Don't Look at This

How many reactions can you get from one routine? If you’re Joe Barbera coming up with a story in the glory days of Tom and Jerry, you can get a bunch of them.

Take “Mouse Cleaning” (1948) for instance. It’s another one of those shorts where the housekeeper threatens to toss Tom out of the house if something happens and Jerry ensures that something happens. In this case, it’s messing up the house. Jerry puts fountain pen ink in a bucket of water Tom’s using to clean the last mess. Tom then realises what’s happening.



Leonard Maltin used a drawing just before the last one in Of Mice and Magic to show Tex Avery’s influence on the Hanna-Barbera unit.

Unfortunately, there seems to have been a deliberate decision NOT to release this cartoon in the coming chronological Tom and Jerry DVD set for collectors. Presumably, it’s because the cartoon has a Stepin Fetchit routine at the end. As usual, Thad Komorowski ably and succinctly sums up the situation on his blog.

It’s a Bull Cycle

Here’s an animation cycle from “Strong to the Finich,” where youngsters from Olive Oyl’s Health Farm for Children are threatened by two bulls and Popeye uses (what else?) spinach to punch them punchy.

Each punch twirls a bull into a little circle in the air. The circle cycle animation’s on five drawings on ones. Observe the bull to the left.



And you can talk all you want about how Disney used weight and movement, but the Fleischers knew about it, too. You see how part of the bull’s mouth is held back by gravity vs. the force of the blow.

This 1934 cartoon shows you the rut the Popeyes got into by the ‘50s. You knew what was coming. Bluto conned Popeye, bashed him senseless, then came on to Olive. Her screams result in Popeye somehow eating spinach and kicking Bluto’s butt, then singing a plot-appropriate verse of his theme song. There’s no Bluto here, Popeye’s theme doesn’t play during the fight scene or even during the climactic spinach eating (“You’ve Got to Be a Football Hero” is featured on the soundtrack) and it’s not full of endless chatter. Instead we get a stool that toddles over to Olive so she can sit on it, a dead sapling that morphs into an apple tree (then the apples morph into pineapples and bananas), and a kind of indistinctive “Our Gang” group of kids, complete with a little black boy accepted as an equal by the others (but no girls).

Seymour Kneitel and Doc Crandall get the animation credits. Olive here is pre-Mae Questel.

Julius Tannen is the Key to Success

The Dean Martin Roasts on TV were a direct descendant of the Friars’ Club testimonial of top stars of show business going back over 100 years. The Dean Martin affairs were edited, soundtrack-sweetened (sometimes poorly) and corny; the only joy in watching them today is to see some old-time stars in the same place. The Friars Club affairs were private and featured the kind of humour you’d expect from men in private; you couldn’t put it on the air, though it’s probably tamer than some stuff on cable TV today.

So it was the Friars put the obscene gear to Jack Benny in 1963. Broadway columnist Earl Wilson was invited and reported on it. As much as he could, anyway. It’s interesting to read the Friars toned it down during their tributes to Lucy Ball and Sophie Tucker. I’m sure both could have taught the men a few four-letter words.

For years, Jack related how he started telling jokes on stage while in a revue during his time at the Great Lake Naval Training Center. But he tells a bit of different story here and bringing up the name of someone he emulated he never talked about anywhere else that I know of. Wilson’s column was published March 29, 1963.

