A Devil of a Cartoon

The devil disguises himself as a tycoon at a swank dinner between a business baron and John Q. Public in “The Devil and John Q,” a 1952 John Sutherland anti-Communism short.

Here are some poses as the devil (devil = Godless Communism) tries to con the pair into keeping profits high (“and keep labour right under our thumb”), then reacts to John Q’s counter argument about high prices causing inflation. See the eye stretch as the businessman is shocked.



Variety explained a little about Sutherland’s operation at the time this short was made. MGM had released six of Sutherland’s shorts before their deal was quietly ended. The last Sutherland cartoon put into theatres by Metro was “Inside Cackle Corners” as of November 10, 1951. This story was published on February 28, 1952.

Industrial Film Prod’n Booms For Sutherland
In an expansion of industrial film activities, John Sutherland Productions is prepping a 45-minute feature for National Carbon Co., and a 30-minute feature for Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Co. Carbon Co. picture will be filmed in color, on subject of industrial public relations, and is for use by its sponsor both on TV and before groups. Kaiser film will be in 16m Kodachrome, and combo live-action and animation.
Sutherland is now doing final editing on an animated film turned out in Technicolor for the NY Stock Exchange, tagged “What Makes Us Tick.” Two additional Technicolor animation shorts also are being started for program which Metro in the past has released. First is “Dear Uncle,” dealing with taxes, and second, “The Devil and John Q,” on inflation.
Three previous shorts in this series received awards from Freedom’s Foundation in Valley Forge, for achievements showing the American way of life. Trio included “Make Mine Freedom,” which won the award in 1949; “Albert in Blunderland,” 1950 winner; and “Why Play Leapfrog,” 1951 winner.

The animation in this short was handled by Arnold Gillespie, Emery Hawkins, Bill Higgins and Russ Van Neida. There’s a great opening theme with blaring trumpets by Les Baxter. Sutherland seems to have had a stock company of voice actors around this time. Frank Nelson is terrific as the devil. I don’t know who is voicing John Q, but you can hear Bud Hiestand, Herb Vigran and someone I’m pretty sure is Harry Morgan (as Abe Lincoln) on the soundtrack.

New Year's Eve Killed

“The trophy room,” declares narrator Frank Graham in ‘The House of Tomorrow,’ “contains many exhibits of the hunt.” The camera then pans across a Johnny Johnsen background of some important “kills,” ending with a New Year’s Eve pun (accompanied by a shaky version of “Auld Lang Syne” in the background).



I suspect there were animators who were quite familiar with that last drawing (a somewhat similar white label on the bottle could be found on Walker’s DeLuxe). And the sequence takes up 16 seconds of screen time with no animation, meaning Fred Quimby was probably celebrating the cost-savings.

Here’s hoping your 2015 will be full of Tex Avery-like fun.

The Little Match Girl Model Sheets

A New Year’s Eve-quasi Christmas cartoon is one of the saddest ever made. “The Little Match Girl” by the Charles Mintz studio was nominated for an Academy Award in 1938 and was screened for Academy voters the same night as Disney’s “The Old Mill” (guess which cartoon won the Oscar?).

One of the auction sites posted these model sheets on-line some time ago.



Last New Year’s Eve, we posted some frames from the short. You can view them here. Art Davis got the screen credit but a lot of the animation was by Emery Hawkins.

The Champagne Lady on the Cider Gentleman

Some people are famous for being famous. I suppose Elsa Maxwell falls in that category. About all she was known for was throwing champagne parties and then writing about them in the New York Post (she was syndicated by Press Alliance).

One person who I cannot picture at an Elsa Maxwell party is Fred Allen. He and his wife Portland led a very quiet existence. Allen was so busy writing or re-writing his radio show, he didn’t have time for much else. But Maxwell wrote a nice tribute to Fred Allen in prose that was about as elegant as she ever got.

