The Tralfaz in the Stafferzat

The question has arisen “Where did the word ‘tralfaz’ come from?” Those of you reading here on a regular basis likely know it was the original name of Astro the dog in Hanna-Barbera’s “The Jetsons,” and had been used several times before that in various Warner Bros. cartoons (Warren Foster wrote for both studios). And we tracked down a variation before that from the Burns and Allen radio show which we discussed here.

But there’s an even earlier reference, one that also comes from network radio.

Cliff Nazarro was a vaudevillian who eventually adopted a gimmick that brought him work. He came up with a double-talk act. Jack Benny loved it and started using Nazarro on his radio show.

Here’s Nazarro talking about his self-minted vocabulary in an article that appeared in the New York Sun of March 4, 1939.

● ● ● ●

IT’S GIBBERISH BUT IT PAYS WELL
Double Talk of Cliff Nazarro Started as Hobby.
When a man wins a prize for perfect diction, that's not news. But when a chap wins the hilarious approval of millions of listeners for being utterly incoherent, that’s Cliff Nazarro.
Cliff, he of the glib tongue which pours forth a conglomeration of senseless syllables, is radio’s Doctor of Double Talk today. But until a year ago this smallish man in his early thirties had been successively a juvenile and musical comedy singer on Broadway, a vaudeville master of ceremonies and a radio crooner.

Then Jack Benny invited Cliff to try his double-barreled linguistic artifice on a Sunday night broadcast. Now his insane banter manages to confuse everybody in the Benny gang except Kenny Baker. (Trying to confuse Kenny is like to trying to fatten up Don Wilson.)
Nazarro is not the originator of doubletalk nor is his current stock in trade anything new. Doubletalk has been a well-known prank among vaudevillians for years. Cliff, however, certainly deserves the credit far using radio to make America doubletalk conscious.
A mere half-dosen words, original Nazarro creations, are the secret to his baffling double-talk on the Benny shows. After sin exhaustive search for words which sound almost but not quite legitimate, Cliff simmered the list down to the following: Pul-gin-dasiphin, rastrot, tralfaz, stafferzat, albal-jul-dundee and bersopher. Try them on your own larynx.
Although the words are obviously phony when spoken slowly, by the time Cliff rattles them off in his machine-gun-like delivery, they’re enough to confuse any microphone.
Started as a Hobby.
Doubletalk had been just a hobby—a gag with which to torment unsuspecting victims—to the five-foot-three-inch verbal dynamo during his career on the stage. He seldom used the bewildering banter professionally, although he had become quite adept at making head waiters and policemen think they'd better be fitted for ear trumpets before he outgrew juvenile roles.
When the bottom dropped out of vaudeville, Cliff was making a tour of the West as master of ceremonies of a Fanchon and Marco unit. Like another trouper named Jack Benny, Nazarro saw the handwriting on the wall and decided to try radio. Unlike his present boss, however, Cliff never guessed that his forte might be straight comedy. On the stags Cliff had sung sad songs, tempered with a line of patter and a comic piano routine. After landing a job as singer on a San Francisco radio station, Cliff pigeon-holed his doubletalk for a while and became serious about his new work. For several months he sang with Meredith Wilson's orchestra over a coast-to-coast NBC hookup, recorded occasionally and devoted all his time to music.
Then one day, while hanging around the studio after a show, he started ribbing a very serious piano tuner with his doubletalk. The ivory osteopath’s bewilderment struck bystanders so funny that the station manager soon heard of the incident.
Against his better judgment, Cliff was induced to take a fling at doubletalk on the air. Although he argued that it was a visual as well as audible trick, he wrote a skit involving a doubletalk payoff and presented it on a West Coast sustaining program. The listener response proved his misgivings to be foundless.
Warned Against Diction.
One old lady summed it all up beautifully when she wrote: "Dear sir, I enjoyed your skit tremendously and think you're a very clever comedian, but please do try to watch your pronunciation. I could scarcely understand a word you said."
After that he tossed a doubletalk routine into his local radio acts from time to time, and whenever be made personal appearances he’d use doubletalk to soften up tough audiences—with excellent results.
On one of these occasions—it was at the Paramount Theater in Los Angeles—Jack Benny was in the audience He made a mental note to remember the dapper little guy who'd double-talked his way under the skin of the most brutal audience Jack ever remembered.
A year ago Jack ran into a situation that was tailor-made for Cliff. While casting his parody of "A Tank at Oxford," Benny discovered he needed some one to direct him to the college town. Cliff’s description of the road to Oxford, all done in doubletalk launched him in a new career.

