Not Quite A Pussywillow

Some people write off Tex Avery’s “The Cat That Hated People” (1948) as a “Porky in Wackyland” (1938) wanna-be because it has strange creatures that are, somehow, logically together but take it to an illogical extreme. All I know is I like both cartoons. And Tex tosses in a grass-is-always-greener message at the end where Bob Clampett’s Wackyland goes for a, well, wacky ending (similar in humour to what Avery later used in 1948’s “Half-Pint Pygmy”).

One scene has a shovel chasing a plant to put it in the ground. The shovel plants the titular cat instead. And the gag reaches its logical conclusion. The cat is watered, spouts from the ground, grows carnations, and is finally plucked from the ground and put in a vase.



Avery’s unit was in transition. Walt Clinton, Louie Schmitt, Bill Shull and Grant Simmons received animation credits. Schmitt made the model sheets.

Popeye Shakes the Diner

There’s a neat effect that the Fleischer studio came up with to enhance the force of the impact from Popeye’s spinach-fueled violence. Here’s a great example from “We Aim to Please” (1934) where Bluto gets punched out. Notice how the diner becomes bent and twisted in the background drawing. It’s as if the blows are warping the building.



Because the two drawings of the background alternate after only several frames, there’s a nice violent flashing effect. Very clever.

Willard Bowsky and Dave Tendlar get the animation credits in this one. The title song has always been a favourite of mine.

Krazy Kat and Ben Harrison

It’s been awhile since I posted box ads for Charlie Mintz’ Krazy Kat cartoons from The Film Daily. So here are a bunch more from 1928. Mintz hadn’t gone to sound yet; later ads pushed the fact they were sound cartoons.



Especially pleasing is the credit given to animators Manny Gould and Ben Harrison. Gould later went on to a fine career at Warner Bros. then into commercial films. Harrison just seems to have disappeared. The 1940 U.S. census finds Harrison without any occupation, living with wife Ruth (née Hildebrand) and daughter Myrna Jean in Los Angeles, while the 1942 City Directory lists his occupation as “cartoonist.” For whom, I don’t know. Trying to piece together information about him has been trying. In 1930, he was rooming in New York City with Gould and Jimmy Bronis, who was Mintz’ production manager; the studio moved that year to California. After trying to match census records, I can only conclude he was born in Portland, Maine on November 30, 1896, the fifth child of Louis and Minnie (Berman) Harrison. His parents arrived from Russia (either from Poland or today’s Belarus) in 1884 so I suspect “Harrison” wasn’t the family name. His father was a peddler in Maine, but became an instructor of languages when the family was living in Worcester, Mass. in 1900. A World War One draft card lists Harrison as a news dealer. He was in animation in New York by 1925.

Harrison and his young daughter were involved in a lawsuit that stemmed from a car accident, apparently in mid-1939, that took more than two years to wind its way through appeal court. The 7½ year old girl was run down while crossing the street. You can read the ruling HERE. The Daily News, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, of June 23, 1951 revealed the Harrisons were living on Long Island, New York; see Charlie Judkins’ note in the comments. When and where Harrison died, I haven’t been able to find.

You Can Marry Robert Q. Lewis

At first glance, the idea of Robert Q. Lewis advertising for a wife seems a little odd. Robert Q.’s reputation today is of a man who wasn’t all that interested in women, shall we say. But on closer observance, it’s evident Bob’s ad campaign was entirely satiric and he wasn’t interested in walking down the aisle at all. Bob was having a bit of fun with the stereotypical husband-wife relationship of the post-war years. “Fey wit,” as the New York Times described him in his obituary.

The wife-for-Lewis ads were developed after CBS tried yet again in 1949 to boost the former Bob Goldberg’s stardom, this time with a late Sunday afternoon radio show. The network couldn’t sell it, so Lewis and his writers cleverly filled the commercial time by advertising for a wife. Lewis took his wife-hunt to the pages of the Radio and Television Mirror in February 1949 in a self-penned article with a title that was borrowed from a show tune (it was a song in “Annie Get Your Gun”). The article will seem a little corny to today’s eyes but it shows you how unserious Robert Q. was in his quest for matrimony.

