Queens and Teens

The Golden Age of Radio had more than comedians fronting variety shows, noir-ish detectives, kid adventure stories, adult mysteries, soaps and the latest war news and commentary. There were sitcoms and quiz shows.

There were sub-genres, too. There were sitcoms starring somewhat dopey, incompetent dads. There were sitcoms starring earnest, incompetent young men. And there were sitcoms starring teenaged girls dealing with troubles caused by either earnest or dopey incompetent teenaged boys.

Quiz shows ranged from the intellectual (Information Please) to the parody intellectual (It Pays To Be Ignorant) to the whoever-tells-the-best-sob-story-wins (Queen For a Day).

John Crosby of the Herald Tribune syndicate dealt with the latter in both categories in the first month of his columns in May 1946.

His first column appeared May 6th. The following is from May 7th. In case you’re not up on your station/network connections: WABC is CBS. WJZ is ABC. WOR is Mutual. WEAF is NBC. Queen For a Day made a very successful leap from Mutual to television, filling airwaves on two other networks with tales of personal woe involving poor health, unemployment or natural disaster until 1964. Crosby thought they were tacky, a viewpoint that is quaint compared to the reality shows of today.

Incidentally, cartoon fans will notice the title to Crosby’s column is a play on a Jam Handy industrial film from 1936. Whether that’s the origin, I don’t know.

A Sedan for Cinderella
TOO many programs of late are built on the questionable theory that philanthropy is an adequate substitute for talent. Four of them, one on each of the major networks, are so similar in aim and so uniformly in bad taste that they may as well be examined in a group. The four programs, any one of which may be heard from Monday through Friday, are Cinderella, Inc. (WABC 3:30 p.m.), Bride and Groom (WJZ 2:30 p.m.), Queen for a Day (WOR 2:30 p.m.) and Honeymoon in New York (WEAF 9 a.m.)
Every month, the sponsors of Cinderella, Inc. bring to New York a group of four women from various parts of the country. The girls are put up at the best hotels in town, taken to the Stork Club and the Statue of Liberty among other places and showered with gifts. During the day the Cinderellas are turned over to a stable of experts who strive to improve their posture, their diction and their hair-dos but not, apparently, their minds. At the end of the month, the one who improves the most in the opinion of the experts gets a new sedan. At least, that’s what she got last month.

Every day during the week the girls are on the air to relate what they did last night and how wonderful it all was. And each day there is more loot—electric ranges, toasters, sweaters, compacts, silver, everything. To earn these gratuities they perform little chores in front of the microphone, such as reading poetry to demonstrate their improved diction or making beds to how they haven’t forgotten how, a performance that doesn’t register well over the radio. At the end of the month the girls return to Wichita or wherever they came from and a new batch of Cinderellas take[s] over.
* * *
Bride and Groom is a little different. At the outset of this program a young couple on the brink of matrimony are introduced to the radio and studio audience and then hustled to a nearby chapel for the ceremony. While they are away, the master of ceremonies dredges married couples, young and old, from the audience and plies them with questions. The principal question, the day I listened, was whether the husband or wife should wear the pants in the normal, happy marriage. The answers varied but the reward in each case was an expensive present. Any one who can fight his way to the microphone in these affairs gets something. Presently the newlyweds are back from the chapel to get their share of the largesse. This particular couple got a set of silver, a camera, a year’s supply of film, a vacuum cleaner and a makeup kit. The sponsor also blew them to a honeymoon.
* * *
In “Honeymoon in New York,” when I tuned in, an aged couple, who were celebrating their fifty-fourth anniversary, were relating that they had known each other since they were two years old and had been separated only once for any length of time. They told the story with touching eagerness as if it were an old, old story that every one else had stopped listening to. Of course, they were repaid handsomely with a set of gold cuff links for the old man and a gold wristwatch and a set of dishes for his wife. “Oh, dear,” gasped the lady when the bounty descended.
* * *
In “Queen for a Day,” the master of ceremonies selects a few girls from the audience and asks them to name what they want most at the moment. One girl, unless my ears were playing me tricks, said her heart’s desire was to dip her hands in fresh cement. Later one of the girls is nominated queen for that day and is given an expensive whirl of Hollywood night clubs and, of course, a lot of other things.
The four programs, all of them vastly successful, ought to be reviewed by a psychiatrist rather than a newspaper man. Exhibitionism is out of my line. However, the gifts are fabulous, and if your greed exceeds your inhibitions, get in the parade. You might win a roadster.

May 9th’s column looked at two of the teenaged girl comedies, one on NBC and the other on CBS. Both made the jump to television for a short period. One became a feature film with Elizabeth Taylor. Both shows could probably have used the same scripts and just changed the names of the characters. The stars of both shows used their gushy teenaged voices later. The star of one became Judy Jetson. The voice was easy because Janet Waldo was naturally bubbly and it was practically her real voice. She could sound like a teenage girl even in her 90s!

