Shaking Simple Simon

Ub Iwerks’ ComiColor series tried to imitate the Walt Disney world of fairy tales and nursery rhymes but didn’t display much of the polish of what Walt’s gang was doing at the time.

Simple Simon (1935) is weighed down with unlikeable characters, trite songs and a story that turns the fair of the lyrics of the rhyme into a circus with lions and acrobats in an attempt to gag it up.

The ending features shake takes, where the animator alternates a regular drawing and a squiggly variation to indicate fear. First, the pieman after Simple Simon spots an angry lion he’s been trying to avoid.



Shake, shake, shake!



Then Simon shakes, too. He doesn’t seem to realise the lion isn’t after him and stares in astonishment when the lion goes after the pieman.



Finally, the iris closes around the lisping dolt to end the cartoon. Not a moment too soon.



Carl Stalling composed the score but no animators are credited.

Walter Winchell Sphinx

Everyone was convinced after the opening of the 1939 New York World’s Fair, where RCA demonstrated and broadcast television and then began somewhat regular programming, that TV was right around the corner. There had been constant talk about it for a dozen years by that point and there had been experimental broadcasts in the late ‘20s.

So it was that the writers at the Screen Gems cartoon studio used the growing medium as the subject for one of their spot-gag cartoons, Tangled Television, for release by Columbia. Every studio seemed to release a spot-gagger of some kind after the wild success Tex Avery enjoyed with them at Warner Bros. (Detouring America was nominated for an Oscar in 1939). Generally, they paled by comparison.

Interestingly, the writers at Columbia used the earlier medium of radio as spot gags in a cartoon about TV. One gag has a punch line involving Amos ‘n’ Andy. The next one has narrator Mel Blanc state “We are now visiting the colossus of the Nile, the mysterious and silent sphinx.” The sphinx then launches into a spiel borrowed from Walter Winchell, bobbing its head around. Here are a few drawings.



Sid Marcus is the director of this one. He handles this scene a bit differently than Avery might have. The camera continues to pan toward the sphinx after Blanc’s narration stops. Then the sphinx goes into its routine. I can see Avery having the camera stop before the narration ends, hold the shot long enough to make the sphinx appear “silent” (as per the narration), then launch into its spiel.

There are some interesting layouts at the start of the short (I have no idea who handled layouts at Columbia in this period). The animation is credited to Art Davis and Herb Rothwell, though Davis once said he and Marcus had their names on each other’s cartoons but didn’t work on them. Boxoffice magazine was impressed in its October 19, 1940 edition:

Tangled Television
Columbia (Color Rhapsody) 7 1/2 Mins.
First-rate cartoon entertainment is the order here. In Technicolor and with tongue-in-cheek, the action burlesques the arrival of television. A trio of bewhiskered scientists who resemble The Three Stooges present their invention which, after first laying eggs, shows the television dream girl who is lost when there is distortion and India with a native selling programs. Then the Sphinx speaks in Egypt, like Winchell; a couple of mummies sing "Comin' Round the Mountain." The performance closes in Venice. It holds up from start to finish.

The cartoon was released on August 30, 1940. Unfortunately, the Los Angeles Times doesn’t reveal what, if anything, aired on local television that day, though W6XAO had broadcast TV’s first live wedding only weeks before.

Not Terrific

The mid-1960s were a time of painfully unfunny comedies. I should know. I watched most of them when they first aired. They all seemed to have the same loud laugh track that guffawed at anything, trying to convince you it was uproaringly humorous instead of trite or obvious. They’re not so-bad-it’s-good. They’re just bad.

One of them was Mr. Terrific.

The concept, critics said, owed something to the great Batman series. To be honest, it owed a lot more to the 1956 Warner Bros. cartoon Stupor Duck. Mild-mannered Daffy Duck took pills that let him zoom through the air and perform all kinds of daring and stupendous deeds while completely screwing up along the way, thanks to his own incompetence. Daffy was funny. Mr. Terrific was a dud.

Adam West had the right idea about Batman. He realised it was a fad so he didn’t take it all that seriously. Not the star of Mr. Terrific, who quickly rose from obscurity when he landed the role and fell back into said obscurity after 17 episodes. Stephen Strimpell treated it much differently. Co-star Dick Gautier told one author (I can’t find the source now) that Strimpell approached it in dead seriousness and earnestness like an Ibsen play.

