Dog Trouble

More scare reaction shots of Tom, this time from “Dog Trouble” (1942).

Angry Tom is after Jerry.



Uh, oh. He sees the dog.







He runs face-first into the dog, slowly gets up, and sees the dog again.












Tom runs in one spot in mid-air before taking off, with the dog behind him.

There are no animator credits on this cartoon.

The Q Stands For Quick, Fill In

Imagine you’re 24 years old, have been doing a 15-minute local morning show for only a few months and suddenly you’re asked to make your network debut on a half-hour evening variety show.

That’s what happened to Robert Q. Lewis.

To me, at about age six, Robert Q. was the guy who suddenly replaced Merv Griffin as the host of the game show “Play Your Hunch.” What I didn’t know, being a kid and all, was that Lewis had probably gone through more shows than anyone else at the time. Radio and TV listings through the late ‘40s and into the ‘50s show a revolving door of time slots and programmes, none of them seeming to last very long.

Lewis first appeared on WEAF New York on November 20, 1944. Then C.E. Butterfield, veteran radio columnist of the Associated Press, reported the following April 7th:

New York. April 7—(AP)—A new comedy show which NBC believes offers possibilities, steps suddenly onto the network at 7:30 tonight. Assembled almost on the spur of the moment, it is being built around Robert “Q” Lewis, a 24-year-old broadcaster who has been displaying his talent in a local morning series six times a week, under the title “Listen to Lewis”. He is to have the help of Mae Questel, veteran mimic, with variety music coming from the Murphy Sisters and Dave Grupp’s orchestra. His humor, of the Zany Type, depends to a large extent on the use of contrasting voices. The program fills the time given up by the discontinued sponsored, series, The Saint. Lewis insists he inserted the initial “Q” in his name solely for identification purposes.

Actually, the “Lewis” was inserted as well. His real name was Robert Goldberg, born in New York and raised in the Bronx. You wouldn’t know it by his voice; Robert Q. always affected a bit of a cultured tone.

The story doesn’t explain why “The Saint” was suddenly pulled in favour of a non-sponsored show. But Robert Q. lasted until June 2 before his programme was replaced with a dramatic series. Mae Questel continued her career as the cartoon voice of Olive Oyl while Lewis moved back into local radio before another network shot, at CBS, in 1947. Despite what the New York Times declared was “fey humor” the show failed, though Neil Simon and Paddy Chayefsky were among the show’s writers.

CBS kept trying and trying with Lewis (he finally got out of his contract with the network in 1951). New York Herald Tribune radio columnist John Crosby decided Robert Q. was trying, too. This is from the Oakland Tribune, December 24, 1948.

Radio in Review
By JOHN CROSBY
Robert Q. Lewis, the strolling minstrel of the Columbia Broadcasting System, is back on a five-week schedule again (not broadcast in west), changing over from a once-a-week show (Sundays). At least that’s the way things sound as this is written. You never quite know where Lewis will be from hour to hour. Lewis has roamed all over CBS, from the Godfrey show to the late shift on the elevators or from Paley to breakfast, as the saying goes.
Either he's getting better or I’m getting less critical or the Christmas season has filled me with unwarranted benevolence. My current opinion, subject to change without notice, is that Robert Q. is a good-natured humorist whose efforts are certainly on the side of the angels.
A CBS press release refers to him as “honest, eager and thesauric” and after pausing briefly to look up “thesauric,” I feel inclined to agree with that description. The fact there’s no such word as “thesauric” either in Webster or Funk and Wagnalls hasn’t swayed me. There should be such an adjective, meaning encyclopedic, or full of largely useless information.
PLEASANT PIXIE
At any rate—to get this back into English—Lewis is a pleasant pixie who, I’ve always felt, worked a little too hard at being natural. He used to strain so widely at being casual he made me nervous which is hardly the idea. Lately he’s succeeded at informality, a difficult business, and the listeners can relax. His is a friendly, unassuming, largely satiric humor which ranges in quality from excellent to terrible—a wide range. Here’s Lewis concerning his Christmas show which took place last Sunday, the night of New York’s third largest snowfall. “Either it’s snowing outside or the Rinso people are overdoing it. This is our Christmas show and there’s no one in the studio except reindeer. I was hoping to have my favorite carol on it but Madeleine was busy.”
Lewis likes to poke gentle fun at Christmas customs, guest stars, announcers, capital gains deals, or anything else that happens to be on the back pages of the newspapers, leaving the front pages for the more eminent authorities like Gabriel Heatter.
GIRL PROBLEMS
He has a rather special attitude toward girls. Most of his girl friends seem to be homicidal maniacs of grotesque proportions. “We sat on George Washington Bridge and you dangled your feet in the water.”
For a long while there was a nasal girl named Ruthie who called him up every broadcast and confused him. This sort of routine: “Hello, Ruthie?” “Speaking.” “'What?” “What number you calling?” “You called me.”
He has no armor against puns, falling victim to almost any pun: “I dropped in to say hello to the High Lama. I said ‘Hi, Lama’. He has a cute girl—Lama Turner.” Lewis also suffers from self-deprecation, a weakness of all radio comedians. Many of their complaints sound too authentic to be funny. “I was practising my singing this morning. The canary threw himself to the cat.”
BURSTS INTO SONG
When he isn’t making jokes, he bursts into song, plays the slide whistle, heckles his announcer or does everything but turn somersaults in an effort to amuse—which indicates a nice generosity of spirit. As a singer, he is hard to define—falling somewhere between Helen Kane and Ted Lewis. In other words, cute, monotonous and vaguely ineffable.
His choice of songs is rather odd, too. He likes to sing some of the fact there’s a girl snail for every boy snail, a girl quail for every boy quail, a girl whale for every boy whale but there isn’t one for him.
Besides Lewis you’ll find Howard Smith’s orchestra, which sounds a little like 1922 Paul Whiteman, and the Ames Brothers, an excellent quartette, which spells the head man now and then but not often.

