Ho-Ho-Ho-Hollywood

This is the time of year they really put the tinsel in Tinseltown.

There’s been an accusation going around for years that nothing in Hollywood is real. Christmas-time is ample proof, though the reason is more meteorological than cinematographical. Thus the wintery weather in the movie capital is no Miracle on 34th Street. It’s as crafted as any big-budget blockbuster sequel.

United Press columnist Aline Mosby looked how some of the stars of 60 years ago got their neighbourhoods into the Christmas spirit—and appearance. This is from newspapers of December 24, 1952.

Even Hollywood Manages To Look Christmas-like
By ALINE MOSBY
(United Press Hollywood Correspondent)
HOLLYWOOD (UP)—The orange is on the tree and the blonde in the swimming pool, but this land of cactus and sunshine manages to look like the good old North come Christmas, anyway.
It snows about half an inch every 27 years around here. Yet the movie stars and other citizens load their streets and homes with plastic reindeer and snow just as though everybody knew what it was all about.
Comedian Danny Thomas each year puts up a $1000 nativity scene on his front lawn among the palm trees and rose bushes in Beverly Hills.
Fancy Santa.
The sun also beats down on a mammoth $5000 Santa who’s climbing down comic Bud Abbott's chimney in the San Fernando Valley. This Santa waves his arms and shouts “Merry Christmas” via a phonograph. Abbott’s thrifty neighbor across the street merely puts up a sign on his lawn saying, “See our display,” with an arrow pointing toward the Abbott abode.
Glamour girls like Peggy Lee hang sequin-sprinkled artificial snowballs on their Christmas trees. Other stars, including Ruth Hussey, sprinkle fake snow on the real trees out in front. Esther Williams strung lights on a sycamore tree that forms an arch over her front door. One studio art director deco-rated his Christmas tree with ermine tails.
The Boulevard.
The lamp posts on Hollywood Boulevard sag with three-ton, eight-foot metal Christmas trees. Each is ablaze with 150 colored lights. Overhead dangle 300 aluminum six-foot bells and four-foot stars. The total effect is $125,000 worth of colored spots before your eyes.
Every night Santa Claus, who the rest of the year wears yellow shirts and grows lemons, rides down the boulevard. Bleached snowflakes, known as snow out here, flies from the glittering sleigh.
When Hollywood’s Santa Claus lane parade was launched in 1927 Santa’s sleigh was pulled by a camel to match the climate. The beast got tired and sat down half way down the street.
Neighboring Beverly Hills hung red bells on the lamp posts. A huge Santa, sleigh and six of the world’s largest (this is California) reindeer ride overhead. Wilshire boulevard features metal trees that bleat Christmas carols.
Roy Rogers plays Santa in North Hollywood’s parade. Christmas day, though, many celebrities will head to even warmer Palm Springs, where decorations on the thorny Joshua trees light up the sand.
One nearby town has a huge neon “Merry Christmas” on the hillside.
Not even Hollywood thought of that.

Tomorrow: Christmas cards of the stars.

Santa is a Sucker

Leave it to Tex Avery to come up with a Christmas cartoon like no other. Tex combined radio references, the old tale of the Three Little Pigs (minus two) and a kid who can’t wait for his visit from St. Nick. “One Ham's Family” is about a little piggy jerk (inspired by Red Skelton’s Mean Widdle Kid) who sticks it to a wolf (inspired by the Great Gildersleeve).

Here’s the wolf-disguised-as-Santa’s take when he realises the pig isn’t in his bag like he thought. These are consecutive frames.



Appropriately for an Avery Christmas cartoon, it was released August 1, 1943.

Ray Abrams, Ed Love and Preston Blair are Avery’s animators. Kent Rogers plays the wolf and the pig (and he’s the narrator as well).

Tintair For Stanwyck

Last Yuletide season, we brought you a daily edition of Christmas With the Stars, thanks to old newspaper columns by Bob Thomas of the Associated Press. This season, we’ll check in with the other major wire service.

Aline Mosby of the United Press was more than a Hollywood gossip. After working the show biz beat, she covered a polar opposite—the Cold War as the wire service’s bureau chief in Moscow. One of her interview subjects there was one Lee Harvey Oswald. In the early ‘80s, she reported from what we called Peking back then.

