Train Hits Kid

Junior the would-be hot rod has rescued his taxi-cab dad by pushing him out of the path of an oncoming train in “One Cab's Family.”



But then he realises he can’t get away from the train in time. There are four frames of the wide-eyed Junior (the stop sign is all that’s animated) before the train comes into the picture. He’s run over in three consecutive frames.



Junior survives because, well, Tex Avery built up the little guy to be loveable, so pulling off a comedic, “Sad ending, isn’t it?” sign gag wouldn’t work.

Grant Simmons, Mike Lah and Walt Clinton are the credited animators.

The Benny Feud That Didn't Involve Fred Allen

A few changes came to the Jack Benny radio show in the 1944-45 season, not all of them good. The worst was the fact the show’s ratings dropped. Various Hooper reports over the course of the season reveal the show was between number 10 and 15 much of the time—not in the top five like Benny had been not long before.

I always thought the reason for this was the change in sponsorship. Shows before the ‘44-‘45 season opened with Don Wilson happily expounding on the joys of Jell-O or Grape Nuts Flakes. You could picture him enthusiastically gobbling them down; only his loyalty to the sponsor stopped him from doing it in mid-commercial. With a new sponsor came a harsh, obsessively repetitious (and Wilson-less) opening ad. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like being shouted at for the first minute and a half of a comedy show. But it turns out there may have been another reason for the ratings drop, one out of the control of anyone on the Benny show.

But before we get to that, let us point out the Lucky Strike sponsorship and its hard-sell ads were not what was anticipated when Benny signed a deal with American Tobacco. And it turned out Benny had to drop Grape Nuts. Here’s what Broadcasting magazine announced in its edition of February 28, 1944.

Pall Mall Acquires Jack Benny Series
Comedian Understood to Get $25,000 Weekly for Show
AMERICAN CIGARETTE & Cigar Co., New York, will sponsor Jack Benny in his present 7-7:30 p.m. Sunday spot on NBC, beginning next fall, the comedian announced last Thursday. He has signed a three-year contract with the company to broadcast a weekly program for Pall Mall Cigarettes, he stated, with his 10-year association with General Foods which he described as "10 of the happiest years of my career", coming to an end with the broadcast of June 11.
The Sunday evening period on NBC is controlled by Benny under the terms of his last contract with General Foods, a situation believed to be unique in radio. When the contract was signed the comedian received from NBC a letter specifying that should he not continue under the same sponsorship at the conclusion of the contract, he should have the right to turn that choice spot over to any other sponsor-as long as the company is acceptable to NBC.
Pay Boost Claimed
Financial details of the new contract were not disclosed but it is understood that the cigarette company will pay $25,000 for the program each week, that sum covering the orchestra and all other talent on the broadcast, which is produced and sold by Mr. Benny as a package. His current contract reportedly is for $22,500 weekly.

Benny’s season debut was October 1. But Billboard magazine of September 2 reported on talk to plug a different tobacco (stop groaning at the pun). It said Benny might be hawking Lucky Strikes instead; “Reason given for change was scarcity of product.” But Florence Small wrote in a puff piece on Pall Malls (oh, another pun) in the July 3, 1950 edition of Broadcasting that “American Tobacco Co. believed it [the Benny show] was too large a venture and reassigned it to Luckies.”

Deciding against listening to haranguing commercials wasn’t the only danger awaiting the Benny show. General Foods didn’t want to give up the 7-7:30 p.m. Sunday time slot so easily. Since it was Benny’s to keep on NBC, General Foods simply went to another network. And it put up some big-name competition against him. Here’s PM’s take in a column of July 12, 1944.

