He Swims With the Fishes

The wolf tries to escape Sergeant McPoodle throughout “Northwest Hounded Police.” He goes from one gag to the next with no stops. Here, the wolf dives into an icy Johnny Johnsen lake. He thinks he’s escaped. We get another Avery take again before the wolf swims up out of the lake and into the next gag.



Ed Love, Ray Abrams, Preston Blair and Walt Clinton animated this 1946 cartoon.

The Lawyer Who Didn't Play One on TV

Herb Vigran was one of a number of actors who made a very good living without being a star. In radio, he was among an elite group constantly in demand for dramas and comedies. The same in early network television based on the West Coast. On top of that, he realised—like a number of good radio actors—that commercials were not something to be sneered at. They paid very well. Stardom? Fame? Yeah, that may be nice, but a good character actor could make plenty of cash and, as Arnold Stang once observed, without all the stress.

Vigran did land a starring role, but like other supporting players in radio who did the same, it didn’t last very long. We’ll get to it in a moment.

First, let’s pass along this unbylined biography about Vigran found in the Lewiston Evening Journal of February 29, 1964. I doubt the paper interviewed him and he isn’t plugging anything. I imagine his agency had it sent out to newspapers in the hope someone might publish it.

There Have Been Changes For Herb
HOLLYWOOD—When Herb Vigran first arrived in Hollywood, he was broke and unknown, and had scant experience as an actor.
Today he’s not penniless, obscure or inexperienced. His voice, if not his face, is known to millions. His voice got him started in show business and earns him the income which in part built his new San Fernando Valley home he has named “Rancho Residual.”
Herb’s professional career, which spans more than 25 years, got its start in 1939 when he was lucky enough to get an interview with an agent. An hour later, he had the lead in a radio “Silver theatre” drama. It was a welcome change after a particularly bleak year in the world’s entertainment capital.
For $5, which he could ill afford, Vigran had a recording made of the show. It proved to be the open sesame for future jobs. He parlayed his vocal versatility into a career covering most of radio’s top shows as well as both radio and television commercials.
The move from radio to television and motion pictures came naturally. His bushy-browed features were as much an asset as his voice. He has appeared in character roles in innumerable live and filmed TV series, including “The Donna Reed Show,” “Hazel,” the Jack Benny, Ed Wynn, Red Skelton and Lucille Ball shows, and “McHale’s Navy.”

Vigran perhaps is best known for his role of Monty in the Dick Powell “Willie Dante” shows. His most recent motion picture credit is Universal’s “The Brass Bottle,” starring Burl Ives and Tony Randall.
Herb was born June 5, 1910, in Cincinnati, Ohio. At 16 he moved with the family to Fort Wayne, Ind., where he was graduated from the local high school and from Indiana University’s Law School.
As soon as he had taken his bar examination, Herb abandoned Blackstone for greasepaint and struck out for Hollywood.
“I didn’t even wait to find out if I’d passed the exam,” he says. “I headed West because I had an aunt living in Hollywood and knew I could sponge on her for room and board.”
He got a few bit parts, but finally packed off to New York. After roles in “Boy Meets Girl,” and “Having a Wonderful Time” on Broadway, Vigran headed West again, determined to take another crack at Hollywood before thinking of going back to the law books.
That was in 1929, when he met the agent. Herb hasn’t looked back since. One good radio role followed another and except for a two-year stint in the Army during World War II, he hasn’t been out of show business.
A year after he took the bar examination Herb learned he had passed. He later returned to Indiana to be officially admitted to the bar, but he has never practiced law.
Coupling his infantry and acting experience, he starred in “Sad Sack,” a 13-week summer show, when the war ended. Good roles in motion pictures followed. By the advent of television, he was known, trained and ready.
Herb married the former Belle Pasternak, a secretary to a motion picture executive, in 1952. They have two sons, Richard, 10, and Robert 8, and live in Woodland Hills in California’s San Fernando Valley.

Vigran’s starring role was on a half-hour summer replacement comedy in 1946, portraying World War Two’s most put-upon soldier, the Sad Sack. Summer shows were treated as auditions for fall pick-up, but that isn’t what happened with Vigran’s show. It finished its 13-week run and never returned. Vigran told interviewer Chuck Schaden the show failed because people didn’t want to be reminded about the war any more.

