Not Too Silent Night

Christmas comes too early you say? Christmas music is pouring forth from radios before it should? It was different when you were a kid?

Funny, people were saying the same thing 60 years ago.

You can thank—or blame, depending on your point of view—two people for the reason you can’t seemingly escape from festive tunes of snowmen, candy canes, Santa, sleighs and the like. Associated Press movie reporter Bob Thomas explained it all in his column that began appearing in papers on December 3, 1952.

Annual Barrage of Christmas Ditties Hitting the Air Waves
By BOB THOMAS
HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 3 (AP)—Here it is only the beginning of December and already the jukes and jocks are dinning our ears with Christmas songs.
The juke boxes and the disc jockeys hare a full quota of Yuletide carols, some centuries old and some brand new. The new ones will be as abundant as ever this year, because members of the music industry are always hopeful that they will find another “White Christmas.”
I can remember when the only Christmas songs we sang were the ones we learned in Sunday school. I seem also to remember when Christmas was celebrated on or about Dec. 25.
Of course, there had been some modern Christmas songs, but practically all you heard were oldies like “Silent Night” and “Jingle Bells.” All that changed in 1942. That was the year Bing Crosby crooned Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” in a film called “Holiday Inn.”
That was a sentimental year, with men going off to war. The song seemed to hit everybody’s heart and stay there. Sales records are hazy in the music business, but most experts agree that Bing’s “White Christmas” platter is the top seller of all time. Estimates range as high as eight million.
Two million copies of the sheet music were sold in the first year of “White Christmas,” and 800,000 are reportedly sold each year.
That is the reason that each year song writers rack their brains for new Christmas songs. And music publishers and record companies plug the daylights out of them, hoping for another “White Christmas.”
I found some research on this subject at Capitol Records, which this year is going all out for a tune called “Hang Your Wishes on a Tree.” It’s a new song written by Marian Boyle and Eddie Gale and recorded by Les Baxter.
“It’s a good song,” observed Capitol executive Dave Dexter, “That’s the only thing that worries me—it might be too good.”
He told me that the song was selected from an estimated 500 to 600 Christmas ditties submitted to the record company this year. That gives you an idea of the chances of getting a song recorded, much less have it become a hit.
“The song-writing business is the toughest in the world to crack,” Dexter explained. “I think it was Irving Berlin who said that three out of every five American adults write songs at some time during their lives.”
Another viewpoint on the Christmas song industry is offered by Herb Montel, whose firm published “Hang Tour Wishes on a Tree.”
“Every publisher would like a big Christmas song,” he commented. “It’s just like having an annuity policy. Yet every publisher tries to discourage writers from writing them because the competition is so great.”

There were some popular Christmas songs before Der Bingle’s seasonal serenade. But there weren’t many. One was called “Santa Claus’ Workshop” and was written in 1910 by William T. Phillips. You can hear it below.

Grampy Plays Santa

Max Fleischer’s Grampy can be a little creepy, but there’s a certain inventiveness in many of his cartoons that’s admirable. Take “Christmas Comes But Once a Year” (1936). Typical Depression yarn. Poor kids won’t have a real Christmas but Santa comes along to save the day. In this case, Santa is Grampy.

As the old man laughs uncontrollably, he comes up with toys for the kids made of stuff found around their orphanage. They’re pretty clever.



A train set is created by a coffee percolator (plugged in), with saucers for wheels and teacups for cars, with a tunnel made from a cheese grater suspended above the tracks by a pair of books.



Another cheese grater creates snowflakes as a fan blows a bar of soap over it. A shame this is a lousy public domain version. I’d love to see what the brush strokes on the wall actually look like.



Grampy puts some green umbrellas into each other to create a Christmas tree.

The opening and closing of the cartoon have those wonderful little Fleischer’s models that add a 3-D effect which is still effective after all these years. The opening the orphanage behind a fence. The scene turns from an angle, and as the setting faces the front of the building, the fence stands out in front. The ending’s even better, as Grampy’s Christmas turns in 3-D. The scene then darkens so just the Christmas tree lights are on, with Grampy being lit from an open side entrance. I’ll bet it looked terrific on the big screen.



Seymour Kneitel and William Henning are the credited animators and there’s even an original song.

Jerry Gets His Christmas Present

Many things went into making the Tom and Jerry series a real joy to watch but the foundation is the wonderfully expressive pantomime by the two characters.

