A Little More on Grant Simmons

Disney, Screen Gems, MGM with Tex Avery, Grantray-Lawrence with Ray Patterson, DePatie-Freleng. Grant Simmons has that on his list of animation accomplishments.

We profiled him in this post. In leafing through clippings, but there’s one we missed. We’ll give you some other tidbits, too.

A family history at Ancestry.com says Grant Alden Simmons was born Nov. 11, 1912 at Pima, Arizona and his early schooling was in Miami, Ariz. It claims the family moved to Los Angeles after he graduated from high school—at the age of 12! (June 25, 1924), though a 1943 article transcribed in the previous post says he attended high school in Glendale, which seems more likely. He attended Brigham Young University for two years, studying art.

But the history is missing something. Besides his third birthday party reported in the Graham (Ariz.) Guardian (games and refreshments). This story is from the weekly Lordsburg Liberal of Lordsburg, New Mexico, May 31, 1935.

JACK KERR TELLS OF THE MICKEY MOUSE CARTOON
Our own Jack Kerr, voted the most popular boy on the campus of Modesto College in California, published an article in the Modesto Collegian on the production of the famous Mickey Mouse cartoons, the production being so good that it was broadcast over the radio. Jack's very interesting article follows:
In the minds of the audiences who have seen a Mickey Mouse cartoon, the prevalent reaction is one of mere entertainment. But in the minds of the 250 skilled artists who make these cartoons is the thought of one and a half months of long, hard work, according to Grant Simmons, MJC student.
Simmons has attended several noted art schools, including the Otis Art in Institute at Los Angeles, and was at one time employed by Walt Disney in the making of one of his famous cartoons.
The studio is run on the same scale a large motion picture corporation, according to Simmons. If the artist is good enough he is given a three months' course in apprenticeship, which is held on the studio lot. The artist who has possibilities is given a contract for six months as an "in betweener," and from here he works up the ladder.
The animater plays the most important part in the making of a cartoon. He draws every first and fifth movement. The drawings are then sent to the "thirders," who draw every third movement, and from there the drawings continue on to the "in betweeners," who draw all other motions between the first, third, and fifth drawings.
From these rough sketches a trial picture is made, and if satisfactory the drawings are then sent to the inking department, where "inkers" trace all drawings on celluloid. These celluloid copies are then shown on a stationary background.
All of the songs heard in the cartoons are composed at the Disney studio.
It takes approximately 150,000 drawings to make a single Mickey Mouse moving picture cartoon.
Simmons, who is taking art under Jean Williams at MJC, is practising animation and plans to have a try-out with Disney this summer.

After working on Fantasia (1941), Simmons accepted an offer from Dave Fleischer to work for Screen Gems. The Film Daily’s review on Nov. 9, 1942 of The Dumbconscious Mind, a Phantasy cartoon, says “Reel is amusing and skillfully animated by Grant Simmons.”

The Hollywood correspondent on the Deseret News of Salt Lake City wrote on June 2, 1943:

Grant Simmons, animator at Columbia Cartoon Studios, gets screen credit on Columbia’s current cartoon “Something About A Soldier.” It’s good fun. Grant is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Simmons, formerly of Salt Lake. When I asked Grant if his three-year-old daughter Arlene is also an artist, he said: “She’d better not be.”

Simmons stayed at Screen Gems until it closed in November 1946 (cartoons with his name were put on hold then released over the next two years). His first credit at MGM in the Tex Avery unit was Li’l Tinker. Model sheets for the cartoon are dated June 5, 1946 and the short was released May 15, 1948.

During the ‘40s, he was also active in the Screen Cartoonists, Local 852 as a trustee.

MGM disbanded the Avery unit in March 1953. Variety of June 16, 1953 reported that two weeks earlier, Simmons and Ray Patterson, who bounced between the Hanna-Barbera unit and Avery’s crew, had been hired by Walter Lantz. While two Lantz cartoons bear their names, they did not stay long. On July 21, 1954, Variety said the two, and New York producer Robert Lawrence, had set up Grantray Animation, Inc., later Grantray-Lawrence. The intention was to make commercials, industrial films and theatricals. For a time, their creative supervisor was Gene Hazleton.

