Singing Fireplace of Horror

The Wild Goose Chase (1932) is the Van Beuren version of one of those Fleischer scary cartoons featuring parades weird creatures. It’s imaginative enough to make it one of the studio’s best, even though the story’s developed in a stream-of-consciousness method as we go from banjo-strumming frogs to two cats taken by a goose (which they don’t chase) to a castle in the clouds to get some gold.

The cats try to escape from the castle and stop in front of a singing stone fireplace. The fire acts like a tongue as the lyrics are sung. Fire creatures then jump out and run up the stairs, and the flames then turn into arms to try to grab the cats, who climb out a window to (supposed) safety.



I sure wish I knew the name of the song the fireplace (played by the original voice of Bluto?) is singing, but Gene Rodemich’s soundtrack is taken up part of the time with the 1927 hit “Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella.” Margie Hines is the girl cat; the boy cat’s voice is lost to the ages.

John Foster and Manny Davis receive screen credits.

Marty Ingels, Hopped-Up Squirrel, Lousy Dentist

If someone shouted the name “Marty Ingels” at me, the first word that would come to mind would be “unpredictable.” Growing up in the ‘60s, Marty was on TV quite regularly but whenever you saw him, you never quite knew what he was going to do. Other than it would probably be unusual.

Marty passed away last night and obituaries have all brought up his TV series that few people really paid attention to at the time—“I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster.” It co-starred John Astin, who went on to sitcom immortality on “The Addams Family.” Marty went on to, well, staying married to Shirley Jones. Frankly, I find the contrast between Ingles and Jones’ first husband, Jack Cassidy, funnier than anything any of them did on camera.

Plenty about Marty was written about the time he landed his co-starring gig. Let me pass on a couple of newspaper columns. The first is from the Philadelphia Inquirer of May 28, 1962.

Worry Over Keeps Comic Happy —By ALAN GILL
THE title of a forthcoming record album of humorous reminiscences is “Marty Ingels Arrives.” But Marty Ingels has not yet quite arrived. He was sitting in a show people's hangout in New York the other day and nobody was saying, “Hi there, Marty,” and no money was jingling in the young man's pockets. Just wait.
Ingels has more than a record album up his sleeve. He's got co-star billing in an ABC comedy series that will be unleashed in the fall under the bumbling title of “I'm Dickens . . . He's Fenster.”
The fellow is 26, a Brooklynite, a redhead and a worrier. His dark, snappy eyes are the eyes of a hopped-up squirrel. And whoever it was that carved out Marty Ingels' mouth—well, the band slipped. His mouth has as many curves to it as the Colorado River; and behind this topographical wonder, the teeth are effectively hidden.
“I have as much tooth as anyone else,” he said. “I just have more LIP than most people.”
The voice which spoke these words can only be approximated by dropping a handful of stones into your kitchen blender.
“You're billed as having bright red hair,” a table companion said, squinting in the gloom. Is it all that red?”
“Nah,” Ingels said He rolled up his sleeve. “But look it here. The real stuff, huh?” (The arm hairs were aflame, all right.) “If we go color, this arm will be a star.”
• •
HE WAS about to tape a TV guest stint and he was staying away from food. Because he's the nervous type?
“Nervous?” he said. “You haven't SEEN nervous. Look Are you ready? Here's nervous.” He tossed two blue-and-yellow capsules onto a saucer. “Lunch!” he announced.
Asked what kind of comedian he was, Ingels said, “Max Liebman broke my heart one day when he said the day of the reaction comedian was over and done with. I'm a reaction comedian.
“That's somebody who, when somebody else throws a pie in his face, he reacts. I react to audience, too. I get up there without any material. It all just comes out of me and my being there.
“The other comics, they're playing parts. Me, I just play myself. I AM this way. I'm a dopey Brooklyn kid that never got out of school except by being kicked out, because I was the class clown. I couldn't help it.”
In “I'm Dickens . . . He's Fenster,” Ingels plays Fenster, a carpenter—the sidekick type who has a hundred pockets in his coveralls, each pocket lined with the tools of his trade. He walks through the role bent double like Groucho Marx.
Most people who've seen the pilot think the show will be the making of Marty, but he worries.
He worries about all those millions of people from coast to coast who are about to be his judges. He worries about the house he one day will buy for his parents. He worries about the public relations people around him, because he doesn't like being a corporation.
“You know what I worry about most of all?” he says. “I'm scared that when the day comes when I don't have to worry any more, I won't know how to NOT worry.”

