Breaking the Ice

Tex Avery loved literal gags. At MGM, Symphony in Slang was nothing more than slang being taken literally.

Just about everything Avery did had a genesis in his cartoons at Warner Bros. Here’s a literal gag from Land of the Midnight Fun. It’s silly at worst.

“In these thickly frozen waters,” intones narrator Bob Bruce, “passage would be impossible without the aid of these ships called ‘icebreakers.’ Let’s see how it’s done.”



Dissolve to the gag. He’s an icebreaker, all right.



Sick of Disney? Like Tex Avery? Los Angeles Times critic Philip K. Scheuer was and did. In his “heresy note” published December 17, 1939 he “rises to remark that the Walt Disney shorts for the past year have not been what they ought to be. Mickey is slipping; so is Donald Duck, their latest shenanigans lacking the wit and ingenuity of, say, M.G.M.’s ‘Peace on Earth,’ or ‘Land of the Midnight Fun,’ a Merrie Melody.”

Scheuer admits that Disney was concentrating on features, but it’s interesting to see him refer to an Avery cartoon that wasn’t groundbreaking (though ice-breaking).

The National Board of Review announced approval of the cartoon in its weekly guide of Sept. 14, 1939, calling it “An amusing satire of a travelog, with the Northern capes as a setting. In color.”

The revolving story credit goes to Tubby Millar and the animation one to Chuck McKimson. The cartoon was released Sept. 23rd. We find it playing the day before at the Capitol in Pottsville, Pa.

Benny the Motor City Maestro

Besides making millions of people laugh, Jack Benny raised millions for symphony orchestras, venues and musicians’ pensions funds.

He was honoured in return, as John Gardiner of the Windsor Star reported on Oct. 29, 1959.

Jack Benny, appearing as violin soloist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra Friday, Nov. 13, at the Ford Auditorium in a spectacular benefit concert for the orchestra, will receive the Laurel Leaf Award of the American Composers Alliance for his outstanding contributions to such organizations eight days later in Washington, D. C.
The Laurel Leaf presentation will be made at the Third Annual President's Ball of the National Press Club in Washington by Ben Weber, A.C.A. president, who will be introduced by William Schuman, Juilliard School of Music president.
Benny has raised more than $1 1/2 millions for the leading American symphony orchestras by appearing with them as soloist. His Detroit performance under Paul Paray will find him playing Sarasate's "Gypsy Airs" and the first movement of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in minor.
Tickets for the Detroit benefit concert are priced at $5, $10, $25, $50 and $100.
Among previous recipients of the Laurel Leaf Award, presented for distinguished service to music in America, are Leopold Stokowski, George Szell, Martha Graham, Howard Hanson and Howard Mitchell.

If you’ve read any reviews of Jack’s concerts, you’ll know it was pretty much the same act, just like in vaudeville in the ‘20s when you’d have a routine and take it from city to city. Reviews are, generally, the same, too. Music critics enjoyed Jack’s performances, as much as the audience, it seems. My guess is they were pleased that Jack respected classical music, and did not ridicule it. He ridiculed himself, just like he had done on radio and TV all those years.

Here’s what the Detroit Free Press critic had to say the following day.

When Benny Stood Up to Play
BY J. DORSE CALLAGHAN
Free Press Music Critic
Sixty thousand dollars is not to be laughed at, but Jack Benny in his role as a violin virtuoso definitely is.
The dollars came from the sale of tickets at a top of $100 each for Benny's appearance with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra Friday night at the Ford Auditorium.
They went to swell the orchestra's maintenance fund.
And everyone who laid out the price of a ticket was amply repaid. The Benny adventure was a hilarious event all the way.
Even conductor Paul Paray and concertmaster Mischa Mischakoff revealed unsuspected gifts for comedy.

