Booting a Puss and an Animation Career Into High Gear

Puss Gets the Boot changed the MGM cartoon studio forever. But not right away.

The cartoon was released on February 10, 1940. It wasn’t on the studio’s 1939-40 twelve-release schedule unveiled by Variety on October 9, 1939. It was on the schedule by December (Showman’s Trade Review, Dec. 2, 1939) and the cartoon was profiled (with cel set-ups) in the January-February 1940 issue of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Short Story, an internal magazine (which trumpets it as “Rudolf Ising’s latest cartoon” and calls the characters “Jasper,” “Pee-Wee” and “the housekeeper”). It’s clear the cartoon was ready before the start of the year.

What else is clear is that someone at MGM decided to allow a former storyman from Terrytoons and a failed MGM director to make a cartoon, at the very least on a trial basis. At the time, the Metro cartoon division was rife with politics and turmoil. I’d love to know exactly how it was that Hanna and Barbera became directors.

After Puss was released, Variety announced on March 23rd that Hanna and Barbera would receive their own unit and leave Rudy Ising’s. Their first cartoon was to be Swing Social, without Tom and Jerry (it starred fish in blackface); it was one of the 12 cartoons announced the previous October.

Interestingly, the Associated Press did a story on the unknown Hanna and Barbera. The premise seems odd. The author says people saw Rudy Ising’s name on the screen but wondered who designed the characters. Wouldn’t they think it was Ising? Weren’t these the same people that thought Walt Disney was the driving force behind all his cartoon shorts because his name was the only one on the credits? We printed part of the story on the Yowp blog some years ago. We’ve found a longer version since. It appeared in papers starting May 5, 1940.

New Cartoon Enters Movies
By HUBBARD KEAVY
HOLLYWOOD, May 4 (AP)— A very entertaining cartoon making the rounds now deserves some belated attention. Its title is "Puss Gets the Boot."
One gets so accustomed to seeing the "credits" at the beginning of pictures, looking for names of neighbors and fellows we have met, that when there are no names he is curious and a little disappointed.
The credits for "Puss" are conspicuous by their absence. At the beginning, it says a man named Ising produced the picture for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer but more than one person wondered who conceived the characters and the plot and directed the story and, in addition, told it with such simplicity that it will not confuse children—nor bore adults.

The answer is a pair of young fellows, Joe Barbera, who used to work in a bank in New York, and Bill Hanna, who started his film career as a janitor in a cartoon studio the day after he got out of high school.
From now on, because "Puss" is so good, Joe and Bill are a team of producers and they will have their names in large letters on every picture they make.
GET LARGE JOB
They expect to turn out six a year, which is a large undertaking, though they do have "inkers-in" and animators and photographers to perform the routine of giving life and illusion to thousands of little drawings.
Joe, who is 29 years-old, is one of the few who is both artist and story constructor. He had sold some drawings to magazines in New York while working in the bank. He went to a film-cartoon factory when the bank, for reasons of economy, reduced the number of its employees. That was five years ago.
DOESN'T DRAW MUCH
Bill doesn't draw much, but he's done about everything else in film cartooning. He and Joe, working at sundry tasks in the one-reel department, complemented each other so well that the boss, Fred Quimby, put them in the same cubbyhole office. Joe and Bill now are working on their fifth picture and the way they get them up is so unusual that it demands telling.
With their feet on their desks, they begin tossing ideas and suggestions back and forth. Bill may say, being one who prefers colloquialisms, "That's swell," or if it isn't, "That smells." Joe is a neat, precise fellow who works with his coat on, a handful of sharpened pencils and a fine regard for the King's English.
ONE SKETCHES, ONE TALKS
Barbara sketches while Bill talks. In four or five weeks, they have a rough draft—in black-and-white sketches—of the picture they intend to make. They have the sketches filmed, which is a new technique and their own idea, and thus they have a preview of the story before getting into, the expensive part of production.
One-reel cartoons cost from $30,000 to $35,000. These "rehearsals" cost about $3,000 and Joe and Bill say, with the time and effort they save by "getting rid of the bugs" first, they're able to effect quite a savings. Their finished cartoons average about $25,000. In the cartoon business, they speak of "arty" pictures which stress color and odd camera angles and freaky stuff, as "cloud effects."
SCENERY IS SECONDARY
Joe and Bill pick simple characters as the cat and the mouse in "Puss" and animate them against simple, unpretentious backgrounds. The "actors" never get lost in a maze of scenery, something which will give their pictures an unconscious appeal to the younger customers. And, says Joe:
"The idea is to make them funny. The purpose of the cartoon is to make people laugh. That's all we're trying to do."
Joe and Bill don't give a hang for "cloud effects." They can have more fun on the good old terra firma.

