The Cartoon With Two Meanings

Symphony in Slang looks to have been an experiment by Tex Avery in several different areas—stylised backgrounds (except for the opening), limited animation and a story consisting of nothing except visual puns.

Avery and writer Rich Hogan shoved in as many literalized phrases as they could string together to make a narrative. They come at the audience quickly.

Just one: “My breath came in short pants.”



Avery uses a 20-drawing cycle for the pants flying out of the hipster's mouth.

Years ago, we posted a link to screen grabs of the gags and to the dialogue. The links are still active.

Tex suggested to author/historian Joe Adamson if MGM cartoon boss Fred Quimby had his way, the cartoon never would have been made.

We got smart, and we would wait until it got close to our deadline and we'd say, “Chief, this is all we’ve got! The only way to keep from making this show is to lay the animators off. This is all we've got!”’ So we got by with some things. That's how we did Symphony in Slang, where we illustrated literally a lot of popular expressions—‘‘I was in a pickle’, “‘I went to pieces.’ He had a hell of a time trying to understand that one.

The short seems to have sat on a shelf (try saying that five times). Variety reported on Aug. 5, 1949 that John Brown was recording three different voices for it. Brown, at the time, was Digger O’Dell, the friendly undertaker, on The Life of Riley and deadbeat boyfriend Al on My Friend Irma. Then this story popped up in the papers; one was published Aug. 27th.

SCENES FOR SLANG
HOLLYWOOD—Largest number of scenes ever listed for a one reel cartoon are scheduled for M-G-M’s “Symphony in Slang,” Producer Fred Quimby states. An entirely new cartoon technique will give five feet each to individual slang expressions. The cartoon will also be different in that it will have commentation behind the action for its entire length.

Scott Bradley's score was copyright September 11, 1950, but the cartoon’s official release date was the following June 16th. However, to the right you see it advertised for screening on April 29 at a theatre in Waverly, New York.

I can’t imagine this cartoon went over in theatres outside North America, but it did go over well at one American institute of higher learning. Reported the Hollywood Reporter on Dec. 27, 1951:

Cartoon Lesson
E. A. Warren of Notre Dame has requested Fred Quimby, producer of MGM cartoons, to show “Symphony in Slang” before the English classes at the University. Cartoon pokes fun at some of our more familiar slang clichés.

As the cartoon’s hipster might say, “Ain’t that a kick in the head!”

A Jack, a WAC and a Camel

Jack Benny couldn’t make it happen again.

He had success on his radio show when a pet polar bear became a part of it. Carmichael even played a role in the feature Buck Benny Rides Again (1940). Benny and his writers decided to bring other animals onto the show, but they didn’t last very long. Audiences didn’t seem to connect with them. One was an ostrich. Another was a horse that replaced Benny’s Maxwell (which reappeared after the war years). Another was a camel.

Unlike the others, the camel had some basis in reality. Jack, Larry Adler and others toured the Middle East in 1943, entertaining soldiers in the sweltering heat, afterward going to Italy. The Los Angeles Daily News had some information in its edition of Oct. 22, 1943.

WACS 'draft' Jack Benny as he returns with head unbombed
Jack Benny, the only entertainer to return from an overseas tour without claiming he had been subjected to gunfire, was met at Union station yesterday [21] by a mob scene that included a detachment of WACS and a stuffed camel. The WACS were on hand to “swear" Benny in as an honorary recruiting officer in the current campaign, while the camel's presence was explained to be in connection with a "gag” Benny had broadcast from Cairo.
It seems that while the entertainer was entertaining in that Egyptian city he let loose with the remark that he had bought a two humped camel, the two hump model on the ground that “you can get a better tradein deal, and besides you can keep dry ice in one."
Press agents from the broadcasting company here, hanging on every word, immediately instituted a search for a two humped camel, which was located by a safari at Goebel's Lion farm on Ventura blvd.
It was thought best to rent a stuffed camel, rather than a live one, it was explained, the latter being “a little unpredictable, front and back."
Benny, when he got off Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe's Chief and stood in the midst of an admiring group, said he had had a fine time on his trip.
“But, kids,” he cautioned, “if you want to make a Frank Merriwell story out of this, I can't help you. I had a wonderful, exciting time, practically a vacation.”
In 10 weeks and 15,000 miles, Benny played 150 shows in Africa, Sicily and Italy, points on the Persian gulf, and Iceland on the way home.
“The big thing was the trip to Italy," Benny said. “It was the only place we made a hazardous trip, where we had no business going.”
Though he had been in what the army designated as combat zones, Benny said, he hadn’t been up at the front. No bombs, no shells.
The comic, who said that he had put on 15 pounds which he would have to take off for his next picture, ran into a lot of people “over there."
“I ran into Bruce Cabot in Tunis, and, what’s the name of that fellow who was married to Joan Bennett and Hedy Lamarr?”
"Gene Markey?" somebody said.
“Yeah, Gene Markey,” Benny continued. “And then I ran into people like my caddy from Hillcrest. That was in Tunis, too."
Asked what he thought the troops overseas needed by way of entertainment Benny said “More live entertainment, they could stand. Especially in places where there isn’t any combat duty."
When Benny arrived in New York, he was quoted as having said that some of the pictures being shown the boys were so old that Shirley Temple hasn’t been born yet and Francis X. Bushman is the lending man."
Yesterday he explained that he hadn’t meant it quite that way.
“I don’t like to start a thing all ever again," he said. “My statement was that in two places, Sicily and Persia, I saw old pictures. But in other places I saw very late pictures."
Among the military present to greet the homecomer was Lt. Col. Clifford Henderson, staff officer to Maj. Gen. Jimmie Doolittle, on detached service with the air transport command.
Benny and the colonel had missed seeing each other in Benghazi by about 10 minutes, and if the colonel had gone away mad when the train didn't come in on time yesterday, he would have missed him again.
The reason the colonel was there was that he is giving some indirect help on the WAC recruiting drive, and what with some WACS being at the station to meet Benny it all adds somehow.
In New York Benny picked up his radio troupe for the return home.
With him were his wife, Mary Livingstone; Phil Harris and Mrs. Harris (Alice Faye), Rochester (Eddie Anderson), Dennis Day and Don Wilson.
Day got off at Pasadena and Harris and Miss Faye at Union station, the latter two availing themselves of invisibility to avoid the crush.
A station passenger agent, long since used to anything Hollywood can spring on him, was unimpressed by the presence of the stuffed camel. “That's not so bad,” he said. “When Fred Allen came in they brought him a calf."
And before that, when a consignment of Cover Girls was shipped to a local movie studio they were met at the station by a Russian wolfhound.
The presence of live or stuffed stock is rapidly becoming standard equipment at these trainside events.

