Comedy and Cucamonga

On January 7, 1945, a call for passengers was heard for the first time: “Train leaving on Track Five for Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga!” It was Mel Blanc’s voice on the Jack Benny radio show. Benny milked the gag for a number of years.

It turns out there was soon a battle over Cucamonga. But we’ll get to that in just a moment. We’ll take a spur line and go off track for just a moment.

While Benny is the comedian connected with Azusa and Cuca-you-know-where, he wasn’t the first. Witness this United Press story from June 8, 1940, years before Benny and his cast ever entered a train station.

Pomona Gets For Joke
—By ALEXANDER KAHN
Hollywood—(UP)—One of the "eggs" comedian Bob Hope laid on a recent radio program—and even he admits there have been a few—came home to roost as a full-fledged chicken, with a traffic fine in its beak.
Hope got a speed ticket while breezing through Pomona, Calif., the other day. Busy at Paramount in "The Ghost Breakers," the comedian sent an attorney to make an appearance for him.
"Hope?" mused the judge. "Hope? Oh yes, that's the fellow who is always making cracks about Pomona on the radio. You tell Mr. Hope to come down here and pay his fine in person."
Now Hope is wishing—that someone would tell the good people of Pomona about the use of “locals” by comedians.
In every big city, it seems, there is always one sure-fire laugh for a comedian with a strictly local outlet. Some nearby city or town for some reason seems funny in every around in the profession, they all these towns locals."
Hope is going to appear at Pomona in a big benefit some day soon just to prove he has nothing against the town, and was just using Pomona as a “local.” If he keeps on, he may get Pomona into the big leaguers. Like Bismarck, N. D, which comedians agree is funny anywhere in the United States. Or Canarsie, which always gets a chuckle in New York, and Winnetka, the local for Chicago.
Other locals include: Woonsocket, good for a laugh every time in Providence, R. I.; Kennebunkport, which lays them in the aisles way down East; Manayunk, funny to Philadelphians, Hamtramck, a side-splitter in Detroit, and Nahant, which makes staid Bostonians titter.
In fact, Pomona, thanks to Hope, already is displacing Azusa and Cucamonga as Los Angeles laugh provokers.

It would appear the use of “locals” was an old vaudeville gimmick. Robert Lewis Taylor’s biography of W.C. Fields quotes The Great Man as telling a Paramount P.R. flak (presumably in the ‘30s) that Cucamonga was one of them. Fields loved the name. He used it in The Old Fashioned Game (1934). Louella Parsons’ column of March 25, 1938 reveals:

Bill struggled hard to get the studio to call his next movie, which goes into production April 4, "The First Gentleman of Cucamonga," because he liked that name, but Paramount politely but firmly told him no marquee was long enough to hold all those letters. Mary Carlisle and John Howard carry the romantic interest in a story which deals with Bill's adventures as a champagne salesman.

The great book W.C. Fields by Himself also contains a treatment for an unmade film about this same time where Fields played W.C. Whipsnade, who inherited a department store in Cucamonga. Incidentally, Fields and Paramount parted company within two months of Parsons’ column over a disagreement about the script for the Cucamonga film, which had undergone at least two other name changes.

So it was when the Benny writers came up with the Anaheim-Azusa-Cucamonga running gag, it was really a switch on an old one.

Still, the folks in the three cities didn’t care. They seem to have liked the publicity. In February 1946, Benny was elected honorary mayor of all three towns and given a key to the city of each in a formal ceremony (for some reason, Benny wore a sombrero in publicity pictures). This resulted in what I presume were some tongue-in-cheek comments from another comedian who was asked for reaction. It doesn’t seem to have gone past this column; there certainly was no radio feud over it and Benny never mentioned any of this over the air. The column appeared February 25, 1946.

Jack Benny vs. Lou Costello
By Virginia MacPherson
HOLLYWOOD, Feb. 24 (UP)—Today we have the fantastic story of how Jack Benny and Lou Costello, two world-famous funny men, are battling over who will be Mayor of the tiny California hamlet of Cucamonga.
The feud started a few months ago as a publicity stunt. Somewhere along the line it got out of hand. Now the citizens of Cucamonga—all 500 of ‘em—are caught in the middle. Mighty uncomfortable they are, too.
On one side they have Fiddler Benny insisting he’s already honorary Mayor. On the other they’ve got “Bad Boy” Costello, who says they promised to make him Hizzoner before Benny ever heard of the village.
Benny’s press agent got him named honorary Mayor of Cucamonga, Anaheim and Azusa, neighboring towns. He got a lot of publicity in the papers as the “first man ever to be honorary Mayor of three cities at once.”
Costello claims the good people of Cucamonga are getting gypped.
“One-third of a Mayor they’ve got,” he declares. “What kind of a deal is that? A fine little orange-growing community like Cucamonga deserves a whole Mayor.”

He asks: Has Benny offered to pin a badge on Rochester.
The unhappiest man in town is our father-in-law, John D. MacPherson. He’s the guy who encouraged Costello to put in his two-bits’ worth.
It started two months ago when we discovered the locale of the new Abbott and Costello movie was Cucamonga, our old home town. We mentioned this to Costello’s press agent and gave him our father-in-law’s name.
Like a flash he buzzed out to Cucamonga to start his campaign for Mayor. Our father-in-law was a little nonplused.
“We’ve already got Jack Benny,” he said.
Costello’s press [agent] again pointed out Benny had three towns to take care of and wouldn’t Cucamonga like a Mayor all its own? Our father-in-law said he guessed they would at that. That’s when all the trouble started.
Benny said the names of the towns fascinated him when he heard a guy at the Union Depot holler: “Trains leaving for Azusa, Anaheim and Cucamonga!”
So he worked it in on his next broadcast. It was good for a big laugh. The Service Club of Cucamonga sent him a case of California wines.
“That was darn good wine!” said Benny.
The people of Azusa, Anaheim and Cucamonga got so much fun hearing the names of their towns on the air they elected Benny honorary Mayor of all three.
But Costello says his movie will give the town just as much publicity. And he promises to remain loyal to Cucamonga. Even if the citizens of Los Angeles asked him to be honorary you-know-what he’d turn ‘em down.

Cucamonga’s success on the radio proved to be a problem elsewhere. Witness this wire story from April 23, 1954:

Cucamonga KO’d As Too Funny
BURBANK, Calif.—Jack Benny and his writers have made Cucamonga too humorous a word for utterance in any serious drama.
Case in point is “Serenade,” Warner Bros. feature starring Mario Lanza, Joan Fontaine, Sarita Montiel and Vincent Price.
The vineyard sequence, where Lanza as a California tractor operator learns he is to audition for a professional singing career, was shot at Cucamonga, center of the world’s largest vineyards.
Director Anthony Mann ordered the Cucamonga labels obliterated from all the grape crates.
“After what Benny’s done with Cucamonga,” said Mann, “the mere sight or mention of the name starts a laugh going and in this sequence we don’t want laughs.”

Some radio and TV critics griped about Cucamonga, saying a regional reference had no business being on a national radio show (Mad Man Muntz and the La Brea Tar Pits annoyed them as well). And not every one in “Cuc—” were happy with being a butt of a joke. Here “—amonga!” is a United Press International story from October 7, 1958.

Cucamonga Name Change Meets Strong Opposition
CUCAMONGA, Calif. (UPI) — Residents of this community asked themselves today, "what's in a name?"
And, the answer of some self- conscious citizens who have cringed at comedians' jibes at their community, was, "plenty."
For years, this area east of Los Angeles has been known by the Indian name of Cucamonga, meaning land of plenty waters, although it's quite dry here.
Now, Cucamongans are considering incorporation and part of the proposal is a resolution to change the community's name to something less funny.
Charles Smith, secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, was one of those who is sick, sick, sick of Jack Benny's references to the community.
"Cucamonga has been low man of the totem pole for 'Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga' when someone wants to make a joke about a city," Smith said.
"We're sick of it. Our name is no joke to us."
On the other side was Ted Vath, president of the Chamber of Commerce, who is proud of being a Cucamongan and is not afraid of letting the world know about it. "We think the name is worth fighting for," Vath said. "It gives us identity and we're going to hang on to it."
One of the names on the list of proposed monickers for the community is Arpege, the name of a perfume offered free of charge by the maker of the scent. To Smith, almost anything would be better than Cucamonga.
To Vath, the idea of changing the name to Arpege is downright odoriferous.

When the town finally incorporated, it took the name Rancho Cucamonga. And we assume the anti-Benny grump-amongas were a small minority. The area had declared Jack Benny Day on September 8, 1956. There was another Jack Benny Day on December 15, 1965 when Benny arrived in Azusa to receive proclamations of thanks from three towns; though Disneyland and the California Angels baseball team had moved Anaheim into the Big Time. He returned again in 1969, donating his time to emcee a benefit show for the district’s disaster assistance programme when the area was hit with floods and scores were left homeless. Jack Benny is honoured in Rancho Cucamonga with a statue. (Thanks to reader Bob Davidson for his picture of the plaque with the statue).

