Wackiki Writers

It’s a real disappointment that a cartoon featuring cartoon writers Tedd Pierce and Mike Maltese playing themselves isn’t funny. But that describes ‘Wackiki Wabbit.’

Director Chuck Jones and Layout Man John McGrew spend virtually the whole cartoon telling the viewer “Look at us! Look at the angles we made! Look at our camera shots! Look at our design-y background art! Look how we’re not like everyone else!” Very little of any of this is for the sake of advancing the story or for gag purposes. It’s there to show off.

Ken Harris is the credited animator. But we get some smears suggesting Bobe Cannon is at work.



Smeary Tedd Pierce.



Smeary Mike Maltese.



And Smeary Bugs Bunny. The Bugs smears are for the sake of smears. He’s turning his head back and forth for no particular reason other than to give the artist a chance to do smear drawings.

Two weeks before ‘Wackiki Wabbit’ came out in July 1943, Warners released another of Jones’ ultra-design efforts—‘The Aristo Cat’. It’s a far better cartoon because of a stronger story and gags once the mice show up to battle the selfish jerk cat. In this one, Bugs torments (in very few gags) a couple of lacklustre starving castaways (Maltese barely speaks) who, quite logically, want food.

I guess if you’re an artist, you find art in itself entertaining. But if you’re making a comedy film, the concentration had better be on comedy. Jones forgot that in this one.

Bad Luck Blackie

One after another, Tex Avery comes at you with a stream of variations on a gag in ‘Bad Luck Blackie,’ one of his best cartoons. You know the black cat is going to cross in front of the evil bulldog. And you know something’s going to fall from the sky and land on the dog. But you don’t know what or even when. Then, when one gag is finished, it’s on to the next one.

How about a couple of scare takes?




How about the sneaky bulldog becoming cellophane-thin to sneak up on his kitten prey?



And how about the dog as brush strokes with eyes rushing into a scene, then becoming a solid. It happens in ten frames, five drawings on twos, immediately after the drawing where the cat disappears under the building.



Avery has the same crew as ‘Lucky Ducky’ working on this great short, released in 1949—Louie Schmitt, Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton and Preston Blair. Avery himself is the snickering bulldog. The cat’s voice is open for debate; it’s a different guy than the growly Cat That Hates People, featured in the Avery cartoon released just before this one.

It’s a Great Honour Being Here Tonight

“Dean Martin put the ‘moan’ in ‘testimonial’,” a Hollywood observer once yowped. There was a time when you couldn’t get away from Dean Martin TV roasts, complete with vaudeville-era jokes (all on cue-cards), Foster Brooks’ tedious drunk act, Ruth Buzzi constantly bashing someone with her handbag, and the same guffawing reaction shots edited in throughout the broadcast. Despite all that, the shows were a huge success because viewers loved the stars no matter how weak and contrived the material was. (As an aside, I really love Ruth Buzzi. Her ability to stay in character in all these shows is a testimony to how underrated a talent she is).

The TV roasts descended from the show biz fraternity roasts put on by the Lambs, the Friars and so on. The roasts had a more stately moniker of “testimonial dinner” at one time. One was given in Jack Benny’s honour to mark his tenth year in broadcasting in 1941 (see below).

There’s a fleeting mention of Jack in this column which appeared in newspapers starting April 20, 1948. But the star is really Eddie Cantor, who tells great old stories that only the great old comedians could tell.

