Don't Raze Allen's Alley

“People You Didn’t Expect to Meet.” “The Average Man’s Round Table.” “Town Hall News.” No, those aren’t the things you remember if you remember Fred Allen. You remember Allen’s Alley.

The Alley didn’t take up an awful lot of Allen’s half-hour broadcast—and even less time on Armed Forces Radio when it had to be chopped up to remove dated or topical gags—but it’s the one thing that seems to have stuck in people’s minds about Allen’s show.

The Alley was first broadcast December 6, 1942 but I suspect the residents of the imaginary street didn’t become hugely popular until Kenny Delmar joined the cast as the blustery Senator Claghorn at the start of the fall season in 1945.

One critic thought the Allen had outlived its usefulness and, more importantly, Allen’s clever observations could be put to better use on the air. Another critic disagreed. Let’s bring you both sides of the argument. John Crosby’s column is from the October 28, 1947 edition of the New York Herald Tribune. Harriet Van Horne’s response was published November 3rd in the New York World Telegram.

Prisoner Of ‘Alley’
By JOHN CROSBY
This is probably heresy, but nevertheless I’d like to suggest that Fred Allen change the format of his program. Allen, who possesses the most nimble mind in radio, possibly the only one, has become imprisoned by Allen’s Alley. The Alley, it must be admitted, is a wonderfully elastic formula; in no other alley could you find the farmyard smells and backwoods wisdom of Titus Moody, the lower East Side shrewdness of Pansy Nussbaum, the southern pretensions of Senator Claghorn and the Irish chauvinism of Ajax Cassidy. Yet, over the years, the charm of the Alley has perceptibly dimmed and the original plan of testing a single idea against a cross-section of the country has been almost lost.
CLAGHORN WORE thin the first year. The Irishman never really got started. Mrs. Nussbaum is a little different; she was acquiring a sort of worms-eye view of metropolitan life, a downtrodden but sprightly wisdom which could be preserved. Titus Moody, of course, is in a class by himself. He is a genuine American comic character not a tintype like Claghorn or Cassidy; his grotesque misfortunes (he can’t sleep because he’s got short eyelids) could go on forever. About Mrs. Nussbaum I’m not so sure, but I’m all for keeping Mr. Moody. Nevertheless, I think the Alley could be dispensed with, opening up the first part of the show to something quite new. I’d like to see Allen devote that first fifteen minutes to comment in his acid style on American life, comment that would avoid all but the more comic aspects of politics or world problems, and yet reach somewhat deeper than two-line gags about high prices and the ladies’ new hemline. At its best, it would be a commentary on those things which lie under our noses and which we would never notice until some one called our attention to them.

The new inventions, the newer expressions (How distinguished can you get?), the nation’s songs, and now and then, dipping into the fringes of more important things, the ideas which grip the country like suddenly illuminated truths and then are quickly forgotten. (Whatever became of "the more abundant life," by the way?)
IN A SENSE, Allen has been doing just this for years but he has been wrapping it up in two- line gags. The object has been belly laughs from the studio audience, which automatically limits the range pretty severely. (The two-line joke is going to ruin us eventually for everything except the comic strips.) The sort of comment I had in mind would not be aimed at the belly laughs (although it would probably get some); it would be an extended discussion aimed at giving Allen more scope than he has.
Today the air is full of commentators, all quite justifiably preoccupied with the more serious aspects of world problems. There isn’t any one looking into the minutiae which in many respects are just as important as the doings of Congress. Since the serious commentators get listeners and a lot of listeners, there is every reason to suppose that a witty commentator would get even more of them.
Allen is the only man in or out radio who could manage it. He more widely read and considerably more profound than most of the commentators now pontificating on the air; his wit never really has a chance to get started on the self-imposed limits of his present format; he is so thoroughly established in radio that he could get away with almost anything.
I haven’t the faintest hope that this suggestion will be adopted or even considered. I just thought I’d get it off my chest.

Fred Allen All Aglow Over High Rating
By HARRIET VAN HORNE
“Fred Allen died in 1896. What you hear on Sunday nights are transcriptions.”
This was the zenith of Mr. Jack Benny’s humor last night. And it was not without its irony. For the past week end saw Mr. Allen zoom to the top place among the Hooper elite. He came up from 11th, sprinting nimbly past the aforementioned Mr. Benny.
In fact, Allen’s Alley is now tied with Bob Hope at 23.2.
This announcement comes on the heels of a suggestion by one of my most esteemed colleagues that Fred dispense with the Alley and its dearly familiar denizens and devote himself to a witty by profound commentary on the American scene.
It also comes on the heels of an offer by CBS to build an entire show around the cheerful oddities of Allen’s Alley. A show minus Mr. Allen but starring Mrs. Nussbaum, Sen. Claghorn, Titus Moody and Ajex Cassidy.
Just what would happen to these wonderful characters if anyone save Fred wrote for them is too terrible to contemplate. Needless to state, Fred spurned the offer. And I rather think he’d spurn any suggestion—no matter if it came from the sponsor AFRA, Portland Hoffa or George Bernard Shaw—that he toss out a format that has served him so well.
As for the commentary on the American scene—it’s all there, every week. Beautifully contained in the homely mutterings of Titus Moody and the blustering nonsense of Sen. Claghorn.
Fred is the only comedian whose devotion to a set pattern has been unswerving. By now everybody is aware that the first few minutes of the show will feature Fred and Portland, discussing recent events in the news.
The news commentary is always followed by the saunter down Allen’s Alley. It’s a ritual so rigid that Fred even visits his characters in the same order each Sunday night, starting with Claghorn and ending with “the little shanty at the far end of the Alley” where Ajax Cassidy—his most recent creation—lives alone with his aches and his brogue.

