Hungover Sun

The sun gets up in the morning—and it apparently had a rough night. These are some of the drawings from “Morning, Noon and Night,” a 1933 Fleischer cartoon.



The cartoon was an attempt to score classical music to birds, flowers and butterflies and other things generally best left in the province of Mr. W.E. Disney. But, unlike Mr. Disney, the Fleischers add drunken cat rowdies and Betty Boop. It’s not the best mix but the musicality shows some dexterity.

Tom Johnson and Dave Tendlar received the animation credits on this short.

Self-Diagnosis

“Interesting to behold is the evolution of the tropical butterfly,” says Robert C. Bruce, as we sit back to enjoy another phoney travelogue. “Let’s watch this curious transformation as from this lowly, insignificant little cocoon emerges a full-grown butterfly, vividly marked with all the gorgeous colours of the rainbow.”



And one after the next, butterflies are spat out of their cocoons (Treg Brown handles a blown-up balloon to get the sound of the stretching of the cocoon). But the third one is a shaking runt.



“Well, I’ve been sick,” the quasi-butterfly tells the audience.

The gag is from “Aviation Vacation” (1941). Tex Avery used it in other cartoons. If anyone knows the origin of the phrase, let me know.

The Maxwell

You want an example of how times have changed?

A comedian today could never get a laugh out of owning a Maxwell. Even if anyone in the audience knew what it was, they wouldn’t see humour. They’d see someone collecting an antique car that would probably be worth a good chunk of money.

How different were things in the middle part of the 20th century. The American auto industry was always coming up with something brand new. You don’t want to be out-of-date, old-fashioned and laughed at, was their message. Thus it was the driving public was convinced to get behind the wheel of something with portholes, large fins or a horse-collar grille. It was NEW!!

But Jack Benny wanted to be laughed at. So in 1937 he and his writers came up with an obsolete car for him to drive, showing his character was so cheap, he wouldn’t buy a new one. Thus was born Jack Benny’s Maxwell, a car with which he was associated for the rest of his life. Incidentally, Benny had a different car association at one time. His show had been sponsored by Chevrolet, but no one except radio historians and ardent Benny fans recall that.

Benny built his character piece by piece. But one can only do the same jokes for so long. So as time moved past 1960, Benny and his writers started downplaying or eliminating certain things. The Maxwell was one of them. Here’s an unbylined syndicated newspaper feature from October 20, 1962.

Jack Benny About Maxwell: 'She's Just Too Expensive'
Automotive reactionaries, concerned over the passing of tall, slow automobiles, have often cited Jack Benny as a paragon of taste.
"Benny," they say, "had sense enough to hang onto his Maxwell."
Even as they cast admiring glances at the low, hyper-horsepowered 1963 cars now making their advent on the highways of America, they cling to the Maxwell, among other-vehicular relics, a symbol of a past whose departure they mourn.
But even that last anchor to the Good Old Days is dragging.
No one seems to have seen Jack Benny's Maxwell lately, either on or off The Jack Benny Program on the CBS Television Network on Tuesdays. And for good reason.
Benny's Maxwell, a wonderfully nondescript car of time-dimmed origin, seems to have fallen victim to plusher times.
The Maxwell automobile was born during the first decade of this century and died in 1924. It existed less than 20 years.
Oar hero made driving a Maxwell part of his miserly character in the mid-1930s, a few years after the Jack Benny Program started on radio.
When Benny and his writers developed the joke the Maxwell automobile had been out of production for at least 12 years.
Benny's Maxwell jokes, in fact, have enjoyed a longer life span than the automobile which gave them birth.
Anyone who has attempted to maintain vintage machinery certainly can appreciate the expense and labor of keeping a Maxwell, or even a joke, running well past the midway point of the 20th Century. Benny can.
In earlier days. Benny might patch one of the Maxwell's worn rear tires with a pair of tennis shoes.
"It worked just fine," he would explain, "except that driving late at night I had the eerie feeling that someone was sneaking up on me."
And, he would go on, "Every time I drove past a tennis court the car tried to jump over the net."
If one exercises his memory a little, he might recall that the Maxwell had five fenders; the extra was kept in the back seat to cover the driver's head in the event of rain.
Benny's Maxwell was the most awful-sounding piece of machinery imaginable. Mel Blanc, who is with Benny still, was the snorting, coughing, hacking, stammering voice of the Maxwell in flight on radio.
The Maxwell was rolled out briefly last season, but only as a device to get Benny into a situation—in this case a chichi (and highly improbable) version of the Beverly Hills, Cal., police station. The auto itself was not seen.
It is not impossible, of course, that the Maxwell will turn up again.
"We'll use it if it's called for," Benny says.
But chances of it bucketing down Wilshire Boulevard in this day of high horsepower are mighty slim indeed.
Perhaps it would help if a simple economic fact were pointed out to those who grieve that Benny's Maxwell has been retired from active duty: Jack's Maxwell, no longer just an old car, has become an antique worth more now than it was when it was new.
"The car's just too expensive," says Benny. "I can't afford it."

