What Year is It?

Some people make up animation history. They come up with a conclusion and state it as “fact.”

A good example is the “fact” that animation backgrounds were redrawn at Warner Bros. to change dates on them (such as magazine covers in one short) so a cartoon wouldn’t look “old” to the audience. This odd claim has never been substantiated and, to be honest, I can’t picture anyone years ago sitting through a re-released cartoon in a theatre to either notice or care. To me, it’s just a weak gag, like when you see a wall calendar in a cartoon that reads “September 32nd.”



Here’s one such calendar in a long school house interior in Porky Pig’s painful debut “I Haven't Got a Hat,” released in 1935. There’s a calendar on the wall which, if you blow it up and look close enough, reads either “1943” or “1949.” This is from the original cartoon with original titles, not some Blue Ribbon re-release from the ‘40s. So it obviously wasn’t altered. It’s just the anonymous background artist doing something silly, just like the lame joke that the map shows the country of “Mehico.”

Incidentally, if you’re wondering about the book on the teacher’s desk, it’s entitled “History of Kansas.” The fine, but abandoned, web site Looney Tunes Hidden Gags goes into detail about how the backgrounds around this time featured inside jokes about Tubby Millar and his hometown of Portis, Kansas. I suspect this is another one of them.

Long Before He Said "Come On Down!"

Johnny Olson was (and still is) my favourite game show announcer and I always got a kick out of seeing him on camera. It happened rarely in the ‘60s and, usually, it was a quick, dark shot of him off-stage. When Goodson-Todman revived “The Price is Right” in the ‘70s, he started being placed in little showcase sketches which were the best part of the show.

Little did I know back then that Johnny had appeared on camera in the early days of television. He hosted a number of shows but, for reasons I still don’t quite understand, ended up announcing instead of hosting. And little did I know that Johnny had emceed several daytime shows in the latter days of network radio, some of them with his wife Penny. In fact, his radio career goes back to at least 1926, when he interviewed taciturn President Calvin Coolidge.

I stumbled onto this feature story about Johnny and Penny in the Radio and Television Mirror of November 1949. Johnny had a Saturday morning radio show at the time and was also on TV on the DuMont network (where his replacement on “To Tell the Truth,” Bill Wendell, was on the staff).

The Mirror was a magazine aimed at housewives, who were Johnny and Penny’s main audience. So it’s no surprise that the article talks an awful lot about cooking, keeping house and marriage—and this is from a woman who also had a career on radio at the time—with a bit of soap opera-style adversity thrown in. It sounds old-fashioned and hokey, but they were married 46 years until Olson died so it must have worked for them.

The story consistently spells their name “Olsen” with an “e.” So do some newspaper obituaries. But he spelled it with an “o” and that’s what’s on his grave.

The photos you see here accompanied the story.

