Today's Animation Question

You know this gag if you’re a fan of Warners Bros. cartoons; it’s quoted all over the place.

We get to a point of the proceedings in The Dover Boys (1942) where melodrama villain Dan Backslide says the best-known line in the cartoon.

“A runabout! I’ll steal it! No one will ever know!”

Today’s animation question: where does that line come from? Is in an inside joke? Is it from an old movie, maybe a silent movie title card? Is it just a non-sequitur? Does anyone have a real answer for this, instead of speculation I’ve read on-line.

Interestingly, one of the other boys book series of the era featured a runabout. It was "Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout" (1910).

The cartoon’s well-known for its smear animation. Here’s an example.

If you’re wondering what Carl Stalling has scored behind the opening credits, it’s the 1857 song ‘Annie Lisle,’ associated with a number of American colleges and universities.

On the Road With Don Wilson

Don Wilson wasn’t network radio’s first sidekick/announcer, but he soon became the most popular.

Jack Benny went through something like ten announcers in the first two years before General Tire picked up sponsorship of his show on April 6, 1934. In the earliest days, the network simply assigned someone to work his show. In fact, Wilson was hired to work with Benny as a result of a network audition in New York, where he had been transferred as a result of his football play-by-play on the West Coast.

Wilson was a refreshing change from Alois Havrilla, whose claim to fame was winning a diction award. Precise diction isn’t necessarily the first thing you want in a comedy foil. Wilson quickly chuckled and chortled his way to audience appreciation, coupled with the interruptions for sponsor mentions which Havrilla, Howard Claney and other network mouthpieces had engaged in.

He stayed with Benny until the end of the 1964-65 TV season. He missed only a handful of shows, generally when Benny hit the road and Wilson had commitments on other shows in Los Angeles. He did make the trip in March 1937, when Jack intended to bring his feud with Fred Allen to a climax and an end. He gave a little report on it to the paper in Monrovia, California.

Don Wilson Writes Column
"The world will little note nor long remember what we say here—“
By HOMER CANFIELD
Hollywood, March 15.—
THE POSTMAN DOES RING twice. On his second round this morning, he left me a very special letter from Don Wilson. As it gives an intimate inside picture of the Jack Benny troupe in New York, I'm taking the liberty of showing it to you. I'm sure Don won't mind, and I'm doubly sure you'll enjoy hearing from radio's No. 1 announcer every bit as much as I have.
Dear Homer:
Here we are in Radio City once again. It seems only like last year that we were here. Wait a minute—oh yes—Jack Benny, you know, that violinist, just looked over my shoulder to remark that it was last year. How time drags when all one has to do is listen to "The Bee" day in and day out.
But you wanted to know something about the trip. We caught the train out of Los Angeles Tuesday night, March 3, after Jack's broadcast with The Ol’ Maestro, Ben Bernie. Yowsuh! The party included, besides Jack and me, his secretary and able assistant, Harry Baldwin, those clever script writers, Al Boasberg, Eddie Beloin, and Bill Morrow. Mary Livingstone preceded us east by about two weeks and Kenny Baker by a couple of days.
I put in a good part of the time reading and playing solitaire while Jack stayed in the weekly huddle with his writers, turning out the script for the first of two broadcasts from New York. We arrived in Chicago Friday morning and

