Sunday, 9 February 2025

"Ferdinand" Blanc

Mel Blanc enjoyed fishing. And, like a fish story, Blanc’s tale of how he came to be hired by the Leon Schlesinger cartoon studio grew and changed over the years.

This Week was a newspaper magazine supplement A feature story on cartoon voice actors published October 13, 1946. This may be the earliest version about his hiring. We posted this a number of years ago on the GAC site.

Look Who's Talking!
You don't know them but their voices are famous. They give life to cartoon characters.
SUZANNE V. HORVATH
The success of every animated cartoon depends on the talents of a highly specialized group of people—the men and women who speak for them. ...
Moviegoers everywhere know the Hollywood artists and the product of their magic inkwells. But it’s to the unknown “voices,” on these pages, that cartoon studios turn when a new character pops up.
These people get no special training, have to depend on their imagination and a talent for mimicry. The artists or directors can’t be of much help, beyond a vague request to “talk like a rabbit,” or “say this like a timid ghost.”
In 1928 Walt Disney had a brain storm and brought forth a “Mouse.” A year later Mickey made his first noise and Disney hasn't stopped talking for him since. Then there is Popeye, whose years of popularity make Bob Hope look like a Johnny-Come-Lately. But in recent years many favorites have come along to where they get top billing, have their own following of fans: Warner Brothers have Humphrey Bogart and buck-toothed Bugs Bunny, whose box-office rating adds up to a mint of carrots. Famous Studios have under contract, besides Popeye and his troop, Little Lulu and a small newcomer called Casper, the Friendly Ghost. Tom and Jerry, the cat and mouse, are friendly enemies at M-G-M. Terry Toons made stars of two magpies.
For each of these, and others, a man or woman plays a major role. All are talented mimics and work into the animated-cartoon world quite casually.
Bugs Bunny’s Mel Blanc, for instance, was writing radio shows when he got a call from the office of Treg Brown of Warner Brothers’ cartoon department. “Can you play a drunken bull?” asked Brown. “My best friends call me Ferdinand,” replied the surprised Mel.
The drunken bull is now a forgotten character, but Mel has become one of the animated cartoon world’s greatest talkers.


Gee, nothing about dead casting directors or wallowing in pig-pens. A “surprise” phone call sparked it all.

Whether Mel was writing for radio shows at the time of his hiring, I can’t say. But he was certainly appearing in them. You can probably find a number of these series on old-time radio websites.

The Oregon Daily Journal ran down some of Blanc’s radio career to date in a feature story printed June 23, 1946. It’s an overview, so don’t expect to find specific dates of shows. One thing it doesn’t mention is Blanc played a character named Sylvester on the Judy Canova Show. Warners borrowed the name and voice for a certain cat. The radio character was more over-the-top than the cartoon character.

Mel was to start his own network radio show within a few months. All his voices couldn't save it. The show ran for one season.

