Molly Turns Into Bowling Pins

Can someone explain something to me? Why does Molly Moo Cow have a man’s baritone voice?

On second thought, skip it.

If it weren’t for public domain video releases, and maybe Leonard Maltin’s “Of Mice and Magic,” few animation fans would have heard of Molly. She was part of the Van Beuren cartoon stable, yet another result of the theory that if you give a character some expressions and move it around on film, you’ll impress everyone with artwork and that will equal entertainment.

It appears four Molly Moo Cow cartoons were released—all within months of each other in 1935-36—before the character was quietly retired. “Molly Moo Cow and Rip Van Winkle” was the third. It features some good animation of Molly smiling, frowning, shouting, making 360° turns. And none of it entertaining. The most interesting and imaginative thing in the cartoon is a variation on the old Oswald-splits-into-multiple-Oswalds-when-hit routine that Disney did in the ’20s. Molly is bowling. The bowling ball hits her and she turns into pins.






The pins twirl in mid-air then down they come, forming poor old Molly.









Why the brown colour change? You’d have to ask Burt Gillett or Tom Palmer, the only people who got a credit on this besides composer Win Sharples. The studio had good writers at this point, Joe Barbera and Dan Gordon among them. Whoever the animators were on this cartoon—Carlo Vinci and Jack Zander were at Van Beuren—they didn’t stay much longer. The studio closed in 1936 as RKO decided to release real Disney cartoons, not third-rate imitations.

Duck Soup to Nuts Exit

Porky Pig and Daffy Duck made a great combination in the 1940s. Daffy outsmarted Porky and, in the process, pulled off funny dialogue and tricks that came out of nowhere. He was both casual and vivacious (Bob Clampett stretched his emotions more than the other directors). Unfortunately, he became an egotistical patsy in the ‘50s but that’s another story.

Friz Freleng’s “Duck Soup to Nuts” (released in 1944) has a string of great routines that flow one into another. It also has an interesting animation effect. Porky rushes off camera to get a bucket to bail out the lake that Daffy’s in. Note the multiple pig eye.








Tedd Pierce wrote the story and the animation credit on the original prints of the cartoon went to Dick Bickenbach. Looks like Paul Julian painted the backgrounds.

Adults Say The Darndest Things

Mel Blanc related in his book how the American Tobacco Company had someone prowling the radio studio of “The Jack Benny Program,” ensuring that anyone who was smoking, was smoking a Lucky Strike. Even other American Tobacco brands were verboten.

Mel tended to exaggerate but the story has the ring of truth, as others who worked in the old days of network radio shows tell similar stories of how ridiculous the sponsor’s stranglehold got to be.

The situation occasionally, and quite unexpectedly, leaked out onto the air. I’m sure it got a laugh every time, especially from radio people who were glad someone broke the stupid taboo. Here’s columnist John Crosby, no fan of giveaway shows, on November 11, 1947. And he unexpectedly griped about one of his radio favourites.