The Teen-Age Girl Again
FOR REASONS I find difficult to understand, the teen-age girl has become the most celebrated exponent of her sex in our time. She has been glorified on stage and screen, on magazine covers and comic strips, and virtually beatified at various times by “Life” magazine. I don’t know who started all this, but I suspect Miss Sally Benson must shoulder much of the responsibility for her stories in “The New Yorker” which formed the basis for that very successful play (and later movie) “Junior Miss.”
After “Junior Miss” came a deluge of imitators and eventually, the teen-age girl was enthroned on a number of radio programs where she still reigns. There is no doubt that the teen-age girl, with her whims and exuberance and wide-eyed crushes, was once a suitable topic for comedy. But much of the freshness has been wrung from the subject, and, since comedy depends largely on its element of surprise, the teenager just isn’t that funny any more.
* * *

Two of the teen-age programs are “A Date With Judy” (WEAF 8:30 p.m. Tuesday), which has been on the air a good many years, and “Meet Corliss Archer” (WABC 9 p.m. Sunday), which returned to the air recently to replace a far better program, “Request Performance.”
Miss Archer is the same girl who got slightly involved in pregnancy in the stage play “Kiss and Tell” and she is still tormenting her irascible father and her patient, harassed mother with similar, although milder, involvements. When I listened in, she had just started the “So Help Me Club” whose members were pledged to tell nothing but the strict truth, an idea which was thoroughly exploited in a play many, many years ago. Corliss, I’m afraid, is also inclined to say things like: “Oh, goodness, he’s elderly—he’s past thirty,” which has become a fixed idea in these girls. Even conceding its staleness, “Meet Corliss Archer” is a very limp and indifferently written attempt at comedy.
In “A Date With Judy,” the writers have apparently run through all the situations a teen-age girl can get into and are now concentrating on the eccentricities of her father. Next, I suppose will come mother’s eccentricities and then, possibly the maid’s. Even so, Judy is standard equipment—flighty, wide-eyed, passionately absorbed in trivia and rather worn with time.
* * *
Somewhat hesitantly, I should like to submit my own idea as to why the teen-age girl has lost much of her charm. When Miss Benson was writing her stories for “The New Yorker” the world, particularly the teen-age world, was slumbering quietly I pre-war innocence. For all I know, teen-age girls behaved that way. They don’t any more, at least the ones I know, don’t.
During the war years, the teenager matured with alarming rapidity. Many of them got married and had children, much earlier than they would normally, and they accepted adult responsibilities which a gravity and poise that was astounding for their years. Meanwhile a different breed of teen-age girl was filling the juvenile courts with her escapades, which are not nearly so cute as they are depicted on the radio. On the other hand, there are many admirable girls who kept house while their mother was busy with the riveting. In any case, whether admirable or not, the teen-age girl, it seems to me, is a much tougher little cooky [sic] than the ones portrayed on the radio.
* * *
If this idea is at all acceptable, I should like to add that these radio programs are guilty not just of imitation, which must be expected in radio, but of imitating something that has largely lost its point. Or maybe I know the wrong teen-age girls.

We talked a while ago about posting the early Crosby columns. Some are feature local or obscure programming, or are simply outdated. His May 6, 1946 review on Alan Young is HERE. May 10, 1946 on Fred and Tallulah is HERE. The May 17, 1946 column on kid adventure shows is HERE. Below, if you’re interested, are clickable versions of his columns for May 8, 13, 14, 15 and 16 in chronological order.

Bob Clampett In a Bob Clampett Cartooo-ooon

Jerry Beck remarked after reading yesterday’s crack about an animated Bob Clampett that it might be fun to do a quick post on the times there was an animated Bob Clampett in cartoons. I thought I had posted some of these frames before, but evidently not.



None of the animators got credit in Tex Avery’s Art Moderne masterpiece, Page Miss Glory (1936), so they were inserted in the cartoon itself. Clampett is the hook-nosed guy giving an annoyed look to a short guy, who is assistant animator Bobe Cannon.



“Captain Clampett” is one of the acts in Circus Today (1940), another Tex Avery cartoon. Clampett had been directing his own unit for several years at this point.



Here’s eager animator Bob Clampett rushing out of a ramshackle cartoon studio in A Cartoonist’s Nightmare (1936), directed by Jack King. That’s writer Tubby Millar in front of him.



Thad Komorowski points out that Clampett’s head appears for two frames in a wonderful set of fight drawings in Porky and Daffy (1938). Clampett directed this cartoon, with the credited animators being Bobe Cannon and John Carey. You’d never see this watching the cartoon. Incidentally....



This cartoon also has a reference to assistant animator Roger Daley. He never received a screen credit at Warners.



In Porky’s Hero Agency (1937), Clampett is part of a picket fence of Greek statuary, second to the right (Chuck Jones in to the far right).



In 1944, Clampett appeared naked as a gremlin from the Kremlin in Russian Rhapsody.



When Clampett’s company sold ABC on airing Beany and Cecil as part of Matty’s Funday Funnies, Clampett inserted his caricature and his name in the opening animation, tossing in his name into the show’s theme song. Chuck who? Friz what?

If anyone has other examples of Clampett cameos in cartoons, let me know so I can add them to the post (provided my discs aren’t corrupted). Thanks to Thad and Jerry, that fine English singing duo of the 1960s, for suggesting this.

Mad Musician Misses Clampett

An inside gag greets us as the Mad Musician randomly picks a name from the phone book as his next victim in Buddy the Detective (1934).



Say! Some of these names look awfully familiar.



