This Trolley is Out of Control

“If the first of these new cartoon comedies for Universal release is an indication of what is to come,” declared Chester J. Smith in the Motion Picture News, “then this series is destined to win much popular favor. They are cleverly drawn, well executed, brimful of action and fairly abounding in humorous situations.”

The “new cartoon comedies” being referred to were Walt Disney’s shorts starring Oswald the rabbit, the first being Trolley Troubles, released on September 5, 1927. It’s still amusing after all these years.

There are a number of scenes with cycle animation, including a neat one that opens the cartoon where 55 drawings of child rabbits and a cat move around the trolley while Oswald (in a separate layer of animation) dusts it off. A simpler one is eight drawings of Oswald’s out-of-control trolley rolling down a hill.



Put the cycle together and it looks like this:



From what I gather, Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harman and Friz Freleng were among the animators of this cartoon.

The One, The Only, Fenneman

George Fenneman was more important to the success of You Bet Your Life than people realise and his absence may explain why revivals of the show have failed.

Groucho Marx was wonderfully caustic and insulting to contestants, but his show needed to have a bit of a balance. It couldn’t look like the naïve people coming onto the set were being unmercifully picked on. On You Bet Your Life, Fenneman helped soften the blow. He came across as someone at kin with the contestants because he’d get insulted, too. It was like he was on their side and, because he was involved in the show, he gave the viewer the impression he’d speak up for, and defend, the contestants if Groucho went too far.

Fenneman’s fame came with Groucho. He wasn’t one of the big name announcers, a guy like Jimmy Wallington or Ken Carpenter, when he was hired in 1948 for the second season of the radio version of You Bet Your Life. He was an ABC staff announcer in Los Angeles who had done a couple of network shows, Hilltop House and (briefly) I Deal in Crime. The way he put it, he ran into Groucho’s director, someone he had worked with in San Francisco, who urged him to audition for the job and got the job. That’s not quite it. He replaced Jack Slattery, who left the show after the first year for some reason. Fenneman stayed it until the end, and used it as a springboard for his own hosting and producing career.

How did Fenneman cope on You Bet Your Life? Let’s find out. Here’s a story from November 19, 1953. The show had jumped from ABC to CBS to NBC and then to television in 1950 where it prospered.

Acid Ribbing Defended By Groucho Announcer
By ALINE MOSBY
United Press Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD (U.P.)—Groucho Marx should not be cited for cruelty to contestants, his announcer insisted today, because any amateur felled by Groucho's barbs "is somebody who deserves them."
Some television and radio fans Groucho's top NBC shows mourn while the master of sharp wit breaks up an audience with laughter at a hapless contestant's expense.
But George Fenneman, the handsome announcer on the program who is mercilessly ribbed himself by Groucho, defended the mustached comedian.
"Most people he gives a bad deserve it," said Fenneman as relaxed at home out of reach the eyebrow-wiggling Marx.
Stuffed Shirts
"Sometimes he's tough on a person who doesn't deserve it, because opportunity for good gags is there, but usually it's some stuffed shirt who's out of relation with the world—somebody who takes himself too seriously."
One of Fenneman's pre-show duties is to calm contestants who tremble over what Groucho may to them. But not one contestant has ever stomped home after the program in anger or embarrassment, he said.
Fenneman himself is one of the "Patsies" who is squelched by Groucho's piercing humor, and the announcer humbly thinks he deserves it, too.
In Category
"Groucho's wit takes apart things that at are supposed to be dignified and sacred, and an announcer of commercials is in that category," he admitted.
"The whole show for me is a nightmare. When I start to introduce a contestant, Groucho will say, 'Smile, smile, this is a fun show, look idiotic, Fenneman. Show them your teeth.'
"I smile so much Groucho calls me Laughing Boy. Now when I go into service stations and barber shops people say, 'Hello, Laughing Boy,' and howl."
Fenneman for years tried to deliver his commercials under Groucho's heckling. Now he has learned the only way to keep the sponsor from ulcers is to film the blurbs in advance when Marx isn't around to blow cigar smoke in his face.
Job Is Fun
Now I used to be flustered on the show, but now it's fun," George said. "I'm the underdog, which is wonderful. The fans have sympathy for me."
Once a contestant, name of Gonzales Gonzales, was so hilarious he was signed to a movie contract. "Believe me, he got the better of Groucho only because Groucho let him," said the announcer, nodding wisely. "You don't have the last word with Groucho if he doesn't want you to."

