A Funny Thing Happened On My Way To the Paramount

There were these two comedy writers, and one said to the other. . .

Well, that’s pretty much how Erskine Johnson’s Hollywood column read once. He didn’t do that much work. He let the writers fill it.

This gives you an idea of what the top-echelon radio comedy scribes on the West Coast thought was funny.

It appeared in papers starting around Feb. 6, 1950.

Gagsters Tell of Best Laughs
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
NEA Staff Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD—I was on my way to Paramount to talk to Alan Ladd when I bumped into Al Schwartz and Marvin Fisher who write jokes for Bob Hope.
The conversation, naturally, swung toward gags and I asked the boys about the biggest laugh Hope garnered during the past radio season. After due mulling and consideration, they came up with this one. In one of his monologues, Hope said:
"I've got one of those teeny television sets and my cat loves it. He drags it over to a mouse-hole and turns on the cheese commercials."
Holding my sides, which I thought would split, I quickly jotted down the quip, thanked Al and Marvin, and continued on what I thought was my way to Paramount.
But a block later, while crossing the street against a red light, I was almost hit by a car which turned out to contain four Jack Benny gagmen. Remembering my good luck with Hope's writers, I asked the Bennymen what they considered their best recent gag.
The boys (Sam Perrin, Milt Josefberg [sic], George Balzer and Jack Tackaberry) put their collective funnybones together and finally agreed on the following:
Jack was in England trying to exchange money with his hotel clerk. "Deflation or no deflation," said the thrifty Benny, "I want more for my money." The clerk replied:
"Begging your pardon, sir, but it's hard to believe that you and the Marshall Plan come from the same country."
* * *
By the time I had written down the jest and said goodby, it was too late to keep my date at Paramount. So I decided to drop In at Lucey's, where the stars and the gossip hang out. But no sooner had I landed safely on the opposite side of the street than I collided with a lad named Paul Henning, who writes the Burns and Allen show.
I asked Paul about his best recent gag. He said the biggest laugh on that program never got on the air. It happened while one of the shows was being taped for a later airing.
Seems that Gracie was at a costumers looking for a couple of outfits she and George could wear to a masquerade party. The dialog:
Gracie: "Say, that cowboy suit hanging there might look good on George."
Clerk: "That's from the picture 'The Outlaw' and I can give you the costume Jane Russell wore."
Gracie: "Oh, no, thank you. I could never fill her shoes."
Well, said Paul, the laugh was so big it was snipped from the tape for fear the censors would complain.
It was too late to collect movie gossip so I went to a phone and called all the radio gagmen I know and some I don't know.
Hugh Wedlock Jr. and Howard Snyder who write Edgar Bergen's show contributed this:
Dick Powell was a guest on the Bergen show and was playing the role of a private eye. In his narration, Dick said: "The blonde threw her arms around my neck. This came as a big surprise to me as she was standing 10 feet away at the time."
* * *
From Ray Singer and Dick Chevillat, who write the Phil Harris-Alice Faye show:
Alice was laughing at Phil because he wanted to be an inventor. "Go ahead and laugh at me," said Phil. "People always laugh at genius. They laughed at Edison. They thought he was crazy. They thought Fulton was crazy. Thy thought Marconi was crazy."
"Yeah," interruped Frankie Remley, "they even thought Sam Fromkiss was crazy."
"Who was Sam Fromkiss?" asked Phil.
"My uncle," said Frank. "He WAS crazy."
From Norman Paul of Jimmy Durante's writing staff:
Durante was describing the celebrities at the opening of the opera in New York. “Lady Mendl wore a diamond tiara in her hair, Mrs. Vanderbilt a ruby tiara, but all eyes were on me,” boasted Durante.
"What did you have on your head?" asked Don Ameche.
"Popcorn," said Jimmy. "Some guy in the balcony had a leaky bag."
Charlie Isaacs, who knocks out the zanies for Martin and Lewis:
They were doing the life story of Dean and Jerry, starting with the time the two met as little boys. "What's your name?" asked Dean. "Jerome Levitch," answered Jerry. "What's yours?" "Paul Crossetti," replied Dean. "Gee," said Jerry, "I can just see our names up in lights—Martin and Lewis."
All of which just shows you what can happen to me when I'm on my way to Paramount to talk to Alan Ladd.

