She's a Happy Joyce

“Mr. Disney liked me because I reminded him of one of his animations.”
“Cinderella?” she was asked.
“No. Dopey,” she replied.
That rim-shotting line came from actress Joyce Bulifant, who appeared in “The Happiest Millionaire” (1967) for Uncle Walt. She also showed up seemingly everywhere on television where a laugh-track could be heard (or before live studio audiences), or a tumbleweed tumbled (such as “Bonanza”), and in some of the most obscure places.
Good reviews greeted the 23-year-old Bulifant in an off-Broadway production of “There is a Play Tonight” in 1961 (syndicated critic Alice Hughes declared her “a good actress, with charm and stage presence”). She soon found work on the West Coast in all kinds of TV roles, including a spot on the “Tom, Dick and Mary” portion of the rotating sitcom “90 Bristol Court” (1964, photo to right) and a season as a dancer on “Arthur Murray’s Dance Party.”
Due to its huge popularity, she’s perhaps most associated with “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” where she showed up occasionally as Murray Slaughter’s (Gavin McLeod) wife. Alas, attempts at other junctures in the ‘70s for her to break out in a starring role somewhat eluded her. One was in a short-lived series called “Love Thy Neighbor” in 1973. It was during that period where TV executives, uniting almost as one, decided if they imported some Britcom with a left/right, rich/poor or black/white dynamic, they’d be greeted with instant success. Let this King Features syndicated column from June 20, 1973 try to bring back some memories.

NO LOVE FOR "LOVE" SITCOM
By CHARLES WITBECK
TV Key, Inc

HOLLYWOOD (KFS) – "Love Thy Neighbor," a modified version of the English TV series about blacks moving into a white neighborhood, arrived on ABC last Friday for a summer run, and the results are not encouraging. "All in the Family" it is not.
Even so, the black-white female comedy — scheduled for a six weeks' engagement — may have an extended run, earning a chance to find its groove, since the prolonged writers' strike has forced networks to drop plans for the customary grand fall opening in mid-September.
For those who missed the first episode, "Love Thy Neighbor'' looks in upon a middle-class San Fernando Valley, Calif., development called the Sherwood Forest Estates. Charlie and Peggy Wilson, played by Ron Masak and Joyce Bulifant, live on Friar Tuck Lane. Blue collar man Wilson, a shop steward, blows a fuse at the plant over the hiring of an efficiency expert, then has a second fit at home when hit with the news that a black couple has bought the house next door. The new neighbors, Ferguson and Jackie Bruce, turn out to be the efficiency man and his wife, portrayed by Harrison Page and Janet MacLachlan.
Wives Peggy and Jackie become immediate friends while the men are more wary, unable to drop their suspicions and prejudices over a handshake With wives forming allies, the promise slides into male-versus female combat for comedy playoff, and judging from the first two episodes, actresses Joyce Bulifant and Janet MacLachlan clearly have the best of it.

Bulifant had another obscure starring role, on—of all places—Saturday mornings. Here’s King Features again in a story published July 25, 1976. This series didn’t take off, either.

Joyce Bulifant, a Happy Little Dizzy Blonde, Can Make Silliness Palatable
By CHARLES WITBECK
TV Key, Inc.
HOLLYWOOD – (KFS) – Joyce Bulifant has a rare quality that's much in demand these days on the tube; she can make silliness palatable.
The happy little dizzy blonde with the turned-up nose, the elfish grin and the high-pitched squeaky voice brightens game shows like the new "Cross-Witts," and "The Match Game" in the daytime.
At night there's Joyce, when she has time after telethon and guest spots, bolstering her series husband, writer Murray Slaughter, on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."

