Becoming, Isn't it Girls?

Feminising men is a guaranteed laugh in old cartoons. Take, for example, Tex Avery’s Big Heel-Watha, where the title character (with Bill Thompson’s Droopy voice) is hunting for Screwy Squirrel, who quickly pulls a home permanent gag on him.



Cut to the next scene, where Heel-Watha gets the permanent contraption off his head. As Scott Bradley plays “I Dream of Jeannie” in the background, the native’s pupils look up at the hair, he strikes a coy pose and says to the theatre audience “Becoming, isn’t it girls?”



The animation in the second scene is by Ed Love. He uses the same mouth movements and teeth positions on Heel-Watha in the cartoon that you can spot in his work at Hanna-Barbera in the late ‘50s. Preston Blair and Ray Abrams also received animation credits. Heck Allen wrote the story and Johnny Johnsen did another fine job painting scenic forest backgrounds. Thompson, Wally Maher, Frank Graham and Sara Berner supply the voices.

Questions to Benny

When Jack Benny signed off on May 22, 1955, he didn’t realise his radio series was finally coming to an end. A columnist in Variety reported on March 31th that Benny had a deal with American Tobacco for another radio season featuring more repeat shows. But something happened. When Jack returned in April from a meeting with company president Paul Hahn in New York, sponsoring the Benny radio show had been dropped in favour of pumping money into spot ads. Sponsor magazine also reported on May 1st that another sponsor had an option on the Benny show for the 1955-56.

It was not to be. Variety reported on August 19th that Jack was giving up radio, and:

It had been planned to use the old Benny tapes with occasional live leads and integrations, but Benny's unwillingness to continue on radio together with the lack of sponsor interest caused CBS to abandon the program.

But a deal was eventually worked out and Benny returned to CBS on Sunday nights at 7 in the East and 6:30 in the West starting October 28, 1956. But they were all reruns. There were no new Benny radio shows.

It would appear Benny’s management came up with a news release that was sent to papers to publish as a story. This unbylined piece appeared in the Buffalo Courier-Express of March 24, 1957.

Benny Herewith Answers 5 Most Asked Questions
There are five questions most frequently asked by newspaper and magazine writers, says Jack Benny.
Benny says the most frequent question is "Why did you decide to go back into radio?" With some pleasure, he answers, "When I left CBS Radio for television in 1954, I thought I'd never be I missed. But not so. Everywhere I went, people kept telling me that they missed the Sunday night spot. CBS executives heard the same thing. They called me for a little talk, and here I am back on the air each week. And believe me, it's a pleasure."
Another staple in the interviewer's kit is the question: "When was your first radio appearance?" Benny has the facts handy. "It was with Ed Sullivan in 1932. I'd known Ed for a long time, and as I was doing a vaudeville show in New York, he asked me to be a guest on his radio show. An agency heard me and signed me forthwith for 39 weeks."
Benny's habit of integrating commercials into his show is a frequent question subject. He answers that he was the first to do so, doing a light satire on the product. "At first the sponsor didn't like it," he says, "but then he got a flood of mail approving the stunt, and we stayed right with it."
"What is your approach to humor and the thing you try hardest for on your program?" is a frequently asked question. "We concentrate on building up characters that people like," Benny answers. "The audience wants to feel friendly toward you, and to be able to know the traits of the people in the show. You don't have to knock yourself out every week trying to come up with a blockbuster show. If people like you, they will stick with you, because they recognize the people in the show as friends."
Editing Most Important
Finally, the inevitable question, says Benny, is "What's the most important element in producing your show?" His answer is ready. "It's editing. This is the most important thing in show business, as well as in politics. In making a speech, or in any communications project. We go over our script and lines and keep changing and improving them right up to show time. And then if something good occurs to us during the program, we'll edit right on the spot."
Benny's radio show can be heard at 7 tonight on WBEN. His TV show will be carried at 7:30 tonight on Ch. 4

The recorded Jack Benny took the summer off in 1957, replaced on July 14th by the Henry Morgan quiz show Sez Who! (and not by Stan Freberg as is commonly thought). He returned on September 29th and bade farewell to radio again on June 29, 1958. John Dehner in Frontier Gentleman was moved into his slot. Benny was about to open at the Flamingo in Las Vegas, was performing benefit concerts and was still busy with television (and looking for a new director as Ralph Levy had quit). Whether Jack mourned the loss of his radio show is doubtful, considering he told interviewers a number of years later he was tired of being asked about it.

