A Year at the Top Wasn't Tops

When Late Night With David Letterman premiered in 1982, the only one on the show I didn’t know was Letterman. I never saw his daytime show. I knew Bill Wendell’s voice from the Garry Moore version of To Tell the Truth.

Paul Shaffer I recognised from one of those sitcoms that I swear no one else watched. It was called A Year at the Top and co-starred Greg Evigan, and featured Nedra Volz as a stereotypical feisty old lady.

“You know, Yowp,” I said to myself. “You haven’t written about that show here. Why don’t you find a couple of old clippings about it?” “That I will,” I answered to myself.

The first clipping is an Associated Press story that appeared in newspapers starting in late December 1976.

Two old 'kids' reunited in 'A Year at the Top'
By BOB THOMAS
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The indefatigable Norman Lear has gone to the devil for his latest television comedy, reworking the Faustian legend in today's pop music field.
The half-hour is called "A Year at the Top," and that's what a trio of old-time entertainers sell their souls for. They are Vivian Blaine, Robert Alda and Phil Leeds. Their diabolical deal allows them to transform into a now young singing group that swiftly ascends to the top of the charts.
"A Year at the Top" evolved from a partnership of Lear's T.A.T. Communications Co. and Don Kirschner Productions. Music man Kirschner created the series with Woody Kling and supplies the music. Lear is executive producer; Darryl Hickman, producer.
The show debuts on CBS Jan. 19, and the first tapings are going on at the Lear compound in Metromedia Square. All of his series, from "All in the Family" to "Maude," headquarter at the local KTTV studio, owned and operated by Metromedia.
The star of "A Year at the Top" is Mickey Rooney, also an old-time entertainer, but one who decides against making the youthful comeback. The other day he was rehearsing a scene with his customary verve, playing with his "converted" partners, Greg Evigan, Paul Shaffer and Judith Cohen, who portray the young singing sensations.
“The format is terrific," said Alda, who was observing the rehearsal. "It has appeal to both the young and the middle aged. The young will get their kind of music from the three kids, and Mickey, Vivian, Phil and I will supply the music from our era. Plus some very funny situations.
"My only concern about doing the series was that I didn't appear opposite my son Alan on ‘M*A*S*H.’ But we're both on CBS, so that's no problem."
After the scene concluded, Rooney returned to his dressing room for a conference on how to punch up the comedy. He is wearing the stubble of a beard that he grew for "Pete's Dragon" at Disney. He conferred with a producer who looked familiar behind his own black beard.
"Imagine me working with Darryl Hickman after all these years!" Mickey said. "Why, we were kids together in 'Boys Town' back in 1940. Make it 1938."
"And I was reminded of 'Boys Town' the other day," said Hickman, a onetime child actor. "Mickey did a scene with the three young people in our show, and when he finished I noticed that all of them had tears running down their cheeks. I remembered watching Mickey do a scene in 'Boys Town' when I was 9 years old, and I was crying myself."
"Isn't this great, me and Darryl being back together?" Rooney said. "We've hardly seen each other since. I was busy getting married, and he was learning to be an executive."
"A Year at the Top" is Rooney's first TV series since the ill-fated "Mickey" of 15 years ago.
"It was on and off the air before you knew it," he said. "I pleaded with Selig Seligman of ABC not to call it 'Mickey' and not to give me three children, a Filipino houseboy and have me running a motel. I want to play a character who had had three or four wives and was in alimony trouble. You know, like Mickey Rooney. It's a great device to kid yourself, like Jack Benny always did.
"Then they scheduled the show opposite Jackie Gleason in his first season with 'The Honeymooners.’ Bombsville.”

When I read this story, I was confused. I realise I haven’t seen the show in almost a half century, but didn’t remember any of this. Robert Alda? Phil Leeds?

Well, here’s what happened. The show was taken off the schedule before it even got on the air.

Val Adams of the New York Daily News reported on Jan. 11, 1977 that, a week earlier, CBS said the premiere had been postponed a week, then announced the previous day that the show would be replaced. Lear was quoted in a network news release: “We have asked the CBS television network to allow ‘A Year at the Top’ to be shut down . . . for repairs and they have graciously granted us permission to do so. After alterations are made, we will be back in production in March for possible airing in the fall on CBS.”

Adams noted this was the second go-around for the concept. Lear had produced a pilot called Hereafter, which aired on NBC on November 27, 1975 (Thanksgiving). Josh Mostel played Nathan, the devil's youngest son, who agreed to transform three over-the-hill singers, played by Leeds, John J. Fox and Robert Donley, into a young rock group in exchange for their souls after a year of success. Blaine, Shaffer and Evigan were in this version, as well as Antonio Fargas and Don Cardino.

If the reason for Lear’s sudden decision to re-work the show is known, I haven’t been able to find it. However, let’s look at the “Eye on TV” column from the Newark Star-Ledger of Aug, 5, 1977, the day the show premiered.

