The Merriest of Genii

Max Fleischer took out a patent on the rotoscope in 1915 and within a few years he found a good use for it. The first “Out of the Inkwell” cartoon was released as part of the Goldwyn-Bray Pictograph on September 30, 1919. Yet Moving Picture World reported on June 7th that year there had been a preview of Fleischer’s life-like cartoon clown “a couple of months ago.”

The rotoscope brought about animated movement that had never been seen before. Here is an article full of praise from the New York Times of February 22, 1920. Part of this was quoted in Donald Crafton’s book Before Mickey, but let’s take a look at the whole story. The writer is unbylined.

THE INKWELL MAN
MANY persons have been delighted by the little black-and-white clown who, one of the merriest of genii, occasionally comes out of Max Fleischer’s inkwell. He has been seen most frequently on the screen of the Strand Theatre, where after a long period of anonymity among other numbers of the Topical Review, he has at least won his own place on the program.
This little inkwell clown has attracted favorable attention because of a number of distinguishing characteristics. His motions, for one thing, are smooth and graceful. He walks, dances and leaps as a human being, as a particularly easy-limed human being might. He does not jerk himself from one position to another, nor does he move an arm or a leg while the remainder of his body remains as unnaturally still as—as if it were fixed in ink lines on paper. Also he has an exciting habit of leaving his own world, that of the rectangular sheet on which he is drawn, and climbing all over the surrounding furniture.
The neat appearance and movements of the clown, and his defiance of the laws of pen-paper-and-ink, led an investigator to Mr. Fleischer at the Bray studios, where the little fellow is being made. It was learned, first, that, whereas most animated drawings are made with four or five separate pictures for each foot of film, there are fifteen or sixteen drawings of the clown in each film foot. This means, of course, that his arm, say, in going from a horizontal to a vertical position, does not make the complete movement in one or two jumps, and so appear to move jerkily, but is pictured at four or more points of its progress and seems to make the whole movement without interruption. Patience and pains, therefore, account for much of the clown’s naturalness. But not all. There is another reason.

Mr. Fleischer explained that many pen-and-ink drawings were made from the imagination. An artist, for example, will simply sit down and, with a certain character in mind, draw the figures that are to make it animated. If he wants an arm to move he will draw the figure several times with the arm in the positions necessary to give it motion on the screen. The probability is that the resulting movement will be mechanical, unnatural, because the whole position of his figure’s body will not correspond to that which a human body would take in making the same motion. With only the aid of his imagination an artist cannot, as a rule, get the perspective and related motions of reality.
Mr. Fleischer does not draw his clown from imagination. He draws him from life. A real man dressed as a clown poses for him in the principal positions to be assumed by the animated figure.
But how about his climbing and running all over the room? Some think that in the scenes with obviously real backgrounds, a cut-out figure or a doll is substituted for the drawing, but neither is the case. The figure who slides down table legs and climbs into chairs is drawn, just as he is when he remains on his sheet of paper. Mr. Fleischer prefers not to make public the full explanation of how the trick is down, but it may be said that a certain method of superimposing the drawings of the clown upon photographs of the real background are employed. Spectators may be assured, therefore, that no dummy substitutes for the clown when he takes his hazardous journeys around a room.
The clown is the result of a number of years’ work by Mr. Fleischer and also J.R. Bray, President of the company which bears his name, and with which Mr. Fleischer is associated. Some fifteen years ago both Mr. Bray and Mr. Fleischer were employed in the art department of the Brooklyn Eagle. Mr. Bray decided to “go into the movies,” and invited Mr. Fleischer to join him, but the latter at that time preferred to stay where he was. He lost track of Mr. Bray for about twelve years, and then learned that he was making a success of his venture. Also he had begun to observe animated drawings on the screen, and felt that he could improve on them. So he set to work, and for two years he and his brother struggled with the first out-of-the-inkwell man. When their set of drawings was complete Mr. Fleischer took it to Mr. Bray, who liked the subject and its execution. The two men then co-operated to make the drawing still better, and at the end of six months had achieved gratifying results. Developments have followed, and now 300 feet of film showing the clown can be made in three weeks by the combined work of four or five men. It may be seen that a somewhat tedious and expensive process still preceded each emergence of the clown from the inkwell, but those at the Bray studios feel that he is worth while in more ways that one, and they promise that he or some creditable successor will continue to appear from time to time.

A year after this article, Max and Dave Fleischer set up their own studio and worked out a distribution deal with Margaret Winkler. The Fleischers then set up their own distribution arm, Red Seal, the failure of which we documented in this post.

