Yeah, Yeah, Yeah

It was likely one of the most highly-anticipated TV shows of 1965—and it was not on the prime time schedule. It was on Saturday mornings.

It starred the Beatles.

Or, rather, animated versions of them.

The Fab Four had just released A Hard Day’s Night and ABC made a deal with Al Brodax’s King Features to air at least 26 half-hours “keyed to the non-sequitur humor” in the feature film, and including four songs per show (Variety, May 26, 1965).

Obviously, any deal involving the world’s biggest rock band would be for major coin, so it would seem logical that ABC would have wanted to take advantage of it in prime time, especially considering Saturday mornings had been a dumping group for old cartoons up to that point. But if the idea had been considered, ABC would have no doubt looked at the failure of Jonny Quest in prime time and how The Flintstones was saved only because it was moved to a different time slot. Animation in prime time was out (Fred, Barney, et al lasted only one more season).

Back Stage, a English-based trade publication, of June 25, 1965 revealed the first voice recording sessions had taken place in London a few weeks earlier and Brodax was in the city supervising the second recording. Animation had begun at London-based TV Cartoons, Ltd., under studio head George Dunning. Some of the cartoons were also made in Canada; ten full-time artists worked out of the Canawest studio on Burrard Street in Vancouver (Boxoffice, Sept. 27, 1965); condos now stand on the property. The series debuted on September 25, 1965 at 10:30 a.m. with the first two episodes being A Hard Day’s Night and I Want to Hold Your Hand. The show immediately garnered a 7 rating and a 51.9 per cent share opposite Linus the Lionhearted on CBS and Underdog or other shows on NBC stations; in New York City, the Beatles ran on two different stations at two different times.

John, Paul, George and Ringo didn’t play themselves. Joey Sasso’s column in the Lockport Union-Sun and Journal of July 24, 1965 filled in potential viewers, and gave a unique explanation:

BACKSTAGE ON TV When you hear the Beatles speak on their new cartoon show on ABC-TV next fall, it will be two other fellows. As explained by Al Brodax, director of TV for King Features Syndicate producer of the show, the Beatles' Liverpudlian accents are too difficult for U. S. audiences to catch in a cartoon. And even if they were readily understandable, they don't have enough "separation" between one and the other. In a cartoon, explained Brodax, each of the principal voices must be unmistakably different from the other. Brodax announced he's signed Lance Pervical, English TV personality, to do the voices of John and George. The voices of Paul and Ringo and many bit parts will be played by Paul Frees, an American voice specialist. But when you hear the Beatles sing on their cartoon show (four numbers per stanza) that's really them. The show debuts Sept. 25.

And another newspaper publicity blurb revealed:

The shrieking of the Beatles fans that viewers will hear in many of the "Beatles" cartoons is authentic. The producer, Al Brodax, recorded the shrieks with portable equipment while attending the Beatles' concert in New York City's Shea Stadium this past August. (Rochester Democrat, Oct. 3, 1965).

Here’s an item from—could it be coincidence?—King Features Syndicate published in papers on November 5, 1965.

Beatles Cartoon Hits The Top
By HARVEY PACK
NEW YORK — The most successful new show of the season, according to the ratings, is a cartoon series called "The Beatles" seen every Saturday morning on ABC. It boasts a better than 30 per cent share of sets in use (over 33 per cent is excellent), and its over-all rating at 13 tops any other daytime show except for the World Series.