The Girl That I Marry
By ROBERT Q. LEWIS
WANTED . . . WIFE. By radio humourist just over draft age. Girl must be breathing, anywhere between ages of twenty and twenty-one. Should have poise, charm, ability, personality and oil well. If possible send picture of oil-well. Box Q.
THAT'S it! In a nutshell. . . . That's the ad I've been using on my commercial-less CBS program for the past couple of weeks.
Am I kidding? No . . . not really. Every day, people keep asking me why I'm still a bachelor. Actually, there's no good reason. I'd get married in a minute . . . only nobody's asked me. And frankly, I don't enjoy being a bachelor at all. I'm so dam helpless around the house. Especially when I iron my own shirts. I never seem to know when to turn the iron off. And while we're on that subject . . . does anybody know anybody who'd like to buy some open-toed shirts . . . cheap? I'm not much good at housecleaning either. I hate that darn dusting . . . and I look so silly with a red bandanna wrapped around my noggin. I'll never forget the day I really got ambitious. I scrubbed the floors, massaged the ceilings and washed the walls. And you know something? I discovered two rooms I never even knew I had! So I've given up thorough dusting ... I use the old rug system ... as a matter of fact, in the past six months I've swept so much dust under my carpet that I'm now listed at the Soviet Embassy as "Hill No. 137"!
A poor batch can get so weary! Like the other morning I read in the papers that "now is the time to clean out the refrigerator." It sounded logical, so I spent all morning doing just that. First the grapefruit, then the eggplant, then the milk, then the bologna, then the eggs, then the yogurt . . . honest, by the time I got through, I thought I'd burst. You need a wife to help you out with little things like that.
And gee ... if I had a wife, I wouldn't have to go through that awful business of shopping for my food. What prices! It's tough when you have to pay a dollar a pound for meat ... of course, I must admit that when you pay only forty cents a pound . . . it's even tougher! But meats aren't the only things that are high. Like the other day. . . . My bill from the fruit store had an extra charge of ten cents. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what it was for! Then I remembered that on my way out of the store I'd stepped on a grape. Honest.
And some of those clerks ask the dopiest questions. Take my butcher (and believe me, he's yours with my blessing). I asked him for a small chicken. . . .
"Tell me, Mr. Lewis," he asked, "do you wanna pullet?"
"Of course not," I told him, "I'll carry it."
Oh . . . and what I wouldn't give for a wife who could cook a delicious meal.
Not that I can't do a little cooking myself. The other evening I tried some eclairs. I have never seen eclairs so light. It was sensational. My secret is filling them with helium instead of whipped cream. Of course, I still haven't tasted my light eclairs. I can't get them down from the ceiling.
Lately, I've also been trying my hand at dinner dishes. I had my uncle over for dinner and decided to try a Welsh rarebit. I'll never forget what he said when he ate it. He said, "This is the best Welsh rarebit I've ever eaten!" Those were his last words.
It's not that I haven't tried to get a girl to marry me. I have. I think of wonderful things to say to a girl . . . and when I start, she giggles!
Maybe I just don't appeal to girls.
Maybe . . . and this is the thought that kills . . . maybe they're mad at me for conducting a radio show that doesn't give anything away. You see, I have no refrigerators, no washing machines, no B-29s. Not even a little six-week jaunt to Pago-Pago. All CBS allows me to offer is what we hope is entertainment. It's so embarrassing!
Yes, that may have something to do with it. I feel awful about the pretty girls who come to a broadcast, and all the girls tuned in. I feel as though I’m cheating them, being cruel and inhuman. The thing that hurts most is when I have to notify my studio audience just before a broadcast to go out to the street and dismiss those empty moving-vans they've got parked there. It hurts me!
THIS summer I really got a little desperate. So I decided to try my luck in Europe. I had a wonderful vacation in Paris and London. Paris was delightful. I saw all the sights . . . The Champs Elysees, The Folies Bergere, the Eiffel Tower, The Folies Bergere, the Arch of Triumph, The Folies Bergere . . . And then it happened. It was a lovely dimanche evening in Aout at about dix heures. (English translation: Sunday night in August at ten . . . I think.) Her name was Marie . . . and she was charmante! We had had a magnifique diner, followed by le cinéma. Walking along the Champs Elysées with the moon shining brightly on nous, I popped the question. ”Chérie, voulez-vous marier avec moi?” I'll never forget her ravissant reply. With a bright twinkle in her pretty yeux bleu she whispered: "What kinda jerk ya think I yam, ya shmo!" My conclusion: The only difference between French girls and American girls is . . . the Atlantic Ocean.
I haven't gotten many responses from the ad on my program. Ten percent of the replies I did get were from girls who were under-age . . . But the other ninety percent came from girls who were under observation.
I don't know. Maybe I made the requirements a little too tough. I asked for charm, poise, ability and personality and an oil well. "That is a little demanding of me. So, just forget about the charm, poise, ability and personality. And, the oil well doesn't have to be brand new. All I want, girls ... is a gushing bride.

