Boxing With Spaghetti

For all the talk about flat characters in UPA cartoons, I was a little astonished to see a couple of things in the 1951 Jolly Frolic “The Wonder Gloves.” Like many people interested in theatrical animation, I had never seen a number of the non-Magoo UPA cartoons, including this one, until the newly-released UPA discs came out.

It shows a descent from the rubber-hose animation of the ‘30s with plenty of rubbery animation of spaghetti-like arms and legs of the principal characters.



But there’s also perspective animation, something you wouldn’t expect to find from a studio bragging about flat designs. At one point, the janitor turns around 180 degrees while sweeping the floor. In one scene, he and then a pair of boxing gloves run at an angle past the camera. And in another, he sends a punch toward the camera (on twos).



I plead ignorance about “modern” classical music of the 20th century and even music composition itself, so I don’t want to say much about the score of this cartoon by Lou Maury. To my ear, it’s full of dissonant bridges between musical effects accenting the action on the screen, except at the very end. And that’s another astonishing thing. There’s a take by the dad that registers surprise when the boxing gloves come to life, a take that signals to the audience that his story about his boxing career that made up the whole cartoon was BS. But there no stab of horns, no musical augmentation of any type of the climax gag; the score is already playing off like the cartoon is over. So the take gets a little lost when the music could have made it stand out more, just like the music was doing during the rest of the cartoon.



I wish I could tell you I laughed during this cartoon. I didn’t. In fact, I couldn’t even feel the pain of the punches on these spaghetti men and even the evil expressions of the bad guy boxer (in medium shot) were weak. I’ll take Bugs Bunny’s “Rabbit Punch” instead, thanks.

Paul Julian designed the cartoon, the credited animators were Bill Melendez, Frank Smith and Roger Daley, and the great Marvin Miller supplied several voices.

The Bernice Hansen Mystery Solved

You’ve heard her squealing voice in countless cartoons from the mid-1930s. Little girls and animals her specialty. Leonard Maltin calls her “Bernice Hansen” in Of Mice and Magic. Even Bob Clampett and Rudy Ising called her “Bernice Hansen” in interviews. Jerry Beck and Will Friedwald call her “Berenice Hanson” in The Warner Brothers Cartoons (1981) and “Bernice Hanson” in their quasi-successor book Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies (1989). Graham Webb calls her “Bernice Hansel” in The Animated Film Encyclopedia. He got the name from the Disney Archives, though Tex Avery once claimed that was her name.

They’re all wrong. But one is damned close. And you’ve got to be amazed with Tex’s memory.

For years, I’ve wondered who this mystery voice artist is. Some speculated she was a child. Some speculated she was a radio or movie actress using an assumed name. Others speculated she was a professional singer (and she does a good job with the Jimmy Dietrich tune “Dunk Dunk Dunk” in the 1934 Lantz cartoon “Jolly Little Elves.”)

They’re all wrong.

Recently, I found some crumbs of information, thanks to interviews conducted by Leon Schlesinger in the mid-‘30s, the period when a squeaky female voice was heard as Little Kitty in “I Haven’t Got a Hat” and in the title role of “Page Miss Glory,” among many cartoons. An Associated Press story of April 4, 1936 reveals:

On the “Merrie Melodies” vocal list is a woman who does no other film work than speaking for Kitty the Kitten.

But then Leon got a bit more specific in a full-page feature article by Alice L. Tildesley of the Ledger Syndicate. The Baltimore Sun ran it June 20, 1937, though I suspect it was written earlier and banked for use that day.

...we have a [stock] company just like the human ones on the major lots -- it consists of Beans, Oliver Owl, Kitty, Ham and Ex and Tommy Turtle. A middle-aged woman who works on the lot as dressmaker does Kitty’s voice. It’s her own natural voice, but it sounds like that of a very small girl.”

Okay. Now we know she’s not a professional actress or singer. She’s a seamstress. And definitely not a child. Maddeningly, Leon didn’t mention a name. However, we have several to pick from, thanks to the various animated history books. That sends us to the Los Angeles City Directory of 1936, conveniently on-line for public viewing.

