Cubby's Drunken Orchestra

Animated cartoons were au courant in the early ‘30s, what with references to Ghandi, George Bernard Shaw, Bing Crosby—and beer.

Near beer (3.2% alcohol and below) was legalised in March 1933, and the Constitutional Amendment forcing Prohibition on America was repealed the following December.

Animators, if rumour is to be believed, enjoyed a drink or two on rare occasion, so it’s no wonder alcohol found its way into cartoons. There are a couple of beer gags to open “Cubby’s Picnic” (1933). Cubby opens the cartoon conducting an orchestra. A tuba player hooks up a nearby keg to his instrument and uses it to drink beer.



A cellist deftly picks up a stein with his bow and finishes it off.



Pretty soon, the whole band is drunk. Apologies for the fuzzy resolution on the frame, but it’s kind of appropriate for a scene with drunks (unfortunately, higher-quality versions of this cartoon on the internet have been killed).



Cubby really isn’t on a picnic in this cartoon even though it’s called “Cubby’s Picnic.” Why? Because it’s a Van Beuren cartoon! You don’t expect it to make sense, do you?

Steve Muffatti directed the short, with Eddie Donnelly receiving the animation credit. The sad irony is Muffatti died an alcoholic on September 8, 1962 at the age of 51 (thanks to Thad Komorowski and Jerry Beck for the information).

Before She Was Alice

There was a time that Ann B. Davis was worried about being typecast in the role of Schultzy, which brought her a pair of Emmys. But who remembers Schultzy today?

Blame the relentlessly ticking clock. Schultzy appeared on “The Bob Cummings Show” more than 50 years ago. It wasn’t a show too many boomers grew up with (dad may have appreciated the female models that surrounded Cummings, though), and disappeared from reruns when colour punted virtually every old black-and-white show off the air (“I Love Lucy” and “The Honeymooners” being notable exceptions). “The Brady Bunch” came along 12 years later, appealed to tons of kids, and played in reruns forever (and probably is on some channel somewhere, even today). Those kids are now grown up and remember Davis as the likeable stalwart maid Alice.

Davis’ death at the age of 88 was reported today.

She once told Associated Press reporter Bob Thomas (in a column published May 6, 1958) she appeared in tent shows in Erie, Pa. for $20 a week—then got a raise to $25 because she helped set up the tent. In 1949, she headed to California to the Porterville Barn Theatre, then accepted stage roles in Monterrey and San Francisco before heading to Hollywood. In 1954, she was working in the Christmas card line of a local department store. Then came Schultzy.

Here are a couple of columns done about the same time as the Thomas interview. The Niagara Falls Gazette of April 13, 1958 reported:

‘Schultzy’ Leads Double Life
Television may be here to stay, but Ann B. Davis is taking no chances.
Ann, the girl with the bun hairdo, is in her fourth year as Charmaine Schultz, the irrepressible secretary on the highly successful “Bob Cummings Show” on (Tuesday, 9:30 p.m.) Chan. 17.
You would think that would be assurance enough, but Ann is sticking to the night club job that she had when discovered by Bob Cummings and George Burns. Every night, after the work is done for the television show, Ann returns to a small place called The Cabaret Theatre on Sunset Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles. It is a little walk-down cellar place. You have to look carefully, or you'll miss it.
Night Life
There Ann, with three or four other performers, does songs, satires and funny sketches, most of which she writes herself. It is a pleasant little place. It has what the newspaper boys call “Atmosphere.” And always, it is crowded. Ann will do a bit entitled “A Streetcar Maimed Ammonia” that would make Tennessee Williams quit writing if he ever sees it. And another thing is called “Typhoid Mary.” All of which gives you an idea.
One night in 1954, two friends told Ann that Bob Cummings was looking for an actress for a new television show. They arranged an audition. She read for Bob and Mary Cummings; George Burns, who is part owner of the show; Paul Henning, writer-producer, and Frederick de Cordoba [sic]. She had never met any of them.
“I've never met with more patience and consideration since I walked through that door,” she recalls.
However, Ann flubbed a line and she was sure that error wrote finish to her efforts. She could not have been more mistaken, because immediately, auditions were called off and Ann B. Davis was signed to her first television, series, bun and all.
Movie Work
Other television roles followed, and some movies.
“My first movie was ‘Strategic Air Command,’ but my bit was cut out.” However, the tight schedule for “The Bob Cummings Show” does not give her time for much else.
“I continue my work at The Cabaret Theatre. Well, in the first place. I like it.” She says. “It gives me a great opportunity for keeping in practice and for developing new routines. I can try anything there.”
Ann Davis was born in Schenectady, and then the family moved to Erie, Pa. Her mother was interested in amateur theatricals. Ann and her twin sister Harriett made their joint debut at the age of four. They recited before clubs, etc. By the time they reached ten, they were doing their own puppet show and making the puppets themselves. Harriett still has some of them.
Ann attended the University of Michigan, and had some vague ideas about studying medicine, but the taste of theater was too strong.
Ann Davis now lives in Hollywood with a poodle and two parakeets, “as near the studio as can.”
The role of Schultzy definitely has affected Ann's life. People recognize her everywhere, on the streets, in restaurants and at theaters. They yell, “Hi, Schultzy. When are you going to marry Bob?”

