Sniffles Misses Santa

Jerry Beck described “Bedtime for Sniffles” (released November 1940) as “A charming Christmas cartoon, a rare Warners bow to yuletide sentiments, albeit an effective one.” Well, if there’s sentiment in a Warners cartoon, you know it’ll come from the Chuck Jones unit.

Jones and storyman Rich Hogan put a pleasant spin on the idea of a child trying to stay awake on Christmas Eve so (s)he can see Santa Claus. And despite Sniffles’ best effort, he falls asleep before St. Nick and his sleigh arrive.

The camera moves in on the left pan on this scene so I can’t show you the whole background. You get about 2/3rds of it here.



Bobe Cannon gets the sole animation credit and despite the fact Hogan came up with the story, writer Dave Monahan has a prominent place in the cartoon as Sniffles owns a Monahan brand pocket watch.

And a trivia note: Sniffles’ radio is playing KFWB, a Los Angeles radio station owned by Warner Bros. The radio gives the NBC chimes twice, even though the real KFWB was not an NBC affiliate. But the chimes were so recognisable, they became kind of a shorthand for anything to do radio.

Secret Show-Biz Santa

Self-indulgent misbehaviour by celebrities has been going on as long as there have been celebrities, but these days we’re unwillingly inundated hearing about it. Sex tapes. Drug and alcohol abuse. Violence. Then there’s the other side of the coin where celebrities help others—but they want you to know what great, selfless people they are by tweeting about everything they’ve done, or getting their flak to send out a news release, or their agent to get them on an entertainment show to aw-shucks about it.

Enough, already.

Not all show business stars have been wrapped up in themselves. Here’s a fine example, reported by Aline Mosby of the United Press in her Hollywood column. The logical question you’ll have after reading this is “Who was it?” If Mosby every revealed the identity, I haven’t seen it. And it really doesn’t matter.

The first column is from 1952, the first year she took over the beat from Virginia MacPherson. The second one is from the following year.

Many Helped By Santa of Film Capital
By ALINE MOSBY
UP Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 16. (UP)—Thanks to Hollywood’s real life Santa Claus, a shivering invalid in Maine will get an electric blanket for Christmas this year. . . a California widow receives a wheelchair. . . and a North Carolina woman can pay her doctor bills.
Hollywood’s Santa is a celebrity of show business who anonymously hands out checks signed only “Santa Claus” to needy persons he hears about.
For five years he’s given away $30,000 a year, and every Yuletide I visit to find out whose chimneys he’ll climb down. He wears custom-made suits instead of that red outfit. He is beardless, his “North Pole” is a swanky office, and Santa’s helper is a gorgeous brunette who wears sweaters.
“I don’t want anyone to know who I am or I’d be criticized for seeking publicity,” explained Santa, a handsome, dark-haired man. “I get personal satisfaction from this, so it’s really a selfish motive.”
The town clerk in Owlshead, Me., wrote to “Santa Claus, c/o Security National Bank, Hollywood, 28, Calif.,” about a sick woman in a nearby town who needed the blanket to keep warm this winter. Santa sent a check with a comforting note and his usual set of golden rules.
A Bryson City, N. C., widow got $100 to pay milk and clothing bills for her two children. A Glendale, Calif., widow found money for a wheelchair in her mailbox. Santa also sent a Christmas check to a Van Nuys. Calif., man who walks three miles to work every day to support his two children and has only one suit. A Twin Falls, Ida., couple received $100 to help pay doctor bills.
Last year Santa helped a Detroit man get a new set of false teeth, and now all HIS friends are writing in. Santa has received 4,500 letters since 1948, and has helped 1,500 persons. He turned down the rest because “they were phonies, or weren’t needy, or wanted large loans.” His fame has spread even to Europe.
He refused help Tuesday to a jobless man behind the Iron Curtain, since “I was afraid the money wouldn’t get through.”
One grateful receiver sent Santa a painting, and others remember him with Christmas cards, socks and ties.
“But some never write to thank me,” mused Santa.

