Famous, But Invisible

People heard their voices on the radio but never knew who they were—guys like Bill Hanrahan, Mel Brandt, Howard Reig, Gene Hamilton. They were among the men who said “This is NBC, the National Broadcasting Company” before the electronic G-E-C chimed out over the air.

Many of NBC’s staff announcers toiled anonymously for years, giving network IDs and announcements. Some rose from the ranks to host programmes; Wayne Howell, for example. And a select few found themselves with regular and high-profile television announcing jobs where everyone recognised their name and voice. Bill Wendell was one. But maybe the best example was Don Pardo.

Depending on your age, you might have heard Pardo reading late night radio news in the mid-1940s. Or you might have caught Bill Cullen asking him to tell a contestant what they won on the original The Price is Right, or elucidating about the World Book Encyclopedia to viewers of the original Jeopardy! (executive producer Merv Griffin was big on the announcer being thanked, so host Art Fleming thanked Pardo for his introduction five times a week). But a different generation gave him his biggest fame as he stretched his vowels opening “Saturday Night Liiiiiiive!!!” for years. Pardo had a wonderful ability to self-kid his announcing style without being a self-parody. He was very professional about what he did, but even he seems to have understood it was somewhat ridiculous for a grown man to buoyantly bleat “It’s a mink stoooooole!” or “A two-week stay in Bermuudaaaaaa!”

We’ve talked about Pardo’s career in this post, and in this post about the time Pardo was suddenly faced with handling a bomb threat in his studio. Here’s another newspaper clipping, this one from February 25, 1978. Writer Frazier Moore is with the Associated Press out of New York these days, but I gather he did this on a freelance basis while living in Florida.

THE VOICE
By Frazier Moore
NOBODY SAYS “Jeopardy” like Don Pardo. He revs up like a firetruck’s siren (Jeeee-ep), the rides a steep but graceful slope of resonance until his voice glides to a rest (“- -pard-deee”).
Pardo, the man with a voice like a firm but soothing rubdown, introduced the TV gameshow “Jeopardy!” five times a week for more than a decade. He was the off-camera announcer, but even after grinning emcee Art Fleming took the stage each day with a squeaky “Thank-ya Don Pardo,” the voice of his unseen sergeant-at-arms still hung in the air.
Years before “Jeopardy!,” Pardo had announced for “The Price Is Right,” the original version in the ‘50s, when Bill Cullen hosted. And Pardo—not Sir Laurence Olivier or Orson Welles—acquainted innumerable youngsters with the majesty of the speaking voice, even as he recited something as mundane as where to send for free tickets to the show.
Now Pardo’s career has taken a curious twist, thanks to his role for the last two years as announcer on “Saturday Night Live,” NBC’s live-from-New-York satirical loony bin which can be seen tonight from 11:30 p.m. to 1 a.m. on WSB-TV, Channel 2 in Atlanta. During each segment’s 90 minutes, Pardo’s buoyant voice periodically bobs up from the sea of insanity. His deep dragline voice dredges up beauty-mud diction as he scoops a path amongst the cast’s precocious young hipsters.
But who is this man with the ear-cuddling splendor, the man who plays second fiddle with a Stradivarius?
It was a little after 4 p.m. a couple of Fridays ago, and Pardo was roosted in the NBC announcing booth, snug in Manhattan’s RCA Building. He greeted the report’s phone call graciously.
He had just arrived at work, and would stay until 7—“and that’s my day,” he crooned into the receiver with the same transcendent tones that tickle airwaves from coast to coast. “It’s pretty deadly, but it’s not bad. I’m sort of sitting back and enjoying my three hours a day.”
Pardo’s day-to-day job is that of staff announcer, which means he sits before a microphone for a given shift and makes all the needed announcements, live. Pardo, a native of Westfield, Mass., has had such a position at NBC since he arrived in New York City in 1944, at the age of 26, after a short stint at a Providence, R.I., radio station.
He’ll [sic] was 60 Wednesday, Feb. 22. And now, one of a dwindling breed thanks to tape cartridges and the TV industry’s exodus to Hollywood, Pardo is a party to a “contract of attrition,” which protects him and his remaining 13 colleagues from dismissal, then terminates each slot as each announcer retires.
So here was Pardo, sitting, waiting until the 4:30 p.m. station break, and welcoming a chat.
Things hadn’t been so rosy a few days before. Then the voice that claimed to be Don Pardo’s sounded like a dime-store photograph; he had a cold.
“When I catch a cold, it goes straight to my pipes,” he was saying now, his voice back in the stirrups and spurring every word. “And that’s my Achilles heel. I wind up with laryngitis.”
It recalled another case, 34 years ago.

