I'm A-Dyin', Rabbit

Gerry Chiniquy helps Yosemite Sam through a dying scene after thinking he’s been shot in “Hare Trigger” (1945). Bugs Bunny has poured red ink on the criminal cowpoke, who thinks it’s blood.



I don’t know who was assisting Chiniquy when this cartoon came out. Sam Nicholson and John Kennedy were part of Friz Freleng’s unit at the time, I believe, and it could have been one of them. Virgil Ross, Manny Perez and Ken Champin were the other animators. Mike Maltese wrote the story.

The Problem with Radio Comedy

Old time radio comedy shows are loved by many people today, but Fred Allen didn’t have much good to say about them. He knew what the problem was with them. The problem was everybody else.

John Crosby of the New York Herald Tribune gave over his column of September 10, 1947 to Allen, who proceeded to find fault with the state of radio comedy everywhere, sparing only the little tubes and tuning dial on the radio set itself.

Reading the column, it’s hard to determine where the truth ended and the satire began. Allen had little time for censors or network executives. He wasn’t enamoured of the idea of guest stars, something his sponsor insisted upon. But was he honestly dismissive of his writer Nat Hiken or supporting players like Minerva Pious and Kenny Delmar?

This version of the story was lifted from the Ottawa Journal, so you’ll noticed the mixed American and British spelling, a peculiar trait of Canadian print media.

