Son of a...

No, Porky Pig saying “Son of a (you know what)” didn’t appear in a theatrical cartoon. It was in a gag reel for studio eyes only.

You no doubt have seen at least part of the 54-second famous cartoon somewhere. Porky bangs his thumb. There are several “takes” for the cartoon with Mel Blanc’s Porky saying “Son of a bih-bih, son of a bih-bih, son of a bih-bih-gun” a couple of times.



Finally, he turns to the audience and says the “b” word.



I've read conflicting reports about which unit animated this.

Also Appearing During the Golden Age of Radio

When you think of radio in the 1940s, you think of NBC, CBS, ABC, Mutual and all the big network shows. But what about stations that weren’t on a network?

Little local stations used 78s, syndicated programmes that came on transcription discs, local singers, musicians and such. But if you were in a big city, how could you compete with Jack Benny, Lux Radio Theatre and Superman on the other stations?

You used your ingenuity.

That’s what WNEW had to do. And it was successful. At one time, it was the highest-billing independent station in North America.

Radio columnist John Crosby lambasted many a network show during that venerated Golden Age of Radio as being trite, unoriginal, ridiculous, hokey or insulting to one’s intelligence. He despised the bureaucracy of censors, sponsor approval and network executives with their little bailiwicks. So did WNEW. Is it any wonder Crosby greeted the independent station with his approval, despite some rather unorthodox management methods (“unorthodox” was also something positive in Crosby’s view).

Here’s his column that was published on March 8, 1949. I like the ideas of parodies on network programmes. I don’t think I’d be crazy about a programme director calling me in the middle of the night at home for her own amusement.

RADIO IN REVIEW
By John Crosby
INDEPENDENT INDEPENDENCE
WNEW, the New York independent at 1130 on your dial, is the Peck's Bad Boy of radio. The procedure over there is by network standards outrageously amateurish and at the same time strikingly successful making it even more exasperating to its competitors. It has an impish disregard for all the competition, especially the big stations.
In the early '30s, NBC had bought exclusive rights to a big fight in the Madison Square Garden Bowl at Long Island city. WNEW blithely ignored the network contract, sent an announcer to the roof of the nearest apartment building overlooking the bowl, and broadcast the fight from there sponsored by a shoe company. NBC almost blew a gasket, but there wasn't much it could do about it.
Bernice Judis, station manager and vice-president of the station, loves to needle the big networks, has a phobia against putting anything on WNEW that remotely resembles a network show, and is, in a rather curious way, one of the severest critics of what might be referred to as big radio.
Now and then WNEW, just for the hell of it, likes to satirize its great big colleagues. Several years ago, for example, WNEW broadcast a one-minute soap opera from 3:14 to 3:15 complete with cliff-hanging broken romances, everything.
When the network stations ran hogwild over the husband and wife breakfast programs, WNEW slyly ran a program called "Cocktails and Cookies with Jack and Jill," featuring the ad lib conversation oi a couple of five-year-olds, which wasn't any less intelligent than that of some of their elders on the breakfast programs. More recently the station poked fun at giveaway programs on a program in which the listeners gave things to the station.

