Lookie, a Rookie!

Friz Freleng’s spot-gag short Rookie Revue opens with a shot of a billboard, then a left-to-right pan across some tents (some in the foreground panned at a different speed to simulate depth) as we hear Mel Blanc snoring “You’re in the Army Now.” One tent is a tee-pee. I guess that's the first gag.

The camera stops on the bugler's tent.



Fade to the first bit of animation. The bugler is snoring. His ears flap in a four-drawing cycle.



Cut to a cuckoo clock. Hey, how come the time is different than in the last shot?



The cuckoo comes out, blows reveille, and goes back in.



Storyman Dave Monahan (or whoever else worked on this) aren't content to leave it there. The frames below reveal the rest of the gag.



Look! Four fingers and a thumb!



The cartoon was released on Oct. 25, 1941, and rated “Excellent” by Exhibitor magazine. Then came Pearl Harbor. Showman’s Trade Review wrote on Dec. 27, 1941, under “Out-dated”:

When this was released it was OK, but the fun about some of the happenings as rookies train with imitation funs now strikes a note that is way off key. This, of course, is no fault whatsoever of the producer or the distributor. It’s simply a matter of record an important fact unfortunately now associated with a very clever fact unfortunately now associated with a very clever cartoon and one containing many situations once good for laughs.

There are two radio show references in the cartoon, a couple of inside gags, and an ending that takes forever to get there.

Dick Bickenbach receives the rotating animation credit; my guess is Gerry Chiniquy, Gil Turner and Manny Perez worked on it as well. The polished backgrounds are the unheralded work of Lenard Kester.

Screwy Meets Meathead

Screwy Squirrel uses a phone call to goad Meathead into chasing him in their debut cartoon, Screwball Squirrel (1944).

“I knew that’d get him,” Screwy tells us (he talks to the audience through the picture), then does his shoulder-hunch laugh before playing Meathead’s note like a Jew’s harp.



Screwy does one of his twirling exits back into the phone booth.



Meathead follows and it's on to the next gag.

I like Screwy. I don't know how many cartoons were left in him, but there are good gags in all of them before Tex gave up on him. I love the barrel gag in this one, where it turns out the drum roll on the soundtrack is being played by Screwy.

Heck Allen assisted Avery with the gags, with Preston Blair, Ray Abrams and Ed Love animating (Love did the above work). Wally Maher, using his Wilbur voice from the Tommy Riggs and Betty Lou radio show, is Screwy.

The Rainbow Girl Who Made Good

“Theme for the new term of Ocean Mist Assembly No. 232, International Order of Rainbow for Girls,” reported the Mendocino Beacon of June 11, 1965, “is ‘Patriotism is the strength of our Country,’ chosen by Karen Valentine, who headed the slate of officers installed on Sunday afternoon, June sixth, in a beautifully impressive ceremony.”

Yes, that Karen Valentine. One of a number of actors/actresses who were in demand on television in the 1970s, given a crack at starring in their own show(s), then faded away.

She seemed to live a storybook, charmed childhood. In 1953, she was selected as an attendant to the Sebastopol Apple Blossom Queen. Ten years later she was given a full-page spread in the Oct. 24, 1963 Sonoma West Times and News after she had been crowned Miss Teenage Santa Rosa. She was not only the first "Nature" of her new Rainbow Assembly, she was a cheerleader, an A student, took part in school plays and said she hoped to get off the family chicken farm to become a dramatic teacher. (There was nothing saying she hoped to hear the words “Karen Valentine to block” sitting next to Paul Lynde on Hollywood Squares).

Her star rose pretty quickly. She entered the Miss Teen Age America contest. On Nov. 2, Peggy Simpson of the Associated Press reported from Dallas:

A living Doll—Judy by name—is the new Miss Teen-age America, but a bubbly sprite from Santa Rosa, California, Calif., Karen Valentine, has the first television contract. . . .
Pixie-like Karen Valentine, 16, captured the audience—as she has all week.
“I’ve just never seen anyone as cute as that gal,” one man said, after seeing her uninhibited, shoulder-wiggling, eye-rolling version of “Blame it on the Bossa Nova.”
“Wonder if I could adopt her?”
Karen had been announced earlier as talent winner for the pageant.
Showman Ed Sullivan telephoned from New York after seeing Karen’s act and invited her to his program.
“Some people like chocolate ice cream—I just love to perform—over and over and over,” Karen said, her big brown eyes laughing.

Her first appearance on Sullivan was Nov. 10, 1963 along with Allen and Rossi, Shelley Berman and the West Point Glee Club.

Two years later, she was installing the officers of her Rainbow Assembly. Four years after that, came Room 222. Producer Gene Reynolds told columnist Don Royal at the time: “I had already read, not just interviewed, 130 girls for the part of Alice, the student teacher. Then Karen came in, went through only three or four lines and I knew she had it.”

