G-E-C

“The internet,” said a greying philosopher, “is a land where people go to have their idiosyncrasies validated.” Buried beneath the porn and advertising (which can be the same thing) are virtual oases which cater to every conceivable arcane interest. And where one learns that, yes, someone else delights in the same arcane interest, too.

There isn’t just one, but several web sites devoted to a familiar sound on radio and television for decades—the NBC chimes. During my boyhood, they accompanied the network’s letters slithering into formation on the screen. A generation earlier, they ended every radio broadcast. In fact, they were even parodied in animated cartoons going back to the early ‘30s.

There’s likely more esoterica about the chimes on the internet than you’d probably want to know. But allow me to add some more.

Out of curiosity, I decided to hunt through some old newspapers to find the earliest reference to the notes that ended each NBC network programme. So here are some clippings.

Winnipeg Free Press, Jan. 4, 1930
B.C.L. writes in the Milwaukee Journal:
“You listeners-in must have noticed the chimes now being used by the NBC for station identification. It’s a great relief from the old hackneyed “A brief pause for station announcement” but it’s rather wearing on the announcers. For these individuals the musical notes mean GET IN FRONT OF THAT ‘MIKE.’ Wherever they go chimes are sure to ring out. One announcer recently attended a formal dinner and the hall clock chimed the hour. The announcer is said to have revived some 15 minutes from the fit of coughing which overtook him as he almost swallowed his soup spoon when the chimes startled him.
Imagine the embarrassment of an announcer in church when the chimes ring out, wake him from a half slumber and he suddenly rises from his seat and delivers the station call letters.”

San Antonio Express, Nov. 16, 1930
...one day when the hammer that is used to sound those terrible NBC chimes which mark the 15-minute periods was mislaid, [Neel B.] Enslen grabbed a pipe out of Ed (Engineer) Knapf’s mouth and boomed away . . . said Announcer Enslen as he returned the improvised hammer . . . “that was a pipe.” . . . O-w-w-w-w-.

Tralfaz says: Enslen had been at NBC since 1929. He had been a baritone with the American Opera Company. He committed suicide, age 38, on May 22, 1938, sticking his head in a gas oven. He had been battling alcoholism and had returned to work after four months off dealing with it. With that pleasant report, let us continue.

Wisconsin State Journal, Dec. 14, 1930
The chimes used by the National Broadcasting company every 15 minutes as cues for network stations to make their local announcements, are heard on an average of 141 times a day. There are 143 synchronizations each weekday and 128 on Sunday.

Wisconsin State Journal, Dec. 20, 1930
Following a recent argument in the Chicago NBC studios, Walter Lanterman, studio engineer, made a rather interesting discovery about the four-note chimes now being used between programs in national broadcasts. By mathematical computation, he has found that 87,296 different combinations are possible with the chimes now in use.
It is improbable that NBC will experiment with all the possible combinations, for it would take a man more than a week to try them all out, allowing five seconds for each combination.
If NBC ever did desire to use sufficient chimes every day, however, the possible combinations would be sufficient, to last for more than 200 years without repetition.

Peter Dixon, Beacon Syndicate, Nov. 1, 1931
It remained for Ray Perkins to stage the best gag around the NBC chimes. In a recent program Perkins built up a very “English” atmosphere and then said:
“In a moment you will hear the sound so dear to every Englishman, the chimes of Big Ben.”
And then the NBC chimes rang out.

Tralfaz says: Perkins emceed an amateur show on CBS through the ‘30s, became a reserve in the Army Intelligence Service, moved to Denver where he worked in radio, then TV. He’s noted for the words “In case of a tie, duplicate judges will be awarded.”