HEARD AND OVERHEARD
Rough Going for Benny
A couple of weeks ago Jack Benny abandoned General Foods, after an association of about 10 years, to take another sponsor, Pall Mall. The parting was accompanied by all sorts of fulsome glad-handing on both sides, and Jack and Mary Livingstone took full-page ads in the trade press to express the pious hope that the end of a decade of business relations did not mean the end of a beautiful friendship. Whether that hope is justified is a matter for considerable doubt. You need only consider these factors (and let us put them delicately so as not to hurt anyone’s feelings):
Benny, by agreement with NBC. retains personal control of the 7 o’clock Sunday evening time, one of the choicest spots in radio. Over the last 10 years General Foods spent millions for that time and might presumably be somewhat disgruntled that Benny inherited it instead of the company.
General Foods values that period so much that next Fall it is sponsoring a full hour variety program, from 7 to 8 p.m. Sundays, on CBS. (The new program will almost certainly cost more than the reported $20,000 a week-exclusive of radio time cost—that the company paid Benny. This would seem to indicate that Benny's switch to Pall Mall, for a reported $25,000 a week, was not primarily due to any unwillingness by General Foods to raise the ante.)
For its new program General Foods is using Kate Smith as m.c. You are welcome to offer any reason you choose for the selection of Kate Smith, but you might like to know what reason is generally accepted in the radio industry. It’s this:
Years ago, when Amos and Andy were a national institution, and when everyone thought they would remain unbeatable, Kate Smith went up against them when nobody else would.
The industry thought she was nuts, that she would be so badly outclassed that she would vanish from the air. What happened? Nothing much-she just murdered Amos and Andy, that's all.
Some years later, when Rudy Vallee was the biggest thing in radio, Kate went on the air against him. The same thing happened. She murdered Vallee.
She has proved twice, and proved conclusively, that she can cut even the toughest competition down to size. And I’m willing to bet that Benny will be the third victim.
I don't want anyone to suppose I am a Kate Smith devotee. I like her personally, and she can sing, but I can't stand that Ted Collins—his is one of the most irritating voices on the air—and the unblushing way they read those commercials is infuriating. But millions of people do like—even love-both of them, which is a very fine thing for General Foods.
I’ll stick with Benny, regardless, and watch with considerable interest what happens to his rating. Over the past year his program ranked around fifth in the Hooper list of the nation's 15 most popular programs. Well see where tie is next November.
—ARNOLD BLOM

Kate Smith may never have been a top 15 show like Benny’s, but she must have cut into his numbers. And it doesn’t appear to have helped either of them. For example, the November 15th edition of Radio Audience pointed out Smith’s Pulse average in October (ratings in New York and New Jersey) dropped from her 1944 average of 23.9% to 10.7% for October, while Benny’s declined from a 1944 average of 37.6 to 31.7. And Broadcasting of July 9, 1945 pointed out Smith had the most listeners per family tuned in of any show in Spring 1945 and she was number one among women. Still, the weekly Hooperatings showed Benny was in the top 15, where Smith was nowhere to be found.

Finally, General Foods surrendered. Broadcasting announced on August 6, 1945 that Smith would be moved to Fridays at 8:30 p.m. in the fall; “Adventures of The Thin Man” filled the time slot for CBS the following season (and for General Foods’ Post Toasties).

Meanwhile, some clever people at ABC (soon to drop the old designation of the Blue Network) made fun of the Benny-Smith ratings war in the trades. You can click on the ad to the right to see one of the full-pagers the network took out.

The people at the Benny show also took some action on their own in the following season to entice listeners. They developed a gimmick to get people to listen week after week: the I-Can’t-Stand-Jack-Benny-Because contest. The show benefitted from Dennis Day returning from the Navy (he had been on an AFRS assignment in Hollywood for the latter part of the war). And new secondary characters were added: Mr. Kitzel (Artie Auerbach, reworked from “The Al Pearce Show”), Polly the parrot (Mel Blanc), the next-door-neighbour Colmans, the phone operators (Bea Benaderet and Sara Berner), which all gave the show a boost.

As a side note, Benny took a light-hearted swipe on his first show for General Foods in 1934. While he introduced himself for years with “Jell-O, again,” on his initial show for the dessert, he chirped “Jell-O, everybody!” making fun of Smith’s well-known “Hello, everybody!” greeting on her programme.

The change from General Foods to American Tobacco had an unexpected casualty. With the change, the Benny show was no longer broadcast in Canada. The CBC looked at airing the show with war messages substituted for the Lucky Strike commercials on its Trans-Canada Network of independently owned stations (Broadcasting, Sept. 11, 1944) . But after the October 1st broadcast, the plan was cancelled because Benny could not guarantee Lucky Strikes would not mentioned during the programme outside of the commercials (Broadcasting, Oct. 16, 1944). What’s unusual about this is the Benny show was running on the American Armed Forces Radio Service with all the mentions of Luckies edited out, and transcriptions were being broadcast in Britain with the references removed. But in Canada, all that editing wasn’t an option for some reason. And, as Broadcasting added: “In Canada the granting of sustaining privileges to the show brought opposition from the advertising and broadcasting industry. It was felt a precedent was being set under which any popular show could demand free time on a Canadian network because of popularity.” So Canadians had to listen to Benny for years on American border stations.