The series oozed ‘60s awareness. It was about an integrated high school. Valentine had been called “perky,” “a sprite” and “likened to an uncorked bottle of champagne” in reviews at the time, but Richard K. Shull of the Scripps-Howard news service dumped a gotcha-question on her, mid-interview. From the Indianapolis News, Nov. 27, 1969:

I asked her if she resented playing a caricature in the show. Her voice still giggled but her hackles were up. She didn’t consider her character a caricature, she said. “I think all our characters are valid. I’ve known student teachers just like Alice Johnson, the girl I play,” she added. Ditto, she said there's no conscious effort in the show to make the black characters credible and the white characters overdrawn. And further, she said, she didn't much like to have "Room 222" compared to Bill Cosby's show. In both shows, a good many viewers have detected what for want of a better name might he called the Stepin Fetchit's revenge syndrome—in which the whites are grotesque travesties. "Bill Cosby and 'Room 222' can't be compared. In the first place," she said. "Cosby is a caricature of Cosby, but Lloyd Haynes as Pete Dixon deals with problems realistically. "The two shows are totally different because of who Bill Cosby is. He's a very funny comedian," she said. And that seemed to be that. But, since the vice-president contends news media treat subject matter with all the impartiality of the Masked Court of the Venetian Doge: Karen Valentine's character is a caricature. Karen Valentine's character is a caricature.
Karen Valentine's character is a caricature.

Room 222 aired five seasons and begat an Emmy for Valentine. The series was a dramady, but when it ended ABC wanted a sitcom for her. And what could be funnier than post-Shull's vice president, post-Watergate, Washington, D.C. This syndicated column is from Jan. 18, 1975.

Karen Valentine Quits Classroom for Capital
By CHARLES WITBECK
HOLLYWOOD — ABC has finally found a format for "that cute little girl from 'Room 222' " — Karen Valentine.
On Friday (Jan. 24), "Room 222's" substitute teacher, Alice Johnson, begins a new life in Washington, D.C., in "Karen," a comedy series about a girl being useful in one of those Common Cause-type lobbying associations.

The show holds promise since It is the brainchild of "M*A*S*H" producers Gene Reynolds and Larry Gelbart, Reynolds being a Common Cause member, and the man who first spotted Karen, the Miss Teenaged California winner from Sebastapol, Calif., as just the right Alice Johnson with her eager, puppy-dog quality.
With "M*A*S*H" already in the can for the season, Reynolds and Gelbart have time to work with Carl Kleinschmitt on the project, and will simply switch the "M*A*S*H" crew over to the "Karen" set at 20th Century-Fox. Earlier in the year, researcher Reynolds spent time in Washington's Common Cause office, and took a political science class at nearby UCLA, so he wouldn't be a greenhorn plotting Washington machinations.
Having mentor Reynolds in her corner again and the "M*A*S*H" crew pleases both Karen and ABC. The network felt secure enough about the project and the people not to demand a pilot.
"I'm not playing the comedy relief this time,” says Karen Valentine. "My character, Karen Angelo, is more grown-up than '222's' Alice Johnson."
After two pilots since "Room 222," one of which she liked by Mary Tyler Moore Productions successful team of Lorenzo Music and David Davis, Karen has been searching for a "now" character who isn't a Woman's Libber or a young housewife. The struggling girl law student didn't fit either. Something in the middle seemed more like it, and Reynolds idea of the Common Cause worker rang the bell.
"I come to Washington with a new Congressman who promised me during the campaign he would take me with him if he won," Karen explains. "However, I become a gopher in his Washington office, mainly running about doing errands. Since I want to be useful, I quit and join Open America, the lobbying association run by a mixture of old and young dedicated people. Denver Pyle is our leader and Dena Dietrich (Mother Nature in the commercial world) keeps the office functioning."
Young idealist Karen gets around Washington on a bicycle, carrying a colorful flag, putting in about equal time buttonholing politicians, working a broken-down copying machine and solving personal problems. She shares an apartment with a black roommate, Sissy, and listens to the trials and tribulations of a law student who lives in the basement and puts himself through school by tending bar.
Using Karen as the reactor much like Mary Tyler Moore, Reynolds and Gelbart have surrounded their heroine with caricatures. In the Open America group, you'll bump into a retired Navy officer (Liam Dunne), who thinks the world has gone to hell and knows all kids are drug-crazed weirdos. His counterpart is a 50-year-old hippie (Allen Kent), attempting to act half his age, wearing the latest mod rags and mumbling "Peace" or "Groovy."
The producers hope to kid all factions on the Washington scene, virgin territory for Hollywood comedy writers, but know, of course, Karen Valentine's ingratiating manner is their main ticket. Politics is simply a backdrop — comedy comes first.
Still, Washington life is a new toy. Maybe the "M*A*S*H" producers can use it as a comedic backdrop, with Karen the charmer up front. At least it's a move in a different direction, and that's unexpected in televisionland.

Karen suffered the same fate as Mr. Shull’s vice-president. She left Washington, D.C. In Miss Valentine’s case, her show lasted 13 weeks before cancellation. Maybe it was because Karen Valentine was likeable. I don't believe anyone has called politics in Washington, D.C. "likeable."