 Celebrity Is ‘Santa’ to Needy People
By ALINE MOSBY
HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 22. (UP) — A television-radio celebrity said he “won’t feel so selfish” when he opens his Christmas presents. He’s given away $23,000 this season to needy people who don’t even know he sent it.
The checks, to pay for everything from alimony to a TV set, were signed merely, “Santa Claus.”
Hollywood’s anonymous Santa is a famous radio-TV man who for four years has been secretly giving money away to deserving persons. Each year I visit Santa’s “workshop”—his swanky office—to find out whose chimney he climbed down this year.
$100 for Test
A Bellaire, Ohio, father of five children who flunked the state barber’s test got $100 to try again. A Pasadena, Calif., boy received $50 for a new bicycle so he could sell papers and support his ailing parents. A Troutvale, Va., invalid received the price of a TV set, and a $100 check paid a Hollywood bit actor’s alimony bill and kept him out of jail.
“We had many more cases this year,” observed Santa, a handsome, dark-haired man as he leafed through stacks of mail on his desk.
“Only about one in a 100 turned out phoney when we investigated. We shy away from second requests, too. Santa wants everyone to know this is no gravy train! I just help people get on their feet.”
Many Letters
Santa gets thousands of letters addressed to Santa Claus at the Security First National Bank, Hollywood, which handles his checks. He also hears about cases from “Santa’s helpers,” friends who pass along tips. Producer Walter Wanger, recently in jail, gave Santa names of many ex-inmates who had no funds to eat on while they looked for jobs.
“We gave them $25 apiece—no more,” said Santa firmly.
Bigger Gifts
Others got heftier sums. A bed-ridden Hammondsville, Ohio, woman with a crippled daughter received $100 for doctor bills. A worried Wichita, Kan., father with Santa’s $100 check can look for a job in Arizona so he can move his sick son to the warmer climate. A New Haven, Conn., labourer was sent money for new teeth. Santa’s $100 helped repair a home demolished by a tornado in Worcester, Mass. He also helped a New Kensington, Pa., mother, who is going blind.
“This really is selfish because I get such a kick from it,” reflected Santa as he puffed on his pipe. “Besides I got about 700 Christmas cards and nice presents, such as some long-hair books. They think Santa is intellectual, I guess.
“Actually,” he grinned, “I read murder mysteries.”

We can only hope human behaviour is consistent. If there were stars who helped the needy for altruistic reasons then, there must be some today whom we also don’t hear about. It means amidst the war, the greed, the pettiness, there are some who are trying to see that the world isn’t such a bad place after all. A Merry Christmas to them.

Tomorrow: Santa is Uncle Bernie.

The Comics Celebrate Christmas, 1912

Let’s turn the clock back 100 years and see what the Sunday comics section offered around Christmas-time. The familiar characters of the day offered Yuletide-themed outings on December 21, 1912, the closest Sunday before Christmas.

The drawing style is a lot different back then. Panels could be pretty densely packed with things, certainly far more than today. Layouts vary in every panel; you won’t characters rigidly drawn in the same position through the whole cartoon. And I won’t guarantee you’ll laugh at any of these.



If George McManus is known today, it’s for the long-running strip Bringing Up Father. But before that, he created another strip called The Newlyweds. It seems to have morphed, at least in some papers, into Their Only Child, and that’s what we have here. Here, the child delibertely breaks all kinds of stuff and the wimpy father and clueless mother enable him. Interestingly, the San Francisco Call has a The Newlyweds cartoon on the same date with the same characters but a different story, though the kid destroys presents in both.



Like McManus, Jimmy Swinnerton drew several comics over his lifetime. One is Mr. Batch, which you see above. A little man with odd proportions. Frederick Opper’s best-known work is Happy Hooligan, but here’s his Howson Lott strip. The pigs appear to be high on something.



Well, here’s Happy Hooligan and Swinnerton’s Little Jimmy. Hooligan’s kind of freaky looking. And I suspect Mexicans are on a horse coming out of a garage because of Swinnerton’s residency in Arizona, where Mexican revolutionaries were an occasional sight at the time this cartoon was drawn. Arizona became a state less than a year earlier.



And what would a Sunday comic page of 100 years ago be with the Katzenjammer Kids? Other than a census report, the strip reflects how different things were then. The U.S. were still very much a land of immigrants. English was not the first language of a fair percentage of adults. Accents and dialects were commonplace in society and thus was reflected in popular entertainment. People made fun of one another and no one seems to have taken umbrage because it wasn’t done seriously.



There were a number of dialect strips (of course, there were later two versions of the Katzenjammers). Here’s a daily called Oscar and Adolf by A.D. (Armundo Dreisbach) Condo and Fred Schaefer. The strips are from December 24 and 25, 1912.

The comic section was in for a change. The war came and went, Depression set in, and soon there were action-adventure strips, soap opera strips, and many new characters created by younger artists—Dick Tracy, Blondie, Lil Abner—drawn in styles never thought of some 100 years ago.

