Scaredy Gun

Heckle uses a pop gun to scare the bulldog security guard’s rifle in Movie Madness (1951). Note the curved mouths in the first couple of frames.





Multiple corks for maximum effect.



Animation screen credits? Bahh. Isn’t working for Paul Terry satisfying enough?

Stopping the Bull

An annoyed bull (played by Frank Graham) is added into the plot half way through The Hick Chick (1946). Here’s a scene where the Clem Kadiddlehopper rooster catches the bull’s tail in a door. It rips his skin off, which becomes a running gag.



Here is a pan (in two parts) from right to left, stopping on the bull. Tex Avery and writer Heck Allen dig up the old meat markings gag. (I don’t know who used it first, but it was in the Woody Woodpecker cartoon Hollywood Matador in 1942).



Preston Blair, Ed Love, Walt Clinton and Ray Abrams animated the cartoon.

The Tycoon of Tastelessness, Chuck Barris

In November 1979, the Associated Press reported:

The "Gong Show" and its producer, Chuck Barris, were singled out yesterday by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York for presenting "vulgar and degrading" prime-time entertainment to children in the metropolitan area in its condemnation of the "Gong Show."
The archdiocese gave this capsule description: "Entire thrust is to demean and ridicule its guests while furnishing a platform for the crude and vulgar comments of host Chuck Barris."

I suspect if Chuck Barris could have fit those sentiments on his tomb stone, he would have. The phoney talent show was the highlight of his career.

Barris has died at his home in New York at the age of 87.

I loved the “Gong Show.” So did millions of others. It was stunning, unbelievable weirdness surrounded by complete pandemonium. It spawned all kinds of off-screen imitations; some group somewhere was staging its own version. At the centre of it was producer Barris, who turned out to be the perfect emcee for the show. Gary Owens handled the job for a bit, but while he had a wonderful sense of the absurd and a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour, he was just too professional. The Brillo-headed Barris came off as a proudful amateur, which is exactly what the show needed. (Later in the show’s run, some viewers wondered if Barris was on something—and I don’t mean on camera).

Barris’ earliest fame came with “The Dating Game,” a collective of harmless silliness and banality wrapped in Herb Alpert’s music (and, eventually, Alpert knock-offs). But why should I tell the story? Here’s a column from the Associated Press wire from May 21, 1967 giving his successes to date.

No Brain Games for Chuck Barris
By CYNTHIA LOWRY
Associated Press Writer
New York—Sixteen months ago, Chuck Barris was an unemployed man of 36, fretting furiously in a $25-a-month office in West Hollywood.
Today he is the hottest thing in the television game-packaging business. He is now producer of three daytime and two nighttime network shows, employer of 65 people, head of several corporations and currently negotiating to put two more shows in network channels.
Barris, for better or worse, is the master-mind who concocted the ABC trilogy called The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game and Dream Girl of '67. None is likely to emerge with a Peabody—or even an Emmy—award, but the maestro couldn't care less.
He apparently has developed a not-so-secret recipe for inexpensive, time-killing daytime now spilled successfully into early evening time game shows with broad appeal.
• • •
GOODSON and Todman, fathers of What's My Line? Password and To Tell the Truth are fond of intellect-tickling word games — a shrewd mixture of celebrity-watching and audience involvement, Barris has no use for cerebral stimuli.
"What we're looking for is people, as opposed to playing with words and clues," he said. "My idea is to pick some lively people, put them into a format and get them talking. You never know what is going to come out, but whatever it is, it's spontaneous."
Barris, like most "overnight" successes, has been around for a number of years, learning techniques. A Philadelphia boy, he entered NBC through its management training program, moved on to daytime sales and worked in a minor capacity, on the old Steve Allen variety hour and in the news and public affairs department.
• • •
LATER BARRIS moved to the coast and spent three years as ABC director of daytime programs. He found it a bore—and quit.
"I was looking at 'Where the Action Is,' which was aimed at the audience between 18 and 35," he said, "and it occurred to me that there might be something interesting in having a teenager talking to a few guys and picking one for a day.
"It would be a sort of Russian roulette — particularly if out of the bunch she happened to pick on somebody famous. It would be just as interesting to see her reaction if she skipped him for somebody else."
Within weeks of confiding the idea to Leonard Goldberg, youthful ABC vice-president in charge of programming, Dating Game slipped into ABC's afternoon channels.
It did so well in the ratings that Barris came up with a second, The Newlywed Game, which simply relies on how well young married couples know each other's tastes and personalities.
• • •
THE STIMULATION for the viewer comes when young couples come fairly close to mayhem when they are not doing very well.
"I suppose I do these shows because I don't find any fun in intellectual games," said Barris. "To me the interest is entirely in the revelation of the personalities."
When ABC's Shane, a western series that cost over $125,000 per episode, turned out a ratings disaster, Barris was tapped for evening editions of his two games as replacements.
Now Barris is busily working the same rich vein. He has something called The Mother-in-Law Game and another, The Family Game, merely awaiting a network okay.
Daytime television, Barris claims is "the real TV jungle," since there is a fierce network battle for the housewife audience. Barris' success has been so swift and big that he really has not yet become accustomed to it, and he worries constantly about his unaccustomed role as employer of a large staff.
"They are all young, enthusiastic and creative," he said. "Their average age is 24 and they want to try everything. I hate to knock down their ideas, but at the moment I'm concerned just about staying on the air. What I keep going for is strictly a commercial winner."

