Little Johnny Jet and his dad whizz past the Statue of Liberty in their Oscar-nominated short. In fact, they’re going so fast, the breeze lifts the statue’s skirt.
I’m not sure what Johnny is thinking after he looks back, but here’s his reaction.
Exhibitors liked this cartoon. It was their second choice in Boxoffice Barometer’s 14th annual shorts poll, only behind Disney’s live-action Bear Country
Heck Allen helped Tex Avery with the gags while Ray Patterson was borrowed from the Hanna-Barbera unit to help Avery’s usual crew of Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton, Mike Lah and Bob Bentley. Daws Butler and Colleen Collins, uncredited, provide voices. Patterson, incidentally, told animation historian/writer Earl Kress late in life that he didn’t recall why he ended up working in both units.
In the 1950s, there was almost one way to guarantee success. By failing. As host of the CBS morning show opposite NBC’s “Today.”
Walter Cronkite went on to be the Most Trusted Man in America. Dick Van Dyke went on to star in one of the classic TV comedies of all time. Jack Paar went on to a memorable turn hosting the “Tonight” show. And Jimmy Dean went on to a number-one record, a gigantic meat empire and helped popularise Jim Henson in North America with his chats with Rowlf on an evening variety show.
And the tale of how Dean’s big, bad song came about is remarkable in its own way.
But, first, let’s look at Dean’s network TV break. He had been hosting a local morning show in Washington, D.C. that CBS decided to pick up. It had nothing to lose. None of its attempts to make a big dent in “Today” had worked. And, after all, hadn’t CBS seconded a Washington D.C. morning man named Arthur Godfrey and watched the money roll in? It hit the network on April 8, 1957. This story from six months down the road is from the United Press.
Jimmy Dean Music Gives 'Today' Jolt
By JACK GAVER
NEW YORK, Sept. 14 (UP)—It appears that the Columbia Broadcasting System finally hit upon the right formula for getting an early morning TV audience opposite NBC's entrenched "Today" show (Ch. 17) when it put singing Jimmy Dean in charge of its 7 a.m. programming (on Ch. 4) and let him cut lose with that "country music."
The lean and likeable Jimmy and his company of expert vocalists and instrumentalists have lost little time since they took the air in April in making an impression on the early-morning ratings. For whatever ratings may be worth, the show has been able to get slightly ahead of Dave Garroway's "Today" in recent weeks.
"Country music's been national popular for years and years," Dean said, "so it's not so surprising that folks like to listen to it even early in the morning. We didn't have to break any new ground when we started this show."
Dean pointed out that so far as radio and television are concerned, much is owed to Station WSM in Nashville for spreading knowledge and appreciation of hillbilly or country or western songs around the land.
"I feel that our acceptance by the public in such a short time is due to the pioneering done by WSM and other radio stations like it over the years. Why, right after our first week on CBS-TV, we got over 40,000 letters.
"This response was something of a surprise because we figured that, although we knew there was a big audience for such entertainment, the early hour might be something of a handicap.
"Folks never really used to stop me on the street except, of course. In Washington, where we had a local show, but now I have to watch my manners wherever I go. Can't pick up the fried chicken in my fingers when I eat in a restaurant now."
Jimmy and his group have latched on so well that CBS recently spotted them also in a 30-minute night-time spot carried at 8:30 Saturday nights on Ch. 4 for the summer.
The 28-year-old Texan, who's sort of free and easy himself, said the performer he most admires is Bing Crosby.
"It's the way he relaxes when he sings that makes all the difference," Dean explained.
Dean and his family live near Arlington, Va., close to the National Capital where his telecasting originates.
"I'm teaching my two children to play the piano," he said. "One of the nicest things about country music is that the notes don't go too high or too low, so the whole family can have a sing-song whenever we're of a mind to."
After December 13th, Dean was replaced with dead air (affiliates filled their own time), but CBS kept him on Saturdays at noon. In September 1958, the network switched him to a half-hour daytime show from New York. But he was told to dump all that yokel stuff. The show didn’t last. By the following June, he was replaced with a soap opera and muddled around with some guest shots (on The Chevy Show, Dean sang while he milked a cow).
But then came “Big Bad John,” released in September 1961, racking up the best sales for Columbia Records in two years within weeks and parking at number one on November 6th after six weeks on the chart. Soon, the Newspaper Enterprise Association came knocking for an interview. This appeared in papers starting November 26th.
