Woozy Woody

Woody Woodpecker does battle with a chicken in the Dick Lundy-directed “Solid Ivory” (1947).

Here are some great drawings of when Woody shakes off the dizziness after being chucked out of the henhouse and is determined to go in and get his cue ball from the chicken. These aren’t all of them but they’ll give you an idea of the scene. The animation’s on ones and twos.












And he gets his birdy butt kicked.

There’s an even better set of drawings near the end of the picture when the dazed chicken moves about in mid-air before taking off after Woody.

Grim Natwick and Hal Mason receive the animation credits.

The Animated Cartoon World, July 1916

There were animated cartoons in the silent era before Felix the Cat. Some were based on newspaper strips, others were original series, others were an element within a magazine format of short film. Uncounted numbers of silent films have been lost. The only visual record may be still photos that accompanied reviews in film publications of the day.

The Motion Picture World was a weekly publication and its editions of July 1916 contain little write-ups on films, including three animated ones, accompanied with a drawing. Whether these cartoons still exist, I don’t know. But you can click on each of them to read about them.







Also included in one of the editions is a news story about the Bray company hiring A.B. Rood as a cartoonist. Donald Crafton’s book on silent cartoons, Before Mickey, mentions an A.D. Reed joined Bray about this time. I guess it’s the same person.



And here are a couple of ads for Rube Goldberg cartoons released by Pathé. Crafton says Goldberg wrote and directed them but George Stallings animated them.



There’s someone out there who cares enough to preserve old silent cartoons. His name is Tom Stathes. Right now, he’s endeavouring to restore two cartoons before the elements take them away forever. Read about what Tom’s doing here.

Want to see a Gaumont cartoon? This isn’t the one mentioned in one of the clippings but is from the same year. The admirably designed artwork is by Harry Palmer, who left Gaumont in 1916 to form his own company. Palmer’s unfortunate fate sounds like something that would happen to one of his silent film characters. He was killed in Miami after being run down by a policeman’s motorbike on August 18, 1955 at age 72.

Palmer was born in Texas. He began his career illustrating news dispatches of the Spanish-American War and was employed by a number of papers as an editorial cartoonist, including the New York Evening-World for 25 years. He moved to Daytona Beach, Florida, and then Miami in 1947 where he worked for papers in both cities. He had created the comic strips “Keeping Up With the Joneses” (which he also animated on cels) and “Babbling Bess.”

Jack Benny, 39+40

Jack Benny predicted he’d never retire, he’d die while he was still performing. That he did. He was about to begin shooting “The Sunshine Boys” with Walter Matthau and had begun work on another TV special when he passed away at the age of 80 on Boxing Day 1974.

Jack was still giving interviews, including one with the Associated Press as he was just about to leave age 79 behind. It appeared in papers starting February 3, 1974. In those days, papers banked long wire service writes for whenever they needed them; this one appeared in some papers as late as May.

There’s a unique connection to Jack’s show in this story. Writer Jay Sharbutt’s father was the great announcer Del Sharbutt. In the late ‘40s, Del was one of several announcers of the commercials for Lucky Strike cigarettes that were broadcast at the beginning and the ending of Jack’s radio show. So Jay’s dad appeared on Jack’s show every week for a number of years (albeit the commercials were broadcast from a different building). The old Hollywood newspaper gossips—Louella Parsons and the like—would have blatantly wormed their own names into the story if they had a connection. Jay was a journalist (he spent time covering Vietnam). He didn’t. So I have.

