Tex, I'll Have Leon's Ham and Eggs

There was a lot of borrowing going on in Tex Avery’s One Cab's Family (1952). The basic concept of the disobedient little car trying to beat a train was lifted from Friz Freleng’s 1937 Warners cartoon Streamlined Greta Green. And Avery borrows from himself, lifting a gag from A Feud There Was (1938).

A hillbilly fires a huge assault cannon. Cut to a pig and a chicken eating feed from a plate. Kaboom! They turn into ham and eggs. Not only did Avery have the plate, ham and eggs drop from the sky in both cartoons, he had the camera pull in for a close-up.



You can see the later version of the gag in this post.

Tubby Millar gets the story credit on this cartoon; Rich Hogan and Roy Williams got it on the latter.

Cat Love a Duck

By 1955, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera were having troubles trying to keep the Tom and Jerry series fresh. On top of that, animation had changed. The great Disney-type personality movement that made the cat and mouse so appealing in the ‘40s was being replaced, partly thanks to UPA. By the mid-‘50s, The two seemed to stare with their lower lip out a lot of the time.

In the ‘40s, Hanna and Barbera had used a Beulah-type maid as a third character for Tom and Jerry to play off. That type of character was o-w-t in the ‘50s. Bill and Joe used a menagerie of other animals but became obsessed with a little duck, who was plotted into at least seven cartoons.

I loathe this character.

In That’s My Mommy, the stupid duckling believes Tom is his mother (the duck has a mommy fixation in most of his cartoons), even after Jerry points out in a book what a mother duck and a mother cat look like (he actually never catches on during the whole picture).

Here are some drawings from the one real take in the short, when the duck realises he’s the key ingredient in his mommy’s duck stew. It ain’t ‘40s-type Tom-and-Jerry animation by a long shot, let alone something outrageous like Tex Avery would have tried.



Now a head shake and another take.



The cartoon ends with Tom taking pity on the pitiable duck (rivers of tears flow from the cat’s eyes) and deciding not to eat him. The last scene shows Tom swimming with him, just like a loving mommy.



The duck, of course, was re-used by Hanna and Barbera in the Yakky Doodle series, and there was even a cartoon where Fibber Fox decides not to eat the duck, but be his mommy instead.

The Quiet Life of a Radio Star

How many stars would greet people at the door in a bathrobe? Jack Benny would. And did.

Actually, he did this for ages. There have been several newspaper columns we’ve spotted over the years where Jack did his interview wearing his bathrobe in his hotel room. Evidently, Jack liked to be relaxed after a stressful week of putting together a radio show from nothing.

His wife Mary Livingstone remarks about that during her own interview with Hollywood magazine which appeared in the June 1937 issue. While it’s true the two of them threw large parties at their home, indoors and outdoors, Jack seems to have liked a quiet life at home.

So, here’s the article. The reference to the “Bee,” for those unaware, involves the feud Jack and Fred Allen had just begun over the air. It was sparked over whether Jack could actually play Schubert’s “The Bee” on the violin. The feud moved on to other topics after about three months, but the “Bee” began it all and caught the imagination of the public. There are “bee” references in the popular press about this time when referring to either Allen or Benny, and the storyline of a Columbia “celebrity caricature” cartoon even contained it (with the Schubert piece in the background).

Mary Puts the “Bee” on Jack Benny
By WHITNEY WILLIAMS
“HMMMMMMM... what can you make of a fellow who greets callers in an old red bathrobe and older slippers?”
No, children of wonder-wonderland, it isn’t Aunt Libby touching upon Uncle Oscar’s eccentricities . . . the above momentous words are uttered by no less authority than Mary Livingston, of that immaculously-groomed — in public — Jack Benny.
Mary, you see, happens to know whereof she speaks. Mary is Mrs. Jack Benny, a star in her own right insofar as radio audiences are concerned, and Jack’s own best pal and severest critic. She knows what she knows and she sees what she sees, and Jack . . . well, naturally, he’s a bit of a pet of hers. But . . .
"Honestly," she says, "I never know what Jack’s going to do next.
"Take the time we were married. I was engaged to be married to another man. The wedding was to take place sometime in March. Early in January I went east from Los Angeles to Chicago, to visit with my sister before the event. I arrived at my sister’s on a Sunday. Friday, I was Mrs. Jack Benny. "How’d it happen? Well, I’d like to know that, myself. Jack must have done some fast talking, or something.

