Pun of Tomorrow

Big takes weren’t the only thing in Tex Avery’s animation arsenal. He liked visual puns. Sometimes he’d make fun of his own puns. Others, he didn’t.

Here’s an example of the latter from Car of Tomorrow (1951). Narrator Gil Warren tells us about a brand-new model. “But we advise against buying it.”



Cut to the car’s hood. “It still has a few bugs in the motor.” The hood lifts up.



Roy Williams and Rich Hogan are both given story credits on this. I don’t know who designed the cartoon; Gene Hazleton maybe? I quite like the approximations of early ‘50s cars. Johnny Johnsen drew and painted the backgrounds. The animators are Mike Lah, Walt Clinton and Grant Simmons.

He's No Bing

Back in the network radio days, word when around that Jack Benny was dependent on his writers. Jack joked about it. Harry Conn actually believed it.

But you’ll find a number of newspaper articles in the Golden Age that spoke of the collaborative nature of the writing on the show. While Jack didn’t do the writing, he sat in with the writers as they dissected the script. He was his show’s script editor and approved every word, even those the writers talked him into that he didn’t particularly like.

This story appeared in the Springfield Sunday Union and Republican, July 3, 1938. There is no byline.

Jack Benny Goes to Town In Sustained Popularity
Radio's Ace Comedian Leans On His ‘Gag’ Writers But Not So Completely as Do Bing Crosby and the ‘Good News’ Performers—Sets Own Pace for Writers and Cast Alike
Radio's consistent No 1 feature—the Jack Benny show—left the air waves last Sunday night but will be back in its accustomed spot on the same network 13 weeks hence, or on October 2. The comedian, voted for three years running as tops in his field, and his wife, Mary Livingstone. and the rest of their troupe take this leave of the radio audience annually to enjoy a well-deserved vacation—more than often a vacation fraught with even more intensive movie and other work.
But they're off the air for the summer, now, so there can be no press agentry suspected in a postlude devoted to a diagnosis of their success on the radio. Recently this column accredited the writer of Bing Crosby's show and the writers and producers of "Good News of 1938," which precedes it every Thursday night on the Red network, with a fairer share of the success of the show than the "big name" performers themselves contributed. Does the same hold true for Benny's performances?
Probably not. Jack Benny's program hasn't the pace of Bing Crosby's nor the variety of "Good News of 1938." But it has a peculiarly individualistic style of humor and presentation that is Jack Benny's—and his alone. It succeeded when Harry Conn, the noted gag writer, was doing his scripts; it succeeded just as well in the recent months when Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin were writing his gags.
Individual Style
The reason simply is—Jack Benny. He knows precisely what he wants in the way of program structure; he personally sets the pace for the whole show; he is perfectly willing to be ribbed unmercifully by his cast (something few other star comedians will stand for), and he has a peculiar style of humor that is debonair New York and Hollywood and at the same time naive Waukegan, Ill.
Assuredly the former fiddler-trouper from Waukegan has come a long way in radio and the films, thanks to a peculiar popular appeal that must set him to wondering himself how long it can last. That he was just another comedian and master-of-ceremonies before he struck the responsive chord on the wave lengths three or four years ago, everyone along the Rialto recalls.
One of the little known facts about the Benny shows, which have lately been staged chiefly in Hollywood because of his new domicile there, is that even his orchestra does not hear the script rehearsal. Thus the sallies of laughter from the audience get a spontaneous spark from the cast itself. More than that, everyone in the cast likes working with Jack Benny, though he is as serious in preparation and rehearsal as he in funny in actual performance. Every line is studied intensively for the right build-up; every situation gauged for the proper reaction. Jack and his scripters work the full week to prepare for each week's end performance; while in New York at least, they spent the whole of Sunday afternoon in rehearsal.
All of this is not to detract from Jack Benny's writers, two extremely well paid young men to whom he is perfectly willing to give credit and kudos. That the writers are less the mainsprings in the Benny show than they are in the Crosby and "Good News" shows is no reflection on the talents of Messrs Morrow and Beloin.
Bill Morrow is a 29-year-old Chicagoan, not many years out of Northwestern university. He became a press agent upon graduation, traveling the circuits with many shows. While at this work he submitted suggestions for material to Jack Benny, Phil Baker and others. In March, 1938, after Harry Conn had left him, Benny needed a gag writer badly and invited Morrow to join him in Hollywood. There he teamed Morrow up with Ed Beloin, a 27-year-old graduate of Columbia university, who had been a humor magazine writer while in college.
Beloin's hookup with Benny was fortuitous. He had submitted a script to Fred Allen, who couldn't use it at the time. Fred, being an intimate friend of Jack Benny, sent Beloin and his script over to Benny. The comedian didn't call upon Beloin until some months later when he sent him a hurry call to join him in Detroit. Thence they went on to Hollywood together.
The Morrow-Beloin team now has a three-year contract through 1940 to write for Jack Benny, doing the dialog for his pictures as well as his radio shows. Together they conceive the situations, write the gags, see the shows through rehearsals. But always at their side is the indefatigable Benny himself, with probably the keenest sense of radio audience appeal and the shrewdest ability to edit and present "copy" of any comedian in the business.

