Today's Inside Joke

A shot of a fake newspaper with some real names opens the pre-Bugs Bunny cartoon Hare-Um Scare-Um (1939).



There’s a drawing of co-director Bugs Hardaway, labelled “Happy Hardaway” (it looks suspiciously similar to a T. Hee caricature made at the studio in 1936). He was from Missouri, and the story above his picture is datelined Hog Hollow, Missouri.

The next column features a story about a “riot at the Looney Tune cartoon studio” caused by Tex Avery dealing from the bottom of the deck in a card game.

On the opposite page is a reference to Lu Cavett and banking. Lewis Lee Cavett was a Los Angeles High School grad who became an assistant animator at the studio after a brief career as a commercial artist. He was noted for loaning money to other employees to top up his pay. He left Schlesinger’s to work as an artist for a pottery company and was assigned to the 517th Airborne during World War Two. Corporal Cavett died in a parachute training exercise near Camp Mackall in North Carolina in 1944 at age 29.

And a box above the Cavett headline makes fun of the slogan “Movies Are Your Best Entertainment.”

The background artist is unknown but Art Loomer was still at the studio and it may be him.

Tubby Millar gets a story credit and Gil Turner receives the revolving animation credit.

Teabiscuit's Record

Some of you reading here are old enough to remember when a real organ used to play at baseball and hockey games. Eventually, organists got fired and replaced by someone in the press box with a CD player. The CDs have been replaced with audio files on a computer.

Here’s a musical gag along those lines from Porky and Teabiscuit, a 1939 effort by the Hardaway-Dalton unit at Warner Bros. The bugler in his traditional outfit appears to make the call to the post. Except instead of blowing, he puts the needle on the 78 on a record player on top of the horn.



Some old Carl Stalling favourites show up in the score after this happens. The parade of horses takes place to the strains of “Sabre and Spurs.” After the starting pistol fires, we hear two pieces from silent film composer J.S. Zamecnik. First is “Western Scene.” After the shot of the Danger sign, when the camera cuts back to Porky and Teabiscuit, the tune switches to “In the Stirrups.”

There are some non-Mel Blanc voices here. Joe Twerp, who you’ll recall from I Only Have Eyes For You (1936) is the spooneristic race announcer. The sound of Porky’s car and the horse whinnies are courtesy of Pinto Colvig. The car start-up noise was made by Colvig blowing into wrong end of a trombone he bought for $2 at a pawn shop. He used it for Jack Benny’s Maxwell on a pair of shows in 1937 and elsewhere. The auctioneer is another non-Blanc voice, but I don’t know who it is.

Tubby Millar received the story credit and Herman Cohen the animation credit.

And for anyone not aware of it, “Teabiscuit” is a pun on the name of championship race horse “Seabiscuit.”

Bat Overhead

Porky opens a door in an abandoned yacht club and out fly a number of bats. In fact, one with a moustache soars directly at the theatre audience.



Mel Millar’s story for It’s An Ill Wind (1938) also has a bear (actually a bearskin rug) that comes at the camera. Between a disobedient dog and a duck sidekick that won’t shut up (why did Warners love that kind of character in the late ‘30s?), the cartoon is more annoying than funny.

Bugs Hardaway and Cal Dalton are the directors, while Herman Cohen gets the animation credit. Mel Blanc and Danny Webb supply voices.

Today's 1939 Radio Reference

A couple of related radio references highlight the ho-hum Hardaway/Dalton effort Hobo Gadget Band, released by Warner Bros. in1939.

Hobos are kicked off a train and slide down an embankment. Note the old-style radio station transmitter in the background of the frame below.



Here’s a take. I’ve left out the in-between drawing; this is just the extreme.



The sign is a parody of the thrice-weekly Uncle Ezra’s Radio Station, broadcast from “the powerful little five-watter down in Rosedale.” The NBC Red show was sponsored by Alka Selzer. Earlier in the cartoon, a hobo takes some “soda fizz” and says “just listen to it fizz,” which was the Alka Selzer radio slogan at the time.



