Youth, Mary and Hospitals

If someone believes Jack Benny’s radio shows in the final season, 1954-55, were weak, the reason could simply be lack of enthusiasm.

Benny had pretty much lost interest in radio after spending more than two decades on it. And listeners had lost interest in radio, too. They could see the big-time stars now, thanks to television. What did they need with a talking box?

Jack talked about radio and a number of other things in an interview with syndicated columnist Sheilah Graham in 1954. He told her he’d never play Vegas. He did. He worried about where new comic talent would come from. He needn’t have. And it’s interesting he points out Mary’s ill health when his wife outlived him. By the way, Mary appeared with him on the final radio season but recorded her parts at home to be edited in later.

Age Does Not Wither Jack Benny
By SHEILAH GRAHAM
North American Newspaper Alliance
HOLLYWOOD, Feb. 27—The gals—from 5 to 50 and even 60—go for Jack Benny. Barbara Stanwyck took her television plunge with him; so did Claudette Colbert and Irene Dunne. As for Marilyn Monroe, I’m surprised she didn’t ask Jack to go along on the honeymoon with Joe Di Maggio. She wouldn’t go to Korea without him—before she married Joe, that is. And when I was lunching at Romanoff’s recently with Jack, Portland Mason, the precocious 5-year-old daughter of the James Masons, waved frantically at Mr. Benny and hollered, “You’re very attractive.”
Jack, who was 60 years old two weeks ago, doesn’t know the secret of his charm for the fair sex, but he has me enchanted and I think I know why. He’s been happily married to Mary Livingstone for 27 years, but there’s still that old glint in his eye, and he’s just as easygoing in real life as on radio and the TV screens. You relax, you shine, so you think HE’S wonderful.
“I don’t feel 60,” Jack confided. “I think the secret of looking young is to be working all the time on something you enjoy. Look how young George Burns looks, and Bing Crosby looked about 28 on my TV show. EVERYBODY looks like a kid!” glowed Mr. Benny.
I asked Jack how he got stuck with being 39. “It started years and years ago, when I was 36. I decided to stay 36 for several years. Some years later I became 37. Then 38. I’ve been 39 for five or six years and I don’t think I’ll get any older. There’s something about 40 that’s a little discouraging.” Jack has starred on radio for 22 years, but he’s about ready to quit the kilocycles.
“I started in May, 1932,” he recalled. “But I don’t know about next season. I’m not crazy about radio now and I’d like to quit. If I do, I’ll step up my television shows to two a month. I’ll film some, but most of them will be ‘live.’ One thing is sure—Mary (Livingstone) won’t do any more radio or TV shows with me. She doesn’t want to work any more. She hasn’t been well. And everything happened to her lately. A box of matches exploded in her hand, burnt two fingers. She went to throw something in the waste basket, and put her back out of kilter. We have the house in Palm Springs, but Mary hasn’t felt well enough for us to go there much this season.”
Most radio and television stars can’t wait for the Summer hiatus to get away from it all. “But I can’t stand still for more than eight weeks,” Jack told me, “so I’ll have to find something to do for the other five. He may do the Palace in New York—“but never Las Vegas.”
Jack has entertained most of the Presidents—“since Lincoln,” he added with a grin. When he was at the White House visiting then President Truman with whom he was very palsy-walsy, Jack told him, “I’d give anything for an autographed photograph, Mr. President.” Mr. Truman deadpanned, “How MUCH would you give?” He was at the Eisenhower inauguration and, when he visited Ike last year, the President told Jack: “I can give you a few minutes.” But he “gave” him two hours!
I asked Jack what he was giving daughter Joan for a wedding present. “I’m giving her the wedding,” he replied.
I’m invited, so I’ll tell you how much poppa went for. The ceremony is scheduled next month and I’ve never seen Jack exhibit nerves in all the time I’ve known him—but I’ll bet he quivers walking up the aisle.
“She’ll live in New York after the honeymoon,” Jack revealed. “And I’m glad. I’ll make Mary go to New York a little oftener.”
We talked of television, which Jack loves. “Eventually it won’t hurt movies,” he prophesied. “People want to go out. But no one knows where the comedians of the future are coming from—they used to come up through vaudeville and burlesque. As George Burns says, young comedians have no chance to be off-beat. On TV with millions watching, they can’t take a chance. As far as I see, there is only one great comic coming up—George Gobel—he’s the best in years.”
Jack will soon be going into the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital for his annual check up. “I’ll stay a week this time. I love to rest in a hospital. I have a TV set installed, a radio, magazines, books, and have a wonderful time.”
The Bennys stay home four nights a week and, in pajamas and dressing gown, watch television in his bedroom. But, when it comes to practicing on the violin, Jack does that in his spacious bathroom. Mary can’t stand the noise.

