Chuck Jones started out 1942 with several lacklustre cartoons featuring Conrad the Cat. By year’s end he started making some funny cartoons while layout man John McGrew started fussing around with the look of them.
“The Dover Boys” gets all the plaudits as critics talk about art and animation technique instead of comedy, but I’d rather watch “My Favorite Duck” instead. Daffy’s funny in this and there’s lots going on around the plot. There’s even a benign battle of song going on. Daffy casually sings “Blues in the Night” through the picture while Porky croons “On Moonlight Bay.” Daffy temporarily wins the musical fisticuffs when Porky starts singing his song. What else do we get? Porky AND his camping gear hang in mid-air. An imaginative burn take. ‘Duck Season’ signs, predating a trio of cartoons Mike Maltese wrote for Jones in the ‘50s. Porky says “Fillagadushu.” And Maltese throws in an Avery-esque film-break at the end. In other words, Daffy is fun. Conrad is ... uh, who was Conrad again?
Oh, McGrew’s at work here, too. There are overhead shots and up shots and angular movement and character close-ups. But none of that is my favourite visual from the cartoon. I’ll take a great scene—I’m presuming it’s Bobe Cannon at work—where Porky sets up his campsite under water. Porky doesn’t realise he’s in a lake until a fish swims by. There’s a stare take then four drawings as Porky collects his stuff before going back onto dry land. They’re on ones.
I suspect Ace Gamer or someone else in effects was responsible for the bubbles.
Cannon got credit on “The Dover Boys” so Rudy Larriva gets it here. Jones’ unit also consisted of (if other credits around this time are any indication) Ken Harris, Phil Monroe and Ben Washam.
The show biz world is full of combinations that you can’t picture apart. And then there are some that just don’t seem to fit at all.
George Burns and Gracie Allen were a perfect match. It’s hard to fathom that when Gracie quit show business in the late ‘50s, Burns chose Carol Channing as his partner for his show on the Vegas strip.
Burns, as everyone knows, was ultra low key and personable, churning out a joke pulled from a dusty vaudeville trunk, puffing on his cigar until the audience got it, then rolling on to the next one. No one has ever accused Channing of being ultra low key. She and Ethel Merman strike me as the two stars of Broadway musical comedy who utterly dominated a stage through sheer force of personality, not exactly a trait you’re looking for when doing a two-hander in front of an audience. But Burns knew all the tricks of the show biz trade and was smart enough to ensure he wouldn’t be overpowered in front of the footlights. It helped, too, that Burns had been known by audiences for years; in 1959, Channing was still reasonably new and not yet the huge star she became. “Hello Dolly” was still a few years away, though she was known to audiences from the Broadway hit “Lend an Ear” and through newspaper columns that reported on the Great White Way.
Art loosely imitated life on the George Burns TV show on January 6, 1959. The plot—Burns signed Channing for a nightclub engagement and then joined the act himself. That’s what’s being plugged in this column in the Tucson Citizen from January 3rd. The writer clearly took the angle that his readers had no idea who Carol Channing was; the description would be quite superfluous today. This great caricature accompanied the story.
Her Eyes Are Brown Oceans By RON KELLY NEW YORK — Many a lover has used this line: “Your eyes are like limpid pools of moonlight . . .” Well, looking into the eyes of Carol Channing isn’t like that at all. It’s more like peering into two huge brown oceans. That’s not all that's startling about this king-sized pixie. She towers over the average male (5-8 in her nyloned feet). And the hair . . . well, she calls it “contrived careless.” Actually, it looks like it was combed none-too-recently by a portable cement mixer. The hair is, presently, blonde. If charm were gold, she would make Fort Knox look like a slum. Her fey, good-natured humor is so rapid-fire yet so abrupt that one sits in awe staring vacantly at this wonderful face, hoping not to forget one little pearly gem. Carol Channing reminds one of a big—very big—friendly sister. The voice comes through like “Gangbusters” and the laughter—warm and gay, never harsh—is contagious throughout any room. She is a good-humored, story-book character in love with the world. Particularly George Burns. “Yes, I love that man,” she chirped, “I mean this is not only the funniest man in the world, he is also the kindest. “Do you know that wonderful man gave me jokes, situations, little stage tricks that I’m still using since I first met him years ago?” “Did you know he completely staged my night club act for Las Vegas?” she demanded. Carol loves Gracie, George’s long-time partner now retired, too. And she loves their children, Sandra and Ronnie. “Isn’t Ronnie doing fine on the George Burns Show? And George. That man fractures me. “Why, he had me in stitches during rehearsals of our TV show. He’s so quick with his jokes, and he has such a tremendous sense of timing. That man has forgotten more jokes than most modern-day comedians will ever remember. “I am,” she decreed solemnly, “the world’s number one George Burns fan.” Aside from her enthusiasm for George, the man and the comedian, Carol Channing has other enthusiasms, such as: Her son, almost six. Her husband, Charles Lowe (advertising man). Her career (she opened a four-week stand at New York’s chic Plaza Hotel on Dec. 26). And people, just plain people. One gathers that this San Francisco-born charmer has a heart to match her 138 well-distributed pounds. She certainly captivates the attention of those around her—and she enters a room like a steamroller with a bass whistle. Carol Channing is quite possibly one of the funniest women in the world. She's the kind of person you’d like to have living next door—if for no other reason than she’d not only loan you a cup of sugar, but she'd give you a million dollars worth of floor show at the same time. Two recommendations: enjoy the talents of Carol Channing on The George Burns Show next Tuesday. And if ever the occasion arises to meet the girl in person, do so. It’s an experience you’re not likely to forget.
