Camelephant

Where else would you get this but in a Fleischer cartoon? A bear, swinging on conjoined tails of two monkeys, lands on an elephant and turns it into a camel.



From Betty Boop’s May Party (1933), with animation by Dave Tendlar and William Henning.

Before He Tried to Stop That Pigeon

It can be a little surprising to discover how far back some entertainers go. To the right you see a picture of Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney. It’s from Showman’s Trade Review of July 8, 1939 in reference to a feature movie the two had appeared in. Winchell would have been 16.

Leafing through columns, photos and stories in old newspapers and trade papers, it’s interesting to see that Winchell was in constant demand. He never appears to have been unemployed. He continually appeared in nightclubs or theatre revues to very favourable reviews. In the early ‘40s, he toured with Phil Harris when the Jack Benny radio show was on summer hiatus and appeared with him at the Wilshire Bowl. In 1943, he landed two regular spots on the Mutual Broadcasting System; one was his own show (Mondays, 9:30-10) and the other with Beatrice Kay (Saturdays, 8:30-9). He hit the road with Sammy Kaye and was a regular on his radio show in the mid-’40s. And in 1948, when there were maybe 12 stations across the U.S., Winchell got his first network TV series. He stayed on the tube regularly into the 1960s.

I suppose it isn’t much of a shock, but almost every story I’ve found about Winchell in the first decade or so contains the words “Edgar Bergen.” I wonder how tough it was on Winchell to constantly be compared to him. Not only were they both ventriloquists, they and their dummies both hosted TV quiz shows. And while Winchell later tried to stop a pigeon as Dick Dastardly for Hanna-Barbera, and provided other voices for cartoons, Bergen tried to get into animation with a Charlie McCarthy cartoon made by Bob Clampett in the early ‘60s; the series didn’t sell.

Here’s a feature story about Winchell from April 5, 1951 from The American Weekly, a newspaper magazine supplement. Among other things, it points out Winchell was well aware of how to market his assets.

How Paul Winchell Got Into Television
By JOAN KING FLYNN
TWELVE-YEAR-OLD Paul Winchell, standing before his principal in New York's School of Industrial Arts, trembled slightly. He'd been summoned.
"What is this I hear about you and a dummy?" the principal, George Gombarts, asked.
"Yes, sir, I have one, sir," Paul answered. "I made it in art class."
"But you make it talk, too. You didn't learn that there."
"No sir, I sent away for a booklet on how to become a ventriloquist."
The principal's words then became both kindly and thrilling. We told the boy that he had heard of his talent and that Paul was to have a chance to win $100 on what was then called Major Bowes' Amateur Hour. It was a great sum in Paul's mind, for his father, a tailor in New York's lower East Side, made only about $15 a week and on it supported his wife and three children.
"I'll do my best," Paul said. A little later on the amateur hour his best was so good that he won the $100 and went on tour with Major Bowes at $75 a week. ON A recent Monday night in New York, after the regular weekly telecast of "What's My Name?" a popular television show starring Paul and Jerry Mahoney, his dummy, his former principal, retired now, visited him backstage.
"I guess you were right when you said you were going to the top," he said to the 27-year-old star, who last year was reputed to have earned $250,000 from television and revenues from Jerry Mahoney by-products such as dolls, T-shirts, key chains and sweaters. Paul, however, didn't go quickly to the top. He has come to popularity by a long, hard way.
After eight months with the Bowes troupe, he went to Hollywood and there for five years he lived a hand-to-mouth existence. From one furnished room to another, he limped (a handicap left by infantile paralysis), carrying Jerry in an aging suitcase, but he never lost hope.
JUST LET me do my act," he pleaded once with the proprietor of a Los Angeles nightclub. "Don't pay me anything but if you think I'm good throw this silver dollar—it's my last—to me."
The proprietor at the right time tossed in the silver dollar and after it came the patter of patrons' coins. Every night for two weeks the money rained down. The tide in the affairs of Paul Winchell was rising and for both himself and Jerry he bought a new suit. Thus they appeared at a Hollywood benefit. After the performance, Ted Weems sought them out.
"I'll pay you $175 a week to go on the road with my band," he said to Paul. "Is that enough?"
"I'd have gone for $50," Paul told The American Weekly recently.
"That was the beginning of my luck. After that I was always working, in nightclubs, theatres and on the radio."
In 1945 he married the former, Dorothy Morse, a pretty blond singer. They have a daughter, Stephanie, nearing five years old.
He has bought his father a home in Los Angeles and the elder Winchell's only tailoring now is for Jerry. He has made all of that remarkable fellow's 35 suits. The Winchell debut in television came near being a catastrophe. Three years ago he was asked to audition for a program planned by Joseph Dunninger, the mind reader and magician. A film recording of several scenes with Jerry was made, as a screen test for the sponsor's approval.
When Paul went into the projection room to see it, he was aghast. The photography was fine; his voice came across perfectly, but Jerry's voice was a series of croaks. For some reason, it seemed, Jerry's voice didn't register.
HASTILY Paul arranged to do a guest appearance with Jerry on a friend's television show to prove that he really could make Jerry's voice come through. The telecast began. A signal came from the engineer's booth. It had happened again—Jerry's voice was a croak.
Panic - stricken, Paul felt his whole prospective TV career vanishing. Then he saw the reason for his dilemma.
When he talked the movable microphone was over his head, but when he appeared to throw his voice and Jerry appeared to talk, the dummy and its illusion of speech were so real that unthinkingly the sound man had put the microphone over Jerry's head.
Paul signaled the sound man to keep the instrument over him. The trouble was over. For the first time, televiewers then heard the uninhibited Jerry Mahoney, who once called President Truman "Prez."
PAUL (who is not related to Walter Winchell, the columnist) explained to the sponsors of the Dunninger program and he and Jerry were hired, they became so popular that 100 Jerry Mahoney fan clubs were organized and more than 200,000 Mahoney dolls were sold to junior ventriloquists.
NBC-TV put Paul and Jerry under exclusive contract for 52 weeks a year for five years and last fall starred the pair on their own program, "What's My Name?" sponsored by Speidel Watch Bands. Besides his routines with Jerry, in which the dummy sings, dances and asks questions, Paul does a dramatic act each week Often in the studio audience is his No. 1 fan, George Gombarts, the school principal, who gave him his start.

