Going Up?

A stretch in-between and dry-brush help move the “Gildersleeve” clerk who continually gets outsmarted by Bugs Bunny in Hare Conditioned (released in 1945).

Bugs is disguised as an elevator operator and tricks the rabbit-chasing clerk into getting off the lift, who suddenly realises what has happened.



He gets into the elevator again and Bugs shoves him out. Another reaction with multiples and dry-brush as Gildersleeve rushes to take the stairs instead.



Ken Harris, Ben Washam, Basil Davidovich and Lloyd Vaughan are the credited animators for director Chuck Jones.

The official release date was Aug. 11, 1945 but, naturally, it appeared on movie screens earlier. The Varsity in Iowa City showed it July 14 along with Rosalind Russell and Jack Carson in Roughly Speaking. Say! Someone should make a cartoon parodying that title. Are you listening, Mr. Jones?

Pink Elephants Not On Parade

There’s a great sequence in Walter Lantz’s The Bandmaster (1947) where a drunk on a circus high-wire sees pink elephants. There’s a cut to a scene where they are ballet dancing to the Overture to Zampa.

There’s a cut back to the drunk and the elephants, which dive into his bottle of hootch. Each of the three elephants go into the bottle in a different way. The drunk’s reactions are animated as well.



How did the drunk get up there? Beats me. Maybe that scene got cut.

Bugs Hardaway and Webb Smith came up with the gags. La Verne Harding and Les Kline received the animation credits but the star animator in this one is the great Pat Matthews, who gives us some lovely perspective animation of the staggering drunk. He is my favourite of the 1940s Lantz artists.

Darrell Calker does a fine job for the score.

Tom and Jerry Home Video News

Delightful news has come out from the Warner Archive Collection twice this year.

First, the company was able to release all four seasons of The Huckleberry Hound Show. Now comes word that the complete Hanna-Barbera theatrical run of Tom and Jerry will be on Blu-Ray AND DVD. Release date is December 2nd.

Let’s get right to the point. Anyone reading this likely knows a release of Tom and Jerry cartoons was stopped several years ago because of concerns about blackface gags. Here’s what Warners says:

The complete collection of Hanna Barbera’s Tom and Jerry Oscar® winning masterpieces, available at last! Including three shorts, Casanova Cat, Mouse Cleaning   and His Mouse Friday   which are now completely remastered and uncut for the very first time.

Six discs. 20 audio commentaries. From what I can tell, correct aspect ratios for cartoons released in Cinemascope. A 28-page booklet. Bonus features. They’re going all out on this.

I’ve mentioned over the years I’m not a huge Tom and Jerry fan, though I can name a number of cartoons I really like (none of which include an annoying duck). But this release sounds great.

You can read more at this site.

A minor announcement from yours truly: I’ve finished some partial posts and Tralfaz will be active again for a full week, starting Monday.

Dave Ketchum

He was a screenwriter, a columnist, a disc jockey and a cartoon voice, but may be known more for sticking his head out of sofas, mailboxes and washing machines.

That was all part of the role of the hidden spy, Agent 13, on the mid-to-late ‘60s comedy show, Get Smart.

He was played by Dave Ketchum, who has passed away at age 97.

Ketchum’s fame in the 1950s was pretty much restricted to southern California. The San Luis Obispo County Telegram-Tribune of May 24, 1952 notes he was a speech student at San Diego State College who was 11 days from starting a movie career in October 1950 when he entered the army with a National Guard group. He was discharged the day before the story was published as a sergeant at Camp Roberts where he wrote 42,000 pages of script and emceed shows at the camp and toured with the USO.

He then put together, as the Sacramento Bee of Dec. 1, 1956 calls it, “The Dave Ketchum Show, a singing, dancing and comedy revue which has played to service audiences all over the world.” A year later, the revue was in Alaska. Included in the company was folk singer Louise Bryant, whom he married. In November 1955, he was in the cast of KRCA Kapers “an experimental showcase to comics and writers who are trying to develop into big-time pros,” as columnist Hal Humphrey called it (the February 28, 1956 show was broadcast in colour).

Ketchum wrote a column called “Assignment Hollywood,” distributed by New Era Syndicate. A squib in the Valley Times of August 30, 1957 mentions Ketchum was headed to Mexico City to interview people for the column before returning to play a comedy role in Will Jason’s film Desert Massacre. I can’t find that it was released.