Associated Press, July 22, 1932
By C.E. BUTTERFIELD
New York, July 22—(AP)— The day of the announcer-operated chimes on the networks may soon be at an end. An electrical device has been designed to do the job.
At the same time there will be eliminated the “sour” notes that often materialized when the announcer failed to hit the three-note xylophones used to produce the chimes in the proper sequence or with the right force.
The new device is a development of Capt. R. H. Ranger, radio engineer, noted for his work on the electric organ and in facsimile radio transmission.
All the announcer need do is press a small button. That not only “rings” the chimes but cuts them into the proper network.

Oakland Tribune, Nov. 4, 1934
The old tradition of the theater, “The show must go on,” holds good in radio, too. On a recent Friday night the “One Man’s Family” episode was one long agony for Minetta Ellen, who has the role of Mrs. Barbour, gentle voiced, kindly mother in the Carlton E. Morse serial of American family life.
Although she was suffering from a severe case of ptomaine poisoning, she went through with her part. She collapsed as Announcer William Andrews was striking the NBC chimes at the end of the drama. She was taken to the hospital and on the following night, when the serial went on the air for Eastern ears, Verna Felton doubled for her.

Syracuse Herald, March 9, 1936
To countless listeners all over the world, the NBC chimes are three melodious notes heard before local station identification. To operators at NBC associated stations they are the unerring signal to announce identifying call letters and to the telephone repeater station operators to break down existing network set-ups and reestablish new connections.
To the engineering and musical experts who designed them, however, they are not chimes at all, but electrically and musically perfect tines which vibrate at the touch of a button on an announcer’s studio panel.
It has been four years since the old hand-struck chimes were used. They varied too greatly in volume. If the announcer struck them too lustily with his padded hammer, the sound would blast annoyingly through loudspeakers and sometimes circuit breakers would snap out. If they were sounded softly, operators at relay points along interconnecting lines might miss the cue to throw switches for local announcements and network realignment.
To thrust such irregularities definitely into the past, the NBC engineering department, under the supervision of O. B. Hanson, chief engineer, and Capt. R. H. Ranger, inventor, designed and created the mechanism now relied upon for its smooth and constant volume.
When the announcer touches the button on his panel in a studio, a relay clicks floors away and the chimes machinery starts, A motor turns and two second after the button is pushed, the first gong sounds. The two other follow at one second intervals.
The metal tines which produce the chime tones are not struck. They are plucked by pins on a motor-driven drum. That particular part of the chimes operation suggests the workings of an old-fashioned music box.
What listeners believe they hear when each of these notes is struck is a melodious tone like that of a perfectly tuned bell. What they actually hear for each is the harmony of eight of these metal tongues, plucked in union by pins on the revolving drum.
The first of each series of tongues is the fundamental. The other seven are harmonics which give the richness to the tones. The fundamentals sound in order. G below middle C; E above middle C, and middle C. Considerable tuning and balancing of the harmonics was required before the chimes could be brought to their full richness.
When these series of tunes are struck, they are barely audible to the ear. The vibrations are fed into the circuit by utilization of the electro-static principle. Close to each tuned tine is an untuned tine. As the tuned tines vibrate, the electrical capacity between it and the untuned tine varies, thus inducing electric vibrations which finally are translated by the listener’s receiver into a musical tone.

