Pedigreedy

Felix the Cat tells an audience of the hoi-polloi some tall stories about his ancestors in an attempt to join their private social club in Pedigreedy (1927).

This gag’s pretty straight-forward. I love how the Pharaoh in 1000 B.C. has a pistol. And why he splits apart into pieces while he dances is something that escapes me.

A Tail Of One Gag

“If you take a big bite out of any one thing,” Paul Terry opined in 1970, “that’s plagiarism and you’re a thief. So, we used to have a saying, John Foster and I, ‘Never steal more than you can carry.’”

Foster was the story chief at Terrytoons through the ‘30s and ‘40s. In one of his cartoons, he borrowed the old paint-a-scene-on-something-the-good-guy-runs-through found a few years earlier in Tex Avery’s Jerky Turkey (but popularised later by Wile E. Coyote). Here’s another familiar one in Felix the Fox (1948).

Dimwit the dog chases Felix into some bushes. The drawings tell the story.



If you’re an Avery fan, you’re saying “Hey, wait a minute!” and know what cartoon Foster “carried” this from.



It’s from The Screwy Truant, released in 1944.

Arthur Q

All the years he was hunting wabbits, Elmer Fudd’s voice actor was never identified on screen. Countless kids grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s thinking it was Mel Blanc, because Blanc’s name was the only one that appeared in the title cards.

But it wasn’t Blanc. It was radio actor Arthur Q. Bryan, at least pretty much up until the time of his death. Kids of the ‘40s may have known Bryan was Fudd because he used the exact same trick voice on a number of wadio, er, radio shows, especially in the regular role of Waymond Wadcwiffe on Al Pearce’s show. Bryan had been on a show in the late ‘30s called The Grouch Club, and it’s probable someone at the Leon Schlesinger cartoon studio heard him on it, catapulting him to freelance animation work.

Bryan was a busy actor, lending his voice not only to comedy parts, but dramatic roles on Lux Radio Theatre. He even played a network censor on the Orson Welles Show in 1944 before being shown the door and replaced by John Brown (Ray Collins, a Welles favourite, lost his role to Jack Mather at the same time). Bryan’s most famous radio character was born on March 16, 1943 when he showed up in Wistful Vista as Doc Gamble on Fibber McGee and Molly. He stayed in the part until March 22, 1956 when the show’s format was reworked as strictly a dialogue between Fibber and Molly. He came down with gastritis later in the year.

Long before Fibber and cartoons and even Hollywood, Bryan was a young singer in New York. The New York Sun of September 20, 1930 profiled him.

ARTHUR Q. BRYAN, the chief announcer at W O R, was born in Brooklyn, N. Y., in 1899, which he says makes him today of a ripe old age. At the age of eighteen years he began the study of singing with an eye to a concert career. It developed, however, that necessity demanded that his aspirations along these lines be shelved, with the result that his vocal talents were displayed only in various church choirs.
In 1924, Mr. Bryan went to Scranton, Pa., where he worked in the coal mines for the long space of six days quite long enough for him to be prejudiced against that sort of position forever. He returned to New York city and secured a position with a well-known insurance company, incidentally the same which once sheltered Lewis Reid.
The singing persisted, however, and he finally got into radio over both WEAF and WJZ, and was heard in a number of programs including the Seiberling Singers and the Jeddo Highlanders. This was followed by eleven weeks in the show business singing with an octette in “Follow Thru.”
About this time he heard talk of Reid’s leaving WOR and more as a joke than with any seriousness went there and took an audition for an announcer. The joke, however, turned into a position and since then his air activities have been manifold, from singing and a speaking part in Main street for dogs and birds. Mr. Bryan writes the Moonbeam verses and reads on the Choir Invisible. He particularly enjoys working with Uncle Don and thinks him one of the finest characters on the air.
As an afterthought only, he is not married!

Radio listings in the New York City papers show Bryan at WGBS in New York as far back as June 1926 with a ten-minute show early every Thursday evening. He sang. By March 1928, he had a 15-minute morning broadcast at WEAF as a tenor soloist, and was announcing at WOR by April 1930. Bryan quit WOR on September 19, 1931; Variety reported he was going to freelance. If that was the case (“quitting” in radio can mean something else), he quickly changed his mind. He was hired on October 31st by WCAU, the CBS affiliate in Philadelphia, to announce, write and sing. In December 1932, he joined the staff of WIP-WFAN but returned to WCAU the following June to write the CBS network show Bill and Ginger while still appearing on WIP for several more months. Bryan remained in Philadelphia until May 1935 when he returned to New York where WHN employed him to work on, among other things, a variety show with M.C. Ted Claire. His New York radio career ended in September 1936 when he announced he was going to Hollywood. Billboard of October 3rd reported Bryan “leaves the movie lots to join the Par pix scripters”; it sounds like he went West to try his hand at acting first before Paramount hired him as a writer. That didn’t last long. In December 1936, Variety revealed he was now at KFWB, along with Gil Warren, who also later provided his voice on Warner Bros. cartoons.

Bryan was profiled in the Los Angeles publication Radio Life on May 12, 1946. It’s interesting Bryan should tell the writer he didn’t want a starring show. He had already starred on Major Hoople, a summer replacement show in 1942. And waaaaay down below, you can see a reference to his cartoon role.

