The Independent Cartoon Movement

Critics got tired of Walt Disney.

Uncle Walt and his cartoons were praised all through the ‘30s for one development after another —Flowers and Trees, The Three Little Pigs, Snow White, Fantasia—but now, writers about film wanted something different, something modern. And they got it when UPA came along with its flat characters, stylised settings and quirky music.

John McManus of PM Daily was one of the first to notice the upstart company in a column of April 10, 1946. You can read what he had to say in THIS post. The vast bulk of articles about the studio that I’ve found are dated after the release of Gerald McBoing Boing in late 1950. But here’s one from the British Film Institute magazine, Sight and Sound, with a cover date of January 1, 1950. After a paragraph about Ichabod And Mr. Toad, in which the writer regrets the “unshatterable egg-shaped forms...of the conventional cartoon,” he looks elsewhere in the field, and gives a neat little history of alternate forms of graphics in commercial/industrial American animation.

Splintered from Disney and staffed by some of his dissenting talent, the independent cartoon in Hollywood is a little explored segment of practically experimental work. Without pretending to the title—it would probably repudiate it—this little shreds-and-patches cartoon movement has the eagerness and gift for drastic invention which avant-garde favours—plus, one cannot help pointing out, the practised craftsmanship in the art so seldom met with in better publicised recent “art-in-cinema” in this country. The war, as with other film forms, offered cartoonists working in the Army and Navy instructional units the opportunity, seconded by need, for considerable flexibility in their work. The movement is roughly ten years old, with early scattered “incidents” taking place inside major cartoon studios and out. (Among these: the Chuck Jones-John McGleish [sic] The Dover Boys at Pimento U, and the several “Mina Bird” cartoons from the still interesting Chuck Jones unit at Warners; the John Hubley-John McGleish Rocky Road to Ruin, a bold, not wholly successful satire on the rags-to-riches theme, at Columbia.) The largest independent group to manage to consolidate itself is to-day known as U.P.A.—United Productions of America, and for it at one time or another during its first six years have worked nearly all of the new movement’s leading artists.
These rebels have upset the tyranny of the egg-shape by employing frank flatness and unreality in constantly refreshing and surprising ways, a rebellion too seldom noticed in the Disney fortress ever since the “Pink Elephant” sequence in Dumbo, the “Baby Weems” sequence in The Reluctant Dragon. The human animal has been brought back into a cartoon respectability that it has not enjoyed since silent cartoon series like “Colonel Heeza Liar”, “Farmer Alfalfa” and “Canimated Noos”. Nor is Disney’s ever-recurring (1) adorable (2) baby (3) animal a U.P.A. formula. Over all there is some recognition that the graphic and colour adventures of this century belong to animated cartoons as properly as to other media.

U.P.A.’s two most famous films have been Brotherhood Of Man (against racism) and Hell Bent For Election, a pro-Roosevelt campaign document—1944—sponsored along with Brotherhood by the United Automobile Worker, both of which gotLife spreads. And there have been others as good and better like Flat Hatting, one of a long and continuing series for the Navy’s Flight Safety Division; Swab Your Choppers, for the same arm’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery—a film of particular interest for its graphic simplification and stretches of non-animated action illusion. All of these films have been made for special, though not necessarily negligibly-sized audiences, but for one reason or another have by-passed the regular theatres. Last year, Columbia Pictures gave U.P.A. a five-year contract for sixty one-reel cartoons. The first of these, continuing an established Columbia series (“the Fox and Crow” series), were released in September and Dceember of last year. There have been two more delivered this year (with production tempo accelerating). The new series’ title, which will continue hereafter, is “Jolly Frolics”. The four cartoons available so far carry titles Robin Hoodlum, The Magic Fluke, The Ragtime Bear and Punchy de Lion.[sic]
The quality characterising the first three (I have not seen Punchy de Lion) is abundance. In a cartoon series where normally all is uniform, their individuality of plan and overall idea, non-repeating dramatis personae, and personal graphic styles, are unheard-of extravagances. Robin Hoodlum’s Gilbertian libretto is too intricate almost for comprehension in one viewing, with all the sight and sound distractions; without impeding movement a valid sound-speech effect is gotten in the dialogue take-off of British stage (film also?) accent excesses. In The Magic Fluke an unaccustomed pointing up of background is in the detail and colour richness (an antique gold) given tiers of baroque galleries up which, in one camera effect, we go endlessly climbing. The Ragtime Bear—the best so far—corrects Hoodlum’s diffuseness, is funnier than Magic Fluke. It has all kinds of style: drawing reminiscent of Flat Hatting’s—touchstone on graphics; a spareness in the music score to give in-the-room impact to the delightful sheerness of the unaccompanied banjo. Its introduction of human characters, notably the short-tempered, always almost catastrophically near-sighted Mr. Magoo—of human characters, that is, not grotesque-ified or single-traited only, like Popeye—will bear watching.
HAROLD LEONARD

