Gagging the Hugh Harman Way

There’s a pleasant bounciness to the Harman-Ising cartoons for Leon Schlesinger. And an awful lot of repetition.

Some of this was forced on the studio by Warner Bros. The Merrie Melodies were required to have a portion of a Warners-owned tune featured in the cartoon as a vehicle to sell sheet music. Almost all these cartoons seemed to feature a song in the first half, then bad guys kidnapping a girl who was rescued by a gang in the second. The 3/4s view, open-mouth facial expressions all look the same. Characters would do the same slide-step dance that Bosko performed in a number of cartoons. Screen-fuls of animals, humans or objects would face the camera and cheer in cycle animation.

Personally, I prefer the early Fleischer Talkartoons, but there’s a cheeriness in the Warners shorts that is appealing. Frank Marsales’ scores are fun, too, as they feature great songs like “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” and others from the Warners musicals of the era.

Lee Shippey’s column in the Los Angeles Times of January 26, 1932 included a report on a trip to the Harman-Ising studio. There’s no mention of Leon Schlesinger because he was the middle man; he contracted with H-I to provide cartoons which he provided to Warners. In 1932, newspaper stories about him dealt with his own productions—western shorts starring John Wayne. The drawings accompanied the article.

It’s a shame none of the artists are identified.

The Screen “Funnies”
Since Mickey Mouse became an international favorite, upsetting the laws of nature by chasing Felix the Cat out of hundreds of theaters, the animated cartoon business has excited a large number of persons in Filmland’s capital. Companies to produce animated cartoons have flared up and flared out. But you can’t go to any theater now without seeing Bosko, Mickey Mouse or some artist’s creation performing the impossible in the matter-of-fact manner.
See What Kansas City Has Done
Oddly enough, the atmosphere of Kansas City, more than that of any other spot, seems to affect artists so that they become screen cartoon animators. Maybe it’s the influence of Harry Wood’s Intellectual Pup, which has been running in the Kansas City Star for twenty years or so. Anyway, Walt Disney, creator of Mickey Mouse, is a Kansas City boy and brought out from Kansas City several other artists who were his chief aides—most of whom now are in business for themselves and employing more Kansas City artists.
Harman-Ising
Yesterday we visited the Harman-Ising studios on Hollywood Boulevard, half-expecting to hear some snappy young men practicing barber-shop chords. As we stepped into the office, though, we realized our mistake. It wasn’t a singing school, but a mad-house. Reassured by that discovery, we decided to stay awhile and see what happened. As we entered, unobserved, one fellow was hopping around on one foot, strumming an imaginary musical instrument and singing:
“Plink - dink, -dink-dink-dink! Plink -ooo-do-do!” Another, who seemed to fancy himself an Indian, was about to do a little scalping, and a couple more were dashing to the rescue: it looked like a swell fight, but abruptly the combatants stopped and sat around a table.
“That’s the way we want the scene,” said one. “Now we want five good gags to go with it. Get busy, gag men.”
It was the story room, in which Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising and their assistants devise stories for Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, and stunts for Bosko, their favorite character, to perform.
“Actors” Are Directed
“The original animated cartoons,” Harman said, “relied on trick stuff and utter impossibility for their laughs. Now we try to build real stories which, though still fairy stories, progress logically. We mix it a good deal as a housewife mixes a cake—one character to delight children and arouse their sympathy, six ludicrous mishaps which all tend to bring about the happy ending, twenty gags to the reel. As we know that twenty-four squares, or scenes, of film go through the projection machine in a second, we can time our music or sound accompaniment to precisely fit the action, especially when actors speak or play. Here we work out and gag a story. Then the head artist, who really is the acting director, confers with the music director and the dancing director. Oh, yes, we direct Bosko just are carefully as Edward Griffith directs Constance Bennett.”

Indians? Scalping? I tried to figure out what cartoon they were working on, and the closest I can think of is Crosby, Columbo and Vallee, released March 19, 1932, though no one was scalped in it.

Harman talks about carefully honed stories in the article above, but this short is anything but coherent. It starts off with an overweight Indian chief complaining about the aforementioned three crooners in the title song written by Al Dubin and Joe Burke, arranged for ukulele and published by Witmark in 1931. Well, the lyrics were changed to fit the scene and attempts to rhyme “troubadours” with “squaws” (the original rhymed “vagabonds” with “blondes”) were really forced.

But he’s not part of the plot. He leaves the cartoon. The scene cuts to an Indian brave and his girl-friend, who are basically Merrie Melodies stand-ins for Bosko and Honey of the Looney Toons series (they even have the same falsetto voices). He has a radio that’s hooked up to a spider web for power (to the melody of “Pagan Moon” by Frederic Knight Logan and Jesse Glick) and we get more of the song from the two, happy, bopping-up-and-down Indians. Animals come into the picture, and there’s a 16-drawing applause cycle. One drawing below.



