The Almost Return of Miss X

Pat Matthews left his mark at the Walter Lantz studio by animating a couple of cartoons with “Miss X,” Lantz’ equivalent to Red in the Tex Avery cartoons at MGM. Miss X waving her butt while dancing in see-through pantaloons was a bit much for theatre owners, even during the WW2 years, and Lantz dropped her from his cartoon roster.

Matthews left Lantz around 1948 to work at UPA. Besides theatrical cartoons and TV commercials, UPA made industrial shorts; that’s how the studio got its start. One of them was The Sailor and the Seagull, a 1949 short for the U.S. Navy to sell sailors on reenlistment. This was before UPA decided limited character movement was the right movement; the short features lovely, flowing animation that you can find in its earliest theatrical shorts for Columbia.

There’s a dream sequence which feature Miss X-ish harem girls. Were they animated by Matthews? I’d like to think so. He should have been at UPA at the time.

Here are some frames. I wish the resolution was better than this.



There’s an inside joke at the end of the cartoon. It features the names of UPA staffers, likely some of the ones who worked on this cartoon. Matthews’ name isn’t among them, though.



Bobe Cannon was a director, Willie Pyle and Jack Schnerk were animators, Bill Hurtz was a designer, Jules Engel got credited for color, Herb Klynn was eventually the studio production manager who later founded Format Films. There are no credits on this cartoon.

It also features some early cartoon voice work by Daws Butler as the seagull and a few other characters. The McGinty character in the frames above is played by John T. Smith, using the same “What, no gravy?” voice heard later in Chow Hound from Warner Bros.

Plane Dumb

Plane Dumb is plain dumb.

I’m referring to the 1932 Van Beuren cartoon which is almost close to unwatchable.

Okay, I understand the plot. Tom and Jerry are disguising themselves to go into Africa. But why do they have to speak with those stereotype voices to each other when they’re not in Africa yet?

Well, the answer is the cartoon was supposed to star a black vaudeville team named Miller and Lyles. The plan got scrapped because Aubrey Lyles became ill (he died on July 28th that year), but the Van Beuren studio didn’t scrap the soundtrack; it just changed the two to Tom and Jerry. Of course, the theatre audience watching the cartoon didn’t know any of this and may have been puzzled if they had any interest on what was happening on the screen.

Even worse, Tom and Jerry don’t say anything funny. It’s as if their sound was the gag. The trouble is, there was nothing novel about the voices; they’re not much different than Amos ‘n’ Andy who had been on the air for about four years at this point; Miller and Lyles themselves were in vaudeville before World War One.

And then there’s a scene with an octopus. Why is he kissing Tom? And why is there no impact when Tom hits him. The less-than-skilled Van Beuren cartoonist simply has the arm sweep down, and there’s a sound effect and a few lightning bolts and stars. Oh, well. Van Beuren is not your sign of quality.



The octopus turns into a spanking wheel, spinning in mid-air. That may be the funniest thing in the cartoon. He dives into the ocean and the plot jerks along.



For added weirdness, the opening title animation is superimposed over cycle footage of a waterfall. Why? Who knows. It’s a Van Beuren cartoon.

John Foster and George Rufle get screen credit. Gene Rodemich again supplies the background music. I’ve drawn a blank naming the songs in it (see the comment section).

Dances Better Than Sabu

This is a post about Morey Amsterdam. To the right, you see a picture of Sabu. There’s a reason. Morey will explain why below.

Amsterdam’s big fame came The Dick Van Dyke Show, which began airing in 1961. He’d been the star of his own show, one of the first variety stars of early modern network TV. Nobody remembers it because it was on the CBS and then the Du Mont network almost 70 years ago. And it didn’t have the advantage of being rerun over and over like Van Dyke because any versions of the show that existed would be on kinescopes and not considered airable.

Here’s Amsterdam in an unbylined story in the Salamanca Republican-Press published July 14, 1962 when the Van Dyke show was building an audience thanks to reruns. The reference to Bobby Kennedy deals with the president’s brother when he was U.S. Attorney General and conducting all kinds of investigations.

