Jack Hannah as Tex Avery

Walter Lantz kind of had a Disney unit for a while around 1960. Jack Hannah was directing, with Roy Jenkins and Al Coe animating, Al Bertino and Dick Kinney supplying stories and Ray Huffine working on backgrounds. For that matter, Paul Frees provided voices. The problem is the cartoons aren’t really very funny. Hannah doesn’t sound packed with incentive at Lantz. “Once you’ve been at Disney’s, it’s just a job,” he once remarked.

Still you can find stretches of good animation in some of Hannah’s cartoons. And he tried some Tex Avery style takes in Doc’s Last Stand, a 1961 cartoon featuring all of those named above. Doc, who is supposed to be a rogue and conman but comes off as drab, tries to sell his cohort Champ the bulldog as a squaw to a rich American Indian. After a bit of assistance from perfume and bash on the head, the brave gets all excited about “her.” It looks like Hannah saved money by flipping some drawings.



Hannah would leave Lantz in 1962 but not until he inflicted the Beary Family on unsuspecting cartoon lovers.

Calliope Man Bernie Green

Henry Morgan’s radio show had an unsung hero. Not an actor. Certainly not a sponsor or an ABC executive. It was musical conductor and arranger Bernie Green.

There couldn’t have been a more perfect musical fit for Morgan than Green. Acidic humourist Morgan gave him a musical spot and then apparently allowed him to do whatever satiric came to his mind. Green’s ideas were brilliant. On one broadcast, he conducted his symphonic arrangement of the “Pepsi Cola Hits the Spot” jingle. Green was an ABC staff musician, so when Morgan moved to NBC, Green stayed behind, though his arrangements were still heard on the Morgan show. He ended up being the musical director on TV for Mr. Peepers, Caesar’s Hour and the Garry Moore Show, plus provided musical cues for Al Brodax’s Cool McCool cartoon series. He also recorded a couple of albums of space-age pop for RCA, including one named for MAD magazine (with Alfred E. Newman on the album cover).

Here’s Herald Tribune syndicate critic John Crosby, a fan of Morgan’s, speaking about Green and the job of supplying snippets of music for network radio shows. It was published September 15, 1949. Green died in 1975 at the age of 66.

RADIO IN REVIEW
By JOHN CROSBY
MAN ON A BRIDGE
That blast of music you hear—a bridge as it is known in the trade—just after the District Attorney says: "This is no suicide, Jenkins. This is—mu'dah!" has to be, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, written.
One of the experts in this highly specialized field is Bernie Green, A. B. C. staff conductor. Green, who will be remembered by Henry Morgan devotees for his dizzy arrangements on that program when it was on ABC, has been writing musical bridges for radio programs these eighteen years. Most of them ran from eight seconds to a minute. One day he looked in some despair at the pile of music he had written and asked himself if he were going to spend his life doing four measure cues. The next day he sat down and started work on a symphony. Had a terrible time. The first movement was roughly eight minutes long or about four times the length of even the longest music cue. Once over that hurdle, the symphony came more easily. He hopes to have it performed this year by the ABC symphony.
There are as many cliches in radio music as there are in the rest of radio, Green says. A narrator, as any radio listener knows, always has music in the background while he's telling you that it's the next morning and Stella spent a sleepless night worrying about the mortgage. When the music stops, the next scene begins. Mystery programs, soap opera and more ambitious radio drama, each has its own music cliches, and an experienced radio listener can tell you what sort of program he's listening to by the music alone. A real expert in the field can tell by the music alone not only what has happened, but what is going to happen.