More than 75 years after Erskine Johnson let the writers write his column, we have done the same. Which way to the Paramount studios?

Cingalli Circle

Big-Hearted Bosko (March 1932) has an odd error toward the end, at least in the version in circulation.

The cartoon is fairly routine, with the first half taken up with Bosko and Bruno skating on a pond. They find a baby in a basket and take him home.

The second half shows Bosko and Bruno failing to stop the child from crying until the dog puts on a lamp shade as a hula skirt and starts wiggling. All three of them start swinging to Richard Whiting’s “Cingalli.”

For four frames, a circle flashes on the screen. What’s it supposed to be?



Oh, well. It doesn’t stop them from dancing. A roast duck makes a cameo appearance.

Friz Freleng and Ham Hamilton are the credited animators.

Crying Eyes of the Walrus

Walter Lantz’s Musical Miniature series holds its own with any cartoons produced in Hollywood at the time.

Kiddie Koncert (released by United Artists, Apr. 2, 1948) puts Wally Walrus front and centre as a conductor, with some fine animation by Ed Love. He’s responsible for a good portion of the cartoon, including a cute gag timed to a movement in Von Suppe’s “Morning Noon and Night in Vienna.”

The audience starts crying during a violin and harp passage, tears from the audience overflowing the small schoolhouse where the concert is taking place. There’s a cut to Wally conducting while wiping his nose. Director Dick Lundy comes in for a close-up, then cuts to Wally’s eyes. They fill up, and the pupils swim to safety. You can see some frames below. I like how the pupils congratulate each other, then go back to where they started.



Alas, only one other Musical Miniature followed, Pixie Picnic, released May 28, 1948. Lantz' deal with U.A. started to sour, and to save money, he virtually shut down his studio. Lundy, Love and musical director Darrell Calker did not return when the studio re-opened in 1951.

Here’s what Boxoffice had to say about the cartoon on Apr. 17, 1948.

Kiddy Concert [sic]
United Artists (Lantz Cartune) 7 Mins.
Very good. Wally Walrus conducts the school orchestra in a concert. The orchestra is composed of chickens, penguins, pigs, turtles, seals, a bloodhound and a skunk, who plays a trumpet outside the window. All the performances are novel. A centipede plays five violins, while the dog drummer beats out the rhythm with a pair of knitting needles. A pig trumpet player runs into trouble when he attempts to chew bubblegum and play his instrument at the same time. The musical score is excellent.

The ad to the right is for a theatre in Houston on the day of release.

He Never Said No

He appeared on the Jack Benny radio show 186 times—and that was after Jack changed sponsors to Grape Nuts Flakes in 1942. That doesn’t include the Jell-O years that started in fall 1934.

On occasion, you could hear Jack trying to stifle laughing during dialogue with him, which generally started with one word: “Yehhhhhhhs?”

Frank Nelson was known on radio and TV for his comedy, but in the 1930s he had been a dramatic actor, as well as the announcer, on the Lux Radio Theatre. He announced and performed sketches on The Shell Chateau. The Los Angeles Daily News of Jan. 15, 1938 reported columnist Dr. Ralph L. Power had selected Frank as the top local dramatic actor of 1937 (the top local dramatic actress was “Bee Benadaret.”)

Bruce Nicholl’s radio column of the Lincoln Star of May 1st that year mentioned this accomplishment:

There was considerable activity at the CBS Hollywood studios Saturday [April 30] as the network dedicated its new radio center there. Beneath the buzz of excitement, however, we discovered one fellow who was pretty calm about the whole thing.
He was the one who said, "On the air from Columbia Square!" Considering the conditions under which he worked, we considered it pretty remarkable that he didn't crack up some time during the day. He banged out the first salute at 6 a. m., and the last one at 12:45 a. m.
CBS told us that this announcer is Frank Nelson. Around the Columbia studios in Hollywood he is known as the official breaker-in because he presided when CBS opened its new studios there two years ago.
Mr. Nelson was assigned to bark out this salute fifteen times. After looking the situation over carefully he planned several little tricks to vary the routine. First of all he got permission from CBS to say this once in a while: "Columbia Square is on the air!"
He later noticed that twelve different inflections were possible for the two phrases. After considerable debate CBS decided to let Mr. Nelson do what his reckless spirit pleased with the other three.