Next gag: a dog pushes up his fluffy ears to imitate Rudy Vallee’s hairstyle, then grabs a tree stump to use as Vallee’s megaphone and gives out with “This is my Love Song,” another Dubin-Burke tune.



We’re half-way through the short. The evil villain hasn’t come to kidnap the girl yet. Wait! Hugh and his writers have pulled a switch. A fire and its little flame-lets are swaying and dancing to the title song when, suddenly, the flames run amok. In maybe the best gag of the cartoon, they burn the greenery off a tree, revealing its underwear. Embarrassed, it jumps into a lake to hide.



The plot makes a violent turn and is now about birdies trapped in a burning tree by the fire. As Marsales’ orchestra provides a jumpy version of the theme, flies carry a spider web to employ as a net to rescue the baby birds, wherein is inserted the mandatory butt/crotch violence gag.



A lone flame gets its revenge on the birds, and Bosko an Indian brave expectorates to kill the flame. None of this has anything to do with Bing Crosby, Russ Columbo or Rudy Vallee.



Piggy says “so long, folks.”



Ham Hamilton and Max Maxwell received screen credit for animation. The screen grabs are from an aged laser disc as the cartoon never appeared on DVD. Hugh (and Rudy) deserve better.

Oproar Clobbering

My favourite Sylvester cartoon?

Back Alley Oproar (released in 1948). Mike Maltese and Tedd Pierce pack in a lot of funny stuff.

One scene everyone seems to like is when Sylvester hands a piece of sheet music to a dopey looking orange cat, who turns out to have a female operatic voice.



She gets clobbered by Elmer Fudd.



Expressions as she goes down.



To state the obvious to any cartoon fan, Friz Freleng is a master of timing. The scene cuts to the cat staggering in time to the music and then dropping out of the cartoon as the orchestration ends.



An added throwaway gag is the cat can’t read music and keeps turning the sheet upside-down and sideways.

The song is “Carissima,” written in 1907 by English composer Arthur A. Penn. Composer Carl Stalling also employed it in Malibu Beach Party (1940) sung in the same way by the Deanna Durbin character. You can read the lyrics at this site.

Gerry Chiniquy, Virgil Ross, Manny Perez and Ken Champin are the animators, while Paul Julian supplied some attractive backgrounds.

Does Anyone Like This Cartoon?

Question: What is Good Night Elmer?
Answer: Name a Chuck Jones cartoon just about everyone dislikes.

Actually, I think Jones and gag writer Rich Hogan accomplish their purpose with this 1940 short. Elmer Fudd is frustrated. So is the audience after 6 ½ minutes of watching this. One exhibitor in Saskatchewan, in a 1942 edition of the Motion Picture Herald, summed up the cartoon with the short phrase “Very poor reel.”

This is early, slow, artsy Jones. He seems to have decided to make this an experiment in variations of shadows on Fudd, who behaves like a silent film actor. The problem is, it’s not very entertaining.

Here are various angles as he tries to take off his jacket while holding a candle.



Just PUT IT ON THE FLOOR!!!

Carl Stalling fills the soundtrack with “When My Dreamboat Comes Home.” Other than “Good Night Ladies” over the opening title card, the rest of the music is Stalling’s.

Phil Monroe gets the screen credit for animation.

After this dud, Elmer resumed his much funnier pairing with Bugs Bunny.

Marian Richman

They wanted someone besides Bea Benaderet.

Bea provided voices for almost all female characters in Warner Bros. cartoons starting in 1942. Toward the end of the decade, someone felt another woman should be brought in.

You may think that “another woman” was June Foray, but it wasn’t. She wasn’t regularly heard until 1955. Someone else, never credited at Warners, was hired instead. Her name was Marian Richman.

There’s not a lot of information about her out there, so allow me to cobble together some things based on government records, newspapers and a few other contemporary sources.

Richman was born Marian S. Pearlson on April 10, 1922. Her parents were Louis Elehoenon and Lillian (Jacobson) Pearlson. Her father had come to the U.S. from Lithuania, grew up in Boston, then moved to Los Angeles by 1906 where he went into the jewellery business. She attended Belmont High School.

She married Lionel Richman on March 27, 1944. Whether they were high school sweethearts, I don’t know, but they attended Belmont at the same time. He had been working in his father’s garment manufacturing company though, at the time of the wedding, it appears he was in the U.S. Coast Guard. After the war, he was hired by the Teamsters legal department, passing the bar in 1950.

