The Frees File

“Allow me to introduce myself. I am Colonel Tomsk Parkoff.”

Well, actually, Colonel Tomsk Parkoff was Boris Badenov in disguise. And this isn’t actually the Colonel. It is a publicity shot of the man who voiced the Colonel. And Boris. And plenty of great enjoyable cartoon characters. It’s Paul Frees.

He was one of the great voice actors, incredibly in demand for not only for cartoons, but for radio shows, novelty records, and commercial voiceovers. If you could meet his price. And pay him to come to Los Angeles, after he had moved to the Bay area.

If anyone should have had a biography written about him, it was Paul Frees. One was. It was penned by Ben Ohmart with the foreword by June Foray and afterword by Keith Scott.

I’ve always been a Frees fan (Beary Family notwithstanding) and after stumbling across photos of him, I thought I’d check the Frees clipping file to see what he was up to. At random, I picked 1953.

His radio career was in full swing then, and he could be heard as Barney Bear and elsewhere in MGM cartoons (Keith Scott says Frees’ first cartoon appearance was in Jerry’s Cousin, released in 1951). He was also in the cast of the 20th Century Fox feature The Star, released in 1952 but still in theatres. His own late-night radio show only lasted a few months. Frees must have been the only disc jockey who got cancelled and replaced by The Lord’s Prayer (which he could have done in his Dorson Belles voice).

(Note: This is not a filmography. This is not an invitation for an endless list of things Frees voiced in his career or his numerous radio shows of 1953).

January 1
KGEM Radio 1140
10:00 to 10:15 p.m.—The Player with Paul Frees.

January 11
Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show
With Walter Tetley as Julius. Also appearing tonight are Hans Conried, Paul Frees (as the plumber).

January 23
Coincident with the time switch on Carson’s Cellar, Johnny Carson adds three new members to his regular cast beginning tonight—Singer Jeri Sullivan, Actress June Foray, and Recording Star Paul Frees. (Los Angeles Examiner)

February 8
Monday through Thursday (9:15 p. m.) brings a different type of radio show, The Player. It stars Paul Frees, the Raymond who opens the squeaking door to Inner Sanctum. He plays all the parts. (Lubbock Avalanche-Journal)

February 28
FEATURE REVIEWS
The War of the Worlds
Cast includes Paul Frees as a radio reporter. (Boxoffice)

March 11
Actor Paul Frees of Radio Hall of Fame program, and his actress wife Joyce Terry have just celebrated their second wedding anniversary . . . They’re looking forward to a new member of the household in June. (Worcester Daily Telegram)

April 6
Johnny Carson, bright young comedy find of KNXT (2) who has been off the telewaves for two months since his “Carson’s Cellar” left the schedule, returns tonight at 10 on KNXT (2). The Johnny Carson show will be built around satire-comedy skits. Paul Frees and Joan Vohs will help Johnny. (Pasadena Star News)

April 10
In the Café Tambourine, which is constantly crowded with tourists, camel drivers, women, cheats and forgotten men down on their luck, owner “Rocky Jordan” finds himself “Behind the Black Ball” on tonight’s program on KIRO (CBS) at 6. Jack Moyles portrays “Rocky,” while others in the cast include Jay Novello, Byron Kane, Olive Deering and Paul Frees. (Victoria Times)

“THE BIG SKY” playing Thursday and Friday, April 9 and 10 at the Midway Drive In.
Kirk Douglas and Dewey Martin join a keelboat expedition up the Missouri from St. Louis in 1830, bound for the Blackfoot Indian country to establish a trading post in the fir-rich territory. Aboard the vessel as a hostage to ensure their safety is a Blackfoot maiden, Elizabeth Threatt. The expedition survives hazards including a stretch of rapids, Indian attacks and sallies by agents of a rival fur-trader, Paul Frees, who abducts Elizabeth. The Indian girl is rescued and the keelboat successfully gets by Frees’ river stoackade. Next Douglas and Martin frustrate a double-cross by which the expedition was to have been sold out to Frees. (New Port Richey Press)

April 23
PLEASURE; words & music Paul Frees © Goday Music Corp. (Copyright Catalogue)

June 19
Lon McCallister is guest star-host in “Operation Riviera,” a comedy about what happens to a GI who promotes himself a 10-day furlough on the Isle of Capri, on “[Schlitz] Playhouse of Stars” tonight at 9 o’clock over Channel 2. Others in the cast are Randy Stewart, Lela Bliss, Paul Frees, James Dodd, Rolfe Sedan, Alphonse Martell and Gil Frye. (Connecticut Post)

June 30
Tyler McVey reports that the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists Frolic for its members brought in about $5,000 for the sick and benefit fund. [Paul Frees was one of the people performing on June 19]. (Zuma Palmer, Hollywood Citizen-News)

July 5
A new type of anti-crime program will take the time period of “Dragnet” beginning tonight at 8:30 on KTBS and the NBC network. This new series, entitled “Confessions” will star Paul Frees as Richard A. McGee, director, department of correction, state of California.
The programs will be based on actual confessions of crimes and their causes as revealed by the files of various correction departments throughout the nation. (Shreveport Times)

