A Close Look at Close

Commentators have been with us since before electronic media. Back then, they were found in newspapers and called “editorial writers.”

Radio networks were skittish whenever analysts veered into giving their own opinions. It usually resulted in management deciding it would be better having one less analyst. H.V. Kaltenborn was shown the door at CBS. So was Bill Shirer. Later, Howard K. Smith. Even the sainted Edward R. Murrow ran afoul of the executive suite at CBS.

Another lesser-known commentator was Upton Close, whose real name was Josef Washington Hall. In his newspaper days in 1932, he predicted China would become Communist, and “a mad military clique” was rising in Japan. However, on the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Close put forward the idea on radio that the Japanese government and military really weren’t responsible.

After NBC decided Close was not suitable for its airwaves, he ended up at the Mutual Broadcasting System. That’s where we find him at the start of 1947. Herald Tribune columnist John Crosby decided to do what we now call “fact checking” into some of things Close declared on his broadcasts. The Daily Worker called him a “fascist.” Crosby was more restrained in his column of Feb. 5th that year.

RADIO IN REVIEW
By JOHN CROSBY
The All-American Commentator
Criticism of journalism on the radio is a ticklish subject, particularly in a newspaper which is engaged in the same line of work. But, since news is not only the most popular but certainly the most important commodity radio has to offer, the handling of news and news comment is a difficult topic to avoid. Certainly all sorts of opinions, from extreme right to extreme left, should be on the air, but those who purvey them should have something to offer besides an opinion.
I'm speaking specifically of Upton Close, "defender of American principles and champion of straight thinking" or, as he is sometimes billed, "The All-American Commentator." Close, now heard on the Mutual Broadcasting System on Tuesdays at 10:15 p. m., was twice dropped by the National Broadcasting Company. After a decidedly curious interpretation of Pearl Harbor made in a broadcast on Dec. 7, 1941, he was suspended on the ground that his comments were irresponsible. His later broadcasts convinced NBC that his knowledge of the Far Eastern situation was questionable and they refused to renew his con-tract in 1944. Close's political convictions are about one hundred yards to the right of even the National Association of Manufacturers, which is pretty far right. After a close atudy of five of his scripts, and after hearing many of his broadcasts, I can report with reasonable confidence that he is anti-Communist, anti-British, anti-Russian, anti-United Nations, anti-Roosevelt, anti-Truman and even, curiously enough, anti-Republican or at least anti-Vandenberg. I use the phrase "reasonable confidence" advisedly because is very difficult to pin Mr. Close down in any one statement. His sentences start out bravely toward the Polish elections and may wind up with an oblique reference to Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt's automobile accident. Here is a typical example of his "straight thinking":
"Our Communist allies have as usual clipped us with surprise offensives. We're all wrapped up by their push on Norway to fortify Spitzbergen and the election in Poland which, if we leave it alone, makes us look either like mice or admitting that eastern Europe was outside our province to begin with. Either alternative would leave the Roosevelt war effort still further without meaning and internationalism a yet more discredited illusion." For a sheer jumble of disconnected incidents, the only comparable statement I ever heard emanated from a terribly confused woman at Schraffts, who was attempting to explain the Supreme Court's gold decision.
Close, however, is not confused; he is just cautious. Sensible persons, he says, "can see no possible further use for all those in the Latin-American and Far Eastern Divisions (of the State Depart-ment) who can't forget both the hates of the last war which are no longer useful and the false loves of the last war which make us ridiculous." What are the "false loves of the last war which make us ridiculous?" Britain and Russia, apparently, but it's hard to tell. What are the false hates—Peron and Franco, or the Nazis and Fascists?
"Under a Republican Congress and with no great persuasive voice to sell them on world government, the American people are going to have sober second thoughts about the United Nations, particularly about setting up world government authority over our economy, including tariffs and prices and how much stuff we can make and grow." You will note that Close doesn't say that the "world government," which the United Nations certainly isn't, has any intention of controlling American tariffs, prices and "the stuff we can make and grow." He just says we'll have sober second thoughts about it. Who had the first thoughts, Mr. Close? No one has ever hinted at the extension of United Nations authority to include control of prices, which even the Administration has abandoned; production, which has never been attempted in this country except in war time, and farm products. Such irresponsibility isn't funny and goes dangerously beyond the ordinary concepts of free speech.
• • •
Close is adept at this sort of shadowy mud-slinging. A masterpiece of Close "straight thinking" is this paragraph in which the commentator was discussing General George C. Marshall's fitness to be Secretary of State: "Those who doubt General Marshall base their feelings largely upon his equivocal testimony before the Pearl Harbor Investigating Committee but at that time Marshall was still a soldier, who never; brings dishonor upon a superior! officer." The implication is that Marshall didn't tell all he knew about President Roosevelt's pre-war diplomacy but Close can't quite bring himself to make bold statements. While the air should be free to all opinion, the broadcasters certainly ought to set up some sort of journalistic standards. Close's talks are unfair, wildly implausible and at their worst arc plain gobbledygook. They don't meet any editorial standards at all. No matter what his convictions, any good editor would ask Close to clarify these curious sentences, to substantiate the vague implications, and to explain why his incredible conclusions differ so widely from those of his fellow reporters.
Mr. Close is sponsored by an organization called the National Economic Council, which has dedidicated itself, it says, to "upholding the American way of life."