The Cairo broadcast was a special programme on NBC on Sept. 13, 1943. You can listen to it below.



Benny’s pet camel debuted on his show of January 9, 1944. You would think the role would have been given to Mel Blanc, who had been appearing with Jack. Instead, it was handed to 17-year-old Alhambra High School student Stan Freberg, who went on to a career in the public relations department of McCormack General Hospital (and a few other things).

Freberg did the one thing you never did on the Jack Benny show. He pissed off Jack Benny. In his anxiousness during a rehearsal, he rushed to the microphone to do his camel voice (supporting players sat on chairs on stage) and threw off Benny. Benny then threw off Freberg. He never appeared on the Benny radio show again, and evidently took the camel with him.

Making a Terrytoon Starts With Paul Terry

“Paul Terry took an active part in the story work not only by feeding his own gags to the stories but by a sort of assault-tactic on the story department,” recalled writer Izzy Klein about his former employer.

In the December 1973 edition of Cartoonist Profiles, he said: “During my first two weeks Terry seemed to be a quiet soul, but soon enough his crash method of forcing a story out every two weeks became evident. He considered himself Mr. Story Department for Terrytoons, from whom all ideas originated. Other people’s ideas were merely fillers. Nevertheless, he expected and demanded support from the ‘backfield.’”

If anyone disbelieves Klein’s opinion, they need look no further than the April 1945 edition of New Dynamo magazine. This was an internal publication of 20th Century Fox, which released Terrytoons until the studio stopped making them. The issue features a rather lengthy feature story on Terry, how his studio made cartoons, and an overview of what exhibitors were getting in the current season and would be available at film exchanges in the next season.

It’s worth reading for its, at-times, almost poetic recitation of superlatives about Terry and his product that Fox was distributing. About the studio, it states:

The keystone of the structure is its President. His personal and professional history and temperament have been the core around which this cohesive and efficient organization could readily form and absorb enough of the Terry character to compose a unified, consistent and smoothly-working mechanism.

Due to the length, we won’t reprint the full article. It is available for your pleasure at the handy Archive.org site (off-line until further notice). Instead of the portion about Terry himself, we’ll transcribe the portion about how Terrytoons were made. Note what is said about stories.

Thirty years after his venturesome plunge into the animated cartoon arena, and, despite the many strenuous intervening years, expended in inspiring and superintending successful production in a highly competitive field, Paul Terry today shows few signs of wear and tear. Most people at first sight would estimate his age as being ten years less than it actually is.
This is because he has long since made the virtually perfect adjustment between the ideals and fancies of the creative artist, and the practical thought-processes of the executive, that is so essential to the role he has to play in the world.
To constitute the driving and controlling force of an organization like Terrytoons, as he does, it is necessary first for Mr. Terry to be an originator, a creator. This faculty, of course, had to be born in him, and it was developed by the art education of his very early years, by his work as a newspaper artist and cartoonist, and still more rapidly and fully by the flowering of his imagination and technical abilities after he had plunged into the swift and turbulent stream of animated cartoon work and found himself thoroughly at home there.
Acting on his life-long belief that one must "take in" in order to "give out," Mr. Terry reinforced his natural talents and his training by studiously delving, over a long period of years, into the fictional lore of all nations. Beginning with Aesop, and completely absorbing every recorded word that the ancient genius ever uttered, he stored his mind with the narrative masterpieces of thousands of years and of every country on the globe.
From this rich and inexhaustible stock of themes, characters, situations, backgrounds and miscellaneous ideas, Mr. Terry, adding the indispensable ingredient of original conception, distills the concrete inspiration which starts the machinery rolling on the production of another cartoon.
Over a course of many years, Paul Terry has assembled a staff of executives and artists, most of them long known to him, who can work with each other and with him harmoniously and with the highest degree of effectiveness. To the specialized experts of the Story Department he hands the theme and the principal ideas of the new cartoon-to-be, and they shape it in elaborate detail, over a period of two weeks, in sketch form. Backgrounds are visualized, the successive situations are worked out so as to tell the story in the most forceful and cogent form, the "gags," which are to bring the laughs from the audiences, are conceived and inserted in the places where they will be most effective, and the dialogue completed down to the carefully-selected last word.
Even sound effects are calculated with care and precision. A staff of talented and experienced scenarists, headed by John Foster, who has been a noted Story Director for many years, handles this end of the work. Mr. Terry, however, keeps his eye on this vital task and frequently alters the course of the story for the better, or suggests new situations, "gags," or bits of dialogue to sharpen it up.
The completed story consists of hundreds of sketches, depicting, in order, the various scenes that have been carefully knit together — their backgrounds and their action — and a script describing all the action in detail, with the dialogue and sound effects.
One of the picture directors, who are assigned pictures in turn, takes over the story in this form, and he cooperates with the musical director, Philip Scheib, in "timing" all the action in the cartoon. This is a long and involved task, in which every movement of the characters is measured in fractions of a second, and the exact time consumed for each is set down in the music sheets, for the accompanying music, which is so important, must synchronize exactly with the action of the figures.
Mr. Scheib, a musical director of wide reputation over a long period of years, next takes charge of the music sheets. He composes a score calculated to accompany and illustrate all the action throughout the picture, indicate the changing moods, and emphasize the high points. The music must stimulate and excite the listener in one place, uplift him in another, soothe or charm him in other passages. The Music Department is one in which Terrytoons particularly excel.
The score, with sound effects and dialogue, is recorded at the 20th Century-Fox Sound Studio in New York, under the supervision of Mr. Scheib and the picture director, with the assistance of an orchestra and various actors and singers who have specialized in this form of work.
The director in charge of the picture now takes over the music sheets, where the score as well as the action, dialogue and sound effects have been set down in finished form. He spreads the multitudinous sketches delineating the story, on a great board filling one wall of his office, and gets down to work. The director must be a craftsman of long experience and exceptional talent, familiar with all departments of animated cartoon work, as well as a forceful executive. He now plans, in detail, the execution of all the scenes in the picture, and calls in the layout men to make careful drawings of characters, key action attitudes, and backgrounds.
The next step is for the director to hand out the scenes of the picture, which may be anywhere from 45 to 70 in number, to the various animators, with the layouts for each scene and detailed instructions as to how it is to be treated to achieve the best effects in respect to action and humor. Twenty animators and as many "in-betweeners" work for a month, or longer, completing the scenes for each cartoon. Nine or ten thousand drawings in elaborate, smoothly-coordinated sequence, are necessary to depict in finished fashion the action of the average Terrytoon.
The drawings are next taken to the Tracing and Painting Department, where about 50 young artists, most of them girls, carefully trace the drawings on to celluloid sheets, and paint in the variegated colors in which the characters appear.
All this time, the Background Department has been working up, in full color, charming, whimsical, dramatic or fantastic settings (whichever may be called for) from the drawings furnished by the layout men. The Background Department is staffed by outstanding landscape artists, whose distinctive work is one of the superior features of Terrytoons, adding much to the vividness and charm of the pictures.
The thousands of celluloid sheets, with the action drawings traced and painted on them, are now taken to the Camera Department, where seven great modem color cameras dominate a full equipment of every mechanical device known to the improved production of animated cartoons. Scene by scene, the backgrounds are fitted under the vertical cameras, and on them are laid the celluloids depicting the action, three or four at a time. This process continues under the various cameras until the entire cartoon is photographed.
The picture has now been completely recorded on a long roll of film, and this is dispatched to Hollywood by airplane, printed in Technicolor, and the prints swiftly returned by plane to the New Rochelle main office of Terrytoons. There the picture is projected with all executives and workers present, when criticism is invited and changes are made if found necessary. Changes, however, are actually infrequent in the case of these cartoons, as every operation involved in their creation has been executed with the utmost care, from the sketching of the first idea to the final click of the camera in the last scene.
This, in brief, is the story of the evolution of a Terrytoon. Many details of the process have been omitted, and whole departments vital to the conduct of the business have been overlooked. However, the foregoing is an adequate summary of the most important moves in the production of a modern animated cartoon of the first order, calculated to please, thrill and bring the boon of happy laughter to millions of followers.