July 6
Television programs
Paul Frees, 2:15 [guesting with Dave Street on KLAC-TV 13]

July 24
Paul Frees, radio actor, became a father for the first time Tuesday [21] when his wife actress, Joyce Terry, presented him with a 7-pound boy. They have selected the name Frederic William for their heir. (Barbara Sellers, Hollywood Citizen-News)

August 19
THE DEAL NOW has been set for Larry Finley to move into a special restaurant adjoining the Mocambo when he exists “My Own Place” on Sept. 3. He also will take his KWFB radio lines along and continue to broadcast from 10 p. m. to 4 a. m.
Larry Kolpack, who will continue with “MOR,” now is playing to present Paul Frees as the Finley substitute at the late night spot with the broadcast going out over KECA. (Paul Price Los Angeles Daily News)

August 23
The Unexpected, KECA-TV (7) at 7, offers Robert Hutton, Gale Storm and Paul Frees in “The Peppeteers,” all about the mysterious disappearance of a famous puppeteer on the eve of a performance. (Jack Lait, Jr., Los Angeles Examiner)

September 3
New nightly disc jockey show begins at M. O. P. [My Own Place] tonight, on KECA from 11 to 2. Versatile-voiced Paul Frees has charge of the platter-chatter. (Jack Lait, Jr., Los Angeles Examiner)

September 8
Glenda Farrell, James Dunn, Alan Mowbray, John Hubbard, Billy Bakewell and Paul Frees have been inked for supporting roles in the Mickey Rooney tele pilot, which rolls Thursday [10] at the Goldwyn studios, under the aegis of Volcano Productions.
Richard Quine will direct. (Daily Variety)

September 13
Jack Benny, the only 39-year-old man born in 1894, returns to TV tonight at a new hour of 10 p. m. and with Marilyn Monroe making her “live” video debut. Scene is set aboard a ship as Jack returns from Hawaii. Jack dreams of Marilyn, buy the dream comes out 200-pound Maxine Gates.
Rochester, Don Wilson, “Mr. Kitzel,” Paul Frees and Joe Kearns complete the cast for the KNXT (2) fall debut of the great comedian. This season he will be on each third week, alternating with Ann Sothern as “Private Secretary.” (Terry Vernon, Long Beach Independent-Press-Telegram)

September 22
Irma’s playing the field from now on. A whole new stable of boy friends are in Marie Wilson’s future on this season’s “My Friend Irma” [TV] show with the departure of Sid Tomack as Al from the series. More variety in the romantic department is another big change for “Irma” along with a new roommate, Mary Shipp as Kay Foster, and a new character—Paul Frees, playing a schoolteacher who lives next door. (Erskine Johnson, NEA)

October 3
Parrot, Squeaking Door, All the Same to Emcee; Gen. Dean Story on Air
BY WALTER AMES
If you happen to be tuned into KECA radio some evening after 11 p m. and suddenly hear a familiar parrot talking to you, don't run for the nearest psychiatrist. It's only Paul Frees.
Paul, along with the rest of his acting chores, recently decided to try his hand at being a disc jockey. It was one of the few things he hadn't already experimented with and the other day he said he's never had as much fun.
Being a master at dialects, voices and sound effects, Frees finds his radio show an excellent showcase for rehearsing roles. Thus if he has a squeaking door coming up you'll hear him opening doors for most of his guests during the evening.
I mentioned that you might hear a parrot. One of Paul's chores in the past has been to be the parrot on the old Sam Spade series. His toughest assignment was to play a squeaking French door. Ask him to do it some night.
Recently he was confined to Folsom Prison — strictly for business, however, as a featured player in the new flicker, "Riot in Cellblock Eleven." It was a drastic change from his imitating roles because, as he says, everything about Folsom "is for keeps.” (Los Angeles Times)

October 7
Paul Frees has added a “Surprise Celebrity” contest to his KECA Monday through Saturday show which is broadcast from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. on KECA. Listeners who have written in are asked to identify the recorded voice of a well known personality. Frees calls three people each night. The first jackpot now being offered includes a silver tea set, a man or women’s suit, a radio, a watch, a set of men’s toiletries, and a table lamp. (Barbara Sellers, Hollywood Citizen-News)

October 12
EDGAR BERGEN
(Sun., 6:30-7 p.m. [11], KNX-CBS)
Chunking in their share of the laugh load were Veola Vonn, Gloria Gordon and Paul Frees. Bill Baldwin is back in his usual good selling job, this time for Lanolin Plus, skin sharpener which comes from sheep. (Helm, Daily Variety)

November 2
Walter Baker, leader of the newly organized “Baker’s Dozen” orchestra, starts his Monday commentaries on the Paul Frees radio show tonight. (Hollywood Reporter)

