Take That, Blabbermouse

The endlessly-talking Little Blabbermouse finally shuts up at the end of the Warner Bros. cartoon Shop, Look and Listen (1940). But assistance is needed from a robot that ties up the annoying rodent in a package.



This is a spot gag cartoon but what’s different about it is writer Dave Monahan has avoided the usual off-screen narrator style to have an on-screen mouse (Bill Thompson in his W.C. Fields voice, according to expert Keith Scott) weave things together in a travelogue-style patter. Monahan’s gags are obvious and corny. The best part of the cartoon is when it ends.

Benny on Benny

Benny Rubin was a star, so big a thoroughbred race horse was named for him. But unlike his friend Jack Benny, he didn’t remain one when vaudeville died. Rubin went into movies and had his own series of shorts. He hosted an amateur variety show for Feen-a-mint on WOR in the mid-‘30s. But for whatever reason, he didn’t maintain his huge success from vaudeville. He was soon reduced to bit parts in films and continued to be handed roles on the radio, and then television, by his old friend, Jack Benny.

Jack managed to carry on with his regular show until he finally ran into an unbeatable obstacle: CBS programming boss Jim Aubrey. Jack thought he should have the time slot and lead-in shows that he wanted. Aubrey decided he was running the network, and a bunch of rich stars weren’t going to put together his prime-time schedule to suit themselves. So when Jack howled in public after Petticoat Junction was made his lead-in for the 1963-64 season, Aubrey told him to like it or lump it. Jack saw the writing on the wall and signed a deal with NBC for the following season. He lasted one more year, though there were occasional specials up until his death in 1974.

Rubin was there when Jack’s final regular season TV show was recorded. It aired April 16, 1965. TV Guide asked Rubin to reflect on Benny’s career, and his thoughts were published in its week of August 28th issue. Reader Rick Greene sent a scan of it to pass along to you. Some of these stories you may have heard before. I have not been able to find where Benny Rubin and Ben K. Benny were on the same bill, but the change in name to Jack Benny happened during an Orpheum stop in Chicago in September 1920, according to contemporary issues of Variety.

A SENTIMENTAL FAREWELL
The weekly ‘Jack Benny Show’ has ended, but the memories linger on.
By Benny Rubin
I had just finished doing The Jack Benny Show, and there was a lump in my throat the size of a tennis ball. Not that I’m an especially sentimental man---after all, I’ve done I’d guess 500 shows with Jack—but this was different. This was the last show, the end of an era, the climax of 33 incredible years on top of the radio and television heap. When this one was locked up, there would be no more regularly scheduled weekly Jack Benny show. For me this was like saying the sun would not rise tomorrow.
As I looked around the huge Universal City soundstage, I wondered what Don Wilson, the Smothers Brothers (who were guests that week), director Norman Abbott, producer Irving Fein and some of the others were thinking. Every one of the 50-odd members of the cast and crew knew it was Jack’s swan song as a regular performer. Yet, like a pitcher working on a no-hitter, no one mentioned it.
When it was time to go home, there was a sudden stillness. I sensed that if anyone made a sad speech, I couldn’t stand it. So I ran backstage, where the makeup man was waiting to remove the beard I was using to play the Viennese psychiatrist. My only thought was to get out the door as far as I could without running into anyone, especially Jack.
Naturally I ran into him. Only then did I notice waiters wheeling in a long table loaded with goodies. A voice said, “Aren’t you going to stay for my party, Bee-yammy?”—that’s what he’s called me for 45 years.
Now I’m known as a guy you can just say hello to and he’ll tell you 10 jokes. I can talk more in 10 minutes than Milton Berle can in an hour. But not then. Instead I was thinking, Jack, what are you going to celebrate? That you got yourself into a bind with Jim Aubrey [the now-departed head of CBS Television] over a time slot, that when you had the temerity to switch networks your old bosses clobbered you by flooding the market with your reruns, that because of this, audiences are to be deprived of one of our great talents?
I thought it but I didn’t say it. I turned and faced him. We didn’t speak for a few seconds. Finally, he said softly, with a smile on that pixy kisser of his, “Some party.” I squeezed his arm and ran out of there.
I got in my car ad put the key in the ignition. It was then that the memories came flooding over me. They took me back 45 years to Keith’s Theater in Syracuse [N.Y.], where there was a young guy—he was then 27—named Ben K. Benny on the bill. That’s when we first met. He was a stand-up single with a fiddle under his arm and a bow dangling from his fingers. I was a fast-talking, loud kind of comedian, and I just couldn’t believe that soft, slow delivery. He’d come out and say to the orchestra leader: “How’s the show up till now?” The leader would say “Fine,” and he would say, “Well, I’ll put a stop to that” Then he’d go on with his jokes, waving the fiddle.
The night he became Jack