Because of this constancy to format, listeners enjoy a fine sense of anticipation with each knock. It’s the pleasure of the initiated who know what is going to happen but not precisely how. But, inevitably, the first knock brings the blustering. “I say, somebody knocked” and the second a tightlipped, “Howdy, Bub.” Even the inflections are the same each week, including the querious note struck by Pansy Nussbaum when she inquries, “Nu?”
You wait for all of it, exactly as you wait for the next line of an old song, humming the melody to yourself. Mr. Allen would be a fool to change one syllable of this routine. Artist that he is, he has provided himself with the framework best calculated to set off his particular talents. The droll observations of Mrs. Nussbaum wouldn’t sound quite Kosher emanating from Fred’s lips. And while he may write the salty sayings of Mr. Moody, he’d be out of order saying them. I am inclined to feel that the Alley will stay as it is, with Mr. Allen happily knocking on the same old doors every Sunday night. It’s a glowing jewel that finds the perfect setting. And Mr. Allen, possibly because he’d just seen the new Hooper ratings (he even had Portland give a subtle nod) seemed to be in quite glow last night.
● ● ●
Besides being in a glow, Fred was also in a rush last night. For he appeared on Edgar Bergen’s show directly preceding his own—which, incidentally, went off the air in the middle of Maurice Chevalier’s “Mimi.” This was as rude a gesture as I’ve ever encountered in radio. This awful tyranny of time made one wish, momentarily, for the easy ways of the BBC. They’d have let Mr. Chevalier finish his song, even if he did run into the next half hour.
Chevalier’s comments on French radio were touched with the Allen satire. He mentioned “Breakfast in Bordeaux” in which a funny fellow pinned dandelions on old ladies. And he got a good-sized laugh with “Gaston Spitalny and his all-mademoiselle orchestra...featuring Fifi and her magic flute.”
By my favorite line came when Fred was describing a Western film he wanted Chevalier to translate into French. A deranged cattle man was the leading character. A psychiatrist was called in.
“The old cattle man is still lying on the couch but he isn’t talking,” explained Fred. “The couch is talking to the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist thinks the couch is an old patient of his who used to think he was a couch.”
Now how could Fred have worked in that line if he changed himself into a commentator?

A detour was put up around the Alley at the start of the 1948-49 season, but not for any of the reasons mentioned above. Ford had taken over sponsorship of the show and decided Allen should stroll along Main Street, where you were more likely to find Ford cars. Allen tried replacing the Senator and Ajax Cassidy with other characters, but something just didn’t seem right. Main Street didn’t last long; a combination of poor ratings and poor health ended Allen’s show in spring of 1949. He tried bringing back the Alley on one of his failed TV attempts before his death in 1956. Titus Moody and a Texan version of Claghorn appeared on CBS radio’s Funny Side Up at the end of the 1950s. Van Horne was right. It just wasn’t the same without Allen.

Shooting Adolf Full of Holes

The three little pigs (they're in the Army now) fire at Adolf Wolf, who ridicules them. "You didn't even touch me!" he yells. Wrong again, Adolf.



Tex Avery and his writers (Rich Hogan in this case) used the same sort of gag, usually involving drinking water and then the water flows out of holes in the body.

Ed Love, Preston Blair and Ray Abrams animated this cartoon. Blitz Wolf was the first Avery cartoon released by MGM.

The Rabbit Kicked the Bucket

Some cartoons were shown over and over and over on The Bugs Bunny Show and its various Saturday morning incarnations, but you could never get tired of them. One was Friz Freleng’s Robot Rabbit (released in 1953).

There’s so much great stuff in this cartoon, starting with Milt Franklyn’s mechanical arrangement of Carl Stalling’s “What’s Up, Doc” over the opening titles. Mel Blanc and Arthur Q. Bryan harmonise beautifully in character in “In a Little Red Barn” (Bonus: Blanc’s solo performance of “It’s Magic”). There are Elmer’s burns as Bugs keeps outsmarting his robot. And there’s a great scene (by Virgil Ross?) where Bugs pulls off one of his fake dying scenes, and says he’s going to kick the bucket. Pan over to a bucket. Bugs kicks it.



Elmer is joyous. He’s killed Bugs Bunny. Look at him leap into the air. More nice acting as Elmer clenches his fists.



Then my favourite part. Elmer and Bugs join together to dance in a circle and sing “The Rabbit Kicked the Bucket” (with Bugs adding his own lyrics, such as “The bucket kicked the rabbit”).



Elmer stops dancing while Bugs continues. He realises something is wrong, but he’s not sure what.



Bugs thanks Elmer for the dance. More subtle animation. Bugs shakes Elmer’s hand so vigorously, Elmer’s hat has trouble staying on. Elmer has to steady it so it doesn’t fall off.



Look at Bugs’ fingers.