Terry and CBS signed a contract in 1953 to put 112 Terrytoons on television. The Barker Bill show debuted in November. Then he started closing a deal in late 1955 to sell his studio to the network. Terrytoons continued to be made for about another 15 years. Say what you will about him, but Paul Terry was an animation pioneer and produced cartoons popular with more than one generation.

The Ears Have It

In the 1930 Disney cartoon Wild Waves, there's an awful lot of repetitious action. We see four penguins dancing on a beach. Then they go through the same steps a second time. Same with Minnie Mouse trying to escape some high waves.

There's an interesting take that I don't believe was used very often. Mickey sees a fishing net he can turn into a harp (which sounds like a piano). He's so excited about it, his ears detach in a three-drawing take (one per frame).



The first half of the short is Mickey rescuing Minnie, the second half is characters dancing or singing.

The internet can’t make up its mind when this cartoon was released. We have this report from New York by Phil M. Daly, Jr. of the Film Daily of Jan. 16, 1930; it was in theatres by then:

Charlie Giegerich is happy over the treatment given “Wild Waves,” Celebrity cartoon, at the premiere of “Hit the Deck” the other night at the Earl Carroll.

Celebrity was Pat Powers’ company and Giegerich was his right-hand man. Later in the year, Powers would poach Ub Iwerks.

Here's Variety's review of Jan. 22nd:

“WILD WAVES”
Disney Cartoon
8 Mins.
Carroll, N. Y.
Columbia
Fast-moving comedy cartoon, which isn’t on long enough to bore many, no matter if it isn’t always laugh provoking. Doesn’t rank with the best of the recent crop, but will fit any program.
It’s one of the Mickey Mouse series, unwinding the usual antics of the cartoonist’s imagination. Most of the action attempts to keep the rhythm of the synchronized score, but the resultant gag maneuvers not being overly strong. Some of the cartoons are mimicking the voices of the figures in certain spots, a mistake, as it rudely interrupts any illusion the drawings may have previously invoked. That’s overdoing the sound thing.
The cartoon one-reelers are riding in front at present, with a wealth of material to pick from to make it tough to offset their strength. Carelessness and an attempt to turn ’em out too fast can undermine as fast as the novelty of sound and a couple of great ideas sent them out as pace makers. Their main asset is that they’re built for laughs, and people primarily go to the theatre for that purpose. Sid

The uncredited director is apparently Burt Gillett.

Mitzi Gaynor

Mitzi Gaynor was a dynamo.

She appeared in movies and in stage shows, and was continually lauded for her ceaseless energy.

In 1950, producer Georgie Jessel saw her, shoved her into the cast of the Betty Grable/Dan Dailey picture My Blue Heaven, borrowed a surname from Janet Gaynor and turned Mitzi Gerber into Mitzi Gaynor (the original Gaynor was reportedly not impressed with 20th Century-Fox unilaterally absconding with her moniker).

Her biggest film role was likely Mary Martin’s leading part in the stage musical South Pacific (1958) but she was out of movies within a few years.

Why?

The Associated Press hunted for the reason in a column published May 31, 1964.