ARTHUR ? BRYAN
We Found Out What Mr. Bryan’s Ambition Was, But He Refuses to Tell One Well-Kept Secret
By Joan Buchanan
Tuesday, 6:30 p.m.
NBC—KFI, KFSD
Sunday. 8 p.m.
NBC—KFI, KFSD

ARTHUR Q. BRYAN is one comedian without a “Hamlet” complex! “In fact,” Arthur admitted, “I don’t even like Shakespeare—except for ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’—it’s nice and wacky.”
“There’s just one role I would love to play—and what a part that is!” he continued. “It’s the lead in ‘Harvey’.”
On a trip last year to open the War Loan drive in Toronto, Arthur managed to go to New York and in ten days he saw seven plays. Frank Fay in “Harvey” was one—the one that Arthur can’t forget. Arthur is morose about his chances ever to play the part because Joe E. Brown is winning new acclaim in the West Coast company and Bing Crosby has been mentioned for the picture. However, if the chance ever presents itself—Arthur will put in his bid to play the part of Elwood P. Dowd, the lovable inebriate whose closest friend is an invisible, six-foot rabbit.
“What makes you desire the ‘Harvey’ part above others?” we wanted to know.
“Well, it’s wonderful fantasy, and it’s so terrifically sympathetic. Of course anyone who plays it will have to do it the way Frank Fay does, because he does it perfectly,” Arthur answered.
Arthur Q. is equally enthusiastic, however, about his part as “Doctor Gamble” on the “Fibber McGee and Molly” show. “Don Quinn (writer of the show) is wonderful,” he said. “Every part he writes is a good one. ‘Doctor Gamble’ is a real person—when I step up to the mike to do the ‘doctor’ I feel subconsciously that I am him. Don Quinn studies the character and your voice and writes for you. I feel that the characters on the show are all drawn by him and we just sort of aid and abet him.
“For instance, when the ‘McGee and Molly’ show was in Toronto, nobody knew or cared what our real names were. In the morning when I’d come down into the hotel lobby, people would say, ‘Good morning, Doctor’ . . . ‘How are you this morning, Doctor Gamble?’”
Prefers Comedy
Arthur admits that he enjoys doing comedy more than any other type of role. “I think most comics really enjoy being comedians,” he confided, “because of the instantaneous response to humor. We revel in laughter and can actually have fun with the audience. That's something you don’t get in drama. I guess a comedian has to have a touch of conceit to be a good comic—but perhaps I shouldn’t say that!”
“Is it harder to make people laugh or cry?” we wanted to know.
“I really don’t know,” Arthur admitted. “I do know that some audiences can be awfully hard to play to, though. Sometimes at rehearsal we actors will double up laughing at what we think is a hilarious script. Then we hit a cold audience—and murder! Dead silence!”
Arthur hasn't always been a comedian—he started out to be a singer and revealed that “singing was my first choice for a career, and once you’ve been a singer you never quite get it out of your system!” He has started to study classical singing again just to keep in practice. He’s an enthusiastic record collector and to date has about 2000 records—symphonic and concert, largely vocal. Arthur was (and still is) a tenor. He sang in light opera, did many Gilbert and Sullivan roles, sang in the Broadway show, “Follow Thru,” and on many radio programs. Locally he has appeared in the light opera festivals in “The Merry Widow” and “The Vagabond King.”
He loves the stage because “it’s so phoney! Such marvelous opportunities for hamming.” And likes radio because you never know what you’re going to be doing next.
“How would you like a show of your own?” we ventured.
No Show of Own!
“I’d hate it,” Arthur replied cheerfully. “Too much to worry about, and I happen to be crazy about everybody I work with. Never been in such a pleasant organization before.”
Arthur's been in radio for 22 years now and has done dramatic roles besides comedy, "We figured it out on the ‘McGee’ show that the radio experience of the cast figured out to over 180 years," he claimed. Arthur’s most recent picture was the Rosalind Russell starrer, “She Wouldn't Say Yes,” and of course he is still immortalizing the easily hoodwinked hunter in the Warners’ “Bugs Bunny” cartoons.
“By the way,” we inquired, finishing things up, “what does the Q. in Arthur Q. Bryan stand for?” Arthur looked cunning. “I haven’t told anybody that in twenty-two years, and I don’t think I’ll start now.”
“Aw—why not ?” we protested. Arthur laughed. “ ‘Cause that way--everybody always asks me!”

You needn’t ask what the “Q” stood for. Unlike Robert Q. Lewis, whose name purely an invention, Bryan had a middle name. Here it is on his World War One draft registration.



Bryan’s last appearance in a Warner Bros. cartoon was in Person to Bunny, released April 1, 1960. Bryan never saw it. He died on November 30, 1959 at the age of 60.

Late note: Voice actor and historian Keith Scott sends the following clarification:
[I]t was Avery who was the one who wanted Bryan for his cartoon DANGEROUS DAN McFOO. He spoke at a college lecture once of how he listened to THE GROUCH CLUB and heard Bryan as a regular (he played "The Little Man") on that...also said he and others would go and watch radio shows at KFWB on the Warner lot a few buildings away from the cartoon facility on Sunset. He saw Blanc doing his News of the World skit and knew of him before he ever used him.

M Is For the Million Laughs Tex Gave Me

“Lucky Ducky” features the great “Technicolor Ends Here” gag, but Tex and writer Rich Hogan fit in a bunch of quick gags during the extended chase scene.

Here’s one. The duck’s on the run through a pair of trees.



The dogs are in pursuit (in their motorboat on dry land).



The big tree protects the little tree, as Scott Bradley plays “Mother” on the soundtrack.



Tex liked surprising his audience from beginning to ending of his pictures. Unfortunately, re-issue prints of “Lucky Ducky” have the original ending chopped off. Film collector and researcher Jim Tucker came across an original print and reported his findings to fellow historian Jerry Beck. Read about it HERE.

Yes, The Post

“Not ‘The Gezundheit!’” “Not ‘William Tell!’” “Not ‘Roll Out the Barrel!’” You probably have a favourite amongst the penalties inflicted on Bob McKimson’s generic cat in a couple of cartoons involving a bulldog. One is “Early To Bet,” featuring the Gambling Bug (played by Stan Freberg).

Here are a few frames (the drawings were used more than once) of the bug attacking the cat and the cat’s reaction.



Emery Hawkins, Rod Scribner, Charles McKimson and Phil De Lara receive the animation credits.

They Couldn't Stand Him

Running gags are a staple of comedy, but Jack Benny’s writers tried stretching that to running scenarios embracing part or all of a radio season. So we were treated to Jack warring with the Sportsmen Quartet (1946-47), Jack and the missing Oscar (1947-48), Jack and the echo (part of 1948-49) and Jack the songwriter (1951-52).

