Rough on Rats

It’s called Rough on Rats, but avenging kittens are rough on only one in this 1933 Van Beuren cartoon.

They toss anything they can get their hands on at the rat and finally kill him with a shoe.



Then what do the kittens do after killing the rat? The same thing any murderers would do. They sway and sing a happy, chirpy Disney knock-off song.

Harry Bailey directed this short and Gene Rodemich supplied the score. Who the chirpy singers are is your guess.

We Attack At Dawn

Tex Avery cartoons aren’t merely exercises in outrageous takes and ridiculous puns. There’s solid posing, too. After all, over the years, Avery had ex-Disney artists in his unit, though they may not have worked for Uncle Walt all that long or in major positions.

Check out these poses (and an in-between or two) from Drag-A-Long Droopy, where the rancher wolf (played by Avery himself) decides to attack the Droopy’s sheepherders at dawn.



Animator Ray Patterson was plopped into the Avery unit for this cartoon along with future business partner Grant Simmons, as well as Mike Lah, Bob Bentley and Walt Clinton. If I recall, all but Bentley spent time at Disney before eventually moving to MGM.

Doesn't Slow Down

Jack Benny had been around so long, and seen or heard so often by 1968, it must have been tough for national columnists to come up with something different to write about him. But they managed, though if you view them collectively, there’s a lot of repetition.

Jack hit the publicity circuit in early 1968 to push his latest TV special. Columnists usually got around to fleshing out their story—after all, an out-and-out plug would be a little unseemly—generally asking about his charity concert work or about his show-biz friends.

This story published March 8, 1968 has a few of the usual nuggets and a couple of other little things. Jack gets across some “cheap” and “39” one-liners; I suppose he was resigned to the fact it was expected of him.

Jack Benny, at 74, Refuses To Slow Down; Acts Like 39
By HAROLD HEFFERNAN
North American Newspaper Alliance
HOLLYWOOD — Jack Benny is a man who acts like he really believes he's 39 years old. The way he bounces around the country, doing symphony concerts, personal appearances and now his own special on TV, you would think he has forgotten that he has been 39 since 1933.
"Take it easy?" asks Jack. "At my age?"
The fact is that Jack is having a ball. His closest friends realize that. Nobody enjoys life and movement more than Jack. This couldn't be more definitely projected than when he is doing a guest soloist spot with a major symphony orchestra, as he just did in Boston with Eric Leinsdorf and the Boston Symphony orchestra. Or when he is cavorting around in a TV comedy special.
"I have just finished a show which will be seen on NBC-TV March 20," he says with all the enthusiasm of a video newcomer, "and I think it's one of the best I've done in years. We've got a great cast, real pros like Lucille Ball and Johnny Carson. And Ben Blue and a combo called Paul Revere and The Raiders. "Sure thing," Jack chuckled, "somebody had to ask me if I played with the original group."
Some of his old buddies turned up, too, for what they called "cameos" — among them Bob Hope, Dean Martin, Danny Thomas, George Burns, The Smothers Brothers and the Dodgers' 100-grand-per-year pitching ace, Don Drysdale.
It is a historic fact in show business that Jack Benny is the best audience in the world. He laughs louder and longer than anybody. Oddly, although they've been pals and perennial trodders of the vaudeville boards for many decades, Benny and George Burns are each other's greatest fans.

"The guy can just walk into a room and he breaks me up," says Jack. When they appear on the same dais at stag events around Hollywood, the dialog is something to remember—and to shudder over. They are constantly contriving practical jokes.
Having attained the venerable age of 74 on Valentine's day, Jack is actually more occupied these days than in years past. He has made 60 appearances with major symphonies around the country at no fee to himself, raising close to $4.5 million for symphony funds in the process. He has racked up box office records all over the U.S. and in Canada. Next month he goes to London for several TV shows and concerts.
Also in March he will deliver to U.C.L.A. all the memorabilia of his show business career, which he began saving upon his first professional appearance (in Knickerbockers) in the pit orchestra of the Barrison theater in Waukegan, Ill., at age 16. He will donate all of his scripts, film, tape recordings, stills and clippings, and U.C.L.A. authorities are properly ecstatic over their coup.
Does Jack have any secrets of eternal youth? Nothing spectacular. "I've been blessed with good health and an ability to relax. I love to fiddle and I play the violin to keep myself amused during the long waits between television shots. Mainly, I love doing what I'm doing, I enjoy my work so much, I think I would do it for nothing . . . BUT DON'T PRINT THAT!" he screams.