Morey Amsterdam of 'Dick Van Dyke Show' is Talented Fellow
It's quite possible someday that Morey Amsterdam will settle down long enough so that when asked to list his occupation on an official form he doesn't have to scratch his head in wonder or ask the clerk for a second piece of paper.
The extra sheet of stationery is a must for the dapper wavy-haired show business veteran because he can describe himself as a comedian, movie actor, television actor, radio performer, cellist, songwriter, nightclub impressario, gag writer, restaurant proprietor, movie, radio and television director, night club star, full-time father, part-time golfer, photographer and stock market watcher.
Ar the present time, Morey's numerous talents are confined to CBS' “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” where he teams up with the amiable Dick and versatile Rose Marie as a trio of gag writers for a mythical TV comedian named “Allan Brady.”
Viewers watching the summer re-runs of the half-hour comedy show every Thursday on CBS-TV at 9:30 p.m. discover more often than enough that Dick, Morey and Rose Marie produce more laughs for themselves than they do for their invisible boss.
“It's a funny thing," Morey was saying-over lunch, “but I've been talking to people who have made it a deliberate point to see the show a second time around to catch up on the laughs they missed - the first time because they were laughing so hard.”
Morey quickly adds that he is one of these time-tested faithful viewers.
“I watch to see Rose and Dick," he adds. “Me? I can see any time in the bathroom mirror.”
Morey's descriptive eyebrows fly up at this point. “And it's a good thing I watch that pair. They've stolen so many laughs from me that I think it's a case for Bobby Kennedy.”
But ask Morey who is the funniest comedian and comedienne and he gives full marks to the scene stealers mentioned above.
“We all have a good arrangement,” the effervescent Mr. Amsterdam claims. “We've got a great deal of respect for each other as entertainers and people. On some comedy shows the people, who give the public the impression they are buddy buddy, are about as friendly towards each other as Joe Lewis and Max Schmelling. But not on our show. We get along.”
Morey's eyebrows flashed again. “Actually, we get such a kick out of working together we'd probably do it for nothing but the laughs. If the sponsor reads this: remember I'm under psychiatric care, sir.”
A native of Chicago, Morey grew up in San Francisco. “But I stopped growing when I reached three feet” he adds, “because I liked the view from here.”
The elder Amsterdam was first violinist with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and thought young Morey should get a classical education. Morey took up the cello and today is so proficient on it he plays to relax and also uses it as a comedy gimmick on occasions.
Morey recalls that he was always interested in show business. “I started my vaudeville career at sixteen in Chicago and ended at sixteen in that same city,” he states. But he was determined to stay in show business.
“I got a job as an usher,” he adds. “It was sort of a show business. Besides the uniform matched the color of my eyes which were yellow at the time.”
A few far sighted vaudeville house owners saw the comedy potential in young Morey, and the years that followed saw him steadily employed in clubs and cabarets.
About this time other comedians discovered the nimble-witted Amsterdam, and he was soon writing special material for them. The illustrious list of clients included Fanny Brice, Milton Berle, Jack Benny, Joe E. Brown, Eddie Cantor and Frank Morgan.
Morey felt that the greatest thing to happen to him in show business was his friendship with the late Will Rogers. The cowboy humorist took Morey under his wing and gave him some advice the comedian has never forgotten—never be cruel to anyone even in jest.
“Mr. Rogers used to write to me a lot,” Morey adds. “Mostly postcards. I've got about a hundred of them in my home. I was the only guy-in show business lucky enough to get a million dollars worth of comic material by mail.”
The year 1930 found Morey in radio. Since then, he has been in and out of that medium.
After the war he appeared on so many radio and TV programs as guest star, Fred Allen quipped: “the only thing we can turn on in our house without getting Morey Amsterdam is the water tap.”
A few years ago, former movie hard guy Sheldon Leonard and comedian Carl Reiner had an idea for a show about a trio of gag writers. They both thought Dick Van Dyke, who was then appearing on Broadway in “Bye, Bye Birdie,” would be a natural for the part of “Rob Petrie,” the safe and sane head comedy writer. Rose Marie, they agreed, would be excellent in the role of “Sally,” the wisecracking female of the trio. But who was to be the third party?
Both Leonard and Reiner concluded that they would need a man who could act, dance, sing, charm viewers out of their chairs and, above all, rattle off funny jokes like a Gatling gun.
“Sabu couldn't dance," Morey flips, “so they wound up with me.”
“The Dick Van Dyke Show" was the comic hit of last season — one of the few shows to be renewed this year.
While not working twenty hours a day, Morey spends some time with his wife, Kay, and son Gregory, eighteen, and daughter, Cathy, ten. He plays golf and takes pictures, and he adds, “stare at myself in the mirror and wonder how lucky a guy can be.”