This is from the Buffalo Courier, November 15, 1962.

Marty Ingels Rated As Fine New Comic
By JACK ALLEN
FUNNY MAN – Maybe it's the face. Or is it the gravely voice? At any rate, Marty Ingels makes you laugh.
The new comic star of ABC-TV’s “I’m Dickens—He's Fenster” (Marty is Fenster) is a genuinely funny man. In these days of manufactured comics, situations and laugh tracks on TV, he's a rare bird.
And Marty's life story is rarer. He told it to us the other day in a torrent of 10,000 choice phrases, piled rapidly one atop the other in as wild a fashion as he and partner John Astin work as TV's zaniest carpenter.
BORN CLOWN — “I don't turn on the comedy,” Marty said. “It turns me on. It comes from a little machine inside. It got me in perpetual trouble in school and fired from a lot of jobs. I can't control it.”
As a red-haired, freckle-faced lad at Brooklyn's Public School 167, Marty unwittingly became an instigator.
“Every time I raised my hand in class to ask a legitimate question,” complained Marty, “the teacher would say, ‘What are you, a wise guy?’ and send me to the principal. As I quaked before him, he'd say, ‘Cut out the acting, smart aleck’.”
HOT WATER — Marty stayed in hot water through Erasmus High School and Queens College on his way to dental school. His uncle, cousin and two brothers are dentists, and 26-year-old Marty is still rebuked by his mother for not continuing the practice.
But the wide-eyed comic gave up dentistry, took a variety of jobs. He distributed peanut samples in Times Sq., was patrolman at a Harlem dance hall, a longshoreman, a bartender, and magazine salesman. People still thought Marty was an instigator and a “goof-off.”
“In eight of 11 jobs," he said, “my application and severance papers were processed at the same time. And they never gave me any reason for the boot.”
SAD SACK — Marty joined the U.S. Army, and became its biggest sad sack. “The sergeant would say, ‘Hey Bendix, stop staring at me.’ They thought I looked and spoke like William Bendix, the actor.
“I'll compare my record for KP duty and push-ups with any company foul-up ever persecuted in the Army.”
But Marty's unforgettable face and unwitting comedy gave him one break.
A WINNER— “A woman visited our mess hall one day,” said Marty. “She remarked that I had a funny face. I said, “Look, miss, isn't it bad enough I'm in the Army?’ But she turned out to be a people-getter for the TV quiz show, 'Name That Tune,' I went on the show, won $6,000 and about 1,000 letters from viewers asking if I had any teeth.”
Marty left the Army, figured If people thought he was so funny, he should try acting. He took his quiz show winnings to California, and enrolled in the Pasadena Playhouse.
GREEK DRAMA — “There they tried to make me a John Gielgud,” said Marty. “They kept me like a mascot for months. They taught me ballet, voice discipline and a thousand other things to, as my director put it, ‘tear that ever-present comedy compulsion from this otherwise sensitive actor’.”
“But it didn't work. They put me in a Greek chorus as a spear carrier. When I stepped forth and spoke my one serious line, the audience broke up. Then I was in a morbid Russian drama called ‘He Who Gets Slapped.’ The reviewers called the play a satire and I was expelled from the cast.”
ON HIS WAY— Eventually, Marty played summer stock, won guest appearances with Phil Silvers, Steve Allen and other TV comedians. He flopped at Las Vegas, where his clean, visual comedy found no takers in an audience accustomed to “blue” humor and intellectual comedians.
“I thought I was born 20 years too late for the comedy field,” said Marty. “With the Newharts, Bermans, Sahls and Gregorys crowding the field, where were the new Danny Kayes, Red Skeltons and Jerry Lewises?”
Finally Marty caught on with Lewis, after crashing the Paramount lot to see the star, and he was on his way in movies and television.
OWN SHOW—He's seen now on Friday nights on Ch. 7, in a comedy show many describe as the brightest of the new season. The new team of Astin and Ingels evinced mutual distrust at first sight.
“I expected a Dean Martin-type straight man,” said Marty.
“And I guess John expected David Niven. But we hit it off beautifully now.
“A series is hard work, but I love it. It's the first steady work I've had, and it seems like a dream. But we're up against tough competition in 'Route 66' and Mitch Miller. I hope the Nielsen ratings don't bust the bubble.”
So do we. Marty Ingels' arrival is long overdue. And he'd make a very poor dentist.