All the Beatles had to do to start this phenomenal show in motion was agree to accept a big bundle of money, allow their records to be used on the sound track, and then let the pros take it from there. And they call that "A Hard Day's Night?"
Produced and distributed by King Features, the program is the brain-child of executive producer Al Brodax who readily admits he wasn't the only one out to sign the Beatles as a TV cartoon feature. But his proposed formula was the most practical and apparently appealed to Beatles mentor Brian Epstein, so he received the nod.
"I knew it would be a hit," explained Al, "but I think it has gone way past my estimates. Of course we're working very hard trying to meet the deadlines, but now that we're rolling I think the next series will be a lot easier."
Produced In England
"The Beatles" is primarily done in an English studio so Brodax is virtually a London-New York commuter. The voices are provided by British Lance Percival and American Paul Frees who record their contribution in England.
The cartoons, which run about five minutes each, are all based to Beatle recordings which are used for background. The pace of the episodes and even the style of presentation are quite similar to the highly successful Beatles film "A Hard Day's Night." Brodax does not deny the similarity and he's quite pleased when a viewer notices it.
Flushed with success, Mr. Brodax has now embarked on a campaign of signing teen-age musical stars for future shows. He now has Herman's Hermits and Freddie and the Dreamers ready to go, one in animation and the other live.
"I watch those top 40 record lists like a vulture," he laughed. "If we can get them inked before they hit the top we'll save a lot of money. The fact that 'Shindig' and similar shows are fading in the ratings this year actually encourages me. The major difference between our presentation and that of a 'Shindig' or a 'Hullabaloo' is the incorporation of a solid storyline. In effect, we do a musical comedy — a weekly 'Fantasia,' so to speak, starring the Marx Brothers. We know from record sales and our own show's ratings that the youngsters still want to hear the music so we can only assume they want a new style of presentation and we think we've got it."

The Beatles series had a huge impact, CBS began talking in November about revamping its entire Saturday morning line-up because of it. Brodax announced four feature cartoons for television. But they were not to be. Instead, he turned his attention to the feature film cartoon Yellow Submarine. No Herman’s Hermits or Freddie and the Dreamers, either.

The Beatles’ music and fashion sense was changing. The simple chords of “Love Me Do” were passé; psychedelia was in. The cartoon series carried on for three seasons, with fewer made each year, before moving to Sunday morning rerun-land. And new shows were coming along that kids wanted to watch. The ones who wanted a music fix could switch the dial to CBS and see “The Archies,” though Ron Dante and his session musicians are no Fab Four.

Let’s be honest. The cartoons aren’t good. The direction is slow and the voice tracks are almost amateurish, despite the presence of Paul Frees, of all people. The best thing about them (aside from the music) may be the clever caricatured Beatles designs that could still seen here and there when the actual cartoons weren’t anywhere to be found for years. But despite their faults, they’re still an interesting little time capsule of how animation mixed with the most successful band of the mid-‘60s and one of the greatest of all time.

Walter Lantz Imitates Tex Avery

What’s the difference between Tex Avery’s “A Gander at Mother Goose” (1940) and Walter Lantz’ “Mother Goose on the Loose” (1942)? Well, there’s a war on now, so Lantz and writers Bugs Hardaway and Lowell Elliott larded up scenes of the cartoon with sexy babes for our boys watching overseas.

(Some of Avery’s spot-gag cartoons aren’t very funny in places but none are as cringingly bad as several of the Lantz efforts around this time).

“Mother Goose on the Loose” is structured just like the Avery cartoon with an off-screen narrator setting up puns (Hardaway liked them as hokey and obvious as possible) and a running gag which caps the cartoon. The running gag involves something Hardaway seemed to think was hilarious—a buck-toothed, cross-eyed moron.



The end gag features Simple Simon pulling a mermaid out of his bucket. She dives back in and he follows.



The twist in this cartoon is the off-screen narrator isn’t part of the film. He’s “in the theatre” showing the cartoon. And he jumps into the cartoon to try to get the mermaid.



Showman’s Trade Review called this cartoon “a natural for Easter.” I have a gag response to that which I’ll save.

Mel Blanc supplies his Jerry Colonna voice and I think he’s doing the Lucky Strike tobacco auctioneer spoof. The narrator is supposed to be a Frank Morgan voice; I won’t guess who’s doing it.

Whoops!

Did gay men really go around saying “Whoops, my dears!” all the time in the 1930s? I suspect maybe a few did and, from that, a stereotype grew.

Whatever the truth, cartoons way-back-then didn’t shy away from effeminate jokes. Betty Boop’s Penthouse (released 1933) had a pair of them. The first one comes after a close-up of Betty spraying her flowers. A white rose and a pansy sprout faces. The rose is the one that remarks, in a high voice, “Oops! A pansy!” with a hand-on-hip, limp-wrist pose.



The final one comes at the end where a Frankenstein-inspired monster is sprayed by Betty, which turns him into a ballet dancer and then—stereotype time again!—a pansy, who exclaims “Whoops!” as Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song” plays to end the cartoon.



There’s lots of great animation in this cartoon (Willard Bowsky is credited), and the wonderful “Penthouse Serenade” by Jason and Burton fills the soundtrack.

