Something In The Drink

Celebrity caricatures abound in Flip’s Soda Squirt (1933). One is a queenie stereotype modelled on character actor Tyrell Davis who drinks a chocolate soda made from tacks, ink, insecticide, hair tonic and castor oil. He turns into a monster (as per the 1931 feature Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) that walks toward the audience.



But don’t worry. He’s changed back when, in a thrilling fight scene with Flip, he sprays himself with “Eau de Pansy.”

This was the last Flip cartoon released. One theatre manager told the Motion Picture Herald: “Another good cartoon comedy of Flip as the soda jerker. The grand opening of a drug store in Hollywood and some very good caricatures of the film actors and actresses. Very good and full of good clean entertainment—J.J. Medford, Orpheum Theatre, Oxford, N.C.”

Ring of Fire

Tex Avery and writer Rich Hogan came up with several spot-gag cartoons involving a competition between Droopy and Spike the bulldog. They’re not Avery’s best work but the quick pace makes them funny.

Avery may have been talking about Daredevil Droopy (released in 1951) when he mentioned to historian Joe Adamson that these kinds of cartoons were made when he got stuck on a story and needed to fill his yearly quota. The idea was to put the strongest gag at the end. In this case, Avery’s “strongest gag” was one that had been used several times before in the middle of cartoons (the old “tiiiiimb-(crash)-brr” routine).

There are several “blackened” gags in this cartoon. Two involve explosions. The other involves fire. Droopy zooms a motorcycle through a ring of fire. He’s untouched. Spike does it. Naturally, he’s the bad guy, so something’s going to happen; it’s a matter of waiting to see what Avery and Hogan do. In this case, Spike and his bike become crispy outlines.



Walt Clinton, Grant Simmons and Mike Lah animated this short.

Sheldon Leonard vs TV

For a while, Sheldon Leonard could do no wrong on television. He had given up on a screen career that seemed destined to have him play small time hoods for the new world of television production. He had a success right off the bat with “Make Room For Daddy” starred nightclub comedian Danny Thomas playing nightclub comedian Danny Williams.

Leonard brimmed over with self-confidence about his producing abilities, long before a string of consecutive hits in the early ‘60s. Here’s a 1954 article (May 11th) from the Brooklyn Eagle, written during the first season of “Make Room For Daddy,” the first of his huge successes.

TV Keynotes
Sheldon Leonard States His Views on Television
By STEVEN H. SCHEUER
Hollywood, May 11—“The basic trouble with live television,” volunteered Sheldon Leonard, “and I'm a guy who's basically a stage actor, is that you have to submit and print your first draft. With film, we can edit and change and throw out the dead wood.” We were on the set of tonight's Bob Hope Show, in which Leonard appeared as guest-star actor. Sheldon, incidentally, is director of the Danny Thomas Show (filmed). I agreed that film has certain technical advantages over live TV, but, then, why is live TV invariably better than its filmed counterpart?
“That's easy,” Leonard answered. “Conditions have always favored the author who writes for live TV.
Primarily, it's the problem of residual rights. Once the film is made, it's a permanent thing and all rights are relinquished. For live TV the rights are just leased for a particular showing. Naturally, live shows get the best material. It's a big problem and it's being fought over now. When we can solve it, films will probably get better material to work with.

