Laughing Gas

Some cartoon gags are so bizarre, you have to admire their genius. Others make so little sense, they leave you wondering what the writer was thinking (Columbia cartoons of the late ‘40s are good at this). Then there are some odd ones that are in between.

One of the latter is in the Flip the Frog cartoon Laughing Gas (1931). Flip is a dentist trying to pull out an aching tooth. Instead, he pulls out a hot water bottle. Then a pair of panties.



Now the gag gets really strange. He pulls out a mass of something that turns out to be a little sedan—which starts dancing and honking.



Flip’s kitty assistant takes it out of the office. She doesn’t flush it down the toilet, like the off-key note in the Van Beuren cartoon Piano Tooners (1932). Too bad, because it would have been a better gag.



The idea of a living little car inside a walrus isn’t funny. It’s just weird.

The only animation credit on the cartoon is Ub Iwerks’.

Elva

Of her, Jimmy Durante said “She put considerable more Inka and not enough Dinka but whattaya gonna do.”

Durante should have known. He co-starred with her on an episode of a TV variety show during her brief rise in show business in 1966, a woman loved by aficionados of campy, bad music.

We’re talking about Mrs. Miller.

Everyone has an aunt or an older next door neighbour who loves to sing at the top of their lungs but is horrendously, and obliviously, tone-deaf. That’s why Mrs. Elva Miller connected with people and rode the charts for a brief period until even her fans got tired of the joke and moved on. Well, temporarily. Mrs. Miller fans like myself are still out there, though I suspect they only want to hear her in occasional, small doses.

It wasn’t just the lack of rhythm and unfamiliarity with the scale that made people appreciate Mrs. Miller. She was just so darn sincere, you couldn’t dislike her.

However, somewhat like the way modern singers are overly assisted by AutoTune, Mrs. Miller’s blatant awfulness was assisted by producers at Capitol Records, or so she said in interviews (depending on the interviewer). Let’s bring you a few of them. Here’s an Associated Press story from May 3, 1966

1 More Time, Mrs. Miller
By MARY CAMPBELL

NEW YORK—(AP)—Listening to records made by a plump gray-haired grandmother who warbles and whistles rock 'n' roll songs, mostly off-key, is the current kick in U. S. pop music.
The singer is Mrs. Elva Miller of Claremont, Cal., 35 miles east of Los Angeles. Her family was against Mrs. Miller's trying to make records but she went ahead.
Her debut long-playing record, "Mrs. Miller's Greatest Hits," was released by Capitol Records April 11 and sold 50,000 copies its first two days out. The LP and two songs taken from it and released as a single, "Downtown" and "A Lover's Concerto," all are on the best-selling charts compiled by Billboard magazine.
Mrs. Miller sings with a vibrato which sounds as if she had once studied voice, which she did. Meanwhile she often changes key and goes flat, reminiscent of the late Florence Foster Jenkins.
She sucks ice cubes while she does, her bird-like whistles, to contract the muscles for a more-controlled pucker.
Ed Sullivan has signed her for an appearance on his TV show May 22.
Disc jockeys apparently love the novelty of "the Miller sound." A station in Denver played the record 24 hours straight.
Through radio stations, Mrs. Miller has been voted honorary mayor of Kalamazoo, Mich., a "good guy" in New York and Memphis and an honorary citizen of Cobb County, Ga.
In Honolulu, arriving to do a radio-sponsored benefit show, Mrs. Miller received one of the wildest welcomes in the state's history. Her record became the biggest seller there since "Meet the Beatles." A Chicago disc jockey said, "It's fun radio all over again."

Bob Thomas of the Associated Press wrote two columns about the Coloratura of Claremont. The first one appeared in papers starting July 12, 1966. He revealed a little bit of show-biz chicanery to make her sound worse than she was. Interestingly, she told UPI’s Stephen E. Rubin in an interview published days before the Thomas column that “I am truly sorry when I don’t come in on the beat,” implying she couldn’t help it. That’s not what she, or someone else, told Thomas.

