Peter Thomas

Childhood was a time of voices.

In the 1960s, television was a big part of life. Television was full of commercials, with admirable announcers who were heard year after year after year. They were anonymous, unless they showed up elsewhere and got a credit; Alexander Scourby comes to mind (among many things, he was the narrator for National Geographic specials, for which he got screen credit).

There were two announcers I heard all the time back then. Their voices were instantly recognisable but for years I had no idea who they were. It was only by stumbling onto industrial films that I learned their names. One was Norman Rose who, I recently discovered, narrated all kinds of children’s records. The other was Peter Thomas.

Thomas was amazing. Or extremely fortunate. Or both. Age changes one’s voice—it did mine—and not always for the better. Thomas was still doing narration at age 90 and sounded the same as he did half a century earlier.

There is a great, almost-one-hour interview with him on the internet. He had an incredible career, starting in his home-town of Pensacola, Florida before he enlisted for war service. The local paper, on October 27, 1940, wrote: “Cub announcer, Peter Thomas, has been added to WCOA’s staff.” The same paper enlightened readers with short biographical sketches of station announcers on June 8, 1941: “PETER THOMAS—Born in Pensacola; is 18 years old; started in radio as an actor on dramatic shows over WCOA; later hired as junior announcer at WCOA; recently promoted to regular commercial announcer; will carry afternoon and late night shift; weight, 135, tall, has a decided English accent.” It left out his starring role as “Dick Denny, American Birdman.”

The paper announced, on August 17, 1941, Peter’s departure from the station to New York. He moved there to attend Stony Brook. Then came the war. Then came television. His early experiences did not include the sombre narration he would become known for. Anything but. His attitude was like Henry Morgan’s at times. The Memphis Press-Scimitar of April 10, 1950 picks up the story.

‘Unhandy Handy’ Peter Thomas, Video Star, Has a Big Role
By ROBERT JOHNSON, Press-Scimitar Staff Writer
Peter Thomas is the sort of fellow who if there is a crack in the sidewalk he will trip on it. Things just naturally happen to Peter. If an accident is waiting around for somebody to happen to, Peter will show up.
It was, perhaps, a bit of an accident that he has become probably the major local personality developed by television since WMCT went on the air. But that engaging, ingenuous personality which has maintained his popularity is all Peter's. There's something encouraging to the average spectator in watching anyone as buffeted by fate as Peter stumble thru adversity like Dagwood Bumstead triumphantly catching a bus.
Peter will be the professor in the college division of "School Days." It is to be hoped that the stage does not collapse.
Son of Minister
WMCT's "Unhandy Handy Man" is the son of English parents. His father, a Presbyterian minister in Pensacola, is an Oxford graduate. Peter, who is only 26 now, began doing juvenile dramatic parts on a Pensacola station when he was 15, began announcing and took over the night shift in 1939.
He entered the Army in 1943, went right on from the invasion thru France, Belgium, Holland and into Germany with the First Infantry Division.
"I made private first class during the Battle of the Bulge," he said.
He was a rifleman, later became a division MP. During the Battle of the Bulge he got a piece of shrapnel in his leg. "It wasn't much," he said, "but it got me a Purple Heart."
After the war, he worked with a Mobile station a year.
Charley Sullivan, WMC's chief announcer, is from Pensacola and an old friend of Peter's. When there was an opening, he arranged a chance on WMC's staff for Peter.
It was entirely chance that Peter became the Unhandy Handy Man. Henry Slavick, the station manager, had seen a program introducing new gadgets on a New York television station. He wanted something like it.
"I just happened to be the announcer on duty that night," Peter explains. The program was called "What's New."
Flustered Demonstration
Peter demonstrated a cheese cutter, a three-piece device. It fell apart on him and he couldn't get it back together. He showed a toy fire truck, activated by pressing a lever. The engine just wouldn't move.
"I got so flustered I didn't know what to do," Peter said. But he kept trying—desperately, and he talked while he tried.
Slavick, watching at home, was devastated. But then the letters and phone calls began coming in. People liked Pete's friendly clumsiness.
"I'm not a comedian," Peter says.
"I'm just not a fixer. I'm no good at all around the house.
"In the Army I always messed up inspection. One time I pulled a grenade pin and I don't know what would have happened if somebody hadn't yelled at me to get rid of it."
Peter began to get sponsors. It didn't matter that he stopped right in the middle of a commercial and muttered—"That's all he paid for." One of his sponsors is Collins & Freeman. Peter referred to Frank Freeman once as "an old goat—but he needs your business." Mr. Freeman loved it, gleefully paid one of his salesmen to let Peter demonstrate a home hair clipper on him. The clipper slipped, and a wide furrow was cut across the subject's tonsure.
Got 'Em Mystified
Right now, says Eddie Frame, WMCT's public relations man, Peter has sponsors backed up for two months. Rhea Smith, who conducts the "What's Cooking" show, says around the station they're always wondering whether to compliment Peter on some piece of business. "We never know whether he planned it or whether it just happened," she said.
He began to get well known. A cop stopped him for speeding, smiled up, 'Hello, Uncle Pete," calling him by the name the children use on "Steps to Stardom."
Two ladies watched him while he was shopping at Lowenstein's. "We're waiting for him to break something," one explained.
Peter and his wife, a Pensacola girl, live at 1927 S. Parkway E. They have a daughter, Stella Elizabeth, one-and-a-half.
"My wife lets me hold the baby," Peter said. That, playing tennis and writing short stories are his major diversions. He has never yet dropped the baby.