Heard But Not Seen Makes a Living
By TOMMY HOXIE
(Special to The Journal)
There is a voice in Hollywood that is heard by more radio listeners than that of any other comedian . . .
one that pays off to the tune of a figure well up in the six-digit bracket—and that’s not counting the two ciphers to the right of the decimal point, either.
Yet the name of the owner of that voice won’t be found listed in any schedule of daily radio programs, for it’s Mel Blanc, the “one-man-crowd” of radio.
* * *
AND IT’S MEL’S flexibile voice that portrays Pedro and Roscoe Wortle on the Judy Canova show; the cigar store clerk and the melancholy postman on George Burns and Gracie Allen’s broadcasts; and Scottie Brown, Cartoony Technicolorovich and the chronic hiccougher of the Abbott and Costello show.
For the Jack Benny broadcasts, he portrays the train announcer, the French violin teacher, the loquacious parrot, the news reporter and Benny’s English butler. It was the latter bit of acting that won for Melvin Jerome Blanc the nomination as one of the outstanding bit parts in radio for 1945.
In addition to his four weekly radio broadcasts, Mel is busy on the Warner Bros. lot, where the voices of 90 per cent, of the masculine cartoon characters are dependent on his versatile vocal chords. It was he who devised the stuttering voice of Porkie Pig and the belligerent one of Bugs Bunny. And his new contract with Warner Bros. gives him screen credit for his voice characterizations, the first time this distinction has been given an actor in cartoons.
* * *
“PORTLAND and San Francisco both claim me,” said Mel in an interview following the rehearsal of a recent Judy Canova program. “Portland claims I was born in San Francisco, and San Francisco claims I was born in Portland.”
Actually, the man who plays so many parts on the air and on the screen was born in the Bay City 38 years ago, but moved to Portland at the age of 7.
Fellow classmates at Lincoln high school will remember Mel as the lad who began producing and directing amateur vaudeville shows at school. And in writing the skits for these shows he usually managed to feature himself as comic. It was then that Mel first to show an inkling of the career that would some day make him famous.
AS A BOY, WHEN MEL studied the violin, he never suspected that he would one day portray the role of Jack Benny’s French violin teacher. But he did know that he would never win much acclaim as a violin virtuoso in his own right. So, after eight years of study, he packed his violin away and turned his time to the tuba. With his big horn, Mel joined the staff hand at station KGW, played with some of the Northwest’s leading dance bands and filled a spot with the Portland Symphony orchestra.
It was for Portland radio listeners that Mel first aired his amazing voice dexterity when on KGW-KEX’ famous “Hoot Owls” and “Cobwebs and Nuts” broadcasts, he occasionally put aside his tuba to step up to the mike in one of a score of voices and dialects.
Some time after this, Mel began writing, producing and acting in a show of his own. But not content with putting in as many as 16 hours a day on a six-day-a week, 52-weeks-a-year job, he spent the seventh day writing the Portland Breakfast club scripts.
* * *
“IT WAS in 1935 that I left Portland for Hollywood,” Mel reminisced, “and, believe me, things weren’t easy for a while. For the first two years, I was lucky to do one show a week.
“Finally, I started getting chances at auditions and wound up with a spot on a network show. From then on, I’ve been pretty busy.”
That network show was with Al Pearce—and “pretty busy” is putting it mildly. By 1943, Mel was appearing in 14 radio shows a week and already becoming widely recognized for his movie cartoon voice characterizations. And with a half—hour radio show requiring a full day—and—night schedule.
“I finally just dropped everything except the four network shows I do now and the cartoons.”
* * *
“OH, AND BY the way,” he explained, “I never see the cartoons at all, you know. I merely do the voice part as prescribed by the script, and then later the artists draw the characters. Facial expressions and body movements are animated to match the dialogue.”
Mel can portray 57 different characters, sometimes doing as many as 8 or 10 on a single program. But his own favorites are the Burns and Allen postman and salesman Roscoe Wortle.
It was while he was doing the latter at the Judy Canova rehearsal that I saw he marked his script with a mechanical pencil with four colors of lead—a different color for each voice change.
“I always carry this pencil and a fountain pen,” he remarked. “The pencil is ideal for coding the script, and I save the pen for signing contracts.”
IT IS NOT ONLY his voice that Mel uses in his radio characterizations. His whole body fits into character as he strives to inject into each one a complete naturalness. When he assumes the character of the lazy Pedro, he slouches at the microphone and cocks his head to one side. Then on the same show, when he returns as Roscoe Wortle, he stands erect and straightforward.
In the few recreational hours his busy schedule allows. Mel fishes, plays with 7-year-old son Noel and does the buying for a successful Venice, Cal., hardware store which he started as a hobby. His merchandise features sporting goods with an accent on fishing equipment. His father—in—law operates the business while Mel operates his larnyx.
It is at their ocean-view home at Playa Del Ray, near Santa Monica that Mrs. Blanc (Estelle) and Noel listen to the radio so that when he comes back from the studio they can serve as critics to Daddy.
“I get a little homesick for Portland now and then,” Mel said as we left the studio,” “and maybe one of these days I’ll be able to take Estelle and Noel and go back there. You see they have the best fishing up there, and all the time I lived in Portland I never went fishing. Now it is my hobby, and I’d really like to try out my tackle on some of those big ones that get away.”


Blanc’s hiring by Treg Brown came at a time when the Schlesinger studio had decided to bring in professional actors; after all, Warner Bros. owned KFWB radio with all kinds of actors at its disposal. Billy Bletcher is probably the best known of the earliest pros. Not too much later came Danny Webb and Elvia Allman, joining seamstress-turned-actress Berneice Hansell. That early group seemed to find work at most of the West Coast studios. Blanc’s voice can be easily spotted in cartoons produced by Charlie Mintz for Columbia, and almost every cartoon fan knows he was the original voice of Woody Woodpecker for Walter Lantz (and, later, on children’s LPs).

Mel Blanc outshone all the others. His expressiveness, accents, even singing, was perfect for animated comedies, where Warner Bros. had become the top dog (or, bunny, perhaps). The dialogue got better and better as the 1940s wore on. In turn, Blanc’s performances got better and better. No doubt he inspired many, many others who followed. Mel Blanc really was the best cartoon actor of all time.

What’s that, you say? This is a perfect opportunity of plugging Keith Scott’s two-volume history of actors in animated cartoons, you say? Why, indeed this is.

I can’t say enough good things about this set, which needed to be written. Only Keith, with his meticulous research and attentive ear, could write it. Check out the BearManor Media site for more. Keith has the full Mel Blanc story. Without any fish.

Saturday, 8 February 2025

When the Government Controls Everything

John Sutherland Productions quite happily aligned itself with big business and its anti-big government, anti-Communist sentiments in a number of well-animated cartoons produced for Harding College, a private, right-of-centre school based in Searcy, Arkansas.