Plenty of work on TV-movies and TV guest shots followed, even some pilots. But she never got another series. She told columnist Jay Bobbin in 2004 she hoped a Hallmark channel comedy movie with John Laroquette would help her wind her way past the glut of reality shows and help her get back on television. Not long after, newspaper columnists were asked “Whatever happened to...”

As it comes to all who are able to reach a certain time in life, Karen settled into retirement. It’s a shame she didn’t get a crack at her own series again. Watching her back in the ‘70s, she struck me as pleasant and sincere. And she could be fun, as you can see below in her second appearance on Sullivan, March 29, 1964. As a DeMolay, I can tell you it’s a far cry from the ceremonies in a Rainbow Assembly.

Koko Komes

Something is always becoming something else in the early Fleischer cartoons, one of the things that makes them fun to watch.

In this scene from Boop-Oop-A-Doop (1932), a happy elephant draws ink from a well on his back and squirts it out. Since it’s a Fleischer cartoon, and it is an inkwell, who should emerge but Koko?



Sousa's "The Washington Post March" is playing in quick-time in the background.

The Fleischers seem to have like animal crowds in backgrounds, and this cartoon has them, too. Check out this scene. Sad dog, raccoon, horse, some humans. Lots of variety.



What the available version of the cartoon doesn't have is the original credits. Any factual insight into the head animator for this well-drawn and enjoyable cartoon would be helpful.

Bird Butt

Dick Lundy’s last cartoon for MGM, Bird-Brain Bird Dog, includes some familiar bits from Tex Avery’s cartoons, and a really odd cut.

Barney Bear shoots his own large butt after his bird-loving hunting dog drew a little quail on it.

Lundy cuts to a close-up of the damage. In the very next frame, he cuts back to the longer shot, but the difference in the action is pretty jarring. These are consecutive frames.



Without a summary of the scenes from the studio, it’s hard to determine if some action was cut. A cue ends when the scene ends, and a new one starts when the next scene begins, so it’s really tough to say if there’s a cut in the soundtrack. It’s possible.

Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton and Bob Bentley are the credited animators (Mike Lah either didn't work on this or his name was omited) and Johnny Johnsen gets a background credit. Heck Allen and Jack Cosgriff provided the gag, including a variation on Avery's "Timber" routine, and characters stacked on top of each other as in Half Pint Pygmy.

MGM had a backlog of cartoons, and this was one of the shorts on a shelf for a while. Not only was Lundy gone from MGM when this short was released on July 30, 1954 (he told Mark Mayerson he left at the end of October 1951), so was Avery, who had come back only to have his unit disbanded in March 1953.

The Palace Presents Jack Benny

When Rochester answered the phone and said “Jack Benny’s residence, star of stage, screen, radio and (fill in gag here),” he was listing the Benny accomplishments in chronological order. Before radio, there were films at MGM as sound came in. And before that, there was the vaudeville stage.

Jack not only played at the pinnacle of vaudeville success, the Palace in New York, he was contracted in 1931 to be the Master of Ceremonies in addition to doing his act.

Critics, by and large, in the 1920s, found little to complain about Jack’s performances, whether they were on the Orpheum circuit on the West Coast, in Chicago, or on his East Coast swing.

But in 1931, there was no Rochester to play off of. There was no Maxwell, 39, or even being a cheapskate. So what exactly did he do?

Here’s an indication from the New York Daily News of Sept. 8, 1931. Of interest to Benny radio fans is Jack worked with Abe Lyman well before the bandleader made guest appearances on the Benny radio show. And, as it turned out, Kate Smith, another member of the General Foods stable (for some baking flour until she was given the Jell-O sponsorship) who appeared once on Jack’s show.

ENTER JACK BENNY AS NEW PALACE M. C.
By JOHN CHAPMAN.
The Palace Theatre, having found a large, new public during the course of a seven weeks' run of Lou Holtz and company, is attempting to retain its customers by assembling a new offering in which Jack Benny, Harriet Hoctor and Abe Lyman's band, are featured.
Just for luck, too, the management has kept a couple of features from the Holtz fiesta.
It will be interesting to see if the new program can approach a long-run record; to see if Benny is as successful a master of ceremonies as was his predecessor.
Miss Hector Returns.
Benny's scheme is different. Holtz, a sure marksman with a scatter gun, aimed for howls and got them. A shrewd interpreter of the vaudeville patron's mind, his humor was broad, low and loud. Benny's wit is sharp, dry and cynical.
[omit Hoctor review]
Lyman's band has rhythm and go—and some jerkily conceived arrangements. It serves for a funny scene in which Benny doubts that a leader's baton-waving amounts to much. Left by Holtz.
"After all," says Jack to Abe, “what could you do with this stick if the band didn't show up?"
So Benny tries some stick-waving of his own with ludicrous results.

This wasn’t Jack’s first go-round as M.C. at the Palace that year. Chapman’s column of May 25, 1931 mentions:

Least obtrusive and funniest of the recent masters of ceremony is Jack Benny, who soberly plays a violin while a sound news reel is crashing about the screen, quips with [Mexican dancer] Armida and is otherwise of assistance.

