Alan Sues Remembered

Alan Sues of “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In” died a year ago and I posted a couple of old newspaper interviews he did while the show was in its heyday. Alan was far from the star of the show but he certainly was a prolific talker. And he seems even funnier than the broad characters he ended up playing all the time on “Laugh In.” Let me post a couple more wire services columns from his early days on the show.

Here’s an Associated Press column from 1969.

Alan Sues Is Success After Much Knocking
By CYNTHIA LOWRY
NEW YORK, June 22 (AP) — Alan Sues, the blond guy who is the paranoid sportscaster, Big Al, on NBC’s “Laugh-in” is still another of those overnight successes who has been around knocking on doors for years.
Sues, in fact, was a member of the 1957 Broadway cast of “Tea and Sympathy,” and in spite of engagements at such anvils of comedy as the Blue Angel in New York and the hungry I in San Francisco, nothing much happened.
“I met George Schlatter producer and creator of ‘Laugh-In’ when he was producing Edie Adams’ act in Las Vegas,” Sues said. “I was working with Larry Tuck and Paul Muzursky [sic]—he later wrote “I Love You, Alice B. Toklas”—doing impressions. We got fired after two days, and they brought in Rowan and Martin That was four or five years ago.”
Sues then got a job in “Mod Show,” [sic] a Los Angeles revue that was similar in form and pace to “Laugh-In,” and moved on to New York with the East Coast version.
“I ran into George on Madison Avenue one day and he asked me if I’d like to appear in his show. I went to the coast to do three shows, was picked up for 15—and wound up doing all 26.”
Now one of the series’ resident madmen, Sues is touring the profitable summer fair circuit with Rowan and Martin, Ruth Buzzi, Henry Gibson and Dave Madden.
The “Big Al” feature, which caught on with TV audiences, was developed from material
he worked out with his former wife. But like all the other cast members, Alan is all over the show, much of the time disguised with mustaches, wigs and strange costumes.
“That show is not for beginners,” he said with a shake of his head. “We have a 243-page script and our average shooting time is two days. The pace is so fast that most of us have to be our own directors—the director is pretty well occupied just setting up camera angles.”
Sues, whose comedy style is unique, appears to have been born a comedian. He is as entertaining off-stage as on. He comes from a substantial upper middle-class family—his father until retirement recently was the Southern California distributor for a large electronic equipment company.
Alan has a tendency to get caught in unusual crises.
When he arrived in Hollywood for his first “Laugh-In,” he sublet a second-floor apartment and was admitted by the superintendent.
“Something happened to the lock, and I was trapped inside one Saturday night,” he recalled. “I couldn’t climb out and we couldn’t get a locksmith until Monday. I spent Sunday with nothing to do but start and stop the garbage disposal unit—there wasn’t even a magazine in the place.”
At the moment, Sues, like the other “Laugh-In” comedians, is very hot and like the others, he is eager to take advantage of the exposure to build up his career. He is eager to pick up some of that beautiful money doing commercials and, like every other performer, get started in feature movies.
Sues also writes. One of the funniest sketches, on ABC’s “Hollywood Palace” this past season, was one of Alan wrote for Ruth Buzzi and himself. He has also written a movie—a silent film with elaborate background music.
In New York on a short holiday to see shows and old friends, Sues was pleased to be recognized by “Laugh-In” fans and was busily counting his blessings.
“I have never worked so hard and I’ve never had so much money,” he said. “I play tennis to keep in shape. I write when I think of something that interests me. I just want it all to keep going.”

And Alan repeated bits of his life story for the National Enterprise Association’s Hollywood reporter in 1970.