“The Gong Show” premiered Monday, June 14, 1976 from 12:30 to 12:55 Eastern on NBC, followed by a short newscast. (The sight of the dour-looking Edwin Newman after a string of outrageous acts was incongruous, to say the least). The TV critics dug in. Outrageous acts brought outrage. One huffing, puffing columnist from Gannett, invoking the sacred memory of Ted Mack (who had an amateur hour that sold Geritol and liver pills), managed to write virtually the same unsmiling article twice in three years, demanding the end of the gong. But some critics got it. They knew the show wasn’t serious. It wasn’t a competition, it was a twisted party. A sampling:

"'The Gong Show' is loud, shameless and vulgar, but it's not like any other game show on the air" ...(Tom Shales, Washington Post Service).
"It has managed to be the most gawdawful show on television...It is silly, puerile, objectionable, insulting, degrading and ridiculous. And I wouldn't miss it if my house were on fire " ...(John H. Corcoran Jr., National Observer).
"It exploits greed and need, it is based on the lowest principles of public humiliation...a piece of trash...an assault on public taste ...It is also funny" ...(Bill Granger, Chicago Sun-Times).

I was hoping to find a column quoting Barris during the show’s run. Instead, you’ll have to settle for this syndicate story from December 22, 1976. If you’re too young to have seen the show, this gives you an idea of what it was about.

The 'Gong Show' is a feast of lunacy
By DON FREEMAN
Copley News Service
HOLLYWOOD - The one new show this season that is always certain to wrench a laugh out of me — and, often as not, a very big laugh up from the toes — is an incredible oddment called the "Gong Show." It is — I believe the word is apt — bizarre. It is also wildly, outrageously funny and I salute Chuck Barris, the man who also gave us "The Dating Game" and "The Newlywed Game" and others, for conceiving this nonsense.

There are two versions of "Gong Show." The first is hosted by Barris himself, and it can be seen weekdays on NBC; the nighttime version is widely syndicated and it is hosted by the mellow-voiced veteran of "Laugh-In," comic and author, KMPC jockey and all-around good sport and jitterbug champion of South Dakota, Gary Owens.
A television columnist in Chicago, writing in a cold fury, has already lambasted the show, saying that "it exploits greed and need, it is based on the lowest principles of public humiliation." He calls it a "piece of trash" and an "assault on public taste." And those are his compliments.
Frankly, I suspect that this fellow's humor has been swept away by the harsh winds off Lake Michigan. As I say, the "Gong Show" is a genuine laugh-provoker. "It is," says the redoubtable Owens "a feast of lunacy."
Inspired lunacy, really. And inspired, moreover, by a relic from out of the distant past—the amateur hour once conducted by Major Bowes who would tap a gong to indicate that fee aspiring entertainer did not exactly measure up. On the "Gong Show," they have an enomorous gong that rests behind the panel chairs for the three celebrity judges. Often, one of them — or all of them in unison — will strike the gong if an act strikes their displeasure.
Onstage, the genial emcee, one Gary Owens, brings on the acts and what acts they are! There was, for example, a rather large woman said to weigh about 450 pounds and dressed like a kewpie doll singing "The Good Ship Lollypop." And there was the fellow who sings "These Boots Are Made for Walking" as it might be rendered by Peter Lorre. And the fellow who strums his guitar for 20 seconds and then, to finish off his act, mutters: "I'm so lonely since my horse died." And the act billed as Oscar and Pancho — Oscar plays the flute while Pancho plays the piano. Pancho is a dog. He doesn't play very well.