Here’s an example from “The Night Before Christmas” (1941). The cartoon begins and ends with Jerry in front of his mouse hole where Tom had placed a present of cheese on a mouse trap. At the outset, he ridicules it as an obvious attempt at capturing him. But at the end, he decides to extricate the cheese. Check out these poses as he discovers that Tom really has left him a present; the trap slowly springs back to play “Jingle Bells.”








The mouse shows a bunch of different emotions, raising the cartoon from the cutsey sentiment of a Rudy Ising MGM short to something far more satisfying.

The Comeback of Jack Benny

Newsweek featured a cover story on Jack Benny on March 31, 1947 leaving the reader with the impression he was making some kind of comeback. In a way, it was true, even though Benny didn’t go anywhere; he was still on the radio every week outside the summer replacement season. And his show still had a large audience during that time.

But to my ear—and evidently to those of radio listeners at the time—something went haywire. Since his early days on the air, Benny was fairly heavily formatted. The first half of the show was on-stage banter and the second half was a play parodying something. The format was getting a little worn. The war didn’t help him. Jack broadcast from various locations and the shows were obligated to shoehorn in military or local humour—occasionally with ill-at-ease local dignitaries given speaking roles. And the sponsor change, I don’t believe, helped him either at first. Instead of Don Wilson jovially hawking Jell-O or (and less convincingly) Grape Nut Flakes, the first thing on the show listeners had to sit through was almost two minutes of announcers shouting catchphrases over and over with unintelligible tobacco hawkers giving a demonstration of their chanting skills. Friendly and inviting, it wasn’t.

The cigarette spots didn’t change their style until the ‘50s but the show got a mid-‘40s makeover, as Newsweek noted. New characters were brought in, ones that became loved by Benny fans—the telephone operators, Mr. Kitzel (who got a personality change from the Al Pearce show), Mel Blanc’s train announcer. Frank Nelson got to say “Yehhhhhhhhhs?” a lot more. Rochester started appearing in more places than on the other end of a phone. The writers tried an annual running gag; one year it was Jack Benny’s song. And they started writing more “off-stage” routines. Instead of a radio show, listeners got a radio show about a radio show. And it smoothly moved into TV, where the Benny show was, much of the time, a TV show about a TV show.

I don’t know whether this is the full Newsweek article, but it appeared in the Milwaukee Journal of April 1, 1947.

