Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: Wings For Roger Windsock

Jam Handy was an industrial film studio in Detroit and, for several decades, made live action and animated shorts and commercials. In 1951, it produced Wings For Roger Windsock for the U.S. Air Force (the date is from Film and Filmstrips: Rules For Obtaining, Handling and Returning by the Civil Air Patrol).

Gene Deitch was involved in the making of this limited animation cartoon. The highlights may be the post-war designs and the voice work of Dick Beals, who later moved to Hollywood where his perennial kid voice could be heard in Alka Seltzer commercials, as Ralph Phillips in the Warner Bros. cartoons (Windsock compares interestingly with Phillips), and in TV series like The Funny Company, Roger Ramjet and Davey and Goliath. Beals was an actor on radio in Detroit at the time this film was made.

Deitch, of course, went on to do commercial work at UPA, became the head of production at Terrytoons, then moved to Czechoslovakia where he made Tom and Jerry theatrical cartoons and Popeye cartoons for television.

Rudy Zamora has been identified by Mr. Deitch as one of the Windsock animators. Another source says Jim Fekete also worked on it.

Schlepp

The Jack Benny radio show created and developed many characters who took on a life of their own. There was a danger in that. The audience only accepted the character’s actor in that role until they finally got tired of it and wanted something new played by someone else.

That, unfortunately, is what happened to one of the show’s earliest semi-regular characters.

Sam Hearn had been a star in vaudeville before World War One, reaching stardom as a single act in dialect. Radio and talking pictures did their best to kill vaudeville careers. Hearn’s real stardom ended. But ethnic stooges were still welcome in radio comedy in the 1930s and Hearn landed a job with Benny as a Jewish character named Schlepperman.

Schlepperman banged the public’s funnybone and there was more and more demand for him. But there was one problem with that. The audience didn’t want Hearn. They wanted Schlepperman. Hearn’s attempt to distance himself from the character by leaving the Benny show didn’t work. So Hearn returned to work for Benny for a while, then began to make personal appearances as Schlepperman into the war years. After the war, when ex-Benny vocalist Kenny Baker’s radio sitcom needed shoring up, Schlepperman was brought in as comic relief, perhaps in the hope the Benny familiarity factor would result in ratings (further adding to that was the choice of announcers, Don Wilson). But the show never really took off.

Here’s a syndicated feature story from the Freeport Daily Review of January 18, 1937, telling of the tribulations of being put in a role that the audience won’t let you leave.

Schlepperman Calls 'Farewell Stranzer' As Sam Hearn of Freeport Takes a Rest
Makes Indies Cruise After Leaving A Hit Song To Audience
By MARY RITA HALPIN

Sam Hearn stooged "Hello Stranzer" to Jack Benny on a radio program two years ago, and Schlepperman, Hearn's alias, made more friends than a dozen lonely hearts columns run end to end.
"I'm taking a trip to the West Indies to try it on the natives," said Mr. Hearn who leaves his home on Wilson place, Freeport, tomorrow, for a 12-day pleasure cruise with his wife and Lester and Mort Lewis, radio script and magazine writers.
Wants Nothing Save A Rest
Regardless of his pen-pushing playmates, the dapper Freeport comedian mirroring sartorial perfection from his neat mustache to gray spate, seeks a rest. He leaves behind the song, "There's a Sparrow in the Haystack", in words and music of which he introduced to his "Showboat" audience last month, and his cinema self in the "Big Broadcast of 1937" that played the local theatres this week.
"No scripts, just relaxation," announced Hearn under the approving smile of his attractive redheaded wife, the former Helen Eley who last appeared on the stage with Charlie Ruggles in "Battling Butter."
"When I return I'm going to pitch into the 'Schlepperman Enterprises,' a script which we have completed and hope to uncover a sponsor for," the comedian continued seriously.
Resents 'Stooge' Ranking
"I resent classification as a stooge. When on the stage I was called a player. A stooge in the theatre is the lowest form of a player; makes about from $25 to $26.50," he said.
"Of course, when you play with Jack Benny you are a stooge. It's just one stooge family. Jack, incidentally, put me on the air. He heard me at an intimate frolic of the Friars' club when I decided to do an all Jewish dialect. He liked it so much that he asked me to go on the air with him the following week. I did and Schlepperman was born." His infectious "Hello Stranzer" merrily pushed its way through the Chevrolet, General Tires, Jello and Maxwell House programs.
"That happened accidentally. My script ran 'howdy-do' so I said to Jack, I knew you in the studio but the audience doesn't know that how about 'Hello Stranzer.' He said, 'that's good, Sam, try it.' I did and am I glad," Hearn grinned. "Like Joe Penner's 'wanna buy a duck' or Jack Pearl's 'Vas you there Sharlie' it has set a high. It's hard to top."
Quietly affable in manner, with a rare joke rollicking, this funny man thinks he runs according to the air comedian's pattern. "Radio sets a tedious pace. Jokes are clean due to censorship and they have to be good. Benny is on top. It's turned his hair white. Fred Allen, one of the cleverest, writes his own script, never goes out of the house," was his explanation.
Last Of The Mohicans

Twenty years of Freeport, the Long Island railroad and natural musical talent put Ream's "Sparrow in the Haystack" on the popular music list.
"We're practically the last of the Mohicans of the town's show people. The Lights club is gone and with it the men I used to ride with to New York on the smoker. No one to talk to commuting, I thought up the words to the song then fooled around the piano for a plaintive air. I sang it once and received so many requests it was symphonized for the 'Showboat' program. It was a real thrill to hear Helen Jepson, Lanny Ross and the Modern choir take it up." He rehearsed the presentation on the spot.
Mr. Hearn has appeared in one other moving picture for Paramount besides "The Big Broadcast", "Florida Special" in which Jack Oakie starred.
"Yes, I was the little man with the violin. Pictures are funny. After working your head off the picture is run and you only see yourself in spots. I put pajamas on for the pullman scene at "two" in the afternoon. After waiting around all day they put me in the upper berth at 10 o'clock. I fell asleep when they started adjusting the camera, when I came to at 12:30 with 'what town am I in?' they took three shots and the day was done at twenty to one. You probably won't even remember the few minutes you saw that on the screen," he mused.

