How to Deal with Aging and James Garner

A follow-up to a couple of Jack Benny posts.

A couple of months ago, I wondered whether Jack Benny went back to 39 after celebrating his 40th birthday during a TV special in 1958. Erskine Johnson of the National Enterprise Association provided the answer a year later. Here’s his column:

HOLLYWOOD, Jan. 9 (NEA) — Life may begin at 40 but the laughs didn’t for Jack Benny who will return to that magic “old” age of 39 when he celebrates his next birthday on TV in February.
“Turning 40 was a mistake,” Jack confided when he tipped me off about going back to the age he celebrated for 23 years. “There’s nothing funny about being 40, really. But there is about 39—the hanging on to a certain decade. Our kidding and jokes about being 40 didn’t pay off.”
So Jack will be 39 again in ‘59, but there will be no other format changes on his TV show, which continues to roost in, or just outside of the nation’s Big Ten.
As Jack always puts it:
“What can I change on my show? I never do two shows alike.”
It’s the unexpected, combined with the old Benny character now known to two generations, that has kept Jack & Company at the same old stand while other comedy shows have posted closing notices. But there’s something else, too. Jack likes to point out.
“Working constantly and avoiding nostalgia,” are his words for it.
“I think,” he says, “about today and tomorrow and never about the past.”
Oh, yes, it happens for comedians like Jack, too. Just like it happens to all of us husbands.
Jack went home the other day and told Mary he had just heard a wonderful new joke, which he then told her.
Mary just smiled, benignly.
“Oh, Jack,” she said. “I heard that one three months ago.”

And a month ago, I expressed a bit of scepticism in Jack’s statement to Associated Press columnist Bob Thomas in 1962 that he “can’t worry about the ratings.” Jack most decidedly did worry about the ratings and, once more, he tried to get Bill Paley or someone at CBS to do something about it—and succeeded. Let’s look at some snippets from Johnson’s other columns in 1959.

Buck Benny Wants to Move; No Match for ‘Maverick’
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
HOLLYWOOD, March 15 (NEA) – That “cowardly western” called “Maverick” which gunned down Steve Allen and Ed Sullivan on the rating charts now has the old pro, Jack Benny, pressing the SOS button.
James Garner, Jack Kelly and Co. are competition Buck Benny no longer wants to buck. CBS already has Jack’s ultimatum—a new TV time for next season or else he will pass up his regular show for occasional “specials.”
In another time spot, Jack should have no trouble. But he’s whistling in the dark when he says his long-time 7:30 p.m. Sunday night time is controlled now by young ‘uns at the TV dial. Junior, pop and grandma, too, are watching “Maverick,” Jack.

From April 8th:
Those cold, cold figures for Jack Benny on why he’s bowing out as Sunday night competition for “Maverick.” The March 22 rating on the shows:
“Maverick” 35.2
Jack Benny 11.2
On the same night “Maverick” also gunned down the opposing Steve Allen (14.5) and Ed Sullivan (14) shows.

From June 10th:
Channel chatter: Jack Benny got his wish for a later Sunday night time spot in the fall. He will alternate with George Gobel next season at 10 p.m. according to latest plans.

And a follow-up from July 28th:
Jack Benny will star in three hour-long TV specials for the new season. He’ll still have his half-hour spot on alternate Sundays. George Gobel and not “Bachelor Father” will be the alternate this year. Jack’s first guest star will be Harry Truman, at the piano, you can bet, with Jack fiddling.

Jack’s competition in the 1959-60 season was “The Alaskans” (ABC) and “The Loretta Young Show” (NBC). “Maverick” continued to do pretty well, but not as well as “Dennis the Menace,” which CBS counter-programmed against it. Jack was pushed back a half hour the following season—and ended up back in the top ten before being creamed by “Bonanza” in 1961.

Woody in the Poorhouse

Walter Lantz was the last cartoon short producer still in business when his studio finally shut down in 1972. He stayed in business because cartoons were his business. At Warners, MGM and Paramount, cartoons were an after-thought and as soon as cutbacks were needed, their cartoon studios were cut.

It always seemed that the Lantz studio was coping with a low cash flow. He closed his studio temporarily in the late ‘30s and late ‘40s because of it. Lantz sounded off in Boxoffice magazine about the lack of cash. This was published November 3, 1956.