Movies Wrong For Gaynor
By JAMES BACON
HOLLYWOOD (AP) – Mitzi Gaynor is a victim of box-office chemistry.
And that may also be what’s wrong with the movies.
The last time Mitzi was cast opposite the right leading man — Rosanno Brazzi — the picture, “South Pacific,” wound up seventh in the top 10 list of all-time moneymaking films.
Her next two pictures were comedies opposite Yul Brynner and Kirk Douglas.
Result: Mitzi had to go into the nightclub field where she commands $40,000 a week.
At the Las Vegas Flamingo she was given two points—two per cent — of the action of the entire hotel-casino operation to sign a 10-year contract.
Jack Entratter of The Sands, who wishes he had her under contract, comments:
“She’s the only new night club star to emerge in the last decade.”
But there are no movie scripts. Josh Logan once said Mitzi can do more things better than anyone else in Hollywood. That’s partly her trouble. When Brynner and Douglas, both serious actors, chose Mitzi, she was so good that she made them look bad.
A smart producer would cast her opposite Jack Lemmon or Cary Grant — and you would have a female Sandy Koufax pitching against a Willie Mays.
Also, she was producer Ray Stark’s first choice to do “Funny Girl” on Broadway, but declared:
“I knew I wouldn’t be believable as Fanny Brice so I turned it down. And look what Barbra Streisand is doing with it.”
Jack Bean, her husband and manager, explained why she refused the role.
“Fanny Brice was no beauty. Neither is Barbra—she kids about it herself. Look at Mitzi. How can you make her unpretty?”
Now Stark has a Broadway show called “The Passionate Witch,” based on the old Fredric March-Veronica Lake movie “I Married a Witch.”
Mitzi’s interested. If she takes it, you may see a repetition of the Betty Grable saga.
For years Betty get herself arrested around Hollywood. Then she did “Dubarry Was a Lady” on Broadway and the movies discovered her.
For the next ten years, she was in the movies’ top 10 box office list—usually the only woman there.

She shone on the Vegas strip. She toured nightclubs. Vancouver loved her. She tried out her Vegas material in the city. Gaynor first appeared in Vancouver in 1966. There were long lines outside the Cave supper club. Two weeks became four. People were still turned away.

Gaynor didn’t cancel a vacation in Banff and stay in Vancouver just for the money. The Bolshoi Ballet was arriving and she wanted to catch their matinee performance. Actually, she decided to do more than that. She asked local show producer Hugh Pickett to invite them to her late performance and then take them all to a nearby Italian restaurant. “But, my dear, there’s 140 of them.” It ended up the invitation was accepted by the company’s 30 principals.

She returned a number of times to Vancouver, though the days of expensive supper club shows being funded in higher-valued American money were waning. A columnist for the Province tried to get Gaynor to be introspective in a column published May 24, 1969.

Mitzi Gaynor . . . way it is all right by her.
By KAY ALSOP
Offstage, too, she’s a life-size Barbie doll—same round eyes, pert nose and that incredible figure . . . Watching her perform, the way she wound an audience around here finger, I’d thought to myself: “Nuts—no woman over 21 can be all that adorable. She’s GOT to be bitchy before breakfast, or have some dirty shoulder straps—SOMETHING!”
Then I met her—Francesca Mitzi Marlene de Charney von Gerber Bean—Mitzi Gaynor.
I had been talking to Cave band-leader Fraser McPherson, and hadn’t noticed her approach until suddenly:
“Hi!” she bubbled. “Waiting for me?”
And in the dim light, there at the top of the stairs, I swear it was like she was lit by sparklers!
Easy now, I thought. Adorable, eh? You’re going to have to show me . . .
While she chattered on about this and that—(“Hey, like to sit here? I think I’ll sit myself—phew!”)—I grabbed a couple of sneaky peeks around at the star’s dressing room.
During the past few months I’ve been in it several times, and seen it in all manner of disarrat. And you know? This time it was parlor-tidy, costumes lined up, plastic-covered. No powder spills on the table, lounge laid tidily with cotton cover.
I looked at this doll, composed on a straight chair, a flame-colored shirtwaist playing up those curves, silk scarf knotted at the throat, eyes swagged in two-inch lashes.
She read my mind.

“My face is ready,” she cracked. “And believe me, it takes time. These eyes are a production!”
“Listen,” I began, “I’ve got only three questions, all ‘how-do-you-keepers.’ First, how do you keep your bounce?”
“Easy,” she said. “I’m naturally energetic, but I take vitamins too, tons of them. And I try to get enough sleep. Even though my life is topsy-turvy—I go to bed at 4 a.m. and get up at 2 p.m. But I do run down occasionally, and when I really get tired I flop! (and she slumped dramatically in the chair to show me.)
“Then my husband drags me off for a rest, and I don’t do a thing but plop! Otherwise I’m lucky—I have lots of git-up-and-go.”
“Okay—second question. How do you keep your figure?”
“Exercise,” she said instantly, “and I watch my diet. I was REALLY fat fifteen years ago, you know—42 inch hips, 23 inch waist (normally, I’m 21 inches around the middle). I looked like this: (and she drew parentheses in the air to indicate balloon proportions.)
“I was engaged to Jack then, and he told me bluntly: ‘Diet!’ So I did. I lose 35 pounds in three months. My stomach growled all day long. I was so grouchy. But I got my shape back.
“Since then I don’t really diet, but (she looked at me levelly) let’s face it—I work a lot of it off out there on the stage. And I exercise regularly every day.”
“Final question. How do you keep your husband?”
Her answer came back like a shot.
“I ADORE him, and I tell him so CONSTANTLY! He’s the boss, he’s my manager my companion, my love and my friend.
“We’ve been married for fourteen years, and I can hardly wait for the next fourteen. I wake up in the middle of the night and suddenly get panicky. I think: ‘My God! What if I had never met Jack? What if something happened to him? What would I DO?”
“Sometimes I get terribly crabby, like when I’ve sprained my ankle, or cut my finger, or put my back out. I feel disgustingly sorry for myself then. But Jack knows all I need is lots of loving. And I GET it!”
I had forgotten the ‘adorable’ bit by now. I was remembering, instead, that Mitzi Gaynor was one of those ‘overnight’ successes who had been slugging away for more than 20 years before she was ‘discovered’ in “South Pacific.” I was recalling that the crew she works with—the backstage people who really know a star—dote on her.
I thought about the fat girl who gritted her teeth, ignore the famished stomach, and whittled her 42 inch hips down to a curvy 36. And I looked at this performer who, in the best tradition of show business, worked doggedly at her craft, polishing, practising, till she was letter-perfect and gesture-sure.
My mind flashed back over the number of female performers I’ve interviewed in the past, whose off-stage lives loomed bleak and lonely because they’d not known how to work at a marriage as well as a career, and I mentally applauded this Gaynor gal for her shrewd, basic logic, her ability to put things in proper perspective, first things first.
She’s at the top of the heap, earning some $45,000 a week at Las Vegas. Vancouver crowds line the streets and the stairs, waiting to squeeze in to see her perform. Critics rave. And Mitzi Gaynor raves too—about her husband!