Simmons and Patterson’s company did some sub-contract work for television, notably on the debut episode of The Jetsons (1962). It also turned in footage for the features Gay Purree (1962) and Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear (1964). Then came a big break. Broadcasting revealed in its Jan. 24, 1966 issue:

Comics on TV ● Producers Robert Lawrence and Stephen Krantz have acquired TV animation rights from Marvel Comics group for two of its comic characters, Spider-Man and Captain America. Production of a half-hour pilot film is now under way at Grantray-Lawrence Productions, Hollywood.

A million-dollar contract between Krantz Films and RKO General Broadcasting to put the Captain America half hours—three segments including Sub-Mariner, The Incredible Hulk, The Mighty Thor and Iron Man—on five of its stations was announced in the Mar. 26, 1966 issue of Back Stage. By April 11, sales reached two million for 18 cities, according to Broadcasting magazine. Simmons was one of the directors.

As for Spider-Man, ABC decided by January 19, 1967 to add the half hour to its fall Saturday morning schedule (source, The Hollywood Reporter). There were expanded studios and staff. There were more TV commercials. It was all too much. Grantray-Lawrence closed in (I understand) 1968. Spidey was now animated in New York, though Simmons got a credit.

Simmons’ name appears in Daily Variety a final time on June 1, 1970. He was hired, along with familiar names Art Davis, Sid Marcus, Hawley Pratt, Gerry Chiniquy and Lars Calonius, to direct the Doctor Dolittle cartoon series for DePatie-Freleng.

Cancer claimed Simmons died on October 31, 1970 at age 57.

Lookie, a Rookie!

Friz Freleng’s spot-gag short Rookie Revue opens with a shot of a billboard, then a left-to-right pan across some tents (some in the foreground panned at a different speed to simulate depth) as we hear Mel Blanc snoring “You’re in the Army Now.” One tent is a tee-pee. I guess that's the first gag.

The camera stops on the bugler's tent.



Fade to the first bit of animation. The bugler is snoring. His ears flap in a four-drawing cycle.



Cut to a cuckoo clock. Hey, how come the time is different than in the last shot?



The cuckoo comes out, blows reveille, and goes back in.



Storyman Dave Monahan (or whoever else worked on this) aren't content to leave it there. The frames below reveal the rest of the gag.



Look! Four fingers and a thumb!



The cartoon was released on Oct. 25, 1941, and rated “Excellent” by Exhibitor magazine. Then came Pearl Harbor. Showman’s Trade Review wrote on Dec. 27, 1941, under “Out-dated”:

When this was released it was OK, but the fun about some of the happenings as rookies train with imitation funs now strikes a note that is way off key. This, of course, is no fault whatsoever of the producer or the distributor. It’s simply a matter of record an important fact unfortunately now associated with a very clever fact unfortunately now associated with a very clever cartoon and one containing many situations once good for laughs.

There are two radio show references in the cartoon, a couple of inside gags, and an ending that takes forever to get there.

Dick Bickenbach receives the rotating animation credit; my guess is Gerry Chiniquy, Gil Turner and Manny Perez worked on it as well. The polished backgrounds are the unheralded work of Lenard Kester.

Screwy Meets Meathead

Screwy Squirrel uses a phone call to goad Meathead into chasing him in their debut cartoon, Screwball Squirrel (1944).

“I knew that’d get him,” Screwy tells us (he talks to the audience through the picture), then does his shoulder-hunch laugh before playing Meathead’s note like a Jew’s harp.



Screwy does one of his twirling exits back into the phone booth.



Meathead follows and it's on to the next gag.

I like Screwy. I don't know how many cartoons were left in him, but there are good gags in all of them before Tex gave up on him. I love the barrel gag in this one, where it turns out the drum roll on the soundtrack is being played by Screwy.

Heck Allen assisted Avery with the gags, with Preston Blair, Ray Abrams and Ed Love animating (Love did the above work). Wally Maher, using his Wilbur voice from the Tommy Riggs and Betty Lou radio show, is Screwy.

The Rainbow Girl Who Made Good

“Theme for the new term of Ocean Mist Assembly No. 232, International Order of Rainbow for Girls,” reported the Mendocino Beacon of June 11, 1965, “is ‘Patriotism is the strength of our Country,’ chosen by Karen Valentine, who headed the slate of officers installed on Sunday afternoon, June sixth, in a beautifully impressive ceremony.”

Yes, that Karen Valentine. One of a number of actors/actresses who were in demand on television in the 1970s, given a crack at starring in their own show(s), then faded away.