One night — I'm not making any of this up, you understand — I saw a contestant on the show whose entire act consisted of eating a banana to the theme from the movie, "2001: A Space Odyssey." I mean, that was his entire act. He wore white tie and tails and tennis shoes.
Comic Rip Taylor, on the panel, watched him eat the banana and said, afterward: "Well, it had appeal. Take your banana and split, kid!"
Phyllis Diller, another panelist, was singularly underwhelmed. "I don't see where the act can go," she said, "except to the grocery."
Let's see now, and there was a girl singer who was brought on by Owens with this encouraging introduction:
"The good news is that she sings in 10 languages. The bad news is, one of them is English."
And there you have the "Gong Show," which is syndicated not only to 130 cities but also to England and Australia, where it's an enormous hit.
As Gary likes to say, "This show may seem a bit silly at first but then it develops into something totally ridiculous."

“The Gong Show,” in some ways, was Barris’ last TV hurrah. He came up with “The $1.98 Beauty Show,” which soon faded as viewers felt they had seen the Barris Productions’ campiness all before. There were other short-lived shows and rehashes of old ones. Barris turned to writing, penning a book about his daughter who died of an overdose, and then an autobiography where he claimed to have been a CIA assassin. He showed he still had some power; he spun the rights to that book into a 2003 movie.

Was it true? Who knows. But does it really matter? After all, he brought the world Gene, Gene the Dancing Machine and the Unknown Comic. Nobody else can make that claim, for better or worse. I say, for better.

Shadowing Disney

Drawing shadows on animated characters wasn’t something you saw a lot of in 1930, but Walt Disney’s staff gives it a try in a few scenes in Pioneer Days.



If you’re wondering what the song is when the natives are in a war dance, it’s “The Sun Dance,” written in 1903 by Leo Friedman. Carl Stalling used it, too, at Warner Bros. You can click on the arrow and hear it below, thanks to the wonderful people at the UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive.

Dove of Peace Ends War

O what has come to so erase
All thoughts of peace from off this place?
Have they forgot that love ‘tis right
And not, is gain by show of might?

So laments the dove of peace (voiced by writer John McLeish) in Norm McCabe’s energetic wartime short The Ducktators.



Later, we see the dove amongst the olive branches (and jars of olives) weeping over war in verse:

Mercy me! Regretful sight!
O branch of peace, forestall this fight.



The dove’s entreaties are ignored by the marching jackboots.



The dove has had his fill of peace. A fist in face he will release. That’s giving it to old Adolf!



The civilians cheer. Excellent layout (by Dave Hilberman?).



Here’s a wonderful scene where the barnyard denizens tangle with the Gestapo ducks in a mass of swirling lines. Look at the perspective animation as one patriotic civilian jumps into the fight.



The Nazis become Trashzis.



We return to the dove, sucking on his peace pipe.

I hate war, but once begun,
Well, I just didn’t choose to run.
So I can point with pride and say
‘There’s three that didn’t get away.’

And the camera pans over to Mussolini, Hitler and Tojo in animal representation.



John Carey gets the rotating animation credit for this cartoon. I imagine Vive Risto, Izzy Ellis and Cal Dalton are at work here as well. The dove’s poetry is by Mel Millar.

He Brought the Show Up When It Was Down

Alois Havrilla is the answer to a trivia question. The question is: “Who did Don Wilson replace as the announcer on the Jack Benny show?”

