Cantor on Benny

The big stars weren’t the only ones who made Jack Benny laugh. Listen to his radio show and he starts to break up Frank Nelson or Mel Blanc or Frank Fontaine are about to answer him.

George Burns talked about Jack being the “world’s best audience.” And so did another of his colleagues from the vaudeville days.

Eddie Cantor had a heart attack in 1952, which limited his television career. One thing that would seem to be less stressful for him was a syndicated newspaper column. Certainly Cantor had no end of stories about the greats of vaudeville and the early days of talking pictures. And it would appear Cantor and Jack were fairly close; certainly Cantor appeared with him on radio and TV, as well as charity functions.

Jack is the subject of Cantor’s column of August 30, 1954. The hair joke is pretty much the same as one Charlie Farrell did on the Benny radio show, but the topper is new.

EDDIE CANTOR - - SHOW BUSINESS
Jack Benny Enjoys Laughs
The best audience I've seen is another comedian. I first met Jack Benny in 1919. In those days, he played violin and gave out with some chatter. While his violin was not good, his dialogue was pretty bad. However, the Benny boy impressed me with his appreciation of finer things. He laughed at jokes. In a roomful of comedians, Jack is a welcome relief. He'd rather enjoy laughs than get them. This attitude has paid off. Content to be the butt of jokes, Jack has so firmly established his penny-pinching character, he has only to pause after the word "money" and audiences are hysterical.
Following the wedding of his daughter Joan, Dennis Day commented. "I think Jack's the only father of the bride who wept and validated parking tickets at the same time." The Los Angeles papers gave a lot of space to the event. The "Examiner" announced that the elaborate affair had cost $60,000. The Times quoted it at $541,000. I asked Jack if he'd seen the papers. He said, "I read The Times and saved myself ten thousand dollars!"
Recently, I spoke at a dinner in San Diego for the Hadassah Women of America. Jack went with me. I paid for the trip When Jack got up to speak, he opened with. "1 don't know why you invited me tonight. I couldn't feel more unnecessary. It's like being on a desert island with Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio."
He got another laugh when he introduced me. "I can't get over the youthful appearance of Eddie Cantor," he said "Just look at him! Not a gray hair in his head — tonight!" I wasn't going to get him get away with that I jumped up and said, "Gray or black — at least it's all mine!" Jack squelched. "So what? I've got hair at home I haven't even used yet!"

Toward the end of his life, Cantor wrote a book about the people he’d known. Of course Jack Benny would have to be in it. Eight paragraphs were taken up with the above stories (the Hadassah women’s banquet was still “recent,” even though the book came out ten years later). Cantor continued with some tales his readers probably knew, but loved to read about again.

MANY YEARS AGO at a midnight supper, I asked Jack Benny what made him turn to comedy. I thought he was joking when he said it was Jascha Heifetz, until he explained to me that as a youngster in Waukegan, Ill., he had had visions of becoming a serious violinist until one night he heard Jascha Heifetz play.
"I realized then and there that he only way I could make a living out of the violin," said Jack, “was to play on street corners, but it gets so cold in the winter."
And then there was the time Benny found himself pitted against the master ad libber of them all, Fred Allen. How the audience roared as Fred rocked him with one off-script slant after another. But the roof really caved in when Jack finally retorted, "You wouldn't dare say that if my writers were here."
• • •
MONEY, MONEY, money. That's Benny's avowed aim in life. But only in his radio and television life. I've taken him for plenty, and now Jack is on to my tricks. When I recently invited him over for a dinner which he knew would culminate in a little fund-raising he begged off, pleading another engagement. I was a little hurt, because the Surprise Lake Camp project for boys is a favorite of mine. Maybe, I thought, this Benny is beginning to believe his own script.
We were just reaching for our coffee when a knock came at my door. The maid brought me an envelope. There was a signed check inside and a note. "This is for dessert, Eddie. Fill in the amount. Love, Jack."
• • •
FOR 26 YEARS Jack Benny has worked harder than any person on his show to create a fictitious character, and he has succeeded all too well. But hard work is meat and drink to him. If it were for gain alone there wouldn't be any point to this story. At a recent benefit staged by the Friars in Hollywood, Jack shared the stage with such accomplished artists as Tony Martin, Danny Kaye, George Burns, the Ritz Brothers, Georgie Jessel, and a host of their comparable ilk. Who stole the show? Benny.
Why? Some of these performers were funnier than Jack. All of them sang better than he. But no one took his job that night more seriously. Benny worked, rehearsed, wrote, and rewrote. In a sketch with George Burns, he played Gracie Allen. It took him an hour and a half to make up, but when he walked on stage his appearance elicited whistles.
• • •
WHEN I ASKED HIM why he did it he gave me a pungent answer.
"I'm a ham."
And I guess he's right. Here is a ham; he's a fine, lovable ham who enjoys every minute of appearing before people. Even if he has to appear as the stingiest man in the world.
That's why I'm stuck on the guy. There's nothing in the world I wouldn't do for Jack. I told him once I'd give him the shirt off my back.
"And do you know what I'd do for you, Eddie?" he said. "I'd wash it, iron it, and charge you only 35 cents!"

