Boo-ze

Slap Happy Lion is an exercise by Tex Avery in exhausting the audience by repeating the same joke faster and faster. A mouse says “Boo!” A lion does a take. Onto the next scene.

In this scene, the shaky lion tries to calm himself with a drink. Nope, the boo-ing mouse is there.



The same routine worked far better in Northwest Hounded Police a few years earlier. Avery’s too much in a hurry in this. And I don’t get any satisfaction in the mouse terrorising a lion into mental illness, though Avery and writer Heck Allen came up with the only suitable ending.

Bob Bentley, Walt Clinton and Ray Abrams animated this short, released in 1947.

He Comes Once in a Lifetime

The story of how Jack Benny married Mary Livingstone comes in several different varieties, but there can be no doubt that Jack deeply loved his wife and, whatever her faults, they remained married until he died in 1974.

Silver Screen magazine of October 1939 devoted a feature article on how the two got together. Fan magazines (and Hollywood publicists) aren’t altogether known for their veracity but this version contains many of the things talked about for many years afterward, such as the fact that Mary was engaged to someone else when she agreed to Jack’s proposal. This variation mentions nothing about a seder, the May Company, or the Marx Brothers being distant relatives of Miss Livingstone (née Sadye Marks).

It also devotes some space to Jack and Mary’s child Joannie, who mother praised in public but could be very unpleasant with her daughter in private. But, mainly, it is a love tale. The pictures accompanied the article.

Jack was, of course, loved by the public as well. Mary was right—someone like Jack Benny comes once in a lifetime.

Romance in Reverse
The wife of Jack Benny personally gives you the untold story of how they first met fought, fell in love, were married and expect to remain so
By Mary Livingstone Benny
 IT'S funny the way Jack and I always do things exactly the opposite of what might reasonably be expected of us. Even when we got married we did it in reverse. As a matter of fact, to be at all consistent we should be getting married right now and working back to the way we felt thirteen years ago.
For on the day we ran off to Waukegan to be married Jack and I felt about each other the way people usually do who've been married for years. Nice and friendly and comfortable with each other. We were friends. Neither of us had reached that high plane of excitement that's reserved for lovers. We weren't sitting away up over the world some place with our feet dangling over the moon and our minds touching the stars. It took us thirteen years to get that way.
If I were marrying Jack today I'd be so jittery about it I wouldn't know what I was doing. I'd be any goofy girl so mad with love that I'd probably be setting out for the license with a shoe on one foot and a bedroom slipper on the other, and doing all the other cockeyed things girls do when they're in a delirium of romance. Funny, isn't it, that today when I suddenly see Jack, when I'm not expecting to see him, my heart goes scooting right up to the place where my head would be if I had one? But I haven’t. I’ve lost it completely over Jack.
Now I can’t understand why I wasn’t playing leap frog over the stars the day Jack proposed to me. The only explanation I can offer is that mice men like Jack don’t usually do the things that get girls jittery over them. What I mean is, when men do all the little things girls are supposed to fall in love with, when they’re sweet and attentive and their one desire is to make them happy, girls, darn fools that they are, just can’t get excited about them.
It’s the ones who keep them on the anxious seat who get them mooning over the stars. The ones they’re never sure of. The darn little fools don’t realize who soon you can get over a man like that. He can come in and out of your life leaving nothing but a few wakeful nights, a few tears on a pillow and afterwards only a blessed sense of relief that he’s gone at last. But the other kind, the grand kind, can leave the emptiness of the whole lonely world. A man like that comes only once in a lifetime, but a lot of girls don't realize this before it's too late.
Let the poets sing of love at first sight. But count yourself as lucky as I do if you get love at last sight.
It certainly wasn't a case of love at first sight with Jack and me. Annoyance at first sight would have been more like it.