Everyone loved the idea of a broken-down Maxwell, it seems. Jack always seemed to have been chauffeured in one during public appearances. And one theatre took advantage of it, as we read in the Syracuse Journal, May 10, 1941.

Keith’s Seeks Oldest Maxwell Car
Inspired by the appearance of Jack Benny's famed Maxwell in "Buck Benny Rides Again," opening today at Keith's, Manager Harry Unterfort has launched a search for the oldest Maxwell in Onondaga County.
The winner will be paid $5 in cash. Deadline for all entries is 6 P.M. Saturday.
In addition, the Keith management will give guest tickets to all Maxwell owners and their guests who drive up to the front of the theater in their cars. Maxwells must be of 1930 vintage or older, however, to qualify for the stunt.

In 1925, the vice-president of sales for Maxwell-Chrysler stated “the automobile buyer of today is a different sort of a person from the buyer of yesterday.” Within a year, there were only Chryslers, no Maxwells. They belonged to yesterday. Except on a certain radio comedy-variety show. The Maxwell was mentioned in Jack Benny’s newspaper obituaries. It was mentioned in Mel Blanc’s newspaper obituaries. It never got an obituary of its own.

Jack E. Cartoon

For every Huckleberry Hound, there’s a Keemar, the Invisible Boy. Keemar was a proposed cartoon series by Format Films that never got off the ground. Huck, of course, did.

All kinds of ideas for cartoon series floated around after Hanna-Barbera proved in the late ‘50s that TV cartoons could be profitable, likely more ideas than actual cartoons that ever appeared on your screen at home. One of them starred Jack E. Leonard, the nightclub comic known as “Fat Jack.” Jack E. appeared in animated form as the Post Cereal Postman in the early ‘60s. Trans-Lux, the people who brought you the “magic bag of tricks” version of Felix the Cat and the “iron in his thighs” Mighty Hercules, came up with the idea of putting Fat Jack in a cartoon series that would be flexible enough to run at any time of the day.

Here’s a story from Sponsor Magazine of December 14, 1964.

Jack E. Leonard to Star in New ‘Adult Western’ Cartoon Series
New York — Starring comic Jack E. Leonard as “the fastest mouth in the West,” Trans-Lux Television Corp. last week unveiled plans for a new cartoon series aimed at adult viewers as well as small fry.
Entitled Fat Jack, Sheriff of Cheyenne, the series is the brain-child of Ernest Pintoff who won an Academy Award for his theatrical short subject, “The Critic.” Commenting on the new series, slated for release in the fall of 1965, Pintoff noted that the cartoon will not only be “out West,” but “way out West.”
In announcing the series, set for 500 episodes, each five minutes in length and filmed in color, a spokesman for Trans-Lux said it may be a contender for prime-time viewing.