THE FACT that Benny is more than a mere fiddler kept the comedy turn within good taste. Most of the fun, in fact, was completely musical.
We had the good fortune to experience it twice. Once in the early morning at rehearsal when Benny laid out the comedy routine, and again in the evening at the formal presentation. The big laughs involved Benny and several members of the orchestra. When the comedian began to falter in his performance of a brilliant passage in the Sarasate Ziegunerweisen," Mischakoff gallantly came to his rescue.
The indignant Benny waited out the display of violin fireworks by Mischakoff in splendid indignation.
At the next pause he held a whispered conference with Paray, who then banished Mischakoff from the stage. Mischakoff, the picture of dejection, moved into the wings.
SIMILARLY, Gordon Staples later came to Benny's "rescue." This time, though, the assistant concertmaster banished himself.
A like fate overtook percussionist Arthur Cooper for his temerity in sounding too frantically on the cymbals.
Competition wasn't entirely eliminated, however.
When a stage hand brought in a music stand for Benny, the comedian handed over his Strad.
The "stagehand" immediately flashed through a dazzling set of finger exercises and handed the instrument back to Benny.
It was an incident without words, in the best Benny tradition.
BENNY, in his project of raising money for maintenance funds of major orchestras, broke all Detroit symphony box office records with a net of $59,000. This ran his contribution for the week to more than $100,000, including an appearance with another orchestra.
Benny's part in the proceedings otherwise included his impersonation of the concert styles of four world famous violinists, and an "intimate" discussion with the audience.

The only thing that marred the Benny visit was beyond his control. Isaac Stern had a recital in at the Masonic Temple in Detroit the same evening. Stern and Benny were friends and I’m sure the conflict must have bothered both of them.

The two of them performed together at the National Press Club appearance mentioned above. Washington columnist Lucian Warren took their friendship as the angle of his column on November 26, though he didn’t mention the Detroit scheduling problem.

FEUD—Guests at another recent Press Club function were treated to a mock between Jack Benny, the comedian, and Isaac Stern, world renowned violinist.
Introducing the audience to a couple of highly classical violin solos, Stern said he wished to do so “before this program disintegrates as it is bound to do when Jack Benny appears a little later.”
The laughter which greeted this sally prompted Benny to shout from the audience: “Quit making them laugh. That’s my department.”
When Benny did appear, the pair staged a violin duet of the “Flight of the Bumble Bee,” with Stern doing the intricate rhythms and Benny interjecting an occasional simple note or two.
A moment later Benny played the violin with Vice President Richard Nixon as the piano accompanist. Benny said that the vice president had demanded “equal time” after Benny’s recent performance with another famous piano player, former President Truman. The Benny-Nixon selection—“The Missouri Waltz.”

One of the magnificent things about Benny is he continued these charity concerts year after year after year, even after he turned 80 in 1974. The only reason he stopped was because of the pancreatic cancer that claimed his life at the end of the year. He had concert-lovers laughing and applauding to the very end.

Calvin, the Colonel, Amos and Andy

Amos and Andy finished their radio career on CBS on November 25, 1960. With a promise.

At the end of the programme, Freeman Gosden said: “For the past few months, we have been working on another idea which we hope to present to you in the not-too-distant future. It will be entirely different from anything we have done in the past.”

That cryptic announcement may have been explained in Fred Danzig’s TV column for United Press International on February 1, 1961: “Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, creators of the ‘Amos ‘n Andy’ voices, will create new voices for ‘Calvin and the Colonel,’ a new half-hour animal cartoon series that ABC-TV plans to present in the 1961-62 season. Producers are Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, creators of ‘Leave It To Beaver.’” They had also written the various Amos and Andy shows for the final 15 radio seasons.

Danzig’s counterpart at the Associated Press, Cynthia Lowry, noted in her column the following day that “Instead of playing the well-known human characters (who were not popular with organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Gosden and Correll will be the voices of a bear and a fox.”

What Lowry didn’t report is that Gosden and Correll simply couldn’t instantly concoct an Amos ‘n’ Andy cartoon series out of thin air if they had wanted to. They didn’t own the names to the characters and hadn’t for years. CBS did. The two would need to strike a deal with the network to revive them in animated form, irrespective of the NAACP. The Amos ‘n’ Andy TV series was still in syndication at the time, by the way.

1961 was the year of Great Prime Time Cartoon Experiment. The Flintstones were a hit on ABC after a September 1960 debut, so the networks were eager to have similar animated successes. It never happened. All the new shows were cancelled. Some went to Saturday mornings in reruns.

Calvin and the Colonel began with a lot of promise, and a bit of distancing from its origins. The story from the King Features Syndicate’s TV Key service appeared in newspapers around Sept. 2, 1961.

