Were Bob and Ray a Success?

If you think about it, no one had a more odd career than Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding after they left local radio for the Big Time in 1951. Critics loved them and they had a loyal fan base. But management never seemed to know what to do with them. NBC shoved them around all over the place on radio and TV. They seemed to work incredibly long hours. But they never really stayed in one slot long enough to develop a large audience.

They also rose to fame at a time when just about everybody who was anybody was transported from dying network radio into TV. Bob and Ray’s humour wasn’t of the baggy-pants variety show, or of the honey-the-boss-is-coming-over sitcom, which was about all you saw on the tube then. They may have been a little bit early for television.

Here’s a piece from the Philadelphia Inquirer of June 30, 1952 about one of their TV efforts. Audrey Meadows had been in the supporting cast but left and had been replaced by Cloris Leachman at this point.

Screening TV
Bob and Ray Succeeding In Difficult Task of Satire
By MERRILL PANITT
Of all the various kinds of comedy, satire is the least likely to succeed with a mass audience. Henry Morgan proved that a number of times by failing to click with a whole succession of radio and television shows.
Morgan's sometimes harsh burlesquing of the current scene won him a large group of fans—large, but not large enough to satisfy sponsors who think in terms of millions of viewers.
TWO UNINHIBITED LADS
The cause of satire on TV now is in the capable hands of Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding, a couple of uninhibited lads who have long since inherited the Morgan radio audience. They've tried TV before without too much success but are back in a Saturday night half hour on NBC stations—including Channel 3 here.
It may be that Bob and Ray will have better luck than Henry Morgan. Their satire is broader and often funnier than the Morgan brand. They also have a knack of kidding without seeming bitter.
TAKEOFF ON DRAGNET
Last Saturday night, as an example, they did a takeoff on Dragnet, which is easily the best TV crime program. Their version was called Fishnet, and was a very funny hunk of business.
Aping the rapid-fire, monotone delivery of the Dragnet cast, Bob and Ray—assisted by Cloris Leachman—dramatized "a true story from the files of the Gloucester, Mass., police department." The names of all characters were revealed, by the bye, "so that their relatives might suffer."
'KILLER' FINALLY GIVES UP

This was the case of a fish killer, a man who had fired a sawed-off shotgun 20 times at close range and murdered a fish. It was the fifth such killing in a week.
Needless to say, the killer—Bob—finally gave up, but not until every pat phrase from Dragnet had been used, including, "Blood all over the place," "What do you think," and "I'm innocent." He confessed after the smelliest third degree in history, during which a waitress reeled off the names of scores of fish dishes on her menu and finally thrust a live lobster into Bob's face to prove he hated fish.
Another high point in last Saturday's show was a miniature program produced to increase the sale of stamps in post offices. It opened with Ray, dressed in a page-boy's box cap, intoning, "Call for Philatelics, call for Philatelics!”
NEW STAMP INTRODUCED
After Stamalong Cassidy had told kids to be sure to try a roll of three-cent stamps for dessert, Bob and Ray introduced a new series of stamp creations to the tune of "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody." A scantily dressed girl would parade out with her face framed in a stamp outline. As she paraded, one of the two comics would intone:
"Miss three cent stamp.
"Petite and sweet — designed for the working man.
"And the elite.
"She's beautiful, demands inspection.
"Wouldn't you like her in your collection?"
SOME FUNNY, SOME NOT SO
There were other sequences—some funny, some not too funny. The one during which Ben Grauer sang a song in Spanish while typing, answering phones, and being a busy convention reporter, was one of the funny ones.
TV's got to have some good satire to balance all the slapstick comedy of the regular season. Bob and Ray seem to have the formula. Let's hope they make the grade with a sponsor and a regular once-a-week program during the cool weather.

Dogs Catch On

The cat laughs and mocks at the stupidity of a pack of dogs in Tex Avery’s “Ventriloquist Cat.” The dogs suddenly realise they’ve been had. Check the poses. Grant Simmons is responsible for the first drawing.



The dogs chase the cat from the horizon past the camera.



You can view the hair take before the chase at this post.

Pop Up Rabbits

“Delightful whimsical satire on Johann Strauss and the composition of his famous waltz, ‘Tales of the Vienna Woods’,” is how Variety termed the George Pal Puppetoon “Mr. Strauss Takes a Walk.”

Strauss turns into a human metronome at one point in the cartoon but the most interesting part to me was how rabbits popped up out of the ground. Not out of a hole. They just grew up out of the ground. And they obey the rules of squash and stretch. These are eleven consecutive frames.



This wasn’t Pal’s only encounter with the noted composer. He finished work on “Bravo, Mr. Strauss” around the start of 1943 and was so busy, a third sound stage for him was being built. Within five years, his stop-motion shorts got too expensive to produce.

