Tazzy Birthday (Not Quite)

Yes, we're back. But only for a week.

Music expert Daniel Goldmark sent me some information quite a number of months ago. I thought I had turned it into a post, but have discovered I hadn't. I don't want to waste his kindness, so I've come up with something which you'll read here next week. Since I've had a bit of spare time, a full week's worth of posts will appear starting Monday. Then it's back into retirement. (The Yowp blog will have posts monthly through the end of the year but it is essentially done).

Some cartoon fans have pointed out today is the birthday of the Tazmanian Devil. Indeed, Devil May Hare was released on this date in 1954 according to all trade publications of the time.

But hold on thar! It's actually not his birthday.

Cartoon scholar and noted Release-the-Remaining-Warners-Cartoons champion Jerry Beck has pointed out on many occasions that as soon as a cartoon arrived at a film exchange, a local movie theatre could show it. It may have arrived some time before the "official" release date; A Wild Hare is a great example.

So it was with Devil May Hare. To the left is an ad from the Escanaba Daily Press of Saturday, May 29, 1954. It advertises Devil May Hare will be on screens the next day. (You can click on the ad to get a larger view).

This doesn't mean the cartoon debuted in a small town in Michigan. That's just the earliest newspaper ad I can find. I don't know if any records exist of when each theatre showed any cartoon, and some newspapers will simply announce "Bugs Bunny cartoon" or "cartoon" without the short being named. After all, if it says "Bugs Bunny cartoon," do you need to know more?

I am not suggesting people who want to celebrate cartoon "birthdays" stop doing it. I merely point out that "official" cartoon release dates are not necessarily birthdates of characters therein. As a side-note, some years back Turner sent out a press release with "birthdays" of Hanna-Barbera characters. It was flat out wrong for the Kellogg's series and I've spent time on-line trying to correct the dates.

Below is another ad, this one from the Omaha Evening-World Herald. Omahamians (is that what they're called?) got a chance to Dial T for Taz on June 3, 1954.



Incidentally, the Warners featurette Frontier Days had an official release date of June 12, so it was being screened early in Omaha as well. Oh, and there was another Warners short with a June 19 release date, a Vitaphone Varities ten-minute reel named When Sports Were King. Warners was still offering movie houses various shorts, including sports and music reels, something called "Classics of the Screen" that ran 17 to 20 minutes, Technicolor Specials (like Silver Lightning, the story of a salmon) and George O'Hanlon as Joe McDoakes.

Bugs and other McKimson characters were drawn with hooded eyelids. An example is to the right.

Devil May Hare was written by Sid Marcus. Perhaps that's why the character is an original. Other writers for McKimson were content with purloining characters from radio (eg. Frank Fontaine's John L.C. Sivoney was turned into Pete Puma). Motion Picture Exhibitor rated it "fair." I suppose it is compared with other Bugs cartoons that year, such as Bugs and Thugs and Bewitched Bunny, but I quite like the Devil. There wasn't a lot McKimson and his later writers could do with him (see Dr. Devil and Mr. Hare for an example. If you dare) and he was eventually turned into a TV cartoon sitcom character for the kiddies.

Herman Cohen, Rod Scribner, Phil De Lara and Chuck McKimson animated this short, with Bob Givens laying it out. Dick Thomas supplied the stylised forest background art that isn't much more elaborate than his later work at Hanna-Barbera. By the time this was released, they were all unemployed. The McKimson unit was eliminated in March 1953 but, apparently after some debate, reactivated almost a year later.

We have more about the McKimson family and the T. Devil in this post.

So Long For Now

This concludes our regular posts on Tralfaz.

15 obituaries are banked and will appear at the proper time.

We didn't expect to resume regular posts last July, but it happened. It's possible we may return.

There are 5,100 posts here so there is a lot to go through. We hope some of your favourite cartoons are represented here.

Update: Tralfaz will return for one week, starting next Monday.

Like a Moose Jaw Needs a Hat Rack

Have you heard the one about Jack Benny showing up in a church in Moose Jaw?

No, this isn’t a joke. It actually happened.

Well, we should clarify that it wasn’t Jack himself but his voice.

