Oh, That's the Next Gag

From the first moment to the last of his life on screen, Screwy Squirrel knew he resided in a cartoon. And he loved demonstrating to the audience he knew that’s where he was.

Take his debut, for example. Screwy ponders what it is that he does to Meathead the dog next. He decides to find out by lifting the edge of the paper he’s on and looking ahead to the next scene.



Now that he knows what he’s supposed to do, Screwy puts the paper he’s on back in order, and runs over to the scene he’s supposed to be in.



But he doesn’t clobber Meathead with the bat first. We get the old “waiting for a street car” gag. The tram arrives inside a tree, Screwy boards it, and the Squirrel Hollow Special rolls away—only to quickly return so Screwy can wallop the dog.



Tex Avery brought the “we’re in a cartoon, folks” routine with him from Warner Bros. and always used it to great effect at MGM, whether it was the “Technicolor Ends Here” gag in “Lucky Ducky” or the narrator of “Who Killed Who” turning out to be the killer in the cartoon he’s narrating.

Your Pie, Sir

Among the great little elements brought together in the Bugs Bunny cartoon “Slick Hare” is a slapstick routine where Bugs quickly assumes another identity and dishes it out to Elmer Fudd again and again.

Bugs sees Elmer come at him with a meat cleaver in the kitchen of the Mocrumbo supper club. He quickly rushes out the door and returns pretending to be a waiter. “One lemon merango pie!” he shouts at Elmer. Fudd follows the logic of the situation and assumes the role of the pie chef.



Bugs keeps picking up a freshly-baked pie, leaving with the kitchen with it, then returning and mashing it in Fudd’s face. The wabbit never breaks stride. The action has perfect rhythm. Another beauty from Friz Freleng.



Tedd Pierce and Mike Maltese wrote the story. The animation is by Manny Perez, Gerry Chiniquy, Virgil Ross and Ken Champin; Greg Duffell tells me this scene belongs to Ross.

She Never Liked Acting

To use a Jack Benny analogy, a Maxwell will run without brakes—but the car works much better with them.

Jack Benny’s television show was missing a few parts which made the radio show a large success. And while it lasted over a decade, it just wasn’t quite the same, nor quite as good, as the radio version. Dennis Day didn’t appear on TV every week. Phil Harris left during the radio days. And Mary Livingstone didn’t really make the transition to television, either. Her appearances on the final year of the radio show were almost smoke and mirrors. A good percentage of the episodes that year were reruns. On the new programmes, either Veola Vonn (uncredited) performed the necessary female roles in sketches, or Mary’s lines—read unenergetically—were recorded at home and spliced into the master transcription. She got a credit every show so it sounded like she was there. But her performance suffered because she didn’t have a live audience to feed off of.

On television, the Benny show survived without Mary’s biting sarcasm, Phil’s fervent love for fermented beverages (and himself) and Dennis’ weekly naivety, but you can’t lose solid and proven comedy elements without the show suffering a bit. Phil and Dennis were both involved with personal appearances and other ventures. Mary’s excuse was she simply wanted to stay away from microphones and cameras. It’s a shame because she really was very good on the air, both on radio and TV.

James Bacon of the Associated Press wrote about it in his column published on October 4, 1958. It’s interesting he should compare her to Gracie Allen, who retired from TV in ’58. Mary apparently had a case of Gracie envy and set out to buy whatever Gracie had—only larger (a fan magazine wrote about it as early as the mid-‘30s).

Never Liked It, Anyway
Mary’s One-Show Stint Ends--After 26 Years
By JAMES BACON
Associated Press Writer
Hollywood—Mary Livingstone, who only meant to help out her husband for one show in 1932, is retiring from the act after 26 years.
Hubby Jack Benny, who has started his new television series, said his wife never did like acting.
“But,” he added, “she always liked show business. I think I'm going to find a show for her to produce. She has great taste and great comedy sense.”
Mary thus follows the example of her best friend, Gracie Allen, who retired from the act that made her and George Burns famous.
“Mary isn’t trying to copy Gracie,” said Jack. “Actually, she’s been retiring for four years when she begged off during live shows. This summer she made two films with me and then asked if she couldn’t drop the filmed shows, too. I said okay.”
The two films Mary made will be shown later in the series.
In 1932 Jack had a radio sketch with a part for a supposed fan from Plainfield, N.J.
“It was just a couple of lines,” Jack recalls, “and we couldn’t find a girl to read it right I asked Mary to help out. She did and then she wasn’t on the next week and the fans started writing like crazy wanting to know when that girl from Plainfield, N. J., was coming back on the show.
“She’s been a good sport about it, sticking it out 28 years, especially when she never liked it.”
Mary is nervous about her parts on the show, often fainting from the tension.
Benny has been criticized for what appears to be a callous attitude toward his wife’s fainting spells.
A friend, however, says that is not the case; Jack has just seen Mary faint so often and recover so quickly that he is always the least excited one around her.
“When we got married in 1927,” says Jack. Mary answered ‘I do’ and fainted. It’s something that you have to live with.”

