Mitzi Gaynor

Mitzi Gaynor was a dynamo.

She appeared in movies and in stage shows, and continually lauded for her ceaseless energy.

In 1950, producer Georgie Jessel saw her, shoved her into the cast of the Betty Grable/Dan Dailey picture My Blue Heaven, borrowed a surname from Janet Gaynor and turned Mitzi Gerber into Mitzi Gaynor (the original Gaynor was reportedly not impressed with 20th Century-Fox unilaterally absconding with her moniker).

Her biggest film role was likely Mary Martin’s leading part in the stage musical South Pacific (1958) but she was out of movies within a few years.

Why?

The Associated Press hunted for the reason in a column published May 31, 1964.

Movies Wrong For Gaynor
By JAMES BACON
HOLLYWOOD (AP) – Mitzi Gaynor is a victim of box-office chemistry.
And that may also be what’s wrong with the movies.
The last time Mitzi was cast opposite the right leading man — Rosanno Brazzi — the picture, “South Pacific,” wound up seventh in the top 10 list of all-time moneymaking films.
Her next two pictures were comedies opposite Yul Brynner and Kirk Douglas.
Result: Mitzi had to go into the nightclub field where she commands $40,000 a week.
At the Las Vegas Flamingo she was given two points—two per cent — of the action of the entire hotel-casino operation to sign a 10-year contract.
Jack Entratter of The Sands, who wishes he had her under contract, comments:
“She’s the only new night club star to emerge in the last decade.”
But there are no movie scripts. Josh Logan once said Mitzi can do more things better than anyone else in Hollywood. That’s partly her trouble. When Brynner and Douglas, both serious actors, chose Mitzi, she was so good that she made them look bad.
A smart producer would cast her opposite Jack Lemmon or Cary Grant — and you would have a female Sandy Koufax pitching against a Willie Mays.
Also, she was producer Ray Stark’s first choice to do “Funny Girl” on Broadway, but declared:
“I knew I wouldn’t be believable as Fanny Brice so I turned it down. And look what Barbra Streisand is doing with it.”
Jack Bean, her husband and manager, explained why she refused the role.
“Fanny Brice was no beauty. Neither is Barbra—she kids about it herself. Look at Mitzi. How can you make her unpretty?”
Now Stark has a Broadway show called “The Passionate Witch,” based on the old Fredric March-Veronica Lake movie “I Married a Witch.”
Mitzi’s interested. If she takes it, you may see a repetition of the Betty Grable saga.
For years Betty get herself arrested around Hollywood. Then she did “Dubarry Was a Lady” on Broadway and the movies discovered her.
For the next ten years, she was in the movies’ top 10 box office list—usually the only woman there.

She shone on the Vegas strip. She toured nightclubs. Vancouver loved her. She tried out her Vegas material in the city. Gaynor first appeared in Vancouver in 1966. There were long lines outside the Cave supper club. Two weeks became four. People were still turned away.

Gaynor didn’t cancel a vacation in Banff and stay in Vancouver just for the money. The Bolshoi Ballet was arriving and she wanted to catch their matinee performance. Actually, she decided to do more than that. She asked local show producer Hugh Pickett to invite them to her late performance and then take them all to a nearby Italian restaurant. “But, my dear, there’s 140 of them.” It ended up the invitation was accepted by the company’s 30 principals.

She returned a number of times to Vancouver, though the days of expensive supper club shows being funded in higher-valued American money were waning. A columnist for the Province tried to get Gaynor to be introspective in a column published May 24, 1969.

Mitzi Gaynor . . . way it is all right by her.
By KAY ALSOP
Offstage, too, she’s a life-size Barbie doll—same round eyes, pert nose and that incredible figure . . . Watching her perform, the way she wound an audience around here finger, I’d thought to myself: “Nuts—no woman over 21 can be all that adorable. She’s GOT to be bitchy before breakfast, or have some dirty shoulder straps—SOMETHING!”
Then I met her—Francesca Mitzi Marlene de Charney von Gerber Bean—Mitzi Gaynor.
I had been talking to Cave band-leader Fraser McPherson, and hadn’t noticed her approach until suddenly:
“Hi!” she bubbled. “Waiting for me?”
And in the dim light, there at the top of the stairs, I swear it was like she was lit by sparklers!
Easy now, I thought. Adorable, eh? You’re going to have to show me . . .
While she chattered on about this and that—(“Hey, like to sit here? I think I’ll sit myself—phew!”)—I grabbed a couple of sneaky peeks around at the star’s dressing room.
During the past few months I’ve been in it several times, and seen it in all manner of disarrat. And you know? This time it was parlor-tidy, costumes lined up, plastic-covered. No powder spills on the table, lounge laid tidily with cotton cover.
I looked at this doll, composed on a straight chair, a flame-colored shirtwaist playing up those curves, silk scarf knotted at the throat, eyes swagged in two-inch lashes.
She read my mind.