“Everybody gives me advice on how to handle my career. My agency wants me to specialize. But I don’t want to relinquish acting—it's fun. It keeps me fresh and it's good for me as a director. No, I'm not going to specialize. “I don't want to sound egotistical, but nobody can tell me what to do in this business—nobody knows more than I do. The truth is, nobody knows very much. We can't learn anything from anybody, because we're doing it right now. We have to discover how because it hasn’t been done before. We make lots of mistakes, but don’t forget, we’re writing the book.”
Questioned about the Thomas show, Leonard told us it was shot in sequence, before a live audience. “It's like a play, a little cluttered by machinery.”
He's enthusiastic about “Make Room for Daddy,” and its surge to popularity justifies the enthusiasm. “I'm always battling with Danny about how to do some scene. If we don't argue, the show stinks. Sometimes we shoot a scene both ways to see who's right. Oh, we've done a lot of bad shows,” he continued, “but maybe that's because we're over-ambitious. Directing this show is the hardest work I've ever done in my life—but it's the most stimulating.
“I have no tolerance for mediocrity in this business,” he exploded before putting in a strong plug for his network (ABC) and his clients for granting the show relative immunity from interference. “There are too many talented people held back because of the mediocrity already entrenched. Show business is one of the few businesses a person can get into without talent and without aptitude.” (Leonard's opinion, not Scheuer's.)
“I bitterly resent the absence of standards to qualify people for this business. It has too many ramifications, it has too strong an effect on people to be permitted to operate on such a whimsical basis. But, how do you get around that? I don't know," said Sheldon, answering his own question, “I guess that's Utopia.”

Leonard learned the same thing Fred Allen learned 20 years earlier—executives at the networks fancy themselves experts at programming and invent reasons why shows should or shouldn’t work. Leonard saved “The Dick Van Dyke Show” from cancellation by going to the sponsors and directly pitching the show, telling them to give it a chance. It worked. And the show became a success. But that’s only one example of troubles that Leonard endured. Here’s a list, enumerated in an Associated Press column of January 3, 1969.

Sheldon Leonard a Successful Don Quixote of TV and Movies
By BOB THOMAS
HOLLYWOOD (AP) — Television producer Sheldon Leonard pictures himself as a tilter of network windmills, a dreamer of impossible programming dreams. Judging from his past performance, other producers should try the Don Quixote bit.
The latest of the Leonard lances is aimed at the Sunday spot now being vacated by the Phyllis Diller show. Leonard's new series, “My Friend Tony,” will be facing the formidable opposition of “Mission: Impossible” and ABC's Sunday night movie starting Jan. 5.
“I think we can make it,” he says confidently.
Maybe so. After all, Leonard himself made it from playing gangsters in wide lapels and snap-brim hats to being mentor of a long string of television successes. With each show he had to battle the ossified thought patterns of the industry's programmers. He catalogued:

1. The Danny Thomas Show. “I was told that in the heartland of America, viewers would find no identification with a man who told jokes in a night club for a living. I solved that by placing the emphasis on him as a husband and father.”
2. The Andy Griffith Show. “Now I was told the reverse: that a rural comedian would not register in urban America. But I had my research department look up the huge sales of records by Eddy Arnold; a large percentage were sold in cities. That proved to me Andy would go over in the urban areas."
3. The Dick Van Dyke Show. “An inside show about television show couldn't possibly interest a mass audience, they told me. In fact, Jim Aubrey, then head of CBS, tried to convince me to change Dick from a comedy writer to an insurance man.”
4. The Bill Dana Show. “This time they said I couldn't base a comedy show on a dialect comedian. The series failed—because I had tried to present a fantasy character against a realistic background.”
5. Gomer Pyle. “An audience gravely concerned about the draft and the Vietnam war would not watch a show about soldiers, they argued. I solved that by placing Jim Nabors in a military environment that had nothing to do with fighting a war.”
6. I Spy. “No show with foreign locations had ever succeeded, but I was willing to try.” Leonard also pioneered with a Negro co-star, Bill Cosby. The producer's challenge in “My Friend Tony” seems less profound than those which went before, but he claims it is a real challenge: “No series has ever had a foreign-speaking leading man.”
The new star is Enzo Cerusico, a handsome Italian Leonard chose for an "I Spy" segment in Rome.
“I interviewed 50-60 actors for the part, and he was the only one who couldn't speak English,” said Leonard. “I figured he must be good if the casting man would send him to me under those circumstances. And he was good.
“I put him under contract and brought him over here a year ago last June. Now his English is good. So good, in fact, that he is beginning to question why he does this and that in his scenes. I lose an hour or so a day because his English got good.”
James Whitmore also stars in the hour show as a UCLA criminology professor who helps solve crimes by scientific methods.