The watermarked screen grabs are courtesy of silent film historian and archivist Tommy Stathes. The frames shown, from a 1924 short called “A Trip to Mars,” are from one of his DVD releases. He doesn’t seem to update his web site all that much but you can find out more here.

Multiple Screening

What was one of the great animators of the Walt Disney studio doing in 1950? This:



This is Multiple Screening, a live action/animation short made for the Pennsylvania Department of Health in 1950 by Tempo Productions. It was co-directed by none other than Bill Tytla.

Tempo was founded in New York as Zac-David by Dave Hilberman and Zack Schwartz, both formerly of UPA. Hilberman is the other director on the cartoon, and the stylised design you see above owes more to him than Tytla. Nowhere is Tytla’s work evident. He was wasted on cycles and extremely limited animation (there are stretches of this short with nothing but still drawings and background pans).

In this scene, Mr. and Mrs. Josiah Smith, average Americans of a half-century ago become current (1950) versions of themselves in a dissolve. Not exactly the chernabog transforming in Fantasia.



Eric Barnouw wrote the script for what’s a pretty uninteresting piece of film.

Tempo made animated commercials in addition to industrials—and then got caught in the blacklist, thanks to the hate-mongering magazine Counterattack, which scared off corporate clients and forced the sale of the company in 1954 and Hilberman’s temporary departure to England.

Tytla was interviewed about his career in 1968. You can listen to him by clicking here.

Sorry, Wrong Number

Tom gets hit on by a telephone operator who comes out of his candlestick phone’s earpiece in Trouble, a 1931 effort by the Van Beuren studio.

Tom never exhibits a lot of emotion (other than shaking in terror or nervousness) in these cartoons. In this one, after the operator tells him she’s got the wrong number, he gulps and blinks his eyes, she winks and he rolls his eyes. Why? Because it’s a Van Beuren cartoon. It doesn’t have to make sense.



Tom and Jerry are ambulance chasers in this one. Jerry strums a banjo while they sing about accidents, broken legs, a railroad bridge, and rhyme “banana peels” with “automobiles.” Whether it’s a Gene Rodemich original, I don’t know.

It's Mae Day

Forget that “Mary Ann or Ginger” thing. Who would you pick—Betty Boop or Olive Oyl?

The best part about that is you’d be picking the same person. For a good portion of time, both cartoon characters were played by Mae Questel.

Mae would turn 110 today were she still with us.

I’m not going to go through a list of “she did this, she did that.” She worked steadily for decades after winning a Helen Kane sound-alike contest in the late 1920s. If it wasn’t in radio, it was on the stage. If it wasn’t the stage, it was in movies. If it wasn’t movies, it was on TV.

Mae appeared in the ne plus ultra of vaudeville at the age of 21. She was in an act at The Palace with, of all people, New York Yankees pitcher Waite Hoyt in 1930. Later that year, she sang on a bill headlined by Helen Morgan. Still later that year, she wowed the reviewer for Billboard, who wrote of her October 22nd show at the Orpheum in New York:

Mae Questel, boop-boop-a-doop girl, went over like a house afire. Her impersonation of Irene Bordini mimicking Maurice Chevalier in song was eaten up. She sang this number in both French and English. Her delivery of I’m Dangerous Nan McGrew took the house by storm.

In 1931, she appeared periodically on The Pleasure Hour on the NBC Blue network and that led to her own 15-minute show on NBC Red. The radio show she was on that I’d love to hear was on a March 1947 episode of CBS’ musical anthology series Once Upon a Tune. How’s this for an unbilled cast: Questel, Minerva Pious, Parker Fennelly, Everett Sloane and Arnold Stang!

Questel knew the real and fake Fanny Brice. Whether she played opposite the real one, I don’t know. But she played opposite the fake one in the movie “Funny Girl.” Questel talked about that and even some cartoon things in this story from the Tribune syndicate, October 22, 1968.

Betty Boop’s Alive, Well...
By STEPHANIE FULLER
Many Chicagoans who have heard Mae Questel over the years now have an opportunity to see her in “Funny Girl,” the movie currently playing in the United Artists theater.
“A number of people will overhear me talking in public, and say, ‘I know you. You’re . . . you’re . . . you’re . . .’ and then they keep trying to figure out why they know me,” she said. The problem is Mae hasn’t always been seen as well as heard.
Earlier in her career she created the voices for animated characters such as Olive Oyl, Little Lulu, Little Audrey, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and Betty Boop. “Paramount was looking for a girl with an unusual voice,” she recalls. “They picked me to do the Betty Boop cartoons in the early ‘30s. They took a caricature of me for the series.
“The process of animation has come a long way since then. If you recall, Betty didn’t have much facial expression.” Mae then screwed up her round face and went through Betty’s repertoire of expressions.

