Frankie! (East Coast Version)

Here’s a wonderful pan shot (thanks to Nick Richie for snipping it together) from the opening of “Swooning the Swooners,” a 1945 Terrytoon take on the Frank Sinatra craze by Bobby Soxers that also made up the plots of cartoons at Warner Bros. and MGM.



Farmer Al Falfa tries bashing his radio with a broom to stop it from broadcasting the Sinatra cat from crooning into his home. The third time around, the uncredited animator adds lines and multiples of the good farmer to enhance the speed of the broom-bashing.



The cartoon’s not in the same ballpark as Frank Tashlin’s “Swooner Crooner” or Tex Avery’s “Li’l ‘Tinker” (floating seems to be a gag that doesn’t really build to anything). John Foster gets the mandatory story credit with Connie Rasinski directing.

They're Nuts

Whether it was characters reading title cards, stopping the action and demanding the credit roll or hatching out of nuts and then beginning the plot, Tex Avery found unique ways to open his cartoons.

The nut-hatching (the characters are “nuts,” get it?) begins after the credits appear in the 1937 Merrie Melodie “Daffy Duck and Egghead,” while Carl Stalling plays “Here We Go Gathering Nuts in May” behind the action. Daffy does two takes when he sees Egghead, who fires at the fleeing duck. Could this be an Irv Spence scene?



The “nuts” pun may have come from writer Bugs Hardaway, who loved obvious stuff like that. Virgil Ross gets the animation credit.

Incidentally, the music over the title card is “‘Cause My Baby Says It’s So” by Warren and Dubin from the 1937 movie “The Singing Marine.”

Burns On Benny (Again)

Cagey, clever and quick, that George Burns. He allowed old age to turn him into a celebrity raconteur with a zillion funny stories that netted him a pretty publishing penny. He told all kinds of tales about Jack Benny in his various books. Like a vaudevillian testing out a new act in Altoona, Burns reeled them out in interviews. The ones that went over best were kept and later found places in his best-selling remembrances.

Here’s an interview that ended up in Family Parade, a weekend newspaper supplement, of November 27, 1960. If you’ve read Burns’ books or seen clips of him on old Johnny Carson shows, some of these tales will be familiar. But they’re always fun to read again.

My Friend Jack Benny
By GEORGE BURNS
as told to Peer J. Oppenheimer
IT SEEMS LIKE only yesterday that I was sitting in my dressing room in Chicago and received Jack Benny's wire from Milwaukee: "Am arriving at 10 a.m. Meet me at the station."
I promptly wired back: "Glad you're coming to Chicago. What time do you arrive?"
A couple of hours later, Jack's second telegram was delivered. "I'll be there at 10 o'clock."
My second message went out by return wire: "If you don't tell me what time you're coming, I'll see you later at the hotel."
Three hours later, about 35 wires, sent by actor-friends of Jack, arrived simultaneously from all over the United States: "Jack Benny will be in Chicago at 10 o'clock."
I didn't meet him at the station, but I plastered the telegrams all over my dressing room. When Jack came to my room the next morning and wanted to know why I hadn't met the train, I said: "Because I didn't know what time you were coming in."
Jack and I exchanged such crazy—and expensive—communications for years until my Gracie and his Mary—his wife of 34 years—insisted we'd go broke if we didn't stop. So we switched to the telephone.
I would call him from almost anywhere, then hang up in the middle of the conversation. After a while it ceased to be funny, but I continued doing it because if I didn't Jack would think I was angry at him.
When Jack played Milwaukee once, comic Benny Rubin was there in a show and Jack made Rubin a $25 bet that if he phoned me I'd hang up in the middle of the conversation. Rubin took the bet, went to his room, called me, and told me about it. He went back, and Jack phoned me. I talked to him for about half an hour. Finally Jack said: "George, aren't you going to hang up?"
I said: "No, I've got half of Benny Rubin's bet."