November 11
“The Martians and the Coys,” KHJ at 8:30, has in its cast three members of a family, Jack, Lil and Lee Kirkwood. They are, respectively, Hobe, Maw and Rhododendron Coy, hillbillies, who entertain Dr. Zim (Jay Novello) and Melco (Paul Frees), who arrive in a “crazy silo with windows.” (Zuma Palmer, Hollywood Citizen-News)

December 12
Paul Frees will he M.C. at the Altadena Tournament of Roses fund raising variety show, Tuesday at 7:15 p.m. it was announced by William Adrian, producer of the talent and fashion show.
Frees is seen weekly on "My Friend Irma", nationally televised series. He is known to millions as the weekly character in "Wild Bill Hickok" radio series, as well as a featured star in "Suspense" each week. Paul has been a variety of different voices in the "Tom and Jerry" cartoons and nightly airs his own radio show at 11 till 2 over KECA. (Pasadena Star-News)

December 15
Paul Frees will change the format of his Monday through Saturday KECA radio show to include interviews with leaders from business, industry, charitable organizations and law enforcement agencies. (Barbara Sellers, Hollywood Citizen-News)

December 17
Paul Frees does his last show on KECA Dec. 23. The station starting Dec. 26 will run an hour of classical music titled “Musical Masters, Past and Present,” in the 11 p.m. to midnight spot and conclude its Monday through Saturday programming with a five minute-newscast and The Lord’s Prayer. (Barbara Sellers, Hollywood Citizen-News)

Frees’ cartoons in 1953, according to Keith Scott in his book on Cartoon Voices, were all for MGM. It should be noted the voice tracks likely were recorded before 1953:

The Missing Mouse (Tom and Jerry, Jan. 10)
Barney’s Hungry Cousin (Barney Bear, Jan. 31)
Cobs and Robbers (Barney Bear, Mar. 14)
Heir Bear (Barney Bear, May 30)
TV of Tomorrow (Narrator for Tex Avery, June 6)
Wee-Willie Wildcat (Barney Bear, June 20)
Half-Pint Palomino (Barney Bear, Sept. 26)

His career at Disney had begun in 1950 but he did not voice anything for the studio again until 1954. The studio tapped him in 1961 to play Ludwig Von Drake. Frees pulled out a Germanic accent he employed during his career, but it was never funnier than when he played the cartoon professor, sometimes opposite Walt Disney himself.

He didn’t start his career at Walter Lantz until 1959, the same year he brought life at Jay Ward Productions to Boris Badenov. And Tomsk Parkoff.

You Know How These Gags Will End

Literal gags found their way into all kinds of Tex Avery cartoons. Eventually, it got to the point where he’d top the gag with a sign or some kind of commentary on the gag.

In Screwball Football, he treats them as is. Football announcer Reid Kilpatrick tells us Slobbovitz gets the ball and fades back for a long pass. “He’s fading. Fading. Fading.” He does.



There's a touchdown. Kilpatrick: “The cheerleader is yelling his head off.” He does.



I think my favourite literal pun is when Blottovich “recovers the pigskin” and the football escapes from his arms, squealing like a pig.

These are all pretty hokey, but I suspect they went off okay in 1939. Too bad the football didn't turn into a real pig, stop and turn to the camera and say, "This is silly," then continue on its run.

Avery does switches on a few of these gags in other cartoons, like the multiple horns (Car of Tomorrow, 1951, though I’ve seen it in a Columbia cartoon, too), and the stop-to-listen-to-the-radio one (Thugs With Dirty Mugs, 1939).

The running gag is great. There’s a murder, just like in Avery’s Batty Baseball at MGM.

The rotating animation credit goes to Virgil Ross.

Carl Stalling loads the soundtrack with that college favourite, “Frat.” We hear J.S. Zamecnik’s “College Stunts” and a bunch of old favourites, including public domainers “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” and “She’ll be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain,” “The William Tell Overture,” and “Rock-a-Bye Baby” for the running gag.

More Rainbow Parades

Over at the Cartoon Research website is the very pleasant news that Thunderbean Animation is ready to start sending out copies of its The Rainbow Parades, Volume 2 Blu-ray collection.

It’ll be a treat to see these in a form other than faded copies of public domain DVDs.

I doubt restoration will make me like any of these cartoons, but the Thunderbeaners have done an excellent job. The animation is very good in Felix the Cat Meets Old King Cole, especially the effects. Here are some frames from Felix the Cat Meets Bold King Cole (1936). Felix is riding a tree branch in a thunderstorm. There’s a zap, the branch gets away from him and Felix is riding a lightning bolt.



I’ll take the silent Felix, thanks. He was a rounded character, ingenious one minute and scheming the next. Van Beuren’s version could easily be played by Mickey Mouse. Molly Moo-Cow could be played by Pluto (now with her blackface scene fully restored), while Parrotville is a place where you wait and wait and wait for something to happen.

RKO thought so little of these shorts that it decided it didn’t need cartoons from a studio it had part interest in and released real Mickey Mouse and Pluto cartoons instead. Van Beuren got out of the cartoon business but still released travelogues for another year.