Walter Lantz Talks of Popularity Of Cartoons and the Rising Costs
NEW YORK—"Despite the fact that shorts are very important to a film program—comparable to the comic sheet in a daily newspaper — exhibitors refuse to pay any money for them," Walter Lantz, head of Walter Lantz Productions, which releases a program of cartoons through Universal, declared here this week.
The present film rental for a cartoon, averaging about $3.50 per booking, should be increased "to a $10 per booking minimum," because of the steadily rising costs for cartoons, which now average $35,000 per six-minute cartoon—"as much per foot as a feature film costs," Lantz said. "However, I'll be satisfied if we could just get a 50 cent increase per booking," he admitted.
12,000 TO 13,000 BOOKINGS
Exhibitors appreciate the entertainment value of cartoons and they give them more playing time than any other type of short, he commented. Lantz' cartoons now get from 12,000 to 13,000 bookings and can gross approximately $60,000 each domestically. But, with a $10,000 print cost added to the $35,000 production cost, it takes Lantz four years to get back a profit. The current number of bookings is a drop from the 16,000 bookings per cartoon in the peak years of 1946-47.
Lantz, who will celebrate his 40th year in the business in June 1957, has been with Universal for 27 years (at that time he developed the "Oswald the Rabbit" black-and-white cartoon) still makes 13 new cartoons in color for Universal each year, in addition to six he reissues through the company each year. Of the 13 new cartoons, six are Woody Woodpecker subjects, three are Chilly Willy and the other four are for experimenting with new cartoon characters. Although cartoon rentals are still a major complaint with Lantz, he has nothing but praise for the U-I sales force, which gets many repeat bookings for his cartoons, he said.
Lantz started more than two years ago making his cartoons six minutes long, instead of 7-8 minutes as formerly, and he now finds that all the other cartoon makers have followed suit. He said that the use of Cinema-Scope in cartoons was found to be "not practicable" as they cost much more and "exhibitors wouldn't give a nickel more for Cinemascope cartoons."
DEPLORES RISING COSTS
"If costs continue to rise, we won't be able to make cartoons for theatres any longer," Lantz predicted, in mentioning that no new cartoon producers can start out these days because of the term of years it takes to get back the original production costs and to start making a profit. There is also no way to train new cartoon artists, who have to be animators and artists at the same time. Lantz mentioned that the only cartoon makers still in the business are Paul Terry, who makes Terrytoons; Warner Bros., which makes several cartoon subjects; Famous Studios, which makes Paramount's cartoon series; MGM, with its Tom and Jerry cartoons; UPA, which makes "Mr. Magoo," and Disney, who no longer makes any new cartoon shorts.
Disney’s cartoons used to cost him $60,000 each, Lantz commented. Lantz has $250,000 tied up in new cartoons at all times but his cartoon reissues are all clear revenue, except for new prints, and his comic book business is another profit. He has no plans to make cartoon commercials for TV but he has predicted that some cartoon producers may be driven out of the business and into TV.
Budd Rogers, Lantz’ producer representative, accompanied him to New York, where the cartoon producer talked to U-I executives about the new shorts season.

While Lantz was the one concerned about the lack of money, it was the much more well-financed M-G-M that decided about the time of this story to stop making cartoons altogether because that would save a whole pile of cash.

Frying Pan Tom

Joe Barbera tosses in a second cat into the Tom and Jerry battle in “Sufferin' Cats” (1942). The plot’s simple. The cats battle each other while trying to chase the mouse. It has all the stuff that make the Tom and Jerry series lots of fun for a number of years—subtle pantomime by Jerry, thrashings of long limbs by the felines (all that movement is so exaggerated it doesn’t slow down the picture, even though the cats really aren’t getting too far), and poundings of Tom. Or, in this case, an anonymous cat.

Tom has a frying pan.



Down it comes.



Then the background changes to a solid colour to emphasize the impact.



Fans of Tom and Jerry are so used to the same animators, it seems odd finding these names on an early title card.



George Gordon moved on to John Sutherland, Wilson (Pete, not Peter) Burness to Warners and then UPA, Jack Zander headed back East to commercial house Transfilm and eventually opened his own studio.