Incidentally, one of Jack’s other routines gently jabbed a different small town. We’ll have their reaction next Sunday.

Humanettes

Walter Lantz constantly cried to the trade papers about the small sums of money that exhibitors wanted to pay for his cartoons. In a way, you can’t blame him. Though he personally never seemed to be hurting for cash, the Lantz studio closed twice before 1950 and ideas had to be put on the shelf, presumably due to a lack of capital.

Lantz had proposed opening a studio in Mexico. It never happened. He talked about a cartoon feature. It never happened. And he and producer Edward Nassour proposed creating four-reel pictures combining live action and clay figures. It never happened, either.

The trade papers talked about the latter plan, and so did United Press in this story from early 1945. Considering the success of George Pal’s Puppetoons (Sutherland and Morey were also working on stop-motion shorts), it’s too bad Lantz wasn’t about to bring the plan to fruition.

'Humanettes,' New Movie Medium, Being Perfected
By MURRAY M. MOLER
HOLLYWOOD, Feb. 14 (UP) — Cartoonist Walter Lantz, the gent who fathered "Woody Woodpecker" after some of the long beaked birds dug holes in his studio roof, is working on a new cartoon medium—"Humanettes."
Lantz, who has been giving legs and voice to pen and ink figures for more than 15 years, thinks the new medium will go places.
"It's a natural for entertainment cartoons, definitely something new," he predicted; "but it's even better as a device for turning out top notch, highly interesting educational films."
Educational films. Those two words are in the back of Lantz' mind in practically all his activities now.

"We'd done only a few educational shorts before the war," Lantz recalls.
"But since then we've turned out 20 educational pieces for the navy, illustrating better methods of doing a lot of business with planes and torpedoes."
Making those pictures—combinations of cartoon figures, plastic models and live talent—has taught Lantz and his 50 artists—more and more of them women, incidentally—a lot of lessons.
"These educational films can teach more in two reels than can be put across in a two-hour lecture or in half a dozen books," he contended. "So they're really going to be the thing after the war."
There's a strong possibility that before the war is over, Lantz will be given the task of -turning out some cartoons on American life for government release to South American and European countries. That's where the Humanettes will come in.
What are they? Well, we saw the one experimental reel that Lantz and his staff already has made. It's a process discovered by a young artist named Edward Nassaur and perfected by the new team of Nassaur and Lantz.
The figures are clay models, carefully sculptured according to scale. In orthodox cartoons, a drawing is made for each frame of film. For the Humanettes, a separate group of clay figures will be turned out for each frame. That's a lot of figures for the seven minutes of the average cartoon.
"It's a complicated, painstaking and expensive process," Lantz admitted. "But with these figures we get much more depth and perspective.
We can place the lights better behind these figures than we can with flat drawings.
"With the clay figures modeled for each frame, we can achieve a smoothness of action that's impossible with puppets, the only similar medium that's been tried."
The reel we saw had definitely achieved that smoothness, and the colors—it was a technicolor job—were much more distinct than in most cartoons.
Lantz hopes to start turning out Humanette cartoons, for entertainment, before too long. He's just arranged for new studio space.
"We'll probably combine, with the aid of a process screen, the Humanette figures and live talent," he said.
"Some of the figures undoubtedly will be some of our old established—'Swing Symphony Cartune' personalities."
These personalities are led by Andy Panda, Oswald the rabbit—and Woody Woodpecker.

Despite the announcement, the Humanettes were put on hold. Temporarily, at first. Lantz talked about them in another U.P. story that year. This came out of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette of May 16, 1945. This is another column where Lantz explains why Pat Matthews’ great Miss XTC character from “Abou Ben Boogie” and “The Greatest Man in Siam” suddenly vanished from screens.

Lantz Says Don't Go Saying Those Characters Are "Drawings"
By Virginia MacPherson
United Press Hollywood Correspondent
Hollywood, May 15.—Walter Lantz, who’s been making animated cartoons for 30 years, gets mighty indignant if you refer to his characters as "drawings." They're real people, he says. And he plans their careers as carefully as if they were Clark Gable or Hedy Lamarr.
"There's no reason why a cartoon character has to make a big splash and then fizzle out," Lantz insists.
"If you're careful with the type of roles and billing you give 'em, they can live for 15 or 20 years. Look at the funny papers, he says. "Bringing Up Father" has been going for something like 50 years. And "The Katzenjammer Kids" are tickling their third generation of readers.
That's the kind of career Lantz has in mind for Andy Panda, Woody Wood pecker and Oswald the Rabbit.
"Animals can be made just as real as humans," he said. "Give 'em natural gestures and expressions and put 'em in real-life situations and first thing you know people forget all about the pen and ink stuff."
That theory backfired on him once, though. Seems he made a cartoon character too real and the censors told him it was too sexy. The drawing was of a shapely young lady named “Miss X-T-Cy.” And the Hays office objected to the voluptuous way "Miss X-T-Cy" wiggled her hips when she walked.
Drawn From Life

"The funny part about it," Lantz explained, "was that the drawings were made from a real live actress. She walks that way on the screen all the time. But we had to remake a third of our cartoon to calm down the lady’s hips." And when you think how it takes four months to make a cartoon that's a lot of fuss over a lady's hips.
The censors give him trouble on some other items, too. Never, again they told him, can he draw a Mexican peon without shoes. The government of Mexico, mindful of its growing importance in the world, is afraid people will think their country is poverty stricken. "And wouldn't a Mexican peon look silly with shoes," Lantz snorted. "So now I just don't draw Mexican peons any more."
He's careful about putting train sequences in his cartoons, too. Can't have any porters. At least, not colored ones. Says the Negro race got together and decided they were being ridiculed in cartoons.
"Yep, the Hays office watches us like hawks," Lantz said. "Even the real movies can do things we can't. Maybe that's because we cater to the kids."
Lantz started making animals walk and talk in 1916, some six years before Walt Disney began experimenting around with his barnyard characters.
“But Walt got the jump on us all a few years later," he said. "He got exclusive rights to put out his cartoons in color. And the rest of us had to wait around three years and gnash our teeth until his contract with Technicolor ran out."
Lantz has been making the kids happy and their moms and pops too ever since. And it keeps him busy thinking up new characters.
"But we stumbled on a dilly the other day," he said. "We haven't thought up a name for him yet, but he'll be based on the goony bird our soldiers and marines have been finding on the Pacific islands."
He's got another idea that's going to have to wait until after the war, but he thinks it'll start a tricky new third-dimensional process. He calls these characters his "Humanettes."
"They're thousands and thousands of clay figures," he said. "Only instead of animals they're human beings. And we can really make 'em look natural."
Says he wouldn't be at all surprised if he discovered a new Lana Turner in clay. Only he's gotta think up some way to let her wiggle her clay hips without bringing the censors down on his neck.

The goony bird made it into one Lantz cartoon, but the Humanettes never made it into the studio’s release schedule. Eddie Nassour didn’t give up on the idea of Humanettes. Whether they actually appeared on screen in unclear, but Variety in 1954 reported that Nassour had shown them off two years earlier—“full blown puppets operated from an electronic panel board” is how the trade paper described them—but did nothing with the concept afterwards. In the meantime, Lantz carried on making cartoons, losing a great staff when he was forced to shut down for almost a year and a half around 1950, and augmented his theatrical cartoons with a TV show before finally closing shop in 1972.

Television Worries

In 1947, there was television, but there wasn’t television.

There were about a dozen stations scattered across the U.S. and no hook-up between the east and west coasts. The networks, such as they were, didn’t offer programming during much of the week, and all the big stars were still on radio.

But television had been steadily developing after the war and the FCC was in the process of tripling the number of stations with the granting of licenses. The big stars of radio knew it would just be a matter of time before TV would be calling them.

Television may have still been developing in 1947 but Jack Benny could already see the pitfalls for someone like himself. Radio painted pictures in people’s minds. Seeing the same thing on screen couldn’t possibly measure up to someone’s imagination. And Jack realised that TV would swallow material even more than radio. No doubt that’s why he committed himself to only four shows on his first season in 1950-51.

As it turned out, Benny didn’t do “a whole new kind of program” as he predicted. In fact, many of his successful routines on TV were taken from old radio scripts, in some cases verbatim. Here’s what he had to say in a United Press column that appeared in newspapers beginning September 24, 1947. As a matter of interest, the Brooklyn Eagle of that day reveal TV listings in New York City consisting of test patterns, news, a movie, sports events, a kids’ show, a soap opera (“Highway to the Stars”) and a disc jockey programme. It’d be a year before the Uncle Miltie phenomenon made manufacturers of TV sets very happy and profitable.