Thomas dropped something that year—his job in Memphis. A CBS handout found in Ohio’s Sidney Daily News of Oct. 16, 1954 reported his work in the Tennessee city had financed his education at Memphis State College and Southwestern University. He was then off for New York to record poetry on a series of syndicated programmes for the Hamilton Watch company and won an audition at CBS in 1951. Among his early assignments was announcing Faye Emerson’s TV show. The release sent to newspapers was to publicise he had replaced Dan Seymour as the announcer on the Aunt Jenny radio show (a favourite target of Bob and Ray).

The Pensacola News Journal of May 5, 1957 wrote of some of his network credits.

VOICE OF MELODY
The voice of CBS radio's late evening musical presentation, "Melody in the Night," is one of the top announcers in the radio field. He has been with CBS for nearly six years as a staff announcer and actor, going to CBS in 1950 from WMC-WMCT in Memphis, Tenn. Prior to that assignment, Thomas was an announcer for a year at WALA in Mobile.[...]
Since joining CBS Thomas has handled a number of choice assignments including "Theater of Today," "Young Doctor Malone" plus television announcing jobs on "News on New York" and the "Good Morning Show."
He has handled radio, TV and film assignments for more than 49 advertisers and has done cutting for news broadcasts during his career in broadcasting. Thomas assumed his duties as the "voice" of "Melody in the Night" on Nov. 5, 1956.

It would be impossible to name every company that employed him. You can start with IBM, Exxon and American Express. He narrated all 403 episodes of Forensic Files. He won an Oscar for the HBO documentary One Survivor Remembers. You heard him on episodes of Nova. He was an image voice for cable channels. His hometown newspaper obituary mentioned a wry piece of copy he read for another client: “Sadly, every year, millions of innocent cakes are mangled, mistreated and hurt, but there is something you can do. Go to the freezer section of pick up new Cool Whip topping.”

He was 91 when he died on April 30, 2016

There are likely readers who are not quite sure who I am talking about. Below is one of his many, many commercials. Surely you’ll know the voice.



And he appears on camera in this 1972 industrial film.

Attack of the Sound Waves

The ringmaster of a Dixieland-playing flea circus thinks he hears something inside a barrel in Dixieland Droopy (1954).

He pulls out a cork in the barrel and the sound comes blaring out. Being a cartoon, we have to see the sound, which appears in multi-coloured lines.



The musical fleas are on John Pettybone (played by Droopy, played by Bill Thompson), who jumps out of the barrel and it’s on to the next scene.



One wonders what MGM musical director Scott Bradley thought of being allowed to come up with a Dixieland style underscore instead of having to use ancient favourites of Avery like “My Old Kentucky Home.” (The ASCAP database confirms Bradley wrote the “Dixieland Droopy Signature Main Title” as well as the cartoon’s cues).

Avery’s animators were Mike Lah, Grant Simmons and Walt Clinton. Ed Benedict designed the cartoon with Joe Montell painting the backgrounds.

Fishy Shower

I enjoy some of the absurdity in the early Walter Lantz sound cartoons.

Here’s an example from Let’s Eat (1932). Oswald and an unnamed dog go ice-fishing for food. After a circle is cut in the ice, there’s a cut to an underwater scene when a little fish takes a shower and towels off.



The absurd part is the fish doesn’t need a shower. He’s underwater!

Later the fish gets eaten by a seal. But his skeleton is still alive.

Among the list of artists in the opening credits is Tex Avery. Ray Abrams, Bill Weber, Vet Anderson and Manny Moreno all also credited. I’ve love to know who was responsible for the backgrounds.

Five Years With Jack Benny

When the Jack Benny radio show hit the five-year mark in 1937, it wasn’t the show you may remember. There was no Rochester and Kenny Baker was still the singer. But it had evolved over that time (which included a rather acrimonious change of writers).

Jack got into some of the changes in this feature interview in the St. Louis Star and Times published May 10, 1937. He also explained how he felt comedy had changed in the U.S.

The first phrase of the story isn’t accurate. And Jack vacillated about his place of birth. The How-I-Met-Mary story changed over the years, too (the “seder” meeting, a late addition to the tale, never happened).

The writer quotes dialogue from the April 25, 1937 broadcast. St. Louis listeners would have heard the East Coast broadcast. I’ve never liked this show. I can understand it when the cast gangs up on Jack when they catch him in a lie, and he keeps building on it instead of admitting he’s BSing. In this one, Jack makes an honest mistake (that isn’t his fault; it’s the board operator’s) and even apologises but they keep bashing him throughout the show. This is one time where he doesn’t deserve it. And the Block and Sully routine seems shoehorned in.

