Unfortunately, Deitch doesn’t borrow timing from Avery. Tex would make sure you saw the take by letting it hang there for a bit. Deitch lets the jaw stay on the ground for about ten frames (less than a second), bounces it up with a kettle drum sound effect and then when the jaw’s back in place, Deitch cuts away to an unmatching closer shot of the cat and mouse. The take doesn’t sink in a well as it could.
Mind you, that’s the least of the problems with “Dicky Moe,” which is full of Deitch’s patented camera shakes, boings, mouths not moving when characters are yelling (I swear Allen Swift’s dialogue was recorded after the cartoon was made), overused jagged impact lines and butt-ugly, jerky animation. I’ll take Tex Avery any day. Deitch can give me the much more fun Sidney the elephant instead of this.
How can a skeleton have a ghost? Isn’t a skeleton dead already? Ah, it’s pretty easy to ignore stuff like that and just enjoy the fun and creative morphing in “Minnie the Moocher,” one of the greatest Fleischer cartoons.
Skeletons, watched by Betty and Bimbo, drink (presumably illegal) liquor. Their bones turn to black, then white again as they die. Ghosts arise and resume singing the title song.
Willard Bowsky and Ralph Somerville are the credited animators.
The boy squirrel gathers nuts for winter by playing craps in “Now That Summer is Gone” (1938).
The title theme is sung by a female vocal groups throughout the first two minutes or so. After winning at craps, the squirrel (played by Mel Blanc) comes up with his own specialty lyrics—before being slapped by father squirrel (played by Billy Bletcher).
Director Frank Tashlin pans over to a trio of male squirrels with their own specialty lyrics, warning the boy squirrel of the dangers of gambling. There are overlays aplenty in this cartoon, sometimes two in the same scene. The male vocal squirrels are framed by two trees on an overlay (the overlays jump around a bit in this cartoon as well.
There are no credits on the cartoon, but it’s possible the animators included Bob Bentley, Joe D'Igalo, and Volney White. I’d love to know who Tashlin’s background artist was.
There are two things you’ll notice in any newspaper interview with Jimmy Durante—all the quotes are in Durante dialect, and he launches into a monologue that sounds just like one of his acts.
Here’s a good example from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 30, 1940. You can probably hear Durante’s voice as you read this. By the way, the Schnozz was born on today’s date in 1893.
CANDID CLOSE-UPS
Jimmy Durante Discovers Acting Preferable to Sleuthing; Decides to Stick To ‘Keep Off the Grass’ By ROBERT FRANCIS
"I got nothin’ to say," announced Jimmy Durante, eyeing us severely in his dressing room at the Broadhurst. "You newspaper guys made me enough trouble already."
We never take a statement like that from the Durante seriously. He always has plenty to say. And usually gets in the last word.
"Everybody should mind his own business," he went on. "A butcher should cut meat, a banker should cut coupons, an’..."
"And you should stick to cutting capers in "Keep Off the Grass," we suggested.
"Ha," he snorted, indignantly, "everybody wants to get in the act! Stand back! I make the gags!"
"Listen, I read in the papers all about this ‘Fifth Column.’ Somethings got to be done! ‘Jimmy,’ I says, ‘we organize a Gessepo of our own.’ ‘How do I start?’ I asks me.
"I goes into the Astor Bar for a buttermilk. I greets a guy next to me. ‘How dy ye do, Mr. Durante?’ he cracks. Right away I am auspicious. I ask him to cash my check. He does. I am more suspicious.
"He tells me he is a baker. ‘Do you own a car?’ I queries. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘an I got a chauffer, too.’ What effrontery! Now I knows I’m on the scent! Like a dog after a frankfurter!
"I slips out and phones the F. B. I. This is too big to handle alone. They investigates, shadows, wire-taps. What a catastrophe! They discovers he is a Harvard man with money left him!
"So he sues me in Supreme Court for inflamation of character! I tries to camouflage the details, but the judge has a congested mind. He fines me a hundred dollars. Politics! I considers taking it to the Epaulet Division, but I thinks the matter has gone far enough!"
The ever-present Durante cigar stump twisted furiously.
"You’d think that learnt me a lesson, but last week I tries again. Gluttony! I see a suspicious character in . . . (this is for the ‘Eagle,’ ain't it?) . . . in Brooklyn. I trails him through the Park Slope, through Flatbush, into Bay Ridge. What a sleut! He ducks into a house, an’ I waits diligently. I holds my breath an’ watches for him to come out. He don’t. I am breathless.
