If It Got Laughs the First Time...

The almost-uproariously funny Cool Cat strolls past a mechanical pink elephant in his 1967 debut cartoon.



Inside the elephant is Colonel Rimfire, who pops up and says “I tought I taw a puddy tat.”



Well, Tweety got laughs with the line. 20 years earlier.

Writer Bob Kurtz evokes more old Warner Bros. humour, this time from the Chuck Jones unit. Cool Cat decides to “split the scene” and exits stage right (oh, right, that was another cartoon “cat.”). Instead of following him, the mechano-elephant, for whatever reason, retreats to Larry Hanan’s flowery background and jumps.



It turns out Colonel Rimfire and the elephant fall over a cliff. Why? Well, the coyote got laughs with it. Except Jones and Mike Maltese did a lovely job of setting up the cliff-drops in the roadrunner shorts. This comes out of nowhere.



Can anyone name which Roadrunner cartoon this artwork was pilfered from?

Alex Lovy might as well be named “Colonel Misfire” for directing this sorry excuse for a cartoon. There was so much wasted talent involved, including Kurtz and Larry Storch. Veteran animators Volus Jones, Ted Bonnicksen, Eddie Solomon and La Verne Harding are credited. Lovy must have brought sound effects with him from Hanna-Barbera, as Hal Geer edits them into the sound track.

Word is that Warner Bros. is not planning to follow up the "Blew Up" movie with a feature starring Cool Cat.

Shocking a French Poodle

Crazy Mixed Up Pup (1955) has a plot only Tex Avery could think up. A human is given dog plasma and a dog is given human plasma, which results in both taking on each other’s characteristics. They continue to switch back and forth.

In this scene, Rover acts like a human and pats Fifi, the other pet dog in the house. "Hi, Fifi. How’s my little old French poodle?" says Rover.



The first drawing below is held on 20 frames, then comes the take.



This was the second of the four cartoons Avery directed for Walter Lantz before he got out of commercial animation. Don Patterson, La Verne Harding and Ray Abrams are the animators.

The male voices are supplied by Daws Butler. The dog voice is another of his takes on Ed Norton of The Honeymooners, and even says "You're a good kid" to Maggie, just like Norton did to his wife Trixie.

A Weighty Matter

The Jack Benny radio show didn’t just develop over the course of a season, with a Maxwell, and age 39 and trains leaving for Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga showing up in the dialogue. That took years, something a show on TV would never be given the time to accomplish.

Jack debuted in May 1932. There was a revolving door of NBC and CBS staff announcers assigned to the show. Any attempt by Benny to build a comedy character around them was pretty much impossible.

When Chevrolet picked up his show the following year, Jack started with Howard Claney, who was replaced with Alois Havrilla. The carmaker dropped his show in 1934 and Benny was forced to find another announcer when General Tire decided to sponsor it.

That’s when Don Wilson won an audition and began a lengthy association with the Benny show, taking the jump into television with Jack in 1950. He had started in radio in Denver as a singer, and ended up working at several radio stations in Los Angeles, and hosting a transcribed comedy/variety show called The Mirth Parade. He was best known for calling the Rose Bowl game. That got the attention of NBC executives in New York, who transferred him back east, ostensibly as a sports announcer.

Don continued doing what Claney and Havrilla had been doing—interrupting dialogue to shoehorn a word in about the sponsor. But Wilson had something else Benny could hang a comedy peg on—his size.

Some might call it fat-shaming today, but Wilson seemed to take it in stride and got his licks in at Benny in response.

When the show became televised, audiences could see Donsie was hefty but not obese. I’m no expert on the television version, but it seems things shifted and Wilson was called to do sillier things on camera (and, out of nowhere, was father to an adult son).

Here’s Don talking to one of the newspaper syndicates in a story published on March 4, 1962.