My family was living up in Vancouver, B. C. then and my father, who was getting up benefits for this cause and that, grabbed off every show person who came near the place for his performances.
We weren't a stage family but just the same we often had about the best talent in the world sitting at our dinner table. If the Trocadero could assemble such casts no one in the world would be able to buy a dinner there. They'd be so expensive. But I'm afraid we just took it for granted.
The Marx Brothers were steady customers for my mother's cooking every time they were in town, and we loved having them there for pot roast and noodles or whatever home cooked delicacy she decided the boys might like. I was a kid at the time and I'm afraid I didn't realize the stellar spot I was in. Of course I thought they were funny but I didn't know just how funny. It was after I'd gotten out in the world that I realized all people didn't grip Groucho's brand of humor or play the piano like Chico or clown like Harpo. I just thought the world was made up of delightful zanies and I've never quite gotten over the shock of finding out that it isn't.
It was Zeppo who brought Jack over. Jack was playing at the Orpheum and Zeppo told him there were a couple of girls he wanted him to meet, and Jack came all expectant and hopeful, dolled up in a new tie and his best suit, only to discover the girls were my sister, Babe, who had reached the provocative age of fifteen and myself a skinny, gangling kid of thirteen.
For once Jack didn't appreciate Zeppo's humor.
"Fine thing to do, bringing me here to meet a couple of kids," he said.
I was furious. After all there's no time in her life a girl takes herself quite as seriously as when she's just entered the teens. Me a Kid! I glared at him, hating him with all my soul. Why I'd even escaped my mother's watchful eye long enough to put lipstick on. She had to keep her shoes under lock and key in those days. Babe and I were always sneaking her highest heeled pairs and risking our necks in trying to look as grown up as we possibly could.
Jack saw he had hurt me and was sorry. It isn't in him to hurt anyone consciously and certainly not a child, even if she were a brat like me.
"Do you like dolls?" he asked, trying to make conversation and I was more furious than ever. I just stalked out of the room without answering him.
The next afternoon I had my revenge. I gathered my gang around me, and a formidable gang it was, too, and announced I was taking them to the Orpheum with the money I'd been saving for Christmas. There was a string to that offer though, a long one full of knots. They had to heckle a guy called Jack Benny.
We got there early and held the first two rows in the orchestra for an hour before the show began. We applauded every act enthusiastically. We laughed in all the right places and kept a respectful silence in the others until the cards appeared on either side of the stage announcing Jack Benny.
Then we sat there with faces as stony as our hearts, deadpanning his best gags. Jack told me, years later, he had never wanted to do anything as much in his life as he wanted to reach down into the orchestra that day and yank me up on the stage and turn me over his knees.
The next time I met Jack Benny was after my sister had married and moved to Chicago. She had married an actor who was a friend of Jack's and the three of them became pals. Babe adored him but felt she had turned traitor to those two kids of a few years ago. Imagine her liking that upstage so and so. Jack Benny.

I was engaged to a boy nobody but I seemed to like very much. I was always getting engaged to boys like that. My views of life were alternately rose color and drab gray in those days. If ever there was a romantic little ninny it was me. Every time I met a new boy and he had a line that pleased me the world turned rosy. Then, a few days later, they hardly ever lasted longer than that, I began to get fed up with romance and the world would look as if it never could stop raining again until I met a new lad I could rhapsodize about.
Much to my surprise I liked Jack when he came to see us. We had moved to Los Angeles and he was playing the Orpheum there. It's always the Orpheum on Keith time you know. But I had a date right after dinner and I kept it without a twinge. And the next day when Jack appeared at the store where I was working as a buyer, and asked me to lunch, I didn't turn a hair when I refused. He came to the store every day for a week after that and I went out with him twice, but it didn't mean a thing.
A week afterwards our telephone rang at three o'clock in the morning. The family was in a frenzy before my father got to it. What awful thing had happened? Could it be Babe? Could it be Grandma? None of us could think of anything but a major calamity that could make any telephone ring at three in the morning.
But the world hadn't turned upside down after all. It was only Jack Benny calling from San Francisco as casually as could be to say, "Hello Doll, I was just wondering how you are and what you're doing?"
At that moment I was shivering in my nightie motioning appealingly to the family not to stand there glaring at me. For now that they were no longer scared they were furious. But I wasn't mad. I was thrilled. It was my first long distance call and that meant something to a kid still in her teens. What if it wasn't a romantic conversation, full of pleas and endearments, it was still a long distance call.
I think even then I knew that call didn't mean much to Jack. It was just an impulse that stage people get all the time to call long distance as casually as anyone else would call from a few blocks away. And three o'clock in the morning didn't mean anything more to Jack than it did 'to any other young vaudevillian having a bite to eat after the show. It was just the middle of the afternoon to him. But to me it was an event and I did my darndest to turn it into a throbbing moment. But it didn't quite come off. How could I get romantic over a man kidding me in that casual, easy way Jack has of doing things.
Anyway I must have known that another BIG MOMENT was due. I told you I was a crazy kid, didn't I? Well it did, a week or two afterwards. I had gone north to visit my grandmother and I met a boy I thought I was mad about and we became engaged. Only it was different this time. The wedding day was set for January and this was November.
I was wearing his engagement ring too. That made it seem pretty formidable this time. I was scared to death when my head wasn't in the clouds, where it was most of the time.
I couldn't wait to call my sister in Chicago and I was pretty crestfallen at the way she took the news. "But you don't know what it's all about," she wailed. "You're such a goofy kid. Don't do anything in a hurry. Come out here to visit me and I'll try to pound some sense into that head of yours."

