Shining Tex's Shoes

The running gag in The Peachy Cobbler doesn’t run very long as Tex Avery and writer Rich Hogan cram in as many shoe/shoemaking gags as possible.

Twice, an elf is polishing only to have another elf driving a boot splash some convenient mud on it.



This happens twice. Avery puts other gags between them. Then we get to the third time. The elf sees the boot coming around the corner. He decides to splash mud on his shoe so the other elf can’t have any effect.



The elf, instead, drives the boot into a shoe stall. The gag is the reaction. No wide eyes here, just some claw-hands.

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Mike Lah, Grant Simmons and Walt Clinton are the animators. Voices by Daws Butler. Footwear by Johnsen.

A Dusting of Cleanser

Old Dutch Cleanser doesn't just "chase dirt." It appears in a Bosko cartoon as well.

Bosko goes cleaning crazy in Bosko's Store (1932). He dusts off some eggs (which hatch) and then turns his attention to a cut-out, stand-up ad for an obvious-but-unnamed cleanser. The maid comes to life and gives out with a squealing giggle.



Evidently, she's fickle. She turns around and bops Bosko.



Bosko staggers back from the blow. But, no matter. He resumes his dancing and dusting like nothing happened.



There's another pop culture reference. On the phone, Bosko yells "Okay, Chicago!" It comes from Walter Winchell on the Lucky Strike radio show. On November 3, 1931, Winchell and his magic carpet appeared on the Red network (WJZ) for the first time, and switched to different dance bands around the world with an "Okay... (name of city)." That was the cue for the engineer to switch lines. It was parodied in a syndicated newspaper cartoon of the day.


There's a crotch/pain gag and a piano, something not uncommon in cartoons made on the West Coast in the early 1930s.

Friz Freleng and Bob McKimson receive the animation credits. Bosko sings "There's A Rainbow On The River" by Dave Oppenheim and Sam H. Stept (copyright Jan. 25, 1932) before giving us his version of "Turkey in the Straw."

The Face is New. And Familiar

Her name isn’t one you think of what you hear of someone in church singing “The Old Rugged Cross.”

Nor do you think of her as a “new face.”

But both can be used to describe Alice Ghostley.

She was another person who was seemingly everywhere on TV at one time. But in 1945, she made a trip back home to Henryetta, Oklahoma where the proud local paper pointed out she was studying voice in New York City.

In 1949, she was at the Hilltop Theatre in Baltimore starring in a musical comedy fantasy called Saturday. A 1950 newspaper review of her performance in another musical comedy there said “Prominent in the proceedings was Alice Ghostley, who took part in nearly every musical number and scored again and again as singer and comedienne, running the scale from blues to slapstick.”

Her first huge break came in the monstrously successful Broadway revue New Faces of 1952 with a cast including Paul Lynde, Eartha Kitt, Robert Clary and Carol Lawrence, with writing by Mel Brooks. The local paper printed glowing reviews from the New York Times, Journal-American (it compared her to Bea Lillie), Post, Time, Collier’s and elsewhere. The International News Service profiled her. This story appeared starting around Oct. 26.