What did reviewers have to say? Most liked the cartoon.

“The animation of this item is the usual cat-plays-with-mouse stuff with the tables eventually reversed. The coloring is fine. Humor with injected with sly ingenuity. Ideal for the children.” (Boxoffice, March 23, 1940).
“Here is a lively color cartoon which should draw chuckles from any audience. A cat plays with a mouse until the mouse becomes desperate. However, the cat is threatened with eviction if he continues to break dishes around the house, and the mouse seizes the opportunity to avenge himself on his tormentor. Very clever animation.” (Motion Picture Daily, March 5, 1940).
“The characters are three in this ingenious and really humorous Technicolor cartoon; the cat, the mouse and the menacing feet of an old colored servant. One is pleased to see the little mouse win, although the rules were not written by the Marquis of Queensbury.” (Motion Picture Reviews, May 1940).
“In this Rudolf Ising pigmented pen point of a cat and mouse game, the little rodent comes out of the fray victor over his feline tormentor. How the victim turns the tables on his tormentor results in a gay, brightly tinted and sketched bout. Especially clever is the portrayal of the smug superiority of the cat dictator.” (Motion Picture Herald, March 9, 1940).
“This is a dandy color cartoon. A very different type of humor predominates this in which a mouse discovers one way to keep an advantage over a cat. You'll like it and so will your audience.—W. Varick Nevens, III, Alfred Co-op Theatre, Alfred, N.Y. (Motion Picture Herald, March 23, 1940).
“One of the best cartoons in many months. An idea with laughs aplenty. Play it.—C.W. Davis, Rockingham Theatre, Reidsville, N.C. (Motion Picture Herald, April 6, 1940).
“As good a cartoon as you will play this season. Very funny. —A. J. Inks, Crystal Theatre, Ligonier, Ind. (Motion Picture Herald, May 25, 1940).
“The poorest of this series. Color not so good as most of them and plot below average.—Gladys E. McArdle, Owl Theatre, Lebanon, Kansas (Motion Picture Herald, June 1, 1940).

There was one other review that seemed to mean more to Metro than anyone else. Besa Short, who booked shorts for the Interstate chain of theatres, wrote the studio to ask when more of the cat-and-mouse cartoons would be coming. According to Bill Hanna’s autobiography, that’s when the studio figured the characters had better make a return to the screen.

Puss Gets the Boot was nominated for an Oscar but lost in February 1941 to another MGM cartoon. MGM then announced, as reported by Motion Picture Daily on May 20, 1941, that it was starting “an extended two series cartoon program.” One was to star Tom and Jerry. “Titles of the cartoons planned for this group are ‘Midnight Snack,’ for release this month, ‘Comrade Nix,’ ‘Fraidy Cat,’ and ‘The Girl Friend.’” Midnight Snack came out July 19th, Fraidy Cat was released Jan. 17, 1942. It’s tough to say what the other two were.

Puss was re-issued as late as the 1962-63 season, when it appeared on screens along with the Gene Deitch Tom and Jerrys.

It’s a good thing Fred Quimby listened to Mrs. Short. If he hadn’t there would have been no more Tom and Jerry cartoons, meaning there would have been no Hanna-Barbera partnership, and that meant there would have been no TV animation studio which opened in 1957 which changed television cartoons forever.

