The Failure of Phil Silvers

Two fine comedians couldn’t make television lighting strike twice in the early 1960s.

Groucho Marx spent more than a decade wisecracking with contestants on You Bet Your Life, but when he tried a similar show in 1962 called Tell It to Groucho, it bombed.

Likewise, Phil Silvers’ Bilko show ended with the 1950s and he tried again in 1963 with a self-titled show, basically playing Bilko. But he couldn’t make it fly, despite the presence of director Rod Amateau and writers Harvey Bullock and Bob Allen.

Here’s a look-ahead to the new show, which appeared in newspapers starting around Sept. 13, 1963.

Silvers Still Bilko In New Civilian Role
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
Hollywood Correspondent Newspaper Enterprise Assn.
HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 13 (NEA)—Sgt. Bilko—oops, I mean Harry Grafton of the "NEW Phil Silvers Show"—leaves the factory set and plops down on a couch in his dressing room in corner of Stage 10 at the Fox studio. "Just a little dizzy," apologizes Silvers, who is Harry Grafton now. "Maybe it's tension—the new show, my wife expecting our fourth child, the freeway traffic this morning. A little hot tea should fix me up. Boy, a little hot tea, please."
The NEW Phil Silvers show makes its debut on CBS-TV Sept. 28. But as almost everyone knows, Sgt. Bilko is still with us except he is a factory maintenance boss now in a blue baseball cap and gray coveralls.
The name of Grafton is as appropriate as Gladasya Prods., the company Phil formed and which gives him full say on his laugh-getting and a chance to keep more of the big money the network is paying him for his enormous talents.
Harry Grafton, like Sgt. Bilko, is all "graft" in his diverse activities. The "Gladasya" goes back to Phil's early movie career when he always played the friend of the hero. His most important and sometimes only line always seemed to be, "Glad to see ya." That's how "Gladasya Prod." was born.
Phil is happy to explain how Harry Grafton was born.
Sipping the hot tea, he says: "Sure I was disappointed when CBS canceled the Bilko show. I didn't understand then, but I do now. It cost too much. It was split too many ways. The network tried to help me swing a deal to bring Bilko back to television, but it was still too expensive, too complicated, cut too many ways.
So how close Is Harry Grafton to Bilko? The answer includes the question, "How close is Phil Silvers to Bilko?"
Very close, yes sir. Phil has been playing Bilko in one way or another practically all of his life, you might say.
But for the first time, he's now in a position to let the fast talking scamp set him up financially for the rest of his me.
As Harrv Grafton, Phil will have as many things going for him as Bilko. His "sidelines" as the maintenance boss in the factory include a sliding wall behind which he operates a little factory of his own; leasing part of the warehouse after hours to an amateur theatrical group, and ownership of a coffee wagon.
Such a coffee wagon you’ve never seen. In addition to coffee, there are daily foreign food delights which usually are served along with dancing girls costumed to match.
For foils and accomplices, Phil's factory crew includes his old pal Herbie Faye as "Waluska," and Jim Shane, a six-foot, six-inch 235 pounder who will be the fall guy for Phil's wildest schemes. Stafford Repp, as the plant manager, will be as confused as Bilko's old army boss.
"This says Phil, "I'm gambling on myself. But I'm not playing the big tycoon behind the scenes. I'm sitting in only on what I know about."
The tea and the dizziness gone, Phil goes back to work as a baby sitter with a 14-month-old baby boy on his lap. As the father of four girls, Phil cracks between scenes: "It better be a boy, this next girl."

Hot tea may have fixed Silvers, but something more was needed to fix his show. First, CBS changed the time slot. And then Silvers decided to re-work the series.

This unbylined story in the South Bend Tribune of Jan. 25, 1964 was one of a number that explained the situation.