“My face is ready,” she cracked. “And believe me, it takes time. These eyes are a production!”
“Listen,” I began, “I’ve got only three questions, all ‘how-do-you-keepers.’ First, how do you keep your bounce?”
“Easy,” she said. “I’m naturally energetic, but I take vitamins too, tons of them. And I try to get enough sleep. Even though my life is topsy-turvy—I go to bed at 4 a.m. and get up at 2 p.m. But I do run down occasionally, and when I really get tired I flop! (and she slumped dramatically in the chair to show me.)
“Then my husband drags me off for a rest, and I don’t do a thing but plop! Otherwise I’m lucky—I have lots of git-up-and-go.”
“Okay—second question. How do you keep your figure?”
“Exercise,” she said instantly, “and I watch my diet. I was REALLY fat fifteen years ago, you know—42 inch hips, 23 inch waist (normally, I’m 21 inches around the middle). I looked like this: (and she drew parentheses in the air to indicate balloon proportions.)
“I was engaged to Jack then, and he told me bluntly: ‘Diet!’ So I did. I lose 35 pounds in three months. My stomach growled all day long. I was so grouchy. But I got my shape back.
“Since then I don’t really diet, but (she looked at me levelly) let’s face it—I work a lot of it off out there on the stage. And I exercise regularly every day.”
“Final question. How do you keep your husband?”
Her answer came back like a shot.
“I ADORE him, and I tell him so CONSTANTLY! He’s the boss, he’s my manager my companion, my love and my friend.
“We’ve been married for fourteen years, and I can hardly wait for the next fourteen. I wake up in the middle of the night and suddenly get panicky. I think: ‘My God! What if I had never met Jack? What if something happened to him? What would I DO?”
“Sometimes I get terribly crabby, like when I’ve sprained my ankle, or cut my finger, or put my back out. I feel disgustingly sorry for myself then. But Jack knows all I need is lots of loving. And I GET it!”
I had forgotten the ‘adorable’ bit by now. I was remembering, instead, that Mitzi Gaynor was one of those ‘overnight’ successes who had been slugging away for more than 20 years before she was ‘discovered’ in “South Pacific.” I was recalling that the crew she works with—the backstage people who really know a star—dote on her.
I thought about the fat girl who gritted her teeth, ignore the famished stomach, and whittled her 42 inch hips down to a curvy 36. And I looked at this performer who, in the best tradition of show business, worked doggedly at her craft, polishing, practising, till she was letter-perfect and gesture-sure.
My mind flashed back over the number of female performers I’ve interviewed in the past, whose off-stage lives loomed bleak and lonely because they’d not known how to work at a marriage as well as a career, and I mentally applauded this Gaynor gal for her shrewd, basic logic, her ability to put things in proper perspective, first things first.
She’s at the top of the heap, earning some $45,000 a week at Las Vegas. Vancouver crowds line the streets and the stairs, waiting to squeeze in to see her perform. Critics rave. And Mitzi Gaynor raves too—about her husband!

At age 66, the Cave long demolished, Mitzi was emotional when her 1996 performances at the Vogue Theatre in Vancouver prompted the city to declare July 9th as Mitzi Gaynor Day. Just shy of 80, she performed at a Vancouver-area casino. Entertainment critics still lauded her enthusiasm on stage. She gave her all to her audiences. She'll be long remembered for it.

On the Downbeat

Sir Wally Walrus conducts an orchestra of animals in The Overture to William Tell, a 1947 Musical Miniature directed by Dick Lundy for Walter Lantz.

Here are some of Wally's positions as he gets set to lead the orchestra in the Ranz des Vaches portion of Rossini's famous composition.



La Verne Harding and Casey Onaitis receive the animation credits in this cartoon, with Bugs Hardaway and Milt Schaffer charged with coming up with different musical instrument gags than in the other Miniatures.

Funt's Stunts

There’s always been a subset of television programming, dating back to the network radio days, of shows that deliberately embarrass and laugh at innocent people. Most make me cringe.
Ralph Edwards was particularly smirky and smarmy as he ridiculed people in ridiculous situations on Truth or Consequences (his image was counterbalanced by some excellent charity work and a half-hour of sentiment called This is Your Life). Art Linkletter was a little more tolerable on People Are Funny (his image was counterbalanced by eliciting amusing answers by naïve children on House Party).