“I must have been here about six weeks or so. Then, (veteran newsman) Lowell Thomas was on for Sunoco, from 6:45 to 7, and one afternoon I was rushed into the studio because his announcer ad laryngitis and couldn’t do it. And I went in there—and you think I wasn’t terrified?”
“Lowell Thomas used to come in at the last minute. Sometimes he used to come in when they had the beep-beep-beep, beep-beep-beep sound going on, and there’s nobody there, and this is L-I-I-I-I-IVE, and I think ‘What the hell do I do?’ ‘cause the moment you get through with the beep-beep-beep, “... And now, Lowell Thomas’—that’s your introduction. ...” Pardo halted, to let the potential horror of the situation sink in.
“But, by George, he’d just make it to the studio. Wouldn’t even take his hat off. But I remember I thought I was gonna have a cardiac arrest, right then and there. Oh, my God!” And he laughed a husky laugh—his laugh a worthy partner to the Pardo voice—at the memory.
Throughout his NBC careet, Pardo has been on hand for broadcasting’s grand parade, which he witnessed, rain or shine, day in, day out, from the reviewing stand his job provided. He’d been at NBC a long time, but his brimming memory began to spill out recollections.
“All the years I’ve been around here, and all the shows I’ve been affiliated with, good heavens!,” he marveled, as if his lengthy tenure had just occurred to him. “I did just about everything . . . ‘Caesar’s Hour,’ with Sid Caesar, and ‘The Martha Raye Show’ for five years. . . . I did the first two soaps that were ever on television—two 15-minute shows, ‘Follow Your Heart’ and ‘Three Steps to Heaven.’ . . .
“There was ‘The Colgate Comedy Hour; starting in 1950, and all the great stars we had on that. Martin and Lewis, Eddie Cantor, Abbott and Costello, the whole lot. . . .
“And I did Fred Allen’s only TV show, ‘Judge for Yourself,’ in 1953, and there was ‘The Kate Smith Hour,’ and ‘The Four Star Revue,’ with Martha Raye, Danny Thomas, Jackie Gleason and Jimmy Durante—every Saturday they would rotate. . . . And the ‘U.S. Royal Showcase,’ and Jonathan Winters’ 15-minute show. That’s where I met Art Fleming. He did the commercials.”
Then there was “The Price Is Right,” “Winner Take All,” “Jackpot,”—“for 11 long, beautiful years,” says Pardo.
Many of these projects were freelance jobs supplementing his staff chores. For Pardo, “Saturday Night Live” is such a sideline.
“Everybody on the show is about 32 or younger,” Pardo said. “The gimmick was to get a veteran announcer. (Producer) Lorne Michaels and (writer) Herb Sargent had grown up with me, ever since they were little tots, hearing ‘Don Pardo, Don Pardo’ on the air—I’ve been at NBC longer than Lorne has been on earth. So they called me in, looked me over, and that’s how I was hired.
“We coming up?” he asked suddenly, speaking to somebody else. “We got the director over there going bananas,” he said. “There’s a break coming up. . . .” A few seconds’ pause, then Pardo’s voice returned in a slightly richer, much more forceful manner: “It’s ‘The $100,000 Name That Tune,’ tonight at 7:30. . . . “Now we’re set,” he said into the telephone, sliding his voice out of hiking boots and into suede slippers.
Three weeks ago he got to “die,” when “Saturday Night” concluded its show in ultra-bizarre fashion with an onslaught of “giant atomic lobsters the size of helicopters.” Pardo, along with the rest of the cast, crew and studio audience (and for that matter, the whole of the Northeast United States( expired at their hands—er, claws.
And he’s even had a starring role. Once, a “Saturday Night” sketch cast Pardo in a tribute to himself. And lo and behold, Don Pardo was exposed as an INVISIBLE MAN!
Is it true?
“I’ll send you a picture,” Pardo replied, then went on to explain that his recent anonymity isn’t part of a conspiracy to keep him under wraps. In many of the series in which he participated during the ‘50s, he worked on-camera. In a series of long-ago TV commercials, he put a Benrus watch through its paces by swimming laps with it strapped on his wrist. He hosted his own local kids’ show in New York City. “And on ‘Jeopardy!,’ I was seen once a year,” he said, “when I’d wheel out the anniversary cake.”
Otherwise, the fact that no one knows what Don Pardo looks like, “Why, that’s one of beauties,” he said. “I’m free as a bird. But on ‘Saturday Night,’ I get out there for a few minutes and do a warmup, and the minute I open my chops and say, ‘Good evening, I’m Don Par. . .’—‘Yayyyyyyyyyy! That’s him!’ they scream. ‘THAT’S the one!’
“I’ve never in my life seen such a group of people,” he said of The Not Ready for Prime Time Players, the show’s seven-member repertory company. “Changes are made up until airtime, but they only have to be told once, and you wonder how they do it. I’d flip out. They’re a most talented bunch.” Pardo is a stranger in a strange land, and “Saturday Night Live” is his passport.