Jack Benny Fears Television Advent Will Spoil Act
By VIRGINIA MacPHERSON
United Press Hollywood Correspondent

HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 24 (U.P.)—Television, Jack Benny lamented today, will probably louse up that nice, soft deal he's worked 16 years to perfect. He'll have to start all over.
So, he says, will every ether radio funnyman. Which is probably why the veteran jokesters are beating no drums to hurry up this miracle of the air waves.
“All the comedy shows—as we know 'em—will die out,” Benny says. “You'll have a whole new kind of program. I imagine we'll have to go in for plays. Heaven help my writers!”
No more peering through spectacles at neatly-typed scripts. The scripts will have to go. So will those spectacles. And ditto for the sound effects.
“Because the audience will be looking right smack at us,” Benny explained. “And we'll never be able to get as wild over a television screen as the listeners have us get in their own minds.”
Take that business of “tightwad” Benny clomping down to the basement vault.
“We could do that for television,” he said, “but it'd never be as funny. Neither would the squeaking hinges. Or my smoking old Maxwell. Or making Phil Harris put his dimes in my cigarette machine. All those gimmicks paint mental pictures that are twice as hilarious as what really goes on.”
The only funnyman who won't have to begin from the bottom again, Benny figures, are the boys who rely on visual antics for their giggles. “People like Billy De Wolfe and Danny Kaye and Danny Thomas,” plugged the only man in the business who can afford to. “They don't have situation comedy. They are funny just to watch.
“Fred Allen's puss might be, too.” Benny added. “But he's not taking any chances on the kind of chuckles the Benny pan might bring on.
“Nope, what we'll have to do is a fast switch to half-hour comedies,” he said, “and that'll be murder. I don't see how we could do a show oftener than once a month.”
Benny figures it'll take him that long to get that “hilarious” play written, sets built, costumes made up, cast hired, and all his lines memorized. His only consolation is that old “enemy Allen” will be in the same fix.
Meanwhile, he's starting his 16th consecutive year Oct. 5 on good, old-fashioned radio. And he's plenty thankful that television's still limited to fights and football games.
“By the time everybody has a home set,” Benny grinned, “I'll probably be too old anyway. Let the kids worry about it I'll be retired to the golf links.”

I'm Flabbergasketed

Hollywood made a couple of movies about Al Jolson and one about Eddie Cantor. It’s a shame it didn’t do the same thing with Jimmy Durante.

Jimmy’s life had enough drama and atmosphere to make a good film (especially with a little dramatic embellishment). So it’s a shame that some studio didn’t work out a deal when it had the chance. Durante’s biography was written in 1949 by one of W.C. Fields’ drinking buddies, Gene Fowler, and United Press columnist Virginia MacPherson learned an option on it was being pursued in Tinseltown. She talked with Durante about it. A couple of things about her column are interesting. One is that she, like everyone else it seems, wrote Durante’s quotes in his dialect. The other is that Durante didn’t get a cent from the sale of any books. Fowler got it all. That just doesn’t seem quite fair. Dem’s da conditions dat prevail, I guess.

MacPherson obliquely refers to the fact that Larry Parks played Jolson on the screen because Jolson was too old. The immortal Keefe Brasselle was Cantor for the same reason. But she’s right. Who else could play Durante but Durante?

The column is from 1949.

‘Flabbergasketed’ Jimmy Watches ‘Schnozz’ Sales
By Virginia MacPherson
HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 23. (U.P.)—Jimmy Durante whose life story “Schnozola” has hit the best seller lists already, says he’s “flabbergasketed” anybody’d shell out three bucks to read about him.
“I really am,” rasped the little guy with the big beak. “An’ dat’s a fack. It’s sold more ‘n 50,000 awreddy . . . Imagine! All does people gittin’ on de inside o’Durante.
“I’LL BE ENTERTAINING at the Greater Los Angeles Press club. Maybe I oughta take a few copies down ‘n peddle ‘em, huh?”
Jimmy doesn't get a penny of the proceeds from all this—those go to author Gene Fowler and the publishing firm.
“But what I’m gittin’ outa dis, honey,” he twinkled, “couldn’t be bought wit money.”
DURANTE SPENT months “spillin’ my heart out” to Fowler, who lolled in an easy chair, turned on a wire recorder, asked a question now and then, and just listened happily while the “Schnozz” spun his yarns of the old days in show business.
“I didn't have any idea what he was gonna put in," Jimmy added. “To tell de troot, I t’ink he left out a lotta good stuff.
“AND I DON’T like the pitchas he put in. A lotta dem are just gags. Day don’t belong in a book like dat. But what the heck . . . It’s a helluva good writing job.
“I’ve read it free times myself awreddy. And dere’s parts of it dat jist make me cry. Jeez, it sure brings back the memories . . . it sure does.”
IT’S PROBABLY gonna bring him a lot more ‘n that. MGM, 20th-Century-Fox and Paramount studios are scrambling for the rights to put it on the screen.
"Dis story’s gotta be told,” Jimmy nodded. “Not on accounta Durante. Heck, dere’s more about Lou Clayton in it dan there is about me.
“But it’s a nice story about me and my Missus and Eddie Jackson and Clayton... all the people who've been wit’ me fer years. It’s a kinda family story. Make a good pitcha, I betcha.”
THE MASTERMINDS are already looking around for a young feller to play Durante’s part. At which point MacPherson, the No. 1 Durante fan in these parts, will register an official complaint.
All the “Schnozz” needs to look 20 years younger is a little hair. What he’s got left is white and kind of wispy. But Mac Factor’s wig experts could remedy that in two shakes.
HE WAS NO BEAUTY when he was 16 and he’s no beauty now. But the same old gleam is still here.
“Da’s ‘cause I’m still havin’ fun,” Jimmy says modestly.
“And I’ve kept me shapely figger. No bulges around Durante’s diagram.”
No sir, the idea of anybody else playing Durante is something we don’t even like to think about. It’d be nothing short of heresy.

The Making of The Horn Blows at Midnight

Jack Benny’s final movie got more mileage on his radio and TV shows than it ever did on the big screen. To hear Benny’s characters talk about it, “The Horn Blows at Midnight” was such a stinker that even corpses got up and walked out on it. You may wonder if all the negative publicity caused studio bosses to take a pass on hiring Benny to appear in any more films. It’s not true. The movie made money and columnist Erskine Johnson reported (March 9, 1948) Jack was still being offered roles—and turned down all of them. One was “The Good Humor Man” which Jack Carson finally made. He did make a cameo appearance in Bob Hope’s “The Great Lover” (1949) at the behest of producer Ed Beloin (a former Benny writer). And he played himself in “Somebody Loves Me” (1952), the film about vaudeville friend Blossom Seely and produced by Bill Perlberg, who sold his house in Palm Springs to Jack. But that was it. He told Johnson (September 13, 1952) he had retired from the screen because he couldn’t concentrate on movies, TV and radio simultaneously and “I simply cannot afford to make a bad picture.”

We mentioned one of the challenges of making the movie in this post, but there were others. Let’s check out the United Press from November 10, 1944.

IN HOLLYWOOD
Jack Benny Is Reducing To Play A Slender Angel
By VIRGINIA MACPHERSON
Hollywood, Nov. 10. (BUP)—Today we had lunch with an angel. Only the angel didn’t eat much because he was overweight. And anybody knows angels can’t have too many bulges—not when they're making a picture.
The name of the angel was Jack Benny. And he gained the extra poundage on a USO tour of the strictly unheavenly South Pacific.
Mr. Benny is making a picture for Warner Brothers called The Horn Blows at Midnight. It’s Angel Benny’s job to blow the horn.
“Sounds simple, huh?” he said. “Well, did you ever try to perch on the edge of a skyscraper and toot a trumpet loud enough to blow the whole darn world to little bitty pieces?”
That, in a word, is the plot of the picture. Mr. Benny is a Milquetoast sort of angel who gets appointed by the heavenly chief in charge of small planet management to finish off the world. It’s in that bad a mess.
What happens to keep him from tootling the race into eternity is a surprise ending. And that ending lasts eight minutes and costs the Warner family the tidy sum of $350,000.
Ending Was Too Weak
“We had the picture all finished before I took my show to the South Pacific,” Benny explained. “But when they ran it off they decided the ending was too weak. So here I am, back for retakes.”
Benny said he had a fine time on the tour. Got plenty of rest and food and reported back for work in tip-top condition. He thought.
But Director Raoul Walsh took one look at Benny's roly-poly frame and moaned. Said the word for his ex-angel was tip-top-heavy. He couldn't even squeeze into his wings any more.
So that’s why Benny is on a diet and he hopes the ending ends pretty soon because he’s working up a fine appetite.
The ending involves what studio officials describe as a highly technical process whereby Angel Benny falls off the skyscraper and goes hurtling toward the street.
Studio officials are very proud of that ending. They won’t tell how it works, but they guarantee it will fool all the technical know-it-alls in town.
Benny’s plenty willing to be fooled, but right at the moment he’s just a little worried. They haven’t even explained it to him yet, and what he wants to know is:
Does he really go hurtling through space, or does it just look as if he does?
He’s waiting for that part of the picture as anxiously as the makers I hope the audience will be.