Funny Even to Comedians.
Since that time, Nazarro has almost forgotten about singing—except for joy. In addition to frequent appearances on the Benny programs, he's garnered several motion picture parts for himself. His bit with Jack Benny in "Artists and Models Abroad" was so spontaneously funny that it had to be retaken five times. The first four takes were ruined by irrepressible laughter from stagehands and extras.
But Cliff is not one to rest on his laurels. He’s even now at work creating new uses for doubletalk, just to keep the demand ahead of the supply. A routine in which he sings in doubletalk is already being considered for a film spot. And his present experiment is playing a piano in doubletalk. In fact, he claims he’s already trained his dog to yelp in doubletalk so craftily that the neighbors’ mutts are all being treated by alienists.

● ● ● ●

On the May 29, 1938 Benny broadcast, Nazarro launches into a phoney-word list of the principal industries in Czechoslovakia: “Zennatophatusurate and Clump raising.”

Jack: What raising?
Cliff: Clump.
Jack: Oh. I thought you said “Tralfaz.”

Unfortunately, gimmicks don’t tend to last. Nazarro’s double-talk routine ran its course and the Benny show went on to other things. Nazarro survived with small parts in films into World War Two. He died at the age of 57 in 1961.

Two Landmark Silly Symphonies

So much has been written about Walt Disney’s cartoons, there’s no point in me analysing them. Instead, let me post a couple of full-page trade ads for two of Disney’s three landmark cartoons before his studio made “The Three Little Pigs” in 1933. The first was “Steamboat Willie,” where Disney took a lead character and turned into a musician and cavorting dancer. The synchronised noises as Mickey played animals as musical instruments was more than enough to captivate 1928 audiences, especially compared with the crudely-drawn generic mice of an Aesop Fables cartoon.

We skip past that to look at a cartoon from the following year that, thanks to the internet, has probably been seen more these days than it did when it came out in 1929.



Spake Variety on July 17, 1929:

"THE SKELETON DANCE"
Animated Cartoon
Cinephone
5 Mins.
Roxy, New York
Title tells the story, but not the number of laughs included in this sounded cartoon short. The number is high.
Peak is reached when one skeleton plays the spine of another in xylophone fashion, using a pair of thigh bones as hammers. Perfectly timed xylo accompaniment completes the effect.
The skeletons hoof and frolic. One throws his skull at a hooting owl and knocks the latter's feathers off. Four bones brothers do a unison routine that's a howl.
To set the finish, a rooster crows at the dawn. The skeletons, through for the night, dive into a nearby grave, pulling the lid down after them. Along comes a pair of feet, somehow left behind. They kick on the slab and a bony arm reaches out to pull them in. All takes place in a graveyard.
Don't bring your children.
Bige.

“The Skeleton Dance” wasn’t much different in the basic concept than a Mickey cartoon. Lots of music. Lots of cavorting. A little humour. No plot. It’s still fun to watch today, but it was captivating in 1929. Soon other studios, especially Van Beuren, populated their cartoon shorts with dancing and singing skeletons.



The early Mickey cartoons followed a loose format of musicality in the first half, with Mickey rescuing Minnie in the second. The Harman-Ising cartoons at Warner Bros. followed the same format (as did Merrie Melodies until some guy named Tex Avery showed up) and you can see it at other studios. “Flowers and Trees” in 1932 wasn’t much different—flora and friends battled flames in the second half—but what made it different was the full spectrum of hues, thanks to the studio’s inaugural use of three-strip Technicolor. The cartoon still has some charm, despite its comparatively languid pace (it wouldn’t be unfair to credit Avery with picking up the overall speed of cartoons in the ‘40s).

If you’re an animation fan, even if you’re not partial to Disney, you’ve seen “The Skeleton Dance” before. But it’s always worth watching again.

Murray and Al

Al Molinaro never struck me as being an actor. He was that genuine on camera.

