Money Can Be a Headache

Fred Finchley got a raise. What should he do with that extra money?

A TV announcer tells him: “You could spent it on a couple of nights out a week with the wife.” A champagne cork pops out, lands on a cymbal which dissolves into Finchley and his wife dancing to Dixieland music.



The scene dissolves again to a snare drum being rolled. “This seems like a lot of fun,” declares the narrator.



This is from the John Sutherland cartoon Working Dollars. The Sutherland cartoons drew their humour from juxtaposing the dialogue with the action on the screen. The drumsticks remain on the screen while the drum dissolves into Fred Finchley. The drumsticks then dissolve into an ice pack on his head. Clearly, it is not “a lot of fun.”



Sutherland co-wrote the story with former MGM director George Gordon and future Rocky and Bullwinkle producer Bill Scott.

Emery Hawkins, George Cannata and Jim Pabian are the credited animators. Ed Starr painted the backgrounds for director Carl Urbano.

Marvin Miller provides the voices of everyone except the stockbroker, who sounds familiar, but I can’t name him. The Langlois Filmusic library is heard in the background, and among the cues are “Comedy Suspense,” “School Life” and “Walking Briskly.”

The March 1956 edition of The Exchange put out by the New York Stock Exchange said previews of “Working Dollars” were held simultaneously in 19 cities on February 20, and prints were available free from Modern Talking Picture Service, Inc. It would be nice if one of those prints surfaced because the one generally found (without a time code) is pretty beat up (a better version of Sutherland’s Make Mine Freedom would be nice, too).

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?

The Computer of 2000

Your Safety First is a cartoon that looks into the future before The Jetsons did, and uses some of the same futuristic ideas for the sake of comedy.

It was made in 1956 and set, partly, in the year 2000. A man is leafing through a newspaper or magazine (well, they still had newsprint in 2000) and spots an ad for the bubble-topped Turbopusher II. They inspire him to buy a new car.

Cut to a shot of him asking his secretary Millie how long he’s had his old car.



The shot pans over to his secretary at a desk with a computer with a punch card slot on the wall (okay, they didn’t quite predict this one right).



Millie puts a card into a slot, continues reading a book while the computer calculates and spits out the card with the answer.



Now comes the gag. First the artificial intelligence powders her face, then plunks a hat on her head. It doesn’t have Saturn-type rings like Jetsons clothes do.



It’s time to go home. The Jetsons had similar dialogue, as the man complains he works a four-hour day (with two hours for lunch), three days a week.

There are other gags found later in the Jetsons, too, such as food tablets for dinner (also found in a 1931 Fleischer industrial called Texas in 1999), and a big-screen TV that the people on it can leave and walk into the living room. Cars only fly to pass. And safely.

The Automobile Manufacturers Association is paying for this short, so their message is about how safe cars are today and into the future.

The man has a George Jetson-like voice, supplied by Marvin Miller (in a couple of places, he sounds extremely close to George O’Hanlon, who said he never did cartoons before The Jetsons). I couldn’t tell you who plays Millie or the man’s son.

A battered old print of this cartoon is all that’s been in circulation for years on-line. We can hope a better version will surface, as it’s an enjoyable cartoon. The animators are Ken O’Brien, George Cannata, Cal Dalton and Fred Madison, with layouts by Gerry Nevius and Charles McElmurry. Backgrounds are by Joe Montell, formerly with Tex Avery at MGM, and the music is by Carl Stalling’s former copyist, Eugene Poddany.

A survey in Variety in 1958 voted this one of the “50 Outstanding Free TV Films.” It was the only animated one. We found it in the listings of the NET station in Chicago (WTTW) on May 14, 1957 as well as the NET station in San Francisco (KQED) on June 10, 1958, among other stations.

The Home of John Pettibone

After some night-time shots of a junkyard, there’s a fade to inside a shack that is the home of John Pettibone, the alias given to Droopy in Dixieland Droopy.



Director Tex Avery pans from right to left. You'll have to click on this to enlarge it.



The name of the artist is hidden three times in the background. This is the work of Joe Montell. The right-hand bag covering the window is for Montell Flour. And it’s tough to read but the stove is a Montell brand. The towel over the window is from the Hotel Mondello. Mondello was his family's surname.

By the time this cartoon was released in 1954, the Avery unit had been shut down at MGM and Montell was working for John Sutherland Productions.

Jump! Jump!

A roll of dollar bills and a price tag jump over each other in the John Sutherland cartoon Why Play Leap Frog?

Both have little arms and feet. It takes 32 drawings for the two to leap frog, animated one per frame in a cycle. Unfortunately, the graph background doesn’t match at the start of each cycle, so we can’t put together a repeating version. Instead, you can see all 32 drawings below. There’s some slight movement, then a stretch up and down again.



The cartoon is copyright March 1, 1949. The music cues by former Disney composer Paul Smith are copyright September 26, 1949. This is one of the Sutherland cartoons MGM put on its release schedule, with a date February 4, 1950.

The first showing of the cartoon we can find so far was on July 26, 1947 at a meeting of the Batesville, Arkansas Lions Club at which members were warned about the bogey-man of socialism, “now the accepted philosophy in many sections of the United States,” according to a report on the event the next day in the Batesville Guard. The message of the cartoon is if Joe wants a raise, he’d better be a more productive worker, otherwise prices will jump to keep up.

The capitalist propaganda short made immediately before this, Meet King Joe was also screened.

There are no credits on the short. Bud Hiestand is the narrator, Frank Nelson plays a couple of characters, but I haven’t been able to identify the voice of Joe.