Close’s career at Mutual didn’t last much longer. He had been fighting with his sponsor, which decided not to renew its contact with him. Close announced on the air Feb. 11 his broadcast would be the final one for Mutual. He was being heard on 67 affiliates.

He had other problems that year. In September, his wife sued for divorce, claiming her 54-year-old husband was openly fooling around with his secretary, who was 30 years younger than him. He was living in Mexico in November 1960 when he died in a car-train crash.

The week’s columns are below. Some are dated.

Monday, February 3: The movie The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) was inspired by a radio show written by Fulton Oursler, who also got a credit on the film. Of course, the radio show was inspired by something that was a little older. Crosby gives the radio version a passing grade.
Tuesday, February 4: Odds and ends, including a rare story about television. Crosby leads off with his take on something got lots of notice—Lee DeForest’s public complaint about commercial radio. My recollection is Crosby appeared in a short film after a clip of DeForest dictating this column.
Thursday, February 6 and Friday, February 7: a two-part piece on the F.C.C. and the new Republican congress.

You can click on the stories to enlarge the copy. Cartoons are by Bob Moore of the Daily News in Los Angeles.

No April Fool

No, there will be no April Fool post this year.

The blog will be taking a holiday fairly soon (for how long, we don’t know). It was supposed to have wrapped up months ago but new posts have been squeezed out. We’ll be here at least two more weeks.

The frame above comes from Stooge For a Mouse, a 1950 Warners release from the Friz Freleng unit.

Here’s a 12-drawing run cycle of Sylvester from the same cartoon. Note he sprouts an extra leg when he has to look speedier.



Emery Hawkins animated part of this cartoon, in addition to Friz’ regulars of Art Davis, Ken Champin, Gerry Chiniquy and Virgil Ross.

Pun of Tomorrow

Big takes weren’t the only thing in Tex Avery’s animation arsenal. He liked visual puns. Sometimes he’d make fun of his own puns. Others, he didn’t.

Here’s an example of the latter from Car of Tomorrow (1951). Narrator Gil Warren tells us about a brand-new model. “But we advise against buying it.”



Cut to the car’s hood. “It still has a few bugs in the motor.” The hood lifts up.



Roy Williams and Rich Hogan are both given story credits on this. I don’t know who designed the cartoon; Gene Hazleton maybe? I quite like the approximations of early ‘50s cars. Johnny Johnsen drew and painted the backgrounds. The animators are Mike Lah, Walt Clinton and Grant Simmons.

He's No Bing

Back in the network radio days, word when around that Jack Benny was dependent on his writers. Jack joked about it. Harry Conn actually believed it.

But you’ll find a number of newspaper articles in the Golden Age that spoke of the collaborative nature of the writing on the show. While Jack didn’t do the writing, he sat in with the writers as they dissected the script. He was his show’s script editor and approved every word, even those the writers talked him into that he didn’t particularly like.

This story appeared in the Springfield Sunday Union and Republican, July 3, 1938. There is no byline.

