Peace On Earth

Backgrounds from Hugh Harman’s pride and joy, Peace on Earth (1939). The background artist is uncredited. So is the effects animator who drew the slow-moving clouds.



Harman and his artists had come a long way from Sinkin’ in the Bathtub.

Cartoon Horse Runs To the Camera

Mickey Mouse’s runaway horse gallops toward the camera in The Plowboy. The animator uses a cycle of 32 drawings, one per frame. Here are some of them. I guess this was as close as you could get to 3-D in 1929. I imagine it still looks pretty effective on the big screen. (Oops! The horse’s bottom teeth lose their whiteness for a frame).



Here’s the cycle slowed down.



Hans Perk has posted the story drawings for this cartoon. See them at his excellent site.

John Crosby's First Radio Review

Radio and television of the 1940s and ‘50s needed someone to tell it the Golden Days weren’t always so golden. That someone, at least in the minds of many, was John Crosby.

Crosby was handed a radio column by the New York Herald Tribune, which did him the great favour of syndicating it across North America. Newspapers generally ran a “radio highlights” column and may have had PR chatter about some radio stars in gossip columns. Crosby was different. He had a standard that he thought radio should meet and when it didn’t, he didn’t mince words about it. Readers (many, at least) found him refreshing. Editors found him quotable and his quips would end up on the editorial pages. Crosby moved seamlessly into the TV age.

I admit I haven’t researched when Crosby’s column ceased; the Herald Tribune stopped publication in 1962 and had two other TV editors by the time it shut down. But I can tell you his first column appeared on May 6, 1946.

In it, Crosby talks about a show that’s forgotten today. Forever Ernest only ran from April 29 to July 22, 1946 as a summer replacement for Vox Pop. It was sponsored by Bromo-Seltzer. It sounded like the sponsor needed one after listening to an episode. It gave up on Jackie Coogan’s show and put its money behind Inner Sanctum instead. “Duke” mentioned in Crosby’s review was played by Arthur Q. Bryan, the voice of Elmer Fudd. The girl was Lurene Tuttle, one of radio’s most in-demand actresses.

The other sitcom he talks about starred one of Vancouver’s gifts to old-time radio: Alan Young. And considering how much he liked the character, it’s interesting Crosby doesn’t identify the actor who plays Hubert Updike on Young’s show. As radio fans likely know, it was Jim Backus, using the voice he later gave to Thurston Howell III on Gilligan’s Island. The show also benefitted from the talents of Kenny Delmar and Parker Fennelly. The sponsor hated their characters, a loud-mouthed politician and a farmer from New England, so they were kicked off the show. Fred Allen, knowing talent and comedy when he heard it, grabbed them and turned them into Senator Claghorn and Titus Moody. The rest is history. (The sponsor, incidentally, was Bristol Myers, makers of Sal Hepatica). Over the years, Young had a number of different shows on radio and TV, playing earnest young men inexplicably getting into uncomfortable or improbable situations. One of them involved a talking horse. You know the show.

