Foney Fables Backgrounds

Background artists weren’t credited for far too long on Warner Bros. cartoons. One was the never-credited Lenard Kester who spent some time in the Friz Freleng unit in the early ‘40s and painted these scenes for “Foney Fables” (1942). The bag in the third frame is on an overlay.



Mike Maltese wrote the cartoon and may be responsible for the mock-Cockney ‘Agsb’ry signs.



Owen Fitzgerald was Friz’ layout man when this cartoon was made.

Frank Graham is the narrator, by the way. I haven’t checked to see if this was his first Warners’ cartoon.

The Golden Age of Smut is On The Air

Oh, the smut and filth pouring out of the radio into the family living room in 1948!

What’s that, you say? You’ve heard lots of old-time radio and it’s all squeaky clean? Yes, that’s my opinion, too. Especially considering network censors went to ridiculous levels to blue-pencil dialogue (Jack Benny’s writer Milt Josefsberg recalled how someone at CBS tried to delete a scene containing a limerick merely on the basis that “all limericks are dirty”—even though the language was gibberish). But it appears there are people in every generation who get offended over the innocuous, and such was the case in 1948.

Here’s a piece from the Chicago Tribune’s radio columnist published January 4, 1948. See what you think of the findings.

CHICAGO GIRL STARTS DRIVE TO CLEAN AIR
150 Schools Join R.A.P. Poll
BY LARRY WOLTERS
Many of the student critics who participate in the so- called radio poll took their ballot sheets home with them and kept right on rating comedians during their holiday interlude. A group of students from St. Joseph's of Indiana, where the voting from all over the country in tabulated, from Rosary, Mundelein, Mount Mary, and Chicago Teachers college interrupted their dance last Sunday evening at the Morrison hotel to check the Fred Allen show.
The R.A.P. has grown into a big organization. More than 1,500 students on more than 150 campuses--Catholic, Protestant, non-denominational and state institutions among them--each week rate about a score of comedy shows for acceptability. More schools are being added almost every week and some 200 colleges will be involved in the operation within a couple of months, it's expected.
Seeks To Ban Smut
The R.A.P. grew out of an idea of Marilyn Malone, 18, of 8117 S. Marshfield av. a student of Marycrest college, Davenport, Ia. Miss Malone, youthful listener, had encountered offensive material on comedy shows. She thought college students might do something to get rid of smut on the air if enough students would help out in checking the major comedy shows each week. She told her friends about her plan and got an enthusiastic response from every direction.
St. Joseph's offered to do the tabulating. A group of its students sacrificed part of their holiday recesses to keep the poll machinery going. Many Catholic schools joined the R.A.P. and then the leaders of the movement set out to enroll Protestant, private and state colleges so that the result might be as representative as possible. Students may give only a day to listening or as much 20 half hours a week. After a week of listening others are recruited. Thus different students' reactions are clocked week by week.
Fibber Is First
After nine weeks of listening the R.A.P. has issued a cumulative or composite rating. Fibber McGee and Molly with an average of 78 per cent were first. Theirs was the only show winning the accolade of "highly acceptable." Henry Morgan is second with 71.5.
Then in order came: Burns and Allen, 65.3; Jimmy Durante, 65; Jack Benny, 64; Charlie McCarthy, Baby Snooks and Red Skelton, tied at 63; Fred Allen, 61.5; Duffy's Tavern, 56; Jack Carson, Bandwagon with Phil Harris and Alice Faye, Eddie Cantor, 53.5; Milton Berle, 47; Abbott and Costello, 42.5; Jack Paar, 39; It Pays to be Ignorant, 32.5; Jim Backus, 31.5; Bob Hope, 31.
Poll Still Growing
The poll is still being expanded and other shows being added. Joan Davis, Judy Canova, Amos and Andy are among the group that has not been evaluated to date. All the above have fallen within "the acceptable" classification altho some gags have been rated as unacceptable.

