The Helpful Help

One of the fun things in silent cartoons is when characters, Felix the Cat especially, took question or exclamation marks, or words, and turned them into something else that furthered the plot.

Here’s a great example from the Oswald cartoon “Oh, Teacher” (1927). Oswald’s girl-friend has landed in the lake. She yells “HELP” and her words form the word. The word travels in the air to Oswald, the “p” kicks him in the butt, the “h” points to where his girl is, then Oswald pulls down all the letters and rides the word like a horse. Pretty clever, even today.



As usual, Walt Disney was the only one to receive screen credit and he didn’t draw a thing. However, Mark Kausler reports that Friz Freleng worked on this scene. Thanks to Devon Baxter for the note.

Questions about Book Revue

Bob Clampett’s “Book Revue” screams along at such a pace that you don’t have time to ask yourself questions. Such as:



Who are these people? Yes, that’s Daffy Duck as a quasi Danny Kaye and Little Red Riding Hood. But who’s the second Daffy with the witch hat in the background? The other two background characters kind of appeared in the short. There’s the Durante caricature, but now he has hair. And there’s one of the Frankie-loving bobby-soxers, except now she has breasts.



And what are those little things that are dancing around Daffy and Red? Where did they come from? And why is there a cut in the visuals (but not in the soundtrack) and they’re suddenly gone? Well, I guess we’ll never know. But the cartoon is a lot of fun. Animators who got credits are Bob McKimson, Rod Scribner, Manny Gould and Scribner’s ex-assistant, Bill Melendez.

The Non-Menace Dennis

Jack Benny’s show started out as a musical-variety one and when it finally went off the air 23 years later in 1955, about the only vestige of variety was Dennis Day’s solo—and Day wasn’t appearing on every show at that point. The enjoyable band numbers were eliminated and even the sketches disappeared for long periods of time as the show evolved into a sitcom about a radio star and his cast. That left only Day’s song to give a short pause in between acts and a break for the writers’ brains.

Day was a real find, having been hired after Kenny Baker deserted the show for $2,000 a week with Texaco (and then, apparently, soon complaining he only got four minutes of air time to sing). He had virtually no radio experience but grew into Baker’s role in the show, and then evolved it into much more because of his gifts for comedy. He eventually parlayed that into his own, and quite lesser, programme “A Day in the Life of Dennis Day” starting in 1947.

Here’s a syndicated newspaper piece from 1943. Robbin Coons worked at one time for the Associated Press; he penned a feature story on Day for the Radio-TV Mirror several years later. Day’s first broadcast with Benny was October 8, 1939. He lasted until April 23, 1944 before being inducted into the U.S. Navy the following day, then returned on March 17, 1946. The final Benny radio show was May 22, 1955 but Day continued with him through the television years.

Dennis Day Won Radio Fame All Because of an Appendectomy
By ROBBIN COONS
HOLLYWOOD, June 4 — Just for a change, I’m turning today to a fellow who isn't the type. His name is Dennis Day, and—he can correct me if I’m wrong—I think he’s an actor by mistake.
That's all right, anyway, because he’s a singer first and an actor only because—well, because he’s a singer. You’ve been hearing him on the air with Jack Benny for four years now, and seeing and hearing him in an occasional movie, like “Powers Girl” or the one he's doing now, “Sleepy Lagoon” with Judy Canova.
He says he has a lot of ham in his make-up, but it doesn’t show. He says that’s why, back in New York when his dad and mother didn’t want him to take up such a flighty business as singing, he decided he’d be a lawyer. He even went to law school, and might have finished if an appendectomy hadn’t broken up his course and turned him back to yodeling.
He says he has the ham. It doesn’t show because he looks, talks and acts so much like a good, clean, family youngster who somehow got mixed up with the show world and, much to his amazement, is part of it.
Dennis Day turned 26 the other day. The reason you keep on hearing him sing, instead of hopping to a bugle call, is his family. He’s one of six children, is sending two of them (already enlisted in naval reserve) through college, and is taking care of his aged and ailing parents. He doesn’t know how much longer his deferment will last—but he does know that, traveling some 25,000 miles about the country with the Benny show, appearing at three or four camp shows a week, and broadcasting from military bases, he has never had any wisecracks tossed at him by service men.
Dennis (real name Dennis McNulty) was introduced on the Benny show as a naive, breathless kid, the butt of many jokes. He still plays that character today, though he is in fact neither breathless nor naive. You might call it naive that he was, at one time, paying out 30 per cent of his earnings to three different agents, but that’s show business, and slicker, older guys than Dennis have found themselves similarly peddled wholesale.
* * *
Dennis started singing when he was a boy, the only one in his family, who had the gift. He sang in the glee club at Manhattan College, but it wasn’t until after appendicitis ended his law studies that he tried seriously to make a living with his songs. When Kenny Baker left Benny, Dennis tried for the spot — and nearly passed out when Benny, in person, came to hear him. Benny gave him a round-trip ticket to California to further auditions, and that was four years ago. He still calls Jack “Mr. Benny.”
If Dennis Day were “the type,” he’d be parading his talents in front of the boss constantly. As it is, only recently Benny heard him tell a dialect joke—dialect having been a quiet specialty of his for years—and that’s why he’s doing it on the air now.