The actress, who has boundless energy and never is at a loss for conversation, plays the role of a friend of Fanny Brice’s mother in the movie. “Fanny Brice,” Mae said, her blue eyes getting misty. “Yes, I was lucky enough to know her. I even used to mimic her in cartoons.
“You know, Baby Snooks, which Fanny played on radio, came near the end of her career. The network contacted me and asked me to be ready to step in for her. However, her agent, William Morris, put his foot down. He maintained that Baby Snooks will always live with Fanny Brice, and he was right.”
Of the many people with whom Mae has worked, her closest friends were Sir Cedric Hardwicke because “he was charming, droll, and so witty,” and Gertrude Berg, the unforgettable “Molly Goldberg” with whom Mae played in “A Majority of One.”
“Of course, I knew Gertrude better than almost anyone I worked with because I worked with her the longest. She was a beautiful woman,” commented Mae, who only recently learned that Gertrude Berg left a letter in her will requesting that if her life story is done Mae will play the lead.
“The music is finished and the lyrics are completed for the story,” said Mae. “The story will center on Gertrude’s early life and tentatively is titled ‘Molly and Me.’
“It’s sad that the people we’ve mentioned aren’t here anymore,” she continued. “Time passes on. I think we are all so lucky if we can live to an age when we can look back, admire the milestones, and still enjoy what we’re doing. I love my work, and I have two sons of whom I’m extremely proud.”
Then Mae jumped up and did an imitation of her grand-daughter, Melissa, in a perfect 4-year-old’s voice saying, “You mean, Grandma, you mean you’re not going to see your picture with me?”
“Melissa is a complete ham,” she said. “At the drop of a hat she’ll get up and sing and dance.” Like grandmother, like granddaughter.

Off the top of my head, I can’t pick a favourite performance by Questel in her many cartoons. She sang a fair number of enjoyable songs. If your Flash player will work in your browser, you can hear one at the bottom of this four-year-old post about her.

Topping the Toppers

What happens when the insultee gets the best of the insulter?

That question was answered in several columns by comic Joey Adams for Family Weekly, a weekend newspaper magazine supplement. Here’s one that appeared on April 25, 1976. Some of the comebacks are pretty funny.

By Joey Adams:
When the Insult Artists Get Squelched...
In this era of masochistic comedy, some of our greatest personalities have considered it an honor to show up at roasts and be carved to pieces by friends who don’t unintentionally hurt the ones they love. It’s all premeditated murder, written and rehearsed especially for the occasion. But nothing is more devastating to a professional comedian than to be squelched by an amateur—or even by another comedian when he isn’t expecting it.
Imagine, for example, how insult artist Don Rickles felt when he shouted at a lady pest at ringside: “If you were my wife. I’d give you poison’-only to have her answer, “If you were my husband, I’d take it.” That’s why every comedian worth his weight in laughs is constantly prepared for battle. Bob Hope once told me he never went out of his house unless his writers prepared him with ad-libs. But even the best sometimes get topped. Here are a few instances that are among my favorites:
Fred Allen to Max Asnas, who was the owner of New York’s Stage Delicatessen: “Your corned beef gives me heartburn.” Max: “What do you expect in a delicatessen—sunburn?”
Henny Youngman to a waiter: “My glass is empty—what do I have to do to get some water around here?” Waiter: “Why don’t you set yourself on fire?”
Jackie Gleason to restaurateur Toots Shor: “When I walked on stage, the audience sat there open-mouthed.” Toots: “You mean they all yawned at once?”
Eighty-two-year-old Jack Benny to an audience in a moment of seriousness: “I have a violin that was made in 1729.” A heckler in the audience: "Did you buy it new?”

