But Was It For a Cup of Coffee

Life imitates art on occasion, and a good example was in Chicago in 1970.

Jack Benny was smitten with the comedy of Frank Fontaine, a night club comic who did a character that eventually became named Crazy Guggenheim on “The Jackie Gleason Show.” In 1950, he built a whole radio show around Fontaine’s talents, which began with Fontaine panhandling a dime from Jack who, in shocking generosity, gave him 50 cents instead.

No doubt Carol Kramer of the Chicago Tribune, writing some 20 years later, didn’t know any of this. But she bookended a newspaper piece on Jack with the same kind of incident that took place in real life. It sounds like Jack was making the rounds to do publicity stories on his coming TV special but, as it always seemed to be the case, interview ending up touching on other topics. The story was published by the Chicago Tribune News Service on November 15, 1970.

I don’t know how much exposure Stephen Leacock got in the U.S., but Jack certainly knew his work. In Canada, his short stories were read in elementary school some 50 years ago.

Jack Benny...he’s really a very generous man.
By Carol Kramer
A hippie walks up to Jack Benny, who’s strolling down Madison Avenue, and says, “Mister, could you give me 50 cents?”
It sounds like a variation of the famous Benny joke about the thief who says to him, “Your money or your life,” and Jack answers, “Let me think about it.”
Surprise!! Jack didn’t think about it for an instant. He just reached into his pocket and gave the kid 50 cents. As he walked away, Jack grinned and said, “He’ll probably spend it on dope—if he can get any for 50 cents.”
There goes that myth, carefully built up in the 76-year-old comedian’s long career. Of course, we all suspected that it was untrue and when you ask Jack what he thinks his biggest virtue is, he pauses for a while, and says, “I think I’m fairly generous.” And if you asked Mary Livingstone, she’d “probably say I’m kind, which includes being generous, I suppose.”
Jack and Mary were in New York recently because he was being honored at a “Salute to Jack Benny” sponsored by the Manhattan School of Music for raising $5 million for symphony orchestras in the last 14 years.

“It was a real class show,” Jack said the next afternoon as we drove to a photo session. He was posing for a series of ads and had brought his bright blue sports jacket—the one that Mary thinks is too loud. And yes, it does match those baby blue eyes, and when you tell him, he smiles proudly.
But that’s almost the only trace of vanity you can find in Jack Benny. He’s become an institution during his long career being vain, cheap and 39. He still is 39. I know because as we were strolling down the street after the photo session a couple of women recognized him and asked for autographs. “Are you still 35, Mr. Benny?” one of them asked. “No,” he smiled. “39.” And they giggled.
Tomorrow Jack will celebrate his 20th year in television with an anniversary special. His television career really began on Oct. 28, 1950, and he’d already been on radio for 18 years.
Mary hasn’t been seen professionally for 14 years because stage fright finally got the best of her. But she will be on the anniversary show. Her segment was taped in September and she was given the right of approval. But she liked it, much to the surprise of her husband. “Boy, when Mary likes something, it must be good.” She'll be seen in a sketch with Lucille Ball, who plays her maid.
Other guests will be Bob Hope, who won’t discuss politics [“Being my anniversary, he’s only going to talk about me,” Jack says], Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore. And it wouldn’t be a Jack Benny show without Eddie Rochester Anderson, Don Wilson, Dennis Day, Mel Blanc and the other regulars. They only get together when Jack does a show. “We like each other,” he says, “but we don't have much in common.”
He’s also not particularly funny. His friend, George Burns, the man he’s been trying to make laugh for years and years, is funny in person. As Jack was having his picture taken, the photographer asked if he could pose sitting on the floor with his legs crossed.
“I don’t think that’s such a difficult trick,” he replied dryly. “I couldn’t stand on my head, tho.” Then he added, “If you asked George Burns that question, he could do 49 minutes on it.”
It’s true that George still does the match bit. Whenever they’re at a party and he sees Jack lighting a cigaret, he shouts, “Quiet everyone, Benny is going to do his match bit.” Jack just smiled to himself thinking of that.
We were walking back to his hotel, a 14-block walk, as people recognized him and shouted “Hello, Mr. Benny.” The hippie was probably the only one who didn’t know it was Jack Benny.
We talked about his favorite comedians. He loves the writings of the Canadian humorist, Stephen Leacock. “I’ve read everything he’s written four times over.” And he’s a Bob and Ray fan. “I’ve always meant to send them a fan letter. I’m sorry I didn’t.”
When I asked Jack if he would like to make a movie again [remember “Buck Benny Rides Again”?] he said, “Who would pay to see me?” further reducing that image of vanity.
He does go to the movies, however. His friends talked about “I Am Curious, Yellow” so much that he finally went to see it because he didn’t believe what they were saying about it.
“It was really boring and the people weren’t even good looking. I don’t know how people can perform like that in front of the cameras. It’s hard enough for me to do it without an audience."
Then we talked about his career. He’s proudest of his ability as an editor of humor. “Writers of humor say I am.” And he’s very critical of his own performances.
“The best thing about my career,” he says, “is that it’s lasted so long.”
And maybe some day he’ll make George Burns laugh.
[Chicago Tribune Press Service]

