A Few Quick Facts About Limited Animation

“Purely graphic in design” is how Zack Schwartz viewed A Few Quick Facts: Fear, a cartoon made by United Film Productions for the U.S. Signal Corps in 1945.

The 3½-minute short has stylised designs, no backgrounds, and movement that resembles cut-outs being moved around in front of the cartoon.

Here’s one of the effects. The horses continue to clop away on twos while the background changes. Then during one of the wipes, the horse and rider change from negative to positive shades.



The heralds are moved around like cutouts (after the doorway is pulled out of the scene), then are animated to combine into a thick line, which is again moved like a cutout and stands on end. The herald emerge from it and are moved into two poses.



Bobe Cannon animated this short, which deliberately paid more attention to art than humour. That would eventually be part of UPA’s downfall.

Dancing Fifi

Tex Avery’s fascination with long shots of a little insect on a stage goes back to his Warners Bros. days in Hamateur Night (1939). He featured fleas in other films but when he gets to The Flea Circus (1954), he combines the idea with the mass procreation gag that ended Little Johnny Jet, Bill Thompson’s Droopy voice and the song “Clementine” that appeared in Magical Maestro. In other words, a lot of Avery ideas are at play here (a muffled sound gag in this cartoon was further explored in his next short, Dixieland Droopy).

One thing that’s unique to The Flea Circus is the design of Fifi, the little French girl flea who steals the heart of Pepito the Clown flea (who finally wins her by saving her life). My assumption has been that Ed Benedict was responsible but there’s no design or layout screen credit in this cartoon. Fifi’s involved in a neat dance scene to the tune of Applause by Ira Gershwin and Burton Lane, lifted right off the soundtrack of the MGM musical Give a Girl a Break (1954).

Here are some of Fifi’s poses, with the chorus line in the background.



You’ll notice Fifi and the chorus aren’t in step and aren’t always singing at the same time. They catch up to each other every once in a while. During this scene, Fifi may move from one frame to the next then hold. The chorus may move in a different frame or the same one. It means their actions aren’t always in sync. I didn’t notice until writing this post and froze each frame.

Here’s what I’m talking about. This is one second of animation, slowed down. Only once are all characters held for two frames, everything else is on ones with Fifi, or the chorus, or both, moving. All the characters start out in the same position.



Did Mike Lah animate this scene? He seems to have done a number of dance numbers at MGM. Walt Clinton, Bob Bentley and Grant Simmons are the other credited animators.

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre – We Learn About the Telephone

All kinds of industrial films were made about telephones but only one combined John Hubley, Mel Blanc, the Capitol Hi-Q library and the girl who played Felix Unger’s daughter on TV. It’s the 1965 two-reeler We Learn About the Telephone, produced by Jerry Fairbanks Productions.

A. T. and T. evidently had some kind of special educational campaign going on at the time. A 24-page booklet aimed at young people was copyrighted in late 1964.

Animation fans should like the cartoon segments which take up a good portion of the first half of the film. I especially like the designs of the circus animals about half-way through which teach us phone etiquette from the days before everyone carried around their own hand-held. Director Hubley’s career, which spanned and included the Disney strike, a McCarthyist ouster at UPA and Oscar wins as an independent producer, should be well-known to readers here. As for the voices, you’ll recognise Blanc doing a host of voices and Paul Frees as the sleepy bear and the fox (I should know who is doing the female voices but I don’t).

The opening theme is SF-1004 Happy Outing by Marc Lanjean. It’s originally from the KPM library but is found on Hi-Q reel L-95. The closing cue is Bright Title by Bill Loose and Emil Cadkin from the Capitol Production Music library. Spencer Moore’s L-1144 Animation Light makes an appearance during the running scene at the 2:30 mark and there are cues by Phil Green and some from the Hi-Q ‘D’ (Dramatic) series.

Mike Kazaleh helpfully listed some of the animators in a post on the late Michael Sporn’s blog, all veterans of the theatrical world.