It was pointed out that “the series will be aimed at an adult audience although it will have the same appeal for youngsters as do most animated shows. Leonard’s wit and Pintoff’s screen satire, using the familiar western theme as a base, should make this television’s greatest spoof on a universally accepted tradition — the glorious West with all its time-honored clichés.”
Richard Carlton, vice president of Trans-Lux, said the budget for the series is $2 million, adding that Fat Jack will be flexible enough to adapt to network or syndication.
Although Leonard has appeared as a guest on many tv shows, this represents his first participation in a regular tv series. As he put it before an audience of reporters, broadcasters and agency executives, “I’ve made so many pilots in my life that I have my own airport.”

The drawing of Jack E. looks more like it came from Gamma Productions (“Underdog” and “Tennessee Tuxedo”) than the New York-based artists that Trans-Lux employed on Felix and Hercules.

The proposed series got a few mentions in the trade press as if it were a fait d’accomplis. But none were as elaborate as this syndicated column that appeared in newspapers on March 18, 1965.

Inside Television
EVE STARR
STARR REPORT
“The Fastest Mouth in the West" is the sub-title of Jack E. Leonard's new 5 - minute color cartoon series, which will make its debut this Fall. The actual title is “Fat Jack, Sheriff of Cheyenne” a “way out” Western satire, tailored to fit the character and talents of one of television's fastest wits popularly nicknamed “Fat” Jack Leonard.
The name suits Jack perfectly. “So I’m fat,” says Jack. “Do you realize that inside every fat man there’s a skinny man waiting to get out? Except for me, of course. Inside me, there’s a fat man waiting to get out!”v The Oscar winner, Ernest Pintoff, created the cartoon series for Jack when he saw the fan mail Jack got after one of his many appearances on the Johnny Carson show.
***
JACK HAD done a nifty Charleston with Eva Gabor and the audience had gone wild. Later, he said, he started his show business career as a dancing teacher, went professional, and for several years toured the theater circuit, ending up doing his dancing act in the British Isles.
“The people there loved me—they’d never seen a fat man doing this ‘wild’ dance, and bookings kept me there for three years. But New York is my first love, and I realized I wanted to do more than just Charleston so I returned.”
Today, Jack has more than 650 tv appearances behind him, plus credits in the best clubs and theaters here and abroad. His comedy role in the Jerry Lewis’ starrer, “The Disorderly Orderly” proves he's become a fine actor even without his rapid fire witticisms, and such stock openers of his act as, “Greetings opponents!”
***
“I'M PROBABLY the only comic who ever made a comeback without going away.”
In the series, which will certainly appeal to both adults and children, “Fat Jack” hangs out at the Golden Pink Saloon, loves “Pretty” the shapely owner of the joint. Then there’s “Pronto,” Jack’s Indian sidekick who speaks with an Oxford accent, Benny Bingo, a professional wisecracker, and Sheldon, a Chinese “gorilla" and expert on the cherry soda torture.

Broadcasting magazine of March 15, 1965, in reporting on the coming Television Films Exhibit in Washington, D.C., reported that one of the industry’s trends was still cartoons. It gave an in depth report on what was being offered for sale to local stations and the animated Leonard series was on the list. It also revealed “For later this spring, Trans-Lux TV expects to release two other children’s oriented series, a five-minute cartoon property and a half-hour program” but wasn’t specific.

Here’s a rundown of the cartoons being offered by syndicators at the exhibit:

ABC Films: “Casper the Friendly Ghost” (176).
American International Television: “Adventures of Sinbad Jr.” (130).
Embassy Pictures Corp.: “Dodo—The Kid from Outer Space” (104).
Hollywood Television Service: “The Storytoon Express” (30).
King Features Syndicate: “Popeye” (150), “Beetle Bailey” (50), “Barney Google and Snuffy Smith” (50), “Krazy Kat” (50).
Medallion Television Enterprises: “Medallion Cartoons” (130).
MGM-TV: MGM Cartoons.
National Telefilm Associates: Cartoons (550).
NBC Films: “Astroboy” (52).
Official Films: Cartoons (41).
Walter Reade-Sterling: “Cap’n Sailorbird Cartoons” (184).
Screen Gems: “Ruff and Reddy” (156), Hanna-Barbera Cartoons: Touche, Wally, Lippy (156).
Seven Arts Associated: “Out of the Inkwell” (100), Looney Toons Cartoons (191).
Trans-Lux: “Fat Jack, Sheriff of Cheyenne” (200), “The Mighty Hercules” (130), “Felix the Cat” (260).
United Artists Associated: Warner Bros. cartoons (337), Popeye cartoons (234), “The Tales of Wizard of Oz” (130), “The New Adventures of Pinocchio” (130).
Warner Bros. Television: “Warner Bros. Cartoons Series ‘64” (100).