By ERSKINE JOHNSON
HOLLYWOOD—(NEA)—Everything runs in cycles in Hollywood except producers, who run in circles.
Right now Hollywood is having a testimonial banquet cycle and if someone hasn’t given you one you just ain’t anybody. (Or else you aren’t eating anyway. They never give a man a dinner until he can afford one.)
As of today there have been testimonial dinners for Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson, George Jessel, a radio editor, a lady columnist, and Bob Hope, who thinks there will probably be one soon for the janitor of the Friars’ club.
Oscar winners Ronald Colman and Edmund Gwenn are next in line. They get a stag banquet at the Masquers’ club April 28.
Cantor was getting two poached eggs on toast—“they look just like me”—when I cornered him at the Brown Derby. As a veteran banquet-goer for 30 years—“always a bridesmaid but never a bride until now”—Cantor was full of testimonial dinner lore.
Testimonial Chickens
In fact, Eddie thinks there are chickens raised especially and laid aside for testimonial banquets. “Especially skinny and especially tough.”
Eddie remembered a testimonial banquet in 1924 for someone whose name he didn’t remember. The famous New York lawyer, Max Steuer, was toastmaster. One of the speakers talked for nearly an hour, then apologized, saying, “I’m sorry. I didn’t bring a watch with me.”
To which Steuer replied, “Why there was a calendar right behind you.”
This one Eddie says he’ll never forget. Will Rogers was invited to be toastmaster at a Jewish charity drive banquet. To the surprise of everyone he accepted. But the big surprise came with the banquet seven weeks later.
Will stood up and didn’t speak a word of English all evening. Everything he said was in Hebrew. He had spent the seven weeks learning a language for just one evening.
Cantor and George Jessel once promised a pal they would attend his testimonial banquet at a New York hotel. It was on a Saturday night and they were anxious to get back to their gin rummy game. So they rushed into the hotel, went to the back door of the banquet room and said to the first man they met:
“Put us on right away. We’ve got a date.”
Wrong Party
The fellow beamed, said, “Of course,” and shoved them onto the stage. They told jokes for half an hour and then rushed back to their cards. Next day the pal called Cantor and said., “What happened to you? Where were you last night?”
“Where were we?” yelled Cantor. “We told jokes at your banquet for half an hour.”
In their rush, Eddie and George had gone to the wrong banquet room and had entertained somebody else’s pal.
The great Caruso was given a testimonial banquet at the Friars after World War I. There was a long program intended to entertain him. Caruso listened for a while, then stood up and shouted:
“Why nobody ask me to sing? I am a professional. I will show you programs where I worked.”
And with that, Caruso walked onto the stage, collared a pianist and sang for nearly an hour.
“Caruso,” said Eddie, “was just an Italian Al Jolson.”

Johnson referred to the Jessel dinner among the items in his column later in the week:

Gags flew high, wide and handsome at the George Jessel testimonial banquet. Jack Benny, the m.c. , recalled his own career with Darryl Zanuck, Jessel’s boss, and quipped,
“Zanuck traded me to Warner Bros, for an assistant director and a polo mallet.”
Sam Goldwyn insisted, “Jessel has been around so long there’s a story that he’s the actor who shot Lincoln. But if Lincoln had heard Jessel sing, it would have been the other way around.”

Frankly, I’d rather have seen that testimonial dinner than Foster Brooks belching his words for the umpteeth time. I’ll bet Ruth Buzzi would agree.

To listen to the Jack Benny 10th Anniversary Dinner broadcast of May 11, 1941, click on the audio player below.



And Jack’s show of November 4, 1951 revolved around a testimonial dinner with Jessel guest-starring. The supporting cast includes Mel Blanc, Bea Benaderet, Frank Nelson and a young boy playing Jack Benny that’s still busy in show biz today. His name is Harry Shearer.

Paul Terry, Innovator

No one really thinks of Paul Terry being at the cutting edge of animation. By 1950, his cartoons looked positively old-fashioned at times next to, well, everyone else’s. But in the silent days, it was a different story. Terry’s cartoons were universally praised in newspaper write-ups in 1924, and one syndicated columnist decided to do a feature piece on what he found ground-breaking in the Terry shorts.



Much of what you’ll read is probably pretty familiar if you’re into animation, but it would have been unknown to the average person in 1924. The drawing you see above accompanied the column, which appeared in different papers on different dates (undated feature pieces like this being banked for whenever something was needed).