Pipe Dream Bull

A hallucination brought on by smoking a pipe is the best part of appropriately-named MGM cartoon Pipe Dreams, though it takes about a minute and a half before the plot gets there.

Characters are made out of various tobacco products. The dream begins with discarded cigar butts as singing hobos. They meet up with a bull formed out of a pouch of tobacco, a pipe, a pipe cleaner and matches (a nod to Bull Durham tobacco).



The bull chases them. The hoboes jump into a covered ashtray for safety. The bull tries to slow down to avoid crashing into it. The friction causes the match-stick feet to catch fire.



Too late.



The crash separates all the parts of the bull and there’s a quick pan to some fancy pipes where the various parts land.



This cartoon was released in 1938 after Harman and Ising had been dropped by the studio and before they were hired back after two new studio bosses (Milt Gross and Harry Hershfield) didn’t work out.

Scaredy Ghost

There’s a ghost hiding in a closet in Who Killed Who?, the great Tex Avery Detective Story. When the bulldog detective realises it’s a ghost, he shrinks and runs away.



The ghost thinks being scared is really funny, until (s)he sees a mouse. (The ghost starts out with a man’s voice but switches to a woman’s for the purpose of the next gag).



Hey, ghost! A theatre audience is watching you and can see you’ve pulled up your skirt.



Yeah, that’s right. See for yourself.



The ghost suddenly turns modest.



The cartoon has no animators credited. Ray Abrams, Ed Love and Preston Blair, I suspect.

He Really is a Scre-am

Creepy and kooky? Mysterious and spooky? Well, their theme song said they were. But I suspect a lot of people didn’t think that of the Addams Family. I can’t help but wonder if the show was liked by kids who didn’t quite fit in because it showcased other people who didn’t quite fit in, too. And, like animated cartoons that kids love, there’s no explanation for any of the oddness on the screen. That’s just the way things are.

Is it any wonder, then, that Ted Cassidy, who played the Addams’ butler, soon found himself working in animated cartoons. Hanna-Barbera hired him starting in 1965. Cassidy had been in radio, as had others at the studio (albeit, most as actors in the Golden Age).

Today being Hallowe’en, we’ll post a couple of newspaper stories about “spooky” Ted Cassidy from the time when he first made his name answering a loud gong that shook the camera on the Addams’ set. First stop is the Binghamton Press of September 18, 1965.

Cassidy 'Lurched' to Stardom
By HAROLD STERN
Special Press Writer
Hollywood—Take heart, all you nervous unknowns who are listed as "stars" of your own new television series. Some of you are destined to survive the success or failure of your series. But you would be well advised not to count on the series to establish you. Now is the time to start doing something, about it.
Take the case of one Ted Cassidy, professional identity: Lurch.
"I came from a good job to an excellent job," Ted sums it up. "I was lucky. I missed the struggle. I don't feel I have to pay anyone back for the miserable years. I never had them."
But when you're six feet nine inches tall and you're elected to go into show business, nothing comes without a struggle. You've got to have perseverance and the intelligence to realize you're not like everybody else and to do something about it.
• • •