A few years ago, Gracie and I played the Palladium in London. Unknown to us, Jack flew all the way to England to surprise us on opening night something of an accomplishment because it isn't easy for anyone as prominent as Jack to sneak into England without reporters and photographers spotting him.
The night before the opening. Val Parnell, managing director of the Palladium, gave a party in our honor. The affair was about half over when Val came over and said there was a phone call for me. When I picked up the receiver, a deep voice with a Cockney accent said a Mr. Benny was calling from Beverly Hills, Calif. A moment later, I heard Jack's voice clearly.
"Hi, George," he started out, "how do you feel? How's Gracie?" And he hung up. I went beck into the living room and told the other guests what a crazy fool Jack was, calling me all the way from Beverly Hills and then hanging up on me. And who was mingling among the guests? Jack—who had made the call from the kitchen!
This little gag of his should prove at least one point about Jack—he's not stingy at all. Flying back and forth for that opening must have cost him several thousand dollars at least.
In fact, he is probably the most generous guy in the world, although you'd never know it from him. He just doesn't talk about it. I don't know of any charity he has ever turned down. He has collected over $2 million for musicians' funds for symphony orchestras in numerous cities and has flown back and forth to New York City six or seven times a year to play charity concerts on the behalf of musicians. This takes about six or seven weeks a year out of his time, and at Jack's salary that's giving up a lot.
THERE ARE many misconceptions about Jack—like the one that he is a hypochondriac who's constantly worried about the state of his health.
This isn't true at all. The idea is probably based on his yearly visits to the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital for a checkup. Actually he spends four days a year at the hospital just to get a rest. Mostly he watches TV.
After his first night at the Cedars, Jack usually sneaks home for dinner and then returns to the hospital. It's expensive to eat at home and watch TV at Cedars of Lebanon for four days.
Talking about eating, if you eat with Jack, he's never happy with what he orders: he always wants what you order. Don't ask me why—he's just that way. If you order the same thing he has ordered, he's heartbroken.
That "other-peoples'-pastures-are-greener" attitude even extends to the houses we live in. That was proved about 25 years ago when I built an Early American-style house for Gracie, our son Ronnie, our now-married daughter Sandra, and myself in Beverly Hills.
When Jack saw our h he said: "Would you like to sleep in my bedroom?"
I said: "No, then you'd want to sleep in mine." He likes what the other fellow orders, no matter what.
Jack hasn't really changed much since I first met him 38 years ago, before I married Gracie. By the way, it was Gracie who introduced us. She used to live with two other girls, one of whom was a friend of Jack.
He was already doing well as a single, making $400 a week. We hit it off as soon as we met. I laughed at him on stage, and he laughed at me off. He was even telling stingy jokes then, and I remember one of his favorites about taking his girl friend out to dinner: he said something funny, and she laughed so hard at it that she dropped her tray.
Other comedians have gotten rid of their old material. Jack is a courageous comedian. When he gets a gag rolling, he keeps it going for years—like gags about his Maxwell and his money vault.

Our families have always been close. His daughter calls me "Uncle George," and my children call him "Uncle Jack." Our wives, Gracie and Mary, are very good friends, too. Mary's a sharp businesswoman, and Jack talks over everything with her and has a high regard for her opinion. Of course, Jack himself has a keen mind for business and is a good judge of people.
UNLIKE MANY close friends, we don't play cards together. The reason? Simply because I don't play gin, and Jack doesn't play bridge, and this is one time he doesn't want to sample my favorite.
We always go to each other's opening night, no matter what part of the country it's in. Jack usually drives his car, and I fly. Jack likes to drive—why, I'll never know. I drove with him about 10 years ago, and he smacked right into a wall. I looked at him and said, "Jack, you still drive better than you play the violin."
For the past 20 years, everything that has happened to Jack has been big, important things. So they ceased to be important, and the little things became important. Recently he was at his lawyer's to sign a contract for probably a million dollars. When he got home, he was very excited he had found out that if you drive down Wilshire Boulevard at 20 mph, you miss every red light!
That's my friend Jack Benny—he misses the lights but hits the walls.