It Happened Last Night
By EARL WILSON
NEW YORK – The Friars fried Jack Benny and had him for lunch a few noons ago—he was honor guest at a stag-party salute at the Astor where, by accident, six or eight printable lines slipped into the speeches.
“Jack doesn’t have an enemy in the world—he’s out-lived them all,” claimed Marty (Hello Dere) Allen.
“Sorry your contemporaries couldn't be here,” mused Joey Adams. “Harry Lauder, Douglas Fairbanks Sr.’s father . . .”
“There’s nobody in show business hotter than Jack, except Lenny Bruce,” explained Harvey Stone.
Roastmaster Johnny Carson casually mentioned Jane Morgan, Jack’s co-star at the Ziegfeld, and from then on the talk was masculine.
Top men in show business, millionaire manufacturers and merchants, leading editors and reporters—but no clergymen!—took time out to hear the humor that was not for feminine ears.
The Friars only soften their phraseology when they roast a lady—Sophie Tucker, Martha Raye and Lucille Ball make up the exclusive group saluted thus far.
George Burns, Harry Hershfield, Al Kelly and Harry Delf, veterans all, boasted of knowing Jack for ages. But youngsters Woody Woodbury and Charlie Manns bragged they didn’t know the old miser.
“Let’s all put $5 on the dias and retire him,” proposed Marty Allen.
Occasionally a speaker forgot to mention Jack and spoke only of himself. Red Buttons digressed to speak of his California community property divorce—“that’s when your wife gets half and her lawyer gets the rest.”
Arthur Godfrey groaned that he didn't have the right sort of improper jokes. Nor did Woody Woodbury.
“You’re going to have a meteoric disappearance from show business," Carson told Woodbury.
(“I went over,” Woodbury confessed later, “like an expectant mother in a bikini. I was as out of place as a male nude model in Playboy.”)
Jack doubled up with laughter the whole luncheon. Reminiscing, he said in his response that he really started as a violinist.
He began telling jokes by imitating great monologist Jules Tannen [sic] whom he deliberately copied. He remembered that the late Jack Lait, reviewing his first Broadway appearance, said:
“Evidently he has seen Julius Tannen, but not often enough . . .”

Tannen was still alive when the roast happened, but the obscure Charlie Manns (who died in 1971) likely wasn’t the only one who had never heard of him. Tannen’s career dated back to the turn of the century and he reached the pinnacle in the ‘20s—he emceed at The Palace in New York City. But Jack Benny did what Tannen didn’t. He adapted to change in the entertainment world. While stand-up star Tannen was reduced to playing bit parts in movies after vaudeville died, Benny parlayed his emcee job on stage into a hosting gig on radio’s The Canada Dry Program. The rest was history. He may have started off as a Tannen copycat, but he became something far greater on his own.

Hogan Isn't With Us Any More

You can count on a sign commenting on a pun in a Tex Avery cartoon, and “Batty Baseball” is no exception. But in addition to being a gag, the sign may very well have stated a fact.



There’s no writer credit on the cartoon, but the likely storyman was Rich Hogan, who wrote for Avery at Warners and then left to join him at MGM. If that’s the case, he wasn’t with the studio any more when it announced in October 1943 that “Screwball Baseball” (the original name) would be the first release “in a special slapstick series” (as Boxoffice magazine called it) for the coming season. Seems the military had something in mind for him.

Aside from his cartoon credits, there’s not much information around about Hogan. He’s the forgotten man in the story of Bugs Bunny; he received the story credit for the wabbit’s breakthrough cartoon, “A Wild Hare,” in 1940.

Richard Adams Hogan was born in Buffalo, New York on June 7, 1913, the oldest of seven children of John Martin and Florence L. (Adams) Hogan. His father was a customer service manager for Buffalo General Electric Co., active in the Knights of Columbus and Secretary of the Buffalo Golf Club. Hogan’s World War Two draft record states that he spent four years in art school and the New York Times of June 10, 1937 lists his name in a story about graduates of the Pratt Institute.

The Buffalo Courier-Express of April 17, 1940 has this brief biography:

SCRIPT BY BUFFALONIAN
Cross Country Detour, color cartoon, at Hippodrome
The Merrie Melody color cartoon, Cross Country Detour, which has been receiving special mention from press and public and is now at Shea's Hippodrome, is of special interest to Buffalo.
The script for the film was written by Rich Hogan, son of Mr. and Mrs. J. Martin Hogan of 181 Sterling Avenue. Rich has been with the Leon Schlesinger Studios in Hollywood as cartoonist and writer for four years. He has written many scripts for cartoons but Cross Country Detour is the first to receive nationwide acclaim.
In Buffalo, Rich attended St. Margaret's School and was graduated from St. Joseph's Collegiate Institute. He then went to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn to study cartoon drawing before joining the Schlesinger staff in Hollywood.