And this story is from June 21, 1958.

The Three Faces of ‘Schultzy’
There’s Ann, Her Twin And ‘Typhoid Mary’
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
NEA Hollywood Writer

Hollywood—You've seen or heard about “The Three Faces of Eve,” of course. But do you know about the three faces of Ann?—Ann B. Davis? Or “Schultzy” to you.
The Emmy winning comedienne of The Bob Cummings TV show. The sharp-witted, rubber-faced doll who wears her hair in a bun atop her head and a sign, “I Want A Man,” in her eyes.
There is Ann's TV face of Schultzy. That you know. But even while she is working on a sound stage in Hollywood, there is the face of Ann 3,000 miles away in Lexington, Mass.
The face is the same — of her identical twin sister Harriet Norton. When Harriet twists her hair into a bun atop her head she can fool J. Edgar Hoover into believing she's Ann. Or Schultzy.
Harriet, in fact, almost joined Ann in the cast for one Cummings show during a visit to Hollywood. They dressed her like Schultzy for a double vision plot. They made a film test but Harriet, a mother and a housewife, couldn't handle the lines and the idea was shelved.
• • •
THE THIRD FACE of Ann is one only a few people have seen.
She used it as an unknown comedienne in a little downstairs beer and wine only bistro at the wrong end of Sunset Blvd. here. Ann was known as “Typhoid Mary” in those struggling-for-recognition days.
She had a bun on her head then, too, but it was pierced by a big chicken bone set at a rakish angle. She were a sarong, high-laced shoes, horn-rimmed glasses and a lei around her neck. She came out on the little stage by stages— first sticking a bare leg out from behind a curtain. The other leg and the arms and the rest of her followed while the customers pounded heavy beer mugs on the red-topped tables.
Then Ann sang about having a romance with an Englishman in a song she says “made no sense at all.” Her salary didn't make sense, either. A couple of dollars or so a night. But Typhoid Mary helped the career of Ann B. Davis far more than all of her six years of little theater, stock companies and touring musicals in the bush leagues.
People in Hollywood who knew people who knew other people passed the word about Ann's flair for comedy. One of these people was an agent and after a couple of passes at the movie studios—all turned her down—Ann auditioned for the role of Schultzy.
• • •

THERE WAS NO question about it. She WAS Schultzy.
Every now and then on the show Ann comes up with some fourth face to keep the laughs coming. Like when she slipped her head into a blonde wig and her hips into a high gear wiggle for a Marilyn Monroeish character called “Flaming Charmaine.”
Charmaine was quite a challenge. But it's why, after three years as Schultzy, Ann isn't a bit weary or frustrated, like some TV series show regulars, about the limitations and the monotony of it all.
“Our writer, Paul Henning, is a genius,” Ann says. “He keeps throwing challenges at me.”
• • •
The Ann B. (for Bradford) Davis who ditched plans to study medicine at the University of Michigan, switching to drama (class of '48), is a native of Schenectady, N.Y., and a member of the “I Live Alone and Like It” Club. She has a Hollywood bungalow, where she chatters to a French poodle and a parakeet and where she cooks, reads science fiction hair risers and keeps a weight chart—“I have to count calories”—which is down 30 pound points since 1953.
But quite unlike Schultzy, there are nights when Ann hits the night club beat on the arm of some male pal and takes tourists by surprise with a mean rhumba.
She's a doll with romantic frustrations on TV, but she's had her chances as Ann, she will tell you.
“I could have married for love, once and once for money,” she told me. “But I would have had to give up acting—and that I can't do.”