Radio Life magazine profiled the show in its edition of August 18, 1946. Any fan of the Golden Days of Radio should love this publication. It’s full of network publicity pictures about anyone who was anyone on the air. It’s a shame the copies on-line aren’t better scanned but it’s nice to have them. The photos come from that edition.

“Sad Sack’s” In Civvies
—And On the Air With Veteran Actor Herb Vigran in His First Starring Role as the Wistful Little Hero of George Baker's Pen
By Lynn Roberts

ALTHOUGH actually, Herb Vigran didn't become "Sad Sack" until just a few weeks ago when the new airshow was inaugurated, Herb himself will tell you that he has been "Sad Sack" for over two years. For that length of time, the actor was wearing khaki that was no stage costume in an Army camp that was no movie set. "And all of us guys in the Army," related Vigran earnestly, "turned to see what the 'Sack' was doing the minute we got hold of a Yank magazine, because every guy in the Army thought of the 'Sack' as himself—including me."
After years of skipping meals and pounding pavements in search of acting assignments, thirty-six-year-old Vigran had just established himself as a successful character actor in Hollywood radio when Uncle Sam called him to the colors in October of 1943. "That made me a little sad," grinned Vigran, "and the Army made me a 'Sack'."
The actor was stationed with the Infantry at Camp Roberts for six months, then transferred to the Torney General Hospital at Palm Springs, where he was placed in charge of entertainment, staged shows and taught classes in stage acting and radio production. He was discharged from service in October of 1945.
Looking very unlike "Sad Sack" (save for the discharge button in his lapel) in a conservative well-pressed dark blue suit, his thinning black hair combed neatly back, actor Vigran talked with enthusiasm about his new radio assignment. The title role on this CBS comedy series that is based on George Baker's familiar comic-strip character, is Vigran's initial starring part.
He expressed gratitude to the show's producer, Ted Sherdeman. "It was Ted, in fact," reminisced the actor, "who gave me my very first Hollywood radio job—on Hedda Hopper's 'Brent House'."
Said Sherdeman of the "Sad Sack" show, "We're having fun with it," and Vigran pointed out, "That's typical of Ted. When he's putting together a radio show, he always says, 'Let's have fun with it,' and as a result, so does the audience."
Cast of the "Sad Sack" show includes Sandra Gould as "Lucy Twitchell," Ken Christie as "Lucy's father," Patsy Moran as "Mrs. Flanagan, the landlady," and Jim Backus as "Chester Fenwick."
Ex-Navyman Dick Joy is its announcer.
Ex-Coast Guardsman Charlie Isaacs and ex-Army man Arthur Stander do the scripting. Producer Sherdeman is an ex-Lt. Col. "Sad Sack's" creator, Baker, in an ex-Sgt.
Smiled Vigran: "The ruptured ducks are thick around the 'Sad Sack' microphone."

Besides radio and TV, Vigran could also be heard in cartoons. He’s the uncredited narrator in the Warner Bros. short What’s My Lion? (1961) and appears in a number of industrials for John Sutherland Productions, such as It’s Everybody’s Business (1954). He died in 1986.

Press the arrow below to hear him and Jim Backus (several years before he was Mr. Magoo) in The Sad Sack.

Gin! You Lose!

“I’m a-thinkin.’ (pause) And my head hurts,” Yosemite Sam tells Bugs Bunny as they play cards in the great Western spoof “Bugs Bunny Rides Again.”

The title could have been borrowed from “Buck Benny Rides Again,” a Jack Benny Western parody, and so could the card routine. In one of the Benny radio shows, Dennis Day “helps” Jack by telling him what card to play in a game of Gin Rummy against Mary Livingstone. Immediately after the card is laid down, Mary cries “Gin!” Bugs does the same thing here and zooms out of the scene. The best part is Sam’s expressions, subtle one moment and vivid the next. Gerry Chiniquy’s animation?



Carl Stalling has the Warners orchestra play a light version of My Little Buckaroo under the scene.

Tedd Pierce and Mike Maltese came up with the story and the gags, timed perfectly by Friz Freleng.

Bugs and Sam Ride Again

Bugs Bunny tries to escape on a big lumbering horse, while Yosemite Sam’s steed is a small pony during the thrilling chase scene in “Bugs Bunny Rides Again,” one of Friz Freleng’s best Bugs pictures.

The horse and pony are on cycles of seven drawings. Is an uneven number like that unusual?



