Flip the Wolf

What’s the difference between Tex Avery at Warner Bros. and Tex Avery at MGM? Well, in his first cartoon for Metro, “Blitz Wolf,” he has his animators pull off stuff that I don’t recall seeing his Warners crew try, even though he had adept people like Bob McKimson, Virgil Ross and Rod Scribner.

There’s a nice-looking scene where Adolf Wolf (voice by Bill Thompson) does a reverse 270-degree turn in mid-air.

It starts with some standard ‘40s cartoon stuff—a pop culture reference (the Myrt line from radio’s “Fibber McGee and Molly”) and a hotfoot. Adolf hangs up the phone. He’s smug. There’s a nine-drawing hold on the wolf while the fire burns.



The wolf realises something (I’ve skipped posting two anticipatory blink drawings). Then a surprise look to the camera. Nice rubbery animation. These are on ones.










Adolf sees the fire.



Up he goes. Here are a few of the drawings to give you an idea. Notice the hands in perspective at the camera.







Avery’s timing couldn’t be better. The force of gravity slows down the wolf as he goes higher; the background drawing moves vertically at shorter increments. When the wolf reaches the apex, the background is only held for two frames but parts of the wolf are still moving.

Down he comes.









Ray Abrams did the flip part, according to an animator draft in the Mark Kausler collection. Irv Spence, Preston Blair and Ed Love also get screen credits. A fine crew.

The Six Year Old Who Loved Shari Lewis

I remember when television disappointed me for the first time. It was the day that Shari Lewis suddenly wasn’t on Saturday mornings any more.

Almost 50 years later, I have no idea why NBC cancelled her show. And it seems at the time, Shari wasn’t told, either. All I know is at age six, I was confused and sad about it. She was like the nice older girl down the street.

What’s maybe even more confusing is why it took anyone so long to give her a network show in the first place. It wasn’t until 1960. By then, Shari had achieved a measure of fame from her local broadcasts in New York starting seven years earlier. Eventually, New York-based national newspaper columnists tuned in and liked her work. (Earl Wilson wrote in a 1955 column that Pinky Lee wanted her for his show. That’s like an outboard motor wanting to power a Cadillac). And the ink translated into appearances on nighttime TV shows starting in 1957. After a visit on the “Tonight” show with Jack Paar on June 24th, International News Service TV columnist Jack O’Brien called her “a delightful ventriloquist, best we’ve ever seen, with a fresh, spanking brightness and by far the class of the show.” Steve Allen, Pat Boone, Patti Page, Garry Moore, Perry Como, Andy Williams, Arthur Murray, “Your Hit Parade,” she appeared on them all. That’s only a few of them. She hosted a Thanksgiving Parade (not Macy’s; Gene Rayburn and Bill Wendell handled that one). She even showed up in Canada on CBC’s “Show Time,” all before she had her own Saturday morning slot on NBC.

Let’s peer at a couple of stories before Shari broke onto the network scene. First, we have the syndicated “TV Key” column (with no other byline) from July 16, 1956.

