Can I Borrow a Basket of Berries?

Our story today takes place on this piece of property. The year is 1946.


You can see the address on the sidewalk in the shade of the lower right corner. 17340. We don’t wish to deceive you. This is a bigger house than what was on the property at the time. The original home was on an acre of land, had three or four bedrooms, a den, a guest house and a pool. It was owned by the same person according to the 1945 local directory as it was in the U.S. Census for 1950, the year it was sold.

The home is at 17340 Magnolia Boulevard in Encino. The property at the time belonged to a gent named Walter Lantz.

The Valley Times wrote about the cartoon producer several times that year, but in a story published April 29, a reporter decided to visit Lantz at home. The first subject wasn’t cartoons.

Encino Tops for Home, Says Cartooner Lantz
By HILDA BLACK
Going in search of Walter Lantz, producer of the animated cartoons that bear his name, your reporter arrived at a modest French provincial home in Encino. Producer Lantz was found digging in his garden. He is, he confided to us, going to have enough strawberries to supply his favorite fruit for every meal. Its worth all the hard work, the bending and stooping, he said. We agreed, and made a mental note to make a return trip in another week. We like strawberries, too!
Did he, we wondered, have any other farmer-like instincts, chicken raising, for instance? Not on your life, was the firm response; at $1 a piece eggs are cheap, compared to the worries that beset an “egg raiser.” Lantz admitted he discovered this the hard way.
While we discussed the price of eggs and the value of raising your own strawberries, the Lantz dogs, Daisy, a pointer, and Butch, a 165-pound Great Dane, were greeting us officially. Butch darned near knocked us down, in a friendly way, of course.
Butch Is Sensitive
“He greets all our friends,” Lantz explained. “Gracie tried to break him of the habit, but it’s no use. He’s sensitive, and sulks all day if he doesn’t get a chance to jump up and meet every visitor.
Even as he spoke, Mrs. Lantz (Gracie) was trying to call off the hounds. We thought she looked like someone we’d seen before, and commented on it. Our hunch was correct; Mrs. L.—the former Grace Stafford—had been an actress on the New York stage, then one of the Duffy players who appeared regularly at El Capitan theater in Hollywood, and still later in pictures. Now, she’s perfectly content to be a housewife.
But not a “sit-by-the-fire” housewife, for she is a senior grey lady at Birmingham hospital, and during the war, as part of her patriotic contribution, she put in over 500 hours as a spotter in the Valley.
Films for Government.
And what, we wanted to know, about Walter? Did he work at spotting, or something like that? No, he told us. While Gracie was busy spotting, he had been busy at his Universal studio making training films for the government. Twenty-two in all, for the U. S. navy. What were they?
Oh, pictures on bomb fuzes, torpedo practices, and one which now is being shown all over the country: A film called “The Enemy Bacteria.” Designed to teach young doctors the necessity for proper sanitation precautions, the picture fills more than a wartime need. Today, young medics and nurses are shown this picture early in their training. It is also being distributed through the Latin American countries by the office of the co-ordinator of inter-American affairs, as part of their educational program.
Yes, Walter Lantz did a good job for the government, we decided. And so did Grace.
Woody in Cement
On our way up the driveway we thought we had detected a bit of Lantz artistry, and asked about it. Yes, that’s Woody Woodpecker, and Andy Panda, Walter agreed a bit sheepishly. Then he told us about how his top Cartune stars found their way into his driveway. They almost didn’t we learned.
Seems when the driveway was being put in, Lantz got the unique idea of drawing a Woody and an Andy in the wet cement. Anxiously, he waited around until the workmen had left for the day, then carved out the figures of his two top stars with a nail.
He was a little chagrined next morning when the gardener came running into the house reporting that some darned neighborhood kids had scribbled all over the driveway and ruined it!
Speaking of neighbors, we wondered about his. Well, we learned, there was M-G-M Publicity Chief Howard Strickling and Actors Paul Muni and Walter Tetley. Tetley, incidentally, is the voice of Andy Panda in the Lantz Cartunes.
He Loves Encino
Fine neighbors, enthused Walter, and Encino! Well, here’s a town! And he’s not kidding—he means every glowing word. He almost had us believing that the weather is always wonderful, and that even though there may be fog in every other town in San Fernando Valley, in Encino the sun always shines!
We became a trifle suspicious, and asked if, by chance, he had anything to do with the local chamber of commerce. Our remark brought only an innocent, pixie-ish grin, and the information that the chamber of commerce meets regularly in Edward Everett Horton’s barn, and is now planning to build the Encino community clubhouse.
What about local politics, we asked pointedly. Once more we got that naive smile and Walter Lantz informed us: “Tom Breneman may be mayor of our town—but I’m the only cartoon producer in Encino.”

