Chasing Lucky Ducky

The two dogs hunting Lucky Ducky (from the Tex Avery cartoon of the same name) exit from the scene—in individual pieces.



The Motion Picture Herald reported on July 19, 1947 that the cartoon would be released in the 1947-48 season. Nope. Boxoffice then reported on September 25, 1948 that it would be released in the 1948-49 season. It played at Loew’s Atlanta on November 7, 1948 opposite John Wayne and Monty Clift in Red River.

Ruling Radio Roost

There weren’t too many newspaper columnists who had bad things to say about Jack Benny. About the worst it got was John Crosby and a few others grumbling that Benny’s shows had the same types of routines before admitting that’s what the (very large) audience wanted.

Hearst columnist Jack O’Brian caught Jack in 1952 when his TV career had become a success. He wrote a birthday piece about Jack, published by the International News Service on February 13, 1955. As this is Jack’s birthday today, let’s reprint it. You’ll notice even columnists took advantage of Benny’s “39” joke to add humour to their stories.

My thanks to Tim Lones for supplying the drawing for this post.

Benny 39?
By JACK O'BRIAN
NEW YORK (INS) Jack Benny, comic Valentine born Feb. 14, 1894, will be 39 tomorrow. We realise this may strike a discordant chronological note, but we don't argue with a man about his own age, and that's what Jack told us; he'll be 39 tomorrow.
What we can do something about is to divulge the fact that at the age of either 61 or 39, Jack Benny, born in Chicago, bred in Waukegan, star of vaudeville, the legitimate stage, movies, radio, television and several banks, observed his impending birthday by moving up to the top ten shows on television.
TOPS IN RADIO
The Jack Benny show still rules the radio roost, too, as it did 20 years ago. Jack has been in the light for 45 years; he was just 16 when he teamed his then authentically proficient fiddle with the pianistics of one Cora Salisbury, who played with him in the pit orchestra of the Barrison Theatre in Waukegan, at which point a star was born.

Jack had been playing violin in the Barrison for several years, in knee pants.
Cora Salisbury got homesick early in their partnership. When her father became ill, and dashed home to Waukegan. The team Benny & Woods followed, the latter a Chicago pianist.
Enlisting in the Navy at the start of the First World War, Jack was assigned to the Great Lakes Naval training station; became a sailor in greasepaint, raised money and spirits in "The Great Lakes Revue."
VITAL MILESTONE
This became an important milestone, for it established Jack as a man who could chatter engagingly on stage as well as fiddle.
From the first laugh, comedy became more important than violin. He had planned another musical act with Zez Confrey, legendary jazz pianist, as partner, but Zez got out of the Navy later than Jack, who by then had decided to go it as a "single."
START IN FILMS
When early talkies were hiring any vaudevillian able to speak in passable grammar, Jack starred in several films revues and did real well in them. Though he was getting big pay, he felt he was stagnating between pictures, and his guilt complex sent him back to the stage.
In a couple of years a little gadget that poured entertainment into homes was in its infancy—radio. It was, as TV was to become later, a chance and a challenge for all in show, business. Jack took the chance and became the biggest name in radio comedy and remained at the top since.
Television claimed him five years ago. His first hilarious phrase came after a long burst of applause from the premier audience, to which he mused: "I'd give a million dollars to know how I looked. He looked, and performed, just fine.

Neither O’Brian or Benny knew it at the time, but the radio roost was about to be torn down. Fewer people were listening, more and more Americans had television sets on at night. American Tobacco didn’t see how it could bear the expense of the Benny show for the diminishing return it was getting from its advertising. The microphones were shut off for a final time on May 22nd. But Jack carried on in television, either on a series or in specials, up until he died. O’Brian was right. Benny “looked, and performed, just fine.”

Phone-y Disguise

Ten-Pin Terrors (1953) features some good animation (the bulldog bowling at the start, Jeckle tapping his fingers against the bathtub at the end), nice backgrounds and a solid story.

One gag I particularly like is when the magpies disguise themselves as candlestick phones in a phone booth to get away from the angry dog. Here are some frames as the dog answers each phone (the third one is a real one; the operator tells him his two minutes are up).