Long after I abandoned the watered-down world of Saturday Morning Cartoons in the early ‘70s, Engels moved into the arena and had the impossible task of trying to put personality into a cartoon based on a video game character with no personality, on a programme hamstrung by network restrictions. Kids deserved better. Marty did, too. A cartoon show based on a guy trying to make a living selling magazines, peanut samples, watching over a dance hall in Harlem and being confounded learning dentistry strikes me as something far funnier. Marty Ingels may have been funnier in real life than anything he put on television.

The Smurd Sellers

There are many things that baffle me about the great team of Bob and Ray. One of them has nothing to do with their comedy. I’m dumbfounded about the hours they kept.

In 1952, the two were hosting a morning radio programme at WNBC. But they are also appearing live on television at 7:15 p.m. In fact, after their arrival in New York City, various networks kicked their body-clocks all over the clock. How they managed to stay creative, let alone awake, is a major accomplishment.

Here are Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding talking about what it’s like to be up at sunrise. It was syndicated by King Features and found in the Glens Falls Post-Star of February 19, 1952.

My New York
By MEL HEIMER
NEW YORK — I was talking with Bob and Ray the other morning and discovered two important items about the city I love: (1) this is a very hilly town, and (2) no matter how early you get up in the morning, there's always somebody up ahead of you.
A brief description of and explanation about Bob and Ray might be in order, although this is unnecesary to New Yorkers. This is Bob and Ray year. The Chinese probably would describe American years as the year of the eating of goldfish, the year of dancing the Charleston, etc.; well, this is the year of Bob and Ray.
These two souls, who are the most tired and likely the funniest men to New York, are a pair of radio and television performers who swept into town last July from the outlying precincts of an Indian territory called Boston. They are the sharpest, most honestly whimsical most dead-panned puncturers of the bubble of false dignity that Manhattan has seen in lo, these many moons.
Blase Gothamites rush home to watch them on television at the uncivilized hour of 7:15; others pass this up reluctantly, when unable to pry themselves loose from the Plaza bar, and stay up all night to catch one of their radio shows at 6 A.M.
They are on their way to being the richest comics in the cemetery, having been handling a total of 17 radio and TV shows a week, which they estimate gives them time to sleep two hours each night.
The most remarkable thing about the whole turbulent schedule is that the quality of their humor remains constantly high, which likely is because at heart they are very funny-minded men.
• • • •

Their names are Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding, and to get to the microphone at 6 each morning, Bob gets up at 5:30 in his East Side apartment and Ray gets up at 4 in his Sands Point, L. I., home. These are hours that honest farmers keep, to be true, but when you only get home the night before at 9:15 or so they are frightening.
"I love the morning," Ray said, feebly, to me, "but now — well, now, when that alarm rings, I could just put my head in the pillow and sob. It's inhuman."
Ray is the one who discovered there's always someone awake ahead of you. "Any time I drive through all those little Queens communities on my way to work," he said morosely, "there's always somebody standing on a street corner waiting for a bus."
That, Ray says, is what he probably will remember longest as his great Impression of life in New York — a man standing on the street corner in the dawn, waiting for a bus. "And feeling, no doubt, more miserable than I do," he adds. Bob, who is stockier and looks the enact opposite of the lanky, mustachioed Ray (although their minds must be twins), says that the thing that impresses him about Manhattan in the dawn is the hills. I didn't know there was a hill in the city.
"Oh, yes," he said, doggedly. "I grab the same cab every morning and we go rolling down Second Avenue and all of a sudden, with no cars on it, you notice that it's hilly. And all over town it's the same way; the streets are full of little hills you don't see in the daytime." Bob refused to accept the theory that at 5:30 A.M. he was full of little hills, and not the streets.
• • • •
The boys have dusted off and put into use an old dodge of the subtler radio comedians (there are so some)—the phony, satirical commercial. They have elevated it to the heights.
They have been offering phony television sets, a fantastic soap flake called Smurd (or something) which dirties clothes rather than cleans them, and so on. One would expect them to be sued for libel or hung by the thumbs by outraged merchants or other objects of their satire, but they've escaped unscathed so far.
Their television characters are superb — Kindly Dr. John, Linda Lovely (beautifully played by Audrey Meadows), Mary Magoon (a hairy-armed recipe-maker whose face never is seen, because Ray plays her) and a superb pointy-headed man named Uncle Eugene, who makes peanut butter sandwiches endlessly. This may not seem funny. All right, it doesn't seem funny. But it is, you must take all New York's word for it.

The Hanging Dog

Bob McKimson simply couldn’t make a cartoon after taking over as a director without characters running toward the camera.

