The Dog's Still There

Tex Avery and Mike Maltese both knew how to let gags talk without dialogue. Here’s an example from The Legend of Rockabye Point (1955). When a polar rushes into a locker full of frozen fish, a door closes revealing a sign reading “Beware of Dog.”

There’s a reason for the sign.



The dog taps the bear on the back. A look. A take.



A zoom skyward. End of scene. On to the next gag.



Don Patterson, La Verne Harding and Ray Abrams are the credited animators. This was the last cartoon Avery and Maltese worked on together. Maltese went back to Warner Bros. Avery made one more cartoon for Lantz and was preparing others when he walked away from theatrical animation for good.

More fun frames from this cartoon in this post, this post, this post and this post.

The (Not Exactly) First Anchor

Douglas Edwards is credited with being the first anchorman of the CBS-TV evening newscast in 1948. That’s a simplification. Edwards anchored television newscasts before this, and there were other anchors before Edwards, such as Richard Hubbell starting in 1941. However, May 3, 1948 is when the newscasts were expanded to five nights a week and the man picked to work solo behind the desk was Doug Edwards.

CBS had was a three-station network at the time—WCBS-TV, New York, WCAU-TV, Philadelphia, and WMAR-TV, Baltimore, though the Philly station was still in test mode. Affiliation deals had been signed with nine other stations that were under construction.¹

Edwards first anchored the CBS Television News on March 20, 1947² when the network was a whopping one station—in New York City. He replaced Larry LeSueur. The news aired for 15 minutes on Thursdays and Saturdays; Tom O’Connor continued to handle the weekend newscast. The news had been sponsored by Gulf since June 1946 when Milo Boulton was the anchor.³ (O’Connor was a former PM reporter who was hired as a news writer and newscaster on WCBW in July 1945⁴),

The roof soon caved in. CBS needed to save money, so it eliminated all studio TV programming effective May 11, 1947.⁵ But Edwards kept anchoring. He commented off-camera while charts and pictures were broadcast. Gulf must have been happy with this as it continued to sponsor the newscasts which eventually could be seen on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. With a small network in place, CBS re-opened its studio at Grand Central Terminal on April 28, 1948 with Edwards’ newscast as the first live programme from it.⁶

Let’s go back to those days and find out what the print news media was saying about Edwards. Here’s an unbylined story from The Boston Globe of June 6, 1948. The city didn’t have a CBS TV affiliate yet.

Edwards Prepares 10 Hours for 15-Minute TV Broadcast
Reporting News While Electronic Cameras Stare Is Not World’s Easiest Job
Douglas Edwards, native of Oklahoma who spent his boyhood in Alabama and his college days in Georgia, hasn’t seen any of those places in quite a while. But they will be seeing him one of these days—on television receivers.
Better known as a Columbia Broadcasting System correspondent and news analyst, Edwards is piling up an impressive record of pioneering experience in the new medium in addition to his regular broadcasting assignments.
The latter comprise six mornings a week as New York anchor mean for the “CBS World News Roundup” which calls in overseas reporters by shortwave and his five-day-a-week noontime stint as a reporter of the day’s events on “Wendy Warren and the News.”
His broadcast time on CBS-TV is a mere 15 minutes a week, but after a year before the cameras, mostly under Gulf Oil sponsorship, he still needs 10 solid hours of preparation per broadcast.

Reporting the news with a couple of big electronic cameras staring at you in the eye needs that kind of preparation if you’re going to be caught off base, Edwards explains.
“A television news broadcast,” the sandy-haired 31-year-old newsman explains, “is a combination of reporting-up-to-the-minute happenings, analysing the day’s big events, and acting as interlocutor for films, photos and other illustrative material that the audience is busy looking at while listening to you. That means you have to know when to shut up too.”
While he can depend on his typewritten script in his other broadcasts Edwards has to work mostly from memory for the television shows even though he holds a script in his hand from time to time for reference to figures or other tricky bits of information.
He got his first taste of broadcasting while in high school. Some of his friends rigged a 100-watt station and Doug, who had been practicing newscasting into a telephone since he was 12 years old, was naturally appointed news broadcaster.
His first regular radio reporting job came in 1935 at WAGF, Dothan, Ala. He stayed there for three months, then joined the Atlanta Journal and radio station WSB, doubling as radio and newspaper reporter.
In 1938 Edwards transferred to a new job with WXYZ, Detroit, stayed on for a couple of years and in 1940 returned to WSB, Atlanta, to become assistant news director for the station.
In December, 1942, he joined Columbia network’s news staff, worked on such shows as “Report to the Nation,” “The World Today,” Behind the Scenes at CBS.” In March, 1945, he went overseas, was heard from London, Paris and Germany and went on an 8000-mile roving assignment to inspect Army Air Corps Communications installations in Marseille, Rome, Athens, Cairo, Ankara and other cities. He returned to the United States in June, 1946.
Edwards, 5 feet 9, 160 pounds, is married to the former Sara Byrd of North Carolina and has two children, a 7-year-old daughter, Lynn Alice, and a son, Robert Anthony, 2½.