Incidentally, an in-house paper called 20th Century Dynamo of April 18, 1953 not only announced Ten-Pin Terrors and other coming releases but also talked about bonuses given to branches in Canada and the U.S. that booked Terrytoons. The article is a wonderful piece of spin, saying how revenue for Terrytoons in the first quarter was below that of the previous quarter (and 1.6% from the previous year) and only 11 of 38 booking departments qualified for bonuses but things were looking up! Canadians evidently loved Terrytoons, as Vancouver, St. John, New Brunswick and Calgary all finished in the top ten.

The Art of Bugs and Elmer

“Did you notice,” reader Steve Bailey remarked, “the caricatures in the background of Yankee Doodle Daffy?”

No, I don’t think I have. It’s never been among my favourite Daffy/Porky outings to begin with. But behold! Porky’s office has portraits of Warners’ beloved stars on the wall. Porky, evidently, has stolen someone’s Oscar, too.



A famous cartoon director sends his love.



Too bad we can’t see the full drawing in the frame below. It’s not the same as Friz above. I love the fish statuette.



Unfortunately, the pictures below are tough to see.



And there may be an inside joke. I can’t discover whose phone number this was when the cartoon was released in 1943. There definitely was a WYoming exchange in the Los Angeles area at the time, with four numerals after the prefix.



So who was the portrait artist? There’s no credit on screen, of course. Paul Julian left the Jones unit for Freleng in February 1941 (according to Mike Barrier’s book Hollywood Cartoons), but he left the studio for the forerunner of UPA soon after, then returned. When? I don’t know. Lenard Kester was painting backgrounds for Freleng in the interim.

A Day in the Navy

Dennis Day may not have been the best singer on the Jack Benny show, but he was arguably the best cast member out of the vocalists who were hired. He had a penchant, the writers eventually discovered, for broad dialects and could do some impressions well enough for comedy purposes.

Day joined the show at the start of the 1939-40 season then left for almost two years starting in April 1944 for service with the U.S. Navy. He parlayed the Benny job into his own radio and TV series, a record deal, as well as nightclub gigs in Las Vegas. Day did pretty well by Jack Benny. But, of course, he had to have the talent first.

Screenland magazine’s October 1944 devoted space to Day’s career. It’s a familiar tale to those of you who are long-time Jack Benny fans. And there are a couple of personal pieces at the end.

"YES, PLEASE?"
A million times yes, Dennis Day! Two big contracts are held in abeyance for you until the war is over — radio AND pictures
MAYBE this story should be called "My Day, by Jack Benny." For Dennis Day's been Benny's boy to the last naive wisecrack, the final bright, agreeable "Yes, please?"
By Constance Palmer
But he's in the Navy now. Two contracts are being held in abeyance for him until the war is over. One is with National Broadcasting Company, holding his spot in the Jack Benny show and the other is with RKO for pictures.
He's finished making "Music In Manhattan," with Anne Shirley and Phil Terry. In his first picture, "Buck Benny Rides Again," they made him a cowboy in a blond wig and allowed him one song. RKO, however, has shown more discernment. This time he is playing his own black-haired, dancing-eyed Irish self and is given full scope for his particular brand of pixie comedy.
Reports on the picture and Dennis' performance are enthusiastic, but not all the fun went on the screen. Gifted with the keen ear of the singer and the lively humor of the Irish, he can be at will Jap, Swede, Greek, Cockney or lazy Mexican peon.
One morning, to the astonishment of the executives, he turned up in the day's rushes as Hitler, bellowing in low-German accent, "Dey vill nefer bomb Chermany!" Then, after a sheepish pause. "Veil, maybe a leedle — "