Plug Plug Plug

Plugola on radio comedy shows was good for everyone, it seems. A company got a free plug. Audiences got laughs. Writers got freebie gifts in return.

For a period of a few years, no comedian seemed to take advantage of this more than Jack Benny. He had a sure-fire laugh formula based on his character being cheap. Someone on his show would mention a product, then Benny would joke that the mention would result in him getting the product for nothing. One show topped it by turning it into one of Benny’s great running gags that always came out of nowhere—Frank Nelson played a man who interrupted a scene later in the show by delivering the product.

Script writer Milt Josefsberg explained in his book about the Benny show that situation wasn’t quite as it played out on radio. Benny would rarely take advantage of the plug, he said; the company getting the freebie would generally send alcohol to the writers.

It seems the idea of inserting plug-gags on a radio show didn’t always originate with its writer. Witness this interesting column that appeared April 8, 1948:

Radio Full of Ad Plugs Sugar-Coated as Gags
By ALINE MOSBY
United Press Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD
The radio shows are getting so shot full of sneaked-in ads, disguised as gags, that you wonder how they have time for the commercial the sponsor is paying for. These plugs most listeners don't know about.
They hear Jack Benny make a crack about which end of a Studebaker you get into. Or Bob Hope spiel about somebody who combs his hair with a Mixmaster. They yak at the gags and figure the trademarks got there by accident.
Not in this bright commercial age. . . . The plugs are out-and-out ads. But neither Benny and Hope, their writers, nor the networks get paid for 'em. The only guy who does is the "script plugger." He takes dough from companies to get their names mentioned in a gag on a radio show.
Gift-Sending Part Of Ad Plugging
Script pluggers, we always thought, were mole-like characters who pulled slick deals with customers in the back booths of dim bars on Vine St. We found one sprinting around in broad daylight.
"This is strictly on the up-and-up," says Joe Gardner.
"We do not," he added indignantly, "pay writers to plug our clients in their scripts. Of course, we send them gifts, but that's just to cultivate their good will . . ."
He operates this way: He takes a script-writer for the Benny show, say, to lunch.
"Got a great gag on a Studebaker," he barks to the writer, and tells it to him. The gag's good. The writer says thanks, he'll use it.
"Everybody's happy," beams Mr. Gardiner. "My client gets a plug on a radio show that would cost him thousands if he bought it as a sponsor. He gets the plug for practically nothing—just the few hundred he pays me.
"The writer's happy. He has a good gag and a bottle of scotch I send him. Benny likes the gag, too."
Free Merchandise Helps Get Plugs
Hey, what about the networks, we said. After all, they're in business to get paid for the ads they broadcast, aren't they?
"Sure, the radio boys raised a fuss for a while," grinned Mr. G.
They shut up, he whispered, after the "script pluggers" began furnishing free merchandise for give-away shows. If the radio folks had to buy all the prizes they hand out to giggling contestants, they'd be out a few million bucks a year.
The give-away show is where Gardiner operates best. He loads 'em down with prizes like ball-bearing lipstick (for making-up under water), things to bake potatoes in atop a stove, egg beaters with low and high gears, shoulder pads for coat hangers, etc., etc.
Each time the master of ceremonies gives one of these treasures away, he lovingly describes it. The lady gets her prize that the show didn't have to pay for, the company gets a cheap plug, and Gardiner collects his commission.
There's only one guy who doesn't profit by this neat arrangement—the sponsor who pays for the show. Why he hasn't kicked up a storm yet, we don't know. Once the sponsor of a give-away show took a test. The ladies in the studio audience were asked to tell what the show advertised. Each carefully listed the brand names of all the fantastic prizes. Not one remembered the company that only shells out several thousand dollars a week so the housewives can win those things!

The most famous plug on the Benny show likely occurred on November 27, 1949:

JACK: And Rochester, the evenings are getting chilly so don't forget to plug in my General Electric blanket.
ROCH: Boss, boss, we haven't got a General Electric blanket.
JACK: We've got one now. (laughter and applause) I'm (ad-libs) oh, brother, will my home be full of General Electric blankets. (resumes script) I'm going into the den and read now.
ROCH: Are you gonna walk or shall I drive you in a Cadillac?
JACK: Let's not over-do it.

That's (Crash! Boom! Tinkle! Zorp!) Oswald

Sound in cartoons was still a fairly new concept in 1929. The Adirondack News explained how it worked in this syndicated piece published February 9, 1929.

You’ll notice the absence of any mention of dialogue in this story. Either there wasn’t any or it was recording separately.

As the last Disney Oswald was released in April 1928 and the first Lantz Oswald appeared on screens in September 1929, this would have been the period when the Winkler studio on the West Coast were making the cartoons. The first synchronised Oswald was “Hen Fruit,” released on Feb. 4, 1929.