By the way, we checked the Van Nuys directory for 1945 and, sure enough, Walter Tetley lived almost across the street with his parents at 17357 Magnolia Blvd. That house has been replaced as well.

The year Lantz sold his home, he inked a deal with Universal to make a new series of Woody Woodpecker cartoons for the studio after a dead period of over a year; the first one was released in January 1951.

And who bought the Lantz house? In 1962, it was listed for sale again. It seems the owner filed for bankruptcy, partly because he was trying to make alimony payments to three ex-wives. The man was Joseph N. Yule, Jr. You know him better as Mickey Rooney.

Hey! I'm Headless!

Tom yells into a mountain range to hear his echo in the wonderfully warped Van Beuren cartoon A Swiss Trick (1932).

The word “HEY” flies in between the peaks, then makes holes in each mountain as it sails along.



The word bashes Tom on the back of the head. But the gag doesn’t end there. It decapitates Tom. Jerry grabs the head as it goes past him, reattaches it to Tom’s body, then Tom rubs his chin as he wonders what to make of what happened.



This short has all kinds of weird ideas, ending with Tom and Jerry developing holes like Swiss cheese and being chased by mice.

John Foster and George Stallings get the “by” credit.

Sylvester's a Mother

Foghorn Leghorn has convinced Sylvester he has laid an egg in the 1947 release Crowing Pains. The cat is quite proud of himself.



But wait a minute, he thinks. Director Bob McKimson holds the pose for 26 frames.



“Hey!” he shouts. “Tom cats can’t be mothers!”



Sylvester’s body is static so the animator can concentrate on moving the head around in different shapes during the dialogue. Here are some frames.



The opening credits say this is a Henery Hawk cartoon, not a Sylvester cartoon. Even then, the star is the not-yet-named Foghorn Leghorn, with a different voice than what Mel Blanc used later, but with some Senator Claghorn-isms already part of the dialogue from Warren Foster (egs. interrupting a sentence to remark “I say!” and ending sentences with “That is”).

It seems the Warners directors were trying to find ways to use Sylvester. The time this cartoon was released, Friz Freleng had paired him with Tweety, and won an Oscar. Art Davis and his writers came up with an idiot version of him with a dopey voice. Chuck Jones tried him in several horror cartoons with an oblivious Porky Pig. After this cartoon, McKimson came up with a combination far more lasting—a “giant mouse” (kangaroo) nemesis in Hop, Look and Listen (released in 1948), adding Sylvester, Jr. into the mix in Pop ‘Em Pop (released in 1950). The three of them settled in for a long career on the screen.

Meanwhile, McKimson realised Foggy was of star calibre and gave him a leading role (occasionally with the dog in this short) until 1963’s Banty Raids, about a year before the end of the studio’s life. With this one cartoon, McKimson managed to spawn two series of well-remembered shorts.

Presenting the CBS Radio Network

Ed Murrow was of such towering stature in the news business, you’d think he couldn’t be replaced. But replaced he was when CBS boss Bill Paley decided he was too controversial. It’s all about attracting big corporate sponsors, you know.

