Don Quixote

You can tell Ub Iwerks’ Don Quixote is nuts because of the rolling cross-eyes when the character looks at the camera.



Here’s Iwerks’ version (actually his unidentified storywriters’) of the famous tilting-at-windmill scene from de Cervantes’ book where Quixote sees it as a giant.



In Iwerks’ version, the windmill spanks him.



And it takes on a personality, growing a face, and spanks him yet again.



Quixote eats some nails and clobbers it into a grave which rises from the ground (along with a headstone, followed by a picket fence, followed by a flower pot with a lily).



Carl Stalling melds together a nice score from well-known classical tunes, including a minor key variation on “The William Tell Overture” at the start, and his own bridging music. No animators are credited in this 1934 cartoon.

Dictating to Other People's Children

It’s laughable that anyone, at any time, could have considered the Lone Ranger, Tom Mix or Jack Armstrong, the All American Boy, as harmful influences on children, programmes that should be censored or maybe banned altogether. But that was the case in the 1940s. The world has always had those who wished to impose their will on others using shame, labelling or legislation.

When I was a kid, after a day at school, I wanted to relax and not have to think a lot. So I watched reruns of Gilligan’s Island or Bugs Bunny cartoons on TV. It was no different for kids a generation before me, except they did it with radio serials.

Ah, but some adults were unhappy. They wanted to tell other parents’ kids what to do for their entertainment. Herald Tribune syndicate writer John Crosby mentioned it briefly in one of his early columns, then went more in depth into it the following year. Basically, all he found wrong with kids’ adventure programming on radio is it was hackneyed. Maybe that (and their episodic nature) is why the serials don’t seem to have the same love from old-time radio fans as night-time comedies, mysteries or variety shows aimed at adults.

The first column appeared on May 17, 1946.

Blood and Thunder From 5 to 6 P.M.
I once lived on a street that was alive with children until 5 o’clock, when they suddenly vanished. They were, of course, listening to the kids’ programs which several networks feature between 5 and 6 o’clock. Since every one on this particular street knew every one else, it was the custom of these children to run to the nearest house, sit in a semi-circle around the radio and fall into a rapt silence. Children, I find, are about the best radio listeners there are.
On several occasions I watched these kids as they listened with stars in their eyes to the extraordinary adventures of Jack Armstrong, the All-American boy. I realize that this type of program has brought storms of criticisms from parents’ associations and women’s clubs and I am perhaps sticking my neck out when I say that the mothers ought to worry about something else.
Provided it isn’t downright seditious, I don’t think it much matters what sort of story puts stars in a child’s eyes so long as they’re there. When I was young, I read with equal enthusiasm “Hopalong Cassidy,” “Tarzan of the Apes” and “Huckleberry Finn.” This does not mean I had a catholic taste; I didn’t have any taste at all. The only difference to me between Tarzan and Huck Finn was that one was cast in a jungle and the other took place on a perfectly wonderful river. I read some pretty awful stuff in those days and still managed to avoid the juvenile courts and to grow up reasonably literate.
The real harm in these broadcasts, in my opinion, is that they lure children away from books and make radio addicts out of them. This is a deplorable tendency, but I don’t know what can be done about it. Radio, I’m afraid, is here to stay and so are the kids’ programs.
I listened to four of them recently that follow each other at fifteen-minute intervals on WJZ from 5 to 6 p.m. and couldn’t see any great harm in any of them.

First I got “Terry and the Pirates,” which, unlike the comic strip of the same name, is slanted for children and not adults. Terry, in case you’re interested and I doubt that you are, is still in China and is mixed up with some one named Ruby Buckle. The comic-strip Terry is noted for his adult dialogue, which isn’t the case on the radio. Over the air, Terry talks pure blood-and-thunder and each move is carefully spelled out for the children.
After Terry comes Dick Tracy, “the protector of law and order,” who is now bending his great mind to the problem of solving the case of the snarling dog. Tracy is played by one of most virile voices in radio, which sounds as if it were nourished exclusively on vitamized breakfast foods.
Since all these adventures move at a snail’s pace, Tracy barely had time to open his mouth before Jack Armstrong took over with his manifold troubles. Jack and Billy, the modern version of Tom and Huck, are now in the hands of Slim Griffiths, a notorious sky bandit who has built up a huge fortune robbing stratocruisers. It’s not for you, pop, but the kids eat it up.
“Tennessee Jed,” the last on my list, who has apparently strayed far out of Tennessee to the wild west, differs from the others chiefly in the fact that he is likely to put his dialogue into song now and then.
“I can’t sit here wasting the rest of the night. I’ve got to meet Pancho before it gets light,” he sings to the accompaniment of a guitar.
I’m told that Superman recently has added a new twist to kids’ programs by mixing education to his adventures. Right now he is battling bigotry in the city of Metropolis and incidentally weaving in some very excellent talk on tolerance. It sounds like a fine idea, but we’ll have to take it up in some later column. At this time, I’m less concerned with programs aimed at winning the seal of approval of the United Parents Association than with shows aimed only at gripping the imagination of a child. All of the four programs I mentioned perform that function adequately and without, in my opinion, any unwholesome effects. I know a great many youngsters who listen to them regularly and there isn’t a juvenile delinquent in the lot.

