Cooking With Phil Harris

The image Phil Harris projected on the Jack Benny Show, and which followed him throughout his career, was the relaxed, boozy, vain guy who didn’t let something like illiteracy or lack of formal musical training bother him. You couldn’t help but like Phil Harris.

Unlike Benny and almost everyone else who was big in network radio comedy or comedy/variety, Harris didn’t make the jump to television. He insisted in the ‘50s the right vehicle didn’t come along but, frankly, the reason was he didn’t need to work. He explains a bit of that here in a 1961 Associated Press feature story. Phil and Alice Faye virtually retired from show biz at the end of their radio career and, every couple of years, reporters would trek out to Palm Springs to see how he was doing.

PASS THE CHITLINS!
Phil Harris, who rarely works anymore, spends his time cooking
By JAMES BACON
AP Movie-TV Writer
HOLLYWOOD, May 12 — (AP) — This may shock the boys at the corner saloon, but Phil Harris spends more time cooking nowadays than he does drinking.
It used to be that when Phil felt sad, his tears were 86 proof. No more. Of course, he never did as much drinking as Jack Benny made out. If he had, his liver would be in a bottle at the Harvard Medical School.
The one-time bandleader now makes only occasional entertainment appearances, hence has plenty of time for the kitchen.
It’s quite a sight to see Phil with a market basket picking out choice vegetables at the Farmers Market. It’s even more astounding to see him hovering over the stove at his Palm Springs home, whipping up a special dinner.
“I cook every dinner at home,” boasts Phil. “And I feel like I’m in heaven in that kitchen.”
Phil is so ardent an amateur chef that his kitchen is restaurant equipped.
He ribs his wife, ex-actress Alice Faye, as to the inspiration for his love of cooking.
“I either had to learn how to cook or starve to death,” he says.
“I didn't used to let Alice in the kitchen, but I’ve taught her how to fix salads. She’s a pretty good salad maker now.”
PROBABLY no one in show business lives the good life Phil does. He and Alice live in a beautiful home facing the Thunderbird Country Club golf course. When he's not in the kitchen, he's out on the course playing with Bing Crosby.
Sometimes for variation Phil and Bing go hunting or fishing. Bing is a guy who knows how to live, too, but he has to work harder and oftener than Phil.
How does Phil—or anyone else—get this life of paradise?
“Well,” he says, “when Alice was a big star, I told her always to save her money—and she did.”
Actually, Phil doesn’t need Alice’s bank account. He is the only grownup show business personality who believes in Santa Claus—and Santa looks exactly like NBC’s Gen. David Sarnoff.
Back in the days when radio was big, Jack Benny, Amos & Andy and some other stars made a famous exodus from NBC to CBS.
Phil had been a mainstay of the Benny radio show for many years. Then NBC gave him his own show, co-starring Phil and Alice. It was a top-rated radio show for a long time.
“I felt grateful to NBC,” Phil recalls “so I didn’t make the big switch. Gen. Sarnoff was grateful too, so he gave me a long-term contract.”
The contract, similar to the TV deal later given Milton Berle, was one that paid Phil whether he worked or not. It still has two years to run.
Some sources say that Harris gets $100,000 a year. The network never came up with a TV series for Phil, but occasionally uses him on special productions, such as the Bob Hope show.
He also does a month at Las Vegas each year.
NOW THAT HIS lucrative contract with NBC is running out, Phil and Alice are preparing a new TV series starring themselves.
“It’s not going to be one of these situation things where Alice is in the kitchen all the time. The air is filled with those.” Besides, she seldom is allowed in the kitchen at home—she wouldn't know how to act.”
Harris’ cooking must be pretty good because Crosby, who can afford to eat in restaurants, is a steady customer.
And Benny never turns down one of Phil’s invitations.
“Jack never says much about the food but he loves that price,” says Phil.
What's the secret of good cooking?
“A good cook starts his meal early in the morning by shopping personally for the meats and vegetables. All great chefs do their own shopping. Then take time, loving time with your dishes.
“About the only drinking I do nowadays is to sip a tea while I’m stirring the soup. Man, it’s real living. It’s the greatest relaxation in the world to create a meal.”
BUT THERE are hazards. When an AP photographer took pictures of Harris in his Palm Springs kitchen, he had just come back from a visit to his doctor. The photographer quoted Phil:
“That guy must be nuts,” he said. “How can anyone as relaxed as I have an ulcer?”
Maybe his own cooking doesn't agree with him.

Incidentally, Phil wasn’t the only ex-radio or TV star of the day who didn’t have to work for a while. We’ll explore a few others from 50 years ago in a future post.

Gerald McNotDisney

For those of us who grew up with Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and a host of other cartoons where characters mangled and belittled other characters in impossible ways, it’s hard to stomach the undisguised disdain they were held in by the animators at UPA. But perhaps it’s understandable.