The Propaganda Cartoon King

There was a lot more to the animation industry than making entertainment shorts back in the days when studios were creating Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry, Mighty Mouse and Popeye cartoons. Smaller outfits were animating commercials or films sponsored by companies or organisations. They experimented in design and movement and produced some entertaining cartoons, attracting veterans from theatrical studios.

My favourite of the industrial studios is John Sutherland Productions. The Sutherland cartoons are entertaining, well-written and well-animated. The studio employed top creative people: designers included Maurice Noble and Tom Oreb; among the animation staff were Emery Hawkins, Phil Monroe and Bill Melendez; voice actors included Marvin Miller, Frank Nelson, Bud Hiestand and Herb Vigran. Les Baxter and Gene Poddany wrote scores, while Bill Scott and Warren Foster were employed as writers. Its main directors were Carl Urbano and George Gordon, both of whom were veterans of Fred Quimby’s MGM studio.

Like many of the industrial studios, it supplied cartoons to television stations of the early 1950s to run when they pleased; such a practice had gone back to the 1930s. However, Sutherland also managed to have one of his series released along with Tom and Jerry and Droopy by MGM; it happened coincidentally when Quimby dropped the third unit headed by Mike Lah and Preston Blair.

There was only one problem. While the Sutherland cartoons were entertaining, they weren’t entertainment. The ones MGM released were bought and paid for by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation to push a big business/small government agenda as being the patriotic thing to do for America. Finally, a hue and cry rose up against one Sutherland cartoon as being against Truman government policies (it ridiculed a subsidy programme). Soon, Sutherland’s cartoons weren’t on the MGM schedule any more.

But Sutherland was still making industrial films and commercials (he had success in the 1940s with ads for Chiquita Bananas). His magnum opus was Rhapsody in Steel, a 22-minute release in 1959 with eye-popping designs by Maurice Noble and a score by Dimitri Tiomkin that was released on an LP.

Industrial studios rarely got noticed outside of the trade press, but here’s a story about the Sutherland studio from the Christian Science Monitor of August 29, 1957.

Cartoons Animate Ideas In Business-Subject Films
By Richard Dyer MacCann
Hollywood
Ever since he wrote 108 reels of training and information films for the government during World War II, John Sutherland has been figuring out new ways of putting abstract ideas on the screen.
Most film critics doubt whether this can be done at all. Mr. Sutherland does it with animation. He has become, in a dozen profitable years, one of the leading producers of sponsoring films in Hollywood.
Ideas, especially the interesting ones, often have a tendency to be controversial. Mr. Sutherland, who still writes much of his own material and therefore is something of a reader, has a theory that controversy is a continuous factor in the progress of mankind. The gentleness and love taught by Jesus—and in Oriental countries by Buddha—are constantly striving, he feels, with the intellectual approach to life offered by Plato and Aristotle and with the materialistic, person and economic forcefulness worshiped by Nietzsche and Marx.
● ● ●

He comes down quickly enough from this dizzy philosophical height to point out that in our time there is a quite different three-sided battle going on—among big government, big labor, and big business. His preference is one of conviction, entirely apart from the source of his sponsorships. He believes that big business, these days, is far more dependably responsible toward the public welfare than are the “politicians” or labor and of governmental agencies.
His statement of the case used to be more extreme than it is now. Mr. Sutherland made a series of animated films several years ago for distribution by Harding College in Arkansas. They stirred up a regular storm of criticism among political scientists because they attacked, with devastatingly burlesque humor, a number of New Deal assumptions. “Fresh Laid Plan,” for example, took the view that agricultural subsidies would lead to bankruptcy for the whole community. In the end, the “professor” had to lock up all the producers in the community for violating his “plan” and body was left to produce.
John Sutherland, Inc., is continuing to make films in the category of “economic education.” They are more broadly informative than the older ones, and less likely to irritate people of a different persuasion. “You can’t tell people anything, anyway,” Mr. Sutherland says. “You can’t preach to them on film. All you can do is present information from a point of view and in a manner the audience has never seen or thought about before. If it’s reasonable, then the audience will accept it and perhaps be stimulated to participate more in public affairs.”
● ● ●