This column is from August 21, 1947.

Ministers, Psychiatrists and Children
In the last few months the Parent-Teachers Association in San Francisco has been kicking up a devil of a fuss over children’s programs. The most recent action is a resolution urging two networks (Mutual and A.B.C.) to abandon eleven programs—Jack Armstrong, Lone Ranger, Sky King, Hop Harrigan, Superman, Captain Midnight, Tom Mix, Red Ryder, Cisco Kid, Tennessee Jed and Terry and the Pirates.
“Juvenile crime and horror programs are tending to dull the minds of children,” says the resolution with great piety but not much perspicacity. The parents and teachers went on to recommend that all future children’s programs be submitted to a “recognized, expert and impartial board of judges” consisting of radio representatives, psychologists, psychiatrists, ministers, educators, librarians and “listeners such as parents.”
I’m not quite brash enough to defend those eleven programs, but it seems to me the kids require some defense against this sweeping and unfair indictment. It’s much harder to dull the mind of a child than the P.T.A. seems to think. Dull-minded children—apart from those congenitally so—are usually the ones whose imagination has been stifled by well meaning but grim-lipped persons such as parents.
The literary merit of children’s programs is rather questionable, it’s true, but, in so far as the children are concerned, the programs are far better than anything turned out by any such panel of experts. The expertness, and particularly the impartiality, of psychiatrists, ministers and educators—let’s leave the librarians and psychologists out of this—can’t stand very strong examination. I should have violently objected to any of them passing judgment on my childhood reading. My mind might well have been purer if they had, but my point of view would very definitely have been narrower and my appreciation of style probably totally underdeveloped.
Besides, the ministers, educators and psychiatrists would have great difficulty finding any common ground of approval. The minister eager to adjust each word to accord with the precepts of the Christian church, the psychiatrist sniffing suspiciously at each evidence of trauma, his eyes alight with the holy fires of syntax, would be hopelessly at cross-purposes and any agreement any them would be—somewhat like Congress—a matter of generous compromises in which the script would be so excised, bowdlerized, sanctified and grammatical that it would not only dull the mind of the child but put it directly to sleep. Maybe that’s the idea. There’s no more virtuous child than one asleep.
The last group of judges—“listeners such as parents”—is a plain contradiction in terms. It’s the kids, not the parents, who listen to these things, and if any one should be consulted, it should be they. I’m not foolish enough to recommend that children be given complete control, but right now they haven’t any say-so at all.

In fact, without the addition of a single parent, minister or educator, children’s programs are already more carefully edited and supervised than any other group of programs on the air.
Vulgarity and horror are strictly forbidden and law and order and fair play inevitably triumph in all of them. That—to lay it bluntly on the line—is why they have no literary merit whatsoever. Not, dear parents and teachers, because they are so free from restraint but because they are so hag-ridden with regulations. The systematic attempts to purify children’s minds have recurred for years, and in retrospect they always look ridiculous. At the time they were written, “Tom Sawyer,” “Huckleberry Finn,” “Treasure Island” or “Snow White” (a little horror story if ever there was one) could never pass any such impartial board as suggested by the San Francisco P.T.A. These works have been hallowed by time and prestige—not an increase in tolerance or common sense on the part of parents and teachers.
For years, Mark Twain was plagued by many attempts—many of them successful—to bowdlerize his books. As recently as 1906 a group of women with minds like the drive snow attempted successfully to have “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn” removed from the shelves of the Brooklyn Public Library. At the time Twain wrote a letter to the librarian, a little gem of irony, which I produce in full below:
21 Fifth Ave.
Nov. 21, ‘05
Dear Sir:
I am greatly troubled by what you say. I wrote Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn for adults exclusively, & it always distresses me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experiences, & to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and veer draw a sweet breath again this side of the grave. Ask that young lady—she will tell you so. (Ed. Note: I have no idea who is the young lady referred to by Twain.)
Most honestly do I wish that I could say a softening word or two in defense of Huck’s character, since you wish it, but really it is no better than those of Solomon, David, Satan & the rest of the sacred brotherhood.
If there is an Unexpurgated in the Children’s Department won’t you please help that young woman remove Tom & Huck from that questionable companionship? Sincerely yours,
S.L. CLEMENS

