He Wasn't Disco Peter Cottontail

Was there ever a more uncomfortable TV performer than Daryl Dragon?

Dragon is better known to the world as the Captain half of the Captain and Tennille, who turned a Neil Sedaka/Howard Greenfield song called “Love Will Keep Us Together” into an insanely-huge chart-topper in 1975.

The chirpy song quickly led ABC-TV to sign them to a contract to host a variety show in 1976. Boss Fred Silverman predicted big things, no Big Things, for them. Silverman apparently didn’t predict that Dragon came across on the tube as someone who wanted to be anywhere else but on the tube. Combine that with obvious jokes about Dragon’s hats and Silverman decided by January 1976 the show needed a new producer, a new director and less of the Captain and his wife in comedy sketches. (Freddy insisted the ratings were fine as far as he was concerned, but what else is he going to tell reporters?).

No one was more relieved that the show was cancelled than Mr. and Mrs. Dragon.

Daryl Dragon died a week ago. Three people in show business passed away the same day, all age 76. We didn’t post about Dragon then lest the blog turn into an obituary column, so we’re posting this today. It’s an Associated Press article from July 8, 1977 with the Captain and Tennille’s perspective of the cancellation of their show, the broader perspective of the demise of variety television with music stars, and at least one insipid idea their writers tried to foist on them.

It seems Dragon was as distant and enigmatic off-camera as he was on, according to Tennille’s memoire released in 2016. Yet Tennille remained close (or as close as anyone could get) to him after their divorce and she was with him when he died.

Show's end pleases singing duo
By PETER J. BOYER
LOS ANGELES (AP) — When television discovered that Sonny and Cher drew good ratings In prime time, tube executives were ecstatic. Here, they thought, is a mother lode of potential family hour filler; thus was born the bubble gum song-and-jokes variety show format.
Executives weren't sure whether it was Cher's navel or the couple's musical talents that brought in the viewers, but that didn't really matter — Tony Orlando and Dawn, Captain and Tennille and Donny and Marie Osmond were quickly drafted to come up with shows of their own.
The plan, like so many television ideas, sounded better than it worked. It turned out that folks really were tuning in to see Cher's navel, and after they had it memorized, well, the talents of the famed divorced couple didn't quite sustain them.
BUT PERHAPS THE the worst consequence of the soft-pop variety show was experienced by the musicians-turned TV performers themselves. Tony Orlando couldn't buy a hit record; Sonny and Cher might have bought Sonny and Cher records, but nobody else did; Donny and Marie didn't suffer as much in sales and neither did the Captain and Tennille, but ask that latter couple what they think of TV variety shows and then cover your ears. The Dragons think television may have been worse for them in terms of their music than for the others.
"It was hell," says Toni Tennille, the pretty, smiling half of the teenybopper's notion of the ideal couple. "Because of television we didn't have time to write. We'll never do another series in our lives, at least till I'm 55 and do a Dinah Shore talk show. It was really hell. It was not fun."
"It can be fun," says Daryl Dragon, the inevitable captain's hat pulled down over his eyebrows. "But I'll tell you what's wrong — variety shows are all based on formulas. They say, 'Well, let's do it like Donny and Marie, that show's successful.' They've never come up with a variety show that's different."
The Dragons think that television may have been worse for them — in terms of their music careers — than for the others.
"See, Donny and Marie, Sonny and Cher were just kind of 'hit and miss' singles artists," says Toni, "every now and then they'd get a hit single, but they never really were big album artists. We have been. People have come to expect quality stuff from us, and we didn't have time to write."

THEY THINK THE PROBLEM is not that pop singers can't transfer successfully to TV but that "the networks are brainwashed into a certain format," Daryl says. "Yeah," Toni joins in, getting excited, "you have to have certain guests on because they draw. They were going to take our last two shows and make them SPECIALS," pronouncing the last word with disdain.
“And that’s real cute. They wanted one to be an Easter special (“What’s wrong with the Easter Bunny? Daryl jokes). And as an opening number, they suggested a disco version of "Here Comes Peter Cottontail!"
"That's what Donny and Marie do, and there's nothing wrong with it," Daryl says.
"Right," Toni chimes, "but Donny and Marie can get away with it ... they're kids. I said, 'Look, you've got The Brady Bunch and Donny and Marie, they can do Peter Cottontail disco, that's not our thing."
IT WAS RIGHT ABOUT at that time that Captain and Tennille realized you can't be serious about your music and have a weekly television series too. They dream about the ideal music series featuring guests like Linda Ronstadt and The Eagles but in the meantime, they've returned full-time to their real vocation, "recording artists, definitely, that's what we are."
Their series, by the way, was dropped by ABC; and the Dragons couldn't be happier.
The pair, both former members of the Beach Boys, are back in their roles as pop stars. They're in the middle of a back-breaking 90-city tour and they are also back in the charts with a new album, "Come in From the Rain."
"Our new album is almost platinum," Toni says, "So as far as I can see, television hasn't really harmed us."