However, praise should again go to Thunderbean for the hard effort on behalf of those of you who want an improved look at these Technicolor shorts. And, like any good release, there are interesting extras on the disc.

The Perils of Ken Carpenter

Ken Carpenter had two long-time associations in radio. One was with Bing Crosby, apparently starting when Bing hosted the Kraft Music Hall on NBC in January 1936, and continuing through various shows and networks, carrying on into the early 1960s in a recorded show with Bing and Rosemary Clooney playing records in between heavily-scripted banter.

The other was with Kraft itself. He continued on the Music Hall after Bing left, and other programmes sponsored by the cheese company, including The Great Gildersleeve and a TV show with Milton Berle. He announced regularly on other shows, among them Command Performance, the Edgar Bergan/Charlie McCarthy show for Chase and Sanborn, the Life of Riley and, in the 1950s, The Halls of Ivy and Lux Radio Theatre, just to name a few. And there had been the Packard Show with Fred Astaire and Jimmy Fidler's on-air gossip column for Tangee and Grace Moore's programme for Vick's, all in 1936, and replacing Don Wilson in all of them. Carpenter was, more or less, Wilson’s protégé.

The June 28, 1930 edition of Inside Facts of Stage and Screen announced:

NEW ANNOUNCER
Kenneth Carpenter has been added to the announcing staff of KFI-KECA here. The new announcer at the Anthony stations is married and is 29 years old.

Carpenter was assigned on Oct. 21, 1930 to The Violet Ray Music Box, airing 8 to 8:30 on Tuesday nights on KFI for General Petroleum. The same publication gave the opinion over two issues:

Tinkling music box melodies faded in, Kenneth Carpenter orating two minute plug for gasoline and oil. This boy has a voice that should sell anything.

Again, let us mention the announcer, Kenneth Carpenter. The lad is good, with a friendly, pleasant voice, well modulated and using the proper inflection. This is very rare amongst the fraternity of announcers!

Carpenter had been hired at KFI by Wilson. They both ended up announcing football on NBC’s West Coast network. The Oakland Post-Enquirer of Sept. 23, 1931 squibbed:

The St. Mary’s-U. S. C. game will be handled over KGO by Don Wilson, who made such a hash of the Pageant of Jewels, and Ken Carpenter.

Carpenter's first Rose Bowl was 1934, sharing play-by-play with Don Thompson. Before then, Wilson had been hired by NBC to do sports back east. Of course, he ended up with a 30-plus year career with Jack Benny. In fact, an uncredited Carpenter opened the Benny show on March 23, 1937, as the plot had Wilson in Chicago, so an announcer was needed to throw to the midwest city.


Radio Mirror, in its September 1938 issue, contained a nice profile of Carpenter. We won’t reprint the full article, but will cut out a chunk of career highlights for you, along with the story of Carpenter and the NBC chimes on the hour-long Kraft Music Hall. His ad-lib was a stroke of genius. Radio writers speculated for weeks whether Carpenter would sound them at the half-hour station break.

