Yes, It Is a Scream Bomb

A “scream bomb” lives up to its name in Tex Avery’s Blitz Wolf.



Note the ghost multiples to make the movement faster.

Animation is by Irv Spence.

Boom

The makers of silent films didn’t rely on the theatre pit orchestra to provide sound effects. Like title cards to make the plot understandable, words would appear on the screen to indicate sounds.

Here are good examples in Felix Turns the Tide, a war picture released not too many years after fighting in the trenches of France and Belgium. The word “BOOM” is formed as a cannon is fired by a rat and lands in a trench filled with cats. The cartoon depicts non-comedic death as the cat soldiers are thrown into the air by the bomb blast.



As a side note, “BOOM” appears on rare occasion in sound cartoons. Tex Avery's Blitz Wolf (1942) is one. A really late example is the opening of Rocky and His Friends (1959).

The visual highlight of this short may be the depiction of the war. There are silhouettes, black and white cards in between the action to give a flashing effect, alternating black and white backgrounds, and an animated explosion where the smoke fills the screen. Unfortunately, the versions of these films on-line are murky, as if an old print was recorded onto a VHS tape.

Felix was a huge star and deserves better treatment.

Moving Picture World of Jan. 13, 1923 opined that, even then, “many will be able to anticipate” the ending of the cartoon.

The short was released on Oct. 15, 1922. Felix was distributed on a States Rights basis by Margaret Winkler. There were new Felixes every two weeks. The others around this time (from the Motion Picture News):

Felix Gets Revenge, Sept. 1, 1922
Felix Wakes Up, Sept. 15, 1922
Felix Minds the Kid, Oct. 1, 1922
Felix on the Trail, Nov. 1, 1922
Felix Lends a Hand, Nov. 15, 1922
Felix Gets Left, Dec. 1, 1922
Felix in the Bone Age, Dec. 15, 1922
Felix the Ghost Breaker, Jan. 1, 1923
Felix Wins Out, Jan. 15, 1923

Other than Winkler and Pat Sullivan’s names, there are no credits.

That Ain't the Way I Heerd It

In the mid-1930s, when theatrical animation on the West Coast had reached the point where studios needed professional actors to voice their characters, they had a ready-made talent pool at radio stations.

It was not only still a time of dialects but the rise of impersonations, as someone imitating the voice of a talking picture or vaudeville star got laughs on the air.

One of these radio actors who got side-work in cartoons was Bill Thompson.

His show business career started as a boy. Here’s a pretty good radio career summary from the Hollywood Citizen-News, March 10, 1952.

‘OLD TIMER’
Bill Thompson Does Various Characters
Millions of listeners to NBC radio's “Fibber McGee and Molly Show" know him as Wallace Wimple, shy, henpecked little man who studies his beloved bird book when not dodging his "big, fat wife, Sweetyface."
Or, as the Old Timer, who repeats old, trusted jokes at the drop of a hat.
Or, as Horatio K. Boomer, whose pockets are constantly crammed with all manner of strange devices.
Or, as Nick Depopolis, past master of the old Greek art of English mispronunciation.
Or as Bill Thompson, 'off-mike.'
Or, if there's a need for formal identification, William Henry Thompson, Jr.
Whoever or whichever, Mr. “Bill’s Good Enough" Thompson is one of the cleverest and most versatile young men in the business of radio dialects.
Brown-eyed Bill was literally born into show business — and practically smack on an international border. Shortly before his birth, his mother, then on a vaudeville tour in Canada with his father, was obliged to return to Terre Haute, Indiana post-haste, so Bill could be born in the United States. They arrived just under the wire!
Young William Henry's first stage appearance came six weeks later, when he was carried onto a Terre Haute stage by his proud and beaming papa. And hardly two years had gone by before Bill began his professional career with his parents by doing a tap dance with their act.
Even attendance at Chicago's Lemoyne Grammar School and Lakeview High School didn't keep the active young man off the stage. Each year, until he was 12, he toured the variety circuits with his mother and father, fitting into their set by dancing and telling dialect stories and jokes.
One of the high spots of his public appearances came in 1919 when he was awarded a citation by Secretary of the Treasury Carter Glass, for having sold more than $2,000,000 in Liberty Bonds!
In 1934, while an usher at Chicago's Century of Progress Exposition, gleeful Bill won an NBC audition and was put under contract to the network. His first appearance on a network show was on the National Farm and Home Hour.
After playing various radio shows in the Windy City for two years, Bill joined the ''Fibber McGee and Molly" program. He's been with the popular network show ever since, except for a two-year cruise in the Navy, from 1943 to 1946.
Today, Bill's greatest interest outside his radio activities is his work with the Boys Club of America.