Leading Comedienne Proves Small Town Gals Make Good
By PHYLLIS BATTELLE
INS Woman’s Editor
NEW YORK —INS— Comedienne Alice Ghostley entered this world as only comedienne Ghostley could enter it—in a train station at Eve, Mo. three minutes ahead of the 7:14.
It was hectic going for Mr. Ghostley who was the station master and for Mrs. Ghostley who was visiting Mr. Ghostley at the time.
But little Alice was in a hurry to get her start, and you can't blame a girl for having ambition.
Today Eve, Mo., is no longer on the map but Alice most definitely is. As the biggest laugh-getter in the Broadway hit, "New Faces of 1952," she has come out ahead of a great deal more than the 7:14. . .and the way she did it is proof positive that small town girls with big time courage do get places in this city of alleged defeat, deceit and despair.
There never was a smaller town girl than Alice.
Born, as indicated, in Eve, Mo., she and her family soon moved to the more prosperous metropolis of Seloam Springs, Ark., from whence they moved up to the more cosmopolitan community of Henryetta, Okla.
"It was in Henryetta," describes Miss Ghostley in a droll voice that drags on like a yawn, "that I learned about the thee-et-a. Once I learned, they could do about as much with me as just-washed hair."
She studied singing and dramatics ("they have culture in Henryetta, really") and when she reached college, was a pretty solid soprano, by University of Oklahoma standards.
"And then—as they say in one of the old songs from the repertoire of Dinah Shore—the runaround began!"
Miss Ghostley, equipped with a modest operatic-type voice and the blessings of the appreciative citizens of Henryetta, journeyed to New York.
Like almost every other small town girl who journeys to New York with a modest something-or-other and blessings, she worked for peanuts and a tough boss.
Started As Usher
"I started my career," she recalls loftly, "as an usher at the Imperial Theater, for $11.88 a week. The show playing at the Imperial was Milton Berle's 'Ziegfeld Follies,' which could get a little dull eight times a week. . . .
"Except not for me. This was my first Broadway show and I loved every hammy line of it."
She loved it while she was in the theater, that is. ''Every night after the show I would run home and start crying. Did it regularly, like brushing my teeth."
She also had part-time jobs, typing, clerking, doing all the usual fill-in jobs between dream and success.
One day at an audition for a musical revue—her 648th audition as she recalls it—Miss Ghostley was accosted by a producer, writer and comedian. "G." convinced her that she was a comic instead of an operatic-type singer, and persuaded her ("Gee, it was easy") to join him in an original singing-comic duo.
They went over big at Greenwich Village night spots. Alice began to eat again.
Then Imogene Coca spotted Broadway's newest comedienne at a supper club and told Leonard Sillman about her. Leonard Sillman is the producer of "New Faces." the persistent, almost-annual revue in which Miss Coca got her start in 1934.
Now Alice Ghostley is on top. When she sings a sophisticated little number called "Boston Beguine," she even tickles the Royale theater's musty Chandeliers. And how does she feel about this dizzy rise from a depot to a dressing room with a star on it?
Like a couplet from "Boston Beguine:"
"The strings of my heart seem to be knotted;
"Even the palms seem to be potted!"

The 1950s wore on and Ghostley appeared on Broadway and in television; newspapers around March 8, 1953 reported on her first regular TV role: as John Beal’s wife on Freedom Rings, a comedy-audience participation show that aired twice weekly on CBS. There were appearances on The Hallmark Hall of Fame, on the Julie Andrews version of Cinderella and with Jackie Gleason on Westinghouse's The Best of Broadway and on a Hallmark Hall of Fame version of Twelfth Night with Maurice Evans.

In the 1960s, Ghostley was with Gleason again, playing Agnes opposite his Arthur in regular sketches on his "American Scene Magazine" show. She picked up a Tony in 1965. She won the role of the overly-mothering mother of Captain Nice (1967), Buck Henry’s super-hero spoof that was like kryptonite to viewers. She’s probably better known for Bewitched, though she was only on periodically. She was the bumbling witch, taking the place of the late Marion Lorne, who did it far better in my estimation (she, Lorne and Henry all appeared in the movie The Graduate.

Here’s a Newspaper Enterprise Association column that appeared around Sept. 21, 1969 in various papers.

Alice Ghostley Sneezes Magic on Series
By STAN MAAYS
HOLLYWOOD (NEA) — With a name like Ghostley, what better place to be than on a program populated by witches and weird manifestations. So it comes as no great surprise to learn that Alice Ghostley is a regular on ABC-TV's Bewitched.
Miss Ghostley plays Esmeralda, a witch whose power to do magical things suffers from a lack of spiritual voltage. Esmeralda is summoned by her old friend Endora, who, upon hearing Samantha Stephens is expecting a second child, decides she'll need help around the house.
To Samantha's twitch you can now add a sneeze as a gimmick welcomed by the technical staff of the series. Each time Esmeralda ahhh-choos! strange things happen, which will open up all kinds of film magic.
Miss Ghostley, who made her debut, appropriately enough, in "New Faces of 1952" on Broadway, is exactly the mild, pleasant sort of person you'd expect her to be away from a Screen Gems sound stage.
"I was on the series three years ago when Samantha was pregnant the first time," reveals Miss Ghostley in an almost inaudible voice. And then with that familiar humorous, expression she added, "I was a housekeeper who couldn't do anything right."
Producer William Asher wanted Miss Ghostley to join the series shortly after as a replacement for Alice Pearce, who died while playing Samantha's neighbor. But she turned him down for the simple, understandable reason — "I couldn't because I knew her."
When Paul Lynde makes one of his all-too-infrequent appearances on Bewitched — and if it's in an episode with Miss Ghostley — it will make another reunion. Lynde was also in "New Faces" and has worked with Miss Ghostley on several Jonathan Winters shows. "People always thought we were relatives," she said, turning on Lynde's famous shark smile.
This recognition came about mostly after her appearances on Jackie Gleason's series, pointing out the power of TV exposure.
"I used to leave stage productions in full make-up and nobody would recognize me outside of the theater," she says, "and, mind you, this was after doing Broadway shows for 10 years! But, after just the second Gleason show, a cab driver knew me."
One thing Miss Ghostley regrets is the few chances she has to do good dramas these days. "You do all those shows for prestige, but no money," comments this winner of a Tony for her work in Broadway's "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window."
"I guess I'm stuck with comedy roles from here on out," she sighs. "I got the feeling my agents, bless their hearts, are too young to remember the good things I did."