The Freleng crew for this one is Ken Champin, Virgil Ross, Gerry Chiniquy and Manny Perez, and likely Warren Batchelder and Sam Nicholson among the assistants. We’ll have another scene from this one tomorrow.

Maybe I'll Try Radio Instead

Jack Benny had a very short-lived and uneven vaudeville partnership before launching his radio career on May 2, 1932. He appeared on stage with comedian Lou Holtz, who mounted a revue that opened at Warners’ Hollywood Theatre on Broadway just over two weeks earlier on April 18th. That’s Holtz in a 1935 radio show to your right.

Benny dominated radio and was incredibly successful on television, beloved when he died in 1974 and someone who attracts new fans to his old broadcasts even today. But in 1932, Holtz was the mega-star. He pulled in $75,000 for an 11-week run at Warners’ Hollywood. Jack apparently got $2,000 a week. But then vaudeville died. Holtz’s agents put out feelers. He landed his own show on CBS for Chesterfield cigarettes starting in May 1933, but radio was never really his medium and he was never a star on TV. Unless you’re a real fan of the golden, pre-Depression era of vaudeville, you’ve probably never heard of him.

Money was the centre of Benny’s appearance with Holtz. He took the spot of Harry Richman, who had been pulling in even more cash than Holtz.

In the ‘30s, New York was littered with newspapers and each had its own theatre critic; the bigger papers had more than one. So let’s see what the Brooklyn Daily Eagle published the day after the opening of the revue.

The Theaters
By ARTHUR POLLOCK
Lou Holtz Presents the Third Edition of His Vaudeville Revue, Adding Jack Benny and the Extraordinary Borah Minnevitch
Lou Holtz replenished his Vaudeville-Revue at the Hollywood Theater last night, making this, the third edition, all new except himself and the notables he picks out of the audience for purposes of introduction. The new didos are looser than the last but better. For one thing Jack Benny replaces Harry Richman as co-star with Mr. Holtz. That's a big step in advance. Mr. Benny is much easier to watch and listen to. And there is Borah Minnevitch!
A few are missed from the last edition, Hall LeRoy and Mitzi Mayfair for instance. No one fills the gaps they leave vacant. The third yersion needs a good dancer. It has a lively young man to sing songs, sentimental ones about the girl he loves or anything else the audience asks for. He's too lusty to be a crooner, but he means it just the same.
And for those who have long adored Blossom Seeley, there she is, as large as life and working hard, and seriously, Benny Fields meanwhile helping out. Her following is a large one. She is one of the bill's assets.
Borah Minnevitch and his harmonica symphonists are the real hit of the evening, though. He has something genuine to contribute to the show, a gift of a quality none of the other players have to offer. A fine musician himself on his mouth organ, he has gathered together an orchestra of ragamuffins of all sizes and senses of humor and they play beguiling music on their throbbing instruments while he directs. He doesn't say anything. Most of the comedy is silent. But it is good comedy, he is an oddly humorous leader and the music is really very fine, like nothing to be heard anywhere else. Minnevitch has his little touch of genius.
A young girl named Martha Raye, with a wide and mobile mouth and insinuating hips, sings eagerly. There is some dancing and a sketch or two. The rest is Holtz and Jack Benny. They are content with a simpler kind of comedy than that manufactured by Holtz and Richman in the preceding edition, and the effect is better.
Benny's poise is more genuine than Richman's, so the fun is less oily. The two kid each other and the audience and offer at one point in the evening what is perhaps the funniest, if also the boldest, of those jocularities about effeminate men who go about with their hands on their hips. Later, as a couple of Hill Billies, they sing a song called "West Virginia Gal" that is very amusing.

Hillbilly music was starting to become popular in the Depression and went in for a lot of ribbing. Jack himself did yokel sketches on his radio show, especially in the ‘30s, and featured a makeshift act called “The Beverly Hillbillies” (no relation to the later TV series) that was part of his stage act and even appeared with him on television. And, as you can see, jokes about “effeminate men” were perfectly acceptable in an era when white guys appeared on stage in blackface, and comedians used thick Yiddish, Swedish, Irish or German dialects to get laughs. Holtz was a dialect comedian and that kind of humour fell out of favour after the war.

The revue closed days before Benny began his radio career. Holtz jumped aboard the S.S. Bremen on May 5th for a vacation in France and England, turning down $3,000 to appear at the Palladium in London.