Fibber McGee and Molly originated in Chicago. When Jim and Marian Jordan were signed to a film contract by Paramount in 1937, they moved the show to the West Coast. And there it stayed. Thompson came along.

It would appear, if I’m reading Keith Scott’s books properly, Thompson’s first cartoon was for Walter Lantz in Arabs With Dirty Fezzes in 1939. He took his Horatio K. Boomer voice to Warners Bros. for two appearances as W.C. Fieldmouse opposite Little Blabbermouse. Then, it was to MGM, where Tex Avery cast him as Adolf Wolf in Blitz Wolf and then as Droopy in Dumb-Hounded; that voice was more-or-less the same as Wallace Wimple's.

The story above indicates Thompson enlisted for war duty; a feature article in the June 5, 1945 edition of the Akron Beacon Journal stated he entered naval training at Great Lakes in February 1944 and became SP (A) William Thompson, U.S.N. The story went on:

The "A" in his navy title does not mean "Actor" . . . He is a part of the athletic department of the navy . . . originally commanded by Gene Tunney . . . which is similar to the Special Service corps of the army . . . His job as a physical instructor is putting men through athletic drills and entertaining.

Thompson had to put his radio and cartoon careers on hold. It’s thought Tex Avery himself voiced Droopy during the interim. Fibber brought in other characters instead of trying to duplicate Thompson's voices (though the old-timer was originally played by Cliff Arquette).

He returned to radio and cartoons after the war, finding a good chunk of work in features and shorts for Walt Disney in the 1950s. Radio was dying and NBC slowly dismantled Fibber McGee and Molly until all that was left were the two title characters. He had to find a new career.

Thompson had other interests, as we learn in this story from the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, March 25, 1962. It's interesting the columnist would know about Droopy. Thompson never received screen credit for the role and this was a time before animation history books

Old Timer Known for Aid To Boy Clubs
BY ELSTON BROOKS
The announcement said W. H. Thompson Jr. of the Union Oil Company would speak on "Juvenile Decency" at the First Methodist Church meeting of the North Side Kiwanis Club—and it certainly didn't sound like amusements column fodder.
But that wasn't just W. H. Thompson up at the rostrum Friday. It was Wallace Wimple and Horatio K. Boomer and the Old Timer and Nick DePopolous—and even Droopy, the hangdog pup of the Metro cartoons.
Bill Thompson, one of the most famed voices in show business, has been hitting the luncheon club circuit full-time in behalf of his beloved Boys' Clubs of America ever since Fibber McGee and Molly dropped their Tuesday night stranglehold on network radio in 1956.
"IT'S NOTHING NEW, this work for Boys' Clubs," he told us in his rarely heard normal voice. "I was doing it for 20 years before I quit showbusiness. Three days a week it was radio, four days it was work with Boys' Clubs."
Oddly enough, Thompson has never had a boy of his own, nor a "mean ole Sweetie Face," as Wallace Wimple used to describe his wife. At 49, Thompson still is a bachelor.
"I guess it's that I always wanted to be a Texas Ranger when I was a kid back in Indiana. But you can't always go on a police force, and I found out I could help in other says back when we did the Fibber McGee show in Chicago. "I saw a need for club activity for boys—not just gangs. I’ve been in the work ever since, continuing it when we moved the show to Hollywood."
• • •
TODAY, THOMPSON is public service representative of the Union Oil Company, a West Coast firm that allows Thompson to make his good will talks around the country. Herbert Hoover has appointed him national director of the Boys' Clubs of America, and Thompson, in turn, is elated at landing his old boss, Walt Disney, on the board.
"I did a lot of work for Walt," the diminutive, red-haired actor recalled. "I was the voice of the white rabbit in 'Alice in Wonderland,' and Mr. Smee, the pirate, in 'Peter Pan,' and the Scotty in 'Lady and the Tramp' . . ."
"And, of course, Droopy, the pooped pup," we reminded.
Thompson laughed, and came up with his most famous voice: "That's pretty good, Johnny, but that ain't the way I heerd it. The way I heerd it, one feller says to the other feller, sa-y-y-y, he sez . . ."
We felt obligated to ask another question, because the Old Timer rarely finished one of his stories. We asked him for a match—and got the response we were hoping for.
"Match, match, let's see," said Horatio K. Boomer in that W. C. Fields voice. "Here's a poem I wrote once, and a check for a short beer. Well, well, whaddya know? No match."

