Fractured, Not Tangled

Random character designs from the Fractured Fairy Tale “Rapunzel.” The witch is lots of fun and I like the orange inks in Rapunzel’s hair.



I like how the witch escapes from the tower on her broom. A drawing with a new word is held for three frames.



The cartoon was animated at Ward’s own studio (credit to Keith Scott’s book The Moose That Roared).

Hawley Says Drink It!

Another staff reference from background artist Paul Julian in a Warners’ cartoon, this time in “Kit For Cat,” released in 1948. Sylvester picks through the garbage in the opening scene and tosses a kitten into a can wherein rests an empty liquor bottle.



It’s another reference to Hawley Pratt, who was the layout artist on this cartoon.

Mary on Jack

Mary Livingstone began life as a fictional girl from Plainfield, New Jersey who was a fan of radio newcomer Jack Benny. She was played by Jack’s wife, Sadye Marks, who later legally assumed Mary’s name as her own.

Mary, the character, was a bit of an airhead (silly poems a specialty) through much of the ‘30s until the writers wisely decided to focus more on her sarcastic nature. And that’s how she remained on the air until Mary, the wife, decreed she didn’t want to be on the air any more.

Mary, the wife, also gave an early interview in print about Jack, the husband. This was in the Albany Evening News “Dialing In” column of June 29, 1936. If you’re familiar with Jack Benny, not much will surprise you. Many of the same things were stated in interviews almost 40 years later—including some with Jack himself.

‘LOWDOWN’ ON BENNY --- IN SARCASTIC TONE
By THE LISTENER
WIFE speaks up!
It is Mary Livingstone, talking about Jack Benny. We asked Miss Livingstone to take over this column today and give us the "low down" on Jack. We would have figured that she might be rather sarcastic about him if we had believed that her lines in the Benny radio skits were her own. But we recalled that Jack and Harry Conn write the skits, so the sarcastic tone may be Mary’s but the direction is Jack’s. Really Jack comes off very well in this estimate by Mary Livingstone. He often says on the radio, Oh, well, you can’t please everybody," but he evidently pleases Mary. So here, then, is Mary discussing Jack.
By MARY LIVINGSTON
OTHER radio artists may have a little difficulty writing a guest column, but they just aren't fortunate enough to have literary ability the way I do. Of course, poetry is my specialty but my prose is pretty good, too—I hope. Your radio editor has been good enough to let me play any tune I want on the typewriter. So if it is all right with you. I think I will devote this essay to answering the question that is put to me most frequently. To wit: What kind of a guy is Jack Benny away from the microphone? On the air Jack portrays a rather quiet sort of fellow on whom the rest of the cast Is constantly picking. He has nobody but himself to blame because he gets up the scripts. Off the air he is equally quiet, but hardly the browbeaten lad he pretends he is when showing off for you listeners. If he is browbeaten, he never lets on to me. Or perhaps I just don’t notice it.
When were home, he never tries to be the comedian, I am very glad to say. As a matter of fact he does a lot of worrying—he starts in worrying about next week's program the moment this week's is over. Sometimes even sooner. If you see him in the movies you may think he has black hair. Actually, there are a few streaks of grey here and there. If he were not doing radio, he wouldn't have those. And if he weren't doing radio, he wouldn't be in pictures. So he does not have to worry about that, anyhow.
The greatest fault I find with him is his perpetual good nature. He makes me furious because he is one of those people who always feels good in the morning and gets up early, feeling bright and cheery, no matter how late he has been up the night before: Another thing that gets me down is that he will never start an argument. We have our differences of opinion, just like any other couple. But somehow or other, I am always the one that starts things.
People often ask if Jack tries to be funny when we have visitors at home. Apparently they think that because a man makes his living by getting other folks to chuckle that he never relaxes. It so happens that our closest friends are in the business of producing laughs also—the Freddy Allens, Burns and Allen, Block and Sully, the Jack Pearls, and so forth. Benny Rubin, Jane and Goodman Ace and the Eddie Cantors are people we see frequently too. Whenever we get together with any of .them, Jack likes to take the part of the audience and let them do their stuff for him. He is a sucker for anything that George Burns says or does, for example. All George has to do is walk in the room and say, "hello," and Jack prepares himself for a fine evening of laughter—at no expense to him.
I'm very much afraid that our existence must be a great disappointment to the fan magazine writers because we do not go in very strongly for things they consider suggestive of "GLAMOUR." Our lives and tastes ore very simple. Jack does not care a hang about flashy clothes, hates tea parties and nightclubs. He is much more fond of a quiet and easy-going life. If Jack wants to be exceptionally gay and giddy, he will suggest going to a show and top it off by taking in a midnight movie. Try to get glamour out of that!
We do not listen to the radio much, except to news and music. We seldom, if ever, tune in on other comedians. Jack avoids doing so because he doesn't want, even subconsciously, to be influenced by what the other boys are doing. He really loves fine music, though you would never guess it from hearing him torture "Love In Bloom." He is also pretty fond of golf, but plays a terrible game. He ought to give it up entirely. One of his greatest pleasures is getting together with his cronies at the Friars Club and Just chewing the rag.
Our baby daughter, Joan Naomi, takes up a lot of his time. No matter how busy he is, he tries to take off an hour every day to wheel her. Last week he went around showing his friends the newest scratch she had given him on the nose. He seemed to get more kick out of it than springing a new gag on his pals. He enjoys driving a car a great deal, but I always prefer to hop the trolley. It's not that he goes in for speeding—to the contrary, he just crawls along. But he always seems to be thinking about something else rather than where he is going. He is an avid follower of sports and devours the sports page of every edition he can lay hands on. Horseracing gets a lot of his attention, but he picks 'em so badly, I have made him stop betting.
I hope this gives you some sort of notion of the kind of bird J. Benny is when he isn't working. In any case I am grateful to the editor for the opportunity to display my talent as a writer.

