Have a Cigar

Tom tries to force Jerry out of his hole with cigar smoke in “Professor Tom” (released in 1948). It doesn’t work. First, the cat turns blue, then green.



The capper is why Jerry is unaffected by the fetid smell. He walks out to Scott Bradley’s plucked strings.



The unsung ink and paint department had to gradually change from blue to green over the course of several seconds of screen time. I can only imagine what the colour instructions looked like.

The credited animators are the usual four in the Hanna-Barbera unit.

She's a Dog...Or Is She?

Tex Avery’s “Wags to Riches” has a juxtaposition scene by Mike Lah where Spike shows opposing attributes listed by an executor (voiced by Pat McGeehan) as qualifications to inherit his late master’s estate. He’s clean-minded. But with an eye for beauty.





Lest you think there’s interspecies lust going on here, here’s Johnny Johnsen’s background drawing. The babe has a dog face that you don’t see when Spike is in the scene.



Late word: Thad Komorowski passed on a note that he doesn’t see a dog face. Upon closer inspection, he’s probably right and it’s just heavy makeup on the left eye instead of an oval black dog-nose. Oh, well, the sequence is funny anyway.

Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton and Bobe Cannon also animated this cartoon.

Benny and Baldy

Jack Benny had a reputation of being a tough editor of his radio scripts, and a gossip magazine gave a good indication of it in 1939.

Radio Mirror was directed at women. Its June 1939 edition featured articles about Edgar Bergen’s love life, Martha Raye on marriage mistakes and Ida Cantor talking about life with Eddie. But there are also invaluable programme guides, profiles of announcers and other people on the air and snippets of news. The edition also has a brief article on how the Benny radio show is put together, accompanied by a picture (probably by NBC) of Jack and Mary. The writer is anonymous.

The article mentions Benny’s preoccupation with sound effects. Later news columns described how fussy he was with sound effects men when it came to footsteps. The other neat thing about the story is the mentions of Harry Baldwin and Blanche Stewart. Baldwin had been with Benny since the early ‘30s when he was sworn in to the U.S. Naval Reserve on August 27, 1942. Yeoman Baldwin of the U.S.S. Los Angeles starred—likely his only starring radio role—with Ginny Simms on “Johnny Presents” on December 15th that year (Jack was involved in the plot) but when the war ended (he was discharged Dec. 16, 1944), he never returned. The 1950 Census shows him unemployed and living in Los Angeles with a shipping clerk for a furniture company.

Census and naturalisation records show that Harry Maurice Baldwin was born Hirsch Cohen in Perth, Australia on June 24, 1901. He arrived in New York City on January 31, 1906 and was made an American on Boxing Day 1941. He died in Los Angeles on February 26, 1972.

Stewart was a real unsung talent. She could do voices and animal imitations. She was a good screamer, too. She had been appearing on Benny’s shows on a fairly regular basis starting in 1932 but faded out after the 1939-40 radio season. Stewart spent the ‘40s working with Bob Hope but returned to the Benny show on an occasional basis toward the end of decade. Stewart was not in good health the last few years of her life and died July 24, 1952.

ON THE AIR TONIGHT: The Jell-O Show, on NBC's Red network from 7:00 to 7:30 Eastern Daylight Saving Time, with a rebroadcast for the West Coast at 7:30, Pacific Standard Time.
If you were Jack Benny, star of the Jell-O Show, you'd have to figure on rehearsing a full week for every thirty-minute program—that's what Jack does. He starts on Monday morning to prepare for next Sunday's show—a full-time job from October until early in July. That's how important radio is to Mr. Benny.
The week's procedure goes something like this. Jack collaborates with his two gag-writers, Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin, and the three are virtually inseparable until the script is in shape. In fact, Jack relies so much on the boys' comedy sense that his screen studio hires them to write additional dialogue for his Paramount pictures.
When the script is ready, the regular cast—Mary Livingstone, Kenny Baker, Phil Harris and Don Wilson—get together with Jack to read it. A reading rehearsal means hours of work, because showman Jack insists that every word must be paced, timed and given just the right inflection. The microphone rehearsal doesn't take place until Sunday morning, at the studio, when producers Ted Hediger of NBC and Murray Boland of Young and Rubicam, Jell-O's advertising agency, time the program and make the necessary cuts.
Jack personally supervises every detail of the show, but he's particularly fussy over sound effects. They mean so much to his scripts that he always instructs the soundmen himself, and sometimes during a broadcast even waves his arm to cue the sounds in.
Sunday night, after the broadcast, is "date night" for Jack and Mrs. Jack, who is of course Mary Livingstone. Mary wears a neat tailored suit to rehearsals, but shows up at the actual broadcast in a more sophisticated costume, suitable for the gayety afterwards.
Before the program gets under way in NBC's Studio B in Hollywood Radio City, Jack comes out, cigar in mouth and fiddle in hand, and gives a curtain talk—joking, playing the violin, kidding celebrities in the audience, and introducing Mary's mother, who sits in the front row.
The voice that always says "Telegram for Mr. Benny" is that of Harry Baldwin, who also acts as Jack's secretary. Harry's the only secretary in Hollywood who has a contract—he's been with Jack 11 years. Blanche Stewart, the girl who does all the feminine parts except Mary's, is an old-time vaudeville trouper, and a great friend of Mary's.

