How They Make Mickey, 1930

You’d be hard-pressed to find Walt Disney’s name in the popular press very often before 1930. Mickey Mouse was quite a different matter. Mickey’s fame garnered him publicity, and one wonders if Walt, the voice of Mickey, wondered why he shouldn’t share in the fame, too.

A few newspaper stories emerged in 1930 outlining how Mickey Mouse cartoons were made. And Walt got his name in print, too. It started happening more and more.

This isn’t the first story of its kind about the Disney studio but it may have been the longest. It’s from a syndication service and accompanied by photos. This was in a paper dated November 2, 1930.

Art and Science in Complicated Studio Teamwork Draw And Photograph 7,000 Movie-Talkie Figures for Single Reel
Requires Six Weeks to Complete 600 Feet of Film, Which Also Has a Musical Side.
By QUINN MARTIN.
WITH the introduction of sound and speech in motion pictures, no department of production has increased in popularity more than that of the animated cartoons. Those weird like-like, little figures in black and white which skip across the screen in short subjects supplementing the feature picture have become so favored a part of the exhibitors’ programs that no bill is considered complete unless it has its Mickey Mouse, its Frolicking Fish or its Cannibal Capers.
So closely do these comical creatures approximate the movement and the manner of human beings that one wonders by what process they are evolved. Walt Disney, whose Silly Symphonies are among the most widely applauded subjects, has taken time off to explain.
In order to understand the method of producing the animated cartoons it must be realized that all motion pictures are, in the last analysis, merely a series of small still photographs whizzing past a shutter. It would be impossible [sic] to gain the identical effect of animated cartoons if one were to flip rapidly the pages of a book containing drawings in black and white. The basis of making these cartoons in the films is the drawings by artists of thousands of separate little figures, each figure graduated slightly, with the idea in mind of presenting definite movements when these separate figures are flashed before a camera, photographed, and later projected upon a screen. As an example, if Mickey Mouse’s tail is to move but slightly, that movement may represent as many as a hundred drawings, all leading up to the complete shifting of the tail.
It requires from 6,000 to 7,000 drawings, Mr. Disney tells us, to make one reel of Silly Symphonies. A reel is some 600 feet long. An animated subject is not created overnight. From two to three weeks’ work goes into each of them.
The process of actual production differs little from that of production in the feature film studios where real men and women act before the camera. Preparations are made in Mr. Disney’s comparatively miniature studio for the making of a subject exactly as they are made at the Paramount, the Fox or the United Artists’ studio. The idea is the same, but it is a fact that the method differs.
In the animated cartoon, to begin, there is the necessity of capturing an idea or a story. This is written into scenario form. The scenario is broken up into scenes and sequences with the usual “long shots,” “medium close-ups” and “close-ups.” The sets, or backgrounds, are designed and roughly drawn and these are turned over to the scenic department to be painted. These are prepared, of course, to fit the action. The action of the various characters moves and plays against these stationary backgrounds or sets.
A “gag” meeting is held, attended by the studio staff, and everyone submits ideas for comedy actions. The musical director suggests tunes for the running picture. The idea is born. From this nebulous idea the story in detail is written into a scenario. This is broken down into sequences and scenes and each scene is handed to the various artists, with instructions as to the action to be drawn. As each scene is plotted and laid out for the animating artists, the musical accompaniment for that scene is arranged, so that the artist knows not only what he is to draw but what the music will be.
As each frame, or small one-inch square, of film must account for a certain position of action, the music and the action synchronize perfectly, and along with the music and sound, interpolated speech (used in many of the animated subjects) is recorded also on the edge of the film, precisely as is done in the regular pictures plays.
When an artist has completed the drawing of a scene, which is done with pencil on white sheets of paper, these are in turn handed to the inking and painting department, where each line is traced upon a transparent celluloid sheet. This is done with India ink. These tracings are painted In various shades of white, black and gray and are then ready for the camera. Along the edge of the film containing the images are recorded, in terms of light the music, and the speech and the sound effects. The speech, of course, is supplied by one of the studio staff, and the record of the speech is grafted upon the picture film.
Mr. Disney explains that the cameraman’s job is perhaps the most monotonous of all. He can only click, or photograph, one frame, or square inch, of film at a time. At this rate he cannot exceed 50 feet a day.
After the photograph is completed the film is developed and printed, and there you have an animated cartoon.
We learn that the musical director, under ordinary circumstances, completes his score after the action picture has been made. He then has his orchestra play the score, which is made to synchronize perfectly with the passing events of the story, and this score is recorded upon the film electrically with light. From the picture negative and the music and sound negative there is then taken what is termed acomposite print, which is to say the action, the music and the sound, and this is the end of a day’s work in making the animated cartoons with sound effects.
Naturally, the artists employed in this highly technical field must possess a keen understanding of the movement and mannerism of persons and animals. Every angle, every situation in which the human, animal or insect body can find itself must be known to them.
Mr. Disney adds that his artists are trained to cause their characters to move and react to a rhythm timed to the second.
In the production of animated cartoons, we are given to understand, there is little waste, practically no lost motion. When a picture is finished there is no cutting to be done on it.
(Copyright, Press Publishing Co.)