Incidentally, Jack was held over the following week. The headliner was Georgie Jessel.

Jack spent part of 1931 on the road with his act, a Chester Hale production called “Bits of Wit.” It seems to have been more terpsichore than anything. It included “syncopated spirit of inebriation” Evelyn Wilson, acrobatic dancer Billy Rolls and Jack Benny’s Dancing Girls. He was assisted by the “Comedy Girl,” Marie Marsh, known today as Mary Livingstone.

During a stop in Buffalo at the end of April, Ardis Smith of the Times profiled Jack. This may be the only time you see the word “cachinnation” anywhere. Considering he spent a great amount of time years later ridiculing The Horn Blows At Midnight, it’s interesting seeing him do the same thing year. The difference was, as he related on the Merv Griffin show, the Tiffany film really was bad.

JACK BENNY, on the Great Lakes stage this week, doesn't hanker after applause. No, Sir, or Madame. He wouldn't know what to do with it if he had it. It would embarrass him. What he wants is continued cachinnation out there in the dark where the audience crouches. The more immoderate the laughter, the more expansive Mr. Benny becomes. No guffaws and Mr. Benny is actually chilled, he says, and needs an overcoat.
On those few occasions when a dour congregation of paying customers, of those who have come in on passes, show an obstinate disinclimation to titter, Jack works on the orchestra or the ushers. If the musicians laugh, he knows it's the same old Benny after all.
• • •
DURING one performance Saturday, it became necessary for Mr. Benny to play to the orchestra, the first time in a long spell. This contretemps was unprecedented as far as his appearances in Buffalo go.
Mr. Benny, who proudly advises his current audiences that he was six months in Earl Carroll's "Vanities," "four months on the stage and two months with the company in jail," played 18 years in vaudeville and then broke into the talking pictures over night. He broke out with parallel suddenness and into the Earl Carroll theater.
• • •
YOU may have noticed that Mr. Benny is a fiddler. He fiddles from left to right on the stage, hands in pockets, lazy, nonchalant, drawling, quite certain that most folks think he's pretty funny. Well, he really is a fiddler. At 15, he was playing the violin in a theater orchestra. A year or two later he took his instrument to the stage. Then he began to talk. Pretty soon he was just totin' the fiddle and wending his full 20 minutes in inconsequential banter, chatting with the ushers and the late arrivals. This seemed to go better than "Fantasy Impromptu" so pretty soon, he quit bothering with the violin.
• • •
DURING the war Mr. Benny enlisted in the Navy.
But the recruiting service or the propaganda bureau found he was quick with his bow and quip, and he spent the period of the war skedaddling about the country, helping finance the war and raise a navy. He never did get on intimate terms with the briny blue, and he eyes any large fluid body fairly askance to this day.
He's going to London this summer to play at the Palladium, but he doesn't know whether the British will like him. The English feeling for humor is sensitive enough, he says, but you never can tell for sure what they want over there in the way of patter. And it may be too late by the time you find out.
• • •
MR. BENNY was playing two a day vaudeville in Los Angeles when Metro picked him to share with Conrad Nagel the mastering of ceremonies in “The Hollywood Revue." After that he made "Chasin' Rainbows" and a quickie for Tiffany which he saw last week in Cleveland the first time. The latter talkie, “The Medicine Man," released over a year since, was the worst moving picture ever made, he brags. "Really, you have no idea—atrocious!" • • •
HE would be pleased to go back to Hollywood. He cancelled his contact with Metro because he wasn't getting any work to do and he thought Broadway, the absent-minded thing, might forget him. Now, he would like to make two pictures a year and play in a revue like the "Vanities" every winter. He is spoken for by Earl Carroll and will be on hand when that entrepreneur casts his next entertainment. • • •
MR. BENNY was married in 1927 and his wife appears with him on the Great lakes stage. He wears the same clothes on the street and in the theater, uses little or no make-up and usually strolls around town window-shopping between turns. His patter is never the same two performances running. He makes up a good deal of it as he goes along. He has blue eyes and prematurely gray hair. One of his eyes is a trifle bluer than the other which may indicate to you that his favorite sport is golf, though I don't know how. • • •
MR. BENNY wouldn't be a star in the movies for any amount of money, this is any amount be could met- A comedian is crazy to be starred he says. The really smart comedic craftsman is one who is missing from the screen or stage at least half the time while the audience is wishing he money, that is any amount, he could itself that he is stealing the whole shebang from the topline principals.
He thinks it was too bad they made Jack Oakie a star. Oakie was so popular a year ago that theater patrons actually cheered his audible shadow. Now look at him. Mr. Benny says in the more recent Oakie pictures, you can actually see this naturally happy-go-lucky clown groaning under the responsibility of carrying the central role.
• • •
BENNY, of course, thinks Metro the greatest of the movie producers. Norma Shearer, he believes, in [is] his favorite feminine screen personality, though he is particularly partial to Marie Dressler.
The Great Lakes star doesn't smoke and while I was interviewing him he refused a drink. He is partial to blue double-breasted suits and light gray snap brims, never tries to sing or dance the tango, and is tremendously serious and studious about his work. When his gags are not taking hold, he talks it over with his wife, the manager, the musicians or the head property man.