Charles Lane

People really don’t like humourless, by-the-book management people. And it’s a good thing, because Charles Lane wouldn’t have had a career on TV otherwise.

Lane played the sour and scrooge-like Homer Bedlow on Petticoat Junction, and the sour and scrooge-like Mr. Barnsdahl on The Lucy Show (as heretical as this is, I liked his character better than Gale Gordon’s, which replaced him). He seemed to play the same character over and over again; Stan Freberg even used him on a record album as the sour and scrooge-like man from A.T. and T. pushing phone operators out of jobs in favour of computerised all-digit dialling.

He achieved a measure of fame late in his career as he reached age 100 and newspapers and TV entertainment shows did retrospectives on his years in show business. (He died at 102). Lane wasn’t always typecast as the unsympathetic grump. Let’s go back to before those days. Here’s a piece from the N.Y. Times of July 20, 1947.

The Face Is Familiar
Meet Charles Lane, Semi-Anonymous Champion of the Small Role
By GLADWIN HILL
HOLLYWOOD
This is an introduction to an old friend of yours. If you bumped into him on the street, actually experience indicates, you’d probably fumble vainly for his name, but would wind up definitely placing him as a man who was up at the lake two summers ago, or who ran a store back in your home town. Charles Lane has been in so many movies, albeit in semi-anonymity, that he find to his embarrassment that people have a sub-conscious impression of him not as a movie actor but as a member of the community—some fixture in their own lives.
Lane is the-little-man-who-almost-wasn’t-there—the bright-eyed movie reporter who says, “Any comment to make, Mr. Smith?”; the efficient private secretary who says, “Those papers will be ready in just a minute”; the lawyer who pops up in the courtroom scene to say, “I object—”; the hotel clerk who says, “Sorry, no rooms.”
Typical American
Earnest and lean-faced, with a Truman-like universal American physiognomy, and often wearing his own rimless spectacles, he was in “Forty-second Street.” He was in “Gold Dinners of 1933.” He was in “Broadway Melody.” He was in “Nothing Sacred,” “Having a Wonderful Time,” “Ball of Fire,” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” etc., etc.

Lane, now 42, made his movie debut—fresh from the Pasadena Playhouse—in 1930; his a pace with twenty-three pictures in 1933; and in seventeen years has been in some 200 pictures. He doesn’t claim to have been in more pictures than anybody, because some extra’s always popping up to challenge such records. But in the field of speaking parts, he has been in more movies than any star or featured player, while pursuing a career completely counter to popular impressions of life in Hollywood.
Although a professional actor, now commanding upwards of $750 a week, Lane looks and talks more like a business man and operates that way. He drives to work at 9, goes home to at 5 to his wife and two children in Pasadena and outside the studio takes only a passing interest in the movies. “When I get in the car, turn the switch and start home I forget all about them,” he says. He never sees many of the pictures he plays in, can’t remember the titles of many or even what kind of part he had, and once had the eerie experience of watching himself on the screen in a role he had absolutely no recollection of doing.
Always Reliable
His reliability is one of his principal assets and, with his versatility in characterization, is the reason directors hire him so often. Of Frank Capra’s last six pictures, Lane has been in five. He does no politicking for parts, relying on customary agent representation, and has no special pull. A free lancer, he works at all the studios. Most of his jobs are one-day affairs, although his minimum fee is for a week. His longest job was thirteen weeks in Harold Lloyd’s “Milky Way” when the production was stalled because somebody got sick.
He feels that his work is subject to the same determinants as a star’s” Did he play a part well? and was the picture good? His best part, the income-tax collector in “You Can’t Take It With You,” he says, helped him get roles for two years afterward.
In a busy year, he may work thirty weeks. In 1939 he played in twenty-six pictures, and in 1941 in thirty-one pictures. Then he went in the Navy, and served four years in the Southern Pacific as a lieutenant on an attack transport whose staff diverted themselves by running and re-running a corny picture Lane was in. His avocation now is schooling horses—hunters and jumpers, of which he owns two.
Like every actor, he strives for bigger parts, and wouldn’t cavil at being starred, although he’s making a very comfortable living without the headaches of stardom. But he has his own unique headache of being misrecognized by strangers, particularly at convivial public functions. “Football games,” he says, “have become torture. Then there was that drunk in the railway station in Palo Alto. He kept yelling about my having been with him in a hotel corridor with a couple of blondes. . . .”