Jack Benny, King of Laugh Makers
Radio Comedian, Who Isn’t the Tight Fisted Blowhard of Legends, Has Had His Ups and Downs.
Now, at 53, He Is at the Top of His Highly Competitive Profession
From Newsweek
Not even among comedians is there much argument. Right now Jack Benny is the funniest man on radio.
Back in 1945, after Benny had been on the air for 13 rib tickling years, his program abruptly skidded. The comedy became dusty and labored. Listeners demoted him from his customary post among radio’s top four or five shows to twelfth place. The smart alecks whispered that he was finished. But not Benny. The next fall he clamped more tightly on his ever present cigar and paced the floor nervously and the show recaptured some of its old verve.
This week, after exactly 15 years in radio, Jack Benny is back in full strode, as he has been all season. Against the toughest competition of his career, the Jack Benny show has copped the top spot in the bi-monthly Hooperatings twice in six months, and week in week out, gives the Bob Hopes and Fibber McGees a hard, fast run for the win money.
Unlike some of his competition, notably Hope, Benny pulls his radio way almost unaided by outside activities. Of the 15 movies he has made, he has had two real hits. During the war he successfully toured battle zones, but his personal appearances for home front civilians have been few.
The Serious Business of Being Funny
Nevertheless, Benny’s potential draw as a performer on the stage of urban movie houses is such that this May the radio star and a small troupe move into the Roxy in New York for a minimum gross take of $40,000 a week. It is the highest salary ever paid for a theater date.
At 53, Benny, off mike, looks and acts like a successful businessman. He is exactly that—a success at the very serious business of comedy. Unlike the Fred Allens of the trade, Benny has little natural, spontaneous wit. What gags he ad libs on the air are those anyone would soak up after 37 years of hanging around professional funnymen.
In a private gathering of show people Benny is no show-off. He would much rather and usually does sit and listen to others strut their stuff. For them is he a wonderful audience. Even a minor gag can provoke a Benny belly laugh. It is the appreciation of what makes a line laughable that keys his radio program. Benny is the industry leader in the business of manufacturing radio comedy. Like the Henry Fords and the Alfred Sloans, he can’t manufacture his product alone. Hence he has surrounded himself with a production team that clicks like castanets.
Benny gives all the credit for his stature to this outfit. “Where would I be today,” he asks, “without my writers, without Rochester, Dennis Day, Mary Livingstone, Phil Harris and Don Wilson?”
The Radio Benny vs. the Real One
That he himself hand picked both the writers and the cast is something that Benny never admits. He dismisses lightly the fact that he directs his own rehearsals, down to the last, fine reading of a line. Nor will he ever say part of his success stems from his own sense of timing and showmanship.
This belittling is not new. It was evident in the first words that Benny ever spoke on the air. He said: “Hello, folks. This is Jack Benny. There will now be a slight pause for everyone to say, ‘Who cares?’”
That was Mar. 29, 1932. Benny was appearing on Broadway that year in Earl Carroll’s “Vanities.” He was successful graduate of vaudeville and had already hit Hollywood for a couple of movies. Ed Sullivan, the columnist, who then had his own radio program, had invited Benny to try this new medium. Four weeks later, on Monday, May 2, Benny opened his own show over the old NBC Blue network. He has never been without a program or a sponsor since then.
Benny’s first crack in radio may have been characterized by modesty. But it was never to be so again. The Jack Benny of radio is a cheap, tight fisted blowhard who gets knocked down by everyone and comes right back for more. The balding Benny character of the air let his vanity force him into buying a toupee. The character insists Benny is a violinist—though he never gotten through more than a few squeaky, sour bars of “Love in Bloom.” This is the Benny that is a mirror for a million human foibles—the perfect fall guy. Yet all of this is completely manufactured. The radio and stage Jack Benny is the opposite of the private Jack Benny. And it is a difference which Benny has to fight hard to maintain.
When he was still a kid in knickerbockers in Waukegan, Ill., Benny was given a violin by his father. He learned to play it so quickly that he got a job in the pit orchestra of a local theater before he was in long pants. At 17, calling himself by his real name, Benjamin Kubelsky, he went into vaudeville with his violin tucked under his chin. At home Benny still plays his violin, not too badly, for his own amusement and as proof to the skeptics that he can.
Though his hair is gray and thinning, Benny is a long way from being bald. To prove this to the public, Benny rarely wears a hat and never a toupee except on movie sets. But Benny’s worst fears are that people will take him for a genuine skinflint. He estimates conservatively that it costs him an extra $5,000 a year in lavish tipping and the like to disprove the non-existent theory.