The Saga of Sinbad and Salty

After Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera opened their own cartoon studio in July 1957, they developed a reputation for dependability and, more importantly, saleability. They made cartoons that kids wanted to see. Even when “Top Cat,” “The Jetsons” and “Jonny Quest” failed in prime time, they found new homes—and eager sponsors—on Saturday morning network programming.

Perhaps for that reason, Hanna-Barbera ended up taking over production of two cartoon series begun by others. One was Laurel and Hardy, the brainchild of Larry Harmon, who bought the rights to Bozo the Clown and franchised it into a nice little fortune. The other was “Sinbad, Jr.”

There was talk of a half-hour, combined live-action/stop-motion Sinbad in 1960—Screen Gems had signed a co-production deal—but it had nothing to do with the later cartoon series. For that, we have to zoom up to 1964 and the man who brought the world some of the ugliest and most unwanted cartoons—Sam Singer.

Singer inflicted “Paddy the Pelican,” “The Adventures of Pow Wow” and “Bucky and Pepito” on syndicated television in the 1950s. You can read his background in THIS POST. Singer somehow kept managing to find new partners willing to help him churn out new series. He had better success in 1960 with “Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse.” Then in 1964, something else came along.

American International Pictures is known today for its string of bikini pictures (pun not intended) and teen science fiction or horror movies such as “I Was a Teenage Werewolf.” By 1964, the studio was evidently looking to expand its distribution and its eye landed on the lucrative world of TV cartoons. Variety reported on July 29, 1964:

Vulcan Vamps 130 'Sinbad' Briefs For AIP-TDistribution
Vulcan Animations Ltd. execs met yesterday with American International Pictures reps to firm deal for 130 five-minute “Sinbad” cartoons. Shorts, which Vulcan will produce for AIP domestic distribution, will be released overseas by Transcontinental Distributors.
Monroe Rapaport heads Vulcan and Albert E. Marten is the president of TD. Sim Singer [sic] will be creative supervisor on cartoons.

Who was Monroe Rapaport and what was Vulcan Animations? For the answer, we turn to page 71 of the Oil, Paint and Drug Reporter, Volume 1957, published in 1950. It announced Rapaport, the former vice-president and technical director of Processed Chemical and Coating Corporation of Brooklyn, had taken over the ownership of Vulcan Lacquer and Coatings. It would appear Rapaport somehow got bitten by the animation bug and a corporate subsidiary, using the Vulcan name, was set up to make cartoons. Maybe. Vulcan seems to have disappeared from the picture pretty quickly. Variety reported on August 4th that American International Television had signed a term contract with Sam Singer Productions for worldwide distribution of the Sinbad Jr. cartoons, and production had already begun. No Vulcans were mentioned.

AI Television set a time frame it hoped to have the cartoons ready for stations and hit the road to sell them. Broadcasting magazine of November 16, 1964 reported some good news.

Metromedia 1st buyer of AI-TV cartoon series
In its first venture in U. S. TV production, American International Television Inc. announced last week it is producing and distributing an animated color series, The Adventures of Sinbad Jr. consisting of 130 five-minute segments.
James H. Nicholson, president of AITV, reported the series has been sold in advance of its official release date to the seven Metropolitan Broadcasting (Metromedia) TV stations: WNEW-TV New York; KTTV(TV) Los Angeles; WTTG(TV) Washington; KCMO-TV Kansas City, Mo.; WTVH(TV) Peoria, Ill.; WTVP(TV) Decatur, Ill., and KOVR(TV) Stockton -Sacramento, Calif. Sinbad is available for an early 1965 start.

1965 rolled along. Variety reported on January 22nd that the cartoons would go into syndication in March. That’s when full-page ads in trade papers appeared. On April 21th, Variety blurbed the cartoons had now been sold in 31 cities, but there was no indication whether they had begun airing. It’s altogether possible they weren’t as they were still being produced. Variety looked at the future of American International in its May 25th edition. The paper quoted executive vice-president Samuel Z. Arkoff about the cartoons:

Arkoff added that AIP has no plans for vidseries production beyond current “Sinbad, Jr.” cartoon strip of 130 5-minute episodes. Hanna-Barbera has taken over animation chores, he said.

