Animating Cartoons, 1935

Just how are those animated cartoons made?

Feature stories in newspapers answered that question over the years. One of them was courtesy of EveryWeek Magazine, one of many Sunday supplements found in papers.

This one was pulled out of the Ogden Standard Examiner of May 12, 1935. It’s interesting to see the reference to (and picture of) La Verne Harding, the only woman animating in Hollywood. For whatever reason, there’s no reference to the Fleischer studio, though the Paul Terry-Frank Moser operation makes the list (Van Beuren is snubbed as well).

It’s surprising to see Ed Benedict’s name in the list of the top animators. I don’t know if anyone could pick out Benedict’s animation in a cartoon. He spent the majority of his career in design and layout, first on industrial/commercial shorts in the ‘40s, then at MGM and Hanna-Barbera in the ‘50s. Ham Hamilton’s name is mentioned. Hamilton’s work has been praised by a number of people, including Chuck Jones, but I gather he had some personal difficulties.

The artwork that accompanied this story looked great in a broadsheet but it a little difficult to cut up for blog use, so you’ll see a lot of dead space.

Meet Hollywood’s Men of Action
By Dan Thomas
GET the bathing beauties out of the way—here come a flock of artistically inclined young gentlemen who just know that Hollywood has been waiting for them with open arms and bated breath!
These fellows, hundreds of them, indicate clearly the ever-increasing scope of the movie industry, the widespread appeal of today's animated cartoons.
In former days Hollywood was overrun with beauty contest winners from all parts of the world. The demand then was for beauty, not artistry. There was a premium on feminine curves. Consequently, the moment a girl was adjudged to have the prettiest dimples, loveliest legs or most alluring curves in Kokomo, she hopped a rattler for the film colony.
Today there still is the same kind of premium placed on curves—but they must be of the drawing board variety. Those of a strictly feminine nature, the kind which make men bump into lamp posts while looking in the opposite direction, are a dime a dozen in filmland now. But carefully drawn curves which, fitted together, form an animated cartoon, aren't so easy to find.
Hence the demand for animators and the constant influx of artistically inclined young gentlemen. Fresh from high school, college or an art institute, they flock to Hollywood to gain fame and fortune via the pencil route. They are the youths who used to hie themselves to the nearest metropolis to start making their marks inthe world as newspaper cartoonists and comic strip artists. Today, however, they aspire to become animators of "Mickey Mouse," "Oswald the Rabbit," "Silly Symphonies," "Merrie Melodies" or other screen cartoons.
AND they come with all the confidence and assurance that marked their forerunners who invaded newspaper offices, certain that they will presently be earning at least $200 weekly in one or another of the studios turning out animated cartoons. It never occurs to them that only through years of hard work and study can they become first-rate animators, just as years of hard work are necessary before a comic strip artist can become a topnotcher.
Generally speaking, Hollywood offers a considerably higher wage scale than an artist can expect in the newspaper field unless his work is good enough to be syndicated. Animators draw as high as $250 weekly. However, only the most talented animators ever receive the maximum salary and it takes them from five to seven years to reach that figure.
A survey of the Walt Disney studio where "Mickey Mouse" and "Silly Symphony" cartoons arc produced gives a rather accurate description of the whole animated business. With very slight variations in procedure, the same rules have been adopted by Universal, Leon Schlesinger, Charles Mintz, U. B. Iwerks, Harmon and Ising and Paul Terry, producers respectively of "Oswald the Rabbit," "Merrie Melodies," "Krazy Kat," "Flip the Frog," "Bosko" and "Terry Tunes."
Receiving on an average of 20 applications a week, with a considerable increase in that number during the summer vacation months, Disney is forced to reject most of the applicants. Only those showing genuine talent are given trials.
These men are given two weeks in which to prove their worth. They draw no salary during this time. Their duties consist of redrawing characters from old cartoons. If their work is satisfactory, they are given contracts as apprentices at $15 a week.

ORDINARILY Disney keeps from 30 to 40 men in his apprentice room. The apprenticeship lasts from six months to a year.
As a rule this class is composed entirely of young men. Seldom is a girl found among them. For some inexplainable reason, women don't make good animators. At the present time there is only one in the entire business—-Verne Harding who works on Oswald at Universal.
"I don't know why girls should be poor animators but they are," Disney declares. "Very frequently they are better artists than men but for some reason they lack the knack of getting smooth action into their drawings."
The first duty given to an apprentice is the last, step in drawing a cartoon. From him the drawing goes to the girls in the tracing department to be traced on a celluloid sheet for photographing. His job is to clean up and ink the characters as drawn by the animators and their assistants.
As the apprentice progresses he is given bits of inconsequential drawing to do. For instance, if Minnie Mouse's hat were to blow off, the apprentice would complete the drawings by showing the hat being blown away. If Bosko had to climb a stepladder, the animator might draw everything but his feet, leaving them to be put on by the apprentice.
After successfully serving his term as an apprentice, a man is promoted to the post of assistant animator. In this spot he does whatever the animator leaves unfinished. Hence, before we can go very thoroughly into his duties, we'll have to jump over and find out what the animator does.
HE is the real hub around which the making of animated cartoons revolves. Once the story is completed and the continuity handed to him, he puts the action on paper in a series of drawings.
There are 16 drawings or frames to each foot of film. However, the animator does not make each drawing. He plots the action and then sketches intermittent drawings. He may make "every other one or possibly only every fourth or sixth one, depending upon the difficulty of the action and the capabilities of his assistant.