He was a likeable lump of a guy who was perfect in The Odd Couple, which proved in reruns to be one of the best-written and acted sitcoms of all time. The show had to overcome the almost impossible—being inevitably compared to the terrific movie it was based on. It succeeded. The casting was flawless. The TV show included the same poker-playing buddy characters the movie did but, eventually, Molinaro’s Murray was the only one left. The writers found enough in Molinaro’s camera presence to make his character more than one-dimensional.

Molinaro was fortunate enough to appear in the supporting casts of two monster comedies of the ’70s. He moved on to the cast of Happy Days.

Let’s pass on a few newspaper clippings about Molinaro, who died this week at the age of 96. This is an unbylined story, published on this date 44 years ago, not too many weeks after The Odd Couple began its run on TV. His background is quite surprising.

Bungled Assignments Pay Off for TV Actor
Al Molinaro has a generous-size nose, brown eyes as guileless as a puppy's and the overall aspect of a man who keeps taking wooden nickels, misses buses by seconds and gets a busy signal whenever he dials the telephone.
A born loser. A schlemiel.
Al, who plays Murray the Cop on the ABC's "The Odd Couple," has been acting only three years.
No johnny - come - lately to Hollywood, he arrived in lotus land 20 years ago on tour with a four-piece combo, playing piano and guitar. Fancying the idea of doubling in brass as an actor, he remained when the other sidemen split the scene.
He landed a $75-a-week job as staff producer at a local TV outlet, made good contacts, and throe years later quit the job and began packaging and selling his own video shows. Business was good for six years, and when it petered out he took the plunge into commercial TV as a performer. His first effort, selling frying pans on a Joe Pyne show. "It's Your Nickel." was pure disaster.
"It was live television." he recalls, "and if you goofed once there weren't any second chances. I was kicked off the show and out of the studio."
Al also bungled his next assignment, a foreign car commercial. But he was so funny the producer decided to play the blurb for laughs. The commercial ran two years. In another comedy of errors, he landed his first acting job in a TV series when the casting director of "Green Acres" hired him for a role, thinking he was somebody else. His next break came when the producer of "Get Smart" saw Al in a commercial and signed him to play Agent 44. He appeared in six episodes.
To polish his thesping techniques, Al enrolled in a Hollywood school of acting. While performing in one of the school plays, he attracted the attention of writer - producer Garry Marshall. After the performance. Garry went backstage and told Al he'd keep him in mind when he cast "The Odd Couple."
When Garry began auditioning performers to play the poker players in the series. Al sent him a series of blowups of himself in various poses around a poker table. The hint was obvious — and it worked. He was hired as Murray, the Cop.

King Features interviewed Molinaro a couple of times. First up, a piece that ran in newspapers around May 31, 1973. The photo accompanied the story.

Al Molinaro's Finest' Role Extends Security
By HARVEY PACK
TV Key, Inc.