The animators I can spot are Phil Duncan, Bill Littlejohn (these two did the most footage) Don Towsley (the lion and the raven), Emery Hawkins (the beaver and the bear), Ben Washam (the elephants) Tom Ray (the fox and the pig), and one other person I can’t identify (the Samuel Morse sequence.) Some of the stuff Duncan animated were the opening section, and the scenes of the ringmaster. Littlejohn animated the messenger traveling through time, and the two musicians.

Oh, the little girl is Pamelyn Ferdin, who appeared on The Odd Couple and was one of the voices of Lucy in the Peanuts cartoons (which Littlejohn also worked on).

Still a Small-Town Boy

Jack Benny a quitter?

Ah, you’ve got to love tabloids and their attention-grabbing opening sentences. The statement leaves the impression that he was some kind of loser but the article goes on to reveal anything but.

This story from the Radio Mirror of February 1937 is a long read so I won’t waste time with a huge introduction. The old saw about Benny’s first radio appearance being on Ed Sullivan’s show is trotted out (it’s not true) and there’s an interesting tag of trivia notes about the show. “Al Burns,” if I recall, was Jack’s brother-in-law for a time (he married Babe Marks).

They’re better than nothing, but the pictures with the article aren’t that great because of a low resolution scan of this magazine.

GENIUS IN A FOG
By WELDON MELICK
JACK BENNY has been a quitter all his life. At every turning point in his career he has turned tail-but each such occasion has somehow advanced his fame and fortune.
I've heard actors, writers and comedians marvel that anyone could reach the top by the seemingly careless, unambitious, unbusinesslike methods that are Jack's. His Sunday half-hour recently forged ahead of Major Bowes in a national radio popularity survey, returning to the first place it lost two years ago. Yet Jack is easygoing, almost phlegmatic, and always takes the line of least resistance. When he gets into a violent argument he will suddenly give in to save himself the effort of keeping his mind on it.
His friend, George Burns, found him fuming one time over the incompetence of his vaudeville agent. Jack had determined to fire him. George didn't want to miss the fireworks, and went along, with his companion getting hotter under the collar and thinking up new vilifying epithets all the way.
As they entered the office, the agent called a cheery, "Good morning, Jack!"
"Is there any mail today?" Benny seethed.
"No, there isn't, Jack."
"Well, goodbye," the infuriated actor boiled, and on the way out mumbled, "I guess I told him!"
Another demonstration of his one-mouse-power temper occurred years ago at the Academy of Music in New York City, which boasted the most bloodthirsty audience since the Roman Coliseum. The house welcome to each new act was a prolonged raspberry-when tomatoes were out of season. Entertainers dreaded to play the spot, but egotistically gave everything they had for the applause of the barbarians, as it was equivalent in the theatrical world to a Congressional Medal for Bravery.
Jack sauntered in from the wings in his usual preoccupied manner at the first performance. His "Hello, everybody!" was drowned in the raspberry-flavored accolade which crescendoed to a thunderous roar as he shuffled deliberately across the stage, his eyes on the floor. When he reached the other side of the stage without so much as a change of expression, the raspberry subsided into ominous defiance, prefacing the real baiting and torture of a human sacrifice. Jack tossed them a genial "Goodbye, folks," sauntered on out of the theater and never came back.
Benny has developed quitting to the perfection of a science. He quit high school in his sophomore year-by request. The principal said he wouldn't amount to anything and was only wasting the taxpayers' money.
Jack next quit his home for the stage. His father threatened to lock up the welcome mat if the boy walked out on him, but admitted he was only bluffing when he found out his son was serious.
Young Jack Benny was a violinist when he quit the stage to join the Navy. There were Seamen's Benefits, so he kept right on entertaining. When the world conflict was over, all that was left of a second-rate violinist was a first-rate comedian.
Laughs are not only Jack's career, they are also his existence. His closest friends are rival comedians-those who can make him laugh the most frequently and heartily-and when Jack Benny laughs heartily, he falls down, rolls on the floor, and clicks his heels. He matches laugh for laugh, reveling in a joke with the same abandon whether he's on the giving or receiving end.

