Cue the Cue

Music was the driving force in the early sound cartoons; think of the Silly Symphonies, the original Merrie Melodies and Mickey Mouse bashing out tunes on a variety of animals-turned-instruments. And music is behind one of the questions asked by animation fans on occasion: “What is that music in the background?”

In some cases, the answer is easy if someone has knowledge of classical music. My father had a large collection of classical music and listened to a classical radio station, so I’m not one of those people who say “I learned about classical music/opera watching cartoons.” But cartoons exposed me, and several generations, to popular songs of another era. How else would anyone born in the 1950s or 1980s know “Blues in the Night” unless they heard it in the soundtrack of a Warner Bros. cartoon? Or “Shuffle Off to Buffalo”? (Performed by a Jewish baby, in one short).

The definitive answer to “what is that music” is found in something that, regrettably for cartoon fans, is not available on the internet. It’s found on a cue sheet. Cue sheets have been around since before sound films, but they originally served a different purpose. Music publishers would send out cue sheets to theatres in the hope the music cues on it would be played—cues that, oddly enough, were exclusive to the publisher supplying the sheet. In the sound era, cue sheets were logs containing names of songs, publishers and other pertinent information, and sent to music licensing organisations to ensure composers got paid for their work. A cue sheet is still required for every production, film or television.

Below you see a sheet from the first Huckleberry Hound Show, though this sheet was revised in June 1960 for some reason.



Jerry Beck, as you might expect, has a random collection on his Cartoon Research web site.

My favourite cartoons were made by Warner Bros. In his doctoral dissertation at UCLA in 2001, Daniel Goldmark, perhaps the foremost expert on music in theatrical animated cartoons, transcribed portions of the cue sheets for almost every Warners short, beginning with the first Looney Tune, Sinkin’ in the Bathtub (1930). Here’s the list of cues for one of Friz Freleng’s funniest cartoons, Bugs Bunny Rides Again (1948).



The cue sheet reveals the melody behind Bugs and then Yosemite Sam dancing is a Carl Stalling original.

Dr. Goldmark’s dissertation expounds on Stalling’s use of popular and classical music, so most of his cue transcriptions are missing just about anything Stalling (and his successors and predecessors) composed for each cartoon. Also missing is a list of cues I’ve been trying to find out about for several decades—what the internet has dubbed “The Seely Six.”

Six cartoons released by Warners in 1958 bear a music credit for John Seely. Seely was a musician and composer, but he didn’t compose the scores for the six shorts. At the time, Seely was in charge of Capitol’s film music library. In 1956, Capitol created a library of several hundred records (or film reels) of music that could be licensed for films or television shows. It proved to be very popular; it provided background music for Hanna-Barbera cartoons, Gumby stop-motion shorts, industrial films from numerous companies (including Jerry Fairbanks Productions) and theme songs for several TV shows. Cues from the Capitol library were cherry-picked, quite possibly by Treg Brown at Warners, and edited together to form a score. Seely got the screen credit on the cartoons solely because he was the boss at Capitol.

Dr. Goldmark speculated in his dissertation that a possible reason behind using the stock music was an experiment to save money; Carl Stalling retired from the studio just before the Capitol library found its way into Warners cartoons. But the theory has also been floated, and I can’t remember where I first read it, was that the canned music was necessitated by a musicians strike.

The American Federation of Musicians launched a strike against the major Hollywood studios on February 20, 1958. Things didn’t quite go according to plan for the union and its leader, Caesar Petrillo. An unhappy group of members splintered off and formed their own union. Petrillo suddenly retired. On July 14th, the National Labor Relations Board certified the splinter union as the sole bargaining agent for musicians at the studios and the strike ended later that month, with “tooters” (as Variety insisted on calling them) returning to work starting July 21st. A contract was ratified on September 3rd.