Jack Benny: 39 and Counting
EDITOR’S NOTE — Jack Benny's trump card as a comedian has always been timing. The pregnant pause. He still has it. And at age 80 it still isn’t time to retire.
By JAY SHARBUTT
AP Television Writer
NEW YORK (AP)—JACK BENNY, age 39, turns 80 this month. His sputtering Maxwell has long since been garaged, but not the man or the legend.
He’s still defying time with well-honed comic timing. At an age when most men are playing shuffleboard, he’s playing Las Vegas. At an hour most octogenarians are snoozing, he’s up drum-beating for a television special.
In an era of imminent nostalgia, he’s not rambling about the good old days, belying the late Fred Allen’s theory that most performers’ lives “are bounded on the north by their entrance music and on the south by their exits.”
He even gets exasperated if someone points out that network radio drama is making a small comeback and asks: Why not radio comedy?
“Because nobody will listen,” he’ll defiantly say, puffing a big cigar, propping his feet on the coffee table in his hotel suite and jamming his hands in the pockets of an old, comfortable bathrobe.
Nobody will listen?
“You wouldn't listen to it.” Sure I would.
“Like hell you would. You know why you wouldn’t listen to it? Well, maybe you would be one of a few who would listen to it. The big thing is television. Before radio it was newspapers.
“Supposing I was the only one doing radio now? How many listeners do you think I'd have?”
Millions Listened
Hmmm. Odd words from a man who in the 1930s kept millions listening and laughing of his alleged stinginess and vanity, and his Maxwell Rochester, Dennis Day, Mary Livingston, Don Wilson. And the violin assaults on “Love in Bloom.”
And don’t forget his long-running “feud” with Fred Allen, whom he greatly admired. The war erupted when Alien heard Benny playing violin. Allen had a child prodigy playing violin on his show the next week and compared him to Benny.
“Fred—you know how he talked with that nasal twang—he said a very funny line,” grinned the mufti maestro, pinching his nostrils and commencing an uncanny imitation of Allen.
“He said, ‘When Jaaack Benny plays the violin it sounds like the strings are baack in the Caat.’”
Fiddling for 62 Years
Benny, born in Waukegan, Ill., on Valentine’s Day in 1894, started in vaudeville 62 years ago as a violinist. He got in the humor business both in word and bow while in the Navy in 1918.
His instrument only has had a relatively small saw-on role, so to speak, during his almost 42 years in radio and television. But he’s been using it to help, not hurt, music since 1956, when violinist Isaac Stern persuaded him to play with the New York Philharmonic to raise money to save Carnegie Hall.
It was a gag with a serious intent; and Benny, who actually is a competent violinist, has been doing it ever since, appearing at fund-raising concerts. He’s raised, by his estimate, nearly $6 million for money-starved orchestras. Why does he do it?
“Well, in the first place I love the violin,” he says. “Second place, I'm nuts about good music. In the third place, I hate to see the symphony, orchestras fold.
“That doesn't mean I can keep ‘em alive all the time, but I can always start a little excitement and keep them going for a little while.”
“If I want to quit for a while, I’ll just quit. Sometimes I get tired of playing certain places. But I still go."
He’s a Comedy Editor
Despite Benny’s carefully cultivated image of vanity, the concerts are one of the few things he’ll openly boast about. Another, which isn’t too well-known outside those in the business, is his reputation as an excellent comedy editor.
“This I will admit,” he laughed. “I am probably not the best writing comedian, but the best editor. All the writers give me credit, even on other shows, for being the best editor.”
Although he's not the swiftest ad-lib man in the business, he considers himself “fairly good at it. But let me give you an idea of what I term good ad-libbing.
“I think the most important thing to know is what you’re going to say, and make it sound like you’re just making it up, which I have a knack of being able to do.”
Pause That Amuses
The acknowledged master of comic pause and effect was asked for a 25-word definition of timing. He shook his head.
“No way I can define it,” he sold. “People will say to me, ‘How'd you learn timing?’ I haven’t the slightest idea. The only thing I did know was innately, when I first started to talk on the stage.
“I knew that I must not be a one-liner comedian ... I must not do those kind of jokes I must talk on subjects. And I must make my whole act sound as though I’ve hardly ever changed the subject.
“That if I go from one subject to another, I must do it very gracefully, so that you, as an audience, wouldn’t even realize I’m changing.
“Now, a lot of people think I have excellent timing. But what they don't understand is that it isn’t better than a lot of comedians, except they talk faster.
“They think because I talk slower my timing is better. Well, let me tell you something: Every comedian better have good timing or he’s not a comedian. He’s dead.”
No Money Worries
Benny never has quit working for more than six decades in show business. He certainly has no money worries, aside from a recent dispute with the Internal Revenue Service.
Doesn’t he ever get the feeling he’d like to take a few years and just goof off?
No, he said. “Do you know I would be three years late in”—he chose his words carefully—“in my material, my approach to material, in my being topical.
“I don’t mean being topical because there’s a Watergate or something. I mean generally topical... you come back stale and I don’t give a damn how clever you are.
“You don’t lose your delivery. You wouldn’t lose your delivery if you were 100 years old. This stays with you always. What you lose is material, what to talk about.”
A cheerful, confident man with neither the walking nor talking hesitations of age, Benny grew somber only when asked why he’d never retire.
“I don’t know,” he softly said. “I don’t know. I think I’ll probably die with my boots on. I hate to word it that way—it scares me—but I just don’t give it a thought.”
“If I want to quit for a while, I’ll just quit, Sometimes I get tired of playing certain places. But I still go.”

Gremlin 101

It’s part of animation lore that the Disney studio was working with author Roald Dahl to produce a film on gremlins, the imaginary creatures blamed for all kinds of trouble with wartime British aircraft. Dahl’s book was published in 1943. The film never came about.