ONE morning during a Winnipeg date, the Bennys' friend, Al Burns, telephoned from the hotel lobby that he was on his way up to their room. To give Al a laugh, Jack stood on one bed with a pitcher of water on his head and Mary stood on the other bed balancing a telephone book on her brow. At the knock on the door, Jack called "Come in!" and in walked the waiter with their breakfast. Jack doesn't go in for practical jokes. His idea of fun takes the milder form of telegrams and long distance phone calls.
When "Big Boy" opened in San Francisco, Florence Moore, who was playing in the same city, received a telegram from Jack Benny and George Burns to this effect:
"Jolson opens tonight. As we don't know Jolson, we are sending you a telegram. Congratulations."
The night George Burns and Gracie Allen got married in Cleveland, Jack called up from Vancouver at 4:00 A. M. "Hello-this is Jack Benny!" he announced. George said, "Bring up two orders of bacon and eggs!" and hung up. While George was playing the Palace in New York, Jack sent him this wire from San Diego, "I think your act is sensational. You've got the cleverest routine, the funniest gags Broadway has ever heard. I think you're a genius - better than Chaplin!" He signed it "George Burns."
Jack once wrote George a six-page letter. George was too busy to answer, so he switched the names in salutation and signature, and sent the letter back. Jack redoubled, and for a year and a half, that was the only letter that passed between them, but it passed frequently.
After George's first program on the air, Jack wrote him a fan letter: "I listened to your program last night and I think it was swell. I would appreciate it very much if you would send me a picture of Tom Mix's horse." George dug up a picture of a jackass and inscribed it "To my very dear friend, Jack Benny." Jack acknowledged it with "Thank you for your picture."
When Jack meets friends after the theater or in a restaurant, he can't refrain from a cordial, "Come on up to the house-we'll have a lotta laughs." Sometimes he comes home with thirty people. But Jack will never make a good night owl. He habitually rises before nine o'clock every morning, in aggravatingly jubilant spirits. So about the time the impromptu guests dispose of their wraps, their host is asleep on the couch.
He's never the life of the party. But whoever is the life of the party never had a better one-man audience than Jack Benny. He whoops at whatever strikes him funny.
Several comedians have risen from the minor ranks through his enthusiasm. He has sat in on radio auditions and used his compelling personality to persuade sponsors to contract comedy programs which would compete with his own, just because he wanted to help someone he used to know in vaudeville.
He is probably the only actor on record without a spark of professional jealousy. When Jesse Block first teamed up with Eve Sully, Jack loaned the pair his best piece of gag material, a sure-fire bit that was getting his biggest laughs on the road. He figured it might do them a lot of good while bookers were catching their act in New York, and wouldn't do him any harm, since they would drop it as soon as they started on the road themselves.
The bit was terrific. Block and Sully became sensations over night and were being held over in New York when Jack returned to play the Palace.
After his first performance, people said he was doing a Block and Sully. He took the bit out of his own act and told his friends to keep it when they went on the road.
Jack often gives a fair imitation of a lunatic on the loose. When he is not composing goofy telegrams, he is usually lost in a fog of concentration and petty worries. A sudden question will jar loose some words concerning the subject on his mind, making the most surprising answer. Sometimes he doesn't hear you at all, and other times he startles you with an answer fifteen minutes after you have forgotten what you asked.
Four years ago, Jack committed a stupefying act which convinced all his friends of his insanity. Without a single other prospect in view, he quit cold a job that was bringing him $1400 a week. He asked for a release from his contract with the Earl Carrol Vanities road Company, thus throwing away $20,000-and then and there quit the stage. Of all times that Jack has been a quitter, that remains his masterpiece. But as usual, his professional ascent was only accelerated by the halt!
He had completed a cycle, and come again to the choice between his career on the stage and a home. But this time, he chose a home-for his wife's sake. Mary Livingstone had tried hard to forget the solid, comfortable security she had given up for a portable existence in hotels and trains. She had tried to get used to uprooting her life every few days-packing, unpacking, waiting alone in hotel rooms for Jack, or worse, visiting him backstage, and seeing chorus cuties swarming around him. The first year she had been miserably unhappy and had left her spouse ten times, but always her love for him outweighed her aversion to the merry-go-round of the theater, and drew her back.
By 1932, Mary was resigned to her fate, and had even overcome her dislike for the stage enough to appear in Jack's act with him. But she was still a home girl at heart-and Jack knew there was only one way to make her supremely happy. He saw radio as a solution to his domestic problems.
THEY went back to New York and for three months Jack gave audition after audition to no avail. Then, one night, columnist Ed Sullivan invited him to make "a guest star appearance on his own program. For the record, these are the first words that the bland comedian uttered over the air:
"Ladies and gentlemen-this is Jack Benny talking. There will be a slight pause while you say 'Who cares ?' I am here tonight as a scenario writer. There is quite a lot of money in writing scenarios for the pictures. Well, there would be if I could sell one. That seems to be my only trouble right now, but I am going back to pictures in about ten weeks. I'm going to be in a new picture with Greta Garbo. They sent me the story last week. When the picture first opens, I'm found dead in the bathroom. It's sort of a mystery picture. I'm found in the bathtub on Wednesday night." He shortly had his first sponsor, Canada Dry, and amid the flood of old-style gags that deluged radio almost four years ago, the Benny brand of timely character humor sparkled like a Will Rogers quip in the Congressional Record.
It was by breaking from the tradition that called for a star comedian to grab all the laughs from his straight man that Jack Benny developed a smooth-running, eight-cylinder laugh machine while other comics were still wheezing along on one cylinder. Using the same fuel-that is, jokes no funnier and in many cases less clever than those of his competitors-he streaked to record popularity before the others could remodel their ancient vehicles.
He even dragged Mary with him, putting her into the scripts against her will. But she has grown to love the work and the audience loves her blithe assurance.