I remember listening one night to Don Rickles devastating a room full of stars. To Orson Welles he said: “Who makes those tents you wear?” To Dean Martin: “You could build a skating rink with the ice cubes you use in your drinks each week.” To Ernest Borgnine: “Look at you . . . Anybody else hurt in the accident?”
But when he picked on Jackie Gleason, he got more than he had bargained for. “You are three of my favorite comedians,” Don said to the fat one. “I wish you were just one of mine,” Gleason snapped back.
Johnny Carson at one Friars Club (for performers) dinner, introduced Howard Cosell as “a legend in his own mind.” He went on. “Just because it’s free, Howard, you don't have to eat everything that’s put in front of you. At least stop eating while I'm talking.” Howard looked up and said, “I couldn't take you on an empty stomach.”
Milton Berle’s tongue can be declared a lethal weapon. He has put down everybody, even the Mayor of New York (“You look good, Abe—you've taken off a little height”). But even Berle was left without an answer once. Milton has a habit of picking on anybody at ringside who is smoking a cigar. Pretending to wave the smoke away, he groans. “Don't you ever inhale?" But one night a man was ready for him. “Not with you in the room,” he answered.
Alan King was in a particularly vitriolic mood at the George Burns—Walter Matthau dinner. He introduced George Jessel as the oldest member: “His idea of an exciting night now is to watch his leg fall asleep.” To Milton Berle: “I think the world of you—and you know the shape the world is in right now.” To Walter Matthau: “Someday you'll go too far—and I hope you stay there.”
Then he started on Henny Youngman: “I would like to introduce Johnny Carson.” he said, “but I am forced to introduce Henny Youngman. A man who started out as a small-time night-club comedian and never lived up to his promise—take Henny Youngman, please . . .”

Henny finished with the toastmaster very quickly: “One thing about you, Alan—you’ve never lost an enemy.”
Those squelches are love pats compared to the time I heard a minister devastate a profane comedian. It happened at an officers’ club in Vietnam. After a pointless and blasphemous story, the alleged comic noticed all eyes were suddenly fastened on a quiet man at the end of the table. “For God’s sake,” blustered the storyteller, “are you a chaplain?” With a slight smile and deliberate emphasis, the chaplain answered. “Yes, for God’s sake, I am.”
Bob Hope told me that when he visits service hospitals around the world he likes to “louse up the joint.” It’s what they want. “One thing they don't want is sympathy.” Bob explained. “They want me to walk into a ward filled with guys harnessed to all kinds of contraptions and say: That’s all right, fellows, you don’t have to get up for me.’ ”
Only once was Bob caught without an answer. We were going to St. Albans Hospital with a troupe of minstrels to cheer up the boys who had just come back from Vietnam. Most of them couldn’t leave their chain or their beds. As we approached one of the wards, ready to throw our punch lines, we heard someone singing above the clatter of our entrance. Then I saw that the singer was a wounded serviceman. He was pushing himself towards us in a wheelchair by the power of his two arms—the only useful limbs he had left.
“Say,” Bob greeted him. “were supposed to entertain you, and here you are meeting us with a song." And the crippled serviceman answered: "When I stopped looking at what I had lost and began looking at all I had left, I could sing again!” What could Bob Hope say to top that?

A Standard Cartoon Rule

Screwy Squirrel runs afoul of an established cartoon rule in Happy-Go-Nutty when he hides in a tree from Meathead the dog. He quickly zooms in....



....and quickly zooms out and away.



What’s the problem? Meathead shows up, reaches in, and pulls out a skunk. He eventually catches on and zooms away.



Cartoon Rule 514 states that “In cartoons, skunks always stink.” This particular skunk parodies the Lifebuoy radio commercials that tells you that if you use Lifebuoy, you’ll never have to worry about....



Sound editor Fred McAlpin throws in the soap commercial’s foghorn in the background to emphasize the gag.

Tex Avery doesn’t waste time getting characters on and off screen. He goes from a character drawing in one frame to brushstroke lines in the next. Hanna-Barbera eventually did the same thing on its TV cartoons.

Let's Rub Noses

The 1939 Porky Pig cartoon Polar Pals has a nice energy to it, and the animators look like they had fun in the main musical when a chorus sings Silverman and Meyer’s “Let’s Rub Noses (Like the Eskimoses).”

Porky chugs along and sings facing sheets of ice that act like a funhouse mirror. And in another scene, a polar bear sweeps his arm in a bit of smear animation.



John Carey gets the animation credit on screen. Bobe Cannon, Norm McCabe and Izzy Ellis were also animating in the Clampett unit at the time. Warren Foster wrote the story.

Thanks to Jerry Beck and his friends, we know from this sheet music cover they supplied that this 1935 song originated in a stage show at the Radio City Music Hall (and, presumably, not a Warner Bros. movie musical). Carl Stalling also incorporates into the score “Old Pal” (G. Kahn/E. Van Alstyne), “Deep In a Dream” (E. De Lange, J. Van Heusen), “Singing In the Bathtub” (M. Cleary/H. Magidson/N. Washington) and “Old Tar” (J.S. Zamecnik).

