Of Tricycles and Flahooley

He was the “World’s Foremost Authority.” Whether Professor Irwin Corey ever said what he was the world’s foremost authority on is unknown. But it may have been on a subject few people have first-hand experience with: protesting with tricycles.

Corey died yesterday, a man whose stand-up comedy career dated back to the late 1930s. He was called a “cockeyed philosopher” by Broadway beat reporter Earl Wilson, a “tatterdemalion professor of everything,” according to Virginia Forbes of the New York Sun and a man who “wallows in a sea of oratorical chaos” in yet another column. His act was unusual, and he appears to have been as quirky in real life (he claimed, during the height of the Red Scare, that the Communists didn’t want him). Here’s a story from the Long Island Star Journal of June 22, 1950. I wish the photo accompanying the scanned photocopy of this story on the internet was viewable; it shows women rushing to Corey’s defence.

‘Human Chain’ of Mothers Blocks Bus Street in Kew Gardens Hills
Police Break Barricade After Scuffle
Another "human chain" was flung across a Kew Gardens Hills street yesterday by 50 mothers who barred all traffic for a full hour . . . duplicating a feat staged by another band last week a few blocks away.
They barricaded 69th road with a massed line of tricycles in the middle of the block between 147th street and Main street.
Ten policemen finally smashed the blockade by pushing the housewives and tricycles off the roadway.
The police grabbed one dad—Irwin Corey, widely known comedian—who was trying to save his wife from being shoved off the sheet. He was rushed off the roadway and pushed against the side of a bus.
But the housewives rushed to his defense, screaming at the top of their lungs and pulled at the policemen's uniforms. They finally succeeded in rescuing him.
• • •
COREY RUSHED off to his home at 144-27 69th road. The police did not follow him. Known as Professor Corey, he has just completed an engagement at Manhattan's Copacabana night club.
The mothers were "demonstrating" in an effort to have the Q-44 Shuttle bus taken off their street, claiming it's dangerous for their children.
They did block one bus. When the driver climbed out and called for help, police arrived and detoured other buses from the trouble spot, blocking it off with a barricade of their own.
The driver of the bus thus found himself trapped between the two barricades, so he sat it out and whiled away the time while the mothers mixed it up with the police.
After the perspiring policemen managed to clear the road, Mrs. Dorothy Willner of 144-40 69th road, spokesman for the mothers, promptly announced that they would block the street again today and every day until the city re-routes the buses.
• • •
LATER IN the day, however, Inspector Frank Centner, in charge of the North Queens police, visited the area and invited the mothers to appoint a committee to meet with him and thresh things out.
Just nine days before, another human chain made up of mothers with children in baby carriages, blocked all traffic at Main street and 72nd avenue, in a demonstration to force police to install a traffic light.
It took police an hour to clear away the demonstrators and reopen the street, too.
As a result of that demonstration, Inspector Centner had a policeman assigned to direct traffic at the intersection, and he sent a commendation for a traffic light to his superiors at Manhattan Police Headquarters.
• • •
THE BUSES use 69th road as part of a turn-around loop at the end of the Q-44 shuttle line.
Mrs. Willner asserted that Corey’s child “was almost run over by a bus last week.”

Professionally, Corey was involved in an unusual experience on Broadway. In May 1951, he was in the cast of a musical that was making money, but closed for re-writes because the authors (and critics) weren’t happy with it—and never re-opened. “Flahooley” lasted 40 performances. Names you would recognise from the opening night cast are Nehemiah Persoff, Louis Nye, Yma Sumac, veteran Ernest Truex and the Bil Baird puppets. “Involved and unwieldy” was how the Brooklyn Eagle’s critic viewed the musical. And he was one of the critics who liked it.

Louis Sheaffer’s “Curtain Time” column of June 12, 1951 in the Eagle was supposed to be a profile of Corey but kind of got sidetracked, appropriate, I suppose, as Corey’s nightclub act consisted of a monologue that went off on tangents upon tangents.