Unfortunately, Magoo’s shorts devolved into becoming dependent on the old man mistaking something for something else because of miserably poor vision. The one-shot cartoons wrapped uncharming characters and uninteresting stories in graphic styles that were becoming increasingly familiar, thanks to TV commercials by a host of studios. When Disney released Flowers and Trees in 1932, people cared about animated short films. By the time UPA’s The Jaywalker (1956) rolled around, the movie shorts business had been pretty much killed by television. The studio’s rise and fall had been pretty quick.

Unhappy Walrus

Dick Lundy and Les Kline get the animation credits on The Beach Nut, but I can't tell you who is responsible for this a-little-over-a-second of animation of Wally Walrus getting frustrated at Woody Woodpecker.



This was Wally's debut at the Walter Lantz studio. In this cartoon, he was voiced by Jack Mather.

Friz is a Dog

It’s a great day for a dog race in Bosko's Dog Race (1932). And look who’s entered!



At the top of the list is No. 1, animator Friz Freleng. You’ll also notice No. 5, animator Cal Dalton. No. 4 is “Granger.” I don’t know if there was a Granger on staff at the studio; Peter Gaenger was a background artist at Schlesinger’s in the late ‘30s and early ‘40s.

Ham Hamilton and Norm Blackburn are the credited animators.

Playing Tonight

Skitch Henderson had two kicks at being the frontman for the Tonight show band. The first time was when the show debuted in September 1954; he had been hosting a variety show with his wife Faye Emerson. When Steve Allen left Tonight in 1957 and battled Ed Sullivan for Sunday night ratings, Henderson went along. He returned to Tonight on April 29, 1962 when NBC was rotating hosts following Jack Paar’s departure and stayed when Johnny Carson became the host on October 1, 1962. Eventually, Henderson wanted to try other things and was replaced in October 1966 by Milton DeLugg, the bandleader on Tonight late-night predecessor Broadway Open House.

This guest column syndicated by King Features on August 12, 1963 tells us about Skitch’s band. Already, it appears Doc Severinsen was displaying the irreverence that stood him in good stead with Carson when DeLugg left in 1967 and he took over.