A Curious Combination of Sentiment and Hard Common Sense

People can’t handle feature-length cartoons? Time has proven that to be completely untrue. And it was untrue in 1951 when Paul Terry made the claim. I suspect that more people had enjoyed Disney’s Snow White or Dumbo by that time than they had a Terry Little Roquefort short. To be cynical, it was better for Terry to say that than to admit features cost money and he didn’t want to spend any more than absolutely necessary.

Terry made a nice living out of making B-list cartoons. They weren’t all that polished, but he had a few characters that audiences liked, and that was all that mattered in the long run—if the cartoons entertained, they accomplished their goal.

Here’s the old man himself talking with the New York Herald Tribune in a story published on July 22, 1951. Terry had no qualms about stealing ideas from other cartoons; he readily admits it. And, yes, his first sound short came out in 1928 before Disney’s Steamboat Willie, but historians say Terry initially didn’t really want to spend money on sound and that caused his break with Amadee Van Beuren on the Aesop Fables series. Perhaps Van Beuren was waiting for him as well, as per the last sentence.

Terrytoons, 20 Years Old, Going Strong
By JAMES S. BARSTOW, Jr.
Twentieth Century-Fox’s annual convention in Hollywood recently sported an out-of-town guest of honor in the person of Paul Terry, sponsor of Terrytoon color cartoon shorts. The occasion of Terry’s trip to the film capital where the ten-minute adventures of Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle and other Terry creations take shape was ostensibly to celebrate the twentieth year of association between the cartoon producer and the film company that releases his Technicolored fantasies. While sentiment was undoubtedly involved, there was a hard core of commercial appreciation on the part of Twentieth behind the festivities.
In these times of straitened circumstances in Hollywood the steady financial returns from the Terry films, heretofore unheralded among the plush post-war profits of major productions, now stand out in comforting black and white on the studio’s ledgers. The individual income from each short may be small, but Terry makes twenty-six a year, and where other Hollywood films have been failing at the box office. Terrytoons have gained steadily in popularity to a point where today they reach an estimated weekly audience of 40,000,000 through 450,000 bookings in 17,000 theaters.
Like What He Does
The man behind Terrytoons is about as far removed from the usual conception of a producer of such financial magnitude as his suburban New York studio is from Hollywood, a fact that is probably primarily responsible for his success. A chunky man in his sixties, with all his original sandy hair and a deceptively calm and easy-going manner, Terry believes in his films. Where other producers have occasionally had to sponsor studio projects that they would not want to make on their own initiative, Terry likes what he is doing and has felt that way for a long, long time.

Originally a newspaper cartoonist and photographer—about as perfect a background for film cartooning as one could ask for—Terry made his first animated short in 1915, when Walt Disney and other “newcomers” will still in grade school. He lays his conversing from journalism to film making to the late Winsor MacKay, a close friend and creator of what is believed to be the first animated cartoon in this country, “Gertie, the Dinosaur.” Terry, who treasures a collection of the original “Gertie” drawings, recalls that MacKay told him, in effect: “Young man, this form of artistic expression is going to be important one day, and I advise you to get into it.”
Terry did so with a conviction of purpose that has survived the passing of time with little abatement. There have been tremendous changes in execution and technique since his initial black-and-white “Little Herman” cartoon of thirty-six years ago, but Terry has been one step ahead of the evolutions of sound, color and other developments with a curious combination of sentiment and hard common sense that is the other key to his longevity and freshness in the medium. Perhaps the best example of the Terry composition is his attitude toward what appears to be his major interest outside of cartooning, the volunteer fire department of New Rochelle. He has a warm and affectionate regard for the smoke-eating tradition—a fireman’s hat occupies a handy and important spot in his office—but at the same time he shrewdly estimates that the conclave around the firehouse of a small town is the best vantage point for satisfactory social maneuvers.
Long-Time Employed
Among the friends and employees in the small, three-story studio in New Rochelle, the Terry approach shows up in the fact that the average length of service of his associates is ten years, while his musical director, Philip A. Scheib, has been with him for twenty. If he is sure of those who help him turn out a record-breaking twenty-six cartoons a year, he takes no chances on the fickle public taste, keeping tabs on his audiences with a variety of methods that would put fiction’s top private eyes to shame. There is one man on the Terry payroll who does nothing but go to theaters and take voluminous notes on audience reactions on all types of entertainment. Anything and everything that draws a laugh is reported to Terry and his panel of writers, directors and artists for possible use in future Terrytoons.

