The Stars' Address

I love the work of Al Hirschfeld and it’s a treat to run into caricatures of his I’ve never seen before. I spotted these in Sponsor magazine and thought I’d pass them on.

CBS commissioned Hirschfeld to draw the line-up for their 1963-64 season. It’s remarkable how long many of these shows remained on television, either on network or syndication, and it’s the reason people of a certain age will recognise many of the caricatures. And I think it’s neat that Hirschfeld drew Bea Benaderet and Frank Fontaine (in character). Hirschfeld seems to have drawn all the big names in Hollywood and it’s nice to see how he handled some of the comparatively lesser known.

A kind copywriter at CBS has numbered the drawings and supplied an index to the names of the shows. I’ve bracketed some names nonetheless.


SUNDAY: 1. The Twentieth Century (W. Cronkite), 2. Mr. Ed (Alan Young), 3. Lassie (Jon Provost), 4. My Favorite Martian (Ray Walston), 5. The Ed Sullivan Show, 6. The Judy Garland Show, 7. Candid Camera (Allen Funt with Durwood Kirby above), 8. What’s My Line (Kilgallen, Cerf, Francis, Daly).


MONDAY: 1. CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, 2. To Tell the Truth (Bud Collyer), 3. I’ve Got a Secret (Garry Moore), 4. The Lucy Show (Ann Sothern to the left?), 5. The Danny Thomas Show, 6. The Andy Griffith Show (with the brilliant Don Knotts below), 7. East Side/West Side (George C. Scott).


TUESDAY: 1. Marshal Dillon (Jim Arness with Dennis Weaver), 2. The Red Skelton Show, 3. Petticoat Junction (Bea Benaderet), 4. The Jack Benny Program, 5. The Garry Moore Show (Carol Burnett to the left, Durward Kirby to her left).


WEDNESDAY: 1. CBS Reports, 2. Chronicle, 3. Glynis (Glynis John), 4. The Beverly Hillbillies (Douglas, Ryan, Ebsen, Baer), 5. The Dick Van Dyke Show (MTM to the left), 5. The Danny Kaye Show.


THURSDAY: 1. Password (Allen Ludden), 2. Rawhide (Eric Fleming and Clint Eastwood), 3. Perry Mason (you know who it is), 4. The Nurses (Zina Bethune and Shirl Conway).


FRIDAY: 1. The Great Adventure (Van Heflin), 2. Route 66 (Martin Milner and Glenn Corbett), 3. Twilight Zone (imagine, if you will, Rod Serling in a Dracula cape), 4. The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.


SATURDAY: 1. The Jackie Gleason Show (Frank Fontaine above), 2. The New Phil Silvers Show, 3. The Defenders (Robert Reed, E.G. Marshall), 4. Gunsmoke (Weaver, Arness, Blake, Stone).


CBS NEWS: J.F.K., Nikita Krushchev, Charles De Gaulle, Chou En-Lai and Fidel Castro included.

Kennedy would be dead within three months of this ad appearing.

If It’s Rabbit Baby Wants...

... it’s rabbit baby gets.



Farewell, Lauren Bacall, from Bugs Bunny.

From “Slick Hare.” Manny Perez animation?

Long Pan to Bugs

You’ll have to click on this great background drawing by Irv Wyner to enlarge it. It’s the opening shot of the Bugs Bunny cartoon “A Star is Bored” (1956).



Milt Franklyn’s elegant opening theme accompanying the pan over the shot stitches together “You Ought to be in Pictures” and “Hooray For Hollywood.”

Fred Finchley's Stylised World

Like a lot of studios, John Sutherland adapted to changes in animation as the 1950s wore on. There was a lot of MGM squash-and-stretch, one-drawing-per-frame animation in Sutherland’s industrial shorts in the late ‘40s. But with the rise of UPA in the ‘50s, designs and some of the movement became minimal. Fortunately, Sutherland dealt with well-heeled corporate clients, so I imagine he didn’t have to worry about costs and, therefore, his artists could concentrate on design and animation.

“Working Dollars” was made for the New York Stock Exchange in 1956. Even through these lousy screen grabs (oh, for a decent, restored version), you can see the flat style the studio was going for. I like the gopher munching on the money saved in a tin can underground. I wonder if that was a Bill Scott joke; he co-wrote the cartoon.