In the meantime, Marian found employment in radio, which was the home of most of the major cartoon voice actors of the era. In the “Frisco Chatter” column of Daily Variety of March 2, 1945, we learn:

Marion [sic] Richman, 21, shipyard worker and latest KPO-NBC “Opportunity Theatre” winner, appears in tomorrow’s Hollywood aircast.

The Hollywood Citizen-News of June 21, 1948 reported on her. You should recognise other names in this squib.

A group of young radio actors, Don Messick, Daws Butler, Marian Richman, Bob Young, Frederick Campbell, Jean Young and Helen Winston, have staged a production of “Night Must Fall,” for presentation at the “little theater” of the Crescent Heights Methodist Church, Fountain and Fairfax, at 8:30 p.m. June 21 to 24. The group goes by the name of the Crescent Players.

Later that year, a writer named Bob Bellem came up with the idea of talking comic books and employed Daws Butler and Marian to provide the voices. The two helped Bellem with stories while “Miss Richman keeps in voice by emitting hyena laughs from time to time,” according to a story at the time in the Los Angeles Daily News. One was called “Sleepy Santa,” and included sound effects by radio whiz Ray Erlenborn.

Television was expanding in Los Angeles at the time, from two channels at the start of 1948 to seven in Sept. 1949. TV stations grabbed talent wherever they could find it, and there was plenty in radio. The Los Angeles Mirror revealed in July 1949:

Marian Richman is one of television’s “heard, not seen” stars. She is the voice of the marionette clown Bobo on the KTTV children’s show “Bozo’s Circus” aired Saturdays at 7:30.

Richman lent her voice to a puppet show, along with Butler and Colleen Collins, who you can hear in a number of MGM cartoons, such as Counterfeit Cat. The footage came from France. Gigi and Jock debuted on KTSL in Los Angeles on September 16, 1950. The Hollywood Reporter called Richman “fine” and praised Butler in its review. The series was written by Bill Asher, who went on to direct I Love Lucy and Bewitched.

Variety of September 27, 1950 mentioned she and Daws Butler dubbed voice tracks for Courneya Productions’ chimp starrer Chimplock Hums and the Net of Fate series satirizing Sherlock Holmes for Bing Crosby Enterprises. This was not a cartoon. The site sherlocktron.com says Jerry Courneya used trained chimps as performers, and the series was shown in Canada in 1953 as Professor Lightfoot and Dr. Twiddle after the Conan Doyle estate complained about the name. In 1951, Richman signed with Pathway Productions for a proposed Cinnamon Bear half-live, half-puppet TV show.

She eventually appeared on camera as well, being featured on an episode of Mystery is My Hobby on KTTV on February 6, 1950. At the end of the year, she was sending out cards reading “Surprise, I’m Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on Spike Jones’ record.” The Los Angeles Times revealed her voice is the one hiccupping on Jones’ “Molassess, Molasses.” The following year, she sung the refrain behind Jones’ parody of “Peter Cottontail.”

The National Automatic Merchandising Association named her Miss Red Feather of 1951. Richman landed a regular spot as a hostess on Star Hostess Party on KNXT in July 1952 (Johnny Carson was an emcee on it at one time with her) and then on KTTV’s Sav-On Theatre about half a year later.

The Today show was gaining ratings in the East, so stations on the West Coast decided to broadcast at 7 a.m. as well. In November that year, Richman was one-third of the cast of Panorama Pacific, which aired in Los Angeles (KNXT), San Diego (KFMB-TV) and San Francisco (KPIX). It was the first programme of the CBS-TV Pacific Network. The critic of the San Francisco Examiner shrugged “Marian Richman...did what most women do best—talk. She talked about the weather and whether they should play another record or not.”

TV trade publications report she appeared on shows as diverse as Hallmark Hall of Fame, Dragnet and Betty White’s Life With Elizabeth. Herb Stein’s column in Photoplay once remarked:

The versatility of a gal trying to get ahead: Actress Marian Richman sent letters to talent scouts and columnists, mentioning the characters she plays (and dig this): “Lead, ingenue, neurotics, toughs, housewife, sophisticate, commercials—and the real, real friendly type.”

Her publicist seems to have been at work. Newspapers had pictures aplenty of her, and a story in 1953 got her ink when it said:

TV actress Marian Richman, receiving a contract and asked to “execute it in the spaces provided,” returned it filled with bullet holes. A note added that “as per your request, the contract was executed—at dawn.”

Science fiction was big in the 1950s, and Richman became part of it with a role in Ivan (“Flipper”) Tors’ 3-D feature film Gog, released by United Artists in 1954, starring Richard Egan as a security agent and two robots that went around killing secretaries.