[Carpenter] might still be knocking on office doors in search of employment — though I seriously doubt it — if his quest hadn't led him to KFI, then an independent radio station in Los Angeles. Since the only qualification he could advance for a radio job was a checkered business past embracing life insurance peddling, iron foundry puddling, commercial photography and the Chicago department store stint, Kenneth Carpenter spent most of his time waiting in the reception room at KFI. He was so tired hotfooting it along the pavement, he just decided to sit and wait. He did that for three weeks at KFI. Then, says Ken, "Finally Don Wilson had to hire me to get rid of me!"
DON, who "sells the stuff" for Jack Benny these days, was chief announcer at the old KFI. Ken doesn't recommend the sit-down system for ambitious young would-be announcers, though. He realizes that Don might have just given him the bum's rush or called a cop.
KFI put him to work broadcasting sports for the Coast networks. He airported track meets, crew races, baseball games and football. He got to be a crack spieler on gridiron goings-on and graduated to the top gridiron event in the nation — the Rose Bowl Game. Ken has four Rose Bowl games under his announcing belt by now, but his first Bowl job lingers longest and most painfully in his memory, which is only natural considering what befell.
It was along in the middle of the third quarter when the stands were on their feet yelling themselves hoarse. One team was about to score close to the sidelines, and the quarterback probably thought Ken Carpenter looked like a weak left end. At any rate, he called the play and several tons of tackles, guards and assorted backs charged down on Ken and his mike. When he woke up, there were cleat marks all over his fair white body and a lot of "dead air" on his particular broadcast. His reputation as well as one of his knees was pretty badly twisted.
It has been like that, it seems, all along with Ken Carpenter. Things pick on him to happen. That's why he timidly asserts today that he has come up the hard way.
There was the time he set up his traveling mike in a downtown jam to report an Elks Parade. As the colors went by the patriotic fervor of the crowd shoved Ken up against a plate glass window and then shot him through into a snappy department store display. The only indications the station had that Ken was on the job were loud crashes of falling glass and some muffled yowls.
He covered a championship baseball series, and a hasty batter slung his bat aside after a hit. Who do you think stopped it with his solar plexus and an "oof!" over the air? That's right — Carpenter. He put on a special air stunt from an orange grove and in the middle a tree decided to unload its fruit on Ken's uncovered top. Once, during a Navy Day review, Ken attempted to hop from one destroyer to another with his talk-box and misjudged the distance. He hung over the deep by a snag in his very best pants until the boys in blue rallied to the rescue.
"So," Ken declared, "you can readily see that the mere fact I am still hanging around and drawing a pay check is some sort of small miracle!"
Of course, Ken Carpenter does much more than just hang around the NBC studio in Hollywood. In fact, he is one of their very ace announcers and always as busy as a bookie on Derby Day. If you're a confirmed dial twister you'll hear his dulcet and persuasive tones over the Marion Talley Ry-Krisp hour on Sundays, as well as the Sunday One Man's Family show and the Wednesday one, too. He announces the Gilmore Circus (Pacific Coast Chain) on Fridays, still does very special events, makes recordings, and in his spare time he comes at you via the movies in Paramount's "Unusual Occupations" short subjects.
But Bing Crosby's battery of station-break bells on the Kraft Music Hall has really sounded out the Carpenter air click in a big way. That started as a rib, and like Topsy, "just growed," like this:
One day at rehearsals Chester Morris, the movie star guest that week, said the station gongs had always intrigued him. Who rang them, Chester wanted to know, what did they look like, how did they work?
"Why," replied Bing, shuffling his script sheets, "have you never heard of Kensington Carpenter — Carpenter the little Father of all the Chimes? Go ahead, Ken, ring 'em for the lad."
But Ken was busy penciling up his plugs and the chimes weren't handy. "Bing," he replied, "I'm just not in the mood!"
"What!" bellowed Bing, in mock severity, "This is a horrible contretemps, Carpenter, a deplorable contretemps!" 'Contretemps' is one of Bing's favorite words, and he rolls it out in a nasal snore more French than the French.
IT went on from there, with Bing exhorting Ken to give with his art and Ken feigning a temperamental indisposition— and all the time a secretary was taking the gag down in shorthand.
Now, it is practically a rule on the Kraft show that all spontaneous gags and impromptu by-play during rehearsals that get a laugh out of the company, go into the finished script. "Off the elbow" stuff, as radio people call it, makes a show sound relaxed — and that is just what Bing's Music Hall show wants above everything else.
Moreover, all guest stars on the Kraft hour are taken aside by the producer and urged to "throw curves" during the show at Bing and Bob — and now, of course, Carpenter — as much as possible. If the surprise "curves" are clever enough to get any one of the three at a loss for a snappy comeback — so much the better.
So that night Ken Carpenter's "temperament" about his station-break chime virtuosity went out on the air. The next Thursday, too, and the next and the next, until it had snowballed into a definite part of the show. Bing carried on his professorial severity and Ken kept up the callow, striving youth pose. They've tried to drop it several times, but somehow it seems to get better each week — and now they can't!
At any rate, whether he likes it or not, Kenneth Lee Carpenter now finds himself a radio comedian. The other day, Lenox B. Lohr, President of the National Broadcasting Company, sent him a set of chromium-plated chimes for his very own, as a sort of official recognition of the fact.
Now they've got him doing all sorts of things — even singing songs. "Which," mused Ken to me, "is a little strange, considering this fact: When I was in college my greatest ambition was to be a singer. It was a very small college and the glee club had fifty members. But my voice was so terrible they kicked me off the glee club the first day. And now I'm warbling from coast to coast! Amazing, this radio!"


Carpenter lost a TV job in 1955, but it wasn’t quite his fault. Among his duties on the Halls of Ivy television show was to warm up the audience. The San Francisco Call-Bulletin of Apr. 19 reported Carpenter was unable to get to the studios at Columbia Square, so a page boy and part-time copywriter named Fred Grimes told Colman he could do it. He did. Next thing, Grimes had the job full-time. (Carpenter told historian and radio man Chuck Schaden he didn’t really like doing it anyway).

As network radio petered out in the first few years of the 1960s, so did Carpenter’s career. Appearances were rare. He made one with Jack Benny, announcing Premiere At The Pavilion, a 1965 KTTV charity special where Benny played a concerto. And he continued his activities with AFTRA and Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters.

Carpenter joked about the situation to Jack Smalley of the Ventura County Star. In a column on June 16, 1969, Smalley wrote:

When asked Ken Carpenter what he was doing now.
“Our grandchildren can’t figure out what I do, either,” said Ken. “They don’t understand broadcasting work, and they wonder what sort of job I have.
“One day we bought a whole flat of boxed strawberries and stopped off at their house. Our grandson came to the door. He looked at the strawberries and a light dawned. “Now I know what you do, grandpa!” he yelled. “You sell strawberries.”

The days of selling Velveeta for Der Bingle had long ended.