The waiting ends for 'A Year at the Top'
By JERRY KRUPNICK
What does it take to get a new television series on the air? Well, along with the usual ingredients—money, talent and guts—add in a heaping spoonful of patience and perseverance.
For nearly three years now, Norman Lear and Don Kirshner have been trying to get air time for a musical situation comedy straight out of "Faust" which they were calling "Second Chance."
At first, it was "penciled in" for the NBC lineup, only to be scratched at the last minute. Undaunted, they changed the premise slightly, changed the title to "A Year at the Top" and changed the network to CBS.
They were all set to go again this January. Air time was announced, the promotion hoopla was going full speed, everything was falling into place, when. . .
Kirshner and Lear sat down in a screening room and decided a week or so before opening night that what they had wrought was really all for naught. So they voluntarily yanked the series before it could be unreeled.
They have spent all spring and half a summer making changes in their godchild. This time out, they have gotten rid of more than half the cast and gotten rid of the original premise—a group of aging musicians trade their souls to the devil so that they can come back for a year as kid rock superstars. What they kept was the title, along with veteran Mickey Rooney and a pair of talented youngsters named Greg Evigan and Paul Shaffer.
Greg and Paul who?
Evigan, described by Kirshner as a combination Tom Jones-John Travolta, is a young New Jersey singer-musician from Englishtown who walked into Don's office, three years ago to audition and has been labeled for stardom ever since. Shaffer, whom Kirshner enthusiastically casts in the Elton John-Paul Simon mold, was the musical conductor of "Saturday Night Live" before joining the Kirshner-Lear camp.
The series has now been entirely restructured around them—it will make it or fail on their talents, their charisma, their luck. And they get their first crack at "A Year at the Top" tonight at 8 p.m. on Channel 2. This time, Kirshner and Lear feel that they've kept on trying and finally have gotten it right.
Apparently CBS feels that way too. Even though "A Year at the Top" is arriving nominally as a five-week summer replacement series, it is being kicked off with a one-hour opener, instead of its usual 30-minute format, and the word is that if the Nielsen numbers are big enough, the series could hang around for the fall.
The opener certainly has enough pluses going for it. Kirshner and Lear are right about their two new stars—Evigan in particular is destined to make it big, if not in this show, then somewhere else. He's got enough boyish charm and handsome looks to drive the teenyboppers gaga. Greg's a winner . . . and his partner Paul could also score in an oddball sort of a way.
Rooney, of course, is an old pro fr[o]m the word go. He makes it all look so easy.
Gabe Dell is another veteran in the cast who knows what character acting is all about. Unfortunately, his approach to the role of the devil's son disguised as a talent agent is a little too fey for our liking. It's a far cry from “The Dead End Kids.”
Priscilla Lopez, who was nominated for a Tony Award when she sang "What I Did For Love" in "A Chorus Line," shows up in the opener as Greg's girlfriend and she's absolutely lovely in a sad-eyed, Piaf-Garland way.
And Nedra Volz (she was grandpa's girlfriend in "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” is delightful in a continuing role as the boys' grandmother, who keeps an eye on their budding careers.
Oh yes, the plot. Gabe, as the son of the devil, has promised his old man two more souls. Mickey, meanwhile, arrives with the boys and Priscilla in tow. It seems they have written a musical which he wants to present on Broadway. Can Gabe put up the dough?
Gabe figures he's better off grabbing the two boys for the Hell of it and makes them a career offer they can't refuse. At the end of the first hour, they are on their way to big time stuff. Mickey and Priscilla, meanwhile, are giving their regards to Broadway after conning Gabe out of the front money for the show.
So much for the pluses. On the negative side, Priscilla Lopez is absolutely wasted in tonight's first installment. She's allowed to sing a few bars of harmony in one of the songs and that's about it. Her appearance is listed as that of a guest star and she probably won't be back for the rest of the initial series.
The same is true with Mickey. He is guesting also and won't continue as a regular, which is a pity. He and Gabe Dell play so well off each other and provide all of this musical sitcom's comedy. Kirshner and Lear, however, have opted for the youth market. An album by Greg and Paul is already in the works. Look out for fan clubs and lots and lots of hypo. If "A Year at the Top" is to get its chance, they reason, it will, be because their two young unknowns have caught the public's fancy.
If CBS doesn't buy the show, in fact, the producers are prepared to package it a la “MH2” and peddle it to independent stations. They feel their patience and perseverance is about to pay off. And they want it to last for more than “A Year at the Top."

A Year at the Top didn’t last a year. It barely lasted a month, and nowhere near the top. CBS jettisoned the show after five episodes.

1977 wasn’t the best year for Evigan. Lear must have liked him, as he was cast earlier that year in Lear’s soap opera/gender role satire All That Glitters, which vanished from syndication after about two months. He soon had more success, spending a couple of seasons starring opposite a chimp in B.J. and the Bear.

As mentioned, Shaffer went on to a side-kicking career reacting to Letterman, though one night on the show, Chris Elliott did an incredibly funny, not-too-exaggerated impersonation of Shaffer (similarly, Elliott’s father Bob, of Bob and Ray, did an equally cutting and accurate Arthur Godfrey) which was more like Shaffer than Shaffer. That wasn’t all. Shaffer proved himself to be a very fine musician and band-leader.