Ten Minutes Best
Terry is equally certain that the ten-minute film is the best cartoon size. He professes to great respect for his chief competitor’s technique, but feels that Disney’s feature-length pictures are too much for audiences to handle. The cartoon film requires tremendous concentration, he says, and anything over the short length becomes tiring, with the result that most of what you put on the screen after that goes by unnoticed.
After thirty-six years in cartoons, Terry admits to a comfortable feeling that, if not himself, at least his Terrytoons will go on forever. “You know,” he said reflectively, “before sound and Terrytoons came in twenty-odd years ago, we made 460 Aesop Fable cartoons. He wrote only 220 stories—I’m afraid to die, he’ll be waiting for me.”

Organ and Harp(o)

A monkey examines a second-hand store mannequin in Harman-Ising’s The Organ Grinder, a 1933 cartoon.

Something is familiar here.

Look! It’s Harpo Marx!

Naturally, a harp happens to be conveniently nearby. Frank Marsales cheaps out and uses a piano on the soundtrack.

I always thought Groucho was the centre of the early-‘30s Marx Brothers movies, but Harpo seemed to get caricatured in cartoons more often back then.

Ham Hamilton and Tom McKimson are the credited animators.

Harpo For Madame

Time for another celebrity caricature in one of those insufferable mid-‘30s Friz Freleng musical cartoons, this one Flowers For Madame (1935).

A flower (is it a red clover?) puts on a bluebell for a hat.



Look! It’s Harpo Marx!



Naturally, he has to play a spider web as a harp. And there’s a harp on the soundtrack playing “Oh, You Beautiful Doll.”



Norman Spencer’s usual back beat woodblock is part of the arrangement, while J.S. Zamecnik’s "Traffic" shows up when the snail starts running to when the watermelon juice puts out the fire. Spencer even treats us to march-tempo versions of the title song.

Oh, and an inside joke as the end of the cartoon!



Whether cartoon writer Tedd Pierce liked the ladies more than Harpo did on screen is open to debate.

The Not-Quite Ink Spots

The Ink Spots were a tremendously popular singing group in the early ‘50s. So it was they were parodied in that wonderful Tex Avery cartoon Magical Maestro (released 1952).

An opera goer, unhappy with all the magical morphing happening on the stage, sprays Poochini with fountain-pen ink. Suddenly, he turns into Bill Kenny, the lead singer of the Spots, crooning Burton/Adamson’s “Everything I Have Is Yours.”



Next comes an anvil (who doesn’t bring an anvil to an opera and carry it up to a balcony?) which flattens Poochini to sound like the guy who did the talking bass vocal in the Spots. (The real one was lower and wasn’t as froggy sounding as you hear in the cartoon).



The magician’s rabbits jump back into the scene. One sprays off the ink, the other carjacks Poochini up to regular size for the next gag.



Scott Bradley (or his arranger) was really ingenious here. The Ink Spots were known for harmony vocals behind a solo guitar; that’s what you hear in this cartoon. And Avery and writer Rich Hogan were smart enough to know they needed a break from the magician pulling tricks on Poochini, so they introduced the angry patron in mid cartoon.

I couldn’t tell you who is doing the Ink Spot imitations.

One Droopy Night Backgrounds

When the second unit was revived at the MGM cartoon studio in September 1955, director Mike Lah acquired Fernando Montealegre as his background artist. Monte had been born in Costa Rica on June 23, 1926 and, in his late 20s, began work at MGM as an assistant animator.

His style meshed very nicely with that of Lah’s layout man, Ed Benedict, who seems to have preferred the flat style popularised by UPA. Monte’s backgrounds tend to be very stylised. The two of them moved to the Hanna-Barbera cartoon studio in 1957 where Monte’s work wasn’t quite as abstract.

Here are some of his backgrounds for the Oscar-nominee One Droopy Knight (1957). I like his use of colours. Mountain ranges are indicated by a simple purple line.



I don’t know if the characters are on overlays on this one.



Monte worked on all the early Hanna-Barbera syndicated shows and the ABC half-hours, like The Jetsons. He stayed with the studio through the early ‘80s, and died in California on April 29, 1991.

She Worked for Cod Liver Oil

June Foray made more people laugh than any other woman in animated cartoons.

The title of her autobiography—Did You Grow Up With Me, Too?—couldn’t have been more appropriate. She was far from being the first voice actress in animation, but she’s probably the best known, thanks to the constant exposure of her Warner Bros. cartoons of the 1950s and ‘60s, and the great joy she and her comrades freelancing for the Jay Ward studio gave to people for years.