“My Friend Tony” wasn’t a hit and is remembered by perhaps a handful of people today. By now, Leonard’s track record wasn’t so hot—he lost with “Hey, Landlord,” “Accidental Family” and was on his way to failure with “My World and Welcome To It,” and comedies starring Pat Finley, Shirley MacLaine and Don Rickles before gaining a starring role in a show called “Big Eddie” that never found an audience.

Despite all that Leonard accomplished on television and his image as a gangster on film, he still may be best known for occasional appearances on radio when he said “Hey, bud, c’mere a minute,” to comedian Jack Benny playing comedian Jack Benny.

Rule 1 is Broken

Mike Maltese’s end gag in Going! Going! Gosh! (released in 1952): the Coyote swings at the Roadrunner to skewer him with a javelin. He hear a “beep, beep!” Down he comes. The frames explain what happened next. I love the little trucks floating around the Coyote’s head.



It turns out the roadrunner is driving the truck.



Hey, wait a minute! Chuck Jones insisted Rule 1 of the Roadrunner/Coyote series was “The Roadrunner cannot harm the Coyote except by going ‘Beep-Beep!’” (Chuck Amuck, pg. 225). Oh, right. He made these up long after he stopped making the cartoons. Or, to paraphrase Maltese, “What rules?”

Staircase Cycle

Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera didn’t come up with the idea of cycle animation for their TV cartoons. They used it much earlier. Here’s an example from the second Tom and Jerry cartoon, The Midnight Snack. There are 12 drawings (a half foot) of film to this cycle, which we’ve slowed down.



The character you see descending the staircase is voiced by Lillian Randolph. Contrary to what you may have read, there is no indication the character had a name in the MGM cartoons. Radio historian Chuck Schaden asked her about it in an interview in August 1976:

CS: Did you ever do any voice work for any of the animated cartoons on TV or in the movies?
LR: You know Tom and Jerry?
CS: Yes.
LR: Well, you know, remember the legs, the striped stockings and the big feet of the cook and that was all you could see? That’s my voice.
CS: That was you. The legs made the...
LR: The legs and big feet. (laughs) Oh, listen. The funniest thing. I saw that cartoon in Japan.
CS: You did?
LR: With a Japanese woman doing it. I laughed! I’m telling you, I was sitting in a theatre. It was real funny. And they still show it over there.

Randolph also revealed in the same interview she was “taught Negro dialect by a Caucasian” when she first appeared on a radio show called “Lulu and Leander” a number of years earlier.

Unfortunately, Randolph never received screen credit for this or any other MGM shorts. Roughly six weeks after this cartoon first appeared, Randolph would begin a long-running role as a maid on the radio show The Great Gildersleeve that lasted into the mid-‘50s.

39 Times 2

On radio, Jack Benny celebrated the same birthday over and over again. In print, Benny columnists celebrated, too. There always seems to have been a Jack Benny column around February 14th of each year.

Incidentally, Jack Benny did not spend all of his life at the age of 39. He didn’t turn 39 on the radio until 1948, some 16 years after he began broadcasting. But the programmes of the late ‘40s may have been the most popular, and certainly the aspects of his personality developed in those years stuck in people’s minds as if they had always been there.

Benny would be dead less than three years after this column appeared in papers on his birthday in 1972.

By the way, I thought the Bennys owned a home in Palm Springs. Perhaps they had one built but sold it by the time this story was published.