Evidently around Christmas-time 1942, the project was still a go. The studio churned out somewhat-veiled advance publicity for the movie, giving an introductory course on the various members of the gremlin family via Walter Winchell’s column. Normally, Winchell spewed one or two-line blurbs on the celebrity world. However, Winchell gave his column over to others when he was away and one of those others was Walt Disney, or someone in the Disney PR department who wrote under Walt’s byline.

The column was accompanied by appropriate illustrations, marked ©WDP (in the version below, most of the credit notations were deleted). It appeared in papers starting December 28, 1942. You’ll notice the resemblance to the gremlins in the Warners cartoon “Russian Rhapsody” (1944) in which the little creatures were caricatures of Leon Schlesinger, Friz Freleng, Tubby Millar, Artie Davis and others at the studio.

BATTING FOR WINCHELL
Lt. Com. Walter Winchell of the U.S. navy is temporarily unable to produce his column, which is being handled by guest columnists.
Pukka Gen* on Gremlins
*(RAF Slang for “the real low-down”)
By WALT DISNEY
Ever seen a real Gremlin? No?—Well, maybe it’s because you haven’t been up in a British Spitfire swapping bullets with a Messerschmitt, or dodging German flak in a bombing raid over Hamburg.
RAF fighter pilots and members of bomber crews who have seen real action are the only ones eligible to see real Gremlins.
Of course, lots of others think they’ve seen them, but they’ve only seen the imitations:—Gound Wallopers the pilots call them.
* * *
Ever since the Gremlins were discovered, the press has been deluged with drawings of grotesque hobgoblins, bearded dwarfs, misshapen elves, pixies, spooks and what-not, all trying to pass themselves off as Gremlins.
But don’t let them kid you. The real Gremlins, discovered by the RAF are a distinctively individual race; and are by no means ugly. They have their own original characteristics, and bear no resemblance to the outlandish monstrosities and gruesome nightmares cooked up by artists of the past.
* * *
How are we going to make a picture and write a book about them if we can’t see them?
That’s where we get a real break. Thanks to the British air ministry, all the RAF pilots who have seen Gremlins have promised to give us first hand information on them.
They’ve already supplied us with plenty of Gen to get started on, and letters are coming in every day filled with blow-by-blow accounts of the latest contacts with these remarkable little guys. The general consensus is that they’re less than a foot high and built on the chunky side. They wear zippered flying suits and their horns grow right thru their helmets.
Some affect green bowler hats and all have black suction-boots for walking on wings at 300 miles an hour.
After all, the RAF feels responsible for its Gremlins and wants them pictured just as they really are. And that puts us on a spot. They warned us that if we fall down on the job or put up any blacks they’d take a dim view of our efforts and probably tear us off a colossal strip, which we assume means pinning our ears back.
Only last month the British embassy sent one of the foremost Gremlinologists out to the studio; a flight lieutenant who has been on speaking terms with every known type of Gremlin.
He put us straight on lots of things. We found out, for instance, that Gremlins never operate higher than 30,000 feet. It’s the Spandules who take over above this altitude.
They hang on to the leading edge of your wing and slowly exhale, forming a nice thick coating of ice. Spandules are flat rug-like individuals covered with fur and have large pockets for storing hailstones, which they chew constantly.
* * *
From all reports, the Fifinella (that’s the female Gremlin) is a honey. They tell us her face is fizzing’ and she has wizard curves, all in the proper places. Nothing ropey about this little crumpet. We gather
from this that she’s really an eyeful. The boys tell us that you’ll never catch a Fifinella drilling holes in your wing, cutting your parachute straps or draining the alcohol from your compass. All a Fifinella has to do is hop aboard a plane for a joyride and the Gremlins will follow her in droves. (Statistics show one Fifinella to every 12 Gremlins.)
By the time they've chased her back and forth from one wing-tip to the other, wiggling your wing flaps, swinging on your aerial wire and playing see-saw on your elevators, you’ll wish she'd stayed at home to mind the Widgets.
* * *
Widgets?—They’re the new born Gremlins that appear in nests hidden in the dark corners of your aircraft. In every batch of Widgets you’ll find a Flibberty-gibbet. She’s the one who eventually becomes a Fifinella. Before they’re a day old, Widgets are up to mischief.
They have very high baby voices and chatter incessantly. Since they're not equipped with suction boots like older Gremlins, they usually concentrate on the instrument board and have a marvellous time putting all the gauges out of whack.
* * *
The fact that Gremlins have become so real and play such an important role in the thoughts and conversations of the flyers is really a tribute to the courage, morale and sense of humor of the RAF.
And when the gong sounds ending the final round of the war, the chances are that the Gremlins will be entitled to a large slice of credit for making their appearance during England’s darkest hour and carrying on in their mischievous way until victory was certain.