Green has done his best to get away from the cliches and to compose some really original and descriptive music bridges. When "The Fat Man" went on the air three-and-a-half years ago, Green got together an orchestra which was all woodwinds and percussion instruments to give the program a distinctive tone color. When the Fat Man came on he was preceded by a short tuba solo, suggestive of his girth.
When "The Clock," a real horror number, went on the air, Green contributed possibly the most original part of it. He achieved weird musical effects by using a combination consisting of four percussion instruments, two harps and two pianos. Weird as this was, it didn't work out well because no instrument could hold a note. Green got around this by dropping one percussion instrument and adding four French horns. The effect is still pretty weird.
Green had a real field day on the Henry Morgan show. He had an idea that music could be just as entertaining as comedy and some of his arrangements were little classics of comic music. As a parody on two-piano teams, he wrote a "Concerto for Two Calliopes." One of the calliopes was a moth-eaten old job which had been lying around NBC since the death of "Showboat." ABC bought the other on from a bankrupt carnival. The NBC calliope had fourteen pipes missing, so Green blithely worked around them.
Green's latest project, which may or may not be heard on the network this fall, is a program called "The Laboratory of Dr. Bernie Green." This one, which has been auditioned twice on the air, opens with what Green describes as "the distilled essence of all horror programs" dragging chains, a crowbar opening a wooden crate, a groan, a maniacal laugh. This is meant as a musical description of Bach turning over in his grave. The rest of the program would very likely drive Bach into doing just that.

Vermin Time

Here’s a different frolicking mouse cartoon than the Tex Avery/Warners one we told you about yesterday. It’s When the Cat’s Away, a 1935 Harman-Ising short for MGM.

The mice take a little break in the cartoon, when the hero mouse activates a pump which lets out drops of water that land with a Latin beat in a pan.



What’s that behind the cockroach powder?



It’s a cockroach! And he’s singing (are you surprised?) “La Cucaracha.” And what’s that behind the scrub brush?



Yes, a whole chorus of roaches!



And still more of them.



And a pair of Latin dancing cockroaches.



That roach powder isn’t very effective, is it? Come to think of it, the place is infested with roaches and mice. Who’d want to live there?

This cartoon has a lot of similarities to Harman-Ising’s work at Warners: lots of singing and dancing, a menace that shows up half-way through and is vanquished (although not by a gang this time, just the hero mouse), and a chirping, off-camera, female chorus (could it be the Rhythmettes, the same one heard on Warners cartoons?).

There are never any credits on these early Harman-Isings at MGM.

Not Taking a Stab at it

Johnny Mouse is about to be stabbed in the butt, but is rescued by a typical Tex Avery gag in The Mice Will Play (1938).



“Don’t do that!!” screams a woman in the “theatre audience” watching this cartoon, who stands up and waves her hands.



“Aw, we never have any fun,” say the disgusted boy mice (all played by women), who throw away the hypodermic needle.



This isn’t one of Avery’s best by a long shot, but it’s been preserved by the Library of Congress. I don’t think his heart was in it, doing a cartoon about cutish (Charlie Thorson designed?) mice, even though the cat at the end decides to wait for Susie Mouse to get pregnant so he can eat her offspring.

Sid Sutherland received the animation credit.

Peroxide That Polar Bear!

How does a movie studio publicise its latest blockbuster, other than buying advertising and supplying theatres with one-sheets and maybe a promotional kit?

Let’s find out.

I’m not so sure this United Press story from 1939 about ideas to push a Jack Benny movie is tongue-in-cheek. Maybe this really happened as reported. You never know in Hollywood. Certainly all the Paramount publicity people mentioned in it were real. For the record, they were Terry DeLapp (department head), Ed Churchill, Jean Bosquet, Don Ashbaugh, Kathleen Coghlan (fan magazine publicist), Don Chatfield, Bert Holloway, Don King, Steve Brooks, Ralph Hustin, Gretchen Messer (fashion editor) and Edward Mills.