Daily Variety reported on October 8, 1946 that Sutherland had received approval of script on the animated, Technicolor short "Private Enterprise" from Harding College, and shooting was to start that week. There was no cartoon released with that name, so this may have been the working title of Make Mine Freedom, its first cartoon for Harding. Sutherland managed to find a theatrical release, with MGM revealing on February 6, 1948 it would put Make Mine Freedom into theatres. That happened the following month.

There’s no subtleness in this short. John Q. Public (who sounds like Stan Freberg at least some of the time) urges representatives of labour, management, government and farmers to try the “Ism” being peddled by Dr. Utopia (played by Frank Nelson).




After glugging down the “Ism,” the picture fades into a fantasy sequence of what America would turn into.



A factory worker (voiced by Billy Bletcher) protests working conditions imposed by the government. The huge hand of government clamps a ball and chain on him. “The state forbids strikes,” says the ominous off-screen voice (Bud Hiestand). When the worker threatens union action, the hand stamps him with a government union mark.



When the tycoon objects to having his business taken over and threatens to sue, the hand appears again to tell him “The state is the Supreme Court” and tosses him out of his former factory. “No more private property. No more you.”



When the government takes away the pigs and corn of the farmer, he pledges the “farm vote” will put a stop to it. The voice tells him farmers don’t vote any more, and after clamping an iron collar on him, informs him “the state will do the planning from now on.”



The scene swirls into the Congressman (John Brown?) in a concentration camp, calling for a fight “to regain our freedom.” The hand squashes him and turns him into a propaganda record player, repeating over and over “Everything is fine.”



Not surprisingly, reactions to the cartoon varied depending if you were on the left or the right side of the political fence. Hearst columnist George E. Sokolsky wrote on May 8, 1948:

I saw a movie short, done after the style of Walt Disney, which is humorous, colorful, bright and yet explains why the United States is an excellent place in which to live—in fact a better place than those proletarian heavens that are so widely advertised by the seekers of utopias. The short is called “Make Mine Freedom” and it was prepared by the John Sutherland Productions, Inc.
The reason why I like this short so much and call it to your attention so that if your movie house shows it, you will go to see it, is that it is the first of its kind that is wholly affirmative. It does not apologize for the American civilization: it rather challenges anyone to produce a better one. And while the nine–minute short is full of humor, it nevertheless hits the nail squarely on the head. In this country, we have freedom, and that is worth more than anything else in all this world.


On the flip side was this review by Herb Tank of The Daily Worker, May 6, 1948.

SEEING MOST of the nonsense that concerns this department at press previews saves me from the short subjects that often plague the neighborhood film goer. But now and then I get trapped. The last time was by Metro. The short in question was a little animated item that struck me as particularly phony.
The short: Make Mine Freedom. The subject: political. The viewpoint: strictly NAM [National Association of Manufacturers].
If this color cartoon is an example of the film capitol’s [sic] sense of public responsibility A. T. (After Thomas) I’ll take Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. Compared to Make Mine Freedom, the mouse and the duck stand out as veritable elder statesmen.
. . .
THE OBJECT of this film is to sell a non-existent status quo which it lightly labels the American way of life. This it does with all the deftness of a full page ad by the NAM on why price controls are un-American. Says the film, with appropriate cartoon images: America is ... the cracker barrel philosophers in Crabtree Corners. And it’s the tycoons on Wall Street. Then it lists our freedoms, some of which we have yet to win, and some that are disappearing at an alarming pace.
BUT THE MAIN ACTION in Make Mine Freedom takes place in a park. Here we find presumably four fifths of America in vigorous conflict. The final fifth, of course, comes in later. He saves the day.
The four fifths are represented by labor, management, farmer and politician. During their argument an olive-skinned individual dressed in a violet zoot suit breaks up the conflict by offering to sell them each a bottle of Dr. Utopia’s Ism.
Each takes a sip and discovers the horrible things that will happen to people who listen to speeches about ------ism on street corners. Comes then the resolute final fifth of America, John Q. Public, who is neither farmer, worker, manager, or politician and he saves the day. Under his leadership and united, the others chase Dr. Utopia out of the park, belting him over the head with bottles of Ism. I presume they damn well made him go back to where he came from!
. . .
MAKE MINE FREEDOM, in its content and method, its obvious pandering to a mentality certainly short of the usual 12-year-old level, is an insult to the audiences who will have to see it along with the full-length feature that brought them into the theater. Particularly obnoxious is a cartoon in it depicting people of other nations in much the same way as the Nazi Streicher once did in his anti-Semitic magazines.
. . .
APPARENTLY the makers of Make Mine Freedom felt that the term Ism was sufficient to identify socialism and communism.
I’m not so sure. After all there are also such Isms around as capitalism, imperialism, nationalism, chauvinism and fascism . . . all Isms that are embodied one way or another in this film.


Certainly, it MUST be about those Commies. Individual freedoms couldn’t be taken away under capitalism. Could they?