Speedy Bimbo

Speed lines in 1932? That’s what you’ll see in that year’s Betty Boop’s Bamboo Isle as Bimbo pilots his motor boat.



By the way, Irving Berlin wrote a song in 1920 called “My Little Bimbo Down on the Bamboo Isle.”

Seymour Kneitel and Bernie Wolf are the credited animators. The Royal Samoans make a live-action appearance.

Don't Touch That Film!

A baby alligator desperately wants to be nursed by its mother pig (a stork mixed up the delivery).



The mother pig stops it with her hoof.



Now comes a horrible edit job. The mother pig begins talking to the alligator in five drawings animated on twos (less than a second of screen time) before an abrupt cut to a baby cat and an old mouse.



What happened? The cartoon’s director, Bob Clampett, told historian Jerry Beck that the pig was supposed to say the opening line of the old Blondie radio show which went “Ah, ah, ah! Don’t touch that dial!” but the movie censor office ordered it cut out. Why the studio didn’t excise the preceding ten frames along with the gag line, I don’t know.

Animation credits go to Rod Scribner, Manny Gould, Bill Melendez and Izzy Ellis. Oh, the cartoon is Baby Bottleneck.

The No. 1 Foil

“Why spoil with success” must have been Jack Benny’s motto.

He kept the same writers for years. They kept writing the same type of material for years. And audiences kept eating it up for years.

Jack let Bert Resnik of the Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram drop in as he was about to get ready for another television show. This short column was published on November 17, 1963. This was during Jack’s final season for CBS, though it had already been announced he was leaving for NBC the following season. He was also about six weeks away from headlining a show at Harrah’s in Lake Tahoe, with the Lettermen, Moro-Landis Dancers and Leighton Noble’s orchestra. Unfortunately, the cover photo referred to in the story is unavailable.

As for retirement, Jack was true to his word. He worked until cancer stopped him in 1974.

Jack Benny Foil For Jokes
For 14 consecutive television seasons, Jack Benny has been the butt of endless jokes.
“It’s better for my particular show if somebody else has the lines,” said Jack.
“I never figured it out. I felt it.”
The comedian had just come from a script-reading of one of his upcoming CBS-TV Tuesday night programs.
I sat through that reading-rehearsal and became aware, again, that Jack was the No. 1 foil. Everyone else seemed to have the yaks.
* * *
ON THE AIR, you sometimes lose sight of the fact that Jack is the butt.
His facial expressions, his timing, his gesture reactions somehow are funnier than the spoken lines.
In rehearsal, Jack laughs more than anyone else, probably getting it out of his system so he can dead-pan it for the actual show.
Make no mistake. If Jack is the butt of all the jokes, it is his own doing.
“I think it’s much funnier for Dennis Day to get funny lines off me than me off him,” said Jack.
“I create a situation where I deserve what they give me.
“That’s one of the reasons the South never resented Rochester—because I deserved the insults.”
* * *
JACK PLANS ON continuing to deserve insults.
“I never want to retire,” he said.
It would be too strenuous because, right now, Jack figures he has it made time-wise.
His writers have been with him so many years, they know what he’ll accept. This minimizes rewriting and editing.
Rehearsals have an easy rhythm, no pressure, no tension, just fun.
Jack figure he actually works only works about 13 hours a week, which gives him time for golf, listening to good music and collecting paintings such as the Peckstein canvas on our cover.
“I think George Burns has the perfect answer when someone asked him if he was going to retire,” Jack said.
“George answered, ‘I’m too old to retire.’”
* * *
AT 69, JACK, ALSO, is too old to retire.
He’s not worried about compensation.
In television, you’re only in competition with yourself,” said Jack. “If only every other show was good, that’s what they’d expect. But if you have eight good shows in a row, people expect a ninth.
“Maybe you can call that being in a rut, but it’s a good rut. Rut means groove.”
Jack admits there have been a few “ninth” shows which he personally didn’t like.
He hated one in particular, postponing and postponing the air date. It finally aired and “everyone raved” about it.
Benny, once again, was happy the joke was on him.

