Cock-A-Doodle Dog

Tex Avery talked about using the element of surprise in his cartoons, coming up with a gag that the audience least expected. By the 1950s, Tex was still doing that, but there are other gags that fans can see miles away. The fun is watching how he handles them.

‘Cock-A-Doodle Dog’ (1951) is a good example. Tex hangs the cartoon on a simple premise he used a number of times—sleep vs. noise. Tired Spike the bulldog tries to stop a scrawny rooster from obsessively crowing so he can get some rest. Since roosters are supposed to crow, Spike doesn’t have a chance in his effort to change the natural order of things.

Toward the end of the cartoon, Spike throws a cake of soap at the rooster, who swallows it. The rooster blows a huge soap bubble which floats into Spike’s dog house. You can see a nail on the wall. You know what’s going to happen—the bubble will burst and loud crowing will come out of it to wake up Spike—but you don’t know what kind of crazy take Tex is going to pull off. Here’s just one of the drawings.



There’s a gravity gag I really like, where the rooster and Spike back into each other, then start walking up into the sky as their feet touch each other. Finally, the two realise what’s happened. In ‘Ventriloquist Cat’ (1950), Avery uses a fright gag with the cat’s fur standing on end. He does the same thing with the rooster here (feathers standing on end?).



The animators are Avery’s truncated ‘50s MGM crew—Mike Lah, Walt Clinton and Grant Simmons.

Kevin Langley looked at this cartoon 4½ years ago and you can read his post here.

What’s Wrong With this Wabbit?

If you’ve watched enough of the old cartoons, you’ll see an occasional error. Generally, it’s in animation—a limb disappears for a split second, there’s a brief colour change, or something like that. Once in a while, there’s a continuity error. There’s one in the 1942 Warners cartoon ‘The Wabbit Who Came to Supper.’ Look at the telegram that Elmer Fudd gets in the forest.



Now, here’s Elmer at home.



No wonder he’s surprised. He’s in the wrong house. The address on the mailbox isn’t the same as the one on the telegram (And it doesn’t exist in the 1942 Los Angeles City Directory). The wrong house would explain why Elmer could afford a “Steinbeck” piano. Here’s a reconstructed background of Elmer’s living room that was panned in the cartoon. Click to enlarge.



There are no layout or background credits on this cartoon, but Graham Webb’s animation history book says Lenard Kester constructed the backgrounds from layouts by Owen Fitzgerald.

Jack Benny on Radio Success

If you asked Jack Benny the secret behind his big listening audiences, he would have said “Consistency.” Well, he actually did say it in an interview with the Associated Press in 1948.

Over the years, Jack gave full credit to his “gang”. He felt the years had allowed people to befriend his cast—and his secondary cast, like the phone operators or Mr. Kitzel or even the Maxwell—and therefore tune in to hear what they were doing in the radio world Benny and his writers invented. Fortunately, Benny had enough people to mix and match that it carried him into the mid-‘50s despite the show suffering from the loss of some of his old regulars (replacing the larger-than-life Phil Harris proved impossible).

Though he doesn’t mention it in the story, Jack also hooked his audience to come back every week with something else. For several seasons, his writers came up with a running plot that bubbled up over the course of the whole radio season. One year, it was hiring/firing the Sportsmen Quartet. Another year it was trying to find anyone to sing the wretched song he wrote. The best-known one may have been the “I Can’t Stand Jack Benny Because...” contest, an audience participation gimmick that even the giveaway-hating Fred Allen would approve (and took part in as the chief judge).

Allen gets a brief mention in the column with a little tale Jack may not have told before.