Big Bad John Born in Plane
By DICK KLEINER
NEW YORK - (NEA) - Out of a chorus singer, a flight certificate, a hunk of steel and a quonset hut has come the first big popular record hit in three years.
Not since the late Johnny Horton yelled out "The Battle of New Orleans" has there been a record which has sold as fast as Jimmy Dean's current Columbia smash, "Big Bad John." Not so much a song as a recitation, it was written by Dean himself.
“Big Bad John" tells the story of a mighty miner who gives his life to save his fellows. Although it has the flavor of folk music, it is a complete fiction.
It came about when Dean toured the summer stock circuit last year in "Destry Rides Again.” In the chorus was a 6-foot-5 singer named John Mento. "What else do you call a man that big whose name is John except Big John?" says Dean. Let You Experiment
The two became friendly and one day Dean gave him a ride. To while away the time, he made up a story about Big John — and promptly forgot all about it.
This fall, Dean was summoned to Nashville, the second capital of the recording industry, to do a session. For some reason the saga of “Big Bad John” flashed into his mind while he was flying to Tennessee. He called the stewardess and asked for some paper.
All she had was a flight certificate the airline gives out to babies commemorating their first flight. Dean scribbled the words of "Big Bad John" on the back.
"What I like about recording in Nashville," Dean says, "is that they let you experiment."
So they let him put "Big Bad John" on wax. The recording stadio he used is a converted quonset hut. In it, Dean, five singers, a rhythm section and famed country pianist Floyd Cramer went to work. Opens TV Doors
“We'd done one or two takes," Dean says, "when Cramer says, “You don't need a piano on this, but I've got an idea.” He took a hunk of steel they had been using for a door stop, hung it from a coil rack and began hitting it with a big bolt. That's the clang you hear on the record."
The result was something—nobody knew exactly what—which was an immediate hit (Dean originally preferred the ether side, a little number called "I Won't Go Hunting With You, Jake, But I’ll Go Chasing Women.")
For Dean, the huge success of "Big Bad John" has meant a 75 to 100 per cent increase in hit salarv for in-person engagements and, “It's opened some TV doors."
Indirectly, it will mean the completion of a dream. Dean, originally from Plainview, Tex., has long wanted to build a certain kind of house on a particular plot of land. He already owns the land—75 acres in Loudon County, Va., not far from Leesburg.
"This coming summer,” he says, "I’m going to build that house. I’m going to dam up the creek and have a fishing pond about seven acres and stock it with trout and bluegill.
As for John Mento, the cause of it all, Dean would like to know where he is.
“I’d like to take him home and give him a steak dinner,” Dean says. “I owe him that much, any how.”
It took a little time for Dean to land a TV deal. He signed with ABC for the 1963-64 season and, despite mixed reviews for his debut, the show lasted 2 1/2 seasons. Dean told Lawrence Laurent of the Washington Post that a time slot change opposite “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” was the main thing that killed his show. He went back to guest shots (none involving a cow) before adding to his wealth when he jumped into the pork sausage business in 1969. The friendliness he projected in his TV commercials sold a lot of meat.
Dean jumped back into television in 1973 with a syndicated show but had a lucrative contact in Vegas, so he really didn’t need the small screen any more. He died in 2010 at the age of 81. His TV shows may be long gone, but his sausages live on.
Flip and his dog manage to capture escaped convict Chow Mein (and a parrot) in Chinaman's Chance. Flip defers credit to the dog. The animator gives various expressions to both.
The dog bashes the heckling parrot, whose feathers all fly off in a gag we’ve seen elsewhere. After Iwerks’ patented radiating lines and flashing question mark, the parrot ends the cartoon with “Wass you dere, Sharlie?”
The phrase belonged to Jack Pearl as Baron Munchausen, teller of tall tales, who would say it at least once every show to Cliff Hall as Sharlie, whenever his straight man would express scepticism about what he was hearing. They hit the airwaves in September 1932 (though both had been around for years in vaudeville) but hadn’t worn out their welcome yet when this cartoon was released in 1933. Flip was about to wear out his, though. Only two more cartoons were released later in the year before he was retired by the Iwerks studio.
It’s hard to believe there was a time that Dennis Day wasn’t connected with Jack Benny, and that Day’s hiring was a real gamble on Benny’s part.