I was there the night the wire came from Pat Casey, head of the Vaudeville Managers’ Protective Association, telling him he couldn’t use the Ben Benny tag because it sounded too much like Ben Bernie, the orchestra leader. Benny was beside himself. In those days sailors called everybody “Jack.” A couple of them breezed into the restaurant where we were sitting. “Hey, Jack!” one of them said. “Didn’t I catch your act at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station?” That’s how he got to be “Jack” Benny.
The next time I saw him was in 1923 in Kansas City. He’d given up carrying the fiddle, borrowing one from the pit man for the finish of his act. Instead he had a straw hat under his arm and a cigar dangling from one hand—that was because he had got so use to the fiddle and bow, he had to have something. Later, he gave up the cigar and hat. That’s how the famous Benny folded arms originated; he had to have something to do with his hands.
We became great friends although exact opposites. I loved the horses. He didn’t. I loved the girls. He didn’t. I used bad language. He didn’t. After Jack played the Orpheum in 1927, he signed to do a movie. I happened to be at MGM, too. We had adjacent dressing rooms, and a sign stretched across the both of them. JACK-BENNY RUBIN, it said.
In was involved in the first—and last—of just about everything he did. In Chicago in 1931 he was in Earl Carroll’s “Vanities” and I was in “Girl Crazy.” One day he came to me and said, “They want me to go with this radio thing and I’m scared.”
Actually, what the station wanted was a one-shot, 15 minutes. Jack figured he could come up with 10 minutes of solid minutes of material. He planned to fill in with a song by Harry Stockwell (Dean’s dad), who was appearing with Jack in the “Vanities.” On the night of the broadcast there was a blinding snowstorm. Jack was eight minutes into the routine and no Stockwell. He was frantic. At the break I whispered to him to tell the listeners he would now do an imitation of Benny Rubin. He did and I stepped out and told the biggest joke I knew. Stockwell never did show up.
It filled the 15 minutes OK but it drew fire from the Chicago critics. “Jack Benny was very good until he tried that terrible imitation of Benny Rubin,” Hazel Flynn wrote. “Then he was awful.” Jack hated the whole experience and swore never to go on radio again.
That was pretty funny because the following year Ed Sullivan, the New York Daily News columnist, began his first radio show, “Broadway’s Greatest Thrills,” and conned everybody he could into going on for him. All our gang went, Burns and Allen, Block and Sully, Blossom [Seeley] and Benny Fields, Jack and Flo Haley—and Jack. Benny was soon signed for a radio show. He worked with a band and a stooge, Sid Silvers, then noted as the stooge in the box for Phil Baker. He had been on about two weeks when he made a horrifying discovery: In radio—unlike vaudeville—you run out of material. He came to me in a dither. We took some of my dialect jokes, switched them to English, and found we had enough for about two weeks. Jack was saved only by the arrival backstage one day of one Harry Conn selling jokes at $10 a shot three for $25. Jack bought 50 of them.
As it turned out, however, Conn jokes worked best with a girl. So suddenly Silvers was out and Jack’s wife, then known by her real name, Sadye Marks, was in. And that’s how Mary Livingstone was born.