What happened to Singer? Why did Hanna-Barbera take over? The paper is silent on both questions.

“No plans” in the Variety story was merely a fleeting consideration. Broadcasting magazine outlined in its October 11th edition:

AI-TV expands sales adds more films
American International Television, established as a TV distribution company 18 months ago, is expanding its sales operations throughout the world and is embarking on a new product acquisition spree.
Stanley Dudelson, vice president in charge of distribution for the company, a subsidiary of American International Pictures, reported last week following a month-long overseas business trip that AI-TV has set up sales representation in Paris, Rome, Toronto, Tokyo, and Madrid (from which Latin America will be handled temporarily). He said AI-TV also has begun negotiations for the co-production of three half -hour cartoon series in color; three half-hour cartoon series in black and white and a five-minute cartoon series.
Mr. Dudelson said the majority will be co-produced in Tokyo. He said details on these projects would not be given until contracts are signed.
In addition, he reported, AI-TV has acquired distribution rights to five color features from abroad, which will be edited, scored and dubbed for sale as 90- minute color specials. Titles include "The Friendly Amazon," "Witch Doctor In Tales," "Devil's Pass," "Volcanoes of the Devil" and "The Great Secret." AI-TV currently is distributing to stations more than 200 feature films and 130 five- minute color segments of the Sinbad Jr. cartoons.

What cartoons were being discussed with the Japanese companies? Ah, always more questions than answers when you delve into animation research. The trade papers are silent. If anyone has confirmed information that answers the question, leave a note.

And what of Sam Singer? Variety speaks of him no more. Neither does Broadcasting. Or Sponsor or any TV trade publications I’ve glanced through. However, the late Michael Sporn related on his blog his brief experience with Singer on the feature “Tubby the Tuba” (released in 1975). Read what Michael had to say about him HERE.

Helpful Animator

Animators can be helpful, even in their own cartoons. Witness this example from “The Lion Hunt,” a Terrytoon released at the start of 1938.

A group of chanting Africans chasing a lion are chanting around a palm tree. “Hey, stop!” yells an off-camera voice. The Africans stop and so does the background music.



“You’re barking up the wrong tree. Not that tree. This tree.”

A finger in live action appears and indicates the tree next to where they’re standing.



The finger, having done its job, moves off camera, the lions jumps down from the tree and the chase (and music) resume.



An imaginative gag from John Foster’s story department.

Missing Mouse

“I didn’t go back and still-frame it,” said animation writer and historian Earl Kress, “but it looked to me like Jerry disappeared for a frame.”

He’s talking on a commentary track for “Puss Gets the Boot.” Well, let’s still frame it for Earl.



Say, he’s right. Earl usually was. We miss you, Earl.

Oh, and here’s the missing drawing of Jerry from earlier in the walk cycle.

How To Be An Announcer

There is, out in the wide world today, a sub-set of the population known as Grumpy Former Radio People. Their main place of gathering is broadcasting message boards where they endlessly complain about the state of the radio industry today and how the airwaves are filled with low-salaried, semi-literate kids, unlike decades ago when sounds from their larynxes were flowing through microphones. Of course, they don’t seem to realise that their predecessors groaned the exact same thing about them.

Submitted as proof is this column from May 24, 1949 by esteemed radio observer John Crosby. Announcing had indeed changed from the early 1930s, where over-enunication and über-pear-shaped tones were the norm to allow people to be heard over the static and poor signals emitted by radios back then. That style quickly became obsolete as the technical side of broadcasting improved and would have sounded downright silly in 1949. But that didn’t stop nostalgic oldsters from waxing on about the “good old days.”