Despite that, the Benny radio show is still loved today. It’s not just the echoing voice of nostalgia that’s responsible. A whole new audience, albeit in smaller numbers, who didn’t grow up with the show, have heard it on the internet or “old time radio” shows broadcast by their local stations. They appreciate the humour and the characters, just as people did in the Benny heyday. CBS radio may have cancelled the show but, in one way or another, it’s never really left us.

Snickelgrass and the Stars

You’ve seen Smokey Bear, McGruff the Crime Dog and Vince and Larry, the crash dummies. They’re among the stars of TV public service announcements presented by the Ad Council.

For years, the Council has also provided radio stations in the U.S. with 30 and 60-second PSAs. Originally, the Council supplied print ads starting in 1941. You can read the Council’s history in brief HERE.

The Council first got into television in 1949, not long after the networks finally began offering a full prime-time schedule on weeknights. Its initial TV PSA was packed with stars—in caricature form. The cartoon wasn’t fully animated. I haven’t seen it, but I suspect it was the same as contemporary shows such as Tele-Comics, which featured drawings held for a period of time, with only a slight change in the next drawing. However, Broadcasting magazine of August 15, 1949 published the storyline and some of the frames of the cartoon, which we reprint below. The PSA had a message that is far too timely today.

Snickelgrass Saga...
SAD STORY of Sidney S. Snickelgrass Jr., who got his wish that all Americans of foreign descent "be sent right back where they came from," has been made into a one-minute musical cartoon sequence by the Advertising Council and will be distributed to all U. S. TV stations before the end of the month.
The film short, first venture into video by the council, was announced by Lee H. Bristol, president of Bristol-Myers Co. and coordinator of the United America campaign to combat religious and racial discrimination.
The pictures, drawn in crisp black and white against a gray background, are semi-animated by a technique that provides adequate motion without undue expense. A guitar-strumming vocalist sings the story in ballad fashion.
The TV spot opens with Snickelgrass rubbing a magic lamp [top photo] and telling the genie who appears that he'd like all people of foreign heritage sent back home. The genie explains that if that wish is granted "... all exiles may take what they've created."
"I don't care what they take. You just do what I stated," answers Snickelgrass. But his hat flies off and his jaw drops in amazement [second photo] as he watched huge ships loaded with:
"Roads built by Slovaks and farms plowed by Swedes [third photo], mills run by workers of hundreds of creeds.
"Skyscraper cities were loaded and stored [fourth photo] as Protestants, Catholics and Jews climbed aboard."
Frank Sinatra, Marian Anderson, The Marx Brothers, Jimmy Durante and Jack Benny wave goodbye [fifth photo] and poor Snickelgrass finds himself alone on the empty shore [bottom photo].
Even . .
"The genie was doing what Snicklegrass bade.
Like the rest of the foreigners, he'd gone back to Bagdad."
The story material was developed by Lynn Rhodes, copywriter, with Milton Krentz and Leonard Weil of the American Jewish Committee as programming consultants. Fred Arnott provided the art. Oscar Bryant arranged and sang the ballad. Edward Royal of the Advertising Council directed and produced the one-minute sequence.

Arnott semi-animated several other PSAs for the American Jewish Committee within the next few years. “Baseball,” “Sweet ‘n’ Sour” and “Three-Ring Circus” were all part of the AJC’s campaign promoting racial and religious diversity as part of a strong America, and available in 16 millimetre for free. They aired on 77 stations.