San Mateo News Leader, Dec. 2, 1937
Temperament gum-shoed its ugly way into the joint and everything went to blazes! Last Thursday night a great and glorious tradition crashed ‘round the heads of Bing Crosby and Bob Burns when, at the halfway mark in the broadcast, Ken Carpenter refused to ring the NBC chimes.
This coming on the heels of guest star Chester Morris’ remark that above and beyond Bing’s singing and Bob’s bazooka-ing, he enjoyed the way Ken rang the bells, was a rude awakening indeed for Music Hall veterans.
While stooge and star alike stood agape and a shocked nation refused to believe what it all too plainly heard, Ken, in tones flat with despair, said, “I just don’t feel like it tonight. I’m not in the mood.”
And there just weren’t any bells!
Obviously, this can’t go on. Bing’s Music Hall must have bells ringing somewhere along the halfway mark.
Will this Carpenter lethargy linger? Did Chester Morris’ praise too much for Carpenter, the artist. If so, will a committee have to be appointed to wait upon Mr. Carpenter and coddle him into a bell-ringing mood?
Whatever has to be done, must be done. Bing, you’ve got to see to it. It’s your hall, they’re your bells and Ken’s being paid good money to ring ‘em.
We’ve grown mighty attached to their merry little pong! pong! pong! We wait impatiently each week for Ken’s masterful rendition. In fact, we’re inclined to agree with Chester Morris that it’s the best part of the show.
Yes, this Ken guy has sure got a touch!
While the spotlight of attention flickers with a questioning light on the moody Carpenter, Edward Arnold and Barbara Weeks, both from the screen, and Joseph Knitzer, American violinist, will rally ‘round to lend moral support to a nervous and over-anxious cast.
Ken’s just got to ring them bells! (KPO, 7 p. m.)

Connesville Daily Courier, August 18-19 1938
By JOE CARSON
You’ll soon be able to compete with KEN CARPENTER, chime-ringer extraordinary for the Bing Crosby show, right in your own home. Ken has created such hullabaloo over chimes in the last few months that now NBC has arranged a tie-up with a bell manufacturer to put a set of standard NBC chimes on the market. It’s all part of a deep dark plan to make America chime-conscious . . . Why? I don’t know.
More about chimes tomorrow!
* * *
The NBC chimes, most-famous of musical trade marks, will begin sounding the hour for the thousands of New Yorkers and out-of-town visitors who daily pass through Radio City and the adjacent plaza and walks of Rockefeller Center.
Synchronized with one of the large ornamental clocks overlooking the Sunken Plaza, the familiar chimes which have identified the two networks of NBC for more than a decade, will mark each hour between 8 A. M. and 1 A. M. for all in the vicinity of Radio City.
Only recently extended to use outside radio, the chimes have already been adopted by three large American railroads. For several weeks travelers on the Baltimore & Ohio and Alton systems have been called to meals in the dining cars by the sound of the melodious chimes. This week they were adopted by the New York Central Railroad for the same purpose, and 150 sets of hand operated chimes are now being placed in. service on that road.
To make the chimes sound in the streets about Radio City, a system has been set up including a loud speaker, three small clocks, and the large ornamental clock in the south facade of the International Building.

Madison Capital Times, June 30, 1940
The dedication of a new, six-foot square, three-quarter-ton, NBC-chimed clock and the broadcasting of the first sounding of the chimes which are expected to become as familiar to visitors o£ Chicago’s Loop as Big Ben’s chimes are to Londoners will be presented as part of the Merchandise Mart's Tenth Anniversary celebration during the National Farm and Home Hour program at 10:30 Monday morning over Station WIBA.
The celebration will open with “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” current theme tune of the National Farm and Home Hour, followed by “Over the Waves,” which was the theme 10 years ago when the Farm and Home Hour moved into new studios in the penthouse of the Mart, world’s largest building. A dramatic review of the history of- the building will serve as an introduction to the presentation of the clock. The ceremonies will be broadcast from the North Bank Drive entrance way of the building.
During the presentation, Frederick D. Corley, president of Marshall Field & Co., and Edward J. Kelly, mayor of Chicago, will speak, and the noon chimes, and the striking of the clock, will, be heard.
The unit, of the clock which regulates the NBC chimes was made especially by NBC engineers and will be housed in a special studio on the fourth floor of the Merchandise Mart.

Associated Press, Jan. 22, 1944
By C.E. BUTTERFIELD
NEW YORK, Jan. 22 (AP)—Three notes of the NBC chimes—G E and C—have now acquired voice and have joined the fourth War Loan campaign. They say: “Buy War Bonds.”
The chimes, which signal time or station breaks on the network, have “learned” to talk or rather sing, with the aid of three notes struck on an organ, a feminine voice and a device known as a sonovox. The engineers describe the effect as “voice modulated tones.” It is this same equipment which makes trains, musical instruments or other gadgets talk, and has come into wide use for radio sound effect purposes.