You’ll get that impression reading a couple of newspaper interviews with Strimpell when he was shooting the series. The first one below was published February 12, 1967.

FROM THE BAR TO THE BAR TO MR. TERRIFIC
By Mimi Mead
Bell-McClure Syndicate
STEPHEN STRIMPELL is a wiry, articulate actor with red-brown hair freckles. He has had a season with the American Shakespeare and festival, played on Broadway, appeared in a movie, been on tour several times and played off Broadway in four productions. One of the shows won him Variety’s vote as one of the year’s outstanding performers. He also teaches acting. Now he is playing the title role in CBS’s new super-hero series, “Mr. Terrific.”
Well, you say, most actors who star on television have had a pretty fair amount of experience. They’ve all been working at it since they were youngsters, haven’t they?
Stephen Strimpell has been working at it just four and one-half years.
In 1961 he was a full-fledged lawyer with a degree from Columbia Law school. He was admitted to the New York state bar the same year.
It may seem an extraordinary thing for a young man to go all the way through college and law school, be admitted to the bar, and then not practice at all. Stephen Strimpell doesn’t think so.
“It all happened because I took an I.Q. test as a child back in Brooklyn. It said I was very smart or something, and I got into Brooklyn Ethical Culture Academy as a result. I kept being skipped to the next class, and as a result of being advanced in school and getting scholarships I became very introverted and bookish. I wasn’t really an oddball, but I only had one or two friends, you know.
“Then I went on to college, again on a scholarship, and after only three years they sent me on to law school. Well, I went along with it and sat like a birth moulting and growing, and the same with the army (he served six months, with the judge advocate general’s corps, which is the closest he came to practicing law). So when I was finished I decision to what I wanted for once.
“I even went into summer sock under an assumed name—you see? My final year in law school and I still couldn’t say it was me. I called myself Frank Milk because I had a theory that all the great stars’ last names ended in ‘o’: Valentino, Garbo, Marilyn Monroe, and so on.”
Strimpell’s diffidence did not last long. He got a role in the play, “All You Need Is One Good Break,” which was a prophetic title, since it started his career rolling. One thing led to another, and here he is as Mr. Terrific. He also has a great many fairly deep theories about Mr. Terrific, which seems pretty typical of Stephen Strimpell.
“This is not a spoof,” he said earnestly. “You can’t do 13 weeks of spoof. It may have begun with that in mind, but it ended up as a real adventure story. “There are three kinds of comedy in the show: The comedy of the genuineness of each of us as a character; the comedy of the writer in the situation, the lines, and the comedy of effect, or the gimmicks we use. But Stanley Beamish is not essentially a comic character. (Stanley is the gentle service station attendant who becomes Mr. Terrific when he takes a potent pill).
“Stanley is not Caspar Milquetoast, he is Walter Mitty. He is not afraid; he is just naïve, unknowing. He has a fantasy mind. He does not resent being Mr. Terrific, nor is he afraid of flying. In his fantasy mind it is only natural that these wonderful opportunities should come to him. He simply doesn’t do it very well.
“Stanley had the kind of mind which makes it impossible for him to recognize evil and deal with it. He is always being kindly to the arch villains. The comedy comes in because the premise of the show is as if fate entered into the picture to defeat science. Stanley is sent out to solve problems that cannot be solved in any other way but by superhuman methods, but Stanley is unable to see the obvious dangers. He is not idiotic, he is just unknowing. “I believe what Stanley believes,” Strimpell commented cryptically.

This Associated Press story is from January 31, 1967. The writer had already panned the show in her regular column but did a feature piece nonetheless.

