Cheap, Or Not Too Cheap

It’s a shame Jack Benny felt he had to compensate for his radio and TV character. I’ve reprinted a number of articles on the subject and he always sounds a bit resentful. He, at least in my mind, should have just let people think that they’ll think. They’re going to do it anyway.

As it was, he couldn’t satisfy some people.

As intelligent people are reading here, those who are Jack Benny fans know he wasn’t cheap. They know he contributed to charities through concerts and donations. They know he did unadvertised acts of kindness, such as writing to parents of service-members he entertained during World War Two.

Here’s another syndicated column, this time from 1964, on the subject.

Jack Benny Is Really a Spendthrift
By ALAN MITCHELL
North American Newspaper Alliance
NEW YORK, March 6—"When I go to dinner in a large party, I feel obliged to pick up the check," says Jack Benny, who has devoted 30 years to building a reputation as a tight-wad. "Otherwise people may say, 'There goes old sticky-fingers again." I can't leave a normal 15 per cent tip. It's got to be a whopper.
"I pay the top price for everything I buy, even when I know it's on sale somewhere else. Over the year, it has cost me tens of thousands of dollars to prove I'm not really a miser. And every time the cost of living goes up, it gets worse."
Jack, who turned 39 for the 32nd time on Feb. 14, recalled a conversation with a cab driver who took him from New York's John F. Kennedy Airport to his hotel suite. The fare was $5. Jack handed the cabbie a $10 bill and told him to keep the change. "I wish you hadn't done that, Mr. Benny," the driver insisted, pocketing the bill. "Now I'll have to tell my wife you're not really a cheap bum. She'll be disappointed."
On another occasion, during a concert tour, Jack dropped into an all-night diner for a cup of coffee. When it came time to pay the tab, he discovered he had left his wallet it his hotel room. "So you're Jack Benny, eh?" the counterman remarked, watching Jack fumble through his empty pockets. "I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes." The next day, the comic's accountant dutifully mailed a check for $5.10 (including $5 tip) to the counterman.
Jack recalls that this financial Frankenstein began as a one-line joke on one of his first radio programs, back in 1934. The gag got a loud laugh, so the following week there were two "cheapskate" jokes in the script. Soon Jack's stinginess was such a part of his professional personality that when a bandit, in a radio sketch, warned him “. . . your money or your life,” there was no need for further dialogue. The long pause that followed brought down the house.
Recently the comedian's philanthropies have received sufficient publicity to help eradicate the image. In five years, his off-key concerts have raised nearly $4 million for worthy causes, including the musicians' welfare funds of more than 25 symphony orchestras. He is a heavy contributor to CARE, the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund, the United Jewish Appeal and other charities.
But the public guise of a skinflint—on his TV show and elsewhere—still rankles him. "I realize people don't believe I actually have a cigarette vending machine in my living room, or a private vault in the cellar," he said. "But on the other hand, they may think that where there's smoke there's fire."
Not long ago, Jack bought a classic custom-made Rolls Royce for more than $25,000. He rushed to the home of a friend, an antique auto buff, to show it off. But his friend's cleaning woman was unimpressed. "It's terrible for a millionaire like Mr. Benny to be running around in an old car like that," she remarked sourly after he left.
"You see," said Jack, "no matter how much money I spend, I'm still a cheapskate."

By the time this article appeared in print, Jack was in Sydney, Australia for some live performances. That meant his TV shows were on film. The March 3, 1964 episode included an unusual guest star. What looks to be a CBS publicity hand-out appeared in newspapers in advance. (Yes, I know, headline, Beechnut gum).

Zebra in stripe-tease on Benny's program
Kate Smith plays a walk-on part on "The Jack Benny Program" on CBS-TV Tuesday at 9:30 p.m., and doesn't sing a note.
It's not the singing star Kate Smith. It is coincidentally enough a zebra named Kate, whose owner's name is Smith. Thus making her Kate Smith. And she has a claim to fame all her own.
This is the only working zebra in Hollywood. She was shipped to the Mark Smith Stables from her native Africa some nine years ago on a special request.
• • •
"WE FIGURED we could train her," recalls Smith, "but we never realized what a tough job it would be. Zebras are wild animals; we never let ourselves forget that. Where a horse can be gentled to be a friend, and a somewhat domesticated pet, a zebra may turn on you at any given time. She's mighty tricky and we don't trust her a bit."
Both Jack Benny and Joan Staley, who appears in this episode of the Benny show, found out the same thing. While the beast appears gentle for the camera, she was actually kicking up quite a fuss backstage.
"That’s because her buddy isn't here," explained Smith. "Her stablemate is a mule; it's out in the trailer now and when the two of them are separated Kate gets jittery."
• • •
THE SMITHS, who operate stables in the Los Angeles area, figure to import a few more zebras. "Not that there's an overwhelming demand for them to work in Hollywood, but we do get calls for them to make personal appearances. "Because of their scarcity they get more money than horses. And it is easier to work with the real thing than to stripe a horse," he said.