Fast forward to 1949. Benny was one of the top stars in network radio and had been for years. CBS had fought NBC (and the IRS) for his services. Holtz was trying to hawk a five-minute non-network “Laugh Club” radio series on transcription discs. Maybe he should have taken the big money at the Palladium when he had the chance.

Cartoons on TV, 1957

As hard as it may be to believe, there was a time when there no cable channels devoted to cartoons, and no such thing as “Saturday morning cartoons.” If you wanted to see cartoons, you watched the local afternoon shows for kids where some costumed host would intro them in between routines. If you were lucky, the TV station (especially a small one) wouldn’t have a host and simply run a half-hour block of old cartoons, either every weekday or some time early on a weekend.

Cartoons have always been part of TV. Before World War Two, at least one New York station aired some of Van Beuren’s Aesop Fables. As television expanded, especially after the freeze on new TV licenses was lifted in 1952, more and more stations needed programming, and time could easily be filled with old films that were of no use to movie studios. Syndicators brokered deals for the films—in some cases whatever a studio owned before a certain date—and soon found cartoons were incredibly popular with kids. Popularity equals ratings, ratings equal sales, and sales equal profits.

By 1956, the bulk of theatrical cartoons made in the U.S. before 1948 had found homes in TV syndication, though Disney cleverly hung tight onto its animated shorts to use in its own programming. The obvious solution was made-for-TV cartoons but the results to date had been pretty cheap looking and couldn’t compare with the theatricals.

Here’s Variety summing up the situation as it stood as of the publication date of July 31, 1957. It included a helpful chart to reveal the origin of the cartoons being broadcast. Primrose Productions simply bought European cartoons for broadcast in the U.S. And Here Comes Pokey has nothing to do with Gumby’s horsie. It was a radio series put together by Phil Nasser; I’ve found a Feb. 4, 1957 copyright date. It would appear Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising worked out a deal to bring his characters to the screen, though I’ve seen no evidence a cartoon was ever made.

CARTONS OF CARTOONS FOR TV
3,298 MAKING VIDEO ROUNDS
There are, by the best count of the moment, 3,298 fully-animated cartoons being sold to television stations across the country. In most cases, their impact on the audience has been terrific, usually downing the opposition wherever they have played on a regular basis. But the impact on advertisers is not always commensurate: There is a dearth of tv sponsors who are interested primarily in attracting juvenile lookers-in, yet, at the same time, out of necessity, any cartoon distributors have been able to point to a reasonable quotient of adults, to appeal to adult sponsors.
Exactly 1,533 cartoons have reached tv distributors in the past 24 months, 550 of those animations will break into the market between now and September of this year. Those include 130 from George Bagnall, somewhere in the vicinity of 175 from Metro, 104 from Onyx Pictures, 52 from Screen Gems (cartoons made for CBS-TV’s "Captain Kangaroo" and being prepped now for syndication), and 92 from Sterling Television. Sterling, incidentally, is expected to add another 50 or so new cartoons in the next couple of months.
Few Specifically For TV
Most every one of the cartoons that tv can lay its hands on these days was made first for theatrical release, and there is no strong indication that matters will change in the foreseeable future; market conditions, it has been said, don't encourage fully-animated cartoons made specifically for video. However, there are 466 of the over 3,000 cartoons around which were made for television, George Bagnall's distribution company having the biggest lot, the durable "Crusader Rabbits" and the new "Here Comes Pokey," for 325. Then there are the 52 "Adventures of Pow Wow," the Screen Gems pix mentioned before as "Captain Kangaroo" network material, which were made for tv, plus 89 "Cartoon Classics" from Sterling. The 104 untitled cartoons owned by Sam Lake's Onyx Pictures might in a way qualify as tv productions, since the European-made pix will have had their first U.S. appearance on tv.
There are 14 different distributors in the tv field with cartoons. The largest, in terms of numbers and the forerunner of the present-day cartoon "revolution," is Associated Artists, which, particularly behind the "Popeye" theatricals, has amassed a strong rating record.
National Telefilm Associates has 475 and Guild Films 370, most of which, in both instances, were released for tv in 1954 or 1955.
George Bagnall has 325. Screen Gems has a mixture of new and veteran cartoon product, for a total of 386 pieces. Sterling has 159, new and rerun, Onyx 104, Metro 175 and CBS Film 156. The smallest number known to be held by a single distributor is 11, that being out of the Governor TV camp. Others are Commonwealth with 400, Cinema-Vue with 150, RKO and Goodman with 13 each.