The first person I saw when I got off the train at Chicago was Jack. There he was standing beside my sister and brother-in-law grinning and he was the first of them to reach me. He took my hand and there wasn't any wild thrill. Only that nice, warm glow. Suddenly I knew how frightened I had been. I knew it because the way I was feeling now was just sort of happy and secure and peaceful.
We went around a lot together in the next week or so. I'd never had so much fun in my life. Funny, the way Jack and I clicked. We laughed at the same things without even realizing we were doing it. We were serious about the same things too. We'd sit together on the shore of Lake Michigan and sometimes we'd talk and sometimes we wouldn't. When two people speak the same language they think the same language too. And though it was November and those Lake breezes blow pretty hard we didn't even know it was cold.
We did the goofiest things together. We always just fell in with each other's ideas. We never had to explain things. So when we got on a bus once and I saw a couple of rather prim women stare disapprovingly at the length of my skirt, we were wearing them short that year too, remember, I decided I'd give them something to be really shocked at. So when Jack came along I pretended I didn't know him.
He came right into the game and started to play. He never put on a better act in his life, even in the old Palace on Broadway. He sat in the seat across from me leering in the most awful way, raising his eyebrows in a way that would send any respectable girl post haste in search of a policeman.
But I wasn't pretending to be respectable. And I acted as badly as he did, tossing my head and giggling and using my eyes in a way eyes have never been used outside of a home for moronic girls. You could hear the gasps, not only from the two women but from the whole bus when he confidently took the seat beside me and I slipped my arm through his.
We got off at the next stop followed by the indignant "Well!" of those two women.
You know it's easy enough to find kindred souls for a serious moment or even for a sad one. But having fun together . . . that's different! Senses of humor vary so. Some are scholarly, some subtle, some broad. Some are pedantic and some are whimsical and some just aren't there at all. Having the same sense of the ridiculous is awfully important for two people. For if a man and a woman can laugh at the same time you can risk your last dollar on their being happy together.
We were all invited to Jack's father's house out in Lake Forest for a weekend, and on Friday night Jack and I sat up talking after the others had gone to bed. It was grand. We didn't realize how late it was. We always had so much to say to each other even if we had seen each other only an hour or so before.
Then, without any warning at all, Jack asked me to marry him and I said I would. I knew it was right. Don't ask me how I knew it, but I did. I'd never felt so happy before, so entirely without doubts or misgivings of any kind. We woke up the whole house and told them our news. And as long as I live I'll never forget Babe throwing her arms around me and crying, "You little ninny, I never knew you had sense before."
The next morning I felt myself smiling before I really was awake. I'd never awakened, so completely contented before. Then I saw the engagement ring on my finger and I was petrified. I'd been so happy the night before I'd completely forgotten I was engaged to another man.
I threw on my clothes any which way and ran downstairs to find Jack. I threw myself in his arms and sobbed out my story. He took out his handkerchief and wiped away the tears streaming down my face. Then he held it out to me and said, "Here Doll, blow! Blow hard!" And I did and it sort of cleared all my tears and my fears away at the same time.
Then Jack said, and he was very serious now, the kind of nice, easy seriousness that I've gotten to know is one of the nicest things about him, "Listen, if we don't get married now, we never will. You know that and I know it. So get your hat and we'll be on our way."
Well, it's funny the way I took his orders, relying on his wisdom the way I've relied on it ever since. I went upstairs and got dressed all over again just as calmly as you please and even remembered to put powder in my compact and get myself a fresh handkerchief. And then without telling anyone what we were doing we got in the car and drove out to Waukegan.
We didn't do much talking on the way and when we did it was about the most casual things, and I didn't feel excited or up in the clouds at all. But when the ceremony was finished and Jack turned to kiss me he couldn't because I wasn't there at all. I was flat on the floor. Ninny that I was, I had fainted. So maybe I was excited a bit after all and didn't realize it.
I don't know just when it was I began getting up in the air about Jack. Only that I'm getting more that way every day that passes. I'll hear a song and somehow it seems as if that song had been written just for us, and I'll feel like crying as if I was a youngster who had met a man for the first time and was mad for him and didn't know yet if he returned the feeling or not. And if he's a few minutes late getting home I'll pace the floor like a crazy thing.
Only one thing was missing and for a long time it seemed that Jack and I were never going to have what other husbands and wives have. We both wanted a baby so desperately. Then we discovered that a baby doesn't have to be your own to love it and want it above everything in the world except each other.

When we decided to adopt a baby we gave a lot of thought to the type we wanted. Just when we thought we wanted a girl we'd think a boy would be nice and when we decided on brown eyes we thought of blue ones in the next breath. Of course we were sure we were going to select a pretty baby. Wouldn't it be just too ridiculous to have the advantage of our own selection and not pick the prettiest one we could find.
But we didn't. Our little Joan was only three months old when we found her and she wasn't a pretty baby at all. But it didn't make any difference. We felt something, as soon as we looked at her, that we hadn't felt for any of the other babies. Maybe it's true, as scientists think, that- attraction is a matter of chemicals and that you can't help being drawn to some people more than to others. Maybe it's just that it was destined little Joan was coming to us. At any rate there was a bond between that baby and us and we felt it the first moment we saw her. No mother and father looking at their baby for the first time could have felt more in awe of the thing that was happening to them than Jack and I felt looking at this, our first child.
Today that baby is the loveliest child you've ever seen. And that's not just a fond mother talking either. She has the bluest eyes in the world and the yellowest hair and her face is as lovely as a Botticelli cherub. But that isn't important. That little girl, she's five now, is as spiritually and mentally and physically kin to us as if she had become ours by birth as she now is through love.
Nothing in the world makes me as furious as to have people say, "Isn't she lucky that you adopted her."
Why, we're the lucky ones getting a child like that. And we're not such egotistical fools either that we don't realize our own baby, had we had one, might not have been as perfect. We didn't know then how she would develop, any more than other mothers and fathers know how their children are going to develop. That she has become the individual she is, is only another one of the blessings that have come to us.
For we're been awfully lucky, Jack and I. We've laughed together and sometimes we've cried together — as what two people who love each other and have been together for a long time haven't? And we've seen some of our friends part and we've been unhappy about it. But we've never been afraid for ourselves.
Because the thing we have isn't a thing that was conjured up some spring evening out of a handful of stars and a mist of moonlight. It's a thing we've built together, slowly and securely out of the days and the years of being together. And you don't lose a thing like that!

