Oh, Rochester!

As the television years wore on, Jack Benny’s gang that made his radio show so great slowly broke up. Phil Harris left the show before it ever got to the tube (he was replaced by Bob Crosby, which is like replacing a neon sign with an LED light). Mary Livingstone didn’t want to do television and appeared only rarely. Dennis Day started showing up only occasionally as he had growing outside interests (and Jack went to a weekly show). That left announcer Don Wilson and Eddie Anderson as Rochester.

Judging by the reaction he got from the audience, Rochester was second only to Benny himself in popularity on the show. Everyone could cheer for—and identify with—a poorly-paid, put-upon employee who kept putting one over on his boss. All vestiges of racial stereotyping were eliminated from his character within a few years. I imagine Jack’s brushes with racism (a hotel where the cast was booked refused entry to Anderson, for one) had something to do with it; ridding him of black clichés made the subtle point to bigots that Rochester was no different than anyone else.

Here are a couple of newspaper columns on Anderson, both from United Press International. The first is from April 25, 1960, the second from November 15, 1968. Anderson addresses the racial aspect in the latter, speaking of those who had their eyes and ears solely fixed on his basic role on the show instead of how he played it.

Shouts As A Kid ‘Make’ Rochester
By RICK DU BROW
UPI Hollywood Writer
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) _ Eddie (Rochester) Anderson, Jack Benny’s brash stage valet, says he got the gravel in his voice that has earned him a fortune by trying to out-shout other newsboys as a youth.
“We really hawked newspapers when I was a kid in San Francisco,” said the impish, 54-year-old Anderson, who was born in Oakland, Calif.
“We thought that the loudest voice sold the papers, which wasn’t true, of course. Anyway, I ruptured my vocal chords from straining them.”
Wearing old work clothes and puffing on a cigar in his large, comfortable home, Anderson said:
“In the early days it looked like I was a gonna be a singer, but I wouldn't force that on anybody now.”
Anderson, now a little hard of hearing, lives with his wife, Eva and their three children — Stephanie, 7, Evangela, 3, and Edmund, 2.
He’s been with Benny for 23 years.
“I auditioned for him a week before Easter in 1937,” he said.
The audition was for the part of a railroad porter for a broadcast dramatizing Benny’s move to California from New York with his family.
The public loved “Rochester,” asked for more — and Benny’s writers wrote a script in which the comedian hired him away from the Pullman Co.
“Eventually, it might work into a steady job,” Anderson joked.
According to Anderson, the reason for Benny’s continued success on his CBS show is his forethought.
“He has a talent for planting a situation that will catch on and pay off maybe a year later,” he said. “It’s uncanny. And he knows his exact image to the public.
“Once, on radio, he got the idea for people to send in letters on the subject of ‘Why I hate Jack Benny.’ It might have been dangerous, but it worked out wonderfully.
“As for me, I enjoy my part to this day. I enjoy the situations and the family ties, you might say. I get a lot of pleasure out of the show.”
Nevertheless, said Anderson, he wouldn't mind having a show of his own.
“I certainly haven’t — and wouldn’t — divorce myself from Jack," he said, "but I think I could be fitted for a situation comedy.”
Anderson is one of Hollywood’s genuinely funny characters.
And nothing bothers him.
On his first broadcast, he showed up at the studio in while tie and tails with a top hat and an Inverness cape draping his shoulders.
And when a horse he owned won a race, he showed up at MGM studios in the costume of a Kentucky colonel and insisted that everyone call him Colonel Rochester.
"But I have pretty good common sense,” he said. “I didn’t marry an actress.”