Associated Press, Dec. 11, 1945
By C.E. BUTTERFIELD
New York, Dec. 11 (AP)—Those chimes in Walter Winchell’s latest ABC broadcast—and they were NBC chimes by the way—didn’t bong on purpose. It was just one of those odd studio incidents that occur on occasion. The ringing did blot out item a twenty-seven word brief about a marriage.
ABC leases studios from NBC. The panel which announcers for both networks use has a pushbutton which automatically operates the three-note chimes NBC rings at station breaks but ABC does not. It was this button that announcer Ben Grauer accidentally hit shortly after the broadcast started.



After Bill Paley’s talent raids in 1948 netted him Amos ‘n’ Andy and Jack Benny, Broadway columnist Earl Wilson joked in print that the NBC chimes weren’t going to be changing networks.

There’s oodles of information about the chimes at THIS web site, and you can hear the famous radio version of them, circa 1949, by clicking on the button below. And we have more clippings about this chime here.

Hardaway Sign Language

Shamus Culhane hated Bugs Hardaway’s signs.

Culhane arrived at Walter Lantz’s studio as a director and found Hardaway had a penchant for writing stories with “thirty or forty feet of bad puns lettered somewhere on the background.” Culhane tried to find ways of getting rid of the worst ones, realising he was stuck doing a pan over Phil DeGuard’s backgrounds because it saved money (no animation).

Hardaway actually had two types of sign puns. Some were names of businesses that were plays on words.


Ration Bored (1943)


The Loan Stranger (1942). “Hudson C. Dann” will go over a lot of heads today.


Woody Woodpecker (1941).

This one’s so stupid, it’s funny. And are those construction lines I see?

Then there’s the type Culhane cringed at, when the camera stops to let the audience read each groaner. They’re so bad, I’m only going to give a couple of examples.


The Hollywood Matador (1942).


The Dizzy Acrobat (1943).

All these were made before Culhane arrived. In some cases, Culhane’s signs are even worse because Woody (played by Bugs Hardaway) stands there and stiffly tells us what they say. We can already see them. Why is he reading them aloud?

Someone loved “Prof. Bernie Burny.” A different circus sign by Brunish with him on it showed up in the 1952 cartoon “The Great Who-Dood-It,” written by Homer Brightman.

Hardaway arrived at Lantz in 1940 and stayed until the studio shut down at the end of the decade. After that, he managed to sell one story to his former employers at Warner Bros. but work was fairly slim. He might have done well in television with limited animation on the horizon but he died before it ever really got off the ground.

Here’s his obit from the Los Angeles Times, February 6, 1957.

Joseph Hardaway, Bugs Bunny Originator, Dies
Animated Cartoon Story Man, Pioneer in His Field, Also Worked in Television
Joseph Benson (Bugs) Hardaway, 66, animated cartoon story man who was instrumental in originating Bugs Bunny, died of a heart attack Monday night at his home, 11211 Kling St., North Hollywood.
Mr. Hardaway, onetime cartoonist for the Kansas City Post, served as Capt. Harry S. Truman's top sergeant in the 129th Field Artillery during World War I.
Early in Animation Field.
He was one of the early arrivals in Hollywood's animation field. He was a story man for Leon Schlesinger, Warner Bros. cartoons, from 1933 to 1939. His own nickname was adopted from the subsequently famous rabbit character.
In 1940 he went to work for Walter Lantz, aiding in the development of Woody Woodpecker. Recently he had been doing stories for Temple-Toons Productions [sic] for television.
Member of Guild.
He was a longtime member of the Screen Cartoonists Guild. He leaves his widow Hazel; a son, Robert, of 1907 N. Highland Ave.; a daughter, Mrs. Virginia Kirby, of Lafayette, Cal.; a brother, Frank, of San Francisco; and three sisters, Mrs. Ella Mitchell, of Bronson, Mo.; Mrs. Louise Vogel, of Fresno, and Mrs. Elizabeth Killinger, of Visalia.
Funeral arrangements are pending with Forest Lawn Memorial Park.