The movie came out the following April. The International News Service dutifully reported:

Jack Benny Must Wear Kiss Muzzle
HOLLYWOOD, May 5.—As a screen lover Jack Benny seems doomed to be thwarted and thwarted.
Just as he was about to start rehearsing a luscious kiss with fascinating Dolores Moran for Warner Bros.’ comedy hit, “The Horn Blows at Midnight,” he came down with a heavy cold; had to do his romancing from, behind a flu mask!

Moran’s Hollywood career was a bust. If Carlisle Jones’ column of May 25, 1945 is right, her concentration during filming was divided.

During those same weeks in which Dolores Moran worked hard at making Benny’s mission difficult for him in The Horn Blows at Midnight, she was hard at work, between scenes, with books on philosophy, English literature and psychiatry, subjects which she is studying at the University of California at Los Angeles. She graduated from Warner Brothers lot high school a year ago with the highest general average in grades ever received by a student there.

Columnists offered mixed reviews. Jimmy Fidler (April 11) wrote the movie “blows a note that is very sour.” But Walter Winchell (May 14) raved the film “is crowded with so many howls some laughs have to wait in line.” And all Dorothy Kilgallen said was Fred Allen went to the preview; evidently she didn’t bother to toss him a straight line about what he thought of it. Regardless, the film provided Benny will more ammunition in his comic arsenal, much to the delight of his fans who thought they were in on another Hollywood inside joke.

Doris Singleton

There are few people who appeared in adult roles on the Jack Benny radio show still with us, and Doris Singleton was one until this past week. She died at the age of 92.

Doris picked up the role of Pauline, Mary’s maid, when the Benny show decided to bring it back on February 15, 1948. The character had an interesting evolution. Butterfly McQueen had played Butterfly, Mary’s maid. Columnist Leonard Lyons reported on July 31, 1944:

Butterfly McQueen, the film actress who has been appearing on Jack Benny’s program, will not return to the show next season. Miss McQueen likes working for Benny, receives high pay and says that her experiences with the show have been pleasant ones. She isn’t returning because she refuses to play the role of a maid, feeling that this is a reflection upon her race.

The following season, a new maid named Pauline appeared, portrayed by Pauline Drake (later one of umpteen Miss Duffys on “Duffy’s Tavern;” thanks to Keith Scott for the identification), but she disappeared after a few scattered episodes. Why Benny decided to bring her back more than two years later is a mystery, as is why the audience would believe that Mary could afford a maid if the stingy Benny character grossly underpaid her.

Pauline didn’t stay around long again, but it’s not like Singleton needed the work. She had regular comedy roles on radio with Jack Paar, Alan Young (moving with the show to television) and on “December Bride” (not moving with the show to television). And, on TV, her list of credits is long, appearing with Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Eddie Cantor. Of course, her most famous recurring role was Carolyn Appleby, the competitive, somewhat stuck-up neighbour on “I Love Lucy.”

Doris was quite different than a lot of the women regularly working in supporting roles on network radio comedy. Her characters generally weren’t over the top, not like characters played by the likes of Sara Berner, Elvia Allman or Bea Benaderet. She seemed to get a lot of straight parts and, like most people in radio, moved between drama and comedy (she sang as well).

Profiles of non-starring actors were rare in newspapers, but Doris rated one, a syndicated piece dated June 24, 1952.

Doris Singleton Has Never Repeated 1942 Radio Fluff
By TOM E. DANSON
HOLLYWOOD. Doris Singleton, well known radio actress, and more recently heard on the CBS “December Bride” series, will never forget her radio debut as an actress back in October 1942. Doris told me about the embarrassing incident the other day during a rehearsal. It happened when she was reading a commercial on the [Lux] Radio Theater series. She was to have said: “My very dear friend, Somerset Maugham, says . . .” The actress, with a good case of “jitters,” fouled her line and said: “Monerset Saum”—and then, on her second try, blurted out “Monerham Set!”
Amid the hilarious laughter of the studio audience, William Keighley, the “Radio Theater” producer, answered: “Yes, he must be a VERY dear friend of yours!”
In the years that have gone by since this gigantic "fluff," years in which the actress has appeared on hundreds of coast-to-coast radio programs, Doris has “wood-shedded” diligently, (a term actors use for studying their roles), to make sure that she’d never again duplicate that “Radio Theater” performance!
Doris is a native of Buffalo, N. Y., but has lived most of her life here in Southern California, a graduate of New York City’s American Academy of Dramatic Arts, the actress prepared during 1940-42 for her eventful appearances on "Radio Theater" working as a vocalist with Art Jarrett's orchestra. Having studied classical dancing, Doris made solo appearances with the Ballet Theater Co. in New York and Philadelphia, in addition to somehow working in a season of summer stock in Massachusetts. “Those two years,” Doris told me, “found me doing everything but running a newspaper route!”
She is married to radio writer-producer Charles Isaacs, who for the last season has been handling the Jimmy Durante writing chores. Doris says Charlie is her favorite hobby.

Here’s another column from 1952 where Doris gets a brief mention.

SEVERAL SUFFER PAINFUL OR EMBARRASSING INJURIES
TV Getting Downright Perilous For Comedians
By VIRGINIA MACPHERSON
United Press Hollywood Writer
HOLLYWOOD, Jan. 4 —Ask any top comedian, the television racket is getting downright dangerous.
The customers aren’t throwing tomatoes—yet—but in the past few weeks Ed Wynn. Allan Young [sic], Bob Hope, Jimmy Durante, Martha Raye and Milton Berle have all suffered what turned out to be painful injuries...or some that were so embarrassing it was just as bad.
And the sponsors are getting worried. In the movies they hire stunt men to do the rough stuff for the $5,000-a-week big shots. But in TV the celebrities have to do it themselves.
Want Gags On Film
That’s why everybody's hollering for a chance to put their gags on film.
Charles Issacs and Jack Elinson, two boys who dream up funny things for Jimmy Durante to do on TV, think it’s the only way to keep alive what good comedians there are left. “Jimmy used one gag in a show that scared us stiff,” Isaacs said. “He climbed on a fence, tied a knot in some long underwear and slid down it.
Taped Him Up
“Now, Jimmy’s no Boy Scout. He can’t even tie a very good knot. We begged him to drop the whole thing...but not him. Soooo...he swung out like a sailor, fell six feet and bruised his hip and arm. We had to tape him up for the show.”
On another program the “Schnozz” went long-hair on his fans with a pair of crashing cymbals. Only his aim wasn’t very good. He crashed himself instead. Time out while they stitched up his thumb.
Ed Wynn tried to play “Samson” to Dorothy Lamour’s “Delilah” in a TV skit a while back, stumbled over scenery and broke two bones in his foot.
Bob Hope took on Jack Dempsey for one round of prize-fighting and wound up so winded he couldn’t crack a joke for almost a full minute.
But Allan Young’s really the hard-luck kid of TV. He threw himself into a hot love scene with Doris Singleton during a rehearsal and sprained his neck.
“My own wife,” Isaacs grinned. “But Allan managed to make the show that night. And halfway through the script he fell through a wall and sprained his ankle!”
Breaks Shoulder Strap
Martha Raye was doing pratfalls one night when her shoulder strap broke. She did the rest of her act clutching her neckline.
And last week Berle got squirted with whipped cream and a sack of flour, a gag that turned mighty un-funny when the flour got in his eye and closed it up tight.
“Being hilarious is a terrific risk sometimes,” Elinson says. “And you can’t do a letter-perfect five show anyway. It ought be all on film. . .then for the dangerous stunts you can hire doubles and keep your actors alive for the laughs.”

Doris recorded a three-hour interview about her career with the Archive of American Television. You can watch her talk about her radio career below and check out all six parts.

Marvin Miller’s Millions

The idea that “radio people can’t act on camera” is ludicrous, considering how many radio people made the jump (not that they had much choice) to television. But that was in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s. Before then, there was a bias about rolling film on a radio actor/actress, as studios feared they weren’t adept unless a script was in their hands.

So was the situation with Marvin Miller, a wonderful voice man who was featured on cartoons for John Sutherland and UPA, children’s records (“Fox in Socks” is a personal favourite) and countless radio roles. Despite Louella Parsons whining at him by name at the start of her broadcasts for at least a season, television brought him the fame radio never quite did, thanks to ‘The Millionaire,’ but at least one columnist wrote about him in the pre-television era.

Here’s a United Press column from 1945 that gives you an idea how insanely busy Miller was. As if he needed the work in films.

