Crows' Feet Backgrounds

Orange and shades on either side of orange dominate the Friz Freleng cartoon “Crows’ Feat” (1961). And since we’re into the 1960s, stylisation is the key. Clouds aren’t puffy white things; they’re mere outlines in the sky.



The backgrounds are by Tom O’Loughlin, who replaced Boris Gorelick in Freleng’s unit on cartoons that were released starting in 1958. Here’s more of his work, including the scarecrow that (deliberately) resembles Elmer Fudd.



Thomas Gardner O’Loughlin was born in Canada on Christmas Eve Day 1923 to Ernest W. and Nellie Jane Gardner, neither of whom were Canadian (his father was from Washington State). The family was living in Edmonton in 1935 and moved to Indianapolis by 1940. A posting on the Big Cartoon Database states O’Loughlin began work in the animation industry in 1947 but, as usual, that’s not correct. A Los Angeles Times story in early 1952 stated he moved to California from Montana the previous year. He was married in 1953 but his marriage certificate doesn’t list his occupation. As you might expect from someone in Friz’ unit, he later worked at DePatie-Freleng and spent time at Filmation. He died in Healdsburg, California on October 26, 2007.

Felix's Nightmare Monster

Dream sequences give good cartoonists a chance to use their imaginations, and “Felix Dines and Pines” is no exception. Felix has a nightmare after eating a bunch of garbage. Immediately, some monster comes after him.





The monster stands there and his dots and eyes change. Here’s the sequence.



See the white along the legs in the last two frames? It continues in a cycle as well to give the impression the legs (and the white stuff on whatever’s dropping from the monster’s fingers) that it’s moving like ribbons of neon.

I don’t know whether Otto Messmer drew this or a “guest animator” did, but it’s one of the best of the whole Felix series.

No Hope For Bob

Show people had some dandy feuds. Some weren’t real—Jack Benny and Fred Allen, for instance. Some were professional—Parsons and Winchell, for example. And some people just didn’t like each other. I suppose you can put Bob Hope and columnist John Crosby in that category.

Hope sued Crosby (settling out of court) over one column in Life magazine. In return, Crosby didn’t let up on Hope in print for almost ten years. Here’s a syndicated newspaper review from 1954 of what should have been a terrific show. Crosby panned it.

Talent, Money Fail to Save Hope TV Show
By JOHN CROSBY
NEW YORK, Dec, 10.—I just don’t understand how Bob Hope can assemble such a glittering roster of talent and spend so much money and come up with something so mediocre as his last show on NBC-TV Tuesday night.
Hope left the country in November to do a command performance at the Palladium in London. This show was filmed in London with Maurice Chevalier, Beatrice Lillie, and the Cologne 182-voice choir, a British film star named Moira Lister, and a French ballerina named Liane Dayde. With a lineup like that I didn't see how he could possibly miss but he sure did.
ONLY ONE GOOD JOKE
There was the usual opening, Hope in front of a curtain, splattering bad jokes about the English fog and the Los Angeles smog. In ten minutes, there was one good joke: “Over here the government subsidizes the actors to go on television. In our country the actors go on television to subsidize the government.”
Well, maybe it just seemed good because of the company it was in. Incidentally, Hope seemed to slow his normal machine-gun pace down to about half speed for the British who have trouble understanding fast-talking Americans. I don't know whether the laughter that greeted these feeble sallies was authentic English laughter or whether it was the canned stuff they turn out in Hollywood these days.
HEAVY GERMAN SONG
Then came the Cologne Choir. Normally, I'm a sucker for choirs, the bigger the better, but this one intoning some dreadfully German number, as heavy as the food of that country, left me unmoved. On came the incomparable Miss Lillie who was not, I'm afraid, being as incomparable as usual. There's something about being on the Hope show that takes the fire out of people.
Presently along came Liane Dayde, of the Paris Opera ballet, and she, too, was pretty much a disappointment, doing a dance that looked like the sort of thing little girls do in ballet school. Miss Lillie returned as sort of street waif who is picked up by Hope at the stage door and becomes, after a bit of shenanigans, a star of his show. As a cockney waif, she was very appealing but not terribly funny.
UNDERESTIMATES WRITERS
So far so bad, I thought, but wait till Chevalier comes on. You can't kill Chevalier. Well, I underestimated Hope's writers. They can kill anything.
Chevalier made his appearance in a sketch in which Hope is supposedly on a honeymoon with Moira Lister in Cannes. Chevalier shows up as a supposed cousin of the bride and instantly starts making passes at the girl which culminate in a lesson in love-making, involving some kissing that they could never get away with in the movies and shouldn't be allowed here either. There hasn't been anything in such poor taste on television since—well, since Hope had that show in Cleveland with Phil Harris procuring girls for him in a hotel room. Somebody ought to talk to this boy.
Chevalier did redeem himself by his “accents melodiques” number, which is a very clever spoof of different accents as heard by someone who doesn't speak the language, and by singing one of his all-time favorites, “Louise,” and “Seems Like Old Times.”
In contrast, the latest Max Liebman spectacular, while not an unqualified delight, had two perfectly wonderful numbers with Jack Buchanan, the very talented Englishman, one a lampoon of modern stage choreography, the other a little fun poked at English choir groups. It also had Jimmy Durante playing Jimmy Durante which is to say that he was just great.