The most successful running routine had to be the “I Can’t Stand Jack Benny” contest, which took up part of the 1945-46 season. The idea was brilliant. It was a way to get the Benny audience involved in the show and, at the same time, get publicity.

Radio Life magazine of February 3, 1946 explains what happened.

They “Can’t Stand Jack Benny” because . . .
By Evelyn Rigsby
Fourteen years ago, Jack Benny pulled a comedy switch in radio. Instead of having a cast full of stooges, he became a stooge for his cast; instead of telling jokes on the other fellow, he let the other fellow turn the joke on him.
A few weeks ago Benny pulled another switch. This time, instead of conducting a contest on “I like Crunchy Munchies (or) Soapsy Sudsies (or) Itsy Bitsies in fifty words or less together with a box top or reasonable facsimile” contest, he launched a “Why I Can’t Stand Jack Benny” deal with no tops, no wrappers, no facsimiles—no, not even a strand from a 1945 model Benny toupe. It was a contest to satirize all contests, an insult routine to end all insult routines.
But to fifty-three winners it will pay off in $10,000—a first prize of $2,500, a second of $1,500, a third of $1,000 and fifty added awards of $100 war bonds each.
Proof that the radio fans can go along with a gag was the mail response, which, it is estimated, will finally tabulate at between three and four hundred thousand letters. Final judges Fred Allen, Peter Lorre, and Goodman (Easy) Ace will name the winners.
Almost Called Off
There’s an interesting story behind this contest which, it is claimed, will break all records for any such competition ever held in the state of California. A few months ago, Benny’s writers presented the idea as a sequence for one program, suggesting that the $10,000 of which the radio Benny character had been robbed was really a publicity stunt. While the sequence was being “kicked around” someone said, “There are 130 million people in the country, but only thirty million listen to you, Jack. So one hundred million people must hate you. Say! There’s an idea. Why don’t you run a contest—a legitimate contest, “Why I Hate Jack Benny?”
“Why not?” replied Benny. “Only it’s no good to use the word ‘hate.’
This is just the time when we’re trying to eliminate that four letter word from the national and international vocabulary.”
At this point the contest idea was almost abandoned until someone came up with the substitute wording “Why I ‘Can’t Stand’ Jack Benny,” that carried the germ of the idea, but took the curse off the hate notion.
Enlarge Staff
The contest was announced on the December 3 [actually, 2] program and ran three weeks and one day, ending Christmas Eve. To handle the anticipated replies. Benny rented a shop in an off business street in Beverly Hills—some space that could be spared for a month. He figured six girls, working without too much pressure, could handle perhaps 20,000 letters a week.
By the end of the second week, the mail was 150,000 for seven days and it was necessary to add three girls to the day staff and to put on a night staff of nine workers who hurried into the room at nightfall like little gnomes, slit open the letters, and segregated them as to categories for the workers coming in the morning to read.
About half of the replies came in rhyme. As for the reasons people can’t stand Benny, they were divided between stinginess, ill-treatment of Rochester, ill-treatment of Fred Allen, fiddle-playing, and miscellaneous. In the miscellaneous category was a certain group which seized the contest as an opportunity to write nostalgic and “Hello, I haven’t seen you in a long time” letters. Some letters went even so far as to include foot notes telling Benny they really loved him and that he shouldn’t take the entry reply as anything more than a chance to latch onto same money—as who wouldn’t, including Jack Benny?
The accompanying box contains quotes which were chosen while the contest was still in progress and which were picked because they were typical replies. Some, sent in by Benny’s friends, were not trying, to compete, but were intended as gags. Radio Life will print the winning answers.

Radio Life also published some losing answers. Actually, some were gag responses by some of Jack’s show biz friends. These were found in the same issue. Detroit Tigers star Hank Greenberg was a running gag on the show that year, heard moving to third base whenever Jack listened to play-by-play baseball. Tom Breneman had a morning show on ABC catering to elderly women, who filled his studio audience. He tried on their funny hats and gave them orchids; Jack was an honorary pallbearer at his funeral.

WHY SOME CAN'T STAND HIM
I can’t stand Jack Benny because my husband won't miss his program, then we are late for church. He'd rather miss his chance to heaven than to miss Benny's program. —E.H.R., Glenarm, Ill.
I can’t stand Jack Benny because he’s had me on third base since the World Series, and I want to come home! —Hank Greenberg.
Sincerely regret St. Joe residents can’t qualify for contest. We still love you here. —H.B., St. Joseph, Mo.
I can’t stand Jack Benny because he doesn’t play more violin solos on his program—Napoleon Bonaparte, (P.S. My two roommates, Julius Caesar and General Grant, prefer Fred Allen’s singing—but they’re crazy! N.B.) —Capt. A. J. H., Portland, Ore.
I can’t stand Jack Benny because he obviously hasn’t read my book. —Dale Carnegie
I can’t stand Jack Benny because he puts rocks in his pockets when he weighs himself to get more for his money’s worth. —J.O., Waukesha, Wis.
I can't stand Jack Benny because, while he continually talks about “good old Waukegan,” he was smart enough to leave and never come back. —F. F., Waukegan, Ill.
I can’t stand Jack Benny because he's always disguising himself as an old lady to get a free meal at “Breakfast in Hollywood.” Worse yet, he won an orchid and I had to kiss him. —Tom Breneman.
I can’t stand Jack Benny because he is giving $10,000 in prizes to people who can’t stand him and I like him so much I don’t stand a chance to win. —M.E., Erie, Pennsylvania.
I can’t stand Jack Benny because four years ago he took the role of Charley’s Aunt away from me. —Lucille Ball.
I can’t stand Jack Benny because he’s so young, so firm, so fully, packed, so free and easy with his purse. That is, I don’t like him too because my great grandmother told me when she was a little girl Jack used to give her a new Indian head penny if she would go to bed when he carne to see her older sister. —Mrs. C.H.O., Spokane, Wash.
I can’t stand Jack Benny because he is the type of person who would swear he had no relatives if you asked him “Brother, can you spare a dime ?” —L.C.H., Denver, Colo.
I can’t stand Jack Benny because I have no sense of humor. —M. C., San Leandro, Calif.
I can’t stand Jack Benny because I saw him mature from a man to a boy. —Fred Allen (who isn’t even eligible, as he is a judge.)
I can’t stand Jack Benny because he’s tight as an olive jar when you’re having a party. —H. T., Glenside, Penn.
I can’t stand Jack Benny because he’s too much like a close friend of mine, and by close I do mean Bergen! —Charlie McCarthy.
I can’t stand Jack Benny because I can’t stand Fred Allen; I can't stand Fred Allen because I can’t stand Charlie McCarthy. In fact, can't stand Charlie. I can't stand any of these sissy dummies who sit on a knee and use their noses for talking. Give me a HE-MAN like Joan Davis. —S.Y.C., Clifton Forge, Pa.