In 1939, Kenny Baker was the singer on the Benny show. Baker was also singing on another programme, The Texaco Star Theatre starring Ken Murray. Suddenly, almost at the end of the radio season, Baker decided to sign an exclusive, $2000-a-week contract with Texaco. He was a no-show on the last Benny show.
Baker was a popular and valuable asset to the Benny show. Replacing him would be difficult. What if the public didn’t accept the replacement?
As it turned out, it turned out for the better. Dennis Day grew into his role on the show and proved to be even more valuable and versatile than Baker, demonstrating that he was a fine comic actor and had a good ear for dialects and a few impressions.
Day’s hiring was utterly improbable. He had a bit of radio experience—on a Thursday afternoon show on the CBS station in New York, then on a network show that was batted around the CBS schedule in 15 and 30-minute formats. He was not someone a lot of people would have known. Here’s a story from the Buffalo Evening News, less than two months after Dennis arrived on the Benny show, to explain how he got there, with a bonus revelation about actress Verna Felton, who played his mother. And he stayed with Benny, military service excepted, until the radio show went off the air in 1955 and for more years in television after that.
By the way, Dennis’s birthday is tomorrow. That makes this post (get ready, folks) a Day early!
DENNIS DAY BEGAN CAREER IN RADIO FIVE MONTHS AGO BUFFALO EVENING NEWS, New York Bureau.
NEW YORK, NOV. 11.—The big town boy who's making good in a great big way as Jack Benny's tenor discovery Sunday evenings on NBC-WBEN had never sung a note professionally five months ago.
As recently as last November he hadn't even considered earning a living as a singer.
More than a few New Yorkers will remember Dennis Day as one Eugene Dennis McNulty, son of a city engineer, choir boy at St. Patrick's Cathedral, second ranking honor student at Manhattan College, president and soloist of that school's glee club, and winner of Mayor LaGuardia's vocational scholarship upon his graduation in 1938.
To most of the United States, however, he was an unknown until a few weeks ago.
"Mac," as he was better known in those days, chose to exercise the scholarship by accepting a job at WNYC in New York. His four amateur appearances with Larry Clinton's NBC Campus Club the previous Spring had whetted his appetite for radio. • • •
But far from becoming an immediate tenor sensation, Mac put in his time at WNYC as a glorified office boy, saving every penny he could toward the day when he could afford to enter law school.
In October, an appendectomy upset his well-laid plans. When he was released from the hospital, his savings were gone and he was faced with the necessity of making money quickly to regain lost ground.
Spurred on by Rudolph Friml Jr., who recognized his vocal talent after hearing him at a party, McNulty took a more appealing professional name, Dennis Day—his own middle name plus his grandmother's maiden name.
Then began the heart-breaking routine of auditions. He was rewarded finally in June, when Del Peters of CBS signed him for the tenor spot on Ray Bloch's Musical Varieties.
He started at the stupendous salary of $21 per week, of which an agent got 10 per cent. • • •
A faux pas made during the second and last broadcast with Bloch made Dennis believe that he had snuffed out a promising career.
After singing one song, Dennis stepped out of the studio momentarily for a drink of water. Maestro Bloch, crossing him up, went immediately into the introduction of Day's next song instead of a band number.
Dennis reached the mike on cue, but his first note should have been put through a wringer.
The error wasn't as tragic as Dennis had assumed, however, for he next was given the vocal berth on Leith Stevens' series, Accent on Music, and was making his debut on this CBS series when Mary Livingstone heard him.
She located his manager, obtained a record of the broadcast, and flew with it to Jack, who was then in Chicago. After playing the record, Jack returned to New York to audition Day. • • •
All in all, Jack listened to more than 100 of the nation's best tenors during the Summer, and his radio producer, Murray Bolen, heard that many more. But Dennis, a shy youngster who came along about number 50, had the inside track from the moment Jack heard him.
Funny thing, too. Last June, when Day heard that Kenny Baker wouldn't be with Jack this Fall, he stroked that piece of Blarney Stone without which he wouldn't feel completely dressed, and immediately was seized with the feeling that he was destined to be the next Jack Benny tenor.
Common sense told him that it was a crazy idea, since he had only one professional broadcast behind him at the time, but a few weeks later, when Jack Benny asked him to audition, Dennis felt as if he'd known about it and had worked toward it all along.