Pinto Colvig supplies some voices here; he was writing for Warners in between gigs at Disney and Fleischer. Dick Bickenbach is the credited animator, while Jack Miller was given the story credit. Herman Cohen , Rod Scribner and Gil Turner were in the unit at the time.

You've Seen These Gags Before

You’ll be waiting a whole cartoon to get any laughs out of the Bugs Hardaway-Cal Dalton short Gold Rush Daze. They just aren’t there. Three years earlier, Tex Avery (wait for it) MINED the same scenario in Gold Diggers of ‘49, which had original and funny bits. This one just has a few lame puns like one you just read.

I don’t know when the first sucker/transformation gag ever showed up in a cartoon, but it’s in this 1939 short.



The owner of the Eureka Bar grabs the sucker, hauls him inside, and forces him to sit down at a card table with some other guy. Why? Beats me. The cards shuffle themselves in mid-air (that’s a gag?) and then the guy slowly pulls five cards out of his vest.



Yes, it’s the old “five aces” gag. I must admit Carl Stalling’s honky-tonk piano adds some atmosphere.

This whole scene becomes pointless when someone runs into the bar and yells “They’ve found gold in the hills!” The plot changes altogether.

Mel Millar gets the story credit, while Gil Turner is the credited animator. Joe Twerp and Mel Blanc provide voices.

Cartoon's Cavett

One of the many fun sidelights of watching Warner Bros. cartoons from the ‘30s and ‘40s is to spot gags that are not designed for the theatre audience. They were made by the artists for their own self-amusement. Paul Julian especially seems to have liked scrawling staff members names on backgrounds he painted for Friz Freleng. In other instances, staffers appeared in caricature, such as in Page Miss Glory (1936), where we see part of Tex Avery’s unit as farmers.

These were never meant as actual gags except in one instance that I can recall. In Hollywood Steps Out, the panning camera stops at a table where Henry Binder and Leon Schlesinger are sitting. The Merrie Melodies theme plays in the background. A rough cut was screened for Schlesinger on April 23, 1941, and The Hollywood Reporter of the next day suggested the gag was done solely to surprise and kid their boss.

There’s a really obscure in-joke in Fagin’s Freshmen, a cartoon from the Hardaway-Dalton unit released in November 1939. Observe the name in these backgrounds (artist unknown).



The reference is to Louie Cavett. I don’t know whether he was an assistant animator, an in-betweener or another kind of artist, but I do know one thing about him—the poster reading “Do you need money?” was on the mark.

“He was a loan shark,” the late Martha Sigall recalled. She revealed he would loan money and charge interest. Her comments came on a commentary track over a Schlesinger gag reel which features a voice saying “Do you need money? See Louie Cavett.”

Here’s what little we can tell you about Cavett (accent on the last syllable; it’s not pronounced like Dick Cavett). He was born on April 2, 1914 in Los Angeles. Where he went to art school is yet to be found, but he’s listed on the 1934 city directory as a commercial artist. The 1936 Voters List gives his occupation as “cartoonist.”

He was married in July 1939 and still working at Schlesinger’s. But he didn’t stay much longer after that. He was gone by late January 1940. His 1940 draft card reveals he was employed by Norris Stamping. Cavett was called up in 1943 and died in a military training exercise in North Carolina on January 6, 1944. His death certificate states he died instantly and accidentally of a fractured skull after parachuting.

He never received screen credit; by 1939 the only artists who got their name on a title card were animators and even then it was one and on a rotating basis. But we are happy to point out that Louie did get his name projected in theatres thanks to this cartoon.

Porky the Giant Killer Backgrounds

Bugs Hardaway and Cal Dalton aren’t among guys I consider top-flight cartoon directors, but there are beautiful backgrounds and creative layouts in their 1939 cartoon Porky the Giant Killer.

The two of them, or whoever was doing layouts for them, must have been inspired by the angles and perspectives that Frank Tashlin and, to a lesser extent, Tex Avery had in their cartoons at the time.



It’s a real shame the layout and background people weren’t credited on screen for another half dozen-or-so years at Warners. I’d love to know who the artists were responsible for these.