Benny’s real-life popularity ensured the contest got plenty of publicity. Arthur Godfrey, according to Variety, got chastised in mid-programme by management for mentioning it on his morning show; the Redhead was on CBS at the time while Benny was on NBC. Variety wrote a think piece on not only whether the whole contest was a bad idea (with the potential of contest losers getting upset and no longer listening), but whether reading the winning entry was wise (Fred Allen, according to the publication, felt it should be kept off the air). In fact, Variety reported on February 6th that Benny himself, and not the Benny “character” was “disturbed when a Los Angeles suburbanite won his capital prize” but doesn’t say why. The item seems odd, considering Benny continued to milk the Can’t Stand Contest on his show for a number of years. And it seems silly to not read the entry. Benny’s huge audience was, no doubt, dying of curiosity to know what it was.

The winner was submitted by Carroll P. Craig, Sr. Craig’s poem was more than funny. It had a ring of truth, and I’m sure that’s why it was selected.

He fills the air with boasts and brags
And obsolete obnoxious gags.
The way he plays his violin
Is music’s most obnoxious sin.
His cowardice alone, indeed,
Is matched by his obnoxious greed.
In all the things that he portrays
He shows up my own obnoxious ways.

It was read beautifully by maybe the finest actor Benny ever had on his show, Ronald Colman, who after finishing it, added to his wife: “You know, Benita, maybe the fellow that wrote this letter is right. The things that we find fault with in others—are the same things that we tolerate in ourselves.”

Carroll Piper Craig was originally from Altoona, Pennsylvania, born on December 26, 1896. His father was a lawyer. The family moved to Harrisburg where Craig enlisted in service in World War One. In 1940, he was living at 735 Radcliffe Avenue in Pacific Palisades, working as a draftsman for the Douglas aircraft factory in Santa Monica for about $2,900 a year. You see a fuzzy photo of him from a poor scan of Radio Life to the right. He died in Los Angeles on June 12, 1958.

Perhaps one other thing to mention about the contest is it brought about the invention of the character of Steve Bradley, Jack’s P.R. flack, who thought up ridiculous and impossible stunts to create publicity. He appeared only rarely after the contest ended. Bradley was originally played by Dick Lane, then resurfaced as “Dick Fisher” and then again as Bradley in the ‘50s, voiced by Hy Averback. Lane was an actor in short films in the ‘30s and worked on a number of radio shows in the ‘40s, usually as some kind of fast talker. As much as I like Averback, he was far inferior to Lane in the role. Lane had a distinctive voice and delivery which became eventually famous in Los Angeles as the voice of professional wrestling and roller games.

You can hear the winning entry read. Click on the arrow for the February 3, 1946 Benny show. The poem is at the 25:38 mark.

The Journey of Gene Deitch

Theatrical cartoons are dying, said all kinds of people in the movie business starting in the late ‘40s, but they changed a bit before that happened. And you can partly thank television.

After network TV made its huge expansive leap in 1948, ad agencies moved their money from radio into the new medium. On radio, sponsors could get away with an announcer reading straight copy. TV needed more. And an awful lot of agencies picked animation as the easiest and cheapest way to get their messages across.

But the studios contracted to make the animated commercials for the agencies decided the designs used in theatrical cartoons were all wrong. They went for flatter, stylised characters, just like newspaper comics and magazine panels; the UPA studio was doing the same thing in its theatricals. A lot of the cartoon commercials were clever and entertaining and won awards. And that’s when one old theatrical studio decided it wanted a chunk of all this commercial moolah.

Terrytoons had been run by Paul Terry since its inception in 1929 (though Terry managed to manoeuvre Frank Moser out of a partnership a few years later) until he sold the studio to CBS on January 9, 1956. The network now had a stash of old cartoons it could run, but to grow it had to move into new fields. And because it was looking at advertising, it hired one of the young commercial award-winners praised in the trades—Gene Deitch.

Deitch joined the Jam Handy Organization in Detroit as its chief animator in November 1949. He jumped to UPA in New York and found himself winning awards and in demand. He joined Storyboard Productions as creative director in September 1955, moved to Robert Lawrence Productions the following March and then was hired by CBS to be the creative supervisor at Terrytoons in June, a new post that supposedly made him the creative boss.

One can only imagine the atmosphere at Terrytoons with someone from the outside being brought in. In television, that means change. And Weekly Variety of August 15, 1956 outlined Deitch’s ambitious plan.