Feature film production was only mildly inconvenienced by the strike; studios elected to have their composer’s scores recorded in foreign countries, mainly Mexico. From what I’ve been able to find so far, only one feature film released by a major studio required stock music to be used due to the walkout, Fox’s The Fiend Who Walked the West (cues were supplied by Leon Klatzkin, who supervised the Mutel library). As for the Warners cartoons, the Goldmark dissertation reveals the last in-house cue sheet filed before the Seely Six was on May 6th for Knighty Knight Bugs (released August 23, 1958). Cue sheets for the six Seely cartoons follow, four of them dated October 22nd, one on October 31st and the last on December 8th, the same day sheets were submitted for Milt Franklyn’s scores for Cat Feud and Baton Bunny (both released in 1959). Four of the Seely sheets are dated after the release of the cartoon. The music was added to each cartoon after the artwork was completed and shot. The dates could indicate the strike wasn’t the catalyst for using Capitol’s library.

Of the six, the Seely score I’ve been most curious about is for Hook, Line and Stinker, released October 11, 1958. It may be the most Hanna-Barbera sounding of the sextet, mainly due to the presence of a Capitol cue called “TC-303 Zany Comedy,” composed by Seely with Bill Loose, and heard frequently in the earliest Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound and Pixie & Dixie cartoons. But the short is also distinguished by what some people insist is the theme to the Dennis the Menace TV series, which was also composed by Loose and Seely. The melody is the same in some spots but is not note-for-note and is missing the musical “twitch” that Loose felt made it a likeable theme. Dr. Goldmark didn’t list any of the “Seely” cues in his dissertation, but I’ve been blessed by the kindness of on-line friends who have graciously supplied me with the cartoon’s cue sheet. And it reveals a surprise.



The “Dennis” cue, which precedes the Menace sitcom by a year, was actually written for Gumby, and is called “Gumby Chase.” The cue is still licensed under that name by ASCAP and published by Sam Fox Music; Loose and Seely wrote for that company before their Capitol days and some Sam Fox cues found their way into the Hi-Q library, though I cannot find a record of “Gumby Chase” being one of them.

The sheet reveals some other interesting things. Simple arithmetic bewilders me on occasion but the times of the cues on the sheet add up to 7:01. Yet the cartoon in circulation is 5:55. Was footage cut out? Or are the times on the sheet wrong? And are they in order? For example, the “Gumby Chase” that opens the cartoon is at least 45 seconds, not 15. “EM-126E” in the Hi-Q library only runs 12 seconds, not 1:08, and doesn’t sound like anything in this score. I don't hear “C-5” at all, let alone 45 seconds of it. “ZR-50” can be heard for seven seconds, not 35, after about 30 seconds of “Gumby Chase” (which runs from when Wile E. Coyote fires the slingshot to when the cannonball goes through the funnel). It would appear “TC-303 Zany Comedy” is the same cue as “Western Breeze.” The former is still under license from BMI, the latter from ASCAP. And someone devised their own code for a number of the Phil Green cues as EM-CT- is not used in either Hi-Q or the EMI Photoplay library which originally released the Green music.

Among the cues in the cartoon (Photoplay names) are “GR-453 The Artful Dodger” (Wile E. with dynamite under the tub until he tip-toes off camera); “GR-255 Puppetry Comedy” (the stick clubs Wile E.); “GR-459 Dawn in Birdland” (shot of birdseed, Wile E. opens can); “GR-97 By Jiminy! It’s Jumbo Short Bridge No 1” (Wile E. high-steps to the tracks, gets run over) and “GR-256 Toyland Burglar” (balloon, shot of roadrunner; shot of grey clouds, Wile E. drops).

The cartoon isn’t strong to begin with (a gag is Wile E. gets a beard of dust) and the stock music doesn’t add anything, as much as I’m a fan of the library.

That’s enough about this particular cartoon, one of about a thousand scored at Warner Bros. It’s a shame cue sheets for all the studios aren’t more accessible to the public. Fans would be able to learn more about the scores stitched together by cartoon studio musical directors, music that, in some cases, would otherwise go forgotten.

That Left Toin

You know the gag so well, I don’t need to explain it. So here are the consecutive frames of the burrowing Bugs Bunny surfacing in a middle of a bull ring in Bully For Bugs.



Bugs looks around and realises something is amiss therein.



You know the next line.