Jack was soon back with Earl Carroll. Then Carroll tried to cut Benny's salary twice, the second time by 20%. Variety reported February 9, 1932 that Jack was quitting the road. “Star of radio” was only a few months away.

Ub's Odds and Ends

How’s this for an assessment of Flip the Frog?

Sydney Tremayne, in a feature story on Walt Disney published in a London newspaper on Jan. 1, 1932, wrote.

Walt Disney...gathered together one or two other men—some with cinematic and photographic experience and, as very little capital was required, he set to work in conjunction with a gentleman who used the un-rhythmic and un-melodious name of Ub Iwerks, to make the now famous cartoons. During the partnership there was a Rabelaisian twist to the humour and, I think, a certain coarseness of line in the drawing, both of which are very much more in evidence in those films which Mr. Iwerks has made independently since the partnership was dissolved, Iwerks’ own cartoons lack invention and artistic merit, and he has imposed on his compositions disgusting, pseudo-human, pseudo-comic figures in whom mouths and posteriors reach the apogee of distasteful importance.

If he printed this today, social media and website comment sections would be overcome with apoplexy.

We came across a few news items about the Iwerks studio and posted them here. We’re passing along some more random clippings.

I was quite surprised to discover this theatre ad. I’m using to seeing drawings of the Disney and Warner Bros. characters, even Woody Woodpecker, in newspapers. This is the first one I’ve seen of Flip.

Australia seems to have an interest in the frog. This unbylined blurb, from the distributor, I imagine, showed up in papers there around about July 30, 1930.

MICKEY MOUSE'S NEW RIVAL
"Flip The Frog" Is On The Way
A NEW comedian of the same sort us the now half-forgotten Felix the Cat and the delirious, roguish Mickey Mouse, should shortly be seen in Australia.
THE newcomer is to be called Flip the Frog, as animated and saucy a creature us can be imagined.
Flip comes from the magical pen of a cartoonist called Ub Iwerks—a name that is so odd that one is almost inclined to feel it may be real — who drew so many of the enchanting animals we met in the Mickey Mouse cartoons.
And because we all like so much the same artist's sentimental horse who plays the drum with such feeling, his evilly-disposed Tom Cat, his simple little tiger cubs, and his long-legged birds, I think Flip the Frog will have a great welcome.
These new animated film cartoons will, of course, be accompanied by sounds and music, too, just like the Micky Mouse ones.
Flip is rather a pompous frog, wearing a neat bow tie on the white shirt front Nature gave him, and bubbling out his eyes in a most expressive way.
Ub Iwerks was a well-known commercial artist who was working for an advertising firm in America, before he became a film cartoonist, and went into partnership, in 1924, with Walt Disney, creator and master of Mickey Mouse and the other jolly creatures we have only grown familiar with during the last year.

Another Australian story, showing up in papers around May 26, 1932, explained how Iwerks made cartoons.

HOW A COMEDY CARTOON IS MADE.
Do you know that it takes on an average of five thousand "shots" with a camera to make one Flip the Frog comedy? It requires a great amount of thought and labor to make one of these little five or six hundred feet cartoon comedies. What one sees on the screen in the six or seven minutes requires thirty people to produce working from three to four weeks steadily. Frequently it requires as many as ten thousand drawings to make a single picture.
Mr Ub Iwerks, creator of Flip the Frog comedy cartoons, which are distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, employs two scenario writers whose job it is to manufacture plots, situations and "gags" for new comedies. This is no small task, for an average of six to eight stories must be written every three weeks, as this is the allotted time for each picture. From these stories only one is generally selected.
The story is then ready for the animators who make the drawings. Each animator is given a particular scene, to animate, a scene which is best suited to his ability, for some animators are especially adept in depicting expression, others action, and so forth. There are usually from twenty to thirty scenes to a five hundred or six hundred foot cartoon. In order that the exact continuity may be followed, it is necessary to make the original drawings on trans-parent paper, from these, tracings are made with ink on sheets of celluloid. Each sheet is numbered so that when it comes to the camera-man he shoots it in its numerical sequence.
Now we come to the most difficult part of cartoon making, which is the arrangement of the musical score. The services of a composer, not just a musician, but one who can compose and arrange music, is required. It is said that better results are obtained when the musical score is planned first and the drawings made to fit the music, rather than arranging the music to fit the drawings.
If the character is playing the piano, the music must be synchronised with each stroke of the fingers on the keys. If the character happens to fall through a window, the sound of broken glass must be recorded simultaneously with be impact, or the whole effect is lost. Timing as you see, is a very important factor.
When the picture has been "shot" and the music arranged, the next step is to have it recorded. This requires the services of from ten to fifteen musicians and usually takes from three to five hours on a sound stage. Several re-takes are invariably necessary to make sure that certain sound effects and dialogue will register properly. The negative is then sent to the laboratory for developing. After this it is carefully assembled, prints are made, and the completed Flip the Frog cartoon comedies are sent on their way to theatres throughout the world.