An admirable example of his latest work in this field is “It's Everybody's Business.” In this 20-minute animated Technicolor film, a seller of ladies’ hats in colonial times is compared with a seller of refrigerators in modern days. Economic freedom and competition are the abstract heroes of the story. There is just enough fun in it to keep everybody delighted—as when the newest model of the refrigerator has space in the rear for keeping ladies’ fur coats during the summer. And there is some especially stunning animation explaining how investors’ money keeps factories going.
“The Story of Creative Capitalism,” now completed and ready for release, is in the same groove—with more of a Disney touch. Alf the Elf explains capitalism to a sad young man who thinks he’s useless. Even his insurance policy and savings account make him a participant in big business, he is assured. Both of these films were sponsored by E.I. du Pont de Nemours Company and distributed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Among the 61 films in the current catalogue—some of them live action, some cartoons, some a combination of both—are advertising and sales promotion items on electric lift-trucks, meats for babies, bananas, frozen foods, arc projection equipment, carpeting, wood, and industrial research. Occasionally, pictures are made simply to impress retail dealers with the best way to handle a national product.
● ● ●
In the wider field of public relations, Mr. Sutherland has won nine different awards for an educational film (sponsored by General Electric) called “A Is for Atom,” and three more for “The Atom Goes to Sea,” “Horizons of Hope” (cancer research) and “What Makes Us Tick” (New York Stock Exchange) have won further prizes.
“The Story of a Main Street Merchant” (J.C. Penney) undertakes to dramatize a company’s employee policy, and, in a more specialized way, “The Dragon Slayer” (du Pont) describes in animation a whole series of employee benefit plans. “The Littlest Giant” traces national wealthy to the constructive force of consumer credit.
One of the most entertaining of Mr. Sutherland’s excursions into abstractions is a 16-minute combination of live action and animation he did for the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. In brightly rhymed couplets, a narrator explains the new electronic bookkeeping and billing system “Behind Your Telephone Bill.”
Mr. Sutherland has three notable new enterprises well under way. Ready for release this winter will be a film about the men who are building the new national expressways. Under exploration are two new sponsored films about physical chemistry, in cooperation with the California Institute of Technology, for use in college classrooms. And in preparation for possible production next year is a feature-length explanation of the discovery and meaning of “The Dead Sea Scrolls.” This is a project which will test to the full John Sutherland’s 65-man organization and his experience in presenting abstract ideas on the screen.

Sutherland’s studio carried on all the way into the early 1990s. Perhaps his studio’s best-known work in the later years was “The Most Important Person” vignettes that ran on the Captain Kangaroo show.

While the political leanings in his cartoons may not be to everyone’s taste, the shorts do deserve to be preserved. Their designs are fine examples of mid-‘50s art, and there’s enough humour to make them enjoyable to watch.

You can find an excellent article on the Sutherland studio, with quotes from former co-workers, and more biographical material by going to this web page.

Sutherland Main Street

Will Mrs. Consumer of 1954 choose the Quickchill or the Permafreeze refrigerator? Look at the Permafreeze. New style! Better quality!



Yes, it’s a John Sutherland propaganda cartoon. America! Free enterprise equals freedom! Down with government controls!

The scene is from It's Everybody's Business, a 1954 short funded by DuPont for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The designs in this cartoon are great, though it seems the restored version of the short is a little dark in places. The man behind them was Maurice Noble; he left Warners a week before the Chuck Jones unit was laid off at Warner Bros. for the last six months of 1953. Ex-Warners artists Abe Levitow, Emery Hawkins and Bill Melendez are among the credited animators, and part of the score was provided by Gene Poddany, who had been Carl Stalling’s copyist.

Here’s a little more of Main Street, USA from a darker print.



And here’s Mrs. Consumer and her family at one of the USA’s national parks—funded by taxes, thanks to business competition driving the American economy.



The obligatory flag scene. No background artist is credited but I wonder if it’s Joe Montell. The art direction is by the great Maurice Noble.



Both NBC and CBS were experimenting with colour broadcasts during daytime hours in 1954, with NBC showing a number of industrial films. It’s Everybody’s Business was one of them, airing on Thursday, July 1st at 3 p.m. Business Screen Magazine of August 1954 pointed out:

It is always more difficult to judge color quality of animated films, like It’s Everybody’s Business, because the animator’s tints have always been at his own whim and not subject to comparison with “natural.” In telecasting them, the electronic color trimmer does not feel obliged to constantly “correct” as much. As a result, the film seemed “steadier” in its color than live action films. It demonstrated that animation will probably be a favorite device for colorcasters for some time.

We’ve got a little more on the cartoon in this post. We’ll have more on the Sutherland studio tomorrow.

Tired Tom

More great expressions on Tom from Old Rockin’ Chair Tom (1948). The maid’s mouse-fearing screams wakes up the cat.



Three consecutive frames as Tom realises the maid is screaming for help, followed by the vibrating tail take.



Multiple cats as he dashes out of the scene.



