Tex's Sleeping Bear

Tex Avery must have had some kind of hang-up about sleep. Several of his MGM cartoons and two of his four cartoons at Walter Lantz revolved around someone making noise to disturb someone else who doesn’t want to be disturbed.

One is “Rock-a-Bye Bear,” released in 1952, which has a neat little story by Heck Allen and Rich Hogan. Avery loved surprising his audience with unexpected things. There’s a great irony that the hibernating bear that can’t stand noise is the noisiest character in the cartoon. And he lives in a nice, modern home, but suddenly unveils his bed is actually in a cave in a hole in the wall. Unexpected, but logical.

The bear doesn’t drowsily drop off to sleep like in a late 1930s cartoon. He hits the ground an immediately starts snoring. Avery handles this in an eight-drawing cycle, each drawing lasting one frame of film. Here are the individual drawings.



We’ve re-created the cycle, though it’s a little slower than it is in the actual cartoon.



Mike Lah, Walt Clinton and Grant Simmons are the credited animators. The bear’s closed eyes are like the way Don Patterson used to draw them at Hanna-Barbera. While Patterson was at MGM in the Lah-Blair unit in the latter ‘40s, I couldn’t tell you when he left Metro or exactly (to the month and year) when he ended up at the Walter Lantz studio.

The Life and Career of Jack Benny

Jack Benny’s story has been the subject of several books, but also appeared over the years in feature columns of a number of newspapers and newspaper wire services.

For two Sundays in a row, Chicago Tribune’s TV Times devoted space in weekend TV supplement to analyse and biographise (if that’s a word) the comedian whose career just kept rolling along. We’ll present it on two consecutive weekends as well, unfortunately without the photos that accompanied the articles.

This one was published on December 17, 1960.

THE UNSINKABLE MR. BENNY
by Richard Blakesley
TV Week Editor
JACK BENNY made his first appearance before a nation-wide audience on Ed Sullivan's radio program in 1932. His first words were: "Hello, folks. This is Jack Benny.... There will now be a slight pause for everyone to say, 'Who cares?"'
Apparently a lot of people cared, for he was soon back on the air as the star of his own show.
Now, 28 years later, Benny is still the star of his own show, and in a startling move belying his "39 years." He has programmed his 1960-61 appearances on a weekly basis rather than every other week as was his schedule last season.
In television, where a 39 week contract has been a cradle-to-grave experience for many performers, Benny's move marks him as something of a rebel. Virtually every other comedian in the field—including several considerably less than 39 years of age—has either taken himself off television entirely or reduced appearances to one or two a month or once-in-a-while "specials."
But Benny, now well into his 11th year on TV, isn't afraid the pace will kill him physically or professionally. In addition to his TV show, he is booked for night clubs and concert engagements with such major symphony orchestras as those in Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Indianapolis.
He will, of course, be violin soloist. But he'll not play "Love in Bloom" that made him famous. On these occasions he will tackle such major fiddle fodder as selections from Mendelssohn and Rimsky-Korsakov.
After his almost three decades as an entertainer, audiences still wonder: Is Jack a virtuoso sidetracked into a career as a comedian or a classic comic with a musical side line?
When asked that question recently in Chicago, Benny gave his famous long look and uttered that unfunny word that always evokes audience hysteria: "Well . . . !"
Perhaps Isaac Stern, the violinist, knew the answer when he said: "When Jack walks out in tails in front of 90 musicians, he looks like the greatest of soloists. What a shame he has to play!"
THIS PARADOX of the entertainment world was born Benny Kubelsky on Feb. 14, 1894. His father ran a clothing store in Waukegan, Ill., but Benny was born in Chicago where his mother had been transported for his birth. "The only reason I conceal my age," says Benny, "is that if I told it nobody would believe me."
And he's right, for at 66 he has the appearance of a man much younger. Scarcely out of diapers, he began, at his father's behest, taking violin lessons. While still in grammar school he became the only knickerbockered member of the orchestra at the Barrison theater in Waukegan. During high school he doubled between the school band and the Barrison job, and at 16 he teamed up with Cora Salisbury, the Barrison pianist, as a vaudeville act. When Miss Salisbury left the act, Benny joined Lyman Woods and the team of Benny and Woods became a headliner on the vaudeville circuit.
During World War I Benny was in the navy. His chief job was raising money for navy relief. His routine in the Great Lakes revue was entirely musical. but one night during his performance the lights went out in the auditorium. To keep the crowd from getting restless, Benny and a pianist named Zez Confrey [he later wrote "Kitten on the Keys"] began to talk. The audience roared with laughter.
It was this ad libbing in an emergency which first indicated to Benny that he could be funny. It is ironic that an ad lib started him on his phenomenal career as a comedian because ever since he began broadcasting he has never ad libbed, depending entirely on carefully prepared material.
This dependence on script led Fred Allen to remark: "Benny couldn't ad lib a belch after a Hungarian dinner."