Oh, I loved the guy. So did Conn—in his own way. It was Conn who sold Jack on the idea that you just couldn’t tell jokes. You had to have a “situation”; that is, the audience knows that you are stingy or vain, and you bounce the humor off that. In short, the first situation comedy. Conn wrote the first stingy jokes and thereby rocketed Jack to the top along with Fire Chief Ed Wynn, Jack (Baron Munchausen) Pearl, Eddie Cantor, Rudy Vallee and Major Bowes. In the end, though, Conn outsmarted himself. He began figuring that the $1500 a week he was getting wasn’t enough. He told Jack, “Without me you are nothing. I want half.” Jack held a council of war at the Lombardy Hotel in New York. There was Don Wilson, a sponsor’s representative named Stauffer, an agency man named Harrington, Jack and myself. We each took a batch of scripts from aspiring writers and in the end we chose two young guys, Ed Beloin and Bill Morrow, later to become top men in their new field of comedy writing.
Conn? He became a performer, lasted a short time and ended up as a doorman in a theater. When things got really tough it was Jack (and he’d kill me if he knew I was writing this) who contributed to his support.
Generous with laughs
Not very many people really know Jack. Maybe I don’t even know him. But I do know this. He is the only truly generous comedian I have ever known. I mean with laughs. I remember once we were three and a half minutes over on a show. Jack, who is his own best editor, said, “Take this out, take that out.” “But, Jack,” complained the director. “That’s seven minutes!”
“OK, so give the extra three minutes to Benny Rubin. He kills ‘em with that German doctor routine.”
I know his bad points, too. Jack is sensitive; he can’t stand criticism. It bugs him—except from his writers. He is disappointed if they don’t criticize him. He has a terrible temper, particularly where incompetence is concerned. His worse vice is preoccupation; he can know you a hundred years and walk right by without noticing you. And yet there is a great kindness. I wish I had a nickel for every time I’d seen an actor goof up lines, and Jack had turned to the audience and inquired, “Wouldn’t you think after all these years I’d know what I’m doing?”
A tough man to say professional good-bys to. Really tough. But somehow of other, that night in the studio parking lot, I managed to get the car started and drive to my tiny house on a crowded street in West Hollywood. I was sleepless a long time.

Grinching About the Grinch

On Christmas Eve 1965, Hedda Hopper announced in her column that How the Grinch Stole Christmas would come to television in an animated half-hour after Chuck Jones and MGM cartoon head Les Goldman talked Ted Geisel into allowing it to happen.

50 years ago tomorrow, it did.

Actually, news of the Grinch special first appeared in Variety on December 23, 1965. It was buried in a story on the MGM cartoon studio that focused, instead, on a planned feature film called The Phantom Tollbooth. Whatever your thoughts about the latter, Grinch turned out to be superior in every way to the dry Tollbooth. And it certainly fared better than Goldle Lox And The Three Yahns, one of two animated TV pilots that MGM shot. It never sold; neither did the other one about an anti-Superman character.

Like all TV specials that air annually, Grinch has graduated from a neat little animated tale to a staple of pop culture. We all know the Grinch song. The word “Grinch” has become part of the language. And it’ll remain that way so long as the cartoon can continue to turn a profit on TV; ironic, considering the altruistic message of Dr. Seuss’ story (incidentally, a Grinch LP was released simultaneously with the special).

Grinch marked the ascendancy of Chuck Jones in the realm of publicity, thanks due to winning the Oscar for The Dot and the Line. Interviews when the cartoon was being made have an air of “Oh, that guy!” when you read his name. The Grinch solidified his reputation and led to a vice-presidency at ABC, his own production company, and eventually, an elder statesmanship in the world of animation (as cynical as this sounds, the fact he lived to a ripe old age helped).

So, let’s go back 50 years and read one of the many advance stories in the press, along with a bunch of reviews. The story below was syndicated by the TV Key service of King Features.

Dr. Seuss' Grinch In Christmas Treat
By CHARLES WITBECK
Special Press Writer
Hollywood—The Grinch, a red-eyed, green-faced man who hates Christmas is the Dr. Seuss villain in a CBS color cartoon special, "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," pre-empting Lassie, Sunday night, Dec. 18 on CBS.
It's possible the old sour puss with his too-small heart will charm the adult viewers with his disgust over the noise and the commercial aspects of the holiday. The Grinch story is the first by the world's largest selling author of children books, Ted Geisel, pen name Dr. Seuss, to appear on television, and it will be followed by others if Grinch and his faithful dog, Max, don't foul up the grand opening.
Mr. Geisel doesn't expect this to happen, because he's been working hand-in-hand on the show with old friend and director Chuck Jones, the cartoon man who walked off with his third Oscar last spring for the short, "The Dot and the Line," so if viewers claim any distortions from the book they can blame the author. "The book has so many characters in the illustrations they could cause a problem in animation," admitted director Jones, while author Geisel looked on, "but I don't think we cut one scene."
• • •
EXCEPT for patches of red in the book illustrations, the Grinch story was devoid of color, so Jones and Geisel put heads together and came up with a red-eyed, green complexioned Christmas hater, and immediately thought of Boris Karloff, as the man most likely to sound like the old grump who lives atop Mount Crumpit, just north of Whoville, as he schemes to keep the holiday from coming to all the Whos in the village below.
The 79-year-old Karloff agreed to the part without hesitation. He knew he had a perfect Grinch voice.
The animated cartoon show celebrates the return after a long absence of author Geisel to the film world and story boards. Before slipping off to La Jolla, Cal., to concentrate on Suess books, Geisel thought up Gerald McBoing-Boing and had a hand in the early Ford animated commercials.
"I learned the film short and documentary business under Frank Capra (famed movie director of the '30s)," said the author. "And I met Chuck here during World War 2 when we were stationed at the Hal Roach Studios making Army SNAFU films. Chuck is a fine fellow; he's the only person I know who lets me write lyrics."
• • •