Edwards had some further comments to Jack Perlis of the New York Times on January 2, 1949.

[Edwards] feels that the ever growing video audience “is entitled to as full a news covering on this newer medium as it gets on radio. The news and its interpretation are the important things—news has its own dignity—and it is our job at CBS to present it in an informative and visually effective manner.” He goes on to add that “while our news format is fairly well established, we are constantly on the look-out for innovations that will heighten the visual impact of our news presentation.”
As regards that operation bugaboo—reading from scripts while “on camera”—Douglas is equally explicit. He feels that a script is absolutely essential on news broadcasts, not only for content but for the technical demands of timing and cue-ing. The trick is to consult the script rather than read from it. This is done by becoming familiar with the news, so that only occasional glances at the caption heads and cues are necessary to assure continuity.

Regular appearances before the video cameras by Edwards have resulted in some interesting reactions from some members of his audience whom he meets while they are in pursuit of their livelihoods. Often elevator operators, newsboys, clerks in department stores (especially in the video department) glance at him curiously as though they had seen him somewhere before, and audibly check their hunches. One cab drive, on being told his fare was indeed on CBS-TV, remarked: “You know, mister, you look a whole lot better on screen than on the street!”
Members of his own household are not much more encouraging. Two of his three youngsters—Donna (1 year) and Bobby (3 years) maintain an impartial objectivity—their tastes running to electric trains and “Lucky Pup.” However, his 7-year-old charmer, Lynn, is outspoken. She feels that her daddy should smile more often when “on camera” but conceded he has a good point when he replies that a good deal of the news he talks about is far from a smiling matter.
One final matter: Doug Edwards insists that he had proof positive that the CBS telecamera was actually rendered hors de combat during the fateful performance of Gypsy Rose Lee at the Air Force Show held in Madison Square Garden several months ago. It will be recalled that a good portion of the citizenry waxed skeptical at the coincidence of a fuse blowing just at the critical moment. Well, Doug had the guilty fuse in his possession—it had actually blown out—but he sent it along to Miss Lee to be autographed. It was never returned.

Just before Edwards began broadcasting Monday through Friday, Bob Trout left CBS for NBC. In the early 1930s, Trout had emerged as CBS radio’s number one news/public affairs reporter. But the war came along and Trout dropped further and further down the CBS news pecking order to Edward R. Murrow and his team of war correspondents. The same thing eventually happened to Doug Edwards. The CBS Television News was renamed Douglas Edwards With the News in 1950. For whatever reason, the network decided not to have Edwards anchor the biggest showcase in the TV news business back then—the political conventions. That job was bestowed on Walter Cronkite in 1952, 1956 and again in 1960. In 1962 Cronkite, who had been anchoring a 15-minute network cast on late Sunday nights, hosting CBS Reports, Eyewitness and The Twentieth Century, space flight coverage, and conversing with former president Eisenhower in a short series of specials, was handed the prime-time news job on April 16th.⁷

Anyone that tells you that CBS News was floating in some lofty journalist heights where no one paid attention to ratings is full of it. The idea sounds grand but it wasn’t a fact, though “a CBS spokesman” denied it to the New York Herald Tribune at the time. Edwards was more than capable, but increasing numbers of TV viewers were getting their network news from Chet Huntley and David Brinkley at NBC. Cronkite was brought in by news president Dick Salant to get the numbers up. It took time (and a strike at NBC News combined with incisive coverage of Vietnam) for Cronkite to make CBS number one.

Edwards told the Associated Press in a story published on March 15, 1962 that he asked for his release, saying “I have had a very good substantial offer. But they refused me. I don’t know quite what to do. But one thing I’m not the least bit ashamed of the showing I’ve made on the show against the competition.” Salant’s damage control to the AP was that Edwards would take on an increased schedule of “informational programming.” But clearly, Edwards’ career had peaked. He spent the rest of it at CBS anchoring local late news and brief mid-day network newsbreaks on TV and appearing on radio before retiring in 1988.