Music in the Animated Cartoon

There were two Paul J. Smiths in the animation world. Both worked for Walt Disney. One later went on to animate at Warner Bros., then animate and direct at Walter Lantz (he also stopped at the John Sutherland studio). The other was a composer. You can read a nice biography about that Paul J. Smith HERE. He’s the one we’re going to talk about.

Music, in the early sound cartoons, gave an excuse for comical characters to sing and/or dance (such as Disney’s skeletons to the right, animated by Ub Iwerks). It set moods. It even provided gags. Many talented composers and arrangers worked well with cartoon directors. Smith was one of them.

Smith was a member of the American Society of Music Arrangers. He was asked to come up with a three-part series on writing music for cartoons in the Society’s newsletter, Score, starting in March 1944. Here’s what he had to say:

MUSIC IN THE ANIMATED CARTOON
By PAUL J. SMITH
As in live-action, cartoons are divided into sequences and scenes, but in this medium a further breakdown is accomplished by the animator who may draw a different picture for every frame of film, or in other words, 24 pictures a second.
Unless the picture is pre-scored, the musician receives a complete outline of the picture with the placement of scene cuts, dialogue, sound effects and action as drawn by the animator.
The animation has been set up into numbered measures (groupings of frames) of predetermined length in which the action is minutely described. Measures may have as few as 14 frames or as many as 40 or more. With the speed of film constant (24 frames per second), a "pulse" or "beat" is established for the measure. Measures of fewer frames will take less time than those of greater length, and consequently will have a faster beat.
The artist animates the point he wants musically emphasized at a position in the measure where the musical accent normally falls, or at a point where a syncopated thrust of the music will enhance his work. A 32-frame measure has, in cut time, a normal accent on the first and seventeenth frames and a secondary accent on the ninth and twenty-ninth frames, with syncopated beats almost anywhere ("Charleston" on the thirteenth frame). If the animator lacks musical knowledge, or if things go wrong (in 10,000 probable ways), the composer finds a series of unrelated, illogical points of emphasis that should be, but cannot be, pointed musically.
Here the musician must dip into his bag of tricks. He must use judgment as to what is important to point musically; knowledge of mathematics as to what can be emphasized without musical distortion; discretion as regards the general mood of the scene without undue emphasis on minor points of action. At times he finds that a tempo different from that the animator planned, will give better results, that is, animation planned for 24 frames per beat actually might be enhanced by music in a 22 beat.
Careful consideration must be given to the smooth connection of short musical sections of different tempos. Perhaps if a complete "take" is shifted forward or backward a few frames, the music will "jell" with the picture. The music is recorded to a beat loop* of the same tempo as the music written for the scene, and since the animation, the beat-loop and the recording film all move at the same rate of speed, the score, good or bad, ultimately fits the animation like a glove.
The above system is employed mainly in "shorts," and applies only partially to feature cartoon technique, in which the animator is allowed greater freedom of accent placement; thereby further complicating the musician's attempt to justify his own existence. * A beat-loop is a loop of sound film prepared for the purpose of projecting a regular metronomic beat through earphones to the conductor of the orchestra.
(EDITOR'S NOTE: Writing music for cartoons is a highly technical development. Readers of THE SCORE will be interested to know how music and, the animated, cartoon are synchronized, Paul J. Smith, composer, arranger, and conductor at Disney Studio is in a position to discuss this subject. In his 11 years of association with the Disney Studio his screen credits include: "Snow White," "Pinocchio," "Bambi," "Saludos Amigos," "Three Caballeros," and numerous other short subjects.)

