Dancing Stove

Ho hum. Another Harman-Ising character does the slide-step dance. The same squealing female voice says “You hoo” and “Ain’t he cute?” As usual, there are cuspidors for humour. Once again, there’s a lot of dancing and instrument playing with no gags. Oh, and there’s a villain harassing the girl in the final half of the cartoon vanquished by the good guys who join together and then shake hands as the iris closes.

What’s different about Moonlight For Two (1932) is that the hero is a stove that’s come to life, inspired by Joe Burke and Irving Kahal’s title song (all the rest of the music, other than the theme, is public domain).



Mr. Stove needs a little nourishment before carrying on with his dance. Nice finger snap, Stovie.



Hey, Harman-Ising writers! Don’t forget the Black Bottom that you over-use in cartoons.



The stove isn’t finished yet. He returns later in the cartoon to dance with Goopy Geer who helps him, uh, drop stuff out of his bottom.



Uh, oh. The bad guy is after Goopy. Quick, Harman-Ising writers, dredge up your usual butt-pain joke. (This actually happens twice because that makes it twice as funny).



Goopy turns the stove into a fiery machine gun that sends the villain running toward the moon in the distance to Frank Marsales’ peppy score.



So long, folks! New cartoon, same jokes next month.

Friz Freleng and Larry Martin are the credited animators.

Busy Benny

When Jack Benny started his radio variety show in May 1932, he was on the air not once, but twice a week. It wasn’t until Chevrolet took over sponsorship in March the following year (after a respite of several weeks caused by being fired by Canada Day) that he hit the airwaves once a week. That’s how things stayed when his radio show ended in 1955.

When Jack added television to the mix in fall 1950, he originally appeared only monthly. Part of it was because he had to fly to New York City to do TV; a trans-continental cable didn’t exist at the time. Another reason he gave at the time was concern about over-exposure; once a week on radio was one thing, but once a week on television might, he thought, lead to audience burn-out.

Eventually, the show appeared every other week (though Benny also simultaneously hosted a number of episodes of Shower of Stars for several seasons). Finally, in the 1960-61 season, he consented to broadcast over CBS-TV every week.

Why the change? Jack sort of explained it in this feature story which appeared in the Albany Times-Union edition of Christmas Day 1960. It ends with a capsule biography. Whether Benny was actually interviewed by the paper or whether this story was put together from a network/producer/sponsor PR sheet is unclear.

HE'S NO LOAFER
Jack Benny Goes for Broke
By ED MISURELL
At an age where many men are thinking of retiring on their Social Security and savings and doing a bit of hard-earned loafing, millionaire Jack Benny has doubled his work load. The 66-year-old comedian has stepped up his video schedule, for the first time in 11 seasons on television, to weekly appearances. His decision to do a show every Sunday, night on CBS-TV has puzzled show business veterans. What made him take on this rigorous routine that has toppled such younger and famed funnymen as Jackie Gleason, Milton Berle, Red Buttons and George Goble.
Now well into his present season, Benny offered a number of reasons for jumping in where others have drowned in a flood of poor ratings. "The idea came at the end of last season," he explained during a recent visit to New York. "My wife, Mary, and I were discussing whether I should continue doing shows on a bi-weekly basis as I had been doing or do just so many specials a year.
LESS TENSION
"Mary pointed out that I had appeared in specials alone for a number of seasons and said that I would hate to go back to working under the pressure that such shows bring about — further agreed that the bi-weekly programs had taken on the aspects of small specials, with pressures still present to a certain degree." Straightening an ascot scarf tucked into the smoking jacket he was wearing, Benny continued, "Talking over the possibilities of doing a weekly show, I came to the concession that the problems which might arise could be solved quickly with little or no tension involved. And after reaching that conclusion, I went to my writers and asked them how they felt about the idea.
"They were all for it even though it would mean more work and no more money. You see, they are paid on a yearly basis, no matter how many shows we do a season. They told me they had been talking about the coming season and had intended asking me whether I would consent to stepping up the schedule.
"Well," he went on, "since we did we have learned that with the weekly, half-hour format, you get into a groove that keeps you keyed up. Viewers know you're on each week and form the habit of looking forward to seeing you. Each show you do does not have to be a great one. If you miss now and then, it is not a tragedy. The viewer who watches you every week seems to understand this. If it were a special and it didn't come, off. he'd be ready to clobber you for letting him down."
WORKS ON 'IMAGE'