BORN in Pittsburgh, Cassidy attended Wesleyan College and Stetson University, studying music and drama. His voice was good enough for him to be considered by several big bands as their vocalist. He moved to Dallas where he won recognition as a disc jockey. Then gambled on a trip to Hollywood, carrying his own screen test with him.
Visits to studios and casting directors accomplished nothing and he returned to Dallas. But one of the people he saw remembered him when The Addams Family series was proposed and he was contacted and asked to audition for the role of Lurch.
One of last season's episodes, "Lurch, The Teenage Idol," pretty much sums up what's happened to Ted since. Kids all over the country are wild for him. "It's shocking to me," he told me during our conversation on the Patio of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. "I don't get the sense of doing anything of national importance. I travel to the studio, work and go home. I don't get the sense of people in Philadelphia or Detroit. I don't even realize what's being put on film.
• • •
"ONLY when I tour, or when the Georgia Tech football team visits me, or when a stream of kids come to my door do I realize the impact I have. The kids are constant, kids by the carloads, kids on skateboards, kids looking for any excuse to come up to look or to talk to me. The only way I've found to preserve any normalcy is to give them the autographs and pictures they want. Then they'll finally accept the fact I'm human and after that they won't come to stare but they'll wave at me when they go by.
"I think kids like Lurch because he's kind of an earthbound superman. They know he's physically strong and they sense that he's a gentle man who loves kids. About the only prototype I can think of is the family dog. Lurch isn't voluble, but he's an aesthete. He plays the harpsichord and he appreciates Mozart and Bach. And he's big and strong enough to get away with it.
"There is no gainsaying that Lurch has put me where I am today," Cassidy said. "Lurch bought the house I live in. But what's going to happen to a guy like me when it's over? What happens when the show dies in maybe five years? Do I die too? No! I want to go on with other things.
"I went to Capitol Records a while ago with an idea that's finally come to fruition. We've made a record. Half the character of Lurch is the sound, So, how do you get the sound on a record? With a dance! "The Lurch,' of course. Capitol dug it and it took us three sessions to cut it, but it's out now.
"How can it miss being a smash, it's a presold item! What I'm banking on is the other side called 'Wesley.' It's kind of like the Walter Brennan treatment of 'Old Rivers,' a philosophical, down home narrative with a country and western beat.
"But acting is unlike any other profession in the world. It's a succession of jobs. When The Addams Family ends, however good you may be, if you're the greatest talent in the whole world, when that job ends, you end. My getting the show was a million-to-one shot. Everything broke just right. When you think about it, I'm the only one in the series who isn't an experienced professional. I don't even know if I'm an actor yet. "Will I be able to make it in films because of my size? I wish I knew."

Cassidy hit the road promoting the show. A reporter with the Rochester Democrat-Chronicle tagged along with him on one leg of a publicity junket and put this into type on December 5, 1965. There’s good news for cat lovers in this story.

He's a 'Most Likable Person'
By JOHN HEISNER
Democrat and Chronicle TV-Radio Editor
"Hey man," the cabbie said apprehensively as he looked up at the brute of a man who had just slid into the front seat beside him, "you're bigger 'n John Wayne."
"Well, maybe physically," the big man boomed forth, "but not as a box office attraction."
"Yet..." a voice quietly opined from the rear of the cab.
The big man—he's 6 feet, 9 inches tall and weighs in at 250 pounds, give or take a ton—was Ted Cassidy, perhaps better known as Lurch of TV's "The Addams Family." The voice from the back seat belonged to one of our small party. And if the cabbie felt a bit crushed in the driver's seat of the taxi, we weren't doing much better on the other side of Cassidy, squeezed against the door.
A few minutes later we scrambled from the cab at the University Club, where we dined prior to heading out to Hedges Nine Mile Point establishment in Webster and, it was hoped, a little relaxation for Cassidy. He had been signing autographs, making appearances and in general working like a numb zombie all day long in Rochester in behalf of his show. But it just wasn't going to be that easy.
Example:
As we left the University Club a passerby gave a double take, walked back to our group, tapped one of us on file shoulder and asked, almost whisperingly, "Say, isn't that fellow Lurch?"
Advised that he was indeed Lurch, the man stuck his hand at tbe big fellow and said, "Hey, I just want to shake your hand. Boy, wait'll my kids hear about this!"