IDEA PARLEY IS HELD FOR BENNY FILM
How Press Agent and His Aides Map Attack Is Disclosed.
By Frederick C. Othman
United Press Hollywood Correspondent.
HOLLYWOOD, Oct. 20.
We were in the conference room at Paramount today where the publicists were deciding how to make America conscious of a motion picture entitled "Buck Benny Rides Again."
This film will feature a radio star named Jack Benny, a polar bear called Carmichael, and a dusky comic named Rochester.
Boss Press Agent De Lapp and a dozen helpers were mapping their attack upon the public.
Mr. De Lapp: "We don't want to overlook this Mr. Rochester. And we might even go to Reno for the premiere to cash in on the dude ranch stuff."
Mr. Churchill: "We can't find us a Carmichael. Polar bears are hard to tame."
Mr. Ashbaugh: "I know a trained brown bear named 'Big Boy.' Couldn't we peroxide him?"
Mr. Bosquet: "They whitened two tigers for the last Anna Mae Wong picture."
Mr. Churchill: "It's dangerous to paint a bear."
Mr. Holloway: "Are any of the girls set yet?"
Mr. De Lapp: "Not yet, but there'll be four of 'em. And the Abbott Dancers. They ought to be swell for roto leg art."
Miss Messer: "They'll be wearing summer clothes. We've already got a tieup with a manufacturer."
Mr. De Lapp (in an aside): "Where's Johnny Engsted?"
Mr. Brooks: "He's out looking for a stained glass window."
Mr. De Lapp: "Oh."
Miss Coghlan: "The fan magazines should go for some Easter art."
Mr. De Lapp: "Let's get Benny in a jackrabbit roundup."
Mr. King: "Maybe we can have a picture of a jackrabbit pulling Benny out of a hat."
Mr. De Lapp: "Well if we can't get a live Carmichael. we'll have to have a stuffed bear for the stills."
Mr. Brooks: "There isn't a stuffed bear in Hollywood. We've looked."
Miss Coghlan: "I understand Benny is afraid of horses."
Mr. Brooks: "Anyhow he has agreed to sit on a horse, if we can find one that can rear safely."
Mr. De Lapp: "What about Benny's Maxwell auto?"
Mr. Huston: "Maybe we can find a guy named Maxwell who will sue Benny for defaming the family name."
Mr. Mills: "Let's get Benny to write a magazine story on how to tame a polar bear."
Mr. Holloway: "What we need is a good layout of Pratt Falls."
Mr. Del Valle: "Can't we get a by-line story by the bear on how he became a star?"
Mr. Ashbaugh: Let's send Frank Buck out to get us a bear. He oughtn't to charge too much."
Mr. Del Valle: "A picture showing Benny being thrown off a mechanical horse should be funny."
Mr. Mills: "If we can't get a bear, we ought to have a bear rug anyway."
Miss Coghlan: "We must start a nation-wide search for the oldest Maxwell."
Mr. Holloway: "Then we can get Benny to speed in it down Hollywood boulevard and have him arrested."
Mr. Chatfield: "I've got an idea for a giveaway, aluminum coins that say 'one buck.'"
Mr. King: "I believe we should get a double for Benny to be bucked off a horse for the Paramount newsreel. They ought to go for that."
Mr. Bosquet: "If there's anybody in the cast about to get a divorce, they ought to have him do it in Reno, "while the picture is in production."
Mr. De Lapp: "Unless we can talk him out of it, altogether."
The boys went on from there, far into the night. They hold these idea meetings at the start of every picture and a stenographer takes down each word they say. Then the hair begins to fly. Woe is the actor who balks at co-operating.

Shouts for UPA

“What was all the shouting about?”

That was the rhetorical question Leonard Maltin wrote in Of Mice and Magic when it came to the UPA cartoon studio. It was rhetorical because it set up the response from critic Gilbert Seldes, writing in the May 31, 1952 issue of The Saturday Review. Maltin published excerpts of the article but we’ll reprint it in full below.

Seldes’ main complaint seems to have been that cartoons should look like cartoons, not the “illusion of life” espoused by Disney (something praised by critics not too many years earlier). He also favours the UPA attempts at light humour and whimsy. Certainly “Gerald McBoing Boing” was an excellent short in all facets, from colour to camerawork, while “Rooty Toot Toot” combines interesting artwork and movement, and has its humorous moments as well. Later, Magoo became more blind than bombastic and the one-shots became increasingly coy and child-like instead of wry.

But this article was written, arguably, when the studio was at its peak—and the very same day director and UPA vice-president John Hubley was fired as fall-out from the McCarthy witchhunt.

DELIGHT IN SEVEN MINUTES
THE best way to identify United Productions of America is to say: "They're the people who made 'Gerald McBoing Boing'." And the best way to identify the quality of their product is to say that every time you see one of their animated cartoons you are likely to recapture the sensation you had when you first saw "Steamboat Willie," the early "Silly Symphonies," "The Band Concert"—the feeling that something new and wonderful has happened, something almost too good to be true.
Twelve times a year UPA releases, through Columbia, one of these seven-minute masterpieces; current or soon to be seen are "Rooty Toot Toot" (based on Frankie and Johnny), "Willie the Kid" (which is a travesty of the Wild West legend), and several episodes in the career of Mister Magoo, who plunges with supreme confidence into all sorts of adventures although he is so near-sighted that he doesn't know himself in a mirror. Also on view is the film "Man Alive," a serio-comic film about cancer released by the American Cancer Society. And recently the Roxy Theatre paid UPA the significant compliment of showing "Man on the Land," a documentary prepared for the oil industry, for its sheer entertainment value.

