She's Not Forever Blowing Bubbles

I’ve never really liked I Love to Singa (1936). Kid singers bother me. And “June-a” and “spring-a” just sound stupid; why is that “ah” sound added to the ends of words anyway?

However, director Tex Avery and whoever helped write this cartoon keep trying to win me over. The cartoon has the layered backgrounds that give a 3D effect. The radio talks back to Mama Owl (not an original Avery gag but new-ish at the time). And there’s one scene that reminds me of Avery at MGM.

An obese hen at Jack Bunny’s amateur show (“amatuer” in some drawings) gets gonged while singing “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles.” A trap door opens but she’s too fat to fall through it. Bunny helps with his trusty gong mallet.



Avery doesn’t waste time. Three bars of the song, followed by one of Treg Brown’s crash sounds and a camera shake and it’s done. Compare it to the dolt who gongs himself through the floor. Good gag but it goes on too long. The hen gag is under ten seconds. Perfect pacing.

Berneice Hansell plays the hen. I suspect Warners cartoon fans would want to gong her after hearing her baby-ish voice endlessly.

The cartoon is Avery’s parody of Warners’ The Jazz Singer (originally a stage play), so it has a happy, musical Warners-type ending (which Avery puts his own stamp on with an iris gag). Norman Spencer composed the score.

The Secret of Jack Benny

This feature story on Jack Benny saw print on October 29, 1961. It doesn’t need any introduction except perhaps to remark that some of the vignettes you’ll read below you’ve likely read before. But like Jack’s TV and radio show, with re-workings of gags and routines, they’re old favourites that don’t wear out when you read them again.

The photo accompanied the article in one paper.

Jack Benny's Life Keeps Beginning at 39 But Here’s the Sneaky Lowdown—He’s 67
How Showbiz Veteran Keeps Pulling Laughs
EDITOR'S NOTE: Few men of 39 are celebrating their 50th year in showbiz. But then few men are Jack Benny. Some say he's been using the same gags for half a century but to Benny every knock is a boost and he just keeps on fiddling while the world laughs.
By JAMES BACON
Associated Press Writer
HOLLYWOOD — Television is supposed to be sure death for comics. Excepting Jack Benny. He's just started his 12th year on home screens, his 30th in broadcasting, his 50th in showbiz.
His secret?
Says best friend George Burns: "Jack is such a nice guy that people tune him in each week hoping he'll get better."
Says violinist Isaac Stern: "When Jack walks out in tails in front of a symphony orchestra he looks like the greatest of soloists. What a shame he has to play!"
Said the late Fred Allen: "Benny couldn't ad lib a belch after a Hungarian dinner."
Says his wife, Mary Livingstone: "Jack stares audiences to death. He dares them not to laugh. Finally, the audience—never Jack—gets nervous and starts laughing hysterically."
For Benny, every knock is a boost—and no one knows it better than he. He is the all-time champion patsy, butt of all jokes—even in real life.
• • •