Indeed, she had a role in Too Kill a Mockingbird, a movie not known for laffs.

“Replacement” seems to be the operative word in her television career. She and Kathleen Freeman shared the role of Colonel Klink’s sister in Hogan’s Heroes. Then when Francis Bavier had more than enough of playing Aunt Bea, she was brought in to assume the housekeeper role on Mayberry R.F.D. (with Ken Berry, photo right).

More comedy happened to her off-camera than on, much of it sounding like something out of Bewitched. She was late for an interview with a syndicated columnist because she didn’t drive and had to hitch a ride, but not before stopping off to get an unemployment cheque since she didn’t work that week.

When she and her husband bought a home in Hollywood in 1968, it took six months to put in a driveway, then the pavement buckled. The lights kept going on and off. Then there the Oscar she accepted. It wasn’t hers. It was Maggie Smith’s. Maggie was in London doing a play and asked Ghostley to accept for her. Her husband’s car was missing hubcaps and his tux didn’t fit. Her dress still had a price tag on it. Everyone expected Jane Fonda to win, but when Smith’s name was called, Ghostley didn’t know how to get on stage. On top of that, she didn’t think to call Smith to tell her about the Academy honour.

A little less amusing was when she recalled to Canadian columnist Rick Forchuk in 1988 she got paid for six reruns of Bewitched and it was now costing more to mail her residuals than the actual payment. At the time, she was a “special guest star” on Designing Women and appearing on stage.

It was quite a journey from singing a hymn for five cents at the age of five in a small Oklahoma church.

Shishkabugs Backgrounds

Tom O'Loughlin was hired at the Warners cartoon studio by October 1957 and replaced Boris Gorelick as the background artist in the Friz Freleng unit. His first work appeared on screen in 1958. He stayed until the end of the studio, and carried on at DePatie-Freleng. O'Loughlin had been a painter before coming to the studio. We put together a short bio in this post.

The studio was running on fumes in 1962. One of his unit’s cartoons released that year was Shishkabugs. O’Loughlin provided the backgrounds. Here are some of them. They’re not terribly inspired but they do their job to give an appropriate place for the characters. I have managed to paste together the opening pan upward; it is in two pieces.

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Bugs is pretty tame in John Dunn's story. He finally shows up at the 2:15 mark. His antics include kissing the king (who has done nothing to him) and rigging a custard pie to hit the king's face. Oh, and he becomes the cook and serves the king a carrot. That's it. No sparkling dialogue. No outrageous reactions. Friz, give me Baseball Bugs or Bugs Bunny Rides Again instead.

Virgil Ross, Gerry Chiniquy, Bob Matz, Art Leonardi and Lee Halpern are the animators on this short, released Dec. 8, 1962. Freleng had resigned from the studio the previous month. Everyone knew the end was near.

Typically Terry

What can you expect to find in the average Terrytoon in 1931? Besides cycle and re-used animation, I mean.

Let’s take Razzberries for an example.

There’s the iris close-up.



There's the characters-run-into-the-background routine for fear or embarrassment.



There’s the scenery-changes-behind-character bit. These are consecutive frames.



And there’s a character being chased that glides in mid-air.



Razzberries doesn’t have two things they loved at Audio Cinema—marching bands and endless amounts of mice.

Basically, these Terry cartoons follow the Silly Symphony formula—singing, dancing, a few gags, virtually no plot. I don’t know if the song “Jungle, Jungle” (if that’s what it’s called) is a Phil Scheib original.

Jack Benny On Fred Allen

Fred Allen’s sudden death on March 17, 1956 brought a pouring of sorrow.

Newspapers were filled with stories about three things: Allen’s cleverness with words, the Allen’s Alley portion of his radio show, and his feud with Jack Benny, which began in late 1936 and boiled up for almost the next 20 years.

After Allen died, the Globe in his home town of Boston induced Jack to put his memories in print. They were later sent across the country through the North American Newspaper Alliance.