But times were fluffier for her in 1952, when she published one of those celebrity Christmas lists that fills newspapers (and, today, web sites). She didn’t compile it herself. She had it done by Arthur Blake.

Some of Blake’s references are as dated as Blake himself. To be honest, I’d never heard of him. When I think of impressionists of the 1950s, I think of Will Jordan. But while Ed Sullivan was Will’s most famous impersonation, Mrs. Ed Sullivan might have been more Blake’s style. Sure, he could go on stage and make off like Peter Lorre and Jimmy Stewart, but he was known more for Bette Davis, Tallulah Bankhead, Mae West and Carmen Miranda.

Blake provides Ms. Mosby with not one but two Christine Jorgensen jokes. Franchot Tone divorced Barbara Payton in 1952 after learning she was still fooling around with another actor with whom he lost a very violent fight. At the time of this column, Ginger Rogers was about to marry Jacques Bergerac, who was 16 years younger. The “skinny” Sinatra jokes of the ‘40s were pretty much passé by this time. And Scott Brady may have been happy to have been noticed a couple of decades later; his star fell so far he ended up in the cult favourite Satan’s Sadists (with another big Technicolor name of the ‘50s, Russ Tamblyn).

Blake’s cattiness here seems pretty lame (certainly by today’s standards) but he annoyed some of his victims way-back-when. His nightclub act featured a deadly Louella Parsons routine which insulted her so much, she wouldn’t appear on Eddie Cantor’s radio show with him.

The Caustic Arthur Blake Turns Soft for Christmas
By ALINE MOSBY
United Press Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD (UP)—Mimic Arthur Blake, who tickles night club audiences with caustic imitations of movie stars, decided to soften the blow today with “Christmas presents” for them all.
These gifts, of course, never will reach Santa’s knapsack. But Blake hopes to slip each present into his night club act when the celebrities show up in person.
While examining a fingernail, Blake lists his gifts as follows:
“For Barbara Payton—A unlimited extension of her travel visa.
“Bette Davis—Ten thousand cartons of di-nicotined cigarettes.
“Gary Cooper—Pocket size digest of the art of conversation.
“Mickey Rooney—A safe and sane fourth (marriage).
“Marlon Brando—An un-torn T-shirt.
“Percy Kilbride—Scott Brady’s looks.
“Scott Brady—Percy Kilbride’s money.
“Ava Gardner— A diet for fattening up Frankie.
“Marilyn Monroe—A new lease on her 1953 calendar.
“Tallulah Bankhead— A box of soothing throat lozenges.
“Christine Jorgensen—A Christmas note beginning dear sir, or dear madam, as the case may be.
“Alan Ladd—Another expression.
“Tony Curtis and Rock Hudson—-Haircuts.
“Ritz Brothers—A trip to Denmark so they can come back the Andrews Sisters.
“Garbo — A comeback, gift wrapped.
“Barbara Stanwyck—Tintair, in the large economy size.
“Ginger Rogers—A boy friend her own age.
“Franchot Tone—Judo lessons.
“Bob Hope—Bing Crosby enterprises.
“Ingrid Bergman — An Italian cookbook.
“Marjorie Main— A date with Charles of the Ritz.
"Tyrone Power—A gold coffin for his play, ‘John Brown’s Body.’”
Blake has no fear what his celebrated customers will say at such “gifts.” “Oh, they never REALLY get mad,” he shrugged.

Tomorrow: How stars of the ‘50s decorate for Christmas.

Christmas Island!

The Woody Woodpecker cartoon “Bunco Busters” (1955) is known mainly for the line “If Woody had gone right to the police, this would never have happened.” But since we are in Christmas time of year, it’s fair to point out Santa Claus makes an appearance, too.

Buzz Buzzard pilots a tramp steamer and storyman Milt Schaffer gives us some corny sight gags. The boat passes some mine fields. Cut to miners going down a set of stairs into the mine-filled water. Buzz’s next port-of-call—Christmas Island.



Cut to, well, it’s not miners going down the stairs.



But Schaffer milks the gag too long. When Buzz shouts “Easter Island!” we know exactly what’s coming before we see it.



The animation’s by Herman Cohen, Bob Bentley and Gil Turner, with the backgrounds by Art Landy.

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.