Meaningless Money of Paul Terry

On January 2, 1956, Broadcasting-Telecasting magazine reported “CBS was in the final stages of a transaction with Terrytoon Inc., under which CBS would acquire the assets of the film animation company for about $5 million.” Later reports put the figure between three million and five million. Regardless, every single penny went to one man—Paul Terry, who took his instant new fortune and walked away from the cartoon business. This was a man who less than five years earlier insisted he wasn’t close to retirement and he wasn’t really in it for the money.

The sale came less than two months after the city of New Rochelle, New York changed its name for a day to “Terrytown” and honoured Terry on the 25th anniversary of moving his cartoon studio there.

Terry had already made a little bundle from CBS. Variety reported on November 11, 1953 that 112 sound shorts had been sold to the network for $140,000. A Billboard story dated four days earlier stated General Mills had agreed to a sponsorship deal. There had been rumours the previous June, according to Billboard that month, that 20th Century Fox was looking at releasing a number of the Terrytoons to TV. But Terry owned the cartoons, not Fox. So Terry quite wisely cut out the middle man and pocketed the cash himself.

Terry had been looking at television as early as 1951. He mentioned it in an interview with Hal Boyle of the Associated Press that appeared in papers on July 13th as he painted himself as a roly-poly veteran of the cartoon world who just wanted people to laugh. Money? It’s there to make better cartoons, he said. Anyone familiar with the 1950s Terrytoons may wonder how he said it with a straight face.

Cartooning Is Big Business to Paul Terry Creator, of Terrytoon Animated Flickers
By HAL BOYLE
NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. (AP)—Laughter is an industry today and cartooning is a big business.
A top chuckle-smith in this field is Paul Terry, creator of Terrytoons and a pioneer of the animated cartoon.
Some 40,000,000 moviegoers each week enjoy the antics of his famous characters—Mighty Mouse, Dinky the Duck, the Two Terry Bears, and Heckle and Jeckle, the talking magpies.
At 64, Terry well may have made more people laugh more often than any man in history. But he himself has remained little known to the public. That suits him.
“Put your roots in the minds of as many people as you can,” he said. “Minds are all that count. Anybody who goes out for dollars alone is crazy.”
Soon his big rambling studio here will put out the 1,000th Terrytoon. That leaves the cheerful, portly artist only one goal in life:
“To make 1,000 more. I never want to retire. If a fellow sets a time that he’s going to retire—whether at 35, 55, or 65—he’s through as of the time he mentally decides he’s going to retire.”
BACK IN 1915 Terry quit two jobs as a comic strip and newspaper artist to make his first film cartoon. It was called “Little Herman,” and it took him two months working alone in his own living room to make the 1,000 separate drawings for the five-minute feature.
“Now our cartoons run seven minutes,” he said. “They have 8,000 to 10,000 drawings, and it takes 85 people eight months to produce one for the screen.”
The studio turns out 26 cartoons a year now, all in technicolor. His staff also puts out several million comic books a year and is working on a television show.
“We haven’t worked out the format yet,” Terry said. “But I’m sure it will stick basically to children, cartoons and animals.”
Terry won his first wide recognition with his series of Aesop Fable cartoons in the days of silent films.
“I had to out-Aesop Aesop himself,” he recalled. “Aesop told 220 fables originally. But I eventually put out 240 more—460 altogether. Sometimes I wonder if Aesop is waiting for me to give me plenty for what I did to his stories.”
EACH CARTOON now costs up to $50,000 to produce. Over the years Terry has ploughed his profits back into his studio, trying to improve the art of animation.
“There is no sense in accumulating money,” he said. “Only people who are afraid try to accumulate money. I have more faith in the pictures I make than in dollars. The dollars I make are no good to me until I turn them into another picture.”
Terry believes cartooning still has a fabulous future, and this is advice to the young kid learning to draw:
“There’ll always be room for the top ones. But it’ll always be tough for the ones who don’t grow mentally. This trouble comes if they are too clever too young. They peter out and don’t develop. Anyone can learn to draw, but to succeed—growth must be endless.”
He recently put his own philosophy in a lyric, “The Miracle,” set to music by his old friend, Phil Scheib, who has composed original scores for all the Terrytoons.
“Every day is a miracle to me,” he said. “Life has been good. The world is better than it was, and it is still getting better.”
With a twinkle in his eye, Terry added stoutly:
“And that’s no Aesop fable.”