When Murrow took time away from his CBS radio commentary slot in 1959, who do you think the network got as a replacement? Charles Collingwood? Walter Cronkite? Eric Severeid?

No. They got Bob.

We don’t mean veteran newsman Bob Trout. We mean Bob Elliott. And Ray Goulding.

Network radio was heading in the direction of news by the late 1950s, but CBS decided on one last shot at comedy in the evening hours Monday through Friday. Thus Bob and Ray were hired to take over Murrow’s 7:45 p.m. Eastern Time spot on June 29, 1959 to give listeners 15 minutes of their sly humour. (They were preceded by Amos ‘n’ Andy at 7:05, a newscast with Stuart Novins at 7:30, Andy Griffith at 7:35 and Burns and Allen at 7:40).

Radio critics loved Bob and Ray. In 1959, columnists were happy to announce the prospect of an hour and a quarter of Bob and Ray’s “irreverent whimsy” every week. At that point, the two had been showing up occasionally on NBC’s Monitor, and their recorded bits were heard on a five-minute show at 6:55 p.m. on Toronto radio station CJBC 860. The CBS gig was such a big deal, newspaper ads appeared on The Big Day. Cynthia Lowry promoted it in her daily column for the Associated Press.

In fact, the debut got reviewed the next day. Here’s what the Des Moines Register had to say. The history is a bit off; the two first left Boston for NBC in New York in July 1951. They were at Mutual later in the decade.

On Television
By Ogden Dwight
Bob and Ray—Elliott and Goulding, the maddest team in broadcasting were last on network television in a set of filmed commercials for an auto hour. It would have been astonishing if they helped sell a single car.
Because television is not their medium. Radio is, and their return to it with a nightly quarter-hour of wild wit is a kind of diminished-seventh heaven for their fanatical disciples.
New Network
The two maniacs from Massachusetts are on CBS Radio now—a network new to them after having captured wide renown (and an elite Peabody award) for a similar weekday series on Mutual in 1951, five years after first concocting their deadly satires over WHDH, Boston.
Then they did a few programs for NBC Radio and TV, and in '54 and '55 tried to cut on ABC-TV with "The Name's the Same." No go. Video's appetite for sight gags is too voracious.
Bob and Ray then landed on NBC's weekend "Monitor" in irregular three-minute spots (meantime earning a good living doing commercials), spots which kept their cult alive and hoping.
Now their weird little world and its lunatic population have moved over to 485 Madison ave., formerly precincts sacred to Ed Murrow, Arthur Godfrey and Jackie Gleason.
On wavelengths those mellifluous voices once ruled, may now expect to meet—if you follow the Bob and Ray party line as a fellow traveler—such Bob and Ray-voiced caricatures as:
The "incomparable" Wally Ballou, dough-voiced ace radio reporter; Uncle Eugene, soft as a grape; Mary McGoon, who once ran for the U. S. senate; Tex, the cowboy warbler; Steve Bosco, talent scout [for] has-been athletes; Webley Webster, ace forum foul-up, or Arthur Sturdley, a jerk.
Also you are likely to hear their hilarious lampoons of radio and TV: “One Feller's Family,” “The Life and Loves Linda Lovely,” or “The Gathering Dusk,” in which the heroine does nothing but rest.
A New Kit
Monday night in their CBS premiere they made one of their famous premium offers—the "Help Bob and Ray to Fame & Fortune & Worry-Free Old Age Kit," which included among other useless articles a sign to hang over your TV screen reading, "I'm Away Listening to Bob and Ray," plus a "handsome, rich-looking, simulated plastic lapel pin" for promptness.
They conduct crusades for hopeless causes and send out expeditions to nowhere. They recite straightforward, hard-sell commercials for products like ersatz garbage. They interview men in the street who have nothing to say. If you're a square about satire, don't bother to listen. You won't understand it.