Jack did convince her to appear several times after “retiring”—notably on his anniversary special in 1970—but she spent the bulk of her time on her second and far more enjoyable career: being Mrs. Jack Benny.

Ism!

No sooner did the John Sutherland studio cancel its contract with United Artists because of its inability to make a profit on cartoons than it signed a deal with Harding College for three animated educational shorts (Variety, Jan. 17 and 29, 1947). But the studio wasn’t out of the theatrical cartoon business yet.

MGM was looking to save some money, too, and announced in early February 1948 it would release the first in the series of Sutherland shorts, “Make Mine Freedom,” and that it would use part of its Technicolor commitment on the prints. The cartoon went into national release on March 10th. The film received the ringing endorsement of the American Legion’s Americanism Commission (Variety, May 28, 1948) and won the Freedom Foundation’s Achievement award in 1949. The cartoon wasn’t subtle. It was a denouncement of Communism and a celebration of Capitalism, with worker, management and politician working together for the betterment of America.

The first Sutherland cartoons look like a cross between Lantz and Columbia designs, with much of the animation on twos, like in a Warners cartoon. But the poses and some of the animation is great to look at because of the quality people Sutherland picked up from other studios. Here are a few of the neat little poses on Professor Utopia, as he pushes his “Ism” as a cure-all for the ills of labour, management, government and farmers. There’s a nice little bit of animation where he lets go of the bottle of Ism only two catch it before it falls too far.



There are no credits on this cartoon, but former MGMers Carl Urbano and George Gordon were directing at the studio. Gerry Nevius (Disney) and Ed Starr (Columbia) were the early layout and background artists and Arnold Gillespie (MGM), Emery Hawkins (Warners), Armin Shaffer (assistant, Disney) and Bill Higgins (assistant, MGM) were among the Sutherland animators around 1950 or so. Ignore internet sources that claim Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera had anything to do with this cartoon; it was made by Sutherland’s staff.

Sutherland didn’t cheap out on voice talent. There are at least a half dozen actors in this cartoon, with Frank Nelson as Dr. Utopia. Bud Hiestand narrates and if I’m correct, you can also hear the voices of Billy Bletcher, Stan Freberg and John Brown, among others. Voice historian Keith Scott has pointed out Hiestand narrated a number of Sutherland’s propaganda shorts.

MGM released five more Sutherland shorts after “Make Mine Freedom,” but the second-last one caused a controversy. “Fresh Laid Plans” cost $80,000 to produce and was released on January 21, 1951. Some felt it was an attack on U.S. government aid to agriculture.Weekly Variety of March 21st reported:

Metro Won’t Yank Cartoon In Farm Rap
Metro is sticking to its guns in releasing “Fresh Laid Plans,” cartoon short over which has developed a political controversy. M-G distribution vice-president William F. Rodgers stated in N. Y. yesterday (Tues.) the distrib has no intention of withdrawing the one-reeler from circulation.
Recognizing the uproar which “Plans” has caused, Rodgers issued a formal press statement identifying the M-G position.
He asserted: “‘Fresh Laid Plans’ is fifth in this series of patriotic cartoons which we have released. It was submitted to us by Harding College as were its four predecessors, and we released it because, like the others, we believed it to be interesting and entertaining to moviegoers.
“As a matter of fact we had received such favorable comment on the other cartoons, all of which dealt with similar subjects in the public interest, that our acceptance of ‘Fresh Laid Plans’ was routine.” “Plans” and other four shorts which Rodgers referred to all were produced in Hollywood by John Sutherland, for Harding. M-G serves only as the distributor, as it would with any other indie producer with whom it enters a releasing pact.
Touching off the fireworks in the “Plans” instance, however, is the fact the short has been interpreted in some quarters as treating of Government agricultural planning in satirical fashion. Carrying this thought still further, Alfred D. Stedman, farm editor of the St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press, questioned whether handling of the short might mean that a “big segment of the movie industry is going to bat to knock the Government out of agriculture.”
Stedman further branded “Plans” as a “one-sided editorial in pictures" and declared its purpose was to sway public opinion in a hotly-contested farm issue.
'Hits at Price System'

