Jackpot Tom

There’s only so much you can do with characters before you start running out of ideas. And that’s what happened with Tom and Jerry at MGM. There are only so many ways a cat can chase a mouse. So Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera started adding secondary and tertiary animal characters (and, even worse, humans toward the end of the series). But you could start to see the gags coming. You’d seen them before.

In Jerry and the Lion (1950), there’s Tom blocking a door to stop Jerry from getting through. But there’s a little door inset into the door. You know Jerry’s going to run through it. So where’s the gag? Jerry doesn’t even stop and do some amusing bit of personality business, he just runs through it and, uh, okay.

Same with a later gag. Just look at the first frame below.



Now, you and I and the rest of the world know the lion is going to sock Tom. Ho hum. We’ve seen it before.



The best part of the gag is something that, again, is telegraphed. Tom slams through a chimney, which turns into a one-armed bandit. You pretty well can guess what’ll transpire.



Right. Tom tumbles out like a jackpot, and then bricks land on him like a secondary jackpot.

Ken Muse, Ed Barge, Ray Patterson and Irv Spence are the animators in this cartoon.

Snuffy Sneeze

In Chuck Jones’ hands, Daffy Duck morphed into an incompetent braggart, setting the stage for the incompetent and angry Daffy of the wretched Daffy-Speedy cartoons of the mid-1960s (by which time Jones had left for MGM to remake Tom and Jerry into Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner).

However, there were several cartoons Jones directed where an incompetent Daffy was pretty funny—whenever Daffy was playing a role. One is The Scarlet Pumpernickel (released in 1950).

Mike Maltese loved swashbuckling films, and in his story Daffy (as the aforementioned Pumpernickel) gets to swash and buckle and smash into things and poke himself with a pin to reach the top of an impossibly tall castle. He also, foppish that he is, snorts some snuff. Alack! He’s not refined enough to avoid sneezing. Note the eye take in the frame below. Then Daffy turns into streaks of colour as Jones cuts to a long shot.



The credited animators are Ken Harris, Lloyd Vaughan, Phil Monroe and Ben Washam.

Understanding Fred Allen

Fred Allen made his debut as a star on radio on October 23, 1932. The Linit Bathtub Revue is pretty hokey by today’s standards, and perhaps by the standards of 1932. However, Allen (assisted at the start by Harry Tugend) honed his show where it soon began attracting extremely good reviews. Long before he signed off in 1949, he was praised everywhere (except, perhaps, in some vice-presidents’ offices at NBC) for his intellect and insight.

Here’s a feature story in the Radio Mirror with a cover date of May 1934. The photos accompanied the article, presumably courtesy of the network. The one to the right shows one of his early cast members, Irwin Delmore, who was later a judge and a member of the New York State Assembly under his full name of Irwin Delmore Davidson (Portland Hoffa is to Allen’s right).

IT PAYS FRED ALLEN TO BE FUNNY
THE popular air comedian was born with a gift for laughter and the necessity for making it buy him coffee and cakes. This is the real Allen behind all the comedy
by R. H. ROWAN
IF you could happen along one of the streets of New York right now and should encounter a tall, serious-faced fellow, with bland blue eyes, a set mouth and a serious demeanor you might at first think him a country product in from the sticks to find out for himself if the blades of grass do sprout up along Madison avenue in the springtime to give you that certain April nostalgia.
That is, at first you might think him a homemade product from the rural spaces. But then if you got a good look at him, caught that crinkly twitch of flesh below his eyes, a sudden upward twist of lips as though he were having a laugh ail by himself, you'd know you were facing a philosophical man. And if you'd happen to see a photograph of Fred Allen you'd realize after a hesitation that you were gazing at the famous comedian who came to the airwaves last year to repeat the sensational success he had on the stage.
Fred Allen, the trouper and Fred Allen, the private citizen are the same. There is so little of the actor and so seldom the attitude of posing about this fun-maker that it is difficult to differentiate between his leisure hours and his microphone moments.
The first thing that strikes you about him is his understanding kindliness. Or perhaps that should come second for he is fundamentally the humorist who brings out the fun in an amusing situation rather than the brief laugh in a smart gag. He has unjustly been accused of being a sophisticated type of comedian and, rightfully, he resents that. The fact that he doesn't descend to lowbrow cracks, to obvious jokes; that he is an astute student of human nature, born to brighten life for people of more sombre mien and that there is a keen philosophy in all his funny business has caused an erroneous impression to get round about his work.