From sublime to Alan Sues
By Dick Kleiner
HOLLYWOOD, July 7 [1970] (NEA) — Remember Bob Burns? The Arkansas comic used to get most of his laughs talking about his family and all their crazy shenanigans.
Alan Sues, “Laugh-In’s” resident frant (a frant is somebody who is always frantic), gets most of his off-screen laughs when he launches into details of his family life. Only difference between Burns and Sues is that Sues swears his stories are true.
It all starts with Sues’ father. The point was, Alan said, that his father was now living in San Rafael, north of San Francisco. It was the 63rd place he had lived.
“I’ve always thought,” Alan said, “that my father was cut out to be a gypsy, but he was too square to wear an earring.”
There was no basic reason behind his movingitis. He just liked to move. He’d buy a house, settle in, tell everybody that this was where he intended to spend the rest of his life — and a few months later he’d up and move again.
He could afford it. He did nicely, as the distributor for some big-name appliance brands on the West Coast.
For Alan and his brother, the problem with all these moves was an almost-constant changing of schools. It was upsetting for a boy.
“I was always the new kid in school,” Alan says. "I was the boy who only got one Valentine card. The near-sighted bucktoothed kid in front of me would have a mound of Valentines, but they didn't know me so I’d only get one.”
His father wanted him to go into his business, but Alan was always interested in acting. His father wanted his brother to be a veterinarian, but Alan’s brother wound up owning a restaurant.
“He was always a food freak,” Alan says. “He loves all kinds of food. So he opened a gourmet restaurant. Only trouble is he opened it up in San Luis Obispo. The people in San Luis Obispo aren’t gourmets. They only want to eat steak. It’s very frustrating for my brother.”
Anyhow, poor Alan wanted to be an actor, not a refrigerator-and-washing machine distributor. At one point, he found himself living in Pasadena (that was home No. 48, he thinks) and so he went to the Pasadena Playhouse.
“I was studying to be a serious actor,” he says. “That’s what I always wanted to be. Then one day I did ‘Hamlet’ in class and I got all tangled up in my cape and everybody laughed. Ever since then, I haven’t been able to do anything serious.”
He’s progressed up the acting trail — some stock, some Broadway, some revues — until he was tapped by George Schlatter to be a Laugh-Insaniac. But the urge to act is still there — not “Hamlet,” necessarily, but something.
This summer, he’ll be out on the road for many weeks with Carl Reiner’s nutty play, “Something Different.” He hopes to play the part when — and if — it’s made into a movie.

There’s a memorial site for Alan I discovered when hunting around the net. If you enjoyed his work, or enjoyed the early seasons of “Laugh In” like I did when I was young, you’ll want to click here.

The Camera of Dicky Moe

Gene Deitch made a dozen Tom and Jerry cartoons at his studio in Czechoslovakia in an exercise that brings about much debate amongst old-time animation fans. Some people love them. Others think they’re horrible. Frankly, and I don’t mean any disrespect to Mr. Deitch, I’m not a fan of them.

To be honest, the Tom and Jerry series was already downhill when Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera were still making the cartoons and things never improved when Chuck Jones took a crack at them after Deitch’s efforts. Jones’ cartoons look nice but I defy anyone to have any empathy for his version of the characters.

Deitch’s Tom and Jerrys are just too quirky for me. I won’t get into a whole shopping list of reasons but one thing that’s always bothered me is how jerky the action is at times, especially when impact is shown on the screen. I never understood what was happening until writing this post when I took a look frame-by-frame.

Here’s an example from the infamous “Dicky Moe” (1961). After some mismatched shots, and no dialogue when the Captain is gesticulating like he’s shouting, Tom is shanghaied. During the scene, the Captain shoves a brush in the cat’s mouth with inexplicably reverbed sound effects. I imagine Tod Dockstader, a pioneer in electronic music, had something to do with it.



Then Tom is tossed against the side of the ship. What I didn’t realise is the impact is so jerky because the camera suddenly moves in on the animation from one shot to the next.




Then the camera jerks sideways on the drawings while it pulls back at the same time. Some drawings are on one frame, others on two. It’s just a weird visual effect to me.

If you’re wondering what I mean by “matching shots,” here’s a good example. The Captain should be standing in the same place and have the same expression when the shot is cut from a close-up to a medium. But he’s not. Why? Style or an accident?



Gene wrote about the difficulties in making the series. You can read about it here on the AWM site (ignore error messages and scroll down). You can visit Gene’s web site here.

These cartoons were made a couple of years after my favourite Deitch series: Tom Terrific. And it’s one that seems to get the universal praise that “Dicky Moe” doesn’t.