One particularly audacious show at CBS was when Bob and Ray took aim at an announcement on October 16, 1959 by company president Frank Stanton in response to the quiz show scandals on TV that network programmes must have disclaimers that “everything is exactly as it purports to be.” Ed Murrow became livid when Stanton mentioned in a New York Times interview that Person to Person, a show Murrow had hosted before his sabbatical, was one that needed a disclaimer. Murrow lashed out at Stanton personally in a written statement later that month.

Bob and Ray responded on their transcribed show of October 22 not with Murrow-esque anger but with ridicule. They stopped the show and spent the quarter hour constantly telling listeners everything on it was fake—the music, the characters, the sound effects. Goulding’s Mary McGoon lent some sane commentary to the situation by remarking “Don’t you think that’s a violation of a theatrical promise, really?” “Well, yes, it is,” Ray replied.

Another target for their stinging was Jack Paar and what Bob and Ray perceived was his self-serving, phoney humility and persecution complex, abetted by announcer Hugh Downs. They did it twice that I recall and the dialogue struck Daily News columnist Kay Gardella as worthy of preservation, at least some of it, in her column of August 14, 1959. The routine was on CBS three days earlier.

Paar Taken Apart:
For a refreshing change from TV reruns, we recommend tuning an occasional ear to Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding, CBS-Radio's rapier-tongued satirists, who hold forth nightly at 7:45. This witty pair have an ear for the ridiculous, turning what they hear into hilarious comedy routines. The other P.M., for instance, they had some typical Bob and Ray fun with Jack Paar's nightly TVer; their version was the Hack Park Show, excerpts of which follow:
BOB: Well, Hack—people have asked me what Hack Park is really like, and . . . ah . . . you see, Hack, you're so many people . . .
RAY: I have to be. There's so much to do around here. And I have to be so many people to look after the details. And thus far, what I've done here has been incredible. (Sincerely) I mean that, Eustace.
BOB: I know you do, Hack. And . . . ah . . . that's part of it. But the thing that . . .
RAY: Excuse me, Eustace. Folks—about Eustace . . . most of you out there don't know this, but Eustace is seldom wrong.
BOB: (Embarassed) Hack . . .
RAY: No, I mean that, Eustace. Most people do not know how right you are. And I'll tell you something else about Eustace—who's part of our family here. He's been to my home and he's seen a lot.
BOB: Ah . . . Hack is right about that. And I might tell you that I was moved by what I saw. . . . and so was Hack.
RAY: Tell them why I was moved, Eustace.
BOB: Well, I don't know if you folks know this, but there's stream that runs adjacent to Hack's house. Anyhow, about six months ago there was this crab. Well it crawled into Hack's home.
RAY: Oh, that was a wild night! Wild!
BOB: And wouldn't you know. . . . that crab crawled into one of Hack's best suits! And the marvelous thing about it is Hack continued to wear the suit, crab and all! Now, very few people know that.
ETC.

Bob and Ray, and whoever helped write their sketches, even had Hack call people “Dear heart” just as Paar used to do.

Remarkably, Bob and Ray survived just under a year CBS. The radio show was cancelled on June 24, 1960, leaving the Amos ‘n’ Andy Music Hall as the only entertainment show on the CBS weeknight schedule, and it was gone five months later.

On January 28, 1961, President John Kennedy announced the name of the new head of the U.S. Information Agency. Edward R. Murrow was gone from CBS, too.

Chicken Fingers

Here’s an example of one of the things animation had to give up when it went to made-for-TV cartoons.

Look at the positions of The Rattled Rooster’s fingers in this scene as he’s left in mid-air when a worm sprays him into the sky with a hose. That kind of subtlety cost too much time and money for a television cartoon budget. (Virgil Ross was great at this kind of thing in the Freleng unit).



The rooster realises where he is. Down he drops.