Cowbells, Saxophones and a Rabbit

When the era of sound cartoons began, characters weren’t exactly filling theatres with chatter. Instead, animation producers concentrated on making music and sound effects that were coordinated with what was happening on the screen. That was novel enough for the audience and it also eliminated the need to animate dialogue.

Mickey Mouse’s “Steamboat Willie” and Fables Studio’s “Dinner Time” had appeared in theatres equipped for sound towards the end of 1928. The Associated Press decided to do a story at that time on how cartoonists put the sound in sound cartoons. But the wire service didn’t approach either Walt Disney or Paul Terry. Instead, it contacted either Universal or George Winkler, as its story centres around Oswald the Rabbit. Oswald not only didn’t talk, his cartoons were still silent. According to the Universal News of January 12, 1929, the first sound cartoon prints were just being made (the first sound Oswald was “Hen Fruit,” released on February 4th).

This story appeared in newspapers 90 years ago today and gives you an idea of how basic and primitive it all when theatres were still deciding if sound was a fad or if it was worthwhile installing audio equipment.

How Oswald The Rabbit Is Given His Vocal Chords In The Talkies
By WADE WERNER.
Associated Press Feature Writer.
Hollywood. Cal., Jan. 5.—(AP)—It is the very darkest middle of the night and the great studio sprawls like a town of fantastic shadows between the dry river bed and the barren hills. One supposes there is a night watchman somewhere on the lot; but apparently he does not see the dim figures slinking one by one toward a barn-like structure, each carrying something, and each disappearing through the same small door in the building.

Heading away from the studio they might have been taken for burglars escaping with their loot; but under the circumstances it is more reasonable to guess they are conspirators of another sort. The interior of the building is dimly lit, but by mingling casually with the crowd one can see very clearly what they carried in: Two saxophones, a galvanized iron wash tub half full of tin cans, a cornet, a tuba, a clothes wringer, three phonographs, a school bell, several cowbells, a hand-operated alarm gong, three sizes of electric bells. Innumerable tin, brass and wooden whistles, many assorted pieces of wood and metal, half a dozen panes of window glass and a metal cylinder of compressed air.
Obviously these are not the paraphernalia of arsonists or dynamiters; and besides, even In the dim light, the conspirators have a jolly look. It begins to look more like preparations for an old-fashioned charivari. Before one can ask who was married, however, the head conspirator explains everything:
"Our job tonight," says he, "is to synchronize Oswald the Rabbit."
Oswald, one learns, is the pen-and-ink hero of an animated cartoon which, in keeping with the modern craze for screen sound, must be embellished with music and noise-effects. Six musicians, skilled in leaping nimbly from tune to tune in harmony with the action on the screen, take their places under one microphone. Another microphone hangs near the table where all the bells and whistles are spread. A large man in overalls sits near the tubful of tin cans with a wooden paddle in his hands, as if waiting for the cauldron to boil; the other conspirators stand here and there between the microphones, ready to make the right noises at the right times.
They rehearse with the picture running on the screen in front of them. As the main title of the comedy appears on the screen the orchestra leaps into an overture, while the other sound-smiths stand tensely waiting for their cues.
When the opening scene discloses Oswald sleeping in his bed, the orchestra dodges quickly Into a cradle song, while a lad within whispering distance of a microphone snores rhythmically and another specialist imitates the squeaking of the bed by running sole leather through the clothes wringer. After each rehearsal the recording engineer In the sound-mixing booth, who hears all this as it will sound to an audience, suggests improvements.
And again and again the mixed symphony of harmonies and discords is rehearsed; then, "This is the picture, boys," and they go through it once more, with the sound-recording apparatus registering everything on celluloid.
Along about sunrise the sound-smiths call it a night and go home, tired and hungry, but with a little glow of pride at the thought their artistry has made it possible for the world to hear as well as see Oswald the Rabbit.

How To Reference Another Cartoon Studio

Major Twombly is getting his butt handed to him by wild African animals in The Major Lied ‘Til Dawn.....



....so he does the only logical thing a cartoon character would do. “By Jove,” he says to the camera, “if it’s good enough for that sailor man, it’s good enough me.”



Warner Bros. ripped off the Popeye spinach routine, but it couldn’t rip off Popeye’s theme without paying one of Paramount’s music publishers, so Carl Stalling plays some fanfare instead.