CBS hoped to move Robert Q. into television in May 1949 with a revue format but, instead, made him the summer replacement for Arthur Godfrey on the Chesterfield show. That began his career as the number one back-up host on TV. He finally got his own show on January 19, 1950, replacing “Film Theatre.” Here’s Crosby again, from February 20, 1950, saving his biggest dig for owners of nightclubs.

Television in Review
By JOHN CROSBY
Robert Q. Lewis claims his middle initial doesn’t stand for anything in particular. My own theory is that it stands for Quo as in “Quo Vadis.” “Whither Lewis?” people keep asking me. I snap back that I have no idea whither Lewis is headed or whither he’ll get there. (You can’t hang around Robert Q. Lewis very long without becoming afflicted with puns.)
Robert Quo has done about everything over at CBS except play Ma Perkins. His most recent venture is “The Show Goes On” which CBS rather too generously distributes both on television and on radio. On television, it’s an hour (not in West); on radio, the program is wisely pruned to half an hour (KCBS, 8:30 p.m., PST Fridays). If you don’t possess either a television set or a radio, drop in on CBS. He runs six of the elevators there. And in his spare time he took over all of Arthur Godfrey’s manifold duties while Godfrey was in Florida. There’s no money in it but he's getting lots of experience. (He hasn’t time to spend money, anyhow.)
BUYERS ON HAND
“The Show Must Go On,” to get down to it, is a switch on Godfrey’s Talent Scouts and on all the other amateur or semi-pro programs where the talent displays its wares in an effort to get jobs. Here, talent buyers, eager to give jobs away, are on hand. Lewis has rounded up the talent or what passes for talent. The talent does its stuff. The talent buyers shudder or smack their lips, depending on circumstances. Then they either buy the stuff or shrug it off.
To you, it probably sounds quite a lot like the other talent shows. To me, it sounds like a slave market. The buyers—booking agents, night club impressarios, a few Broadway producers—may hire the acrobats on the spot or take a 25-hour option on them. Or say no. No one, to my knowledge, ever says no. If worse comes to worst—and it frequently does—they take a 24-hour option, sneak out the side door and leave the country.
There are several dozen similar shows beating the bushes for talent. Lewis is last man to get a shot and the plumper quail have been brought down before he gets there. Consequently, you are likely to hear a good many, say, girl singers who under normal circumstances would never have got much farther than choir practice.
SEVERAL GOOD ACTS
You'll also hear a couple of good acts. One girl who looked and behaved quite a lot like Judy Garland was hastily snapped up by Ed Sullivan, an exercise of judgment of which I didn’t think him capable. A male comedy team made noises like a newsreel, an act as indescribable as Danny Kaye and almost as funny. For the rest—well, they got to beat those bushes harder.
On television, Robert Q. Lewis looks remarkably like Harold Lloyd, does quite a lot of muggling, double takes and Bob Hopeisms, and still has a lamentable habit of ruining good gags by running past them instead of stopping at the end. (On radio, he still resembles Robert Q. Lewis to a remarkable degree, though he is beginning to calm down a bit, a fortunate thing.)
There is nothing much the matter with “The Show Goes On” except it sounds like too many
other shows. Its greatest contribution, to my mind, is the intimate glimpses one gets of some of the night club owners, sharp-faced little ferrets in pin-striped suits, the sight of whom may keep some of the listeners out of night clubs for the rest of their lives.

