March of 1945

Hugh Harman left MGM in 1941 to set up his own studio which, despite hopes of a deal with a major studio to make cartoons, ended up making industrial films.

One of them was “March of 1945” for the people who ran the transit system in the San Francisco Bay area. It runs 20 ½ minutes and it’s only in the last minute we see any animation. A little animated tram conductor runs onto the scene, twice using the same animation, and then once again. Here are some of the drawings. They look really good.



Finally, the conductor is lifted up by the narrator and deposited in a desk drawer in a fine bit of combination live action/animation.



The animation is by Arnold Gillespie, who had worked at Disney and Fleischer (on “Gulliver’s Travels”) and then for MGM before being hired by Harman (I suspect Gillespie had been at Harman-Ising at one point). He later moved to John Sutherland (and fit in some work on the “NBC Comics” before co-founding Quartet Films.

Jack Benny's Good Old Days

Pretty much every obituary about Jack Benny after his death in 1974 mentioned the gag about his age being 39. Not generally known was the “39” part came about late in Benny’s radio career and was the perfection of an old routine where Benny lied about his age.

Jack claimed other ages before 1950, but 36 is no funnier than 38. But 39 is funnier because it gave him and his writers ample opportunities to stretch the gag and invent comedy around why he refused to go to the milestone age of 40.

But Benny did turn 40, albeit briefly. It happened not on his own show, but on another series that Benny hosted. The show was a mess. It didn’t help that Eddie Anderson got sick at the last minute and couldn’t appear. The show was loaded with old colleagues of Bennys. But there wasn’t anything for them to do. They existed solely for the audience to peer at them and go “Gee, I didn’t know Paul Douglas was on the Benny show.” Instead of well-honed and purposely dialogue amongst a small group of characters, it look more like a visit to a museum. (Still, there is a contingent of TV viewers who find entertainment in merely ogling at stars. Oscar Night Red Carpet telecasts wouldn’t exist without them).

Here’s one of a number of syndicated newspaper columns featuring interviews Jack did solely to plug the broadcast. It was published February 13, 1958.

TV Keynotes
Jack Benny Late Arriving At 40 Year
By STEVEN SCHEUER
Jack Benny is celebrating his 40th birthday on tonight's Shower of Stars and joining in on this remarkable milestone are such cronies as Mayor Robert Sabonjian, of Waukegan, Ill., band leader Don Bester, Phil Harris, Van Johnson, Andy Devine, Mary Livingston and many others to see that Benny doesn't renege and go back to the comfortable age of 39.
For some reason 39 is a funny age, and Benny, who's been that since 1950, has decided to face 40. In his early 60's, Jack and wife Mary Livingston recently celebrated their 31st wedding anniversary, and the master now feels he can look the public in the eye and admit to 40.
A few years ago Jack and his writers decided the time was ripe for him to turn 40, but the public, via mail, said no. One Boston newspaper went so far as to print an editorial against the move. Naturally, the birthday was abandoned. Now, eight years later, Benny sneaks into the fourth decade accompanied by a blast of trumpets.
Having a birthday means recalling "the good old days" and the other day in Hollywood, Jack was asked to name his happiest ones.
"I think the best time in my life was doing vaudeville," he said: "There were no particular problems about coming up with new material every week. And traveling at that time was fun and there were a minimum of worries."
What does he consider the funniest line in his career? Jack thought a moment and said "Well, I guess my most famous line is the one in which the holdup man sticks a gun in my ribs and says: 'Your money or your life.' I just stand there, and he repeats the line, whereupon I say, 'I know, I know, I'm thinking it over.'"
Jack learned most of his comic lessons in vaudeville and the most important one was making himself the butt of jokes. “I found it was always good for a laugh," said Jack, "when the other acts on the bill would make me the victim of the joke I'd stand there, a poor abused emcee, and the audience loved it.
“I found that if people laugh at you, they don't tire of you That's why I turn the laughs on myself and lots of time give most of the big laughs to others in the cast. That's part of the role I've built for myself and people seem to like it.
"I think the success of my comedy lies in the fact that I've created a fictional character,” Jack continued. "The fact that the audience knows in advance I'm going, for instance, to be cheap doesn’t detract from the humor, because they expect me to be cheap, but the audience doesn't know just how I'm going to be able to justify it to myself.
“When I do things expected of the Benny character, I'm actually doing something most people wouldn't do—it's easy to laugh at something you yourself are not guilty of. Now if I did something a normal person might be expected to do in a given situation—no matter how funny I was—there would be the thought in the mind of the listener that maybe under the same set of circumstances he might have done the same thing, and he wouldn't laugh.”
Well, Jack can laugh at his 40th birthday—all the way to that famous Benny bank vault. And if 40 isn't funny (he can't recall whether it really was or not) he can up it to 41 in only eight years.