This fall the busy Bulifant invades a new territory of the ridiculous — Saturday morning, where she joins Herb Edelman and child actor Robbie Rist in NBC's "Big John, Little John." It's a crazy show by Sherwood ("Gilligan's Island," "The Brady Bunch") Schwartz and His son, Lloyd, about a housewife (Joyce) whose 45-year-old husband drinks from the fountain of youth and regresses back to the age of 12.
In the Schwartz rendition, fans will see both the 45-year-old husband in the form of actor Edelman, and the head of the household when he has slipped back to 12. Whether hubby is 45 or 12, Joyce's housewife remains steadfast, going along in her happy, giggling fashion.
As Bulifant fans can attest, the Schwartzes hit the bullseye when they thought of Joyce. On game shows, the actress plays the dizzy blonde, shooting verbally from the hip. She may be miles off target, but that hardly matters because she makes everyone feel better with her happy disposition.
"I speak before I think," Joyce admits. "That's a terrible thing to say, but it usually pays off in the game show business. I've never lost a job because of the habit."
Just because Joyce says the first thing that comes to mind doesn't mean she's a lame brain. "It's not a dumb mind, only a silly one," is her explanation. Silliness has its limits with the actress. She goes through periods of depression wondering what she is doing playing dumb games for daytime consumption. But then she bumps into an elderly couple at the supermarket and hears "You make our day." Little kids run up to her on the street and fuss over her. "That's really nice," she says.
Thanks to her happy-go-lucky silly image, the actress earns a good living, enough for three children. A working mother, the 13-year charter member of International Orphans, Joyce is known for her inability to say no to anything involving kids. When the first Vietnam refugees arrived in California's Camp Pendleton, there was Joyce ready to lend a comforting hand. This had nothing to do with show business.
As for her happy disposition — it's real, not put on. Evidently, the actress was born that way, and a lucky thing too. Before Joyce reached the seventh grade, she had attended 21 schools.
The Bulifants kept on the move after Joyce was born in Virginia, and the youngster learned to adapt quickly to new environments, shifting from the Southern states on up to New York before she went off to boarding school in Pennsylvania, where she met her first husband, "Hawaii Five-O's" James MacArthur, son of playwright Charles MacArthur and Helen Hayes.
Sailing through her childhood without visible scars, the outgoing actress appears to feel at home anywhere. True, she will get up and perform at the drop of a hat, but nobody ever minds. She brightens an evening.
"I enjoy people." she says. "And I don't take myself seriously. I'm having a great time.”

The scars may have been invisible but they were there. Joyce’s parents divorced when she was very young and she ended up in an orphanage. She married alcoholic husbands—four of them. You can find out more about her book on her web site. And this afternoon at 4 p.m. Pacific time, she’ll talk about her life with Stu Shostak on his webcast. If you’ve heard Stu’s previous interviews, you’ll know he likes and respects the people he has on his show, and has the background knowledge to ask the right questions. It should be a worthwhile few hours of listening.

Birthday Bouquets to Gene Deitch

Animator Gene Deitch has turned 94 today. As best as I can tell, he’s as hale and hardy as he’s ever been. We wish him a happy birthday and continued good health.

Mr. D. is known for trying to modernise theatrical Terrytoons in the late 1950s—and was succeeding until some politics in the front office got in the way. He brought the world Tom Terrific, a creative, delightful series by any standard. He was responsible for some fine, stylised animated spots while at UPA and elsewhere, and after his move to Czechoslovakia in the early ‘60s, came out with an array of independent cartoons that deserve wider circulation.

He also won an Oscar for directing the Paramount-released short “Munro.” If you’ve never seen it, watch it below. His son Seth provides the title voice.

What Colour is He?

In Gerald McBoing Boing (1951), the colours of the scenes change depending on the mood being expressed. In the follow-up cartoon, How Now Boing Boing (1954), the colours of the backgrounds change because, well, I’m not really sure why. But in a lot of cases, the characters are simply outlines and the background colour is their colour.



In some scenes, it means characters are two-tone.



Rhyming dialogue and Marvin Miller’s narration don’t mask the fact this short has none of the charm of the original. But UPA boss Stephen Bosustow apparently felt pressure to make more Gerald cartoons.

So made them he did,
And it can be said
They didn’t go “boing boing,”
They went “splat” instead.

Stork Naked Backgrounds

Irv Wyner took over as the background artist in the Friz Freleng unit at Warner Bros. when Paul Julian left for UPA. Since it was the 1950s, his work was stylised. Certainly not as much as at UPA or in animated commercials made at that time, but more so than the 1940s.