Hearn spent the ‘50s back with Benny, though the Jewish dialectician job had been handed to ex newspaper photographer Artie Auerbach. Hearn instead played a rube character, though Schlepp returned for an episode of the Benny TV show. But it seems an absence from the air and a change from radio to TV put Schlepperman to rest. Hearn started picking up different roles, including two in 1964. One was on Universal’s “That Funny Feeling” with another dialectician-turned-Benny bit player, Benny Rubin. Hearn had a heart attack on set almost a week later and died on October 29th.

Van Beuren Makes a Fable

When the cinema world gave up stoney silence for music and voices toward the end of the 1920s, New York City was left with three major cartoon studios—Fleischer, Van Beuren and Paul Terry.

The Van Beuren cartoons get denigrated in many quarters. Let’s face it. The Fleischer shorts of the early ‘30s were better drawn and better gagged. But it wasn’t as if Van Beuren cheaped out like Terry, who didn’t want to pay for music rights or outside characters and, I suspect, would have continued churning out silent black-and-white shorts if he could have gotten away with it. Van Beuren did none of those things. It spent money getting the rights to the number one radio show, Amos ‘n’ Andy, as well Otto Soglow’s comic strip character the Little King (and, later, the Toonerville Trolley and Felix the Cat). The studio paid for popular tunes and Technicolor. Despite that, not only did the Terry plant outlive Van Beuren by more than three decades, it grabbed top Van Beuren animators who were left without a studio in early 1936.

However, no one expected any of that in 1930 when Exhibitors Herald World published a feature story on the making of Van Beuren cartoons. We reprint the article (from Feb. 22) below. At the time, Van Beuren’s shorts—which included Grantland Rice Sportlights, Talking Topics of the Day and Song Sketches in addition to the Fables—were distributed in the U.S. by Pathé. The photos accompanied the article; it’s a shame better prints aren’t available.

Tower of Babel was Mere Tombstone Compared to Animators’ Shop
Introduction of Sound Doubles Cost and Labor, and Triples Tax on Nerves of Sound Cartoonists — But Ain’t We Got Fun!
By DOUGLAS FOX
NEW YORK, Feb. 18.— "Give us a good pansy step, Jack."
The musical gag man swung into action, minced his feet around and waggled his posterior. He finished in a sort of pirouette
“THAT ends on six,” he said. "Get the pose?"
"Yeah."

The animator bent over his tracing paper, his pencil flew. It took him a few seconds to sketch the action. Complete, it portrayed a hippopotamus, a female of the species, indulging in a lively, if undignified dance.
Over Their Drawing Boards
Three or four other men, music and roughs in front of them, were bending over their drawing boards in other parts of the room. They paid no attention to the dancer.
And that, perhaps, will be the picture that presents itself should you happen to visit the home of Van Beuren's sound cartoons. Animators, fill-in men, a musical gag man; in the next room a photographer steadily disposing of the material accumulating on his desk.
Animators. . . . Lively people, you'd suppose; just regular cutups. But no, not these fellows. Not often, anyway. Occasionally, if Jack Ward does a particularly funny step you may see a gleam in the eyes of these men who are paid to be humorous on paper. Otherwise it's all solemnity.
Music Doubles Cost and Work
It's the introduction of music which has caused the change, almost doubled the cost and labor of making animated cartoons. The action now has to fit the music, everything is done in beats and the master mind who can piece together the odds and ends of the jigsaw puzzle becomes a pretty well paid executive. And this fellow is the musical gag man, a chap they wouldn't have had any use for ten or eleven months ago.
The production of synchronized cartoons is a long and laborious business. But, according to these that do the job, it seldom if ever becomes tiresome. One week they fill monkeys with delirious aspirations in regard to the lady hippopotami who go scampering through the picture; a few days later they'll be drawing impossible animals performing impossible antics in an equally impossible arctic region. There is always change. They never come up against the same problems twice for the simple reason that they never repeat themselves.

The making of an animated cartoon begins with an editorial conference between the animators and the music directors. The general trend of the story is decided on and everybody does his bit in contributing gags and ideas. Then they work out the music to go with it and cut the scenario to fit the music. This is done by Gene Rodemick [sic] and Jack Ward who synchronize the whole business on paper before a line is really drawn. The chief animator, John Forster [sic], then divides the script into sections which he gives to his assistants, Harry Bailey and Mannie Davis together with the music that goes with them and everybody gets to work with pencil and tracing paper.
Ward, who can dance any step that was ever invented and a good many that are just nightmares, goes from one animator to another, helps him out on the tempo and poses of various routines or invents new ones to fit the action. Characters, of course, along with the trend of the story, have all been determined previously.
Drawing for Each Movement
One drawing is made for each movement of each character and, as they are done, the sketches are numbered, traced on to celluloid, filled-in in black and white by capable draughtsmen, and numbered again. Several of the characters often move at once so you may see a number of sketches with just arms, legs, tails, or beards in various positions. In the next room sits a photographer, celluloids stacked before him, a guide sheet at his side, a camera overhead.
He placed one, two, three, or four celluloids into a frame, according to what his guide sheet calls for, shifts the background the necessary fraction of an inch, pulls a lever and the camera comes down and takes just one picture. He changes the celluloids in the frame, takes another picture. Unless the pattern of the background becomes too complicated (that is, made up of separate strips which have to be moved at different speeds) he takes four or five frames a minute. On some days he may shoot 75 or 100 feet. On other days, when the going is tough, he may do only ten.
Follow Up with Piano
When the picture is complete they take it into the projection room and follow it with the piano. Musical gags have been worked out beforehand. Sometimes, however, it is necessary to do quite a bit of cutting or a little rephotographing on certain sequences to get the musical emphasis where they want it. An important thing in the drawing is the variation of tempo. While the tempo of the music may be constant for several bars, that of the action is constantly changed to obviate the possibility of monotony. In varying the tempo of the action and in still keeping it in harmony with the music, in bringing emphasis to certain beats, starting and stopping on certain beats, sustaining the action on still more beats (you can tell by this how much I know about music), the presence of a musical gag man is imperative.
Then there is the business of improvising in the breaks and working out sound effects. It is all quite complicated and the men who do it are well worth their salt.
To continue the original line of thought, when all the details have been worked out with the piano the orchestra is thoroughly rehearsed in constant synchronization with the films. When everything is perfect the music is recorded in synchronization with the action on a. separate strip of film, which is split into three sections, so that even then, if anything is wrong, there is room for remedy and the sound track can be shifted a little each way before it is made a part of the original film.

