Mama Bea

Stardom finally greeted Bea Benaderet in 1963 when Petticoat Junction went on the air, after years and years of supporting roles on radio and television. Unfortunately, she didn’t enjoy it for long. She was dead of cancer in five years.

Benaderet was born 112 years ago today. Her family moved to San Francisco where she began her radio career as a singer in the mid-1920s. She moved to Los Angeles and eventually had regular roles on a number of network shows—The Great Gildersleeve, My Favorite Husband with Lucille Ball and especially on The Burns and Allen Show. It was with Burns and Allen she went to television and there was never a season she didn’t have a regular TV role until her death.

The Philadelphia Inquirer of May 10, 1964 published this feature piece with Benaderet. If you want to read more about her, go to THIS POST on the Yowp blog.

Bea Benaderet—Mama of the Year
By HARRY HARRIS
Of The Inquirer Staff
HAPPY Mother's Day to the successful new mama of the current television season!
That would be Bea Benaderet, who as widow Kate Bradley in CBS' Top Ten "Petticoat Junction," Tuesdays at 9 P. M. on Channel 10, has three beauteous teen-age daughters: blond Jeannine Riley, brunette Pat Woodell and redhead Linda Kaye (As Betty Rubble in ABC's "The Flintstones" responsible for the character's voice and, by example, batting eyelashes she also has a cartoon kid: Bam-Bam.)
Miss Benaderet, alias Mrs. Gene Twombley (her husband since 1957 is a sound-effects engineer), has two real children by an earlier marriage to actor-announcer, ex-"Red Ryder" James Bannon: Jack, 23, and Maggie, 16.
She's a TV mother now because she failed to become a TV grandmother last season. She had her heart set on the "Granny" role in "The Beverly Hillbillies," which went to Irene Ryan instead, but wound up in the same Nielsen-pacing show as Aunt Pearl.
Earlier, TV audiences saw her as Wilma, the housekeeper, in the "Peter Loves Mary" series and, earlier still for eight years as Blanche Morton, the neighbor, in "The Burns and Allen Show," where her successive spouses were Hal March, John Brown, Fred Clark and Larry Keating.
A professional performer at 12, and for quite a spell one of radio's busiest dialecticians (she played continuing roles in numerous comedy shows), Bea now gets top billing for the first time in a long career—"Shall we say 30 years?"
"I'm glad to be a star," she tells interviewers, "but I don't feel like one."
One frequent concomitant of TV situation comedy stardom is the use of one's own Christian name onscreen. Thus, Lucille Ball plays a Lucy; Danny Thomas, a Danny, etc.
"We kicked around the idea of using 'Bea,'" the brown-eyed blonde (via black and gray) told us, "but I didn't think it would be appropriate. If the character were closer to me, yes, but she's entirely different.

"She's like I am in that she's sort of middle-aged and not unattractive, a hard worker, a provider, with a sense of humor but not otherwise. I could more suitably have been a 'Bea' on The Burns and Allen Show.'"
Her name is her own, despite repeated efforts to get her to change it.
"When I was doing radio, many years ago, on a San Francisco station, they'd say, 'Anything's better than Benaderet—How about Smith?' But now it's a little late, don't you think? The boat has sailed.
"People don't seem to be able to remember there's only one A. It's Benaderet, not Ben-AdA-ret. It was misspelled on the Burns and Allen show—in big letters!—for years and years.
"In the seventh year, they wanted to correct it, but I said, 'Don't—not now!’
"It's misspelled where I park my car at the studio, and it's misspelled on my checks. Benny Rubin used to call me 'Benny de Rat.' Usually I'm just 'Bea' or 'Beazie.' "
She's enjoying other attributes of stardom, however—greater recognition, higher income, a posh dressing room, more tender working conditions.
"Last year, when they threw Cousin Pearl into the water for a 'Beverly Hillbillies' scene," she remembers, "the water was ice cold. When they threw a cat in—that crazy, skinny Rhubarb—a crew kid yelled, 'Hey, Bea, see, we heated the tank for the cat!'
" 'Sure,' I said. 'Cats have a better union!'
"Don't misunderstand," she adds quickly. "I have no desire to act like a star. I don't think I'm all-important. An actor is only as good as what he gives and gets back.
"I've kept busy because I'm lucky and because people have trusted me to give a role a different flavor. I think I've done that.
"But a show is more than one person, and there are lot of reasons "Petticoat Junction" is so well liked: Paul Henning (the show's producer, who also created "The Beverly Hillbillies"), my 'daughters,' fine actors like Edgar Buchanan, Smiley Burnette and Rufe Davis..."
She hasn't always played comedy.
"I started as a dramatic actress," she says. "Well, as a singer, actually; then as a dramatic actress, at a little theater in San Francisco. (New York City-born Bea moved there when she was 4.)
"For a while I did radio dramas with Orson Welles from Hollywood, both comic and serious. I recall when they were casting 'Algiers.' I had an audition appointment with John Houseman, who was with Welles at the time, and I went to his office, prepared to read.
"We talked for 30 or 40 minutes, and then he said, "Rehearsal is at 9 A. M. Monday.' I thought I'd be a super, an ad libber, but it was a leading role. 'I don't understand,' I said. 'Wouldn't you like me to read?' No,' he said, you’ll be fine.' And you know something? I was fine.
"I worked with Welles from then on. We used to do two shows one for the East Coast, one for the West Coast First we'd do the script as it was, then Mr. Welles would sit down and frantically cross out five minutes of dialog, after he'd heard how it 'played.'
"I've done a few dramatic shows on television—a 'Line-Up,' a 'Restless Gun' but not many people will take a chance. They're afraid of laughs.
"I have no desire to change from comedy, I'm very happy in this field, but every actor yearns for variety. It's like a form of exercise. The acting muscles get a little numb."

