It Sounds Sensible

Someone asked a while ago why I haven’t mentioned the Burns and Allen show on the blog, considering I’ve mentioned George Burns a number of times in connection with Jack Benny. I hadn’t really noticed, to be honest. Since today is the 49th anniversary of Gracie’s death, maybe it’s a good time.

For years, George gave credit to Gracie for being the whole act. In a way, that’s true. But I’ve got to give credit to their writers. It must have been a real task to come up with new scripts every week for 39 weeks (I’m talking radio here) with Gracie’s own peculiar take on the English language. Gracie didn’t only spout puns like Jane Ace’s “up at the crank of dawn.” The great thing about Gracie is she would either take a word or phrase with more than one meaning and apply the other meaning to it, or she’d use it literally. Either way, her humour always had a basis in logic. She merely convoluted the way she used English. It’s pretty clever and must have been difficult to come up with new turns of phrase every week.

And that was only part of her charm. Gracie was likeable, her intentions on the show were always good. She was like a friendly neighbour. Couldn’t you picture living next door to her? Gracie’s fluttery delivery in the mouths of a lesser comedienne might have come off phoney. But listening to the show, you can be easily convinced that Gracie Allen sounds and behaves that way in real life.

There were some elements of the show over the years I didn’t like. Earlier ones where George and Gracie aren’t married sound odd (though it may be the basis for the word “Tralfaz.” Read HERE). Bringing in Clarence Nash as a pet duck strikes me as a superfluous move. I never bought Bill Goodwin as a hammy ladies man; Phil Harris on the Benny show had that character nailed down. And Goodwin eventually became so busy being a ladies man on the show, someone else had to be brought in to do his announcing work. Toby Reed struck me as too stiff and flat for Burns and Allen.

Here’s what columnist John Crosby thought about Burns and Allen after their move to CBS. This appeared in papers around December 22, 1949.

Burns and Allen, those prehistoric comedians, now are almost at the tail end of Mr. Paley’s Wednesday night parley on CBS which is quite a parley. In order, you get Dr. Christian, Groucho Marx, Bing Crosby, B. & A., and Lum and Abner—an indigestible grouping if ever I heard one.
George and Gracie and still very funny people, provided you haven’t grown weary of that particular side street over the years.
My own theory for their longevity—George Burns is 112 years old and doesn’t look a day over 96—is that theirs is a specially timeless comedy. Gracie Allen is a past mistress at feminine irrelevance, that distinctive female gift which has driven all husbands out of their minds from time to time.
“All great singers have their trials,” says Gracie to George. “Look at Caruso. Thirty years on a desert island with all those cannibals.” “You’ve got the wrong man,” says Georgia wearily.
“No, you’re the right one for me.”
In that exchange, Gracie has switched directions twice and your average husband, listening to her, can derive a small crumb of comfort from the fact that his own wife, gifted as she is at wandering a mile away from the point, isn’t that bad.
You hardly can describe the Burns and Allen show as a public service program, but it has some claim to that distinction. In the umpteen years they have been on the air, Gracie very likely has kept two or three husbands from shooting their wives, simply by persuading them that things could be worse. A small thing, but noble.
Gracie lives in a permanent state of hopeless confusion that defies rational solution. She drives a car with the emergency brake on, for example, so that when an emergency happens she’s ready.
The other day she delivered a spirited talk to her neighbors to come to the assistance of her husband, George, with the words: “When George needed help, who did he go to? You! Now that he needs help, it’s your turn to help him.”
Well, it sounds sensible.
Recently she’s been trying to comfort George about his singing which drives people to distraction. George said: “My singing is a thing of the past. It’s dead, extinct.”
“It does not,” said Gracie loyally.
The Burns and Allen show, like so many others, is now transcribed. This has added a little more polish to the production and an added fillip to the pace (which was always good). George Burns, one of the swiftest wits in Hollywood, strikes an almost perfect note of resigned exasperation.
Bill Goodwin, the announcer, has been cast in the role of a male animal of great sex appear which sometimes gets a little harassing. In all other respects Burns and Allen are still a fine half hour of entertainment—apart from their great age. I shouldn’t advise listening every week, though Once a month is enough.