"All of a sudden a big guy is next to me. We discovers each other siniustaniously! He is a cop. I have claustrophobia! ‘What are you doin’ here?' he barks ominiously. ‘I’m on a suspicious case,’ I ups to him, bold. '‘You look suspicious to me,’ he comes back, frisking me, ‘an’ wearin’ a disguise, eh?’ An’ before I knows it, he grabs me by the schnozzle an’ yanks. The ignominy of it!
"So I’m in court again. I explains to the judge I’m an actor. “Why don’t you work at it?’ he says. ‘I do work at it,’ I replies, ‘Right now I'm in ‘Keep Off the Grass’ at the Broadhurst Theater, New York City.’ ‘Then I fine you ten dollars,’ he retorts, ‘for being nosey an’ not stayin’ where you belong.’ The brutality of it! Durante fined ten bucks for nosetalgia!"
Il Schnozzola waggled his bare toes which were getting an alcohol rub from Tiny, that 200-pound fixture of the Durante menage.
"You guys are responsible for it all," he sighed, plaintively. "You write all that stuff in the papers about ‘boring from within’ and ‘fronts.’ It gets a guy like me all steamed up. I can’t knit, but I wants to do somethin’. But from now on I leaves sleuthin’ to the sleuts. The butcher should cut meat, and the banker. . . ."
"We know, Jimmy," we interrupted, firmly, "and you should stay on 44th St. where you belong. However, there isn't a word of truth in any of this."
The Durante grin appeared around the stub of the cigar.
"Well," he drawled, "it might make a good song lyric, at that. And anyway, I told you I had nothin’ to say. You guys have made me trouble enough already."
In any event, that fictitious magistrate may have been gifted with second sight, for "Keep Off the Grass" takes a Summer vacation, begun last night and lasting until mid-August. Jimmy goes to the Coast to make a picture in the interim. He can practice his "sleuthing" for the next six weeks in Hollywood.
Bobby-soxers love Frankie, whether they’re hens (“Swooner Crooner,” Warner Bros., 1944) or rabbits (“Little 'Tinker,” MGM, 1948).
Here’s one rabbit blowing kisses at the ersatz Frank Sinatra and the skunk dodging them. I like the little addition of the final, huge kiss dripping down the stage curtain.
The credited animators in this charmer from Tex Avery are Bill Shull, Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton and Bob Bentley. Louie Schmitt designed the characters.
Some cartoon fans are stuck in a Land of Childhood TV pining for a time that, frankly, was in one way inferior to today. Back then, an awful lot of old theatrical cartoons were never or rarely seen emanating from your box in the living room. Today, the internet (or a disc you can purchase) allows you to look at animated shorts you may never even have known about when you were a child.
Steve Stanchfield deserves everyone’s lasting gratitude for labours of love that have brought us works of the Van Beuren studio as well as the adventures of Pvt. Snafu. He’s got cleaned-up shorts from Ub Iwerks coming. That’s only to name three.
Other than the output of the Mintz/Columbia studio, the most difficult-to-find Golden Age animated shorts may be the Terrytoons. They’ve been denigrated in some corners as extremely repetitious and poorly animated. They were released by a distributor (20th Century Fox) that didn’t care what they looked like as long as they filled screen time and showed up at exchanges on time. Terrytoons’ owner Paul Terry was quite happy to oblige. 20th’s attitude saved him money. Saving money seems to have been one of Mr Terry’s goals in life.
Fortunately, a pseudonymous Paul Terry has begun posting his collection of Terrytoons on-line, which gives everyone a chance to make their own judgments about them. Unfortunately, some prints are chopped up for TV. Don’t expect DVD quality, either.
I’ve pooh-poohed the idea of DVD sets of cartoons in chronological order, but have to eat my words a bit. I’ve watched the posted series that way and it’s been an interesting exercise. I haven’t studied them to any great depth but the studio definitely evolved during the ‘30s. The cartoons started out in the early ‘30s much like any other studio’s—characters joyfully singing and dancing, with gags tossed in, in the first half; boy-rescues-girl-from-villain in the second half, with animation a step up from the silent era. Within in a few years, Terry added an operetta element which finally wore out its welcome—when it began, The Film Daily gurgled in delight about it—and then ran into the same problem as other studios in the middle part of the decade: finding a new starring character. Eventually, Terry settled on a watered down version of Daffy Duck. Gandy Goose doesn’t woo-hoo like Daffy but he constantly laughs. Both engage in a lot of silly stuff. Frankly, I find Gandy’s constant laughing annoying and his story elements are weak in a lot of places. By the late ‘30s, Terry seems to have fallen in love with Arthur Kay’s celebrity impersonations and dialects. There are an awful lot of Greek-accented wolves and Bert Lahr soundalikes. Like Warners cartoons, radio catchphrases are tossed in on occasion as funny-because-it’s-familiar gags (one cartoon includes a character briefly launching into an Elmer Blurt routine, a couple make reference to Jell-O’s “six delicious flavours,” others have the NBC chimes, and still more toss in Joe Penner-inspired reactions).