Some Radio Stars Revise Shows, But Not Jack Benny
By HOWARD C. HEYN
(For Bob Thomas)
HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 21—(AP)— Feel that nervous fluttering in the autumn air? Radio’s old standbys are flocking back, in new trappings, after as arid a summer as most listeners can remember.
New writers and new formats are legion. Bob Hope, Fred Allen, Eddie Cantor, Jack Carson, Edgar Bergen and others have changed their shows or their casts, some radically.
But not easy going Jack Benny. Consistency must be his mark of distinction.
Jack, just back from Europe, starts his 17th year Oct. 3. And with the same crew. This is Mary Livington’s 17th year too. He’s had the same writers for six years. Don Wilson has been with him 15 years, Phil Harris 13, Rochester 11, Dennis Day nine.
With Benny, every broadcast is a new show, although the basic character of the program remains the same. “It’s the people that the fans like,” says Jack. “As long as we stay in character we can do pretty much as we please. And we keep the show flexible. Maybe we put a guy on like Sinatra, for one line. Some weeks one or even two of the regular company aren’t in the script at all."
I had lunch with Jack at Romanoff’s, and he didn’t gag once— humorously or otherwise. Not even about Fred Allen. He talked about Allen though.
“He’s a strange fellow. He lives very simply. I don't think there’s anything he wants very badly. If there was I’m sure he’d get it. If I go to New York I call him and we have dinner. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t see him. If he comes out here, I offer him my house and my swimming pool, and he stays in a hotel. I like that, in a way. We’re good friends because, when we do get together, we’re really glad to-see each other.”
Jack returned from Europe about two weeks ago. He got a lot of acclaim in London’s Palladium and a lot of golf in the countryside. British audiences he said are just about the most gratifying in the world.
“I gave ‘em the sort of thing I do here, except that I didn’t have Dennis, Don or Rochester with me. Believe me, next time I want them along. Everybody there knows who they are.”
Since he got back Jack has been watching his weight and putting off, as long as possible, any serious work on the season’s broadcasts. He isn’t worrying about television, either. “We’ll take care of that when the time comes,” he said.
The cast has been together so long that, Benny doesn’t have to work half as hard as he did. He puts in, personally, about three days instead of six.
Time was when Benny worked with his six writers Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, Saturday they read the script. Rehearsal came Sunday, just before the show.
Now he and the writers get together on Sunday, after the broadcast, to discuss next week’s airing. The writers work Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Benny plays golf. Friday, at 9 A. M., he goes over the rough script. Maybe they start again, from scratch. By Friday night things are in fairly good shape.
But, Jack says, on Saturday anything can happen. They may rewrite the whole show.
One thing they don’t do: When the show hits hard one week, they don’t strain to top it the next week.
“We just rock along,” said easy-going Jack, “and usually it turns out all right.”

Incidentally, in hunting around for this article, I found the newspaper ad you see above, published the same day in one paper. I didn’t realise Jack endorsed R.C. Cola. It must have been a nice little deal that showed him that consistency also equalled cash.

A Bick and Some Chicks

Frank Tashlin doesn’t have anyone cradling large milk bottles against their chest like he did with Jayne Mansfield in ‘The Girl Can’t Help It’ but you don’t have to look far to find a sexual subtext going on in his cartoon ‘Swooner Crooner.’ Well, maybe it’s more aptly deemed a sexual sub-subtext because the cartoon’s all about female fertility (though no offspring result). Hens that were laying eggs for Porky suddenly stop when a Frank Sinatra rooster shows up. The early ‘40s stereotype of Sinatra gets played up—frail and not terribly manly. You know, someone who wouldn’t induce fertility in women.

Then along comes the Bing Crosby rooster, who casually arouses the hens into renewing their fertility and pumping out endless stacks of eggs. The Hens Can’t Help It. And who better than the Ol’ Groaner? His wife Dixie Lee had four sons by the time this cartoon was released in 1944.

(You’ll notice I’ve avoided any comment about the use of the word “lay”)

We get a bra and panties joke.



And then there’s the famous “between-the-legs” shot as the camera pulls back to demonstrate another of Tashlin’s fixations—camera angles.



In the finale, the crooner roosters prove to be so hyper-masculine when combined, they even make men (or, rather, a male pig) fertile like a female chicken.



Nice use of coloured filters in the shot. Presumably, Tashlin handled his own layouts. Historian Graham Webb says Dick Thomas did the backgrounds.

Of course, Sinatra and Crosby don’t supply their stand-ins’ singing voices. Tashlin didn’t have to look far to find his Crosby. He used Dick Bickenbach, who was animating for Friz Freleng unit but ended up in the Tashlin unit. Bick toddled off to MGM in 1946 to replace Harvey Eisenberg doing layouts for Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, then stuck with the pair when they opened their own studio.