Come and Visit Johnny Olsen
By Helen Bolstad
In Penny's voice, the enthusiasm and happiness bubbled like champagne when she telephoned her invitation. “Our new apartment is finished at last. Radio Mirror readers had a hand in it, you know. How about coming over to visit?”
The idea was fine. For all their success, Johnny and Penny Olsen remain the young couple next door. The New York locale doesn't count. Half an hour after you first meet them, you feel as though you were in the middle of a class reunion with your best friends.
As viewers and listeners long ago guessed, Johnny and Penny are home folks. Johnny, born in Windom, Minnesota, still reads the Cottonwood County Citizen each week. Instead of talking about celebrities at Sardi’s, he’ll convulse you with an account of how, when at a small station in Mitchell, South Dakota, and singing with Lawrence Welk’s band, he joined the musicians in turning mechanics, converted two cars into a bus, and started the trek toward big bookings.
Penny, whose roots strike equally deep into Wisconsin soil, can still name the top performer at WLBL, the Stevens Point station where she began singing at the age of six. She met Johnny at a country dance where he was an announcer at Milwaukee’s WTMJ. He wooed her by writing new words for his theme song each day, proposed on a boat during a Lake Michigan storm, and married her in Decorah, Iowa, the place his family first settled when they came to this country.
A visit to the Olsens is always delightful. The only problem was time.
Reminded of it. Penny pondered. “Oh yes, the schedule. The wonderful, thrilling, awful schedule. All we need is some hours.
“Let’s see . . . Rumpus Room goes on every morning, and so does Luncheon Club. Saturday is ABC’s for Johnny Olsen’s Get Together, and then there’s Prince Charming on Mutual, I mustn’t forget What’s My Name with Arlene Francis, and Fun for the Money, televised from Chicago. ...”
It sounded like the start of what television people call a “hassle,” for Johnny and Penny, these days, are probably the busiest couple on the air.
Penny found a solution. “Let’s make it like an old-fashioned progressive dinner where you move to a new location for each course. Just latch on and keep up until we can go home.”
It sounded hectic but fun. In the WABD dressing room, where Penny was firmly lipsticking a televisable mouth and Johnny slicking his smooth hair down just a little slicker, there was only time enough to ask, “How’s Lena, the good luck poodle?”
Forty-five minutes and a half-dozen quiz contestants later, in a taxi, Penny caught her breath to answer, “About Lena—I just clipped off all her hair, and she’s the funniest sight. I was walking her on Riverside Drive the other day when a boy stepped up to ask, ‘Lady, is that really a baby lion?’”
Lena’s position, officially, is that of mascot. Her arrival marked the end of a run of hard luck and sorrow which Radio Mirror readers, too, had a hand in breaking.
“You remember all the awful things which happened to us after our little dog died last winter,” says Penny. “That was the start, and a deluge followed, Johnny’s father passed away, and we were both terribly broken up. Then it was the apartment. That meant an awful lot to us, for it was the first real home we’d had in years. We sent for our antiques and started to settle down at last.”
Her face clouds at the recollection. “It never occurred to us, when we talked about it on the air, that we were inviting disaster. On a Rumpus Room broadcast, we announced it was finished. That same night, on another show, we got word it was on fire. We rushed home and found that we had been robbed, too—all we had left was the clothes on our backs.
“It hit doubly hard because I had to go to the hospital for an immediate operation. Next, Johnny’s best programs cancelled. We felt as though we had lost our last friend.
“We were feeling so low that John Gibbs, Johnny’s friend and agent, decided to take a hand,” Penny continues. “He brought us Lena, assuring us a new dog would change our luck.
“It was the strangest thing, but do you know she did? The very next day, Johnny got a new show. Then the Radio Mirror story ran—but let us show you, rather than tell you, what happened after that.”
When the taxi delivers you on Park Avenue, Lena, the animated good luck piece, makes herself heard before she is seen. Her happy yips start as soon as the elevator lands, and when the door opens, she hurls herself, ecstatic with joy, into Johnny’s arms.
Says Penny, “She’s the jumpingest dog. Sometimes I think she’s crossed with tomcat or jackrabbit.”
Although the Olsens look out on the towers of Manhattan, the interior of the apartment presents a rustic aspect. Johnny and Penny, forever homesick for the country, have created a sky-high version of a Midwest farmhouse.
Antiques furnish the spacious living room, and each one has a story. Stopping in front of the open-front maple dresser, Penny lifts a plate. “This china came from Johnny’s home, and the milk glass was my mother’s.”
“And Penny’s grandfather carved the settee in the hall,” Johnny volunteers.
“We’re sort of sentimental,” Penny confesses, "I guess we both like old- fashioned country things best of all.”
“We’re sentimental about our fans, too,” says Johnny. "Our families’ fire shower surprised us, but the second shower, from Radio Mirror readers, really knocked us for a loop. Come on. Penny, let’s get the things.”
They return, arms heaped high with hand towels, bath towels, dish towels and sheets. “I’ve never had such linen in my life,” Penny says. "I received some of the most gorgeous luncheon sets.”
Deeply serious for a moment, Johnny says, “Tell everyone how much we appreciated the gifts, will you? We’ll never forget what our friends did for us.”
Says Penny, “Much as I love every single present, I can't help feeling people shouldn't have done it. I know some of them had to sacrifice things they needed themselves in order to send these to us.”
"Well," says Johnny reflectively, “there’s joy in giving, as well as receiving. We’ve handed out over a million prizes, but I still get just as much kick out of it as the contestant, providing it's a fun prize—something which doesn’t amount to a great deal, but which the person will enjoy using.
“This may be a strange thing for a quiz master to say, but it turns me sick to have a contestant get within reaching distance of a whopping big award and then miss the question. When I see that shocked, dead look come over their faces, I realize that winning, to them, meant getting rid of the mortgage or paying for an operation. I know they’ll forever reproach themselves for missing the question.”
Penny, well aware of Johnny’s habit of carrying his listeners’ problems home with him, seeks to switch the conversation to a lighter vein. “I won a quiz prize once. In fact, because of it, I actually got on ABC before Johnny did.”
She goes on to tell how, when Johnny came to New York to apply for a job, she waited in the corridor until a man came by and asked if she would like to be on Ladies Be Seated.
Penny says, “I had never heard of a ‘regular’—a person who goes to every audience show—and I certainly didn’t know that their badge at that time was a red hat. Ed East, with a then-new show to run, thought it wise to choose a few persons who had seen a microphone before. He spotted the red hat I had on and invited me in.
“I answered my questions, and I’d won an ironing board before it dawned on me that would be pretty clumsy to tote home to Milwaukee if Johnny didn’t get his job. I also thought of how little cash we had. So I asked East if he would buy it back. He gave me the most disgusted look. He must have figured he had a real nut on his hands and it was worth anything to keep the peace. He gave me three dollars.”
The big clock booms three deep notes. Johnny looks up with a grin. “Coffee time?”v “Coffee time,” Penny agrees. Leading the expedition into the kitchen, she comments, “After ten years of learning Olsen's Norwegian habits, you’d never guess my ancestors were Irish.”
She sets the coffee to perk, then says, “It will take only a minute or two to get dinner started. We’re having Johnny’s favorite dish — Norwegian hamburger soup.”
“It’s really like a stew,” Johnny explains. “My mother, having ten children, used to cook it to make the meat stretch. We’d make a meal of it.”
Penny takes a fresh recipe card from her file box. “Let me tell Radio Mirror readers how to make it. Giving the recipe is one way to say thank you for the shower. Just follow these directions:”
Norwegian Hamburger Soup
Break an egg into a mixing bowl. Beat slightly, and to it add salt, pepper, a dash of sage, a chopped onion, and just a little garlic. Add the hamburger, mix thoroughly, shape into small balls, and roll the balls in flour. Melt fat in a dutch oven, and when it’s sizzling, drop in the hamburger balls to brown. Add some water, and let simmer for about three hours or more.
When the meat is cooked, add the vegetables—carrots, celery, potatoes, peas, green beans, cabbage and tomatoes. Simmer for an additional thirty minutes.
“Then add one more line,” Johnny instructs. “Deeelicious! Penny is my favorite cook.”
“And it’s just lucky I like it,” Penny continues, “for Johnny never wants to go out to eat. I suppose the only way we manage the schedule we do is because when we’re through, we come home, get into old clothes and really let our hair down and relax.
“Johnny has his record collection, and I’ve got my cooking for hobbies. The most fun I’ve had in a long while was when my niece came here on her honeymoon. I’d always wanted to cook a wedding dinner, so we put all the leaves in the table and called our friends and relatives. “I set the table with my best linen, and of course there were flowers. First of all, we started with cream of chicken soup, and after that, we had fried chicken, carrots and peas, potatoes and gravy, and green salad. For relishes, I had home made dill pickles, stuffed celery, and radishes. I baked Parker House rolls and served them with melting butter. For dessert, we had strawberry shortcake, followed by mints and coffee.”
“Just a simple little meal, tossed together after a day over a hot microphone,” says Johnny with a grin.
Penny matches his smile. “Savour the recollection, my lad, for you get store-bought cake with your coffee today. The housekeeping suffers when I fly out to Chicago to watch you televise Fun for the Money.”
“It’s worth it,” Johnny replies. “We’ve worked together so long that I’m lost without Penny. Even if she isn’t on the show, I need her in the audience. We are partners in everything we do. One is no good without the other.”
“How’s about a little partnership in setting the table?” Penny suggests.
“The hamburger balls are almost brown enough, Lena wants to be fed, the coffee’s ready, and everything seems to be happening at once.”
“Sure,” says Johnny, ambling into the yellow-walled dining room. He takes dishes from the china closet, then holds up a cup for inspection. The pattern is a scene which might have been drawn from Penny’s Wisconsin hills.
“See,” says Johnny, “we can’t get away from it, even in dishes. We may live in the biggest city on earth, but Penny and I like to think we’re still country kids.”