His first credit on a Warners cartoon is in Frank Tashlin’s “The Major Lied Till Dawn,” released in August 1938 and his last is on Chuck Jones’ “The Brave Little Bat,” released in September 1941. At the time, Hogan was renting a room at the large home of Disney artist David Swift’s parents along with Bob Givens (who drew the first Bugs Bunny model sheet), John Freeman (also at Disney) and Rogers Brackett, at the time a clerk at a movie studio and who was later known for his personal connection to James Dean.

Daily Variety reported on June 24, 1942 that Hogan had joined the MGM cartoon staff, buying out his contract with Leon Schlesinger for $1000 with a year left to go. The trade paper says Hogan’s first assignment was on Avery’s “Blitz Wolf.” But things don’t quite add up. Avery had arrived at MGM the previous September and Variety reported on January 16, 1942 he was assigned to work on that cartoon. “Blitz Wolf” wouldn’t have sat there for six months without a writer. Animation historian Keith Scott speculates Hogan did it on a freelance basis. “Blitz Wolf” was released August 22, 1942. Four days later, Hogan enlisted. His name appears on several other shorts but then there is a period when there are no writer credits until Heck Allen’s name on “Screwball Squirrel,” put into production next after “Batty Baseball.” Animator Berny Wolf told historian Mike Barrier that Allen replaced Hogan, so it’s possible “Batty Baseball” was Hogan’s last cartoon before his military service. The Animator, the Cartoonists Union newsletter, reported in its Sept. 7, 1942 iaaue that Hogan was now at Fort McArthur in San Pedro.

Hogan re-appears as a storyman after the war. Weekly Variety reported on June 12, 1946 he had returned to Metro after 42 months in the Army. In the meantime, he had gotten married in New Orleans the previous March. His first cartoon credit shows up on “Lucky Ducky” (released October 1948) though, once again, there are a couple of Avery cartoons released after Hogan returned with no story credit. His name appears later on such great cartoons as “Bad Luck Blackie,” “Little Rural Riding Hood” and “Magical Maestro.” Hogan’s animation career ended when Avery left MGM for health reasons in May 1950. Dick Lundy took over Avery’s unit but Hogan didn’t stay. He settled in Sherman Oaks and got into the real estate and development business with Coldwell Banker. Later, he and his wife Marge had a home in Studio City and the two were part of the San Fernando Valley’s social set through the 1960s. The pair had four children, including a set of twins. Tragedy clouded the twins’ seventh birthday party—Hogan spotted a six-year-old neighbour girl face down in the pool. She was pronounced dead in hospital.

Post-cartoon career newspaper stories refer to him as “Dick” Hogan. Warners animator Phil Monroe did the same in an interview with historian Mike Barrier. In the late ‘30s, there was a contract player at RKO named Dick Hogan. That may be why Hogan went with “Rich” in his on-screen credit.

Hogan seems to have disappeared in the ‘70s—he was divorced in 1977—and he died in Los Angeles on January 28, 1981 at age 67.

Punchy Backgrounds

The last Fox and Crow cartoon released by Columbia Pictures wasn’t made by Columbia Pictures. It was made by UPA. The story seems fairly well known. Columbia got rid of its own studio that made third-rate imitations of Warners cartoons and worked out a deal with Stephen Bosustow, whose studio was obligated to use the Fox and Crow characters in some of the shorts. By the time “Punchy De Leon” was released in January 1950, Columbia had already sent the first Mr. Magoo cartoon (“Ragtime Bear”) to theatres. Columbia loved Magoo. So the Fox and Crow were banished to Re-issue Land which, as the ‘50s wore on, became an increasingly busy place.

“Punchy” has some fun animation in places but, being a UPA cartoon, the designs are the main focus. Here are a few of the backgrounds.



This background is actually a gag. The Fox and Crow think they’ve found paradise in Florida. The camera pulls back to reveal it’s a billboard and then pans over an ugly swamp.