Editor alleged the short hits specifically at the farm production and prices system advanced by Secretary of Agriculture Charles F. Brannan, known popularly as the Brannan Plan. Also linked in the pic's production is the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation which granted funds to the college for its lensing. Denials of the Stedman charges have been made by a spokesman for the Foundation, who said the film had neither the intent nor effect of satire, and by Sutherland. Producer said he merely tried to “point out the impossibility of planning our lives from a central authority.”
Other four cartoons made by Sutherland who, incidentally, formerly was associated with Walt Disney, were: “Make Mine Freedom,” dealing with free enterprise; “Meet King Joe,” concerning the capital-labor relationship; “Why Play Leap Frog?” focusing on prices and wages, and “Albert in Blunderland,” a satire on the Russian system. Three others now are in preparation, centering respectively on profits, taxes and inflation. M-G’s pacts with Harding have been on a single-pic basis. Distrib. has made no commitments for the future, as yet.

A week later, the ACLU backed Metro, saying it was concerned about censorship, and that Sutherland should be “free to express himself, and those who want to see the film, despite protests against it, should be free to do so.” But perhaps the controversy made MGM skittish. It waited 11 months to release one more Sutherland cartoon, “Inside Cackle Corners” (November 10, 1951). And that was the end of it. Sutherland continued making industrial films and TV commercials. MGM contented itself with Tom and Jerry.

The Mysterious Screen of Black

The 1930 Walter Lantz cartoon “Spooks” has an ingenious opening, very much in line with what Walt Disney did in “Plane Crazy” a couple of earlier later when a black scene reveals itself to be a cow.

In this cartoon, curtains close on a title card, blackening the screen. Slowly, the black recedes and we learn it’s a rubbery tree branch blowing in the wind.



Could cartoons be any weirder than they were in 1930 and 1931? This one’s disjointed, with an owl growing bizarre designs in its eyes and poking toward the camera, a skeleton putting out the cat, a couple of guys in a theatre shouting months at each other, a Phantom of the Opera setting for a bit, and finally a riddle, with the bad guy disappearing for some unknown reason and the cartoon coming to a stop.

Pinto Colvig provides the voice of a hippo and is credited on the artistic staff along with Bill Nolan, Ray Abrams, Manny Moreno and Clyde Geronimi (no Tex Avery).

And Molly Makes the Save

In 1958, Joe Barbera co-wrote a cartoon where Yogi Bear rescues a cute little native Indian boy who has accidentally fallen into the fast-flowing waters of a river.

23 years earlier, the studio where Barbera worked released a cartoon where Molly Moo-Cow rescues a cute little native Indian boy who has accidentally fallen into the fast-flowing waters of a river.

Coincidence? Well, Barbera did borrow from earlier cartoons when he came up with plots for his new made-for-TV animated shows.

It’s been a while since we heard from dear old Molly on the blog. For those of you unfamiliar with Molly Moo-Cow, she starred in four cartoons released within three months of each other by the Van Beuren studio in 1935-36. Then she disappeared, appearing decades later on tapes and DVDs of public domain cartoons. At the time of Molly’s creation, Van Beuren was being run by ex-Disney director Burt Gillett, who seems to have thought he could come up with a bovine Pluto. Molly emoted. Molly could twist and turn at various angles (any bets Carlo Vinci animated her dances?). She was painstakingly animated one drawing per frame of film. But she wasn’t charming or funny. She was just there. And that’s not good enough for entertainment.

The native boy rescue came in the appropriately named “Molly Moo-Cow and the Indians.” Here are some of Molly’s emotions as she watches the papoose being carried down the river.



Whoever the animator was—George and Dan Gordon, Jack Zander and maybe Alex Lovy were with Vinci at Van Beuren at the time—came up with this interesting expression, one of the oddest of the whole cartoon. Or perhaps it’s the work of an in-betweener.



But Molly dives onto land, not into the water. Are your slides splitting yet?



Molly’s body gets caught between two rocks in the river but, somehow, her heads keeps going and her mouth grabs the child off-camera and hauls him to safety.



Molly was gone soon after this picture was released. The Van Beuren studio wasn’t far behind.

The Life of Gerard

Anyone who knows Arnold Stang solely from cartoon character voices is missing out on some of the best work he ever did.