As the new decade came, Ketchum landed some roles on network TV. He appeared on I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster before David Swift cast him in another comedy series, which had an animation connection. Here’s a column from the Newspaper Enterprise Association that appeared in papers starting in late September 1965.

Zany Comedy Makes Series ‘Incomparable’
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
HOLLYWOOD (NEA)—Don't fire until you see the whites of their pies.
In proof that there's reaIly nothing new on television this fall, the show business trade paper Variety recently listed the new shows. In one way or another, each show resembled one of last season's hits.
But one new show, NBC-TV's "Camp Runamuck" did not appear on the list.
"And I think that's a good sign," says David Ketchum, the lean, likable comedian who stars as Spiffy in the series. "If nothing else, we are incomparable and I think that's something on television these days."
Wild really is the word for "Camp Runamuck" with silent movie comedies, Red Skelton and pair of one-time Disney studio animators being responsible for its zany approach.
This may be news to Skelton, but he is at least responsible for David Ketchum's career as a comedian.

In 1941 Ketchum was a high school student in San Diego. Red visited the campus for a war bond rally and broke up the student body when he drove up in a jeep, stepped out and promptly fell flat on his face.
"If you can make people laugh by falling down, why don't we try it," Ketchum said to a student pal. With that both lads 'fell' into show business by taking lessons in the art of falling and then putting together a rambunctious act for servicemen's camp shows which led to night clubs, TV and movies.
After 24 years, Ketchum is still falling down for laughs.
The format of "Camp Runamuck”—a boys' camp under the supervision of four experts in chaos—tells only half the "incomparable" label. Ketchum tells the other half when he says:
"The show really is 75 per cent sight gags—the chases, falls, stunts, and other mishaps right out of old silent movie comedies. In the first six shows we have sent a fellow across a lake on a surfboard equipped with a jet engine, shot a fellow into the air from a giant bow and arrow, recreated the gunfight from High Noon with pants falling down, had an entire house collapse on us and flooded the entire camp with soap suds.
"The show is mad, mad, mad. There's only one thing I can compare it to and that's the movie, 'Mr. Hulot's Holiday.’ We don't stop between gags to try to make sense." The pre-planned sight gags of the show are developed in special story-board technique, a skill the show's creator David Swift acquired early in his career as a Disney animator. Still another ex-Disney sight gag man, Cal Howard, is the show's full-time "animator."
In the Swift-directed movie, "Good Neighbor Sam," Ketchum was the Hertz car man in a spoof of the TV commercial. Everytime he slid down the wire he missed the car and fell on his face.
"But," laughs Ketchum, "that was tame compared to 'Camp Runamuck’.”

Runamuck was run off the NBC schedule after one season. He told the press at the time it was likely because CBS’ The Wild Wild West kicked them in the ratings, and some affiliates delayed airing the show.

Ketchum was quikly cast in Get Smart after Victor French, who played a similar role as Agent 44, left. He evidently made an impression on newspaper columnists, as a number of them talked to him about the show. This is from January 1967.

Dave Ketchum Proves to Be A Very Versatile Performer
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
HOLLYWOOD (NEA)—In the new role of Agent 13 on television's Get Smart this season, Dave Ketchum turns up la the strangest places.
With sudden abruptness Agent 13 appears inside a popcorn dispenser or from out of a trash can, inside a foot locker or out of a mail box, inside a sofa or out of a picture frame.
Guessing where he will be next week has become a game with regular fans of the show.
Off screen Dave Ketchum also keeps Hollywood guessing about where he will show up next. The other day even a man from NBC guessed wrong about Dave’s presence on the Get Smart set. There had been a last-minute change in the shooting schedule, it was explained, to permit Dave to play a role in another TV series.
We found him, four miles away, playing the part of a real estate salesman on The Andy Griffith Show. For a rival network yet.
"I like to be a moving target,” Dave kidded about a career which has been booming since he starred in the short-lived Camp Runamuck series after first winning TV fan attention in I’m Dickens ... He's Fenster.