Supporting players on shows are rated, too. Phil Harris gets the lowest rating of any one on the Benny show and his wife, Alice Faye, by 18 points on their Bandwagon show. Bob Hope's guests rate higher than he does Vera Vague invariably is given low ratings but Lulu McConnell does still worse. Many of the ballot sheets include comment such as: "Lulu McConnell is rough and vulgar; she's given to double meaning jokes." Jim Backus also is down for "off color remarks jokes that could easily confuse adolescents."
While the networks have made real progress in the last year or two in keeping offensive material off the air, complaints do come in regularly to this department that smut comes out of the loudspeaker (Often it isn't in the script but is ad-libbed). If this movement helps to keep violators of good taste out of the family circle all broadcasters will cheer self-appointed critics from the campus.

Apparently this would-be nanny group had a problem with women wanting a man. That’s what the Vera Vague character was based on. Barbara Jo Allen’s dialogue had nothing to do with 50 shades of grey or male sex organs. At best maybe she wanted to get smooched, at most married (horrors!). But, like Lulu McConnell, she was noisy about it. How unlady-like, the prudes apparently felt. The Backus reference is just downright puzzling. At the time, he was best known for playing the upper crust Hubert Updike the 3rd. His jokes generally revolved about his insane amount of wealth. And I can only imagine Morgan’s reaction to being highly-ranked by self-appointed censors.

Tastes today have changed, but offendees remain. If the Benny show were broadcast today, I suspect someone would get upset at the stream of fat jokes directed at Don Wilson. And I won’t even go into Amos ‘n’ Andy.

For some reason, none of the self-appointed lobbyists over the years have ever proposed the following solution—shut off the radio or TV if you don’t like what’s on the air. If there’s not a big enough audience, it’ll be taken off the air. But that would eliminate their raison d’être—to force their will on others on what to think and do.

Busted Blossoms

“Busted Blossoms,” a 1934 Terrytoon, has some nice Oriental settings and an imaginative little gag when the boy sings to the girl in the balcony.

The lyrics coming out of their mouths form into little pictographs until they morph together into forming a ladder which the boy climbs to greet the girl. The lyrics include: “Chinese girl is nuts for you. She much like to mally (marry) you. My old man he sleeps, let’s run away.”



The title is a play on the silent classic “Broken Blossoms,” where an abused girl dies, her tormentor is killed by her Chinese boy-friend, who then commits suicide. The cartoon is a little happier than that.

Number Ple-ase

Did Tex Avery have problems sleeping? He produced several topics built on the premise of sleep vs noise; an early one being “Doggone Tired” (released in 1949). Avery and writers Dick Hogan and Jack Cosgriff combine it with another Avery obsession—hunting. In this case, a Louie Schmitt-designed rabbit tries to keep Speedy the hunting dog awake all night and thus too tired to go rabbit hunting in the morning. Avery, Hogan and Cosgriff give us a string of gags.

One is the rabbit putting a phone to the sleeping dog’s ear. An operator (Sara Berner) spews out a litany of standard operator lines (“Number, ple-ase,” “They do not answer,” “Your three minutes are up,” etc.) until the dog strangles the phone receiver, killing the operator. I love the little expression with the dog’s rolling up to look at the receiver.



Kids reading this post on your smartphone, note: until the 1950s, every single time you wanted to use your phone, you had to go through an operator. Can you imagine that today?

Bobe Cannon was in the Avery unit at the time this cartoon was made, along with Walt Clinton, Grant Simmons and Mike Lah.

A Soldier and a Star

The U.S government used all the weapons in its arsenal to raise money for bonds during World War Two. Including tears.

Here’s the heart-tugging text from a box ad for War Bonds. It appeared in the New York Sun of September 9, 1943 and the space was provided courtesy of I.J. Fox, “America’s Largest Furrier.” It shows the generosity of Jack Benny.