NEW YORK (KFS)— The Jewish cop—one of New York's Finest—on ABC's "The Odd Couple" is an Italian from Milwaukee.
Al Molinaro, who is the perfect third party foil for Tony Randall and Jack Klugman on the series, is one of those pleasant success stories that offer hope to all who are approaching the middle-age crisis. Al changed careers about four years ago and, as a featured player in a hit TV series, is now relatively secure in his new profession.
"And if it goes bad, I'll find something else," said Molinaro, laughing. Even as "The Odd Couple" begins its fourth season, he is not completely convinced it has all happened.
Despite the fact that he started acting but a few years ago, Al has lived in Hollywood since the early '50s, when he arrived as part of a 4-piece musical combo touring the country. "I liked California, so I stayed," is his only explanation for abandoning the tour.
He landed a job at a local TV station for a lot less money than he earned as a musician, but he stuck with it for three years learning all he could about the local TV operation. Then he went out on his own and began packaging his own ideas. He developed a business which netted him almost $100,000 a year, but each show he sold was either a hit and stolen, or a flop and cancelled. As a result after some seasons of lucrative returns, the business began to falter and Al looked about for something new.
Since most aspiring actors in Hollywood still haven't heard that this is the era of the average looking guy, Al decided to offer his average, man-in-the-street face around for TV commercials.
His first shot was a live spot selling drying pans, and he was not only fired by tossed out of the studio. His second job was also a disaster, but some astute producer thought it might work as a funny commercial, and the spot played for two years, giving Al his first delightful experience with residuals.
After several years of making a buck in commercials, Al decided he should reinvest some of his money and actually take acting lessons. He was spotted by Harvey Lembeck, who told him he had a lot of natural talent. Lembeck invited Al to join his acting lab which specializes in improvisations.
"That was the turning point for me," said Al. "I really found out what it was all about. Harvey runs it as a labor of love, yet anybody who has spent time in the group not only learns his craft but is seen by producers. That's how Garry Marshall first saw me work, and he came back to tell me he'd keep me in mind for a TV series."
Then Al heard that Marshall was in charge of "The Odd Couple" and was looking for types to appear in the famous poker game scene, which established the characters in the original play and was expected to do the same for the TV version. Al called to remind Marshall about their first meeting.
"I couldn't get past the front office," Al said, "but I sent him pictures and notes reminding him. I finally got through. And I got the job."
Al is the only poker player still with the series. The chemistry he created while working with his co-stars was recognized, and he was signed on as a regular. Despite his success playing a New York cop, Al was on his first visit to the big town when I met him. He was bringing his family East for a vacation, and had come ahead hoping to line up enough commercials to cover expenses.
"It's a great town?" Al said. "And everybody recognizes me."

Molinaro had the unenviable job of coming into a sitcom and replacing a well-liked character. How well did he pull it off? Judging by the fact most of the headlines in his obits refer to his role on Happy Days, I’d say pretty well. This column is from Dec. 22, 1976.

For Molinaro, 'Happy Days' Return
By CHARLES WITBECK
TV Key, Inc.

HOLLYWOOD—(KFS)—Needing an exit line on "Happy Days," the fat Italian, Al Molinaro, yells, "Garry, give me a clap-off line" to producer Garry Marshall. Later, during the filming of the show before an audience, Molinaro, as Alfred the new drive-in owner this season replacing Japanese comic Pat Morita, uses the Marshall line and gets a big laugh as he departs.
By now Molinaro knows almost anything Garry Marshall gives him will work. When Al portrayed Murray the poker-playing cop on "The Odd Couple," Marshall always fed him boffo lines. Marshall never had any trouble pegging Al.
When Al protested a line one day as being "hard" during a reading, Marshall urged the staff writers to scan the pudgy actor. "Look at him," said Garry. "He's not a hard man. Write for him, don't worry about the character."
The best thing about Al Molinaro is that he doesn't fit the image of a Hollywood actor. He is the garageman down the street, the Italian minding the store. The body is full of pasta, and the face with the expansive nose can turn dark with fury or light up a gloomy room. On camera beside neatly proportioned actors, Al is reality. Therefore he can say almost anything and be believable.
Hearing about his past, it's apparent Molinaro can do almost anything. Barely out of school in Kenosha, Wis. Al, 17, went to work in a bedspring factory, and soon led the employes out on strike to protest the terrible working conditions. Al didn't know what he was getting into. The strike lasted a month. But the workers stuck by the kid and won.
Next to last in a family of 10 children, Al watched his dad work day and night to keep the family going, but drove his father crazy when he quit a job as assistant city manager to hit the road as a guitar player in a 4-piece band.
Twenty-five years ago, Molinaro the musician hit Hollywood and decided to try acting. Perhaps he was a shade too handsome in his youth. His face needed seasoning. No one would hire the Italian. A girl hit Al with the truth, "How can you get what you never were?"
Television was in its infancy during Al's rounds of rejection, so he decided he would be a TV producer, and muscled his way into an independent station manager's office. Lying about his credits, Al walked out with a $75-a-week job as producer. His tenacity had worn down the manager.
"I moved around the Sunset Boulevard studio with a clipboard under my arm to see what the business was about," Al said. Taking the worst air time available, Molinaro put on a 2-hour square dance party, a show that ran two years. He brokered the air time, fought off an agency man who wanted kickbacks, and got so involved in the rat race his emotions took over. It was time to clear out.
The Molinaro face, and his anger rising up during the reading of a foreign car commercial, changed Al's life not many years ago. Soon that Italian face under a chef's cap appeared on Los Angeles billboards for the gas company. The "Get Smart" producers spotted the billboard and hired Al for six episodes as Agent 44. A "Green Acres" series job followed.
Actor Harvey Lembeck caught his TV roles on the air and asked Al to join Lembeck's comedy improvisational class: "You're a funny guy, but I don't think you know what you're doing."
Al didn't, but he learned with Lembeck. Penny Marshall, Garry's sister of "Laverne & Shirley" fame, was in the class. One night brother Garry came to pick up his sister and watched the final improvisation of the night by Molinaro. It was a rocker, and Marshall came up to congratulate Al: "You are terrific."
Al thought "The Odd Couple" producer was merely another actor, but when auditions for the role of a poker player on "Odd Couple" came up, Al sent Marshall a huge board of Molinaro photos sitting around a poker table. Marshall has never mentioned the promo, but Al's job on the Tony Randall-Jack Klugman comedy speaks for itself.