Morrow and Beloin did more than come up with gags. Jack’s on-air “gang” was changing and they had to invent new characters for each of them. Phil Harris, Rochester and Dennis Day joined the show. Andy Devine was used frequently for a couple of years. There was Carmichael the polar bear (other animals were short-lived) and Mr. Billingsley the boarder. They all added something to the programme, thanks to their acting abilities, the writers and, through his oversight, Jack himself.

Friz on MGM and Tex

A number of the great Warner Bros. cartoon directors lived beyond the period where the only word in animation was “Disney” into a time of being honoured and interviewed about their cartoon careers.

Friz Freleng was one. He went on publicity tours and his thoughts were written in local newspaper feature columns.

There was a wonderful time, before the rise of the internet in the post-modem era, when fanzines flourished. My favourites were Mindrot/Animania and Animato!. The average fan didn’t have too much knowledge of theatrical animation history then, so every issue was, for me, a goldmine of information.

Happily, a number of the people who wrote for the publication 35 or so years ago are still with us, and still doing animation research.

With that brief introduction, let me pass along part of an interview published in Animato No. 18. It is from a chat between Jerry Beck and Friz Freleng on August 22, 1988. I hope I’m not violating any copyright by reproducing this portion, but some of what’s said may be news to some readers. The full magazine is available on-line at archive.org.

Jerry asked Friz a question about Chuck Jones, but it was never answered. Friz also doesn't mention, as he did in other interviews, his distaste at being assigned to direct The Captain and the Kids cartoons at Metro.

It's pretty well known now that Friz did not bring in Tex Avery for Meatless Flyday. Why Friz didn't correct Jerry on this, I don't know, but he went on to talk about another, unidentified cartoon.

You can see Friz wasn’t altogether enamoured at Tex’s style of humour.

You left Warner Bros. and took Hugh Harman's place at MGM for a while.

Fred Quimby tempted me to come over. He offered me a lot of money; for me at that time, it was a hell of a lot of money. I signed up in August, and my contract was up in October with Schlesinger. And Leon was madder than hell. He said, "You didn't give me a chance to compete before you signed up with him."
When I got there, Fred Quimby said to me, "Do anything you want to do. What are you going to do?" And I said, "I don't know. If I had something in mind, I would be making it over at Schlesinger's." He said, "You're right. Well, you can do whatever you feel is right."
I jumped from $250.00 a week to $375.00 at MGM. I thought it was going to be the same as over at Warner's: everybody cooperating with each other, nobody undermining the other guy. If they did [at Warner's], I wasn't conscious of it. I think Leon depended on me, and no one dared try to undermine me.
So when I got over to MGM, there was conspiracy right away. Joe Barbera, Dan Gordon, George Gordon, all them were working trying to put the New York people in front of the California people. And then there was real turmoil, because everyone was clamoring for position. I was so glad to get out of that place.