“HE DID IT THE HARD WAY”
BY ED SULLIVAN
Famous Daily News Columnist
The game we played has ended, and the boy in the last bed of a ward at Halloran Hospital has died . . . We met one night I’d taken a show out there, and after the main show, we’d gone through the wards to let the badly hurt kids meet Jack Benny, the Andrews Sisters, Pat Henning, Jimmy Durante, Block and Sully, Avis Andrews.
We were just about to leave this particular ward when over in a corner bed, something stirred, and the something was a boy . . . So I went over and talked to this boy, and he looked at me uncertainly through hot and fevered eyes . . . "Would you like to meet Jack Benny?" I asked him, and then, he grinned and whispered: “Stop your kidding” . . . So I got Jack from another ward, and so strong is training that the badly-wounded boy asked me if his hair was combed right . . . “Want to look my best when Mister Benny comes in,” he explained weakly . . . Benny was as nice as he could be to him, and the boy's appreciation glistened in his eyes . . . His name on the chart at the foot of the bed was Arthur Ford, from a little town in Georgia.
“We’re going to be back here with another show in a couple of weeks,” I told him . . . “Maybe I won't be here,” the boy whispered. “I don't feel too hot, Mister. They got me right through the stomach” . . . So I pretended to bawl him out, and told him he’d BETTER be there when we came back to the ward in two weeks, figuring that if he had some definite date to look forward to, it would keep him holding on to life . . . We shook hands on it.
All that night, I couldn’t get the boy’s face out of my mind, so early the next morning, I called Father Bellamy, out at Halloran . . . He checked with the doctors . . . “Ford had the best night’s sleep he’d ever had. Meeting Jack Benny was the finest medicine the doctor could prescribe” . . . The rest of that day, I walked on air.
Each succeeding telephone call confirmed the optimistic news . . . Ford was holding his own, Ford was a little better . . . Each day, the chaplain and the Red Cross women made it a point to stop at his bedside over in the corner and remind him of his date with us . . . And with a definite date to focus on, and to live for, Ford had a calendar which helped him to keep on living, or so I prefer to think . . . And then, after keeping that date, the worn boy died one night, very peacefully.
Whether or not his folks, down in Milledgeville, Ga., ever learned from him that in the last month he had played a game that brought to his bedside people who were rooting for him. I don’t know . . . But they should know of it, because it will bring some measure of consolation to them to learn that this was so . . . In his last struggle, they should know that their son, or brother, was not a small town Georgia boy alone in a big city of Yankees . . . He was with people who regarded him as one of their own, and when he died, in the North, of wounds received while landing on a faraway shore, we regretted it bitterly, while acknowledging that the wearied and wounded boy finally had found the one opiate to ease his pain.
Because of Arthur Ford, who died at Halloran Hospital, I’m going to buy as many War Bonds as I can in this Third War Loan Drive . . . As he whispered to us that night in the dimmed ward, the Germans got him right through the stomach . . . I figured that if young Ford could sacrifice his life for me, and for you, the least we can do is to buy bonds, which pay interest . . . He and other boys like him took the worst of it, to give us the best of it . . . He did it the hard way—buying bonds is the easy way.

Sullivan was employed by a rival New York City newspaper, hence the Sun only dubbed him “famous daily news columnist.”

Benny not only did broadcasts from military compounds in the U.S. during the war, he also toured overseas. He toured Korea during the war there. Daughter Joan Benny relates in her book that she discovered her father kept detailed notes about many of the soldiers he met and took the trouble to contact their families once he returned to America.

That might have done as much to help the war effort than any bond could.

Silent Cartoonist Wallace Carlson

Newspaper cartoonists must have looked at the fame of the New York Journal’s Winsor McCay and the success of his animated cartoons of the pre-World War One era and thought “Hey, I can make some money on the side that way, too.” A host of newspapermen got into the animation business. Most were pushed out after sound films arrived in the late ‘20s.

One of them was Wallace Carlson. He came up with original characters—Dreamy Dud (see frame to the right), Otto Luck, Goodrich Dirt—and supplanted in the public consciousness in the 1920s by Felix the Cat and Koko the Clown. He slashed out a 1000-foot cartoon every few weeks for Essenay before leaving in 1917 to work on the Paramount-Bray Pictographs.