Cubby is Played by Bosko

When is a Van Beuren cartoon not a Van Beuren cartoon? Simple. When it’s a Harman-Ising cartoon.

In 1933, Leon Schlesinger parted company with Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising who had been making Looney Tunes, starring Bosko, and Merrie Melodies starring Foxy (for a time) and other singing, dancing creatures. Van Beuren had an animation studio in New York City which had been making Cubby Bear cartoons. For whatever reason, Hugh and Rudy on the other side of the U.S. were given a contract to animate some Cubbies that Van Beuren could release. Suddenly, Cubby looked and acted just like Bosko and Foxy. Same character designs and construction. Same facial expressions. Even the same falsetto voice as Bosko (and other characters, like the mouse in the Merrie Melodie “One More Time”). Same animation, too. In “World Flight,” Cubby develops the same slide-step that Bosko used over and over.



Oh, and same celebrity caricatures, too. The Marx Brothers make an appearance in “World Flight.” They appear in “Bosko’s Picture Show” as well.



Even that wacky comedy character Adolf Hitler appears in both. In the Cubby cartoon he’s hanging out with Paul von Hindenberg who, in real life, needed the Fuhrer like he needed a zeppelin explosion.



The Harman-Ising link with Cubby was short. Hugh and Rudy signed with M-G-M (no doubt for far better terms than Van Beuren) where Bosko got out of his Cubby suit and soon wore one that made him look less like an early ‘30s cartoon. Cubby was left in the capable hands of Steve Muffatti in New York.

A Helpful Hollywood Dictionary

The phoniness of the movie business gave Fred Allen plenty of material for his sardonic sense of humour. Many quotes survive on the internet. Some seem to have been gathered together in one place for the first time in an Associated Press column of 1940. Allen was never one to waste a good line or routine and while I don’t know how many of them found their way into his radio scripts, he repeated a few of these in a Liberty magazine article two years later.

If you’re wondering about the restaurants he’s referring to, the former is the Brown Derby and the latter is Ciro’s.

Fred Allen Has His Own Words For ‘Em
By TED GILL
HOLLYWOOD, Aug. 27—(AP)—Comedian Fred Allen wriggled irritably in a camp chair on a motion picture sound set and bemoaned the plight of the goggle-eyed tourist who comes to gawk at movie stars—and goes away disappointed.
Comedian Allen practically is a tourist himself. His current visit here, to make the aptly-titled film, “Love Thy Neighbor,” is his third in five years. In it he co-stars with Jack Benny, his favorite enemy.
“Thousands of Hollywood visitors,” proclaimed Allen, “each year quit the cinema capital disappointed. And I’ll tell you why; to the average movie magazine addict, Hollywood, from afar, must be a tinseled utopia—a ‘must’ metropolis.
Tourists who have succumbed to the columnists’ syndicated enthusiasm arrive in Hollywood expecting to find Dorothy Lamour slinking around the bus station in a sarong and the Aldrich family parked in a battered station-wagon waiting to welcome them.
“None of this happens. The tourist wanders around focusing a poached stare on the local scene and exuding the aroma of nostalgia that can be picked up by a pug nose at 20 paces.
“The tourists’ plight has bothered me—when Benny isn’t—and I have compiled a compendium of terms peculiar to this bizarre borough.”
He reached into his pocket and drew forth his own unique dictionary or glossary on terms heard about movieland. Here ‘tis:
Hollywood — Bagdad in Technicolor; Shangri-la in neon.
Hollywood Boulevard — Main street in slacks.
Hollywood Bowl — Carnegie Hall on the half-shell.
A certain popular eatery — A café where people from Iowa mistake each other for movie stars.
Another equally popular restaurant — The other place, with a white tie, where movie stars mistake each other for movie stars.
Movie star’s home — the ultimate in stucco. An edifice erected on a beautiful lawn to keep strangers from getting direct view of the star’s swimming pool from the street.
Native — A New York actor whose option wasn’t taken up in ‘26.
Picture studio — A covey of buildings surrounded by receivers.
Producer — A dynamic ulcer in charge of making pictures.
Associate producer-—The man who gets fired when the producer makes a bad picture.
Director—The man who sits in a sprung canvas chair under the camera and at two-hour intervals says “This is a take!”
Assistant — Shouts “Quiet!” before a director says “Take!”
Movie star — Any actor who is working.
Freelance — An actor, always “between pictures.”
Child star — A precocious moppet paying dues to Screen Actors’ Guild.
Cowboy star — A man who can’t act and has to sit on a horse to prove it.
Commissary — Place where people playing millionaires in pictures gulp hambergers.
Extra — A silent star who can be lured from behind the eight ball at so much per day.
Publicity man — A neurotic chap who will speak well of anything for a fee.
Love scene — Big moment in pictures when male star, who is wearing toupee, false teeth and a rented tuxedo, embraces glamour girl in wig, artificial eyelashes, false fingernails and bustle, and says “Darling, we must come to ourselves.”