“Last Christmas (1976) we had (rock avant-gardist) Frank Zappa on the show. I didn’t know he was fond of me, but it turned out he had kind of grown up with me on television.” So Zappa recruited Pardo to join his troupe during a four-show engagement at a New York-area concert hall.
“I was dressed in a white tux and tails, the whole thing, and they practically tore me apart, those kids. I ran up and down the aisles, and, Christamighty, they floored me. They grabbed my cape, tore everything apart. And I got kissed by a few fellas. Man, I tell you, what a crowd, what an experience that was! “And they were selling posters. I’m like Farrah Fawcett-Majors, on these big posters. There as a sign, ‘Don Pardo posters, $1.’ And the last night: ‘Free! Don Pardo posters, with every purchase of a Frank Zappa shirt.’” He laughed. “And I’m thinking to myself, ‘Boy, how the mighty have fallen.’ Used to be, when Pardo was doing the live-TV grind every day, he kept an apartment in Manhattan to save commuting during the week. This
time-saving arrangement led to time squandered every evening in bars, he confessed, which inspired this question: Does Pardo’s perma-pressed voice succumb to wrinkles when he has a few drinks?
“I wouldn’t dare, if I’m going on the air, I’ll tell you that,” Pardo said, with a laugh. “Man, it’s sound like, “And now, it’s ‘Saturday Night Liii-i-i-i-i-i-ive.’ You know, your diction would be slooo-o-o-o-o-o-o-ow; ‘Gillll-l-l-l-l-llida Radner-r-r-r-r-rrrrrr,’” he demonstrated, his voice ebbing and flowing with the names of the stars, “Laraine Newwwwman-n-n-n-nnn. John belushiiii-i-i-i-i-i-i-i...”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
But announcing isn’t as easy as it sounds, Pardo warned. “There’s a lot of tension, my friend. You need the voice, and endurance”—he laughed—“and personality. Be different.”
Along the way, Pardo had interrupted the conversation for another announcement: “Visit the New York Public Library,” he boomed. No one could have said “visit the New York Public Library” quite that way.
“That’s it,” he said a moment later. “My next break is coming up in about 2/4 minutes, when I say ‘Chuck Scarborough and News Center 4—next.’”
Shortly after 7 p.m. he would be through for the day and, since there was no “Saturday Night” that weekend, for the week.
For now, Don Pardo, The Voice, had spoken his piece.

He Gave More Than a Goodtime Hour

There he was on your TV set, with a big beaming face enthusiastically shouting “Hi! I’m Glen Campbell!” before launching into “Gentle on My Mind,” one of the songs that resulted in him winning four Grammys and Entertainer of the Year by the Country Music Association in 1968.