Ed Barge, Ken Muse, Ray Patterson and Irv Spence are the animators in this short.

Don't Miss It!...Unless You Want To

Henry Morgan hated hyperbole.

Morgan infuriated ad agencies or/and sponsors by making his commercials anything but hyper sales pitches. If he praised a product, it was lukewarm or backhanded praise at best. It was his hit back at the outrageous and eye-rolling claims made in the advertising world, especially in broadcasting.

He took this concept even further. In 1948, Morgan starred with Arnold Stang and Bill Goodwin in a movie called “So This is New York.” Movies have trailers. So Morgan decided to satirise trailers with the one that was supposed to be plugging his own film. A really great concept.

Here’s a wire story about it from April 6, 1948.

Henry Morgan's 'Trailer' Violates All the Rules
By ALINE MOSBY
United Press Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD
Well, sir, Henry Morgan's gone and made a two minute movie.
For you guys who have time just for a quick one, you can see this miniature masterpiece standing in the theater aisle. You won't have to even sit down.
Some people might get technical and call this movie a "trailer." That is, it's actually the thing which will show up in the theaters a couple of days before Morgan's full-length movie, So This Is New York.
But when the rules for making trailers were passed around, Morgan definitely was out having a beer. Any resemblance his two-minute movie has to a trailer certainly wasn't his fault.
Morgan's midget movie does not advertise his big picture as (1) supercolossal (2) the greatest since, etc. etc., and those other superlatives that make you wonder why the "coming attraction" always sounds better than the movie you paid cash to look at.
This "trailer" doesn't even say you have to see So This is New York. Most trailers scream "don't miss it. . . ." Morgan philosophically remarks that if you want to see the movie, okay, and if you don't well, drop around and we'll recommend one you'll like.
Morgan's in New York now. He left a couple of guys behind to finish up the "trailer." They did. Now they're sitting around congratulating themselves. The way they act you'd think they care more about that trailer than the full-length movie it advertises.
The big picture? Sure, that's great, but come on over to see the trailer, they said.
Usually a trailer is patched together from scenes the director didn't use. Then a narration is scribbled out in a couple of days. It promises you're gonna see the hottest love, the gorgiest [sic] murders, the loveliest toenails, etc.
Morgan and Screenplays, Inc., which made the movie for Enterprise Studio, went about their trailer in a slightly different way.

"Morgan pokes fun at movie trailers in a slightly different way.
"Morgan pokes fun at movie trailers on his radio show, so we did the same," explained the producer, Stanley Kramer.
This turned out to be a full-sized project. Kramer & Co. spent almost as much time making the trailer as the full-length picture.
The writers who wrote So This Is New York wrote a script for the trailer, too. Quite unorthodox. It has a sort of plot, which they polished to perfection. From last October until last week the studio slaved on Morgan's two-minute movie.
The studio big-wigs paraded to a projection room where they gravely okayed the shortie. Next week it'll be shown in a suburban theater—the first "sneak" preview of a trailer. If the audience likes it, the mighty two-minuter will be unleashed on the nation.
Mr. Morgan's movie-before-the-movie is narrated by Henry himself. He tells about the big picture and at the end he says:
"So if you're not doing anything when my movie comes around, and you want to see a movie, come on in. . .You might like it.
"And if you don't see what you like, ask for it. We might be able to recommend some other picture."

The trailer isn’t on-line but the movie is HERE (unless this is a dead link by the time you read this). The poster doesn’t want it embedded. One can guess what Morgan might say about that.

He Let Him Have It

“Let me have it, pal,” says Spike to Drippy (who has been told not to let strangers in). So he does.



Mike Lah, Walt Clinton and Grant Simmons are the credited animators in Droopy’s Double Trouble (released in 1951), with gags by Rich Hogan and voices by Bill Thompson and Daws Butler. This is one of the weaker Droopys.

Blow the Man Up

The Ub Iwerks’ ComiColor short Sinbad the Sailor tries to end with a gag involving exploding cigars. First, Sinbad, then his parrot are caught in the blasts.



Carl Stalling received a musical credit on this cartoon, but the score seems really pieced together. There are no animation credits.

This cartoon was released June 26, 1935. Only a few days earlier, Paramount had announced that it would be releasing a two-reeler starring Popeye taking on Sinbad. The Popeye cartoon is superior in every way to the Iwerks effort.

Jack and George

George Burns and Jack Benny were practically lifetime friends. The two first crossed paths in vaudeville in the early 1920s. In 1974, Jack gave his final wire service interview before his death with George Burns chiming in. Burns replaced Benny in the film The Sunshine Boys when Jack died.

