Clampett Cut

Bob Clampett had the oddest cuts at times. He’d jump from one scene to the next and the action wouldn’t be consistent.

Here’s an example from the Snafu cartoon “Fighting Tools” (1943). These are consecutive frames. But the action doesn’t match.



There’s lots of fun Rod Scribner animation in this and Mel Blanc does his machine-gun equivalent of Jack Benny’s Maxwell.

Entertaining in the Korean War Zone

Bob Hope wasn’t the only star who travelled around the world entertaining troops, though he’s probably the first person you think of when the subject comes up. For example, Jack Benny toured during World War Two (including a stop in the oppressive summer heat in Iraq). He also made a jaunt to Korea during the conflict there.

To the right, you see a picture dated June 26, 1951 of the Benny troupe. You should recognise at least one other face. In the far right of the photo is the formerly swashbuckling Errol Flynn, who died eight years later not too many blocks from where Jack’s wife, Mary Livingstone, grew up in Vancouver’s West End. To the far left is someone well-known to Benny fans—guitarist Frank Remley. Also in the photo are Benay Venuta, Marjorie Reynolds, tap dancer Dolores Gay, mentalist Harry Kahne and pianist June Bruner, who had been with Benny on a U.S.O. tour of the South Pacific during World War Two. The group returned home August 6th. He was cheery about the experience when he talked to the Associated Press’ Hollywood reporter about the jaunt. The column appeared in newspapers on August 10, 1951.

JACK BENNY FINDS MORALE OF YANKS IN KOREA HIGH
By BOB THOMAS
Hollywood, Aug. 10 (AP)—"The morale of our men in Korea is terrific," reports Jack Benny, returned this week from entertaining troops in the front lines.
"They know what they're fighting for," added the fiddle-hacking comedian. "Naturally, they want peace. But they want the right kind of peace, and they're willing to continue fighting until they get it.
"The one thing that nearly every one of them asks is: 'Do the people back home know there's a war on?' I told them, 'You're darned right they do.'"
In his six weeks absence from Hollywood, Benny figures he traveled between 25,000 and 30,000 miles with his entertainment troupe. They played before troops and wounded veterans in Hawaii, Japan, Okinawa and throughout Korea. It was a thorough job. Virtually every possible audience of U. S. soldiers in the Orient was reached, with one exception. That was a group at Pusan who could not be reached because of bad landing conditions for aircraft.

"It was the toughest tour I ever made," said Benny, who made five world-wide journeys to entertain troops in World War II. "But also it was the most satisfying. I think we did the best job possible. Not only did we reach every audience we could, but we gave all the time possible to the other things that are important—posing for pictures with the GIs, signing autographs, talking and eating with the boys.
"The food was good wherever we went," said Benny. "But the living and traveling conditions were tougher than anywhere I had been, including North Africa. Much of the time I was living in a dirt-floor tent close to the front lines.
"We had to use every kind of transportation, from light aircraft to helicopter to jeep. The reason is because Korea is so mountainous. The boys have a gag over there that if Korea were flattened out, it would be as big as Texas."
Benny commented that his audiences were highly appreciative of the entertainment. They howled at any reference to Benny's alleged stinginess, such as: "That Tokyo is a fast town; I was there just a few days ago and 50 yen went just like that." As for his violin playing, "you'd think I was Heifetz."
Wherever he went, army bands would strike up "Love in Bloom." A navy base in Japan was filled with signs reading "Waukegan City Limits." As in the last war, there were occasional "Welcome Fred Allen" banners.
"There was only one audience from which we didn't get the laughs we usually got," he recalled. "They were a bunch of fellows who had to go out the next morning and take a hill which we could see from where we were. They were naturally uneasy, not because they were scared but because of the feeling that they might get hit with the peace possibly near."
Benny is urging other stars to enlist for entertainment in Korea. "It is the greatest audience in the world," he said.
"But it's a funny thing—they want good entertainment or none at all. They get fairly late movies and they like them if the pictures are good. If they're bad, the boys will walk out in the middle."
I asked Jack what gag got his biggest laugh.
"It was usually a local joke," he replied. "The best one was when I'd tell them I was going to retire and be a movie producer: "I can see it now—Jack Benny presents Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in 'The Road to Taegu'."