In Saturday Television Special...
Benny and Sidekick Rochester Reunited
By VERNON SCOTT
HOLLYWOOD (UPI)— “Rochester!”
The name was invariably bleated with frustration for three decades by Jack Benny on radio and later television.
Comedian Benny made the name more famous than the municipality in western New York state. At the other end of Benny’s cry was Eddie (Rochester) Anderson whose social life and drinking habits were the despair of his boss.
After almost four years apart, Benny and Rochester will be reunited Saturday night in a television special, “Jack Benny’s Bag.”
It’s a new, hip format for Benny. The jokes will be more “in,” the dialogue “with it,” and the pace faster. But Eddie Anderson will be a part of the fun.
Hadn't Seen Benny
“Before we taped the show I hadn’t even seen Mr. Benny,” Rochester said a few days before airtime. “He’s so busy traveling and doing concerts we just don’t have time to get together.
“It was good to work with him again. I remember the first time I appeared on his radio show— it was Easter Sunday of 1937.”
Anderson, his black face full of humor, refused to say if he was older than Benny: "If he says he’s 39 years old, then you gotta say I’m about that age, too.”
Eddie Anderson is a loose, happy man who is disturbed only by other black people who accuse him of having been an Uncle Tom during his years with Benny.
Today’s activist–oriented blacks in show business are disdainful of Negroes who played subsurvient roles to white men in the old days.
But they forget Anderson was that Eddie co-star on Benny’s shows and got as many laughs as the Waukegan Wonder, frequently topping him with a quip.
Never Uncle Tom
“I never played an Uncle Tom,” Anderson said, “Because the scripts always called for me to get the best of Mr. Benny.
“The fact that I played a valet had nothing to do with Arthur Treacher played those roles and nobody ever criticised him for it.”
Now that Benny appears mostly on the road in concerts or as a single guest star. Anderson has gone into semi-retirement. He has done a couple of video commercials and a movie.
He fills his spare time as an assistant trainer of horses at Hollywood Park for the harness racing season.
At one time Eddie Anderson earned more than a thousand dollars a week. He worked hard for it and spent it with abandon.
While he is not in financial straits, neither is he the richest performer in semi-retirement.
“Everything’s fine with me,” Anderson concluded. “And it makes me happy when total strangers take the time to greet me with a big, ‘Hello, Rochester.’”

The Frustration of Cartoon Research

No, the title of this post has nothing to with Jerry Beck’s wonderful web site, which is putting up a lot of fine historical information about various cartoon studios you probably haven’t seen before. This post has to do with dead ends and missing links while trying to learn a little more about the Golden Age of Theatrical Animation and the people involved in it.

Some time ago, I became curious about Mickey Batchelder, one of the cameramen at the Walter Lantz studios and whether he was related to Warren Batchelder, who animated at Warner Bros. and, later, DePatie-Freleng. Batchelder isn’t a common name and it would seem more than coincidental that two Batchelders worked in Hollywood animation, especially considering studios were not unknown to have various combinations of family members employed. And I thought there was a bit of a family resemblance between Mickey, who you see above in a shot from The Woody Woodpecker Show from 1957, to Warren, the fellow with the glasses in the bottom left corner of photo you see to the left of the Friz Freleng unit from 1940. Warren finally became an animator in the later part of the ‘50s after being an assistant for many years, part of the time to Virgil Ross.

Sitting in front of a computer far away from Hollywood isn’t the ideal place to do Hollywood cartoon research. And I can’t draw on personal recollections as I am not an old-time animator who knew the people who worked in the Golden Age. But some information is available on line and you have to put it together. Occasionally, it’s like the old game show “Concentration” where you couldn’t see all of the puzzle but had to try to guess what it was anyway. Let’s start with Warren. The Social Security Death Index reveals he was born April 18, 1917 and died in Malibu on February 12, 2007; a posting on the Big Cartoon Database (likely a reprint of a union news item) at the time confirms it. He’s easy to track down in the 1940 Census. I’ve edited the picture below to take out unnecessary information.



