RKO's New Star

Felix the Cat couldn’t beat a mouse.

The rodent he was dealing with wasn’t an ordinary one. It was Mickey Mouse.

The year was 1936. RKO was releasing cartoons featuring Felix, who had been off the screen for several years thanks to the death of a) silent films and b) the man credited with creating him, Pat Sullivan. In the intervening period, Disney rose to reign over the theatrical animated world thanks to a) Mickey, b) Flowers and Trees, a Technicolor milestone and c) The Three Little Pigs, arguably the most popular cartoon to that point.

Mickey had jumped from Columbia to United Artists, but Walt Disney was looking for a better deal for his cartoons. In the meantime, RKO had been releasing cartoons by the Van Beuren studio, of which it was a part owner. Van Beuren was in a state of turmoil, with characters and staff coming and going, exacerbated in 1934 when the director of the aforementioned pigs cartoon, Burt Gillett, was hired and put in charge. Gillett’s cartoons looked like night and day compared to the fun, quirky and not always well drawn Van Beuren shorts of 1930, but it wasn’t enough. RKO decided it wanted the world’s most famous cartoon character.

Daily Variety reported, in part, on March 3, 1936:

Radio Captures Disney
SPITZ TAGS COMPLETE PRODUCT
Disney cartoons will release via RKO exchanges for 1936-37 season. Producer pulls away from United Artists when he fulfills present commitment of five cartoons on current program.
Papers were signed late last night, after negotiations covering month. Leo Spitz, president of RKO, M . H. Aylesworth, chairman of board, and Ned Depinet, president of RKO Distributing Corp., sat in for releasing company, Walt and Roy Disney taking care of their end with attorney Gunther Lessing.
Releasing All Product
Agreement provides for RKO to release all Disney product, including Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony cartoon shorts. Producer has been working on feature cartoon, 'Snow White,' expects to have it ready for spring release.
Understood main reason Disney jumped away from United Artists was his not getting owner-partnership share when Alexander Korda was taken in last fall. Another reason was unsettled affairs of U A with various executive changes, Disney figuring RKO deal, which gives him guaranteed negative cost on every subject produced, is safer than U A release without negative advances and does not require as much operating capital.

Here are some trade ads heralding the Mouse’s impending arrival.



But what of the Van Beuren cartoons? Weekly Variety reported on March 11th:

Disney Ousts Van B.?
Conflict in type of shorts product may result in RKO's dropping of Rainbow Parade cartoons, produced by Van Beuren Corp. next season. Addition of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies gives the company a surplus of animated cartoons. RKO claims it is not definitely set on any change thus far. Van Beuren series includes Felix the Cat, Toonerville Trolley, etc.
Other Van Reuren product which includes five other series of short features, probably will remain set unless RKO decides two-reelers are not profitable in face of influx of dual programs.

But drop Van Beuren it did. The studio was closed by June. The last Van Beuren cartoon released was Toonerville Picnic, directed by Gillett, on October 2nd. RKO’s first Disney cartoon wasn’t released until September 21, 1937—Hawaiian Holiday. A couple of months later, the studio released The Old Mill, which won an Oscar. And Disney had acquired a new director, and from Van Beuren no less. Burt Gillett had toddled home.

A Change of Scenery

An interesting but jarring effect shows up in the early Terrytoon By the Sea (1931). A mouse is driving his car in the city and makes a left turn. Suddenly, the background drawing changes. The last two frames are consecutive.



The cartoon’s story involves a cat in love with a mouse, who is stolen away by the heroic mouse in the frames above.

That's What You Think, Brother

Dumb-Hounded was one of Tex Avery’s “wild take” cartoons, where he came up with variations on huge reactions of horror by the wolf (voiced by Frank Graham).

Here’s the first. Wolfie thinks he’s escaped from Droopy (played by Bill Thompson) but realises he hasn’t after he walks into the dog, who says “That’s what you think, brother.” These are consecutive frames. Notice the outlines of Droopy and the wolf at the end. That was used for a mid-air body vibration effect.



The wolf leaps into mid-air, churns his body and takes off to the door to escape. He’s foiled.



And things get crazier after that.

Irv Spence, Ed Love, Ray Abrams and Preston Blair animated the cartoon.

Garry Marshall's Landlord Evicted by NBC

He gave Blansky’s Beauties to the world.

I’m sure that’s not how Garry Marshall would want to be remembered. Anyone who paid attention to credits on TV in the 1960s and early ‘70s would have seen his name on “The Odd Couple” (along with at least two other Marshalls) and “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” And, of course, he went on to even bigger things (and a few stinkers).