I haven’t checked to see how accurate her claims are about Minerva Pious and Charlie Cantor. It seems to me both were still on the show in the 1943-44 season and that Cantor was playing Mr. Nussbaum; Alan Reed (Falstaff Openshaw) and Jack Smart (Senator Bloat) were other players who made regular appearances in Allen’s Alley along with Elsie Mae Gordon (Mrs. Prawn) and Pat C. Flick (Digby Rappaport).

This appeared in the Post on March 9, 1944.

Elsa Maxwell's Party Line
Off Up for Allen's Alley
Although I have made guest appearances with him more than once, I don't think I had ever appreciated the real value, beauty, and extraordinary fantasy in the mind of this greatest of all radio stars—this Columbia Attic philosopher, this radio Erasmus, with his cadenced drawl and whimsical tones that might be measured by a metronome—who has charmed me every Sunday night this last month during my illness as a cobra charms a cornered rat.
Fred Allen has added a quality to radio without parallel . . . for there is only one Fred Allen, as there is only one Portland, and as there was only one Minerva Pious, who though stolen for a brief time by Jack Benny will shortly, I feel, return to the fold—the one and only Allen s Alley. Also missing—and I hope soon to join the glittering Allen Family circle—will be Charlie Cantor, the greatest character man of radio.
I don't know which special facet of the Fred Allen diamond makes him so irresistible. Perhaps it is the sheer sweetness, humanity and kindliness of the man. Or perhaps it is the hominess, and simplicity of Fred's humor, which is always founded on realism and life, and never taken from the well-known, and rather shop-worn-wits of the last decade: i. e., Joe Cook to "Dottie" Parker. In fact, Fred's caviar still remains just fish eggs, and his champagne still remains apple cider.
There is also the amazing suggestion of spontaneity in Fred's program that makes you believe he extemporizes when everyone familiar with radio realizes that few, except Fred, dare to tamper with the delicate art of improvisation when the relentless clock ticks away the minutes which divide sponsored radio shows. It has been said that unlike most comedians who try to make material sound spontaneous Fred's problem is to make his extemporing seem part of the show.
The first time I saw Fred Allen was when he was an actor. It was way back in the 1920's, when he appeared in "The Little Show," which starred. Clifton Webb and Libby Holman. No one could have possibly imagined that this rather small bit-player could become master of the air.
I once asked Fred "Why did you leave the stage?"
"Oh," he answered, "I didn't leave the stage. The stage left me. Radio came along, and I thought I'd fiddle with that."
"So you fiddled while the stage burned? Was that it?" I inquired.
"No—vice versa," said Fred.
But it's hard to realize the intensive work Fred puts into every show . . . Not only does he write most of the material himself, but, he spends his time "ungagging" the sometimes too goofy gags of his gag writers. Then there are three rehearsals to an Allen show. If you are a guest on it, you will be called for the first reading—say on Tuesday.
Then the script undergoes revision and even amputation. On Saturday there is another "going-through," and on Sunday a dress rehearsal before the evening show. And this is all under the psychological baton of the Maestro, who deeply respects his metier.
On "Information Please," Fred did not even attempt to match wits with John Kieran or F. P. A. when it came to knowledge of the classics. But neither Kieran nor F. P. A. is an Allen when it comes to wit. Fred ad-libbed constantly in a low tone, and rarely missed the bull's-eye, though you could barely hear him.
* * *
One of the questions Clifton Fadiman asked was, "What would Jack Benny, Midas, and Silas Marner be talking about if you met them on a street corner?" The answer, of course, was "money." When Fadiman pointed out that Midas was the king who could turn everything to gold, Allen murmured, "I don't think a fellow like that would have spoken to Benny."
* * *
Some have called Fred and Portland, who have been happily married for fourteen years, the Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne of the radio. It is very aptly put, for they are never apart and every anniversary they face each other over a glass of whatever is their favorite beverage and solemnly congratulate each other. If the art of humor lies in surprise, then Fred's voice is certainly his greatest asset. His incredible drawl as it gives utterance to his incredible wit and fun amazes as well as delights you.
But even at the most convulsive moments of Fred's buffooning one is always impressed, even through tears of laughter, by the innate dignity and decency of Mr. Allen—who, unlike many of his colleagues, never descends to the vice of either vulgarity of cheapness in the endeavor to catch a laugh. No higher compliment can I pay a man.