He gets his material from an analytical appreciation of the ordinary happenings but admits quite frankly he is an ardent reader of his own extensive — and expensive — library of old joke books.
Recent polls, localized and national, have proven the popularity of the Fred Allen broadcasts. The air comedian and his material, are familiar to millions. He writes all his own stuff and every week turns out a skit that might be the bright spot in any Broadway hit. A famous producer, listening in to one of Fred's programs recently said, "It's a tragedy that this sparkling dialogue should go on the air for fifteen minutes and then go right into the ash-can when it might be repeated for months in a theatrical show."
In spite of his repetitious weekly successes, Allen approaches each new script with fear and doubt. Even after his broadcast he is uncertain of its reception and will humbly turn to a bystander with the anxious remark, "Do you think it was any good?" That isn't an act, either. He means it. Sometimes he's amazed when a chance comment of his, a typical Allen retort, will bring loud laughter in an informal conversation.
Not that it is such an effort for Allen to be funny. Humor flows with his most casual speeches, spontaneous and sparkling — not in a glib conceited fashion, but as a natural, unpremeditated utterance of the unique turn his thoughts are always taking. That doesn't mean his broadcasts are extemporaneous because, most of the time, he is so unaware of how funny he is that he works as hard over his material as the comedian whose humor is his job and not his own personality. He will struggle along for a week over a program and then tear it up because he thinks it's dull — start over again and in a few hours turn out a script he thinks will be all right.

Allen was born to work and started in at it the earliest age when he could earn his livelihood. But he never knew until audiences started laughing at his lines how interesting and pleasant a job could be — and how lucrative as well. He's a product of New England and he was baptized John F. Sullivan thirty some years ago. He has a reticence about having his age known so we'll just say he's in his early thirties and you can form your own opinion as to whether we're giving him the break of a couple of years. The day he first opened his eyes, the ground hog went right back into his hole and it was cold Massachusetts winter for the young Sullivan many years until at last he hit Broadway and the Main Stem paid tribute to his talents.

He tried out many jobs while he was still mastering the elementary branches of an education and though his schooling has been limited he is an avid reader and has that mellow, rich learning which comes from varied and wide experience with all sorts of people and experiences.
As a small boy he worked in the public library in Boston and had a penchant for planning his future career from whatever book he happened to pick up. If it was a volume of travel he was going to far places, if it was a thesis on bridge building then that's what he wanted to do — for the moment. It was natural therefore when one day he came upon a book which minutely described the art of juggling he should immediately consider himself an embryonic juggler and so seriously did he dwell on this outlook that eventually he became a very bad throw-and-catch-'em artist in small time vaudeville. His manipulations of the various instruments were so inexpert and so coldly received that he interpolated funny lines to cover his fumblings, gradually developing into a comedian, and leaving the shiny balls to those who could catch them better.
He served in the A. E. F. during the World War and after the armistice returned to New York to hunt a job and marry Portland Hoffa, his present wife and professional stooge, and to struggle along for years until a chance in a big Broadway production brought his clever routines to the attention of those who make stars out of road-show strugglers. What Fred Allen did in the way of keeping the first "Little Show" audiences laughing is still theater history. And what Fred Allen did, in that era, by way of making brilliant successes out of after-theater parties and social soirees is still talked about, too. He was the stellar guest of all those gatherings that included Noel Coward, the Alfred Lunts and other lights.
He had a grand time himself, too, until he realized that staying up late at night and getting up early the next morning made him more amusing socially than he might be professionally. Then, as is typical of Fred Allen, he immediately did an about-face. He gave up the parties because his work was so much more important and now-adays if you hear of the Fred Allens being among those present at any of the big social events you may rest assured Fred's there because of an old friendship or because he's so inherently kind he couldn't find a "no."
The Allens' existence, away from the radio, is an uneventful one if judged by the activities of most other microphone celebrities. Fortunately for Fred, Portland likes the quiet ways. Though, I suppose, she's so much in love with her husband, even if she weren't the quiet, retiring sort of person she is, whatever Fred said would be right.