One last story about Harry Baldwin. On Fred Allen's show of March 19, 1944, there's this little dialogue in Allen's Alley:

Fred: Mrs. Corn, how do you feel about Victory Gardens?
Corn: For the last two years, I've had Victory Gardens.
Fred: Good for you.
Corn: But something always happens.
Fred: How do you mean?
Corn: Last year, my husband threw some old Vitalis bottles out in the garden.
Fred: Yes?
Corn: When the lettuce came up...
Fred: Yes?
Corn: Every head had hair on it.
Fred: Well, that couldn't happen with the apples. The apples are Baldwins, aren't they that you have?

Originally, I thought the Allen audience, which busted a collective gut over the gag, was so tuned in to the Benny show they knew Harry Baldwin and knew he was bald (he even played a character called Dr. Baldy on one show). But it was probably just Fred punning on “bald” and “Baldwin.” Too bad. I’d like to think it referred to Harry.

Gene Rodemich

One of the best things about the early sound cartoons made by the Van Beuren studio in New York City are the jumpy little scores put together by Gene Rodemich. There wasn’t much information about Rodemich on the internet at one time so I did some hunting and posted the findings on the Golden Age Cartoon forums a few years ago. I’m reposting a corrected and expanded version, along with links to a couple of Gene’s recordings.

Eugene Frederich Rodemich was the first orchestra leader for the long-running Manhattan Merry-Go-Round when it debuted on CBS in 1932. He died suddenly while his career was at its peak. Here’s what I can glean of his New York Times obit, dated March 1, 1934:

GENE RODEMICH, 42, MUSICIAN, IS DEAD;
Leader of Dance Orchestras Ill Since Saturday, a Victim of Pneumonia
DIRECTED RADIO PROGRAM
Former Manager of Concern That Produced Animated Cartoons for Movies.
Gene Rodemich, pianist and orchestra leader, died at 9 o clock Tuesday at the Medical Arts Sanitarium, 57 West Fifty-seventh Street, it was made known yesterday. He was 42 years old. His death was caused by lobar [pneumonia].
Mr. Rodemich was born in St. Louis [April 13, 1890], son of a dentist [Henry Rodemich and his wife Rose]. He began his musical career in and near his home town as a pianist, later becoming conductor of a dance orchestra. He was accompanist for Elsie Janis on several tours, including one in Europe.
Before starting radio work in New York about five years ago, he had for three years been director and master of ceremonies at the Metropolitan Theatre, Boston.
He was for some time musical director and then general manager of a concern producing animated cartoons for the movies. He directed the musical synchronization of many of the shorts.
He was taken ill last Saturday while making recordings with his orchestra, which has been participating in a National Broadcasting Company program every Sunday night. In the past he had conducted for many other NBC programs. He insisted on continuing the recording although he had been stricken with a severe chill. Saturday night he was taken to the hospital.
A widow [Henrietta], a son [Raymond] and a daughter, Jean, survive. The family lived in Rye, N. Y. Funeral services will be held be held tomorrow morning at Larchmont.

On January 15, 1935, the Times revealed he “left an estate appraised at $94,210 gross and $58,603 net.”