You Ain’t No Good Luck Charm

Art Davis directed Bugs Bunny only once. Whether that was through desire or the other directors at the studio sopped up the quota of Bugs cartoons, I don’t know. But “Bowery Bugs” is a pretty good cartoon, with a different feel than those of the other three directors of Warners at the time.

There’s a neat little scene where Steve Brodie takes Bugs into a gambling den as a good luck charm—and Bugs proceeds to help Brodie lose all his money. Bugs grabs a coin from Brodie’s pocket and deposits in a slot machine. Whoever’s animating the scene has Bugs’ fingers moving around.



Brodie anticipates a jackpot. But the slot comes up three lemons. We don’t see that. We just see the lemons roll out.



Bugs does a little slide step to get out of the way of Brodie’s punch.



The bouncer that chucks Brodie out of the place isn’t just nicknamed “Gorilla.” He is one. With fangs, even.



I’ve always liked how Brodie is tossed to the curve, then the lemons follow him. After just enough time, the gag is capped. A little sympathetic dog trots into the scene, licks Brodie, gives a take, then spits.



The animation credits go to Don Williams, Emery Hawkins, Basil Davidovich and Bill Melendez. Bill Scott and Lloyd Turner came up with the story.

Was Jack Benny Right About TV?

John Crosby once remarked that he was such a devotee of Jack Benny’s and a student of his methods, he didn’t even have to see him on television (it sounds more like a one-liner than a complement).

Crosby’s column for the Herald-Tribune syndicate featured Jack a number of times over the years and on at least two occasions, Crosby had Jack join a number of TV/radio stars who wrote fill-in columns while they were on holidays.

Here’s the second one that appeared in papers starting May 17, 1959. Basically, Crosby’s giving him free ad space for a coming TV special. Jack fills the rest of the time—presuming he actually wrote the column—commenting on the first column he wrote for Crosby in 1950.

Benny Comments on Column
Some years ago, after I’d done my first television show, I was asked to write a guest column. I called it to Video Via Radio," and it dealt with my impressions of the then infant medium of television. Those were the days of TV-B.C.— that's Before Cowboys.
It's a little odd to read the words you wrote years ago in the light of what’s happened since. A lot of the things I was worried about then seem silly now, after I've been on television for so many seasons with my own half-hour show plus special shows like my May 23 “Jack Benny Hour.” You should see what I’ve got to worry about nowadays.
Anyhow, some of the remarks I made in my Innocence and youth was only 30 at the time, nine years ago) gave me pause; others gave me a good laugh; and a few gave me chills. Before I had my secretary burn every copy, I jotted down a few of my statements in that column and offer them herewith, along with some observations in that column and offer them herewith, along with some observations in retrospect.
“The day after my video show,” I wrote, “I was walking down Broadway and I heard a woman say to her friend ‘There’s Jack Benny, that new comic I just saw on television. . .’” (Now they say ‘There’s Jack Benny, that old comic I saw, etc.”
In those days, of course, I was still on radio. I wrote, “It had always seemed to that to go on television with all its problems, while continuing to do my radio show might be biting off more than I could chew,” (The president of CBS radio agreed; he told me I should stick to television. The president of CBS Television felt just the opposite).
I was also worried in those days about my format. To wit: “There was something about doing an hour show that didn’t feel right to me—an hour show without dancers, tumblers or other extraneous acts might be too long.” (Today, a number of critics feel that my half hour show is too long.)
“We rehearsed a scene in which I call Dinah Shore in the phone to ask her to appear on the show. She tells me her price is $5,000, and I practically faint from the shock.” (I did the same gag with Gary Cooper this season, only his price was $10,000—and I didn’t bat an eye or move a muscle. I think the doctors call it temporary paralysis.
“Experience and proper organization can and eventually will simplify the creation of TV programs.” (I should have saved a copy and sent it to my producers.)
Then I wrote, “We had Mary talk about three stations at the same time. She said that all night I kept shooting it out with Hopalong Cassidy to see who would marry Gorgeous George . . . (Hopalong Cassidy won, and they’ve lived happily ever after.)
“The $64,000 question,” I continued, “which no one can really answer at this time is whether television will wear out comedians . . . (the answer to that is simple . . . Television won’t but the $64,000 Question almost did).
“When we got to the cab, Milton Berle was sitting there waiting for us. He said he’d left his rehearsal just to come down and me some technical advice. And then. . . he briefed me on the art of how to close your eyes when you’re getting hit in the face with a pie.” (Today Milton is a very sophisticated comedian. He believes you should keep your eyes open when being hit by a pie).
Jack Warner was on one of my early shows. “Speaking about ‘The Horn Blows at Midnight,’ Warner explained that if it were a little better, he might have gotten his money back from the theaters and if it were a little worse it would have been a natural for television.” (Since then Jack Warner released ‘The Horn Blows at Midnight’ to television. This was part of the motion picture industry’s campaign to drive people back into movie theaters.)
Anyhow, that’s what I said nine years ago. And nine years from now, why, then I’ll do a column making fun of this one.