Thompson had a couple of cracks at stardom. ABC gave him a half-hour sitcom, opposite the Carnation Contented Hour and the Gulf Screen Guild Players. It lasted from March 4 to May 27, 1946 before the network cancelled it.

And then there was the lead role in an animated sitcom. He had a wife named Wilma and a neighbour named Barney, who was played by Hal Smith. Smith explained what happened in Tim Lawson’s book ‘The Magic Behind the Voices’:

Bill Thompson was a good actor, but he had something wrong with his throat. He couldn’t sustain that gravel they wanted in Fred, so Mel [Blanc] and Alan Reed started rehearsing. We had already recorded the first five episodes, and finally, we were recording one night and Bill would cough and he would stop and he’d say, ‘I just can’t keep that gravel,’ Joe Barbera was directing, and he called us in and said, ‘You know, this isn’t working.’ And I said, ‘Well, it really isn’t. It’s difficult for Bill Thompson to hang onto his voice like that because he just doesn’t have it.’ So he said, ‘Well, Mel and Alan have been rehearsing and practicing this, so I think we’re going to let them do it.’

Hanna-Barbera still had a spot for Thompson. He went on to the far less memorable role as Touché Turtle in the early ‘60s.

Thompson’s animation career didn’t last much longer. He had just turned 58 when he died on July 15, 1971.

Never Trust a Nazi

Blitz Wolf isn’t just another Tex Avery fairy tale send-up. There’s a war on, so it’s a propaganda cartoon, too. Considering what a detestable individual Adolf Hitler was, ridiculing him was completely warranted. At the end of the short, the wolf Hitler-stand-in is blown to Hell, which, for him, is populated by Jews (doing their version of the Kitzel catchphrase from the Al Pearce radio show).



Avery, being the anti-Disney, uses Disney’s Three Little Pigs as a starting point, even utilising the voice of the Practical Pig, Pinto Colvig, to repeat his performance.

The story by Rich Hogan has a warning at the beginning—that even good people can be sucked in by the promises and talk of Fascists. The army-fatigued practical pig warns his brothers to be prepared for the invasion of the Big Bad Wolf, and pulls out a newspaper with the story.



Cut to a close-up and downward pan.



The delusional pigs don’t believe the mainstream media. It doesn’t reflect their beliefs as fact. “He won’t hurt us, ‘cause we signed a treaty with him!” They pull out the treaty. Cut to another close-up and pan, then the camera trucks in a little closer to get the signature and seal.



No sooner does this happen than the tanks start rolling in. The scene soon switches to the Blitz Wolf (Bill Thompson with a German accent) shouting to the pig inside the straw house that he’ll huff, etc. “But Adolf, that would break our treaty,” says the pig. “You’re a good guy. Why, you hate war. You wouldn’t go back on your word!” The wolf leans in and says “Are you kiddin’?” and laughs knowing he has snowballed them with his lies.