You can see that he’s living at home with his parents, J. Lloyd and Zana Batchelder. It shows his mother was born in California and his father was from Illinois. Specifically, J.L. was from Batchtown, named for his father William Warren Batchelder (obviously Warren’s namesake). The 1930 Census again has the three of them together. I can’t find them in the 1920 Census. But I have found the Marriage Certificate for James Lloyd Batchelder and Zana Cushing. It’s dated August 5, 1916 (note that Warren was born 8½ months later). It was the first marriage for both, so neither of them previously had children.

So how does Mickey fit into this? A check of Census records doesn’t show any Mickey or Michael Batchelder, so I wondered if it was a nickname. And that seems to have been the case. Michael Broggie’s book Walt Disney’s Railroad Story (2006) is one of several sources which points out Mickey Batchelder worked in the camera department at Disney (Mickey? Disney? Aha!). And an edition of Walt’s People by Didier Ghez reveals C.W. Batchelder wrote The Multiplane Manual for the Disney Studio in 1939.

There’s only one Batchelder who fits Mickey’s description. Here’s the 1940 Census record for Clyde W. Batchelder.



It seems safe to assume Clyde and Mickey are one and the same. But something doesn’t add up. Clyde is listed as 33 years of age, and Warren’s parents had only been married 24 years. So Warren and Clyde of them can’t be brothers. In addition, Clyde’s Death Index entry reveals his mother’s maiden name was Husted, and earlier Census reports show his parents were named Nathan and Laura. Yet I received a note this week from reader Charles Brubaker quoting both Mike Kazaleh and Mark Kausler as stating the two were brothers. Both are unimpeachable sources when it comes to animation, having worked in the industry for quite a number of years.

So I’m not quite sure what to think. Unfortunately, newspaper obituaries for Clyde (who died in 1960) and Warren are inaccessible, at least to me. Such is the burden of a researcher and the limits of the internet.

At any rate, Warren Batchelder gets credit by some critics as being the best animator in the Bob McKimson unit after the Warners studio moved into gear again following the 3-D shut down in 1953. And Mickey’s part of a fun “How Cartoons Are Made” series seen on the Woody Woodpecker Show which was more interesting and entertaining than some of the cartoons themselves.

King Philippe the Floppe

UPA’s “Punchy De Leon” features a king with an outrageous design by Bill Hurtz. He’s almost all head and much of that is his mouth.



Here are a few of the frames of some smear animation of the king grabbing an earthen jug and exclaiming “Magnifico!” Did Pat Matthews worked on this? (Late note: see the comments for the answer)



Look at the different positions of the Fox’s fingers. The designs may be stylised, but the movement’s not.

The king orders the Fox and Crow to get the Fountain of Youth. Just one of the drawings.



This was the last Fox and Crow cartoon. UPA decided it would rather make stuff like “Ballet-Oop” and “Bringing Up Mother.”

Stereotypically Tex

Blackface transformation gags wound up in several Tex Avery cartoons, mostly at MGM (“Droopy’s Good Deed” being a good example). But he put one in his very first official directorial effort, the Warners cartoon “Gold Diggers of ‘49” (1936).

Generally with Avery, an explosion turns someone into a minstrel show stereotype. In “Gold Diggers,” it’s the exhaust from Porky and Beans’ car.

We start with a pair of Chinese dogs (from a laundry, where else?)



Along comes the car and the smoke.



And, now, they’ve become Amos and Andy, complete with “awa, awa” catchphrase.



Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones receive the animation credits but we know Tex’s unit originally included animators Virgil Ross and Sid Sutherland, plus Bobe Cannon, Cecil Surry and possibly Elmer Wait. I don’t know who did the backgrounds, but the cartoon opens with a pan over a very long background, another Avery staple at Warners.

Tell 'Em Groucho Sent You...For the Reels

You can’t watch early episodes of “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson from New York. Same with the Jack Paar version. Nor can you view many of the bon mots of Paul Lynde and Rose Marie on many of the old “Hollywood Squares.” Why? Because years ago NBC got rid of the shows that were in an old storage facility in New Jersey. They were taking up too much room.