The layouts are by Bernie Gruver, who worked at Ray Patin and later at Playhouse Productions and for Bill Melendez, with backgrounds by Ed Starr, a long-time Sutherland employee who had come from the Screen Gems (Columbia) studio. The animation is by Emery Hawkins, George Cannata and Jim Pabian, who all seemed to bounce from studio to studio. Former MGM animator Carl Urbano is the director. Marvin Miller provides the voices. And although Sutherland did produce fully-scored cartoons, this one uses Jack Shaindlin’s stock cues from the Langlois Filmusic library.

Benny in Italy

Anyone who has read the autobiographical portion of “Sunday Nights at Seven,” the Jack Benny story, will have seen his diary of a gruelling trip through Africa and the Middle East to entertain soldiers during World War Two.

If you haven’t, here’s a good contemporary report from PM’s Heard and Overheard column of October 4, 1945.

The work of the stars to bring emotional relief to the soldiers fighting overseas is admirable, to put it mildly.

They Loved Benny in Africa
By JUDY DEPUT
"Nothing spectacular ever happens to me," Jack Benny complained in his suite at the Sherry-Netherland when PM interviewed him the day after he returned from a ten-week USO tour of North Africa. "The plane didn't get bombed, we had smooth weather except for a sand storm over the Gulf of Persia and we always got the shows on for the boys," Jack, who is some 12 pound heavier and slightly grayer explained. But Benny did get into Italy.
This is how it happened. His USO party, including Larry Adler, harmonica player, and singer Wini Shaw, was scheduled to play in Sicily a week ago last Saturday but found upon arrival that the men had crossed over into Italy. Benny's party was given the "go ahead" and new on to catch up with the troops. They did, about 75 miles from the fighting at Salerno, When Benny landed he was greeted by a Major with, "What the hell are you doing here?" But the surprised troops demanded the show and then went to battle.

Benny reports that U. S. soldiers are crazy about the shows. They like to anticipate a star's arrival, talking about him for days, planting gags like the boys in Egypt who erected the signs, "Waukegan Airport" and "Welcome Fred Allen." They repeatedly demanded St. Louis Blues and the Bolero from Larry Adler, two of the harmonica player's specialities, and from fiddler Jack, The Bee and Love in Bloom.
Once Benny & USO Co. played for about 10,000 men right after a review during which 12 of them were awarded medals for bravery. It was 10:30 a.m., temperature 140, at a camp on the Persian Gulf. The men sat right in the blazing tun for an hour and a half. Wini Shaw and actress Anna Lee, who always dressed up for the show, climbed into evening clothes and went to work. Benny, Adler and piano player Jack Snyder of The Yacht Club Boys, wore civics for the shows, otherwise khaki.
Benny, playing the pinch-penny jerk, always went over big. If you heard his only shortwave broadcast back to the U. S. A., from Cairo, credit this gag to Goodman Ace of Easy Aces who sent it to Benny as a bon voyage token.
"Say, fellows, I just got a cable from Mary Livingstone. Forgive me while I read it. 'Dear Jack, I'm sending you that five you cabled for but it's your own fault you're running short. I told you you couldn't do Africa on $20.'" At hospitals and advance medical stations, Benny gagged with the boys and autographed casts on legs and arms. The doctors, whom Benny couldn't praise loudly enough for the job they're doing, told him that a belly laugh was the best tonic for the wounded men. He came back loaded down with home addresses and messages from the boys, mostly "Tell mom I'm swell."

J.R. Bray Moves to Paramount

J.R. Bray was a newspaper cartoonist who didn’t just want to get into the animated cartoon business—he wanted to own it.

Bray applied for his first patent on the animation process in January 1914. By then, he had a deal in place with Pathé to produce six films in six months. He filed for a second patent in July and incorporated his studio in December, the same month Earl Hurd applied for a patent on the concept of animation using cels.

The two of them got together in 1915 but you’d never know there was an Earl Hurd the way Bray talked. Here’s an article published in the Glens Falls Post-Star on December 17, 1915. Bray had left Pathé and signed a contract with Paramount for a thousand feel of comedy film every week and a cartoon to be issued in a weekly news reel. That’s what this story was plugging, as well as outlining how an animated cartoon was made as 1915 was drawing to a close.