Amos and Andy Speak For "Calvin and the Colonel"
By HAROLD STERN
HOLLYWOOD—Back in the good old days, when radio was king, the world came to a grinding halt every Monday through Friday at 7:00 p.m. It was Amos and Andy time, and that was enough for most people.
This season, in an era which has seen the collapse of monarchy, when television is king, there's a wild possibility that history might repeat, this time at 8:30 p.m., EST on Tuesday night (Premieres Oct. 3) on the ABC-TV network. The occasion will be a new animated series called "Calvin And The Colonel.”
THE REASON THERE is even the slightest hope that "Calvin And The Colonel" might have the same impact on America that Amos and Andy once owned is that Freedom Gosden and Charles Correll, the voices of Amos and Andy, will also be the voices of Calvin and the Colonel. And Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, who wrote 12 years worth of Amos and Andy scripts, are producing and writing the series.
"The characters of Calvin and the Colonel are southern characters, but they're not Amos and Charles Correll told me. "There are no malapropisms, no mispronunciations, no Negro dialects.
"We created the characters," said Freeman Gosden. "'We used to kid around telling each other 'Colonel' stories in order to keep from getting to work, Then we realized we might have something here. We'd been talking about animation for a long time and we decided we'd do it with animals.
"The Colonel is a fox," said Correll. "Calvin is a bear, a bit bumbling fellow. In preparing for the series, we learned that the bear is the most popular of all the animals. In the show the bear has a favorite expression which he uses whenever he passes a pretty girl. It's ‘Howdy-do.’ We have a toy coming out for this Christmas, which is a replica of Calvin the bear. He takes off his hat and says ‘Howdy-do.’ We expect it will catch on.
UNLIKE THE "Amos and Andy" show, Gosden and Correll will not be doing all the voices for this TV series. Gosden plays the Colonel, Correll plays the bear and various other actors play the other roles.
For example, both Calvin and the Colonel have wives, and the Colonel's wife has a sister. So, she's being played by Beatrice Kay. Paul Frees is the voice of an attorney called Oliver Wendell Clutch.
"Our show is not directed at children,” said Gosden with conviction. "We hope the children will be attracted by the animation, but the show is being aimed strictly at adults. And with an 8:30 time slot, it's on the prime adult evening time on ABC. Do you know that we had a suggestion to eliminate the animation and use puppets. That would have been terrible. You can't believe puppets, but you can believe animation."
"We had thoughts of doing 'Amos and Andy' in animation," said Correll, "but that's as far as it went. I think 'Amos and Andy' has had its day. We put in about 37 years at it in radio, television and we even did one motion picture as the Amos and Andy characters. It was called 'Check and Double' [sic] and we'd be just as happy if you said no more about it."
"Did you know we recorded 24 sides for Victor as singers?" asked Gosden.
"That was way back,” said Correll. "We were known as staff artists at the time. We were going great guns as singers until the rhythm boys came along [the Rhythm Boys included Bing Crosby].
ACTUALLY, THEY didn't do that well as recorded singers, but they still chuckle over their "hit" record, a tune they don't even remember. After stumbling around with records for a while, suddenly one of their records took off and as Gosden and Correll went around from record store to record store asking for it and gleefully finding it was sold out they felt: "Finally, public recognition!”
The day of reckoning came when someone pointed out to them that their song was on the back of a Gene Austin number and Austin was the hottest recording artist of his day.
That may be true of records, but as for "Calvin and The Colonel," the only backing it can use is that of the public.
"I have a sneaking hunch that 'Calvin and The Colonel' will work out," said Gosden. "Connelly and Mosher are good writers and their scripts for the series are just great. They are primarily very funny men. They can produce all the other shows they want to, but writing good comedy scripts is what they do best."

Unfortunately for Gosden and Correll, it didn’t work out. It wasn’t for a lack of trying. The programme became the first casualty of the TV season. It was taken off the air on Tuesday, Nov. 14, 1961, re-worked, and then returned in two months. But suddenly, it’s no longer an adult show. Or is it? Holy mack’rel, Andy!

This syndicated story from January 6th goes into the production of the series.

