Cool Down, Bimbo

Bimbo’s Initiation is one of the greatest of the early Fleischer Talkartoons and is one of the most entertaining cartoons of all time. To think it was made in 1931.

Here’s one of the many fun sequences. Bimbo’s butt is burning from being spanked by some bicycle-hand contraption. He rides his bike into a pool room and tries to cool down but the water in the pool turns to cement when he dives in.

I love the little flute music that is cued to the movement of the fish in the pool. The synchronisation is perfect. Notice Bimbo’s reflection in the pool when he cycles around the far side of it. And spot the candle and watering can attached to the ceiling for no particular reason.



The door in the background leads to the next scene. One gag tumbles into the next. Just great. It’s a shame cartoons like this were replaced with Pudgy and Disney wanna-be shorts by the end of the decade.

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre – Hollywood's Golden Years

Gene Kelly hosts this hour-long syndicated show from 1961 looking back at the days of silent film. It’s a shame the soundtrack wows as it makes it hard to appreciate Elmer Bernstein’s score. But the historical footage is great to see, and so are the film snippets from “The Great Train Robbery” to “The Jazz Singer.”

Eddie Anderson's Big Role

It should be no secret why Rochester became the second-most popular person on the Jack Benny show, next to Jack himself. Who doesn’t identify with an overworked employee who’s one step ahead of his boss, and someone who likes to have a good time? And having a funny voice didn’t hurt, though Eddie Anderson’s character was far more than just a voice.

Rochester (seen to the right with Phil Harris) was given more and more air time as the radio show evolved from being a straight performance from a stage to one about the (fictional) life of Jack Benny, star of stage, screen and radio. In the “stage show” version, he interrupted the proceedings with a “phone call,” allowing Jack to engage in a comic dialogue with him. In the “life of” version, he would be found puttering around the home, sometimes carrying the first few minutes of the show in a monologue. Regardless of the situation, audiences laughed.

Though he had been on stage and in film B.B. (Before Benny), it was on radio that Anderson made his mark and a very large amount of money as a result. Here’s a great story from the Radio Mirror of January 1940. Anderson would appear in two Benny broadcast-related movies that year—Buck Benny Rides Again (as in radio, he was charged with caring for Carmichael, the Polar Bear) and Love Thy Neighbor. The story in this fan magazine about the Paramount boot black seems odd. For one thing, the man would have had to have been a member of AFRA to have been on the show. And I find it difficult to believe a complete unknown, who wouldn’t have been pulling in a lot of money from his regular job, would turn down $300 for a few hours work on a Sunday.

The two photos accompanied the story.

ROCHESTER VAN JONES RIDES HIGH
By KIRTLEY BASKETTE
IF A black cloud threatens the private and professional prestige of radio's number one playboy, Jack Benny—his name is Eddie Anderson, alias Rochester J. Syracuse, alias Rochester Van Jones, alias just Rochester.
He's small and he's dark and he's not a bit handsome. He's bug-eyed and getting shiny like a tan shoe at the temples. But he's got more steam than a calliope, more bounce than a golf ball.
Already Eddie Anderson has become such a lodestone for laughs on the Benny Jello show that if Jack were the jealous type he'd be pea green with envy by now. On the screen too, Eddie has buttled so bumptiously against the funny bones of the nation that he's being hailed as the greatest colored comic since Bert Williams. Theater owners hang his name right up along side that of his boss Jack in the bright lights. Critics call him a sure fire picture thief. He has more jobs in Hollywood than he can handle. He's the only member of the whole Benny troupe who made the picture of pictures, "Gone With the Wind."
But if Rochester is just beginning to rival Jack Benny in a show business way, on the personal side he left him panting in the shade long ago.
It's the private life of Rochester Van Jones that's handing Jack Benny an inferiority complex. And no wonder. Rochester is stepping out—high, wide, and handsome. Just exactly who's the butler and who's the bon vivant—Jack or Rochester—is strictly a matter of opinion. But here are the lurid facts:
Rochester smokes bigger cigars than Jack. He drives a sportier car and airs a much more splendiferous wardrobe. He pilots a plane, he sojourns at swank desert dude ranches. He canters his own saddle horse on the bon ton bridle paths; he races thoroughbreds under his silks at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park (a luxury Jack Benny gave up long ago.) For a while Rochester even had his own night club in the sophisticated center of Los Angeles' Harlem, Central Avenue. He whips about in silken high hat and tails, far more socially arrivé in his circle than Jack ever was in his. He has his own gentleman's gentleman to keep him in "the glass of fashion and the mold of form." He sports more official badges, civic citations and honors than Jack ever bagged. He plays a snappy game of golf. His wedding this year was one of the gala social events of the Central Avenue cafe society season.
Even Jack Benny scratches his thinning gray thatch in wonder as he surveys the smoke in Rochester's wake and mutters his favorite line, "What's that guy got that I haven't got ?" Last Christmas Jack presented Rochester with a lucky rabbit's foot on a gold chain. Now he wishes he had it back. "Rochester doesn't need it," grins Jack. "I do!"