Silvers Admits He Made Mistake
HOLLYWOOD—Phil Silvers expands his television format introduces his new television family on "The New Phil Silvers Show" next Saturday.
Elena Verdugo, the onetime heroine of all Brooklyn in "Meet Millie" has been signed to portray Audrey, Harry Grafton's sister.
"Phil as Grafton will no longer be top dog. He'll have to contend a sharp, determined sister who knows his every trick," producer Rod Amateau said.
Boy Is Added
Amateau also announced that Sandy Descher, 18-year-old actress who made 50 films before she was ten and who was last seen on "The New Loretta Young Show," will portray Audrey's daughter, Susan.
Ten-year-old Ronnie Dapo, a lively lad in the film version of "The Music Man" and who will soon be seen in the film “Kisses For My President," will play Andy Grafton's nephew.
Silvers explained the new approach for the series this way: "I had put my head in the sand. We were trying to relate to the common people. It didn't occur to us that the factory foreman isn't the underdog; the underdog is the factory owner. In comedy anyway."
"I set a standard with Bilko," he said, "and I haven't lived up to it. My pride is such that I got a necessary kick in the pants this season. So we shut down for five weeks to take a breather and improve the series as best we could."
Honesty Is Incredible

Silvers' honesty is almost incredible. He assumes all the blame himself. Other stars belittle the network, sponsor, scripts, or rap viewers for not having enough intelligence to appreciate their work.
In giving the series a face-lift Silvers has burned 10 completed new scripts. A tremendously expensive bonfire.
"The 11 shows with the new format will be a situation family comedy," he said, "but not as sweet as those already on the air.
"The important thing is we've got Grafton out of the factory and into the world where he can operate under all kinds of conditions."
Credits Fan Loyalty
Silvers credits fan loyalty with preventing a total catastrophe.
"If it hadn't been for the affection of the fans who stayed with me maybe the show would have been off the air by now," he said. "Well, I owe those people something—a good series.
"And they're going to get it. If the new format is a big success I will stay with it next season. If not, I've got an entirely new idea for next fall that I really believe in.
"I can't reveal what it is, but it would be a new character in new setting with a new cast. It's my responsibility to my audience, and I want to discharge it the best way I know how."

Viewers didn’t accept a Bilko-like character in a family-like setting, especially when they could watch re-runs of the original Phil Silvers show. The New Phil Silvers Show lasted 30 episodes and by the summer, Silvers was in a touring company of his biggest hit: Top Banana.

Silvers was back on television the following season, but not on camera. Silvers’ production company, Gladasya, put a new show on the air, one that lives on in reruns today. It was about seven stranded castaways on an uncharted desert isle. I don’t need to name the series, do I? Silvers guest starred in my favourite episode as fast-talking, shady, show biz producer Harold Hecuba. In essence, he was playing Bilko one more time.

Betty Ends Prohibition

Betty Boop For President (1932) is about as satiric as any Fleischer cartoon could be, from Betty turning herself into caricatures of Democrat Al Smith and Republican president Herbert Hoover (but not F.D.R.), to opposing candidate Mr. Nobody singing that nobody will care if they have to beg, to donkeys and elephants sitting on opposite sides of the aisle knee-jerkingly disagreeing with each other.

The newspapers of 1932 clucked loudly about what they saw as the big issue—not bread-lines, nor poverty, but Prohibition. Roosevelt had promised to repeal it once the new Congress immediately amended the Volstead Act to allow the sale of beer.

The Fleischers, or at least their writers, sided with Roosevelt, as we can see in the ending of the cartoon. A Times Square-like ticker announces Betty’s election (with fireworks falling to form her head), then a parade over which a full stein of beer is superimposed.



The Motion Picture Herald, Oct. 1, 1932, called the cartoon “Clever, Amusing.”

Smart, novel and amusing is this Betty Boop animated cartoon, in which Betty carries on a vigorous campaign for President, and promises what she will do if elected. The novelty lies in the unusual drawings, the cleverness of the idea and execution. Pertinent at this moment, the short may be considered in a measure outstanding among animateds.