Benny and Allen Were Great Pals
Their Radio Feud Was Just an Act
By JACK BENNY
NEW YORK (NANA) — The news of Fred Allen's death shocked me. I can't bring myself to realize it is true.
Fred and I were very dear friends for many years. We'd have to be in order to carry on that radio feud we engaged in over the years. We had a great deal of mutual admiration for each other and if anything good came my way, Fred was always the first to say I had ability and that I deserved it. And I'd say the same about him and his tremendous gift as a comedian.
The minute I heard about Fred's death, I telephoned his wife, Portland. She was standing up under the crushing news quite well, although I knew she was stunned.
"Only this (Saturday) morning Fred went to the doctor and was given an OK," said Portland.
"The doctor took a cardiograph, tested his blood pressure. He was in pretty good shape. When he left for his evening walk, he felt very well.
"This is the first time I didn't go along with him on these evening walks before bedtime. I feel so dreadful."
Fred's death is going to be an awful shock to Portland when she comes to the full realization of it. The pair were inseparable.
Fred had terrific wit, truly comparable to any of the great wits of the past. He could be compared to Will Rogers, had he taken on that kind of column. Although pretty serious-minded, when Fred said something funny, it was terribly funny.
When we made a picture years ago for Paramount called "Love Thy Neighbor," there were always countless tours visiting the movie lot. Of course, when Fred and I were together we were fairly serious. We would discuss various things—such as the news, or we might talk shop or arrange for a visit to my home, as Portland and I my wife Mary were devoted friends.
Well, all the tour groups would be in their element watching Fred and me on the set. They would hang around and hang around wondering when Fred and I were going to have them hilarious.
Everybody Waited
Between scenes, Fred always went to his dressing room and whacked out copy on his typewriter, while I would retire to my room and rehearse my scripts.
Meanwhile, every one would be standing around waiting for us to be funny. The feud Fred and I had, along with the gibes we fired at each other, were strictly for the public, of course. This was an act. Personally, we never engaged in hi-jinks or played practical jokes on each other. You never saw two comedians who were so serious.
Fred and I had the kind of friendship that didn't have to be proved every minute.
There are some people who take offense if you are in their vicinity and you don't call them up or go to visit them. They will remark what a cad you are to come to New York and not get in touch with them. Fred and I were never like that.
On my trips to New York from the coast, I'd almost always get in touch with Fred. Our wives always looked forward to these visits. And when Fred would come to Hollywood, he would get in touch with us. But not always did we do this.
If I didn't get in touch with Fred while in New York, there was no explanation necessary. Neither did Fred have to apologize if he didn't get in touch with me while on the coast. Our friendship was solid.
Fred was taking things a lot easier. His TV assignment on "What's My Line" was just the thing for him. There was nothing to rehearse, so this proved no hardship for Fred.
I have lost a great, great friend.

There were tributes on radio and TV, and Jack was asked to take part. Fittingly, one took place on radio during Jack’s former East Coast time-slot.

A WELL-DESERVED and moving tribute to the late Fred Allen, who was affiliated with NBC for most of his broadcasting career, was quickly prepared by the network Sunday for airing that night as part of "Monitor." It was unfortunate that many listeners who had been amused time and again by the New England humorist were unaware that such a tribute was scheduled by NBC and thus missed it altogether.
Especially touching were the sad voices of Jimmy Durante and Jack Benny, who mourned the loss of a good friend as well as a fellow comedian. The program reviewed Allen's career as an actor and original humorist, presented portion of recordings in which he astutely analyzed American humor and related many incidents and deeds that illustrated his kindness and basic goodness. There also was a portion of the last broadcast Allen ever made, taped the Friday before he died, as he discussed his early career in show business.
Dave Garroway, who narrated, told listeners that "I wouldn't be sitting here tonight if it weren't for Fred Allen." Back in his "Garroway-at-Large" TV days when he was a comparative unknown, Dave's biggest booster was Allen, who once flew out to Chicago to guest on the program at no fee. He later went back to New York and sold the show to a sponsor singlehandedly.
In appraising Fred Allen's contribution to American humor radio at the same time paid tribute to one of its greatest performers of all time.

Allen’s sudden death less than 48 hours before he was to appear on What’s My Line? meant a replacement had to be quickly found. Steve Allen was brought in. Steverino was now the host of the Tonight show from New York on NBC, and only hours after Fred’s funeral on March 20, there was a televised tribute.

The Knickerbocker News of Albany, New York, published a review. Again, Jack was there, though across the country in Los Angeles.

