An Evening in Front of a 1930 Television

The early 1930s saw the rise of the Golden Age of Radio. The Golden Age of Television came along some 20 years later but there was television in the early ‘30s, too. In fact, a number of TV stations had signed on in the U.S. during the late ‘20s. A Brooklyn Daily Eagle story of May 12, 1929 revealed W2XCR in Jersey City was now broadcasting short films. By November it was on the air weekdays from 3-5 in the afternoon and 8-10 at night (and changing frequencies because of interference from other stations).

What was on TV back then? We can get a pretty good idea from the New York Sun of August 16, 1930. Perhaps more interesting than the anonymous writer’s description of programming is the description of his television set. 1930 was still the era of the mechanical TV which didn’t use a cathode ray tube to emit the tiny pictures. It picked up signals with a scanning disc that matched what had been scanned at a studio. And those of us around in the ‘50s and ‘60s thought we had it bad waiting for the tube to warm up.

Let’s take a trip back to 1930 and turn on the “radiovisor,” as people sometimes liked to call it back then.

Suppose we spend a few moments together and tune in on a television program from the Jersey City station. It's just 8 o'clock in the evening, the time when W2XCR begins its broadcasts. Seats for five persons are arranged in front of the radiovisor. It's just a trifle too light in the room, so that shades are drawn to make it as dark as possible. No light must strike the disk or the large magnifying glass through which we look to see the pictures. The size of the pictures we will see are not over an inch and a half square, so the eyes must be concentrated at one spot, that is, at the center of the six-inch magnifying glass in front of the disk.
First the switch controlling the motor is snapped on and the disk gains speed rapidly. Being mounted on a ball bearing shaft there is practically no noise. The motor is allowed to attain a speed of about 900 r. p. m., so as to be in step with the disk revolving at the transmitter. Then the short-wave electric set is turned on and the tubes allowed to warm up. A knob is turned on the front panel of the set to put the loud speaker in operation in order to hear announcements. The dial on the receiver is tuned to about thirty degrees. We hear the announcer telling his audience what the station has to offer for the evening.
“And now, lookers-in,” he continues, “our first half-tone movie this evening is called ‘The Big Fight’—one moment, please.” The next sound is that of the television signal, a succession of intermittent dots. It is tuned in as strong as possible on the loud speaker and then another knob is turned and the signal is put through the neon lamp behind the rotating disk. The flickering light passes through the holes in the disk and before us and we see plainly the title of the picture. Then there appears on the small screen the ringside. In each corner of the ring we see the fighters receiving last minute instructions from their trainers. The fighters get up, move to the center of the ring, are introduced by the referee and they shake hands. The fight is on.
A sub title appears "First Round." Then there is a flash back to the ring again. We see the two fighters engaged in a lively battle. The round is over. A large gong strikes and we see it on the screen. Then comes the second round, a lively one, which ends in a clinch, the referee stepping in to separate the fighters. At each round a sub-title is shown announcing the round and the gong is also shown. The fourth round ends in a knockout. The loser is carried to his corner and the winner's hand is raised by the referee. It's a short movie in silhouette, the figures appearing black against a pinkish background. Some nights I have tuned in the same fight picture with the sound broadcast and heard the match described as the picture progressed.
“Our next offering,” says the announcer, “is the singing of the television song showing the artists in half-tone, and if you will tune in on 187 meters to W2XCD you will hear the artists as they appear before you.”
The image of a young woman appears on the screen and in the loud speaker we hear every word she sings clearly. In a few moments a male voice is heard, and then this soloist appears before us. Finally, the two soloists appear as they sing together. The effect is very interesting. The lips of the soloists as they sing are perfectly synchronized with the words heard in the speaker.
Following the song, there is a short talk on television, which we hear on the loud speaker. Then a half-tone picture of Dr. Lee DeForest, inventor of the audion and "father of radio," is put on. Dr. DeForest's short address is also heard on the loud speaker. The half-tone pictures generally have good detail and the high lights and shadows show up splendidly.
Another half-tone movie called “Dr. Pain” is flashed on the screen. This is a very funny picture concerning a man who did not want to go to the dentist, although he was suffering terribly with a bad tooth. We see Dr. Pain strap his patient to the chair and with a long pair of pliers he pulls the tooth. I might mention that the sub-titles during the various pictures are remarkably clear with large letters, short words being used so that one can get their meaning quickly.
Col. Charles Lindbergh's face is reproduced on the screen by means of a movie film. He is seen making an address. The motion of his head and lips is quite plain. Then there's another movie called "At the Beach," which shows a little girl who runs away from her mother, falls into the ocean and is rescued by a life guard.
All of these half-tone pictures are interesting and often repeated. While some nights they do not come over clearly, there are times when the detail is unusually good.