Pop culture alert!! The cartoons plays around with the Lucky Strike cigarette slogan “With men who know tobacco best, it’s Luckies two to one!” Lucky Strike sponsored Jack Benny on radio for over a decade. One of Benny’s sound effects men was Gene Twombly.



The story credit in this 1938 cartoon went to Rich Hogan, under the direction of Frank Tashlin. Writer Tedd Pierce voices the major.

So it is that Tashlin steals from Dave Fleischer, who took replaced Tashlin at Columbia a few years later. The world is a circle.

Chinatown by Iwerks

Ub Iwerks’ Flip the Frog cartoons may not have been all that funny, but they always have interesting background art. Here are a few frames from Chinaman's Chance (1933). We get some puns on the signs, such as “Aw, fooey!” and “Coming soon.”



Someone’s chin is oblong.



Here’s a unique overhead view.



Iwerks cartoons were sparse on credits. The background artists never were revealed on the title cards. Too bad.

Super Dave

When Pat Paulsen got his own “Half a Comedy Hour,” he told syndicated columnist Mel Heimer in 1970: "I almost can predict one star now: Bob Einstein, my head writer, who's going to double as a performer."

Einstein eventually did reach stardom, but seemed to spend the bulk of his TV career doubling, either writing/producing or performing.

At one time, Einstein might have been best known for portraying “Officer Judy” on the Smothers Brothers and Paulsen shows. But then came a series called Bizarre which occasionally included an inept, perpetually blown-up/squashed stuntman named Super Dave Osborne. Einstein parlayed that into his own TV show in the late ‘80s. (There was also a Super Dave cartoon series. It was like making a cartoon of a cartoon).

Einstein has passed away at the age of 76. (Einstein might have appreciated it if you inserted your own irreverent “failed stunt” joke here).

My memory of Einstein comes from an entirely different place, if age isn’t playing tricks. Einstein used to do a routine on Redd Foxx’s variety show where he’d walk on stage and interrupt Foxx, generally telling him things he couldn’t do on television. It was one of the many series which he wrote.

Einstein was working at Grey Advertising in 1968 when he sent sketch material to Tommy and Dick Smothers. He ended up being hired to write for them and won an Emmy for it.

However, we’ll let this wire story from November 24, 1987 tell us more about Einstein. His “Super Dave” show may have aired in the U.S. on Showtime but it was shot in Toronto. As mentioned, his character appeared on Bizarre, which went through a bizarre gestation. Einstein co-created it, and a pilot starring Richard Dawson aired on ABC, but the network didn’t want to pick it up as a series. Einstein ended up going to Canada and producing it with CTV, which aired a censored version while Showtime broadcast it in the States (John Byner replaced Dawson). Versions of this story appeared around November 20, 1987. Interestingly, there is no mention of his brother, Albert Brooks.

'Super Dave' Osborne brings stunts to Showtime
with new variety series
By Jerry Buck
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Bob Einstein might give a thumbs-up sign as "Super Dave" Osborne, the hapless stuntman he plays on Showtime's "Super Dave" series. But more often than not, his "stunts" leave him bottoms up.
"Super Dave," a comedy and variety show currently showing on the pay cable network, is the first spinoff from a cable series, Einstein said. He developed the "Super Dave" character in the six years he and Allan Blye did "Bizarre" for Showtime.
"Super Dave" looks and talks like a stuntman, from his aw-shucks attitude to his red-white-and-blue jumpsuit. But somehow nothing ever seems to go right. "I'm wishing luck to everyone, then my head is pounded into my shoes," Einstein said. "I think everything will come out fine, but it never does. The stunts always go wrong. They're planned, they're rehearsed, but when it comes time to do them for the show we have problems. I have great recuperative powers.
"Everybody's trying to find a new way to do variety," said Einstein. "So, instead of singing songs, I get killed. All our guests have a great time on the show. It's a different feeling doing a variety show as a character.

