Blintzes and Bets

Jack Benny celebrated his birthday in Toronto in 1943, and then returned to the city seven years later in a stop on his one-night-stand tour. This time, he didn’t broadcast a live show; his radio season was already transcribed for release at a more convenient time.

The first trip was set up to sell Victory Bonds, and his some of his radio cast was with him. There was some charity work as a sidebar to the second appearance, which was a variety show and included two of the people listeners heard on the air (via Buffalo; Toronto stations and others in Canada did not run the Lucky Strike show).

Here’s a story from the Toronto Star of May 31, 1950 about an unusual news conference. Something doesn’t ring true to me, as if this was something put together by Benny’s writers. Eddie Anderson and Phil Harris seem to be in character, and Vivian Blaine’s comments sound like something she would say on a radio show.

Sold Out Everywhere Benny’s Not Hungry But Only Pretending
By A. O. TATE
Star Staff Correspondent
Buffalo, May 31—Jack Benny will be wondering today if those cheese blintzes were really as good as they were cracked up to be.
Jack was here yesterday with Rochester, Phil Harris and Vivian Blaine. The famous radio comedian was torn between sadness and gladness, and when it came time for lunch Jack said he wasn’t hungry. He just wasn’t hungry.
“I’m not hungry . . . I’m not hungry . . . I’m not hungry,” he said in three directions.
When Miss Blaine, who is a very appealing blonde movie star and radio singer, appealed to Jack to think of his stomach, Mr. Benny responded with only a sardonic smile.
“But boss . . .” Rochester began.
“ROCHESTER!” Jack yelped.
“But Jackson,” Phil Harris dared.
“PHIL,” Mr. Benny gargled, “I’M NOT HUNGRY!”
Jack Benny is on a tour of one-night stands which brings him to Toronto for a Maple Leaf Gardens show tonight. He is minus Mary Livingstone and Dennis Day, but along with Rochester, Phil Harris and Vivian Blaine are the Wiere Brothers, Harris’ orchestra and a cast of 40. At lunch time yesterday Jack was very sad about Buffalo, and exceedingly happy about Toronto.
“Six thousand . . . twenty-five thousand,” he muttered into his lap while people swirled about him in his suite’s living room. “Six thousand . . . twenty-five thousand.”
Jack Benny is doing one-night stands for the first time in his long show-business career.
“Just for Fun”
“I didn’t have to start out on this,” he said to someone who was standing nearby. “I’m just doing it for fun. And I’ve got a good show . . . a fine show . . . a terrific show. If Jack Benny, Rochester and Phil Harris can’t pack ‘em in—well, nobody can.”
Even in the old days of vaudeville, before he went into radio about 20 years ago, Jack Benny never did one-night stands. When he showed up in a theatre with his violin and his gags, he was there for a week. One night stands are rugged.
When the reporter and photographer entered the suit they saw Jack Benny in conference with three other men. The conference, over the next hour or so, clustered about one chair after another as Jack moved restlessly about.
Occasionally it would disappear briefly into one of the bedrooms. When it would re-appear, Jack might be in a figured silk dressing gown, or back in his plain tan sports jacket.
Once, when the conference was in a bedroom, a bellboy came in and put a basket of fruit on a living room table. When Jack saw it first he made a quick move in its direction—only to remember, suddenly, he wasn’t hungry.
“I’m Not Hungry”
Three Buffalo radio people came into the room with a tape recorder and yards of wire. When the conference and the radio people tangled in mid-floor a couple of times, the conference disintegrated and Jack sat down and looked at his publicity man, Irvine Fine [sic]. Irving had just come in.
“How about some lunch, Jack,” said the unsuspecting Irving.
Mr. Benny eyed Mr. Fine for a moment and then said, quietly: “No thank you, Irving. I’m not hungry.”
Then the tape recorder was ready to go. Someone went out to find Rochester. A few minutes later Vivian Blaine came in. Phil Harris had gone to a ballgame.
“Oh Jack,” Vivian breathed at Mr. Benny. “Phil and I had the most wonderful food. Really, Jack, we’ve never eaten more wonderful food. We had cheese blintzes as light and tender as . . .”
“Cheese blintzes?” Jack whispered.
“Jack, cheese blintzes like we’ve never eaten before. And Jack, what do you think? A girl came over to me in the restaurant. She said her boy friend says you are his favorite comedian. He listens to you every Sunday night. Nothing interferes with that. But she said he said he didn’t have enough money this week to take her to see your show. There are two people, Jack, two people who would give anything to see your show.”
“Could Pretend”
“You can’t go by what one or two people say, Vivian. This afternoon, the day before the show, there is a $25,000 advance sale. What have we got here on the day of the show? A $6,000 advance sale. What’s the reason? What’s the answer? The cheese blintzes were good, eh?”
“Oh, Jack, they were . . .”
“Jack’s not hungry,” Irvine Fine reminded Miss Blaine.
When Jack and Rochester and Vivian were interviewed for the tape recorder, Vivian said she had just had the most wonderful food just a short time earlier. She gave the name of the restaurant, the street and number.
“We call this show ‘Tape it or Leave it’,” said one of the radio people. “Pretty corny, don’t you think, Jack?”
“No,” Jack said, laughing heartily. “I like that. I also like Vivian’s commercials. Cheese blintzes, yet.”
After a while Jack Benny slowed down long enough to be photographed. “Why don’t youm” he asked the photographer, “take my picture with a great banana. That one right there. I could pretend to be eating it.”
Two bananas later Jack posed with a banana.
“Toronto’s a great city,” he said. “A great city. By tomorrow night the Gardens will be sold out. Buffalo and Pitsburgh. Yipe. In Wichita we sold out. In Pasadena, where they’ve seen me a million times, we sold out. We’re going to London in a month or so. The Palladium is practically sold out now.”
Outside Jack’s suite a number of ‘teen agers waited around hoping for his autograph.