Radio In Review
Quiz Answers Boost Competitors Goods
By JOHN CROSBY
The other day a pair of surprisingly conscientious urchins were seated on the curb in the small town near where I live, rehearsing the spelling they had apparently just acquired in school.
“Spell ‘kid’,” said one urchin. “T-H-E,” said the other. The first one nodded gravely. “Now spell ‘the’,” he said. For some reason this reminded me strongly of the contestants in radio quiz contests.
Now and then a quiz master trying desperately to provoke a contestant into emitting exactly the right word will get instead exactly the wrong one. On Guess Who, a quiz sponsored by the National Dairy Products Company, the master of ceremonies, Happy Felton, likes to ask questions which call attention to his sponsor’s line of work.
“What cow,” he asked the other night, “started the Chicago fire?”
“Elsie?” said the contestant inquiringly, the way those people do. Elsie is not only the wrong answer but is a name never mentioned even in whispers on that program. Elsie is the pet cow and chief advertising device of one of National Dairy Products’ foremost competitors—the Borden Company.
TRYING TO work the sponsor’s products into quiz questions is always a bit hazardous and the results are frequently unexpected.
Bob Hawk, another quiz emcee, once asked a girl to name something beginning with the letter M which you need to make mayonaise.
“Mother,” said the girl.
However, when you don’t want a product—particularly somebody else’s product—the contestants come right out with it. On the Give and Take show, the master of ceremonies asked the name of the author of The Razor’s Edge.
“Gillette,” said the man.
I’m not making these answers up. People said them with every evidence of sincerity. The innocence of all knowledge of quiz contestants has driven the producers of quizzes to incredible lengths of ingenuity. They frame questions in such a way that no mental activity of any sort is required beyond the fairly routine impulse from the brain needed to open the mouth. Still the contestants miss. Last season on Hollywood Jackpot, Kenny Delmar asked a girl: “What does yatata yatata yatata mean? Is it a Siamese word or is it a slang word meaning too much talk?”
IN OTHER words, the girl was not expected to strain her intellect thinking up definitions. The definitions were provided, one of them wildly implausible. Still, the girl was floored. There was a period o£ painful silence. “Will you repeat the question?” she asked finally. She got it right after a little coaching.
The quiz profession in radio is a nice way to earn a living but it is fraught with all sorts of perils. One of the worst of them was experienced just the other day by Walter O’Keefe, the emcee on Double or Nothing. O’Keefe was chatting with an ex-war nurse about her experiences in the late conflict. Carried away by the memory of those virile days, the girl began speaking a'pure Anglo-Saxon popular with .soldiers and with Hemingway but never, never, employed on the air.
O'Keefe shouted: “I hope you win the grand slam prize,” and hustled her away. At Columbia Broadcasting System, the switchboard lit up like a Christmas tree with calls from complaining listeners. Hadn’t been anything like it since Orson Welles staged his invasion from Mars in 1938. I bring it up here only because the same company, Campbell Soup, which doesn't have very good luck on these things, was the sponsor both of the Welles show nine years ago and the Double or show.
EVEN THE amateurs have trouble with other amateurs. Recently Sadie Hertz, the Brooklyn woman who has been winning prizes on quiz shows for 10 years, was made guest emcee on Daily Dilemmas on WOR in New York. For the first time, Sadie was on the other end of the questions and on the wrong end of the gifts. One of the first persons to face her was an ex-GI.
“Ya married?” asked Sadie.
“Yes.”
“Any children?”
“Yes, one.”
“How long ya married?”
“Fifteen days.”
Speaking of stunts that didn’t come off as planned, I might as well report on the opening performance for the season of the Fred Allen show. The guest was Jay Jostyn (Mr. District Attorney). Just as a gag, Allen opened his show with Mr. District Attorney’s theme song instead of his own. Several dozen National Broadcasting Company stations around the country, figuring something was amiss, pulled their switches and threw the program off the air. Countless listeners, including this one, just turned off the radio.

Crosby must have been stewing about the Allen opener. It happened a month before this column appeared in print. The premise, and it was solid from a satiric standpoint, was the characters from “Mr. District Attorney” were hunting for Allen on a charge of murdering radio comedy. The show was sponsored that season by Tenderleaf Tea. Allen might have guaranteed himself some laughs if he blurted out his character was named “Lipton.”

Rock-A-Bye Bear is Still Sleeping

Tex Avery made several cartoons where characters run outside and react to inflicted pain so someone inside isn’t disturbed. “Deputy Droopy” seems to get the most attention because of Ed Benedict’s flat character designs. I much prefer “Rock-A-Bye Bear” (released 1952). The story by Heck Allen and Rich Hogan is far more satisfying (at the end of “Deputy Droopy,” suddenly all the characters develop hearing problems out of nowhere). The little dog who has been terrorising Spike gets his.

Joe Bear hires Spike for a nice, cushy job—keeping his house quiet and not waking him during hibernation time. A jealous beagle tries to make a racket and pin it on Spike so he can get the comfortable job. The situation builds to where the beagle blows up the house—but the bear doesn’t wake up. Here’s the little dog’s take when he sees his plan failed. One frame per drawing.












Ah, if only the cartoon was restored and released. You’d be able to get the effect of the take better.

The credited animation crew is Walt Clinton, Grant Simmons and Mike Lah. Avery revisited the idea again at the Lantz studio in “The Legend of Rockabye Point” (released in 1955), a fine cartoon even though the animation’s a few steps below his work at MGM.

Stale Popcorn

Am I missing something, or is “The Popcorn Story” one of the most inane cartoons ever made?