Television and time changed things for cartoons. Today, Warners, Fleischer/Famous and MGM shorts are loved by adults the world over who saw them on TV as kids. Before television, they were considered family filler until the feature came on in the movie house, appealing generally to children (hence, special screenings of “Cartoon Carnivals” for kids at theatres).

Animators thought they were better than that. UPA gave them an opportunity to say so by creating cartoons that didn’t have the negative connotations they (and the audience) associated with children’s programming—animals (albeit behaving like humans) based on Disney designs, and endless assault and battery.

Their idealism—and air of superiority—can be detected in a story from the United Press about the UPA hit “Gerald McBoing Boing.” Their idealism was a purely artistic one. Not too far buried in Ted Geisel’s story is a tale of a triumph over discrimination. It’s a powerful message but, instead, all the UPAers did was chant in unison about their drawings and how they weren’t like those old-fashioned ones in those kids’ cartoons. The medium was the message. One wonders how Geisel felt about all that as his own drawing style was rejected in the process.

Here’s the story from February 22, 1951.

Hollywood’s New Hit Is Cartoon Hero
By Aline Mosby.
HOLLYWOOD (UP)—One apparent parent cinch Oscar winner among the Academy award hopefuls is an actor who was nominated for his first movie and will never be seen on the screen again.
This new thespian sprang to stardom after one seven-minute movie. He has been exalted by the press, fan mail has poured into his studio, movie theater managers are begging for more of his pictures.
But his bosses announced Thursday that Gerald McBoing-Boing has made his first, last and only movie.
Gerald, is a cartoon character who has stirred up the most fuss among animation addicts since Disney’s “The Three Little Pigs.” He’s a little boy who speaks only in sound effects such as train whistles, thundering hooves and “boing boings.”
But United Productions of America, a new live-wire cartoon outfit that created Gerald, say his debut that may win him an Oscar is also his retirement.
“When they have something good in Hollywood they always repeat and repeat,” said Robert Cannon, who directed the cartoon.
“There are so many things we’d rather do than stick to one subject. Gerald McBoing-Boing is a complete statement. We don’t want to make any sequels.”
Gerald was the brainchild of children’s book author Dr. Seuss. He sold the idea to UPA, which makes cartoons for armed forces trainees, television and Columbia Pictures in modern art style. UPA was formed by cartoonists who were “frustrated”, as one puts it, after years of drawing animals, curved lines, opaque forms, realistic details and violent action at Disney’s, Warners’ and MGM cartoon factories.
They decided to rebel, against traditional cartoon style when they created Gerald McBoing-Boing. So Gerald and his family are simple line drawing over abstract, unrealistic backgrounds.
The result was so artistic that the critics are turning handsprings, and so entertaining that the public is too.
“We made a cartoon that is frankly a drawing," Cannon explained. “You never think of Mickey Mouse as a drawing. To audiences he’s a real little character.”
Now UPA is busy on “The Oompahs”, a family of musical instruments that doesn’t own the usual faces and limbs, and “The Magic Boxing Gloves”.
Between cartoons the company’s now unfrustrated artists invite the public to view their after-hour paintings at their modernistic plant next door to Warners’.
“This shows that you can do good work in Hollywood,” UPA Artist Jules Engel says.
The McBoing-Boing cartoon showed on the re-issue program at the Iowa earlier this week. It may be returned later.

Idealism has a habit of withering away when money is concerned. Gerald McBoing-Boing did not go into retirement, despite what Bobe Cannon wanted. UPA needed cash. UPA could sell Gerald McBoing-Boing. So young Gerald found his way into several lesser theatrical cartoons and a nine-month television show which got critical acclaim but, as animation historian Leonard Maltin noted, needed Bill Scott to punch up that detestable comedy. UPA needed that, too.

It still wasn’t enough. By 1960, UPA was basically gone, with a new owner mainly interested in churning out awful television cartoons for children. Gerald McBoing-Boing had been silenced. His animators weren’t bragging now.

Beep Beep Backgrounds

Bob Gribbroek’s scenic layouts in the Roadrunner cartoons of the early ‘50s weren’t as abstract as Maurice Noble’s in the later part of the decade. They certainly weren’t landscape art of New Mexico, like he painted on the side, but were representational enough to be an effective stage for the cartoons.

Here are some examples from “Beep, Beep,” released by Warners in 1951.








The best-known background drawing in this cartoon isn’t of a desert. It a video-gamish tunnel system in an underground coal mine. The Roadrunner and Coyote are different coloured dots that race through the passages.



And, being a Warners cartoon, there has to be an inside reference. Animator Ken Harris is in the soup business.



The backgrounds were expertly painted by Phil DeGuard.

Cat Concerto Expressions

“Personality animation” is one of those terms that gets batted around that doesn’t quite mean what it says. Felix the Cat had a personality, expressed through animation, but no one ever calls the action in the Felix silents “personality animation.”