One of these programmes I did like was Candid Camera. It may have trod the line, but when I watched it in the 1960s any embarrassment about a situation didn’t last long and we always saw the victim was let in on the joke at the end. (Bob and Ray came up with a parody called “Secret Camera” where the host was beaten up by angry victims). The show was so popular, CBS aired reruns Monday through Friday, which is when I watched.

It helped, too, the host was a chap named Allen Funt. He was no chortling, “aren’t we devils” type. He came across as an ordinary, unaffected guy, not an over-the-top television host.

Funt created Candid Camera, which was actually born as Candid Microphone on ABC radio, the network that allowed recorded voices. The show worked on radio and Funt was able to move it to television, where it blossomed. But it took a little bit of time.

If nothing else, Funt was a self-promotor. Not surprising perhaps because, in 1940, he was the head of a copy department at ad agency. In 1942, he became the writer and director of the Blue Network’s Army-Navy Game, where a soldier and sailor took part in gag demonstrations. The Army itself beckoned for Funt a year later, and we find him at Camp Gruber in Oklahoma, where he was behind a local radio show called Behind the Dog Tag, that made GI wishes come true—after a stunt, of course.

The Gruber Guidon reminisced in late 1944: “Remember the night the soldier had to had to fill the colonel’s hat with catsup and mashed potatoes, then answer to the colonel himself? And the night a blind-folded Pfc made love to a donkey? And the night a soldier was dunked in a tank of water and came up with a watch and a real live pinup girl in a bathing suit?”

After the war, he produced Johnny Olsen’s Ladies Be Seated before selling ABC on Candid Microphone, which debuted on the same network June 28, 1947. (Alan Courtney and Art Green had hosted a series with the same name on WMCA in 1938, but it involved interviews from night clubs). Pretty soon, the papers were talking about it.

Well, in some cases, they were talking about Funt. And Funt was a great story-teller. Here’s one of a number of feature stories about his adventures in stunt-land. It’s from July 30, 1947.

My New York
By MEL HEIMER
NEW YORK—Since the publication of the Wakeman book of the same name, the hucksters have been very much in the spotlight. They are, of course, advertising agency men who go around peddling radio shows.
There is a surface hilarity to their asinine activities which Wakeman exploited neatly, but underneath, most of them are colossal bores. It was thus a pleasure, the other day, to talk to a reformed huckster.
This is a 32-year-old, slightly bald, calm-looking gentleman named Allen Funt, who has progressed from huckstering to the point where he now is a "gimmick" man in radio.
Webster defines "gimmick" as "anything tricky"—which means that the fabulous Funt goes around thinking up trick ideas for radio shows. And here is a man, friends, in words of Broadwayite Al Slep, he makes the average zany character "sound like a bookkeeper with the diamond pin for 50 years' service in sawdust mill.”
Back in the days when Allen was a promising young huckster, he gave more than one indication of his genius. At one time he was trying to peddle P. K. Wrigley, the gum magnate, an idea for a radio show—but Wrigley, he says, just wouldn't pay no never mind to his letters, wires and calls.
Finally, one day he took an old plank of wood, stuck four pieces of well-chewed gum on its bottom side and mailed it express to Wrigley. "I have had these analysed," Allen's accompanying letter informed Wrigley darkly, "and NONE is Wrigley's. Let our radio show correct this situation." He got his audience with P. K. "Of course," Allen adds now, "the show never materialized, anyway. But it was a moral triumph."
Another stunt that Allen pulled more than once was to write a sales letter to a prospective client, then tear it into a hundred pieces, drop it Into a wastebasket—and mail the wastebasket to the customer. “They ALWAYS pasted the pieces together," he recalls, dreamily.
However, huckstering palled on this New York native, who is a Cornell graduate and an artist and sculptor in his spare time. He became a radio idea man—his Groucho Marx mind ran rampant. He has a show now in which an attempt is made to really bring candor to the airwaves.
Thus, recently, Funt broadcast the actual awakening of a man by his wife in the morning (the wife was in cahoots with Funt and his aides), complete to the sleepy guy's muttering of "Get lost, will ya?" He also broadcast the transaction when a harrassed soul hocked his watch in a pawn shop. It turned out the hocker needed some quick money for a set of false teeth.
As an Army corporal in Tulsa, Okla., during the war, young Funt staged a radio show whereby 10 GI's, who had written letters, had their greatest wishes come true. One soldier meditated long and then decided he wanted to dive into a swimming pool full of iced tea.
Eyes a-gleam, Allen got a whole battalion to dig a swimming pool—and filled it with cooling oolong. Another soldier wanted to see some of the animals he had left on the farm. Funt badgered a general to commandeer a fleet of amphibious trucks that ferried in enough livestock to fill Noah's old LST.
One of Funt's best stunts helped win the war. Called on for a gimmick to sell war bonds, he created a dilly. With several thousand people jammed into an auditorium he seated on the stage a little old woman who hadn't seen her GI son for five years. With a roll of drums, the hall was darkened at the entrance to the hall, in a spotlight, stood the son.
The gimmick? For every $1,000 war bond purchased by the audience, the son could take one step closer to his old mother. At $50,000, with half the audience in hysterics, crying men and women finally rushed into the aisles and carried the GI up to his ma.
On his current candid show, Allen's immediate goal is to broadcast one of President Truman's sneezes. He already is lining up a mechanical crew to go to Washington for the purpose.
However, Funt's most grandoise gimmick seems due to die unborn. He wants to get some manufacturer to turn out a Christmas stocking as large as the Empire State building, hang it and have it filled by radio listeners with gifts to be sent to the needy the world over.
There are two main obstacles: 1—You would have to build a bigger structure than the Empire State on which to hang the stocking. 2—It would have to be knitted by Bethlehem Steel.
These are the kind of people we have in New York. I ask you—how can you get bored here?