Don Wilson: Large Bones
By DONALD FREEMAN
Copley News Service
HOLLYWOOD—28 years with the Jack Benny troupe, Don Wilson’s size is certainly no state secret. Everyone knows that the cheerful announcer-actor with the mellifluous voice is —well, ample. His bulk, in fact, has proved one of the more durable props on the show.
"Actually, I am not fat at all," said Wilson, smiling broadly as he slid into a booth at an airport restaurant. "It is true that I have a large bone structure. But, if you want the truth of the matter, I only weigh. . . . .” An airplane droned overhead at that moment, drowning out Wilson’s voice.
“What was that?” I cried, leaning forward. "What was that again?"
Weight A Comic Myth
"Let me put it another way," said Wilson, his expression bountiful. "My weight is one of those comic myths that take hold. But no one, down deep, believes the myths they laugh at.
"No one really believes that Jack Benny is so penurious, for instance no one really believes that he drives a Maxwell or has a butler named Rochester or that he keeps his money hidden in a vault."
"And your —er, size," I put it, that kind of a myth, too?"
"Absolutely," Wilson said, defiantly jutting out his chins. "But I couldn't be happier about it because it gives Jack a chance to make a lot of jokes and it's given me a pleasant living at my profession."
"How much," I asked, "did you say you weigh?"
Wilson raised a interruptive finger. "See those people over here," he said, "at that table by the window." A cluster of diners had spotted Wilson and several of them smiled by way of recognition, Wilson waved back, also smiling.
Wears A Triumphant Look
Now Wilson turned to me, a triumphant look on his good-natured face. "I'll tell you what they're saying over there right this minute," he said. "They're saying, 'My gosh, Don Wilson must have lost a lot of weight.' Wherever I go, that's what people say to me.
“I have to explain that I haven't lost any weight at all. Besides the fact that the TV camera adds a few pounds, with all the jokes they've heard about me on the Benny show, people assume that I must weigh at least 350 pounds."
Wilson laughed at the outrageousness of the thought, his chins dancing again. "And then it's a big surprise to these people when they see me in person."
"I suppose, that I have been the subject of more fat man jokes than anyone in show business. When I think that Jack's writers have used every fat man joke in the world, they come up with another one. I remember one line where I tell Jack that I had gone on a diet and taken off 25 pounds. Jack gave me that dying calf look of his and he said, 'You haven't lost weight, Don. Turn around. You've just misplaced it.' "
Scales Are Challenged
A few minutes later, we left the restaurant and Mr. Wilson approached a scale. "Now," he said, inserting a coin, "this should prove my point. Fat, indeed."
"What does it say?" I asked, but, as he turned, Wilson accidentally blocked my vision. He quickly stepped off the platform.
"When a scale is out of order," Wilson demanded, innocently, "wouldn't you think they'd at least put a sign?"

Don Wilson won all kinds of announcing awards, even though Bea Benaderet once remarked how a pool was conducted every Sunday, with actors guessing which line Don would blow first. Jack took one of the mistakes on TV and turned it into a running gag on both television and radio—Wilson twisted the Lucky Strike slogan “Be Happy, Go Lucky.” Wilson’s wife Lois, who was a fine radio actress, was hired to add to the situation.

When Benny ended his regular series in 1965, Wilson wasn’t hired to announce the specials. Veteran Bill Baldwin was brought in, while Wilson only made a few guest appearances. Somehow it didn’t seem right.

Posters, Knights and Long-Johns

Here’s a buried self-reference in The Girl at the Ironing Board (1934). Check out the poster on the left side of the fence.



Poor Friz Freleng. He and the writing staff had to find a way to make this cartoon’s man-woman-love-villain-abduction-chase-(to the theme song in double time)-vanquish formula different than the others that infested Warners cartoons. And fit in a Warners-owned song. The title song comes from the feature Dames (1934) with Guy Kibbee, Zasu Pitts and Hugh (Woo-Hoo) Herbert. The film included a legitimate smash hit, “I Only Have Eyes For You.”

The staff took the song title and came up with a story about clothes being ironed (and whatever else happens in a laundry), and then married it with an 1890s stage melodrama parody, the same thing that Terrytoons ran into the ground.

But there are some contemporary references. One of the song lyrics features Mae West’s most famous misquote “Come up and see me some time.” The female clothes emulate Joe Penner by shouting “You naaasty man!” And this may be one of the most obscure radio references in a cartoon.



At the time this cartoon was made, Fred Allen was hosting the Sal Hepatica Revue. It, and his previous show, the Salad Bowl Revue, had sketches that were set in Bedlam University, the Bedlam Penitentiary, the Bedlam Department Store, and so on. This poster could be coincidental but I’d like to think not.