Background To Photoplays Prove To Be All Important
By RUTGERS NEILSEN
Even life itself is played against backgrounds. Events take place in varied settings—ou the land, on the sea, in the air, and beneath the earth’s surface. Backgrounds are to cartoon movies what the platinum setting is to the diamond in the ring, or the frame is to a good painting. They literally back up the subject in more ways than one. Atmosphere, that quality which tends so much to give reality to a drawing, play, or whatnot, is injected by well developed backgrounds.
Yet, despite the rapid advancement in motion picture art, backgrounds in their present high state of development, are a comparatively recent feature of pen drawn movies. Therefore, our title—“Backgrounds To The Forefront"—is not as paradoxical as it sounds because settings have not heretofore kept pace with animation.
Paul Terry illustrates some of the best examples of the latest, up-to-the-minute development of drawn backgrounds in his “Aesop’s Film Fables” distributed by Pathe Exchange, Inc. These modernized versions of the ancient fabulist’s brain-throbs are so well staged that when one is seen on the screen, you forget that the movie is a series of animated drawings instead of portrayals by human actors and trained animals.
For years, a few roughly sketched lines to give depth—as you see in newspaper comic strips—sufficed for the backgrounds in movie cartoons.
Under the direction of Paul Terry, the artists at the studios of Fables Pictures, Inc., pay strict attention to appropriate atmospheric backgrounds, highly developed.
Since we are laying stress on backgrounds, we want to correct any impression that may creep into your mind that this feature of the cartoons is given the most attention. Such is not the case, for animation comes first. But the better the backgrounds are the better they display the action of the characters and heighten the reality of the scenes.
Fully detailed backgrounds have been made practicable by the use of celluloid sheets for the series of final drawings that give the animation to the characters. Heretofore when a complete character together with the background had to be executed upon drawing paper for every exposure—and there are 16 to a foot—it was not feasible to draw any more setting detail than was absolutely necessary. However, with the system developed by Paul Terry, only the actual members of the characters’ bodies needed in action need be drawn to give the effect of life-like motion. So, now, the background has to be drawn but once and may be given more attention.
Under the modern Paul Terry system, the sketches that animate the characters are super-imposed upon the backgrounds and photographed. Through the transparence of the celluloid, the background is registered with all its detail. That part of the background which is not wanted in the particular scene is blocked out by painting over the character on the under surface of the sheet. This is necessary, for instance, where Farmer Al Falfa is supposed to walk past a building. If Farmer Al were drawn merely in outline upon the celluloid sheets, the drawing of the building in the background sketch would show through the transparency. So, in each sketch the character’s body and limbs are “filled in” with paint.
To show Henry Cat fishing, the following procedure is carried out by Terry and his artists. The spring board upon which Henry is to be seated, with its landscape surroundings, is drawn upon the background sheet of paper. On celluloid sheet the cat’s body is drawn in a sitting position, so that superimposing it over the background shows him in a natural position for one fishing, except that his arms, rod and line are missing. These are drawn on a second celluloid sheet, which, when super-imposed over the first sheet, complete Henry Cat. Then, the two sheets are super-imposed upon the background and photographed. To show Henry getting a “bite” his arm is made to raise the rod by drawing the “arm”, rod, etc., in successive positions on several sheets of celluloid. The photographing of various combinations of drawings animate the Cat. This procedure eliminates the necessity of drawing the entire body over and over to register the fishing movements.
Having explained how it is now possible to use detailed backgrounds, we shall discuss briefly the backgrounds themselves. These important features of Paul Terry’s animated drawings composing the “Aesop’s Film Fables” are painted in “wash” upon heavy drawing paper. Black and white paints are used in executing these shallow settings. By varying the mixtures of these “colors” all necessary tones and definition are secured.
The older type of background has mere lines which only suggest atmosphere. It is not so far removed from the system in the time of Shakespeare when the sign “Forest” or “The castle” was used upon a bare stage in lieu of better setting. But, as modern stagecraft has advanced, so has the staging of the animated cartoon movie.
It is surprising how much better a background looks upon the screen than when viewed as a “still” drawing upon paper. The screening, of course, shows the characters in action “before” the settings, thus intensifying the depth. Probably other features help to heighten the illusion of the mere “wash” drawings in the background and make them realistic. After you view some of the latest Paul Terry creations in the “Aesop’s Film Fables” series, you can draw your own conclusions as to just what feature you think heightens the realism. We feel sure that you will agree with us that now backgrounds are to the forefront.

Considering how few newspaper features were written about animation, it’s significant that Terry was the subject of one of them. Yet, even then, his studio was being eclipsed by the far more amusing adventures of Felix the Cat. And within a few years, sound, a mouse and a chap named Disney would overtake them all.