When the change was made in 1934, Havrilla was the better known of the two. Wilson’s fame had come from announcing the Rose Bowl games on NBC in the early ‘30s. Havrilla was a top announcer and in 1935 received an award as the best radio announcer in the U.S. “from the standpoint of pronunciation, articulation, tonal quality, accent and general cultural effect.” Wilson went on to spend several lucrative decades with Jack. Havrilla ended up reading news at a small station in New Jersey and died in 1952 at the age of 61.

Wilson was hired when the Benny show changed sponsors from Chevrolet to General Tire. He was an inspired choice. Almost from the start, Jack had incorporated his announcer into the show’s banter. Wilson started off with the same “character” as Havrilla and Howard Claney before him—someone so enthusiastic about the sponsor’s product, he’d shoehorn it into the programme whenever possible (and inappropriate), usually as a pun based on a previous line of dialogue. But Wilson had the advantage of a friendly, up-beat and natural delivery (Claney, in particular, stiffly shouted at listeners) which made it easy to expand on his character. And when General Foods took over, Wilson was a natural spokesman. Everyone listening at home could picture a jolly fat man, quickly scooping up those six delicious flavours of Jell-O.

Jack and his writers used Donzie as the centre-pin of a number of radio shows either celebrating his anniversary in radio or with Benny. A particularly funny one was broadcast on January 10, 1954, where everyone but Jack insisted the show was “down” until Wilson came in and brought it up. Benny was not one to shy away from re-using whole bits of old programmes; the radio show in question contained routines from broadcasts in 1945 and 1949 (including the “down” running gag). So it was one of the ideas he borrowed from the radio days for a TV show. It aired January 13, 1961 and featured a walk-on at the end by CBS’ What’s My Line? host John Daly, who was also the vice president for news at ABC at the time the show was filmed.

CBS got out its publicity machine to plug this particular episode, making Wilson available for interviews. Let’s reprint three of them. First up is a United Press International story that first appeared in papers on December 30, 1960.

Honor, but No Pay Boost for Wilson On Anniversary
BY JOE FINNIGAN
U. P. I. Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) — Don Wilson celebrates his twenty-seventh anniversary as Jack Benny's sidekick soon, but there's no salary raise in sight.
The rotund Wilson started with Jack on radio as part of the Benny “family” that included Dennis Day, Eddie (Rochester) Anderson and Phil Harris.
Day and Rochester appear occasionally these days on Jack's TV show but Wilson still hangs around as a regular and quite often the butt of Benny's jokes.
TO HONOR Wilson for years of faithful service, Benny thought it would be nicer, and CHEAPER to give Don a remembrance rather than something crassly commercial such as a salary boost. Tightfisted economy is Benny's onstage credo.
Of course, everyone knows Jack is just the opposite in real life.
So, Benny turned over the Jan. 17 show to a live "memorial" to the slenderizing Wilson.

“I don't know of anyone in this business who would do this, to set aside a whole show and use the anniversary as a theme,” Don said, as he sipped on a calorie-free ginger ale in a Beverly Hills hotel.
“THE PROGRAM will constitute a flashback and show how our association came about,” Don added. “The program also will show the bigness of Jack.
“When I think back over the years and other comedians I've worked with, I remember that they were the only ones who got the laughs. But Jack started working me into his show right away and I became part of the laugh family.”
Recalling the time 27 years ago when he went to work for Benny in New York after an audition, Don said, “There's been an awful lot of water over the dam since then” as he laughed about Jack's threats to “fire” him.
“FOR YEARS, he threatened to fire me on the air and hire Harry Von Zell who worked for George Burns,” Don said with a nostalgic chuckle. And George would do the same thing to Harry.”
Even so, Don never fretted about the lack of job security working with the violin playing Benny.
“I'm just probably the luckiest guy in this business,” he said. “Let's face it, what better luck could a fellow have than to be associated with a top man like Jack all these years.”

Our next stop at the newsstand is at the Boston Globe for January 15, 1961.

