Party With Jay Ward

Who’s the greatest cartoon producer?

When it comes to promoting cartoons, the answer has to be Jay Ward.

Ward’s cartoons were irreverent and silly. So were his promotions. Ward may have loved the publicity stunts as much as his cartoons.

Here are some examples in a syndicated “Under Twenty” column that appeared in papers starting August 9, 1963. The column’s sub-head “For Teenagers Only” is bunk. Jay Ward cartoons are for everyone with a sense of fun, humour and iconoclasm.

Jay Ward Is Crazy Party Giver
By John Larson
A constant question comes to mind when one knows Jay Ward: “Is there a private, out-of-show-business, non-wacky individual behind all the nutty doings of the bouncing and jovial character?”
Jay Ward, creator and producer of “Bullwinkle,” is the only man who really knows that answer. No matter how many times one sees him, the only side shown is one even more wacky than the characters in “Bullwinkle.”
He won the reputation of being the nuttiest party giver and promoter since P. T. Barnum built his circus. For example: Not long ago in New York Jay gave a “Coming Home Party” on the Campus of Columbia university.
Asked why he said, “Because I’m leaving for California in the morning.” Had he gone to Columbia? “No, the only college I attended was Moose U. in Moosylvania.”
A couple of years ago a section of Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard was roped off for a block party celebrating the unveiling of a statue of Bullwinkle. Directly across the street is a huge statue of a girl rotating for advertising purposes. Jay had the Bullwinkle so constructed that the statue rotates in perfect unison with the scantilly clad “Sahara Girl.”
Meanwhile back at New York, as they say in westerns, Jay threw a picnic at the Plaza, one of New- York’s most plush hotels. So many people turned up that they ran out of picnic baskets. The hotel wasn’t too happy with the picnic idea, but their management screamed a shrill “NO” when Jay suggested they import ants from the country to attend the picnic. “After all,” he said later, “What’s a picnic without ants?”
Last March Jay took over a small coffee house and held a Gala New Year’s Eve Party. Six-foot long hero sandwiches and spaghetti were served and New Year’s Eve was celebrated at four different times between 11 o’clock and 3:30 in the morning.
“I couldn’t spend New Year’s with my New York friends last year, so I decided to do it in March. Even the weather cooperated. It snowed that day!” “On the drawing boards,” Jay told us, “is a Jailhouse Jamboree. New York is tearing down one of its jails and we have arranged to have dancing in the cells and refreshments served from the magistrates desk in the courtroom.”
In September . . . Jay’s new syndiated series “FRACTURED FLICKERS” (syndicated through Desilu) will be simultaneously premiered on Broadway and in Hollywood, in a true silent-movie tradition, Rolls Royce, of ancient vintage containing celebrities decked-out in 1920’s regalia, will pull up to the theatre entrance, and old-fashioned movie cameramen and directors will shoot newsreels on the sidewalk, amidst the blare of 1920 jazz bands and on-location crystal set radio interviews. A silent-screen star party will follow on stage.
Also planned is another “first” in motion picture history—a “Coney Island Film Festival.” A 10-car train will be rented from the subway to carry people back and forth between New York and the festival. On view, of course, will be Jay’s “Fractured Flickers. These consist of old, silent movies re-edited with the most insane words and sound effects dubbed in. “They’re for young adults. Young adults are people all the way up to 85 who have forgotten to laugh.”
What is the real Jay Ward like? We still don’t know. “The world,” he says, “is a pretty serious place. I feel that people are entitled to a laugh to break the monotony. The parties? I think everybody gets a kick out of an off beat party, that’s why I like to give them.”
The truth of the matter is that nobody, but nobody has a better time at one of Jay Ward’s parties than Jay Ward!