The Brementown Blur

Whoever was directing “The Brementown Musicians” for Ub Iwerks tried an effect that other studios used later but didn’t have the technical expertise in 1935 to pull it off.

The background changes behind some characters while they’re still walking. The only problem is the method they chose was to double-expose the animation during the background transition, and the animation doesn’t match up. You see ghost imagines.





No animator credits appear on any the ComiColor cartoons, Iwerks’ version of the We’ve-Got-to-Make-it-Look-Like-Disney shorts that every studio inflicted on people, featuring children or animals and a bad guy everyone beats up at the end. Iwerks’ contract ran out in 1936.

Rabbit Meets Skunk

“Little 'Tinker” is full of those cute, cuddly-looking characters that have no place in a Tex Avery cartoon, unless Tex is making fun of them. Except one.

There’s this gangly-looking rabbit doing any number of man-crazy characters from the radio, likely Barbara Jo Allen’s Vera Vague.



“Oh, you great big beautiful hunk of skunk,” says the Vera Vague stand-in.



Then she realises what she’s said.



Now, the Avery take.



And the rabbit stretch-dives out of the cartoon.

The Disney-like characters (and the rabbit) were designed by Louie Schmitt, a former Disney artist who had worked on “Bambi.” Louis Walter Schmitt was born April 24, 1908 in Illinois to Louis P. and Olive Louise (Glasscoff) Schmitt. He, his widowed mother and his sister were in Pasadena by 1930. He was pulling in $3640 a year by 1940. He died in Los Angeles on May 3, 1993.

The model sheets for this cartoon are dated June 5, 1946 with the original title of “Smellbound” (it seems to me it had another working title as well). It was released May 14, 1948.

The credited animators are Bill Shull, Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton and Bob Bentley.

Al Pearce

The West Coast spawned two hugely-popular radio showed before the truly big-name stars moved in from New York in the mid-1930s—“The Blue Monday Jamboree” and “Al Pearce and his Gang.” Once people like Jack Benny, Burns and Allen, Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor and so on decided to come to West to rake in movie money, the networks decided they’d better find a way to make it feasible to broadcast their radio shows live from Los Angeles. Soon, there wasn’t a need for home-grown variety shows like “The Blue Monday Jamboree,” which died in May 1935.

Pearce was a little more durable. He got national exposure but as the ‘30s became the ‘40s, his show’s popularity faded until few noticed it was gone.

San Francisco was where Pearce first went on the air with “The Happy Go Lucky Hour” on KFRC. Among Pearce’s gang on the show was a comic named Morey Amsterdam. The show migrated south to KHJ Los Angeles in 1932. But something happened. Pearce and the “northern contingent” left the show in February 1933. Pearce announced he was going on a personal appearance tour of the western states, but then showed up with his gang on KFI on March 6 with an hour-long network show weekdays at 2 p.m.—opposite “The Happy Go Lucky Hour.”