How did the act go? The Star’s Jack Karr, in the June 1 edition, gave a summary. He tagged it with an example of Jack’s real-life un-stinginess, the declaration made by Canada’s best-known newsman-turned-announcer who, in a few years, would become America’s best-known Cartwright.

The Jack Benny jackpot at the Gardens last night was a happy piece of entertainment . . . even for those who don’t worship at the Sunday evening radio shrine. For this trek into the hinterlands, Jackson has surrounded himself with a program full of talent, some of which, if subjected to the applause meter, would climb quite a few decibels higher than Benny’s own rating. And that, you’ve got to admit, is a pretty brave thing for any top-ranking comic to do.
* * *
By saying that Benny doesn’t hog the show doesn’t mean, however, that anybody walks away with it from under his nose. He sees to it that his presence is liberally sprinkled throughout the evening simply by taking over the master of ceremonies job. But he has also seen to it that there isn’t a dud act on his supporting bill and that each of these various acts gets a chance to show off its stuff under the best of conditions. And that’s smart showmanship. So the net impression left is of a fine evening’s entertainment all provided through the courtesy of Mr. B. “You can’t say I don’t provide you with the best,” he reminds his audience a couple of times during the show.”
And “the best” includes his radio mates, Phil Harris and Rochester, as well as a gorgeous hunt of Hollywood womanhood named Vivian Blaine, the screwy Wiere Brothers, the juggling Peiro Brothers, and an adagio act known as the Stuart Morgan dancers. These, with Harris’ orchestra in the background, add up to a very solid vaudeville program.
* * *
While no special attempt has been made to make the Benny in-person show conform to the pattern of the Benny radio show, a great deal of the latter has very naturally crept in.
The Benny character—the one developed in nearly 20 years on the networks—is established early and is allowed to grow through the evening; the tightness, the bad violin playing, the infirmities of advancing age that are creeping up on him, his vanity and school-boyish petulance, his notion of being a lady’s man, and his hurt when the glamour dolls won’t take him seriously. He is continually heckled by Phil Harris and he, in turn, heckles Harris. “Did you see how he leads that band?” Benny asks. “Harris is the only man in the world who leads a band as though he has to go some place.”
Harris, in fact, doesn’t lead the band at all. When he is singing his standbys, “That’s What I Like About the South” or “Preacher and the Bear,” he occasionally attacks it in the manner of a cheerleader with a hot-foot, but he seldom conducts it.
* * *
For her part in the performance, the blonde, low-cut Miss Blaine sings a couple of bouncy songs and a couple of torchy ones, and then becomes stooge to Benny’s and Harris’ demonstrations in technique of love-making to much audience hilarity.
The Stuart Morgan dancers—a girl and three men—have the most violent adagio act these eyes have caught in some time. One late-coming lady member of the audience, walking past the front of the stage, almost lost her balance when she ducked at the sight of the girl in the act coming hurtling out in her direction.
The Peiro Brothers have a very fast juggling act . . . and the Weire [sic] Brothers, three clowns who occasionally use violins with their nonsense, are show-stoppers in the real sense of the word.
And then there’s Rochester—Eddie Anderson—who occupies a special spot of his own on the program and who sings in a voice like a fingernail on a blackboard with a great deal of raucous good humor. Rochester is obviously looked upon with a good deal of affection by the Benny regulars, and they eat it up when he sasses Boss Benny.
* * *
At the conclusion of last night’s performance, there was a special announcement from Lorne Green. During his Toronto stay, Jack Benny made a trip out to Variety Village, the school for crippled boys at Scarboro, operated by the Variety club of Toronto.
Jack Benny has offered to completely furnish one of the rooms in the school as a gesture of friendship for the reception he was given here.