So let’s set aside the term altogether for now, and look at some of the drawings one of Joe Barbera’s favourite cartoons from his MGM unit, ‘Cat Concerto.’ One of the reasons it succeeds so well—and certainly did with the Academy of Motion Pictures—is due to the personality exhibited by Tom and Jerry. Like good silent film actors, you know what they’re thinking. Here are just a few of the emotions they display in the cartoon, thanks to animator Ken Muse.


Snooty superiority


Self-satisfaction


Gleeful abandon



And to counter-balance the intricate posing above, there’s a take that must be by Irv Spence.



Dogs and humans excepted, all the characters seem to have similarities in head construction. Occasionally, that posed problems. Here, Tom looks more like a giant mouse than a cat.

Only three animators are credited in this cartoon; Ed Barge is the other.

June Foray

There might be a debate over who is the best cartoon voice actress of all time, but I’ll bet you there would be almost unanimous, universal consent over who is the most beloved.

Can it be anyone else but June Foray?

I have decided, for no particular reason other than I love her work, to declare this June Foray Day on the Tralfaz and Yowp blogs. You’ll be able to read old newspaper clippings about June on both, stories written before she was tipsy-fied by Jay Ward and Bill Scott into accepting what’s probably her most popular role as Rocket J. Squirrel in 1959.



Newspapers before 1950 mentioned June on rare occasion, generally in radio listings for a show called “Smile Time.” It was a daily, 15-minute comedy broadcast that debuted December 31, 1945 on the Mutual network and starred Steve Allen and Wendell Noble. Soon after the show started, one radio column noted (no doubt assisted by a network handout):

June Foray, star of “Smile Time”, can do most anything with her vocal chords—she has been the parrot in Spike Jones’ “Chloe”, the hiccup of Paulette Goddard and Veronica Lake, and can imitate every animal sound imaginable.

Earlier in the year, one newspaper noted her role on “A Man Called Jordan” as “an exotic German spy” (Hmmm. Shades of Natasha?) and as a 13-year-old Arab boy. And, the following year, she was hired to play a pain-in-the-butt tenant of Stu Erwin in the long-forgotten “Phone Again Finnegan” on CBS radio.

Like almost everyone else in radio, June made the jump to television. Oddly enough,
Steve Allen didn’t use her on his television show; maybe it was due to the late hours. June did appear on an early Johnny Carson show (April 20, 1953) based in Los Angeles. The big-name guest was Fred Allen.

Syndicated columnist Al Morton had this cute little biography of June on August 6, 1953. The reference to little old ladies is interesting, given her later career at Warners.

One of the most surprising voices in show business belongs to a pint-sized, throaty girl who says she always wanted to be a leading lady but ended up a character.
She’s June Foray, who can deliver any one of a thousand voices, human or animal, at the drop of a cue. She’ll be exhibiting her vocal talents over ABC-TV on Saturday, Aug. 22, when “Smilin’ Ed’s Gang” makes its debut.
Her own description of her unusual talent range is “anything that walks or crawls.” It all started when June was six. Her mother thought her voice was too low and marched her off to a dramatic school to “elevate her sounds to a more ladylike pitch.” This instigated, instead, such an interest in the theater that June is still with it.
Throughout her schooling, June did summer stock. By the time she reached her early teens, she has tried every role from the town moppet to Shakespeare’s Lady MacBeth—with a specialty of being very good in portraying “little old ladies.”
June has done voices for many cartoons and juvenile record albums. She was a cat in Walt Disney’s “Cinderella,” and imitated two mermaids and an old squaw in “Peter Pan.”
June, dark-eyed, size eight and four feet 11 inches tall, is an apartment dweller whose favorite companion is Katrina, a two-year-old Daschshund. June says Katrina has a fairly man-sized bark, but not “half as good as mine.”
Incidentally, one of her favorite pastimes is barking at the neighborhood dogs before she leaves home in the mornings. More than once she has had the whole canine' populace of her block in an uproar—not to mention the neighbors.

The United Press concentrated on her film work in this 1951 story.

VOICE SPECIALIST
Screams for Living
By ALINE MOSBY
HOLLYWOOD, March 26 (U.P.)— Tiny June Foray, who screams for a living, recommended screaming today for anybody desiring a sexy voice and a slim tummy.
Miss Foray, a “voice specialty” actress, is never seen on the screen. But when the celluloid heroine lets loose a blood-curdling yell, it’s often Miss Foray on the sound track, not the star.
By now, she says, she has “a very firm diaphragm.” Her own voice isn’t husky, but she says a certain kind of screaming can make anybody’s that way.
Lauren Bacall got her boudoir voice by screaming on orders from her discoverer, Howard Hawks.
“You can get a husky voice by screaming incorrectly, with your throat,” she explained. “You strain your throat muscles, what I call ‘stroking the glottis.’
“When I scream I keep an open throat and yell from the diaphragm. That’s good exercise for the stomach.”
Miss Foray has the job of making movies “shriller than ever” because, she said, movie stars are too embarrassed to.
“When a movie actress screams, out comes a little ‘eek.’ They never let loose, so their scream has to be redubbed on the sound track,” the pretty screamer said.
“I guess movie stars are afraid of straining their voices or embarrassed. You have to be be uninhibited to scream.”
June looks like she’d never got more than a whisper out of her pert four feet 11 inches. But she’s hollered on movie sound tracks for glamour queens like Paulette Goddard, Joan Caulfield and Veronica Lake.
She’s also sneezed for Constance Collier, made whooping cough noises for a boy in “Shepherd of the Hills,” sobbed for Olivia De Havilland’s baby in “To Each His Own,” and is now doing seven different children’s voices in Walt Disney’s “Peter Pan.”
On the radio she’s an actress who screams for herself. For NBC’s “Smilin’ Ed McConnell” children’s adventure program she plays everything from a space siren to a horrible witch to a cat, sometimes all on the same program.
“I use different types of screams to register fright, surprise, anger and pleasant surprise,” she said. “The hardest was for a movie, ‘Burma Surgeon.’ I screamed for one hour and got a headache.”