PROUD LYRIC writer Geisel has three songs on the special, all filled with typical Seuss sounding words. One effort compares to the chorus of "Adeste Fideles," and the author doubts if the kids will notice the difference between it and his lyrical foolishness. He expects grownups to nod and say, "I remember that song." The big number, the showstopper, is "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch," and Geisel, who writes to please himself, grinned with appreciation, listening to a recording of the score.
The character of Grinch came easily to the writer some years ago, as he was grumbling about Christmas and its commercial oversell.
"Every grownup hates Christmas from that aspect," said the author, so he sat down and wrote a little story, getting the grumps out of his system. Of course, Dr. Seuss doesn't fight a great tradition, and his holiday story has a happy ending.
Geisel left Hollywood for the quiet, conservative beach town of La Jolla 15 years ago with the intention of writing and fishing, and he says he still lacks the time to fish. Presently, Ted serves on the town council, arguing about the proper placing of high-rise buildings, and he has gone into the publishing business as well.
Geisel hasn't written a book in a year, but assures his public there is no cause for alarm; Seuss hasn't run dry, he's merely been engrossed in other projects like the Christmas special.

The Grinch special has become a Christmas TV tradition, and rightly so, just like A Charlie Brown Christmas. And like the Peanuts special, the Grinch debut wasn’t without its critics. Hal Humphrey of the Los Angeles Times, who had written a favourable advance story on the cartoon, complete with quotes from Chuck Jones, had this to say the day after watching the special:

‘Grinch’ Disappointing Christmas Special
As unfashionable as it is to be an old grouch so close to Christmas, I’ll have to risk it and say that the Dr. Seuss debut on CBS-TV Sunday night with his cartoon story of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” was a disappointment. It is my opinion that the book was better than this expensive half-hour color TV adaptation proved to be. Perhaps I was expecting too much, knowing that 10 months of labor and $315,000 went into it. Mr. Grinch made a poor heavy despite Boris Karloff’s wonderfully narrated warning, “You’re a vile one, Mr. Grinch, you’ve got termites in your smile.” He seemed more diabolical to me in the Dr. Seuss book. The animation, under the supervision of Chuck Jones and Ted Geisel (Dr. Seuss) was well done, as were the Albert Hague special music and Geisel’s lyrics. But put all together, the result was much too mild, and I suspect the usually action-hungry small viewers may have shared my feeling.

Newsday wasn’t impressed, either. Poor Eugene Poddany’s arrangements came in for specific criticism.

‘Grinch’ Fails To Steal Hearts
By Barbara Delatiner
That Dr. Seuss is a hero to parents of young children is a fact of early academic life. His humor and sophisticated touches makes reading and rereading the same books almost a treat, not the usual treatment. That he is a hero to kids, too, can’t be disputed either. His brand of silliness is just silly enough to tickle the most undeveloped funny bones.

With such a formidable legion of fans, CBS took its chances last night attempting to transfer one of Dr. Seuss’ contemporary classics, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” to the small screen. That the half-hour special even approached success is a tribute primarily to the skills of the animators. The cartoon recreation of Dr. Seuss’ zany world inhabited by preposterous creatures was accomplished with imaginative zeal. Everybody looked and moved like all good Seussians should. Unfortunately, the text about a modern Scrooge bent on destroying the holiday spirit in Whosville was more elusive. Though adapted by Dr. Seuss—Ted Geisel in mufti—and intoned by Boris Karloff with the proper amount of menacing whimsy, the gentle attack on the commercialization of Christmas failed to come off. Maybe it’s the personal touch that maes these fables so charming. Second half, they aren’t half as funny. Then, maybe the brassy songs, one replete with a few words not normally in kiddy vocabularies, dimmed enjoyment. Perhaps the embellishments needed to expand the short book into 30 minutes of TV time killed what had been originally a fragile thing. Whatever the cause, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” was a disappointment to adults and children alike. If, as reported, more of Dr. Seuss will become fodder for the tube, let’s hope future forays will retain the delicate air.