Campbell’s music, in a way, wasn’t really country at all, not in the terms of twanging steel guitars, songs lamenting about hurtin’ and drinkin,’ and accents that were so backwoods, they could light a fire under the still out back. He belonged to that valuable category of country pop. An inoffensive, plaintive voice with a hint of farm belt coupled with a rhythm guitar made him perfect for country and middle-of-the-road stations.

By the time Campbell was handed his Grammys in May 1968, he had already by picked by Tommy Smothers to co-host the Smothers Brothers’ Sunday night summer replacement show with deadpan comedian Pat Paulsen. It seems like an odd combination, but viewers tuned in. Campbell was set up in his own variety show, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, which opened on January 29, 1969 with a happy identifying shout at the camera.

Here’s a syndicated feature story from December 2, 1969, with a good look at Campbell’s attitudes at the time.

Better Than Pickin' Cotton
Glen Campbell Unspoiled
By Skyrocketing Career
By BOB ROSE
LOS ANGELES — Glen Campbell says:
—"People want a guy to come out and cut his guts out and say. This is it. This is me. I do bad? At least you're honest about it."
—"These Charley Showbiz people come out and sing, "La de da, this is my song, and I'm going to sing it to you.' That's all bull. All fake. And it comes through that way."
—"I looked at myself in True Grit' and I ain't worth a damn, from an actor's standpoint. Critics? I read some beauts, man. 'Glen has never acted in movies before, and his record is still clean.' He was right."
This is the off-the-cuff, down-home talk of the singer-guitarist-songwriter and TV star—perhaps the hottest property in song and show business today. Grammy awards and awards from the Academy of Country Western Music come to him in batches. His records regularly hit the top of the charts. He's applauded by college kids, teens and just folks alike.
And he's modest about it all.
"I GIVE THE CREDIT to the song. If it's a good song, it'll go. Like 'Gentle on My Mind.' It was a rhythm track and a voice and it didn't have any sweetening on it at all. No strings, no horns, nothing. It was a hit because it was a good song. Not because it was Glen Campbell. I mean, who the hell was Glen Campbell?"
It's good the question was in the past tense. Then nobody knew. But nearly overnight, true to show business legend, everybody knew. True to show-business fact, Glen had been in the background working up to stardom for a long time, from the time he was 4 and his old man gave him a mall-order guitar.
That was back in Delight, Ark. (pop. 450), ("Well, we didn't actually live in Delight. But up the road about 8 miles, on a farm.") As one of a family of 12 kids where everybody, including ma and pa, played some sort of instrument and sang.
"Let's face it, there ain't a helluva lot to do on the farm, except milk the cows and slop the hogs, and when you go in the house after dark, what do you do? We didn't play cards because Mom wouldn't allow them in the house. So we played guitars and sang."