Battling Benny Reviews

You’re never going to please everyone. Even if you’re one of the most popular comedians of the 20th Century.

Jack Benny dragged out George Burns and Bing Crosby to appear on his TV show on Sunday, March 21, 1954. Benny wasn’t on every week in those days, and he was alternating between live and filmed shows. This one happened to be filmed like sitcoms, no different than, say, “Topper.”

Critics weighed in after the show. Opinions were mixed. Here are a couple of duelling critics; the first from the Boston Globe (March 22, 1954), the second from the Philadelphia Inquirer (March 23, 1954). I’ll spare you Variety’s review with an opinion which kind of falls between the two.

The show was on-line at one time; whether it still is, I haven’t looked. Personally, it’s not one of my favourites for some of the reasons outlined below. The fake laughter is annoying and overused, and some of the material was really contrived. Somehow, contrived worked better for Jack on radio.

Benny and Rochester Again Prove They’re Top Team
By Mary Cremmen
After last night’s show there should not be any doubt that Jack Benny and Rochester are the funniest team on television.
The opening scene, showing Jack in a hammock that Rochester kept in motion by operating the foot pump on an old-fashioned sewing machine, developed into the most original, entertaining visual comedy we have seen this year.
For the benefit of those who were watching “Mister Peepers,” Rochester never raised his eyes from a mystery book as his feet pumped, his right hand churned butter and his left whipped ice cream.
After the telephone rang half a dozen times, Jack asked, “Why don’t you answer that, Rochester?”
His man Friday: “It might be a quiz program and I’d have to leave all this for Honolulu.”

Bing Crosby, as a guest star, generated a little more enthusiasm than he did when he was emcee on his own show. He seemed to enjoy the hoofing and singing routine with host Benny and George Burns in their parody of Ye Olde Vaudeville.
But Crosby looked and sounded most familiar when he stretched and strolled and lounged his way through a chorus of “It’s the Gypsy in Me.”
Actually the Benny show is so good that it does not need these expensive distractions.
No TV program ever had a funnier ending.
Benny, in order to put Crosby in a genial mood before talking about the price of his guest appearance, insisted that Bing stretch out in the hammock we saw at the start of the show. Jack took Rochester’s place and pumped the swing into a gentle rock. But not for long.
After Benny told of the plan for his forthcoming show, Crosby named his price. Jack went into such a panic that his foot went like mad, the hammock went into a spin and Crosby, presumably, was catapulted onto the branch of the tree.
The came first showed an indignant Bing calling down to Benny. Then it switched to another tree where, to everyone’s surprise, Bob Hope was balancing on a limb. He called over, “You better do what he says, Bing. I’ve been up here for months.”
The only drawback to the whole show was the unnatural sounding laughter. Is it possible that the producers of this kind of top-flight entertainment resorted to “canned” applause?

Benny Show on Film Adds Nothing to Video
By LEO MISHKIN
When I see an ad in the Sunday papers proclaiming that Bing Crosby and George Burns, are going to be the guests on the Jack Benny show, I want to see Bing Crosby and George Burns, and Jack Benny, too—and not a reasonable facsimile thereof.
I want to see them in person, right in front of me on my own TV screen, and not in a washed-out, edited, rerun and re-edited movie made perhaps three weeks ago.
And if I do get Bing Crosby, George Burns and Jack Benny on film, which is precisely what happened last Sunday evening, no matter what the three do, no matter what gimmicks and contrivances are thought up for their appearance, and no matter how funny they strive to be, I feel cheated.
TRICK CAMERA SHOTS
If I want to see Crosby in the movies, I'd pay an admission price at the neighborhood movie box office, and get an hour and a half of Crosby, instead of just 29 minutes and 30 seconds, with time out for the commercials.
True enough, and I'll be the first to admit it, there were some things on the Benny show Sunday night that could not possibly have been done on live TV but on the other hand, there were some things on a Benny show done live that could not possibly have been done on film either.
The highly publicized father of the bride had business in this last appearance leaning heavily on trick camera shots, sight gags and quick cutting from one set to another that would have left him dizzy and breathless if he had tried to do it in person,
The opening of the program him swinging idly in a hammock on his front lawn, the swinging of the hammock being motivated by a Rube Goldberg contraption operated by Rochester. The device also churned butter and ran an ice cream freezer at the same time. When Rochester became too interested in a mystery story he was reading at the moment, and the tempo of the hammock swinging increased. there was Benny revolving in the thing like a pinwheel, around and around. Rochester put the brakes on the contraption, stopping it with a squeal and a flare of sparks and smoke; and the next shot had Benny up in the branches of a nearby tree telling his faithful manservant to be careful and next time don't jam on the brakes so suddenly.
SOFT-SHOE SHUFFLES