If he were a standup comedian doing monologues and gags on a weekly program, Benny pointed out, the job would be herculean. But since most of his humor springs from the legendary image the public has of him — a tightwad, coward and a poseur who thinks he is, but isn't, a great violinist and lover — many situations can be developed that play up these traits without undue strain on Jack or his writers.
Another important fact in reducing pressure is the long association Benny has had with his professional "family." Announcer and performer Don Wilson has been with him 27 years, his "valet," Rochester Anderson joined him back in 1937. Writers Sam Perrin and George Balzer and Hal Goldman and Al Gordon have been members of the organization for 18 or 12 years respectively.
"It's a great organization," said Benny. "We work hard but we have a great amount of fun, too. We each have respect for one another's judgment and that goes a long way toward eliminating any tension that might arise."
This video season, Benny said, marked his fiftieth year in show business. Born in Chicago in February, 1894, he grew up in nearby Waukegan, where his father ran a small clothing store. As a child, he began taking violin lessons and soon became quite an expert player.
During high school he doubled between the Barrison pit and the school band. At 16, he teamed up with Cora Salisbury, the Barrison pianist, as a vaudeville duo. When she left the act, he joined talents with Lyman Woods in tours of the circuits.
HOW CAREER BEGAN
When World War I came along, Benny went into the Navy and soon found himself in the Great Lakes Revue, a unit which raised relief funds. One night during a performance, the lights failed. To keep the crowd from getting restless. Jack began to swap chatter with pianist Zez Confrey. The audience roared with laughter and Benny's career as a comedian began.
After the war he climbed to stardom in vaudeville and musical comedy. During the Los Angeles engagement of a Shubert musical, Jack met Mary Livingston and they were married in 1927 on St. Valentine's Day, his birthday.
Jack broke into the electronic medium of radio back in 1932 when he appeared on an Ed Sullivan show with the words: "Hello, folks. This is Jack Benny. There will be a slight pause for everyone to say 'Who cares?'"
Apparently, enough people (and sponsors) cared, for Jack was launched on a long career which made him a familiar voice to millions of listeners and, beginning in 1950, a familiar figure to millions of viewers.

Jack left CBS in 1964 after becoming angry with the network changing its lead-in to his show from Red Skelton to Petticoat Junction. As it was, network president Jim Aubrey didn’t want him any more anyway. Benny’s weekly visits into homes lasted one more season on NBC before he was dropped from the schedule. No matter. He merely went back to occasional shows and even had a script and shooting schedule ready for another special when he died in December 1974. Jack still had drawing power until he could, physically, draw no more.

Symbolic Animation From Eastern Europe

In the U.S., animated cartoons from the 1910s into the succeeding decades were used as a form of entertainment (almost always comedy), advertising or propaganda. The majority of the American animation that appeared in theatres or on television came from commercial studios. Walt Disney pretty much set the standard in terms of design and movement (and in some cases, through much of the ‘30s, story) but, eventually, artists wanted to try new things and express themselves differently. UPA gets the lion’s share of attention for this kind of thing. Elsewhere around the world, things were different, possibly because studios were not bound by commercial considerations. The National Film Board of Canada released interesting and iconoclastic cartoons. And in Europe, there were experiments taking place as well.

The 1962 book “Design in Motion” by Halas and Manvell looks at the broadening of subjects for animation and various forms of artistic vision around the world. It is enlivened with drawings in numerous styles. Some that struck me as very bold are from a cartoon produced in then-Yugoslavia, Piccolo. See them below.



My knowledge of overseas animation is really poor, but the internet has come to the rescue with a book called Animation: A World History: Volume 2 by Giannalberto Bendazzi, published in 2016 by CRC Press. There is an excellent and well-researched précis on Zagreb Film as well as the creator of this short, Dušan Vukotić. As quoting even an extract from the book apparently violates copyright laws, I’ll have to paraphrase and you can click on the link above to read the relevant chapter with its analysis in full.