In addition to acting these day s he’s also writing (five Petticoat Junction and three Hey, Landlord scripts); working in TV commercial (he’s that fellow with a glass garage for his 1967 car) and providing the voices of five different characters in the Roger Ramjet kiddie cartoon series.
Some actors belittle commercials and cartoon voices, but Dave welcomes them. He says, “I once read that the Hollywood Screen Acton Guild has a membership of 10,000 but that only 1,000 members work full time in the industry. I’m proud of the fact that in this basically insecure business I’m a full-time worker. To be one, it's necessary to be versatile.”
That, of course, is the story of his show business career which started on a San Diego, Calif., radio station before he invaded Hollywood television.
Since turning to writing TV scripts (with Bruce Shelley) Dave says his eyes have been opened to a new advantage for him as an actor.
“Writing scripts,” he explains, “has taught me to recognize good parts which I might otherwise have turned down. Writing scripts teaches you how to read scripts from a different viewpoint.”
About his TV commercial work, he said:
“It takes two days to film a one-minute commercial. It's just like making a big-time movie and I think there’s more real creative talent behind some commercials than in many TV shows. For young unknowns, a one-minute TV commercial is better than a major studio big screen test”

This piece likely came from the producers as there is no byline. It also appeared in papers in January 1967.

Hollywood—Dave Ketchum may have been destined from birth to appear in strange places. He was born in an elevator.
Today, he may be found in mailboxes, lockers, washing machines, garbage cans, cigarette machines and grandfather clocks.
Ketchum, as Agent 13, has been hiding inside these various containers while awaiting contact with other operatives in Get Smart on the NBC-TV Saturdays.
"I'm not bothered by claustrophobia," said Ketchum, "But I have a slight tendency towards motion sickness."
The only time this problem seems to arise, however, is when he's spinning around inside a washing machine.
Asked what's more his speed, he said:
"F-11 at 125."
As any shutterbug knows, this is shoptalk for a standard lens opening. Ketchum, who has handled a camera since he was a youngster, would just as soon take pictures than be in them.
"I'm often in the dark room until three and four in the morning," he said. "It's a great place for getting away from it all."
He's ALWAYS had a hideaway of some kind. As a youngster it was a friend's hut.
"Once we saw a movie with a steam room scene," said Dave. "We decided to turn our hut into a steam room. We didn't know how to make steam so we used dirt instead. We poured buckets of dirt into the hut and sat around breathing dust."
In time Dave came to Hollywood.

"When I first came to this silly little city I lived in a little room, the size of a restaurant booth, under a staircase," he said.
The room's major virtue was the cost—five dollars a week.
Dave has done many things and popped up in many places. He was a student at UCLA, an entertainer with the Armed Forces and for the Defense Department, and currently he is one of the busiest and most versatile talents in show business.
"I haven't been on unemployment for years," said Ketchum.
His last series was Camp Runamuck. When camp closed, he packed his bags, slipped out of his tent and became the peek-a-boo agent on Get Smart.
WHEN NOT HIDING behind his role or in the dark room, Ketchum hides behind a typewriter.
"I've written 10 scripts in one year," said Ketchum. "I've also written a television pilot. I write with Josh Shelley. We were in the Army together."
They work in a small room, naturally.
"We started out in a larger room," said Ketchum. "But we had a hard time getting started. So we moved to a smaller room. I work better in small spaces."
Some people say their life is an open book. Ketchum puts it differently,
"My life," he said, "is a little room."

After Get Smart, it appears Ketchum focused more on writing than performing. It’s too bad. Even in the most over-the-top roles, Ketchum was never-over-the-top. As Yogi Bear might rhyme: “As a hidden spy, he was a regular guy.” That, to me, was appeal during his time on the small screen.

Eye-Sproing on Broadway

Animation takes could be pretty exaggerated during the years of World War Two. Take a look at Tex Avery’s Northwest Hounded Police (MGM, 1946 release). By the 1950s, that kind of thing had settled down, as cartoon characters became more stylised. My guess is the take-gag had also become a cliché.

Occasionally, one would pop up in a ‘50s short. The eye gag at the end of Droopy’s Double Trouble (MGM, 1951 release) is my favourite. Here’s one from in Broadway Bow Wow’s, released on August 2, 1954.

The tale is of lovers John and Mary, whose dancing act rises to the top of vaudeville. Then, John gets a look at a femme fatale. Here’s the take.