And that’s just a teeny sampling of her work, but it’s the work you probably remember best and love.

There was once a late-night TV host named Steve Allen. He had a gang of stooges—Don Knotts, Tom Poston, Louis Nye. Before television, Allen had a radio show. He had a gang of stooges. It was a gang of one—June Foray. Radio is where all the great cartoon voice people came from.

June spoke with the Los Angeles-area magazine Radio Life several times. This story dates from her time with Allen and his co-host, Wendell Noble, on a show called “Smile Time” on the Mutual network. It was written on March 17, 1946. In honour of what should have been June’s 100th birthday, allow us to reprint it. The fuzzy photos accompanied the article.

JUNE FORAY, “Mighty Midget”
She’s Just as Proficient with a Needle As She is at the Mike — Just as Clever Under a Car Hood as with a Paint Brush
Monday-Friday, 2 p.m.
MBS-KHJ-KGB

RADIO’S “mighty midget”—that’s June Foray, four feet eleven inches of as many different radio voices as ever came out of a mike. June runs the gamut of all of them on KHJ-Mutual Don Lee’s “It’s Smile Time” show heard Mondays through Fridays at 2:00 p.m.—even to the dog that always barks at the end of each show.
Every feminine voice that’s heard on the show is June’s. She can do anything from ingenues to grandmothers, through and including lady wrestlers. She’s one of the best boy juveniles in radio, and she’s played so many of these parts that Hollywood’s younger masculine radio contingent has threatened to form a union to keep Foray out. On a recent “Murder Is My Hobby” program, for instance, June played the lead supporting role—that of a little boy aged eleven.
Foray’s talent doesn’t confine itself to radio alone. She’s just as proficient with a needle as she is at a mike; just as able underneath a car hood as she is with a sewing machine; just as efficient with a paint brush as she is with a wrench.
She’s been sewing ever since she can remember . . . makes many of her own clothes, designs her own hats to add to her height. She loves wacky bonnets, and nothing pleases her better than to walk along Vine street with a new “stopper.”

Learned Accidentally
She got into the automotive repair business by the sheerest accident. June used to drive an old Model A, whose choke kept getting disconnected from the carburetor. One night on Serrano avenue (she’ll never forget it), she couldn’t get the thing to start. It was during the war and service-station attendants were being distinctly ungallant to lady motorists in distress. At least, the only one June could find didn’t care whether she got home or not. So June poked around under the hood herself and after about thirty minutes of fiddling, found out where the trouble was and got her car started. After that, she kept right on doing her own repair work, and she’s one girl who knows the difference between a piston ring and a set of spark plugs.
June’s pint size necessitates the use of a riser on most of the shows she works. On “It’s Smile Time,” she uses a riser AND a high stool, sharing her mike with Wendell Noble’s vocal numbers. When she plays on “Red Ryder,” however, it’s a cinch; Little Beaver’s mike is just the right height. Usually she does half-caste Indians on the Western show.
She's been working in radio since 1930; groomed for it ever since she was a little girl. When she was six, her mother thought her voice was too low, marched her off to a dramatic school to bring it up to a nice ladylike pitch. It was that early training in throwing her voice all over the scale that gave her the ability to imitate anything and everything. Famed as the best dialectician in Hollywood, June is the voice behind “Sniffles,” “Oswald,” and many another favorite cartoon character. She was the parrot in Spike Jones’ “Chloe” when the song was filmed; the hiccough of Paulette Goddard and Veronica Lake . . . the sneeze of Carole Thurston . . . and all kinds of animals. Her hardest imitation was of whooping cough for “Shepherd of the Hills.” She spent an entire day in the contagious wards of the County hospital, learning how.
Pill Pay

Hard work has never bothered June. Her post as a regular on the “Smile Time” show came because she had no objections to getting up at 5:30 a.m. when the show was aired at 7:15 a.m.
Her first radio appearance in Boston was on a program sponsored by a cod liver oil pill company. For three hours of rehearsal and a half hour dramatic show, the cast was paid $5 apiece and all the cod liver oil pills they could eat.
“The sponsor used to come to the show regularly and make us take the pills,” June remembers. “I usually managed to get down two.”
At home, she likes to tinker with a paint brush and a hammer and saw. She does a wonderful trick with coffee jars—paints the tops and bottoms, puts a decal on the clear glass between, and uses them as canisters in her kitchen. Not just decorative . . . you can see what’s in which!
Finally, she has a mad passion for politics—writes letters to her congressman, spends her time during elections doing house to house campaigns—and reads every book she can find on a discussed subject.
But unfortunately, even though she has learned just about everything else, she’s never learned not to take Wendell Noble and Steve Allen seriously. Her one complaint is that she’s a perfect foil for every gag they pull. She never knows what to expect next, and even when they dress up an old routine into something new, she still falls for it, hook, line and sinker.
“I’ve been with the show so long I should learn . . . I should learn,” she sadly shakes her head. “But I’m always the straight woman . . . always!”