About 25 years earlier, some people had to be assured Jack did not own a polar bear named Carmichael. We hope he wasn't asked the same thing about Kate Smith, the zebra.

A Sugar Coated Pill of Wisdom

The Aesop and Son cartoons on The Bullwinkle Show opened with a saying, followed by a fable based on it, followed by a bad pun on the saying.

The theatrical Aesop’s Fables produced by Van Beuren at the dawn of sound films did it differently. There was a fairly ordinary cartoon, followed by a tag at the end with a supposed saying by Aesop followed by a joke on it. The tag didn’t always have anything to do with the preceding cartoon.

Here’s the one from Tuning In (1929). It’s self-explanatory. Running into the distance was not unusual in Van Beuren (and silent Terry) cartoons. The poor image on the left is Aesop and son.



I believe the last Fables cartoon to have a tag was Good Old School Days (released March 7, 1930). Van Beuren changed its openings and closings in 1930, getting rid of this. . .



. . . and changing the opening from a title card like this . . .



. . . to the animated opening with animals making sounds in time to the music. (Thanks to Steve Stanchfield for the restoration).



Speaking of Van Beuren’s sounds, this article is from the Exhibitors Daily Review of Feb. 28, 1930.

137 SOUND DEVICES USED IN AESOP FABLES
To date the Aesop Fable sound department of the Van Beuren Corporation has accumulated one hundred and thirty-seven sound devices, many of which have been manufactured especially for Fables. These gadgets are the queerest looking bunch of what-nots imaginable, made out of every conceivable material including, cowhide, tin, horn, steel, brass, horsehair, and even the hollowed skull of an ox has been util-ized to provide comedy sound effects in "Singing Saps," a current picture. In this collection are twenty-three varieties of wooden instruments, fourteen of which are used in one scene of "Sky Skippers" which is now in the making. Synchronized noise-making is now a specialized brand of American industry.

The sound editor of Tuning In, who I believe was responsible for adding the effects to the score, was Paul F. Maschke. Carl Edouarde provided the music. Pathé provided the rooster.



Whenever Edourde’s name comes up among old-cartoon fans, it’s usually in connection with a recording session for Walt Disney that has been called a disaster. The Film Daily of September 16, 1929 reported:

Carl Edouarde, music director now is in charge of the synchronization for Aesop’s Sound Fables, the Van Beuren Corp., short subjects released by Pathe. The latest Fables synchronized by Edouarde and his orchestra are “A Jungle Fool” and “The Fly’s Bride.”

Edouarde’s tenure was short. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on Jan. 26, 1930 that hometown boy Gene Rodemich had been hired to score Van Beuren cartoons and “his first endeavors along this line have already reached the screen” (likely Ship Ahoy released in January 1930 as the previous release had Edouarde's name).

We may have discovered one of the voices on these early sound Fables. The Film Daily had this on the front page, Oct. 13, 1929:

Van Beuren Corp. will release a series of six song sketches through Pathe. The first will be “Mandalay,” the Kipling story set to music by Oley Speakes. John Stanley [sic] will be featured. He will also sing in “The Trumpeter,” the second of the series.

His name was actually James Stanley. He was a baritone who sang one of NBC’s top shows in the late ‘20s, The Eveready Hour. Whether he appeared in Van Beuren’s cartoons is unclear. The Billboard of May 24, 1930 said Stanley and contralto Margaret Olsen sang in the Song Sketch Voice of the Sea. while the Louisville Courier-Journal, bylined, mentioned on March 16, 1930 the James Stanley Quartette, otherwise unidentified, was in the song sketch Love’s Memories.