Is this Ken Harris animation? Ben Washam and Lloyd Vaughn are the only other credited animators. I suspect Dick Thompson and Abe Levitow were assisting in the unit at the time. The cartoon is full of the kind of masterful expressions that are in the best Chuck Jones shorts.

Jack Benny Becomes Jack Benny

For years, Sunday night was Jack Benny night, first on radio, and then television. The Benny show was so seared into popular culture, references to a Maxwell, the age 39, and being cheap brought only one thing to mind--Jack Benny.

Benny’s traits, of course, were pure invention. But it wasn’t like a bunch of writers sat down and came up with them, ready to spring on audiences listening to the premiere on May 2, 1932. They evolved over a period of time. The same was true of Benny’s cast and secondary players. Characters were added and subtracted as the years went on; Benny’s wife Sadye had been a part of his vaudeville act so she appeared early on as fangirl Mary Livingstone. There was a bit of acrimony behind some of the changes (such as the departure of writer Harry Conn, who you see with Benny to the right) while others are shrouded in mystery.

A number of Benny biographies have been written over the years and you’d think since Benny has been dead for 41 years, there’d be little else to say. Ah, but you’d be wrong. Kathy Helgesen Fuller Seeley has been studying the evolution of Benny’s humour, looking at its origins and comparing it with the wider world of vaudeville and radio comedy at the time. A little taste of it has been posted HERE. It contains footnotes to provide assurances of the accuracy of the facts.

For much of his career, Benny appeared on the air on Sunday nights (while 7 p.m. is the popularly ascribed time of his show, that applied only to the East Coast). It’s the reason this blog has posted a Benny-related piece almost every Sunday. Over the course of the next few months, we’ll try to augment Kathy’s work with a yearly roundup of clippings from Variety. 1932 will be posted this week, the following two years are banked. We can’t guarantee anything after that as the hunt is still time consuming (especially because of OCR scanning errors), but Kathy has lent some assistance to make the task a little easier.

Lantz Designs, 1956

Flatter character designs were in animated cartoons everywhere by the mid-‘50s. Here are some examples from Woodpecker From Mars, a Walter Lantz cartoon released in 1956 and directed by Paul J. Smith.



And..by request:



The Lantz cost-cutting is evident, too. All the characters are stationary except for the heads of the ones in a straight-forward view along the street. Lantz also reuses animation of the Walter Winchell caricature from Termites From Mars.

How To Look Like Yvonne Craig

The great rage at school in 1966 was Batman. And it was a great bonding experience. Everyone in my Grade 4 class would watch it and then talk about it the next day. Then, we’d watch it again that evening and talk about it again the following day.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, the producers crossed the line from “fun” into “way too campy.” Frank Gorshin’s Riddler was unhinged. Cesar Romero’s Joker was crazy but menacing when he had to be. What did we get the last season? Milton Berle? Rudy Vallee? Ida Lupino? Mice driven to suicide by a bat-flute? I’ll pass, thanks.

Yvonne Craig was in the cast that drab last season. At least she made sense. She was Commissioner Gordon’s previously unmentioned daughter. And I liked the irony of how Alfred knew her secret identity. But for a pre-teen boy, she really didn’t need to be in the series. How was I to know she wasn’t put there for pre-teen boys?

Still, she fit in pretty well and Batgirl will probably be the role those of us at a certain age will remember her for. Of course, she appeared in movies and other TV shows before Batman, but I don’t remember seeing any. Little did most people know that in 1957, she was getting $250 a week for The Young Land with options scaled up to $3,000 weekly by 1960 (well, columnist James Bacon knew. He wrote about it 1957).

Here’s a neat article from the “Youth Parade” section of the Binghamton Press of August 17, 1960, which makes a rather foolish case that kids can have a body like Yvonne Craig.

Actress Demonstrates Exercises
By REBA AND BONNIE CHURCHILL
Special Press Writer
SUMMER styles focus attention on arms and shoulders. Abbreviated play clothes spotlight this area every time you move, whether you're carrying a doggie satchel or a bag of groceries. So here are some "sungestions," as demonstrated by Yvonne Craig, to firm and fill out these exposed areas.
A WONDER worker for arms is this push-and-pull exercise. Done slowly it builds up thin arms; quicken tempo and it firms flabby skin.
Yvonne, seen in the 20th Century-Fox film, "High Time," uses three-pound weights or their equivalent in books.
HOLLOWS in collarbones tend to fill out when this routine is practiced faithfully. Stand at arm's length facing a wall. Then, place palms on wall so fingertips touch. Gently lean chest to wall, then return to starting position. Keep back straight as you do this workout fifteen times.