The World of Animation, 1930

1930 was a year of change in the world of theatrical animation. Ub Iwerks opened his own studio. Charlie Mintz moved his entire studio (minus a few staffers) from New York City to Los Angeles. And, the most important development, Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising signed a contract with Leon Schlesinger to make cartoons for release by Warner Bros.

With the coming of sound, the rise of Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse and the expansion of animated cartoon studios, in spite of the Depression, sparked a number of newspaper feature stories about the industry in 1930. One we haven’t reprinted here, until now, is from Billboard of July 12th. The paper was very much an entertainment publication in those days; it didn’t decide to focus exclusively on music until rock and roll came about. It gives a pretty good summary of the theatrical cartoon situation at the time. The trade ads accompanying this story are from Variety.

Cartoon Film Demands Increased Productions
Comedy featurettes so heavy in making that they become an industry with an industry—demand for children’s entertainment has numerous producers in field.
NEW YORK, July 7—The increased popularity of animated cartoons, among exhibitors and patrons of motion picture houses in this country, has developed to such an extent that marked activity of the producer’s part to turn out this product is noted. There are no less than five of the major-producing firms today which are producing from one to three different sets of series of the cartoon short subjects. Independent producers add about seven more to the catalog of animated cartoons available to exhibitors today.
The popularity of this type of entertainment with the youngsters who read the Sunday comic sheets, and with a large percentage of grownups in motion picture audiences, is said to be responsible in part for their increased production. A new and enlarged medium of humor expression has been developed via the cartoon talkies, some producers even making them in four languages, introducing Technicolor sequences and stressing their important to exhibitors almost as much as the feature-length productions.
The growth of animated cartoons, since the experimental days of the silent with the Inkwell series and the Max Fleishman [sic] Felix the Kat [sic] cartoons, has been contemporaneous and equally as remarkable as the growth of the sound and dialog films from the nickelodeon days. Large plants and enormous staffs, devoted exclusively to the making of animated cartoons with sound, color and dialog, have been established for production in various parts of the country. Considerable technical equipment has been evolved for the making of these cartoons, and today it has become an industry within an industry. Writers, artists, technicians, cameramen, sound engineers and directors are engaged with nearly a score of companies in manufacturing these short subjects, not to speak opf clerical, sales and laboratory help required to make and market the product.
Among the major producers actively engaged in making animated sound cartoons are Pathe, with its Aesop’s Sound Fables, known since the silent era as Aesop’s Fables, and today developed to a high degree by the Van Beuren Corporation thru the Pathe release; Paramount with its Talkartoon Series; Warner Bros. with a Looney Tunes Series, created by Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising, and designed as special song pluggers for the feature picture theme songs; Universal, with three distinct series, including Oswald the Rabbit, Fanny the Mule and a series known as Strange as it Seems, created by John Hix and released thru “U” by special arrangement with the McClure Syndicate, and Education, with its series of Paul Terry-Toons. The chief independent producers of the cartoons are Columbia, with two series, the Disney Silly Symphonies and the Krazy Kat Kartoons, and among the State-right producers, Celebrity Productions, releasing the Micky Mouse Cartoons; Copley Films, releasing Felix the Cat series, and Cinema Cartoons, releasing Bonzo the Puppy Dog, created by George E. Studdy.
Sound and dialog cartoons have necessitated a new technique in originality of design, selection of subject matter, musical accompaniment, distribution and exploitation. As to originality, many of them were born in motion pictures in the days of the silents and have merely been improved upon with sound and dialog. Others were inspired from or deliberately purchased from the newspaper cartoon strips, while some were conceived purely as competitive invitations.
Selection of subject matter has been developed to a high degree thru various stages of experimentation with audience reaction and novelty of plot. Many are intended merely as mediums for song plugging, others for humorous program fillers and some even for advertising purposes. Occasionally suggestive matter is injected into the continuity, but public taste is gradually eliminating this practice by protesting to exhibitors. It is reported that the public demands the producer keeps cartoons clean because of their special appeal to children and minors. For the most part, musical accompaniment has been of the popular variety, with occasional classical masterpieces burlesqued in the synchronized action. Distribution and exploitation have been largely left to the exchanges, with their facilities for that purpose, tho many of the major producers have given special attention to these matters.
In line with the development of cartoons, another allied branch of the novelty short-subject field appears to be growing space. These are the variations of what may be called “Idea Offshoots” of cartoons, such as the modeled clay novelties distributed by Fitzpatrick Pictures in their Holiday Series Marionettes, created by Tony Sarg; Animated Toys, such as the Spark Plug and Katzenjammer Kids dolls, and the MGM shorts which have only dogs as the chief characters of the story. While the distribution of this last type of novelty shorts is not so large as the sound and dialog cartoons, there is said to be considerable demand for them among exhibitors and their patrons, as evidenced by the results obtained through exploitation on the existing ones.