Jack Benny Goes to Town In Sustained Popularity
Radio's Ace Comedian Leans On His ‘Gag’ Writers But Not So Completely as Do Bing Crosby and the ‘Good News’ Performers—Sets Own Pace for Writers and Cast Alike
Radio's consistent No 1 feature—the Jack Benny show—left the air waves last Sunday night but will be back in its accustomed spot on the same network 13 weeks hence, or on October 2. The comedian, voted for three years running as tops in his field, and his wife, Mary Livingstone. and the rest of their troupe take this leave of the radio audience annually to enjoy a well-deserved vacation—more than often a vacation fraught with even more intensive movie and other work.
But they're off the air for the summer, now, so there can be no press agentry suspected in a postlude devoted to a diagnosis of their success on the radio. Recently this column accredited the writer of Bing Crosby's show and the writers and producers of "Good News of 1938," which precedes it every Thursday night on the Red network, with a fairer share of the success of the show than the "big name" performers themselves contributed. Does the same hold true for Benny's performances?
Probably not. Jack Benny's program hasn't the pace of Bing Crosby's nor the variety of "Good News of 1938." But it has a peculiarly individualistic style of humor and presentation that is Jack Benny's—and his alone. It succeeded when Harry Conn, the noted gag writer, was doing his scripts; it succeeded just as well in the recent months when Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin were writing his gags.
Individual Style
The reason simply is—Jack Benny. He knows precisely what he wants in the way of program structure; he personally sets the pace for the whole show; he is perfectly willing to be ribbed unmercifully by his cast (something few other star comedians will stand for), and he has a peculiar style of humor that is debonair New York and Hollywood and at the same time naive Waukegan, Ill.
Assuredly the former fiddler-trouper from Waukegan has come a long way in radio and the films, thanks to a peculiar popular appeal that must set him to wondering himself how long it can last. That he was just another comedian and master-of-ceremonies before he struck the responsive chord on the wave lengths three or four years ago, everyone along the Rialto recalls.
One of the little known facts about the Benny shows, which have lately been staged chiefly in Hollywood because of his new domicile there, is that even his orchestra does not hear the script rehearsal. Thus the sallies of laughter from the audience get a spontaneous spark from the cast itself. More than that, everyone in the cast likes working with Jack Benny, though he is as serious in preparation and rehearsal as he in funny in actual performance. Every line is studied intensively for the right build-up; every situation gauged for the proper reaction. Jack and his scripters work the full week to prepare for each week's end performance; while in New York at least, they spent the whole of Sunday afternoon in rehearsal.
All of this is not to detract from Jack Benny's writers, two extremely well paid young men to whom he is perfectly willing to give credit and kudos. That the writers are less the mainsprings in the Benny show than they are in the Crosby and "Good News" shows is no reflection on the talents of Messrs Morrow and Beloin.
Bill Morrow is a 29-year-old Chicagoan, not many years out of Northwestern university. He became a press agent upon graduation, traveling the circuits with many shows. While at this work he submitted suggestions for material to Jack Benny, Phil Baker and others. In March, 1938, after Harry Conn had left him, Benny needed a gag writer badly and invited Morrow to join him in Hollywood. There he teamed Morrow up with Ed Beloin, a 27-year-old graduate of Columbia university, who had been a humor magazine writer while in college.
Beloin's hookup with Benny was fortuitous. He had submitted a script to Fred Allen, who couldn't use it at the time. Fred, being an intimate friend of Jack Benny, sent Beloin and his script over to Benny. The comedian didn't call upon Beloin until some months later when he sent him a hurry call to join him in Detroit. Thence they went on to Hollywood together.
The Morrow-Beloin team now has a three-year contract through 1940 to write for Jack Benny, doing the dialog for his pictures as well as his radio shows. Together they conceive the situations, write the gags, see the shows through rehearsals. But always at their side is the indefatigable Benny himself, with probably the keenest sense of radio audience appeal and the shrewdest ability to edit and present "copy" of any comedian in the business.

Morrow and Beloin did more than come up with gags. Jack’s on-air “gang” was changing and they had to invent new characters for each of them. Phil Harris, Rochester and Dennis Day joined the show. Andy Devine was used frequently for a couple of years. There was Carmichael the polar bear (other animals were short-lived) and Mr. Billingsley the boarder. They all added something to the programme, thanks to their acting abilities, the writers and, through his oversight, Jack himself.

Friz on MGM and Tex

A number of the great Warner Bros. cartoon directors lived beyond the period where the only word in animation was “Disney” into a time of being honoured and interviewed about their cartoon careers.

Friz Freleng was one. He went on publicity tours and his thoughts were written in local newspaper feature columns.