Dance Floor From The Dance Contest

Here’s another blurry-middle background from a Popeye cartoon, this time from “The Dance Contest” (1934). The blur helps simulate speed when a character is quickly panned across it. The effect works really well.



The great background artists at Fleischers back then were uncredited. A real shame.

Now You're Callin' the Jive, Jackson

Toots the cat is delighted, shocked and awed by the Zoot Cat knocking at her door. It’s really Tom in a home-made outfit. Here is one second (24 frames) of her reaction.



Ken Muse used the little overlapping upper lip (see first drawing) when he drew Mr. Jinks some years later at the Hanna-Barbera studio. Muse wasn’t exactly known for these exaggerated takes, though I can think of one he animated of Jinks in “Judo Jack” at Hanna-Barbera. Muse, of course, didn’t do all these drawings; he would have an assistant and an in-betweener. I don’t know who his assistant was.

Sara Berner plays the girl cat; Jerry Mann provides the male dialogue.

P.S.: I gather this is a "colour corrected" version of the cartoon but these colours are not correct.

Yermo For Jack

When you think of Las Vegas comics, you think of loud, brash guys like Buddy Hackett and Don Rickles or Rat Packers like Joey Bishop. You don’t think of someone like Jack Benny. But Jack played Vegas, and that was only after his wife Mary Livingston convinced him that if a sophisticated humourist like Noel Coward could be a smash in Sin City, so could he.

Syndicated Broadway columnist Earl Wilson caught Benny’s Vegas show in 1958 and couldn’t resist the idea of talking to TV’s best-known cheapskate about being in a city where people willingly throw their money away in hope of landing The Big Jackpot. And he also wrote a bit about Jack’s act, some of which was incorporated into sketches on his TV show. Fans didn’t care if they heard and saw it all before. They wanted to see it live. And that’s why Jack was a Vegas smash.

This column was published in papers beginning July 19, 1958.