A little over a month after Pearl Harbor, The Hollywood Reporter revealed “As his first cartoon supervising chore at MGM, Fred ‘Tex’ Avery will handle ‘Blitz Wolf,’ a new animated character for the studio’s shorts” (Jan. 16, 1942). The paper announced on June 2 the cartoon was “in last stages of work” and on Aug. 19 it was “winding up production.” It wound up pretty fast as the same day, the Academy of Motion Pictures screened it at the Filmarte Theatre.

In fact, it was already in theatres, as an ad from the Portsmouth (Virginia) Herald issue of Aug. 16 shows. (Come for Bing. Stay for the Nazi).

This brings us to the oft-told tale that Fred Quimby thought Hitler might win the war and wanted the cartoon to be a little less violent. Did he really say that?

You’d think maybe the famous 1975 animation issue of Film Comment might have mentioned the quote. Or Joe Adamson in his interview with Avery in Tex Avery, King of Cartoons. Or Michael Barrier in his lengthy book Hollywood Cartoons.

It appears the story started circulating from an interview Chuck Jones did on the Mark and Brian radio show in Los Angeles in 1996 as related in the book Chuck Jones Conversations (2005, University of Mississippi Press). I quote Jones, quoting Avery, quoting Quimby.

And he [Quimby] went on, he said, “I was just looking at the storyboard of the Blitz Wolf” and he said—“you think,” this is 1944, right in the middle of the war [sic]—and he said, “Do you think you're being a little rough on Mr. Hitler? ‘Cause we don't know who's going to win the war.”

I have a hard time believing Quimby said this, even if he were joking (Quimby was not known for having a sense of humour). Hollywood—as was all of America—was awash with extreme anti-Axis patriotism. And Jones was not exactly known for a kindly attitude toward cartoon film producers (Disney, excepted).

Blitz Wolf was nominated for an Oscar. Three other war-related animated shorts were nominated, with Uncle Walt picking up the statue for Der Fuehrer’s Face. Fortunately, his face, and the rest of him, was gone in three years.

Hmm...Could Be

Artie Auerbach died in 1957, but his catchphrase lives on.

Auerbach was a newspaper photographer who met a man in Bronx. When Auerbach became a radio actor, he created a Jewish character based on the man, and called the character “Kitzel.”

On the air with Jack Haley, then Al Pearce, he was given several recurring lines, including “Mmm...could be!”

Yes, cartoon fans, that’s where the line you’ve heard for years comes from.

Tex Avery was particularly fond of it. Bugs Bunny said it in a A Wild Hare (1940). You can hear it Screwball Football (1939), Holiday Highlights and Ceiling Hero (both 1940).

It also turns up at the end of The Peachy Cobbler (released by MGM in 1950), with the story by ex-Warners writer Rich Hogan. A sick, destitute cobbler gives his last crust of bread (“whole wheat”) to poor, hungry snowbirds, who turn out to be happy, little shoemaker elves who surreptitiously make shoes and boots for the man to sell.

The shoemaker (played by Daws Butler) wakes up and jitterbugs happily with his wife (to the sped-up strains of “Running Wild”). They stop. “Mama,” he says to his wife, “I wonder if them little birds had something to do with this.” Cut to the birds, putting on their shoemaker hats, giving a stereotypical palms-out shrug and say the Kitzel catchphrase.

Avery used Kitzel’s other phrase of the period—“Hmm...it’s a possibility!”—to end Blitz Wolf (MGM, 1942).

Other directors used “Could be” as well. Bob Clampett ended Slap Happy Pappy (1940) with it, and so did Bob McKimson in Rebel Rabbit (1949). I suspect both cartoons were written by Warren Foster.

Incidentally, when Auerbach brought Mr. Kitzel to the Jack Benny show in 1946, the writers decided to develop their own catchphrases, so “Could be” was abandoned. Auerbach continued to appear on the Benny show, radio and television, until his death.

Normally, I don’t like lists on this blog, but if anyone reading can add another cartoon to the list, especially from a studio like Lantz or Screen Gems, or the Snafu shorts, please leave a note in the comments.