GHOSTLY BANDS PUT SOUNDS IN MOVIES
Snores and Snorts Linked to Pictures at Night
Hollywood, Calif.—It is middle of the night and the great studio sprawls like a town of fantastic shadows between the dry river bed, and the barren hills. One supposes there is a night watchman somewhere on the lot, but apparently be does not see the dim figures slinking one by one toward a barnlike structure, each carrying something, and each disappearing through the same small door in the building.
Heading away from the studio, they might have been taken for burglars escaping with their loot, but under the circumstances it is more reasonable to guess they are conspirators of another sort.
The interior of the building is dimly lit, but by mingling casually with the crowd one can see very clearly what they carried in—two saxophones, a galvanised-iron washtub full of tin cans, a cornet, a tuba, a clothes wringer, three phonographs, a school bell, several cowbells, a band-operated alarm gong, three sites of electric bells, innumerable tin, brass and wooden whistles, many assorted pieces of wood and metal, half a dozen panes of window glass and a metal cylinder of compressed air.
Jolly Looking Conspirators.
Obviously these are not the paraphernalia of arsonists or dynamiters; and, besides, even in the dim light, the conspirators have a jolly look. It begins to look more like preparations for an old-fashioned charivari. Before one can ask who was married, however, the head conspirator explains everything: “Our job tonight,” says he, “is to synchronise Oswald the Rabbit.”
Oswald, one learns, is the pen-and-ink hero of an animated cartoon which, in keeping with the modern craze for screen sound, must be embellished with music and noise-effects.
Six musicians, skilled in leaping nimbly from tune to tune in harmony with the action on the screen, take their places under one microphone.
Another microphone bangs near the table where all the bells and whistles are spread. A large man in overalls sits near the tubful of tin cans with a wooden paddle in his hands, as if waiting for the cauldron to boil; the other conspirators stand here and there between the microphones, ready to make the right noises at the right times.
Rehearse at Showing.
They rehearse with the picture running on the screen in front of them. As the main title of the comedy appears on the screen the orchestra leaps into an overture, while the other sound-smiths stand tensely waiting for their cues.
When the opening scene discloses Oswald sleeping in his bed, the orchestra dodges quickly into a cradle song while a lad within whispering distance of a microphone snores rhythmically and another specialist imitates the squeaking of the bed by running sole leather through the clothes wringer.
After each rehearsal the recording engineer in the sound-mixing booth, who hears all this as it will sound to an audience, suggests improvements.
And again and again the mixed symphony of harmonies and discords is rehearsed; then, “This is the picture, boys,” and they go through it once more, with the sound-recording apparatus registering everything on celluloid.
Along about sunrise the sound-smiths call it a night and go home, tired and hungry, but with a little glow of pride at the thought that their artistry has made it possible for the world to bear as well as see Oswald the Rabbit.

Climbing Mannequins

Sylvester gets ready to climb the department store mannequin tower he’s built to capture Tweety in “Bird in a Guilty Cage” (released in 1952). It’s a variation on a gag found in a bunch of Sylvester and Tweety cartoons, usually preceded by Sylvester tippy-toeing from one side of the screen to the other accompanied by Carl Stalling/Milt Franklyn’s pizzicato strings.

The layout is by Hawley Pratt and the background by Irv Wyner.

Night Owls

Bullrushes sway to the “Moonlight Sonata” to open Walt Disney’s “Night” (1930), then are joined by waves on a lake and a la-la-la-ing moon (in falsetto) as the song changes to “The Blue Danube.”

The scene switches to a pair of owls in a typical gag of the era. The male and female owls dance together, but the female draws the line at kissing. You can see what happens next. I’ve never tried to count the Disney and Harman-Ising cartoons where a character flips up a rump in contempt.



Disneyshorts.org reports seven animators worked on this.

What Made Fibber and Molly

“Fibber McGee and Molly” had about as perfect a formula for a situation comedy as you could come up with. Set up the situation. Have time-tested supporting character appear ostensibly to comment on the situation then leave. Repeat several times. Conclude the situation with a twist. Add catchphrases. Repeat in seven days, adding occasional running gag (Myrt, closet).

Well, there was one other thing. Fibber McGee and Molly sounded like nice people. Someone like Chester A. (“Life Of...”) Riley was a loud blowhard. McGee could be a loud blowhard, too. But he was a nice one. He never seemed over the top, probably because the situations he found himself in weren’t over the top (fixing a clock, losing a train ticket, etc.) and ones the audience could easily accept.

The decay of network radio in the ‘50s quickly dismantled the elements and the formula that made “Fibber McGee and Molly” a success. In 1953, the show abruptly lost its studio audience and was scrunched into 15 minutes. Soon, it consisted of drop-ins on “Monitor.” Eventually, it couldn’t even be described as amusing or even droll, it was just dialogue. By the end of the decade, NBC told Fibber McGee and Molly to go away.