June helped in the war effort in Korea. The United Press wrote about her travails in a story for newspapers of December 16, 1954, revealing how a star’s life is different than ours’.

USO Troupers Head Overseas
By ALINE MOSBY
HOLLYWOOD — (U.P.) — Terry Moore and other stars get most of the glory when Army planes take off today and next week to overseas, but there is many an unsung heroine in the troupe.
At no pay, a loss in salary and considerable expense, singer June Foray, for example, had to do the following to get ready for the USO trek that brings Yuletide cheer to GIs far from home;
Take tetanus, typhoid, small pox, diphtheria and cholera shots; get a passport, do her Christmas shopping, mail Christmas cards, rehearse her act for two weeks with other members of the 71-performer troupe, do her regular work at Capitol Records, attend Army briefings, leave her cat at cat motel, make her costume, buy winter underwear, pay her bills, insure her fur coat, postpone work dates until she gets back in three weeks, make out a will, and get her hair bleached.
Typical of Most.
“But it’s worth it,” laughed June as she packed her suitcase before stepping on the plane en-route to Iceland, France and Germany.
“When the Army told us the boys appreciate our giving up our Christmas to entertain them, we felt kind of happy to do something good for them.”
June, a little-known singer and mimic who records cartoon voices for records and movies, is typical of most of the show people making the trip. She's a veteran of
10 years of “Tom and Jerry” movies, radio, TV and “Woody Woodpecker” records, and was asked by USO to work up a comedy-imitations act.
To Look Feminine.
The troupers get $10 a day expense money and their board and room, but, except for the union musicians, no salary. Terry, Marilyn Monroe, Bob Hope and other stars have received headlines for their trips to Army bases. But June and other troupers wade through snow, work two or three shows a day, travel by Jeep and get little sleep with no recognition.
“Forrest Tucker, the star of our group, won’t let us girls wear slacks,” June added. “He thinks the GIs will want us to look feminine.”
Disc Jockey Johnny Grant, another unsung hero of the USO troupe, left today on his seventh overseas trip to entertain homesick GIs at forgotten bases in the Orient.

Why did June get into voice acting in the first place? Let’s hear from her in her own words, written in the Pasadena Independent of July 9, 1959.

Girl Behind Voice Likes Her Calling
By JUNE FORAY
A small number of people in Hollywood earn their living in what amounts to a really offbeat fashion. I’m one of them.
I specialize in imitating all sorts of voices for TV and radio commercials, motion picture cartoons and sometimes for big-name stars whose dialogue, for some reason or other, did not record well. My voice is heard by millions of people daily and to them I’m more vocal than visual as I seldom appear before the cameras.
From time to time, I have been seen on the Jack Benny and other television shows, but principally my work is confined to doing all types of voices—from babies to witches and then some.
Why have I specialized in this field? Well, for one reason I’m rather short to play leading roles. And another is that I have developed an ability to imitate all sorts of people am in this area, there isn’t as much competition as in the straight acting field. Economically, too, it has its rewards and I’m frank to admit that money is always desirable when you earn it by delivering an effective and conscientious job.
My voice has been heard, impersonating all sorts of characters, on such cartoons as
“Woody Woodpecker,” and “Bugs Bunny.”
I have worked with the great Stan Freberg on practically all of his records and radio shows. A lot of people remember “St. George and the Dragonette” for example and, more recently, the “Best of Freberg,” album.
I’m practically a voice detached from a body, but I love my work—and its financial rewards. And another good angle is the fact that in the far distant future, I won't have to worry about my appearance—only my voice which, from all indications, is holding up well despite its constant use, professionally, that is.
I dare you to turn on your radio or TV set without hearing me.

These days, perhaps you can find her on TV constantly, but you can on video-sharing web sites with endless cartoons. Let’s end our June Foray Day post with a fan-made video of a few of June’s most famous animated roles.

No Flies on Me

The Walter Lantz cartoons dropped a few notches in quality when the studio reopened in 1950. Character designs were simpler, the animation was less elaborate and the timing has a different feel. Still, there were worthwhile Woody Woodpecker cartoons into the mid-‘50s, but it was a case of hit or miss.