While Jack was visiting disabled young people, Rochester and Phil Harris decided to check out the ponies. Eddie Anderson owned a stable of race horses and one famously came in last at Churchill Downs in 1943. The Star’s Sports Editor, Milt Dunnell, has the story. I do not understand why he gave Anderson an Amos ‘n’ Andy dialect. A Canadian should know better.

Rochester’s Horse Didn’t Co-operate
THERE was one new record at Woodbine yesterday that won’t appear in the books. Eddie (Rochester) Anderson, an afternoon refugee from Jack Benny, broke all existing marks for autographing programs. Tom “Long Boy” Ellison, the happy-go-lucky colored clocker, gaped in awe as Rochester “stole” his public. Long Boy had been ticking off winners and non-winners for years on the programs of these same people. They practically trampled Tom under foot in their haste to get Rochester’s signature.
Phil Harris, Benny’s bragging (on the air) band-leader, made the mistake of sitting back of Rochester and Mrs. Rochester in their box. That made Phil the pivot man in passing paper. The play was from public to Phil to Rochester; then from Rochester to Phil to public. Harris soon tired of it and got himself a front row seat breaking up the combination.
Rochester made one trip to the paddock, but was button-holed by so many fans that he was shut out when he finally went make a wager. After that, he remained in his seat and sent down bets with his chauffeur.
Rochester is a “just even” player and owner. He likes the bangtails too well to admit they cost him money. A steed named Whiffletree got him “even” in the seventh. He’s just about “even” in his operation of a modest collection of beetles. His pride and joy was Burnt Cork, which he bought at the Saratoga sales and which he ran eventually in the Kentucky Derby. At least, he entered the colt in the Kentucky Derby. Whether it ran is a matter of argument. Some students of the thoroughbred claim Burnt Cork still would be somewhere on the back stretch at Churchill Downs if he hadn’t got hungry. The Kentucky hardboots were miffed. Such a grazing gluepot, they sniffed, had no place in the Derby.
Kunnel Rochester disagrees. Burnt Cork might not have won he admits, but sure enough, he’d have been in the dough, if the race had been run according to instructions.
Did he mean the jockey disregarded instructions? No, the jockey rode to instructions, but Burnt Cork refused to co-operate. He didn’t like to come from off the pace. So after a mild canter, he spit out the bit and said “to hell with this nonsense.”
“When the race is over, he’s not as tired as ah am right now,” Rochester lamented, shifting his cigar and wagging his noggin.
Eleven days later, Burnt Cork was dead. Killed in a spill while driving down the stretch?
“Naw,” Rochester gloomed. “Died of nee-monia.”

Back to the States went Jack for a June 4th performance at Carnegie Hall for the Damon Runyon Memorial Fund for Cancer Research (tickets were $1.80 to $6.00, tax included). Something else was added to the regular Benny show that evening—another round of the feud with Fred Allen. But that’s a story for another time.

From Horse to Hefner

Quick, the answer the question: Who played Irving, the Unemployed Horse? (No coaching from Greg Ehrbar, please).

The correct answer is Allan Melvin.

Irving wasn’t a cartoon character. He was the star of an MGM children’s record put on the market in 1947. Columnist Leonard Lyons noted in Sept. 26 that year that Melvin played 37 different roles on the record (two double-faced, 10-inch 78s). Melvin was 24 years old at the time.