Maybe there’s some kind of symbolic allusion to the 1950s arms build-up, and building a bigger, more powerful bomb to accomplish the ends of corporate America. But all I see is a six minute cartoon that reaches the surprising conclusion that corn which you can eat is made into popcorn, which you can also eat.

The cartoon features only two characters, neither of whom are likeable. One is a speechless, almost-expressionless dolt and the other is an arrogant tycoon (Jim Backus using his Magoo voice) whose bombast and flowery vocabulary becomes tiresome pretty quickly. And we’re supposed to believe this pillar of industry would be willing to invest in a completely impractical, Rube Goldberg-esque shoe-shine contraption (in a town where no one wears shoes) from someone he publicly spanked for stupidity.



The story is by Bill Scott (I suspect he came up with the puns, like having the corn-growing dolt named “Shuck”), Phil Eastman and Bob Russell. I suppose the laugh highlight is supposed to be the businessman being abused by the machine but I found the whole concept to be implausible to begin with. The best gag is when the dolt tries to power his bicycle by lighting a load of corncobs in a barrel, and it simply powers him over the handlebars and into the ground. The set-up and timing reminded me of a gag in a Roadrunner cartoon (and Chuck Jones wouldn’t have a blank look on the coyote’s face like the dolt).

Bill Hurtz designed the backgrounds, with colour by Jules Engel and Herb Klynn. Let’s look at some of those.








The popcorn industry probably loved this short. Theatre patrons likely rushed to the snack counter to buy their product to avoid sitting through this cartoon.

Handwriting of the Stars

All kinds of newspaper stories were written about Jack Benny over the course of his career—reviewing his films and radio show, dissecting his comedy, interviewing him about his time in show business and eulogising his life.

Perhaps the most unusual story appeared in newspapers in January 1975 when a syndicated columnist analysed his handwriting.

Joanne Romine did this for a number of celebrities in the mid-‘70s. She found Don Rickles and Lynn Redgrave “complex.” Frank Sinatra was “an intensely deep feeling man.” Phyllis Diller “will listen to the ideas and opinions of others.” Bob Newhart is “inscrutable.” What were her conclusions about Jack Benny?

Jack Benny used wit to hide tenderness
By JOANNE B.ROMMINE
Copley News Service
Jack Benny, the late, great comic, accomplished more in 39 years than most people accomplish in 80! Let’s take a peak at his writing and see if we can determine some of the characteristics that contributed to his success.
His writing revealed an unusual amount of drive and determination. (Check the long, heavy down stroke on his Y.) Once he set his sights on a goal, there was nothing, save an act of God, that could keep him from attaining that goal. He could survive sorrow, disappointment, even temporary failure, and keep right on trucking. When he was discouraged, only his loved ones ever knew because he’d bluff his way through until enthusiasm returned.
He was a warm, friendly affectionate man, tending to be somewhat conservative in his show of affection. He was inclined to conceal his tenderness by wrapping it in a witty remark, but he really was a tender-hearted person. His feelings could easily he hurt by the casual comments of others. (Note the big loop in the stem of his D.)
He had his low moments, and because of his intense feeling nature, low was “bottom” to Jack. However, his love of people and life, and a keen interest in the world around him soon put him hack in action.
He was no slouch mentally. If he hadn’t pursued a career in entertainment, he could have excelled in the field of scientific research. He was a man with a lot of questions and he looked for answers, not being content until he found them.
Jack Benny was honest and forthright in his dealings with others. He could be direct and frank He would avoid trying to hurt others whenever possible by softening his statements with diplomacy. Since his integrity was unquestionable... it really must have been true ... he was only 39 years old ... or he never learned to count!
A wonderful man ... at any age.

Will the Real Man of Steel Please Stand Up?

Proof of the impact of television compared with the old days of network radio rests in the form of a gentle, six-foot, 165 pound man named Bud Collyer.

He was a constant presence on the radio waves in a variety of genres emanating from the airwaves of New York. He was Superman, even. But even the Man of Steel was no match for the power of television. Only a few stories were written about Collyer in his radio days, almost all of them focusing on how Superman was very active in his church. When television rolled around and he stuck exclusively to hosting game shows, the news stories about him rolled off the presses more often—and faster than you can say “The Daily Planet.”