Despite the fact Gracie’s humour was almost always verbal, I think the Burns and Allen show worked best on TV. We’ll explore that with John Crosby in a future post.

Hay, That's Not Funny

Ben Hardaway was really a hit-and-miss writer at the Walter Lantz studio, sometimes within one cartoon.

Here’s a miss from “The Screwdriver,” a 1941 Woody Woodpecker cartoon helped to a good start by the acting (and singing) of Mel Blanc and some attractive animation. Woody is a driver who does whatever he feels like on the road. But in one scene, he runs into a simply-drawn rube on a hay wagon. The perspective artwork of Woody’s car is a nice choice, either from Hardaway’s storyboard or whoever handled layouts.



But when the dust clears, the gag is the farmer is suspended in mid-air between the hay. That’s supposed to be funny?! Yipe.



Hardaway ends yet another cartoon with someone driven insane.

Ralph Somerville and Alex Lovy receive the animation credits on screen.

Jolly Fish, Eels and Octopus

“Shuffle Off to Buffalo” wasn’t exactly being played on radio stations when I was a kid in the ‘60s. I learned about it by hearing it on cartoons. Same with “Blues in the Night” and piles of other popular songs from the ‘30s and earlier. In some cases, I still don’t know the titles.

Milton Knight is one of many helpful people on the internet, as he’s gone to the trouble of identifying some of the tunes Gene Rodemich put in the background of the Van Beuren cartoons of the early ‘30s. “Redskin Blues” includes “Business in F” by Archie Bleyer, later to be fired by Arthur Godfrey. “Corn-Fed Cal” by Tom Neely and Peter Dixon is in the dancing farm implement/boardwalk-as-xylophone part of “Barnyard Bunk.” Jimmy Dale’s “Rhythm” opens “Hook and Ladder Hokum”. “Hummin’ to Myself” is heard behind “Plane Dumb” after Tom and Jerry land in the ocean. “Play That Hot Guitar” is used in the climax of “Pencil Mania.” The song on the police radio in “Magic Mummy” is a real tune; “(The) Cop on the Beat, the Man in the Moon and Me” was written by Al Goodhart, Al Hoffman and J.P. Murray in 1932. And Milt’s identified Bernice Petkere’s “By a Rippling Stream (Waiting For You)” as the song that takes up the first three-quarters of “Jolly Fish,” with “There’s Oceans of Love By the Beautiful Sea” filling the remainder of the cartoon.

“Jolly Fish” is fun in spots, and there’s always something worthwhile in the black-and-white Van Beuren cartoons. I like the carefree eels happily gyrating to a piano version of “By a Rippling Stream” because they’re having jolly fun.



And I’ve got to admire whoever animated the octopus playing the piano. All those fingers and keys.



The attention of piano-pounding ‘pus (and the nearby swaying eels and fish) is grabbed by an off-camera swordfish. The octopus swims off in fright, with the gloves he was wearing quickly finishing the tune before swimming after him.



John Foster and George Stallings get the only credits (besides Rodemich), so I can’t tell you about the animators or the background artist. Speaking of Rodemich’s scores, Milt points out “Mean Music” gets a nice airing in “Pots and Pans,” which opens with a tune called “Cupid on the Cake.” And Bonnie Poe livens up part of “Piano Tooners” with her rendition of Jimmy McHugh’s “Doin’ the New Low-Down” from the Broadway revue “Blackbirds of 1928.”

Here’s a nice version of “Jolly Fish” that came from the two-disc Tom and Jerry set put out by Thunderbean. The collection has been beautifully and carefully restored and anyone interested in early ‘30s animation or cartoons with goofy dancing eels should buy the DVD.

But Was it a Maxwell?

Occasionally, friends of Jack Benny would get letters in character from him, complaining they listened to Fred Allen and so on. One of them may be featured in the Long Island City Star of February 25, 1947. I don’t know if the letter or the incident are real or the columnist made it up, but it’s too good not to pass on to Benny fans. Certainly Jack played the Orpheum Circuit throughout the 1920s.