She seemed to live a storybook, charmed childhood. In 1953, she was selected as an attendant to the Sebastopol Apple Blossom Queen. Ten years later she was given a full-page spread in the Oct. 24, 1963 Sonoma West Times and News after she had been crowned Miss Teenage Santa Rosa. She was not only the first "Nature" of her new Rainbow Assembly, she was a cheerleader, an A student, took part in school plays and said she hoped to get off the family chicken farm to become a dramatic teacher. (There was nothing saying she hoped to hear the words “Karen Valentine to block” sitting next to Paul Lynde on Hollywood Squares).

Her star rose pretty quickly. She entered the Miss Teen Age America contest. On Nov. 2, Peggy Simpson of the Associated Press reported from Dallas:

A living Doll—Judy by name—is the new Miss Teen-age America, but a bubbly sprite from Santa Rosa, California, Calif., Karen Valentine, has the first television contract. . . .
Pixie-like Karen Valentine, 16, captured the audience—as she has all week.
“I’ve just never seen anyone as cute as that gal,” one man said, after seeing her uninhibited, shoulder-wiggling, eye-rolling version of “Blame it on the Bossa Nova.”
“Wonder if I could adopt her?”
Karen had been announced earlier as talent winner for the pageant.
Showman Ed Sullivan telephoned from New York after seeing Karen’s act and invited her to his program.
“Some people like chocolate ice cream—I just love to perform—over and over and over,” Karen said, her big brown eyes laughing.

Her first appearance on Sullivan was Nov. 10, 1963 along with Allen and Rossi, Shelley Berman and the West Point Glee Club.

Two years later, she was installing the officers of her Rainbow Assembly. Four years after that, came Room 222. Producer Gene Reynolds told columnist Don Royal at the time: “I had already read, not just interviewed, 130 girls for the part of Alice, the student teacher. Then Karen came in, went through only three or four lines and I knew she had it.”

The series oozed ‘60s awareness. It was about an integrated high school. Valentine had been called “perky,” “a sprite” and “likened to an uncorked bottle of champagne” in reviews at the time, but Richard K. Shull of the Scripps-Howard news service dumped a gotcha-question on her, mid-interview. From the Indianapolis News, Nov. 27, 1969:

I asked her if she resented playing a caricature in the show. Her voice still giggled but her hackles were up. She didn’t consider her character a caricature, she said. “I think all our characters are valid. I’ve known student teachers just like Alice Johnson, the girl I play,” she added. Ditto, she said there's no conscious effort in the show to make the black characters credible and the white characters overdrawn. And further, she said, she didn't much like to have "Room 222" compared to Bill Cosby's show. In both shows, a good many viewers have detected what for want of a better name might he called the Stepin Fetchit's revenge syndrome—in which the whites are grotesque travesties. "Bill Cosby and 'Room 222' can't be compared. In the first place," she said. "Cosby is a caricature of Cosby, but Lloyd Haynes as Pete Dixon deals with problems realistically. "The two shows are totally different because of who Bill Cosby is. He's a very funny comedian," she said. And that seemed to be that. But, since the vice-president contends news media treat subject matter with all the impartiality of the Masked Court of the Venetian Doge: Karen Valentine's character is a caricature. Karen Valentine's character is a caricature.
Karen Valentine's character is a caricature.

Room 222 aired five seasons and begat an Emmy for Valentine. The series was a dramady, but when it ended ABC wanted a sitcom for her. And what could be funnier than post-Shull's vice president, post-Watergate, Washington, D.C. This syndicated column is from Jan. 18, 1975.

Karen Valentine Quits Classroom for Capital
By CHARLES WITBECK
HOLLYWOOD — ABC has finally found a format for "that cute little girl from 'Room 222' " — Karen Valentine.
On Friday (Jan. 24), "Room 222's" substitute teacher, Alice Johnson, begins a new life in Washington, D.C., in "Karen," a comedy series about a girl being useful in one of those Common Cause-type lobbying associations.