AFTER THE war, Benny returned to vaudeville, billed as Ben Benny. The name resulted in some confusion with another fiddle player of the 1920s, Ben Bernie. The Vaudeville Managers association telegraphed Benny at the Orpheum theater in St. Louis asking him to change it.
Benny discussed the problem at lunch that day with Benny Rubin, who also was on the Orpheum bill. Several sailors entering the restaurant, remembering Benny from his Great Lakes days, saluted him with the friendly term they use to address each other: "Hi, Jack!"
Rubin was quick to recognize the possibility of the name. "That's it," he exclaimed, "Jack-Jack Benny."
And so it has been ever since.
From vaudeville, Jack Benny progressed to musical comedy for Earl Carroll and the Shuberts. During a Los Angeles engagement of a Shubert musical he met Mary Livingstone, at that time not in show business. They were married in 1927.
After his debut on the Ed Sullivan radio show in 1932, Benny gave up a highly paid role in an Earl Carroll musical to try radio. He gambled on his theory that radio was the future entertainment medium, and from the start [on the Canada Dry program] his concept was to provide a set of characters listeners would come to recognize and look for every week. And from the start he was the lovable boob, the prime example of human frailties and the butt of most of the jokes on the show.
His first vocalist set the pace for the others. Frank Parker was a tenor, and so were Kenny Baker, Larry Stevens, and Dennis Day, and all except Parker were unknown when Benny put them on the air. All became not only legitimate singers but highly skilled comedians developed under Benny's tutelage.
Benny has starred in more than 1,000 radio and TV programs, most all of them based on a single theme—his stinginess. Next week's installment attempts to explain this phenomenon which defies all experts on comedy geriatrics.

Phil Scheib

If there’s one cartoon music composer who is derided, it’s Phil Scheib, responsible for scoring (and perhaps arranging) the music accompanying Heckle and Jeckle and all your other Terrytoons favourites.

Scheib didn’t have the luxury of a full symphony orchestra, like at Warners or MGM. He had the handicap of not being able to use music outside the public domain because producer Paul Terry wouldn’t pay for it. After a while, his scores started sounding pretty similar. Just as you could bet you’d hear the same splash sound effect that popped up in the last Terry cartoon you watched, you just knew a saxophone would be skipping around the scale during a chase scene.

It might leave you with the impression that Scheib was just another hack, but when Terry kissed off his cartoon studio for millions and CBS brought in Gene Deitch to produce, people (including Deitch) learned otherwise. Terry, Scheib told Deitch, was responsible for lacklustre scores he was forced to write, and proceeded to come up with musical material far more interesting.

Plenty has been written about Carl Stalling, who set the standard for cartoon scores. Scott Bradley has somewhat received his due. But little has been said about many of the others who worked on animated shorts in the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s. We’ve posted about Van Beuren’s Gene Rodemich here, and now here’s a little biography of Scheib. It came from the Mount Vernon Daily Argus of July 14, 1932. The writer’s crack about Tin Pan Alley shows she was more an aficionado of the classics as, apparently, was Scheib. You see to the right a radio listing for a local radio programme he did on Thursday nights in 1927. It certainly wasn’t dance band music.

Our Famous Neighbors
By ELISABETH CUSHMAN
The three young men who create and produce one of this country's best-loved "talkie" features, all live in Westchester. They are Paul Terry of Larchmont, Frank Moser of Hastings, and Philip Scheib of New Rochelle.
Of the three, "Phil" Scheib contributes the music.
He writes it by a stop-watch; it has to synchronize to a split second with the action of the picture; he writes it by the feet—and knows exactly how many feet of melody must be made to fit an equal number of feet of action. If there is any phase of this modern age which ilustrates [sic] perfectly the way in which music has become the hand-maid of the machine, it is in the production of the music for these "talkie" cartoons. That does not imply that it has also become servile but rather that even the great rattle and glamor of modern mechanics cannot get along without a musical setting and that music is adaptable to and fits in with every new development created by man.

Philip Scheib is not to be confused with one of the modern musical composers from Tin Pan Alley. He is a musician with a thorough and profound knowledge of his subject; he is a composer; and he is convinced that the "talkie" cartoon represents the most perfect coordination of the arts that the world has ever seen. It requires everything—play-writing, dialogue, verse, dancing and music. It is notable that in the 65 original scores he has written for the Terrytunes, there has never been a slip-up of a second in the synchronization of the music with the action.
He is 36 years old and a native of New York City. When he was scarcely more than a boy, he went to Germany to study music and shortly was convinced that his greatest field of usefulness rested in conducting. When he was 17 he received an honorary diploma from the Stern Conservatory of Music in Berlin, and when he came back to this country, the same year, it was as musical director for the famous operetta, "The Chocolate Soldier." For a period of years he directed a chain of ten theaters. He was musical director, also, for Adelaide and Hughes and travelled extensively with them.
The closing of so many theaters, the disbanding of so many orchestras, was one factor in his going into the movies and there he found a work sufficiently fascinating and with an interesting future to have engrossed him for the past several years. He wrote the score and theme song for D. W. Griffith's recent picture. "The Struggle," and holds the position of musical director for Griffith.
He lives at 891 Webster Avenue, New Rochelle, nearly opposite the Nature Woods. His small daughter, Barbara Ann, who has just learned to walk and to talk, gives every evidence of following in her father's foot-steps for she carries a tune with no difficulty at all and can sing through the nursery songs she has picked up from her mother. Barbara Ann is a blonde and pink baby, very much the kind one sees on magazine covers; she inherits her blondeness from her petite mother; her gifts from her father include not only what seems to be an unusual proclivity for things musical, but such a wealth of affection, intelligently controlled, as falls to the lot of few children. Philip Scheib worships his small daughter and thinks it a proud and lovely thing to talk of her. He has a direct and simple manner of speech, entirely disarming, with a quiet dignity that results in a personality the strength of which both men and women recognize. His heart is in his home and in his music and obviously he is making a success of both.