“Col. Heeza Liar” to Star with Mary Pickford at New Studio
J.R. Bray, his Creator, Captured by Paramount, Tells How Animated Cartoons Are Made and Has Something Up His Sleeve.
By Tarleton Winchester
New York (Special)
Following closely on the announcement of still further victories for the photoplay, comes the statement from the New York offices of the Paramount Pictures Corporation that “Colonel Heeza Liar,” most famous of screen comedians, will hereafter be seen as a star with such players as Mary Pickford, Marguerite Clark, Geraldine Farrar, Blanche Sweet and Dustin Farnum, since his “father,” J.R. Bray, originator of the animated cartoon has signed a contract with a big company, which adds the Bray Studios, Inc. to the important list of Paramount Producers already including the Famous Players Film Company, Lasky Feature Play Company, Oliver Morosco Photoplay Company and Pallas Pictures.
Fired by the success of its South American Travel Pictures the Paramount Corporation has just added to its program a News Weekly which, in the form of a celluloid magazine, numbers among its editors such organizations as the American Press Association, the Ladies’ World, the Dry Goods Economist, and such individuals as John A. Sleicher of Leslie’s Weekly, and Roger W. Babson, the noted statistician, each being in charge of a department. It is here that Mr. Bray will make his first contribute to the Paramount Program, though his contract calls for a thousand feet in addition to his cartoon for the Newspictures, and in the latter connection he promises an announcement in the near future which will surprise even those who know his work since he anticipates doing things with animated cartoons never before dreamed of much less attempted.
“The possibilities of the moving drawing,” he said when seen, “are unlimited. They are dependent only upon the imagination of the artist. “At the present time we have a staff of six cartoonists, twenty assistant artists and four cameramen constantly at work. An idea of the amount of labor entailed may be gained from the knowledge that there are thirty-four different processes to be undergone by each cartoon, and that there are from three thousand to four thousand cartoons in each thousand feet of completed film. Hence a week’s output involves from 102,000 to 136,000 processes.”

The accomplishment of this tremendous task is made possible only by a special method which Mr. Bray has invented and patented. As a result of his invention the work of preparing thousands of pictures is cut in half. When he has decided upon the desired scene for the antics of “Heeza Liar,” he first makes a background on a sheet of heavy paper, which background is then printed on many sheets of tracing paper. This done, it is necessary for the artist only to draw the parts which are to appear in motion on the screen. The result is evident. The background remains absolutely stationary throughout the scene, so that the work of the artist is reduced to a minimum. If a man is to be represented as standing still for any length of time, he is printed on the sheets. He does not have to be drawn again until he is supposed to move.
“This permanent background may be easily erased or drawn over,” Mr. Bray continued. “What is more, a large number of copies are printed with portions of the background omitted. This obviates the necessity of erasing to a great extent.
“In order that the movement may be both steady and continuous on the screen, great care must be taken in the drawing of the cartoons, a task greatly simplified by our use of tracing paper. The artist merely places a piece of paper upon the last drawing, so that the position last taken by the figures shows clearly through the paper. Thus he is able to draw in the next position carefully and easily.”
Mr. Bray supervises personally every stage of the work. He originates the plot and makes from six to a dozen sketches of the vital points of the story. Then the detail work commences. While the cartoonists do most of the sketching, Mr. Bray draws practically every movement. If a man, for instance, who has been motionless for some time, is required to raise his arm, the staff cartoonists draw the figure, but Mr. Bray draws the arm in the act of moving. When the sketches have been made, they are turned over to a staff of assistant artists who complete them, drawing them in ink and filling in the color.
To reduce the effect caused by the projection of too much white light on the screen, Mr. Bray has invented and patented a process for making a uniform background. By this method one painting of the background suffices for the entire reel.
“When the set of cartoons is completed four expert cameramen photograph them to obtain the negative film,” Mr. Bray said. “An important feature of my invention consists of a method for controlling the speed of action in the picture. This is done by varying the number of photographs taken of each cartoon. For instance, if the scene demands than an object shall move rapidly, then slowly, and finally come to a stop for a moment, the pictures representing the quick action would each be given one exposure. As the movement of the object diminishes in rapidity, each picture is given a correspondingly increasing number of exposures. When the action comes to a stop numerous photographs are taken of the same picture, the number being dependent upon the length of time that the action is suspended.”
J.R. Bray was born in Detroit, Mich., and has lived in New York since 1901. He was for seven years a newspaper artist, being also a steady contributor to the humorous weeklies, such as “Life,” “Puck” and “Judge.” Three years ago he began producing animated cartoons, thus paving the way for imitators though it is said his patents protect him absolutely were he to take advantage of them.
His work has become consistently better and more widely known till he now occupies a place in his particular field corresponding to that held by his new confreres of the Paramount Corporation.
“I knew,” he said, “that Paramount Pictures have done more to raise the standard of film production than anything else, that the principles laid down by W.W. Hodkinson in the formation of the most important organization were right, and I resolved to find a place in the Paramount Program for my new school of art.”