She credits George Burns and Gracie Allen with providing the greatest impetus to her career.
"I was staff, in San Francisco, and used to do 14, 15 shows a week. They came to town for a personal appearance and did a broadcast I worked with them.
"Several years elapsed. I went to Los Angeles and almost immediately I went to work for Burns and Allen, for Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor, Lux Theater'. . .
"I was with George and Gracie, on radio and TV, for 20 years. George is one of the top craftsmen in this business, always businesslike, but always a joy to work with.
"Their television shows were rehearsed one day and shot on another. There was no time for tomfoolery. . .Nobody stands over you with a bullwhip, but this is a fast business.
"The Burns and Allen television show started in New York. For two years it was 'live,' and then they started doing some shows on film at the same time it would be live one week, film the next.
"In live TV, it's do-or-die. In film, if you make a mistake, you know you can shoot it over. When we started using film, I got a little lazy about memorizing. "Then, when we had a live show, I found the words weren't coming as easily. So I started putting notes all around.
One day I planted some on a fireplace behind a vase, but so did the others. I had a line about four-minute eggs that was supposed to lead into a twisted-word thing for Gracie, but all I could see was George's 'What did the doctor say?'
"We never did find the egg line!"
Does she ever long for the good old days of radio when she kept shifting gears between telephone operator Gertrude Gearshift on "The Jack Benny Show" and Mama (a much earlier mama!) on "Meet Millie"?
"Television has never been a problem to me," she says. "I happen to be a good study, fairly intelligent and able to take direction, and I find television very exciting.
"Lake all actors, I didn't realize how lucky we were. It's not that I enjoyed radio more than I do TV, but it would have been so much simpler if television had come first. Now we could have relaxed!"

Pleased to Meet Cha Backgrounds

The rundown city scenes are my favourite Fleischer backgrounds but the other muted settings are enjoyable to look at, too.

Here’s the opening shot from the Popeye cartoon Pleased to Meet Cha! (1935). The music opening the short is “Love is Just Around the Corner.”



Olive’s living room, followed by one of a couple of overhead shots in the cartoon. The soundtrack plays another song from a Paramount feature, “Love Thy Neighbor.”



Fleischer homes have fish mounted on walls.



An angular perspective of the living room. Who did layouts on these cartoons, anyway?



Lamp posts in Fleischer cartoons always seem to sag. I also like how the little store is across the thinnest street in the world from Olive’s house.



The opening credits include the ship’s doors revealing the titles and the fight scene has Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever,” which usually mean a good cartoon. This one isn’t the strongest, though. And someone will have to explain why Olive is worth fighting over.

Willard Bowsky and Hal Walker are the credited animators.

Deduce, You Say Background

Maurice Noble and Phil De Guard are at it again in Deduce, You Say, a 1956 Warners cartoon from the Chuck Jones unit. This is panned left to right. You can click on it to make it bigger.



Oh, and while while we’re talking about De Guard...

This is from the Los Angeles Public Library collection. Photograph caption dated March 10, 1954 reads, "Philip De Guard, North Hollywood artist, shows his version of desert meeting between George Adamski, lecturer-author, and flying saucerman from Venus. Scout ship hovers over meeting place as mother ship soars in distance. In foreground is silhouette of six witnesses." Doesn’t quite look like his work on Duck Dodgers does it?

Grandfather at 39

Jack Benny was a devoted father, according to someone who ought to know—his daughter Joan. And her book about her dad reveals he was a devoted grandfather, too.