Friday, 7 February 2025

Musical Roaches

Here’s Friz Freleng’s dilemma.

He had to make cartoons out of Warner Bros-owned songs. In 1935, Mort Dixon and Allie Wrubel wrote “The Lady in Red” for the Warners feature In Caliente starring Dolores del Rio and Pat O’Brien. It was a hit, so Friz and the writers went to work.

The feature was set in a Mexican cabaret, so the cartoon was set in a Mexican cafĂ©, which just happened to have a cabaret attached. And what better to star in a cartoon set in Mexico than the most Mexican of all insects—cucarachas.

It was already a cartoon clichĂ© to find musical purposes for ordinary items. In this scene, cockroaches are providing accompaniment to a Rudy Vallee roach singing Warren and Dubin’s “Sweet Music.”



One happy roach is playing a jar of jelly like a snare drum. Another jolly roach is playing a pipe like a saxophone. Bernie Brown’s score has neither a drum nor saxophone in it.

Here, peanuts stand-in for maracas.



Spoons and empty water glasses turn into a celeste.



False teeth click like castanets when they “see” a piece of really thin meat. I’m afraid the “gags” don’t get better than this.



The writers revert to the old Harman-Ising “villain shows up in the second half and is quelled by the gang” formula. At least in the H-I cartoons, you could guess the villain had romantic/sexual interest in his captive. I don’t know what the parrot’s motivation is to grab the Dolores Del Rio roach.

This is the best part of the cartoon.



Well, I always liked the jester.

Bob McKimson and Ben Clopton are the credited animators.

Thursday, 6 February 2025

The Ol' Sucker Gag

In Pup on a Picnic (1953), Tom tries to distract Spike the bulldog with a wiener by pretending it’s a stick to be fetched.



The ruse works. Tom tosses it in a little pond. The pond turns out to be very shallow.



Seeing this, I thought “I wonder if Spike’s head is going to turn into a sucker, like in an Avery or Clampett cartoon.



Yes, I have watched too many cartoons.

Actually, Spike and Tyke are not on a picnic. They’re on a “pic-a-nic,” which is the way characters voiced by Daws Butler pronounce the word. Even if they’re not smarter than the average bear.

Wednesday, 5 February 2025

At'sa Scotti

You need an Italian with a stereotypical-ah accent-ah? Who do you hire?

Why, someone from California, of course.

In the case of one actor, it made sense. That actor was Vito Scotti, a native San Franciscan, home of the DiMaggios, whose family name was actually Scozzari, and who lived in Italy for a time.

Scotti was another one of those people who appeared everywhere in television in the 1960s and ‘70s. His career on the small screen goes back further, as fans of I Love Lucy will tell you. He was around so much that entertainment columnists wrote feature pieces about him.

This one is from the Monrovia Daily News-Post of April 18, 1953. This was after a re-casting of the TV series Life With Luigi. J. Carrol Naish (Luigi) and Alan Reed (Pasquale), who were on the radio series, were dumped because of pressure from Italian-America groups, and replaced with Scotti and Thomas Gomez.


VITO SCOTTI FINDS ‘LUIGI’ ROLE SYMPATHETIC
Vito Scotti’s Italian background provides him not only with an authentic characterization of the ebullient immigrant in “Life With Luigi,” Sundays at 8:30 p. m. on Channel 2, but also a desire to portray the earnest good will of America’s foreign-born citizens.
“I see Luigi as an individual,” declares Vito, “and not representative of Italians as a group.” Amiable and voluble himself, Vito expresses a consuming desire to make of Luigi a lovable, humorous, sincere patriot who thinks of his native Italy in a sentimental way and wishes fervently that America could be transplanted to his homeland or vice-versa.
San Francisco was Vito’s birthplace, and New York City’s Public School 21 takes credit for his early education. However, his practical schooling and comprehensive knowledge of all parts of the United States come from his tour of the theatrical circuits with his mother, a professional nightclub comedy singer known as Gine Santelia.
By the time he was 22, Vito had formed his own musical comedy company and toured with such shows as “Bloom Time,” “Vagabond King” and “Naughty Marietta.”
For a while his main source of income was small comedy roles in the movies, including “Kiss of Death,” “Illegal Entry” and “Disputed.”
Three years ago he married Irene Lopez, a Spanish classical dancer. They had met In New York City and moved to an apartment in Hollywood. They expect a “bambino” sometime in July.
Vito’s movie and video roles would seem to make him some kind of international histrionic potpourri. In the ABC-TV “Mama Rosa” series he created the role of a myopic French piano tuner with the improbable name of Nicolai. Lately he has been active as the portrayer of Rama, the Hindu pal of Gunga, in the CBS video series, “Smilin’ Ed’s Gang.” And one of his best professional breaks came when he landed the comedy lead, a Spanish Milquetoast, in the Republic film, “The Fabulous Senorita.” Actually, his only real claim to a cosmopolitan life is the brief period he spent in Italy as a child.
Like Luigi, Vito is earnest and a bit self-effacing, but innately intelligent and full of kindly humor.