New York gossip columnist Cindy Adams talked to the pair about each other in a feature story published in the May 1963 edition of the TV Radio Mirror. Despite the click-bait style sub-headline, there’s no trash talking. Just funny stories and a demonstration of how close the two were.

Jack Benny & George Burns
what they say to each other's face!
what they say behind each other's back!
I first met George Burns a couple of years ago, when he was starring at Harrah's Club, one of the classier saloons and gambling emporiums in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. Being that Burns and Allen had been a team since the Stone Age. and being that this marked Burns' debut as a solo performer without Allen, this naturally was what the man was expected to talk about, breathe about and think about. Therefore, I naturally expected this would be Topic A in conversation.
"George," I said, "the songs and jokes you do all by yourself are wonderful. The audience adored . . ."
"Yeah," said George. "Jack was here for the opening, you know. Mary, too."
"Jack?"
"Jack Benny."
"Well, I'm sure he loved the act because it's so terrific that . . ."
"Yeah," said George. "Jack helped with the act, you know. Let's face it, he's reasonably successful, so sometimes I listen to him."
During this, George, a sun-worshipper, was cutting a dashing figure at poolside with a peaked cap on his head and a soggy stogie in his mouth. Neither ever got removed. And never once did the cigar impede the talk. George Burns can squat for twelve years at a stretch and never run out of anecdotes. The only thing he runs out of are characters. All his stories center around Jack Benny.
It seems that, 'way before Mary entered the picture, Jack knew Gracie. Back some four decades ago (George: "It's exactly 38 years." Jack: "It's exactly 40 years."), Jack dated a girl whose assets included a roommate named Gracie Allen.

Although they worked few shows together (Jack: "Maybe a half dozen times in all." George: "Just once at the Palace Theater in Indianapolis."), Jack and George were already devoted buddies who knew one another from hanging around the same booking offices, the same hotels and the same girls.
"In those days, Jack was making $450 a week in vaudeville and," gags George, "I think he's getting more now. Incidentally, he was doing those same stingy jokes, even then. We enjoyed one another right away. Besides, he used to laugh me up and, since he was earning more than me, whenever he laughed I thought I was a hit!"
Meanwhile, back at the unemployment office, Gracie was looking for someone to team up with in a comedy act. She told this to her roommate who told it to Jack who told Gracie he had a friend. George, who was working with someone who might just be what the doctor — or, at least, Gracie — ordered. Gracie came. She saw. But she conquered George, not the other fellow. And so, a couple of years later, between shows in a theater in Cleveland, George Burns took unto himself the wife that he'd already taken as a partner and — like it says in the storybooks — they've laughed happily ever after.
The cigar in George's molars bobbles overtime when he describes his wedding night: "Jack was working in Omaha (Jack: "Kansas City.") so he wasn't present for the ceremony. Gracie and I were earning $250 a week. We lived strictly in two-bucks-a-day hotels, but for our honeymoon we figured we'd go the whole route and blow $7 a day. We checked into the Statler at four in the morning, but the desk-clerk explained our day officially started at six.
"Well, we weren't gonna pay no extra seven bucks, so we sat in the lobby for two hours.
"The wedding was scheduled for eight that morning. But the justice of the peace was furious because he'd planned to go fishing that day, and he married us so fast that it was eighty cents on the taxi meter when we pulled up — and ninety cents when we left. He wasn't going to let any marriage kill his fishing.
"Anyway," grins George gleefully, "we were dead tired from sitting in that lobby, so we went to bed early. At two A.M., the phone rang. It was long-distance. It was Jack. Now I know his voice, see, so the minute he said 'Hello,' I said, 'Will you have the waiter send up another order of ham and eggs, please,' and I hung up. Four o'clock the phone wakes us again. It's Jack. All he said was, 'Hello . . . hello,' and I said, 'I'm still waiting for the eggs.' Not another word and I hung up."
George, who, as Jack Benny says, "is conceded by most comedians to be the funniest man in the business," continued with his crackling dry wit. "I always hang up on Jack. Always. In the middle of any conversation, I suddenly hang up. It started once when he talked so long I couldn't stand it. So right in the middle of a comma, I hung up on him. He thought it was a riot. Next time, I did it again. I did this three times in a row, and each time he got hysterical. Finally I figured it isn't funny anymore, so I stopped. Well, he was hurt. He thought I was mad at him. Since then, I hang up on him every single time we talk on a phone. It isn't funny anymore, but I don't want him to think I'm mad."