Vukotić was from Montenegro and made his way to Zagreb in Croatia to study architecture. Along the way, he drew and published cartoons and caricatures, and then took part in the start-up of Zagreb Film. His first animated short was Nestašni Robot (The Playful Robot, 1956).

Piccolo was completed in 1959. Bendazzi postulates that this film had its genesis in Norman McLaren’s Cold War allegory Neighbours (Canada, 1952). Piccolo is symbolic of the escalation of the arms race where two friendly men living under the same roof suddenly try to start outdoing each other when one buys a piccolo and begins playing it. The instruments get larger and louder until their house collapses. (As a side note, some have read the same meaning into Tex Avery’s 1949 cartoon Bad Luck Blackie. I really doubt Avery was that political; he merely wanted to make people laugh).

Unfortunately, Piccolo is not available for free on any of the video sharing websites. However, Rembrandt Films (yes, the same company which hired Gene Deitch as a director in the ‘60s) has Vukotić’s works for sale on DVD. You can look here on the Rembrandt site.

Super Chicken Transforms

My five favourite Jay Ward cartoons, in no order, are Rocky and Bullwinkle, George of the Jungle, Super Chicken, Fractured Fairy Tales and Dudley Do-Right. You can argue amongst yourself which is number one. In the meantime, I’ll post some scenes from Super Chicken.

As you all know, simple, unassuming Henry Cabot Henhouse III transformed into that heroic doer of good things, Super Chicken, after drinking the Super Sauce mixed by faithful companion Fred. The Ward animators had fun with the transformation drawings in a few of the cartoons. In the one featuring Shrimp Chop Fooey (aka The Laundryman), here’s what happens.



The series had gang credits listing the animators, who included Rod Scribner, Rudy Zamora, Phil Duncan and Herman R. Cohen.

The Worm and the Egg

George spends a lot of time in costume in the MGM cartoon Henpecked Hoboes (1946), where he and Junior attempt to catch a chicken for dinner.

Tex Avery and writer Heck Allen work up a gag where George pretends to be a worm to get the chicken to chase him. The chicken is supposed to clobbered by Junior, who botches things again. George/Worm realises the chicken’s still on the loose and after him.



The hen has him trapped. A cry of help to the dullard Junior yields no results. I love the crazed look on the chicken. It reminds me of the dog-in-a-box in Avery’s Bad Luck Blackie (1949). Walt Clinton animated on both.



Cut to Junior, who sees the smiling hen with an after-meal toothpick! (Yes, hens don’t have teeth). He pulls open the chicken’s mouth and confirms George is in her stomach. He gets him out—when the chicken lays an egg with George inside it.



Avery never lets the pace slow down so you can think about the gag before you see it.

Ray Abrams, Preston Blair and Ed Love are the other credited animators.

What's That Sound?

Who invented radio sound effects?

Reader Peter Drysdale (at least I think he’s a reader) put that question after reading Irving Fein’s biography of Jack Benny, wherein Fein claimed sound effects were “seldom, if ever used” on the air before Benny came along. He wondered if it were true.

Benny regularly appeared on radio starting in 1932. Large chain network radio was barely five years old at the time and radio itself became a fad only ten years earlier. In the beginning, radio stations generally broadcast music (live or recorded) or talks. When the networks came along in 1926/27, they had more money for bigger stars and live pick-ups of scheduled events outside the studio, such as sports or political speeches. There wasn’t much of a need for sound effects. Comedy-variety shows became the fad starting in 1932. They originally consisted of jokes, music, singing and announcers reading commercial copy. Again, there wasn’t much of a need for sound effects. It’s only when comedy shows evolved to start including sketches that sound effects came in handy.

But the sound effects were already there.

This post isn’t a definitive answer to Peter’s query. It merely passes on random clippings about sound effects from one publication. But it certainly shows noises created in-studio pre-dated Benny by several years.

What’s On the Air magazine from November 1929 reported that at least one network already had an effects department, as primitive as things may have been. The issue reveals:

NBC production managers are hailing a new genius of their craft. He is John Wiggin. In the weekly "Whispering Tables" program the script called for the merry tinkling of ice in a glass. The production managers scratched their heads. How were they to reproduce that sound for the microphone? For pistol-shots they used drums, for clashing swords they used table silver, but what could they do about ice in a glass? "Why not," asked Wiggin, "get a glass and some ice?"