Bill and Joe Tell Their Story, 1956

By March 1956, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera had reached the pinnacle of their success. At least, that’s what they thought.

Fred Quimby had retired from the producer’s office as the MGM cartoon studio and the two of them were now in charge. Little did they know that a year later, they would be finishing up the last of their cartoons for the studio after management told them to shut down the animation plant. And even littler did they know that they would move out and create a television cartoon production empire, making them wealthy and famous beyond any expectations.

This story was published in Good Housekeeping magazine with the aforementioned cover date.

What’s fascinating to me is the story that Joe and Bill never really told. The M-G-M cartoon studio, prior to the success of Tom and Jerry, was rife with nasty politics. New York animators and the West Coast animators didn’t get along, as animator George Gordon once revealed. People were going into other people’s offices trying to force firings. Managers Milt Gross and Harry Hershfield quickly came and went. Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising, two guys who were more or less fired by M-G-M, returned to the studio to produce beside some of their former staff that had been poached (such as Bill Hanna). Friz Freleng, who strikes me as a man who wouldn’t take crap from anyone, hightailed it back to the comparative safety of the Schlesinger studio. Considering this political climate, how did a demoted director and an ex-storyman from Terrytoons convince anyone to allow them to put together a cartoon for theatrical release? Was this another case of back-room studio politics? Whatever the answers, the cartoon world was better for it. And imagine what TV animation might have been like if Hanna and Barbera hadn’t got together.

Other than Fred Quimby, you’ll look in vain for other names in the story.



Mr. TOM and Mr. JERRY
Meet the men who do the thinking for those crazy cartoon characters
BY RUTH HARBERT
Hollywood Editor
Once upon a time there was a certain cat, and also a certain mouse, both of whom are now famous practically everywhere as Tom and Jerry of the movie cartoons, But 18 years ago, they were only nebulous ideas in the minds of two Hollywood cartoonmen named Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. How these gentlemen happened to create Tom and Jerry, and build them to star status in the studio hierarchy of M-G-M, is one of the more pleasant Hollywood success stories.
Hanna and Barbera are now producing all M-G-M cartoons. As a team, they have masterminded some 200 Tom and Jerry cartoons. They have also produced cartoon features such as the currently popular, more seriously conceived Good Will to Men and the animation sequences that are found occasionally in M-G-M feature pictures. But Tom and Jerry are their number one stock in trade, and have been from the moment the public first glimpsed a cheerfully malevolent Tom chasing an opportunistic little Jerry in a cartoon called Puss Gets the Boot.
Prior to the Tom and Jerry era, both Hanna and Barbera were employees of the M-G-M cartoon department, Barbera as a sketch artist and Hanna as an idea-and-production man (i.e., one who supervises the photography and the subsequent physical preparation of cartoon film). Barbera is a former Brooklyn boy who once aspired to be a boxer and became, instead, a Wall Street bank teller who drew cartoons in his spare time. After he was laid off in a personnel cutback, he became an animator at a cartoon studio, and a short while later a member of M-G-M’s cartoon staff. At this point he met Hanna, a former engineering student who had started his career as an inker of cartoon frames and was now an idea man for cartoon stories and gags.
Assigned to work together on a number of small projects, the two young men found themselves in perfect harmony. “It simply turned out that we thought alike, and we still do,” they say. They decided to form an unofficial partnership and produce a new kind of cartoon. At first they searched for a single new character to use as the basis of a new production. They considered and rejected dozens of ideas. Suddenly the word “partnership: struck them, and straightaway they decided to create not one, but two new cartoon characters. What better than a cat and a mouse? They would provide good basic conflict to start with—a cat after a mouse, a big bully getting the worst of it and the little hero emerging triumphant. Such a combination contained fundamental story elements, and so Tom and Jerry were born.
Their first appearance in Puss Gets the Boot immediately captured public fancy and ran for six weeks in Los Angeles at its first theatre billing. Neither Bill nor Joe missed one night of that run! The studio was delighted with the success of Puss, but prophesied that the characters would last about three pictures only. They were mistaken.
Now working on Tom and Jerry cartoon number 212, Barbera and Hanna have added during the years many other characters to share the camera with them. There is the little French mouse who was seen in the Oscar-winning The Two Mousketeers, and the lovable duckling in That’s My Mommy. Their latest two are the bulldog father and son, Spike and Tyke, now on their way to stardom.