Interview With a Genie Turns Into a Discussion of Audiences
It was supposed to be an interview with Irwin Corey on the sort of childhood, general background and acting experience that qualifies an actor to play a musical comedy genie—Carey plays the big-hearted genie in “Flahooley.” But for a while three-way discussion when E. Y. Harburg, one of the creative brains behind “Flahooley,” joined our table at Sardi's and began talking about the show's curious first-night reception on Broadway and the unusual steps being taken to give it a healthier lease on life.
“One of the troubles,” Mr. Harburg was saying, “is that Philadelphia loved the show too much. They didn't tell us anything. You never know what you've got in a show until you've played it before an audience—the audience tells you where it's good and where it's bad, what its weak spots are. Then you go to work and fix them up. That's why you take shows out of town to try them out. But Philadelphia didn't tell us a thing. The whole three weeks we were there the audiences loved 'Flahooley,' and their critics gave us fine notices.
Broadway Reaction
“Then we come in to New York with the show, figure we're all set, and run into a hostile first-night crowd. Some of the notices were good, but many of them weren’t. A friend of ours, a psychiatrist, told me afterwards he felt that he was sitting in a sea of hostility. I don't understand it; it was almost something personal. But I know we've got a good show here, and the audiences since the opening have been telling us the same thing. They've loved it.”
Corey, the part-time genie, added his bit: "Some of the opening night crowd even said the score wasn't good, but three of the songs are on best-selling lists.” Your reporter, who had enjoyed “Flahooley” and thought that at least half of it was sparkling, imaginative fun, offered the opinion that maybe the trouble was that it was too “rich” a show, something like a Christmas or Thanksgiving spread, that the production was rather crowded at times, “busy,” and needed a little pruning and simplifying to make everything jell together smoothly.
Summer Recess
Attentive to the various comments passed over the luncheon table, Mr. Harburg agreed that the book needed some tightening, clarification in spots, and added that they would be made. This Saturday night, taking an unusual, if not unique, step, “Flahooley” will close at the Broadhurst for the Summer; even though the musical has been playing to profitable houses so far, and is expected to reopen in the Fall with virtually the same cast, after Mr. Harburg, who wrote the lyrics and co-authored the book with Fred Saidy, has worked with his collaborator in making the necessary changes. (Editorial opinion: It wouldn't take much work, to make the entire show a thoroughgoing delight.)
A Genie's Background
After a while Mr. Harburg headed back to his own table, and your reporter went back to his job of probing into the background of “Flahooley's” genie, who first began acting in small fry pageants and shows at the Brooklyn Orphan Asylum. He was there from the ages of four to eight, along with his five brothers and sisters, and before that was at the Infants Home in the Bronx.

A frank, outspoken chap, Irwin Corey says that he has a strong need for affection today, talking in reference to his work, because his parents busted up when he was a baby, thereby leaving him to orphan asylums' care the first eight years of his life. “My only concern when I get on a night club floor is: Will they love me? Sometimes the sweat breaks out, wondering if the audience is on my side.”
Billed as “The World's Foremost Authority,” Corey is known to the plushier bistros and supper clubs, the Blue Angel, Le Ruban Bleu, the Copacabana, Chicago’s Palmer House, as one comedian who raises laughs without telling gags or funny stories. He does it through character comedy. Dressed as a seedy but formally turned out professor, Corey fumbles his knowing way through lectures that rarely come within shouting distance of their announced topics or goals.
Comedian Emerges
How does a comedian go about working up such a character? How, for that matter, does one go about becoming a comedian? Corey tries conscientiously, but he can't explain it himself. First he did one thing, then another, worked as a busboy and waiter, was in the CCC, working in a Bush Terminal factory making chairs, got together a little show on the borscht circuit, and somehow developed into a genuine funnyman with a style and personality of his own.
Ask him if he had a sense of humor as a child and he’ll say, “Naw, I was just a scrappy kid.” He went to Pershing Junior High and Abraham Lincoln High, and didn’t like either school. Once the youngsters were supposed to write an essay on “Why I’m Glad to Be a Member of Abraham Lincoln High School.” Young Corey changed it around to why he was NOT glad to be a member.
When he was about 18, he and a friend hitch-hiked to California because Irwin wanted to take a postgraduate course in dramatics at Los Angeles' Belmont High School. A scout from the Pasadena Playhouse liked him in a school play and offered him a scholarship, but it only paid for his tuition and he turned it down. He also had to eat.
Cold Winter
Back in the East, between busboy and factory jobs, he enrolled in the Civilian Conservation Corps and was sent to Vermont, in the Winter time.
“It was 20 below zero and cold . . .! I was called Doc Iodine because I was in the medics, and I had half the boys, about 120, marked to quarters because it was so cold out. Our outfit was supposed to chop down trees and build roads. Well, a supervisor came along and found all the boys in the barracks playing cards, reading, but he couldn't do anything because they were marked quarters. But I was transferred from the medics.”
After various types of jobs, Corey landed a minor spot in “Pins and Needles” and next turned up as a solo performer at Greenwich Village's incubator of name talent, the Village Vanguard, where he began his night club career. Unlike most comedians, Corey retains a humorous slant on things even when he isn’t paid to be funny, as his children, Margaret 8, and Richard, 5, are well aware. Recently he told Margaret, “I’m really pretty but it doesn’t show on my face. I have a beautiful bone structure.”
Another time he hugged Richard so hard the boy protested, and father Corey gravely informed him, “It only seems to hurt; it really doesn’t.”
But perhaps that wasn’t intended as humor. Maybe Irwin Corey was trying to make certain his boy gets enough affection.