Some other bits and pieces:

● Rodemich played at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904, earning the title of “Ragtime Paderewski,” then begun touring. In 1909, he played the piano on President Howard Taft’s tour boat along the Mississippi. He then got the gig, mentioned above, playing for Janis.

● Rodemich’s marriage to Henrietta Pauk in 1915 was not without some controversy. A Chicago Tribune headline reads:

ST. LOUIS HEIRESS ELOPES WITH A DIVORCED PIANIST.

The story goes into how her family tried to prevent a wedding for months, even by taking the girl to California.

● Rodemich registered for military service on June 5, 1917 (he had a wife and two children then) and ended up overseas in World War One playing for the French soldiers near the front lines. When he returned, he formed a 22-piece orchestra and signed a contract with Brunswick Records in 1919. His first session in Chicago in October that year included a recording of “Margie,” which is familiar to any fan of Tom and Jerry’s “Piano Tooners.” Among the singers the band backed during the ‘20s was Al Jolson. Rodemich’s jazz congregation played at the Hotel Statler in St. Louis, and was doing a midnight remote broadcast from there on KSD in 1923. His orchestra capped the inaugural broadcast of KMOX on December 24, 1925. You could call Rodemich a jazz pioneer; an early example of scat singing can be found on a 1924 Brunswick recording of “Scissor Grinder Joe.”

● He headed to Boston in 1926 and by 1929, he can be found in New York on the radio. He appeared in a 15-minute show on the NBC Red Network, and then moved to the Armstrong Quaker Girl Show, a half-hour broadcast for Armstrong Quaker Rugs and Linoleum on the NBC Blue. By the end of the year, he was on the Red Network again, according to this listing for December 17th:

Five numbers by Richard Rodgers, selected from as many musical comedies and reflecting the high spots of this young American composer's career, will be featured by the orchestra under the direction of Gene Rodemich during “the Prophylactic Program” to be heard at 7:30 o’clock.

He did another 15-minuter in 1932 for NBC Blue called “Hollywood Nights” before landing the Manhattan Merry-Go-Round job.

● The Film Daily of January 13, 1929 reports Rodemich had begun a career a week earlier as an emcee at the Paramount Theatre in New York. The trade paper wasn’t impressed. It decided Rodemich “did nothing but introduce the acts in a routine way, and lead the stage harmonizers.” But in the January 20th edition, the tune had changed. “Gene has an easy style that fits in well with the various acts as he introduces them, and when it comes to leading the stage harmonizers, he is also there,” said the anonymous critic. He got involved in the comedian’s act as well. The Brooklyn Eagle of February 13, 1928 noted he was fronting the Paramount Theatre’s orchestra; whether it was a different Paramount in Brooklyn, I don’t know.

● The Van Beuren studio seems to have hired Rodemich toward the start of 1930, though he was given screen credit for a Grantland Rice ‘Sportlight’ short released in October 1929 by Pathe, which also released Van Beuren shorts. Josiah Zuro, General Music Director of Sound Studios, Inc., provided scores for 12 cartoons in 1929 (according to The Animated Film Encyclopedia by Graham Webb) then was transferred by Pathe to Hollywood. By September 1929, The Film Daily reported Carl Edouarde was the studio’s music director; he worked on cartoons ending with “Singing Saps” in February 1930. Rodemich’s name appears on a title card in Van Beuren’s next cartoon, “Sky Skippers,” released the same month. The book Hollywood on the Hudson by Richard Koszarski says Rodemich took over after the fire at the Pathe studio on December 10, 1929 but doesn’t say if it was immediately after, or because of, the fire. Edouarde, incidentally, miraculously escaped the fatal inferno.

● Rodemich didn’t just work on cartoons at Van Beuren. He added soundtracks to 12 silent Charlie Chaplin shorts in 1932 and supplied music to the studio’s Frank Buck feature “Bring ‘Em Back Alive” the same year. Film Daily mentions in its edition of March 22, 1933 that Rodemich was managing the cartoon department.

● Daniel Goldmark’s The Cartoon Music Book relates this (page 162):

As Sharples's son, Winston, Jr., recalls, Sharples went into film writing through a series of coincidences: not long after the death of Gene Rodemich, Walter Winchell coincidentally ran an item in his column praising the [Vincent] Lopez band and Sharples in particular. Amadee Van Buren [sic] read the notice, decided this was the man he wanted, and anointed Sharples the main music man at the Van Buren organization until its demise in 1937.