New York City was the centre of professional animated cartooning at the time, but he decided to forsake it and return to Chicago. There, he opened a studio. His obit in the Chicago Tribune of May 10, 1967 reveals he was producing “features for the movies.” It’s unclear how long the venture lasted. But it seems Carlson was content to go stick with newspaper cartooning.

Here’s a biography published in the Trib on December 24, 1951, long after his animation days had ended.

CARLSON DRAWS HUMAN FOIBLES IN HIS MALARKY
Cartoon Career Began When He Was 12
BY LESLIE MONYPENNY
Wally Carlson, who draws Mostly Malarky for The Tribune, has been a professional cartoonist for 42 years, but that doesn't mean that he was around for the Fort Dearborn massacre. It's simply that he began when he was 12.
It takes a lot of insight into human nature—both the saint and sinner parts of it—to keep pouring out cartoons that reflect human foibles as consistently and funnily as do Carlson's; but in 42 years Carlson has done a lot of observing of his fellow human "critters."
The cartoonist is 54 and he was born in St. Louis. His mama was Danish and his papa was Swedish, so it seems a sure bet that he was born in Minnesota. He insists, however, that this is not so.
Baseball Cartoons First
Carlson was 8 when he breezed into Chicago and he got into the newspaper business four years later—the delivering end; but at the same time he began drawing baseball cartoons. A cigar store owner bought them for 50 cents each and hung them in the window.
By the time he was 14, he'd finished with such picayunish tasks and was selling his sports cartoons to the old Chicago Inter-Ocean. But he was a fast moving youngster, and he soon was assigned to do a daily sports drawing. Sometimes, too, he did front page political cartoons.
Thus, at an age when most youngsters are thinking about how to get any kind of a job. Carlson was page one in a metropolitan city. He also was quite a celebrity around Lane Technical High school, but it wasn't enough. So he took a whirl at vaudeville doing "chalk talks" for the customers.
Breaks Into Films

Carlson was 17 when the Inter-Ocean was sold. He bounced briefly over to the old Chicago Herald, then decided that the animated cartoons of the movies were a good field. He was a pioneer at this type of drawing and did the writing for them as well. He was only 19 when he became the star animator at the famous old Essanay in Chicago.
The studios then had such folks as Lewis Stone, Francis X. Bushman, Charlie Chaplin, Ben Turpin, Gloria Swanson, and Wallace Beery on the payroll—names all well known to an older generation of moviegoers. They inspired Carlson to do a "bit" role in a movie.
The young man swore off after seeing himself, altho he still is a good looking gent with wavy hair. He went back to the animated cartoons. He explains that he got the idea for the animation when he was in school. It seems that he drew small skeletons on the corners of the pages in his books. When he flipped the pages, the figures "moved."
Starts Studio In Chicago
At 21 Carlson was in New York City with his animated cartoons—full length features which captivated audiences. By 1929—when he was 33—he had formed his own studios in Chicago.
Carlson's brother, Carl, was a partner in the firm, and it employed some pretty famous personnel. Included were George Clark, Bill Holman, Harold Gray, and some others who still work at the trade in Hollywood. Clark now draws The Neighbors; Holman draws Smokey Stover and Nuts and Jolts, and Gray draws Orphan Annie. All are in The Tribune.
Carlson followed his employes into the fold of The Chicago Tribune-New York News syndicate and his Malarky is read wherever newspapers are published thruout the nation.
Malarky Has Companions
The cartoonist uses many other characters besides Malarky in his work. Sometimes he uses a strip of several drawings and at other times a single panel. All are peopled by such delightful folk as Mazie and Daisy, Weatherby, and the Malarky wife and son.
The creator of Malarky does his work in a small studio in a Michigan av. office building. His studio windows overlook Lake Michigan, and the long, long view helps rest his eyes after long hours at the drawing board.
Carlson loves to fish and hunt. He is in much demand at public functions as an amateur magician and story teller, and his dialects are versatile and funny. He lives in Chicago and is happily married to a southern girl, the former Patricia Edenton. He has a son, Richard, 25, by a previous marriage.
Would Carlson advise aspiring young cartoonists to take art or drawing lessons?
Well, he points out wryly, he sever had a lesson in his life; but he'd be glad to take one right now—if he had time!
Note: Carlson absolutely refuses to tell which of the two cleaning women is Mazie. The other, he points out, is Daisy.