Winchell visited many hospital wards during his nightclubbing days performing at bedsides for children, especially ones with polio. He also recorded a different kind of children’s record. “Mother Goose Songs of Democracy” is what educator Dr. Louis Untermeyer called “Little Songs on Big Subjects.” They were 12, one-minute jingles on interracial understanding and religious toleration. They won a Peabody Citation and a number of other awards.

The subject was right up the alley of liberal newspaper PM which wrote about Winchell’s recording session in its Sunday magazine section “Picture News” on January 4, 1948. It features another version of the “microphone” story.

Thackstage with a dummy that can't spell
IN CASE we ever become a ventriloquist the visit we had with voice-thrower Paul Winchell, the other day, should be highly profitable; if not, we shall simply count the time spent as entertainment. For that matter, Winchell told us, he had never expected to become a ventriloquist. A commercial artist, yes. A sculptor, yes. But a ventriloquist!
In 11 seconds we had the fruits of Winchell's 11 years of double-talking: how to avoid labial sounds by using substitutes. Thack-stage sounded like back-stage. Without involving the lips, and instead of very good, we learned to say 'ery good which sounded good enough.
Actually, we had not bargained for a ventriloquism lesson; our reason for visiting the Dynamic Recording Studios on West 57th Street was to watch Winchell and his dummy Jerry Mahoney record a group of little songs we had heard over WNEW last year — The Mother Goose Songs of Democracy, by Hy Zaret and Lou Singer.
Winchell, good-looking, curly-haired and young, dangled his cow-eyed dummy on his knee, as he ran through the songs. As he sang he nodded his head toward Jerry in emphasis:
No type of blood is better,
No type of blood is best,
Each type of blod [sic] is just as good
Not better than the rest.*
* Copyright, 1947, Argosy Music Corp., N. Y.
Lou Singer, the composer of the tune, played it on the piano while Hy Zaret nodded approval from the control booth.
Winchell interrupted himself to dear his throat.
"I mean, it's so early in the morning. He can't sing at this hour," said Jerry.
Why did he use the dummy here without an audience when only his two voices were needed, we asked.
“It helps to give the feeling," he said. "He creates a feeling and a mood, and I get better dialog that way. He's the most important — why he's the apple of my eye—" He turned the dummy's head toward him.
“Yes, and the lettuce in your wallet, too," cracked the dummy.
Recently, at a broadcast, Winchell was being interviewed with Jerry Mahoney. The lady interviewer kept sticking the mike in front of the dummy's face whenever Winchell threw his voice. Even in the studio, we noticed, our eyes turned to Jerry whenever his master spoke. That, Winchell pointed out, was one of the things that ventriloquists relied upon: the audience watched the dummy instead of the speaker.
Encouraged by principal
There was nothing about ventriloquism that practice and experience couldn't master, he said encouragingly. He learned the essentials from a mail-order course, by sending a dime for it when he was a kid attending the Manhattan School of Industrial Arts; he made a dummy head in his sculpture class and he got his patter out of old joke books. Most of his talents were used to plug candidates in the school elections. He gave us a sample:
"Kids, if you want to be intelligent, vote for Herbert Goldstein for president of the GO. He won't give you a raw deal."
The principal of the school heard about Winchell and suggested that he try out for Major Bowes program—and it would be nice it be mentioned the name of the school on the air. The principal himself made a wig for the dummy, and at the age of 14 Winchell crashed into radio.
Lou Singer ripped off a few bars of Brown-Skinned Cow, and Winchell and Jerry sang the little plea for racial understanding, plus a dialog of their own to the effect that, brown cow or white, the color of the milk they gave was the same. These records, Winchell said when he had run through the chorus, would be released by Public Service Records and he would sing the songs whenever he made an "in person" visit to schools, hospitals and department stores while he was on tour. He did quite a bit of hospital work, generally in the wards, because he could carry his act with him from bed to bed.
For young audiences he still used some of the stuff that entertained his friends in high school — he pointed to a card on Jerry's back, listing the jokes. We picked one out: Shape of Earth. What was that we asked.
"Jerry, what is the shape of the earth?" he demanded. Jerry rolled his enormous eyes and his wooden head.
"I dunno."
"Think, Jerry." Jerry looked blank. "I’ll give you a hint. What's the shape of my wife's earrings?"
"That's easy. They're square."
"No, no. Those are her every-day earrings.”
“What shape are her Sunday earrings?”
"Round."
“That's it. Now, what's the shape of the earth?"
"Square on week days. Round on Sundays.”
We looked at the card again, and pointed to the word A-L-P-H-E-B-E-T. That should have been an A we corrected. Winchell nodded. A-L-P-H-A-B-E-T, of course.
Then he slapped Jerry on the head.
"He wrote it," he said.
—SELMA ROBINSON