The two guests, Crosby and Burns (the latter without Gracie, for once) turned up as Benny's golfing partners for the day, leading Benny into some reminiscences with Don Wilson about how long he's known them. Seems that years ago Benny, Crosby and Burns did a vaudeville act billed as "Goldie, Fields and Glide," three personable young men in straw hats, white flannel trousers and blue blazers, songs, dances and funny sayings. "I'll never forget," said Benny dreamily.
"I'll never forget one date we played in Scranton ..." and there, by golly, were "Goldie, Fields and Glide" playing that date in Scranton, harmonizing in "Put Them All Together and They Spell “M-O-T-H-E-R,” doing a couple of soft-shoe shuffles, and looking for all the world like three old men in an amateur act on lodge night.
CROSBY UP IN TREE
The Rube Goldberg device with the hammock came into the picture again when Benny tried to persuade Crosby to appear on his TV show. Benny put Crosby back into the hammock, started it swinging, at first easily and quietly, then faster and faster, until Crosby consented to appear. "How much do you want?" hollered Benny over the uproar. "Ten thousand dollars!" yelled Crosby.
Next shot, there was Crosby up in the tree. "Hey, get me down outa here!" he called again. "Not until you come down in your price!" replied Benny. "Better do what he says," came another voice. "I've been up here for four days.” The other voice came from another tree, and the owner turned out to be Bob Hope. End of gag, and of gimmick, end of the Jack Benny program.
But I still felt cheated that the whole thing was on film. Is this the best that television can do?

Quacking For Disney

In 1930, he was a postal telegraph clerk. Little did he realise he would soon veer on a career change that would make him, well, partly famous.

We say “partly” because for years and years and years, Clarence Nash never got to see his name on the animated shorts in which he provided the voice of Donald Duck. It doesn’t appear to have bothered him. He does appear to have been bothered by other cartoon studios which featured quasi-unintelligible quacking ducks. MGM even had a cat that sounded like Donald Duck. Nash didn’t voice any of those characters; he worked in shorts exclusively for Disney. Nash did use the voice on the Burns and Allen radio show for a character called Herman the duck (coincidentally, Nash had a brother named Herman).

Here’s one version of how Donald got his voice. It’s from the Chicago Tribune of February 26, 1961.

The Voice of Donald Duck
By Marion Purcelli
AN inconspicuous man wearing a well tailored but inconspicuous blue suit sat quietly in a chair; a conspicuous, brightly attired puppet duck in a sailor suit sat in his lap.
Around them a score of editors from high school newspapers gathered for a press conference. The students drank cokes or milk and munched cookies and petits fours, nervously waiting for something to happen.
No one seemed to notice the man until the duck began snapping at his nose.
“Quack, quack—so you want to fight, doggone you anyway,” the man said. He sounded so much like a duck that even the duck was startled.
One young editor whispered to her companion, “Have you ever heard anything like that?” Her friend said no, but actually she had. And so have most of the people in this country, at least those who listen to the radio, watch television, or go to the movies.
Clarence [Ducky] Nash is known in show business as the noisiest man in the world. He’s perhaps the busiest actor in Hollywood, yet he could stand in the middle of Main Street, U.S.A., and not be recognized.
Nash was in Chicago and especially at this news conference to plus his boss, Walt Disney’s latest full length cartoon feature, “One Hundred and One Dalmations.”
* * *

BARRY Freed, a press agent who looked no older than the assembled students, entered and asked the editors to be seated; the conference was about to begin. He introduced Nash as the voice of the world famous cartoon character, Donald Duck, and numerous birds, beasts, and scared urchins.
“How was the funtastic (sic) character of Donald Duck born?” asked one editor.
“Back on the farm in Oklahoma where I was born, I learned to love animals and imitate their sounds,” answered Nash. “I knew one day I’d make a living doing these imitations. My family moved to California and when I finished high school, I entertained on the Chatauqua [sic] and Lyceum circuits and then went into radio. The friends I made during these early radio years kept telling me I should meet Walt Disney who was pioneering in the field of animated cartoons and had become famous with his Mickey Mouse character.
“One day I was wandering down the street and passed a studio and noticed a sign that read ‘Walt Disney Studio—the home of Mickey Mouse.’ I remembered the words of my friends and walked in. I was ushered into the office of a director and auditioned a bit of the show I did on the Chatauqua circuit.
* * *
“As I recited ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb,’ the director pressed a button on the interoffice communication system and my duck voice was piped into Walt’s office. Disney immediately came to the director’s office, listened to more, and fell in love with the voice. The was the first time the voice of a Disney character came first.”
Thru subsequent questions the students learned that Nash has made more than 125 cartoons, that Donald’s cartoons have spread around the world and are spoken by Nash in French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Swedish, and that Nash gets most of his animal sounds by spending hours at the Los Angeles zoo.
They learned that Donald is somewhat frustrated and quick to get angry and that he plays at being sad to prey on the sympathy of his nephews. When everything around him looks black, he’s the kind of duck that’ll fall to his knees and begin praying.
They learned that regardless of how well trained the animals are, it’s almost impossible to train them to make noises at just the right time. Instead of taking weeks to train a horse to whinny on cue, it’s much simplier [sic] and less risky to employ Nash. And Nash says he doesn’t mind not being recognized. “People recognize my voice,” he explained, “and that’s the important thing to me.”