Dave Monahan is responsible for the story in this 1948 Warners cartoon from the Art Davis unit. Davis’ animators on this one are Don Williams, Bill Melendez, John Carey and Basil Davidovich. This one doesn’t do much for me, though I do like the design of the rattlesnake. As a Davis fan, I am happy this one got restored; it was previously on laser disc.

A Burning Desire

Tex Avery (and gagman Heck Allen) had a challenge making The Shooting of Dan McGoo (released in 1945). He had to find new variations on the reactions of the wolf to “Red” than the ones in Red Hot Riding Hood (released in 1943).



The difference this time is Droopy was added to the mix.

In the scene below, Droopy anticipates what’s going to happen by casually raising a menu over the wolf’s eyes to block his vision. It is not effective.



Note in the second frame above, the wolf’s eyes turn red.

Avery had used the Robert W. Service tale of Dan McGrew as the basis for a parody in 1939 when Warners released Dangerous Dan McFoo. This one, of course, has Preston Blair’s wonderful animation of Red, er, Lou, and a quicker pace than the earlier cartoon.

There’s great timing in the gag where the wolf downs the straight whiskey. He immediately knows, despite his reaction, something’s wrong. Avery uses only three frames to get the wolf off the floor and into the bartender’s face to tell him “This stuff’s been cut.” (The camera zooms in for a closer shot for emphasis).

Frank Graham supplies most of the voices here, including the wolf and the off-stage emcee.

Writing and Ratings by Jack Benny

It had the makings of a triumphant return.

Jack Benny, grabbed by Bill Paley in 1949 to appear on CBS after starting at NBC in 1932, was coming back to his old home.

That made a great story. So Jack was paraded around the NBC-TV affiliates confab in 1964 and plugged the switch to reporters while glad-handing with management of various peacock stations.

Unfortunately, things didn’t go so well.

Some of it was out of Benny’s control. For one thing, CBS scheduled two Benny series for late afternoons in the 1964-65 season—one to run Monday through Friday and another on Sunday. This saturation of Benny was despite the fact CBS TV president Jim Aubrey didn’t want him, which is why Jack headed back to NBC in the first place.

That wasn’t known when Jack talked about the coming TV season with the Pittsburgh Press. This feature story was published June 2, 1964.

‘Old 39’ Likes Cinch Of TV Schedule
Benny Rides Bonanza On 70 Trail
By VINCE LEONARD, Press TV-Radio Writer
HOLLYWOOD, June 2—"I was 70 years old on my last birthday and I don't look it," Jack Benny said into a microphone in a roof-top restaurant at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
Benny, whose show returns to NBC In the fall at 9:30 on Fridays on Channels 6, 7, and 11 In Pittsburgh, was holding court for a battery of writers attending the NBC affiliates' convention.
He was telling the truth. He didn't look his age at all.
Tanned and wearing a smart, tweedy-ish sport coat and horned-rim glasses, Benny mixed quips with news of his fall show.
"Actually, the only difference next year will be that the show will be on NBC rather than CBS," he said.
"Oh, I'll have a new character to go along with Rochester," he said. "Her name is Jane Dulo and she'll be my cook."
Any change in format?
"I can't change my format," he said, "because I really have no format to change."
The perennial "39 year-old" reported he had six shows already done, calling it "cinch work." “Sometimes,” he said, “I don't have to show up until Wednesday and finish in time to have the week end off."
Nice work if you can get it, the writers agreed to a man.
Connie Francis, Andy Williams and Bob Hope and the wives of Steve McQueen, David Janssen and Andy Williams are the guest stars of the first six segments.
Then Benny, who began his broadcasting career on NBC in 1932, began hitting to all fields.
"We spend more time on editing our scripts than anything else," Benny said. "You know the old saying, plays are never written, they are re-written."
He said sometimes a writer comes up with an idea that doesn't meet with his approval.
"And sometimes I have to apologize. Of course, I'll apologize 28 weeks if the show comes off well," he said.
The Jack Benny Show was nominated for an Emmy 12 of the last 13 years. The season that It missed was the past one. And Jack was nimble with his comment.
"Look at the other shows that weren't nominated," he said, and then ticked off names like Hope, Andy Griffith, Jackie Gleason, Lucille Ball and Red Skelton.
"I'd rather be in their class, great people that were not nominated."
Someone brought up the category squabble concerning the Emmys, and Jack cracked:
"Once I was in the same category with 'The Defenders' and they hardly get any laughs."
On ratings, Benny had this to say:
"I was on top in radio once, but couldn't say much for ratings then. The only time I can say I believe in ratings is when I drop. Otherwise they'd holler ‘sour grapes.’”
The demise of the Richard Boone Show was brought up and after commenting on the show's worth, Benny said, "You know, if I were going to be thrown off the air, I'd rather be thrown off with a good show. At least I'd save face for my concerts."
Then the most famous violinist since Heifetz launched into a symphony on "Bonanza," one of his cousins at NBC, a show which was a rival of his last season when Jack was with CBS.
The Benny show last year came on during the second half of Bonanza.
"I turned on Bonanza once just to see what it was like," he said. "Then it came time to switch over to my show I just couldn't. I got so interested I had to wait for that big ending.
"Then it dawned on me. If I couldn't switch, what about all the other viewers?"
The Joey Bishop Show will battle Bonanza next season.
Said Jack:
"Bishop's a fine comic but he's going to have problems."