Running Outlines

One way to move a cartoon character faster is to turn it into an outline. And that’s what an uncredited animator did in the Terrytoon “Africa Squawks” (1938). A rhino takes exception to being shot by Major Doolittle and chases after him. The rhino becomes an outline. So do the fleeing major and his English butler.



Apologies for the lousy screen grabs. Maybe Viacom wants to restore these cartoons and make them available to home viewers. Thanks to Devon Baxter and his sources for the cartoon.

Telescope Eyes

Screen Gems cartoons of the mid-‘40s were, at best, watered down versions of Warner Bros. or MGM shorts, complete with pirated characters. At worst, they were just plain bizarre.

Here’s a telescope-eye take from Bob Wickersham’s “Snap Happy Traps”; it’s the kind you’d find in a Woody Woodpecker cartoon. A young mountain lion—at least, I think that’s what it is—doesn’t like milk fed to it by a Barney Bear stand-in. Why? Who knows. Columbia cartoons don’t make a lot of sense at times.



The animation can be pretty good in these Columbias—Chick Otterstrom and Ben Lloyd get the credits on this one—but Cal Howard’s stories are all over the place. Why does the bear dress up like a mouse? Howard doesn’t seem to care as long as there’s a gag in there (when the gags fit, they’re not too bad. There’s a funny one about a mousie cheering squad that zips into the scene, complete with bleachers).

The guy who does the dopey dog voice on “Kitty Caddy” and Meathead in the MGM cartoons makes an appearance in this one as the bear. Impressionist/author/voice expert Keith Scott has speculated it’s Howard himself.

Fred Allen's Hollywood Dictionary

Fred Allen didn’t have a high opinion of an awful lot of things and anyone familiar with him knows that Hollywood wasn’t one of them. It seems every interview he gave while making a movie is filled with a litany of quotable put-downs; probably it was a refreshing change for entertainment reporters used to the same time of PR job they got while talking to the stars about their latest screen endeavour.