MUSIC IN THE ANIMATED CARTOON
By PAUL J. SMITH
The music of a cartoon follows in extreme detail the action on the screen, heightening its detail, keeping out of the way of dialogue, emphasizing the drama of the situation, and pointing the comedy, always keeping in step with the characters emotionally and rhythmically.
Cartoons tend to be violent—no attempt is made to be subtle—the characters are not human but have human characteristics, they are usually animals but wear clothes and well illustrate the foibles of human nature.
It is easy to write directly to the action, catching every detail of movement, every swagger, every eye blink, but you end up with a lot of notes and no music. The score has not enhanced the picture. Sound effects might have done as well or better. No matter how simple the emotional situation on the screen, music can help if it says at least as much as the screen says.

A melody by itself cannot successfully carry action. Its efficacy in a cartoon or in any picture is dependent on what surrounds it- how it is clothed. Since it must be clothed, why not dress it up so it makes the best appearance for itself and the picture.
Normally, the melody is but the unifying line of an orchestral structure. It is supported with rhythm and harmony, embellished with counter movements, strengthened by thousand and one devices the arranger knows so the full force of the arrangement can directed towards the needs of the picture through the dramatic as well as the timing standpoint so the net result will be a score good in itself and vitalizing what is seen on the screen.
The approach to music writing in a cartoon studio is often times a cold mathematical one with the musical idea held in the back of the mind for exact placement when the mathematical solution to the placement is found. Creation of the melodic material is the easiest part of cartoon writing. Its placement in the score, so the arrangement heightens the acting normally and naturally, without distorting the picture or itself is the greater problem, in other words, the picture dictates the strength and timing of the arrangement. Every orchestral movement must tie in with the picture.
In practice, the functions of the composer and arranger are generally combined in the cartoon studio. Colors of the orchestra, the amount of emphasis needed, the pointing to comedy, the placement of sound effects and dialogue, the desires of the story men and director— the need of close control over all these factors tend to combine the two functions.

MUSIC IN THE ANIMATED CARTOON
By PAUL J. SMITH
The sound track of all pictures contains a blend of dialogue, sound effects and music. Perhaps the most important is dialogue, for if words are spoken on-stage, they must be easily audible and understandable to the audience. Dialogue gives the story—tells the joke, and its necessity is the basic reason for the switch from silent to sound films.
Sound effects are used to give the impression of realism. In the normal picture every attempt is made to keep them unobtrusive, and as casual as the sounds we hear in normal living. No one actually pays attention to the sound of a door closing, but if it closes soundlessly, we are instantly aware of the fact. Our ears expect and demand the normal sounds of normal living.. Furthermore we edit all normal sounds. By this I mean we dismiss those sounds that are expected, such as the distant drone of a plane, or the squeak of a chair,—but are attracted by unexpected sounds of even lesser intensity. The boilermaker is used to the din of his work, so he hears the bird singing outside.
Cartoon sound effects oftentimes reach for the attention of the audience. Realism is not necessarily the goal, for comedy effects are desired. Anything tending to point the dramatic or comic situation on the screen is used.
Oftentimes the sound-effects track upon completion and before the musician starts his work, is found to be full of practically continuous sound, all of which is important to the director but something of a bother to the composer, for he knows that this results in a definite loss of the music value.
An attempt is thus made, in conference, to edit the effects. In the early stages of the picture, many effects are added simply to give the semblance of a sound track, but as time goes on the director is found to have fallen in love with those heretofore temporary sounds, and resists the effort of the musician to replace them with music. It is then up to the composer to prove that his music is of greater effect. Very much footage of a cartoon is accompanied by music and sound effects running concurrently. However, to achieve the best dramatic result, and to avoid burying one or the other, we must design our music so important sounds are exposed, and also spotted at logical places in the musical phrase. Perhaps a musical anticipation with a pause for the important effect will work, or if a series of effects is rhythmic in the slightest, we will shift our musical beat to a new spot, so as to incorporate the effect as part of the musical score. At times it approximates the handling of the orchestra in an operatic recitative.
Sound effects are generally recorded with a fairly close pickup, giving an on-stage feeling, and are dubbed in at a higher decibel level than music. Dialogue, of course, invariably has the greatest modulation in the final picture!
The least function of music is to act as a binder for sound effects and dialogue, disregarding its great dramatic, and, entertainment value.