The United Press published a bit of a different take on the tour the following month. Jack admitted he was a little worn out by the whole experience. It wasn’t like he was 39; he was 57 years old. But he didn’t take it easy, either. He appeared in living rooms weekly for more than a dozen more years and performed benefit concerts and other charity events. He was beginning a movie comeback at the time of his death in 1974. But when the next war rolled around in Vietnam, Benny left the entertaining to others. One of them was Bob Hope. Ol’ Ski Nose wasn’t quite exhausted yet.

How to Write a Cartoon by a Non-Cartoon Writer

To the average person, it would seem logical to ask the owner of a cartoon studio how a cartoon is made. And you’d get a good answer out of Walt Disney or Walter Lantz, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera or Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising. After all, at one time they were animators who worked on the actual cartoons themselves.

But it’d have been pointless asking someone like Charlie Mintz. Not only did Mintz never draw anything, he got into the cartoon business by marriage. His wife, Margaret Winkler, was distributing a number of animated series when the two tied the knot back in the silent days. But someone interviewed Mintz about writing cartoons. Here’s what he had to say. This was published in the Charleston Gazette of October 20, 1935.

Cartoonists Shout Lots and Scribble Much, Says Mintz
BY PETTERSEN MARZONI
One sure way to tell a writer or gagman for animated cartoons Is to observe him carefully and see whether he acts like a human being If he does he is not working on cartoons. A touch of sanity is the distinguishing mark of the breed. This is the opinion of Charles Mintz, head of the staff which details the adventures of Scrappy, Krazy Kat, Barney Google, et al, for Columbia Pictures.
“They are what most people would call screwy”, is the way Mr. Mintz puts it. “Life seems to them just as haphazard and startling as the plots they conceive for animateds. They become accustomed to letting their minds run loose, so to speak:—for their writing isn’t bound by the rules of real life. But the trick is to think up things that are not only strange but that can be drawn. Also, it takes a special gift to conceive the many little incidental touches which distinguish a good animated from a bad one.”
Long experience has taught him that there are no absolute tests by which to determine a man’s talent for creating animated cartoon plots. The Mintz studio employs seven writers and five gagmen. Some of the best used to be highbrow writers, some have served an apprenticeship in vaudeville and some came straight from college. However, Mr. Mintz has observed that they all have a few traits in common.
Heated Conferences
“A stranger sitting in at one of our story conferences would think they were maniacs”, says he. “They fight just as much as delegates to a peace conference. A good gagman will scream and jump to try to get one of his ideas used in a picture. They all talk at once and each tries to talk louder than the others. Also, they walk up and down a lot—we would get along without chairs nicely in our conference rooms.”
“But the surest sign of an animated writer is that when he talks, he automatically reaches for a pencil to illustrate what he’s talking about. If he doesn't sketch figures, he will at least make lines and eccentric designs. In other words, he’s a man who thinks with his pencil.”
So, when Mr. Mintz interviews a prospective writer, he always has plenty of paper around. If the applicant doesn’t reach for a pencil as soon as he starts telling his ideas, the verdict is apt to be thumbs down.

Twelve people in the story department? Well, there was Lou Lilly and Irv Spector and, uh, well, I suppose Allen Rose and Ben Harrison in 1935. But I don’t know who else he meant.

Mintz was having a tough time of it. Columbia Pictures eventually took over his studio and Mintz was dead before the start of 1940.

Walter Lantz' Secret Ad

Walter Lantz gets in a plug for his comic books in “Well Oiled” (1947).



Background painting by Fred Brunish.

Blitz Wolf Zoom

Words form on the screen in a scene from “Blitz Wolf” (1942). First, a bomb turns into a bottle opener to rip the top off a tank. Adolf Wolf quickly escapes.



Then it blows up with a “boom.” We know that because the cartoon tells us.



And here’s another letter formation in the next scene.



Devon Baxter via Mark Kausler tells me this is a Ray Abrams scene. Ed Love, Preston Blair and Irv Spence also get animation credits in this great Tex Avery short.