Before his long TV career, in animation and live action, Melvin got his break thanks to the audience of Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts on CBS radio. Like Art Carney, Melvin began his career as an impressionist, and won the amateur contest on the Oct. 15, 1946 show. He hit the cabaret scene the following year, appearing at the Café Society in Greenwich Village; Lew Sheaffer’s column in the Brooklyn Eagle of Nov. 14, 1947 mentioned he impersonated Humphrey Bogart and Frederic March.

The impressions led to a role in the stage production of Stalag 17 (Comedy in a POW camp? That can’t be possible!), which opened at the 48th Street Theatre in New York in May 1951 with Melvin’s character giving impersonations of Hollywood celebrities. A story in the San Francisco Examiner in 1952 reported Gary Cooper thanked Melvin for his version of him in the road show version in Los Angeles.

Melvin couldn’t get out uniform for a while. He jumped to TV as Sgt. Henshaw on the Phil Silvers show starting in 1955, played Rob Petrie’s army buddy in a number of episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show and appeared as Staff Sgt. Hacker off-and-on on Gomer Pyle, USMC.

The military roles led to cartoons. Melvin’s first animated voice roles were in the 1963 syndicated Beetle Bailey cartoons, where he played Sgt. Snorkle and Zero opposite Howard Morris. Those animated roles led to cartoon stardom a year later in Hanna-Barbera’s Magilla Gorilla opposite Howard Morris.

All this is before his better-known, non-Army TV roles—appearing periodically as Sam the butcher in The Brady Bunch and Archie’s buddy Barney Hefner in All in the Family and Archie Bunker’s Place.

Sam gets bypassed in this feature story about Melvin on the Associated Press wire, June 6, 1981.

Allan Melvin: From Al the Plumber to Barney Hefner
By JERRY BUCK
AP Television Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP)— Allan Melvin has played Archie Bunker’s best friend since 1972, but it didn’t start off as a chummy relationship.
The very first time Melvin appeared on “All in the Family,” it was not as Barney Hefner, best friend, but as Sgt Pete Pulaski of New York City’s finest.
“The fun of that episode was that Archie came down to the police station and was making remarks about the Polish,” he recalled. “Somebody says, ‘Oh, yeah, tell that to Sgt. Pulaski’ — and I throw Archie into the can.”
It was a few months after that that Melvin was reincarnated as Barney Hefner. He remained with the CBS show when it was changed to “Archie Bunker’s Place,” and only Carroll O’Connor, has been with the series longer.
Melvin, who got his start as a stand-up comic and mimic and then played on Broadway in “Stalag 17,” has had a long and profitable career in television as the foil to the leading man.
A lot of that time was spent in uniform. On “The Phil Silvers Show” he was Cpl. Henshaw, who was Sgt. Bilko’s partner in his attempts to bilk the other soldiers. He was Dick Van Dyke’s old Army buddy on his show and Sgt. Hacker on “Gomer Pyle.” He also had recurring roles on “The Joey Bishop Show” and on “The Andy Griffith Show.”
“I went in the same season from Pulaski to Barney Hefner,” he said “I think thy make allowances for the fact that the audience will accept certain changes I guess they figure since it was a one-shot I wasn’t that established I’ve been Barney ever since.”
Melvin recalled that during the making of “The Phil Silvers Show” in New York, the technical adviser assigned to the show was a captain named George Kennedy.
“He would beseech Nat Hiken for a role,” he said. “Finally Nat made him an MP and let him stand by the door and wear a helmet. He was thrilled. Did I ever think he’d become an actor? No way.” Kennedy, of course, not only became an actor, but went on to win the Academy Award as best supporting actor.
Melvin is also well known as Al the Plumber, a character he has played for 14 years on the Liquid Plumber commercials. Less well known is the fact that he does many cartoon voices. He has been the voice of Bluto on the “Popeye” cartoon for the past four years. He’s also done the voice on “Magilla Gorilla” and has done many impressions for “The Flintstones.”
In fact, the day after the interview he was due to spend the day at Hanna-Barbera studios, recording voices.
Few characters on television ever seem to have jobs, but Barney Hefner is a bridge inspector. Not that he ever works at it. “He never really inspects any bridges,” said Melvin. “He just says they’re all unsafe. That’s how he can spend so much time at Archie’s Place.”
As Archie’s oldest friend they are very similar. “He’s very much like Archie in his thinking and his values. But not to the extreme that Archie goes. He’s more temperate.”
Melvin was born in Kansas City, but was raised in New York and New Jersey. He and his wife now divide their time between their home in Brentwood and one on Monarch Bay in Laguna. He also spends much of his spare time on the golf course.
His own oldest and closest friend is author Richard Condon, who wrote “The Manchurian Candidate.” Condon wrote an early children’s record that Melvin recorded and wrote a night club act for him. It was that night club act that caused the producers of “Stalag 17” to alter the role of Reed to fit Melvin’s background and his act.