When Jack Benny Talks, 27,200,000 Listen
By HARRY T. BRUNDIDGE
HOLLYWOOD, May 10.—His name is Benjamin Kirselsky—Jack Benny to you—and he is the world's number one radio entertainer. His radio sponsors pay him $12,500 a week (not stage money) and out of this he has only to pay the men who write his programs. Paramount Pictures pay him $125,000 in a lump sum for his every production and his 1937 income will top $1,000,000.
Under the system of rating radio stars, now accepted as authentic, he is on the top spot with 34 points; each point represents 800,000 listeners and according to this system some 27,200,000 persons hear Benny every Sunday. On a recent Sunday I went to the little theater in the NBC studio to watch him stage his program, which had been rehearsed for the first and only time an hour before. Benny hates rehearsals, says they take the punch out of a program. "My rehearsals are the worst in the world," he told me. "If they were good I'd be worried about the regular broadcast."
The little theater was packed to capacity. Tickets to broadcasts are not sold; all are given away to applicants, usually weeks in advance. (You apply in January and get a ticket for a May show.) Because tickets are hard to obtain, the visible audience is always one that is highly appreciative, ready to laugh at a joke they heard grandpa tell forty years ago. But the boys and girls on the stage at ALL broadcasts do NOT depend on the spontaneity of the audience. Someone on the stage at EVERY broadcast gives the audience the cue and laughter is turned on and off with a mere wave of the hand.

AS I settled down in the "wings," to watch the performance, Jack Benny, the star; Mary Livingston, his wife; Phil Harris, the orchestra leader; Don Wilson, the announcer, and others of the cast took their places on the stage. Michrophones [sic] were at strategic points. Each member of the cast has a copy of the script because nothing is memorized; everything is read from a script that has been prepared by professional writers, and approved by the advertising agency which represents the sponsor, and by officials of the broadcasting company. Now and then there is some extemporaneous joke or comment, but that is infrequent.
The stage manager, stop watch in hand, watches the seconds tick away. Then, with a long sweep of his arm he indicates that the program "is on the air." What follows — save for the scripts in the hands of the performers—looks exactly like a scene from a musical comedy.
Don Wilson, the announcer, introduces the program by naming it and saying it is starring Jack Benny, with Mary Livingstone and Phil Harris and his orchestra. The orchestra opens the program with "Hallelujah, Things Look Rosy Now."
The number is completed. Wilson steps close to the nearest mike.
WILSON: Spring's the time to wake up and live ... swing into the new tempo . . . go places and do things—"
As the announcement (or plug) is finished and the music fades, Benny reads from his script:
JACK: Hey, Mary, come here. Don't you love the way Phil wiggles around when he leads the orchestra? Look at him.
MARY: Yeah! If he could only see himself. (She giggles.) He sure is cute though, Isn't he?
JACK: Yes, but he doesn't have to show off so much. After all it isn't television.
WILSON: Jack, quiet, your microphone is open.
JACK: What?
WILSON: Everybody can hear you.
JACK: Oh, I'm sorry.
(MUSIC UP AND FINISH.)
CROWD: (Applause.)

THE foregoing is direct quotation from the script. Even the crowd's cue is written in! But why the applause at that point? Ask the script writers—I don't know!
With the broadcast at an end, there was a mad rush of musicians, spectators, electricians and others to gain the street; Benny, his secretary, Harry Baldwin, and I joined the milling mob, battled through the perennial autograph seekers and finally reached the seclusion of a booth in "The Grotto," next door to the Melrose avenue Studio.
"Maybe I ought to feel a little impressed with myself for within a few days—May 2—I will celebrate my fifth year on the air," Benny said. "But as a matter of truth I am far more impressed with radio than with myself. I've made some strides in those sixty months and may be a bit more polished on May 2 when I give my 287th broadcast, than I was on my first, but radio has moved ahead so rapidly that in the same period I feel my own progress has been that of a snail on a treadmill by comparison.
"In common with other so-called funny men on the radio five years ago, most of my stuff was made up as I went along. We didn't spend much time working over a script for we figured that if a joke was bad we could think of something on the spur of the moment that would make it a lot better.

THAT was a fallacy. Many times as we stood before the mike our brains wouldn't think up anything and many times the jokes we did think up were more feeble than those they replaced. That is one of the improvements comedians have made. Scripts are written by experts, far in advance of a program, read, revised, worked over and, usually, revised again after a rehearsal.
"Compare the picture of my first broadcast with the one we did this afternoon. In the first broadcast I had an audience of forty or fifty persons jammed into a small corner of a studio that wouldn't have held twenty in comfort—if everyone breathed right. Then I was in a glass cage, separated from the audience. While radio listeners could hear the suppressed giggles of my visible audience. I couldn't I had to watch the audience through the sheet of glass and wait until they closed their mouths so I could go ahead with the next joke. I got to be a great lip reader, but since I wanted to be a comedian and not an interpreter, I had the glass taken out and the sounds let in. When others found that this idea worked without blasting the microphone off its foundations, they did the same thing, and we haven't been bothered by glass partitions since."
"There were other odd little customs in broadcasting five years ago. The first time I stepped up to a mike I was told that if I so much as moved my head, the listeners would be unable to follow my words. I did a lot of broadcasts with my head glued to one spot in front of the microphone, and I suffered from chronic stiff neck. Today I can stroll all over the stage, virtually go out for a walk during a broadcast, and still be picked up by the small mikes now in use, for they have been made that flexible and sensitive. The NBC trademark letters would have to be made small enough to hang on a woman's charm bracelet to find the mikes we actually use today.
"My hope is that for the next five years radio will decide to amble along at the leisurely pace we comics have taken so that we comics can make the advances that radio has wide."