“And away we go!” says Bugs, Gleason-style, as he strolls out of the scene.



Manny Perez, Ken Champin and Art Davis also animate on this cartoon, with the story by Warren Foster.

She Knew the Walking Man

Jack Benny was a proud cheapskate on his radio show. In real life, he was generous. But he was only indirectly involved in one of the nicest give-aways in radio history—a windfall to a lonely widowed senior citizen.

Truth or Consequences was a show where people performed demeaning stunts on stage in front of a chortling crowd to win prizes. But it also conducted a few contests where listeners could win a cascade of goodies by correctly identifying a sound from new clues every week. In one famous series of broadcasts, footsteps were heard made by “The Walking Man.” The Walking Man turned out to be Jack Benny. And the contest winner was a widow from Chicago. To make things more heart-tugging, the whole thing was tied into a publicity campaign for the American Heart Association.

The winning phone call was placed on T or C’s March 6, 1948 broadcast to Mrs. Florence Hubbard. (You can view a very nice roundup of the preceding events on Martin Grams’ blog). What happened next? The June 1948 edition of Radio and Television Mirror magazine had an in-depth report, supposedly written by Mrs. Hubbard herself. The photos below accompanied the article.

We wrote about the contest on this blog five years ago. She died in Dallas on November 30, 1977.

I Walked into $22,500
For Radio Mirror, the year's favorite Cinderella tells the story behind those famous words that named The Walking Man
By MRS. FLORENCE HUBBARD
THAT day — the day that will always in my mind be "that Saturday" — no dramatist could have set the stage for sharper contrast.
Chicago's weather (and I can assure you that even the natives, though they put up a good front, suffer from it) was really going full blast. That biting wind, carrying rain and snow in from Lake Michigan — how it cut!
And, I must confess, even before I finished my day's work at Carson Pirie Scott and started out to fight the weather on my way home to the Chicago suburb of Austin, I was tired. Saturday's the big day at any department store, and after all, I'm 68! But it wasn't so much physical tiredness as . . . well, just weariness. The salesgirls in the casual clothes department, where I worked as a checker, were many of them just youngsters and the vitality with which they rushed off to their weekend fun, after the hard day's work they'd put in, made me the more tired by contrast.
And Saturday night, after the bustle of the day, is a pretty lonely time. When my husband was alive, even after the 1929 crash, there had been friends to see, guests in the house, plenty of exclamation points to brighten up a week or a weekend.

I scolded myself as I climbed to my little two-and-a-half-room apartment at 48 North Waller Avenue. I still had friends, good ones and enough of them; I had my work— and if I hurried a little I could be out of my wet clothes, through with a steaming hot bath and ready to hear Truth or Consequences by the time it came on. That was enough excitement for anyone— for surely tonight would see the end of the Walking Man contest. It had been going on for ten weeks; everyone was talking about it. I had already sent in thirty contributions with my twenty-five word reason for supporting the American Heart Association, and if need be I could think of thirty more reasons. I have a special interest in the Heart Association, you see it was a heart attack that took Dr. Charles from me, thirteen years ago.
I just about had time to fix myself a plate of chop suey and turn my radio to WMAQ, before Ralph Edwards came on. I don't remember whether or not I ate; I guess not, because just the excitement of hearing Ralph Edwards lead up to the phone call was very bad for digestion! As I waited and listened, it almost seemed as though I could feel everyone around me listening too— people in the next apartment, upstairs, down the street. I guess half the country was listening, at that, for the tension as Mr. Edwards began to make his call seemed to come from all around, to be right in the air and not just in me. . . .
And then, like a scream of excitement, my own phone rang.
People have told me what happened next. I knew my own name, thank goodness, well enough to tell Ralph Edwards when he asked me. And I certainly gasped "Jack Benny" when he asked me to name the Walking Man. But I can't remember another thing, though everyone else heard Mr. Edwards say, "You're not going to cry on me, are you?" and I must have answered something to that. About all I really recall is the shriek my neighbor gave: "Mrs. Hubbard won! Mrs. Hubbard won!" It came through the walls at me. And it was like a signal for Christmas, the Fourth of July, and an old-fashioned election night rolled into one.
Austin is a quiet little suburb of Chicago, and my street is a quiet little part of it. But not that night. Neighbors, reporters, photographers, friends, and a couple of thousand complete strangers seemed suddenly to have fallen from the sky. In fact, inside of twenty minutes the Austin police sent around two squad cars of officers to try to keep the strangers at least from breaking down my door. I wanted the neighbors there. And who could possibly have kept the reporters and photographers away?

