

Her Eyes Are Brown Oceans
By RON KELLY
NEW YORK — Many a lover has used this line:
“Your eyes are like limpid pools of moonlight . . .”
Well, looking into the eyes of Carol Channing isn’t like that at all. It’s more like peering into two huge brown oceans.
That’s not all that's startling about this king-sized pixie. She towers over the average male (5-8 in her nyloned feet).
And the hair . . . well, she calls it “contrived careless.”
Actually, it looks like it was combed none-too-recently by a portable cement mixer. The hair is, presently, blonde.
If charm were gold, she would make Fort Knox look like a slum. Her fey, good-natured humor is so rapid-fire yet so abrupt that one sits in awe staring vacantly at this wonderful face, hoping not to forget one little pearly gem.
Carol Channing reminds one of a big—very big—friendly sister.
The voice comes through like “Gangbusters” and the laughter—warm and gay, never harsh—is contagious throughout any room. She is a good-humored, story-book character in love with the world. Particularly George Burns.
“Yes, I love that man,” she chirped, “I mean this is not only the funniest man in the world, he is also the kindest.
“Do you know that wonderful man gave me jokes, situations, little stage tricks that I’m still using since I first met him years ago?”
“Did you know he completely staged my night club act for Las Vegas?” she demanded.
Carol loves Gracie, George’s long-time partner now retired, too. And she loves their children, Sandra and Ronnie. “Isn’t Ronnie doing fine on the George Burns Show? And George. That man fractures me.
“Why, he had me in stitches during rehearsals of our TV show. He’s so quick with his jokes, and he has such a tremendous sense of timing. That man has forgotten more jokes than most modern-day comedians will ever remember.
“I am,” she decreed solemnly, “the world’s number one George Burns fan.”
Aside from her enthusiasm for George, the man and the comedian, Carol Channing has other enthusiasms, such as:
Her son, almost six. Her husband, Charles Lowe (advertising man). Her career (she opened a four-week stand at New York’s chic Plaza Hotel on Dec. 26). And people, just plain people.
One gathers that this San Francisco-born charmer has a heart to match her 138 well-distributed pounds. She certainly captivates the attention of those around her—and she enters a room like a steamroller with a bass whistle.
Carol Channing is quite possibly one of the funniest women in the world.
She's the kind of person you’d like to have living next door—if for no other reason than she’d not only loan you a cup of sugar, but she'd give you a million dollars worth of floor show at the same time.
Two recommendations: enjoy the talents of Carol Channing on The George Burns Show next Tuesday. And if ever the occasion arises to meet the girl in person, do so. It’s an experience you’re not likely to forget.

Carol turns 91 today. It’s a happy coincidence she shares a birthday with another over-the-top personality of the stage, Tallulah Bankhead, who was flamboyant in a far different manner.

Shuffle Off, Celebrity Imitators

2012-01-30T06:22:00.000-08:00

Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising may have been forced to use Warners-owned songs in their cartoons for Leon Schlesinger, but they couldn’t have been handed a better break (if you’re forced to use songs, that is). Their characters got to bounce around tunes from the best movie musicals of the era. “We’re in the Money.” “42nd Street.” “Lullaby of Broadway.” “Shuffle Off to Buffalo.” All great songs. I’m sure a lot of kids had their first exposure to them watching cartoons.

The songs were plunked in cartoons which bore no similar to the musical in which they appeared, possibly with the exception of “Page Miss Glory” (1936), which has a faux Busby Berkeley overhead choreography shot. The cartoon version of “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” (1933) involved a dispatch office for a place that delivered newborn human babies. None were delivered to Buffalo, shuffling or otherwise. Instead we get rubber hose animation, ethnic throw-ins, celebrity caricatures and the Rhythmettes.

Speaking of Disney...

There’s an inside joke in one of the background drawings of the cartoon. There’s a birth chart on a wall and it lists the names “Frisby,” “Larry” and “Otto.” Frisby is Friz Freleng, and Larry is likely Larry Martin. Both were animators at the studio at the time. “Otto” could very well be Otto Englander. He worked at the Iwerks Studio before going to Disney in 1933 but it’s possible he had a stopover at Harman and Ising. The drawing is quite possibly by Art Loomer, who was later head of the background department when Schlesinger opened his own studio. The 1932 Los Angeles City Directory lists him as an artist at Pacific Title and Art Studio, which was Schlesinger’s own company.

The same celebrities seemed to come in for a caricatured ribbing in cartoons on either side of the mid-‘30s—Bing Crosby, Jimmy Durante, Laurel and Hardy, and these guys:

Maurice Chevalier.

Joe E. Brown. That kinda looks like the pre-Lantz version of Oswald the Rabbit in the crib.

Eddie Cantor. He even claps his hands and rolls his eyes.

And Ed Wynn, known as The Fire Chief on radio, sponsored by Texaco.

Just a note on the Rhythmettes...

They were a vocal trio who found work at several cartoon studios, including employment on the biggest cartoon before “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Said a story in Hearst’s International in 1934:

There has been much secrecy about who portrayed the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf. The voices of the pigs were those of the Rhythmettes. The Rhythmettes are three girls who work on the radio in Los Angeles. They do not broadcast that they are the Three Little Pigs because they want more work at the Disney art shop.

They were appearing on KMTR as early as January 1931 and were with Al Pearce on the NBC Red Network by 1933. Then came this story from Johnny Whitehead of the Covina Argus of May 4, 1934. The Rhymettes were now on the radio with the Rhyme-Kings.

The Rhythmettes, fancy-harmonizing feminine trio with KHJ, sound every bit as good with their new member, who really isn't new because she formerly sang with the trio before going to Chicago some time ago. One of the Rhythmettes told your reporter the other night that the reason they left Al Pearce’s Gang was that two of the team are married and didn’t care to travel any longer.

The identity of the Rhythmettes gets a bit confusing. Two of them were Mary Moder and Dorothy Compton, who was later in The Debutantes singing about a grass shack in Kealakekua Hawaii. But a story in the June 29, 1937 edition of The Oakland Tribune calls them “Doris, Dell and Kay of radio fame.” It’s quite possible there was more than one girl group using the name on radio. Or maybe all the original members eventually quit. Regardless, you can hear them on this very trying syndicated show from 1937 singing a song from a 1932 Harman-Ising cartoon. Another voice you may recognise is that of the “Queen”. She’s Elvia Allmann.

KOMEDY KINGDOM

Television, Here I Come

2012-01-29T06:36:00.000-08:00

September 1950 was a busy time for Jack Benny. He had just returned from a two-month stay in Europe with Mary, and Phil Harris and Alice Faye. He and Bob Hope embarked on a jaunt to Korea to entertain troops. And he decided to make the jump into television. At least on a semi-regular basis.

Television was at the back of Bill Paley’s mind when CBS opened up its vault to put money in Jack’s at the start of 1949 and lure him from NBC. Jack was one of radio’s biggest stars so there was no reason he shouldn’t be big on television, too, was been Paley’s ultimately correct logic. CBS wasn’t loaded down with heavyweight TV shows as 1949 turned into 1950—a couple of broadcasts with Arthur Godfrey, Ed Sullivan’s “Toast of the Town” and a wheezy variety show with Ed Wynn were probably the highlights on the schedule. There was prime time when the network offered nothing to local affiliates.

During this time, Jack obviously weighed the move to television, as you shall read. But it was inevitable. Columnists speculated on when it would happen. Finally, he made the announcement a few days before the start of the 1950-51 radio season.

JACK BENNY ANNOUNCES PLANS FOR TELEVISION
By BOB THOMAS
HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 7 — (AP) — Jack Benny announced today he is going to take the big jump into television.
The fiddle-murdering comedian will make his regular television debut on October 29. The show will be for his radio sponsor and he will do three others this season, at intervals of eight weeks. I asked him how he picked his timing.
“I have to go to New York for the television shows," he explained." That means I will have to tape record my air show a week in advance so I can get away. If I tried to do this every four weeks it would be too much. So my sponsor and I agreed on every eight weeks."
Last year Benny made his TV debut on a program to dedicate the local station KTTV. He views his new program with this philosophy:
“I don’t say that I’m going to be any better than anyone else on television. But on the other hand, I see no reason why I should be worse, either."
What about the format?
“I’ll do an hour-long show. It will be variety entertainment with perhaps a scene from my
radio program. The first show might picture Rochester and me at home. We could show some of the things that we talk about on the radio— the cigarette machine, the pay telephone, and so forth. On other shows I might have a scene with Dennis Day or Phil Harris or Mary.
“People tell me that television is a completely new medium. I don’t think so. I’m going to give them the same kind of entertainment I do on stage appearances. It’s the same type of show I used to do at the Orpheum in vaudeville days.”
I asked Benny about his future in television. He admitted that he foresees the day when he will give up radio entirely.
“It would be hard to do both radio and TV and make both of them good,” he said. “And perhaps radio will not be able to afford a show like mine. After all, the others on my show are stars in their own right and have their own shows.”
He admitted he would have to live in New York when he starts doing television exclusively. “I wouldn’t mind living in New York for a year," he said. But he indicated he would return westward as soon as cross-country video becomes a fact.
When I asked how often he would want to do TV, he gave an interesting insight into the new medium.
“I think I would do something like a half-hour every two weeks,” he said. “I wonder if it isn’t a mistake to be on television every week. The matter of coming into people’s homes and being seen is a lot different from just being heard on radio.
“Even if you could be good every week—and that is doubtful—I wonder if that isn’t too much of an intrusion. Pretty soon people might become so used to seeing you that they no longer can judge whether are good or not.”
Benny said he didn’t know whether he will be using one of his noted props on TV.
“We’ll have to take tests to see whether I should wear the toupee,” he said.

Benny wasn’t the only veteran of radio eyeing the television camera. The AP pointed out a week later that Eddie Cantor, Fred Allen, Groucho Marx and Don Ameche were about to swing over from radio. Of the four, only Groucho was an unqualified success after a hit-and-miss radio career. But Jack was a bigger success than them all. Although his regular show ended in 1965, he continued with occasional specials (and even appearances on “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In” among with other radio long-timers) up until the day he died. Television was the right move after all.

Ramon Navarro and Flip the Frog

2012-01-28T13:07:00.000-08:00

There are Hollywood stars of the 1920 and ‘30s who people associate with silent pictures or sound ones, and that’s that. In reality, seldom is there a firm dividing line. Many sound stars started in silents and many silent stars made the transition to sound.

Ramon Navarro is thought of as belonging to the silent era but he starred in a number of sound pictures into the mid-‘30s. A fair chunk of Depression cash was put out in October 1930 for the ad you see below.

As you can see, not only did Novarro speak, he sang.

This screening was accompanied by two shorts, “Bigger and Better,” a two-reel series produced by Hal Roach with Mickey Daniels and Mary Kornman (and Grady Sutton as comic relief), and the second of Ub Iwerks’ Flip the Frog cartoons, “Flying Fists,” which was released in two-strip Technicolor. But here’s a black and white version.

McKimson vs the Status Quo

2012-01-27T07:37:00.000-08:00

The Warner Bros. cartoons had run out of steam by the early ’60s. Just about everything that could possibly be done with the major characters had been. Now they were doing the same kinds of things, only without a lot of energy or wit.

Chuck Jones tried a couple of different one-shots—“Now Hear This” was an experiment in sound. And Bob McKimson went for something out of the ordinary with “Bartholomew vs the Wheel” (1964). It’s the story of the dog Bartholomew, told by its child owner. The dog comes to hate wheels, ends up in an unidentified Arab desert nation, returns to the U.S., and loves wheels again as a result of his trip. McKimson was going for either charm or whimsy but he doesn’t entirely succeed. John Dunn’s story has holes in it. How did a welcoming party know a stowaway dog would be arriving at the airport? Did the dog call them? And the dog likes wheels because he doesn’t see them anymore? Plus Mel Blanc’s voices just don’t work for me. McKimson obviously didn’t want the short to have the look or feel of a Warner’s cartoon. Someone else should have brought in to match the “outsider” kid voice. Mel’s voice repertoire was running out of steam, too. He dragged out his stock voices; we get Dino for Bartholomew as a pup and Jack Benny’s Maxwell for a car.

On the other hand, Leslie Barringer lends authenticity as Bartholomew’s young owner (and reads lines better than some of the kids that did in the Peanuts specials). And even Bill Lava’s score fits nicely, though one of his dissonant horn stabs shows its ubiquitousness at Warners with an appearance.

Maybe the best part is the graphic appearance by layout man Bob Givens and background painter Bob Gribbroek. Not all the designs are great, but I do like the cat. The best gag of the cartoon is when the cat performs a high-wire act to drag attention away from Bartholomew.

And you’ve got to like sheep with veils on their faces.

McKimson (or Dunn) pulls of a disintegration gag at the end. The cat’s eyeballs drop to the floor first, then the rest in little pieces. Tex Avery had been doing this kind of thing for years and even Hanna-Barbera used it in their cartoons. But it’s still funny here.

The animation is by Ted Bonnicksen, George Grandpré and Warren Batchelder.

You can at least hand McKimson some points for trying. This cartoon was better than some of the others Warners was releasing at the end. And it was far and away better than the crap released under the studio’s name after it shut down its cartoon division.