CBS Full of Animation, Projecting Terrytoons Into TV Programming
With most of the stock-taking and inventorying how complete since CBS purchased Terrytoons for $5,000,000 at the beginning of the year, the New Rochelle animation plant is swinging into a diversified and fullscale production effort that will embrace television programming, special effects for video, tv animated commercials on a open-to-all basis and continuation of theatrical cartoons for 20th-Fox distribution.
Under exec producer Gene Deitch, former UPA exec who recently took over the creative chores at Terrytoons, the hottest project in the works at the CBS subsid is a new series of children’s cartoons under the title of a new character, “Tom Terrific.” Current plans—project is in the pilot stage—are to produce five four-minute cliff hanger episodes for each story, for initial use on the CBS-TV “Captain Kangaroo” morning kidshow. Under such a formula, the five episodes could then be combined and edited into a 15-minute program for use on other kidshows and eventual syndication through CBS television Film Sales. Number of such 15-minute shows would depend on the reaction to the strip showings on “Kangaroo.” Series is an adventure story, with the title character being a little boy who can turn into anything he wants to be. Allan Swift is doing the voices [note: Lionel Wilson actually provided all the voices on the series].

First evidence of the subsid’s new work for television, however, will be seen next Sunday (19) on the Ed Sullivan show, for which Terrytoons has created eight one-minute animated introductions.
Sullivan has indicated he’d like to experiment some more in this direction. The introes will concern Sullivan’s international search for talent, in keeping with the general theme of Sunday’s show, "Sullivan’s Travels,” but if these click, some more with other themes will be ordered.
On the commercial side, Deitch said Terrytoons would attempt to concentrate on “comedy commercials” a la Bert & Harry commercials for Piel’s Beer, on which Deitch worked while at UPA and which in his opinion proved that comedy can sell goods. There are already a number of clients in the house, and Terrytoons has already developed one new character, “P.J. Tootsie,” described as a hearty, “Eddie Mayehoff type guy who’s dedicated to the making of Tootsie Rolls.” Client is Sweets Co. of America.
In work now are nine Cinema-Scope shorts for theatrical use by 20th-Fox, a continuation of the longtime 20th-Terrytoons relationship. It probably marks the first time a network operation is producing for the theatre in collaboration with a major studio. Deitch said his staff is working on the development of new styles of animation and new characters. One step in the creation of such styles and characters was the hiring this week of Ernie Pintoss [sic] as director of research and development, a new post for Terrytoons and possibly for any syndication house. Pintoss had been working with UPA as director of the new UPA series in production for CBS-TV.

“New styles of animation and new characters” meant the old styles and characters were o-w-t OUT (that includes old gags like the one you just read). Deitch’s approach to commercials was modern. Terrytoons’ theatrical shorts were anything but. The cartoons of 1955 looked and sounded like the cartoons of 1940 and had become repetitious; if you’d seen one Mighty Mouse/Oil Can Harry operetta, you’d pretty much seen them all. But many people like staying in their comfort zones and don’t like “new” or “different.” Deitch may have been the “creative boss” but he soon became the subject of office politics, which included a lack of support from the people above him. By early June 1958, Deitch found himself o-w-t, and corralled a job as consulting art director with Robert Davis Productions before forming his own company.

An improbable adventure began for Deitch in October 1959. He was hired by Rembrandt Films’ William L. Snyder for what was supposed to be a 10-day job examining operations at a cartoon studio in Prague, Czechoslovakia. In the meantime, Snyder jumped in bed (figuratively) with Al Brodax of King Features, who was looking to put the company’s characters in cut-rate cartoons on TV. It was looking to air a half-hour show called Cartoon Omnibus, to be emceed by The Little King, who never talked in the newspaper comics. Here’s what Weekly Variety had to say about the show on July 6, 1960:

A Two-Continent Cartoonery
Upsurge of cartoon production for tv has necessitated a two-continent cartoonery operation, according to William L. Snyder, prez of Rembrandt Films. Rembrandt has a deal with King Features for the production of new “Popeye” cartoons and an original, titled “Sampson Scrap and Delilah.” The two Continent operation finds Rembrandt doing the storyboards and soundtrack in the U.S. and animation and shooting in Europe.
Snyder said that doing the animation and shooting in Europe initially was motivated by cost savings. But it’s no longer less expensive, he stated, adding that there just isn’t enough cartoon art talent around in the U.S. to meet the demand and even the European pool is being severely taxed. Rembrandt has ties in Zurich, Switzerland, and Milan. Snyder left at the weekend for London, where he hopes to establish additional production facilities.
He also will visit Zurich to oversee production there. “Sampson Scrap” was created by Gene Deitch, formerly with UPA and Terrytoons, and Allen Swift, emcee of “Popeye” show on WPIX, N. Y. Deitch directs and Swift does all the voices. “Sampson” will be one of the strips in a half-hour show, the others being “Barney Google and Snuffy Smith” and “Krazy Kat.”
King Features, under its “Popeye” program, has a policy of parcelling out production. Rembrandt will do 16 episodes, with episodes due to coming in starting next month. “Sampson” footage will be coming off the beltline in the fall.

Sampson, apparently correctly spelled as “Samson Scrap,” never made it into a series. You can read more about the cartoon on Jerry Beck’s Cartoon Research web site. Format Films, incidentally, won the contract to product the other elements of the Omnibus pilot.

Then Daily Variety announced on March 9, 1961 that Snyder had secretly inked a deal with MGM six months earlier to revive Tom and Jerry cartoons for theatres, and they were already in production, with the first one scheduled for release on May 3rd. While all this was going on, Deitch had teamed with Jules Feiffer and Al Kouzel to win an Oscar in April 1961 for the animated short “Munro.”

MGM decided to hand the Tom and Jerry contract to Walter Bien and Chuck Jones in August 1963. Deitch continued animating in Prague, winning esteem for his work on children’s stories, and being featured in retrospectives of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and by ASIFA in Los Angeles.

Here’s a United Press International story from June 22, 1974 where Deitch is interviewed about his career to date.