I enjoy music several ways in cartoons. In some cases, it’s for the actual music itself, such as Darrell Calker’s scores for the Walter Lantz Swing Symphonies. In others, it’s for how intricate the characters are choreographed to the score, such as in Friz Freleng’s “Pigs in a Polka” or the MGM Oscar-winning “Cat Concerto.” But most of the time, it’s for how the music matches the mood on the screen, augmenting when necessary and filling in elsewhere. And there aren’t too many other places besides cartoons where you’ll hear “Shuffle Off to Buffalo.”

Spinning Woody

Woody Woodpecker’s attention is arrested by a croaking owl saying “Who sez so?” These are consecutive frames as Woody turns 360 degrees. I imagine outlines are used to give the character less weight and make the spin look faster.



This is from Woody’s first starring cartoon in 1941 (his debut was in an Andy Panda cartoon). Alex Lovy and Les Kline get the animation credits. Woody is voiced by Mel Blanc and the owl is Danny Webb.

The Skeleton Violin

There’s really no excuse for putting skeletons in the story of Jack in the Beanstalk unless you’re writing for a New York cartoon studio in the early ‘30s. New York cartoons loved skeletons back then. Skeletons singing. Skeletons playing the piano. Skeletons crashing into each other. It’s all good fun.

“Beanstalk Jack” is a 1933 Terrytoons cartoon with a great little sequence of a skeleton transforming into a violin, then a piano, then a trombone, then a tuba (which swallows up Jack). That’s not all. It then becomes four dancing skeletons, with the bones transforming into two skeletons when necessary to fit the vocals of the giant song that takes up the scene.

Here are the skeleton-to-violin drawings. Note the shadow.



And for fans of those New York cartoons where characters’ mouths join together to form one mouth, that happens here, too.



My thanks to Devon Baxter for the very nice screen grabs of this scene, which he tells me was animated by Eddie Donnelly, according to Terry expert Milton Knight.

He's Worth $1,400 a Word

We haven’t said an awful lot about Mel Blanc on this blog because it’s been pretty much said elsewhere. He was the greatest cartoon voice actor ever. He amazingly survived a hellacious auto accident in the early ‘60s. He spent his later years encouraging sick kids at Shriners’ hospitals (Blanc was a Shriner) and appearing on talk shows where he gave the equivalent of fish stories—they grew with every telling.

Blanc wasn’t an A-lister in Hollywood so he wasn’t interviewed a lot (aside from when he had his own radio show in the mid-‘40s) until after his accident. But I’ve dug around and found this United Press piece from 1958. At the time, network radio was pretty much dead, so his career consisted of occasional appearances on the Jack Benny TV show, voice work on Warner Bros. cartoons and—most lucrative of them all—commercial voice-overs. He was still telling variations of some of these stories 20 years later.

CARTOON 'VOICE' has Netted $1,400 a Word
By JOE FINNIGAN
HOLLYWOOD, Nov. 19 (UPI)—Mel Blanc, who started out in Hollywood as a drunken bull, has graduated to roles that now pay the veteran voice mimic as much as $1,400 per word.
THE MOON-FACED Blanc has been dubbing voices for many of filmland's top animated cartoons for over 20 years and there's nobody in sight who will take over his chores.
"My first job, after coming here in 1937, was a drunken bull with a hiccough voice," he laughed? Since then, Blanc has been in almost 1,000 pictures.
"I've probably been in more pictures than any other actor," he said.
Blanc has been under contract to Warner Brothers studio for years and has done the majority of the voices for such cartoons as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig.
"While at Warners, we won four or five Oscars for cartoons in which I've performed," he said.
"Many companies have quit making cartoons." he pointed out.
"At Warners we still make 30 a year, but we used to do 50."
WHILE HOLLYWOOD has been cutting down on animated cartoons, "the man with a thousand voices" has been finding plenty of work on television. An especially lucrative field for Blanc is commercials.
Blanc's fee for a fountain pen commercial was only $55 for the original recording but after the plug played throughout the nation for one year, he picked up $7,000 in residual payments.
And his task consisted of saying only five words!
The San Francisco-born Blanc, who was raised in Portland, Ore., credits his knack with voices to his ability to comprehend sounds.
"I attribute it all to having a good ear and hearing myself reproduce," he explained. "I don't like to copy a voice, I'd rather improvise."
ONE OF BLANC'S many voices will be heard on CBS' "Perry Mason" show when he does the voice of a parrot Dec. 20.
Even though his meal ticket is his voice, Blanc doesn't worry too much about it.
"A doctor told me I have tremendous neck muscles," he said. "But I don't exercise them or take any special medicines."
"I don't pamper them either," he concluded, "although I should. They've done an awful lot for me."