Ah, maddeningly again, the directory contains listings for both Bernice Hansen and Bernice E. Hansell—and they’re both seamstresses. But that’s the last directory with members of the Hansen family, while Hansell appears for a number of years after when the mystery voice was still appearing in the cartoons. But both the directories and the U.S. Census returns for various years list a variety of spellings for her first name. The U.S. Death Index proclaimed her name was really “Berneice Hansell” as does the 1939 Los Angeles Phone Directory (1760 1/2 Ivar Avenue, GR-4373). So I entered the two words in a newspaper search engine.

Lo and behold.

MICKEY MOUSE’S ‘VOICE’ IN COURT
“Giggles” Hansell, Who Does Cartoon Squeaking, Says Man Beat Her
(Copyright, 1934, United Press)
HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 13 (U.P.)—You probably don’t know Berneice (Giggles) Hansell but you know her squeak. She’s Mickey Mouse’s voice.
Superior Judge Isaac Pacht became acquainted with her today when she appeared to prosecute a $5,000 assault and battery damage suit against Charles Miller. She accused him of striking her in a dispute over a dressmaking bill.
Berneice is a dressmaker when not “dubbing” Mickey’s voice in his film comedies.
“I had made a dress for his wife for $10,” the baby-talk expert testified. “When I delivered it his wife said she would only pay $8.50.
“Mr. Miller made out a check for that amount and I left. Then he ran after me and tried to grab the check away from me. He banged me against the wall, tore my coat and bruised me.”
Miller denied he ever struck a lady.
“After I paid for the dress,” he said, “she took the belt with her because she thought she wasn’t being paid enough. I tried to get it away from her, but I didn’t strike her.”

Berneice Edna Hansell was born in Los Angeles on July 11, 1897 to Edward and T. Belle (Carey) Hansell. Her father was born in England and came to the U.S. in 1877. He was a jeweller but switched careers in the late ‘20s and became an optician. We find him during the Depression an elevator operator and a widower.

Hansell worked as a typist for a grocery company in 1920 and was unemployed as of the 1930 Census, though the Voters List that year gives her occupation as a dressmaker. When she arrived at Warner Bros. is unclear. She found work in cartoons into the early ‘40s and then was never heard again. It could be that her kind of high-pitched squeal wasn’t in vogue. Maybe studios preferred to use professionals who could play more than one role. Perhaps she just got tired of it. Or maybe war work intervened. Whatever the case, Hansell’s animation career came to an end. In 1950, she was a self-employed seamstress. She never married and died in Los Angeles on April 16, 1981, age 83.

Sorry, animation historians. Better change all those incorrect references that say “Bernice Hansen.” Next time, we should all listen to Tex. After we teach him to spell.

Much Ado About Jones

Chuck Jones never divested himself of the Disney cuteness. Even while he was making some really funny cartoons with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, his penchant for “aw-gee” characters kept rising to the surface in other series and in one shots. The difference between his cute characters of the late ‘30s and those of the ‘50s is mainly in the drawing style; Jones’ artists got more sophisticated.

“Much Ado About Nutting” (1953) is a cartoon with a great premise, one that Jones and writer Mike Maltese used again and again. A little squirrel becomes greedy and that’s enough for karma to kick in. And that isn’t all that Jones uses again and again.

The squirrel is yet another of Jones’ overly cute types. He has the big eyes Jones used in all his cute characters around that time. The squirrel’s head even has the same construction as Pussyfoot, the too-cute kitten, in some shots. And, like Wile E. Coyote, the squirrel looks at the camera (perhaps not coincidentally, the cartoon is structured the same way as the Roadrunner cartoons with blackouts and a longer climax gag).




The squirrel flicks its tail (on ones), no doubt as Jones tries to make the character seem as squirrel-like as possible. At the beginning it’s, well, cute. But after awhile, it just gets too cute. There’s no gag involved, so once the character’s established, there’s no reason to keep doing it. Other than the fact Jones liked cute.