Despite Critics, Mr. Terrific Says It's Terrific
By Cynthia Lowry
NEW YORK (AP) — It was the morning after the premiere of CBS's "Mr. Terrific" series, a comedy-fantasy in the mode if not the mood of "Batman." The reviews, still coming in, were decidedly on the grim side.
Stephen Strimpell, the 26-year old actor who plays the title role walked smilingly into a restaurant. No heads turned. He ordered a cup of black coffee and launched into a convincing explanation of why it was really a good show.
"Mr. Terrific," it should be noted, is a series about a young secret agent who becomes a super-hero able to fly after taking a certain pill.
"I just don't see this comparison to 'Superman' and 'Batman'," said Strimpell, his eyes ashine with evangelical zeal. "I see in the character something of a Pimpernel, or a Mark of Zorro, or even of Achilles. All that we have done is to add the power of science. It is science in collision with fate.

"Take it like this: The power pill doesn't work on everybody, just on one extremely unlikely human being, Stanley Beamish. He is a total innocent, without any sense of evil, born not to recognize villains. It is the struggle of a very little man against the world."
Strimpell insists that the part he is playing is more a Walter Mitty dream than "spoof and negation." The young actor, in defense of what started out as a pretty sorry half hour of television was giving a convincing demonstration of skills in the role for which he trained: the law. He is a graduate of Columbia Law School and has passed his New York State bar examination.
Should his career falter he can always go into practice. He is also a court stenographer.
Strimpell is no converted stand-up comedian or graduate of burlesque. Before he started flapping around like an under muscled Superman, he worked with the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Conn., and taught acting for four years in a dramatic school run by Uta Hagen.
The pilot film for "Mr. Terrific" was made 18 months ago with Alan Young, of "Mr. Ed" note, playing the Beamish part. It caused little excitement.
Strimpell had moved onto parts in several off-Broadway shows and attracted the attention of a visiting CBS casting director from Hollywood. After that, he went to California for a two-months holiday. He was scarcely unpacked when he was called for a remake of the "Mr Terrific" pilot. The CBS man had passed his name along to the studio.
Whether the show is a winner or a loser, Stephen Strimpell will have had 13 weeks or more of exposure, which will stand him in good stead.

Strimpell got more than 13 weeks. He got 17.

Gautier went back to Get Smart. Co-star John McGiver went back to character acting (admitting Mr. Terrific wasn’t terrific for his career). Strimpell, well, I don’t recall ever seeing him on TV again. He returned to New York and became, by all reports, a respected acting teacher. I went on to watch other sitcoms. Next fall, it was Accidental Family. “Painfully unfunny” had been renewed for another season.

The Lion is the Bomb

Scare takes abound in Tex Avery’s Slap Happy Lion (1947). In one sequence, the lion manages to swallow a tormenting mouse, who responds by playing the lion’s ribs like a xylophone. The lion swallows a bomb to get him out. It works. But then he realises something.



Now the take.



This post explains what happens next.

Walt Clinton, Bob Bentley and Ray Abrams are the credited animators in this cartoon.

Breathe, Stupid

There’s something funny about a cat that’s so stupid, it forgets to breathe. That’s what we get in the Art Davis short Dough, Ray, Me-ow, with the story by Lloyd Turner.

Heathcliffe the dopey cat is in a panic, once again asking Louie the parrot to help him.



The next scene where Louie berates Heathcliffe for forgetting to breathe again. I love the floppy tongue. More dry brush work, too.



Don Williams, Emery Hawkins, Basil Davidovich and Bill Melendez are the credited animators.

In a truly inexplicable decision, the studio fired Davis’ other writer, the great Bill Scott, then tried to demote Turner back into in-betweening. Turner went on to become a top sitcom writer. It wasn’t long before the Davis unit was gone altogether, a victim of the cost-cutting being made at all West Coast animation studios.

Writing For Benny

Jack Benny and his radio writers didn’t spend their time in Palm Springs because of the weather. Or because of the busy social scene, though that may have been part of the reason; the little town was filled with vacationing film stars and executives in the ‘30s and ’40s. I suspect they spent their time in Palm Springs because of Mary Livingstone.

Mary didn’t go with them to Palm Springs. And she pretty much stated why.

Here’s a story from the March 1945 edition of the movie magazine Screenland. Whether Mary actually wrote it is debateable but I have no doubt it reveals her true feelings—that she really didn’t like her peace and quiet being disrupted by Jack and his writers putting together the weekly radio show at their home. It seems perfectly logical that Jack tried to keep his wife happy by getting in the car and heading to Palm Springs to do the writing there, and enjoy some sun and sociability.