Entertainer and voice expert Keith Scott says June was Oswald in the rabbit’s final cartoon, The Egg Cracker Suite (1943) and had completely forgotten about it until he reminded her. She then recalled how Lantz had to hire someone else to sing for Oswald. Her Sniffles cartoon was The Unbearable Bear (released April 1943), but she played the annoyed bear wife. Keith dug through the Warner studio archives and found Miss Foray was paid a whopping $25 to cut a couple of lines.

One of June’s most famous lines from cartoons was as Rocky saying “Now, here’s something we hope you’ll really like.”

June Foray gave us a lot to really like.

Jack and the President

Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In had Billy Graham and former vice-president Richard Nixon as guests.

Big deal.

Jack Benny did the same thing first. He had the Rev. Dr. Graham and former President Harry S. Truman on his show.

Truman, like Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, and a number of others, made their TV debuts on Benny’s program; they refused all other offers. They knew, from years of listening and watching, Jack would make them look good by making himself the butt of the jokes.

We posted about Graham’s appearance HERE. Now let’s post about Truman’s. A media throng jetted to Missouri for the taping in early September. Here’s one story from October 17, 1959, the day before the broadcast. Maybe the most interesting thing revealed in the story is something that has nothing to do with the broadcast. It’s about the casual approach to security for an ex-president. The JFK assassination four years later changed that.

Benny's Aim on Truman Show: Entertaining Yet Dignified
By MARGARET McMANUS
It would appear, in this fall of 1959, that Mr. Benny is off to the kind of galloping start that win bring him both the envy and the awe of his competitors. Never has the bidding for illustrious guest stars on television reached such a peak, but in any company, it would be hard to top the name of Harry Truman.
"I wouldn't do this for anybody but Jack Benny," said Mr. Truman. "I've had hundreds of requests to be on television, from everybody from Lawrence Spivak to Jack Paar. Jack Benny's an old friend. He came out here and played with the Kansas City Symphony for me; raised $52,000.
"When Jack asked me to be on his show, I said I'd be delighted. I trust him. Course I was advised by a lot of people not to do it. I know there will be some people who will criticize me, but that never bothers me. I'm used to it. I do it to suit myself.
"I know Jack will do this show in a dignified way but it's his show and I'm taking directions like all the other actors. My part will be to take him on a tour of the Truman Library. I'm not going to play the piano."
The portion of the show on which the former President is appearing was taped in the library at Independence, Mo., a handsome, modern building which houses the letters and documents and memorabilia of Truman's almost eight years in the White House.
There is a replica of Truman's White House office with the mammoth mahogany desk and behind the desk, a library table with pictures of Bess and Margaret in silver frames.
In the library, there is also the office and reception room where Mr. Truman works every day, spending six or seven hours at his writing and seeing visitors.
He drives himself to and from his home, a Victorian white house, no more than a five-minute drive from the library.
"I like to drive myself to the office," he said, obviously enjoying the freedom of his private citizenship.
Asked if it is possible, after holding the most important job in the world, to take up a more normal life again without feeling the loss of excitement, Mr. Truman said:
"Course it is. My life is as exciting as it ever was. You should follow me around some time. You know there are lots of things about being president that are not so desirable. You should talk to the 'Boss'. She'd have a few things to say about that."
MR. TRUMAN said he didn't think his appearance on Benny's television show would open up a new career for him.
"Look, I've been on television since 1945. I know almost as much about it as he does," he said, pointing to Benny. "But I'm no performer. Takes a good looking gal for that. I know all the tricks though. I know about wearing a blue shirt tomorrow."
For the run-through, before the actual taping, Mr. Truman was wearing a blue suit, a shads lighter than navy, a white shirt, a light blue silk tie and two-toned shoes, black, with a vamp of gray, silky material.
HOLDING HIS script in one hand, looking like a man about to make a speech, Mr. Truman paid nodding, meticulous attention to the words of Seymour Berns, the director. His most often repeated answers were: "OK. Just tell me what you want me to do" and "shoot, whenever you're ready."