And that, roughly, is how a sound cartoon is made. It entails lots of thought, thousands of drawings, and intensive work for two or three weeks. Before sound came along it was possible to turn out animated cartoons in half the time with half the labor; there was no call for skilled musicians, for experts on the dance, for artists with a gift for rhythm.
Blend Voice with Trombone
Curiously enough, in sound cartoons, the human voice is a liability rather than an asset. When a character speaks its voice is blended with a trombone so that it fits the pictorial characterization rather than something human which would be out of place. Consequently, the studio, or workshop, or whatever you want to call it, is constantly invaded with old women who can cry like babies, young men who can crow and beautiful girls who are gifted in making weird noises. The animators may be bending over their boards working studiously while the place around them is a bedlam of menagerie sounds.
Some day they may go mad in their harness, these young artists and musicians; but they may find some comfort as they chatter and grin behind the bars, in the thought that they have made the world laugh.

Less than a month later, Exhibitors Herald World reported:

Amedee J. Van Beuren claims the widest world distribution for any short subject with the completion of contracts for the handling of Aesop's Fables, both sound and silent, in Canada, Great Britain, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Rumania, Spain, Portugal, Africa, the Philippine Islands, Japan, China, Australasia, Argentine, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile. Deals also are pending for Germany, Switzerland, Russia and India.

But the Fables didn’t last for many more years. Walt Disney upped the cartoon ante by improving his animation, stories and designs, forcing everyone to catch up. In 1934, Van Beuren, now 50% owned by RKO, attempted to match Disney by hiring Burt Gillett, the ex-New Yorker who directed the Disney’s (and the world’s) most popular cartoon in the world to date—The Three Little Pigs. Within two years, RKO decided to distribute Disney instead of match him. There was no need for the Van Beuren studio any more.

My special thanks to Devon Baxter, who found the pictures you see in this post.

Stand Back, Musketeers!

So much has been written over the years about the great cartoon Duck Amuck, you probably don’t want to read anything from me. So, instead, we bring you the opening title. Whether Don Foster was responsible, I don’t know. We’ve snipped it together as best as we can, though the lettering is on an overlay which shifts at one point during the pan down the drawing.

By the way, the music over the titles is a Carl Stalling original.

Patterson's Panther

Walter Lantz’s heyday was in the late 1940s with Dick Lundy directing and animation by Ed Love, Ken O’Brien and Fred Moore. But Lantz couldn’t get enough money from his United Artists contract to stay profitable, so he stopped theatrical animation for close to two years. When the studio reopened, all those artists were gone and the cartoons had thicker ink-lines and a cheaper look.

Still, there was some good work being put out by Lantz through the first half of the ‘50s. Tex Avery’s cartoons speak for themselves. Ray Patterson and Grant Simmons came up with two nice cartoons before toddling off to form their own studio. And Ray’s brother Don proved himself to be a decent director.

One of Don Patterson’s cartoons was Socko in Morocco, where Woody Woodpecker is charged with guarding Princess Salami from Sheik El Rancid (Buzz Buzzard). It features some nice character and background designs (no layout artist is credited).

Here are some frames from two neat little scenes. The key to the harem slips under a door. Woody opens it and reacts. Cut to a scene of a black panther swatting toward Woody in perspective. The animation of the panther is on twos (one drawing used in two frames of film).



Ray Abrams, Herman Cohen and Ken Southworth are the credited animators. I don’t know whether Patterson ended up animating some scenes.

He's Got to Be Shovelling Off

Radio actor John Brown successfully made the transition to television—but he couldn’t overcome grandstanding politicians and bottom-feeding busybodies willing to make a buck on imaginary fears.

Brown was a character actor. He had regular and popular roles on a number of radio shows, and appeared on an Emmy-winning television show in 1949. But then the U.S. House Un-American Activities Sub-Committee got in the way. Reported Variety in February 1954:

Suspension from AFTRA faces John Brown, actor-member, if he fails within 90 days to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Union's board of directors made this ruling yesterday after hearing charges against him for standing on the Fifth Amendment at a recent Committee hearing [in late November 1953]. In his appearance before the AFTRA board, Brown denied he is now a member of the Communist Party and stated that he had signed the AFTRA loyalty oath. He declined to answer questions as to his membership in the Party prior to the time such affidavits were required.
AFTRA ruling on Brown's suspension provides that members testify concerning their Communist affiliation before Congressional committees or face disciplinary action by union.

With that, the man who received applause and laughter for years as “The Friendly Undertaker” on The Life of Riley was blacklisted. But America was safe from Communism as a result.

Brown never had time to clear his name. He died of a heart attack at the age of 53 on May 16, 1957.