At age 66, the Cave long demolished, Mitzi was emotional when her 1996 performances at the Vogue Theatre in Vancouver prompted the city to declare July 9th as Mitzi Gaynor Day. Just shy of 80, she performed at a Vancouver-area casino. Entertainment critics still lauded her enthusiasm on stage. She gave her all to her audiences. She'll be long remembered for it.

On the Downbeat

Sir Wally Walrus conducts an orchestra of animals in The Overture to William Tell, a 1947 Musical Miniature directed by Dick Lundy for Walter Lantz.

Here are some of Wally's positions as he gets set to lead the orchestra in the Ranz des Vaches portion of Rossini's famous composition.



La Verne Harding and Casey Onaitis receive the animation credits in this cartoon, with Bugs Hardaway and Milt Schaffer charged with coming up with different musical instrument gags than in the other Miniatures.

Funt's Stunts

There’s always been a subset of television programming, dating back to the network radio days, of shows that deliberately embarrass and laugh at innocent people. Most make me cringe.
Ralph Edwards was particularly smirky and smarmy as he ridiculed people in ridiculous situations on Truth or Consequences (his image was counterbalanced by some excellent charity work and a half-hour of sentiment called This is Your Life). Art Linkletter was a little more tolerable on People Are Funny (his image was counterbalanced by eliciting amusing answers by naïve children on House Party).

One of these programmes I did like was Candid Camera. It may have trod the line, but when I watched it in the 1960s any embarrassment about a situation didn’t last long and we always saw the victim was let in on the joke at the end. (Bob and Ray came up with a parody called “Secret Camera” where the host was beaten up by angry victims). The show was so popular, CBS aired reruns Monday through Friday, which is when I watched.

It helped, too, the host was a chap named Allen Funt. He was no chortling, “aren’t we devils” type. He came across as an ordinary, unaffected guy, not an over-the-top television host.

Funt created Candid Camera, which was actually born as Candid Microphone on ABC radio, the network that allowed recorded voices. The show worked on radio and Funt was able to move it to television, where it blossomed. But it took a little bit of time.

If nothing else, Funt was a self-promotor. Not surprising perhaps because, in 1940, he was the head of a copy department at ad agency. In 1942, he became the writer and director of the Blue Network’s Army-Navy Game, where a soldier and sailor took part in gag demonstrations. The Army itself beckoned for Funt a year later, and we find him at Camp Gruber in Oklahoma, where he was behind a local radio show called Behind the Dog Tag, that made GI wishes come true—after a stunt, of course.

The Gruber Guidon reminisced in late 1944: “Remember the night the soldier had to had to fill the colonel’s hat with catsup and mashed potatoes, then answer to the colonel himself? And the night a blind-folded Pfc made love to a donkey? And the night a soldier was dunked in a tank of water and came up with a watch and a real live pinup girl in a bathing suit?”

After the war, he produced Johnny Olsen’s Ladies Be Seated before selling ABC on Candid Microphone, which debuted on the same network June 28, 1947. (Alan Courtney and Art Green had hosted a series with the same name on WMCA in 1938, but it involved interviews from night clubs). Pretty soon, the papers were talking about it.

Well, in some cases, they were talking about Funt. And Funt was a great story-teller. Here’s one of a number of feature stories about his adventures in stunt-land. It’s from July 30, 1947.