Cartoon Director Gives Short Subjects ‘Tender Loving Care’
By RICHARD C. LONGWORTH
PRAGUE (UPI) – Gene Deitch probably is the most prominent non-Communist American living permanently in Eastern Europe, which is quite a switch for a man who used to direct Terrytoons cartoons.
When he first came to work in Prague, he had never been in Europe, was “completely confused” and held a contract that allowed him to go home to New York any time he wanted.
That was 15 years ago. The Oscar-winning American cartoon director is still here—living in a modern flat beside the Moldau River with his Czech wife and happily making “polished little gems” for American schools.
“Sometimes it takes us one year to make a six-minute film,” the Chicago-born, California-reared Deitch said. “You can’t do that in America. Nobody can afford to put the time into little things.
“At my stage, I’m not trying to win any more Oscars. Instead we give each cartoon tender loving care. “The luxury of living in Europe is that I don’t have to make so much money. I’m earning a lot less than in New York, but I have a lot more in the bank.
“And I can believe in the films I’m making now,” said the man who used to turn out commercials and “Popeye” cartoons by the dozen. “That’s the key to my own happiness.”
Deitch, 49, began his unique odyssey in 1959. when he was 34 and had his own firm in New York. He had been creative director with Terrytoons, had made the Bert and Harry Piel beer commercials for television, had a wife, three children, a big house in the suburbs and a high salary.
“I was headed for a heart attack,” he says now.

Then entered William L. Snyder, an American cartoon entrepreneur who had bought films for years from a top-flight Prague studio and now wanted the Czechs to make films for the U.S. market from American children’s books. Snyder needed an American director in Prague to give the films the zip and pace American audiences demand and to act as liason with the Czechs. He asked Deitch to take the job.
“It was an offer I couldn’t refuse,” Deitch said. “But I had barely heard of Czechoslovakia and the contract I signed gave me every kind of out.”
When he arrived, Zdenka, the young Czech woman in charge of Snyder’s films, was so hurt at the outside interference that she refused to meet him at the airport.
“But I felt I had as much to learn from her as she did from me. And after the first week Zdenka said to me, ‘If you like going shopping, I go with you.’
“The next Wednesday night we had dinner and fell in love. We were both married, and this really opened up a great set of problems for both of us.” Deitch also had fallen in love with dark, romantic old Prague.
He and Snyder signed a seven-year contract, enabling him to stay in Prague to make “Tom and Jerry” and “Popeye” cartoons. He and Zdenka married in 1964.
Deitch, a trim, excitable man with thinning brown hair and steel-rimmed glasses, let the Snyder contract lapse and now works mostly on contract from Weston Woods Studios of Weston, Conn., directing cartoons—largely adapted from children’s books—for American schools.
He is employed by his American clients, not by the Czechs.
“Zdenka and I have some fiery battles at the studio. She’s the boss—the production manager. I’m her client. It’s her duty to stick to the contract and to keep me in line. It’s my job to get as much for my client’s money as possible.”
A small flat beside the Charles Bridge has been Deitch’s home for seven years. It is jammed with sound equipment, children’s books and many of the awards his 1,000 plus films have won. The couple also has a country house, which they are renovating with tools Deitch won by entering a design for hollow chopsticks—“for sucking up wonton soup”—in a British inventors’ contest.
Despite his success and stability here, “I can’t get over a temporary feeling,” Deitch said.
“The key to my success here is that I do my work and cause no trouble. I have my opinions but I don’t noise them around. They know I’m not a Communist, but they also know I’m not a troublemaker.
“I’m an American, but it’s not incumbent on me to write an expose of life in Czechoslavakia. We’ve got Watergate. Who am I to write about what’s wrong here. I’m a guest in their country.
“There’s a lot of things we have that they don’t,” he said, looking out of his window, across the old roofs and quiet courtyards towards the medieval alchemist’s tower beside the Moldau. “I get very confused now about which is the best way of life. The line is not so easy to draw any more.”

Deitch’s 10-day journey to Prague in 1959 continues to this day. It is there he is celebrating his 91st birthday today as cartoon fans look back at his accomplishments. For someone who became part of a dying industry years ago, he’s accomplished a lot.

Bluto Baloney

The end gag of “We Aim To Please” (1934) sees Popeye’s spinach-fueled punch turn Bluto into a baloney.



Willard Bowsky and Dave Tendlar receive screen credits. The best part of the cartoon is Sammy Timberg’s title song with lyrics by Jack Scholl. Timberg wrote some great music for the Fleischer cartoons and deserves more recognition.

Hungry For Horse

The Southern Wolf tries to get rid of the insatiably-hungry Billy Boy by putting him on a horse and sending him on his way. Billy eats the horse’s fur. Turnabout follows.



Ray Patterson and Bob Bentley work with Tex Avery regulars Grant Simmons, Mike Lah and Walt Clinton as animators on this one. Designs by Ed Benedict.

The Tonight Show That Died

The word “failure” was never associated with the brief, Conan O’Brien version of the Tonight Show. Pundits and fans were, instead, chirping about whether Jay Leno somehow forced O’Brien off the show and himself back on it. It became a debate about personalities, not ratings or content.

No, if you want to apply “failure” to any Tonight Show, it unquestionably describes a version that you likely never saw—the seven-month-long fiasco that was Tonight!—America After Dark.

Our story begins in 1956. Steve Allen had been not only hosting Tonight, but was warring (on and off camera) with Ed Sullivan on a Sunday night show for NBC. He was spelled off by Ernie Kovacs on Monday and Tuesday nights as of October 1st. But the following month, the trades announced Allen was leaving and Kovacs would be dropped if a new format met with sponsor approval. (Something was found for Ernie. In a truly misguided attempt all around, NBC slated Jerry Lewis for a 90-minute show the following January. Lewis refused to work more than an hour so Kovacs was shoved in to fill the remaining 30 minutes. Someone decided there would be no dialogue for the entire Kovacs show. It wasn’t well received).

The new format wasn’t really new at all. It was what NBC programming chief Pat Weaver had envisioned for the Today Show when it began in 1952—cut-ins in from anywhere and everywhere, about anything and everything, anchored by a “communicator.” That’s what the network decided to try in late night. And as the host, the job was handed to Jack Lescoulie who, no doubt, was anxious to get out of the shadow of Today “communicator” Dave Garroway and be the number-one guy.