There were several newspaper columns over the years profiling Nelson and his Benny connection. Here’s one from the North American Newspaper Alliance, Feb. 17, 1963.

Jack Benny’s Nemesis Hollywood’s Only ‘Yessss’ Man
By HAROLD HEFFERNAN
HOLLYWOOD (NANA) — By their voices ye shall know them — and that goes double for a select little group of entertainment celebrities famed for their distinctive sound effects.
Edward G. Robinson was asked recently what one factor he felt contributed mostly to his success, "The voice," he replied without hesitation.
This is true in equal measure where Bette Davis, Marlon Brando, Jimmy Cagney, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, Andy Devine, Katharine Hepburn and several others are concerned. Professional mimics have made careers out of impersonating them.
And if you had hidden any of them behind a curtain with orders to spout off, who could have missed out on the vocal intonations of such screen immortals as Ronald Colman, Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe or Charles Laughton? On the other hand, there is one outstanding voice coming from the television screen today which while immediately recognizable is owned by a virtual nonentity — by name at least. The voice belongs to Frank Nelson, but the introduction means little or nothing.
* * *
WHEN, however, he is identified as the habitual nemesis of Jack Benny on his weekly television show, Frank Nelson can be enthusiastically acclaimed by millions of set-watchers who break into laughter the moment his drawn out, up-pitched "Yessss?" launches Benny on a harrowing round of harrassments. Among other hecklings, Nelson turns up in Jack's life when he goes Christmas shopping for shoelaces and as the station master he fouls up Jack's travel arrangements when he starts on a trip.
The fact that few fans know his face, fewer his name, bothers the mild-mannered, mustachioed Nelson not a bit. His anonymity was pointedly illustrated on the stage where he was rehearsing a Benny show. The interviewer turned to a veteran CBS studio still man with the request that he shoot a picture of Frank Nelson. "Frank Nelson," the lensman repeated. "Who's he?"
Denver-born Nelson (he got his voice-pitching start there in the 20's via radio station KOA) explains his variegated TV character as "the fellow who raises hell with Jack. He's wild and way out and, unfortunately, he's typed me to a stage where I can't play movie heavies any more."
* * *
IT SEEMS that Nelson enjoyed a well-paying career in motion pictures until Benny dropped off radio and launched his TV show. Jack took all his good friends with him, Nelson among them.
"I'm not exactly a newcomer to Jack's show," Nelson points out. "In fact, I'm in my 28th year with him right now. We've never had a contract, and I turned down a request from him to do a show only once—and that was because I had a long-standing date with friends to go on a fishing trip."

While Nelson always seemed to be playing incompetent doctors, or floorwalkers or clerks who detested Benny, one of my favourite radio roles was when he was a baseball announcer, calling play-by-play with a hot dog stuffed in his mouth, making his call unintelligible. He also purred commercials for Yhtapmys Soothing Syrup over the course of more than a year. And he was the doorman who barked “Who do you think I am, Drear Pooson?” with Jack laughing at the unexpected line that had been set up 15 minutes earlier when Don Wilson butchered some dialogue.

While some radio shows, Phil Harris’ for example, used to say something like “Appearing on tonight’s programme were...” Jack's rarely did. However, Nelson got more attention in the television years. His last appearance with Benny was in 1963.

By the 1970s, most of his on-the-air work was in cartoons. Nelson had experience there, too; he had been the narrator of the Jerky Journeys released by Republic in the late ‘40s and can be heard on animated shorts for John Sutherland Productions around the same time. He was also active on the executive of AFTRA.

Nelson died in September 1986. What was the first thing his obituary from the Associated Press mentioned? That he “performed regularly with Jack Benny.” And it remarked about the one word for which he is known the best.