Calvin and the Colonel’ Back from Repairs
By ISOBEL ASHE
It’s a weary cliché out Hollywood way that no one ever set out to make a bad movie. These days of television, it’s also become truism that all TV shows are intended to be great, garner high ratings, stay on the air a minimum of three years, and earn their creators retirement-type fortunes.
It was therefore a bit of a shock when the much-heralded Calvin and the Colonel, starring the perennials of Amos and Andy, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, was cancelled after a short run.
Devotees of the bear and the fox can take heart, however. The show is returning, in a switch unparalleled in TV’s short history. On Saturday night, Jan. 27, at 7:30 p.m., Calvin and the Colonel will resume on the ABC television network.
"We wouldn't knock Perry Mason." says a spokesman for the show. "That would be like something bad about Mom's blueberry pie, because Mason has become an institution. But being opposite that show isn't all that horrendous. There are an awful lot of children who don’t understand legalistics or don't want to. And they're the audience toward which we are aiming."
It was never intended for Calvin and the Colonel to be a kiddies' show, and even though changes will be made in the new version returning to the air, Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, the producers, feel they've got something to attract all age-groups, other than frustrated lawyers, of course.
The mechanics of producing Calvin and the Colonel are unique ones. Only in a cartoon show are the actors allowed the latitude given Gosden and Correll, Paul Frees who plays Oliver Clutch, Beatrice Kay as Sister Sue and Virginia Gregg, who is Maggie Belle.
As in all shows of this type, the story board is The Word. A board is exactly like the story comics in the daily papers. It has illustrations with the words in the words in each segment.
From the story board, the script is written exactly as a live television script, with the dialogue on one side of the page, and description of the action opposite it. And perhaps the session of the live actors' weekly recording voices is the most interesting aspect of the series' production.
Explains recording executive Clif (for Clifton) Howell, "'We get together at 7 on a given evening at Radio Recorders Studios in Hollywood. Freeman and Charlie are always there first, along with the engineers and me. They're both sticklers for punctuality and if one should arrive late—well, they don’t like it.
"The reason we record at night is that many of the actors we use work during the day on other TV shows or in movies.
"Just last week, Virginia Gregg came right from a Wagon Train show she'd done, complete in Old West costume and makeup. Quite a contrast to Beatrice Kay in her black chiffon basic sheath, high heels—she's not even five very feet tall, you know—and Virginia at 5'8" or thereabouts and that costume—well, quite a contrast, as I said," Howell laughed.
The recording session commences with a table reading, with all the cast members, seated around a long table, and Howell directing. "Actually," he continued, "very little direction is required. These people are all pros, and they can pick up a script with a dry reading—no advance preparation—and make it sound as if they'd worked on it for days. They've all had plenty of radio experience, and that's what we need on the show."
In addition to the cast regulars, Gloria Blondell plays the manicurist, June Foray, described as the girl with a thousand voices, does several of the Calvins, as do Lurene Tuttle and Hans Conreid.
According to Screen Actors Guild pertaining to actors working on cartoon shows, they are permitted to “triple”—do three voices on one show.
"And that's why we like to use people like June Foray for example, who has so many voices and so much versatility. She's really incredible.
"Paul Frees, for example, is another one. He looks like a wealthy beatnik since he shaved off his handlebar mustache. He's got that florid complexion and wears Texas-type boots with a wild shirt and scarf. The coat never matches the pants—they're usually dark Ivy League and the coat’s an olive-yellowish corduroy.
"But the voices he does! He's told me he's done as many as five and six in one commercial, and I'm sure if you were familiar with all his voices, you'd hear him dozens of times in one evening watching television or listening to radio," Howell marvels.
Each script runs approximately 25 minutes, and the first table reading takes roughly 35 minutes, allowing for interruptions from Howell or the actors themselves who may not be satisfied with the first interpretation. They stop for a coffee break of 5 or 10 minutes, and then the actual recording session commences.
Gosden and Correll share one microphone, just as they did in the days of radio. Beatrice Kay stands at one mike with Virginia Gregg behind her. Explains Howell: "Beatrice talks up into the mike, and Virginia talks down. It works very well. The other actors come on mike when required and get back, again exactly as in radio. They're all so experienced in the technique, it presents no problem. And then we take it from the top.
"There's no pressure. If an actor fluffs, or we want a different intonation on a line, we get it. And we mark on the tape where the change was made, so immediately after the recording session, the editing is done and we've got a clean and perfect tape.
"We don't record sound effects at this session—that’s done later—and we don't record music.
"We use all original music with 11 to 14 musicians under the direction of George Bruns who is our composer too. He did cartoon music for Disney for years, and now is associated with us in the same capacity."
After Bruns sees the show, he works on his ideas with animation producer Bob Ganon of Creston Studios, and he decides what type of music the action requires—if there will be tuba bass notes, whistles, glissandoes, rhythm shuffling, or music for a chase.
Bruns points out, "Often music will give an effect that you can't get with dialogue and that's the most important part of my job, to create the effect we want."
There is little clowning around during the recording session. Some of the actors are tired from a day's work on other shows, and all of them want to get home.
Says Howell, "Freeman will tell a joke now and then, or an anecdote about his last golf game. He spends a lot of time in Palm Springs with former President Eisenhower, and he might tell us of something that happened the last time he saw him. Or comment on what the stock market did that day.
“Charlie’s son, Richard, works on Leave It to Beaver, and he's with him most of the time on that set. So he'll tell us what happened there. But for the most part, we're all here to do a job, and we do it.
“We rent the studio from 7 to 10 but I can't recall a single instance when we've worked until 10. The recording takes about 35 minutes, and we fix up the mistakes, stop for another cup of coffee, and that's it."
All told, Howell estimates some 35 people are directly involved in each segment of Calvin and the Colonel and he's highly enthusiastic about changes in the upcoming shows. The characters will remain the same, of course, but they will look slightly different. The mouth movements will be different. The bear will have a more lumbering walk. The two women will be prettier, and there will be new openings and closings.
"To sum up, you could say we'll have more slapstick for the kids and more action for the grownups. I like the new approach and I think the people will too," he says confidently.