Davis never did marry but she did give up acting. She was heavily into religious studies for several years before her death and quite content.

Ann B. Davis had a life of happiness and gave happiness to others in return.

Benny and the Bard

They remained in their jobs for years, content with their work and well-paid for it. They were Jack Benny’s writers.

A number of newspaper stories were written over the years about the longevity of Benny’s writing team. Benny praised them as the best in the business. And it must have been an accomplishment for them to come up with new material within the structure of the well-established characters on the Benny show (in many cases, they didn’t. They reused old jokes and scripts. The fans didn’t seem to mind).

Here’s a United Press International column of July 29, 1961, supposedly written by Benny himself. Guest columns weren’t unusual. John Crosby of the Herald-Tribune had them. In this instance, UPI entertainment writer Vernon Scott was on holiday. Benny compares his scribes to one of history’s most celebrated playwrights.

One wonders if Stan Freberg took Benny’s needling of his fees in a good-natured way.

Could Shakespeare Write for TV?
By JACK BENNY
Written for UP-International
Hollywood—A short time ago five Emmy Awards were presented to a group of talented folk who brought "Macbeth" to television—but the chap who wrote the script was not among those honored.
I mention this because, though my show was fortunate enough to have been chosen the best comedy effort of the season, its four writers were not rewarded.
True, they have won several Emmys in the past—but they seemed to draw comfort from the fact that this year they were not alone: William Shakespeare, too, went home empty-handed on Emmy night.
Truth to tell, there is room for doubt regarding Shakespeare: If, indeed, he were alive today, could be make the grade as a television writer? It is fashionable to associate Shakespeare with snob appeal—but he wrote for the masses who sat on rough board benches in the theater, guzzling whatever preceded popcorn as generally accepted showtime refreshment in his era.
He was the combination Desi Arnaz and Rod Serling of his time, writing, directing producing and even acting his way through an amazing volume of product.

But—and it's an interesting question—could he have withstood the pressures of a weekly TV deadline? Could he have pleased both sponsor and audience?
Could he have integrated a commercial for Lipton tea into "King Lear," if he had so desired, and still retained his audience's good will? And, if he were alive today and active in TV, would he be toiling for Davis Susskind or, perchance, might he be under contract to me? I'd like to have him—he could turn a phrase as neatly as Stan Freberg and he'd probably only cost half as much.
But since Shakespeare is not available, let me record here and now that I'm content with Sam Perrin, George Balzer, Al Gordon and Hal Goldman, the four humorists who work so closely with me in tailoring our weekly CBS shows.
Together we were lucky enough to build a character which has been somewhat more resistant than my hairline has been to time's ravages. Many people don't really know where the character ends and I begin.
I must admit I find it fun to pick up the phone to have someone try to sell me spare wheels for my Maxwell (I've never really owned one). My great kicks come from appearances as soloist with leading symphony orchestras—and let's face it, if it were not for my broadcast character as the world's worst fiddle player I'd never get any closer to the stage at Carnegie Hall than the balcony.
One gag we've used through the years, however, does cause occasional embarrassment. It is the portrait of miserliness in which I've been painted. I find myself constantly face to face with it.
For instance, in order to call attention to the start of our coming TV season, a public relations chap who is, to say the least, original, suggested at a recent meeting that the government be asked to put my face on a commemorative penny.
Now this is, of course, a ridiculous idea at best—but I still question the emphasis of a bystander's comment:
"Benny doesn't need his face on money," this fellow said. "He's content just to get his hands on it."
I wonder, if Shakespeare had written my scripts would he have painted me differently?
Perhaps heroically? Could be—but the TV schedules are full of dashing heroes whose options are dropped without warning. And my writers have kept me working a long time.