If a gossip magazine is to be believed, there was a bit of a story behind the birth of Jack’s first grandson. The December 1955 issue of TV Radio Mirror contains a feature story about the first, together with the familiar story of how Jack and Mary Livingstone met.

The title of the article is a bit misleading. “Great grandfather” is meant as in “good grandfather.” Were Jack alive today, he would be a great grandfather; one of his great grandchildren submitted an article to the Jack Benny Times fan publication last year.

The photos came with the story.

He's a Great Granddad!
At "39," Jack Benny shrugs off the years— and revels in the delight his first grandchild has brought him
By FREDDA BALLING
AS EVERYBODY KNOWS, Jack Benny is only 39. It's one of the enchanting myths which the Waukegan wit has encouraged about himself, and which the American public has gleefully accepted. But Jack's self-proclaimed "ceiling on birthdays" does create some problems in statistics — none greater than that which transpired last summer, when daughter Joan Benny Baker became the mother of a six-pound, four-ounce baby boy named Michael. This somewhat early grandfatherhood fascinated newswriters and amateur gagsters around the land.
It was written that the baby was born with a heavy head of hair about the color and consistency of Jack's "Sunday toupee" (he doesn't wear one any day of the week) . The infant's eyes were said to be "mountain lake" blue, and the song that soothed him in moments of distress was, inevitably, "Love in Bloom." But principally Jack was headlined as one of the youngest grandparents in show business — at the age of 39.
The American public quickly took it up. Letters began to avalanche upon the already crowded CBS-Hollywood office. The mail could be divided roughly into three categories: Boasts from younger-than-Benny grandparents (one precocious type from, naturally, Texas, reported himself a grandfather at 28); boasts from legitimate 39-ers with more than one grandchild (usually acquired in a multiple birth) ; protests from Jack's authentic contemporaries (he has never made a strict secret of his actual 61 years) — who complained that, if he'd only stress the truth about his age, they would be far and away ahead of him in the grandparent sweepstakes.
A good many of the letters enclosed snapshots of beloved progeny. At length, after having spent a morning in study of letters and pictures. Jack observed thoughtfully, "Mary and I made just one mistake. We should have had a family of six or eight. Just look at these kids!
Aren't they great? Wouldn't you love to have every single one!" Jack added, taking on the Benny TV personality, "Of course, there's something special about Michael . . . and I'm not saying it because I'm prejudiced. Hmmmmmmmm . . . it's true."
Michael started out being "something special" about seven months before he was born. During one of Joan's regular long-distance phone calls, placed to her parents two or three times a week, Joan confided that she had her doctor's assurance she was going to make Jack a grandfather. She added that she wanted to keep it secret as long as possible.
Jack and Mary agreed with their daughter. A secret it would be.

The following day, Jack showed up at Hillcrest Country Club, as usual, for his luncheon date with George Burns and other members in good standing at the Comedians' Table. George, grandparent of almost a year's seniority at the time, "happened" to have a fistful of his grandson's latest pictures in his wallet, and passed them around.
This was more than mortal man could stand. With quiet dignity, Jack announced that "by this time next year" he would have some pictures of his own to parade. He added, however, that his anticipation was a secret for the time being. After luncheon he joined a foursome for golf and confided his news to them, again with the aside that the information was given in confidence. At the nineteenth hole, Jack joined the usual alibi session and, as soon as he could get a word in, spread the tidings — requesting, of course, that there be no broadcasting of the facts.
All in all, it proved to be a lovely day, Always enthusiastic, Jack had a prize inspiration on his way home and stopped at an out-of-the-way shop which is patronized mainly by musicians of note. After proper deliberation and testing, he tucked his purchase under his arm and hastened home to Mary's welcoming kiss.
"Hi, Doll. Bought a present for the expected," he said, handing the package to Mary.
"Not already!" she moaned, and her expression took on starch. There was no real need for her to remove the wrappings and unfasten the case, but she played out the scene just the same. Nestled in the velvet lining was a quarter-sized violin.
"Oh, Jack!" said his wife, her tone a compound of exasperation, amusement and intense affection.
"Cute, huh?" said Jack, very offhandedly.
Suspicion gradually superseded all other emotions as Mary studied the man to whom she has been married for nearly twenty-nine years. "Jack, you didn't tell anyone at the club, did you?"
Jack said, "Well . . ." as only he can say it. After a pause he went on, "Naturally, I had to tell George." Jack explained that George had been flashing pictures around the luncheon table, so . . . And then, out on the golf course, one of the guys had said something about his daughter's youngsters, which reminded Jack . . . Oh, yes, and then in the locker room there had been a few fellows standing around. . . .
"Jack! What will Joanie think?" Mary demanded, and this time the inflection denoted shocked reproof and genuine annoyance modified very little by loving understanding.
Jack took refuge in a show-business trick which is his and his alone, because — according to other comedians — no one else has the courage it takes to put it into effect. It goes like this in a theater: Jack tells a joke and then, with a straight face — a face on which cosmic melancholy and quiet command are mingled — he stares at the audience and waits. And he continues to wait, permitting himself no more than a patient sigh. According to show-business experts, this leaves an audience with a choice: To laugh or to leave the theater. They always laugh.
And so, regarding Mary with his life-is-a-bad-joke-on-somebody-but-don't-blame-me expression. Jack waited.
And Mary laughed.
She had no real cause to fear betrayal of the secret. The Hillcrest Country Club takes care of its own. Not one word of the Baker expectancy oozed out of California. Not until Eastern columnists noted Joan's chic maternity outfits did the item appear in the press.