The columnist was a bit confused. Jack was opposite the second half of Bonanza on Sundays in the 1961-62 season. He was moved to Tuesdays the following year.

You’d have to be a real Benny diehard to remember Jane Dulo as the cook. She was only on three shows. Dulo loved her time with Jack. She was quoted in the Sacramento Union of May 23, 1965.

“[W]orking with Jack Benny is an incredible experience. Think of anything great to say about somebody and it will apply to him.
“I’ll never forget our first rehearsal. I was terribly nervous and gave what I thought was a mediocre performance.
“Jack said to me, ‘Kid, if your reading is an indication of your performance, we’re home free.’ I loved him for that.”

The irony of the Benny interview is while Jack talked about ratings for Joey Bishop, poor ratings would take his show off NBC at the end of one season. Aubrey counter-programmed by putting an Andy Griffith Show spin-off opposite Benny: Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.. Rick DuBrow of UPI proclaimed it “the real new smash popular show of the year” and Gomer’s Jim Nabors “the biggest new star.”

The Valley Times pointed out on Jan. 2, 1965 that Benny’s show hadn’t even cracked the top 50. On the 19th, the Anaheim Bulletin’s Ann Saunders sadly wished Jack “many, many thanks for the many hours of pleasure you have given us.” The Benny show was being cancelled.

Treg Trivia

It’s hard to believe a man instrumental in the sound of Warner Bros. cartoons never got screen credit until 1956.

Of course, we’re talking about Treg Brown.

Tregoweth Edmond Brown was the film editor at the studio, cutting the music, dialogue and sound effects into the film, as well as creating the effects. Cartoon fans likely know a few things about him—he won an Oscar for the sound effects in Warner Bros.’ feature film The Great Race (1965). Before getting into cartoons he played with Red Nichols and his Five Pennies. And he was a licensed chiropractor.

Oh, and Mel Blanc credits Brown with hiring him in 1936 to voice cartoons. But it took another 20 years before Brown’s name appeared on screen, in Too Hop to Handle, released on January 28, 1956 (information courtesy of Jerry Beck).

Out of curiosity, I decided to hunt around and see what else I could find about Brown. You can read what he told the Exposure Sheet internal newsletter in its edition of September 15, 1939 below right (again, courtesy of Jerry Beck), but we have some odds and ends from various other sources.

Treg was born on November 4, 1899 near Gilbert, Minnesota, the oldest of four children; his father worked in the nearby iron mine, and later was an engineer at a school. His mother was French-Canadian. Brown’s World War One Draft Card from September 1918 gives his occupation as a timekeeper for a Mr. Pilling in Fayal, working for an iron company.