My favourite gag is a pun that Friz times perfectly. First, a title card.



Cut to the next scene. The card is accurate.



That’s it. It’s like a Tex Avery gag, incongruous and quick. Then it’s back to the plot.

The flaps of woolen underwear slap the tops of barrels. The gag is borrowed from We're in the Money (1933). Wasn't it re-used later in a colour cartoon?



The long johns return at the end of the cartoon. Unexpectedly, a head pops out of the top and gives us the familiar “So long, folks!” farewell.



Frank Tipper and Sandy Walker are the credited animators, with the score by Bernie Brown. The soundtrack includes “Dames” and “Shake Your Powder Puff.” Unlike the oft-heard “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” or “The Lady in Red,” this was the only Warners cartoon that used the title song.

The Mountain is Correct

“There’s gold in them thar hills!” proclaims Oswald the rabbit in Alaska (1930), a Walter Lantz production.



The mountain confirms it by opening its “mouth.” “You said a mouth-full,” replies the hill. And it’s on to the next scene.



Jimmy Dietrich’s score includes three choruses “Go Get the Ax,” sung by a prospector in Dalton’s Palace saloon, as well as “Turkey in the Straw,” “Pop Goes the Weasel” and Oswald’s theme song. Pinto Colvig supplies the singing.

Colvig, Tex Avery and Les Kline get smaller letters in their animation screen credit than Manny Moreno, Clyde Geronimi and Ray Abrams.

A Gandhi (Not Dandy) Gag

Mahatma Gandhi believed in separating his people from British rule, opposed a British-imposed tax (on salt) and wanted an independent nation with religious freedom.

Just like the Founding Fathers of the U.S.A., right? Well, while their appearances in American animated cartoons were met with patriotic fervour, Ghandi was ridiculed.

Here’s an example from Insultin’ the Sultan, a 1934 Ub Iwerks short.

Willie Whopper grabs the sultan by the beard and swings him around. The beard breaks off, the sultan spins around, becomes a barber pole, his clothes come off, he crashes into a pillar and voila! Gandhi.



To add to the insult, a goat in a picture in a picture ridicules Mahatma by braying at him.



On top of that, we get black stereotypes, complete with dice fetish. But that’s not all. Because they’re guarding the sultan’s harem, we presume they are eunuchs, so we get gay stereotypes, too.

At the end of the cartoon, Willie finishes his tale and gets rewarded by his teacher (the standard Iwerks old crone design) with a dunce cap.

Grim Natwick and Berny Wolf get animation credits and the music was by Art Turkisher.

The Screen Career That Was More Than a Picnic

What do Fantastic Voyage, Ride Beyond Vengeance, The Silencers and Birds Do It have in common, besides being found on theatre marquees in 1966?

The casts of all of them included Arthur O’Connell.

This doesn’t include drive-ins that were running older films, such as The 7 Faces of Doctor Lao, The Great Race and Your Cheatin’ Heart. McConnell was in all those, too. Then there was television, eg. an episode of The Wild, Wild West.

O’Connell was one of the busiest character actors around at one time, on stage and screen. Dorothy Kilgallen wrote in a column in 1952: “Arthur O’Connell is one actor who can’t complain about being typed by the casting directors. In the current ‘Golden Boy’ he plays a punch-drunk prizefighter—but earlier this season he was seen as a letter carrier, a salesman, an aviator and a priest.”

In 1929, he was a member of the Gordon Square Players in Cleveland. In late January, he was cast as an indolent boy-friend in “The Family Upstairs” and appeared in several plays until the end of the season. One of the other players, age 19, turned up later on radio and on Mr. Magoo cartoons—Jerry Hausner.