W2XCR’s brief glory days were still ahead. The station moved to New York City in 1931; Popular Science Monthly reported on the event in its July edition, and with some wonderful pictures. But it was still really too early for television. W2XCR’s owners, Jenkins Television Corporation, who had been granted the call-sign in 1926, went under the following year.

The Sun article concluded with the words: “No one knows what the next six months will bring about in television but the public will soon find the television set at home as commonplace as the broadcast receiver is today.” It wasn’t “soon” but it did happen. By then, W2XCR was long forgotten.

Too Many Screwys

Meathead finds he hasn’t captured Screwy Squirrel in a sack. Screwy’s right there in front of him. Here’s the take.



Then Meathead’s head twirls around. Here are a few drawings.



The picture’s screwy enough with one squirrel, so Meathead takes care of the extra.



And the chase continues.

Animation in “Happy-Go-Nutty” is credited to Ed Love, Ray Abrams and Preston Blair.

Everglade Raid Background

If nothing else, the Walter Lantz cartoons of the late ‘50s had the nice work of Ray Jacobs and Art Landy. I don’t know whether one did layouts and the other backgrounds or if they switched off.

Here’s one of their pieces from “Everglade Raid” (1958), the first cartoon when Woody Woodpecker takes on an alligator that sounds like a slightly-enthusiastic Huckleberry Hound.



Landy had been a background artist at Disney. His last theatrical credit was on Lantz’s “Window Pains” (1967). Jacobs left Lantz around 1960 to work for Jack Kinney, then drew layouts for Filmation and Hanna-Barbera.

Television Worries

In 1947, there was television, but there wasn’t television.

There were about a dozen stations scattered across the U.S. and no hook-up between the east and west coasts. The networks, such as they were, didn’t offer programming during much of the week, and all the big stars were still on radio.

But television had been steadily developing after the war and the FCC was in the process of tripling the number of stations with the granting of licenses. The big stars of radio knew it would just be a matter of time before TV would be calling them.

Television may have still been developing in 1947 but Jack Benny could already see the pitfalls for someone like himself. Radio painted pictures in people’s minds. Seeing the same thing on screen couldn’t possibly measure up to someone’s imagination. And Jack realised that TV would swallow material even more than radio. No doubt that’s why he committed himself to only four shows on his first season in 1950-51.

As it turned out, Benny didn’t do “a whole new kind of program” as he predicted. In fact, many of his successful routines on TV were taken from old radio scripts, in some cases verbatim. Here’s what he had to say in a United Press column that appeared in newspapers beginning September 24, 1947. As a matter of interest, the Brooklyn Eagle of that day reveal TV listings in New York City consisting of test patterns, news, a movie, sports events, a kids’ show, a soap opera (“Highway to the Stars”) and a disc jockey programme. It’d be a year before the Uncle Miltie phenomenon made manufacturers of TV sets very happy and profitable.

Jack Benny Fears Television Advent Will Spoil Act
By VIRGINIA MacPHERSON
United Press Hollywood Correspondent

HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 24 (U.P.)—Television, Jack Benny lamented today, will probably louse up that nice, soft deal he's worked 16 years to perfect. He'll have to start all over.
So, he says, will every ether radio funnyman. Which is probably why the veteran jokesters are beating no drums to hurry up this miracle of the air waves.
“All the comedy shows—as we know 'em—will die out,” Benny says. “You'll have a whole new kind of program. I imagine we'll have to go in for plays. Heaven help my writers!”
No more peering through spectacles at neatly-typed scripts. The scripts will have to go. So will those spectacles. And ditto for the sound effects.
“Because the audience will be looking right smack at us,” Benny explained. “And we'll never be able to get as wild over a television screen as the listeners have us get in their own minds.”
Take that business of “tightwad” Benny clomping down to the basement vault.
“We could do that for television,” he said, “but it'd never be as funny. Neither would the squeaking hinges. Or my smoking old Maxwell. Or making Phil Harris put his dimes in my cigarette machine. All those gimmicks paint mental pictures that are twice as hilarious as what really goes on.”
The only funnyman who won't have to begin from the bottom again, Benny figures, are the boys who rely on visual antics for their giggles. “People like Billy De Wolfe and Danny Kaye and Danny Thomas,” plugged the only man in the business who can afford to. “They don't have situation comedy. They are funny just to watch.
“Fred Allen's puss might be, too.” Benny added. “But he's not taking any chances on the kind of chuckles the Benny pan might bring on.
“Nope, what we'll have to do is a fast switch to half-hour comedies,” he said, “and that'll be murder. I don't see how we could do a show oftener than once a month.”
Benny figures it'll take him that long to get that “hilarious” play written, sets built, costumes made up, cast hired, and all his lines memorized. His only consolation is that old “enemy Allen” will be in the same fix.
Meanwhile, he's starting his 16th consecutive year Oct. 5 on good, old-fashioned radio. And he's plenty thankful that television's still limited to fights and football games.
“By the time everybody has a home set,” Benny grinned, “I'll probably be too old anyway. Let the kids worry about it I'll be retired to the golf links.”

Ed Barge on Tom and Jerry

This is post is thanks to reader Roger Niccum. Roger dug up an article on Ed Barge, one of the main animators of Tom and Jerry for many years, from the Bakersfield Californian of April 11, 1944. Barge talks about making Tom and Jerry. The photo accompanied the original story.

SHARING BETWEEN THE SHEARS
By MAE SAUNDERS
Tom and Jerry are served up, not just at Christmas time, by Eddie Barge, artist and one of the chief animators in Movietone cartoons at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio. Tom and Jerry are the artists pals every day when he picks up his brushes. Mr. Barge, who received preliminary art training in Bakersfield schools, began work in Hollywood a number of years ago as an artist who did much of the hack work that goes into putting together a motion picture cartoon. Now as one of the chief animators, he blocks in the main story scenes, meeting the requirements of the director. “Tom” and “Jerry” are his chief pals at M-G-M studio and there’s not a whisker that Tom and Jerry have between them that the artist hasn’t flicked impressively. In the motion picture cartoons, a little laugh is a big thing, artistically speaking. It’s the artist that really broadens the comedy with a line here and a line there.

Chief joy to the beholder in the Tom and Jerry cartoons, which by the way won the Academy award last year, is the theme of courage and resourcefulness of the little guy, the mouse, as pitted against brute force, the cat.
The making of motion picture cartoons is an art by itself requiring the co-ordination of many artists, timed perfectly to action and plot, blocked in colors, placement against background, and the final trimmings, all put to appropriate music.
There are approximately 50 or 60 sconces in an average cartoon. There are about four animators necessary to every picture. Artist crews can only turn out about six pictures a year.
Each drawing is “shot” twice; there are about 16 “frames” or 8 drawings to each foot and a half of film that is projected on the screen every second.
There are about 12 individual drawings every second on the screen. The average cartoon used to be about 800 feet, but it is now about 600 feet. This means an average of 6000 drawings per film.
The artist makes pencil sketches and these are run off by the director to test story strength. Sometimes drawings are changed to exaggerate action or subdue it.
The “personality” pictures with much facial expression are the most difficult to do, says the artist.
All the sound effects are marked carefully and the artist must make the sound and action synchronize in his work.
Many fine artists collaborate in making the cartoons, including voice experts, famous quartets and ventriloquists. Joke men and gag men work with directors on cartoon stories.
And, says the artist, it’s all done for the laugh.
Barge originally planned a career as a newspaper cartoonist, got his first job by walking into a Hollywood studio and showing them his drawings. Now he is getting regular screen credit for his work.

Edward John Barge was born on August 29, 1910 in Santa Clara, California to Alfred Edward and Margaret Gwendoline (Gannon) Barge. His father was an Englishman who worked for the Santa Fe Railway, settling in California around 1909 after living in Colorado. The family briefly moved to Kamloops, B.C., where Barge’s brother Al was born and his father is in the 1913 city directory as a brakeman for the Canadian Pacific Railway. But they were back in Bakersfield area by Christmas time 1916 as Barge and his older brother Henry played brownies in the Catholic parish’s children’s pageant (I suspect he never revealed this to his animation colleagues).