The format was aptly described in this TV column from The Knickerbocker News of January 26, 1957.

Gala Sendoff Planned For the New ‘Tonight’
National Broadcasting Company's answer to the popularity of top feature films on Late Theaters in key markets all over the nation will be unfolded Monday when Tonight takes on its new "America After Dark" look. Jack Lescoulie and a battery of leading newspaper columnists will take over from Steve Allen and Ernie Kovacs as Tonight reshuffles its format completely in an effort to regain its once lofty ratings.
A three-city party — in New York, Chicago and Hollywood — will be held in honor of the new Monday-through-Friday show and televised as a portion of the premiere program.
Actress Jayne Mansfield will join in the celebration from Hollywood where Paul Coates, columnist for the Los Angeles Mirror-News and Vernon Scott of the United Press will play hosts to many film stars at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
Singer Roberta Sherwood will participate from Chicago where Irv Kupicnet, Chicago Sun-Times columnist, will host activities at the famous Pump Room, Comedian George Gobel will be seen from New York's Harwyn Club where celebrities will be greeted by columnist Hy Gardner of the N. Y. Herald Tribune and Earl Wilson of the New York Post, in addition, Bob Considine, sixth man of the team of columnists will report from Topeka, where Kansas’ 96th anniversary celebration will be in progress. Former Presidential Candidate Alfred M. Landon will be Considine’s guest.

Tonight cameras also will invade the Mount Sinai Hospital maternity ward in New York City on the opening snow, as well as dropping in at the Argonne National Atomic Laboratories in Chicago and the poker houses on the outskirts of Los Angeles.
Norman Frank, one of the original producers of Wide Wide World, will use many of the techniques of NBC's alternate Sunday show in his new assignment. Frank said the “main concentration” will be to capture the tempo and pacing of nightlife throughout the country.
“The format will remain flexible enough to allow our cameras to go anywhere for live coverage of newsworthy events and specialties dealing with ‘Nighttime USA’,” Frank said.
"We will make backstage visits to theaters and nightclubs to talk with top personalities. We'll showcase new talent, attend parties and venture into any phase of nighttime activity that is technically feasible”.
Lescoulie will go from one extreme to another as host of the new program. For the past five years, Lescoulie has been leaving his bed at 3:43 a. m, to be in time for his duties as Dave Garroway's right-hand man on the Today show. In his new schedule, Lescoulie will not get up until 11 a. m.



Thus the new Tonight Show premiered on January 28, 1957. Critics hated it. Perhaps the best part of the show was something that would never, ever happen in the all-too-thoroughly screened late night talk shows of today—the unexpected, courtesy of Dean Martin. This column from the Philadelphia Inquirer was published January 30, 1957.

New 'Tonight!' No Fun After Dark
By HARRY HARRIS
ON MONDAY at 11:15 P.M., NBC's "Tonight" acquired an exclamation point. It also acquired some new features that rated a /*%/ to go with the !
To replace the civilized fun of Steve Allen and Ernie Kovacs, the network shoveled together a bewildering assortment of stuff culled from “Today,” “Wide Wide World” and “Stork Club.”
Most of these items were repeated, a couple of minutes at a gulp, three or four times during the 105-minute duration of the East Coast telecast. This mineing of material was obviously intended to impress anybody who tuned in, however briefly, with the fact that the show's six newspaper columnist cohosts were widely scattered.
The only trouble is that zero divided by three or four is still zero, and that constant repetition of "Let's go to Hollywood" and "Let's go to Chicago" quickly suggested a better idea: "Let's go to sleep." Despite this inclination, we stayed with it to the last dismaying moment.
WITH Jack Lescoulie watching the store while his newsmen colleagues were digging up stories and Constance Moore along for no perceptible reason except to keep Lescoulie company, the program kept bouncing in and out of New York like a rubber ball attached to a paddle board.
At dull-looking parties in New York, Chicago, Beverly Hills and Topeka, enough names were dropped to stock a suburban telephone book.
Even for television, the small talk was almost unbelievably small. Jayne Mansfield, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Joan Crawford, Roberta Sherwood, Marion Marlowe, Alf Landon and a trio of mayors were among the burblers.
Dean Martin's talk was small, too, but in a different way. Asked to discuss a magazine article by his ex-partner, Jerry Lewis. Martin lashed out with snarling comments like these:
“Everything was full of lies but one thing. He wrote it . . . I could do a write-up on Jerry, but not even ‘Confidential’ would print it . . . Get back together with him? Ha! Not even in the same country! They'll put him away for a while, but he'll get out.”
It was a shocking exhibition of no fun after dark, but it served one devastating purpose. It had the harsh sound of truth, and exposed most of the program’s conversation for the contrived oohing and ahing it was.
THERE were some interesting sequences—robot-manipulators of radioactive materials in action; a California “poker club,” where in effect the gamblers rent the premises; Dr. Karl Meninger opining, in a discussion of don't-give-a-damn pills, “I'm not so sure tranquillity is the aim of life; maybe we need some do-give-a-damn pills.” But these were given relatively short shrift and added up to mighty few nuggets amid all that garbage.
Of the six newspapermen involved, only two—Paul Coates, in Los Angeles, and Irv Kupcinet, in Chicago—displayed any authority before the camera. Hy Gardner, an old hand at local telecasting, looked up from his notes long enough to take exception to Edward G. Robinson's comment, “You're not going Mike Wallace on me.” “I gave Mike Wallace lessons in this,” Gardner said sharply.
The other newsmen participating were Vernon Scott, Earl Wilson and Bob Considine.
"Entertainment" during the 105 minutes consisted of a few pallid gags by George Gobel, a "reading" by Robinson, a song by Miss Sherwood.
Of course, it was a premiere, and so ambitious a project deserves time to iron out the bugs. But “Tonight!”—complete with exclamation point—is as buggy as they come.

At the risk of being repetitious, let’s pass on the opinion of Herald-Tribune syndicate columnist John Crosby, published February 2nd.