What Jack did for Cantor in real life was no joke. As columnist Hal Humphrey reminded people after Cantor’s death.

At the very top of his radio career, for example, Eddie was kept off the air for an entire year.
The mighty radio networks considered Eddie persona non grata to their sacred air after he made a speech in 1939 at the New York World’s Fair attacking Rep. Hamilton Fish, Father Coughlin and a few other fear-mongers whom Eddie referred to at the time as “our enemies within.” [...]
“Nobody in radio, including the sponsors, would touch me until my good friend Jack Benny used his influence to get me back on the air,” said Eddie, when recounting the incident some years ago.
Benny pointed out to the quaking radio men that it was a waste of talent for both them and their public to let Eddie hang on the vine any longer.

Cantor died in October 1964, the year his book came out. James Bacon of the Associated Press related his story in an obituary:

Cantor, a religious man, did much to help finance the new nation of Israel.
“Once I invited Jack Benny over to my house for dinner,” Cantor recalled, “and sold him $25,000 worth of bonds for Israel.
“And after that Benny went all over town telling people not to eat at my house. ‘Cantor,’ he said, ‘serves the most expensive steaks in town.’”

Jack, according to the AP, was not at Cantor’s very private funeral. Family and Jessel only. October 1964 was not a good month for him. Death claimed Cantor, Gracie Allen, Harpo Marx and, the day after Cantor, Mary Livingstone’s mother. For Jack this time, the laughter would have to wait a bit.

A Little More on Grant Simmons

Disney, Screen Gems, MGM with Tex Avery, Grantray-Lawrence with Ray Patterson, DePatie-Freleng. Grant Simmons has that on his list of animation accomplishments.

We profiled him in this post. In leafing through clippings, but there’s one we missed. We’ll give you some other tidbits, too.

A family history at Ancestry.com says Grant Alden Simmons was born Nov. 11, 1912 at Pima, Arizona and his early schooling was in Miami, Ariz. It claims the family moved to Los Angeles after he graduated from high school—at the age of 12! (June 25, 1924), though a 1943 article transcribed in the previous post says he attended high school in Glendale, which seems more likely. He attended Brigham Young University for two years, studying art.

But the history is missing something. Besides his third birthday party reported in the Graham (Ariz.) Guardian (games and refreshments). This story is from the weekly Lordsburg Liberal of Lordsburg, New Mexico, May 31, 1935.