The good professor had affection for the audiences who got his unusual way of looking at things. And they returned it for decades. Irwin Corey died at 102.

There Are More Costly Ingredients in Duck

Daffy Duck is advertising a duck in Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur, so why not use common advertising slogans? (Or variations thereon).



I can’t clip together the whole, long background drawing without colour problems, so we’ll just post where the camera stops on each slogan. The cartoon is from 1939 so some of the slogans are lost on most people today.

Wheaties was the Breakfast of Champions. Fish is brain food. Dr. Pierce’s Golden Medical Discovery was a quack (duck?) remedy for all kinds of stuff. With men who know tobacco best, it’s Luckys 2 to 1. Coca-Cola is the Pause That Refreshes. I don’t recall what had more costly ingredients than the other brand. Evidently I need more duck, the brain food.



A shame it is the background artist went uncredited.

Ventriloquist Cat Backgrounds

Johnny Johnsen was a versatile background artist, rendering cityscapes and the vast outdoors equally well. There are no long pans over vistas in Ventriloquist Cat (released 1950) as in some of the other cartoons he worked on, but here are some examples of his work. Note the well-drawn refrigerator.



Tex Avery has an odd sense of time in this cartoon. These last two backgrounds are from scenes that follow each other, in terms of plot, by a minute or so. Yet it has quickly become dusk.



Avery gets his sense of time back at the end of the cartoon, as the colours change, showing the dogs have been after the cat for hours.

The Life and Times of Jack Benny, Part 5 of 6

The years of World War Two weren’t really kind to the Jack Benny radio show. For one thing, there was a change in sponsors; no more jolly sounds of Don Wilson urging upon the audience the delights of Jell-O or Grape Nut Flakes. I’m sure the almost two minutes of repetitive sloganeering for cigarettes that opened each show turned off listeners. As well, Jack convoyed his cast to broadcast from a number of military sites. It was undoubtedly good for service members watching the show, but disconcerting to radio listeners who had to endure inside jokes directed at G.Is. And Jack was forced to acquire a whole new writing team, which realised they had to find ways to freshen the show.

Eventually they did with a slew of popular new secondary characters (the neighbouring Colmans, Sheldon Leonard’s tout, Frank Nelson’s “yes” man, Bea Benaderet’s and Sara Berner’s phone operators, Mel Blanc as almost anything). And they still had a well-defined character in Jack (the phoney radio version) who could play off them.

Benny racked up huge publicity in two ways after the war. One was with a contest. The other was an attempt to get around huge taxes levied at celebrities, resulting in his jump in mid-season from NBC to CBS.

Both were covered in the fifth part of a series on Benny’s life in the New York Post. The issue of February 7, 1958 also includes more plaudits for Jack by the people who worked with him. The final instalment of the series will be posted next Sunday.