Stang started out in radio and his main employment, after he grew out of pre-adult roles, was on various on-air ventures of jaded satirist Henry Morgan. He was cast as Gerard, a negative, amoral New Yorker who tried to get away with anything, like inventing a whole family to claim on his income tax. “Who’s to know?” he’d say to Morgan. He didn’t care if he succeeded, but he’s try it anyway. Basically, he almost took on Morgan’s personality (if not his viewpoint) while Morgan played the straight man.

Any time is a good time to post about Arnold Stang. He would be 96 if he were still with us. (For years, he lied about his age, likely to help his early career. Who’s to know?) Here’s a little story about Gerard from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of February 20, 1948. Stang began with Morgan on ABC in September 1946 and moved with him to NBC two years later.

'Gerald' on Henry Morgan Show True Sophisticate, Says Stang
By SHIELA McKEON
Arnold Stang, who plays "Gerard" on the Henry Morgan show looked up from his scrambled egg and bacon breakfast the other afternoon and said "Gerard" is one of the completely sophisticated characters in radio.
Every line he repeats on the show with that verbal shrug proves it, he says.
"When I do Gerard, I always think of him as the kind of person who is very hard to impress. I think that is being truly sophisticated."
People laugh, he says, because they like "Gerard" and because they sometimes feel the way he does about things.
Arnold's technical approach to hilarity is a radio actor's method turned on comedy, he explains. He wants to make "Gerard" three dimensional.
"He becomes a real person because I don't step out of character or read lines in any trick way to get laughs. 'Gerard' is 'Gerard' all the time. That spontaneous laugh that "Gerard" gets when Henry Morgan introduces him is no accident, he added as he forked up his bacon.
"Audiences laugh as soon as they hear the name because they've gotten to like the character and they expect to laugh."
Although Arnold feels that Gerard is a good thing professionally he doesn't plan to let radio change his name; "I want people to say that's an Arnold Stang-type part," he says, "not one for 'Gerard.'"
Arnold, who lives at 1846 50th St., has been in radio since his Children Hour days and has worked with Fred Allen, Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Ed (Archie) Gardner and he also subbed for Ish Kabibble on the Kay Kayser [sic] show.
He takes his work quite seriously but he doesn't call it art with a capitalized "a".
"I try to realize that what I do is creative but it's also a business and I have to keep on learning." He checks his performance regularly by having recordings made and listening to the playback.
His current popularity was preceded by a filling-in during lean months jobs, as a Western Union messenger, a fact which helps him keep his perspective in the soap opera and long commercial business.
"You've got to be independent in this business but you can't forget to be human," he says. "If you are too unsure of yourself you can't click when you read for a part because you try too hard."
Currently Arnold is lining up a new radio show from which "Gerard" will be barred, "I'll talk about the Morgan show on my show and my show on the Morgan show but "Gerard" will stay on the Morgan show.

Stang didn’t get much of a chance to talk about Morgan, or anything else, on his own show. It bombed. Summer replacement shows generally lasted through the summer. Stang’s didn’t. “It’s Always Albert” was a replacement for Danny Thomas on Friday nights at 8:30 on CBS. It aired for a mere four weeks in July 1948 before itself being replaced by “Romance Theater” (the cast were told before the fourth show that it would be the last). The failure was quickly forgotten. Gerard was still on the Morgan show and Stang was busy with a second radio venture, a comedy-variety show starring Milton Berle who was about to take off into the stratosphere on television. And Stang eventually went along for the ride.

14 Carrot Backgrounds

“14 Carrot Rabbit” is maybe best known for the great animation of Bugs “getting that funny feeling” whenever he’s near gold, but there are some attractive backgrounds by Irv Wyner as well.



I’d love to snip together the pan shot of Bugs being chased by Sam down a map of North America or through some treed fields until he suddenly stops outside the gold reserve (you see part of the latter above), but the characters get in the way. So here are some of the gold country.



And a couple of more of the park around Fort Knox.



Hawley Pratt is the layout artist in this one from the Freleng unit.

How To Frighten a Gun

Junior has his rifle ready to shoot at a duck through a hole in a log in Tex Avery’s “Lucky Ducky.” (Junior even kicks up some dirt as he skids around to get into position).



The duck avoids being shot. But it isn’t because he’s lucky. He pulls out a mask that frightens the rifle (and has an evil look on his ducky face).



The rifle shrinks in fear, fires weakly, goes limp and expends its shot on the ground (oh, if Freud were here!).



Walt Clinton, Preston Blair, Grant Simmons and Louie Schmitt are the credited animators. This is the cartoon famous for the “Technicolor Ends Here” gag.