It turns out both Evigan and Shaffer had more than a year at the top. It just took a little time.

I'm an Indian, Too. And a Tennis Player. And a...

A quick series of costume changes makes up part of Magical Maestro.

Below are pairs of consecutive frames. There are no transitions. It’s one outfit in one frame, and a different one in the next.

10 frames in a tux.



48 frames as an Indian.



44 frames as a tennis player.



32 frames as a prisoner.



98 frames as a football player.



Tex times the action on ones and twos, except for a 13-frame hold when Poochini looks at the football he's holding.

Grant Simmons, Mike Lah and Walt Clinton animated this short, with Rich Hogan providing the story. If any cartoon is to be seen on a theatre screen, it is this one. The perspective is different (and, I think, better) than watching it on a TV or computer.

The cartoon was released on February 9, 1952 but Thad Komorowski has found Avery had begun work on it by September 1949.

Hooch and a Camel

Van Beuren cartoons had unexplainable gags that came out of nowhere. And so did their predecessors, the silent shorts from the Amedee Van Beuren-owned Fables studio.

The start of Red Hot Sands, released on August 14, 1927, has Milton Mouse and Henry Cat (Movie Age of the day calls him "Tom Cat") riding a camel in the Egyptian desert. For absolutely no reason, the camel splits in half, Henry pulls a bottle of Prohibition-era hootch from inside the camel and starts drinking from it.



The camel is not impressed.



The camel’s head retreats through the front half of its body, grabs the bottle, and puts it back. Henry pulls the camel together again and the journey continues.



You may be thinking “Wait! What? Why?” Don’t bother. I figure one of the animators pulled a bottle out of a desk drawer during a story/drinking session and that inspired this gag.

As a bonus, this Fable has rolling-skating long-horned steers. Just like in Aesop's day.

Paul Terry was given screen credit, but one expert on-line says this is a Mannie Davis scene.

Thanks to Craig Davison for enabling screen grabs of this cartoon.

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: Magoo is No Dim Bulb

You couldn’t help but see the incongruity of someone who couldn’t see, selling light bulbs.

As Television Age of March 21, 1960 put it in a feature story on General Electric signing with UPA to use Mr. Magoo in its TV ads: “The advertiser felt no hesitation in choosing for its salesman a bumbling, half-blind little guy who obviously sees no better with GE light bulbs than without, evidently feeling the humorous approach would work in its favor. Magoo himself has worked for other advertisers—most notably Stag beer—in regional campaigns, but GE intended to promote its use of the character to such an extent that Magoo and GE bulbs would be synonymous.”

And Television Age was told by G.E’s ad manager that it moved its money from print into spot TV because it worked for Lestoil, which had cartoon ads parodying Dragnet.

Sales Management magazine of February 17, 1961 pointed out G.E. spent a million dollars on Magoo TV spots in the fall of 1960, and another $100,000 in accompanying promotion among its dealers.

It boiled down to one simple fact: people loved Mr. Magoo.

Rather than go on and on about what trade publications had to say, let’s give you something a little more fun—a 1963 G.E. promotional film for the company’s retailers. Not only does it feature some Magoo commercials, but Jim Backus is on camera to give an explanation. And there’s a cameo appearance by the NBC peacock (a little washed out, but the print is old).

What Made Jack Benny a Star?

World War Two changed the professional lives of many performers. Some saw action in military service, while others who signed up were only involved in entertainment of some kind.

Then there were people like Jack Benny who were not in the service, but took their radio shows to bases and camps, or to war bond drives, and performed with special stage troupes overseas. Jack was on the road for several years, in southeast Asia, the Middle East and Italy.

One of his bond drives took him down the West Coast in 1944. It was a bit of a throwback to 20 years earlier when Jack played the Orpheum circuit in Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and so on.

Here’s a weekend feature story from that period from one of the newspapers in Portland. It isn’t altogether accurate—Jack had his own radio show starting May 2, 1932. And, perhaps to make it a better story, it tells a tale of how Jack was a nobody before radio. That’s not the case at all. In the Orpheum days, he was held over as a headliner in Los Angeles. He emceed at the Palace in New York. He was one of the stars of Earl Carroll’s Vanities and quit to go into radio.

“No great shakes” as a stage comedian? Benny’s appearances set box office records.

The idea of “friction” between Jack and his supporting players because they got the laughs is preposterous. The article itself admits Jack came up with the concept. Why would he be resentful?

There are several other subtle slants in this article I’d dispute, but you can read it for yourself. It was published May 14, 1944.