This wasn’t quite the case. Sharples was already at Van Beuren when Rodemich was in charge of the studio. The Film Daily reported in December 1933 that Rodemich was gone; RKO executives had a month earlier broached the idea of finding someone they thought could run the cartoon department better. Incidentally, Goldmark reveals Sharples was Lopez' arranger, as well as piano player.

You can head to Archive.org and listen to music of the Gene Rodemich Orchestra (warning: some of it has digital fuzziness that makes it sound like it’s under water). Or you can head to Box.net and listen to these melodies:

HOME AGAIN BLUES 1921
MY PAPA DOESN’T TWO TIME NO MORE 1924
THE MOBILE BLUES 1924

Disney Drunken Dwarves

Pointless dancing, objects-as-instruments and lots of rubber hose animation. That’s why the early Silly Symphonys are lots of fun. Oh, and drunken dwarves.



This is a great drawing from “The Merry Dwarfs” (1929).

Yeah, I understand why Walt Disney evolved away from the rubber hose style and gave us the beautifully animated dwarves of “Snow White” a few years down the road. But the work of Ub Iwerks and his Disney confrères (Johnny Cannon and Les Clark perhaps?) is still a treat to watch.

Molly Flips

The Van Beuren cartoon studio lay in obscurity until Leonard Maltin wrote “Of Mice and Magic.” It really deserves to be the subject of a book, especially now that Steve Stanchfield has beautifully restored a number of the Van Beuren cartoons so people can get a good look at them.

The cartoon division—Van Beuren made live-action shorts for RKO as well—went through several distinct eras, starting in the silent period and ending when Burt Gillett was hired to duplicate his success (which can be charitably described as one—“The Three Little Pigs”) with the Silly Symphonies at Disney. He didn’t quite get there. He duplicated Disney, all right. He came up with animal characters that twisted and turned and emoted like silent film stars but weren’t really funny.

Molly Moo-Cow was one of them. She appeared in four cartoons released almost in a bunch before and after the start of 1936. In “Molly Moo-Cow and the Butterflies” (1935), our heroine terpsichores her way through a meadow. She leaps and turns over in mid-air. Here are some of the drawings.



The animation’s good, but there’s no point to it. Gillett and co-director Tom Palmer have it in the cartoon because they want to show the world they have an animator who can make a character frolic in nature just like those guys on Hyperion Street. You can hear the collective yawn from the audience. That isn’t why they watch cartoons.

The pixilated, public domain video of this cartoon (as opposed to the fine restorations Steve has done on the earlier Van Beuren black and whites) doesn’t show off the impressive Technicolor of the cartoon which, in 1935, probably still passed for entertainment itself.

None of the artists are credited, but Van Beuren had fine people like Carlo Vinci, Jack Zander and Dan Gordon animating at the time. By mid-1936, they were gone. There was no more Van Beuren studio. RKO got real Silly Symphonys instead.

Ignorant Comedy

Puns can be handled two ways—either in dead earnestness, as if the teller truly thinks they’re funny, or with tongue-glued-in-cheek that the listener can’t help but laugh at the idea anyone would try to get away with foisting tired old corn on them.

The latter can apply to old vaudeville acts, animated cartoons and a quiz show that appeared on both radio and TV. It was called “It Pays to Be Ignorant,” and threw out questions and answers like this—

“How can you tell a Jersey cow?”
“By its license plate.”

“It Pays to Be Ignorant” was welcome relief to some who were bored by the languid stuffiness of the venerable “Information Please” where pretentious questions were asked of highbrow panelists. “Ignorant” parodied intellectual quizzes by being the least intellectual programme on radio, where a question like “Who wrote Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony?” would bring about a barrage of groaners from the brain-dead panel on writing, Beethoven, the number nine, phonies and anything remotely connected with them. Much like a Tex Avery cartoon at MGM, the jokes came so fast you didn’t have time to think about them before the next one slapped you.

The show was created by Tom Howard’s daughter Ruth and her husband when she worked in local radio in New Haven, Conn. She took it to her dad, who reworked it and shopped it around. Finally the Mutual station in New York, WOR, debuted “Ignorant” on June 25, 1942 and it ended its radio life on NBC on September 26, 1951, making stops on TV in 1949 and 1951.