There was a wonderful time, before the rise of the internet in the post-modem era, when fanzines flourished. My favourites were Mindrot/Animania and Animato!. The average fan didn’t have too much knowledge of theatrical animation history then, so every issue was, for me, a goldmine of information.

Happily, a number of the people who wrote for the publication 35 or so years ago are still with us, and still doing animation research.

With that brief introduction, let me pass along part of an interview published in Animato No. 18. It is from a chat between Jerry Beck and Friz Freleng on August 22, 1988. I hope I’m not violating any copyright by reproducing this portion, but some of what’s said may be news to some readers. The full magazine is available on-line at archive.org.

Jerry asked Friz a question about Chuck Jones, but it was never answered. Friz also doesn't mention, as he did in other interviews, his distaste at being assigned to direct The Captain and the Kids cartoons at Metro.

It's pretty well known now that Friz did not bring in Tex Avery for Meatless Flyday. Why Friz didn't correct Jerry on this, I don't know, but he went on to talk about another, unidentified cartoon.

You can see Friz wasn’t altogether enamoured at Tex’s style of humour.

You left Warner Bros. and took Hugh Harman's place at MGM for a while.

Fred Quimby tempted me to come over. He offered me a lot of money; for me at that time, it was a hell of a lot of money. I signed up in August, and my contract was up in October with Schlesinger. And Leon was madder than hell. He said, "You didn't give me a chance to compete before you signed up with him."
When I got there, Fred Quimby said to me, "Do anything you want to do. What are you going to do?" And I said, "I don't know. If I had something in mind, I would be making it over at Schlesinger's." He said, "You're right. Well, you can do whatever you feel is right."
I jumped from $250.00 a week to $375.00 at MGM. I thought it was going to be the same as over at Warner's: everybody cooperating with each other, nobody undermining the other guy. If they did [at Warner's], I wasn't conscious of it. I think Leon depended on me, and no one dared try to undermine me.
So when I got over to MGM, there was conspiracy right away. Joe Barbera, Dan Gordon, George Gordon, all them were working trying to put the New York people in front of the California people. And then there was real turmoil, because everyone was clamoring for position. I was so glad to get out of that place.

Did you last a year at MGM?

I was there about a year and a half [until April 1939]. Then one day I came home so disgusted with the whole thing I told my wife, "You know what? I'm going to swallow my pride, and call Schlesinger and see if I can get my job back."
And you know, that very evening, the phone rang. It was Henry Binder [Schlesinger's assistant]. I laughed, because nobody ever called me before. He was laughing, and I was laughing. He says, "I hear you're unhappy over there." So they must have got it through the grapevine.
So to make a long story short, I went over and talked to Leon, and said, "I don't want any more money. I'll take the money that I had before. I just want to get out of there." And he was very happy to get me back, because he tried two or three other guys there. A fellow by the name of Norm McCabe, and Ben Hardaway... And they were all making cartoons that just didn't have it. The cartoons never seemed to find the path, they kind of wandered about. There was no guide there. With Leon, it was like a ship without a captain. Everyone was going in different directions, and Leon just didn't seem to be able to handle that.
So I came back, and Tex started making better cartoons, and we all started imitating each other. We finally found a path.

There was that gag sensibility you got around 1940.

We finally found a direction. Clampett was very good at it.

What were your feelings about Tex Avery and Bob Clampett back then, and Chuck Jones even? What was your reaction to them as people?

I was so engrossed in what I was doing I didn't even care what the other guys were doing. You were always trying to do better than they were. Unconsciously, there was competition, naturally. We wanted to make the best pictures possible.
I think we all influenced each other. Without bragging, like where one guy thinks he created this and that. I don't think anybody created anything himself.
I think they were all little pieces of somebody else. I’d see something that Clampett did and I liked. I did it maybe in a little different way than he did. I'd see something that Tex Avery did, that Disney did... You don't create these things all yourself. They build from other people.
It was a creative thing. The guy who had the greatest imagination in the whole business was Walt himself. When I saw Snow White, it was an entirely different concept than anyone had ever thought of, ever. The concept of animation, even. Nobody animated like that; nobody drew characters like that; nobody put personality like that into the characters. It came from him.
I'm sure it influenced our thinking, and everybody's thinking in animation. They're still trying to imitate that.