“The Show Goes On” went on until December 29, 1951. Sponsor Gillette was unhappy CBS changed its time slot from Thursday to Saturday and cancelled. The show did accomplish something, but not for Robert Q. Billboard of March 25, 1950 reported Tony Bennett’s price tag jumped from about $125 to $750 on the basis of one shot on the show.

Lewis moved on, hosting his own shows or filling in. To show you how television changed, one of Lewis’ guest hosts in 1956 was a young man named Johnny Carson. Before doing “Play Your Hunch” in New York, he was hired in 1961 as a disc jockey by KHJ Los Angeles, arriving in a Rolls-Royce with his white poodle (the Rolls was part of his contract with the station). By 1972, Lewis had been hired by KFI and was opining to the Los Angeles Times that he couldn’t get work in television because he had overexposed himself and programmers thought he was too old. He was two months younger than Bill Cullen, 2½ years younger than Gene Rayburn and seven years younger than Garry Moore. By 1974, he was moved to the all-night show and was reviewing films for the station. He spent time acting in comedies on stage (Las Vegas was one of his venues) but he was a rare sight on television, and his name had become one from the past. It’s a little jarring seeing his face in anything but black and white.

Lewis effected an air of elegance on occasion. He was from an era where the elegant smoked. He sold Chesterfield cigarettes while filling in for Arthur Godfrey. He died of emphysema on December 11, 1991, age 72.

Here’s Robert Q. in one of his fill-in jobs, with a group of young men, a definitive panel and the best announcer in game show history, Johnny Olson. And a package of cigarettes.

That’s Oswald, 1928

Oswald the Rabbit started 1928 being produced by Winkler Pictures, Inc. for Universal. Oswald finished 1928 being produced by Winkler Pictures, Inc. for Universal. But something happened in between. At the start of the year, the cartoons had been drawn by a crew headed by a chap named Walt Disney. By the end of the year, almost all of Walt’s staff had deserted him and went to work for Winkler himself. Walt, as history shows, got the last laugh.

Oswald went through a few more changes, but the other one in 1928 was that he became a sound character. Exhibitors Daily Review announced on November 19 that the first Oswald in Movietone sound would be “Oswald’s Ragtime Band.” Theatres not wired for sound would get the silent print.

Winkler, or perhaps his boss Charlie Mintz, pushed Oswald in the pagers of Film Daily. Between July and December 1928, there are 28 box ads for Oswald, all with the same layout and typeface as the ads for Mintz’ studio’s Krazy Kat. They’re pretty cute. Oswald has long ears in some, and stubbier, tongue-depressor shaped ones in others. There’s one with some pigs that looks like it could have been in a Harman-Ising cartoon at Warners in the early ‘30s. All but one of the ads (which is mutilated) have been posted below, interspersed with reviews of the Oswald cartoons. The dates are publication dates, not release dates.

Anyone familiar with animation around 1930 should be familiar with the future careers of the names in the clippings. Roland (Ham) Hamilton was a top animator for Harman-Ising. Tom Palmer went to Disney, had a disasterous career with Leon Schlesinger and high-tailed it to the other side of the U.S. to work for the Van Beuren studio. Walter Lantz ended up producing the Oswald cartoons for Universal in 1929, leaving Mintz, Winkler and Disney’s former animators looking for work.






July 29, 1928
"Hot Dog"—Oswald
Universal
Circus Fun
Type of production....1 reel cartoon
The circus comes to town, and Oswald the rabbit tries all sorts of schemes to get into the big top without paying. He experiences a series of exciting adventures as the cop chases him. He takes refuge in the lion's cage without realizing what he has done, but when the lion sees his membership card in the Lion's Club he treats him like an honored guest. Finally as the cop chases him he gets a hitch on a wagon—but it turns out to be the patrol wagon, and poor Oswald is pinched anyway. The kids will like this one.

August 5, 1928
"Skyscrapers"
Winkler—Universal
Clever
Type of production..1 reel animated
Oswald gets a chance to show his skill as a construction hand on a new building. Walt Disney has worked up some exceptionally clever cartoon material with a steam shovel and a donkey engine that are almost human. In fact they look like live creatures, and their expressions and actions are highly amusing. This Oswald cartoon is a good number featuring some fine cartoon ingenuity.