Speaking of television, to the best of my recollection, Benny never parodied Shakespeare in his sketches. He pretty much stuck to movies. Still, it might have been interesting to hear Frank Nelson as Rosencrantz to Benny’s “Hamlet” (“What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason. How infinite in faculty. How like a God.” “Ooooh! Am I!”) or Benny as Richard III dramatically shout the phrase “My kingdom for a Maxwell,” followed by Mel Blanc’s loud, deathly sputtering, and the line “On second thought...”

Illusion of Life, 1918 Version

Walt Disney wanted cartoons to evolve where they would caricature human action. “The illusion of life,” as it was called in Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas’ book on Disney animation. Disney wasn’t the first studio with that goal in mind. Max Fleischer wanted to accomplish it, too, and felt he could do it by inventing the rotoscope.

It worked. But the rotoscope was only one of Fleischer’s tools. What made the Fleischer cartoons of the 1920s entertaining is their stories and clever gags. As the ‘30s wore on, the public wanted what Disney was putting on the screen, and that’s the direction the Fleischer studio went.

The public has always seemed to be interested in how animated cartoons are made. Here’s a story from the Syracuse Herald (and appeared in other papers) of February 12, 1918 on how the rotoscope works. The drawings accompanying the story are close but not identical to the ones Max Fleischer filed when applying for a patent.

How ANIMATED DRAWINGS Are NOW MADE to ACT Perfectly LIFELIKE
ANIMATED hand-executed pictures, or, as they are termed, moving picture cartoons, as now produced by the usual methods, while recognized as having their distinctive advantages and desirable features, usually are not lifelike. To overcome this fault, Max Fleischer of New York city has invented a device by which improved cartoon films may be produced, depicting the figures or other objects in a lifelike manner, characteristic of the regular animated photo pictures.
Mr. Fleischer describes his invention as follows:

"In producing cartoon films by my improved method, scenes are enacted by the aid of living actors depicting the subjects to be displayed by the cartoons, and, through the instrumentality of a moving picture camera, pictures of the enacted scenes are taken, and from these pictures, line pictures or cartoons of the characters or objects to be portrayed are made. The series of cartoons are then photographically reproduced on a film or equivalent medium, and the photographs of the cartoons thus obtained are projected on a screen and displayed in the usual manner by any approved moving picture machine.
"The invention will be particularly explained, in the specific description following.
"Reference is to be had to the accompanying drawings forming a part of this specification in which similar reference characters indicate corresponding parts in all the views.
"In the center illustration is shown a perspective view representing conventionally the taking of moving pictures of actual scenes by the aid of an actor or actors, depleting the characters to be presented by the cartoon moving pictures.
"A face view of a photographic film portraying the scenes thus actually produced is shown in the drawing at the right.
"The drawing at the left shows a perspective view of the apparatus for projecting the photographic pictures thus produced and permitting the tracing of the characters thereof.
"In carrying out my invention, having decided upon the subjects of the cartoons to be projected by a moving picture machine, I cause a scene to be enacted presenting the characters to be portrayed. In Fig. 1, the numeral 10 indicates an actor in a life scene going through the performance of wigwag signalling. During the performance a moving picture camera 11 produces a series of pictures of the scene. Several pictures thus taken are produced on a film 12 (Fig. 2), as indicated at 13. The film will thus give a true portrayal of the characters to be presented by the cartoons.
"The pictures on the film 12 are now projected in single succession by a suitable apparatus, preferably arranged as in Fig. 3, which an inclined platform 14 is provided and supported by suitable legs 15. A frame 16 at the upper end of the platform 14 carries a screen 17 at the back, of which is placed suitable tracing paper 18, on which the artist traces the lines of each picture 13 or such elements thereof as is necessary for the cartoon. A projecting apparatus and appurtenances, designated generally by the numeral 20 and is the main of known form, is employed, including a suitable projecting apparatus 21 which is placed on the platform 14. The numerals 22 indicate the reel boxes while 23 indicates a known form of lamp house.
"It may be desirable to provide means whereby the artist may manually control the projecting machine tram his position at the back of the screen, and for that purpose I may employ suitable means, there being shown a pull-cord 24 having a handle 25 and passing over suitable guides 26, through the platform 14 to a connection with a spring-acted lever 27, carrying a pawl 25, engaging a ratchet wheel 29, controlling the mechanism of the machine 21."
The projected photographically produced series of pictures of the actual performance lead realism manually to produce cartoons having radically new characteristics, due, first, to the absolutely accurate relative positions of the moving object in the successive cartoons and relatively to the fixed photographed background, and, second, the method leads to the manually produced cartoons the realistic effects of the photograph by the artist arbitrarily selecting and tracing lines and features represented by the projected photographs.
"In the present methods of producing moving picture cartoons, the greatest skill of the artist is required to obtain an approach to accuracy realism in the relative positioning of the moving object in successive cartoons and in giving lifelike poses thereto.
"In tracing the cartoon the skilful artist, instead of following accurately the lines of the photograph, can exaggerate or modify particular elements or features of a grotesque character for instance, while preserving the truthfulness of the photographic portrayal in its essentials or dominating lines. In photographing black-face characters, for example, the actor is made up with special reference to facilitating the subsequent making of the line cartoons, a part of the makeup being, for example, distinct and prominent white rings about the eyes to bring out prominently in the photographs the lines to be traced. The method possesses advantages in depicting a wide range of grotesque characters or objects. Thus, for example, a dog, masked by the representation of a horse’s head, may be photographed in action, the final result being motion pen drawings of what appears to be a miniature horse going through a performance."