BENNY, five feet, eleven inches tall, well groomed, with blue eyes, brown hair, and weighing 160 pounds, has a far-away look in his eyes and goes off into day-dreaming trances. In one of these he elbowed me and returned to mere earth with, "I beg your pardon—what were you saying?"

WAUKEGAN, ILL., was my birthplace," said Benny," and the date was 1894. I was a St. Valentine's Day present. Father was a haberdasher in Waukegan and I grew up with a collar and shirt under one arm and a fiddle under the other. It's the same fiddle which Fred Allen has been discussing for weeks — discussing whether I can play it. Pop thought that as a haberdasher's clerk I would make a good fiddler, but orchestra leaders put that thought in reverse, so I decided to go into vaudeville with a monologue and a fiddle. Theater managers, listening to me, decided pop, the orchestra leaders and myself were all nuts because, as a monologist, I was a good fireman or deckhand on a boat. "We got into the war and I left vaudeville flat and joined the navy. I thank the navy. Were it not for the sailor suit they gave me at Great Lakes I still wouldn't have the nerve to try to get away with what I have been getting away with ever since. That sailor suit gave me a lot of confidence because people respected wartime sailors; they were supposed to be hard guys.
"The war ended and I went back into vaudeville. More and more I cheated on fiddling and leaned heavily on nonchalant chatter. It got so I was being paid good money just for idling through fifteen minutes of monologue.
"Eventually I worked up to $2,500 a week and I'm frank to say I was making almost as much or more at $2,500 a week than I'm making now—and that goes for everything I'm making. I do not pay off the stage show out of my income; I pay only my writers. But Uncle Sam with his income tax law is the guy I'm really working for.
"I told you before the broadcast about writers—the important thing is that a writer should know what is bad. If he can select the good from the bad he's a genius. You can take my word for it. The bad material is what hurts.

MOST writers try to be ultra-sophisticated and in the attempt, forget that with the coming of the automobile, the radio, and the motion picture, city limits were all but wiped out. The line between the urban and the sub-urban today is so fine as to be almost indistinguishable. There's no such thing as a 'hick' any more and the 'small' town has vanished. The Missouri Ozarks farmer demands an ever higher grade of entertainment—and a newer joke—than the New York City broker, because the Ozark fellow spends more time at the radio, listening, than does his city cousin and knows all the answers.

"Comedians used to say 'It will be great for the hicks in the sticks but Broadway will give you the horse laugh.' Now the comics assert: 'Broadway and Hollywood will giggle but toss it out—it won't get by in the sticks.' "No longer do the so-called horny-handed sons and daughters of the man with the hoe weep at such songs as ‘You Made Me What I Am Today;’ they're too busy singing Robin and Rainger love songs, and they're swinging about the barn to the tunes of Benny Goodman and Phil Harris and can't be bothered with 'Turkey in the Straw.'

I SHALL illustrate my point. We had a gag that laid them in the aisles in New York. Here it is:
“'Q. Who was the lady I seen you with last night?'
“'A. What were you doing in that part of town?'
"But you should have read the fan mail from the farms, villages, and small towns; letters that topped that gag in 100 different ways, and all old.
"The Burns and Allen program is one of the most popular on the air and it couldn't be that without the warm following of fans in the rural districts. I happen to know that their fan mail shows that one of their most rib-tickling gags was appreciated far more by their rural listeners, than by the so-called city folks. Here's the gag: Milton Watson was leaving the Burns and Allen program and after the usual build up, Gracie told Milton to kiss her goodby. There were a series of torrid kisses and then: GRACIE: Goodbye GEORGE. I'm going with Milty.
"Modern?
"To be successful on the air you have to write up to the small towns and rural districts, not down. The greatest mistake a comedian can make is underestimating the intelligence of the audience. Those who make that mistake don't last long. They're too lazy to dig up new material, or too dumb to understand that people in the 'sticks' also enjoy subtle humor."

MY BIGGEST thrill in radio was when a guy in the Ohio state penitentiary, about to be electrocuted, wrote and told me he was very much interested in my feud with Fred Allen, over the subject of whether I could really fiddle. He wrote that he wanted to know the outcome of that feud before sitting on the hot seat. Allen and I both wrote to him and told him how the feud would end. The next week the guy got a commutation of his sentence to life imprisonment and wrote us the Ohio prison inmates had a hearty laugh on the two of us because they knew all along that our feud was bound to end that way.

MY LIFE has been mostly work. I never did anything last night that the world was crazy about the next day. Nothing I ever said tonight was commented on tomorrow. It has just been a procession of programs. I've spent twenty-five years climbing up the greasiest ladder that was ever greased and believe me, you can slide down a damned sight faster than you can climb up.
"My routine hasn't changed. I'm doing the same thing on the air today I did when I was a master of ceremonies at shows in the Orpheum Theater in St. Louis.
"My most exciting experience on the radio was the night of March 14, in New York. Fred Allen and I had been going after each other for three months and on that night we got together, threw away our scripts and went after each other, tonsil to tonsil."

BENNY, now making his eighth motion picture, was preparing to leave and I reminded him he had told me nothing of Mary Livingstone, his wife.
"Sorry," he said. "I met her in Los Angeles. She was a sales girl in a department store and was pinch hitting for a girl with whom an actor friend had made a date for me, but who failed to show. Mary kept the date and, although I didn't know it, I fell in love and that fact didn't dawn on me until I wrote to her sister and learned Mary was engaged to a guy in Vancouver, B. C. I suggested a trip to Chicago. Mary came to Chicago and I proposed and was accepted. We were married on Friday instead of Sunday because we both figured if we waited until Sunday the wedding probably would never take place.
"Would you believe it, we've been married ten years and six months and it only seems like ten years?"