The show holds promise since It is the brainchild of "M*A*S*H" producers Gene Reynolds and Larry Gelbart, Reynolds being a Common Cause member, and the man who first spotted Karen, the Miss Teenaged California winner from Sebastapol, Calif., as just the right Alice Johnson with her eager, puppy-dog quality.
With "M*A*S*H" already in the can for the season, Reynolds and Gelbart have time to work with Carl Kleinschmitt on the project, and will simply switch the "M*A*S*H" crew over to the "Karen" set at 20th Century-Fox. Earlier in the year, researcher Reynolds spent time in Washington's Common Cause office, and took a political science class at nearby UCLA, so he wouldn't be a greenhorn plotting Washington machinations.
Having mentor Reynolds in her corner again and the "M*A*S*H" crew pleases both Karen and ABC. The network felt secure enough about the project and the people not to demand a pilot.
"I'm not playing the comedy relief this time,” says Karen Valentine. "My character, Karen Angelo, is more grown-up than '222's' Alice Johnson."
After two pilots since "Room 222," one of which she liked by Mary Tyler Moore Productions successful team of Lorenzo Music and David Davis, Karen has been searching for a "now" character who isn't a Woman's Libber or a young housewife. The struggling girl law student didn't fit either. Something in the middle seemed more like it, and Reynolds idea of the Common Cause worker rang the bell.
"I come to Washington with a new Congressman who promised me during the campaign he would take me with him if he won," Karen explains. "However, I become a gopher in his Washington office, mainly running about doing errands. Since I want to be useful, I quit and join Open America, the lobbying association run by a mixture of old and young dedicated people. Denver Pyle is our leader and Dena Dietrich (Mother Nature in the commercial world) keeps the office functioning."
Young idealist Karen gets around Washington on a bicycle, carrying a colorful flag, putting in about equal time buttonholing politicians, working a broken-down copying machine and solving personal problems. She shares an apartment with a black roommate, Sissy, and listens to the trials and tribulations of a law student who lives in the basement and puts himself through school by tending bar.
Using Karen as the reactor much like Mary Tyler Moore, Reynolds and Gelbart have surrounded their heroine with caricatures. In the Open America group, you'll bump into a retired Navy officer (Liam Dunne), who thinks the world has gone to hell and knows all kids are drug-crazed weirdos. His counterpart is a 50-year-old hippie (Allen Kent), attempting to act half his age, wearing the latest mod rags and mumbling "Peace" or "Groovy."
The producers hope to kid all factions on the Washington scene, virgin territory for Hollywood comedy writers, but know, of course, Karen Valentine's ingratiating manner is their main ticket. Politics is simply a backdrop — comedy comes first.
Still, Washington life is a new toy. Maybe the "M*A*S*H" producers can use it as a comedic backdrop, with Karen the charmer up front. At least it's a move in a different direction, and that's unexpected in televisionland.

Karen suffered the same fate as Mr. Shull’s vice-president. She left Washington, D.C. In Miss Valentine’s case, her show lasted 13 weeks before cancellation. Maybe it was because Karen Valentine was likeable. I don't believe anyone has called politics in Washington, D.C. "likeable."

Plenty of work on TV-movies and TV guest shots followed, even some pilots. But she never got another series. She told columnist Jay Bobbin in 2004 she hoped a Hallmark channel comedy movie with John Laroquette would help her wind her way past the glut of reality shows and help her get back on television. Not long after, newspaper columnists were asked “Whatever happened to...”

As it comes to all who are able to reach a certain time in life, Karen settled into retirement. It’s a shame she didn’t get a crack at her own series again. Watching her back in the ‘70s, she struck me as pleasant and sincere. And she could be fun, as you can see below in her second appearance on Sullivan, March 29, 1964. As a DeMolay, I can tell you it’s a far cry from the ceremonies in a Rainbow Assembly.

Koko Komes

Something is always becoming something else in the early Fleischer cartoons, one of the things that makes them fun to watch.

In this scene from Boop-Oop-A-Doop (1932), a happy elephant draws ink from a well on his back and squirts it out. Since it’s a Fleischer cartoon, and it is an inkwell, who should emerge but Koko?



Sousa's "The Washington Post March" is playing in quick-time in the background.

The Fleischers seem to have like animal crowds in backgrounds, and this cartoon has them, too. Check out this scene. Sad dog, raccoon, horse, some humans. Lots of variety.



What the available version of the cartoon doesn't have is the original credits. Any factual insight into the head animator for this well-drawn and enjoyable cartoon would be helpful.

Bird Butt

Dick Lundy’s last cartoon for MGM, Bird-Brain Bird Dog, includes some familiar bits from Tex Avery’s cartoons, and a really odd cut.

Barney Bear shoots his own large butt after his bird-loving hunting dog drew a little quail on it.

Lundy cuts to a close-up of the damage. In the very next frame, he cuts back to the longer shot, but the difference in the action is pretty jarring. These are consecutive frames.