My Band’s Best, Says Skitch
(One of our editors suggested that we do a story on the men in Skitch Henderson's band on the "Tonight" show. It seemed like a good idea, but Skitch insisted on writing it himself. The commitment was made about a month ago, but the bearded one's schedule is one of the busiest in the business and his comments on his musicians just arrived.—Harvey Pack).
By SKITCH HENDERSON
I've got the best band in the land. Maybe I'm partial, but the orchestra that plays for NBC-TV's Tonight show starring Johnny Carson consists of the finest musicians in the country.
I have conducted symphonies and operas all over the world and I'll go on record as saying that each one of the Tonight show band regulars could, if he wanted to, sit in and hold his own in any concert hall or opera house.
However, the guys love what they're doing now. Aside from their expert musicianship, their enthusiasm and spontaneity five nights a week, every week, is the secret of our success. Sure, it's work, but it's also play.
We have very serious rehearsals in which we have to work out brand new numbers for each evening's guests. This can run from jazz to novelty to grand opera. Rehearsal discipline is strict. There's no alternative as we rarely have time to go through an orchestration more than once.
Show time is something else. Anything goes, and usually does, once announcer Ed McMahon says: "And now, here's Johnny!" The music is constantly reshuffled while we're on the air, to go along with the mad ad-lib pace of show. At least 30 per cent of the music we play is totally unrehearsed and equally unexpected. How do we do it? The credit goes to the guys in the band. And what guys! Most of the regulars have been with me steadily for a dozen years and we played for the Tonight show when Steve Allen—a musical guy himself—was host.
Our line-up included Doc Severinsen (trumpet) who used to play side by side with our other featured trumpet soloist, Clark Terry, when they were with the Charlie Barnett band; Bob Haggart, the fabulous "Big Noise From Winnetka" bassist with the old Bob Crosby Bobcats; Hymie Shertzer, the saxophonist who was a mainstay of the Benny Goodman band; trombonist Will Bradley, who led his own great swing band in the '40s; Al Klink, whose sax sparked the original Glenn Miller orchestra; Harold Feldman, perhaps the country's No. 1 oboe player; Bobby Rosengarten, whose drum magic and versatility is unmatched.
There isn't enough space to include all the members and the bands they played with, but the list would include every great music group of the last 30 years. The musicianship is taken for granted. The boys are so good that even with their hair all the way down, they're incapable of playing badly.
Sometimes the going gets tough and occasionally chaos reigns. I've a bad habit of forgetting titles and simply labelling my orchestrations with numerals. One night I distributed three orchestrations among the band members, all marked No. 1. On the air I counted off the tempo for No. 1 and three different songs came forth simultaneously, each one played correctly and beautifully, I'm happy to add.
The boys frequently get into the act of the Tonight show itself, but it isn't planned in advance. When the contestants for the NBC International Beauty contest appeared as guests, Doc Severinsen, who is of Scandinavian descent, asked to speak to Misses Denmark, Sweden and Norway. I expected a flood of foreign words but Doc smiled into their faces and said "I yoost wanted to say 'hello'."
Another time, when we had a hypnotist as a guest panelist, Doc got up to play a solo ride on "Honeysuckle Rose," but out came "Rose Room." He claimed he was in a trance.
The confusion of the Tonight show is taken in stride by the band regulars. When Will Bradley was ill one evening, his last-minute substitute played the show reasonably well but got up and walked out of the studio halfway through the proceedings. It was a station break and he thought the program was over.
One night, Bobby Rosengarten was all set for a drum solo when his cymbal fell off the band stand. Thinking fast, he performed an impeccable solo on the bell opening of the nearest tenor saxophone.
The strings of Bob Haggart's bass fiddle once snapped in the middle of a beautiful slap chorus. He continued without missing a beat by merely singing the bass cords that followed.
Do I like the music we play on the Tonight show? More and more. Popular music is getting better, and so are the performing guests.
The groaners and screamers are on the way out. Perhaps it's the folk singers who have brought to the popular field some freshness, taste and musicality that's been conspicuously absent from Tin Pan Alley for too long.
Besides, Johnny Carson and producer Art Stark have given me a great deal of freedom in selecting the show's music and musical guests. I think our level is high, and still climbing.

Fleas Release Me

A girl flea blows a kiss at a hobo flea in What Price Fleadom (1948). It’s a Tex Avery cartoon, so you know what happens next. Some of the drawings.



Avery’s unit was in transition around this time. Walt Clinton, Bob Bentley and Gil Turner received the animation credits, with Johnny Johnsen providing the backgrounds.

The Natural Thing To Do

Why do Popeye and Bluto fight? Because, as the title of the cartoon indicates, it’s the natural thing to do!

One drawing per frame.