I haven’t been able to snip together the whole pan of the jungle to the opening where the golden fountain is. So here it is in two parts. The pan is right to left. Some liked plants shaped like hands and fingers.



This jungle background is used during a running scene, so the foliage is at an angle to heighten the impression of speed. The ends of the background don’t quite match up but because there’s a fast pan over it, you can’t tell. There’s another hand and what seems to be a shadow puppet of a rabbit.



The term “Background” isn’t used in this cartoon (this is UPA, not one of those other studios, you know). Bill Hurtz gets a design credit and Herb Klynn and Jules Engel receive colour credits.

Turntable Tom

Tom twirls on a turntable in 14 drawings in “Puss N' Toots” (1942).



Bill Hanna, Joe Barbera and Fred Quimby are the only names on the credits. No animators.

Krazy is Paramount

Time for more ads promoting Krazy Kat cartoons, made by the Charles Mintz studio for distribution by Paramount. These are from the latter half of 1928 from the pages of The Film Daily, based in New York City.

1928 was an election year, so one ad has Fleischer-esque drawings of the symbols of the Democrat and Republican parties.

Animators Manny Gould and Ben Harrison get credit on all of them.

Krazy was still a silent character at the time. Ironically, the last ad has Krazy singing a song made popular by Al Jolson who ushered in the sound era, making silent films obsolete within a few quick years.



We’ll have more in a future post.

A Mother of a TV Show

The poor DuMont network didn’t have a chance. Four TV channels were at least one too many.

That sounds strange in this endless channel universe of today. But things were quite different in late ‘40s. NBC and CBS had sewn up almost all the big stars for radio, ready to push them into television, and ABC got the leftovers. But there had been experimental television dating back to the late ‘20s and somewhat regular programming on several stations in New York during World War Two. One of the stations (W2XWV, later WABD) was owned by DuMont. From all this, TV networks evolved. When they started beefing up their programming as more and more sets went on the market around 1948, DuMont didn’t have any big names, nor could it afford any if they had been available. So it built its first big hit on schmaltz.

You can’t go wrong appealing to the blue-rinse set. Tom Breneman learned that on radio. Liberace learned that on TV. And so did DuMont. Its first big hit was a daytime show called “Okay Mother,” which began appearing on the network in 1949 after a year on WABD. By then it was the highest-rated afternoon show in New York—on radio or TV. It was the kind of show that only a mother would love. Critics hated it.

Here’s what noted Herald Tribune syndicate John Crosby had to say after an astonished viewing of it. His review appeared in newspapers starting May 25, 1950.