Shari Lewis Delights Youngsters
NEW YORK—Most cheerful recent addition to New York’s programming schedule for kids is the “Children’s Newspaper of the Air,” presided over by a petite, bouncy ventriloquist-magician named Shari Lewis.
Shari is best known to moppet viewers around the country for her stint on “Captain Kangaroo,” where her red hair was done up in pigtails and her face peppered with freckles.
“I played Uncle Greenjeans twelve-year-old niece,” said Shari, who’s actually 22. “I looked I like a live female Howdy Doody.”
• • •
NOW, WITH her own show Shari can act her age. Like Bob Keeshan, who would rather keep youthful interest with games and educational features than bloodshed or pie-in-the-face comedy.
“My parents were both teachers,” Shari explained, “and I remember how they used to shudder at the comic books I read and movies saw. I guess it rubbed off.”
Happiest facets of Shari’s half hour with the kids are her animated conversations with a pair of puppets known as “Lamb Chop” and “Charley Horse.”
“I don’t write gags for the puppets,” she explained. “We just ad-lib together, trying to get across a point And being animals—sort of cartoons brought to life—they can say things to the children that I can’t.”
• • •
ON A RECENT show, Shari stressed water safety by reasoning away the fears of “Lamb Chop,” who timidly avoided going swimming. She received the thanks of parents, who had been trying to get the same message through to their own youngsters—but without benefit of a friendly puppet to ask all the right questions.
“What is most amazing about the puppets,” Shari noted, “is that they have begun to take on facets of my own personality. There’s something rather mystical about it. More and more I find myself with the same devotion I show an animal like my bull terrier puppy.”
Shari told me about one puppet into which she’d put months of work—then discarded.
“I called her ‘Taffy Twinkle.’ She was brash, cheeky, pushy, had terrible grammar and worse diction. I suddenly realized that these were all the traits I hated most when I saw them in myself.”
• • •
AT PRESENT, Shari’s lively “Children’s Newspaper” can’t be seen outside the New York metropolitan area (although Shari herself can, with a featured role in the film, “Somebody Up There Likes Me”). But, based on sponsor and viewer delight with the diminutive redhead, there’s a likely chance of a network slot next fall.

John Crosby of the New York Herald Tribune syndicate was enchanted by Shari. So much that radio/TV vet Arlene Francis was relegated to the second half of his column of December 16, 1957. At the risk of making this post too long, I’ll leave in his comments about Arlene’s show.

‘Hi, Mom’ Star Wins Over Critic
NEW YORK, Dec. 16—“Hi Mom” may be the most revolting title for a television program since “Okay, Mother” but the show itself is a delight. Telecast daily by WRCA in New York, “Hi, Mom” is, I guess, aimed at entertaining and instructing both pre-school kids and their mothers—a difficult assignment.
The main chores on “Hi Mom” are shouldered by a girl named Shari Lewis, who is all eyes and mouth and charm and talent. She’s a ventriloquist who sings songs, tells stories, and is too good for your pre-school children. She should have a show aimed at older children like, say me. “Hi, Mom” is that rare thing, a service show, which have all but disappeared in the mad push for ratings and sponsors.
TIMELY ADVICE
When Miss Lewis isn’t entertaining, there are all sorts of hints for mother on child care and cooking and so forth. The other day there was a lesson, appropriately, on what sort of toys you ought to get for your baby and, more important, what kinds of toys you should not give him. A registered nurse named Jane Warren pointed out that some toys can be awfully pretty and attractive and still be booby traps for the baby. She showed a rabbit whose button eyes came out and would probably be quickly swallowed, and whose whiskers could cut the baby’s skin.
There was a baby on the show who played contentedly with his rattle while this lecture was going on. Moving on to toys for older children, there was a demonstration of the very latest in train gadgets. This train set has a hobo who is chased by a railroad cop, a commuter who marches up and down impatiently, rotary radar antenna, and other wonders guaranteed to keep all the lathers up half the night putting them together.
FRENCH MOUSE
From there, Miss Lewis returned to tell a charming story about a French mouse named Anatole to one of her hand puppets—singing a couple of songs in the process. After that there was a visit to something called Josie’s Kitchen in which Josie McCarthy explained how to make banana chiffon cake—in case you want to know how to make a banana chiffon cake.
Altogether it was a very solid, useful, and entertaining hour. I have only a couple of complaints. In the middle of an otherwise blameless hour, Miss Lewis gets on the phone for some kind of contest in which a viewer is rewarded with loot in return simply for looking at the show. The other was that the commercials for a butter sponsor seemed, roughly, to go on forever.
Directly following “Hi, Mom” which, incidentally, won the Mennen Award for its authoritative advice on baby care, comes the Arlene Francis show. Miss Francis’ old show, “Home,” was just about the best daytime show on TV. Her new show is something else again. “Home” offered all sorts of advice on homemaking, gardening, cooking, child psychology, and every kind of culture you could name.
The new show is aimed at entertainment, and it achieves it only once in a while. I happen to think Arlene Francis is just about the brightest, wittiest and warmest personality on television, and I consider it a terrible waste of her talents to be tossed into fifth-rate sketches, singing duets with cast members and talking nonsense with Hugh Downs.
NOT ALL BAD
Of course, anything with Miss Francis on it can't be all bad. Guests do come in for interviews, and then the program picks up intelligence.
The other day she had Jack Hawkins, the British actor, aboard, and the conversation had great wit and style about it. Miss Francis also gave an unqualified rave notice to Mr. Hawkins’ film, “Bridge on the River Kwai,” which it thoroughly deserves. It takes courage to go overboard on a movie that has not been released.
But then Miss Francis started reading letters just like Dorothy Dix. Should a husband and wife have joint bank accounts? Should women wear hair curlers, in bed? Her answers are forthright, anyhow. On the question of hair curlers in bed, she’s unhesitatingly in favor.