Jack spent the month of August auditioning more singers in Hollywood. Then he sent for Dennis, who arrived early in September and made an immediate hit with the rest of the gang.
But still no contracts were signed. On the spur of the moment Jack embarked for Treasure Island, at San Francisco, pushed on to New York, Detroit and Chicago, and headed home with his mind made up to send for Dennis and give him a trial.
But when Jack reached Hollywood, he found that Dennis was still in town. No one had told him to go home.
Dennis, figuring that he ought to stay under cover lest the cat get out of the bag and spoil his chances, had been practically hiding out for four weeks—and was he homesick! • • •
Homesick—mother—stage mother! Jack had an idea. Why not introduce Dennis by means of a hard-boiled, domineering stage mother who'd see to it not only that Dennis was protected from Hollywood but also that Jack's life was made characterisically [sic] miserable?
Benny, Harry Baldwin, his secretary; his writers, Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin; Mary Livingstone and Producer Murray Bolen began auditioning "stage mothers," with Dennis sitting in.
They finally eliminated all but two, voted, and wound up in a three-three,' deadlock. "Dennis, it'll be your mother," said Jack. "You cast the deciding vote."
Thus Dennis Day, probably the only lad on record who's had the privilege of choosing his own mother, said, "I like Miss Felton, Mr. Benny. She sounds like she'd be a world of protection to me."
So Verna Felton, who had been mother to Phil Harris, Don Wilson and "Tom Sawyer Benny," became the bass voiced maternal protector of Dennis Day. • • •
Now that he's been made a regular member of the Jack Benny gang and is succeeding in one of the toughest spots so young a singer ever had to fill, there is just one question that's uppermost in Dennis Day's mind:
"Mr. Benny, will we do a show or two from New York this year?"
You can probably imagine the reaction by the old-timers on the Terrytoons staff. They had been making lacklustre shorts starring Dinky Duck and Little Roquefort that didn’t have the sophistication or polish of a Walter Lantz cartoon, let alone one by Walt Disney. And then the studio made something called Flebus that looked and felt like nothing the studio had ever done before. It could have come from another planet.
In a way, it came from another studio. Creative director Gene Deitch arrived at Terrytoons and decided changes had to be made. So he brought Ernest Pintoff over from UPA, and Pintoff put together Flebus.
Pintoff didn’t stay. He left in March 1957 to form Pintoff-Lawrence Productions with Bob Lawrence in New York to make television commercials. To no surprise, the highly-creative Pintoff clashed with Lawrence. Their partnership died at the end of the year. Pintoff went on to create The Violinist and then The Critic, which won the Oscar for best animated short subject in 1963. Both films were darlings of the festival circuit, but you can’t make money at festivals. So Pintoff made his money in TV spots.
Broadcasting magazine profiled two of his advertising works in 1960. Whether these spots are available for viewing, I don’t know. The first story is from August 23rd.
A fresh approach to an old story
U.S. Steel and BBDO, its agency, lightly ribbed steel's best customer — the automobile industry — on television in an unusual fresh approach to an old need.
The need as felt by advertiser U.S. Steel has been to remind the country's automobile buyers and riders that it's steel which makes the four-wheeled vehicle so sturdy and safe.
The new approach: a 2½ minute animated commercial that pokes a litde fun at the foibles of the auto industry while ramming home the idea that the use of steel in bumpers, in wheels and even in auto trim makes for a vehicle that's better looking, safer and more practical.
The commercial's debut on U.S. Steel Hour (CBS-TV) on June 15 pleased client and customer Detroit. Result No. 1 : the commercial, called "Materials Salesman," was repeated on Aug. 10. Result No. 2: another animated cartoon about autos is being prepared for U.S. Steel's tv spectacular "Step on the Gas" that will be networked in October.
The choice of producer and talent for the commercial was regarded in this instance as part of the agency's creative effort. With this encouragement, the BBDO team — Jack Goldsmith, a tv art supervisor, and James Huff, a tv copywriter — went to work.
In reviewing their experience with the commercial the team recalled this unusual development as illustrative: Comedian Don Adams, who had been selected for the character voice of the materials salesman, became so enthused in the briefing that he took the commercial script home the night before the recording session.