Happy 39, Jack Benny
By VERNON SCOTT
UPI Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) — Jack Benny’s done it!
He’s 39 years old again.
Today is his birthday. Valentine’s Day.
And the remarkable comedian has started on his second 39th birthday.
The accomplishment is noteworthy because Benny was stock at age 39 for most of his adult life. It was one of his trademarks. Now he is double that age and going as strong as ever at age 78.
Appears at Benefits
Benny is hale. His blue eyes — ever a favorite topic with him, and always good for a laugh — are clear and filled with mirth. Few men have devoted as long and tireless a lifetime to making people laugh as has Jack Benny. And few have done so much for symphony orchestras. He continues to appear at benefit concerts sawing away on his Stradivarius, an instrument he plays surprisingly well.
He also appears at benefits for organizations raising money to fight diseases, for worthy causes and for friends retiring from show biz.
Retirement is the farthest thing from Benny’s own plans.
He makes regular appearances at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas, starring in his own nightclub show three times a year.
“I have to keep working in Vegas because I like to be paid once in a while," Benny quipped. His phony penury also has been a staple of his comedy routines on radio, television and clubs down through the years.
Plays Lots of Golf
Benny rents a home in Palm Springs and plays golf almost every day when he is in the desert. He occasionally sees Frank Sinatra there.
“Frank really seems to enjoy being retired," Benny said. “But I have no idea of fully retiring myself. I just couldn’t do that.
“Maybe I might limit my appearances to concerts. As long as I’m doing something. But these damned benefits keep me from retiring. I can’t say no to good causes. So I do about one a week all over the country."
Then in the inimitable Benny fashion, accompanied by a sly glance, he concluded, “most of my symphony benefits are for the musicians pension fund.
“I don't like to say it." said musician Benny with the snapper, “but that’s my favorite charity."

A Little Note of Thanks

There’s a link on the side to a blog authored by a young man named Kamden Spies. Every two or three days, he’ll post about things connected with animation that he enjoys ferreting out in old newspapers and other sources.

Kamden put up a Top 15 list of “Best Websites for Animation Lovers,” and he has picked this blog (and our companion blog) as number two. That’s very kind of him.

I certainly wouldn’t rank either blog that high. The Yowp blog, if you read it, has a very, very narrow focus. I happen to like the stock music in the original Hanna-Barbera cartoons and I set out to try to identify it. The blog has expanded from that and, to be honest, has just about run its course. This blog doesn’t even deal with animation all the time; you’ll notice posts about old radio and TV shows and stars from contemporary sources, pretty much of the comedy/variety vein. It started as a place to put up frame grabs (like the one from an Iwerks cartoon on the right). I haven’t done much here all year, to be honest. In January, I banked almost a full year of posts through to Christmas. My personal life isn’t allowing me the spare time to post.

Neither blog is terribly weighty. Other people are better at that kind of thing.

It’s a shame that a number of blogs I used to read have fallen by the wayside. David Gerstein always seems to have found information no one else could about some early cartoons. Andrea Ippoliti posted some fine reviews of old cartoon shorts that I occasionally go back and re-read. That’s just to name two blogs that are no longer active.

Kamden has named Jerry Beck’s Cartoon Research as the number one. I’m really not a list person, but I’d probably rank it there, too. I’m not interested in all the topics on it, but someone else will be, so there’s a nice eclectic mix. And I enjoy any posts involving actual, dig-around-and-find-it, cartoon research where I can learn something about a studio or someone who worked in the industry in the olden days.

This gives me a chance to thank all those people who take the time to post about the animation industry for all to read (for free!) and Kamden for his nice thought.

Oh, Magoo, You've Sold It Again

UPA went from a studio that was about expanding the art form of the animated cartoon into being all about the bucks.

You can thank new owners for that. Hank Saperstein was not an artist or an animator. He was a distributor of a TV bowling programme when he took control of the studio in 1960. His interest in UPA’s main asset, Mr. Magoo, was solely how much money he could suck out of it.

Here’s a story from the July 6, 1964 edition of Sponsor magazine. Magoo is treated as both a product and a seller of products. No love is expressed for animation or entertainment, other than how it can be used to make money. But it’s an interesting look at how one cartoon series was sold and then marketed.

Actually, here are three stories. Two sidebars accompanied the main article.