27 years later, the same wire service led off his obituary with his time consorting Alice the maid where “his place in pop culture will be fixed.” Brady Bunch fans had now grown up to pen newspaper obits. Irving the Unemployed Horse was forgotten.

We haven't forgotten. If you are interested in hearing Melvin narrating the story of Irving, someone had digitised it. Listen below.

What? How? Why?

While being chased across the U.S. by Yosemite Sam, Bugs Bunny skids to a stop and gets “that funny feeling” that gold is nearby (in reused animation). Sam can’t any chances in case he’s not being tricked again, so he starts a-diggin’.



But it is no trick. Sam discovers Bugs’ feeling was right.



The camera pulls back.



Wait a minute! That “Fort Knox” sign wasn’t in the shot before this. Where did it come from?

Well, the answer’s simple. If writer Warren Foster had it planted at the outset, it would have ruined the reveal gag. So he and background man Irv Wyner left it out. This bothered me as a kid. A sign can’t show up on a lawn out of nowhere.

The ending bothered me, too. “And what are YOU doing here?” an MP asks Bugs.



“Oh, me?” nervously answers the rabbit. “Well, I, uh, I’m waitin’ for a streetcar.”



We hear the sound of a ship. Cut to an ocean liner pulling up on the lawn of Fort Knox.



“But, in a spot like this, a boat will do,” Bugs says happily.



The cartoon ends with the boat ploughing across the lawn into the distance, as Carl Stalling plays the Warner-owned “The Song of the Marines” by Warren and Dubin (from the Warners feature The Singing Marine).



Me-as-kid didn’t like Deus Ex Machina stuff like this. “I could have thought of that,” likely said I. Foster was just trying to be off-kilter, but the ending seems more convenient than surreal.

Virgil Ross, Art Davis, Manny Perez and Ken Champin get the animation credits in 14 Carrot Rabbit, released in February 1952.

Rock and the Villain

One of Tex Avery’s gags in Homesteader Droopy (released 1954) reminds me of something from a Roadrunner/Coyote cartoon, but Avery handles it much differently than Chuck Jones would have.

In one scene, the evil Dishonest Dan (yet another incarnation of an Avery wolf) tries to destroy the homesteaders’ house with a huge boulder on a cliff.



Cut to a longer shot. The boulder won't fall no matter what Dan does.



Finally, he comes up with the solution—just push away the cliff and the boulder will fall.



If this was a Jones cartoon, he would focus on various facial expressions (a la Wile E. Coyote). Avery doesn't bother with poses. He simply goes for the quick gag.

You’ll notice how the house moved from under the boulder to make the gag work. I doubt any theatre audience noticed as Avery’s cartoons boot along from one gag to the next.

Bob Bentley, Grant Simmons, Mike Lah and Walt Clinton are the credited animators. Backgrounds by Johnny Johnsen.

More Than Hazel

At first, it would seem ridiculous that a woman who won an Oscar, a Golden Globe and a Tony for a heavily dramatic role in Come Back, Little Sheba would be cast in a light-weight domestic sitcom on TV. But Hazel was far from Shirley Booth’s first stab at comedy. For that, you have to go back to radio and “Where the Elite Meet to Eat.”

Here’s a feature column from the Associated Press, Sept. 17, 1961.