Funt parlayed the radio show into a number of books, including dialogue from the broadcasts, several volumes of “secret recordings” on Columbia records, 40 short films released by Columbia (and re-released even into the 1960s) and sales training films for liquor, mattress and appliance companies. When ABC’s TV flagship station WJZ-TV finally went on the air on August 10, 1948, Candid Microphone was dropped in the 8 to 8:30 p.m. time slot opposite Texaco Star Theatre on NBC starring Henny Youngman, with Paul Winchell and Bert Lahr. Then, it was back to radio.

Candid Microphone became Candid Camera on NBC-TV at the start of the 1949-50 season before appearing on CBS from July to October 1950. Philip Morris dropped the show in favour of bandleader/starmaker Horace Heidt, despite placing 15th in the ratings in metropolitan New York. But Funt wasn’t hurting. Associated Artists Productions bought his TV films (recut from 89 half hours) for $200,000 in 1954 and put them in syndication. Funt bought them back in April 1959 for $40,000.

Through most of the ‘50s, while Truth or Consequences and House Party were attracting audiences, no network wanted Funt’s show. Finally, it surfaced on a semi-regular basis starting in April 1958 on, of all places, the Jack Paar version of the Tonight show (columnist Hy Gardner proclaimed they “provide the week’s high in hilarity,” opining Paar was getting stale). Then it surfaced as a regular five-minute segment of The Garry Moore Show in the 1959-60 season. Moore, his announcer Durward Kirby and cast members Marion Lorne and Carol Burnett (chained to a blacksmith’s table) would take part in Funt’s stunts shot behind a two-way mirror or a hole in a folding screen. Amazingly, few people recognised Moore, whose face had been seen day and night on television through the 1950s.

One critic who cried “humiliation!” “sadism!” and “bully!” at Funt was Scripps-Howard writer Harriet Van Horne who, if she were reviewing Santa Claus, would ignore the free gifts to good children, and instead sharply censure him because she might possibly have to vacuum chimney soot from her carpet.

In April 1960, it was reported Candid Camera would become a regular series. It debuted on Sunday, Oct. 2nd, at 10 p.m., sandwiched between Jack Benny and What’s My Line? Funt was there and so was singer Dorothy Collins. But there was a behind-the-scenes war. Eddie Albert had been hired to host and shot some shows with Arthur Godfrey set to be a guest star. But producer Bob Banner, at least according to the Hollywood Reporter, decided he wanted Godfrey to host. Albert found greener pastures. Or green something.

“Warmhearted, prankish,” declared Ben Gross of the Daily News about the premiere, pointing to a Collins segment where she “drove” into a gas station without an engine. Cynthia Lowry of the Associated Press opined “I suspect the gag will wear thin pretty quickly.”

Well, the series carried on until 1967, was revived several times and, even today, reruns are seen on cable TV. The only thing that wore thin was Godfrey, who lasted a season and then griped to Donald Freeman of the Copley News Service that CBS thought he was through, that Funt aired their differences in public and that Candid Camera wasn’t his kind of show anyway. Then he went on to call Julius LaRosa a liar (almost seven years after Godfrey fired him), and rip singer Frank Parker (“he ruined himself”) and singing group the Mariners (“What they used to have, they don’t have any more.”). Sounds like your Lipton tea isn’t what’s bitter, Arthur.

Funt responded by going back to his Garry Moore days, hiring Durwood Kirby to co-host, and carrying on. And on. And on.

Funt died in 1999 just before his 85th birthday.