I’ve heard of people who say their parents wouldn’t allow them to watch specific programmes (TV was off-limits to me after certain hours) or didn’t have a set at all. That’s good parenting. A TV has an off-switch. Use it. But if some other parents had tried to tell me not to watch Bugs Bunny (even that lame cartoon where he takes on a boring, drawling Stepin stereotype), I’d likely have a few words for them. Polite ones, naturally. Watching TV didn’t turn me into a mindless boor, like some of these do-gooders seemed to think it should.

A Few Bugs in the Act

Friz Freleng and writer Warren Foster beautifully put together a gag in Show Biz Bugs (1957), where Daffy Duck elaborately sets up a trained pigeon act on stage only to have the pigeons unexpectedly fly out of the theatre.



Daffy reacts and does his best to save the act. An unseen audience member provides a capper for the scene.



Gerry Chiniquy, Art Davis and Virgil Ross are Freleng’s animators.

Cat on the Flying Trapeze

The generic Tex Avery cat swings from a trapeze to try to kill a cuckoo bird in The Cuckoo Clock (1950). He swings over twice and misses. Then comes the third attempt.



Walt Clinton, Grant Simmons and Mike Lah are the animators, with Johnny Johnsen painting the backgrounds and Scott Bradley (no doubt unhappily) supplying the old chestnut “Man on the Flying Trapeze” on the soundtrack.

A Carnival of Jack Benny

TV specials and concerts occupied the final years of Jack Benny’s life. He kept working right up until cancer stopped him several months before his death. One of his specials in 1968 featured an odd assortment of names. Don Drysdale was a pitcher for the Dodgers; Jack was a baseball fan. George Burns was his best friend. Johnny Carson was practically a student of his. And Ben Blue, well, Ben Blue was an old vaudevillian who had appeared with him in Artists and Models Abroad (1937), on his radio show (about the same time) as some guy who broke into uncontrollable guffawing, and on his TV show in 1960. He wasn’t exactly an A-lister in 1968.

NBC dutifully sent out releases and captioned photos to newspapers to get free publicity for the special. Newspapers did what they wanted with them, lifting quotes for their own entertainment columns or republishing a release in part or whole. A release generally gives itself away by not being bylined, though small papers might not byline its entertainment stories if one writer/editor was responsible for all of them.

This story appeared in the TV magazine section Albany Times-Union of Saturday, March 16, 1968. I suspect it’s from one of those releases.

Jack Benny Conducts Special That Isn't His Idea of a Special
HOLLYWOOD — Jack Benny has put together a very special Special for the only outing of the year as the star of his own show on NBC, despite his protestation that it isn't a "special." The Wednesday colorcast extravaganza features such stars as Lucille Ball, Johnny Carson, Ben Blue and Paul Revere and the Raiders.
The carnival is the theme, and Benny has stocked his "sideshow" with cameo appearances by Bob Hope, Dean Martin, Danny Thomas, the Smothers Brothers, George Burns, Don Drysdale and a host of acts ranging from the sword swallower to the bearded lady.
• • •
"ALL I know," says Jack, "is that we have a great show. But NBC insists on calling it a 'special.' To me, a special is when coffee goes from a dollar a pound to 69 cents. That's a special!"
Benny is surrounded by eye-popping sets representing all elements of the carnival from the pitchman's booth in front of the tent housing Luscious Lucille, the kootch dancer, to the overloaded bus that carts the troupe from city to city. There are sets that showcase the main attractions and the featured performers and a huge carousel that acts as the backdrop for the finale.
The program consists of many vignettes within the world of the carnival. Carson plays a barker, a hustler for the baseball-throwing concession and, in one hilarious skit, Jack Benny's son, a penny-pinching carbon copy of his old man, who owns the Kubelsky Carnival.
Lucille Ball has a field day as Luscious Lucille, the kootch dancer who sings and dances as Helen of Troy and Cleopatra; as the sidekick of Ben Blue in a pantomime skit that pokes fun at the nickelodeons; as Benny's wife who is a Jill of All Trades in Benny's troupe.
Benny romps through the entire hour. He does a take-off of Dean Martin in the opening of his show that sets the pattern for zany humor. Benny's monologue is up to his best previous efforts. Then Jack plays a "rube," a con man, a member of the Revere Raiders and the corny owner, Kubelsky, which, by the way, is Jack's real name.
It wouldn't be cricket to divulge the nature of the cameo bits on the show because the very essence of the spots by the big-name stars is surprise.
• • •
THE ARDUOUS job of dispensing laughter for the better part of four decades (do your own arithmetic concerning Jack's alleged age of 39) has taken little apparent toll of Benny's store of energy and enthusiasm.
He relaxes by working, and makes countless appearances each year in behalf of charitable causes. His principal source of pleasure comes from his guest appearances with major symphonies around the country. (Last month, for instance, he appeared with the Boston Symphony.)
Jack has now been guest soloist with every major symphony in the United States. He gets only joy as his reward — no fee. He has raised over $4 million for ailing symphony treasuries in the years he has been doing this worthy "fiddling-around."
Additionally, Benny has been doing concerts in his primary capacity as a comedian. His act holds records in just about every spot in which he has titillated audiences, the most noteworthy of recent origin being the Expo '67 box office record, topping everything and everyone who appeared [at] the Montreal Exposition. Night clubs, guesting on television and an occasional golf game fill the rest of his spare time.
Public and network reaction to this special may cause Benny to re-evaluate his thinking about the amount of time he devotes to television.
The word going around is: the people are going to demand more of the same. "My doctor would like me to start taking it easier," Benny told his studio audience during taping of the show. "He told me that I shouldn't be working so hard. He said I couldn't be doing the show for the money. Ha!
"I have found," Benny continued, "that when you take the rubber gloves off a doctor, you have a real comedian on your hands!"