Yes, “Clampett, R.” is who you think it is. Below him is Ben Clopton, another animator at the studio. Toward the bottom on Manny Corral, who was a test cameraman at Leon Schlesinger’s through the 1930s before moving to MGM.

Interestingly, also listed is Don Coleman. I don’t know about the phone number, but that’s his actual address. The Los Angeles City Directory in 1935 lists his occupation as “cartoonist.” Was he an in-betweener or assistant at Schlesinger’s who never got screen credit? I don’t know about Conny Connor, but 1400 Bronson (at Fernwood) would be in back of the Schlesinger studio at Van Ness and Fernwood. The rest of the names are a mystery as they don’t appear in the directory.

Paul Smith and Don Williams are the credited animators; Jack King was the director.

To be honest, the cartoon would be funnier if an animated Bob Clampett replaced Buddy.

Joe Sirola

“G.E. is proud to sponsor The McLaughlin Group,” said the raspy voiceover announcer, concluding his institutional pitch with the slogan “G.E. (pause) We bring good things to life.”

The voice was unmistakable. It was heard in all kinds of TV spots. He was on camera, too. When he appeared on Get Smart as Harvey Satan, I said to the TV set “That’s that commercial guy!”

His name was Joseph Sirola. The Hollywood Reporter is reporting his death at age 89.

Sirola is likely the only actor who owned a tooth-whitening business. He’s also likely the only soap opera actor thinking he’d get a better chance at a bank loan by listing his occupation as “soap salesman.” (He got the loan). He’s also likely the only actor to walk out on a Broadway play (“The Unsinkable Molly Brown”) to go to Italy to shoot a small part in Cleopatra with Liz and Dick. He may likely be the only actor who dueted at a café with Ethel Merman (it happened in 1960 when he was just starting out).

He eventually gained a starring role in a series in 1975. He played the head of an Italian family in The Montefuscos. Sirola was Croatian.

It’s not like Sirola needed the money from the series. He was pulling in a good $300,000 and up a year voicing commercials—this was in 1970-era dollars. Voiceover people are so rarely recognised in the popular press but I’ve found two old articles about Joe Sirola. The first was a syndicated column published in the Yonkers Herald Statesman of November 21, 1968.

‘Voice Over’ Commercials Very Profitable For Actor
By FRANK LANGLEY
NEW YORK — When the cab pulled up in front of the Madison Avenue advertising agency, a barrel-voiced (and chested) man jumped out and bellowed at a friend, "Hey Sid! Lend me a buck for the cab. I don't have a dime."
Joe Sirola took the dollar, paid the cab and walked into the building. Four hours later, he walked out $7,600 richer.
Things like that happen in show business. But what is unique here, is that Sirola duplicates the scene several times a week, every week.
Sirola is one of a small, very select, and very rich group of actors who is in demand for "voice over" TV commercials. The phrase simply means that the actor, or announcer, is not seen, just heard."
We sat in the lush garden of his penthouse apartment recently and the vibrant character, practically oozing energy, explained his profession. "First, don't forget that I'm an actor, not an announcer," he said, reminding us that he's featured in the Broadway musical "Golden Rainbow."
"Commercials today are altogether different from what they were in the past," the actor pointed out. "The days of the resonant, hard-selling professional announcer are gone. The ad agencies today want actors who can simulate a natural voice, the sound of your doctor or insurance salesman."
One of the commercial assignments Joe likes best is known as the regional, or market, insert. "They may do a minute commercial for a carpeting company, for instance, and at the end they tag it with something like, 'See these beautiful carpets at such and such a store,' Joe explained.
"That may take all of five seconds. Then I follow that with the same phrase for other stores. Sometimes I do as many as 50 of these in a two-hour period or less.
"I get $90 for each one and that's just for the initial cutting. After that I continue to get paid for every time the commercial goes on the air."
With quick calculations, we figured Joe would make $4,500 for those two hours. He later admitted that the total figure might rise to $15,000 with the residual payments. Sirola claims that he's had commercials that eventually brought in more than $30,000.
One thing Joe will not do, under ordinary conditions, is go before the commercial cameras.
"If you do one," he says, "you ruin your chances for a dozen others in some competitive area. You also lend your face to too much exposure.
"But there are allowable circumstances," says Sirola. "For instance, I've just agreed to do a cigarette commercial in which I will play an 80-year-old man recalling his life-long search for his partner. In a white wig and all the aging makeup, you can't even recognize me."
Despite his success, Joe remains an uncomplicated guy.
"The money really doesn't mean that much to me," he says “except when the mail comes in the morning and all those checks arrive. It's like a game trying to figure out what each one is for."

Here’s another nice little article. It’s from the Courtland Standard’s “View” TV magazine of July 12, 1969.