To be honest, I’m not a Disneyphile. And I don’t need to be because there are many animation fans out there who are, and have expertly studied the minutiae involving the studio. Wade Sampson has an excellent posting about Disney and gremlins at MousePlanet that you can read.

Sleeping Beautyland

Ah, there’s nothing like a good Disney bashing and one of the funniest had to be “Sleeping Beauty” (1960), written by George Atkins and directed by Bill Hurtz. Doesn’t the prince look familiar?



There are a lot of subtle things going on in this cartoon, not the least of which is Walt Disney had laid off a whole pile of animators at the completion of the feature “Sleeping Beauty” only months earlier. Is it any wonder that “Sleeping Beauty” was the basis for this satire? Doubly delicious is the fact that the basic animation produced by Ward is the very opposite of the “illusion of life” that Disney strove for. The characters are rudimentary, the kind that appeared on TV commercials in the ‘50s.



The stand-in Disneyland is shown to be trite, with attractions that are little more than obvious ideas. And the Walt Disney stand-in is not only greedy, he’s a train lover, just like the real Walt. Notice the railway tracks.



Daws Butler uses his Phil Silvers voice in this cartoon. June Foray plays the wicked fairy and Sleeping Beauty.

I Eats My Spinach Backgrounds

Here are pieces of a background drawing that opened the Fleischer cartoon “I Eats My Spinach” (1933). Note the cat under the sandwich board advertising beer in the first frame grab. The buildings are in the order they appear in the right-to-left pan as Popeye walks down the street. The Brooklyn-ese on the sign post (on an overlay) is a nice touch.









The name “Mills Hotel” isn’t random. It was the moniker put on three New York City hostels put up by a D.O. Mills for the poor. They were controversial because there were claims Mills built them for a profit. A New York Times reporter went in cognito to do a story about one of them in 1908. You can read it HERE.

Here’s Popeye with a saloon and barber shop behind him.



As usual, the background artist at Fleischer who came up with these was not identified on screen. Seymour Kneitel and Doc Crandall get the animation credits.

The Wickedest Wicked Witch

Anyone who wants to see a perfect performance on film need only watch Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West in “The Wizard of Oz.”

She was scary. We’ll tell you how scary in a minute.

In honour of frightening witches on this Hallowe’en, I’ve dug up an old newspaper story about Hamilton’s career. It’s funny to see her associated with comedy—she worked with both W.C. Fields and Percy Kilbride in features—because her role in “Oz” is really her defining one, despite her coffee commercials on TV many years later. This is from August 1, 1941 in the Daily Kennebuc Journal of Augusta, Maine, where Hamilton was performing in summer theatre with four-year-old son Toni in tow.