In a sense, the UPA product is not so much new as it is a return to the first principles of the animated cartoon, those fundamentals which Disney understood and exploited more fully than anyone before him, and which he has abandoned. They are so simple that the name of the medium, animated cartoon, comprehends all the essentials, since a cartoon is a drawing that deliberately distorts certain salient features of the subject and animation is an exaggeration of normal movement or expression. As Disney has come closer and closer to photographic realism, he has subtly violated the character of the cartoon (which is a drawing on a flat surface) by giving it depth and, in a brilliant combination of art-work and machinery, has substituted movement—remarkably lifelike—for animation.
The UPA cartoons are flat; whatever sense of depth you get comes from perspective, lines drawing your eyes to a small door in the background, and by color—as the door opens you get a flash of blue in contrast to the sepia or gray of the surrounding walls. And because they use one drawing for every two or three frames of the film, instead of Disney's one for each frame, the figures move less smoothly, they have a galvanic animation.
The delight which these pictures gives is, however, not merely pleasure taken in any return to the primitive. The positive virtues of UPA are their impudent and intelligent approach to subject matter and a gay palette, a cascading of light colors, the use of color and line always to suggest, never to render completely, a great deal of warmth, and an unfailing wit. Some of the cartoons recall stock episodes—tubas grunt and Mr. Magoo steps off a girder into thin air—but the best of them are as fresh in concept as in execution.
In "Willie the Kid," for instance, the brigand on a tricycle is commiting a hold-up or a rescue in the West and a split-second later is in his own backyard dealing with his mother and a moment later is out West again. In "The Oompahs" the conventional musical instruments of animated cartoons appear—and suddenly they are engaged in a baseball game which is all spots and shapes of color dancing against the geometry of the diamond, giving you some of the enchantment of Len Lye's color experiments on film. In "Family Circus" a lesson in child psychology is taught, sympathetically and humorously, through a dream sequence in a circus.
So far UPA has released nothing longer than seven minutes for theatrical use; the company will be represented by animations which are part of the Stanley Kramer production of "The Fourposter," and a plan for a feature picture, using Thurber's "Men, Women, and Dogs," has been long considered. Past experience indicates that feature-length animations are the first step toward the decline of the imagination, but the exuberance and copiousness of the UPA talents will, I believe, protect them. To be gay and intelligent and inventive all at once is a rare phenomenon. I, for one, hope UPA goes on for ever. —GILBERT SELDES.

Popeye in the 3D Cave

Every time I watched the Popeye/Ali Baba cartoon (and I saw it over and over when I was a kid in the ‘60s), I was always amazed by the scenes in the cave with the 3D backgrounds, wondering how they did it. As you likely know, the process was used elsewhere in the cartoon and gave a wondrous feeling of depth.

You can’t get the effect from looking at still frames, but you can see the detail in the backgrounds.



Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves is still an impressive cartoon after all these years. It’s a toss-up whether the first colour two-reeler, Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor, is better. Willard Bowsky (head animator) and George Germanetti get screen credit on both; Orestes Calpini also gets an animation credit on this. The background people toiled in anonymity.

Jerry's Surprised

Pop-eyed takes were a rarity in the Hanna-Barbera unit at MGM, but here’s one in The Milky Waif (1946).

Jerry looks outside the door after a knock and sees nothing. After he closes the door, Hanna holds the drawing for 15 frames, then the door is suddenly opened as Jerry realises what’s outside.



Jerry was one of the best pantomime characters in Hollywood. He always had a range of expressions, sometimes subtle, especially when violence isn’t involved. Here he is looking at the audience just before he closes the door.



Ken Muse, Mike Lah and Ed Barge are the credited animators.

The Second Mr Stephens is the First Mr Cheever

There were character actors aplenty who seem to have appeared in every hit sitcom in the 1960s. They weren’t stars, so there was no incentive for columnists to interview them. But a few did get some press and we’ve featured several of them on this blog.

