What jokes do comedians find funny? Parade magazine milked that question for years.
Parade was a weekend newspaper magazine supplement. One of its pages was taken up with a little biography of a comic actor or comedian and a number of jokes they supplied that they found funny. At least, I’m presuming they supplied them.
Here’s Jack Benny’s contribution. At least he doesn’t mention the one about the wheelbarrow that he used on his radio show one time. This appeared on October 15, 1961.
My favorite jokes EDITOR'S NOTE: Jack Benny's 30th consecutive season in network broadcasting and his 12th in television—an unparalleled record which began when his first sponsor signed him for 15 weeks on radio in 1932—gets underway tonight.
The opening show will be video-taped in New York. Jack then moves to Waukegan, Ill., the home town he publicized to world-wide fame, for dedication of the new Jack Benny Junior High School, which will be the scene of his second telecast next week. Waukegan boasts five other such schools: Thomas Jefferson and Daniel Boone junior high schools. Thus the name of the new institution is some indication of the pride and love Waukegan feels for Jack.
Born on February 14, 1894, Jack was originally named Benny Kubelsky, but when he entered show business at the Orpheum Theatre in. St. Louis, he took the name Ben Benny. Since there was then another entertainer called Ben Bernie, the comedian was ordered by the Vaudeville Managers Association to call himself something else. He took the name Jack Benny when sailors entering a St. Louis restaurant hailed him with the greeting, "Hi, Jack."
Benny lives in Beverly Hills with his wife Mary Livingston, whom he married in 1927. They have one daughter, Joan, and two grandchildren. By JACK BENNY
I'M A SUCKER for talking animal stories. Here's one of my favorites:
It was the final game of the World Series. The Dodgers were wracked with injuries to their key players. Defeat was a certainty, it seemed, but manager Leo Durocher had something up his sleeve. His team was trailing by three runs. It was the last of the ninth with two away. Durocher signaled to the dugout for a pinch hitter. Out walked a horse with nerves of steel and a Dodger uniform. After a few practice swings the horse took his stance at the plate. The Yankee pitcher worked the count to three and two. With the next pitch the horse belted the ball out of the park. It was, by far, the longest-hit home run in the history of baseball. The crowd jumped to its feet in frenzy. Panic had broken loose.
But the horse stood still at home plate.
"Run," screamed the fans.
Their shouts were echoed by the Dodger players, who had streamed out of the dugout.
Durocher rushed to the horse.
"Run," he pleaded.
"Don't be stupid," came the deadpan reply. "If I could do that, I'd be at Santa Anita."
RECENTLY BOB HOPE left the bar at Lakeside Country Club. He was about to tee off when he looked down and saw a grasshopper sitting beside his golf ball. Hope, a friendly fellow wanting to be sociable, said; "Did you know, old fellow, they've named a drink after you?"
"Irving?" asked the grasshopper incredulously.
A GREAT WHITE HUNTER had just returned from a three-year safari. He was regaling members of his private club with some of his harrowing experiences, when one of his cohorts interrupted:
"As I recall," said the listener, "you stood well over 6 feet in height when you left and now you're only 18 inches tall. What caused this?"
"I don't know for sure," came the reply, "but it's the last time I'll ever insult a witch doctor."
A NOUVEAU RICHE COUPLE decided they should start spending in a grand manner. For a starter they made reservations on the most expensive round-the-world cruise. They were assigned the largest and most expensive suite on the ship.
As is the custom, the captain checked the passenger list for likely candidates to sit at his table. He was told the couple were not only booked into the best accommodation, but had filled half the luggage space with their trunks and baggage. It was the captain's decision that they most assuredly would qualify for a place of honor at the head table.
He sent the steward with an invitation to the couple to join him at dinner.
To the steward's amazement the couple were shocked and insulted. "We've spent a fortune to get the best of everything on this ship," shouted the husband, "and now we're expected to eat with the crew!"
THE HONEYMOON is really over when he phones to say he'll be late for dinner . . . and she's already left a note saying his TV dinner is in the freezer. . .
I LIKE THE ONE ABOUT the Englishman who says to the waiter, "Didn't you hear me say, 'Well done'?" The waiter (ignoring the blood-red steak) absentmindedly answers: "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. It's seldom we get any thanks."
A DISGRUNTLED HUSBAND was complaining about the short dresses being worn by women. "What would people say," he asked a leading banker, if it was your wife who was gallivanting around showing her knees?"
"I imagine they'd say," sighed the banker, "that I must have married her for her money."
I REMEMBER THIS STORY about George Gershwin: This great composer was an avid golfer. Playing on an unfamiliar course one day he just couldn't get going. He registered a 9 on the first hole and an 8 on the second. "I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong," he fretted. "Mister," volunteered the caddy, "you just ain't got rhythm."
The Jay Ward studios had some ideas that never got off the ground and others which took some time before they finally appeared on TV screens.