To the left you see part of a painting of Paris in Stork Naked, released in 1955, where Daffy Duck takes on the drunken stork (which has Mel Blanc’s real voice at the outset). I can’t snip the whole thing together because of colour issues but this gives you a good idea of what Wyner was trying to do with Hawley Pratt’s layouts.

Pratt evidently loved tall, Victorian houses. You can see a great example in Back Alley Oproar (released in 1948) painted by Julian. We get some in this cartoon. They’re simpler as rendered by Wyner as we’re now into a period of stylised cartoons. They’re still very attractive, though I lean toward Julian’s work. The shades on the foliage of the trees is excellent.



More outline buildings over a solid colour with just a bit of green and purple to augment.



Same house, same basic angle, two entirely different backgrounds. Note the difference in the tree behind the fence. I’ll bet that later, the studio would have used the same background for both shots to save time and money (a la Hanna-Barbera).



An interior.



For reasons I do not understand, the version of the cartoon on DVD is cropped. Maybe people who demand everything in wide screen want it at 16:9, but it’s missing artwork at the top and bottom of the screen. Not terribly fair to Mr. Wyner, is it?

There’s an inside joke where the first family the stork visits is named “Pierce.” As there was alcohol on the premises, one can presume there is a relation to Warners writer Tedd Pierce (this short was written by Warren Foster).

The Facts of Miss Lubotsky

On August 12, 1942, a 16-year-old girl named Charlotte Rae Lubotsky stepped onto the stage at the Shorewood Auditorium in Shorewood, Wisconsin in the role of Gertrude in “The Merchant of Yonkers.” The play went on to become the musical “Hello, Dolly.” Young Miss Lubotsky went on to drop her last name and perform as Charlotte Rae.

Miss Rae died yesterday at the age of 92.

Those of you who watched sitcoms in the ‘80s will know of her most famous roles. For much of the 1950s, Rae was a nightclub comedienne; New York City seemed to breed them in clubs and revues in that decade and many moved on to television. We find her at the Old Knick on the week of February 8, 1950. On May 13th, she made a guest appearance on WOR-TV’s “Kirkwood and Goodman Show” (Jim Kirkwood later went on to write “A Chorus Line”). In September, she debuted at Max Gordon’s Village Vanguard. Variety reviewed her act.

CHARLOTTE RAE
Comedy, Songs
12 Mins.
Village Vanguard, N. Y.
Charlotte Rae seems like a parlor-performer graduate but with sufficiently fresh approach to comedy material to put her ahead of some in this field. She is frequently reminiscent of Shiela Barrett. Has good perception of comedy and flair for delineating a multitude of types.
Miss Rae scores strongest in a garden club bit in which she satirizes various clubwomen types. She has an off-key contralto which brings yocks, and several speeches that could have been written for the late Helen Hokinson characters.
Miss Rae also essays some straight numbers. She did a briefie of "Summertime" which was virtually a throwaway, and also "Begat" from "Finian's Rainbow." She indicates that she's more at home with her own material.
Miss Rae is yet to acquire more experience. There's lots to pick up on projection, and some of her material needs sharper editing. Since she leans toward plumpness, there's a need of some special material in gowning and coiffing. But it's likely that a long round of steady work will ready her for the uptown showcase's. Jose.

Her career was on the rise. Variety noted in April of her act at the Village Vanguard:

She debuted less than a year ago and has progressed considerably during that time. Her comedy is more certain and her delivery has gained polish. She's also improved in the coiffing and costuming. Her strongest material is a satire on operatic singers. She shows good vocal fidelity and excellent projection in these numbers. She's apparently trying some new material. The child prodigy number is still in rough stages and needs further development. Otherwise, she does excellently in this spot.

By November, she had been cast in the musical comedy “Three Wishes For Jamie” (and survived a re-casting). By 1955, Vanguard Records released a selection of her nightclub material. Someone has kindly embedded it on YouTube.