Arsenal of Voices Joe Sirola Hits Gold Mine in Video Ads
By RUTH THOMPSON
A stranger rushes up to Joseph Sirola on the street, stops, stares and gasps, "Gee, Peter Nino!" "That's Right," nods the sharply groomed, greying Sirola, knowing once again he did right by himself when he walked out of a prospering business career in 1958 to become an actor.
And being an actor has led Joe to a private gold mine on the side — radio and television commercials — that's paying him "all the money I ever dreamed of. Means I can afford to wait for a good movie." He's won nine of the Clio Awards for his delivery. . .yet you don't see the Sirola face.
It's the second lesson he's learned from the Peter Nino thing. Peter — a flashy gambler — was the heavy on the "Brighter Day" soap opera. Peter was magnetic and got a lot of mail so the writers had to clean him up and have him marry the girl before they finally killed him off. Wily Joe is letting his arsenal of voices earn him that nice nest egg. Or as he puts it, "Besides, I'm an actor. I won't be a pitchman.
"I love the stage, and sure I'd like to do a good show again." (His most recent was "Golden Rainbow" with Steve Lawrence and Edie Gorme.) It's a satisfaction. . .though it's zero on the recognition scale." Joe mused: "Nobody ever came up and said he saw me in "The Unsinkable Molly Brown.' And I was doing that nights (on Broadway) the first year I did 'Brighter Day.' All sorts of people were fans. Tallulah Bankhead said she was crazy about Peter Nino. . ."
Joe is a gambler, he says, but not on Peter Nino's scale. Says he plays a progressive system, never goes above the maximum he's set for himself. "Luck comes in streaks," he reflected over his Sardi's lunch. Of course when you get right down to it, Joe made his own good luck by gambling on himself.

"As a kid I was a bellboy. Later I used to handle fighters. Right out of College (Columbia) I sold fishing rods. Then I went into service. . .Korea for 14 months. When I came back I sold bedspreads. Then I went into the garment district and sold plisse dusters. Then I went with Kimberly-Clarke; you know paper-cellulose products. I worked up to sales promotion manager. My folks were proud. I was 28. And bored with business. So I took a course in folk guitar at Hunter. Then I saw in a catalogue, ‘Acting: $20.’" So he signed up for that, too. And, "fell in love with it the first day.
"Mom, Pop, I'm going to be an actor," The news must have left them speechless, Joe didn't pass along their comments. Joe however, proved a natural. He'd found himself, and was well on the way to being discovered by producers. After only 12 weeks the teacher sent him to a "Camera Three" television audition. He got the role. The show, "Notes From The Underground" later won the John Lardner Award for 1958.
Then everything began to happen. Broadway; ". . .Molly Brown." The soap opera. And commercials. "Four years later I was making $150,000. Now I make a quarter of a million a year. . ."
Some of it he's investing in real estate. And he has an eye for bargains. He's snapped up New Hampshire land at $6 an acre, figures it's probably worth a thousand per now. He's also acquiring land in the Virgin Islands.
But probably his greatest bargain is his New York bachelor apartment. A penthouse with terraces on all four sides. Got it completely furnished "and just to my taste" — plus landscaping — for, as they say, a song. As a hobby he tends the rooftop gardens himself. "Raise my own strawberries, blueberries, lettuce. . .and oh yes, there's a crab apple tree. Sure it bears fruit."
What happens when he's out of town? The housekeeper takes over with the plots and the vineyard (sure, there are grapes growing outside the door, too). And even this very minute she may be busy with hoe or hose or whatever.
Because Joe himself is in Nashville, Tennessee making a movie that's strictly to his taste. He's the heavy in Mickey Spillane's "The Delta Factor."

For cartoon fans, I can’t confirm what fan sites claim, that Sirola was Dr. Doom or the opening narrator on the Hanna-Barbera version of The Fantastic 4 in 1967; I don’t believe the series ever credited anyone but the principals.

Sirola apparently was a composer; there’s a song called “Love Conquers All” copyrighted (words and music) on December 16, 1957 by one Joseph A. Sirola.

Sirola won a Tony on Broadway, a far cry from his role as a Soviet colonel in Peter Ustinov’s The Love of Four Colonels at the Sharon, Conn. Playhouse in August 1958. He ended up with a nice collection of Clios for his commercial work. Here’s one of his countless voice overs.

A Blogging Friend Farewell

It’s always a little saddening when a blog you look forward to reading comes to an end. To the right, you see a picture of Steven Hartley. In the tree to the far right, you’ll see a link to his blog Likely Looney, Mostly Merrie.

Steven has found life has rolled on to a point where he really doesn’t have time to post any more.

When he started his blog, I wonder if he’d ever accomplish his goal. It was very, very ambitious. He proposed to review every cartoon released by the Warner Bros. studio, from the cute Harman-Ising “Sinkin’ in the Bathtub” in 1930 to whatever wretched, uncharming Cool Cat cartoon ended things in 1969. That’s more than a thousand shorts. Finding the cartoons (many have never been released on home video), clipping frames from them, coding the text, all of it involves an incredible amount of work.

It’s miraculous he got as far as he did. His reviews stop in 1944. He got through Hugh and Rudy, the tedious Buddy era, and all of Tex Avery. It’s a shame he missed my favourite period—the last half of the ‘40s when Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng were at their peak in my estimation.

Steven was also hamstrung at the outset by the fact that he lives in England and was 16. He couldn’t possibly get all the American ‘30s pop culture references, the same as teenaged Americans would look with puzzlement at the words “Bob Monkhouse.”

Age 16 to 22 doesn’t seem like a long span, but it’s a time when one’s life changes, sometimes drastically. Steven is on to other things, which is unfortunate for those who liked seeing what he had to say and whether his viewpoint about the cartoons matched our own.

My best thoughts and thanks go out to Steve for all his hours upon hours of work.