It’s noticeable, in talking to the producers, that both Hanna and Barbera regard their pen-and-ink children as living, breathing entities. In discussing the small canary seen in several cartoons, Barbera said casually, “We plan to use the canary again. She works well with Jerry.”
How are these cartoons created? Like any other picture, they begin with a story. Hanna and Barbera sit facing each other at two large desks that are pushed together. There they talk over an idea, enlarging it gradually into a full story line. But unlike other motion pictures, the cartoons have no script written in advance. Instead, as the points of the story unfold in discussion, Barbera roughly sketches action on small note pads. (More than once he jumps to his feet to demonstrate a fancy step or some bit of action. Once, for a memorable three days, he was crippled by a strained shoulder, the result of showing how Jerry should emerge from a hole!)
He and Hanna pass these rough sketches back and forth across the desk to each other, sometimes with a minor correction, more often just as they are drawn. For an average Tom and Jerry cartoon Barbera does some 400 quick sketches, depicting the key points of the plot. They serve as a preliminary guide for the subsequent detailed sketching and photographing of thousands of frames for the final cartoon film.
Like most creative men, Barbera and Hanna worry constantly about their stories. They are usually 20 or 30 ideas ahead, conceived from things they see, or hear, or dream.
The Oscar-winning The Two Mouseketeers opened a new field of foreign backgrounds for Tom and Jerry. Their creators got the idea from one of the studio’s swashbuckler films, but the penciled notes lay in a drawer several years until one day they both heard a six-year-old girl speaking French. Voilà, a French mouse! They had their story.
Hoe came into the office one day enthusiastically describing his new dishwasher and washing machine. Bill got the idea of a mechanized cat. Result: Push-button Kitty.
The cartoon crew has also worked closely with the feature-picture producers, inserting novelty sequences in which human actors dance with cartoon characters. Anchors Aweigh pioneered in this field. In it Tom and Jerry danced with Gene Kelly. More recently, the Sinbad the Sailor sequence in Invitation to the Dance shows Kelly dancing with the amorous Dragon and other specially created characters.
Barbera and Hanna’s latest production, Good Will to Men, which they worked on with Fred Quimby, is far from their usual comedy. It is the culmination of a long-term desire, and though it is early to predict, I believe it might very well add another Oscar to their collection. Its cast consists entirely of mice plus one wise old owl. It focuses a penetrating spotlight on Man, on his apparent desire to destroy both himself and his neighbor.
Tom and Jerry gets letters from friends all over the world. Because they rarely speak beyond an “ouch” or “oops,” they meet no language barriers wherever they go.
Since their birth, Tom and Jerry have gradually and subtly changed in appearance. Tom started out as a rather disreputable creature, mangy in appearance, with tufts of hair poking out here and there. Every two years, Hanna and Barbera tack up master drawings of Tom and Jerry and study them. Then Joe redesigns them. Right now the 1956-57 models show a cuter Jerry, with larger eyes and a smaller tail. Tom is more streamlined, with an even naughtier Machiavellian look.
But one thing always remains the same. Unlike so many story lines, cat always meets mouse, cat always chases mouse, but can never gets mouse!
THE END

You Killed Rudy Vallee

Court Jester Goopy Geer (in his third cartoon) sings the song about “Old King Cole” to the King but when the revised lyrics reach the part about calling “for his crooners three,” Goopy’s marotte interrupts by specifying they’re “Crosby, Colombo and Vallee” (singing the Joe Burke and Al Dubin song of the same name).



Suddenly, Vallee pops up from a jack-in-the-box and starts crooning Burke and Dubin’s “For You.”



The king takes care of Vallee.



“I’d rather hear Amos and Andy,” growls the king. “Oh, show (sure), Kingfish, show, show,” drawls Goopy in a not-very-good impression.



But we’re not finished with radio references yet. Some character pops his head through a transom and lets out with Tony Wons’ “Are ya listenin’?” The nervous Goopy shakes and says “Yeah. I’m Walter Windshield.”



Suddenly, bottles of liquor pop their corks in a cannon-like explosion sound. Goopy shouts, “Okay, Chicago!” and runs at an angle past the camera.



The phrase was used by Walter Winchell on his show, The Lucky Strike Radio Hour, at the time this cartoon The Queen Was in the Parlor, was made. In fact, it was used in advertising copy by Warner Bros. to promote a feature film of that year, Blessed Event, which starred Lee Tracy as a Winchell-like gossip columnist. (Universal made a similar film at the time starring Lew Ayres called “Okay, America”). There’s a further connection between this cartoon and Blessed Event—both had scores by Frank Marsales.

The title song was written by written by Sherman Myers (Montague Ewing). I haven’t found out if it was used in a Warners’ feature; this was the only cartoon it was heard in.

You Killed Jimmy Durante

The Queen isn’t impressed when a Jimmy Durante-in-the-box sings the lyrics “Let’s put out the lights and go to sleep” to her. She slaps him.