And now to the Los Angeles Times syndicate and a story originally published February 23, 1980. Lucy 2.0 and Petticoat Junction were far behind him. By this time, he had also appeared regularly on the short-lived sitcom Karen and the second half of the first season of Soap.

Charles Lane: Resigned to a Career as a ‘Stinker’
By JORDAN YOUNG
One look at that face and you know he’s come to foreclose the mortgage, repossess the car, audit your taxes or issue a subpoena. At 74, actor Charles Lane is the epitome of the tight-lipped, stubborn, stingy old s.o.b.
“I think that started with ‘I Love Lucy,’” says Lane. “I always played some sort of jerk on that show. They were all good parts, but they were all jerks. If you have a type established, though, and you’re any good, it can mean considerable work for you.” Indeed, Lane’s characterizations of crusty old skinflints are more than a stereotype; they have become a career.
Celebrating his 50th year in films, Lane observes, “There aren’t many parts for old goats like me, but I try to stay as active as I can.” He has played a race track tout on TV’s “Lou Grant” and an immigration officer on an episode of “Mork & Mindy.” He also appears as a kindly grandfather in the upcoming Tony Bill production “The Little Dragons.” Of the latter role, Lane says, “He’s a nice old codger, which is a marvelous departure for me. I always play these stinkers.”
Although a versatile, stage-trained performer, Lane has come to accept the “stinker” image over the years. “Typecasting is one of the most destructive things for an actor we’re ever had and it’ll continue always. But you have to resign yourself to it,” he contends. “You can’t fight that and be miserable all the time. I have a very healthy attitude toward casting—I’ve always felt it’s none of my business.”
Born in San Francisco, Lane decided to become an actor after “fiddling around in the insurance business, and probably doing it more harm than good.” He came to Los Angeles in 1928 to join the company at the Pasadena Playhouse, where he honed his craft and also met his wife. Movie producers regularly attended the Playhouse, scouting for talent, and before long Lane was working in pictures. He made his debut in “Smart Money,” starring Edward G. Robinson.
Hollywood was prolific in those days and so was Lane. “When I started at Warner Brothers,” he recalls, “my salary was $35 a day. I’d go over to Stage 26 at 11 o’clock and play an elevator operator with four lines, and do another one at 3 o’clock, then I’d go over to Stage 13 and do a taxi driver with four lines. I’d do three pictures in one day, all for the same $35. That was before we had the Screen Actors Guild.”
Lane, who claims he can “count on the fingers of one hand the unpleasant experiences I’ve had in my profession,” says he has probably derived the greatest satisfaction from his association with Frank Capra, who directed him in “You Can’t Take It With You,” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” “It’s a Wonderful Life” and other classics.
“I’m prejudiced, I’ll say that from the start. But I think Frank is the most talented man we ever had. He knew the camera department better than the head cameraman; he had an intuitive feeling with scripts. And on top of that, he had this marvelous ability to relate.”
As a rule, Lane prefers not to watch himself on the screen. “It’s a very unpleasant sensation for me,” he says. “I try to avoid it.” Away from the studios, Lane’s chief recreation is golf. He is also very fond of music, particularly opera, a passion he inherited from his father.
While he enjoys reminiscing, the veteran actor is quick to point out. “I’m not one of these old goats who dwells on the past and says, ‘The great old days . . . ,” because the great old days, a lot of them, stunk. But those big stars, and I don’t use that word loosely—in the heyday of picture, we had maybe a dozen of them—they were bigger than life, those people. When Gable walked into the MGM commissary, silence descended over the room. It takes some kind of presence to project that. Clark was totally unaware of it, but he had that quality, quit a few of the stars did. And I don’t see that anymore.”

Lane had a realistic attitude about typecasting. It doesn’t help an actor that wants to try different roles, but it shows that people like and accept his performance as a certain type of character and want to see more. If an audience wants to see you, an actor should have it made.

Screwy War Gags

The bulk of people reading this, I suspect, are not Americans who were alive during World War Two (I am not). So, like me, you had to have certain wartime references in cartoons explained to you.

Tex Avery’s Big Heel-Watha has a few of them, throwaway and otherwise.



4F is a designation that one is unfit for military service.



Lockheed was a huge military manufacturer in California during the war.