Top Columnists Present Pretty Terrible TV Show
From Beverly Hills by long distance telephone came the menacing voice of an actor I know. “We're all waiting, Crosby,” he snarled, “to see whether you're going to be as rough on these newspapermen as you'd be on us actors if we had stunk up the air the way they did.” There was no point in asking him which program he meant. There could only be one—the new “Tonight” or, as it's subtitled, “America After Dark.”
There are a whole mess of newspaper columnists involved in this terrible enterprise—Earl Wilson and Hy Gardner of New York; Irv Kupcinet of Chicago; Paul Coates and Vernon Scott of Hollywood, and Bob Considine who I guess, represents America at large—and the kindest thing I can say about them is that they would be among the first to denounce the program if they weren't on it.
Rather Horrifying
I've seen two “Tonights” and I can best describe them by picking out a few highlights. On the first one, Dean Martin was persuaded to talk about an article written about his former partner Jerry Lewis: “That article is full of lies. Only one thing true about it and that is that he wrote it.” There was lots more, all rather horrifying. In Kansas, Alf M. Landon told Bob Considine of the Democrats who finally elected a governor in Kansas: “Well, they're eating pretty high off the hog now but by 1958 they'll be up salt creek.”
In Hollywood, Jayne Mansfield, in a sepulchral whisper that may have been her dying breath or may on the other hand have been the way she thinks busty blondes have to talk, confided to Scott that she was going to build a heart-shaped house and a heart-shaped pool and a heart-shaped bathtub for two. Kupcinet broke in from Chicago to ask about her weight-lifting and what it did for her. “It's brought out quite a few of my finer points,” murmured Miss Jayne. “It straightens things and puts things in the right places.”
In New York, a baby was born within camera range of Hy Gardner. The baby sensibly clammed up but Gardner didn't. “You've certainly proved one thing, that certain people do get born in New York,” cried Gardner. “And now back to Jack Lescoulie.”
All They Did Was Drink

The “And now we take you to” bit was heard again and again and again. They took us to Chicago and to Kansas City and Hollywood to the Harwyn, the Beverly Hilton, to Radio City, to a maternity ward while Lescoulie burbled “Exciting things are happening” and “It's all live and it's all happening on Tonight!” The trouble is that nothing special was happening, at least not on the show. There were parties in three cities but apart from making singularly ill-advised remarks, the people did nothing but drink. And while I'm well aware that vicarious pleasures are among television's chief attractions, I don't think vicarious drinking is going to catch on. You got to do your own.
The second night of “excitement and gayety and glamour” (Mr. Lescoulie's words, not mine) was not quite so dull and tasteless and pointless as the first night, largely because it just wasn't possible. Lescoulie interviewed Eli Wallach about movie acting and this was interesting and could have gone on longer. Later, Wallach did a reading about the joys and torments of acting and this was offbeat and absorbing, Kupcinet landed on the Merchandise Mart in Chicago in a helicopter and we learned a little about Chicago's growing helicopter taxi service.
‘Those Bloody Parties’
But then we got back into one of those bloody parties from Hollywood. Among the glamorous, gay, exciting people there were Jolie Gabor, Linda Darnell and Ann Miller, and mostly they all talked at once. This was a lucky thing because the few coherent lines that emerged from the babble will not be quoted in all the anthologies. This bit closed with a lecture on what every young mother should know from Mama Gabor which was totally unintelligible and may conceivably have been delivered in Hungarian.
The best part of the two nights was a visit with Paul Coates to a legal gambling joint in California where bored housewives play poker. I didn't know such joints existed and Coates, an old pro at this sort of thing, brought out the salient features of the place and the people who run it and inhabit it. But then just as my spirits started to lift, we were wafted back to New York and George Gobel asking Joan Crawford if she slept in pajamas. And the next night, Earl Wilson got his hair dyed red in a beauty parlor, setting back journalism 200 years.

NBC knew it had a disaster. Executive Producer Dick Linkroum told Variety in a story dated February 4th that format changes were coming and that it would take about two months to iron out the show. The first thing he did was dump producer Norman Frank (the press was told he’d be gone on another assignment for six weeks; he never returned) and took the job himself. Whatever changes he made didn’t work. The network’s brass met in mid-May and decided to keep Tonight but with some undisclosed format changes. Within days, Earl Wilson resigned and it was announced Lescoulie would be returning to the second banana’s job on the Today Show. On June 5, 1957 Variety announced the new format—a variety show starring Jack Paar with “a 12-piece orchestra, three guest stars nightly, an additional recording star and a comedy panel.” Gardner, Scott, Coates and Kupcinet were fired. (NBC had planned to use the 11:15 to 11:30 p.m. slot as a news commentary lead-in, but affiliates rejected the idea and it never happened).

Paar hadn’t done an awful lot since Jack Benny plucked him from nowhere and decreed Paar to be his summer replacement on radio in 1947. His radio variety show fizzled, there was a stint as a game show host, a failed morning show on CBS, a failed daytime show on CBS, and a fill-in job for Ed Sullivan which resulted in the lowest ratings of the season. In fact, Paar was announced in June 1956 as Allen’s permanent Monday-Tuesday replacement on Tonight but, for some reason, Linkroum decided instead to go with rotating hosts, including Paar, until Kovacs was hired. By June 1957, Paar was languishing in what was left of network radio, over at ABC doing a late morning show.

The seemingly out-of-nowhere Tonight job was an incredible break for Paar, and turned out to be a brilliant decision by NBC, even though some affiliates initially dropped his show in favour of movies. He debuted July 29th. The Station Relations department somehow convinced stations in Nashville, Boston and St. Louis to carry Paar. More affiliates followed. So did advertisers. By the end of October, the Paar show brought in close to one million dollars in new business for the network. On November 8th, Tonight piled up $4,200,000 in gross new business, a single-day record for NBC. Paar was a hero. Paar saved the day. And Tonight.