Orchestrating Lantz

Carl Stalling didn’t do all the musical work on his own at Warners Bros. He had Milt Franklyn as an orchestrator for many years. Before him, Bernie Brown and Norm Spencer had Norm Spencer, Jr. Over at MGM, Scott Bradley had Paul Marquard (as well as Dave Snell as a musical adviser on the Captain and the Kids shorts). So who handled arrangements at the Walter Lantz studio?

The answer is sort of provided in Variety. Here’s a blurb in the weekly version that’s a repeat from Daily Variety of November 16, 1954.



Keith Williams was a drummer with a number of different bands, including Bobby Sherwood’s in 1947. He served as president of the American Society of Music Arrangers and president of the Musicians Union local 47. Here’s part of his obit from the Long Beach Press Telegram.

KEITH ROLLINS WILLIAMS July 25, 1924-December 27, 2008 Keith was born in Garfield, Utah. At the age of two he moved to California. He went to John H. Francis Polytechnic High School, and attended Occidental College, obtaining his Bachelor of Arts in music. After completing a tour of duty in the Air Force in 1945, he organized his own 14-piece dance band, which played extensively in and around the South West.
Throughout his career he studied under leaders in his field - writing, conducting, arranging and creating 12-tone compositions. Upon disbanding the dance group he became Staff Orchestrator for Walter Lantz cartoons. moving on to become Staff Composer for Gene Autry Range Writer Productions for TV. A change of pace saw him take over the chores of Capitol Producer - Capitol Writer for the TV show "Melody Time" on KTTV, as well as executive producer for TV Unlimited Productions. During his multifaceted career, Keith arranged, orchestrated and composed for no less than 28 full length motion pictures, 42 cartoons and 7 commercial films. His best known work was as Musical Director and Conductor for Charles Chaplin's film, "Limelight".
Keith's desire to again form a big band returned. He organized a new 17-piece band labeled "The Dazzling Sound", recording for Liberty Records, an album which was considered one of the All Time Best Selling Albums. The orchestra was listed in the 1957 Disc Jockey Poll as one of America's top ten "most promising Orchestras". During this time, he traveled with Johnny Mathis and the "Hi-Lo's".
Other highlights in his career were were serving as Arranger and Copysit Representative and President of the Musician's Union Local-47, as well as President of the California Copywrite [sic] Conference. In the meantime, Keith earned his Master's degree in music at CSUN. He went on to teach music in both private and public school systems, retiring from LAUSD in 1988.

If you’re interested in the Liberty recording, check out this blog.

It’d be interesting to learn which composer Williams worked with at Lantz. Darrell Calker in the ‘40s went from swing to classical, as well comic compositions with those peek-a-boo reeds he loved. He took the latter with him when he wrote music for the Columbia cartoons in the mid-‘40s (he was also composing for features at the same time). Clarence Wheeler’s music at Lantz in the early ‘50s is comparatively sparse; one cartoon features little more than an electric organ.

One thing neither Calker, Wheeler nor Williams did was write the Lantz studio’s number one hit. “The Woody Woodpecker Song” was penned by two guys in the orchestra Calker used for the cartoons. However, Lantz apparently wasn’t doing as well as Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising at their studio a decade earlier. They had their own lyricist. Variety again.



I haven’t found much about Myers. He copyrighted a song in 1931 while he was living in Cleveland. I wonder if he’s responsible for these lyrics in the 1934 H-I short “The Discontented Canary” (sung by the Rhythmettes?):

Once a canary, his love did bemoan
Locked in an old cage to live all alone
While out in the wild world he wanted to roam
And fly with the birds in the trees.

Now the bird that we sing of was lonesome
He wanted to fly in the breeze
But all he could do was to lead (?) and to sing
And swing on his flying trapeze.

Scott Bradley gets the sole credit for the compositions in this cartoon. Given his classical aspirations, I suspect he’d be glad to have someone else claim the lyrics as theirs.’

Playing With Dynamite and Other Games

If Aaron Ruben is remembered today, it’s for writing and producing “The Andy Griffith Show.” Like many writers in the first decades of television, Ruben came from radio. He’d written for Fred Allen and Milton Berle.