Hey, Mickey, Duck!

Train tracks? Early Disney? That means a cow must be blocking the way. That eventually happens in “Mickey’s Choo Choo” (1929), along with some other re-used ideas, but first we have a cartload of ducks stuck on the tracks.



Here comes Mickey’s Choo Choo.



Crash!



And when the feathers clear...



You can see the ducks are into the same quacking cycle animation. Compare their heads in the above drawing with the first one posted.

Ub Iwerks gets the only credit. Trésors Disney says Ben Sharpsteen animated some scenes, too.

Smoking Nazi

They’re hiding everywhere, as we learn in the 1944 cartoon “A Lecture on Camouflage.”

Private Snafu takes a drag on his smoke, after giving a cigarette to a German speaking tree. Both blow smoke rings.



Snufu realises something is wrong. Here’s the take.



Snafu looks around. Check out the eye-lids.



This short was from the Chuck Jones unit, so his usual crew including Ken Harris and Ben Washam would have worked on it.

Doorbell. Insult. Repeat.

More than a hall closet, was NBC’s “Fibber McGee and Molly.”

By the time the end of World War Two rolled around, the show had pretty much settled into the same routine every week. Fibber and Molly set up the story line at the start and it meandered along until its conclusion, interrupted by secondary characters who, sometimes, got into a routine that had absolutely nothing to do with the week’s plot.

Audiences didn’t mind. Don Quinn, Phil Leslie and the other writers came up with great repartee. And the characters were likeable. For a while at least. New characters came and old ones went to keep the show fresh. But by the end of the ‘40s and into the ‘50s, the new characters were more amusing than laugh-out-loud funny—Ole the Svedish janitor, the golly-gosh teenager played by Gil Stratton Jr., even Foggy the Weatherman wasn’t as strong as Gale Gordon’s earlier Mayor La Trivia. The show sputtered along during radio’s death watch, losing announcer Harlow Wilcox, Billy Mills’ Orchestra (except as recorded stock music bridges) and the studio audience.

The show was a number of hardy annuals that John Crosby reviewed for the Herald-Tribune syndicate. This was published on December 1, 1948. Crosby doesn’t do much more than describe the usual format, so those of you who haven’t heard the show will get an idea of how it went.

Radio in Review
By JOHN CROSBY

The activities of Fibber and Molly McGee are reported for no special reason every year in this space. Periodic checkup. Heart, lungs, teeth, Hooperating. They’re not getting any younger and it’s wise to keep a stethescope [sic] on ‘em. This year. there’s a slight swelling of the metaphors (normal at this age but better be watched), blood pressure 150 (excellent), Hooperating 21.8 (And at their age!)
They’re an extremely rugged couple, Fibber and Molly, and, if they're a little set in their ways, it’s to be expected. Fibber is arguing with Molly boastfully but with superb figures of speech when the doorbell rings. Ding Dong! Doc Gamble, who is quite a lot like Fibber, walks in. They insult each other.
“I'm just cruising around talking to a few friends.”
“You’re getting fewer of ‘em every minute.”
Then, with Molly as mediator, they begin to boat and make cracks at each other about their finishing ability, their hunting ability, or anything else that happens to be under discussion. “I’ll be picking bass out of that lake like fleas off a hound dog, like a ward-heeler picking votes out of a saloon.
“Hah! When you get through beating the lake with that fly rod, you’ll whip up enough froth to shave the shoreline.”
“The fish you’ve caught in your life wouldn’t make enough chowder to wet a spoon.”
It’s a tribute to their incomparable art that Jim Jordan, who plays Fibber, Marian Jordan, who is Molly and Arthur Q. Bryan, who is Doc Gamble, can handle such without sounding like a tongue-tied sophomore in the Mount Vernon High School production of “Hamlet,” if you’ll forgive the metaphor. The language is as complicated as Winston Churchill’s, though of course it lacks the quality.
“You’re as welcome as four choruses of ‘A Tree in the Meadow’ to a cocker spaniel.”
“You dunk your crumpets with such vigor the waitresses have to wear ponchos.”
“He couldn’t hit a hamstrung heifer with a hatful of hay.”
“Them springs are tighter than a size forty girdle after a spaghetti dinner.”
“A flophouse bed gets made up oftener and better than McGee’s mind.”
“Good old Doc! I don’t know what the medical profession would do without him, but I bet they’d welcome tome suggestions.”
These outrageous metaphors are punctuated by that doorbell. After Doc Gamble gets out of sight, the Oldtimer walks in. He talks a brand of pure nonsense that can’t be reduced to print, nohow. There’s an interval of troubled domesticity between Fibber and Molly and then Billy Mills orchestra gives respite to the English language. The doorbell again. Sis, a little girl (played by Marian Jordan) of literate mind manages to get all the adults confused. You haven’t learned history until you hear Sis’s version of the pheasants storming the Bastille.
After Sis gets out of sight, the doorbell rings again and there's Mayor La Trivia. He and Fibber trade metaphors, though in general La Trivia’s figures of speech haven’t the emotional stability of Gamble’s or Fibber’s. The Mayor leaves. The King’s Men, a singing group and a good one, give the language another interval. Then Wimple, a New England type with a tyrant of a wife, strolls in. “How’s your wife.”
“Never seen her in better shape. She’s been in bed for a month.”
The Jordans have been going on in this manner since 1931 [sic] and their Hooper has never been much better.