Although he worries and frets his radio material into shape, making a minor crisis of each broadcast, as soon as the show goes on the air, Jack does his best to befuddle the cast into garbling their lines. He thinks an unintentional slip of the tongue is always good for a laugh, whereas the original line may or may not be. Thus he kidded Don Bestor's spats into national prominence, and some of his ad lib remarks about Kenny Baker not only confuse the singer but have him blushing for hours afterwards.
The strangest thing about this good-natured fellow is that he doesn't react to the white heat of success in any way. He's still a small-town boy who can't hold his liquor (one cocktail sends him higher than a kite, so he practically never drinks) and to whom a midnight movie is an orgy. He has no business sense, and takes his wife's advice on everything but the selection of his clothes. Unlike most actors, he dresses conservatively (and he dresses himself-he wouldn't submit to a valet to pay off an election bet).
His diversions are those of a $35-a-week bank clerk, though his pay check is in five figures. His chief delight is leisurely cross-country motoring. He gave his wife a sixteen-cylinder sedan, but refused to give up his own Pontiac roadster for a more luxurious car. He thinks he's a very good driver, but the temptation to tell a good story frequently takes his eyes from the road.
He's a panic on the dance floor when he pulls a Fred Astaire, but it's a bit nerve-wracking to his unsuspecting partner.
HE sometimes plays casino, but the best thing he does with a card table is to set dinner on it and invite Burns and Allen over. When he starts a meal, he always asks "What's the dessert?" and you have to keep it out of sight or he'll eat it between the appetizer and the soup. He has to taste what everyone else is eating, if it's different from his order. As soon as the dessert is on (once a day it's one of those "six delicious flavors") he asks, "What are we going to do tonight?" He stops eating when he feels uncomfortable and after dinner looks at himself in the mirror, makes a double chin and remarks, "Gee, I'll have to start on a diet tomorrow!" He always means it, and even bought a medicine ball and gym equipment once, using it all of twenty minutes before he gave it away.
Jack has two habits he can't break. He smokes several thousand cigars a year and bites his nails. Mary frequently slaps his hands out of his mouth, as it's a dreadful example to set for Joan. Jack likes to show you snapshots of his adopted baby - he always has some in his pocket - and if you suggest that she looks a little like him, he is the proudest papa-by-proxy in the world.
At least ten needy actors receive regular checks from Benny. if you see him fasten onto some obscure actor at a party and unobtrusively steer him toward the kitchen, it's a safe bet that radio's ace comedian is asking Joe Hoofer how things are going, and is backing up his interest with something to tide him over the tough breaks.
While he was making a personal appearance in Boston recently, the boy who was kicked out of high school because he wouldn't study had an invitation to lecture on humorous writing to the literature classes of Harvard. Jack declined the honor. He explained to a friend, "I can't talk to all those smart guys. I'm only an actor. I wouldn't know what to say."
But if he doesn't stand in awe of his own importance, neither does he of anyone else's. During the same engagement, arrangements were made for him to meet the Governor at the State House. The Governor was late and Benny left-not from impatience after a long wait, but simply because he was due at a rehearsal. The others told him the rehearsal would have to be delayed-that he couldn't walk out on a governor.
Jack simply said, "He can be late. He's got a four year contract, but mine's only for thirteen weeks."