Arnott was born in New Jersey in January 1920 and went to Northwestern University where he was the staff newspaper cartoonist in 1942. Within a few years was working as an illustrator in Chicago. He later went to work for Bob Clampett on the Beany and Cecil cartoon series before returning to New Jersey where he taught art in middle and high school. Arnott told a Kiwanis meeting in Bernardsville in 1952 that four minutes of semi-animation cost $1,500. He died on November 20, 1998.

This is post is brought to you as a public service by this station and the Ad Council.

Knighty Knight Bugs Opening

A pan shot opens the Oscar-winning cartoon Knighty Knight Bugs. You can click on it to make it bigger.



The wall and shields are on an overlay being panned at a different rate than the stone-walled rooms in the background, giving a nice 3-D effect that Warners used for more than 20 years. Tom O’Loughlin is the background artist for the Friz Freleng unit at this point. O’Loughlin was a painter prior to joining Warner Bros. in the late ‘50s; one of his exhibits received an announcement in December 1951 in the Los Angeles Times (along with UPA’s Herb Klynn).

The Cave Man

Willie Whopper cartoons aren’t funny. But you’re really missing out if you don’t get your hands on Thunderbean’s Willie Whopper Blu-Ray/DVD release.

The cartoons, as you may know, were made in 1933-34 by Ub Iwerks for Pat Powers’ Celebrity Pictures for release by MGM. There are some wonderfully off-beat character and background designs and some of the shorts have a peppy little orchestra toot-toot-tooting along as the action proceeds. And Thunderbean has pulled off another of their incomparable and loving restoration jobs on these B-list cartoons. The company deserves the support of anyone who loves animation from the Golden Age of theatricals (and commercials/industrials, for that matter).

Here are some background frames from The Cave Man (1934). Like most interiors in an Iwerks cartoon, things are broken, run-down, misshapen. These are from Mary’s thatched hut.



Here are some of the muted backgrounds. Ignore the characters that get in the way. I’d love to know who painted these and if it was the same person who did Porky in Wackyland for Bob Clampett a few years later (Clampett inherited some of the Iwerks staff).



Note how the distance is out-of-focus. It reminds me of a Fleischer cartoon, not surprising considering Grim Natwick, Berny Wolf (who get the animation credits) and others who worked at Iwerks had come from Fleischer.



There’s no music credit on this short. I don’t know if someone went to a record store, bought a 78 and had it played in the background, but it’s a hopping little tune.

Oh, and for character designs....



P.S.: I get nothing for the above plug for Thunderbean other than the satisfaction that it may help them carry on with their restoration of neglected old cartoons.

Voice Acting Tips From Mel Blanc

Mel Blanc needs no introduction, does he?

Here he is talking to the King Features Syndicate in a column published starting July 7, 1960. You’ll have to forgive the writer misspelling “Daws Butler” and “Paul Frees.”

It’s interesting there’s no reference to The Flintstones. I don’t know when the interview was conducted but Variety reported in May that Mel was working on the series. By November, he and Johnny Burton had joined together to form IDs Inc. to work with ad agencies on commercials.

The giraffe story he tells isn’t verbatim dialogue from the Benny radio show, but the gag’s the same.