Did you last a year at MGM?

I was there about a year and a half [until April 1939]. Then one day I came home so disgusted with the whole thing I told my wife, "You know what? I'm going to swallow my pride, and call Schlesinger and see if I can get my job back."
And you know, that very evening, the phone rang. It was Henry Binder [Schlesinger's assistant]. I laughed, because nobody ever called me before. He was laughing, and I was laughing. He says, "I hear you're unhappy over there." So they must have got it through the grapevine.
So to make a long story short, I went over and talked to Leon, and said, "I don't want any more money. I'll take the money that I had before. I just want to get out of there." And he was very happy to get me back, because he tried two or three other guys there. A fellow by the name of Norm McCabe, and Ben Hardaway... And they were all making cartoons that just didn't have it. The cartoons never seemed to find the path, they kind of wandered about. There was no guide there. With Leon, it was like a ship without a captain. Everyone was going in different directions, and Leon just didn't seem to be able to handle that.
So I came back, and Tex started making better cartoons, and we all started imitating each other. We finally found a path.

There was that gag sensibility you got around 1940.

We finally found a direction. Clampett was very good at it.

What were your feelings about Tex Avery and Bob Clampett back then, and Chuck Jones even? What was your reaction to them as people?

I was so engrossed in what I was doing I didn't even care what the other guys were doing. You were always trying to do better than they were. Unconsciously, there was competition, naturally. We wanted to make the best pictures possible.
I think we all influenced each other. Without bragging, like where one guy thinks he created this and that. I don't think anybody created anything himself.
I think they were all little pieces of somebody else. I’d see something that Clampett did and I liked. I did it maybe in a little different way than he did. I'd see something that Tex Avery did, that Disney did... You don't create these things all yourself. They build from other people.
It was a creative thing. The guy who had the greatest imagination in the whole business was Walt himself. When I saw Snow White, it was an entirely different concept than anyone had ever thought of, ever. The concept of animation, even. Nobody animated like that; nobody drew characters like that; nobody put personality like that into the characters. It came from him.
I'm sure it influenced our thinking, and everybody's thinking in animation. They're still trying to imitate that.

Let me ask you some little specific questions. What happened when Tex Avery left Warner Brothers? Was it over them cutting a gag in one of his Bugs Bunnys? Do you know anything about that?

I don't think so. I think Bobby [Clampett] and Tex were always seeking something else. Because nobody really knew what the future was, and everybody wanted to be his own producer. But they didn't know enough about making deals, and they never really got anything out of it.
I think it was Speaking of Animals that Tex was working on before. I think in his book [Tex Avery: King of Cartoons, by Joe Adamson] he mentions that he proposed it to Leon, and Leon turned it down. I never knew what was going on, really.
The reason he went over to MGM was when I came back he knew there was a spot open. And when he asked me about it I said I left there because the politics were terrible. But MGM was the height of motion picture studios, and I said, "Tex, they'd love to have you there." I figured I'd warned him enough. He said, "You think so?" I said, "I know they'd be tickled to death to have someone like you."
Boom! He was over there, and he got the job. I didn't think he was going to go over there, because I told him about the problems I had. But I figured he must have figured, "Hell, that won't happen to me."
It happened to him. When he got over to MGM he was a very unhappy man, because Bill and Joe took over. He was second banana, no matter what he did. He tried desperately. I look at his cartoons and see elements of desperation.
He was afraid to do subtle things. Tom and Jerry had that. They had little personalities, and subtleties, and things like that. Of course they had the broad gags – they were stealing part of Tex's stuff, the broad stuff.

There was a cartoon about two or three years later, that you made about a spider, called Meatless Flyday.

Oh, it was terrible.

Well, I like that cartoon. And you used Tex's voice as the spider – did you say come over and do this for me, or something?