It Still Sounded Like a Vacuum Cleaner

The Eye has been linked with CBS for years and years, but there was a time when people tuning their TV sets didn’t see it. In fact, there was barely a CBS at the time and it was difficult to see just about anything on a television screen.

The year was 1930. Bill Paley was running CBS, created only three years earlier (as UIB) to compete against RCA’s radio arm, NBC. Radio wasn’t NBC’s only preoccupation. Television was, too, so Paley got into the television business. It wasn’t actually a business, because commercial stations weren’t allowed. CBS, through its Atlantic Broadcasting Corporation subsidiary, applied for a license on August 13, 1930¹ and it was granted on December 16th.² The station was given the call letters W2XAB, which had been abandoned by RCA, the owner of NBC. From this sprang the great CBS television network, but that was a little way into the future yet. There were experiments, a false start and a world war to contend with first (not to mention regulatory interference on the industry by the FCC).

It’s unclear when the first experimental broadcasts in preparation for the big debut happened—they were supposed to begin June 1, 1931³—we do know there were some before July 12th because that’s the date the Baltimore Sun reported:

Boiled Shirts Banned Before Televisor Now
W2XAB Thrown Off Air By Reflection From Shining White Garment
During the first evening of experimental television tests from W2XAB, New York, an artist stepped before the televisor in dinner dress. The shining white shirt caused so much concentrated reflection that the transmitter was temporarily thrown off the air.
Edwin K. Cohan, director of technical operations and television for C.B.S., has, as a result, ordered a ban on “boiled shirts” in the television studios.

The New York Sun of July 17th reported there had been “several weeks of tests in which reception of W2XAB’s signals was said to have been heard in cities as far away as Boston, Hartford, Baltimore, Camden, Schenectady and Philadelphia.”

The big day was July 21, 1931. The time: 10:15 p.m. The New York press gave preview ink, one paper displaying a photo of Ed Wynn who was supposed to be on the 45-minute premiere broadcast. He never made it, and the papers were silent as to why. CBS may not have been a television network yet but the company had a big radio network, which simulcast the show (CFRB in Toronto was among the stations). Here’s what the New York Sun said the next day. Only the picture was carried on W2XAB; viewers on their “televisors” had to tune their shortwave radios to W2XE on another frequency to get the sound.

NEW TELEVISION STUDIO OPENED
Columbia Offers Regular Daily Program.
SCHEME LARGELY EXPERIMENT
Engineers Seek to Make Many Refinements in Instruments.
Television, the toddling scientific development, took a step forward today with the inauguration of a regular daily program from the new radio-vision studio of the Columbia Broadcasting System atop the broadcasting headquarters at 485 Madison avenue.
The opening took place last night when Mayor Walker drew aside the curtain from the sensitive photoelectric cells and officially "opened the eyes" of W2XAB, which becomes the sixth television transmitter in the metropolitan area.
Sixty broadcasting stations carried last night's ceremonies from coast to coast, through WABC, as more than one hundred guests watched the "flying spot" etch the images of speakers and performers and send them out over the ether.
Mayor Walker Introduced.