The Dancing Warden

“Cellbound” was Tex Avery’s last cartoon for M-G-M, released (November 1955) more than two years after his unit was disbanded (March 1953). It contains one of those juxtapositions that Avery liked using—the monotone, stiff prison warden suddenly breaks into a wild dance at the sound of Dixieland music being played on TV. Here are some of the poses.



Meanwhile, the music is being played by an escaped inmate trying to avoid detection inside the TV set by acting out all the shows the warden is watching. So he’s a one-man band.



Ed Benedict laid out the cartoon and designed the characters, while co-director Mike Lah handled the animation along with H-B unit members Ken Muse, Irv Spence and Ed Barge. M-G-M didn’t get a second unit again until an expansion in summer 1955. Less than two years later, the cartoon studio closed. Avery was making commercials for Cascade by then.

If Gene Deitch Worked at Warner Bros.

Gene Deitch’s Tom and Jerry cartoons are, if nothing else, distinctive. Oddly-proportioned characters, overly-reverbed sound effects, jerky animation, it’s all there. His Popeye cartoons made for television were the same (and seem to have used the same three tunes in the background over and over). No one would mistake them for the work of Hanna and Barbera or the Fleischer studio.

Deitch’s crew never got a chance to animate the famous Warner Bros. characters. But if they did, their cartoon would probably look like this TV commercial from Italy. The animation takes up the first minute and 18 seconds.



Reader Charles Brubaker posted this on his Facebook page, and got some background from Alfons Moliné, which I copy:

This belongs to "Carosello", a program block made up of commercials -live or animated- which used to run on RAI (the public Italian TV) each evening from the late 50´s to the mid-70's. Most great names in Italian animation, including Bruno Bozzetto, did a lot of work on "Carosello". Most of the "Carosello" commercials had original characters, but a few starred American cartoon characters -under license, but nevertheeless animated in Italy- such as Sylvester and Tweety, Speedy Gonzales, The Flintstones, Popeye, etc.

Calimero debuted in commercials in the "Carosello" block and later was spun off into his own cartoon series. Another character having debuted in "Carosello" commercials and later also obtaining his own series of 5-minute cartoons was Osvaldo Cavandoli´s "La Linea" (seen in the U.S. in the 80´s on "The Great Space Coaster").

Ali Baba Bunny Backgrounds

Maurice Noble and Phil De Guard get together again for the Bugs/Daffy cartoon “Ali Baba Bunny” (released 1957). It’s known more for “Hassan chop!” and Daffy’s greedy dialogue, but it’s got Jones’ trademarks (multiples of slippers twirling in mid-air when Hassan zooms off, stage left; eyes that stretch out from the eye-whites; Hassan twirling thin, bony fingers like Witch Hazel). And it’s got Noble’s abstract colour schemes that he seemed to like in some of his later work at Warners. Here are some screen shots of the backgrounds constructed and painted by De Guard.



There no clean shots of the backgrounds of two of the best-known Bugs/Daffy visuals in the cartoon, but I’ve posted them anyway.



I still like the Daffy of the late ‘40s better than this Daffy, but you’ve got to laugh at the disgusted way he looks at Bugs and quotes “Ickety ackety oop.”

Al Stahl's Cartoon Studio

I enjoy watching animated commercials from the 1950s, far more than I do some of the animated shorts that came out during that time. I don’t really know a lot about them, though. After all, it’s not like they have credits on them.