DOTS AND DASHES ON JACK BENNY'S PROGRAM. . . . This merrymaker's program is now radio's number one according to the telephone polls, which make surveys of listening popularity, for advertising agencies and sponsors.... It finally shoved Major Bowes' amateurs into second place. . . . Jack's sponsors attribute this to their high-priced comic's flippant personality. . . . But the veteran comedian likes to think his success is due to his innovation of situation comedy on the air, rather than to gags. . . Jack likes to kid the notion's latest crazes, its newest movies, its latest heroes. However, this type of comedy has its limitations. . . . Lampooning national affairs, international figures, politics, religions, is taboo.... To make up for this, Jack built up his company of funsters into definite personalities, so he could kid them instead. . . . When Harry Conn, $2,500-a-week gag writer, left Jack to write for Joe Penner, the former fiddler hired another high-priced writer, Al Boasberg, and three assistants. . . The writers bring in the rough draft to their boss early in the week. . . . Benny greets them in a silk dressing gown, silkier pajamas, and the inevitable cigar tucked in the side of his mouth. . . Benny injects his own ideas. . . The following Sunday the cast gives it a first reading. Suggestions are made by Mary, Kenny Baker and Phil Harris, to suit their personalities. . . . One of the hardest workers and biggest worriers on the program is Tom Harrington, crack production man, who has traveled over 75,000 miles, in connection with this show, between the West Coast studios and the New York advertising agency offices of his company, Young and Rubicam. . . He gets gray hairs every Sunday when Jack upsets the planned routine.... It's Harrington's job to keep the program timed properly.... Young and Rubicam like comedians on their radio shows. They present Jack Benny, Phil Baker, Fred Allen, Charles Butterworth, Stoopnagle and Budd and Ed Wynn, weekly, to a waiting world. . . Jack's man Friday is baldish Harry Baldwin, who cares for Jack's minor business affairs, arranges his appointments, handles Mary's charge accounts. . . . Phil Harris is Jack's sixth bandleader. . . Most of the company dress informally for the broadcasts; Jack wears sweater and slacks, Mary a sports dress, but dimpled, thirty-year-old Harris dresses like a Wall Street baron. . . . The former West Coast drummer made a prize-winning short, "So This Is Harris;" his band has been one of NBC's aces for many years.... Has only one hobby; polo ponies. . He owns a string of them. . It was Rudy Vallee who first recommended him as a coming maestro. . A year ago Kenny Baker was unknown. Today he starts his first starring talkie, "The Great Crooner," Mervyn LeRoy's first independently produced picture. . . Is the proud father of a two-months old boy. . . Don Wilson's raucous laugh, usually heard above the rest of the studio audience, is not forced.... He still thinks Jack Benny is the funniest man in the world.

A Cartoon Word From Our Sponsor

Television saved the animated cartoon industry in the 1950s.

Cartoons and other short subjects became to movie studios like an appendix to a human. They weren’t really needed. They didn’t bring in vast revenue. So studios sold TV distribution rights to companies that proceeded to make a killing off them, resulting in the creation of a whole new TV animation industry.