Let’s look at more pleasant days. Here’s a North American Newspaper Association column, July 15, 1944.

IN HOLLYWOOD
By HAROLD HEFFERNAN
Plain, common-sense folks sometimes hit the jackpot in the amusement field but very seldom do they remain that way. Most of them get glamor and importance and find trouble remembering their old friends. One outstanding exception, or two rather, in the combination traveling under the radio and screen name of Fibber McGee and Molly.
In real life, of course, they're Jim and Marian Jordan, husband and wife who manage a home life in a secluded section of Hollywood even though their Radio Crossley is one of the very highest in the business. Recently RKO studio signed them for a new series of pictures and their latest, "Heavenly Days," is just about to be released.
When yon meet Jim and Marian Jordan you realize at once why their Fibber and Molly should be so down-to-earth and understandable. Their creators are equally real and normal just home folks who have never shown the slightest inclination to bask in the Hollywood spotlight.
"Listen, Pal," said Jim Jordan, "this is the toughest interviewing assignment you've ever faced. We just aren't interesting folks in print. We don't know how to ‘give.’ It's the old story, I guess —we just haven't got the color."
JORDANS FAIL TO REALIZE OWN POPULARITY
They do express a pleased sort of wonderment that they've managed to entertain so many people and keep them smiling, but they still insist that their private lives are of no interest to the seeing and listening customers.
Recently when the Jordans celebrated a wedding anniversary on their movie set, wires, phone calls and letters came pouring into RKO. The two were frankly amazed. "Gosh!" was Jim's comment, "I never knew we had so many friends."
The Jordans—both natives of Peoria, Ill., where Jim was born 48 years ago, and Marian a year later—look like Fibber and Molly. You'd recognize ‘em anywhere. Jim is a sprightly, rotund gent with twinkling blue eyes and Marian, a trim, attractive person who would never be suspected of having two grown children, is exactly the sort of person to whom you turn for sound reasoning and advice.
To strangers, Jim’s shyness often seems a trifle brusque, but after you've conversed a few minutes, you realize he's telling the truth and pulling on no act when he says, "I keep quiet when I haven't got anything to say; I think a lot of the headaches in this world could be avoided if more people practiced that."
The Jordans are one of the few old-time couples in show business whose first great success came via radio. After Jim got out of the Army following the last war, he and Marian toured tank towns with their own vaudeville troupe. Things weren't so good until they hit Chicago in 1924, when Jim, on a bet, tried out for a radio show and was hired as a singer. He earned $10 for the date and opened a new field for himself and wife.
FIBBER AND MOLLY ROLE WAS LUCKY PRECEDENT
For some years thereafter they made a precarious living until they and writer Don Quinn, with whom they had been working off and on, hit on the characters of Fibber and Molly, prototypes of the wise guy who always shoots off his mouth at the wrong time, and the level-headed wife who generally manages in he around to get him out of his jams.
Psychologists have attempted to explain the success of the Jordans with long, impressive Latin words. Elaborate explanations have been written as to why and how people from every walk of life drop whatever they're doing to tune in their program or rush to the neighborhood theatre or see them on the screen.
However, nothing that's ever been written seems to sum up Fibber and Molly nearly so well as Marian Jordan, when she says: "We try to make them the kind of folks who live right next door—the people everybody laughs at without realizing that they're laughing right back, for the same reasons."

It's Brown. No, It's Green

Here’s “Willie the Kid,” another UPA cartoon with dissolving backgrounds. Ah, but that’s not all. The colour changes, too.



I’m sure because the UPAers intended this as Art, the colour change means something. For a while, I thought the green represented the real world, while the brown represented the pretend world. But the kids are playing Old West when it’s green, too. And then there’s a rose colour during some scenes. Oh, well.

Some of the animation is by Bill Melendez, who went on to make kid-character cartoons that actually had some charm, unlike this one.

Fox Catches Dog

A standard-issue Tex Avery dog attempts to bag a fox in “Out-Foxed.” Lots of brushed swirls before we see the fox has bagged the dog.



Bobe Cannon’s working for Avery on this one, as well as Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton and Mike Lah.

Variety gives you an idea how long it took MGM to put this one in theatres:

Fred Quimby added ‘Outfoxed’ to cartoon slate at Metro. (June 26, 1947)

Leo Shows 5 Shorts
Five Metro shorts are scheduled for release during November. They include "Out-Foxed," Technicolor cartoon produced by Fred Quimby; "The Lonesome Mouse," a Gold Medal reprint cartoon; "In Old Amsterdam," FitzPatrick Traveltalk with color by Technicolor; and two Pete Smith specialties, "Water Trix" and "How Come?" (Oct. 21, 1949)