Going to Town
With HAL EATON
Jack Benny Pays a Bill; But It Was a Tough Job!
FOLLOWING correspondence came about as the result of Neal Begley (prexy of the Hertz-Drive-Ur-Self organization on the Pacific Coast) discovering that Jack Benny owed the company $2.25 since 1928 for rental of a car:
“Dear Mr. Benny: Would it interest you to know that you owe us $2.25 wince 1928 for rental on a Hertz-Drive-Ur-Self car? Neal Bagley, President.”
“Dear Mr. Begley: I am interested, but not enthusiastic. Can you furnish some details? Jack Benny.”
“Dear Mr. Benny: It happened in July, 1928. You were playing the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. You took a car out and never paid the bill. You are listed as weighing 142 pounds, 5 feet 10 inches in height, with blue eyes and błack hair. Your age is also listed, but I don't want to put that down on paper unless you request it. Anything else? Neal Begley.”
“Dear Mr. Begley: Never mind how old I was. I wouldn’t want people to know I was breaking the law driving a car at such an early age. Jack Benny.”
“Dear Benny: Very funny, but why didn’t you pay the bill? Neal Begley.”
“Dear Mr. Begley: It so happens I suffer from a strange form of amnesia, I forget about debts. However, send me a bill. Jack Benny.”
“Dear Mr. Benny: Here it is. Neal Begley.”
“Dear Neal: Would you interested in settling this bill for a little less? After all, you know, the dollar is worth only 50 cents now. Jack.”
“Dear Jack: It just occurred to me that $2.25 at 6 per cent interest for 17 years amount to $4.55. Neal.”
“Dear Begley: Am remitting $2.25 as full payment of my bill. Both Dennis Day and myself are pretty sore about this. Jack Benny.”
“Dear Benny: I can understand about you. But why is Dennis Day sore? Neal Begley.”
“Dear Begley: I had to cut his salary again to pay your bill. Now goodbye! If you are going to write me any more letters, please send me some stamps! Jack Benny.”

They Never Got Credit

You couldn’t miss the name “Mel Blanc” in the credits of Warner Bros. cartoons. That’s because, for years, he was the only voice actor under contract (an exclusive one at that) so he was the only one who was credited on screen. That lasted until about the time the cartoons became so ubiquitous on TV that critics were sick to death of them.

So it was I grew up through the ‘60s not knowing there was such a person as Arthur Q. Bryan. His name never appeared on screen. It wasn’t until Leonard Maltin’s Of Mice and Magic and Jerry Beck and Will Friedwald’s The Warner Bros. Cartoons that the identity of a number of the voices at various studios were revealed. And, today, there are still cartoon characters whose voices are mysteries because their names were never included in the credits.

On rare occasion, long before books on animation studios were written, the public press would mention cartoon voices. Two feature stories appeared in newspapers in 1935, a couple of years before Blanc’s cartoon career began. The first is from the Los Angeles Times, April 21, 1935. The author was later a syndicated TV columnist. Only part of the story involves animation. The Disney explanation about why voice actors weren’t acknowledged shows you corporate spin is far from something new. My thanks to Mark Kausler for deciphering some of the text.

