A Tail Sandwich Tale

Tom’s tail gets abused several times in ‘The Mouse Comes to Dinner’ (1945). The best scene is when Jerry puts it into a candle-holder and lights it. But twice before that, Jerry gets Tom to eat it, the second time as a pineapple ice-cream dessert but first in a sandwich.

Here’s Tom’s reaction before he skyrockets into the air.





The credited animators in this short, besides Irv Spence, are Ken Muse, Ray Patterson and Pete Burness.

Acme Bat-Man

Here’s why you should never stare at the camera while you’re in mid-air.




Was there ever a cartoon character more aware of his audience than Wile E. Coyote? Was there ever a cartoon where he didn’t stare at the camera at least once?

This is from Chuck Jones’ ‘Gee Whiz-z-z’ (with a few more z’s on the title card) with animation by Abe Levitow, Dick Thompson, Ken Harris and Ben Washam.

For the record, Wile E. is wearing “One Acme Bat-Man’s Outfit Reg. Size.” Bats, at least in some parts of the world in 1956, must have been green.

Durante’s Schnozz at 30

“Never changes his act,” is how an angry comic once berated Hearst columnist Jack O’Brian about Jimmy Durante. Mind you, O’Brian realised he couldn’t take the complaint seriously when it began with a praise of Milton Berle’s talents only to end with same comedian ripping into Berle for his lack of talent.

O’Brian’s column came out in June 1946, the same month when Durante was marking his show biz anniversary. Well, actually, it wasn’t really quite his idea, as you’ll see.

Newspaper columnists always seem to have written Durante quotes in dialect. Anyone who knows Durante can hear him speak the lines.

Jimmy Durante Celebrating
By BOB THOMAS
HOLLYWOOD, May 30.—Cucumber-nose Jimmy Durante is celebrating his 30th year in show business and everybody is getting into the act.
“I yam touched,” said the Schnoz. “People are sayin’ such nice t’ings about me. They’re even takin’ out ads in da trade papers.”
I found Jimmy in the madhouse which he calls a home. He said that next Wednesday will mark the 30th anniversary of his debut at the piano of a Harlem dive. Of course, had been playing at Coney Island and elsewhere before that time, but MGM “rearranged” the anniversary to coincide with the release of Jimmy's latest, “Two Sisters From Boston.”
Response to the stunt will be enthusiastic; Jimmy is one of the best-loved characters in the business.
“Dis is da most wonderful t’ing that has ever happened to me,” Jimmy confided. "When 1 think of it, I git goose pimples all over.”
The celebration will be climaxed by a violent night at what used to be the Silver Slipper in New York. There Jimmy and his partners, Eddie Jackson and Lou Clayton will put on an all-night show, just as they did in prohibition days. The management should be warned that the boys are going to do the “wood” number for the first time since 1931. The routine extols the virtues of wood with practical illustrations, such as matches, pianos, ladders, etc.
“We’ll tear da jernt apart,” Jimmy vowed.

Here’s what the United Press had to say on June 6th, the day after the big soirée.