Barge’s name was typeset on the sports page of the Californian a number of times. He played local baseball and basketball after graduating from school. In fact, he broke his leg in 1933 and a benefit baseball game was staged for him (the Depression was on, you know). The last I can find of Barge in the Bakersfield area is in July 1936.

He then headed to Los Angeles and got a job at the Harman-Ising studio before moving on to MGM; he was paid $1560 in 1939. In the ‘40s, he animated not only for Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, but in the George Gordon and Lah-Blair units. Barge’s last cartoon for the studio was apparently “Feedin’ the Kiddie” (released in 1957). Barge wasn’t at the studio when it closed that year; Broadcasting magazine of May 7, 1956 reported he, Morrie Zukor and Ron Maidenberg all left MGM to work for Animation, Inc. as an art director, assistant animator and story sketch artist, respectively. Barge was there into the 1960s. He later ended up working for his old bosses again on his old characters and other lesser Hanna-Barbera TV cartoons.

Barge died in Los Angeles on September 29, 1991.

Thugs Backgrounds

Some background drawings from the great Warners cartoon “Thugs With Dirty Mugs” (released 1939). I presume they’re by Johnny Johnsen.

Up Jumps the Devil

You’ve seen cartoons where a devil version and an angel version of a character tell him how to behave. The idea goes back to the silent film era, although in “Bobby Bumps at the Circus” (1916) only features a generic devil and angel.

The devil rises up from, well, you know where. The angel just appears from nowhere.



In the end, Fido listens to the devil. After all, the circus owner does owe him and Bobby for a performance. Fido then takes the money (a $500 bill?) the circus owner has dropped to Bobby’s father, who can now pay his debts.

Gagging on Gags

Imagine one week you’re starring on your own show, and the next week you’re a supporting player on a show that’s taken your time-slot and sponsor. That’s what Louise Erickson had to endure.

It was no surprise, though. Billboard announced in its August 21, 1948 issue that Tums had purchased Alan Young to replace Erickson’s “A Date With Judy.” Judy’s contract ran until January 4, 1949. On January 11th, the Young show made its debut on NBC, costing $8,500 to produce, compared to $4,700 for “Judy.”

In a way, it wasn’t a debut. It was another in a series of shows featuring Young as a clutzy, eager young man with a girl-friend hinting at romance one minute and exasperated at his antics the next. Erickson joined Doris Singleton and Jean Gillespie on the list of actresses playing his suitors. It was a concept that was neither new to Young, nor to radio. Young was already busy. He was co-hosting a variety show with Jimmy Durante, having walked from “The Texaco Star Theatre” in March for not giving him enough air time. And he found time to get married to singer Virginia McCurdy in Tijuana during the run of the show.

How long Erickson stayed on the show is buried in newspapers or radio columns I haven’t uncovered. Broadcasting of March 22nd reported she had rejoined the cast of “Meet Corliss Archer.” The New York Times radio listings for April 26th list Shirley Mitchell in Young’s cast instead of Erickson. “A Date With Judy” returned to the air in the fall on another network (initially without a sponsor). George O’Hanlon took over July 12th as Young’s summer replacement. But Young never returned. The Times’ TV listings grew slowly over the course of 1948 and 1949, with new stations and longer programming days, as well as expanded networks. That’s where the stars were going and that’s where Young went.

Newspaperdom’s best-known radio critic may have been John Crosby, and he got to the bottom of what was wrong with Young’s radio show, which was written by Dave Schwartz, Artie Stander and Joe Young (Bob Fisher joined the staff in March). The column appeared in papers beginning April 18th. You’ll note the sly reference to Don Wilson’s best-known sponsor of the day. Young’s competition, by the way, was “Mr. and Mrs. North” (CBS), “America’s Town Meeting” (ABC, simulcast on TV) and “Share the Wealth” (Mutual). He was the lead-in for Bob Hope.

RADIO IN REVIEW
By JOHN CROSBY
NEW YORK—The Alan Young show (NBC, 8:30 p.m. EST Tuesdays) is described in NBC press releases as situation and gag comedy, which is exactly what it is.
The situations aren't bad. The gags are awful. That doesn't mean necessarily that Young is batting .500. Some of his shows are almost all gags and his average sinks to .019. Others are almost all situation comedy in which case his batting average is more respectable.
Young plays the part of harassed, earnest, dewy-eyed young man, a sort of contemporary Harold Lloyd, who wants to be an actor and hasn't got anywhere. He has an agent named Ed Brady who steals his clothes and gambles all his money away on the horses. (The starting gate usually comes in ahead of Brady's horses.) He has a girl, Betty, who adores him but whose parents don't. She has a small, cynical brother who views his sister with the detachment of small, cynical brothers. Sounds pretty familiar, doesn't, it? Well, it is.