Al was part of Happy Days when there was far too much applause and cheering from the studio audience greeting every arrival and characters from the ‘50s ridiculously wearing 1970s hairstyles (“Cut it? I’m a star!”). While Happy Days is accused of being the quintessential show that jumped the shark, and despite a best-forgotten spin-off, shark-jumping is something Al Molinaro’s career never did.

Wot a Skeleton Dance

A skeleton playing the piano? It could have happened in any number of cartoon studios in the early 1930s, but the one that seemed the most enamoured with human bones was Van Beuren. Skeletons or skeleton gags appear in a number of its cartoons, including the Tom and Jerry favourite Wot a Night (1931).

In one scene, a skeleton takes a bucket of paint and creates a piano on a ledge against a wall, as well as a piano stool.



The skeleton tries to roll the stool up to its boney butt. The stool just laughs at him. So the skeleton rolls its spinal bone down to the level of the stool and begins to play.



That means it’s dance time for the skeleton population, who perform a minuet before the camera cuts to a scene of a gypsy skeleton with a tambourine.



There’s lots of fun weirdness in this one, though parts of it are really poorly drawn. John Foster and George Stallings get the screen credits, along with musical director Gene Rodemich.

The Bats! They're Coming Toward Us!

There’s nothing in a cartoon like things flying or zooming toward the camera, and Disney was a master at it in the studio’s early sound cartoons.

Mickey Mouse is locked inside a haunted house by the house itself. He looks us.



If you look in the left corner of the room, a couple of bats emerge from a hole.



There are more and more of them as they fly toward the camera. One eventually engulfs the whole thing.



When the bat flies in the opposite direction, Mickey emerges from Disney’s ubiquitous spittoon.



I really like the early Disneys; “The Haunted House” is from late 1929. It has excellent layouts and effects, and fine animation.

Up in the Morning with Winch

Combining two words into one in the show biz world goes back long before the days of “Sharknado” and “Bennifer.” I don’t know who started it, but I peered at a Walter Winchell column from the late ‘40s the other day and it included such pen-sations as “Chet Howard's crew is swelegant,” “one chorusiren” and “Henry Morgan and his Floridarling.”

Winchell had a radio gossip show for many years where he’d grease the airwaves and slip one of these combo-jumbos at the audience. Leave it to Bob and Ray to make fun of it in a sketch called “Up in the Morning With Winch,” which aired on CBS on October 15, 1959. Their version featured Winch talking to his secretary, Lizzie Outlan. I don’t believe Winchell ever did that on air. His private secretary was Rose Bigman. At the time, Winchell had a 15-minute radio show on Sunday nights on WOR New York. The West Coast copycat in the sketch is undoubtedly Jimmy Fidler.

Bob and Ray’s ear for Winchell’s use of the language was so astute, allow me to transcribe the whole routine. (If anyone knows what stock music they used on CBS, let me know).