At one point, when there was some delay in setting up the cameras, and Mr. Truman and Mr. Benny were forced to stand and wait for some five minutes, Mr. Truman said: "I'm glad we're not using any stand-ins, Jack. The real big stars always do the whole thing themselves, don't they?"
At another time, a group taking the regular Library tour suddenly realized what was happening in their midst and mobbed the roped-off section to watch. They quickly became loud and excited, until Mr. Truman called to them: "You're welcome to stay, but you have to be quiet, or we'll throw you all out." To which Mr. Benny replied:
"And he can do it. It's his store."
Through the long tedious hours of rehearsals and run-through, Mr. Truman and Mr. Benny were unfailingly good-humored, treating each other with courtesy and consideration. In the matter of taste, Mr. Truman has absolutely nothing to worry about. Jack Benny feels keenly the responsibility of presenting the former President.
"Don't think we haven't given this the greatest amount of thought," said Benny. "Sure, we want it to be an entertaining show but we went over and over every laugh to be certain their is nothing questionable involved. I'd sacrifice the laughs anytime. I don't want Mr. Truman to have any regrets about doing this."
UNDER UNION regulations, the former President must receive at least scale pay for appearing on the show, so the check he received as his guest fee was for $155. It is reliably reported, however, that a substantial contribution will be made to a cause of Mr. Truman's choosing, probably to the Truman Library.
As to what he will do with his check for $155, Mr. Truman said: "Oh, I expect I'll give it to the 'Boss.' She'll figure out a way to spend it."
Blue eyes twinkling behind his rimless spectacles, rosy cheeked, white hair smoothly combed from its side part, Mr. Truman, 75 years old, looked fit and untired after his afternoon's work. In the reception room outside his office, he put an arm around Benny and an arm around Seymour Berns.
"See you in the morning, nine sharp," he said. "Don't suppose you fellas want to walk with me in the morning? No, of course not, we'll be doing a lot of walking here all day."
Since Mr. Truman answered his own question. Jack Benny didn't have to answer, and just as well. The comedian, whose idea of a long walk is the sidewalk between the front of the hotel and the taxi, had a look on his face of ill-concealed disbelief, a look that said his ears must be playing him tricks.
It was Mr. Berns who merrily turned tha conversation away from early morning exercise.
"Look at our guest star," he said. "He's so nervous about the taping tomorrow, he won't sleep tonight."
"Who? Me?" asked the former President.
At the conclusion of the run-through, the only sign of weariness Mr. Truman, 75 years old, showed was a slight dragging of his right foot as he walked back to his office.

How did the broadcast go? Reviewed “Helm” in the Daily Variety the following Tuesday:

Jack Benny had to overcome one of the roughest tape jobs of the season to prove that he's still tv's top "straight man." The acoustics, lighting and other technical attributes were shoddy enough without the added woes of groans and squeaks on the sound track. But he rode it out with his guestar, ex-Prez Harry Truman, no less, and despite all the debits, it was a comedy classic with HST handling the laugh lines off JB's feed like they've been teaming for years.
Benny knew his subject well and didn't press him, taking him along leisurely and pausing to help the laughs along with his pained look of surprise. But the element of surprise, an enduring quality of his unprecedented success in radio and tv, was used to even more surprising effect. Those who expected to see Benny sawing away at a fiddle while Mr. T punched out "Missouri Waltz" on the ivories had to be content with off-camera sounds of the same.
Benny's penury, long a main prop, wasn't short-shrifted either. The 39 age bit evoked one of the show's biggest laughs when standing under a portrait of George Washington, Benny balked blushingly with "you're making it difficult." If the laughs were clocked, the guestar was the main comic. But that's Benny and it has paid off handsomely over the long years. The tour through the Truman library was the best thing that ever happened to it and should prove both beneficial to him as a public benefactor and future visits to the treasure trove of epic documents.
Seymour Berns produced and directed with the gentle touch of humor and to the avoidance of offending the dignity of a great American.

A day later, “Trau” in the Weekly Variety pointed out the two men had some things in common:

It was a natural that Jack Benny and Harry S. Truman would become a team for this half-hour one-nighter spec. Each yens a basic musical instrument that he has made part of his personal trademark. Each is a one-man chamber of commerce for a certain city in Missouri and in Illinois. Truman has a deep and abiding respect for the office of the President; JB has a ditto for the fine art of comedy. History will surely show that each was an American institution in his time, a condition that is just as certain to rub off on posterity.

Truman died December 26, 1972. Benny died exactly two years to the day later.