Here’s Fred in the Chicago Tribune of October 13, 1940. Nothing about sincerity and a flea’s navel, or oranges, in this one. But he listed some of these same definitions to other reporters in other interviews.

FRED ALLEN PENS ACID GLOSSARY OF HOLLYWOOD
Reactions to Sights, Stars Are Recorded.
Things actually change in radio. Eddie Cantor is back on the air after an absence of a year-broadcasting on NBC in Fred Allen's old period on Wednesday nights. And Fred Allen, who has been making a picture in Hollywood with his perennial "enemy" Jack Benny, is broadcasting at his same old hour—but on CBS.
After weeks and weeks in the movie capital Allen has set down some of his reactions to Hollywood, including its sights, jargon, and exotic inhabitants. This is what he has to say:
For several weeks I sat around the Paramount lot watching Jack Benny make a picture with me. [If it is ever released it will be called Love Thy Neighbor.]
To clarify Hollywood sightseeing, I submit a glossary of terms peculiar to this bizarre borough. If I help but one tourist to fathom Hollywood, its weird people, its grotesque industries and its synthetic sights, my work has not been in vain. To wit:
Hollywood—Bagdad in technicolor. Shangri-La with neon.
Main Street In Slacks.
Drive-In—A jallopy cafeteria. A pedestrian found lurking around a drive-in is either the waiter or the man who owns it.
Hollywood boulevard—Main street in slacks.
Hollywood bowl—Carnegie hall on the half shell.
Brown Derby—A popular eatery where from Iowa mistake each other for movie stars.
Movie Star's Home—The ultimate in stucco. An edifice erected on a beautiful lawn to keep strangers from getting a direct view of the star's swimming pool from the street.
Swimming pool—A demitasse pond that draws files and guests.
Defines a Barbecue.
Barbecue—A Hollywood function at which food is cooked and served in the backyard. A barbecue enables the hostess to get guests and mice out of the house simultaneously.
Director—The man who sits in a sprung canvas chair under the camera while a picture is being made. At intervals of two hours h yells, "This is a take."
Assistant Director—The man who shouts "Quiet!" before the director yells "This is a take."
Movie Star—Any actor who is working.
Double Feature Definition.
Fan—An urchin or fat woman in calico wrapper armed with a pencil and a dirty piece of autograph paper.
Double Feature—Twin mistakes made by the same—or two different—picture companies.
Free Lance—An actor who is always "between pictures," but never actually working in one.
Commissary—A ptomaine grotto on the lot where an actor portraying a millionaire in a picture retires at noon to bolt a hamburger.
Makeup Man—The only person who knows what the glamour girl really looks like. FRED ALLEN.

He Clocked Him

“A Bear For Punishment” shows off Chuck Jones’ mastery of poses in scene after scene.

Junior Bear has a table full of alarm clocks to make sure he wakes up so he can celebrate Father’s Day with his dad, who just wants his dullard family and the rest of the world to leave him alone. Including noisy alarm clocks.

“How do you turn these blasted things off?” bellows Papa Bear. Junior Bear simply goes “Shhh.” Pa shakes in frustration that he failed and his son didn’t. The drawings speak for themselves. Carl Stalling’s score builds up to the inevitable sock.



Ken Harris, Ben Washam, Lloyd Vaughan and Phil Monroe animated this cartoon; I suspect Dick Thompson and Abe Levitow were among the assistants.

Sheepherder!

The cattle-raising wolf chases after Droopy the sheepherder in the great Tex Avery cartoon “Drag-a-long Droopy.” The wolf gets off his horse outside a saloon.



He flips over. I imagine someone’s assistant worked on these drawings.



He gets up and rushes in.



Those of you familiar with the cartoon know this is the set up to the punch-line. The cattlemen in the saloon aren’t interested in the wolf’s cry to do something about the sheepherder Droopy. They’d rather watch TV instead, much like suburbanites of the 1950s would rather stay home and look at their box in the living room than go to theatres and see Droopy cartoons, or anything else. Dad-gum television indeed!

Avery’s regular crew of three credited animators—Lah, Clinton and Simmons—got screen credit on this, along with Ray Patterson and Bob Bentley.