Some things Scotti is generally not known for—being seriously mauled by a berserk six-ton elephant on the set of Andy Devine’s Gang (INS, Oct. 11, 1955; Devine was not on the set) and being the owner of 14 sets of teeth (Long Beach Independent, March 12, 1965).

He is known for regular roles on a number of comedies 55-plus years ago—McHale’s Navy, The Flying Nun and To Rome With Love are among them.

The Lincoln Star of Aug. 11, 1968 was one of a number of papers that interviewed him about his new job opposite Sally Field swooping through the air.

Veteran Actor Vito Scotti Lands ‘Flying Nun’ Role
By MARIE JOHNSON
A bumbling, frustrated, funny, stick-in-the-mud, devoutly Catholic Puerto Rican: these phrases sum up the new regular to be seen on “The Flying Nun” this Fall.
The character, played by veteran actor-comedian Vito Scotti, is Captain Gaspar Fomento, chief of police in San Juan, who is constantly getting into hot water and in the sisters’ hair.
In the first episode he arrests the nuns on suspicion of booking bets, and using the convent San Tanco as a front, and books Carlos Ramirez (Alejandro Rey), a friend of the nuns, as their outside accomplice.
Despite his blunders, disasters and misplaced accusations, the nuns are usually the ones who bail him out of trouble when his superiors take him to task.
Like many well-known character actors, Vito Scotti suffers from having most people remember his face but seldom his name. His ability to change his looks to fit the part has made many people believe that his roles have been played by more than one actor.
“I didn’t want to be tied to any one series before this,” he explained. “I was having too much fun playing different parts,” Vito continued, “but the part of Capt. Fomento was written expressly for me. It’s perfect for me and fits me like a glove. I have a free reign on the part and I can do as I like with it.”
The other members of the cast are very good to work with, according to Vito. “They welcomed me warmly to the show and made me feel that they appreciated what I could contribute to it.”
“It’s surprising to see the number of nuns that visit the set of ‘The Flying Nun,’” he said. When they ask him to explain how the nun flies, he answers “faith!”
Of violence on television, he said “trying to blame everything on television is like having a handful of thumbs. You need fingers so you can tell the difference between them and your thumbs. Television is the same way. Some violence is necessary so that youngsters will know good from bad, by comparison.”
“It can be overdone,” he continued. “Violence that is a part of the story is fine, but violence for the sake of violence is unnecessary.
“There are some things that should be left to the imagination of the individual. Do you remember the old “Inter Sanctum’ [sic] radio program? When that creaking door opened, you had to use your imagination to figure out what was behind it. This is the same quality neede[d] on television.”
Vito was born in San Francisco and shortly afterwards his family took him to Italy where he remained for six years.
“My folks were in show business and when I was seven they pushed me on the stage and now nobody can get me off,” he says.
On television Vito has been seen on several shows including “The Dick Powell Show,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “The Donna Reed Show,” “The Addams Family” and “The Wackiest Ship in the Army.”
Although basically a comedian, he has played dramatic television roles on “Playhouse 90” and “Climax.”
Among his feature film roles are a prisoner-of-war in “Captain Newman, M.D.,” the engineer in ‘Von Ryan’s Express” and the Mexican bandit in “Rio Conchos.”
Recently he played the Italian colonel in “The Secret War of Harry Frigg,” starring Paul Newman and Sylvia Kiscina, and had a cameo role in “How Sweet It Is,” a new comedy starring Debbie Reynolds and James Garner.


The Powell show mentioned above, which aired on Jan. 1, 1963, involved him playing a goat-herder on a goodwill tour of the U.S. from Bandoria. Scotti’s character only spoke Bandorian.

Of course, there is no Bandoria and Bandorian doesn’t exist. But, for Scotti, there was no problem. As a publicity handout for the episode read: “I throw in a few Italian sounds, some Japanese sounds, and then top them off with some Egyptian and German sounds. If this show is ever sent overseas, it’ll make people all over the world think their television set has gone on the blink.”

His career found him in front of the cameras in The Godfather and in front of the mike in The Aristocats. And many more you can find checking out those sites that keep track of these things.

Scotti died of cancer on June 5, 1996. He was 78.

Tuesday, 4 February 2025

What Happened There, Toby?

When cutting from an action shot to a different view of the action shot, the action should look the same.

That doesn’t always happen in an animated cartoon, and it can look pretty jarring.

Here’s an example from Circus Time, a January 1931 cartoon starring Toby the Pup and made by the Dick Huemer-Sid Marcus-Art Davis team at the Charles Mintz studio. These are consecutive drawings. The first one was held for eight frames then cuts to the next one. Joe De Nat’s music plugs away like it should, so it’s not a splice in the film.



Perhaps something was edited before the cartoon was scored.