One animator docs not draw all of the characters seen upon the screen. For instance, in "The Tortoise and the Hare," which showed a race between these two animals, one man drew the tortoise and another the hare. After these were traced on celluloid sheets, they were placed one on top of another to be photographed as one frame of the picture.
DISNEY has about 30 animators at work. Each of them is given a certain character to draw for a particular sequence in a film. But none of them draws the same character all the time. Ham Lusk, for example, is a wizard at drawing Pluto. But to avoid letting him become too highly specialized, Disney makes him draw other characters in two out of every three films on which he works.
The theory of this is to keep every animator familiar with each of the characters used by the studio. In this way any one of them can in an emergency fill in anywhere he is needed.
As the animator completes his master drawings, he passes them over to his assistant who tackles the easier job of making the drawings to fill the gaps between them.
After the entire set of rough drawings has been completed, they are photographed and run off on the screen to make sure there are no jumpy spots in the action. Three times each week the Disney animators, assistants and apprentices are required to attend classes for the study of animation. Sometimes living models are used to demonstrate body construction and movements under all conditions. At other times motion pictures showing both humans and animals in action are run off one frame at a time to show exactly how each muscle of the body is brought into play for any given action.
This knowledge is extremely important it the animators are to inject convincing and smooth action into their drawings. For instance, if Mickey is playing the piano, it isn't sufficient to show his arms and fingers moving. Ordinarily his whole body would move to some extent and this must be shown on the screen. Disney is the only producer who conducts such a school for his employes.
“I've often been told how lucky I am not to have any stars to go temperamental on me,” Disney remarks. "It's true I never have any trouble with Mickey, the three pigs or any of my characters. But don't ever think animators can't be temperamental. Say, they can be just as bad as any star you ever saw.
"Occasionally one will have an off day on which he can't draw anything worth while. Then he has to be pampered and pulled out of his slump with all the diplomacy that would be used on a star."
Altogether there are about 150 animators, twice that many assistants and a like number of apprentices in Hollywood. Salaries for animators range from $75 to $300 per week, with the vast majority being in the $150 class. Assistants will receive anywhere from $40 to $75 and apprentices in every studio get $15 weekly.
DISNEY is said to be the only one who pays as high as $300, although all of the other studios pay their top men around $250 per week. Assistants receive about the same salary wherever they work.
Among the topnotchers in the business are Ham Lusk, Norman Ferguson and Fred Moore (all working on Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies), Walter Lantz, Verne Harding and Ed Benedict (all of whom draw Oswald the Rabbit), and Rolland Hamilton (chief "Merrie Melodies" artist).
"The business of animating is the most peculiar one in the world," declares Walter Lantz. "I have known artists who could draw circles around any of us but they couldn't earn their salt as animators because they had no dramatic sense.
"An animator must be more than an artist. A good artist will draw a man crossing a floor. But a good animator will put action into that walk which will bring laughs from his audience. That's because he has a sense of acting."

Woody Woodpecker Outlines

The Walter Lantz studio through a good portion of the 1940s liked outline drawings. In previous posts, we’ve pointed out several Woody Woodpecker cartoons that feature them. Here’s another example. This one is from Woody Woodpecker, the first cartoon starring the character after his appearance in Knock Knock.

At one point, the psychiatrist fox grabs Woody by the neck and shakes him a bit. Note how Woody’s expression changes when he realises he’s being grabbed around the neck. I’ve only included a few of the outline drawings.



Alex Lovy and Ray Fahringer get the animation credits on this cartoon, with Mel Blanc providing voices for Woody and the doctor.

Ah, Yes!

Pausing in the middle of a cartoon for some commentary by a character or a sign is a favourite Tex Avery routine. We find it in Who Killed Who? (released 1943), Avery’s great spoof of radio/film detective mysteries.

Cadavers fall toward the camera, initially in a 16-drawing cycle, speeding up to eight. We see 13 of them drop before a 14th stops in mid-fall and removes the gag around his mouth. “Ah, yes!” he says to the audience. “Quite a bunch of us, isn’t it?” Then the gag snaps back over his mouth and he resumes his fall (as do nine other identical bodies afterward).