They're Famous

The Famous Studios cartoons? To quote Arnold Stang as Gerard on The Henry Morgan Show—“Ech.”

I’m not a big fan of them. I’m not even a small fan, though I like Stang, Sid Raymond, Jack Mercer, Jackson Beck, Mae Questel and the other voice actors who worked on them. The Screen Songs are especially tiresome, especially when compared to the originals made by Max Fleischer, where the animation had charm and inventiveness (and don’t get me started on Casper or Little Audrey).

However, Famous played an important role in the history of Golden Age Cartoons, especially on the East Coast, and so it’s great to see Jerry Beck delving into the studio on his website at Cartoon Research, picking up on the work of Thad Komorowski, who examined ads for the Fleischer/early Famous cartoons from the internal Paramount publicity publication, enticing exhibitors to show them. Especially interesting is Jerry’s collection of cue sheets, which list the music cobbled together for each cartoon and reported to music publishing organisations. Unlike Carl Stalling at Warners and, to some extent, Scott Bradley at MGM, Sharples wrote much of the incidental music and occasionally tossed in a song people might recognise (for example, Jack Benny’s theme “Love In Bloom,” surfaced on a number of occasions, once with new lyrics sung by Jackson Beck as Bluto). Expert Dave Mackey says Sharples’ music was eventually available as a stock library; you can hear it in the Trans-Lux Felix the Cat cartoons for TV, to name one series where it was used.

Incidentally, the first Variety story about the Noveltoons I could find was published February 13, 1946:

For Skeds New Cartoon
New York, Feb. 12.—Paramount’s Noveltoons will introduce a new cartoon technique combining animation with actual scenic backgrounds. First short will be "New York, New York," producer Sam Buchwald announced. Inker will feature travelog of Gotham with pen and ink characters.

Cartoon Research lives up to its name. Jerry and his correspondents delve into assorted nooks and crannies of theatrical cartoons, always finding something that people didn’t know about. For the time being, he’s looking into Famous Studios product every Monday. Read the latest post HERE.

The Rise of Kenny Baker

At first, Kenny Baker was a shy young man who was grateful that he was given a huge break that practically made him an overnight national success. That’s if the publicity is accurate. But something happened between November 3, 1935 when he made his debut on the Jack Benny radio show and less than four years later when he didn’t show up for the final show of the season. He later declared he left because the character he was given on the show was grating on him and he didn’t want to be typecast. Baker hung around radio for another decade, even landing a starring sitcom, but he basically kissed the pinnacle of his career goodbye when quit Benny.

It would appear there were no hard feelings; perhaps Benny felt that Baker was bettering himself by sticking exclusively as the vocalist on The Texaco Star Theatre (he had worked on that show and Benny’s simultaneously in 1939). Jokes about Kenny Baker made periodic appearances on the Benny show for the next dozen or so years, and Baker returned for the Christmas show in 1946.

Here’s a syndicated feature story published in the Rochester Democrat of December 20, 1936 that gives a nice summary of Baker’s career up to that date.

