The two were Alex Anderson and Jay Ward.
Anderson was the one with animation experience. He worked for his uncle, Paul Terry, at Terrytoons. Sergeant Jay Ward was a University of California grad who served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War Two, then attended Harvard School of Business before returning to the San Francisco Bay area and obtaining his real estate license in July 1947.
The two of them opened a company the next year and pretty soon had some ideas for TV cartoons.
The San Francisco Chronicle of August 29, 1948 looked at their plans. Incidentally, "Troplong" was his mother's maiden name; he was using it as his given name going back at least to his days at University High School in 1937. Remarkably, while there is a drawing of Crusader Rabbit accompanying the story, Ward and Anderson's first star character is not mentioned.
Movies Are Coming From Your Radios
By Luther Nichols
EVERYONE, these days, is trying to get in on the ground floor of the television industry. It's beginning to look like the Bridge Terminal at 5:15 in the afternoon.
Let's take a look at one of the foremost of this swarm of eager opportunists who soon will be entering our homes at all hours the day via the telescreen. In his case the "ground floor" is reached by taking the elevator at 111 Sutter to the 17th floor and walking through a door marked Television Arts Production.
To the best of its knowledge and ours, TAP is the first independent professional producer of television shows for general entertainment in San Francisco.
In a sunny corner office its modest staff is currently struggling to complete three "package" programs for delivery to Eastern sponsors by September 15. (Before we go any further, a package program is one readymade for any advertiser who chooses to buy it as a unit and simply affix his commercials.) Looking further ahead, TAP also is shaping up both animated and live shows to put on the market when television makes its debut in San Francisco. That date should be around December 1, depending on who wins the current neck-and-neck race between KGO and KSFO to complete their stations, and when.
WE cornered one J Troplong Ward, a young, hustling business manager for the production company who insists there is no period after the J in his name. The affable, rather roundish Ward is swelling with enthusiasms and ideas. We asked him to voice some of them.
"Right now," said he, "like everyone else, we're still in a trial-and-error stage. For us the accent is on animated cartoons at this time. They're the coming thing in video advertising. The three we're making are for 15-minute spots. And frankly, they're sensational."
Before we could stop him, the effusive Mr. Ward, who is not one to bide his firm's light under a bushel, or even a molecule, of modest), had launched into an outline of the plot of one of the cartoon, a thing called "Hamhock Jones." It may give you a notion of what to expect when TV becomes more than a blueprint here. (Again, let's pause for term identification: video and TV are trade synonyms for television.) Seems in the cartoon there are two main characters, Otto and Blotto, who are Siamese twins. Otto has every good quality and is a great scientist; Blotto has every bad, and turns to crime. Of course Blotto knows he can't be sent to prison, for that would mean sending his innocent twin brother to jail as well.
The complications that arise in profusion from this dilemma and the efforts of the great snoop, Detective Hamhock Jones, to resolve them will make, according to Ward, a great serial for some breakfast food sponsor.
Otto then invents a remarkable gas which has the quality of reversing one's personality and convictions. It can even convert Republicans into Democrats and vice versa, which, as anyone can see, has lively possibilities in an election year.
"Terrific, don't you think?" Ward inquired rhetorically.
THE cartoons, once drawn under the supervision of TAPS production manager, Alexander Anderson are set in frames, filmed with $600 camera and other equipment TAP owns, edited for 15 minutes running time with space for commercials, and are then ready for marketing. All three of the cartoons are slanted for “A” telecasting times; that is, from 7 to 10:30 p. m. Monday through Friday and from noon Saturday to 10:30 p. m. on Sunday. These are television's, and radio's, most costly hours.
If they have read this far, some TV set owners will doubtless have their bags halfway packed to take to the hills. Years from now they will be found as bearded hermits, who, on being interviewed, will say: ''Yep, son, I stuck it out until late '48. But when they started telecasting comic books, wal. . . .”
Television Arts also expects to do live shows soon, according to Ward, and is now lining up talent.
It might be noted that the present search for TV talent is a rather ironic reversal of the old silent films to talkies transition. In those days silent stars found they could no longer get by on looks alone. Today audio stars of radio are discovering that they can no longer get by on voice alone.
Original scripts for plays, people with specailies [sic] or "with plenty of personality," as Ward puts it, are being sought. His company—and the others that will come along—need sketch artists, cameramen, drama directors and a small army of other skilled laborers.
"That's the great thing about all this,” Ward exults. "Television is going to furnish a tremendous outlet for local artists, designers, actors and technicians—for anyone with creative instincts.