However, let’s go back to a more pleasant time. Here’s a Radio Life feature story on Brown from its April 1, 1945 edition. Brown had been a regular on Fred Allen’s radio show in New York—uncredited—and was one of the original denizens of Allen’s Alley as the Brooklynesque John Doe; he used a similar voice in the MGM cartoon Symphony in Slang some years later. Then he headed West, where he remained until his death.

Let Us Be Grave
By Betty Mills
THERE'S A FELLOW in radio who's making quite a name for himself by "ac-cent-chu-ating the negative and eliminating the positive." He says you've "got to spread gloom up to the maximum"—and means it. He has somber blue eyes, wears drab blacks, and thinks "Arsenic and Old Lace" with its two bloodthirsty spinsters was "awfully gay."
Weekly, radio's gloomiest man spreads his Sabbath "cheer" to millions—and they love him. "Digger," the morbid mortician of Blue's "Life of Riley," is motivated by other people's misfortunes. Usually they're last ones. His favorite greeting is, "Don't bother to get up. Just lie there. You look so fine—very natural."—or—"Why walk around half dead, when I can bury you for $40."
The story behind "Digger" began a good many years ago when actor John Brown was a lad of seventeen. John, newly-arrived from Australia, wanted a job. A New York agency sent him to an unknown address and before he knew it, he had been hired as secretary. The wool had been pulled over his eyes because not only did he sign a contract binding him to the same salary for a year, but he had become confidential secretary to the town's leading undertaker. And the sight of a dead body made him sick!
Poor John stuck it out for the year. Every day he'd comfort himself by thinking that some day he'd get even. He didn't know how, but he would! In 1944 his chance for revenge came. Into the script of "Riley" had been written a small part for an undertaker. Ah, thought John, this will be fun. The payoff came when Brown's satirization was an overnight success. Thousands of fan letters poured in asking who was the mortician. And "Digger" was born, not only becoming one of John's most popular characterizations but his favorite!
Goes Dramatic, Too!

English-born John got his start in radio by satirizing. He recently told Radio Life over the luncheon table that all of his characters are done with tongue in cheek. He likes to use himself as model, such as the laughable "Father Foster" on "Date With Judy." But he doesn't confine all of his radio acting to comedy. Some of the twenty -five shows a meek he used to do in New York were deadly serious. Such as the one on which he was heard as the villain who died, the policeman who killed him, and the judge who heard the policeman's story—all in fifteen minutes.
His first air job was with Eddie Cantor. An excited John appeared at the rehearsal. He was handed his script. It said: Brown—Cackle like a chicken. "Me?" said John, pointing to the spot. "Uh huh," they nodded. "Huh uh," answered John, putting on his hat and leaving.
But the very next week he won an audition for Fred Allen and was signed to a ten-year contract. It was then Charlie Cantor, Harry Von Zell, and he were known as the "Sad Macks"—probably not too distantly related to Sad Sack.
To California
When Fred Allen left the airlanes, Brown joined Jack Benny's group and in 1943 came to California. Today he does innumerable shows, including "Duffy's Tavern," "The Saint," the Charlotte Greenwood, Jack Carson and Bob Burns programs.
The Fred Allen influence still plays a prominent part in his life, for his old cronies. Charlie Cantor and Harry von Zell, live several houses down from John on a street they've dubbed "Allen's Alley."
Away from the mike, Mr. Brown's prime interest is his family, wife June, nine-year-old son, Jarod, and four-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Julie. John smilingly admits he chose his son's unusual name so that their initials would coincide and the boy could use his luggage. "Besides," he added, "I wanted him to have a monicker nobody could pin a shortcut to." Asked if his son did have a nickname, he raised his eyes heavenward and grumbled, "Yep, Jerry."
Precocious Jarod has already exhibited acting tendencies. "He'll 'ham' at the drop of a hat," grinned John. "In fact a year ago he hounded me day and night to get him a job on radio. I tried to explain that the actors were older. But one day he saw pictures of several children in the RATE magazine and without telling me, sat down and wrote a letter to CBS:
"Dear CBS:
"I am Jarod Brown. I am seven years old. I want a job as an actor."
"CBS was very kind and wrote him a long letter in return, promising to keep his application on file. It pacified him—but it didn't give him a job."
Apparently Jarod keeps John on his toes trying to guess what his offspring is going to do next. John's favorite story concerns the time he took Jarod out to MGM with him to see Norman Corwin. When Jarod thought his father was looking the other way, he cornered Corwin. "Mr. Corwin," he whispered out of the side of his mouth, "I've got a couple of screen plays here I wrote and if you'd be interested—"
"What a kid!" exclaimed John. "He's my best critic—and darn it he's usually right. My wife says we're quite a pair." "Speaking of my wife, I'd better not forget it's our wedding anniversary. Ah, anniversaries," he mocked in Digger's somber tones, "A faded orange blossom pressed in the book of memory. I adore anniversaries, they're so gay!"

Jared Brown didn’t go into radio, from what I can tell, but co-mounted a musical revue as “a precocious teenager” at Harout’s Ivar Theatre at the same time his father’s name was being smeared. The younger Brown became a professor of theatre at Western Illinois University and wrote a number of books, including a biography of Zero Mostel, an actor who triumphed over McCarthyism. It’s a shame John Brown never got the same chance.

Tex's Trip to Mars

The Cat That Hated People decided to go to the moon. Johnny Johnsen’s background drawings accommodated him.



There must have been a joke about flying to Palm Springs around the time this cartoon was made. This background was panned left to right in the cartoon.



Tex Avery and Heck Allen came up with a plot where the cat, who’s abused by everyone and everything on Earth, goes to moon, where he’s abused by everyone and everything. The cat decides to go back to Earth because if he’s going to be abused, he’d rather be abused in AMERICA! (MGM must have loved a chance to show how patriotic they were).

Walt Clinton and Grant Simmons were in Avery’s unit, along with Louie Schmitt and Bill Shull. Avery’s unit was kind of in a gradual transition when this cartoon was made (it was released in 1947) for reasons I’ve never heard about.