Throwing the Bull

2012-01-26T06:51:00.000-08:00

“You know what?” says Droopy, sternly. “That makes me mad.” And he proceeds to grab a large toro by the tail and effortless batter him to a bully mash. Tex Avery used the gag with the ridiculing cattle baron (played by Avery) in the really funny “Homesteader Droopy” (1954) but he also did it with the ridiculing bull (also played by Avery) in “Señor Droopy” (1949).

Here’s how Avery handled Droopy swinging the bull around. Six drawings on ones.

And here’s what it looks like. The speedy isn’t quite identical to what’s in the cartoon but it’s close enough.

The animation in this cartoon was handled by Walt Clinton, Grant Simmons, Mike Lah, Preston Blair and Bobe Cannon. This is the first of six MGM cartoon where Cannon gets a screen credit. He was already back at UPA by the time this cartoon was released. Bill Thompson is Droopy.

Lucy Confounds the Columnists

2012-01-25T07:17:00.000-08:00

“I Love Lucy” was not only the most popular show on television at one time, it was a groundbreaking one which influences the industry to this day. Other shows had filmed in front of live audiences, who attempted to peer through lights, cameras and technical people to see the stage. Others had shot using three cameras. But “Lucy” found a way to make it all practical. And sitcoms are taped before a studio audience even today because of it.

This was revolutionary to the people who covered TV. They didn’t quite know what to make of it. Let’s pass on a few columns from the time around the show’s debut The first show was filmed September 8, 1951 but it was the second one a week later that was the debut of the series.

In Hollywood
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 27 (NEA)—A movie queen emoting on a studio sound stage with a built-in audience is the latest “Well, I’ll be darned” eye-opener in today’s fast-changing Hollywood scene.
The movie queen is Lucille Ball and workmen knocked a hole through a thick studio wall (built to keep people out) so Lucille’s audience could by-pass the studio gateman and get in.
There’s no standing around on the set with the usual head wobbling for Lucille’s audience.
No, siree.
After knocking that hole through the studio wall, the workmen built a series of raised platforms and installed 300 plush seats right on the sound stage floor behind the cameras.
Darned if they didn’t build a fancy theater-like lobby, too, complete with rest rooms, thick red carpet and uniformed ushers. No boxoffice, though, because admission is free. No popcorn machine, either.
The movie studio with the hole in the wall so the eager public can get in free to watch a star emote is General Service, and the big sound stage with the 800 plush new seats has a long and glittering history of “No Admittance — Public Keep Out” movie making.
Blame or hail television for this first mass studio gate crashing stunt since the early days of Hollywood when Carl Laemmle erected bleachers on his outdoor sets and charged the public 25 cents a head to watch the filming of Universal’s old silent dramas.
Lucielle’s sound stage audience will be watching her make a weekly half hour television movie, “I Love Lucy,” a comedy series in which she co-stars with husband Desi Arnaz, supported by movie veteran William Frawley and Broadway-import Vivian Vance.
The first film will be seen on coast-to-coast CBS-TV October 15 with a cigaret company paying all the bills.
Filming of “I Love Lucy” is as precedent-shattering as the hole in the studio wall.
As Desi, who put the idea together (Lucille claims she “didn’t have anything to do with it. Desi deserves the credit. I was home having a baby”) sees it:
“We’re putting a stage show on film for television.”
All three techniques are represented in the setup. The director, Marc Daniel, is from the New York stage and TV. Cameraman Karl Freund is a movie veteran who tensed several of Lucille’s films at M-G-M.
If you want to be confused, here’s the way it works:
The show is rehearsed like a play on a bare stage with chalk marks on the floor indicating walls and furniture. Then it’s rehearsed on the set in front of three movie cameras just like a movie.
Then they let the audience in and they shoot the scenes with all three cameras and the sound track picking up the audience laughter. Then the audience goes home and Lucille and Desi and the cast run through their lines again while the cameras move in for closeups which will be cut in with the long and medium shots.
Lucille, Desi and Producer Jess Oppenheimer insisted on an audience for their movie making on the theory that a movie for television is not like a regular movie.
Says Desi:
“People alone at home like to feel that they are part of the audience in the TV theater. They want to hear an audience reaction.”
Claims Producer Oppenheimer:
“An audience dictates to an actor what to do. He has to stop and acknowledge the audience’s reaction. Hollywood takes care of the problem with previews before a film is released.
“We don’t have time to preview our films. So instead of taking our pictures to an audience, we’ve brought our audience to the picture.”
“Great idea, isn’t it?” said Lucille, who was wearing slacks and her hair tucked under a bandana for an eight-hour session of rehearsing.
I confessed I was a little confused.
“You won’t be when you see the first picture,” she assured me. “We’re just putting a stage show on film for television.”
But I’m still confused.
“I Love Lucy,” too, but is it a play, a movie or a television show?

TV Is Keeping Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz Together
By BOB THOMAS
HOLLYWOOD, Oct. 9 (AP)—Television’s boosters keep talking about how the new medium is bringing the family back together. Here’s one pair it has done that for—Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
The redhead and the Latin have been married 11 years and a sizable amount of that time has been spent apart. During the war years, Desi was here and there in the Army. When peace came, he organized a band and was touring the country as much as six months out of each year. Meanwhile, his spouse was largely confined to picture-making in Hollywood.
“We saw each other coming and going, and that was about all,” Lucille remarked.
But now they have solved the problem of Desi’s travels. Together they have formed the
Desilu Company (from their first names, as if you didn’t_know). He is prexy and she is vice prez and the whole enterprise is very cozy. Purpose of the company is to produce a TV show called “I Love Lucy,” and that’s what keeping them home together.
“It’s a full-time job for both of us,” Lucille declared. “Starting at noon, we work every week day plus two nights a week. We have Saturday and Sunday off and that’s all.”
The new show is an unusual operation. Some TV shows are telecast directly with an audience and others are filmed. But the Ball-Arnaz program is filmed with an audience. Here's how it works:
The actors and technicians rehearse all day Monday through Thursday at a Hollywood film studio. On Thursday night an audience is brought into the studio for a dress rehearsal. More rehearsals follow on Friday and the show is filmed by three cameras before an audience that night.
“Thus we can get the technical perfection of being able to cut the film before it is televised,” explained Desi. “But we also have the advantage of playing before an audience, so we can get a reaction to the comedy.”
“I Love Lucy” has already been sold for 39 weeks to a cigarette sponsor and will debut soon on CBS in the Monday time slot following Arthur Godfrey.
Naturally, such a tight schedule precludes any film activity right now for Lucille, but. she is shedding no tears over that.
“I’ll have three months every summer to do pictures,” she said. “I could do two in that time, but I only want to do one a year anyway.
“Actually, I don’t miss doing pictures at all. On the TV show I’m doing the things I like to do. It’s a combination of everything I have learned in the movies, radio, stage and vaudeville. Sometimes I would do a whole picture just because of one little scene which I wanted to do. On this show I get that kind of scene every week.”
The Arnaz family now has another reason for sticking close to home. The name is Lucie Desiree Arnaz, age 11 weeks.

Lucille and Desi Happy At Their TV Playhouse
By GENE HANDSAKER
HOLLYWOOD, Oct. 11 (AP) — “Every ham likes an audience,” said Lucille Ball, “and we’re hams.”
The tall redhead was explaining her unique TV setup of herself and her husband, Desi Arnaz. They’re leased two adjoining sound stages. One contains the dressing rooms. The other houses the sets—dining room, living room, kitchen—and bleachers for 300 spectators.
There, each Friday evening, a half hour domestic comedy in a series called “I Love Lucy” is put on film for television. A sign over the lobby where the audience is admitted says “Desilu Playhouse.” Desilu was compounded from the owner-stars’ first names.
During business discussions, Desi may wear a hat labeled “Pres.,” while Lucy wears one lettered “Veepee”—their respective ranks in Desilu Productions, Inc. During rehearsals they sometimes switch to headgear reading “Boy Actor” and “Girl Actor.”
* * *
“THIS COVERS MORE people in one night than a picture does in two years,” Lucy said of the new medium. “Another reason I went into television is, in every script I get things I wait a year or two to get in pictures. Natural, married-couple stuff, mostly. On the screen I’ve had that only occasionally.”
The natural married-couple stuff, in a scene I saw rehearsed, showed Lucy lousing up her hubby’s poker game with his pals.
Miss Ball said she’ll branch out into comedy dance routines in the series and added: “I like not playing myself. Playing Lucille Ball is very boring. I always have to look good. Being glamorous can be very monotonous.”
Their approach to TV, she pointed out, combines all mediums. “It’s television, films, radio, theatre, and personal appearances all in one.
* * *
“BUT IT’S harder than movies. We learn a new script in three days. Any trouper who doesn’t want to work harder than he ever has in his life shouldn’t go into television.”
Desi, Cuban-born bandleader and one-time Broadway actor, has been married to Lucy nearly 11 years. But their separate movies and his band tours have kept them apart frequently. “This television show is wonderful,” he said. “It gives us our first chance to be together.”

If you’re wondering how critics responded, most of them liked the show. The New York Times panned the second half as being low comedy that was a little too low. But here’s one review from the United Press. The writer, or maybe an editor, had a little trouble with Desi Arnaz’s name.

Video Can’t Hurt
Lucille Launches TV Career as Witch
By VIRGINIA MacPHERSON
HOLLYWOOD, Oct. 18—(U.P.) Lucille Ball’s one movie queen who isn't worrying how she’ll photograph on TV. This week she came out looking like a Halloween witch.
There's just one difference: With Lucy it’s on purpose.
She and her spouse, Dessi Arnaz, kicked off their CBS-TV show, “I Love Lucy” Monday night and what the carrot-topped cutie did to her puss was enough to make every “cheesecake” photographer in the racket flip his lid.
She stuck black patches over choppers and flashed a toothless grin at her goggle-eyed audience . . . she flopped a black wig over her orange-colored curls and stalked the stage, pig-tails flying . . . she camouflaged the famous Ball curves in a shapeless gunnysack and stared cross-eyed at the camera.
She did everything, in fact, but worry about her looks. And the laughs rippled forth a mile a minute. Everybody was surprised but Lucy.
“I started out as a comedienne,” she shrugs. “But nobody ever let me get laughs. All I did, picture after picture, was look glamorous.
"Now I let Desi handle the glamour. He's pretty enough.”
She’s right there. But he’s more’n pretty. He’s also smart, as president of Dessilu Productions he bagged a sponsor for $1,500,000 a year.
“This is something we’ve been dreaming about for years,” he explained. “And working on for the past three. We even took a vaudeville tour last year to break in our act. Now we’re in business.”
At $30,000 a week you could even call it big business. For that, every Monday night, Desi and Lucy will cavort through the trials of young married life.
“It’s a cinch,” Desi says. “All we do is remember what happened to us and write a story around it."
“Now honey,” Lucy interrupted. “You know we can’t put THAT on the screen!”
The best part of the show, as far as Dessi and Lucy are concerned, is the hours.
“We’ve been trying to get together for 10 years,” Lucy said. “But I’d always be making a movie and Desi’d always be playing a nightclub tour. Even when he was in town he'd be getting home just as I was leaving for the studio.
“He always saw me as my most unglamorous self. What else . . . at 6 a. m.?
“Now we work together . . . we have a 3-month-old daughter . . . Saturday and Sundays off . . . and it looks like we’re gonna have a sane home life for a change—or at least as sane as it can be with us.”

MacPherson’s column obliquely reveals something that readers probably took as a joke. You couldn’t have put Lucy and Desi’s real life on television. Well, today you could, considering the reality trash that some people are fascinated with. “I Love Lucy” was an attempt by Lucille Ball to stabilise her home life and save her marriage. Instead, she won a default divorce on May 4, 1960; Lucy claimed she knew it was over for good five years before because Desi loved boozing and womanising too much. Considering that and the tremendous pressure to keep not only their show, but their studio/production company a success, it’s amazing that Lucy and Desi continued to bring viewers quality entertainment until the very end. Quality entertainment is the reason everybody loves Lucy.

Number One Dog Nightmare

2012-01-24T07:13:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, there’s no justice in this world. It crashes down around you. That’s the message in Chuck Jones’ “Fresh Airedale” (1945).

The sociopathic Shep wins all throughout the cartoon except during one scene when he has a nightmare sparked by jealousy. Before going to bed, he reads that a black Scottish terrier is the Number One Dog, not him. Jones gets to use his sense of stylisation to advance the plot instead of just showing off.

The pictures of the Scotty and Shep on posters turn into a 1 and a 2, with the one chasing the 2.

Ones turn into Scottish terriers. The transformation of numbers into living characters is reminiscent of the Ralph Phillips cartoon “From A to Z-Z-Z-Z” (1953), also directed by Jones.

And the abbreviation for “number” fills the screen in little jagged trails, as Mel Blanc’s echoing voice repeats the words “Number One Dog.”

Jerry Beck and Will Friedwald’s “Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies” lists the animators as Ben Washam, Ken Harris and Lloyd Vaughan. It doesn’t mention who laid out the nightmare sequence, but Mike Barrier’s “Hollywood Cartoons” states that Earl Klein took over layout in the Jones unit in early 1944 so I suspect he’s responsible for this cartoon, with Bob Gribbroek painting the backgrounds. A great little sequence in a great little cartoon.