Let me ask you some little specific questions. What happened when Tex Avery left Warner Brothers? Was it over them cutting a gag in one of his Bugs Bunnys? Do you know anything about that?

I don't think so. I think Bobby [Clampett] and Tex were always seeking something else. Because nobody really knew what the future was, and everybody wanted to be his own producer. But they didn't know enough about making deals, and they never really got anything out of it.
I think it was Speaking of Animals that Tex was working on before. I think in his book [Tex Avery: King of Cartoons, by Joe Adamson] he mentions that he proposed it to Leon, and Leon turned it down. I never knew what was going on, really.
The reason he went over to MGM was when I came back he knew there was a spot open. And when he asked me about it I said I left there because the politics were terrible. But MGM was the height of motion picture studios, and I said, "Tex, they'd love to have you there." I figured I'd warned him enough. He said, "You think so?" I said, "I know they'd be tickled to death to have someone like you."
Boom! He was over there, and he got the job. I didn't think he was going to go over there, because I told him about the problems I had. But I figured he must have figured, "Hell, that won't happen to me."
It happened to him. When he got over to MGM he was a very unhappy man, because Bill and Joe took over. He was second banana, no matter what he did. He tried desperately. I look at his cartoons and see elements of desperation.
He was afraid to do subtle things. Tom and Jerry had that. They had little personalities, and subtleties, and things like that. Of course they had the broad gags – they were stealing part of Tex's stuff, the broad stuff.

There was a cartoon about two or three years later, that you made about a spider, called Meatless Flyday.

Oh, it was terrible.

Well, I like that cartoon. And you used Tex's voice as the spider – did you say come over and do this for me, or something?

Yeah. I also had him do a character where he was supposed to sing in rhythm, and he just couldn't get the rhythm. I remember we put him in one of these booths you record in, and shook the booth, and said "Just sing to that rhythm." But he couldn't do it. He just never had a sense of rhythm.
He was a fun guy to work with. Everybody liked Tex, but Tex was so insecure. I felt about his cartoons that he overdid them because he was so insecure about them. He couldn't do a subtle cartoon. If he did something, it had to be twice as strong as anybody else, because he was insecure about what he was doing.
It seemed like he never came up with a strong personality after he left Warner's. Tex was so anxious to please he was overdoing everything. He should have come up with characters like Bugs Bunny, things like that...
But I think he created a kind of contemporary art with that desperation, when you look back. His stuff was nothing I admired.

What's great is that your stuff and Tex's stuff is different. It's different, and yet they're both funny, and they both use the cartoon medium to its potential.

Well, you put your own personality in. Tex was a very introverted man. I think he had real family problems. You didn't know Tex; I never knew him outside of his outer skin.

A lot of thanks should be given to people like Jerry and so many others who interviewed people in animation now long gone and laid the foundation stones of animation research. I appreciate them, anyway.

Crazy Dog

Little Shep throws fits at the end of Bone Sweet Bone after being told by a paleontologist professor that the bone he retrieved wasn’t a valuable dinosaur bone after all.

This gives animator Don Williams to move the dog in various poses, with dry brush strokes in between.



Considering the short was co-written by Bill Scott, it is appropriate the last pose has moose antlers.

Art Davis’ usual crew of Basil Davidovich, Emery Hawkins and Bill Melendez join Williams on this cartoon. Phil De Guard painted the backgrounds. The short’s official release date was May 22, 1948, though it was playing at the Rivoli in La Crosse, Wisconsin nine days before that.

Just a Quick Drink

There are scenes with very quick movement in The Mouse Comes to Dinner, released by MGM in May 1945.

In this one, Tom gulps down a glass of champagne. Director Bill Hanna times the drawings so the whole bit takes just over half a second (11 frames).

The second and third drawings are the same, but the camera (by Jack Stevens?) trucks in just slightly in the third frame.

Swinging the arm up takes up two frames, as does the next drawing. The remaining drawings take up only one frame apiece.



You’ll notice when Tom first raises the glass, there’s nothing in it. Nobody would catch that watching the cartoon and it saves some painting.

I suspect a few years earlier, Hanna would have had Tom daintily sip the champagne, with Tom in various poses like in a Rudy Ising cartoon. The quicker way is the funnier way.

Ray Patterson, Ken Muse, Irv Spence and Pete Burness are the credited animators. Harvey Eisenberg (uncredited) would have drawn the layouts.