Being Backus

UPA’s Mr. Magoo cartoons had sight gags (in more ways than one), but what really benefited them was the vocal performance of Jim Backus.

How much of the dialogue was improvised is unclear, but Backus could go from sweet to annoyed to emphatic. He gave Magoo’s personality some colour amongst endless sketchy backgrounds and a continual inability to read signs.

The TV writer for one of the newspapers in Memphis gave a short report on Backus and Magoo in its edition of September 5, 1961. He didn’t actually speak with Backus. Charles Collingwood did. The writer simply relayed parts of their conversation from the September 1 edition of Person To Person on CBS. There is a mention of how Backus was making his big money from Magoo—not on the cartoons, but on a series of animated commercials for General Electric light bulbs. It ran for several years and we can only imagine the Thurston Howell-like residuals they brought in.

The column ends with words about prime-time cartoons that were to start the 1961-62 season. The trend came and went quickly. As prime-time programming, it was a failure. However, reruns on weekend mornings were welcomed by kids everywhere and kept the characters living. And making money for their owners.

In T-V Cartoons, Voice Comes First
By ROBERT JOHNSON, Press-Scimitar Staff Writer
When Person to Person cameras peered into his home the other night, Jim Backus answered a question which had never worried me it all, but which in retrospect seemed interesting.
Jim had one of his greatest successes as the Voice of Mister Magoo, the near-sighted little bumbler who won an Academy Award and is now one of the busiest salesmen in the commercials.
The question: Which comes first in an animated cartoon, the figure or the voice?
It’s the voice, said Backus. He gets a script, studies it then puts his part on tape. The pen-and-ink fellows then have to do the hard part— matching the animation to the voice.
Altho I have been around cartoon studios numerous times, I had somehow just always taken it for granted that they made the cartoons, then the actors match the voices in.
Saves Actors a Lot of Work
The way they do it not only makes sense, but it must save the actors who are voices for cartoon characters a lot of work. It's almost like working radio, with a script there to read from.
Backus was one of the best subjects Person to Person has ever presented, I thought. He is not the biggest of stars, but certainly he has been a successful one, and financially he must be far ahead of some of the glamor faces which grace the magazine covers.
At least, judging from the luxury apparent in the Backus home, and the first view we got of him walking through some manicured grounds which might have gone well with Windsor Castle, and two servants who appeared on cue, being a cartoon voice has done quite well for Backus.
The only trouble, he said, is that he works so hard to be able to afford his luxury that he seldom gets a chance to enjoy it. It even costs money to be on Person to Person, he said wryly, because his wife had their home redecorated and got new drapes.
But Backus also has another gold mine—the residual payments he gets from I Married Joan, one of the first successful situation comedies. The series has been rerun numerous times in this country, is now in the foreign market, which is turning out to be important for t-v film makers just as it was for the Hollywood feature film makers. The series turned out even more popular in England than in this country, Backus said, because in England the idea of a judge being kept on even keel by a somewhat haywire wife was even more ludicrous, because the English hold their judges in somewhat more awe than we do, and the aggressive wife is not so common.
Wears His Success Well
Backus is one of those happy-go-lucky fellows who seem to be able to have success and still do what they want and continue to be highly individualistic in personality—altho sometimes in their moments out of the public eye they are not quite as happy as they seem.
Backus is a strong, unconventional personality. He still wears suits, in Hollywood, and says that his swimming pool is rectangular, not one of those exotic shapes. He was an interesting subject for Person to Person, despite the stilted stiffness which so often pervades this program, because he insisted on being himself. He is humorous without effort, and he had a driving energy. He and Mrs. Backus write in their spare time, turned out one book, "Rocks on the Roof," and are now working on another, which he was persuaded with difficulty from not titling "Son of Rocks on the Roof." He says they have discovered the ideal collaboration arrangement. In bed.
I shall miss Person to Person when it leaves us after this summer run of shows which were made some time ago. It is interesting to see the surroundings in which well known people live.
10 New Cartoon Series Coming
The cartoon voices will really come into their own this fall, because among the major trends in programming cartoons are making a strong showing.
There will be at least 10 new cartoon series coming on, largely as the result of success of The Flintstones, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear and Rocky and His Friends.
The cartoons have undergone a big change from the old format, when cats banging mice around and then getting caught in the vacuum cleaner, etc., was the standard procedure.
Sometimes I have watched curiously as Heckle and Jeckle or Bugs Bunny set various characters on fire, lured them over cliffs, banged them with clubs, etc. It seems like concentrated sadism.
But the trend now is toward sophistication, toward derisive satire. Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound have more adults than children watching, and the appreciation of Huckleberry has become a sort of highbrow status symbol.
Arnold Stang as Top Cat
Top Cat, from Screen Gems, which will debut on ABC at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 27, is from the Hanna-Barbara Studios, which have had the Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, Huckleberry Hound and Flintstones hits in three years. The voices include some of the most successful character actors, with Arnold Stang in the title role, Allen Jenkins, Maurice Gosfield (he was Doberman in the Bilko show), Marvin Kaplan, Leo De Lyon and John Stephenson.
Beatrice Kaye, the singer, will be the voice of Alvin in The Alvin Show, based on the chipmunk recording stars.
Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll (Amos and Andy), whom I would have thought would be content to sit around and count their millions, will be the voices of Calvin and the Colonel, a cartoon about a bear and a fox.
Now Screen Gems, which seldom moves except from strength, announces a new technique called Tri-Cinemation. The company has made a deal to produce a series in which life-like dolls, described as "exactly like human beings, down to the most precise detail, from the wrinkles in the skin to the inflection of a finger," will be made to move on film.
People—who needs them? Except for the voices.