The photos accompanied the article. There’s one of Mary, Jack and Don Wilson that has an ink splotch on it, so I’ve left that one out.

My Life in a Gag Factory
by Mary Livingstone
Benny Exclusive! You're invited to the home of the Jack Bennys, where you will learn just how the Benny brain-trust works out those hilarious scripts

IF THE powers-that-be in the City of Beverly Hills read this article, I hope they will not descend on our home and condemn it simply because I choose to call it a gag factory. Our street is not zoned for industrial activity. It's strictly residence territory. And, however we might choose to kid about it, the Benny domicile is likewise strictly residence.
But, for nine months of the year, this home of ours is likewise the scene of activity which produces some thirty-nine weekly radio programs and is a contributing force in such motion pictures as my spouse, one Jack Benny, gets to play in.
There was a day when a radio performer, especially a comedian, would cringe at the thought that the public was wise to the fact that he didn't write all of his own broadcast material. That day has long gone, and if you follow the columns about this hectic profession of ours you see constant references to huge stables of writers for one performer or another. Now, Jack doesn't have a huge stable, but he has a nice-sized team of five. They are, reading from left to right, up or down, on the bias, or running around in circles, which is more usual, Sam Perrin, Milt Josefsberg, George Balzer, John Tackaberry, and Jack Benny. Yes, Jack works with the boys and provides the locale for its many and long writing conferences which go on a good part of the day for some five to seven days per week.
The innocent little script which is to flow merrily along for exactly thirty minutes on a Sunday evening is carved out of hard rock, syllable by syllable; gag by gag; floor-pacing by floor-pacing; re-write by re-write.

The brain-trust confers for a policy meeting ten minutes after a Sunday broadcast in Jack's dressing room at the studio where a very rough outline of what they expect to do for next week is drawn up. Then each scrivener goes to his own home to pick his own brains for next week's laughs. They may team up into two groups of twos the following day, but by Tuesday, bright and early — I know because their merry prattle and their foot-pounding, fist-pounding, and argument-pounding awakens me — they are at the Benny menage loaded with cute gags and funny sequences.
Then it starts. They may come up to Jack's bedroom. Jack, since it's his house and he's the boss, avails himself of the privilege of sleeping up to the last minute of their arrival. He probably puts on a bathrobe, gets word through the grapevine to the kitchen that he's ready for a little coffee and juice, and then the gang starts to really put together the show.
There's a soft-voiced amanuensis (and that's a $50 word for secretary that would throw Phil Harris completely out of gear) whose name is Jane Tucker, and who acts as sort of a script girl. I would say hers is the most difficult job because first, she has to record the basic gag. Then she has to extract from each person's reaction to the basic gag exactly what Jack wants to have kept in the final script. There may be eighteen reactions, one topping the other, before they all feel they've got something. Then Jack will say, "Read it back, Janie." Janie reads it and this time he might say that it should be changed thus and so, and then they're off again with another dozen toppers to the line she just read. And finally that thirty second to two minute spot is ironed out.
Now this goes on all week. Sometimes they'll call me in and say, "Mary, this one will kill you. What do you think of it.'" I listen. If it kills me, I act properly dead. If it doesn't, I react properly or improperly deadpan and Jack sighs a disappointed "Oh" and they start all over.