The Tobys were released by R-K-O until it decided it didn’t need any cartoons other than the ones made at the studio it partially owned, Van Beuren Productions.

I like the Toby cartoons I’ve seen, though they could use stronger gags.

Monday, 3 February 2025

Tex and Chilly

I’ve always liked this sneaky expression on Chilly Willy as he tries to steal a warm fox fur in I’m Cold, a 1954 release by the Walter Lantz studio.



Tex Avery made two Chilly Willys for Lantz and they’re both entertaining. This is the first one. Avery borrows his southern wolf character from MGM, but turns him into a dog and makes him much more low-key. Chilly doesn’t speak. The dog comments to the audience constantly as the wolf did at MGM. Chilly squeezes the dog’s nose before running away, similar to what Screwy Squirrel did to Meathead at Metro.

There are some cute gags about trying to slice off a tail. The action moves along nicely throughout.

Clarence Wheeler’s score is good, too. He uses a flute when Chilly scurries about and there are percussion effects in the comic scenes to add to reaction shots.

Ray Abrams, Don Patterson and La Verne Harding are the animators, with Homer Brightman getting the story credit.

The second Chilly by Avery is The Legend of Rockabye Point, an even better cartoon in my estimation, as Tex resorts to his “sleep/noise” routine.

Sunday, 2 February 2025

Vaudeville vs Radio

You’d think the grind of vaudeville would be tougher than radio for comedians.

Vaudeville consisted of months on end of train trips to different towns, living out of a suitcase, and multiple stage shows a day using your own props. Despite work and work and work, some acts never made the big-time. Compare this to radio, where you were on the air for a half an hour and rehearsed maybe the day before.

But Jack Benny says it wasn’t all that simple.

Jack and his gang went up to Oakland in 1940 and broadcast his East and West Coast shows there to benefit the March of Dimes. Admission wasn’t a dime; it was 50 cents or a dollar for the afternoon broadcast to the East and Midwest, a dollar or $1.50 for the later show.

Besides the radio broadcasts, Jack met five small patients at the Children’s Hospital in Oakland, and sat in on plans for a special party for disabled kids at the Jefferson School.

At the inevitable news conference, Jack referred to his days on the Orpheum Circuit in the 1920s which included stops in San Francisco and Oakland. He compared vaudeville and radio in this story in the Oakland Tribune of January 25, 1940.