I wanted to find an interview with Rae from before her ‘80s sitcom days and discovered this non-bylined piece from November 24, 1962. Rae was gaining fame as Al Lewis’ wife in “Car 54, Where Are You?”.

Car 54 Drove Her Back to Show Business
New York — Loud-mouthed Bronx-accented, emotional Sylvia Schnauser will provide viewers of Car 54, Where Are You? with some wonderful comedy moments this Sunday when she becomes her version of a Hollywood star, complete with gold lame pants and long cigarette holder. But soft-spoken, non-accented, shy Charlotte Rae, who plays Sylvia, is still slowly shaking her head over the quirk of fate that made her a regular on the show.
Her first appearance, last season, was not in the role of Sylvia, but rather as a bank teller, who was under the mistaken impression that Toody and Muldoon, the show's improbable heroes, were robbing her. Then she was asked to do a bit as Mrs. Schnauser with a double-barreled result: she became a semi-regular cast member and she was launched on a comeback.
• • •
ACTUALLY CHARLOTTE, who began her career in 1951, was never far away from show business. But when she married John Strauss (who coincidentally is the musical director for Car 54), and had two sons, she concentrated on her family rather than her career.
“Now even though my children are small, they are in school, and this show represents the first step in my return. And I'm so grateful to be back. It's such a nice, happy, warm experience to be working with Nat Hiken, and those marvelously funny, well-written scripts.”
• • •

STEP TWO IN CHARLOTTE'S return will be launched on December 26 when S. J. Perelman's "The Beauty Part" opens on Broadway. In this show, which stars Burt Lahr [sic], Charlotte plays four roles, from high society matron to beatnik sculptor.
Show business has been the only aim for Charlotte since her days at Northwestern, where she was in a drama class that included Patricia Neal, Paul Lynde, Jean Hagan and Jeff Hunter. Producer Bob Banner was working toward his master's degree at the same time, and a classmate was Newton Minow, who married one of Charlotte's sorority sisters.
“The competition was so stiff there that at least 1,000 girls switched almost immediately to liberal arts.”
She doesn't find it difficult combining the full-time job of housewife and mother, with the full-time job of actress.
• • •
“IT'S NOT HARD if you don't have feelings of guilt. I feel I'm a better mother if I'm working. When I'm with my children I'm much happier, and they have learned to accept that I'm a working mother.
“Once one of my boys asked in pitiable voice, ‘Mommy, why do you have to go to work?’ I told him ‘because I LOVE it.’ A lot of mothers take just as much time away from the family as I do, but they spend it playing mah jongg and doing all kinds of social things. To me that would be a living death.”
The petite, pretty, blue-eyed comedienne longs to be a serious performer. "I want to do something where I can play a wonderful human being, where I can express deeper emotions as well as be funny.
“I almost didn't accept my roles in The Beauty Part' because I had been offered several serious roles off-Broadway. It's hard to know what to do in a case like that. It wasn't an easy decision. But I want to make people laugh. I also want to shake them up with a dramatic appearance. I shouldn't keep talking about that I should keep quiet and just do it.”

In a 1969 interview with syndicated columnist Frank Langley, she sighed “I am not a comedienne, I’m an actress. But everyone thinks I’m a comedienne.” But comedy was her forte in the ‘50s and it was in the ‘80s when she starred on “Diff’rent Strokes" and its spinoff "The Facts of Life.” You can find lists all over the internet of her performances so I need not go into it. Instead, have a listen to her satirical album from 1955.

Old Gags? Not to Worry

Jack Benny, by various accounts, wasn’t a rollicking humourist when he was off the air. He’d talk about how to be funny on the air, though, in various interviews.

Here’s one from the International News Service’s “Assignment America” column from 1955. It covers a variety of topics. Jack addresses his reputation as a worrier and reveals he never eats kadota figs. I believe he’s the only celebrity that ever mentioned them.