There are too many blogs which I enjoyed reading which have gone dormant. They were full of insight and knowledge about the old theatrical cartoons and I learned an awful lot. But life doesn’t stand still. We’re not in 2011 any more. We move on. Fortunately, many of the dead blogs are still up and one can go back and read the posts again and again.

In case you’re wondering, posts in this blog have been banked to appear for almost the next six months. You’ll keep seeing Jack Benny every Sunday, a cartoon article reprint on Saturdays, something about old radio or TV shows or stars every Wednesday into August, Tex Avery once a week, and notes and frames from various cartoon studios the rest of the time.

Benny Tries TV

Jack Benny’s leap into television in fall 1950 might strike today’s audiences as unusual. For one thing, Benny had no intention to be on every week. At first, he appeared every six weeks. For another, his first broadcast was 45 minutes; Benny felt he couldn’t fit his material in a half hour so his sponsor went to the unusual lengths of purchasing the time period of the next half-show show and giving 15 minutes of it to Benny. And for another, technology hadn’t been invented to send broadcast quality pictures from Los Angeles to the network, so stars had to fly to New York to do live broadcasts (the West had to watch the Benny shows later, aired from low-tech kinescopes).

We posted about Benny’s debut show here. Let’s pass along some of Benny’s thoughts as he was about to make his second TV broadcast on January 28, 1951 (it aired February 11th in Los Angeles) with guests Frank Sinatra, Faye Emerson and Frank Fontaine as John L.C. Sivoney. He talks about the difference between TV and radio, radio in general and TV audience burnout. The first is a United Press story of January 26th, the second a column in the Oakland Tribune two days later.

Jack Benny Advises More Performers, Fewer Appearances For Successful TV
By ELIZABETH TOOMEY
UP Staff Correspondent
NEW YORK, Jan. 26. (UP) — Weekly television performers are like relatives who show up at the house too often, Jack Benny says. He’s for more performers and fewer appearances, "to keep the excitement of show business."
The comedian, who agreed to do just four television shows this year, arrived here from the coast to rehearse for his second show next Sunday night and found things pretty crowded."

"First I couldn't get 45 minutes, only a half hour," he complained. "Imagine trying to crowd Faye Emerson, Frank Sinatra and me into 30 minutes. It's murder." Then when he called Sinatra and Faye, his two guest stars, for the first rehearsal, there was no studio available.
That's why Benny was sitting on a straight chair in the middle of a deserted hotel ballroom while he talked. It was the only available rehearsal spot.
"It's different on radio, once a week is all right there. But when they see you," Benny took his cigar out of his mouth and shrugged, "well, you just get too familiar to them. The excitement gradually diminishes."
He doesn't agree with his competitors who talk about the terrific demands television puts on a performer. His professional personality as the perennial worrier was shed completely as he directed the rehearsal in an easy-going, relaxed way.
"I've done this sketch with Faye before on the stage," he said. "Then I can use some of the stuff I've done on radio. Television isn't so tough."
He got up to begin the rehearsal.
"Now wait a minute everybody. I want to open the show with a guy walking into the dressing room with a toupee," Benny began.
"Does he wear a toupee?" somebody whispered, eyeing the comedian's receding hairline.
"Not even on television. That's a gag," was the answer. Then somebody asked Benny why his wife, Mary Livingston, wasn't on the show.
"There just isn't room in a half hour show," he answered. If some of the regulars would just move over, he said he'd be glad to expand the show. "But once a month is enough."

On the Air
with James Abbe
On the eve of his second swan dive into television, Jack Benny breaks out with a semi-obvious statement, in New York, that radio programs will have to be good, from now on, to withstand the competition of television. He (or whoever thought up that ponderous prediction) might have tacked on to the tail of the statement, "or vice versa." Because unless the producers of television programs start worrying soon, about what the public will do after the novelty of having reduced version of movies in the living room has worn off, a bored people may resort to the old-fashioned business of reading, or just looking out the window for a glimpse of the outside world.
HEED THE KING
Be that as it may, any words which fall from the lips of Jack Benny, whether originating in his brain, or those of his writers, just have to be weighed and passed around because Jack Benny has just been voted the tops, the pay dirt, the champion of champions, by the Motion Picture Daily-Fame 15th annual poll of American newspaper, magazine, radio, editors and columnists. It Is the third consecutive year that Benny has led the pack, in the organized, well financed, exploited and bally-hooed pursuit of public approval, radio-wise.

Burning no bridges from radio as he approaches television, this Jack Benny, with the highest audience rating for any individual performer on radio, makes a point of studying television programs for what he can learn.
McGEE QUESTION
Fibber McGee and Molly, guests on KLX a few weeks ago, stumped The Tribune's Alan Ward and Ray Haywood (from our sports department) and me, when they asked us, any one or all of us, to tell them why they should flirt with TV when they were still getting along fine in radio. They have, in fact, just been voted radio's top comedy team.
Jack Benny seems to have answered the same question from his standpoint. Benny has just said, that he likes to keep trying at television "because I am stage struck."
So let that be a lesson to all of us, even those of us who admit to being over 39; to remain infatuated with our respective jobs, and maybe we too, will be rated as No. 1 in our respective fields of activity.

How to Make Mickey a Talkie

Mickey Mouse whistles and plays animals as musical instruments in Steamboat Willie, but there’s one thing he doesn’t do.