Someone correct me on this. From what I was told, the sheet with the stars was put up outside a home where a soldier (with the draft number on the sheet) was in the service.



All kinds of food was rationed and assigned points. Some foods were exempt. So were skunks, it appears.



Ran out of points? Well, there was always the Black Market, where crooks would charge a fortune for meat and other things in short supply.



Gas was rationed, too. The C card was for doctors, ministers and others who were deemed essential workers and therefore needed gas.



“Pearl Harbor? We’re next!!” cried many along the West Coast (of Canada and the U.S.), to whom the possibility of an invasion wasn’t screwy (to try to get back to our cartoon). So blackouts were invented so the Japanese bombardiers couldn’t see war plants, homes and malt shops. Air Raid Wardens patrolled to ensure no light could be seen during the blackouts.

The Showman’s Trade Review gave top marks to this cartoon in its September 2, 1944 edition.

Big Heel-Watha (Excellent)
MGM — Cartoon - 8 mins.
The rationing problem hits an Indian community without reservations, and Big Chief Rain-in-the-Face offers his daughter in marriage to the first brave who brings in some meat. Big Heel-Watha after much tribulation makes a deal with a red squirrel and wins the hand of the veiled Minnie Hot-Cha. Lifting the veil, he is confounded by a horrifying face whereupon he, the chief and the braves, dive into the cauldron joining the cooking squirrel. Minnie attempts to join them, and all but the squirrel and the heel scram. The squirrel pulls a false face from Minnie, revealing a beautiful face, all of which makes the brave Heel-Watha happy. This cartoon in Technicolor is almost up to Red Hot Riding Hood, so all that needs be said is: get it dated.

Clobbering Slobbering Sylvester

Friz Freleng remarked how he really disliked Elmer Fudd as a character, but he put Elmer in one of my favourite Warners cartoons—Back Alley Oproar.

There’s so much artwork I enjoy, I could do a whole series of posts on this cartoon. But, for now, here are some frames from a scene when Elmer punches out singing Sylvester (eventually tying him up in a whirl of lines before stalking away).



Friz had some real winners for Warners about this time.

Johnny Green Looks Back

Jack Benny employed a number of bandleaders during his radio days, starting with George Olsen in 1932 and ending with Bob Crosby in 1955 (though Mahlon Merrick was handling both the orchestra and much of the comedy at the end). There was one who stood out from the rest of them, mainly because he’s better known as a composer than a bandmaster.

He’s Johnny Green.

At the end of the 1934-35 radio season, Benny had decided to move his show to Los Angeles because he wanted to make money in films. Orchestra leader Don Bestor wanted to stay in the east, so 27-year-old Green was brought in to replace him to start the 1935-36 season. By then, Green had already composed hit tunes such as “Out of Nowhere,” “Coquette” and “Body and Soul.” He was a recording artist who had also hosted his own weekly CBS show, The Modern Manner (with Bernard Hermann as his assistant). Green lasted one season. He moved on to Fred Astaire’s programme for Packard. Benny benefitted, too. Green’s replacement was Phil Harris, who turned out to be a wonderful comedy foil, and had a pretty hot aggregation.

What did Green think of his experience on the Benny radio show? Well, off the air they must have gotten along fairly well. Green invited Jack to be his guest at the opening of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Promenade series in 1960. Benny didn’t play, but the two of them got together for a series of benefit concerts in 1962. But on the air? It’s a little difficult to tell from this story from the Boston Globe of December 9, 1979. Later in life, Green apparently insisted on being referred to as the more dignified “John” Green. The impression I get from this story is Green didn’t wish to have been thought of as some kind of radio stooge, though he did appear on Benny’s 40th Birthday TV show in 1958 (not stooging; he showed off his composition especially written for the programme). The reference to Benny is brief; the article deals with career in general.

Green outlived Benny. He died in Beverly Hills on May 15, 1989, age 80.