Jack Benny is Serious
By Phyllis Battelle

NEW YORK, May 2 (INS) — Expecting Jack Benny to be funny in the privacy of his hotel suite is something like expecting Marilyn Monroe to quote Tolstoy with accuracy.
It is a vain hope. Just as Marilyn is too shall-we-say busy to make mental notes on the classics, so Jack is too serious to make light of his million-dollar talent.
"You take the long-standing gags about me," he said genially, arms folded solemnly over his plaid smoking jacket, "the ones about my being stingy, and about wearing a toupee, and about my feud with Fred Allen. Those were each stumbled upon by accident, but since they caught on a lot of hard work has gone into them.
"People still want those gags now, but it gets tougher every time—the variations. We've kept these subjects alive for so long (Jack's stinginess, 23 years, the Allen feud, 17) that whenever we mention them now they must either very subtly done, or they must be so wild that we seem almost to be parodying our own jokes."
This was typical Jack Benny talk, off-screen and off-mike. He was once known as a man who dined on coffee and fingernails, but now that he is getting a trifle older he is no longer the No. 1 worrier among comedians.
"That other gag about my being 39," he said, and his deep dimpled chin trembled with droll emotion. "It is not true at all. I am 61. I no longer worry as much as most comedians do. I have, instead, a mere anxiety complex."
Benny, who was in New York for a rare business-pleasure jaunt, still looks at life and his career, however, with the respect of a man who was a poor plumber and an unheralded violinist before he located easy street.
"To remain an individual star for 25 years is not easy," he went on, demonstrating why the life of the clown is serious business. "Especially not now, with television. People are getting so sophisticated, there isn't a small town in the U. S. that doesn't know exactly what the heck is going on.
"You just can't be a gangster [sic] any more. You've got to be an actor, a perfectionist. You've got to be as sharp as the people watching you."
He, himself, is a perfectionist "of the worst kind," Benny says. His sense of dramatic timing, which is legend in radio and screen worlds, causes him to flare up when an actor reads a line without a sense of the rhythm of it.
"I despise myself, and try to hold it in. But I feel like firing people on the spot. It's most unreasonable of me, but I've spent years— with the writers, Rochester, Mary and others— going over every line, to make sure the timing is just right," he remembers.
"With practice like that, you get to know that the addition of one apparently, harmless word in a line will completely kill the gag!"
Jack, who looks slim and trim, says, "I play a round of golf every day and never eat Kadota figs or broiled scrod for breakfast" and who does not wear a toupee "but since people find the idea funny, I don't mind if they think I do," is returning to the West coast this week.
But he will be in Manhattan in mid-July, with wife, Mary, to spend his vacation. Their adopted daughter, Joan, is expecting a baby to arrive here then.
"Imagine spending July in New York," he says, grinning and grunting simultaneously, which is no mean feat. "If Joan weren't mine, I'd fire her . . . timing is lousy."

Out of the Ink Stain

Here’s a feature story about Max Fleischer from Picturegoer and Film Weekly, a British publication, dated January 13, 1940. It’s actually one of two stories the newspaper wrote; an article the following April 20th gave profiles (accompanied by drawings) of the characters in Gulliver’s Travels.

This feature story starts off with an incident early in Fleischer’s animation career. It doesn’t attempt to be a history of his studio. Gulliver gets only a passing mention. To say the film “adheres strictly to the line laid down by Swift” is, well, not altogether true, even if you set aside all the travels that don’t involve Lilliput.

He turned ink into Gold
THE living-room of the little apartment on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn looked like a Heath Robinson drawing. Electric wires were hung on chandeliers, picture frames and any other place that would support them. Drawing boards were propped up on chairs, the drawings at first glance looking so alike that an outsider would have wondered why so many sketches of the same subject had been made.
An upright piano huddled timidly in one corner as if trying to escape the attention of three brothers working in the room.
The brothers were busy with a motion picture camera in the opposite corner. They were Max, Dave and Joe Fleischer. The camera poked its lens in between improvised standards bearer electric lights which glared at the drawings on one of the boards.
Max was at one side of the board. A pile of drawings lay on a small table beside him. Dave was on the other side of the drawing board and Joe stood at the side of the camera. Max would pick up a drawing and place it on the board. He and Dave then would fit it carefully within marked boundaries.
“Turn,” Max would say.
Joe would turn the crank carefully until the handle reached a mark on the side of the camera.
“Okay,” he would say.
Then the process would be repeated.