IN HOLLYWOOD
Radio Actor and Announcer Making Good in Movie-town
By VIRGINIA MACPHERSON
Hollywood, Oct. 23. (BUP)—Let’s consider the case of Marvin Miller, a roly-poly young actor who got to the top in radio because he could do so many different things with his voice.
Now he’s branched out into the movies where he has to use his face. He’s doing all right there, too.
You probably haven’t heard much about Mr. Miller yet, but you will, because right at the moment he’s one of the hottest new character actors in town.
A dozen producers have parts they want him for. A dozen more are looking for pictures they can use him in. All of which leaves him gleefully chortling at those know-it-alls who once turned him down for the screen just because he was a radio man.
“They said a radio performer could never change his spots and become a successful movie actor,” he grinned.
Miller is a native of St. Louis, Mo., where he started out in radio 15 years ago. He’s 32 now, but as far as the air waves are concerned he’s an old veteran.
If you’re a radio fan you know him as the Coronet Story Teller; the announcer of Frank Sinatra’s show, and the Whistler.
He’s still doing those shows, too, along with roles in Blood on the Sun, A Night in Paradise, Johnny Angel, and Deadline at Dawn. A busy schedule for some guys, but not for Miller.
45 Different Shows a Week
“When I was on the air in Chicago,” he explained, “I was either announcing or acting on 45 different shows a week. I’d work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day, except Sunday. On that day I got off at 6 p.m.”
A movie agent heard his dialect stuff and asked him if he’d be interested in making movies. Miller said sure. Then came the problem of getting the studios interested
“We couldn’t,” Miller grinned. “They said they thought I was terrific on the air. But they were not taking any chances on signing me up for the movies. Said once a radio actor never a screen actor. How if I’d get a little experience on Broadway, they said, they might change their minds.”
But Miller wasn’t any more interested in Broadway than Hollywood was in Miller. So he kept up his Chicago pace for a few more years and then brought three of his shows to Hollywood with him—for a rest.
And first thing he knew there were the studios knocking on his door with contracts and fountain pens. Miller still hasn’t any idea what made them change their minds.

Miller was profiled in one of those TV magazine supplements you (used to?) get with newspapers. This is from August 9, 1959 and featured a drawing of him on the front page.

Marvin Miller: Aide to A Whimsical Midas
“Some people,” says Marvin Miller, “are jacks of all trades. In what is a very pleasant switch, you might say my job is to supply jack to all trades.”
As Michael Anthony, executive secretary to John Beresford Tipton, eccentric tycoon of CBS-TV’s “The Millionaire” series, it has been Miller’s job for almost four years to bestow sudden wealth upon unsuspecting beneficiaries. And this for an actor who began his career with a job that paid five dollars a week.
If his television capers are unusual, they are in keeping with a history of extraordinary events which rank Miller as one of video’s most versatile personalities.
Noted as an announcer, newscaster, linguist and dialectician, Miller is also a vocalist, recording artist, playwright, poet, painter, photographer and gourmet of repute, who has written for national magazines on the subject of fine liqueurs and foods.
Many Hobbies
And the above docs not even include the dozen or more hobbies which occupy his spare time. His name is listed in the pages of “Who’s Who” and the “Biographical Dictionary of Poets.”
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Miller attended Washington University there, paying his way through the school by working on a local radio station. His first job consisted of writing a dramatic show and playing all the roles called for in the script.
In a typical program he appeared as two Englishmen, two Negroes, an Italian, Frenchman, American gangster and straight man. For this effort as a one-man repertory company, for playing eight different parts, he received a weekly stipend which amounted to 63 cents a role.
By the time Miller obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree from the university, he had scaled the radio heights of the Mound City. He had a reputation as St. Louis’ leading announcer and newscaster, and was recognized as the foremost music commentator on local airwaves, a talent that was to stand him in good stead in later years.
Success Repeated
Moving to Chicago, Miller repeated his successes and was soon starring in dozens of network shows. By 1944 he was appearing on a minimum of 45 broadcasts a week and the show business bible, “Variety,” clubbed him “Chicago’s one-man radio industry.”
Then Hollywood beckoned and the film capital became the scene of new Miller triumphs. In fact, the first week in town saw him handling announcing chores on Frank Sinatra’s show. Motion picture roles followed and his histrionic abilities received recognition when he was cast in roles opposite top name stars.
His distinctive voice also has been employed in recordings of great works of literature. Among them is “The Talking Bible,” which contains more than a million words and requires more than a week to play in its entirety. It was a year arid a half in the making and pioneers the field of 16 2-3" records.
Impressive in appearance, Miller stands five-feet, ten inches and weighs 195. He has dark brown hair and brown eyes.
He is married to the former Elizabeth Dawson, an artist and writer. They have two children, Tony, 19, and Mellissa, 7.
Actor, announcer, writer, a man of many facets, Miller says his current assignment as aide to a whimsical Midas is his most interesting role.

There were game shows in the 1950s (since The Scandal, no one calls them “quiz shows” any more) that gave away nice chunks of money but nothing close to a million dollars until Regis Philbin showed up a few decades later. So fans of big, big money had to content themselves with Marvin Miller’s unreality show, showing the same curiosity as fans of today’s reality shows about just what happens to someone put in an unpredictable situation.

There was a string of stories about Miller and ‘The Millionaire’ a few couple of years after the show became a hit. This is from The Blytheville Courier, March 22, 1957.

Secret Life of Michael Anthony
Gives Away $1 Million Per Week
HOLLYWOOD — (Special)— Michael Anthony, private secretary to multi-billionaire John Beresford Tipton, is something of an enigma to his fans. It seems that although they watch him at his extraordinary chores over the CBS-TV Network every Wednesday night at 8 'o’clock CST, they haven’t been able to find out enough about his “private life.”
Is Michael Anthony married they ask? If he is, how does his wife feel when he calls to say, “I won’t be home for dinner, dear, I have to deliver a million-dollar check to a chap in Hawaii”?
If her reaction to this is slightly negative, what happens when she asks, “Who gets the check this week?” and is told, “It’s a secret, you know that . . . ” A great many viewers are concerned about the family complications created by a job like Michael Anthony’s.
What does he do on his “day off”? Do the Anthony’s have any children? Do they all plan to be millionaires when they grow up? Do they live on the fabulous, 60-acre estate called “Silverstone!” And if they do — have they ever seen the eccentric philanthropist?
Several people have even asked how Anthony got into this line of business anyway — what qualifications must you have to get a position as a million-dollar messenger (It seems a lot of people have them, no matter what they are)?
* * *
THESE ARE JUST a few of the questions that have been hurled at MARVIN MILLER the real-life Michael Anthony. Marvin is at a loss to describe the Anthony domestic scene. He says the best he can offer his television fans are some the facts about the Miller menage.
He is married to Elizabeth Dawson, an artist and writer and they have two children, a son Tony who is 16 and Melinda, who is five.
“Silverstone” may be in the neighborhood, but they live in their own home in West Los Angeles, California. The children have suggested a number of possible careers for themselves, but have not as yet, aspired to be millionaires.
* * *
HOW MARVIN MILLER got into this business of playing Michael Anthony is a story that began while he was an undergraduate at Washington University in his native St. Louis. He worked his way through college by writing and acting in radio dramas. He was neither thinking of, nor dealing with, “millions” in those days.
As a matter of fact, he did the script and as many as eight different characters for about five dollars a week. By the time he received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University he was known as one of St. Louis’ leading announcers and newscasters.
Miller repeated this success in Chicago where he starred in dozens of network shows. By 1945 he was appearing on as many as 45 broadcasts a week. No wonder “Variety” dubbed him “Chicago’s one-man radio industry.”
When Hollywood beckoned, he wasn’t in town a week when he was the announcer on the Frank Sinatra Show. Since he has been living on the West Coast he has done radio, television and motion picture work.
* * *
RECENTLY, he entered the recording world and completed “The Talking Bible,” which was more than a year and a half in the making. It contains more than a million words and requires more than a week to play.
Miller has no idea what Michael Anthony does on his “day off” (Marvin suggests, “He probably browses in the local banks — talking ‘shop’ with the tellers.”) but his own leisure-time is seldom wasted. A man with more than 12 hobbies doesn’t have time to waste.
He collects antique Chinese furniture, records and menus; he is a photographer, gourmet, poet, book binder and woodworker. He may give away millions at work, but after hours he is strictly do-it-yourself.
Now playing his third season as Michael Anthony, Marvin has been stopped all over the world with the question, “Have you got my million-dollar check with you, Mr Anthony?”
* * *
THE FINAL WORD of advice to those applying for his job — You need perserverance and a sense of humor. Marvin says it takes a lot of persistance to locate the about-to-be-millionaires and more of the same to get them to accept the check.
Strange as it may seem, people are very wary of special secretaries who walk about handing out million-dollar checks. His sense of humor carries him through when he is told the lady of the house doesn't want “any.”
He has come to believe it may be easier (and safer) to make money than to give it away.