This short was one of two made by Ray Patterson and Grant Simmons for Walter Lantz. People on the internet claim Grantray-Lawrence made it. Let’s look at the facts. Variety of June 16, 1953 reported Lantz had hired Simmons and Patterson as part of a studio expansion, and mentioned on July 21, 1954 the two had formed Grantray Animation to do commercial work for Robert Lawrence. As the cartoon was released August 2, 1954, there’s no way it could have been made at Grantray-Lawrence.

However, Business Screen magazine’s issue of August 1954 reported the two “have been in the animation business for twenty years. Both were formerly with Walt Disney and later with M.G.M. cartoon studios. Operating as a partnership for the past two years, Simmons and Patterson have been producing television animated commercials and writing and directing theatrical cartoons.”

Buried in the background of one scene is a sign reading “Grantray’s Snake Oil.” There are also signs saying “Garity’s Goiter Pellets” (for Lantz’s studio manager, Bill Garity) and another for “Batchelor’s Eye Wash” (for Mickey Bachelder, Lantz’s chief cameraman). There’s also one for “Avery’s Liver Tonic.” I am assuming that’s a reference to Tex Avery, who was hired by Lantz in December 1953 to be his executive producer, according to the Hollywood Reporter of December 23 that year.

There are no animation credits on the short, but Ray Jacobs and Art Landy handled the backgrounds and layouts, and Dick Nelson got screen credit as John, the narrating dog.

This post will be the last on Tralfaz for the indefinite future.

Indestructible Benny

There may not have been a comedian who was analysed so much during his time as Jack Benny.

Over the years, we’ve posted a number of articles from columnists explaining the appeal of Benny and his show. Jack talked about it himself at the time as well.

This article is from Leon Gutterman of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. What may be interesting is a great deal of credit was given to his irregular supporting cast. Don Wilson, Dennis Day, Phil Harris and Mary Livingstone were the only people to be mentioned at the start of each radio show. Anyone else got credit for their performances only on rare occasion. An exception might have been Mel Blanc, whose name Jack mentioned as the show was unfolding on the air. Unlike other radio shows, you wouldn’t hear “Appearing tonight were…” though credits were given on the Benny television programmes.

The writer got Schlepperman’s catch-phrase wrong, but his column otherwise sums up the Jack Benny show that people remember today.

It was published Oct. 13, 1950.