I spent three hours walking about the Loop and visiting with old pals in the NBC studios. Jack visited his folks between trains. It was a damp, bleak day with the penetrating wind driving in from Lake Michigan and I began to feel a bit nostalgic for sunny California. These easterners may joke about it, but the coast is the place to keep warm.
That afternoon we boarded the Twentieth Century. Following dinner, Jack called a conference to outline Sunday's show. I contributed a few suggestions for myself for some Jell-O plugs and we substituted the name "Lyman" as one of the six delicious flavors (in place of lemon, of course).
The train arrived in Grand Central station at exactly 9:00 a. m. on Saturday morning and we were greeted by a barrage of newspaper men and cameramen, not to forget agency and sponsor representatives and close to a thousand spectators. Many pictures and short interviews were in order, and we were swept into the glory being heaped on Jack's shoulders. The press meeting finally broke up and we all went to our respective hotels.
I dropped over to NBC at my earliest convenience and renewed some old acquaintances, and in the interim realized that one of my bags was missing. Immediately contacted all lost and found possibilities, but no light was shed on the matter. I was especially perturbed over the loss for in addition to my personal belongings, a silver plated traveling kit which Jack and Mary had given me Christmas, was among the missing items. Then I gave up in despair and took an early afternoon nap.
Awakened about 3 Saturday afternoon and called Jack's secretary, Harry Baldwin, to find out about rehearsal schedules. The first words which he greeted me over the phone were "I've got your bag, Don," which completed my self-disgust but relieved me of the worry.
At 4 we met for a script reading session in one of the conference rooms in NBC and went through the show for the first time with Jack, Mary Livingstone, Kenny Baker, Stuart Canin, the 10-year-old youngster who played "The Bee" on Fred Allen's program, Abe Lyman and myself present. That evening Kenny Baker and I had dinner together and took in an early movie. Then to bed with a busy and memorable day ahead of us.
Spent a quiet Sunday until it was time for our afternoon rehearsal at the Waldorf-Astoria. The practice session went off pretty well, although each member of the cast felt strange in the new surroundings, especially after broadcasting from our small and intimate Hollywood studio. Had dinner with some of the gang in the hotel and then was on hand in the ballroom at 6:30 p. m.
As the two thousand some-odd visitors filed into the improvised studio, each of our hearts sunk lower and lower, but our spirits were quickly revived when we sensed the tremendous studio reaction as Jack stepped to the rostrum ten minutes before air time and played "The Bee." Pandemonium practically broke loose. That peculiar edge of nervousness disappeared, and left us completely at home midst a host of congenial strangers.
With the familiar "Jell-O again," our first eastern broadcast in over a year was under way. It moved smoothly and gathered momentum as the minutes passed. The guffaws were frequent and hearty. Mary handled her bit admirably. Kenny sang as he never had before. Abe Lyman's music was stimulating. Jack talked in an inspired manner, Sam "Schlepperman" Hearn returned with a fresh and entertaining "Hello Stranger," and my "Six Delicious Flavors" seemed to make our friends' mouths water.
The show was a success, so we were later told, and we were all set for the rebroadcast at 11:30 p. m. The late broadcast went off just as smoothly, even though Mary had a lot of fun and provoked untold laughter as she juggled a line for a few minutes.
We undertake one more show from New York, and move to Chicago en route home again. I have busied myself looking up old friends, taking in a few of the current Broadway hits, enjoying a little night life and missing California with each breath I take. Hope to see you soon when I can elaborate on the story of our eastern visit. My regards to all the gang.
Cordially, DON WILSON.

Ozark in Florida

If you have a favourite animator in the Golden Age, it may be almost impossible to trace their careers. Only a few people had their names appear on screen at the start of a cartoon—and the credits may not have been accurate—and that was usually for theatrical shorts and features only.

Animators and other artists worked anonymously on commercials. If they were fortunate, trade papers mentioned their names if they won an award. Some of them picked up piecework, so they were more-or-less freelancing on industrials and commercial films and not regularly employed by a studio.

A good example is Jacob Ozarkawitz, born February 21, 1914, in Chicago. You know him as Jack Ozark. He started with the Fleischers in the early ‘30s. If you watched TV cartoons in the ‘60s and ‘70s, you would have seen his name on Filmation shows. He did some things in between, including operating his own studio in Miami. This story was in the Herald on March 7, 1954.

TV Cartoons Take Days to Prepare
Those animated cartoons which keep even the most rabid haters of TV commercials fascinated require days of tedious art work to prepare.
Frank Spalding and Jack Ozark, animators for Reela Films Inc., a subsidiary of WTVJ, spend almost two weeks, for example, in bringing a 20-second cartoon commercial to life.
It takes, they report, 240 separate drawings to put an exterminator superman through his bug chasing routine in 20 seconds time.
A minute-long commercial, they say, could run the number of drawings as high as 1,440 depending on the amount of action involved.
The animators put a cartoon together after studying the commercial script. They run a test of pencil drawings first to determine whether their cartoon idea works. If it passes the test then backgrounds are prepared and the tedious drawing-by-drawing animation is done on transparent acetate sheets.
The animators use an ink with an adhesive ingredient to make it stick on the slick sheets.
The completed pile of drawings then goes to an animator camera where the frame-by-frame photographing is done.
The result is a highly entertaining and sales persuasive commercial which Michael Brown, Reela Films' production manager, reports is gaining increasing favor among advertisers and viewers alike here and throughout the nation.

A non-animation item about Ozark surfaced in the Hollywood Citizen-News in the “Racin’ With Mason” column of June 11, 1963.