And from Jack Gould, the man who called The Flintstones “an inked disaster,” came this opinion in the New York Times:

The old meanie Grinch and his attempt to steal Christmas from the gentle folk of Who-ville were translated to the television screen last night in an animated film supervised by Dr. Theodore Seuss Geisel, far better-known as Dr. Seuss.
The thought behind “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” is so enduring and so badly needs constant saying that is seems Scrooge-like even to hint at the slightest reservation. Particularly for television, a reminder that Christmas is something of the heart and not of the general store is to be treasured under almost any conditions.

Last night on the Columbia Broadcasting System, viewers saw how Dr. Seuss and Chuck Jones, the animator, elected to show how the Grinch was sublimely thwarted in his larceny on Christmas Eve; his dark preditations had no effect on the seasonal songs of Who-ville the next morning, and the Grinch himself was to succumb to the pleasures of giving rather than taking. The half-hour film was offered early in the evening as a service to youngsters.
It just may be that the Grinch is a creation that should be left undisturbed on the printed page, where the graceful simplicity of the language of Dr. Seuss weaves its own wonder and where the reader’s imagination can make its own contribution. At all events, this literal representation of the Grinch in animated form fell a trifle short of expectation. In the preoccupation with the hurried narration, the spell was not quite there, perhaps because there was inadequate time to savor the delights of Who-ville as counterpoint to the grumpiness of the Grinch.
The animation by Mr. Jones was very good and Boris Karloff was both the voice of the Grinch and the narrator. One irony in the presentation was not to be overlooked. The testimony that Christmas is an occasion when mundane concerns really are secondary to the joys of the spirit was not exactly reinforced by the many commercials on behalf of all-service banks.

Not all the critics were negative. Clay Gowran of the Chicago Tribune wrote: “The cartooning, as might be expected with Jones at the helm, was excellent, a lively merger of Walt Disney and Rube Goldberg. Color quality was superb. And old meany Karloff was just right as the off-camera voice for the tale about mean old Grinch, who first hated and then learned to love Yuletime.”

Roy Shields of the Toronto Star chirped: “‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’ made a perfect cartoon special last night. It was so faithful to the artistry of Dr. Seuss that even the colors were his kind of colors.” Variety called it “a literate half-hour” adding “Animation excellently captured the spirit or [sic] Seuss’ fictional characters and had enough farcical sight gags so the kiddies geared to standard cartoon fare wouldn’t feel left out.” And Cynthia Lowry of the Associated Press opened her column with “With delicate animation of the characters and a chilling narration by Boris Karloff, ‘The Grinch Who Stole Christmas’ lost nothing and even gained something in its transition from the printed page to the television screen.”

50 years of TV airings have shown which of the critics was correct.

Manny Gould's Duck Hunt

Why isn’t Manny Gould appreciated more?

He did some terrific work for Bob Clampett and then for Bob McKimson before quitting Warner Bros. in 1947 to work for Jerry Fairbanks.

I love the work Gould did in “Daffy Duck Hunt” (1947). Gould handles the climax scenes at the end of the cartoon. Warren Foster does a switch on an old joke where Daffy cons Porky Pig and the McKimson dog into singing “Jingle Bells.” In mid-song, Porky checks the calendar and sees that it’s April. There’s a cut. Gould and the in-betweeners did a great job. Porky seethes. The dog keeps singing (note how he gestures daintily).



Look at the dog’s pupils. He finally notices Porky’s expression.



Porky grabs Daffy’s Santa beard and pulls him down with one hand, then grabs his neck by the other to pull him out of the Santa suit and swings him toward the camera. The dog runs for cover.



Wham!



Porky goes for the axe. The dog tentatively peers at the action.



Porky notices something. Then comes the take.



The stamp on Daffy reads “Do Not Open Until Xmas.” Daffy has one last wisecrack before the cartoon irises to Daffy’s eye, which closes to end the cartoon.

Chuck McKimson, Phil De Lara and John Carey are the other credited animators, but McKimson’s animator credits for the first few years are inexplicably incomplete.