RADIO IN REVIEW
By JOHN CROSBY
[Mr. Crosby begins today a column of comment on radio programs which will appear Monday through Friday each week.]
In the Footsteps of Harold Lloyd
In the mid-1920s Harold Lloyd earned a respectable fortune with a screen characterization that became almost as standardized as Charlie Chaplin’s tramp. Over and over again, to the delight of his millions of fans, Mr. Lloyd played the part of a wide-eyed, timid, awkward but lovable youth who blundered into preposterous situations that didn’t fit her personality. Therein lay the laughs. At the end, of course, Mr. Lloyd always landed somewhat precariously on his feet with the girl in his arms.
Radio, which, after all, is only half the age of the movies, has rediscovered this formula and plunged into it with the enthusiasm of a bobby-soxer hearing the “Liebestod” for the first time. Latest performer to work the old vein is Jackie Coogan, who was starring in pictures just about the time Mr. Lloyd was hanging from that clock in “Safety Last.”
* * *
In his new program entitled “Forever Ernest”, (WABC 8 p. m. Mondays) which started last week, Mr. Coogan plays a lovelorn soda jerk of such fragility that his girl knocks him cold with a single, accidental punch. For half an hour, he stumbles all over his own feet but at the end he has the gangsters covered when the police burst in.
“Stop biting my finger nails,” Mr. Coogan tells his smoothie friend Duke who gets him into all these difficulties.
“She’s really not a girl. She’s more of a blonde.”
Those two lines exemplify the comedy which was fairly sparse the night the program started. In its opening episode the writers have endeavored to mix comedy and melodrama and wound up with a hash which wasn’t either one or the other. Each of these episodes, I take it, will be complete in themselves, and if you’re interested you can tune in tonight.
* * *
However, my advice is to wait until Friday night and to listen to the Alan Young show (WJZ, 9 o’clock), where the Harold Lloyd pattern is utilized far more skillfully. Mr. Young is a twenty-eight-year-old Canadian-born comedian who won a name for himself in his native country before coming to the United States in 1944.
He plays Mr. Lloyd’s old role with a broad wink at the audience which, in this atomic age, it badly needs. The whole program, in fact, kids itself unmercilessly. Mr. Young engages in a running feud with a character named Hubert Updike, a rich boy with a Harvard accent and a Cadillac, who attempts to lure Alan’s girl away with his pretty promises and says “Gloat! Gloat! Gloat!” when he thinks he has succeeded. The show is considerably enriched by the presence of Jean Gillespie, a very clever comedienne indeed. When I listened she was going Hollywood with a feminine intensity that I found very amusing.
“I’ll throw myself into the reservoir,” says Alan, who disapproves of this Hollywood business.
“I don’t care.”
“Do you realize you have to drink that water?”
* * *
It’s that sort of comedy and much of it is pretty funny. As you’ll readily recognize, this ground has been spaded before, but Mr. Young’s writers have, as it were, refertilized it with great ingenuity. I have only two objections to the show I heard. One was a Jane Russell joke of questionable taste. The other was the fact that George Jessel, that tireless guest star, somehow got mixed up in the festivities and dampened them considerably.
I hope Mr. Young steers clear of Miss Russell in the future. As for Mr. Jessel, I don’t imagine he’ll be around again for some time, at least on the Young show. You can’t really avoid Mr. Jessel entirely unless you turn the radio off.

Later in the week, Crosby tackled windfall giveaways to people with pathetic stories, The Theatre Guild of the Air, Mr. District Attorney, and shows with breathless teenaged girls. He ended with a rave about Fred Allen’s “Mr. and Mrs. Morning Show” parody with Tallulah Bankhead, one of Allen’s all-time great sketches. We’ll try to transcribe that one.

I enjoy Crosby’s columns and agree with much of what he has to say. A number have been posted on the blog already. When I find time, I’ll put up a few more.

Betty Boop For President

Betty Boop sings a push for votes in Betty Boop For President (1932). And she does impersonations, too, morphing her appearance. Oddly, she doesn’t turn into F.D.R., who won the election that year.



The stiff collar indicates Betty is doing an impression of President Herbert Hoover.



She’s now Al Smith, who lost the Democratic nomination in 1932 to Roosevelt (after losing the presidential vote four years earlier). Comedians made fun of the fact that Smith insisted on calling a radio a “raddio.” Betty does that, too.



Gag’s over. She pulls down the brim of her hat and becomes Betty again.



Betty wins the White House at the end of the cartoon, thanks no doubt to animal rights activists (cars are stopped to allow cats to cross a city intersection) and supporters of heterosexual conversion therapy (a hard-boiled inmate is effeminised).

Seymour Kneitel and Doc Crandall get the animation credits. Mae Questel is Betty. I don’t know if New York-based radio mimic Johnny Woods supplied the voices of Hoover and Smith; I’d have to listen more carefully to see if it sounds like him.

Blast That Tongue

Tex Avery made several cartoons involving noise and escaping it so someone doesn’t hear it. There’s Rock-a-bye Bear, Deputy Droopy and, in a variation on the theme, The Legend of Rockabye Point. All of them zip along with one gag flowing into the next.

Here’s one from Rock-a-bye Bear. The conniving little dog gets Spike caught in a dining room table. He puts a stick of dynamite on Spike’s tongue. Anyone who knows the format of these cartoons can figure out what happens next. But Tex twists things by adding a piece of action after the tongue zooms back into the house and Spike’s mouth. The tongue slaps Spike across the face.