---

1 Broadcasting magazine, April 12, 1948, pg. 26^↩
2 Newsday, Mar 20, 1947, pg. 31^↩
3 Variety, June 26, 1946, pg. 35^↩
4 Broadcasting magazine, July 23, 1945, pg. 52.^↩
5 The Billboard, May 10, 1947, pgs. 15, 17^↩
6 New York Herald Tribune, April 24, 1948, pg. 19^↩
7 New York Times, March 15, 1962, pg. 71.^↩

Dancing Dachshund

Plot? In a Van Beuren cartoon, who needs it? Just toss in a fish singing to a cheese, a pig on a fire escape clouting a pail and a parrot with an outrageously huge head, and you have seven minutes of musical strangeness.

Oh, you have to have a wiener dog swaying and bending like a rubber hose while yodelling.



Yes, it’s The Tuba Tooter, a 1932 cartoon starring the human Tom and Jerry. The cartoon is kind of a music video set to the 1927 song “Schultz is Back Again.” Gene Rodemich provides the score, with John Foster and George Stallings overseeing the production.

You can see more frames from this short in this post and in this post.

Punny! Punnn-y!

The purpose of the 1938 Warner Bros. cartoon You're An Education is two-fold:

a) to see how many songs can be fit into one animated short
b) to see how many obvious visual puns can be fit into one animated short

I counted 25 different melodies in this cartoon, most used as musical puns. Carl Stalling didn’t have to think hard to come up with tunes to accompany very short scenes about Hawaii or Scotland (Canada is represented by “The Maple Leaf Forever”).

You want obvious puns? Here’s a string of them involving food as an Aunt Jemina-type chorus sings the Warren/Dubin title song.



They’re HUNGRY! Get it?

Now they get food and utensils.



Boxoffice magazine sure liked this cartoon better than I do. Its review of November 26, 1938:

A flight into fancy by the cartoonists that pays swell dividends as entertainment. Done in an ingenuous and brilliant manner, the action takes place on various travel folders. As the action shifts from folder to folder, appropriate music accompanies the change. On top of that, there is a villain who steals a large diamond from the Kimberly mines and is chased through all the foreign cities. It rates as one of the best animation job turned out by this studio.

The trade publication reported on October 22nd that Leon Schlesinger had shipped this cartoon to Warner Bros. exchanges (it was released on November 5th). At the time, Schlesinger had 26 cartoons in some phase of production. Maybe exhaustion due to a heavy release schedule is why director Frank Tashlin and writer Dave Monahan churned out the most corny gags and treated them with a total lack of irony.

Ace Gamer was the credited animator before this was turned into a Blue Ribbon re-release in October 1946.

Backswing Benny

Several episodes of the Jack Benny radio show, and at least one on his television show, involved golf with the plot showing Jack was a pretty lousy golfer. It was based on fact. Jack did play golf. And he wasn’t all that great at it.

When Benny accepted a humanitarian award in Boston in 1955, he had a chance to fit in a round on one of the local courses. The Christian Science Monitor decided to see how he fared. This was published May 6, 1955.