Is You Is or Is You Ain’t

2012-01-23T15:16:00.000-08:00

“Solid Serenade” is probably best known for Tom’s rendition of Louis Jordan’s hit “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby,” accompanying himself on the double bass. Daniel Goldmark in his “Tunes For ‘Toons” (2005, University of California Press) gives a fine critique and examination of Scott Bradley’s scoring technique in the short, but nowhere does he mention who does the actual singing of the song. Various internet sources claim it’s Buck Woods but, as usual, it’s impossible to determine whence the information originated.

As I’m now using words like “whence” in a post, maybe I should post a few frames that I liked, in the order they appeared on the screen.

The credited animators are Ken Muse, Mike Lah and Ed Barge. I would have guessed Ray Patterson worked on this as well, as the opening scene has the wide-mouthed Tom that I’ve come to associate with him. The singing Tom has sharp teeth, but at times he also has a scrunched-up grin that Muse drew for Mr. Jinks in the Hanna-Barbera cartoons. And a compilation reel existed on the internet of Mike Lah’s animation which included the scene from this cartoon where Tom-as-Boyer is wooing the dog by mistake. He draws Tom’s mouth small and a bit to the side of the face like he did later in cartoons at Hanna-Barbera. If I had to guess, I’d say the scene where Tom clunks the dog with the brick and plays fetch is Lah, too. But I’m not going to speculate any more than that because I don’t want to create any misinformation.

Still, the song’s the best part of the cartoon. You can watch the Jordan version from ‘Follow the Boys’ (1944) below.

Dick Tufeld

2012-01-22T23:34:00.000-08:00

Popular culture can be a funny thing. A man can spend his life heard prominently announcing awards telecasts, commercials for big-name products, at least one incarnation of Walt Disney’s Sunday night show, but then become known for three words—“Danger Will Robinson.”

Will Robinson, known in real life as Bill Mumy, has passed on word on Facebook that Dick Tufeld, the voice of the robot on ‘Lost in Space,’ has passed away.

There was actually a time you could see Tufeld instead of hear him. He was a noon-hour newscaster at KABC in 1955 (soon moved to the 11 p.m. slot where he also did commentary) and hosted ‘Dick Tufeld’s Sports Page’ and ‘Focus on Los Angeles,’ a public affairs show. But his rich, smooth voice could have sold Barack Obama to Newt Gingrich. So, he went into commercial and announcing work. Disney hired him. So did Warner Bros. for the original ‘Bugs Bunny Show.’ Hanna-Barbera brought him in to say things like “The Jetsons. Brought to you by...” He was the announcer on ‘The Hollywood Palace.’ And the Oscars. And the Grammys. And the People’s Choice Awards. He told us Rice-A-Roni was the San Francisco Treat. He voiced obscure stuff, too. Jerry Fairbanks had him do an insert for the Bell Telephone industrial film ‘21st Century Calling’ set at the Seattle World’s Fair. The list goes on and on.

But he achieved fame amongst a certain segment of the population as part of the most unlikely TV comedy duo for his monotone comebacks to the increasingly campy Dr. Zachary Smith on ‘Lost in Space.’ Fan sites have Tufeld interviews on them, but here’s one I thought I’d pass on from the New York Daily News syndicate. It’s dated December 24, 1997.

Lost in Space voice gets heard again in the toy aisle
By David Bianculli
New York Daily News
WARNING! WARNING! Danger, Will Robinson! That does not compute!
Ask most people younger than 45 or so to identify the source of those phrases, and, because of their familiarity with either the original CBS series or its endless syndicated reruns, the answer is simple: The Robot from the 1965-68 sci-fi series Lost in Space, which airs daily on the Space channel.
However, ask them to identify the owner of that voice, and it’s a much trickier question. The answer is Dick Tufeld — and all of a sudden, just in time for Christmas, Tufeld’s voice is all over the place again.
He provides the Robot's voice in a new line of merchandising of classic Lost in Space stuff: talking mini-Robot key chains, for example, and even an ultra-cool, 11-inch Robot replica with a motorized base, moving arms and bubble head, and a voice chip that has Tufeld saying either “Danger, Will Robinson!” or “My sensors indicate an intruder is present!”
Well, my sensors indicate a hot holiday toy is present — and, indeed, the Trendmasters Lost in Space Robots have been selling fast and furiously. Tufeld, whose voice also introduced Zorro and, for years, Wonderful World of Disney, is understandably amused that the series is remembered that fondly — or even at all.
“This was not the strongest show anybody ever saw,” Tufeld said. But he knew, by speaking at colleges as early as the mid-70s and watching how college kids perked up when learning he had the Robot among his credits, just how resonant Lost in Space really was.
It was only a fluke, though, that made him the voice of the Robot. Tufeld had been hired as the show’s narrator by series creator Irwin Allen, but failed in his initial attempt to audition for the vocal role of the Robot.
Tufeld went in presuming Allen wanted a stiff-sounding, mechanical voice, but recalls Allen telling him, “My dear boy, that is exactly what I am not looking for! This is a highly advanced culture in the year 1997!” That, of course, was the year the show’s Jupiter 2 spaceship was launched.
After failing to please Allen with several low-key readings, Tufeld prepared to leave, then stopped and asked to try one more time.
“In my best mechanical, stiff, robot-ian kind of sound, I say, WARNING! DANGER! THAT DOES NOT COMPUTE!”
Allen’s eyes lit up, and Tufeld got the job.
Go figure. And if you want to please someone this year, go buy a Robot gift.

Tufeld was Irwin Allen’s announcer of choice and heard on a bunch of Allen’s shows of the ‘60s.

He had studied drama at Northwestern University. His friendly, resonant voice was perfect for radio. That’s where Tufeld resided prior to his television announcing career, which took off when “Space Patrol” debuted on KECA, ABC’s West Coast flagship, on March 9, 1950 (it became a radio show as well a few months later). My favourite radio work of his is with the future Fred Flintstone, Alan Reed, on “Falstaff Fables” (1950), featuring the Falstaff Openshaw character Reed did on Fred Allen’s show. Listen to one episode by clicking on the arrow. Try to resist going out to buy a Milky Way bar.

If you read commercials on the air for a living, you can only hope to sound as good as Dick Tufeld. Here’s one of his countless TV spots.

Late note: One of Dick’s grandchildren has pointed out in the comment section this full-length trailer for the Disney movie kids begged their parents to let them see again and again: “Mary Poppins.”

A mid-‘60s issue of Screen Actors magazine notes Tufeld was an active SAG member, part of joint talks between AFRTA and the Guild with commercial producers and ad agencies (on the committee with him were former radio actors Daws Butler, Vic Perrin, Ed Prentiss and Bud Hiestand).

Tufeld grew up in Pasadena and was, by all accounts, a thoughtful and likeable man. And, 45 years later, it’s evident to fans around the world no one could have been better at putting that duplicitous coward Dr. Smith in his place than the voice of Bill Mumy’s mechanical friend.

Birds, Bees and Dennis Day

2012-01-22T06:42:00.000-08:00

Dennis Day learned what everyone who has reached any level of fame has learned—your audience typecasts you. At times, that can be a good thing. If a star does something bad in real life, people refuse to believe it because they “know” him. But, professionally, it gets to be annoying after awhile. It certainly did to Dennis Day, it seems.

There’s a bit of irony in that. Day owed his career to the fact that Kenny Baker wearied of the same stereotype that Day did, and quit the Jack Benny radio show because of it. Day stuck with it. It was the wisest career decision. Not only did his role expand a bit on the Benny show—he got to show off his ability to do impressions—he ended up getting his own starring show on NBC. But, again, he was playing a watered down version of his character on the Benny show, a naïve, somewhat silly young man who was a little awkward around young women.

All this seems to have perturbed Dennis as he looked to expand his career past the narrow role people continued to want to see him in. He talked about it in the public press in 1950 as he pushed his new movie. Here’s one syndicated column.

In Hollywood
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
HOLLYWOOD, July 1 (NEA)—Maybe it won’t impress Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner, but Dennis Day, who has million-dollars tonsils, too, gets worry lines right under his widow’s peak whenever he thinks about Gloria de Haven.
The fancy forehead corrugation hasn’t a thing to do with bullfighters, either.
It seems that Gloria, a Hollywood doll who seldom gets a ting-a-ling when they’re looking for stained-glass window types, is about to throw a monkey wrench with SEX engraved on it smack into the middle of Dennis’ fan club of dear, old white-haired ladies.
When Gloria finishes hustling him soundly in Fox’s “I’ll Get By,” Dennis broods, the radio-confected pictures of him at an innocent lad in short pants will go boom-boom.
It’s worrying Dennis in the same way it would worry Gene Autry if he found himself in Mae West’s boudoir right in front of a million bubble-gum blowers.
Dennis looked around furtively and told me:
“I’m box office with those old girls. When I play theaters, they hobble down the aisles on crutches and smash into other people with their wheel chairs. Tired business men want to see Jane Russell. The white-haired gals who collect old-age pensions want to see me.”
Dennis says he’s been putting on the Little Lord Fauntleroy smile for years whenever somebody’s grandma yells for him.
He Knows, Girls
“They think I’m really the mother’s boy I play on Jack Benny’s radio show,” he sighed. “They don’t give me credit for knowing about the birds and bees.”
But there won't be any doubts when the picture is released, he’s sure.
“I get Gloria to make an honest man out of me by mentioning my mink farm. When Gloria hears me say ‘mink,’ she goes wild and screams, ‘Br-r-r-r-rother!’ Only the way Gloria bellows it, the word hasn’t got anything to do with National Brotherhood Week.”
Dennis can just see his picture turned to the wall in the parlors of the Day fans who look like Jack Benny in his Charley’s Aunt wig. He doesn’t think there’s a chance that it will be Gloria’s picture that gets the flip-over treatment. His over-sixty fans aren’t the kind who go around framing photos of girls in the Betty Grable league.
“I’ll Get By” is Dennis’ second movie—his No. 1 try was something called “Music in Manhattan” with Ann Shirley and Phil Terry about 10 years ago—and marks his first screen encounter with molten lipstick.
“Now,” he says, “I know how Shirley Temple felt when she got kissed for the first time.”
Dennis says that he’s been goggle-eyed about the radio public’s willingness to believe anything that comes bouncing over the air waves since he became the big load of whimsey on the Benny show in 1939. He complains:
“They think that Marie Wilson is a mental giant beside me. I have to go around saying, ‘I’m not a schmoe, I’m not a schmoe.’”
He’s lost count of the letters asking him about his wrestling, steam-fitting mother — “She’s really a demure lady”—and the age at which he was dropped on his noggin.
Even radio actors buttonhole him and whisper:
“Hey, just between you and me, is Jack Benny really that tight with a buck?”
Fair-Haired Boy
When Dennis isn’t peeking into Ulcerland about his first celluloid sex skirmish, he’s apt to go into a brown study about the Mother Macrees who haven’t seen him and think of him as a tall blond kid with hayseeds sticking out of his ears.
“Maybe,” says Dennis, “they’ll fall flat on their faces when they see me. Maybe the studio should have used the Larry Parks technique and hired Claude Jarman, Jr., or Butch Jenkins to play me.”
He says a lot of radio singers who have been trying to burst into movies for years fainted dead away and had to go to bed when word leaked out that he had turned down a chance to jump from “I’ll Get By” into RKO’s “Two Tickets to Broadway.”
One stopped him and said:
“Who are you to turn down pictures—Princess Aly Khan?”
Dennis has quite a reputation for his mimicry but nobody he imitates has ever threatened to give him a poke in the snoot. He’s not sure about Ronald Colman, though. When Colman first heard Dennis give out with the “I say, Bonita,” he turned to his wife and said:
“I say, Bonita, isn’t that a wonderful imitation of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.?”
Dennis hasn't figured it out yet.
“Maybe,” he says, “Colman doesn’t like Doug, Jr.”

“Princess Aly Khan” was better known as Rita Hayworth, who spent a fair chunk of time after her marriage refusing to work on pictures Columbia insisted on putting her in.

The following day, Hedda Hopper devoted her entire Sunday column to Dennis. You’ve got to love the way Hedda makes herself part of the story. And she gives a bit of insight into how canny Dennis was. There’s was a reason he inflicted “Clancy Lowered the Boom” on the Benny audience. He made money off it.