The opinion was echoed by several other theatre managers/owners writing to the publication.

Trade papers of the era say the cartoon was not officially released until Nov. 14, six days after the election, but you can see to the right a newspaper ad for the Capitol in Salisbury, North Carolina that it was playing on Oct. 24. The Rivoli in Muncie, Indiana was showing it on September 23rd.

Seymour Kneitel and Doc Crandall are the credited animators on this short.

Betty’s big song “When I’m The President” (after a Cantor-esque “We want Betty” shout from a crowd) was written by Al Sherman and Al Lewis. The Cantor reference would not have been unexpected, as the song was written for him and bears the subtitle “We Want Cantor” (and copyrighted Jan. 19, 1932) as part of his phoney 1932 presidential run. The tune is reprised (as are the donkeys and elephants) in Olive Oyl For President (1948) and sung both times by Mae Questel.

Note: David Gerstein points out a Betty-as-Calvin Coolidge scene was deleted from the cartoon. I presume it's at 1:05 when the scene cuts from Betty reaching into her box of guises to a long shot of the crowd.

Hopping Cinderella

It’s 9 o’clock. What does that mean? For Cinderella in Tex Avery’s Cinderella Meets Fella, it means her fairy godmother is late.

She gets on the phone and yells to the police to find her. The animator of the scene (Virgil Ross?) and his in-betweeners had some fun coming up with hyper drawings for her after calmly talking to police headquarters.



Mel Blanc is screaming “Go get ‘er, boys” on the phone as Cindy, though Berneice Hansell plays her in the rest of the cartoon.

You’ll notice Avery and storyman Tedd Pierce don’t waste time by having Cinderella turn the crank and call the operator. She just picks up the phone and starts talking.

The music behind the scene is Schubert’s “Erlkönig.”

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: Tune in Tomorrow

They tried to save network radio. It was a lost cause.

Since the late 1920s, people wanted television in their homes. It took some time to perfect it. After the war, there was a steady stream of stations signing on. That brought advertising money. Advertising money that had been going to radio. The big-time network shows started disappearing because there wasn’t the money to pay for them.

NBC, CBS, ABC and Mutual had all kinds of capital tied up in their radio networks and they didn’t want to see that collapse. CBS’ reaction was a publicity campaign to tell everyone that radio still had lots of listeners and there would be even more—and all willing to buy products advertised on radio.

To get its point across, CBS commissioned UPA to make several animated promotional films. The first, More Than Meets The Eye, was made in 1952 to describe the impact of the human voice in advertising. The second, in 1953, was It's Time for Everybody, and dealt with the changing patterns of daily life in the U.S. CBS claimed it had been seen by nearly a quarter of a million business and professional people.

The third was Tune in Tomorrow, previewed for newsmen on Thursday September 30, 1954 before being shown to advertising, business and broadcast industry groups. It looked ahead to where radio would be in 1960. The release, according to Broadcasting magazine of Oct. 4, 1954, coincided with new nighttime programming offering Monday through Friday runs of newsman Allan Jackson, commentator Lowell Thomas, Tennessee Ernie Ford, The Choraliers, Edward R. Murrow, Mr. and Mrs. North, Amos 'n' Andy Music Hall, and Mr. Keene, Tracer of Lost Persons.

Psychic, CBS was not. Mr. Keen needed tracing himself in 1955 when CBS told him to get lost. 1960 saw the last of the big-time evening shows on the network; the venerable Amos and Andy didn’t even have a sponsor when they were taken off the air on November 25th. The sainted Murrow was unwelcome and gone, too.

Since someone will mention this if I don’t, CBS had a later relationship with UPA when it put The Boing Boing Show on the air in 1956. That's even though the network owned a cartoon studio (Terrytoons) at the time.