Jimmy Durante Celebrates Anniversary of His Nose
By JACK GAVER
NEW YORK. — (U.P.) — Jimmy Durante took a fanfare in stride as his just due, measured off two paces from the microphone to give himself nose room, looked around at the freeloaders and passed a hand ruefully across his sparsely inhabited scalp.
“There’s not much there,” he commented. One of those meaningful Durante pauses, then
the explosive kicker: “But every strand has a muscle.”
Back Where He Started.
And Jimmy was off to the races. Not the Jimmie of the movies or the radio, but Jimmy the well-dressed man, the guy Broadway can’t do without, the slambang, piano-wrecking Jimmy of the night clubs celebrating his 30th year in show business.
“After workin’ hard fer 30 years,” he said, “I wind up where I started from—workin’ fer nuttin’!”
The affair was in a basement room now called the Golden Slipper dance hall. But 18 years ago it was the Silver Slipper, one of the real hot spots of the prohibition era which employed the great comedy team of Clayton, Jackson and Durante. Last night it bore the temporary name of Club Durante and Lou Clayton, the former dancer, and Eddie Jackson, the strutting singer, were back with the master.
“I been lucky to havee a manager like Lou Clayton,” Jimmy said. “But tell me, folks, how much is 300 per cent?
“The Club Durante! What a joint! Why, I looked into a cuppa cawfee a while ago, and what ya t’ink I found? Cawfee!”
Back in prohibition days coffee cups were a disguise for more potent potions.
"Folks, I’m really an imposter, Jimmy confessed. “This is actually the anniversary of my nose. It was born first. I came along two weeks later. My father said when he saw me that he didn’t mind the country havin’ an eagle fer an emblem, but that didn’t mean he had to raise one.”
Big Names Present.
Clayton did some fast stepping and Durante commented: “Look at him! Hasn’t danced in 20 years and he still wears taps on his shoes. I have to do 12 guest shows a year to keep that Clayton in golf balls. Ah, this reminds me of the old days of the club Durant. The four of us—Clayton, Jackson and Durante—and an interpreter!”
There’s no use trying to name the people who attended the party for which M-G-M, Jimmy’s movie employer, picked up the check. Every big name along Broadway was there. Mayor William O’Dwyer showed up for a few minutes and slipped out a side entrance. Pretty soon a man who was stumbling over the 600 jampacked well-wishers collared a fellow who had a straw skimmer in custody under one arm. “The mayor wants his hat,” he said. "He’s up in the street.” The two of them escorted the headgear to his honor.

A vaudeville comedian was staying at a small-town boarding house where meals were included. “What are you serving tonight?” he asked. “Nothing but ham and corn,” said the owner. Replied the vaudevillian: “That’s funny, I serve the same thing.”

Durante could be accused of dishing out from the same menu. But he was such genuine, unassuming guy on stage, radio and, finally, TV that everybody loved him to the end.

Ernie Pyle on Disney

Death ensured Ernie Pyle became the most famous newspaper correspondent of World War Two, if he wasn’t already. Pyle built his reputation on war stories that weren’t those of the war itself; they were the first-hand stories of the soldiers overseas caught up in the fighting, and life around them.

But his byline was familiar before that. Pyle had a distinctive daily column for the Scripps-Howard news service through most of the ‘30s. He covered whatever struck his fancy. And, one day, he decided to cover the making of animated cartoons.

This story is from 1938. What’s notable, besides Pyle’s “guess what I learned” writing style, is it’s not a puff piece for Walt Disney. There are no pontifications from Disney himself, no plugging of movies with dwarves. Pyle sticks to revealing to his readers the basic process of animation.

And I like the irony how Pyle has no qualms about using the word “hell” in print, something no Disney character would ever say on screen.