Olive Oyl (Margie Hines) rings a fight bell. The fight stops in mid-air. This drawing is held for ten frames.



Tom Johnson was the head animator on this cartoon, and the other animation credit went to Lodowick Louis Rossner. He was a native of Allendale, New Jersey, born on October 26, 1906, and attended the Pratt Institute. He had left Fleischer’s by 1945, as he was then employed by Wilding Picture Productions, an industrial film company. In 1957, he and his wife were living in Tarzana, California. He died in Los Angeles on December 15, 1978.

Jack and Fred

Radio’s most famous feud was a fraud.

Jack Benny and Fred Allen had both worked on the Orpheum circuit in the vaudeville days (though there’s no evidence they appeared on the same bill) and respected each other’s talents. On radio, both tossed in some inside jokes. At the end of a broadcast at the end of December 1936, Allen ad-libbed a crack about Benny’s supposed poor violin playing; something that was the subject of jokes on Benny’s own show. The following week, Jack tossed out a retort mostly for Allen’s benefit as unless someone listening had heard the Allen show in question, they would have had no idea what he was talking about. That started the “feud.”

It was supposed to end several months later with Benny’s appearance on the Allen Show in New York. But the truce was only temporary. The feud was too good to end. It manifested in a Benny-Allen movie (“Love Thy Neighbor,” 1940) and bubbled up on radio throughout the ‘40s. Arguably, the change in writers on the Benny show in 1943 made it even more funny and clever. It even carried on after Allen ended his show in 1949; a wonderful routine on the Benny radio broadcast of April 24, 1953 had the two as small-time vaudeville partners simultaneously hamming it up and trying to undercut each other.

Here’s a feature story from Silver Screen magazine of July 1940. “Love Thy Neighbor” was still a few months away from theatres.

A FRIENDSHIP BUILT ON GAGS AND INSULTS
Although they've known each other for twenty years, Jack Benny and Fred Allen never really became friends until each started poking insults at the other on their radio programs
By Arthur Mason
OUT in Hollywood this summer, Jack Benny and Fred Allen are having the first chance of their lives to sit down together and get well acquainted. Working on their joint picture for Paramount, they will be around with their feet up on the same desk a few days every week and the talk in those sessions will be a caution.
This feud on which their picture and so many radio jokes are based is a lot of window dressing, of course. They have a friendship dating back some twenty years. The way their lives went, however, they never had much chance to sit down and talk.
"When we were in vaudeville," Fred explains, "Jack and I both worked alone or had just one girl with us. To keep the bill balanced, only one comedian like that would be on a show. We never met one another."
Jack knew Freddy (still Freddy to Jack) by hearsay mostly, the way nearly everyone knew Freddy. Unlike most actors, Fred always carried a typewriter in his baggage and spent a lot of leisure writing crazy letters to his friends and to the vaudeville papers. Variety was always running a letter from Fred Allen and making him offers to do a weekly funny column. Comedians watched for those, because usually there was at least one joke worth stealing.
Jack was no stranger in vaudeville conversation those years. He was not considered any great shucks as a wit, but he was a lovely companion for an evening. Actors who fancied themselves as wits always seemed to sparkle more the nights Jack was around. He was willing to tackle any of them, no matter how overwhelming the odds that he would come off second best.
There was a day when he played on a bill with Frank Fay, then considered the king of jokesmiths on the two-a-day time. Young Jack and young Bert Wheeler concocted a plan to make the big fellow quail.
In the middle of Fay's act, out came the two mischievous youngsters with their carefully planned interruption.
"Beg pardon, Mr. Fay," Jack asked, "but do you memorize all those funny sayings before you come out or do you make them up as you go along?"
Fay turned around with a kindly smile and let the two stand through a weighty, majestic pause. He beamed and placed a kindly hand on Jack's head.
"Bless your little heart," he said. Jack tells that story on himself to this day.