Bob: And, hi, gossip fans. This is Ed Winch, with an able assist from my gal/secretary Lizzie Outlan. We’ll be talking about the goings-on in Bigtown, U.S.A. here on “Up in the Morning With Winch.” Liz, what’s new?
Ray: Ed, I hear the Indian playboy, Rumat Singh, is back in town, scattering money around like water.
Bob: Yes, he’s a real maharajerk. He should read what Mr. B. Franklin had to say about exceeding one’s income, etc. etc. etc.
Ray: Are the rumors true about Happy Delmonico, the famous comedian, causing dissention back stage?
Bob: Yes, this teevee tee-hee has his videassociates worried about his late arrivals at the studio, and his constant refusals to leave the backstage area in order to emcee his own show while it’s in progress. From great to ingrate.
Ray: Ed, I hear the Marvin Strobels are expecting their tenth child soon. Is that true?
Bob: Yes, they certainly keep the sparks flying. Mrs. Strobel is former chorinockout, beautieyeful Joan Storm.
Ray: And, Ed, is it true that you’ve been barred from another night spot?
Bob: Yes, and I won’t even mention the club owner’s name. Let’s just say he’s distrodious and forget the item.
Ray: Ed, there’s a man out west who does the same sort of thing you do on radio. Have you heard about him?
Bob: Yes, and I have a message for him, Liz. Mr. Microphoney, while you’re taking bravocades for your broadcast, remember this: imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Now, last week, I came down with a virus. Think you can do the same, Mr. Copy Fathead?
Ray: Is the Al Rockwell/Alma Libby romance off again, Ed?
Bob: Yes, they’re doing their sep-parties at separate tables.
Ray: And I hear the Don Cutlers are having their troubles, too.
Bob: That’s right. Don is a pilot for South Central Airlines and their marriage is up in the air. Mrs. C. is former thrusher-lovely Iris Beechwood.
Ray: Any inside information on gangland, Ed?
Bob: I have a tip for the boys in blue, Liz. Racketsap Eddie Brockway is back on the streets again a free man. None of us will rest until this mad dog, this mongrelomanic is behind bars once more. Are you listening politico R.J.?
Ray: Are there any new hit shows along the Rialto, Ed?
Bob: Yes, a new socko musical called “Meet Me in Pittsburgh.” The firs-snipers couldn’t stop clapplauding. The show is a happy blending of corn and old jokes. I counted 34 standeavesdroppers on opening night. Definitely a cash smash.
Ray: But didn’t “Meet Me in Pittsburgh” close last night, Ed?
Bob: Right, even though the show was good the cast had put on a lemonstration that won’t soon be forgotten in these parts.
Ray: And what is your colorful description of Wall Street, Ed?
Bob: The New York stock yard, a place where millions of people change hands every day.
Ray: I think you mean dollars, not hands, Ed.
Bob: And today’s wrap-up item: Ed Winch’s gal/secretary just became an unemployedope. 30 for now.

In One End, Out the Other.

You couldn’t get away from skeletons if you were watching a cartoon made in New York City in 1933. Yet another example is found in the jaunty musical Tropical Fish, made by Terrytoons.



The cartoon abounds in what are now clichés (dog and cat fish, small fish eaten by a succession of larger fish), but they’re presented in such an unassuming way, they’re fun to watch. There’s some social commentary on Wall Street greed and Prohibition and there’s a red-hot, jazz-singing temptress. And there may be the most disconcerting gag in a cartoon.

Some Walt Disney cartoons in the late ‘20s and early ‘30s featured a scene where a character would swallow the camera. Terry goes Disney a little further. The camera goes in one end of the fish and out the other. I’d prefer not to think of what the “other” actually is.

Quick, Kangaroos, Hide!

Slap Happy Lion is one of Tex Avery’s reaction cartoons. The lion reacts to its own roar, the lion reacts to the mouse, the animals react to the lion. It doesn’t work as well as Northwest Hounded Police, which was the exact same type of picture. In that one, a bad guy is clearly established at the outset, so he deserves all the things Droopy does to him which brings about the outrageous takes. But in this cartoon, the lion doesn’t deserve anything; he’s not a villain. And who feels anything for the mouse? He neither heroic nor a victim.

But back to the gags. The lion’s roar scares every creature in the forest (except the mouse), and Avery and writer Heck Allen come up with reaction gags. A kangaroo (yes, in Africa) is frightened, looks for a place to hide and jumps in the pouch of another kangaroo who... well, it ends with the final kangaroo not seeing a place to hide—so it jumps into its own pouch and disappears.



Ray Abrams, Walt Clinton and Bob Bentley are the credited animators.