The three Bennys have always been exceptionally devoted. During the war years, when Jack was spending every possible hour doing shows at military installations, there was a gag among his troupe that he had to be told a departure hour was thirty minutes in advance of the true time, because he would be shopping until the last minute for keepsakes for Mary and Joan. Some of the finest modern-Marine handcarving of native outriggers and temple ornaments brought genuine antique prices from a not entirely hoodwinked customer from Beverly Hills. It was in India that Jack — according to reports — would have been left behind if it hadn't been possible to hear him, over a mile's distance, hastening to the plane. They sell an awful lot of bells in Bombay.
Bearing this family devotion in mind, several local financial wizards called their brokers to order additional shares of telephone stock, when they learned that Joan Benny was to marry Seth Baker and live in New York — while Jack and Mary remained on the West Coast. Telephone dividends, the wizards figured, were certain to rise on the basis of fantastically increased long-distance tolls from coast to coast.
When the same shrewd gentlemen heard of Jack's impending grandfatherhood, they added still further telephone shares to their holdings. Well-informed sources say that this perspicacity has paid off — at least one such "wizard" bought a custom-made Cadillac the other day.

There is a story behind the long-distance telephone enthusiasm of the Bennys. As is rather well known by now. Jack and Mary met when Zeppo Marx and young Mr. Benny were invited by Mary's sister Babe — who was also in vaudeville and on the same bill with the boys — to enjoy a home-cooked meal in Vancouver, where Mary's family was then living. Mary was twelve at the time and was overwhelmed by the looks and charm of the "Walter Raleigh" of Waukegan.
It can't be recorded that Jack reciprocated her interest. Actually, there was in his deportment, a suggestion that — far from tossing down his cloak for her dry-footed comfort — he would have gagged her with it. Sub-teen Mary was stuck at the conversational stage of development and was trying hard to impress Mr. Benny — which might have been okay if he could have used any of her lines in his act afterward. But no such luck. Said Benny to Marx, "Get me out of here. What am I doing with this . . . this kid?"
Years passed. Mary and her family moved south to San Francisco and, once again. Jack was a dinner guest during a San Francisco booking. He excused himself as quickly as manners would allow. By the time Mary met Jack for the third time, the family was living in Los Angeles. By now, Mary had been graduated from high school and was working at the hosiery counter at the May Company (a long-time Benny radio gag which is actually based on truth).
Mary and her family caught Jack's act at the Orpheum, and he joined them afterward for a post- theater dinner. As Mary remembers, "He sounded a little like a jukebox with the needle stuck. He couldn't get off one subject: 'My, how you've changed!' "
The following day he strolled into the May Company shortly before noon and asked Mary to join him for lunch. She was so excited she couldn't swallow her coffee, much less a sandwich. That night they had dinner at what was, in those innocent days of 1926, one of downtown Los Angeles' great restaurants. The Victor Hugo. Mary had never been in the place before. Again, she was too thrilled to eat.
The following night Jack took her to the Cocoanut Grove, and Mary definitely had no appetite. She might have starved altogether if Jack hadn't left to keep his San Francisco booking, and from there worked his way northward, theater by theater. When he reached Seattle he learned that he had been re-booked in Los Angeles, so naturally he telephoned Mary to ask her to reserve a few dates while he was in town. He had learned — by the secret method of listening to Mary's conversation — that she had at least one beau who kept her evenings busy, so he felt he should clear the way.
When the long-distance call came in from Seattle — the first one Mary had ever received — she was so overcome that she couldn't think of anything to say. The fact that it was one o'clock in the morning and she had been awakened out of a sound sleep may also have had something to do with it. Plus the fact that her parents were having no trouble finding words to say how they felt about it all.