15,000 Drawings For Short Film Make Mickey Mouse Move
It’s All So Simple, But Ernie Almost Tangles Himself; The Animated-Cartoon Idea Flies Apart Like a Bomb To All Parts of the Studio
By ERNIE PYLE
Scripps-Howard Roving Reporter
HOLLYWOOD, March 3.—After they’ve finally decided to put a Disney animated-cartoon idea into production, the thing sort of flies apart like a bomb and goes to all parts of the studio.
First to the music and voice departments which immediately start writing the music and recording the dialogue of the speaking characters. That’s an odd thing, too.
The whole movie is done in sound first, and then the artists have to draw the pictures to fit the music and dialogue.
There are four composers in the music department. They sit at pianos in small rooms and make up the fanciful little times we hear in the Silly Symphonies.
The sound (or casting) department is a weird one. It has to think up all kinds of silly noises. And incidentally only four of the Disney cartoon voices are actually on the payroll. The others are called in when needed.
The four are: Disney himself, as Mickey Mouse; Stuart Buchanan, head of the casting department, as Goofy; Donald Duck’s “voice” takes visitors through the studio when he isn’t quacking; and I forget the fourth one.
MICKEY DOES ALL THE RUNNING AROUND
NEXT to leap on the picture is the layout department. The head layout man takes the script and lays out the whole picture into sequences and scenes, each with its background. I had always supposed that an artist who drew the, say 150 pictures it takes to make Mickey Mouse walk a few feet in the forest and look up a tree, had to draw the whole forest into every picture.
But that isn’t so. The forest is drawn by one man, and only one forest drawing is needed. When it comes to the final photographing, they just superimpose the scores of drawings of Mickey in action, one at a time, on top of that one forest scene.
It is in the layout department that those magnificently colored scenes which Disney pictures have featured for several years are created. There are about 25 artists here, including some of the finest in the country. Men who regularly exhibit in the Los Angeles galleries, for instance.
IT’S SO SIMPLE BUT—AW, NERTS!
LAST, the director gets started. He is in charge of the 250 artists who actually make; the Disney characters move around. So here’s how:
You all remember the children’s “flip books,” where you take your thumb and flip the whole book through in a couple of seconds, and you can see the characters move as you go along, because on each page they’ve drawn in a slightly different position.
Animated cartoons are nothing more than that. Just a lot of pictures, with each succeeding one a little further along in the action than the preceding one, And when you run them through fast enough, as in a movie film, the tiny lapses between movements can’t be caught by the eye, and the whole thing appears as continuous motion.
It takes about 15,000 pictures to make a Mickey Mouse short, which runs only seven or eight minutes.
From one drawing to the next the artists can move their characters anywhere from a 64th of an inch up to an inch and a half, depending on the type of action. This scale is on their drawing paper.
In a series where Mickey is moved an inch and a half forward in each picture, he would simply be a streak crossing the screen, going so fast you could barely recognize him. It would take only about 10 drawings to get him across.
But where the interval is a 64th of an inch it would lake him nearly a minute to walk across the screen, and would require hundreds of pictures. This very fine interval is used only for very slow body movement, or for a close-up change of facial expression.
If the cartoon character were a soldier, walking in regular march time, it would take 12 pictures to make him take one step.
Now do you understand? Aw, to hell with it.

Giraffe of Tomorrow

Tex Avery had different kinds of gags he’d pour into a cartoon and that’s one of the many reasons he stood out as a director. His cartoons weren’t just a bunch out outrageous takes. They weren’t just a bunch of punny sight-gags. Or self-references. They were all of those tossed together. And, occasionally, Tex would add some nonsense from out of nowhere.

He did that in Car of Tomorrow (1951). The cartoon barrels along with all kinds of visual puns based on car design, then he gives us six seconds of a new model rolling down the street:

Narrator: Here’s a handy little model that comes with a hole in the top, for all those people who have pet giraffes.



The conjoined eyes of the giraffe look like something Mike Lah would draw. Lah, Walt Clinton and Grant Simmons get the animation credits. I can’t tell you who designed the cars but Johnny Johnsen handled the backgrounds. Gil Warren is the narrator and you can’t miss June Foray as the woman driver.

Baby Bottleneck Boom

There’s a lot of warped stuff going on in “Baby Bottleneck.” It’s a Bob Clampett cartoon, so what do you expect?

There’s a fun little scene that dashes along. A hyper, big-eyed dog gives Porky a demonstration of his rocket. I like the way he handsprings into the scene. Here are the drawings.



He lights the rocket and...



Animation credits go to Rod Scribner, Manny Gould, Bill Melendez and Izzy Ellis.

80 Years of the Jack Benny Show

If I asked you what Fran Frey, Paul Small, Dick Hotcha Gardner and Canada Dry have in common, you probably wouldn’t know. If I asked you what Rochester, Mary Livingstone, Don Wilson and Jell-O have in common, you’d answer “Jack Benny.” As strange as it may seem, the answer to the first question would be “Jack Benny” as well.

It was 80 years ago today Jack began his radio career in earnest. The Associated Press’ radio columnist C.E. Butterfield highlighted the Benny debut and opined the show would be on for “a while.” “A while” turned out to be until 1955 and then it carried on even longer on television. But Jack’s debut was an entirely different Benny show. There was no Mary, no Maxwell, no age 39, no money in a vault, no bad violin playing. That was schtick developed over the years. Instead, Jack was an M.C. who shared billing with orchestra leader George Olsen and Ethel Shuttá, Olsen’s singer and (at the time) wife. Frey and Gardner were vocalists, Small provided incidental character voices, much like Mel Blanc and many others would do after the show moved to Los Angeles from New York in 1935. By then, the idea of a quasi-musical show had long been abandoned and the comedy and light satire which slowly developed became dominant.