He showed some musical talent as a teenager. The Duluth Herald reported in 1919 that he was member of the chorus of the Oliver club in Eveleth, not far from Gilbert. The club put on minstrel shows.

Brown was off on a musical career. In 1922, the Virginia, Minnesota City Directory gives his occupation as “musician.” He started getting write-ups in Billboard. In 1927, Al Katz and His Kittens landed a winter gig at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas. With Katz, he sang and played banjo, violin and accordion. The band had a nightly show on KRLD. He spent five years with Katz, then left to form his own combo in July 1929. His first gig was at the Far East Restaurant in Cleveland, moving in October to the city’s Club Madrid (and heard on WHK, Cleveland), and in November to a new supper club in Youngstown. That year, he wrote the lyrics to I’ll Always Miss You (music by J.M. Bishop). It’s a shame Carl Stalling never used it at Warners. At the time he belonged to Local 362, Huntington, West Virginia, travelling from Local 10 in Chicago of the American Federation of Musicians. (Being in Chicago, he likely would have known union boss James C. Petrillo). The following year, he held travelling membership in Local 101 in Dayton.

In 1930, his band was called Treg Brown and His Georgia Crackers (even though he was from Minnesota) and engaged for a time at the Hotel Paramount in New York City.

The Chicago local lost a member in mid-1932 when Brown transferred out. At that point, he was based in Los Angeles as a member of Buddy Fisher’s Orchestra (according to an ad in Hollywood Filmograph magazine).

When did he arrive at the Leon Schlesinger studio? Michael Barrier interviewed him in January 1979, and was told Brown (Treg) replaced Brown (Bernard B.) a few months before hiring Blanc (Blanc’s version of events in the mid-‘40s became far more embellished years later on the interview circuit). He appears as chief sound engineer for Schlesinger in the 1937 Year Book of Motion Pictures. To quote from Barrier’s Hollywood Cartoons:

[H]e found work editing live-action features at Paramount. He came to Warner Bros, as a film editor, cutting both features and cartoons: "[Bernard] Brown and [musical director Norman] Spencer would do the sound effects and the music, and I would just cut them in." Eventually, when Bernard Brown left to become head of the sound department at Universal, Treg Brown assumed his responsibilities, "the sound and the editing and that sort of thing." Providing all the sound effects for the Warner cartoons was soon a far more important aspect of his job than it had been for his predecessors. By the time Brown joined the Schlesinger staff, a sound editor could accumulate a large library of sound effects that had been recorded on film— some of them picked up from the soundtracks of features— and add them to each cartoon as needed. An editor still had to invent new effects, but he had abundant resources at his command. Brown's skill in using such resources showed up quickly in sound effects that were both far more numerous and more pointed than before, attributes increasingly valuable as aggressively comic cartoons became more important in the Schlesinger scheme of things and musical cartoons like Freleng's Merrie Melodies less so.

There was an occasional mention in the press, if there wasn’t on screen. Erskine Johnson’s column of August 14, 1943 remarked:

When you see a new Leon Schlesinger cartoon, “Corny Concerto,” you’ll probably marvel at the sound of bubbles bursting to the melody of “The Blue Danube.” Treg Brown, the sound man who created the novelty, nearly knocked himself doing it. He created the bubble bursting sounds by making a sound box of his mouth and rapping himself on the head.

To the right you see an unfortunately murky photo the December 12, 1948 edition of Parade, a weekend newspaper magazine supplement, from a story on art directors and other specialists in the movies.

Brown became active in Local 776 of the Motion Picture Film Editors. He began a three-year term as a director in 1959.