The Cat and Mouse of Bill and Joe

The complaint’s been raised that for many years people only thought of Walt Disney when they thought of animation. It’s entirely logical. Besides the fine animation, Disney’s features of the ‘40s all had some kind of gimmick that was exploitable by the popular press. Meanwhile, the other studios punched out short after short, and shorts had long become the stepchild of the money industry. And, to be honest, after 14 years of Popeye cartoons, Popeye isn’t really a news story any more.

But there were exceptions. Here’s a story from the Hollywood columnist for the North American Newspaper Alliance in 1950 about the cartoons which grabbed the attention of the Oscar people—MGM’s Tom and Jerry. And it’s one of what became a long line of stories portraying directors Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera as underdogs who overcame everything to rise to fame (in TV years, one of the things they overcame was MGM).

A few of the dates are wrong and, in the literal sense, Tom did drink and smoke. But certainly not in the context of being part of his character like in movie dramas, which is the contrast Hanna wanted to make.

The column also shows how things have changed. There’s no mention of violence that set off nanny groups in the ‘60s and ‘70s (members of which likely saw the cartoons as children) that resulted in the emasculation of all kinds of old cartoons for TV. And while letters from two young people are excerpted, there’s nothing to hint the cartoons were solely the province of children. There’s also an interesting comment about the maid character. Perhaps it’s what led to a brief, though indiscernible full shot on “Saturday Evening Puss” later in the year. This column appeared in papers starting around on January 20, 1950.