In addition, ABC Films was offering a half-hour cartoon series of 52 segments—in black and white, while American International was trying to find another animated show to sell. Seven Arts “also has in various stages of development a series of 150 Laurel and Hardy five minute cartoons in color and 100 five-minute animated stores from the Old and New Testaments, Adventures of the Bible.”

Dodo made it onto North American airwaves, but Fat Jack didn’t. Today, you can enjoy his animated work in old commercials on the internet. This one features the drawing at the top of the post.

Greek Smack

Ugly designs, jerky animation, an unstructured story and constant BOINNGGGGG!s—that’s what you get in the Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry cartoon “It’s Greek to Me-Ow!” (1961).

And, for some reason, every impact in the cartoon requires a wild camera shake. It happens constantly and you’d swear the film was shot during an earthquake. Granted, Shamus Culhane did the same thing in a few Woody Woodpecker cartoons in the mid-‘40s but not every time.

Here’s Tom bashing into Jerry’s mouse hole. The camera moves in, out, diagonally, up, down, everywhere.



This is Tom pulling his arm out of Jerry’s mouse hole and smacking himself in the face.



Judging by the bottle cap near Jerry’s entrance, there were soft drinks in ancient Greece.

Now, There's a Well-Built Doghouse

The wolf tries to get at the little pigs’ pups’ brick house in “Three Little Pups.” Here are some of the drawings which get used over and over in a few cycles.



There are even two great smear drawings.



Scott Bradley’s music gets louder and louder, then finally stops when the frantic wolf stops. In a great contrast, he calmly turns to the camera and says “Now, there’s a well-built dog house, man!”



There’s a 1952 copyright date on the cartoon, but Variety reported on Monday, March 2, 1953 that producer Fred Quimby had added it to the completed list on the weekend. Coincidentally, that same weekend, Quimby shut down the Tex Avery unit that made the cartoon. “Three Little Pups” was released December 26th that year.

Mike Lah, Bob Bentley, Ray Patterson, Grant Simmons and Walt Clinton are the credited animators.

Guys and Dolls and Radio

A funny thing happened to radio’s rising new comedian—he became a hit on Broadway instead. As a writer.

You don’t think of radio when you think of Abe Burrows. You think of “Guys and Dolls” or “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” two of the best comedy-musicals ever to appear on the Great White Way. But Burrows started to make his name about ten years before that writing for radio, then moved in front of the microphone.

Burrows wasn’t a big star on radio, and his show wasn’t a blockbuster, either. His first show debuted July 26, 1947 and began as a 15-minute, late Saturday night affair featuring accordionist Milton DeLugg, a pianist, a guitarist, no guests and no sponsor (Listerine picked up the tab in September). The show consisted of Burrows shouting song parodies in his Brooklyn accent, an up-tempo number by DeLugg’s merry group and a parody of some aspect of radio programming. Two years later, he co-starred with George S. Kaufman and Clifton Fadiman on “This is Broadway” and had his own summer show called “Breakfast With Burrows” (appropriately broadcast at 9:30 Monday nights). This one had a big enough budget for guests, a vocal group and a few more pieces for Milton DeLugg on top of the musical satire. When he wasn’t on his own show in 1949, Burrows was putting his tongue in his cheek on Bing Crosby’s show.

Critics love clever wordplay that doesn’t talk down to the audience, so the critics loved Abe Burrows. Dick Kleiner of the National Enterprise Association profiled him in his five-part series of radio/TV funnymen. This appeared in papers on February 5, 1950.