Behind the Screen

A cat has had its tail stepped on by a fan dancer. Cut to a patio with a screen in the background.



The cat runs into the screen, which collapses to reveal some kind of horrible creature.



The cat runs toward the camera and out of the scene. The creature clatters its feet into and out of the foreground.



It turns not to be a hideous monster. It is a design on a parasol held by a Chinese maiden.



The cartoon is Walt Disney’s 1931 Silly Symphony The China Plate.

This is a pleasant cartoon with decorative backgrounds and an actual storyline, opening and closing with a shot of the aforementioned plate. There’s a scene of comic relief involving a fisherman and a duck and, later, a rickshaw driver. There’s no dialogue, but a score sets the mood.

As usual, the only credit goes to Walter E. Disney.

Kal Kat Komedy

Friz Freleng and Tex Avery both remarked how they had to stop the comedy in Merrie Melodies cartoons and fit in a Warners-owned song.

The 1938 short Katnip Kollege is the opposite. It’s all-singing, all-dancing, all-smooching. But where’s the comedy? Or maybe it’s “komedy” because words in the title that start with “c” are spelled with a “k.”

Is it when a book is thrown at a cuckoo clock bird? (The freeze-frame impact is good).



Is it when an empty mesh wastepaper basket is crowned over the head of a student who then sings about Columbus being in the “juggaroo”? It looks like the student is behind bars. Like being in the jug. Get it?



Is it when the teacher sits on a tack and, well, that's it.



Apparently a dead can of oil against a fence came from the Bronx.



And there’s the inevitable dunce cap that populates cartoons. The Betty Boop short Swing School, released the same year, also includes a musically-inept animal forced to wear a dunce cap. When was the last time one of those was in an actual school?



I like inside gags, and there’s one during a pan shot of Professor Dalton. This cartoon was co-directed by Cal Dalton, who was born in 1908.



The cat on the statue isn't kissing it. He's bobbing his head on either side of Prof. Dalton's head. I guess his lips are pursed because everyone else's are.

However, I am again in the minority with my apathy for this cartoon. Motion Picture Daily’s review on June 3, 1938 calls it “A somewhat fantastic, but nevertheless entertaining cartoon in a standard sense is offered here.”

A theatre manager in the Sept. 10, 1938 edition of the Motion Picture Herald not only liked it, he preferred Warners’ releases over those from Uncle Walt.

KATNIP KOLLEGE: Merrie Melodies— As good a color cartoon as you could ask for. Disney will have to watch his laurels to keep first place. If Schlesinger used color as does Disney, I feel that the former would rank with Disney as his subject matter far surpasses the Disneys. Running time, 10 minutes. — A. J. Inks, Crystal Theatre, Ligonier, Ind. Small town patronage.

Joe D’Igalo is the credited animator, and the story credit goes to Dave Monahan. Thanks to Daniel Goldmark, we learn Monahan was the lyrist behind tune sung during the “Professor Dalton” sequence and when Johnny finally starts swinging (it’s called “No Name Stomp”).

The cartoon was officially released June 11, 1938 but, as you can see to the right, it was being shown at a theatre in Albert Lea, Minnesota, on May 31. Let that be a lesson to you.

The Infamous Horn

The Horn Blows at Midnight may, or may not, have been a lousy movie, but Jack Benny’s writers got an awful lot of mileage out of it. The first reference on the Benny radio show to it was on Jan. 23, 1944. How many others there were, I don’t know, but no less a person than movie mogul Jack L. Warner showed up twice to joke about it (in an appearance on Feb. 20, 1949, promoting a radio version on The Ford Theatre, he got unintentional laughs by butchering the dialogue).

One episode featured Mel Blanc playing a car lot attendant who had his Hollywood career killed by directing the film. Another was a funny episode which ended with the entire patronage of a drive-in theatre zoom away when Horn was announced as a special double-feature (aired Oct. 24, 1954).

Movie studios were notorious for planting BS to promote their films. Whether any other what was reported by the Associated Press in the 1944 story below is true, I can’t tell you, but we’ll pass it along.

Jack Benny Finds He’s No Angel
BY TED GILL
HOLLYWOOD, Feb. 12.—(AP)—Comedian Jack Benny is trying his best to be a good little angel—but frankly admits it's a devil of a job!
Benny is appearing in "The Horn Blows at Midnight," in which he's supposed to be No. 4 trumpeter in a heavenly symphony—but the Waukegan wisecracker, whom his arch-rival, Fred Allen, jokingly calls the neanderthal nit-wit of the airways—blithely confesses he doesn't know as much about trumpets as he does about violins—which, he adds, is practically negligible —so they dub in the sound effects.
Next, they had to denude Jack of his pretty white wings, because they were flopping grotesquely in everyone's eyes, and besides, pranksters were habitually plucking out feathers to use as pipe cleaners--so they compromised, and appliqued a small set of wings on Jack's white robe—and let it go at that.
In another scene, Benny's toupee accidentally got knocked off during a rough-and-tumble fracas with some children. Promptly one youngster grabs it up and dashes off, yelling: "Oh, boy, Fred Allen will pay me plenty for this!"
Benny admits he perhaps should have started being an angel a little earlier in life, but adds: "This probably is as close to heaven as I'd ever get, anyway."