Tom and Jerry Provide Headaches
By HAROLD HEFFERNAN
HOLLYWOOD—Tom and Jerry, those ever-resourceful, indestructible cat and mouse heroes who’ve been feuding in MGM’s cartoons for the last nine years, are excruciatingly funny to millions of theatre-goers the world over—but they bring sleepless nights aplenty to the two young fellows who created them.
If you think human stars have a corner on problems pertaining to public approval, you’ve overlooked the technicolored Tom and Jerry. Their fan mail is delivered in bushel baskets.
One little girl, a cat owner, wrote that she resented Tom, the cat, being so mean to Jerry, the mouse. She received a prompt reply explaining that Tom and Jerry are the best of friends and that while they play jokes on one another it’s just to provide fun for the fans.
Another wrote that she was “going crazy” because the head of the Negro maid never was shown.
“You show her body but her head is always out of the picture,” she protested. “I’ve just got to know what she looks like.” This young lady received a special drawing of the maid.
“You now have the only portrait ever made of this fine character,” she was informed. “We don’t show her in the cartoons because we don’t want to detract from Tom and Jerry. Besides, it would add work which is something to which most cartoonists are not addicted.”
An instructor in a religious institute in Philadelphia wrote that Tom and Jerry pictures are “a welcome relief from all the depressing psychological dramas.”
Modest but still proud of their unparalleled achievement of winning five Oscars in the last six Academy competitions, Joseph Barbara and William Hanna, creators of Tom and Jerry, are an unusual pair.
Joe is a handsome boy from Brooklyn. Tall, with curly black hair and dark eyes, he is good looking enough to be over on Stage 16 appearing opposite Judy Garland, instead of working at a drawing board. Joe is the city-type boy and he spends his idle time in New York.
Bill Hanna, also good looking, is a leisurely guy who wears glasses, speaks slowly, usually with a grin, and refuses to be hurried. He’s a native Californian and escapes to the desert or mountains whenever he gets the chance.
Joe and Bill share a large but non-fancy office in an upper floor of the two-story building which houses the 80 workers who turn out 16 cartoons a year, nine of them starring Tom and Jerry.
Joe’s and Bill’s flat top desks are shoved together. After discussing a new adventure for their heroes, Joe makes rough sketches of the action involved and tosses them across to Bill. When they have agreed on the final action, Joe makes detailed sketches of the characters and the action. Bill then starts these on a human production line that refines them to the final step, photography.
It was back in 1940 that MGM, unable to find suitable characters for a new cartoon series, brought Barbera from New York, teamed him with Hanna, and waited for results.
“We took two cartoon characters so old that they had been discarded by everyone else,” said Barbera, “a cat and a mouse. However, our first picture clicked, and we’ve been turning them out ever since, about 70 altogether, so far.”
“Something that probably doesn’t occur to the average theatre-goer,” said Hanna, “is we adhere strictly to the producers’ screen moral code. Tom and Jerry neither drink, smoke nor swear. Tom never even gets close to a girl cat. There are no suggestive movements.
“The only time there was even a hint of romance was in ‘Spring Fever’ [“Springtime for Thomas”] in which Tom serenaded a lady cat—from a safe distance—with a bull fiddle. In another picture he imitated Charles Boyer’s voice in talking with a lady cat. Some thought this was going too far, but we took the chance and nobody complained.”
Neither of the originators of Tom and Jerry started out in life as an artist. Bill Hanna majored in engineering at Southern California, but when he left the university halls to discover a world overflowing with engineers, he got a job in a studio cartoon department as a janitor. He has performed every task connected with screen cartoons.
Joe Barbera had a job in Wall Street. He survived the depression, but in 1934 the brokerage firm for which he worked dejobbed the unmarried men and Joe was on the street. Joe began submitting cartoons to Collier’s, the Satevpost, and other magazines, and then joined the Terrytoon company. In 1934 MGM brought half a dozen men west, Joe among them.
Barbera and Hanna probably play to a larger audience than any other producers. About 64 Tom and Jerry cartoons are always in circulation, and, since 280 prints are made of each cartoon, about 18,000 separate T. and J. cartoons are running constantly someplace or other around the globe.
Like most studios, MGM is coy about quoting figures, but says each cartoon cost about $30,000. Thirteen Tom and Jerry adventures are currently in production. It takes from a year to 15 months to complete one.
Each of the seven-minute subjects incorporates from 18,000 to 25,000 drawings and utilises as many of seventy-five backgrounds, or settings—more than were used in "Gone With the Wind."
Tom and Jerry have a big advantage over most of their rival cartoon characters. They rarely talk. Their language and pantomine is universal, so there is no dubbing of foreign languages for release abroad.
At the moment, Joe Barbara and Bill Hanna have their fingers crossed trying not to think about the fact that Tom and Jerry, with their starring film, "Hatch Up Your Troubles," are seeking their sixth Academy victory.
"We do all the worrying," grinned Joe. "Tom and Jerry have all the best of it. They don't fuss about a thing—they just dive into the ink bottle and take a nice relaxing swim until they're ready for another adventure."

Interestingly, there’s one name the story doesn’t mention: Fred Quimby, who acted as MGM’s overseer of its cartoon studio—and picked up the statues come Oscar time. No doubt his absence in the column was welcome to Hanna and Barbera as proof they were the brains behind the award-winning cartoons, something they liked to make clear in interviews to come.

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.