Dennis' father and mother came from Ireland. They established a home in New York, where Eugene Dennis McNulty was born on May 21, 1917. He is the third son of a large and lively family to go into the Navy. Another brother is a priest and a sister goes to college. He, himself, went to Cathedral High School and studied law at Manhattan College, where he won the Mayor's Scholarship. However, he didn't take his bar examination because graduation and the depression were simultaneous.
"It was a choice of clerking in a store or driving a truck or — the radio," he said. "And, since I'd always been singing — in church and school and at home — I chose the radio."
After some months of sustaining spots on small New York stations, he heard that Jack Benny was looking for a singer to replace Kenny Baker, who had left the program. On the slim chance of being considered, Dennis sent a recording of his voice over to NBC.
"I didn't have much hope of ever reaching Mr. Benny," he explained. "I'd heard they'd auditioned more than 530 people already. But Mary Livingstone listened to the record and took it to Chicago, where they were broadcasting that week. I was called there and sang for them for an hour and a half, so scared I hardly knew what I was doing. Then they told me I could stop and rest."
He turned to ask his accompanist how the songs had sounded just as someone in the control-booth called, "Oh, Dennis — "
"I answered 'Yes, please?' just the way I always answer whenever I'm called," he continued. "Later, Mr. Benny told me that 'Yes, please?' had sold me more than the hour-and-a-half's singing!"
He was given a round-trip ticket to Los Angeles and put up at the Hollywood Athletic Club, with instructions not to talk to anyone.
"They meant, of course, not to discuss the program or the character. Then, if I were selected, the announcement would come as a surprise," Dennis explained. "But I took them literally and for three weeks didn't speak to a single soul. I just walked up and down Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards and all the side-streets north and south and didn't say a word to anybody. I've never been so lonesome in my life!"
After he was chosen for the program and the contract signed, he brought his father and mother to Hollywood and bought a house for them. He moved in with them and they took up again the home-life they'd always had before he left New York. It's a merry menage, full of Irish wit and laughter. Mrs. McNulty isn't at all like the character who is Dennis' mother on the radio. She is warm and friendly, drawing people to her by kindness and happiness. It's a typical evening to find the rugs rolled up and eight or ten in the midst of a lively Irish jig.
Dennis, too, has a deeply religious side to his nature, and, besides his cleverness and quickness of mind, he is a hard and earnest worker. He doesn't talk too readily; he studies his vis-a-vis thoroughly and steadily first with unswerving black eyes.
He likes the ceremony and pageantry of British public life and came away from his recent trip to Canada imbued with the sense of its dignity and beauty.



While he was still in school, he and his sister made a vacation trip to Ireland to visit their grandparents. He bought a little donkey and cart and went jogging up and down the lanes of the lush green countryside.
"The Irish are a poor people but they have a wonderful time," he said. "And my cute little grandmother can dance a jig with the best of them!"
He likes the girls — all of them. But when he settles down to one, he wants to marry a fine woman who will be satisfied and happy with a home and children. He doesn't believe in career-girls or war marriages.
As a child he was unlucky in accidents. When he was six months old, he fell out of his carriage and cut himself so badly that, because of loss of blood, he didn't walk until he was five years old. Later, at the family's summer cottage on City Island, he cut a tendon in his bare foot on broken glass. He hobbled the two miles back home, spouting gore at every painful step. On another disastrous occasion, a playmate pushed him onto the stone steps of the schoolhouse and split his forehead open. Accidents happened so often that my mother made a habit of watching out the window for me every day. When she saw me dripping blood, she'd just reach calmly for the telephone," he said. "The Fordham Hospital ambulance made regular round trips, practically on schedule!"
He enters the Navy with the rank of ensign, but doesn't know yet to which branch of the service he will be attached. His particular fitness will be found out in the two months' intensive training he will have at the University of Arizona at Tucson.
He loves the Navy and is proud to be a part of it. He is entering earnestly and sincerely, just like hundreds of thousands of other boys. Here's good luck to him — and welcome home when he gets back!

Party With Jay Ward

If you had a chance to party with Jay Ward, Bill Scott, Hans Conried and June Foray at one of Ward’s wacky promotional events, wouldn’t you go? I would. And it appears an entertainment writer with the Philadelphia Inquirer agreed with me.