The Newspaper Enterprise Association provided this look the same month.

Benny Doesn’t Like Heaven In His Newest Movie
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
HOLLYWOOD, Feb. 1 (NEA)—Heaven isn't all that it's cracked up to be, Jack Benny said.
He was having trouble, he complained, keeping his white robes clean. A man with a bottle of cleaning fluid had to follow him around.
Those gold sandals were breaking down his arches. Lugging a trumpet around all the time was very bothersome, too. The heavenly hours were too long. And he just didn't feel like an angel, Jack said, since the studio wardrobe department clipped his wings.
"All this and heaven, too. It's too much," Jack groaned.
The picture is "The Horn Blows at Midnight." The three principal angels—Benny, Alexis Smith and Guy Kibbee—played their first scene together and their wings got in each other's way. In the middle of the third "take" the tip of Alexis' wing stuck Benny right in the eye and Director Raoul Walsh stopped the scene.
Finally somebody came up with the idea of the angels wearing wings like the boys in the air corps do. So they clipped the wings of the angels and reseed on a pair of bright, red cloth wings on their white robes.
Since then life in heaven has run much more smoothly.
"The Horn Blows at Midnight" is a comedy about an angel sent down to destroy the earth—because there’s so much hate. Angel Benny is elected for the job. He's given a trumpet to blow at midnight, a book of instructions and a modern business suit. Then he's shoved into an elevator and a split second later he's walking down Fifth Avenue.
Fallen Angels
From then on, everybody hopes, there will be lots of laughs. Benny, you see, has been an angel for a couple of thousand years and things have sorts changed on earth. Besides he's a forgetful gent. He loses the instruction book, gets mixed up with a beautiful girl, Dolores Moran, and a couple of fallen angels who know the secret of the trumpet and eventually steal it from him.
Jimmy Kern, who wrote the script with Sam Hellman, was much more enthusiastic about it all than Benny, who is a natural worrier. “It's tailored for Jack," Kern said. "That one scene where he goes to a restaurant and orders a lot of stuff he's never eaten will be terrific."
We had to admit it was a very funny scene. Knowing nothing about earthly food, Benny first orders a banana split. Then he has some kippered herring. He sees someone eating a big dill pickle, so he orders one for himself. He winds up the meal with roast duck and oyster stew.
The unbelieving, astonished waiter, is played by one John Brown, who until a few weeks ago was a member of Fred Allen's radio show. Jack met Brown in New York, liked him and brought him to Hollywood as his protégé. But getting back to heaven, we noticed a large panel of photographs identified as “Fallen Angels." As Alexis explains to Jack, "Fallen angels can never come back here, and there's only one other place for them to go."
Cinema Caution
The photographs, Director Walsh pointed out, were all of people on the set—hairdressers, cameramen, carpenters, etc. There was even photograph of Walsh. Having once been sued for using in a movie the telephone number of a guy in Milwaukee, Warner Bros. studio takes no more chances. There'd probably be grounds for a suit, at that, if a model in New York or a politician in Oregon recognized his photograph playing a "Fallen Angel" on the screen.
We were surprised, though, that Benny, as a gag, hadn't slipped in a photograph of Fred Allen as one of the fallen angels.
"What!" groaned Jack, "and let that guy steal a laugh? I've got enough worries."
As a matter of fact. Jack Benny seemed to be a very unhappy angel.

While Benny and his friends joked about the “mediocrity” of The Horn Blows at Midnight, there was one picture Jack really did not like. He told the Knoxville Sentinel-News on Jan. 2, 1944, in an unbylined story, after a description of Horn:

The idea is an amusing one and Benny's got his fingers crossed.
Last time he heard of an amusing story, he insisted on Twentieth Century-Fox buying it. It was called "The Meanest Man in the World" and it did seem funny, until the experts got through with the script.
"I pleaded with them to throw it away," Benny said. "They had spent about what my salary amounted to and I told 'em I would gladly do another picture free, if they'd only forget this one. The embarrassing thing was that it was my idea in the first place to make it, and I could not talk them out of it."
• • •
Called Worst Movie
WHEN completed the picture was so bad, according to Benny, it could not be released. One of the greatest of the movie makers (who shall be nameless here) went to work on it and finally let loose upon an unsuspecting public a movie. Some critics for whom we have respect, grimly called it the worst movie Hollywood ever made. That is a broad statement. There have been worse.
"Let's just call it bad," said Benny, "and try to forget it.”
It was the only really terrible movie he ever made. The three before it, including "Charley's Aunt," "George Washington Slept Here," and "To Be or Not To Be." were smash hits and Benny has hopes the customers will remember those.

Indeed, To Be or Not To Be received critical acclaim, and Charley’s Aunt was another film seized upon by Benny’s radio writers, including some where Jack dressed in his old woman’s costume (once to escape Ronald Colman, Apr. 25, 1948).