When Mr. Adams appeared at the studio the next day it was obvious he had memorized the script (ordinarily all he would have had to do was read the lines) and had marked those lines he would suggest for gags or for change of emphasis. Such creative development inevitably gained theatrical quality when combined with the drawing skill of Ernie Pintoff who was producer-director via his Pintoff Productions, New York.
The "star" of the commercial is a salesman who is a sharpster with a likable quality despite his aggressiveness. He appears at the Colossal Motor Car Company (in Detroit) to sell his bag of substitutes for the steel used in automobile manufacture.
The hard-boiled president of the company, secure in the "yessing" of three vice presidents, won't take china for the steel bumper; gingerbread mix for the stainless steel auto trim or flexible putty for autos' rugged steel wheels. Consequently the salesman is forcibly ejected from the sacred domain of Colossal Motor Car Co.
This story was published September 26th.
NOW ITS TALKING LIONS! Cocoa Marsh turns to zoo for ad salesman
Cocoa Marsh's friendly lion has leaped off the label and onto the television screen, bringing son LeRoy with him (in picture, LeRoy is stalling curfew with the drink of Cocoa Marsh dodge). The illustration is taken from a series of new animated minutes that represent a sharp departure in selling style for a company that has had dramatic success with local live pitches backed by strong promotions.
The new commercials premiered this month in some 20 markets. If they work, it could mean Cocoa Marsh business in as many as 30 more.
The switch in strategy was no light decision for Taylor-Reed Corp., the Glenbrook, Conn., manufacturer of Cocoa Marsh, and its agency, Hicks & Greist, New York. Cocoa Marsh built its present distribution on a hard-hitting live tv technique that paid its way from market to market, spreading from the Northeast to cover four-fifths of the country since 1956. (The company goes back 22 years and also produces E-Z popcorn, Fluffomatic rice, Q-T frosting Yum-Berry syrup.)
Now the very young audience Cocoa Marsh addresses is ready for a change, the advertiser is persuaded. The decision to animate the message grew out of research on many fronts — cartoon ratings, commercial testing at agency, factory and independent researcher levels — and, of course, in the homes of the company's board chairman (Malcolm P. Taylor has his own five-member children's panel), his ad manager and agency account people.
Little LeRoy only lately has sprung to the tv screen, but he's the result of a gradual evolution. The lion label was developed just prior to the company's tv debut for a new jar designed by President Charles M. D. Reed, co-founder of the company, who handles production (Mr. Taylor concentrates on sales). "Name the Cocoa Marsh lion" was one of many local promotions to encourage identification in a market where many of the consumers cannot yet read. Today's LeRoy did not grow directly from that promotion but this is the lion of descent.
LeRoy has a large assignment for one so young. Client and agency are ever mindful that children are easily bored. LeRoy and his papa are expected to give the little ones a laugh — mothers, too — while conveying the flavor and health message. The commercials run in children's shows where Taylor-Reed maintains year-round schedules.
Theodore J. Grunewald, senior vice president of Hicks & Greist, and his agency colleagues spent six months developing the character. Currently they have three 60-second situation plots on the air (schedules vary up to 30 spots a week in big markets).
Hicks & Greist conceived the campaign and got Pintoff Productions, New York, to execute animation considered worthy of battle with the food giants the company competes with. The agency's Len Glasser did story boards and Richard Rendely produced.
Mel Blanc was brought from the West Coast for the voice assignment. Now it's up to LeRoy to show what a lion he can be in the marketplace.
Pintoff talked about his career in print. Here’s a story from the Rochester Democrat of August 8, 1963. No mention of Flebus or Terrytoons at all. His work at the Actors Studio later translated into the short film The Shoe.
New Kind of Movie Cartoon Pays Off for Pintoff
NEW YORK — A new kind of movie cartoon, sophisticated, funny and informal with a civilized malice, has became the pride and joy (not to mention the meal-ticket) of Ernest Pintoff, a tall, dark, mustached cartoonist-painter of 31.
A recent Pintoff film, "The Critic," is a wry commentary on both the uninformed viewer of modern art and on its ultra-serious practitioner. Mel Brooks, comedian famous for his "2000-year-man" impersonation, is the narrator, and for the brief film Pintoff has drawn a series of abstract shapes that brilliantly parody today's non-objective painting.