My New York
By MEL HEIMER
NEW YORK—Since the publication of the Wakeman book of the same name, the hucksters have been very much in the spotlight. They are, of course, advertising agency men who go around peddling radio shows.
There is a surface hilarity to their asinine activities which Wakeman exploited neatly, but underneath, most of them are colossal bores. It was thus a pleasure, the other day, to talk to a reformed huckster.
This is a 32-year-old, slightly bald, calm-looking gentleman named Allen Funt, who has progressed from huckstering to the point where he now is a "gimmick" man in radio.
Webster defines "gimmick" as "anything tricky"—which means that the fabulous Funt goes around thinking up trick ideas for radio shows. And here is a man, friends, in words of Broadwayite Al Slep, he makes the average zany character "sound like a bookkeeper with the diamond pin for 50 years' service in sawdust mill.”
Back in the days when Allen was a promising young huckster, he gave more than one indication of his genius. At one time he was trying to peddle P. K. Wrigley, the gum magnate, an idea for a radio show—but Wrigley, he says, just wouldn't pay no never mind to his letters, wires and calls.
Finally, one day he took an old plank of wood, stuck four pieces of well-chewed gum on its bottom side and mailed it express to Wrigley. "I have had these analysed," Allen's accompanying letter informed Wrigley darkly, "and NONE is Wrigley's. Let our radio show correct this situation." He got his audience with P. K. "Of course," Allen adds now, "the show never materialized, anyway. But it was a moral triumph."
Another stunt that Allen pulled more than once was to write a sales letter to a prospective client, then tear it into a hundred pieces, drop it Into a wastebasket—and mail the wastebasket to the customer. “They ALWAYS pasted the pieces together," he recalls, dreamily.
However, huckstering palled on this New York native, who is a Cornell graduate and an artist and sculptor in his spare time. He became a radio idea man—his Groucho Marx mind ran rampant. He has a show now in which an attempt is made to really bring candor to the airwaves.
Thus, recently, Funt broadcast the actual awakening of a man by his wife in the morning (the wife was in cahoots with Funt and his aides), complete to the sleepy guy's muttering of "Get lost, will ya?" He also broadcast the transaction when a harrassed soul hocked his watch in a pawn shop. It turned out the hocker needed some quick money for a set of false teeth.
As an Army corporal in Tulsa, Okla., during the war, young Funt staged a radio show whereby 10 GI's, who had written letters, had their greatest wishes come true. One soldier meditated long and then decided he wanted to dive into a swimming pool full of iced tea.
Eyes a-gleam, Allen got a whole battalion to dig a swimming pool—and filled it with cooling oolong. Another soldier wanted to see some of the animals he had left on the farm. Funt badgered a general to commandeer a fleet of amphibious trucks that ferried in enough livestock to fill Noah's old LST.
One of Funt's best stunts helped win the war. Called on for a gimmick to sell war bonds, he created a dilly. With several thousand people jammed into an auditorium he seated on the stage a little old woman who hadn't seen her GI son for five years. With a roll of drums, the hall was darkened at the entrance to the hall, in a spotlight, stood the son.
The gimmick? For every $1,000 war bond purchased by the audience, the son could take one step closer to his old mother. At $50,000, with half the audience in hysterics, crying men and women finally rushed into the aisles and carried the GI up to his ma.
On his current candid show, Allen's immediate goal is to broadcast one of President Truman's sneezes. He already is lining up a mechanical crew to go to Washington for the purpose.
However, Funt's most grandoise gimmick seems due to die unborn. He wants to get some manufacturer to turn out a Christmas stocking as large as the Empire State building, hang it and have it filled by radio listeners with gifts to be sent to the needy the world over.
There are two main obstacles: 1—You would have to build a bigger structure than the Empire State on which to hang the stocking. 2—It would have to be knitted by Bethlehem Steel.
These are the kind of people we have in New York. I ask you—how can you get bored here?

Funt parlayed the radio show into a number of books, including dialogue from the broadcasts, several volumes of “secret recordings” on Columbia records, 40 short films released by Columbia (and re-released even into the 1960s) and sales training films for liquor, mattress and appliance companies. When ABC’s TV flagship station WJZ-TV finally went on the air on August 10, 1948, Candid Microphone was dropped in the 8 to 8:30 p.m. time slot opposite Texaco Star Theatre on NBC starring Henny Youngman, with Paul Winchell and Bert Lahr. Then, it was back to radio.

Candid Microphone became Candid Camera on NBC-TV at the start of the 1949-50 season before appearing on CBS from July to October 1950. Philip Morris dropped the show in favour of bandleader/starmaker Horace Heidt, despite placing 15th in the ratings in metropolitan New York. But Funt wasn’t hurting. Associated Artists Productions bought his TV films (recut from 89 half hours) for $200,000 in 1954 and put them in syndication. Funt bought them back in April 1959 for $40,000.

Through most of the ‘50s, while Truth or Consequences and House Party were attracting audiences, no network wanted Funt’s show. Finally, it surfaced on a semi-regular basis starting in April 1958 on, of all places, the Jack Paar version of the Tonight show (columnist Hy Gardner proclaimed they “provide the week’s high in hilarity,” opining Paar was getting stale). Then it surfaced as a regular five-minute segment of The Garry Moore Show in the 1959-60 season. Moore, his announcer Durward Kirby and cast members Marion Lorne and Carol Burnett (chained to a blacksmith’s table) would take part in Funt’s stunts shot behind a two-way mirror or a hole in a folding screen. Amazingly, few people recognised Moore, whose face had been seen day and night on television through the 1950s.

One critic who cried “humiliation!” “sadism!” and “bully!” at Funt was Scripps-Howard writer Harriet Van Horne who, if she were reviewing Santa Claus, would ignore the free gifts to good children, and instead sharply censure him because she might possibly have to vacuum chimney soot from her carpet.

In April 1960, it was reported Candid Camera would become a regular series. It debuted on Sunday, Oct. 2nd, at 10 p.m., sandwiched between Jack Benny and What’s My Line? Funt was there and so was singer Dorothy Collins. But there was a behind-the-scenes war. Eddie Albert had been hired to host and shot some shows with Arthur Godfrey set to be a guest star. But producer Bob Banner, at least according to the Hollywood Reporter, decided he wanted Godfrey to host. Albert found greener pastures. Or green something.

“Warmhearted, prankish,” declared Ben Gross of the Daily News about the premiere, pointing to a Collins segment where she “drove” into a gas station without an engine. Cynthia Lowry of the Associated Press opined “I suspect the gag will wear thin pretty quickly.”

Well, the series carried on until 1967, was revived several times and, even today, reruns are seen on cable TV. The only thing that wore thin was Godfrey, who lasted a season and then griped to Donald Freeman of the Copley News Service that CBS thought he was through, that Funt aired their differences in public and that Candid Camera wasn’t his kind of show anyway. Then he went on to call Julius LaRosa a liar (almost seven years after Godfrey fired him), and rip singer Frank Parker (“he ruined himself”) and singing group the Mariners (“What they used to have, they don’t have any more.”). Sounds like your Lipton tea isn’t what’s bitter, Arthur.

Funt responded by going back to his Garry Moore days, hiring Durwood Kirby to co-host, and carrying on. And on. And on.

Funt died in 1999 just before his 85th birthday.

One other thing about Funt—he was a cartoonist. He had attended the Pratt Institute in New York. His strip appeared in papers in the 1940s. (If he didn’t draw it, I will stand corrected).

Road Hog

It would appear Friz Freleng and the writing staff at the Leon Schlesinger studio thought taxi drivers were maniacs on the road.

Can there be another explanation why a little boy car that wants to be a cab turns into an unrepentant speed demon in the 1937 Merrie Melodie Streamlined Greta Green?

The would-be taxi fills up on “ethel” gas (as opposed to “ethyl”) and decides to out-race the 515, which is chugging along railway tracks in re-used animation from Rhythm in the Bow, a 1935 Bugs Hardaway cartoon. He passes the train and looks back in satisfaction.