Still, just because management’s sole interest is counting beans doesn’t mean creative people are banished to the Old Animators Homes. Some solid people worked on the series, including Abe Levitow, Bob McKimson, Jacques Rupp and the staff at Grantray-Lawrence (the Ray Patterson-Grant Simmons studio). And Marvin Miller, Paul Frees and Howie Morris were hired to provide voices.

Inside Magoo — or, what makes a top tv sales personality click
Without seeing a pilot, NBC-TV signed for a new Magoo show for fall, sold half of it to Libby, McNeill & Libby. General Electric will renew its Magoo campaign
■ HE’S HARDLY a “typical tv star.” Elderly, dogmatic, somewhat crotchety, old-fashioned, forthright, a Rutgers “old grad,” and so myopic he often can't see the side of barn (and much less hit it), he’s the opposite of the clean-cut, clear-eyed male protagonist.
Yet Quincey Magoo — born as anonymous supporting player in a 1948 UPA theatrical cartoon called “Ragtime Bear”—is carrying a king-sized load of advertising dollars on his shoulders this fall.
• He’ll have his own half-hour weekly series, in color, on NBC-TV (Saturdays, 8-8:30 p.m.) starting September 19. Libby, McNeill and Libby, making a return to nighttime network tv programing (in which LML has been relatively inactive since it was a sponsor in the 1950's of the Sid Caesar-Imogene Coca series), will be the major sponsor, having signed for an alternate week position.
• He’ll also continue as the star merchandising symbol for the household lamp activities on tv of giant General Electric, which plans a network-and-spot tv campaign built around Magoo which will cost in excess of $1 million (see page 46).
The fact that there is a Magoo series at all on NBC-TV during the 1964-65 season proves the point that a successful entertainment property, particularly one involving a highly characterized personality, can bypass the usual drawn-out process whereby a pilot film or tape must be produced and shown to a network before the show will be bought. The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo was sold on a sight-unseen basis.

It happened soon after the start of 1964, when NBC-TV program executive Ed Friendly and UPA executive producer Henry G. Saperstein were having a meeting (actually, they were driving in a car and just talking) about future program plans. A UPA-produced special, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, had recently had its second annual exposure on NBC, and had drawn both ratings and critical acclaim.
Friendly wanted to know if Saperstein had another special up his sleeve. Saperstein didn't — at least, not exactly. He had been thinking about a possible Magoo series, in which the near-sighted, animated old gentleman would play pivotal roles in adaptations of literary classics.
Friendly liked the idea, and asked Saperstein if he could deliver a series on short notice. Saperstein replied that if NBC management would green-light the project before January 15th, he could do it.
Friendly carried the idea to a reality stage before the deadline, and the deal was on, even though no pilot was ever filmed.
Libby, McNeill and Libby, through J. Walter Thompson, bought the show on the basis of a “presentation film” which was a semi-pilot. In reality, it was a cut down version of Christmas Carol, edited to a half-hour show to demonstrate how Magoo would operate as a character in literary master piece.
Magoo’s own strong image—he’s probably as defined in the public's mind as most “personality” actors are ever likely to be—can do an image-building job for others, or so tv executives associated with Magoo projects believe.
“Our company has been considerably revitalized recently, and has image-building to do as well as to sell food products,” Sponsor was told by Walter Kaiser, assistant ad manager of Libby, McNeill and Libby. “We have an aggressive new president (Ed. Note: Robert L. Gibson, Jr.) who is determined to shake us out of any doldrums. He’s solidly behind our stepped-up campaign. We plan to spot-light a number of our key food products - such as tomato juice, fruit cocktail and corned beef hash — on the Magoo tv series, and backstop it with spot tv in a dozen markets where we feel we need the push.”
In the big Chicago food packing firm bothered by the possibility of “waste circulation” in the Magoo tv audience, since youngsters are known to be fond of the near-sighted cartoon character and are a sizable component of audiences for the 8 p.m. slot in which Magoo is scheduled?
Not at all.
“Our commercials, which we plan to film in color, will be aimed at women as the principal buyers of our products,” said LML ad-man Kaiser. “We’re aware that kids have a lot of control of tv sets at time periods such as the one we’ll occupy. However, we feel that lots of adults — particularly mothers — will be watching on an ‘over-the-shoulder’ basis with the kids and that we’ll reach the audience we want.”
Henry G. Saperstein, executive producer of the new network Magoo series, put his views on the show's audience-attracting capabilities to Sponsor in these informal-but-pointed words:
“We're going to do the big job on Saturday nights in our time period. We'll get the young adults of 20 to 35, and their kids of five to 12. On ABC-TV Outer Limits will be reaching the teenagers, and on CBS-TV Jackie Gleason will be reaching the nostalgia clique. We'll have the audience that really counts for our sponsors.”
Saperstein's optimism is based in fact, as far as he's concerned — the fact of Magoo’s dollars-and-cents success is an entertainment personality. He is no stranger to tv audiences, even apart from five seasons of General Electric “Magoo” commercials. For the past four years, UPA has syndicated its own series of five-minute Magoo cartoons, made specifically for tv. Latest market count: 139 U.S. markets, plus 14 foreign countries.