Business of “Ghosting” Now Hollywood’s Oddest
Heard But Not Seen, Cacophonous Army of Men, Women and Children Make “Dubbing” Pay Dividends
By PHILIP K. SCHEUER
Hollywood has one industry you never heard about. It is made up of an army of men, women and children who—unwept, unhonoured and unsung, if not unsinging—are the disembodied voices of the talking picture . . . the “ghost stars” of the screen!
Their business is like no other on earth. Before the sound film, they did not exist—yet today the highly complicated machinery of the talkie could scarcely turn without them. Of their total number—100, 200, 300, who can say?—the names of perhaps a scant dozen are known to the world outside. The rest are—ghosts.
DECEPTION UNWISE
A few—fewer than are generally supposed—“double” the voices of recognized stars. Bu what Nathan Finston, musical director at Paramount, calls “the first-line artists” cannot afford to employ doubles in singing for long. They can’t get away with it; for one thing; and for another, it isn’t worth the deception. Teaching the stars themselves is easier, as whatever vocal deficiencies they possess can usually be made up by that indefinable thing known as personality. Audiences will forgive their favorites anything.
So it is really the “ghosts” of the newsreel, the novelty, the cartoon, and the “background” in a feature with which we are concerned.
The newsreel personalities come off best, in the long run. You are already familiar with most of them: Graham MacNamee of the “Times”-Universal, Lowell Thomas and Lew Lehr (dialect) of Movietone, Edwin C. Hill of Metrotone and perhaps a couple of others. Their reputations have been previously established on the lecture platform or the radio.
PETE SMITH “ODDITIES”
In the “novelty short” field, Pete Smith takes the lead, along with Grantland Rice and his “Sportlight.” Smith, of course, was western head of M.-G.-M. publicity until he got to be in greater demand as a master of ceremonies at studio and social functions. It was only one step from this to commentator on odd bits of film found lying around on cutting-room floors, and only one more, when these caught on with the public, to actual production of “Oddities” and “Goofy Movies.” Grantland Rice is too well known as a sports writer to need introduction.
Most Paramount short subjects are prepared and “ghosted” in New York. Leo Donnelly, an actor from the stage, officiates on the “Screen Souvenirs.” Another, described somewhat mysteriously as “a vaudeville actor” (Papa, what is vaudeville?) and named Red Pepper Sam, is the voice of “Pop-eye.” May Questal [sic] functions shrilly as “Betty Boop” two days a month, and fills in the remaining time making personal appearances as “The Betty Boop Girl.”

Leon Schlesinger, who sponsors “Looney Tunes” and “Merrie Melodies,” says most of his voice specialists were reared on farms. He employs twenty-five persons who can approximate the “talking” and “singing” of dogs, cats, mice, elephants, cows, snakes and the like. There is no age limit: Jackie Morrow, the “Buddy” of “Looney Tunes,” is only 9 years of age, while Dorothy Varden, who “talks” Buddy’s companion, “Cookie,” is in her early twenties. Yount [Young] Morrow’s chief worry is that his voice will change. Billy Bletcher, an expert at barking and growling, is “Bozo,” the dog; and only the other day they could not resist hiring a man because he gave an elegant imitation of a stuttering pig. Now they have to create the pig.
Charles Mintz, who makes shorts for Columbia, acknowledges the services of Leone Ledoux as “Scrappy” and George Winkler as “Krazy Kat.” One Allen Watson sings bass when bass is required, and there is a useful lady named Celeste Rush and a Paul Taylor quartet.
Harman-Ising (“Happy Harmonies”) draw 75 per cent of their people from radio, the balance from stage and film. Ian Wolfe, an actor in “David Copperfield;” Johnny Murray, K.F.W.B. m.c.; the Four Blackbirds (KFI;) the Californians and the Three Rhythmettes (said to have been the original “Three Little Pigs,”) are a few of them. A reel will provide only about thirty minutes’ work for a capable artist, Harman-Ising state, with salary ranging from $10 to $50.
KEEPING IT SECRET
The Walt Disney studio prefers anonymity for its vocal performers in according with a policy of not showing favoritism to anybody. Around the plant, you know, they speak of the various characters—Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Pluto, Donald Duck and the rest—as living personages, and they don’t see why the rest of the world shouldn’t do the same.
As a spokesman for the company summed it up, “Kids of 12 and 14 don’t believe in Santa Claus, but they don’t want to see him without his beard.
“Besides, we don’t have more than a few words in our ‘Mickey Mouses’ and ‘Silly Symphonies.’” Other than to intimate that those few are spoken by “people around the lot,” he refused to commit himself further.
TWO CROONERS, QUICK!
The Norman Bennett Agency provides disembodied voices to most of the studios, with more than 200 singers on its list. Occasionally these “dub” the voices of those less gifted (Nina Koshetz is an example of a talented artist much in demand for this purpose.) but more often they form part of a solo or ensemble “background” for a musical scene.
Paramount’s director, Finston, declared he has a “perfect organization” of more than 100 voices to call upon at a moment’s notice; voices in every possible combination, from soloists, duos, trios and quartets on up through male groups, soprano groups and mixed choruses.
“There are as many tricks to recording as there are to photographing,” he said. “For the ‘Tosca’ sequence in ‘Enter Madame,’ we needed two choruses—an ‘interior’ and an ‘exterior’ (off-stage.) We recorded the same thirty-four voices for both, and simply ‘doubled’ the sound track. Together they created the mass effect of a choir of—well, 175 voices would be no exaggeration.”
PAID HIM TOO MUCH
Many a ghost singer “graduates” to flesh-and-blood fame. The King’s Men, crack Whiteman vocalists, once did shadow work regularly for Finston. A crooner from a downtown band used to come out and croon for three hours at $50—“and the front office squawked that he was getting too much!” The crooner was Bing Crosby, whose earnings are now about $12,000 per week. Five singing units made up the nucleus of a chorus for the “I Wished on the Moon” number which Crosby sings in “The Big Broadcast of 1935.” They comprised the Three Shades of Blue and the Rhythmettes, female trios, and the Singing Guardsmen, male quartets.
You won’t see any of their faces in “The Big Broadcast”—but who can tell what a year may bring? One of their number may be Bing Crosby’s successor . . . a ghost already singing his way to visibility!