Top Cartoons By Jack Ozark
By ERNIE MASON
READERS POST-TIME—Recently I have noticed quite a few cartoons of race horses, jockeys and trainers done by a Jack Ozark. The likenesses of the subjects are perfect. Is Mr. Ozark connected with anyone locally and do you happen to know where I can get in touch with him? Jerry Herron, Pomona.
I have to agree that Jack Ozark’s turf cartoons are terrific works of art. The talented gentleman currently is doing free lance turf sports cartooning and can be reached here at the press box at Hollywood Park.

Ozark had a conversation some years ago—he died in 2000—with historian Harvey Deneroff, whose father worked at Fleischer with Ozark. View it below.

Dino's Serenade

Can anyone explain to me just who the intended audience was for UPA’s Hamilton Ham series?

The last cartoon was Dino’s Serenade (copyright 1958). The story is by a young John Urie. I don’t want to bash his work because he contributed much to computer animation in the ‘60s and gave work to many young people when he formed his own company. But this short doesn’t seem to do much more than fill time.

Hamilton Ham isn’t even in the cartoon. Dino is an Italian violin player who frolics around while a background singer (actor Hal Peary, in dialect) raptures about any day being a good day for him to make love.

Being a UPA cartoon, cuts and wipes are just too, too pedestrian. We get backgrounds dissolving, eventually becoming a solid pink card.



Dino’s violin case is full of stuff. He pulls out sections of an Italian restaurant and sets them up. Out of nowhere, a waiter comes outside from the restaurant and sets up tables, brings out a bottle of red wine (Dino approves), and pours two glasses (then returns for Dino to give him a tip). The waltz-tempo song about starting “love’s conflagration at any sidewalk café” continues in the background.



Now the cartoon gets creepy. Dino pulls out an immobile female from his violin case and plays for her. Is a blow-up sex doll? Is it a real woman who is asleep?



There’s something else in the violin case—a villain who resembles Reggie Van Gleason. He even does the Gleason “exit” shoulder hunch. What’s he doing in there? Anyway, the villain runs off the now-awakened woman while Dino is completely engrossed in his violin playing.



The waiter takes down the pieces of the front of the restaurant and drop them into the violin case.

What happens now? A dissolve back to the beginning and Dino merrily dances away, as if nothing has happened.

After watching this cartoon, I think he’s right. Nothing has happened.

Jimmy Murakami is responsible for the designs, while Fred Crippen gets the direction credit. There are no animation credits so whether Crippen animated this himself, I don’t know.

The internet says the cartoon was released to theatres on January 16, 1959 but to the right you see an ad from December 27, 1958 which shows the cartoon was appearing in one theatre in Wausau, Wisconsin then.

To be honest, if I want Dino, I’ll either take the Flintstones’ dinosaur (animated by George Nicholas) or the “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime” King of Cool.

Spike Cracks Up

Tex Avery wasn’t above re-using gags, and he did it several times in The Chump Champ (1950).

This is one of Avery’s Droopy/Spike competition cartoons where, naturally, Spike cheats but stillgets the worst of it.

In this sequence, Spike loads an anvil in a punching bag, hoping Droopy will smash his hand when batting it around. I like how Spike slithers away like a snake.



Naturally, the anvil has no effect. Naturally, Spike responds by confidently testing the bag for himself.



Impact close-up.



Now the familiar gag. Spike cracks up like a piece of broken china. The pieces fall to the ground. After a brief pause, more of him cracks up.



Rich Hogan is Avery’s gagman in this cartoon, with Mike Lah, Walt Clinton and Grant Simmons receiving animation screen credit.

The Lady With the Zonks

She made a career on television without saying a word.

Granted, a lot of it involved gesturing at “A NEW CONVERTIBLE!!!” but Carol Merrill’s name was constantly mentioned for years by Monty Hall on Let’s Make a Deal, giving her a level of fame. She was probably the best-known TV model of the 1960s.

Ah, how things could have been different. Instead of Door Number 3, she was Contestant Number Five in the Miss Rheingold contest of 1962. She wasn’t unknown then. The Hollywood Reporter of March 6, 1961 announced she would be the model/assistant on the CBS game show Your Surprise Package. (Since some trivia lover will point it out if I don’t, Beverly Owen in the picture to the right, was the original Marilyn on The Munsters).