Shirley Booth Late to TV
By CYNTHIA LOWRY
HOLLYWOOD — The last time Shirley Booth had a continuing role in broadcasting was 20 years ago when she played Miss Duffy, the waitress, in radio’s great and well-remembered Duffy’s Tavern.
On September 28, Miss Booth comes to television as the star of NBC’s Hazel, a situation comedy revolving about the maid who runs the Baxter family with an iron glove on a velvet hand.
Between Miss Duffy and Hazel, she has become one of the great stars of the American stage and screen, winner of a bucketful of acting awards, including an Oscar and the official title of “world’s best actress,” for her performance in “Come Back, Little Sheba.”
Booth fans may legitimately be a little nervous about the vehicle which will bring this versatile performer into their living rooms each week. Hazel was born as a cartoon character in a weekly magazine in 1942 and has been appearing regularly ever since. It is hard enough to give life to a cartoon character. It is even harder when the background is upper-middle-class family life, so thoroughly explored in TV comedy it has become a cliche.
Miss Booth, however, feels confident and calm.
“I guess I’m a little late getting into weekly television,” she said, almost apologetically. “But then I always get in at the tail-end of everything. But as long as I’m occupied and busy with plays, I’m perfectly content.”
She has had Hazel on her mind for several years, however, Ted Key, the cartoonist who created the character, wrote a play about his brainchild several years ago and presented it to Miss Booth.
“I didn’t feel that it was right—I thought even then that one play was not as good for Hazel as an episodic medium.
“But once we were under way, the thing I had to do was get some depth, a different dimension to her character. The comedy will take care of itself, but the problem was to give her warmth. The only really important job of the actress is to get the audience interested in and caring about the character.”
‘Create a Character...’
Key’s job as a magazine cartoon-1st is to produce one laughter-evoking picture a week. Miss Booth’s job in creating a flesh-and-blood Hazel was “to create a character, not a caricature.”
“So the audience won’t always laugh,” she continued seriously. “That would ruin everything. To build up comedy, you must build up some protection around the funny lines. You must have arid spaces—a desert—before you can have an oasis. So you must have contrast to humor to make it effective.”
Now in her early 50s, Shirley Booth has been an actress since she was 12 and joined a Hartford, Conn., stock company.
In 1925 she was the ingenue (with Humphrey Bogart, another youngster) in the Broadway production of “Hell’s Bells.” In 1939 she won critical notices that topped those of Katharine Hepburn for her acting in “The Philadelphia Story.” But although the rave notices—for serious parts and for comedy—rolled in over the years, stardom came with “Come Back, Little Sheba” in 1950, when she played the poignant, lost Lola Delaney in the Broadway play.
Has Two Poodles
A small, round-faced woman with a quiet wit and easy smile, Miss Booth has hedged her Hollywood bets. She continues to maintain her New York City apartment, is having an addition built on her Cape Cod home—and is sharing her apartment-hotel quarters with her two poodles, “Prego” and “Grazia.”
Her marriage to comedian Ed Gardner ended in divorce in 1942—and it also ended the best years of his Duffy’s Tavern because she left the cast. She subsequently married investment broker W. H. Baker Jr. who died 10 years ago. “I keep very busy,” she confided. “My emotional life now? You can see the answer to that easily: I own two poodles.”

Booth’s Hazel caught the eyes of viewers. Among them were Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, always looking for sources for new cartoon characters. In 1962, The Jetsons debuted. Just as they tagged The Honeymooners on The Flintstones, TV critics equated The Jetsons with Hazel, thanks to Jean Vander Pyl’s portrayal of the robot maid, Rosey, who suspiciously sounded like Booth’s Miss Duffy. Writers had her calling George Jetson “Mr. J,” just as Hazel addressed her boss as “Mr. B.”

There is only so much you can do in a domestic sitcom, and Hazel staved off disappearing from prime time in 1965 by switching networks and replacing almost all of the cast. Hazel polished the silver for one more season. Booth had been hospitalised for exhaustion and likely didn’t want to carry on with a weekly series.

Better make that “weakly” series. The new Mr. B., Ray Fulton, complained to Dick Kleiner of the Newspaper Enterprise Association that the scripts stunk; they were full of basic grammatical errors, plot flaws and repetitions, and sloppy writing. “What’s amazing,” he said, “is how Shirley Booth can make something out of nothing. It has been an education to watch her work.”