A Timid Tenor
The Story of a Chap Named Kenny Baker, Who Really Is Very Modest
By Frances Morrin
KENNY BAKER is the Horatio Alger, Jr. of the networks; the answer to the success story writer's prayer. Unknown a year ago, today he is one of the big names in radio. In the year that he been the timid tenor on Jack Benny's hour, he has won his way into the hearts of the radio fans. Stacks of fan mall testify to that. And now he is act for a career in motion pictures with Mervyn LeRoy, Warner Bros.' ace director, as his sponsor.
His story has all the ingredients that go to make up the popular Horatio Alger, Jr., rags-to-riches story formula. Struggling young tenor playing tag with jobs runs away with high school sweetheart whose parents object to son-in-law who sings for a living. Terrific struggle ensues to keep their heads above water financially and then practically overnight comes fame and fortune.
Kenny, however, is inclined to discount his success and put it down to luck, as I discovered when I attempted to pry the story of his life from him one afternoon recently. We had made arrangements to meet at the reception room of the Hollywood NBC studios, and I admit I was curious about this young man whom I had -heard only over the radio.
When he came in in white ducks and a sweater he looked more like a six-foot college football player than a leading light of radioland. And he is not handsome; rather he belongs to the homely-but-cute school with his befreckled nose, generous mouth and shy but friendly manner.
AND definitely he is very modest about his arrival. The details he gives are very sketchy. When 1 asked him to tell me something about himself he said: “Well, I sang around here for several years and then, I won the Texaco Radio Open contest and that led to my engagement with Jack Benny. Now there’s a grand fellow, Jack.”
The first thing you know you’re talking about Jack Benny instead of about Kenny Baker. But by dint of much questioning of the young man himself and members of the Benny cast I finally pieced together his story. Kenny, who was christened Kenneth Lawrence Baker, is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Baker. He is one of those rare specimens, a native Californian, for he was born in the little town of Monrovia, Calif., a suburb of Los Angeles, 24 years ago.
We skip over the tender years of his life except to say that Mr. and Mrs. Baker had ambitions for their son to be a great violinist. Kenny admits that he wanted to play the violin, but not enough to practice very much.
The Baker family moved to Long Beach and it was while going to the Polytechnic High School there that he first began to take any great interest in singing. After graduation he decided definitely that he would follow a musical career and studied music theory at the Long Beach Junior College. While he was studying he entered the Atwater Kent radio contest but nothing happened.
THE next year, 1933, was an eventful year in Kenny's life. That was the year of the Long Beach earthquake. After the quake he quit school and went back to work. Just what the earthquake had to do with his leaving school and going to work I don’t know, unless it was that he had fallen very much in love with his high school sweetheart, Geraldine Churchill, and promised to show her parents, who objected to a crooner as a son-in-law, that he could make a living.
Or perhaps the earthquake convinced young Baker that life was short at best and that he should set about living in earnest. At any rate, he went to work in a furniture store. There followed a series of jobs including one as a day laborer on the Boulder Dam project.
Finally he managed to get steady work singing in a church in one of the small suburban towns. With a regular income assured Kenny decided to risk matrimony, so he and Geraldine, who had waited patiently for him, eloped. Then, as Kenny puts it, the fight started.
The church job vanished and the youthful Benedict found that there were many more tenors than there were jobs for them. He got a coach, Edward Novis, brother of Donald of radio fame, and worked with his voice, studied and practiced. He sang at night clubs, at churches, filled occasional radio engagements. Anything to keep the wolf from the Baker doorstep. Gradually he began to get local recognition, and finally became a member of the staff quartet on Los Angeles station KFWB.