Rubber Hose

There seem to be endless numbers of places on the internet dedicated to old animated cartoons. Here’s one devoted to rubber hose animation.



There’s a lot of Disney and Fleischer material. Go to http://rubberhoseanimation.tumblr.com

Horse on the Barrel

There’s an exciting chase in “Betty Boop’s Prize Show” (1934), where Betty tries to stop Phillip the Fiend from firing at Fearless Fred who’s chasing them on horseback.



Ah, but this is taking place on stage. We get to see the stage machinery in place. A piece of stage setting is pushed away and reveals the horse is riding in place on barrels.



We can tell the horse is a bad guy because he’s smoking a cigar and has a nasty look on his face.

Myron Waldman and Lillian Friedman get the animation credits.

She Ain't Got No Body

“You might as well move on, Doc. I don’t move from here all through the picture,” says the bartender.



Ah, but he does when the bullets start flying. He leaves his moustache in mid-air as we see the gag.



From the Tex Avery cartoon “The Shooting of Dan McGoo,” written by Heck Allen.

Helen Keller and the Radio

Radio is a friend to the sightless. At least, I was told that far too many years ago when I was a teenaged disc jockey by a man with severe vision troubles who occasionally called the station to chat while listening to the all-night show. I thought of that when I spotted this remarkable picture leafing through the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of May 12, 1929.

Here’s the accompanying story, with no byline.

A. Atwater Kent and R.C.A. Thanked by Helen Keller For Radios for Sightless
In response to an appeal from Helen Keller, 250 blind people will receive radios through the generosity of A. Atwater Kent and the Radio Corporation of America.
During the past few years, the American Foundation for the Blind of 125 E. 46th st., New York, has been distributing radios to sightless people in the United States. When its last consignment of radios was exhausted, 250 names remained on the waiting list of the Foundation.
Some of these requests gave pathetic glimpses into lives cut away from all contacts with the world outside their isolated communities. They came from rural districts barren of any form of entertainment and from those who must spend their bleak evenings alone in great cities.
“My aunt is old and blind, and enforced idleness and inactivity keep her too much alone,” one-letter read. “We are starved for what a radio brings.” When Helen Keller learned that no more radios were available, she realized the poignancy of the disappointment of those who were awaiting a reply to their requests.
In behalf of her fellow blind, she wrote to Atwater Kent asking that these sightless hundreds be provided with radios.
The response was prompt. Two hundred and fifty electric radios were made available for distribution through the American Foundation for the Blind, for which the Radio Corporation of America will contribute tubes. In acknowledgement, Miss Keller wrote:
Dear Mr. Atwater Kent:
Your response to my request for radios for the blind is wonderful. I am all a-tremble with excitement. My heart sings out its joy and gratitude to you. It is just as it should be that you are a Philadelphian, your beautiful deed images the great and generous heart of your city—a city which pours out its wealth in comfort and help to others.
I seek for words to express the warmth of my appreciation of your kindness; but words are only painted fire, and vanish when once spoken. But the feeling remains forever a bright flame in the dark. May your reward be in the thought that through you blindness has lost its brooding—and the heart of sorrow has been lightened and consoled by magical sounds from the world’s brimming orchestra.
Gratefully and sincerely yours,
HELEN KELLER.
Although Helen Keller is both blind and deaf, the laws of vibration permit her to listen to a radio by placing her hand on the cabinet. In the same way she catches the rhythm of the music from the case of a violin when the bow is drawn across the strings and from a light touch upon a piano. In her home in Forest Hills, Long Island, she can enjoy the strains of music caught from the air and transmitted not to her ears but to her finger-tips.
Her face reflects her pleasure as she catches the beauty of composition and interpretation.
Distribution of radios to blind people was commenced by the American Foundation for the Blind four years ago, when a fund was raised for distribution of 2,500 radios. Power Crosley Jr. [sic] has since contributed 1,000 sets, for which the Radio Corporation of America donated tubes.

There is a kind and unassuming man named Jim Robson who had a fine and lengthy career on radio announcing play-by-play hockey and baseball. During a pause in the action, he would give a special and sincere hello to various people who could only enjoy the game on radio, including the blind. A few people thought it was hokey. People who have trouble seeing did not. They were right.

Time For Lunch

Flying words are always lots of fun in silent cartoons. Here’s one from “Sky Scappers,” a 1928 Oswald cartoon.