Like Thumbing a Family Album
That Benny feels he must disprove his stinginess is, of course, perfect proof of the success of his radio character. That character was born on Benny’s first regular program in 1932.
Looking back over old Benny scripts is like thumbing through a family album. The family group is all there. Don Wilson, the announcer, fills the same foil role once held by an earlier Alois Havrilla. Dennis Day, the timorous tenor, is the successor to a line of timorous tenors which included Frank Parker, James Melton and Kenny Baker. Phil Harris, his bourbon, his consummate ego, and his orchestra, joined Benny in 1936, following Frank Black and Don Bestor. Eddie Anderson, who plays Rochester, was hired for a one shot in 1937 to play a Pullman porter. But the public liked him so much that Benny hastily put him to regular work as his valet.
Last but certainly not least in the Benny corral is Mary Livingstone. Unlike the rest of the cast, Miss Livingstone was not a professional. Benny met her in 1926 when a vaudeville tour took him to Los Angeles. She was then a 17 year old clerk in a department tour. Her name was Sadye Marks—shortly thereafter changed to Mrs. Benny. Five years later on his program Jack needed someone to read a short poem supposedly written by an addled fan named Mary Livingstone. Sadye Marks Benny stepped into the bit role—and stayed on.
So thoroughly are these characters established on Benny’s show that this year two of them—Dennis Day and Phil Harris—got their own programs, playing elaborations of their Benny roles.
In 15 years on the air Benny has had only seven writers. His present staff consists of John Tackaberry, Milt Josefsberg, Sam Perrin and George Balzer.
Benny probably prizes his writers more than any other part of his organization. They are under exclusive contract to him and are among the highest paid in radio, with combined salaries totaling about $5,000 a week. When Benny’s program slipped in 1945, instead of hiring new writers, he held onto his four and trained them even harder in the Benny ways. Now he gives them full credit for pulling the show out of the doldrums.
His writers’ work begins right after each Sunday’s broadcast. With Benny they sit down and work out the situation for the following week. Some of the ideas come from the writers, but more of them are Benny’s. By Thursday the writers have put together the script, which goes to Benny for astute editing. On Saturday there is a cast reading and Sunday morning is spent in loose rehearsal. Benny doesn’t like a final dress rehearsal, saying it spoils the show’s spontaneity.
The most serious criticism of the Benny program has been that his show seldom changes. The comedian violently disputes this idea. True, the basic part of each week’s humor arises out of the well established characters and their well known reactions to given sets of circumstances. But the circumstances, Benny points out, always have an element of surprise. Over the years Benny has resorted to such diversified gimmicks as a polar bear, a talkative parrot, a feud with Fred Allen, a museum relic of an automobile and the gravel voice of Andy Devine, whom Benny once paid $500 just to say “Hi ya, Buck.”
His Lifetime Option on His Half Hour
Out of the fact that the Bennys live next door to the Ronald Colmans in fashionable Beverly Hills, Calif., Benny got one of his funniest situations—the socially correct and veddy British Colmans entertaining the social climbing, inelegant Jack Benny. Last year the comedian brought the names of three small southern California towns into the show. Now the mere mention of Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga brings a laugh. Jack started a national nuisance when he got involved with a character named Kitzel who sold him a hot dog named “peekel een the meedle and the mustard on top.”
This year’s major contribution to the nation’s giggles is Benny’s quartet. He hired it first for laughs and, secondly, to help hurdle that necessary evil, the middle commercial. The quarter, professionally known as the Sportsmen but around the Benny show as “Mmmmmm,” take the middle plug for the sponsor’s product and sing or chant it in ridiculous and clever verse. The commercial is written by Benny with the help of Mahlon Merrick, the show’s musical director.
For as long as Benny cares to stay in radio, listeners can be sure they may tune him in on the 6 p.m. (CST) spot Sundays. In 1941, when it looked as if Benny might move to another network, NBC made the unprecedented move of giving him a life-time option on what is one of radio’s most valuable half hours.
So long as he has a sponsor satisfactory to NBC, Benny can use that half hour as he sees fit. Two weeks ago he was assured of NBC’s satisfaction for three more years, when his fifth and current sponsor renewed the contract through 1950. The terms: $25,000 a week for the packaged program which Benny owns, plus $250,000 a year to advertise and publicize the show.
Benny will earn it.