You Bet Your Life went off the air in 1961. Groucho came back without Fenneman in 1962. A success it wasn’t. Fenneman was still busy, though. Here’s a story that’s cobbled together from a couple of papers that subscribed to the Los Angeles Herald Examiner’s syndicate. It appeared in 1961. Yes, the woman in the photo accompanying the article later went on to work on Let’s Make a Deal.

George Fenneman Isn’t a Softie Anymore
Life With Groucho Did It
By CHARLES DENTON
THE commercial announcer is to television what the plate umpire is to baseball—a guy everyone loves to hate. The only difference is that the announcer is spared direct physical contact with his multitudes of detractors. The beer bottles toned at him crash harmlessly through the picture tubes of irate viewers instead of bouncing off his noggin.
Still, it isn't the sort of career many parents would pick for their offspring, which may be a grave mistake when you consider what electronic salesmanship has done for George Fenneman, as slick a hand with a jug of hair tonic or a new brand of canned eels as you're apt to find.
Not only has the dapper Fenneman managed to slap out a better than average living for quite a spell—14 years on Groucho Marx's radio and TV shows alone —spreading sponsorial messages, but he has become host of his own daytime show. Your Surprise Package and has a panel show, Take My Advice, in the works.
• • •
AND WHILE GEORGE is far too honest a gent to say that he's never had a twinge of conscience over some of his spiel-binding, he doesn't feel that his psyche has been permanently damaged by it.
"I've been lucky, I guess,” he conceded. "With a few exceptions I've been associated with sponsors and products I could believe in.
"Oh, I've done a few things I've been ashamed of, sure, but the grand average has been pretty good. Anyway, I feel that if people watch me do a bad commercial, they shouldn't be watching."
Fenneman admitted that he's had his share of beefs from the buying public about video huckstering. "And by now they're pretty unfunny, too." he said grimly, "because I've heard them all. My rejoinder is that if the complainers exercise restraint, if they stop buying the products, sponsors will change their commercials. You can always turn that set off, you know?"
• • •
AS A MATTER OF fact, Fenneman detects an upswing in the quality of TV commercials.
"At least now I can negotiate with sponsors," he explained. "Maybe it's just because I'm better known, but I can get things changed in commercials if I feel uncomfortable about them. And I don't have to yell any more, either. I just tell them to get another boy.
"Of course," he shrugged, "you can do that when you don't need the money. When you need it, you yell."
One development in parlor playhouse pitching that disturbs George is the increasing use of actors to deliver the commercials on their own shows.
"I'm always glad when they fall flat," he said gleefully. "Not only because they're taking a job away, but also because they don't do commercials well. Just as I'm no actor, actors should realize there's more to selling than holding up the pack of cigarets."
• • •
FOURTEEN YEARS (including radio) of taking rapier insults from Groucho have toughened Fenneman, yet left him sad with memories.
"I actually, in the beginning, went home and cried in my pillow every night over the insults from Groucho, and then I suddenly realized that this was Groucho's work, and that all I needed was 'this show.' And now look at me," says George, the biggest quiz show winner of all time.
George recalls the time on Groucho's show when a weight-lifter picked him up like a rag doll and perched George on his shoulder and how Groucho laughed that maniacal laugh and how George would have liked to kill both of them.
• • •
THEN THERE were the LeGarde twins, a pair of bullwhip artists. George was just recovering from a double hernia operation, and Groucho knew his quiz helper was walking around very gingerly. But when the LeGardes needed a sucker to pose with a cigarette and have it whipped from his lips, Groucho offered up George. At the last second Groucho relented, and George was let off the hook—but not before he had sweat off two pounds and nearly another hernia.
George relived, too, that thrilling moment when his hero, Gen. Omar Bradley, came on the show as a contestant. It was the only time he ever asked any of Groucho's guests for an autograph.
Remember the dame that brought 65 of her 159 cats to the show? George does, because he is allergic to cat hair and becomes an asthmatic case if a cat brushes him.
That was the night he flatly told Groucho he would not appear on stage with the cats. He did, though, and didn't sneeze once.
George was more afraid of Groucho than his allergy, apparently.
• • •
THE ONE TIME Groucho advised George was after the latter hired his own press agent, the high powered pressure artist, Russell Birdwell.
"Fire him," Groucho told George. "All you need is the show."
George decided Groucho was right, but before he could shake off Birdwell, he had cost George $16,000, and George says all he has to show for it is some mentions of his name in the tradepapers and two lunches at Romanoff's.
Besides hosting his own weekday show, Your Surprise Package. George has become "the Lipton Tea man." The Lipton people snapped up George last summer to do their commercials at the political conventions, after actor Eddie Albert had failed to cast the right image.