MY LITTLE apartment buzzed like a hive and seemed about to burst its seams. On and on rang the telephone; someone would answer it, and then off it would go again Flash bulbs popped, hands moved me from chair to phone, sat me down, stood me up — "Just one more, Mrs. Hubbard. Smile now. That's right — show you're excited. Are you going to Hollywood? What difference will this make in your life? Are you going to keep it all? How're you going to pay the $8,000 income tax on the stuff?"
Do you blame me for being just a bit flustered?
My heart was beating like mad. I guess I even cried a little, I don't remember. They told me later I'd gone on saying "It's wonderful. I never expected it. Nothing like this ever happened to me before!" That was true — I never had expected anything so wonderful, ever. And when I began to make sense out of what I had won, I knew nothing like that had ever happened to anyone before. Just look! —
A home laundry, consisting of washer, drier and automatic ironer.
$1,000 diamond and ruby watch.
New four-door Cadillac sedan.
Gas kitchen range.
16mm. motion picture sound projector and screen, with a print of a current film to be delivered every month for a year.
Two-weeks vacation for two at Sun Valley, Idaho, all expenses paid.
$1,000 diamond ring.
Vacuum cleaner with all attachments.
RCA-Victor console FM and AM radio-phonograph combination and television set.
Gas refrigerator.
All-metal Venetian blinds for every room in the house.
Paint job for the house, inside and out.
Complete wardrobe for every season of the year.
15-cubic-foot heavy duty home or farm freezer filled with frozen foods.
All-metal Luscomb Silvaire standard 65 airplane.
Installation of ceramic tile in kitchen and bathroom.
Furniture to fill dining room and two bedrooms.
Deluxe trailer coach with modern kitchen and sleeping quarters for four.
Typewriter.
$1,000 Persian lamb coat.
Aluminum boat complete with outboard motor.
Piano.
Two years' supply of sheets and pillow cases for every bed in the house.
Choice of $500 worth of electric home appliances.
Electric blanket for every bed in the house.
Three suits apiece for every man in the immediate family.
Desk console electric sewing machine.
One thing, though, I was sure of. I was Cinderella, and this was — what else could it be? — a fairy-tale, but I knew that essentially my way of living would go on being the same. I'd be at the store, if they wanted me, on Monday. And Hollywood? Only if I could be spared from my job.
It was Mr. Pirie himself, John T. Pirie, descendant of one of Carson's founders, who gave me the answer to that question. He outwaited that ringing phone, and sometime — it must have been very late — he got through to me, and said that I absolutely was going to Hollywood to meet Ralph Edwards and be on the show, and with Carson's blessing.
Oh, how tired I was when I finally closed the door on my last visitor. And oh, how happy! Someone, somewhere, had certainly waved a wand over me. How different this weekend was from the one I'd toiled my way home to!
Sunday was really a most thrilling day. Out of everywhere, out of nowhere, came old friends to see me, people I'd been out of touch with for months, sometimes for many years. They had heard the program and came to congratulate me, and we talked on and on about old times and had ourselves a wonderful time. The relaxation was a welcome let-down after all the excitement.

AND Monday, with one detour, I went downtown to the store as usual. The detour was to see an eye specialist, for the exploding flash bulbs had left me with "Kleig eyes." Like a Hollywood celebrity! But I found when I got to the store that there was no question of work. All my friends were lined up and waiting, and you can't pretend the kind of happiness they all felt for my good fortune. I knew every one of them rejoiced with me. I knew, when they said "Mrs. Hubbard, we're so glad for you," that they meant it from their hearts. And my own . . . well, my own was pretty full.
Then came one of the biggest thrills I've yet had. The store gave a big, glamorous, exciting luncheon — for me! With Bruce MacLeish, Mr. Pirie, and the other executives, as well as my co-workers, all sharing my good luck with me, I felt like more than Cinderella I felt like a queen. And then, as a really final answer on whether or not I was going to Hollywood, Carson's gave me new luggage and a complete, wonderful trousseau for my trip. Now I had to go!
By the time I'd fought my way through the crowds — and some more thousands of people had turned up to jam Carson's just as they'd crowded my apartment the night before, so that special police had to be called again — I knew I was really tired. Thanks to my nephews, I escaped in time to get a little rest. They took me to a hotel, and rest and relax I did. Also I did some planning for the big adventure ahead — my three-thousand-mile trip to Hollywood.
Never having been West before, I decided not to fly but to go by train, to see as much of the country as possible. And to make it last as long as possible, and arrive as rested as possible, not just any train, I discovered, would do for me. No indeed; my covered wagon was to be the dazzlingly famous Santa Fe Super Chief! And luckily, I'd have company on the trip. Virginia Marmaduke, Chicago Sun-Times reporter who seemed by this time like an old and dear friend, had been assigned to come along with me, and I was told that I could have a traveling companion of my own choice as well. I chose Mrs. Albert C. Dodds, the daughter of my dearest friend.
"Rested" wasn't, after all, exactly the word for the way I felt when I stepped off the Super Chief. I'd had time to rest, it's true — time to rest, to chat with Virginia Marmaduke and with all the nice people on the train who were so excited and happy for me. But I was too excited to be really rested. Besides, I kept turning over and over in my mind one thought: "Florence Hubbard, you've got to be practical about this! Just exactly what are you going to do with all those prizes? What are you going to do with two rooms of tile work, for instance? Or an airplane, for goodness sakes! Somebody's sure to ask you, so you'd better make up your mind what you want to keep!"