On Broadway
Gaming Tables Won't Get Jack Benny's Bucks
By EARL WILSON
LAS VEGAS, July 19 - Jack Benny, on vacation here from television, gave me an exclusive explanation of his secret system of not losing at the dice table. (He doesn't play.)
Actually, he doesn't play much. He'd been sitting in the Flamingo coffee shop with George Burns about 5 p.m. when he yawned and George said, "What are you going to do? Take a nap?"
"I think I might go lose $20, he said.
And so one of the richest men in show business, in shorts and sports shirt, was seen leaning over a hot dice table a few minutes later, risking a few silver dollars—while next to him several nonentities with much lesser fortunes were betting $50 chips.
"I limit myself to $100 a day," Jack told me earlier. "And if the $100 is gone by noon, that's still my limit. If I didn't—being here a whole month—I could get killed."
In his Flamingo night club act—a big sellout—he tells it somewhat differently.
"We all get about the same salary here but I take mine home," he says. "Oh, I may risk a few dollars. But by that time, the house has bought me four cigars and six drinks, and I'm ahead. I may become an alcoholic but never a gambler."
Jack's fascinated by the high-rollers. We discussed a well-known figure who won $1,000,000 in a card game.
"That guy can't sit down to lunch without making a bet—such as how many seeds there are in his slice of watermelon," George Burns said. "Or whether the waitress will serve you or me first," Jack said, "Those guys know how to gamble. I don't."
Jack's playing it safe, too, by starring here in a cafe show. "I was such a big hit the first time they brought me right back only 11 months later," he says.
JACK WORKS with fellow fiddler Gisele MacKenzie—and has something fresh and novel for cafe crowds: The Jack Benny fan club from Yermo, Nev., a small town near here. The Jack Benny fan club turns out to be, Jack says, "dames all about 80 years old."
Actually, some are only 60.
"I tried to get them to work nude," Jack tells his audience.
When the fan club is invited up on stage, one fan titters "I haven't been so excited since I danced with President Buchanan."
They invite Jack to the convention of the Jack Benny fan clubs which, they say, is to be held in Minnesota.
"Why Minnesota?" asks Jack.
"Well we've tried other places,” one of the "girls" says, "but we seem to do better the nearer we are to the Mayo Clinic."
Jack also tells his audiences that he conducted a poll to find out whether people preferred his TV show live or on film.
"I was surprised," he says, "by how many didn't like me at all."
The truth is that Jack's looking forward to another big year on TV. "There's no way of changing my format because I have no format," he said.
He felt one of his best shows last year was his takeoff on Jackie Gleason and "The Honeymooners."
"I'd like to repeat that in New York!" he said. "And get Gleason to come on at the end. I'll have tell Gleason to stay fat so I can do it."
"Jackie's slim again," I said.
"That would be better!" he decided. He thought Audrey Meadows was great on that show.
If they want an exciting new star on Broadway, they should get Audrey Meadows," he said. I think she's sensational."
JACK'S WIFE Mary came over at this point to say she'd been on the phone all day. "Do you know what all those calls were for?" she said. "Reservations, what can I do about them, Jack?"
“You can't do a damn thing," Jack said. The room where he performs has a sign over it saying, "Jack Benny's Vault." The lettering is in pennies. The club even removed chairs from Jack's dressing room so more customers could be accommodated.
Jack asked me how I liked "The Music Man" and I told him about a man in it who drops a valise with a loud crash. When asked what he does, he says, "I'm an anvil salesman."
"Isn't that an old vaudeville bit?" I asked Jack and George Burns.
"I never saw it," both said.
"But I think it's very funny,” Jack said. "If it were given to me, I'd do it."
George Burns sucked his cigar. "I'm going to do it!" he announced. "Not only that, I'm going to wire them and tell them to take it out of the show because I originated it and it's mine."
Jack laughed for two minutes.
That's why they say he's the world's best audience and one of show business' nicest people.

Just a note about Jack Benny, Jackie Gleason and the publicity photo above. Shortly before the Benny TV show finished its long run, Jack did a parody of the Gleason show, featuring a sketch with Benny as Gleason as Joe the Bartender and Dennis Day as Frank Fontaine as Crazy Guggenheim. Benny was responsible for giving a huge boost to Fontaine’s career in the radio days. Fontaine developed the Crazy character, known as John L.C. Sivoney at the time, in his nightclub act. Benny got him to do it on several broadcasts and was barely able to control his laughter over Fontaine’s routine. So it was that Benny worked with the real Fontaine and a fake one.

An Assistant Animator

People under 25 may find it inconceivable that were was a time when cartoon fans didn’t even know who directed some of Golden Age cartoons that had been on TV screens for years. The credits had been taken off them. The information had to be ferreted out by people like Leonard Maltin (“Of Mice and Magic”), Jerry Beck (“The Warner Brothers Cartoons,” with Will Friedwald) and those many knowledgeable people who wrote for animation magazines (Mark Kausler, Harry McCracken, Paul Etcheverry, Mike Barrier and a host of others). Pretty soon, there was information about animators, background artists, writers, voice actors and others as experts dug and dug; there’s plenty of information that may never be uncovered at this late date.

Little has been said about assistant animators, especially those who were never elevated to the rank of animator (or at least got credit as one). You can even see pictures of some of them on animation web sites but have no idea about their work. Dan Bessie wrote a book and included some tales of his time as an assistant at MGM at the time its cartoon studio closed (he was laid off in late 1956).

However, I’ve run across a couple of news stories about one assistant, Dan Karpan, who worked at the Disney studio and then retired back home to Iowa. He was interviewed by the local paper a couple of times, once just after Walt Disney died. And he talks a bit about his assistant work.

Some biographical stuff: Daniel Robert Karpan was born July 1, 1911 in Eddyville, Iowa, the son of John and Katherine U. Karpan. He worked for the Columbia and MGM cartoon studios; the 1940 census doesn’t reveal which studio, but he made $650 in 1939 over a 32-week period. He went to work for Disney in 1944 after serving in the U.S. Navy during World War Two. He assisted on “Peter Pan,” “Alice in Wonderland,” “Sleeping Beauty” and “101 Dalmations.” He was laid off (with “about 450” other Disney employees, he said), then went to work for an ad agency before retiring. Karpan died in Albia, Iowa on June 20, 1986.

Karpan was interviewed by a journalism student, whose resultant story appeared in two Iowa newspapers. This is from the Carroll Daily Times Herald, June 8, 1976.