Lloyd Vaughan, Ken Harris and Ben Washam are the credited animators. Maurice Noble is here with some nice layouts painted by Phil DeGuard, such as his opening panorama of a city park.

Jack Benny’s Not an April Fool

Jack Benny was victimised by things out of his control time and time again on his radio show. Events and people seemed to conspire against him, which made for great comedy. And it even happened to him after one of his broadcasts, and in real life.

You’d think it’s pretty common knowledge that you play April Fool’s Day jokes only on April Fool’s Day. But someone got the idea you could play one the day before and everyone would know that’s what you were doing. It didn’t work.

The NBC Red Network had a powerhouse line-up on Sunday nights, starting with Jack Benny, followed by “The Fitch Bandwagon” (with Dick Powell), followed by Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. On the evening of March 31, 1940, the other networks conceded the 7 p.m. half-hour to Benny; NBC Blue and CBS ran war news roundups while Mutual broadcast another in a series of Bach cantatas. So someone thought they could use Benny’s popularity to get some publicity. With an “April Fool!” tossed in.

It resulted in front page news with a bit of irony.

Says Radio Broadcast Was Publicity Stunt
PHILADELPHIA, April 1. (AP)—An announcement that “the world will end at 3 p. m,, E.S.T., Monday, April 1,” purported released by the Franklin Institute’s director of publicity and broadcast over a local radio station (KYW) sent thousands of frightened Philadelphians hurrying to their telephones for additional details last night.
Newspapers, police stations and the city’s information bureau were deluged with calls. The information bureau estimated it handled 4,000 calls itself.
The announcement, read after a radio program (Jack Benny) which featured the name of Orson Welles, of Martian invasion fame, and a discussion of the possible end of the world, said:
“Your worst fears that the world will end are confirmed by astronomers of the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia.
“Scientists predict that the world will end at 3 p. m., E.S.T.,, tomorrow.
“This is no April fool joke. Confirmation can be obtained from Wagner Schlesinger, director of the Fels planetarium of this city.”
Then the radio station checked the story and broadcast an explanation.
It said the announcement was a publicity stunt conceived by William A. A. Castellini, publicity director of the institute, to arouse interest in the opening of a show at the planetarium.
Castellini said later he had told “some of the people” at the radio station about the announcement and “thought they would know it was a stunt.”
Castellini explained Welles and Benny had no knowledge of the stunt. He said he heard the Benny program and thought it a good chance to get some publicity for the planetarium.

The show’s first half involved a phone call to Welles (he was not heard), who Phil Harris blamed on the current sun spots that Jack said had disrupted radio transmissions and could destroy the Earth. But there was no way the P.R. guy for the Franklin Institute could possibly have known in advance that dialogue would be taking place on the live show.

Benny and his writers chose to ignore the whole thing. There was no reference to the stupid scam on the following week’s broadcast.

The Life of an Inker

The Walt Disney studio seems to have been as adept at publicity as making cartoons. Granted, the studio was continuously doing something new—and therefore, easily sellable to reporters—in the ‘30s and ‘40s. But even when it didn’t, Disney’s PR people got the studio’s name—and, by extension, his—into the press.

Other studios would have struggled to get their top-line employees a line in print. Disney managed to get a wire service to profile his ink-and-paint department in another of those how-cartoons-are-made pieces that still fascinate anyone with an interest in cartoons.

This story is from 1946. The cartoon in question is most certainly “Rescue Dog,” released March 21, 1947. It’s interesting to note that this story has what must have been mandatory for any wire story of the ‘40s and ’50s dealing with women—a description of their appearance. Of course, times are far more enlightened now. Today, you can go to any entertainment news web site where touched-up photos of female stars with artificial enhancements are unavoidable.