RADIO IN REVIEW
A Kind Word for the Comedian
By FRED ALLEN
The comedian is the whipping boy of the radio industry. He is the object of critics’ scorn and a target for freelance derision. The comedian's jokes are ridiculed by intellectual and cretin alike. Listeners in mansion and motel agree that the comedian is a no-talent lout whose sense of humor is non-existent. At women's clubs, on dank afternoons, polls are regularly taken. The results, invariably released for publication, tend to show that radio comedy is in a state of galloping disintegration. National magazines take turns in printing semi-erudite post-mortems on the radio funster and his wares. "Variety", the "National Geographic" of the honky tonk, annually runs its hackneyed headline "Which came first—The Egg or the Radio Comedian?"
Since radio first began, no convert has deserted the ranks of the scoffers to champion the cause of the radio comedian. No defender has attempted to kindle a mighty hotfoot that will cause humanity to yelp and raise its heel from the comedian's throat. The "voice in the wilderness" has not cried out in his behalf. Truly the radio comedian has been abandoned by all mankind.
Before he becomes extinct before he is naught but a petrified memory whose tracks are found by scientists retreating down the corridor to oblivion, I would like to say kind word for the radio comedian. His artistic life is a bedlam. Many hazards confront him on his way to the microphone each week. Multiple forces conspire to thwart him at every turn.
A list of aggravations would include . . .
THE WRITER: The average radio writer is an ulcer with a pencil. His rancid expression leads one to assume that his mother had an acid condition and the writer was weaned on sour milk. The weight of the writer's head causes his buggywhip backbone to bend forward, giving the impression that the writer is concealing a boomerang in the back of his coat. The writer instinctively dislikes the comedian who employs him. The writer is always about to write a smash play, sign with a picture company or assemble his own package show. The comedian is paying the writer a large salary which stop the writer from leaving radio to do big things. The writer is so busy bewailing his upholstered fate that he has scant time to work on the comedian's scripts. When the stale jokes he has contrived fall flat the writer blames the comedian. When the comedian's contract is finally cancelled, the writer packs his files and his benzedrine and goes to work to undermine another comedian. Most of the comedy the writer turns out for the comedian is not to be laughed at.
THE CENSOR: The censor is the house detective of the radio network. The censor is usually a man with no sense of humor who is so narrow-minded he thinks in strips. He comes to his job equipped with nothing but a blue pencil and the right-of-way. The censor can find dirt in an infant’s glance. The height of a censor’s ambition is to delete everything in a comedian’s script. The censor would like to hear the comedian at the microphone reading nothing but punctuation.
THE STOOGE: The stooge is the unhappiest character in radio. He knows that he is funnier than the comedian. His wife is forever reminding him. The stooge is always stalking the comedian demanding bigger billing more money or funnier lines. Utopia will strive when the stooge has his own program and the comedian is working for him.
THE SPONSOR: The comedian's sponsor is cannon happy. The sponsor was the first man to shoot a rice grain, out of a cannon. Every employee in the sponsor's factory has been shot out of a cannon. The sponsor himself has been shot but of a cannon. The sponsor's new breakfast food is called "Bang!" Bang not only sparkles, snaps and crackles, as it is being eaten, Bang explodes in babies' mouths. The sponsor wants these startling facts brought out in the commercials. The Bang commercials get longer and longer. The comedian doesn't dare complain. The comedian knows that the sponsor doesn't have to put him in a cannon to fire him.
THE STUDIO AUDIENCE: The studio audience is a mass of negative flotsam. Open the door of a radio studio at any hour of the day or night and a faceless group will flock inside to participate in quiz programs, community sings or to laugh and applaud as directed. Where they come from, where they go, nobody knows. Rumor hath it that most studio audiences are cannibals. They eat masters of ceremonies, they trap behind washing machines, electric stoves and other quiz bait. The studio audience is the bane of the comedian's existence. While he is trying to please the listeners at home he has to indulge in some low comedy to entertain his studio audience. The comedian knows that any joke an inch off the ground will be over the studio audience's head.
THE AGENCY EXECUTIVE: The agency executive is a man who has read "The Hucksters" and passed the Gardenia Test (The Gardenia Test is used by all reputable advertising agencies. The potential executive is seated at a desk. A gardenia is pinned to his lapel. If he has sufficient strength to rise to his feet bearing the weight of the gardenia, the applicant is dubbed executive, fitted for a swivel and welcomed into the agency fold.) The agency man must be able to drink cocktails at lunch and annoy the radio comedian at rehearsal by not laughing at his gags. The agency executive has his finger on the pulse of the nation, when he removes the finger from the pulse of the nation, the comedian has something to worry about.
THE GUEST STAR: The guest star is generally a temperamental Hollywood glamor girl. When the script is finished she insists that most of the jokes be rewritten. Her agent demands that the guest star's last three pictures, "Zombie in the Oven", "Chuck Wagon Clarisse" and "She Couldn't Say Maybe", be mentioned in the dialogue. When the program is over; the comedian hears one laugh. It is the guest star as she takes her cheque.
THE CRITIC: The radio critic is allergic to the comedian. When the comedian's gags are funny the critic prints them to save writing a column. When the comedian's gags are bad the critic prints them to show how lousy they are. This also saves the critic the trouble of writing a column. The comedian, like the other piece of bread in a three-decker sandwich, is always in the middle.
THE SURVEY: The radio survey determines the comedian's popularity. In the United States there are sixty million radio sets in operation. Nobody knows now many people listen to each set. On the basis of a few hundred phone calls, made each month, the survey arrives at a mythical figure which supposedly is the approximate number of alleged listeners tuning in the comedian's program. The comedian has his ups and downs on the survey. The lowest rating the comedian ever had was minus ten. This meant that not only nobody was listening to the program but ten people who were going to buy radios didn’t because the comedian was on the air.
FAN MAIL, FRIENDS, etc: Fan mail and friends are sources of annoyance. Each week the comedian receives hundreds of postcards and letters. His fans want photographs, autographs, tickets for his program, copies of old scripts, money and advice. The comedian is bounded to appear at every benefit from the biggest affair at Madison-Square Garden down to a testimonial dinner being given in a decompression chamber for some sandhog. The comedian's friends are always dropping in to remind him that Jack Benny and Bob Hope had great programs earlier in the week, and that Lum 'n Abner have just passed him on the Hooper. After a few years in radio the comedian shudders at the approach of two people— the mailman and a friend.
THE INCOME TAX: When the comedian comes to the end of his fiscal year, he finds that he has to pay out from 60 to 80 per cent of his income in taxes. The rest of his money he has paid to his agent for commission, mailed to indigent relatives for their support and loaned to old actors who knew him when. After working like the proverbial mongrel all on the comedian finds that he has no money, he has made a million enemies and be has had use of the welkin.
EPILOGUE: The next time you join a crowd and radio comedian's name comes up—don't join the great majority—say a kind word. The memory of your kind word is probably all the comedian will have when his career is ended.

Ub Avery

Some of the things Tex Avery’s known and lauded for were invented before Avery ever became a cartoon director. But, if I may venture an opinion, he perfected them.

In the Ub Iwerks cartoons “Movie Mad” (1931), a Western bad guy’s eyes pop out. Not as exaggerated as Avery took it, but the concept had to start somewhere. This would have been pretty far out for 1931.



There were a couple of cartoons where Avery had his characters running in and out of doors on the left and right sides of the frame. The idea may have come from a French bedroom farce on stage for all I know, but Iwerks uses it in this cartoon. It’s not at the blinding speed as in Avery’s “Little Rural Riding Hood” (released in 1949) but this may be the first time it was used in a cartoon. To watch Flip take his time and then bother to close the door behind him is a little painful, it’s so slow.



No one other than Iwerks is credited on the cartoon.