Bick sang for his wife’s mixed fraternal group and in a church choir—he came from a fairly religious background—but he was also a vocalist on radio before he got into the animation industry. The newspaper back home in Freeport, Illinois published this story on January 12, 1926:

RICHARD BICKENBACH TO BROADCAST SONGS TONIGHT
Richard Bickenbach, son of Fred Bickenbach, formerly of Freeport and now a resident of California, will be on the air tonight and doubtless many of his friends in this city will listen in. The young man is to broadcast several songs from station KTBI, Los Angeles, between 11 and 12 o’clock, Freeport time, tonight. He is said to have an excellent voice and has been heard over the radio several times in the past few months.

Bick was born August 9, 1907, so he was 18 at the time. He lent his bari-tones to several other cartoons. He died June 28, 1994. You can read more about him here.

Barker Bill by Bob Kuwahara

In the early 1960s, there was an animated Terrytoon series called ‘Hashimoto’, the pleasant product of the mind of Bob Kuwahara. That’s all I knew about Kuwahara until recently—I’m not a Disneyphile—when I was surprised to learn he was one of the artists enticed to join the new MGM cartoon studio in 1937. His Disney career began several years earlier.

Kuwahara was also behind a newspaper comic called ‘Barker Bill.’ Of course, his name wasn’t on it. He worked for Paul Terry, so in a time-honoured tradition that saw such comic strip “artists” as Leon Schlesinger and Fred Quimby (and even Walt Disney), Terry took credit for the strip, though unlike the aforementioned he didn’t sign his name to it. Animator and historian Mark Kausler has been busy tracking down the strips and reached a bit of a dead-end. His preliminary research couldn’t find the start of the series.

Allow me to help.

The Winnipeg Free Press had a little blurb on September 25, 1954 announcing it was carrying the strip as of the following Monday, the 27th. Here are the strips for that week. They’re not very good scans and have suffered from dirt and scrapes on the microfilm of the newspapers but they’re the best I can do. Click to enlarge them.








You can see the strip had a story line that continued from day to day.

Kuwahara got his own strip in 1956. He was one of five contest winners and United Features syndicated his ‘Marvelous Mike’. As far as I know, what you see below was an entry.



Mark Kausler is a real friend of animation and he’s helped me so many times in the past. I hope this post has helped him and interested you.

Today’s $64,000 Challenge

In 1950s America, it was an American as apple pie to be a little concerned about those Ruskies, even for politicians in Washington to pound their desks with their ham-like fists, shake their jowls and warn how dangerous the Soviet Union was to Our Freedom. But, even in America, there were limits.

54 years ago yesterday, someone decided to hijack live TV network airwaves to get America to do something about it. 45 million people watched.

Viewers Suddenly Challenged By Interloper on TV Quiz
NEW YORK, Nov. 18—(AP)—Viewers watching “The $64,000 Challenge TV” quiz last night were startled to hear themselves challenged.
In the midst of the program, a man later identified by police as Richard Fichter, 34, of Route 1 Springville, Pa., walked in front of a camera and read from a prepared statement:
“America, I have a challenge. The Russians are ahead of you. ... ”
Fichter got no further. The camera swung away from him, he was grabbed by the stage director and was ushered into the wings after his brief performance.
The director, Seymour Robbie, said later he saw Fichter walk into a televised area that included three contestants and a master of ceremonies but thought he was a CBS employe. As soon as Fichter began to read, Robbie shouted through an intercom system: “Remove him.”
Fichter was taken by police to Bellevue Hospital, where he was admitted to the psychiatric ward.
Police refused to divulge the contents of his statement. They said it was headed: “$64,000 Challenge as Prepared by Richard Fichter.”
Legitimately on stage at the time were the M. C., Ralph Story, and three contestants, Teddy Nadler, Norman Fruman and Barry Simmons. All three had already won $4,000 and Story was asking Fruman the $8,000 question when Fichter appeared.
Fruman, a comic book writer from the Bronx, finally answered the question correctly.
The three contestants were involved in an elimination match in the “general knowledge” quiz category. Nadler, a former civil service clerk from St. Louis, and Simmons, a 20-year-old New York City public relations man, will have a chance next week to draw even again with Fruman.
Studio officials said Fichter, a tall, bearded man, had tried to participate in rehearsals yesterday afternoon but was ejected. He had a ticket for last night’s show.