But if anyone thinks all Terry animation is mediocre, they haven’t watched the cartoons. There’s some really nice, expressive animation of a mother mouse singing the hi-de-ho blues in “Lion Hunt” (1938) that Milt Knight tells me is by Ralph Pearson, just to name one example. And there are some inspired gags, too, some that predate routines at other studios. “The Last Indian” (1938) is a little disjointed, but has a great climax where the nutty native is speeding in a touring car on roads shot in live action, just like Porky Pig did a few years later in “You Ought To Be In Pictures.”
My favourite Terry cartoons (until Heckle and Jeckle came along in the late ‘40s) still have to be the early sound era ones. I really like every studio’s cartoons made around 1930. There isn’t much point to them, but everything in them is alive—hot dogs, pianos, clouds, trees, cars, outhouses—and having fun. And there are some images that are downright bizarre. Take this one from “Hungarian Goulash” (June 1930). Who’d think up such a thing? I love it. As a bonus, there are Felix-style cats found in a bunch of studios in the silent era that stuck around for the first few years of sound cartoons. (Sorry the picture quality isn’t a little better).
Yes, the ‘30s output of the Terry studio isn’t as slick-looking as Warners, let alone Disney. And, yes, there are too many character-accidentally-backs-into-something-and-hilarity-ensues cartoons. But the studio did have some craftsmen. Any problems with the Terrytoons seem to rest at the feet of Paul Terry himself. He lost quality people because he was incredibly cheap; they went elsewhere. As Izzy Klein once noted, he considered himself “Mr. Story Department.” I can’t help but believe, judging by the neat gags in some of the shorts, the stories would have been better had he left the story department alone. And composer Phil Scheib could have created more imaginative scores had be not be hamstrung by Terry’s directive to have all the instruments heard at all times whenever possible (in the ‘50s, Scheib was using still using saxes skipping up and down the scale in the same tempo as he was in the ‘30s). But 20th Century Fox didn’t want quality; it only wanted cartoons because exhibitors had a contract to play them. That’s what Terry delivered. But the cartoons on the whole weren’t, and aren’t, a total loss. Occasionally, some creativity came through. It’s bound to happen when you have creative people.
Some comedians are on all the time. Jack Benny wasn’t one of them.
For proof, a couple of examples can be found in the New York Sun, one of the papers which sent a reporter to interview Jack upon his arrival in the Big Apple. The unbylined reporter is a little annoyed by the lack of humour. He has a point. It isn’t like the press just happened to be at Grand Central Station. They were told, either by movie studio publicists or Benny’s own people, when he would arrive. Jack’s on the promotional trail. Since he’s working, he should have at least bothered to have a quip or two instead of being indifferent about the whole thing. Perhaps he was just weary from the long train ride. On the other hand, a comedian shouldn’t have to be on all the time, and constantly yuck it up with jokes.
This story is from December 12, 1940.
JACK BENNY HERE, SHY ON BON MOTS
Reporters Beg in Vain for Just One Witticism
Jack Benny, the Prince of Funsters, arrived at Grand Central from Hollywood today with all the hilarity of a scene from the Spanish Inquisition.
Here with his wife, Mary Livingstone, for two radio broadcasts and the December 17 premiere at the Paramount of “Love Thy Neighbor,” his new picture with Fred Allen. Mr. Benny was met by a group of reporters who were eager for laughter in these troublous times.
Hearing that he would stay at the Sherry-Netherland, they reminded him that last night his radio-foe, Allen, said that once he left that hotel because they refused to launder his Kleenex. Then, hazel eyes aglow in anticipation, they waited for a bon mot, their chubby pink fingers holding pencils over copy-paper.
“I’ll probably say something about that on my program,” he said.
The reporters made a few efforts to get the comedian to say something about Allen, then in desperation recalled that Linda Darnell, also of the movies, arrived yesterday with a lot of allergies.
“What are you allergic to, Mr. Benny?”
“Allen,” quipped a witty reporter.
“Ha, ha, yes, Allen,” said Mr. Benny. “And food. It makes me fat.”
After a few dark moments, Mr. Benny said: “I don’t think comedians are funny any time except when they’re working. The funny guys on trains and at parties are non-professionals.”
Mr. Benny, however, got into form a few minutes later, carrying suitcases for the benefit of photographers. This got a big laugh from some women who came to meet his wife. Then, too, he playfully shoved a girl in the back. More mirth.