The critics’ attitude toward Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear was fairly consistent. They, and parents groups, cried against what they saw as too much violence in old theatrical cartoons (and Three Stooges shorts, for that matter). Yes, there were dynamite explosions and, yes, Quick Draw McGraw would shoot himself on occasion. But these were different. They were less frenetic than the old Warner Bros cartoons and seemed a lot less painful than what Famous/Paramount had been pumping out. The characters were amusing, clever or funny, so they got a passing grade.

The idea of “protecting” children from seeing cartoon characters engaging in slapstick violence strikes me as pointless. So does emasculating animated characters to become educators for whatever causes parental pressure groups want. Let funny characters be funny.

More Hidden Warner Bros. Gags

There’s nothing wonderful about Those Were Wonderful Days, a Merrie Melodies cartoon made not too many months after Leon Schlesinger built his own cartoon studio from scratch after a flap with sub-contractors Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising.

This one is another 1934 Warners cartoon that uses the standard-issue 1890s stage melodrama as the peg for its plot after the first half is taken up with gags in a saloon of the era.

Example? Beer steins sprout fish lips and sing along to a player piano tinkling out the title tune.



Having already lost interest in this stale effort, I wondered if there would any examples of inside jokes on background signs. I was not disappointed.



You can see on the left of the frame above that writer Tubby Millar is into the cut-plug tobacco business. Whether “Higgin’s” in the background refers to Bill Higgins, I don’t know. The Los Angeles City Directory for 1933 gives his occupation as a “cartoonist” and the following year, he is listed as a “studioworker,” but doesn’t say where. His 1940 draft card reveals he was at MGM. He got animation screen credits on cartoons for John Sutherland Productions in the 1950s. Higgins was a native of Muncie, born in 1911, and died in California in 1991.



Ah, ha! There’s a partly-obscured poster for “Charlotte Darling’s Burlesque Queens.” At the time, she would have been in the ink and paint department at Schlesinger’s. She was an early union activist and secretary of the Screen Cartoonists Guild in 1937. She testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee and you can read her testimony here.

This cartoon ends with the villain happily bidding us “So long, folks!”



Sound technician Bernie Brown is the credited supervisor on this short, with animation credits going to Paul J. Smith and Don Williams.

The cartoon seems to have been restored for television. We hope this means a home video release.

Speedy Cat

It’s been said the increasing pace of the action in Tex Avery cartoons at MGM rubbed off on the studio’s Hanna-Barbera unit.

Here’s an example from Mouse Cleaning (1948).

Tom’s been told by the maid to keep the house clean. In one scene, he realises eggs are going to fall from the air and splatter on the floor. The first drawing is held for ten frames.



Then he realises what’s about to happen. He scrunches down, then the take (with alternating drawings).



Tom scoots out of the scene.



Here’s the speed of the action. These frames are back to back. The first has Tom leaving. He’s already back in the second frame.



The usual team of Irv Spence, Ken Muse, Ed Barge and Ray Patterson receive the animation credit on screen. No background or layout artist are credited, but we could be viewing the work of Bob Gentle and Dick Bickenbach (to be honest, I don’t know which MGM cartoons were laid out by Gene Hazelton).

Everything is Beautiful?

The early 1970s may not have been the Golden Age of Variety Shows, but there were sure an awful lot of them on television then.

It wasn’t only comedy stars like Carol Burnett, Flip Wilson and Redd Foxx who got their own hour-long fun-fests. It seems that all kinds of people with hit songs were handed their own variety extravaganzas.

Two singers of novelty songs back then were Jim Stafford and Ray Stevens. Both of them were crossover artists, getting airplay on MOR, rock and country stations. A broad demographic led to larger potential audiences, so both were inked to TV contracts.

Stevens had appeared on Andy Williams’ show. So it was he was Williams’ summer replacement in 1970.

By then, he had cut several hit records over the course of eight years, made guest shots with Johnny Cash, Dean Martin and Glen Campbell, and hosted the Grammys, but his producers decided to go with a gimmick that he was unknown to TV viewers. His series was called Andy Williams Presents the Ray Stevens Show??? (with three question marks).

Here’s a bit of background from one of the newspaper syndicates, published around June 17, 1970; the show debuted on the 20th.