Cagney the Cartoon Gent

Type Mae Clarke’s name into an internet search engine and it will likely add the word “grapefruit” before you’re finished. She’ll be forever known as the woman who had one crunched into her face by James Cagney in ‘The Public Enemy’ (1931).

Warner Bros. took advantage of the movie moment in advertising for other films with Cagney. Here’s one with some glorious (and, unfortunately, anonymous) caricature art for his 1934 comedy drama ‘Jimmy the Gent.’

That Prince! Where Have I Seen Him Before?

Walt Disney greedy? Walt Disney gouging theme park patrons? Walt Disney not a union member?

No, none of this describes Walt Disney. It describes the prince in the Fractured Fairy Tale ‘Sleeping Beauty’ (1960), part of the Rocky and Bullwinkle show. And the prince just happens to look like, well...



While Bob Clampett’s ‘Beanyland’ episode a few years later settled for puns (“Darn Old Duck Pond”) and parody (an ersatz version of “Wish Upon a Star”), ‘Sleeping Beauty’ is almost The Revenge of the Jay Ward Employees. They’re commenting on, if not attacking, Uncle Walt and his “child” in Anaheim.

It’s significant Sleeping Beauty was picked as the subject of the cartoon for Disney had completed his ‘Sleeping Beauty’ not many months earlier—then promptly fired a whole bunch of employees, some of whom had been at the studio for a number of years and were no doubt close friends of their union brothers and sisters at the Ward studio. In another shot, the Fractured Fairy Tale is drawn in a minimalist style. It couldn’t be more opposite of the “Illusion of Life” animation that became the hallmark and mantra of the Disney films.



Probably the biggest blast at Uncle Walt’s Disneyland was Sleeping Beautyland’s admission fee for every one of what are pretty banal attractions—“Stair Land” and “Entrance Hall Land” among them (the attractions being a hall and a flight of stairs). The Walt stand-in is seen counting his money over and over which, according to historian Keith Scott, made the sponsor nervous that Disney might sue (Jay Ward would have responded “Please sue us. We love the publicity!”). To add to the shysterness, the voice Daws Butler gives the prince is the same as Hokey Wolf, his variation on the scheming Sgt. Ernie Bilko played by Phil Silvers.



The Fractured Fairy Tales are, well, just about everything on ‘The Bullwinkle Show’ (né ‘Rocky and his Friends’), still funny, despite some crude drawing. Take a look at ‘Sleeping Beauty’, with the correct opening and closing music, though the sound only comes through one channel.

The Star Who Survived Bad TV Spin-Offs

You have to wonder why Harry Morgan agreed to star in the best-forgotten “After M*A*S*H.” He should have known it would be a critical and ratings failure. Why? Because it wasn’t the first time he was thrust into the starring role of a sequel to a hit show that hadn’t a hope of reaching the popularity of the show he had just been on.

While Morgan, who died this week at the age of 96, is best known for the revived ‘60s version of “Dragnet” and his Emmy-winning performances as Colonel Potter on “M*A*S*H,” Morgan’s big television break came in the sitcom “December Bride,” which debuted in 1954. About all he was known for at that point was he was not the same guy as radio satirist Henry Morgan (as it turns out, neither of them used their real names).

For those that haven’t seen it, “December Bride” centred on a widow played by Spring Byington who moved in with her daughter and son-in-law and hoped to land a husband. The comedy was actually in the hands of the wonderful Verna Felton, who played her friend, and Morgan, who played the next-door neighbour grouching about his wife. The gimmick was the wife was never seen on the show.

It’s a television truism that time always eats away at the ratings of top-rated shows. Producers respond by adding babies (“I Love Lucy”) or guest stars (“I Love Lucy”) or going on location (“I Love Lucy”) or new neighbours (you get the gag). In early 1959, “December Bride” (produced at Desilu, which brought the world “I Love Lucy”) was no different.