JACK KERR TELLS OF THE MICKEY MOUSE CARTOON
Our own Jack Kerr, voted the most popular boy on the campus of Modesto College in California, published an article in the Modesto Collegian on the production of the famous Mickey Mouse cartoons, the production being so good that it was broadcast over the radio. Jack's very interesting article follows:
In the minds of the audiences who have seen a Mickey Mouse cartoon, the prevalent reaction is one of mere entertainment. But in the minds of the 250 skilled artists who make these cartoons is the thought of one and a half months of long, hard work, according to Grant Simmons, MJC student.
Simmons has attended several noted art schools, including the Otis Art in Institute at Los Angeles, and was at one time employed by Walt Disney in the making of one of his famous cartoons.
The studio is run on the same scale a large motion picture corporation, according to Simmons. If the artist is good enough he is given a three months' course in apprenticeship, which is held on the studio lot. The artist who has possibilities is given a contract for six months as an "in betweener," and from here he works up the ladder.
The animater plays the most important part in the making of a cartoon. He draws every first and fifth movement. The drawings are then sent to the "thirders," who draw every third movement, and from there the drawings continue on to the "in betweeners," who draw all other motions between the first, third, and fifth drawings.
From these rough sketches a trial picture is made, and if satisfactory the drawings are then sent to the inking department, where "inkers" trace all drawings on celluloid. These celluloid copies are then shown on a stationary background.
All of the songs heard in the cartoons are composed at the Disney studio.
It takes approximately 150,000 drawings to make a single Mickey Mouse moving picture cartoon.
Simmons, who is taking art under Jean Williams at MJC, is practising animation and plans to have a try-out with Disney this summer.

After working on Fantasia (1941), Simmons accepted an offer from Dave Fleischer to work for Screen Gems. The Film Daily’s review on Nov. 9, 1942 of The Dumbconscious Mind, a Phantasy cartoon, says “Reel is amusing and skillfully animated by Grant Simmons.”

The Hollywood correspondent on the Deseret News of Salt Lake City wrote on June 2, 1943:

Grant Simmons, animator at Columbia Cartoon Studios, gets screen credit on Columbia’s current cartoon “Something About A Soldier.” It’s good fun. Grant is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Simmons, formerly of Salt Lake. When I asked Grant if his three-year-old daughter Arlene is also an artist, he said: “She’d better not be.”

Simmons stayed at Screen Gems until it closed in November 1946 (cartoons with his name were put on hold then released over the next two years). His first credit at MGM in the Tex Avery unit was Li’l Tinker. Model sheets for the cartoon are dated June 5, 1946 and the short was released May 15, 1948.

During the ‘40s, he was also active in the Screen Cartoonists, Local 852 as a trustee.

MGM disbanded the Avery unit in March 1953. Variety of June 16, 1953 reported that two weeks earlier, Simmons and Ray Patterson, who bounced between the Hanna-Barbera unit and Avery’s crew, had been hired by Walter Lantz. While two Lantz cartoons bear their names, they did not stay long. On July 21, 1954, Variety said the two, and New York producer Robert Lawrence, had set up Grantray Animation, Inc., later Grantray-Lawrence. The intention was to make commercials, industrial films and theatricals. For a time, their creative supervisor was Gene Hazleton.

Simmons and Patterson’s company did some sub-contract work for television, notably on the debut episode of The Jetsons (1962). It also turned in footage for the features Gay Purree (1962) and Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear (1964). Then came a big break. Broadcasting revealed in its Jan. 24, 1966 issue:

Comics on TV ● Producers Robert Lawrence and Stephen Krantz have acquired TV animation rights from Marvel Comics group for two of its comic characters, Spider-Man and Captain America. Production of a half-hour pilot film is now under way at Grantray-Lawrence Productions, Hollywood.

A million-dollar contract between Krantz Films and RKO General Broadcasting to put the Captain America half hours—three segments including Sub-Mariner, The Incredible Hulk, The Mighty Thor and Iron Man—on five of its stations was announced in the Mar. 26, 1966 issue of Back Stage. By April 11, sales reached two million for 18 cities, according to Broadcasting magazine. Simmons was one of the directors.

As for Spider-Man, ABC decided by January 19, 1967 to add the half hour to its fall Saturday morning schedule (source, The Hollywood Reporter). There were expanded studios and staff. There were more TV commercials. It was all too much. Grantray-Lawrence closed in (I understand) 1968. Spidey was now animated in New York, though Simmons got a credit.

Simmons’ name appears in Daily Variety a final time on June 1, 1970. He was hired, along with familiar names Art Davis, Sid Marcus, Hawley Pratt, Gerry Chiniquy and Lars Calonius, to direct the Doctor Dolittle cartoon series for DePatie-Freleng.

Cancer claimed Simmons died on October 31, 1970 at age 57.

Lookie, a Rookie!