And if you think that I'm the only one in the house who's called in to act as guinea pig, then you don't know what happens to my daughter, Joan; to the cook; to the man who comes over to take care of our garden and who would be summoned from the other end of the Victory patch, and to the boy who might be delivering a bundle of laundry, the grocery man, or even the mailman, if he happens to ring twice just when the Benny brain-trust is in and wants a fast reaction. I'm certain that if most of our neighbors weren't professionals themselves, they would all think we were slightly nuts and would wonder what kind of a household I was running.
Sometimes I wish I could share the five to six day non-concern of most of the members of our troupe. Phil Harris can play tiddly-winks or backgammon with Alice and his youngsters, and not worry about Benny from each Sunday until the following Saturday. Don Wilson can make small talk with his wife and be the squire who examines the fruit on his citrus ranch in the Valley without a concern about Jack or his sponsor for the same length of time. The same Bennyless five days go for Rochester who can, unless he is doing a picture, tinker with his model airplanes, or spend time with his model wife and model son. But not Mary Livingstone. She is Mrs. Jack Benny, keeper of the key to his kingdom, steward of his household, foil for his jokes, mother of his child, and, above all, audience supreme, and guinea pig deluxe.
During the summer, my house was comparatively peaceful. I could wake up in the morning any time it pleased me, and there would be a luscious quiet, broken only by a faint whir of a lawn mower, or possibly by distant sounds of breakfast being prepared in the kitchen. I could come downstairs and eat with my daughter, Joan, and carry on an uninterrupted conversation. I could wander from room to room and contemplate the furniture Jack and I are pleased to call our own and were so pleased to shop for when we built the house. I could walk into the garden. I could chat with the gardener. I could go into my own kitchen and have an unharrassed talk with the cook, and find out what we had in the house and what we needed for the next day or two. I could sit at my desk and write letters without tripping over gag writers. I could work at my household accounts and figure out, on my fingers of course, how well within (or without) my budget I was keeping, and do it without making any false starts because of interruptions. All this was because the summer was without Benny, without jokes or joke writers, without radio. Mr. B. was in the South Pacific entertaining G.I.'s. That's the way he spent his vacation, and it was a rest for him because he didn't have any gag men in his hair either — and no cracks about the hair; he has some, you know. Or don't you?

The first two or three weeks he was gone, this new-found quiet was paradise. Then the letters started coming from the South Pacific, and though it was still kind of paradise to be at peace, I began to wonder what the new show would be like for the following season. By the end of the second month the quiet I wanted so badly began to bore me. And by the middle of the final month there was nothing so noisy as that same silence. I literally yearned for the return to our normal life of abnormal activity. Soon I would hear the patter of gag writers' feet. Soon the pacing would recommence. Soon I would be interrupted as I was brushing my teeth by Jack running in and saying, "Doll! This is terrific. It will kill you! What do you think?" Soon agents would come up with picture offers, Bob Ballin, the radio program producer, and sound effect men would come up with gadgets, gimmicks and bit players to which Jack would listen. Soon I would be going crazy again and that would make me sane, because, believe me, by September this sane existence had me literally insane.
So Jack arrived home from the South Pacific September 15 and the brain-trust started functioning the following week. We went on the air on October 1 and just to make it a little more complicated Jack went back to work in his picture out at Warners, "The Horn Blows At Midnight," early in October. At this point not only did he saturate the household with his radio activity, but his producer, his director, his picture writers were out to the house making plans. Looks like Warners established a beachhead at the Bennys, then Jack established a beachhead at Warners — in his dressing room — for his radio writers and himself to carry on with each week's program, but he kept in constant communication with the house to make sure that we were all part of everything that went on.
However, I'm not complaining. I can still remember the summer quiet, particularly at the latter part of the summer, where I swore that never again would I resent living in a gag factory.

Any Bonds Today?

Porky Pig may have been the star of the Looney Tunes cartoon series but it’s clear that about a year after being created, Bugs Bunny had become the number one box office attraction from the Leon Schlesinger studio.

Bugs made his debut in “A Wild Hare” in July 1940. 16 months later, he got the only billing and the feature role in Schlesinger’s free gift to the war effort, the short cartoon “Any Bonds Today.”

On the same day as unionised workers at Schlesinger (led by Chuck Jones on the union side) reached a three-year contract with the studio, Daily Variety reported:

Washington, May 27. — Irving Berlin, whose 'God Bless America' has become the ex-officio national anthem, has been enlisted by both the Treasury and War Departments to write patriotic theme for Americanism. He has contributed 'Any Bonds Today' for Secretary Morgenthau's Defense Bond cause and 'Arms for the Love of America' for the Ordnance Department. Both will be handled by the Government as non-profit, non-commercial ballyhoo for a defense pep-up.