13 Unlucky? Not for Jack Benny
12 Years of Top Billing Is a Long Time, But Camp Adair Boys Who See the Comedian In Person Today Are Hep to Show's Success
BY VIRGIL SMITH
Staff Writer, The Oregonian
ON MAY 9, Jack Benny started his 13th year in radio.
Show people are notoriously superstitious. But not all of them consider "13" unlucky. Jack Benny doesn't.
Anyway, 12 years is a long time for anybody to be tops in the entertainment field, especially as a comedian, and extra-especially in radio, where the audience is always the same, the only difference from week to week and year to year being in the size.
The same people have listened to Jack Benny week after week, year after year. The fact that they still do it, that they still like him, is phenomenal. As a matter of fact it isn't true. It is, strictly speaking, the Jack Benny show that has retained its popularity for so long. And despite the assertion made in the script, this show does not invariably star Jack Benny. That is one of the secrets of his success.
In the past, the May 9th [sic] anniversary has been made an event. But not this year. This year the anniversary came while the Benny troupe on tour, playing military and navy in the Pacific northwest. On April 23 their radio show was put on at Vancouver, B. C. On April 30 it was from the Bremerton navy yard. Last Sunday, May 7, it was at Whidby island in Washington, and today, May 14, the show comes from Camp Adair.
BENNY TROUPE:
Has Given Many Shows for Soldiers
On the way to Hollywood from Corvallis, the troupe will stop off at the Marine base hospital, Mare island, San Francisco, for a special show for wounded men.
In between radio performances the Benny troupe is giving literally dozens of special performances in camps, hospitals, stations. Nearly all of these are solely for the benefit of men and women in the armed services.

Rumor has it that performances for civilians, outside of the regular broadcast, don't interest the comedian any more. Of course there is the matter of time. But then it may well be that Jack Benny is getting just a little tired of it all. He has been at the top. He was up there a long time. And once a fellow gets to the top, there is no way to go but down. Descent is inevitable, and it isn't likely to be as satisfying as the upward climb.
It took this comedian a long time to get to the top. He has been in the show business since he was 15. His press releases never tell his age, but he was 15 quite some time before the last war. It was in the last war, in fact, that he started to become a comedian.
Jack Benny is a comedian who was made and not born.
STAR:
Resembles Executive Personally, Rather Than Gag Man
Personally, there isn't anything of the funny man about him. He looks more like a business executive, accustomed to making decisions for others to carry out, than a comedian. He isn't a mugger like Red Skelton, he doesn't have a funny nose like Bob Hope, or popeyes like Eddie Cantor, nor a strange voice like Ed Wynn, nor any physical characteristic or mannerism which would mark him as a comedian.
That is one of the reasons he was no great shakes as a stage comedian, where people could see as well as hear him.
Even now, if his reputation could be stripped from him, I doubt that his performances in person would funny. As it is, his audience is conditioned to laugh by the mention of his name. Announce Jack Benny is going to appear, and the audience will stir and fix their faces to grin, and the belly muscles get set to shake up some laughs.
The first laugh is the hardest. After that they come easy. The comedian who can get people to believe a comedian has smooth sailings from there on.
Jack Benny is a radio comedian by accident. He got a laugh the first time he opened his mouth before an open mike.
He started out in the entertainment world to be a violinist. He had started to study the violin at the age of six, because his father, a Waukegan tailor, made him do it. He failed at school, and against his father's wishes left home to go on the stage.
He first teamed with a pianist named Coral [sic] Salisbury, with $15 a week as share of the earnings. He was more successful when he teamed with Lyman Woods, another pianist. This team made $125 week, now and then. They never were tops. Jack's fiddle playing was so bad that the people laughed at him. He took advantage of this to wring a few more chuckles. But he flopped in New York.
Then came the old world war, and Jack joined the navy. Because he had stage experience, he was assigned to the "Great Lakes Review," a sailors' road show. He spoke a couple of comedy lines that made a bunch of his fellow gobs laugh. They were not ad lib lines. They were lines written by somebody else. Benny put them over. He has been putting over lines written by someone else ever since.
After the old world war, Benny made vaudeville runs for many years. Always getting by, never really first-rate. He became discouraged. And out of this came his success. He hit on the idea of poking fun at himself.
That type of humor was new to radio, when Benny came on the scene.
Broadway Columnist Ed Sullivan on May 9, 1932, presented Benny as a guest over a New York station. Jack came on like this:
“This is Jack Benny talking. There will be a slight pause while you say “Who cares?”
There was more in the same vein. It went over big.
Benny soon had his own show. And he never has departed from that formula—making himself the butt of all the jokes and gags. This type of humor is difficult. It calls for situations.
WRITERS:
Given Much Credit For Show's Rating
Jack Benny got himself some writers to create these situations. It apparently is not good show business, or not good radio, to give great credit to writers, but Jack couldn't have got where he is without some of the best gag writers in the business.