Despite his own success, Pintoff thinks the animated cartoon is currently at its lowest ebb. "First off, there's really no profit in it, and creatively . . . . well, there are more exciting things being done in TV commercials. The really good talent goes to advertising. Cash is hard to resist."
* * *
PINTOFF got into cartooning by way of painting, which he studied and then taught at Michigan State University. Soon after, in 1955, he joined UPA, the outfit that immortalized Gerald McBoing Boing and Mr. Magoo. There he learned his cartooning ropes, designing, directing and writing tackling every phase of the business.
"By 1958, I decided I’d had it with UPA. I wanted to go it on my own. So I started Pintoff Productions, and entered the television commercials field, something I'm still very busy at. We make about 250 commercials a year."
Not satisfied with the anonymity of commercials, which have won him a string of awards, Pintoff embarked on his first independent cartoon, "The Violinist." None of the major studios wanted to touch it. "Too special."
But it was this "special"—quality that attracted the late Ed Kingsley of Kingsley International. His company bought and distributed the film, which went on to win the British Academy Award, a Hollywood Oscar nomination and the Edinburgh prize for best Animated Cartoon of 1959.
* * *
ALMOST all of Pintoff's films deal in basic concepts: Friendship, love, hate, loneliness. Pictorially, the films are models of economy. The drawings are bold, direct and, in the rendering of human, shapes—never fussy or overly-animated.
Pintoff has managed to invest his cartoons with serious ideas. He makes his points but he also leaves you laughing. It's a rare and refreshing combination.
The future is filled with all sorts of Pintoff projects. More cartoons are on the agenda. A major TV network is negotiating for a cartoon series.
Pintoff is currently enrolled in the playwriting unit of The Actors Studio and is happy over the success of some scenes of a play which the Studio has put on. He hopes the play will reach Broadway in the near future.
If old editions of Variety are correct, Pintoff first contributed to the The Boing-Boing Show, directing “Fight on For Old” (1956) not long after his arrival at UPA. It’s great if you like simple designs and really limited animation. View a beet-red print of it below.
Pintoff died of complications from a stroke at the Motion Picture and Television Fund Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, on January 12, 2002. He was 70.
Time to dig out the Van Beuren checklist for Jungle Jam, a 1931 Tom and Jerry cartoon. Arbitrary dancing and music? Check. Inconsistent animation? Check. Stereotypes? Check. Meandering pseudo-story? Check. General feeling of “What did I just watch?” Double check.
A bad cartoon? Yes, but no. I can’t dislike the early Van Beuren cartoons. They’re too odd to dislike. And you have to admire the weirdness of some of the gag attempts. Here’s one from Jungle Jam, where African natives are throwing spears at our heroes. Jerry rides one of the spears, which inexplicably grows the head of a native, and bites him. Having done its job, it resumes being a spear and zooms away.
There’s at the very least one enjoyable piece of music in every Van Beuren cartoon when Gene Rodemich was running the studio. This cartoon has a nice opening piece with a piano, xylophone and saxophone as Tom and Jerry row their boat. Devon Baxter tells me it is “Stray Sunbeams” by Charles Huerter, copyright in 1927.
Tex Avery has a reputation among animation fans for overblown, outrageous takes, but he could come up with reactions that were a little more subtle, but equally effective.
The frames from Crazy Mixed Up Pup below don’t give you an idea of Tex’s great timing in the scene, but they do give an indication of the style he was using. The milkman calmly asks Maggie to call off her dog. The milkman lifts his leg. The surprised Maggie realises it’s not a dog, it’s her husband. The milkman then realises who it is. Sam turns back into a bit of a human and lifts his hat in greeting. Cut to the “wild” reaction.
Tex is using limited animation to its best effect. Only the characters that need to be reacting are the ones who are moving. The others are held in place. Your attention to directed to what Tex wants you to see as there is no extraneous movement. He saves movement for the scenes where there really needs to be movement, such as the dog/Sam fight.
Tex’s unit at Lantz was La Verne Harding, Don Patterson and Ray Abrams; Abrams had worked for him at MGM earlier.
Not many Canadian radio newscasters move to the United States and eventually try out a singing career.
I can think of one. Lorne Greene.