Benny Salutes Don Wilson On 27 Years Of Association
One day last June, there was a great hullabaloo on the West Coast. Jack Benny put another show on videotape, but this particular one was special.
Benny saluted his announcer and supporting funnyman, Don Wilson, on the occasion of Wilson’s 27th anniversary with the Jack Benny Program.
Tonight, CBS viewers will see the anniversary telecast as it unfolds on Ch. 5 at 9:30 o’clock. The entire program belongs to Don, and well he deserves the honor.
* * *
“Jack has been very good to me,” said Don, in a call from the Coast a couple of days ago. “He goes out of his way for anyone, for that matter. He is very considerate.
“I remember the first time, and times after that, when I played Broadway. Benny made it very easy for me to tape the shows on the Coast. I had only to go back once a week to the Coast and Jack gave my show great publicity, which helped a great deal.
“Jack has had a long and successful career in radio and TV. Of course, his writers are second to none. It’s surprising how well the radio shows have stood up. This was evidence when some of the ones we made 10 and 15 years ago were brought out for repeats broadcasts.”
* * *

By way of explanation of why a show taped last June is showing this January, Don continued:
“Jack takes it comparatively easy these days. Last June we started taping TV shows for fall showing and 11 were put on tape. Our shows are taped before a live audience, and long before the present TV season closes we’ll have everything done. Along about May we’ll put shows for the coming season in the can and take time out for a fine Summer vacation during July, August and part of September.”
Don will watch the TV show tonight, on which he reigns as king. “Funny,” said he, “how you forget what transpired when shows are taped so far in advance. It will seem like a new show to me!”
Don and his wife live in an apartment building. They have a standard size poodle that is a prize winner, and a new addition—and apricot-color toy poodle is being groomed for the prize ring.
“You’d never know they are in the house,” continued Don. “They get along beautifully. Only one problem though:
“When we go to the movies, it has to be the outdoor kind. You see, we have to take the poodles with us!”
Wilson is a winner of every major award available to TV and radio announcers. He has been singer, emcee, announcer, sports commentator and actor.
He has had starring roles in “The Great Sebastians” (1959) at the Pasadena Playhouse; “Make a Million” (1958); on TV he impersonated a pompous confidence man in the Hollywood Bowl production of “The Vagabond King.” Also on TV, he has been on the Perry Como and Red Skelton shows.
Don is married to the former Lois Corbett, an actress, and it was she who interrupted Don on the phone to remind him about their taking poodles to the outdoor theaters. (E.L.S.)

Now to the Atlanta Journal of the same date.

Faithful Old Cue-Cardless Don Hailed on Benny Show
By ALAN PATUREAU
Atlanta Journal TV-Radio Editor
It’s about time Jack Benny did something splendid for Don Wilson, his faithful second banana for 27 years. The golden-throated, oval-shaped one has the toughest announcing job on TV. But he never falters.
Wilson is the only announce in Hollywood who has to rattle off a formal commercial without a teleprompter or even a cue card for a crutch. He told me via phone recently as Benny prepared to make him King for a Day:
“Jack despises idiot sheets. He has never allowed one on his TV show and never will. So it all has to be in your noodle. That really puts the pressure on the announcer—and you can’t afford to fluff and make the sponsor mad. Yet a commercial is harder to commit to memory than any other speech.
* * *

Don’s delivery is usually flawless. Benny the idiot-sheet-hater, on the other hand, often hems and haws through his routines while he searches for the next word in the script. Ironic?
Tonight’s show (WAGA-TV at 9:30) is a half-hour salute to Wilson. He described it in confidential tones:
“I get the full treatment—dressed in royal robes and crown, and of course when I sit down on the throne I got crashing through the bottom, supposedly because of my weight . . . which is only 235 pounds, incidentally (steady for 30 of his 60 years; he was a 190-pound tackle in high school).
* * *
THEN WE USE THE FLASHBACK technique and show my audition for a job with Jack in 1934. It’s gagged up for that Jack hires me because I laugh at the right places in his jokes. Actually I had to beat out some pretty tough competition.
Don was a rising young announcer with NBC, New York, when Benny signed him to an exclusive contract. He had been “discovered” while helping Graham McNamee broadcast the Rose Bowl game of 1932.
He first assisted McNamee in the 1929 Rose Bowl when Roy Regals of California made his famous wrong-way run that led to a win for Georgia Tech. He was the only man in the booth who spotted when happened when Tech got its safety and that made him McNamee’s boy.
* * *
DON ALSO RECALLS WORKING THE Notre Dame-Southern Cal game in 1931 with Atlanta’s Bill Munday—“a wonderful man, give him my warmest regards.”
Wilson then grew nostalgic about his years with Benny: They were the first to rib their sponsors, the first to work their commercials into the program’s continuity and among the first with a singing commercial.
How does Don feel about having a whole show based on him? He let out a jolly chuckle.
“I’m thrilled pink—at last I think the time is ripe to ask Jack for a raise.”