Even so, one man can't stay at the top in radio for ten years at a stretch. Benny hasn't. He knows the ropes. And he shared and still shares the spotlight with others. They have helped to keep him up.
He brought his wife, Mary Livingstone, into the picture. And others, Schlepperman, Andy Devine, Rochester, Dennis Day's "mother." and more recently, Butterfly McQueen. He has chosen tenors, Kenny Baker and Dennis Day, for instance, as much for their ability to work out gags in the show as for their voices.
I don’t know whether any friction has ever developed when these characters got more laughs than the star and threatened to outshine him. It would not be surprising, for such things are common in Hollywood, where one of the devices used to keep being a star is to prevent somebody else from coming a star. It may be that some actors have departed the Benny show because they were too good, but personally I doubt it. And I never heard any such tales when I was in Hollywood. My guess is that some of these people wanted to leave, and others were replaced because their abilities were pretty narrow, and because it is good show business to bring in fresh faces and voices.
Don Wilson, the commercial announcer, is the one character besides Mary Livingstone, who has been kept straight through. There are two reasons for that. Don is a top-notch commercial announcer. He sells the sponsor's product. And Benny has changed sponsor and product enough to keep Wilson fresh. Then Wilson has a belly laugh: which is real and infectious over the microphone. He is a find. Mary Livingstone has a laugh, too. The audience may laugh at Mary's laugh occasionally; it will laugh when Wilson laughs simply because Wilson is laughing.
Benny has won more popularity polls than any other comedian. And he has led the procession of big-time stars more often than any other.
Currently, he is rated among the leaders, but not at the top. And my guess is, that bothers Jack Benny not in the least. There are no laurels left for him to win in the civilian entertainment field.
How much longer he can last as a top-notch comedian is a guess. He'll be top notch with the servicemen as long as the war lasts. After that—maybe the old business about 13 being unlucky will collect another piece of evidence.

As it turned out, Jack Benny was more popular than ever with radio audiences after the war. He moved seamlessly into television, where his series remained until 1965, and then with specials until his death in 1974. In the meantime, his violin performances with symphony orchestras across North America attracted huge audiences who wanted to see him in person.

13 may be unlucky to some, but not to someone whose number was 39.

Mannie Davis

If you wanted to work in animation in the silent era, the place to go was New York City. Well, that was until Walt Disney opened a studio in Los Angeles. New York and its environs still provided a home for animators after sound came in—Fleischer, Terrytoons (originally Terry-Moser-Coffman) and, until 1936, Van Beuren.

There were numerous commercial animation studios in New York through the ‘40s, ‘50s, ‘60s and so on. Like on the West Coast, many animators had long careers in New York, with some beginning in the silent era.

One was Mannie Davis.

Davis began animating well before cartoons had sound. But you won’t learn that from his brief obituary in the New Rochelle Star-Standard of Oct. 11, 1975.

Emanuel "Mannie" Davis, a longtime resident of New Rochelle and Larchmont and an original animator for the "Mighty Mouse' cartoon, died Thursday [Oct. 9] at New York Hospital. He was 81.
Davis worked for Terrytoons, a cartoon studio once located on Center Avenue in New Rochelle. He was associated with the original "Mighty Mouse," "Hekyl and Jekyl" [sic] and "Deputy Dawg" cartoons.
Born in Yonkers on Jan. 22, 1894, he was the son of the late Samuel and Sarah Davis. He was married to the former Florence Goodstein, from whom he later was divorced. Davis retired in 1960, when Terrytoons, Inc. was bought out by CBS Television. He lived at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel in Manhattan for several years before his death.
He was a graduate of Cooper Union Art School in New York City and served as a cartographer for the Army during World War I.
Survivors include a son, James Davis of Hastingson-Hudson; a daughter, Susan Mandelker of New York City; and one grandson.

His wedding story in the Yonkers Herald of July 23, 1929 adds a bit more:

Mr. Davis was born in this city and is a graduate of Public School 10 and of Yonkers High School. Later he attended Cooper Union College in New York City from which he was graduated in 1914. Professionally, Mr. Davis is a cartoonist and maintains a studio at 318 West 47th Street.

Let’s back up a little and peer at our newspaper clipping file and a few other sources.

Davis was born on January 23, 1894. His father Sam was a hatter who came to the U.S. from Hungary. The 1910 U.S. Census gives Manny’s occupation as “clerk, broker’s office.” The family was still using the surname Davidavitch then. It was changed by 1912 as the Standard Union of Brooklyn published Oct. 5, 1912 reports Emanuel Davis was the High Chief Skull of the Curiosity Club, a fraternal group. The Collector of Bones was “A. Davis.” This could be Manny’s younger brother Art, best-known for his directing and animating at the Warner Bros. cartoon studio.

Manny was involved in different clubs and fraternal groups over the years. In 1915, he was elected Treasurer of the Arista Society, which met at the Terrace City Young Men’s Hebrew Association. States the Yonkers Statesman, June 19, 1915:

Mr. Davis, artist, has finished a drawing on which appears the name Arista Society, beneath which are Grecian figures representing the objects of the Society, which are literature, art and science; these are supported by colonnades, with which are photographs of the eight charter members. Appropriate pen-and-ink work completes this artistic work.

He was a member of the Majestic and Gridiron Clubs, which seems to have been associated with Yonkers Lodge No. 707, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. Many of the active members were Jews. Every year for a number of years, they put on a minstrel show. Manny was in the chorus. Despite being amateurs, in 1919, they were booked into the local Proctor’s Theatre. They also entertained convalescent soldiers and for a servicemen’s homecoming celebration fund, according to the Statesman of March 25, 1919, and raised money for a Christmas Fund for poor children with three performances at the Warburton Theatre, reported the Statesman of March 12, 1923.