Chew Chew Shake

Shamus Culhane loved violent impact shakes in his cartoons at Walter Lantz but he did them differently than any other director I can think of. Instead of just having the camera shake on a background drawing, Culhane would move in for a tight close-up of part of the drawing and even flip it around just to enhance the impact (he’d also insert a blank red, yellow or a black card a few times in the middle of the shaking.

A good example is in “Chew-Chew Baby,” a 1944 release featuring Woody Woodpecker in drag duping Wally Walrus, who fails to get even after discovering the con. Here we see Wally sawing a hole in the ceiling in the spot where Woody is standing on the floor above. Woody simply pushes a safe where Wally’s cutting a hole.



Down goes the safe. We don’t see the actual impact. We just see the camera shake and hear sound effects. But look what Culhane does with the drawings. These are consecutive frames.



It’s less than half a second but because of the way Culhane emphasizes the crash, it stands out like it takes up more screen time.

Paul Smith and Grim Natwick get the animation credits in this cartoon; Don Williams worked on it, too.

Egypt Tom

A mop and an orange crate turn Tom into an Egyptian in a nice gag in “The Lonesome Mouse” (1943).



Tom is tossed out of the house and scoots down the stairs into the mop and the box.



They land with Tom looking like the Sphynx and the ends of the crate like pyramids. Note how Tom’s feet are exaggerated to add to the effect.



Cut to Jerry capping the gag by doing a little Egyptian-type dance. He butt jerks with a thump at the end.



No animators are credited, just Bill Hanna, Joe Barbera and Fred Quimby.

Really, I'm Not Cheap. Really.

One of the things that really bothered Jack Benny was that people might really think he was a cheapskate. Why it would bother him, I don’t know. If they thought he was cheap, so what? Well, that wasn’t Jack’s attitude, so he went out of his way—on pretty much an individual basis—to prove he wasn’t tight with a nickel. Then he got resentful about it.

Jack mentioned it in several interviews, but he’s a good example from 1952.

‘Stinginess’ Costs $5000 A Year, Jack Benny Wails
By ALINE MOSBY
United Press Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 29 — That stingy character which Jack Benny plays on the radio and TV is costing him $5,000 a year, the comedian sighed today.
For 16 years the amiable Benny has portrayed a tightwad who takes in laundry, pays his valet a starvation salary and hoards cash in a basement vault surrounded by a moat, alligators, three doors and an aged gatewatcher.
By now, he says, some people believe the legend. So to counteract this catastrophe, Benny has turned into in big spender in real life. “I always have to tip as much or more than the next guy,” he said, “I donate more to organizations than I otherwise would. So my expenses are bigger than they should be because of those heavy tips.
“I've done this stingy character so long I guess maybe some people think I really am a little bit cheap.
“You know,” he added, “It's funny, but even the people who work with me tip more, too.”
Once Benny gave a dollar to a hat-check girl in a local nightclub.
“She gave it back and said, ‘Please leave me some illusion’,” he chuckled.
Benny added after a minute, “You better add that I still made her take that dollar.”
Taxi-drivers, especially in New York, kid him about his spend-thrift thrift character. He has to tip them extra-well. Once he was in a hurry to get to his radio show in New York and ran off, forgetting to pay the driver. The cabbie shouted “So it's true what they say about you!”
The comedian figures his program is such a mixture of fiction and fact (Mary Livingstone really did work in that department store) that listeners have trouble dividing the two. Once he received a letter from a Cleveland attorney berating him for not paying enough salary to Rochester, the valet on the show.
On Benny’s recent personal appearance tour around Europe that first question the London reporters popped was, “Are you really mean?” Jack was puzzled until somebody explained that in England “mean” means “stingy.”
In Holland, the queen's husband, told him with a wink, “Why don't you stay at the Palace Hotel? The price is right!”
Recently Benny handed a parking lot attendant $1 to cover a 50-cent charge. The lad pocketed the bill.
“With my reputation,” said Benny firmly, “I didn’t dare ask for the change.”