Mary's second long-distance conversation with Jack resulted from Mary's placing a call to her sister. Babe, in Chicago to announce that she was going to be married. Babe said Mary was too young, and why didn't she come to Chicago, where Babe was appearing on the same bill with Jack Benny, to discuss the matter. Jack got on the wire and seconded the motion. So Mary went to Chicago to talk over her "youthful unpreparedness for marriage" — and three days later, in Waukegan, married Jack. The date was January 14, 1927, and it marked the beginning of one of the greatest telephonic relationships on record.
Passing a practice from one generation to the next was easy, in this instance. When Joan Benny was a student at Stanford, an audit of the telephone expense indicated that her annual tuition was only slightly greater than her toll calls.
And then she married, moved East, and set out a welcome mat for the stork. During one of her calls last spring, Joan told her father that she and Seth had almost settled on a choice of names for the impending infant: "Jack" for a boy, "Jacqueline" for a girl. Jack considered. "Alexander Graham Baker might be a nice name," he murmured.
Always a quick man to respond to requests for benefit performances. Jack has always tried to adhere to one rule — that the site of the benefit be close at hand.
Yet, in March, when he was asked to appear in Florida for a worthy cause — at the height of the radio and TV season, when every moment was precious — he said with alacrity, "I should be able to fly to New York, have a day with Joanie, fly to Florida, do the show, fly back to New York for a day with Joanie, and be home in time for the Sunday show." He made it.
Originally the stork's visit had been scheduled for July 7, so the Bennys, George smd Gracie AUen Bums flew out of Los Angeles on July Fourth, in order to reach New York in plenty of time. George and Gracie were scheduled to serve as godparents for the infant, and also as shields against a nervous breakdown for corridor-pacing Jack.
July fifth passed without incident, except for the record-breaking heat and humidity, which — as George pointed out — could have been a mild reflection of Jack's blood pressure.

The sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth sweltered by, marked only by the nightly trips of the Bennys, the Burnses, and the Bakers to some air-cooled restaurant where they talked far into the closing hours. Inevitably, someone would stop at the table, fix Jack with a sympathetic eye and ask, "How are you getting along. Jack? Really, I mean."
It began to prey on Jack's already unsteady nervous system. He said to George Burns one evening, "How do you think I look?"
"About thirty-eight," said the man who has known him since he was eighteen.
On the night of July fifteenth, Paul Hahn (president of the American Tobacco Company) gave a party to which all the ladies- and gentlemen-in-waiting were invited. Joan had never looked lovelier — nor more remote from the hospital. Jack spent the evening trying to avoid people who wanted to tell him the joke about the twins who refused to be born because they were so polite that neither would go first.
At seven on the morning of a sweltering, shimmering July sixteenth, Seth telephoned to say that he and Joan were at the hospital. Jack and Mary were still trying to get showered, dressed, and breakfasted in order to charge into the waiting room when Seth called again at eight to say that Michael had made his debut. All critics' reviews were raves — Michael looked like a smash hit.
After their trip to the hospital to meet Michael and to check on Joan's condition (she was doing wonderfully), Jack and Mary departed to go on separate errands. Mary had postponed several weeks of essential shopping, not wanting to be away from Joan at a critical time, but now she could descend on the shops with an easy mind. She agreed to meet Jack at their Sherry-Netherland suite at five.
He was ten minutes late. "Because a fellow can't do a thing like this in a rush. There are too many details to be checked," he explained. Pridefully, he pulled the wrappings off a junior golf bag and a full set of clubs.
"Oh, Jack,'" said Mary.
So far, however, Rochester has had the last word. When he was told that Jack was now known as "Grandfather, J.G." — and the "J.G." was identified as "Junior Grade"— he sniffed. "That's nuthin'," he said emphatically. "In twenty years, when Michael becomes a father, Mr. Benny will be the only great grandfather in the new Kinsey report — still thirty-nine!"

Birthday Bugs? Not Quite

When was Bugs Bunny born? Answer—Easter Sunday, 1936.

At least that’s the answer the publicists at Warner Bros. Cartoons pawned off on people until animation historians started digging to get the facts. And the facts are a little murky to begin with.