In Hollywood
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
HOLLYWOOD, Jan. 24 (NEA)—A change of time or the drop of a few audience points, after a TV show has gone along in spectacular style for five years, can start panic buttons buzzing and cue frantic calls for “Let’s Do Something” conferences.
It happened recently, to “December Bride.”
A new time, the drop of a few audience points did it.
Parke Levy, the little fellow with the big sense of humor who created the show, came up to the conference from his boat moored 40 miles away at Balboa Bay. People from the CBS network and from the agency were there and Levy did the evaulating of all the ideas. There were many — “gimmicks” to boost ratings. “New Look” ideas.
Marriage maybe for Spring Byington?
“No,” Parke said, “too many fans liked her to be free.”
Marriage for Verna Felton, who plays Hilda? Parke dismissed that idea with:
“But what would Hilda and her husband have to talk about?”
No one could answer that question.
“How about Frances Rafferty and Dean Miller becoming parents?” someone suggested. Parke had a big “No” for that idea.
“Then,” he said, “Spring would be a grand-mother and we would have a grand-mother show, which it isn’t. It’s a mother-in-law show.”
A teen age boy as a next door neighbor? Parke didn’t think the teen age influence would mean much to the show’s middle-aged fans. He was really frank about it. He said, “I really don’t know what audiences want next on TV.”
They had one new “December Bride” gimmick going already, Parke reminded everyone Next door neighbor Pete — played by Harry Morgan — and his wife, the never-seen Gladys, were having a baby. The baby, Linda, would be seen for the first time. Jan. 22—
the first cast addition to the show in five years. There will be babysitting routines now, etc.
Parke added that there are plans for Spring Byington & Co. to take a trip to Europe or to the Orient for a change of scenery. Then Parke broke the meeting up by thinking out loud:
“We’ll have Pete’s baby grow up fast, buy her a pony and then we’ll have a western.”
The meeting adjourned then. Everything that could be done was being done for “December Bride.” The meeting couldn’t do much about TV fans suffering from what Parke called, “Double claustrophobia — people in living rooms watching people act in living rooms.”
“December Bride Out West,” is a shuddering thought, at that.
“Well, it was interesting. They say imitation is the sincerest see us doing any imitations of form of flattery, but you’ll never them. For one thing, I don’t think it would fit into our format.”

The Harry Morgan baby idea didn’t work, though it did result in lots of newspaper publicity. By September, Parke Levy had figured out what to do. He’d try to save what was left of “December Bride” by spinning Harry Morgan’s character off into his own show. Of course, that left a small problem. So Levy decided what producers did years later when “Columbo” spawned a “Mrs. Columbo.” They’d destroy the unseen wife illusion and cast a woman to co-star with Morgan. The role was cast the following year.

Harry Morgan With Own Show
By VERNON SCOTT
UPI Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD, Aug. 24 (UPI)—Remember Harry Morgan — the snide little guy on the defunct “December Bride” teleshow who constantly complained about his wife Gladys?
Well, Morgan is returning next season in a new series, “Pete and Gladys,” a star in his own right. As a supporting character in the “Bride” series, Harry, along with Verna Felton, kept viewers laughing for five years. He and the character actress have joined forces in the new venture.
Must Tone Down
There's one other important addition — Gladys.
“On the old show I just complained about Gladys as a battle ax.” Morgan said. “Now that she will be seen I’ll have to tone it down.
“I still have a mother-in-law who doesn’t appear on the show and I continue to blast her pretty well. I think that’s why the character of Pete was so popular, especially with men.
“I spoke for all men with latent hostility to wives and mothers-in-law. Guys used to stop me in the street and congratulate me.
“But the mothers-in-law of the country thought I was an ogre."
Miss Felton, who played busybody Hilda Crocker, will continue to be the target of Pete’s barbs on the CBS-TV entry.
Sample dialogue, Pete to Hilda: “You would have made a wonderful Miss America. . .only they hadn’t discovered it yet. The years have been good to you, yes, but some of the weekends must have been murder.”
Cara Williams Stars
Because shapely, red-haired Cara Williams is playing Gladys, Morgan’s stinging wit will be softened when it comes to defaming his wife.
“She’s frumpy sometimes, and there is still plenty of unpleasantness. And when I’m not around here I still talk a lot more severely than the circumstances warrant.”
Off screen Morgan is quiet and not given to scathing observations about married life. He has been happily married for 21 years and is the father of four teenage sons.
“This is one of the few times a character has been taken from one series to star in another,” Morgan said. “I remember ‘The Great Gildersleeve’ was more of a supporting character in ‘Fibber McGee and Molly,’ and that show turned out to be a big hit.
“I don’t expect to find any hazards by switching to a new show. Matter of fact, I think
‘Pete and Gladys’ will be much funnier than ‘December Bride.’”

