If you’re going to set a cartoon in Paris, you’d better have an appropriate opening. And that’s what you get in Bob McKimson’s “French Rarebit” (1951). Gene Poddany plays ‘Latin Quarter’ over the opening titles and then Milt Franklyn changes the arrangement for the start of the cartoon, which features a fairly literal drawing of the Arc du Triomphe.
Layout man Cornett Wood has the arch set at an angle. The background was painted by Dick Thomas.
Animator Mark Kausler informs me Wood had a storefront under the Hollywood Freeway on Cahuenga Blvd. where he taught drawing into the late ‘60s. Indiana’s Laughmakers, The Story of over 400 Hoosiers by Ray Banta reveals the following:
Cornett Wood went on from John Herron Art School of Indianapolis to become one of the animators for the fabulous Walt Disney production, Fantasia. The feature released in 1940 was called “a tribute to the brilliance of Walt Disney’s staff of artists and animators.” It involved a series of visualizations of musical themes. Wood worked as an effects animator at Disney from March 7, 1938 to September 12, 1941.
After which, he found himself at the Schlesinger studio.
Wood was born September 12, 1905 and died in Los Angeles on May 16, 1980.
Incidentally, if you want to learn more about the Latin Quarter (the area in Paris, not the song by Warren and Dubin), drop by this web site.
“Northwest Hounded Police” (1946) has the takes that Tex Avery became famous for. The last one has the veins growing in Wolfie’s eyes.
The animators on this cartoon were Ed Love, Preston Blair, Ray Abrams and Walt Clinton. Frank Graham supplies Wolfie’s voice. Bill Thompson must still have been on military service because he’s not doing Droopy in this one.
A few days ago, we espoused the opinion on this blog that Jack Benny’s first appearance on the radio wasn’t in 1932, as he had claimed for many years, and pointed out a 1931 appearance on the ‘RKO Theater of the Air’ as likely being the first. A search found no evidence of any broadcasts in 1930 (though Tim Lones of the Cleveland Classic Media blog found one) and the grind of vaudeville would almost preclude anything in the ‘20s.
Turns out we were half right.
Laura Leff of the International Jack Benny Fan Club may know about Jack Benny than anyone alive, save Jack’s daughter Joan. She sent a note that she was sure Jack had done some radio in the late ‘20s in Los Angeles when he was under contract to M-G-M. So back to the digging we went. And, as usual, it turns out Laura was correct. Jack’s famous Ed Sullivan show of 1932 wasn’t his first radio appearance. But it wasn’t in 1931, either.
To the right, you see a clipping from the radio page of the Oakland Tribune of October 9, 1929. At the very bottom, it reads:
“Tonight KFRC will have Jack Benny as master of ceremonies for the Mavio [sic] club from 8 to 9. Marie Wells, popular musical comedienne, will sing a group of songs.”
A check of listings in the Tribune and other California papers (unfortunately, I don’t have access to any Los Angeles papers of the day) clears up the mystery. The show was called ‘The MGM Movie Club’ and it originated from KHJ, the Don Lee network station in Los Angeles. Don Lee owned KFRC in San Francisco and had four affiliates up the West Coast. On August 10, 1929, United Press reported Don Lee was merging his six stations with CBS as of the following January 1st. ‘The M-G-M Movie Club’ was a regularly scheduled show; the previous week featured Basil Rathbone hosting, with Cliff Edwards, Bob Montgomery and forgotten stars Ethelind Terry, Lawrence Gray, the Three Twins and Catherine Dale Owens.
I don’t know any more about the programme or the broadcast itself, though Marie Wells’ presence is puzzling as she was under contract to Warner Bros.
At the time, Jack was about to open in M-G-M’s ‘The Hollywood Revue’ with just about every star the studio had at the time. No doubt that’s what he was pushing on the broadcast. So I won’t go so far as to say October 9, 1929 was Jack Benny’s first appearance on the radio. But we do know it wasn’t 1932 as legend would have you believe.