Groucho was not in the best of shape, physically or mentally, in 1977 when he died. Fenneman went to see him, hugged him, and Groucho’s mind clicked and came up with “Fenneman, you were always a lousy dancer.” It seems their on-camera relationship wasn’t Hollywood phoniness at all.

I Like Rubber Hose

A fine example of rubber hose animation can be found in the Warner Bros. cartoon I Like Mountain Music (1933). Yeah, it’s got the usual Harman-Ising formula, but there’s a great spaghetti arm/leg yodeller who joins in one of the innumerable choruses of the title song.



He jumps into the next scene to join a very non rubber-hosed flapper for more of the song.



Cycles, re-used animation, celebrity caricatures for no reason, bad impressions (the Edward G. Robinson isn’t close), the good guys ganging up on the bad guys in the second half; it’s all here. Friz Freleng and Larry Martin are the credited animators.

The Sun Sets (With Some Help)

Egghead is used as a running gag device in several of Tex Avery’s cartoons, including the first of his travelogue spoofs, The Isle of Pingo Pongo (1938).

He pops up a few times, carrying a bass fiddle case, asking “Now, boss?” to narrator Gil Warren. “No, not now,” Warren responds. Finally, we get to the end of our visit to Pingo Pongo, and Warren launches into the usual “As the sun sinks slowly in the west.” Only it doesn’t. Carl Stalling’s soundtrack and Warren’s narration start again. The sun won’t budge. Egghead returns. “Now, boss?” The narrator agrees. Egghead shoots the sun out of the sky and lets out with a gooney horse laugh as the iris closes slowly on the screen.



These screen grabs may be the best quality you’ll ever see of this cartoon. Half of Pingo Pongo features gags involving Africans or South Pacificans or blackened natives of some kind with oversized lips so it’ll likely never be restored for public viewing.

The American Habit

Jack Benny’s friends liked two Jack Bennys.

There was the one they saw and talked to in their daily lives. And there was the one they saw on television and had heard for years on the radio before that.

Jack found himself not only doing “cheap” jokes on the air and, occasionally, in interviews. At times, he was in character in front of his friends. They wanted to laugh at the tightwad, too.

Here’s an example from a United Press International column of February 10, 1960. Jack also has time to tell the columnist why his character was so popular all those years, among other things. The quote attributed to Fred Allen, by the way, was actually made by Jack’s former writer Harry Conn; Conn was basically saying his words made Benny. Jack’s career lasted about 40 years after Conn stopped writing for him.

Jack Benny Is An American Habit After 28 Years On Radio, Television
By RICK DU BROW
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) — Jack Benny is an American habit.
For 28 years, it has been a Sunday night ritual in millions of homes to tune in the radio or TV set and listen to him portray himself as a miser who tortures people with his violin - playing and won't admit he's over 39.
There are those who believe that's the way Benny really is, with the result, says Benny, "that I have to overtip."
Yet no penny-pincher was ever more popular. Why? The answer is the key to his show's continued success.
Underdog From Beginning