Thirsty Cat

“The Cat That Hated People” (1948) can be looked at as an anti-Communist love-letter to America, where you discover things in the Good Ol’ U.S.A. aren’t as bad as you think they are, and certainly better than the way you’re treated in a certain foreign country far away where everything’s strange.

Or is could be about an over-emotional cat.

Taking the latter into consideration, here’s a scene where the narrating cat (Keith Scott suspects it’s Pat McGeehan) complains that people “are always forgettin’ to put the cat out at night.” See how the cat is calmly sleeping then awakes with a start. Nice squash and stretch here by, I think, Grant Simmons.



One of several worried looks.



Here are a few drawings of the cat churning its feet in the air as it gets set to zoom to the front door.



He churns in the air again as he runs through the door.



Ah, good old American water!



Walter Clinton, Louie Schmitt and Bill Shull are credited on this cartoon besides Simmons. Schmitt drew the model sheets.

Remley

As Don Wilson reads an inside reference to Bert Scott during a Jack Benny radio show, a loud chortling voice can be heard in the background. No, it’s not Benny and it’s not Scott (Benny’s personal manager). It belonged to radio’s most famous left-handed guitar player, Frank Remley.

Remley had what must be the most improbable career in radio, as part of the career wasn’t really his. It came about very gradually. Remley was part of Phil Harris’ orchestra and when Harris was hired as Benny’s orchestra leader in 1936, Remley came along. Harris started out as a combative foil for Benny (or, occasionally, very vocally subdued) until the writers realised making him a brash boozer was a far better character. And the only person even more of a boozer than Harris, said the scripts, was Harris’ guitar player. Finally, the writers decided to use Remley’s name and pretty soon, Remley’s phoney alcohol-soaked antics were getting huge laughs. All during this time, Remley was never heard on the air, except when his unidentified laughter soared into the microphones from the bandstand on the back of the stage.

Harris became such a hot commodity, he was courted for his own radio comedy show. His writers went looking for characters, and since Remley was synonymous with Harris from the Benny show, the writers decided to make Remley a character on the show. But Remley didn’t play Remley. The great radio producer-actor Elliott Lewis did. And that caused no amount of confusion for him, as we can see in this syndicated story from the North American Newspaper Alliance. This was in the Long Island Star-Journal of July 29, 1949