May 1939 was an unusual month for Jack. It was a month after he was ordered to pay a fine in a jewellery smuggling case and columnists like Jimmy Fidler pointed out the charges had absolutely no effect on Benny’s career. In fact, radio newsman Tom Fizdale reported Jack’s management worked out a pay increase that month to $15,000 a week (and staved off an attempt by General Foods to change his sponsorship from Jell-O to Grape Nuts Flakes).

At the start of the month, he was a batter in a celebrity ball game during the opening of Gilmore Field, the new home of the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League. His movie Artists and Models Abroad was still in theatres and Man About Town was set to open the following month.

His radio show, of course, was still on the air. But that isn’t what was heard at a United Church (still standing) in Saskatchewan.

Jack made guest shots on a number of radio shows. On May 16, he appeared on the Lifebuoy (Beeee-oh!!) Tuesday Night Party. Here’s what the Regina Leader-Post reported on page one the next day:

Jack Benny In Church
MOOSE JAW, May 17.—Ghosts of departed congregations of a less broad-minded era probably rolled over in their graves Tuesday night, as a musical festival program was in progress at Zion church.
A radio was set up on the stage to bring to the audience a talk to be given by Adjudicator Arthur Benjamin over the CBC. Officials, anxious lest they miss the opening remarks, turned the set on five minutes ahead of time.
They turned into the last hilarious five minutes of a comedy broadcast, with Jack Benny rowing violently with Dick Powell. The audience, momentarily startled, giggled a bit. But nobody moved to turn the radio off.
Set at full volume, the set blared forth wise-cracks and riotous laughter, a blurb that the United States had more bath tubs than any other country in the world.
Then, to cap it all off, wide-mouthed Martha Raye swung into it ditty about “Three Little Fishes” who swam to the dam. It was not festival music. It was rowdy-dowdy swing stuff, and it probably never blared forth in more peculiar surroundings.
The song ran its course with a hot orchestra background. There was no adjudication for Miss Raye's number.

You can hear part of the show below.



There was another unusual Benny appearance during the month, this one in person. In the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, Jack raised millions of dollars through benefit concerts to save symphony orchestras, their theatres, even their pension plans. Things were a little different in the 1930s. On May 19, 1939, Jack agreed to preside over a charity dinner in Pasadena for poor kids. He brought along announcer Don Wilson and writers Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin to add some shtick.

Here’s the pertinent part from next day’s Pasadena Star-News.

BOYS BENEFIT BY $10-PLATE BANQUET
Funds To Permit 220 To Enjoy Camp
JACK BENNY GIVES $50 DONATION
Radio Star Willing To Come Again
Approximately 220 underprivileged boys will enjoy vacations in the mountains this summer because 550 prominent Pasadena business men paid $10 a plate for their dinners last night in the Huntington Hotel.
Members of the Junior Chamber of Commerce today were jubilant over the success of last night's brilliant [sic] event. General Chairman W. H. Nicholas proudly displayed a $50 check signed by Jack Benny, who after serving as master of ceremonies declared himself completely “sold” on the Junior Chamber of Commerce plan for boys' camps.
"I've had the best time in 20 years, and if you ask me to come again next year, I'll drop everything and come over," he told Leon Kingsley to whom he presented the check. "I'll even bring my own violin."
Benny Humor Pleases
Virtually everyone attending last night's banquet got thrills from Mr. Benny's fine humor, the vaudeville entertainment provided, the "ribs" at the expense of prominent Pasadena officials and the sizzling steaks served as the main course of the dinner that cost $10 per plate.

I suspect one of the jokes at the Pasadena dinner did not include the phrase “like a moose needs a hat rack.” Morrow or Beloin were gone from his writing staff when it was heard on the air for the first time in 1947. Norman Krasna loved it, you know.

There might have been something about the feud with Fred Allen, which would reach another high point by tossing it into a movie in 1940 called Love Thy Neighbor. The photo to the right is also from May 1939 but I can’t find the source. The feud, in a way, continued after Allen’s death in 1956. Jack would reminisce about it to TV talk show audiences and even drag out his impression of Allen ridiculing him.

Prime Time Terry

Animated cartoons on prime time television?

