50s Design Fun From John Sutherland

I enjoy the work (that I’ve seen) of the John Sutherland studio, and I enjoy some of the drawing style used in commercial and some of the theatrical cartoons put out in the 1950s. So I really like the artwork in The Story of Creative Capital, a 1957 Sutherland industrial film.

The layouts are by Vic Haboush, who started with Disney, and the backgrounds are by Joe Montell, who was in the Tex Avery unit at MGM. Both of them ended up at Hanna-Barbera.

Forgive the low resolution, but here are some of the backgrounds.



Montell worked on Avery’s Farm of Tomorrow, by the way.



This particular short has been restored by the National Film Preservation Foundation. You can go HERE and watch the film.

Incidentally, there are three voice actors on this cartoon but only Marvin Miller gets credited. Daws Butler is Alf the Elf and Herb Vigran is Richard Van Winkle. Vigran worked on a number of Sutherland productions. And this post gives me an excuse to divert the topic for a moment and post a couple of photos I have of Marvin Miller.



My thanks to Mark Heimback-Nielsen who posted a note on Jerry Beck’s Cartoon Research Facebook page about this short.

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.