It’s a delight to find interviews were done with some of television’s non-stars. Here’s one with Carol from the Wichita Eagle of June 21, 1970.

TViews
By NANCY SPARKS
Watching television on one of those infrequent weekdays at home, I suddenly had the urge to interview Carol Merrill.
Who, you may well ask, is Carol Merrill?
If you watch much daytime television, Let’s Make a Deal to be specific, you don’t need to ask. You already know the answer. She’s the girl about whom Monty Hall (the host) is always saying: “Or you can have the curtain Carol Merrill is pointing to. Or the coat Carol Merrill is wearing.
Miss Merrill, in private life the wife of an importer and mother of 3-year-old Hillary, describes her job on the show as “actually a model. There are those who try to build it up to be more than that, but all I really do is model."
She’s been doing it now day in and day out for the past six years, since Let’s Make a Deal first went on the air. But her job was something of an after-thought, she explained.
“The night before the first show was taped, suddenly somebody said 'Maybe we should get a model for the show.’ So they called me and the next day I had the job.”
Ironically, although she hadn't met Monty Hall until that day, she had worked in the same studio—CBS — with him for a year.
“I was doing Your Surprise Package with George Fenneman, and Monty was host of Video Village at the time. On Surprise Package I had much the same job as I do on Let’s Make a Deal, so there were people who knew me."
Miss Merrill, who never speaks on the show, has a soft melodious speaking voice.

“Although Monty always tries to build me up by saying my name as much as possible, my real job isn’t to speak. I did say something on the air once, though. Right before I left three years ago on a leave of absence to have the baby, Monty called me out on stage to explain to the audience that I was leaving. As I remember, I said ‘Thank you.’
“I’ve been asked to do dramatic roles, but I have no interest at all in acting. In fact, I can’t think of one thing I’d like about acting. I have the best possible job — go to the studio at 4 p.m., get home by 10 p.m. I work some weeks every night and then some weeks only two nights. Every now and then we get little vacations, and sometimes whole months off. So I have time to be home with my family, and I play tennis and ski a lot.”
While she’s at the studio she’s busy, though. For each new “deal,” she makes a costume change, which means rushing off stage, into a dressing room which she characterizes as a “lean-to,” and back on stage again, all during commercial breaks.
“I actually change clothes in just the time you see it done, too,” she laughed. “We don’t halt taping for anything except an emergency.”
Emergencies do arise but they are infrequent. In the six years, taping has been stopped fewer than a dozen times.
“It’s just too costly to stop a tape,” she explained. “I do remember one time, though, when a sleeper sofa wouldn’t pull out all the way. We had to re-tape that segment at the end of the show and splice it in later. Every now and then, too, a refrigerator door won’t open right (remember Betty Furness back in those days of live television and her now classic battle with a refrigerator door?). I have the boys trained now, though, to put plastic guards at the bottom of the doors so they won’t close altogether. The magnetic catches are sometimes terribly difficult to open otherwise and, because the refrigerators are on dollies, they will roll around if you tug on them too hard.”
If and when Let’s Make a Deal runs its television course, Miss Merrill probably will return to making commercials. “That’s a lucrative field and I’d find it far more interesting than acting. I’ll probably have to go to school to learn how to do commercials again, but it would be much easier than returning to modelling.”
That may be far in the future, however, since Let’s Make a Deal seems to gain more audience and more popularity each year. As long as it's on the air, viewers will continue to see Carol Merrill smiling, pointing, and modeling through one deal after another.

A few years before Deal signed on, the Bill Cullen version of The Price is Right would occasionally offer unusual prizes. Monty Hall and business partner Stefan Hatos expanded this on their show to include gag gifts; the bigger, the better. The Pomona Progress-Bulletin decided to get the story, and who better to spill the goods than Carol Merrill. This appeared June 8, 1969.