RADIO IS TOUGHER THAN VAUDEVILLE, DUE TO STANDARDS REQUIRED IN PROGRAM PREPARATION, JACK BENNY BELIEVES
March of Dimes Show Bid Accepted to Compare Present Audiences Here With Old Ones
By WOOD SOANES
Jack Benny, Waukegan’s gift to show business, stepped down from the highly rarefied atmosphere of the ether lanes yesterday to prepare to walk the earth like a common man on his way to the March of Dimes benefit at the Auditorium on Sunday.
“And don’t for a minute get the idea that I’m conferring a favor on anybody,” grunted Benny as he shifted his cigar pugnaciously. “I speak for the whole troupe when I say that we snapped at the invitation to come to Oakland for these shows.
“I wanted to see what the place looked like after vaudeville collapsed. I wanted to see if audiences were just as tough as they used to be on those old Monday shows at the Orpheum. Brother, you had to be good then. Radio is a cinch by comparison.
NO CHANCE TO REFUSE
“Anyway, I had no chance to refuse. Can you imagine what my life would be like from now on if I passed up a bid from Rochester’s home town. As it Is he steals every scene that isn’t tacked, and he isn’t half trying. He’d probably sick Carmichael on me.”
Mention of Rochester, who is Eddie Anderson, a product of West Oakland who made his start as an entertainer hoofing in the night spots some twenty years ago, turned the conversation into a more serious vein and took up the problems of radio entertaining.
“I never listen to comedians on the air,” he said, “not because I don’t think the other fellow is funny or that I am envious of his gags, but because I can’t get into the spirit of the jest. All I can think of is the hours of sweat and struggle he put into the preparation of the broadcast.
In the days of vaudeville, you worked out a routine, bought or manufactured a few jokes, practiced a few tunes, tried the sketch out for a week or so in the smaller houses and then sallied forth on a tour that ran anywhere from 20 to 52 weeks without a worry in the world.
RADIO FAR DIFFERENT
“In radio as soon as the final commercial is given on a show, I go into a huddle with Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin. We try to get an idea for the next bill. It we get it, swell; if we don’t, headache. Once we have it, all three of us are in a turmoil until it is put on paper.
“And that’s only the beginning. It has to be worked over and polished, transposed and altered, submitted to the sponsor, arranged for production. Granting that everything goes without a hitch—and it rarely does—we are then ready for a series of intensive rehearsals.
“What we are striving for all through this is to achieve what passes for spontaneity. We want it to sound as if we are having a lot of fun—very frequently we are, but we’re always on the spot. We have so watch the clock, we have to get the gags snapping over, and we have to think of the unseen apdience [sic].
TWO AUDIENCES
“For programs such as ours there are two separate and distinct audiences—the fellow who says: What’s on tonight? Benny? Oh well, let’s give him a whirl!”—and the fellow who makes a ritual of the program, who insists that his wife make no engagements for Sunday nights, who demands that the children keep quiet, and who won’t allow a paper to be rustled while he’s listening.
“The trick is to make a regular of the casual listener; and to keep the regular listener happy. Oddly enough, the regular listener is easier to please. He is familiar with the characters—we try to build interesting characters more than hilarious incidents—and he understands that we can’t always be a hundred per cent funny.
“But even the regular’s patience is short. Give him three bad programs in a row—let’s say they are not even bad but dull—and you’ve lost him. It’s like pictures. They say that three stinkers In a row will kill the biggest star in Hollywood. I wouldn’t know about that. So far they keep giving Spencer Tracy the nod on those Academy Awards.”
ABOUT ‘BUCK BENNY’
I wanted to know if “Buck Benny Rides Again” would turn the trick for him.
“For my money,” Benny chuckled. “It’s got everything that the cinema needs, if you know what I mean. The upshot of it will probably be that Rochester will get the award.
There are many sides to Benny’s character beyond that of the clown who prefers to be the Patsy Bolliver in his programs, who is heckled by his man servant, twitted by Mary Livingatone, badgered by Phil Harris, and accused of penury by every taxi man, telegram boy and waitress.
Benny’s interest in the “March of Dimes” benefit may have been prompted, as he argues, by his desire to walk the boards again, but the underlying fact is that he has a tremendous interest in the other fellow, particularly in youngsters who classify generally as underprivileged.
HAS HAD EASY GOING
“I’ve had it pretty soft all my life,” he admitted. “Back home in Waukegan we never knew what privation was. We were what is generally known as ‘comfortably fixed.’ In show business, I had easy going. Then the radio and pictures got me into higher brackets. I’m kept pretty busy, but not too busy to look around and see that other people have pretty tough sledding.”
This interest of Benny’s in the underpup is not something that has come with wealth and acclaim. In his salad days as a variety comic and occasional violinist, he was always the first to agree to attend a benefit performance. He has given more free shows, I venture to say, than any entertainer except Eddie Cantor and George Jessel—and he’s done a lot less talking about it.
Benny will be in seclusion in Oakland for the next few days working on the radio program to be broadcast from the Auditorium. Later in the week he will be joined by other members of his troupe who are coming up from Los Angeles. He will give two shows here on Sunday, one in the afternoon, for the eastern lanes, and in the evening for the Coast area.
The comedian’s plans for the future involve nothing but radio until Summer when he takes his annual lay-off and will put in the time at Paramount working on a picture with his ancient “enemy,” Fred Allen. “Buck Benny Rides Again.” his next opus, is set for general release on May 31.


Incidentally, a dime did eventually show up. As the San Francisco Examiner reported on January 25, 1940:

[Jack Benny] invited visitors into sprawling on a low divan in his suite at the St. Francis, then searched the cushions and the floor and came up with a ten centavo piece which he carefully tested with bicuspids that Mary Livingston [sic] says have a habit of slipping out.

After the broadcasts, Jack and his two writers spent several days in Yosemite National Park. No doubt this gave birth to a series of episodes of the Benny show involving the park and Jack skiing into a lodge after being called out on his “ability” to go down the slopes.

Saturday, 1 February 2025

They Animated Cigarettes

It’s safe to say anyone reading this grew up watching old theatrical cartoons. There was a time when anything outside of Disney was pretty much ignored until we were blessed with animation researchers who started building a base of fact and knowledge that, about four decades later, is practically taken for granted. It seems inconceivable today that people had to be told a person named Arthur Q. Bryan voiced a cartoon character.

There has been an awful lot of digging over the years. More digging remains. With the passage of time, animation history becomes more difficult to research.

One area is animated television commercials. Very little is known about the studios and animators who made the majority of them. The lack of credits is a factor. Adding confusion is an advertiser or its agency would not use the same studio for all its spots, or would hire a different studio the following year, maybe on the other side of the country.

Trade magazines of the 1950s and 1960s can be somewhat helpful. Some animated spots were subjects of feature stories. Some were advertised with frames showing what they looked like. Some won awards and the trades would name the studio, the director and maybe even the designer.

Unfortunately, the lack of information results in educated guesses which may not be correct. A good example is the stop-motion commercials for American Tobacco’s Lucky Strike cigarettes. The assumption by some is they were made at the Jam Handy studio in Detroit. After all, Jam Handy did some fine stop-motion work, and objects in some of its industrial shorts did some high-stepping like the cigarettes.

It turns out Jam Handy had nothing to do with the original Lucky Strike marching cigarette commercials that appeared on TV in 1948. We have the trade magazines to thank for providing some details. The spots were the product of Sarra, Inc. out of New York.