A week and lifetime with Johnny Green
By Richard Buell
Globe Correspondent
“I am a compulsive talker. It always amuses me when they say, ‘Mr. Green will now make a few brief remarks.’ I show them. I really do.
When John (or Johnny) Green (Class of 1928) revisited Harvard recently as part of the “Learning from Performers” program, talk he certainly did, but he also conducted an orchestra (a film score by Erik Satie), played the piano (pieces by his friend Gershwin), and sang (some songs of his own, including “Body and Soul”). He also lectured on copyright law. And in a music colloquiam, he described the agonies of learning synthesizer techniques when in his mid-60s.
Throughout a busy week in Cambridge, it was possible to get a strong impression of one of the more vivid musical careers of our day. Names—some big and glittering ones—abounded. Not only was there a sense of a full, ambitious life having been lived but of its simultaneously being turned into anecdote. One wanted an index.
John Green has been the practical musician par excellence. “I could orchestrate the telephone book and make you enjoy it,” he remarked to some students at Paine Hall. “I never have any surprises when I hear anything of mine being played for the first time. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be employed.”
Early in his conducting career—which has taken him to the Brooklyn Paramount, CBS, the St. Regis Roof, Symphony Hall, and MGM—he acquired the art of dealing with emergencies. He learned that you can have terrible accidents with a baton that’s too long, especially if there are any loose toupees in the vicinity.
As a music director at Metro, he was responsible for synchronizing the efforts of studio musicians on one part of the lot with those of Esther Williams and her cohorts in an Olympic swimming pool several blocks away.
This conductor knows how to use—all at once—baton, metronome, stop watch, headset and “click tape,” and a waiting limousine.
(Cut to Harvard and Lower Common Room of Adams House. Bald, dapper, bespectacled composer at piano confides to throng of students.)
“This won’t be one of those and-then-I-wrote evenings, I promise.
“First maybe I should try to answer the question, ‘Mr. Green, how did you get this way?’ Well, I couldn’t help it.”

His New York City childhood (born 1908) was a rather middle European one. As both parents were always at the piano, the Beethoven and Shumann four-hand transcriptions were in his ears at an early age. It was also a trilingual household: young Johnny never knew whether afternoon tea would be served in French, German, or English.
Though father intended him for Wall Street, of course there were music lessons. He heard his first symphony concert at 4, was later mesmerized by Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Gondoliers,” and at 12 made the acquaintance of Fred Astaire (then 22). He became what show biz people used to call an RT or rehearsal test.
Gertrude Lawrence took a shine to him. He wrote a song for her. She promised to have it included in her hit, “Charolet’s Revue.” Green to Harvard audience: “Will you listen to this—‘Now that you’re gone, I’m lonely’—awful! This did happen sort of. The young composer got to hear his piece used in the theater as exit music.
At Harvard in the ‘20s, the fact that he could introduce his friends, Gertrude Lawrence and Beatrice Lille [sic] to come and entertain the undergraduates didn’t cut much ice: Hasty Pudding wanted no part of him. But there was plentiful satisfaction for this economic major when his song “Coquette” became an international hit in his senior year.
The present day Johnny Green has a charming synonym for flop: “Catostrophric [sic] manhole cover.” He started on the first of several such soon after his sixth post-graduation month working on Wall Street, the company was excellent, however. Johnny Mercer, Gertrude Lawrence, and Jack Buchanan, whom Americans perhaps best know from the movie “The Bandwagon.”
As Green remembers him, Buchanan “was 9 feet tall and he couldn’t sing and he couldn’t dance. But when he opened his mouth, you belonged to him. He knew one step, but he could convince you that you were looking at Fred Astaire.” Buchanan took him to London, and Green wrote for him what was definitely not a manhole cover—“Mister Whittington.”
Back in New York, the young musician did various chores for CBS, then also very young. This could be very nice when it involved working with symphony orchestras and with Bunny Berrigan [sic], the jazz trumpeter, less so when he was employed as a dialectician on the Jack Benny Show for Jell-O.
“All the accents that Sam Hearn, who played Schlepperman, didn’t do, I did.”
In retrospect, the later ‘30s looked like a marking-time episode to the present-day musician. There was the dance band that opened up the St. Regis roof and there were the records for Brunswick with Fred Astaire, records now universally esteemed. Then once more, a show whose scenery went straight from the Colonial to the warehouse. Those damned manhole covers.
If it had not happened that one evening as Green was leading a pit orchestra, Judy Garland walked in, and so did MGM producer Arthur Freed, and so did Louis B. Mayer ...
(Cut to much later—Hollywood, USA, 1955) John Green is wearing two very important hats: Director of music at MGM and executive in charge of music for Loew’s, Inc. His desk is one that is crossed by many important memos, purchases, and properties. Today it seems the “fate” theme is sounding, inaudible to all ears but Johnny Green’s, as the novel “Raintree County” (a recent purchase) comes to his attention. The composer foresees in it a psychological study with great musical possibilities. Metro exec Dory Schary discerns a neo-“Gone With the Wind: in the offing. It will cost MGM $11 million, production will be held up because of star Montgomery Clift’s serious auto accident.