Here’s an example from Crowing Pains, one of his first. Sylvester and the dog are running in the foreground as you might expect in any cartoon. Then they run into the background.



Then McKimson had them run diagonally toward and past the camera. He seems to have done this in every one of his first few cartoons.



Whether it was McKimson or his writer Warren Foster, I don’t know, but the characterisations in the early McKimson shorts were just plain weird. His Bugs Bunny was unable to tell the difference between a mechanical rabbit and a real one, and got upset over a two-cent bounty (would the Bugs you know really care?). In this cartoon, Sylvester is aggressive and sadistic. He even hangs the dog. Of course, we get more of those coming-at-the-camera shots that McKimson doted on. Random frames.



There’s lots of thrashing about in this cartoon that’s fun to stop and look at. Within a few years, the animation in the McKimson unit got pretty sedate. Budget cuts, a whole new animation crew and American society’s transition from the Let’s-Kick-Nazi-Butt-‘40s to Let’s-Have-a-Barbecue-and-Invite-the-Neighbours-‘50s likely played varying degrees of responsibility.

Lousy Tipper

Tex Avery fills maybe a quarter of “Sh-h-h-h-h-h” with sign gags. The premise is the hotel where Mr. Twiddle is staying at is supposed to be quiet, so the communications are in silent signs. I like how the bellboy flips around one sign and it has three messages. No need to ask why it doesn’t have two (one on either side); it’s a Tex Avery cartoon.

Being a silent cartoon during this portion, the drawings say it all.



Ray Abrams, La Verne Harding and Don Patterson animate this, Avery’s last completed theatrical cartoon.

Martha and Emily

One of the great luxuries of the Jack Benny radio show is, eventually, he and his writers developed so many secondary characters that he didn’t need to have them on every week. He could bring them back once in a while so the show sounded fresh but familiar at the same time. Among the characters were two little old ladies named Emily and Martha. Benny made himself out to be a ladies man but these were the only ladies he could attract. The whole concept was funny. Their octogenarian status allowed the writers to come up with age jokes that didn’t involve Benny himself. The concept was later developed on the Benny TV show as a fan club of little old ladies, usually from Pasadena (what the link is between that city and elderly women, especially as it predates Jan and Dean’s song about one, is a cultural reference I don’t get).

Two veteran actresses were picked for the roles. Gloria Gordon played Emily while Jane Morgan was Martha. Their first appearance was on November 3, 1946. They actually didn’t appear very often together, only nine times, with eight of their routines broadcast during the 1940s. Besides the later “fan club” on the TV show, they were the inspiration behind a two-headed vulture (voiced by Julie Bennett) in the 1962 Bugs Bunny cartoon “Transylvania 6-5000.”

Emily has a slight English accent, unintentionally, I suspect because Gordon was English. Morgan’s voice should be recognisable to fans of situation comedy as she began a long tenure as landlady Mrs. Davis on Our Miss Brooks beginning in July 1948 (playing opposite Gordon’s son, Gale). She also played a landlady on My Friend Irma, which debuted in April 1947, but was replaced by Gordon through the series’ run on TV.

The two were profiled in Radio Life, a terrific publication for the Los Angeles area, on May 11, 1947.

Delightfully Devoted
You’ve Heard Them as “Martha” and “Emily,” Jack Benny’s Elderly Admirers. Now Meet Jane Morgan and Gloria Gordon, Two Ladies With Illustrious Careers in the Theater
By Joan Buchanan
“OH, MARTHA, isn’t that Jack Benny over there?”
“Yes, Emily—oh, isn't he handsome?”
Every time Jack Benny’s car pulls to a stop for a Vine Street traffic light, listeners to his Sunday show wait for the foregoing dialogue. Yes, it’s Jane Morgan and Gloria Gordon as “Martha” and "Emily,” Jack’s indefatigable fans, waiting for a glimpse of their “star.”
Ever since this whimsical twosome first made an appearance on NBC’s Benny show, we've promised ourselves that we'd look them up and find out if they really do feel that way about Jack Benny.
“Jack Benny is a dear,” exclaimed Jane.
“He’s a darling boy,” added Gloria.
“So easy to work with,” continued Jane.
“Absolutely pie,” concluded Gloria.
And that’s their word on the subject. Both Jane and Gloria have been in radio for many years. Gloria started in 1928, "and worked for a year, my dear, without pay!” Jane entered soon after, or “whenever it was that there was no more theater.”
Though neither Gloria nor Jane can recall working together before, they have been friends for years and their careers have paralleled one another’s surprisingly. Both were born in England. Gloria calls herself an old Liverpuddlian, the name for those born in Liverpool. Jane’s parents were Welsh and she admits that listening to “How Green Was My Valley” on “Lux” made her cry because it reminded her of her father. Both have been in this country for years, and Gloria proudly announced that she has voted in every election since becoming a citizen.
Both Musical