Magoo is an established success in theatrical motion pictures. More than 50 color cartoons have produced and distributed, several of which have won awards up through the Oscar level. There has been a successful Magoo feature-length cartoon. Also, Magoo's services have been available for public service films.
Although Magoo animated films don't have any budget problems for sets and other inanimate production values ("If we need a prop, we just draw one," says Saperstein), they're far from inexpensive. A small army of artists, animators and other production staffers — some 250 in all — are required to produce the new tv series. Costs are "comparable," according to Saperstein, between the half-hour Magoos and star-name situation comedies, i.e. about $60,000 per episode.
Breaking even on such a big nut is not easy, Saperstein admits. “Syndication is an absolute must on this series,” he told Sponsor. “Our first network run is expected to be a no-profit situation on the new series, but we're confident that the profit will be there in the long haul through syndication, and through foreign sales. We have already sold the new series in Japan, England and Australia, and have orders pending for Latin America and Germany.”
UPA has a built-in source of revenue in the Magoo series: tv commercials. “So far, the sponsors for the new series aren't merely in favor of using Magoo in commercials — they insist on it as part of the deal. He'll be available to Libby, McNeill & Libby and to all other ‘substantial’ purchasers of the show for commercials and for other promotional tie-ins.”
Saperstein, incidentally, is the one who makes the decision on whether a sponsor is spending enough to warrant being granted the use of Magoo as a direct sales weapon. There's no firm yardstick as to what is, or isn't, a substantial purchaser of the show, but Saperstein says “it won't be a short-term advertiser buying something like alternate-week minutes.”
Sponsors have a tendency to stick close to Magoo in tv. Timex for instance, sponsored the 1962 and 1963 showings on NBC-TV of Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol via Warwick & Legler. Timex will again sponsor a 1964 exposure (on December 11, 7:30-8:30 p.m.) as part of a five-year deal the watch company has for the special. Not generally known is the fact that General Electric and Libby, McNeill & Libby both made offers to Timex to buy part of the Christmas season show. GE, in fact, is understood to have offered to pay up to three-fourths of the costs for half the show, but Timex declined with thanks, preferring to maintain its full sponsorship identification.
UPA feels, despite this clear-and-present evidence of a bullish market in Magoo, that the little near-sighted cartoon character is a long range investment and should be treated with care.
“We don't want to milk Magoo for a fast buck,” says Saperstein. “We’re in no hurry to arrange ‘character merchandising’ deals all over the place, even though ancillary benefits are important to tv producers. There’ll be some books, records, a few toys, some clothing items this fall, but there’ll be no flood of Magoo merchandise around during the Christmas season. We think his value as a performer, and as a sales personality, is greater if we keep careful control over his exposure.” ■

Near-sighted Magoo was far-sighted GE tv buy
■ Not only is Quincey Magoo far from the pattern of tv's hero types, he's hardly what you'd expect optometrically as a top salesman for a product like General Electric light bulbs. But, in a manner befitting Gilbert & Sullivan's "ingenious paradox," Magoo — who is classically nearsighted — manages to sell the concept of better sight through better light so well that GE is a prime Magoo booster.
“We've had excellent consumer and dealer response to our Magoo television commercials, ads and promotions,” Norman Townsend, supervisor of GE's residential lamp advertising, told Sponsor. “We’ve had a phenomenal use of point-of-purchase Magoo material, especially in food stores, in fact, the pickup by dealers has been over 90 percent.”