Zcaring the Zebra

A string of fear gags greets viewers in Slap Happy Lion every time a fierce jungle lion roars. In one, a zebra calmly munching on the African veld becomes so frightened, it jumps out of its stripes and runs away. The stripes follow.



See how Avery’s animator turns the lower half of the zebra’s body, then the upper half before running into the distance. These three frames are consecutive.



Tex loved to have a tongue sticking straight out in fear drawings.



Now the zebra turns the upper half of the body. The two drawings below are consecutive.



Now the stripes.



Bob Bentley, Ray Abrams and Walt Clinton are the animators in this cartoon.

Dad Gum Varmint

Rabbit Every Monday (1951) has an extended sequence involving bubble gum which Bugs Bunny uses to plug Yosemite Sam’s rifle. I like the look in Sam’s eyes as he’s about to fire.



Blam! Sam’s trapped in a bubble that Bugs blows over a cliff. I always like the “how did this happen” look Sam has when things don’t go right. Since you know Carl Stalling well enough, I don’t need to tell you what song is being played by a muted trumpet in the background.



Sam manages to blow himself and the bubble back up to the top of the cliff. You know what’s going to happen next.



Part two of the gag involves throwing a rock down Bugs’ hole. Problem: there’s gum attached to it.



Manny Perez, Ken Champin, Art Davis and Virgil Ross are the animators. For some reason, there’s no story credit on this cartoon. Warren Foster and Cal Howard get co-writing credits on the next cartoon Friz put into production.

Directing Jack Benny

If you mention Fred de Cordova’s name, you’ll probably think of Johnny Carson. After all, he called the shots on the Tonight show for 22 years. But before he did that, he was the producer/director of Jack Benny’s TV show for seven years.

Fred talked about Jack in his book Johnny Come Lately, published in 1989. He said Benny “was in a class by himself” and talks about how he and his wife socialised with Jack and Mary. But he was interviewed about Jack much earlier. Here’s a piece from the King Features Syndicate, published August 14, 1961. You kind of get the feeling the columnist would like to have some kind of dirt, any kind, and was annoyed he was getting anything but.

TV Keynotes
Jack Benny and Brook Go On Forever
By HAROLD STERN
Frederick de Cordova, the producer-director of CBS’ perennial comedy hit “The Jack Benny Program,” faces a problem almost unique in the quixotic world of television. He must at all times be certain that there is no major departure in what has been a successful format.
“People wouldn’t stand for any changes in Jack,” Fred told me, “so we find we must have a wide variety of shows carefully contained within certain basic limitations. Jack realizes that to stand still in this business is to go back. We have to be careful that he doesn’t go too far forward too fast. We try to keep the show changing as much as possible within the framework of the character and it takes an enormous amount of work to make it look so easy and so casual that it seems as if the entire show were nothing but fun to do.”
“I’ve been directing comedians since 1931,” he continued, “and there’s nobody who’s quite the perfectionist that Jack is. Even after a show is finished, edited, dubbed and ready to go he’ll insist on loking at it again and he’ll find some way to improve it. No amount of work is too hard for him. He’s a magnificent editor of written comedy as it appears on the screen and he’s completely objective about himself as a performer.
‘A Real Champion’
“Jack’s a real champion,” De Cordova went on. “He’s 67 now and he’ll go on as long as there’s a Jack Benny. I think we’ll all give out long before he does. And do you know that if they approached me now and told me I could pick anywhere else to work, but not with Jack. I wouldn’t know where to go.
“The technical end of the show gets easier from year to year,” he added, “but the writing and directing get harder. We try to alter the method of telling the joke but basically we are still faced with the problem of remaining in the context of the character. Jack’s philosophy is: if it begins to get easy, it isn’t going to be funny.