The Haunted Cat Takes

I’ll bet you can guess who was responsible for odd takes in a few scenes near the end of The Haunted Cat, a 1951 Terrytoon.

Little Roquefort the mouse ties a ghost balloon to a cat’s tail. The cat (with different-sized eye whites and pupils every two frames) spots the “ghost.”



The shrinking head take!



The fuzzy take!



The cat then turns around while walking on its fingers. It’s animated on ones. Here’s one of the drawings.



A frightened, goofy take.



The mouse then uses a slingshot to blow apart the balloon. We get a growing head take.



The final two drawings alternate as the background slides to the right, then the cat races off into the next scene.

An usual, Jim Tyer and the rest of the Terry animators are uncredited.

How Walt Disney Changed One Life

Walt Disney, his studio and his legacy have been—and likely will continue to be—written about endlessly, so you don’t need me to state the obvious or pontificate.

I suspect many readers of this blog are Disney fans, so let me mark the 50th Disney Deathiversary today with two pieces from the Palos Verdes Peninsula News of December 18, 1966. Instead of talking about Disney the Visionary, or Disney the Businessman, or Disney the Moulder of Animation, this first story deals with Disney the Example to Others.

Former Disney Prodigy Recalls ‘Remus’ Role
By JO MOSHER
“I felt like part of my world dropped away,” Glenn Leedy Allen told the News on hearing of the death of Walt Disney. He heard the words on a morning television newscast at home.
Allen, process cameraman for Palos Verdes Newspapers, Inc., was a child actor and played Toby in his first role in “Song of the South,” - the famous Uncle Remus musical produced by Walt Disney Productions.

“He was out-of-sight and up tight,” Allen described Disney. “That means too much, and that was better to me than beauty.” He oversaw everything on the sets and knew everything that was going on at all times,” he added.
Allen, who will be 30 years old on Dec. 31, was discovered by Disney Scouts while playing on the school grounds at Booker T. Washington grammer [sic] school in Phoenix, Ariz., in 1945.
He was called into the office with about 10 other children, he recalls, and at six years old, was in mischief most of the time, he added. Expecting chastisement of some sort, he was surprised to be asked to repeat a number of words given him and the other children. They were sent out of the room for about 10 minutes, called back in and asked to again repeat the words.
“My memory was great then, and I rattled them off. Also they had seen me walking around on my hands, so with those recommendations they asked me if I could cry easily. My mother had died when I was four, and I was living with my grandmother, Ivy Allen. All they had to do was ask if I would cry if something happened to my grandmother, and the tears came,” Allen remenisced [sic].
The talent scouts convinced Mrs. Allen to move the family to Los Angeles, all expenses paid, and young Glenn was in show biz, as the saying goes.
“I was on top of the world at my young age,” Allen said. He was known as Glenn Leedy then.
“It was about this time that Mr. Disney changed the entire format of my life,” he recalled. “I guess I was getting too big for my britches - what with a private chauffeur taking me to and from the studios, a private tutor and appearing at public appearances for the studio so Mr. Disney went to Hattie McDaniels, my relative in the movie, and James Baskett, who played Uncle Remus, and they called me into their dressing rooms one at a time. They gave me “what for,” he smiled sheepishly.

“They told me how to be nice in this world and what not to do and what Mr. Disney expected of me. I’ll always remember Mr. Disney for that. I’ve really tried to be a good citizen and not be scared of life, and I’ve found it’s easy to like everybody if you give all you’ve got. That’s what life’s all about, anyway, and its a lesson I learned from Mr. Disney.”
Allen, who is known to everyone hearabouts [sic] as “Tiger,” keeps everyone smiling with his good humor and sunny outlook on life. He resides in Compton with his wife Blanche and their four children - Glenann, 11; Glenn, Jr.,10; Ivy, 9, and Paul, 8.
“One of the proudest moments was attending the Academy Awards banquet to see Walt Disney, receive awards for “Song of the South”. My grandmother was there and my sister, Leslie Leedy Kellum, who was five then and had played in the movie with us.

This eulogy was found on the paper’s editorial page and reflects views still held by many today. The reference to The Sound of Music is a little puzzling as it wasn’t a Disney film. And it’s nice to be reminded when we hear nostalgia for days gone by, that people in days gone by were nostalgic for the past, too.