The jack-in-the-box’s voice is the worst impression of Durante ever put to film; Keith Scott tells me it’s Rudy Ising’s. The Schnozz-in-a-box says “I am mortified!” before expiring.



The King is upset that Durante is dead. He walks along imitating the Stan Laurel whimper, pointing at it. Frank Marsales’ band plays “Am I Blue.”



The crying king dumps the jack-in-a-box over the balcony. But suddenly, he’s all excited. He sees children playing in cycle animation in the courtyard. Durante is forgotten for the rest of the cartoon. How mortifying!

The cartoon is Young and Healthy (1933), drawn by Larry Martin and Ham Hamilton. The celebrity jack-in-a-box idea wasn’t new. More tomorrow.

Hello Dere

Tuxedos were the thing every smart, rising stand-up comedy duo were wearing in the 1960s. But one comedian seemed a bit out of place in evening wear—mainly because he looked like he had plopped a large Brillo pad on his head.

Marty Allen followed fashion trends. As the ‘60s wore on, hair got longer. So did Marty’s unkempt ball atop his crown.

If you watched television in that decade, Allen and Steve Rossi seem to have parked themselves on Ed Sullivan’s show. Maybe they weren’t on a lot, but it sure seems like it. Despite that, Sullivan wasn’t the one who gave them their break on TV. And the way they told it way-back-when, nobody did, other than themselves. All that time on the living room tube meant nothing.

Here are a couple of columns from the National Enterprise Association. First stop is a story that appeared in papers around July 16, 1960.

TV? Who Needs It?
By Dick Kleiner
NEW YORK (NEA) – A fast-rising comedy team is disproving the widely-held belief that nowadays you have to be exposed on TV over a long period of time before you can become a top star.
These two—(Marty) Allen and (Steve) Rossi—have only been on TV twice in their affiliated lives. They appeared in two guesting shots with Perry Como last winter and spring. They helped, of course, but Allen and Rossi think the help was very limited.
"TV is over-rated as far as making stars," says Marty Allen. "A good average comedian could go along for years, making a decent living, even if he never was seen on TV."
They teamed up a year ago. Allen, the older of the two, had a long record as a comic, both as a single and part of a team. He's short, stocky and has a face that always reminds people of other people. In fact, he keeps track of whom he's told he looks like (Art Carney is leading, closely followed by Harpo Marx and Jimmy Savo).
Rossi, a handsome 26-year-old, grew up from the Mitchell Boy Choir to recording fame. At the time he met Allen, he was the production singer in a Las Vegas hotel.

Today, just about a year after their first meeting, they're headlining at the Copacabana in New York. For fresh talent, this is quite a coup. And they feel they made it this far on the strength of their talents, not because of two shots with Como. So far, a definite Allen and Rossi style has not materialized. They do a bit of Martin and Lewis' type of act (Rossi sings, Allen mugs) ; they have borrowed from Bob Hope and others by using topical gags; they pantomime, dance, clown; they use brief skits. But everything has their own individual stamp.
As for their future TV plans, they just shrug. If something good comes along, fine, but they're not worrying about it. They flatly refuse to work the Jack Paar Show, unless they're on Paar’s panel. They figure a five-minute spot doing part of their act could hurt them, especially if Paar takes it into his head to make some crack.
They feel their future is in the top nightclubs, plus perhaps movies and/or Broadway (Rossi could be a singing leading man with Allen as the comedy relief). There are other reasons they don’t worry. Allen is married to the reservations clerk at one of the biggest resort hotels in the Catskills—“So we always have a room,” Marty says. And Rossi writes songs, many in collaboration with Paul Anka.
Marty Allen almost discovered Anka. While playing in Canada, he was invited to dinner at the Anka home. Out trotted a fat little boy with a guitar. Allen kept on eating.
"What should I do with the boy?" the father said.
"You could put him in the closet," said Allen.
Despite this inauspicious beginning, they're friends today.

Kleiner did a follow-up piece. It appears in print beginning February 4, 1962.

Comedy Team Proves They Don’t Need TV
By DICK KLEINER
NEW YORK (NEA)—Almost two years ago, this writer interviewed Marty Allen and Steve Rossi, a nightclub comedy team. At the time, they said they were going to try to make a success without television because they felt TV would use up their material too fast.
And now, how are things going with them?
"It's worked out," says Marty Allen. "We stuck to nightclubs. We've done practically no TV—I can remember only once since the last time we talked, and that was a spot, on Sullivan about seven months ago. We've made no records or movies or anything—just stuck to nightclubs.
"In the last 18 months, we've been working all the time and we've tripled our price. I guess that proves you don't need TV in this business."
Allen admits that luck had something to do with it. They were working in Las Vegas when Frank Sinatra saw them and liked them. That's always a big help to performers.
"Once," Marty says, "he flew us in his own plane to Florida. What a beautiful plane! We were flying along and Frank says to me, 'Well, how do you like it?" I said it was fine. So he says, 'I think I'll trade it in for a jet.' I said, 'Wait 'til we land.' "
Starts Breaking
Since the Sinatra association — but possibly just because the boys are talented — things have started breaking for them. Allied Artists signed them to do a picture. ABC-Paramount taped their act and will put out a record. Garry Moore's producer approached them with an idea for a TV series. Car 54, Where Are You? wants Marty for a role, and Steve Rossi (the singer) is making straight vocal records.
So the boys have proved their point. Young performers in the comedy field can make it without television. Of course, it helps to be funny.