Both Rich Hogan and Heck Allen get story credits in this 1952 release. As far as I know, Hogan left MGM when Avery took some time off around May 1950 and was replaced by Dick Lundy. So it could be that the story stage of the cartoon was started before Avery left and completed when he came back.

Jack Benny Visits Texas

A few weeks ago, we posted a review of one of Jack Benny’s seemingly innumerable benefit concerts, this one in Austin, Texas in 1966. Jack’s arrival in Austin was a big deal, and there was a flurry of advance publicity and a number of events once he arrived. The State Senate made him an honorary Texan and gave him an engraved certificate attesting he was officially 39 years old. And there were the interviews.

Jack kept up a very taxing schedule. It’s no wonder he tried to be as comfortable as possible as he met reporters day after day after day. It seems Jack preferred doing interviews in his hotel room while wearing his bathrobe. I’ve found a number of newspaper stories in the ‘60s in that setting.

Here are two from the Austin Statesman, first from February 1, 1966, the other from February 22nd. The second is unbylined, the first is by a reporter who positively gushes over the fact she met Jack Benny. Jack seems a little short-sighted about his comments on rock music; just ask fans of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones or any of the long-time rock acts still touring today. Jack should have remembered people at one time thought Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra were young people’s fads and wouldn’t last, too.

CONCERT: Benny, Symphony Feb. 22
By KAY POWERS
Special Writer
Beg—borrow—go into hock if you have to—but get yourself the best seat possible for the Feb. 22 Jack Benny Benefit Concert with the Austin Symphony Orchestra. The man is terrific. Warmly human, wonderfully witty and absolutely amazing.
All this became apparent in a Houston hotel suite Sunday afternoon while Irving Fein, Jack Benny’s long-time manager and friend, was talking over concert details with Mr. and Mrs. Dick brown and another Austin couple. Brown, chairman of the committee which is going all out to make the Benny benefit a smashing success, was giving Fein the latest information on concert plans.
A door opened quietly and in wandered Jack Benny in a somewhat crumpled navy-and-white silk dressing gown—with nothing showing ‘twixt it and the floor except two typically male legs and a pair of black socks!
It wasn’t a gag. It wasn’t an act. It was Jack Benny being himself—and there is nothing more delightful than Jack Benny being himself, we learned in the next 90 minutes.
Despite the fact that not one penny of the receipts on the Austin concert will go to the Benny vaults, he was eager to hear how ticket sales are going. “In San Diego last Sunday—in Orlando Tuesday night and in Tampa Thursday night—a whole lot of people paid $100 apiece for the concerts. Not just to hear me play, mind you, but for charity . . . my favorite charity, which happens to be good music.”
“Pictures? Sure you can make pictures. Anybody who files from Austin to Houston just to work on plans for a symphony benefit with us is entitled to pictures,” Benny smiles, and shortly thereafter he disappeared in the bedroom.
But it wasn’t a change of attire he had in mind, because the plink-plink-plink of a violin being tuned came floating from the room and back came Jack Benny with his Stradivarius tucked under his chin. It did contrast rather strangely with the dressing gown and black socks.
He didn’t play “Love In Bloom.” Instead, he backgrounded our small talk with some agile arpeggios and several double-stopped passages that bespoke hours of practice and considerable skill.
“I knew you had to be a real musician,” exclaimed Dick Brown. “Nobody who isn’t a musician could make it sound so bad so consistently.”
“No, I’m not,” Jack insisted. “Honestly, I play as good as I can when I’m up there in front of a symphony orchestra—it just comes out lousy, that’s all.” At any rate, his hands are definitely those of an artist, and he punctuates his remarks with them freely. Although he was to have dinner with all the Astronauts this evening, he regaled us for an hour and a half with lively anecdotes from his several decades in showbiz. His memory is fantastic and his appearance amazingly youthful.
Learning that Brown hails from Corsicana, he remembered a week’s stand there on the old Interstate vaudeville circuit back in the mid-twenties. For just a moment, he seemed annoyed that he couldn’t recall the last name of a Texan he had known years ago.
“You know, Irv, I really must be getting old,” he remarked. It could have been a real scoop for us—except Jack Benny’s delightful humor, quit wit and warm personality will always be 39 years young, and everyone knows it who comes in contact with him.
Austinites will have several opportunities to rub elbows with this famous comedian-fiddler-philanthropist when he comes into town this month. The really Big Spenders (those seeing the concert via seats in the front rows with $100 donations to the cause) will enjoy a dinner with Jack on Monday night.
Tickets for the concert, which promises to be one of the season’s most glittering social events as well as a bonanza of fun and music, are now on sale at Dillard’s of Austin, Hemphills and J.R. Reed Music Co. They range in price from $3.50 to $100 . . . and the top-bracket ones ($50 and $100) carry the privilege of meeting Mr. Benny after the concert at a gala champagne reception “on stage.”
Invitations for the Monday night dinner and the Tuesday night reception are being handled by a special committee which may be contacted through the Austin Symphony Office.