He Never Owned Any Mice

Say what you will about Paul Terry, but he was a pioneer in animation and successfully ran his own studio for almost 25 years. And he realised television had a hunger for cartoons, so he sold 112 old Terrytoons to CBS on November 10, 1953, then worked out a five-million-dollar deal in late December 1955 for the network to buy his studio, its characters and 1,100 master reels of cartoons, enabling him to live a life of ease at a gentleman’s club for the rest of his life.

Terry (photo to the right with musical director Phil Scheib) must have had his publicity machine churning at the start of 1955. Several feature stories about him were syndicated to newspapers across the U.S. We’ve transcribed one from Dick Kleiner of the Newspaper Enterprise Association. (He called Terry “elderly.” Terry was 67).

This column is from the Hearst news service, Jan. 25, 1955. Terry’s story sounds more fanciful than anything that actually went into his cartoons.

Assignment America
By PHYLLIS BATTELLE
NEW YORK, (INS) — Almost anyone who has had close dealings with the parlor variety of mouse will agree, I think, that this is a rodent with no charm.
There are exceptions, of course, as in the case of a man I knew who claimed mice were quite nice when happy. You put out a wedge of cheese in a kitchen corner, he contended, and your friendly mouse will return your kindness by eschewing your fruit cake. This man recently left us, however, and I think the state took him gently out of circulation.
Anyway, what puzzles me is why — if mice are so generally unloved in the home — they are so popular in the theatre and the comic book?
True, Mickey and Mighty Mouse and their crawling cinematic friends do not look like the mice we hear behind the walls when the lights are out. But they are mice, no doubt about it.
And a mouse is a mouse, even in top hat and tails.
The answer, according to Paul Terry, 67-year-old creator of Mighty Mouse (the flying super-mouse), is not easy to put down in black and white. It has something to do with egomania, sympatica, quantum mechanics, lend-lease and Einstein's law of relativity.
That is, if I understood Mr. Terry correctly.
"You see," said Terry, furrowing his brow, "mice are really pretty interesting little fellows when you look at them analytically.
"The trouble is that most people in the home don't take the time to study their mice. They don't stop to think 'there's a cute little rascal when a mouse runs between their legs. They are too startled. But I am digressing, am I not?"
We gave it to him straight. “Yes.”
"Well, I recognized the inherent values in mice about 15 years ago," Terry resumed. "Their very smallness made them the perfect heroes for animated animal cartoons. A basic rule of cartooning is that the hero has got to be the underdog . . . people have to feel sympathy for him.
"So one day I took this little church mouse and put him in a very tough situation. I got him out in the open with hundreds of kitty-cats chasing him, see, and then to get him out of danger I had him grab a lot of fruit from a market he was passing by—and he grew so big and strong that all of a sudden he just took off and flew through the air."
Wow, Mr. Terry.
"And that's how Mighty Mouse was born. People loved him from the start because he was so little and apparently helpless, but underneath it all had heroic tendencies."
Terry, who doesn't care to say how much income little Mighty has netted him, is celebrating his 40th birthday in the animated cartoon business this year (he turns out dozens at his "terrytoons" plant in New Rochelle, N.Y.) and he insists he came by his career quite naturally.
His mother and brother were artists, so he was more or less born to create, and his father was an animal-lover, which meant that as a child Paul had as personal pets at home in San Francisco: one sheep, one goat, one mule, 50 pigeons and 25 or 30 hares.
"No," he admitted reflectively, "I never owned any mice. I wish that I had.”
He might then have thought up Mighty Mouse 40 years ago, instead of 15, and beat Mickey Mouse to the punch!

An indication of the success of Terry’s studio was given by columnist Sid Shalit in the New York Daily News, Jan. 18, 1955.

Mighty Mouse has the same initials as Marilyn Monroe, and apparently is as popular with the small fry as the shapely movie queen is with their ever-lovin’ daddies. Latest rating figures reveal that Paul Terry’s cartoon character, who appears every third week on the “Barker Bill” show, is CBS-TV’s highest-rated afternoon property.