Hymn Singer a Hit With Rock 'N' Roll
By BOB THOMAS
AP Movie-Television Writer

HOLLYWOOD (AP) — Watch out, Frank Sinatra, here comes Mrs. Miller with her version of "Strangers In The Night."
Capitol Records in rushing a version by Elva Miller onto the market, and the Sinatra hit song may never be the same. But then, the whole record business hasn't been quite the same since Mrs. Miller came on the scene.
Her album, "Mrs. Miller's Greatest Hits," already has sold 150,000 copies, a highly respectable figure. Her style? It has defied description. Suffice to say she sings teen-age record hits in a mature contralto. She also whistles.
Frankly 58, Mrs. Miller has no illusions about her achievement. "I'll go along with it as long as it lasts," she remarked. "It would be foolish at my age to become starry-eyed. If all this comes to an end, I still have my home and my many interests. And I will have had a lot of fun."
IT ALL STARTED because Mrs. Miller, an amateur singer of Claremont, Cal., made regular visits to a Hollywood studio to record songs, mostly of a sacred nature, for her own pleasure. On one occasion, her accompanist, Fred Bock, slipped some rock 'n' roll numbers among her hymns.
"I think you're having fun with Mrs. Miller," she said. But she went along with him. It happened that Capitol had been searching for an operatic voice to render beatle-type hits. Mrs. Miller seemed an ideal choice.
Most of her numbers were recorded in one take, to preserve the ingenuous duality. Some of the errors were deliberate, as in one number when she was instructed to begin singing a half-beat behind the orchestra.
Concerning the sales of her records, Mrs. Miller declared: "I don't understand it, but teenagers seem to be buying them.
As I see it, there are two kinds of teen-agers. There are the sophisticated ones; who dress like Sonny and Cher; they don't buy my album. Then there are the teen-agers who dress neatly; they are the ones who do buy my records."
Mrs. Miller, who had done no real performing since her high school days in Dodge City, Kan., now finds herself in show business.
She has appeared on the TV programs of Ed Sullivan, Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas and Art Linkletter. During the Griffin show she found herself sharing a dressing room with Sally Rand—"a nice person; she lives in Glendora, not far from Claremont."
Recently she made her acting debut, portraying a dance-hall singer in a new TV series, "The Road West." Next month she plays her first night club engagement at Harrah's, Lake Tahoe.
Does she have any qualms about appearing in night clubs?
"Not as long as the stage is separated from the audience," she said. "I like to sing. What people do in the auditorium is their own affair."
Mrs. Miller has now had to acquire a manager, press agent, tax lawyer, accountant, etc. She is also planning to move to nearby Glendale to be closer to the entertainment capital. Her husband, a retired rancher, John Miller, is sympathetic with her career.
"He knows I am mature enough to realize that things like this run their course," explained Mrs. Miller.

Indeed, things did run their course. Very quickly, in fact. But few performers can accept the fact their public has turned against them. A year later, Mrs. Miller insisted she wasn’t unpopular. After all, hadn’t she left audiences at the famed Cocoanut Grove with her performance (it seems they were laughing at her more than with her). No, it was all her record company’s fault. But she never reached the heights she briefly achieved for several months in 1966. This story is from October 9, 1967.

Mrs. Miller Seeking New Singing Image
By BOB THOMAS
RENO, Nev. (AP) — Will Mrs. Miller spoil success by taking vocal lessons to eliminate her tremulous long notes?
Whether she will or she won't, the one-time housewife is determined to fit her padded frame onto a new image. No more the singing a half-note behind the orchestra. No more the fractured melodies. She's going straight.
"It's a gamble," she admits, "but I'm willing to take a chance on a new Mrs. Miller. After all, the people weren't responding to the old Mrs. Miller."
Since she burst open the music world last year with the album "Mrs. Miller's Greatest Hits," she has been a puzzle. How could a 58-year-old matron singing teenage songs in an uncertain contralto manage to sell 660,000 records?
Elva Miller reflected on this:
"Capitol Records created the angle that 'she's so bad that she's good.' Or, it's what you call 'camp.' But still that doesn't explain why so any records were sold. Its true that the album was a gag. But it's also true that I have drawers full of letters from young people saying, 'We think it's wonderful that you are singing our songs.' "
Was Mrs. Miller in on the gag? She claims that she wasn't—not at first.
"I don't sing off key and I don't sing off rhythm," she insisted. "They got me to do so by waiting until I was tired and then making the ecord. Or they would eut the record before I could become familiar with the song. At first I didn't understand what was going on. But later I did, and I resented it. I didn't like to be used."
She made a second album for Capitol, prophetically titled, "Will Success Spoil Mrs. Miller?" Despite sales of 30,000 on that one, the record company put forth a third album, "The Country Soul of Mrs. Miller."
"I could see they were doing nothing for my records in the way of promotion," she remarked, "and I felt this was a signal. So we asked for my release. Without consulting us, Capitol released the news that I was being dropped."
Now she has formed her own company, Vibrate Records, and she will lease future discs to distributers. She is trying out, for an acting role at Paramount and is mulling a nightclub tour with her new image.

Ten years later, the Los Angeles Times caught up with her and she claimed she never needed to sing, and never took her show business career seriously, though in the same breath she claimed it had been mismanaged. Regardless of whether she really felt she was a serious singer or didn’t, you couldn’t dislike Mrs. Miller any more than you could dislike your off-key Aunt Phoebe. She came across as genuine. And there isn’t a lot of that in show business.

Wolf Puts on the Brakes

Mighty Mouse is so mighty, he rips the clothes and fur right off the bad guy wolf in Mother Goose’s Birthday Party. Yes, M.M., that’s what you’re holding in your hand.



The wolf skids to a stop, with the famous Terry Brake Squeal, heard in countless cartoons, in the background. This is one of a few scenes in the cartoon when body parts pop at the camera. Here are some of the poses.



How’s this from pose to pose? The flap in the underwear slowly peals back. The wolf reacts.



Director Connie Rasinski holds that drawing above for five frames to let it register.

Fans of the Terry Splash™ will be disappointed it is not heard in this cartoon, but they will see more of that spikey Jim Tyer animation (including a fight inside a birthday cake) and a great walk cycle of the wolf heading toward the castle.

The Ducksters

“And let remind you again, folks, that you’re listening to ‘Truth or ...’”

Quiz show host Daffy then screams. It looks like he pops from one pose to the next, but there are actually some in-between drawings. The first in-between is animated on two frames, the rest on ones. It takes a quarter of a second.



Mike Maltese’s story in The Ducksters parodies radio quiz shows “Truth or Consequences,” “Take It Or Leave It” and “Dr. IQ” (the “lady in the balcony” line at the end). The cartoon may have been funnier in the radio days when it was released, unless you like to see innocent Porky Pig deliberately abused.

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.