Edward B. Husing, WABC announcer, introduced Mayor Walker and then presented Natalie Towers, the Columbia television girl. Edwin K. Cohan, technical director of WABC, and Dr. Walter Schaffer, chief engineer of the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft of Germany, discussed television, its history and future.
Mr. Cohan said that television of today is comparable to the phonograph of 1910 and the motion picture of 1905, but predicted that it would advance from now on "just as surely as sound broadcasting has, and at no less pace."
"It will progressively bring to you the individual and small groups," he said, "the larger groups and complete symphonic and stage productions, the outdoor sporting events, the spot news events. It will eventually bring these to you in natural color."
"We have but one purpose in opening television station W2XAB," Mr. Cohan said, "our interest being solely that of a progressive broadcasting organization intent upon carrying on television experiments of its own, to determine the scope and limitations of this new art, and to build a well coordinated and efficient organization in advance of the day when television no longer remains the crude marvel that it now is."
Entertainers On Program.
George Gershwin, composer, played his own work, "Liza."
Other entertainers on the program were Kate Smith, pianist and singer; Ben Alley, tenor; Henry Burbig, humorist; Helen Nugent, contralto; the Boswell Sisters, Helen Gilligan and Milton Watson, who sang duets. Following the presentation, which the guests saw and heard in another studio, the visitors were allowed to inspect the visual-aural studio on the top floor of the building and the 500-watt picture transmitter which which is part of the broadcasting apparatus.
A regular schedule of broadcasts through W2XAB and W2XE, the respective visual and aural short-wave transmitters associated with WABC, will begin tonight when a program will be flashed to the liner Leviathan at sea.
The regular schedules calls for broadcasts from 2 to 6 P M. and from 8 to 11 P. M. The afternoon broadcast will he used largely for experimental work of the Columbia engineers, and will be sent out without sound accompaniment.

The Sun was a little reticent in describing the pictures. Other papers weren’t. The New York Herald Tribune said “The images in the televisor were quite plain last night, although red waves seemed to run through them constantly. Mayor Walker’s features were easily recognizable, and the Mayor commented somewhat on the difference television would make in politics.” (Walker wasn’t predicting “news” channels with slanted commentary; he was speaking of politicians being seen by voters). The Associated Press chimed in that “The images on these televisors permitted the guests to obtain good recognizable pictures, but from 14 miles away came a report that reception was somewhat marred by static with the images faint at times.” The Brooklyn Standard Union was even less impressed, opining “the televisors still sounded like a vacuum cleaner and the pictures were scarcely more clear than the early telephoto pictures printed in newspapers, when a few smudges and straight lines appeared under the caption ‘Flyers Land in Greenland.’”

Perhaps the biggest stunt on the station was the “first million dollar television broadcast” on September 8, 1931, when hostess Natalie Towers (CBS photo, right) wore a multitude gems and jewels on camera. You can read more about Natalie’s career on W2XAB in these fine articles HERE and HERE.

The station’s seven-day-a-week schedule was pretty ambitious for a company that wasn’t getting a cent from television. And a company that found itself caught in the Depression. The following May, W2XAB’s nightly schedule was cut from three hours nightly to two, with no sound because the audio was distorted when acts moved, and daytime programming was ended.⁴ The station then went off the air on July 4, 1932 for some sound tweaking.⁵

Ah, but it was only temporary. W2XAB celebrated its first anniversary by being new and (supposedly) improved. Now the sound and picture came from the same frequency! Here’s the New York Sun, July 23, 1932. You’ll notice not a lot is said about the programming; there’s more about the geeky, technical stuff.

W2XAB BACK ON THE AIR
Celebrates Its First Anniversary With Gala Event.
Another milestone in the development of television was passed Thursday night, July 21, when a program of synchronized sight and sound was transmitted over W2XAB.
The program marked the first anniversary of Columbia's entrance into the field of television, and also inaugurated the regular broadcasting of simultaneous sight and sound on one wave-length.
The program included an innovation when Harold Stern's dance orchestra broadcast their music from the roof garden of the St. Moritz Hotel, while their leader talked to them and directed them from W2XAB's studio nine blocks away. Receivers set up in front of the band enabled the musicians to follow Stein's baton and hear his instructions as he faced the flying spot.
New System Explained
In a brief address to the listening audience, Edwin K. Cohan, technical director of Columbia, gave an explanation of the now synchronization method and pointed out its significance.
"The frequency band, or ether channel, occupied by W2XAB," Cohan said in his talk, "extends from 2,750 kilocycles to 2,850 kilocycles. Thus we have a channel 100 kilocycles or 100,000 cycles wide. (The regular broadcasting facilities are ten kilocycles or 100,000 cycles wide.) We transmit a picture composed of 4,320 picture elements and we transmit twenty complete pictures per second in order to obtain a satisfactory illusion of motion. This requires approximately 86 per cent of the 100,000 cycle channel just mentioned, leaving 14 per cent, or about 14,000 cycles, unused. Since the next progressive step in picture detail and definition under present methods would require a channel wider than 100,000 cycles. 86 per cent of the band has been the highest efficiency thus far. Instead of wasting the remaining 14 per cent, as has been the practice heretofore, tonight's program inaugurates the usage of nearly all this 'waste space' for the accompanying voice or music.
"This more efficient use of the channel," concluded Cohan, "coupled to the greater economy effected through the elimination of a large amount of equipment duplication, both at the transmitter and receiver, practically assures the future universal adoption of this basic idea, regardless of specific methods or channels used."
In another short address. William A. Schudt Jr., television director, outlined the accomplishments of its visual broadcasting activity after one year of experimentation, laying particular stress on the great advances made in television as an artistic medium of entertainment.
Continues Its Experiments