‘Puny Express’ (1951) was the first short released when the studio re-signed with Universal International and went back to work. The lack of dialogue hurts this and other cartoons around this time—Lantz wanted to release cartoons to foreign markets and words got in the way—but there are a few things I like in this one.

There’s a throw-away gag involving Buzz Buzzard’s horse, Flea Biscuit. Horse rears tend to attract flies. Flea Biscuit’s does. And he deals with it. I really like the expressions.





The animation credits go to Don Patterson, La Verne Harding and Ray Abrams. The horse design may have been by Dick Lundy; he worked on this cartoon along with writers Bugs Hardaway and Heck Allen before they were let go when the studio closed in 1948.

Page Miss Glory and Mr Avery

“Page Miss Glory” is an unusual cartoon in so many ways. It starts off as the raison d’être of the Merrie Melodies series—to push Warner-owned songs, in this case Warren and Dubin’s “Page Miss Glory” from the 1935 feature film of the same name. How it was done is what’s unusual.

Leon Schlesinger’s cartoons were not noted for their art; some around that time are flat-out ugly with some dull stock character designs. But, for reasons we can only speculate, Schlesinger decided to make a cartoon with Art Moderne designs, brought in mystery woman Leadora Congdon to create it, then never tried anything like it again. Congdon only worked on this one cartoon. Who she was and where she came from is one of those great unanswered questions of animation; I’ve never found her name in a census report, a Los Angeles City Directory, nor a newspaper of the day.

Even more odd is the cartoon was assigned to director Tex Avery (“I think I was forced to make it,” he recalled to historian Joe Adamson). Avery was hardly the veteran on staff. Friz Freleng was the number one director at the time and Jack King had experience at animation’s Shangi-La, the Walt Disney studio. Avery had only made four cartoons before this one was released in 1936 and was noted for his gags, not his artistic temperament. But he geared up his crew of Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Sid Sutherland, Virgil Ross, Bobe Cannon and writer Tubby Millar and came up with an interesting cartoon at worst (none of them received credit but all appear in caricature near the end of the cartoon). Certainly the gags and the twist ending are what you’d expect out of Avery.

Avery isn’t known for his perspective animation, but there’s some of it in this cartoon. My favourite bit is a funnier variation on the old Harman-Ising camera-in-the-mouth routine. This one has the “camera” drink champagne.



Tuxedoed men run to and away the camera. In an enjoyable bit, an endless group of them run from elevators toward the camera, turning the picture black (I’ll bet this was a hit on a big screen in the theatre). A few seconds later, the men walk away and the picture reveals them surrounding the idealised Miss Glory.




More perspective animation as the men high-step in a ring around Miss Glory. It’s remarkable to think this same studio could only muster lame Buddy cartoons a year earlier.



Anyone familiar with Busby Berkeley’s choreography at Warners has seen his overhead shots during songs. Congdon (or Avery) imitates one in the cartoon, with the dancers going clockwise and the rings they’re on going counter-clockwise. Really a great effect.



And there are rounded or angular geometric shapes everywhere in this cartoon. Some have the camera looking up at them, and others down. Here are two examples.




These designs are in stark contrast to the standard-issue characters and Elmer Plummer’s backgrounds we see outside of the art deco dream sequence. A wandering cow is downright crude. It’s hard to believe the same animators were at work. Despite that, I still like this cartoon. And you can’t beat a surprise pop culture reference to Jack Benny’s orchestra leader at the very end.

Unglamorous Glamour Manor

Jack Benny had a fruitful symbiotic relationship with members of his cast, even the secondary members. They made fun of Benny and made Benny’s show funnier. That, in turn, increased their fame so they were able to parlay it into their own shows, all in 1946. Phil Harris was one. Dennis Day was another. Mel Blanc was another. But a former member of Benny’s cast also launched an attempt at radio stardom that year.

Time proved Benny and Kenny Baker didn’t have much of a symbiotic relationship. Benny carried on for years after Baker walked out on his show, replacing him with someone who had far more talents. Baker’s career began an irreversible decline, slow at first before wearing out his welcome on Fred Allen’s Texaco show. “Glamour Manor” was Baker’s last hurrah on radio and the odds were against him from the start.

“Glamour Manor” debuted in June 1944 with Cliff Arquette in a dual starring role (one being an old woman). The show was tinkered with several times with new casts, vocalists, announcers (one was Robert C. Bruce of Warner Bros. cartoon narrator fame) and even locations. Arquette apparently finally had enough and quit in June 1946. That resulted in another reshuffling. Baker was brought in with a brand-new cast, though some were familiar to listeners as he played on his old connection with Benny. Don Wilson was his announcer and Sam Hearn reprised his role of Schlepperman. In fact, Benny showed up for a guest shot on October 3, 1946. But it simply didn’t work and the show signed off June 27, 1947.