The Jack Benny Story
By DAVID GELMAN and MARCY ELIAS
ARTICLE V
In 1946, when the popularity of Jack Benny's radio show was in a rare period of decline, he hit upon the bold, if questionable, stratagem of inaugurating a kind of unpopularity contest in his own name.
"A lot of people, " said Irving Fein, president of Jack's J&M Productions, "tried to talk Jack out of it because they said it was a negative idea, but Jack insisted on going ahead with it and he was right. The only thing they succeeded in making Jack do was to change the contest wording from ' I Hate Jack Benny because . . . ' to 'I Can’t Stand Jack Benny because . . .'"
The results of this hazardous gambit were more than gratifying. Between 300,000 and half a million radio listeners across the nation vied with each other in heaping written abuse on Benny's willing head in 25 words or less. By the end of the year, he was solidly reestablished among the top 10 shows on the air, a position he has almost habitually occupied in both radio and TV from the beginning.
(Currently, Jack is seen on alternate Sundays at 7:30 p.m. on Channel 2, and rebroadcasts of his old radio shows still are carried regularly on CBS at 7 p.m. each Sunday.)
Among performers, Jack might conduct an "I Like Jack Benny because . . ." contest with a response equal in enthusiasm if not in volume. Interviews on the subject produce such an outpouring of affection, esteem and gratitude that it is best perhaps to let the quotes fall where they may:
Barbara Stanwyck, an occasional guest star on the show: "Jack is like a Bible to me. He is the only comedian I would appear for. I have nothing against the others but I know that if I goof Jack will never ridicule me to get a laugh.
"He once said to me that unless his guest star is the star of his show it isn't worth anything."
Ronald Colman, who, with his wife Benita, was a frequent guest on the radio show:
"I can honestly say—being a straightman myself—as fond as I am of many comedians, he is the only comedian that I didn't have any hesitation about working with. He never leaves you, as we say, with egg on your face. You get the fat, the laughs.
Silence and Stores
"He did a great deal for me in encouraging me about pauses and the late take. I knew how to wait in a dramatic scene but he would go to the extreme. Perhaps I would hold the pause two or three seconds and he would urge me to hold It longer, five or six seconds. I was afraid of losing the audience but Jack would say you can tell if you're doing it right by the studio audience. He was and is just marvelous at timing and also at various possible readings of the same line."
Colman's comment, incidentally, points up another singular development of the Benny show—the comedy of silence, perhaps best exemplified by one of the most memorable renditions of the Benny stingy joke. This was brought about by the simple device of having a holdup man accost Benny on the street and say:

"Your money or your life!"
There followed a stage wait which has been variously estimated as from 45 seconds to two full minutes. Certainly it was of record duration and the notion of Jack Benny forced at last to choose between his money and his life and hesitating over the decision set some sort of record for studio laughter.
Often Jack achieved a similar effect by the use of pregnant exclamations like "Hmmm!" or "Well!" in each case with lingering emphasis on the final consonant. For the transition to TV (which he made cautiously in 1950), Jack embellished the silences by simply staring at the audience with a facial composure that was once described by Arthur Marx, writing in the Sunday Times Magazine, as "reminiscent of a calf that has just been dealt a blow between the eyes with a sledgehammer."
Benny himself explains it this way:
"As the butt of the jokes with everybody else getting, the laugh off me most of the time, I hold that laugh by looking at the audience as if in desperation and to get their help."
At the London Palladium he carried the stare to such excruciating length once that a balcony customer finally shouted in heavy Cockney accents:
"Fer Gawd's, syke, Mr. Benny, sigh something.
"The biggest point about Jack,'' says George Burns, "is that he deceives people. On the stage he doesn't look like he has any courage. He looks spineless. It looks like everyone is taking advantage of him and you want to adopt him, feed him, take him in your arms. But what you don't realize is that on stage Jack Benny is a powerhouse. If he does a funny joke and the audience doesn't laugh, he looks at them long enough until without realizing it they're frightened not to laugh.
"I've seen him look without saying a word for 45 seconds, which is a long time to stand out there alone without saying a word, and then you know he has courage. It's the waiting for those first snickers. You've stuck your neck out and if they don't come, God help you, you're dead. I saw him do this in Las Vegas last year. He had them so much in the palm of his hand that right from the beginning they were scared to death that they might not laugh in the right spots. With Jack Benny, it's the audience that's on."
The testimonials go on and on until one is tempted to say, as Jack once said to Judy Garland:
"You have so much talent I'd like to punch you in the nose."
Says Edgar Bergen: "I think he loves any performer who does a good job. In all the years I've known him I've never seen an ounce of professional jealousy in him."
Says singer Frances Bergen (Edgar's wife): "I'm so prejudiced about Jack I could be nauseating . . . He is the most considerate man I've ever known."
Says Benny Rubin: "Because of two tough divorce cases I went broke twice . . . I bought a small egg farm in New Hampshire. I didn't tell Jack anything about this but somehow he found out and wrote me a letter with a check in it. The letter said: 'You gotta eat until those goddam chickens lay the eggs.'
"Later back in L. A., I would get a call from someone on the show saying there was a part for me. Sometimes there actually was a part, but more times when I got there Jack would apologetically tell me the part had to be cut for one reason or another. You know what that meant—I got paid for the part anyway. Jack does this all the time. It's his way of giving without embarrassing you."