HE'LL BE 68 next Valentine's Day. He looks and acts 39. Well, almost.
"In fact," says Jack, "I wouldn't mind being 39 again if I felt as good as I do now."
For years Burns has played outlandish gags on Benny. No matter where Jack is playing, Burns will call him and hang up in the middle of a conversation.
"If I didn't keep up this ridiculous gag, his feelings would be hurt. He'd think I was mad at him," says Burns.
Almost anything Burns does, Jack thinks funny.
Once at a Hollywood party at producer Bill Goetz' house, entertainers like Danny Kaye and Judy Garland did impromptu bits for the guests.
• • •
BENNY, AT THEIR FINISH, asked Burns for a cigaret. Burns handed his old friend a smoke, lit it for him — and then signaled the orchestra for a fanfare.
"Ladies and gentleman," announced Burns. "Jack Benny will now do his famous cigaret bit."
Burns puffed his cigar and waited away. A perplexed Benny stood there with smoke in his face muttering: "What cigaret bit?"
George says Jack got his revenge in the most tortuous of ways.
"Every time I go to his house," says George. "He plays me some new tune he's learned on his violin."
Benny and his violin is one of Hollywood's oddities. At 67, Jack still takes lessons and practices two hours a day.
Is he good? says Jascha Heifetz.
"Only a genius could make such sounds come out of a Stradivarius."
BENNY, SMART SHOWMAN, has let others argue about his playing. In a rare comment on his ability, he said:
"Heifetz, Leonard Bernstein, Mischa Elman all think that I'm pretty good on the violin but just play lousy for laughs. Isaac Stern knows me better. He knows I can't play any better. But I love the violin."
One thing that Jack can do well is play a jazz fiddle, but his practice sessions are always the difficult classics.
Benny's first radio appearance was on a variety show in the 1931-32 season.
In a medium where everybody talked a mile-a-minute so there wouldn't be dead air, Benny calmly said:
"Hello folks, this is Jack Benny." Then he stared at the microphone for what seemed an hour.
Next, he said "There will be a slight pause while everyone says: ‘Who cares?’"
That appearance brought Benny a 13-week network offer. He has never been unemployed or unsponsored since.
Benny made the transition from radio to TV in 1950 with little effort.
"My gang just had to put on make-up and memorize lines instead of reading them," says Jack.
• • • •
FOR A WHILE, he was on TV every other week. At an age when most performers are slowing, Benny upped his schedule to one-a-week.
He added night club appearances and symphony benefits.
Benny is a show business paradox. He's a perfectionist in preparing his shows but he gives an almost lackadaisical impression while doing it — like Willie Mays snagging an outfield fly.
Some will say that he has used the same basic jokes for his 50 years of show business. Those who remember vaudeville in the twenties will recall one of Jack's routines about taking his girl out for dinner: He said something so funny she dropped her tray.
The 1961 Benny's using the same joke in another variation.
"It's not really the same joke," explains Jack. "It's a characterization."
A few years ago on one show, a gunman held up Benny with the usual threat: "Your money or your life."
All Benny had to do was ponder with that famous stare to get one of the biggest laughs of the season."
• • •
BURNS SAYS Benny's success lies in coming out like a mincing lightweight and then delivering a knockout performance.
An example of this was a recent affair in Beverly Hills when Frank Sinatra and friends—Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Joey Bishop—were on too long. Danny Thomas, the emcee, also played past the finish. (They) took three hours.
Came Benny. His quips were sharp, funny and brief. He did three minutes — and stole the whole show.
Enthusiasm is another Benny forte.
Burns recalls:
"Jack had just come from his lawyer's where he signed a contract worth a million. He joined me for lunch and was all excited.
" ‘You know what, George? I just found out that if you drive 20 miles an hour up Wilshire, you can miss all the red lights.’"
A party he tossed a few years ago at a New York automat was front-paged because only Benny, in character, would host a black-tie party at the automat complete with dance band and big names. Jack, not denying the obvious publicity value, admits there was another motive.
"When I was in vaudeville I used to eat at the automat all the time. They have certain things there, coffee and pie for instance, that are great. I always wanted to sneak in for some but I was afraid that everybody would think that I really am a miser — so I had to content myself with inferior coffee at 65 cents a cup in some plush New York restaurant. With the party, I had my coffee and pie and ate it too."

The Scoop on a Boop

Mae Questel wasn’t the only woman to voice Betty Boop and Olive Oyl for Max Fleischer, but she’s certainly the best known and, no doubt, best loved. But there was someone else, someone who provided Boop-like voices for Van Beuren cartoons as well.

She was Margie Hines.

For a time, she was also Mrs. Popeye. She married the swab who voiced the character, Jack Mercer.

Margaret Louise Hines was born in Queens, New York on October 15, 1909 to Andrew and Cecilia M. Hines. The 1930 U.S. Census lists her occupation as “singer, theatrical.” She had appeared on radio on WMRJ in Jamaica in 1929¹, the same year she won a Helen Kane contest in Brooklyn² (Questel had won the same contest in Manhattan).

The New York Sun’s Eileen Creelman wrote about Miss Boop in its story about Paramount’s short subjects on May 22, 1933, quoting the studio’s overseer of one and two-reelers, Lou Diamond. Margie gets a brief credit, more than she ever got on screen. Notice at the end the deference paid to a certain Mouse cartoon producer on the West Coast about a feature that wouldn’t be on screens for several years.