A long, lush, end-of-an-era score does get written for it, though in the composer’s words, the film proves to be “the bomb of all time.” This is to be the final nail in Dory Schary’s coffin. In a few years, the resplendence of MGM Studio orchestra itself will be decreed out of existence. The thriving times are the stuff of legends and—like it or not—part of every American’s pop-cultural heritage. What other corporate entity could have had on its payroll Red Skelton and Aldous Huxley? One way to describe Green’s position in all this would be to say that he was Kapellneister to the dream factory. Whenever possible, he displayed MGM’s musical resources to advantage. His scoring of the “American in Paris” ballet is, to many ears, greatly superior to Gershwin’s own.
A week at Harvard reminiscing and being lionized seems a very short time when you think of the stories Johnny Green didn’t tell. His expertise on movie music from the period before talkies—the era of pit orchestras in the big city “deluxe” houses, for instance. Rehearsing an ensemble of Harvard-Radcliffe musicians to accompany the Rene Clair film “On Tr’acts,” he demonstrated that Erik Satie wasn’t remotely aware of the professional standards of the period—no cues, no timing in the score. And his memories of the Arthur Fiedler of 50 years ago for another example.
“Back then Arthur was what they call a ‘floater,’ moving from one section of the orchestra to another and, believe me, he was a celeste player. From Arthur, that instrument could actually sound nice a lot of the time, it’s just a small, ugly anvil and Arthur’s way of saying hello was, ‘Look here, John.’ I remember him asking if I’d conduct ‘Raintree Country.’ (for the Pops) It’s ‘County,’ I told him. He said, ‘Whatever it is, how long is it?’ ‘Eight minutes.’ ‘Good, it’s short and you won’t have to learn ‘Fair Harvard, will you? Then goodby.’ And he hung up.”

Making a Piggy Cartoon

Walt Disney wasn’t the only cartoon studio boss who caught the attention of the press at the start of the 1930s. But he was the one who had something worth writing about—Mickey Mouse, then three pigs, then cartoon features. Let’s face it. Bosko and Oswald paled compared to Mickey, just as the Silly Symphony imitations of various paled compared to Disney’s real thing.

Leon Schlesinger eventually ended up with the funniest animated characters but he took a while to get there. At the start, with Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising working for him, his studio’s stars were interchangeable happy singing and dancing animals that existed solely to sing and dance. Schlesinger bought the H-I cartoons and sold them to Warner Bros. for release. Either Schlesinger or (I suspect) Warners launched a publicity campaign for these shorts with money spent on trade ads, and stories planted in newspapers. This one is from the New York Herald Tribune of October 11, 1931. There is no byline, leaving me to speculate it’s rewritten from a studio handout. You’ll notice there’s no mention of Hugh and Rudy.

Papers can publish only so many “how do they make those cartoons anyway?” stories before having to find something else. And Disney had more popular and “newsy” things to offer space-filling editors than anyone. People wanted to read about that amusing mouse, not about Piggy.