The proceedings weren’t too silly for venerable Herald Tribune syndicate columnist John Crosby. He would have panned the show if he thought it was trying to be seriously funny. It took him about six years to review it. Here’s his column from about November 4, 1948.

Radio In Review
By JOHN CROSBY
The Corn Is Green
IN A medium where corn, as the word is understood in show business, has become a respected and lucrative though non-agricultural industry, “It Pays to Be Ignorant” deserves, and in my case, achieves a great measure of respect simply because the program harvests more per acre than any other.
For the benefit of those —as they say on the radio—who tuned in late, “It Pays to Be Ignorant” is a veteran program both in respect to its age as a show and to the ripeness of its participants.
It is a parody on all quiz programs; its moderator, Tom Howard, and its three experts—Harry McNaughton, Lulu McConnell and George Shelton—are cheerfully ignorant of all rational information but appear to have forgotten nothing ever written by Joe Miller.
AS REGARDS the jokes, no program on the air is more shameless. They tell jokes on this program that would cause even Joe Miller some embarrassment; they tell these ancient wheezes in a self-confident, unceasing roar that ranges from Tom Howard's fog horn tenor through McNaughton’s bleating mockery of an English accent to Lulu McDonnell’s gravel-voiced screech.
The technique is simple. Howard howls a question at his experts, a really difficult question such as: “In what country is the Bank of England?”
Pandemonium then breaks out. No one ever gets around to answering the question but, for the next three minutes, the air is blue with every joke about banks, about money, about England—each worse than the last one but each exploded at you with such idiotic good humor, with such speed and above all with such mastery of timing and inflection that you haven’t time to examine the joke’s antecedents.
“IN WHAT COUNTRY is the Bank of England?” howls Tom Howard. “Mr. McNaughton, there’s a question you ought to know.”
“Yes, indeed,” squeals that raffish Englishman, McNaughton.
“You mean you know it?”
“No, I mean I ought to.”
“Where is the Bank of England?” repeats Howard, louder than the first time.
“Don’t tell me you’ve lost the Bank of England already!” bellows Shelton.
“HE’S JUST misplaced it,” shrieks McNaughton.
Miss McConnell at this point interposes her voice, which fortunately is inimitable: “I keep my money in a mattress.”
“Why do you keep your money in a mattress?”
“So I have something to fall back on.”
“Miss McConnell,” roars Howard, “you already have something to fall back on.”
“My wife keeps her money in a silk stocking,” screams McNaughton. “It’s a joint account.”
“Let’s get back to the question,” screams Howard. “Where is the . . . ”
“I WISH I HAD enough money to buy an elephant,” whispers Shelton, rattling the chandeliers.
“Why do you want to buy an elephant?”
“I don’t. I just wish I had that much money.”
“I don’t need money,” howls somebody. “I got rich relatives.”
“You got rich relatives?”
“I got a cousin in Arizona who’s worth $10,000.”
“You got a cousin worth $10,000?”
“Well, that’s what the sheriff is offering for him.”
THESE TERRIBLE and wonderful gags hurtle out of your microphone at a speed considerably greater than sound is accustomed to travel; the teamwork of the four veteran comics is extraordinarily good, each one playing straight man when the occasion requires, and, even making generous allowance for my personal idiosyncrasies, I’m forced to conclude they are very funny people.

Let’s see if you can hear the pun-fest. Click on the arrow below and you should hear a show broadcast on the Armed Forces Radio Service on October 5, 1945. The AFRS took network shows, edited out the commercials and dated references, then recorded the edited version onto transcription discs that were sent to military radio stations.

Shear Terror

Isn’t it fun when one cartoon character wants to chop off the head of another with garden shears? Sure, it’s laughs-o-plenty. When it’s accompanied by good animation.

That’s the situation that greets viewers of the Tom and Jerry cartoon “Fine Feathered Friend” (1942). Tom chases Jerry into a barn. Tom’s pleased.



But he can’t stop in time when Jerry decides to bring down the shears. Great pose.



Tom pulls his head back in time.



Jerry slips dues to the force and falls on his butt. He jumps up, turns 180 degrees in mid-air and then runs out of the scene.



Tom picks up the shears and resumes the chase.