"When the history of television is written," he said, "we will be credited with having presented boxing bouts on a large scale, [staged photo to right] as well as wrestling and a play-board vision of football games. We likewise projected by television an authentic art exhibition; classic dancing; miniature musical comedies; sketching before the scanner; dancing and piano lessons, and programs in connection with news events of the day.
"Station W2XAB is the first television station to be synchronized in sound with a coast-to-coast radio network," he continued. "For those who do not have the opportunity to become familiar with present-day visual broadcasting, let me add that there is a fair television audience. We have received a good deal of fan mail from distances up to a 2,000-mile radius of New York. It is conservatively estimated that there are close to 9,000 television lookers-in within the metropolitan area. I feel reasonably certain that there are thousands more who see our programs, although we have no figures on them. Let us say then, that there are 9,000 television receiving sets in operation tonight, watching me as I stand before this scanning equipment Do you realize that you could not crowd 9,000 people into any but the few largest theaters in the country.
"For the coming year we will continue to experiment and develop studio technique and mechanical facilities. There will be hundreds of artists and performers facing these eyes' during the coming months. They will be working for the sake of television; working so that, you may have perfected television in your homes within a short time."

But the Depression wasn’t going anywhere. CBS needed to save money. A number of sustaining (non-commercial) radio artists making $100 a week were let go, including singer Vaughn De Leath. And W2XAB was shut down. The Columbia spin was the station offered little opportunity for further contribution to television, that the station had existed to prepare the company for when television “arrived” and the company was now prepared.⁶ It unexpectedly signed off on February 21, 1933.

Its passing was noted in The Billboard’s television columns of March 4 and 11, 1933. In the latter, Benn Hall eulogised its short life and talked about its stars, all of whom are long forgotten.

Requiem W2XAB

Before the books are closed for all time, let us say a few last words about some of the performers at W2XAB. Now that the station is no more, your commentator can say a few kind words about some of the entertainers without fearing for his skin when next he meets some unmentioned acts. W2XAB had approximately 35 acts; we were conversant with all, but about three.
Acts that have definite radio possibilities include: “Out of the Song Shops,” a sister act of pop melodies by the O’Neill Sisters, Connie at the ivories and Jean vocalizing. Jean won a recent Whiteman audition and either with a band or with her sister has promising radio possibilities. “Character Slants,” by Bob Davis, with legit and stock background, who did a novelty bit on television with trick makeup effects. Forgetting makeup and pictures for radio, Davis showed in his wide repertoire of characterizations that he possesses talent that can be developed into something worth while for ether use.
Harriette Downs, the “Girl with the Musical Teeth,” warbles pop numbers and does trick throat stunt, imitating stringed instruments. Plenty of vocal heat. “Millinery Fashion Review,” with Gladys Kahn, who until some weeks ago did two television numbers weekly, this fashion show and a musical number. Both programs displayed genuine ability. Her chats on chapeaux are freshest in your correspondent’s memory and it was breezy, informal, natural and interested women fans.

Television underwent more changes in the ‘30s. The mechanical TV system, with its coordinated spinning wheels to transmit and pick up signals, was out. The cathode ray tube was in. And the engineers at RCA tinkered around enough to their satisfaction that NBC re-launched its New York City TV station, with huge fanfare, at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Again, CBS played catch-up. And W2XAB returned. The first test of the signal from its new transmitter atop the Chrysler Tower was made from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. on November 8, 1939, where viewers got to see a test pattern that didn’t interfere with the programming on NBC’s W2XBS down the dial.⁷ The station became commercialised in 1941 with new call-letters, WCBW, and maintained a somewhat regular, abbreviated schedule until after the war, when the medium finally came into its own.