Our Horn trivia: Louella Parsons broke the story on May 19, 1942 that Ida Lupino had been signed to star in the film, then was the first to report on May 11, 1943 that Benny would play an angel in the movie. In the meantime, Lupino bowed out.

Our non-Horn trivia: Jack and his co-star from George Washington Slept Here, Ann Sheridan, were supposed to appear together on the Screen Guild Players' version of Nothing But the Truth on Feb. 21, 1944, but the broadcast was called off and a different one with other stars substituted. No reason was given in the press.

The biggest story involving Jack in Feb. 1944 wasn’t his movies. Newspapers revealed his show would no longer be sponsored by General Foods as of June 11, but by American Tobacco for the coming radio season (the Associated Press didn’t mention specific products while the United Press did). Jack had been getting $22,500 a week to plug the only cereal (I can think of) with a double-plural name, Grape Nuts Flakes. The deal for Lucky Strikes on radio lasted until the end of Jack’s show in 1955.

Now, a Drawing From Our Sponsor

Animated television commercials in the 1950s had great designs, clever copy and fine voice-overs. They were made, for the most part, by artists who had worked on theatrical shorts.

Television Age magazine included stories or blurbs about cartoon commercial production and, best of all, one-frame samples.

These are from the Feb. 8, 1960 issue. To the right is José, the spokes-monkey for Kellogg’s Cocoa Krispies. Eventually, the role was taken over by Snagglepuss. Kellogg’s was sponsoring his cartoons on the Yogi Bear show, and other Hanna-Barbera characters were already featured in commercials, some of them animated by Ed Love.


It’s a shame high-resolution copies of the trade paper aren’t on-line.

We’ve spoken about Ray Patin Productions in this post; Patin had been at Disney, then moved to Warner Bros. The issue reported:

RAY PATIN PRODUCTIONS, INC.
Completed: IXL Food Co. (food products), Armand Productions; Purex Corporation, Ltd. (bleach), Columbia Pictures; Skippy Peanut Butter Div. Best Foods, Inc. (Skippy), GB&B; General Foods Corp. (Jell-O), Y&R; Bardahl Oil Co., Inc. (oil), MMH&H.
In Production: General Mills, Inc. (Cheerios), D-F-S; Johnson & Johnson (Perfron), Y&R.

Bill Melendez was an animation director at Playhouse, run by Ade Woolery of UPA. Former MGMer Jack Zander was connected with Pelican Films for a time. Elektra was started by Abe Liss, who had been at UPA. Ray Favata was a designer at a number of commercial studios in New York, including Tempo in the 1950s and Gryphon in the early '60s. Lars Colonius had worked at Disney and was the man who brought you the nuke-scare cartoon Duck and Cover. Bill Sturm had animated at Fleischer/Famous.

HFH Productions was Dan Hunn, Ronald Fritz and Howard H. Henkin. Henkin was gone by 1961 and working for Fred Niles' new office in New York, so Hunn and Fritz changed into D & R Productions. Hunn, in 1990, was animating on the Jetsons movie for Hanna-Barbera. Bandelier was operated by Robert Stevens, with Dan Bessie, an ex-MGM assistant animation, as director. TV Cartoon Productions was run by Robert Leo Hovorka and Robert J. Mills, former students of the Art League of California. Paul Kim and Lewis Gifford set up a studio bearing their names in 1959.

Morphing Musical Instruments

Schoolboy Bimbo (wearing glasses so the teacher won’t hit him) grabs a banjo and strums the old chestnut “School Days” in the finale of the Talkartoon Teacher's Pest (released Feb. 7, 1931).



Bimbo keeps time with his left foot. In the frame above, the upper part of the shoe detached from the sole (note the nails). Later, the whole shoe stays on the floor and his foot lifts out of it.

The banjo morphs into a sax. When he squeezes it, a cat jumps out of the bell.



The instrument becomes a trombone, which wraps itself around Bimbo and tries to crawl away like a snake.



He pulls it back, and it briefly goes from a mandolin into a bass violin, which he plays from the hole with a saw.



The large fiddle explodes and when the dust clears, Bimbo plays the woozy stars above his head like a xylophone.



All kinds of things come to life in these early Fleischer shorts. The continents on the teacher’s globe start slapping in rhythm. A pen and pencil dance on a sloping desk. And, in a terrific visual, letters and numbers from a blackboard dance and break apart in mid-air, with silhouettes of students behind them.



Yeah, crappy TV “message” cartoons from the ‘80s can get restored, but we can’t get a pristine set of the inventive Talkartoons and Fleischer Screen Songs. Bravo to anyone working on these. Still, these frames are certainly better than nothing.

Grim Natwick and Seymour Kneitel are the credited animators. “School Days” was co-written in 1907 by Gus Edwards for his young people’s revue on Broadway. Edwards appears with a really off-key kid in a Screen Song with that name, released Sept. 30, 1932.

Here’s a version of the song from that era.