Remley Hopes Film Job Will Prove He's Real
By Harold Heffernan
PERSONALITY PARADE: Frank Remley gets so confused at time that he pinches himself to see if he exists. Most people who have heard Jack Benny talk about him on Jack's radio program, and Phil Harris and Alice Faye on theirs think he's strictly a fictional character.
They say when introduced to Frank, "oh, come now, you're not Frank Remley on the Phil Harris show. You can't fool us. We know—because the announcer at the end of the program always says, ‘Frank Remley was played by Elliott Lewis.’"
Remley then tries to explain that Elliott Lewis does play him on the radio but nevertheless he—Frank Remley—does exist in the flesh and blood. He's no fictional character. He does play the second guitar in Phil Harris's band and when the instrument is heard, that's the genuine Frank Remley. But when Frank Remley talks, that's Elliott Lewis.
• • •
"I'M NOT GOOD enough to play myself," said Remley. "I tried out for the role but everybody said that a famous character like Frank Remley should sound better over the air. They chose Elliott Lewis which is okay by me because I want to sound good. He's given me quite a reputation back in my home town of Fargo, N. D.
Remley, who's been a pal of Harris's for 27 years, is coaching Phil now on how to make love to Betty Grable in "Wabash Avenue" at 20th Century Fox. Vic Mature provides the competition. Remley himself is acting a small part in the film just to prove to people that he's not something out of Jack Benny's imagination.
"Jack started it all," said Remley as he awaited his next appearance in the movie. "When Phil went on the Benny show 13 years ago, I was playing second guitar, like I had been in Phil's band for 10 years before that. Jack took pot shots at me in his ad libbing and soon I was getting fan mail.
• • •
"WHEN PHIL and Alice started their show four years ago Phil decided to give me a buildup. At first it gave me a strange feeling to watch Elliott Lewis play me. I felt like I was watching my own ghost. But I've gotten used to it. I go to rehearsals, sit there strumming my guitar and saying to myself, 'golly, that Frank Remley's a great actor.' I always say to Elliott before the show starts, 'don't let me down tonight. Remember, my reputation is at stake.'
"Elliott has played me so well that, the other night, when I went to a party with Phil and Alice, a producer offered me a leading role in a film. I said, 'but you've made a mistake. I'm not Frank Remley. I mean I am but not the guy you think I am.' He got sore and said, 'wise guy, eh? Well, I'll give the role to someone else.'
"Elliott is swell about it. Here he is building up my name but not his. But he doesn't mind. Sometimes when we go out together, someone will shout, 'hello, Frank.' At first, we didn't know what to do. Now. we both shout back and the fans probably think one of us is crazy."
• • •
A HAIL-FELLOW-WELL-MET with a rugged physique and a handsome face, he finds the fictional character of Frank Remley embarrassing at times.
"Especially that part about me being a hard drinker," Frank said. "If I go to a bar where I'm known, I always hear someone whisper, 'uh-uh, there he goes again.' I'm so conscious everyone's watching me that I usually down a coke and go home."
On the "Wabash Avenue' set, Remley plays gin rummy by the hour with Phil. The two met in 1922 on a ship when Harris was taking a band, the Dixie Syncopators, to Hawaii for an engagement. Remley was playing a banjo in the ship's orchestra and Harris offered him a job. They've worked together over since.
"Many of the incidents we use on the air actually happened to Phil and me," he said. "We blow them up of course, to get the most laughs possible but basically they're true stories."
Release of this movie will be a red-letter day for him, Frankie says.
"Folks will know then," he declared, "that in spite of Benny and Harris there is a real Remley. That is," he added and the thought almost overcame him, "unless they slap me down en the cutting-room floor."

Remley’s on-air situation got more bizarre. Harris left the Benny show at the end of the 1951-52 season. But his orchestra stayed, including Frank Remley. But this seems to have sparked a change on Harris’ own show. Starting in the 1952-53 season, Frank Remley was known as “Elliott Lewis.” Yes, Lewis used his real name and a contrived explanation was given for the name change on the season opener. All those years of Remley jokes went down the drain; Elliott Lewis being called Elliott Lewis just didn’t seem right. The real Remley ended up making the occasional on-camera appearance on the Benny TV show and even had a line or two. As an actor, he was no Elliott Lewis. But he was a great friend of Benny’s; they took trips together and Jack wrote him letters which, I understand, weren’t quite G-rated.

Remley had a heart attack and died in Newport Beach, California on January 28, 1967, age 67. He may have provided more laughs for more radio listeners by not being on the air than anyone else.

Hugh and Rudy

For at least a decade, whatever Walt Disney was doing in cartoon shorts, Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising were doing in cartoon shorts. It was quite understandable at the start. Both worked for Disney in Kansas City and then on the West Coast. They took over for Disney when Uncle Walt was punted off the Oswald series by middle-man Charlie Mintz in 1927. Then came their own studio in 1930 where they made Bosko cartoons for Warner Bros. that were reminiscent of Disney’s Mickey Mouse shorts. They were fun and bouncy and are still entertaining today. When they moved to MGM in 1934, the Warners cartoons suffered.

By the late ‘30s, Harman and Ising larded their MGM cartoons with large numbers of characters on the screen (or large numbers of shingles in “A Rainy Day”), stopping the plot for little gestures or expressions. The motto seemed to be “More characters than Disney!” “More gestures than Disney!” “More Disney than Disney!”