Morgan put on a brave face in the interview, but even he must have known the show was doomed from the start. The producers did what producers obsessively do—they go with an idea because it’s wildly popular then completely change it to eliminate everything that was popular to begin with. Having an unseen wife allowed the TV audience, for five years, to build up in their mind what Gladys looked like and behaved like. Suddenly, Cara Williams was sprung on those same viewers. She wasn’t what they pictured. And, just as suddenly, Pete was acting differently toward her. The characters the audience knew were gone. Substituted, instead, were wisecracks against a motherly-looking senior citizen. Oh, and a redhead who did physical comedy (“I Love Lucy”) alongside another supporting actor, Gale Gordon (“The Lucy Show”).

It’s a wonder it didn’t kill his career, but he can partly thank Ben Alexander for that. Alexander wasn’t contractually available to return to “Dragnet” when Jack Webb revived it in the ‘60s, so he picked Morgan. And Morgan supplemented his residuals some years later with his best role, being MacLean Stevenson’s sequel as the commander of the 4077. And then came “After M*A*S*H.”

If you really want a taste of that show, you’ll have to find it yourself. But here’s a taste of “Pete and Gladys.” And we do mean “taste.”

Hollywood Kitchen Magic

You’d expect a forgotten, low-budget movie studio like Regal Films to have problems putting together believable props and effects for its 1958 classics ‘Space Master X-7’ and ‘Wolf Boy’ (not starring Taylor Lautner). You wouldn’t expect the prop proprietors to have difficulty with a loaf of bread. But such is the nature of Hollywood.

You may recall in the ‘I Love Lucy’ episode “Pioneer Women” (1952), Lucy Ricardo baked a long, long trailer loaf of bread. The show actually used real rye bread from a commercial bakery because it was cheaper than building a phoney prop. But, apparently, Regal Films decided to splurge and go with the phoney kind. Because That’s Show Biz.

The United Press revealed all in an amusing column in papers of May 31-June 1, 1949.

Baking Old-fashioned Loaf of Bread Stupendous Task for Movie Magic-makers
By VIRGINIA MacPHERSON
HOLLYWOOD, May 31.—(U.P.)—Baking an old-fashioned loaf of bread almost proved Hollywood’s undoing this week.
The movie magic-makers can move whole mountains and whip up tropical hurricanes without jatting an eye. But it took ‘em six whole days, a batch of rubber cement, and a can of brown paint to knock out a hunk of the “staff of life.”
And the baker they hired to make sure it looked real stalked home in a grave state of shock, swearing he’d never work on another Hollywood epic as long as he lived, so help him.
The kitchen catastrophe took place on the set of Regal Films’ “Mrs. Mike.” The script writers, homespun lads all, decided it’d be a nice touch if Evelyn Keyes baked Dick Powell a loaf of bread.
So far, so good. The powers-that-be called in Joe Pheipos, who runs a bakery in San Fernando Valley, to function as technical adviser on the sifting, kneading, baking, etc.
But in the movies nothing is what it seems, and regular flour, which was good enough for Pheipps’ Greek ancestors for 5000 years, wasn’t white enough for he movie-makers. Joe protested, but they added a little bicarbonate of soda to “dress it up.”
When it came time to knead the dough they decided to sling in a generous supply of slow-flowing rubber cement to give it a “cinematic” touch. By now, Joe is goggle-eyed.
Next, it turned out the backwoods oven, fired by pine logs, wasn’t hot enough. So prop man Johnny Orlando built a modern gas range inside, and pretty soon the aroma of baking bicarbonate of soda, flour, water, and rubber cement began to waft through the studio.
There was even a thin ribbon of smoke trickling out through the oven. It looked like the bread was baking. Actually, it was coming from a burning cigarette.
“You drive-a me craze,” Joe stormed. “What a helluva way to make da movies. No wonda you guys got ulcers!”
He stuck around just long enough to eye the finished product—And that's when he got the crowning insult. A painter rushed up to tint the loaf a crispy brown.
Joe threw up his hands.
“You tell me come over, be technical adviser,” he ranted. “You pay me lotta money. But who wants it with ulcers?
“You keepa your damned ulcers! And your movie bread! From now on I stick to my own recipes!”