Readers to the blog will know I’ve been trying to post a Benny story every Sunday as that was Jack’s night on the air for years. The source where I was getting these has now become inaccessible. However, I have a few salted away and will try to keep posting them. Next Sunday, we’ll have Crosby himself on Jack’s TV show.

Mickey Trade Ads, 1935

Here’s a collection of ads from The Film Daily marking Mickey Mouse’s birthday in 1935. Much like how Boxing Day has been stretched out to a whole week, Mickey’s birthday is more than a day.

The caricatures in the first ad are terrific. Beery, Keaton, Garbo, Brown, Chaplin, Cantor, Arliss, Groucho, Hardy and Durante; other than Beery, I think they were all caricatured in animated cartoons about this time.



Interestingly, Walt Disney’s name isn’t on all the ads. I suspect the Disney studio wouldn’t omit its name from publicity material today.

Banana Duck of Tomorrow

If there’s a Tex Avery cartoon of the ’50s that gets bashed, it’s “Farm of Tomorrow.” While his “Car of Tomorrow” makes fun of the increasingly outrageous design of autos of the decade and “TV of Tomorrow” spoofs technology and banal programming, “Farm” is a string of puns that doesn’t really go anywhere.

Still, there are nice little poses, as good as anything Chuck Jones tried with the coyote at Warners. For example, when you cross a duck with a banana, “you don’t have to pick him, girls. You just peel him.”




This is another one of Tex’s limited animation specials. Lots of static background drawings made by Joe Montell, a buddy of Ed Benedict’s, who was Tex’s main layout artist. Montell was on his way to the John Sutherland studio and went on to work in Mexico on Rocky and Bullwinkle after a brief stop at Hanna-Barbera. Mike Lah, Walt Clinton, Grant Simmons and Bob Bentley are the animators.

A Chinese Goulash

Shamus Culhane brags about the climax of the Woody Woodpecker short “The Barber of Seville” (1944) where he quickly cuts from pose to pose, but the audience keeps up with the action because they all know the famous opera lyrics “Figaro! Figaro! Figaro!”

Culhane recalled how writer Bugs Hardaway yelped that the scene looked like “Chinese goulash” during pencil testing but Walter Lantz himself figured it would look fine when animated and painted.



Here are the cuts as Woody yells “Figaro!” Remember, these aren't static poses as Woody is singing; the mouths and bodies move. 24 frames equal a second.



Six frames.



Six frames.



Five frames.



Ten frames.



28 frames, as the “o” is elongated.

La Verne Harding and Les Kline get animation credits, but Emery Hawkins is in here, too. Woody pokes his head toward the camera, sprouts multiple eyes in a speedy head-poke take and the customer’s butt backs into the camera, all things you’d find in Lantz cartoons around this time.

Hello, Folksies

If Bill Comstock wasn’t radio’s first female impersonator, he was radio’s best-known, at least before World War Two.

Comstock decided to make fun on radio’s home economy shows of the 1930s and created a hostess named Tizzie Lish. Tizzie achieved national fame when the character joined “Al Pearce and His Gang,” one of the top shows of the ‘30s that petered out in the ‘40s. As far as I can tell, it’s the only thing Comstock did on the show. Tizzie was so well known, she was even parodied as Tizzie Fish in the 1937 Warner Bros. cartoon “The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos”. Tedd Pierce, as Fish, captures the screwiness of character beautifully. His inflections are bang-on and so is the dialogue.