Foxy Blast

Here’s an explosion effect from Paul Terry’s Sour Grapes (1950), starring Dingbat. A fox plants some dynamite and....



Yeah, that’s the end gag. The fox sitting there.

The scene’s undercut a bit by Phil Scheib’s approach to scoring. The explosion happens while his saxophones are still puffing away. Someone like Carl Stalling or Scott Bradley would have built to a climax and then let the animation take it from there. (To be fair, Scheib has a great version of “Man on the Flying Trapeze” in the next gag).

Mannie Davis’ direction credit was chopped from TV prints of the cartoon.

Jack Benny Vs Fred Allen, June 1, 1947

Jack Benny and Fred Allen managed to carry on their phoney radio feud from late 1936 past the time Allen’s show left the air in 1949. The two of them exchanged visits on each other’s shows, usually when Benny was in New York City as Allen lived there.

There’s plenty of old-time radio available on the internet for your free listening pleasure, but not all the Allen shows featuring Benny are in circulation. One of them was broadcast June 1, 1947. However, scripts for the Allen shows are in the Boston Public Library. Hurray to historian Kathy Fuller Seeley, who headed to the aforementioned educational edifice and managed to get a copy for that particular show. Actually, she’s missing several pages due to a photographic error but all the pages involving Jack’s dialogue are intact.

The first half of Allen’s show in those days involved an introduction by announcer Kenny Delmar, dialogue between Allen and Portland Hoffa, followed by the Allen’s Alley segment, a song by the DeMarco Sisters, then the middle commercial. The second half consisted of Fred and Portland setting up a sketch with the guest star, then the sketch, a final commercial and Allen’s farewell (if he wasn’t cut off by the NBC staff announcer).

What you see below is the transcribed script for the second half of the show; the page numbers are indicated. Allen’s regular cast was involved and is noted in the script as to which characters they played. They were Delmar, Minerva Pious and Peter Donald. The other regular, Parker Fennelly, didn’t generally take on any other parts except the dour New Englander, Titus Moody, in the Allen’s Alley portion of the show.

Just a few notes in case there are readers unfamiliar with the background:

● Jack Eigen had a radio all-night show where he interviewed celebrities at a club in New York. The bulk of his career was in Chicago.
● The major radio networks required programmes to be broadcast live, with a second live version several hours later to accommodate the west coast time zone (recording off the line was permitted by local stations in certain exceptional circumstances). Bing Crosby was the first person to break the rule, convincing ABC in fall 1946 to allow him to pre-record his show on transcription discs. This created a huge controversy in the industry as well as Crosby/wax jokes.
● Bernarr MacFadden (1868-1955) was a health, bodybuilding and diet expert, one of the first.
● “Small boy”? New one on me.

● There was a Cecil Theatre in Mason City. It opened June 3, 1912 with a seating of 859. It was later named the Park 70. It ended its days run down and boarded up before collapsing in 1988.
● Kenny Delmar’s Russian accent is a takeoff on actor/director Gregory Ratoff, who appeared on radio periodically.
● The name of “Mr. Weaver” was borrowed from Pat Weaver (1908-2002), who was president of NBC in the 1950s. He produced Allen’s radio show some years earlier as the representative of ad agency Young & Rubicam.
● A number of comedy/variety radio shows in the ‘40s—whether by network edict, I don’t know—reserved time before the final commercial for a public service announcement.

-13-
ALLEN: That was just a blueprint of My Adobe Hacienda played by Maestro Al Goodman and 25 members who were honorary pallbearers at Seabiscuit’s funeral. And now – Yes, Portland.
PORT: Do you mind if I go home early tonight?
ALLEN: No.
PORT: The antique man is bringing Mama a new coffee table.
ALLEN: What happened to your Mother’s old coffee table?
PORT: Termites got in it.
ALLEN: No kidding.
PORT: The termites ate the coffee table down to a demi-tasse table.
ALLEN: We had an end-table at home. Termites got into the end-table. And now we have an end-table no end.
PORT: An end table with no end is a what-not.
ALLEN: I know. I went out yesterday to look around the antique shops and I saw the oldest antique.
PORT: Where?
ALLEN: Well, yesterday afternoon I left home and started up Third Avenue.
(MUSIC: BRIDGE . . . ORCHESTRA)
ALLEN: I stopped to read a sign in a window of an empty store. The sign said – Jack Eigen slept here. Suddenly, the door of a thrift shop next door opened –
(DOOR OPENS)
A: And I heard the saleslady say –
MIN: (OLD LADY) I’m sorry mister. We won’t have those high button shoes until next week.
JACK: Save me two pairs and a button hook.
ALLEN: Jack Benny!
(APPLAUSE)
-14-A
ALLEN: Jack what are you doing in a thrift shop?
JACK: I have the darndest time getting shoes.
ALLEN: You get your shoes in a thrift shop?
JACK: I like those high-buttoned shows – nobody else carried them. I get the vici-kid with the bulldog toes.
ALLEN: oh.
JACK: They were all out today. They only had those Congress shoes with the elastic in the side. They looked too dressy.
ALLEN: Gosh, Jack. You look wonderful.
-15-
JACK: And, Fred, you look wonderful, too.
ALLEN: Those rumors. People have been saying you’re a shriveled up, infirm, doddering old man.
JACK: And people have been saying you’re a flabby, wrinkled, baggy-eyed old sour puss. They told me you were wearing a veil.
ALLEN: People have been saying that’s what we are? Ha! Ha!
JACK: Yes. Ha! Ha! Say, Fred –
ALLEN: Yes, Jack?
JACK: We are, aren’t we?
ALLEN: Jack. I’ve never seen you looking better.
JACK: Thanks, Fred.
ALLEN: That beautiful wavy hair –
JACK: Well - -
ALLEN: Those sparkling white teeth –
JACK: Gee - -
ALLEN: And those long eye-lashes –
JACK: uh-huh. What about my nose?
ALLEN: Your nose?
JACK: Yes. At least that’s mine.
ALLEN: Jack, all I hope is that when I’m your age I look as good as you do.
JACK: Wait a minute, Fred. Did you say when you’re my age?
ALLEN: Yes.
JACK: You had a birthday yesterday, didn’t you?
ALLEN: That’s right.
JACK: Well, I heard that if all the candles on your birthday cake were melted down, there’d be enough wax to record Bing Crosby’s program for all of next season, and enough left over to wax the floor at Roseland.
-16-
ALLEN: I heard last year when they lit the candles on your cake two guests who got near the cake were barbecued.
JACK: Now wait a minute, Allen, if you want –
ALLEN: Jack, Jack, what are we fighting for? We’re old friends.
JACK: You’re right, Fred.
ALLEN: Gosh, I wouldn’t know you from Barnarr MacFadden. How do you keep yourself in such wonderful condition?
JACK: It’s the life I’ve been leading.
ALLEN: Oh.
JACK: I get up every morning at seven, pry my nostrils open, take a deep breath and I’m ready for breakfast.
ALLEN: What do you have for breakfast?
JACK: A glass of orange juice and a small boy long loaf of French bread.
ALLEN: A small boy? A long loaf?
JACK: Yes. I lean on the small boy French bread while I drink the orange juice.
ALLEN: Oh. After breakfast –
JACK: I’m off to the golf course.
ALLEN: You play golf?
-17-