“One interesting thing about Jack,” De Cordova continued his hero worship, “is that he’ll throw away a script that’s been written for a guest and postpone the guest’s appearance if the script doesn’t come off the way he thinks it should. So far, we’ve got 12 of next season’s shows in the can and among our guests are Ernie Ford, Jane Morgan, Shari Lewis and Dimitri Tiomkin. We have Raymond Burr in what I consider to be an outstanding comedy show.
“The opening show of the season will be taped in New York and will star Phil Silvers. The second show will come from Waukeegan, Ill., and will serve as the dedication show for the new Jack Benny High School. Then we’ll start to use the shows we’ve finished.
Trip to Australia
“We’ll also use the James Stewarts again,” De Cordova added, “and we have a script ready for Roberta Peters. There’s also the possibility of a combination business and pleasure trip to Australia for personal appearances and television. Jack likes to do four or five tape shows and spread them through the season so that he may get topical once in a while.”
Fred was appalled at the low survival rate for stand up comics in television. Other than Benny, Skelton, possibly a few performances by Hope and maybe Bob Newhart, there are no comics left on the medium which once spawned them.
Aside from the Benny Show, Fred is happy at the lengthy association he had with another great comedy series, the Burns and Allen Show. He rates both George Burns and Jack Benny as giants in the comedy field. He also did December Bride for four years and was surprised it got that long a ride from what he termed an innocuous idea. During the coming season he’ll slip away from Benny every once in a while to do a few shows for the new “Hazel” series and for the new “Hathaways” series.
“These are great days,” he said with a smile, “for a fellow who’s doing well in comedy. The creation of a brand new comedy idea that’s good is a feat of some proportions and I’ve turned down a number of shows because I didn’t feel there was anything I could contribute to them.”
Likes TV Work
He also indicated that though he occasionally receives scripts, he has no desire to go back to Broadway, where he got his real start in show business. He also doesn’t care to return to feature films (“I get more fun out of television.”)
“I’m snobbish about television,” he insisted, “but unlike most other snobs, I’m snobbish on the side of TV. I get first crack at the best guest stars in the business because we make our guests look good. We haven’t changed our writing staff in 13 years.
“If you ask me, I have only one real problem with the show,” he concluded. “Our guests are often required to insult Jack and some of them can’t bring themselves to do it. Last year Joey Bishop couldn’t go through with it and it sometimes takes brute force to get some guests to insult Jack. Say it as if you mean it, he’ll snap at them and then he’ll go into his long take and instead of insulting him, they’ll break up and they’re useless for hours.”

The Battle For Cartoon Airtime

Every once in a while, some cartoon fan will say “They should have made a cartoon series with J. Evil Scientist or Maxie Chickenhawk” or “Why didn’t they spin so-and-so off into his own cartoons?”

There’s a pretty good reason. Several, actually.

While fans view cartoons as entertainment, the people in charge of making them see things a little differently. A cartoon studio manufactures little films it wants to sell. To do that, it needs to find a distributor for its cartoons. The distributor needs to find enough TV stations to run the cartoons to make a profit. TV stations only have a limited amount of air time and need to run something that’ll bring it the most revenue. Now picture a whole bunch of studios and distributors all trying to do the same thing, fighting for the same limited air time.

And all this is contingent on whether there are enough animators around to make the cartoons in the first place.

Obviously not everything is going to make it.

1961 was a year of glut. There was a glut of potential cartoon shows on the market. Hanna-Barbera had been incredibly successful with The Huckleberry Hound Show and The Flintstones. Others wanted a piece of the action. Here’s Weekly Variety of February 1, 1961 explaining the situation.