As Daffy Duck once complained, “Comedy! Always comedy!” Winchell decided he wanted to show he was more than a puppet’s straight-man. He incorporated dramatic sketches into his 1953-54 NBC Sunday night series sponsored by Procter and Gamble—Neil and Danny Simon (and animator Leo Salkin) wrote for him. It didn’t end happily. He bailed on the show five weeks early to do nightclub gigs. The following season, he was plunked into a Saturday morning kids show and a children’s entertainer he remained for most of the rest of his TV career. Winchell was much more than an entertainer, children’s or otherwise. You can read about that in another of Mark Evanier’s fine, first-hand remembrances on his website. Winchell died on June 24, 2005.

Read the Sign

There’s a warning sign in Wild and Woolfy.



The sign was right, we learn from an 18-frame pan to the left (only partly recreated below).



More of Johnny Johnsen’s backgrounds and Red as a cowgirl singer highlight this cartoon, Tex Avery’s first Western at MGM.

A Smelly Shakespearean Scandinavian Scenario

My favourite gag in Cheese Chasers (1950) is the bulldog at the adding machine trying to figure out what’s going on. My second favourite is near the beginning of the cartoon.

In this fine Hubie and Bertie cartoon, the two mice have stuffed themselves with a life-time supply of cheese, so they decide there’s no reason to live now. They sneak into a nearby cat’s mouse and figure that’s the end.

Chuck Jones was in a great period of his directorial career. Check out the take on the cat.



The cat uses a mirror to determine the cause of his satisfied appetite. But wait a minute!



Yes, they’re mice alright.



Logic takes over. Now, a fine pun by writer Mike Maltese, set up by Jones.



The cat realises mice normally don’t want cats to eat them. He keeps spitting them out and they keep climbing back into his mouth.



It’s hard to believe this is the same Chuck Jones who inflicted Sniffles on people as an example of cartoon mousehood.

Ken Harris’ fine work can be spotted in this cartoon, along with Ben Washam, Phil Monroe (soon to be on his way to UPA) and Lloyd Vaughan.

Should He, Goody?

We don’t discuss local, national and world affairs on this blog. You don’t come here to read a rant about that sort of thing. You come to look at frames from old cartoons and maybe find out some things about them, or read about radio and TV actors of a different time. That’s what we do here. You can read about the state of affairs in your town or country in countless other places. We do something else.

Jack Benny had the same attitude. And that didn’t sit well with one of his long-time friends.

Goodman Ace (right) was a top comedy writer in print, on radio and TV. For a while, he and his wife had a radio show of their own and did comedy shorts. I recall their show being full of misspoken words a la Gracie Allen; I don’t recall it being full of social activism. But that didn’t stop Goody from being angry that Jack didn’t include social activism in his comedy; presumably espousing a viewpoint that coincided with Goody’s.

Jack’s attitude seems to have been he spent years and years building a character, his audience loved it and that’s what they wanted to see. If they wanted social activist comedy, they could see someone else make pungent observations on L.B.J. and the American scene.