Bald Pate, Moon Face, Voice of Gravel, Sharpest Wit of All—That’s Abe Burrows
By RICHARD KLEINER
NEW YORK—(NEA)—One of the phenomena that keeps radio young and virile is the fact that a bald, bespectacled, hoarse-voiced, unimpressive-looking guy like Abe Burrows can become a star.
Abe has a couple of good points that make people forget that he looks like a druggist and sounds like a cab driver—he has possibly the sharpest wit on the air, he has a personality that creates lasting friendships in a twinkling; and he has a knack for satire that bites but doesn't chew.
Among radio comedians, Abe's path to popularity is a unique one. Where most funnymen are alumni of vaudeville, burlesque or the stage, Burrows graduated from accountancy, a rather infrequent contributor to humor.
He did post-graduate work in Wall Street and as a salesman for maple sirup and labels. It was the career of a traveling salesman that undoubtedly prompted his next jump. He began writing for radio comedians.
AMONG RADIO WRITERS he was—and still is—unusual. He believes that humor is a little something more than simply mentioning such names, as Le Brea Tar Pits or Azusa.
He prefers a real fun-bodied gag like this:
“Oh, she was beautiful. She was sweet 16. And kinda chubby. Weighed 180. She was 5 feet tall—in any direction. But she was a wonderful girl to know at school.
‘Cause the way she was built, no matter where I sat in the classroom I was right next to her.”
But it wasn't his gag-ability that pushed him ahead. It was his songs.
Strictly for his own amusement, Burrows had long written parodies on Tin Pan Alley's standard-type songs.
He'd write both words and music for love-type songs like “Click-Click-Click, Rap-Rap-Rap, You're Playing Ping-Pong With My Heart” and anniversary-type songs like “Oh, How We Danced on the Night We Were Wed, I Needed a Wife Like a Hole in the Head.”
THE WORD OF BURROWS and his wacky ditties got around. He began to be invited to parties, and they laughed when he sat down at the piano and started banging out his type-tunes. Burrows became a featured player at Hollywood's better-type brawls.
Burrows' brand of burlesque ballads is still the high spot on his programs. Most were originally ad libbed in his party-going days.
He never wrote any of them down until he became a performer, and many of the 150 are still galloping loose through his head.

HERE'S A SAMPLE. This one is a Hawaiian-type song:
Sweet (GULP)—ua—my lovely hula maiden
In my dreams each night you shake lot me.
Sweet (GULP)—ua—my grass-skirted flower
How I long for you and Hawaii—i-i-ee-ee.
We fell in love on the beach at
(GULP GULP GULP)
But our love could never come to pass
Because you were a hula maiden
And I was allergic to grass.
So it was Aloha, sweet little (GULP)—ua
But some day I'll come back
To ask for your forgiveness
And I hope and pray that you will answer (GULP).
The combination of those lyrics set up a dreamy typical Hawaiian-type melody and rendered—that's the right word—in Burrows' hoarse bass-soprano has sent the Brooklyn-born comic's star soaring.
Burrows now has a new television show, the Abe Burrows Almanac, and the sight of his bald pate, moon face and studious expression should make him even funnier on that medium.
BURROWS WRITES all his own material, although he admits that he's trying to “break in” two writers to his style. At the moment, however, he's his sole source of supply, and it's a big job.
He spends all week jotting down ideas, snatches of gags, pounding out his type-song; then he'll sit down one evening and write the program out in longhand. He says he works better that way.
Here's a Burrows’ definition:
Hooper ratings —- It's a telephone survey . . . really remarkable . . . they tell you the exact size of your audience . . . they told me mine was a woman five feet tall.
Burrows, you see, is far from a typical comedian. His jokes have that strange quality of being funny. And he writes them himself.