You can see Tom actually slices Jerry. But the shears must be dull or made of rubber because the mouse slips through them every time.



We’re still into the early Tom and Jerry years, so the animators credited on screen are Ken Muse, Pete Burness, George Gordon and Jack Zander. Mark Kausler reveals in the comments who did what scenes.

Not the Flintstones

Forgotten on lists of Stone Age cartoons made before the invention of “The Flintstones” at Hanna-Barbera in 1960 is the Bob McKimson short “Wild, Wild World,” released earler in the year. It’s another one of Tedd Pierce’s painful TV parodies where turning the name “Dave Garroway” into “Cave Darroway” is considered funny. Ouch. The olive in Tedd’s martini must have gone down the wrong way that day.

This was the second time McKimson and Pierce got together to foist on us the plot of a lost reel of film from the caveman era being discovered. The first was in the extremely unfunny “Pre-Hysterical Hare” (1958). At least this cartoon has the benefit of a nice score by Milt Franklyn featuring a couple of tunes by Raymond Scott. Layout man Bob Gribbroek and background artist Bill Butler got together on this one (Dick Thomas had left for Hanna-Barbera by this time). Here are some of the character designs.



The stone skyscrapers are reminiscent of Tex Avery’s “The First Bad Man” at MGM a few years earlier.



Cary Granite?! What about Stoney Curtis? (“Cary Granite” is such an obvious pun, I suspect it’s a coincidence it was later used in “The Flintstones.”)

McKimson’s credited animators in this one are Warren Batchelder, George Grandpré, Ted Bonnicksen and Tom Ray.

Before She Was Dennis Day's Mother

She was the mother who cared so much for her son, she’d turn to his employer and bellow “Ah, shaddup!”

Verna Felton was perfectly cast as Dennis Day’s mother on “The Jack Benny Show.” So perfect, more than 20 years later she was hired to play the same kind of battle-axe mother on TV, haranguing and berating Fred Flintstone for being such a crummy husband for her daughter, Wilma.

Day was virtually a radio rookie when he made his debut on the Benny show on October 8, 1939. Benny’s show was a top-rated coast-to-coast affair, not some local music show like the kind Day had periodically appeared on in New York City. So Benny let Day grow into his role by hiring someone with experience to, basically, do the talking for him for a number of shows. Benny hired Verna Felton, who had already appeared on his programme in a variety of roles, including the mothers of orchestra leader Phil Harris and announcer Don Wilson.

Felton was a true veteran. But she wasn’t a vaudevillian like Benny. She honed her craft on the legitimate stage, travelling from town to town. She was getting top billing in San Francisco in 1900, when she was barely 10 years old. At age 13, she was billed as a “dainty” actress, a word that would never be used to describe Dennis Day’s longshoreman-like mother.

Although Mary Livingstone spent part of her childhood in Vancouver’s West End, Felton was the Benny cast member with a big Canadian connection. Her family lived for a time in both Vancouver and Victoria. Her older brother, actor George Clayton Felton, was married in Victoria in 1914 and settled in Ladysmith on Vancouver Island; Verna was a guest of the town in 1958 during the British Columbia Centennial celebrations and showed off her collection of 150 hats.

Here’s a story from the Vancouver Sun of August 2, 1952 about Felton’s early show business career, the one few fans of the Benny show probably know about.