Miss Judis is outspoken in her criticism of big radio, which, she feels, suffers equally from hardening of the arteries and red tape. Some years ago a network executive, after watching a WNEW engineer trying to repair one of the station's ancient microphones, sent her a wire which read: "Understand you have rare old microphones. Would like to purchase them for museum of radio antiquities." She fired a wire right back: "Will give you our antique equipment provided you display it next to your antique programs."
WNEW's operation is, to put it mildly, as flexible as possible. Ideas are batted around at a daily coffee-and-talk conferences with promotion manager and station her salesmen, program director, press agent and, once Miss Judis approves. are put into effect with the speed of light.
All-night operation, which has turned out to be extremely lucrative, was simply an idea that shot through her mind at one of these conferences, and was put into effect that night. A couple of days later one of the owners of the station called up. "I don't mind a bit," he said apologetically, "But why didn't someone tell me we were operating 24 hours a day?"
Make Believe Ballroom, perhaps the most successful program WNEW has, is a three-and-a-half-hour disk jockey show run by Martin Block. WNEW's contribution was simply the pretense that there were live bands playing in a fabulous array of ballrooms. So insidious is this idea put across that thousands of listeners believe Martin Block actually is in a Crystal Studio with Benny Goodman right in front of him. Dozens of other independents across the country have borrowed the idea.
Milkman's Matinee, a very popular disk jockey show that runs from midnight to 6 a. m., flashed through Miss Judis' mind one day and was on the air in two hours. It is this sort of informality which WNEW an interesting though nerve-wracking place to work.
Like its boss, WNEW is an extremely feminine station, largely furnished in blond wood with turquoise and lime walls. (Its rate cards used to be shocking pink, one of her favorite colors). Miss Judis is on wisecracking terms with virtually everyone there, her interest in their employees extending even to their clothes, which she criticizes candidly. She is not, however, a person any one can relax with easily and the presence of such a feminine ball of fire around the premises is not altogether soothing.
One rather bitter ex-employe swears that when he worked for WNEW every employe in the place was being psychoanalyzed--all by the same man at cut rates. "I think the station had some sort of deal with him." There is some exaggeration in this statement but it is fairly illustrative. Miss Judis' concern for her employes is profound and maternal, but it is also a little feudal. Occasionally when she is bored she may phone and summon some of the field hands to her apartment to amuse her.
The process is getting hired at WNEW is something no one easily forgets. The prospect is plunked down at a coffee-and-talk conference of executives and asked the most searching questions, one of which—from Miss Judis—is: "Why do you want to work here? Take away the salary and what have you got?"
The executives not only fire questions at the prospect, but talk about him as it he weren't there. Finally, if the decision is favorable, Miss Judis turns to the executive in whose department the job lies: "Well, Ira, you want him, you got him."

“Make Believe Ballroom” was certainly a success for Martin Block, who had been selling razor blades before he knocked on Judis’ door. She hired him in 1934 for $25 a week. Eventually, he parlayed the show into a $200,000-a-year gig, though he insisted he had no idea Al Jarvis was doing the same kind of show in Los Angeles when he started. “Milkman’s Matinee” made a celebrity of Stan Shaw, the young announcer who became “Stay-Up Stan, the All-Night Man.” A song was written about him. And at the time this column was printed, the co-host of the WNEW morning show was Gene Rayburn. But they all eventually left for the “big radio” that Judis despised.

And what of the unorthodox Bernice Judis? Ownership of the station changed in 1954. You know the old saying about a new broom. She and her second husband, WNEW sales chief Ira Herbert, were bought out and tossed out. In 1960, they bought three stations in the U.S. South. Judis died in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in late May 1983 at the age of 83. In the meantime, the new ownership of WNEW did quite well. Broadcasting magazine reported sales figures for 1955 were 32% higher than 1953. And dismantling and replacing Judis’ programming schedule brought about ratings increases as higher as 29% to 125% for certain shows and total listening up by 70%. It’s all the more amazing considering radio was losing oceans of ad dollars to television.

It seems Miss Judis’ antipathy for network-type radio was all for nought.

No Good Humor

“Dixieland Droopy” (released 1954) is a typical Tex Avery cartoon. He and writer Heck Allen set up a premise then pull of a string of gag variations on it.

In this cartoon, Droopy wants to “conduct” a record of Dixieland music, so he keeps substituting sedate music for his screeching LP.

One gag features a Good Rumor truck with its usual tinkling music inviting kiddies to come and buy some of its cool wares. Droopy switches the little bell-like tones playing “Sing a Song of Sixpence” for his swinging jazz. The truck reacts. The Ed Benedict-designed driver reacts to the reaction. Avery’s timed the scene so the background continues to pan. There’s one in-between, an extreme is held for four frames, then another in-between for a frame, another four-frame extreme and so on.



The truck races off screen into a brick wall. The driver kicks Droopy out of the scene and it’s on to the next gag.



Walt Clinton, Grant Simmons and Mike Lah are the animators in this cartoon, with backgrounds by Joe Montell.

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’.