The second story isn’t bylined and contains some of the information in the Scheuer story. Either he reworked his Times story for syndication with additional information, or he expanded a news release from the Schlesinger studio for his Times story. Anyway, this appeared in the Schenectedy Gazette on May 30, 1935. The comments by Bernie Brown should put to rest Blanc’s claim (which expanded like a fish story over the years) that Norman Spencer wouldn’t hire him and then died. Brown hired the actors at Schlesinger and when he left the studio Treg Brown took over.

Learn to Talk Animal-Like to Crash Movies
If you want to crash the gates of Hollywood and are willing to give up your identity and be just a voice, move out an a farm and study, animals.
This is the advice of Leon Schlesinger, producer of “Looney Tunes” and “Merrie Melodies,” animated cartoons, in whose employ are 25 unsung heroes and heroines who sing and talk like pigs, mice, elephants, cows and snakes, and what have you?

There is no age limit for those who can "do" the voice for cartoons. For instance, the dialog for “Buddy” in “Looney Tunes” is done by 9-year-old Jackie Morrow, who was selected for the job after some 300 aspirants of ages raging from 6 to 60 had been interviewed. Jackie's chief worry is that his voice will change some day and he'll be out of work.
Dorothy Varden, in her early 20's, does the dialog for “Buddy's” companion, “Cookie.” Like Jackie, Miss Varden is afraid that the passing of years will not be kind to her voice and career.
Billy Bletcher is the man behind the voice of “Bozo,” the dog. An expert at barking and growling, Bletcher does dialog for the “heavy” dogs too.
Bernard Brown, head of the Schlesinger sound department and “voice casting director,” tells of a man who came into the office the other day stating that he could do something different—a stuttering pig. An audition was arranged and the pig stutterer had created a job for himself. Now the studio is thinking of making a stuttering pig one of the featured players in “Merrie Melodies.”
Before the animators start work, the cartoon's voice characters gather around the microphone and record their lines. Then, Brown, with a print of the sound track before him, translates into words what he sees on the track and creates assignments for the animators. His detailed instructions tell the animators just when the cartoon character starts to open its mouth for a word, when the tongue touches the lips and when the mouth is closed at the end of the word. It's all very intricate, but the drawings always match up with the sound.
Brown, one of the best known engineers in America, believes in doing things well—that's why he took a lip reading course at night school.

As a side-note, I had much better luck as a kid identifying actors in Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Each Flintstones and Jetsons episode had separate credits and you could figure out who was whom over time using the process of elimination. TV Guide even listed who played specific guest roles. And to the right you see a newspaper story revealing Elliot Field guest-starring on The Flintstones. He was the afternoon drive guy at KFWB radio.