Wilson carried on with Benny through the end of his TV series in 1965 and appeared on a few specials, though Bill Baldwin took over the straight announcing role. Donzie and Lois moved to Palm Springs where they hosted a TV show for a number of years until, in a move far too typical in broadcasting, they suddenly weren’t on the station any more. Wilson was 81 when he died in 1982.

Click on the arrow below to hear “The Don Wilson Story” on the Benny radio show of January 10, 1954. Mel Blanc, Frank Nelson, Hy Averback and Sandra Gould have uncredited supporting roles.

From Birth of a Nation to Buddy

Here’s a re-post of a Toronto Globe and Mail story that was put up on the Golden Age Cartoons forum a number of years ago. At the time, there wasn’t too much about Bernie Brown on the internet. He won a couple of Oscars from 11 nominations as well as three technical achievement awards from the Motion Picture Academy for his sound work. He was employed on at least two bonafide history-making films. But cartoon fans know him as one of two people who got credit for musical scores on Leon Schlesinger’s cartoons during those barren years of the mid-1930s when the studio’s star was Buddy the Bland. He even received supervisory credit on two shorts—“Pettin’ in the Park” and “Those Were Wonderful Days” (both 1934)—though I can’t see him doing the work of a cartoon director as he doesn’t seem to have had any art experience. Brown recollected in a 1973 interview with historian Mike Barrier that story conferences with eventually-fired director Tom Palmer were woefully indecisive and it’s tempting to speculate that Brown mother-henned shorts that Palmer put into production in 1933. (Variety of April 9, 1934 also lists him as co-director of “Buddy of the Apes” with Ben Hardaway).

The Globe and Mail article blows off his cartoon work in one line. It doesn’t reveal Brown and cohort Norman Spencer connected with Schlesinger around the start of 1932 in a venture called Pacific Sound Track Service. When Schlesinger decided the following year to stop using the Harman-Ising staff and set up his own cartoon studio, Brown and Spencer moved over to handle the music (with Spencer’s son arranging the scores). Footnotes in Barrier’s Hollywood Cartoons quote animator Jim Pabian as saying Brown was “a very genial person,” though he got divorced during his time at Schlesinger, reportedly telling his wife of 12 years: “I’m tired of this married life—I want romance” (he remarried soon after). Brown left Schlesinger in 1936 to take over the sound department at Universal where his screen billing changed to “Bernard B. Brown” and he went on to a fine career. Hedda Hopper called him “that wizard of sound.”

This story ran in the edition of May 24, 1980. Bernard Bohn Brown was born in Lafarge, Wisconsin to Charles S. and Ida M. (Millison) Brown on July 24, 1898; his father was a photographer. The family was in Los Angeles by 1910. The 1920 Census lists Brown as being a musician in motion pictures (yes, silent pictures) and by 1930, he was the head of a special effects department, presumably at Warners. Before making music and sound his career, he had a job as a bill clerk for a wholesale drug company. He died in Laguna Hills, California on February 20, 1981.