There were a number of small studios in New York which made animated spots. In fact, if you read directories of production houses back then, all of them seem to have been able to provide clients with animation if that’s what they wanted (whether it was sub-contracted, I don’t know). Among the best-known of the New York commercial cartoon houses 60 years ago were Shamus Culhane, Transfilm and Tempo Productions; at least they’re known to me because their owners worked on theatrical cartoons not too many years earlier. In glancing over some trade ads, I came across one for “Animated Film Corporation,” run by Al Stahl. I’d never heard of it and I didn’t remember seeing Stahl’s name on any theatrical cartoons out of New York. So I thought I’d hunt around.

Studious researchers have already put a chunk of information on the internet about him. The reference site at Lambiek.net informs us that Stahl was an assistant animator at Terrytoons (in the early 30s, evidently) and then went into comics. He copyrighted “Needles Loses His Noodle” and “Happy Trailings” in 1936 (and something with Richard Mackay called “Al and Mac”) and “The Family Trailer No. 1” (in quarto) the following year. He also worked on Oswald the Rabbit comics for DC.

Albert Lester Stahl was born in New York on July 3, 1916, the oldest of two sons of Jesse and Helen Stahl. They were living with an uncle in 1920 but by 1930, had a home in Atlantic City. Stahl was living on his own on West 91st Street in New York City in 1940 and working as a commercial artist. He enlisted in the Army in 1942 (he served as a Private First Class).

He opened his own commercial animation studio in early 1950, but the ad you see above is from 1952. In 1953, his clients included NBC (promotional announcements), Margo Wines and Marvel Mystery Oil, and he was also producing combination live action/animated commercials for the Yonkers and Roosevelt Raceways. The two best-known pieces of animation at NBC are the peacock spreading its feathers and the “snake” letters but both came after this and Stahl had nothing to do with them. A couple of years later, his studio did animation/live action commercials for Chunkynut Candy with Abbott and Costello. As you can see in the top picture, the studio’s earliest clients included the makers of Kelvinator (through Geyer, Newell and Ganger) and Lever Bros.’ Rinso. The Screen Gems studio had attempted to make animated shorts with Li’l Abner a decade earlier with decidedly unhappy results; the Rinso bird’s origins are in the tweeting jingle used on radio commercials for years (Shamus Culhane also had the Rinso account in 1952). Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear any of these commercials are on-line so I can’t direct you to them.

Stahl spent part of 1954 trying to implement industry standards for animation stands and color TV film at the lab level. He also had either an office or studio in New Rochelle, the home of Terrytoons. Stahl’s company also provided animation for “Black Fox” (1962), a 35-minute, black and white film narrated by Marlene Dietrich on Hitler’s rise to power.

Stahl died in New York on December 10, 1999. You can read more about him here.

But All They Did Was Walk On

Many years ago, a TV critic whose name escapes me complained in print about how the plot of every “Happy Days” episode would squeal to a stop while the audience burst into applause every time a character came on set at the beginning of the show. Apparently the same audience later sat in the stands during tapings of “Married With Children.” But the practice goes back a little further than that. And at least one critic wasn’t happy then, either.

If you listen to the season openers of Jack Benny’s show towards the last decade of his career on radio, the audience erupts into (spontaneous?) applause when each member of the regular casts makes their entrance. This really wasn’t all that new. Phil Harris always liked to make a hammy start to his appearance. Shows on location at military camps during the war years featured cheers and sustained clapping by the servicemen whenever someone came to the microphone (especially Rochester). But it seems to have baffled esteemed critic John Crosby, who wondered why people would clap for a performer who hadn’t done anything. (As a side-note, it didn’t puzzle the radio critic for the Vancouver Daily Province, Dick Diespecker, a former boss of one Alan Young. Instead, it annoyed him. Diespecker was capable of being annoyed easily).

What Crosby doesn’t seem to realise—assuming the applause was sincere—was that the audience was pleased to have their radio favourites back on the air after a 13-week hiatus. The applause was in appreciation of their return. Not exactly the practice of the theatre, but certainly one that’s appropriate in my estimation. And in 1950, Benny returned after 13 weeks of Guy Lombardo. Who wouldn’t be happy that Jack was back?

Besides being baffled about Benny’s studio audience, Crosby gives his stamp of approval to Eve Arden’s “Our Miss Brooks” which, like Jack’s show, would soon be vacating the changing network radio airwaves and moving to TV.