Hear Voices? Fire a Blanc
By CHARLES WITBECK
Special Press Writer
IN HOLLYWOOD the mailman is known as the “residual man” to the big four in the voice business: Mel Blanc, Jim Backus, Dawes Butler and Paul Freeze.
Hardly a day goes by that Mel, who is best known as the voice of Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker, doesn't get a residual check in the mail. Backus and Blanc also survive visually in the trade, with Jim playing in pictures and on TV, and Blanc appearing at least once a month on the Sunday night Jack Benny show.
Residuals come from radio and TV commercials of all sorts; for instance, Mel will open envelopes with checks in payment for his voice doing the “Piggy back refill” bit, or plugging tamales, cookies and other tidbits in various accents.
He does so well that he is constantly plagiarized by others. When calls go out for voices the question is usually, “Do you want a Mel Blanc voice?”
There is nothing Mel can do about this. We have no legislation protecting original voices and characters, but Mel survives nicely.
The good thing about it, is that others try to do a Mel Blanc type voice and they miss, so Mel is called in to redo it. Blanc first made his name in Hollywood with his animal voices. He's won five Oscars for being Bugs Bunny, Speedy Gonzales, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Yosemite Sam.
He says his Woody Woodpecker is understood everywhere, and as for Bugs, “why others may come and go, but Bugs will be around forever.”
This fall Mel, as the voice of Bugs, will be bucking Wagon Train, and Mel thinks it will be a walkaway in the ratings for the cocky rabbit. He's also going to do voices for The Three Stooges show, which will have a weekly five minute animation sequence, besides his Jack Benny Show.
When Mel joined Benny he was known only for his animal sounds. He was hired to play Carmichael the boar, and just growl. This went on for some time and finally, Mel pleaded, “All I do is growl, Jack. Give me a couple of lines.”
Benny agreed and Blanc began playing idiot professors, carpenters and insulting salesmen.
He had Benny on the floor with his version of a giraffe.
Not a sound came out of Blanc because giraffes don't have any vocal chords. "What are you doing?" asked straight man Benny. “I'm making a noise like a giraffe,” said Blanc.

To be a good voice man means that you have to have a good ear and you have to listen.
For example, Blanc says he's a big star in China for his Chinese characters. “They can't understand what I'm saying, but they laugh at the voice,” he says. To pick up the right sounds, Blanc took his shirts to a Chinese laundryman and listened to him jabber.
The character Speedy Gonzales came from a Mexican who was building a house nearby. Mel sat around and listened to his rhythm and then went home and practiced. “All you need is a start,” he says. “This aptitude isn't inherited. You listen, then hear it in your head, and then hear yourself doing it.”
To make the dialects funny, Mel, once he has the general ring of it, will sacrifice the dialect to bring a point across, and this is where he gets his laughs. All this sounds fairly simple, but there are only a few besides the big four who do make a good living using just their voices.
Many actors have tried the voice business, but they are not successful. Maybe they don't spend enough time practicing after listening.
To give enthusiasts further incentive, Blanc's workweek should be described. He's at some studio three or four days a week on an average. There he puts in maybe four hours, which is a big day.
Ten years ago it used to take a day and a half for the present four-hour stint. Equipment and Blanc are just that much better now.
For instance; in making The Three Stooges pilot, which contains five minutes of animation, using the Blanc method, Mel, the Stooges and the crew were finished in just half the time expected.
“We just took one line at a time,” said Mel. “We'd say it until we got the right emphasis on a word and then go on. This was brand new to the comics, but they got the idea. We breezed through it.”
Blanc has one other claim to notoriety. He's the new mayor of Pacific Palisades, a suburban community near Los Angeles, and this job is hard on him because he has to make speeches. “I prefer to listen says Blanc, a new type of politician.”

Yes, it is, Tex

You know the story of the Three Little Pigs. First pig, house of straw, huff and puff, etc. Ah, but if you set it during World War Two, a few new touches are added.

The Big Bad Wolf becomes Adolf Wolf and, since a war is underway, he has to use an instrument of war. However, since this is taking place in Tex Avery’s Blitz Wolf (1942), some ridiculous contraption has to be invented.



Because it’s a Tex Avery cartoon, we’re left with a typical Tex Avery sign.



The camera pans over to another sign. Hey, where did it come from? It wasn’t in the earlier shot.



Ah, best not to ask questions in a Tex Avery cartoon and just go along for the fun.

A “Gone With the Wind” sign gag appeared again in Avery’s “Swing Shift Cinderella."

Woody Multiples

The first Woody Woodpecker cartoon released after the Walter Lantz studio had shut down for almost two years was “Puny Express” (1951). The first few Woodys when Lantz returned had been timed by director Dick Lundy before the shutdown from stories by Heck Allen and Bugs Hardaway. There was no dialogue, apparently to facilitate their sale in foreign countries.