Bernard Brown gave you talking pictures and crushed peanut shells
He broke sound barrier in film
BY STEPHEN GODFREY

BERNARD B. BROWN thinks he might have been able to save silent screen star John Gilbert. “He committed suicide because his career was over when the talkies came. He really had a high, squeaky voice,” says the first pioneer of film sound. “At Warner Brothers, we knew how to add low frequencies, so a tenor could sound like a high baritone. We could have applied it to Gilbert, but,” he shakes his head sadly, “he was at a different studio.” Probably no one has had more experience in making the high sound low, the loud sound louder, and everyone sound better than they really do than Bernard B. Brown, a bubbling, enthusiastic man known as Brownie to his colleagues. Beside him in the room where we sit is a rocking chair. It is easily the most comfortable chair around, but Brown is eyeing it with suspicion. “I'm staying out of that thing,” says a living historical document whose diverse activities since retiring from film include inventing a hair tonic and facial peel. “I don't believe in feeling old.”

He is in town this weekend to talk about his work in film scoring and sound engineering at Cineforum on Mercer Street, which will be showing three of his films. Highlights of his career include the orchestration of director D. W. Griffith's epic Birth of a Nation (1916); conducting and arranging in the first “talkie”, The Jazz Singer (1928); two Academy Awards, (out of nine nominations), one for developing the 10-track mixing system used in the Deanna Durbin film, One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937). Singers such as Miss Durbin, Bing Crosby and Nelson Eddy have had their singing voices transformed and their careers stregthened - sometimes despite their protests.

Brown's career began with a sensation. At the age of 16, just graduated from Hollywood High School and already an accomplished violinist, he applied to the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In the first hour of his audition, he was moved from sixth to first violinist. But more importantly, he was chosen to assist conductor Carli Elinor, who had been asked to select music for a new film by Griffith, Birth of a Nation.

To get California audiences in the mood to see a three-hour epic — an unheard of length — of the deep South, pine oil was blown into the auditorium by a wind machine through real pine trees placed in front of a set depicting a Southern plantation, while the orchestra played Swanee River. That's not all they played, but unfortunately that's one of the few tunes Brown can recall. The original score has been lost.

“We didn't compose any music, apart from the occasional short bridge,” he recalls. “We chose segments from about 30 classics. I can remember only a few; we used Suppe's Morning, Noon and Night, the overture from Rossini's Semiramade, Southern tunes such as Dixie, and a tune called The Sweetest Bunch of Lilacs, which became a theme song.”

Playing in the orchestra every day was tortuous. “There was no intermission, remember, and because it as the war, catgut for violin strings was hard to find. We had to settle for fish line, which ate right into the fingers until we bandaged them up with adhesive tape.”

Joining Warner Brothers in the twenties, Brown became both sound man and musician. Some of the early recorded effects were crude but effective for their novelty. “I had to do sound for some really B-type films. I remember one where a man was bending down to pick up his wife’s earring, and she kicks him in the fanny. I got a Chinese gong for that one, and turned up the volume when it went off. People jumped up and screamed. It was a sensation.”

The first brief soundtracks, made of wax, added their own problems. “If you got one revolution out of sync, a man would be talking for a woman and the woman instead of the man. Then there'd be a loud scratch as the operator pushed it back into sync.”

Sound only started being treated seriously with the success of The Jazz Singer. There had been talking in shorter films before, but for the first time, camera and turntable were synchronized during production, and talking and singing were both put on the same wax record. And although only 10 per cent of The Jazz Singer boasted sound, Brown ensured that it seemed like more. "People remember the last thing they see, so we made sure a lot of that dialogue was at the end of the film." In The Jazz Singer, the back of Brown's brilliantined head can clearly be seen conducting the orchestra while Al Jolson mouths the song Mammy to pre-recorded music.

Paramount was fast matching Warner Brothers in the technology of transferring sound from discs onto the film itself. "We went to see Paramount's new film Old Arizona, and there was a scene where someone shoots a money box open with a .44. It was a tremendous cracking, and it really registered with Jack Warner, who was a little hard of hearing anyway. But it gradually sold him on the idea of a soundtrack on the film itself, and of course in a year or two the whole industry had converted to it.

Brown's work in the thirties included some pioneering sound effects — from the complex (he was the first to construct a "train effects machine") to the simple (he realized that the loud splintering of falling trees could be imitated by crunching peanut shells close to a mike).

And he supervised the first Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons for Warners. He also moonlighted with the Disney studios in the making of Fantasia in 1940.