Talk.

As 1928 turned into 1929, sound feature films meant music and dancing. They also meant singing and talking. Cartoons weren’t quite there yet. Singing and talking meant characters had to make mouth shapes that corresponded with words, as opposed to just random opening and closing in the silent days (with a title card to explain what they said).

Mickey and his artists conquered sound fairly easily. Other cartoon characters weren’t as fortunate. By 1930, Mickey spawned a sound cartoon craze that gave birth to a whole pile of new characters (and new cartoon studios, for that matter).

Here’s a story from the Los Angeles Times of August 11, 1929. It already declared Felix the Cat dead, a victim of microphones (Felix was soon revived in a vocal-effects version that didn’t excite movie audiences). It claims there were only four cartoon studios in existence at the time. There’s no mention at all of the Charles Mintz studio, which was still making Krazy Kat cartoons, albeit they were silent for much of 1929.

TALKIE IDEA STRIKES ANIMATED CARTOONS AND FILM ANTICS TURN VOCAL
By MURIEL BABCOCK
When animated cartoons go vocal the drawing masters must work overtime.
The theme song and business of letting the shadows shout seem to to have passed to the studios of the motion picture comic strips.
“Mickey Mouse,” a favored character of these thing-a-ma-jig films, is going to sing in his next screen appearance.
Perhaps Mickey’s voice will ring out clear and true for the total time space of one minute. Walt Disney, Mickey’s fond creator, conveys the information that 700 drawings will be required to reveal the contraction and expansion of Mickey’s throat in the simplest act of getting the song out of his system.
These muscular movements of the throat and body must occur in such a fashion that they synchronize perfectly with the notes and words of his theme song, project, of course, by a human voice double.
Just a matter of rhythmics and mathematics, explains Mr. Disney glibly. In fact, “you write the music to fit the drawings and then draw the drawings to fit the music.”
Animated cartoons, as it may or may not be known, are simply a series of black and white sketches, one sketch to each different posture or movement of the stuff-legged characters. A cartoon runs from five to six minutes. It may contain five to six thousand drawings, projected as such a speed that the whole seems a piece of continuous action as if from humans.
COMPLICATES BUSINESS
The business of adding vocal histrionics to the film antics of Mickey and his confreres, Oswald, the rabbit, and the farmer and the cat of Aesop’s Fables series complicated considerably animated cartoon construction.
Perhaps that is the one reason why at present there are in existence only four cartoon studios, two on the west and two on the east coast.
The two local production units are the independent Walt Disney studio, found in a small one-story friendly appearing stucco building at 2719 Hyperion avenue and the Walter Lantz studio at Universal Pictures Corporation. Aesop’s Fables cartoons are produced in the East and released by Pathe.

Disney not only turns out the Mickey Mouse films, but recently launched what he terms his “Silly Symphony” series. The first of the latter, named “The Skeleton Dance,” was recently shown at the Carthay Circle Theater and proved a sensational success, taking about as much applause on the occasion of the premiere as the feature itself. The film depicted grotesque skeleton characters dancing weirdly to the music of a symphonic—at times—nature.
His studio, small though it is, employs eight artists, a musician and various technical assistants. Disney himself studied cartooning at the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago, went almost directly from school into picture work, and has maintained his present studio about six years.
VETERAN OF CARTOONS
Walter Lantz at Universal, now turning out the “Oswald, the Rabbit” series, is a veteran of the animated cartoon production. From him was gleaned the information that the first motion drawings were produced by J. R. Bray in 1914, and had to do with the antics of “Col Heeza Liar.” About the same time Windsor McKay [sic] made a series about a so-called prehistoric animal called “Gertie.”

Lantz was responsible for the first combination cartoons, that of a human appearing on the screen with black and white figures.
He did much work at one time on the “Heeza Liar” series, originated a “Dinky Doodle” group, in which nursery rhymes were parodied, and sketched what was known as the “Un-Natural History” series. Among these were such classic short fun films as “How the Elephant Got His Trunk,” “The Leopard’s Spots,” “The Cat’s Whiskers” and others.
Most of these have long since folded their wings and passed into oblivion as have more recent efforts, such as “Out of the Inkwell,” from the pen of Max Fleischer, and “Felix the Cat,” as well as a number of films based on newspaper comic strips.
The advent of talking pictures and the subsequent necessity for vocalizing the inanimate figures is blamed for the passing of these once-popular strips.

When My Ship Comes In Backgrounds

No rodents or insects jump in and make an aside comment. Furniture doesn’t sing. No, Betty Boop’s When My Ship Comes In (1934) is a pretty dull affair, with a long scene of Betty doing little but squirming around while listening to a radio.

Here are some of the background drawings in the cartoon. The radio sounds a parody of the NBC chimes to start the cartoon.



A nice exterior shot. Betty and the stream flows are animated.



The background artist isn’t credited. Myron Waldman and Hicks Lokey are the credited animators.

It Really Is Five Horsepower

“There goes one of the new five horsepower jobs,” says the narrator in Tex Avery’s Field and Scream (released in 1955). Then comes the visual pun. Gag over. The whole scene lasts only five seconds.



The cartoon was re-released in 1960.