The main significance of that story at the moment is the idea it offers on the sort of youngster Jack was in his pre-radio and movie years. He was playing jokes and relishing his fun; Fred was lugging the typewriter around the circuits. Each of them spoke of the other as a good friend though they seldom met.
The friendship between them that has ripened by remote control the past three seasons really springs entirely from a casual jibe Fred made about 9:42 the night of December 30, 1936. The Fred Allen program brought in a few amateurs every week and this night a ten-year-old, who played the violin, was included.
Fred did not plan his conversation with those amateurs, relying mainly on extemporaneous inspiration. After some talk about the complex violin solo, "The Bee," that the little boy was to play, Fred remarked, "There's a comedian out in Hollywood who used to play the violin. He'll probably feel a little ashamed when he hears what you can do at your age."
The remark was forgotten until next Sunday night when Jack answered on his program, "I could play 'The Bee,' too, when I was ten years old. That's an age for it." The next Wednesday Fred called for witnesses who had heard Jack Benny playing "The Bee" at the age of ten — and the Benny-Allen feud was on. Two casual acquaintances suddenly became dear and intimate friends, but still mostly by long distance.
Benny was busy with movies in Hollywood and Fred preferred to conduct his radio business from New York. Whenever Jack was in New York, he would drop in on a Fred Allen broadcast, but that was about as much as the two saw of one another. Fred lives the life of a hermit, working on a radio script until the small hours of every morning.
When Jack visited New York this past spring, he insisted that Fred should move right into the Benny home during the weeks they worked on their picture together. Fred was insisting violently that he would not. He would make a strange house guest.
About mealtime he probably would emerge from his room and then go back up to books and typewriter. Meanwhile, the sort of a host Jack Benny is would be to sit around fretting about what could have happened to keep good old Freddy from having a good time.
Old friends in New York tell about the way Jack used to love to spend an evening when he lived there. After a show, he would stop in at Lindy's or one of the other actor hangouts and gather a gang of cronies to "come up to our place and sit around for some laughs."
On the way home, Jack would pick up the morning papers. While the conversation was getting under way, Jack would glance quickly through the columns where he might be mentioned and then slip off into a doze. The friends would have all those laughs that had been planned while Jack quietly and happily slept in a corner. When they woke him up around time to go home, he heartily thanked everyone for the swell evening the gang had given him.
Don Wilson tells about Jack in Hollywood.
"He's a great walker," Don says. "To get exercise, he goes out and walks through the hills and comes back to tell what a great day he had. But one side of his face will be all sunburned. He goes out and finds a nice grassy spot and goes to sleep."
Fred Allen's stays in Hollywood included a minor amount of social life with Jack Benny or anyone else. He has a strange phobia about burdening himself with possessions, so he refuses to have a car.
Distances between places are so great in Hollywood, Fred had to rent a car there. That entailed hiring a chauffeur to drive it, because Fred never has learned to drive himself. After a month of paying rent, Fred called the chauffeur aside.
"With what I'm paying in car rent," Fred offered, "you could be making payments on a car. Why don't I just give that money to you?"
The colored chauffeur liked the arrangement. The only trouble was that Fred had not been specific about what sort of car he might like.
"The chauffeur got his own idea of a nice thing," Fred went on. "We spent the rest of our time in Hollywood running around in a little cream colored Ford. Rolls Royces and a lot of other big cars would be parked in front of a place and up would come the Allens in their queer looking jallopy."
Portland has her own complaints about Fred Allen in Hollywood.
"He spoils all the servants," she says. "He keeps asking them if they like the way things are going and if everything is all right in their treatment. After a while, they won't take orders."