Evidently Comstock’s press agent was working hard in 1937. Several news articles about Tizzie hit the papers.

Radio’s Typical Old Maid Is Amusing Young Fellow
So Tizzie Lish Has to Turn Down Marriage Proposals
By NORMAN SIEGEL
(NEA Service Radio Editor)
NEW YORK, Nov. 18. —The old maid ain’t what she used to be. The traditional spinster who led a secluded life with her pet cats and memories of love affairs that didn’t jell, has become as popular as Mae West at an American Legion smoker. Bill Comstock of the Al Pearce program is responsible for the transformation.
Bill is radio’s “Tizzie Lish,” the typical old maid. Tizzie is tall, gawky, coy, romantic and gossipy, with a high-pitched giggle. She airs fantastic cooking recipes and puts her friends through muscle-bound setting-up exercises. She chews gum incessantly and labors under the delusion that some five or six thrilling men are in love with her.
Yet “Tizzie,” in spite of her ways, is a knockout with radio fans. They're always sending her gifts, letters, valentines, clothes of all sorts from silk stockings to expensive fur pieces, and jewelry. She has also received at least a dozen real proposals of marriage.
Bill Comstock’s “Tizzie,” who cavorts on the Columbia airwaves every Tuesday night at 9:15, is a composite of his falsetto voice, an outlandish outfit and the memory of a real woman. The original inspiration for “Tizzie” was a cooking expert Bill used to listen to on the air. He thought her style so unique he began mocking it.
Even today “Tizzie” still uses many of the phrases coined by the cooking expert, who has since given Bill permission to impersonate her on the Al Pearce show. One of the most famous is “Good morning, folks, are you ready for lots of goodies?”
“Tizzie” hasn't always posed in women’s clothing, in the old days, Bill used to get himself into the mood without the aid of a costume. He finally was forced to dress up for a personal appearance at the popular Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles.
He found that “Tizzie” improved so much behind a hat and a polka-dotted veil that he has worn her outfit since.
Her outfit is the same as the one Bill first adopted for her. He hastily borrowed it from the girl who is now his wife. “Tizzie” still wears the same black, tight-fitting skirt hat, veil, brown cotton stockings and brown drop-earrings she lent him. He even wears the same feather boa. It once was white, but from long usage it has become practically black. He doesn’t bother to have it cleaned.

Tizzie Lish wasn’t Bill’s only accomplishment in life, nor was it his start in show business. William Herbert Comstock was born in Oswego, New York on November 11, 1889, the third child of Fred M. and Mary Comstock. His father had worked for a Saskatchewan railroad (his mother was Canadian) and later became a box maker. He was named for his uncle.

Comstock enlisted in service for World War One at the beginning of 1918 and was discharged before the end of the year. He spent part of 1928 in a tuberculosis sanatorium for veterans at Sawtelle, California. His wife, Theodora Belle Comstock, was an actress and 16 years his junior.

This biography is from the Los Angeles Times, April 13, 1937.

Tizzie Lish, Al Pearce’s “Cooking and Health Expert” . . . Real name is Bill Comstock . . . Born and educated in Syracuse, N. Y. . . . Played drums in Keith vaudeville theaters for seven years, until the World War broke out . . . Wounded in action and sent to Saranac [a TB sanatorium in New York] where he was active in promoting benefits for injured soldiers. Bill studied music at Syracuse and in the early days of radio appeared as a member of a Pacific Coast singing trio . . . Rapidly getting nowhere as a vocalist, he decided to try his hand at comedy . . . His high-pitched voice was an asset . . . Earl, the Coffee King, his first act, was just so-so . . . Then came a turn with a partner and they called themselves Null and Void . . . Tizzie was introduced first on a small Los Angeles station . . . No one was more surprised than Bill at the success of the characterization. Writes his act two days in advance of the broadcasts . . . Takes him three hours to bat it out . . . He’s a shade past 40, stands five feet eight inches and has blue eyes and graying black hair.