Let’s look at Tune in Tomorrow. The cartoon (not this version) has been cleaned up and released on one of Steve Stanchfield’s fine Thunderbean discs, with commentary by Mike Kazaleh and Jerry Beck. I haven’t heard what they had to say about the cartoon, but I understand it was directed by Bobe Cannon. Broadcasting helpfully tells us “Narration of ‘Tune in Tomorrow’ was by John Cone and Harry Marble, sound direction by Gordon Auchincloss and music adaptation by Bernard Herrmann.” What it doesn’t say is the voice at the start and at the end is that of Tony Marvin, among the people fired by Arthur Godfrey. In the 1960s, he ended up on Mutual doing top-hour news, which is about all the networks were airing.

Your Money Or Your Life

One of the most famous routines on radio was this:

Robber: I said, “Your money or your life.”
Jack Benny: I’m thinking it over.

Jack did it a number of times, and his fans likely know the exchange happened at the end of an episode when the hold-up man not only took Jack’s money, but a package with Ronald Colman’s Oscar. This set up a story-line for a number of shows where Jack tried to borrow someone else’s Oscar to replace it.

The running gag sounds perfect. Stunningly, it was not the original intention of Jack and his writers.

The Colman episode aired on March 28, 1948. A week before, the second half of the Benny show was taken up with Jack addressing his Beverly Hills Beavers boys club on the advantages of thrift. The show ends with the self-satisfied Jack walking and singing to himself “For I’m a jolly good Beaver,” followed by the final commercial.

But that isn’t how it was supposed to end.

Many of Jack’s scripts for American Tobacco are on line. The “final” script for this episode is one of them, and it shows the stick-up routine was supposed to be on this show after Jack started singing. It’s crossed out in grease pencil. You can see the pages below and click on them to enlarge them.


Both George Balzer and Milt Josefsberg, who were there when the dialogue was created, never mentioned it was supposed to be the conclusion of the Beavers episode.

Here’s Josefsberg’s recollection from his book on Jack and his show:

The joke was first aired on the radio program of March 28, 1948. It was actually created accidentally, and John Tackaberry and I happened to be the midwives. We were writing a program where Jack was supposed to have borrowed Ronald Colman's Oscar and then a crook stole it from him. This was to lead to programs on subsequent weeks when we'd do shows with other Academy Award winners as guest stars, with Jack borrowing each one's Oscar and returning it to the preceding week's guest — but always leaving him one Oscar behind.
As we started to write the scene with the holdup man, I paced the floor while Tackaberry reclined on the sofa. We threw a few tentative lines at each other, none worthy of discussion. Then I thought of a funny feed line but couldn't get a suitable punch to finish it. I told this to "Tack," saying, "Suppose we have the crook pull the classic threat on Jack, 'Your money or your life.' Jack will get screams just staring at the crook and the audience — and if we get a good snapper on it, it'll be great."
Tackaberry seemingly ignored me. I kept thinking of lines and discarding them as mediocre or worse. Finally one line seemed better than the rest, and I threw it at him, half-confidently: "Look, John, the crook says, 'Your money or your life,' and Jack stares at him and then at the audience, and then the crook repeats it and says, 'Come on, you heard me — your money or your life?' and Jack says, 'You mean I have a choice?' "
Now frankly that wasn't too bad an answer, but Tackaberry made no comment, good or bad. I got angry and yelled, "Dammit, if you don't like my lines, throw a couple of your own. Don't just lay there on your fat butt daydreaming. There's got to be a great answer to 'Your money or your life.' "
In reply, Tackaberry angrily snapped at me, "I'm thinking it over."
In a split second we were both hysterical. We knew we could never top that.

Why did the routine get cut from the Beaver show? Was it because the show was running late? That seems quite possible. And considering all the effort that went into the bit, there was no way the writers were going to abandon it entirely; they had found places for cut dialogue before. As it turned out, the Colman episode was the better place for it. Using it there opened up a potential for weeks’ worth of gags, more so than the Beaver episode. Benny and the writers took full advantage of it.