Newsreels are of course practically a necessity in any picture house. Of the others the cartoons are still the most generally popular.
Audiences like them as much if not more than ever, and producers are pleased because a six-minute cartoon can chop three minutes off the program length of a nine-minute one-reeler. That three minutes repeated several times a day can make quite a difference in the overtime salaries of the theater employees.
That little routine business fact has nothing to do with moviegoers' delight in the antics of Betty Boop and her pen-and-ink friends. Max and Dave Fleischer, veterans of the animated cartoon business, and two brothers are responsible for Betty. She is, Mr. Diamond explains with justifiable pride, the first human figure ever to make a hit with cartoon fans.
"There have been lots of other human figures," said Mr. Diamond, "'Mutt and Jeff and 'Bringing Up Father' among them. They always liked the animals better. Then we made Betty. We didn't think she was anything particular at first, just another novelty."
Her first film ran at the Rivoli. Miss Boop ran out on the screen, bowed and threw a kiss to the audience. To her creators' amazement, the audience replied with a hearty round of applause.
"Then we knew we had something." Mr. Diamond continued. "A cartoon figure that was clapped just for making a bow."
Betty, oddly enough, didn't start off as the pert little flapper she is now. She was drawn originally as a cat [sic], a cat with ears, tail and a kittenish voice. Then the animators began experimenting, subduing the ears a bit, touching up the face, dropping the tail and ears entirely at last, and leaving only the round bright-eyed face. The feline personality called for a childish voice. Marjorie Hines, the first Betty Boop, was succeeded later by May Questel. There is now still a third Betty. All three have sung on the radio under the cartoon name, and no one seems to have noticed the difference.
For all that, Helen Kane is now bringing legal complaint that the cartoon is a burlesque of her. Mr. Diamond seems more amused than worried by the suit.... Novelty, of course, is the great problem of short subject producing. Many a good idea is good only once. And there must be so many new short subjects each season. Mr. Diamond is amused by the idea of a "Betty Boop in Blunderland," carefully named so that it will not interfere with the West Coast feature, "Alice in Wonderland."

To me, Betty looks more doggish than cat-like in Dizzy Dishes. To add to the confusion, Variety called Bimbo “a mouse waiter.”³ So much for the drawings being “clear and effective,” as the trade paper proclaimed.

Diamond referred to the lawsuit by Helen Kane, who basically claimed Paramount and the Fleischer studio stole her persona, affecting her ability to work. Hines, Questel and Bonnie Poe, the other Boop voicer, all showed up in court to watch Kane lose her case; there is an Associated Press photo of them together in an old post on this blog. Hines testified “she won a preliminary contest before she ever heard Miss Kane.”⁴

As for Hines herself, here’s an unbylined story from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of September 22, 1933 about her.

New ‘Boop-a-Dooper’ Likes the Stage But—
Marjorie (Betty) Hines, Doll-Voiced and Baby-Eyed, Doesn't Crave the Heartaches—Versatile Freeport Miss Happy in Kitchen
Usually it is the young and ambitious girl who craves fame on the stage, while the family protests.
With Marjorie Hines of Freeport the situation is reversed.
On the eve of 21, slender and shapely to the tilt of 98 pounds, dark hair intriguingly curled around a tiny face, and big baby blue eyes, the young miss, who belongs to the boop-a-doop group of entertainers, says:

"Oh, I like the show business. But too many heartaches in it. Too much uncertainty."
Three years-ago the talented Freeport girl who can boop-a-doop with the best of the doll-voiced boop-a-doopers sprang overnight from the family fireside to a place behind the footlights by winning a Helen Kane imitation contest at a local cinema cathedral. She had entered, nervous and. hesitant, only at the urging of her mother and uncle.
Today her family still urge her to take advantage of the opportunities that come her way.
And Miss Hines, still heeding them, continues in the theatrical business, with decided leanings to the movies, radio and phonograph recording. And, between auditions and appearances is happy cooking in the family kitchen at 75 N. Bayview Ave. and, every Monday night, playing bridge with friends in Freeport.
Her talent at the type of singing made famous by the chubby Helen won Miss Hines after the dontest a chance to create the voice of Betty Boop of the movies.
She was the original of Betty, who, in turn, was the original femme in movie cartoons. After that she did a series called Aesop's Fables, imitating goldfish, a cat's meow or, as she said, “most anything they wanted me to.”
Freeport calls her "Betty" because of the character she played.
A boy friend? In love? Marriage?
To the first question, she admitted "Yes." To the others she responded with blushes and silence, though later she confessed that sometimes she thinks marriage and domesticity better than a career.