"You see, I had first met Jack about four years before, when he was playing the Orpheum in Los Angeles and I was a buyer in the lingerie department of May’s, a large department store almost directly across the street from the theatre. My sister, the same sister I visited in Chicago, introduced us one night backstage — Babe was an actress herself — and we went out together after the show.
"The next day, who should enter my department in the store but Jack. He and another man walked in and started to ask for things. Then, they’d go off and come back, asking to be directed to something else. And whenever I waited on them, Jack, in a very loud tone, would begin to find fault. It was only an act, I knew, but it began to get my goat. All the girls and some of the customers were watching, to make matters worse.
"This kept up all morning, with me doing a slow burn. I think Jack knew I was getting mad, for he began to make it even more embarrassing for me. Finally, he asked me to go out to lunch.
"After that introduction to the Benny wit and manner, I didn’t see Jack again for a year, when he returned to Los Angeles on his tour of the circuit. Every year, then, for three years, I’d see him for a few evenings while he was in town, then forget all about him.
"That’s why it was all the more surprising, then, when I discovered my-self married to him. He was stopping at the same hotel in Chicago as my sister, and naturally, I saw him as soon as I arrived back there. But when he showed up on the scene, he was just a friend whom I hadn’t seen for a long time. I still can’t figure out what happened."
JACK entered the room at that moment, greeted us cheerily, and flashed "Doll" — that’s Mary, whom he’s called that ever since they were married — a bright smile.
"Where’s Joanie?" he asked.
Joanie, or Joan Naomi, is their small daughter, dainty in a Dresden-like way and ruler of the household, whom the Bennys adopted several years ago. After he had left the room in search of the cherub, Mary continued. . . .
"Jack’s simply crazy about our little daughter, and whenever he’s home she’s seldom out of his sight. No matter in how brooding a mood he may be, when he sees her he seems to brighten up and is a new man.
"I’m frequently asked if Jack wisecracks as much and is as funny around the house as he is over the radio and on the screen.
"I can only reply that Jack is a very quiet man. He’s not over-talkative as are so many men and frequently, like all comedians, he’s moody. Humor and comedy, you know, are hard work, much harder than most people realize.
"Occasionally, we have Burns and Allen and the Marx brothers and their wives over for dinner. The majority of people, I honestly think, would like to believe that the evening was one wild, raucous affair. Actually, instead of the Marxes climbing atop the piano, Burns and Allen going into their act and the Bennys trying to compete, the party is little different from that held in anybody else’s house, with the exception, possibly, that no liquor is served. Anybody can have it, of course, but nobody in that group touches it. Jack and George go over in one corner and play Casino, Gracie and I engage in Russian Bank and the Marxes play Bridge. Exciting, isn’t it?
"But that’s the kind of an evening Jack likes. We go out very little — just a dinner once in a while at some friend’s house, and the Trocadero once a week. Jack works too hard for us to be constantly on the go, even if we wanted to. But there’s no telling about that man of mine."
And there never was, for that matter.