This post gives me a chance to talk about Laura Leff’s Labour of Love. Laura has just published Volume 3 of “39 Forever.” The first two volumes feature detailed research on every single episode of Jack Benny’s radio programme, including casts, sketches, “firsts”, songs, appearances of the “Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga” gag, screw-ups. Anyone who loves Jack’s radio show should have them. Laura’s now devoted a third volume to Jack’s television series. Almost anything you wanted to know about the show is there. You can read more about it HERE and if you want to find out what else the Fan Club offers, stop by HERE.
By the way, ‘The Hollywood Revue’ of 1929 is memorable in that it brought us that wonderful song “Singin’ in the Rain” long before Gene Kelly’s immortal dance to it in the movie of the same name. You can see briefly Jack at the end of this clip (next to Marie Dressler and a teeny umbrella) along with one of Hollywood’s greatest ever comic actors, Buster Keaton. And you may recognise a few other soggy faces.
Some comedians are an acquired taste. I never acquired one for Joe Penner. And seeing he’s been dead for 70 years, I likely won’t acquire one. But I sure like this ad for his film debut, ‘College Rhythm’ (1934). We get a realistic Penner and a cartoon duck. Duck as in “Wanna buy a.”
Cartoons are about the only place anyone knows Penner from these days. Danny Webb borrowed his voice for Egghead at Warner Bros. (notably in ‘Daffy Duck and Egghead’). And the annoying rabbit characters in the Warners’ animated short ‘My Green Fedora’ (1935) were Penner-ised with one dressing like him and the other laughing like him. Penner was a huge, but fleeting, radio star. Rudy Vallee “discovered” him in 1933 and played straight man to him. This clip is courtesy of Craig Hodgkins’ very good site on Penner.
Radio isn’t kind to people whose routine consists of little more than a couple of catchphrases. And that’s about all Penner had, besides a childishly-whiny voice. Penner realised a little too late that you could go on with the same act for years in vaudeville, but not on radio. In 1936, he gave up his duck and tried a new radio show written by Harry W. Conn, the man who thought he made Jack Benny, but his career had peaked.
Penner continued in movies, walking from RKO to Universal in a salary dispute in 1939, before his sudden death on January 10, 1941. He was 36. The catchphrases he tried to give up followed him to the grave; some front page newspaper stories showed a publicity shot of Penner and his duck. Click on them below to see the clippings in larger form.
Philadelphia, Jan. 11 (AP)—Millions who had howled hilarious approval of a little Hungarian comedian and his incessant “Wanna Buy a Duck?” were touched by sadness today with the death of Joe Penner. The 36-year-old funnyman who brought the nation many a laugh through the screen, stage and radio, died in his sleep yesterday. Pending an autopsy, the cause was given as a heart attack.
Penner, seeking a rest, had asked not to be disturbed in his hotel room — Mrs. Penner told how hard he had been working on his new show “Yokel Boy,” which opened here Monday — and was found dead in bed about 5 P. M., by his wife.
Only the night before, friends said Penner — born Josef Pinter in a tiny Hungarian village — had appeared in his gayest mood. After the show, he escorted Mrs. Penner and comedienne Martha Raye, their guest, to a night club.
Robert Crawford, his co-producer and general manager, said the star called upon, returning to the hotel and seemed “in the best of spirits.” Mrs. Penner, the former Mae Vogt, a dancer in Joe’s first show, was placed under a physician’s care.
There was no understudy for the star of “Yokel Boy” and the Locust Street Theater was dark last night. Crawford has not decided whether it will be continued.
Penner was brought to this country at the age of nine by his grandparents, and joined his parents in Detroit, where the father worked in a motor car factory. School and odd jobs had no appeal for a youngster who showed more aptitude for clowning than classes, but a prize for an amateur impersonation of Charlie Chaplin started him on his way to stardom.
His first theatrical job was assistant to a mind reader—until the comedian on the bill failed to show up. Penner stepped in, and there followed several seasons of vaudeville, carnivals, burlesques and nightclubs. The first big break came in 1926, a role at $375 a week in the “Greenwich Village Follies.” In 1933 Rudy Vallee had Penner as guest star on radio, and a few weeks later he was featured on his own program.