You’ll notice in the March 21st show, the crossed-out lines indicate Benny Rubin was supposed to play the hold-up man. Benny had a small-time hood voice that was perfect for it, But when the routine appeared on March 28th, the actor was, instead, Eddie Marr. Why the change? All we can do is speculate. This was not a good period for Rubin. On March 17, he was ordered by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to pay $80 a week to his separated wife and seven-year-old daughter. Rubin had been dumped by Eagle-Lion, where he had been dialogue director for 16 months, and tried to make ends meet with radio comedy appearances (his last gig, he told the court, was for $50 working for Abbott and Costello).

The routine ended with the revelation that Colman put up his chauffeur to “steal” the Oscar to teach Benny a lesson. Marr appears as the chauffeur when the gag finally played out in a funny episode including one of Jack’s tall tales (though the funniest thing may have been a botched sound effect).

Something else not mentioned is the money-or-your-life routine originated in the minds of Jack’s earlier writers, Ed Beloin and Bill Morrow, in the radio show broadcast November 24, 1940. In this one, Jack is robbed outside of Don Wilson’s home, where he is forced to wait because Wilson decided he didn’t want the whole gang to “barge in on the little woman.” Jack’s response to “Gimme your dough” (the crook doesn’t say “Your money or your life”) was to rant on and on to the robber about how he had suggested to Don to call his wife in advance, and Wilson ignored him, and that’s what led to his misfortunate situation.

This particular version was repeated on the Benny TV show of January 15, 1956. Joe Downing plays the robber; Rubin appears as a cab driver.

Kathy Fuller-Seeley mentions there was another robbed-while-walking episode of the Benny show, going back to the General Tire days on May 11, 1934. Only part of the broadcast is available, but Kathy is doggedly going through the early Benny scripts. They’re being published in a series of books by Bear Manor Media. You can find out about them here.

How Cartoons Are Made – 1930

Disney has always dominated discussions about animation. There was a minor bit of hoopla amongst critics in the early 1950s about the “anti-Disney,” UPA, but by the time I was growing up in the 1960s, it was long forgotten. It took “Of Mice and Magic” to bring some knowledge of other cartoon studios to public knowledge; film publications of the ‘70s were doing the same thing to a more academic group.

There were many articles on cartoon studios during the sound era of theatrical cartoons, some of which were designed to satisfy the curiosity of how they were made.

Below is a story from the Los Angeles Times, dated April 13, 1930. It was published elsewhere. Most of it is about Disney, with a brief list of other studios. Several are not mentioned. Harman-Ising and Iwerks were just starting out, as was Paul Terry on the East Coast, whose first release was in February that year.

This was transcribed on the old GAC site in May 2009.