If you want to know a bit more about Carlson’s animation career, Donald Crafton’s Before Mickey is always a good reference book. And you can drop by Tom Stathes’ site “The Bray Animation Project” and read some more here.

The Beach Nut

Some outlines as Wally Walrus reaches to grab Woody Woodpecker in “The Beach Nut” (1944). Outlines like these were common in Woody cartoons for a few years. So was the perspective animation of something swooshing toward and past the camera.



Some perspective drawings as Wally pulls Woody back. These are animated on twos.



Dick Lundy and Les Kline are the only credited animators. I wondered whether the drawing below was Don Williams’ but someone will know.

Mail Call!

In “The Great Piggy Bank Robbery,” a wrinkled hand (missing a little finger) of a mailman delivers letters to Daffy Duck. Or does he?



Wait a minute! That letter’s addressed to Rod Scribner, who animated this cartoon (dare I say this is a Scribner scene?).



Who is the letter from? Hard to tell, other than the last name is Fitzpatrick. It could be Willie or Millie or Walter. Anyone know of a Fitzpatrick who worked at Warner Bros.?



Scribner, Manny Gould, Bill Melendez and Izzy Ellis are the credited animators.

The Game Show Host Who Wanted to be a (Blank)

When you hear the name “Gene Rayburn,” two words come to mind. They’re not “Broadway actor.” It’s a shame because I suspect those are the words Rayburn would have wanted to come to mind.

Rayburn fancied himself as a stage performer and got a huge break when he starred on the Great White Way in the musical “Bye Bye Birdie” in 1961. But he got lured back into the game show world on TV the following year to host the (here come those two words) “Match Game.”

Like most people in 1950s television, Rayburn began in radio. His initial fame came from co-hosting a morning show in New York City. Then he got national exposure on TV in the early ‘50s as the announcer on the original “The Tonight Show.” That’s a pretty good resume, but it wasn’t for Rayburn. Here’s a syndicated newspaper column published March 19, 1958.

● ● ●

TV In Review
Woes Plague Rayburn
By WALTER HAWVER
For Gene Rayburn, the last four years have been a frustrating case of hurry up and wait.
Back in 1954, the National Broadcasting Co. gave Gene a rush call while he was disc-jockeying at a New York station. “We have a time slot for you,” he was told. Gene dropped everything, got to work on a format and was all set to go before the cameras when the agency owning the time period exercised his option—on another show.
An ABC executive sought to placate the dejected Rayburn. “How’d you like to be ‘second banana’ to Steve Allen, until we get something for you?” Gene was asked. Steve was getting together his cast for the original Tonight show at the time, and Rayburn having burned his bridges behind him, joined up.
Rayburn has been with Allen since and his life has been one round of disappointments and bad breaks.
FIRST OFF, IN 1955, he came down with hepatitis and was bedridden for 16 weeks. “I’m an expert on this disease,” he said solemnly. “I read every piece of literature on it.
“The thing that broke my heart is that I got sick just when Steve and the others went to California for 10 weeks. That was when Steve did ‘The Benny Goodman Story.’”
Rayburn got to California the following year but he did it the hard way. He broke a leg skiing. “Plaster cast and all, I went this time,” he said.
Although Gene was an important cog in the Tonight show, when Allen shifted over to Sunday nights exclusively he found himself with less and less to do. Occasionally he would get into a man-on-the-street sketch but usually he was concerned merely with getting the show on and off the air.