It’s a wonder Pearce survived so long. Like Joe Penner, he pinned his series on an eventually-tedious catchphrase uttered on every show by Pearce’s laconic salesman character, Elmer Blurt. Pearce, as Pearce, was only a tad more energetic. If you’re interested in some of the dialogue, and there appear to be more of Pearce’s scripts on line than shows, click here for a PDF from January 31, 1941. Blurt is joined in the gang by C.B. Kitzel (Artie Auerbach), Waymond Wadcwiffe (Arthur Q. Bryan) and Dick Lane, Margaret Brayton and Mel Blanc; a far cry from Tizzie Lish and Arlene Harris.

The Oakland Tribune, which had covered Pearce in his KFRC days in the ‘20s, published a full-page spread on Pearce on January 30, 1938, wherein he explains his radio philosophy.

Main Figure of “Watch the Fun Go By,” Transcontinental Program, In His Character of Elmer Blurt Coined When He Worked as Salesman
By JACK BURROUGHS
“I HOPE, I hope, I hope . . .”
Hopelessly, with a gently reproachful look in his mild blue eyes, a chubby young insurance salesman mumbled the phrase over and over one day as he found himself facing a slammed door. The insurance salesman’s name was Al Pearce. The slammed door was an annoyed prospect's somewhat emphatic way of declining to take out insurance. It was one case where hope was not sandwiched between faith and charity. There was no optimistic ring to that mumbled refrain. It was more like an echo of despair.
The chubby young man on the doorstep turned and retraced his steps to the street. This was not the first door that had been slammed in his face. Life at that moment seemed little more than a long succession of closed doors.
Perhaps, he reflected ruefully, there was something wrong with his approach. Perhaps there was something symbolic to that closed door. Perhaps he should seek some other portal to success.
It may be that if Al Pearce had persisted he would have eventually become president of the insurance company he was at that time representing with such indifferent success. How much of a gain this would have been to the insurance company I shall not venture to guess. This much I can state with certainty: It would have been a distinct loss to the laughter-loving dialers of America.
“I hope, I hope, I hope . . .”
That despairing phrase, born on a doorstep that had never been graced by a welcome mat, survived the buffetings of Al Pearce's lean years.
Today it echoes in the loud speakers in millions of homes. Closed doors mean nothing now to the erstwhile insurance salesman who used to be left cooling his heels on the doorstep.
Al is a better insurance salesman now than he was in the old days. He has a natural flair for handling his present line — insurance against the doldrums.
WHEN Al went into radio he took his “I hope, I hope, I hope” with him.
The first person Al ever mimicked on the air lanes was himself. He christened the character Ebenezer Biggs Jr. and launched him upon the ether in the old “Happy-Go-Lucky Hour.” In this role Al mumbled into the mike the now celebrated phrase he used to mumble to a closed door. The phrase caught on and was taken up by Al’s “Elmer Blurt” when Elmer succeeded Ebenezer.
Here is Al’s own account of how the “I hope” phrase came into being: “I got that ‘I hope' straight from life. In the early days I’d just about be starting my selling spiel and I’d just get to the point where I'd be saying ‘I hope. Madam, you’ll take advantage of this wonderful offer,’ when the housewife would get bored and suddenly slam the door on me. And I’d be left mumbling ‘I hope, I hope, I hope,’ out on the front doorstep.”
Dialers in this ear area take a more or less personal pride in Al Pearce’s climb to Nationwide fame via the kilocycles, for it was out here on the Pacific Coast that he made his start in radio with his “Happy-Go-Lucky Hour.”
Al’s achievements in the past nine years have been neatly summed up by an alert and able publicity man in the East in the following terms: “He has produced more than 400 air shows in studios, theaters and town halls all over the country, under all kinds of circumstances and most of the time without the aid of a script. Yet today he is in the very top-notch class of radio entertainers and heard in a prize evening spot on Tuesday nights over the CBS network.”
The “gang” idea as Al considers it did not blossom forth suddenly with his entry into the field of radio. Al has had a “gang” of his own ever since he was a small boy. His first “gang” was made up of youngsters who lived in his neighborhood. Al used to round them up regularly and take them home, where he would treat them to apples, bread and jam, cookies, generous slabs of pie and other things dear to the “inner boy.”
AS TO how he applies the gang idea in his radio work, Al says: "No matter how the dictionary may define a gang, my idea of it is that it’s a group of people who get together because they enjoy each other. Out of their being together comes a lot of hilarity and humor. That's the principle of our show.
“We always try to put on a broadcast that has the spontaneity and natural humor of a family party. That’s why we have only one rehearsal and even it is seldom serious. If we watch and worry too far ahead about what we’re going to do, we sound forced. But if we get up and act natural we sound as though we were having a good time ourselves—and that communicates itself to the audience.”
Thus does Al Pearce set forth in his own words his philosophy of showmanship.