Let's Use This Radio Catchphrase Again

Tex Avery made some brilliant cartoons. And he made some real disappointments, too.

Falling into the latter category are some of the spot-gag shorts at Warner Bros. Gags are either obvious or hokey. Occasionally, he spruced them up for re-use in later cartoons.

An example is the ending of Ceiling Hero (1940). A test pilot crashes his plane on the tarmac. Narrator Bob Bruce gets all dramatic on us. “What happened? He crashed! This is terrible! Is he hurt? Is he killed?? IS HE KILLED?!??” IS HE????”

While Bruce is completely overwrought and speculating about death, the scene cuts to the dopey-looking pilot drawing on the ground with his finger after crawling from the wreckage. Obviously, he’s not killed.

But Tex and writer Dave Monahan decide to ignore that for the sake of shoehorning in a radio catchphrase as their ultimate gag. Emulating Mr. Kitzel on The Al Pearce Show, the pilot says “Mmmmm...could be!”

Kitzel was funnier when he went over to the Jack Benny show and Avery was funnier when he put a Kitzel-ism in a row of devils meeting Adolf Wolf at the end of The Blitz Wolf (MGM, 1942).

Avery lost the potential for a good gag when Bruce pointed out ice had developed on the wings, and the scene panned over to a polar bear on one of the wings. I was waiting for the bear to make a quip like “Don’t ask how I got up here” but the bear itself was the gag. Oh, well.

Perhaps the most imaginative thing was when the opening titles appeared out of the clouds.

At least Avery laid out the jokes and moved on. In a Lantz or Columbia spot-gag, you get the impression the writer thought the gags were the funniest things on the face of the earth. At his best, Avery gave you a groaner like he was defying you not to laugh at it.

Rod Scribner got the rotating animation credit in this short.

Practical Pig Warns Against Nazi Wolf

Daily Variety told readers on January 16, 1942 about a cartoon. “Fred Avery will supervise production of ‘Blitz Wolf,’ cartoon subject at Metro.”

Avery had arrived at MGM the previous September and busied himself with The Early Bird Dood It. This was the first cartoon Avery and his unit—Irv Spence, Ray Abrams, Preston Blair and Ed Love, likely assisted by effects animator Al Grandmain—worked on, with The Blitz Wolf following. It seems odd that Avery would be employed on only one short for the first four months he was at Metro, but that’s what the trades at the time indicate.

Even odder is a blurb in Daily Variety of June 17, 1942 saying Rich Hogan has bought himself out of his contract with Leon Schlesinger and “his first assignment being ‘Blitz Wolf.’” Why would he be writing a cartoon that had been started six months earlier? Especially one the Hollywood Reporter said on June 2nd was “in last stages of work.”? And when the MGM newsletter of January-February 1942 revealed he was already at the studio.

(Hogan was loyal to Avery. He returned to Avery’s unit after WW2 military service and quit animation when Avery took time off to get his life together).

Avery and Hogan brought with them from Warner Bros. sign gags, fairy tale send-ups, characters talking to the audience, radio show references and Sara Berner’s voice talent. With ex-Disney animators under him, he could try for animation that was a little more elaborate at times than what he put on the screen when working for Leon Schlesinger. There are a couple of scenes of perfect perspective animation with something large in the foreground flying into the background.

Oh, there were unmatched shots, too. Here are two consecutive frames. Sergeant Pork, the Practical Pig, drums his fingers and begins to point. But his finger doesn’t get there.



The GI-garbed pig urges the other two to buy bonds and be prepared for the Big Bad Wolf. Here are some poses. The pig’s gestures are not way-over-the-top like in a Clampett cartoon. They seem perfectly natural. This is the work of the great Preston Blair. Sgt. Pork’s voice is courtesy of Pinto Colvig. He had finished his work in Florida on Gulliver’s Travels and was back in Hollywood freelancing.



You can find more frames from the cartoon by searching here. There’s a profile of Mr. Hogan as well.