Tonight Tribute to Fred Allen Fine Farewell to Great Comedian
By WALTER HAWVER
Show business paid a fine tribute to one of its greatest performers yesterday when the Tonight program dropped its regular format, personnel and advertising to honor the late Fred Allen.
The show was necessarily thrown together in a few hours, but no spectacular [TV special] with weeks of rehearsal could have been more effective.
I watched the show “live” at the old Hudson Theater. I was in New York City for interviews with some NBC and CBS stars and heard about the program Monday afternoon while I was talking with Ernie Otto, NBC's press contact for out-of-town newspapermen.
The show was mainly serious but there were a few light moments, which was as it should be. Fred Allen was a humorist, one of the best, and he would not stand for gloom-and-doom stuff, even in death.
The most touching moment of the night came with Jack Benny's appearance from Hollywood. The tears welled in Jack's eyes. He bit his lip as he told of his radio “feud” with Allen.
"In order to carry on a feud for 20 years, you have to be the very best of friends, to have a great love for each other," Jack said.
"America has lost a great wit and a wonderful citizen. I know I've lost a very dear friend. Wherever his is tonight [sic], I feel sure Fred is making up some awful joke about me."
Jack recalled a New Year's Day telegram Fred sent him. He wouldn't send a wire and say 'Happy New Year' like anyone else." His wire read: "Today the world is starting a new year. When are you going to?'
Bob Hope compared Allen to the great American humorists. “I’m certain that Josh Billings, Mark Twain and Will Rogers were waiting for him at the gate a say; 'Welcome, Fred'."
The picture other friends painted of Fred was remarkably consistent.
Author Herman Wouk ("Caine Mutiny," "Marjorie Morningstar”) who broke in as a writer on the Allen radio show, "Town Hall Tonight," said he and other writers on the show were “always in competition" with their boss.
Wouk said Allen was "infinitely more brilliant, more to inventive than any of us. No matter how we tried we could never do more than a passable imitation of Fred's style. But in five years, he never once criticized my work. The only way I knew whether he liked it or not was how much of it he rewrote for the show."
Story-teller Peter Donald, the "Ajax aCssidy" [sic] of Allen's Alley on the radio show, said Fred was "ruthless" with his own material when it came to trimming a script to fit the time limits of a show.
Donald, who wrote much of the material for the Cassidy character, recalled that Allen would "cut all his own good lines to leave ours in."
Songwriter Howard Dietz "Dancing in the Dart" remembered that Allen hated rehearsals. During the preparation for one Broadway play, he said Allen fumed and fretted and after several hours exploded in exasperation: "When are we going to write the jokes?"
Allen's biggest disappointment was that he never made much of a mark in television, but he would have been pleased at Bennett Cerf's comment that he "supplied great dignity" to What's My Line and "made it a better show."
Cerf said Allen was "literally terrified" the night he turned up for his first What's My Line program 2 1/2 years ago. "He was afraid he wouldn't be good. He hadn't gone very well in television. At first he felt shy and out-of-place, but as we all knew would happen, he made it a better show."
If some one collected all of the Allen material reprised on television the past few days, they would have enough for two or three more volumes as thick as Fred's own best-seller “Treadmill to Oblivion."
The Tonight show was rich in Allen wit. Tonight for Steve Allen (no relation) revived some of Fred's views on humor.
"All humor should be treated and done in an atmosphere of relaxation. You need time to think humor, to enjoy humor."
“. . . the unexpected in any situation, the incongruous, that is the basis of humor."
Fred was one of TV's biggest critics.
“Television gets tiresome. It's too graphic. It offers everything for the eye, nothing for the mind. The next generation will have eyeballs as big as cantaloupes and no mind at all."
And television executives were foreover [forever] coming under his fire.
"If the United States can get along with one vicepresident, why does NBC need 26."
"NBC does not recognize Hell or the Columbia Broadcasting System. When a bad person dies, he goes to Heck. When a good person dies, he goes to the Rainbow Room."

The cross-fire between the two on radio, to me, got better as the years went on. One highlight may have been the “King For a Day” sketch on May 26, 1946 when, judging by the uncontrollable studio audience laughter, stagehands removed Jack’s pants. My favourite of the two on the Benny show was Allen’s last appearance on May 3, 1953 where they were now vaudeville partners, willing to undercut each other to make money on stage (in reality, they never appeared on a vaudeville bill together).

Even to the end of Jack’s life, he’d talk about Fred Allen, doing an impression of him on the Johnny Carson Tonight show. And when Jack died on December 26, 1974, newspapers were again filled with fond memories of The Feud.

My thanks to Warren Croom at the International Jack Benny Fan Club Facebook page for sparking this post.