One other thing about Funt—he was a cartoonist. He had attended the Pratt Institute in New York. His strip appeared in papers in the 1940s. (If he didn’t draw it, I will stand corrected).

Road Hog

It would appear Friz Freleng and the writing staff at the Leon Schlesinger studio thought taxi drivers were maniacs on the road.

Can there be another explanation why a little boy car that wants to be a cab turns into an unrepentant speed demon in the 1937 Merrie Melodie Streamlined Greta Green?

The would-be taxi fills up on “ethel” gas (as opposed to “ethyl”) and decides to out-race the 515, which is chugging along railway tracks in re-used animation from Rhythm in the Bow, a 1935 Bugs Hardaway cartoon. He passes the train and looks back in satisfaction.



But something’s ahead. The car’s little hat jumps up in surprise (Earlier, the gas station attendant’s hat flips over, like in a Jack King cartoon).



Freleng cuts to a visual gag—a road hog. It even oinks.



He can’t get past Mr. Hog.



The hog is quite pleased with himself.



Uh, oh!



The girders of a bridge change the situation.



I’m pretty sure the “road hog” gag wasn’t original, but it fits nicely here. Since a “hog” is involved, Carl Stalling puts “Rural Rhythm” behind this sequence.

I can only picture what Friz and the writers thought as they tried to build a cartoon around, or shoehorn in, a Warner Bros.-owned song. The song “Streamlined Greta Green” has nothing to do with this cartoon. The little car is boxy, not streamlined. No one in it is named Greta Green, who “looks like Dixie’s cotton queen,” according to the lyrics.



The train barrels along to the strains of “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” and when the car fills up with high-octane gas, we hear “My Little Buckaroo.” This opening of the cartoon may have my favourite arrangement of “Merrily We Roll Along,” punctuated by piccolos.

Berneice Hansell squeals as the little car, Mel Blanc adds a voice and I think the mother car is Martha Wentworth, but that’s a guess on my part.

Cal Dalton and Ken Harris receive screen credit for animation. Maybe some day, someone can positively ID the background artists in these mid-‘30s Warners cartoons. Whoever did this used the same distinctive lettering on signs in the background of a number of cartoons. Is it Art Loomer? I wish I knew.

And, now, for your listening pleasure, the Little Ramblers....

The Ice Truck Cometh

You’ll see several ice cream truck gags (“Good Rumor” trucks, mainly) in Tex Avery cartoons, but he pulls an ice truck gag in One Cab’s Family.

The truck driver is motoring along blithely, then sees Junior the hot rod coming at him.



Avery indulges in a transformation gag. The collision sends the ice hauler out of the frame, and turns the truck into something related when it lands.



The short was released May 15, 1952. Avery tried the same kind of cartoon a year later with Little Johnny Jet. We’ve mentioned before the story has similarities to Friz Freleng’s Streamlined Greta Green, released by Warner Bros. in 1937 when he and Avery were working for Leon Schlesinger. More on that tomorrow.

Rich Hogan and Roy Williams are the credited story people, with animation by Mike Lah, Grant Simmons and Walt Clinton, and voices by the wonderful Daws Butler and June Foray.

Playing the Palace

When Rochester answered the phone and described Jack Benny as “star of stage, screen and radio,” it was not like Benny being cheap or driving a Maxwell. He didn’t do either of those things in real life, but he actually WAS a star. Prior to beginning a radio career in 1932, he headlined on stage at the Palace in New York and, in 1931, also toured the U.S., Canada and Europe.

One of the things I’ve noticed in reading reviews of his vaudeville act in the 1920s and into the ‘30s was he almost always won the approval of critics.

There really is oodles of print material about Jack in New York in 1931, but I’ll stick to reviews in Variety. They go through the whole bill, so I’m dropping some non-Benny parts in the interest of brevity. This is from the Show Biz Bible of February 11:

CAPITOL
New York, Feb. 7.
Loew’s “Bits of Wit” unit, current with the Greta Garbo talker, “Inspiration,” follows the new trend away from standard stage band presentation toward the less decorative, but also less stereotyped variety formation.
Jack Benny is starred over the unit and works in between the numbers as a gagging m. c., later bringing part of the pit crew to the stage for some comedy band biz. He formerly used the same number in floor shows and vaude. That almost completes the cycle for this particular bit and even so it held up here.
Garbo was bringing them in opening day, forcing the Capitol to five shows, all capacity. They were standing up almost to the finish of the last performance at night and into the midnight straight picture show. That gave Benny five full houses to talk and play to Friday and at the last one he made mention of the hardship on his pipes.
Capitol, a big place empty or filled, is unlike the intimate vaude and revue theatres to which Benny is accustomed. By the night show he apparently has struck the right chatter system, (or they were getting his light comedy banter in the rear), giving this single the entire audience to juggle. The average talking act coming from the smaller theatres to a place of the Capitol’s size generally finds itself potent with only about half the audience, Benny’s stuff landed all over.
Mrs. Jack Benny is on the program as Marie Marsh for her dumb dora foiling bit with her husband. She has two chances, one including a song.
Benny’s flip talk, fiddle solo and band stuff were meant to stand out. They do, and manager to carry the unit. Bige

Jack wasn’t through with this particular show. Among other venues that booked it were the Valencia in Jamaica, New York, and Loew’s Jersey City before heading to other cities in the east.