But something’s ahead. The car’s little hat jumps up in surprise (Earlier, the gas station attendant’s hat flips over, like in a Jack King cartoon).



Freleng cuts to a visual gag—a road hog. It even oinks.



He can’t get past Mr. Hog.



The hog is quite pleased with himself.



Uh, oh!



The girders of a bridge change the situation.



I’m pretty sure the “road hog” gag wasn’t original, but it fits nicely here. Since a “hog” is involved, Carl Stalling puts “Rural Rhythm” behind this sequence.

I can only picture what Friz and the writers thought as they tried to build a cartoon around, or shoehorn in, a Warner Bros.-owned song. The song “Streamlined Greta Green” has nothing to do with this cartoon. The little car is boxy, not streamlined. No one in it is named Greta Green, who “looks like Dixie’s cotton queen,” according to the lyrics.



The train barrels along to the strains of “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” and when the car fills up with high-octane gas, we hear “My Little Buckaroo.” This opening of the cartoon may have my favourite arrangement of “Merrily We Roll Along,” punctuated by piccolos.

Berneice Hansell squeals as the little car, Mel Blanc adds a voice and I think the mother car is Martha Wentworth, but that’s a guess on my part.

Cal Dalton and Ken Harris receive screen credit for animation. Maybe some day, someone can positively ID the background artists in these mid-‘30s Warners cartoons. Whoever did this used the same distinctive lettering on signs in the background of a number of cartoons. Is it Art Loomer? I wish I knew.

And, now, for your listening pleasure, the Little Ramblers....

The Ice Truck Cometh

You’ll see several ice cream truck gags (“Good Rumor” trucks, mainly) in Tex Avery cartoons, but he pulls an ice truck gag in One Cab’s Family.

The truck driver is motoring along blithely, then sees Junior the hot rod coming at him.



Avery indulges in a transformation gag. The collision sends the ice hauler out of the frame, and turns the truck into something related when it lands.



The short was released May 15, 1952. Avery tried the same kind of cartoon a year later with Little Johnny Jet. We’ve mentioned before the story has similarities to Friz Freleng’s Streamlined Greta Green, released by Warner Bros. in 1937 when he and Avery were working for Leon Schlesinger. More on that tomorrow.

Rich Hogan and Roy Williams are the credited story people, with animation by Mike Lah, Grant Simmons and Walt Clinton, and voices by the wonderful Daws Butler and June Foray.

Playing the Palace

When Rochester answered the phone and described Jack Benny as “star of stage, screen and radio,” it was not like Benny being cheap or driving a Maxwell. He didn’t do either of those things in real life, but he actually WAS a star. Prior to beginning a radio career in 1932, he headlined on stage at the Palace in New York and, in 1931, also toured the U.S., Canada and Europe.

One of the things I’ve noticed in reading reviews of his vaudeville act in the 1920s and into the ‘30s was he almost always won the approval of critics.

There really is oodles of print material about Jack in New York in 1931, but I’ll stick to reviews in Variety. They go through the whole bill, so I’m dropping some non-Benny parts in the interest of brevity. This is from the Show Biz Bible of February 11:

CAPITOL
New York, Feb. 7.
Loew’s “Bits of Wit” unit, current with the Greta Garbo talker, “Inspiration,” follows the new trend away from standard stage band presentation toward the less decorative, but also less stereotyped variety formation.
Jack Benny is starred over the unit and works in between the numbers as a gagging m. c., later bringing part of the pit crew to the stage for some comedy band biz. He formerly used the same number in floor shows and vaude. That almost completes the cycle for this particular bit and even so it held up here.
Garbo was bringing them in opening day, forcing the Capitol to five shows, all capacity. They were standing up almost to the finish of the last performance at night and into the midnight straight picture show. That gave Benny five full houses to talk and play to Friday and at the last one he made mention of the hardship on his pipes.
Capitol, a big place empty or filled, is unlike the intimate vaude and revue theatres to which Benny is accustomed. By the night show he apparently has struck the right chatter system, (or they were getting his light comedy banter in the rear), giving this single the entire audience to juggle. The average talking act coming from the smaller theatres to a place of the Capitol’s size generally finds itself potent with only about half the audience, Benny’s stuff landed all over.
Mrs. Jack Benny is on the program as Marie Marsh for her dumb dora foiling bit with her husband. She has two chances, one including a song.
Benny’s flip talk, fiddle solo and band stuff were meant to stand out. They do, and manager to carry the unit. Bige

Jack wasn’t through with this particular show. Among other venues that booked it were the Valencia in Jamaica, New York, and Loew’s Jersey City before heading to other cities in the east.

He was back in New York at the May, but wasn’t the star. That honour went to another one of Fred Allen’s buddies. No less than the founder of Variety wrote the paper’s review on May 31.

PALACE
(St. Vaude)
Way over the average entertaining bill of eight acts at the Palace, currently. It is headlined by Dr. Rockwell and none of those coming or going actors known as stooges.
To Jack Benny goes the mark for holding up and sending the show over the average. Without him it would be just a good show. With Benny it’s a beaut bill. To prevent squawks by others it may be said that no m. c. excels Benny, letting it go at that. Which also takes him in as a single talking turn.
For the first time an m. c. vaudevillian or any other stage person has found how to pull a gag out of news reel. Benny is doing it this week with Pathe sound news. In the reel is a sound scene of artillery practice. The reel on the sheet goes blooey in this scene. It is a natural guess of a break in the booth. Benny steps out, saying the house wants him to fill in the wait. He asks the orchestra leader for a violin and starts to play “Mighty Lak a Rose.” He’s barely started when the reel behind him resumes. He continues playing during the heavily sounded gunnery with the horses tearing headlong out of the sheet and over Benny’s head. That ends the news reel, with Benny’s playing now heard. It might be made known who picked this spot in the reel for a gag. It was perfect and tells what a comedy vision he had. Probably Benny.
Nearly all of the standard acts are return dates here, excepting Armida, single, who isn’t standard yet, and perhaps the first two turns. Benny made a gag out of that also. No. 2 is a Chinese act, the Joe Wong turn. Benny entering after it for the first time, to announce he is the announcer, mentioned it seemed strange for a Chinese act to be on No. 2. “Generally,” he said, “it takes two Japs to open.” Then he added: “Anyway, I’m glad to see a Chinese act. It’s the first time there have been Gentiles up here in months.”
Armida seems to have enough to make the single turn grade, but perhaps would make it more solidly and quickly if turning the joke she indulged in with Benny later into a literal fact. Benny asks the Mex girl if she isn’t a Gus Edwards protege and how does she like Gus. “I like him,” she answered, “but he holds me down.” That’s for the purpose of the Lincoln car gag, etc., for a laugh. But that holding her down may be so, in so far as Armida might do several things better if permitted to frame her own turn, at least in part.
During Benny’s own act which wasn’t, [tap dancer Jim] Barton broke in on it to have the orchestra leader rehearse his waltz music, and again Armida stepped out, neither noticing Benny with both interrupting him, and Armida mentioning she had forgotten to thank the audience for her reception. Armida did a nice bit with Benny here. Sime