It was three o’clock in the morning. The brothers had worked steadily for honours. Max’s wife had long ago retired, after giving reluctant permission for the brothers to work in the living-room. Max had to plead with her.
“We have worked for months drawing these pictures,” he argued. “We have no money to rent a place to work and everything is read now to photograph them. Let us work there. We won’t hurt anything.”
“All right,” she had said finally. “You can work there tonight, but it you damage that rug of mine, out you all go.”
And so they had worked far into the night, trying to get as much done as possible. It was going to take several nights to complete the task.
“Hand me a wrench, Max,” said Joe. “This handle is loose.”
All of them were physically exhausted, so Max wasn’t as careful as he should have been. He turned to pick up the wrench from the table, his elbow struck a bottle of ink, and the bottle landed with a sickening thud on the beloved rug.
THE three brothers gasped in dismay as the pool of ink slowly but relentlessly spread on the rug. Suddenly they were galvanised into action. They grabbed blotters and pieces of paper to blow the flow of the ink. They stemmed the tide and mopped up the pool, but the blot was still there.
Max had become imbued with the conviction that characters could be drawn by artists and photographed in a series to make those caricatures move with human action across the screen. If he was right, as he had informed the brothers, there was a fortune in his idea. If he was wrong, all that they stood to lose was their labour.

And now disaster threatened to offset their months of labour. They were so tired that the inclination was to walk out of the room, go to bed, and take the consequences—which meant expulsion from the house and the abandonment of Max’s idea.
They slumped into chairs, so despondent that not one of them said anything for a few moments. Suddenly Max saw the way out. In whispers he convinced his weary brothers that too much was at stake to abandon the idea and sacrifice the time which they had spent upon it.
They unlocked the door to the dining-room and locked the door to the bedroom where Mrs. Fleischer lay asleep. Then, on tiptoe, they carried the furniture, the paraphernalia, and even the upright piano out of the living-room. They turned the rug around and then restored the furniture and the paraphernalia to their places. The tell-tale spot of ink was hidden under the piano.
That was twenty-five years ago. Since that time, the amazing combination of the Fleischer brothers has invented and developed virtually every piece of equipment which is essential in the making of animated cartoons. Dave directs the pictures and turns such problems over to Max. Max invents the equipment needed or adapts existing equipment to the problem. Joe then rebuilds it.
There are more than seventy-five patents, on everything ranging from drawing paper to rotoscopes, held by the Fleischers.
Today, twenty-five years after the ink bottle, Max and Dave have achieved their greatest success by producing, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, Gulliver’s Travels for Paramount.

Employed in the Fleischer plant are seven hundred artists. In addition to the full-length feature, the Fleischers are under contract to make thirty-eight one and two-reel animated cartoons for Paramount release.
Max Fleischer was born in Austria in 1885, but was taken to America by his parents when he was four or five years old. He studied art in the Art Students’ League and mechanics in the Mechanics’ and Tradesmen’s School in New York.
Even as a boy, Max was determined to become a cartoonist and obtained a job in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle art department as an errand boy. On the same paper was J. R. Bray, also a cartoonist. Bray and Max began talking about the possibilities of animating cartoons for the screen. They began their experiments separately.
The Fleischers were almost a year making a piece of film 150 feet long. Max took the film to a distributor and screened it. It lasted one minute. The distributor was interested and asked him if he could make one a week.
“No,” laughed Max. “That’s a physical impossibility.”
“How long did it take you to make this one,” the distributor asked.
When Fleischer told him that it took almost a year, the distributor told him that if he had something he could offer for sale once a week, or once a month, he would be interested.
So that work started over again and Fleischer finally worked out a method whereby he produced a hundred feet every fourth week. Then Bray became interested in the Fleischer process and the two brothers went into partnership with Bray. Eventually, Fleischers broke away from the Bray organisation and formed their own corporation, retaining the title “Out of the Inkwell.”
It is general believed that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first full length cartoon feature. This is not true. Max Fleischer produced two seven-reel features, virtually all done by hand drawings, many years ago, and both of them were very successful. Each of the pictures capitalised upon discussions which were in the public print at the time.