Avery’s name is the only one on the credits.

Soupy

You’ve seen it in cartoons. A character will stop and observe: “I like him. He’s silly.”

That describes Milton Supman. The world knows him better as Soupy Sales.

The best kid show hosts were the ones who were having fun on camera, not talking down to their audience, and doing ridiculous (and sometimes inside) stuff that appealed to smart youngsters, astute college students and adults who had a sense of humour. Most of those emcees appeared on local television. So did Soupy Sales, but he got a national audience in summer of 1955 with a 15-minute show on ABC-TV, then again starting in October 1959 with a half-hour Saturday show called Lunch With Soupy Sales. Both shows were beamed out of Detroit, where Soupy was pulling in $150,000 a year. He moved to Hollywood in December 1960 (still on ABC), guest hosted on the Tonight show in June 1962, signed a four-picture contract with MGM (which figured he’d be “the next Jerry Lewis” as AP columnist Bob Thomas put it at the time). Then he chucked it all and moved to New York City in 1964.

Let’s pick up Soupy there with a couple of newspaper stories from 1965. First up is a piece from the syndicated TV Keynotes column from the King Features Syndicate. It appeared in newspapers on June 11th, by which time Soupy was riding a gimmick called “The Mouse,” a dance he did on his show that he turned into a novelty album that was briefly on the Billboard chart about this time. The story also talks about his most famous stunt of his New York TV career.

Soupy Sales Latest Whiz On TV
By HARVEY PACK
NEW YORK — Fans either love Soupy Sales or they hate him. There's no in between and that's the way Soupy wants it.
"People who love you watch you." philosophizes Soupy, the current rage of local New York television and creator of that popular dance "The Mouse,'' 'And if they hate you they've got to watch you just to give their hate muscles some exercise."
But at the moment Soupy is riding a crest of love. Teenage girls converge daily around the entrances of New York TV station WNEW waiting to meet and greet the uninhibited host of a kiddy show which has become something of an "in" program among New Yorkers.
When Soupy arrives he graciously accepts their gifts (edible offerings are not consumed since one never knows whether the chef was one of those rare Soupy-haters); he chats with all of them, signs their autograph books and even scrawls his name on a few arms which will undoubtedly not see soap and water again until the fickle youngsters find another idol.
Hottest In Business

Soupy is one of the hottest performers in the business today, a fact which seems to confuse Soupy because he's been doing the same thing on TV for more than a dozen years. Born in North Carolina and reared in Huntington, W. Va., he entered the field of radio in Huntington soon after graduating college. Stints in Cincinnati and Cleveland were followed by his debut in Detroit back in 1953, which really launched him as a top audience getter and a clown in the true slapstick tradition.
From Detroit, where he was carried on the ABC network Saturday mornings, he went to Hollywood and became a pet of the Sinatra clan. His pie throwing became his trademark and his celebrity fans in the film capital considered being plastered with a Soupy pie a status symbol.
They gave him a nighttime network show which was a flop and, except for a week as host of the "Tonight" show, that was the last anyone heard of Soupy Sales. Then, last September he brought the same kiddy show which had been a sensation in Detroit and Los Angeles to New York. WNEQ-TV put him on at 4:30 p.m. and forgot about him. He was tops in his time slot, but nobody at the station really cared.
On Jan. 1, 1965, Soupy walked up to the camera and stuck his face right into the lens which is one of his favorite tricks. "Hey, kids," he began that New Years's day, "your folks are probably sound asleep so sneak into their rooms, open their wallets and send Old Soupy all the green paper with pictures of presidents."
Publicity Results
The kids were hip and knew Soupy was having fun, but a few irate parents — who were not sleeping — wrote letters and suddenly WNEW knew they had a guy on named Soupy Sales.
"I had used that same gag for years in Detroit and Los Angeles," said Soupy one afternoon, while sitting in the windowless, humid, pop art decorated office where the station has imprisoned him. "Nothing ever happened. Even here it wasn't until two weeks later that the thing exploded."
When the station suspended Soupy it became something of a local issue and the resulting publicity definitely brought the Soup to a boil. A sensational in person show at a New York theater, his hit record of "The Mouse," and eventual switch by the station to an early evening time slot and appearance with Ed Sullivan and other major TV shows have all contributed to his phenomenal rise.
"I write the show myself," he explained, "I always have. Of course, I now find it harder to handle all the writing. I think the reason we're so successful is that I gear every gag and every situation for kids and adults on two different levels. The kids love to watch puppets or see me throw a pie . . . and their parents have their ears tuned for some inside gag.
"Where do I want to go now? I'd like to do the same kind of free wheeling comedy on a network at night. I know it would work. And movies. That's what I really want. They're great for a comedian . . . particularly one like me."
He handed me the script for that day's "Soupy Sales Show." I read one gag. Man: Whatever happened to your brother? Girl: Didn't you know he was caught in a cement mixer? Man: Where is he now? Girl: You know that sharp turn on Route 46 in New Jersey? That's him. Man: No kidding . . I'll wave to him next time I go by.
Crazy? Nutty? Of course it is, but that's Soupy Sales and you either love him or you hate him.