When the producers of Batman decided to add Craig, the publicity machines did their jobs. Here are a couple of newspaper columns from that period. The first is from the Associated Press, July 18, 1967.

Dynamic Duo Will Become Terrific Trio
Editor's Note—One of the eternal problems of television is giving an established series a booster shot. ABC. “Batman,” no longer a nine-day camp wonder, has shaken down to its hard-core young audience now and will soon attempt to brighten its corner by introducing a third character, “Batgirl,” moving the Dynamic Duo to a Terrific Trio. The lucky girl is a former ballet dancer, Yvonne Craig, who will wear a mask, of course, a purple and gold cape, and a skin-tight purple suit so that, says the producer, “It will be impossible to mistake Batgirl for Batman.”
By YVONNE CRAIG
For CYNTHIA LOWRY
HOLLYWOOD (AP) — Batgirl, another character from the “Batman” comics, is really Barbara Gordon, the librarian-daughter of Commissioner Gordon. She has just returned from college, but an intellectual square she's not. She helps the Dynamic Duo in their fight against crime, but they have no idea who she is. For that matter, neither does she know who Batman and Robin are.
An actress likes to be noticed, and who could miss Batgirl? She comes screeching to the scene of the crime in a customized Batgirlcycle with purple Bat fins, white lace trim, a fringed seat and a large gold bow on the back.
Very Feminine
And while Batgirl is an active type, she's also very feminine None of that smacking people low with karate and gung-fu. In my opinion, three karate chops and you've lost your feminity. If a girl goes on a date and a fellow gets fresh, she can't very well give him a karate chop for a good-night. But if she ducks, she’s simply adept and feminine. Batgirl will be aiding and assisting Batman and Robin, not constantly rescuing them. I like that, too.
In fact I like “Batman,” period. It's wild and bizarre; while entertaining the youngsters with its action and costumes, it contains a lot of humor for adults. I recently met an important politician in Denver who told me “Batman” had produced some of the best political satire he had seen. The prospects are very exciting.
Big Break
When I was touring the country with the Ballet Russe and doing guest spots on television, I never dreamed that my first big break would be as a sort of sexy superheroine.
After doing a 15-minute presentation film as Batgirl for ABC, I still had to wait for some time for the decision that Batgirl would become a regular member of the "Batman" cast. I was given the news while attending a network function in Chicago. I suddenly realized that I was in the dream situation of every actress who aspires to a television series role. There was no worry about an audience—“Batman” is an established show— and there was no concern about whether it would sell because it’s already sold. As a veteran of four unsold television pilots I can appreciate that kind of security.

And the Buffalo Courier-Express did this promo piece, published August 20, 1967. It seems rather tacky publishing Craig’s measurements, but in this day of pictures of a Kardashian shoving a greased butt at the camera, it’s comparatively quaint.

Batgirl and Batcycle Join Dynamic Duo
Yvonne Craig Having Grand Time on ABC Series
By WALT DUTTON
HOLLYWOOD — Pow! Zap! Va-va voom! Batgirl is here, and quicker than you can flash a batsignal, Gotham City's dynamic duo has become the terrific trio.
In the illusory TV world of Gotham City, Batgirl's true identity is Barbara Gordon, the just returned from college daughter of unsuspecting Commissioner Gordon. And in the illusory world of show business, Barbara Gordon's true identity is Yvonne Craig, a luscious ballet dancer-turned-actress.
So far, Yvonne has been having a great time as a dedicated crime fighter in the ABC series.
“I HAD NEVER seen anything like it,” she remarked the other day, referring to the first time she had seen Batman and Robin in her TV screen.
“I didn't quite know what to think then,” she admitted, “but now I love the show; there are so many fun things about it.
“IT'S WILD AND bizarre; while thrilling the kids with its action and costumes, its humor gets through to the adults who are watching with them. In fact, a politician recently told me he thinks Batman has produced some of the best political satire he has ever seen.”