Allen lives by a routine of physical exercises and careful adherence to a sane diet so that he is in better condition this year than he has been for many theatrical seasons. He has all sorts of gymnastic equipment in his own home and if you see a picture of Fred in his living room, slouched in a comfortable chair with a glass in his hand, you may be sure it contains milk. He walks miles every day and visits a New York gym several times a week. He keeps regular hours, works all day and as a result not only writes his own material, scribbles off syndicated letters and humorous articles for any number of publications but concocts the stuff for other comedians whose names are as well known as his. Many a quip that has brought a coast-to-coast laugh has originated in the fertile mind of Fred Allen and we don't mean it finally reached the public by the pilfering route either, because a part of Allen's income is derived from contracts to provide the continuities for other stars. During months between theater engagements he once served as a production man in Paramount's Long Island studio where he brightened the dialogue of many a dull scenario. And if any of you vaudeville fans of other years recall a funny fellow named Fred James who long ago made you laugh, that was Fred Allen, too. Only he changed his name to Allen after he'd changed John Sullivan to Fred James.
HE'S an old married man now, judging by Broadway matrimonial seasons but he's still so crazy about Portland Hoffa he'd rather you complimented her than his own humor. His generous spirit extends to other members of his radio cast, too. He doesn't hog the catch lines. He'll often give the funniest speeches to somebody less important than he when he writes the script because to him it's the act that comes first — not Fred Allen. That, any executive or actor will tell you, is the height of professional generosity.

Silencing the Kid of Tomorrow

"This modern little wonder," says narrator Frank Graham in the cartoon House of Tomorrow, "relieves mother and dad of the problem of answering junior's many questions."

The kid won't stop talking. "What did you bring?" "Is Santa Claus real?" "Can I have a nickle?" "Did the stork bring me?" "Can I go to the show?" are among his many queries until the machine tells him to shut up. Then it forces him to.



Jack Cosgriff and Rich Hogan wrote this for Tex Avery. I think Daws Butler is playing the machine's voice.

The Helpful Question Mark

Silent cartoons are crammed with words or letters or punctuation marks that are used as props. In the Oswald short Oh Teacher, our hero turns the word “HELP!” screamed by the heroine into a horse which he mounts to ride to the rescue.

The bad guy cat pulls the same kind of thing earlier in the cartoon. He sprouts a question mark over his head which he turns into a rope to knock Oswald off his bicycle so he can have his way with Oswald’s girl-friend (why a cat wants to date a rabbit, I’ll never know).



This is one of the Disney Oswalds, released September 17, 1927.

The Co-Comedians

How big of a television draw was Ben Blue in 1968? Not a huge one, I’d suspect. But that didn’t stop Jack Benny from featuring him on one of his NBC specials that year.

Blue and Benny had worked together on the 1937 film “Artists and Models Abroad.” Blue’s name appeared in advertising for the movie—in much smaller letters than Benny’s. By the 1950s, he was running a nightclub in Santa Monica but still dabbled occasionally in show business. In 1964, Blue was indicted on charges of personal income tax evasion, and was accused of filing false returns for his business.

At the start of 1968, Blue was appearing in the movie “Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?” with his name in much smaller letters on the advertising than Doris Day and Robert Morse. He was also appearing on the Vegas strip under the management of Lou Irwin. Around that time, Benny tabbed Blue to be on one of his specials.