It’s remarkable how fame changes one’s attitude. Let’s jump ahead two more years. TV? Bring it on!

Comedy Constant Threat
By Harold Stern
New York, Jan. 17—Among the newer comedians, the team of Marty Allen and Steve Rossi ranks high in the funny echelon. They have been widely acclaimed for their unique personalities, their approach to their material, their timing, their catch phrases and their originality.
What do they have to say about their success?
"Comedy is constant theft," Steve Rossi told me. "There are only eight basic situations and you get your laughs from switching around punch lines. We've used routines that Jackie Gleason and others have used before us, but they don't accuse us of stealing, because they stole the material themselves. We're all using comedy that's sometimes as old as 2,000 years."
"Even 'Hello dere' (the catch phrase which has won them international renown) isn't original," Marty Allen chimed in, "but it's mine. And it was an accident. I forgot my lines and couldn't think of anything else to say. The audience loved it and it stuck. Now we're trying to create another catch phrase ("I made it up") deliberately and it's beginning to catch on."
Whether their new expression will ever attain the success of “Hello, dere” is doubtful.
"Aloha Dere" Week
Their “Hello, Dere” record album has sold over 70,000 copies. They are working on a book; called “Hello, Dere” which will offer pictures of Marty in all his ridiculous costumes, with funny captions. They have a tie-in with the National Safety Council which distributes bumper strips reading: "Allen and Rossi Say 'Hello, Dere' But Drive Carefully." Hawaii recently celebrated its Aloha Dere Week. Kids are using it. And so on.

They have three major television guest shots coming up in the next several weeks, the Garry Moore show on Tuesday, Jan. 21, the Ed Sullivan show on Sunday, Feb. 16 and the "Hollywood Palace" show in early March. So far, they're sure they'll be doing a new routine on the subject of Indians on the Moore show and expect to have another routine on car racing ready for the Sullivan show. On the latter hour, they'll be sharing the billing with some pretty stiff competition, Mitzi Gaynor and the Beatles, not necessarily together or in that order.
Interested in Series
"Ed Sullivan was one of the first people to put us on television," said Steve, "and he's publicized us extensively. Now, he's interested in doing a situation comedy with us and we've had several discussions on the subject. We're really interested in our own series."
“We can get partial ownership now," said Marty. "Before this, we were in no position to. But we've proved ourselves as an act and now we're definitely interested. So far, the only star I can think of who came in cold and was a big hit in a situation comedy series is Mister Ed. I don't recall him making any guest appearances."
"If the story appeals to us, we'll be happy to do a series," said Steve. "That's one case where we'll have to rely on the material. Up till now, the secret of our success has been that we've never been afraid to try for an instantaneous change of pace. We try to do noncomedic things, to be more than just a comedy act. Marty does serious pantomime and I sing operatic arias. And we'll go from that to being completely low-brow. And if we're driven to it, we'll even throw in a touch of sophistication."
"That change of pace even holds true in our records," Marty added. "So far we've got three albums which contain various portions of our act. Now we'd like to do an album for kids and we'd like our next adult comedy album to be situation comedy using other actors. Steve will be producing a rock- and-roll album for 20th Century- Fox Records and will probably do an album in Rome for M-G-M."

Allen and Rossi were playing the Riviera in Vegas in September 1968, but they had already announced “Goodbye ‘Dere” to each other (Variety, Aug. 7, 1968), effective mid-November after a Jackie Gleason taping. Rossi went on to partner with Joe E. Ross (of the aforementioned Car 54). It didn’t last. In January, he’d hooked up with Slappy White.

Allen continued to pop up on the medium he didn’t think he needed, mostly as himself. And he and Rossi got back together in the ‘90s to perform at Vegas World. He was inducted into the Casino Legends Hall of Fame in 1999. And this past year, he tweeted to the world to join him in Sin City for his birthday party. At age 95, he got to say “Hello ‘Dere” to a whole group of fans who remembered the old Las Vegas—and maybe Ed Sullivan.

Milkman of Tomorrow

“Heretofore, milking old bossy has taken much of the farmer's valuable time,” narrator Paul Frees tells us in Tex Avery’s Farm of Tomorrow. But soon we see the results of a cow cross-bred with a kangaroo.



The milkman has been given that quick stomping walk cycle that you see in other Avery cartoons of the mid-50s, such as Cellbound.



The coloured outlines of the characters in the stills are interesting but this cartoon may be the worst of Avery’s 1950s output.