IT WAS while he was singing there that he decided to enter the Texaco Radio Open contest held in Los Angeles last year. Much to his own amazement, he won it over the other 1,100 contestants.
“Boy, you don’t know how good $100 in cash looked to me. That was the prize and also an engagement to sing with Eddy Duchin’s orchestra at the Cocoanut Grove,” Kenny beamed as he told me this.
“It was while I was singing at the Grove that Mervyn LeRoy, the director, heard me. He came backstage after my act and told me he thought I had moving picture possibilities. I thought at first be was kidding, because I know I’m no Romeo. Then when he offered me a contract I signed it so fast I splattered ink all over the paper.”
Another famous personality caught Kenny’s act at the Grove. Jack Benny heard him, liked him, but did nothing about it. For Benny’s program was all set. He had Mary Livingstone, Johnny Green, Don Wilson, and Michael Bartlett was to take Frank Parker’s spot. But Bartlett failed to click as a radio personality. His voice, which thrilled the motion picture audiences, lost something over the air waves. So Bartlett withdrew from the cast.
Agents for the program called a number of singers for auditions to fill Bartlett’s place. Kenny says he didn’t know it was an audition for the Benny program when he was called or he would have been too scared to sing. And whether Benny asked for him Kenny says he doesn’t know. At any rate, before Kenny had finished his first song, one of Benny’s men tells me, Benny himself stepped from the control and said, “There’s the boy I want.”
CAME the first Sunday and time for rehearsal. (This part of the story was told me by one of the cast.) Jack and his cast were assembled when Kenny walked in. In his usual bashful manner he went over to a corner and sat down by himself. When they started to rehearse their lines, the young tenor was so nervous he fumbled his.
Jack, smart showman that he is, decided to capitalize on Kenny’s real personality, so they wrote his lines to portray him as the timid tenor. And the audience loved it. After Parker’s heckling of Benny for two seasons, the listeners liked a sympathetic character.
So after his first appearance he was signed for the season and proved so popular with radio audiences that he was contracted for the program again this year. This national recognition as a featured artist on Benny’s program has not increased Kenny’s hat size the fraction of an inch. If anything, he errs on the side of modesty, and I told him so.
He shook his head. “I’ve been very lucky,” Kenny says. “I have been fortunate enough to get the breaks and I know it. I haven’t had any pull and I have worked hard, but so have lots of others. So why should I get a swelled head? Look at Jack Benny.
“There is a fellow who has about everything anyone could want and yet he is the grandest guy you’d ever want to meet. Nothing high hat about him. And what a showman. He has a mind that works like lightning and can always turn a mistake into a laugh.
“SOMETIMES in rehearsing, someone will make a mistake and if Jack thinks it will get a laugh we put it in. For instance, when we were rehearsing for our first program this season, Jack’s line to introduce Phil Harris was ‘He’s the tall handsome, romantic type.’ Jack in reading it said ‘romantic tripe’ instead and it proved to be such a laugh we kept it in.”
When Kenny isn’t rehearsing for the show or trying out new songs, he likes to play handball, golf or go fishing. But soon, as he told me this morning over the phone, that will be a thing of the past. For just recently Mervyn LeRoy nought the Clarence Bodington Kelland story, “The Great Crooner,” for Kenny and will star him in it. It is a tailor-made story for the timid tenor of the airlanes, for it concerns a bashful young man who makes a tremendous hit as a radio singer, and was written by the author of “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.”
If tins story does for young Baker what Mr. Deeds did for Gary Cooper, he’ll be able to write his own ticket. But whatever happens, I’m gambling he’ll still be wearing the same size hat.

Baker’s entertainment career pretty much petered out at the same time as network radio did. He had a show on Mutual in the ‘50s and made some religious recordings. But it would seem he had enough money to walk away and spend time with his family and Christian Science endeavours. If he had any regrets, he never made them public.

Friz

Nobody goes on line or writes books to debate the merits of the Pacemakers shorts put out by Paramount. Or the Pathé Sportscopes released by RKO. Or Universal’s Variety Views. But you’ll find huge numbers of people endlessly lavishing attention upon animated cartoons released by the various movie studios at the same time as the previously mentioned shorts.

In 1947, all of those series—and many more—served the exact same purpose. They were short subjects that theatres could put on the screen and then send back the reel to the exchange and forget about it forever. But television changed that. The cartoons filled airtime directed at children, and were run over and over countless times. Kids who admired the cartoons wanted to learn more and became the first generation of animation scholars. They learned about, and told of, the people behind the cartoons. As result, today, many of the names of front-line people associated with cartoons could be considered part of pop culture.

One of the many is Friz Freleng.

Freleng lived into the era mentioned above so he was around to receive honours within the “animation community” and recognition of fans. He made the rounds in the glory days of seri-cels, when drawings from cartoons were re-created and signed by old time artists or directors. Making the rounds meant doing interviews and here’s one from the Chicago Tribune of January 31, 1989. Freleng deserves credit for making some of the best cartoons at Warners but the writer of the story goes a little too far. Freleng had nothing to do with assembling Tex Avery, Frank Tashlin or Mel Blanc at the studio. And we’ll leave the sub-head of “creator of...Bugs” alone. And saying Freleng did Roadrunner cartoons is like saying Dave Barry was the voice of Elmer Fudd. But it’s nice to see Freleng get accolades in the print medium.