JACK: If I happen to find a ball, yes. Otherwise I caddy.
ALLEN: After a hard day of retrieving on the links you must be ready for dinner.
JACK: Yes. For dinner I have one jumbo raisin and a heaping bowl of spinach.
ALLEN: One raisin and spinach. That must give you plenty of iron.
JACK: You said it. I don’t know what they do in Rio on a rainy night, but at my house I sit around and get rusty.
ALLEN: You’re certainly double crossing old Father Time. You haven’t a wrinkle in your face.
JACK: Confidentially, Fred, I wouldn’t want to get this around but I’ve been having a little plastic surgery done.
ALLEN: Plastic surgery?
JACK: Yes. Every week or so I have this plastic surgeon take up the slack skin on my face and tie it in a knot at the back of my neck.
ALLEN: The back of your neck? Doesn’t it bother you?
JACK: No. The only thing is, I have to wear a size 27 collar.
ALLEN: I noticed that your Adam’s Apple was pulled around your left ear. But with it all, Jack, you still look the same as the first day we met.
JACK: Gosh, that was a long time ago.
ALLEN: It sure was. The first time we met – remember . . . . .
(“MEMORIES” . . . . (SNEAKS IN) . . . (VIOLINS)
ALLEN: I was in vaudeville – a star. I was headlining at the Cecil Theatre in Mason City, Iowa. After the first show I was sitting in my dressing room. I heard an argument in the hall. I opened the door.
(DOOR OPENS)
-18-
PETE: I’m Krakauer, the manager of this theatre. Your act is putrid. You’re canned.
JACK: But everything went wrong. When I came on the orchestra forgot to play Pony Boy. At the finish when I play Glow Worm my violin is supposed to light up. The electrician forgot to plug it in.
PETE: Even if you lit up you couldn’t save your act. Start packing!
JACK: But, Mr. Krakauer.
PETE: You’re through! Get out!
(DOOR SLAMS)
JACK: I wish I was dead.
ALLEN: What’s the matter, Son?
JACK: Say aren’t you Fred Allen, the big star – The head-liner?
ALLEN: Yes. Stop trembling, lad. Aren’t you the opening act?
JACK: Yes. I’m Gypsy Jack and his vagabond violin.
ALLEN: Gypsy Jack.
JACK: This is my first date in vaudeville. The manager just canned me. I haven’t any money. How will I get home?
ALLEN: Where do you live?
JACK: In Waukegan.
ALLEN: What is the fare to Waukegan?
JACK: Thirty dollars.
-19-
ALLEN: Here is thirty dollars, Gypsy Jack. Go back to Waukegan.
(“MEMORIES” . . (FADES) . . . VIOLINS)
ALLEN: Gosh, Jack, when I saw you leaving the theatre that day in your gypsy suit with the long silk stockings and your satin pants little did I think I would ever see you again. What happened?
JACK: When I finally got home to Waukegan, I went back to pressing pants in my Uncle Tyler’s tailor shop.
ALLEN: Mason City had left no scars?
JACK: No. But show business was still in my blood. At heart I was still Gypsy Jack, and his vagabond violin.
ALLEN: I see.
JACK: One day, I was pressing a traveling salesman’s pants, when my iron ran into a lump in one of the pockets. The lump turned out to be a ticket to Hollywood.
ALLEN: Hollywood! That was the second time we met. Remember.
(“MEMORIES” . . . (FADES) . . VIOLINS)
ALLEN: Hollywood. . It was on the 20th Century Fox lot. I was starring in my first picture “Thanks A Million”. I remember that morning I walked on the set.
(WHISTLE)
PETER: (YELLS) Quiet on the Set! Quiet on the set! Mr. Allen is ready.
ALLEN: Where’s the director?
KENNY: (RUSSIAN) Right here, Mr. Allen.
ALLEN: What is my first scene, Gregory?
KENNY: It is the Bowery. You do that big comedy bit with a bum.
ALLEN: Oh, yes. Let’s run it through. Who’s playing the bum?
-20-
KENNY: Central Casting sent us a real bum. Here he is. You with the filthy wind-breaker and the baggy beret. Come here.
JACK: Yes, sir.
ALLEN: Just a minute, Unsanitary One. I seem to know your face. Didn’t we meet in vaudeville? Aren’t you Gypsy Jack?
JACK: Formerly Gypsy Jack, Mr. Allen. Here in Hollywood I’m using the name, Dexter Strongheart.
ALLEN: I hardly knew you with that beard.
JACK: I’m Gabby Hayes stand-in. But this is my big break, Mr. Allen. Gosh, doing a scene with a star like you. It’s like a dream.
KENNY: All right. Let’s gat going with the scene. Here’s the pie, Mr. Allen.
(HANDS FRED LEMON PIE)
ALLEN: Thank you.
JACK: Oh, there’s a pie in the scene.
ALLEN: Yes.
JACK: Do we eat the pie?
ALLEN: Not exactly. I hit you in the face with it.
JACK: Let me understand this. You throw the pie at me?
ALLEN: Yes.
JACK: What do I do?
ALLEN: You do nothing. I throw the pie at you. You get it in the face. Are you ready.
JACK: Just a minute.
ALLEN: What is it?
JACK: You throw the pie, don’t I duck or anything?
ALLEN: No. You just hold your face still and “Whap” you get it.
JACK: “Whap” I get it.
ALLEN: Yes, are you ready.
-21-
JACK: Could I ask one more question?
ALLEN: What is it now?
JACK: What kind of pie is it?
ALLEN: I don’t really know.
JACK: Do you mind if I taste it?
ALLEN: No. Go right ahead.
(JACK PUTS FINGER IN PIE AND TASTES IT)