GLEN GRINNED as he talked, leaning back on a couch in his CBS office, a suite that used to be occupied by the Smothers Brothers, who gave him a big lift up in television before they and the network split in a squabble over censorship.
"Those were some kind of days, back in Delight, I'll tell you. I picked cotton at $1.25 a hundred pounds, and boy, if I worked my tail off I picked 80 or 90 pounds a day."
Glen decided a better future might lie with his music. Something of a prodigy, he could play anything he wanted to by the time he was 7 or 8—rhythm, country music, jazz, old-time religion— and by 14 he left home to work with his uncle's band in Albuquerque. He's made his living as a professional entertainer ever since.
He mastered the five-string banjo, the 12-string guitar, six-string guitar, electric guitar, mandolin and bass fiddle. In 1961, his last year on the road, he traveled 105,000 miles in a station wagon for 11 months, and then decided to try his luck in Hollywood.
His skill put him in demand as a studio musician.
"I PLAYED for all kinds. Easy ones like Dean Martin, who says, 'Anything you want is OK with me.' And tough ones like Bobby Darin, who tells every musician how to play each note. But the money was good. You could get $105 for a three-hour session. If you could pick up three or four of those a day, you made good dough. Sometimes I'd work from 9 a.m. until 4 a.m. with damn few breaks in between."
Glen was working for Capitol Records, and kept it up for five years, then he went to his bosses and asked for a chance to do his own thing. They agreed. He came in with "Gentle On My Mind," and shortly after, "By The Time I Get to Phoenix," and then, "Hey Little One," three massive hits.
Characteristically, Glen pays tribute to Capitol.
"They're a great outfit. They back you 100 per cent. I'm still with them."
Tom and Dick Smothers, whom Glen played behind on several records, picked him to head up their "Summer Brothers Smothers Show," and he was a solid success. Then CBS gave them his own regular season show, another hit.
Glen bought out the Smothers Brothers share of his show so he could have control over just what he was going to do and say.
"There was no bitterness, no unhappiness, you understand. But last year they had me doing some things that I just didn't think fit. And if I don't feel comfortable doing something, it comes out looking phoney. That is bad news."
GLEN ALSO DIFFERS with Tommy's one-man, or two-man war to run a completely free-of-censorship network show in which he can say anything he wants.
"I think Tommy's real talented. But he has this hangup. I told him I have a point of view, too, but I'm not going to use my show as a vehicle to try to express it. There's 200,000,000 other people out there with a point of view and they don't have a television show to express it on. Why should I be different? Besides, ain't nothing we're going to say that's going to change a damn thing anyway. Except it's going to raise a lot of stink. It ain't common sense."
Glen plays country music because he likes music that tells a story.
"I like music that has a beginning, a middle and an end. I look for a human interest story, maybe a story of a boy and girl in love. And I don't look for depressing endings."

But Glen doesn't like to be typed as a country and western singer because he does all kinds—pop, jazz, rock 'n' roll and some classical along with it. ("I'll jump in with the Juilliard String Quartet with my five-string banjo. I love all kinds of music").
One music critic described Campbell as "all smiles and welcome, a style that is as open and natural as church on Sundays, and a fearsome agility in his top notes which are as acrobatic and far-reaching as a razorback's hog calling . . . his big, silky baritone is a polished instrument, with equal vocal measures of Las Vegas and Nashville."
HIS ACTING may be something of a different story, but Glen thinks it's improving.
"I act" Glen admits, "like I shank a four-Iron. But in this new picture, 'Norwood,' I think there are a few places I look like an actor. I'm really working on it."
In "Norwood," Glen works at a service station In Ralph, Tex., and a guy suckers him into driving a car to New York for him.
"Halfway there I find the car's hot. And the chick who's riding with me is a hooker, and I don't know it. Dumb. Naive. Boy, that's me. I fit right in."
Well, "dumb" and "naive" Glen will be putting away cash like he's bailn' hay this year from television, records and movies—and he thanks Daddy for a lot of his good fortune.
He proudly describes him in a way that could be applied to himself.
"My dad, Wes, he's the kind who always won first prize for singing and playing at the county fair. He's a helluva showman. He really is. We had him on the show and we got more letters than any one we ever had. He's a card. But very honest. Very open. And people can see that."

Despite the sunny, down-home optimism, Campbell’s life unravelled and not just because comedy-variety TV shows became passé. There are a bunch of divorces. A lot of drinking. And then came Alzheimer’s, which he publicly fought to set an example for others.

The first impression is always a lasting one. Glen Campbell is still thought of today as an unassuming young man from a small farm town who crooned pleasantly with a simple string guitar. A guy who deserved success. It’s why he’s being mourned today.

Hiding Bull

Tex Avery made several cartoons where the bad-guy wolf character couldn’t shake Droopy. No matter what he did or where he went, Droopy was always there.

The same thing happens in Señor Droopy (1949), except the difference is a bull is always there.



Avery now builds up to the surprise by holding a drawing for 18 frames. Then...



The bull quickly pops out. Note that the fear take isn’t as outrageous as Avery got in earlier cartoons, like Northwest Hounded Police.



There he is again.



I haven’t bothered checking, but it seems the wolf had more screen time without Droopy than with him.

Grant Simmons, Bobe Cannon, Walt Clinton, Preston Blair and Mike Lah receive the animation credit.

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.