Evidently this enraged Goody so much, he made it the subject of it in his column in the Saturday Review of October 5, 1968. I’ll avoid further comment other than to say you will not read my opinion here about Lyndon Baines Johnson (if I have one).

Shoulda Said
TAXI CAB HINDSIGHT reflections consist of the clever, diabolical points you suddenly think of as you drive away, still steaming, from a luncheon where you found yourself the minority dissident in a two-party argument on the state of the world and other trivia.
"What did you say, Mac?" the driver asks, staring at me, appropriately enough, through his rear-vision mirror.
"I didn't say anything. It's what I should have said," I reply angrily.
Actually it's myself I'm angry with. After years of watching politicians and civilians being interviewed on TV, I have developed this divine gift of being able to think of tricky questions no newsman ever asked that would leave the hapless interviewee sitting there, a quivering bloody pulp. In living color.
I was overwhelmed with this esprit de Vescalier the other evening while watching Jack Benny being questioned on the NET network. The interviewer asked Mr. Benny if he ever did any political humor on his TV shows.
Mr. Benny had an easy copout. He could have said he didn't do political humor because his show is taped weeks in advance and the material would be dated. But he didn't.
"No," replied Mr. Benny. "I don't think it's right to do jokes about our President."
He admitted it was all right for Bob Hope because "you can see he doesn't mean it," he said.
"Who can see Bob Hope doesn't mean it?" I shouted at my TV set.
Which was more than the interviewer did. He segued, very kindly I thought, to commenting that Mr. Benny used "character" humor.
"Yes," said Mr. Benny quietly, and, I thought, breathing a sigh of relief, "our material deals with human frailties."
I was on my feet again. "Jack, are you inferring," I screamed, "that our President has no frailties? Or are you implying the other alternative?"
This esprit of avoiding even a suggestion of lèse majesté is prevalent among most TV stars who have made themselves beloved of their fans by sealing themselves in a vacuity of neutrality. Any utterance that might estrange even one out of the millions of their devoted followers strikes terror in their hearts. Every line their writers contribute is suspect and is gone over with a finetooth magnifying glass.
Example: Two years ago while on assignment to write for a televised variety hour, the writers were asked to devise a script that would feature Canada's Expo 67. For openers, the star of the show wanted to do a short humorous monologue about Canada.
We were hard put. But finally, with the aid of The World Almanac—the last book you would hunt; through for jokes—we came up with an opening line:
"Tonight we honor Canada. Did you know that in area Canada is the second largest country in the world? Russia is first, Canada is second. I guess you thought it was Avis."
Well, what can I tell you? All heck broke loose, as they say on TV. The juxtaposition of Canada and Russia was just too much. The line was immediately placed under tire microscope and examined for Communist cells, sabotage, World War III, and even treason.
After an hour's discussion, during which the writers were asked to swear on the Bible (the Nielsen rating book), show their citizenship papers, sing the third stanza of the national anthem, and stand to pledge allegiance to the flag, the line was left in.
The victory was Pyrrhic. On the show the next night the delivery of the line was something less than masterful. The straight lines were spoken impeccably. But poor Avis was lost in a slur of mumbling.
Terror had struck again as the star envisioned countless sets tuned out.
This aberration can be further exemplified in a conversation this writer had recently with the above Mr. Benny. He was going, he told me, to Atlanta for one of his charity symphony concerts. He asked for a line in a monologue. Any writer worth his laugh-track is eager to contribute to this master of all comedians, knowing it will get the most skillful delivery. I gave him one:
"I've met the mayor of Atlanta, and I found him to be a progressive and courageous man who is not afraid to call a spade, mister."
"No," Benny said, "I can't use that."
"Why not?" I asked.
"Because I'm not mad at anybody."
Later in a taxicab I realized what I should have said:
"When will you get mad, Jack? When they have one door marked WHITE, another marked BLACK, and a third door marked COMEDIANS?"

Linus the One-Hit Wonder

Hanna-Barbera, Filmation and DePatie-Freleng cranked out series after series, year after year, for Saturday morning network programming. And then there were other studios that, for whatever reason, were one-shots.

One of them was Ed Graham Productions. He gave the world Linus the Lionhearted—in fact, he was making new cartoons for Saturday mornings before almost everyone else—but that was about it.

Graham had been a writer and producer of the animated Bert and Harry Piel commercials in partnership with Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding, the radio comedians who voiced the characters. Their business split up, and Graham moved on to Linus.