Manny was also a member of the Freemasons. He joined Dunwoodie Lodge No. 863 on South Broadway in Yonkers, receiving his three degrees on Oct. 29, Nov. 5 and Nov. 19, 1919, and was installed as Senior Steward on Dec. 1, 1920. Jews made up the membership of this lodge. He doesn’t appear to have held a higher office, but he was involved in “jollifications” of the lodge’s Fellowcraft Club, which was (or maybe still is) a social group appended to the lodge which had (or maybe still has) some kind of silly, frat-like initiation ceremony, far different than the serious mien of the symbology of Masonic degrees. (A 1925 newspaper clipping lists Cliff Friend as a member but it’s unknown if it is the composer of that name). In May 1925, he was in a contingent of 200 members from eight lodges that journeyed to Washington to meet President Calvin Coolidge and view the uncompleted George Washington Masonic Memorial. He was suspended for non-payment of dues on Dec. 31, 1932.

Enough of his fraternal life. Art was always an interest of Davis. He designed the cover for the second issue of the Courier, published by the Y.M.H.A. (Statesman, July 13, 1916).

Then the war got in the way. Davis almost stayed out of the service, but then the ground rules were changed on him. Reported the Statesman of Oct. 9, 1917:

As a result of changes made in the requirements as to weight made since they were examined for the draft among the first 300, seven men of the First Local District will be obliged to submit to another examination to ascertain if they are now fit, according to new orders, to join the National Army.

Among the seven was Mannie Davis. This time, he passed his physical and the Herald of March 26, 1918 said he was on his way to Camp Upton in six days. A report in the same newspaper on Aug. 19th said he was engaged in map drawing and had been transferred to the Officers Training School for the Engineer Corps in Washington, D.C. He was back from war service by Dec. 27, as the Herald reported the Gridiron Club was able to return to life and Davis was invited to come to the Club’s rooms when they reopened in Getty Square on New Year’s Day. The group continued with its minstrel shows and Davis drew a number of posters depicting past shows (Statesman, Apr. 26).

He was rising in the world of animation. We read in the Herald of Jan. 17, 1921:

Emanuel Davis, of 119 Ludlow street, who is an accomplished artist of the city, has been placed in charge of the studio of the Bud Fisher Film Corporation, 2555 Webster avenue, Fordham. Mr. Davis, who has been with the corporation for four years, is also chief animator of the famous Fisher cartoons. Prior to his present employment, Mr. Davis was connected for several years with New York daily newspapers.

But he wouldn’t be in charge for long. The Corporation went bankrupt that year. Bob Coar on Cartoon Research sorted through the mess of the Fisher animation operations and stated the business was transferred to the Jefferson Film Company, with more morphing within the next year. A bio by the National Cartoonists Guild says Davis worked for the Fleischer studio from 1922 to 1924, but Davis also opened his own studio in 1923, based out of his home at 105 Morris Street (Herald, June 18).

This venture evidently didn’t last long, for Variety of Nov. 11, 1925 has him at Fables Pictures, Inc., owned by Amedee Van Beuren and run by Paul Terry, and named in two patent-infringement lawsuits by Bray-Hurd Pictures. Charlie Judkins in Cartoon Research helpfully tells us that by 1926 Davis wrote, directed and animated his own Fables. Terry was bounced by Van Beuren in 1929, John Foster promoted in his place, and the studio name changed to the Van Beuren Film Corporation. Says Charlie:

Mannie Davis and Harry Bailey were chosen as Foster’s initial two directors, therefore a cartoon credited “By John Foster and Mannie Davis” is actually de-facto directed by Davis. Foster’s creative role during this time would’ve mostly been reserved to story work and working with the musical director, although he also contributed animation to a fair amount of the cartoons.

The Van Beuren cartoons have been dismissed over the years as poorly-drawn with disjointed stories. You can’t really deny it. But they got some respect when they first appeared. Billboard’s review of The Haunted Ship on May 10, 1930 contained this praise:

Waffles Kat and Buddy Kit [Don Dog] have been launched on another of their ever-interesting adventures in this comedy cartoon created by John Foster and Manny [sic] Davis. And this is by far the best of the similarly themed cartoons viewed by this writer recently. The reel is packed with a laugh in each foot. [. . .]
The cartoon is a guarantee for laughs on any program. Book it in one of yours.

Several trade papers in 1930 mentioned that Davis was among the people at Van Beuren working on a new system to synchronise animation with music. One of Davis’ other accomplishments at Van Beuren was the creation of Cubby Bear (according to a DVD of the Cubby cartoons) in 1933.

Despite whatever charms or laughs (intentional or otherwise) the Van Beuren cartoons have today, Charlie goes on to reveal:

RKO executives were displeased with Van Beuren, who put the blame on Foster. According to Mannie Davis, “Bunny” Brown, a nephew of a top RKO shareholder, was appointed business manager of the studio in 1933 and butted heads with Foster.

John Foster was fired and Davis was out the door later in the year. The Film Daily reported on August 23rd that year that Davis had moved to Terrytoons, where he settled in for a long career. The same trade paper announced on April 4, 1936:

Mannie Davis, who has been associated with Paul Terry for 15 years, has been promoted to head the story department of Terry-Toons as the latest step in the re-organization and enlargement of the staff making Educational's cartoon series.