Jack Benny’s Christmas in Vaudeville

Ed Sullivan had what must have been one of the cushiest book deals with McGraw-Hill. He came out with a book he didn’t even write. Christmas With Ed Sullivan featured little holiday remembrances by Ed’s buddies. The book was published in 1959—just around the time that plugola on TV shows was being ix-nayed. So Ed couldn’t push the book on his show. However, it did get a nice three-page spread in Family Weekly, one of those magazine inserts in weekend newspapers.

Among Ed’s friends who wrote a short recollection was Jack Benny (J. Edgar Hoover was another). It’s legend that Ed gave Jack his first shot on the radio. That’s not true, but it apparently did lead to Canada Dry picking up Jack to emcee its musical comedy show with George Olsen’s orchestra. The story was published in Family Weekly, December 20, 1959.

Dear Ed,
When I think of Christmas, I remember Father O’Connell, a priest in Sioux City, Iowa. At his death a few years ago, one of my most treasured friendships suddenly vanished, but a Christmas will never come without my memory racing back over the years to Sioux City and the night we first met.
Christmas in a town where I didn’t have one friend wasn’t exactly my idea of a holiday. It was in the early 1920s, and I had been playing a vaudeville engagement there. To make things worse, the snow began to fall. It was a white Christmas all right, but I didn't share in any of the joy I saw around me.
On Christmas Eve, the rest of the troupe had started to leave the theater, but I sat in the dressing room, feeling a long, long way from my home and friends in Waukegan.
Of course, I had been on vaudeville tours at Christmas time before, but there were always a couple of friends on the bill, and we managed to talk ourselves into a good time and a celebration over Christmas dinner in some restaurant, even though we were far away from Mama’s apple strudel.
But that year, besides not knowing a soul in town, I didn't know anyone playing the engagement with me. As the theater grew silent, I dreaded the prospect of dinner all by myself the next day. I was growing more alone by the minute when suddenly there was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” I called, and looked up to see a priest standing in the doorway.
He was a smiling, ruddy-faced man who introduced himself as Father O’Connell. “Jack,” he began, adding uncertainly, “I hope you don't mind my calling you Jack.” Then at once he explained, “It’s just that I’ve seen you every time you’ve come to Sioux City, and I think your act is great.”
Mind him calling me Jack! We were friends before I had time to answer.
Hesitantly he suggested that in case I hadn’t already planned Christmas with someone, he would be very glad if I would have dinner with him.
I jumped at the chance.
Instead of a lonely little restaurant the next afternoon, I found myself at the rectory having a wonderful dinner with Father O'Connell and five other priests. I didn’t feel at all strange, though I am Jewish and it was the first time I had been inside a rectory. To this day, I can’t remember another Christmas so filled with laughter and real joy. Once dinner was over, the priests went to open presents under their tree, where I was dumbfounded and touched to find a small gift from every one of them for me.
Good will toward all men indeed!
In the years that followed, Father O’Connell and I became close friends. Whenever I played Sioux City, he was at the depot to meet my train and spend any time he could spare with me. I looked forward to bookings in the once-lonely town where I hadn't known a single person on Christmas Eve. With Father O’Connell’s sudden death, I lost a generous and dear friend, and I have often realized since then that Christmas away from home is not so very different for me than Christmas away from the warmth and unassuming kindness I had found in that distant rectory in Sioux City.
—Jack Benny

Tomorrow: Hollywood’s Secret Santa.

Christmas Wishes to a Red-Baiter

At the very least, Christmas-time is about peace on Earth and good will to others. And it’s a time that’s sorely needed, considering how people sometimes treat each other over the course of the rest of the year.

So it is that entertainers—perhaps holding their noses—sent holiday wishes to International News Service columnist Jack O’Brian. O’Brian, to many people, was not a nice man. In the ‘50s, he was, frankly, an unapologetic, red-baiting bully. Robert Metz’s book CBS: Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye speculated how insulting and goading columns by O’Brian helped push CBS newsman Don Hollenbeck to suicide for supporting Edward R. Murrow’s anti-McCarthy telecasts, then showed anything but remorse for what happened. O’Brian later displayed his homophobic side in an early ‘60s column about a radio broadcast about gays. But O’Brian has also been credited with help busting open the Quiz Show scandal of the late ‘50s, though cynics might suggest a print reporter would gleefully revel in television’s downfall.