Verna Felton Is Still Tops
Veteran B.C. actress rates high in movies, radio, TV
By BOB WILLETT
VETERAN actress Verna Felton, an American who credits Canada with her continued success in movies, radio and television, lived in British Columbia for twenty years. During that time she toured from Victoria to Toronto annually. She knows more about Canada than about her native California.
“I spent a third of my life as a Canadian entertainer,” she relates. “Met my husband in the Dominion and gave birth to my boy in Vancouver. I’ve been drawing on my Canadian experiences ever since.”
Miss Felton is best known as the domineering mother of Dennis Day on his radio and television programs. In the twelve years she has been mothering the singer on the air, she has received hundreds of letters from fans offering advice on how to raise a son. Whether or not, she took any of it, she has been successful as the real-life mother of Lee Millar, Jr., who is active in television production.
Since the death of her husband a few years ago, Verna has lived with Lee and his wife, a cat named Veronica and four cocker spaniels known as Mike, Tracy, Hildegarde and Gus Gus. The last-named canine is called after a mouse created by Walt Disney, for whom his mistress has worked for several years. She has been the voice of such delightful Disney characters as a mother bunny in “Bambi,” an elephant in “Dumbo” and the fairy godmother of “Cinderella.”
Versatile Verna has been a regular on radio since 1932 and is one of the highest-paid performers in the business. Apart from acting with Dennis Day, she has portrayed the grandmother of “mean widdle kid,” Red Skelton. The comedian, who once kiddingly suggested that they team for vaudeville as Felton and Skelton, still calls her Grandma.
She is also known as old-time movie star, Patsy Pierce, on the Judy Canova radio show and her appearances with comedian Eddie Cantor on television. Her screen credits include important parts in such pictures as “Gunfire,” “The Fuller Brush Man” and “Buccaneer’s Girl.”
Born in Salinas, California, Verna began her career as Little Lord Fauntleroy, touring with the old Jessie Shirley stock company with her mother, Clara Allen. When she was 17, her father, Dr. J.W. Felton, organized a stock company in which her mother was featured and called it, The Allen Players. Soon after the group was formed, they journeyed to Vancouver to begin a Canadian tour of what they hoped might be of three or four months’ duration.
They were so popular they sold seats on their wardrobe trunks in an effort to accommodate crowds. Canada became their career and they travelled from B.C. to Ontario and back annually. In the twenties and thirties, they were on the road each season from August until the following spring. In between tours, they did summer stock at the Empress and Vancouver Theatres in Vancouver. The Feltons had a summer home in Ladysmith, but didn’t spend much time at it.
“We used to do a different drama every night for three weeks while we were on tour,” Verna recalls. “Our repertoire included 21 plays. We had no complete scripts, just our parts with cues. As a result, memorizing for television is easy for me.”
In 1928, the family troupe closed its trunks for the last time. Verna had married Lee Millar, an actor who had joined the company several years before, and they decided to try their luck on Broadway. In New York, Verna and Lee made a joint appearance in “Appearances,” after which he was hired as a director of Blesaco and Shubert productions. During the depression, when the stage went the way of everything else, they moved to California and, more or less in desperation, turned to radio. It proved a fortunate turn. Lee went to work for NBC in Hollywood and eventually arranged an audition for his wife.
“I’ll never forget it,” Verna avers. “After I read for a part in a broadcast of ‘Ramona,’ the producer pointed out that, while the program would be heard for many miles away, it was not necessary for me to try to reach the listeners without taking the transmitter into consideration. I had to overcome the habit I had acquired of projecting to the last row in the theatre. When I did, I was hired for a series of shows—at nine dollars per program.”
At home, in an England manor type house in North Hollywood, Verna minds her menagerie, cultivates camellias and knits. At radio and TV rehearsals and between scenes of movies, she is never without her knitting.
“It keeps me out of trouble,” she says. “When I was a teenager, an older actress once asked me what I did with my spare time around the theatre. When I admitted that I did nothing, she advised me to get a hobby that would keep my hands busy.
“All the years since, whenever I’ve wished to avoid seeing or hearing something going on around me, I’ve just put my head down and purled like mad.”
Verna still corresponds with friends in British Columbia and gets a special kick out of fan mail from Canada, particularly when someone remembers seeing her on stage.
“A letter postmarked Saskatoon, Sask., brought back memories of my most embarrassing moment,” she told me. “I was doing the death scene in ‘Camille’ at a theatre there and the curtain went down ahead of schedule, then right back up. It was one of those roll-up affairs and, when it went up, it took the wig and veil of the actress bending over me. That was the only time I ever died laughing!”

There were many mothers on network radio in the ‘40s: Harriet Nelson, Blondie Bumstead, Peg Riley, Janet Archer (Corliss’ mom), all gentle, intelligent women with loving and occasionally-firm advice for their youngsters. And then there was Lucretia Day, the boisterous former Golden Gloves boxer who verbally fought Jack Benny on the air and usually won, the mother who loved her son Dennis so much she moved away on several occasions without telling him. We can do no better than to wish her a Happy Mother’s Day. The wonderful actress who played her passed away in 1966, but Verna Felton’s best-known character lives on in the minds of old-time radio fans.