Cinderella Meets Wolf

Tex Avery packs so much into “Swing Shift Cinderella,” it’s hard to even figure out where to begin to describe it. The action’s so fast at times, characters seem to zoom from one place to another in less than a second. But that’s what makes it funny.

He heaps on routines of his that became standard but never lost their impact in the ‘40s. Lots of sex and scare takes by the wolf. Running past a title card during the cartoon. Characters in the wrong picture. Ridiculously long cars. Corny puns that tell you they’re corny puns. Scott Bradley playing “The Trolley Song” from ‘Meet Me in St. Louis.’ Oh, and Preston Blair’s Red, er, Cinderella floor show.

How about some of the drawings of the wolf when Cinderella opens her front door? Here are some of them.



Did Ed Love animate this? The drawings are staggered on ones and twos, something Love loved to do even with limited animation at Hanna-Barbera. Ray Abrams gets the other animation credit.

Oh, and it appears there’s a surprise cameo in two frames. Does the taxi driver look familiar?



Sara Berner gets to show off several voices, including her mock Bette Davis and what she later used for Mabel Flapsaddle, one of Jack Benny’s phone operators. Frank Graham is the wolf, and Keith Scott reports Graham also does the off-camera emcee who sounds like George in the George and Junior cartoons. Imogene Lynn sings for Red, er, Cinderella.

Billy Haines and Laurel and Hardy

Sorry you can’t see the caricatures of Laurel and Hardy very well, but I’ve never seen them in a newspaper ad and thought I’d pass this one on. It’s from April 5, 1931.



The short features Mae Busch and is a re-make of a 1927 film.

The feature is also a re-make of a silent, from 1922. It stars William Haines, who soon was forced to give up stardom and become a much-in-demand interior designer. Hedda Hopper, in her pre-gossip column days, plays a snooty society woman.

Drunk Turtles

Ah, there’s nothing like a Don and Waffles cartoon. Four of them were made by Van Beuren in 1930. They’re all strange, which is what makes them fun. Take, for example, “The Haunted Ship.” How many characters are chased in the sky by a bolt of lightning which grows jagged arms and legs? Or bizarre, scaly sea creatures swimming past the camera? Or skeletons? Okay, they seem to have appeared somewhat regularly in Van Beuren cartoons, even after Don and Waffles became Tom and Jerry.

But what can beat singing turtles? Thanks to animation, not only can they breathe underwater, but they can drain beer at a submerged ship’s bar, then launch into a fine chorus of ‘Sweet Adeline.’ The outlines of their mouths shake when they hold a note in vibrato.



The turtles return at the end of the cartoon to do a final chorus of the song. Then their wrinkly heads stretch right into the camera and fill the frame, as the background goes black. Zooming heads were a Van Beuren specialty. A lovely cartoon ending.




John Foster and Mannie Davis were the animators on this and Gene Rodemich supplies one of his enjoyable scores.

I Got Plenty of Rats

Everyone seems to sexually analyse Frank Tashlin’s “I Got Plenty of Mutton” but I’d prefer to do something else.

There’s a wonderful set of drawings when the hungry wolf sneaks to a pot and attempts to make a weak meat broth, only to have rats gobble it down. There are some great drawings of the wolf shooing away the rats, some of which lunge in perspective past the camera.

Tashlin doesn’t really use a cycle. Some of the drawings repeat in order but not all of them so he avoids a feeling of repetition. Here are a few of them.

You can see outlines of the wolf’s head are used to add a speed effect.