Differences, however, are set aside at Yuletide, and O’Brian waxed pleasantly in his column about the Christmas cards he received from many people in show biz. This is from 1957.

Yule Cards of Stars Bright Modest, Gay
By JACK O'BRIAN
NEW YORK, Dec. 24 (INS)—Merry Christmas, dear readers, and all holiday good wishes . . . Despite our position as an official heckler and skeptic and critic of the TV universe, the citizens thereof bothered in the spirit of the holy season to wish us the same.
Their cards are many, varied, expensive, modest, gaudy, glorious, but we must state none was in bad taste, none was anything but nice to receive.
Bob Hope’s indicated he’s ready to fly out into space to entertain (“have space ship, will travel”), with Bob and family-caricatured in out-of-the-world haberdashery . . . Mildred and Bert Lahr’s card was simple; tasteful red and gold on white background sprinkled with holly.
Alice and George Gobel kept it pure and simple, too: A pair of does-in the snow, looking toward a church whose windows glowed in gold against a midnight blue, all bathed in the light of the Christmas star.
Perry and Roselle Como’s card had its customary religious motif (mother and child) illuminated in lovely colors, bearing the rich, red cross of the least publicized portion of Perry’s private life, of which he’s proudest: The Hallmark of his Knighthood in the Roman Catholic Church’s “Order of the Holy Sepulchre.”
Patti Page wished yule good cheer via a cardboard pseudo-re-cording . . . Mike Wallace’s beautifully engraved, deep-dark blue card carried wishes for “peace on earth” in gold against white as its cover motif . . . NBC exec Veep Bob Kintner’s card had oriental children on its cover inscribing the season’s greetings in a variety of exotic languages.
Polly Bergen’s—a pure white card with three golden Christmas trees . . . Mary and Jack Benny sent a “Merry Christmas” embossed in gold on deep red velour . . . Peter and Mary Healy Lind Hayes’ card was in cardinal red, the holy family painted in color and inside, a most properly, and reverently inscribed: “With Best Wishes for a Holy Christmas.”
Sophie Tucker came caricatured in yellow slacks singing a Merry Christmas “All of These Days.” . . . Occasional TV actress and more frequent strip teaser Sherry (Mrs. Buddy Boyland) Briton’s pale blue card was the simplest, most restrained and polite greeting of our bunch.
RCA’s Frank Folsom featured a riot of gay good, taste and cheer with ornaments, holly, bells and all the merriest . . . Jo Stafford and husband Paul Weston: a red candle in a lamp, hung in gold against green . . . One hundred thousand dollar quiz winner Anette Chen’s was a Chinese Christmas scene in many oriental colors. The Fontaine sisters, religious girls, had the altar decorated for Christmas mass in lovely, natural colours . . . Rosemary Clooney’s white card was hand-writ in dark green.

Tomorrow: a vaudevillean Christmas.

Christmas Cartoon Trade Ads

The Film Daily is giving cartoon fans an early Christmas gift. Real early. Like late ‘20s, early ‘30s early.

Here are some beautifully-drawn ads from the trade paper going back more than 80 years. You can click on any of them to enlarge them.

Before we get to them, let’s pass on a couple of promo cartoons for The Film Daily Christmas Fund from 1929. The first one stars Krazy Kat, produced by the Mintz studio in New York. There’s no signature on the drawing. The second one is really cool, as Bill Nolan has drawn a caricature of himself along with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, whose career in 1929 had taken him to the Walter Lantz studio after employment stops with Walt Disney and Mintz. Nolan, by the way, had drawn the Krazy cartoons in the mid-20s.



Now, the great ads. The first is for a Harman-Ising cartoon from 1935 and next to it is a Disney ad from 1932.
Below it is a Columbia ad for a three-strip Technicolor cartoon, except the ad itself is mainly in two colours, red and green. It’s from 1935. Next to it is a 1932 ad that might as well be for a cartoon called “Marketing Mickey.” It’s not only pushing the mouse, but bragging about the stuff he sells.
Who doesn’t love a Van Beuren cartoon? “Silvery Moon”, on the bottom left, was released in 1933. And to the right is an ad for a Terry-Toon from 1932. If only Terry’s cartoons looked as good as the ad.



Want to see the Van Beuren short? It was released to television in the early ‘50s as “Candy Town” by Official Films, which sheared off the opening titles (and changed the name for some unknown reason). Van Beuren was certainly consistent. The two cats skip around like the studio’s Tom and Jerry.

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.