Fibber and Molly survived, transcribed, with assistance by Arthur Q. Bryan and Bill Thompson (who would get out of show biz in 1957, only to return to voice some cartoons for Hanna-Barbera a few years later). When NBC finally gutted its radio programming schedule and created “Monitor” in 1955, Fibber and Molly found a new home. The show carried on until 1959, very much a shadow of its former self. But then, so was radio.

Eyes of a Hound Dog

The McKimson dog can’t figure out why his dog house is moving like a railroad car in “Walky Talky Hawky,” the first Foghorn Leghorn cartoon.



He looks outside, then gets a mirror to see what’s underneath his doghouse. Cut to Henery Hawk carrying it.



Here’s the dog’s “my goodness!” take. It’s animated on twos.



Don Williams drew duplicate vertical eyes like this in other cartoons. According to Jerry Beck and Will Friedwald’s Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, he animated on this Oscar nominee, along with Cal Dalton and Dick Bickenbach.

One Cab’s Family Background

We suspect One Cab's Family wished there had been disposal diapers in 1952. Witness the cab family’s backyard as rendered by Johnny Johnsen. Note the TV antenna on the garage roof.



Daws Butler and June Foray supply the voices in this Tex Avery cartoon. I think the baby cries were from Jim Faris’ library.

Read-io With Jack Benny

The following is self-explanatory. It comes from the pages of the Radio Mirror of September 1938 (which went on sale toward the end of July). The magazine’s staff has stitched together dialogue from the 1937-38 season of the Jack Benny radio show to make a new “broadcast.” Coincidentally, a number of years later, Benny’s own staff would re-work old shows—sometimes with the dialogue from previous writers lifted verbatim—and turn them into new ones. The Mirror concocted the same thing for the Benny show twice in 1937; you can read the posts on the blog in February and March.

The second part of this “script” uses material from February 20 and 27, 1938 when the show broadcast a spoof entitled “Submarine D 1½.” Not all the dialogue was incorporated into this phoney broadcast; there was a whole scene with Schlepperman that’s not here. The dialogue from the show of the 27th begins when Don Wilson talks about the sub slowing down. On the actual broadcast, the phone caller is played by Blanche Stewart and the diver is Harry Baldwin, Jack’s personal secretary who spent several seasons on the air each week knocking on a door and interrupting the dialogue.

The part about Phil catching a blonde and Mary reading a French poem is taken from the season opener show of October 3, 1937.

We can only presume the folks at the Mirror were given the scripts. Most of them still survive today; Benny had copies bound at kept them in his home.

This would have been a treat for fans. There was no such thing as reruns back then. If someone missed a broadcast or wanted to hear it again, they were out of luck. This was likely an acceptable substitute. The photos accompanied the article; Phil Harris and Eddie Anderson apparently didn’t rate one.

A NEW JACK BENNY “VACATION BROADCAST.”
You don’t have to stop laughing just because you can’t hear your favorite comedian’s jokes. You can read ‘em!