After this poolside chat, I didn't see George for two years. Our next meeting was at his office. He was the talk of the industry because he'd just discovered the rising star, Ann-Margret, and had just packaged a CBS-TV series, "Mister Ed," so this naturally was what the man was expected to talk about, breathe about and think about. Therefore, I naturally expected this would be Topic A in conversation.
"George," I said, "you're doing so well without Gracie that ..."
"Yeah," said George, "Gracie would have quit even sooner if not for Jack."
"Jack?"
"Jack Benny."
"Well, in any case, you're doing so sensationally that . . ."
"Yeah," said George, "You know, Gracie wanted out of the business for four years before she finally retired. She'd been working all her life, and she was tired. I hated to cancel a sponsor who was offering us forty weeks of TV plus twelve weeks of repeats. Besides, I was afraid that, without her, I'd have to quit, too. And I love to work. That's the reason, when I okayed that final year, I called Jack and Mary to break the news for me. Gracie was staying at their Palm Springs house. Jack and Mary helped a lot. They explained how wonderful it was for us and how ordinarily actors throw parties when their options are picked up. I'm certain that, if not for them, she wouldn't have done that last season."
As long as Jack Benny has been alive — "thirty-nine years" — the Bennys and the Burnses have been a close quartet. Even the wives have much in common. They were married within a year of each other. The Burnses became Mr. and Mrs. thirty-seven years ago. The Bennys, thirty-six years. Both wives teamed with their husbands professionally. Both women wanted out. Both women are out.
The two couples occasionally vacation together. They've gone to New York, Europe and Vegas together. The Burnses live within four blocks of the Bennys in Beverly Hills. They see each other constantly. The womenfolk have been known to lunch or shop together. Come a holiday or birthday, they exchange lingerie, nighties or "some inexpensive little doodads like silverware, glasses or something for the house," since each decided long ago that the other has practically everything.
Although the men began the friendship, it's well-known that the ladies could have finished it. It's an accepted fact that not only can women change the face of a foursome, but down through the centuries the frail li'l female of the species has rechiseled the destinies of whole families . . . whole countries. Take Helen of Troy, the Duchess of Windsor, Elizabeth Taylor. . . . However, both men disagree that the wives could kill off their friendship, because it is far too enduring. However, they agree that the parallel of their wives' theatrical background — and now retired foreground — makes for a tremendous closeness.

The first time I met Jack was a year-and-a-half ago, when he taped several television shows from New York. The night before, he'd taken over the Automat on 45th Street and Fifth Avenue for a black-tie party. In line with the professional Benny "stinginess," he personally handed each guest a $2 roll of nickels. To see Helen Hayes in a floor-length gown and elbow-length gloves jockeying apple pie from a glass window, or to catch Arlene Francis carrying ermine and diamonds and a tray of corned beef, was a beautiful sight. Naturally, it had been a tremendous party, and naturally I figured this would be the major topic of discussion.
"Jack," I said, "it was so funny at your party when . . ."
"Yeah," Jack said, "too bad George wasn't there."
"George?"
"George Burns."
"Well, I'm sure he'd have howled the way you . . ."
"Yeah," Jack said. "But he'd have deflated me somehow. He always does. It's very easy for George to make me laugh. Mary can be quite witty at times, too, but mostly we three just sit around and scream at him."
He explained how he prepared Mary for her first introduction to George — who, although straitlaced Gracie doesn't sanction it, is known to toss off lavender verbiage. True to form, George teed off this meeting with a few four-and five-letter words that not even Webster knows — "Just so Mary could get used to how I talk real fast." George explained later.
"It's just that everything he does breaks us up, and he knows it. As a result, he's always planning how to make me laugh." continued Jack. "Like at the Command Performance last year. We were walking down a dark London street at two A.M., and George stopped to look into a basement window. A little further on, he bent down to look into another one. Each time I stooped down, too, but I saw nothing. The third time. I ran over to ask what he saw. And he said, 'Nothing. But I'm in England and I don't want to miss anything.'
"Once, we were at somebody's home when an opera singer was giving a recital. Everything was fine until George sat down behind me. He didn't do anything. He just whispered. 'Now whatever you do, don't laugh.' That's all I needed. Just his power of suggestion. Before you know it, my shoulders heaved and I couldn't control myself. I had to leave."