Says Dennis Day, who was singing for $20 a week until Jack hired him:
"He has been almost like a father to me. On my first couple of shows I'd been awfully nervous and scared and he came over to me and said, 'Look, don't worry about it. You've got the talent and the voice and I'm right behind you.' You can't imagine what this means to an amateur.
"The rarest thing in show business is the Benny show because it's all fun, everybody gets along like a big family, "where on most shows everyone is out to stick a knife in everyone else's back."
And says Eddie Anderson, who was originally hired for a single appearance on the show as a Pullman porter:
"If I'm not mistaken I was probably the first Negro to become a regular member of a coast-to-coast radio show. And as a result a lot of good was done in making it a natural thing to have mixed casts . . . I would go from here to hell for that man. There is only one other man I had that feeling for—my father."
Absent from this impressive roster of admirers is Harry Conn, Benny's first scriptwriter who started the stingy joke, invented the Mary Livingston character and initiated several other standard features of the Benny show.
Conn broke with Benny in 1936 apparently because he felt he was half the reason for the show's success and accordingly entitled to half of Benny's earnings. Benny fired him, some say, at the insistence of Mrs. Benny.
Conn was replaced by two writers, Ed Beloin and Bill Morrow, who worked for Benny until 1944. Both still speak of him glowingly as the best-paying comedian in the business, as well as the easiest and the most educational to work for.
Benny then acquired four writers—Sam Perrin, George Balzer, Milt Josefsberg and John Thackaberry —more recently added Hal Goldman and Al Gordon, all happy, all prosperous, all accounted for.
Testimonials to Benny come as a rule from individuals but occasionally a corporation gets into the act. In 1942, NBC threw him a 10th anniversary dinner in the course of which Niles Trammell, then network president (and possibly a little carried away by the occasion), publicly awarded Benny a lifetime option on the 7 to 7:30 p.m. Sunday time slot.
Trammell's generosity notwithstanding, Benny succumbed to the blandishments of a CBS capital gains deal and switched to the rival network at the beginning of 1949, precipitating an industry-shaking migration of established radio names like Edgar Bergen, Bing Crosby and Red Skelton from NBC to CBS.
To engineer this coup, CBS paid $2,260,000 for Amusement Enterprises, Inc., an organization of which Benny owned 60 per cent of the stock and which included the Benny show and the services of a little known ex-GI comedian named Jack Paar. By selling his corporation, Benny was able to list the profit under the heading of capital gains, an item which is taxable at only 25 per cent, and which spared him an estimated $1,000,000 that he would have been required to pay as a personal income tax.
The deal touched off a controversy in Internal Revenue circles that was not resolved until Nov. 7, 1955, when a U. S. Tax Court handed down a decision favorable to Benny.
No one has ever suggested that Benny himself, conceived this master plan. It was CBS boss William Paley who made the offer, and ultimately it enabled the network to equalize the balance of power and wealth in the broadcasting field.

(There was some doubt afterwards as to whether Benny had switched to CBS or CBS had switched to Benny. Network brass extended a royal welcome on his arrival and jostled each other in the rush to satisfy his whims. Paley, always an avid follower of the comedian, hosted a huge party for him at the Waldorf about six years ago. Benny innocently embarrassed him there by refusing to mingle with the guests, drawn almost exclusively from the Social Register and the entertainment business, and instead spent most of the evening conducting the dance band.)
Currently, Jack is the chief stockholder in J & M Productions, the successor to Amusement Enterprises But, says J&M President Fein, "Jack knows nothing about the business end of the company. I run it, and I make the decisions about the deals, the prices and the amounts. Jack is not interested. The more you explain the details of a business deal to him, the more he gets bored. The only thing he cares about business is to pay the top salaries in the business. When you talk business to him, he always says after awhile, 'All I know is a funny thing happened to me on the way to the studio.'"
Week-End Edition: At Home With an Institution

Happenings in the Warner Bros Cartoon Studio, 1955

I don’t know about you but when I was a kid, I watched credits in cartoons to see who made them (and with TV cartoons, who voiced them). It was a time before gang credits, so you could connect a specific cartoon with its makers.