Unfortunately, there are still too many unidentified actors and actresses in animated shorts, and even some TV cartoons for that matter. Worse still, some have been misidentified, either through incorrect guesswork or people making up their own “facts” by stretching logic from snippets of information, and then plastering it all over the internet. Fortunately, a few people are out there diligently filling in the blanks in our animation knowledge, not just when it comes to acting. Animation history will benefit in the long run.

Double Trouble Take

Tex Avery pulls off another huge eye take in “Droopy’s Double Trouble” (released 1951).

Spike sees Droopy and his twin brother Drippy. His jaw drops.



Then his muzzle drops.



Then come the eyes. These are consecutive drawings.



And, naturally, there’s a throbbing eye bulge for just under a second before the take switches.



Mike Lah, Grant Simmons and Walt Clinton get the on-screen animation credits.

Hugh and Rudy's Cow

Some familiar gags adorn the first Warner Bros. cartoon, “Sinkin’ in the Bathtub” (1930). It shouldn’t be a surprise because the artists who created and worked on it (Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising) were the same ones who animated the Oswald cartoons for Walt Disney.

One example is the munching cow, recalcitrantly blocking the route of travel. Here’s a crudely drawn one in Oswald’s “Trolley Troubles” (1927).



And here’s the one Bosko encountered.



Both our heroes in cartoons get around the cows. Both cows indignantly walk away with their noses and tails up.



And the same cow routine got used again in “Smile, Darn Ya, Smile” (1931) with Foxy. In fact, the same animation was used.

Whither Dialects

The opinion that Stereotypes = Racism is debated today, but it’s a discussion that’s certainly not something new. And it’s not something which will ever result in a universal consensus, I’m afraid. Some people think Rochester on the Jack Benny show was portrayed as an equal with the rest of the cast and superior to the man in charge. Others think he was “servile.” There’s no reconciling the two.

100 years ago, America was a land full of new immigrants of various ethnic and religious stripes. They gently kidded each other about themselves as they all tried to make a better life in a new homeland. That was reflected on the vaudeville stage, in radio and even in television. Unfortunately, there were others who weren’t kidding. And then there was some guy over in Germany spouting nonsense about a master race and hate against a long list of people just because of who they were—and forcibly demonstrated it with murder. So ethnic humour became something other than a laughing matter to some, no matter what the motivation was behind it.

Groucho Marx jumped into the debate back in the days when network radio was at its peak in the mid-1940s. I can’t find the exact quote now, but he expressed his displeasure to Fred Allen with the broad Jewishness of New York housewife Pansy Nussbaum, Minvera Pious’ contribution to Allen’s Alley. Allen, who either wrote or edited Mrs. Nussbaum’s dialogue, reacted as you might expect.

Broadway gossip columnist Earl Wilson focused his attention on the matter of dialect humour in the August 21, 1946 edition of the New York Post. Both sides state their case. I post it without comment.