Yeah. I also had him do a character where he was supposed to sing in rhythm, and he just couldn't get the rhythm. I remember we put him in one of these booths you record in, and shook the booth, and said "Just sing to that rhythm." But he couldn't do it. He just never had a sense of rhythm.
He was a fun guy to work with. Everybody liked Tex, but Tex was so insecure. I felt about his cartoons that he overdid them because he was so insecure about them. He couldn't do a subtle cartoon. If he did something, it had to be twice as strong as anybody else, because he was insecure about what he was doing.
It seemed like he never came up with a strong personality after he left Warner's. Tex was so anxious to please he was overdoing everything. He should have come up with characters like Bugs Bunny, things like that...
But I think he created a kind of contemporary art with that desperation, when you look back. His stuff was nothing I admired.

What's great is that your stuff and Tex's stuff is different. It's different, and yet they're both funny, and they both use the cartoon medium to its potential.

Well, you put your own personality in. Tex was a very introverted man. I think he had real family problems. You didn't know Tex; I never knew him outside of his outer skin.

A lot of thanks should be given to people like Jerry and so many others who interviewed people in animation now long gone and laid the foundation stones of animation research. I appreciate them, anyway.

Crazy Dog

Little Shep throws fits at the end of Bone Sweet Bone after being told by a paleontologist professor that the bone he retrieved wasn’t a valuable dinosaur bone after all.

This gives animator Don Williams to move the dog in various poses, with dry brush strokes in between.



Considering the short was co-written by Bill Scott, it is appropriate the last pose has moose antlers.

Art Davis’ usual crew of Basil Davidovich, Emery Hawkins and Bill Melendez join Williams on this cartoon. Phil De Guard painted the backgrounds. The short’s official release date was May 22, 1948, though it was playing at the Rivoli in La Crosse, Wisconsin nine days before that.

Just a Quick Drink

There are scenes with very quick movement in The Mouse Comes to Dinner, released by MGM in May 1945.

In this one, Tom gulps down a glass of champagne. Director Bill Hanna times the drawings so the whole bit takes just over half a second (11 frames).

The second and third drawings are the same, but the camera (by Jack Stevens?) trucks in just slightly in the third frame.

Swinging the arm up takes up two frames, as does the next drawing. The remaining drawings take up only one frame apiece.



You’ll notice when Tom first raises the glass, there’s nothing in it. Nobody would catch that watching the cartoon and it saves some painting.

I suspect a few years earlier, Hanna would have had Tom daintily sip the champagne, with Tom in various poses like in a Rudy Ising cartoon. The quicker way is the funnier way.

Ray Patterson, Ken Muse, Irv Spence and Pete Burness are the credited animators. Harvey Eisenberg (uncredited) would have drawn the layouts.

What'll You Do, Robert Q.?

The world got way too much of Robert Q. Lewis.

At least, Lewis thought people thought so.

Lewis seemed to be everywhere in the 1950s. He had a couple of shows, he filled in for Arthur Godfrey, he made appearances on panels of game shows. Then it all dried up.

1960 saw Robert Q. touring the U.S. in “The Gazebo.” And complaining to J. Don Schlaerth of the Buffalo Evening News. This is part of a column published Aug. 24, 1960.

COMEDIAN Robert Q. Lewis admitted today that he is a victim of a television malady known as “overexposure.”
The star of the summer stock production, "The Gazebo,”' a comedy-mystery playing at the Garden Center Theater in Vineland, Ont., visited Bill and Mildred Miller on their WHEN-TV telecast this afternoon and stopped long enough to discuss his case.
"There are dozens of people in show business who are suffering from too much exposure," explained the candid entertainer, "and I'm one of those finding it tough going. Arthur Godfrey has suffered from it and so has Jack Paar. I think Steve Allen will have some difficulty this season."
Lewis stated that his TV outlook is "chilly" at the moment "because show producers and advertising agencies seem to feel that the public is tired of me."
• • •
LEWIS RECALLED that he was on both network radio and television steadily from 1946 to 1959. "At one time I had shows five days a week and once in the evening. It got to the point," he said, "where the average housewife saw more of me than she did of her husband."
Stating that he was far from starving, Lewis said the current period in his career gives him tme to concentrate on his art collection and enjoy summer stock.
"I plan to guest on a number or TV panel shows this season when the regular panel members vacation," he went on, "but I have to wait to be called."
• • •
IN THE MEANTIME, he said, there are plans for a TV series based on the Harold Lloyd movies. “We’re working on a shooting script and may be able to film the pilot in November. I’ll be working for a mythical Federal Bureau of Space."
The performer also said he would like to do a Broadway play soon. “It’s important when you're in the position that I'm in right now to watch your emotions. Some actors become very upset. You've got to plan and wait for your time to come around again. It usually does and then you’re better off than before."