The one original note in the Young show is struck by Jim Backus, who plays the part of Hubert Updike, the biggest snob in radio. Updike, a wealthy young man whose accent is a parody of Harvard's, gives away all his folding money because the creases spoil the pictures, and likes to stroll in his garden to give his flowers a chance to smell him. He has blue jaundice. (You can't get it in this country. He had to send abroad for it).
Over the years Updike has developed a number of other eccentricities. He had to sell his new Cadillac because the tune played by the horn fell to No. 3 on the Hit Parade. And once he knocked a pedestrian 250 feet and had him arrested for leaving the scene of an accident.
Backus, who plays this highly flavored young man, is easily one of the best stooges in the business. I just hope they don't make a featured comic of him. You have to take Updike in small doses.
I'm also rather fond of the young brother, a perceptive little brat. Once when Young was scheduled to leave town and wailed that this would remove him from the sight of his girl friend's beautiful face, this youngster informed him that her eye lashes came off, her red cheeks came off, her lips came off. "I can put it in a box and ship it to you," he said.
There are a couple of other stooges—Nicodemus [Stewart], a colored man who sounds like his name, and Mr. Beagle, a nasal New England type who sounds like all the other nasal New England types! Young, in fact, is in danger of being overwhelmed by his own stooges. He's a personable and likable young man, but in this show he has surrounded himself with so many spicy characters he is easily the dimmest member of the cast. As to those terrible gags, if you want don’t want to take my word for it, here are some samples:
“Gamble all my money in a plumber’s shop? Oh, I couldn’t. I’m no plunger.”
“What do you want to be an actor for? One day you’re making love to Betty Grable, the next day you’re a has-been.”
“Yeah, but look where you has been.”
That’s enough for everyone?
One last word. Tums, which used to have the world’s worst commercials, no longer has the world’s worst commercials. Tums has Don Wilson in there pitching now and Wilson’s mellow voice—so round, so firm, so fully packed—is probably the only one in existence which can take the curse off all that chatter about acid indigestion.

Both Updike and Young went onto better things. Young won two Emmys for his early TV show, but later gained fame co-starring for six seasons with Mr. Ed and had a fine cartoon voice acting career. Updike was given a new name by a chap named Sherwood Schwartz and placed on an island with six other stranded castaways. And there he remains in endless reruns of “Gilligan’s Island” to this day.

Singed Duck a la Sutherland

John Sutherland Productions produced some enjoyable animation during its lifetime, paying good money to get top people who had worked at other studios.

Here’s a neat little scene from later in the studio’s life called “A Missile Named Mac” (1962) made for Bell Labs. A coonskin-hatted hunter fires his rifle, nicking a duck casually sailing through the air in the butt. The duck isn’t happy. Here are some of the drawings.



Animation on this short is done on twos by Gerald Baldwin and Lefty Callahan. If the designs remind you of either UPA or Jay Ward, it’s because they’re by Bob Dranko, who worked at both studios. Baldwin was a Jay Ward vet as well, while Callahan went on to a long career at Hanna-Barbera, having assisted the funny Irv Spence at MGM in the ‘50s.

Lotsa Heel-Wathas

There was a gag in the old Oswald the Rabbit cartoons, and later in the Bosko cartoons released by Warners where the character would crash and split into a bunch of little versions of himself.

Whether Tex Avery’s paying homage or simply borrowing the gag, I don’t know, but he uses it in “Big Heel-Watha” (1944). And because he’s sped it up, the gag is funnier than it was 15 years earlier.



The Heel-Wathas run into each other and reform into one person. These are consecutive frames.



Heel-Watha runs out of the scene, stage right. But one little Heel-Watha runs into the scene, stage left. He’s been left behind. And he stays that way forever, apparently, as the cartoon moves on to the next scene.



Heck Allen gets the story credit. Preston Blair, Ray Abrams and Ed Love are the credited animators.