Cartoonists Put a Little of Themselves into Character
By Kathy Kusa
Drake Journalism Student
ALBIA (IDPA) — Dan Karpan's scrapbook is filled with painstaking pencil sketches from his 23 years as a Hollywood cartoonist, including 16 years with Walt Disney Studios.
"It's a funny thing about cartoonists," said Karpan, 64. "When they draw a character, they put a little of themselves in it. Now you take a tall, skinny fellow, he'll draw a tall, skinny duck."
Karpan still has the first set of drawings, he made commercially and, by riffling the pages, he can make a pair of penguins waddle jerkily across the paper.
But Karpan now discourages requests for his talent. He suffered a stroke in 1960 and he never fully regained his drawing ability. "For three months I couldn't even write my name," he said. After therapy he regained use of his right leg and arm, but he walks slowly and he said the tips of his fingers tingle all the time.
Lifelong Goal
Karpan, born near Eddyville, said he wanted to be a cartoonist even in high school. "I started drawing on the pages of my books and the teachers used to give me heck for it," he said.
After high school, Karpan worked in a coal mine. "But I hated that work," he said. "I wish I hadn't wasted those five years, because I got a late start in animation. I used to take slate and draw cartoons all over the side of the (coal) car if I had time" — the coal car checkers "knew it came from me — it was the only one coming out that way."
Karpan went to Hollywood "at the height of the depression" and discovered he didn't have enough art training to become a cartoonist, so for three years he attended the Chounaird School of Art in Los Angeles and did odd jobs.
He caddied, bused dishes, sold soft drinks and sharpened razor blades until he was hired by the Charles Mintz Studio (now called Screen Gems — the animation department of Columbia Pictures).
Joined Navy
Karpan worked as an animator for the Mintz Studio for several years and then moved to the animation department of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios.
During World War II, he joined the U.S. navy, where he spent two years working on training films and booklets for a torpedo school. After a medical discharge in 1944 because of an ulcer, he went to work for Walt Disney Studios.
"I had to kinda start over," he said, "to learn the characters. See, you had to know the characters . . . For about ten years I was what they called a key man — seeing that the ducks remained consistent ... if the duck was tall and skinny, (I'd) have to shorten him." Karpan stayed with Disney 16 years. He worked on short cartoons as well as feature-length films such as "Peter Pan", "Cindrella" and Alice in Wonderland".
"If you did 32 drawings (about 1 1/2 seconds of actual footage) that was a day's work," he said. The animation for a feature-length film takes a studio three years to complete.
Assistant Animator
Karpan was never a full-fledged animator; he was an assistant animator. "The animator was just concerned with the action and his first assistant was just concerned with drawings out of the roughs and little changes if the animator was busy.
"An animator works on a board on a glass that the light shines through (so) you can see four or five drawings at one time. We'd flip with our left hand and draw with our right," Karpan said. He compared it to "looking through a lampshade for eight hours."
Karpan retired in 1960. He now lives with his dogs Buddy Boy and Rusty Dusty just outside of Albia.
In 1969 Karpan finished a cartoon mural in the children's room of the Albia public library. The mural includes characters from the comic strip Peanuts as well as many characters Karpan is familiar with from his years in Hollywood.
Karpan said he tries to encourage young artists whenever he can.
His activities are restricted by poor health but Karpan said he still draws "once in a while. If I get in the mood I make little pencil sketches."

Ptui and Ptui Junior

All kinds of stuff comes to life and dances in an Ub Iwerks cartoon, even tobacco juice spat out by Sailor Flip.



Then the juice spits out his own juice, and it starts dancing.



This is from the opening of “Stormy Seas” (1932). The animation of the scene on deck is interesting to watch frame-by-frame. The sailors are dancing to “Life On An Ocean Wave” on ones; the number of cycle drawings for the captain is different than the accordion-playing Flip but both are in time to the music.

Zap the Cat

The two-strip Technicolor that cartoon studios (except Disney) were forced to use for a few years toward the middle-1930s was pretty limited, but it provided the highlight in “The Discontented Canary,” the first cartoon Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising released under MGM.

It’s a typical colour cartoon for 1934. A little creature is threatened by a more menacing creature until the menace is stopped. Normally, it’s by friends or cohorts of the little creature. But there are none in this cartoon. Nature does it instead.

A cat is chasing the little canary in the middle of a storm.



For reasons of pure plot convenience, the cat’s tail gets wrapped around an Acme Lightning Rod. The cat doesn’t notice.



Lightning hits the lightning rod.



The lightning travels down the rod and zaps the cat. The reddish skeleton—two-strip Technicolor only produced shades of red and green—is the best part.



The cat kind of deflates, jumps up, rolls around a bit and runs away. Meanwhile, a lightning bolt strikes a weather vane, which morphs into the word “Scram.” It’s really the only gag in the picture.



Cartoon studios—especially Warner Bros.—would milk this dull formula over and over. MGM’s animation became more fluid and elaborate while doing so, but Warners finally decided enough was enough and start developing the gag cartoons and characters it’s known for even today. No one remembers a discontented canary.

Stan Freberg Has a Message

If Stan Freberg were doing what he was doing 60 years ago, many people would be cheering him on as he skewers Justin Bieber and the network people who produce and buy reality TV shows.

Yes, endless numbers of people do that today. But not with the panache and creativeness of Freberg.

Wicked satire is just one specialty of Stanley Victor Freberg, who turns 87 today. Cartoon voice actor. Puppeteer. Advertising media mogul. Children’s recording artist. He’s all those, but he’s best known for lancing stupidity and banality.

