No One Laughed at 40

“People wouldn’t stand for any changes in Jack,” insisted the producer of The Jack Benny Program in 1961, one Fred de Cordova.

What we think of as Jack Benny today was something that evolved over a long period of time on radio. When Jack and his writers found something that brought laughs from the audience, they stuck with it as long as it worked.

Freddie was right. Attempts to go against Jack’s type were failures. One was in 1949 when Jack was hit on the head and became a wild spender. The writers hoped to mine a bunch of shows out of it, but gave up on the idea one week later. One said they just couldn’t write a non-cheapskate Jack Benny.

Another was Jack’s age. There was an attempt to push him past 39. It, too, failed. Just like Jack’s Maxwell, which mysteriously re-appeared in the later ‘40s after he gave up it during a war-time scrap drive, the idea was treated as it never happened.

Jack talked about “40” a number of times after the fact. One musing made its way into a column for the Bell Syndicate, published in Sunday newspaper supplements starting July 23, 1961.

39’s Find but 40? That’s Too Far
(Editor's Note: While Margaret McManus is on vacation, her column is being written this week by television comedian Jack Benny. Margaret McManus will resume her column next week.)
BY JACK BENNY
HOLLYWOOD—One way to stay young is simply to stop counting birthdays. I did that a long time ago.
It also is important to "think" young—stay active and surround yourself with young people. I have a friend, a motion-picture producer, who is in his 80s, but still one of the most youthful people I know.
He is vital and alive and he always talks about his next picture — not the one he just made or something that happened 20 or 30 years ago. It's deadly to make a habit of reminiscing: take it from me, there was no such thing as the "good old days."
Dennis Day calls me an "ancient Robert Cummings." You know. Dennis was a carefree bachelor when he joined the show and now he's married and the father of eight. He knows I would never fire an expectant father.
Well, anyway, when I come back on CBS-TV this fall I'll still be 39, and I have to say that sometimes it's a little hard to live up to the legend.
I look into the mirror some mornings and ask myself. "Just who do you think you're kidding?"
Then I shrug and think: "So I don't look 39; I don't look my right age either."
Now you can take that two ways, of course. But take it my way.
NOT HIS IDEA

You know, that joke about my being 39 wouldn't be funny at all if I actually looked my right age (67). Everyone knows by now that I'm not actually 39, but when they see the way I work and get a look at my schedule they can't really be sure exactly how old I am.
Now. I hate to say this, but stopping the clock —deciding to be 39 for the rest of my life—actually was not a stroke of inspiration on my part. I wish I could say that was the case, but it isn't.
The truth is this: My writers and I liked the idea of a fellow being so vain that he would never admit how old he really was, so we made that a part of the "Jack Benny" character I played.
And I'm sure not many of you will remember this: the writers made me 36 first (to tell the truth. I can't remember how old I really was when I was posing on radio as a 36-year-old). Then they made me 37, and I stayed that age for a few years, then I became 38 and finally 39.
When we got to that number, I told my writers, "Fellows, this is it. We go no further."
And that's the way it stood until I made that awful mistake a few years ago and decided to turn 40. I never should have done it, but I guess I was just impressed by all the publicity it would bring the show.
My wife. Mary, tried to tell me I was making a big mistake, but I said I could be just as funny at 40 as at 39.
ASTONISHED AT RESPONSES
Well, we had a big 40th birthday party on one of the shows, and the next day the telegrams, letters and phone calls starting pouring in. I was astonished.
No one wanted me to become 40. They said that, at 39, I had given a lot of encouragement to people over 40 who didn't like to tell their true ages for all sorts of reasons.
One letter, from a woman, said, "Mr. Benny, for years I've been fibbing about my age because I don't look it and I don't feel it. You have given hope to all of us who are long on years but young in spirit for a long time, and now you are going to change it all. I. and thousands of others my age, wish you wouldn't."
I also learned at about that time there were clubs all over the country for "39-year-olds." The idea was that you couldn't get into clubs until you were 39, and you couldn't get any older as far as the club was concerned. And, Brother, did I hear from them!
So I did a lot of thinking and didn't mention "40" for a few weeks. Then I decided, what the heck, I'm a comedian, and nothing I do is supposed to make much sense — so I went back to being 39.
Thirty-nine is a funny and not quite “real” number; when you say you’re 40, it sounds like you’re over the hill. I’ve been 39 for almost 30 years, so I should know what I’m talking about.

Jack's analysis was right. People found “39” funny. They referred it in their own lives. Jack knew that. Knowing what got laughs was why he was on top for so many years.

Beaky and the Bambino Bee

Buzzards aren’t associated with Italy. So why is it that Mama Buzzard in The Bashful Buzzard speaks-a with a vaudeville-style “Atsa-a-matter-for-you” Italian accent-a? Pasta fazool!

Well, if we may venture a guess.

Warner Bros. cartoons are full of radio show references. You likely know that the lead character in The Bashful Buzzard is a takeoff on Mortimer Snerd on the Edgar Bergen radio show.

But I suspect Mama Buzzard is, too.

There was an actress making the rounds in Los Angeles in the 1930s who did an Italian dialect character. Here’s an example from the Hollywood Citizen-News of July 17, 1934.

“Mrs. Pasquale,” or, if you prefer, popular comedienne on KFWB’s “High Jinks,” will be featured with the Californians over KFWB from 7:30 to 7:45 p. m. She certainly has a line of chatter!

KFWB certainly had its own connection with cartoons, besides its owner releasing them. People on the air there, like Robert C. Bruce and Arthur Q. Bryan, were hired to supply voices for the Leon Schlesinger studio on the Warners lot.