You’ve no doubt heard stories of the frightening number of people who watch TV soap operas and think they’re real, as if they’re watching some kind of live documentary. Marvin Miller dealt with the same kind of thing from viewers of his show. This column in the Oakland Tribune of April 25, 1958 makes light of the blurring of reality but it’s sad to know there were desperate or deranged, or perhaps downright greedy, people who couldn’t comprehend they were watching a drama.

THESE TV PEOPLE
The Best Things In Life Are Free
By BILL FISET
You’d think that Marvin Miller would be a reasonable man.
After all, as Michael Anthony on television’s “The Millionaire,” he spends all his time finding people to give $1,000,000 to, and tax free.
But no. Apparently he has a heart of stone. We met in San Francisco last night.
“Marvin,” I said, to him in my most confidential tone, “I know the source of your money is virtually unlimited, and actually I don’t need a whole million. If you could just let me have, say, $100,000...”
He laughed, in a coarse sort of way that reminded you of all those old movies in which he always played the villain. “Our TV program,” he said, “is supposed to show that money won’t cure all ills. The money is a symbol of security. It solves the biggest problem—meals and rent—but it doesn’t bring happiness.”
“It’d help, Marvin. Now as I say, all I need is a paltry $50,000 . . .”
“Our show’s now in its fourth year and people seem to like it,” Miller said. “You know, everyone always says what they’d do if they had a million. Well, of course nowadays a million won’t go very far, but even so, people like to daydream.”
“A check for $25,000, Marvin, would do an awful lot...”
“Daydreaming is a fine thing,” Miller said, as if he hadn’t heard me. “There’s nothing harmful in that. But the terrible thing is when people BELIEVE the show, and when they write and ask for money. They’ve divorced themselves from the harmless daydream and from reality.”
“But, Marvin, I always thought...”
“About one viewer in 50, as near as we can figure, believes there's actually a John Beresford Tipton, a billionaire who gives away money. The letters these people write are pathetic and heart-rending. When the letters are addressed to me at the studio, I answer them all personally. I try to break it to them gently that our show is fiction. I tell them the worthwhile things are those they must work hard for. They seem to accept that.”
“Actually, Marvin, even $10,000 would be nice. If you’d just explain to Mr. Tipton ...”
“I remember,” said Miller, “a letter from a boy in Toronto, written in French. He explained his parents both had to work to keep him in school. He said he didn’t want an outright gift. He wanted just a loan of $1,000. He said I should send it to his mother, without saying he’d asked for it, and that he’d repay me when he grew up. Then on his letter he put a postscript, saying, “If you can't afford $1,000, $500 would help.”
“Well, Marvin,” I said, “if you think my asking $10,000 is too much, I’d be happy to take less. I’d ...”
“The letter from that young boy touched me deeply,” Miller went on. “I wrote him a nice reply and sent him one of my special checks, and I guess that made him happy.”
“Your SPECIAL CHECKS, Marvin? Then you do give checks to people outside your TV show?”
“Eh? Why certainly,” said Miller. “I’ve given away over 5,000 checks to people I’ve met personally since the show started. That’s aside from all the checks I’ve given away for Mr. Tipton on the show. The checks seem to make people happy.”
I rubbed my hands together. “Certainly they would. Could you . . . uh ... have you a check book with you, Marvin?”
He looked at me and smiled. In his eyes was a glimmer of the old Marvin Miller. (In one old movie he played Ghengis Khan and murdered countless thousands. In another he was a villainous sea captain who sank his own ship to kill his crew. He’s worked over actors such as Humphrey Bogart and George Raft with a blackjack, but he insists this isn’t the real Marvin Miller. In real life he’s a happily married man who’s never so much as been in a fist fight. Not even with his wife.)
He was still smiling as he said, “Of course I have my check book with me, my boy.” He whipped it out and wrote out a check. He ripped the check from the book and handed it to me. I felt like all those recipients on “The Millionaire.”
“Thank you, thank you,” I babbled. Imagine! I was rich. Luxury. I could take a trip around the world. Also, I could tell my editors where to go, too.
But then I looked at the check. It was for a million, all right. “One million dollars worth of good luck,” and drawn on the “International Bank of Goodwill.”
Marvin Miller is an unreasonable man, indeed.

Miller passed away February 8, 1985 at age 71. Whether after all that work, he socked away a few million dollars of his own, I can’t say. But he sure had a million-dollar voice.

He Didn’t Hate Dogs

W.C. Fields was one of filmdom’s most talented and iconoclastic stars. His movies were little more than short comedy scenes linked together by a pretty bare plot—“It’s a Gift” (1934) is probably my favourite. Fields was a tremendous writer as well. The book W.C. Fields by Himself contains his detailed outlines for a number of his movies, all of them better than what ended up on the screen after tinkering by higher-ups at whichever studio he happened to be working (the book also features his blunt letters to the studio giving his opinion about the tinkering).

Fields is quoted as saying “Anyone who hates dogs and kids can’t be all bad.” Apparently, his dislike was all a put-on. Sure, he poured gin into scene-stealing Baby Leroy’s milk, which unexpectedly stopped production on one of their movies until the youngster stopped staggering around. But that was just for fun. He was, by all stories, kind and friendly to young Freddie Bartholomew when the two made “David Copperfield” (1935).

And it seems he liked dogs, too. At least, he purported to in this United Press story from 1945.

W. C. Fields Is Just the Man To Reform Drunken Canine
By Virginia MacPherson
HOLLYWOOD, Oct. 26 (UP) — Bulbous-nosed W. C. Fields today offered a congenial home to Pepe, the dog drunk who gets the blind staggers on muscatel, and said he’d “reform” him from a wine to a martini hound.
“I’m a martini man, pure and simple,” drawled the comedian who uses quart jars for cocktail glasses. “And any dog that drinks with me can’t drink wine.”
Fields said he read about Pepe in the newspapers after police picked him up as a confirmed wino who was using alcoholic barks to tip off his human friends that the cops were approaching.
“I understand this dog needs a good home,” the neon-nosed actor added, “Well, I do, too. If this canine will meet me halfway, we can make a deal.”
Friends said he was being .kicked out of his famulous house, which has a billiard-table in the middle of the living room and a portable refrigerator well stocked with liquids. It’s mounted on wheels 30 he always has a drink handy when he gets thirsty.
Pepe and I could hunt .for a home together,” Fields said. Seems my lease on this place has expired—or something.”
His secretary reminded him that Pepe was undergoing scientific treatment of chronic alcoholism.
“I’ll breathe on him,” Fields declared. “That’ll cure the cur.”
Fields said he’d like to go down to the animal shelter, where Pepe was recovering from a hangover, but didn’t have time.
“I’m working on my notes for a temperance lecture I have to give soon,” he wheezed, reaching for the quart jar. “And tonight my writers are coming to work on a radio script.”
As soon as he’s kicked out of his house he’s moving into Las Encinas sanitarium in Pasadena, Calif.
“Going over for a short cure,” Fields grinned. “It’s the only place I can find to live for a while. Pepe might as well come along to keep me company.
The police booked Pepe yesterday when they found him staggering around Los Angeles streets. It wasn't the first time, either.
They picked him up a month ago, lapping wine from an old tomato can and barking an alarm to two-legged friends who were already five or six tomato cans ahead of him.
That time his friends sobered up and bailed him out with a dog license.
When police chased him again yesterday Pepe fell flat on his face in a drunken stupor.
“A condition I understand perfectly,” commented Fields. “This mutt is a dog after my own heart.”
Fields hasn't gone to the dogs, yet, he added. But in the case of Pepe he’s willing to make an exception.

While Fields’ quotes make this a light story, it really was sad. And I don’t mean the story of the alcoholic dog. Fields himself was on the losing end of his battle with the bottle, and the sanitarium mentioned in the story is where Fields went to live until he died 14 months later on Christmas Day, 1946.

Fields left behind some great movies. Audiences couldn’t help but love him. He played a man who just wanted to enjoy life but met with unfairness and stupidity, two things the average viewer can still identify with. It made his triumph (such as at the end of “It’s a Gift”) all that much better.

Like many ex-vaudevillians, Fields made short films before going into features. You can watch three of them cobbled together below.

George Pal and Sex

A couple of months ago, we posted about George Pal, maker of the imaginative Puppetoons released by Paramount in the 1940s. I’ve dug out another newspaper piece on Pal, this one from 1945. It was written about the time a new season of shorts was hitting theatres, beginning with ‘Jasper and the Beanstalk’ on October 19.