Finally, an unidentified reader mentioned something in the comments I could have sworn had found itse way into one of our posts. I cannot find it, so here it is below. Amedee Van Beuren was on his way to or from his honeymoon in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia when he stopped in at the office. Variety’s brief story appeared June 5, 1929:

VAN BEUREN’S MARRIAGE DAY
Amedee Van Beuren a couple of hours after his marriage Saturday, walked into the Aesop Fables headquarters.
In less than five minutes he deposed Paul Terry, the original of the script, and placed John Foster in charge.

Then, the press reported, it was off for a round of golf.

Terry and his cohort Frank Moser could not be stopped. The Feb. 10, 1930 issue of The Billboard reported the Educational Film Exchange, eager for cartoons with the coming of sound, had just closed a deal with Audio Cinema for a new series of animated shorts called Terry-Toons. By 1936, Terry had jettisoned Moser, then got fat and rich from his cartoons. The same year, Amadee Van Beuren got out of the cartoon business and stuck with travelogues for another year. He died at his country home in Carmel, New York in November 1938, age 58.

They're Not Hubie and Bertie

Remember in Mouse Wreckers, how Hubie lowered Bertie on a fishing line down a chimney to play head games with a sleeping Claude Cat?



Wait a minute. That’s not Hubie and Bertie. That’s Jerry and an unnamed mouse in The Year of the Mouse, a 1965 MGM short.

Both cartoons were directed by Chuck Jones and written by Mike Maltese, so the similarities are not coincidental.

The plot is the same in both. The mouse plants something on the snoozing cat, instigates violence, gets pulled up the chimney, and the cat is left to wonder why he is harming himself.

Mouse Wreckers is a far superior cartoon, with stronger gags, including the one where the mice nail everything on the floor to the ceiling. In The Year of the Mouse, Jerry sneaks a gun into Tom’s hands. The trigger has a string attached, which Jerry tugs before being pulled up the chimney. I like the dry-brush colouring after the gun goes off.



The main difference between the two cartoons is Tom figures out what’s happening, catches and imprisons the mice, thereby winning in the end.



Hey, didn’t this happen in another Jones/Maltese Warners cartoon, too?



Jerry’s mimicking of Tom’s expressions gets stale (Why are these mice picking on Tom anyways?). And almost all Mel Blanc and June Foray do in this cartoon is giggle, an incredible waste of their talents.

The animators on The Year of the Mouse are Ken Harris, Ben Washam, Dick Thompson and Don Towsley, with Maurice Noble and Phil De Guard on the Jones team. Gene Poddany provides an original score.

Enough of this. Let's bring on Hubie and Bertie.

Steamboat Toby

Down South, starring Toby the pup, is kind of a cross between a Disney and a Fleischer cartoon. The whole steamboat and rescue-the-girl-friend aspects remind me of a certain Mickey Mouse short. The rest is kind of Bimbo Light.

There’s a series of gags about captain Toby welcoming passengers onto his riverboat. There one where some kind of bird in a top hat lays an egg. A more amusing one is where Toby shakes hands with a kangaroo. A joey pops up out of its pouch. Then a second one. Then the kangaroo turns around and there’s a pouch in the back with another little kangaroo.



The soundtrack includes “Steamboat Bill,” “Old Folks at Home,” and a version of “Mississippi Mud” sung in Minnie/Honey style. Joe De Nat provided the musical score.

Dick Huemor [sic] and Sid Marcus get screen credits. R-K-O released the cartoon, made by the folks at the Charles Mintz studio, April 15, 1931. Art Davis worked on them as well. In 1977, he recalled to historian Milt Grey:

The three of us actually had a piece of it. Each one of us had a contract that, on top of our salary, we were going to get 13 and 1/3 percent of the profits, above a specified amount. But we never got a nickel out of it.

A few Tobys survive for your viewing pleasure. 12 were released, all in the 1930-31 season, though we’ve found ads from 1932 where theatres were still showing them; the ad to the right is from May 14, where it was playing in Kalispell, Montana. The one I’d like to see is Toby in the Brown Derby.

Yes, Commissioner

We kids were watching a star on Batman and never knew it.

Long after the show went off the air, I learned that Commissioner Gordon had been a big name on the silent screen.

About the only exposure to silents I had in the mid-1960s were from compilations of clips of comedies—Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Harold Lloyd’s clock, airborne pies, that kind of thing. And a few names like Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish.