He was back in New York at the May, but wasn’t the star. That honour went to another one of Fred Allen’s buddies. No less than the founder of Variety wrote the paper’s review on May 31.

PALACE
(St. Vaude)
Way over the average entertaining bill of eight acts at the Palace, currently. It is headlined by Dr. Rockwell and none of those coming or going actors known as stooges.
To Jack Benny goes the mark for holding up and sending the show over the average. Without him it would be just a good show. With Benny it’s a beaut bill. To prevent squawks by others it may be said that no m. c. excels Benny, letting it go at that. Which also takes him in as a single talking turn.
For the first time an m. c. vaudevillian or any other stage person has found how to pull a gag out of news reel. Benny is doing it this week with Pathe sound news. In the reel is a sound scene of artillery practice. The reel on the sheet goes blooey in this scene. It is a natural guess of a break in the booth. Benny steps out, saying the house wants him to fill in the wait. He asks the orchestra leader for a violin and starts to play “Mighty Lak a Rose.” He’s barely started when the reel behind him resumes. He continues playing during the heavily sounded gunnery with the horses tearing headlong out of the sheet and over Benny’s head. That ends the news reel, with Benny’s playing now heard. It might be made known who picked this spot in the reel for a gag. It was perfect and tells what a comedy vision he had. Probably Benny.
Nearly all of the standard acts are return dates here, excepting Armida, single, who isn’t standard yet, and perhaps the first two turns. Benny made a gag out of that also. No. 2 is a Chinese act, the Joe Wong turn. Benny entering after it for the first time, to announce he is the announcer, mentioned it seemed strange for a Chinese act to be on No. 2. “Generally,” he said, “it takes two Japs to open.” Then he added: “Anyway, I’m glad to see a Chinese act. It’s the first time there have been Gentiles up here in months.”
Armida seems to have enough to make the single turn grade, but perhaps would make it more solidly and quickly if turning the joke she indulged in with Benny later into a literal fact. Benny asks the Mex girl if she isn’t a Gus Edwards protege and how does she like Gus. “I like him,” she answered, “but he holds me down.” That’s for the purpose of the Lincoln car gag, etc., for a laugh. But that holding her down may be so, in so far as Armida might do several things better if permitted to frame her own turn, at least in part.
During Benny’s own act which wasn’t, [tap dancer Jim] Barton broke in on it to have the orchestra leader rehearse his waltz music, and again Armida stepped out, neither noticing Benny with both interrupting him, and Armida mentioning she had forgotten to thank the audience for her reception. Armida did a nice bit with Benny here. Sime

Benny stayed for another week. Wrote “Bige” in the June 2 edition: “Levoda brought some action, opening the second part, after Jack Benny had soothed ‘em with his smooth m. c.’ing during a first part that came in last. Benny is the only holdover currently, which sets a modern record for the Palace.”

The headliner was Georgie Jessel, who replaced him as the Palace emcee the following week. But there was a surprise. As The Billboard put in on June 13: “While Jessel was carrying on, Jack Benny sprung a real surprise by coming on for a corking bit, giving the impression that he had forgotten his engagement as emsee ended the night before.”

The two were on the bill again on June 21 at the Friars’ Frolic at the New Amsterdam Theatre. Jack played his violin with Phil Baker on the accordion, as they kibbitzed.

Jack’s next big tour took to the Palladium in London, where he worked out a contract signed in 1927. Variety stated he opened August 10 and stayed a week, rejecting a two-week appearance to return to New York. From the edition of Variety, Aug. 11:

London, Aug. 10
Jack Benny, billed as “the world’s most famous master of ceremonies” proved a revelation at the opening show today, scoring immediate popularity. He did an m. c. for the bill.
Benny objected to the billing, with the program merely announcing his as being “direct from Carroll’s ‘Vanities.’”
Remainder of the bill is not up to standard. It’s lucky Benny is there.