Animated genius
The creator of Porky and Bugs is still quite a draw
by Deborah Sroloff
“Eh, what’s up, doc?”
“Thufferin’ thuccotash!”
“I tawt I taw a puddy tat!”
These catchphrases—uttered by Bugs Bunny, Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Pie—have become such part of our collective lexicon, it’s easy to forget that those critters are cartoon characters not real people. But, of course, there is real person behind all these celluloid crazies—Friz Freleng, resident genius of animation at Warner Bros. from the 1930s through the ‘60s.
In a 65-year career, Freleng was present at the birth of the animated cartoon, and still keeps his hand in exhibiting his limited-edition animation cels in 40 galleries nationwide, including the Circle Gallery in Chicago, where they are on continuous display.
Did he have any idea at the outset of his career that he would someday be an exhibited artist?
“No! We were making a living. We were just happy to do that kind of work. Now it’s considered art,” he says, shaking his head in bemusement.
Freleng, 82, was born in Kansas City, Mo., the birthplace of another animation giant, Walt Disney. He never lost his childhood interest in drawing, and in his teens intended to become a newspaper cartoonist.
“By the time I got out of high school,” he recalls, “I was looking for a job, and saw an ad in the paper for an office boy who could draw. . .It happened to be where Walt Disney had been working, [United Film Service].
“Walt had left for California, and one of my high school friends, Hugh Harman was there, getting ready to join Walt.
“ ‘Gee, I don’t know anything about animation,’ I told him—I didn’t even know how you got the drawings onto film! Well, he showed me little bit and told me to get a book called ‘Lutz’s Book of Animation,’ saying I’d learn everything had to know from there.
“Hugh left me there alone, and I was doing the animation, transferring paper drawings to celluloid, painting the cels. They didn’t have inkers and painters so I did everything myself. And, believe me, sometimes they came out pretty wrong! Then Hugh told Walt about me, and I came out to California.”
Though the association with Disney didn’t work out—“Did you ever try working for genius?” Freleng asks. “You do exactly what the genius wants. And you can never satisfy him, because you can’t do it as well as he can or as well as he’d like it done.”
He eventually set up a California production company with Harman, Rudy Ising and Ham Hamilton. In 1930, the dawn of talkies, they came up with a talking cartoon, “Sinkin’ in the Bathtub,” starring a character named Bosko. Warner Bros. then hired Freleng and thus began its golden age of cartoons: cartoons that were more wild, freewheeling and tongue-in-cheek than anything put out by Disney.
Freleng assembled a legendary group of cartoon men—Bob Clampett, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones and Frank Tashlin (who later went on to direct many of Jerry Lewis’ films) and, of course, the chameleonic-voiced Mel Blanc. And so were born a riotous of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies.
One of Freleng’s first creations was Porky Pig. “He was the first character that really took hold,” Freleng says. “That little, stuttering pig. How I came up with him was I had two fat playmates as kid, one we called Porky and one we called Piggy. To make him different, I had him stutter.”
The unit produces 10 to 12 cartoons year—an unaffordble feat today. “We figured they’d just run in the theaters and then disappear,” he chuckles. “Cartoons were like newspapers—you print it, you read it, it’s gone. Nobody even thought about TV; you never thought you’d see them again.”

With the use of the Warner Bros orchestra and cadre of irreverent writer-directors and animators, Freleng churned out laugh riot after laugh riot, starring Porky, Sylvester, Tweety, Daffy, Bugs, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam (Freleng’s personal favorite), the Road Runner and Wile Coyote.
“They really were personalities,” Freleng says of his creations. “People have asked me, and I ask myself, why can’t they do now what we did then? But we had the time and the patience and the desire to make those things come alive.”
And a studio. As Freleng is sadly aware, the cost of animation today is prohibitive.
“ ‘Roger Rabbit’ luckily had a producer and a director and a cartoonist who could think the same and believed in one another. But that’s very rare. The reason you see what you see on Saturday morning is that they can’t afford to make the cartoons here. You have to ship the story board off to Taiwan, where somebody you have no communication with is going to make it.