I THOUGHT there'd been excitement enough in Chicago to last a normally quiet-living woman like me for the rest of my life, but I just didn't know what excitement was until we got to California. Just like jumping from the frying pan into the fire, it was, but don't think I didn't enjoy every minute of it just the same! I wonder, looking back on it now, where on earth I got the energy, the get-up-and-go it took to do everything they had planned for me, but I certainly had a reserve of it stored up somewhere — and I tapped that reserve right down to the dregs!
When I got off the train, there was a big crowd of people, and everyone shook hands and congratulated me and everyone introduced everyone else so fast I couldn't possibly get any of the names, until I felt as if my head might begin to whirl 'round and 'round and eventually fly right off. But fortunately I was rescued — there was a big and shiny limousine waiting — with a chauffeur to drive me! — and I was whisked into that and we drove away.
"Where are we going now?" I asked Virginia.
"To a very famous Hollywood restaurant," she told me, "to have lunch with Ann Daggett and Mac St. Johns — they're the Hollywood editor and managing editor of Radio Mirror Magazine, and they're going to help us get together the Hollywood part of your story for Radio Mirror."
About that time we pulled up in front of the restaurant, and I found out that it was called L'Aiglon. That sort of made me feel at home, because we have a very nice L'Aiglon restaurant in Chicago, too. Somehow it was extra nice to have my first luncheon in Hollywood there — bridged the gap between the known and the unknown I told Ann and Mac, when I met them.

They were as nice as could be to me, and explained they'd help me all they could with my story, because they knew even better than I did how busy I was going to be in Hollywood.
Right after lunch, "Next stop, Ralph Edwards' Truth or Consequences office in Hollywood," Virginia told me, "to get all the arrangements made."
"What arrangements?" I asked.
"Well, there's your appearance on Truth or Consequences tomorrow night," she said, ticking them off on her fingers, "and you're going to be on the Jack Benny Show Sunday, and — "
"Will they tell me what to say?" I asked anxiously.
I needn't have worried. Mr. Edwards made everything so clear about my part in the program the next night that I began to have the feeling that I'd been in this business a long time, too! And then, when the arrangements were all made, there came that question I'd known was coming.
"Mrs. Hubbard," he asked me, "have you made up your mind what disposition you're going to make of all those prizes? Of course, there'll probably be some you can't, or don't want to use. What do you think?"
I found that, somewhere along the line, I had made up my mind — at least about most of the prizes.
"I'm not going to take up flying at my age," I told him, laughing. "So I guess I'll sell the airplane. And the Cadillac, too. And the sound projector and screen — none of those seem to fit into life in a two-room apartment in Chicago. As for those two rooms of tile work — "
"We can fix that up for you," Mr. Edwards said. "Let's solve that problem by sending you a check for the labor costs of installing the tile. As for the tile itself, you can dispose of that any way you see fit."
"My nephew, Eber Hubbard, will know what to do about that," I told him. Honestly, I don't know what I would have done without Eber! It's a mighty handy thing to have a lawyer in the family, I always say, and when the lawyer is a good businessman, too — well, that makes it doubly handy!
"The fur coat," I told Mr. Edwards, "I'll certainly keep. My old one has seen better days, and those Chicago winters of ours really call for a fur coat! And I'll keep the television set — now I'll be able to watch the fights, and I love them. And the electric blanket will come in handy on cold nights."
I suppose a lot of people feel the way I did about radio programs — everyone sounds so relaxed and pleasant on the air that you're likely to get the idea that putting on a big network program is a simple business. What a completely wrong idea that is, as I found out on Saturday!
Not only did we rehearse for the Truth or Consequences program, but for the Jack Benny Show the following day as well. We rehearsed and rehearsed — but everything went off well, I think. At least, both Ralph Edwards and Jack Benny said it did. In fact, after the broadcast on Sunday Mr. Benny paid me the nicest compliment ever.
"You performed just like an experienced trouper," he told me. "In fact, you almost stole the show!" Pretty strong words from a man like Mr. Benny to a rank amateur like me!
I had a lot of fun on that program, and everything was so well-planned that it made answering the questions easy. For instance, he asked me if I were thinking of getting married again, now that I had all these things that go to make up a home.
"No, now that I have all this, I don't feel that I need a husband!" I told him.
"But won't you be lonely?" he wanted to know.
Right there I remembered one of the phrases they had used earlier in the program, and I answered back, "Lonely — but loaded!" and had the wonderful experience of hearing the studio audience roaring with laughter.

After the program, Mary Livingstone put her arm around me and told me that everyone was so happy that such a nice person had won the contest. "Chicago couldn't have a better representative," she declared.
I felt tears start into my eyes, and what I said to her in answer came straight from my heart. "Everyone has been so wonderful to me! I don't believe this fairy story could come true in any other country but America, do you?"

I WENT, right after the broadcast, to Ralph Edwards' beautiful home. We had tea before the fire in the Edwards' lovely early American living room, and I met Mrs. Edwards — she immediately insisted that I call her Barbara, and brought the three charming children in to meet me, too. Christine is five, Gary two-and-a-half, and baby Lauren just eighteen months old. Christine surveyed me solemnly and I apparently passed muster, for she broke into a big smile and assured me that she was "awfully glad you guessed the Walking Man!"
The rest of the time spent in California was hectic but absolutely wonderful. On Monday, for instance, I was taken over to the Paramount Pictures lot. I met a very charming blonde girl there and we snatched a moment to sit down and chat. I told her how tired I was from all the rushing here and there and the excitement, and she was as sweet and sympathetic as could be. In a few minutes she said she was pretty busy herself, and had to leave. After she was gone, I asked, "Who was that?"
And what do you suppose the answer was? "Veronica Lake!" I guess she is pretty busy!
Tuesday I did something I'd been promising myself I'd do — something I thought of myself, and wanted to do with all my heart. I drove down to the Long Beach Naval Hospital and saw and talked with some of the veterans. Believe me, an experience like that makes the other things that happen seem pretty trivial to you.
Later in the week, San Francisco was on the itinerary. Then one day in Los Angeles for a round of goodbyes — and I really felt as if I were taking leave of old friends.
As for that Sun Valley vacation — two weeks with all expenses paid — that was one of the prizes, as I told my nephew, "I've gone so many places and seen so many things, I think I'll postpone that for a while, until going someplace will be a real treat to me again, and I can enjoy it to the fullest."
So now I'm back in Chicago — back to my old life, my old routine — but perfectly contented and happy with it, let me assure you. Somehow, I don't think I'll ever be lonely again. I've learned that people are good and kind and wonderful, and I have too many things to live over in my dreams, too many delightful experiences to remember, ever to have time for loneliness again!