An Interview With Bugs Bunny

Hollywood is a hype machine, and there’s no end of press agents, handouts, interviews, leaks to gossip writers. It’s been a part of the movie business for decades. Today you can add tweets (some of them bafflingly obtuse or illiterate) to the list. Not much modern publicity seems terribly original or creative.

One fresh way in the ‘40s to conduct an interview was to have the interviewee in character. Radio rags did this; you’ll find someone giving the inside scoop on a soap opera as if they’re the soap opera character. Here’s a cute puff piece where Bugs Bunny is interviewed as Bugs Bunny.

It has no byline, which makes me wonder if it was a standard release from the Warners P.R. department where a newspaper could simply fill in the name of a Bugs cartoon playing at a local theatre. It doesn’t have a lot of hard content and seems to have been meant as a playful parody of interviews; it adds a non-existent romance than never appeared on screen. And I highly doubt that a local newspaper writer would spell Tedd Pierce’s name with two d’s. I like the fact the writers and directors are given some credit, though it’s interesting there’s no mention of Warren Foster or Art Davis. While Davis only directed one Warners cartoon (and it seems probable that was by design), Foster wrote some of the funniest Bugs cartoons of all time.

This story was published in the The Portsmouth Times, December 21, 1946.

STARS BEWARE! MR. B IS ON WAY FOR TOP BILLING
Bugs Bunny Relates Hare-Raising 'From Rabbits To Riches' Saga
Probably none of Hollywood’s top stars realizes it, but they’re all in grave danger of losing their favored positions to a four-footed fugitive from a cartoonist’s ink bottle.
This long-eared pretender to the cinema throne is Warner Brothers’ popular leading man, “Bugs Bunny”, whose rabbity escapades have zoomed him to film-town heights. In a dressing room between scenes of his latest picture, “Rhapsody Rabbit”, which began Friday at the Laroy theater, America’s No. 1 carrot connoisseur gave his own version of “from rabbits to riches”.
“Yeah, Doc, I’ll be glad to tell ya about my hare-raising exploits,” began Mr. B. “If there’s one thing I love to talk about, it’s myself. What’s more interesting, anyway?
It’s Strictly Platonic
“But Doc, keep your nose clean and don’t go sayin’ t’ings about yours truly dat ain’t true. I’m on to youse guys—first t’ing ya know you’ll be startin’ a big romance up between me and dat cute little number I was visitin’ out in de cabbage patch, las’ night. Dat’s stric’ly Platonic, Doc, so don’t go getting’ any ideas!”
Mr. B. stopped momentarily to select another carrot and then continued in a reminiscent mood:
“Ya know, Doc, for my age I’ve come a good long way . . . but dat’s to be expected from someone of my caliber, eh? It all began back in 1936 [sic] when I made my deboo as an extra in a cartoon featurin’ dat big bum, Elmer Fudd. I was one of Elmer’s intended victims, but somehow I didn’t create any furor.
“Agony, agony, I was completely forgotten for over two years while de world did its best to get along widout me. But class will tell, and den I returned to de screen in a ‘quickie’. I wowed ‘em dat time, Doc Knocked ‘em right in de aisles as dey say in de movie business. An’ I kept right on goin’ from dere!”
Admits He’s Modest
Pausing to pick out a sliver of carrot from his prominent bicuspids, Mr. B. went on: “Of course, Doc, I’m a modest character. I’ll admit dat I’m de combined product of over 200 men and women of Warner Brothers’ Cartoons, Inc., in Hollywood. You might quote me as saying dat de Messrs. Charles M. Jones, Isadore Freleng, Bob McKimson, Tedd Pierce and Michael Maltese are all responsible. Even my voice is not me own—it belongs to Mel Blanc, a swell gent who’s allergic to carrots!”
Bugs smiled and added: "Don't know how I do it, Doc. I’m just wot de American public loves. Dey call me de ‘Bogart of de Cartoons’ or de ‘Errol Flynn of de Drawing Board.’
"But you'll have to excuse me now, Doc. I see I'm due back on t set. Ya know how wit is wid artists, Doc, de show must go on!