Yvonne was outside the studio soundstage watching the crew shoot an exterior scene.
“There it is,” she smiled, pointing to an outlandishly purple motorcycle bedecked with bat wings, trimmed in lace and sporting a white bow on its rear fender. “It's the batgirl cycle.”
“OH, I CAN RIDE it all right,” she boasted. “I just have trouble when it's stopped; it's so heavy I can't hold it up. It fell over the other day and I decided to try talking to it.
“ ‘Come on,’ I said nicely, ‘you can get up, can't you?’ It didn't, so I kicked it.”
Then she recalled with a laugh how the thing nearly wiped out Vincent Price, who was guest villain Egghead.
“IN THE SCENE I race in on the batgirl cycle and make a panic stop at the curb, where Vincent is standing. Well, it stopped; but then — Voom! Voom!—It went after him a second time.
“He ended up straight-arming it and cut his hand on the bat wing. It ran over his foot, too.
“I thought I was going to kill him; that would have been the end of art in Los Angeles.”
REPORTEDLY, PRICE had the urge to shout, “ole!” Producer Howie Horwitz offered him two ears and an organdie bow.
“Let's go see Barbara Gordon's apartment,” she suggested. On the way, we detoured to her dressing room, where the wardrobe department's Pat Barto was looking over Rome row acquisitions for Barbara Gordon.
“How are you in stretch jeans?” asked Pat.
“Not too great,” she replied modestly. Those who have seen her in the form-fitting Batgirl costume might take exception to that statement. Although the outfit looks like a shapeless skindiving suit while on a hanger, on Yvonne it is rather stunning. (She confessed, somewhat reluctantly, her dimensions are 35½-21-34½).
“BUT LET'S SEE the apartment,” Yvonne urged.
The apartment was dark. The bright studio lights were turned off, and the only illumination on the set came from the open studio doors.
“I'd like to move in here,” she said. “That would be kicky. I really like that bedroom.”
The living room of Barbara Gordon's apartment is contemporary in design, reflecting the tastes of a swinger. But the bedroom is very feminine, with ruffles and antique furniture.
Behind her vanity table lies her secret room: Barbara Gordon's answer to the batcave. It is replete with flashing lights and an Iris-like exit leading to the batgirl cycle.

On the same page as this story is a photo of Eddie Albert and Arnold the Pig. It reminded me that television seemed an awful lot more fun in 1967. And Yvonne Craig was part of it. Farewell, Yvonne.

One of Those Corny 'B' Pictures, Eh?

Screwy Squirrel is about to clobber Meathead the dog when his cartoon is interrupted.



In another great routine, Red Riding Hood and the wolf come out of nowhere to interrupt the action. Screwy explains to the wolf he’s in the wrong cartoon—with the assistance of the previously-seen title cards pulled out of nowhere.



The whole routine is topped when Screwy and Meathead briefly inhabit the world of Red Riding Hood, with none of its characters anywhere to be found.

Heck Allen helped Tex Avery with the story in this one.

Falsetto Frolics

Ever wonder how Mickey got his high voice? The answer may be in eight consecutive drawings from “Plane Crazy.”



Mickey doesn’t actually cry in pain during this part of the picture. Music and sound effects pretty much tell the story.

Broadway Benny

Jack Benny disliked the song the world associates with him, “Love in Bloom.”

Well, so he said in an interview with the Associated Press in 1963. And elsewhere, long after his radio days when he adopted it had ended.

He had nothing against the song’s writers, Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger. In fact, he had them on his show twice and handed them laughs as his violin butchered their songs “Let That Be a Lesson To You” (show of July 7, 1936) and what became Bob Hope’s theme “Thanks For The Memory” (show of March 6, 1938). But the song was a love song, and Jack didn’t see how the lyrics applied to a comedian. They didn’t, of course, but there’s something funny about lousy violin playing during what’s supposed to a romantic song. So it really did fit him after all.