Fred Allen, Parkyakarkus Discuss Radio’s Forthcoming Season
By Earl Wilson
NEW YORK—Very soon, radio will be belting us with its big autumn push.
You do listen in, occasionally?
You really should, you know, because with most programs what can you lose but your mind, or, in a few especially nauseous cases, your supper? Radio is acutely nervous about the fall. Several shows flopped sadly last spring. Some were fired. Now all the geniuses are worried about 1946-47, and about television. Eager to toss another banana skin on the icy sidewalk, I recently reported how Groucho Marx was slugging at the radio dialecticians, charging them with hurting the minorities. Groucho’s grouch stirred up a storm.
• • •
Fred Allen, employer of “Mrs. Nussbaum,” Queen of the Dialecticians, has just emerged from Old Orchard Beach, Me.—from which Orchard he didn’t say—with a reply that tells Grouch to sheddep.
“In my not too humble opinion,” Allen has written to me, “comedians should confine their remarks to the stage and leave the soap box to those who feel that their postulations need airing.
“I do not believe,” he goes on, “that the general public is inclined to take seriously any comment a comedian may make on world affairs.
“A plumber may air his views on the Koran. To the public he is still a plumber. And so it is with the comedian. In some cases, he, too, is still a plumber.
“It might be well if people in show business let the Western Union worry about messages . . .”
• • •
I wrote not long ago a sentimental column that brought in a shower of complimentary letters and telegrams. Being all ham, I was tickled. Then came one letter from an intelligent woman saying this very same column stank. Please God, she said, never smell up the paper with that garbage again.
“You can’t please everybody,” in short.
I fear “Mrs. Nussbaum” of the Allen program, Rochester of the Jack Benny program, and Harry Hirshfield, Joe Laurie Jr. and Peter Donald of “Can You Top This?” are aware now that though their dialect jokes please millions, the same dialect jokes make a lot of others sore as hell.
So who is right? If you own even a second hand radio, you've got a right to sound off at the sponsors and tell them how to run their business, so let’s go.
Parkyakarkus, who does the Greek dialect, tells me that Greeks love his dialect and made him a member of their best societies.
In a letter signed, “Your Pall, Parky,” he says, “I have heard any number of radio programs that are downright offensive and should be off the air . . . And there’s not a trace of any kind of dialect used in them. Why? Simply because they are presented in bad taste. So you see, it’s not the dialect that’s the rub. It’s WHAT is said . . . "
Parky feels he handles the dialect judiciously. Joe Laurie would admit he handles Jewish inoffensively.
Up steps Harry Ruby, the song writer with a raucous “Hey, wait!”
Once, he says, vaudeville had Irish, German, English, Jewish and Negro comedians, "but only the Negro and Jew remain to be shown in a ridiculous light . . .”
Negroes and Jews have statesmen and scientists, but they are never portrayed, he says. “Your comic can incite laughter only by projecting ludicrous images. The impression that unthinking people get from these portrayals is responsible for some of the prejudice against them . . .”
Sometimes when I think of the headaches radio is going to have with television and the increasing sensitivity of the public, I’m glad I’m not on the air. P.S. I am not so worried about it that a sponsor couldn’t fix it up.

Dancing Jungle Snake

You want quirky, pointless cartoons? Then you want Van Beuren! Sure, the studio’s animation in 1930 wasn’t much more polished than it was in the silent days a few years earlier, but there’s always something silly or weird or baffling going on in a Van Beuren cartoon.

Take “Jungle Jazz,” for example. It’s an enjoyable cartoon, even though it’s poorly drafted in some places (the Fleischers’ cartoons looked and were gagged far better than anything from Van Beuren). But who cares? Gene Rodemich comes up with his usual terrific score and arrangement (he loves xylophones), there’s an outrageous take that anticipates the kind of stuff Tex Avery would perfect, there’s dancing for the sake of dancing because that’s what 1930 cartoons were all about, and the proceedings end with a barbershop quartet of animal heads zooming in on the camera.

Don and Waffles are in the jungle. A snake slithers up from behind a rock and dashes after the pair into a nearby hut where, naturally, the first thing Waffles does is start playing the organ.



How’s that for rubber hose animation on Waffles’ arms?



The goony, bloated snake really gets into the music, even tapping the end of its tail against the ground in time. Don reacts by killing the snake with a bone. Why? Because it’s a Van Beuren cartoon!

John Foster and Harry Bailey get screen credit.

Slobbering Woody

Andy Panda tries to capture Woody Woodpecker by putting salt on his tail in the bird’s debut cartoon “Knock Knock” (1940). The woodpecker thwarts it when he backs Andy to the edge of the roof of the Panda home, growing and expanding as he threatens to tear him apart. Here are a few of the drawings. Woody spends a great deal of time slobbering; I guess it was to make him look more crazed.



Woody is animated on both ones and twos in this scene, but when he’s not moving, Andy moves ever-so-slightly, so there’s always a bit of action on every frame.

Alex Lovy and his brother-in-law, Frank Tipper, are the only two animators to receive screen credit.