Keith Scott’s terrific research points out the Franco Sunday night Hi Jinks show was hosted by Johnny Murray, who Rudy Ising recalled hiring for main characters in Merrie Melodies, including Foxy and Goopy Gear. As well, the programme included Jack Clifford, the hard-of-hearing-sheriff, a character voice that got mushed together with Kenny Delmar’s Senator Claghorn and became a certain, I SAY, became a certain cartoon rooster. Rooster, that is.

Back to our story.

Urecal’s Italian dialect was recognised enough in the mid-‘30s for her to make personal appearances; we note one in 1934 presented by a Legion post in Los Angeles in 1934 where she “delighted an audience of 500 with her Italian characterization and impersonations.”

Does it seem probable that Bob Clampett, noted aficionado of radio references, wanted a familiar accent in one of his cartoons, and this was one of them?

By the time the dialogue for The Bashful Burrard was recorded (the cartoon came out in 1945), fine dialectician Sara Berner seemed to be brought in to handle the female adult voices. No need for Urecal, who had been in the movies for several years. Berner could do the job just as well.

Let’s get to the actual cartoon. There’s some great expressive work we’ve posted about before. The scene with the farmer and the cow in mid-air is lots of fun (Manny Gould, I imagine). So is the perspective animation in the sequence with the flying dragon chasing Beaky.

Perhaps one of the better-known moments is when Beaky is “bringing home a baby bumble bee” (to the melody of “Arkansas Traveler”).



Cut to a close-up of the little bee and his angry mother. Despite the buzzing, it’s really a silent action scene. You can't dislike animation like this.



As you can see in that last frame, Clampett wastes no time. Action is continuous. Clampett alternates between a fast pace, a slow pace and movement within dialogue scenes.

This is another cartoon where the credits have been Blue Ribboned. The second Beck and Friedwald book gives the story credit to Mike Sasanoff. The story includes a Dumbo reference, a Lassie reference and ends with a catchphrase from The Great Gildersleeve radio show.

The animation credit was apparently rotated to Bob McKimson. I am told Dick Thomas did not paint the backgrounds. Here is one in a perspective view when Beaky's brothers are overhead scoping out their targets.



Besides Berner as Urecal as Mrs. Pasquale, Kent Rogers is Edgar Bergen as Mortimer Snerd. Keith Scott points out (in Animato! Issue 37 and later in his two-book set) that Rogers died in a training exercise in July 1944, so this gives you a bit of an idea of when the soundtrack was recorded. The cartoon was officially released September 5, 1945.

Urecal died of a heart attack in 1966 at the age of 71. At that point, if she was remembered it was for starring in a TV version of Tugboat Annie in the early '50s. She had appeared on Petticoat Junction just a few months before her death.

You can hear what Mrs. Pasquale sounded like below. Cartoon fans will recognise the first song before Urecal's routine with emcee Don Wilson.

Nosey Rescue

A dachshund with a German accent places an order at a kitchen window in Dizzy Dishes (1930).



Being a Fleischer cartoon, something has to sprout a face, or arms and legs. In this one, the dog’s nose gets caught in the slide-down door of the window. Never fear. It grows arms and legs and rescues itself, presumably returning to the dachshund.



The cartoon's credited animators are Grim Natwick and Ted Sears (see comments for more).

Yeah, I know, Betty Boop. But my favourite character is the dancing roast chicken.

Clobbered By a Star

Attractive characters with heads and bodies based on circles? Maybe at Disney, or Harman-Ising, or Lantz. But not at the Paul Terry-Frank Moser studio in 1930.

In Jumping Beans (1930), a mouse rides a horse. Even in this low-resolution version, we can see the odd, impossible contortions of the valiant steed.



We interrupt what plot there is for a gag. The horse bucks off the mouse, and is quite pleased as he gallops out of the scene. The usual stars develop over the unconscious mouse’s head.



A crow flies into the scene from a distance.



Being a cartoon crow, he whips out some mallets and starts playing the stars like a xylophone.



One of the stars doesn’t like being bashed, so it flies up and rams the crow in the butt and out of the scene. It develops an angry face.



You can count on the 1930 Audio-Cinema versions of Terry cartoons to include:

● Lots of cats and mice. And we mean lots.
● Characters riding or marching.
● An elephant in a gag.
● Characters running into the distance.
● Lots of cycle animation. And we mean lots.
● A song.

The lyrics at the start of this one:

Male Mouse: Hello, hot tamale, how are you today?
Female House: I’m okay, sweetie, in my hot tamale way.
Male Mouse: I’m your boy-friend, lover, and it’s you I’d like to see.
Female Mouse: So, make it snappy, honey, and before we (something or other).

Well, I think they’re the lyrics. The guy in falsetto is singing for the woman, and the soundtrack is about 100 years old. They are wearing sombreros but neither has a Mexican accent.

Motion Picture News of Oct. 25, 1930 grumbled:

Jumping Beans
(Terry-Toon—Educational)
Weak Cartoon
THIS is pretty shy on laughs or funny gags. As the title indicates it is a Mexican border affair, built around the effects of eating jumping beans. Terry has turned out so much better stuff that this one suffers plenty by comparison. Can’t handle it much. Running time, 11 minutes.
Use with good support

The Film Daily had a different opinion. Its review from Oct. 26:

“Jumping Beans”
Educational. Time, 9 mins.
Neat Cartoon
A Paul Terry-Toon exploiting a cowboy hero who feeds the villain jellybeans with disastrous but hilarious consequences. The incidental music by Philip Scheib is real harmony, and enhances the funny cartoon antics and increases the laugh voltage. Clever animation, up to the standard of this series.

Harrison’s Report of Nov. 8, 1930 says it was 5½ minutes and released Nov. 2.