Greene is known to the world as the star of Bonanza, one of TV’s longest-running and most successful Westerns. Before that, Greene was a drama grad from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario with a ballsy voice and a lot of ambition. The only work he could find in 1939 was in radio. He quickly became the top news reader at the CBC, served in World War Two, became part of a hand-picked staff at CKEY, founded a broadcasting school in Toronto, and then headed to the U.S. in 1953 where he was a male lead on Broadway almost immediately. Greene worked steadily after that—including a stint reading news on the Mutual network—before finding a top-rated home on the Ponderosa (in colour!) in 1959.
Within a few years, he tried singing.
I’ve never quite understood why some TV stars suddenly decide they are vocalists. I can only presume they’re doing it either for the ego or the money or both. But, in Lorne Greene’s case, it kind of worked. If anyone’s going to sing the Bonanza theme, shouldn’t it be Ben Cartwright? You wouldn’t expect a rancher (or a former Canadian radio newscaster) to be on key all the time, would you? And he kept his repertoire to something you’d expect the star of a Western to sing. It isn’t like he tried Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds. That great, low baritone helped, too.
Bonanza was on NBC so NBC’s mother company, RCA, offered him a recording contract in 1963. By the end of the next year, he had a number one hit after six weeks on the charts with “Ringo.”
So let’s read more about Greene’s aspiring singing career. Here’s a United Press International story from July 7, 1963.
Veteran Actor Now a Crooner Greene Finds a New Bonanza
By VERNON SCOTT
HOLLYWOOD (UPI)— Many a singer pipes his way to stardom in movies and television.—Crosby, Sinatra, Presley et al—but few are the Shakespearean actors who turn successfully to crooning.
One such is Lorne Greene, big daddy of the "Bonanza" television series.
Green, a veteran Shakespearean, has recorded a new album, "Young At Heart," I which is on its way to becoming a hit, and making the 47-year-old Greene very young at heart.
His booming baritone sometimes dips to the bass range and is especially effective in the shower of his new home, a showplace on the outskirts of Mesa, Ariz.
Greene and his wife, Nancy, 29, built the place as a replica of the "Bonanza" ranch house in the heart of Ponderosa country. Even the walls of the living room are lined with ponderosa logs.
Located in a section known as the Apache Country Club Estates, the Greene's new pad overlooks a golf course. Plays Golf
This was not a coincidence. The gray-haired star is a golf nut; who shoots in the 80s whenever he can spring himself for a weekend away from Southern California.
When he's working in the series, Greene, a native of Canada, lives in an enormous San Fernando valley home surrounded by palm trees, cactus gardens, and a swimming pool. It is as modern in design and decor as his Mesa home is rustic.
If "Pa Cartwright" is living high on the hog now, it must be remembered he suffered through some lean years, too.
As a radio announcer in Canada he earned $5 a week. Later he became the "Voice of Canada" heard nightly during the war years as chief newscaster for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. This no doubt accounts for his deep, sonorous voice.
He further polished his voice in British television and on Broadway and in the Shakespearean Festival at Stratford, Ont.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Greene, 6 foot 2 and weighing 195 pounds, was well prepared to cut the new platter which includes such favorites as "Hello Young Lovers," "As Time Goes By," "The Second Time Around" and "You Make Me Feel So Young."
The album's accent on youth reflects the actor-singer's own outlook. He and Nancy, his second wife, spent six weeks preparing the Mesa home for a grand opening for his movietown friends.
Evidently the house is a monument of gratitude to "Bonanza" for boosting Greene to stardom. Even the furniture has been copied from the home in the show. To round out the feeling of the permanent set at Paramount studios, Nancy, an accomplished artist, has decorated the walls with portraits of Lorne as well as his costars, Mike Landon, Dan Blocker and Parnell Roberts. All three play his video sons.
He has a family of bis own, teen-age boy-and-girl twins, by a previous marriage. They attend school in Switzerland and were visited by Greene and his new wife on a European vacation in April.
It is possible Greene has assumed the characteristics of Ben Cartwright. Or perhaps he infused his own personality into that of the character he plays. At any rate, there is little difference between the man on the screen and the actor off screen.
Serious minded, sometimes to the point of pomposity, Greene weighs his words carefully before speaking. He stands Cartwright - straight and looks you squarely in the eye when he talks.
There is the ring of authority about him, which also comes through in his singing.
Here’s a story from the “other” wire service, dated December 22, 1963, almost a full year before “Ringo” reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100.