Here’s the story we mentioned above. Jack was making a Broadway appearance, so the A.P. found it worthy of an interview.

Jack Benny's Broadway Return Done on a 'Hunch'
By WILLIAM GLOVER
NEW YORK, Feb. 4 (AP) — "I had a feeling," says Jack Benny who is coming back to Broadway, "that if I didn't do it this time, I just never would."
And if that sounds mildly mystical—well, Benny is a great believer in hunches. His career, the noted television comic asserts, has been filled with impromptu payoff events.
"Everything that's happened has come about by accident."
For several years, the man from "Waukegan has been noodling notions about appearing once more on the White Way stage that he last visited in the 1931 Earl Carroll "Vanities."
"Each time I'd say I'd do it—and then didn't."
Obeying his impulse this time, Benny begins a six-week engagement Feb. 27 at the Ziegfeld theater in a variety revue. It is the longest in-person stint he has set, although there have been a number of concert appearances, and "about a million banquet speeches."

THE THEATER GUILD show is an expansion of a program which he displayed several months ago for two weeks in Las Vegas.
"I go to Vegas mostly for kicks—and when you do something for kicks, you better be great," he points out.
"You see, I get stage-struck every so often, and people keep sending me scripts of musicals and plays. But with TV commitments, the only kind of play I could do would be one written for me and that I would own.
"Then I could go into it for a few weeks, have someone replace me, and come back the next chance I got. But nobody is going to write a play like that for me."
With all of his television shows recorded for the rest of the season, Benny put his name on the line for the Ziegfeld date.
The original intention was to call the revue "Life Begins at 39." But the star, who will actually be 69 on Valentine's Day, felt some fans might be misled into thinking it was a play with a plot So the title is simply "Jack Benny in Person."
APPEARING WITH HIM are Jane Morgan and several other entertainers, and a preliminary warmup opens in Toronto Feb. 11. "At this point I don't really need any rehearsal," says the comedian, "we could go on tomorrow."
After the run, he vacations for a fortnight, then starts shooting next season's video series. If the show hits big, he'd like to curtail video to some extent thereafter for a cross-country tour. Why all the work?
"Well, Mary—she'll be along for the opening here—thinks I work too much sometimes, but she's got a feeling that if I rested too much, I'd get restless. So do I."
Turning to some of the happy accidents that have shaped his merry image, Benny calls such items as reputed stinginess, that renowned feud with Fred Allen and his "Love in Bloom" fiddling all the results of chance.
"IF WE'D DELIBERATELY set one of those things up, the sting would have died in four weeks," he declares.
Mention of that theme melody brings another confession.
"I despise that song — and I always have, because it has absolutely no meaning for me."
Much better, he adds, would be mastery of "All the Great Violin Classics." Just before pausing to chat, he was hard at rehearsal of a Henry Wieniawski concerto.
"I'll never master that as long as I live," sighed the thwarted maestro.

Much About Clutch

I’ll just go ahead and say it. Clutch Cargo is creepy. I don’t know if it aired on any channels I watched a kid, but it would have been too weird to attract me if it had.

Clutch, for those of you who don’t know, is classified by many as a cartoon and, it is in a way. The drawings don’t move. Instead, film of human lips reciting dialogue is super-imposed over the drawings.

I ran across the trade ad you see to the right and it inspired me to write a few things about Clutch and its producer. As I started researching I discovered—and I shouldn’t be surprised about this—cartoon historian Jerry Beck has already posted an interesting little history on his blog. Read it HERE. Frankly, it’s far more entertaining than what you’ll read below.

Getting TV cartoons on the air in the 1950s and early 60s was octopussian in nature. There were always a bunch of connected tenticles. In the case of Clutch Cargo, there were George Bagnall, a company called Cambria Studios and inventor Edwin Gillette.