Soupy’s first wife contributed to this piece about him found in Family Weekly, a newspaper magazine supplement, on September 5, 1965. One of the more impressive revelations was likely unintentional—Soupy as a crack businessman. He did a really good job of marketing his persona.

WHO IS THIS SOUPY SALES?
By MRS. SOUPY SALES
as told to Jack Ryan
MY HUSBAND was a prisoner of teen-age mobs! They besieged him for 10 days last spring in New York's famed Paramount Theater while he was making an appearance there.
Some girls rented rooms in the Astor Hotel and demanded a "Soupy view." When Soupy leaned out his window and waved to the crowds, the police threatened to arrest him.
My wifely visiting rights consisted of sneaking through the mobs and seeing him backstage. Toward the end of his run, I found him haggard and 15 pounds lighter but still exclaiming: "This is it—what we took all the knocks for!"

Despite acclaim by kids and adults (20 percent of his audiences are grownups), I still heard a man ask: "Who IS this Soupy Sales?" Well, I could have told him. Soupy is the slapstick comic who made pie-in-the-face throwing so popular that Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis, Burt Lancaster, and other Hollywood stars lined up to get a meringue of shaving cream shoved in their faces. He is the constant cut-up who invented a dance step at a party which developed into a teen-age favorite, the Mouse (his records for the dance have sold a million copies). And his is the face goggling at you from sweatshirts and bubble gum. There are now 60 such items selling at the rate of $10 million a year.
But as his wife for 15 years, let me tell you who Soupy Sales really is: not the comic kids love and adults either hate or love, but the thirty-ish man with wiry black hair who never quite outgrew being the "school nut" in our home town of Huntington, W. Va.
His widowed mother ran the local dry-goods store, and he was known as Milton "Soupbone" Hines, and his buddies were nicknamed "Chickenbone" and "Hambone." Soupbone studied to be a newspaperman but was more interested in show time than deadline.
We were married in 1950, after his graduation from Marshall College, and he went to work for a radio station at $20 a month. "You just wait," he'd promise. "You'll see." I did see, too, but it truly was a wait. A good friend of ours managed the Huntington station, and one day we got terrible news—he'd been fired.
It was a sour moment but, as it so happens, the real beginning, too, because he landed a job in Cincinnati and called in Soupy as a disc jockey. So we took our first step to conquer the hip big cities—and, believe me, using the same downing that slayed them in Huntington.
Cincinnati? I remember my husband changing his name to Sales because Soupy Hines sounded "like a commercial." I also remember Soupy's discouragement He had enthusiastically presented an idea for a new type of show, a teen-age dance program with music and fun. "It'll never go," said the bosses. Six months later Dick Clark came on with a similar program, and "American Bandstand" made show-business history.
We next packed for Cleveland, where a newspaper named Soupy's show "best of the year"—but he was fired the following week. "They think I'm a nut just because I talk loud, make funny faces, and gag up a show," Soupy would say, talking loud, making faces, and tossing off gags. "Am I a nut?" Certainly not I told him. Doesn't every husband act that way after he's been fired?
We have good memories of Cleveland, though. Our oldest boy Tony, now 13, was born there and so was Soupy's trademark. He wrote an Indian skit which needed a totally unexpected climax, and what could be more unexpected than a pie flying in from nowhere?
Soupy wanted to work in Detroit but he couldn't get a job until a station executive there accidentally turned on Soupy's audition tape, which had been long-forgotten. We moved to Detroit with happy results.

Our youngest boy Hunt now 11, was born there. Soupy got a network show and became one of the highest-paid local performers in the nation. He worked so hard, though, that on one of the rare occasions he was home, Tony rushed to him with: "Hey, Dad, Soupy Sales is on! You gotta see him!" After seven years in Detroit Soupy suddenly said: "Look, this is great, but when I'm 50, with mortgage paid and kids raised and sitting on my patio, you know what’ll I ask myself—'Could I have made it really big?'"
So we packed up for Los Angeles, and lightning struck when Soupy was summoned to the phone for a "call from Frank Sinatra." Soupy thought it was a practical joke, but there came Frankie's voice saying: "Could I be on your show? Not just a walk-on. I want the works—pie in the face and all." So Sinatra, who rates $50,000 a guest appearance, came on free—and all Hollywood followed.
Soupy became a celebrity. We bought a big house, and Soupy had time for the boys and his hobby, painting. So one day, he said: "You know, New York is really big . . ." and I began to pack.
New York was big. It brought Soupy to the entire country through everything from the Ed Sullivan Show to county fairs to campus "concerts," where everybody shows up with a pie in hand.
Why do people love Soupy? Maybe because he reciprocates boundlessly and has retained a sense of absurdity about adult life, talking to such show characters as White Fang, the "meanest dog in the world," and tossing off nonsensical one-liners such as "Show me a dead Communist, and I'll show you a Red Skeleton."
Anyway the love affair became nationwide, and I had just settled down in New York when our oldest boy announced he had formed a rock & roll trio called Tony and His Tigers, had cut his first record, and "was going places!" Before I could get my breath, Soupy charged in and said:
"I just signed to do five pictures for Columbia! We're going to shoot them on location all over the country. Better pack . . ."
I felt as if I'd just been hit in the face with a pie.