THE lure of the theatre got into his blood back in Waukegan, Ill., when he headed a small orchestra and played at school dances. His mother had presented him with a violin one birthday, and Jack, after taking lessons, had thought it would be nice to play the instrument in a band.
Deciding to take his orchestra into Waukegan’s only theatre, Jack got only as far as the front door. He was made the doorman. Then, he tried the back door and was made property man. Finally, after much pleading, he reached the orchestra pit and spent several months fiddling. He learned to play "The Bee." (Page Fred Allen.)
When the Waukegan theatre closed of old age, Jack teamed up with a piano player and appeared in vaudeville for four years.
Then came the World War. Jack always had wanted to see the world from a porthole rather than a stage door, so he joined the Navy . . . and was placed in the Navy Relief Society. Instead of going overseas, his duties consisted of entertaining.
His first appearance was at the Great Lakes Naval Station. He played his violin for a show called The Great Lakes Review.
Returning to vaudeville after the War, Jack’s violin thereafter spent most of its time under his arm instead of under his chin. In time, he became one of the smartest monologists in the show business.
January 12, 1927, is the red-letter day in Jack Benny’s life. It was that day he took unto himself Sadye Marks — or Mary Livingston, as she’s known today — as wife. Ten years wed last January 12th, the Bennys today are among the happiest married couples in Hollywood.
JACK entered motion pictures during that period when Hollywood producers were raiding the legitimate and vaudeville stages for talent.

He was doing his regular vaudeville act — probably you old-timers will recall it — in Los Angeles, when several Metro-Goldwyn executives, preparing to make a musical revue on the screen, noticed how clever this fellow was as a master of ceremonies. A day later, and Jack Benny signed to play one of the leading roles in Metro’s Hollywood Revue of 1929, coming through with flying colors. More recently, you’ve seen him in such pictures as Broadway Melody of 1936, The Big Broadcast of 1937 and College Holiday.
Admittedly the most popular figure on the air, film audiences now are clamoring for more pictures in which this star of both the radio and the screen appears. Only recently, Benny and his wife gave a Command Performance — or should I say Command Broadcast? — for the English king, George VI. The British Broadcasting Company finally selected the Benny program from all other American broadcasts with which to entertain their monarch.
No wonder Mary Livingston looks proudly at Jack Benny and complacently leans back and murmurs, "Hmmmmm . . . what can you make of a fellow who greets callers in an old red bathrobe and older slippers?" She has no wish to change the life and habits of her lovable lord and pal.

Jay and Bill vs Bill and Joe

Bill Scott and Jay Ward weren’t impressed with either Walt Disney or Hanna-Barbera, but for different reasons. And they expounded on their opinions in an interview published in the November 12, 1961 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The two really had no business criticising anyone when it came to animation. Their characters were engaged in minimal, jerky movement, and held drawings with eye-blinks. But, in Ward’s estimation, it was better minimal jerky movement than Hanna-Barbera’s (evidently animator/director Gerard Baldwin agreed; he left Hanna-Barbera in 1959 to join the Ward operation). The cartoons certainly looked better in 1961 than when the studio first set up shop two years earlier. And while Ward’s cartoons may have been funnier, the shorts were half the length of Hanna-Barbera’s. They were ideal for the quip-cut-quip-cut-pun-cut dialogue that Scott and his team of writers developed. Hanna-Barbera’s talk was less brash and flippant; there’s no way you’d find a Snagglepuss soliloquy in a Ward cartoon.

Still, Ward and Scott raise some valid points in their interview. I’m pretty sure some of this was quoted in Keith Scott’s fine book “The Moose That Roared” but you can read it in full below.