Both studied music—Jane was a violin, piano and voice student, Gloria studied piano and voice. Both appeared in opera and musical comedy before switching to straight dramatics. Gloria’s career encompassed tours that took her to every important European capital, and between them she and Jane have appeared with almost every great name in their lifetime. Jane was a Boston Opera Company star—“I’ve sung everything from ‘Jack in the Beanstalk’ to ‘Carmen’,” she added. In addition to opera, the concert stage legitimate theater, resident stock, pictures and radio have claimed the talents of this pair, though never as a team until now. Both were working with the Henry Duffy players locally at the same time—but in different companies.
Jane and Gloria have both known the adulation that goes with being a great star. "The movie people get it nowadays," Jane said. “And they’re welcome to it,” added Gloria pleasantly.
“I remember being rushed through the crowd waiting for me at the stage door and across the street to my hotel. People shouted, ‘Here she comes!’ when I came out!” recalled Jane.
“And the Stage Door Johnnies!” continued Gloria. “They don't have anything like that now.”
Both agreed that the old days were much more exciting and glamorous because the barrier between players and audience was much greater. “The illusion is gone now, and after all, show business is the business of illusion,” Jane sighed. “They’ve let the audience in on all the secrets,” said Gloria.
Believe in Credits
According to both our stars, radio is full of such talented young people as to be almost amazing. “Many of these young people are stars, great stars," they told us. “And so often they don’t even get name credit on a show. It’s ridiculous. If you went into a theater and they didn’t give you a program, you'd be indignant.”
Both are ardent hobbyists. Jane calls her new granddaughter, Mary Jane, and her garden, her two main interests. “I love to get into the earth and dig,” she laughed. “And I can't wear gardening gloves—I buy them, put them on, they fall off and the next time I dig in the garden I dig one up.”
"You must have Virgo in your horoscope,” commented Gloria. “Good at gardens.”
Gloria is a specialist in horoscopes and tin ware. She's made horoscopes for all her friends, including Jane. Jane also informed us that Gloria makes beautiful ornaments in tin ware—a very difficult craft to work in. They both retain their interest in classical music and are avid listeners to the fine music programs. “And heaven help me, I keep a diary,” laughed Gloria.
Gloria is mother of that fine radio actor, Gale Gordon, whom she terms a wonderful son and a wonderful actor. “I claim him as mine, too,” smiled Jane. “He’s so wonderful, I can’t let Gloria have him all to herself.” Gloria’s daughter, a playwright, has just completed a play for coming presentation, “Half Past Twilight.” The title is Gloria's contribution.
Real Character Women
Getting back to radio, both actresses have appeared on practically every network show originating from Hollywood. Neither has any idea how she landed on the Benny show. In spite of the fact that both characterizations complement each other beautifully and fit into the show like little jewels, Jane and Gloria think that they were called for the parts “because there aren't really very many character women in radio.”
“They are cute parts, aren't they ?” smiled Jane. “We would love to dress for them.”
“Long black dresses, little bonnets ...” visualized Gloria.
“Some people call us bobby-soxers,” explained Jane, “but I don’t see the characters that way at all. I think if I got that picure in my head, I’d give a wrong reading.”
“We’re bobby-longstockings,” laughed Gloria.
“I see the characters as two nice old ladies who happen to be crazy about Kack Benny instead of—oh—”
“Francis X. Bushman?” suggested Gloria.
“And isn’t Jack Benny a sweetheart?” Jane smiled.
“Such a handsome boy, too,” winked Gloria.

Morgan died of a heart attack in Burbank on New Year’s Day 1972 at the age of 91. Gordon died on November 23, 1962 at 81.

You can hear their debut on the Benny show by clicking on the arrow.

Animation Cosplay, 1926

The caption of this picture says it all. It’s from the Motion Picture News, March 20, 1926. If nothing else, it gives you a good idea of the huge popularity of Felix in the mid-‘20s. Within a couple of years, he was shoved aside by a Mr. M. Mouse employed by a Mr. W.E. Disney.