Harry Swan, radio-effects man for the Columbia Broadcasting System, has been presented with a title, and now sports the avuncular prefix. The young thespians who broadcast during the children's dramatic periods from WABC have decided Harry shall be known as uncle, despite the weird noises he turns out on short notices for the broadcasts. Incidentally, "Static," the studio cat, not long ago happened on a loud-speaker in the control-room just as Harry was imitating a particularly active dog, and since that one dreadful moment, when it seemed her doom was upon her, pussy hasn't been seen about the studios.

Sound effects were already being used on broadcasts in foreign countries. From March 1930:

Cecil Lewis, former manager of programs of the British Broadcasting Corporation, is spending a few months in America, studying our radio-program technique and incidentally giving American program directors and the listening public a glimpse of his own. While here he will personally direct the broadcasting of several of Bernard Shaw's plays over the NBC chain. For some of the plays he will use four or five studios simultaneously. The British fashion requires that actors, music, sound effects, etc., originate in separate studios, and that the producer at the control panel blend the resultant sound output. Mr. Lewis has been a prominent figure in British radio since the BBC was organized in 1922.

In the same issue, an example of the ingenuity of sound men:

ON Sept. 17, 1929, a program appeared on WJZ and associated stations proving to listeners that there was something new before the microphone. It was the first installment of the Johnson & Johnson Musical Melodramas, in which Jimmy Otis, hero reporter of the Clarion; Dorothy Brent, student nurse — she's a full-fledged Red Cross nurse now; Rawley Rawson, funny English newspaperman, and Detective Sergeant McCarthy, started the seemingly hopeless task of tracking down a sinister figure of the underworld, known only as "The Chief." Although they've never caught the villain — and probably won't, at least for a long time — their efforts have supplied radio listeners with some new thrills and some unique sound effects. ...
The Musical Melodrama, which the sponsors, incidentally, recommend hearing with the lights turned low, is a unique radio production in that it requires as many sound-effect and production men as it does actors. For instance, it takes two men to make a noise like an airplane — one to manipulate an electric fan, which has leather instead of metal blades, the other to hold the tomtom against the blades. One of the most elaborate effects ever used during the Melodramas was that which produced the sound of water rushing from a hydrant. A tank of gas, a long hose and an old-fashioned wash-boiler partly filled with water were obtained. The hose was placed in the water and the gas slowly turned on. The effect was excellent.

As for comedy shows with effects, the same issue gives an example from the satirist who hosted The Cuckoo Hour on NBC Blue. It’s not quite on the box-of-gravel-for-footsteps level of manufacturing an effect, but it’s funny:

Raymond Knight, NBC production man, who is becoming known as the Ed Wynn of radio, has developed a new sound effect. By rights, Knight's body should be kept in the sound-properties room at NBC. Knight was trying out all the stock devices in an attempt to get the sound of a dog wagging its tail against the floor. Finally Knight put his head near the microphone and thumped it gently with a piece of wood. The studio engineer signaled success. And that was the way the effect was worked in the program.

It would make sense that the early detective and mystery shows would require the creation of special sounds. More again from March 1930 of What’s On the Air:

ONE of the swiftest-moving radio features, the True Detective Mysteries program broadcast over CBS every Thursday evening, owes much of its popularity to the action which takes place in the studio. Reproducing as it does true stories of various police cases, it is often impossible to go into every detail of the story, and so far no one has actually been murdered in the broadcast; but when a struggle is indicated in the script the actors proceed to struggle; when the gong and siren on the police-cars are heard, there are sirens and gongs in the studio.
Staged under the direction of Charles Schenck, one of radio's pioneers in stagecraft, "True Detective Mysteries" utilizes approximately the same cast each week to dramatize the most thrilling story in the current issue of the magazine from which it takes its name. Much of the program's success is due to the fact Mr. Schenck has been able to assemble the cast which his experience has shown him possesses really ideal voices for the microphone, as well as dramatic ability. The sound effects, pistol shots, slamming doors, crashing glass, speeding autos — every conceivable noise, in fact — are all produced by one man, who sets up his apparatus before his own special microphone, and, working from his own copy of the script, follows his cues as carefully and promptly as do the actors.