Dodsworth

Bob McKimson seems to have had hopes he could create another successful new cartoon character in a fat, lazy, con-artist cat named Dodsworth. He even went to the trouble of bringing in Sheldon Leonard to voice the character. But perhaps Dodsworth was too low key for any kind of stardom. He disappeared after two cartoons—“Kiddin’ the Kitten” and “A Peck o’ Trouble,” both copyrighted in 1951. The former has the Rosemary Clooney kids song “Peterkin Pillowby” as the opening theme.

Here are some of Dodsworth’s expressions from “Kiddin’ the Kitten.” He spends about half of the short with his eyes closed. He fumbles his hands and arms around when he’s startled and, below, you can see him cross-eyed when he’s surprised by his owner’s shouting at him.



The “calmed” version of Rod Scribner, Chuck McKimson and Phil De Lara are only ones who get an animation credit on this cartoon. Bea Benaderet and Mel Blanc provide the other voices.

Woody Surprise Take

Matador Woody Woodpecker gets wrapped up in his cape, and then spots Oxnard the Bull in “Hollywood Matador” (1942). These are consecutive drawings.



Woody’s hat turns in mid-air while he stares at the bull to let the take register.

Alex Lovy and George Dane get the animation credits.

The Golden Age of Fax Radio

Before e-mail became practical, there was another way of sending letters and even pictures to your home. Someone used a fax machine. Some people still do.

Like most technology, faxing was around before most of us ever heard about it, kind of like there was television in the late 1920s but no one thinks of it as being that ancient. But fax technology was around about the same time and is kind of a cousin to broadcasting.

My curiosity was piqued reading some trade journals in the ‘30s and early ‘40s talking not only about the future of not only television, but faxing by broadcasters.

Here’s an interesting story from the New York Sun, January 13, 1934.