The Sad End of Frank Graham

Almost every cartoon voice actor in the ‘40s who didn’t have the name “Mel Blanc” performed their tasks anonymously to the movie-going public. At least on screen. Sara Berner worked at a bunch of studios and received one credit on the first Chilly Willy cartoon for Walter Lantz. You won’t find Billy Bletcher’s name on any Warners cartoons. Nor Kent Rogers’. Nor Bea Benaderet’s. And you won’t find Frank Graham’s, either.

Frank Lee Graham was a radio actor who played both the Fox and Crow at Columbia. Tex Avery used him as the voice of the wolf in the first Red cartoon and in other MGM shorts, like “House of Tomorrow.” He popped up at Warner Bros. in a number of the Snafu cartoons and in theatricals as well—he’s the narrator of “Horton Hatches the Egg,” to give you one example.

Frank Graham was also dead at the age of 35 by his own hand.

The Los Angeles Times published a full story on September 4, 1950.

RADIO STAR GRAHAM COMMITS SUICIDE.
Actor Known as the Man With 1000 Voices Found in His Auto With Engine Running Radio
Actor Frank Graham, 35, known as the man of 1000 voices and radio’s one-man theater, was found dead in his automobile in the carport of his Hollywood Hills home, 9115 Wonderland Ave.
Police said Graham had committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. His body was found about 1 p.m. Saturday by friends. He was slumped in the front seat of his expensive convertible.
Engine Was Running.
The engine of the automobile was running. A section of vacuum cleaner hose had been attached to the car’s exhaust pipe and brought under the cloth to carry the poisonous gas to the car.
Near Graham’s hand on the front seat of the car was the photograph of a handsome brunet woman, identified by police as Miss Mildred Rossi. Associates said that until recent weeks Miss Rossi had been Graham’s constant companion. She was not present at the time the tragedy was discovered and she could not be reached for comment.
Telephone Call.
At 9:10 p m. Saturday Graham telephoned Jack and Virginia Shallow, 2707 Castle Heights Ave. “He told us to come to his house and pick up something from the front seat of his car,” Shallow told police. They said they arrived about 10 o’clock and pulled Graham’s body from the car and applied artificial respiration. He was already dead. They called police.
Officers Ted Morton Jr. and J W. Hodson said that two notes were found in the living room of Graham’s home. They were neither dated nor signed. Both were addressed to Radio Producer and Announcer Van Des Autels. One read, “Please get keys of the house and car from Mildred. I don’t want her to have time to disturb anything here.” The other, “Although the attached note says – owes me $600, he actually only owes me $400. It’s to become part of the estate.”
No Cause Learned.
Morton said Graham was dressed in blue denim trousers and a T-shirt. No cause for the suicide was immediately learned by police.
Associates at the Columbia Broadcasting Co. said Graham was at the peak of his career. He was star of the Jeff Regan Show. He had just completed a summer announcing the highly successful dramatic program, Satan’s Waitin’, which he and Des Autels had developed and which they owned.
He was the star of Night Car Yarns over CBS from 1938 through 1942 and was the announcer of dozens of programs, including the Ginny Simms, Rudy Vallee and Nelson Eddy shows.
Graham was born to show business. His mother was Ethel Briggs Graham, concert and opera singer. He grew up in dozens of cities and attended numbers of schools while traveling the concert circuit with his mother. At the age of 2 he knew the backstage odors of grease paint and dress rooms well.
Attended UCO.
He attended the University of California for one year and left to begin his acting career in Seattle, both on the stage and in radio. He was brought to Hollywood in 1937 to join the CBS-KNX. He had been married two years before to the former Dorothy Jack of Seattle. They were later divorced. In addition to his radio roles, Graham's voice was well-known to motion-picture fans. He created the voices of numbers of cartoon characters in animated films for Walt Disney, MGM and Warner Bros. studios.
Services Tomorrow.
He leaves his mother and father, Mr. and Mrs. Frank L. Graham of San Francisco, a brother Jack and a sister, Mrs. Janet Downs, both of Seattle. Funeral services will be conducted at 3 p.m. Tuesday in the chapel of Will A. Reynolds Mortuary, West Hollywood. Burial will be private.

California state records say that Frank Lee Graham was born in Detroit on November 22, 1914, though the 1940 Variety Radio Directory has him older, saying he was born on the same date in 1911. It lists him at 5-foot-7 and 125 pounds with brown hair and blue eyes. An Associated Press story said his father was an inventor. His mother was related to the Briggs who built Briggs Stadium in Detroit. The family had moved to Seattle by 1920. Graham’s first radio appearance was in 1931, when the repertory company with which he was acting was contracted for several regional network commercials. He started as an announcer at KHQ-KGA, Spokane, in 1935, where he and his wife founded founded the Rockcliff School of Theatre and Radio. She was from Sedro-Woolley, about an hour north of Seattle. The Variety profile lists a decent-sized body of radio work by 1940, mainly on CBS, and reveals he appeared in film shorts but doesn’t list any titles.

Mildred Rossi had been employed at the Disney studio. The Associated Press followed up on the story:

Unusual Will Fills Gaps in Mystery of Graham’s Death
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 19. (AP)—Missing gaps in the last few hours of radio producer Frank Lee Graham’s life were filled in when his unusual will was filed for probate yesterday.
Graham’s body was found in his convertible at his Hollywood Hills home about 10 p.m. September 2 by two friends, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Shallow, whom he had telephoned an hour before asking them to come over.
The automobile engine was running. A hose led from the exhaust into the tonneau. Friends said the 35-year-old radioman was at the peak of his career.
On the seat of the car was a picture of a brunette woman, identified by police as Miss Mildred Rossi. Radio associates said she and Graham had been close friends.
One paragraph of the will said: “To Mildred, I leave absolutely nothing except the pleasure she will have knowing that now she won’t have to decide whether I am good enough for her or not.” A postscript said: “Gee, I wish Mildred had called me back yesterday morning.” The document didn’t further identify “Mildred.”
Ex-Wife Gets Share
It bequeathed to Graham’s divorced wife, Mrs. Dorothy Jack Graham, insurance policies, an automobile, half interest in two radio shows, “Satan’s Waitin’,” and “Sing for Your Supper,” and said of her “Believe me, she struggled and worked harder for them than I did.”
Graham left the other half interest in the shows to Shallow. He directed that the remainder of “all my earthly possessions (and they’re certainly not much)” be divided among his father, Frank Graham, San Francisco; his sister, Mrs. Janet Downs, and his brother Jack, both of Seattle.
The probate petition valued the estate simply as in excess of $10,000.