The cartoons looked nice. They showed creativity. There was one problem. Audiences wanted to laugh; they didn’t go to the movies to be impressed with artwork. Leon Schlesinger realised it. Walter Lantz realised it. And Fred Quimby at MGM realised it, too, but found he needed Bill Hanna, Joe Barbera and Tex Avery to give him laughs, not Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising (Ising’s cartoons were more of the smiles-and-chuckles type). By this time, even the critics barely paid attention to Disney shorts. They weren’t going to pay attention to imitation Disney shorts.

The war interrupted Ising’s professional career, while Harman made military shorts and dreamed dreams that never quite got off the ground. After the war, the reunited Harman-Ising sunk into obscurity. The theatrical animation business was starting to slide and studios had all the cartoonists they needed. New commercial studios came along and snapped up the increasing (and lucrative) TV ad business. Harman-Ising did try to get into the TV cartoon business, and before Hanna-Barbera, too. But it got bogged down over money. Variety revealed on May 23, 1957:

State Intervenes In Cartoonists' Labor Dispute
State Division of Labor Enforcement will hold hearings Monday on dispute between seven cartoonists and animators, and two associated cartoon firms, Harmonising Enterprises and Nasser-Bien Productions, Inc. Dispute revolves about sum of approximately $3,000 owed the cartoonists for work on two telepix pilots, "Pokey" and "Emmett Kelly," and whether this work could be done on speculation

Here’s a story found in the Buffalo Courier-Express of November 19, 1939, when Hugh and Rudy had returned to MGM after new studio boss Fred Quimby made a complete shambles of things when he refused to renew their contracts. You can read their attitude toward cartoons.

Filmland Rambles
By ANNE M. McILHENNEY
Peering into the byways of Hollywoodland at this long distance is hard work but it does develop ideas and even by mail—you meet the most interesting people. This week, for instance, we finally put the finishing touches on a story of the guys behind the animated cartoons—in person, Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising. It has been our aim to present the little written of geniuses and certainly Hugh and Rudolf fit the bill. Those sad-eyed gents who have been busy mourning the passing of "color" in Hollywood just haven't looked in the right place. Hugh and Rudolf have been there all the time. To those who have wept that stars have become business-like to a painful degree, we introduce Hugh and Rudolf a couple of zanies who are everything the lovers of "screwball" folk could wish.
Working side by side with the hard-headed folk at MGM's big studio lot they are nevertheless Hollywood's dream children, living in a world of fantasy and perpetual childhood. Yet, they have a concrete and successful theory on why the world likes cartoon films and how to give the world what it wants.
They read profound literature on psychology, philosophy, biography and sociology. But, they are just as likely to be found immersed in a book of fairy stories. They can't tell you a thing about what goes on in the War Zone, or Washington politics, but their pictures are as timely as tomorrow's newspaper. They can figure out an animated effect to the nth degree of accuracy, yet, in their personal lives, they are so impractical that they find It necessary to hire personal business managers. Music carries them clear off this earth and art is a tender thing of inspired beauty to them, yet one of them gets keen delight in a session of vicious boxing and the other rides bucking broncos.