Carol turns 91 today. It’s a happy coincidence she shares a birthday with another over-the-top personality of the stage, Tallulah Bankhead, who was flamboyant in a far different manner.
Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising may have been forced to use Warners-owned songs in their cartoons for Leon Schlesinger, but they couldn’t have been handed a better break (if you’re forced to use songs, that is). Their characters got to bounce around tunes from the best movie musicals of the era. “We’re in the Money.” “42nd Street.” “Lullaby of Broadway.” “Shuffle Off to Buffalo.” All great songs. I’m sure a lot of kids had their first exposure to them watching cartoons.
The songs were plunked in cartoons which bore no similar to the musical in which they appeared, possibly with the exception of “Page Miss Glory” (1936), which has a faux Busby Berkeley overhead choreography shot. The cartoon version of “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” (1933) involved a dispatch office for a place that delivered newborn human babies. None were delivered to Buffalo, shuffling or otherwise. Instead we get rubber hose animation, ethnic throw-ins, celebrity caricatures and the Rhythmettes.
Speaking of Disney...
There’s an inside joke in one of the background drawings of the cartoon. There’s a birth chart on a wall and it lists the names “Frisby,” “Larry” and “Otto.” Frisby is Friz Freleng, and Larry is likely Larry Martin. Both were animators at the studio at the time. “Otto” could very well be Otto Englander. He worked at the Iwerks Studio before going to Disney in 1933 but it’s possible he had a stopover at Harman and Ising. The drawing is quite possibly by Art Loomer, who was later head of the background department when Schlesinger opened his own studio. The 1932 Los Angeles City Directory lists him as an artist at Pacific Title and Art Studio, which was Schlesinger’s own company.
The same celebrities seemed to come in for a caricatured ribbing in cartoons on either side of the mid-‘30s—Bing Crosby, Jimmy Durante, Laurel and Hardy, and these guys:
Maurice Chevalier.
Joe E. Brown. That kinda looks like the pre-Lantz version of Oswald the Rabbit in the crib.
Eddie Cantor. He even claps his hands and rolls his eyes.
And Ed Wynn, known as The Fire Chief on radio, sponsored by Texaco.
Just a note on the Rhythmettes...
They were a vocal trio who found work at several cartoon studios, including employment on the biggest cartoon before “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Said a story in Hearst’s International in 1934:
There has been much secrecy about who portrayed the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf. The voices of the pigs were those of the Rhythmettes. The Rhythmettes are three girls who work on the radio in Los Angeles. They do not broadcast that they are the Three Little Pigs because they want more work at the Disney art shop.
They were appearing on KMTR as early as January 1931 and were with Al Pearce on the NBC Red Network by 1933. Then came this story from Johnny Whitehead of the Covina Argus of May 4, 1934. The Rhymettes were now on the radio with the Rhyme-Kings.
The Rhythmettes, fancy-harmonizing feminine trio with KHJ, sound every bit as good with their new member, who really isn't new because she formerly sang with the trio before going to Chicago some time ago. One of the Rhythmettes told your reporter the other night that the reason they left Al Pearce’s Gang was that two of the team are married and didn’t care to travel any longer.