It’s always a pleasure to hear or read stories about the various people at cartoon studios. For a while, Jerry Beck was able to post copies of “The Exposure Sheet,” the in-house publication at Leon Schlesinger Productions. Perhaps he’ll find time to resume doing it. Besides gossip, there’s some historical insight revealing when people came to and left the studio. There are also references to people who never received screen credit, which I always find fascinating. For too many years, a lot of people never got credited. How many animation fans have heard of Tom Armstrong or Art Loomer, who worked on Warners cartoons in the ‘30s (Armstrong was the head writer, Loomer the head background artist). Or cameraman Manny Corral, who later was employed at MGM? Their names never appeared on screen.

A little while ago, animation researcher Thomas Shim scanned a page of the Warner Club News, the Warners’ employee publication. It’s from the September 1955 edition. It was at the time the cartoon studio (Warners now owned it outright) was being moved from the ratty old building at Fernwood and Van Ness to the company’s new operation in Burbank. I’ve taken the liberty of transcribing it, partly because it tells some stories about Mike Maltese I’d never read (Maltese being my favourite cartoon writer) and there are references to people who never got screen credit. Unfortunately, a second page is missing so we won’t get to learn what happened to Bette Rebbeck when she left her wallet at home.

I can tell you a little bit (very little) about a few of them. Isadore Edward Faigin retired to Cathedral City, California and may still be living. He was born on September 18, 1922 and his father Sam was a commercial artist. Faigin did a little bit of radio work before going into the U.S. Army in World War Two; in the ‘80s, he was a minority owner of a broadcasting company run by his son. He was an assistant animator on Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956) and worked with fellow ex-Warners artists Tom Ray and Virgil Ross on Gremlins 2 (1990).

Carroll C. “Woody” Chatwood was from McCleary, Washington, on the highway from Olympia to Aberdeen. He was born on February 14, 1921 and died of cancer in Los Angeles on October 26, 1974. He was an assistant animator as well. Chatwood’s son Melvill died at the age of 5, while his son Todd was 23 when he died. Chatwood’s widow Betty (Brown) Chatwood died in 2010.

Joseph Bruce “Lefty” Price was born in Colorado on April 16, 1914 and was a musician when he got married in 1937. The 1940 Census lists his occupation as a cartoonist but doesn’t say where. He died in Los Angeles on January 25, 1962.

Dave Hoffman was an animator at Warners in 1939-40 after leaving Fleischers. Where he was after that to the time of this story, I couldn’t tell you. He worked on comic books and later ended up at Creston Studios (TV Spots). His name appears in the credits of Crusader Rabbit (the later version), Calvin and the Colonel, King Leonardo and The Funny Company.

Note that Irv Wyner’s name is spelled “Irv Weiner.”

What’s Up, Doc? . . .
A SPLICE OF CARTOON LIFE
By BARBARA RICHARDS
We, the cartoon studio guys and gals, will be the last to receive our copies of this issue of Warner Club News. We MAY not even bother to read it! We return from vacations on the 13th . . . smug, barely tolerant and highly impressed with ourselves. Why? Our new surroundings, of course! At first, we’ll just look, and admire our new building casually . . . but within minutes we’ll be scrambling all over it, inspecting every nook and cranny. We’ll charge through the Freleng, Jones and McKimson units; through the animators’ rooms; through the Ink and Paint Department; back to the main entrance and the executive officers . . . and then we’ll settle down to loud huzzahs and possibly a wee celebration over this dream come true. Warners Club Member, tell us how wonderful it is . . . we’ll love it!
And for those who can find a moment or two to read on, and because we’re in a gay mood to begin with, let’s enjoy the last to come out of the old studio, the . . .
Quips of the Month
Dick Thompson followed Abe Levitow into the studio from luncheon, staring at Abe’s new crewcut. “Look at that, will you?” exclaimed Dick. “A flat-top pin-head!”
Ellen Moyer to Chuck Jones as he came down the hall yodeling: “You’re the noisy type!” Quipped Chuck: “Oh, no. I’m exuberant. That means I used to be uberant, but now I’m ex-uberant.”
And Gordon Estes, signing letters as I wandered through his office to the vault, suddenly exclaimed: “I’m in such as hurry I’m signing my last name now . . . later, I’ll fill in the initials!”