The Associated Press talked to her again after the cancellation. This is from April 16, 1966:

Shirley Booth Chooses ‘Menagerie’ Role on TV
By CYNTHIA LOWRY
HOLLYWOOD (AP)—A Hollywood trade paper recently carried a note that a producer of a television series was trying to get Raymond Burr, whose “Perry Mason” series recently came to an end, to play a trial lawyer in one episode. It is extremely doubtful that, no matter how attractive the series, money or role, Burr could be persuaded to take the assignment. This is typecasting, more dreaded by actors than a low Nielsen rating.
“Well,” said Shirley Booth with a smile as she concentrated on maneuvering her hardtop into a right-hand lane for a turn onto Sunset Boulevard, “nobody has offered me any parts as a domestic.”
Miss Booth, an Oscar winner—“Come Back Little Sheba”—and a three-time winner of Broadway’s “Tony,” has wound up five busy years of playing the title role in “Hazel,” a comedy that earned her an “Emmy” as well.
* * *
The first assignment she accepted was the lead in a CBS special, Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie,” which will be produced in London in October for broadcast early in December.
“Of course, I’ve been offered lots of guest star roles,” she continued, moving into the noon-hour stream of traffic. “And some series. I really don’t want to get into another series but I’m very reluctant to say ‘never’ about anything because something might come along and I’ll change my mind.”
When the chance to do the Williams play turned up, she said, she was even reluctant about that, at first.
“I remember Laurette Taylor in the Amanda part,” she said. “I remember that performance so vividly — she really contributed something important to theater with it. I didn’t feel as if I wanted to take on something in which I’d just be doing an imitation of somebody else.”
She drove into a driveway of a handsome little house on a hillside in a secluded section and there followed a leisurely luncheon in the patio. One eye was on the clock, however, for she was due back at the studio in midafternoon to wind up chores on a two-hour film, “Package Deal” she is making for NBC’s “World Premiere” series next season.
“I also decided to do this film, even though it broke into my Cape Cod summer,” she continued. Pleasant parts — women with humor and wholesome outlooks — are hard to find these days, and I just didn’t feel like playing a lady drunk or a woman of loose morals and those parts are all over the place now.”
* * *
Meanwhile, re-runs, of “Hazel” will be on television channels all over the lot—which provides a painless steady income for the star.
Miss Booth, still remembered fondly as “Miss Duffy” in radio’s immortal “Duffy’s Tavern” and as a musical comedy star of Broadway’s “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” has four homes.
Her voting residence is the hillside house in Los Angeles. For weekends and holidays in winter, there is her recently acquired desert home beyond Palm Springs. Back East she has her summer home in Chatham on the Cape, plus the co-op apartment she owns in New York.
A widow, she enjoys movie and theater going, does a little Sunday-type painting, collects antiques, and is a passionate art collector. Most of all, though, she likes acting.

There were plenty of pre-broadcast newspaper publicity interviews by Booth for The Glass Menagerie. She got an Emmy nomination for that role, too.

One more sitcom awaited Booth. She played a widow in A Touch of Grace, that ran on ABC in 1973. Why did she come back to television? She told a press junket (as reported in the Omaha World-Herald) she had read the scripts for three series and preferred Grace. “I like the regimentation of doing the show, because I like to be a certain place at a certain time. For a lonely woman, it’s nice to have a built-in family.”

The show had a very good cast—J. Pat O’Malley, Warren Berlinger and the wonderful Marian Mercer—but eked out only 13 episodes. The finale featured a monologue by Grace to a table that represented her late husband’s gravestone. O’Malley and producers Saul Turteltaub and Bernie Orenstein cried when Booth rehearsed the scene and, as reported by Cecil Smith of Los Angeles Times syndicate, the two long-time TV show-runners quietly marvelled to each other about her acting abilities.

Booth decided to retire not much later and lived until the age of 94, passing away in 1992.

Van Beuren Farm Fun

Unexpected, funny things used to happen in early 1930s Fleischer cartoon, like a plant being watered, coming to life and waving “Thanks!” In a way, what happened seemed logical.

At Van Beuren, unexpected things happened and you were left wondering “What was that?”

I swear John Foster and whoever helped him got drunk on bootleg booze during story sessions and decided to go with any weird idea they could think of.

In The Farmerette (1932), two cows are grazing on pasture. One google-eyed cow stands up and pulls her tail and the one next to her. Their skirts go up. Why? Who knows. It’s a Van Beuren cartoon. (Note in the third frame, the horns are inked in. The animation is in a cycle so the horns kind of flash).



Then the horns turn into horns that honk.



The two cows dance and collapse. One gets up to sing “Hey, hey!” to end the scene.



First, an inking error, then a camera error. In some cartoons, you’ll see a blip on the screen when a character loses a body part on a separate cel for maybe a frame. In The Farmerette, one poor “dog in the kennel” loses his entire body for 12 frames.