The identity of the Rhythmettes gets a bit confusing. Two of them were Mary Moder and Dorothy Compton, who was later in The Debutantes singing about a grass shack in Kealakekua Hawaii. But a story in the June 29, 1937 edition of The Oakland Tribune calls them “Doris, Dell and Kay of radio fame.” It’s quite possible there was more than one girl group using the name on radio. Or maybe all the original members eventually quit. Regardless, you can hear them on this very trying syndicated show from 1937 singing a song from a 1932 Harman-Ising cartoon. Another voice you may recognise is that of the “Queen”. She’s Elvia Allmann.
September 1950 was a busy time for Jack Benny. He had just returned from a two-month stay in Europe with Mary, and Phil Harris and Alice Faye. He and Bob Hope embarked on a jaunt to Korea to entertain troops. And he decided to make the jump into television. At least on a semi-regular basis.
Television was at the back of Bill Paley’s mind when CBS opened up its vault to put money in Jack’s at the start of 1949 and lure him from NBC. Jack was one of radio’s biggest stars so there was no reason he shouldn’t be big on television, too, was been Paley’s ultimately correct logic. CBS wasn’t loaded down with heavyweight TV shows as 1949 turned into 1950—a couple of broadcasts with Arthur Godfrey, Ed Sullivan’s “Toast of the Town” and a wheezy variety show with Ed Wynn were probably the highlights on the schedule. There was prime time when the network offered nothing to local affiliates.
During this time, Jack obviously weighed the move to television, as you shall read. But it was inevitable. Columnists speculated on when it would happen. Finally, he made the announcement a few days before the start of the 1950-51 radio season.
JACK BENNY ANNOUNCES PLANS FOR TELEVISION By BOB THOMAS HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 7 — (AP) — Jack Benny announced today he is going to take the big jump into television. The fiddle-murdering comedian will make his regular television debut on October 29. The show will be for his radio sponsor and he will do three others this season, at intervals of eight weeks. I asked him how he picked his timing. “I have to go to New York for the television shows," he explained." That means I will have to tape record my air show a week in advance so I can get away. If I tried to do this every four weeks it would be too much. So my sponsor and I agreed on every eight weeks." Last year Benny made his TV debut on a program to dedicate the local station KTTV. He views his new program with this philosophy: “I don’t say that I’m going to be any better than anyone else on television. But on the other hand, I see no reason why I should be worse, either." What about the format? “I’ll do an hour-long show. It will be variety entertainment with perhaps a scene from my radio program. The first show might picture Rochester and me at home. We could show some of the things that we talk about on the radio— the cigarette machine, the pay telephone, and so forth. On other shows I might have a scene with Dennis Day or Phil Harris or Mary. “People tell me that television is a completely new medium. I don’t think so. I’m going to give them the same kind of entertainment I do on stage appearances. It’s the same type of show I used to do at the Orpheum in vaudeville days.” I asked Benny about his future in television. He admitted that he foresees the day when he will give up radio entirely. “It would be hard to do both radio and TV and make both of them good,” he said. “And perhaps radio will not be able to afford a show like mine. After all, the others on my show are stars in their own right and have their own shows.” He admitted he would have to live in New York when he starts doing television exclusively. “I wouldn’t mind living in New York for a year," he said. But he indicated he would return westward as soon as cross-country video becomes a fact. When I asked how often he would want to do TV, he gave an interesting insight into the new medium. “I think I would do something like a half-hour every two weeks,” he said. “I wonder if it isn’t a mistake to be on television every week. The matter of coming into people’s homes and being seen is a lot different from just being heard on radio. “Even if you could be good every week—and that is doubtful—I wonder if that isn’t too much of an intrusion. Pretty soon people might become so used to seeing you that they no longer can judge whether are good or not.” Benny said he didn’t know whether he will be using one of his noted props on TV. “We’ll have to take tests to see whether I should wear the toupee,” he said.
Benny wasn’t the only veteran of radio eyeing the television camera. The AP pointed out a week later that Eddie Cantor, Fred Allen, Groucho Marx and Don Ameche were about to swing over from radio. Of the four, only Groucho was an unqualified success after a hit-and-miss radio career. But Jack was a bigger success than them all. Although his regular show ended in 1965, he continued with occasional specials (and even appearances on “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In” among with other radio long-timers) up until the day he died. Television was the right move after all.