Sarra was an extremely active producer. It took out trade ads showing frames from its spots. Some were live action. Some were animated. Who animated for the studio, I couldn’t tell you. Perhaps Devon Baxter will eventually turn up information in the animation union local’s newsletter (if they were a union shop). For now, let’s talk about its marching cigarettes.

This story and poor-quality photo (and incorrect spelling of the announcers’ names) come from the May 1948 edition of Business Screen magazine.


Sarra Television Commercials Set a Standard
♦ SARRA, Inc. has included among their recent releases the first of a series of black and white third dimensional animated film commercials, especially prepared for television, for the American Tobacco Company, together with a production story, filmed at Willow Run, for the Kaiser-Frazer Car Company.
The Kaiser-Frazer spot, produced by Cullen Landis, Director of Motion Pictures for Sarra, has been appearing on Sunday evenings as a commercial announcement on the K-F sponsored Major Bowes Amateur Hour over WABD, New York [the Du Mont flagship station].
The Lucky Strike commercial, produced in Sarra’s New York studio, represents the coordinated efforts of John Boor, of American Tobacco, John Freese, of Foote Cone & Belding, Valentino Sarra and Bob Jenness, who is creating and directing the program for the Sarra organization.
Squads of marching Lucky Strike cigarettes burst from the background of a tobacco leaf and perform intricate maneuvers to the tune of a snappy martial air with the familiar announcements of Basil Rysdale and Andre Barouch in the background.
Extensive tests were conducted by Valentino Sarra and Director Bob Jenness for lighting effects and background created expressly for the video medium. For example, a rough, contrasty background of finely corrugated wood was discovered to be far superior to a neutral shade of board or cork. As the video receiver frame usually contains a narrower angle of view than the film frame being televised, action in the Lucky commercials is confined to center portions of the frame during photography. Extra footage is photographed to allow for fades and smooth transitions at the beginning and end of the show.
The Lucky Strike commercials have been used many times on New York stations as well as 17 other stations throughout the country,
(All Lucky Strike television activity has recently been assigned to N, W. Ayer & Co.)
Variety Accolade to Luckies
♦ VARIETY commenting recently on a Lucky Strike television show (WABD—New York) said that the commercial was one of the best parts of the program. Other video critics have praised Luckies for taking the lead in smart visual selling.


Television Age of November 1953 profiled Sarra in a feature story. It pointed out the 48-second animation and stop-motion opening for the Lucky Strike Hit Parade was made in 1948 at a cost of $9,500 and was used for four years.

It also revealed something about two of the creative people at the studio, names you likely don’t know.


Chief creative man in the firm’s tv setup is Rex Cox, who has been with Sarra for six years following an 11year stretch as an animator and story director for Walt Disney. For every production Rex works with a story board which he describes as being “a series of rough sketches indicating the action and staging of a film.” Sarra does no work on speculation. The fee for submitting a story board is from $350 to $500.

When stop-motion is required, tv production chief, Bob Jenness, credited with 18 years of experience in the field with animators like George Pal and Charles Mintz, steps in. He defines his specialty as “animation done in three dimension.” The basic technique is the same as in animation except models instead of drawings are used. For each job Jenness must create different devices—called jigs—by which he controls the movements of the models and props.


At the time, Sarra was responsible for the animated and live-action opening “Come see, come save at A & P” for Paris and Peart, Stopette’s live and stop-motion “Poof ... there goes perspiration” for Earle Ludgin and Pabst’s animation and stop-motion “What’ll you have?” spots for Warwick & Legler. We caution the article does not state exactly which footage it is referring to. Claiming the “Poof!” opening on What’s My Line? is what it mentioned is only speculation, unless further information is made available, though another article reveals Sarra made commercials for a powder that appeared during the show. Fact A + Fact B don’t always equal Fact C. To the right are some frames of some of the animated commercials made by Sarra in the 1950s; the top one is for something named Musterole.

There is a post-script to the story involving someone stop-motion fans should be familiar with. Ray Harryhausen sued Sarra in 1957, claiming he brought the stop-motion cigarette march idea to the company and it was rejected. The next thing he knew, there it was on television. If you want more information, a transcript of the testimony can be found here.

Friday, 31 January 2025

Doing the Pillow Stretch

Stretch in-betweens are among the highlights of To Duck or Not to Duck, a 1943 cartoon from the Chuck Jones unit at Warner Bros.

We’ve featured some of the stretch frames in the past on the blog. Here are some from another scene, after Daffy has been shot by “sportsman” Elmer Fudd and is falling from the sky. Fudd’s hunting dog gets prepared for the landing.



Larrimore (who says he isn’t Larrimore) lays down a pillow to cushion Daffy’s fall. These are consecutive frames.



The consensus I’ve read is Bobe Cannon is responsible for these scenes (including the in-betweens). He received screen credit, along with writer Tedd Pierce.