Walt Disney -- Quality!
Thousands of words of tribute are being written this weekend following the death of Walt Disney. The words are all superlatives: “fabulous,” “ a great artist,” “an irreplaceable man,” “one of the few true geniuses.” Governor-elect Ronald Reagan declared, “The world is a poorer place now.” Governor Brown said, “Our state, our nation and the world have lost a beloved and great artist.”
The newspaper stories remind us of the wonderful imaginery [sic] characters created by Walt Disney for the enjoyment of millions. Mickey Mouse. Snow White. Pinocchio. Donald Duck.
Disneyland, often described as a Taj Mahal or a Niagara Falls, is perhaps more than any other creation of the mind of Walt Disney a monument to hi[s] talent and his creativity.
But in all the words flowing forth about this fabulous man, his life and his Horatio Alger financial success, few note an aspect of his life that transcends all his other accomplishments, yet is probably the largest factor in his success.
Walt Disney succeeded with products of quality and wholesomeness in an industry that often has sought financial success in the gutter. An American parent has never had to check a Disney movie or TV special before granting permission for viewing to a teenage daughter or son.
Walt Disney built an empire on wholesome entertainmen[t] that never played to the enticements of sex, horror, or smut. His characters, his plots and his production techniques never offended anyone.
It would be impossible to count the millions in this country and aboard who went home after viewing a Walt Disney movie with a smile on their lips and a contented heart.
The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins are excellent examples of films that were winners in a moviemaking era that has seen good taste take a back seat.
Walt Disney never lowered his standards, never cheapened his product. His name has stood for years for high quality productions. And as tributes pour in from all over the world, and as we find that Mickey Mouse has been translated into dozens of languages, this nation knows it has lost its top Goodwill ambassador to the world.
When we see some of the entertainment trash that goes overseas with the U.S.A. stamp on it, the loss of Walt Disney becomes even more acute. This nation can only hope that those who have worked with Walt Disney and learned his principles and ways will carry on his traditions. The entertainment world and the nation needs such talents.

The Honest Morning Show, By Fred and Tallulah

Fred Allen’s radio show is known mostly for his jaunt down Allen’s Alley, a vehicle for satiric commentary on items in the news. The Alley appeared in the first half of the show. The second half always contained some kind of sketch or parody. Some, to be honest, are really painful. Others are incredibly creative.

Two of his best may have been parodies of the musical “Oklahoma” and the morning wake-up radio shows (based in New York) starring married couples. In both cases, he re-worked the ideas and presented them again, using a lot of the same material in the second go-around.

The radio parody was—get ready for this one, folks—right up Allen’s alley. (Wait for laughs). Allen wasn’t enthralled with much of his own industry, and that included the phoney cheerfulness of the husband-wife shows where every sentence was a lead-in to an advertiser. What a perfect target to rip apart. And who better to help than Tallulah Bankhead, who wasn’t exactly known for being quiet and reserved.

New York Herald Tribune radio writer John Crosby loved Allen’s observations, and mentioned him many times in his column. The Mr.-and-Mrs. parody was the first time Crosby reviewed Allen, and it found print on May 10, 1946.

Incidentally, the third person who took part in the sketch, not mentioned in Crosby’s column, was Minerva Pious as the little girl. You can hear the version edited for the Armed Forces Radio Service below (Allen’s Alley is butchered because it was either too topical or political for the AFRS).