Mater Earns Affection On TV Show
By JOHN CROSBY
Day-time television has been strenuously avoided in this space as a matter of simple sportsmanship. You shouldn't shoot sitting ducks. However, this duck has been sitting in one position so long I’m beginning to suspect he’s already dead.
I have neither the space nor the inclination to go into all of day-time television. I submit only one specimen. Not a typical specimen, either. I’ve picked out the most terrible day-time program I’ve yet run across, the deadest duck on the air.
It’s called “Okay, Mother,” and it’s on the Dumont network Mondays through Fridays. The bright, particular star of this hideous firmament is Dennis James, a man of many faces, none of them especially edifying. “Okay, Mother,” as its title implies, is a salute to motherhood, and if anything will kill motherhood in this country, this is the one that will do it. Down in Washington, we have the Communists undermining the country, and here in New York we have Dennis James undermining motherhood. Nothing is safe any more.
HUNDREDS ROUNDED UP
James or his henchmen—who, I suspect, are trolls—round up two or three hundred mothers every day. I don’t know how they do this. I imagine it's something like an elephant hunt. The beaters fan out in the New Jersey veldt, setting fire to the bush and shouting their weird cries, and gradually they drive the poor, hunted mothers into the krall. Then each day, the mothers are shipped to New York for exhibition.
I must confess they don't seem to mind being exhibited. They take to it like a dead duck to television, to coin a phrase. Almost every single one tries to get her face into the camera and, by George, almost every single one succeeds. Most easily domesticated mothers I ever saw.
“Who’s the girl with brush and broom?” shouts James.
“Mother!” cry the captives dutifully.
“Who’s the girl who chases gloom?” says James.
JUST YELL ‘MOTHER!’
“Mother!” is the riposte to this one. (No, they don't have to push any teak logs around, junior. They just have to yell mother at appropriate intervals.)
“Lotsa fun, laughs and lotsa loving,” James declares heartily.
The novitiate is likely to get the impression his ears are playing him tricks from that last work.
But, no. Loving is what James said and loving is what he does. Anyway, it’s a reasonably accurate euphemism for what he does. What he does is to kiss the mamas, fondle them, hug them and, in general, muss ‘em up. They appear to like it.
James—I throw this in as limply as possible—is tall, dark, husky and handsome, and I expect he appeals not only to the girls on the set but to the ones at home.
Thousands of them probably swoon over their ironing boards causing—I devoutly hope—endless casualties. James may easily have set fire to more mothers than any man since Nero.
There isn’t much else to tell you about this program. James, from time to time, recites what he calls Mothergrams, a form of verse I shan’t inflect on you. Occasionally, he vaults two or three rows of mothers to land squarely on the lap of a mother in the upper tiers, busses her roundly and vaults back—easily the most specialized form of exercise I ever saw. For all I know he’s the only athlete in the world who can do this.
SAME DENNIS JAMES
Incidentally, this is the same Dennis James who kids the bejabbers out of wrestling on TV by simulating the sound of breaking bones, torn limbs and other tortures on a series of mechanical contraptions. He's pretty funny at it, too. Just why he should get mixed up in this mother thing, I don’t know. Maybe he needs the money. Maybe he never had a mother. Or maybe — this is my theory — the whole thing is a freak of transmission, a collision between a cumulus cloud and a low pressure area which produces picture that never took place at all.
If that last theory is true, I apologize to James and to mothers everywhere. I now propose to adjourn to my favorite saloon. There I shall sing “Mother’s Day Falls Once a Year But Every Day is Mother’s Day to Me" until closing time. Or until they throw me out.

As funny as Crosby’s column is, funnier still is how the show got on the air in the first place. Dave Weinstein’s The Forgotten Network: DuMont and the Birth of American Television relates how during DuMont wrestling telecasts, James would pause during the hold-by-hold and say “Okay, Mother?” as kind of a question to female viewers to see if they understood flying mares and step-over toe-holds and other terminology restricted to the squared circle. The fact the mothers couldn’t answer back was irrelevant—he was talking to them, he was paying attention to them. And that’s just what he did when DuMont bosses took his catchphrase and made a daytime TV show out of it.

James was DuMont’s first big star and like all of DuMont’s stars (Jackie Gleason being the most noteable), he bolted for a bigger network. People will probably know James today as a host of “The New Price is Right” because of YouTube. In the ‘60s, he seemed to be everyone’s back-up game show host, and I remember he hosted a show called “PDQ.” As for DuMont, it passed away quiet and unnoticed in 1956. But “Okay Mother” lives on the internet. This broadcast is from June 1950.

Real Gone Woody Backgrounds

A week ago, we featured some of the brushwork from the 1954 Walter Lantz cartoon “Real Gone Woody.” We didn’t mention the backgrounds by Ray Jacobs and Art Landy. Let’s post a couple. I love the building exteriors. Here’s Winnie Woodpecker’s super-modern house and the drive-in.



This is part of the exterior of the school; there’s a quick pan to the right to a window but I can’t get the colours of the frames to match, so I can’t snip them together.



Next, the bedrooms of typical high school boys Woody and Buzz. There isn’t a clear one of Buzz’s in the cartoon (Buzz’s phone is cordless, except in close-up).



The Hanna-Barbera cartoon studio was known for having TV characters go past the same building or tree or light socket over and over. The background loop was generally fairly seamless. But at the Lantz studio, they couldn’t do it right with higher budgets. Below are two consecutive frames. Notice how the background jumps.



Still, that’s minor. This is still one of Paul J. Smith’s finest cartoons, helped by a fine story and some good designs.