This story in the Binghamton Press of July 3, 1964 explains:

Linus, His Pals Get Own Show
By TERRY TURNER
Special Press Correspondent
Chicago—A year ago, when the advertising agency handling television commercials for one of the big cereal companies wanted a "spokesman" appeal to children, Linus the Lionhearted was created.
Linus, a timid lion, appears in cartoon form to tell the kids to buy a breakfast food. Linus later was joined by such cartoon spokesmen and pitchmen as Sugar Bear, Rory Racoon, So-Hi and the Friendly Postman.
Inevitably, what happened was that the commercials proved more popular with the kids than the so-called entertainment shows.
This isn't unusual in television.
It happens occasionally, even with the so-called adult shows. That's because more money, imagination and talent often are expended on the commercials than on a series, which is ground out like so much hamburger.
Now comes the announcement that Linus and his friends have been promoted. No longer will they be confined to the commercial spiels but, instead, are to be stars of their own entertainment program.
The new half-hour cartoon series will be scheduled by CBS-TV on Saturday mornings, effective in September, and will utilize a company of both cartoon and human figures in a game-story-joke format.
There must be a moral there, somewhere.

Children’s programming rarely warranted interviews in the popular press, but the Chicago Tribune talked with Graham in a story published September 24, 1964.

Linus & Co. Roar Into New TV Roles
By Marion Purcelli
STORYTELLERS INFORM us that some lions are born great; others have greatness thrust upon them. Television's storytellers are going to show us a rare type, Linus, the Lionhearted, a new cartoons series starring an unlikely king of beasts who would rather sleep undisturbed in the shade than face the problems arising daily in his jungle domain. It makes its debut Saturday at 10 a. m. over channel 2.
King Linus, a mild beast who is continuously being plunged into impossible situations by his many subjects, will be joined by three colleagues—Loveable Truly the postman, So-Hi the Chinese boy, and Rory Racoon the guardian of the cornfield.
The improbable Linus has the loudest and most self-satisfying roar in the jungle, but is reluctant really to let loose because the frightening noise always stampedes his subjects—and likely as not, Linus is trampled underfoot.
An oddity about Linus and his colleagues is that they starred on cereal boxes and as spokesmen in cereal commercials on television. Their popularity with children became so great that the sponsors decided they deserved to rise from the sales force to star in their own TV series.

LINUS AND HIS friends are television personalities known and loved thruout the land by people under four feet high. We decided that the taller and older folk, already baffled by Beatlemania and other childhood ailments, deserved a briefing that will make them erudite enough to discuss Linus with their children. Herewith is our report.
The job of transforming a television spieler into a character with the depth and breadth to sustain the interest of 2-12 year old children, was entrusted to Ed Graham, television producer.
"Linus had already developed a full-blown character," said Graham in a recent interview. "And since action stems from character in any dramatic form, in effect, he told me what would happen. Linus, deep in his lion heart cannot quite accept his own lion-hood.
"In the first episode he becomes the natural prey of a neighbor, Billie Bird, instead of the other way around. Billie Bird's idea of fun is to present Linus with an impossible problem, then watch him try to handle it in kingly fashion."
THAT’S JUST ONE of the plots.
"In others, we’ll see what happens to Linus when he meets with a totally different character," Graham continued as earnestly as if he were discussing a human he knew well. "Sugar Bear, for example, is ultra-cool, but a scrapper who helps Linus to be more king-like. Occasionally So-Hi takes time out to tell one of his Orientalized fairy tales—'Jack and the Bamboo Stalk' or 'Goldilocks and the Three Dragons.'
'Rory Racoon', a mixture of Nelson Eddy, Jack Armstrong, and Lil’ Abner, is featured along with Loveable B. Truly, a thin, freckled-faced postman who is too loveable to be true. Most of his good deeds involve keeping his dog from the clutches of Richard Harry Nearly, silent screen star turned dogcatcher."
Linus, among these characters and dozens more, is the star as well as the king. He is a well-meaning, but stumbling honest-John-con-man from Runyonland. What he’s doing in the jungle is anybody’s guess and the basis for the cartoon show.
"Only Linus would think of dressing an elephant in a suit with vertical stripes to play down her overweight," said Graham. "And only Linus could let loose the roar that would bring all the elephants thundering to his rescue just as he and Sugar Bear are about to be swept over the rapids.
Despite his self-doubt, Linus is King."

Variety, in its September 30, 1964 edition, reviewed the Linus debut. “As kids’ tv cartoon fare goes,” began ‘Bill,’ “ ‘Linus the Lionhearted’ rates with ‘Bullwinkle’ and ‘Yogi Bear,’ which is real class.” He went on the praise the musical score by Johnny Mann, though the series seems to have used stock music, the character designs of George Cannata, and voice work of Sheldon Leonard and Carl Reiner, as well as the format with a story connecting all the little cartoons between the cartoons.