Comstock’s first appearance as Tizzie was on the Tom Breneman morning programme in 1931. Phil Harris and Helen Gahagan Douglas were featured on the same show. He joined Pearce in 1933.

Pearce’s radio show slowly descended from its peak of the late ‘30s. By 1946, it was on during the daytime and Pearce decided to retire and run a prune farm. Comstock went to work for a talent agency; newspapers reported one of his discoveries was Gloria Henry, who later played Dennis the Menace’s mom on TV. But television beckoned Pearce in 1952 and he assembled part of his old gang, including Tizzie Lish. The show survived seven months (and Pearce took time off during the summer). Comstock took Tizzie to the Garry Moore show for a bit around the same time and even cut an audition radio show for ABC in December that year. Listen to it below, courtesy of Rand’s Esoteric OTR. Comstock’s voice is raspier than it was 20 years earlier when Tizzie first appeared with Pearce.



Tizzie soon became someone of the past, a name evoking someone’s parents’ generation. And Bill Comstock was forgotten. One of Earl Wilson’s columns in 1971 asked readers if they knew who played Tizzie Lish. He gave the answer next day as “Al Pearce.” One California newspaper story reporting on Arlene Harris declared she had played Tizzie (Harris had her own segment on the Pearce show).

Comstock died in Los Angeles on June 22, 1979; I haven’t found a newspaper obituary. His wife died December 14, 1984.

Pearce’s show is really a mixed bag, at least if you listen to any of the few broadcasts that have been preserved. But it deserves a second look. Perhaps we’ll do that here next week.

Hare Ribbin' Cut

Bob Clampett’s “Hare Ribbin’” is noted for two things—most of it takes place underwater and two endings were made for it. But it’s got a really jarring edit at the beginning.






Suddenly it jumps from the imitation-Bert Gordon-as-the-Mad Russian dog sniffing on the ground to snorting away next to Bugs Bunny in mid-chew.



You can tell by the trumpet in Carl Stalling’s score that something was taken out because it leaps head by a couple of bars.

Well, the answer was provided to me by Thad Komorowski moments after this was posted. Clampett was never accused of being demure and tasteful. He’s got a gag where the dog sniffs Bugs’ underarm, turns to the camera, and lets’ out with the Lifebuoy radio slogan “Beee…O!” There’s a stretch in-between. The portion cut is the dog spending more time examining the effluviant area.






Bob McKimson gets the sole animation credit. Rod Scribner and Manny Gould would have been in the unit at the time.

The Two-Shoes Kitchen

Somewhere in some forgotten filing cabinet, I hope, rests archival material that shows who worked on animated cartoons but never got screen credit.

Layout people like Harvey Eisenberg and Gene Hazelton worked on Tom and Jerry cartoons. You never saw their names. Ernie Smythe drew the backgrounds for the the first Oscar-winner “Yankee Doodle Mouse” (1943). His name never appeared on screen. And such was the case for the layout and background people into the early ‘50s.

It’s too bad because I’ve always like the MGM settings of the ‘40s and the artists responsible for them should be known. I don’t know how many people worked in Metro’s background department during that time, but the primary artists were Bob Gentle, in the Hanna-Barbera unit and Johnny Johnsen in Tex Avery’s.



I strongly suspect this is one of Gentle’s backgrounds. This kitchen is seen near the start of “The Mouse in the House” (1947), when the camera quickly pans to the right, stops at the fridge, then quickly pans again and stops at the cake. You’ll have to click on it to enlarge it.

There are colour-changing highlights on the floor which look abrupt in this snipped-together digital version. It’s a basic drawing that sets up the action nicely.

The pans take up 11 seconds of animation-less, cost-saving screen time.

Gentle was born in Norfolk, Nebraska on February 15, 1914 and arrived in Los Angeles at about age 13. He got a job at the Harman-Ising studio. When MGM dumped Harman-Ising and started making its own cartoons in 1937, Gentle make the jump and stayed there for the full 20-year life of the operation. When Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera opened their own studio in 1957, he made the jump again, working on all the early TV cartoon series. Gentle died January 24, 1988.