Dennis Day-He's Such a Boy
You'd never think that nostalgic tenor, that youthful innocence, that dumbjohn naivete came from a tough veteran in show business!
By HEDDA HOPPER
HOLLYWOOD—To millions of people Dennis Day is the eternal boy—a naive lad who says the things that most people only think, a lad who sings sweet songs in a tenor that calls forth nostalgic tears. And in recent years the public has come to think of Dennis as one of the world’s best comedians and imitators.
Every two years radio man Day shows his fans Dennis Day in the flesh through personal appearance tours across the nation.
And once in a blue moon Dennis makes a motion picture. This is his picture year. He’s co-starring in “I’ll Get By” at Twentieth Century-Fox with June Haver, Bill Lundigan and Gloria de Haven, and with such top stars as Clifton Webb, Jeanne Crain, Dan Dailey and Vic Mature doing specialty spots as background for his unique talents.
Won’t Sign Up
“You haven’t made a picture in six years,” I observed over our tea. “Why? It’s easier to let your public, see you on the screen than to go out on those killing personal appearance tours—and the money all goes out in tax anyway.”
“That’s true,’ said Dennis, “but you can’t find a producer who will let you off with one picture. They all want to sign you up for a baker’s dozen, and that I can’t do. Darryl Zanuck is the exception—when he wants you he’ll take you for a one-shot. He and Bill Perlberg don’t play that cards-to-the-chest game. They go out to make a top picture, and that's their first consideration.”
“Then you won’t make a p.a. tour this year?” I asked.
“No. I’ll spend my vacation time at Balboa,” he replied. “I’ve a house there and a little boat, and I’ll get 13 weeks rest. But I’ll go out on tour next year. The last time I went out we did six shows a day and I sing nine songs at each show. That’s work, sister. Toward the end of the tour I caught cold and lost my voice. I wanted to throw in the sponge, but you can’t let audiences down, so I came out and emceed the show in a croaking whisper until the voice got straightened out.”
His Name’s McNulty
Bronx-born Eugene Dennis McNulty is a fine looking lad in a drawing room. He wears with case and assurance clothes made by the best tailors. His ebony hair and heart-warming smile, a ready wit and flashes of temperamental fire make him a personality to remember. In private life the shy, star-struck boy of the radio becomes a man of modest reticence. He qualifies his success story repeatedly with use of the word “luck.”
“Luck has everything to do with it,” he said. “If Kenny Baker hadn’t pulled out of the Jack Benny show when he did, I’d probably be working away at the law. That’s what I wanted to be— a criminal lawyer. I find that branch absorbing.”
I wanted to know how a would-be criminal lawyer wound up as a world famous entertainer. “Didn’t that take some fancy footwork?” I asked.
“Oh, no. I’d always sung a bit. In the choir at St. Patrick’s cathedral when I was a small boy. I sang alto. Then when I was at Manhattan college we did some amateur shows with Larry Clinton’s orchestra. And I sang a couple of times on radio shows so in my spare time I’d fool about with recordings. I was recovering from an appendix operation when I made a recording of ‘Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair.’ Some fellows from a Canadian corporation were in the next room when I was cutting it and heard me. They bought it for $75. I ran home with the money and you can imagine the excitement. ‘A wonderful country this,’ my father said, ‘that pays you for singing. Why, when I sang in Ireland, they threw water at me!’”
It seems there were other singers among the McNultys. Dennis’ grandmother has a very fine voice and his mother is musical also.
“Mother played the tenement house piano—that’s what we call the accordion—at her own wedding,” Dennis explained. “She plays it now when we have a family get-together around the piano.”
So many McNultys came to California after Dennis arrived that they just bought they own apartment house and settled down. I wanted to know how many songs Dennis knew by heart.
Got to Keep Working.
He thought a moment. “It would run into the thousands I guess.” he smiled deprecatingly.
“You can’t help knowing a good many when you've been singing as long as I have. Then, you see, I take a singing lesson every day when I’m not making a picture. You can’t stand on your honors in life— you've got to keep working.”
Dennis sang a number of songs when he auditioned for the Jack Benny program—“I Never Knew Heaven Could Speak” and “Don’t Worry About Me” and “Yours Is My Heart Alone,” “A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody,” “I’ll Follow My Secret Heart” and I don't know how many more. But it was “Jeanie” which caught Mary Livingstone’s fancy and which got him the chance to land in what he calls “the greatest showcase in the world”— the Benny show.
When Jack finally called Dennis’ name singling him out of a room full of hopeful aspirants, it was Dennis’ instant response “Yes, please,” which keyed the eternally fresh character he plays. He was nervous and reticent and his voice was higher than normal and a trifle breathless. Jack Benny a master showman, recognized his comedy value. “There’s our boy,” he told Mary. “We’ll play him just like that— a shy utterly sincere boy whose mother is somewhere in the offing all the time.”
Correct Psychology
Jack’s psychology was correct. Mrs. Patrick McNulty, who was Mary Grady of Carracastle, Ireland, has reared a family of four sons and a daughter to be proud of. It was his mother who introduced Dennis to Peggy Almquist, his wife and the mother of small Paddy and Denny. One brother is a doctor, another a teacher of electrical engineering at U.C.L.A., another is Denny’s business manager, and the fourth is in the pharmaceutical business. Dennis’ sister is married and the mother of four, and Grandma McNulty has nine grandchildren to fuss over, and she’s not yet 60.
Dennis has one great difficulty! There aren’t enough hours in a day for him He says he’s an eight-hour man when it comes to sleep and just must have it to keep his voice fresh. His two music publishing businesses take up a good deal of his time since he personally checks on all the songs that get past his brother John with a recommendation.
He Isn’t Greedy
“You can’t afford to overlook anything submitted in the music publishing business,” he told me. “Song writers are spurt people. They jot down the flash as it comes because if it’s not caught on the fly if often leaves never to return. ‘Clancy Lowered the Boom’ was submitted to me on the back of a laundry list, probably the only piece of paper at hand.” Dennis thinks he has another hit in “When I Was Young and Twenty,” from the Housman poem which he has set to music.
Eugene Dennis McNulty isn’t money greedy, but he knows the value of a dollar. And he has a certain inflexibility when it comes to things that might interfere with his standards—nobody can break him down. He is the only big-moneyed entertainer in Hollywood without a swimming pool. His home, which he bought before he married, and which is in a conservative residential section of Los Angeles, might be the home of a doctor or lawyer.
After Dennis Day had gone I remembered all the times I’d sat in my library listening to that golden voice. There, I thought to myself, goes talent and brains and manners and high ideals and charm—there goes a boy every woman in the world would be proud to call son.

Hedda Hopper was 65 years old when she wrote this column. Right in Dennis Day’s motherly musical audience demographic. When you sing sentimental songs from the Victrola days, you attract fans who are sentimental for the songs from the Victrola days. It would have been pointless, and far less lucrative, to hope for some other result. It may have been frustrating at times, but if fans wanted a naïve, boyish singer, that’s what Dennis Day gave them. It’s the reason why he’s remembered today.

No Money in Cartoons

2012-01-21T13:51:00.000-08:00

Before the end of block booking in 1948, which stopped studios from forcing theatres to accept their short subjects along with features, cartoon producers were teetering on unprofitability. The war had stopped a lot of their overseas business for obvious reasons. Then came another financial blow in 1947, as related by this United Press story.

Bugs Bunny to be Rationed
England’s Embargo Hits Home At Cartoon Factories
By VIRGINIA MacPHERSON
HOLLYWOOD, Oct. 16—(U.P.)—The British tax became something real to movie-goers today when they discovered they’re going to be rationed on Woody Woodpecker and Bugs Bunny.
Yep—fewer cartoons.
Up to now England’s embargo on Hollywood has been something the fans would just as soon let producers worry about. But it’s beginning to hit home.
Of the eight cartoon factories, two have shut down altogether. Columbia Studios, which makes “The Fox and the Crow,” took a look at their profits, discovered there weren’t any, and went out of business.
George Pal, whose bug-eyed “Jasper” kept kids happy at Saturday matinees, has chopped off his Puppetoons. He's going in for full-length features, where he can make some money.
“Let’s not kid ourselves,” shrugged Walter Lantz, president of the Cartoon Producers’ Association. “We’re not going to get our dough back from the domestic market. Europe used to help us make a profit. Now everybody’s losing money.”
So Lantz, who makes “Woody Woodpecker” and “Andy Panda,” is cutting down. In 1942 he had 13 cartoons out by August. This year he has eight. It’s the same all over town. M.G.M.’s “Tom and Jerry” are coming out 10 times this year. Five years ago they were in 16 cartoons. Paramount’s “Popeye” gulps spinach 15 times, as compared to 25 in 1942.
Even Disney’s slowing up. “Mickey Mouse” and company hit your movie house only every six weeks now. They used to be there once a month.
“Bugs Bunny” and Warners’ “Merry Melodies” are really taking it easy. They’ve slowed from a fast 42 a year to 16.
“And if the other companies are anything like mine, they’re losing money on every one,” Lantz said. “My costs have gone up 165 per cent since 1940. Profits? A measly 12 per cent. We spend $25,000 for a six-minute short now—and wait 18 months to get it back.”
Trouble is, he said, theater managers want a cartoon for $2.50 a week. They get it, too.
“Feature pictures get a percentage,” Lantz explained. “But cartoons come for a flat rate. Awful flat I might add. Exhibitors still think they’re fillers—something to fill up the screen with while the customers go out for more popcorn.”
At least, the British tax hasn’t cut down on that—yet.

Wood Soanes of the Oakland Tribune sniffed his response in the entertainment pages on October 23:

Well, I have no doubt that the British embargo is having its effect, but it isn’t the basic cause. Several months before Britain decided on its new tax arrangements, the cartoon producers were in the public print screaming that they couldn’t go on unless they got better terms.
The cartoon men claim they are being given the brush-off by the feature producers; the exhibitors claim that with the public demanding double bills there is no time for cartoons. In short, everyone is blaming everybody else. The sorry fact is that most of the cartoons aren’t worth the powder to blow them to Never-never land.

Soanes seems to be under the impression that if the cartoons were “better,” producers would get more money for them. But he doesn’t address the fact that the movie-going public felt they got more for their money with two features instead of one feature and several short subjects they didn’t have a great deal of interest in.
While cartoons directors would say decades later “Cartoons weren’t made for children,” that certainly appears to have been the primary audience attracted to them even before 1947. Theatre owners knew it. They scheduled whole afternoons of nothing but cartoons aimed at a kid audience, packaging shorts from several different producers together, often under the “cartoon carnival” moniker.

Studios never wised up to the value of their cartoons. All they saw is how long it took for them to bring in money. When television became the home entertainment medium of choice in the ‘50s, the studios eagerly sold their cartoons to distributors in that business, who proceeded to make a killing re-selling packages of them to television stations desperate for tried-and-true kid content. So studios never wised up to the true value of television, at least initially, but their short-sightedness allowed countless kids to fall in love with the classic cartoons and ensure their preservation even to today.

Arch in the Latin Quarter

2012-01-20T07:11:00.000-08:00

If you’re going to set a cartoon in Paris, you’d better have an appropriate opening. And that’s what you get in Bob McKimson’s “French Rarebit” (1951). Gene Poddany plays ‘Latin Quarter’ over the opening titles and then Milt Franklyn changes the arrangement for the start of the cartoon, which features a fairly literal drawing of the Arc du Triomphe.

Layout man Cornett Wood has the arch set at an angle. The background was painted by Dick Thomas.

Animator Mark Kausler informs me Wood had a storefront under the Hollywood Freeway on Cahuenga Blvd. where he taught drawing into the late ‘60s. Indiana’s Laughmakers, The Story of over 400 Hoosiers by Ray Banta reveals the following:

Cornett Wood went on from John Herron Art School of Indianapolis to become one of the animators for the fabulous Walt Disney production, Fantasia. The feature released in 1940 was called “a tribute to the brilliance of Walt Disney’s staff of artists and animators.” It involved a series of visualizations of musical themes. Wood worked as an effects animator at Disney from March 7, 1938 to September 12, 1941.

After which, he found himself at the Schlesinger studio.

Wood was born September 12, 1905 and died in Los Angeles on May 16, 1980.

Incidentally, if you want to learn more about the Latin Quarter (the area in Paris, not the song by Warren and Dubin), drop by this web site.

Takes From Northwest Hounded Police

2012-01-19T05:52:00.000-08:00

“Northwest Hounded Police” (1946) has the takes that Tex Avery became famous for. The last one has the veins growing in Wolfie’s eyes.

The animators on this cartoon were Ed Love, Preston Blair, Ray Abrams and Walt Clinton. Frank Graham supplies Wolfie’s voice. Bill Thompson must still have been on military service because he’s not doing Droopy in this one.

Jack Benny on the Air, 1929

2012-01-18T12:49:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, we espoused the opinion on this blog that Jack Benny’s first appearance on the radio wasn’t in 1932, as he had claimed for many years, and pointed out a 1931 appearance on the ‘RKO Theater of the Air’ as likely being the first. A search found no evidence of any broadcasts in 1930 (though Tim Lones of the Cleveland Classic Media blog found one) and the grind of vaudeville would almost preclude anything in the ‘20s.

Turns out we were half right.

Laura Leff of the International Jack Benny Fan Club may know about Jack Benny than anyone alive, save Jack’s daughter Joan. She sent a note that she was sure Jack had done some radio in the late ‘20s in Los Angeles when he was under contract to M-G-M. So back to the digging we went. And, as usual, it turns out Laura was correct. Jack’s famous Ed Sullivan show of 1932 wasn’t his first radio appearance. But it wasn’t in 1931, either.

To the right, you see a clipping from the radio page of the Oakland Tribune of October 9, 1929. At the very bottom, it reads:

“Tonight KFRC will have Jack Benny as master of ceremonies for the Mavio [sic] club from 8 to 9. Marie Wells, popular musical comedienne, will sing a group of songs.”