“Re-organization” means Frank Moser was eased out by Terry.

One of the Davis-directed Terrytoons was nominated for an Oscar—All Out for ‘V’ (1942).

The Terry studio was embroiled in a strike by the Screen Cartoonists Guild in 1947. Historian Harvey Deneroff says Davis told him Terry persuaded him and other directors to cross the picket line by promising them a share of the proceeds when he sold Terrytoons. CBS bought the studio in late 1955 for almost $5,000,000. Davis was double-crossed. In 1970, he said of Terry: “He got all the money, he got all the glory, he had everybody's talent—he inherited all that for himself. He kept it, he's going to take it with him when he dies. I might sound a little bitter, but I am.”

After the sale, Davis stayed on, and he continued to work at the studio after Gene Deitch was brought in as the creative supervisor in June 1956. I haven't been able to find any comment by Deitch about Davis. Deitch got ousted not long afterward, but Davis remained at the studio through the 1960s.

Despite the reputation of the Van Beuren and Terrytoons cartoons, Davis certainly deserves some respect for a 50-year career in animation.

Woodpecker Target

The Dizzy Acrobat (1943) stars Woody Woodpecker heckling a circus cop who refuses to let him in for free. The cartoon ends with a scene where the cop crashes into a shooting gallery and some off-camera rifles whizzing bullets past him.

Woody comes into the picture to heckle-peck his head a final time in cycle animation, engaging in his familiar laugh. (Isn't the DVNR horrible?)



But Woody doesn’t bask in victory. Story men Bugs Hardaway and Milt Schaffer punish Woody by having the shooting gallery customers fire at him. Some random poses.



Emery Hawkins gets an animation credit but no director is credited. Kent Rogers goes for a Bowery Boys-type voice for Woody in this one.

A Pre-Tex Avery Gag

Tex Avery had a great gag when one character is on the phone with another in a split-screen effect, but then goes outside their part of the screen to talk directly to the other. You can see it in Thugs With Dirty Mugs, A Bear’s Tale and Tortoise Beats Hare.

Well, before Tex tried it out at Warner Bros., you can see the same gag in a Van Beuren cartoon.

In the Manny Davis-directed Nut Factory, released on August 11, 1933, an old woman is calling a Sherlock Holmes-ish Cubby Bear. Cubby’s assistant answers. The woman tries to explain what’s going on, but then found it better to talk to the cat directly.



The cartoon begins with the warped premise that someone is stealing false teeth from residents of the Old Ladies Home. Cubby and his assistant are on the case. After going in disguise, and dealing with ghosts and skeletons (which have nothing to do with the plot), they finally discover who is responsible.

Van Beuren cartoons can be odd, but this could be the oddest story they created for Cubby. I’d love to know how they came up with the idea of squirrels stealing teeth and creating a factory in a tree.

Gene Rodemich supplies the score. I wonder how much was his original music.

The Articulate Hansel

Hans Conried always had a sense of high-brow theatricality about him. But he never came across as snooty or superior. I suspect he cultivated it because he thought it was amusing.

Conried was always amusing in everything he did, at least when it came to comedy. He was an accomplished dramatic actor, too, appearing on shows including Lux Radio Theatre, The Cavalcade of America and Suspense. He recalls he turned more to comedy after the war, through he did a number of shows with Burns and Allen starting in 1943. This allowed him to put his talent for outrageous accents to use.

Television, as Conried and others noted, was limiting as you had to look like what you were playing. Still, Conried found a career there, too—acting, appearing on Pantomime Quiz and other game shows, and a late-night merchant of observations with friend Jack Paar. And, yes, because someone will say I “forgot,” there were cartoons and Fractured Flickers for Jay Ward (for a full list, consult the internet).

Here is Hans on his career to the North American Newspaper Alliance, in a column that appeared in February 1961.

The Many Sides of Hans Conried
By HAROLD HEFFERNAN
North American Newspaper Alliance
HOLLYWOOD, Feb. 4—Movie, radio and TV actor Hans Conried for many years was just a voice—doing as many as six network radio shows a day, playing Italians, Germans, Greeks, Brooklynites and Injuns. In one program he did 18 different characters in 25 minutes.
"You could get away with it then," laughs the Baltimore-born son of Viennese parents. "No makeup, no wardrobe—just a change of voice."
HANS BECAME a face—playing Nazi sub commanders, a Lebanese matchmaker (he's Lebanese again this year as Danny Thomas's Uncle Tonoose on TV), a Russian spy, a British lord.
And next he was revealed as a wit—decorating most of the top panel shows and saving many from disintegration with his rapid repartee.
"My voice and face were always much better known than my name," he frankly admits.
ALL THE Hans Conried pieces will be put together in the June Allyson Show (CBS-TV, Feb. 13), in which he plays a masterful imposter, impersonating a distinguished professor in a play titled "A Great Day for a Scoundrel." It will be one of his rare forays into straight drama.
"Oddly, this role somewhat parallels my own life," Hans observed in the home he occupies with his wife and four children overlooking a lake high in the Hollywood hills. "This character is an eloquent lecturer. Well, I may not be eloquent, but I spend half my time lecturing. "Whenever I'm afraid of overexposure on TV, I hit the road and talk before women's clubs. It's a gold mine.
"YOU KNOW how many women's clubs there are in the country?" He asked, and answered with a surprising "over 100,000. Know what many of them pay for guest lecturers? From $350 to $1000. And just for an hour's talk. "Why, if I'm properly scheduled I can knock off two a day.
"Of course, there's a drawback to everything," pointed out the 6-foot-2 former Shakespearean actor. "The chief trouble with a lecturing career is all the clubs serve chicken a la king.
“And when it comes to chicken I'm—well, I'm chicken. You can eat only so much of the stuff before you start to cackle."
CONRIED GIVES the clubs a choice of subjects for his talks. Shakespeare, music appreciation or modern philosophers.
"Know what subject they ask for most?" he asks. "That's right, all want me to talk about Hollywood. So I read up on the columns and give them a big earful."