Robert Q. was still complaining about “overexposure” more than 12 years later during a time he hadn’t been getting a lot of national exposure. He never seemed to accept the fact that everyone’s career goes up and down. Newcomers arrive and get attention. Old stars get shoved out along the way by the public. That’s how the entertainment business works.

In various interviews in 1960, he talked about buying a radio station on Long Island. Maybe he was going to move to Miami. The show about a Harold Lloyd-type character (with writer Howard Tichman) went nowhere. Instead, Lewis ended up on the West Coast at a radio station, starting Aug. 7, 1961. This wire service feature story was published on Aug. 19.

Robert Q. Moves West
By RICK DU BROW
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) — Robert Q. Lewis, accompanied by his white poodle and bolstered in morale by occasional glances at his Rolls-Royce, has come West to settle dawn as a Hollywood disc jockey.
"This is where the action is," said the bespectacled, nasal-voiced funnyman who once shared network radio and television eminence with Arthur Godfrey, Dave Garroway, Garry Moore and Jack Paar.
"This is Mr. Lewis' first Hollywood interview," said his press agent.
"And you couldn't have picked a bigger star," said Robert Q.
Looking "Hollywood" to the core—with a deep tan, sun-glasses and a wide-striped dark sports shirt open at the neck Lewis sat on the terrace of an outdoor cafe and explained why he left New York:
• • •
"I NEEDED A job. Arthur Goldberg and I decided there was too much unemployment. No. Seriously, this station out here (KHJ) wanted to be No. 1—not that they aren't now. My gosh, how do you say this? Well, anyway, I'm here. It's a good deal. I wanted to be a disc jockey again. I like doing a job five days a week.
"I haven't had my own show for two years, and I don't have the actor's temperament of being able to relax. My kind of show—the informal, anything goes daytime thing—is in disrepute since filmed syndication took over, and it's affected all of us—Godfrey, Moore.
"All of us are radio babies. We gripe, but we're never happier than when we're on the air every day projecting our own self-idolized images. Paar says he's going to quit, and he may well do it—but be in pain missing the outlet every day.
“Moore got his night-time show but begged CBS to put him on radio 10 minutes a day. Godfrey went through cancer but kept his radio show.
"I was on the air since 1945, and my problem is overexposure. The average American housewife saw more of me than her husband."
• • •
ROBERT Q. confessed that some people considered his move from network to a local show something of a comedown.
"I suppose people along this Sunset Strip or on Madison Ave. might consider it so," he said, "but I don't. I'm looking forward to it. I think there'll be a rebirth of my kind of show. The TV set once was an altar in the living room. Now it's become a pennance box. Hmmm —that's not a bad line."
What has he done for the past two years?
"Primarily griped," he said. "I did summer stock, winter stock, spring stock. Believe me, I know now why they call it stock. I've been in just about every contemporary American comedy."
Lewis, whom bigwigs believe will wind up network from here, said,
“Sure, I’ll miss New York. I’m a native and lived within a radius of 20 blocks all my life. But I always wanted to live here. I'm a sun-worshipper. I bought a house within two days, got a housekeeper the third and wallpaper the fourth.
"Wait'll I give out freeway instructions on the air: ‘This is Robert Q. Lewis and as for you on the freeway—I don't know where the heck you are.’ Did you ever hear those cheerful disc jockeys in the morning? Not me. Who's cheerful in the morning?
• • •
"FRANKLY, I haven't the slightest idea what I'm going to do on the show. But you'll hear such names as Jimmy Stewart, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. Of course, Bette Davis may turn out to be a stenographer, and Stewart a worker from Lockheed. But some days, it might be the real thing.
“Awhile back, I had an idea for a wonderful show. It would be called ‘Breakfast with a Bachelor,’ and it would start out with me saying, ‘Today our special guest is—what's your name, honey?’ For heaven's sake, don't print that!" Lewis got up from the table and headed for the parking lot.
"I really wanted a compact limousine, but no American manufacturer was making one," he said. "By the way, do you know anybody who wants to buy a $65,000 duplex in New York?"
An elderly couple recognized him and said, "Hello, Mr. Lewis." He returned the greeting and said: "I hired them from Central Casting."