Over the years, Jack segued from “comedian” to “living legend,” a title which makes reporters prone to enquire about the subject’s nostalgic past rather than the future. Mini life stories about Jack were not uncommon during the course of his radio and TV career. He practically invited a look back by fabricating occasional how-I-found-this-cast-member episodes. But reporters apparently reached the point where they had written almost all they could about Jack, so they asked him (or his buddies) to reminisce instead.

One such story was syndicated by the National Enterprise Association, and appeared in papers on February 22, 1960. Some of the things Jack talks about may be unknown to Benny fans. I’ve left in the columnist’s post-script on a non-Benny item because it features a project I’ve never heard about with truly bizarre casting.

Applause, Memories Balm to Benny
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
HOLLYWOOD — (NEA) — As George Burns keeps insisting, Jack Benny is a pushover for life’s little things, and it is fond little personal memories we have Jack talking about today.
The world’s most famous “39-year-old” has just celebrated his 66th birthday on the road from Waukegan to riches. But if you think Jack keeps working because he wants to become even richer, you’ve got the lad pegged wrong.
Money, fame, social security and old age paychecks he doesn’t need.
What keeps that youthful zest up at such a hectic, enthusiastic pace is applause — applause and friendly laughing faces out there in the audience. They’re better than vitamins for Jack.
Well, anyway, everyone knows how busy Jack keeps himself on CBS-TV, and in concert fiddling, and everyone knows all about all the fame he has had.
But as George Burns keeps insisting, Jack flips over the darndest little things.
“One day,” Burns tells it. “Jack phoned me and asked me to rush over to his house. I rushed over and he said come upstairs to his bedroom and there, in the center of the rug, he had a pair of newly shined shoes. He pointed to them and said to me:
“ ‘Look at those shoes, George. Did you ever see a shine that good? It’s fantastic, George. I just found this fellow down in Beverly Hills. Best shoe shine I’ve ever had. You just gotta take all your shoes to this fellow, George.’ ”
George Burns, as everyone knows, is a bit of a dramatist but people who know Jack Benny best know about the little things in life which keep him happier than new fame or another lousy million in the bank.
Looking back at 66 years, little personal memories overshadowed the big ones as Jack flipped the calendar.
A 50-foot putt on the 9th green at the Hillcrest Country Club which gave Jack his first nine hole golf score of 39 — “I shot my age that day.”
There was an old, 1908 newspaper clipping someone sent him, a story in a Waukegan paper about a 14-year-old Benny Kubelsky in a violin recital.
There was the first time he saw the name “Jack Benny” on a Chicago theater marquee—“I thought it was an awful name”; the disappointment of not being able to accept (because of a vaudeville booking) a costarring role with Fred and Adele Astaire in “The Bandwagon” on Broadway — “Frank Morgan got the part and I thought I had missed the opportunity of my life.”
There was a date Jack could remember: July 4, 1945.
The place was Nuernberg, Germany, and he stood on a platform and made two thousand GIs laugh until there were tears in their eyes. On the same platform, just a year before, Hitler had promised to wipe out the entire Jewish race.
Jack flipped the calendar way back to World War I to remember young Benny Kubelsky, a violin-playing sailor in the Great Lakes Naval Training Station Revue. The director of the show gave him one line of dialog but the line came out so funny that he was given another line and still another line and in that sailor suit “Jack Benny” was born.
Jack finally made the next to closing spot in vaudeville at the Palace. “On that day I thought I had gone as far as I could ever go.”
But it was really just the beginning because radio, movies and TV were still to come.
SHORT TAKES: Bing Crosby’s lads will revive the singing act, but not until next summer . . . Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin couldn’t get together on the time and the place. So, for the time being at least, “The Jimmy Durante Story” is on the shelf. They were to have played Clayton, Jackson and Durante.