Producer Pal Explain How Wooden Puppetoons Work
By VIRGINIA MACPHERSON
Hollywood, Oct. 25. (BUP)—Producer George Pal is our candidate for the man who works harder than anybody to put sex in the movies.
Usually it’s a simple thing for an actress to wiggle her torso. But when Pal’s ladies do it that means 25 extra wooden figures.
Pal is the ex-architect who turns out Pal’s Puppetoons, those little three-dimensional people.
It takes, he explained today, 14 different puppets to show one step.
Just the same. Pal thinks he’ll keep on using his bosomy ladies with the shapely legs.
“I tried one out in one of the Jasper puppetoons,” he said. That was the first time we’d ever had a fling at wooden sex. And she seemed to go over quite well.
And he makes that statement, he grinned, just a few days before the Hollywood chamber of commerce will present him with a bronze plaque (we still think it should, be wooden) commemorating his five years in Hollywood and his long record of clean entertainment.
“But when I say I’m going to keep sex in I don’t want you to get the wrong idea,” he explained. “Because every puppetoon we turn out has to be passed by the censors first.
Started in Hollywood
Pal has been working with “his little blockheads” for about 12 years now. He started out in Holland as an architect. Then he decided drawing animated cartoons would pay better.
“But it didn’t,” he said. “At least, not much. So I started carving out my puppets and making three-dimensional cartoons of them.
The puppets went over big with the advertising companies.
“Then five years ago, I got an offer from Hollywood,” he said.
“Then one day I, was sort of doodling away,” he said, “and I hit on the idea of a little colored boy. We called him Jasper. Then we got a colored scarecrow and perched a crow on his shoulder.”
From there on in Pal was in business. Right now he’s turning out a new puppetoon every six weeks.
It takes about 3,000 different puppets for a seven-minute short, and about 22 weeks to draw whittle, shoot and record it.

Someone knowledgeable about Puppetoons can comment about what short involving a “bosomy lady” he’s talking about. I wonder if it’s ‘Hatful of Dreams,’ released earlier in 1945. Boxoffice magazine gave it a “superior” rating in its review.

One of the most colourful and imaginative of the series to date, this subject shows how Punchy, a pathetic little ragamuffin in love with his unattainable Judy, is given a magic hat by a cab hose. The hat’s magic transforms its wearer into whatever he or she secretly dreams of being. Thus, the spavined, knock-kneed nag becomes a Derby winner. Punchy becomes Superman, and others who do the magic skimmer undergo a surprising change. After many complications, the nag gets back his hat, Judy gets her Punchy and Punchy gets—more Punchy.

The Winter 1985 edition 14 of Animator had a nice article about Pal. You can read it HERE.

Jack Benny on the 38th

Nostalgia tells us World War Two was a fun time in Hollywood. The stars were entertaining “our boys” overseas, with a happy collective camaraderie as they jaunted from place to place around the globe. The exuberance of patriotism to help win that clear-cut fight with the Nazis (never the ‘Germans’) and the Japs (always the people and not their government).

Korea was a lot different. The world was still worn out from the last war. And it was a war that was more ideological than personal. Sure, the entertainers made their trips to brighten the lives of “our boys” but it seems to have been done out of a sense of obligation than anything else.

Jack Benny toured overseas during World War Two. He kept a little diary and while there’s a sense of weariness at times, the entries leave you with the impression he was enjoying himself some of the time. You don’t get that sense from his trip to Korea, certainly not from this United Press column which appeared in newspapers starting September 14, 1951.

Jack Benny Finally Is Feeling His Age
By VIRGINIA MacPHERSON
U. P. Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD, (UP) — Jack Benny confessed today he’s about through telling people he’s 39. That last trip to Korea made him feel every day of his 58 years.
“I came home completely worn out,” the comedian said. “And it kinda scared me. That was my fifth trip to the wars—and I think it was my last.”
Feeling 58 came as something of a shock to Benny, who doesn’t think he looks it. (He’s right. He doesn’t.)
“Mentally, you feel the same at 58 as you do at 39,” he said grinning. “But after weeks of slogging through that Korean mud and sleeping only four hours a night I couldn't kid myself any more.
“From here on in I’m gonna have to let the younger kids entertain the troops. There’ve been a few other signs that made me think I’m not 39 any more, but Korea convinced me.”
Benny starts his 20th year in radio day after tomorrow. And all the old gang’s back with him. The only one who gave any trouble was his own wife.
“Mary wants to quit,” he said. “She doesn't like show business and we have a heck of a time signing her up every year.
“She refused to do any television with me. Doesn’t think she’s any good. But, although she does less comedy than anybody on the show, she’s one of the top favorites with the fans.”
So Benny backed her into a corner, shoved a pen in her hand, and made her sign on the dotted line. She still isn’t happy about it, though.
Jack doesn't blame her. He’d like to retire himself.
“I’ve been at this for 40 years,” he said, gazing at the shimmering swimming pool two decades of gags have paid for. “But I know I could never quit show business for good.
“I’d like to semi-retire. Do maybe 13 weeks of radio and six weeks of TV and then play theaters in England and Australia. I could squeeze long vacations in between each of these.
“I’d like to do a Broadway play, too, but I can’t. I’m stuck.”
The only reason Benny’s “stuck” is that he’s too good. He has a big staff that earns fabulous dough helping him be funny every Sunday night. And if he quits now, he said, they’ll have to hunt for new jobs. Some of them after 18 years with him.
“But if there's any quitting,” he said, chuckling, “I want to do it myself. I don’t wanta hang around until they fire me.”

“Our boys” may have had more fun that Jack did. When he arrived for his first show on the front line on July 4, he was greeted with a huge, red-lettered sign that read “Welcome, Fred Allen.” He left California at 2 a.m. on June 27 for a five-week tour, along with Errol Flynn, Benay Venuta and Marjorie Reynolds, stopping at the Travis Air Force base in California and several bases in Hawaii before heading to Korea.

MacPherson’s column touches on two other things. Evidently, it wasn’t commonly known at the time that Mary wanted off the show. Anyone who has listened to the Benny show realises quickly her own assessment of her ability was wrong. But perhaps hanging around Hollywood’s elite all those years gave her a feeling of inferiority.

And while Jack wearied of the show-biz grind, he kept himself interested by doing different things. He had moved from vaudeville to radio to television (with some slight overlapping). Then he did Vegas shows. And then switched his focus altogether by taking part in charity symphony performances. And, had he lived longer, he might have revived his dormant movie career, having been cast in “The Sunshine Boys” (today, six sequels would have been planned before shooting even began). Show business never fired him. And he never quit. He was there until the very end.

Lucy Confounds the Columnists

“I Love Lucy” was not only the most popular show on television at one time, it was a groundbreaking one which influences the industry to this day. Other shows had filmed in front of live audiences, who attempted to peer through lights, cameras and technical people to see the stage. Others had shot using three cameras. But “Lucy” found a way to make it all practical. And sitcoms are taped before a studio audience even today because of it.

This was revolutionary to the people who covered TV. They didn’t quite know what to make of it. Let’s pass on a few columns from the time around the show’s debut The first show was filmed September 8, 1951 but it was the second one a week later that was the debut of the series.

In Hollywood
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 27 (NEA)—A movie queen emoting on a studio sound stage with a built-in audience is the latest “Well, I’ll be darned” eye-opener in today’s fast-changing Hollywood scene.
The movie queen is Lucille Ball and workmen knocked a hole through a thick studio wall (built to keep people out) so Lucille’s audience could by-pass the studio gateman and get in.
There’s no standing around on the set with the usual head wobbling for Lucille’s audience.
No, siree.
After knocking that hole through the studio wall, the workmen built a series of raised platforms and installed 300 plush seats right on the sound stage floor behind the cameras.
Darned if they didn’t build a fancy theater-like lobby, too, complete with rest rooms, thick red carpet and uniformed ushers. No boxoffice, though, because admission is free. No popcorn machine, either.
The movie studio with the hole in the wall so the eager public can get in free to watch a star emote is General Service, and the big sound stage with the 800 plush new seats has a long and glittering history of “No Admittance — Public Keep Out” movie making.
Blame or hail television for this first mass studio gate crashing stunt since the early days of Hollywood when Carl Laemmle erected bleachers on his outdoor sets and charged the public 25 cents a head to watch the filming of Universal’s old silent dramas.
Lucielle’s sound stage audience will be watching her make a weekly half hour television movie, “I Love Lucy,” a comedy series in which she co-stars with husband Desi Arnaz, supported by movie veteran William Frawley and Broadway-import Vivian Vance.
The first film will be seen on coast-to-coast CBS-TV October 15 with a cigaret company paying all the bills.
Filming of “I Love Lucy” is as precedent-shattering as the hole in the studio wall.
As Desi, who put the idea together (Lucille claims she “didn’t have anything to do with it. Desi deserves the credit. I was home having a baby”) sees it:
“We’re putting a stage show on film for television.”
All three techniques are represented in the setup. The director, Marc Daniel, is from the New York stage and TV. Cameraman Karl Freund is a movie veteran who tensed several of Lucille’s films at M-G-M.
If you want to be confused, here’s the way it works:
The show is rehearsed like a play on a bare stage with chalk marks on the floor indicating walls and furniture. Then it’s rehearsed on the set in front of three movie cameras just like a movie.
Then they let the audience in and they shoot the scenes with all three cameras and the sound track picking up the audience laughter. Then the audience goes home and Lucille and Desi and the cast run through their lines again while the cameras move in for closeups which will be cut in with the long and medium shots.
Lucille, Desi and Producer Jess Oppenheimer insisted on an audience for their movie making on the theory that a movie for television is not like a regular movie.
Says Desi:
“People alone at home like to feel that they are part of the audience in the TV theater. They want to hear an audience reaction.”
Claims Producer Oppenheimer:
“An audience dictates to an actor what to do. He has to stop and acknowledge the audience’s reaction. Hollywood takes care of the problem with previews before a film is released.
“We don’t have time to preview our films. So instead of taking our pictures to an audience, we’ve brought our audience to the picture.”
“Great idea, isn’t it?” said Lucille, who was wearing slacks and her hair tucked under a bandana for an eight-hour session of rehearsing.
I confessed I was a little confused.
“You won’t be when you see the first picture,” she assured me. “We’re just putting a stage show on film for television.”
But I’m still confused.
“I Love Lucy,” too, but is it a play, a movie or a television show?