What was wrong with the show? In fairness to Kenny Baker, you can’t blame him. You can blame the writers for coming up with jokes that would be at home in small-time vaudeville and clichéd, one-dimensional characters (and, frankly, this describes most of the sitcoms in the Golden Days). The types had been around radio so long that if someone described the character to you, you could probably guess who played the role. If you read the description of Miss Biddle in the review below, you can’t help but think of Elvia Allman. But dour critic John Crosby of The New York Herald-Tribune didn’t blame the writers, either. This is from December 20, 1946.

Radio Review
Such Young, Young Men
By JOHN CROSBY
The fascination of naive and extremely literal young men has so thoroughly gripped the people who produce and sponsor radio programs that it deserves, I think, some looking into. I’m not quite sure who started it all but I suspect Jack Benny must shoulder much of the responsibility and it’s a heavy responsibility.
A good many years ago Benny employed on his program a young tenor named Kenny Baker. Besides singing, it was also Baker’s task to be dumb, timid, excessively innocent and a sort of permanent butt of a lot of good-natured jokes. Above all, he provided an excellent foil for the aging, grasping, cocky Benny. Baker was then replaced by a young man named Dennis Day. The advantages of this substitution remain, at least to me, obscure. Both young men (though Baker can’t be so young any more) are tenors with identical qualities. Both react precisely alike to the same stimuli. Both have the same dewy personality. In fact, if any one can distinguish between the two, he has a sharper ear than mine.
Although he still appears on the Benny program, Day has a new program of his own called “A Day in the Life of Dennis Day,” (NBC, 6:30 p.m. Thursday). Baker has HIS own program “Glamour Manor,” which appears, God save the mark, five times a week (ABC, 9 a.m. Mondays through Fridays). This makes a total of seven programs a week of fresh young male innocence or enough to keep Hollywood gainfully employed for a couple of years.
TYPICAL YOUTH?
If it hadn’t been going on so long, I’d call it a trend. The way things are, you might call it a sort of fast-frozen belief in radio circles that Baker and Day epitomize young American manhood. On the basis of five years in the Army, I find this belief difficult to share. The young men I met were considerably more hep than either Baker or Day and I met only one young man who fainted dead away when a pretty girl spoke to him. This custom made him rather more of a curiosity than a typical American male.
All the above is a rather circuitous introduction to “Glamour Manor,” one of the heaviest daytime shows on the air. In addition to Baker’s tenor voice and girlish innocence, the program boasts Harry Lubin’s orchestra, a competent cast, and Don Wilson, an announcer who has provoked more, though not necessarily better, jokes about fat men than Falstaff. About one-third of the program is devoted to Baker’s singing in his pleasant tenor to Lubin’s music.
The rest of the proceedings revolve around the goings-on at “Glamour Manor,” a hotel which Baker runs and in which his girl-friend, Barbara, is employed.
OTHERS ON BILL
Barbara is the Great American Girl Friend as opposed to, let us say, the Great American Kid Sister, who is Judy Foster, somebody else entirely. In addition to these two, there is a Jewish dialect comedian named Schlepperman and a Miss Biddle, one of those elderly snobbish ladies who chases men and never catches them and who says at one point: “I’d like to have a neck like a giraffe and a head like Charles Boyer. I’ve always wanted to have a long neck with Charles Boyer.”
To give you the smallest possible example of the proceedings at “Glamour Manor,” the other day an old college friend of Kenny’s named Russel Green, a conceited, handsome mug, showed up at the hotel and threw everyone into an uproar by making a pass at Barbara. Every thing worked out all right when this character came down with lead poisoning from one of Miss Biddle’s pies.
TIMOROUS KENNY
More important than the plot in these programs is Baker’s character. To give you some idea just how arrested is Baker’s development, I offer the following samples of his dialogue. At one point he says to Barbara: “Look, there’s a mouse!” Then KB runs. At another point when Schlepperman tries to reason with him as he picks up a gun and looks desperate. Baker says: “Don’t worry; there isn't any water in it.” Now, just one more: “Gee, I didn’t know he’d tell his father I broke his yo-yo.”
The other jokes are almost uniformly awful but I’m afraid most of them will have to be forgiven. After all, this is a half-hour show, five days a week. The jokesmiths must be suffering from a severe case of combat fatigue. I have only one suitable for exhibit.
“I became a singer,” says Kenny.
“I didn’t know that. I thought you were a tenor.”
Copyright 1946, for The Tribune

NBC Comics, Part 2

Television went through an awkward period between its experimental days of the early 1930s and the movement of radio stars to the new medium about 1948. Stations were filling time during the World War Two years with crude, low-budget—and long-forgotten—shows. They knew something was better just around the corner. It was a matter of preparing and waiting.

Syndicators got ready for the explosion of television licenses by coming up with programming proposals. Several of them involved cartoons. But not even the limited animated, Saturday morning kind; that would have been too expensive. Instead, the idea was not to have any animation at all. Cartoons would be just that—panels like in newspaper cartoons.