Izzy Ellis gets the animation credit on this cartoon but I wonder if Art Davis did the angular wolf going to the safe just before this scene. Cal Dalton was in the Tashlin unit at this time and George Cannata (Sr.) got an animation credit in “Swooner Crooner,” the next Tashlin cartoon to be released.

Jack Benny’s Jolly Good Show

It seems appropriate that, on July 4, there would be a newspaper column about an American conquering the English. No Revolutionary War story here, though it had been joked the man at the centre of all this had been around since then.

July 4, 1950 is when Broadway columnist Earl Wilson wrote about Jack Benny’s victory on the stage of the Palladium in London. Earl—and it must be nice to have this kind of job—was a first-hand viewer.

British Love Jack Benny
By EARL WILSON
London — Jack Benny stands there on the stage and says, “In Scotland, they think I’m quite a spendthrift. . .”
And the English, some of them well-to-do, some of them in evening clothes, smoking their cigarets and cigars as they sit in the stalls at the Palladium Theatre, go mad with delight, for Jack Benny is as popular in England as American money.
I think he’s even more appreciated than he is at home.
For we take him for granted back home; here they only hear his broadcasts — without commercials, yet! — during the war, and saw him two years ago at the Palladium, so he’s a great, great luxury.
“I’m a collector of rare coins,” he says.
“Of course they weren’t rare when I collected them”.
And they roar again.
The Londoners go to either the “first house” at 6:15, or the “second house,” at 8:45, and they have a drink in the saloon in the back at intermission. And sitting in the audience as the Beautiful Wife and I did, hearing the laughter of that friendly audience, you can begin to feel something new about the greatness of the English language and its power to communicate.
(There, there, Wilson, don’t get serious. You’re a jerk from Ohio remember?)
For they’re hep here. They laugh just at the mention of Fred Allen, and cheer the name of Danny Kaye.
They know about Jolson. Jack — as a gag — said that Jolson got paid $5-000 to work at a N Y. benefit.
“Jolson needs $5,000 like Jane Russell need falsies,” Jack said “They’re both loaded.”
They adore Phil Harris’ singing and bragging, as when he pretends he’s the top man and says superiorly to Benny, “Glad to have you with me.”
And when Rochester says he has no objection to his salary “but I’m the only man who can cash my pay check on a tram,” well they’ve had it — as everybody says here.
How the critics raved! The Daily Express’ John Barber said:
“Oh Good, Mr. Benny. Oh, Very Good!”
And here’s a clue to Benny’s likely greatness on television in this line: “The famous deadpan’s face is never still. Radio audiences miss the best of Benny.”
I think so, too, but only discovered it here. Jack is one of the greatest muggers — yet it’s an underplayed mugging; he’s really a “facial expressionist,” with about the greatest timing to be found today.
At intermission, I went to investigate a great jam in an aisle, thinking it was Ava Gardner’s fans, but they were packed around Cesar Romero and Mary Benny for their autographs, Quel adoration for Romero.
Afterward we went into the bar off the royal box that Val Parnell, owner of the Palladium, fitted up for the King and Queen, then we were off to the “21 Room” for a party where the guests, including the Robert Sherwoods and Sam Goldwyns, cheered Benny when he came in.
Characteristically, Jack, after his triumph, talked about somebody else—about Danny Kaye and Dinah Shore phoning him from Hollywood and the Wiere Brothers from St. Louis.
And he told Bob Sherwood about Barney Dean, a writer for Hope & Crosby on the coast, whom he greatly admires for his wit.
“Somebody asked him how he liked his writing job,” Jack related, “and he said, ‘Fine, except every once in a while when they ask me to write something.’”
“How I know that feeling!” Sherwood said.
Me too. Right now.

Jack returned to the air on September 10 and the first-half of the show involved dialogue dealing with the trip. Interestingly, Jack and his writers admitted in the second half that radio was finished. Benny and his troupe are shunted around the CBS building because all the radio studios are now being used for television. Within two months, Benny’s TV show would debut from New York.