The love affair with morning radio and the West Coast didn’t last too long. On Nov. 19, 1962, he was back at NBC New York, with Johnny Olson introducing him as the host of Play Your Hunch. He replaced Merv Griffin, who had accepted an offer from the network to host an afternoon talk/variety show. When that didn’t pan out, Merv was back on a game show again on Sept. 30, 1963 hosting Word For Word, which replaced Robert Q.’s show.

The two men crossed paths a number of times, starting when Merv was hired to sing on Lewis’ daytime TV show in the mid-1950s. Griffin ended up marrying Q.’s secretary. Though Robert Q. came across to viewers as somewhat sophisticated and glib, Merv bluntly stated (after Lewis’ death) he was crazy. Behind the scenes, Lewis would throw furniture and fits.

Mark Goodson continued to put Lewis into a fill-in host or guest panellist slot until the host’s job at Get the Message came open on Sept. 28, 1964. There was no overexposure on that show. It was cancelled on Christmas Day.

There was more stage work, then another West Coast radio gig (at KFI) in the ‘70s. By the 1980s his name in print was associated with others who had worked with him in the Golden Age of Television. Robert Q. passed away December 11, 1991 at 71.

Telescope Eyes

They were re-issued as “A Columbia Favorite.” Whose favourite, I’m not quite sure.

Dog, Cat and Canary must have been someone’s favourite, as it was nominated for an Oscar, losing in 1945 to the Tom and Jerry short Mouse Trouble.

There’s some good animation. In this scene, the cat’s eyes become telescopic, checking out the canary and the sleeping guard dog.



Then the rest of the cat’s head comes up to meet the eye pupils. These drawings are animated on twos.



The characters? Eh. Just another cat and bird and dog. They don’t really stand out, not like the Oscar-winning Tom and Jerry who were pretty expressive characters in the mid-‘40s. Despite that, the canary was turned into Flippy (at least according to Boxoffice Barometer of Nov. 17, 1945) and appeared in some forgettable cartoons. The Exhibitor of January 24, 1945 rated the cartoon “fair.”

Howard Swift directed this short, with animation credited to Volus Jones and Jim Armstrong, and the story to Grant Simmons.

The following year, Rippling Romance was Columbia’s Oscar nominee, losing again to Tom and Jerry. It was the final Screen Gems short up for an Academy Award. The studio gave the bird to the animation world and shut down.

Who's the Real Monster?

Tex Avery tried a split screen gag in 1939 in Thugs With Dirty Mugs, and did it again the following year in Cross Country Detours.

Narrator Lou Marcelle intones over a tympani roll the next scene is quite gruesome, so the screen will be split with one side for grown-ups and one side for children.



Grown-ups get a “hideous gila monster” snarling and growling. Children get a recitation.

Avery loves violating split screen gags, and he doesn’t disappoint us here.



Avery uses a split-screen again in A Bear’s Tale (1940), Tortoise Beats Hare and Aviation Vacation (both 1941). The “Mary Had a Little Lamb” recitation routine goes back to Harman-Ising’s Bosko in Person and Bosko's Mechanical Man (both 1933). Avery used it in Hamateur Night (1939) and again as late as 1954, when MGM released The Flea Circus.

Rich Hogan is the credited story man on this short, with Paul J. Smith getting the rotating animation credit and Johnny Johnsen getting no credit for backgrounds.