August 26, 1928
"Mississippi Mud"
Oswald—Universal
Clever
Type of production. . . .1 reel cartoon
Oswald is deck steward on a Mississippi river boat, and when the villain kidnaps the beautiful heroine and takes her away on the boat, then the fun begins for all hands. The cartoonist has evolved some very clever cartoon gags and sketches for showing the antics of the animated rabbit, and of course it winds up with the hero rescuing the girl and proving his right to her love. Well up to the high standard of this series.

September 9, 1928
"Panicky Pancakes"
Oswald Winkler
Universal
Lively
Type of production. .1 reel animated
Oswald is running a concession at the county fair, when various animals start to interfere with his business. First the elephant drains his lemonade bowl through his trunk, and then a pup steals his pancakes as he flips them in the air. Finally the bandit mice steal his cash register and Oswald has some exciting time before he recovers it. Good gags put over at a lively pace. Hamilton and Palmer are now handling the work on this cartoon series.






September 17, 1928
Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit, has made a departure in his amusement program. Heretofore there has been nothing topical in the cartoons in which Oswald is depicted. But the imagination of Oswald's creator, the Winkler Company, was so fired by Commander Byrd's determination to reach the South Pole, that they have made and will release in a very short time a picture entitled "The South Pole Flight."

September 23, 1928
"Fiery Firemen"—Winkler
Universal
Clever
Type of production..1 reel animated
Oswald, the funny rabbit, turns fireman, and proves himself a hero when he tries to save Miss Hippo, but she falls on him and flattens him out. Some tricky stuff is worked in by having the firemen sleep or mechanical beds that are almost human and answer the fire alarm and do almost everything that the firemen do.






September 30, 1928
"Bull-Oney"—Winkler
Universal
Animal Fun
Type of production..1 reel animated
This time Oswald, the rabbit finds himself a trainer for the bull that is picked to do his stuff in the bull ring. Before Oswald realizes what has happened, the bull has him in the center of the ring, and a real scrap is staged that the crowd didn't expect. Oswald finally escaped by a narrow margin. The audience consists of all the various animals, who arrive for the fight by transportation methods and vehicle sthat are laughable and original. Cleverly animated, and with lots of comdey action.

October 14, 1928
"Rocks and Socks"—Winkler
Universal
Peppy
Type of production..1 reel animated
Oswald, the rabbit starts out for a day's shooting. He tackles a little tiger, and is lambasting it when the mother conies along and makes things hot for Oswald. Escaping finally from the tiger, he encounters other strange monsters of the jungle, and is glad to call it a day. The cartoon work is very unique and some clever technique is employed. It carries the laughs also.






October 28, 1928
"The South Pole Flight"
Winkler Cartoon—Universal
Type of production. . 1 reel cartoon comedy
These lucky Oswald rabbit cartoons provide a real kick for any kind of audiences. They are exceedingly clever, and some of their exaggerated silliness is good for real guffaws. This one shows Oswald making a dirigible flight to the South Pole, and the difficulties he encounters, only to land at the desired spot, to place an American flag at the Pole.

December 2, 1928
"Farmyard Follies"—Oswald Cartoon
Universal
Original
Type of production. . .1 reel animated
Artists Hamilton and Lantz put a lot of clever animation into this one. They show in their work that they are striking out along new lines, and the line of gags they develop for the funny rabbit Oswald are amusing. Oswald attempts to take charge of
things on the farm. He washes the little pig, and tries to milk the cow, but with poor success. His chief trouble is with a sassy young chicken that insists on mixing things up generally till Oswald applies the ax to her neck. A very enjoyable cartoon comic for old and young.






December 23, 1928
"The Yankee Clipper"—Oswald
Universal
Clever
Type of production. . 1 reel comedy
Oswald, the funny rabbit goes through his cartoonatics in great form. This time he is a barber with a very up-to-date establishment. The animated barber pole picks up pedestrians off the street and shoots them into the barber chair. This helps trade a lot. The climax shows Oswald made up as a manicurist in order to please the villain wolf whom he has kept waiting. Wolf takes him for a necking party in his car, and when he discovers that Oswald ain't that kind of a gal, he throws him out with a pair of roller skates.





1928 was a watershed year for animated shorts. I’ll have a timeline post encompassing studio highlights from the pages of The Film Daily in the future.

Have a Blast With a Kite

The old Hole-in-the-Body Gag. This time from “Ventriloquist Cat” (released 1950), written by Rich Hogan and directed by Tex Avery.

Spike sees the huge stick of dynamite.



The effects animator goes to work. Here are the first two explosion drawings.




And here’s the hole. I’ve always liked the little gag at the end where the duck serenely flies through the hole.

Grant Simmons, Mike Lah and Walt Clinton get the animation credits on this one.