Burrows had fingers in a lot of pies. He had an exclusive deal with CBS as a writer-producer-performer (through June 1951) but seemed to end up being on more panel shows than anything. He recorded for Decca. But once “Guys and Dolls” became a smash, any thought of Burrows being a TV star ended. In 1951, he mounted “Two on the Aisle” and his focus became Broadway. Of course, it was a safe haven for someone who testified to the TV-career-killing House Un-American Activities Committee he hung out with Communists.

If you want to hear some of Burrows’ songs, the wonderful WFMU Blog is the place to go.

Skeleton (Bird) Dance

Could there have been bigger fans of Disney’s “The Skeleton Dance” (1929) than the staff at the Van Beuren cartoon studio in New York? They populated their cartoons with skeletons, sometimes for no particular reason.

A great example is “Romeo Robin” (1930). Here, a couple of dancing birds turn into skeletons. How? Why? Who knows? It’s a Van Beuren cartoon. It doesn’t need to make sense. Here are three drawings, the first two are consecutive.



But it doesn’t end there. As the skeleton birds step their way through the old “Shave and a Haircut” ditty, they lay down and cover themselves with dirt as graves form under them and headstones grow out of the ground. Wreaths pop up. Here are some of the drawings.



The Van Beuren cartoons could be really twisted, which makes them lots of fun.

John Foster and Manny Davis get the screen credit on this one, with another lively score by Gene Rodemich. Apologies for the over-pixilated YouTube screen grabs; I wish I could find a better version.

Scent For Armstrong

A faux UPA background from a faux Chuck Jones cartoon greets viewers at the start of “Really Scent” (released 1959). You can click on the picture to enlarge it.



In this case, the cartoon was directed by Abe Levitow with members of Jones’ unit. Phil De Guard painted the backgrounds, while Sam Armstrong handled the layouts. The book Washington State Art and Artists (Trip/Cook, 1992) contains a brief biography of Armstrong; the rest is snipped from other sources.

Samuel John Armstrong was born in Denver on November 7, 1893 to John and Nettie (Williams) Armstrong. His father was a travelling salesman. By 1900, the family was in San Francisco. Armstrong studied art at the Philadelphia School of Industrial Art, Rochester (NY) Mechanics' Art Institute and under J.L. Ferris and Albert Hurter. In 1917, he was a photographer for the Los Angeles Express Tribune. He lived in Tacoma from 1918 to 1929, where he was employed as the art editor for the News Tribune. In 1923, he founded the Armstrong School of Art in Tacoma. By the 1930s, he had moved to Santa Barbera where he painted a mural for Amy C. du Pont’s home in nearby Montecito. Other mural work included the Ferry Museum (Tacoma); Temple of Justice (Olympia, WA); Fox Arlington Theatre (Santa Barbara); Doheny Library (USC). His work was exhibited at the Pacific NW Expo, Seattle, 1927 (1st prize); Santa Barbara Art League, 1930s; NW Independent Salon (Seattle), 1928 (3rd prize) and Gardena (CA) High School, 1933.

Armstrong joined Disney in 1934 and eventually worked on the early features, including the Nutcracker Suite in “Fantasia.” He seems to have left around the time of the strike. Armstrong designed covers for Sunset magazine and drew backgrounds for a number of books featuring animated cartoon characters. His tenure at Warners was brief; a few cartoons in the late ‘50s. Armstrong apparently died in Los Angeles on January 24, 1977; there are conflicting dates depending on the source.

A late P.S. – Edward Cox of New Orleans sent me this note about the background: “And what a lovely stylized version of Jackson Square, St. Louis Cathedral and other aspects of our French Quarters all rolled into a fantasia of New Orleans shapes and colors.”

We Want Free Stuff Because

One of radio’s most popular contests of 1948 was the mystery of The Walking Man, solved by a dear widow in Chicago. We talked about her in this post. The Walking Man, in case you don’t know, was Jack Benny.

It’s a little hard to criticise a contest that raises hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity, but dour syndicated columnist John Crosby found a way. Actually, he seems more disappointed with people who want something for nought, judging by his closing paragraph.

This column appeared in newspapers beginning March 3, 1948.