How ironic that Graham’s best-remembered role in cartoons was that of a Hollywood wolf.

Mammy Moo Cow

On today’s edition of old Public Domain Cartoons, we take you back to exciting days in old New York, where the Fleischer studio had Betty Boop and the Van Beuren studio responded with its own female character.

Yes, Molly Moo Cow.

Molly, in her four pictures, just wanted to be loved. Instead, she was callously shoved off the screen in 1936 because the people at RKO, for some reason, decided they’d rather release cartoons with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy than a child-like cow. The Van Beuren studio closed forever. Fortunately, some of its artists jumped ship before that happened. One of them was Joe Barbera, whose autobiography reveals what it was like to work with dear old Molly:

The model sheet, which establishes the look, shape and even dimensions for each character, and which is so essential to professional animation, was unknown at Van Beuren.
This meant that even a simplistic, homely character like Gillette’s real winner, Molly Moo Cow, given to thirteen animators, would emerge as thirteen different cows. Rubber- legged and amorphous to begin with, Molly would go through a most disquieting process of metamorphosis when the work of these thirteen animators was cut together into what was supposedly a single five-minute cartoon. … With a staff of about 150, the organizational chaos at Van Beuren was a serious problem, but the worse fault was exemplified by the very idea of Molly Moo Cow herself. This was the best character they could come up with? I mean, what can you do with a cow? It isn't intelligent. It certainly isn't beautiful — except to a farmer or a bull. It is sedentary rather than lively, and, even with rubber legs, it doesn’t move in interesting ways or in a way that allows much range or variety of action. As animated characters, cows do not work.

One has to wonder how accurate Barbera’s memory was. Model sheets certainly were known at Van Beuren at that time and several have been reproduced in books. Furthermore, models of Molly and her co-stars were registered with the U.S. Government Copyright Office on October 19, 1935.

It may seem odd to compare Van Beuren of 1936 to the acclaimed UPA studio 20 years later but they had something in common—both seemed to feel art was the only thing that counted. Story? Who cares! And that’s the problem with Molly. Director Burt Gillett was probably delighted that Molly could twist and turn and frown at the command of Carlo Vinci’s pencil—and could point to the fact that the animation at the studio got better after he took charge. But the audience doesn’t care if Molly can do a 180 on screen better than Cubby Bear a few years earlier. They want to be engaged with the characters and that simply doesn’t happen. All they’re seeing is personality animation with no personality.

Molly’s final adventure was “Molly Moo Cow and Robinson Crusoe.” Gillett and Tom Palmer inject a song and Win Sharples provides a nice score but there’s no point to most of the cartoon and the main characters simply aren’t likeable.

And then there’s the problem of cannibals. You just can’t show them in cartoons any more.



Oh, and the cartoon ends with Molly in blackface imitating Al Jolson and Robinson calls her “Friday.” Jolson was acclaimed as the world’s greatest entertainer in his day. Molly was not.



The death of the Van Beuren studio didn’t really kill Molly. Her films were seen on television in the early ‘50s before being shoved aside by better old theatricals and then TV cartoons—including some made by a chap named Barbera. But when television didn’t want her, public domain video tapes and DVDs did. The copies of the prints aren’t that great, but the curious can still see Van Beuren’s female star in action.

He’s Krazy

It’s been a little while since we posted some Krazy Kat trade ads from The Film Daily, so let’s put up a few more. These appeared in the latter half of 1928.

Bravo to the studio for giving credit to Ben Harrison and Manny Gould on these. Gould toiled at Columbia for years, moved over to Warner Bros. and finally allowed his creativity to shine, with some great, outrageous animation under director Bob Clampett—who, I think, was still in high school when these ads were published.










The “Salt and Pepper of Any Program” is a parody of Educational Pictures’ slogan “The Spice of the Program.” Educational was releasing Aesop’s Fables cartoons at the time.

Nelson Hughes has passed on this note:

The fifth trade ad uses the image from THE STORK EXCHANGE ('27) which was also released by Paramount.

We’ll have more in a future post.

Up Jumps the Devil

Andy Panda isn’t really the type of animated character I’m into, but there’s sure some great work by the Walter Lantz staff in his cartoons of the later ‘40s.