Without a summary of the scenes from the studio, it’s hard to determine if some action was cut. A cue ends when the scene ends, and a new one starts when the next scene begins, so it’s really tough to say if there’s a cut in the soundtrack. It’s possible.

Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton and Bob Bentley are the credited animators (Mike Lah either didn't work on this or his name was omited) and Johnny Johnsen gets a background credit. Heck Allen and Jack Cosgriff provided the gag, including a variation on Avery's "Timber" routine, and characters stacked on top of each other as in Half Pint Pygmy.

MGM had a backlog of cartoons, and this was one of the shorts on a shelf for a while. Not only was Lundy gone from MGM when this short was released on July 30, 1954 (he told Mark Mayerson he left at the end of October 1951), so was Avery, who had come back only to have his unit disbanded in March 1953.

The Palace Presents Jack Benny

When Rochester answered the phone and said “Jack Benny’s residence, star of stage, screen, radio and (fill in gag here),” he was listing the Benny accomplishments in chronological order. Before radio, there were films at MGM as sound came in. And before that, there was the vaudeville stage.

Jack not only played at the pinnacle of vaudeville success, the Palace in New York, he was contracted in 1931 to be the Master of Ceremonies in addition to doing his act.

Critics, by and large, in the 1920s, found little to complain about Jack’s performances, whether they were on the Orpheum circuit on the West Coast, in Chicago, or on his East Coast swing.

But in 1931, there was no Rochester to play off of. There was no Maxwell, 39, or even being a cheapskate. So what exactly did he do?

Here’s an indication from the New York Daily News of Sept. 8, 1931. Of interest to Benny radio fans is Jack worked with Abe Lyman well before the bandleader made guest appearances on the Benny radio show. And, as it turned out, Kate Smith, another member of the General Foods stable (for some baking flour until she was given the Jell-O sponsorship) who appeared once on Jack’s show.

ENTER JACK BENNY AS NEW PALACE M. C.
By JOHN CHAPMAN.
The Palace Theatre, having found a large, new public during the course of a seven weeks' run of Lou Holtz and company, is attempting to retain its customers by assembling a new offering in which Jack Benny, Harriet Hoctor and Abe Lyman's band, are featured.
Just for luck, too, the management has kept a couple of features from the Holtz fiesta.
It will be interesting to see if the new program can approach a long-run record; to see if Benny is as successful a master of ceremonies as was his predecessor.
Miss Hector Returns.
Benny's scheme is different. Holtz, a sure marksman with a scatter gun, aimed for howls and got them. A shrewd interpreter of the vaudeville patron's mind, his humor was broad, low and loud. Benny's wit is sharp, dry and cynical.
[omit Hoctor review]
Lyman's band has rhythm and go—and some jerkily conceived arrangements. It serves for a funny scene in which Benny doubts that a leader's baton-waving amounts to much. Left by Holtz.
"After all," says Jack to Abe, “what could you do with this stick if the band didn't show up?"
So Benny tries some stick-waving of his own with ludicrous results.

This wasn’t Jack’s first go-round as M.C. at the Palace that year. Chapman’s column of May 25, 1931 mentions:

Least obtrusive and funniest of the recent masters of ceremony is Jack Benny, who soberly plays a violin while a sound news reel is crashing about the screen, quips with [Mexican dancer] Armida and is otherwise of assistance.

Incidentally, Jack was held over the following week. The headliner was Georgie Jessel.

Jack spent part of 1931 on the road with his act, a Chester Hale production called “Bits of Wit.” It seems to have been more terpsichore than anything. It included “syncopated spirit of inebriation” Evelyn Wilson, acrobatic dancer Billy Rolls and Jack Benny’s Dancing Girls. He was assisted by the “Comedy Girl,” Marie Marsh, known today as Mary Livingstone.

During a stop in Buffalo at the end of April, Ardis Smith of the Times profiled Jack. This may be the only time you see the word “cachinnation” anywhere. Considering he spent a great amount of time years later ridiculing The Horn Blows At Midnight, it’s interesting seeing him do the same thing year. The difference was, as he related on the Merv Griffin show, the Tiffany film really was bad.