Friz Freleng’s spot-gag short Rookie Revue opens with a shot of a billboard, then a left-to-right pan across some tents (some in the foreground panned at a different speed to simulate depth) as we hear Mel Blanc snoring “You’re in the Army Now.” One tent is a tee-pee. I guess that's the first gag.

The camera stops on the bugler's tent.



Fade to the first bit of animation. The bugler is snoring. His ears flap in a four-drawing cycle.



Cut to a cuckoo clock. Hey, how come the time is different than in the last shot?



The cuckoo comes out, blows reveille, and goes back in.



Storyman Dave Monahan (or whoever else worked on this) aren't content to leave it there. The frames below reveal the rest of the gag.



Look! Four fingers and a thumb!



The cartoon was released on Oct. 25, 1941, and rated “Excellent” by Exhibitor magazine. Then came Pearl Harbor. Showman’s Trade Review wrote on Dec. 27, 1941, under “Out-dated”:

When this was released it was OK, but the fun about some of the happenings as rookies train with imitation funs now strikes a note that is way off key. This, of course, is no fault whatsoever of the producer or the distributor. It’s simply a matter of record an important fact unfortunately now associated with a very clever fact unfortunately now associated with a very clever cartoon and one containing many situations once good for laughs.

There are two radio show references in the cartoon, a couple of inside gags, and an ending that takes forever to get there.

Dick Bickenbach receives the rotating animation credit; my guess is Gerry Chiniquy, Gil Turner and Manny Perez worked on it as well. The polished backgrounds are the unheralded work of Lenard Kester.

Screwy Meets Meathead

Screwy Squirrel uses a phone call to goad Meathead into chasing him in their debut cartoon, Screwball Squirrel (1944).

“I knew that’d get him,” Screwy tells us (he talks to the audience through the picture), then does his shoulder-hunch laugh before playing Meathead’s note like a Jew’s harp.



Screwy does one of his twirling exits back into the phone booth.



Meathead follows and it's on to the next gag.

I like Screwy. I don't know how many cartoons were left in him, but there are good gags in all of them before Tex gave up on him. I love the barrel gag in this one, where it turns out the drum roll on the soundtrack is being played by Screwy.

Heck Allen assisted Avery with the gags, with Preston Blair, Ray Abrams and Ed Love animating (Love did the above work). Wally Maher, using his Wilbur voice from the Tommy Riggs and Betty Lou radio show, is Screwy.

The Rainbow Girl Who Made Good

“Theme for the new term of Ocean Mist Assembly No. 232, International Order of Rainbow for Girls,” reported the Mendocino Beacon of June 11, 1965, “is ‘Patriotism is the strength of our Country,’ chosen by Karen Valentine, who headed the slate of officers installed on Sunday afternoon, June sixth, in a beautifully impressive ceremony.”

Yes, that Karen Valentine. One of a number of actors/actresses who were in demand on television in the 1970s, given a crack at starring in their own show(s), then faded away.

She seemed to live a storybook, charmed childhood. In 1953, she was selected as an attendant to the Sebastopol Apple Blossom Queen. Ten years later she was given a full-page spread in the Oct. 24, 1963 Sonoma West Times and News after she had been crowned Miss Teenage Santa Rosa. She was not only the first "Nature" of her new Rainbow Assembly, she was a cheerleader, an A student, took part in school plays and said she hoped to get off the family chicken farm to become a dramatic teacher. (There was nothing saying she hoped to hear the words “Karen Valentine to block” sitting next to Paul Lynde on Hollywood Squares).

Her star rose pretty quickly. She entered the Miss Teen Age America contest. On Nov. 2, Peggy Simpson of the Associated Press reported from Dallas:

A living Doll—Judy by name—is the new Miss Teen-age America, but a bubbly sprite from Santa Rosa, California, Calif., Karen Valentine, has the first television contract. . . .
Pixie-like Karen Valentine, 16, captured the audience—as she has all week.
“I’ve just never seen anyone as cute as that gal,” one man said, after seeing her uninhibited, shoulder-wiggling, eye-rolling version of “Blame it on the Bossa Nova.”
“Wonder if I could adopt her?”
Karen had been announced earlier as talent winner for the pageant.
Showman Ed Sullivan telephoned from New York after seeing Karen’s act and invited her to his program.
“Some people like chocolate ice cream—I just love to perform—over and over and over,” Karen said, her big brown eyes laughing.