But I never recalled seeing Hamilton in anything. Sound brought new stars. I knew who they were (they were parodied in Warner Bros. cartoons). Hamilton wasn’t among them. He made some B pictures. He went to New York in 1944 for 13 years of stage work. As you may have read on the Old TV History blog, at the dawn of network television, he hosted Hollywood Screen Test on ABC, the network that later brought you the Caped Crusader. He returned to Hollywood in 1957 and found some employment in movies and on TV.

The era of the silent screen was the era of puff pieces on the stars, planted in movie magazines and newspapers by the studios. Facts never got in the way of a good story, an attitude that carried into the sound years (Tab Hunter is the all-American boy, right?).

Whether this story from 1928 is true, I have no idea. But (and this was its purpose) I’d like to believe it. This piece of trivia must have been sent to newspapers by the Universal publicity department, where the movie page editor could insert the name of theatre where Hamilton’s newest feature was showing. I’ve found it in several papers. This is from Halifax Evening Mail of Feb. 16.

NEIL HAMILTON FEATURED LEAD
In ''Shield of Honor," a Police Film, is Out of the Usual Run of Pictures
NEIL HAMILTON, popular film leading man who portrays a feature role in "Shield of Honor", the Universal production which is now showing at the Orpheus Theatre, is just as clever and is as much at home doing tricks of magic on the stage as he is acting before the camera.
Since his childhood school days in Lynn, Massachusetts, Hamilton has been an ardent follower of the mystic art of magic. During his school days he was the "kid of the hour" with his many interesting objects used to promote the magician's handiwork.
It was not until after making his screen debut that he took up the study of magic seriously. His many idle hours in his dressing room were soon put to use with his legerdemain activities and he was the source of entertainment to the entire staff on the sets on which he has worked.
Among his favorite tricks is the disappearing cigarette stub. He will borrow someone's handkerchief, a silk one desired, take a lighted cigarette and after forming a cup of the handkerchief he will drop the cigarette in the cup, rub his thumb on top of it, shake the handkerchief and the cigarette will be gone.
Another one is the balancing of a silver dollar op the beveled edge of a water glass. This sounds easy but suppose you try it. He also has any number of card tricks, disappearing cards, picking them out of the air, calling their denomination as they are selected by others and he can also pick the proverbial rabbit out of a silk hat.

Let us leave the era of silk handkerchiefs and stop in the Mod 1960s. Batman is on the air.

The Arrow Collar Man Stars Again
By HAROLD HEFFERNAN
HOLLYWOOD (NANA) — Greta Garbo's former landlord is a great big star—all over again.
Moreover, within the next couple of weeks, Neil Hamilton—the man in the Arrow collar ads a few decades back—will celebrate his 48th anniversary in show business.
He'll be doing it on the set of the feature film treatment of the phenomenally successful "Batman," in which he's repeating his role of the police commissioner of Gotham City. And, of course, 20th Century-Fox Studio is the scene of this new mischief.
"I spend most of my time on the screen calling Batman on the Batphone imploring his aid," he laughs. Still handsome, and looking at least 15 years younger than the 67 he professes, Hamilton finds the assignment fun and a good job.
"And acting to me has always been a job, a means to a living," he says. "I've never been one of those guys who claims he acts to express himself."
Hamilton, married over 40 years to the same lady, co-starred with Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, and all the romantic actresses of his era. At the peak of his career, he had a fan mail count of 20.000 a letters a month. In recent years, when acting lobs were hard to come by because he no longer is the young leading man type, he earned a comfortable living lecturing to women's clubs in various parts of the country.
"Several hundred dollars and chicken a la king several times a week are nothing to turn your back on," he said wryly. "And it was better than selling real estate. Heavens, that's a perfectly horrible job—real estate! I worked as a salesman for a while. A nightmare!"
Hamilton says he's still a film fan but doesn't attend pictures much any more because he's tired of those "dreary stories about perversion and dope pushing and all the downbeat celluloid that passes for significant commentary."
"Where are the pretty girls in movies today?" he asked. "Name me three—just three —pretty girls in movies today," he demanded. "Today, they are all concentrating not on how to act appealingly but in displaying what huge bosoms they've developed, or how fetchingly they can twist hips. No sign of subtlety or good manners anymore. They simply hurl the sex stuff out at you with a shovel."
Hamilton, whose chief attributes in his heyday were a flashing smile, clean-cut good looks and dress, and an instinctive graciousness, chose acting as a career after he plodded, as a teen-ager in Massachusetts, from the family farm to a nearby theatre where the actors gave him their leftovers to carry back to feed the Hamilton pigs. Gradually, he got an acting break there between the porcine chores.
He became a star first for D. W. Griffith in movies made in New York and Griffith later brought him to Hollywood, where, teaming with "It" Girl Clara Bow, he quickly won matinee idol status.
He estimates he's made about 300 films.
Hamilton's favorite assignments include the original "Beau Geste"—the fourth has just been completed—in which he teamed with Ronald Colman, and "One Sunday Afternoon," in a pairing with Gary Cooper.
Greta Garbo, during her tenure at MGM, rented a house from him for two years and always paid her rent on time.
"But I never got to meet her," he says. "When she left, I found she had piled carpets as much as a foot deep in the bedroom—I don't know why."
Hamilton has hopes, however, of finally meeting his former tenant. She's reported to be a rabid "Batman" fan.