Bray left Paramount in 1919 and signed a deal with Goldwyn. But, for whatever reason, he tired of entertainment cartoons. Instead, he focused on educational production and continued to try to enforce his patents into the 1930s until they expired.

Blackboard Jumble

The southern wolf whistles his way toward a rowdy school house in “Blackboard Jumble” (1958). The designs are pretty typical of Ed Benedict. The school house is reminiscent of the one in the opening scene of “Little Bird Mouse,” an early Pixie and Dixie cartoon at Hanna-Barbera.



The backgrounds are by Fernando Montealegre, who joined Benedict at Hanna-Barbera and also painted the backgrounds for “Little Bird Mouse.”

Inside Out

Disney realism? Yeah, it’s impressive at times. But give me Disney un-realism for some good fun. Like the climax gag in “El Terrible Toreador” (1929) where our hero ends a bullfight by turning the bull inside-out. And you thought only the Fleischers did that kind of thing.



The cartoon was released a little over two weeks after the first Silly Symphony, “The Skeleton Dance.” Part of the cartoon’s action is scored to Bizet’s “Carmen.”

Flame War, 1950-Style

You see it on web forums, Twitter, comment sections on news sites, and Facebook—people getting into angry discussions, sometimes with perfect strangers. Bible verses are flung, flag-waving patriotism is invoked, finger-wagging comparisons to Mr. Schicklgruber’s other name are shot back. Yet this sort of thing wasn’t the invention of social media or the internet. It goes back to the days of that quaint concept, Letters to the Editor.

Quaint, as well, is the idea that someone would get hyperbolic about seeing a low neckline of a dress on a fuzzy black-and-white picture tube. But that was the uptight 1950s for you. Mind you, there was that Janet Jackson thing a few years ago that caused the Offended-for-the-sake-of-being-offended crowd to rise up and cluck furiously. Meanwhile, back in 1950, this horrible, scandalous sight was broadcast by the casual, ukeleke-strumming redhead, Arthur Godfrey. What happened so unhinged the population of Racine, Wisconsin (home of Aero-Wax, by the way), that it became front-page news.

So here is the 1950 version of an internet flame war from the Racine Journal Times of October 20th that year. No picture of the salacious, sinful neckline in question was published.

Godfrey TV Show Stirs Racine Critics
By VERNE HOFFMAN
Is Arthur Godfrey, star of radio and television, vulgar?
That question has raised a tempest in a teapot in Racine.
It all started when a Racine woman wrote a letter to Godfrey in which she censured him for showing a picture on TV of a woman in a low-neck dress. She termed it indecent, and sent a copy of the letter to "Reading a Columnist's Mail" in the Journal-Times.
Other letters followed. Some defended Godfrey; others pointed the finger at him.
Clicked in 1945.
Nearly everywhere TV viewers gather in Racine—in home or tavern—Godfrey and his programs are being discussed with the viewers arguing his merits pro and con.
Who is Godfrey?
The 47-year-old Arthur Godfrey left high school in Hasbrouck Heights, N. J., when he was a sophomore and started out on a hit and miss career of odd jobs. The first was office boy to a New York architect for $10 a week. Coal miner, rubber plant worker, Navy radio man, taxi driver and Coast Guardsman followed. He got his start in radio, in 1929, but it was not until 194S that he really clicked. Fellow Coast Guards egged him into a Baltimore radio station where amateurs were welcome.
He was signed by a pet shop that sold bird seed, and billed as Red Godfrey, the warbling ban-joist. The pay was $5.
What has easy-going Godfrey got?
The boys in radio and show business would like to know. As Richard Kleiner, NEA writer, put it, "He sings, but he isn't a serious threat to Crosby. He tells pleasant little jokes but nobody dies from excessive laughter. He emcees three shows, but spends most of his air time talking about his airplanes and his Virginia farm."
Has an Audience.
According to the radio crowd, Godfrey's got absolutely nothing—except a large audience, many of whom will jump down the throat of anyone who says anything against him.
CBS may not care what he's got, but it is aware that this year Godfrey will account for some $7,000,000 of the radio and TV business Columbia Broadcasting System brings in.
Two decades after Godfrey received his $5 a performance, reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission show that the radio and TV star was paid more than $440,000 by CBS alone—more than CBS vice presidents get.
Godfrey's speaking voice is a rusty rumble, often described as sounding like a bull frog, a bassoon or north wind whistling over a pile of rusty bath tubs.
He is known for the impudent manner in which he handles commercials, making his sponsors wince.
Once, for example, he described lipstick and was telling the price and size of the brand:
"For two bucks they'll probably pipe the goo right into your boudoir."
Discussing a shampoo which had eggs and milk as ingredients, he said:
"And if your hair is clean it makes a fine omelet."
Often he will stop right in the middle of a commercial with a "Nuts to that," or "What tripe."
Doesn't Use Script.