Dick Gregory

Not too many comedians were shot during the Watts riots in 1965.

Dick Gregory was.

He survived to live 52 more years. Gregory has died at a hospital in Washington, D.C.

Gregory’s satirical stand-up act based around race relations quickly turned into real-life activism where he put himself in harm’s way.

He was virtually an overnight success. Here’s a syndicated entertainment column that first appeared in newspapers on March 6, 1961.

From Car Wash to TV Comedian
By STEVEN H. SCHEUER
CHICAGO — The Playboy Club here in Chicago is about the busiest nightclub in America. A few deaf diehards night claim the thriving business is due largely to the voluptuous waitresses who serve the undistinguished food and drink. A more likely explanation would link the non-recession laughing crowds to Dick Gregory, who appears tonight for the second time in two weeks on the Jack Paar Show.
Dick is creating more talk in show-business circles than any new performer in months. He's using fresh topical political humor of a brand never heard before in major night clubs or on television. He's an altogether refreshing phenomenon these days—a young man talking previously taboo political truths, but delivering same with such ease that few members of his audience have the time or inclination to be offended.
They're too busy chortling!
Gregory is a personable young Negro college graduate who grew up in St. Louis and moved to Chicago over five years ago. He's a reminder that Lady Luck and Her Magic Show Business Wand is still in business on the New Frontier.
Cash on Hand $1.50
This past Christmas Dick's liquid cash assets amounted to $1.50. He was working for nothing in a local night club on the assumption that the added experience would be helpful and he stood a better chance of being discovered while working than reading poetry at home. Dick was washing cars during the days and on Christmas eve spent two-thirds of his bankroll on three pounds of hamburger for his wife and child. During a break between shows, Dick added "and you just know what kind of treat you can get for three pounds for one dollar."
Thanks partially to a writeup in a national magazine in early February, Dick can well afford to eat filet in early March. His current Playboy Club salary is $250 weekly, up $100 from the starting figure after a successful audition for Playboy talent scouts.
How can I describe his act in 25 words or less? Well, Dick has been referred to in some circles as the colored Mart Sahl. He prefers to remind his audience that "in the Congo they call Mort the white Dick Gregory."
Sullivan Show Shots
Dick's sudden recognition is primarily due to his conviction that public acceptance of even such issues as school integration in America and the need for greater effort in Africa would not suffer from a light touch and dash of satire. Dick told me "my only question was whether my race was mature enough to laugh at our problems. I decided they were. Too many people take themselves too seriously when discussing this subject (integration)."
Dick was pleased by the response to his first network TV appearance and is currently prepping for the first of several guest shots with Ed Sullivan. Dick jests that after the TV debut he was approached by network officials who wanted him to star in "Stagecoach South."
Flips Gregory, "It will be a little different series. The Indians are scheduled to win."
Even in the South the response to Gregory's appearance with Paar was enthusiastic, so Dick can indulge himself with such flippancies as, "in the South they burnt crosses in front of the sets after seeing the Paar Show."
Even his sudden affluence will not easily let Gregory forget some of the things that happened to him two weeks ago today. The day marked not only his first major network TV exposure (he appeared briefly on ABC's "Cast The First Stone," last fall) but his first airplane ride. When he returned to Chicago late in the evening his wife calmly informed him that the finance company had repossessed the Gregory family's television set. As the saying goes, his success couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

But Gregory soon felt more than “a dash of satire” was needed in the real world outside glitzy nightclubs. An editorial by Robert G. Fichenberg in the Knickerbocker News in 1967 stated that Gregory “was stunned by the case of a 78-year-old Negro man who was jailed during a voter registration drive. The man's wife died while he was in jail — on the first night the old man ever spent away from home. At this point, Dick Gregory says, he began to wonder if he "really had it made" when so many of his people were suffering.”

In May 1963, he was in Birmingham, Alabama marching for de-segregation. Here’s a snippet of an unbylined story from the California Eagle of May 9th. The Associated Press photo below is from the same day; Gregory shows newsmen where he said police beat him while in jail on charges of parading without a permit.

"Let them use the dogs! We’ll march anyway!"
Waves upon waves of Negroes have been challenging [public safety commissioner] "Bull" Connor, his snearling, [sic] biting dogs, his pelting water hoses and the whole segregated set-up of Birmingham, Ala. The entire city is in turmoil; shops are closing; schools are emptying.
Sympathy protest demonstrations are being held throughout the country.
HUNDREDS OF CHILDREN
Monday more than 1000 men, women and children were arrested and carted off to jail. Among them were hundreds of school children, some as young as six or seven years old.