PRETTY GIRLS BRING DISNEY’S PETS TO LIFE
One Inker Has A Doggone Tough Time Putting Point On Pluto’s Tail
By GENE HANDSAKER
Associated Press Movie Writer
HOLLYWOOD, May 24—Cried my guide in a tone of pride: “It’s like a college campus.”
And so it was: a neat, two-story building ... blue air-conditioned corridors with pretty, personable girls flitting about ... and nearly 200 of them at desks beside big windows, doing the tedious, exacting, non-creative part of bringing Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck to life.
Joan Anderson, for instance, is a livestock broker’s 20-year-old daughter. This former U. C. L. A. commercial art student has been a Walt Disney studio inker for two months. She’s small, shapely, black haired and freckled and has a lively personality.
Disney puts a pleasing personality on a par with artistic ability in hiring employees, my guide said.
Joan explained her work. This pencil sketch here on her desk—a silly-faced seal sitting on ice on his hind flippers—had been drawn by an animator.
Over it she placed a sheet celluloid (called in shop talk a “cell”) measuring about 12x14 inches. On the cell, wearing cut-away a glove to prevent hand marks, she copied the sketch with a pen and India ink.
For Joan, the most difficult detail she has encountered is the dog Pluto’s tail, a curving, tapering line that ends in a point.
The cells go upstairs to the painters, another battery of attractive girls who paint in the water colors (mixed in a laboratory in the same building by girls with expert eyes for pigments), as directed by little notes on the animators’ sketches.
A painter who makes a mistake can rub it out and start over. That’s partly why painting is considered a little easier than inking.
The cells are photographed on 35-mm. film. A short like Donald Duck needs about 12,000 cells. A feature like “Snow White” or the new “Make Mine Music” requires some 120,000.
It’s tedious, all right, but Joan likes the work. She said: “People say: ‘Where do you work?’ and you say: ‘Disney’s,’ and they say: ‘Oh’—like you're a big wheel. Mother thinks I’m a real artist.”

The story contains evidence the public bought into the Disney hype. Even the inker’s mother thinks her daughter is an artist because she’s at DISNEY. But the movie itself, despite some attractive artwork, is ordinary. It’s Pluto versus yet another pesky smaller creature that ends in yet another “Aw, isn’t-that-sweet?” moment. But Disney sentimentality must have been liked by someone. The studio still trades off on it today.

Cameo Appearance

Staff and even management at the Warner Bros. cartoon studio sometimes found themselves plopped into animated shorts. Some were characters driving the plot like in ‘Wackiki Wabbit’ (1943). Some merely made quick appearances, like the Tex Avery unit in ‘Page Miss Glory’ (1936).

Animator Virgil Ross appears to have graced ‘Ain’t She Tweet’ with a cameo shot. Most character designs at Warners about this time feature eyes with whites and pupils and look fairly cartoony. But there’s one character who’s different in this 1952 release: a mailman with beady eyes that looks an awful lot like Virgil.





Layout man Hawley Pratt had a moustache but his face was much wider. Animator Greg Duffell believes it’s Pratt, and as he knew Virgil (I don’t recall if he met Hawley), my guess could be quite wrong. At any rate, it wasn’t Art Davis, as he was bald. It certainly doesn’t look like Manny Perez or Ken Champin, who also worked on this cartoon.

Friz Freleng’s cartoons were known for in-jokes on signs, generally painted by Paul Julian. When Julian left for UPA, Irv Wyner took over doing the backgrounds for Freleng’s unit. He’s on a sign in this one.

TIMMM...ber.

Tex Avery called up some standard gags for Spike time and time again in his later MGM cartoons—being burned to a crisp, an explosion creating a hole in his body, the coy blush after his butt’s blasted (and revealed) .

And then there’s the “timber” gag, the one where Spike chops down a huge tree but it lands on him in between syllables of the warning “Timber!” It’s always accompanied by a little four-drawing stomping run, shot on ones. This version’s from ‘Daredevil Droopy’ (1951).






And then the fall.