Hal Eaton’s column in the Newark Star-Ledger of July 5, 1946 gave this short bio:

Arthur O'Connell, actor-director, has been signed by William Cahn to direct Frank Gould's "Snow-Job," a comedy about ex-GI's returned to college. O'Connell last directed "Brighten the Corner."
Cahn, an ex-GI who is looking for an apartment, liked the way O'Connell staged the recent "Operation Housing," the Veterans' Housing Rally at the 69th Armory, and decided to sign him for "Snow-Job." Apparently the Duncan-Paris Post of the American Legion liked O'Connell's staging, too, since they elected him vice commander to Sgt. Marion [See Here, Private] Hargrove.
As an actor, O'Connell worked for MGM with Lew Ayres and Lionel Barrymore in the "Dr. Kildare" pictures, appeared in Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" and did a series of RKO shorts with Edgar Kennedy and Leon Errol. He played in the London production of "Golden Boy," with Louis Calhern and Jack La Rue.
O'Connell's first job as director was for the Federal Theater's "Little Women." During the war he was assistant director of movies for the army at Astoria. L. I., and directed John Golden's production of "The Army Play by Play."

You have to jump forward 21 years for O’Connell to get any significant publicity, and it had nothing to do with films. He was hired to co-star in a gimmick comedy with Monte Markham. This feature story was published July 19, 1967.

Why Would a Top-Notch Actor Do a Situation Comedy?
By DONALD FREEMAN
Copley News Service
HOLLYWOOD, Calif.—His actor's moustache bristled only slightly when Arthur O'Connell, after 38 years in the profession, after winning one Oscar and being nominated for another, was asked why a distinguished performer of his stripe would go into a situation comedy series.
This particular series, moreover, is a complicated bit of business which may or may not capture the viewers' fancy. A Screen Gems-ABC entry, "The Second Hundred Years" involves O'Connell as the 67-year-old son of a man in his 20s who — are you following this? — was buried alive in a Klondike snowslide, frozen all the years and then discovered and defrosted.
Now then — "I have a mortgage to pay," quoted O'Connell. "A situation comedy is as good as anything else to pay the mortgage for an actor. Besides, an actor has to work. If not, you're out there in left field with the sun in your eyes."
O'Connell, as befits a star of the Broadway stage, has been in any number of television series, and this one he accepted because of its inherent comic possibilities. In fact, he was ready to return to Broadway before producer Harry Ackerman offered him this particular show.
* * *
THE thought of facing a camera — or an audience —still fills O'Connell with a strange, nameless fear, an oddity for a man who once played the old five-a-day routine in vaudeville.
"Years ago," O'Connell said, "I was doing a comedy sketch with my partner and just before we'd go out on stage I'd be standing there in the wings, trembling, full of trepidation.
"What I would do, I'd devoutly promise God if he got me through the performance I would go back to pumping gas and make an honest living.
"And after each show, I'd say to myself, with great relief, 'God knew I was lying.' Surely he must have, else why would I still be in the acting business?"
It is one of Arthur O'Connell's major assets as an actor that he can portray a drunk with such devastating believability. Most actors overplay when in a drunk scene and you don't believe for a minute that they have really hashed it up. I wondered how O'Connell handled this type of acting assignment.
He shrugged. "Easiest thing in the world to play a drunk," O'Connell said. "To begin, I've had experience in the real thing. But mainly I've observed people after they've had a belt. They're loose — oh, so loose, bumping into the furniture, missing the cigaret with the match. Very loose. Even though I'm under tension always as an actor, I stay loose externally.
"Fear is all in the wings, anyway. Acting! Listen, there's very little acting done today at all. Mostly it's reacting. And I know a lot of actors who never stop acting —until they get before a camera.
"Looseness is a deceptive commodity in a performer," he went on. "Look at Johnny Carson — apparently as calm as a leaf in a breeze. Ah, but he's up inside. He has that inner energy going for him. But I don't know much about theories. When young actors come to me for advice, I tell them the best thing I know, 'Say your words and mind your own business and you'll do all right.' "
* * *
WE TALKED about "Picnic," the movie that won him an Oscar and, O'Connell insists, changed his life [photo above with Roz Russell]. "After 'Picnic' won me an Oscar, suddenly I was known," O'Connell said. "Suddenly I could ask producers for more money. Which reminds me of a producer story.
"After he won an Oscar for 'Mr. Roberts,' Jack Lemmon gratefully paid a call on the producer, Harry Cohn, who was paying him something less than the world's biggest salary, and he says, 'Thanks, Harry, for everything.' Cohn said back at him, 'Listen, kid, I made 16 million bucks on the picture. So you don't have to thank me for anything,' "
* * *
O'CONNELL'S movie career goes back to "Citizen Kane" and Orson Welles. "I'd come out to Hollywood and I wasn't doing much, making a few shorts with Leon Erroll, and I hear Orson is casting for 'Citizen Kane.' Orson would sit there, in his office, and actors would troop in and he'd say, in that big rumbling voice of his, 'My name is Orson Welles. Tell me about yourself.' And the actors would rattle off whatever movie credits they had.
"Well, I didn't have any movie credits," O'Connell said. "So I walked in to see Orson and I'm scared witless and he informs me that he is Orson Welles and would I tell him about myself. I cleared my throat and I said, 'Mr. Welles, I'm Arthur O'Connell. I've been out here for four months. I'm a stage actor.' At the sound of the word, 'stage,' Orson perked up. That means you're an actor,' he said to me, 'and you are hereby hired for my picture.' "