Let’s catch up with Graham again, giving background on how he hooked up with Reiner. To be honest, both Reiner and Leonard were so busy with other shows, it’s surprising they found time to be involved in a cartoon series. This appeared in the Los Angeles Times on July 5, 1965.

Graham Roaring Hit With His Linus the Lionhearted
By PAUL HENNINGER
“I had been watching Sid Caesar’s show. Some of those wonderfully wild things they did. On one there was a crazy song, something like ‘Who Kept the Kaiser Out of Nebraska?’ and I got to wondering whose fertile mind was behind all this nonsense.
The wondering man was Ed Graham, who at the time was doing commercials for an agency in the East. He put in a call to NBC and learned the man behind the Kaiser bit was one of Sid’s second bananas, Carl Reiner.
“I called Carl and introduced myself,” said Graham, “and after he reluctantly admitted that he was the idea man for many of Caesar’s skits, I told him that someday I’d like to get together with him to discuss some ideas I had about doing commercials.
“Carl thanked me, but didn’t seem too enthused. About 10 minutes later the phone rang. It was Carl. ‘Aren’t you the guy who does those beer commercials using the voices of Bob and Ray?’” Ed was.
Heads Own Film
That conversation took place more than 10 years ago. Today, Ed Graham is head of his own animation production company. And Carl Reiner is very much a part of the operation.
Linus the Lionhearted, the CBS animated cartoon series for kiddies on Saturdays, bears the Graham label. The voices of Billie Bird, Sascha Grouse, Dinny Kangaroo and perhaps a dozen other characters all come from Reiner.
Ed Graham is a New Yorker who made up his mind early in life what path he’d pursue. Having a father who is a cartoonist (Ed Graham Sr.) gave him direction. Graduation from Dartmouth, writing for magazines, then for Perry Como, before getting the agency job, rounded out the background for the 39-year-old family man (a wife and two sons), who now has 100 employes working for him.

Linus Going Strong
The Linus series has been renewed by CBS, sold in Japan and Australia, and Graham is about to start on theatrical shorts. And Carl Reiner is with him all the way.
“Carl is just amazing,” said Graham, continuing his praise for a colleague, who has logged much praise on his own for the Dick Van Dyke series. “The biggest thing about Carl is his spontaneity. When he speaks lines you just can’t believe that he’s reading them.”
Graham, well aware of Reiner’s many other enterprises, always arranges recording sessions to accommodate him.
“Carl will break away during his lunch hour,” said Graham. “I’ll hand him a few basic story lines. He’ll usually change a line or two, which makes it better, and during that hour or so we can usually wrap up six or seven stories.”
Graham uses other great names to voice his cartoons—Jonathan Winters, Sheldon Leonard (he’s Linus) and Jesse White, to name three—but he says Reiner’s personality dominates the series.
With all this talent poured into each Linus production, you’d think that some authoritative body, headed by Graham or Reiner, would put the final OK on each episode before airing. But no.
It’s up to a couple of fellows named Lucas and Scott. If they don’t laugh, it’s back to the drawing board. Lucas Reiner is 5, and Scott Graham is 4.

One person whose name you haven’t read yet is Irv Spector’s. Bob Givens, who storyboarded on the series, gives Spector full credit for Linus. He says Spector was the one who set up a studio on the West Coast for Graham and ran the show, although Jack Kinney was involved at one point. The studio on Laurel Canyon just below Burbank Boulevard; Givens says it was a big place but there weren’t many people in it. Spector, he says, was at UPA when the original Post cereal commercials were made; Givens boarded and laid out some and revealed they were made on the West Coast because it was cheaper than animating them in New York.

There was talk of a Sid and Marty Krofft series called Au Go Ghouls featuring top-40 music and puppets that would wrap around Linus episodes (Broadcasting, Feb. 21, 1966). Instead, ABC picked up the show for a Sunday morning re-run for three more seasons. Then that was it, though Linus was later offered in syndication. Word is the Federal Trade Commission forced the series off the air because its characters endorsed Post cereals during the show. A perusal of Variety and Broadcasting magazines has found no report on the matter. In fact, ABC aired Hot Wheels starting in fall 1969 after Linus had left the air, and a Variety story in December that year about the cartoon’s connection with Mattel’s toys of the same name doesn’t mention any decision or ruling. Nevertheless, Ed Graham’s animated series was off the air, bringing an end to his shot at cartoon stardom.

Swingin' the Cat Around

Let’s see...there was Popeye swinging a bull by the tail in Bulldozing the Bull (1938). There was Droopy swinging a bull by the tail in Señor Droopy (1949). And there was Jerry Mouse swinging...

No, it wasn’t a bull. It was Tom in The Milky Waif (1946). In eight drawings on ones.