He turned and wafted away, but grabbed another passerby by the shoulder, pointed in our direction, and started talking.
Later, at Hedges, it was the same way. People would walk in, look at Cassidy, and ask him to sign just about anything they could get their hands on.
"Doesn't this get to you after awhile?" we asked.
"Sure," he replied, doing his best to autograph a tissue for a woman with the sniffles. "But you kind of get automatic about the whole business. You know, a piece of paper appears in front of you and you sign it, hardly thinking about it."
We liked as how that could get a bit dangerous if one became careless, and he agreed, doing his best to sign something that looked like a mutilated label from a beer bottle.
Maybe it's because he's relatively new at this star business—he had had no great experience before the movie cameras or with toe intricate demands of Hollywood-type TV production prior to getting the rote on "The Addams Family"—but Ted Cassidy is the most personable, easy talking and downright likable person we have talked with from the world of show business in many a moon.
Our conversation ranged over such topics as how shocking it often is to people if they try to go back to times and places of their childhood, through such things as how so much of our humor is based on the failings of people or the trouble in which they find themselves, to an explanation of why Cassidy likes cats.
"They can't be ruled," he said. "Cats are different from dogs in that you can train dogs to do just about anything. But cats..". well, it's a different matter with them. You can love them, pet them, and take excellent care of them, but if they don't want to do something, well, you'd better give up.
"It's their independence that I admire," he explained. Perhaps it's the same kind of independence that Cassidy possesses. He wants to go far in his chosen profession, beyond and up from his current role.
He says he'd like to portray villains, that he feels he should be pretty good at it.
And if the initial look on that cabbie's face as he watched that 6-foot, 9-inch giant slip into the taxi next to him is an example of how Cassidy would affect viewers, then it doesn't take much to imagine how he would make out as a TV or movie villain.

The Addams Family lasted only two seasons in prime time but found a lot of popularity in daytime syndication until black-and-white shows disappeared from the small screen. But that wasn’t the end of Lurch for Cassidy; he continued to play the character in various animated cartoon versions. He could have been known for something else. Jack Martin of the New York Post reported on May 25, 1979 that Cassidy had beat Atlanta Falcons lineman Pat Howell for the role as the Incredible Hulk, but Lou Ferrigno was cast. That’s because Cassidy died the previous January. His fiancée, actress Sandra Griego, told Dick Kleiner of the Newspaper Enterprise Association in March that Cassidy was “registered in the hospital where he died under an assumed name (Theodore Case). She says that was done ‘to protect his humanity from the Lurch image’.”

Regardless of how Cassidy eventually felt about being known only as Lurch, Addams Family fans, I suspect, think he was altogether ooky.

A Witch's Tale to Tom

Tom is deathly afraid as he listens to “The Witch’s Tale” on his radio in Fraidy Cat. It’s perhaps even scarier because “The Witch’s Tale” went off the air in 1938 and the cartoon was released in 1942. An unexplained, chilling voice from the past coming out of the radio! Bwaa-ha-haaaa!

“The Witch’s Tale” starred Martha Wentworth as Old Nancy, the elderly witch. Wentworth reprised her role in Fraidy Cat, cackling and relating a tale of mocking, echoing laughter as a girl is trapped in a lonely tower.



Joe Barbera (with an assist from his gag writer, perhaps) comes up with visual puns narrated by the witch. Tom acts them out as he listens.

“The helpless girl feels her hair stand on end.”



“Icy chills race down her spine.” A large ice cube eventually forms and clunks to the floor.



“Her heart leaps into her throat.”



A scream is heard on the radio. Tom races out in fear (after his feet rotate in mid-air for about two seconds). Notice how Tom still has his eyes on the radio.



No animators are credited. Barbera and Bill Hanna get the only credit. Scott Bradley contributes an appropriate score with woodwinds during the witch’s frightening story.

Tom's Haunted Mouse

Haunted Mouse (1965) really is a misnamed cartoon. “Haunted” means there’s a ghost or goblin or something of a similar nature scaring everyone.

Chuck Jones and co-writer Jim Pabian set us up for a fearful cartoon at the beginning. A sinister shadow appears on the horizon. What kind of apparition could be it be?



It’s a mouse. A magician mouse. Sorry, Chuck, but a magician doesn’t haunt anything. There were animators known to haunt a few bars, though. The mouse trots along to a jaunty, jazzy tune by Gene Poddany.



The Jerry lookalike gives us one of those smug side-looks. Hey, Chuck, this isn’t a Wile E. Coyote cartoon!



Ken Harris, Ben Washam, Tom Ray and Don Towsley are the animators, with Maurice Noble getting a co-director credit.

We’ll have a haunted Tom and Jerry cartoon tomorrow.

Jack Benny, Tricker or Treater?