"From the beginning," he explains, "I was the underdog, the guy with all the human frailties."
How did he conceive the cheapskate character?
"Well," he recalled at lunch on the terrace of the CBS-TV studio, "it was, in a sense, an accident. Years ago, I did a couple of jokes about being cheap, and they got laughs. So I added a couple more and established the character.
"It's a lot easier to work now because I don't have to establish the character when I walk out on a stage. People are laughing in advance."
Several months ago, for instance, Benny addressed the Beverly Hills Bar Association, which includes many of his friends— but on-stage, even they expected him to be in character, and he was.
Lincoln His Favorite
"My favorite lawyer," he said, "was Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln once walked 12 miles barefoot to return a library book and save three cents. That's my kind of guy."
When the lawyers appointed him Chief Justice of the "Ancient and independent Province of Beverly Hills," he replied that he was "glad to know that the violin is no longer my only means of support.
"I don't deserve all these kind words," he added, "but as a friend of mine said. 'I've got arthritis and I don't deserve that either'."
Off-stage, however, no actor could be more different from his role. Benny is serious, generous, an accomplished violinist, and freely admits to being 65.
His seriousness highlights his one flaw as a comedian. He is no ad-libber. His old feuding partner on radio, the late Fred Allen, once told him: "You couldn't ad lib a belch after a Hungarian dinner."
Needles Himself
Benny needles himself. Once, when Allen was heckling him, he said: "If I had my writers here, you wouldn't talk to me like that and get away with it."
Benny's generosity is best-known to the musicians of many of the nation's symphony orchestras. For the last three and a half years; he has played violin concert dates in such cities as St. Louis, Detroit and Rochester, N.Y., for the benefit of the musicians themselves.
He refuses to accept pay for the concerts, which have poured about $1,700,000 into the treasuries of non-profit symphony associations to further the cause of good music.
"I used to be a musician," said Benny, "and I know classical music is a losing business. I admire and love people who devote their lives to it. I fool around a little, of course, during the concerts but it's worth it to make it a success."
The concerts have been such a success that last November, in Washington, D.C., he was awarded the Laurel Leaf Award of the American Composers Alliance for his distinguished contributions to music.
Music Above Politics
A guest at the affair, Vice President Richard M. Nixon, joined Benny at the piano for an impromptu duet.
Benny, who claims his music is above politics, also is a bosom friend of another sometime accompanist, former President Harry S. Truman, who appeared on his TV show last October.
"He was the easiest guest I ever got," said the comedian. "Our friendship started when he was Vice President and I went to Washington to make an appearance for Franklin D. Roosevelt.
"I met Harry at dinner, and we became quite friendly. We always exchange things on our birthdays. It's not political at all.
"A funny thing happened once when I tried to call him on his birthday, which I do every year. I was in Palm Springs, and I called my secretary in Hollywood six times to make the call — but he didn't answer.
"So I called Harry direct and got him in about one second, right on the dias where he was sitting in Kansas City. I wished him a happy birthday. Then I called my secretary again and still couldn't get him."
What does Benny think of Nixon, and Truman as pianists?
"Well," he said with his classic pained look, "they play a little in one key."

Some Words From Walter Lantz

Walter Lantz was still busy in his 80s, though he wasn’t making cartoons any more. He was travelling here and there, being honoured and giving interviews.

Here are a couple of newspaper features from 1982, one without a byline. Ignore the canard about Woody Woodpecker being invented on Lantz’ honeymoon a year after he debuted on screen, and the one about Woody’s laugh being based on a bugle call. The first story is from May 19th, the second from November 18th. The photos were grabbed off the internet and didn’t come with the stories.

Incidentally, regarding Lantz’s age in these stories, his birth year was given as 1900 at the time of his death. It was learned afterward he was actually born in 1899.