OUR FILM FOLK
Why Jack Benny Is the Indestructible Comedian
Jack Benny has returned to the nation's air waves for the 19th season of his comedy career in radio. And he has come back, as always, in his familiar role of the balding, penny-pinching patsy, but his CBS program as in the past, will be replete during the coming year with new riotous laugh skits, new characterizations, new guest surprises. At least that's what Jack tells me.
This indestructible quality of the great wit's character creation and a show format flexible enough for a perennial infusion of fresh idea material and talent point to the secret of his enduring and inimitable success. As one newspaper editor once wrote: "Benny hasn't, as is so persistently rumored, been doing the same thing for 18 years. He wouldn't have lasted that long if he had."
Comedy situations in a Benny program season had, year after year, been marked by freshness and originality. New characterizations, his own and those of an odd assortment of fellow actors and actresses, have paraded across; the script in endless procession. His guests, too, have been spectacularly impressive, as witness the case of the Ronald Colmans, who appeared 16 times on the show.
But the program personalities, including the whimsical portrayals of regular cast members, are probably the most memorable highlights of the Benny saga. Among those who turned up last season was Frank Fontaine, a new comedian, playing a mentally retarded sweepstakes winner named John L. P. Sivony [sic]. Mel Blanc, a regular, (the voice of Bugs Bunny) did a week-by-week impersonation of Al Jolson. Jack himself added another facet to his characterization, that of the naive treasurer of the Beverly Hills Beavers, a boy's club.
Once, there was an ostrich in the script, and even a polar bear named Carmichael. Jack kept Carmichael in the cellar and Rochester was his keeper. At the time, the husky-voiced valet was in an endless search for a gas man to do some repairs. The versatile Mel Blanc played Carmichael. Blanc now is the voice of the Benny parrot, which keeps Rochester from delivering soliloquies while doing the household chores. Its screams drive him to distraction. Blanc is also Benny's French violin teacher. He is the coughing, sputtering voice of the rattletrap Maxwell auto as it tunes up, and he doubles as well as the rhythm-tongued train announcer calling out Azusa, Cucamonga and other weirdly-named stations.
Buck Benny Rides Again
Who doesn't remember the famous Buck Benny of the long-running "Buck Benny Rides Again" sequence? Andy Devine, whose entrance line was "Hiya, Buck" was the chief stooge of this comedy turn. The skit ceased with the release of the Paramount film "Buck Benny Rides Again." in which Jack and most his fibbers appeared.
Mr. Billingsley was a quaint character dreamed up and played by Ed Beloin, a former Benny writer. A subnormal, self-appointed house guest, Mr. Billingsley consistently made wry comments at the wrong time in a dry voice. Beloin, never an actor, always had Benny worried that he'd miss his cues or fluff his lines.
Another witty specimen knocked on the Benny door anouncing [sic] "A telegram for Mr. Benny." The role was played by Harry Baldwin, Benny's secretary, who would glow with Barrymore-like pride at the end of each performance, over his laconic line.
Mr. Kitzel, a current fabrication, is played by Artie Auerbach, former New York newspaper photographer. His "peekle in the meedle with the mustard on top" and his baseball stories are laugh toppers. Mable Flapsaddle and Gertrude Gershift, the Benny telephone opertors [sic], enacted by Sarah Berner [sic] and Bea Benadaret [sic], tie the program in knots with them saucy badgering of the boss.
Schelepperman’s "Howdy Stranger"
Off and on the show have been Sheldon Leonard, Sam Hearn, Frank Nelson and many other stooges. Leonard is the racetrack tout with the soft, patronizing voice. Hearn played Mr. Schlepperman, whose greeting, "Howdy, Stranger," stirred a ripple of chuckles. Nelson is often heard as the haughty floorwalker, the butler or some generally nasty type, with a mocking "Yeahus" when addressed.
Jack's main foils of course, have come in for equally hilarious typing. Tenor Dennis Day is the timid mama's boy who is always asking for his salary, and Phil Harris is ribbed as a lady-killer with a predilection for word-mangling and liquid refreshments. Rochester as the extrovert valet and chauffeur constantly befuddles the harassed Benny. Mary Livingstone, Jack's wife, is the heckling girl friend whom Benny constantly threatens to send back to the hosiery counter at the May Company department store.
Practically every important figure in show business has guested on the Benny funfest, but Fred Allen's visits have been among the most notable. Jack and Fred carried on a feud for years, on their own programs. Every once in a while they crossed over for mutual calls, letting the quips and sparks fly at close range. "If I had my writers here," Jack once exploded, "you wouldn't talk to me like this."
Benny at His Best
For years, the Benny comedy situations have run the gamut of thing that could possibly happen to Jack Benny has been satirized. Last season, for example, he did a takeoff on an actual operation on his nose, and in another skit he roved through the script for several weeks spending his money like a drunken sailor after a can of tomatoes fell on his head and put him out of his mind. It was Benny at his best.
To his sheer delight, the fabulous funnyman has taken the worst beating from his stooges of any comedian in radio history. Everything about him is mercilessly lampooned . . . his thinning hair, his baby blue eyes, his age (39 years), his romantic attractiveness, his Maxwell, his money vault, his thriftiness and his fiddle. A few years ago his writers even dreamed up a contest in which listeners were invited to send in letters of 25 words or less dwelling on the theme "I can't stand Jack Benny because . . ." More than 500,000 letters poured in. Benny revelled in the scheme.
That's why Jack Benny is the indestructible comedian, who never changes himself but keeps his show over fresh with funsters. That's the secret of his 19 years of radio success.

Swing Symphonies

Carl Stalling had a great advantage when it came to scores for Warner Bros. cartoons. All songs published by Warners’ subsidiaries were available to him and arranger Milt Franklyn. Scott Bradley was able to utilise music owned by MGM. The same for Win Sharples at Fleischer/Famous/Paramount.

Other cartoon musical directors—even the ones at Disney—had to create their own scores from public domain music or whatever they wrote themselves.

And then there was Darrell Calker.