COMICS MEAN HARD LABOR
Creator of Mickey Mouse and Other Animated Cartoons Works Harder Than Composers
BY JACOB COOPER
A comic-strip artist and a master musician go into a huddle, and—Presto!—we have the animated sound cartoon. Or, rather, this is an abbreviated picture of what goes on in the little studio which hugs the small, green hills on Hyperion avenue, where Walt Disney directs the lives and fates of those droll zoological which his fertile brain creates.
Walt, you know, is, among other things, the daddy of Mr. Michael Q. Rodent, otherwise and affectionately known to his screen public as Mickey Mouse.
Besides the latter, Disney also produces the Silly Symphony series, and after seeing the involved process which goes to make up this one-reeler, it would be safe to wager that it carries behind it more anguish of soul a work-day minute than Tschaikowsky labored under during the creation of his Symphonic Pathetique.
PAINSTAKING DETAIL.
There is more than a keen sense of the humorous needed in the production of this type of opus, although this is one of its main ingredients. There is infinitesimal, painstaking detail to be done on the part of the thirty some odd persons engaged in the studio. Consider the fact that it takes about 6000 drawings to make up one reel of film, and you have an idea of just what these many people are doing. They must possess an understanding of movement involving every situation in which the human or animal body may find itself—an authoritativeness surpassing Michelangelo’s on the self-same subject. Then every person is expected to contribute to the fund of gags and droll situations as the ideas occur to them—and they are funny to the point of tragedy.
On the whole, the entire procedure is somewhat on the same order as any company may use in production of the over-famous back-stage revue. There is the scenario, in this case both written and drawn, in which the scenes are laid out according to the tick of the clock. The sets are drawn on pasteboard. The background of a scene need never be recopied; it is only the characters which move that have to be put through their copius [sic] gestures. These are first drawn on thin paper—one drawing for each frame of the film—and are then traced on a sheet of transparent celluloid. The celluloid drawing is then filled in with the necessary blacks and whites and superimposed over the background which has been placed under a hanging camera.
The cameraman’s job is no grind; far from it. He can only click one frame at a time and at this rate hardly ever exceeds an output of fifty feet per day.
There is very little cutting to be done on this type of film; it is almost in sequence when the exposed film is removed from the camera.
SOUND PREARRANGED
Then comes the musical and sound part. This has all been prearranged even before the drawings are made. In fact, many of the subjects are based on a musical idea. But this is no job for a thoroughly canonical musician. He must suffer to see Liszt made ludicrous, Bach a buffoon, and Debussy delirious. Whistles, horns, drums and perversions of the human voice add to this barnyard bedlam and Mickey Mouse and the Silly Symphony venture forth into the world equipped with the utmost in risible accoutrements.
Then, lest we forget, there are the other cartoons which help fill our moments of frivolity. Two others are being produced in Hollywood: Mintz's "Krazy Kat," and Walter Lantz's "Oswald"—the latter being originally the creation of Walt Disney. It is rumored that Van Beuren's "Aesop's Fables," which now claim New York as their habitat, will move out to Hollywood. The eastern metropolis also sends forth Max Fleischer's "Talkatoons" and "Song Cartoons," declaiming and warbling into the world.

The Many Shapes of Tom

Mice Follies is a Tom and Jerry cartoon where Joe Barbera tries to get gracefulness and humour out of ice skating.

In one scene, Tom chases Jerry and the little mouse (I don’t know what name he was using at this time) on skates. Tom jumps. He goes high. He goes low.



Tom self-congratulates himself. Evidently he hasn’t watched Wile E. Coyote because he should know what happens next.



Why is that ironing board out? Oh, right. There’s no maid any more to clean up the house.

Two scenes later, Tom becomes a sled.



Scott Bradley fills the soundtrack with Tchaikovsky’s “Sleeping Beauty Waltz.”

The credited animators are the usual crew—Ken Muse, Ed Barge, Ray Patterson and Irv Spence. No doubt Al Grandmain handled the effects animation. Bob Gentle painted the backgrounds. Said the Motion Picture exhibitor “This has excellent musical and sound accompaniment, as well as novel drawings and effects. GOOD.”

The cartoon was released in 1954 but copyrighted a year earlier.

Bimbo Can't Escape

Swing You Sinners is filled with almost non-stop nightmarish imagery and is one of my favourite Fleischer cartoons.

Bimbo finds himself in a graveyard, with ghosts and gravestones singing accusations against him before escaping to a warped farmyard and being chased by all kinds of creatures.

In one scene, the grass opens up and a huge mouth comes out, while headstones advance toward him and form a square around him.



Bimbo jumps to escape. Cut to him grasping and then climbing to the top of a tall pole. “Oh, no!” wails Bimbo. A tombstone grows, develops a face and responds, “Oh, yes.” Bimbo drops to the ground.



And it’s on to the next scene.

Ted Sears and William Bowsky are the credited animators.

Shamus Culhane remembered the cartoon very well. He wrote almost two pages about it in Talking Animals and Other People, saying he, Al Eugster, George Cannata, Seymour Kneitel and William Henning (as well as Bowsky) were suddenly promoted to animators and this was their first cartoon. Culhane felt Grim Natwick should have received a credit for all the work he did on it.

It was released Sept. 24, 1930.