Cartoonist Walter Lantz: 60 years with one studio
By Bob Thomas
Associated Press Writer
HOLLYWOOD — It might not make the Guinness Book of Records, but in the transitory movie world, a 60-year contract with a single studio is nothing less than phenomenal.
Walter Lantz, father of Woody Woodpecker, Andy Panda, Chilly Willy the penguin and a host of other cartoon stars, recently signed another contract with Universal Pictures, with which he started in 1927. The new deal extends to 1987, when Lantz expects to still be going strong at 87.
"That's not all that's happening," says the stubby, energetic Lantz. "Woody is going to be in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade this year for the first time. And we're opening an exhibit on the Universal Studio Tour that will include a lot of our memorabilia and a 15-minute documentary that we just filmed.
"All of our licensees are sending products for the exhibit. We have over 100 products, everything from T-shirts, shoes, dolls to pens, pencils, pads, stationery."
Walter Lantz Productions now operates at offices in the former Technicolor building in the heart of Hollywood. Lantz gave up cartoon-making five years ago. He explains: "I quit when I discovered I was paying $50,000 for a six-minute short that cost $12,000 to $15,000 in the 1930s. I've always financed my own pictures and I said, 'Hell, I'll go broke if I stay in production.' It's lucky I quit. Those cartoons would cost $100,000 today."
Universal continues to release 13 Lantz cartoons a year to the world's theaters, as well as 185 to television. Lantz is planning to produce half-hour and hour specials for TV. There's plenty to keep him and Gracie busy.
Grace is Walter's sprightly 79-year-old wife and the voice of Woody Woodpecker. The story is that when they were honeymooning in 1950, a pesky woodpecker pounded on the roof of their cabin at nearby Lake Sherwood.
"That's how we got the idea for Woody," Lantz recalls. "Mel Blanc did the voice at first. Then Warner Bros. signed him to an exclusive contract, and Gracie took over. She's been doing Woody for 32 years."
Woody's loony manner and "ah-ah-ah-HA-ha" laugh became a national sensation, and Lantz had found the biggest star in a cartoon career that began in 1915. As a boy, he began washing brushes for Winsor McCay, who had started a cartoon studio for William Randolph Hearst. Lantz worked his way up through the New York animation studios, moved to Hollywood as a gag writer for Mack Sennett in 1926, started making cartoons for Universal a year later. "I've lasted through seven regimes at Universal," he says wonderingly.
The secret of his longevity?
"Making cartoons for theaters, I always aimed for things that would make people laugh. We did stories that didn't require dialogue, and we never made them topical. That's why they don't age.
"I've always liked slapstick humor, broad gags that create bellylaughs. I know cartoons have been criticized as too violent. But nobody dies, nobody bleeds, nobody gets hurt. I've never received a letter from a parent or a schoolteacher complaining that my cartoons were too violent or had racial slurs."
Lantz has found another way to make Woody Woodpecker pay off. He spends a few hours a day at oil paintings of Woody in poses like Mona Lisa and Blueboy. A Honolulu gallery sells them at prices ranging from $10,000 to $30,000, Lantz said proudly.

Woody Woodpecker take his place in Smithsonian
WASHINGTON (UPI) — If the Gallup Poll were to conduct a survey to determine the five most popular movie cartoon characters in cinema history, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, Popeye and Woody Woodpecker surely would be high up on the list.
Only one, however - Woody Woodpecker - has been honored with an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution.

That distinction was recorded Tuesday when 17 Woody Woodpecker artifacts went on display in the Smithsonian's Museum of American History.
They were now part of the popular-entertainment collection, along with such other museum-pieces as the ruby slippers Judy Garland wore in "The Wizard of Oz" and the jailhouse door from the set of the "Barney Miller" television series.
The Woody Woodpecker objects were donated to the museum by Walter Lantz, 82, pioneer animated film producer who created the first WW cartoon in 1940.
As Lantz tells it, he got the idea while on his honeymoon. A real woodpecker kept waking up the newly weds early in the morning by rapping on their cottage roof, he said.
The bride, not incidentally, was actress Grace Stafford, who subsequently became the voice of Woody. Her speciality, which she has done countless times in her 10 years of dubbing, is the famous woodpecker laugh.
Lantz said the laugh originally was based on a six-note bugle call. However, the way Mrs. Lantz does it, only five notes are detectable.
Woody's first cartoon, in which the woodpecker played second banana to Andy Panda, was called "Knock, Knock." A copy was among the treasures Lantz presented to the museum.
In all, he produced about 400 Woody Woodpecker cartoons, a feat described by Douglas Evelyn, the museum's deputy director as "a truly profound accomplishment."
In accepting "a gift of great significance," Evelyn did not indicate why the Smithsonian honored an animated woodpecker rather than, say, a mouse, a duck or a rabbit.
It could, be that Walt Disney's creations are legally restricted to amusement park promotion. Woody Woodpecker has never been associated with a venture of that sort; although he was the subject of a 1947 hit song Lantz said he quite making cartoons in 1976 because "It got to be so expensive." A six-minute Woody Woodpecker film required 7,000 drawings, 73 staff artists, an original score and four weeks of production time, he said.
For the short, balding animator, the Smithsonian ceremony was the highlight of 55 years of work for the same studio.

Midnight Stab

The expressions are the highlights of the early Tom and Jerry cartoons. You always know what the cat and mouse are thinking. In the climax of The Midnight Snack, Tom jumps on an ironing board to get Jerry only to get his tail caught in it. He realises his predicament, then does a head-shake take as he realises Jerry is trotting off into the kitchen to grab a barbecue fork.