A check of listings in the Tribune and other California papers (unfortunately, I don’t have access to any Los Angeles papers of the day) clears up the mystery. The show was called ‘The MGM Movie Club’ and it originated from KHJ, the Don Lee network station in Los Angeles. Don Lee owned KFRC in San Francisco and had four affiliates up the West Coast. On August 10, 1929, United Press reported Don Lee was merging his six stations with CBS as of the following January 1st. The Don Lee stations were carrying some CBS programming, but ‘The M-G-M Movie Club’ wasn’t one of them (at least, the CBS flagship in New York didn’t run it, though it would have been a good candidate for a network show). It was a regular show; the previous week featured Basil Rathbone hosting, with Cliff Edwards, Bob Montgomery and forgotten stars Ethelind Terry, Lawrence Gray, the Three Twins and Catherine Dale Owens.

I don’t know any more about the programme or the broadcast itself, though Marie Wells’ presence is puzzling as she was under contract to Warner Bros.

At the time, Jack was about to open in M-G-M’s ‘The Hollywood Revue’ with just about every star the studio had at the time. No doubt that’s what he was pushing on the broadcast. So I won’t go so far as to say October 9, 1929 was Jack Benny’s first appearance on the radio. But we do know it wasn’t 1932 as legend would have you believe.

This post gives me a chance to talk about Laura Leff’s Labour of Love. Laura has just published Volume 3 of “39 Forever.” The first two volumes feature detailed research on every single episode of Jack Benny’s radio programme, including casts, sketches, “firsts”, songs, appearances of the “Anaheim, Asuza and Cucamonga” gag, screw-ups. Anyone who loves Jack’s radio show should have them. Laura’s now devoted a third volume to Jack’s television series. Almost anything you wanted to know about the show is there. You can read more about it HERE and if you want to find out what else the Fan Club offers, stop by HERE.

By the way, ‘The Hollywood Revue’ of 1929 is memorable in that it brought us that wonderful song “Singin’ in the Rain” long before Gene Kelly’s immortal dance to it in the movie of the same name. You can see briefly Jack at the end of this clip along with one of Hollywood’s greatest ever comic actors, Buster Keaton. And you may recognise a few other soggy faces.

I Don’t Wanna Buy One

2012-01-18T05:37:00.000-08:00

Some comedians are an acquired taste. I never acquired one for Joe Penner. And seeing he’s been dead for 70 years, I likely won’t acquire one. But I sure like this ad for his film debut, ‘College Rhythm’ (1934). We get a realistic Penner and a cartoon duck. Duck as in “Wanna buy a.”

Cartoons are about the only place anyone knows Penner from these days. Danny Webb borrowed his voice for Egghead at Warner Bros. (notably in ‘Daffy Duck and Egghead’). And the annoying rabbit characters in the Warners’ animated short ‘My Green Fedora’ (1935) were Penner-ised with one dressing like him and the other laughing like him. Penner was a huge, but fleeting, radio star. Rudy Vallee “discovered” him in 1933 and played straight man to him. This clip is courtesy of Craig Hodgkins’ very good site on Penner.

Radio isn’t kind to people whose routine consists of little more than a couple of catchphrases. And that’s about all Penner had, besides a childishly-whiny voice. Penner realised a little too late that you could go on with the same act for years in vaudeville, but not on radio. In 1936, he gave up his duck and tried a new radio show written by Harry W. Conn, the man who thought he made Jack Benny, but his career had peaked.

Penner continued in movies, walking from RKO to Universal in a salary dispute in 1939, before his sudden death on January 10, 1941. He was 36. The catchphrases he tried to give up followed him to the grave; some front page newspaper stories showed a publicity shot of Penner and his duck. Click on them below to see the clippings in larger form.

Philadelphia, Jan. 11 (AP)—Millions who had howled hilarious approval of a little Hungarian comedian and his incessant “Wanna Buy a Duck?” were touched by sadness today with the death of Joe Penner.
The 36-year-old funnyman who brought the nation many a laugh through the screen, stage and radio, died in his sleep yesterday. Pending an autopsy, the cause was given as a heart attack.
Penner, seeking a rest, had asked not to be disturbed in his hotel room — Mrs. Penner told how hard he had been working on his new show “Yokel Boy,” which opened here Monday — and was found dead in bed about 5 P. M., by his wife.
Only the night before, friends said Penner — born Josef Pinter in a tiny Hungarian village — had appeared in his gayest mood. After the show, he escorted Mrs. Penner and comedienne Martha Raye, their guest, to a night club.
Robert Crawford, his co-producer and general manager, said the star called upon, returning to the hotel and seemed “in the best of spirits.” Mrs. Penner, the former Mae Vogt, a dancer in Joe’s first show, was placed under a physician’s care.
There was no understudy for the star of “Yokel Boy” and the Locust Street Theater was dark last night. Crawford has not decided whether it will be continued.
Penner was brought to this country at the age of nine by his grandparents, and joined his parents in Detroit, where the father worked in a motor car factory. School and odd jobs had no appeal for a youngster who showed more aptitude for clowning than classes, but a prize for an amateur impersonation of Charlie Chaplin started him on his way to stardom.
His first theatrical job was assistant to a mind reader—until the comedian on the bill failed to show up. Penner stepped in, and there followed several seasons of vaudeville, carnivals, burlesques and nightclubs. The first big break came in 1926, a role at $375 a week in the “Greenwich. Village Follies.” In 1933 Rudy Vallee had Penner as guest star on radio, and a few weeks later he was featured on his own program.
The death of Joe Penner may cancell [sic] the road tour of “Yokel Boy,” the Lew Brown-Ray Henderson musical in which the comedian was making a stage “comeback.” The show had been booked for a one-night engagement on Jan. 29 at the Empire, but no news of cancellation has been received by Harry Unterfoot, city manager of RKO-Schine theaters, who is supervising the theater.

A Camel in Morocco

2012-01-17T07:03:00.000-08:00

Camels are funny-looking things, especially in cartoons. Probably the funniest-looking camel in a cartoon not made by Warner Bros. is in the Walter Lantz cartoon ‘Socko in Morocco’ (released in January 1954). It’s one of the shorts Don Patterson handled during his far-too-short tenure as a director.

For reasons known only to Patterson, and perhaps writer Homer Brightman, the camel is partly hollow. Buzz Buzzard rides inside it.

Thad Komorowski tells me that Walter Lantz was so cheap, the directors at his studio had to their own design characters, unlike MGM where they had people like Claude Smith or Ed Benedict to do that sort of thing.

The camel is animated in silhouette and long shot at the beginning of his scene with a flurry of feet on ones. Then we get some medium shots. The animation is by Ken Southworth, Herman Cohen and Ray Abrams. Art Landy is credited with the very nice backgrounds; good design and sunset hues.

This cartoon has dialogue at the beginning and end, and virtually nothing in between. What few words on the soundtrack are handled by Dal McKennon as Buzz and a horse, while Grace Stafford is Woody and giggles for the princess. I’m presuming McKennon is also the French Foreign Legion commander, though he reminds me a lot more of Harry Lang than anyone else. Lang died about five months before this cartoon was released after suffering a lengthy illness.

Stage Door Clampett

2012-01-16T07:51:00.000-08:00

Here’s an inside joke from Friz Freleng’s “Stage Door Cartoon.” Well, maybe it’s a sly editorial comment by someone in Freleng’s unit about the animators in Bob Clampett’s unit, because you can see a reference to Clampett in one of the background drawings.

Paul Julian liked referring to fellow Warners employees in his backgrounds. Julian didn’t get credit on this cartoon but it’s obviously his work. I love the little light reflection highlights he draws. Here are a couple of other backgrounds of his from early in the cartoon. They’re from layouts by an uncredited Hawley Pratt.

Jack Bradbury gets the sole animation credit, though the nice little Bugs tap dance is either by Virgil Ross or Gerry Chiniquy, depending on which animation ID expert one wishes to accept. Mike Maltese wrote the story, though several years later, Tedd Pierce put Bugs back on stage (this time, with Yosemite Sam instead of Elmer Fudd) and reworked the high-diving scene into a full cartoon, “High Diving Hare.”

The cartoon was released just before Christmas 1944, according to one newspaper ad I’ve found, and was still playing at theatres into 1946.

Jack Benny on the Air, 1931

2012-01-15T07:50:00.000-08:00

Fans of Old Time Radio have heard the story over and over, how Jack Benny first appeared on radio with Ed Sullivan in 1932, and what his first words were.

That isn’t how it happened.

Jack told the story over and over so much, he may have come to believe that’s how it happened. Sullivan told it, too. But Jack’s radio debut was not on Sullivan’s show and was not in 1932. Jack must have known it at one time because he celebrated his tenth year in radio on a special broadcast in 1941. Simple arithmetic dictates that his debut would have been in 1931. And that’s indeed when it was. September 4th to be exact.

To your right you see a newspaper column from the Capitol Times of Madison, Wisconsin of September 3, 1931, listing the following day’s radio programmes. There you can see Jack as a guest on ‘RKO Theater of the Air.’ The New York Times of September 4 shows the programme airing at 10:30 p.m. over WEAF, flagship of the Red Network of NBC. Also appearing in the hour-long show were Irish tenor Joseph Regan, and Aunt Jemima of “Show Boat.”

If you’re wondering about the famous Sullivan show, the radio listings of Times for Tuesday, March 29, 1932 show:

WABC 860 Kcs.
8:45 p.m.—Ed Sullivan Comments; Berger's Orch.; Jack Benny, Monologues.

Jack always credited the Sullivan broadcast with raising interest with the folks at Canada Dry who then signed him for his own show. Jack seems to have misremembered this as a result of his first radio broadcast which, as you can see, was not the case at all. And, to be honest, having Ed Sullivan “discover” him made for a better story. Through all the years Jack told about his “first” broadcast, everyone knew who Sullivan was. Likely no one had heard of ‘RKO Theater of the Air.’ But now you have. And now you know when Jack Benny really began his illustrious and lengthy broadcast comedy career.

Felix Makes a Mistake

2012-01-14T16:31:00.000-08:00

No, this isn’t the name of a cartoon. I was doing some Felix hunting and found this article from the Victoria Advocate of March 6, 1927.

Felix ran in serial form (dubbed “reels”) in newspapers in the ‘20s. One adventure seems to have caused a bit of a flap. I can't find the actual comics in question, but I’ve included a poor copy of the graphic that accompanied the story. It’s not the best quality but you should get the idea.

Yes, Felix Will Be Careful About Bananas
Felix the Cat must watch his step more carefully in the future. The children who follow him so closely have just given him a lesson he will not forget. Of course Felix wasn’t to blame. He had to do what Pat Sullivan told him or get out of the picture and lose all of his nine lives at one and the same time. But since the children who read The Advocate know Felix and do not know his inimitable creator, it is Felix who has been put on probation. Hundreds of letters have come to Mr. Sullivan’s studio from children telling Felix “what’s wrong with this picture.”
“I didn’t know that I was letting Felix put his foot into it when I had him jump upon a bunch of bananas hanging from a tree to escape from a snake in the jungle,” said the artist in telling of the avalanche of letters. “It seems to me that he put all four feet into it, judging by the number of letters I have received, and now I shall have to appeal to The Advocate to help extricate him. Please tell your little readers for me that I would love to answer each letter that came to me. I started out to do so, but so many came that I am forced to answer through the column of their favorite newspaper.
“What happened was this: Felix was shown jumping upon a bunch of bananas which hung from the stalk just as they do from a stalking hanging in a grocery store. From their studies in commercial geography or from some other source the little letter writers know that bananas don’t grow that way. The bunch in the grocery store is reversed from the way it hangs from the tree in the tropics.
“It looked for a time as if Felix and I would be able to wiggle out of the difficulty by writing the young people that when the bananas are first formed and they are very small they hang down just as they do in the picture. This explanation was going well during the first few days when I was trying to answer all letters personally. It went very well until indeed until I received a reply to my letter from a very young lady who said, ‘If bananas were small they would not have been ripe and then Felix would not have had such a good time eating them in the last picture because we learned at school that you shouldn’t eat an uncooked banana until the yellow skin has some black spots on it.’
“Now, when a little girl is as matter of fact as that there is no answer which can possibly let Felix save his face. All I can say is that when he goes into the jungles again he will be very careful to observe all the rules.”
So, at the request of Mr. Sullivan, The Advocate is taking this means of telling the little friends of Felix that they will have to look sharp if they ever catch him again. Watch for Felix every Sunday.

This Time We Didn’t Forget the Gravy

2012-01-13T08:05:00.000-08:00

One of the best-known moments of revenge in animation history.

“Chow Hound” is another product of the mind of writer Mike Maltese. The credited animators in the Chuck Jones unit are Lloyd Vaughan, Phil Monroe, Ken Harris and Ben Washam. Vaughan, Harris and Jones get additional mention in an inside joke in the classified ads. Phil DeGuard painted these from Bob Gribbroek layouts.

“M. Hinkle” has yet to be identified. The only one I can find in the Los Angeles Directory is
“Mary Hinkle.” Considering the character in the cartoon is played by Bea Benaderet, perhaps that’s who it is and Mary worked in ink and paint. Just speculation.

John T. Smith is the voice of the dog who gets the gravy and the zoo curator. Mel Blanc plays the cat, mouse, Vaughan and Harris.