This is a Hallowe’en tale about Jack Benny that isn’t.

Erskine Johnson put together a syndicated column in 1959 with the idea of crafting a story either about Jeanne Crain or trick-or-treating. It’s mostly about Crain but Benny ended up being the point of it all. It appeared in papers starting around November 2nd.

I must admit, when transcribing this, I was surprised by Johnson’s use of an uncomplimentary term referring to illegal Mexican immigrants.

The Night Jack Benny Gave Money Away
By Erskine Johnson
NEA Staff Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD — (NEA) — The guide book to Halloween fun doesn't mention it, but we can report today that Jennne Crain lives in the Mother Lode country of trick or treat. You just wouldn't believe what goes on along Jeanne's block in Beverly Hills.
"Last year I kept count," she told me, "and 602 kids rang our bell."
It all started, you see, on "The Night Jack Benny gave Half Dollars Away."
That's right, Jack Benny!
He's one of Jeanne's neighbors along with Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Thomas Mitchell, Rosemary Clooney and Jose Ferrer, Ira Gershwin, Diana Lynn and, the last time Jeanne counted them — "a total of 27 children."
Five of them are Jeanne's and next year she and hubby Paul Brinkman will have six.
Well, anyway, Jack probably told Mary, "No kid is going to call ME a cheapskate."
So every Halloween night since Jack unlocked his basement vault and handed out those half dollars there has been a kiddie rush to Jeanne's neighborhood, where the treats, she says, seem to get "bigger and better every year."
Like wetbacks sneaking across the Mexican border, kids pile into the land of plenty from all over town, brought by parents in autos and station wagons.
"Last year," Jeanne said, "someone had a jar full of pennies — and they let the kids take home as many as they could grab in one hand."
There's no official record of Jack repeating his half dollar treats but if he does the kids and the neighbors, well-stocked with generous treat gifts, will be ready for him. Keeping up with the Beverly Hills Joneses named Jack and Desi and Ira isn't like Peoria, you know.
Keeping up with the stork, her big family and her career is much simpler, Jeanne indicated, except, of course, for such minor things like her nine-year-old Tim occasionally upsetting the household ("He's a character — he thinks he's Jerry Lewis") and a movie director telling Jeanne:
"I want you to give me a sexy, boyish walk."
"Now, really," the gorgeous red head laughed.
But the director had a point, she admitted. It was for her early scenes with Alan Ladd in the film. "Guns of the Timberland," in which she plays a western ranch boss. For the first 15 minutes of the film. Ladd and the audience aren't supposed to know whether she's a boy or a girl when she's seen in cowboy duds, breaking a bronco.
Playing a murderess in her first telefilm, "Riverboat," was something else again. Jeanne said the frantic pace just couldn't compare with live shows she has done in New York.
"The live shows were easy in comparison," she said, recalling the hours until 1 a.m. and struggling through a muddy swamp. "And when I climbed out of the swamp, the assistant director said: ‘And now Miss Crane, we will go to the dinner scene. Have your hair fixed and change into that fancy dress QUICKLY.’
"Give me the live shows," Jeanne pleaded. Then she took off for the Farmer's Market, still obviously haunted by "The Night Jack Benny Gave Half Dollars Away."
"I'm thinking," she winced as she left, "of individual five-pound candy boxes this year. Paul suggested individual, gift wrapped speedboats," but I talked him out of it."

Boogie Woogie Calker

Walter Lantz turned out some pretty good cartoons in the 1940s.

He had some extremely talented artists. He had a versatile musical director/arranger. Together, they combined for two different musical series in that decade.

While the Musical Miniatures had some fine animation timed very well to classical music by director Dick Lundy, I may be more partial to the Swing Symphonies simply because I enjoy the boogie woogie and big band sounds put together by Darrell Calker and the musicians he was able to round up.

Lantz made 14 Swing Symphonies from 1941 to 1945 but actually had two precursors in that first year—Scrub Me Mamma With a Boogie Beat and Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company “B”, which reused some animation from the first cartoon. The later received an Academy Award nomination. Interestingly, it was also profiled in Movie-Radio Guide of July 25, 1941 on its “Recommends” pages. It was rare a cartoon received that privilege, and considering Walt Disney’s towering reputation, it’s odd a Lantz cartoon would be picked.