The TV Floor Director Who Made Good

Landing a gig on a successful, long-running sitcom (especially in syndicated reruns) is something most actors can only dream about. But two of them? There may be only a handful that can make that claim. And one of them is Bill Daily.

Daily has passed away at the age of 91.

Actually, Daily did more than that in his career. In the ‘70s, he starred in Bill Daily and His Hocus Pocus Gang, a syndicated children’s series where he went to amusement parks across the U.S. In the early ‘80s, there was another you’ll-miss-it-if-you-blink sitcom called Aloha Paradise which one reviewer compared to a tetanus shot. And there were a few other TV gigs in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

Daily’s humour was unique. On I Dream of Jeannie, he occasionally plotted against his buddy, Larry Hagman’s Major Nelson. But he wasn’t evil or nefarious. It’s almost like he just couldn’t help himself. As Howard the next-door neighbour on The Bob Newhart Show, he was no jokester. His comedic acting was low-key, almost apologetic.

Both Daily and Newhart got their starts in Chicago. Daily came from an odd background for a stand-up comedian—he was a director at a TV station. He landed his first comedy gig at the Blue Orchid, opening for singer Roberta Sherwood. Variety reviewed it on March 11, 1959:

BILL DAILY
Comedy
20 Mins.
Black Orchid, Chicago
Ranks of offbeat funnymen should easily accommodate Bill Daily, a low-key type whose stuff is largely situational. This is his maiden nitery stand, and he betrayed remarkably little nervousness at the initial spotlighting.
Promising as he is, with undeniable talent for the gentle whimsy, there is a disturbing derivativeness about the act, a factor that could hinder him less if he brought to his portrayals a strong personality characteristic or a deep-impressing material gimmick. Neither of these identifiers is present, so that much of the time Daily is reminiscent of established comedians in the same general genre.
For example, his soft-spoken "H'lo" gambit and subsequent meandering patter harks of Herb Shriner, including a quip about a plush restaurant where "you have to audition to eat there." One of his funniest sketches has to do with a shy guy new to the formal banquet circuit, and his attendant perplexity re apparel, which cutlery to use, for what course, etc. This one, as it plays, evokes the sturdy image of Sid Caesar.
Daily flashes a particularly keen imagination with an impresh of a newborn just home from the hospital. It's a delightful bit, but again invites comparison, this time to Jonathan Winters.
Yet, for all the suggestion of personalities in the same orbit, Daily is a sufficiently attractive and fertile performer to rate attention by the small rooms and tv potentates, especially for guesting on the variety formats.
Video, in fact, is familiar ground for Daily. He's a floor director for NBC-TV, Chicago, and made occasional appearances on the web's short-lived "Club 60" daytime stanza. He has a good "feel" for his stuff, and may in time give his own character the sharper definition needed to spell the difference between fair success and the upper rungs. Pit.

Variety also noted singer Duke Hazlett had been added to the bill because of a fear that Daily was so new, he wouldn’t be enough support.

Daily carried on at WNBQ until 1964 when he was signed to be a banana on Steve Allen’s syndicated show for Westinghouse to do the same kind of shtick that Louis Nye and Tom Poston (Ah! Another Newhart connection) had pulled off on earlier Allen variety efforts. His big break came in early December, when he was added to the cast of the pilot of I Dream of Jeannie. The show lasted five seasons. (Until it got on the air, Daily teamed with Ann Elder in a comedy act). Here’s a United Press International column about Daily at the start of season number four. It appeared in papers on September 21, 1968.