Pictures by Radio Near
R. C. A. Asks Permission to Erect Stations to Try Out New System.
By MARTIN CODEL.
WASHINGTON, D. C, Jan. 13.—Ready to prove its startling disclosure of exactly a year ago—namely, that its research engineers have devised a means of harnessing the ultra-short radio wave lengths to provide a "picture message" system for the United States—the Radio Corporation of America has just filed with the Federal Radio Commission an application for authority to erect a group of experimental stations as the first links in the proposed system.
A complete revolution in wire and radio telegraphy, and, if cheap enough, even the mails, is forecast as the next great development in radio, if the R. C. A. can substantiate its claims in actual operation. Only those who recalled the claims, first disclosed in January of 1933, saw the true significance attached to the company's request to the Commission last week. It filed in the usual routine and without any accompanying publicity, and it asked for the right to roam the wide band of wave lengths between 86,000 and 400,000 kilocycles (35 to 75 meters) for experimental operation of a facsimile radio transmission system using its newly developed "repeaters."
First Station In New York
The first stations would be in New York and Camden. N. J., where R. C. A. has its laboratories. Between them would be two "repeater" stations, one at New Brunswick and the other at Trenton, in New Jersey. Facsimile reproductions of letters, telegrams, pictures, newspaper pages and indeed all form of written and printed matter flashed between cities in a matter of mere seconds—this, in sum, is the promise of the revolutionary new ultra-short wave development which R. C. A. is apparently now ready to prove or disprove if the Radio Commission will grant the necessary authority.
It is manifest that such a system, if successful, may mean a new form of communications that may ultimately displace the code telegraphs and wreak many other changes in our economic and social life. The future day can be envisioned when a business man scribbles a note, or his secretary types a letter, inserts it in an automatic radio-facsimile transmitting machine and knows it will be delivered in a matter of seconds in distant city as an identical reproduction of the original. It may also be possible for a great newspaper to send facsimiles of its printed pages to other cities, there to be recast into type, reprinted and delivered simultaneously with its borne editions.
Looking Ahead.
Looking even further ahead—though such an accomplishment may take several generations to make practical—the reproduction of such facsimiles on cheap radio receiving and reproducing instruments in office and home is a logical and not improbable eventual development.
The chief obstacle to the use of the ultra-short waves has been that they act much like light beams and cannot penetrate beyond the horizon where the curvature of the earth stops them. Nor could they penetrate hills, buildings and other barriers. Accordingly, it has been necessary for the experimenters to conduct, their radiating tests from extremely high points in order to gain as far a horizon as possible.
It is not possible in all cities to secure vantage points as high as the Empire State Building, and the New York-to-Philadelphia links will probably use lower radiating location. The plan is to transmit from New York to New Brunswick, where R. C. A. already has a transatlantic code station; thence to Trenton and thence to Camden. The New Brunswick and Trenton stations will automatically repeat the signals from New York. It is calculated that not much more than sixty seconds will he required to send a facsimile of an ordinary-sized letter-head message from the transmitting point to the receiving city.
Other Developments on Way.
If the first link proves successful similar transmitting and repeating stations will be erected throughout the country, economic conditions warranting. A vast network of radio facsimile stations, flashing "picture messages" through the ether at incredible speeds, is foreseen ultimately. But even the R. C. A. is not placing all its eggs in one basket. It is not going forward with this highly expensive experiment with the sole end of "picture message" transmission. It is also known to be testing a new system of multiplex code transmission whereby one radio wave length can he used to send three code messages automatically and virtually simultaneously, each message at the rate of sixty-five words per minute. This is also a secret, development, and the key to its operation is a new machine designed to take advantage of the split-second lapses between the code impulses and use them to stagger other dots and dashes in between.

Newspaper radio columns followed developments about fax transmission with great interest. The papers, as much as radio stations, had a vested interest. C.E. Butterfield’s Associated Press radio column of February 27, 1938 revealed WTMJ in Milwaukee had begun experimental broadcasts in 1934—the station was owned by the Milwaukee Journal—and listed 12 stations that were doing, or were about to do, the same thing. Facsimile receivers were selling for between $120 and $260, attachments for radios cost less.

Butterfield followed up developments in a 1939 column:

Radio 'Round The Clock
Facsimile Transmission By Three-Station Network Being Started On Experimental Basis.
By C. E. BUTTERFIELD
Associated Press Radio Editor
(Time is Eastern Standard)
NEW YORK, March 15 — Facsimile transmission by a three-station network is being started on an experimental basis. The schedule opens Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, to continue weekly.
Stations to carry this form of communication, a means of handling printed and other visual matter such as pictures, maps and etc. will be WOR, New York; WLW, Cincinnati, and WGN, Chicago, of the M.B.S. chain.
Each broadcast is to run an hour and each station will send on the chain for 20 minutes. Time on the air is 2:30 A. M. after the regular sound signoff. A test of the network setup was tried last Saturday night.
Facsimile requires special equipment, although it is possible to use a sound receiver provided a facsimile recorder replaces the loudspeaker. The number of sets within the area of the three stations is estimated at not more than a thousand.