What Can You Do With Mickey Mouse?

So much has been written and said about the Disney studio and its resultant empire that there isn’t really much I can add. And that’s all just as well, because I’ve never been as into Disney, or fascinated by the whole aura that built up around what’s now just a brand-name, as many others.

I liked seeing the kindly version of Walt Disney on camera and watching on Sunday nights (what else was on?) only if some funny cartoons were being shown (or Ludwig Von Drake). And, once in a while, I’d tune in the opening of the Mickey Mouse Club to see what happened to Donald Duck and the gong. By that time, the commercials would be over on Channel 12 and I could turn there and watch Bugs, the Fleischer Popeye and the really funny cartoons.

Disney himself has been analysed to death by people expert on the subject so there’s no point in me doing it. Instead, let me pass on this wire service story from 1950. It provides a bit of insight from Walt himself about why he turned away from cartoon shorts and on to other interests.

Yes, Disney Has Trouble With Animal Actors, Too
By Bob Thomas
HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 6 (AP) — Alfred Hitchcock, the director who has called actors anything from children to cattle, once remarked that Walt Disney has the ideal relationship with his stars: He can erase them if they get out of line.
When I told Disney this, he replied: “We have trouble with our actors, too.”
For instance, there is Mickey Mouse. The famed rodent has been brought back more times than Sarah Bernhardt. Several times Mickey has faded and his sentimental creator has revived him in a new vehicle.
“The trouble is,” Disney explained, “that Mickey isn’t funny himself. He has to be surrounded with comic situations. That takes a lot of trouble.”
Minnie Mouse has suffered an eclipse for the same reason. “There’s no action connected with Minnie,” the cartoon man said, "and we have given up the subtle stuff.”
“The duck (Donald) and the dog (Pluto) are funnier characters in themselves, but even they can get out of line. We get so busy with what we’re doing that we lose perspective. We have to stop and see what is happening to the characters.”
Disney has taken on a new set of actors who are even more unmanageable than his film veterans. He has started a series which he calls “true-life adventures,” starring the wild life of North America.
The first of the series was called “Seal Island” and it chronicled the life of seals on an Aleutian island. It won an academy award. The second is “Beaver Valley,” which is currently winning much praise throughout the country. Among the fan letters Disney has received is one from a justice of the U. S. supreme court.
“Beaver Valley,” as you might suspect, stars the Beaver. “He is a fantastic animal,” Walt said. “All he does is eat, sleep and work. He never seems to play at all. The work he does is of utmost importance in conserving the land in the western United States. The government even transports beavers into areas that needed conservation.”
Supporting the dam-builders are a lively bunch of otters, who believe in all play and no work. They are as funny a set of comedians as Disney has ever offered. The rest of the cast includes the villain—a coyote, plus various moose, crickets, frogs, salmon, ducks, bears, etc.
The films run a half-hour and are Disney’s answer to the double-feature. He feels audiences will get more enjoyment out of watching nature’s actors than in sitting through a B picture that accompanies the major film.
“These pictures aren’t cheap to make,” he told me. “They cost at least $100,000. I have to send a cameraman into the wilds for about nine months in order to get what we’re after. I now have a man on the Olympian peninsula in Washington filming the elk. Coming up is what I call ‘Nature’s Half-Acre.’ A study of every living thing on and under an average half-acre of land.”
He is also contemplating a starring vehicle for the otters. I highly recommend it. They’re as funny as Donald Duck.

A Necessary Evil

“Is This Trip Really Necessary?” says the sign. “Sure, it’s necessary,” Woody Woodpecker says to us. Then he pokes his head at the camera. “I'm a necessary evil.” I love the evil expression.