Now, let’s talk a bit about her animation career. Let’s first point out this is not a filmography with each and every cartoons she was in. If you want that, you can do no better than to buy Volume 2 of Keith Scott’s book “Cartoon Voices of the Golden Age.” Richman was first hired at Warner Bros., as best as I can tell, in 1949. You can hear her in Friz Freleng’s Canned Feud, copyrighted that year but released in 1951. However, Keith reveals her first cartoon was Chuck Jones’ The Scarlet Pumpernickel, released in 1950, where she created the role of Melissa. Her next cartoon was Bob McKimson’s Strife With Father, also 1950, where she is Gwendolyn, playing a bird version of Benita Hume, Ronald Colman’s wife. Keith has found her in nine Warners cartoons, all uncredited.

UPA also hired her for a number of shorts, beginning with Giddyap, first appearing on screens in 1950. Her last role for the studio was in Gerald McBoing Boing on the Planet Moo, 1956. She received screen mention on some of them. The Citizen-News of December 12, 1950, reported she was on the very limited animated NBC Tele-Comics.

What happened to Richman? It’s another sad story. Her career ended at the age of 33. She died in her Hollywood home on February 24, 1956 after what Variety called “a short illness.” The trade paper was being less than forthright. Her death certificate says she committed suicide, overdosing on pentobarbital. Richman’s last cartoon appeared in theatres more than a year after her death. She played Ralph Phillips’ mother in Boyhood Days, a Chuck Jones short released on April 20, 1957 (she was Phillips’ teacher in From A to Z-z-z-z-z in 1954).

Two final notes about Richman—she was made an honorary first sergeant of the 112th Air Forces Communications squadron, according to the Hollywood Reporter of Oct. 20, 1949. And her name is among the signators in a full-page ad in the Reporter of Nov. 3, 1947 supporting actor Larry Parks, already fingered by the right-wing for his progressive causes. Among the other people signing was Bea Benaderet.

Here are a couple of examples of Richman’s non-cartoon work. First, her recording of “Peter Cottontail.”



And here’s one of her “Talking Komics” with Daws Butler called “Flying Turtle.”

Today's Hidden Gag

Tex Avery seems to have made Circus Today (1940) to amuse his co-workers. It’s not one of his good spot gag cartoons, but it’s packed full of references to the Leon Schlesinger cartoon studio staff.

Most of them are in the dialogue, but there’s one hidden in Johnny Johnsen’s backgrounds. Although the cartoon takes place in the Jingling Bros. Circus, the big top has the letters “L.S.” You can guess what they stand for.



Most of the characters we meet are named for Schlesinger employees: assistant animator Ace Gamer, story man Rich Hogan, executive assistant Henry Binder.

Then there’s the “sensational Captain Clampett.” This one isn’t only named for director Bob Clampett, it’s a caricature of him.



Jack Miller is the credited writer, combining with Avery on a few familiar gags (egs. the elephant repeating the bobcat routine and the sign-ignoring animal feeder, both from Cross Country Detours), Sid Sutherland gets the animation credit, and it would appear Bob McKimson and Virgil Ross also animated scenes.

It's Just a Jokio

During war-time, it’s okay to ridicule the enemy. Of course, when the war’s over, the ridicule becomes really out of place. Bugs Bunny stopped nipping anyone from the Land of the Rising Sun, Popeye didn’t tell anyone in Japan they were saps, and Tokio stopped being a jokio.

Tokio Jokio was Norm McCabe’s last directorial effort for Warner Bros. It would appear he had left the studio and was in uniform when this cartoon was released on May 15, 1943 as his credit is “Cpl. Norman McCabe.” (The city was spelled “Tokio” back then).

The short is supposedly a captured Japanese newsreel and is full of unflattering, tired stereotypes. It starts out with a parody of the Pathé newsreels with the rooster crowing. Except the rooster turns out to be a Japanese vulture in disguise.

“Cock-a-doodle do, prease,” says the vulture, who then rubs its hands (?) together as the Japanese flag appears in the background. (The deal is Japanese people are polite and pronounce the letter “l” as “r,” so they say “prease” instead of “please.” Try to control the laughter).

The music behind this scene is “Fou So Ka.” You can hear it below, from a Victor recording in the U.S. Library of Congress.



The Japanese national anthem, “Kimi Ga Yo,” is under the opening credits.

Don Christensen gets the revolving story credit. Izzy Ellis is the credited animator, though I suspect Art Davis, Cal Dalton and John Carey also animated, with an uncredited Dave Hilberman providing layouts.

McCabe and Christensen don’t leave their ridicule for the Japanese. Hitler and Mussolini show up as losers as well.