Mike Lah, Ken Muse and Ed Barge are the credited animators. Here is the scene in an endless loop.

Scrappy's Celebrity Friends

Scrappy and Oopy are looking for radio entertainers. And they sure need them. They need something to liven up the dismal Scrappy’s Expedition (1934), wherein our hero pilots a ship to the South Pole.



Why, it’s Eddie Cantor!



Fire chief Ed Wynn.



Scrappy needs a winch to load hefty Kate Smith onto the boat.



Walter Winchell, with a voice by someone who doesn’t appear to have ever heard Winchell before.



And we get the NBC chimes in the form of icicles on Winchell’s nose. Yes, announcers used to strike hand chimes with a little mallet up to the microphone before the chimes became electronic a few years later.



We’re at least spared Joe Penner in this cartoon, with the story by Sid Marcus and animation (and there’s some good animation in this) by Art Davis.

The Fluttering Actress

There’s one thing I could never figure out watching Bewitched—was Aunt Clara really having trouble remembering her lines or was she acting?

I guess it’s still hard to say. Marion Lorne was playing confused people before she ever exchanged words on screen with Elizabeth Montgomery.

Lorne worked steadily on television through the 1950s. She was in the supporting cast of Mr. Peepers, she had a regular role on The Garry Moore Show, and she co-starred on a sitcom called Sally which had the misfortune of being scheduled opposite Jack Benny.

Let’s read what Lorne had to say about the whole matter in the days before she popped onto the set of Bewitched. This UPI column ran January 25, 1959.

Yes, Marion Lorne Is Not Always Like That
BY FRED DANZIG
NEW YORK (UPI)—"Is Marion Lorne always like that?"
The question comes up each time Garry Moore steps forth to chat with members of the studio audience after his Tuesday night show on CBS-TV.
By "that," the questioner refers, of course, to Miss Lorne's inspired performance as a fluttery, fluffy little old lady caught in the grip of acute befuddlement.
"I must listen to Garry's answer some day," said Miss Lorne. "I'm told he nods his head yes and shakes his head no. And he says, 'she knows everything she's doing.'
"But if they asked me," Miss Lorne added, "I'd say I think I'm the same always. I don't think I'm faking. Not at all."
This interviewer's answer to the question of what Miss Lorne is really like: she's a charming, lovable old pro whose jitters seem to diminish as distance from the TV camera increases. The panic now is an acting job more than Lorne realism, but some of it does stick off camera.
How did she get that way?
"I worry all the time. Big things, little things. I worry. And even when I'm convincing myself that it's silly to worry so much, I worry. Oh, my agent has a dreadful time getting me to make up my mind.
"I'm just a girl who can't say yes. I'm a mixed-up kid," said Miss Lorne, who was born in Wilkes Barre, Pa., some 71 years ago, but picked up her slight British accent in England. Before World War I, she and her playwright husband, the late William Hackett, went to England to do a play. They stayed 30 years, ran the Whitehall Theater in London, and returned to America in 1942.
While her ardent fans write letters demanding that she be given more to do on the Moore show, Miss Lorne seems quite happy with the brief spots she does. "I was hired as an interrupter. I was supposed to arrange everything, you know, and then have nothing come out right. But that could get dull week after week. So I just wander in now and do everything all wrong. Now, I just come in and say 'boo.' I find it very difficult to stop with one 'boo.' I want to say, 'Boo, boo, boo.'
"But I love everybody on the show—I adore Garry—so I do whatever they. And even though my part is small, I must be at rehearsals. It's just as much work. It's a strenuous routine. It's the routine that kills you in this awful TV," Miss Lorne said.
In March, the Moore crew will do three shows from Hollywood and Miss Lorne is looking forward to it.
"I was there last year and stayed in the same hotel as Sophia Loren. We kept getting each other's mail and phone calls. It was all so interesting for me. The phone would ring and I'd answer it and these charming gentlemen would say these things and it all sounded so enchanting, you know. Then I'd say something and they'd mumble and hang up. It was frightfully frustrating. I wonder how Sophia got on with my callers," said Miss Lorne.
Her approach to comedy acting is simple. "The more serious you are, the funnier you are when you play comedy. If you try to be funny, good night People who don't know me well try to give me comic hats to put on. I say no comic hat, no red nose, no dots over the eyes like a down. I can be just as funny without all that. Oh, my. Maybe that's not so good. Oh, my," Miss Lorne said. She said it with a smile—and a flutter.

Now, a little further back. The Associated Press interviewed her in 1957 and this column appeared on October 13th. It gives you a good idea of Lorne’s career, which dated almost from the turn of the century. She recreated the “Harvey” role for television opposite Art Carney in the lead.