Ray Stevens Replaces Andy in Show
By CHARLES WITBECK
HOLLYWOOD — Who is Ray Stevens?
This question comes up every Saturday night on the Andy Williams summer replacement series, kidding the young, sleepy-eyed host Stevens, who happens to be the author of the top-ranked pop tune, "Everything is Beautiful."
Judging from the first two shows, Stevens enjoys playing the unknown. He beams when the cast interrupts a line of dialogue, and pretends to take punishment as the piano lids bang down on his fingers at least during the hour, allowing Ray to cry out in anguish after much sucking in of air.
The Georgian composer acts as if he were just one of the performers, not the star. The "put-down" approach was adapted by producers Allen Blye and Chris Beard [sic] after Stevens taped four Andy Williams guest spots during the winter, receiving a "totally favorable" mail response, beating out runner-ups [sic] Don Ho and Jonathan Winters.
"We figured the humorous angle was the only way to go," says Blye. "Ray isn't sexy and handsome like Glen Campbell. He's cute and has a sense of fun. Later, we learned he was a deep, deep kid judging from his new album 'America, Communicate With Me.' "
While viewers are in the dark over Ray Stevens, the pop music business knows the singer as a dependable source of record hits. Beginning with "Ahab, the Arab," in '62, Ray, out of Clarksdale, Ga., knocks them out year after year —"Mr. Businessman," "Harry, the Hairy Ape," "Gitarzan," "Along Came Jones."
"I have 15 years of classical piano behind me," Ray said, flying into Hollywood from his Nashville home for a round of publicity interviews. Wife Penny, with big saucer eyes and a handsome curved nose, sat quietly by, listening.
The songwriter spends half his time at the piano, playing with ideas. The lyric or the tune may come first, it doesn't matter. When something pleases, a few notes are jotted down on paper and put inside the piano bench. Overflow goes into a big chest. Or, Ray will write a melody, and tape it on a cassette for safekeeping.
One morning the composer started turning pages of a rhyming dictionary, and in a few hours, a novelty piece, "Gitarzan," emerged. "I sung it to a friend over the phone," Ray told me. "He said it was nice. Then I stuck it away in the piano bench. Two years later we moved and I found the song again. It pays to move now and then."
The Stevens’ songwriting career began at the age of 17 when he gathered up his nerve and went to Atlanta contacting music publisher Bill Lowery. Ray played one song, and Lowery politely offered encouragement. In a few days, the novice was back with another, "Silver Bracelet," and this improved piece earned Lowery's backing and led to a contract with Capitol Records.
Nowadays Stevens writes, arranges and produces his own product. "I junk from 75 to 80 per cent of my ideas," he estimates, "and keep about 20 per cent. Only five per cent turn out to be any good."
So far the writer shows a sensitive ear for his own work. 1968 was a vintage year with two hits and two misses, and '70 may equal the high with "Everything Is Beautiful," riding along at a million-and-a-half sales during a recession, a Broadway score for "Johnny Appleseed" in the making, and his serious album, "America, Communicate With Me" due in August, a "poetic, arty inside view of the country about dope, Vietnam and the man in the street." "I like to think I'm a sounding board," says Ray "I want to be known as a singer of the people. I don't want to turn my songwriting into an ego trip, to think everything I do is good."
And that is the aim of the summer show — keep Ray in his place. Avoid the big head, laugh at the star.

Dwight Newton of the San Francisco Examiner wasn’t impressed. His review appeared on July 3, 1970. Let’s face it. If you’re doing an Al Jolson joke in 1970, you’re stretching.

A Cornball from Canada
Ray Stevens, an amiable, soft-sell, composer-singer from Nashville, Tenn., is Andy Williams' summer television replacement. Though Ray is a big noise on records ("Mr. Businessman," "Ahab the Arab," "Everything Is Beautiful," etc.), he was, until the summer series began, the Mr. Nobody of television.
Andy had hosted him a few times; that was about it.
Andy tried to get Ray's show off to a talked-about start with a continuing "Who is Ray Stevens?" gimmick. For instance: Andy appeared on last week's show for about four seconds. In response to the question, "Who is Ray Stevens?" Andy mumbled: "Didn't he use to be Stella Stevens?"
In another cameo bit, Bill Dana solemnly observed: "Ray Stevens will be remembered a long time after Al Jolson is forgotten, but not until then."
Two such quips were cute enough but when two dozen more in the same vein were sounded off, the name of Ray Stevens became a pain in the ear. The whole show became a pain in the neck. A shame because Ray is affable and magnetic. He is a highly skilled contemporary pop musician.
His competency was evident whenever he and his piano closed in on a ditty such as last week's "A Catchy Little Tune" . . . "when it had no place to go, it became the closing number on a rock and roll show.")
Tomorrow night Stevens will vocalize the instrumental sounds on his self-written "Freddy Feel-good and His Funky Little Five-Piece Band."
* * *
STEVENS IS a product of our new times. His show is a product of infantile asininity. Never in his lowest depths did Andy Williams have to cope with such a clanging clutter of disorganized guck. One guy never performs but takes thousands of bows. Sketches are performed by sacks and bags. Gags are fired like flack in an air raid. The girls are pretty, the jokes are pretty bad.
The show is stitched together like a poor man's "Laugh-In." Correction: Make that a beggar's "Laugh-ln." Because the show is running on a beggar's budget. The show is produced at Toronto, Canada, for two reasons: (1) Any show can be produced much, much cheaper in Canada than in Hollywood. (2) Any show produced in Canada is not subject to Canada's new quota restrictions on U.S. Television shows.
Stevens' two continuing "star" guests are Lulu from Scotland who bounces through most of the scenes, and Mama Cass Elliot who does her thing and vanishes. Last week she was a frog making a fly vanish by swallowing it ("rib-bit rib-bit.")
* * *
THE FINALE and show-stopper of last week's program was a rousing rendition of "Happy Days Are Here Again" treated as a spiritual — "Jesus walks, "Wash my sins away," "Happy days." As the closing credits rolled, Stevens was on his feet, bustling through the audience, shaking hands, kissing girls.
Ray Stevens has the stuff that Andy Williamses are made of. That's why Andy brought him into the Williams stable. But can Stevens survived [sic] the cornball goings-on of the summer series? It is doubtful that Andy could.