There are Hollywood stars of the 1920 and ‘30s who people associate with silent pictures or sound ones, and that’s that. In reality, seldom is there a firm dividing line. Many sound stars started in silents and many silent stars made the transition to sound.
Ramon Navarro is thought of as belonging to the silent era but he starred in a number of sound pictures into the mid-‘30s. A fair chunk of Depression cash was put out in October 1930 for the ad you see below.
As you can see, not only did Novarro speak, he sang.
This screening was accompanied by two shorts, “Bigger and Better,” a two-reel series produced by Hal Roach with Mickey Daniels and Mary Kornman (and Grady Sutton as comic relief), and the second of Ub Iwerks’ Flip the Frog cartoons, “Flying Fists,” which was released in two-strip Technicolor. But here’s a black and white version.
The Warner Bros. cartoons had run out of steam by the early ’60s. Just about everything that could possibly be done with the major characters had been. Now they were doing the same kinds of things, only without a lot of energy or wit.
Chuck Jones tried a couple of different one-shots—“Now Hear This” was an experiment in sound. And Bob McKimson went for something out of the ordinary with “Bartholomew vs the Wheel” (1964). It’s the story of the dog Bartholomew, told by its child owner. The dog comes to hate wheels, ends up in an unidentified Arab desert nation, returns to the U.S., and loves wheels again as a result of his trip. McKimson was going for either charm or whimsy but he doesn’t entirely succeed. John Dunn’s story has holes in it. How did a welcoming party know a stowaway dog would be arriving at the airport? Did the dog call them? And the dog likes wheels because he doesn’t see them anymore? Plus Mel Blanc’s voices just don’t work for me. McKimson obviously didn’t want the short to have the look or feel of a Warner’s cartoon. Someone else should have brought in to match the “outsider” kid voice. Mel’s voice repertoire was running out of steam, too. He dragged out his stock voices; we get Dino for Bartholomew as a pup and Jack Benny’s Maxwell for a car.
On the other hand, Leslie Barringer lends authenticity as Bartholomew’s young owner (and reads lines better than some of the kids that did in the Peanuts specials). And even Bill Lava’s score fits nicely, though one of his dissonant horn stabs shows its ubiquitousness at Warners with an appearance.
Maybe the best part is the graphic appearance by layout man Bob Givens and background painter Bob Gribbroek. Not all the designs are great, but I do like the cat. The best gag of the cartoon is when the cat performs a high-wire act to drag attention away from Bartholomew.
And you’ve got to like sheep with veils on their faces.
McKimson (or Dunn) pulls of a disintegration gag at the end. The cat’s eyeballs drop to the floor first, then the rest in little pieces. Tex Avery had been doing this kind of thing for years and even Hanna-Barbera used it in their cartoons. But it’s still funny here.
You can at least hand McKimson some points for trying. This cartoon was better than some of the others Warners was releasing at the end. And it was far and away better than the crap released under the studio’s name after it shut down its cartoon division.
“You know what?” says Droopy, sternly. “That makes me mad.” And he proceeds to grab a large toro by the tail and effortless batter him to a bully mash. Tex Avery used the gag with the ridiculing cattle baron (played by Avery) in the really funny “Homesteader Droopy” (1954) but he also did it with the ridiculing bull (also played by Avery) in “Señor Droopy” (1949).
Here’s how Avery handled Droopy swinging the bull around. Six drawings on ones.
And here’s what it looks like. The speed has been slowed down.
The animation in this cartoon was handled by Walt Clinton, Grant Simmons, Mike Lah, Preston Blair and Bobe Cannon. This is the first of six MGM cartoons where Cannon gets a screen credit. He was already back at UPA by the time this cartoon was released. Bill Thompson is Droopy.
“I Love Lucy” was not only the most popular show on television at one time, it was a groundbreaking one which influences the industry to this day. Other shows had filmed in front of live audiences, who attempted to peer through lights, cameras and technical people to see the stage. Others had shot using three cameras. But “Lucy” found a way to make it all practical. And sitcoms are taped before a studio audience even today because of it.
This was revolutionary to the people who covered TV. They didn’t quite know what to make of it. Let’s pass on a few columns from the time around the show’s debut The first show was filmed September 8, 1951 but it was the second one a week later that was the debut of the series.