It was 50 years ago that Marshall and writing partner Jerry Belson became producers. Mirisch-Rich had recently formed to get into the TV business. Their first three network nibbles were “The Rat Patrol,” a cartoon series called “Super 6” and a comedy called “Hey, Landlord!” The latter was put in the hands of Marshall and Belson, along associate producer Bruce Johnson. All were around 30. Proctor and Gamble bought a full sponsorship. A flotilla of people involved in the Van Dyke show came over to work on the series (Rose Marie had a guest spot). 11 additional episodes were ordered by the network in October and six more in January. But despite being sandwiched between Walt Disney and “Bonanza,” the show got killed by Ed Sullivan and “The F.B.I.” and it was pulled before the end of the season.

All I remember about the show is there was a staircase. That’s how much of an impression it made on a nine-year-old viewer (I haven’t seen it since). So it was interesting peering around trying to find some old newspaper clippings about Marshall and running into a few stories about this show instead. So here they are. Both are from September 10, 1966.

Brownstone Is Locale Of Hutchins Comedy
By CHARLES WITBECK
HOLLYWOOD—If "Dick Van Dyke Show" fans feel lost this day night group of extraverts, they should try catching "Hey, Landlord," with Will "Sugarfoot" Hutchins and Sandy Baron, NBC's new Sunday night comedy slotted between "Walt Disney" and "Bonanza."
While the "Van Dyke" series charted the problems of a successful TV writer and his delightful wife, "Hey, Landlord" drops down an age notch to watch the reactions of a young, naive, would-be writer, Woody Banner (Will Hutchins), inheritor of a beaten-up New York brownstone, and his roommate Chuck (Sandy Baron), the flegling comic, a pragmatist who prefers action to dreams except when it comes to paying rent or helping out with antiquated plumbing.
Each week Woody and Chuck check want ads for jobs to launch careers and to pay for the upkeep of the brownstone apartment house. In a sample episode, Woody lands a writing job with a toy company seeking material for a talking toy crow. This situation sets up humorous scenes of the two men trying to dream up gags for the crow, and it lets the writers take playful pokes at the big money toy market and some of its silly products.
Job And Home
Like the "Van Dyke Show," "Hey, Landlord" moves back and forth between job and home. In the Banner apartment house reside all sorts of goofy and tenants: a scatter-brained, sexy TV weather girl, Pamela Rodgers; a lovely Japanese airline stewardess, Miko Mayama, and a bedraggled widow, Ann Morgan Guilbert, with her 6-year-old brat. The pilot episode featured a crazy photographer played by Michael Constantine, and the producers liked him so much, Michael has been added to the cast. The Banner brownstone has ah open end—whenever new characters score highly they'll simply be brought back as new tenants. By the end of the season the battered dwelling may house more occupants than the Waldorf Astoria.

All these "Van Dyke" traits in the Sunday night comedy come as no surprise when one checks the list of credits. Producers Garry Marshall and Jerry Belson used to write for the Emmy laden show, while director Jerry Paris learned his trade on the series.
Another member of the distinguished alumni is Ann Morgan Guilbert, formerly neighbor Milly, now the exhausted widow. And, at the top of the credit pyramid, is executive consultant Sheldon Leonard, the man who launched "Dick Van Dyke Show" and managed to keep it on the air after those initial shaky six months. For Will Hutchins, "Hey, Landlord" is a gift from heaven. The sandy-haired Phi Beta Kappa cast as the slow-moving, simple western hero in "Sugarfoot" for three years, finally gets a break in status.
Even though Hutchins still receives fan mail on "Sugarfoot," he has been given short shrift by Hollywood casting people who look down on the crop of Warner Bros. TV actors noted for bringing in all that money during the mid-50's. Up for an "Alfred Hitchcock" TV part a few years ago, Hutchins was asked by producer Norman Lloyd to read the entire script before being accepted. Lloyd simply felt unsure of Will's acting abilities because he wore a Warner Bros. label.
Hutchins Doesn't Shuffle
In the role of intelligent, naive, 21-year-old Woody who is trying to find himself after graduating from Ohio State, Hutchins can at least erase that Warner Bros. stigma. Will doesn't shuffle as Woody, he says some funny things and makes pertinent observations. He is even quiet and appreciative in certain key scenes, playing a normal young man who doesn't have to kick clods for laughs.
His co-star Sandy Baron, cast as the fast-talking, effervescent comic Chuck who performs everywhere for nothing, is playing a role he knows by heart. Sandy started out In the comedy business as a bus boy and waiter in the Catskills, watching the standup comics perform, and he had confidence right off the bat.
"I knew I was funny at the time, but delivering one-line jokes wasn't my racket," says Baron. Instead Sandy bought monologues and then found his niche improvising material in the off-Broadway theater hits, "The Premise' and "Second City." Dramatic roles followed "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and this spring's "Generation" with Henry Fonda.
"I used to think getting a TV job was a sell-out," admitted Sandy, "but work has changed my mind."
Baron Learning Business
Now, Sandy is learning the filmed TV comedy business playing a familiar part, and he's taking lessons from the best pros in town. Says Sandy about overseer Sheldon Leonard: "He will frighten you. He does a great Indian war dance. He watches you perform, and then he will come up and begin with 'I would like it if...'."
Says Leonard, concisely summing up "Hey, Landlord":
"This is the story of three musketeers, but with two."