Bob went on to a fairly steady career on television on game and panel shows into the early ‘60s before packing up his little poodle and relocating to California and a late-night show on KFI radio. He never really made the transition to colour TV; his career was mainly in the black-and-white era. I enjoyed watching him and it’s a shame he’s not better remembered today. Robert Q. Lewis died in 1991. He never did find a wife.

The Circles of Abou Ben Boogie

Emasculation meets stylisation in Shamus Culhane’s “Abou Ben Boogie,” one of his fine musical cartoons for the Walter Lantz studio. It’s his version (through writers Bugs Hardaway and Milt Schaffer) of Tex Avery’s wolf-reacts-to-sexy-girl shorts.

In one scene, harem girl Miss X arouses two sultanic types that they both want to kiss her. Instead, she bashes their heads together so they kiss each other.



What follows is a stylised representation of the wooziness of the violent impact. Culhane’s animation comes up with circles and other geometric shape, some of which are used several times. Solid colour cards are inserted for a frame to add a “flash of light” effect to emphasize the impact; it’s something Culhane did in other Lantz cartoons.



We’ll leave it to Freudians to analyse the sexual symbolism here.



Pat Matthews and Paul Smith receive the animation credits; Art Heinemann came up with the layouts.

QTTV and the Irvin Jay Story

There are a couple of inside jokes at play in the Bob McKimson cartoon “Video Wabbit,” which opens with Bugs Bunny reading an ad looking for a rabbit to appear on TV.



You’ll notice the address of the TV station is 1351 North Van Ness. That was the address of the Warners cartoon studio. But by the time this cartoon was released in 1956, Warners had moved its studio to Burbank. Warners turned the old Van Ness building into—a TV station. But the station was KTLA. QTTV was a smirking reference to KTTV, the Los Angeles Times’ station which had brought Angelenos the fine programming of the DuMont Network.

Here’s Bob Thomas’ rendering of the QTTV building which bore no resemblance to the old Warners cartoon studio on Van Ness. Layout by Bob Gribbroek.



Incidentally, this is one of the two cartoons where Irvin Jay filled in for Treg Brown as the sound cutter. Irvin Frederick Jay (Sr.) was getting close to 50 when he worked on this short. He was born September 27, 1908 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, the third child of William Harrison and Elizabeth S. (Weber) Jay. His father was a bookkeeper who later became treasurer of a bond company. Around 1915, the family moved to Miami. Jay’s aunt was acclaimed director Lois Weber and he moved in with her and his grandmother in Los Angeles, likely by 1927 when the Times reported he attended the opening of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Jay was employed in 1940 as a sound cutter as a motion picture studio (and making more money than his father at the time). Whether he was Brown’s assistant or had come over from the main Warners lot for a brief time to work on cartoons, I don’t know. He died in Los Angeles on April 29, 1981.

Dover Boy Harris

Plenty has been written about the significance of Chuck Jones’ cartoon “The Dover Boys” but animator Greg Duffell raised something on-line the other day I didn’t realise.

Bobe Cannon gets the sole animation credit on this cartoon, somewhat meaningless as all Warner cartoons only gave credit to one animator then. Cannon has a reputation during his time with the Jones unit as a smear animator, where there are two normal poses but the drawing in between them looks like a stretch of a character from one drawing to the next. There’s smear action all over the place in “The Dover Boys” but Duffell points out that Cannon wasn’t responsible for all of it.

I’ve posted some fine smear work by Ken Harris from “No Barking” here before. Greg explains that Ken’s smears are in the “Dover Boys,” too. He writes:

The sequence I'm thinking of Ken's in THE DOVER BOYS is when Dora Standpipe is counting at the tree, and Dan Backslide (Ken Harris caricature) rips up the whole tree, puts in the car, realizes his mistake, puts the tree back and extricates Dora straight into the car. Ken uses a combination of traditional animation, with the more radical blurring. It's quite impressive to watch frame-by-frame, and I've used it in as an example in my timing lecture. . . . [D]efinitely the take Dan does in the car is Ken's work, and everything else lines up to that standard. It's my impression that Ken is very carefully mixing the radical approach of Cannon's with a traditional sensibility.

Here’s the rubbery Backslide at the tree.



And here’s part of the scene of Backslide at the car. I like how he divides himself in two but the action’s so fast, you’d never notice.



Thad Komorowski has remarked that Cannon’s smears were wilder than Harris’. I suspect he means a drawing like this one.



Rudy Larriva was animating for Jones during this time but I’ve never read that he tried any of this kind of animation (until now; see the comments).