Supporting Actor Big Aid to 'Jeannie'
By VERNON SCOTT
UPI Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) – Bill Daily is one of the co-stars of “I Dream of Jeannie”—not the kind of star who makes you drop everything to catch the show, but whose performance is absolutely invaluable.
As with most successful series, it is the gem-like assists from supporting players that make “Jeannie” a hit.
As does Roger Healey in the weekly situation comedy, Daily frequently slips in nuggets of humor on his own. It is a natural extension of his moonlighting job as a writer of commercials for radio and television.
In addition to the series Daily writes commercials regularly for a potato chip firm and for a national bakery.
The actor and his wife, Pat, have been married 19 years and are the parents of Patrick, 10, and Kimberly, 8. Both are adopted.
The Daily family is poised to move into a brand new four-bedroom home in the hills of Studio City, a half-hour drive from Columbia Studios where the NBC-TV show is filmed.
There will be an office in the house where Bill can work on his commercials. Included on the grounds is a swimming pool for the children.
Working Day

Daily works four days in the series, rehearsing three and shooting on the final day. On a normal day he is on the set at 7 a.m., in makeup, in his Air Force uniform, and before the cameras until 7 p.m.
Pat, whom he considers a brilliant cook, has dinner waiting for him when he gets home.
“I’m a cook, too. A good one,” Daily claims. “I’m terrific when it comes to making spaghetti with clams.”
The barbecue chores fall to Bill when the family spends the summer in a beach cottage on Lido Island at Newport Beach about 50 miles down the California coast from their home.
On weekends Daily likes nothing better than packing Kimberly and Patrick into the family car and heading for the chartered fishing boats for deep-sea trolling. Recently, to Pat’s dismay, the children and their father returned home with almost a hundred pounds of bonita.
Mrs. Daily was grateful, however, that the catch was brought to the old house. She has plans to decorate their new home with antiques and as many of the Daily painting collection as possible.
“Our problem is that the new place has so many glass walls and draperies, we don’t know what to do with all the really fine paintings we’ve bought over the years,” Daily says.
A native of Des Moines, Iowa, Bill attended the Goodman Theater College in Chicago before becoming an NBC staff director. Later he switched to writing for the old “Club 60” television show starring Dennis James. Thereafter he formed his own comedy act and hit the Midwest nightclub circuit.
At the moment he is satisfied with working as an actor during the day and writing commercials at night—oh, yes, and fishing weekends.

After Jeannie, Daily enjoyed fishing and the occasional gig until he and Newhart got together for six seasons starting in 1972. His old castmate, Larry Hagman, went on to other things, too, becoming part of one of the most famous cliff-hangers in TV history. Seemingly everyone in 1980 was talking about who shot the evil oilman J.R. on the nighttime soap Dallas. Well, almost everyone. This is from the Associated Press, August 21, 1980.

Hagman’s ex-partner doesn’t watch ‘Dallas’
AKRON, Ohio (AP) – Bill Daily is one person who isn’t caught up in the mystery over who shot J.R. Ewing.

As Larry Hagman’s former co-star in the television show “I Dream of Jeannie,” Daily spent five years with Hagman in the series during the 1960s. The show, which also featured Barbara Eden, has been in syndication since production was stopped. Daily, in Akron Saturday for the 43rd annual All-American Soap Box Derby, played Roger Healy to Hagman’s Tony Nelson in the highly-successful comedy about an astronaut who found a female genie.
“I’ve never watched ‘Dallas,’ ” Daily said. He said he didn’t know anything about the show, that Hagman's character had been shot in the last episode this season or that the show has taken the country and parts of the world by rage.
“You’re kidding. Larry was on the cover of Time?’ ” Daily said. “This ‘Dallas' thing is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
Daily said he doesn’t watch much television, especially situation comedy. “If it is really great, I ask myself why I’m not in it, and if it’s lousy, I sit and ask myself ‘Why am I wasting my time watching this,’ ” he quipped. Still, Daily has made much of his livelihood through television “sitcoms." After “I Dream of Jeannie,” he had a run as Howard Borden in “The Bob Newhart Show,” He said he makes a pilot for a possible television show each year, but none have been purchased recently.
Lately, most of Daily’s work has been devoted to a play he wrote for the dinner-theater circuit. “Lover’s Leap” has been playing around the country since 1978. The show opens in St. Petersburg, Fla. on Tuesday.

Even when playing himself on The Match Game (and seemingly not matching contestants very often), Daley came across as a genuine guy, a little befuddled perhaps, and pretty likeable. That’s why you’ll find fan reminiscences about him on social media today.