It’s unfortunate the article mentions no staff names. David R. Smith’s fine story on Iwerks in Funnyworld 14, published in spring 1972, reveals Tony Pabian, then Fred Kopietz, were the first two animators hired. A newspaper story reveals Ben Clopton joined the staff in 1932. Shamus Culhane writes in depth about his experience at the Iwerks studio, which also began in 1932. But neither Smith nor Culhane really explain the politics that went on when it came to distributing Iwerks cartoons.

Flip was replaced on the MGM release schedule in the 1933-34 season. Why? Culhane speculated “Ub must have realized that Flip was a flop at the box office, so he cooked up a new character, Willie Whopper....In addition, he wanted to do a series of fairy tales.”

Film Daily of July 5, 1933 explained:

"Jack and Bean Stalk" New Cartoon Series
Hollywood—"Jack and the Bean Stalk," the first of a new series of cartoons in Technicolor, will be ready for release in September. This new series of famous old fairy tales in color will be produced by UB Iwerks under the screen title of "Once Upon a Time." Scenarios have been prepared on the following stories for future production: "Tom Thumb," "Cinderella," "Jack, the Giant Killer," "Little Red Riding Hood," "The Three Bears," "The Snow Queen," and "The Little Tin Soldier."

Powers journeyed from New York to Los Angeles on Nov. 20 to deal with “story and production details on the new series of ‘ComiColor Cartoons’ to be put on the independent market by Celebrity [Productions].” But the company appears to have changed its name, judging by Eleanor Barnes’ column in the Los Angeles Daily News of Dec. 26, 1933:

EMIL OFFEMAN, general manager and treasurer of Animated Pictures corporation, has signed Billy Leyser as director of publicity and advertising for that organization, effective immediately.
Animated Pictures are producers of animated cartoons in color, and are now in the midst of production on two distinctive series which are in work—"Willie Whopper," which is being distributed throughout the world by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Comicolor Cartoons, which are being distributed through Allied Exchanges.
Ub Iwerks is president of Animated; P. A. Powers, vice president; Glenn Behymyer, secretary, and H. A. Post, assistant secretary.

The question remains: since MGM was releasing the other Iwerks cartoons, why didn't it release the Comi-Colors? Could it be because of Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising?

The Hollywood Reporter of January 4, 1934 stated a deal was expected to be “closed in a day or two” for MGM to release Harman-Ising cartoons, adding in its issue of January 26, 1934 stated that the deal had been “pending for several months.”

So why did MGM drop Iwerks altogether and go with Harman and Ising? Dissatisfaction over the Iwerks shorts could be the reason, but no one seems to have gone on the record about it.

Apparently, Pat Powers felt he could complete in the colour cartoon market by giving it imitation Silly Symphonies. The Film Daily’s story of Dec. 11, 1933 says:

Cartoon Studio Expands
Hollywood — Increasing demand for animated cartoons in color is resulting in expansion and development of the Animated Pictures Corp. studio, it is announced by Ub Iwerks, studio head. Staff will be increased, space will be enlarged, new equipment acquired and personnel divided into several units each capable of producing individual pictures.

According to Culhane. Grim Natwick headed the Whopper unit, with Bernie Wolf and writer Cal Howard, while Culhane and Al Eugster, with writer Otto Englander, took on what became the ComiColor series. Variety, on Jan. 22, 1934, stated Iwerks’ Animated Pictures Corp. had hired Earl Hurd, William Wheeler and Bob Stokes, and mentioned the “Comicolor” series. (Bugs Hardaway, for whom Culhane had no affection, had left for the Schlesinger studio).

A number of newspapers that reported on Iwerks' colour process, claiming it had been in development for 18 months. Here are some more newspaper blurbs about Ub's studio.

Win Smith has filed a $125 wage claim against the Animated Pictures Corp., with the Labor Bureau for services as an artist. (Variety, Nov. 6, 1933)

Contracts for the Cinecolor process have been closed for the Willie Whopper cartoons for MGM release and Educational's "Romantic Journeys" series for release through Fox. P. A. Powers also has closed for his Comicolor series. The new business is ascribed to a development which has enabled Cinecolor to secure the effect of three colors. (Hollywood Reporter, Jan. 20, 1934)

A booking recorded is the contract recently signed by the Dollar Steamship company for the entire series of ComiColor cartoons for each of their fleet of 15 ships. This means that the product of Ub Iwerks, creator of ComiColor cartoons, will be exhibited in practically every port in the world, as well as on the high seas. (Daily News, Feb. 2, 1934)

The color cartoon on the program is the happy beginning of a new series by Ub Iwerks, under the label Comi-Color. It is beautifully tinted, displays a high quality of draftsmanship, and is smoothly animated. The spirit of the familiar fairy tale [Jack in the Beanstalk] is faithfully observed, but there are some ingenious embroideries. Plenty of humor and much imagination went into the making of the film, and, if others in the series are as good, Mickey Mouse will have a worthy rival to the general benefit of everybody. (Donald Kirkley, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 2, 1934)