Freberg’s name became known in January 1951 when Capitol released “John and Marsha,” a record making fun of trite dialogue in radio soap operas (it consisted of Freberg as both John and Marsha, each calling the other by name as they get progressively older). It was a huge hit—an Associated Press story of February 1951 estimated Freberg’s royalties of 4½ cents a record would earn him $50,000—so, naturally, Capitol, released more of his parody records.

Like Fred Allen and Henry Morgan before him, Freberg ran into censorship and complaints from people who didn’t appreciate what he was doing. Here’s a United Press story from 1952. If you can imagine Freberg’s take on Bieber and how those little Beliebers would react, you’ll get the idea behind this story.

Platter Satire
'Cry' Fans Stan For 'Try'
By ALINE MOSBY
HOLLYWOOD, Apr. 3 (UP)—Singer Stan Freberg wailed today that Johnny Ray fans "just don't have a sense of humor" when they get screaming mad over Freberg's satire of the weeping crooner.
Ray, at devotees of the arts know by now, is the new swoon boy who sobs such sad songs as "Cry."
Freberg decided "so many sad songs come out of radios now they'll find the sets have been corroded by tears." So he and composer Rudy Raskin dashed off a murderous satire, "Try." Stan's record of it swept the country.
• • •
ON THE PLATTER he cries and gurgles, "don't you know . . . nobody laughs it up no more . . . Wipe off that smile and weep awhile . . . It's real George to cry . . . Don't be a snob . . . Sit down and sob . . Come in and Taa-ry!"
Freberg innocently shrugged that he doesn't see why Ray fans bombarded him with letters labelling him "a dirty louse."
"I got one card with flowers on it and I thought, boy, this one will congratulate me. But inside it said, 'drop dead'," sighed the 25-year-old composer-singer.
"I was just having a little fun. I didn't do this maliciously, but in a good-natured way. But when people start taking you seriously and can't laugh at themselves . . .
• • •
"RAY FANS want to shoot me. Others, though," he beamed, "think my record is the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel." Ray himself, Freberg added with a sob, was "honored that he was imitated."
Freberg has waded in hot water for his satire before. He plays Cecil the Seasick Serpent on "Time for Beany," the children's television puppet show. But he also records satirical tunes, such as his famous "John and Marsha."
This take-off on soap operas consisted of Freberg saying only "John . . . Marsha." The radio networks sniffed innuendo and banned the tune. "ALL I DID was say two words," said Freberg. "I'm a nice boy who lives with his father who's a minister in a nice home in Pasadena.
"My father said why did they ban the song, son? I had to tell him a lot of people have dirty minds. It's banned in the whole city of Boston. They can't even sell the record. That shows you what kind of minds they have in Boston."
Freberg's next record "Abe Snake for President."
"With each record you get a campaign button, 'I'll take a snake'."

Freberg went on to huge success in novelty music, and an even bigger career in novelty advertising (novelty because it used comedy); he resurrected John and Marsha for a Snowdrift shortening ad that was voted the best animated commercial of 1956 in the New York Art Directors Club annual show. His radio career may be best described as one that garnered a cult following, while he didn’t score success hosting TV shows (the Chevy Show in 1958 and a few specials) or in feature films (“Geraldine,” a movie about a crying pop singer, is long forgotten). He tried TV puppeteering after walking away from “Beany and Cecil” in 1954, only to be sued for $2,000,000 two years later by Bob Clampett, who won a court injunction to stop Freberg from using a snake-like character named Grover on TV because it looked too much like Cecil (Freberg later came up with an alien puppet called Orville you see to the right).

But probably the most unusual part of his career dealt with faith advertising. Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise. Freberg’s father, the Rev. Victor Friberg, was born in Ferndale, Washington and later became a minister in California. Freberg’s rip at Christmas commercialism in his single “Green Chri$tma$” seems to have been sparked by religious indignation as much as anything else. Freberg won an award for his work on religious ads and it was written up in the popular press. The St. Petersburg Times of April 24, 1976 picked up this story.