Marion Lorne—Typical Featherbrain
By CYNTHIA LOWRY
(AP Newsfeature Writer)
NEW YORK (AP)—It is a pleasure to report that Miss Marion Lorne bears a remarkable resemblance to Mrs. Gurney of television's dear, departed "Mr. Peepers" show and to Mrs. Banford of the current "Sally" series.
Miss Lorne in the flesh, of course, is far from a charming idiot. But those wonderful vague, fluttery ladies she portrays bear the likeness of a caricature to the original.
There is a nice question—unanswered by the principal—whether this is because Miss Lorne has been playing scatterbrained females for so many years that the character has rubbed off a bit. Or whether she, a skillful comedienne, has shrewdly made a natural tendency a little bit larger than life.
Whatever the cause, Miss Lorne does tend to flutter a bit.
She laces her conversation liberally with "bless you." She wears a slightly harassed expression, as if the business of getting through a day was pretty confused and complex.
And she communicates magnificently by a combination of words, not necessarily complete sentences, plus gestures and facial expressions.
The meaning is completely clear to the listeners, although she doesn't provide very comprehensible quotes for literal newspaper writers.
No Easy Life
Life, however, has not been one long, joyous progression for the gentle, smiling little lady who, if the British "Who's Who in the Theatre" may be trusted, passed her 69th birthday last Aug. 12.

A successful, well-established stage star in London for three decades, 1943 found Miss Lorne back in New York, newly widowed, financially wiped out and 54 years old the age when most actresses " are thinking about plastic surgeons and fretting about chin lines.
A native of Wilkes Barre, Pa., Marion attended the American Academy of Dramatic Art, was a member of a Hartford, Conn., stock company and had made her Broadway debut before she married Walter Hackett, a newspaperman and playwright. One year she and her husband made a combined vacation and business trip to England, where one of his plays was being produced. They remained for 30 years.
Great Success
As a husband-wife team they were a great success. Hackett wrote plays carefully tailored to his wife's comedy abilities. They never had a show which ran less than 125 performances and by 1929 the Whitehall Theatre opened, virtually built just for his plays and her acting.
After war started and the blitz came, Hackett and his wife returned to the United States for a three months visit. Hackett died suddenly. War wiped out their fortune and Miss Lorne was alone, penniless and out of work in New York. That was 15 years ago and she still doesn't like to think about those days.
Wins Prize Role
In 1946, however, she won the Josephine Hull role in the national company of "Harvey" and played it long enough to establish an American acting reputation. Next came an unexpected summons from her old English friend, Alfred Hitchcock.
He wanted her to play the murderer's mother in "Strangers On a Train," and she told him forcefully she didn't think much of his casting. Hitch, however, persisted and now, after the critical notices, Miss Lorne thinks maybe he knew what he was about.
The Hitchcock part led her to the Peepers Show and that firmly established Miss Lorne as an American television star.
Her "Mrs. Gurney" replaced the Helen Hopinson lady as the typical matronly tea room customer figuring the size of the tip. With all her silliness, she was still warm, generous and lovable.
They've changed her name to Mrs. Banford, and she's impossibly rich in "Sally" (NBC-TV, Sunday, 7:30 P.M. EDT). But it's still Marion Lorne, playing her favorite role.
IN NEW YORK catching up on some live theater, changing apartments and getting some rest, Miss Lorne expressed one serious reservation about working in Hollywood. She said seriously, "I get up in the morning at 4:30, get to the studio at 6 and am made up and ready for work at 8. At night I get back to the hotel at 8:30 or 9 and am so tired I tumble straight into bed. "This is very difficult for one accustomed to sleeping comfortably into the morning and staying up late at night."
She likes the "Sally" series in which she co-stars with Joan Caulfield.
"They're sweet little things, I think. Of course, they're not designed to change the shape of the world, but they are good-humored and amusing and I think the whole family can get together to watch them. "I do think that's something don't you?"

Lorne was reviewed by the New York Press in March 1904, the same month she graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Art. The Morning Telegraph reported on the 11th: “[W]hen Miss Marion Lorne, as Bess Van Buren, in ‘The Charity Ball,’ said anything amusing, as she was expected to do about every other minute, there was a hearty and hilarious response in the lower left section of the orchestra circle, which indicated that the young woman’s friends were there in considerable force and one or two rows of seats.” 64 years later, she never heard the crowd’s final applause for her. She was awarded the Emmy for best supporting actress in a comedy series. Marion Lorne had died ten days before.

Thumb Fun Take

Daffy Duck in shock in the cartoon Thumb Fun (1952).



Oh, and an inside joke. Dick Thomas painted the backgrounds for Bob McKimson unit (including this cartoon).



The animators credited are Rod Scribner, Phil De Lara, Bob Wickersham and Chuck McKimson.