Benny stayed for another week. Wrote “Bige” in the June 2 edition: “Levoda brought some action, opening the second part, after Jack Benny had soothed ‘em with his smooth m. c.’ing during a first part that came in last. Benny is the only holdover currently, which sets a modern record for the Palace.”

The headliner was Georgie Jessel, who replaced him as the Palace emcee the following week. But there was a surprise. As The Billboard put in on June 13: “While Jessel was carrying on, Jack Benny sprung a real surprise by coming on for a corking bit, giving the impression that he had forgotten his engagement as emsee ended the night before.”

The two were on the bill again on June 21 at the Friars’ Frolic at the New Amsterdam Theatre. Jack played his violin with Phil Baker on the accordion, as they kibbitzed.

Jack’s next big tour took to the Palladium in London, where he worked out a contract signed in 1927. Variety stated he opened August 10 and stayed a week, rejecting a two-week appearance to return to New York. From the edition of Variety, Aug. 11:

London, Aug. 10
Jack Benny, billed as “the world’s most famous master of ceremonies” proved a revelation at the opening show today, scoring immediate popularity. He did an m. c. for the bill.
Benny objected to the billing, with the program merely announcing his as being “direct from Carroll’s ‘Vanities.’”
Remainder of the bill is not up to standard. It’s lucky Benny is there.


Back in New York, Jack had another week at the Palace. Some of the acts on the bill with him are familiar. One was singer Kate Smith. The other was bandleader Abe Lyman. The two appeared with Benny on his show of March 27, 1938. “Bige” in Variety wasn’t altogether impressed. He wrote in the paper’s September 8, 1931 edition:

CAPITOL
(St. Vaude)
Show against show, act versus act, the current layout can complete with the bill that just completed seven weeks. In several ways, especially as a variety program, it’s superior. But it just didn’t blend like the other one did, while Benny wasn’t as funny Saturday as [Lou] Holtz had been for seven weeks previously.
The show’s worst handicap, no doubt, was a mental one. The house decided to spend $13,000 in salaries to duplicate the long run. It must have placed the acts under a strain. This was evident in Benny’s work all through the opening performance. Some bad breaks, mechanical and otherwise, didn’t make things easier for this usually smooth m.c.
Benny also might have done some thinking or some buying. The two bits he relied on most were used by him at this house several times before, and the last time not so long ago. Through a muff in the projection room, one of them went wrong. The other one has been used here by Benny so many times before, it’s now a clause in the lease.
In between-the-acts bits, Benny and [William] Gaxton were shaky at the first show. As the week progresses, so should the m.c. team. A fortunate discovery of an unbilled boy who can do a Holtz in everything but looks gave Benny and Gaxton their best chance of the afternoon. Everybody got it.

The September 1 Variety revealed Benny each received $2,000 for the week, Gaxton got $2,600, Harriet Hoctor, $2,500 and Lyman and the orchestra $4,500. The bill was held over for a second week.

Jack was still under contract to Earl Carroll, and Variety of Oct. 6 reported the road version opened that evening at Ford’s in Baltimore. There were difficulties with Carroll. Variety revealed:

Chicago, Dec. 21
Before leaving with ‘Vanities’ for Milwaukee, Jack Benny, featured principal in the Carroll show, indicated he would ask for a release immediately. Prior to the show’s closing at the Erlanger, Carroll ordered a general cut in the payroll, one reason for Benny’s balk.
Publix is negotiating with Benny for the Ambassador, St. Louis, now held by Wesley Eddy. If Benny opens in St. Louis it will be after Jan. 1 on a minimum run of four weeks with usual options.

Carroll relented, with the trade paper explaining Carroll held off the cash slash after “gratifying results” in Milwaukee over the Christmas period.

Jack’s future appeal on radio may actually be found in a 1931 edition of Variety. In reviewing the act of singer comedian Freddie Bernard at the Academy Theatre, a Loew’s house on East Houston St. in the Lower East Side, “Earl” wrote on Oct. 13:

He tells the umbrella gag, which Jack Benny recently told at the ace Palace, and got nothing. Benny socked ‘em with it. Difference in delivery and knowing how.

Perhaps this is why you’ve heard of Jack Benny and not Freddie Bernard.

Bernard, by the way, emceed for years in Miami after the war, then in Atlanta until the mid-1960s. The “clown prince of show biz” had a Benny story from the days when they worked the Orpheum together.

“Lots of show world comedians get off their best lines off the stage, like for instance once I was working in Winnipeg with Jack Benny. The audience was stony. No laughs. Afterward we were walking back to the hotel in dismal silence when Benny stopped in his tracks and pointed to a child with an expressionless face.
“ ‘My God, no wonder we can’t get laughs from these people,’ Jack groaned. ‘That kid has a face like a frozen lox.’ ”

He couldn’t ad-lib without his writers? That was something else Benny made up. Ater ditching Earl Carroll in 1932, radio audiences would begin to find out.