THE transformation of Eddie Anderson, in and out colored vaudeville hoofer and straight man, into the professionally and personally glorious Rochester Van Jones is mixed up mainly with two frolics of Hollywood fate. One involved a train trip of Jack Benny's gang back to Hollywood from New York; the other certain delusions of Oscar, the Paramount studio bootblack. It happened like this:
Some two and a half years ago, Jack and his ace writers, Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin, who plot all the funny business each week on the Benny show, huddled their harried heads with no more ideas for the show next week in Hollywood than rabbits. They were riding west, somewhere near Chicago. The roadbed was bumpy.
"How can you think on a train anyway?" grumbled Jack. "It's a headache."
"Headaches can be funny," said Bill. "Let's work out a train routine."
"What'll we use for a straightman?" asked Jack. "The conductor?"
"A porter's funnier," offered Bill.
"Boys," cried Jack, "we've got it. Wire Hollywood and get a colored porter for the show. Now let's get a script together."
Maybe you remember the "Albuquerque" program of Jack Benny's a couple of years ago. The gang were supposed to be rattling Westward on the Santa Fe Chief. The gags were screaming; it was one of Jack's funniest shows. A negro porter gave him the business all through it. The porter was Eddie Anderson.
He almost wasn't. Because the colored boy who shined Jack's shoes on the Paramount lot, Oscar the bootblack, was Jack's choice in his Hollywood wire. But Oscar, picture wise, had an agent. The agent demanded $300 for Oscar. Now, Jack's not quite as stingy as he makes out on his program, but that was too steep. Oscar kept on shining shoes and Eddie Anderson was plenty glad to take the break. The show was on Easter Sunday, 1937. When it was over Rochester Van Jones hadn't exactly risen, but he was certainly on the ascent.
He wasn't "Rochester" on that show, just an unnamed porter. But Eddie Anderson got laughs. And like all people who get laughs the first time in radio, he came back. Once as an elevator boy; once as "Pierre," the western waiter in Jack's "Buck Benny" series. Then Jack decided to build a house in Beverly Hills. If you know the Benny show, you know right away that every halfway important act in Jack Benny's personal life is gagged to the limit for the air. The house was too good for Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin to pass up. "What would certainly make you look funny as a householder," mused Bill, "is a butler."
"I resent that," huffed Jack. "Who'll we get?"
Well, to tidy up a story, Eddie Anderson got himself that job too.
Rochester, the eye-rolling eight-ball, not only clicked from the start-he rattled right out loud.
Eddie has shivered through a lot of lean and cold years for this his day in the sun. He peddled firewood on the side streets of San Francisco as a pickaninny. He hoofed for pennies later on as a kid and worked his way through grammar school, until he finally busted in and out of corny negro revues that folded as regularly as Chamberlain's umbrella. He was sick and hungry and footsore a million times before he hit Hollywood.
Even his first few picture parts, such as Lowell Sherman's valet in "What Price Hollywood" and Noah in "The Green Pastures," before he hooked up with Jack Benny, hadn't lifted Eddie out of the red. It was strictly from hunger with Eddie Anderson until he met up with Rochester Van Jones. Then suddenly it was plush. Eddie sort of figured he had a spree coming. So the first thing Rochester Van Jones did was open a night club. Eddie Anderson thought he knew the night club business inside and out. When he first hit Hollywood he had snagged a semi-steady meal ticket for a year or so in Frank Sebastian's Cotton Club, heaven for Hollywood's colored entertainers. Eddie joined the Sons of Syncopation and did riffs and scats and jives and things before they ever caught on to become famous. Peckin' started at the Cotton Club, and if you believe Eddie Anderson, truckin' did too.
Anyway, when he caught on with Jack, Eddie put a little cash with a lot of credit and became mine genial host of Central Avenue in a big way. He bought himself a high, shiny silk hat, white tie and tails. He put them on and hustled over to the broadcast.
The Benny gang almost swooned when they saw Rochester buttling so magnificently in soup and fish. But when the show was over, they all took a run down for a quick look. It was a good thing they did. The club didn't last long. Eddie Anderson had a hot high-brown spot, but his hospitality obscured his business judgment. His darktown friends put their drinks on the cuff-Eddie's cuff. Pretty soon the cash register tinkled with a hollow sound. The club folded and Eddie was broke. But he still had (1) his job with Jack Benny and (2) his high hat and tails. He kept the job-but he changed the ensemble.
Every turn in Eddie's private projects, social or sporting, has involved a little private fashion premiere at the Jello broadcast. When Eddie shows up with a new outfit, the Benny gang know some new blossom of Eddie's personality is bursting the bud. Eddie believes clothes make the man. He hired himself a colored valet the day his option was taken up, to lay out his sunburst creations, checks, zig-zags and stripes which comprise the wardrobe of the sartorially perfect Central Avenue boulevardier. When it comes to the well-turned-out man, Eddie refuses to miss a trick, and he is really stepping high.
NOR does anything substantial loom in the offing to slow him down. Not even marriage. A few months ago Eddie decided that a man of his position, having reached the mature age of thirty-five, should take unto himself a wife. His choice was Mamie Wiggins, a comely, dusky worker in the County Clerk's office. Their wedding was a big event. The Benny show troupe were on hand, of course.
"Madame Queen"—that's what Eddie calls his new wife—has no intention of cramping Eddie's splendiferous style as a public figure. In fact, right after their wedding, she accompanied Eddie as he achieved the greatest triumphs of his career—in Waukegan, Illinois, where Jack Benny took him for the world premiere of "Man About Town".