Jack Benny, the Golfer, As Seen by His Caddie
By Harry Molter
Sports Writer of the Christian Science Monitor
As one of the outstanding comedians of our time Jack Benny has been seen, heard and laughed at by millions of people all over the country.
But there is another, more relaxed side to him—that of Jack Benny, the golfer.
Like President Eisenhower, Benny likes to do his relaxing by playing a friendly round of golf as he did yesterday at The Country Club in Brookline with Francis Ouimet, Joe Cronin and Elmer Ward.
And you can take it from the young man who carried the clubs for Benny that he is as entertaining on the golf course without his gag writers, as he is on radio or television with a prepared script.
“A very enjoyable round,” said Guy Guarino, who cut five classes at Boston College for the chance to caddy for Benny. “He never stopped telling funny stories or cracking jokes. He kidded Cronin (Red Sox general manager) about being a long-ball hitter, laughed about his own bad shots and was strictly out there for pleasure. It was lots of fun, and for me a real thrill.”
Then, with the skilled appraisal of a man who has caddied eight years, young Guarino gave a cold, calculating caddie’s-eye view of Jack Benny, the golfer.
Hands Like Violinist
“He’s accurate off the tee but not too long, probably because he has small, soft hands for a golfer. (Ed. Note: More like the hands of a concert violinist.)
“He didn’t get in too much trouble and was good out of the sand traps. His putting was consistent. I think Mr. Ouimet (National Open champion in 1913) helped him read the greens.
Dress Rehearsal
“Over-all, though, I’d have to say Mr. Benny was a little erratic,” continued the college freshman. “Like on the short 16th where he hooked his drive into some trees, then played a delicate approach shot over a trap and right up to the pin. He had some pars, but he also had a few sevens mixed in and took two shots to get off the first tee.”
In “clubbing” Benny, Guarino advised him to take a little more club than he would the average player. “He took a practice swing before every shot,” laughed Guarino. “Sort of like a dress rehearsal.”
Benny seemed very pleased to play with someone like Ouimet and called him “The professor” whenever he (Ouimet) hit an especially good shot, added the caddy.
On Benny’s behalf, it might be pointed out he was playing on a strange course with borrowed clubs and borrowed shoes. Asked later how he plays, he said: “Not as well as I should after 30 years or so.
“I took the game up for relaxation during my vaudeville days and it still takes my mind off all my troubles when I get out on the course. It’s my only hobby. I can be on the Hillcrest course, near my Beverly Hills home, five minutes after I leave work. I play about four or five times a week.”
Benny has a 15 handicap, which means he shoots in the 80s—about the same range as the President’s game. His wife, Mary Livingstone, is also a regular on the golf course.
“But we don’t play much on weekends,” adds Benny in his dead-pan manner. “We’re usually pretty busy then.”

Paul Terry's Got Rhythm

Movie producer Amadee Van Beuren interrupted his honeymoon in June 1929 for one thing—to fire Paul Terry. It was probably the best thing that happened to the cartoonist.

In September, the Carpenter-Goldman Laboratories morphed into Audio-Cinema and decided to get into the movie business. Among the people it got into business with was Paul Terry and his new partner, Frank Moser. Film Daily revealed on January 26, 1930 that the production schedule was under way on the new Terry-Toons. The first one was released on February 23rd (see screen grab of Caviar to the right, shamelessly pilfered from Jerry Beck). The last one began to hit theatres in 1968. Long before then, Terry had sold his studio to CBS and became a millionaire.

The Larchmont Times decided on April 10, 1930 to profile Terry, who explains how his cartoons are made and doesn’t resist a chance to put down the Van Beuren Aesop’s Fables series that continued without him.

Among Professional Folks Here is-- Paul Terry
The business of combining two arts music and motion, is an easy one for Paul Terry, animated cartoonist and originator of the famous laugh-provoking “Aesop’s Fables.” He is now producing a new sound movie entitled “Terrytoons," a series of cartoons which goes from country to country, taking in all the folk songs and customs of that nation and putting them on the screen, synchronized with music, and the comical characters drawn by Mr. Terry’s skilful pen.
“Rythm [sic] is so much in our business,” said the cartoonist, “everything done in the “Terrytoons” must he accomplished in time, every action or movement of the character. Music also decides the length of the film, rather than the cartoon having the preference over the melody. Of course, that requires mathematical skill and a stop watch to work out to the last beat, and the special music to be played—then it is figured in seconds and divided up into exposures. Moving pictures, as you know, are a series of small pictures. Therefore, after the cartoons are drawn, they are projected at the rate of 24 per second and photographed that way. It ordinarily requires nine to ten thousand, but the slack is taken up by pauses and breaks, so that the average length is only six thousand. Then, there is the actual drawing of the cartoon, which is always an interesting process. Each cartoon is on an 8 by 12 inch of paper. It is first done on tracing paper, then transferred, in ink, to celluloid. It is colored up in black and white, and finally, photographed in strips. These are regular animated cartoons, and the “Terrytoons” although different, are done the same way and manner, having the usual music is the main thing,—it must have a tune worked out in perfect synchronization with the picture.”