Stan Freberg wins award for church ads
By BONITA SPARROW
Baptist Press
FORT WORTH—“I got into advertising because, as a consumer, I wondered why I had to be subjected to assaults on my intelligence. “I have wanted out since about 20 minutes after I got into it.”
The words are Stan Freberg’s, the creative genius whose satirical records—“St. George And The Dragonet” (which would never have seen the light of day, he says, “if Jack Webb hadn’t had a sense of humor”) and “Stan Freberg Presents The United States of America”—are classics and sold in the millions in the ‘50s. The records are now collectors’ items, selling for as much as $40 in specialty shops.
Freberg’s advertising agency has made a fortune producing commercials that kid around with the product to offer viewers and listeners a change from the pompous, irritating hard-sell that dominated TV advertising for so long.
Freberg was in Fort Worth from California to accept the Christian Service Award from the Southern Baptist Radio and Television Commission for a series of religious commercials he did for the Presbyterian Church. The Commission has previously honored Dale Evans Rogers and Astronaut James B. Irwin with a Christian Service Award.
The Agency cities Freberg “for pioneering in the use of humor and wit to breathe life into religious radio and TV spot announcements,” and for using his talents “to advance the cause of Christianity in America.”
“Actually, I didn’t do those Christian spots for the Presbyterians, or the Baptists, or any other organized religious group,” Freberg told “Master-Control” and “Country Crossroads” interviewers.
“I did them for the Lord. The attempt to do them at all was one of the great challenges of my life, not just as a writer, or producer, by as a Christian.”
The son of a retired Baptist minister (the Rev. Victor R. Freberg of Pasadena, Calif.), Freberg said the spots were aimed at people who were told that God is dead.
“I wanted to get the message across that God will help us if he let Him. I felt non-Christians would not listen to anything religious and I wanted to do something that would reach them. I thought it would be nice to have people talk as they usually talk, as opposed to what I call ‘advertisingese.’”
When the spots were aired, Time magazine described them as “a disarming natural conversational approach leading into a song that’s like a pop tune—sort of an espionage approach.”
In one commercial, a secular-type says he can’t make it to church because “this Sunday I’m playing golf,” and next Sunday “I promised to take the kids to the beach.” A voice (Freberg’s) asks, “Well, how about two weeks from Sunday?” “Oh, I never plan that far ahead. Two weeks. Why, the world could blow up by then.” There’s a meaningful pase and Freberg comes back softly with, “That’s right.”
A chorus then swings into a jingle that concludes, “It’s a great life, but it could be greater. Why try and go it alone? The blessings you lose may be your own.”
That spot, and others like it, enjoyed immense success. “Industry demographics show that in New York, for instance, you need at least 200-300 spots a week to reach all economic levels,” Freberg said. “Well, in Detroit the church got something like 500 spots a week for that commercial.”
Another well-received commercial—Freberg prefers to call them messages—featured a hippie-type character reading aloud from an art-deco poster the words of John 3:16 and saying, “That’s really heavy, man.” Freberg’s voice says, “Yes, it’s from an ancient book that’s been around more than 2,000 years. It’s called the Bible.”
“That particular message got the attention of a lot of young people,” Freberg said. “I guess I received more comments about that one from kids than any I did. They said it really gave them something to think about.”
Freberg’s background as a “P.K.” (preacher’s kid) made him into a “theoretical Christian” until his late teens when he “accepted Christ” for himself. From that point on, “everything changed.”
“It’s tough, in this fact-paced world, to sit back and let Jesus help you do things,” he said, “but if you can get the message across that you do not have to fight it alone, it helps.”
“The church can do a great work,” he said, “and the church is not as dumb as some people would have you believe. The church today is aware that it has trouble communicating with people outside its influence. If the church only had to worry about talking to the people who come all the time that’s great.
“But what about the people who are not sitting in church, and who may never get there? You have to talk to people in everyday language, not that of a pulpiteer. And you have to be relevant.
The reason he hasn’t done any church spots recently?
“Nobody’s asked me,” he said.

Freberg ended up doing more within a few years, making fun of TM with a character called Maharishi Cosgrove (“This is the single most important message of 1979” said Paul Stevens of the Southern Baptist Radio and Television Commission).

People may remember Freberg for Pete Puma at Warner Bros., or parodying “Dragnet” with “St. George and the Dragonet” (the opening two lines, by the way, were read by Bob Hope’s former announcer, Hy Averback). But I like to think of him taking shots at deserving targets, even when he was threatened with censorship or outright bans. Freberg once did an ad for the animal preservation film “Bless the Beasts and Children,” opening with an actor representing the phoney ‘American Gun Association’ condemning the movie because it was a vicious attack on American hunters. Another actor says “I wouldn’t let my kids see ‘Bless the Beasts and Children’ .. not unless I wanted ‘em to grow up hating guns.”

Stan Freberg’s satire still speaks volumes today.

The Original Allen's Alley

The best-remembered feature of Fred Allen’s radio show was “Allen’s Alley,” where Allen would ask a question-of-the-day of four people which would veer off into some type of comic story. And if you did your own little survey of radio fans about which character in the Alley they think of first, it would likely be the blustery Southern-loving Senator Claghorn.

But the Senator was a relatively late addition to the Alley. He arrived in fall 1945. The Alley first appeared on the air on December 6, 1942 with only one of the four characters whom most fans associate with radio’s most famous lane. It was popular from the start and prompted a newspaper feature story that appeared in the Niagara Falls Gazette on January 30, 1943. The story isn’t bylined, so I can only presume it originated from Allen’s ad agency (or perhaps the network, which warrants one mention). Supporting players weren’t credited on Allen’s show for many years, so the story was one of the rare occasions radio listeners got to learn who played the first characters in the Alley and a little about them.