In Waukegan, "Mr. and Mrs. Rochester" stayed at the best hotel, were feted at the country club, and mobbed for autographs as enthusiastically as any movie star could wish. State and town potentates called on Eddie and bestowed honors. In no time at all Eddie had a flock of official badges-city collector, deputy sheriff, special investigator, mayor's assistant and four or five more. He pinned them all on his suspenders and strutted into Jack Benny's hotel room. Jack exploded.
"Say," he yelped, "whose home town is this anyway? Mine or Rochester's?"
Right now Eddie Anderson is trying to work a little black magic and cut down his outgo to squeeze under his income-the while maintaining his scorching pace as Rochester Van Jones, man about Hollywood. The reason is that Eddie and the missus crave to be solid citizens and build themselves a big house. They want one like the place Phil Harris has out in the Valley.
Eddie's chances of getting that big house, too, aren't a bit bad. Because while he still keeps up his private spend-for-prosperity campaign, his checks are ballooning every week. He just finished a fat part as Uncle Peter in "Gone With the Wind". and Bill Morrow was writing more Rochester than ever into Jack Benny's next picture, "Buck Benny Rides Again."
The other day Jack looked over the advance script. After a few pages, he rolled his cigar thoughtfully and said. "I've got a suggestion."
"What is it?" asked Bill Morrow.
"Let's change the title." said Jack.
"Let's make it 'Rochester Rides again'. Who's this guy Benny, anyway?"

Terry at 25

1940 was a pretty good year for Paul Terry. He hired George S. White away from Educational Pictures to be his advertising and publicity director (and assistant story editor). Theatre contracts passed the 10,000 figure, an 11-year high. He announced more colour cartoons than ever—13 of 26 releases, and plans for a two-reel cartoon in colour, likely inspired by the Fleischer studios having done the same thing. He signed a merchandising deal with Ideal Toys. And he celebrated 25 years in the animation business.