One of the latter was Hoppity Hooper, which finally found a place on ABC’s Saturday schedule in 1964-65, airing at 12:30 p.m. Keith Scott’s indispensable book, “The Moose That Roared,” reveals it germinated in the idea for a Fractured Fairy Tale in 1960, but Bill Scott envisioned the character as the lead of a series (which would also include something called Clobbered Classics). Ward’s staff was asked to pony up money so a pilot could be shot.
I love the humour of Ward’s writers but Hoppity was blah and not all that sharp, certainly not as much as The Bullwinkle Show. The pace seemed slower, too. Hoppity lasted three seasons on Saturdays but it seems to me the show ended up on Sundays for a time.
Ward refers to Hoppity in this 1964 column by the Newspaper Enterprise Association around May 28th. There’s a reference as well to The Nut House, a pastiche of comedy that was being bashed about by Ward’s staff as early as July 1963 and aired as an hour-long special on CBS on September 1, 1964. Nothing like it had been tried on television before and it’s compared these days to Laugh In, which appeared three years later. Critics found the show uneven and the network took a pass on turning it into a series. Ward always had some clever concepts and it’s too bad some of them never made it.
Satire? Yes. Malicious? No
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (NEA) — Can satire be funny without a point of view?
The answer from Jay Ward is a resounding "Yes."
A professional funny man in the field of animated television cartoons, Ward is making it pay big money. He has the popularity rating charts of a delighted audience to prove he is right.
Ward is the creator - producer of such cartoon hits as Bullwinkle, Rocky and His Friends and, an old film with narration, Fractured Flickers. He crashed home screens early, in 1947 [sic], with Crusader Rabbit. Next season he is introducing a new series, Hoppity, starring a frog.
But about satire being funny he adds:
"You can't be malicious. That's the secret of our whole operation."
Via Bullwinkle, his outlandish moose of a star, Ward has kidded the Northwest Mounted Police (Dudley Do Right), Chicago politics, the Los Angeles City Council, the Peace Corps, assorted Washington figures, film stars, TV shows and personalities and even television commercials.
Ward's "commercial" kidded a well-known drive-it-yourself auto rental company. In Ward's version, the driver had to be yanked skyward out of the car, which then crashed into a wall.
He is happy to say that no one has complained seriously and the laughs have paid off. Since he is not malicious and attempts no points of view, even sensitive network censors welcome the Ward brand of looking at the world satirically.
The old Hollywood comedy film he features in Fractured Flickers is Ward's guide, he says, in seeking audience laughter.
He says: "Mack Sennett, Buster Keaton and Hal Roach had a sense of comedy we would like to equal. Their film was just funny, period."
A jolly, sport-shirted, 38-year-old, Ward came home to Berkeley, Calif., after World War II to launch a real estate business, which he still owns. With the coming of TV he and an artist friend created Crusader Rabbit which they sold to NBC as the first cartoon series made especially for home screens. Now Ward hopes to equal his past success with a live one-hour variety show featuring young talent and titled, The Nut House.
"We hope to do a lot of wild, crazy things," he says, adding. "It will be nice for a change to work with people who can talk back."
For his new Hoppity series he chuckles: "We will be featuring the only frog in existence who isn't really a prince." Hans Conreid [sic] will provide the voice of another frog [he was actually a fox], a conman always involved in wild schemes. It's another chance for non-malicious satire with — as Ward puts it — "no point of view. Just funny, period."
A wolf vanquished by Scrappy, Oopy, a goat and hot coals bays in defeat on a hill outside the goat’s home in The Wolf at the Door (1932).
The smoke from the chimney of the house forms a message for the wolf.
The print is battered but you get the idea.
Dick Huemer wrote the story, such as it is, with Sid Marcus and Art Davis receiving animation credits. Joe De Nat opens the cartoon with Franz Schubert’s "Erlkönig" that was also heard in Warner Bros. cartoons.
Rudy Vallee revealed in the February, 1932 edition of Radio Digest that composer Herman (Do-Do) Hupfeld promised he could introduce his newest competition “Goopy Gear Plays Piano By Ear” on the air. Hupfeld was appearing on the Hart, Schaffner & Marx Hour on CBS at the time, and the sponsor was unhappy that Vallee got a two-hour jump on putting the song on the radio.
The tune is best known for being the reason for the existence of the 1932 Warners cartoon Goopy Geer. There’s singing, dancing, piano playing, repetitious “gags,” re-used animation from an earlier cartoon. And we get a gorilla-waiter ordering chicken soup, made by a chicken swimming in a pot then drying itself off.
At the time, Hupfeld was best-known for composing “When Yuba Does the Rumba on the Tuba,” which also appeared on Warner Bros. cartoons and Vallee recorded for Victor. He also wrote a song involving something to do with a kiss being just a kiss and a sigh being just a sigh.
Well, twice by United Press International in stories by two different columnists two years apart.