Butterfield reported on April 10th that WHK, the Mutual station in Cleveland, had joined the fax network. Broadcasts were taking place from 2 to 3:30 a.m. on Sunday morning. The Brooklyn Eagle’s radio columnist, Jo Ranson, revealed on November 21st that 20th Century Fox was providing WOR with photos of stars and a gossip column for transmission.

WOR was still carrying out fax broadcasts in 1940. The newspaper PM published a faxed comic strip from WOR on June 20, 1940. Here is a photocopy of it, scanned for the internet, so it would have looked better in the paper.

WOR began regular radio programming overnights starting June 18, 1941, knocking the facsimile broadcasts off the air, though the Brooklyn Eagle of that date reported the experiments would resume in a few months once the FCC granted the company a shortwave license. After World War Two, there was renewed interest in facsimile radio. The A.P. reported on July 31, 1946 that stations in at least a dozen cities were going to experiment with and equipment had been ordered from the General Electric Company. G.E. explained to the paper how the system worked.

The copy to be transmitted is placed on a revolving drum. An electric eye scans each detail and translates each gradation of black into an electrical impulse. This in turn is converted into a sound signal and is put out over the air by an FM radio station. The radio signal is picked up by any standard FM radio receiver and relayed to a facsimile recorder connected to or built into the set.
A chemically treated roll of of white paper feeds through the recorder, the action of the electrical impulse on the paper turning it black. Thus, an exact reproduction is obtained.

This story appeared in PM on February 6, 1948. Fax had now been shunted to FM airwaves, no one really having quite established what to do with them.

Facsimile ‘Times’
The New York “Times,” as traditionally a morning institution as the milkman in our town, enters the afternoon paper field a week from next Monday via a four-page “facsimile” edition which will be prepared at the “Times” office and transmitted via WQXQ to receivers (or “recorders”) installed in the radio departments of a number of New York department stores.
The facsimile “Times” will have two pages of current news and pictures, a woman’s page and a feature page. It will start appearing over the department store recorders at 11:05 a.m. and its news and picture content will be brought up to date hourly in renewed transmissions ending with a final edition at 5:05 p.m. The recorders to be used in the demonstration will look like home console radio sets except that they will turn out newspaper text. All equipment used was designed by John V. L. Hogan, facsimile pioneer and founder of WQXR, which is now owned by the N. Y. Times, along with its FM affiliate, WQXQ, which will handle the facsimile transmission. The receivers are manufactured by General Electric.
The news and feature content of the facsimile Times will be produced by a staff headed by Robert Simpson in the Times offices on West 43d St. At the receiving end, displays will explain in non-technical language what facsimile is, how it works and what its possible future uses are. A four-page leaflet, titled “A Newspaper Delivered by Radio,” will be distributed so you can explain to your friends the scientific wonders of the N. Y. Times boiled down by radio to only four pages.

Hogan, incidentally, had provided WTMJ with its equipment in 1934.

The debut of the fax version of the Times on February 16, 1948 was a success. The AP reported six editions were sent out at five minutes after each hour between 11 A. M. and 4 P. M. over road station WQXR-FM. Each edition contained four pages, 11 1/2 inches long and eight inches wide. But the plan was apparently temporary The wire service said demonstrations would continue for only four weeks.

The Mexico (New York) Independent of April 1, 1948 talked of broadcasting faxes to thousands of northern New York farm homes via a six-station FM network connected to WGHF. The FCC decided in November that year to relax rules around schools operating FM stations, declaring they could fax educational materials to the homes of students. All very intellectual (the FCC didn’t mind looking intellectual on appropriate occasions). But facsimile radio’s days were pretty much done. Who was interested in radio any more? The tidal wave of television was washing across America from east to west. But fax technology, as we know, didn’t die. It was perfected through the 1960s and ‘70s until it became commercially feasible for businesses to tie up a phone line with a fax machine. And, of course, when home computing became practical, modems allowed someone to fax a document to someone (at blinding speeds of 2400 bits per second).

With increased computer memory and faster connections, as well as an expanded internet, the poor fax has been replaced by e-mail and other ways to transmit something from one computer to another. But history shows us it played a little part in the Golden Age of Radio.

Field and Scream Backgrounds

Johnny Johnsen handled the backgrounds in Field and Scream (released 1955) from designs by Ed Benedict. Here are some of them. The first one plugs “Herman’s Sporting Goods.” I don’t think animator Herman Cohen was near MGM at this point.