No one knows how much of this strange background for a close friendship will get into the Benny-Allen picture. Most of the script probably will come from the preliminary conversations between the two comedians.
This much has been planned: the picture will present them as a pair of radio comedians who get into a feud. The background will not be primarily radio, however. It will be a musical picture with emphasis on comedy and a title will be selected sometime between now and the release date next fall.
There is comedy material in abundance in the occasional meetings of Allen and Benny in the past. On their broadcasts together, they usually have been funnier during preliminary chats to the studio audience than they were after the microphones actually had been turned on.
Jack was on the stage early one night and asked, "Where is Allen?"
"Here I am, Jack," Fred drawled as he walked up the center aisle. "I have been out there watching the door for you so your audience wouldn't get away."
That was a night when the Benny show had travelled from Hollywood for a brief New York visit. Fred began explaining things to the studio audience.
"Those people under glass," and he pointed to the glass panels of the control room, "are California people. They can't stand the climate here so you see how we put them under glass."
No matter who tackles Fred Allen, the exchanges usually are one-sided and Jack is no exception. "If I only had my writers here, I'd give you an answer, I tell you," Jack has said to Fred many a time.
Jack always warns his studio audience, "You'd better laugh if you ever expect to get in here again."
"You'd better laugh," Fred interrupted one night, "if HE ever expects to get in here again."
Fred told the studio audience another night, "Jack Benny is a very funny man. Five minutes with him and your sides ache. Every time he tells a joke, he punches you in the stomach."
Jack laughs helplessly when Fred cuts loose on him. His professional reputation cannot be helped by having a rival comedian outwit him all evening. But, as far as Benny is concerned, that has nothing to do with the situation. He tries to provoke Fred to retorts, because he loves hearing them.
In one of their first programs together, he came out of the studio red faced with laughter.
"I was afraid Freddy was going to just stick to the script," he said, "and I had to dig into him to get him started. Wasn't he wonderful?"
After Jack left, a few of the people around there had their own ideas of what was wonderful. With people as jealous and petty as they usually are in show business, it was wonderful to find two top men with that sort of an attitude toward one another. You don't often find it.
Jack loves to plan ideas where he figures Fred can't possibly find a topper for the gag. One night just before a broadcast, he walked into the Fred Allen studio and ostentatiously shook hands with everyone except Fred. Fred watched that for a moment and came up:
"The man Jack just shook hands with is our tester. He shakes hands with visitors to see if they are fit to associate with the rest of us."

Their independent attitude toward the boss is one of the few things Jack and Fred have in common. Last fall, each of their radio sponsors had an elaborate luncheon at which the comedian was to explain his plans for the coming season. The newspapermen and a lot of vice presidents were there. Jack confined his remarks mainly to abuse of the sponsor for letting Kenny Baker go. Fred said his program probably would suffer greatly because of a lot of wild suggestions the sponsor was making.
Neither one of them has the flossy air of hypocrisy that usually comes after a few years on the stage, or in pictures. There is the real foundation for the affection they feel toward one another.
A good sample is Jack's remarks one year when he came home from a vacation in Europe. "Oh, great!" he was telling his friends about the time he had had. Then he paused to be more explicit.
"After you pack and unpack everywhere you go, you begin thinking you could have had just as much fun right at home. With your wife along, there's no end to that packing."
Jack had another picture coming up then.
"We were in some wonderful restaurants over there," he went on, "and I'm a guy who likes to eat. But I never can because it puts weight on me so fast. Isn't that awful?"
This Benny-Allen picture should be something worth seeing. But it's a shame to think of those preliminary conversations between that pair slipping off into thin air. Unless times are very tough this summer, Paramount ought to slip a stenographer into a corner and save those remarks. There has not been much talk as good as that going on in any age.

Gorgeous Gal is Gone

Earlier this year the world lost June Foray, considered the Grand Dame of Cartoon Voice Acting. There were many other women who lent their voices to cartoon characters in the Golden Age, and some are not well known.

One of them was Gladys Holland, who has passed away yesterday afternoon according to Jerry Beck.

Holland was a radio actress whose first cartoon was Madeline for UPA, released in 1952. She even received screen credit. Her French accent was perfect for the narrator. The cartoon garnered an Oscar nomination. It didn’t win the Oscar. Another cartoon did, and she revealed to Mr. Beck she almost had a connection to it.