The Ward studio made some of the fastest and funniest cartoons ever put on television. But until I read Keith Scott’s great book The Moose That Roared (if you don’t have a copy, why don’t you?), I had no idea of the outrageous publicity campaigns that Ward and his PR people invented for their cartoons. Maybe the era was just insanely creative. Media promotions in the 1960s always seemed to be hilariously over-the-top.

Keith related the tale of the Bullwinkle “premiere” in his book. Here’s a first-hand account from a reporter who doesn’t seem to know what to make of it. It was published September 6, 1961.

(The photos that accompany this post are random).

Bullwinkle Premiere Is Completely Mad...Even for Hollywood
By HARRY HARRIS

WE SAW only about 20-odd (very odd) minutes of television during our week-long sojourn in Hollywood, but those few minutes—from an upcoming cartoon series, "The Bullwinkle Show"—were accorded the kind of Hollywood premiere raztma-tazz usually reserved for star-stuffed epics. (In fact, Rock Huston's "Come September" opened the same night, and all reports indicated a resounding hoopla victory for moose over man.)
There were klieg lights and red carpets and traffic-directing policemen and gaping Sunset Strip fans. As members of the press arrived, they were greeted with bursts of canned applause and hustled to the microphone while the usual recipients of premiere-fussing — people like ex-"Maverick" star James Garner, "Angel's" Marshal Thompson, "Rescue 8's Jim Davis — were most enthusiastically ignored.
Each arrival was welcomed by "Bullwinkle's" papas, Jay Ward and Bill Scott, the former nattily attired in top hat, white tie and tails — plus white Bermuda shorts and sneakers.
Guests were crowned with antler-bearing beanies, handed helium balloons proclaiming, "You're a little old for this sort of thing" and "You look silly holding a balloon at your age" (before the evening was over, dozens had soared ceiling-ward), and propelled toward a well-stocked bar.
Lobby displays included Yul Brynner's pocket comb — sans teeth — and a pile of unsold Jay Ward pilot films, including "Adventures of John Birch," "The Charles Van Doren Show" and "Sing Along with Conrad Nagel."
The showing of sample "Bullwinkle" segments was preceded by remarks from Bullwinkle J. Moose himself, self-proclaimed "singing, dancing, poetry-reciting fool, the Sammy Davis with antlers," who noted that he was "available for wakes, weddings and bar mitzvahs.
THE request of network, sponsor and just about everybody else, bellowed Bullwinkle, none of the show's commercials had been included in the evening's entertainment. To make up for this viewer-disturbing omission, sample sales spiels were performed onstage at intervals by Hans Conried, Paul Frees and June Foray.
They turned out to be no-holds-barred lampoons. One unctuous voice advertised "the home of low, low prices, made possible by a revolutionary new technique—child labor!"
"What," asked an impeccably clad Conried, "do eight out of 19 doctors do for relief of stomach distress? BELCH!"
Miss Foray, her back to the audience, wielded a comb. "Does she or doesn't she?" asked an unseen announcer. "Only her hairdresser knows for sure." Whereupon she turned, revealing a full beard.
A beatnik sang the praises of a new smoking sensation — "pot." "Smoke Western," he urged. "It's the only way to fly!"
And, asked why she always appeared in television commercials gaily smiling, "America's favorite homemaker," Betty Crocker, hiccupped that she was a crocked Crocker.
Similar commercial-clobbering blackouts popped up in "Parade," a sprightly revue we attended a few nights later. The familiar ode to the number of coffee beans in every cup of a particular brand of java was graphically demonstrated by a performer who took a sip and ejected a cascade of beans, and a touching family portrait, with two males cuddling an infant, was accompanied by the stirring strains of "They said it couldn't be done!"

Here’s another report on the event, this one from United Press International. It hit the wire September 25th. (**Late note: Historian Harry McCracken tells me this was a different event altogether. His research is this describes a Bullwinkle Block Party at the studio on September 20th).