San Francisco Flats

There’s more flat in “Flat Hatting” than just the title of the cartoon. The character designs and settings in much of the cartoon are flat, a style that would carry on when the studio which made the cartoon changed its name in 1946 to United Productions of America and eventually started making theatrical shorts.

The show-off pilot who’s flat-hatting in the short buzzes past people and buildings in San Francisco. Here’s some of the artwork.



The internet can’t make up its mind when this cartoon was made. It was copyrighted in 1946 by United Film Productions, a name that would be changed later in the year. Leonard Maltin identifies the designer as Robert Osborne of the New Yorker. The director was John Hubley, though the cartoon bears no credits as it was made for the U.S. Navy and not theatres.

There's No New Haven For TV

Network television took the baton from network radio and, at the start, tried running the same way. A sponsor put a show on the air, handled day-to-day by its ad agency. The only difference was some shows were so expensive to broadcast, they appeared every other week or once a month, with the time slot taken the following week by another sponsor of another show with another star.

That changed, and only in a matter of a few years. People wanted their favourite stars on the screen every week, just like they heard them every week on the radio. So a toe dipped in the TV pool became a leg and eventually a whole body.

All this was disconcerting to some of the veterans of entertainment who found radio was dying and they either had to move into TV or retire their shows. Vaudevillians were used to the old stage tradition—take your act on the road and hone it before you brought it to the big time. Television wasn’t like that. Television was like radio. Writers got together and came up with a script which was then produced, rehearsed and aired—and then they started from square one again.

Here’s Jack Benny on the whole issue from an International News Service column of August 5, 1952. Jack’s toe was dipped in the CBS-TV pool in fall of 1950, when he appeared in the first of only four shows that season.

Jack Benny Gets Cozier With TV
By JACK O'BRIAN
INS Staff Writer
New York—The most popular man in radio, Jack Benny, has not even a fleeting notion of his own future in that venerable medium. Beyond next season, anyway.
Jack was having his final few days of vacation here in New York before driving back to Hollywood (in a new Cadillac convertible, not the Maxwell) after his newest British triumph.
Not that he is a fair weather friend of radio, which has been so good to him these 20 years. It's just that he's getting along toward 59, a slight complication for a fellow of 39, and he feels he just can't do everything.
PREFERS RADIO

He wants to stay in radio. But his sponsors want him in TV, and Jack is a nicely adjusted fellow in deed. Unlike certain recent nitwits who have made public proclamations of their disrespect for the folks paying the bills for their TV shows, Jack retains an honorable attitude toward the direction whence his cash flows.
Jack this season will do nine TV shows, three more than last year. It means one every four weeks, where last season it was one every six. It also means, he said, the end to his free time.
His radio shows fall comfortably into formula and by now are comparatively simple, if not quite easy, to play and perform.
In radio, Jack pointed out, the biggest part of the job is in the planning, the fashioning of fun on paper and through sound effects.
In television the planning's still a great part of it, but the work to be done after everything's been blueprinted and mimeographed is the crusher.
CAMERA ANGLES
"You have to stick around for camera angles, where to stand, for how long, which way to turn, which camera to face, all the same problems an actor encounters on a Broadway stage," Jack said. "Only there's no New Haven to try it out, no Boston to rewrite the first act, inject new business, to pick, change and discard.
"You set your sights four weeks ahead to a Sunday night at 7:30 and by gosh you better be there, and ready.
"With six weeks between shows, I was able to enjoy the couple of weeks resting up from TV. Now even that's gone.
"It takes just about four weeks of planning for a TV show, the way I like to work. I don't know how some of them do it every week. Maybe I could do it every two weeks, but even that's too tough. I can't see how possibly I could do more than one TV show a month and radio at the same time."
What about TV without radio?
"I don't like to think of it," said CBS radio's number one boy.

Well, Jack had to think about it. He had no choice. The public wanted TV, not radio. Sponsors wanted TV, not radio. So Jack Benny dove into the TV pool. Considering his regular show carried on until 1965, he was working on specials until his death, and people still watch reruns on their small screens (including computers hooked up to video web sites) his fears about television were all for nothing.