Perhaps not coincidentally, Bogey and Flynn were under contract to Warners when this was written.

Bugs mentions in his interview that Mel Blanc’s allergic to carrots. Actor (voice and otherwise) Craig Crumpton asked me where the rumour started about Mel’s allergy. Judging by this story and one posted a while ago on the blog, the answer is at least 1946. Here’s another short piece, from the Portland Press Herald, March 10, 1947, where the situation is discussed further.

INSIDE RADIO
By PAUL LUTHER
Prior to the launching of his own starring vehicle this past Fall, Hollywood’s Mel Blanc gained wide recognition as the voice of numerous movie cartoon characters. Among them is the well-known Bugs Bunny. If you’re a moviegoer, you’ve probably enjoyed the antics of Bugs and marveled at his capacity for carrots. This brings us to the point of our little secret.
Mel had been making these particular cartoons for several months but in every instance where the script called upon him to munch carrots while reading his lines he became ill. Puzzled, Mel consulted a doctor who began a series of tests to determine if an allergy existed and sure enough the answer proved to be—carrots.
Informed of this turn of events studio technicians began at once to test all manner of fruits and vegetables to obtain an exact duplication of the carrot crunch. Apples, beets, celery, asparagus all were tried—but to no avail. Finally studio chiefs came up with the following solution: Since the sound couldn’t be duplicated would Mel agree to record all dialogue wherein carrots were used in one session. Seemingly the only answer Mel consented. And to this day whenever Bugs has to gnaw and talk, his creator must undergo a rather unpleasant time with his allergy.

However, Mel’s own autobiography, That’s Not All, Folks, published several decades later, doesn’t say anything about an allergy or illness at all. Mel simply states he doesn’t like the taste of raw carrots. It repeats the story above of Treg Brown being unable to get the right sound from other things and Mel goes on to write he ended up spitting out the carrot in order to read his next line. While Mel is known for really stretching the truth (eg. how he came up with the name “Bugs Bunny”), the carrot expectoration sounds perfectly plausible. So perhaps Mel’s being honest about carrots in his book. Bugs Bunny being allergic to them may have been just another concocted irony of Hollywood’s hype machine.

Knock Your Teeth Out

Not one but two toothpastes are parodied in Tex Avery’s “Batty Baseball” (1943). The batter bashes a long fly to centre field towards an advertising sign.



“Toothodent” and “Delirium” are slight changes from Pepsodent which contained Irium, something not found on the Table of Elements. “The Smile of Glamour” comes from the slogan for Ipana toothpaste, which promised “the smile of beauty.”



The ball hits the sign.



And the teeth drawn on the sign fall out.

Ray Abrams, Preston Blair and Ed Love are the credited animators.

Flying Fish and Whitecaps

Corny visual puns are handled several ways in old cartoons. Bugs Hardaway just plastered one in front of viewers and let it stand on its own as if it was really funny (and, generally, it wasn’t). Tex Avery and his writers liked sticking one on the screen, then commenting on it afterward as a topper. Bob Clampett and his storymen used a set-up line then the pun happily appeared. Some good examples are in “Pilgrim Porky” (1940). It features Porky captaining the Mayflower over the Atlantic from England to America.

There’s a shot of Porky looking onto the water. Bob Bruce’s narration: “On our leaside, we sight a group of flying fish.”



Cut to the “flying fish.” Carl Stalling plays “Man on the Flying Trapeze” in the background.



As a topper, we see they’re pulling a sign. Stalling plays “Umbrella Man” in the background.



No, I don’t know the origin of “Eat at Joe’s.”

Next scene, Bruce’s narration: “Suddenly, without warning, the sea becomes turbulent.”



“The waves grow choppy.”



“And whitecaps appear.” The narrator is proven correct when the waves tumble down from the sky and form little white cloth caps. Stalling plays an up-tempo wheezy version of “Put on Your Old Grey Bonnet.”



I liked the flying fish pun better. The fish have wide grins Clampett gave to just about every semi-crazed character back then.

Warren Foster wrote the cartoon and Norm McCabe received the only animation credit.