AT STREET SOIREE
Hollywood Meets a Moose
By JOSEPH FINNIGAN
UPI Hollywood Correspondent

HOLLYWOOD – Only in Hollywood would you get a crowd, estimated in the thousands, to attend a street dance honoring a make-believe moose.
That’s what happened the other night when Jay Ward and Bill Scott, a couple of cartoon show producers, introduced “Bullwinkle,” star of their NBC-TV series.
Part of Sunset Boulevard and an adjacent street were roped off for the festivities which included dancing to an 18-piece orchestra and community singing. Crowds of unemployed actors, residents of the neighborhood and curious passerbys [sic] flocked to the party, hoping for a glance at Bullwinkle, a perfect stranger to many guests.
Bull was undoubtedly the evening’s reigning star, but he shared his spotlight for a few moments with Jayne Mansfield. The shapely actress pulled a cord which unveiled the 18-foot high Bullwinkle statue.
As often happens at unveiling ceremonies, things went wrong and Miss Mansfield required assistance when the rope didn’t work.
Ward and Scott took over a glamorized hotdog stand for their party and also rented an adjacent parking lot to seat the overflow.
The street was decorated with signs, one of which said “Watching the Bullwinkle Show helps fight Communism.” Another shouted, “Bullwinkle si, tractors, no.”
Host Ward, attired in a baseball uniform, personally greeted many guests. Scott, dressed to look like Teddy Roosevelt, stumped the area plugging the “Bullmoose Party.”
More than a dozen police were on hand to control the crowd, which included some of the weirdest people in a town where being weird is often commonplace. One fellow strolled around without his shoes.
A bearded chap sat on the ground and serenaded himself with a rendition of “Melancholy Baby.” He had a right to. Community singing was the evening’s sport. Song books were passed out to guests who crooned such melodies as “Matt and Kitty,” “The Clan Song,” “Give My Regards to Fay Wray,” and “The Price is Fright.”
Ward said guests consumed about 3,000 bags of popcorn, 10,000 cups of soft drinks and hundreds of gallons of coffee. They blew up 4,000 balloons and sported 1,000 party hats. Everything was on the house.
The invited guest list read like a Movieland star director, including such names as Marlon Brando, Bobby Darin, Elizabeth Taylor, Kim Novak, Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, Frank Sinatra, Sophia Loren and Jack Paar.
Ward admitted none of them showed up. But prominent persons who accepted invitations included Bog Freen, Ortin Freenie, Mel Turgle, Lilla Munch, Martha Spink, Zelda Borg, Claude Fritzell and Clodd Hopper, all known only to Ward and Scott.

Ward and Scott continually complained that NBC never publicised the show; perhaps that was part of the motivation behind stunts like you’ve just read. But perhaps it’s no wonder. The network tried to push Bullwinkle during a segment of one of its daytime shows, but Ward and Scott turned it into a shambles. It sounds funny, though, and that’s all that mattered to Ward and Scott. This is from the Los Angeles edition of Variety from May 29, 1962.

Here's Hollywood
(Mon., 2:30-3:00 p.m., KRCA-NBC)
The question: "Where did you get the idea for 'Bullwinkle'?"
The answer: "We stole it from several other cartoon producers."
Thus transpired a typical exchange in Helen O'Connell's courageous but hapless attempt to obtain inside information from cartoonsmiths Jay Ward and Bill Scott on the NBC-TV edition of "Here's Hollywood," a madcap session that might aptly be subtitled "Fractured Interviews."
Nary a serious answer marked the 15-minute televisit to the forecourt of Ward's Sunset Strip studios, during which Miss O'Connell elbowed her way into wet cement, engaged in duets from "Sing Along With Bullwinkle" in company with the star, and made with the ill-fated queries as champagne glasses tinkled and a five-piece orch tootled in the forecourt background.
At face value, this was undoubtedly the most devastatingly fruitless interview since Burt Lancaster put the skids under Mike Wallace on "PM East" two weeks ago. Yet, as Ward chuckled and Scott dead-panned, and both tried perhaps a little too hard to prove there's madness in their method, the Ward-Scott nothing sacred attitude of enterprising irreverence managed to surface through the chaos, making it a novel, disarming and almost rewarding oasis in the electronic desert of daytime television.
Tube.