"Bullwinkle Show" Creators Hate a Strong Story First
By HARRY HARRIS
A YEAR ago, just before the debut of 'The Flintstones," Joe Barbera of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon factory that also grinds out "Huckleberry Hound," "Yogi Bear," "Quick Draw McGraw" and the new "Top Cat," sounded off to us at great and amusing length about long-reigning cartoon king Walt Disney's "outmoded" concepts.
Nowadays, Jay Ward and Bill Scott, representing an even newer "new wave" in the TV animation field, needle Disney and Hanna-Barbera.
Native Californian Ward and Philadelphia-born, Trenton-reared Scott are partnered in the production of NBC's 'The Bullwinkle Show," Sundays at 7 P. M. (Channel 3), an outgrowth of "Rocky and His Friends," being aired on Channel 6, via syndication, daily at 7:30 A. M. and Wednesday and Friday at 5:30 P. M. Earlier, Ward created "Crusader Rabbit," still going strong under other auspices.
"We don't really needle the others," Ward demurs. "We just think they have the wrong concept.
"We believe that animated cartoons should have a strong story first. Then you work the animation in. "Disney uses full animation because he doesn't really believe in the story. He lets the animators make wonderful pictures instead."
"Disney mistrusts writers," opines Scott. "He's actually said things like 'Wait till the animators get hold of that idea' and 'With sufficient acting, it'll be fine.' It's like a Broadway producer's saying, 'Who cares what the play is; we have Laurence Olivier!' "
"Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera," Ward continues, "believe in the same kind of animation, but they've come up with economical short cuts for TV.
"Their idea of movement, for instance, is to keep heads nodding the same way, no matter what the characters are saying. We call that 'the Hanna-Barbera palsy.'
"We believe in devising a funny story and then animating to fit the story with classic poses, held drawings, funny walks. Every word should have appropriate animation."
"Until about 1948 or 1949," says Scott, "dialogue in cartoons was frowned on. The ideal cartoon was one with no words at all. That was a holdover from newspaper and magazine cartoons; the funniest ones didn't need words."
" 'Crusader Rabbit' started adding dialogue," says Ward.
Scott again: "Doing an animated cartoon without dialogue is like proving how far you can walk on one leg. Sure it can be done, but why?

"We don't insist that each line be a smash. We use throwaways along with hits on the head—'inside' jokes, puns, wild lines, wisecracks. Where Hanna-Barbera go off is that they try to use stand-up comedy routines, and it turns out dull.
"Disney gets so worried about dialogue that sometimes he spends a full day recording two or three minutes of talk, trying to get subtle nuances."
"After 10 takes," Ward suggests, "no one knows the difference."
"It's like tracing a tracing of a tracing," says Scott.
"We have the strongest writing staff in the business," Ward claims. "Our emphasis is on writing because Bill and I were both writers; Hanna and Barbera were primarily animators.
In the past, animators have always been the key men.
"I don't think many people turning out cartoon series really understand stories. That's why so many of the shows, like 'The Flintstones,' are merely copies of stories for human characters.
"Television and pictures try to use established properties because they feel that if people already know about them, it's a head start.
"But that stifles creative thinking. Why rehash 'Mutiny on the Bounty'? Why do old 'Amos 'n' Andy' scripts and call it 'Calvin and the Colonel'? We loved Amos 'n' Andy on radio, but because you can't have colored characters in a cartoon is no reason to make them animals. "We were invited to do the 'Calvin' animations, but turned it down.
We've been asked to do cartoons based on 'Lum and Abner' and 'Fibber McGee.' They've already announced series about the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy.
"We're interested in fantasy and whimsy, a step above reality—and you can't do that if you're using old established characters."
Hanna and Barbera are peeved with them, they report, because—asked by a reporter what they thought of "The Flintstones"—they replied succinctly, "Mediocre, but at least it opened night hours for cartoons."
"We got a sharp note from their press agent," says Scott," but we got even. We spread a rumor that Hanna and Barbera are married to each other."
The zany duo operates out of three adjacent houses on Hollywood's Sunset Blvd. Ward rented an apartment in one of the buildings two years ago as living quarters, but soon converted that apartment and several nearby into workshops and offices.
A huge statue of Bullwinkle was erected, with much hoopla, outside the principal building last September. Other wacky gimmicks abound. Thus, a la the Grauman Chinese Theater's famed footprints, and signatures in cement, Ward and Scott have designated an area for imprints of celebrities' elbows.
From these offices emanate the most imaginative—and most uninhibited—press releases ever to leaven with levity a TV columnist's mail.
Thirty-odd some very odd people are employed at the Hollywood headquarters, though rarely are more than 10 or 11 on the premises.