This post was prompted by the discovery of a name in the W2XAB listings, one not mentioned in Hall’s column and one who became a TV pioneer almost 30 years later. On August 25, 1931, the time slot from 8:30 to 8:45 p.m. was taken up by “Teddy Bergman, Television’s Clown.”⁸ Bergman later changed his name and is known to you as Alan Reed, the voice of Fred Flintstone on the first-ever prime-time animated series. Thus it was that Alan Reed not only appeared in a Stone Age cartoon, but in the Stone Age of television.

---

1 NY Times, Aug. 14, 1930, pg. 12^↩
2 Baltimore Sun, AP story, Dec. 17, 1930, pg. 14^↩
3 Baltimore Sun, Apr. 19, 1931, pg. 8^↩
4 Variety, May 10, 1932, pg. 55^↩
5 Broadcasting, July 15, 1932, pg. 19^↩
6 The Billboard, March 4, 1933, pg. 12^↩
7 Broadcasting, Nov. 15, 1939, pg. 39^↩
8 The Outlook For Television, pg. 211, by Orrin E. Dunlap, Jr., Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1932^↩

Help! I'm Outside the Cartoon!

Porky the Rain-maker has a great ending. Porky’s farm animals swallow meteorological pills, which turns them into living versions of the weather (fog, lightning, tornado, etc.). But the rain pill gets into the sky, causing a downpour that saves the crops on the farm. Porky, his dad and the animals celebrate and strike a pose like at the end of a stage musical.



But it’s not over. The animals suddenly turn back into the weather-emulating versions of themselves.



But it’s still not over! The goose gets thrown, then gets caught “outside” the cartoon as the iris closes on him. He bangs on the “wall” and is pulled back in to end the short.



Leave it to Tex Avery to screw around with the ending of a cartoon (he also had a reach-out-from-the-iris gag to end I Love to Singa, released two weeks earlier).

Sid Sutherland and Cecil Surry are the credited animators; Avery’s little group also had Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Virgil Ross and assistants Bobe Cannon and Elmer Wait at the time.

Flying Duck Dinner

Would you eat a duck that got stripped and then roasted by an airplane propeller? Tom and Jerry would in In The Bag (1932).



They never eat the duck. Their plane crashes and they go onto something else.

John Foster and George Rufle get the co-director credit with Gene Rodemich providing the score (I couldn’t tell you the name of the song behind the above scene).

The film studios weren’t terribly possessive about titles. There was a Slim Summerville two-reeler called In the Bag released a week after this one.

An Engaging Rodent and Minor Masterpieces

Even as Mickey Mouse was being recognised and praised by the people who hand out the Oscars in 1932, the humanoid mouse had peaked in films.

Mickey, of course, stuck around for many years and still starred in films, but he was eclipsed by multiple colours, then by multiple pigs, then by multiple dwarves. Even setting aside features and Silly Symphonies, Donald Duck and, to a lesser extent, Goofy, began grabbing the audience’s attention in short films.

One wonders if part of the blame, if blame’s the word, could be put on film censors. Donald was just a loudmouth with anger management issues. Goofy was a dope. But Mickey was a “role model.” He had a wife-like companion, a dog, a home. In many ways, to the kid audience, he was similar to dad. And dad can’t be shown doing anything bad. He must uphold the American Family Way. So out went chamber pot and outhouse jokes, and udders and bodily fluids and stuff like that. Mickey became bland as, well, dad with his predictable routine of work, dinner, pipe and slippers and reading the paper.

Here’s a story from the New York Herald Tribune of November 27, 1932. I reprint it not because of its analysis of Mickey Mouse but because it has some small praise for other animated shorts. How often do you see Van Beuren’s Tom and Jerry receive some favour in the popular press? Almost never. You do here. Even Flip the Frog (before he stared at showering women through a keyhole) warrants a mention.

Mickey Mouse’s New Garlands Are the Subject of This Essay
By J.C. Furnas
THE annual awards of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences for the best acting, directing, camera work and so forth always produce more or less dispute. But that one of the recent awards which gave special recognition to Mickey Mouse is something with which almost all picturegoers can be thoroughly satisfied. You have your own ideas as to whom turned out the best job of acting among the great ladies of the screen, but, unless you are more or less than human, you cannot object to seeing Mr. Walt Disney’s engaging rodent hung around with garlands. Although it seems a little unfair that Minnie Mouse was not included in the honors, that is a matter touching domestic diplomacy and had been not be discussed in public.
Nor is this laboring of the Academy mountain to bring forth a mouse a matter of mere routine, like the selection of an All-American quarterback or the year’s best director. A special award of this sort has been made only twice before, once for Charles Spencer Chaplin, once for the Warner Brothers’ contribution in developing sound-production. This is fame. It ranks the absurd creature of Disney’s fancy with the actor who heads the screen pantheon and with the most important technical development the screen has seen since the close-up was invented. And there can be little doubt that Mickey deserves to be in such company. Only the early Chaplin comedies ever gained such a hold on the public affection as animated cartoons in general, and Mickey Mouse in particular, have developed since synchronized sound was combined with the old cartoon technique.