Two companies with the same name and same idea got to work. Viewers started hearing about it in 1945. Here’s a wire service story.

Artist Launches Two Comic Movie Firms
HOLLYWOOD, March 23 (UP)—Artist Steve Slesinger today announced formation of Tele-Comics, Inc., of New York, to reproduce nationally known syndicated and original comics for 16-mm. distribution and television.
Slesinger also announced launching of another producing company, Telepictures, Inc., of Hollywood, which will produce 16-mm. film in conjunction with a children’s books publishing firm.

Some specifics about how the cartoons worked were revealed in Advertising and Selling magazine that year.

Comics telecast
To test the adaptability of the newspaper comic strip to television, an experimental series was begun recently by Hollywood’s W6XYZ under a short-term contract with NEA.
Labeled by Fred S. Ferguson, president of NEA, as only an experiment to test out the possibilities of television as a syndicate market, the “Telecomics” test puts eight NEA Sunday pages on the air for a half-hour weekly. Panels, unanimated, are separated and transferred to film without balloons. Background character voices dramatize the dialogue, while a narrator supplies supplemental explanation and sound effects are added. The comics being used are “Boots and Her Buddies,” “Freckles,” “Brenda Breeze,” “Our Boarding House,” “Captain Easy,” “Carnival” “Mr. Merriweather” and also “Otis.”

The concept continued to germinate. Here’s a newspaper story from April 24, 1946:

It’ll Soon Be Telecomics
By SAUL PETT
Distributed by International News
“Telecomics”: A group of air-minded experts have come up with an idea for televising Sunday's favorite comic strips the same day they appear in newspapers. As prevued before the American Newspaper publishers association, the comic panel first appears on the television screen without the blurbs. Then, as a narrator begins to tell the story and assumes the voices of the various characters, the blurbs pop up in their right spots. In the case of the "Little King" by O. Soglow, the narrator will have little to do except explain the actions of the lordless little guy.

Billboard magazine covered early television in depth, including the rise of non-animated cartoons. Steve Slesinger’s company inked a deal then went shopping for an ad agency to snare a sponsor, a practice that came from network radio in those days. This is from the edition of April 19, 1947:

A radio-television package deal which may set the pattern for future video sales was set last week when NW Ayer agency took up an option for the Zane Grey comic strip, King of the Royal Mounted, for use over both media. Deal was set with Telecomics, Inc., which owns and controls the comic strip’s rights. Option primarily covers tele rights to King, serialized in five-minute takes, but also gives ultimate sponsor the right to bank roll a 15-minute radio strip made from King if sponsor so desires. Telecomics veepee John Howell stated his firm's desire to stress the video possibilities precludes splitting the package to permit separate sale of radio rights to bidder interested only in that medium.
Should the deal work out satisfactorily, it may mark a new method of marketing packages during video’s long transition period, whereby sponsors interested in purchasing radio rights will be able to secure them only as a bonus to a television deal.
Ayer took the option on behalf of all its clients, feeling the deal offers possibilities for several, and a chance for simultaneous sponsorship by some local outfits in different cities. Telecomics already has completed filming about 150 five-minute television episodes of King, with production continuing. Only one sample radio show has been cut to date.
Technique involved in producing the filmstrip also is heralded as ushering in new potentialities for television sponsors. David Gudebrod, manager of Ayer’s motion picture and television bureau, expressed his enthusiasm by saying it may “greatly ease current agency-sponsor video problems.” Aside from audience participation and sports shows, he said that most video today costs too much for what a sponsor can get out of it. Films for television also cost too much for most sponsors, what with studio, technical and talent expenses involved.
Technique used for King, however, reportedly introduces new methods at costs far below those of the past.
Process used by Telecomics makes use of special optical effects, camera movements, fades, dissolves and wipes which give the semblance of animation without using expensive animation technique. Cartoon characters’ conversation is via traditional balloons, as in newspaper, with words dissolving in and out.

One of Ayer’s clients that was interested in sponsorship was Kellogg’s. Of course, the cereal company invested heavily in animated TV cartoons a decade later with the Hanna-Barbera and Lantz studios.

Billboard of November 22, 1947 featured a lengthy story on the players in TV cartoons of the day, and a battle between two companies named “Telecomics, Inc.”