The first full length cartoon feature was titled Relativity. This was produced by Fleischer with Dr. Garrett P. Serviss, a science writer of the New York American, shortly after Dr. Albert Einstein announced his famous theory.
Fleischer’s second feature was Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and was produced with the co-operation of the American Museum of Natural History, at that time that William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow waged their famous battle in the Scopes trial in Tennessee.
Ever since the advent of sound, Fleischer has wanted to make a full length feature based on the famous Jonathan Swift satire, “Gulliver’s Travels.”
The picture adheres strictly to the line laid down by Swift. However, Swift wrote the story from the standpoint of Gulliver. Fleischer made the picture from the standpoint of the Lilliputians.
One of the most noteworthy things about the Fleischer organisation is the permanency of a job there. Many of the employees have worked for Fleischer for twenty years, at least twenty-five of them have been with him for twelve years, and there are more than forty that have been with him more than seven years.

Black and White Porky in Black and White

Porky Pig checks out a car engine in Porky’s Super Service. A little brat, the kind that populates cartoons of the 1930s, turns on the ignition. See the effect on Porky.



The tune in the background while this is going on is “Little Old Fashioned Music Box” by George W. Meyer and Pete Wendling (unheard lyrics by Mac David). The soundtrack is more likeable than the kid. It features “I’m Hatin’ This Waitin’ Around,” “My Little Buckaroo,” “Gee But You’re Swell” and “ ‘Cause My Baby Says It’s So.”

Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones have animation credits; this was animated at Ub Iwerks’ studio in Beverly Hills. Mel Blanc and Elvia Allman provide voices, and there’s an incidental voice I can’t pick out.

The 1943 Wolfmobile

The Wolf turns into a fancy roadster as he rushes to Grandma’s House penthouse apartment in Red Hot Riding Hood. Sound editor Fred McAlpin plays the sound of a car motor starting in the background.



The car skids to a stop. Naturally, the brakes are so powerful, it scrunches into itself.



Perhaps some day we’ll see a DVD release of Tex Avery’s work minus DVNR that mars the versions of this cartoon in circulation on line. Tex, and this cartoon especially, deserve better.

Steed and Peel

The Avengers was unlike any other series on television.

The tone was completely different, and so was the look. Odd plots, odd camera angles. The scores built an unusual eeriness and tension enhancing the feeling that whatever was going on was off kilter. And, of course, there was an English atmosphere in terms of speech, setting and fashion. The main characters were cool and understated in an English manner.

To me, the key of the show was Diana Rigg. The series was not the same after she left in 1968.

Canadian stations started buying the programme in 1965 when Honor Blackman was the female lead. Then late in the year, ABC in the U.S. picked it up for broadcast in 1966. Oddly, it wasn’t on the schedule again when fall of that year rolled around but was added a few months later (the lead-ins were, unbelievably, Rango with Tim Conway and The Pruitts of Southampton with Phyllis Diller).

Here’s a feature story from the National Enterprise Association, dated February 11, 1967, describing the coming season on American television.

‘Avengers’ Fans Welcome Derring Duo's Return to Home Screen
By DON ROYAL
NEW YORK (NEA)—When Emma Peel and John Steed, "The Avengers," returned to American television a warm welcome waited for them from fans they made during their go- around here.
"The Avengers" missed the transatlantic boat when ABC made up last fall's schedule. Viewers and reviewers alike made known their thoughts on dropping the show. And so, the net returns the polished pair of derring-doers to its "second season" lineup.
The sleek Mrs. Peel and the urbane Mr. Steed, secret agents played to the British hilt by Diana Rigg and Patrick Macnee, are on ABC Friday evenings, 10-11 p. m. Eastern time.
"Apparently the British aspects of 'The Avengers' intrigues viewers on the American continent," said R. H. Norris, the chap in charge of production for the English producing firm, from London.
A big change, however, has been effected since the first visit of "The Avengers" the slick and sophisticated Emma Peel and John Steed are now performing their fabulous deeds in color.
This season, Steed is driving a 1929 six-and-a-half litre Green Label Bentley in British racing green; Emma has a new 1966 Lotus Elan in powder blue.
This season, each episode begins and ends with a stylized sequence in Emma's apartment.