We’ve reprinted a couple of publicity handouts to newspapers written by the folks at Warners. You can read them in this post. We’ve stumbled across another one, published in the Utica Daily Press, March 20, 1956. There’s no byline, which leaves me to believe it’s a studio press release. It’s chock-full of ridiculousness. It mentions a wholly imaginary Elmer Fudd cartoon made in 1936 (what it could have been, I have no idea), then a 1939 “conference” of the Warners directors and writers—as per the studio’s roster in 1956. Nothing about Tex Avery; “he isn’t at Warners any more, so why mention him?” seems to have been the attitude. Tedd Pierce wasn’t even at Warners at the time, Mike Maltese was an assistant animator and Friz Freleng may still have been at MGM. However, the story is correct after it gets to 1940 (okay, the line about Errol Flynn is facetious). “A Wild Hare” was a huge hit. Oh, and the “allergic to carrots” business was a publicity gimmick. Many years later, Mel Blanc changed the story to say he simply didn’t like the taste of carrots.

Anyway, here’s the story.

Biggest Star of Them All
Bugs Bunny, the most popular short subjects star of them all—voted No 1 by exhibitors for 12 straight years, passed his 20th birthday this year making him at least 18 years older than any other cottontail rabbit in the country, and certainly a good deal more popular than all of them.
Bugs was not always a star. His is a success story to stiffen the spine of any chicken-hearted rabbit who would conquer Hollywood. Born in 1936 on the end of a Warner Bros. art director’s pen he played only a bit roll in an Elmer Fudd starrer, then was put back in the ink bottle. But no cork could frustrate the irrepressible bounce of this bunny. In 1938, Bugs who had been living on discarded beet (ugh) tops, began eating high off the carrot as befits a new star.
He got his break when I. Freleng, Charles Jones and Robert McKimson, directors, and writers Michael Maltese, Warren Foster and Tedd Pierce, got together to give Bugs a format worthy of his talent. From then on, he was another Gobel. Only nakeder.
“Bugs has never worn clothes,” Freleng pointed out. “His tastes are too expensive. Besides, he looks better au naturel. He never wears shoes, his feet’s too big. He has a Brooklyn accent because he escaped from there. He never looks for trouble, but trouble seeks him like a guided missile. Bugs can handle any situation with his wits.”
Seven thousand drawings and one year after the historic conference a new star named Bugs Bunny burst upon the cinematic world in his own vehicle, “Wild Hare.” Acclaim was immediate, but it did not turn his head (only a pretty girl rabbit can do that). Bugs is still the same unspoiled bunny, houseless, hungry, unmarried.
Since 1938 he has starred in 138 of his own pictures—more than Peck and Gable combined, including such classics as “Up Swept Hare,” “John Brown’s Bunny,” “Rabbit Transit,” “Hare Meets Hair,” [sic] and “Rabbit Hood.” In the latter Bunny, with the insouciance of a true star, boosted the career of an upcoming youngster named Errol Flynn by allowing the latter to play a small part. He also helped out a couple of other actors named Doris Day and Jack Carson by consenting to appear in their pictures: “My Dream is Yours,” and “Two Guys From Texas.”
Few bunnies can equal Bugs’ war record. He helped the boys at the front by, for example, leading the first Liberator bomber to attack Davao on the march back to the Philippines. He helped the Treasury Department sell war bonds. He allowed himself to be appointed official mascot of many air groups, tank battalions, and infantry companies. He is officially a member of the Marine Corps, and his service record is on file in Washington, D.C.
Bugs has no trouble in talking with other rabbits, but when it comes to human conversation he employs Mel Blanc, one is not only the voice of Bugs Bunny, but of practically all of the Warner Bros. Cartoons characters, such as Tweety, Sylvester, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Pepe Le Pew, Foghorn Leghorn and other incidental characters. The strange thing about Mel Blanc is that although he is the voice of Bugs Bunny, who is very fond of carrots, Mel himself is allergic to carrots. The creation and development of Bugs Bunny to his present high box-office position is no accident. As much care is given to the selection of the proper story for a Bugs Bunny cartoon as is devoted by the major studios to the material picked for the most popular human stars.
The carrot is Bugs Bunny’s principal prop. There is no limit to the range of his talents.
Incidentally, more than two million Bugs Bunny comic books are sold each month and these comic books, which are distributed by the Dell Publishing Company, are as clean and wholesome as a rabbit’s tooth. Bugs never does anything that is apt to lead a youngster into juvenile delinquency. The same may be said for his newspaper comic strips which are syndicated by the NEA to over 600 newspapers, daily and Sunday.
Recently, Warner Bros. Cartoon Department moved into a new building in Burbank, Calif., on the company’s own studio property. It could be very aptly called, “The House That Bugs Bunny Built,” but Bugs, being of a modest nature, prefers to have the building known as the Warner Bros. Cartoon Studio.

The 1936 birth date is mentioned in an earlier newspaper story, one by the Newspaper Enterprise Association to publicise its Bugs comic strip in subscribing papers. This came from the Morning Herald of Johnstown, New York, April 10, 1950.