The method he favors may not work for all entertainment projects, but there is no doubt about its being the ideal one for the type of show exemplified in “Watch the Fun Go By” where the informal family idea is paramount.
Two words in what might be termed Al Pearce’s entertainment platform constitute an all-embracing formula for histrionic success. That formula is “Act natural.” Bombast, silly artificiality and a tendency to “act all over the place” are marks of the rankest of rank amateurs. Such futilities and falsities are automatically barred from the Al Pearce Show. They invariably come a cropper when they attempt to clear the “act natural” hurdle.
I have at hand a communication from a sympathetic but keenly critical observer who likes to take radio top-flighters apart and put them together again, just to see how they work. Here, in part, is his analysis of Al Pearce and his “act natural” idea:
"Al’s formula isn’t really simple. It takes a heap of brains, personality, showmanship and shrewd personality to ‘get up and act natural’ in front of millions of people. And many elements have gone into the seeming informality of an Al Pearce Gang. Al’s own personality is one of the most important of these elements. Without trying to, without being a back-slapper or a mere ‘good-time Charlie,’ he just naturally attracts people. . . He is the epitome of Western good humor and he makes friends wherever he goes.”
ANOTHER important ingredient in Al’s “act natural” formula is the varied experience that has gone to make up his background. The selling of insurance is far from being the only formative experience in his past. He sold diamonds, too.
Of Al’s experience as a diamond salesman there is but little information immediately available. Whether or not he used his “I hope” approach when trying to swing a deal involving precious stones, Al does not say. Since Koh-i-nurs and Great Moguls are not ordinarily peddled from door to door, this phase of Al’s career as a salesman was probably carried on over a counter. Of course, knowing “Elmer Blurt” as we do, we can readily picture him standing on an otherwise deserted doorstep holding the Koh-i-nur in one hand and the Great Mogul in the other, while he mumbled his familiar “I hope, hope, I hope.” We can even imagine Elmer’s trying to sell locomotives to housewives.
Al did not confine his activities to insurance and diamonds. He tried other lines, such as roofing and carpet sweepers. He even worked as a waiter in a Reno restaurant.
"Elmer Blurt" is a lifelike caricature based upon those experiences of Pearce’s. But in case Elmer Blurt’s blurtings have broadcast the impression that Al Pearce was not a top-flight salesman in his commercial prime, I hasten to set the world right in this matter. Make no mistake about it, Al was right up there among the best sellers. His natural ability to make friends made his ultimate success as a salesman a foregone conclusion. Succeed he did, to the point where he was on the verge of making a fortune out of real estate in San Francisco when the depression came along and knocked the spokes out of the wheel of fortune.
The wheel of fortune, it turned out, was only temporarily put out of commission. It was soon turning again for Al. His genial temperament and pleasing personality, coupled with his flair for mimicry, convinced the manager of one of the San Francisco radio stations that Al had what it took to become an air lane attraction. He was “singing” in a real estate glee club at the time with his brother Cal, who was the real warbler of the family.
Vocally Al was a crow, but he covered his vocalistic shortcomings by clowning. And he really could play the guitar.
DIALERS in this ear area still remember the old Blue Monday Jamboree, on which Al and Cal made their radio debut.
But it was not until the “Happy-Go-Lucky Hour” became a part of the daily dialing fare with Al Pierce as pilot that Al really struck his gait. Since he hit his stride on that program he has forged steadily ahead to the point where his “I hope, I hope, I hope” has become a National watchword. Another necessary quality Al possesses in generous measure is his instinct for selecting the right people to make up the personnel of his gang. He has a small “inner gang” of tried and true dependables and his permanent group is augmented by other artists from time to time.
Give ear to Al on this subject:
“In the gang we always have a kind of central nucleus—a special little gang of people who have been with us a long time. The inner gang is really the heart of our big general gang. It’s composed of people who will do anything on the spur of the moment—who know radio backwards and forwards, and the spirit of the show.
“The rest of the gang is changing. We usually have about four other entertainers shift from week to week. They may not be used to our style. So it’s up to ‘the nucleus gang’ to gag around with them and act crazy enough to put them into the mood we think is necessary.”
Currently this inner gang consists of three persons. These three are Monroe Upton, famed for his “Lord Bilgewater” characterization, but now active chiefly behind the scenes as Al’s right-hand man; Arlene Harris “the Human Chatterbox” and “Tizzie Lish” who is Bill Comstock in real life. Ken Roberts is heard as announcer, and Madge Marley as the housewife in the Elmer Blurt routine.
This in brief is the secret of Al Pierce’s success as a radio showman. His admirably practical formula has carried him and his gang to the top and will keep them there for a long time, I hope, I hope, I hope.