The Personality Kids
By JOHN CROSBY
PAT KELLY, N.B.C.’s chief announcer, celebrates his 20th anniversary with the network next month. He's somewhat the worse for wear and not altogether happy with the current crop of announcers.
Young announcers, he says sadly, can’t appear to get the hang of spoken English, a failure he blames on schools and colleges.
“We can’t undo the damage that’s done in schools. They’re not teaching English any more. Ninety per cent of the people in this country can never be taught correct English speech. They’ve heard it spoken incorrectly too long.”
MOST OF THE FAMOUS announcers of 15 years back have died or passed into obscurity, he reports. One famed announcer is now selling records to undertakers who hide record-players behind the ferns.
Alois Havilla, one of the best known of early announcers now practices his art on WNJR in Newark. Another once-famed NBC announcer works for a small Philadelphia station. Tastes have changed and few announcers were able to alter their voices with the fashion.
The old-style announcers, according to Kelly, used a beautiful precise diction. Or they bellowed.
Today sponsors prefer the chatty, chummy type of announcer like Harlow Wilcox or Harry von Zell. An announcer has to be a personality kid. Command of the language isn’t necessary.
ONE OF THE FEW old-time announcers to survive the revolution is Ford Bond, who once bellowed at the top of his lungs and is now as chummy as a loveseat.
Some announcers became so associated with a product that no other sponsor would take them. Ed Thorgersen, now the high priest of the newsreels, became so identified with Lucky Strikes that no one else would touch him when the Lucky Strike show dropped him.
Most good announcers have been either actors or singers. Graham McNamee, Milton Cross and Jimmy Wallington were all singers before they became announcers. Don Wilson and John B. Daniels were actors, Kelly himself was both a singer and an actor. Ben Grauer was a child movie star.
KELLY HAS HAD some grim evenings with announcers who had a drop too much to drink. One of the 19 announcers used on the Dr. I. Q. show—announcers are scattered all around the balcony on that program—went off on a toot.
When Dr. I.Q. said: “And now we will hear from Frobisher in the second balcony,” the only response was a dead silence. The announcer didn’t show up for five days. When he did, Kelly asked him what had happened to the 48 silver dollars with which he’s been equipped to pay off winning contestants.
“Oh,” said Frobisher blankly, “is that where I got all that money?”
The same man once walked out on the stage of the Philip Morris show, beating a Chinese gong which wasn’t part of the script. He threw the gong on the floor and jumped on it before several people fell on him and dragged him away.
THE LONGEST ad lib job in Kelly’s memory was that of Charley O’Connor.
O’Connor was sent out in an airplane to describe the arrival in his country of the Mollison plane. But the Mollisons didn't show up. For 45 minutes O'Connor circled around Long Island Sound in the dark, chattering about not very much.
An NBC announcer is a highly paid and fairly secure individual. The networks pays him at least $350 a month, generally more, and he may earn two or three times that in addition on commercial shows.
It's not an easy job to get, though. Vacancies occur only about once every two years and there is a long list of applicants. The ones who get in have to have five years’ experiences somewhere else.
IF YOU WANT to be to announcer, Kelly recommends a college liberal arts course with an English major, a course in speech, and as much acting as you can work in.
Kelly says if an announcer is good, it should be very hard to tell what part of the country he’s from. He should have no regional mannerisms. President Roosevelt, Kelly thinks, didn’t have a Harvard accent or any kind of accent.
“He just spoke good English,” declares Kelly.

In a few years, the Announcing Crop of 1949 would be complaining about the “death” of radio and lambasting the screeches of Boss Rock Jocks who, in turn... Well, radio, like life, appears to be an endless cycle.

Wild Bill

In “Wild and Woody!” a Western type has uncontrollable hiccoughs.



I’m certain Bugs Hardaway had to have come up with this gag. Nobody else would have tried this tired, obvious pun as the Westerner turns around.



And I’m about as certain Pat Matthews did the animation on this scene. He loved horizontal stretches, sliding a character a couple of frames instead of walking him and the angular mouth design you see in the second drawing (he used it in “The Bandmaster”). Ed Love gets the other animation credit.