A Beautiful Curve Ball

“Here comes McGrip’s beautiful curve,” says the announcer in Tex Avery’s Batty Baseball. And a beauty it is. The fans in the stands appreciate it. Note the war-time salute.



Ray Abrams, Ed Love and Preston Blair are the animators. John Wald is the announcer. It sounds like Pinto Colvig got in one line as McGrip but was replaced later in the cartoon with Kent Rogers. And the growly ball player who stopped the action in the cartoon’s best gag? I think it’s Harry Lang. I can’t get some of the growly voices in Avery’s Metro cartoons straight, but it sounds like the same guy who was the black cat in Bad Luck Blackie.

Advice From Don Wilson

Don Wilson was an integral part of Jack Benny’s cast (1938 photo to the right) and it’s difficult to imagine Benny carrying on for years with Howard Claney or Alois Havrilla as his announcer; both had been with the show before Wilson.

Wilson’s hiring for the Benny show was as fortuitous as it was improbable. Wilson was a play-by-play football broadcaster who had started in radio as a singer with a trio. Those aren’t exactly credentials for a comedy/variety show. But it proved to be a stroke of genius. Wilson and the rest of the cast interacted beautifully. And who better to sell food than a happy fat guy? Then when American Tobacco took over sponsorship and handed Wilson’s commercial spots at the start and close of the show to a bevy of others, the writers found ways to keep Donzie as a relevant and vital part of the show.

Wilson was incredibly popular and, season after season, in market after market, topped listener polls for favourite announcer. He bested some greats. Harry Von Zell, Ken Carpenter and Harlow Wilcox were beautiful foils on their shows; Carpenter was a Wilson protégé at KFI while Von Zell was signed by Columbia to star in a series of shorts.

Here’s an article about Don from Radio Life, a terrific Los Angeles-based publication, from March 30, 1947 (the photos accompanying this post are from elsewhere). Those of you familiar with his wife Lois Corbet from TV and radio may be puzzled by the reference to Marusia Rudunska. Before Lois, Wilson didn’t have the best luck with wives. He divorced two of them; reading between the lines of stories at the time, one was left with the impression that Donzie hooked up with some drama queens. Wilson filed for divorce from Marusia in June 1949, citing cruelty. The divorce was granted on June 19, 1950. He married Lois four days later in Santa Barbara. Four days?! We’ll avoid editorial comment.



Don Wilson
They Call Him “Jovial, Genial, Chubby,” but We Call Him a Distinguished Veteran Who’s Seen Radio Change for the Better
By Lillian Kramer
DON WILSON, rotund winner of Radio Life's 1946-47 Distinguished Achievement Award for the Most Enjoyable Commercial, has been "at it" for twenty-four years now, and that's a long time. Don has seen radio change from a frail to a giant industry. When he started dabbling in radio back in 1924 they weren't as fussy about production, sound and timing as they are now.
"Before commercial radio, it didn't make much difference if we ran over a minute or two," Don recalls.
"As a matter of fact, if we didn't have anything to put on the air—or if someone failed to show up for a broadcast—the station just signed off for a while."
A bit more informal than things are today!
Don confesses there wasn't much money then in radio, "but it was a lot of fun and we learned as we went along".
Most people got into early radio because they were musically inclined, either instrumentally or vocally, since most radio programs consisted solely of music. Don started out as a singer over a Denver transmitter. It was several years before he took up sportscasting and then announcing.
Our chubby voice of experience says that announcers, along with technique, have changed for the better since those early days.
"Announcers today have finer diction and a much greater command of the language.
"They must have more than a good voice and a knowledge of pronunciation, however. They have to be able to project a 'selling' voice over the microphone and to have an acceptable radio personality at the same time", he points out.
According to Don, the radio microphone is the daddy of the lie detector.
"The mike is the greatest detector of insincerity, and by the same token it reflects honesty and sincerity in an announcer's voice", he claims.
His Advice
Every week Don receives countless letters from would-be announcers seeking advice on how to succeed in radio. He answers them all:
"Be yourself. Don't try to mimic someone else. Your own personality is your greatest asset.
"Have an honest enthusiasm about the product you're selling and your voice will register successfully."
He certainly knows whereof he speaks. The Radio Life citation is the latest in a ten-year-long string of firsts in popularity polls which have picked him as favorite announcer.
Don has been with Jack Benny for thirteen years. Besides his Sunday stints for Benny, the Wilson verve also adds lift to Ginny Simms' Friday night airers, the Victor Borge-Benny Goodman show, and Kenny Baker's five-times-weekly early morning broadcasts.
Most of his fans write about his infectious laugh. Those background chuckles are not prop laughs. Don doesn't laugh at a joke because there's a paycheck in the shadows. He really enjoys a funny line and it's second nature for him to boom out with the hearty ho-hos.
After all those references to Don as a "Hemo Boy," comparisons to Mt. Wilson, and what not, the popular conception is a Don Wilson weighing in the neighborhood of 400 pounds, more or less.
Actually, Don weighs a trim 230—not bad for his six feet, two.
Ginny's warm-up shows make a lot over Don's avoirdupois. A make-believe storm at sea calls for a line like "Make Wilson stay in the middle of the ship—it's listing!"
Pounds don't worry Don, and he claims he diets only when he's asleep. His favorite midnight snack 1s a bowl of graham crackers and milk.
Wilson is married to Marusia Rudunska, a refugee Polish countess and a very talented dress designer. A couple of weeks ago Marusia had her new spring opening in Beverly Hills. Hollywood stars and Beverly Hills society were well represented.
Ginny was one of the hostesses at the opening, which was emceed, as you might guess, by Don Wilson. Marusia modeled her creations herself and caused quite a flurry.
Don is very proud of Marusia's success. He likes to talk about her workshop in downtown Los Angeles, about the clever things she does with fabrics, and about the gowns she whips up for Esther Williams and other stars.
"They call her the Valentina of Beverly Hills", he says gleefully.
The Wilsons have just moved into a new apartment in Beverly Hills and are now in the happy throes of decorating. They used to live on a ranch in the Valley, but their busy careers made town living more to be desired.
Besides his multitudinous radio assignments, Don finds time to be President of Acro-Speed, Incorporated, an automotive tune-up equipment plant located in Pasadena—and to be radio's number one gin-rummy addict.

