Haaallo

Tex Avery experimented with deadpan characters before he invented Droopy at MGM. One was the emotionless m.c. in the Warner Bros. cartoon Hamateur Night. He talks slowly and deliberately from the side of his mouth.



Avery pulls a switch on us at the very end. The m.c. gets the audience to judge the amateur they like best. Egghead, who was pulled off the stage every time he tried to perform, gets wild applause from the audience. Suddenly, the m.c. reacts with a couple of takes.



The reason? Avery cuts to the audience. They are all Eggheads.



The laconic-until-the-penultimate-scene m.c. is played by Phil Kramer, whose casting by Tex Avery had to be deliberate, as he rarely appears in Warner Bros. cartoons. In fact, I associate him with Famous Studio’s shorts of the mid-‘50s as you can hear the exact same voice there. In fact, Kramer only had one voice. His own. It was a low-key whine.

Keith Scott’s research has determined he voiced three cartoons at Warners. I’ve found a newspaper blurb from mid-1939 reporting he had been hired to narrate Slap Happy Valley and a trade paper mention of his work on The Painter and the Pointer, both for Walter Lantz.

Phil Kramer was one of those people who kicked around Los Angeles radio in the 1930s, before and after the big network programmes came from New York and took over the local airwaves. In 1934, he appeared on KHJ’s Friday Frolics with comic actress/singer Elvia Allman. The two were also on the syndicated 15-minuter Komedy Kingdom (You can hear Allman on a number of Warners cartoons, including Avery’s Little Red Walking Hood).

Kramer later got regular roles with Joe Penner, on KFWB’s The Grouch Club and with Al Pearce. Other Warner Bros. cartoon actors inhabited these shows as well, including Mel Blanc and Arthur Q. Bryan. A couple of other clippings note his supporting role in 1940 in a show called Ann of the Airlines, co-starring Robert C. Bruce, the main narrator of Warners cartoons for years. A column from 1944 mentions he was on a show with Johnny Morgan, sponsored by Ballantine’s. That’s a sampling.

The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle of April 8, 1938 profiled him.

The Story of "Butch Shmutch,” Radio's Newest Comic Star
Phil Kramer Wins Radio Fame With His "Hallo Joe" On Joe Penner Programs; Movie Career Next
By DICK CHASE
Hollywood Correspondent of Seven Arts Feature Syndicate
It's a long hop from the Borsht Circuit to a spot on a radio coast-to coaster, but it's not so hard if you have one of those hail-fellow-all-wet whines and an irrepressible bent for kidding, like Mr. Butch Smutch—in real life Mr. Phil Kramer. Known universally and respected deeply by every youngster who ever turned a dial to Joe Penner's radio show, Kramer is pretty much of a favorite with the college crowd too. Since coining that sarcastic "Hallo Joe" greeting—in a way one of the neatest bits of counterfeiting in radio—he has been stamped definitely as a Man With a Voice.
It's about ten years since Phil was playing vaudeville in the East, and it was then that he made that famed string of summer resorts in the Adirondacks patronized by the most kosher element of New York. Under his belt he had several years of experience as a private secretary in a Wall Street coffee importing firm. He also had a flair for shorthand acquired alongside Billy Rose, with whom he went to school during the Lower East Side-Bronx days, as well as an undefinable quirk that made him do screwy things in a crowd that caused people to laugh.
Man of Many Talents
Besides these, he had a distinctive style at the piano, which always helps. When his ability to entertain casually, without premeditation, got his name linked with compliments, his career in the Bourse was ended . . . Then we find him in such New England spots as Camp Wah-kee-nah, a resort for Jewish boys in Bristol, N. H. Here he was on the payroll to entertain kids, and grown-ups as well, and he devoted himself to finding out what it is that makes people laugh.
It was at Wah-kee-nah, by the way, that Moe Berg of the Chicago White Sox and Eddie Wineapple of the Yanks, were serving as counsellors in those days. And down the road a piece the Marx Brothers had their summer home. All in all, Phil was in pretty good company. In 1930, after a few years of this sort of trouping, the doctor prescribed a change of climate, which brought Kramer to Los Angeles.
Work in plays, a movie short with Norman Foster, and variety shows kept him busy intermittently, in the best tradition. Notable parts were in stage productions of "Talk of the Town" and "Once in a Lifetime." In the latter there was a new face—Miss Rosalind Russell's, who since has gone places too.
"Radio Needed Kramer"

Bits in radio were helpful, but not the real thing. One afternoon, to get a laugh at a party, he phoned the J. Walter Thompson agency and informed the switchboard operator delicately but forcefully that radio needed Phil Kramer. The young lady on the hardboiled end of the line was so impressed by the revolving whirr in Phil's tones that she passed the word along. A couple of hours later a voice with an executive sting to it called Phil back . . . From then it was easy. His first big spot was with Burns and Allen. After three months with that hare-brained family circle he was hired by Joe Penner [right]. The turning point in his career came one night when Penner was in a haunted house, quaking with fear but determined he would stay in the place to win a $50 bet. There was a noise. Penner, shaking, cried: '''Who's there?" . . . This was Mr. Butch Smutch's cue. "Hallo, Joe," he drawled. "I'm the skull over here in the corner." . . But the studio audience was convulsed with laughter before he had finished the sentence. After the show, Penner sought him out. He liked the way the "Hello, Joe" had gone over with the audience. It would be kept in the show.
Single, living unostentatiously, Mr. Butch Smutch may soon be seen in pictures. And after two years of life with the dizzy people that Mr. Penner is so intent on "smashing," it may a pleasant change.

Piecing together biographies takes a bit of work. The 1940 Census shows Kramer was living with other show folk in the St. Moritz Hotel; he made $2,400 in 1939. His age is given as 40. Considering he was once a typist and a pianist, only one person matches those occupations with the same parents in various government documents. We can safely say Philip Kramer was born to Solomon and Julia Kramer on October 12, 1899. He was a typist for the Adams Manufacturing Co. at the end of World War One. In 1942, he was employed by the Russell Seeds ad agency across from NBC at Sunset and Vine. Its big client was Brown and Williamson Tobacco and sponsored Flagg and Quirt, an NBC Red network show he appeared on. He enlisted in the Army on September 1, 1942 and was discharged the following February 6, 1943.Radio Daily reported he did five shows immediately on returning then went to work for Douglas Aircraft.

When he returned to the east isn’t clear, but at the end of 1945 he had recorded Happy the Humbug for radio syndication with New York actors Jackson Beck, Mae Questel and Frank Milano. In 1948, the Gagwriters Institute of Palisades Park, New Jersey gave an honorary degree to him and Arnold Stang as “Doctors of Stooge-ry”; he was on the Slapsie Maxie Show at the time. That year, he was hired by Famous Studios for a Popeye cartoon. He pops up in NBC-TV programme publicity releases until 1960. He was also the voice of CBS-TV's stop-motion promotional character, Mr. Lookit, in the mid-50s.

Kramer died in Weehawken, New Jersey on March 31, 1972.