Shari’s first network show was a half hour sponsored by the Girl Scouts called “Adventuring in the Hand Arts,” which debuted January 11, 1959. Her own show (in colour) premiered on October 1, 1960. It received universal praise. But it lasted only three seasons, despite Cynthia Lowry of the Associated Press writing in a column in February 1963 that the show had been renewed. That changed within a few months. This column is from June 23rd.

Shari Lewis Show Is Regrettable Casualty
By CYNTHIA LOWRY
AP Television-Radio Writer
NEW YORK—(AP)—One of the regrettable casualties of the current television season is the pending demise of NBC’s “The Shari Lewis Show," for the past three seasons a delightful Saturday morning musical treat for children.
Childhood’s loss, however, may well turn out to be a gain for adult audiences. Miss Lewis, a tiny red-haired young woman who sings, dances, and is one of the most skillful puppeteers and ventriloquists in the business, expects to find time to launch a career as an actress, with a play on Broadway in the fall.
It will undoubtedly come as a great shock to the summer theater audiences who go to see “Indoor Sport” to find Shari, the perpetual ingenue with pony tail hairdo, playing a young matron with divorce on her mind—and without a note to sing or a hand puppet named Lamb Chop or Hush Puppy to talk to.
Cancellation by NBC of “The Shari Lewis Show,” however, does not necessarily mean the end of her special type of entertainment. Negotiations are already in progress to continue her show elsewhere.
Shari is realistic about the windup of the program.
“I think that in network television, there is a real, basic lack of interest in children’s shows,” she said earnestly. “I think, for one thing, it shows in the categories for the ‘Emmy’ awards.
“And to me, it’s a shocking thing that after 10 years of such a splendid children’s show as ‘Captain Kangaroo,’ it has never received an Emmy from the television industry.”
“Just think, out of 30 odd categories, there is just one for children’s shows, and you find in that such ridiculous situations as ‘Captain Kangaroo’ or my show placed in competition with Walt Disney’s programs, each of which costs $100,000 or more to produce."
Miss Lewis believes that her program was canceled for simon-pure economic reasons.
“In order to put on a good television program,” she reflected, “you must spend money. We worked on a budget of something under $10,000 a week, but obviously the network could do better than that—like a cartoon show for children which will cost them about $3,000 a week.”
One of the constant subjects of debate inside the dollar-conscious, sales-conscious industry is the value of young television viewers as customers.
“Actually, I'm convinced that kids are good customers, and I’ve got sponsors who think they are, too, and are willing to follow me wherever I go,” said Shari. “I think children are an important influence on what their parents buy.”
Shari at 28 is a real veteran of show business, having become incurably infected at the age of 18 months when she was allowed to act as mistress of ceremonies for a show at a summer camp.
At 17 she was studying to be a ballet dancer when a broken ankle put an end to that ambition. While recuperating, she studied ventriloquism and practiced with a hand puppet. Within three months she was a winner on Arthur Godfrey’s “Talent Scouts.”
This was followed by a series of television shows, featuring Shari as a puppeteer, but also giving her a chance to sing, dance and even play violin a little.
She writes much of her own material. She has written several children's books, cut phonograph records, guest starred on all the top variety shows and even, a couple of years back, played a dramatic part in a television comedy. Somehow, amid all this activity, she finds time to be a wife—her husband is a New York publisher--and mother to Mallory, a red-haired girl almost 1 year old.
Actually, Shari’s relationship with NBC is already terminated, because she has finished taping all of her shows. One of the most interesting will be the final program next Saturday: “Cinderella” with original music and with the puppet Lamb Chop playing the fairy godmother.
Although Shari’s immediate future is concerned with playing a mature woman in a sophisticated comedy for adult audiences, she is still thinking about her small fry fans.
Earlier this month she appeared at the Portland, Ore., Rose Festival with a brief one-woman act which she hopes to bring to Broadway for a limited engagement around Christmas time, It is especially created for children and is designed, she explained, “to give kids a sneak preview of what it's like to be grown up.”
“Actually, I enjoy performing for children,” explained Shari. “But that’s not all there is to it. I really enjoy anything that results in a good show—for adults or children.”
“Television is really very frustrating because you work hard for a short period to do a half-hour show7—and it’s gone: I’m looking forward to appearing in one play for ten weeks, touring and perfecting my part. It should be very satisfying.”