Radio in Review
By JOHN CROSBY
Jack Benny, CBS's $2,000,000 comedian who returned to the air this week for his 19th year (7 p. m. EDT Sundays, as if you didn't know), is an odd fish, extremely hard to explain in any rational terms.
His opening program, so help me Hannah, consisted almost entirely of exclamatory greetings. "Don!" Mr. Benny ejaculated to his perennial announcer, Don Wilson, and the air was instantly filled with tumultuous applause.
"Well, Dennis!" he said a moment or two later. More applause.
"Well, look who's here! Hello Mary!" Pandemonium.
There was very little else on that opening program. It was just an introduction of the familiar cast, a sort of muster of the company. Phil Harris present and reporting for duty, as it were.
That this should comprise a $40,000-a-week radio program and a highly satisfying one to Mr. Benny's millions of listeners is one of those things that astonishes even Benny and it certainly confuses me.
"Tell me about your trip to Europe," asked Mr. Wilson. Now, there is nothing duller than the recital of somebody else's trip to Europe.
Yet Benny gets paid and paid very well to tell about his trip to Europe. As usual Mr. B. played the London Palladium with vast success. And that's hard to understand, too. The English will flock to the theatre to see our, shall we say, cinema stars. But then they've been well indoctrinated by American movies.
Mr. Benny's movie career was pretty close to a disaster; the English can hardly have cared much for his pictures; his radio career is just a rumor to them, still, they enjoy him on the stage.
He must have the common touch that surmounts the language barrier (What do you mean there isn't any language barrier? Have you seen any English pictures lately? The last one I saw had American subtitles.)
Anyhow, Benny is back for what may be the last year of big-time radio as we once knew it.
Like so many other of the big radio stars, Benny is dipping a toe into television this year. By next fall night-time radio may have lost so much of its audience to television that it can no longer afford anything so expensive as Mr. Benny.
Already, Benny's ratings in areas where he competes with television are shockingly low.
Going Into T-V
We can't tell you how well he'll do in television. But few, if any, people knew radio as well as he did. (Or, more accurately, as did his writers and advisers.)
He was the only comedian who deliberately threw let-up pitches. If he had a whale of a program one week, he slowed to a walk the next week in order not to compete with himself.
In an industry which has long been tyrannized by formats, Benny was never hampered by any single format. He had three or four of them and never hesitated to try a new one.
Some of his programs contained parodies of successful books, plays or movies. Others didn't. Some programs had strong comedy plots. Others didn't have any plot at all.
In general he followed the Rogers & Hammerstein precept, which is simply to do what they like rather than what they think the public is looking for.
This theory, fairly common in the theater, is almost unheard of in radio which slavishly sniffs at every popular whim and tries to satisfy it. He created rather than followed popular taste.
Must be a moral in there some place for the other comedians who are all trying to be Milton Berle.
Incidentally, Benny is preceded by "Our Miss Brooks," one of C. B. S.'s better comedy efforts.
Preceding Benny is one way to commit suicide. It's pretty much like the dog act in vaudeville. The audience is still rustling its programs, getting, settled in its chairs, waiting for the headliner. Our Miss Eve Arden, who plays Miss Brooks, deserves better than that.

Interestingly, one of the routines of Jack’s show the following week was built around reviews of this broadcast, though the Crosby column isn’t mentioned.

Mary: Did you read all the reviews on your opening programme?
Jack: Yes, most of them. I thought they were nice.
Mary: The reporter from Variety thought you were better than ever.
Jack: I know, I know.
Mary: Louella Parsons said you got loads of laughs.
Jack: Yes, yes.
Mary: Hedda Hopper said you were dynamite.
Jack: Yes, yes, I know.
Mary: Erskine Johnson said you weren’t the least bit funny.
Jack: Him, I’m suing. (audience laughs) What other write-ups were there?
Dennis: Did you read the review in the [Los Angeles] Herald-Express?
Jack: No.
Mary: You can take that one to the Supreme Court.

It appears the Johnson line was purely a gag. I’ve been through his columns for that week and he doesn’t mention the broadcast. I don’t know who the Herald Express’ reviewer was. Parsons and Hopper were, if not friends, at least friendly toward Jack. I’m sure they didn’t mind the positive plug.