Barker Bill left the CBS schedule Nov. 25, 1955, but the network wasn’t giving up on Terrytoons. It moved them to Saturday afternoons, as of December 10, 1955 and created The Mighty Mouse Playhouse, the first Saturday network cartoon show. Then they appeared in prime time on June 13, 1956 on CBS Cartoon Theater hosted by Dick Van Dyke.

In the meantime, 20th Century-Fox continued to distribute new Terrytoons until the studio petered out in the late 1960s. Terry was admitted into a cancer hospital and died October 25, 1971, age 84.

Dog On Snow Cycle

Here’s a five-drawing run cycle from I'm Cold, the first of two Chilly Willy cartoons by Tex Avery for Walter Lantz.

A dog guarding a vault of furs races after Chilly, who has grabbed a fox fur to keep warm in his igloo. Who needs both feet showing?



Let's slow down the cycle so you can get a better idea of how it works.



And here is it at about the speed you see it in the cartoon.



Tex's animation crew in this cartoon is La Verne Harding, Don Patterson and Ray Abrams, who worked under him at MGM. Both were at Lantz in the first half of the 1930s. The first cartoon where they shared screen credit was on the Oswald short The Singing Sap, released Sept. 8, 1930.

The cartoon was released on Dec. 20, 1954, however it made an appearance starting Dec. 5 in Anniston, Alabama, billed with John Wayne.

Daws Butler provides a very low key version of his Southern Wolf/Huckleberry Hound voice, who comments directly to the audience throughout the cartoon. He’s funny. He’s either stating the obvious, or commenting on what’s happening on screen. Homer Brightman is given a story credit.

Chilly was never better than when Tex was taking care of him.

The New MGM Cartoon Team: The Raven and the Bookworm

The kindly Dr. Jekyll tries to undo the brain (and size) transfer wrought by Mr. Hyde on a New York-ish raven (Mel Blanc) and a bookworm in The Bookworm Turns, a 1940 MGM cartoon.



After a struggle, he throws the switch. A lightning-esque electric current activates.



It forms a hand that magnetically captures the raven and the bookworm and deposits them into a system that transports them via liquid-filled tubes and turns them back the way they were. The layouts and colours are certainly impressive.

>

This is the second cartoon starring the bookworm and the raven (neither of which have a name in a profile in the July-August 1939 edition of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Short Stories.

Boxoffice’s review credited it for “Highly imaginative information and brilliant execution,” but warned exhibitors kids might have nightmares watching it. Think of the children!!!

Hugh Harman is the only person who gets screen credit.

The cartoon was released July 20, 1940, a week before A Wild Hare at Warner Bros. The first Tom and Jerry cartoon had already been in theatres for about 5½ months. Sorry, Hugh. That’s the direction Metro is going.

Leave It To Beaver Arrives

Leave It To Beaver was a little different than the average family sitcom. Many of them seemed to be centred on a father in various degrees of befuddlement. But over at the Cleaver household, dad was not a boob; with his calm demeanour and sweater, he had more in common with Perry Como (sans singing) than Chester Riley. And the plots didn’t revolve around him.

The show debuted Oct. 4, 1957, lasted six seasons, then instantly moved into afternoon reruns in syndication. At the outset, it got mostly favourable reviews.

The Hearst paper’s TV columnist gave his verdict the day of the premiere.

‘Leave It To Beaver’ Endearing, Cute
By JACK O’BRIAN
NEW YORK, Oct. 4 (INS) — The new CBS-TV situation series Leave It to Beaver is an endearing little slice of cuteness, sometimes too blamed cute for words, obviously created and composed by writers of considerable perception into what makes junior run.
Probably it's because the writers, Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, have eight children between them. If they've made any mistake, it's on the side of affection, as might any parents who expand and sweeten every tale involving their youngsters. Occasionally Leave It to Beaver got so precious you almost went glug, but generally it had a slick, impish niceness, not unlike Ozzie & Harriet or rather, Ricky and David Nelson, set back to their younger childhood.
* * *
Beaver is the nickname of the second-grade pupil who is starred, a darling lad played by Jerry Mathes [sic], known to his family and even his teacher as Beaver Cleaver. The Beaver is a very good little performer, and if some of the too-cuteness stuffed into his role cloys somewhat, he can't be blamed; blame it on Connelly and Mosher who must see their own octet as the cutest things since Teddy bears.
* * *
George Gobel owns Leave It to Beaver, by the way, another layer of good green in his wallet.