ZONKS I HAVE KNOWN
By Carol Merrill
(Editor's Note: Carol Merrill is the model on ABC’s Let’s Make a Deal, the trader-game show. The statuesque beauty is 5’ 7 ½” tall with brown eyes and light brown hair. A former photographic model (35-24-35), she started with the show five years ago. "Deal" airs Mondays through Fridays, 1:30 PM, and in prime time on Fridays in its new time period 7:30 PM.)
In case you haven't seen our show, I would like to explain the ground rules. They are simple. To play, you must be selected for the trading floor. A trader is selected because he brings something unusual to trade and is dressed in some way that draws attention.
When selected for the trading floor, Monty Hall will ask them to trade and when they accept, they keep going until they get what they want or get zonked. The game is to guess right in making the trade since you never see what

Monty has until you accept it could be bartering for a new car or a camel. The camel would be the zonk since that would be a funny booby prize. You could also be zonked with an old bathtub, a salami or a wild turkey. The zonks are strictly for laughs but I've found that working with some of the live zonks isn't always that funny.
There was a zebra who had me going around in circles——literally. Just before I took the leash, the trainer warned me that might happen and as soon as the curtain opened, there we were going around together.
I like animals—at least most of them. There was a hippo zonk that did scare me a little. I was told that I had nothing to worry about because he was inside a railing. I stopped worrying until discovered that he could climb the railing. I looked over just as he was about to take a bite out of my arm.
Jay (Stewart), our announcer, works with all the big animals that appear on the show like lions, tigers and camels. I’m just as happy handling the sheep. They just stand around. So do horses and cows.
There is a burro named Junior who is a friend. There was also a seal who wasn't a bit mean although I heard that seals are. I fed him fishheads while we were working together.
I can remember the time we had chinchillas as zonks—they reminded me of mice. I like the skunks. They were the non-smelly kind.
But then there's the mountain goat who bruised my leg with his horns. And there was a boar that chased me. I remember two different times when bears gave me a rough time. One started walking when the curtain opened. I gave a tug on his leash but he kept on going. He stopped at a camera to smile into the lens. I guess animals are hams too. The other bear got affectionate just as we went on camera. I was so shocked that I just stood there.
(Editor's note: I have to admit, I admire the bear’s taste.)

A macadamia nut farm sounds like a zonk, but that’s what Carol Merrill owned when she moved to Hawaii after giving up her life with “TV’s biggest dealer” (Monty Hall was originally called “America’s biggest dealer.” Then I guess someone realised he was Canadian). Her life couldn’t have been any more nutty than it was with contestants on TV some 50-plus years ago.

Beaky Takes His Turns

Why does Bob Clampett have a flying dragon in a cartoon? Well, why not?

Clampett gets some interesting visuals out of it in The Bashful Buzzard (1945), as it chases after Beaky.

After a twisting pan of the curled-up dragon’s body, Clampett cuts to a close-up roar. He quickly cuts to Beaky zooming away from the creature, and cuts again to a long scene where the dragon zooms after Beaky in mid-air, turning in two circles before the pair jump into a cloud that appears on the scene. The animator goes for perspective.



The cloud starts changing shape with fight sound effects in the background. We now reach to the finale with Beaky returning home.



“You never, never, bring-a home one teensy-weensy piece of-a meat!” Mama Buzzard shouts at Beaky. Cut to the final scene where the camera pans down the side of a cliff, with Beaky holding on to the dragon, who says “Well, now, I wouldn’t say that.”

Radio references? What were you expecting in a Clampett cartoon? The dragon’s doing the catchphrase of Peavy the druggist in The Great Gildersleeve. Beaky (voiced by Kent Rogers) is an imitation of Edgar Bergen’s dullard dummy, Mortimer Snerd.

And for years I’ve wondered why Mama speaks in Italian dialect. Nobody else does in the cartoon. I have now concluded it’s yet another Los Angeles radio reference. Minerva Urecal appeared on variety shows on stations in the 1930s as “Mrs. Pasquale,” shouting in an Italian accent in the exact same way Sara Berner does as Mama Buzzard. I’m not saying this is the origin of the voice in the cartoon, but I can’t think of any other explanation. (As a side note, Mrs. Pasquale appeared on the syndicated “The Mirth Parade.” Another actor on the show was Bob Burns, known as “The Arkansas Traveller,” the name of a song that appears in this cartoon with some new, bumblebee lyrics).

As for animators, Bob McKimson and Rod Scribner’s work can be seen in this cartoon and Bill Melendez and Manny Gould must be here, too.

Periscopasaurus

A brontosaurus hunts for a meal in The Cave Man, a 1934 Willie Whopper cartoon.



He’s looking. Aha! Let’s turn him into a periscope.



It turns out the grassy snack is some kind of prehistoric chicken, who stares the bronto in the eye and flies away.



What’s a bronto to do? He rolls his eyes and it’s on to the next scene.



The cartoon isn’t especially funny but there are some odd gags, solid backgrounds and a nice jazzy score. Berny Wolf and Grim Natwick are the credited animators.