In Hollywood By ERSKINE JOHNSON HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 27 (NEA)—A movie queen emoting on a studio sound stage with a built-in audience is the latest “Well, I’ll be darned” eye-opener in today’s fast-changing Hollywood scene. The movie queen is Lucille Ball and workmen knocked a hole through a thick studio wall (built to keep people out) so Lucille’s audience could by-pass the studio gateman and get in. There’s no standing around on the set with the usual head wobbling for Lucille’s audience. No, siree. After knocking that hole through the studio wall, the workmen built a series of raised platforms and installed 300 plush seats right on the sound stage floor behind the cameras. Darned if they didn’t build a fancy theater-like lobby, too, complete with rest rooms, thick red carpet and uniformed ushers. No boxoffice, though, because admission is free. No popcorn machine, either. The movie studio with the hole in the wall so the eager public can get in free to watch a star emote is General Service, and the big sound stage with the 800 plush new seats has a long and glittering history of “No Admittance — Public Keep Out” movie making. Blame or hail television for this first mass studio gate crashing stunt since the early days of Hollywood when Carl Laemmle erected bleachers on his outdoor sets and charged the public 25 cents a head to watch the filming of Universal’s old silent dramas. Lucielle’s sound stage audience will be watching her make a weekly half hour television movie, “I Love Lucy,” a comedy series in which she co-stars with husband Desi Arnaz, supported by movie veteran William Frawley and Broadway-import Vivian Vance. The first film will be seen on coast-to-coast CBS-TV October 15 with a cigaret company paying all the bills. Filming of “I Love Lucy” is as precedent-shattering as the hole in the studio wall. As Desi, who put the idea together (Lucille claims she “didn’t have anything to do with it. Desi deserves the credit. I was home having a baby”) sees it: “We’re putting a stage show on film for television.” All three techniques are represented in the setup. The director, Marc Daniel, is from the New York stage and TV. Cameraman Karl Freund is a movie veteran who tensed several of Lucille’s films at M-G-M. If you want to be confused, here’s the way it works: The show is rehearsed like a play on a bare stage with chalk marks on the floor indicating walls and furniture. Then it’s rehearsed on the set in front of three movie cameras just like a movie. Then they let the audience in and they shoot the scenes with all three cameras and the sound track picking up the audience laughter. Then the audience goes home and Lucille and Desi and the cast run through their lines again while the cameras move in for closeups which will be cut in with the long and medium shots. Lucille, Desi and Producer Jess Oppenheimer insisted on an audience for their movie making on the theory that a movie for television is not like a regular movie. Says Desi: “People alone at home like to feel that they are part of the audience in the TV theater. They want to hear an audience reaction.” Claims Producer Oppenheimer: “An audience dictates to an actor what to do. He has to stop and acknowledge the audience’s reaction. Hollywood takes care of the problem with previews before a film is released. “We don’t have time to preview our films. So instead of taking our pictures to an audience, we’ve brought our audience to the picture.” “Great idea, isn’t it?” said Lucille, who was wearing slacks and her hair tucked under a bandana for an eight-hour session of rehearsing. I confessed I was a little confused. “You won’t be when you see the first picture,” she assured me. “We’re just putting a stage show on film for television.” But I’m still confused. “I Love Lucy,” too, but is it a play, a movie or a television show?
TV Is Keeping Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz Together By BOB THOMAS HOLLYWOOD, Oct. 9 (AP)—Television’s boosters keep talking about how the new medium is bringing the family back together. Here’s one pair it has done that for—Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. The redhead and the Latin have been married 11 years and a sizable amount of that time has been spent apart. During the war years, Desi was here and there in the Army. When peace came, he organized a band and was touring the country as much as six months out of each year. Meanwhile, his spouse was largely confined to picture-making in Hollywood. “We saw each other coming and going, and that was about all,” Lucille remarked. But now they have solved the problem of Desi’s travels. Together they have formed the Desilu Company (from their first names, as if you didn’t_know). He is prexy and she is vice prez and the whole enterprise is very cozy. Purpose of the company is to produce a TV show called “I Love Lucy,” and that’s what keeping them home together. “It’s a full-time job for both of us,” Lucille declared. “Starting at noon, we work every week day plus two nights a week. We have Saturday and Sunday off and that’s all.” The new show is an unusual operation. Some TV shows are telecast directly with an audience and others are filmed. But the Ball-Arnaz program is filmed with an audience. Here's how it works: The actors and technicians rehearse all day Monday through Thursday at a Hollywood film studio. On Thursday night an audience is brought into the studio for a dress rehearsal. More rehearsals follow on Friday and the show is filmed by three cameras before an audience that night. “Thus we can get the technical perfection of being able to cut the film before it is televised,” explained Desi. “But we also have the advantage of playing before an audience, so we can get a reaction to the comedy.” “I Love Lucy” has already been sold for 39 weeks to a cigarette sponsor and will debut soon on CBS in the Monday time slot following Arthur Godfrey. Naturally, such a tight schedule precludes any film activity right now for Lucille, but. she is shedding no tears over that. “I’ll have three months every summer to do pictures,” she said. “I could do two in that time, but I only want to do one a year anyway. “Actually, I don’t miss doing pictures at all. On the TV show I’m doing the things I like to do. It’s a combination of everything I have learned in the movies, radio, stage and vaudeville. Sometimes I would do a whole picture just because of one little scene which I wanted to do. On this show I get that kind of scene every week.” The Arnaz family now has another reason for sticking close to home. The name is Lucie Desiree Arnaz, age 11 weeks.