Seeing Radio In Review
By JOHN CROSBY
'Murder Is Naughty Because...'
THE word written most often in this country by more different people during the last winter, a word which, in fact, has occupied the attention of an incredible proportion of our population, is the simple word "because."
All over the country butchers, merchants, beggarmen, thieves, their brows furrowed with concentration, have inscribed painfully at the head of a fresh sheet of paper such words as: "Peace is nice because. . ." or "Murder is naughty because. . ."
These rather sweepingly innocent statements are then followed by 25 words or less which round out the thought, nail it down so that there is no possibility of error.
They are then mailed in with the top of a Wheaties box or 10 cents or sometimes nothing but a hopeful and address to any one of a dozen masters of ceremonies in radio to join millions of other letters all starting "Murder is naughty because. . ." and all of 25 words or less.
Out of this mass of rhetoric of 25 words or less comes a winner or several winners who may easily become rich overnight. The millions of nonwinners turn on the radio, sigh when the winners are announced, and start again: "Mothers are wonderful because . . ."
Radio contests didn’t originate in the winter of 1947-48 but they very definitely came to their fullest flower this winter and may be expected to recede a little simply because all the clichés of language have been exhausted.
The “because” contest is by no means the only one on the air but it is far and away the most popular. I don’t know who originated the 25-word limit or what that number would be considered most suitable for what I refer to as the “because-and-effecters” but it is employed without exception in all this type of contests.
Easily the most famous of the current “because” sentences is: “We should all support the American Heart Association because . . .” which now has been written by more than 1,100,000 persons, all hopeful of winning Ralph Edwards “Walking Man” contest on “Truth or Consequences.”
Rules of the contest—this information is supplied for including in my time capsule since everyone in America knows them—are that contestants must finish that line (25 words or less), send a contribution to the association in care of Edwards, and then wait hopefully at home on Saturday nights for the telephone to ring so he or she may make his guess as to the identity of the Walking Man.
The contest is now in its 10th week and, just to set the record straight, the famous people whose names have been guessed and who are definitely not the walking man are President Truman, Louis B. Mayer, J. Edgar Hoover, James E. West, Ed Crump, Herbert Marshall, Henry J. Kaiser, Richard Dix, Col. Edward J. Baker, Bing Crosby, Walter Huston, Eddie Canter and Winston Churchill.
The Walking Man—this is for the time capsule, too—is the successor to Mr. Hush, Mrs. Hush and Miss Hush, in each of which contests listeners had to write: "We should all support the March of Dimes because . . ." Each of these contests proved to be more profitable for the winner and the March of Dimes than its predecessor.
Winner of the Mr. Hush (Jack Dempsey) contest got loot valued at $13,500; winner of Mrs. Hush (Clara Bow) got $18,000, and the Miss Hush (Martha Graham) winner, a Texas housewife, cleaned up $21,500.
About all that can be said for the correct guesser of the Walking Man is that he will earn more than any of them and part of the largesse will include a Cadillac and a diamond wrist watch.
At this writing, the contest already has brought in $900,000 for the American Heart Association, a very nice haul though not so large as the $1,500,000 Edwards has persuaded people to donate to the March of Dimes by virtue of his Hush and other contests.
Edwards is the only individual in America to raise that much for the March of Dimes and clearly a man to be reckon with in future plans of any charity organization.
The two organizations have much to thank Edwards for but he has also given them some food for sober reflection.
Avarice for Cadillacs, mink coats and airplanes has been more than a little responsible for this open-handed generosity and, the way things are going, future contributors to great causes may ask first: "What's the first prize?"
Edwards is one of the great prize givers of our time but has staged contests without prizes and the difference in the response is significant. Last December, he asked listeners to name what they would like to present the world for Christmas—the winner in this case being the gift named by the most people.
In contrast to the 2,000,000 letters brought in by his Miss Hush and Walking Man contests, this one brought in 76,000, which is peanuts by radio standards. The prize-winning gift was peace. Runners-up, in order, were: Understanding, faith, love and—a poor fifth—God.