None of the Acting is Real

Two groups loved the Quiz Show scandals. Politicians were ecstatic. It gave them something to denounce and talk about high-road stuff like “the good of the American people.” Never mind the Cold War, something had to be done about “The $64,000 Question” (which had already been cancelled). And newspaper writers were happy, too, as it gave them a shot to bark about the shallowness of television, in between their paper’s horoscopes and Broadway gossip columns.

CBS president Frank Stanton announced on October 16, 1959 that the network would take “a fresh, hard look” at all its programming, and that viewers would get assurances that everything they saw would be “exactly what it purports to be.” Stanton told the New York Times in a story published four days later the crackdown would include canned laughter and applause.

The TV columnist for the National Enterprise Association couldn’t resist having a little fun with Stanton’s proclamation. He wrote a column where he extended Stanton’s new guidelines to the nth degree. It appeared in papers starting November 2nd.

This Honest John Thing Could Become An Absurdity
By ERSKINE JOHNSON.
NEA Staff Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD (NEA)—The TV reform wave had brought requiem for the last of the quiz shows and had sent all the laugh machines to the sea bottom. Taped shows no longer were hailed as “live” and not one typewriter was turning out clever ad libs.
All cue cards had been burned and announcers no longer signaled audiences to applaud commercials.
The TV network’s firm words were still in force: “We are going to ban anything that purports to be what it isn’t.”
TV was still in the spasms of “Operation Honest John,” which had spread to all networks. Vice presidents had become private eyes for a TV Central Intelligence Agency and the flow of telegraphed reports and “Top Secret” pouch deliveries was keeping the TV central intelligence staff working round the clock.
THE “HONEST JOHN” crusade had brought many changes to TV, and more were to come. The top staffer at C.I. issued his first order of the day: “Producers of ‘Lassie’ are hereby ordered to make public announcement that Lassie is a he, not a she. Refusal will result in immediate cancellation.”
Then the C.I. topper leaned back in his chair and reviewed the reform progress to date.
One western, about to be cancelled, had used real bullets on its final show. There was talk that the hero, who had been outdrawn, would be awarded a special Emmy, posthumously, for his contribution to “honesty.”
Jack Benny had agreed to stop saying he was only 39.
Contestants on the Groucho Marx show no longer were screened and given gags tailored to them before they were brought before the cameras.
“Gunsmoke” now carried a “special note” for viewers.
“Chester’s limp is simulated as a dramatic device.”
Walter Brennan’s limp as Grandpa in “The Real McCoys” likewise was explained.
ONE CONTESTANT on the Arthur Murray Party had been exposed as a student of a Fred Astaire Dancing School.
Whenever “Maverick” or “Riverboat” used studio stock shots these words flashed on the screen:
“This scene first appeared in a 1938 movie.”
Stunt men were now being given screen credits as doubles in all the-fight scenes.
“You Asked for It” was demanding open hearings on two charges.
One viewer had accused the show of giving its audience something no one had asked for. Another viewer had charged he asked for something and didn’t get it.
Marilyn Monroe had been cancelled as a “Person To Person” guest because she insisted on wearing make-up. “No make-up,” TV ordered. When she insisted, Marilyn had been replaced by Perry Como.
Faced with being himself, Perry came on like the bull in the china shop, revealing he is a nervous wreck and not one bit relaxed.
"This is the real me," Perry said, and it was like the night the dam broke.
IN HOLLYWOOD, Fredric March had discarded his bald wig and five inches of padding for his William Jennings Bryan role just before the start of filming on “Inherit The Wind.” The make-up trickery, the TV boys had ruled, would keep the movie off the late, late show in 1980.
At public confessionals, this had happened:
John "Lawman" Russell admitted the gray streak in his hair was for a “dramatic” reason—housewife appeal. George Jcssel explained his toupee, “You wouldn't recognize me without it.” Oscar Levant laughed about his ailments — “I’m just sick, folks, not sick-sick.”
But TV C.I.’s work was going on. The C.I. staff topper looked at the day’s schedule. It lead off with: “Check possibility of checks bouncing on ‘The Millionaire’ and investigate network quizlings now writing dialog for crooked sheriffs.”
It was a real mess, folks.

The mention of “Person To Person” may have been intended as a joke, but it mirrored a comment made by Stanton in his Times interview that the show wasn’t what it appeared to be. A disclaimer was actually put on it one evening telling viewers the questions were rehearsed. All this enranged host Edward R. Murrow, who felt Stanton was telling the American people he was dishonest. But that’s a story for another time.