The Cheese Vault

Routines familiar to fans of the Jack Benny TV and radio shows become animated in the Warner Bros. cartoon The Mouse That Jack Built (1959). Other than becoming rodentised (the characters are mice), the Benny bits are treated without much exaggeration or parody, unlike celebrity caricature cartoons of the 1930s.

The famous Benny vault bit makes an appearance in Tedd Pierce’s story. In this case, since we’re dealing with mice, Jack’s treasured valuables are cheese instead of money.



To stay safe, Jack trips all the anti-burglar devices before passing through. One is a guillotine. Jack stops and looks backs, then thinks about what could have happened before carrying on with his limp-wristed walk.



Next is a gun. Jack la-las the Warners song “We’re in the Money” along his journey.



Next is a mouse trap.



Finally, he reaches the vault. Just like on radio, the alarm is sounded when the door opens. Because we’re dealing with a 6½ minute cartoon instead of a 29½ minute radio show, the sound effects are reduced, though you’ll hear the Lifebuoy foghorn at the end.



Jack chats with Ed the guard (played by Mel Blanc instead of Joe Kearns, who did the radio version after Sandy Bickert left for New York). Otherwise, all the voices are handled by the radio/TV show actors.

The background artist in this cartoon is Bob Singer, a young artist at the time who was put into the McKimson unit, where a fellow named Bill Butler had been painting backgrounds. Not too long ago, Bob explained to me:

For the cartoon "The Mouse That Jack Built" I drew the Bg's of Jack's vault in colored pencil, the 1st time that Bg's were rendered that way.... Since the vault was made of wood I felt that the pencil treatment would work. I asked permission to do it that way and got approval first.

The animation was credited to Tom Ray, George Grandpré, Ted Bonnicksen and Warren Batchelder with layouts by Bob Gribbroek.