This may be my favourite Avery spot-gag cartoon at MGM. I’ve posted on it before but not all posts are coming up either in search engines or even the search mode on my Blogger posting page. You can see more about the cartoon in these posts. I’m sure I’ve posted the mother-in-law gag but I can’t find it.

Ed Looks at Us
Homer Death
Backgrounds
Ducks
Forest of Eds
Bailing Duck
Trout Cooks Breakfast

Turning Off 'Turn On'

Did you ever have a blog post that you were SURE you put up but discovered it had disappeared?

In this case, perhaps the post was cancelled. That would have been especially appropriate. The post was about Turn-On.

Countless TV shows have been cancelled. I suspect very, very few have been cancelled before they even aired. Turn-On was. At least where I lived.

Let’s try posting again and look at what Turn-On symbolised.

It was 50 years ago yesterday the show was supposed to air on KOMO-TV in Seattle. I was looking forward to it. The show was kind of like Laugh-In, I had read. Tim Conway was going to be the guest star, and I always liked Tim Conway. But when I turned on Turn-On it wasn’t there. The station was airing something else.

My aging memory may be imagining a post I never wrote but it perfectly remembers what happened in 1969. And it is confirmed by a column in the Vancouver Province on February 7th, two days after the show was to air. Oh, the indignity! The column was written by Lawrence Cluderay, who was generally assigned to cover the symphony, opera and legitimate theatre.

The premiere of a new ABC network show, Turn-On, was not screened on the Seattle outlet, KOMO, Channel 4, this week. The station's management explained that it had decided “certain portions of the program are not in good taste, and that these portions would be objectionable to a substantial and responsible segment of the community.” In future, it stated, the program will be viewed ahead of time to see if its contents are suitable for their viewers. As a result of the KOMO action the program was not available to viewers in the Vancouver area.

Columnist Cluderay then washed his hands of it all and re-published a review from United Press International.

Television in Review
By RICK DU BROW
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) – The producers of television's highest-rated series, “Laugh-In,” this week presented a new, weekly ABC half-hour show entitled “Turn-On,” and described as follows:
“A visual, comedic, sensory assault involving all media techniques such as graphics, film animation, tape, stop action, slow motion, electronic distortion, computer graphics and even people.”
The final reference to the fact that “even people” figure in the entertainment may be intended lightly but is, in fact, the crux of advance debate on the show. For this is a serious comedy show that strikes uncomfortably close to the nerve in recognizing a subtle, yet terrifying contemporary theme: people becoming objects, packaged in a huge supermarket atmosphere.
“Turn-On” has, as its host, a computer. While it may be compared with “Laugh-In,” it is actually much more compressed, not merely because it is 30 minutes shorter than the parent series, but, additionally, because it intends to truly assault the senses with bludgeoning speed. It is the most McLuhanesque of all television series to date.
I have no idea whether “Turn-On” will be a hit. I think it depends on the kids around college age. If they turn on to it, it may provide the shot in the arm that will bring on great promotion, which, in turn, could command national attention.
It is certain that the show will be either hated or loved, and if enough of the older generation hates it well, that, too, could provide the spark for youth to latch on to it.
If “Turn-On” fails, it will be, I think, because it is so honest in its attempt to comment on the way we live: I don't mean just the individual sight gags and topical humor, but the adherence to the impersonality it is driving at as an essence of our time. In order to make this overall comment, “Turn-On” is ironically, yet pointedly, using some of the weapons that have contributed to our impersonality: the computer, film, animation, a lack of human hosts.
Thus we can see where “Turn-On” and “Laugh-In” really differ sharply in certain key areas. The presence of Rowan and Martin as the “Laugh-In” hosts lends an air of traditional warmth and even middle-aged respectability—despite the biting humor. There is not even this cushion of tradition on “Turn-On.” As a further example, the so-called musical track that normally accompanies such a show is rebelled against: it sounds like a steady sequence of electronic impulses and garbled tape.
So we have a show of packaged people unlike the “Laugh-In” crew that is projected more personally to the home audience. Make no mistake, however—there are enough wild characters on “Turn-On” to provide just as good newspaper copy as the “Laugh-In” performers. The question is whether the very intelligent, very serious comedy brains behind “Turn-On” have pulled off a major coup in using impersonality to attract an audience (probably a young one), or will be victims of the very impersonality they see so clearly.

Du Brow got what executive producer George Schlatter was trying for in Turn-On. Others didn’t. His February 10th column pointed out stations in Cleveland, Denver and Little Rock cancelled Turn On. Other columnists viciously ripped the show, including a UPI colleague who didn’t spare Du Brow in his criticism (though not by name). Vernon Scott always seemed easy-going over the years he was in print and on radio, but he was really violently offended in this case. This was published on February 13th.