Late word: I forgot that Mark Kausler has a copy of the animation draft for this cartoon and it’s on-line. Matthews did the above scene. La Verne Harding, Fred Moore, Ken O’Brien and Les Kline also worked on the cartoon in addition to Love.

Say, It Is!

It takes 23 seconds to get from here...



Through the clouds...



To here.

Only Tex Avery would try to see if he kept the audience that long before a gag pay-off.

This, of course, is from “Blitz Wolf,” his first MGM release.

Am I Blue?

There was a running gag on the Jack Benny radio show about his eyes. “Oh, they’re blue, aren’t they?” Bea Benaderet or some secondary character would remark. “Bluer than the thumb of a cross-eyed carpenter,” Jack would reply, or say something descriptive along those lines.

One thing people never accused Jack of being on the radio (or TV) was blue, a quaint term these days referring to un-family friendly material. Part of the reason was simply because the FCC wouldn’t permit it even if it slipped past sponsors or censors. But there was no FCC on the Las Vegas strip and it appears late in life, Jack’s material changed a bit.

But judging by this story from the Associated Press, Jack knew his audience very well and it wouldn’t let him get away with too suggestive material. He talked about it in this interview which also touched on his phoney age. It must have seemed to Jack like “39” was Mount Rushmore—it was carved in stone and there wasn’t much he could do to change it. And if it got laughs (and I suspect it still did), why change it?

This story appeared in papers on February 15, 1968.

Jack Benny, Once Again, Is 39
By CYNTHIA LOWRY
AP television-Radio Writer
NEW YORK (AP)—The world's oldest 39-year-old man—or perhaps its youngest 74-year-old—had a birthday Wednesday, but he was much too busy to pay much attention to it.
"I say I’m 39," said Jack Benny with mock severity. "And anything else you want to guess is entirely up to you."
Jack was stopping over briefly in New York, en route from a concert with the Boston Symphony to a night club date in Miami. He will be one of the guest stars next Sunday in an NBC special saluting his homestate of Illinois, and he recently finished shooting a special comedy program to be shown on March 20, also on NBC. He is now busy polishing up some material for use during a four-week engagement in April at New York’s Waldorf Astoria.
Even after a half century in show business, he still prefers the tensions and excitements of the theater.
"A few years ago when we were doing the television series we had a show in which I was finally going to celebrate my 40th birthday," Jack recalled. "Before we got it on the air, we started getting all sorts of mail and there were even editorials in important newspapers, all asking me not to do it. They said that 39 had become a symbol of youth and determination for many people, and they wanted me to stay 39.
"Well, it was too late to drop the show, so we went ahead and showed it But then we dropped it, forgot it and I went back to being 39."
Benny wears his calendar years lightly. He maintains his enthusiasm for his music and for playing in concerts. He practices the violin for a couple of hours daily, even when he is away from his Los Angeles home. And he works constantly over his comedy material.
Jack discussed the current use of controversial topical material and the injection of risque material into comedy routines.
He is the acknowledged master of timing, and his own style is built around the stingy, vain and somehow lovable character he has been playing for more than 30 years.
"I've never gotten laughs by zinging anybody else," he said. "There is a rapport with an audience, and you’ve always got to be careful not to spoil it. With an audience it is important to be especially careful with the first couple of jokes. Hope has his way, and I have mine, which is usually getting into things by explaining why I happen to be on stage or why I'm doing a TV special."
"It's a strange thing about risque material," he continued. "Occasionally there may be something that might be considered risque in material I might use in a night club—never on TV, of course. But critics are always writing about how clean my material is. I’ve got a hospital thing that I do that certainly might be considered risque, except that when I’m talking, it is about how much all these things cost, and everything else seems to slip by unnoticed."
Benny, in his only special of the year, will share honors with Lucille Ball, Johnny Carson and "a cute singing group that you have to put in shows these days for the kids in the audience."