No, Mr. Howell, they didn’t. Variety reported on April 4, 1962 Calvin and the Colonel had been cancelled in late March. It didn’t get the Saturday morning rerun treatment by the networks; instead MCA-TV put the 26 episodes in the syndication market in 1964. There don’t appear to have been a lot of nibbles outside of stations in Los Angeles, Boston and Philadelphia.

For kids, the problem with the show was none of the characters were likeable like Yogi Bear, Bugs Bunny or even blowhard Fred Flintstone. Kids didn’t root for them like they did when Mighty Mouse vanquished evil cats. Calvin and the Colonel were a schemer and his slow-on-the-uptake friend. In other words, they were Amos and Andy. Even without the dialect, their voices were pretty much the same. News articles about the cartoon series continued to refer to the old radio show, not surprising because that’s all Gosden and Correll were known for. One paper in Wisconsin even had a drawing of the two in costume and blackface, like it was still 1928.

However good Gosden and Correll’s intentions were, by 1962 America pretty much had enough of that. Even if it was hidden in animal-face instead.

The Danger of Dog Food

You know how the Claude Cat/Frisky Puppy cartoons work, right? Claude tries to do something, Frisky barks, the barks scare Claude, Claude flies upward, when he drops he lands on his feet because that’s what cats do.

If nothing else, the formula gave director Chuck Jones a chance to do a whole bunch of his poses and expressions. Claude’s a great villain because you always know what he’s thinking.

Terrier Stricken (1952) opens with Claude finishing his food, then eyes Frisky’s full dish. He checks to see if no one will catch him stealing. Just as he’s about to eat—BARK! BARK! BARK! And away Claude goes.

I like how Jones (or maybe Maltese on the storyboard or maybe the artist) turns Claude’s tail into a devilish pitchfork. Some frames:



A pose by Frisky. Jones has the ears moving a little bit (gravity, you know) so the shot isn't static. Follow-through. Just like at Disney.



This is all one scene by one animator. The first cut is to Claude. There are three drawings used in the chattering cycle.



Ken Harris, Lloyd Vaughan and Ben Washam receive the animation credits. If the first scene is by Harris, someone can let me know. Bob Gribbroek contributes some good layouts.

What You Do When You Hear the Door Buzzer

The Hanna-Barbera unit, at least in 1942, wasn’t into wild takes like MGM stable-mate Tex Avery. So when Tom reacts to a door buzzer in Puss N’ Toots, his expression isn’t all that outrageous.

Still, there are some good drawings, from Irv Spence, I suspect. These are nine consecutive frames.

>

Bill Hanna holds Tom for three frames, then turns his head. Tom is held for 23 frames while Jerry continues to run in the fish bowl.



Hanna and Joe Barbera are the only people to get a screen credit on this short, besides producer Fred Quimby.

The Rise of Tim O'Hara

Not every television actor gets typecast.