Pantry Panic Backgrounds

Pantry Panic (1941) was made by the Walter Lantz studio about the time background artist Ed Kiechle left to work on the main Universal lot. I don’t think he did the backgrounds for this cartoon; I think they’re Fred Brunish’s, but I can’t be positive. The table with food looks like one of Brunish’s watercolours. Background artists weren’t listed until 1944 after Shamus Culhane arrived to direct; Phil De Guard was handling the backgrounds as Brunish was doing war work for the studio.

There are a few overlays on some of the background art below, and a couple of characters, but I wanted to give you the idea of the settings in the frames. There’s an excellent array of colours on some.



This cartoon has Alex Lovy and Les Kline as Lantz’s credited animators on this. La Verne Harding, Frank Tipper and Hal Mason were also animating at the studio around this time.

Benny and the Boy

When was the first time you saw/heard Jack Benny?

It’s a question Benny fans occasionally ask each other for fun. As a boy, I must have been aware of Benny on TV. I knew all his stock gestures. When I saw him on Laugh-In, I recognised him (and wondered what he was ever doing on a show like that). But my main experience with him through childhood was on rebroadcasts of his old radio shows. And I don’t think my experience is that unusual.

The son of Herald Tribune Syndicate radio/TV writer John Crosby was introduced as a boy to Benny via the radio, except in his case, Benny was still doing shows for the CBS network. Crosby wrote about it in his column. He also touched on something that’s bothered me about the Benny TV show—the laugh track.

Jack was vaudeville trained, meaning he waited for the laughs or applause to die down before going onto his next line. The same thing when he started in radio. You milk a laugh, you don’t step on one. But when his radio shows started being recorded for broadcast and cut down to 29 minutes and 20 seconds, the sound editors didn’t worry about such niceties. Solely to fit the broadcast in the allotted half hour, you can hear Jack reading his script while the studio audience laughs. It just sounds wrong to my ear. And when TV came along, it was even worse. Not only is Jack talking over the phoney laughs, they’re the same laughs show after show after show. And I’m pretty sure you heard them on other shows, too. It’s really obvious in the “mannequin” show that Crosby talks about.

The column appeared in the Herald Tribune on March 9, 1955.

Jack Benny Passes Test of Small Boy Audience
By JOHN CROSBY
The other night my son discovered Jack Benny. Of course, Benny has been around 40 years or so, but Michael just discovered him fast other night, largely because he was up a lot later than he should have been. And he practically fell out of his chair laughing at him.
That is a great test of a comedian to get a seven-year-old child to laugh at you. I remember when I was Michael's age the first comedian I ever saw—or first performer of any kind—was Fred Stone. And, years later, I recall Stone saying that he always tried to locate a child in the audience and bounced all the laughs off him. If you got the kids laughing, Stone used to say, you had the audience in the palm of your hand.
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As a matter of fact, there are two big tests of a comedian. One is the children, The other is whether he translates to foreign soil. Benny passes both of them very well. In England, for example, they write about Benny's art in the hushed, cathedral prose that we reserve over here for Sir Lawrence Olivier. It makes mighty fine reading, but an American reading it is likely to wonder if they're talking about the same old Jack Benny they've been listening to over here Sunday nights these many years.
To get back to Sunday night, I didn't have the heart to tell Michael that this wasn't the best of the Jack Benny shows. It was on film, and time and again this winter Benny has demonstrated that while film may enhance an actor, it doesn't enhance a comedian. At least, not Benny.
Benny has done some perfectly wonderful live shows this year, especially one with, Giselle Mackenzie. But all the filmed shows have came out pretty flat. There was one earlier, this year with Mary Livingston in which Benny wound up as a mannikin in a department store window. It should have been hilarious. It wasn't.
The one last Sunday in which Benny escorts his Beverly Hills Beaver Patrol through a carnival was written with the usual loving care by Benny's crack writing crew of Sam Perrin, Milt Josefburg [sic], George Balzer and John Tackaberry.
● ● ●
And it should have been a howl, too. But it came out flat. Benny's famed timing seems to elude the film cameramen. He is a master at handling audiences—and there isn't any audience.
The canned laughter was even more painful than usual. Still, I never met an actor yet who doesn't yearn for film.
"You can cut all the mistakes," they will tell you if you give them a chance. Well, that's true enough, but they also contrive to cut all the enjoyment, all the spontaneity and much of the laughter. After all, the Benny movie career was pretty close to a disaster, and there's no reason to suppose that he's going to be any better on TV films than on movie films for theater.
Still, Michael thought it was great, if that's any comfort. One of the great things these days is watching a child get his first experience of the magic of the theater on television. God knows there isn't much of the real thing, but there are moments like Mr. Benny or "Disneyland." Watching a child watch "Disneyland" is an experience all of its own.
● ● ●
These are the childhood memories they are going to hark back to years later as I hark back to Fred Stone. "Remember way back when we first saw Donald Duck." Long after they forget "Space Cadet" they'll remember the Disney animals with the peculiar affection that we of the older generation reserve for Betty Bronson to the first "Peter Pan" of my experience.