BECAUSE the only thing wrong with summer, for several million people, is that you can't hear Jack Benny then, Radio Mirror this year repeats a custom which it inaugurated in 1937 and prints a special Benny “vacation” Readio-Broadcast.
You can't listen to Jack, Mary, Don Wilson, Kenny Baker, Phil Harris and Andy Devine on the air — but read this and you'll find that you're hearing them in your “mind's ear.” Thanks are due to Jack and his sponsors, the makers of Jell-O, who gave Radio Mirror permission to recreate this special broadcast from material which Jack put on the air during the last season.
It's Sunday evening — a hot, midsummer Sunday evening. And though the Jell-O troupe is officially on a vacation, here they are, nevertheless:

DON WILSON: Now, ladies and gentlemen, we bring you a man with a twinkle in his eye, a smile on his face, and a toupee on his head . . . Jack Benny! JACK: Jell-O again, this is Jack Benny talking. And thanks very much, Don, for that introduction — although you shouldn't mention my accessories. By the way, is my toupee on straight?
DON: Why, yes — what makes you ask?
JACK: Well, one ear seems to be warmer than the other.
DON: It looks all right to me.
JACK: Now, Don, you know I don't wear a toupee.
DON: Of course not, Jack, I just wanted to let people know that you need one.
JACK: Oh well, then — I forgive you. . . . I tell you, Don, it's fun to be here for this vacation broadcast — I didn't know how much I'd miss all the gang. DON: Me too, Jack.
JACK: I was going to spend the summer in Honolulu, but I got too lonesome. Where did you go, Phil?
PHIL HARRIS: Oh, I went down to Texas on a little fishing trip.
JACK: Fishing, eh? Have any luck?
PHIL: Swell — I caught a hundred-and-ten-pound blonde in Galveston.
JACK: Well! Those are rare too, aren't they?
PHIL: Yeah. But her father was the game warden so I had to throw her back.
JACK: That's too bad.
PHIL: So you didn't like Honolulu, Jack?
JACK: Naw. I went with my uncle. He's a swell fellow but he drinks a lot.
PHIL: Well, at least you had company — somebody to talk to, I mean.
JACK: Oh, sure — if you can understand hiccoughs.
PHIL: Where's Mary? I hear she ran over to Paris for a few days.
JACK: Yes — she just got back yesterday — and here she is now.
MARY: (And what a French accent!) Bon jure, messeers, ka-mon tally-voo say-swar?
JACK: Hello, Mary!
MARY: Marie to you guys.
JACK: Cut it out, Mary, you're home now.
MARY: Yes, and I've brought every one of you a present — from Paris.
PHIL: You did?
DON: What is it, Mary?
MARY: Perfume.
JACK: (In disgust) Perfume!
PHIL: Just what we needed.
JACK: Speak for yourself, Harris.
MARY: Come here, Don — here's your bottle. It's called "A Kiss in the Dark."
DON: Thanks, Mary.
MARY: And here's yours, Phil — it's called "Love's Gardenia."
PHIL: Well!
JACK: Mm, quite romantic. What's mine, Mary?
MARY: "Dracula's Dream."
JACK: That's a fine name for a perfume.
MARY: It also kills ants. . . . And I've brought back a present for our audience too.
JACK: Fine! What is it?
MARY: A poem — and I'm going to read it now. Ahem!
I've just returned from dear old Paris,
Where life is gay and there no care is.
Some call it Paris, some Paree —
Now which is right, I'm up a tree.
With your good old Eiffel Tower,
Where friends you meet and say bon jower,
And people poor and people rich
Ride across your London Britch —
JACK: Mary! London Bridge is in London!
MARY: Well, I was there too.
JACK: Oh!
MARY: I adore you, Paris, France,
Where girls buy hats and men buy pants.
And taxicabs they have a rattle —
The drivers look but do not tattle.
Your onion soup is so delish,
It puts you in a swell condish.
And the whole world shouts hurrah
For your patty fooey grah.
JACK: It's pate de foie gras, Mary,
MARY: It's fooey — I didn't like it.
Your waiters with their fine behavyurs
Serve the six delicious flavyurs —
Ze strawberry, ze raspberry, ze cherry, orange, too,
Ze lemon and ze lime, and ze keskay voo-le-voo!