"The others—writers, directors and story line people—often work at home," Ward explains. "They're free to come and go as they like. One even lived in Italy for six months and submitted his material by mail.
"The animation is done by about 180 artists in Mexico City. We started that as an economy measure; now, there's a shortage of animators in Hollywood. We wouldn't bring the work back anyway; we're pleased."
Scott writes the episodes starring Bullwinkle J. Moose and his sidekick, Rocky J. Squirrel, in 'The Bullwinkle Show," and provides the voices of Bullwinkle and of Dudley Doright, who figures in spoofs of melodramas.
"Bill's one of the top voice people in the business," says Ward.
"Jay's very big for crowds and applause," Scott counter-compliments.
"He's a great mumbler!" Both have been married 18 years; each has three children. Ward's are 15, 13 and 12; Scott's, 14, 11 and 5. "My kids love 'Bullwinkle,' " says Ward. 'They're loyal. I beat 'em!"
"But my youngest," Scott says dolefully, "prefers Popeye! What a shock!"
Teen-agers constitute a sizable Ward & Scott cheering section. Their particular favorite: the "Bullwinkle" baddie, Boris J. Badenov.
"Teen-agers like Boris, whose slogan is 'Somebody down there likes me,' because they're rebels," Scott suggests.
As for adult rooters, they're all over the place. Example: Us.

The Judge Spells It Out

There’s a running gag in Betty Boop’s Trial (1934), where a judge bangs his gavel and his chair twirls into his bench with a little portion of his beard sticking up.

In one version of the gag, his beard spells SOS.



In the final scene of the cartoon, mice jump out of his beard and help spell a phrase before the iris closes.



Myron Waldman and Hicks Lokey are the credited animators. There’s a perking trumpet version of Betty’s theme song that opens the cartoon. You can read about the actual Betty Boop trial HERE (the cartoon mimics the actual trial with a jokes about the words being used in testimony).

Blackout Borscht

Starving Woody Woodpecker wolfs down some “Blackout Borscht” from a taxidermist cat that wants to kill him. Here are some reaction drawings.



Don Williams is the only credited animator in Woody Dines Out, directed by Shamus Culhane, but of course there were others.

The Irate Bald Guy on TV

In the ‘50s and ‘60s, Fred Clark was one of those supporting actors who seemed to be everywhere. He had a pretty impressive list of film credits, including Sunset Boulevard and Auntie Mame (the less said about Sergeant Dead Head, the better) and was a regular or semi-regular on a few TV shows, while doing guest shots on others.

He told Newsday in 1964 his first paid acting job was in a play in New York in 1938. He made his first film in 1941 but couldn’t get regular work. Then came three years and 12 days in the military starting in 1943. He got out of the Army, played stock for $50 a week before Michael Curtiz cast him in The Unsuspected (released in 1947).

But it’s odd more interviews weren’t done with him. We’ll post a couple of stories, first from January 20, 1951, before he took over the role of Harry Morton on the TV version of Burns and Allen. The second is from August 19, 1962. Between those two interviews, Clark and his wife Benay Venuta were offered a “Mr. and Mrs.” type TV show which never came off, and he was signed as Daddy for an NBC-TV version of Baby Snooks which went nowhere. He revealed to Newsday he had been offered a series in 1964 playing opposite Soupy Sales. He didn’t waste time saying ‘no.’ Instead, he played opposite Red Buttons in the forgettable The Double Life of Henry Fyfe (1966). Clark died of cancer in 1968. He was only 54.