Among them also was Dick Gregory, comedian who has made the fight in the South his fight.
Angry Negroes streamed from five churches when word spread that the youngsters had been kept outside in an open jail yard during a sudden drenching thunderstorm.
One Negro woman who refused to get off the sidewalk when ordered to was set upon by five policeman [sic] who wrestled her to the pavement. One of the "law" men kneed her in the neck.
FREEDOM! FREEDOM!
Dick Gregory led the first group of 19 boys and girls from the 16th Street Baptist Church where some 2000 people had gathered. He didn't get very far, only to the first road block.
"Freedom! Freedom!" shouted the youngsters as they were herded into paddy wagons and buses and swept away to jail.[...]
ON THEY COME
Other demonstrators, in groups of 20 to 50, followed those who were with Dick Gregory. Some 200 to 250 more were arrested downtown as they picketed department, drug and variety stores.
Even before the new arrests, the city's jail were packed [sic]. "There's standing room only," commented one official. Hundreds of those taken into custody, including children, were sleeping shoulder to shoulder on concrete floors.
And still the marchers came.

Two years later in August 1965, Gregory was in Watts, urging a throng of 500 rioters to go home when, the A.P. reported at the time, he “stepped behind a barricade of police cars and the shots started. I felt a pain in my leg. I didn’t fall.” It turns out he was shot with a rifle in the thigh. He confronted the man with the firearm and told him to get off the street. The crowd left. Gregory went to hospital, was treated, and then went back to the area to try to help restore order.

Gregory later ran for president against Richard Nixon and turned his attention to health and nutrition. He continued to speak to college audiences. “You have a big job,” he told a young crowd at the University of Utah in 1970, “of giving America back its sanity...Stay morally pure, morally honest.”

Not everyone agreed with Gregory, who was prone to generalisations at times. Walter Winchell, who was writing columns back in the days people yucked it up at Stepin Fetchit, called Gregory “a professional bore.” But the best summary of Gregory’s career may have been made at the end of a column in the Syracuse Post in March 2, 1961. Writer Mario Rossi opined: “When Dick Gregory walks off the stage, he leaves us with more than the pleasant exhaustion that comes from rollicking laughter. There is suddenly the old realization that many a truth is spoken in jest.”

A Tale of Turkisher

He’s the guy Carl Stalling didn’t talk about.

Stalling told Milt Gray in an interview published in 1971 that he composed for the Ub Iwerks studio for parts of 1931 and 1932 before returning in summer of 1933 and staying until the studio closed in 1936. Stalling said he had no assistant at Iwerks; he did everything including the arranging.

So who, then, is Art Turkisher?



In the photo of the Iwerks studio above, published in Leonard Maltin’s Of Mice and Magic, you can see men standing in front of pillars. The one on the right is Stalling. The one on the left is Turkisher, who received music credits on (as best as I can discover) six Iwerks cartoons, all released in 1934.

The Brave Tin Soldier, April 7
Insultin’ the Sultan, April 14 (Willie Whopper)
Reducing Créme, May 19 (Willie Whopper)
The Queen of Hearts, June 25
Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, August 10
The Valiant Tailor, October 29

It should be noted some Iwerks cartoons didn’t have a music director in the on-screen credits, such as the first ComiColor short, Jack and the Beanstalk, released December 23, 1933. In a few cases it is likely because, as music historian James Parten has pointed out, the background music consists of phonograph records (eg., 1935’s Balloonland).

It turns out Turkisher was far more than a music composer and eventually had several different, and diverse, careers. Unfortunately, his obituary in a Palm Beach, Florida newspaper reveals little. It is two lines long and says nothing about his life. It only mentions survivors and that he died after a long illness on January 30, 1993 at age 79. He and his wife Irma “Judy” Turkisher had been living in the little city of Atlantis.

The longest bit of background I’ve been able to find about him comes from the Poughkeepsie Evening Star of February 23, 1940, announcing a concert:

The Paeff Quartet for Strings and Piano, which will be heard on Tuesday night, Feb. 27, at the Jewish Center, 54 North Hamilton street, is the only ensemble of its kind in this country devoted to the piano quartets of the classic and contemporary composers. The concert is scheduled to start at 8:15 o'clock. . . .
L. Arthur Turkisher, cellist and composer, has toured throughout this country as soloist with the major symphony orchestras. A graduate of the Institute of Musical Art in New York, he brings a great wealth of knowledge to the music, at hand. He recently discovered the Shostakovich quartet and arranged for its premier performance on Royale records.

But thanks to government records, a few clippings and city directories, we’re able to piece together a bit more. Laci Arthur Turkisher was born Christmas Day 1913 in New York City to Edward and Helen Czukor Turkisher. His parents came to the U.S. from Hungary in 1907. His family was musical. Arthur’s father was a cellist, music teacher and composer, and crafted stock scores for silent cartoons. Interestingly, the 1940 Census has his father living in Miami with the occupation of “Musician, sound studio.” It is tempting to think Edward was working on the Fleischer cartoons, especially since he and Fleischer composer Winston Sharples both worked on the score of a documentary 10 years later.