Back in New York, Jack had another week at the Palace. Some of the acts on the bill with him are familiar. One was singer Kate Smith. The other was bandleader Abe Lyman. The two appeared with Benny on his show of March 27, 1938. “Bige” in Variety wasn’t altogether impressed. He wrote in the paper’s September 8, 1931 edition:

CAPITOL
(St. Vaude)
Show against show, act versus act, the current layout can complete with the bill that just completed seven weeks. In several ways, especially as a variety program, it’s superior. But it just didn’t blend like the other one did, while Benny wasn’t as funny Saturday as [Lou] Holtz had been for seven weeks previously.
The show’s worst handicap, no doubt, was a mental one. The house decided to spend $13,000 in salaries to duplicate the long run. It must have placed the acts under a strain. This was evident in Benny’s work all through the opening performance. Some bad breaks, mechanical and otherwise, didn’t make things easier for this usually smooth m.c.
Benny also might have done some thinking or some buying. The two bits he relied on most were used by him at this house several times before, and the last time not so long ago. Through a muff in the projection room, one of them went wrong. The other one has been used here by Benny so many times before, it’s now a clause in the lease.
In between-the-acts bits, Benny and [William] Gaxton were shaky at the first show. As the week progresses, so should the m.c. team. A fortunate discovery of an unbilled boy who can do a Holtz in everything but looks gave Benny and Gaxton their best chance of the afternoon. Everybody got it.

The September 1 Variety revealed Benny each received $2,000 for the week, Gaxton got $2,600, Harriet Hoctor, $2,500 and Lyman and the orchestra $4,500. The bill was held over for a second week.

Jack was still under contract to Earl Carroll, and Variety of Oct. 6 reported the road version opened that evening at Ford’s in Baltimore. There were difficulties with Carroll. Variety revealed:

Chicago, Dec. 21
Before leaving with ‘Vanities’ for Milwaukee, Jack Benny, featured principal in the Carroll show, indicated he would ask for a release immediately. Prior to the show’s closing at the Erlanger, Carroll ordered a general cut in the payroll, one reason for Benny’s balk.
Publix is negotiating with Benny for the Ambassador, St. Louis, now held by Wesley Eddy. If Benny opens in St. Louis it will be after Jan. 1 on a minimum run of four weeks with usual options.

Carroll relented, with the trade paper explaining Carroll held off the cash slash after “gratifying results” in Milwaukee over the Christmas period.

Jack’s future appeal on radio may actually be found in a 1931 edition of Variety. In reviewing the act of singer comedian Freddie Bernard at the Academy Theatre, a Loew’s house on East Houston St. in the Lower East Side, “Earl” wrote on Oct. 13:

He tells the umbrella gag, which Jack Benny recently told at the ace Palace, and got nothing. Benny socked ‘em with it. Difference in delivery and knowing how.

Perhaps this is why you’ve heard of Jack Benny and not Freddie Bernard.

Bernard, by the way, emceed for years in Miami after the war, then in Atlanta until the mid-1960s. The “clown prince of show biz” had a Benny story from the days when they worked the Orpheum together.

“Lots of show world comedians get off their best lines off the stage, like for instance once I was working in Winnipeg with Jack Benny. The audience was stony. No laughs. Afterward we were walking back to the hotel in dismal silence when Benny stopped in his tracks and pointed to a child with an expressionless face.
“ ‘My God, no wonder we can’t get laughs from these people,’ Jack groaned. ‘That kid has a face like a frozen lox.’ ”

He couldn’t ad-lib without his writers? That was something else Benny made up. Ater ditching Earl Carroll in 1932, radio audiences would begin to find out.

Made Of Pen and Ink

There was a time when animated cartoons were promoted with full-page ads in the trade newspapers. It’s been a while since we posted some, so let’s pass along a few for the Fleischer studio’s greatest creation—Betty Boop.



Betty started out as a great character, even when she was dog-ish. Dizzy Dishes, Snow-White, Betty Boop, M.D., Minnie the Moocher, all great cartoons. She put in an appearance in Bimbo's Initiation, another enjoyable, creative cartoon. There are others, too.

Critics, starting with Leonard Maltin I guess, blamed enforcement of the Production Code in 1934 for the decline of Betty. But there was more to it than that. By 1934, flappers were a thing of the past. Their lifestyle belonged in the ‘20s when you couldn’t (legally) get booze, not in a time when you couldn’t get employment.

Dave Fleischer and the writers had to do something. So we got Pudgy. We got Grampy. We got Buzzy Boop. Then we got Sally Swing. This is from Paramount's internal newsletter in 1938.



Sally Swing’s invention made sense. Boop-oop-a-doop songs were passe. Swing and jitterbugging were now in. Why not have a character who reflected that?

The problem was Sally could sing and dance and...well, that’s about it. Betty had a personality. Sally Swing was one-note. (And her hair colour changed from Myron Waldman's drawing above).