This fall, General Electric will roll into its fifth season of Magoo commercials. There'll be a total, according to Townsend, of 10,000 Magoo-GE tv spots in 200 markets, plus participations in NBC-TV’s Tonight and a quartet of daytime television shows. (The only reason GE didn't buy into the new Magoo nighttime series, according to both GE and UPA, is that GE’s budgets were fully committed before the show deal was made.)
Budgeting for the Magoo tv promotions (including the follow-through at point-of-purchase) occupies "considerably more than half" of the total advertising dollars GE spends for its light bulbs.
The successful commercial blend of Magoo and GE came about largely by accident. It happened five years ago when BBDO’s Arthur Bellaire was casting around for some kind of theme to tie all the GE bulb promotions in one package.
“There were lots of sales features in the bulb line, but we needed an interest element, a character to relate everything,” Bellaire recalls. “I felt that Mr. Magoo would be ideal for this purpose. I’m glad to say our client thought so, too.”
The only initial problem BBDO and GE had when the Magoo campaign was first proposed was whether or not Magoo's nearsightedness would be improved by the use of GE bulbs. One faction felt it should be; others didn't.
Final upshot, which has the basic “gimmick” in GE commercials to the present: Magoo achieves quite obviously everything he wants in the way of improved lighting with GE bulbs — only it doesn't work for him.
It works, however, for GE.
The new fall campaign for Magoo will revolve around a presidential election tie-in. Magoo will function as campaign manager to "Betty Bright," a pert woman presidential candidate. In typical Magoo fashion, he never lets the poor girl get a word in edgewise — although the GE sales message comes through loud and clear. Four years ago, during the last presidential election, there was also a spoof campaign of “Magoo For President.” Nobody took it very seriously—until the results came in. It turned out some 40,000 had been cast for the little cartoon character. ■



The man who makes like Magoo

"There's no problem in playing it straight when it comes to adapting literary classics for our new Magoo series," executive producer Henry G. Saperstein told Sponsor last week. "We just give Backus a straight line, and when he reads it, it usually comes out funny. Around the studio we say that he 'Magoo's' it."
The man who "Magoo's" the most straight-forward English prose at the drop of a director's signal is an accomplished actor in his own right. He is Jim Backus, a Clevelander who has been in the theater since the age of 14 when he had a bit part in a "White Cargo" production that starred the late Clark Gable.
He has been in countless radio shows, including a two-year stint as star of his own comedy program. He has made nearly 100 pictures. He has been the voice of "Magoo" from the start.
This fall, he'll again voice Magoo.
He'll also be seen on CBS-TV in another new show, Gilligan's Island, thus becoming the first tv actor to be launched in two new series at that same time in the same season.

Moospies

Spies can be anywhere, as America’s military members were told in the Snafu cartoon Spies (1943). Even the moose heads hanging above a bar are working for Adolf. These are consecutive frames. Look at what their antlers form.



Are these more of Bobe Cannon’s stretch in-betweens? This cartoon was made at Warners by the Chuck Jones unit.

He's Crazy

“You’ll like this guy,” the deadpan prison warden says to his happy suburban housewife. “He’s crazy.” And the prisoner hiding in their TV set demonstrates the warden is right.



So ends the final scene of the final cartoon directed by Tex Avery at MGM. Cellbound was co-directed by Mike Lah, who animated it along with the Hanna-Barbera unit. Avery and his unit had been let go by the studio two years before its release in 1955.