On one hand they may create a truly spiritual subject, like animated paintings to describe Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard," and on the other they milk dry the field of slapstick and burlesque comedy with a ludicrous bear who can't go to sleep.
Professionally, they work separately, yet actually they have to be considered as a team. On the screen, it is either a Hugh Harman or a Rudolf Ising production and each is sole creator of his product with his separate staff. Yet, each knows what the other is doing and exchanges advice. If you want a concrete example. Ising is the Wallace Beery-like voice for the popular Papa Bear in one series of Harman's pictures!
Their personalities are as different as Garbo's and Judy Garland's but their minds are like twin motors. Ising is quiet, serious, dark and built like a fighter. Harman is an easy talker, perpetual smiler, and small and wiry. Strangely, he's the one that likes fighting in the ring. Ask them for a theory and they'll both come up with the same answer simultaneously.
Although they do use human characters occasionally, animals are their popular stand-by, also for definite reasons.
"Through animals, humans can be caricatured more expertly," they state. "Animated cartoons stress the faults and limitations of persons rather than their strong features. To an audience, it is like looking into a strange world, yet recognizing themselves and their acquaintances.
"The public would rather see animals do human things than human drawings do the same. Every animal unless played for comedy menace, can be made to look lovable and cute. There is also the advantage of being able to give our animal characters all of the individualities in actions and thought of animals plus the same actions and thoughts of humans. We really have a two-barreled gun to shoot."
As long as cartoons are strictly fantasy, the unreal is valuable, but never possible with human characters. Hence, the two point out, a real character can never be a prolonged cartoon star—eventually all the limitations will be used up and the character will begin repeating his adventures because he can't do impossible things which animals can do.
They realized this when "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" was made. Goldilocks was just a stooge for the bears, which turned out to be the stars. Harmon is now making more with the Bear Family, treating them as a cartoon counterpart of the Hardys. Papa Bear is the main character, his character patterned after a cross between Edgar Kennedy and Oliver Hardy, with Beery's voice.
He is a "fall guy," unemotional, suppressed, lazy, slow-moving and continually irritated by events that mount to the unbearable. The next Bear picture will be "The Bear Family," in which they again do the unconventional. The subject will open with a hand stretching Papa Bear. Gradually, the public will see how he is made to move and then he goes into his story. Papa Bear will also be treated as an unwilling actor on a stage through the use of a heckler, always brought in merely by his shadow looming from an "audience" and an off-screen voice.

This will be followed by "A Rainy Day" and an untitled fourth now in preparation (it takes eight months from story idea to completed subject). "A Rainy Day" will illustrate one of their principals—always base fantasy on realism. Papa Bear tries to repair a tiny hole in the roof, eventually wrecking the roof. As a storm comes up, the shingles blow away, forming themselves into billowing waves, into which the bear plunges and starts swimming. They have probably the largest and ever-changing cast of cartoon characters in the business. That is because they continually experiment. If a star is created—as in the case of Papa Bear—they make a few more with him. Having no strict star characters, they don't have to work a certain one into every cartoon.
The present "talk of the department" is Peace on Earth, story of animals joyously living after man has succeeded through war in killing off the human race. The story is told by Grandpa Squirrel, a prototype of the late Chic Sale in his old man characterization. They lean heavily in their brilliant satire on this character's provincial mannerisms, wisdom of speech and homey truths.

Tom Turkey will be Harman's next introduction. He'll be human, all right—a small-town "slicker" in mail order suit and yellow shoes. He's the peppy fellow everyone knows, the guy who has an answer for everything and never seems to learn a lesson. Surrounding him will be a "stock company" of fowls representing small town folk. At the same time, Ising is readying a little calf character for introduction in Home On the Range.
What of the future of cartoons? Well, "the boys" sincerely believe that animated cartoons eventually will express other emotions than the basic ones now used, but this will depend on technical advancement.
They believe pathos, tragedy, love, drama, suspense and many other emotions will some day be as easy to express as comedy and irritation are today. "After all," they say, "animated cartoons have come a long way. Why it was only ten or twelve years ago when figures only moved. Today our cartoon characters really are individuals."
Yes, Harman and Ising have "color" but also common sense; they picked a field where their actors can show no temperament.

How to Make a Cartoon

Gene Deitch Tom and Jerrys? Yeah, I know what you’re thinking.

Even those who think they’re wretched blights on film can’t dislike the opening of “The Tom and Jerry Cartoon Kit” (1962). Chris Jenkyns, who had worked on “Rocky and Bullwinkle,” came up with the facetious dialogue intoned by Allen Swift:

Anyone can now enter the lucrative field of animated cartoons with the new Tom and Jerry cartoon kit. This kit contains everything needed for quiet, sophisticated humor. One mean, stupid cat. One sweet loveable mouse. And assorted deadly weapons.

And the numerals appear on the screen as each is numbered.

What about the other things in the kit? The best line in the short. Swift treats it as an aside.

The coffee and cigarettes are for the cartoonist.

And they float away out of the picture.



I suspect, in real life, the cartoonist had something a little stronger than coffee.

From all of here at the Tralfaz blog, here’s a cheery holiday song from one of the greats of show biz.