“Apple Andy” (1945) features the old good/bad conscience routine. The good and bad sides of Andy (dressed as an angel and a devil, of course) try to dictate to young Mr. Panda what to do about some winesap apples he’s not supposed to pick. At one point, the devil Andy clobbers the angel Andy. The pious look of the angel, the crazed look of the devil, and the mallet (with a head that expands before impact) are lots of fun.



Dick Lundy’s the director and he has a weird cut as the devil ducks behind the real Andy. It works okay on screen.



Emery Hawkins handles the scene. Here’s another great pose from him.



Hawkins and La Verne Harding are the only credited animators. Walter Tetley plays Andy and the devil Andy is Will Wright, who also voiced the wolf in the Woody Woodpecker cartoon “Fair Weather Fiends.” It sounds like Sara Berner is the good Andy. And the cartoon features a song and another of Darrell Calker’s swinging scores.

Censoring the Aspiring Censors

The other day, we referred in our Jack Benny post to the unusual demise of one of the shows that appeared in Jack’s TV time-slot when Jack didn’t—the forgotten “This is Show Business.” Its crime was an incident I hadn’t heard about until researching the post. One of America’s great 20th Century playwrights, George S. Kaufman, was a panellist on the show. By December 21, 1952, he had had enough of hearing Christmas carols on commercials and blurted out on the programme “Let’s make this one program on which no one sings ‘Silent Night’.”

Kaufman expressed a pro-religious sentiment. He wanted a carol to be held in higher esteem than for commercial purposes. But that didn’t sink into the heads of pro-religious viewers who bleated that Kaufman was being anti-religious, and then engaged in pressure tactics that resulted in Kaufman being fired from the programme (Merry Christmas, George). He was reinstated several days later but if it was a victory, it was hollow as the show was leaving the air.

I wondered if one of the era’s most perceptive TV critics, John Crosby of the Herald-Tribune syndicate, had anything to say about it. Sure enough, he did. In fact, he was so annoyed at what happened he wrote two columns. Crosby’s words remain as important today as they did when they were published almost 60 years ago. There still are people and groups who want the media to reflect only their particular tastes and bias because they insist only their opinions are morally correct. They want others to behave as they do.

Both columns are from early 1953.

Silent Kaufman
By JOHN CROSBY
NEW YORK, Jan. 3 — 1 have never fully understood what constituted irreverence In this country. Practically anything, I guess. Just try uttering a deprecatory remark about Kate Smith and you’ll find yourself accused of being unpatriotic, anti-religious and probably subversive.
The latest man to run afoul of the letter writers was George S. Kaufman, one of the few genuine wits ever to find his way on to television. Mr. Kaufman, one of the original panel members of “This Is Show Business,” happened to remark a couple of weeks ago: “Let’s make this one program on which no one sings ‘Silent Night.’” Along with several million other people, Mr. Kaufman was fed up with “Silent Night” when used—as it is used—to sell toothpaste before Christmas.
Four or five hundred protesting letters poured in to the Columbia Broadcasting System, and Mr. Kaufman was fired from “This Is Show Business.” Why? Was it because of the religious implications of the remark? No, junior, it wasn’t. It was because the letter writers threatened not to buy any more of the sponsor’s products.
Which brings us back to the question: what constitutes Irreverence? Irreverence, according to this interpretation, is tied inextricably to the sales chart. If sales drop, it’s irreverent. If they rise, It’s sacred. It’s all right to commercialize one of the world’s best-loved hymns to sell products. It’s not all right to make wisecracks about it. That leads us with acute intellectual discomfort to consider whom we are supposed to pay reverance so—a commercial company?
The commercialization of Christmas has upset a great many genuinely religious people besides Mr. Kaufman. It’s ridiculous to call the remark—as so many of the letter writers did — anti-religious. “Silent Night” is dinned into our cars much too much on both radio and television. Out of deference to the Christmas carol it ought to be held down to some decent limits. In any case, Mr. Kaufman’s remark was a mild enough one and also one that I heard in several homes by people who were not at all anti-religious, who were merely sick and tired of “Silent Night.”
What’s the matter with people that they get so easily upset these days? Least upset of all is George Kaufman who calls the whole thing “a tempest in a teevee.”
“That’s the kind of business it is,” he remarked sourly. “It shouldn’t surprise anyone. It’s a fear-ridden industry, and that’s the way it’s ruled. When they get some letters, they’re afraid not to fire somebody and then they’re afraid to hire him back. I have no complaint. After all, I didn’t have to get into television. It’s bad news for the dramatic critics, though. It means I have to go back to show business.”
Kaufman, one of the country’s most distinguished playwrights with two Pulitzer Prizes to his credit, had been on the panel of “Show Business” since it started Nov. 2, 1949. He confessed that he’d been wanting to quit for some time because “I had said nothing in as many ways as know how to say nothing.”
He had lacked the courage because the program was such an easy way to make a living. “This has given me strength,” he added.
“This Is Show Business” is going off the air in a couple of weeks anyhow and whether it ever gets back again is problematical. Without Kaufman, whose acid wit and basic common sense were the bulwarks of an essentially phony idea, it won’t be much of a show.
So the affair Kaufman be comes largely a matter of principle. How innocuous does television have to be? And who runs it—the letter writers or the broadcasters? If the audience is going to have the last say let’s poll a few more than four or five hundred of the millions who listened to “This Is Show Business.” “Silent Night” is a perfectly splendid title for this particular issue. We’re all perforce becoming silenter silenter about everything.