Mr. Benny hasn’t seen his new picture, but he said he had heard Allen was terrific. He cursed that fact, but added that he and Allen are friends.
“I find that I’m best at preparing material early in the morning,” he said. “I’m fresh then.”
Maybe it just wasn’t early enough.
Benny returned to New York two years later. The Sun had this to say on December 10, 1942:
BENNY IS HERE WITHOUT AD LIB
Comedian Tells Reporter to Think Up Quip.
Jack Benny is one comedian who doesn’t believe in squandering his repartee at places such as the gaunt ramp in Grand Central where the Twentieth Century Limited comes in from Hollywood. Arriving there today for a tour of eastern Army camps, he ad-libbed only once, calling his Negro radio-mate Rochester, “Rotch.”
Mr. Benny said that he would be in the East for eight or ten weeks, after which he would return to Hollywood and begin his twelve-picture program as an independent producer, working through United Artists. He said that he didn’t expect too much difficulty in getting stories and players because of the war.
“I have myself for six of the pictures,” he said, “and I shouldn’t have any trouble getting girls.” His arrival caused the usual miniature bedlam which envelops the arrival of a film star, complete with press agents, newspaper persons, redcaps, rubbernecks and assorted citizens. Wearing Trench Coat.
One citizen was Miss Florence Allen, secretary for the Rapid Messenger Service, who had been promoted to the post of celebrity-meeting uniformed messenger, to deliver to Mr. Benny a stack of 200 letters from persons who wanted Mr. Benny to visit places where George Washington has slept and perhaps to sleep at them himself. (Mr. Benny’s latest picture is “George Washington Slept Here.”) Miss Allen said that she had met celebrities before, “behind stage.”
Mr. Benny said that he would try to sleep at some places if he had time. He was not told that the messenger’s name was Allen, which might have occasioned a quip, because of his radio feud with Fred Allen.
Mr. Benny, in a trench coat, posed with his wife, Mary Livingston, in a mink coat; their adopted daughter, Joanie, and Rochester, also in a trench coat.
Asked by a reporter if he would say something funny for his public—an admittedly unfair question at 9:30 A. M.—he said: “Think up something. It’ll probably be funnier than anything I can think up.”
The reporter couldn’t think up anything, either.
La Verne Harding wasn’t the first female animator, but she certainly had a long career as one. Harding was hired in 1932 out of Chouinard Institute at the Walter Lantz studio. She started as an inker, was moved into the in-betweener pool, then became an animator in 1934. Her first credit was on “Wolf ! Wolf!” Despite Lantz’s financial ups and downs which caused his studio to close several times, Harding stuck with him until 1959, when she quit to work for Hanna-Barbera.
A number of people in animation supplemented their income by drawing comic strips or comic books. Harding was one of them. I stumbled across a Sunday newspaper comic she did called “Cynical Susie.” There’s a little information about it on the internet; you can read about it HERE. You should also read in the comment section as Mark Kausler has some additional information. The Catalogue of Copyright Entries lists the character with a Jan. 30, 1932 copyright date, listing Becky Sharp as a co-creator with Harding.
I’ve scrounged up a few comics. You can see the art style changed when someone else began drawing it (though Harding’s name is still attached to the comic). The format changed into a serial in later years. You can click on each comic to see it better.
June 30, 1937
July 7, 1937
January 6, 1938
November 2, 1939
November 9, 1939
November 16, 1939
November 22, 1939
It’s unclear when Harding left Hanna-Barbera, but she was back in theatrical cartoons at De Patie-Freleng when it began animating the Pink Panther in 1964. Former Lantz and Hanna-Barbera co-worker Alex Lovy may have been responsible for her jumping to Warner Bros. around 1967, where she stayed until the studio shut down in 1969. Harding then spent the next few years at Filmation to finish out her career.
Harding was certainly respected in the industry. She was given the The Winsor McCay Award for outstanding service by ASIFA on October 30, 1980. She died at her home in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles on September 25, 1984, age 79.
A bottle of milk delivered on a window sill is about to fall off to drop to its doom. Fortunately, it grows hands. And so does another bottle, which rescues it The bottles shake hands.
A cute little scene from the Flip the Frog cartoon “The Milk Man.” Well, Variety didn’t think so. It opined: “An insipid and lazily penned cartoon” (July 12, 1932). As usual there are no animator credits.
Tom O’Loughlin painted the backgrounds for “Nuts and Volts,” a 1963 Warners cartoon directed by Friz Freleng. Layouts are by Hawley Pratt. The last two frames are parts of long pans that I can’t clip together.
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