Here’s another column we posted earlier on the subject. Fortunately, Benny and his people realised their error and went back to 39. And that was, at least according to one wire service at the time with a sense of humour, Jack’s age at his death.

Looney Tune Psychology

Walt Disney got most of the publicity when it came to animated cartoons—first Mickey, then Flowers and Trees, then Pigs, then Snow White, then Fantasia, then the combo features. But he didn’t get all the attention.

Here’s a short unbylined piece, likely syndicated, that appeared in the Schenectady Gazette on December 28, 1930. It gives a shout out to the early Looney Tunes cartoons made by Rudy Ising and Hugh Harman. Several had been released by that point; Warner Bros. began advertising them in the trade press in April.

Note that “Bosco” was an acceptable spelling of the character’s name in 1930.

Cartoon Type Of Comedy Has Strong Appeal
The appeal of the cartoon type of comedy has become so universal that it has piqued the curiosity of psychologists as well as of motion picture producers. The explanation of the public liking for cartoon comedies is of an unusual nature.
Leading psychologists declare that people are always interested in anything that acts contrary to the established laws of nature and their own sense of reality. The mystic tricks of magicians always find a ready audience. One must remember that the average layman attends the theater to enjoy the things that take him away, for the time being, from the humdrum happenings of everyday life. By means of animated cartoons, which have become so popular, the artist is able to present situations which by the very nature of their unusualness, enable the audience to lift itself for the moment out of this life into the land of make-believe.
A good example of this is evidenced in the "Looney Tunes" series of Vitaphone song cartoons. In one of the releases, Bosco, the central cartoon figure, whistles for his auto which comes running to him to the tune of a popular song. In still another of the series is shown a brute of a hippopotamus rendering popular selections on a guitar. The "Looney Tunes" cartoons are devised by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising with a special musical arrangement by Frank Marsales.
The cartoonist is allowed great opportunity for imaginative skill. The more unusual the antics of his characters, the better chance for success the attraction has. The element of impossibility and surprise in animated cartoons is a feature greatly appreciated by audiences. Added to the highly amusing though impossible situations, the use of music and sound effects, well synchronized, have probably done more to popularize the cartoons than any other factor.
The increasing popularity of the "Looney Tunes" series as well as other animated cartoons of like nature, bears out the contention of psychologists and the experience of exhibitors that the antics of cartoon characters are relished by the public because of the element of surprise, due to their improbabilities, and the amusing manner of their presentation.

Cinderella Swirl

Cartoon actors get typecast, too. Witness this review in Variety of August 21, 1934.

Betty Boop
“Poor Cinderella”
10 Mins.
Paramount, N. Y.
Paramount
Color cartoon by the new process with firm tones and practically no bleeding, but a lack of tints in the colors. Conventional story of Cinderella other than that Cindy is Betty Boop at her boopiest. Good stuff for the children around holiday times and carrying a catchy melody for a theme song, but not the knockout it was intended to be chiefly because the main character is unsuitable. Sound very poor. Chic.

The reviewer didn’t seem to want Betty in a cartoon unless she was dealing with letches coming onto her as inanimate objects sprung to life for little bits of odd business. This cartoon’s in the Disney vein. But using a one-shot female character instead of Betty just wouldn’t have worked. And when you’re using colour for the first time, wouldn’t you showcase your star?

I’m very surprised the reviewer didn’t mention the 3-D effects during the short which are spectacular. Here are the background drawings from when Cinderella runs away after the clock strikes 12.



After the transformation, the scene changes from the ragged Cinderella to the prince in the palace (who sounds like he read his lines from the back of the room). The transition from one scene to the next involves a setting swirling behind the animation. Here’s one complete turn.



Seymour Kneitel was the head animator on this short.

Boogie Woogie Bunny

Bugs Bunny and a mouse play boogie woogie in “Rhapsody Rabbit.” I like how Boogie Woogie Bugs sticks out his tongue (Virgil Ross animation?).



Bugs traps the mouse.



Ross, Gerry Chiniquy, Manny Perez and Ken Champin are the credited animators.

It Pays To Be Ignorant

In 1959, as network radio sputtered toward its death, CBS melded some familiar elements into a show called “Funny Side Up.” It featured Kenny Delmar and Parker Fennelly basically reviving their “Allen’s Alley” characters under new names (with Delmar substituting Texan jokes for Southern jokes). They were two-thirds of a panel engaged in scripted banter on material sent in by the audience, pretty much like the premise of the parody quiz show “It Pays To Be Ignorant.” “Funny Side Up” wasn’t funny. It was flat.