Margaret Hamilton Got Start in High School Senior Play
Lakewood Actress Who Has Played In 43 Movies Tells of Road to Footlights
Like the heroines in all the best theater novels, Margaret Hamilton finally had her chance on the New York stage after several years of hounding agents and tramping from one theater to another. Miss Hamilton, who is a member of the Lakewood company this Summer, got her first real shove toward the stage in a high school senior play.
Brought up in Cleveland, our heroine had serious leanings toward kindergarten teaching until the annual senior play came along. Cast as a man in the production, Miss Hamilton wowed the audience and received such hyperbolic praise for her acting that she realized at once that kindergarten idea was a mistake and it must be the stage for her.
Her sensible parents raised no strenuous objections to the notion, only insisting that first she learn the fundamentals of teaching so that she could earn her living, and then, if the urge were still upon her, she might try her hand in the more artistic and possibly less lucrative field.
Followed several years of both teaching and acting, Miss Hamilton became a member of the Cleveland Theater group and taught in a kindergarten on the North Shore while acting in one of the two groups at the theatre afternoons and evenings. Although she never attended a dramatic school, a great deal of practice, experience in every phase of the theatre was available with the Cleveland group. Even in those first years, she play the character parts for which she has since become so well known, and during that period took over 60 character roles.
After a summer at the Dennis Theater on Cape Cod and a try-out of “Another Language” in Greenwich, Conn., Miss Hamilton’s father staked her to a year in New York during which time she could discover whether or not New York producers were clamouring for her presence.
That year consisted chiefly of pounding the pavements and dropping in to see people who, because of her summer experience, had told her to come around in the Fall. It was odd, Miss Hamilton, said, how they had all forgotten her and couldn’t even recollect the type of part she played. The $100 a month which her father sent her supported a friend as well as Miss Hamilton, and they were on pretty slim rations most of the time.
At the end of the year, nothing had happened, not even a walk-on and Miss Hamilton was on the verge of accepting a permanent position as teacher of five-year old when the long awaited break came. Backers had been found for “Another Language” and the show was about to open in Washington.
“I shall never forget that opening night,” Miss Hamilton said. The Washington try-out was over, and funds were so scarce that the company had to waive their bond in order to get to New York. The entire cast felt that a run of two weeks would be a miracle and were tightening their belts in anticipation of more job hunting. “Another Language,” however, ran 50 weeks and was the entering wedge for several of the young actors in the group, including Miss Hamilton.
Her past six years have been spent in Hollywood where she has been in 43 pictures, including the fantastic “Wizard of Oz.” “The Wizard” was the screen version of a popular children’s book, and in it Miss Hamilton was cast as a witch. On the surface of it, being a witch seems a mild enough assignment and one would hardly expect a children’s story to furnish dangers and thrills. However, the making of the film was not a tame or easy period for Miss Hamilton.
Many of the scenes in which Miss Hamilton flew through the air with the greatest of ease on her brook-stick were done in miniature, but an occasional close-up to give authenticity was necessary. During the shooting of one of those scenes, Miss Hamilton received a first degree burn on her arms and hands, and a second degree burn on her face. After six weeks of hospitalization, she returned to the set and was told they were ready to shoot another sequence in which smoke would pour forth from the brook-stick.
Upon learning that the costume designed for her was fireproofed, in spite of the fact that the smoke bomb was guaranteed to be harmless, Miss Hamilton refused to be part of parcel to the scene. Her stand-in was used, and inside of a few seconds, the bomb exploded, severely injuring the stand-in. Seldom a dull moment in making a picture, Miss Hamilton says.
Like all performers who have had both legitimate and screen experience, Miss Hamilton much prefers the stage. Movie-making is such a hodgepodge with the end of the film often being shot first, that it is almost impossible to sense the continuity of the picture. The appreciable lift that an audience gives an actor, and the applause or laughter that greets him, is the biggest possible stimulus to a good performance, according to Miss Hamilton.
Nearly all tragedians long to do comedy, and most comedians have a secret desire to have a crack at a serious role. Miss Hamilton, having made a name for herself in character parts, all of a humorous nature, is automatically cast in those roles. But, like all of her colleagues, she would like a straight part, and at the Lakewood Theater during the week of August 4, that long awaited opportunity will be given her. In “Lady in Retirement,” Miss Hamilton will, for the first time in her long career, have a straight lead.
Embryonic actors seeking advice from Miss Hamilton as to how they may further their careers, receive discouraging but sane advice. “Don’t do it, my dears,” she says.

Just how scary, just how convincing was Hamilton in the role? Well, there were parts of the movie I simply couldn’t watch (when I was a kid, “Oz” was seen only once a year on TV). But here’s a better example from Hedda Hopper’s column from November 4, 1941.

TAKING NO-CHANCES
When Margaret Hamilton played the wicked witch in “Wizard of Oz,” she had to frighten Toto, the little dog, in many scenes. Yesterday she was on the set of “Twin Beds” in a maid's costume, when Toto saw her, tucked his tail between his legs, ran under the couch and howled dismally. He remembered her, and wanted no more abuse.

That’s right. Margaret Hamilton was so scary, she frightened people. And a little dog, too.

Buccaneer Bunny Teeth Grind

Seagoin’ Sam almost shoots himself in the head, thanks to Bugs Bunny trickery in “Buccaneer Bunny” (released 1947). Then he realises. And he looks toward Bugs.







Frustration gag.




Manny Perez, Gerry Chiniquy, Virgil Ross and Ken Champin are the credited animators.

She Sends Me Back a Wire

David Germain writes that we should check out the walk cycle by the messenger in Tex Avery’s “Symphony in Slang.”

It’s not an actual cycle in that the same drawings are sequentially used over and over again. Tex or his animator varies the drawings so different ones pop up, making the walk jerkier and funnier. Here are ten consecutive frames to give you an idea of the kind of drawings that were made.












We’re back to drawings one and two in the next frames but then the animator starts tossing in different leg positions that you see don’t see above.

This is Avery’s version of limited animation, though there’s still a different drawing per frame of film. And the fact the messenger’s completely stiff other than his rubbery legs makes it funnier than if the rest of his body were animated.

Avery’s regular crew of Mike Lah, Walt Clinton and Grant Simmons receive the animation credits.