Dancing down the corridor for the benefit of Friz Freleng and Tedd Pierce came Mike Maltese wearing pale blue suede shows. To the general razzing, Mike replied: “I’m a seersucker. I bought ‘em at Sears.”
As Dot Bitz fled through the hall, I called after her “Did you cut your hair again?” and she replied: “No, no . . . just put a little shortening on it, that’s all.”
Hawley Pratt had elbow trouble recently, quite serious, resulting in swollen fingers and his being unable to lift his arm. This sort of thing is not recommended, especially for artists, so after a lengthy session with his doctor, Hawley returned to the soothing influence of Friz Freleng, Warren Foster and Mike Maltese, who enacted this spontaneous playlet:
Friz: (dusting him off with a feather duster) “Feel better?”
Warren: “Of course he does.” (patting him on the head) “They bled him a little and released the vapors.”
Hawley: (impressively) “Actually, they used cortizone.” [sic]
Barbara: (innocently) “What does cortizone do?”
Mike: (delighted with the opportunity) “It raises the doctor’s bill.”
(curtain)
Happy, Happy to You!
Congratulations to you on YOUR DAY! Irv Weiner on the 4th, Jane Ferry the 5th, Della Anderson the 11th, Louise Cuarto the 13th, Milt Franklyn the 16th, Ted Bonnicksen and Ed Faigin on the 8th, Chuck Jones the 21st and your columnist on the 27th. Congratulations and many, many more!
Shakespearean, Hmm?
Did you know that Joseph Bruce Price (“Lefty” to you) at one time worked in radio as a newscaster in every state from Virginia to Mississippi? He has also done dramatic roles, and once had his own daily 15-minute show called “The Friendly Philosopher.” And if you’d like to hear some excellent dialects, just name them and call on Lefty!
It’s a Boy!
Woody Chatwood is wearing a big smile these days. Betty has just presented him with a baby boy and they have named him Todd Royce. their first-born son John, now 2½, is quite excited about his baby brother and can even saw “Congratulations,” as do we!
She’s Lovely! She’s Engaged
That’s what happens when you go to parties. Ellie Shenker enjoyed dancing with a young man by the name of Philip Liebowitz at a soiree recently, but turned down his offer to drive her home. Being a clever young man, he drove her friends home and learned from them her last name (which he had forgotten) and that all-important telephone number. Six weeks later after one date had followed another, they were in a ceramic shop purchasing wedding gifts for mutual friends. The following conversation ensued:
Salesgirl: “Have you room for these large pieces?”
Philip: “My wife (indicating Ellie) wans a larger place anyway, so now we’ll have to have one.”
(Salesgirl leaves to wrap packages. Philip turns to Ellie)
Philip: “You would, wouldn’t you? I mean you would like to have a large apartment and you would like to be my wife, wouldn’t you?”
Astonished over a marriage proposal in a ceramic shop, plus the intriguing way Philip maneuvered it . . . what could Ellie say but yes? The wedding will take place in her home in October and since Ellie is not interested in an engagement ring, she adores the gold and jade bracelet Philip chose for her engagement gift, her favorite precious metal and gems. All happiness and success to you two!
Have Another!
Just for the record (and quite a record it is!) Ken Harris just bought a 1955 Cadillac, hard-top coupe in off-white with a grey top. This makes his 103rd automobile and his 9th Cadillac, and Ken is dressing in very light and medium grey flannels these days. “Ho, hum,” sighed he when Carmela Blitz observed that his clothes matched his car.
Oops!
Speaking of cars, it seems last month Phil DeGuard was reported the owner of a new light blue Nash Rambler. T’ain’t so. But to keep up with this column, Phil simply had to go right out and buy a new car . . . a Sarasota Sand and Jamaica Bronze 4-door Plymouth, in which he is driving to Jamaica. (No, not across the Atlantic . . . Jamaica, New York). He also plans to visit Washington, D.C., to see where our money goes, but Maurice Noble insists that Phil wants to check on whether Washington is handling our money as they should!
New Faces
Painters Helen Kegler, Julia Raymond, Jo Mapes and Jeanne Bischoff have joined our ranks. June Rose Ross is back in our midst after a few months in New York; and Russ Dyson’s lovely daughter Barbara is now one of the gals, too . . . welcome!
A-Travellin’
Dave Hoffman zoomed off to Chicago and Washington, D.C. with his better half and will spend time in Pennsylvania and New York as well. Since they’re driving a new car, they’ll undoubtedly hit (not literally) even more of the 48 states before arriving back in California.