But cartoons got a boost from television in another way. They were perfect for advertising. TV was still fairly primitive in 1950. There weren’t all that many production facilities and the ones that existed were still tinkering to perfect the technical aspects of the medium. But cartoons had already been perfected. Veteran animators and layout men who knew their craft were looking for work. Cartoons didn’t involve building and lighting sets, blocking actors and so on. As a result, there were almost countless numbers of animated commercials on TV through the ‘50s.

Harry Wayne McMahan, formerly of animated TV producer Five Star Productions, wrote a book in 1954 on effective TV advertising, then enlarged and updated it in 1957. It has some wonderful reproductions of frames of commercials, including animated ones. Unfortunately in some cases he doesn’t reveal which studio was responsible for them. But allow me to pass on some that were identified.



Animation Inc. was run by Earl Klein, Storyboard was John Hubley’s company while Ed Gershman was in charge of Academy Pictures (with Bill Tytla as a vice-president for a time). Sam Nicholson was creative director at TV Spots at the time this book came out. There were many other studios, of course; these were among the West Coast commercial producers.

Here are some examples McMahon gives of styles.

Like everything else in popular culture, the animated commercial fell out of favour toward the end of the ‘50s. It, like just about all animation, was determined to be kiddie fare. Cartoon animals hawked breakfast cereal and not much else during time slots aimed at children. It’s too bad. There’s still a place for Bert and Harry expounding gleefully on the wonders of a really lousy regional beer.

King-Size Canary Backgrounds

As the characters grow in Tex Avery’s King-Size Canary, so the scene of action gets vaster. They start inside a home, then around a suburban neighbourhood, then around big city downtown skyscrapers, then the great outdoors and finally, the whole planet.

Here are some of Johnny Johnsen’s backgrounds in the latter part of the cartoon. You can get the idea of the colours and shading he used for good effect. He even fits some green in the strata lines of the Grand Canyon. You can probably recognise the skyscraper designs; he used them in cityscapes in other MGM cartoons. Same as the lattice-work billboard signs; he liked that a lot, too.



John Didrick Johan Johnson was born on July 23, 1885 in Denver, at least according to U.S. census and military records. But his parents, Didrik Johan and Karen Assine (Aanonsen) Johnsen didn’t emigrate to the U.S. from Norway until 1893, and Norwegian baptismal records state he was born in Norderhov, Norway and christened there in 1886. So I’m stumped. (To add to the confusion, his sister Rakel was born in Norway in 1888. His brother Taule Arnt was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1894). By 1906, the family was in Los Angeles where Johnny was working as an artist for the Los Angeles Express in 1908. He was a commercial artist for Neuman-Monroe Co. in Chicago when he registered for service in World War One. By 1920, he was working in the Detroit area (Highland Park) and then back in Los Angeles by 1930.

Johnsen joined the staff at Leon Schlesinger some time in the 1930s; Griff Jay and Bugs Hardaway were on staff and both former newspaper artists. Johnsen’s work can be seen in Tex Avery’s Merrie Melodies and he stayed at Warners briefly before joining Avery at MGM in 1941 or 1942. When Metro got rid of its Avery unit in 1953, Johnsen retired. He died on February 7, 1974.

Czech That Pain

Gene Deitch sure loved those spikey effects, didn’t he? He used them for both impact and pain in his Tom and Jerry cartoons.

Here’s just one of a number of examples from High Steaks (1962). High comedy erupts when Jerry traps Tom’s tail in a barbecue. It sounds like Tom’s saying “no, no, no” over and over again as he tries to extricate his tail but it’s hard to tell because his echoey voice is being drowned out by the muffled music (there’s a fair bit of vocal ambient noise in the cartoon).



Here come the coloured spikes. Deitch has these four on a cycle, while Tom moves around, all on ones.



Mismatched shots. These are consecutive frames.



This was the fourth of the 13 Tom and Jerrys that William Snyder produced for distribution by MGM. Deitch directed this one at his studio in Prague, although there’s also an “animation director” credit.