‘Mrs. Mike’ (as opposed to the old Mr. Mike’s Steakhouse) was Regal’s second film. The company specialised in, well, it was the ‘50s after all, westerns, space/science fiction features and filmed a token musical epic—‘Rockabilly Baby’ (1957) featuring those noted rockabilly artists Irene Ryan (Granny on ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’) and Ellen Corby (Grandma on ‘The Waltons’). One of the songs was written by Dick Kallman, who took acting lessons from Lucille Ball at her Desilu Workshop. Therefore, ‘Rockabilly Baby’ would have been one Regal Film where a loaf of bread wouldn’t have been a problem.

Kiss of a Gruesome Twosome

One of the great things about cartoons on DVD is, interlacing aside, you can stop them whenever you want and check out individual frames. That way, you can appreciate Rod Scribner even more.

Scribner’s animation in the Bob Clampett unit at times wasn’t really so much animation, where one drawing grew out of the other. It was a series of stark, at times rubbery, poses, one for each frame, that eventually led to a conclusion. Scribner seems to get credit for all these drawings, as if he never had an assistant (we know he did, as Bill Melendez was one of them for a while).

Here’s one of many examples. This is in ‘A Gruesome Twosome’ (released in 1945) that’s almost two cartoons in one. Warren Foster wrote in a similar structure later, especially at Hanna-Barbera, where the plot changes direction in mid-cartoon. The stars are a pair of cats, one a rip-off of Jimmy Durante, and the half-first of the short sees them vying for the attention of a girl cat. Then she disappears and the pair vie for possession of Tweety.

The first half features one of those interrupt-the-action-and-talk-to-the-audience bits that Clampett loved. The cats are somewhere off camera fighting. A dog rises up into the shot, he’s designed like something in the Clampett unit of the later ‘30s. He looks very average.



But the dog goes nuts because he has a chance to kiss the babe. And Scribner’s animation goes nuts. Just some of his drawings.





Then the kiss. Just one of the drawings.



And then the reaction. We even get a butt shot at the camera.





The other credited animators on this are Manny Gould, Basil Davidovich and Bob McKimson; Melendez’ name appears on Clampett cartoons before and after this so why he’s not on this one is a mystery.

The Takes of Rockabye Point

Chilly Willy suffered an ignominious end at the Walter Lantz studio, surrounded by unfunny supporting characters, stiff animation and the hack directing of Paul J. Smith. Even Daws Butler couldn’t get enthused enough with the gag-less dialogue to come up with new voices; a gooney bird must have had a mother who mated with Peter Potamus because that’s whose voice it’s got.

But there was a time when things were different, when Chilly was in the hands of Tex Avery. Tex directed only four cartoons at Lantz, two of them Chillys. They’re both pretty good but the best is ‘The Legend of Rockabye Point’ (1955). You can’t miss Tex’s style. It moves along at a great clip; Tex is into the next gag as soon as the last one registers. There’s his run-to-the-hilltop-and-scream routine he used several times at MGM (‘Deputy Droopy’ probably his best-known); even the layout looks much the same.



And Tex shows his love of teeth, and jagged takes, the kind of thing Grant Simmons used to draw for him at Metro.





Simmons wasn’t with Tex on this cartoon, of course; he had opened his own studio. Tex still had a good group of animators—Don Patterson, La Verne Harding and Ray Abrams, though he bluntly told historian Joe Adamson the work was “pretty crappy.”

Mike Maltese is the writer but, considering how Averyesque the gags are, you have to wonder how much he contributed. He revealed to historian Mike Barrier that he went to Lantz to complain that “I wanted to earn my money there.” Avery was known for having his hands on, and worrying too much about, every phase of each of his cartoons.

Tex arrived at Lantz on February 1, 1954 and left (the same day as Maltese) on August 20th. Alex Lovy took over his unit and finished up a couple of his cartoons, perhaps the best ones Lovy made at Lantz. Maltese headed back to Warner Bros. Tex got out of the theatrical animation business. Perhaps his timing was right. The industry was in a decline from which it never recovered. But if anyone could have made funny cartoons in that atmosphere, it would have been Tex Avery.