Meanwhile, back in July 1932, columnist O.O. McIntyre buried vaudeville in its showcase tomb by waxing about the great acts in former times at the Palace, including star emcee Jack Benny. And C.E. Butterfield’s column on the 13th announcing Jack’s renewal for 13 weeks was overshadowed by something else—word of a concert to be televised on W2XAB-CBS. That was mass entertainment’s future, and Jack eventually starred there, too. In fact, old Benny reruns are still seen on TV today, proof that his comedy has stood the test of time, making him one of the greats of modern show business.

Oh, no, Lumbago!

The words “favourite Paul J. Smith cartoon” usually don’t fit together in a sentence. Smith had the misfortune to become a director after theatrical cartoons peaked and his became more pale and pointless as the years wore on.

But picking a personal favourite out of his work is pretty easy. It’s “Real Gone Woody” (1954), and I prefer to give writer Mike Maltese more credit than Smith for its success. Maltese dumps Woody, Buzz Buzzard and a girl in a light satire of the world of ‘50s high school sock-hops. They all fit in very nicely.

The gag I like the most might get lost on kids today. Buzz puts money in a juke box and then stops and cringes when he hears a hokey version of ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ “Oh, no! Lumbago!” he cries. It’s a play on Guy Lombardo, whose saccharine saxes were considered old-fashioned well before 1950. Lombardo’s biggest claim to fame—and he was still doing it in the mid 1970s—was ringing in the new year from New York with his Royal Canadians groaning out ‘Auld Lang Syne.’

If anyone was considered square, it was Guy Lombardo. Cut to a shot of the record in the juke box. It’s square shaped.



Musical director Clarence Wheeler sets it up nicely by having the record wow, like the vinyl is warped.

And, to top the gag, Maltese has invented a little gadget that breaks the hokey record, sweeps away the remnants and then puts a new platter on the turntable.

The animation in the cartoon is credited to Gil Turner, La Verne Harding and Bob Bentley.

Mr Jinks Pretzel

The Hanna-Barbera TV cartoon studio will never be accused of fluid animation. But when the studio opened in 1957, it had the most elaborate for-TV animation seen to date. And there were some funny poses, too, at least for a few years after ‘The Huckleberry Hound Show’ made its debut the following year.

Huck had three main animators—Ken Muse, Lew Marshall and Carlo Vinci, who had all been in the Hanna-Barbera unit at MGM. But some of the earliest cartoons on the show (which also featured Yogi Bear and Pixie and Dixie), Mike Lah took care of maybe a minute’s worth of footage. Lah’s drawings don’t look all that polished; odd considering he went from Disney to MGM. But he seems to have been given some of the funniest poses to do.

Lah takes care of some of the action in ‘Judo Jack’ (1958), including a scene where the stereotype Japanese mouse puts Mr. Jinks in an airplane spin. Lah has a couple of swirl drawings shot on twos and then the gag pose.




The credited animator is Muse.

Lah was working at Quartet Films, a commercial house, at the time, so I can only presume he was freelancing at Hanna-Barbera. He animated a couple of cartoons on his own with his distinctive drawing style. It’s a shame he didn’t stay longer.

Jack Benny, 39 (1939, That Is)

Could Jack Benny’s character on radio somehow get snookered by a conman, then end up on the losing end as a result? Anyone familiar with the Benny show would say “sure.” And that’s probably why Jack emerged with no permanent damage to his reputation when it happened in real life.

Jack was fined $10,000 and given a dressing-down by the judge after being indicted in January 1939 and pleading guilty the following April in a case that was front-page news. (Who says being obsessed with celebrity court cases is new?)

In the middle of it all, the National Enterprise Association did a profile on Jack and made a reference to the smuggling case. The story didn’t seem to take it all that seriously and, ultimately, neither did radio fans. This version was published February 2, 1939. The photo came with the story.