Cambria came about in 1956. Jack Schwartz sold his Equity Studios to a man named Richard Brown “who will operate it as Cambria Studios on a rental basis” (Variety, Jan. 18, 1956). Brown seems to have intended it to operate as a live action studio. The Fund for the Republic, bankrolled by the Ford Foundation, commissioned a five-minute historical series with the filming to be done at Cambria, with Ed Gillette handling the cameras (Weekly Variety, May 9, 1956). Gillette held a number of patents, and one of them was for a process which photographed composite talking pictures. You can see the patent HERE. Somewhere along the way, this process acquired the name “Synchro-Vox” and, it would seem logical to assume, Gillette talked to somebody at Cambria about the studio using it. Apparently, he soon had his chance. Weekly Variety reported on November 14, 1956.

‘Capt. Fathom’ in Tint
Cambria Studio Inc. and New Vistas Inc. will combine to color-film a new telepix series, “Captain Fathom,” according to Dick Brown, prexy of Cambria. Series, about a skindiver, will be aimed at both juve and adult markets.

Things get a little confusing here. Captain Fathom was the name of a Cambria cartoon series in 1965 that used the Synchro-Vox technique. The aforementioned programme may have been a live action show starring Buster Crabbe; Weekly Variety of Feb. 7, 1957 mentions such a show was being produced by Cambria. But it may have been a different show altogether. Billboard of September 9, 1958, well over a year and a half later, talks about the Crabbe show and we learn for the first time about Clutch and Synchro-Vox.

Bagnall Associates Pitches Anthony, 'Davey Jones' Pix
NEW YORK-George Bagnall Associates is pitching two new properties for TV, with Les Anthony handling ad agencies here.
"Davey Jones," half-hour adventure series, stars Buster Crabbe as an ex-Navy demolition expert engaged in salvage work.
"Clutch Cargo," a cartoon strip with a new lip-sync process, is a five-minute serialized cliff-hanger.
Both properties are being produced by Cambria Productions.

Bagnall had kicked around for awhile. He was treasurer of the Fox Film Corporation in 1930, moved to Paramount in 1941, and later landed at United Artists as vice president in charge of production. He was on the board of the Motion Picture Relief Fund for 45 years, serving as its president for a time, and received the Jean Herscholt Humanitarian Award from the Motion Picture Academy in 1967. More relevant to our story, Bagnall set up his own distribution company in 1952 hoping to get in on the television syndication gold mine. His experience with animation came in 1957 when he bought the rights to distribute the original, Jay Ward produced, Crusader Rabbit cartoons to TV stations. Evidently, he was looking for more animation to sell; several companies were making good coin brokering deals for old theatrical cartoons to stations.

In the meantime, an animator named Clark Haas came up with the concept of Clutch Cargo. Somehow, he hooked up with Cambria and Gillette’s Synchro-Vox, and Bagnall came on board to distribute the 130-episode series (Cargo’s companion Spinner, incidentally, was voiced by Margaret Kerry, who was Richard Brown’s wife).

Bagnall’s sales team hit the road. By August 25, 1959, Variety reported the company had done a half million dollars in business on Clutch. Broadcasting magazine of August 31, 1959 broadcast the happy news:

George Bagnall & Assoc. Inc. (tv film distributor), Beverly Hills, Calif., has sold Clutch Cargo, a cartoon comic strip using the Synchro Vox system of interposing human lips to drawings, to more than 15 stations. The Stations include WPIX (TV) New York, WFIL-TV Philadelphia [purchased in January], WNHC-TV New Haven, WGN -TV Chicago, KTTV (TV) Los Angeles, WWJ -TV Detroit, WIIC (TV) Pittsburgh, WEWS (TV) Cleveland, WKBN-TV Youngstown, KFRE-TV Fresno, WNBF-TV Binghamton, KOVR (TV) Stockton, WREX-TV Rockford, WJRT (TV) Flint. Other sales were made in Phoenix, Tucson, Tampa and Eureka, Calif.
Clutch Cargo has 26 stories consisting of five episodes a story.

When did Clutch first appear on TV? The Los Angeles Times reveals he became part of KTTV’s Lunch Brigade with Sheriff John on October 19, 1959. He’s on Philadelphia’s channel 6 on March 30th introduced by Sally Starr (who had just finished running 55 minutes of Popeye cartoons). The earliest we’ve spotted him is on New York City’s channel 11 on Monday, March 16th at 5:25 p.m. immediately after Abbott and Costello.