It’s easy to read this and think the guy was some kind of kook who, today, would be screeding incoherently all over the internet. But perhaps not. A little newspaper digging (thanks, internet!) reveals Fichter was born in Hamilton, Ohio and grew up in nearby Oxford, where his father was head of the state Grange, a farmer’s organisation. He and a brother became ministers and had been granted a deferment from military service in World War Two because they were conscientious objectors to war. A third brother was hauled before a grand jury for failing to report, after losing his attempt at deferral based on the same objection. Fichter took his Methodist ministry to Springville, but decided to go into dairy farming. That’s what he was doing when he challenged the ‘Challenge.’

Fichter was involved in a protest in December the following year outside a prison farm in Ohio where another minister had been incarcerated for refusing to pay taxes because they were being used for military purposes. He, his wife, and three children had driven 650 miles to picket the Cincinnati courthouse where the man’s sentencing was taking place.

Furthermore, the United Press story on Fichter’s TV appearance says he “told network official Julia Shorwell he could not ‘sleep two nights ago and got up and wrote a message to the American people about godlessness.’ His message said Americans were ‘frustrated’ because Russia was ahead scientifically and were ‘frantically blaming first this one and then that one.’” It would appear he wanted to warn about the end result of increasing Soviet paranoia, not feed it.

Later, he and his family lived for 13 years in Arzier, Switzerland, and Frankfurt, West Germany. While in Europe he founded and edited a magazine called “Equality,” at one time published in four languages. The family returned to Oxford in 1972 where Fichter died on June 3, 1977 after a long bout with cancer.

Crackpot or someone with a legitimate concern? Considering protests of various kinds have continued since Fichter’s day, it’s perhaps a challenge to decide who is what.

Van Beuren’s Barnyard Bunk

Perhaps there’s some kind of perversity in the make-up of human beings that they like theatrical cartoons that really aren’t that great. There are actually fans of the Gene Deitch Tom and Jerrys. There are people who willing watch Cool Cat. In my case, I enjoy some of the old Van Beuren cartoons.

Yes, they’re pretty third-rate compared to what the people were doing across the street from Van Beuren at the Fleischer studio. Some of the drawing is downright ugly. Many of the cartoons are still written like they were stuck in the silent era—next to no dialogue, just music and sound/vocal effects. And they’re downright strange, either in terms of gags or a story that’s all over the place. But there’s something I like about them, at least the best of them.

Van Beuren’s big stars in the early part of the 1930s were named Tom and Jerry, one tall, one short. Neither had a fleshed-out personality; they just kind of went about their business and occasionally reacted. But several of their cartoons are innocent fun. One of them is ‘Barnyard Bunk,’ released in September 1932.

How can you hate a cartoon with an apron-wearing cow that dances to "Wabash Blues"? Or a chicken that lays eggs as it somersaults (and the eggs hatch into ducks)? Or farmhouse-wrecking mice that put up a ‘Danger’ sign before part of the home collapses? Or how a hoe, shovel, wheelbarrows and bail of hay sprout faces and limbs, then begin to dance to new hit song “Corn-Fed Cal” in a big finale?




You’ll notice how the dancing cow has her legs joined together. The drawing was used a couple of times in the sequence but the artists didn’t draw some Hanna-Barbaric eight-drawing cycle on twos. The dance was mainly on ones and the drawing above was used again after 59 other drawings.

Leonard Maltin dug into the bowels of obscurity in Of Mice and Magic to bring the history of the Van Beuren Studio to light in those pre-internet days, and it’s from his research our knowledge of All Things Van Beuren grew. If you want to know all about Tom and Jerry (and their predecessors Don and Waffles), go to the Cartoon Research site.

Van Beuren fans owe a lot to Steve Stanchfield at Thunderbean Animation, who did what no major company would ever do—restore the battered old Tom and Jerrys. It wasn’t an easy task for a variety of reasons but the results are just great. You can go to Thunderbean’s site here and see what they have, though I don’t believe the page has been updated for awhile. If you want to own some of the lesser-known cartoons of the ‘30s, this is the place to go.

(P.S: If you’re just new to cartoons, the cat and mouse Tom and Jerry weren’t invented until 1940, a number of years after the human Tom and Jerry vanished from theatre screens and the Van Beuren studio closed. One of Van Beuren’s employees worked on the cat and mouse Tom and Jerrys. You may have heard of him. Joe Barbera).

TV or Not TV

1948 seems to be the year many people consider the start of network television, but regular TV broadcasts were around before then. Stations went on the air in New York and Los Angeles in 1931 (some having broadcast experimentally in the late ‘20s) and the networks, small as they were, carried programming during the war years.