As a kid TV viewer of “To Tell the Truth,” I liked Bud Collyer. Unlike almost every other host, he didn’t crack a lot of jokes. He was friendly and sincere, kept the focus on what was happening and built the suspense in a genuine manner. Like Collyer, the show wasn’t loud and boisterous. In fact, its lack of noise and lights (other than a “ding” accompanying an “X” that lit up for each vote) and immoveable cameras would be incomprehensible to any game show producer today. But the game was basic and appealing, the celebrities (albeit B-list) were very pleasant, and the string-dominated theme music perked along, originally a library music cue by Dolf van der Linden, then a fine, somewhat similar tune by Bob Cobert. Collyer fit “To Tell the Truth” perfectly.

Let’s dig back through a few newspapers and see what they had to say about Bud Collyer. United Press International published this on July 17, 1960.

Remember Superman?
By DOC QUIGG
NEW YORK (UPI) — Clayton Collyer, a pleasant family man with an outboard motorboat, a 14-room house, and three grown children, has been superintendent of the Sunday school of the First Presbyterian church in Greenwich, Conn., for the last 14 years.
“His term in the Sunday school superintendency now seems certain to break his long-record run in another—and certainly disparate—job. He was “Superman” for 14 years on radio, creating the character and sticking with it until it went off radio in 1952.
His show-business name is Bud Collyer. You know him as the talented moderator of CBS-TV's popular panel show “To Tell the Truth” and as emcee and producer of ABC's “Beat the Clock.” But in the halcyon days of radio, he was all over the place as a soap opera actor and an announcer. His twenty-fifth anniversary in broadcasting is coming up in two months.
* * *
Collyer, a graduate of soap opera, can remember when he thought nothing of playing in four different radio shows — doing the leads in two and running pails in at least a couple more, and announcing on the side. During one 6-month period, he averaged 34 to 35 actual broadcast hours a week, and one day of each week was a 9-show day.
The announcing stints included the Eddie Duchin show on Mondays, the Benny Goodman show Tuesdays, and the Tommy Dorsey show Thursdays. And all the while there was “Superman,” with Bud Collyer shaping his voice into a light baritone for the role of the newspaper reporter Clark Kent and then dropping it as low as he could, at staccato pace, for the role of Superman.
* * *
Collyer, a native New Yorker, paid his way through law school as a radio singer (7:45 a. m., six days a week, accompanying himself on a guitar). Graduated, he practiced with a law firm for nearly two years before deciding, in 1935, to get into network acting.
His sister June Collyer was then a movie star. His mother Caroline Collyer had been an actress.
A nurse tagged him with the name Bud when he was a baby while the family was trying to decide whether to name him after his father, which they eventually did. He has no middle name, and neither, did his children until they were in their late teens.

For a while in the early ‘40s, Collyer portrayed Superman simultaneously on radio and in the cartoons produced in Miami by the Fleischer studio. He had a Fleischer connection of sorts that went back a few years before that. In early 1937, he was a regular on Jack Pearl’s radio show. And so was another young New Yorker known as the voice of Betty Boop and Olive Oyl—Mae Questel. He was hosting a game show as far back as 1943, called “Good Listening” on CBS. “Break the Bank” followed in 1945, “On Your Mark” and “Three for the Money” in 1948 (like “Stop the Music,” it involved calling people at home) and then another show on CBS in 1949. This review is from the Cedar Rapids Tribune, March 17th that year.

There's no limit to the number of rounds a contestant can win or the number of “Winner Take All” programs he may appear on — just as long as he has the right answers.
The format of this new weekday series heard Monday through Friday from 3:30 to 3:45 p.m. features two competing contestants selected from the studio audience. One is furnished with a bell, the other a buzzer, which they sound to indicate that they wish to answer the master of ceremonies’ question. Each correct answer earns the contestant a point, and three points win him a round, a valuable prize and the right to defend his “championship” against a new contender, until dethroned.
Clayton “Bud” Collyer who is the emcee for “Winner Take All” started out to be a lawyer. After graduation from Williams college and Fordham university Law School, he went to work in a New York law firm as a clerk. “I was working for a fast fifteen dollars a week and desk space,” he recalls, “but I found that quite dull.”
“He worked hard in this humble calling for the next two years, but thought there must be some other way to earn more money. While at Fordham, he had earned spending money singing on WCBS and he remembers that the actors and actresses he met at that time made as much money in a month as he could expect to collect in a year at the bar.
In, 1935 Collyer took an audition that landed him a network acting part, although he no longer recalls the name of the program. “This program marked the turning point of my life. I was in radio for good after that,” he says.
The construction of a career in radio acting and announcing comes slowly at the start, and for some time Bud languished in semi-obscurity. In those years he found his own lack of fame a particularly bitter pill because of a family connection. Bud’s sister, June Collyer, was then a well-known movie star. “People were always introducing us as June Collyer and, oh, yes, this is her brother,” Collyer says.
After a while Bud got his recognition. It was while attending a play with his sister June, that her husband Stuart Erwin was appearing in, that Bud experience his long–awaited triumph. A friend introduced them to tome strangers and said, “This is Bud Collyer, and, oh, yes, his sister June.”