For the record, Clutch was voiced by announcer Richard Cotting. Emil Sitka, a well-loved secondary player to Three Stooges fans, supplied accents and what he called “eccentric voices” and the ubiquitous Hal Smith can be heard as well.

Sponsor magazine of July 11, 1960 mentions this interesting Clutch tie-in:

Ideas at work:
• Humanitarians all: WTRF-TV, Wheeling, W. Va., turned its gimmick "Clutch Cargo Humanitarian Award" legit. The tv station and local police department honored a parking lot attendant for "service beyond the call of duty" (he permitted an officer to store his rain gear on the lot) . The award became so well known that the two decided to make it really mean something. First recipient was a 12-year-old who saved a friend from drowning.

Clutch Cargo remained on the air for several more years. Variety reported in September 1963 the “TV comic strip” was syndicated in 90 markets.



The success of the ultra-cheap Clutch enabled Cambria to put several more Electro-Vox series on the air. Space Angel (1963), with animator Hi Mankin supervising, featured artwork by Alex Toth, Doug Wildey and Warren Tufts, all of whom went to Hanna-Barbera to toil on Jonny Quest. In fact, Cambria took Hanna-Barbera to court for $1,050,000 in 1965, claiming the Quest series “uses, copies and appropriates substantial parts and portions of Cambria’s ‘Clutch Cargo’ and its pilot film, ‘Captain Fathom,’ including their principal cartoon characters.” There’s really no comparing the shows.

The year was a busy one on the drawing board for Cambria. Not only did Captain Fathom hit the airwaves, so did an animated version of The Three Stooges (producer Norman Maurer was Moe Howard’s son-in-law). These series required honest-to-goodness animators, and veteran Chic Otterstrom was among them. Read more (or is that “Moe”? Nyuk, nyuk) about the show on this blog. Cambria, incidentally, had a co-production deal with Canawest Film Productions of Vancouver to film a Three Stooges feature film. It was budgeted at $250,000 and to be shot in two weeks in Vancouver (Canawest was one of the studios where the Beatles cartoons were made).

Like the other TV studios, Cambria had projects that were announced in the trades but never quite got off the ground. From Variety, January 19, 1965.

Cartooning Arquette's Weaver' Character
Cliff Arquette's " Charlie Weaver" character will become a cartoon to be produced by Cambria Studio for its kidult series. He will portray his Mt. Idy caricature in letters from his mother.
Joe Cutter and Dave Detiege are scripting the pilot and Clark Haas is the art director. Art Rush set the deal for Arquette.

And from Broadcasting magazine, February 13, 1967...

Animated World War I
A new adventure cartoon series in color, The Golden Eagle, is being produced by Cambria Studios, Hollywood, for distribution by the Trans-Lux Television Corp. Initial episodes of the series, which is based on exploits of World War I flying aces, are expected to be ready by March in time for the NAB convention and TFE '67, a Trans-Lux official reported.

Trans-Lux was no stranger to cartoons. It put the “bag of tricks” version of Felix the Cat on the small screen, as well as that Greek god with iron in his thighs, The Mighty Hercules.

Cambria seems to have relocated to Canada. Richard Brown was based in Vancouver by the late ‘60s and working on a number of deals for TV films, some involving children’s adventure stories. He joined Animation Filmakers Corp. in 1972 which absorbed Cambria. Clark Haas, the man behind Clutch Cargo, died in 1978. Brown died in 1993 (the cartoon’s director, Phil Booth, died in 1960). Meanwhile, the worldwide TV rights to Clutch and Space Angel were acquired in 1974 by Entertainment Corp. of America. Whether anyone actually broadcast them has yet to be discovered. The show remained a campy, fuzzy memory for some boomers, including Conan O’Brien, who decided the Synchro Vox technique would be something really funny for a segment of his late night TV. Suddenly, people were talking about Clutch again and the maligned series ended up on DVD in 2005.

We wonder when a forward-thinking studio will come out with a feature film CGI remake of Clutch Cargo. Some fans may complain about computer generated versions of their old favourites being vastly inferior to the originals, but we suspect there’s no possible way to make Clutch worse than it was.