At the beginning of each story Steed arrives, in various ways, all unexpected, to say, "Mrs. Peel, we're needed." At the end of each story he returns, but for a more pleasant purpose, perhaps to take Emma to dinner.
Steed's apartment, near London's Houses of Parliament, has had a face lifting. It's been done over in natural pine paneling, with buttoned red leather upholstery and a winding staircase.
Emma has moved from her penthouse on London's Primrose Hill to an airy, L-shaped studio nearby, which has an artist's north light ceiling window, a scarlet alcove, and an early Victorian sofa and chair in white and gold.
Emma's new wardrobe is the work of a new, young English designer, Alun Hughes, who was recommended by Diana Rigg. This year she introduces a new outfit called the "Emmapeeler" in a variety of colors. It's a skin-tight, all-over suit. Steed's wardrobe is a version of the famous Pierre Cardin's clothes of Paris—but he still favors the British bowler and brolly.
One outfit, which could start a men's fashion trend, is a pearl gray suit with a pearl gray velvet collar. The shoes are the same color, in suede, and the gray bowler completes the costume.
The science fiction element in the stories will be stronger this time around, though the seemingly supernatural happenings may have a logical explanation. The emphasis is a development based on several highly successful episodes of last season.
Unlike James Bond, Emma and John report to no one such as "M." And their adversaries are mostly private villains, madmen with delusions of power, rather than merely agents of You-Know-Who.
Emma, of course, remains Mrs. Peel, internationally educated daughter of a wealthy shipowner and youthful widow of a famous test pilot. She is obviously chummy with John Steed, but we never really know exactly what they mean to each other— at least, they never tell the audience.
Diana herself is unmarried, tall (5 feet 8 1/2), shapely and quite knowledgeable about judo and karate. (An autograph-seeking fan once asked her if she were indeed the woman who throws men through walls.)
She does throw people about as the distaff partner in "The Avengers," but never outside the studio. A Yorkshire actress who learned her craft with the Royal Shakespearean Company, she was with them again when the call came to make new adventures for "The Avengers."
Diana spent her early years in Jodhpur in Rajputana, where her father was in the Indian Government Service. Back in England, she studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art—but getting started in the theater was a sticky wicket.
Too tall, they said. So she became a model, eventually to begin as an actress in a reperatory theater and later, in 1959, to gain a fine reputation with the Shakespeareans at Stratford-on-Avon. A quest for a change of pace brought her to television, succeeding Steed's first partner, Honor Blackman.

Patrick Macnee is a native of London who has been living the role of undercover agent John Steed since 1961. A cousin of David Niven, the role was created especially for Macnee and has developed around his own background and personality.
Many of Steed's tastes, habits of speech and dress are Macnee's—others are projections of the man he would like to be—a romantic who would have favored the grand life of a Regency swinger in the days of George III.
Macnee was educated at Eton (he began his acting career there, by playing Queen Victoria in a school play).
Macnee served with the Royal Navy in World War II as a torpedo boat commander. He returned to busy himself on the London stage, in television and in films. Unlike father, his son is a student at Princeton.
By the 1950s he was an established actor, working in major television dramas in England, the United States, and in Canada, for four years. He is well-known in the Hollywood teleseries centers, and still owns a house on Malibu Beach.
"The Avengers" are based in England and they never really leave for any more exotic arena.
What is presented in this series is wit and satire, and an awful lot of Jolly Ol’, especially those aspects of British life as it is promoted overseas — from atomic laboratories, biochemical plants, automated factories to fox-hunting, stately estates of lord sand earls, and the Olde English Inne.
Many American viewers call it their cup of tea.