There was some side-work as well. The Pittsburgh Courier of April 20, 1940 reported that Brown handled the sound effects for Mr. Washington Goes to Town, produced by Dixie National Pictures. It starred Mantan Moreland and was described as the “first all-Negro feature comedy.” (Jack Benny fans note: Eddie Anderson isn’t in this, but Johnny Taylor is. The Courier reviewer remarked he had “played so much with Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson that he sounds him” and that one funny gag was when Taylor produced “an egg by magic and says, ‘That’s the egg that Jack Benny laid on the Rochester Hour’.”).

We mentioned Brown’s other career. The Hollywood Citizen-News reported on July 17, 1942:

Dr. Treg. E. Brown, chiropractor, today, announced that he would open new offices Monday [20] at 5658 Sunset Blvd. and specialize in dermaculture.

Brown also had a musical hobby that saw his name get mentioned in the Citizen-News starting in 1951. He was a square dance caller. Researcher Devon Baxter dug around and reported on Cartoon Research that Brown replaced Phil Monroe as the studio’s square dance instructor and caller (he was instructing the beginners class in February 1950), and was even featured on the TV show You Asked For It in 1951. Oddly, Brown wasn’t asked to voice the dance caller in the Warners cartoon Hillbilly Hare (recorded in mid-1949, released in summer 1950). The role went to John T. Smith.

What you may not know is Brown dusted off his lyricist skills and penned the words to a call. Here it is from the Sets-In-Order Yearbook of Square Dancing, 1957.

GOING GNATS
By Treg Brown, Los Angeles Calif.
Gals to the center and back to your men
The gents star right just as pretty as you can
Now back to the left, go across the track
Box the gnat and pet ‘em back to back
Now get along home get along get along—(CW)
And box the gnat before the gnat is gone
The gents star left to your left hand maid
And box the gnat, don’t be afraid
To take a little walk to your right-hand girl—(CW)
And box the gnat with a pretty little twirl
And the gents star left on your toe and heel
And meet your partner with a wagon wheel . . .

What is “Box the gnat,” you ask? Read this link. My guess is “CW” means “cake walk.”

No Treg trivia would be complete without noting the reference to him in the 1955 release One Froggy Evening (to the right). And Brown makes an appearance, of sorts, in the 1962 short Fish and Slips where he is seen on TV by Sylvester and Sylvester, Jr. with his prize catch: “a record-breaking, sharp-nosed Tralfaz.”

Brown died in Irvine, California on April 28, 1984.

Why Can't Magoo See?

Our Kartoon Kwestion Box has a Quincy query (better make that “Kwincy kwery” for more “komedy”).

“Since Mr. Magoo has trouble seeing, why doesn’t he get glasses?”

Well, the answer is, Quincy Magoo HAS glasses. They make an appearance in the second Magoo cartoon Spellbound Hound (released in 1950).

Mr. Magoo is on the phone in the Point Dim View Lodge when a dog peers through a window. Magoo thinks the window is a mirror. He sees the dog, then grabs his glasses for a better look.



This is what he sees in them.



Magoo can’t believe it. “Boy, I look terrible,” he says to himself.



The answer to the question, from the Tralfaz medical department: “He doesn’t bother with glasses because his astigmatism is so bad, they don’t help.”

UPA director John Hubley probably had a better explanation, recorded in Leonard Maltin’s Of Mice and Magic: “It wasn’t just that he couldn’t see very well; even if he had been able to see, he still would have made the same dumb mistakes, ‘cause he was such a bullheaded, opinionated old guy.”

Spellhound Hound is certainly not a static cartoon. There are some enjoyable stretch in-betweens. I like the short, squat version of Magoo. Even some of the visual-mistake gags are funny because they come out of nowhere. Who expects Magoo to mutter “Yo-yo fish” when he catches his rod pulls a doorknob out of the lake?

Pat Matthews, Bill Melendez, Willie Pyle and Rudy Larriva are the credited animators. Jim Backus shows more emotional range as Quincy Magoo in the early cartoons. Jerry Hausner plays Ralph and likely the dog.