The same animation was used in each of the cartoons with the gag, “Wags to Riches” and “Cock-a-Doodle Dog” being two of them. Some times, the drawings were reversed so the run was left to right in the scene. The animation was by Mike Lah (and whoever assisted him) and the yell unmistakeably belongs to Billy Bletcher.

Parker Fennelly

Characters need the right setting to connect with the audience. If it weren’t true, every TV spin-off would be a success.

Parker Fennelly was an actor, not a character, but he was known for playing the same type for decades—the rural New England philosopher. But he needed the right setting and the right characters around him. He succeeded on his own show with Arthur Allen in the mid-’30s, he succeeded a decade later with Fred Allen, he even succeeded on the Pepperidge Farm commercials of the ‘60s. But he didn’t succeed all the time.

Fennelly was handed a starring role in a summer replacement show sponsored by Auto-Lite in 1947. He played the home-spun role everyone was accustomed to hearing weekly in Allen’s Alley. Agency Ruthrauff and Ryan had high hopes for the show, realising a hit could put the show on the fall schedule. But the long-forgotten “Lawyer Tucker” is proof that entertainment requires the right mix of elements in place. After all, an outhouse will work just fine in the living room, but you wouldn’t put one there (that’s about the best cracker barrel philosophy I can cough up for now).

Here’s a review of the show from June 18, 1947, six days after the first episode.

Just One Laugh to A Carload
By JOHN CROSBY
As Lawyer Tucker in the new program of that name (CBS 9 p.m. Thursdays), Parker Fennelly is a bit of Ephraim Tutt, a bit of Calvin Coolidge and quite a lot of Titus Moody, the character he normally plays on the Fred Allen show. He is, in short, cynical, shrewd, kind hearted in a pickle-pussed way, a defender of the oppressed, and a deflator of politicians. And through it all, he is rustic as all tarnation, a cuss word of such mild voltage that it’s allowed on the air.
“Being at a bar of justice is like bein’ at any bar,” says Lawyer Tucker. “Sometimes what you’re handed is mixed wrong. Gets ya into trouble. Ya know there’s some folks that looks down their noses a a city the size of this. An’ lookin’ down his nose a feller’s not apt to see much except maybe a wart or a freckle.”
That is a fair sample both of the prose style Lawyer Tucker employs and the sentiments he enjoys expressing.
NOT SO FUNNY
I’m afraid the lawyer just isn’t as shrewd as the authors seem to think he is or nearly as witty as Titus Moody, who used to have trouble sleeping, because, he had short eyelids.
Around Lawyer Tucker are fathered a paste-up of small town types, most of them recognizable. Tucker has a.law partner named Biggers who is a dope or, to be more specific, a Harvard man. Biggers is meek, confused and a little pompous.
Then there's Tucker’s sister Sairie, spinsterish, respectable and smelling faintly of lavender. Also around is a nonegarian with as irritating a wheeze as I’ve heard in some time, and a villain named Whateley who got what was coming to him just as the curtain fell.
A BIT WOBBLY
The plot of the first episode was a slow-moving, almost non-moving, business about Tucker’s retirement from the law, a retirement which lasts only about 20 minutes. Through it all Fennelly talks that clipped, twangy American he does so well on the Allen show. (“Don’t lose your temper, Dan’l.” “Ain’t lost it. Just found it.”) But somehow it isn’t very funny. The show wallowed rather uncertainly between characters, situation and gag comedy without ever quite making up its mind.
There’s no reason why the adventures of a small town lawyer shouldn’t make good comedy, particularly when he’s played by as skilled an actor as Parker Fennelly.
But the writers will have to pump a little more life, a lot more comedy, and much more action into the script before this hits the mark. Well, this was only the first script and maybe next time they will.
Incidentally, the show’s sponsor has that foghorn voice in there advising you to switch to its product, but they appear to have cut down the number of times it’s inflicted on the listeners. It only appeared six times in this script, which is about five too many.