14-CARROT BIRTHDAY FOR BUGS
By NEA Service
Bugs Bunny, carrot-chomping star of the movie cartoons and The Morning Herald’s daily comic strip, celebrated his 14th birthday yesterday.
The rascally rabbit has appeared in the comics for half of his 14 years, made more than 100 screen cartoons and for five years in a row has reigned as box office champion of all movie short subjects. NEA Service, the world's largest picture and feature organization, distributes the "Bugs Bunny" daily comic strips and Sunday color pages to more than 800 newspapers.
Like many famous stars. Bugs got his start as a bit player. He popped out of the inkwell at the Warner Brothers Hollywood studios one day to be the intended victim of the intrepid hunter, Elmer Fudd. Saved from the shotgun by his nimble feet the zany bunny went back on the shelf for a couple of years until he was finally "discovered" in true Hollywood style.
Pretty soon Bugs Bunny was popping up out of rabbit holes, chewing his carrot and shouting "What's cookin', Doc?" as the star of his own cartoon series, while Elmer was playing supporting roles. Now Bugs condescends to let frustrated Elmer appear in his daily comic strips, too, along with other screen pals like stuttering Porky Pig, plump Petunia, little Cicero and a new comic page discovery, Sylvester the languid cat.
The bold, brash character of Bugs Bunny—so unlike the everyday rabbits you meet—developed as the cartoon star matured. At 14. he is as full of pep and mischief as the average teen-ager, although his Brooklynese repartee is about as average as Ladies' Day at Ebbet's Field.

Much of Bugs' popularity is due to the fact that all red-blooded Americana enjoy watching the underdog get the better of his oppressor. The happy hare always gets deep into trouble through no fault of his own—then turns the tables on the bad guys.
Bugs Bunny has an impressive war record. He was adopted by units of every branch of the armed forces and became the most widely-traveled Hollywood star—going around the world on bombers, warships, tanks, jeeps and other military vehicles.
In celebrating his birthday on Easter Sunday, Bugs shares the spotlight with another well-known rabbit. However, he and the Easter Bunny have rather opposite views on what constitutes fun, and Bugs definitely hates eggs. He's had too many thrown at him in his 14 years as a slapstick comedian.

So celebrate Bugs’ birthday tomorrow on Easter Sunday if you wish. Try to find that 1936 cartoon they keep talking about. I’ll still consider July 27th his birthday. But, of course, you don’t need a birthday as an excuse to haul out a DVD or go to a video web site and enjoy a cartoon starring the greatest rabbit in animation history (and you can’t go wrong with “Rabbit Hood”).

A Ball of Dogs

Here’s a gag from the sixth Looney Tunes cartoon that was stolen from the 1929 Mickey Mouse cartoon The Plowboy (and earlier; see Mark Kausler’s comment).

In Big Man From the North (released January 10, 1931), three dogs pulling Bosko in a sleigh roll down a hill smash into a wall. The animals emerge as a single character in a ball.



Billboard reviewed the cartoon on January 17, 1931.

Bosco, the chief character in all these Looney Tunes, and Honey, his inspiration in all his adventures, are the hero and heroine in this animated cartoon travesty on the Northwestern Mounted Police tale. This Warner Vitaphone short is up to the usual standard of cartoons and should prove effective competition to other similar cartoons in the market. Intricate action and background, plot and animation and sound synchronization are all satisfactory, and the laugh qualities to this short should be worth any exhibitor’s showing time. The caricatured drama shows Bosco as a member of the Mounties sent out to get a bad man and bring him in. Little Bosco is shaking like a leaf when he enters one of the Northwest saloons to find his man. Ultimately the gigantic bad man shows up and proceeds to shoot up the pace. Poor Bosco’s puny stature and ineffectual bravado are insufficient to capture the outlaw, but morally supported by his sweetheart, and assisted by the effectiveness of a high-powered shotgun. Bosco gets his man and how! Animation is sandwiched with the usual dancing animals and rhythmic convolutions of other inanimate props in the background. A reel worth booking. C.G.B.

The Accurate Avery Sign

“A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute Saloon,” intones narrator Frank Graham at the start of Tex Avery’s The Shooting of Dan McGoo. Cut to a slow pan right of the fighting, drinking and gunfire inside. The camera passes a (misspelled) sign typical in an Avery cartoon as it carries along. It’s on an overlay.



Ed Love, Preston Blair and Ray Abrams are the credited animators. Heck Allen gets a story credit and Robert W. Service is acknowledged.

Western Union Delivers Johnny Olson

By all accounts, the best warm-up man in television at one time was Johnny Olson.

Everyone thinks of Johnny as an announcer, but he kind of fell into that job in the mid-1950s. Before that, he had hosted a number of shows, first on network radio, then network television.