No Barking

2012-01-12T11:18:00.000-08:00

There’s a neat visual effect in several Chuck Jones cartoons. Someone zooms out of a scene and leaves multiples of something floating in the air in their wake. In “Bully For Bugs,” it’s hooves. In “Bewitched Bunny,” it’s bobby pins. And in “No Barking,” it’s feet.

There’s a smear drawing of Claude Cat, too.

Ken Harris gets the only animation credit. Whether he had an assistant on this one, I couldn’t tell you.

Kenny, I say, Kenny Delmar. Delmar, That Is.

2012-01-11T06:35:00.000-08:00

Fred Allen’s best-known radio routine was one that had a comparatively short life on his show—Allen’s Alley. It was Fred’s chance to satirise stories of the day and toss in a bit of regional humour by taking a mock straw opinion poll of four residents of a stretch of back road. The Alley debuted on December 2, 1942, 10 years after Allen began regular broadcasts. It morphed into “Main Street” in the early part of the 1948-49 season, Allen’s last. And the characters everyone associates with the Alley weren’t the original denizens. Three of them were played by Alan Reed, John Brown and Charlie Cantor, all of whom left the show before the Alley achieved its fame.

The best known today of the four who settled in the Alley is Senator Claghorn, played by Allen’s announcer, Kenny Delmar. He’s known no doubt because of the repeated television showings of that blowhard cartoon rooster, Foghorn Leghorn. The two shared many of the same traits and if you’re wondering which came first, you can do no better than read Keith Scott’s research on the question.

Claghorn was a modification of Counsellor Cartenbranch, a character Delmar played on ‘The Alan Young Show’ during the 1945-46 season. In Allen’s hands, the Senator became instantly popular (the Alley had an earlier Senator Bloat, played by Scott Smart). The nascent Eagle-Lion ‘B’ film factory quickly jumped on Claghorn, and spun a whole 63-minute movie starring Delmar as the Senator, with a plot separate and apart from anything on the Allen show. Shooting on “It’s a Joke, Son!” began in Hollywood in July 1946.

The movie wasn’t really a success. It was almost an impossible task taking a two-minute routine and trying to turn it into a feature film (something many stars of “Saturday Night Live” would learn about their characters years later). The Senator may have been from, I say, he may have been from the South, but fans were used to his natural setting in the Alley. The fast pace of the verbal radio gags gave way to the languid pace of an hour-long piece. And Delmar had the distinct disadvantage of trying to be a visual version of a character people had already pictured in their own minds. He may have sounded like Senator Claghorn but he didn’t look like him to many viewers; I pictured the Senator to be an older, grey-haired wheeler-dealer.

Unlike some actors who embellished their stories over the years on the talk show circuit, Delmar was consistent about how he came up with the Senator. Let’s read two articles from 1946. The first is from the National Enterprise Association. The second is by the International News Service’s maven of show biz gossip, Louella Parsons. You’ll notice how Lolly loved to insert herself (and, in this instance, her news service) in the story of what she’s covering.

By ERSKINE JOHNSON
NEA Staff Correspondent
Hollywood, Aug. 11 — Senator Claghorn was sitting at the north end of the bar, sipping a Manhattan. He saw us coming and switched to the south end, but he couldn’t do anything about the Manhattan.
“Why Senator,” we said, “how come you’re not drinking a mint julep?”
The Senator put a finger to his lips and whispered: “Shhh! Nobody knows me out here in Hollywood. I’m having fun.”
But, he assured us, he wasn’t living in North Hollywood.
As you’ve probably read, Senator Claghorn — Kenny Delmar — is a movie-star. You’ll soon be seeing “It’s a Joke, Son,” starring Kenny, which Bryan Foy is producing for the new Eagle-Lion Film Company.
No Beautiful Girls
But the Senator was unhappy.
“There are no beautiful girls in Hollywood,” he said. “Where are all your beautiful girls? I saw beautiful girls in Texas, but none here.”
We assured him a couple might show up after lunch, and that seemed to make him happy. (They didn’t show up.)
Kenny was a surprise to us. He didn’t look at all as we had imagined he would. He’s a stocky little man with bushy hair that stands up in different directions, and he wears big, black, horn-rimmed glasses.
In fact, he looks something like a fat Harold Lloyd. We told him so.
“That’s what they said at the studio, too,” he told us. “They won’t let me wear my horn-rimmed glasses because with them on I look too much like Lloyd. In fact, they gave me a flock of makeup tests, and I looked like too many actors — like Jean Hersholt, Edward G. Robinson, J. Carroll Naish, and Ed Wynn.”
But after 36 makeup tests, he assured us, he finally wound up looking the way people think Senator Claghorn should look. He’ll just wear his own face plus big, bushy, prop eyebrows. He’ll have no beard and no mustache, and his glasses will be the pince-nez type.
The South Can’t Lose
There will be plenty of gags about the South, of course, in “It’s a Joke, Son.” This is one of them.
Una Merkel, Claghorn’s wife, tells him to come into the house — “a north wind is blowing, and you’ll catch cold.”
Replies the Senator: “There is no such thing as a north wind. That’s just the south wind coming back home.'”
Kenny came to Hollywood, free, in the president’s private car on the Southern Pacific railroad. (Everybody wants to get in the act.)
“But it was pretty rugged,” Kenny groaned. “I had to do 38 broadcasts and make about 48 speeches all' through the South. Anytime there were four people at the station they dragged me out of bed to make a speech.
“I should have taken Fred Allen’s advice. He said I’d be a wreck. After walking around in 110 degrees in Tucson while they made me a member of the Sunshine Club, I was a wreck.”
But, said Kenny, he’s going to take Fred’s advice about not associating in Hollywood with people who are sun-tanned.
Before he left New York, Fred warned him: “Avoid the people with sun-tans. They’re the ones who are not working.”

Delmar Tells How He Met ‘Claghorn’ While Hitch-Hiking
By LOUELLA PARSONS
HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 14 (INS)—I grew to know Kenny Delmar (Senator Claghorn) as well as it he wore a close friend, nil the weeks I was in the hospital. He was a must on Fred Allen’s show and the old Southern Senator and his drawl that smacks of down yonder below the Mason and Dixon line was one person I wanted to meet.
Considered the find of 1946 in radio, I was curious to see him and to hear first hand all about the Senator’s n e w movie, “It’s a Joke, Son,” which he came to Hollywood to make.
The Senator—Kenny, that is—was one of my first visitors, and he is no joke, son. He is an affable, attractive young man, who is still wondering what good luck symbol hit him square on the head. His only complaint at the moment is a bad case of sinus trouble which has kept him from being as happy as .ho feels he should be with all the golden success poured into his lap.
“HOW DID you got your sinus trouble?” I naked, when he sadly informed me he was gradually feeling worse and that he was told he had an allergy.
“I stopped at every town on the way out here,” he replied. “I never worked so hard in my life. I had to write something different about each town, and it was so hot that when I returned to the air cooled train, I caught a terrible cold.”
“The penalty of fame,” I said, and for just a split moment the smile turned into a question mark. I think he had a feeling I was being sarcastic, and ribbing him which, heavens knows, I wasn’t, so I quickly said, “Tell me all about yourself—where did you find Senator Claghorn? Are you married? Do you return to Fred Allen’s show? And how do you like the movies?”
“ONE QUESTION at a time,” Senator Kenny laughed.
“This isn’t my first movie,” he replied. “I was Joseph Schildkraut as a little boy in D. W. Griffiths’ ‘Orphans on the Storm.’ I tried awfully hard to get back into movies after that picture, but no one wanted me. It was really while I was hitch-hiking to California that I got my idea of Senator Claghorn.
“The Senator is the evolution of Dynamite Gus. An old western rancher with a rattletrap broken down car picked me up. He had to yell so I could hear him over the noise of the wheezy motor. He would preface each sentence with ‘I say’ and finish it with something like this, ‘I planted wheat, that is.’ So I turned Dynamite Gus into Councilman Cartenbranch, and he eventually became Senator Claghorn. I wrote the first two shows for Fred, but all the others are written by him.”
WHEN KENNY goes back to New York City, he will have his own show three times a week, besides his stint on the Allen comedy half-hour.
He told me that he had once worked for the Hearst organization.
“The radio, that is,” he laughed. “I did a part in Jungle Jim,’ advertising the American weekly.”
Now for you who will read this before Kenny’s movie is shown, let me describe Kenny, He is 34. His mother was one of the Delmar sisters in vaudeville. He was on the stage at the age of seven, and from his maternal side he inherits the love of art, beauty and poetry. His mother is Greek and English. He married one of the Cochrane twins, those lovely ballet dancers who appeared at the Metropolitan. He has a son aged five, who, he says, he expects to let hitch-hike because that’s where you meet the real American people.
And here’s a laugh — Kenny says he can no longer use his own gag, “It’s a joke son,” which he made famous on the air, on account of too many other radio comedians have used it.
P.S.: I used it myself on my show, and did I feel guilty when he told me how often it had been swiped.

When television killed network radio, it pretty well killed Fred Allen’s career and wounded Delmar’s; he never enjoyed the stardom of his time in Allen’s Alley. He remained based in New York as TV moved to Hollywood, but worked steadily in guest roles through the ‘50s (the commuting to and from the West Coast killed his marriage), briefly formed a comedy partnership with fellow ex-American Tobacco pusher Del Sharbutt and even produced industrial and sales films, at least one featuring a certain Senator.

In the ‘60s, Delmar became one of a handful of voice actors in the New York animation community along with Allen Swift, employed by Total Television Productions. Florida beckoned, where Delmar enjoyed retirement in West Palm Beach. The native New Englander died in Stamford, Connecticut on July 14, 1984, age 73.

We don’t suppose too many of you will sit and watch the entire version of “It’s a Joke, Son!” But a few minutes of the Senator’s bluster will give you a bit of an idea of what audiences liked on Fred Allen’s show. The dialogue director (who helped Delmar with his accent) was vaudeville veteran Benny Rubin and you’ll see a young June Lockhart. And, yes, that’s Foghorn Leghorn’s “Camptown Races” in Irving Friedman’s medley over the opening credits. Credits, that is.

The Old Sprung-a-Leak Gag

2012-01-10T09:08:00.000-08:00

Anyone care to guess how many times Tex Avery pulled off this gag?

This time, the body-leaking gag comes from “The Hick Chick” (1946). The bad guy with the Charles Boyer voice has stabbed Lem several times with a pitch fork. “Ah, ya didn’t even touch me,” Lem says. Then the gag.

Tex pulled it again in “Garden Gopher” (1950) with Spike and a rake.

The story isn’t one of writer Heck Allen’s best; the ending is unsatisfying because it’s a running gag without a topper. You can see it coming and expect to build to something more. But the fight inside Lem’s clothes has to be unique.

The credited animators in this cartoon are Ed Love, Walt Clinton, Preston Blair and Ray Abrams. Avery and Allen use Red Skelton’s Clem Kadiddlehopper (and Daisy June) as a starting point for the cartoon; I’m not a Skelton fan so Skelton’s catchphrases aren’t any more amusing coming out of animated characters.

It sounds like Pat McGeehan supplying the voice of the Avery Wolf-behaving villain (complete with moustache) and Frank Graham as the bull.

The Elephant and Michael Sasanoff

2012-01-09T07:05:00.000-08:00

Michael Sasanoff had a short but productive career at the Leon Schlesinger studio, though much of his work was uncredited.

Sasanoff, from what I’ve been able to gather, took over as the background artist in the Clampett unit when Johnny Johnsen left for MGM in 1941. Clampett, himself, had acquired the unit from Tex Avery not too many months earlier. Clampett finished up a bunch of Avery cartoons and then put his own into production. One is the charming “Horton Hatches the Egg” (released in 1942).

It opens like a number of Avery cartoons—with a pan over a background drawing. There is foliage on a foreground cell panned at a different speed than the background so I can’t snip it together. But what you see below gives you an idea of Sasanoff’s work on the cartoon, as Clampett tried to give a flavour of the designs in the Dr. Seuss book the cartoon was based on.

Sasanoff moved into management, according to The Film Daily Year Book of Motion Pictures, 1943 edition, and finished his career at Schlesinger’s with writing credits on several of Clampett’s cartoons in 1944 and 1945. Then, he vanished. It turns out he got out of animation and into the advertising business. Billboard magazine of April 3, 1948, tells us where he went:

Schenley Distributors, thru Biow Agency, this week signed to televise film commercials on a co-ordinated sked calling or simultaneous airing of identical spots over 11 video outlets daily. The 10 film strips, which plug Cresta Blanca wine, were completed in Hollywood last week by Biow’s tele production chief, Michael Sasanoff.
Sasanoff returns to Gotham next week to present finished series to agency toppers.

Sasanoff moved from agency to agency in the ‘50s and ‘60s, eventually opening his own firm. You have to laugh at this snippet of a story from a 1957 edition of Radio Daily-Television Daily:

MICHAEL SASANOFF, creator of Warner Brothers’ “Tweety Bird,” and partly responsible for “Bugs Bunny,” has been added to the copy staff of NW Ayer & Son, Inc., Philadelphia. He will be with the New York radio-television department.

Considering his ex-boss Clampett had a reputation for taking credit for creating almost every major pre-‘45 character at Warner Bros., it’s ironic Sasanoff took credit for a character Clampett did create (Tweety).