Being a stage actor may have given him respect with Welles, but not at Screen Gems. He was used. Robert de Roos, in the December 30, 1967 issue of TV Guide, had this behind-the-scenes dirt:

Arthur O’Connell, an accomplished and veteran actor, was billed as the star in the pilot film: “Starring Arthur O’Connell and Monte Markham.” Now the billing has been reversed and O’Connell’s parts have been cut and Monte’s built up.
A studio executive said, “Arthur O’Connell was billed as the star on the pilot because we thought it would help sell the series. No one had ever heard of Monte and O’Connell was well-known.”
“I feel guilty about it,” Monte says, “but it’s out of my control. Arthur O’Connell’s been nominated for Academy Awards and now he’s featured under me, a guy no one ever heard of. It’s . . .” His voice trails off and he drops an embarrassing subject.
As for Arthur O’Connell, he seems resigned to the situation. “I turned down series after series because I didn’t want a supporting role,” he says. “I signed here because I was to be the star. Now the word is around that my part is being purposely written down.
“I think Monte is upset about it. He asked me to have lunch one day, but I refused. I just didn’t want to talk about it.”

The Second Hundred Years didn’t get to a second season. The cancellation did not stop O’Connell from keeping busy. He had already shot The Reluctant Astronaut with Don Knotts earlier in the year and there were other films ahead (including 1968’s forgotten If He Hollers, Let Him Go with Barbara McNair). He never got another series, but appeared regularly as a kindly store owner in Crest toothpaste commercials.

O’Connell vanished from the screen in 1975. He was claimed by Alzheimer’s on May 18, 1981. He was 73.

A Fishy Camel

Before we get to the lacklustre Beau Bosko, let me grumble about the worse-than-lacklustre copies of many of the Bosko cartoons that circulate on-line.

I know they come from VHS dubs of 1990 cable TV enhancements, but shouldn’t there be decent versions around? They look like sixth-generation dubs recorded on the slowest tape speed. The copy of this cartoon has an end title spliced on.

It is true that Bosko is no Bugs Bunny, or Daffy Duck, or even Pepe Le Pew. But he was Warners’ first animated star and he deserves better treatment than this.

He deserved better treatment than the story of this cartoon. The first half is a bunch of snoring gags, and then a wash basin-in-a-backpack gag. The cartoon is just under seven minutes, and the villain doesn’t appear until the five-minute mark. There’s a gag about flies around a snoring turbaned guy and another with a different Arab stretching up and down as he rides a camel. Those are the gags. Yikes.

Here’s another one that’s cuter. Bosko’s camel drinks water out of a shallow pond in the desert (no mirage gag this time). Unexpectedly, a fish pops up. You can follow the action in the fuzzy frames below.



Ham Hamilton and Norm Blackburn are the credited animators. Frank Marsales' music provides the proper mood; most of it was original.

Pill Poppin' Pullet

There’s a bit of stylised action in Porky the Rain-Maker (1936) as a hen swallows a lightning pill and turns into a bolt of lightning.



Cecil Surry and Sid Sutherland get the animation credits in this short, but we know that Chuck Jones, Virgil Ross and Bob Clampett were in Tex Avery’s unit at Warners at the time. John Waltz provided the backgrounds. The ending is a lot of fun, and typically Avery.