Her first appearance on Sullivan was Nov. 10, 1963 along with Allen and Rossi, Shelley Berman and the West Point Glee Club.

Two years later, she was installing the officers of her Rainbow Assembly. Four years after that, came Room 222. Producer Gene Reynolds told columnist Don Royal at the time: “I had already read, not just interviewed, 130 girls for the part of Alice, the student teacher. Then Karen came in, went through only three or four lines and I knew she had it.”

The series oozed ‘60s awareness. It was about an integrated high school. Valentine had been called “perky,” “a sprite” and “likened to an uncorked bottle of champagne” in reviews at the time, but Richard K. Shull of the Scripps-Howard news service dumped a gotcha-question on her, mid-interview. From the Indianapolis News, Nov. 27, 1969:

I asked her if she resented playing a caricature in the show. Her voice still giggled but her hackles were up. She didn’t consider her character a caricature, she said. “I think all our characters are valid. I’ve known student teachers just like Alice Johnson, the girl I play,” she added. Ditto, she said there's no conscious effort in the show to make the black characters credible and the white characters overdrawn. And further, she said, she didn't much like to have "Room 222" compared to Bill Cosby's show. In both shows, a good many viewers have detected what for want of a better name might he called the Stepin Fetchit's revenge syndrome—in which the whites are grotesque travesties. "Bill Cosby and 'Room 222' can't be compared. In the first place," she said. "Cosby is a caricature of Cosby, but Lloyd Haynes as Pete Dixon deals with problems realistically. "The two shows are totally different because of who Bill Cosby is. He's a very funny comedian," she said. And that seemed to be that. But, since the vice-president contends news media treat subject matter with all the impartiality of the Masked Court of the Venetian Doge: Karen Valentine's character is a caricature. Karen Valentine's character is a caricature.
Karen Valentine's character is a caricature.

Room 222 aired five seasons and begat an Emmy for Valentine. The series was a dramady, but when it ended ABC wanted a sitcom for her. And what could be funnier than post-Shull's vice president, post-Watergate, Washington, D.C. This syndicated column is from Jan. 18, 1975.

Karen Valentine Quits Classroom for Capital
By CHARLES WITBECK
HOLLYWOOD — ABC has finally found a format for "that cute little girl from 'Room 222' " — Karen Valentine.
On Friday (Jan. 24), "Room 222's" substitute teacher, Alice Johnson, begins a new life in Washington, D.C., in "Karen," a comedy series about a girl being useful in one of those Common Cause-type lobbying associations.

The show holds promise since It is the brainchild of "M*A*S*H" producers Gene Reynolds and Larry Gelbart, Reynolds being a Common Cause member, and the man who first spotted Karen, the Miss Teenaged California winner from Sebastapol, Calif., as just the right Alice Johnson with her eager, puppy-dog quality.
With "M*A*S*H" already in the can for the season, Reynolds and Gelbart have time to work with Carl Kleinschmitt on the project, and will simply switch the "M*A*S*H" crew over to the "Karen" set at 20th Century-Fox. Earlier in the year, researcher Reynolds spent time in Washington's Common Cause office, and took a political science class at nearby UCLA, so he wouldn't be a greenhorn plotting Washington machinations.
Having mentor Reynolds in her corner again and the "M*A*S*H" crew pleases both Karen and ABC. The network felt secure enough about the project and the people not to demand a pilot.
"I'm not playing the comedy relief this time,” says Karen Valentine. "My character, Karen Angelo, is more grown-up than '222's' Alice Johnson."
After two pilots since "Room 222," one of which she liked by Mary Tyler Moore Productions successful team of Lorenzo Music and David Davis, Karen has been searching for a "now" character who isn't a Woman's Libber or a young housewife. The struggling girl law student didn't fit either. Something in the middle seemed more like it, and Reynolds idea of the Common Cause worker rang the bell.
"I come to Washington with a new Congressman who promised me during the campaign he would take me with him if he won," Karen explains. "However, I become a gopher in his Washington office, mainly running about doing errands. Since I want to be useful, I quit and join Open America, the lobbying association run by a mixture of old and young dedicated people. Denver Pyle is our leader and Dena Dietrich (Mother Nature in the commercial world) keeps the office functioning."
Young idealist Karen gets around Washington on a bicycle, carrying a colorful flag, putting in about equal time buttonholing politicians, working a broken-down copying machine and solving personal problems. She shares an apartment with a black roommate, Sissy, and listens to the trials and tribulations of a law student who lives in the basement and puts himself through school by tending bar.
Using Karen as the reactor much like Mary Tyler Moore, Reynolds and Gelbart have surrounded their heroine with caricatures. In the Open America group, you'll bump into a retired Navy officer (Liam Dunne), who thinks the world has gone to hell and knows all kids are drug-crazed weirdos. His counterpart is a 50-year-old hippie (Allen Kent), attempting to act half his age, wearing the latest mod rags and mumbling "Peace" or "Groovy."
The producers hope to kid all factions on the Washington scene, virgin territory for Hollywood comedy writers, but know, of course, Karen Valentine's ingratiating manner is their main ticket. Politics is simply a backdrop — comedy comes first.
Still, Washington life is a new toy. Maybe the "M*A*S*H" producers can use it as a comedic backdrop, with Karen the charmer up front. At least it's a move in a different direction, and that's unexpected in televisionland.