"It's hard to do a variety show. It's hard to do all that small talk and make it sound real. When you have a star, he becomes the focus of a variety show, and he has to take himself seriously. But with Super Dave, it's all phony anyway. The baloney is really baloney, and it's a way of not taking yourself seriously." The first show features guest star Ray Charles and a cameo by Carol Burnett, plus a real stunt by a group of acrobats who perform precision basketball slam-dunk routines after leaping from trampolines.
"Super Dave" will become a weekly series in January.
Einstein is primarily a writer and producer and got into performing only after Tom Smothers spotted him on a local TV show.
"I did a put-on character who said he was responsible for putting the names of stars along Hollywood Boulevard," Einstein said. "Someone asked me how to get a name on the sidewalk, and I got huffy and said I couldn't be bought. He asked me again and I said, 'Have you got $5?' Tommy saw it and bought the character until I did the switch."
The award-winning advertising copywriter became a writer and performer on "The Glen Campbell Summer Series." Later, he became head writer for "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour." His writing partner was Steve Martin.
He and Blye, his partner for the past 14 years, wrote and produced "Van Dyke and Company." Einstein also wrote and directed his own movie, "Another Fine Mess," and was head writer for two Andy Williams specials and "The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour." He was co-host of 45 segments of "The Steve Allen Show."
The tall, lanky Einstein grew up in a show business family in Beverly Hills. His father was Harry Einstein, better known as Nick Parkayakarkus, the host of the radio show "Meet Me at Parky's" who also starred on shows with Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson.
"I loved humor," Einstein said. "I had that in me. But I had no ambition to go into show business when I was growing up. I started out as an advertising copywriter and evolved into it. Once you get into it, however, it's very difficult to get out. It gets into your blood. You don't want to do anything else. You want that excitement."

Farewell to The Hoky Hero

Gene Okerlund was the best straight man in wrestling.

Back in Minneapolis, Mean Gene was the guy who conducted the pre- and post-match interviews on broadcasts of the American Wrestling Association. Wrestling had been big on TV in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s. In the early ‘80s, Vince McMahon, Jr. figured he could expand wrestling nationally and make some changes to appeal to a young age group. McMahon’s WWF used the AWA as kind of a farm system, offering contracts to its top people. One of them was Gene Okerlund.

Gene’s job was to help move along the WWF’s storylines by asking occasional questions while being browbeaten by the bad guys during interviews. Gene was a little hammy and his “surprise” reactions were far-too-obvious, but he had a really likeable personality. There was always something amusing about Gene shouting at the camera “Teams of five strive to survive!”, as if he knew we knew he just being entertaining.

I’m sorry to read that Mean Gene has passed away. He was 76.

I’ve dug up a feature story about him from the Minneapolis Star and Tribune of August 26, 1982. He was doing other things than TV wrestling before McMahon offered him mega-bucks. He took an unorthodox route. People go from radio announcing into sales, where the money is. Gene went from sales back into announcing, and quite unexpectedly.

Pro wrestling TV show has hold on ad executive
By Mike Kaszuba
Staff Writer
At the moment, a man wearing an Elvis Presley hand-me-down jumpsuit is yelling into the camera about some guy who tried to ram his head into a post. His name is Rock'n Roll Buck Zumhoff. After him comes Jesse (the Body) Ventura, wearing beatnik sunglasses and a feather boa wrapped around his neck.
Then there is Big Bad Bobby Duncum. And Baron Von Raschke, the Claw Master. And Sgt. Jacques Goulet, the guy with the French Foreign Legion outfit and horsewhip.
In the middle—always in the middle—is Gene Okerlund of Burnsville. Sometimes he is called Mean Gene, but usually just Gene. Unlike the others, Okerlund is short, balding and, dressed as he is in a fire engine-red blazer, looks like a vacuum cleaner salesman.
It is Wednesday at Channel 9 studios in Edina and all of these people, except for Okerlund, are professional wrestlers. Okerlund is the announcer. The show is All-Star Wrestling.
Each Wednesday, Okerlund steps in front of the camera and with a face and voice that is all business, tries to interview one, two and occasionally three screaming and weirdly dressed wrestlers amid the noise. He will do this as many as 27 times on a given Wednesday, once for each of the markets in the United States and Canada where All-star Wrestling is shown. At the end of each spot, Okerlund will remind fans where to buy their tickets for the big one in Brainerd, or wherever the match that is being plugged might be.
All this organized mayhem is taped each week for the following Sunday morning telecast of All-Star Wrestling, the only show in which you can regularly see the man who holds the world record for tearing phonebooks.
Okerlund has become as much a part of Sunday morning television as Tom and Jerry cartoons and the Rev. Rex Humbard and his singing family. He is recognized at airports across the country and although he says it initially was embarrassing, he has grown accustomed to people asking for his autograph.