The Making of Mr. Bug

Critics and apologists have come up with all kinds of reasons the second and last Fleischer feature Mr. Bug Goes To Town was a failure (Variety used the terms “mediocre” and “meagre” to describe the film’s weekly take figures). Some blame the release coming around Pearl Harbor Day. Others say an unfair comparison to Disney influenced movie goers. Still others say it just wasn’t very entertaining.

Whatever the reason, Variety announced on January 23, 1942 the Fleischer Studio would no more make feature films. And, as fans of old cartoons likely know, Paramount soon swooped in and took over the studio.

The feature seems to have received an extensive PR build-up. Here’s a newspaper column from the National Enterprise Association. The film was completed on November 6, 1941. Within two weeks, Dave Fleischer was in Hollywood, allegedly scouting talent but likely looking for work (he was in charge of the cartoon department at Columbia five months later).

This was originally posted at the Golden Age Cartoon forums with better versions of the pictures. I no longer have them and could only find these weak copies.

500 Glamor Girls Required to Make Film Star at Miami
Oldest Cartoon Studio Is Bughouse These Days During $1,000,000 Production of ‘Mr. Bug Goes to Town’ To Be Released Near Christmas
By JONATHAN KILBOURN
(NEA Service Staff Correspondent)
MIAMI, Aug. 8—In Hollywood it takes one glamor girl to make a picture star. Here in Miami it takes 500.
The 500 girls are artists who draw cartoon characters — “stars” — stars for the Fleischer Studio, oldest movie cartoon makers and, next, to Disney, the biggest. And the fact that it takes 500 girls to create a character of only one of a multitude of differences between the set-up in a West Coast studio and the situation here.
For one thing, the Fleischer company is the only major movie concern to be established successfully outside the Hollywood area. It moved here in 1938, after 22 years in New York. For another, it manages to do business without any of Hollywood’s hullabaloo. Although it has one of Florida’s largest payrolls, most Miamians don’t even know of its existence.
The company, under the leadership of Dave and Max Fleischer, now has under way its second full-length production (first was “Gulliver’s Travels”), the biggest project in its history. Titled “Mr. Bug Goes to Town” and costing over $1,000,000, it may prove a minor milestone in the progress of movie cartooning. It is the first all-cartoon feature-length picture with a non-fantasy plot—production officials describe it as a “modern romantic comedy-drama”—and instead of human actors it has insects.
Most Artists Have Two Jobs
These insect actors are, in a sense, among the highest paid in the business. Hoppity, the Jimmy Stewart-type grasshopper hero, draws $5000 a week, and Honey Bee, who reminds you of a Deanna Durbin heroine, gets $3750. C. Bagley Beetle, the insect menace, makes $1750. At least, it’s fair to set down those sums as salaries, because that is what the artists who create these characters are paid for the time Hoppity, Honey and Mr. Beetle are actually “in production.”
As in Hollywood, 55 per cent of the Fleischer feature’s budget is earmarked for “talent.” But instead of going into the pockets of five or six big-name stars, the $550,000 is divided among the 700 artists, including 500 girls, who create, animate, ink and color the make-believe movie stars feature players and extras, as well as design the “sets,” which are painted backgrounds.
Most of the girl artists are “inkers,” whose precision work consists of inking in the outlines of the penciled sketches created by the top artists and animators. Their average age is only 23, and they’re the prettiest bevy of beauties that never saw the screen.
Few of them, however, have Hollywood ambitions. They like Miami and the studio, and they want to stay here.
Hardly a soul at the studio holds down less than two jobs. Artists suggest story ideas, gagmen do art work, every one gets his or her chance to become the “voice” of a cartoon character.