Soupy was involved in a few interesting projects that didn’t get off the ground. One was a projected TV series with Gale Gordon called Where There’s Smokey, which had a spot on ABC’s Wednesday night schedule unveiled to affiliates in March 1959. For whatever reason, the network decided not to go with it. Then ABC announced the following March it was financing a live action/animation pilot produced by former Disney storyman Brice Mack with Sales interacting with a mouse, penguin and others animated by his Era Productions. Whether any of the artwork survives, I don’t know. But I’d like to think one of the gags involved a cartoon character who pointed to Soupy and said “I like him. He’s silly.” I’m sure the audience would have agreed.

Using His Head

One of the seemingly endless “George” cartoons is Cat-Tails For Two, which marked the debut of Speedy Gonzales.

You know how it works. A big dumb character keeps calling another character “George” (even if his name isn’t George).

In this cartoon, the big dumb Bernie (voiced by Stan Freberg) tells George (voiced by Mel Blanc) “I’ll be real smart and use my head.” He certainly does. He uses it to bang himself against a steel beam. I really like George’s expressions here.



The scene features the familiar “squashed flat against the body gag” you’ve seen in other cartoons.



Rod Scribner, Phil De Lara, Herman Cohen and Chuck McKimson animate from a story by Tedd Pierce.

Invasion of Terrytown

Green cats with bat wings and feet that turn into wheels invade Terrytown, populated only with mice. Who can save the innocent rodents? The name “Terrytown” should give it away.

There are a few neat gags in Goons From the Moon (1950), like when Mighty Mouse (in song) urges the animator to hurry up and draw him so he can save the day. I like this scene that’s a throwback to the early ‘30s, when inanimate objects came to life. The mouse spots the asteroid or whatever it is the cats are on as it approaches Earth. The through-the-telescope take is pretty standard issue, but I like how the telescope jumps and runs away in fear.



Who animated the scene? Beats me. Terrytoons never credited animators until Gene Deitch arrived several years later.

The Comedian and the Agent

Stars don’t have lives like you and me. They’re little corporations. They have all kinds of people working for them in a professional capacity—agents, business managers, personal secretaries, public relations types.

Jack Benny had a number of agents. I haven’t really looked to see who handled what, but for many years he not only employed his brother-in-law by marriage, Myrt Blum, he was represented by Arthur Lyons. The pair-up began in the vaudeville days and continued toward the end of the 1940s when Jack approached MCA to set up a corporate tax deal just as it had done with Amos ‘n’ Andy. MCA agreed, provided Lyons was out of the picture. Lyons was bought out. When he died of a heart attack in 1963, Lyons was lauded in Variety as a product of another time, leaving the impression he was an earthy guy a few steps removed from the Garment District, as opposed to the fast-talking, insincere hype-ster of Madison Avenue.

Radio Guide devoted a great deal of space in its edition of December 19, 1936 to Arthur Lyons, Benny and their relationship. Here it is, including the pictures that accompanied the story.

The GREATEST FRIENDSHIP IN RADIO
THEY'VE BEEN PARTNERS FOR YEARS—BUT THEY'VE NEVER HAD A CONTRACT! AND THEY'RE MORE THAN PARTNERS—THEY'RE PALS!
BY DOROTHY SPENSLEY
GETTING Jack Benny to talk about himself is easy. Easy, like roller-skating up Mount Everest in a roaring blizzard. The man to talk to about Jack Benny is Arthur Lyons, his personal representative. He knows more about the humor king that Jack (born Benjamin Kubelsky) does himself.
A chat with Jack is pleasant, but sterile. He is so modest that it's devastating. Ask him about his success and he grins, rolls the ever-present cigar in his mouth, and murmurs something about it being "a long, hard grind." He has definite ideas about the kind of radio humor he purveys—it must be "high class and low down," he says—but he'd rather tell you what a truly superlative artist Georgie Jessel is. "Much better than I am at impromptu speeches," Benny says. And he means it!
Sure, it's fun to talk to a celebrity who is self-effacing, unspoiled by success, but if you want to get a peek at the real Jack Benny, the man who has been wowing the airwaves for plus three years now on his exuberant dessert program, who has a corner on the gentle business of toppling personal appearance records, whose stage and screen work brings whoops of joy, then you want to see Arthur Lyons.
Short, sturdy, compact Arthur Lyons is not Jack Benny's agent. Get that straight at the outset. He's something more than a mere "agent" or "manager." Lyons is a "personal representative." He explains carefully that he is not out for grabbing money for his clients (he has something like two hundred top-notch artists in all the artistic fields). He is building lasting careers for them. He'd just as soon turn down $22,500 a week for Benny as not. In fact, he has. A sponsor offered that much for Funmaker Benny's services. Jack didn't care that it was turned down. His honest opinion is that no man, artist or otherwise, is worth that much money a week. That gives you an idea of them.