Benny the Fiddler To Faddle Tonight
Crank up the Maxwell, Rochester, it’s almost time to go hear Jack Benny.
That’s what hundreds of Austinites will be saying shortly before 8 p.m. Tuesday.
Benny will join the Austin Symphony Orchestra for a benefit concert in Municipal Auditorium.
Although a near-capacity crowd is expected, seats in nearly all price ranges will be available at the auditorium box office until curtain time. Only the $100 seats are already sold out.
Benny arrived at Municipal Airport shortly after noon Monday. He came here from Corpus Christi, where he performed Sunday night.
As the plane rolled up to the airport gate, Vincent DiNiro was leading the Longhorn Band through a deliberately off-key version of “Love in Bloom,” the familiar Benny theme.
On hand to greet the visiting comedian-musician were Austin Symphony maestro Ezra Rachlin, benefit concert chairman Richard F. Brown and other civic officials.
Mayor Lester Palmer showed Benny the street marker that changed Congress Avenue to Jack Benny Avenue for the comedian’s visit.
Texas Ranger Captain Clint Peoples stepped up to present Benny the traditional 10-gallon hat. Later at a press conference at the Crest Hotel, Benny fielded a wide variety of questions candidly and cheerfully. Among the subjects and responses:
On traveling with two violins: “I travel like a real fine violinist. I’ve got all the equipment, but it’s all in the case.”
On his musical talent: “I’m probably the worst violinist giving concerts. In fact, I wouldn’t be permitted to give concerts if I didn’t have something else to do as part of it. When I make mistakes, people think I’m doing it purposefully. But I can be quite modest and say my concerts are delightful.”
On his leisurely manner of speech: “People think my timing is good because I talk slow. When Milton Berle does 10 minutes, it would last me an entire season.”
On today’s pop music: “Rock ‘n’ roll is fine—if everybody likes it. But I think people will get tired of it. I can only compare it to, say, jungle drums, though. Of course, I’ve got the Righteous Brothers to work with me soon in Lake Tahoe. If people don’t want to see me, they can see them. I’m only interested in doing business. I don’t care who does it.”

It All Started With Box Tops

About the only thing I wondered when I first saw The Bullwinkle Show in 1961 is why they changed the name of the show (Rocky’s name had been in the title prior to this). What I wonder today is why didn’t NBC, the sponsor’s ad agency, and others just leave Jay Ward alone to make cartoons.

Keith Scott’s indispensable book The Moose That Roared chronicles a number of cases where Jay Ward and Bill Scott had to endure ridiculous interference. Somehow, they overcame it all to make some extremely funny cartoons. A few of the stories got into the popular press as Scott or Ward groused to reporters or columnists about what was happening to them. Erskine Johnson’s column for the National Enterprise Association was one of them. This appeared in papers on November 8, 1961. See how petty you think some of these things are.