Lucille and Desi Happy At Their TV Playhouse By GENE HANDSAKER HOLLYWOOD, Oct. 11 (AP) — “Every ham likes an audience,” said Lucille Ball, “and we’re hams.” The tall redhead was explaining her unique TV setup of herself and her husband, Desi Arnaz. They’re leased two adjoining sound stages. One contains the dressing rooms. The other houses the sets—dining room, living room, kitchen—and bleachers for 300 spectators. There, each Friday evening, a half hour domestic comedy in a series called “I Love Lucy” is put on film for television. A sign over the lobby where the audience is admitted says “Desilu Playhouse.” Desilu was compounded from the owner-stars’ first names. During business discussions, Desi may wear a hat labeled “Pres.,” while Lucy wears one lettered “Veepee”—their respective ranks in Desilu Productions, Inc. During rehearsals they sometimes switch to headgear reading “Boy Actor” and “Girl Actor.” * * * “THIS COVERS MORE people in one night than a picture does in two years,” Lucy said of the new medium. “Another reason I went into television is, in every script I get things I wait a year or two to get in pictures. Natural, married-couple stuff, mostly. On the screen I’ve had that only occasionally.” The natural married-couple stuff, in a scene I saw rehearsed, showed Lucy lousing up her hubby’s poker game with his pals. Miss Ball said she’ll branch out into comedy dance routines in the series and added: “I like not playing myself. Playing Lucille Ball is very boring. I always have to look good. Being glamorous can be very monotonous.” Their approach to TV, she pointed out, combines all mediums. “It’s television, films, radio, theatre, and personal appearances all in one. * * * “BUT IT’S harder than movies. We learn a new script in three days. Any trouper who doesn’t want to work harder than he ever has in his life shouldn’t go into television.” Desi, Cuban-born bandleader and one-time Broadway actor, has been married to Lucy nearly 11 years. But their separate movies and his band tours have kept them apart frequently. “This television show is wonderful,” he said. “It gives us our first chance to be together.”
If you’re wondering how critics responded, most of them liked the show. The New York Times panned the second half as being low comedy that was a little too low. But here’s one review from the United Press. The writer, or maybe an editor, had a little trouble with Desi Arnaz’s name.
Video Can’t Hurt Lucille Launches TV Career as Witch By VIRGINIA MacPHERSON HOLLYWOOD, Oct. 18—(U.P.) Lucille Ball’s one movie queen who isn't worrying how she’ll photograph on TV. This week she came out looking like a Halloween witch. There's just one difference: With Lucy it’s on purpose. She and her spouse, Dessi Arnaz, kicked off their CBS-TV show, “I Love Lucy” Monday night and what the carrot-topped cutie did to her puss was enough to make every “cheesecake” photographer in the racket flip his lid. She stuck black patches over choppers and flashed a toothless grin at her goggle-eyed audience . . . she flopped a black wig over her orange-colored curls and stalked the stage, pig-tails flying . . . she camouflaged the famous Ball curves in a shapeless gunnysack and stared cross-eyed at the camera. She did everything, in fact, but worry about her looks. And the laughs rippled forth a mile a minute. Everybody was surprised but Lucy. “I started out as a comedienne,” she shrugs. “But nobody ever let me get laughs. All I did, picture after picture, was look glamorous. "Now I let Desi handle the glamour. He's pretty enough.” She’s right there. But he’s more’n pretty. He’s also smart, as president of Dessilu Productions he bagged a sponsor for $1,500,000 a year. “This is something we’ve been dreaming about for years,” he explained. “And working on for the past three. We even took a vaudeville tour last year to break in our act. Now we’re in business.” At $30,000 a week you could even call it big business. For that, every Monday night, Desi and Lucy will cavort through the trials of young married life. “It’s a cinch,” Desi says. “All we do is remember what happened to us and write a story around it." “Now honey,” Lucy interrupted. “You know we can’t put THAT on the screen!” The best part of the show, as far as Dessi and Lucy are concerned, is the hours. “We’ve been trying to get together for 10 years,” Lucy said. “But I’d always be making a movie and Desi’d always be playing a nightclub tour. Even when he was in town he'd be getting home just as I was leaving for the studio. “He always saw me as my most unglamorous self. What else . . . at 6 a. m.? “Now we work together . . . we have a 3-month-old daughter . . . Saturday and Sundays off . . . and it looks like we’re gonna have a sane home life for a change—or at least as sane as it can be with us.”