Pamela Rodgers? Was she on it? I only remember her as a replacement cast member on “Laugh-In” before vanishing from TV. But “Landlord” gave Rogers her first regular role. Several different interviews with her saw print; this one was found in the Binghamton Press; I suspect it’s a syndicated piece.

Pamela Turns Up the Heat As Hey, Landlord! Regular
New York—Everybody talks about the weather but once they get a look at Pamela Rodgers as a stunning weather reporter, they will change the subject.
Pamela, a striking beauty, co-stars as slightly scatter-brained TV weather girl Timothy Morgan on Hey Landlord!, a new half-hour comedy series dealing with the life, times and tenants of a venerable New York brownstone, showing in color NBC and Channel 40.
A former "Miss Texas," Pam went directly from the stage of the Miss Universe Beauty Pageant to the stages of such top night spots as the Hotel Sahara in Las Vegas and New York's Copacabana as a dancer and ultimately to the sound stages of Hollywood.
As recently as 1965, just three years after graduation from Jesse H. Jones High School in her hometown of Houston, that she made her film debut. She has since appeared in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and The Donna Reed Show as well as such motion pictures as "The Silencers," "Three on a Couch;" "Doomsday Flight" and "The Oscar."

AS WEATHER GIRL Timothy Morgan, Pamela portrays a starry-eyed innocent, aspiring to a career in show business and whose not-so-innocent face and figure, all agree, portend imminent stardom.
Timothy shares an apartment with another career girl, airline stewardess Kyoko Mitsui (Miko Mayama) in a typical metropolitan brownstone landlorded by series star Will Hutchins as Woody. Sandy Baron also stars as Chuck, Woody's roommate, confidante and some-time managerial assistant.
Timothy feels her participation on the local TV weather program is affording her the exposure necessary for a start in the business. But it is back at the brownstone where Timothy attracts the most viewers thanks to her passion for the latest in such "mod" fashions as hip buggers, bikinis and mini-skirts. The fact is, considering the total male tenant contingent plus the helicopter and dirigible crews who hover over the rooftop sundeck, Timothy gets a much better audience rating when she is not working.
Wondrously, she somehow detects logic in why half the Eastern Seaboard's militaryand civilian aircraft must "practice their low-level maneuvers" smack over the center of the world's largest city but like Kyoko, her companion sunbather, she'd prefer the planes go someplace else because, "they make too much shade." As to Pamela's ability to handle her role in this, her TV series debut, among a cast of players with considerably more acting experience, co-producers Garry Marshall and Jerry Belson sum it up this way:
"It takes brains to play a scatterbrain."

Garry Marshall didn’t let the failure of “Hey, Landlord” faze him. And TV fans can be grateful for that. Blansky’s Beauties notwithstanding.

Speechless With Colour

The climax of How Now Boing Boing (1954) seems to have been an experiment in shapes and colours by Jules Engle, T. Hee and director Bobe Cannon.

Gerald, as you know, can’t speak and goes “boing boing” instead (except when he’s imitating cars, trains and so on; apparently he can’t imitate speech). In this cartoon, a professor uses a huge piece of equipment designed to unscramble overseas calls to translate Gerald’s boings (and, remarkably, into English instead of another language).

Cannon has the camera cut in and out of the animation to change the perspective a bit.



In the original Gerald cartoon, you feel sorry for the outcast little boy and are happy he triumphs in the end. In this sequel, you don’t care about anyone or the abstract shapes that take up about 25 seconds of screen time.

Gerald Ray, Alan Zaslove and Frank Smith are the credited animators.

Tell Me More About My Eyes

Bugs Bunny outsmarts himself in Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears, a 1944 cartoon written by Tedd Pierce and directed by Chuck Jones.

Bugs quickly pulls a con job on Mama Bear who is about to clobber him by complimenting her on her appearance (including her eyes).



The ruse works. Mama Bear reacts by protecting Bugs from the angry Daddy and Junior Bear. But it works too well. Mama becomes completely enamoured with Bugs. “Tell me more about my eyes,” she coquettishly asks.



There is no escape.



Finally, the panicked Bugs jumps into his hole in the ground. We hear giggling and “Tell me more about my eyes.” Bugs jumps out of the hole and runs away to end the cartoon.



Considering his reputation, I can picture Pierce getting into a similar situation with a woman.

Bobe Cannon gets the animation credit and Mama Bear is played by that fine actress Bea Benaderet.

The Hensir of Comedy

There seems to have been a fascination with how Jack Benny and his writers put together the Benny radio show. We’ve posted several contemporary newspaper columns about it. Here’s another one.