Calker was hired by Walter Lantz in 1940 to replace Frank Marsales. Lantz’ studio was independent; Universal only released the cartoons. Lantz was having money troubles about the time Calker was hired, but someone at the studio came up with the idea of putting out the cash for the rights to popular music and building a series of big band-style cartoons around them.

It worked. The Swing Symphonies were among the finest cartoons that came out of the Lantz studio, perhaps surpassed only by the Musical Miniatures later in the ‘40s when classical music was at the forefront.

Cartoon music scholar Daniel Goldmark sent me some links last fall to editions of Down Beat which mentioned some cartoon composers. I thought I had transcribed the stories about Calker, but I must have gotten sidetracked. We’re rectifying that now.

First up is a short one from May 1, 1943. By this time, Calker had been making musical cartoons for some time. The first was Scrub Me Mama With a Boogie Beat (released March 28, 1941). The less said about the plot of this one, the better. It was followed by Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company “B” (Sept. 1, 1941). At this point, Lantz made the Swing Symphonies a series, beginning with $21 a Day (Once a Month) (Dec. 1, 1941), Juke Box Jamboree (July 27, 1942, Oscar nominee), Yankee Doodle Swing Shift (Sept. 21, 1942), Boogie Woogie Sioux (Nov. 30, 1942), Cow Cow Boogie (Jan. 3, 1943), Swing Your Partner (Apr. 26, 1943) and Pass The Biscuits Mirandy! (Aug. 23, 1943), Shamus Culhane’s directorial debut at Lantz.

Cartoon Films Feature Jazz
Hollywood—Meade “Lux” Lewis, king of the honey tonk pianists and, to serious students of the jazz idiom, one of its greatest figures, will be featured—although not seen in the first of a series of “swing symphony” cartoons produced by Walter Lantz for Universal release.
Lewis, accompanied by a studio band under the direction of Darrell Calker, recorded Cow Cow Boogie, around which the cartoon featurette was drawn.
Same series of cartoons will include one built around a song entitled Boogie Woogie Man’ll Get You, musical accompaniment of which will feature the Loumell Morgan Trio.

The Boogie Woogie Man cartoon was released Sept. 27, 1943 and was Culhane’s second cartoon.

Three fine Swing Symphony cartoons appeared in 1944: The Greatest Man in Siam (March 27), Jungle Jive (May 15) and Abou Ben Boogie (Sept. 18). The final two in the series followed in 1945: The Pied Piper of Basin Street (Jan. 15) and Sliphorn King of Polaroo (Mar. 19), Dick Lundy’s first directorial job for Lantz. No more of the cartoons were made at the time this article in Down Beat appeared on Sept. 15 in the "On the Beat in Hollywood" column.

We’ve had many requests to write more about cartoon scoring. Adequate coverage of the subject will have to wait for a let-up in the paper shortage but we’ll devote, our column this time to some notes on Darrell Calker, the “one-man music department” for Walter Lantz productions (Swing Symphony series) who was first to see the possibilities of building the animated cartoon shorts around top rank jazz musicians.
We recently paid a visit to Darrell in his unpretentious headquarters at the Walter Lantz plant adjacent to the Universal studios during which he ran some of his pictures for our special benefit and supplied us with some of the best screen entertainment we’ve had in a long time.
Between showings we questioned him on his musical background (we like to find out where musicians came from and how they got that way) and although he held out a formal biography we wormed out of him such interesting facts as that he, like so many other of today’s musicians who combine a good sense of jazz values with a sound musical schooling, stems from the old Goldkette group; that he was once a banjo player, went to college to become an engineer, has had compositions played by major U.S. symphonies.
Calker didn’t have a print available of his first application of jazz to the cartoon comedy medium—a short featuring Meade Lewis—but he showed us the Bob Zurke short, Jungle Jive, and the two Teagarden pictures, Sliphorn King of Polaroo and Pied Piper of Basin Street. These pictures have been available for some time but are still to be shown in many houses. If you haven’t caught them, request them at your local theater.
Zurke, like Teagarden, an old friend of Calker’s, recorded his piano solo for Jungle Jive (the animators built the picture around the previously recorded solo—an original boogie by Zurke) just a month before his death, but it is one of his best. The interesting “jungle drums” passages in the picture are by the veteran Vic Berton. Calker backed Teagarden with a band of ace dance men. His cartoon music, for that reason has a solid beat running through most of the score instead of the conventional “mickey mouse” quality. The fine pianist heard in the Teagarden pictures is our old friend Stan (Blues in the Night) Wrightsman.
But Calker gave us a real surprise by running a government short, a three-reeler used to teach medical corpsmen the dangers of infection during surgery, for which he had done a full length symphonic score recorded under his direction by the 75-piece AAF orchestra under Lt. Col. Eddie Dunstedter (now retired). It’s unfortunate that this picture, Enemy Bacteria, will not, for the present, anyway, be shown publicly, as it is, in our opinion, not only an excellent picture but one of the best examples of dramatic picture scoring we have encountered. In one passage the rhythm is taken directly from a human heartbeat, actually recorded and heard in the sound track. What might have been a dull training film becomes an engrossing human drama due mainly to the intensity created by the music. We’ll be hearing more of Mr. Calker.