MacPherson’s column obliquely reveals something that readers probably took as a joke. You couldn’t have put Lucy and Desi’s real life on television. Well, today you could, considering the reality trash that some people are fascinated with. “I Love Lucy” was an attempt by Lucille Ball to stabilise her home life and save her marriage. Instead, she won a default divorce on May 4, 1960; Lucy claimed she knew it was over for good five years before because Desi loved boozing and womanising too much. Considering that and the tremendous pressure to keep not only their show, but their studio/production company a success, it’s amazing that Lucy and Desi continued to bring viewers quality entertainment until the very end. Quality entertainment is the reason everybody loves Lucy.
Sometimes, there’s no justice in this world. It crashes down around you. That’s the message in Chuck Jones’ “Fresh Airedale” (1945).
The sociopathic Shep wins all throughout the cartoon except during one scene when he has a nightmare sparked by jealousy. Before going to bed, he reads that a black Scottish terrier is the Number One Dog, not him. Jones gets to use his sense of stylisation to advance the plot instead of just showing off.
The pictures of the Scotty and Shep on posters turn into a 1 and a 2, with the one chasing the 2.
Ones turn into Scottish terriers. The transformation of numbers into living characters is reminiscent of the Ralph Phillips cartoon “From A to Z-Z-Z-Z” (1953), also directed by Jones.
And the abbreviation for “number” fills the screen in little jagged trails, as Mel Blanc’s echoing voice repeats the words “Number One Dog.”
Jerry Beck and Will Friedwald’s “Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies” lists the animators as Ben Washam, Ken Harris and Lloyd Vaughan. It doesn’t mention who laid out the nightmare sequence, but Mike Barrier’s “Hollywood Cartoons” states that Earl Klein took over layout in the Jones unit in early 1944 so I suspect he’s responsible for this cartoon, with Bob Gribbroek painting the backgrounds. A great little sequence in a great little cartoon.
“Solid Serenade” is probably best known for Tom’s rendition of Louis Jordan’s hit “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby,” accompanying himself on the double bass. Daniel Goldmark in his “Tunes For ‘Toons” (2005, University of California Press) gives a fine critique and examination of Scott Bradley’s scoring technique in the short, but nowhere does he mention who does the actual singing of the song. However, someone who knows better than anyone has revealed it’s Buck Woods.
As I’m now using words like “whence” in a post, maybe I should post a few frames that I liked, in the order they appeared on the screen.
The credited animators are Ken Muse, Mike Lah and Ed Barge. I would have guessed Ray Patterson worked on this as well, as the opening scene has the wide-mouthed Tom that I’ve come to associate with him. The singing Tom has sharp teeth, but at times he also has a scrunched-up grin that Muse drew for Mr. Jinks in the Hanna-Barbera cartoons. And a compilation reel existed on the internet of Mike Lah’s animation which included the scene from this cartoon where Tom-as-Boyer is wooing the dog by mistake. He draws Tom’s mouth small and a bit to the side of the face like he did later in cartoons at Hanna-Barbera. If I had to guess, I’d say the scene where Tom clunks the dog with the brick and plays fetch is Lah, too. But I’m not going to speculate any more than that because I don’t want to create any misinformation.
Still, the song’s the best part of the cartoon. You can hear the Jordan version from ‘Follow the Boys’ (1944) below.