PEOPLE, says Ward, don't realise the extent of TV already in San Francisco. According to Focus, the trade news release, there will be an estimated 500 receivers in commercial places in this city by September. The average audience for each of these receivers is assumed to be 200 a night for the first 90 days of television. That means, if we haven't lost any beads from our abacus, that there will be a local audience of 100,000 nightly from the very outset. Since TV, like radio, will be as free as the air that conveys it to anyone with a receiving set, financial support must come from someone other than John Q. Advertisers will pick up the check. Despite the promising figures quoted above, however, advertisers are jittery about sponsoring television shows at the moment.
Although careful surveys have shown that television is vastly more effective than radio in causing the viewer to retain the name of a product, sponsors do not expect to realize much return from their video programs at first. Consequently, there is an overwhelming demand for penny-ante productions. And this is where TAP and similar producers enter the picture with microphone and tripod at the ready.
"Our advantage," Strategist Ward explained, "lies in making general entertainment programs on film, which neither the broadcasting stations nor the advertising agencies are now doing. And in making them cheaply."
By virtue of some shortcutting methods employed by Anderson, a dryly humorous fellow who formerly was a top animator with Terrytoons and who knows the cartoon-on-film game from roughs to transit case, and by its willingness to work on a speculative basis for its profit, TAP hopes to shave expenses and lead in the custom-built commercials field.
TO put television shows on film before broadcasting them may seem a needless and costly step to the layman. Ward says it's really cheaper than staging live shows of equal dramatic merit. For one thing, putting it on celluloid cuts down rehearsal time, since there is no need for extensive memorising of lines, and saves studio rental costa. For another, Kinescope photography, as the 16mm film process required to shoot for TV is called, allows a retention of the programs for future distribution and display, and a more accurate using of them, just as in transcriptions for radio. The human agency, so likely to "gang aft a-gley" in a live show, is minimised in the "canned" product.
There will be three stations—KSFO’s KPIX, ABC's KGOTV and the Chronicle's own NBC affiliate, KRON-TV—in operation in the Bay Area by, or shortly after, the first of next year. Three more will be added soon after, the FCC having allotted six channels to this area.
As each station must televise a required 23 hours per week within three years (12 hours to begin with) in order to keep its permit, that will mean at least 100 hours for the six stations, or 8736 hours a year. One-third of this time, as we have seen, will probably be devoted to programs on film, such as TAP puts out. And that, in case your pencil broke, is 2012 hours at the barest minimum in which TAP and its competitors may romp around.
Considering that it takes Hollywood from 20 to 30 days to shoot an average B picture, and that television-on-film producers have to go through much the same processes, it is plain that such producers are going to be as busy as one-armed jugglers in getting out enough material to fill those 29 1/2 hours plus. Anderson estimates it will take his company about two weeks, when it gets better organised, to film a run-of-the-reel one-hour program.
What's more, Pacific Telephone and Telegraph recently announced that the coaxial cable, now being laid across country to convey nationwide network programs, probably won't stretch to San Francisco until 1951. And since even a microwave relay system probably won't be installed between here and Los Angeles until late 1949, there will be a heavy initial emphasis on locally-produced shows and a demand for local equipment, talent and technicians. BUT enough of powder-dry facts and figures. Let's have a couple of unvarnished opinions from our man Ward, who has been doing some close-up scanning of the television field.
Ward is not one of those cringing milquetoasts who say out of fear of offending sports, movie or radio people that television won't hurt their business.
“It will," he declares flatly. “But since most radio and movie people will get into television anyway, it won't deflate their wallets much, at least not those who realize that the time for leaving slowly sinking ships is near."
While Ward and TAP are arrayed with those who feel that video is much more closely allied to the theater and movies than to radio, he doesn't bother to enter the stormy controversy on the subject.
"All three forms contribute to new medium," he says. "And as someone put it: I'm not concerned with its paternity; I'm just thankful that the child is with us."
To sum it up, the age of television is dawning at last on San Francisco. Some early birds, like Messrs. Ward and Anderson and their Television Arts Productions Company, are up to greet the dawn. Most others will just lie abed and let it get brighter before they stir themselves. And why not? You can soon have it televised right into your room and save yourself the trouble.
Ward and Anderson took their concepts to NBC in New York, which put them in touch with Jerry Fairbanks. He had signed a deal with the network in June 1947 to handle production of filmed shows. This ultimately proved to be a bad move for Ward and Anderson. Fairbanks ran into money trouble, his assets were ultimately snapped up by producer Shull Bonsall, who claimed ownership of Crusader and all his cartoons.
As you likely know, Ward went out on his own, reworking some concepts of Anderson’s to come up with Rocky and Bullwinkle. The whole story is told in-depth in Keith Scott’s fine and detailed book, The Moose That Roared, which should be in every animation fan’s collection.