ALLEN: What flavor is it?
JACK: Lemon Meringue. Oh shoot.
ALLEN: What’s wrong?
JACK: Couldn’t you make it banana cream? I like banana cream better.
ALLEN: It’s too late now. We’re holding up the picture. Get set. I’ll throw the pie.
JACK: Hold it!
ALLEN: Now what?
JACK: What part of my face are you going to hit?
ALLEN: What difference does it make?
JACK: I’d like to get it right. I’m anxious to make good.
ALLEN: I plan to hit you between the eyes. It will be quite funny when the goo runs down your cheeks.
JACK: That will be funny. Ha! Ha!
ALLEN: Good. Well, here we go.
JACK: Wait! Wouldn’t it be funnier if you hit me with a loaf of bread?
ALLEN: A loaf of bread?
JACK: Sliced.
KENNY: Stop! Stop! I am the director! This bum is trying to direct the picture.
JACK: But, sir.
-22-
KENNY: I couldn’t shoot this scene today. The company is dismissed. Put away the pie. Get that bum out of here. He’s fired.
JACK: Gosh, Mr. Allen. I’m fired again.
ALLEN: Look, Dexter. It told you ten years ago in Mason City - -
JACK: You’re right, Mr. Allen. I guess I’m just not meant for show business. How will I get home?
ALLEN: Do you still live in Waukegan?
JACK: Yes, Mr. Allen. It’s thirty dollars by bus.
ALLEN: Okay. Here is thirty dollars, Dexter Strongheart, go back to Waukegan.
(“MEMORIES” . . . (SNEAK IN) . . STRINGS)
ALLEN: I’ll never forget, Jack, before they threw you out of the studio I gave you the lemon meringue pie.
JACK: It lasted me all the way to Green Bay.
ALLEN: What happened when you got back to Waukegan this time?
JACK: I went back to work in my Uncle Tyler’s tailor shop. But show business was still in my blood.
ALLEN: You were unhappy at your ironing board, eh?
JACK: I was desperate to getaway. Whenever I got a pair of pants to press, the first thing I did was feel for lumps. And then one day - -
ALLEN: Another lump?
JACK: A big one.
ALLEN: A railroad ticket?
JACK: This time it was money. I could go where I wanted. I went to New York.
ALLEN: New York. That was the third time we met. Remember?
(“MEMORIES” . .. (FADES) . . VIOLINS)
-23-
ALLEN: New York. That’s where you got your start in radio.
JACK: Thanks to you, Fred.
ALLEN: Oh, it was nothing. I remember, that day I got the call from a man named Weaver. A big-shot with the American Tobacco Company. I entered Mr. Weaver’s office.
(DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES)
PETE: Gad! Fred Allen! We’ve been waiting all afternoon.
ALLEN: What’s on your mind, Mr. Weaver.
PETE: We’ve got a big radio program for Lucky Strike Cigarettes – We want you to be the star.
ALLEN: I’m sorry, Mr. Weaver. I’ve just signed with Tender Leaf Tea and Shefford Cheese.
PETE: Well, that does it. Without you Allen we might as well pull Lucky Strikes off the market. We’ll close the plantations, and send old F.E. back to Lexington, Kentucky.
ALLEN: I’m sorry, Mr. Weaver.
PETE: Gad what a program this would have been. We had this singing quintette.
ALLEN: A quintette?
PETE: Yeah. Show him, boys.
CAST: Hmmmmmmmmmmm.
ALLEN: Wait! That hairless soprano on the end – aren’t you Dexter Strongheart?
JACK: Yes, Mr. Allen. (WHISPERS) But for radio my name is Jack Benny.
-24-
ALLEN: Jack, you in a quintette?
JACK: Before Mary Livingston would sign up for the show she made them find a job for me.
ALLEN: Oh, a tie-in deal!
JACK: Please, Mr. Allen, take over the program, it’s my last chance.
ALLEN: Jack, that gives me an idea. Mr. Weaver, the star of the Lucky Strike show – does he have to be funny?
PETE: No. We’ve got Rochester, Dennis Day, Phil Harris – plenty of comedians.
ALLEN: I see?
PETE: All we need is a slob the others can bounce jokes off of.
ALLEN: Then here’s your man – Jack Benny!
PETE: Okay, Benny – If Mr. Allen says so, you’re hired!
JACK: Gee, thank you, Fred.
(“MEMORIES” . . . SNEAK IN . . ORCHESTRA)
ALLEN: So Jack that’s how you got into radio.
JACK: Yes, Fred, if it wasn’t for you who know what I’d be today.
FRED: Oh, it’s nothing, Jack.
JACK: Well, Fred, it’s been swell talking over old times.
ALLEN: It sure has, Jack. I haven’t seen you since that day in Weaver’s office. Tell me, what are you doing now?
JACK: My program finished last Sunday. Right now I’m doing nothing.
FRED: You’re out of work again, eh?
JACK: Yes, Fred.
ALLEN: What are you going to do?
JACK: I guess I’ll go back to Waukegan. But, Fred.
-24-A-
ALLEN: You don’t have to ask me, Jack. Here’s the thirty dollars.
JACK: But, Fred - -
ALLEN: And this time stay in Waukegan!
(“DOWN IN MAC CONNACHY SQUARE” . . . (FADE) . . ORCHESTRA)
(APPLAUSE)
-25-
ALLEN: Ladies and Gentlemen, during the last half hour more than 120 people in the United States were injured in automobile accidents. Accidents are increasing at an alarming rate. This last year 33,500 American drivers and pedestrians died as a result of carelessness and violation of the laws. Whether driving a car of crossing the street, be alert - - be careful. And remember that the life you save may be your own.
Before we remind you to remember Tender Leaf Tea and Shefford Cheese on your shopping days, I want to thank the Neanderthal Man, Jack Benny, for sneaking out of the Roxy to join us tonight. Next week, our guest will be Rochester. Thank you. And good night!
(APPLAUSE)
(THEME: TO FINISH . . . ORCHESTRA)
?-sk
5/31/47PM