The death of Joe Penner may cancell [sic] the road tour of “Yokel Boy,” the Lew Brown-Ray Henderson musical in which the comedian was making a stage “comeback.” The show had been booked for a one-night engagement on Jan. 29 at the Empire, but no news of cancellation has been received by Harry Unterfoot, city manager of RKO-Schine theaters, who is supervising the theater.
Camels are funny-looking things, especially in cartoons. Probably the funniest-looking camel in a cartoon not made by Warner Bros. is in the Walter Lantz cartoon ‘Socko in Morocco’ (released in January 1954). It’s one of the shorts Don Patterson handled during his far-too-short tenure as a director.
For reasons known only to Patterson, and perhaps writer Homer Brightman, the camel is partly hollow. Buzz Buzzard rides inside it.
Thad Komorowski tells me that Walter Lantz was so cheap, the directors at his studio had to their own design characters, unlike MGM where they had people like Claude Smith or Ed Benedict to do that sort of thing.
The camel is animated in silhouette and long shot at the beginning of his scene with a flurry of feet on ones. Then we get some medium shots. The animation is by Ken Southworth, Herman Cohen and Ray Abrams. Art Landy is credited with the very nice backgrounds; good design and sunset hues.
This cartoon has dialogue at the beginning and end, and virtually nothing in between. What few words on the soundtrack are handled by Dal McKennon as Buzz and a horse, while Grace Stafford is Woody and giggles for the princess. I’m presuming McKennon is also the French Foreign Legion commander, though he reminds me a lot more of Harry Lang than anyone else. Lang died about five months before this cartoon was released after suffering a lengthy illness.
Here’s an inside joke from Friz Freleng’s “Stage Door Cartoon.” Well, maybe it’s a sly editorial comment by someone in Freleng’s unit about the animators in Bob Clampett’s unit, because you can see a reference to Clampett in one of the background drawings.
Paul Julian liked referring to fellow Warners employees in his backgrounds. Julian didn’t get credit on this cartoon but it’s obviously his work. I love the little light reflection highlights he draws. Here are a couple of other backgrounds of his from early in the cartoon. They’re from layouts by an uncredited Hawley Pratt.
Jack Bradbury gets the sole animation credit, though the nice little Bugs tap dance is either by Virgil Ross or Gerry Chiniquy, depending on which animation ID expert one wishes to accept. Mike Maltese wrote the story, though several years later, Tedd Pierce put Bugs back on stage (this time, with Yosemite Sam instead of Elmer Fudd) and reworked the high-diving scene into a full cartoon, “High Diving Hare.”
The cartoon was released just before Christmas 1944, according to one newspaper ad I’ve found, and was still playing at theatres into 1946.
Fans of Old Time Radio have heard the story over and over, how Jack Benny first appeared on radio with Ed Sullivan in 1932, and what his first words were.
That isn’t how it happened.
Jack told the story over and over so much, he may have come to believe that’s how it happened. Sullivan told it, too. But Jack’s radio debut was not on Sullivan’s show and was not in 1932. Jack must have known it at one time because he celebrated his tenth year in radio on a special broadcast in 1941. Simple arithmetic dictates that his debut would have been in 1931. And that’s indeed when it was. September 4th to be exact.
To your right you see a newspaper column from the Capitol Times of Madison, Wisconsin of September 3, 1931, listing the following day’s radio programmes. There you can see Jack as a guest on ‘RKO Theater of the Air.’ The New York Times of September 4 shows the programme airing at 10:30 p.m. over WEAF, flagship of the Red Network of NBC. Also appearing in the hour-long show were Irish tenor Joseph Regan, and Aunt Jemima of “Show Boat.”
If you’re wondering about the famous Sullivan show, the radio listings of Times for Tuesday, March 29, 1932 show:
Jack always credited the Sullivan broadcast with raising interest with the folks at Canada Dry who then signed him for his own show. Jack seems to have misremembered this as a result of his first radio broadcast which, as you can see, was not the case at all. And, to be honest, having Ed Sullivan “discover” him made for a better story. Through all the years Jack told about his “first” broadcast, everyone knew who Sullivan was. Likely no one had heard of ‘RKO Theater of the Air.’ But now you have. And now you know when Jack Benny really began his illustrious and lengthy broadcast comedy career.