The cat knows what’s next, even though this is only his second cartoon. He’s going to get stabbed in the butt, go flying across (and breaking) everything in front of him and land in the fridge.



Here’s how the Lillian Randolph housekeeper finds him when she opens the fridge door.



This whole sequence takes almost a minute, which shows you Bill Hanna was still using Rudy Ising-style lumbering pacing (the cartoon runs nine minutes).

Nevermiss Misses

Nathaniel Nevermiss stars in one of Tex Avery’s gags in Believe it or Else This is a 1939 version of an Avery take. Tex picked up the pace and wildness when he left Warners for MGM in 1941.



Is there a doctor in the house?



Virgil Ross is the credited animator.

Paar-Backus Feud

Jack Paar was a jerk. I’m being polite.

Need evidence? Check out these syndicated columns by Hal Humphrey, published in December 1959. Paar, for reasons known only to him, publicly put down Jim Backus. Backus fought back. Paar responded by blaming everyone but himself for the situation. Paar spent his career doing that.

As a side note, his complaint against comedians ranting about TV censorship is particularly ironic, as it came two months before he walked off his show because NBC dared to censor one of his jokes.

The first column ran December 7, 1959, the last on December 18th.

Filmtown Accepts Paar Challenge
By HAL HUMPHREY
HOLLYWOOD — Things never are quite the same in this overgrown village after Jack Paar visits us. The last time he was here Jack rapped our movie-TV stars for being poor sports and lousy adlibbers. They wouldn't go on his NBC late-night-free-for-all.
This time many of the town's elite are accepting the Paar challenge, but with such torrid results that network executives are turning grey. For the past few days NBC has been flying its "Seal of Good Practice" at half-mast.
Paar must be congratulated on one count. he has gotten us off the subject of crooked quiz shows and sullied disc jockeys.
The question is, do jokes with Jerry Lewis about perverts and aimless repartee with a "half smashed" Mickey Rooney constitute an improvement?
Through all of this the compulsive and controversial king remains relatively calm—if not too rational. He doesn't give out many interviews but was kind enough to cut up a few touches with me. I'll try to put them in a semblance of order.
“YOU KNOW, I shouldn’t say this, but the greatest disservice I do myself is making the show too easy. These little comics sit around Lindy’s and say ‘Where’d he come from?’ But just let them try to do this show,” Paar challenges.
“Jim Backus is one of them. He may be a funny man at a party, but he lost his radio show. Do you know that Backus and Reginald Gardiner were two guys I had to cancel, simply because they weren’t capable of doing this kind of show.
“I love these guys. When they can’t make it themselves they spend all of their time giving out interviews.”
The irrepressible Paar takes violent exception to those comedians who constantly rant about their wits being dulled by TV’s oppressive censorship.
“I feel no censorship. My only guides are my mother, my conscience and Billy Graham. NBC is either afraid of me or very wonderful—or maybe they don't watch my show!”
FOR THE PAST six months the Paar show has been pre-taped, except when he is away from New York At no time, according to Paar, have NBC's watchdogs previewed his tapes or made any move toward editing them.
“The taping of the show has saved me, I get home at a decent hour now and so does my staff. I wouldn’t be doing it now if they hadn't let me tape it,” Paar says, flatly.
He has been pleased and flattered by the number of stars who have volunteered to go on his Hollywood telecasts.
“Red Skelton wanted to know if I had room for him. Imagine that! He's just simply great. Jack Benny called and wanted to put on a wig and appear as a mystery relative. Is that funny?
“I have senators call me now, and a representative from Vice-President Nixon's office called the other day. Sure. I've got enemies, but I never get involved in politics.
PAAR'S latest analysis of why his show is the big success it is (sponsors pay $9,000 per minute) comes out like this:
“People keep watching because they wonder when the balloon will go up.”
He might have added that in Hollywood it never comes down.