JACK BENNY, on the Great Lakes stage this week, doesn't hanker after applause. No, Sir, or Madame. He wouldn't know what to do with it if he had it. It would embarrass him. What he wants is continued cachinnation out there in the dark where the audience crouches. The more immoderate the laughter, the more expansive Mr. Benny becomes. No guffaws and Mr. Benny is actually chilled, he says, and needs an overcoat.
On those few occasions when a dour congregation of paying customers, of those who have come in on passes, show an obstinate disinclimation to titter, Jack works on the orchestra or the ushers. If the musicians laugh, he knows it's the same old Benny after all.
• • •
DURING one performance Saturday, it became necessary for Mr. Benny to play to the orchestra, the first time in a long spell. This contretemps was unprecedented as far as his appearances in Buffalo go.
Mr. Benny, who proudly advises his current audiences that he was six months in Earl Carroll's "Vanities," "four months on the stage and two months with the company in jail," played 18 years in vaudeville and then broke into the talking pictures over night. He broke out with parallel suddenness and into the Earl Carroll theater.
• • •
YOU may have noticed that Mr. Benny is a fiddler. He fiddles from left to right on the stage, hands in pockets, lazy, nonchalant, drawling, quite certain that most folks think he's pretty funny. Well, he really is a fiddler. At 15, he was playing the violin in a theater orchestra. A year or two later he took his instrument to the stage. Then he began to talk. Pretty soon he was just totin' the fiddle and wending his full 20 minutes in inconsequential banter, chatting with the ushers and the late arrivals. This seemed to go better than "Fantasy Impromptu" so pretty soon, he quit bothering with the violin.
• • •
DURING the war Mr. Benny enlisted in the Navy.
But the recruiting service or the propaganda bureau found he was quick with his bow and quip, and he spent the period of the war skedaddling about the country, helping finance the war and raise a navy. He never did get on intimate terms with the briny blue, and he eyes any large fluid body fairly askance to this day.
He's going to London this summer to play at the Palladium, but he doesn't know whether the British will like him. The English feeling for humor is sensitive enough, he says, but you never can tell for sure what they want over there in the way of patter. And it may be too late by the time you find out.
• • •
MR. BENNY was playing two a day vaudeville in Los Angeles when Metro picked him to share with Conrad Nagel the mastering of ceremonies in “The Hollywood Revue." After that he made "Chasin' Rainbows" and a quickie for Tiffany which he saw last week in Cleveland the first time. The latter talkie, “The Medicine Man," released over a year since, was the worst moving picture ever made, he brags. "Really, you have no idea—atrocious!" • • •
HE would be pleased to go back to Hollywood. He cancelled his contact with Metro because he wasn't getting any work to do and he thought Broadway, the absent-minded thing, might forget him. Now, he would like to make two pictures a year and play in a revue like the "Vanities" every winter. He is spoken for by Earl Carroll and will be on hand when that entrepreneur casts his next entertainment. • • •
MR. BENNY was married in 1927 and his wife appears with him on the Great lakes stage. He wears the same clothes on the street and in the theater, uses little or no make-up and usually strolls around town window-shopping between turns. His patter is never the same two performances running. He makes up a good deal of it as he goes along. He has blue eyes and prematurely gray hair. One of his eyes is a trifle bluer than the other which may indicate to you that his favorite sport is golf, though I don't know how. • • •
MR. BENNY wouldn't be a star in the movies for any amount of money, this is any amount be could met- A comedian is crazy to be starred he says. The really smart comedic craftsman is one who is missing from the screen or stage at least half the time while the audience is wishing he money, that is any amount, he could itself that he is stealing the whole shebang from the topline principals.
He thinks it was too bad they made Jack Oakie a star. Oakie was so popular a year ago that theater patrons actually cheered his audible shadow. Now look at him. Mr. Benny says in the more recent Oakie pictures, you can actually see this naturally happy-go-lucky clown groaning under the responsibility of carrying the central role.
• • •
BENNY, of course, thinks Metro the greatest of the movie producers. Norma Shearer, he believes, in [is] his favorite feminine screen personality, though he is particularly partial to Marie Dressler.
The Great Lakes star doesn't smoke and while I was interviewing him he refused a drink. He is partial to blue double-breasted suits and light gray snap brims, never tries to sing or dance the tango, and is tremendously serious and studious about his work. When his gags are not taking hold, he talks it over with his wife, the manager, the musicians or the head property man.

Jack was soon back with Earl Carroll. Then Carroll tried to cut Benny's salary twice, the second time by 20%. Variety reported February 9, 1932 that Jack was quitting the road. “Star of radio” was only a few months away.