Off-Network TV Cartoons Seen Syndie Natural
Pattern of a network ride followed by a syndication run will grow to further embrace made-for-tv cartoons is the forecast of some savvy vets in the cartoon field.
Reason for this predicted pattern stems from a number of factors:
1. Unless a syndicator has an established character, or a pre-sold property, he has a tough road to hew in the market-by-market route.
2. There are currently about 30 cartoon making now the market-by-market rounds, with only about one out of 10 of the newbies successful, according to some estimates.
Plenty of product isn’t felt in the seven station markets such as N.Y. and Los Angeles, but in the three station situations, the very markets which are needed to put a syndie show in the break-even or profit margin.
Success of “Flintstones” in the adult category, and other kiddie cartoon shows on the webs assures a growing supply from that source. There also is the national spot field, closely akin to networking, now riding with the success of “Huckleberry Hound,” et al. When these shows come down the pike into syndication, they will have a wide acceptance.
In syndication, new cartoon properties with established characters, such as “Popeye” and “Mr. Magoo,” are doing fine. Others are finding the field tougher, although a few of the other newies also are successful.
Last two years has seen many new made-for-tv limited animation cartoons placed on the market. For a period, with the supply of theatrical oldies drying up, there was a real need to fill it. That vacuum in syndication now is said to have been filled to a large extent.
One of the big bottlenecks in distribution is the less than four-station market situation prevailing throughout the country. Cartoons usually are sold on a two or three-run basis to station, with unlimited plays. In the less than four market situations, once the stations have bought their limited cartoon needs, new packages just go whistling for want of an outlet.
A made-for-tv cartoon without a highly recognized character can make gross from $5,000 to $8,000 per five-minute episode the first time around nationally, in a successful sell. Others fall short of that mark.
Overseas potential for many cartoons is severely restricted if there’s too much violence in the series. Overseas markets are much more severe about violence in kiddie shows than their counterparts in the U.S.

But, as we mentioned, there had to be a viable market for cartoons, meaning finding airtime on enough stations to make producing them profitable. That wasn’t easy. Not only were cartoons competing against live-action syndicated programming, networks were trying to take up more and more affiliate time to make their programming more attractive to buyers. And the networks themselves were flooded with distributor/studio pitches for “the next Flintstones.” Here’s Weekly Variety again from June 21, 1961.

Everybody’s Got a Cartoon Series, But Webs Less Than Enthusatistic
Everybody and his brother seem to have a cartoon series for sale and airing during the season after next. This would suggest that the only thing that might slow boom in animation is the somewhat less than enthusiastic response of the networks.
One network source unhappily estimated that in the last few weeks, some 20 cartoon ideas, storyboards, rough sketches and film “samples” had crossed his desk. Among those making the rounds of ’62-’63—since the coming season’s programming is already inked and, because it takes at least nine months advance warning before an animator can successfully or comfortably turn out a full series are:
An idea for an Edgar Bergen-Charlie McCarthy cartoon, ditto Fibber McGee and Molly, “Duffy’s Tavern” and Frances Langford and Don Ameche, all of which have their roots in old radio formats or old radio personalities. Then there is “Shrimp,” a sample being peddled by William Morris, a Jay Ward-Bill Scott entry based of Sampson and Delilah, and two King Features; “Krazy Kat” and “Barney Google.”

“The Three Stooges,” now seen on local tv via live-action syndication (taken from the old theatrical short subject library), is also being proposed to ABC, CBS and NBC.
While there are to be several new half-hour animations on the networks this coming fall, the webs have decided to move cautiously in preparing additional shows of this genre for seasons beyond that. Among other fears, the networks say they’re afraid they’ll again kill a good thing (cartoon shows have been reasonably successful so far) by overexposure.
Meantime, Coast producers are pouring out about $35,000,000 worth of product, none of which is included in the list of 20 or so subjects designed for network airings in ’62-’63. Most of the Hollywood product appears to be for the immediate consumption by the networks or in syndication to the tv stations. Beyond Hollywood’s present output, there is a thriving animation business in N.Y., headed by Peter Piech’s Production Associates of Television and his Leonardo TV Productions, which right now have “Rocky & His Friends,” “The Bullwinkle Show” and “King Leonardo” in network time slots. Piech is associated with Jay Ward Productions in some of his ventures.

The bottom fell out of the cartoon market by the end of 1961 as all new animated series failed in prime time. Within a few years, studios would regroup and take aim at the one time period when people watched cartoons enough to reap profits—Saturday mornings.

Wonderland in Kansas City

In 1955, Walt Disney opened Disneyland. 32 years earlier, he opened Wonderland. Kind of. Alice’s Wonderland was the name of his first live action/animation project designed to land a contract. He signed with Margaret Winkler.

Walt appears in the short as a cartoonist.



I believe that’s Hugh Harman at the right.



More animators. That may be Walker Harman in the baseball cap. Is that Max Maxwell in the back? The cat remains unidentified.



Winkler ordered six Alice Comedies from Disney due to the strength of this short film. Winkler’s only remembered by die-hard old-time animation fans. I think the Disney name is a little better known.