‘Turn-On’ Drops Megaton Bomb
By VERNON SCOTT
UPI Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD (UPI)— ABC-TV should have held the debut of “Turn-On” on Bikini atoll or maybe the underground atomic test site at Pahute Mesa, Nev. The show, styled somewhat after “The Rowan and Martin Laugh-In,” was a bomb of unequaled megatons.
It did, in fact, blow itself right off the air.
Some critics who find serious, albeit self-inflating, merit in anything television spews forth, searched their souls and predicted “Turn-On” might ignite the younger set, beginning a new trend.
What it did was turn off a couple of million viewers, the sponsor and a number of video stations affiliated with ABC, according to one source.
A Cleveland station wrote the network saying: “If your naughty little boys have to write dirty words on the walls, please don't use our walls.”
And the flap was on. Contracts, time and money are involved.
All Parties Silent

None of the parties wanted to speak out. Not ABC. Not producers George Schlatter and Ed Friendly (who also produce “Laugh-In”). Not the ad agency. Not the sponsor. It is almost a certainty that “Turn-On's” debut was also its swan song. Praise be. It was an abomination. The show had no stars, horrible sounds that weren't music, bad jokes, poor taste and no redeeming artistic attributes.
Victim of the disaster is a jolly Englishman, executive producer Digby Wolfe, formerly associated with “Laugh-In.”
He had hoped the frenzied lunacy and pace of “Turn-On” would break new ground. It did. It broke right through the earth's crust.
Before the bomb exploded last week Wolfe said: “We'll deal with a broader base of satirical targets and more social satire than ‘Laugh-In.’
Sees Advantage
“We have an advantage over that show because we're on film instead of tape, allowing us to integrate cartoons, still shots, multiple images, undercranking and over cranking.”
Wolfe had high hopes for his brain child. But he more or less put the whammy on the show with his next statement.
“Our pace is really an assault on the senses,” he said. “Three or four things will be going on at the same time.”
The viewers' senses were not so much assaulted as raped.
A rival network executive said the show had only a 17 per cent share of the audience the night it was still-born, a wretched showing for the debut of a new, well-advertised series.
Instead of conventional music the sounds were provided by a moog synthesizer, an electronic device that beeped and bopped along like the wheezing of an asthmatic caliope.
Perhaps Wolfe's biggest error was replacing a living human being as host with a computer. God knows machines have replaced individuals to a ridiculous degree already. But as a television host. No way!
“Turn-On” is off. And good riddance.

What did executive producer George Schlatter have to say about the criticism and unprecedented sudden cancellation? Schlatter was never at a loss for words. This story appeared in papers on February 13th as well.

TV Networks Worried Over New Versions of ‘Sex Humor’
By JERRY BUCK
AP Television-Radio Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — A question frequently asked about shows like “The Smothers Brothers” and “Laugh-In” is just how far can television go with sex humor.
Since television began its flirtation with blue material in prime time some sort of collision seemed inevitable. It is the natural inclination of showmen to push for greater freedom—and the duty of the networks to see that freedom doesn't become license. This week an answer of sorts was provided.
ABC's “Turn On”—amid charges that it was “dirty” and “vulgar”—was canceled after its premier performance on Feb. 5.
Did “Turn On” step over the thin line between humor and bad taste?
George Schlatter, executive producer of Rowan and Martin's “Laugh-In” and “Turn On,” says, “ ‘Turn On’ was adult, sophisticated, loaded with double entendres. But dirty? No.”
Perhaps “Turn On's” sin wasn't that it was so dirty—just that it wasn't very funny.
In one vignette a girl pulled frantically on the lever of a pill-vending machine. A sign on the machine said it was “the pill.” In another quick vignette called the “Body Politic,” the show indulged in a double-meaning many viewers thought questionable.
“Let’s face it, creatively ‘Turn On’ didn't work,” said a high ABC official who asked not to be identified.
“Dean Martin is absolutely beyond belief. He can be awfully blue, but he's funny as hell. So is ‘Laugh-In’ and ‘The Smothers Brothers.’ Some of the things they get away with are incredible. But you don't bear anybody complaining—they're funny.
“And another thing,” he said. “These shows are earning very high ratings.” You let one of them slip in the ratings and you’ll see how fast people suddenly start discovering they’re dirty.”
The comedian and the network censor are natural adversaries, and their battles as far back as Jack Paar’s water closet joke have been fought in public. The story that caused NBC to censor Paar and Paar to walk off the show would seem tame today.
“I don't think standards are lower, but it's a sense of evolving—I'm talking about the whole United States—perhaps not so much toward permissiveness as toward candor. America is growing up and becoming less prudish,” says Ernest Lee Jahncke, NBC's vice president for broadcasting standards.
Schlatter, reached in Burbank, Calif., by telephone during a taping of “Laugh-In,” said, “I think that humor and satire can be as healthy as some documentaries I've seen. You can have a contemporary outlook on contemporary subjects. The way young people react to the pill shouldn't be just confined to the area of statistics.”
Asked why “Turn On” didn’t succeed, Schlatter said, “This kind of show—it's a startling change—is bound to ruffle a few feathers. ‘Turn On’ was no more outrageous or in bad taste than anything that's ever been on ‘Laugh-In’ or Dean Martin. It was the form that was distracting.
“The people were new, it had a new look, new sound. It was offbeat. All that contributed to a sense of uneasiness and disorientation. They didn't know that it was provocation, so they said, aha, bad taste!”
An ABC spokesman said the network had a contract for 18 shows and that a settlement would be made with Schlatter and his partner, Ed Friendly.
He said he was unable to say now what the replacement would be in the 8:30-9 p.m. slot on Wednesdays, but that it probably would be a taped game or variety show.

The Counterculture 50 years ago rejected the old and wanted the new. The establishment rejected any change from the status quo as being an attack on, ultimately, themselves and their values. In its 30-minute lifespan, Turn-On crystalised and symbolised the 1960s.