Allen's Art Players May Sound "Wacky" on the Air, But They're the Best
Two Russians, one Englishman, a Yank and a star who impersonates Chinese detectives. That's radio's own United Nations, waging a weekly war on gloom—and it happens to be Fred Allen and his famed "Art Players."
Allen needs little introduction to Columbia network audiences, but his acknowledged versatile cast of "stooges" or supporting comedians, is more or less cloaked in anonymity.
This is due not to a matter of lesser billing in the program but their command of characterizations prevents a listening audience from spotting them.
Take Charlie Cantor
Take Charlie Cantor, for instance. Charlie was born in Russia on September 4, 1898. He was such a tiny tot when his parents brought him to America that he never knew the name of his birthplace. His parents never mentioned it to him. Fred Allen fans currently know Cantor's voice as either Socrates Mulligan or Rensaleer Nussbaum, two residents of that mythical slum section called Allen's Alley. Charlie doesn't even have to clear his throat to change to a high-voiced dope, rasp-throated taxi driver or a mincing vice-president.
When he appears with Ed Gardner in the "Duffy's" program he is Finnegan, a half-witted habitué who never is quite taken in by the sharpest of sharp practitioners in the story plot.
His voice agility makes him quite a favorite with directors of many programs . . . which should provide listeners with a lot of fun trying to see if they can identify him on as many as three shows in one night.
Cantor, whose radio career began about 20 years ago, is five feet five inches tall, weighs 158 pounds, has brown eyes and is the constant butt of Allen gags about bald heads. He attended P. S. 134, De Witt Clinton high school, CCNY and N.Y.U., all in New York.
His first job was shoe salesman. While attending school he took vacation jobs in vaudeville. Then he decided he wasn't going to be an actor and starve to death. Charlie was going to be a businessman.
Twelve years ago, business, as far Cantor was concerned, was a fine place to starve to death. Today acting is feeding him well despite the fact that few directors in radio know he is an excellent musician.
Here's John Brown
A native of Hull, England, is John Brown, educated in England, Australia and New York.
John was born April 4, 1904, and came to America when his father traveled from Australia to New York for a phonograph recording company.
To Allen fans, Brown is John Doe, of Allen's Alley. The character is one of Fred's favorite tongue-in-cheek representations of a man who knows all the answers of the popularity poll conductors, before they even ask them When Brown isn't being John Doe, he may be a race track tout, a haughty vice president, a pompous college professor, the typical Dodger fan, a sleazy-voiced gold brick salesman or just a wise guy.
Like Cantor, Brown is in much demand on other programs and listeners can find him by listening for strident lawyers, sniveling gangsters or kind fathers giving their children homely advice.
That again, is a limited description of the versatility of the Allen Art Players' vocal skill.
Brown, too, started in a non-professional job, that of jewelry salesman. In 1934, David Freedman and Harry Tugend first used him in Eddie Cantor and Fred Allen programs after an uneventful career of amateur dramatics, little theater work and stock company appearances in Haverstraw and Rockville Center, New York.
He is five feet nine inches tall, has blue eyes, blond hair, is married and has two children.
Meet Alan Reed
The next character wizard is Alan Reed, native New Yorker, who was born on August 20, 1907, attended P.S. 52, George Washington high school and Columbia university without ever suspecting that he one day would rise to "anonymous fame" as Falstaff Openshaw.
Even after a career which started when he took a job in the American Legion state headquarters as office boy, took him through a theatrical stock company in Oklahoma and finally landed him in radio in 1926.
Reed still cannot understand why straight, poetic reading in a cultured voice, makes him a comedian.
A great deal of this is planted in Fred Allen's early introductions of Falstaff as the rhyming tramp who composed roadside sign poems. The public never has forgotten this and delights in the misanthropic conception of culture and squalor embodied in Falstaff.
Reed, in addition to his excellent Ghetto characterizations, often is heard as an over-stuffed vice president, an English butler, a lisping lackey of some guest star from Hollywood . . . and adds to his laurels by stellar performances in other programs. Among these, perhaps his finest is the portrayal of Poppa Levy in "Abie's Irish Rose." Broadway, in two consecutive seasons has seen him win honors as featured player in "Hope For A Harvest" and The Pirate."
He is married, has three sons, stands five feet 11 inches tall, and weighs 225 pounds (practically no waistline, but shoulders like a weight lifter). His eyes are blue and his hair is brown.
Enter Minerva Pious
Last, but far from least is the veteran of the Mighty Allen Art Players—a tiny, gracious good sport who has been with Fred Allen for nearly all of his ten years in radio. She is Minerva Pious, native of Odessa, Russia, and graduate of Bridgeport, Conn., high school.
Min, as she is known to everyone in radio, played a week in stock while attending high school: two weeks with the Theater Guild at West port. Conn., and once worked as secretary to a Connecticut judge.
Harry Tugend, Allen's earliest radio director discovered her unparalleled gift of voice characterization and she since has delighted millions with her portrayals.
Miss Pious is the only feminine member of the Sunday evening Texaco Star Theater cast, with the exception of Portland Hoffa.
To the 5-foot, 108-pound voice mimic comes every type of characterization in the feminine category.
She plays dumb stenos, dowagers, debutantes, gangster molls, secretaries, housewives, burlesque queens, gum-chewing dames . . . and at present is known to the listeners as Mrs. Pansy Rensaleer Nussbaum or Mrs. Socrates Mulligan of Allen’s Alley.
She has appeared many times in Columbia Workshop, Philip Morris Playhouse, Duffy's Tavern and dozens of other programs.
Miss Pious and Charlie Cantor will be remembered as Min and Charlie two plain citizens who were a feature of Kate Smith’s Hour several seasons back.
This same team often appears in Allen’s programs as Mr. and Mrs. Average Listener, the couple who interrupt the broadcast and want radio changed around to suit them.
It is an interesting fact that all four of Fred Allen’s Art Players—separately or ensemble— are acknowledged to have no equal in radio. The nation's editors have voiced their praise time and again.
The listening audience follows their antics on the air with the same enthusiasm as they trace the doings of their daily comic strip characters.
Without question, in the profession, they are actors without equal. Yet not one of them ever attended a dramatic school.
And when you ask them their favorite movie stars or stage stars, they range all the way from Helen Hayes to Dinah Shore.
But ask them their favorite radio star.
These players, who have worked with them all, unanimously pick Fred Allen.