NEW YORK, Nov. 15—The rush to package cartoon and comic strip programs for television this week threatened to turn into a stampede, with five organizations readying funnies for video. Latest to enter the field was Jimmy Saphier, Coast agent who handles Bob Hope, Herbert Marshall, Man Called X, Date With Judy and other properties. Saphier this week gave the first New York showing of several semi-animated juvenile cliff-hangers filmed in Hollywood by a new outfit called Telecomics, Inc. This firm now joins such others beating the agency bushes or readying shows: Television Corporation, United Features, New York Daily News Syndicate and another firm, also called Telecomics, Inc., which is a subsidiary of Stephen Slesinger Productions. Edgar Bergen also has a hand in the comic pie with a set of animated characters called Telekins. Conflict over use of the Telecomics name this week drew a protest from the Slesinger subsidiary, which may be a prelude to legal conflict over its use. John Howell, veepee of the firm, said they have been protected both copywise and titlewise for nearly a year, and intend to investigate any transgression of the rights.
Samples Shown
Saphier said his version of Tele-comics, Inc., was organized by two former Disney animators. A demonstration of of Saphier’s sample films at National Broadcasting Company (NBC) revealed a couple of blood and thunder juvenile serials titled Kid Champion, a fight opus, and Jim Hardy, Ace Reporter.
A change of pace was the cartoon version of Anatole France's classic story, Our Lady’s Juggler. Semi-animation process had drawings change about once per second, with some held longer or shorter, according to the dialog. Sound strip behind the cliffhangers had voices impersonating the characters dramatizing the action, while the France story was told by a narrator.
Described as a combination of comic strip and radio serial techniques, Saphier’s shows featured original characters, unlike the newspaper comics offered by several other firms. But Saphier said his outfit, too, might attempt to secure newspaper comics should he find any demand for them. His shows will have 12 minutes of story and three minutes of commercial and will be turned out for weekly showing. Cost to sponsor for rights for each 15-minute saga will be about $2000 for use in eight video markets. Saphier said that should sponsor demands require, he would produce daily five-minute episodes or tri-weekly 10- minute shows. Delivery can be promised four weeks after signing of contracts, with commercials prepared according to specifications.
Name Comics Signed
Perhaps the most significant announcement of progress came from Century Television Corporation of which Smith Davis, station and newspaper broker, is president. Century has lined up an imposing list of name comics for exclusive representation in video, including Ham Fisher’s Joe Palooka, Chicago Sun’s Barnaby Clifford McBride’s Napoleon and Uncle Elby, Bell Syndicate’s Mutt and Jeff and about 20 other well-known characters. Initial plans call for selling rights to these characters for use in one-minute animated film commercials, but Century also plans to enter production in January on a sample 10-minute film based on Joe Palooka. Two salesmen currently are making the agency rounds.
The Telecomics, Inc., firm, an outgrowth of the Stephen Slesinger organization, already has prepared a joint radio-television deal around King Features’ King of the Royal Mounted, with purchaser of tele rights acquiring an option on radio rights as well. Unlike all the others, this version uses the traditional comic strip balloons for dialog. Sound is optional. Show will be available to one sponsor only for all video markets and may be had in five or 10-minute version. Five-minute show with sound track costs $500, while silent version with script for reading by local announcer is $250. Ten-minute sound version is $1000, while silent-script cost is $500.
United Features comics are represented for video by Ed Reed, of the New York office of The Des Moines Register-Tribune syndicate. These, including Lil’ Abner, Nancy and about 10 others are available both for use in commercials or as programs.
The New York Daily News Syndicate, which controls such comics as Moon Mullins, Little Orphan Annie, Gasoline Alley and Harold Teen, is understood to be preparing video shows based upon these characters. First rights likely would go to the News’ own New York tele outlet which will open next spring, with subsequent rights in other markets undoubtedly to be made available to sponsors or stations.

It’s hard to say how many of these comics got on the air. And the two Telecomics companies carried on with the same name; the 1951 Broadcasting Yearbook shows Slesinger’s company on Park Avenue in New York and Don Dewar’s on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

Surprisingly, some of Dewar’s comics are available for viewing on the internet. First, “Danny March.”



Here’s “Space Barton.” The voice of the narrator and the bad guy should be familiar as the narrator on many Warner Bros. cartoon travelogue parodies—Robert C. Bruce.



And this is “Kid Champion.” Bruce is the bad guy again.



P.S.: The first reference to cartoons on TV I’ve found is in the September 11, 1944 edition of Broadcasting Magazine. The pertinent part of the story is: “Patrick Michael Cunnings Teleproductions, recently organized Hollywood television film production group . . . has set up an experimental television cartoon studio under Robert Clampett, supervisor-director of Warner Bros. cartoon productions.” What Clampett accomplished, or even if he got programming on the air, is unclear. It was still too soon for TV animation. Yet Clampett soon made his mark on television with his “Beany and Cecil” puppet show and, finally, by 1960 got into the TV animation business for a brief time.

Kissed a Cow

The highlight of any of the Red cartoons at MGM is the nightclub scene, where we get to watch Tex Avery and whoever’s writing with him figure out how many different ways to come up with takes for the wolf. But, of course, Avery gives us more than that.

I’ve always liked the cow kissing gag in “Little Rural Riding Hood” (1949), probably because of Pinto Colvig’s great delivery as he states the obvious to the audience. A few drawings of the rubbery wolf:






Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton, Mike Lah and Bobe Cannon get the animation credit here.

This was the last of Tex’s Red cartoons. Considering the way it whips along and tosses gags and routines at you before you know it, perhaps he felt it couldn’t be topped. And he’d probably be right.