Terry set White to work and the resulting ink was something that would have made publicity-conscious Walt Disney proud. Trade publications and newspapers soon started telling how poor Paul tried to sell his first film and was told the film would be more valuable without his drawings on it. For whatever reason, the Motion Picture Herald skipped that little tale as it told the Terry Story in its April 13, 1940 edition. Here it is, with the drawing accompanying it.



Paul Terry Recalls 25 Years Of Animated Cartooning
TWENTY-FIVE years ago this month Paul Terry, owner and guiding genius of the Terry-Toon studios in New Rochelle, N. Y., finished and sold his first animated motion picture cartoon. It was "Little Herman," a 400-foot pen and ink imitation of a performance of Hermann the Great, and it was sold, with the benefit of a little showmanship involving the packing of the projection room with children, to the old Thannhauser company for $1.35 a foot.
The picture, first of a long series of what are not known as Terry-Toons, was the result of three months of back-breaking labor in a little room on 42nd Street in New York, where the Cameo theatre now stands. It was made without benefit of the celluloid and fixed background method on which Mr. Terry now holds patents.
Inspired by McCay's Work
Reminiscing this week on a quarter century of work in the medium in which he and others have since become famous, Mr. Terry said he owed the inspiration for that first cartoon to Winsor McCay, famous newspaper cartoonist of the period. Mr. Terry had been in New York four years, having come from San Francisco search of new fields to conquer, when he attended an artists' dinner at which Mr. McCay screened "Gertie the Dinosaur," an incomplete animated cartoon on which he had been working for some time.
The cartoon and Mr. McCay's enthusiasm for the medium for which he predicted an important future intrigued Mr. Terry and he forthwith sank most of his slender resources in equipment for the 42nd Street workshop.
With the completed "Little Herman" under his arm, Mr. Terry took a train for New Rochelle to try out his salesmanship on the Thannhauser officials. He met a cool reception, but he argued and pleaded until it was agreed that the cartoon would be screened later in the day.
Mr. Terry used the interval to good advantage. When the time came for the screening he had the projection room packed with children from the streets of New Rochelle. As "Little Herman" stepped out on the screen, bowed, tipped his hat and began to take out of the hat everything from rabbits to elephants, the audience roared. "Little Herman" went into the Thannhauser magazine reel.
All One Man Labor
During the following year he contributed several more subjects to the magazine reel. It was all one-man work. No one had thought in terms of the organization by which the present cartoons are turned out. Before starting his second picture, however, Mr. Terry determined to find a simpler method of production.
McCay had started by drawing a complete new picture for each frame. Background as well as animated figures had to be redrawn for each frame.
Mr. Terry thought of trying celluloid and he had some sheets made up. These were better to work on and their complete transparency enabled him to make one drawing of a background on opaque paper and then repeat only the moving figures on the celluloids. With this improved method his second picture, "Farmer Alfalfa," was less back-breaking labor.
Made Aesop's Fables Series
After the Thannhauser days Mr. Terry worked through several different associations. He served during the World War, doing animation of medical subjects for the Army Medical Corps and then returned to making comedy cartoons. Howard Estabrook suggested to him the use of Aesop's Fables for a series of cartoons and the suggestion resulted in a series which continued for nine years, until the coming of sound.
Aesop's Fables started with the staff of 19 men who had been engaged in producing the previous comedies.
At present a staff of 100 men are engaged in making the Terry-Toons for Twentieth Century-Fox release. They are shown in more than 10,000 theatres in the United States and Canada.

A Nose For Golf

The truant officer dog in Tex Avery’s The Screwy Truant acts like a human through most of the cartoon—except when Tex needs to fit in an extended gag sequence. The dog suddenly behaves like a bloodhound, trying to sniff out Screwy, only to have our hero grab his nose right off his snout.

Little explanation needs to be given about what happens next; the drawings tell the story. We get a couple of golf gags, an anvil makes one of several appearances in the cartoon and the dog’s injured nose turns into a dog itself, yelping in pain, hiding under the truant officer’s snout fur and then emerging to bark like a dog.



Tex rolls seamlessly on to the next gag.

Bob Abrams, Preston Blair and Ed Love are the animators.

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.