No, this isn’t the name of a cartoon. I was doing some Felix hunting and found this article from the Victoria Advocate of March 6, 1927.
Felix ran in serial form (dubbed “reels”) in newspapers in the ‘20s. One adventure seems to have caused a bit of a flap. I can't find the actual comics in question, but I’ve included a poor copy of the graphic that accompanied the story. It’s not the best quality but you should get the idea.
Yes, Felix Will Be Careful About Bananas Felix the Cat must watch his step more carefully in the future. The children who follow him so closely have just given him a lesson he will not forget. Of course Felix wasn’t to blame. He had to do what Pat Sullivan told him or get out of the picture and lose all of his nine lives at one and the same time. But since the children who read The Advocate know Felix and do not know his inimitable creator, it is Felix who has been put on probation. Hundreds of letters have come to Mr. Sullivan’s studio from children telling Felix “what’s wrong with this picture.” “I didn’t know that I was letting Felix put his foot into it when I had him jump upon a bunch of bananas hanging from a tree to escape from a snake in the jungle,” said the artist in telling of the avalanche of letters. “It seems to me that he put all four feet into it, judging by the number of letters I have received, and now I shall have to appeal to The Advocate to help extricate him. Please tell your little readers for me that I would love to answer each letter that came to me. I started out to do so, but so many came that I am forced to answer through the column of their favorite newspaper. “What happened was this: Felix was shown jumping upon a bunch of bananas which hung from the stalk just as they do from a stalking hanging in a grocery store. From their studies in commercial geography or from some other source the little letter writers know that bananas don’t grow that way. The bunch in the grocery store is reversed from the way it hangs from the tree in the tropics. “It looked for a time as if Felix and I would be able to wiggle out of the difficulty by writing the young people that when the bananas are first formed and they are very small they hang down just as they do in the picture. This explanation was going well during the first few days when I was trying to answer all letters personally. It went very well until indeed until I received a reply to my letter from a very young lady who said, ‘If bananas were small they would not have been ripe and then Felix would not have had such a good time eating them in the last picture because we learned at school that you shouldn’t eat an uncooked banana until the yellow skin has some black spots on it.’ “Now, when a little girl is as matter of fact as that there is no answer which can possibly let Felix save his face. All I can say is that when he goes into the jungles again he will be very careful to observe all the rules.” So, at the request of Mr. Sullivan, The Advocate is taking this means of telling the little friends of Felix that they will have to look sharp if they ever catch him again. Watch for Felix every Sunday.
One of the best-known moments of revenge in animation history.
“Chow Hound” is another product of the mind of writer Mike Maltese. The credited animators in the Chuck Jones unit are Lloyd Vaughan, Phil Monroe, Ken Harris and Ben Washam. Vaughan, Harris and Jones get additional mention in an inside joke in the classified ads. Phil DeGuard painted these from Bob Gribbroek layouts.
“M. Hinkle” has yet to be identified. The only one I can find in the Los Angeles Directory is “Mary Hinkle.” Considering the character in the cartoon is played by Bea Benaderet, perhaps that’s who it is and Mary worked in ink and paint. Just speculation. (2023 Tralfaz note: The 1950 U.S. Census lists Mary E. Hinkle of 1454 19th Street, Los Angeles, as “opaquer,” “studio.” Now you know).
John T. Smith is the voice of the dog who gets the gravy and the zoo curator. Mel Blanc plays the cat, mouse, Vaughan and Harris.
There’s a neat visual effect in several Chuck Jones cartoons. Someone zooms out of a scene and leaves multiples of something floating in the air in their wake. In “Bully For Bugs,” it’s hooves. In “Bewitched Bunny,” it’s bobby pins. And in “No Barking,” it’s feet.
There’s a smear drawing of Claude Cat, too.
Ken Harris gets the only animation credit. Whether he had an assistant on this one, I couldn’t tell you.