Radio in Review
By JOHN CROSBY
Breakfast With Freddie and Tallulah
Last Sunday, Fred Allen, who has eyes like venetian blinds and a tongue like an adder, teamed up with Miss Tallulah Bankhead, a scorpion in her own right, in a parody on the “husband and wife” breakfast programs so coruscating that, according to “Variety,” it has brought loud complaints from the husband and wife performers. These programs have been parodied before, but never with the explosive violence that radio’s greatest wit applied to them. So cutting was Mr. Allen’s satire that many of the injured parties have requested permission of N.B.C. to hear a transcription of the program, under the theory they couldn’t have heard aright the first time.
To give you a specimen of Mr. Allen’s sharp mind and also as a commentary on the breakfast programs themselves, I present below a condensed version of the Allen-Bankhead parody which seems destined to become something of a radio classic. Take it away, Freddie and Talullah!
FRED: Ahhhh! What coffee! What aromatic fragrance! It must be. . . .
TALLULAH: You’re right, lovey! It’s McKeester’s Vita-Fresh Coffee. The coffee with that locked-up goodness for everybody—grind or drip . . . Peach fuzz, you’ve spilled some on your vest.
FRED: Goody. Now I can try some of that Little Panther Spot Remover. No rubbing.
TALLULAH: And, imagine, a big two-ounce bottle for only 35 cents.
FRED: Or, if you are a messy eater, you can get the handy, economical forty gallon vat. . . . Your hair is breath-taking. That sheen! That brilliance! What did you do it it?
TALLULAH: I just did what so many society women are doing these days. I went to Madame Yvonne’s Hair-Do Heaven at 424 Madison Avenue—in the loft.
FRED: It’s divine, fluffy bunny.
TALLULAH: Madame Yvonne uses a sensational hair-dressing. It contains that new mystery ingredient—chicken fat.
FRED: I hear it’s on sale at all the cut-rate cigar stores. (Jasha, the canary, twitters.)
TALLULAH: Ah, little Jasha is so happy, so carefree. And why shouldn’t he be happy.
FRED: Yes, he knows that the newspaper on the bottom of his bird cage is New York’s leading daily, “The Morning Record”—thirty-two columnists, eighteen pages of comics, and all the news no other newspaper sees fit to print.
TALLULAH: Excuse me, apple honey. I have a letter here from Mrs. T.S. Button, of Molehill, Idaho. Mrs. Button had a splitting headache for forty years until she heard about Pepso-Bepto on our program.
FRED: Only Pepso is guaranteed to fizz twice. Once before you drink it and once after.
TALLULAH: Here’s another interesting letter—from a kleptomaniac. She writes. . . .
CHILD’S VOICE: Good morning, mumsy and daddy.
FRED: Why, it’s out little three-year-old daughter, Amber.
TALLULAH: Isn’t she cute? Amber, I love the way your tooth is shining this morning.
AMBER: Yes, I brushed it with Dr. Pratt’s Homogenized Toothpaste.
FRED: Ha. Ha. Ha.
TALLULAH: What are you laughing at, love duck?
FRED: I just thought how witty Oscar Levant was last night when he poured that bottle of catsup over Jim Farley’s head.
TALLULAH: And wasn’t Mr. Farley a good sport? He just say there grinning and smacking his lips.
FRED: You, too, will smack your lips if you taste Klotnick’s concentrated catsup—the only catsup that bears “The Hobo News” seal of approval.
After a bit more of this cheerful patter Fred and Tallulah decided to put a little realism into their early-morning conversation. On one of their grouchy mornings the program sounds like this:

TALLULAH: Hey, Knucklehead, get out of that bed! We’ve got a program to do.
FRED: Six o’clock in the morning. Who’s up to listen to us—a couple of garbage collections and some burglars?
TALLULAH: If you want to go back to hustling gardenias in front of Childs, go right ahead. (Jasha twitters.)
FRED: Shut up! I thought I told you to give that canary some of Dr. Groober’s Bird Seed.
TALLULAH: I did. Now Jasha is the only canary in the country with an ulcer. . . . What’s in the mail today, chowderhead?
FRED: A summons. Some one took that Pepso-Bepto and dropped dead. Where do you find these sponsors—at a police line-up?
AMBER: Good morning, mummy and daddy! (Allen slaps her and she howls.)
FRED: Sneaking up on your parents with that one tooth like an old elk. Little Amber!
TALLULAH: I told you we should have finished reading the book before we named her.
I’m afraid our time is up, as they say on the air. There was lots more of it and it was all hilarious. It was also perhaps a little too unkind to the husbands and wives who slave away at these programs morning after morning for only $2,500 a week. Some time soon, I shall discuss the breakfast programs in milder tones.

Wally Pays Off

Wally Walrus (Jack Mather) adopts Woody Woodpecker (Ben Hardaway) as his son in Wacky-Bye Baby. One of the gags has Woody riding Wally on a carpet like a horse. However, a safe being pulled along the carpet. Yes, a safe. Everyone has a huge safe on a carpet runner.



If Shamus Culhane had been directing this, the off-camera impact between Wally and the safe would have resulted in a camera shake with drawings in long and close shot turned every which way. Not Lundy. He relies on a sound effect as the camera rests on a drawing for at least 32 frames.

Wally is turned into a slot machine. Lundy saves a bit on Walter Lantz’s United Artists budget by animating only a cycle of fruit drawings in Wally’s eyes.



Fade to the next scene.

Pat Matthews and Les Kline are among the animators, while Fred Brunish contributes some nice watercoloured backgrounds.