It’s noon on the job site. The foreman pokes a mechanical worker into blowing his whistle to get everyone to take a break to eat. Oswald's ear changes shape to hear the word floating overhead. Here are some of the drawings; a shame the top of the print is cropped on this.



Incidentally, the dogs and cats on the jobsite are on a 30-drawing cycle.

The only person to get a credit is non-drawing Walt Disney.

Dustcap Doormat

The hypocritical next door neighbour gets clobbered by John Doormat’s battle-axe wife in “Dustcap Doormat” (1958). And only one man could have possibly come up with the kind of drawings you see below—Jim Tyer.

Mrs. Doormat starts off with a roundhouse right. Her wind-milling arm multiplies.



Tyer does something really odd. There’s no impact drawing. Actually, the neighbour’s head drops to the floor before Mrs. Doormat’s arm gets near him. But the windmill motion makes it look like she hit him, especially when Tyer adds stars in the next drawing—and her arm still isn’t near him. These are consecutive drawings. Some are on twos, others are on threes.



Tyer’s work has been discussed in a number of venues on the internet, so I won’t go into it here. A short biographical note: Jim Tyer was born on February 7, 1904 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the seventh child of John F. and Mary Tyer; three of his brothers served in World War One. His father was a wire worker who died before Tyer turned six. The 1940 Census has him working in Detroit (Jam Handy studio) and his 1935 residence was listed as “Hollywood.” Tyer died March 23, 1976 in Fairfield, Connecticut.

P.S.: Thanks to Charles Brubaker for posting this Cinemascope version of the cartoon on-line from his collection.

Jack Benny on Stage, 1921

Jack Benny wasn’t always Jack Benny, the 39-year-old cheapskate who had Rochester drive him around in a Maxwell. That character was developed over the years on his half-hour network radio show.

Benny started out on radio in 1932 just like he had been in vaudeville in 1932—as a master of ceremonies. Basically, he was a host who was a stand-up comedian. He had spent his early vaudeville days working with partners in a musical-comedy act before becoming a single and eventually changing his name to Jack Benny around October 1920.

THIS POST has a Variety review of Benny’s act soon after it arrived in New York. Not long after, the New York Clipper, a trade paper, reviewed the act as it played at the Alhambra at 7th Avenue and 126th Street in Harlem. The picture to the right was taken a number of years before Benny played the house. The Clipper story is from February 2, 1921. I’ve snipped out those parts of the review which don’t relate to him. The bill was Margert Taylor (high-wire), Matty Lee Lippard and Dave Dillon (singer and piano), John W. Ransone Co. (play, “Ask Dad”), Benny, Karyl Norman (female impersonator), Long Tack Sam (magician and acrobat), Burns and Fabrito (“Shoes”) and the Gus Edwards Revue. Sadly, the acts besides Benny (and perhaps Edwards) are long forgotten.

Capacity business again on Monday night. This house can boast of an exceptionally good lay-out, in fact it's one of the most entertaining bills in town this week. Clayton and Edwards, programmed, are out of the show, Jack Benny replacing them. Benny appeared in number four spot on Monday night, a stranger to New York audiences, and tied the show up. Variety in the full meaning of the word is represented on this bill.
We don't remember having seen this Jack Benny in the East, and for that matter this Jack Benny evidently was strange to the audience. It is therefore that we give all the more credit to Jack Benny. Some might compare him with Ben Bernie, because he uses a violin and talks, but the use of the violin is as far as the comparison can go. Benny does an entirely different routine of talk, in an entirely different manner than Bernie. He holds his instrument differently and works differently. Benny is that type of male single that is needed in vaudeville. His talk is refreshing. It's original and it's very clever. He talks in the ordinary conversational tones, yet can be heard all over. He plays one or two bits on the violin, but Benny is not primarily a musician, which does not mean that his playing is bad. As an entertainer, Jack Benny can take his place with the best of them.

The Alhambra was a Keith house. Through the ‘20s, Jack appeared on the Keith Time (including the Palace in New York City) on the East Coast and the Orpheum circuit on the West Coast (Keith and Orpheum would add “Radio” to the front of their names to form some familiar initials), playing in all the major cities.

Interestingly, the review of the acts at another theatre on the same page in the Clipper ends with the words “Pictures closed.” Before long, motion pictures would take over the vaudeville houses. Vaudevillians moved into pictures or radio. Jack Benny did both. He thrived in radio and television, the reason we remember him today and not Harry Burns and Frank Fabrito.