A Likely Story

One of my favourite pieces of Mike Maltese dialogue at Warner Bros. is when Daffy Duck starts accusing the butler in Daffy Dilly (1948), building and building his case through detective and mystery plot clichés.

Ken Harris’ gestures augment the words very nicely.



“Where were you the night of April the 16th?”
“I...I...”



“A likely story!”



“I see it all now.” Note how Daffy’s cogitating.



“You and the upstairs maid.” Daffy points toward the upstairs.



“ ‘Do the old boy in,’ you said.” Daffy gives a strangling motion.



“ ‘Elderberry wine and old lace,’ you said.” Daffy motions like he’s pouring wine.



“ ‘Then the quick getaway,’ you said.”

Daffy eventually gets to that great line: “But you weren’t smart enough, John. Alias Johnny. Alias Jack. Alias Jackie!” as Mel Blanc’s voice rises.

Phil Monroe, Ben Washam and Lloyd Vaughan also animated this cartoon.

Radio's Tart Aftertaste

Bob and Ray spent a great deal of their career wandering in the towered canyons of the New York City radio wilderness, going from network to network, and station to station, as the industry evolved.

One of their stops was at CBS, where they broadcast for 15 minutes each weeknight starting June 30, 1959 until the following June 24th when the network fiddled with its evening programming and they looking for work again. That means they were no longer on the air when the Christian Science Monitor praised their CBS show in a story published June 28, 1960, an amusing twist in itself.

Despite what the column states, there were good portions of their CBS show which were not ad-libbed. A fellow named Phil Green was helping them with sketches. And the animated “Bob and Ray’s Hollywood Classics” never made it to air, despite Variety stating on March 30, 1960 a deal had been struck with California National Productions—an NBC company—to distribute it. Bob and Ray were in business with Ed Graham, who later produced the Linus the Lionhearted cartoon series.

The article mentions the WHDH shows in Boston which ended in July 1950 when the duo went to NBC. I enjoy parts of them but they’re quite different in tone than the 15-minuters in New York. With the shorter time slot, they couldn’t meander like they did on the Boston shows. On the other hand, I miss the musical interludes that CBS decided not use (perhaps for cost-savings) and you’d hear on the NBC 15-minute broadcasts. The CBS shows ridiculed Jack Paar, treating his humility as less than genuine, and the network’s own policy in the wake of the quiz show scandals to put disclaimers on shows in an attempt at transparency.

The Mild Acid of Bob and Ray
By Melvin Maddocks
New York
Slumped on their kitchen stools, the so-called “sick” comedians sit, half-contemptuously throwing darts at their audiences. At the other extreme, hopping like pogo sticks, the gagsters peddle their patter—fast-talking, slick, and a little too eager to please.
In between, range a mere handful of comics, neither barbed nor bland. Among these belong CBS Radio’s Bob and Ray.
Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding may best be described as kind-hearted satirists who would, one feels, honestly hate to see harm to come to the things they make fun of. Like most radio and television comedians, their humor is parochial. The prime target, in other words, is radio and television, not life.
They have spent a combined 41 years in the media. Down to the last pear-toned caress, they know the way of unctuous announcers. Not a cliché of soap operas, Boris Karloff-type mysteries, or space-fiction dramas has escaped them. They command equally the absurdities of the woman’s program hostess and the pretensions of the on-the-scene interviewer.
● ● ●
In a well-equipped scale of voices, extending from deep nasal to crackling falsetto, they take off these and other airwave stereotypes. Characteristically, their fictional personalities are self-important and solemnly obsessed by March-hare ambitions. But, on balance, the laughter they provoke is affectionate. As their brief sketches—three or four per 15-minute program—genially wander to improvised conclusions, Bob and Ray almost seem to deserve the fatal label, whimsy. But a tart aftertaste nearly always rescues them.
The two, after 14 years of togetherness, works without a script. The effect is a bit like jazz improvisation, with one following the other’s lead, then trying to top it. Transcribe the routines to paper and—again like a jazz solo—the whole flavor evaporates. Everything depends upon hesitation, inflection, and nuance.
The scene where Bob and Ray tape their broadcasts, two or three at a session, is as informal as the entertainment it produces. In a small parlor-sized studio the comedians sit at plain rectangular table. While Ray, the more ebullient one, rocks back and forth in his dangerously tipped chair, Bob quietly doodles as they record a broadcast. A sound man and a turntable man share the studio with them. Behind glass a producer-director, assistant director, and technical director watch. Ray works hard—and successfully—to make them all “break up.” He clowns just as eagerly for the messenger boy who drops into swap repartee during commercials or between “takes.”
● ● ●
Behind their convincing air of casualness, Bob and Ray are craftsmen with a solid respect for comic tradition. Among their admirations: Stoopnagle and Bud, Laurel and Hardy, and Robert Benchley, traces of whose deceptively guileless style may be found in their own work.
As multiple-voice impersonators, Bob and Ray have never done as well in television as on radio. There is something dampening about the soprano of Mary Magoon, for example, emerging a little sheepishly from the burly person of Mr. Goulding. Now they think they have this handicap licked. The answer: animated cartoons. The comedians, who have also made a reputation in the industry for their commercials, own their private animation studio. At present, they are writing, producing, and acting in a cartoon series dealing in parodies of overworked movie plots, which they hope to sell next season.
Old Bob and Ray fans, who knew them back in Boston a dozen years ago and before they went “network,” natural swear they were at their sharpest in the early days. But in this latest project it may be taken for granted that Mr. Elliott and Mr. Goulding will still be operating on the theory upon which their reasonably literate, reasonable subtle humor is based: “There are no hicks anymore. They’re as hip in Sioux City as they are in New York.”

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.