By 1947, newspaper articles appeared speculating whether—or when—television would overtake radio as the electronic means of choice. There was no Ed Sullivan Show yet, no Uncle Miltie. Instead, you could watch ‘Pulitzer Varieties’ or ‘King’s Record Shop’ on the DuMont Network or ‘Living Room Education’ on W6XAO in Hollywood or the first 15-minute newsreel by the Associated Press on CBS. It’s really an interesting period in television history, rarely explored.

But there was something behind the speculation. The radio networks knew it, the stars on the radio networks knew it and, most importantly, the sponsors and ad agencies of the shows on the radio networks knew it, as they watched sales of TV sets climb in the buoyant post-war economy. The question was, what was a star to do: give up a well-paying job on a radio show with a huge audience, or jump to a shaky new medium that could eventually kill their current big-money employment.

An Associated Press column put that question to a bunch of the stars during the 1948-49 season. By then, Ed and Miltie were on the small screen, cutting into radio’s numbers. Here’s what the top names had to say.

T-V by Fall?
By BOB THOMAS
HOLLYWOOD, April 22.—(AP)—When will television become big-time? Next fall perhaps. Fall of 1950 for sure.
That’s the way it looks after a survey of TV plans of most of the big air shows. It’s apparent that most of the top television talent will come from the industry’s older brother, radio. Here is the latest news:
Eddie Cantor —Will definitely jump into TV next fall, with simultaneous radio and telecast for present sponsor.
Amos ‘n’ Andy—“We are working on an unusual idea for television and hope to come up with something in the next few months.”
Burns and Allen — Going to New York in June to discuss a TV deal with CBS’ William Paley.
Jack Benny—May do a monthly videocast in the fall; was happy with his debut on the local CBS station.
Bing Crosby—Definitely plans a TV show, but may wait another year; will do show on film.
Bob Hope—Making big plans for TV; may start in fall.
Duffy’s Tavern—Easily adaptable to TV because of one barroom set; may wait until fall of 1950.
Truth or Consequences — Did one show here on TV; waiting until Kine-scoping is better or coast-to-coast telecasting is possible.
Red Skelton — MGM contract keeps him off TV until December, 1952.
[Lux] Radio Theater—Not adaptable because film studios won’t permit telecasting of movie stories of stars.
Screen Guild Players—Same.
Edgar Bergen—Plans a few telecasts next season, will probably be a regular in fall of 1950.
Al Jolson—Laying plans for a minstrel show on TV.
Ozzie and Harriet — Have put their own children into the show, replacing actors who impersonated them; this is first step toward TV show, which may start in fall.
Dennis Day—Watching situation; may start in fall.
Judy Canova—Same.
Jimmy Durante—Tied to MGM contract.
People Are Funny—Possibility of simultaneous TV and radio show in the fall.
Groucho Marx—Probably not for another year; would be done on film.
Fred Allen—In no hurry; “Let the others pioneer it.”
Fibber McGee — Definitely interested; both son and daughter in TV field; Molly calls herself a “television widow,” since Fibber spends all his time watching the screen.
My Friend Irma—All of cast is suitable for TV; waiting for CBS go-ahead.
Spike Jones—Has been experimenting with show, but no commitments yet.
Faye-Harris—Committed to another year of radio; perhaps TV after that.
Frank Sinatra—Studying the field, but no plans yet.
Take It or Leave It—Garry Moore thinks show readily adaptable for TV, ready to go.
There seems little doubt that most of these names will join Milton Berle, Arthur Godfrey, Perry Como and other air stars who have already leaped into the new field. It will happen when (1) Coast-to-coast telecasting comes in, (2) There are enough sets in the U.S. for sponsors to put out more money.

The list is almost a Who’s Who of the radio people who never quite made the jump. For all their greatness on radio, ‘Fibber McGee and Molly’ and ‘Duffy’s Tavern’ never made it on the tube. Nobody thinks of television when they think of Judy Canova. Phil Harris and Alice Faye decided to enjoy semi-retirement after their radio days and stayed out of it. Fred Allen’s reciprocal disdain for television is well known. Frank Sinatra’s role in ‘From Here to Eternity’ took his career in a whole new direction away from the small screen. And we can only imagine the reaction to Jolie’s blackface act if death hadn’t interfered with his plans for a long career in TV.