While the Paar show brought him name-recognition which resulted in large sums of cash as an arch relater of show biz gossip to that quaint specimen of obsolete Americana, the afternoon women’s charitable club, he maintained his affection for network radio.

Here’s a 1963 story which was published in newspapers in February that year.

Conversation Leads to Stardom
BY DONALD FREEMAN
Copley News Service
HOLLYWOOD, Feb 11—Hans Conried, that richly theatrical mummer who might well have sprung to life in one of the more flamboyant Restoration cornedies, sums up his current professional state in a phrase: “I am not a star."
Then he reconsiders with a rueful smile: "Ah, but to a star I'm not a star"
A mere technicality of course. Or is it?
“Well, my name is now placed above the title of the play," said Conried. "And I am recognized in the various cities where my profession calls. I am, in a word, known. Which is a far cry from my days in radio.
"Ah, radio," Conried sighed, "the theater of the mind, a stage where the rubies were always big and flawless and where an actor was cloaked in blessed anonymity—very desirable, I might add, since audiences could not therefore take your measure for a suit of tar and feathers."
FOR MANY YEARS now the disarmingly candid Conned has enjoyed a public acceptance—notoriety he would probably call it, based on a variety of roles. Today, for instance, he might play Uncle Tonoose on the "Danny Thomas Show," then act in a dramatic special, then romp through a session of charades on "Stump the Stars."
And of course Hans is one of the talking people thrust into a special niche by the "Jack Paar Show," with its stress on airy conversation. Conried's flair for talk has, in fact, given him another public cloak—he is now a "television personality."
"For years I was just an actor, a wandering player," Conried noted, with his usual wry self-deprecation, "and then Jack Paar fortunately exploited my, uh, leaning to the verbose. Paar, you know, likes to glance about him before going into battle and see the old trustworthy faces waving the banners aloft. That is to say. he's loyal to old friends.
“Now, as a result, I've become a 'personality.' I never sought to be one but I accept it gratefully, for it has been, after all, a boon to my career—a word I usually avoid. It's nice."
NOT LONG AGO, Conried was one of the regulars who journeyed with Paar to Japan. I wondered, was he often recognized by the Japanese?
Conried shook his head. "They only know American cowboy heroes. In my day I have played western engagements but I was strictly black sombrero—a villain or a charlatan or a snake oil merchant. I was never in short a laudable page out of the great book of Americana."
Conried was momentarily thoughtful. "I started out, you know, as a classical actor. Born in Baltimore—but left as a babe of 6 weeks so they can't claim me. Claim me? They don't even want me. I've never been back and I've heard of no public outcry to have me return to place my feet in cement. . .”

Here is something featuring Hans Conried that you may not have seen. It’s a Jay Ward-esque look at model railroading, with a kazoo soundtrack, an oom-pah Germanic march, and that annoying BOINGGG! you hear in the Gene Deitch Tom and Jerrys. It opens with a little chat by Walt Disney’s most amusing animation director of the day, Ward Kimball. Conried is narrating.

Transitioning Tex

Tex Avery is known for his gags, but his career at Warner Bros. shows him interested in cinematic effects, too. You’ll see overhead layouts, montages, double exposures, and so on.

In I Wanna Be a Sailor (1937), he changes backgrounds on Petey Parrot as he is still walking.

Tex also liked overlays. Above, you can see Petey walking behind a chair on a separate cel.



Below are a few cels from Petey’s walk cycle. You can see how the living room background fades out and an outside background fades in.



Below, notice where the picket on the fence is in relation to the drainpipe compared with the frame above.



The fence, “sup” can, flower and ground are on a cel underlay that’s being moved by the cameraman (Manny Corral?) while the house in the background is stationery. It gives a feeling of depth. Avery would have to plan all this movement.

My favourite “depth” shots of Avery’s are when he starts a cartoon with a pan over some scenery, with underlays or overlays shot at different rates while a long background painting remains in place. He did this both at Warners and MGM.

The background artist wasn’t credited. It doesn’t look like Johnny Johnsen to me. I suspect Paul J. Smith got the rotating animation credit.