EIGHTEEN years ago Benny was doing a "dumb" act. In show business, it's a vaudeville turn that has no talking. Jack, a skilled violinist, had been teamed with a fellow named Woods. Benny and Woods. He was then doing a solo skit. As for statistics, we don't need to tell you that Jack is a Waukegan, Illinois, boy who has made good. History tells, too, that Jack's poppa was a haberdasher; first name Mayer. His mother's name is Emma. He has a sister, married, living in Lake Forest, Illinois.
Jack had a friend named Phil Baker. Yes, the same. They were pals, playing the same circuit, but never the same bill. Know why? Phil played an accordion, then as now. Jack, with his violin, was a rival act. Vaudeville bookers never put two "dumb" acts on the same bill. In those distant days, when war clouds were coloring the eastern horizon, they were "curtain ringer-uppers." If either one ever played "No. 2" on a bill, he thought he was a big-shot. Professional rivalry there was between the two young fellows, but never personal rivalry—they were the best of friends.
ARTHUR LYONS, at that time, was trying to re-enter the show business. He had been out of it for several years, dabbling with the drug business (junior drug clerk) for Druggist Louis Schenk. Louis was Joe and Nick Schenk's brother. Lyons had been a part of show business for a few years (he had acted and produced) and it was in his blood. He had run away from his birthplace in Minsk, Russia, and gone to the Orient. In Pekin he got his first sample of theatrical life, and liked it. It wasn't much of a job, but it was show business. In the international colony's theater in Pekin, where so many foreign tongues are spoken, it was necessary for a boy to parade across the stage carrying an announcement in various languages of the next number. He was that boy.
Saving enough money, Lyons travelled steerage to New York from the Orient. It took him two or more months to make the trip. But he didn't mind. He had plenty of time before he joined up with show business in Manhattan. He was then ten years old! He was eight when he ran away from Minsk. He was seventeen when he first met Jack Benny. Lyons is now thirty-five, and a success. One year he and his firm, Lyons, McCormick and S. Lyons, Arthur's brother, did six million dollars worth of "actor business," as he calls it, netting six hundred thousand dollars for his organization.
He has been president and chairman of the Council of the International Theatrical Artists' Association; president of the Agents' Association of Actors' Equity; always an important figure in the advancement of his profession. If Benny, his old pal, is today an important figure, so is Arthur Lyons, although not as much spotlighted. Their success has been shared through the years. As one climbed, the other climbed with him. Their careers are so closely bound together that it is hard to tell where the guiding talents of Lyons stop and the artistic talents of Benny begin. Their abilities are perfectly fused. One complements the other.
OF COURSE, if Jack didn't have the superlative talent that he has, if he didn't know timing, voice inflection, all the things that make the master humorist, Lyons would have nothing to exploit. But if Jack did not have the omniscient Lyons to "groom" him, to guide his professional destinies, counsel him, chances are that he might still be making the $1800 a year that he was making when Lyons met him. Today, Jack is in the upper brackets, and very much so.
The scene shifts to nearly two decades ago. One day Phil Baker, then and now a Lyons client, brought to Arthur his friend, Benny. Jack was playing the Keith-Orpheum Circuit, a two-a-day, and Lyons was booking for Loew and Fox, three-a-day circuits. Lyons knew he couldn't better Jack's circumstances by making him play one extra performance a day in booking him on his circuits, but that didn't prevent the three from becoming friends. For several years they lived together, sharing a six-dollar room (two dollars apiece) at the Forest Hotel on 45th Street; at the National Vaudeville Club, or the San Rafael Hotel.
One day Jack told Arthur that he wanted him to handle his professional career. He felt that he had gone as far as he could sawing at violin strings in his present capacity. Lyons thought a minute. That was fifteen years ago. He's been thinking along those smart lines ever since. "Jack, we're going to get you a band," he said. "We're going to get you the best and biggest band that there ever was, and you are going to stand in front of it with your violin, but you're not going to play, you're going to talk. That will be our excuse, because you know how to handle a violin, for the most expensive band in theatrical history."
JACK had discovered, by that time, that his purring -voiced monologue had possibilities. Contrary to published reports that Jack's Navy Relief Society appearances, during his stretch as one of Uncle Sam's sea dogs, had showed him that he could wise-crack, Jack's first experience with the spoken word on the stage came when he was a part of the long -forgotten New York Winter Garden show. Charles King, then an ace singer, had an act with Jack wherein he kidded Jack into talking. "Why don't you say something?" he'd cue, and Jack would put aside his violin and talk. This was a Lyons idea, too.
They assembled the band. Using circus parlance, it was the "costliest aggregation of musical artists ever assembled into a jazz orchestra." Joe Venuti, now with his own band, was first violinist. Jack and Arthur made no profits; salaries for the band took them all. But it did just what the boys wanted. It established Jack as a personality. They kept the band one year, then dropped it. Jack was lifted from a "curtain raiser" to dignity. He could stand alone as a theatrical artist.
From that moment on, Jack Benny was a "prestige name" in show business. First a vaudeville headliner, a talented master of ceremonies, he became an integral part of musical shows, night-club entertainment, Earl Carroll's Vanities, a Sam Harris farce, films (Hollywood Revue of 1929, Chasing Rainbows, Trans-Atlantic Merry-Go-Round, Broadway Melody of 1936, The Big Broadcast of 1937, plus others). Five years ago Benny and radio discovered their natural affinity for each other.