Pearce was off and on the air with different times, formats, networks and casts through much of the ‘40s, finally retiring to run a prune farm. His last show was a Saturday morning broadcast on ABC on October 18, 1947. He quickly became a punch line about radio’s past. When Jack Benny made his highly-publicised move to CBS on January 2, 1949, Herb Vigran played an engineer on the premiere show who complained “With all this fuss they’re making, you would think they were getting Al Pearce.”

But CBS came calling. Television gobbled up talent and went looking for more. It looked on a prune farm. Part of the old gang returned as Pearce debuted on TV in February 1952. But it wasn’t a big nighttime extravaganza. It was a morning variety show starting at 8:45. The show died by October. Pearce hated the hours. The network affiliates hated the show. Only six agreed to open up the airtime when CBS wanted to move it to the afternoon. The two parted company and Pearce retired again.

Pearce made millions from radio and millions more from real estate. He died June 2, 1961 from complications after an operation for an ulcer. His Associated Press obituary claimed he paid $50 in 1928 to a couple of actors from Chicago to do their first show under a new name. They went farther in broadcasting than Pearce or just about anyone else. They were Amos ‘n’ Andy.

Buzzard Wrestling With Ernie Gee

There’s a beautifully drawn sequence in “Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid” where Beaky Buzzard tackles Bugs Bunny, they wrestle and it turns into a dance. These are just a few of the drawings. Bugs seems to be enjoying it all.









Bugs does almost a 360 degree turn in perspective. This is the first part of it. The drawings (and others) are re-used in the scene.







The story is attributed to Warren Foster, but Clampett told historian Mike Barrier that isn’t quite true. The explanation was contained on one of the Looney Tunes DVDs and I am taking the liberty of transcribing it. As a background note—near the start of 1937, Leon Schlesinger sub-contracted Ub Iwerks to make a couple of cartoons for him and sent over Clampett to watch over things. It, more or less, became a corporate takeover. Boxoffice magazine announced on May 22, 1937 that Schlesinger’s brother-in-law Ray Katz would get his own unit of 35 to make 10 Looney Tunes for the coming season in a separate building (on Santa Monica Boulevard) from the Schlesinger studio. The following week, Boxoffice revealed Bob Clampett, who it called Schlesinger’s “chief animator,” would be the director.