Backus Scores Paar For Rough Discourse
By HAL HUMPHREY
(Editor's Note: Following Hal Humphrey’s interview here last week with Jack Paar, comic Jim Backus now requests "equal time.")
“Dear Hal:
“I would like to reply to the unwarranted attack leveled at me by Jack Paar which appeared in your column Monday, strangely enough on Pearl Harbor Day.
“First of all, he says I am a little comic who sits around Lindy’s. For the record, I have never set foot in that restaurant, though I confess they have my footprints in chicken fat in front of Nate and Al’s delicatessen.
"Also, though I have appeared in over 40 motion pictures only two roles could be called even faintly humorous. Unless, of course, you consider low comedy the part of Jimmy Dean's father in 'Rebel Without a Cause.' I wouldn't expect Mr. Paar to be aware of this as he admittedly spends his time in a cultural thermos bottle.
“AS FOR BEING canceled off the Jack Paar show, this is a bald-faced lie. In order to be canceled, you have to be first contracted for a show and then notified not to appear. Well, I was contracted for the Jack Paar show on seven separate occasions and appeared on those seven shows . . . Believe me, Jack Paar should really know the meaning of the word canceled, because, as even he will admit, he holds the all-time record.
"Jack Paar says, and I quote, ‘I love these guys . . . they can't make it themselves . . . they spent all their time giving out interviews.’ As for making, it for myself I would like to challenge Mr. Paar to a duel of canceled checks.
“Furthermore, I am about to start my own TV series, a comedy, if Mr. Paar will excuse the expression, the reruns of which I hope will bolster his morale when he returns to his natural habitat, the unemployment office.
“IN ANY INTERVIEW I have, ever given. I have been more than kind to our Jack. I am a big fan of his show and have said in his defense that he possesses one of the quickest wits in our business, an ability to bring out the best in people and. above all, he ‘listens funny.’
“Maybe he took umbrage at something I once said in discussing his program and his unique talent. I said, ‘You know, Jack would make a lousy guest on his own show.’ A pretty good observation, if I do say so myself.
“Please have your secretary send me a copy of this column 10 years from now, so that after a round of golf with Mickey Rooney, when he asks me, ‘Who was that balding Tom Duggan who gave me such a bad time back in '59?’ I won't answer, ‘I'm not sure. I think his name was Henry Morgan.’” JIM BACKUS

Indomitable Paar Is Full of Surprises
By HAL HUMPHREY
That indomitable fellow Jack Paar is full of surprises. On the airwaves he has great fun ambushing many of his guests with squelching bon mots. After each strike, he has a habit of looking innocently at his audience, as if to say, “Now can I help it if this poor chump wants to walk into a left hook?”
The crowd generally roars with glee, because all of us at one time or another enjoy watching our fellow man get skewered by a city slicker, or better yet, just a country boy who loves his home and family.
That's why I was so surprised to open my mail yesterday and find in it a wounded cry from the man who makes a good living by directing his rapier wit at those who willingly get themselves snaffled onto his show.
So, herewith, I give you Jack Paar, without stint:
“DEAR HAL:

“You may use this letter in your column, if you wish but only if you use it in its entirety.
“As I told you, I promised my wife I would never give another interview to the press, because you can't win an interview. I broke that promise to my wife to see you, because you were an old friend.
“I enjoyed having lunch with you that day, Hal, but I do not think the editing and putting together of what I said over the two-hour interview constituted accurate reporting in your column, and I state that while you did not misquote me, you used the provocative, controversial things I said to make me look like an egotistical and ungentlemanly person. I'm very sorry if this is the only impression you received.
“As for the Mickey Rooney incident, may I remind you and the readers of your column that I never started the affair? I was prepared to treat him, a man I had never met, with the same courtesy and respect I have shown other greats in show business.
“I'm sure you will recall you brought up the name of Jim Backus. I hope you will also recall that during my last visit here, you printed an entire column by Backus about me and that I never replied to it.
“JIM BACKUS IS an excellent actor. His narrations in the Magoo character are classics. I have nothing but respect for Jim's work. Since he chose to criticize our show and since you did seek my reply, I must point out, however, that Jim has not 'made it' in show business as a solo personality, and that, as you know, is the most difficult of all roles.
“Perhaps I am wrong, but I like to think of myself as a man of peace. I have had many feuds on this show, but I never started any. I would prefer to avoid them, but they have a habit of find me. I seem to spend wasted time fighting on other people's playing fields and by their own rules.
“As for Hollywood, our show has never been treated better than on this trip. Not that anyone in Hollywood owes us anything, but we have always been quick to all of the decent people here.
“I have been, and am now, eager and willing to spread the word that show business is an honorable profession of many honorable people, and that Hollywood is one of its logical centers.
“I regret, Hal, that we had to meet this time on your field by your rules.
My best to you,
JACK PAAR.”