Ruben was brimming over with comic ideas, some of which wouldn’t quite work on radio or TV. So he sent them in as jokes to noted syndicated TV columnist John Crosby. Crosby wasn’t exactly a fan or quiz or audience participation shows, though there were a few off the beaten path like “You Bet Your Life” and “It Pays to Be Ignorant” that he reviewed favourably (a critic would be taking his life into his hands bashing Groucho Marx in print). So here’s Crosby’s column from March 22, 1954 where he passes on Ruben’s brainstorms and a funny exchange from the Groucho show. For whatever reason, Crosby didn’t reveal Ruben’s identity, though he must have known who Ruben was.

Readers Suggest Choice—Though Slighty Dangerous—New Shows
By JOHN CROSBY
My waggish readers, who brood over the plethora of panel shows, have been writing in suggestions again. In case you think there aren't enough panel gimmicks on the air, here are some ideas that haven't quite got on yet.
A man named Aaron Ruben, who has a strong streak of Charles Addams in him, has suggested a fine ghoulish game called “Up You Go.”
“This is a program in which you have a permanent panel of dynamitologists and bomb experts. A contestant is chosen from the audience and asked to disassemble a bomb. As the contestant goes about his task the members of the panel observe carefully and call out instructions. If the contestant ignores the instructions—‘Up You Go!’”
In case that game isn't exciting enough, Mr. Rueben has another one called “Out You Go” played in a studio at least 20 stories high. The contestant is shown a series of windows—one of them, the real thing, the others papier mache. If he is unfortunate enough to dive through the real one, the next of kin pay for the broken window. If he doesn't, he gets many handsome prizes.
Mr. Ruben, for the more intellectual crowd, has another on called “In You Go,” a thoughtful game in which lawyers and income tax experts closely quietly question the contestant about his personal life. If the experts are any good at all, they should be able to pin a criminal rap on him in no time. He gets to choose the federal pen he prefers.
Then someone else—I forgot who—submitted “Name You Mate.” This would be a rather highly specialized fame in which the contestants would be selected entirely from such folks as Tommy Manville or Barbara Hutton or other much-married folk. The idea would be to see whether they could identify some of their earlier mates, three or four marriages back. This one ought to be jolly fun, especially if—as is highly probable—they can't.
If you think these games are a little rough on the contestants, you just don't realize how durable contestants are these days. Not so long ago, for example, on the “People Are Funny” program, they pitched a contestant in a tank of water, threw live crabs in the water, and then threw lighted firecrackers at him. Just good clean fun. And down in Philadelphia, on a program called “Stop Look Listen,” Tom Moorehead, the emcee, just as a gag gave a startled woman contestant a live 4-foot alligator.
It's awfully hard to find anything a contestant won't do these days.

The surface has barely been scratched in the capabilities of contestants to bare their souls or their bodies to public gaze in order to win the free cruise to Bermuda where presumably the sun will heal any wounds left by the firecrackers.
And, of course, you just never know what a contestant is going to bare when he starts unlimbering his life story. Not long ago, Groucho Marx stumbled on 97-year-old Ed Ryan, a contestant on “You Bet Your Life,” who confessed that he was a technical survivor of Custer's last stand.
He had, he said, been left behind on that historic occasion to care for a sick buddy. Disgusted at being left behind and thereafter having avoided massacre, he deserted the Army and never went back.
“In other words,” said Groucho, “you've been AWOL for seventy-five years.”
Mr. Ryan allowed that this was true.
“If I were you,” Groucho told the white-bearded ancient, “I'd sneak back into that camp and keep my mouth shut. Of course right at this minute 200 colonels in the Pentagon are getting dizzy thinking of your back pay.”

Le Poste du Pew

Bob Gribbroek and Phil De Guard got together for these backgrounds in “Little Beau Pepé,” a 1952 Warner Bros. release from the Chuck Jones unit. It’s set in a French Foreign Legion camp in the Sahara.



Pepé cartoons are known for their phoney French, and not only in dialogue. Here’s some in the background paintings for gag purposes. Why Pepé would be interested in a cologne called “Man Trap,” is up to you to figure out. Maybe it does get lonely on those French Foreign Legion posts.