Calker was musical as a child. A news report on January 21, 1917 told readers Calker was a boy soprano who sang after a meeting of Potomac Council of the Knights of Pythias in Washington, D.C. He was a soloist at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church. He was 11 years old. Another newspaper story from Washington on July 24, 1925 tells how he was part of the Maccabee Caravan Entertainers, about to play vaudeville houses across the U.S. We learn more from another D.C. paper of April 12, 1936 which reported he was at WHN radio in New York and had made his first professional appearance as a banjoist in the Club Le Paradis at age 14. His father Maurice had been a bandleader.

Over the years, Calker and his orchestra (the Swing-Phonics) had a 15-minute programme, transcribed, on various stations in the U.S. There was a half-hour show as well, as outlined in Radio Daily of July 1942:

Treasure Tunes
In "Treasure Tunes" Daryle Calker, arranger-composer-conductor, and his concert-dance orchestra furnish the setting for "the Hit Parade of Tomorrow and Today," 30-minutes of new songs and music played and sung by top notch talent of Hollywood. Wide appeal is gained by introducing original songs selected by our song jury and voted upon by listeners. Merchandising is present in the fact that the program presents the work of thousands of new songwriters attracted to entertainment especially built for them.
Presentation: Live talent
Available Time Units: 30 minutes, once weekly
Audience Appeal: Entire family
Suggested for: Evening
Client Suitability: Nationally distributed low-cost product
Number of Artists: 30
Unit Cost: $3,000.00 a week
Audition Facilities: Transcriptions
Submitted by: Paul Cruger Radio Productions

His musical scores are in the possession of the University of Wyoming. About him, its web site says:

The Darrell Calker papers include more than 250 musical scores which Calker composed for ballets, television, motion picture productions, as well as symphonic and radio music. Works in the collection include "Geronimo," "Penguin Island," "Manhandled," "My World Dies Screaming," and "Albuquerque." The collection also contains music Calker composed for Walter Lantz cartoons, shooting scripts for motion pictures for which Calker provided the soundtrack; music transcripts (records and audiotapes) ballets, television and motion picture productions, as well as symphonic and radio music. The collection also contains scrapbook material and personal photographs.
Darrell Calker (1905-1964) was a prominent composer, conductor and arranger, educated at Maryland University where he earned his Bachelor of Science degree, and at the Curtis Institute where he studied under Edgar Priest and David Pell. He joined ASCAP in 1953 and composed musical scores for ballet companies including the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, the Ballet Russe, and Sandler Wells. His classical works include "Penguin Island" and "Golden Land." His ballets include "Royal Coachman," "Quiet Wheel," and "Decameron." He also composed music for "Geronimo," "Albuquerque," "The Red Ryder" serials, and Walter Lantz cartoons.

The summary skips over his work for the Screen Gems cartoon studio, which sounds a lot like warmed-over Woody Woodpecker scores. They certainly weren’t up to the standard of the Swing Symphonies and Musical Miniatures. Calker left Lantz and Columbia when their cartoon studios closed; he did not return right away when Lantz started up again in 1951.

Calker was hired in 1959 to score films for Pacific International Pictures, but he had a second go-around with Lantz, receiving credit on Fouled Up Birthday (April 1962), and 15 more cartoons through Rah-Rah Ruckus (June 1964, hilarious frame-grab to the left). Yeah, I know, Superman and the Mole Men, The Amazing Transparent Man, etc. If you want a full list, find it elsewhere on-line.