It would appear Leon himself came up with the idea to set Berlin’s song to animation. And we know when the film was in production. Variety on November 18th said:

LEON SCHLESINGER'S Cartoon creation, Bugs Bunny, appearing in 'Merrie Melodies' and 'Looney Tunes', will sing the song, 'Any Bonds Today?' in a special one-reel cartoon which the producer is readying as his Christmas donation to the government in the defense savings drive. Schlesinger volunteered to make the short subject to promote holiday sales of defense bonds, and has received acceptance of proffer from Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. Calling a halt on all his other activities, Schlesinger has put his entire staff of 200 to work on the Technicolor graphic to insure release before Christmas. Plan is to distribute 7,500 prints to cover entire United States in one week. Vitaphone Recording Orchestra will obbligato.

Then on December 16th, Variety reported:

LEON SCHLESINGER and his staff of 200 cartoonists yesterday finished in record time Schlesinger's contribution to the Defense Savings drive, a short-reeler called 'Any Bonds Today', featuring Bugs Bunny. Special Technicolor cartoon, contributed to the government, was completed in three weeks and prints were speeded to Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau for distribution before the Christmas holidays.

The studio had four units but, for reasons lost to time, Bob Clampett’s unit was picked to animate this little cartoon. Clampett had been put in charge of Tex Avery’s old unit about four months earlier after directing black-and-white cartoons for several years with a different team of animators. Bugs’ dance sequence is terrific. High-stepping, hand-wagging, finger-waving, there are some great poses. Here are just some of them. Check out the finger movements. Is this the work of Virgil Ross? Is there a change of animators during the dance?



Bugs is joined by pantsless Porky and Elmer Fudd in the closing. Mel Blanc is both Bugs and Porky, Arthur Q. Bryan is Fudd and the two actors harmonise very well.



Whether the short made it into theatres before Christmas, I don’t know. But the Motion Picture Herald had reaction from two exhibitors in 1942.

ANY BONDS TODAY: Victory Films— Three-minute cartoon furnished free to help sell bonds. It's worth running. — E. M. Freiburger, Paramount Theatre, Dewey, Okla. Small town patronage.

ANY BONDS TODAY: Official U. S. Victory Films — Bugs Bunny sings the song as a plug to sell stamps and bonds. It is good, but disappointing to Bugs Bunny fans, who expect it to be a regular cartoon when it only last two minutes. Best idea is to tack it on to the end of a regular Bugs Bunny release. That's what I would do. — W. Varick Nevins III, Alfred Co-Op Theatre, Alfred, N.Y. Small college town patronage.

Perhaps the short might not have been so short if it had been made after the attack on Pearl Harbor. That horrific event which pushed the U.S. full-throttle into the war inspired Irving Berlin to write additional lyrics which were introduced by Bing Crosby on his Kraft Music Hall show of December 11th:

Bonds for the planes
And bonds for the tanks
And bonds for the ships,
Meaning: “Here Come the Yanks.”
Bonds for the guns.
The shot and the shell,
And bonds to avenge
All the heroes who fell.
They died in the night
With no chance to fight.
But wait 'til the final text—
We’ll wipe Mr. Jap
From the face of the map,
And Germany has to be next.

The cartoon resulted in a letter of commendation from Secretary Morgenthau on August 25, 1942 and Bugs was later made an honorary sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps (Washington Post, Dec. 11, 1942). But it receives jitters and even criticism today. Not because of stereotyped depictions of the enemy; unlike other cartoons, the Allies’ opponants aren’t shown. But because of Al Jolson. Rather Bugs’ impression of him.



I’m not going to get into a long dissertation on the subject of race and popular culture, other than to provide background to readers who don’t know that Jolson was a hugely popular entertainer whose act, in vaudeville and on film, included performing songs while in blackface. I am going to—and this is the purpose of the post in the first place—direct you to a piece on Jerry Beck’s Cartoon Research blog by Christopher P. Lehman, author of The Colored Cartoon. Mr. Lehman republishes a letter he received from Martha Sigall, one of the most delightful and genuine employees of the Schlesinger studio, who worked there when “Any Bonds Today” was in production. Any comments about the studio’s history from the late Mrs. Sigall should be lapped up, and I hope you click on this link and read what she had to say.

Now, if Leon had his staff animate to the song We’ve Got to Slap the Dirty Little Jap...