Jack Benny Has Lots of Luck—But It’s Bad Most of the Time
By PAUL HARRISON
(NEA Service)
HOLLYWOOD— Jack Benny usually is a fall-guy—on or off the screen, on or off the air, in or out of court. He accepted his indictment on charges of buying smuggled jewelry with about the same spirit that he displays when somebody gives him the hotfoot, and with the same remark: “That’s VERY funny.”
Unhappy things are always happening to Mr. Benny, who is Hollywood’s champion worrier and deadest-pan comedian when he isn’t performing. He is dead-pan because he actually does not see or hear what is going on about him. He just stalks around, rolling his cigar in his mouth and worrying about some imminent crisis which may be nothing more than a 30-second scene in “Man About Town.” Not even an appearance in federal court can be more terrifying to Mr. Benny than those first few moments when he faces a camera or a microphone.
Pants in Flames
In spite of the actor’s preoccupation and grim mien, nobody takes him very seriously. While he was wearing cowboy costume during the filming of his last picture, someone set fire to his chaps. When he was being lowered from a window, a costly watch dropped from a pocket and was smashed to bits. He has a large entourage of stooges who by all the Hollywood rules should behave in an obsequious manner and say, “Yes, Mr. Benny.” Instead, they argue with him until, exhausted, he sits down in a chair that has been fixed to collapse.
When such things happen, Benny says, “That's VERY funny.” Occasionally there is the ghost of a smile behind his cigar.
There are some who say that Benny is a thrifty man who will go out of his way to save a dollar here and there, but his closer friends declare this idea is engendered by the ribbings he gives himself on the radio. Last year, on the first day of his return from New York after an absence of months, Benny was touched for $1,200 by numerous needy pals. He is a generous player of benefits. He and Mary Livingstone entertain handsomely in a large house in Beverly Hills, and their swimming pool is so big that it has a skiff on it. Benny and his wife have large wardrobes, and he undoubtedly is the world's best dressed comedian.
Jokes are Cash to Him
Whether pinch-penny or prodigal, he is no waster of gags. A joke is the most precious thing in the world to a man in Benny’s business, and he almost never says anything funny in informal conversation. His companion in smuggling trouble, George Burns, lets quips fall where they may. But Benny mumbles through a newspaper like a small boy in juvenile court.
When Benny is not working in a picture, and has time to go to private parties or his golf club, he is almost as gay as anybody. During picture production, though, he works all the time. Two gag writers. Eddie Beloin and Bill Morrow, and Secretary Harry Baldwin are always with him at the studio. During every spare minute they work on the radio program for the following Sunday.
Benny never appears in the Paramount cafe; he has gags and coffee in his dressing room. The three employes all talk at once. Benny sits back and listens. Occasionally he seizes a suggestion and rises and paces as he elaborates on it. He never petulantly says that a lousy idea is lousy; he says, “Maybe we could switch it around like this—” His writers believe that he is the most kindly fellow who ever lived.
He’s Good, That’s All
Beloin and Morrow are on his personal payroll, and he often uses them on movie dialogue. “That doesn’t play right,” he’ll say, tossing away a few pages of script. He and his writers then will work out some new lines. The result always is an improvement, or he would not be allowed such liberties.
His perpetual cigar is not a posed trademark: he smokes about 15 25-centers a day. Never smoked in his life until 10 years ago when he took a part in Earl Carroll’s “Vanities” which required him to puff stogies.
His devotion to Miss Livingstone (who was Sadye Marks) and their 5-year-old adopted daughter Joan is one of Hollywood’s special prides.
He and his wife call each other “Doll.” Benny never has attended a preview of one of his pictures. He goes to boxing matches, if there are any, and is on tenterhooks until Miss Livingstone finds him and says that the picture was a success.
And They Still Speak
Besides golf, Benny likes bridge but is poor at poker. He owns a race horse, Buck Benny, bought at a Saratoga auction. Before Buck Benny’s first race under his new colors, the actor gave Hillard Marks, his brother-in-law, $300 to bet on the nag across the board. Marks didn’t know how to bet and couldn’t find a bookie anyway, so he held the money. Buck Benny won, paid a big price, and cost its owner some $7,000 by the unplaced wager.
Marks remains one of Benny’s closest cohorts. Another is Harry Lee, his former Broadway manager, who now is his stand-in although he has to wear 4-inch cork stilts.

Much has been written about the smuggling case. Even portions of the FBI files on it are even on-line. However, we’ll try to give you a contemporary look at it in a future post.