Like Frank Churchill at Disney and Gene Poddany (also at Lantz), Calker met a sad ending. The Los Angeles Independent of Feb. 27, 1964 reported:

MGM Arranger Found Deat At Hotel
Darrell Calker, 21336 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu, a musical arranger for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, was found dead in a downtown Los Angeles hotel room with his wrists cut last Wednesday.
Calker, 59, was found lying dead in the bathtub of his room by a security guard R. W. Gerst who had been summoned by a maid. Calker had checked into the hotel Feb. 7 under the name of Dean Catheart.

You can read more about Calker in this post. Links to old issues of Down Beat, where more stories about Calker and cartoon composers, can be found here.

Kiss My...

Van Beuren cartoons are at their best when weird stuff happens out of nowhere. Not an awful lot weird happens on In the Park, a 1933 Tom and Jerry.

If this were a Fleischer cartoon, there would be a sense of danger as the hero tries to rescue a wayward child toddling into perilous situations. In this one, Tom and Jerry spend the cartoon trying to keep the baby quiet.

There is one Fleischer-type gag. The child is hanging from its baby gown (what is that called, anyway?) on a tree branch. Suddenly, a safety pin pops over and the child’s diaper falls down.



All is not lost. A helpful leaf on the tree pulls the diaper back up.



The end gag is, literally, an end gag. A cop has been making time with the baby’s nurse. After the cop kisses the nurse, the kid falls into his arms. He goes to kiss the nurse again, but just about kisses the baby’s butt before he opens his eyes.



Boy, is his face red! Or would be if the cartoon were in colour.



Tom and Jerry chortle to bring this tame short to an end.



Frank Sherman and George Rufle get the "by" credit. They handled the next two Tom and Jerrys before the series was brought to an end.

I Don't Care What You Say

Here we have an eight-frame cycle of a camel chewing on, well, I’m not quite sure. Note the spacing of the drawings. There seems to be barely any movement at one point.



This is the cycle slowed down, which gives you an idea of how the mouth moved.



Yeah, I know. Not the post interesting of posts, unless you are into timing of poses and in-betweens. The director is Friz Freleng, and the cartoon is Hot Spot, a 1945 Snafu short. The gag is an example of how everyone borrowed from Tex Avery. In fact, the short is like an Avery travelogue in places.

In this scene, the narrator (the Devil, played by Hal Peary, complete with Gildersleeve laugh), informs us “Here, the native beast of burden, the camel, is the only one who doesn’t mind the heat.” After chewing a bit, the camel (Mel Blanc) turns to the viewing audience and says “I don’t care what you say, I’m hot,” and resumes chewing.



Say, that gag is familiar, isn’t it? Let’s think back to Avery’s Wacky Wildlife (1940), where a camel is strolling across the desert. Narrator Bob Bruce informs us the camel “plods over scorching desert sands, in terrific heat, never once desiring a cool, refreshing drink of water. The camel (Mel Blanc) turns to the viewing audience and says “I don’t care what you say, I’m thirsty,” and resumes strolling.



Say, that gag is STILL familiar. That’s because Avery used a variation of it earlier in the year in Cross Country Detours. In this one, a polar bear is shown on a chunk of ice. “Mother Nature has provided him with layer upon layer of fat, plus a thick coat of heavy fur, to keep him good and warm,” says the narrator. The camera moves in and the bear (Mel Blanc) tells us “I don’t care what you say, I’m cold.”



Is it any wonder that Avery came up with the idea of footage of real animals with superimposed cartoon mouths that made wisecracks. The idea ended up at Jerry Fairbanks Productions, which made the Speaking of Animals series for Paramount. If the “I don’t care what you say” routine was one of the gags in those shorts, I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

What about the end gag of Hot Spot, you ask? Thanks for reminding me. The short has emphasized how hot it is in Iran, hotter 'n Hades as they used to say. The short finishes with the Devil discovering the camel is now in his office in Hell. The camel turns to him and casually remarks, “I don’t care what you say, I’m cool.” It resumes chewing to end the cartoon.



None of the artists who worked on this are given screen credit.