The fact that Jack is wildly susceptible to George is best illustrated by the time Jack said to him. "Now, listen, don't try to be funny today." Being an Eagle Scout, George didn't try to be funny. Suddenly, Jack started to guffaw maniacally. George looked startled. "I didn't say anything," he said. "Yeah," giggled Jack, "but I know what you're thinking!"
The upshot is that Jack is always trying to make George laugh, and George's always deflating him. "Once," grins Jack, "he was in Minneapolis and I was so desperate to break him up that I concocted a really hysterical telegram. I worked hard on it. I threw everything I could into it. It was about fifty words, and it was really a riot. I got a return wire from him. All it said was, 'Don't worry. I won't show your wire to anyone.' "
(Author's Note: When George told the story, the wire was "over two hundred words." When Jack was told Burns' version, he giggled happily and said, "That's George. The world's biggest liar.")
During my visit to Benny's dressing-room, he sat slumped in a chair while the makeup man was pretending he was a Rembrandt and Benny's beautiful, familiar face was a canvas. Between the artiste crayoning his eyebrows, and this interviewer recording his adlibs, and the fact that he was due to face millions on television in three minutes, Mr. Benny was so high-strung and nervous about the whole thing that he was yawning altogether.
At the end of the hour's discussion on George Burns, Jack said, "By the way, just what was it you wanted to interview me about?"
"George Burns," I said.
"Oh, my God, honey," yawned Jack as he sauntered onstage, "We've been friends for so long I couldn't possibly think of anything to say about him!"
— Cindy Adams
"The Jack Benny Program" is seen on CBS-TV, Tues., at 9:30 P.M. EST.

The Cartoon Sophisticate

The 1960s were just horrible for theatrical cartoons. If your local movie house ran them at all, you were subjected to Honey Halfwitch, Cool Cat or, if you were really unlucky, the Beary Family. But there was one theatrical series that was a real bright spot.

The Pink Panther.

Friz Freleng, Hawley Pratt and the other creative people who came up with the idea hit on the right combination. Instead of the aging concept of funny animals chasing each other, the Panther was plunked into a human world. Making him a pantomime figure instead of a lippy Bugs Bunny type caused John Dunn and the other writers to rely on sight gags enhanced by Friz’s (and Pratt’s) perfect timing. The gags were pretty imaginative. And the use of Henry Mancini’s Panther movie theme as the main background music gave each short a sly and jazzy air.

Here are a couple of stories about how the Panther cartoons came about. The first is from United Press International, February 4, 1965, the second from the Los Angeles Times syndication service, originally published December 24, 1964.

The Panther series kind of petered out in 1971 but theatrical cartoons continued to be released into 1977.

Cartoon Panther Is A Box Office Tiger
By Vernon Scott
HOLLYWOOD—UPI—If you have been to the movies recently you have probably noticed the comeback of an old theater standby, the animated cartoon. With the increasing disappearance of double features, theater owners are filling out the bill with animated hijinks.
Moviegoers will be seeing more of Woody Woodpecker, Bugs Bunny and the ubiquitous Tom and Jerry. They will also be entertained by a skinny and malevolent character named the Pink Panther.
The Panther made his debut when the credits flashed on the screen more than a year ago for the feature film thriller-comedy, The Pink Panther, starring Peter Sellers. Audiences enjoyed the animal's rapscallion adventures almost as much as the phenomenally successful film.
Director Blake Edwards, along with David Depatie and Friz Freleng (who created the animated prologue), saw gold in the Pink Panther and forthwith turned him into a star in his own right.

Depatie-Freleng Enterprises have been contracted by United Artists to turn out 13 Pink Panther short subjects a year.
Thus far they've produced three, all with the theme music from the Pink Panther movie; all without dialogue of any kind.
“We think of the Panther as an adult cartoon character, but geared for children, too,” said Depatie at his cartoon headquarters near Warner Bros. studio. “But our dilemma is whether to give him a voice or keep him in pantomime.”
His partner, Freleng, added, “we were as surprised as everyone else with the Panther's popularity.
“He captured public imagination because here was a character fussing around with the credits of a movie which are supposed to be a serious undertaking. He was the first cartoon 'personality' involved in main title credits and was therefore, different.”
Depatie and Freleng hope to stockpile more than 100 Panther cartoons and dump them on the television market which gobbles up cartoons faster than it does old movies.
According to Freleng, adults enjoy cartoons in theaters as much—or more so—than their offspring, but will not admit it.
Freleng is an old hand at fathering cartoon characters, having originated Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Sylvester and Tweetie Pie, Yosemite Sam, Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales. He foresees as big a future for the Panther as any of his previous children.
“The Panther is egotistical, effeminate, affete, [sic] chic, and very pink,” said Depatie.
“He's not in-step with the regular pattern of a cartoon cat chasing a cartoon mouse,” Freleng said. “We're staying out of the trap of creating another Bugs Bunny.
“You could say the Panther is sophisticated.”