“I had met Hanna and Barbera, and I was talking to Mr. Hanna, who did the Tom and Jerry cartoons. And he had heard that I had narrated ‘Madeline’ and he asked me if I could do a German accent. And I said, ‘Well, I learned English and German in school, so I can do a German accent.’

“So he said, ‘Okay.’ He said ‘We haven’t decided yet if we’re going to have a man or a woman to narrate it. If it’s a woman, you will get it. If it’s a man, it will be someone else.’ So, the cartoon was shown and it was ‘Johann Mouse’ and it won the Academy Award. And I was so upset that I refused to go and see that cartoon until years later when I was at the Motion Picture Academy, and they were showing the Oscar-winning movie of that year, plus the cartoon, which was ‘Johann Mouse.’

“And it was so great. And Hans Conried did the narration and he was so wonderful that I finally forgave them for winning the Oscar.”

You might be surprised to learn (I was) that Holland also worked for Walter Lantz, though she never received screen credit.

“Yeah, the Woody Woodpecker cartoons, yes. They used to call me whenever there was an accent in it and then I would come and do it. And I never really saw the cartoons, except for the one that I did when I did a very sexy French voice and they said ‘It’s so funny, you must see it.’ And they showed it to me [it was released in 1954]. It was a very heavy-set, fat woodpecker, and with a very, very sexy voice.”

It’s a shame her work in cartoon isn’t better known. Until Holland’s interview with Jerry Beck, I had no idea the character of Gorgeous Gal in A Fine Feathered Frenzy was not played by Grace Stafford. It was within Stafford’s vocal range and she would have been capable of doing it. Evidently, Lantz liked Holland’s work and was willing to pay her. She did an excellent job, as those of you who have seen the cartoon know. Holland didn’t mention it, but I suspect she’s also playing French actress Gaga Gazoo in the Woody Woodpecker short Belle Boys (1953). Incidentally, both it and A Fine Feathered Frenzy were directed by Don Patterson.

Our condolences to Ms. Holland’s family.

The Porky Pig Story

Porky Pig modestly started his life at the Leon Schlesinger studio as part of the cast I Haven’t Got a Hat (1935). Helped by the stuttering gimmick and a lack of personality in just about every other character at the studio, he was elevated to the lead in the Looney Tunes series.

Porky was a little limited, but far less than the insipid Buddy he replaced. He was the kind of character the theatre audience could empathise with. He overcame his vocal difficulties and his innocence with determination. Later, Bob Clampett used him as kind of a straight man playing off goofy characters.

Poor Porky kind of fell out of favour as more in-your-face characters gained in popularity in the 1940s. But he could still be found in comic books, and he still turned up in animated cartoons into the ‘60s. Various directors used him different ways; I particularly like Art Davis’ cartoons with Porky.

From what I’ve read from the great animation historians of our time, producer Leon Schlesinger loved Porky. Here’s Leon talking about his favourite character to Hollywood magazine in its issue of December 1936. By that time, Frank Tashlin had been hired to direct Porky, adding his own particular cinematic stamp to the character.

The article gives a nice roundup of how Porky was created and how Warners cartoons were made. It even talks about voice artists, though it doesn’t name Joe Dougherty or Berneice Hansell. (Mel Blanc’s first cartoon as Porky wasn’t released until April 1937).

(Sorry for the poor photos. The magazine was scanned at low resolution).