Why was she dropped as Betty? It couldn’t have been because Fleischer was dissatisfied with her work; the studio hired her once to replace Questel as their female voice artist after the studio moved to Miami in 1938. It could very well be her career got in the way. Variety reported on Feb. 25, 1931 that she was on her way to Omaha for a vaudeville show. She toured with bands for a time; the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette of Jan. 8, 1934 reported:

Perhaps you’ve heard her with Gus Arnheim and Huston Ray ... If not, and you go to the movies, we’re sure you’ve heard her as the voice behind those Betty Boop flicker cartoons ... That’s the way Marjorie started her career ... since then she has been many things; a baby’s cry, the voice of a gold fish, a cat’s meow! ... And now a featured orchestra singer ... The voice you have often heard in the movies as the birds and bees flitted across the screen is also a cute radio vote.

Hines married Mercer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on March 3, 1939. By now she was voicing Olive Oyl (Betty had been retired by the studio) though her version brought to mind Zasu Pitts more than anyone else. What happened to her after that is pretty much a mystery, at least judging by the popular press. Paramount took over the Fleischer studio, downsized it (it wasn’t in the animated features business any more) and moved it back to New York City. Mae Questel was Olive again.

Two more notes about Hines:

She appeared in the 1932 Vitaphone short The Perfect Suitor starring comedian Benny Rubin. The Variety review of March 22nd that year says “Girl played feebly by Marjorie Hines.” She got a better notice from the paper on December 20th when it revealed: “Larry Cowan, for RKO, has arranged for a personal appearance of Marjorie Hines, the unseen voice of Aesop’s Fables, in connection with a Christmas party at the 86th, New York, for 100 crippled orphans who are to be guests of the house Saturday (24).” RKO released Van Beuren’s Fables cartoon. Hines appeared in a Van Beuren live-action short in 1933 called The Strange Case of Hennessy starring Cliff Edwards, who cartoon fans know as the voice of Jiminy Cricket. The same year, she showed up in a Vitaphone musical short starring composer Harry Warren at a piano playing a medley of his hits, with Hines singing along to some of them.

And to your right, you see a Variety story from Nov. 17, 1931. Whether Margaret Hines is the same as Margie/Marjorie Hines, I don’t know. But it seems appropriate for men to shower the voice of Betty Boop with fineries. It might even make a nice cartoon plot.

---

1 NY Herald Tribune, May 23, 1929, pg. 25^↩
2 Variety, Dec. 25, 1929, pg. 34^↩
3 Variety, July 30, 1930, pg. 19^↩
4 United Press story, May 2, 1934^↩

Frying Duck

Effects animation abounds in The Fishing Bear, a 1940 cartoon from Rudy Ising’s unit at MGM. Bubbles, waves, splashes. And some great animation involving an electric current when an eel bites on the end of Barney Bear’s fishing rod. Barney gets zapped. Then a duck that (ahem) fouls up things gets it, too, before exploding like an electrical transformer in a lightning storm.

Notice the duck multiples.



The effects animator isn’t credited on screen, but Mike Lah recalled Ugo D’Orsi had come over from Disney and worked on shorts for both Rudy Ising and Hugh Harman. He was born in Rio de Janiero in 1897 and arrived in the U.S. from Naples, Italy in May 1928, giving his occupation as a painter. He animated for the Fleischers before coming west for a job at the Disney studio. D’Orsi was later the animation director for Graphic Films, a commercial outfit run by Les Novros, an ex-Disney artist. He died on February 12, 1964 in Los Angeles.

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.