Karen suffered the same fate as Mr. Shull’s vice-president. She left Washington, D.C. In Miss Valentine’s case, her show lasted 13 weeks before cancellation. Maybe it was because Karen Valentine was likeable. I don't believe anyone has called politics in Washington, D.C. "likeable."

Plenty of work on TV-movies and TV guest shots followed, even some pilots. But she never got another series. She told columnist Jay Bobbin in 2004 she hoped a Hallmark channel comedy movie with John Laroquette would help her wind her way past the glut of reality shows and help her get back on television. Not long after, newspaper columnists were asked “Whatever happened to...”

As it comes to all who are able to reach a certain time in life, Karen settled into retirement. It’s a shame she didn’t get a crack at her own series again. Watching her back in the ‘70s, she struck me as pleasant and sincere. And she could be fun, as you can see below in her second appearance on Sullivan, March 29, 1964. As a DeMolay, I can tell you it’s a far cry from the ceremonies in a Rainbow Assembly.

Koko Komes

Something is always becoming something else in the early Fleischer cartoons, one of the things that makes them fun to watch.

In this scene from Boop-Oop-A-Doop (1932), a happy elephant draws ink from a well on his back and squirts it out. Since it’s a Fleischer cartoon, and it is an inkwell, who should emerge but Koko?



Sousa's "The Washington Post March" is playing in quick-time in the background.

The Fleischers seem to have like animal crowds in backgrounds, and this cartoon has them, too. Check out this scene. Sad dog, raccoon, horse, some humans. Lots of variety.



What the available version of the cartoon doesn't have is the original credits. Any factual insight into the head animator for this well-drawn and enjoyable cartoon would be helpful.

Bird Butt

Dick Lundy’s last cartoon for MGM, Bird-Brain Bird Dog, includes some familiar bits from Tex Avery’s cartoons, and a really odd cut.

Barney Bear shoots his own large butt after his bird-loving hunting dog drew a little quail on it.

Lundy cuts to a close-up of the damage. In the very next frame, he cuts back to the longer shot, but the difference in the action is pretty jarring. These are consecutive frames.



Without a summary of the scenes from the studio, it’s hard to determine if some action was cut. A cue ends when the scene ends, and a new one starts when the next scene begins, so it’s really tough to say if there’s a cut in the soundtrack. It’s possible.

Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton and Bob Bentley are the credited animators (Mike Lah either didn't work on this or his name was omited) and Johnny Johnsen gets a background credit. Heck Allen and Jack Cosgriff provided the gag, including a variation on Avery's "Timber" routine, and characters stacked on top of each other as in Half Pint Pygmy.

MGM had a backlog of cartoons, and this was one of the shorts on a shelf for a while. Not only was Lundy gone from MGM when this short was released on July 30, 1954 (he told Mark Mayerson he left at the end of October 1951), so was Avery, who had come back only to have his unit disbanded in March 1953.