BEHIND THE SCENES
How Porky the Pig Became A Star!
Believe It Or Not, there's a new star in Hollywood who never signs a contract, never displays temperament, is always on time, and last, but not least, doesn't even expect a salary for the grand performances he gives on the screen.
This delightful personality has never been known to "highbrow" his less fortunate associates since he blossomed into stardom and left them struggling for recognition among the stock players at the studio in which he toils.
It all came about one day, when Leon Schlesinger, producer of Merrie Melodies and Looney Tune cartoons called in his staff and said, "Boys, the public is crying for new personalities and I'm going to do something about it. How about organizing a stock company? Perhaps we can find a new star."
A few weeks later this same group of men gathered in the projection room to see a cartoon just completed entitled I Haven't Got A Hat, in which the new stock company was to make its debut. Among such characters as Oliver Owl, Ham and Ex, mischievous little puppies, Kitty Kat, and Tommy Turtle, was a chubby, stuttering piggie named "Porky," and did he steal the show!
Porky Grabs the Spotlight
When they finished running the picture, Schlesinger, a large, good-natured man, fairly beamed with enthusiasm. "That's just the fellow I've been looking for. From now on he'll not only stutter, but he'll star in all our Looney Tunes."
And that's the new star we've been telling you about.
Like regular actors and actresses of the screen, these fantastic little characters must have likeable personalities and when they do, they receive fan mail just like famous stars.

Unlike Porky, Schlesinger once featured a little boy named Buddy in his films, who seemed to have possibilities as a comedian, but had to let him go when he failed to register on the screen.
With all his clever ways, Porky can't read, so when fan letters are sent to him his boss reads them and whenever possible, tries to fulfill the requests of the fans.
Porky's greatest appeal seems to be the fact that he's always a good little pig, and manages to dispose of the "villain" in his pictures.
Cartoons are so popular with children that Schlesinger has discovered he must never allow any evil or frightening character in his pictures. One wicked character appearing in a film was never shown again when parents wrote in saying it frightened their children.
Where Porky Got His Voice
There's an interesting story about the strange sounds emanating from these pen-and-ink people. Porky's voice, for instance, is that of an extra player who is a genius at stuttering. In fact, he can't say a word unless he does.
The child-like voice of Kitty, the Kitten, is created by a woman who is a dressmaker at the studios.
Because Schlesinger's cartoons are released through Warner Bros., he has access to their libraries and oftentimes your favorite star's voice speaks from an animated character. Joe E. Brown's amusing yell has been the roar of a hippopotamus. A record of such a famous voice as John Barrymore's has been played in reverse to furnish the jabber for a funny little animal.

Two famous stars of today used to double their voices for Schlesinger's cartoons when he first started producing them in 1930. One was Rochelle Hudson, the other, little Jane Withers.
Few people realize that it requires from 10,000 to 12,000 drawings for the average cartoon, which takes up approximately seven minutes running times on the screen.
Weeks are spent on story preparation for each picture, and strange sights are seen during this time. Don't be alarmed if it should be your fate to pass a story conference room in a cartoon studio and see a perfectly normal-looking person suddenly jump on one of his co-workers and choke him until he screams like a wild man. They are merely illustrating a proposed scene in a forthcoming picture. These gagmen, as they are called, will crow like roosters, walk on all fours, barking like a dog, etc., all for the love of their work.
Going Through the Mill
After the story has been okayed, the ideas of which are drawn, not written, the "scenario" is turned over to the director of animation. Here, as many as thirty animators will draw the key drawings, or "extremes" of each scene, leaving three or four drawings for the "in-betweeners."
From there it goes to the "inking" department, where each drawing is traced on celluloid. The painting department is the next stop, where "painters" fill in the various colors.
Backgrounds are then drawn which form the scenes or sets to match the action of the film.
After this every drawing on celluloid must be photographed.
The final step is the recording department, where the musical is added.
That's why it takes one-hundred-and-twenty-five people approximately three and a half months to bring Porky to life in one of his starring vehicles.
Modest Porky, who has always been so untouched by all this sudden fame will throw out his chest proudly when he sees this, his first magazine story.

Today’s Warner Bros. Inside Joke

Nothing But the Tooth was written by Dave Monahan, but he isn’t the only story man mentioned in the cartoon. There’s a billboard with another one.



The rest of the billboard is a play on Carter’s Little Liver Pills.

Phil DeGuard painted the backgrounds from layouts by Don Smith in this short from the Art Davis unit.