Foster and Harry Bailey get screen credit for this short.

Off With His Head

Bugs Bunny reacts to being fired on in Rebel Rabbit (1949).



This is one of those cartoons where parts of a character’s body disappear out of the frame during a take. I’ve never understood why a drawing would be shot that way. Below, Bugs’ head springs back into the frame.



Here, Bugs’ head springs out of the frame.



Multiple brushwork hands. This is one of several similar drawings.



There are about ten frames where we don’t see Bugs’ head as he runs in mid-air.



The Bob McKimson unit made some good Bugs cartoons in the late ‘40s (pigs, genie) but this isn’t one of them. I never bought Warren Foster’s plot that Bugs was outraged about a bounty. To me, Bugs didn’t care. I could see Daffy getting upset about a duck bounty.

Anyway, Manny Gould, Chuck McKimson, Phil De Lara and Jack Carey are the credited animators on this one.

Warm Warner Cartoon Birthday Greetings

By now, I’m sure you’ve read it on the internet. 90 years ago today, Warner Bros. officially released a landmark cartoon featuring one of the most beloved animated characters of all time. Yes, we’re talking about I Haven’t Got a Hat. Let us, then, wish a happy 90th birthday to that charming cartoon favourite:



We mean none other than Miss Cud.

Sure, Disney had Clarabelle Cow. But Miss Cud entertained the world in at least three cartoons. Besides her dynamic role as an elementary school teacher in her debut, she briefly appeared in Hollywood Capers (1935)



Jerry Beck has identified Miss Cow as the bovine homeowner in Porky's Moving Day (1936), giving an outstanding dramatic performance while wearing an Olive Oyl skirt. If Jerry says it's Miss Cud, I won't argue.



The story has been oft told, in Michael Barrier's Hollywood Cartoons and elsewhere, about how Leon Schlesinger wanted to replace the incredibly lacklustre Buddy as the star of his Looney Tunes series, and the idea was floated to rip off the popular Our Gang series and create an animated group of animal kids. Bob Clampett and Friz Freleng both took credit for naming two members of the “gang,” but nobody ever claimed “I came up with ‘Miss Cud’!” Shame, shame.



As you can see by the title card above, poor Miss Cud wasn’t considered star material. It showcases Little Kitty, Beans, Oliver Owl and Porky Pig (sorry Ham and Ex).

Miss Cud, at least in her debut, was played by Elvia Allman. Elvia’s career was bittersweet. She was based in Los Angeles and began appearing on radio there in the mid-1920s. This was an era when the West Coast had its own strong network of stations, with broadcasts originating from San Francisco or Los Angeles being heard on stations in major cities up to Seattle. NBC and CBS didn’t reach the West until the late ‘20s.

Allman was a bona fide star then, doing monologues, voices and comedy songs. But when the big radio comedy stars began moving west in the mid-‘30s, and bringing their shows with them, regional programmes began dying off. Allman's starring days were done. She moved into character roles and was in very much in demand on radio and, later, television (The Beverly Hillbillies is where I first saw her).

The best you can say about Miss Cud is she never was a has-been, because she never got that far. We can say that about the “gang” character originally plucked from cast of I Haven’t Got a Hat—wise guy Beans the Cat. Jack King starred him in seven cartoons. In the meantime, Schlesinger made the incredibly wise decision to hire Tex Avery as a director. Avery directed a Beans picture (Gold Diggers of ‘49, 1936) but gave a larger role to Porky. It was clear to Avery that the pig had more potential than the smart-alec cat, so he tossed Beans from his desk at Termite Terrace and starred Porky in the fine cartoon The Blow Out (also 1936). That cartoon also had a silent Miss Cud-like cow.

Beans’ fate was sealed. And Leon now had a real star.

The Hollywood Reporter of January 28, 1936 mentioned I Haven't Got a Hat was up for consideration for an Oscar. It never got nominated.

Jerry has advised cartoon fans not to accept release dates in his book (or elesewhere) as when cartoons first appeared on screens; theatres could rent and show anything as soon as it arrived at the local exchange. To the right, you see an ad for a movie house in North Carolina which includes I Haven’t Got a Hat on its programme two days before the “release.”

Regardless, birthday greetings are in order for Miss Cud. As for this post, th-thee-th-thee-th-That’s all, folks.