New Craze Started by ‘Pink Panther’
DePatie and Freleng Reveal Story Behind Cartoon Series
BY PHILIP K. SCHEUER
Times Motion Picture Editor
Having flipped over “The Pink Phink,” an animated cartoon being released with “Kiss Me, Stupid,” I hastened to call a high-level conference with its creators—primarily two chaps with the arresting names of David H. DePatie and Friz Freleng. They had introduced their Pink Panther, who reappears in “The Pink Phink,” in the picture of that name—behind the opening credit titles. Since almost everybody thought the credits deserved more credit than the picture, the Mirisch Corp. and Blake Edwards urged DePatie-Freleng to keep the sly young fellow alive in a series.
“The Pink Phink” is the first. Four others are ready: “Pink Pajamas,” “We Give Pink Stamps,” “Dial P for Pink” and “Sink Pink”—in which the PP is refused entrance to Noah’s Ark “because there’s only one of you.”
Friz Freleng, older of the pair, is roundish, bald and mustached. (Actually, he apparently served as the model, consciously or not, for the only other character in “The Pink Phink.”) “My real name is, of all things, Isadore,” he explained. “There used to be a cartoon-strip character called Congressman Frizby—and years ago, at Warners, they somehow hung the tag on me.” DePatie is taller and has curly black hair.
Pair Partners For 10 Years
Both are veterans of the cartoon field, only Friz is a veteran veteran. He came west from Kansas City about the same time Walt Disney did and went to work for him in 1927, later moved on to MGM (“Krazy Kat”) and Warner Bros. (“Looney Tunes,” “Merrie Melodies”), for whom he originated such characters as Porky Pig, Sylvester, Tweety Pie, Yosemite Sam, Speedy Gonzales and Daffy Duck. Eventually he tied up with DePatie, who had begun his career as a film editor at Warners and returned there later as head of the studio’s commercial department. They have been partners for 10 years.
When, in May of last year, Warners decided to drop its commercial and animation divisions the pair took them over—as DePatie-Freleng Enterprises. “But now,” Friz said, “we have resumed for them with a contract for 39 cartoons—this in addition to our other work. This includes titles for other pictures (‘A Shot in the Dark,’ ‘Sex and the Single Girl,’ ‘The Satan Bug,’ ‘The Best Man,’ ‘How to Murder Your Wife’ for Ross Hunter and, coming up, ‘The Great Race’), a trailer for ‘John Goldfarb’ and the pilot for a Screen Gems TV series, ‘I Dream of Jeanie,’ with Barbara Eden.
He’s a Natural For Animation

The idea for their new beastie was born when Blake Edwards approached them and said, “I have a picture that is a natural for animation, ‘The Pink Panther.’” Continued Friz, “Edwards and the Mirisches gave us complete freedom—and now all the other producers who wouldn’t, want us.”
DePatie nodded agreement. “The pinks are being geared for the adult intellect; kids will watch anything that moves. Our first give are in pantomime only—far more difficult to do, by the way, than with a voice. But since they may later be put together three at a time for a half-hour TV show—and TV won’t sustain without dialogue—we are using dialogue in No. 6. The panther will speak with a kind of Rex Harrison voice—knowledgeable, the ultimate in sophistication. In the past the industry has missed by making cartoons that adults might enjoy but that were a little immature. The exceptions were Disney, in some of his, and UPA.”
I asked how they thought they compared with Hollywood’s Saul Bass and Maurice Binder, in Europe, as creators of opening titles. “They use more abstract designs and graphics; we’re more character animation.” The most successful big-scale commercial title makers are Pacific Title and National Screen Service. On the financial side, they estimated from $17,500 to $18,000 as the cost of their own title-making for a picture. Pretty reasonable, since they figure their opener for “The Pink Panther” has added $1.5 million to its gross—“gives people something to talk about.” Another by-produce that could develop into a bonanza is merchandising. United Artists in New York has been making tie-ups for the Pink Panther in comic strips and joke books, toy manufacturers, etc. He is, incidentally, the first new character to be invented for theater exhibition in eight years.

The Changing Pianist

There’s humour—intentional and unintentional—in cartoons made by New York’s C-list studio, Van Beuren.

In Mad Melody (1931), notice what happens when the camera cuts to a closer shot. The pianist doesn’t even look like the same character. The lion has tousled hair, a huge collar and teeth (or a tooth) in the second frame.



That’s the unintentional humour. The intentional is how the lion sings in a female soprano, then changes his voice in what’s supposed to be bass. His body drops as his voice drops.



Alright, maybe it’s not that amusing. But you can’t dislike a cartoon where a piano suddenly gets up and paces, or where a monkey assistant sweeps up notes that tumble out of the open piano and throws them back in (and a note jumps out to conk him on the head and knock him out).

There are no credits on this cartoon other than Gene Rodemich for synchronization.