How nice of a man was Bud Collyer? Paul Luther wrote in his syndicated radio column of February 28, 1947.

Radio people are mighty proud of the outstanding recognition just awarded one of their top drawer performers. In presenting annual scrolls, the Council Against Intolerance in America has cited Clayton (Bud) Collyer as one of five such persons in America worthy of the honor. That his constant efforts to promote a better understanding among and races and religions should come to the attention of the Council is indeed gratifying. Having known Bud and shared the same mike on many occasions, I concur that no more worthy recipient could have been selected for this signal honor.

Which is something one might expect from Superman.

Alas, while Collyer was a perfect radio and cartoon Man of Steel, he was more like Clark Kent to his kids. This is from the Anniston Star, Wednesday, May 19, 1948:

Clayton “Bud” Collyer, who is radio’s “Superman,” rues the decision now that prompted him to take two of his children, Michael, 6, and Cynthia, 8, to New York’s Central Park Zoo before going to Mutual’s studio for one of the broadcasts of the week-day “Superman”
series 5:15 to 5:30. The Collyer youngsters had never seen a “Superman,” broadcast, and after the show Bud asked his children: “Well, how’d you like it?” The unimpressed youngsters replied with: “Daddy, can you imitate a seal?”

And from Saul Pett’s column from the International News Service, May 29, 1946:

And the fact is that Bud Collyer, who plays “Superman” for Mutual, was fighting a losing battle in his home the other day and appeared to be in clanger of losing a finger until his young son reminded pappa of the “simple directions on the label” and opened a jar of jam for him.

Bud Collyer died after three weeks in a Connecticut hospital on this date in 1969. He was 61.

Magical Maestro Miranda

“Magical Maestro” is a funny cartoon but TV doesn’t do it justice. You use different peripheral vision watching a movie screen than a television set or computer monitor at home. Tex Avery uses that visual effect when he has the magician’s rabbits quickly jump into the action from the sides of the frame. You don’t seem them coming and suddenly they’re there. It’s really funny.

The cartoon is another one where Avery and writer Rich Hogan pitch one silly routine after another, with no time in between. If you don’t know the cartoon, the premise is simple. A magician gains revenge on Poochini the opera singer (Spike) by replacing a conductor and using his magic wand (disguised as a baton) to change Poochini’s costume. The magician’s stylised rabbits (designed by Ed Benedict, I imagine) get in on things wearing their own silly but appropriate outfits.

An opera fan unhappy with Poochini’s act gets into his. He pulls the old vaudeville custom of throwing rotten fruit at the stage.




The fruit lands on Poochini’s head. The magician waves his wand. Poochini is instantly transformed into Carmen Miranda. Below are two consecutive frames. Notice the rabbits already jumping in from the side.




Poochini waves his butt (and actually does a full body turn) and sings while accompanied by the rabbits. Are they wearing turnips on their heads? Here are some of the dance drawings.








Avery keeps building. Poochini lifts his skirt only to reveal a pair of boxer shorts.




Now Poochini’s body becomes immobile, except for his head, which he pokes out from behind different sides of the raised skirt. The rabbit merely pushes the body off stage like it’s a theatre flat, revealing the tux-clad Poochini standing behind it.




How does he grow a second body? Oh, don’t ask. Enjoy the outrageousness instead.

Avery’s down to three credited animators by the time this was released in 1952—Walt Clinton, Grant Simmons and Mike Lah.