Koko Appears

Koko the Clown was still coming out of the inkwell in 1932. Unlike the silent film days, when Max Fleischer’s hand would have a, um, hand in it, an animated elephant brings Koko to life in Boop-Oop-a-Doop. I like the closed-eyed smile of the elephant.



Unfortunately, the cartoon has no animation credits.

Foul-Mouthed Phone

Yes, you weren’t hearing things in The Cuckoo Murder Case, a 1930 Ub Iwerks cartoon.

There’s a creative gag where the a cuckoo clock drops the numbers on its face into a phone to reach the number for Detective Flip the Frog.



Flip’s phone desperately rings but Flips sleeps through the noise. The phone turns to the audience and says “Damn!”



Finally, the phone bops Flip on the head with its mouthpiece.



No animators are credited.

Comedy: Sick Versus Bland

“But Mommy, I don’t want to go to Europe!” “Shut up and keep swimming.”

When it comes to jokes, that’s a pretty hokey one, right? Maybe today, but in 1959, it was considered depraved humour.

In the late ‘50s, America got hung up on “sick” humour. Humour that was irreverent? In poor taste? Why, it was sign of the morals of U.S.A. falling apart (one would almost expect Robert Preston to show up and launch into “Trouble” from The Music Man). Boo to the sickos, guys like Shelley Berman. Whaaa? Shelley Berman?! And Don Rickles!?

Peering through newspapers of the day is fun. In 1961, there was a poll published saying “sick humor is slowly dying.” Then in 1967: “sick humor is dying.” Then in 1972, Dear Abby answered a question about why sick humor was so popular. Even funnier were articles in both 1959 and 1962 declaring Red Skelton a “tonic” from sick humour; Red had one of the foulest mouths in show business that he used in his post-broadcast, off-air show to his audience.

This story from United Press International appeared in newspapers on August 6, 1959. It quotes none other than Dan Rowan and Dick Martin who, at that point, had hosted a summer TV replacement for The Chevy Show. There’s a little irony here as ten years later, some people were accusing “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In” of questionable taste. Their contradictory conclusion: “Sick humour is horrible. I wish we could do it.”

Comedy Team Gives Views On Acts of 'Sick' Comedians
By VERNON SCOTT
HOLLYWOOD (UPI)— "Sick" comedians were scrutinized by the comedy team of Rowan and Martin Thursday. They decided the audiences are sicker than the sickniks.
"It's a cult that's grown up in a few big cities," Dick Martin suggested. "Most of the sick comedians depend on the same people returning night after night to hear their gags. The nightclubbers who follow them around are real addicts."

"The sick ones would never be popular on television," Dan Rowan said. "Their material is too far out."
"That's why they're popular in clubs," Dick said. "They can get away with controversial and spicy jokes with a limited audience--and use terms the average televiewer does not comprehend.
"They never get a laugh in real joints because the audience doesn't know what they're talking about."
The comedy team, who appear in movies, TV and clubs, have no "sick" routines themselves, but study the off-beat competition closely.
"Sophisticates—or pseudo sophisticates—are flattered by the sickniks because the comedians throw around psychological terms and other words that aren't usually identified with entertainers," said Dan.
"But even without censorship, mass audiences would never dig the humor. In fact, most of the country would be offended by the new group."
Among the sickniks named by the boys were Lenny Bruce, Don Rickles, Shelley Berman and Tom Lehrer. Mort Sahl, who specializes in political barbs, isn't considered a sicknik by his cohorts.
"Their jokes are based on tragedy," Rowan went on. "Death, illness, religion and such things as lynchings make up the subject matter.
"Shock value is what they're looking for. And as audiences become more and more difficult to shock, their jokes keep getting more and more sick. The laughs they get are usually somewhat nervous."
Rowan and Martin, who soon move into the famed Coconut Grove, insist the sickniks must play small, intimate rooms to be successful.

"Comedians like to watch the sick ones perform," Dick said. "Most comedians would love to get away with some of their routines, but television is so closely censored comedians are limited to old, dull stuff."
"Right," Dan agreed. "You can't hope to be a success on TV unless you're really mediocre. There are so many taboos by pressure groups and sponsors we have to stay with bland, innocuous material.
"I wish I had a dollar for every person who has come up to us after our nightclub act and asked why we aren't as funny on TV."
"It's not that we use off-color jokes in clubs," Dick concluded, "but we can mention a product or controversial subject without having to worry about ad agency guys or network big shots. That's something the sickniks never have to put up with."