Jack: Hey, Harris!
PHIL: What?
JACK: See-voo-play, Phil!
(And Phil does, just in the nick of time to drown out Mary as she starts on the second verse — which is much verse.)
JACK: That was "Love Walked In," played by Phil Harris and his orchestra. And, Phil, it really sounded swell.
PHIL: You think that's something? Wait until we learn it!
KENNY BAKER: Hello, folks.
JACK: Oh, hello, Kenny — did you just get here?
KENNY: Yeah. I'm sorry I'm a little late, but I was over in the next studio talking to Charlie McCarthy.
JACK: Oh, was Edgar Bergen there too?
KENNY: No, just Charlie and me. . . . And he's dumb.
JACK: Well, he's supposed to be— he's a dummy.
KENNY: Oh, say, Jack, if you think I'm bad, Edgar Bergen came over later and boy — is he all mixed up!
JACK: Why, what happened?
KENNY: He asked Charlie to sing, and put me in a suitcase.
JACK: Can you imagine that, Mary? Edgar Bergen thought Kenny was Charlie McCarthy. If he can't tell 'em apart, who can?
KENNY: Gee, I don't know. Say, Jack, did you drive down in that old Maxwell of yours?
JACK: I certainly did. And I didn't have any trouble at all. Did I, Mary?
MARY: Not with me, you didn't.
JACK: I'm talking about the car.
MARY: What about that flat tire you had?
JACK: Flat tire? Say, you could hardly feel it. Anyway, my tires are awfully thin.
DON: A puncture, eh? How did it happen?
MARY: Jack ran over a marshmallow.
JACK: Well, no wonder — it was toasted. You forgot to mention that. And of course you'd never mention what swell time we made. I even got a ticket for speeding.
MARY: Yeah, right next to a fire plug. (She giggles.) Jack, shall I tell ‘em what else happened?
JACK: Oh, not now, Mary — we've got a show to do.
KENNY: Come on, Mary — tell us about it.
MARY: Well—
JACK: Mary!
MARY: Oh, what's the difference? We were driving along Wilshire Boulevard, and there was a great big truck right in front of us —
JACK (in anguish): Mary!
MARY: And all of a sudden the truck backfired.
DON: And what happened?
MARY: Jack's motor dropped out.
JACK: Well, that could happen to anyone. Anyway, there's one thing about my car — it never backfires.
PHIL: It wouldn't dare to.
MARY: And how about that bicycle that passed us?
PHIL: No kidding, Jack, did a bicycle really pass you?
JACK: Well, what of it? It was a brand-new 1938 model.
MARY: Boy, was Jack mad!
JACK: I wasn't mad when he passed me. What burned me up was when he started doing those figure eights around my car. He was a regular Sonja Henie on wheels. (The phone rings.)
MARY: Hello.
ANDY DEVINE (on the phone): Hello, Mary. Can I speak to Buck?
MARY: Sure, Andy. Here, Jack; it's the Voice of Experience.
JACK: Oh, Andy! What's the matter — why aren't you down here?
ANDY: Well, you see, Buck, I got a cold.
JACK: That's too bad. Haven't you done anything for it?
ANDY: Well, Maw put a mustard plaster on my chest, an icebag on my head and a hot-water bottle on my back. Now I look like a one-man band.
JACK: Glad you're taking care of yourself, Andy? Say, where are you — in bed?
ANDY: No, I'm talking to you from the barn.
JACK: The barn? How come there's a telephone in the barn?
ANDY: My bull's got a girl friend in Pomona.
JACK: Oh! Well, Andy, I don't think you ought to be in the barn with a cold. Haven't you a nurse?
ANDY: Yes, sir! And you oughtta see her, Buck. She's a humdinger.
JACK: Oh, yeah? Where is she?
ANDY: In the house with Paw.
JACK: She is, eh? Where's your Maw?
ANDY: She's out on the sidewalk, picketin'.
JACK: That cold of yours certainly has complications. I wish you were here, Andy. We're going to do our version of that thrilling Warner Brothers movie, Submarine D-1, and I had a big part all picked out for you.
ANDY: Aw, gee, Buck, can't I do it over the phone?
JACK: Come to think of it, I guess you could. Just hang on and come in when you're needed. Okay, men, let's get started. I'll play the part of Butch O'Benny, Chief Petty Officer, as portrayed by Pat O'Brien of the screen — as tough a sailor as ever choked on a seasick pill. . . . The members of my crew will be Sock Harris, Slim Wilson, and Lucky Baker.
MARY: Am I going to be in this?
JACK: Yes, Mary. Your name is Slug Livingstone. You'll have to be a sailor too.
MARY: Okay, but I'm going to put a screen around my hammock.
JACK: And Rochester will be the cook.
ROCHESTER (suspiciously): Cook for what?
JACK: For our submarine.
ROCHESTER: Is that one of them boats that dunks?
JACK: Yes, it travels far beneath the surface of the ocean.
ROCHESTER: I ain't gonna be on it.
JACK: Now, Rochester, I promised you ten dollars — don't you want to make ten dollars?
ROCHESTER: Not if I have to send a whale to the bank with it.
JACK: Now look, Rochester, it's nothing to worry about. It's only going to last five minutes.
ROCHESTER: I can drown in three.
JACK: Well, it's only a play, so go over in the corner and put on your uniform. . . . Oh, and Andy — I almost forgot. I want you to be the steam whistle. Okay?
ANDY: Sure, I'll take it. I ain't proud.