AS FAR back as the glorified band era of Benny's career, Lyons has been grooming Jack for just the sort of success he is now enjoying. A dignified, respected position in the theatrical world. Jack Benny's name stands for decency, integrity. Integrity is the main plank in the Lyons platform for Benny. Lyons (and Benny, too) is proud of the fact that whenever an important office comes up in theatrical circles, a benefit, or something, almost without exception Jack is the first to be asked to head it. The theater world appreciates that quality in Jack. As for Benny, his biggest pride, just about, is his membership in the Friars' Club. It was Jack, incidentally, who reached into his pocket and saved the club from dissolution when its debts overwhelmed it. Jack didn't tell me, of course. He wouldn't.
If Jack has any fault, it is his generosity. Every month his auditor finds cheeks that are unaccounted for. "What does this mean?" he'll inquire of Benny. "Oh, tha-at," says Jack, wriggling a little uncomfortably. "Oh, yeah that's the fellow who did a tumbling act in a bill I played fourteen years ago. Met him on the street the other day. He's been having a tough time. It's just a little check I made out to tide him over the rough spots."
It is only by accident that these gratuities are noticed. Somebody whom Jack has helped tells someone else. The Lyons office does not believe in publicizing them. Jack cringes at the very thought of mentioning them. About the only thing that can bring Jack's blood to the boiling point is mention of his charities and his more than comfortable income. The recent unauthorized mention in a national magazine of Jack's plump bank-roll made Jack furious. His thought is "What about the man in the street?" Why do I want to shove my good luck in his face?"
JACK is definitely class-conscious. He even sees insurance agents. He said to me once: "I have to see them. They're trying to make a living, aren't they? If I won't see them, and no one else will, how can they sell anything?" He accepts his large salary because it enables him to distribute much more happiness, and to relieve more need, than he could without money.
If Jack is noted for his integrity, he is also noted for his overwhelming modesty. It [If] he were playing three months straight at the Palace Theater, which would be a record, Jack would probably say, off-handedly, if you asked him how he was doing, "Oh, all ri-ght," giving the impression that he was three leaps ahead of The Wolf.
Lyons, who keeps close tab on Benny's tours, tells of an experience, two years ago, in Chicago, that exemplifies Jack's overwhelming modesty. Jack calls Lyons, or Lyons calls Jack—they always talk together on the phone at least once a day, whether Jack is in Hollywood or Manhattan.
During the Winter of 1934, Lyons booked Jack into the Chicago Theater. When the week came for Jack to play the house, up blew the biggest blizzard the city had seen for years. Lyons cursed himself for booking Jack in the dead of a middle -western Winter. If he had waited until toward Spring, bad weather wouldn't confound the grosses. The blizzard was a honey. Snow knee-deep, wind howling along the canyons of State Street, blasting in from Lake Michigan a few blocks over. Who was bothering about a theatrical attraction when it was dangerous to step from your door? Lyons thought he might as well learn the worst. He phoned, from Los Angeles, to the Chicago's manager.
HOW are things?" answered the manager. "It's a sight. People in line since five o'clock this morning, standing in snow up to their knees. We've got fires burning to keep 'em from freezing. The newsreel men are busy photographing the mobs and the blizzard. We hard to open the theater doors at eight o'clock this morning, instead of eleven-thirty, as we usually do. They'd have frozen to death if we hadn't."
Lyons waited for Jack's first appearance before he phoned Benny. "How is it going, Jack?" he asked, confident of Benny's answer. He knew that his client was "knocking them over." Back came Benny's voice, small and discouraged, over the hundreds of miles of wires: "We've got tough competition, Arthur," he answered. "The worst blizzard in years. It's going to be hard."
"But I've just talked to the manager, Jack, said Lyons. "You're breaking good-weather records! You're doing sensational business. Let me talk to the manager again." The manager answered in a moment: "There are three thousand people standing in the snow to see him," he gloated. The Chicago Theater seats five thousand. Jack made $64,000 for the theater during the blizzard week. He returned, with another blizzard, on a second engagement three weeks later and the boxoffice took in $60,000.
Did Jack think that he was sensational? He did not. Oh, he was getting along, that’s all. He soft-pedals all mention of success. Won't admit it to his nearest friend. He has stricken the word from his vocabulary; that I know to be a fact. At least, when it applies to himself. What can you do with a guy like that? A regular Clarence Buddington Kelland hero. Lyons has been trying for years to make Jack argue with him. Just recently he succeeded.
LYONS was delighted when Jack began to argue out managerial problems with him. He has even arrived at the point where Jack will actually read through the film scripts submitted for his approval instead of skimming halfway through the script and nodding his approval. Jack's success, particularly in the current "Big Broadcast of 1937," is due to his representative's insistence that Benny sit in on the story and the selection of his director. Lyons, the omniscient, knows that any good director that Benny approves is not going to bother with a bad story, so there is double protection that Benny will get the kind of screen material he needs. When he finishes "College Holiday," Jack will shoulder the burden of an all -romantic role co-starred with comedienne Carole Lombard in "Tightwad." It puts him in the class of the important romantic male stars like Bill Powell, Fred MacMurray, and others.
Jack's great success lies in his knowledge of timing, says Lyons. He instinctively knows whether to read a line "up" for a laugh or to read it down." You've noticed his reading in his radio broadcasts. Some lines Jack gives a marked "down" inflection. Others he slides "up." But always in that creamy, poised, purring voice, with its boudoir overtones. Jack also has the ability, at a moment's glance, to see whether written copy has genuine humor. He writes some of his own copy. At the moment, he is training a number of young writers to supply him with radio material. His after -dinner speeches, which are excellent, are all written by himself. Then he brings them in to let Arthur see them.