TV Is Keeping Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz Together
By BOB THOMAS
HOLLYWOOD, Oct. 9 (AP)—Television’s boosters keep talking about how the new medium is bringing the family back together. Here’s one pair it has done that for—Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
The redhead and the Latin have been married 11 years and a sizable amount of that time has been spent apart. During the war years, Desi was here and there in the Army. When peace came, he organized a band and was touring the country as much as six months out of each year. Meanwhile, his spouse was largely confined to picture-making in Hollywood.
“We saw each other coming and going, and that was about all,” Lucille remarked.
But now they have solved the problem of Desi’s travels. Together they have formed the
Desilu Company (from their first names, as if you didn’t_know). He is prexy and she is vice prez and the whole enterprise is very cozy. Purpose of the company is to produce a TV show called “I Love Lucy,” and that’s what keeping them home together.
“It’s a full-time job for both of us,” Lucille declared. “Starting at noon, we work every week day plus two nights a week. We have Saturday and Sunday off and that’s all.”
The new show is an unusual operation. Some TV shows are telecast directly with an audience and others are filmed. But the Ball-Arnaz program is filmed with an audience. Here's how it works:
The actors and technicians rehearse all day Monday through Thursday at a Hollywood film studio. On Thursday night an audience is brought into the studio for a dress rehearsal. More rehearsals follow on Friday and the show is filmed by three cameras before an audience that night.
“Thus we can get the technical perfection of being able to cut the film before it is televised,” explained Desi. “But we also have the advantage of playing before an audience, so we can get a reaction to the comedy.”
“I Love Lucy” has already been sold for 39 weeks to a cigarette sponsor and will debut soon on CBS in the Monday time slot following Arthur Godfrey.
Naturally, such a tight schedule precludes any film activity right now for Lucille, but. she is shedding no tears over that.
“I’ll have three months every summer to do pictures,” she said. “I could do two in that time, but I only want to do one a year anyway.
“Actually, I don’t miss doing pictures at all. On the TV show I’m doing the things I like to do. It’s a combination of everything I have learned in the movies, radio, stage and vaudeville. Sometimes I would do a whole picture just because of one little scene which I wanted to do. On this show I get that kind of scene every week.”
The Arnaz family now has another reason for sticking close to home. The name is Lucie Desiree Arnaz, age 11 weeks.

Lucille and Desi Happy At Their TV Playhouse
By GENE HANDSAKER
HOLLYWOOD, Oct. 11 (AP) — “Every ham likes an audience,” said Lucille Ball, “and we’re hams.”
The tall redhead was explaining her unique TV setup of herself and her husband, Desi Arnaz. They’re leased two adjoining sound stages. One contains the dressing rooms. The other houses the sets—dining room, living room, kitchen—and bleachers for 300 spectators.
There, each Friday evening, a half hour domestic comedy in a series called “I Love Lucy” is put on film for television. A sign over the lobby where the audience is admitted says “Desilu Playhouse.” Desilu was compounded from the owner-stars’ first names.
During business discussions, Desi may wear a hat labeled “Pres.,” while Lucy wears one lettered “Veepee”—their respective ranks in Desilu Productions, Inc. During rehearsals they sometimes switch to headgear reading “Boy Actor” and “Girl Actor.”
* * *
“THIS COVERS MORE people in one night than a picture does in two years,” Lucy said of the new medium. “Another reason I went into television is, in every script I get things I wait a year or two to get in pictures. Natural, married-couple stuff, mostly. On the screen I’ve had that only occasionally.”
The natural married-couple stuff, in a scene I saw rehearsed, showed Lucy lousing up her hubby’s poker game with his pals.
Miss Ball said she’ll branch out into comedy dance routines in the series and added: “I like not playing myself. Playing Lucille Ball is very boring. I always have to look good. Being glamorous can be very monotonous.”
Their approach to TV, she pointed out, combines all mediums. “It’s television, films, radio, theatre, and personal appearances all in one.
* * *
“BUT IT’S harder than movies. We learn a new script in three days. Any trouper who doesn’t want to work harder than he ever has in his life shouldn’t go into television.”
Desi, Cuban-born bandleader and one-time Broadway actor, has been married to Lucy nearly 11 years. But their separate movies and his band tours have kept them apart frequently. “This television show is wonderful,” he said. “It gives us our first chance to be together.”

If you’re wondering how critics responded, most of them liked the show. The New York Times panned the second half as being low comedy that was a little too low. But here’s one review from the United Press. The writer, or maybe an editor, had a little trouble with Desi Arnaz’s name.

Video Can’t Hurt
Lucille Launches TV Career as Witch
By VIRGINIA MacPHERSON
HOLLYWOOD, Oct. 18—(U.P.) Lucille Ball’s one movie queen who isn't worrying how she’ll photograph on TV. This week she came out looking like a Halloween witch.
There's just one difference: With Lucy it’s on purpose.
She and her spouse, Dessi Arnaz, kicked off their CBS-TV show, “I Love Lucy” Monday night and what the carrot-topped cutie did to her puss was enough to make every “cheesecake” photographer in the racket flip his lid.
She stuck black patches over choppers and flashed a toothless grin at her goggle-eyed audience . . . she flopped a black wig over her orange-colored curls and stalked the stage, pig-tails flying . . . she camouflaged the famous Ball curves in a shapeless gunnysack and stared cross-eyed at the camera.
She did everything, in fact, but worry about her looks. And the laughs rippled forth a mile a minute. Everybody was surprised but Lucy.
“I started out as a comedienne,” she shrugs. “But nobody ever let me get laughs. All I did, picture after picture, was look glamorous.
"Now I let Desi handle the glamour. He's pretty enough.”
She’s right there. But he’s more’n pretty. He’s also smart, as president of Dessilu Productions he bagged a sponsor for $1,500,000 a year.
“This is something we’ve been dreaming about for years,” he explained. “And working on for the past three. We even took a vaudeville tour last year to break in our act. Now we’re in business.”
At $30,000 a week you could even call it big business. For that, every Monday night, Desi and Lucy will cavort through the trials of young married life.
“It’s a cinch,” Desi says. “All we do is remember what happened to us and write a story around it."
“Now honey,” Lucy interrupted. “You know we can’t put THAT on the screen!”
The best part of the show, as far as Dessi and Lucy are concerned, is the hours.
“We’ve been trying to get together for 10 years,” Lucy said. “But I’d always be making a movie and Desi’d always be playing a nightclub tour. Even when he was in town he'd be getting home just as I was leaving for the studio.
“He always saw me as my most unglamorous self. What else . . . at 6 a. m.?
“Now we work together . . . we have a 3-month-old daughter . . . Saturday and Sundays off . . . and it looks like we’re gonna have a sane home life for a change—or at least as sane as it can be with us.”

MacPherson’s column obliquely reveals something that readers probably took as a joke. You couldn’t have put Lucy and Desi’s real life on television. Well, today you could, considering the reality trash that some people are fascinated with. “I Love Lucy” was an attempt by Lucille Ball to stabilise her home life and save her marriage. Instead, she won a default divorce on May 4, 1960; Lucy claimed she knew it was over for good five years before because Desi loved boozing and womanising too much. Considering that and the tremendous pressure to keep not only their show, but their studio/production company a success, it’s amazing that Lucy and Desi continued to bring viewers quality entertainment until the very end. Quality entertainment is the reason everybody loves Lucy.