By the late ‘50s, the Sasanoffs had settled in New Canaan, Connecticut, where his wife Rose was involved in an amateur acting troupe along with Peter Van Steeden, Fred Allen’s ex orchestra leader. He died in Wilton, Connecticut on December 20, 1984, almost six months after becoming remarried. He was 81.

Jack Benny, 1966

2012-01-08T05:56:00.000-08:00

It seems reporters and columnists had a check-list of things they had to mention in any of their stories about Jack Benny in the 1960s. They all seemed to

● Juxtapose “39” with his real age.
● Reveal he isn’t really a cheapskate.
● Mention how he laughs at everyone else’s jokes.
● Opine that he really isn’t a horrible violin player.

And maybe it’s my imagination, but a lot of the interviews seem to have been conducted in Jack’s hotel room with some incident occurring in the room before, during, or after the interview mentioned in the story.

This one is from 1966 from the Associated Press’ New York-based TV-radio writer (an obsolete title in 1966; the beat was strictly television by then), written for newspapers to use in weekend editions. Of course, it also plugged Jack’s coming special. which was the reason for the column in the first place. There’s a factual error I’ll mention after you read it.

Show Biz’s Busiest ‘Youngster’
by Cynthia Lowry
NEW YORK, Nov. 26 (AP)—Jack Benny opened the door of his hotel suite, then quickly retreated into another room and reappeared in a dressing gown:
“Forgive me, forgive me,” he apologized. “It’s this time difference from California.
His manager, Irving Fein, who accompanies him on all professional journeys, appeared from an adjoining room, and everybody sat down to breakfast.
Benny, whose manner and mien belie his years, eyed two glasses of orange juice and one slice of Persian melon.
“Who gets the melon?” he demanded, in that petulant, ready-to-get-my-feelings-hurt voice he has developed over 35 years of radio and television. Then he laughed, and said he’d rather have orange juice anyway.
Benny, in spite of the fact that his official biography states that he was “born 39 years ago in Chicago,” will be 73 in February. And, although in semiretirement from television for two seasons, he manages to be about the busiest senior citizen in show business.
A professional errand of mercy jetted him to New York this time—to be a guest star on CBS’ “Garry Moore Show,” part of a desperate effort to save the show from sagging ratings.
Benny had just finished making his annual special, and was also using his time to plug it. A spoof on beauty pageants and loaded with former contest winners, it will be broadcast next Thursday on NBC.
Benny is not the funniest man in the world off-camera. In fact, he is a bland, somewhat understated fellow who is rated by his colleagues as the greatest audience for humor in the world.
Steve Allen, in his book “The Funny Men,” says that Benny is “to humor what Arthur Rubinstein is to music: ‘a performer of genius.’ He calls Benny ‘the world’s greatest reactor’ to jokes and situations, which usually are on him — “straight man for the whole world.”
Over years of show business Benny has honed his professional character: a conceited tightwad of easily punctured dignity. Years of limelight have also developed what is widely believed to be his real character — a generous, outgoing and modest man who is an inordinately big tipper and a: lavish appreciator of other people’s humor.
In an interview, Benny will have pleasant words about all his colleagues. He will discuss his recent move from his Beverly Hills home to an apartment close to his favorite golf course. He speaks of enjoying freedom to spend more time in his Palm Springs home —although he has not done so yet — and the pleasures of doing charity concerts all over the country with top orchestras.
Benny practices on his violin at least two hours a day. He is a much better violinist than he appears to be; it takes considerable skill play delicately off-key. He goes to his office daily. He performs on a lot of stages.
“It is a good life,” he says. “I enjoy playing a few weeks a year in Nevada — once I get accustomed to the turnaround in hours. And I like to be able to work on a concert or a show for a few concentrated weeks and then take time off.”
Over the years, Benny shows have been real innovators. The old radio show and the newest special, however, are built from the same brick and mortar. There will be the stingy jokes and several samples of his fantastic timing.
Benny’s first radio broadcast was a 1932 Ed Sullivan show, and his opening lines were: “This is Jack Benny. There will be a slight pause while everyone says, ‘who cares?’” Today, Benny can produce laughter merely by exploding “Cut that out!” or just by facing the audience thoughtfully and droning, “hmmmmm.” Over 35 years, the audience has come to know the character and is conditioned to laugh,
Benny’s timing is peerless. Don Wilson once told a magazine writer that when Benny turns to the audience for his famed long “reaction,” other actors are not allowed to continue with their lines. The signal to resume comes when he again faces his fellow, performers.
Benny jumped off the Sullivan Show into his own NBC series in 1932 and was one of the network’s big stars until, the famous “Paley’s Raid” of 1949 when CBS wooed away big names like Benny, Bergen and Skelton. He continued the radio show until 1955, but in 1950 started his television series. These continued, in one form or another on CBS until 1964, after which he returned to NBC for one season of specials.
When the weekly show was discontinued for low ratings, Benny was not exactly happy, but obviously he has adjusted to the idea of one special a year, plus as many guest shots as he wants to take on.
“Listen,” he confided, in mock exasperation, “I am an awfully easy fella to get along with. I like everything I do and I’m happy with everything I do. I like to work and I like to practice. I even like to walk down Fifth Avenue and have people say hello to me.”
And, for his amour-proper, he’d also like is very much if his “Jack Benny Hour” Thursday landed him on top of the Nielsen ratings.
Oh, yes, and he did, after all, eat the melon.

Now the factual error:

Just about everyone today seems to cite a 1932 appearance on Ed Sullivan’s interview show as Benny’s debut on radio. When this became part of the Benny legend isn’t clear but it’s not true. Benny celebrated his tenth anniversary on the air in a show broadcast in 1941, and that was quite correct. Jack appeared on the radio for the first time in 1931 and it was not with Ed Sullivan. We’ll have that story next week.

Liz Taylor Drinks

2012-01-07T01:12:00.000-08:00

She was 18 when “Father of the Bride” was released in 1950. It was nominated for three Oscars.

We suspect Liz preferred something a little stronger than milk not too long after this ad campaign.

Porky’s Continuity Hunt

2012-01-06T05:45:00.000-08:00

Gags are going to win over consistency any time. At least that was true in the cartoon that introduced Daffy Duck to the world.

At the beginning of “Porky’s Duck Hunt,” young Mr. Pig lives in a home with a dresser against the wall by the door. But at the end of the cartoon, a window is there.

The window’s only there to allow Tex Avery to set up a gag where Porky can look out it to see a bunch of ducks taunt him. It makes even less sense considering Porky is in an apartment building, as you can tell by the shot of the neighbour going back to his suite upstairs. Any window in the previous shot would look out into a hall, not outside. But the neighbour’s part of a running gag so the cartoon has to be set in an apartment.

Porky’s got a pretty big apartment. It’s even got its own upstairs. Note the staircase to the right.

It just proves anything’s possible in a Tex Avery cartoon.

The background artist isn’t credited in any of the ‘30s cartoons. Art Loomer was in charge of the Warners background department but whether Johnny Johnsen worked on this cartoon, like he did for Avery a few years later and then at MGM, is your guess. It doesn’t look like his work; there are lots of wonky angles on pictures, door frames and so on in the interior shots; a style that died in the ‘30s but was really popular at the Fleischer and Iwerks studios a few years before this.

If Woody Had Gone Right to the Police...

2012-01-05T05:42:00.000-08:00

...this would never have happened.

Even die-hard members of the Paul J. Smith Sucks Society admit this is one of his better cartoons, though he treats some groaners a little too seriously. It’s McKimson-esque in that “Bunco Busters” (1955) is a parody of the TV show “Racket Squad”. Dal McKennon does a pretty good job approximating the stiff delivery of Reed Hadley, who played Captain John Braddock in the crime show (the character here is called Captain Haddock). The character even looks like Braddock.

The animators on this cartoon all spent time at Warner Bros. in the late ‘30s—Gil Turner, Herman Cohen and Bob Bentley. I’ve never liked some of the thick ink-line work at Lantz around this period; look at the palm trees above. The story’s by ‘40s stalwart Milt Schaffer.

From Laurel and Hardy to Joi and Lois

2012-01-04T04:57:00.000-08:00

Not all of Hollywood shuddered in fear over the rise of television in the late ‘40s. The makers of feature films short-sightedly shunned the new medium into the ‘50s, but it was embraced early by producers of short subjects. And for good reason.

The bottom was falling out of the shorts business in the ‘40s. In 1948, the court-ordered end of block booking—where theatres were forced to take short subjects released by a studio along with features—was only one problem for producers of one and two-reelers. They had been complaining, independent producers especially, it took too long to see profits from their films. The war had cut off overseas markets, and then post-war currency freezes kept film profits from leaving foreign countries to the U.S. It’s no wonder veteran producers of shorts saw television as a land of opportunity.

Everyone thinks of early television—and in this post, we mean 1948 onward—as a time when the radio networks tippy-toed into the industry, pushing its stars (and their sponsors and ad agencies) along with them. But besides network programming, there was a large syndication business, too. And that’s where the shorts producers hoped to cash in. True, there were more than enough networks to go around for stations in most cities to pick from (there were 59 TV stations in the U.S. by June 1, 1949). But networks weren’t able to fill a lot of time in the late ‘40s so filmed syndication programming was appealing to stations that didn’t, or couldn’t, rely on live shows the rest of the broadcast day.
Here’s an Associated Press story from 1948 that is a follow-up to developments from a month earlier. At that time, Billboard announced Hal Roach was getting into the television. The producer best known in the sound era for Laurel and Hardy features and the Our Gang shorts was casting his lot with the small screen. He cancelled a six-picture deal he had signed with MGM in the spring.

Video Gets a Shot In Arm From Roach
By BILL BECKER
HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 22 (AP)—Television—the baby whose bounces have been followed by many worried Hollywood eyes, is getting ready to take bigger steps.
Hal Roach, for more than 30 years a producer of motion picture comedies, today begins the first of a series of television productions. And from now on, says Roach, all his work will go into the television field.
If, as video insiders say, films are the lifeblood of the new industry, Roach’s entry into the field might be regarded as a major transfusion.
And producers already in the hectic field are inclined to welcome the old comic master openly. Despite the dozens of small video production companies which have mushroomed up here in this talent mecca, there seems to be plenty of room for competition.
LOOKS TO FUTURE
As Jerry Fairbanks, who has a video producing contract with NBC puts it:
“We feel we are pioneering an industry that will eventually be many times larger than the movies. The time is not far off when films will provide at least 50 per cent of all television programs.”
Fairbanks and other major video producers claim too that the break with the movies—reshowing old Westerns and other films on television—is not far distant. Production costs are averaging nearly $10,000 per half-hour program so far, but the television producers say they’re determined to make good original shows for the fireside trade.
For example:
Fairbanks has completed “Public Prosecutor,” a series of 26 shows each 20 minutes long, and “Television Closeups,” five-minute oddity featurettes for NBC. He has three other series in production.
The first 13 shows of another detective-type series, “The Cases of Eddie Drake,” have been completed for CBS by IMPHO (Independent Motion Pictures Releasing Organization).
FINISH SIX PICTURES
Marshall Grant-Realm Productions has finished six of a “Great Stories” series for American Tobacco Company that will start next month. Slated for NBC release January 21 in New York and about the same time here, the weekly show will run at least six months.
Dipping into the public domain for stories available without copyright the series includes
“The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant, “Sire Maletroit’s Door,” “Mademoiselle Fifi,” “The Mummy’s Foot,” “The Invisible Wound,” and “The Substitute” for starters.
Production costs ran slightly higher than $10,000 for each of these 30-minute shows, General Manager Norman Elzer of Grant-Realm said. The talent lineup included Arthur Shields as narrator, John Beal, Robert Alda, Reginald Denny, Maria Palmer, Hurd Hatfield and J. Edward Bromberg.
Hollywood talent—for the most part held in leash by the big movie producers—is also represented in “TV” shows by John Howard, Anne Gwynne, Patricia Morrison and Don Haggerty. Among those toying around the experimental fringes of the industry are Joseph Cotten, Rudy Vallee, Frank Albertson and Designer William Cameron Menzies.
Many others are itching to get in on the ground floor of the business, even though the foundations are just beginning to harden.
Roach’s announcement tipped the current mood:
"Following the entertainment-seeking trend the public mind has been a lifework of mine since the inception of motion pictures. I am thoroughly convinced that the insatiable desire to be entertained will find its greatest satisfaction through television.”
Roach plans six half-hour shows at his Culver City studio. “Sadie and Sally,” a comedy show starring Joy [sic] Lansing and Lois Hall, will be the opener.

As a side note, Fairbanks had his hands in many pies. Besides producing shorts like the “Unusual Occupations” and “Speaking of Animals” series for Paramount, he also made industrial films into the 1960s.

Television history is littered with projects that never were and that seems to have been the fate of almost all of Roach’s first TV efforts. Billboard of January 1, 1949, announced Roach was filming six pilot shows to shop around to agencies and sponsors. Besides “Sally and Sadie,” the others were “The Brown Family,” a sitcom starring John Eldredge, Ann Doran, Carol Brannon and Billy Gray; “Botsford’s Beanery,” a slapstick comedy, “Foo Young, a Chinese comedy whodunit; “Puddle Patch Club,” an Our Gang ripoff and another sitcom called “Our Main Street.” 12 additional shows were in various stages of planning. Roach was still peddling them in 1952, along with a TV version of “Myrt and Marge” through the International News Services television department., though it appears none made it past the pilot stage.