The warm-up guy basically gave some technical information the studio audience needed to know about applauding and behaviour during the broadcast. But he had to get them in the mood for fun. Olson did silly and funny stunts to get the people in the seats primed for the big show ahead.

We’ve written about warm-ups, and Johnny Olson, before, but I’ve spotted another wire service story from June 20, 1963. Olson was working out of New York then, mainly on Goodson-Todman game or panel shows. For whatever reason, his name was constantly misspelled in newspaper stories. I don’t envy anyone trying to warm up an audience for Keefe Brasselle.

What the Stars Owe To Warmer-Upper
By JOAN CROSBY
New York — When Bud Collyer, John Daly, Gene Rayburn, Robert Q. Lewis, Keefe Brasselle, Jackie Gleason, Sid Caesar and Victor Borge walk out on a stage to face a television studio audience, they find a group of relaxed, happy people waiting to laugh at the least flicker of an eyebrow. And the performers owe it all to Johnny Olsen, the industry's number one audience warmer-upper.
To give you an idea of the esteem in which Olsen is held, Jackie Gleason flew him to Florida this past season to perform a ten-minute warm-up for a ten-minute skit to be inserted in one of the Great One's shows. Johnny, in addition to warming up the audience is also the off-camera announcer for most of-these shows, and he is even, occasionally, seen on-camera.
Olsen is a 25-year veteran of radio and television—20 years in New York—and one of the busiest commercial men around. Between his announcing and warm-up chores, it's not unusual for him to be scheduled for 23 shows within one week.
Why is it considered so important for an audience to be warmed-up before the star appears? "The majority of people in audiences are not from New York," Johnny said. "They are often distracted in a television studio by the lights, the cue cards, the technicians and the cameras--which get in their way. Well, we can't have them grumbling 'I'd rather stay home.' So the warm up man comes out ahead of show time and acts as a liaison between the personality and the audience."
Johnny works Play Your Hunch, then follows this immediately with The Match Game. "Here I act as a Pied Piper. Many times at Hunch, I tell the audience I'm going upstairs to do another show, and I ask them if they want to join me. We march up the stairs together, and I know at least I've got part of the group set and ready to respond."
• • •
OLSEN, who hosted such shows as Ladies, Be Seated, Break the Bank and Rumpus Room, sometimes has some tight schedules which necessitate an imaginative to the problem of beating New York traffic.
"Once I hired two detectives to take me from one show to another. With their help I got 23 blocks uptown and 8 blocks crosstown in four-and-a-half minutes. "Another time I had approximately 70 seconds to get five blocks down Sixth Avenue. But, Sixth Avenue is a one-way street, going the wrong way for my purposes. I finally hired a Western Union kid and his bicycle and we sped through the one-way traffic and made it just in time."

Egging On Warren

Long-outdated pop culture references drive the story in Slap Happy Pappy, a 1940 Warner Bros. cartoon. The gags are based around Eddie Cantor having only girls and wanting a boy, and Bing Crosby only having boys.

The “Bing” rooster excites a hen so much with her crooning, she lays a tower of eggs.



On closer inspection, some are named after Warner Bros. cartoon staff, beginning with director Bob Clampett and writer Warren Foster. Or could it be assistant animator Warren Batchelder?



You can probably guess at some of the others: Chuck Jones (or maybe Chuck McKimson), Sid Sutherland, Ben Hardaway, Alex Ignatiev, Dick Bickenbach (or maybe Dick Thomas), Ray Katz, Art Loomer, Roger is perhaps Roger Daley (in the long shot, you can spot Rev Chaney, Norm McCabe and what may be Sam Nicholson). I don't know if George Grandpre was at the studio then.

Other celebs include Walter Winchell, Jack Benny (Jack Lescoulie does the voice), Andy Devine, Eddie (Rochester) Anderson (by Mel Blanc), Ned Sparks and Kay Kyser, with catchphrases of Bert (the Mad Russian) Gordon and the Al Pearce version of Mr. Kitzel.

John Carey and Izzy Ellis (who doesn’t get an egg named for him) are the credited animators.

Multiple Woodys

The Woody Woodpecker cartoon Ace in the Hole (1942) is pretty lacklustre. One thing I like is the brushwork when Woody bounces over some bombs (twice for no particular reason). Notice how the first two drawings and the last two aren’t quite the same.



Woody’s apparently in the military but doesn’t wear a uniform. He wants to “fly like the birds,” except he is a bird. And there times Woody talks without his mouth moving and his mouth moves but no words come out.

George Dane is the only animator credited on screen. Kent Rogers is Woody.