JACK: And now, folks, for our epic of the sea — Submarine D and One-half. We pick up the submarine off the coast of Panama, cruising forty feet below the surface on its way to San Diego.
PHIL: Hey, Popeye. . . .
JACK: Popeye? Listen, Harris, that's an insult to your superior officer. Step forward and salute.
PHIL: Oh, all right.
JACK: WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
PHIL: I'm saluting you.
JACK: Well, unless your nose itches, you're insulting me again. . . . Well, speak up, what's the trouble?
PHIL: Something seems to be wrong. We're slowing down.
JACK: Darn those sharks! They're hitching rides again. . . . Shoo! Shoo! Scat!
MARY: Oh, why don't you let them have a little fun?
JACK: I don't mind them bumming a ride, but I don't want them biting their initials in the rudder. Hey, Rochester, is supper ready?
ROCHESTER: All but the apple pie.
JACK: The apple pie? Where is that?
ROCHESTER: I put it out the window to cool.
JACK: Oh. . . . Well, never mind; we'll be in Panama soon.
DON: Hey Chief, we're slowing down again.
JACK: Now what?
MARY: Slowing down nothing — we've stopped.
JACK: Hey, Harris, what did you stop the boat for?
PHIL: There's a red light against us.
JACK: Red light! Go right through.
PHIL: All right, but pinched, it's your fault.
JACK: Hm, some navigator. . . . Hey, Slug! Where are you going with those curtains?
MARY: I'm gonna hang ‘em over my window. There's been a halibut peeking in all week.
JACK: A halibut peeking in — that's nothing to get upset about.
MARY: Oh, no? Last night he winked at me.
JACK: Aw, you're imagining things.
MARY: I am, eh? Then who sent me those gardenias?
JACK: Now get back to the periscope and keep your eyes open. I don't want any accidents.
DON: Oh, Chief, we just received a radiogram from Admiral McKenzie:
JACK: A radiogram? What does it say, Wilson?
DON: Use extreme caution when entering Panama Canal. The canal is filled with battleships, cruisers and destroyers.
JACK: What, no water? Well, men, we'll have to take a chance. Are you with me?
THE CREW: Aye, aye, Sir.
MARY: Hey, Chief, Chief! There’s a battleship directly ahead and it’s bearing down on us. We’ll be hit for sure.
ROCHESTER: Dawggone, where did I put that rabbit's foot?
JACK: I'll handle this — we've to warn them. Hey, Slug, pull steam whistle.
MARY: Aye, aye, Sir.
ANDY: Whoo whoo!
JACK: Hm, they don't hear us. Pull the whistle again — louder.
MARY: Aye, aye, Sir.
ANDY: Whoo, whoo, and I do mean WHOO!
JACK: They still don't hear us. What are we gonna do?
MARY: You better think fast, Chief.
JACK: I got it — empty main ballast tank! (We hear three bells.) Reverse rear engines! (We hear the three bells again.) Who keeps ringing those bells?
MARY: Jimmie Fidler.
JACK: Hm, six bells — we can't be that good. . . . Harris, I gave you a command to stop. Are you reversing rear engines?
PHIL: I don't know how.
JACK: Then what'll we do?
PHIL: Hold your hats; we're gonna crash.
(There is a terrific noise, splintering, clashing of chains, tearing of metal.)

Jack: Now keep cool, men, I'll handle everything.
DON: But, Chief, we're sinking fast.
JACK: I know we are. What does the gauge say, Rochester?
ROCHESTER (like an elevator operator): Two hundred feet . . . sardines, herring, barracuda and tuna! Goin’ down!
JACK: Look all that salt water pouring in. What'll we do?
KENNY: Let's make some taffy.
ROCHESTER: Three hundred feet. . . . Mackerel, pickerel, whales, sharks and mountain trout! Goin' down!
JACK: The water's getting deeper in here. Hey, Wilson — man the pumps!
DON: We haven't got any.
JACK: Then somebody give me a blotter! (There is a dull thump.)
ROCHESTER: Ground floor. . . . Crabs, oysters, sand, seaweed, and thanks for the memory!
JACK: We've struck bottom! Have courage, men. Are you getting along all right.
PHIL: Now, there's a silly question.
JACK: If we could only make connections with the Naval Base. Gee, the water is up to my waist.
MARY: It's only up to my ankles.
JACK: Where's Kenny?
MARY: I'm standing on him.
JACK: Then who am I standing on?
ROCHESTER: This isn't a hat I'm wearing.
PHIL: Why don't you call the Admiral to send help?
JACK: I can't — the phone is out of order. (But just then it rings.) No, it isn't — that must be the Admiral now. We're saved! (He picks up the receiver.) Hello, hello!
A VOICE: Hello, is this the Orpheum Theater?
JACK: No, this is Submarine D-1.
VOICE: What's the other feature?
JACK: Everybody Sink. (He hangs up.) Hm, I'm so mad I could drown. Well, things look hopeless, men. I'm afraid there's no chance for us. But remember, we're in the Service, so let's die like men.
MARY: Hey, Chief, Chief! Look, there's somebody coming toward us. He's coming through the water.
JACK: Let's see. . . . You're right, and he's in a diving suit.
KENNY: Is it anybody we know?
JACK: Hooray! We're saved, fellows! (There is a heavy knock on the door.) Come in. (The door opens.)
THE DIVER: Mister Benny?
JACK: Yes.
THE DIVER: Have you saved your money all your life?
JACK: Yes, I have.
THE DIVER: Ain't you sorry now? Good-bye. (And the door slams behind him.) JACK: Play, Phil!
(Phil plays, and we know the broadcast is almost over. But wait a minute — here's Jack, back for a final word.)
JACK: Well, folks, that was the last number of the special vacation Jell-O broadcast. And now that our play is over, let's get out of this submarine and go up to the surface.
MARY: You better not do that, Jack.
JACK: Why not?
MARY: The Warner Brothers are waiting for you.
JACK: Oh, well, it's comfortable here. Good night, folks.