One who found steady work was Roy Roberts. He was the second Darrin’s father on Bewitched (well, there were two Darrins after all) and he was on The Beverly Hillbillies as Mr. Cushing of the Merchant’s Bank, failing to get the Clampetts to moved their millions into his financial institution from Milburn Drysdale’s Commerce Bank of Beverly Hills.

He was a banker on another series, playing Theodore J. Mooney’s boss and nemesis on The Lucy Show. That attracted the attention of one syndicated columnist, who coaxed Roberts into telling a funny story about one of the great American Ac-Tors of the 20th century. It was published December 14, 1967.

TV Character Jolly Demeanor Like a Santa in Civvies
By STAN MAAYS
HOLLYWOOD — It's an axiom in television never to stand pat, even when you've got a guaranteed rating winner like The Lucy Show. For that reason, a new character was introduced this season.
Mr. Cheever was brought in as Mr. Mooney's banking boss, thus opening a whole new bag of involvements for Mooney, as well as Lucy.
Cheever is played by Roy Roberts, a burly 230-pound veteran actor, whose theatrical roots date back to the likes of David Belasco, Jane Cowl, Helen Hayes and the Broadway stage. Roberts was Capt. Huxley for three years in the old Gale Storm series, Oh! Susanna. He's also had semi-regular roles in McHale's Navy and Petticoat Junction, And he has countless movie credits.
It is doubtful that viewers could possibly enjoy the "play" between Roberts and Gale Gordon as much as they do themselves.
"Why, we're like two old lovers—it's shocking!" laughs Roberts, whose jolly demeanor is like a Santa in civies.
"We appreciate what the other one does. Our timing is such that we never have to shoot a scene over. One take, that's it.
"Like Gale, I seemed to be stuck in banker roles in my old age, but we're making the most of it. Being his boss I'm more pompous, stuffy and arrogant. I frighten him and he in turn frightens Lucy."

Rogers admits to being "basically a straight man," but he prides himself in knowing how to be a good one. "It's important to play up key words," he continues. "Gale and I, old hams that we are, get together and go over the script. We see a spot and say, 'Let's give this a goose here.' It's fun for us because on the Lucy show you have to play half to the audience and half to the cameras."
This ability to emphasize clearly key words wasn't any over night accomplishment. Roberts, early in his career as a member of the E. B. Coleman's Honey Bunch Stock Company, when all he had was "curly hair and teeth," realized he had to overcome a Florida accent, which apparently is more southern than southern.
A chance meeting with the great John Barrymore helped. He suggested reading Shakespeare aloud. So as not to disturb anyone, Roberts used to go to Jones Beach and shout Shakespeare at the waves. This triggered a story about the "great profile."
"I met him again a few years later in Hollywood. It was in a restaurant crowded with his friends, the occasion being the opening of his movie, 'Twentieth Century.' I didn't think he'd remember me (his sister Ethel later assured me he wouldn't have bothered if he hadn't), but I had such admiration for him I had to approach him.
" ‘Speak, my son,’ he said in a great stentorian voice, ‘What do you require of me, anything?’ Stymied for a moment, I suggested a soliloquy from 'Hamlet.' So while his friends waited he sat down and did the whole thing for me, complete with gestures.
"When he finished, he leaned over and whispered, ‘Now never speak to me again, you s.o.b.’"

Drunken Horse Becomes Celebrity Caricature

Goopy Geer isn’t just an obscure cartoon character. He’s the subject of a song written by Herman Hupfeld, the same man who composed the immortal “As Time Goes By.”

Hupfeld’s song gets a workout in the aforementioned cartoon. It features re-used gags and re-used animation from Lady Play Your Mandolin, released the year before. Oh, and Goopy pulls off that little slide-step dance that Bosko did ad nauseum. (Keith Scott reveals it was based on dancer Will Murray’s act).

The most bizarre gag is when a drunken horse takes a long gulp of some rot-gut and begins to see creatures in the mirror. When he sees the image of Mahatma Ghandi, that’s enough. He runs screaming at the audience.



Friz Freleng and Ham Hamilton are the credited animators.

Here’s Hupfeld singing his song with the Victor Young Orchestra on the Brunswick label.