“Many people are puzzled as to how combining a real movie and an animated cartoon is done. This is accomplished much the same way. First, the moving picture is taken of a human being, then a bromide enlargement is made, which is placed over the photo of the cartoon (already finished in primary method), and the whole thing is again re-photographed.”
My [sic] Terry went on to tell of his special production which has just started to be released, but is already gaining recognition. “Terrytoons” are a lot better product than “Aesop’s Fables” and have been very successful so far, and he expects much to come of them. Up to now, he has produced eight. A Russian picture entitled, “Caviar," A German, "Pretzels”, A Hawaiian specialty called “Pineapples,” a western film with a quaint name “Indian Pudding” and a spicy one from Spain, “Spanish Onions.” There is also the Swedish [sic], “Swiss Cheese” an Oriental “Hot Turkey” and finally, “Roman Punch.” They surely sound good!
“Although the reel itself is short," continued the cartoonist, “it needs an awful lot to produce it. I have a staff of 20 artists who are drawing continually, and an eighteen piece orchestra, and a small army of official photographers, camera-men and song-writers. Of course, sound and the talkies have made a tremendous difference, especially in my business. No one produces silent films any more—if you stop and think about it, you have'nt seen a silent picture for months, and you probably never will again. They are as hopelessly out of date as the bustle and the bicycle-built-for-two.”
“The Aesop’s Fables had a great run in silent form, but wasn’t so good in sound. I thought it would be best to have a production with music taking the leading part and accordingly, adopted “Terrytoons.” The name is tricky, since it combines the idea of cartoons and tunes. The old Fables, however, get a big reception. They were showed in the Parish House for 9 years, every Friday night—I showed the first fable ever made there, they were tried out there, and 429 have been put on there, a fact that should be interesting to Larchmonters.”
Paul Terry is a native of San Francisco, where he worked as cartoonist on the San Francisco Chronicle, Call and Examiner. In 1910, drawn by the natural urge which brings everyone to the Big City, he came to New York and obtained a position on what was then the New York Press. He says that New York is the Mecca for artists who feel they have outgrown the smaller cities, and as a consequence, there is a steady stream of them constantly coming from outside. In 1915, he first started to draw animated cartoons, attracted to the business because he understood a bit about photography had done some painting and stage and gained a liking for the theatrical business, and mainly because he enjoyed the thought of putting a drawing in action.
Today, he owns the Audio-Cinema Studio on Harris Avenue, L. I., together with Frank Moser and Philip Schieb [sic] musical director. He owns a lovely home on Beach Avenue in the Manor and has a wife and small daughter Patricia. He belongs to the Larchmont Men's Club and the Larchmont Shore Club.



Doug Fox of the Exhibitors Herald-World of April 12, 1930 didn’t share the enthusiasm over the new Terry cartoons. Or the other B studios, either. He wrote:

Paul Terry and Frank Moser have created something in their new series of Terry-Toons, produced for Educational by Audio-Cinema, that is faintly reminiscent of the work of Ub Iwerks and Van Beuren Corporation. In other words, these sound cartoons do not bear the stamp of originality either in character or theme. “Pretzels,” the latest, lays claim to its title only in that a few feet of it are laid in a German beer garden to the accompaniment of wellknown Germany tunes. As entertainment it is so-so. I've seen lots better.

Regardless, Iwerks and Van Beuren were out of business before 1940. Moser was gone by then, too. Terry (at least his studio) kept going and going until pretty much the end of theatrical animated shorts. He must have done something right.

You Win A Cigar, Elmer

A joyous Bugs Bunny carefully and deliberately takes aim as Elmer Fudd sobs uncontrollably, thinking he’s killed the wabbit.



Now the sequence switches to an analogy with a carnival midway strongman game where someone uses a mallet to bash a weight up to the top of a pole, the winner getting a prize. That’s what happens here. Elmer soars to the top of a tree, bashes against a branch, a bell is heard, then when he lands, Bugs Bunny fishes into his pocket for the prize—a cigar.



The scene ends with a little balletic dance as Bugs exits.



This, of course, is from A Wild Hare (1940), Tex Avery’s Oscar-nominated take on Bugs. The pacing of the cartoon is far more measured than what he would create at MGM, where it seemed like he tried to cram as many gags in a short as possible. But the slower tempo works here. The audience is given the time to anticipate and then watch what the rabbit will do.

Virgil Ross is the only credited animator, but the Avery unit had Bob and Chuck McKimson, Sid Sutherland and Rod Scribner in it by this point.

Flying Pluto

By May 1931, Mickey Mouse was domesticated. In The Moose Hunt, he’s basically a boy with a dog.

The cartoon ends improbably with Mickey lifting up Pluto’s hind-quarters, and the dog flies like a bird, flapping its ears (no “illusion of life” here, folks). They can now easily escape a charging moose.



Mickey plays Pluto’s tail as a Jew’s harp. Then, because Disney cartoons had a rear end fetish, Mickey slaps the dog’s butt in rhythm to “Shave and a Hair Cut” as the iris closes.



Pluto fakes a death scene. Bugs Bunny did it a lot better, albeit it was nine years later.