Godfrey doesn't use a script, and only his television program has any semblance of preparation. And he changes that at his whim, driving his production staff and performers daffy.
Godfrey believes his own success lies in what he calls personalized broadcasting—he figures people like to feel they are part of a conversational group, friends, not "ladies and gentlemen" in a crowd to be addressed.
Whatever Godfrey's got, he causes violent reaction, such as the Racine woman who called herself "Disturbed", and wrote the original letter criticizing him.
Some excerpts from his critics and defenders follow:
Disturbed - Your TV show of Oct. 4 must have pleased the devil. I know he enjoyed the magazine cover you flaunted before the eyes of the public ... I was glad my children were not at home to see the half-naked girl . . . The girls who wear those plunging neck' lines on your programs and on others are no inspiration for good. ... Give us a clean program.
Bible Is Quoted.
North Side Father-You seem to take an evil view of the human body. Read the Bible, Book of Genesis, Chapter 2-25th verse: "And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed." My advice to you, Disturbed, is to live in the current century. Not the previous one.
LaSalle Streeter-Tune In a different station . . . That's what those knobs on your set are for.
Determined - Godfrey's programs have always been on the naked side and very vulgar. Just to listen to A. G.'s voice is enough to realize what the rest of the program will be-one vulgarism after another.
Bible Reader-North Side Father quotes the Bible (Genesis 2 V 25) that "they were naked and not ashamed," meaning Adam and Eve ... It was before they had sinned. Chapter 3 V 7 (after they had disobeyed God) "And the eyes of both were opened, and they knew they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons."
Student of Logic-(North Side Father) is guilty of contradictory statements by first justifying the nude TV picture as sex instruction, and then stating his children will know about sex "not from books or pictures." ... He advises Disturbed to live in the current century. Northside Father has violated his own principle when he advises Disturbed to disregard anything but what is of the present moment. If Disturbed’s argument that nudity in TV is immoral is valid then it would be immoral in any century. Please, Northside Father, be logical. Another North Sider—It’s funny how many people enjoy the trash Godfrey puts out, when there are so many good programs on the air.
Hits Shop Jokes.
West Side Miss—Some people make me sick. I would like to know just what vulgarisms Arthur Godfrey displays on his programs. I’ll be a top of men and women have seen a lot more vulgarisms going on right before their eyes. What about some of those rotten jokes their husbands bring home from the shop?
North Side Mother—I never miss a (Godfrey) program if I can help him. To me he is a great entertainer and a good American. Now don’t get the idea that I like vulgar radio programs. I imagine a few things he says could be taken in different ways. I never noticed. But then I have a clean mind.
Disgusted Too—I like his (Godfrey’s) program very much, but since when did this country lose their freedom? . . . It’s getting pretty bad when we start judging other people.
Disgusted (in rebuttal to North Side Father)—There is nothing wrong with sex when it is kept clean. Why, Mr. North Side Father, did you think of sex as soon as you read about a half-clad (not nude) woman? I believe your doing so proves my point...If wanting to be a good mother makes me old fashioned...I hope God will keep me that way.

One of the letters actually contains the best advice. If you don’t like something on TV, don’t watch it. If you don’t like this post, well, we’ll be back to old cartoons again tomorrow. Old radio and TV returns next Wednesday.

Jump, Granny, Jump

Grandma jumps out of the way of the wolf in his bathtub-turned-almost-Chevrolet in “Swing Shift Cinderella” (1945). Some nice smears, though the digital pixilation ruins the effect.



Chevrolet, you ask? Well, here’s wolfie’s model compared with a ’42 Chev convertible. Not identical, but close, though the grille is closer to the one on that year’s Hudson.



Ray Abrams, Preston Blair and Ed Love are the animators.

Late note: Chuck Cooperman points out a model of the 1941 Chrysler. That’s pretty much it.