Bonanza Papa Lorne Greene Loosens Ties to Ponderosa
By CYNTHIA LOWRY Associated Press Writer
New York—After four fabulous years establishing the wise, just father image in the NBC's and Channel 40's top-rated Bonanza, Lorne Greene is making an effort to reassert his own personality.
In recent weeks he has appeared in well-cut, modern tuxedo as TV host of an international beauty contest, in business clothes and topcoat as commentator on NBC's television coverage of New York's Thanksgiving Day Parade and, again in dinner jacket, presided over a memorial program to John F. Kennedy.
He has also popped up on Perry Como's and Andy Williams' variety hours, sat down with Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show a number of times and made two record albums (he has a rich baritone).
"I guess you might say that I like a fullness in my career, and enjoy doing a variety of things," Greene explained.
"I'm not unhappy with Bonanza—who could be unhappy in such a popular show?—but by doing these outside things I guess I'm really just trying to express myself in performances, most for my soul's sake."
• • •
GREENE, in his mid-forties, looks younger in person than he does—deliberately—on the television screen.
He is both intelligent and loyal, and would never complain about his lot. But the truth is that, no matter how successful a series, how rich or famous it makes an actor, after four or five years of playing the same character, life does tend to become a bit boring.
Bonanza is a western in the classic mold, and even with four regular characters, all hero types to take turns carrying the main role, situations do tend to get repetitious.
This season the producers have deliberately attempted to throw the meatiest roles to guest stars. And while this may add variety to the series, it distresses the regulars, who find they have little to do.
Greene, when asked about this shift of emphasis, merely noted drily that, in the last 20 episodes he has made, only one had been "his" show, meaning that he was the leading character.
Although most of us were not particularly aware of him until he turned up with a six-gallon hat, buckskin vest, three stalwart sons and an enormous ranch empire called "The Ponderosa," Greene has a broad theatrical and broadcasting background.
HE IS A NATIVE of Canada, studied at Queens University in Ottawa. Performing in a student drama, he was noticed and given a scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York.
In Canada at the outbreak of World War 2, he found little work for a professional actor and turned to radio. He soon became chief newscaster for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
By 1953 he had decided to quit radio to become an actor again.
Television parts in New York led to movie roles and a Broadway play. In 1954 he was Katharine Cornell's leading man in "The Prescott Proposals." Then more films — including two westerns, his first.
But when, in 1958, Bonanza beckoned, Greene still had to learn to ride a horse like an expert.
"I went to Palm Springs," he recalled, "and took two lessons of an hour each. And then I practiced."
The horse he rides as Ben Cartwright is a thoroughbred quarter horse with a long, splendid name shortened to "Buck."
Lorne's working days start early—he reaches the studio at 7—and ends late, usually after 7 p. m. On weekends, particularly when the weather is warm, he is likely to be flying someplace for a personal appearance tour. He has an act with co-star Dan Blocker, and sometimes he does a single, usually at rodeos or state fairs.
• • •
MOST OF THE ACT is devoted to kidding his television character, for he usually leads off by singing a parody that goes, "I'm an Old Cow-Hand From TV-land ..."
Greene and his second wife live in the Los Angeles suburb of Sherman Oaks. Chuck, 19, his son by his first marriage, is a freshman at M.I.T., and Chuck's twin, Linda, is a freshman at the University of Toronto.
Do they want to go into the theater?
Greene laughed and shook his head: "They say that one actor in the family is plenty."
Perhaps to Greene’s chagrin, his number-one hit didn’t lead to much more than treated as a novelty. But it was all just as well. The Bonanza theme, with its lyrics about “a hat full of hope” led to more than a hat full of money.
Greene died far away from the carillon in Canada’s capital. He passed away in Santa Monica, California in1987.
You can hear him sing his show’s theme song below.
The other day, I was watching Dicky Moe (1962) for some reason and out of nowhere some red stuff briefly appeared on the screen after a quick cut. “What was that?” I said to myself (a question not unusual when this cartoon is involved). So I decided to freeze frame it.
Here are the consecutive shots. Is the red stuff blood? Is it some weird sweat? If so, where is it coming from? Some of it appears to be coming from the eye, some from the top of the nose? And why?
Whatever the red stuff is, it only lasts for two frames. Here are the next two frames.
There’s a clip-clop woodblock accompanying the captain running. Then he kind of looks around, but the same running cadence is played on the woodblock.