Oddly, one show that’s not mentioned was revealed in the Billboard article of the previous November and it did get on the air almost two years later. It was “The Stu Erwin Show,” subtitled “The Trouble With Father.” General Mills was its sponsor and the show was one of the early successes of television syndication.

Cat Fishin’

2012-01-03T06:42:00.000-08:00

Lots of brush work in this scare take by Tom in “Cat Fishin’”.

There are only three credited animators in this one—Ken Muse, Ed Barge and Mike Lah. This looks like Lah to my untrained eye; I’ve seen similar jagged teeth in Pixie and Dixie cartoons he worked on. There are other spots where Jerry’s mouth is animated at the side of the face, much like Lah’s work at the Hanna-Barbera studio.

Corny Gag

2012-01-02T02:38:00.000-08:00

Yeah, Bob Clampett used this gag in ‘Baby Bottleneck’ and re-used it in ‘The Great Piggy Bank Robbery’ (both 1946), but Dave Monahan put it in a Tex Avery cartoon in 1941 (if Avery didn’t think of it on his own). This is from ‘Tortoise Beats Hare.’

The background is by Johnny Johnsen, who moved over to MGM and the Avery unit not long after Tex left Schlesinger’s. He never received billing on a Warner’s cartoon but his full name appeared near the end of his Metro career.

We’ve mentioned before on this blog that Johnny was an artist with the Los Angeles Express by 1909 before going to the Schlesinger cartoon studio. But he was also an inventor, receiving a patent in 1917 for a process to make colour-printing plates. You can read it HERE.

Ringing in The New Year in Comics, 1905

2012-01-01T03:36:00.000-08:00

January 1, 1905 was a Sunday and the Atlanta Constitution published its usual Sunday comics that day. All of them had a new year flavour. Most of them are long forgotten.

Jimmy Swinnerton got the majority of the space. His “Jimmy” took up a full page and had its own masthead. “Katy” was yet another of Swinnerton’s comics.

I would hope the Katzenjammer Kids need no introduction. Remarkably, it is still being drawn today.

Frederick Opper wrote “And Her Name Was Maud!” No, this isn’t a comic starring Bea Arthur. The title character is a donkey. This may be Opper’s least-known comic. He was the creator of “Happy Hooligan” and “Alphonse and Gaston.” You see Happy below.

“Foxy Grandpa” was from the pen of Charles E. Schultze. He used “Bunny” as a pen name, probably to avoid confusion with Charles Schulz, whom he psychically knew would be born 17 years later and become a cartoonist.

Lulu and Leander was drawn by H.M. Howarth.

You can click on any of them to enlarge them.

Happy New Year

2012-01-01T00:15:00.000-08:00

One of my favourite Bugs Bunny scenes ever since I was a kid is when he dupes Elmer Fudd into thinking it’s midnight on January 1st in “The Wabbit Who Came to Summer.” The gag comes out of nowhere and the confetti comes out of nowhere. It builds nicely and lasts just long before before Elmer realises it’s July and he’s been conned.

Bugs is beautifully expressive here. Dick Bickenbach gets the only animation credit. Manny Perez, Gerry Chiniquy and (as far as I know) Gil Turner were animators in the Freleng unit at the time.

Show Biz Stars Look Back at the Past Year

2011-12-31T03:39:00.000-08:00

No doubt gossip web sites will be filled right about now with a year in review of the bon mots of Hollywood’s salacious train-wrecks. We, of course, prefer to look back to those happier days of Tinseltown, in an era before criminal stars, before infidelity, before scandal, before...

Oh. Right. I haven’t found those days yet.

Well, let’s look back at the years 1949 and 1950 anyway, and bring in the Associated Press’ movie writer of the day.

My favourite is the Tallulah quote.

Quotes of the Year From Hollywood
By BOB THOMAS
HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 23 (AP)—What are the deathless quotes of the year in Hollywood?
Maybe some of these won’t live into the second half-century, but they seemed out of the ordinary to me. Here are some of the bright, pointed or inane sayings that I have collected from the 1949 news:
Robert Mitchum, commenting on his sentence at the county detention farm: “It’s an experience every taxpayer should go through.”
Laurence Olivier, after winning the academy awards: “I always did say Shakespeare was a good script writer.”
Actor Paul Valentine, divorcing strip-teaser Lili St. Cyr: “Everybody in the country could see more of her than I did.”
Fred Allen on the FCC ban on giveaway air shows: “They have taken radio back from the scavengers and given it back to the entertainers.”
Milton Berle, answering an attack on him by Allen: “Allen still has the first penny ever thrown at him.”
James Mason: “Hollywood is filled with frustrations, but not uninhabitable.”
Claudette Colbert, disapproving French bathing suits: “Of the many features of a woman’s anatomy, one of the least attractive is the navel.”
Mae West: “I’m still looking for the right man. My trouble is I find so many right ones it’s hard to decide.”
Clifton Webb: “There’s no use pretending I’m a modest fellow. Some day I shall write a song called ‘I Fascinate Me.’”
David Niven, on the end of his Goldwyn contract: “For the first time since I was 17 years old, I am able to do what I want. During all that time, I either was in the British army or under contract to Goldwyn.”
Bette Davis: “Hollywood tries to combine entertainment for both kids and adults in the same picture. The result is a movie which isn’t suitable for either.”
Shelley Winters, after returning from a blustery location: “I was so cold I almost got married.”
Description of the “shimmy” in Gilda Gray’s suit against the picture, “Gilda”: “A rhythmical shivering and shaking of parts of the body, synchronized and performed in a personalized syncopated musical rhythm and accompanied with appropriate songs.”
Linda Darnell, decrying the “boyish look” in fashions: “Why can’t women look like women and men look like men? That’s what makes life more interesting.”
Jimmy Durante, telling about rubbing elbows with socialites at the opera opening: “I had to rub elbows—nobody would shake hands with me.”
Bob Thomas, to his readers: “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.”

Quotes of Year From Hollywood
By Bob Thomas
Hollywood, Dec. 22—(AP)—Every year a lot of wind blows in Hollywood and some of it is worth remembering.
I have collected some of the 1950 quotes that are remarkable for one reason or another. Here they are:
Tallulah Bankhead’s answer to reports that Bette Davis imitated her in a picture: “Hasn’t she always?”
Betty Hutton, announcing that she was giving up night life after a reconciliation with her husband, Ted Briskin: “Contented people don’t go to night clubs.”
Fred Allen: “Television is based on the belief that there are a lot of people with nothing to do, willing to waste their time watching people who can do nothing.”
Betsy Drake, asked after her wedding to Cary Grant about possible plans for children: “I think it would be very depressing for one to know that he was a planned baby. That’s so cold and unromantic.”
Hedy Lamarr, explaining why she couldn’t see the police for two days after losing $250,000 worth of jewels: “You know what it’s like to come home late after a party and be wakened from a sound sleep.”
Director Elia Kazan: “Actors should stay hungry.”
Vivien Leigh, asked if her husband, Laurence Olivier, had plans to film more Shakespeare: “I don’t think he’d say. If he did, Orson Welles might start filming the same thing immediately.”
Dorothy Parker, explaining why she didn't take a honeymoon after her re-marriage to Alan Campbell: “We’re going nowhere. We've been everywhere.”
Red Skelton, hearing about a fire at the preview of one of his pictures: “You can’t blame it on the picture because it’s not so hot.”
Jean Simmons, commenting on yell leaders after seeing her first American football game: “I don’t like those people waving their arms to get people to yell. Goodness knows, we scream our guts out at soccer matches, but not at somebody else’s direction.”
Italian Actress Marina Berti, arguing against divorce: “Men are all alike, so why throw one away and get another just like him? It is better to keep the one you have and profit from the time and trouble you have spent on him.”
Marta Toren, on U. S. males: “The American wolf is really shy and uncertain. He is abrupt in order to hide his shyness.”
Lauren Bacall, on the nature of her profession: “A person has to be unnormal to get into this kind of business. Normal people couldn’t take it.”
Jack Paar, telling about his three-year contract with R.K.O.: “I was never even scheduled for any of the pictures they cancelled!”
Bob Hope: “Vaudeville is dead and television is the box they buried it in.”
Chill Wills, the voice of “Francis:” “Folks have been talking to me about going into politics, but I figure I better stay in a field where a talking mule is a novelty.”
Sir Laurence Olivier, after observing the Los Angeles smog: “Isn’t it ironic that motion pictures came westward for the sunshine and now there isn’t any?”

Lo! The King Approacheth!

2011-12-30T07:48:00.000-08:00

A smear drawing by Lloyd Vaughan from one of Chuck Jones’ funniest Bugs Bunny cartoons.

Ken Harris, Phil Monroe and Ben Washam get the other animation credits on ‘Rabbit Hood’ (1949).

Vaughan didn’t return to the studio after it shut down for six months in 1953, but he worked for Jones again in the 1970s.

You Won’t See This Movie Ad Today

2011-12-29T08:14:00.000-08:00

An example of how our vocabulary has changed since September 1940, when this ad appeared in print.

The cartoon advertised, “Little Lambkins,” is not about a lamb. It’s about a destructive kid, animated by Nelson Demorest, the pride of Greeley, Colorado, under Dave Tendlar. I don’t find it enjoyable, but you might.

George Pal Jumps to the Big Time

2011-12-28T08:58:00.000-08:00

Stop-motion animation didn’t originate with George Pal, but he certainly showcased it to an audience on a regular basis with his Puppetoons through the 1940s. Without Pal, one wonders whether TV viewers would have ever seen the somewhat bizarre Gumby or various quirky Rankin-Bass specials, both with coteries of loyal followers.

Pal was an admirable craftsman and technician, taking Jack Miller’s stories and creating delightful little films.

However, there was only so far one could go in shorts. Walt Disney realised it. Frank Tashlin realised it. And George Pal realised it, too. Because of that, he achieved fame in the science fiction film world.

Here’s an Associated Press article from 1950, outlining why Pal made the jump to features. It also refers to a popular commercial for Lucky Strikes.

New Film To Show Collision Of Worlds To Be Produced By George Pal
By BOB THOMAS
HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 23.—(AP)—Not content with having flown to the moon, George Pal is now causing the end of the world.
Pal is no flying saucer pilot or evangelist. He is a miracle worker in another field—motion pictures. Born in Hungary, he studied to be an architect but graduated at a time when there were no jobs. He was fascinated with American cartoon films like Felix and the Cat and went into the cartoon field in Europe.
Soon the ambitious draftsman grew tired of the tedious work of drawing thousands of flat figures. For a novelty, he made a tobacco advertising film that featured marching cigarettes (a forerunner of today’s television ads). He began to make animated films by the use of puppets.
Pal came to America in 1939 to produce puppetoons for Paramount. They achieved success but recently he was forced to abandon them because of rising costs. This year Pal produced a film called “Destination Moon,” a fanciful but seemingly authentic account of what interplanetary flight would be like.
The film was produced for about $600,000 and is expected to bring in $3,000,000 in this country alone. ]t started a cycle of science fiction movies.
This week Pal started filming a new project called “When Worlds Collide.” It will be the ultimate in movie catastrophes, making the “San Francisco” earthquake and “The Last Days of Pompeii” seem minor-league.
“The story starts with the approach of a planet and a star toward the earth,” Pal told me.
“Many people fear that it means the end the the earth, but others do not become alarmed and claim the other worlds will bypass the earth.
“Well, the planet does bypass, although it causes huge tidal waves, earthquakes and volcanoes. After that comes the star and it strikes the earth and destroys it.”
The picture will have a human story about a group of people who believe the worlds will collide and try to make some plans for it. They devise a space ship and select 800 candidates for passengers.
“They are chosen for their mental and physical well-being and because they are best in their fields, such as carpentry, medicine, etc.,” said Pal.
“Would a newspaperman be included?” I asked.
“There might be one among the Et Ceteras,” he added slyly. “Of course there is only room for 40 people aboard, so they are chosen from the 800 by the democratic process of drawing names.”
The survivors will watch the end f the world from their space ship and then zoom on to the nearby planet, which is deemed suitable or human habitation. They carry with them enough animals and needs to start anew.
“When Worlds Collide." has no relation to the recent best seller, “Worlds In Collision,” which attempted to explain Biblical events by planetary phenomena. The Pal story was a piece of science fiction vritten by Philip Wylie and Edwin Palmer in the early 30s’. It was originally planned as a Cecil B. DeMille epic, but he never got around to it.
I asked Pal how he would be able to top “When Worlds Collide.”
“I’m not going to try," he answered. “Next I may do a picture about Tom Thumb.”

The October 1941 edition of Popular Mechanics devoted a page to how the Puppetoons worked. Click on the picture to the right to have a better look.

There are plenty of fans of Pal on the internet. Look HERE for links aplenty.

It seems to me today's computer-generated 3D kids films are attempting to replicate a similar visual effect to the Puppetoons, but without their natural charm. George Pal may not have been a stop-motion pioneer but he was one of a handful of people who was truly adept at using the technique to entertain.