You can go back to the early 1930s to find them. In the late 1940s, as television expanded beyond nine stations, ancient cartoons (including Van Beurens in the public domain, and silents with newly-added stock music) were put on the schedule and lapped up by kiddies. That sent stations looking for any available animated material, and syndicators snapping up TV rights for out-of-date shorts from movie studios which, with an incredible lack of foresight, were aghast at having anything to do with television, and let other companies rake in profits from their shelved, black-and-white cartoons.

However, one independent producer saw money, money, money in television. He was Paul Terry.

There’s a real irony. Terry once said he was the Woolworth’s of the animation; Disney was the Tiffany. So what did he do? He struck a deal with television’s self-proclaimed Tiffany network—CBS. First, he sold TV rights to a number of his old shorts that began turning up on the Barker Bill Show twice weekly beginning in November 1953. Then the network concocted the Mighty Mouse Playhouse, starting December 10, 1955. About two weeks later, Terry sold his entire studio and its cartoons to CBS for just under $5,000,000.

The question at 485 Madison Avenue became this: what should we do with all these cartoons?

The answer was to get the most out of their investment by plopping the cartoons in prime time. And they found a job for a chap who had begun hosting CBS’ The Morning Show on July 18, 1955 only to be replaced the following February 17—Dick Van Dyke.

His hiring made the press around May 14, 1956 and the show debuted on Wednesday, June 13, 1956 over some of the CBS television network, 7:30 p.m. in New York and 6:30 in Los Angeles (the show was not cleared on WBBM-TV in Chicago).

The programming department at CBS decided to put Cartoon Theatre up against the most venerated name in animation—Tiffany himself, Walt Disney. While Disneyland wasn’t a cartoon show, the Terry shorts (sorry, fans) looked pretty shabby next to Uncle Walt’s.

Here’s Variety’s review of the debut show, published June 20.

CBS CARTOON THEATRE
With Dick Van Dyke
Producer: Michel M. Grilikhes
Director: Howard T. Maywood
Writer: Bill Gammie
30 Mins., Wed., 7:30 p.m.
Sustaining
CBS-TV (film)
With Walt Disney obviously still a problem to CBS on Wednesday nights, Columbia decided on a try at fighting fire with fire. Having acquired 1,100 of Paul Terry’s cartoons in its purchase of Terrytoons, Inc. last fall, the network decided to collect them into half-hour form with Dick Van Dyke, ex of the ex-“Morning” show, as host and integrator.
Show, tabbed the “CBS Cartoon Theatre,” was installed last week with the hope that it might latch onto a sponsor and become a regular entry for the fall, thus relieving the CBS program and sale boys of a major headache (“Brave Eagle” ran in the same time slot all last season as a sustainer). Well, the program boys and salesmen will just have to take another Bromo—“Cartoon Theatre” just doesn't have it.
First off, the cartoons themselves weren’t particularly good—certainly not Terry’s best. Of the four, one was okay—the “Heckle & Jeckle” a weakie, the Dinky Duck” a bore and the “Gandy Goose” rather dull. Not a very good selection, even if Terry’s “Mighty Mouse” character can’t be used because it’s the basis of another CBS show.
But even assuming that there’s better fare available in the huge library, the show’s troubles aren’t over by a long shot. Van Dyke integrates the sequences in an unusual manner—but it doesn’t come off. He’s filmed in front of a tv set, and converses with the animated characters as they appear on the screen. But both the dialog and the business are strained; Dyke looks and feels uncomfortable and rather silly. So it boils down to a question not only of content but of format, with an entire revamp in order, if “Cartoon Theatre” is to make it through the summer, let alone into the fall. Chan.

The review in Broadcasting-Telecasting of July 2 isn’t too favourable, but the anonymous writer is evidently not as much of a Tom and Jerry fan as he or she thought.