Blanc’s parrot voice had some longevity. He may not have originated it on the Jack Benny show, but he used it with some regularity there beginning in 1945 and a variation of it popped up as Salty on the Hanna-Barbera Sinbad cartoons of the mid-‘60s.

Considering all the cartoons I’ve watched over the years, I’d have to say Mel Blanc has given me more laughter than any other person on earth. I’ll bet there are a lot of others who can say the same thing.

Familiar Ending, Isn't it?

A dead umpire bids farewell to us to wrap up “Batty Baseball,” a 1944 Tex Avery cartoon. Tex ended “Lonesome Lenny” the same way the following year.

I suspect Rich Hogan is the uncredited writer. Ed Love, Ray Abrams and Preston Blair get the animation credits.

Today's Merrie Melodies Hidden Staff Reference

Warner Bros. cartoon staffers show up in the most unexpected places. Take, for example, “Yankee Dood It,” one of the Sloan Foundation free enterprise cartoons made by the studio that ended up in theatrical release. There’s one montage sequence which shows cheques signed by prospective investors in a business. About those names…



Emmet Simmons. Can’t find anything about him.



Don Foster was the guy who drew the lobby cards for Warners cartoons.



Veotis Richmond (note the spelling) was a cel washer for the studio when he got married in 1945. I don’t know what he was doing for Warners when this cartoon was made. He was a member of IATSE local 839 at the time of his death.



I won’t even take a guess on this name.



Hugo Henkel is another mystery. I found one who died in 1967; location unknown. As a young man, he had been a chemist in a paint factory in New York City in 1940.



Sid Farren was an assistant animator in the Freleng unit.



Russell Jones was the studio janitor. Chuck (no relation) Jones lauds him in Chuck Amuck.

You’ll notice the cheques are all dated 1957. The cartoon was released in 1956.

The Brief Tenor

Dennis Day is the singer just about anyone thinks of when Jack Benny’s name is brought up. He joined the Benny radio show in 1939 and remained with him to the end, even though he was a star in his own right by that time. And he continued to appear occasionally with Benny on television into the ‘60s.

On the flip side is the tenor who worked five weeks on the Benny show before walking out—Michael Bartlett.

It’s a little puzzling why Bartlett signed with Benny in the first place. He had appeared on film opposite Grace Moore, who had been assuring the public that Bartlett was screen star material. What would you choose—being a movie star or a supporting player on radio who sang one song and then kibbitzed with a character named Schlepperman?

Day was likely thankful Bartlett chose films. Although Bartlett’s movie career quickly washed out, he enjoyed quite a number of years on the stage, with a stint as a Captain in the Marines during World War Two in between.

Fan magazine Radio Mirror profiled Bartlett in its December 1935 edition. Cover date notwithstanding, Bartlett was gone from the show after October.

MEET MICHAEL BARTLETT
DO YOU KNOW JACK BENNY'S NEW TENOR COMEDIAN? YOU SHOULD BECAUSE HE'S HOLLYWOOD'S AND RADIO'S LATEST SINGING FIND!
By DAN WARREN
YOU should know Michael Bartlett.
Because he's the new tenor-comedian on the Jack Benny Sunday night radio programs.
Because he's Hollywood's newest, most exciting discovery who sang opposite Grace Moore in "Love Me Forever," who takes a prominent part in Claudette Colbert's "She Married Her Boss," and who is scheduled as Miss Moore's leading man in her next picture.
By rights Michael Bartlett today should be living in Massachusetts, a staid officer in a staid manufacturing company. His background of prominent New England ancestry called for that, but Michael had different ideas.
It all started his freshman year at Princeton, when he became one of the distinguished few to join the Triangle Club which has made itself famous lately by producing two songs: "Love and a Dime" and "East of the Sun and West of the Moon."
"That," Bartlett explained, "was my first taste of the stage and I vowed that it wouldn't be the last. The thrill of going on the road with the production sold me on the theater as a career. All day on the train we'd sit around in pajamas playing bridge and get dressed just in time to get off the pullman and around to the theater before the curtain went up."