“Lawyer Tucker” signed off September 4, 1947. Soon, radio was replaced by “furniture that talked,” as Titus Moody put it, but Moody was nowhere to be seen on television.
Someone who sounded an awful lot like him popped up on the tube in the 1960s as an unnamed spokes-New Englander hawking frozen baked goods. Then, Fennelly got a supporting role on a TV series.

Somehow, it seems appropriate that a man who had played a casual, rural New Englander would team up with a man whose most famous role was a casual, rural North Carolinean. So it was that Fennelly was cast in Andy Griffith’s “Headmaster.” Griffith may have been a real-life high school music teacher before TV immortality as the sheriff of Mayberry, but audiences didn’t accept him in his new role. The show flopped after 14 episodes. But it gave Fennelly, the actor, to do some out-of-character musing of his own in this newspaper feature of October 13, 1970.

‘MR. PURDY’ OF ‘HEADMASTER’
Aging Actor Yearns For Broadway
By HAROLD STERN
Inter-Press Feature Syndicate
At age 78, he’s a regular on the CBS-TV situation comedy series “Headmaster” and he’s been doing commercials regularly for 16 years, but Parker Fennelly’s ambitions do not stop there.
“What I’d really love to do is get back on Broadway,” he said. “The trouble is, nobody asks me. They all think I’m dead. But I’m not. I just haven’t done a show on Broadway since I was in a revival of ‘Carousel’ at the New York City Center. The person I marvel at and secretly envy is Margaret Hamilton. She’s always working and she’s no child.”
Fennelly, who is quite a few years older than Miss Hamilton, doesn’t seem to realize that as far as she's concerned, he’s probably working all the time. The two veteran performers, however, have had to face the same sort of career problems. Miss Hamilton, for all the things she’s done over the past 30 years, is still thought of as the Wicked Witch of “The Wizard Of Oz.” Fennelly, for all he’s done, is best remembered as Titus Moody of the Fred Allen radio show.
“For that matter,” he said, “even the old ‘Snow Village Sketches’ haven’t been forgotten.
That show is still remembered by ‘old, old people,’ and every once in a while someone stumbles across it and tries to turn it into a TV series. Ray Goulding, of Bob and Ray, called me a while back and said he was interested in becoming a producer and he wanted to do the series on TV. I put him in touch with the widow of the man who wrote the radio series, but nothing ever came of it.”
He doesn’t say it deprecatingly, but if you listen closely, you’ll find him referring to the episodes of “Headmaster” as “sketches.” This may possibly derive from his memories of “Snow Village Sketches.” But if you think about it, much as the people producing TV series episodes may dislike the term, it is possibly the most apt description of these half-hour crumbs of life — rarely, if ever, substantial enough to be considered even a slice.
“I play ‘Mr. Purdy’,” said Fennelly of “Headmaster,” “sort of a philosophical and humorous caretaker of a private school in some unidentified community which looks suspiciously like a California suburb.
“Mr. Purdy is really a cameo character, I haven’t got nearly as much to do as Andy Griffith (the series star) or Jerry Van Dyke. But it’s a thankful part with a lot of good small scenes.”
Fennelly started acting in the theater in 1916 and he’s done movies and TV, but he is remembered fondly for his characterization of Moody, one of Fred Allen’s favorite residents of “Allen’s Alley,” the man who immortalized the catch phrase “Howdy, Bub.”
“I’ve never retired,” he said. “I don’t want to retire and I don’t intend to retire.
“I don’t really work all that much — a movie once in a while, about 30 commercials a year for Pepperidge Farm bread and now ‘Headmaster.’
Unknown to most people is Parker Fennelly, playwright. He was first represented on Broadway by “Fulton of Oak Falls,” which starred George M. Cohan and opened in New York in 1937 after a long road tour.
“I finished a play a couple of years ago,” he said. “I set it in New England, but it was based on one of the longest and most famous cases in English legal history, ‘The Tichbourne Case.’ The play hasn’t been produced yet.”
He relocated his play from London to a town in New England, because he knows that area best
“After all,” he said, “it doesn’t matter what name you give him, I've been playing the same character for eons. I guess it’s a combination of the fact that I come from a small town and I have the Down East accent. And when it comes to writing, people from small towns write about people from small towns a lot better than people from big cities do.”
If “Headmaster” and his commercials aren’t enough and you want to catch Fennelly in his patented role, his last movie, which stars Don Knotts, is scheduled for release this fall.
“It’s called ‘How To Frame A Fig’,” he said. “It’s not a bad little movie, but isn’t that a terrible title? I sure wish they’d change it.”