The April 1930 edition profiled Edwin King Cohan, technical supervisor of CBS, who was credited with “constantly surprising the broadcasting world with new methods of production and sound effects” when he was at WOR in New York the previous year. But the real highlight is the picture of the odd apparatus you see to your right, accompanied by the following article:

THE scenery of the radio drama is its sound effects. Consequently, supplying sound that accurately portrays a setting that can not be seen (at least until television arrives) is a serious part of preparing the dramatic broadcast. Thus it happens that A. W. Nichols, of the Judson Radio Program Corporation, and the weird and wonderful "sound" table pictured on this page are in constant demand by the production managers of dramatic features broadcast from New York studios.
The script may keep him busier than the terrible tempered Mr. Bang would be were he compelled to scratch out the seven-year itch, but so far no call for sound effect has bluffed Mr. Nichols long. The table took him nearly a year of steady work, averaging from ten to fourteen hours per day, to build, but it seems equal to every call dramatists can make on it.
The more popular sound effects are keyboard controlled. One button releases the ocean surf; another, the thunderstorm; another, gales of variable intensity. Then there are buttons for train effects (steam and motorized); aviation fields, fire department, automobiles, motorcycles, city street, riveting-machines, trolley cars, machine guns, crashing glass, revolver or rifle fire, and a myriad others and combinations of all.
One side wall is devoted to whistles of every description. The center back is capable of reproducing the sounds of barnyard or zoo, or of any individual denizens of either. The right side wall is for bells, buzzers, telephones, wireless instruments, machinery sounds of many types. Room has been provided also for Old Dobbin and the buggy, anvil, door slam, clock ticks, fireworks, baby cry, chain rattle, sleigh-bells, board squeak, sword duel, flies, bee buzz, cork pulling, falling trees, various types of saws, blow-torch, real cloth tearing, nose blower and a hundred and one varieties of percussion instruments. Last week William B. Murray received the following telegram from Mr. Nichols: "Ruined my ocean waves stop won't be at studio to-day." All of which goes to show that the business of producing sound on the radio is a very sad and serious one.

Jack Benny’s first broadcast had a sound effect in the opening and closing—a steam train whistle (I think it had to do with the theme song title). Ed Wynn used a siren (for Texaco Fire Chief gas). But before them, in 1930, Phil Cook had a signature opening with effects. You can read about it to the right (click on the photo to make it bigger).

What’s On the Air, full of pictures and beautiful examples of calligraphy, talks about sound effects men on some of the shows. Vernon Radcliffe was responsible for the waterfront noises on NBC’s Harbor Lights. At CBS, Al Sinton replicated the sounds of a night-time showboat on the Mississippi River on Mardi Gras. Bill Mahoney on Tower Health Exercises every morning on NBC used a collection of 50 sound effects. Rin Tin Tin from NBC Chicago got assistance from F.G. Ibbett. And it was even reported that C.L. Menser on NBC’s Miniature Theatre was careful not to use effects that might be misinterpreted by the listener. In fact, female performers at NBC could be the bane of the network’s engineers. Moving while wearing a beaded dress came across the air as if it were machine gun fire.

So Jack Benny may have been an influential pioneer in radio comedy—situation comedy, even—but sound effects departments were established in radio well before he cracked his first joke for Canada Dry in 1932.

Gophers From Texas, Dog From Stratford

The overly-polite gophers met up with a thespian dog in three Warner Bros. cartoons, one of which was ridiculously-titled Two Gophers From Texas (1948). If either of the gophers had been from Texas, it would have been a clever pun on the title of a Warners’ feature. Instead, it’s a real stretch. Anyway...

In one scene, the dog uses a marble to test a trap he wants to spring on the vegetable-stealing rodents. He’s staring like he’s not altogether there.



There’s a cut to the trap working, then a cut back to the dog evilly laughing. You’ve got to love the mouth.



Animating this is Emery Hawkins, with Basil Davidovich, Bill Melendez and Don Williams animating other scenes for director Art Davis. The opening scene is great, too, with the dog’s eyes being different shapes and sizes.