It aired on March 20, 1968. One TV listing of the day describes it this way:

Ben Blue will vie with Lucille Ball in the Jack Benny Special Wednesday night. The show depicts a carnival with all its odd characters played by a host of stars. Benny himself plays everything from con man to owner of the carnival.

Lucy and Jack had been neighbours in Beverly Hills for a number of years and he appeared on “The Lucy Show,” which had become dependent on huge guest names to prop up its ratings. One of Jack’s ex-writers, Milt Josefsberg, went to work for Lucy. Their chemistry was already proven.

Also picked for the special was Tonight host Johnny Carson, who always acknowledged the extremely large influence Benny played in his developing his style.

Jack found nice things to say about the three co-stars in this story in the Geneva Times of March 16, 1968. The paper even featured Lucy and Blue on the front page of its weekend magazine supplement (but, oddly, not Jack). I suspect this story is straight from a production company release. Jack is pretty diplomatic about Miss Ball. She was apparently a tyrant at rehearsals.

Jack Benny Special On Wednesday
HOLLYWOOD — Think about Jack Benny, and what comes to mind — a penny-pinching comedian, perennially claiming to be 39, and a squeaky violin.
Lucille Ball, Johnny Carson, and Ben Blue also conjure up instant public images. But how does Jack Benny think of them? Benny expressed his views of them in connection with their forthcoming appearance as guest stars on "The Jack Benny Special," to be colorcast over the NBC Television Network Wednesday, March 20.
"Lucy and I have been friends for many years," said Benny. "I consider her one of the real great pros that we have in show business. There isn't anything she doesn't know about all the different branches of the business. She's a terrific comedienne who instinctively knows what to do and what not to about comedy. She knows equally as much about production and she’d be a great director."
Benny enjoys alternating shows with her. "She's a perfectionist and meticulate and I try to be the same," he said. "When she asks me to be on her show I don't even ask what the story is about or to see the script. I know it'll be good and I am positive that I will never be embarrassed. I think she feels the same way about me."
In short, Benny admires Lucy. "Lucy is the type of person I have great admiration for because I love show business and to be associated with the giants in the business," he said. "She certainly is a giant and loves to work hard. She can do really anything."
Benny is impressed with Johnny Carson. "I'm a great fan of Johnny's," he said. "Not only do feel he's a fine entertainer but I always notice a terrific improvement each year, which means he absorbs a lot, learns a lot and that he must study quite a bit to hold down the kind of job he has." Continued Benny: "He's not only a fine comedian but a great straight man. You have to be both, particularly in his kind of work. That's why everyone loves Johnny Carson as Johnny Carson."
Benny considers Ben Blue a great comedian but an enigma. “I always felt that he was one of our great comedians,” said Benny. “But something, which I can’t figure out, has kept him from being one of our greatest visual comedians and pantomimists. He’s a fine artist and actually conceded to be among other entertainers, a real funny man—a comedian in every sense of the word. Sid (Fields) is particularly good for Ben and is a great straight man.”
Benny has managed to enjoy the best of two worlds—show business and music. Said he of the TV special, “I’m tremendously pleased with it.” He is also pleased with his benefit concerts, realizing that he is doing more for music than he might have done had he followed strictly a musical career. "I don't do enough concerts to suit me," he said. "I like them better than anything. I practice a lot, anywhere from a half hour to three hours a day. I also listen to music quite a bit, particularly since I've been giving concerts. I found myself a lover of good music. I never realized I liked good music that much."
He feels personally rewarded in a special way. Said he: “The reason I like appearing with a symphony orchestra is that it’s the most dignified background a comedian could be given. It is unusual and it doesn’t fit anyone else, except maybe Danny Kaye.”

Variety gave the special a lukewarm review. It praised Lucy, called the writing “clichéd,” gave Jack a passing grade solely because was Jack Benny, but was sour about the walk-on appearances of George Burns, Bob Hope, Danny Thomas and Don Drysdale (among others). As it was, television would soon be moving away from variety shows, but Jack remained a star until the end. So did Lucy and Johnny. Ben Blue wasn’t as lucky.

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.