One example is Bill Bixby. He starred in My Favorite Martian, The Courtship of Eddie's Father and The Incredible Hulk. Other than Bixby’s presence, those three shows don’t have anything in common with each other.

Not only that, after a start in industrial films, he was cast in musicals. In February 1961, the earliest I can find any mention of him in the papers, he replaced Byron Palmer in the sketch revue Max, which also starred Dick Kallman. That summer, he was cast in a very successful production of Under the Yum Yum Tree (it ran more than a year), then in November was hired to be the romantic juvenile lead in a Los Angeles production of The Fantastiks. Declared Charles Stinson of the Los Angeles Times: “Bill Bixby, as the Boy, is excellent—a real find as either a leading man or a light comic. He throws lines away wonderfully well. And his voice is strong and true.”

The same year, he began his television career. The “Castings” column in the Hollywood Reporter talks of two appearances on The Danny Thomas Show, produced by Sheldon Leonard, who just also happened to be picked to direct the pilot of My Favorite Martian.

Almost a year before the series debuted, the Hollywood Reporter stated that Bixby had been signed for the series, and the pilot would be filmed Oct. 25, 1962. The Pittsburgh Press reported on Feb. 2, 1963 that CBS had picked up the show. (At the same time, a Phil Rapp-produced sitcom called I Married a Martian was shooting at Desilu. It starred Bob Cummings and Julie Newmar and, I suspect, morphed into My Living Doll).

The Chicago Tribune interviewed him before the series debuted. Here's what the paper published on June 14, 1963.

There’s a Martian Coming to TV This Fall
By Walter Oleksy
JUST HAD lunch with Bill Bixby. You may not know him yet, but you will. Bill's a good-looking, sandy-haired young actor who has snared a co-starring role in what may be the most original and funny show on television come September, CBS' My Favorite Martian.
Bill plays the part of a West Coast newspaper reporter who befriends a real live martian whose space ship crash-lands near Bill's bachelor apartment. Bill puts him up, but keeps it a secret. Why? Well, would anyone believe you if you said you had a martian stashed away as a house guest?
"The show has been presold sight-unseen to run in England and Japan," said Bill. "That's a 'first' of some kind." He was in town to appear on At Random, but at the last minute had to jet back to Hollywood for more conferences. Lew Koch, At Random producer, said he'd have Bill on the show in the near future.
"The martian show is being written for adults," Bill said, and we said we liked that fresh approach. "We want to get in a lot of social satire," he added.
"Satire?" we asked, delighted. "Social satire on TV? We're going to watch every episode!"
Before we went on to a special screening of the pilot film, we asked Bill to tell us about his background and how he got the martian show.
"Well, I was a lifeguard at the Hollywood-Roosevelt hotel three years ago [he's 29 now, and like the TV character "Tim O'Hara" in the martian show, a bachelor], and someone asked me to stand next to a Jaguar. The car, not the cat.
"I found out they were shooting a television commercial and they called the work I was to do ‘modeling.’ I shied back, but when I learned they'd pay me $100 for three hours work, I let the cameras roll. I was able to turn in my bathing suit at the hotel and study acting.
"My big break came on the Danny Thomas show, when the producer-director, Sheldon Leonard, gave me the part of a millionaire grocery boy. The part and I clicked and I did it for several weeks running. Then I became a regular on the Joey Bishop show, and from there played in just about every series on TV. Every time a producer wanted someone to play a kookie millionaire kid, they'd call me."
His two most recent appearances were on Eleventh Hour, as Robert Walker's college roommate in "Try to Keep Alive Until Next Tuesday," and on Twilight Zone in a submarine adventure with Peter Falk.
For those who saw the movie "Lonely Are the Brave," they may remember Bill as the helicopter pilot who relentlessly pursued Kirk Douglas. He has roles in two new movies, "Irma La Duce" and "Under the Yum Yum Tree," both starring Jack Lemmon.
“Jack’s my idea of the perfect actor," Bill said. "He does the best combination of drama and comedy, and that, incidentally is what we're trying to do on My Favorite Martian.
"The show is directed by Sheldon Leonard. I had worked with him before, and he said he had me in mind for the reporter part from the first. The martian is played by Ray Walston, the pixish, poker-faced comedian who was so good in 'South Pacific' and 'Damn Yankees.’”
Then we went to the screening, and the thing which most intrigued this writer about the show is its freshness. There are subtleties in the script that come over like a breath of fresh air after viewing so many insipid TV situation comedies. There isn't one "cute" moment in the show to offend a viewer, except maybe Herbert Rudley's televisionese caricature of a disgruntled army officer. Maybe that can be toned down before fall.
Bill, furthermore, plays no Sunset Strip hero. He's not a "pretty boy," and when he tries to win the sexy girl next door, he really tries to win her. And the martian, fondly called "Uncle Martin" by Bill, has his antennae set on the girl's attractive widow mother.
The script writers have allowed themselves worlds of latitude for developing the comedy. Uncle Martin is a professor of anthropology at a Mars university who specializes in our "primitive planet." He has extra-sensory perception, and can make himself invisible. He has to stick around on earth long enough to repair his space ship. "And most of the parts I'll need haven't been invented here yet," he adds coyly.
Desilu filmed the pilot, produced by Jack Chertok. We're looking forward to more episodes. This is a series with a plot and two fresh stars that should really be entertaining.