But let's go back to the start of 1933. Betty was big. There was merchandise (and department store promotions). There was a radio show. There was a comic strip. There was a lawsuit filed by Helen Kane claiming Max Fleischer and Paramount stole her act and put it in Betty. On the screen, Betty had run for president, complete with impressions of Herbert Hoover and Al Smith. Theatres had “Betty Boop Booster” clubs to try to attract kids to Saturday matinees; at least one in Shreveport did.

Sidney Skosky's "Tintypes" column in the New York Daily News of January 16, 1933 was devoted to Betty and her best-known voice, the likeable Mae Questel.

BETTY BOOP. She's the handiwork of 100 artists working full time for five weeks when you see her on the screen. Plus that she's the voice of Mae Questel, who also works from four to five weeks.
For the synchronization takes that long. It is started when the animation is completed. An actual orchestra is used for the synchronization—music, sounds, singing, etc. It is done with the aid of a metronome which the performing artists follow meticulously.
It was eighteen months ago that Betty Boop emerged from the inkwell of Max Fleischer. Then she was merely one of the characters. But she booped her way to stardom.
Although the cartoon appears for only a short time on the screen, it necessitates tedious work. Fleischer took a year to finish his first six-minute subject. It consisted of 12,000 separate drawings.
The penciled lines were then traced over on celluloid and filmed in. Then they were photographed by a still camera. Synchronization followed and the finished product was ready for exhibition.
The same process still is followed, but instead of one artist, 100 are used. Fourteen chief artists draw the key scenes. The other action scenes are put in the hands of subordinate sketchers.
Next time you're watching one of these cartoons notice how many times a certain scene in passes review again and again as the action flies by. Those are the key scenes.
Betty Boop enjoyed only mild popularity until Mae Questel got the job. Then she became a favorite with the movie fans. Miss Questel almost looks like Betty Boop.
She is 5 feet 1 inch in height, has black, bobbed hair and sparkling eyes, and talks like Helen Kane.
In fact she began her theatrical career in an amateur impersonation contest in a Bronx theatre and won a prize for mimicking the boop-a-doop gal.
Up to that time she had been teaching elocution privately. So the voice you hear in that animated cartoon is that of an elocution teacher.
But after she won that amateur contest Mae deserted the classroom for the stage. She started out in vaudeville doing a single and later appeared with Waite Hoyt and Fred Coots when that act played the Palace. She also played in Nancy Carroll's flicker "Wayward." Played the role of the cute, fresh chorine.
It was when Max Fleischer was looking for a new Betty Boop—he had tried a number but they all failed—that she was sent to him. She was found to be perfect for the part. She was Betty Boop.
Fleischer will tell you she isn't Betty Boop, but that Betty Boop is Mae Questel. That's how good he believes she is.
In her job she must sing in German and French. She speaks French, German, Polish and Spanish. She got a medal at school for Spanish. She can and does do impersonations of Marlene Dietrich, Maurice Chevalier, Fannie Brice, Lyda Roberti, Rudy Vallee and others. There's no telling when, as Betty Boop, she may be called upon to do any of those characters.
She doesn't care that the audience only hears her but doesn't see her. She doesn't insist on being that type of a star. Now, however, all her friends and her boy friend call her Betty Boop. She's only 19, went to Morris High School, and is Russian-Polish.
She buys her clothes wholesale and is not individualistic in her style. Blue is her favorite color, for it brings out the color of her eyes. She has a scar on her right cheek, hardly perceptible. She received it when she fell down a flight of stairs when a kid.
She wears flannel nightgowns and sleeps alone. On cold wintry nights she wears woolen socks in bed.
She smokes, takes a drink now and then, and chews gum constantly. Often while she is recording a number for the cartoon she forgets herself and keeps chewing gum.
Her voice is the remarkable thing about her, which is why she's so good in a job where she's only a voice. The ability to change her voice allowed her to take eleven parts in one reel.
When she goes to the movies she likes to see those animated cartoons. Mae Questel's favorite is not Betty Boop. Just tell her where Mickey Mouse cartoon is playing and she'll be there.

By the way, Mae was 24 when the story was written.



Betty still has an audience today. Canadian David Foster has composed a musical that is apparently coming to Broadway. Why not? Betty sang in her cartoons, including on a theatre stage (1932's Stopping the Show). And her name is based on a line from Helen Kane’s famous song “I Wanna Be Loved By You.”

I don’t have time to watch cartoons much these days, but I took about eight minutes today to immerse myself in a 91-year-old animated short—Betty’s Snow-White. I defy anyone to say it’s not a brilliant cartoon. Bravo Betty.