The Hollywood Reporter quoted Fred Quimby as stating on August 18th the cartoon was “winding up production.” If so, it wound up very fast. The press got a sneak preview the next night at the Filmarte Theatre by the Motion Picture Academy. It was the last short to be screened, and the programme included Superman’s Terror of the Midway, the very good Norm McCabe war short The Duck-Tators, Goofy in The Olympic Champ and the Fox and Crow in Woodman, Spare That Tree. About all Daily Variety said about it was “solid laughs.” The Reporter pronounced it “an especially ingenious release.”

The 887-foot film hit theatres on August 22nd, a week before Early Bird. In Weekly Variety’s edition of September 2nd, it concluded “With such a childish topic, Director Tex Avery and his crew have concocted a refreshing, laugh cartoon. Strong on any program.” (It also praised Avery in its review of Early Bird in the same issue).

Boxoffice, on September 5th, was more lavish in its praise: “They don’t come any better...Audiences, recovering from their laughter, will stand up and cheer this one. Tex Avery, who directed, is a man to watch.” (It, too, thought Early Bird was a “Top notcher...Tie the roof down when this one hits the projection machine”). From Motion Picture Daily of September 2nd: “Top honors for ingenuity, comedy and brilliant satirical handling go to M-G-M for this color short...Directed by Tex Avery, this short is an added attraction on any bill” (It also mentioned Tex in its review of Early Bird: “clever and amusing, and not above poking fun at the company that made it”).

Motion Picture Herald, misguided about who was responsible, wrote on August 29th: “is Fred Quimby, executive producer, at his best in the field of cartoon, and a subject which had the audience screaming.” And Showman’s Trade Review included frames in its little story on the cartoon in the September 5th edition, calling it in a critique “novel, amusing and entertaining...Entire subject is excellently animated and contains much to humorously impress the need of precaution and preparedness.” It also notes that Hitler is blown to a Hell where he is greeted by Jews.



The Filmarte again screened the cartoon on February 3, 1943 as the Academy narrowed down its list of nominees for animated cartoon. Also on the list: All Out For V (Terrytoons), Juke Box Jamboree (Walter Lantz), Tulips Will Grow (George Pal), Pigs in a Polka (Schlesinger/Warner Bros.), Der Fuehrer’s Face (Walt Disney). Alas, it lost to Disney with his elaborate dream sequence. However, in May, it did top a Motion Picture Herald poll of exhibitors as the best industry-produced war cartoons (and was second on the list of shorts).

And Canada loved the cartoon, too. The Hollywood Reporter revealed on April 1, 1943 “For its Fourth Victory Loan Drive, starting April 15, the Canadian government will distribute MGM’s cartoon, ‘The Blitz Wolf,’ which was also used as a war bond sales stimulant in this country. W.H. Burnside, director of production for the National Film Board of Canada, is here [in Los Angeles] making arrangements for 195 (16mm.) and 65 (35mm.) prints. The negative was furnished gratis by MGM.” This didn’t mean theatres. The cartoon was shown with other NFB propaganda films on a screen at Eaton’s in downtown Toronto every hour, seven times a day, in April 1944. In Vancouver and Victoria, “bond” shells were set up downtown where the cartoon played for anyone passing by.

Then The Blitz Wolf disappeared, to return some time later with the bombing of Tokyo excised and a now-unflattering reference to the Japanese rubbed out. Hitler, of course, was still hated so he remained a rightful target of satire on both the big and little screen.

As for the story of how producer Quimby told Tex to take it easy on Adolf Wolf, I call B.S. I don’t know where the tale started but as the U.S. was fully involved in the war at the time the cartoon was made, the whole thing sounds like it was cooked up by someone who didn’t like Quimby or thought it was a funny story. Add in the fact Quimby was supervising the studio’s training films for the Army Air Corps. Oh, and at the time, Quimby had his son in a military academy.

As hard as it is to believe, Avery got even more attention for the next cartoon he put into production—another fairy tale parody. It was Red Hot Riding Hood.