Having just completed “Robin Hood Jr.,” animated “Whopper” cartoon, Ub Iwerks announces another subject portraying the adventures of the “little boy with the big imagination.” Willie starts his next adventure in the Orient. It is titled “Insultin’ the Sultan.” (S.F. Examiner, Feb. 26)

Even though Ub Iwerks, shorts producer, declined to take spot as a judge on the briefers for Academy Awards at first runoff of nominated subjected, committee looked at more than a score of them last week and lamp same amount tonight.
Iwerks declined to submit product in competition with ‘Three Little Pigs.’
Nomination in three classes for final voting are:
Cartoons: ‘Building a Building,’ (Disney Micky Mouse); ‘Merry Old Soul’ (Walter Lantz-U); ‘Three Little Pigs’ (Walt Disney) (Variety, March 1, 1934).

Cupid is stalking the staff of Ub Iwerks’ cartoon plant. Recent aisling had Lee Blair and Mary Robinson tying the knot, while Murray Griffin married Eleanor Griffin, non-professional. (Variety, Mar. 19, 1934)

A total of 24 cartoon comedies, all in color, will be produced by Celebrity Productions for the 1934-35 season, and, according to present plans, these will be released through the independent market. Celebrity currently is released its “Willie Whopper series through MGM, and its new “ComiColor” series through independents.
Next season’s schedule calls for 12 “ComiColor” cartoons, all adaptations of fairy tales and folklore stories; also six musical cartoons and six cartoon “thrillers.” (Motion Picture Herald, Mar. 31, 1934)

UB Iwerks of Animated Pictures has three animated cartoons in production. They are "Puss in Boots" and "Queen of Hearts," two ComiColor cartoons, and "Reducing Creme," a Willie Whopper. (Hollywood Reporter, Apr. 7).

We have been apprised direct, by some of the largest exhibitors in the country on the quality of “Willie Whopper” and “ComiColor” cartoons, that aside from entertainment of a very high grade, the pictures were exceptionally clean. (U. B. Iwerks to The Film Daily, May 14, 1934)

U. B. Iwerks is starting work on the first of ComiColor cartoon shorts for the 1934-35 season. First two will be ‘Rip Van Winkle’ and ‘Legend of Sleepy Hollow.’ (Variety, May 15, 1934)

Animated Pictures Studio in Beverly Hills has five animated cartoons currently in work. Two featuring ‘Willie Whopper’ are ‘The Cave Man’ and ‘Jungle Jitters.’ The other trip are ‘Comicolors,’ being ‘Queen of Hearts.’ ‘Aladdin and His Lamp,’ and ‘Legend of Sleepy Hollow.’ (Variety, June 5, 1934)

To meet a rising market in color cartoons abroad, U. B. Iwerks is rushing Spanish, German, French and Italian versions of his Comicolor animations, “Puss in Boots” and the “Queen of Hearts.” Iwerks recently completed foreign versions of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk,’ ‘The Little Red Hen’ and ‘Brave Tin Soldier’ cartoons which Celebrity Productions are distributing. (Variety, June 28, 1934).

Wellington Mack, who writes comedy pantomime for circus clowns, has been signed by P. A. Powers for the Comicolor cartoon story department. Mack has himself been a clown. (Motion Picture Daily, July 25, 1934)

UB Iwerks will produce a series of 12 color cartoons for Celebrity, leading off with ‘Headless Horseman,’ with ‘Rip van Winkle’ probably following. Other subjects of a similar character are to be included in the group.
Studio is now completing the foreign dubbing of the current crop of briefies, making 17 versions of many of the subjects. (Variety, Aug. 13, 1934)

Stories afterward pretty much consisted of production information and plans. Iwerks did put up some of his ComiColors for an Oscar.

Shorts nomination pickers of the Academy last night viewed 16 cartoons and 22 novelties up for the eighth annual awards, at the Paramount studio. . . .
Cartoons viewed last night and their producers are:
“Monkey Wrenches” and “Three Lazy Mice,” Universal; “Jack Frost” and “Sinbad the Sailor,” Ub Iwerks; “Sunshine Makers” and “Bird Scouts,: Van Beuren Corp.; “I Haven’t Got a Hat” and “The Lady in Red,” Warners; “Who Killed Cock Robin” and “Three Orphan Kittens,” Walt Disney; “The Lost Chick” and “The Calico Dragon,” Harman-Ising; “The Spinach Overture” and “Song of the Bird,” Max Fleischer (Paramount release); “The Five Puplets,” Paul Terry (Educational); “The Bon Bon Parade,” Charles Mintz (Columbia). (Hollywood Reporter, Jan. 28. 1936)

Of note:

The first coloured sound cartoon made for health propaganda is shortly to be shown at 200 cinemas throughout the country.
The film has been made by Ub Iwerks, a one-time partner of Walt Disney. It was sponsored by Mssrs. Boots, the Nottingham firm of chemists. It took 170 people seven weeks to make, and no fewer than 70,000 sketches were used.
Its entertainment value is so good that it has already been booked by many cinemas, and at a pre-view in London yesterday Ministry of Health officials attended at the invitation of Messrs. Boots to report on its educational value. (Evening Sentinel, Sept. 25, 1935).