John Crosby of the Herald Tribune syndicate approved of the show. His column of Oct. 18, 1957:

'Leave It to Beaver' Is Refreshing Show
By JOHN CROSBY
NEW YORK—Childhood has been touched on and walked over and toyed with on a dozen different family series on television but a new show "Leave It to Beaver," goes into it a great deal more extensively and, for a chance, from the delicately muddled viewpoint of the child.
"My name's Beaver," the title role, age eight, explains to his teacher on the opening day of school.
"Is that your given name?" asks the teacher.
"Yes, my brother give it to me," says Beaver.
The brother, who give it to him, is Wally, age 12. Wally is teetering precariously on the edge of adolescence but the Beaver keeps yanking him back into the trusting innocence of childhood. In other words there is the adult world of the parents and two quite not-quite separate levels of childhood, which is a rather more complex exploration of the child world than has ever been attempted on TV before.
Wonderful Candor
The plots of the Beaver show are the sort of thing that anyone's kids might get into and the dialogue has that wonderful candor and directness with which children disconcert and enchant you. The first one, for instance, concerned Beaver's getting a note to take to his mother from his teacher. The other kids tell him this sounds like he's done something awful and he hides the note and somehow gets the idea he's been expelled. "You'll be the first person thrown out of second grade in the history of the school," observes one youngster thoughtfully.
Anyway, after a bit more plot, the Beaver runs away from home—as didn't we all—and the family—mother, father and older brother go looking for him. "What's he look like?" asks a gas station attendant. "He looks like a kid," says his brother. They find him high in a tree.
"What are you doing?" inquires his father.
"Sitting in a tree, Daddy," says Beaver. "I'm going to stay here till I die."
How's That Again?
There was another exchange in this episode that I'm fond of.
Kid: He tells jokes in class.
Father: Who?
Kid: Mr. Wilks.
Father: Funny jokes?
Kid: No.
In another episode the kids buy a baby alligator from a mail order house and raise it to imposing proportions in strict secrecy from their parents on a diet of stolen eggs and brandy. This, naturally, leads to a good deal of confusion in the household, especially when the alligator gets to be about five feet long.
The cast—Jerry Mathers as the eight-year-old Beaver, Tony Dow as the 12-year-old Wally, Barbara Billingsley as the mother and Hugh Beaumont as the father—all underplay and understate their positions with great charm and discretion. This throws the emphasis where it belongs—on the fact that even with the greatest good will in the world there are great gaps in understanding between different age levels. And not just between childhood and adulthood. Frequently, Wally is as baffled by the little boy world of his younger brother as his parents.
Charming, Sincere
"Leave It to Beaver" is not great art but it is charming and sincere. I imagine the adults in your family will like it as much as the children. It's really aimed at both age groups.
Of course, we've had kids on these situation comedy series before—by the dozens, as matter of fact. But, always they were contemplated from the top, from the viewpoint of the parent downward. But in this one the two kids are the focal point and the gaze is upwards.

Connelly and Mosher were used to different kinds of comedy. For one thing, they had spent ten years on radio and TV writing Amos 'n' Andy. And Jerry Mathers was already a show biz veteran, starting at age 2 1/2 and then getting a break thanks to Alfred Hitchcock, who cast him in The Trouble With Harry starring Shirley MacLaine.

When the show wound down in 1963, the finale being a retrospect with clips from 11 episodes, Mathers admitted to North America Newspaper Alliance columnist Harold Heffernan his mother had turned down three series for him, but approved Beaver simply because it was a pilot and would be a one-shot. “Those things don’t sell,” his father said.

Not only did it sell, the series has fans almost 70 years later.