Veteran Fleischer employee Mike Meyer [photo to the right], for example, is the voice of a popular comic strip character as well as of Smack, the “dead-end” mosquito in “Mr. Bug Goes to Town.” But he’s also an idea man who creates stories and gags and sketches characters.
Teamwork keynotes studio activity. Conferences are constantly being held—not the fabled, interminable conferences West Coast movie magnates are forever holding, but short staff meetings for the making of decisions and interchanging of opinions.
Unlike Hollywood, a cartoon studio can’t afford retakes; each foot of cartoon film requires weeks, even months of work. So changes must be made before work begins on the “shooting script.”
Planning and producing a Fleischer cartoon is an elaborate process—“Mr. Bug Goes to Town” has been in production for over a year, although it won’t be released until Christmas time. Over a month was spent deciding on the general outline the story should follow, then three months creating characters, which means perfecting their appearances, action, voices.
A cartoon studio doesn't need to hunt for talent as Selznick did for “Gone With the Wind” and Paramount is now doing for “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” If it wants a certain type of actor for a particular role, it just draws him.
When the story outline is complete, Dave Fleischer, this studio’s producer and director, puts the pencil sketches in his “moviola”—a device of his own invention which rapidly turns the sheets of drawing paper, gives the effect of motion. Thus he can tell, how nearly the preliminary sketches come to the desired effect.
Revisions then are made, details added to the script, backgrounds designed and colors selected. All the speaking parts are filled and voices recorded, for animators use the sound to visualize action.
Then the animating side of movie cartoon-making really begins to move. Pencil drawings are made, 24 per second for each character. There are 24 “frames,” or squares of film, shown on the screen each second, so for every second a moving character is on the screen, 24 pencil drawings must be made. Girl inkers place transparent celluloids over the drawings, trace the lines in ink. Others, called “opaquers,” color these outlined characters. The present Fleischer feature is in that status now “Mr. Bug Goes to Town," when it gets there, will have used up six tons of specially-mixed paint, including 1500 colors and three times that number of shades.
Film Uses 600,000 Pictures
The various characters, inked and colored on celluloid, are then placed against the color backgrounds and photographed, frame by frame, onto film. An hour-long motion picture contains 86,400 frames, and “Mr. Bug Goes to Town” will contain slightly over 100,000—average for a feature-length picture. But into this will have gone close to 600,000 separate celluloid action pictures, 650 separate backgrounds. In all, including working sketches, more than 1,000,000 drawings will have been made.
Final process in movie cartoon-making includes transferring the pictures, dialogue, music, other noises, all of which are on different films, to one film. After this is done, cutting and editing ready the film for release.
That’s when beaming, bespectacled Dave Fleischer, who has his finger in every studio pie, breathes a sigh of relief and takes a plane to New York, where he was born 47 years ago. It’s characteristic of him that when he arrives he stays quietly at the same small Broadway hotel he lived at in less lush days.
It is largely because of Fleischer’s unassuming qualities that his studio lacks Hollywood atmosphere. But he says it is due to the studio’s location. “You get a chance to be natural here and to forget the picture business,” he says.

Shrinking Duck

The gang gets together in the second half of the cartoon to vanquish the villain? Harman and Ising did it in the early ‘30s. An animal’s handicap turns out—in the climax scene—to be a blessing? Sounds like Dumbo, right? Put them together and you get the 1952 Terrytoon Flat Food Fledgling.

But what they didn’t have (besides the Terry Splash™, heard three times in this cartoon) was the shrink take. Observe Dinky Duck as a squirrel and a chipmunk try to stop a weasel from catching him (accompanied by a nice score by Phil Scheib). Notice how he shrinks before exiting from the scene. And notice how the weasel shrinks when he goes around the rope.



Now, a stretched, angular exit.



The old denture gag. Notice in the fifth drawing how the fur on the weasel lifts up.



All the animals have sped-up voices. Including a chipmunk! Oh, Paul Terry, if you only had them release some songs on Liberty Records....