THE most unusual feature of this Damon-Pythias friendship is that there has never been a written contract between the two. It's all verbal and sealed with a handshake. In show business, where competition is frequently cruel and unethical, this is a miracle. Only once was the professional association of Benny and Lyons broken. For two years Benny was handled by another organization. The personal friendship continued, but the two years were unhappy for the two men. Benny is now back in the Lyons fold without a written contract. Jack wishes, sometimes, that he had it down in writing. It would give him a secure feeling against some of the Hollywood wolves. But Arthur shakes his head. "It burns 'em up more this way, Jack," he says.
AS FOR the "boudoir overtones" in his voice, Jack is strictly a one -woman man. And Mary Livingstone, whom he married on January 12, 1927, is The Woman. If she has any rival, it is a little charmer of two, named Joan Naomi, the Benny's adopted daughter. If Joan said so, Jack would gladly toss up his career. Fortunately for us, Joan is just learning to talk, and she wouldn't demand that of her daddy, anyway. She doesn't demand anything of Jack, but gets far more that way. When Jack returned from a recent New York trip he brought Joan Naomi twenty-four new dresses, selected with care.
Mary Livingstone (born Sayde Marks) is as generous as Jack. She loves to buy things. Her pleasure is as much in their selection as in their presentation. Knowing her for so many years, Lyons says she has genuine literary talent, and, if she would set herself to writing, could make a name for herself. Lyons considers the Bennys an ideally happy married couple.
MARY has a brilliant wit. Jack adores people who make him laugh. He worships Mary, therefore. "Nat" Burns, known as George Burns, of the inimitable Burns and Allen, has that laugh -making ability. He can make Jack scream with laughter. They are the best of friends. Moreover, even their wives are good friends! George Jessel is another humorist at whom Jack cackles. "Cackles" is the word for it He has a chortle that rings out, and establishes him in any crowd.
The story of the friendship of Jack Benny and Arthur Lyons could spin on for pages. Lyons is full of anecdotes about his friend. Not only anecdotes, but genuine affection, the kind that springs from the heart and—yes, the soul. In a business where today's friend may be tomorrow's bitterest enemy, the deepness, the sincerity, the honesty of their friendship is something that can be described only as inspiring. The most inspiring part of the friendship is that it will undoubtedly last as long as they live.
Jack Benny may be heard Sundays over an NBC network at 7 p.m. EST (6 CST; 5 MST; 4 PST); and later for the West Coast at 8:30 p.m. PST (9:30 MST).