Baldie Calls on Screen Glamour Boys to Toss Away Exotic Toupees
By BOB THOMAS
Associated Press Hollywood Writer
HOLLYWOOD—Slick-topped character actor Fred Clark today called on Hollywood glamour boys to toss away their toupees.
“You're making it tough on the millions of bald-headed Americans,” Clark advised. “They may get inferiority complexes because they see every male film star with a full head of hair, whether it’s his or Max Factor’s.
“The baldies of America are in danger of feeling socially and romantically inferior because of how they are pictured in the movies.
There's no reason why Hollywood can't have at least one romantic star who is bald.”
• • •
Clark himself has had a fine head of skin for many years, but he is no oldtimer. He shields his exact age because he fears producers will think he is too young for the character roles he portrays. (My spies report he is in his thirties.)
The actor is living proof that a shiny-domed male can be successful socially and professionally. He is one of the film town's most popular escorts, his current date being Benay Venuta. He is also one of the busiest actors, with or without a toupee. He has appeared on the screen both ways, but shuns the hairpiece to his personal life.
• • •
“The toupee is just as dishonest for the male as the falsie is for the female," he reasoned. "I think it is much better to look bald than phony. Most women can spot a toupee at 10 paces. The movies may be able to trick audiences with fake hair, but it's too easily detected in person.”
Clark cited science to support his argument. He observed that studies in recent years have shown that baldness is a sign of virility. The fact that baldness occurs infrequently with women adds to that belief,” he said.
Furthermore, he named some famous figures as proof that bald men can be admired and successful—General Eisenhower, Winston Churchill, Henry J. Kaiser, Clement Attlee, Aga Kahn, Harold Stassen, etc.
“Hollywood is behind the times in trying to hide baldness." he concluded. “When will the studios wise up? Hair on the head? Bah! It's more important on the chest.”

Fred Clark Speaks Up For Supporting Players
By FRANK LANGLEY
NEW YORK — Fred Clark, best remembered as the temper-torn neighbour of the “Burns and Allen Show” some years ago, once expressed his distaste for award-winning actors who gush gratitude to everyone from producer to prop man. “They rarely,” he said, “if ever remember to give credit to their supporting players, without whom they certainly could not have attained their success.”
There is a good deal of sense to this, since supporting players, some of whom were once great stars and all tried-and-true professionals, supply the canvas, paints, brushes, color, setting and illuminating with which the star creates his masterpiece. If these elements are inferior, there will be no praise, no awards and very little play.
Most of these character actors walk the streets of Hollywood and New York in relative anonymity. If they are recognized, they produce such phrases as “there goes Fred Mertz, Lucy’s landlord” or “isn’t that whatziz name, who plays Ben Casey’s assistant?”

Fred Clark is no stranger to this type of recognition. “Most visitors to the set where we shot would approach me and say, ‘Oh, Mr. Morton, we enjoy your acting so much.’ When somebody addressed me as Mr. Clark, I was reasonably certain he worked there.”
Average American Male
Clark is far from the image most people have of an actor. On stage or off, he appears to be the average American male. He is tall, balding, sometimes attentive, other times aggressive, reacting to the situation.
On stage, he is a delight of producers and directors in his professional ability to make his characterization as natural as if it were in real life.
“It is particularly difficult to be natural in comedy,” Clark admitted, somewhat sadly. Although comedy has become his forte, he still prefers the serious roles.
“Comedy demands exaggeration. Too much makes it slapstick. Not enough makes it dull. You have to find the happy medium between natural and exaggeration so that the part can be both believable and still funny.”
Series Are Hard Work
In his latest role, on Wednesday, August 8, “U.S. Steel Hour,” Clark played a World War Two Colonel who so enjoyed the cooking for his mess officer he refused to consider his request for a transfer to a combat area. This situation required that combination of exaggeration and naturalness that Clark so proficiently blends.
Returning to the subject of top bananas in show business, Clark reminisced about George Burns, whom he considers to be “the very essence of a showman and the epitomy of a good administration in show business.”
“He didn’t demand anything of his actors. He advised them on their performances and that way got just what he was after.”
Asked if he would enjoy returning to a series like Burns and Allen, Clark said there is a possibility of doing one, though not in the immediate future. “However,” he remarked candidly, “I must admit that my preference for doing a TV series is motivated by finances. They are very lucrative. But they are very tough on an actor. They are confining, often boring and always hard work.
“I think I speak for most actors when I say that, if the money were the same, we would all want to be the guest stars and featured players in one-time specials, or somebody else’s series.”