THEN GENE BECAME “the voice of Pontiac.” He was visualizing a future filled with security a la Bill Lundigan [who was the on-camera endorser for Chrysler] and Betty Furness [same for Westinghouse] when Pontiac decided the next season to get out of television.
“This fouled me up, but good,” Rayburn recalled. “I thought I had a good chance to become Buick’s announcer but somebody mentioned that ‘product association’ business. I’m dead as a car announcer for five or six years, until they forget I ever sold Pontiacs.”
Gene was never lower in spirit when NBC finally came through with the show of his own it had promised him four years before. Both the Home show and Arlene Francis had failed to hold an audience in the mid-morning period and the network decided to try a quiz program in this time.
The program is Dough Re Mi, a giveaway devised by Jack Barry and Dan Enright. Inasmuch as this team was responsible for both Tic Tac Dough and Twenty-One, two of television’s most successful quiz shows, no one can blame Rayburn associating himself with Dough Re Mi. But I, for one, can commiserate with him over the long hot Summer ahead. If the show lasts that long.
If you haven’t seen the program, it is a rather uncomplicated affair built around the old game of spotting tunes from a few notes. Three contestants bid for the right to guess a song’s identity with $100, $300 and $500 riding on the answers. If this sounds like a dull outing, it is.
IT SEEMS EXTREMELY doubtful that this show will do anything for Rayburn. Although Gene fancies himself as a comedian, he hasn’t shown any inclination to Dough Re Mi as a springboard for larger things in that direction. He apparently visualizes his assignment as keeping the contestants at ease and the game moving along pleasantly and expeditiously as possible.
While this is sufficient for the quiz show which has either (a) a lot of money to give away, or (b) exceptional personalities among its contestants. Dough Re Mi has neither. I’d like to see Gene take advantage of his hard-won position and strike out boldly to establish the show as one in which the quiz-master is more important than the quiz. He has nothing to lose. And he might attract the attention has sought these four long years.

● ● ●

In a way, Rayburn kind of accomplished that last paragraph. In the ’70s incarnation of “The Match Game,” the game was pretty much secondary—but not to Rayburn, as he steadily held the show together. The six stars were more important than the contest.

Here’s a little more background on Rayburn from a piece found in the Jamestown Post-Journal of July 2, 1960. “The Match Game” hadn’t come along yet, and neither had “Bye Bye Birdie.”

● ● ●

Top TV Personality
Gene Rayburn Does Unexpected
By JAMES MCMAHON
Early morning risers in the 40's will never forget me zany skits and humorous chit-chat with which they were greeted by radio's "Jack and Gene" show which later became the "Rayburn and Finch." The guiding light behind these shows' almost unlimited store of humor was Gene Rayburn. Not only the public but the entire entertainment world was amazed at the inexhaustible material which made up the daily format of the show. It was a program unique for its time.
This radio show also known as "Anything Goes" proved an excellent stepping stone for Gene Rayburn. As star of "Dough Re Mi" on NBC-TV (Monday through Friday 10 A.M. EDT), viewers and contestants alike have become prepared to expect anything to happen.
On Labor Day of last year, "Dough Re Mi" opened with the announcement that, because of the holiday, there would be no show. Viewers then saw the staff scurrying away, cameramen removing lenses from cameras, and the studio lights dimming.
Though the idea for this gag opening came just before air time, everyone connected with the program quickly got into the spirit of things for the unexpected is to be expected on this informal musical quiz show.
Gene has a lot to do with the surprises and humor that mark the program. Almost all the comedy results from Gene's spontaneous and inventive ideas. Undoubtedly, his varied background and comic talents contribute much to his ability to guide the show through these impromptu moments.
Gene was born in the town of Christopher, in the southern part of Illinois, but grew up in Chicago where his family moved when he was still an infant. He attended grammar school and Lindbloom High School there before entering Knox College in Galesburg, Ill. He left college after his freshman year to come to New York where he was hired as a page by NBC.
Between guide tours, he attended the network's announcing school where out-of-town station mangers hired young men aspiring to careers in radio. He soon landed his first announcing job. It was with WGNY in Newburgh, N.Y., where he remained for a year and a half. He then moved to WITH, Baltimore, and later to WFIL, Philadelphia, finally returning to New York, 1942, to work at WNEW. He stayed there until enlisting in the Air Force.