Bird Fight

Two birds fight over a worm taken from a fishing line in the Van Beuren short A Cat-Fish Romance (1932). Animation by Jim Tyer (courtesy Milt Knight).



The best scene may be the one where a, well, it’s fish of some kind. These early ‘30s New York cartoons had the lumpiest characters.



There’s a bit of reused animation from The Haunted Ship (1930), and I’ll bet the high-kicking mermaids were redrawn from somewhere else. (Note: Milt points out it’s from the Tom and Jerry cartoon The Rocketeers).

The highlight may Gene Rodemich’s enthusiastic arrangement of “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby” from the Broadway show Blackbirds of 1928. It’s sung by Margie Hines and a man whose name may some day be rescued from the bowels of history.

The Milky Way

Elaborate backgrounds and beautiful colour choices are the highlight of Rudy Ising’s The Milky Way. You can see the ending coming miles away, but the Motion Picture Academy ignored that and was bedazzled by artwork and cuteness in handing the picture the Oscar for 1940.

It’s a shame that Bob Gentle or whoever handled the backgrounds on this cartoon never got credit. Nor did the layout artist. Their work is tops. Here are some of the scenes from the second half, complete with highlights flashing and streams of milk pouring from the brushes of effects animators.



Daily Variety of September 8, 1939 mentioned the cartoon as one of seven in “in various production phases” at MGM. The studio may not have had more than a title. The publication mentioned on February 24, 1940 that Ising was putting it into production, adding “It will be a satire on astronomists.” Nothing about little kittens. Boxoffice magazine of March 2, 1940 reported Ising had begun production of the cartoon and was preparing Swing Social. It then blurbed on May 11th that Scott Bradley had completed scoring on the short.

Daily Variety of June 5, 1940 reported MGM found a clever way to promote the cartoon:

METRO and the National Dairy Council have gotten together on what is probably the most extensive cooperative exploitation campaign ever put behind a short subject. Benefiting is Metro’s Technicolor cartoon, ‘The Milky Way,’ release of which has been timed to fit in with National Milk Month, which opens this week from coast to coast. Newspaper ads, milk bottle tops, window cards, billboard and other bally outlets have been lined up. ‘Milky’ was produced by Rudolf Ising.

Boxoffice reviewed the cartoon in its July 6th issue:

The Milky Way
M-G-M (Cartoon) 8 Mins.
This is a highly imaginative and expert bit of whimsy that strikes a pleasant note. Telling of three kittens who voyage to the milky way, the production has a standard of artistic execution that sets it apart from the ordinary. Children will love it and adults will revel in its eye-filling color. Worth while.

Hollywood had a few oozing-with-kiddie-winsomeness voice actresses around this time. Berneice Hansell, known for her squealing animals at Warner Bros., provides one of the kitten’s voices, and I suspect another is Margaret Hill-Talbot, who played Sniffles at Warners. I’ll leave it to the experts to pick out anyone else in the cast. Same with the animators, though a wild guess is that Bill Littlejohn, Jack Zander and George Gordon worked on this cartoon, based solely on the fact they were at MGM at the time and spent time under Ising.

Somewhere on the internet, you’ll likely read that The Milky Way “broke the Disney streak of Oscars.” Well, yeah, it did. Because Disney didn’t enter anything that year in the ‘Short Subject: Cartoons’ category. Daily Variety of January 28, 1941 had the list of 14 cartoons screened by Academy voters on February 3rd:

‘Snubbed By a Snob,’ Fleischer; ‘You Ought to Be in Pictures,’ Warners; ‘A Wild Hare,’ Warners; ‘Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy,’ Fleischer; ‘Knock, Knock,’ Universal; ‘Puss Gets Boots,’ [sic] Metro; ‘Billy Mouse’s Akwakade,’ 20th-Fox; ‘The Mad Hatter,’ Columbia; ‘Western Daze,’ (Pal) Paramount; ‘Wimmin Is a Myskery,’ Fleischer; ‘Early Worm Gets the Bird,’ Warners; ‘Cross Country Detours,’ Warners; ‘Recruiting Daze,’ Universal, and ‘Milky Way,’ Metro.

It’s clear the Academy in 1941 was still enamoured with Disney, even the faux variety of Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising. But not for much longer. People like Hansell were soon out of demand as was the chirping female chorus that sounded more like it belonged in a 1934 short. New, loud stars—Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry, Woody Woodpecker—hit the screen as the world was plunged into a violent war. People wanted brash comedy. The time of oh-so-charming little kittens riding to a sky-land of milk had passed.