The Customer Isn’t Always Right
By JOHN CROSBY
NEW YORK, Jan. 9—Completely apart from the principle, the affair George Kaufman ought to act as some sort of useful guide to sponsors’ conduct in future occurrences of this sort which are bound to take place. It ought to but it probably won’t.
The principle involved the original ousting of Mr. Kaufman, who has sensibly been reinstated by the Columbia Broadcasting System, is a very simple one. But it is, I think, dangerously wrong not only on moral grounds but also on practical ones. It is that a sponsor is trying to sell his product to all the people and cannot afford to offend any of them. Therefore any program or personality which offends any minority must go. Now that, from a businessman’s point of view, is very sound doctrine—if it works.
But in radio or television broadcasting it very conspicuously hasn’t worked. There’s hardly a radio on television program that doesn’t offend SOMEBODY. But the reactions vary. Some people just turn the darn thing off. The more militant ones write or phone. This is usually a fairly small group of malcontents but a highly aggressive and sometimes highly organized group. While it is as entitled to protest as anyone, this group is hardly qualified to act as arbiter of taste for all of us. Their private discontents are not necessarily the discontents of those quieter members of the community who don’t rush to the telephone or to the writing desk the moment their sensibilities are ruffled.
However, purely as a practical matter, there is another graver objection to this way of doing business. Every time one of those cause celebres has arisen, whether it be Jean Muir or Philip Loeb or George Kaufman, there has been an uproar in the press. Two or three hundred people get upset about something—and let’s not, for the moment, worry about what upsets them—and so the sponsor either cancels a program or fires an entertainer.
Then the uproar begins. The original handful of protesters is now joined by hundreds of thousands of others, most of whom will take sides one way or another. I didn’t hear Mr. Kaufman make his now celebrated remark about “Silent Night.” I read about it. So did thousands of others who would never have heard about it if Kaufman hadn’t been fired. A very tiny tempest suddenly blew up into a great big one. If the idea is to keep out of trouble with the customers, this is one hell of a way to do it.
Messes of this sort spring up, it seems to me, because of that old precept that the customer is always right. This philosophy works very well in a department store where each man’s problems are dealt with separately. It doesn’t work at all on radio or television where millions of people, with conflicting opinions and tastes, are in the front row. You can’t just fire the saleslady this case. If you do, you mollify one customer and outrage a hundred others.
In other words, the idea yielding to every small bleat of anguish from the listeners is not only morally indefensible but practically unworkable. No one was appeased by the Kaufman ousting and his subsequent re-hiring. Far from solving the problem, the timidity simply created one. I bring it all up at this late date because this sort of thing has cropped up time after time and, sure as God made little apples, it’ll happen again.
The most hardheaded way to settle the next batch of letters that comes in is to throw them in the wastebasket and settle the issue on its merits. Sooner or later popular opinion will force the sponsor to do this, anyhow.

Hare Do Smears

There are three spots with smear animation in the Friz Freleng cartoon “Hare Do.” I’ll post two. Here’s the first, after Bugs lures Elmer over a cliff.



And now Elmer weaches for his wifle, uh, reaches for his rifle.



The animation crew of Gerry Chiniquy, Virgil Ross, Manny Perez and Ken Champin worked on this one, with Pete Burness getting credit with his name hidden in the background.