After the war Gene returned to WNEW and started a morning radio program that was to be an important springboard in his career. His first partner was Jack Lescoulie, and they billed themselves as "Jack and Gene." When Lescoulie quit to go to another station, Gene teamed up with Dee Finch and became known as "Rayburn and Finch." The show lasted more than five years, until 1952, when Gene joined NBC, where he has worked continuously ever since. First, WRCA (then WNBC) gave him his own radio program, and two years later he joined Steve Allen on the latter's local television show. He continued with Steve Allen on the NBC-TV Network's "Tonight" and then on the Sunday evening "Steve Allen Show." He has been the Star of "Dough Re Mi" since it premiered Feb. 24, 1958.
Gene's other TV appearances have been on panel shows and in dramatic roles on "Robert Montgomery Presents," "Kraft Theater" and other series.
"When I did 'The Man Who Vanished' on 'Robert Montgomery Presents,' I developed a real thirst for dramatic acting, and I haven't lost it I am extremely anxious to do a play on Broadway."
He also has done extensive Summer Stock work, including appearances in "Seven Year Itch" and 'Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" Last summer he broke all records at the Buck's County (Pa.) Playhouse where he starred in "Who Was That Lady I Saw You With?"

● ● ●

Despite Rayburn’s hope for a stage career, he was convinced to accept the host’s job on “The Match Game,” which debuted December 31, 1962. The celebrities were NBC stalwarts Arlene Francis and Skitch Henderson on the first week, Sally Ann Howes and Abe Burrows on the second, and Peggy Cass and Peter Lind Hayes on the third. Rick DuBrow of UPI reviewed the opener. His column of January 3, 1962 containing this sting:

NBC-TV this week is initiating a new daytime quiz show, "The Match Game," in which panel teams try to write the same answer to questions by the host, Gene Rayburn. The original match game, which requires only a book of matches and a cozy tavern, was taught to me in Gus' Pub in Chicago, and I can assure you it is more pleasant. The new show is dreadful, geared for incredible simpletons and the screaming ninnies in the studio audience. Wednesday, a panelist could not think of a city in Asia. A guest, Arlene Francis, thereupon named Viet Nam as a city.

If DuBrow was cringing over the studio seat warmers in the sedate 1960s version (questions were of the “Name a state that begins with the letter I” variety), one can only imagine what he thought of the frenzied audience of the 1970s (answers included “tinkle,” “boobs” and, on at least two occasions, made veiled references to Charles Nelson Reilly’s sexual orientation).

I quite liked the original show (especially the great theme, “A Swingin’ Safari”) and was a little disappointed when the new one came on in 1973 because it wasn’t really the same. However the celebrities jelled, and I don’t think any game show has provided more laughs than the re-born Match Game. It’s something I’m sure Rayburn was proud of. But I still get the idea he kept hoping for a phone call to return to the stage, and sing and dance with a Birdie.

Wile E. Bird

You know how Wile E. Coyote used to paint a tunnel on the side of the rock and the Roadrunner would be able to go through it but Wile E. smashed himself when he tried to do it? Well, Mike Maltese didn’t come up with that gag.

The same kind of thing can be found in “The Early Bird Dood It,” the first cartoon assigned to Tex Avery to direct at MGM, with Rich Hogan getting the story credit.

The boid (Frank Graham) zips to the hole of the worm (Kent Rogers) and covers it up.



Then he paints a hole on the ground and hides.



The worm jumps into the “hole.” The bird reacts with about three times as many drawings as Avery would use a few years later. I’ve only posted one.



The bird tries leaping into the “hole.” You know what happens next. Notice how Avery makes the impact seem bigger by replacing the background drawing for one frame with a bright colour card. He does it elsewhere in the cartoon.



Irv Spence, Preston Blair, Ed Love and Ray Abrams are the credited animators.