By an unfortunate coincidence, the current Mickey Mouse releases at the time of the award were not quite up to standard. Neither Mickey’s adventures in Arabia at the Roxy nor “The Wayward Canary” at the Rivoli match up with the best Mickey has done, such as the battle with the octopus on the beach, nor even with his average quality, which was well represented in “Mickey’s Revue.” And just at the moment attention has been diverted to the new colored Silly Symphonies, of which an excellent example is now showing at the Palace. But week in and week out, Mickey overshadows all other animated cartoons, and the best way to take this welcome award is as a tribute to the whole cartoon business, properly given to the most eminent practitioner.
Otherwise you would be guilty of the same sort of invidious preference which denies merit to all the old two-reel slapstick comedies except Chaplin’s. For, although Mickey Mouse is indubitably the best of the lot, there are plenty of other animated cartoons that are well worth sitting through. A Silly Symphony like “The Spider and the Fly,” also a product of Mr. Disney and his merry men, can come close to the edge of Mickey’s mantle. Bosco and Tom and Jerry and Flip the Frog all have their moments and, if you can discount the fading curse of the bouncing ball, even a few of Betty Boop cartoons have displayed an admirable fancy, particularly that specimen in a kind of topsy-turvy land where fish caught men and pipes lighted matches. Yet there seems to be something about Mickey which prompts his creator to a flawless taste, so that Disney is never guilty in a Mickey Mouse of the occasional candy-box prettiness that mar his Silly Symphonies.
It will be interesting to see how color affects Mickey’s personality, if they ever get round to ornamenting him with the dazzling polychromy that the Silly Symphonies already use. Color in photographed films has proved of little service, but perhaps Mickey can survive its preemptory monopoly of attention. He is developing all the time in other directions, not only in decorum with his past trouble with the censors. To his faithful and much tried Millie he is adding other stock characters: the lugubrious hound dogs that danced in “Mickey’s Revue” and the horse-creature with the laugh like a defective pump that caused so much of the joy in “Mickey’s Revue” and “Mickey’s Whoopee Party.”

If the academy award is to be taken seriously at all, it must mean that the animated cartoon has become a major achievement in films. Certainly the picture business accords no such emphasis to any other breed of short subjects. Mickey Mouse gets his own billing on marquees and stands outside theaters alongside cutouts of the popular stars. And the most precious and pretentious critics of the cinema agree with the cash customers: animated cartoons are the object of high praise and formidably grave analysis among those to whom Hollywood and its fruits are usually anathema. It is so often the fate of the American picture industry to labor pantingly to become aesthetically respectable in a big way and then discover that the aesthetes have come over to something like Chaplin or Mickey Mouse which nobody ever took seriously.
It may mean, of course, that the animated cartoon has a chance of developing into something large scale and important. Outside theorists like H.G. Wells have long been wondering why the flexibility of this medium is not turned to account in serious work, and animated cartoons receive a great deal of the credit for developing the new sound technique in conventionally photographed films. At least one Hollywood director—Frank Tuttle—now and then injects a cartoon gag into a regular film. But the main reason for the delight that the aesthetes take in Mickey Mouse is said to derive from the fact that in cartoons alone can they still find the complete subjugation of fact to fancy, the mad irresponsibility, the passing of which is still the subject of much lamentation among those who consider that the art of the cinema died with silent production and lives again only in Rene Clair.
That is a big load for Mickey Mouse to stagger under, as dean of the profession. It is hard to avoid a lingering suspicion that it is too much of a load, that, even at their amazingly delightful best, animated cartoons are very minor masterpieces and that Hollywood needs such surpassing achievements in major keys. It is as if the most fertile and aesthetically significant work on English literature were the limericks of Edward Lear. But things like that sound unpleasant in connection with the apotheosis or Mr. Disney’s offspring. Mickey Mouse is for all that, a joy forever, and if he can only keep from developing a swelled head—his proportions at the north end already far exceed the Lysippic canon—there is no reason why he should not continue to be the delight of the many and the admiration of the few.