Iwerks would have more commercial cartoons in production later in the decade, as well as an English connection.

There was talk about features, though not necessarily cartoon ones.

Celebrity Productions, the P. A. Powers company which has been making the ComiColor Cartoons in color, is definitely set to enter feature production for 1935-36 with a program of six action melodramas. Pictures will be released in the independent market. A third series of the ComiColor cartoons also will be made. (Film Daily, July 6, 1935)

Celebrity Productions, Inc., has announced that in addition to the present series of “Powers ComiColor Cartoons” which it releases, in the future it will also distribute a group of features on the independent market. These will be known as “Celebrity Productions” and the first two, to be released shortly are “Kiss Me Goodbye” and “For Love of You.” (Motion Picture Herald, Nov. 9, 1935)

Iwerks, or Powers, had further plans in 1936.

In addition to a fourth series of ComiColor Cartoons already planned for 1936-37, P. A. Powers will expand the activities of his Celebrity Pictures by producing a new cartoon series based on the Gene Byrnes newspaper strip, “Reg’lar Fellers”, under a deal made by Charles Giegerich of Celebrity. Both series will be produced under the directorial supervision of Ub Iwerks. (Film Daily, Feb. 26, 1936)

Finally, Iwerks and Powers parted company. This story made the trades:

P.A. Powers may move the ComiColor production to New York from Los Angeles for next season. This would take in the “Reg’lar Fellers” series of Celebrity Prod. Harry A. Post, vice-president of Celebrity, is on his way to the coast to confer with Ub Iwerks on the possibility of moving the entire animation staff eastward, or the advisability of making the “Reg’lar Fellers” here and continuing the Comi-Colors at the Beverly Hills plant. (Motion Picture Daily, May 18, 1936)

Iwerks did neither. The one Reg’lar Fellers cartoon, Happy Days was released Sept. 20, 1936 and, as Culhane put it, Iwerks closed his studio temporarily.

Details aren’t altogether clear, but Iwerks became a sub-contractor. Mike Barrier’s Hollywood Cartoon explains that Leon Schlesinger signed a deal “early in 1937” to have Iwerks make Looney Tunes for him, and assigned Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones to go the Santa Monica Blvd. and oversee Iwerks’ staff. Porky and Gabby (released May 15) and Porky’s Super Service (released July 3) bear Iwerks’ name under “Supervision.”

But Clampett found himself coming in to work on a Monday and learning that he was now the supervisor; Barrier says his promotion was announced in May. A month later, Clampett was back on the Warners lot, in a separate building, with his new unit, some of them having worked for Iwerks.

Iwerks was still in business, though. He had also sub-contracted with Columbia to make Color Rhapsody cartoons. The 1936 Copyright Catalogue credits him with directing Two Lazy Crows, while the 1937 edition lists him as directing Skeleton Frolic, Merry Mannequins and The Foxy Pup. Motion Picture Daily’s review on Spring Festival states Iwerks as the director, though no director apparently was in the original credits and in a number of cartoons Columbia released that year. The annoying thing for viewers today is credits were taken off Columbia cartoons when they were re-released as “Columbia Favorite.”

Iwerks’ last cartoon for Columbia was, at least according to Leonard Maltin’s Of Mice and Magic, Wise Owl, released Dec. 6, 1940. By then, he was gone. He returned to Disney on September 9, 1940, where he received honours for his technical work. During the war, he went to Ottawa, as Disney produced some films strictly for Canadians to buy War Bonds.

There was one last series with which Iwerks was connected, at the end of 1937.

Haris and Ub Iwerks Start Cartoon Firm
HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 13.—Backed by British capital represented by Lawson Haris and having release contracts in Great Britain already signed with the newly formed British Independent Exhibitors' Ass'n, Cartoon Films, Ltd., a new corporate setup for Ub Iwerks, this week started production of 24 color cartoons depicting Lawson Wood's famous Collier's Magazine cover ape, "Gran'pop."
The Beverly Hills studios of the company increased its capacity and is using RCA sound. Haris is president.
"Gran'pop's Busy Day" will be the title of the first picture. (Motion Picture Daily, Dec. 14, 1937)

Film Daily reported on Dec. 19, 1938 that three Gran’Pops had been completed, though they were not apparently released by Monogram until 1940.

A post-script: Iwerks’ cartoons were made available for home viewing by Castle Films by 1941. Some of them appeared on early TV. WABD’s programme listing for June 6, 1944 show Little Red Hen aired at 9:30 p.m. Even before then, W2XBS (NBC’s experimental TV station) broadcast Jack and the Beanstalk on July 18, 1939 as it experimented from the New York World’s Fair. And ComiColors were broadcast in late 1947 on KSD-TV in St. Louis.

And after the war Official Films was selling 8mm versions of Flip the Frog. There were theatre ads in 1947 advertising Flip on the big screen. He's with us today on Blu-ray video while the ComiColors are still on old public domain DVDs but are slowly being restored for home viewers.