Dirk MacDonald of the Montreal Star was less charitable in his review of Aug. 15.

You have to be pretty starved for something to do to have to expose yourself to most of television's summertime programming.
No longer is it the mere problem of reruns filling the humid hours; the networks have realized that some degree of originality just might be useful at this time of year.
Realization and implementation, however, are two entirely different beasts. In terms of variety shows, we seem to have little to draw us to the set in the evenings. The bulk of the summer programming is so damned bland that you'd be better off digging out the antiquated Viewfinder. Those still pictures of Niagara Falls can be mighty entertaining, after all.
The goals of the Canadian Radio Television Comission [sic] hardly have been achieved by CTV's highly-publicized production of such programs as The Ray Stevens Show. It was a senseless substitute for Andy Williams. I'm sure the Canadian-content cause was set back five years by the overworked techniques used on the Stevens' hour.
As far as I'm concerned, Allan Blye and Chris Beard should stay in California, for all the imagination they brought to the Toronto-produced show. It was a second-rate American program. stamped "Made-in-Canada.” It doesn't fulfill the CRTC's stated objective, by my reasoning, CTV’s Murray Chercover notwithstanding.
The gimmickry of the Stevens' show was nothing less than appalling. It probably was tremendous a couple of years ago with Laugh-In — and Blye and Beard have won Emmy awards for their work — but it most certainly has paled. [...] Allan Blye, meanwhile, said this about the Ray Stevens show in an interview with Cynthia Gunn for THE STAR.
"It's difficult to simply describe the show. We have two people who do everything they do from inside burlap sacks. We have one young boy who's 24 years old, who we've dubbed The World's Greatest Comedian ... we have the Swamp Girl who appears a number of times on our show.
"We also happen to have Ray Stevens, who's the star of the show . . .”
The Stevens' program came off as a bore, caught up in fanciness.

A number of newspaper articles made a comparison to Laugh-In. That couldn’t have been accidental. Chris Bearde was a writer on the show. So were Stevens’ writing supervisors Jack Hanrahan and Phil Hahn. One of the other writers was a young man who appeared after the end credits of the first show—a young man who had worked with producer Allan Blye on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour—Steve Martin (complete with arrow through his head).

Cynthia Lowry of the Associated Press noted in a column the night of the debut that NBC’s deal called for eight programmes and two repeats. The series was never picked up for the fall. Stevens continued recording, climbing the charts in various formats in 1974 with “The Streak.” He’s been inducted into a number of music halls of fame. His attempt at variety TV never hurt his career.

You can view the debut episode of his show below.

If It Got Laughs the First Time...

The almost-uproariously funny Cool Cat strolls past a mechanical pink elephant in his 1967 debut cartoon.



Inside the elephant is Colonel Rimfire, who pops up and says “I tought I taw a puddy tat.”



Well, Tweety got laughs with the line. 20 years earlier.

Writer Bob Kurtz evokes more old Warner Bros. humour, this time from the Chuck Jones unit. Cool Cat decides to “split the scene” and exits stage right (oh, right, that was another cartoon “cat.”). Instead of following him, the mechano-elephant, for whatever reason, retreats to Larry Hanan’s flowery background and jumps.



It turns out Colonel Rimfire and the elephant fall over a cliff. Why? Well, the coyote got laughs with it. Except Jones and Mike Maltese did a lovely job of setting up the cliff-drops in the roadrunner shorts. This comes out of nowhere.



Can anyone name which Roadrunner cartoon this artwork was pilfered from?

Alex Lovy might as well be named “Colonel Misfire” for directing this sorry excuse for a cartoon. There was so much wasted talent involved, including Kurtz and Larry Storch. Veteran animators Volus Jones, Ted Bonnicksen, Eddie Solomon and La Verne Harding are credited. Lovy must have brought sound effects with him from Hanna-Barbera, as Hal Geer edits them into the sound track.

Word is that Warner Bros. is not planning to follow up the "Blew Up" movie with a feature starring Cool Cat.

Shocking a French Poodle

Crazy Mixed Up Pup (1955) has a plot only Tex Avery could think up. A human is given dog plasma and a dog is given human plasma, which results in both taking on each other’s characteristics. They continue to switch back and forth.

In this scene, Rover acts like a human and pats Fifi, the other pet dog in the house. "Hi, Fifi. How’s my little old French poodle?" says Rover.



The first drawing below is held on 20 frames, then comes the take.



This was the second of the four cartoons Avery directed for Walter Lantz before he got out of commercial animation. Don Patterson, La Verne Harding and Ray Abrams are the animators.

The male voices are supplied by Daws Butler. The dog voice is another of his takes on Ed Norton of The Honeymooners, and even says "You're a good kid" to Maggie, just like Norton did to his wife Trixie.