The cartoon reveals Pepé not to be romantic or even interested in sex, but a control freak. Sure he wants the woman—until the woman wants him. Then he’s not in control any more and instantly wants out of the situation. It’s a concept Jones and writer Mike Maltese revisited in other Pepé cartoons.

That Cow is Dragon

The Disney cartoon “Hell’s Bells” has some familiar routines used at a number of studios in the late ‘20s and early ’30s: wide open mouth swallowing the camera, three characters dividing the same action—and a preoccupation with udders.

In this clever variation, a dragon/cow is “milked.” But being a dragon-cow from the underland of fire and brimstone, its milk is actually flames.



There are lots of great character designs and the usual rubber hose animation that makes you forget there’s no plot. The animation of the flames is good, too. And you get some fine music, including “Funeral March of a Marionette” and “Fingal’s Cave.”

Gibson and the Elephant

How many names on the list to the right do you recognise?

These are the signatures of people who worked at the Leon Schlesinger studio who volunteered for picket duty outside Disney in July, 1941. Many of them you know if you’re an animation fan. Some, like Keith Darling and Bob Matz, later became animators and received screen credits. Other assistant animators like Murray Hudson and Rudy Zingler never did.

Number 15 is “Gibson, Jr.” It’s a name you’ve never seen on a Warner Bros. cartoon. So who is it? And what famous Warners cartoon did he work on? Don’t bother going to internet sites where people post their guesses as historical fact, because the answer’s not there (if people haven’t heard of “Gibson, Jr.” they can’t very well guess his name to put it on a web site).

Michael Sporn has a wonderful blog. Buried in it are a couple of references to “Gibson, Jr.,” who happens to be Nicholas Ephraim Gibson. Before arriving at the Schlesinger studio he worked on “Gulliver’s Travels.” He was evidently in a position of importance as he signed off on some model sheets. Here’s one of them, courtesy of Mr. Sporn.



Elsewhere on the site, there’s a drawing of the fine Irv Spector by Gibson, made when, presumably, both were at MGM.

Nic(k) Gibson was born in Oak Park, Illinois on January 16, 1917 to Nicholas Ephraim (Sr.) and Anna Marie (Basadow) Gibson. His father worked in the Buick plant in Melrose Park. The September 28, 1961 edition of the Oak Park Oak Leaves reveals he studied at the Fontainbleau School of Fine Arts in France, the Chicago Art Institute and the Art Students League in Chicago. He was the staff artist for the Art Leaves from 1934-41 and, at the time of the story, was a TV producer and art director for Foote, Cone and Belding in New York City. He had worked for Compton Advertising before going to Kenyon and Eckhardt in 1959 as a commercial producer, then ended up at Papert, Koenig and Lois in 1963. He had enlisted in the military at Camp Grant in Illinois on December 4, 1941 and was evidently in New York by 1945 as he’s mentioned in an animation guild newsletter that year. He died in Los Angeles on July 6, 1968.

When he arrived at Warners and how long he was there is still a mystery. But the cartoon he worked on is mentioned in Daily Variety, August 4, 1941.



“Horton Hatches the Egg” is one of the Blue Ribbons shorn of all credits, although layout artists weren’t getting credit on Warners cartoons in 1941. So we can thank Variety for preserving an historical fact.

The backgrounds in “Horton” were done by Michael Sasanoff who, like Gibson, went into ad agency work in the ‘40s. You can see some of them at this post.

Just a background note: it’s interesting seeing “Horton” in production so early. The Film Daily reported on July 10, 1941 that Leon Schlesinger had suspended Tex Avery for four weeks. Here we about three weeks later and already Bob Clampett is working with the Avery unit on “Horton” (Avery’s hiring by MGM was announced in the trade press on September 3rd). One wonders whether Gibson had contributed any layouts to Tex’s cartoons.

Production on “Horton” would have ceased temporarily. Daily Variety reported the studio shut down for two weeks starting August 18th for the usual summer vacation. Incidentally, for some reason, The Film Daily didn’t announce Schlesinger’s purchase of the Horton story until October 31st.