There are lots of brush strokes and multiples in a scene where Buzz Buzzard pushes the plunger on a dynamite detonation box—only to be squirted with water. He looks inside to see what’s wrong. The selected drawings below tell the story. The first five are consecutive frames.



The next five drawings are consecutive as well.



Three more consecutive drawings.



And the next three are consecutive frames.



Ray Abrams, La Verne Harding and Don Patterson get screen credit for animation.

Not a Good Day For Dennis

Ed Sullivan was the toast of the town to some and tyrant of the town to others.

Sullivan was notorious for arbitrarily chopping someone’s act down to next-to-nothing just prior to air on his Sunday night show, and objections or complaints would bring out language in the Great Stone Face that he’d never be allowed to use on television.

Even Dennis Day, long-time colleague of a Sullivan friend, Jack Benny, was victimised. We don’t know what Sullivan thought about it, but Day griped to columnist Hal Humphrey about what happened to him. This appeared in papers on June 18, 1960.

Dennis Day Has No Pull On Ed Sullivan's Show
Hollywood—Even if you happen to be an Irishman, it cuts no ice for you on Ed Sullivan's show. Dennis Day (born Eugene Patrick McNulty) had some funny patter and a couple of sharp impersonations ready for a recent turn on Sullivan’s "big shew." During the dress rehearsal Dennis lost everything but a couple of songs. "I had some stuff about international TV. For example, I was going to point out that in Ireland the favorite was called ‘The Fastest Shillelagh in the West,’ and how Israel had a commercial on TV plugging Shapiro's Chicken Fat as the only thing that would louse up a Paper-Mate pen.
"The chicken fat joke went out because they said the Paper-Mate reference constituted a plug. I think shillelagh bothered them a little but they couldn’t be sure if it was a brand name.
"But the silliest thing was cutting my impersonation of Khrushchev," says Dennis.
Red Plug?
Don't tell me Sullivan considered it a plug for East Berlin?"
"I didn’t even see Sullivan until he introduced me on the air. No, the Khrushchev bit was cut during the rehearsal.
Somebody thought that viewers didn't want to be reminded of Russia and bombs. Of course, there was nothing about Russia or bombs in my impersonation, but that didn't seem to matter."
Dennis says he understands that Sullivan is hidden somewhere around the theater when the show rehearses in front of an audience. If an act or line of dialogue doesn't get a good reaction from that audience, out it goes with a wave of Sullivan's hand. It's a kind of kangaroo court.
After his two songs and a handshake from Sullivan, Dennis got on a plane and jetted for home, dreaming about a guest appearance where the star of the show says to him, "Do just what you want to, lad, and good luck!"
This week Dennis is back playing the lovable schnook whom Jack Benny invented in 1939, when Dennis took over from Kenny Baker. Benny is filming shows for next season already, because he is going to be on every week. Dennis is set for a minimum of eight Benny appearances.
Second Fiddle

"I enjoy working with Jack, but after 21 years of it, everyone seems to think it's all I can do—that is, play the Dennis Day on the Jack Benny show."
Just once Dennis would like to play someone else in a dramatic role. His agents control Revue Productions, which films "Wagon Train," "Riverboat" and a flock of other TV series, but each time Dennis pleads with them to find him a role in one of these epics, the answer is "Be patient, Dennis, we're looking for the right thing for you."
"Frank Sinatra had to lay siege to Harry Cohn and practically work for nothing to get that first dramatic part of his in 'From Here to Eternity'," Dennis recalls. "Maybe I'll have to do it that way."
During the next few months most of the country's TV viewers will have a chance to see Dennis' old TV series which ran on NBC in the 1953-54 season. He sold the 36 films for syndication and the comedy in them is fresher than most of the stuff on TV today.
"Nobody saw these shows the first time around because they ran opposite ‘I Love Lucy’ on Monday nights," reports Dennis. "And Cliff Arquette was in most of them with me. At that time his Charley Weaver character was considered corny. Now he does the same character on Jack Paar's show, and the New York critics rave about him."