CBS CARTOON THEATRE
AS LIGHT (and lightweight) summer fare, CBS-TV's newest venture into cartoonland is not likely to create any stir around network quarters or any qualms in the Disneyland camp.
Its June 20 CBS Cartoon Theatre offered viewers a group of Paul Terry cartoons, including Gandy Goose, Heckel and Jeckel [sic], plus those two delightful hellions, Tom and Jerry, pieced together with pattern by Dick Van Dyke. He commented on the authenticity of historical characters, inserted a plug for The Adventures of Robin Hood (also a CBS-TV series) and gave water safety tips for the small fry. Mr. Van Dyke has a pleasant and smooth manner about him which, far from being condescending, appears a bit too lofty for the juvenile audience.
Slated opposite ABC-TV's full-hour Disneyland for the summer, Cartoon Theatre is not apt to win many viewers during the 7:30-8 p:m. slot, any more than Arthur Godfrey is during the second half of Disneyland. Nor is it likely to influence advertisers (Cartoon Theatre is aired on a limited CBS-TV network, sustaining). It's hard to envision it as a tv staple.
This reviewer, an old Tom & Jerry fan, concedes that cartoons are popular, but isn't there a glut of them on tv already? And don't they belong on local stations instead of in prime network time?
Production costs (gross): $25,000.
Telecast June 20 by CBS-TV, 7:30-8 p.m. (EDT), sustaining.
Announcer: Dick Van Dyke; producer: Michael Grilikhes; director: Howard Magwood; writer: Bill Dammie.

While the show was intended as a summer replacement, it still had life after leaving prime time. It was given a more appropriate time slot. The series was replaced on the Wednesday night schedule with a news-quiz show hosted by Walter Cronkite.

Variety of September 5 filled in its readers.

Tootsie to Roll With CBS Cartoons
“CBS Cartoon Theatre," which has been riding the Wednesday night 7:30-8 spot as a sustainer but must make way for the Westinghouse election-themed “Pick the Winner" and subsequently the General Mills “Giant Step" quizzer, has found a new home and a sponsor to boot. CBS-TV is moving the show to Sunday at 1 p. m., starting in October, and Tootsie Roll is coming in as alternate-week sponsor.
Series is being retitled “Heckle & Jeckle," after the magpie characters of the Terrytoons cartoon series, and will also be televised in color, since the cartoons themselves were originally filmed in tint. Tootsie, incidentally, picked up half of “Tales of the Texas Rangers” last week, hence the alternate-week by on “Heckle," but CBS is reportedly close to another sponsorship deal on the show. Tootsie Roll is also using the Terrytoons facility in New Rochelle for its new animated commercials as well.

The last Cartoon Theatre aired September 12.

Van Dyke didn’t accompany the show to Sundays. Variety announced on November 21 that he would be a panellist on a new CBS game show, Nothing But the Truth. He was dumped after five shows. (The person who really got screwed was the man Goodson-Todman wanted to host it: Walter Cronkite. After a programming conflict stopped Mike Wallace from being the emcee when the show debuted as To Tell the Truth, the network told Cronkite that it was against CBS policy for him to appear on an entertainment programme {New York Times, Dec. 10, 1956}. Days later, Bud Collyer was hired for the job).

As for cartoon-starved kids, there was still something for them on Wednesdays, at least in New York. WABD had Warners cartoons from 6:30 to 7, and WOR-TV aired Crusader Rabbit from 7 to 7:30. And Uncle Walt still held court at 7:30 on the ABC network (on Sept. 19, with an animated documentary on the history of the cat, including Lambert, the Sheepish Lion).

But Where Are the Dinner Guests?

Tom is sleeping and minding his own business for the first 4½ minutes of The Little Orphan (1949 general release). Then, thanks to Jerry and Nibbles mooching a feast put out on a long table by the maid, an orange is swatted out of the baby mouse’s body and flies into Tom.



This brings on a very swift cat vs mice war. For about the next 2½ minutes, Tom is bashed in the face with a champagne cork, stabbed in the butt with a fork launched from a tempting dish of delicious Jell-O (note the dry-brush), smacked with a spoon, swallows a boomeranged decorative bulrush he set on fire and splooshed in the face with a crème pie (we will guess it is banana).




Nibbles then fires a candle which lands on the cat’s tail. The flames go up his body and turn him into a black kid, complete with curls on his head. Someone will have to explain why this is funny. I don’t get it. (At least Scott Bradley didn’t put “Old Black Joe” in the background soundtrack like he would have in a Tex Avery cartoon).



Finally, a champagne bottle is popped open. The force of the bubbles turns it into a rocket that bams into Tom’s head, sending him flying.



There’s a crash. It’s off-camera. We see Jerry and Nibbles reacting to what we can’t see, as the camera shakes. It’s just like in a Pixie and Dixie cartoon of a decade later.