The Duck Man Speaketh

Walt Disney’s priorities in the 1940s and ‘50s may have been feature-length cartoons and a theme park, but he still had a contract with RKO to put animated shorts on the big screen. And he had three units doing it, led by Charles Nichols, Jack Hannah and Jack Kinney. In the ‘60s, Nichols moved on to Hanna-Barbera, Kinney opened his own studio and ground out Popeye cartoons for TV and Hannah got a job directing for Walter Lantz.

Kinney seems to get all the accolades of today’s animation fans, mainly because his shorts are a little more rough-and-tumble. In other words, they’re not like Disney shorts. Nichols gets little respect. Hannah falls in between, though the nicest comments you may read about him are from fans parroting each other about his work for Lantz. If you hear about his Disney work, generally it involves directing Humphrey the Bear in In the Bag (1956). Hannah later went into teaching. It was then he was profiled by the Long Beach Press-Telegram on July 17, 1975. When I transcribed this story for the GAC website, a poor scan of Hannah from the paper accompanied the post. I don’t even have that now; what you see above is a cropped picture from the D23 site.

End of an era? He hopes not
By LINDA ZINK
Staff Writer
Once upon a time in what was then considered a brave new world of writers and artists and technicians, Jack Hannah was known jokingly around the Disney Studio as a Donald Duck man.
Today Hannah calls himself an endangered species. In 40 years, he explained, the world has changed and the newness has faded and Hannah — now close to 70 — finds himself part of a dying breed.
"We're all getting old now," said Hannah of the men and women who were responsible over the years for transforming Walt Disney's dreams into celluloid reality. "The studios aren't training young people the way they did when we were starting out. Pretty soon there won't be any of us left."
Hannah spoke not wistfully, but realistically of the days when both he and the Disney Studio were young and casts of hundreds worked together to produce one animated feature. But the time that went into those features, Hannah lamented, and the expense...no studio could possibly afford to do that sort of thing today. "It used to be that you could make your money back on a 10-minute Donald Duck cartoon. That doesn't happen any more and gradually the studios have stopped making them."
HANNAH, A ONE-TIME animator and "shorts" director, bemoaned both the end of an era in cartoon-making and the end of a system which encouraged and trained young people in the art of character animation. Once again, he said, cost is the culprit. Yet as appreciative as he is of financial realities he fears the worst for the future of animation.
"There used to be plenty of opportunity for a young person to learn. When I started out there were so many people involved that there were ways to train an apprentice.
"But now if you don't know how to do it you're not going to learn. The studios just don't have the money any more to provide training for newcomers and there are no schools of art in this country that offer programs in character animation."
So committed is Hannah to preserving at least part of that magical world he once help to create, he has come out of semi-retirement to head a program to train young people in the techniques of character animation.
The four-year bachelor's degree curriculum will be offered beginning this fall at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. The program is funded by the Disney Foundation and "old hands" from the Disney Studio will play an integral role in the training process.
"THE IDEA," Hannah explained, "is to teach the art of character animation. This means more than just drawing sketches — it means knowing every phase of the animation process.
"At the same time we want to make sure our students have a well-rounded background in the arts. This isn't just a prep school for the Disney Studio. When a student graduates from the program we want him to be able to go into any area, not just character animation."
As the program is now conceived, students will spend the first two years mastering the basics of animation, including design and life drawing. Mastery of life drawing is especially essential, Hannah explained, "because if you can't draw an actual sketch of a fawn, you aren't going to be able to do character animation of one."
At the same time, students are expected to spend at least one day a week pursuing other liberal arts studies, Hannah said. Curriculum during the final two years — which will be supervised personally by Hannah — will emphasize the film making process.
ENROLLMENT in the program will be limited to 15 students per class. Several young people already have been accepted on the program and numerous others have submitted applications and samples of their work.
"All portfolios submitted will be looked over by an evaluation committee made up of Disney people," Hannah said. "What we're looking for are people with some basic talent and sense of movement...and of course some indication of a sense of comedy and entertainment."

Hannah was born in Arizona on January 5, 1913. His family was in San Diego by 1930 where he and his brother Robert worked as overseers at a parking lot. He was hired at Disney in 1933. Hannah died in Los Angeles on June 11, 1994. Jim Korkis interviewed him a number of times and you can read a composite of their conversations here.