Making Cartoon Films Involves Series of Complicated Processes

MOTION PICTURES have their cycles, a screen star may develop overnight and for a time be all the rage until another comes along, but there is one form of screen entertainment which keeps growing in popularity. That form of fare is the animated cartoon.
Animated cartoons are not recent. They are an institution as old as the film industry itself, according to Leon Schlesinger, who produces for Warner Brothers “Looney Tunes” and “Merrie Melodies.” Dozens of screen cartoons were started in the silent days, only to fall by the wayside. It was the advent of sound in pictures that saved the comedy cartoon business.
Sound revolutionized the technique. The average cartoon runs 600 feet in six and seven minutes, screen time, but few in an audience realize the amount of labor which goes into the production. Not many know, for instance, that between 6,000 and 10,000 individual drawings must be made and that a staff ranging from sixteen to twenty-four people works steadily for four weeks to produce one screen cartoon.
Before a cartoon can be produced a cartoon character must be created. This is no simple matter. To begin with, the character must have appeal, just as new motion picture players must have personality. The figure can’t be too large, it can’t be too series or too grotesque, although when in action the more impossible the stunt and situation the greater the laughs.
Once the leading character has been selected and drawn, the plot and action must be developed through means of a scenario. In the case of a song cartoon, such as “The Merrie Melodies,” the words of the song used dictate the action. However, the word “action” must be supplemented with comedy cartoon action, synchronized with the sound effects.
When sound first came in cartoon produced tried making the cartoon first and then fitting the music and sound to the action of the film. That proved unsatisfactory, as it was impossible under this method to achieve synchronization. Today virtually all producers work along the following lines:
The preparation of the script from which each comedy is made calls for collaboration of the writers with a trained musical composer familiar with this type of work. The script is worked into a complete musical manuscript form before turning the work over to the artists or the recording orchestra. The recording orchestra and the vocalists can have their part of the subject completed even before the artists have started work with their pencils. The process calls for mechanical precision. When recording, the musicians and singers sit with earphones clamped to their heads. Above them is the microphone, in front of which stands the conductor. He, too, has earphones. Before him is the complete manuscript music and story worked out in parallel just as the lyrics for a popular song appear in print.
Through their earphones, to each singer and to each sound-effect man, comes the faint click of a metronome behind sound-proof walls in an adjoining room. Precisely on the beat, and at the proper time in relationship to the story, the drummer will thump his wood block and the saxophone will wail just at the point where later the character may get hit with the inevitable brick and his mouth will fly open in a cry. The musicians, however, never know the purpose of the sounds they are making. Only the conductor knows the story.
The artists, in making up the little drawings, emphasize the action to meet the beat. As each drawing means one exposed frame of film, and there are sixteen frames to each foot of film which will move past the projection lens at the rate of ninety feet a minute, the artists know exactly how many frames of film make a bar of music. In this way the brick is made to strike at the identical moment the drummer’s wood block was recorded.
With all the sound effects records, the artists are then put to work. The action of the characters on the screen is obtained by making a succession of individual drawings, first in pencil on thin white paper, then traced in ink on transparent sheets of celluloid, with opaque in[k]s of white, black and gray. Five or six such drawings are required to make a character move a single step. Ten or more are needed when “Piggy,” of “Merrie Melodies,” takes a graceful leap across the screen.
Each sheet of celluloid, or cell as it is called, is numbered. When all the drawings have been made they are passed along to a photographer who operates a regular motion picture camera geared to take a single frame of film at each exposure. Along with the cells is a number sheet, on which is recorded the number of exposures to be given to each cell. Sometimes as many as thirty-two exposures will be given to a single cell, sometimes only one or two or three, all depending on the action required. The camera is rigged on a lens facing a bed on which the cells are laid, one at a time.
Under the cells is placed the painted background, against which the characters move. Inasmuch as the characters on the cells have been drawn with opaque inks and the rest of the cell is transparent, the camera, operated by a foot pedal, photographs the character against the background. As each cell is photographed the background automatically moves the distance of one cell, so that when the finished product is flashed on the screen the character will be seen running down the street or climbing a pole, as the case may be.
With the photographing of the cells there remains only the matter of developing the negative and making the print. The action film and the sound track film are then put together on a single film and another cartoon is ready for the screen, assuming, of course, that the picture is in perfect synchronization and that the cartoon is of the required length.

Ballooney Joe Penner

A gooney dunce lets the psychotic pincushion man into Balloon Land, resulting in his own death, in a cult cartoon by Ub Iwerks.

As a bonus, the moron turns out to be a Joe Penner impersonator. “You naaaasty man!” he points and exclaims just before the pincushion man pops him, and his balloon head flies away.



It was released September 30, 1935.Motion Picture Daily reviewed the cartoon in its issue of October 24th.

"Balloon Land"
(Celebrity)
Done in Comi-Color, this cartoon should be found interesting by the audiences that enjoy these efforts. The story is about a land where all is of balloon-like nature and the terror is the Pincushion Man who goes about with a lot of needles puncturing as he goes. His assault on the town and eventual defeat makes for a novel twist. The color effects are well done and pleasing to the eye. Production Code Seal No. 1297. Running time, 7 mins. "G."