Social satire? Other than a parody of spy films, with the great Larry D. Mann as Butterball, the show was reduced to ridiculous Bewitched-esque story-lines such as body swapping, (yeah, I know, this was a comedy movie plot some years later), a bunch of trips into the past, and reconstituting a squirrel into a human.

Martian went into reruns after it finished three years on the air in 1966. Bixby signed a TV and recording contract (!) with Columbia, made some movies (including one where, afterward, he told a reporter “Elvis is no actor”), appeared on game shows like You Don’t Say and on stage in The Owl and the Pussycat.

As for fame, here’s a humbling syndication service story from July 11, 1966:

Bill Bixby's Name Gives Him Trouble
By JOAN CROSBY
NEW YORK (NEA)—MGM has finally learned to spell Bill Bixby's name, and with that knowledge has come an MGM film role for Bill.
The costar of My Favorite Martian, the CBS-TV series which is disappearing from television after this year, is presently making "This Way Out, Please" with George Hamilton and Sandra Dee.
When the Martian cast moved to MGM last season (the series had been filmed elsewhere before that,) Bill drove into the parking lot where all the stars have their names printed on their very own parking space.
"My name was spelled Bixbley. I told them my name was misspelled and the next day they had corrected it to Bixley. So then I said I don't think they understood, and they apologized and fixed it—to Bixbey. Once again complained and they found no another way of spelling my name. This time it was Bixly.
"Then, one day, a new policeman at the gate didn't want to let me in. But there were some fans hanging around the gate and they recognized me. So I got to work that day. It's just that, for awhile, I had a parking space with a sign with an awful lot of scratched-out names.”

I can’t find any quotes from Bixby about the series when it met its demise but, in a 1979 interview, he gave it his approval, saying “My shows are the kind children can watch with their parents, without embarrassment. And parents can watch with their children, without embarrassment. I like that.”

A non-parental moment on the Martian set happened not on the air, but during a Christmas party. Ray Walston recalled that Bixby told him to check his dressing room for a gift. “There stood two beautiful girls in trenchcoats. As I opened the door, they dropped the coats, bowed, and said ‘Merry Christmas’.”

Cancer that spread from his prostate killed Bixby in 1993 at age 59.

How To Get Into a House

A hungry hobo cat wants to sneak into a house to get at a fridge he thinks is bulging with food in King-Size Canary.

He can’t quite reach the window.



Well, that’s easy. Just stack some conveniently-placed nearby boxes on top of each other and climb in.



Hmm. Still can’t reach it. Since this is a Tex Avery cartoon, anything can happen—like ignoring the law of gravity.



The repealed law having done its job, gravity returns. Even before the cat has finished hoisting itself through the window.



Bob Bentley, Ray Abrams and Walt Clinton are the credited animators in this one, with Johnny Johnsen providing the backgrounds. This is one of those gags I am certain was used in another cartoon (I don’t mean Bugs “I never studied law” line, I mean one with climbing on boxes) but I can’t remember which one. Someone out there will know.

Bob Bentley, Ray Abrams and Walt Clinton are the credited animators in this one (the Tex Avery unit would soon go through some changes), with Johnny Johnsen getting no screen credit for the backgrounds. The title character is played by Sara Berner (who has one line), the cat is (I think) Pinto Colvig and Frank Graham gives the mouse a voice.