Astute critic John Crosby hit on the thing that made “Ignorant” such a fun show to listen to. It was tightly-scripted but seemed out of control. The show’s tempo was manic. Wheezy old or obvious jokes didn’t get a chance to lie there—unlike the sedate, suburban proceedings of “Funny Side Up.” They were like a Tex Avery cartoon: set-up, ridiculous punchline, on to the next set-up before anyone has a chance to realise it’s an old groaner.

Here’s Crosby’s review from June 18, 1946.

YES, IT’S CORN, BUT GOOD!
By JOHN CROSBY
NEW YORK, Sept. 6.—In a book on fashions, I once recall reading that a particular fashion in, let us say, women’s clothes was ridiculous 15 years after it was introduced, quaint and amusing 50 years later, and a classic 100 years later.
It doesn't take that long for a joke to become a classic. The jokes in "It Pays to Be Ignorant” already have all the attributes of the classic, although I don't suppose these jokes are more than 20 years old. But, like Greek statuary, they follow a rigid pattern laid down by the early masters, and through the years have acquired the yellowed and nostalgic patina of old marble.
This satire on quiz programs is still as corny as Iowa in August and doesn’t pretend to be anything else. It’s a lot of fun, too, if you like that sort of thing. Perhaps I’d better give you a sample of the goings-on in “It Pays To Be Ignorant” and let you judge the program for itself.
GRAND GAGSTERS
Tom Howard is quiz master and he is flanked by a battery of experts, consisting of George Shelton, Harry McNaughton and Lulu McConnell. All four are veteran vaudevillians steeped in the wisdom of Joe Miller. If they know anything else, they keep it a deep secret.
Mr. Howard plucks an amateur from the audience and asks him a skull-cracking question such as “How many stories has a three-story house?” Before the poor man has a chance to open his mouth, the experts start throwing gags around like Indian clubs.
“Is the house for rent?”
“If you don’t know where the house is, why don’t you tell that to the people? I’m going to report you to the APU.”
“I once built a house in the country.”
“Well, you built it all wrong. It’s upside-down.”
“No wonder I keep falling off the porch.”
“Let’s get back to question,” yells Howard. “How many stories has a three-story house?”
“My sister in Kansas City has a four-story house.”
“Well, that’s another story.”
FAST-FIRED CORN
So far as I know, no one ever answers any of these questions. Suddenly, Mr. Howard remembers the amateur, or non-expert, who, I guess, simply shifts from one foot to another while this bedlam goes on. The amateur is given a prize of $25.15 and 204 cigarets for no apparent reason, but that shouldn't astonish any one who has ever heard a quiz program.
“It Pays To Be Ignorant” would be unbearable if it didn’t move so rapidly. Before you have a chance to detect the ripeness of these antique gags, three more come shooting through your loud-speaker.
“I was a comedian in a hospital—I kept the patient in stitches.”
“I've been married for fourteen years and I’m still in love. If my wife ever finds out, she’ll kill me.”
“I have a nice girl now—her name is Bottle.”
“I bet she’s a corker.”
“What do you expect for Father’s Day?”
“The bills for Mother’s Day.”
“What lives in a henhouse?”
“Is it for rent?"
These gags are delivered in a rich medley of accents. Howard has a voice like a hoarse bullfrog. Miss McConnell’s voice will remind you of a gravel chute in full operation. As for the amateurs, they simply sound bewildered.

For CBS, it didn’t pay to be ignorant. The network had been airing the show on Friday nights at 9 but looked at the ratings and suddenly replaced it on February 1, 1946 with a sitcom written by Abe Burrows called “Holiday and Company.” The numbers were even worse. “It Pays To Be Ignorant” returned May 2nd. The show began in 1942 as a sustainer on WOR/Mutual, bounced to CBS and then over to NBC, where it finished out its run on radio in 1951. The show premiered for a short run on television on WCBS on June 6, 1949 (opposite a movie on NBC and “Doorway to Fame” on DuMont) and there were TV revivals in each of the next three decades (the 1951 effort on NBC featured the original cast). By the way, to the right you can see the ignorance of one of the radio fan magazines. The misidentified cast depicted is from another show, “Can You Top This?”.

You can listen to an Armed Forces Radio edited version of some ignorance from 1943 below.
IT PAYS TO BE IGNORANT AFRS SHOW

The Magic Fluke

In Tex Avery’s brilliant “Magical Maestro,” a magician uses his magic wand to turn opera singer Poochini into various demeaning guises (child, western singer, Hawaiian chanter). Several years earlier, the UPA studio put out “The Magic Fluke,” where a magician’s wand turned into various things in the unwitting hand of Lips Fox and starts doing stuff to the orchestra.

The animation’s well-timed and gags are set up very well. Things build to a climax. A bass turns into a woman and the bow becomes a saw. (Is this Pat Matthews’ animation?)



Pigeons fly out of the tuba.



A triangle becomes a coat hanger that suddenly attracts the triangle player's evening wear.