This is from Earl Wilson’s column in the New York Post of January 22, 1945. The radio show being discussed aired the night before. And “hen, sir” was part of the dialogue.

Gag Busters in Action—Jack Benny's Brain Trust
I'm a candidate for a booby hatch today. I've survived a Jack Benny gag-rewrite session. Assigning myself to find how Jack manufactures his jokes, I hopped up to his 33d floor penthouse at the Sherry-Netherland. In an orangeish dressing gown, chewing a cigar that had gone out a long time ago, Jack faced the crowd—17 people by actual count—and asked, "Where the hell's Phil?"
Meaning Phil Harris.
Nobody knew. Mary Livington said maybe he couldn't get a cab. Rochester ran around behind a long cigar, showing off a yellow shirt and a blinding tie.
Phil arrived to chants of "Always late, always late" from the crowd, and read his part. Coming to the word "humanitarian," he innocently read it:
"Human-tarian."
One writer fell down laughing. "You don't have to write jokes for Phil," Jack said. "He reads things wrong anyway." Finally the rehearsal ended.
"Everybody scram but the geniuses," somebody in authority said. "Just the writers stay."
This your clever reporter had come to hear—the four writers, probably top joke men in the country, probably each a $25,000-a-year man, cutting and polishing the first rough script. They sagged into chairs or onto couches, with coats off and collars opened. Jack lighted his cigar—which went out. He kept chewing it. They began kicking jokes around. Jack wanted a gag about him appearing before FDR. Somebody would ask, "Did the President like you?"—and then the gag.
"Roosevelt laughed and Jimmy Byrned," said Writer George Balzer of Van Nuys, Calif., but he took it back with a wince.
"Roosevelt hasn't laughed so much since he saw Herbert Hoover," flung in either John Thackaberry of Houston, Tex., or Milt Josefsberg of Brooklyn—I forget which. They were in their '30s. The fourth writer, Sam Perrin, of the Bronx, held his script mirthlessly, but business-like. He is 40ish. Silence gripped the room. A clock ticked loudly while the geniuses thought. The script girl, Jane Tucker, waited for a witticism she could write down.
Perrin called out, "Did the President like your show? You say, 'Oh he liked it swell. He sat next to Gen. Hershey and now I'm in 1-A.'"
Jack smiled—for the first time so far. "I would put it in," he said. Jane Tucker wrote it down in her script book.
"That'll play good," one writer said. That's what they said repeatedly—it would play good.
I listened as they hauled gags out of their heads for an hour and a half, and threw most of them away. Occasionally a writer would have a paroxysm of laughter over his newest joke, yell it out, and nobody would laugh. I gave them one of my own gags. They gave it back to me. Two writers wanted to get in a gag about Col. Elliott Roosevelt's dog.
"It's a good laugh, but I hate to pan anybody, and I'm afraid of it," said Jack. Out came a joke about Don Wilson arriving late: "He lost his priority on an elevator." Out came another where Jack asked Phil Harris, "How do you keep warm—Red flannels?"
"No, Black Label."
They were running too long. Jack wanted a joke about how skinny his legs look in knickers. "You look like two champagne glasses with ridiculously long stems," one writer suggested. Another thought he looked like V for Victory upside down. But another one came up with "You have to tie knots in your legs to make it look like you have knees."
"Got that Janie?" said Jack. She had already written it down.
I was restless. But apparently loving it, they weren't. They were meticulous. For 5 minutes, they discussed a gag in which Jack complained to a waiter about an egg costing 20 cents. "What's in an egg that could make it cost 20 cents?" he said.
"Well, sir," replied the waiter, "it's a whole day's work for a hen."
The burning issue was: Shouldn't the "sir" be at the end of the sentence? ". . . It's a whole day's work for the hen, sir." I think it was Josefsberg who said "sir" after "hen" would produce a new word, like "hensir."
"Like saying, 'Somebody's at the door. Will you please hensir?'"
Our session had gone on almost two hours, and they were only in the middle. It was orderly, nobody even had a drink, and all I could think about was the new word, "hensir." Jack denied the story he has no hair—said he has hair at home he's never used. So on that I left, thinking how nice they were, and, also, how long could they stay sane?

Benny’s writers continually found ways to work old jokes into a new script, and the “hen, sir” was no exception. The new version appeared on the radio show of May 3, 1953. Jack was, in real life, appearing for several weeks at San Francisco’s Curran Theatre. On the show he complained about the price of a breakfast at the Fairmont Hotel. Only the audience didn’t get a “hen” this time. Said waiter Mel Blanc: “Well, it’s a whole day’s work for a chicken.” But joke continued:
JACK: That’s a very old joke.
MEL: Well, I thought it was funny when I heard it last night at the Curran Theatre.
Benny’s writers did it again.