The same fate awaited reels and reels of “You Bet Your Life,” the wonderfully comic not-really-quiz show hosted by Groucho Marx. But it never happened. The programmes were saved because of a phone call. Read the remarkable story here from Groucho’s grandson. Marx fans can be grateful to him. I know I am.

Now if I could only find out which studio did the opening animation for the show (Late note: Mike Kazaleh has the answer in the comments).

Heavenly Puss Backgrounds

“Heavenly Puss” (July 1949) has some fine acting by Tom and the bulldog (even a Wile E. Coyote-like wave at the camera before Tom drops into Hell) but just as enjoyable are the backgrounds, greatly assisted by MGM’s contract with Technicolor.



Here’s an interior. Notice the wall is curved.



Who did the backgrounds? And from whose layouts? MGM never tells us in the credits. Dick Bickenbach was doing at least some of the layouts for the Tom and Jerry unit and Bob Gentle some of the backgrounds. But who knows who else was at the studio then.

Booting Bobby Bumps

How television has changed since the early 1950s for cartoon lovers. There are more hours of cartoons on TV in a day that anyone could watch. Compare that to June 20, 1953 when Billboard headlined a story “Kids Love Cartoon Film Shows But Few Stations Air Them.” Few aired them because the cartoons simply weren’t available to air.

The article reveals the somewhat surprising fact that “Approximately 90 per cent of the cartoons in TV are silent.” It’s inconceivable to those of us who grew up in the 1960s that there was ever a time people couldn’t sit at home and watch Bugs Bunny or Popeye. But it took some time for the owners of those cartoons to sell them to television. Before that, TV stations could only purchase cartoons that were either obscure (Van Beuren) or from the silent days.

Among the forgotten silent stars who suddenly got exposure again was Bobby Bumps. He appeared in shorts made by animator Earl Hurd for the Bray Studio. You can read more about Bobby at Tom Stathes’ site. J.R. Bray must have been giddy realising that TV offered him a chance to make money from rotting old worthless cartoon negatives and cut a deal in March 1952. Stock music from Chappell or one of the other English libraries was added to old Bray cartoons and they started appearing on TV. One of them was “Bobby Bumps and the Hypnotic Eye,” released in June 1919. The cartoon’s most interesting sequence, to me, is when two ushers boot Bobby and his dog out of a theatre and they fly through the window of a moving street car. Here are a few of the drawings (the digital pixilation makes them a little tough to view).



The cartoon ends with Earl Hurd’s signature on screen. Is it just me, or do pre-1920 smiling cartoon dogs look creepy?



Earl Oscar Hurd was born in Atchison (of the “...Topeka and the Santa Fe” fame), Kansas on February 14, 1880, the middle of three sons of Oscar S. and Georgia Anna (Moore) Hurd. His father was a contractor. The 1900 Census lists the 20-year-old Hurd, now living in Kansas City, as an “artist.” He went into newspaper cartooning there for a time.

Hurd may be best known for combining his patent on cel animation filed in December 1914 with Bray’s, meaning studios had to pay a licensing fee to use their processes until the patents expired in 1932. Hurd carried on at Bray studio in New York City for several years, though he was living in Los Angeles in 1918. Wid’s Daily of June 17, 1919 revealed Bray had “announce[d] the perfection of a new process for cartoon comedies.” Basically, Bray set up a brand-new company, dropped his Paramount release in October in favour of Goldwyn and cagily worked out a deal with Hearst to animate the International Film Service cartoons, including Krazy Kat, Judge Rummy and the Shenanigan Kids. Earl Hurd moved on to Famous Players to supervise production of the company’s educational cartoons (and took assistant Harry Bailey with him). He eventually struck out on his own and when the sound era came in, headed west and worked for, among other people, Leon Schlesinger and Walt Disney; no doubt Disney was acquainted with Hurd through his work in Kansas City. Hurd was making $100 a week for Disney when he died in Los Angeles on September 28, 1940, age 60.

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.