I wish I could tell you who’s responsible for this piece of animation. Bob Bentley gets the animation credit. Animator Emery Hawkins gets his first of two co-direction credits on this one; the studio personnel was in a state of flux and Alex Lovy had left.

The cartoon is ‘Ration Bored’ (1943). It has the good and bad of the early ‘40s Lantz. Woody should be a frantic character like Daffy Duck; instead, a good chunk of the cartoon consists of inflating body-parts sight gags. But I like the design of early Woody, though a transition was afoot. Or a-hand. Woody’s got glove-like white hands.

Warners was experimenting with smear animation about this time. Lantz is still stretching characters in between poses. Here’s one that would be a smear if Virgil Ross or Bobe Cannon were drawing him.



At least one of the animators (or assistants) on the Lantz staff about this time used thick action lines, with outlines filled in by brush-work. I’ve seen it in a couple of cartoons. There’s a drawing like that here.



Darrell Calker’s score is really good in this one. He uses a kettle drum as Woody’s car rolls between hills to a stop. The start of ‘The Alphabet Song’ is used behind the ration book gag (as the gas station attendant reads the letters in the book). He uses a solo clarinet going up and down part of the scale when lumps of gas move along a hose into Woody’s jug. And I like the cuckoo sound with woodwinds when Woody’s “driving” the cop who has tire tubes around his arms and legs. Woody’s irises and pupils turn into bullet-shapes when he realises what’s at the bottom of a hill (the camera then cuts to it).



Woody dies at the end of the cartoon but, of course, he’s back in a few months in another cartoon.

This was a last cartoon of sorts. It’s the final time Woody’s original design would be used. Art Heinemann brought in a new design for the next cartoon. It was last Woody directed by a make-shift team. Shamus Culhane was hired for the next cartoon. And it was the last cartoon where Kent Rogers voiced Woody. He was off to war duty (he was killed) and Lantz elected to go with Bugs Hardaway as the woodpecker until the studio closed at the end of the ‘40s. Lantz had a pretty polished group of voice actors the rest of the decade (Hardaway’s monotone notwithstanding)—Hans Conried, Jack Mather, Harry E. Lang, Walter Tetley and Lionel Stander among them. Oh, and Lantz’s wife got in a couple lines here and there. We’d hear a lot more of Grace Stafford in the ‘50s. Lantz hired her to be Woody. Just a coincidence, said Lantz. He wouldn’t make up stories, would he?

Hound Hunters

The George and Junior series of cartoons had to be Tex Avery’s weakest at MGM, unless you want to count the “...of Tomorrow” shorts. “Lucky Duck” was a success because it was George and Junior vs a duck. The conflict was focused; there wasn’t even dialogue to get in the way or slow it down. And then the conflict itself became irrelevant for much of the cartoon as Avery interrupted the chase for gag after gag.

In “Hound Hunters” (1947), the conflict between George, Junior and a teeny dog gets muddled when Avery tosses other characters into it and the little dog vanishes. There’s not one but three costume gags. And one gag ends with Junior shivering in George’s arms, which he’s already done in the picture to set up a situation, not as a gag.

Maybe the story’s a little out of whack because the cartoon was originally named “What Price Fleadom.” There is no flea in this story, unless Tex was referring to the dog which is small but not flea-sized. So it could be the story underwent a major overhaul and not all the kinks were worked out of it.

Still, Tex always manages to do something inventive. One thing I did like was in the cat dress-up sequence. George and Junior get inside a lumpy cat costume, one in front, the other in back. Tex pulls off a surprise take, but adds vibrating words on the screen. And when you’ve read the first line and it sinks in, a second one pops up. I think it’s Walt Clinton’s writing.



Naturally, it wouldn’t be a Tex Avery cartoon without big-mouth fear takes. With teeth.





But where’s the little dog in all this? Isn’t the cartoon about catching him? Oh, well.

The designs are by Irv Spence and the animation credits went to Clinton, Preston Blair, Ed Love and Ray Abrams.