A Reply To Chuck Jones

There’s more to an animated cartoon than art.

The reason’s simple. Animated cartoons are entertainment. To be entertainment, there has to be something other than nifty artwork or movement. There has to be a story. If you want proof, watch any late ‘50s UPA short or any of the imitation Silly Symphonys put out by a number of studios. Pretty designs and intricate movement are nice, but if there’s no well-constructed plot to hang them on, you’re not entertaining anyone.

Chuck Jones created some of the funniest cartoons ever made. His best work is when all the elements of a cartoon—visual, aural, intellectual—come together. But Jones never seems to have divested himself of his 1930s Disney Superiority Complex, that he felt he’d really be making great cartoons if they looked like a Disney cartoon in terms of movement and artwork. Why else would Jones, years later in his career, continually denigrate television animation as “illustrated radio”?

Jones bragged on a number of occasions you could watch his cartoons with the sound down. The trouble is, in some cases, who would want to? Does anyone find Jones’ “The Bird Came C.O.D.” funny or amusing? And what about those 1960s Tom and Jerry cartoons he produced? The problem with them is simple—they’re not much more than a bunch of poses, and people (except maybe animators) don’t watch cartoons just to look at how characters are posed.

Conversely, there are some dialogue-heavy TV cartoons that have stood the test of time for decades. Why? Because people like the characters and find them funny. I’d love to see a fully-animated Quick Draw McGraw cartoon because an artist could fit in extra gags through movement. But the limited-animation version is still funny, thanks to good dialogue and a strong enough storyline.

For this reason, Jones’ “illustrated radio” sneer (at least, I take it to be one) has always bothered me. And evidently it bothered other animators. Certainly it bothered one who had a pretty good pedigree.

Jack Zander owned a commercial animation company for many decades but in the 1930s and ‘40s, he worked for several different cartoon studios. He was one of the original animators on Tom and Jerry at MGM, and had been at Warner Bros. in the Harman-Ising days before Jones’ arrival. Historian Mark Mayerson pointed out, upon Zander’s death in 2007 at the age of 99, Zander gave opportunities to all kinds of young animation talent. And Zander was put off in the 1960s by Jones’ comments about the deterioration of the animated cartoon, and the new people in the industry.

Here’s a story in the New York City-based Weekly Variety from January 27, 1965.

‘Simplified’ Cartoons Arouses Debate; Its Economy Versus Credibility
Charles M. Jones, director of Metro’s new animation and visual arts department, has drawn raps from execs of the eastern Animation Producers Assn. and Screen Cartoonists Guild for published remarks in which he attacked trends in animation toward simplification and stated that “there are hardly any animators around younger than 50 who know how to draw full animation.”
Leading the attack are Jack Zander, v.p. of Pelican Films and an exec of the Animation Producers Assn. and Richard Rauhn, prez of the Screen Cartoonists Guild. Jones had argued that the new, economy-oriented techniques, detracted from the realism of the product, a charge the assailants brand as “odd” in 1965 when realism “has all but disappeared from the world of painting and the graphic arts in general.”

The Metro exec had objected to tv animation principally, mentioning that new techniques enabled producers to make a six-minute cartoon for about $10,000 as opposed to $35,000 for a full-animation pic. Zender and Rauhn acknowledge the economic factor but claim that more important is the entire tendency of 20th century art which is toward simplification, citing such examples in cartooning as “Mr. Magoo,” a quite popular figure Also, as involves credibility, the objectors cite “Mickey Mouse” saying that he was never literally, zoologically speaking, an authentic rodent but rather a fantasy.
The cartoon chiefs also rapped the notion that there are hardly any animators around under 50 who can draw full animation, wholehardedly [sic] denying the charge. They claim that it is choice and not pressure that is leading the trend toward simplification in animation style. They asserted that Janes’ [sic] statements “sound like echoes from the distant past.”

One can imagine Jones’ reaction to being publicly criticised. He rebutted. Weekly Variety of February 24th reported:

...Jones has accused the Easterners of seeking publicity rather than accuracy and that his own comments were made for purpose of identification, not to indict an industry.
At to his claim that good animators under 50 are increasingly scarce, to which the pair replied “‘Tain’t so,” Jones told Zander and Rauh to send along any good ones, he'd be quite happy to employ them.
The argument about the proper definition of full animation and what it entailed was further elaborated by Jones whose conception of it is "moving three-dimensional objects in space in a believable manner." He said that it is a valuable and necessary aspect of the multiform art of animation but takes years to learn and that few artists today take the time required by the severe apprenticeship.

And with that, Variety dropped the subject and Jones went on to making snoozers like “The Cat’s Me-Ouch” and then, post-MGM, the interesting “Curiosity Shop” for ABC. And continually brought up the “illustrated radio” subject in interviews for the next several decades. However, we’ll let you have the last word about it if you want to leave a comment.