He is also a believer in wrestling as sport/entertainment and the part he plays in it once a week. He will trot out figures he says show that wrestling has gone beyond the beer and T-shirt crowd. And while he concedes his interviews might be hyped, Okerlund raps his fingers on the table to make the next point: "It is a very well-produced sports entertainment program."
In his other life, Okerlund is a mild mannered 39-year-old advertising executive in Minneapolis. He wears monogrammed shirts. His teen-age son, Todd, was drafted in June by the Stanley Cup-champion New York Islanders.
His wife, Jeannie, never has been to a wrestling match and talks as if she wouldn't mind if she never goes to one. His other teen-age son, Tor, says the kids at school think what his dad does is pretty cool.
Okerlund occasionally helps NV Advertising Associates Inc., the advertising firm he owns a third of, by appearing in commercials. He can still be seen on TV as the Hoky Hero, advertising a floor and carpet sweeper.
In the commercial, a woman drops something on the kitchen floor and makes a mess. Okerlund appears with the Hoky Hero. The woman, obviously happy, sends a kiss over to Okerlund that—with a ping—magically appears on his cheek.
"We wanted to have a spokesman . . . sort of a nonthreatening spokesman ala Mr. Whipple," said Richard Cohen, majority owner of the advertising agency. But Cohen said he has some genuine misgivings when Okerlund exchanges the carpet sweeper for a microphone to interview Hulk Hogan. He is afraid of what some of the firm's advertising clients think when they connect Okerlund to All-Star Wrestling.
"Twenty percent have got to be turned off by it. If he called on a new account . . . there's a 20 percent chance they would say, 'Gee, this buffoon?,' " he said.
Although it might be the face they recognize, it is the voice that is hard to forget. It is a deep voice, the kind that used-car salesmen usually have.
Okerlund is a master at using it to roller-coaster his way through a sentence, literally pouncing on the first word:
"Hel-lo again, everybody" or "I can't believe. it What a bomb shell!"
Since 1975, Okerlund has, been holding the microphone and standing in front of the red-white-and-blue American Wrestling Association seal as its TV announcer. He got the job full time when the legendary Marty O'Neill, who had held the job for two decades, became ill.
Before that he had made a career out of bouncing from one radio station to the next. There was KOIL (Omaha, Neb.), KDWB (Twin Cities) and WDGY (Twin Cities). He then went on to Channel 11 as a salesman.
Okerlund happened to be walking across the studio at Channel 11 in 1971 during an employee strike just before a live professional wrestling show went on the air. Someone remembered he had some on-air experience, asked him to fill in as the announcer, and that was that.
He is good at what he does. He knows—as do all real wrestling fans—that Otto Wanz, the European Federation Wrestling champion, is 1.92 meters tall and weighs 152 kilos. He can make an interview with Baron Von Raschke come across as if the fate of the entire planet rested on its outcome. He can also play a great straight man.

"Where is Ken Patera?" Okerlund wants to know, shoving the microphone into the face of Bobby "The Brain" Heenan.
"It's none of your business where Ken Patera's at," Heenan spits at him.
Or there was the interview last Sunday with Sheik Adnann El Kaisey, a guy wearing an Arab headdress and rattling a saber. When the Sheik started to get out of hand with his on-camera threats to Wally Karbo, the TV wrestling matchmaker. Mean Gene had to interrupt:
"OHHHh, just a second, Sheik!"
Usually, the on-camera emotion is turned on and off like a faucet. As soon as the camera is off, the wrestlers walk off to the side and sit silently. Okerlund goes over and takes a drag on a cigarette. Sometimes, though, there is not enough elbow room in the studio for everybody and their egos.
Last Wednesday, for example, Jesse the Body Ventura was mad at Okerlund. Heenan, Ventura's manager, was mad at Okerlund largely for the same obscure reason Ventura was mad at Okerlund. Okerlund, in turn, was mad at both Heenan and Ventura.
Ventura warned Okerlund during a break to stop interrupting him when he talks during the interview. Ventura, who was suspended temporarily from wrestling after tearing off Wally Karbo's clothes, is considered one of the bad boys of wrestling.
"You'd like to ask them a couple of intelligent questions," said Okerlund."

Six Heads of Screwy

The old flypaper gag results in Screwy Squirrel sprouting six heads in Screwball Squirrel, the first of five cartoons Tex Avery made with him.



Screwy is contrite. “I think this belongs to you, Meathead,” he says the to the dog, as Scott Bradley plays a feeble version of “Oh, Where, Or Where Has My Little Dog Gone” in the background.



Nah, he’s not contrite. It’s all a head-game. Screwy zips off and we soon get the next gag.



I still like the Screwy cartoons, even if Avery apparently didn’t.

Preston Blair, Ray Abrams and Ed Love are the credited animators in the 1944 short.