Filler Dillers
Until "Popeye" and "Looney Tunes," cartoons were invariably used as filler for established kidvid, both locally and on network. Trade recollections are clear about how well the material did pre-"Popeye." WATV, Newark, for instance, the first station in New York and one of the first in the country to use cartoons, brought an otherwise weak lineup right up to the top of the seven-station afternoon heap on the basis of "Junior Frolics," which showcased animations. This kind of filler stuff brought a good, steady rating and since there was a limited number of juve-slanted programs two and three years ago, a hefty number of sponsors.
While many of the cartoons for video are as old as the Fred Sayles show on WATV, a wide contention nevertheless is that the kid audience is unlike the adult market, in that product for the juve has recurring, periodic strength. Three or four years, perhaps a little more, the cartoon material that has played again and again in a short span of time and theoretically worn itself out for the moppet mart has in time a new market to play for. So far the theory hasn't proved out in syndicated sales, but if it does in time it will help alleviate the relative shortage of animated-material for tv.
Bonus Audience
About a month ago, Associated Artists, distributor of "Popeye," released the findings of a research study indicative to some degree of the whole cartoon field. Company disclosed a "bonus" adult audience of at least 20% in ARB surveys for cartoon shows. Cartoons for years previously had been popular with the grownups in theatres, so, argued AAP, why shouldn't they be via tv?
AAP went on to say that when cartoons were slotted favorably competition and time-wise, they attracted as much as a 30 and 40% adult share and even "an exceptionally fine" 50% adult audience. An example was a recent 7:30-9 p. m, cartoon "carnival" on WFIL-TV, Philadelphia, when the 50-50 audience was achieved, and this against the Ed Sullivan-Steve Allen competition, and Jack Benny-"Circus Boy."
Nearly every tv market in the United States has its cartoons, sometimes through the networks (as with CBS' "Kangaroo"), but usually via the syndication route, with the product as often as not integrated into a favorable local kid format. It's hard finding a local rating for the integrated cartoon, but the "Popeyes," "Looney Tunes," "Terrytoons," which are so frequently slotted in tailor-made local tv formats provide a representative sampling of the strength of cartoon product recently released to video.
AAP, on the basis of a 29-market ARB average, reports that "Popeye" pulled a 16.3 against an average competition of 8.9. That's for all markets studied by ARB since December, 1956. "Popeye" kept pace with ABC's afternoon strip by Walt Disney, "Mickey Mouse Club," beating it as often as it lost, but in either event the margin of difference in ratings was minute. ("Popeye" is currently sold to 71 stations.)
A 19-market average for AAP's Warner Bros. cartoons, a package including the "Looney Tunes" ("Bugs Bunny," etc.), was 14.0 against a collective competitive average of 10.6. (The Warner animations are inked on 53 outlets.)
CBS Film reported a series of "success stories," from among the 47 station deals it has made since starting sales. Again with the ARB's, distrib shows that "Terrytoons" on WOR-TV, New York, jacked the anchorage's returns 68% over last year, when Gene Autry and Roy Rogers features were shown. Packages, too, runs neck-and-neck with "MMC," instances being Buffalo and Providence.



Two names conspicuous by their absence are Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. At the time this story was published, their company, H-B Enterprises, was roughly three weeks old. Little did anyone realise that they would soon find the key to mass production of TV cartoons and change an entire industry.

Columbia's Quiet Boulevard

Columbia’s “A Hollywood Detour” (1942) does a pretty good job imitating a Warner Bros. Hollywood caricature/spot gag cartoon (it even includes a Mel Blanc hiccough) but there’s one thing that’s a little different.

Director Frank Tashlin (another Warners connection) includes a long pan of a crowd along a street. But he’s showing how out of control the traffic situation is on what the narrator describes as “a quiet boulevard” by not only adding a police siren to the soundtrack, but by tilting the camera around as it pans across the painting. Tashlin re-uses animation of a car (seen in the distance in the second frame below) as it fills the camera to allow him to go back and re-pan over part of the background a second time.



Adding to the Warners feel, besides the story structure and even a few gags, are the presence of Ben Shenkman’s celebrity caricatures and Frank Graham as the narrator. Even some of Paul Worth’s music selections (“Little Brown Jug” with a W.C. Fields caricature), are reminiscent of what Stalling would do at Warners.

Unfortunately, the background artist is uncredited, but (s)he provides some very nice watercolours.