Hollywood—(NEA)—Show business has its "cold" wars, too, and the one going on in television between Jay Ward Productions and the combined forces of network, sponsor and agency is the kind you can't hardly find no more.
The deck is stacked against Ward, he admits, but he's still in there fighting.
It all started with box tops and went on from there to involve a spy on a U. S. Army base, a "belt in the mouth" and a hand puppet known this season as Bullwinkle, the moose.
A way-out sense of humor which Jay Ward and Company put into their animated cartoon, "Rocky and His Friends," led to an arch fiend in the series undermining the world's economy, not by devaluating the gold standard, but by counterfeiting box tops and cornering the world market.
The sponsor let Ward know in a hurry that box tops ARE the basis of his economy and the arch fiend had to go. In the same show a few months later, a spy at an army base stole a general's uniform. That was okay until Ward put a sign on the general's office reading:
"Out to lunch. I shall return."
"MacArthur," groaned the sponsor. "You can't kid the Army, Navy, Marines, box tops, or any racial, cultural or religious group."

THE DEBUT OF "The Bullwinkle Show" this season brought Ward a new battle and a new opponent, the National Broadcasting Company. In cartoon form in a 20-second promotional film advertising the show, Ward had a husband and wife talking about television. They wound up in an argument about a moose being called a Bullwinkle. Hubby had the last words:
"How would you like a belt in the month?"
It was funny—but not to NBC "because it smacks of violence."
While the network had Ward on the phone, advising him the 20-second plug for the show would not be shown, he was also asked to please kill a funny take-off on NBC's living color peacock.
AS YOU CAN SEE, if it isn't one thing it's another at Ward Prods. The first show in the Bullwinkle series had the moose puppet telling the audience that the knobs on their TV sets were removable. The set would stay tuned to the same channel for next week's show.
Once again NBC became "Nothing But Chaos." People were telephoning the network to complain that their offspring had pulled off the TV set knobs. Would Ward do something, please?
"How about this?" suggested Ward. "Next week we can have the puppet advising the kids to glue the knobs back on—using plenty of glue—so the set would be permanently tuned to NBC."
NBC was happy he mentioned it "because you can't do that—the FCC will have us on the carpet."
FORTUNATELY, NETWORK and agency executives now are aware of Jay Ward's zany approach to his animated TV cartoons and look the other way when he refuses to take himself seriously. Asked on a radio interview who wrote the "Bullwinkle" show, Ward dead-panned:
"We have two peasants whom we keep bound in the basement. Every once in a while we drag them out and beat them. They come up with very funny material." Maybe there should be an Emmy, or at least a box top, in Ward's name for putting a little life into the dreary TV season.

Bullwinkle went into reruns in the fall of 1964, with some elements of the show being rerun during the new Hoppity Hooper series. One of Hoppity’s sponsors was Topper Toys, which was pushing a seven-in-one gun. You can picture what Bullwinkle could have done with an animated version of that, klutzily blowing up an NBC building by accident—and then Ward being told the routine was being censored by the humourless network.

Don Foster Sighting

Another inside reference in a Warner Bros. cartoon, the one in Mouse-Placed Kitten (1958). Don Foster was responsible for title cards at the studio in the later years. He later worked for Chuck Jones at MGM. This cartoon was directed by Bob McKimson.



Here’s the title card for this cartoon.



And here’s the establishing shot. Background painting by Bill Butler, Layout by Bob Gribbroek.

I'll Get By With a Twinkle in My Eye

Margie Hines voiced Betty Boop before signing an exclusive deal with Van Beuren to provide Boop-like voices for its cartoons. She appears as a tightrope walker singing “I’ll Get By With A Twinkle in My Eye,” written by J. Fred Coots and Roy Turk, and recorded by a number of artists in 1932.

The uncredited animator twirls her around the rope, has her do the splits and then brings on Tom and Jerry with their ubiquitous piano to help finish the vocals on the song. Here are some of the poses.



Most of the animation is on ones, though the cartoonist occasionally holds a drawing for a frame while the background drawing is moved, making it appear the girl is sliding on the rope.

This is from the 1933 cartoon Tight Rope Tricks. Gene Rodemich provides another great score, with “East Side, West Side” appearing on the soundtrack, along with a Circus Day song I can’t identify that’s sung over the opening credits. Some of the animation is re-used from Circus Capers (1930) and Animal Fair (1931).

Hear Margie here, along with more bars of the song during the next scenes where a lion roars and decides to take revenge on Tom and Jerry.