Mr. Jinks, er, Tom, is no longer a stereotype as he waves a flag of surrender.



The final scene shows the three giving Grace like good little Christians.



Someone at MGM smelled Oscar-bait with this film. It was shoved into a theatre to make it eligible for an award for 1948. The Miami Herald reported on December 8th.

HOLLYWOOD, Cal.—Preview reaction to M-G-M’s Tom and Jerry cartoon, “The Little Orphan,” resulted in the birth of a new star—Nibbles, baby mouse with ravenous appetite. Result—Nibbles series with William Hanna and Joseph Barbera co-directing. Fred Quimby producing.

Indeed, the cartoon did win the Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoon). (1948 was the year Warners released What Makes Daffy Duck?, Back Alley Oproar and Bugs Bunny Rides Again. Not one was nominated. Boo).

You can see Quimby accepting the award below. I like how they didn’t waste time at the Oscars back then with endless speeches. Besides, what would Quimby say? “I really had nothing to do with making this cartoon. I’m just a mid-level executive.”

There Was a Crooked Hand

Of Fox and Hounds (1940) stars George the fox (behaving like a slick version of Bugs Bunny) and Willoughby the dog in the kind of cartoon Tex Avery never would have made a few years later.

At MGM, Tex loaded up his cartoons with gags and fired them at the audience at a brisk pace. This cartoon for Warners has a slow (but steady) pace and sets up the final, satisfying gag after two similar situations.

There are a number of scenes where George’s fingers are twisted or crooked.



Here are some examples from a creeping cycle. Whether this is Bob McKimson's work, I don't know, but even the in-betweens are solid.



“Draft No. 6102” gets the animation credit (looking at the credit rotation, my guess is it’s Rod Scribner), with the story by “Draft No. 1312” (Rich Hogan, maybe?). Johnny Johnsen provides some lovely scenery.

The short isn’t full of the crazed humour you’d expect in an Avery cartoon. It’s more of a situational involving two characters, with a third interfering only when necessary.

I’ve Heard That Joke Before

When comedians on radio got tired of jokes, they made jokes about jokes.

Fred Allen, Henry Morgan, even Boston’s Bob and Ray, pointed out radio was obsessed with making fun of Brooklyn or the La Brea Tar Pits. Morgan and the wonderful Arnold Stang had a routine, where Stang urged Morgan to jump on the overused joke bandwagon, saying Fred Allen had one about a pen that writes under water and, by procrastinating, Morgan didn’t have “one damp joke.” Morgan responded with a lovely pun that he did have a joke about a typewriter that wrote under wood.

Syndicated columnist John Crosby went further, making jokes about comedians making jokes about jokes in his missive of Friday, February 14, 1947.