Clampett: When I started at Iwerks, and then when I took over, I had no gag man for five, six, seven pictures, something like that. Then Ray Katz brought some guy in he wanted me to use. And I said “I really don’t need him.” The fun to me was “Hey, I’m going to write my own stories.” You know, I’d make, when I was driving at home at night I had a pad and I would be thinking and jotting down ideas. I remember doing that on “What Price Porky?”, you know, the spot gags.
But he brought me a guy, I think it was Howard Baldwin, who was kind of a slow, heavy, I don’t mean heavy-built, but sort of a stolid guy with no bounce. He was there for a very few days and I went to Katz and said “Gee, I’m not going to get results this way,” and he sent him over to the other studio.”
He still says to me “Well, you got so much else to do, you ought to have somebody help you on the story.” So that was the time that I said “Well, I got a friend that I knew in school that we used to always think up a lot of funny stuff together,” which was Ernie Gee, Flash Gee. And he’s working in a grocery store, making very little money, so he says, “Well, maybe give him 25 a week or something like that.” So, suddenly, here comes Ernie, who couldn’t draw but he’s sitting in the room by himself, you know, and his dad—who I knew for years—his dad said, “Well, what do you do all day, son?” He said, “I’m thinking up ideas, I’m thinking up gags.” And the dad, who was a plasterer, very practical guy thought, you know, this is no way to make a living, he never could stand it. And he finally got him to go back into being an inspector for the city and that’s the way he retired.
Ernie wasn’t really a guy, a writer, he wasn’t a guy who could consciously sit down and think up a story, or even hardly gags, but when you talked to him, it came fast. A lot of times I’d be so busy in the daytime with the animators that I’d say “Hey, Flash, can we do it tonight?” So we’d go off at night, maybe go over to some place that had night ping-pong, and we’d play a few games of ping-pong and keep talking story. Sit in the drive-ins.
I know even after Flash was no longer with us, I was doing the Beaky story, you know, the Snerd Bird, “Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid.” And I wasn’t satisfied the way it was going at the studio. Warren, I think, was working on it, but he didn’t seem to have a feel for it. And it was getting behind, so I called up Flash who was back working somewhere else, and I said, “Hey, I’d sure like you to help me on a story tonight.” And I picked him up and we went to a drive-in in Glendale, sat there for three or four hours, and talked out the first three-quarters of that picture, from the beginning scene of the mother bird to about when they went into the dance. It was all finished. Later, I walked to a night club and saw a guy in an Air Force outfit and went up to him and his girl and I said “Can I ask you something?” and I got the lingo about “Come and be my Queen.” [?]
But the story was finally well-written at night. So that was Flash. He was a very good man used in the right way.

Any fan what wants to know about life and the people inside the Warner Bros. cartoon studio should gobble up any interviews Mike Barrier graciously puts on his web site. He has some excellent transcriptions of his talks with director Bob McKimson, animator Phil Monroe and writer Lloyd Turner, among others. They are invaluable. You can see a composite interview with Clampett here.

Ernest Gee was born on January 18, 1914 near Chicago, Illinois, the son of Ernie Sydney and Lillian M. (Bell) Gee. Both his parents were English. His father was from Leicester and arrived in the U.S. a single man in April 1909. They were living in Nebraska about 1912, as that’s where Ernie’s older brother was born. The 1940 Census reports Ernie was living with his parents in Glendale, but doesn’t say where he was working (and the 1939 employment numbers are almost certainly wrong, unless he made $1000 in four weeks).

Ernie died in San Clemente, California, on June 22, 1987.

Fighting is Kosher

Popeye doesn’t just have Bluto to worry about in “I Eats My Spinach” (1933). It’s a bullfighting cartoon so after Popeye predictably chows down on spinach and dispatches the bad guy, he’s got a charging bull to worry about.

The bull is a train, with a steam-whistle sound and smoke coming from its horns.



One punch is all it takes (we are talking Popeye, after all) to deal with the bull. One drawing per frame.












And back down comes the bull. The punch has turned him into a meat market. Here are some of the drawings. You can see how the words “Dog Bones” develop from a scrawl.







And, of course, the meat indicates it is kosher. Early ‘30s cartoons on both coasts seemed to like to use kosher food gags.

The animation credits on screen go to Seymour Kneitel and Doc Crandall.