On the other hand, Jack Benny never missed a beat, though it’s arguable that he was better on radio than television due to his marvellous supporting cast. Skelton was the opposite; television gave him range to do pantomime and other things radio couldn’t. Groucho shone on ‘You Bet Your Life.’ People associate ‘Truth or Consequences’, ‘People Are Funny’ and even the long-lasting ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ more with TV than radio. ‘Take it or Leave It’ went to television after having three zeros added to its $64 jackpot. You know how it ended. And Bob Hope outlasted them all, though he avoided a regular show and stuck to increasingly tacky, cue card-laden specials on NBC.

Perhaps even more interesting is the names that aren’t on the list. When you think of ‘50s television, you think of Lucille Ball, Phil Silvers, the Honeymooners. You think of ‘Playhouse 90’ and ‘Gunsmoke.’ In other words, television viewers almost had their fill of many of the stars of radio and wanted someone new for a new medium. Perhaps to the display of the Cantors and Wynns, the public looking forward and not back.

No Barking Swirls

Chuck Jones temporarily split up his unit at the Warner Bros studio some time in 1952 and had his animators work on different cartoons. Dick Thompson and Abe Levitow animated ‘Feline Frame-Up’ (Production 1278), Ben Washam and Lloyd Vaughn drew ‘The Cat’s Bah’ (Production 1285), leaving his remaining animator to handle ‘No Barking’ (Production 1282). All were released in 1954.

Why Jones did it, I haven’t been able to discern. The studio shut down production for six months, but that wasn’t until June 1953. Regardless, Ken Harris came up with a really likeable cartoon. Not bad for a former car mechanic.

Among the many attractive things about it are a couple of bits of animation featuring swirls and multiples, the first time with Frisky Puppy and the second time, toward the end of the cartoon, with Claude Cat and Frisky.




In the last sequence, there are 12 different drawings of heads, eyes and swirls animated on twos before we get back to the drawing you see above.

Like all animators, Harris had an assistant—it was Al Pabian for awhile in the ‘50s, then Willie Ito—but whether the assistant did any work on this, I don’t know.

Harris was born Karol Ross Harris on July 31, 1898, the son of William and Katherine R. Harris. He spent his youth in a little whistlestop called Elliot near Livermore, California, and then in Stockton before moving to Los Angeles. He died in Los Angeles on March 24, 1982 after a fine, well-documented animation career.

As a trivia note, ‘No Barking’ appeared on the bill with MGM’s attempt to cash in on ‘I Love Lucy.’ See the teeny letters at the bottom of this ad for ‘The Long, Long Trailer.’ And another theatre advertised it as a “new Tweety colortoon,” even though Tweety only has a cameo at the end.

An Egg Scrambled Background

Here’s the kind of thing people never noticed until the advent of home video when they could stop scenes and peer at them for a bit.

In the Warners cartoon ‘An Egg Scramble’ (1950), Prissy the Hen escapes from a house with her precious egg that a housewife was about to boil. She thinks the cops are after her. She runs down the street and hides in a garbage can. There’s a cut to another scene, then back to Prissy jumping out of the garbage can and running down the street some more. Only the two garbage can scenes don’t have the same background.




I suspect this was done because Prissy runs across a street and to the steps of a rundown old building. Having both scenes on one background would have made for a long drawing, so two different backgrounds are used instead. Who would notice?

The layouts are by Cornett Wood and the backgrounds by Dick Thomas. I’m led to believe they were both in the Frank Tashlin unit when Bob McKimson took it over in the mid ‘40s.

The animators in this one are Phil De Lara, Chuck McKimson, Bill Melendez, Rod Scribner and Emery Hawkins. I suspect the animator of the Prissy in the first scene above is different than the one in the scene below, where there’s a fluid take and then Prissy cradles the egg like a football with one hand, uh, wing and the other to the front.

There’s an inside joke with a store called “Foster’s Fresh Eggs” (Warren Foster wrote the cartoon). My favourite background can’t be clipped together but here’s the end of it. There’s a farm road with a barbed wire fence in the foreground, and barns and stacked wheat in the background. The countryside abruptly ends at the city limits and there are cars, buildings and a strip club on a corner.



Bea Benaderet plays all the different hens in the cartoon though, inexplicably, Prissy’s voice is her’s in a couple of scenes and Mel Blanc’s in the rest.