RADIO IN REVIEW
By JOHN CROSBY
The All-American Joke
Peter Lind Hayes, who is developing into a very good comedian indeed, fell to complaining the other day about jokes. There were, he claimed, almost as many jokes about the Governors of Georgia as there are Governors of Georgia. Mr. Hayes, who is one of the brighter luminaries on the Dinah Shore show (C. B. S. 9:30 p. m., E. S. T. Wednesdays), explained that the Georgia Governors had moved to Number Four on the Hit Parade of jokes.
"What's Number One?” inquired Miss Shore.
"The most popular joke of the year was Kilroy was here. Number Two was the fountain pen that writes under water. In the third slot is a new entry which came up very fast."
"Bet I can guess—‘Open the Door, Richard.’ "
"Right," said Mr. Hayes some-what grimly. "Number Four was, of course, the Governors of Georgia. Numbers Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine and Ten were Artie Shaw's marriages. Eleven was President Truman's piano. Number Twelve was the joke about Leo Durocher saving up for a Larainey Day."
"Pete, what about Los Angeles pedestrians?" asked Miss Shore.
"Coming up—got the perfect number for them. Number Thirteen. Yes, Number Thirteen is Los Angeles pedestrians. Number Fourteen is Los Angeles smog, and Number Fifteen is Los Angeles."
Mr. Hayes then offered his version of the All-American Joke, a fool-proof number guaranteed to contain all the guaranteed laugh ingredients. Here it is:
"The other day the Governors of Georgia and the pedestrians of Los Angeles picked up a fountain pen that writes under water and wrote a letter to President Truman asking him to play the piano at Artie Shaw's and Leo Durocher's weddings and signed it Kilroy was here."
• • •
Well, it was a brave try, Mr. Hayes, but I feel vaguely dissatisfied with that All-American Joke. Some of the most brilliant running backs and four or five linesmen of indubitable All-American excellence have been omitted. No All-American team would be complete without a mention of Frank Sinatra. John L. Lewis, the Brooklyn Dodgers, portal-to-portal pay, Jack Benny's stinginess, Esther Williams's bathing suits, James C. Petrillo, Senator Claghorn, Don Wilson's waist line, Bob Hope's yo yo and the housing shortage.
Mr. Hayes's list calls attention to the flagrant favoritism the comedians pay to Los Angeles. President Truman's piano, Kilroy, "Open the Door, Richard," and the fountain pen that writes under water belong to the nation; the Governors of Georgia are the personal property of that state, but all the rest of the jokes have a distinctly local connotation. Hollywood and Vine is virtually the only street intersection in the world that ever gets mentioned on the radio. Hollywood's weather is more widely and unfavorably advertised than the weather any place else and Tommy Manville simply can't compete any longer with the Hollywood marriage and divorce mill. Nobody ever tells any regional jokes about the East, the Mid-West or—apart from the Georgia Governors and Senator Claghorn—the South, Chicago, which in my youth was the most prolific joke factory in the world, is hardly ever mentioned.
Also, it seems to me the joke-smiths have missed a couple of topics entirely. I don't hear all the jokes that are told on the air, Heaven forbid, so maybe I missed a few. Has any one told a joke about Staten Island's threat to secede from New York City, Admiral Byrd's expedition to Antarctica or Toots Shor's expedition to the White House? Any one who can't fashion a joke out of Toots Thor in the White House, to parephrase Mr. Shor, ain't tryin'.

Let’s look at the rest of Crosby’s columns for the week. As a side note, these columns had been banked as Crosby was on his honeymoon in Los Angeles when they were published.

Monday, February 10: Politicians and would-be politicians show up on Information Please. I’ll take Oscar Levant, thank you.
Tuesday, February 11: Jack Benny and Your Hit Parade were sponsored by Lucky Strike, which used a tobacco chant in its opening and closing commercials. Crosby delves into the cigarette spiel. We posted that column several years ago.
Wednesday, February 12: The BBC tries an intellectual programme, drama, poetry, plays and such.
Thursday, February 13: an odds-and-ends column, including Johnny Olson’s audience participation show and newsman Bob Trout on slang.

You can click on the stories to enlarge the copy. Cartoons are by Alan Ferber and Bob Moore of the Daily News in Los Angeles.

I Like Him. He's Silly

You can count on Screwy Squirrel for silly gags and the MGM cartoon studio’s artists for solid animation and dry-brush work to enhance the action.

In Happy-Go-Nutty (1944), Screwy lives up to his name by hacksawing bars on an open door at a mental hospital (for squirrels only), then climbing over a metal gate that’s already open to escape.



Here are three consecutive frames. The dry-brush makes the action look fast and smooth, instead of popping pose-to-pose.



“You know, those guys in there think I’m crazy,” Screwy tells us. He then gives us an indignant look.



Screwy then whips out the quintessential proof of insanity—a Napoleon hat. “And I am, too!” We get a demonstration (as if we need convincing)



These are consecutive frames. How about that in-between?



More dry-brush. This is part of a cycle of head pounding.



Finally Screwy rides off on an imaginary bicycle.



Director Tex Avery reprises the “fool the dog to jump over a fence” gag from Of Fox and Hounds (Warners, 1940). There’s an old vaudeville gag involving a phone call, an inexplicable second squirrel gag, a cave/darkness routine, a break from a chase for a Coo-Coo Cola and, as you might expect from Avery, a title card gag.

Heck Allen gets a story credit and Avery’s wartime crew of Preston Blair, Ray Abrams and Ed Love are the credited animators.

Screwy appeared in only five cartoons. I don’t know what else Avery might have done with him, but there are funny scenes in all of them.