Shari’s show went into summer reruns and left NBC on September 28, 1963. And she was right. She was replaced by a cartoon show for children, “Hector Heathcote.” Nothing against Hector, thought I, age six, but why was Shari gone? She was great. She should go on forever.

My childhood was gone in the ‘70s, but Shari came back to TV for someone else’s. And she was back again in the ‘90s, too. Shari Lewis passed away in 1998 but now that almost-one-year-old daughter Mallory is grown up, and touring North America with Lamb Chop. After all, someone else has a childhood. And, you know, Shari Lewis may go on forever after all. There’s an old six-year-old boy who hopes so.

Red Riding Hoodwinked Backgrounds

“Say, it’s a Honeymooner catchphrase, and, oh, what? The cartoon’s over? That’s it?” That’s how Friz Freleng’s “Red Riding Hoodwinked” leaves me.

The analogy has been comparing the toning down of rambunctious Warner Bros. cartoons as the post-war years rolled on to the toning down of America; how the fighting men of World War Two were, by 1955, relaxing with their pipe and slippers watching Arthur Godfrey on TV.

“Hoodwinked” demonstrates the slide of the Warners cartoons. The end gag has no punch (ironically, it’s about a punch) and you watch the cartoon thinking much of it is awfully familiar. And it has those block-headed human designs by Hawley Pratt that I’ve never liked. Still, it’s got a funny twist on a Tex Avery sign gag and Friz’s fine timing.

Irv Wyner handles the backgrounds from Hawley’s layouts. They’re not as stylised as what you’d find in the Chuck Jones unit but they’re not as literal as Paul Julian’s work for Freleng only a few years earlier. Here are some exteriors.








And some interiors of grandma’s house. The doors are on separate cels; they’ve been digitally removed from the bottom two drawings.





Getting the animation credits here are Artie Davis, Gerry Chiniquy and Ted Bonnicksen. Virgil Ross was playing the piano in Los Angeles when this was being made; Ken Champin had gone to work in commercial animation.

Bonnicksen soon ended up in the McKimson unit; whether Freleng didn’t like his work, I don’t know. The internet tells us he was born September 18, 1915 in Illinois to Hans Madsen and Marie Mathilda Bonnicksen, the youngest of six brothers and sisters. His father was a grocery clerk in Waukegan who died in 1918. His mother remarried but the sons kept their original surname. Ted was in Libertyville, Illinois in 1935 but apparently begun his career with Disney by 1940, as we find him in the census that year as “animator, motion pictures” (at $1800 annually) and living with fellow cartoonist Manny Gonzales. During the war, Bonnicksen was a private stationed at Camp Crowder, Missouri where he spent part of his time designing scenery for plays. It’s unclear when he ended up at Warner Bros.

He had a lengthy career in animation up until his death; he was suffering from leukaemia when he was working on “Fritz the Cat.” He died July 22, 1971.

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.