But some of his most satisfying experiences were with singers, especially Deanna Durbin.

“Doug Shearer, who was the brother of Moira [sic] Shearer, the wife of MGM's boss Irving Thalberg, was a tennis partner of mine.” Brown is a devoted tennis player. “One day he said, ‘They had a screen test for Judy Garland and Deanna Durbin, and they've let Deanna go. This is your chance.’ I knew why they had let Deanna go. She had such a range that she kept hitting the high frequencies, and their equipment couldn't handle it, while Judy was sticking to the middle register. But I knew how to work with Deanna, and once I sold Warner Brothers on her, she became a star."

Miss Durbin had a problem that plagued her career. “Every day right at noon — and this was really strange, because she didn't have a watch — she would stop on the set and say ‘I'm hungry.’ I'd say, ‘Okay, Deanna, I'll go get some sandwiches.’ She'd say ‘Forget the sandwiches, I want a plate of spaghetti.’

Brown sighs. “That's why we never gave her any time off. She'd put on 10 pounds just like that.”

There was talk of Miss Durbin, who now lives in Paris, making a comeback. “I wrote her about four years ago, and asked if she'd like to work with the old gang again. She replied that she was in better voice than ever, and that she would consider making another movie as soon as she lost 30 pounds.”

Brown hasn't heard from her since.

Some singers appreciated him more than others. Bing Crosby refused to return to Paramount after making a picture for Warners unless they hired Brown to remake their scoring stage. “Bing had that deep, casual voice that made him sound as if he was singing in a rain barrel at Paramount. In their sound studio, they had up all these drapes which damaged the natural brightness in his voice. I just tore them down.”

Nelson Eddy was more of a problem. By 1939, Brown had switched studios, to Universal and vowed that “If Nelson Eddy comes to this studio, I'll make a new singer out of him.” When Eddy was contracted to make A Phantom of the Opera with Claude Rains in 1942, Brown had his chance.

“Eddy had no brightness, no character, no oomph. But I built a special studio, that gave timbre and definition to his voice.

“The first time he heard his voice played back on the set, he was furious. He thought we had hired a double.” Eddy was ultimately delighted with his new resonance. “But when he went back to MGM,” says Brown smiling, “he lost a bit of it.”

Brown retired from film in 1953 after a projected film company to be formed in Jamaica with his friend Errol Flynn fell through. (Of the recent allegations concerning spy activities by Flynn, Brown says “That's nonsense. I was so close to Errol I would have known. We played tennis nearly every day.”) Although he has kept up with new sound techniques, he doesn't think much of them. Mention a gimmick like Sensurround, and he looks depressed. The new lush sound of sci-fi films? “I went to Star Wars at Grauman's Chinese Theatre with some friends from Honolulu, and if they hadn't come from Honolulu I would have walked out,” he says. “It's just too much of everything. There's no clarity, no definition.”

Today, Brown keeps busy minding his real estate investments in Los Angeles and Palm Springs, wondering how to market his facial peel, playing tennis every morning at 6:30, and preparing his projected three volumes of memoirs. But still, film tempts him back.

“You know this Neil. . . Diamond?” he says slowly, as if he didn’t. “Well, he’s starring in a remake of The Jazz Singer. And just three days ago they phoned and asked me if I would consider supervising the sound.”

He rocks back in his chair, but it still doesn’t look remotely like a rocking chair. “I guess I can still remember where the music goes.”

Fleischer's Fuzzy Bunny

The anonymous background artists at the Fleischer studio were called upon in several films to give the impression of speed during a pan. They would render part of their background blurry so it seemed the camera was moving quicker. Here’s an example from Parade of the Wooden Soldiers (1933), where the camera pans from right to left.



What’s really interesting about this sequence is the camera first pans from left to right, stops on the action, pans bottom to top, stops on the action, then does the right to left pan above, followed by a pan from bottom to top. I’d love to see what the whole background looked like. The camera eventually pulls back to reveal a full scene of the room, but a different background drawing was used when the camera begins to move out.

Here’s the centre part of the panned background a little later in the cartoon.