My grade four class wasn’t the only place where we were talking about Batman on Thursday morning and wondering what would happen on tonight’s part-two episode. Here’s a good-news story as reported by the Hamilton’s home-town newspaper, The Daily Item, on Aug. 20, 1966.

Ex-Lynner Neil Hamilton
Commr. Gordon Wins Hearts of School Kids
Neil Hamilton, the onetime Lynn resident who plays Comm. Gordon an ABC-TV's 'Batman," is a veteran of 48 years of richly varied background on the stage, screen and television.
Recently, however, he indulged himself in a brand new experience—he made an announced visit to a contingent of his young fans in their fifth-grade classroom in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
Hamilton had met their teacher socially and she told him that five minutes of each Thursday morning in class was devoted to trying to solve the dilemma the Dynamic Duo had been placed in the night before.
With such interest brought to his attention, Hamilton sent off photographs of Batman (Adam West) for each member of the class—24 in all. Twenty-eight thank-you's followed, along with a brief letter from the class president extending an invitation to the actor to visit them.
Nnoe [sic] of the children expected such a visit, but they didn't know Neil Hamilton. Bearing 28 candy bars, he drove the 44 miles to the Thousand Oaks school. To get directions to the classroom, he stopped by the superintendent’s office where he was greeted with a blank look and the query: "Are you from the welfare?"
Assuring the superintendent that his bag of candy was not a welfare package, he was shown to the classroom, still unrecognized, to meet his fans. What happened next is best expressed in quotes from the letters he received after the visit:
“You are the nicest person I ever met" . . . "I would have rather seen you for 45 minutes than have gone to the movies for the whole day" . . . "I would pay $1 to see you again" . .. "My mom wouldn't believe me" . . . "Thank you for the autograph" . . . "Now I can prove you were here" . . . "You are a very nice move [sic] star" . . ."You seemed to like kids very, very much . . "
An Oscar isn't an actor's only award.

Hamilton wound down his career after Batman went off the air. He was 85 when he died about two weeks after his birthday in 1984. And while, I suspect, just about everyone reading this knows him best from telling Chief O’Hara he was about to use the Batphone, Charles Schulz remembered him from an earlier time in a 1979 cartoon.

Read the Sign!

The gag worked for Tex Avery in A Day at the Zoo (1939), so why not try a variation one year later?

In Zoo, a visitor is chided by a monkey for trying to feed it. In Cross Country Detours (1940), the narrator informs us that “Tourists are often tempted to feed the tame bears in the park.”



Check to see that no one is looking.



Now to violate the park rules!



The bear is having none of that b.s.



“Listen, stupid, can’t you read??” screams the bear.

On to the next gag.

Paul Smith gets the rotating animation credit on this, with Rich Hogan credited with the story. Johnny Johnsen painted the backgrounds, with overlays panned at a different speed to simulate a 3-D effect. Lou Marcelle is the narrator.

Stratos-Fear Backgrounds

Stratos-Fear is an imaginative Willie Whopper cartoon, both in its story elements and its artwork.

Background artists went uncredited in 1933, so I leave it to Iwerks studio experts to determine who was responsible for the paintings behind the action.

Gas-filled Willie ascends into outer space, passing an annoyed moon, a bike race on Saturn (due to its rings being like an oval track), and various stars and planets to an identified planet.



Some interiors.



Willie survived less than another year. MGM dumped the Iwerks cartoons in favour of Bosko and others from the Harman-Ising studio.