Before the first season was over, NBC screwed around with the show. The network decided to move it for the 1962-62 season from 7 p.m. Sundays to 5:30 p.m.—then attempted to charge more for it. A bit of bargaining worked for Bullwinkle’s sponsors; the show had an offer from CBS to come on over and fill the Sunday 6:30 p.m. slot before Twentieth Century (Variety, April 25, 1962). The Ward studio was busy with things other than Bullwinkle that season; it set up a commercial production department under Pete Burness (Variety, July 23, 1962). It was a long-term deal with Quaker Oats to animate Cap’n Crunch spots that kept the studio running for years, not TV cartoons, no matter how funny they were.

Cow Puncher

“Why haven’t you written about Molly Moo Cow lately?” asked absolutely no one. Well, is there anything more to be said?

Molly had the benefit of animators Jack Zander, Bill Littlejohn, Alex Lovy, Dan Gordon and Carlo Vinci, story guy Joe Barbera, and music by Winston Sharples—but her cartoons still smelled like cow pies.

How’s this for a gag? In Molly Moo Cow and Robinson Crusoe, the ocean wave (from the song of the same subject) has fingers—which pick up the beached Molly and then punch her out of the scene. It’s a cow puncher! Get it?



Molly fan(s), now is your time to comment and defend her!

Molly was Van Beuren’s last attempt at creating a starring character. The studio bought the rights to Felix the Cat and the Toonerville Trolley and put them in the Rainbow Parade cartoons until RKO decided to distribute animated shorts from a studio it didn’t part-own (Disney) and Van Beuren shut down in 1936. Molly seems to have sauntered along with some of the Van Beuren animators to Terrytoons as a cow that suspiciously looks like her soon turns up in two shorts there.

Blunderland

Albert in Blunderland was the fourth John Sutherland cartoon released by MGM, warning theatre-goers about the dangers of America being under government control (ie, like those Godless Commies in Russia).

Even public transit is bad—if it’s run by the government (money was pumped into this cartoon by a foundation operated by Alfred P. Sloan, former chairman of General Motors. You think he liked streetcars?).



This cartoon is more strident than the one which preceded it, Why Play Leapfrog?, also released in 1950. I do like the futuristic backgrounds. Note the leaders of Antrolia (ie. Russia) commune by the signs of the zodiac (ie. not they’re not Judeo-Christian).



Unfortunately, no screen credits were given on this short. Presumably, George Gordon and Carl Urbano were involved as they were long-time Sutherland directors. Sutherland had a stock voice cast, it seems. Herb Vigran plays Albert, Joe Kearns is the ant, Frank Nelson is the radio speaker promoting Communism, Bud Hiestand is heard as well.

Pantsless Pig 1, Unmighty Mouse 0

For some reason, Warner Bros. cartoons in the mid-‘30s loved having hick characters or characters named Elmer. We get both in Friz Freleng’s The Country Mouse (1935). The farmboy mouse is named Elmer.

The mouse fancies himself a fighter but gets clobbered by the champ. Mighty Mouse, he’s not. In one of the better gags of the cartoon, a pig corner-man (without pants, just like Porky) is cooling Elmer down with a towel between rounds. Suddenly, Elmer gets up and starts throwing punches, including some straight toward the camera. The pig isn’t pleased his work has been interrupted, so he socks Elmer and resumes his towel waving.



Earlier in the year, there was a Friz Freleng cartoon named The Country Boy. There’s also a Friz cartoon of the same year called My Green Fedora with a baby rabbit named Elmer. Of course, the most famous Elmer we all know at Warner Bros. was a human who evolved from Tex Avery’s Egghead character.

The music credit is given to Bernie Brown, though the soundtrack features a Norman Spencer original named for the cartoon title; it may be the theme that Elmer sings and turns into a double-time version later in the cartoon. The music features that clip-clop, off-beat rhythm heard in a bunch of the Spencer scores. It sounds like Tedd Pierce plays the ring announcer.

A Bone!

Spike sees a bone in Counterfeit Cat. Some of the drawings from the take.



Mike Lah, Grant Simmons and Walt Clinton animated this cartoon for Tex Avery, which would make more sense if it was called Counterfeit Dog, because the cat is pretending to be the pooch next door.