Fennelly lived to a ripe old 96. He died in 1988. And if you hunt around the internet, you can still enjoy him in Allen’s Alley. Because, outside of rural Maine, that was the best place for him to be.

Happy Joe Lucky

The 1950s were a great time for animated TV commercials. Everyone seemed to use cartoons to get their message across with stylised characters. Former studio animators opened their own commercial operations in Los Angeles—Ray Patin, Playhouse Pictures, Quartet, Swift-Chaplin, Raphael Wolf, TV Spots, Animation Inc., Cascade. Even Disney and MGM got into the commercial business.

Some of the animated spokes-cartoons became fairly well known. Others flourished briefly and vanished when someone at an agency came up with the next Great Advertising Idea. One that seems to have enjoyed only a brief career was Happy Joe Lucky.

Joe appeared in campaigns for Lucky Strike cigarettes through agency Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborne, located along New York’s Madison Avenue. I haven’t been able to finish researching where Joe’s animated adventures were created, but one lively little spot that ran on the Jack Benny show at the end of 1956 sure reminds me of the work of Ed Love, the MGM and Lantz veteran who did commercial work in the ‘50s. I wish the drawings were bigger and the quality of the digitised kinescope better, but you may be able to get an indication of what looks like typical ‘50s character design.






The best spot Joe ever appeared on was a combination of live action with Gisele MacKenzie singing at the piano. At the time, it was compared favourably with the Gene Kelly dance sequences with various animated characters crafted at MGM. Gisele had been taken under the wing of Jack Benny, whose sponsor was Lucky Strikes. Soon Gisele “coincidentally” landed on ‘Your Hit Parade,’ sponsored by—guess who?

Joe and Gisele were even featured together in a Sunday newspaper comic which, of course, was paid advertising.



Joe didn’t have the longevity of a Tony the Tiger. He seems to have pitched the fun side of cigarettes for a few years in the mid-‘50s before disappearing. But, if nothing else, he provided some gainful employment to some cartoonists.

Beep, Beep Exit

Back when I was a cartoon-loving kid, the best time to get something to snack on during Saturday mornings was when the Roadrunner cartoons came on. I knew what was going to happen. The Coyote would strap some contraption to himself, it would fail, he’d stare at the audience, and disappear at the bottom of a cliff. If you’ve seen one...

It didn’t help that neither of the characters said anything funny. So I wasn’t a big Roadrunner fan.

(As a digression, the one I liked the most was the catapult one, “To Beep or Not to Beep,” because I didn’t know what was going to happen with the catapult).

However, that won’t stop me from posting things I’ve found interesting in some of Chuck Jones’ Roadrunner shorts. Like the Coyote’s body being controlled by jet skates in “Beep, Beep” (1951).

Here’s Wile E. being drawn out of camera range by the skates. The drawings are on ones. You’ve got to like the way Wile E. is stretched beyond recognition.







And here’s one from round two.






Mike Maltese uses a writing trick found in a couple of other Roadrunners. A booby-trap doesn’t work. The cartoon quickly moves on to the next gag and carries on. Wile E. then ends up in the forgotten booby-trap. Jones telegraphs the gag in this cartoon but perhaps he’s trying to build anticipation as we see the returned booby-trap for a little too long before it springs.

Ken Harris, Lloyd Vaughan, Phil Monroe and Ben Washam are the animators. I suspect Abe Levitow was assisting.