Marilyn and the Power of Television

If there’s any doubt that Jack Benny was a huge star in his day, it can be erased by the fact that he landed Marilyn Monroe for his TV show. True, she didn’t have the legendary status that came with her death, but she had become a movie star of the first realm by the time she appeared with Jack in 1953. But even more significantly, her appearance came in the days when movie studios were absolutely paranoid they would be killed by TV and forbade their stars from appearing on it. Jack Benny’s huge stardom and reputation as someone who makes his guest stars look good overcame that. And, in the process, 20th Century Fox likely learned there was free publicity for the studio in a Monroe guest shot (she was on screens at the time in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” and about to appear in “How To Marry a Millionaire”).

Monroe’s casting was perfection as far as the Benny TV/radio character was concerned. He considered himself a suave ladies’ man. Who better to appear opposite him than filmdom’s reigning sexpot?

The show was the season premiere and aired on September 13, 1953, live from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Fox wouldn’t allow her to be paid for appearing, so Benny sent her a black Cadillac convertible with a red interior. I suspect that’s slightly above union scale.

Radio-TV columnist John Crosby was a Benny fan and seems to have reviewed Jack’s show at least once a season. Here he is on the Monroe show, in a column that appeared in papers starting a week after the broadcast.

Radio and Television
By John Crosby
The Last TV First
It’s always a pleasure to welcome Jack Benny back. Naturally I was right there, waiting. I didn’t know Marilyn Monroe was going to be on Honest! I was just sitting there enjoying Mr. Benny and suddenly this blonde shows up. Quite a lot of blonde.
It may have been the best kept secret of the year. Oh, there were a couple of press releases and maybe a quarter page ad here and there but, in general, they kept her under wraps. Then just before she marched out in front of the cameras, they removed the wraps—most of them, anyhow.
This was a television first of some dimension. I remember way back when they first linked New York and Philadelphia. Then Chicago swam into view. Finally came Los Angeles, throwing open the Far West to Milton Berle. Gads, historic moments on TV we’ve all shared—Kefauver, Virginia Hill, J. Fred Muggs, Queen Elizabeth II, the bonfire at the Democratic National Convention, Arthur Godfrey in four colors, Truman playing Mozart.
AND NOW THAT WE’VE seen Marilyn, live and in the flesh—as much flesh as the law allows—I don't know what we’ve got to look forward to. This may be the last of all television firsts. It’s going to take an awful lot to surprise me from now on.
It would have been interesting to have been in on the story conference when the Benny crowd found out they had Marilyn Monroe on then hands. After all these years, I think I know how the mind of a gagwriter works and it's my guess that at least one of them, leaped in with the suggestion: “We’ll put the girl in a Mother Hubbard.” A gagwriter’s mind runs strongly toward the old Switcheroo and veiling the Monroe shape would have been about the biggest switcheroo of all time.
IF SUCH A SUGGESTION was made, it was overruled, conceivably by Miss Monroe. She came aboard in a white dress so tight-fitting that it must have taken all four of Benny’s gagwriters to hook her into it.
From there on she was pure Marilyn Monroe, a girl who has made a very good thing out of sex and isn’t going to be talked out of it by any gagwriters. She batted her sleepy eyelids at Benny, pawed him in a way that made me very nervous, spoke in that babyish, almost European whisper which she must have invented because it has no real reason for existing, and sang at him.
In short she behaved just exactly as you’d expect Marilyn Monroe to behave. You may think it odd for me to be so surprised about this, but I am. The trend is all the other way. The usual thing is to take Helen Traubel and make a clown of her. Or you take some big muscle man like Buddy Baer and make him mince around the stage with his hands on his hips. Or make Margaret Truman do bumps and grinds.
Never, never do you allow them to be themselves. In that regard, Miss Monroe’s appearance was a triumph. Or perhaps that’s the only way she can act.
THE JACK BENNY show — I knew Mr. Benny would get in here eventually if you’d just be patient — was not the funniest one I’d ever seen, possibly because our minds were elsewhere. But it was the usual smooth, relaxed, professional job. On radio, Benny relied heavily on his very expert stooges and sometimes almost vanished from the show entirely. On television, more and more, he’s doing most of the work himself with surprising ease.
If memory serves, he was on this show for the entire half hour, sometimes entirely alone. It was quite a tour de force. He’ll do a show every three weeks this year and there’ll be 12 more.

Toward the end of the show, after Monroe has said her goodbyes, Jack looks at the audience and begins a little dissertation about how much he loves radio. Without warning, strings play the sponsor’s theme “Be Happy, Go Lucky” and interrupt the clearly surprised Benny, who looks at his director, realises the show is over, then suddenly gets off the air. Radio, the formerly powerful medium that made Benny a star, is given short shrift. And it’s significant that Crosby has reviewed Jack’s television season premiere, not his radio one. By 1953, attitudes of film studios toward television were changing. Attitudes toward radio already had.