He also learned that year how much freshmen can be imposed upon by seniors. He was the tenor of a trio and every night when the three walked out into the spotlight, it was his job to hold up his two companions. People might otherwise have thought they'd all been indulging.
For awhile it looked just as easy as that—he'd decided on the theater as his career, so the theater it would be. Then complications arose. First his father objected and tried, by cutting his allowance, to dissuade his son. Michael overcame that by hiring himself out as a choir singer in a church on 114th street in Manhattan. Salary, $80 a month. After that, his father admitted defeat and sent him abroad to continue his studies.
He's stubborn, this six-foot young man who looks like a new Englander softened by contact with the more volatile, sunny disposition of the Latin races. His family was the first to find this out. Broadway producers were the second.
After a few years in Italy as a student and later as a full fledged opera singer under the name of Eduardo Bartelli, Michael returned home. "To be best man at a friend's wedding." And he's stayed here ever since. He talks now with a gesture of hand and nimbleness of eyebrow that would do credit to any Roman singer.
In the beginning, Broadway failed to recognize in Michael the potentialities that have turned him overnight from a concert hall performer to a radio and screen star. Jerome Kern finally chose him to take one of the leads in his musical comedy, The Cat and the Fiddle," but not until he had hired another for the part. Michael got the job after waiting eight months.
"The trouble was," he said, "my background scared them. They didn't think that anyone who could sing in four languages and who had studied abroad could sing their popular melodies."
THIS fear in producers has plagued him ever since, until last spring. Michael wanted to get into the movies. About the time sound films were springing up like mushrooms after a heavy rain, he went to Hollywood and took a series of screen tests. Fox finally handed him a year's contract as a featured player. And then never cast him in a single picture, just paid him his salary.
He's tried radio too, before this fall. "I can't count all the times I've been called down to some studio and told to sing for a prospective sponsor. Naturally I always chose a piece I knew, light opera or a favorite aria, and the sponsor would just sit and shake his head. I hadn't sung 'Love in Bloom' so I couldn't be much good!"
The nearest he came was six months ago when he made an appearance over WOR, powerful local station in New Jersey. Stubbornly sticking to his guns, he chose for one of his numbers a melody he had heard in Paris. He sang it in French, by way of introducing it to American audiences.
No great rush of agents wanting to sign him soured Michael on radio and he went again to Hollywood, this time by request. Grace Moore wanted him for her picture. He determined to forget broadcasting.
Then this summer he had a phone call from an old school chum. "Come over and audition for the Jack Benny show," the friend said. Bartlett, in his own words, thought the friend was nuts, but he got an hour off from the lot where he was working and went to the radio studio, "Listen," the friend said, "I know you can sing, but you've got to do one popular number."
Bartlett nodded and rushed out to a music store, grabbed the first sheet music he saw and took it back with him. When he opened it up, he saw it was "Tell Me That You Love Me Tonight." When he hummed the tune he discovered it was the same little French melody he had introduced last spring!
Which all goes to prove that the right kind of stubbornness sometimes gets you places. It also explains why Michael Bartlett says he is glad of the chance to play comedy with Jack Benny, when another opera singer would snort and rear on his hind legs. He'll sing popular melodies from now on and like 'em.

Bartlett died February 3, 1978 in Webster, Massachusetts. You can read an excellent biography of him HERE, though I don’t believe it explains he changed his name to Michael when addressed that way by mistake by another new student while attending Hotchkiss Prep School (source, Grace Wilcox, Long Island Sunday Press, May 19, 1935.

It didn’t take long for Jack to find a replacement tenor. John Skinner’s column in the February 1936 edition of Radio Mirror states that Phil Regan was considered, but his price was too high. Benny then settled on the winner of Eddy Duchin’s Radio Open Tournament, who had appeared in the films "The World Moves On" and "George White's Scandals." Kenny Baker became the show’s tenor in November 1935. Skinner reveals that, like Dennis Day later, Baker didn’t use his natural speaking voice on the show; “It's all in fun,” reported the columnist. Baker stayed for two years until he, too, felt he could move on to bigger things than Benny, and really didn’t. Perhaps it was just as well, as many fans think Dennis Day was the best choice of all.