The story in this cartoon was credited to Bugs Hardaway and Lowell Elliot.



Variety announced on April 9, 1941: “Walter Lantz has bought the ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B’ number used in Universal’s ‘Buck Privates’, and will make an animated cartoon of the song for Universal release.” The film was released on September 1, 1941. The following January 27th, Variety reported the cartoon had been nominated for an Oscar along with “two Walt Disney cartoons yet to be named.” It was one of those Disney cartoons that landed the prize (Lend a Paw).

The animation credits in the cartoon go to Alex Lovy and La Verne Harding. Lovy was credited as an animator in each cartoon around this time, and it’s possible he could have been helping Lantz supervise this one, much like the first-named animator in the Fleischer cartoons was a head animator/director. Hal Mason, Les Kline, Ralph Somerville and Frank Tipper were also on Lantz’s animation staff about this time. They weren’t quite the A-listers that Lantz had later in the decade but they were capable.

About the only place this cartoon falls down is in the gagging department. Hardaway’s sense of humour generally varied from lame puns he thought were really funny, to the obvious, to the surreal. A few years after this cartoon appeared, Shamus Culhane arrived at Lantz to direct and immediately battled Hardaway’s unsophisticated sense of humour. Today, of course, this cartoon has the added handicap of stereotypical, minstrelsy black caricatures (and dice and razor jokes) which leave some people horrified. Incidentally, the Norfolk New Guide and Journal, a black newspaper, published a feature article on January 24, 1942 about Ann Rhodelle Johnson of the Lichtman Theatres, the “only colored woman short subjects booker for a major theatre chain in this country” who booked Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy into 24 houses to play with Murder By Invitation.

At least Hardaway didn’t use his flat, inexpressive voice like he did for Woody Woodpecker. Danny Webb plays the sergeant and an African-American was selected to play the title character.

Some contemporary reviews talk about this cartoon appealing to young people because of the music. Whatever the case, Lantz decided swing cartoons were the way to go. Variety announced the new series in its November 6, 1941 issue, and that 21 Dollars a Day would be released around Christmas time. That’s even though the Swing Symphonies cost extra to make. Knock Knock was made in 1940 for $8,500. Scrub Me Mama cost $10,000 (perhaps that’s why Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy reused animation—to save money) and others went up to $12,000 in 1942.

“I think I made some of the most interesting musical cartoons ever made,” Lantz told author Joe Adamson. More interesting than the Screen Songs at Fleischers? Or Leon Schlesinger’s characters bopping along to those great tunes from Warners musicals of the ‘30s? Whatever the case, Darrell Calker and the rest of the Lantz crew did fill soundtracks of the studio’s cartoons of the ‘40s with some great music.

Knitting Brows

“First, put the sweet lovable mouse into a simple situation expressing a natural human need...The result may not make sense, but it will last long enough for you to be comfortably seated before the feature begins.” So says narrator Allen Swift in an aware, apt and ironic description of the Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry cartoons in The Tom and Jerry Cartoon Kit (1962), which happens to be a Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry cartoon.

The “result” in this cartoon kind of doesn’t make sense. The plot moves along from a battle spitting out watermelon seeds to a battle involving judo. Meanwhile, Gene Deitch is interested in visual effects. Backgrounds, a lot of the time, consist of solid colour which changes depending on the characters’ mood. Settings and even characters fade out when they become unnecessary. At least Deitch and animation director Vaclav Bedrich are trying something different.

There’s one effect that’s a pretty good visual pun. An annoyed Tom’s eyebrows sprout knitting needles. The cat knits his brows—into a turtleneck sweater. Tom fades away. All that’s left is the sweater. Suddenly, Tom pops into the sweater. It’s a turtleneck like some palooka would wear and, indeed, the setting of a boxing gym descends from the top of the screen.



The very able Chris Jenkyns wrote the story.