Turkisher was performing in public when he was almost 15, giving a violin recital in 1928, according to the New York Herald Tribune of December 16th that year. But more germane to our tale is a listing in the 1933 New York Directory, which gives Turkisher’s occupation as “employee, Fleischer Studios, Inc.” Turkisher was assisting Lou Fleischer in the music department with scores. By that time, Grim Natwick had left Fleischer’s to animate on the West Coast for Iwerks. Berny Wolf, Al Eugster and Jimmie Culhane followed. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that one of them suggested to Carl Stalling or Iwerks himself that he hire Turkisher. However it happened, Turkisher was at Iwerks’ Beverly Hills studio the following year.

Why did Turkisher leave Iwerks? Of Mice and Magic states that some staff members were laid off in 1935 while others quit because of tight money. Producer Pat Powers pumped a lot of promotional money into the Disney-imitating ComiColors, but prints were rented on a state’s right basis, meaning the Iwerks studio couldn’t expect the kind of money for them as it would receive from a release by a major, theatre-owning distributor (such as MGM, which handled Iwerks’ Willie Whopper shorts). It could be that Turkisher left at that time, but the answer may be lost in the past. Whatever the reason, the studio closed in 1936. In May 1937, he was back in New York where he married Irma Jurist. Her father Simeon was, for a short period after World War Two, a copyist for Paramount’s Famous cartoon studio; afterward the father and daughter were both caught up in the HUAC investigations. It would appear that Art and Irma divorced prior to 1944 (her passport that year lists her as single) and at some time, Turkisher married someone else named Irma (who went by “Judy”).

Besides a few cello concerts, the only other musical reference to Turkisher I can find after departing Iwerks is in the June 1943 edition of the Radio Mirror, which reprinted the sheet music for one of his songs.



Turkisher enlisted in the U.S. Navy in April 1943 and rose to the rank of Radarman, First Class, before being discharged in October 1945. The Manhattan City directory of 1949 discloses that Turkisher was in the diamond business; he moved to White Plains by the early ‘50s where he and his wife enjoyed golf (she potted a hole in one) and he was involved in a minor car accident in May 1965. Soon after this, there are several newspaper stories stating that Turkisher was now running a 64-car fleet of taxis out of the Bronx; the New York Times of January 16, 1968 reported the cab company had been organised by his father-in-law, and that Turkisher took it over upon the old man’s death in 1953, giving up his jobs as a diamond importer and film editor/producer in the process.

When he and his wife retired to Florida is unknown.

There’s little to say about Turkisher’s work at Iwerks. Much of his first cartoon was done in verse. The huge success of “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” in the Disney cartoon The Three Little Pigs seems to have inspired studios to plunk original songs in their cartoon shorts in the hopes it would mean a wolf-like financial windfall. The opening lyrics for Turkisher’s tune:

Hammering away at his desk all day
Sits a toymaker working on his toys.
Soldiers bright and neat
Now the set’s almost complete
So to bring lots of fun to little boys.

Those lyrics aren’t exactly Disney calibre, are they? And all they do is mimic what the audience can see on the screen. Turkisher includes “Parade of the Wooden Soldiers” in the score, as well as “Taps” when the spirits of the soldier and his girl-friend rise to Toy Heaven after being burned.

In Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, there’s a nice folk music feel in places, with Turkisher including a guitar (and, I believe, a celeste) in the orchestrations. Again, part of the cartoon is treated as an operetta, with some dialogue almost being sung. He tosses in the NBC chimes twice strictly as a pop culture reference as there is nothing about radios on the screen. The first minute and a half of Reducing Créme features variations on the opening title theme. Turkisher seems content to let his melodies play out; when the shrunken Willie is chased by the cat on the table, there’s no change in tempo or orchestration, a kind of rhythmic dance piece just carries on whatever the action is on the screen, then it’s back to the Willie theme before nice little percolating tune when the cat is after Willie on a roller skate.

In essence, Turkisher’s music is for strictly for mood; no wonder Iwerks or Powers or maybe Stalling thought it was just as easy buying records and playing them in the background of future shorts. Still, it’s no worse than some of what was being composed for cartoons in 1934, a period of animation whose scores deserve wider examination.

That Trick Never Works

“Hey, Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat,” says Bullwinkle. You know the routine. Anything but a rabbit comes out.

If you watch the animation frame by frame, you’ll see multiples of Bullwinkle’s gloves as his arm moves.



How do you get Bullwinkle to read better in the scene? Simple. Just eliminate Rocky. Poof! He’s gone



More multiple gloves.



Bullwinkle gracefully wiggles his fingers.



The animation of these “Special feature” intros is a lot better than what’s in the actual cartoons. I presume they were done in Los Angeles instead of the nascent ValMar studio in Mexico City.

Smearing the Soldier

Popeye punches Bluto against a wall so hard he bounces back in the “highlights” cartoon I’m in the Army Now” (1936).



The action goes faster and faster until Bluto becomes a blur in multiples and Popeye’s forearms turn into smear animation.



Since this is mainly a compilation cartoon, only Dave Fleischer’s name is on the credits.

By the way, I love how Olive Oyl decides she wants a man in a uniform, so Popeye rushes to join the Army. Uh, Olive, isn’t Popeye wearing a uniform?