Violins become long rabbits that, in probably the goofiest gag ever seen in a UPA cartoon, start la-la-la-ing that old cartoon workhouse, Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.



The fox turns his orchestra members into rabbits, then erases them with the wave of the wand.



Finally, with some spectre rabbits floating from the end in mid-air, the wand expires.



The cartoon was nominated for an Oscar but that didn’t matter to the Capital-A artists at UPA. The short featured the two things many people at the studio despised: funny animals and slapstick violence. So such things vanished from the studio’s cartoons.

There’s a great post about the art of this cartoon on Michael Sporn’s blog.

That Cat Can Play!

Another gag from “Bad Luck Blackie”...

Kitten tries to escape from the menacing bulldog but runs down a back lane instead.



Kitten is cornered. He blows the whistle.



Black cat crosses the bulldog’s path.



Instant bad luck. Piano falls on bulldog.



Kitten plays the dog’s teeth like a piano. Look at the expressions on the kitten. Tex Avery and his animators were masters.



The kitten plays a quick, amateur version of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” One wonders if Scott Bradley would have preferred Chopin or something else a little grander.

Jack Benny Goes Home

The continual mentions of Waukegan, Illinois should have telegraphed to radio listeners that Jack Benny loved his home town. And Waukegan loved him back. A centre for the arts and a junior high school in Waukegan are named for him. One of his homes in the city has been preserved. And there’s a statue in his honour.

It’s unclear how often he ever got back home, but it happened during the spring of 1946. Benny appeared on the Quiz Kids show, based in Chicago (he did a series of shows with them in 1941 as well) and made a side trip north to Waukegan.

Here’s the Chicago Tribune’s radio columnist from June 9, 1946. Apparently, trips with Frank Remley weren’t out of the ordinary for Jack; the two were great friends for many years.

WHAT A RADIO COMEDIAN DOES FOR A VACATION
Benny Visits Folks Here, Golfs, Drives, Talks
BY LARRY WOLTERS
Every summer two dozen of radio’s top entertainers vanish for three months or so. Where do they go? What do they do? Well, Jack Benny, radio’s best known worrier, is relaxing in Chicago with not a care in the world--at least nothing more serious than a guest appearance on the Quiz Kids show tonight.
Benny is taking it easy. He’s been visiting with his sister, Florence Fenchel, and father, Meyer Kubelsky, in Chicago. And he spent a couple of days golfing and reminiscing with old friends in Waukegan. He smoked countless cigars and drove all around in his convertible Cadillac. Benny is daffy about motoring. And tomorrow he will start driving back to the west coast to rejoin his family with Frank Remele, guitar player in Phil Harris’ band as companion. Benny expects to do a lot of loafing and looking on the way back. He wants to visit Colorado Springs, the Grand Canyon--and anything else that attracts his attention.
Gives Up Fretting
Benny confided that he has learned a lot about enjoying himself the last couple of years. He doesn’t even fret about the script any more--or not much. He’s got a stable of capable writers, he’s back near the top of the ratings and the critics have been cheering him for some of the best satire of the season.
A pro has got Benny all heated up over golf and he’s on the courses a lot. He shoots in the low 80s. "I’ve got something new to do," he mused. Bill and Harry Schwartz threw a golf party for him at Waukegan. Others in on it were Syd Block, Ollie Elmerman, also old friends.
Jack also visited with Julius Sinykin, in whose home he and Mary Livingstone were married, and his cousins, Mr. and Mrs. Clifford Gordon, Ben Gordon, and Ben Richman.
Goes to the Plays
Even on vacation Benny doesn't forget about the amusement world. Last week he saw "Anna Lucasta," Katharine Cornell in "Candida," and Russel Crouse and Howard Lindsay’s "State of the Union." He saw "Lucasta" and the latter play in New York and enjoyed them so much that he went again.
Benny has a yen to do a Broadway comedy and Crouse and Lindsay are conjuring up some ideas. Whether the play will come off in one year or five remains to be seen. It’s in the talking stage now.
As to his next season’s radio show Jack says it will follow much the same pattern as last year’s--consistent characterization; guests only when you can fit them perfectly into the mood of the show. Last year the Ronald Colmans were on the Benny show five times--made such a hit that a radio show may be built around them.
Defines an Ad Lib
Benny doesn’t agree that a comedian ought to pay much attention to looking for good gags.
"All you need to know is when a gag is lousy," he said, "and get rid of it."
Benny found time, also, to define a radio ad lib: "Know what you're going to say, but make it sound like you don’t."
After getting back to the coast Jack and Mary plan three weeks of golf at Del Monte. Next, Jack will make a quick trip to either Berlin or Tokyo to entertain GI’s and then he goes to work on a new picture about the life of Jack Benny tentatively titled "Always Keep Them Laughing."
And that's a summer’s vacation!