The first article was written soon after her completely overhauled The Pruitts of Southampton was cancelled. I liked the original show. Mind you, I was nine when it debuted in 1966, but it was fun seeing Phyllis prance around in her ridiculous outfits, cackling away. Unfortunately, she didn’t use any of the material from her nightclub/TV talk show stand-ups. All that was left were broad and somewhat ridiculous plots. By January, the whole thing was started over from scratch and I tuned out.
I dispute columnist Vernon Scott’s characterisation that Diller worked in “fleabag clubs.” She started in San Francisco at the Purple Onion and the hungry i, and worked the Blue Angel in New York, all before 1958. They were hardly “fleabag.” This story appeared starting around May 2, 1967.
Phyllis Diller Not Really What Most People See
By VERNON SCOTT UPI Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) – Phyllis Diller is a fraud.
She's been passing herself off as a shapeless scarecrow with a maniacal laugh and a frightwig hairdo to become the top comedienne in the movie and television business. And you can throw in nightclubs, too.
Phyllis heightens her fraudulent image with outrageous clothes. She doesn’t appear to be something the cat dragged in for good reason that no respectable cat would get near one of her costumes.
She is more London after the blitz, or Johnstown when the waters raged through the place.
Her outfits make Twiggy seem a burlesque queen. Phyllis would have the world believe her measurements are 18-18-18.
But beneath the fuss and feathers, the phony patina of nothingness is a warm-blooded pretty, well-rounded female who keeps her curves a secret.
THE OTHER DAY she climbed out of a horrible red gown and hat on the set of her new movie, “Did You Hear the One About the Traveling Saleslady?” and into a snug fitting white blouse and capris.
The transformation was eye-popping. It was as if Don Knotts donned a bathing suit and came out a Rock Hudson.
“Ah haaa, haaa, haaa,” Phyllis roared. “Didn't recognize me did you, baby? This is the real me in all my glory. Kind of grabs you doesn't it?”
She slapped her leg and bellowed her laugh again.
“Can't say that I like to have too many people see me in this condition. It could ruin me.
“You know what my real measurements are? Well, I'm 38-30-38, and that ain't bad considering what I've been through.”
More recently Phyllis was through a television series, "The Pruitts of Southampton." The ratings didn't even measure up to Phyllis' measurements and was cancelled.
“I don’t miss the series at all,” Phyllis said. “It was wrong from the start and I knew it from the first day shooting the pilot. But you learn from failure and it really gives you more confidence in yourself.”
Television wasn’t her goal, anyhow. Since working in flea-bag clubs years ago, Phyllis has always dreamed of starring in movies.
She's co-starred with Bob Hope in a couple of comedies (most recently “Eight on the Lam”), but always in a supporting role. Now she is top billed and thrilled out of her mind.
“This is it, baby,” she cried. “This is what I've been shooting for all these years. And I'm doing another one with Hope after this. We're becoming a sort of road company Taylor and Burton.”
“Movie star” Phyllis? Um, not quite. In 1968, she was headlining on TV again in a comedy/variety show which died quickly (Rip Taylor was in the cast; apparently Phyllis herself wasn’t campy enough). This next United Press International story comes from pretty close to the time she was starring in “Hello, Dolly” on Broadway. It appeared in papers around November 2, 1969.
Comedy Star Really Attractive, Good Housewife
By PATRICIA E. DAVIS
NEW YORK (UPI) – Phyllis Diller is a fraud.
Offstage, comedy’s most famous raucous, incompetent housewife is a soft-spoken, attractive middle-aged woman who is, she admits, “rather elegant.”
And, to add to the cracking Diller myth, her husband, singer Warde Donovan, brags she is a “marvelous” housekeeper and a “superb” cook.
“I have convinced the public through the tube that I’m a monster,” Miss Diller said in an interview. “They don’t believe I’m elegant until they see me in person. Then their first reaction is, ‘My God, she’s pretty.”
And as for housekeeping — “I’m persnickety — precise — about the way my house is run,” Miss Diller said, adding that becasue her house is a 22-room mansion she has a staff of eight to help run it.
Donovan, whom Miss Diller insists is not the Fang of her comedy routines — “Fang is fictional” — claimed that his wife is a “superb gourmet cook.”
“I’m great with eggs,” Donovan said, “So I cook breakfast and serve it to Phyllis in bed. But after that, it’s her show.
“She loves to cook so she crowds everybody out of the kitchen. They become choppers and slaves,” he added.
“But Warde’s a great chopper,” Miss Diller interrupted. “We stand there for hours cooking together.”
Miss Diller and Donovan were married four years ago, the second marriage for each. The Donovan household includes seven children, three living at home, as well as one harpsichord, seven pianos, three pump organs, three sets of drums, a xylophone, three saxophones and a melodion. “We’re rather musical,” Miss Diller, who once studied to be a serious singer, noted wryly.
Miss Diller had swept into the interview in a white Maribou bathrobe and bare feet. “Excuse me while I get put together — my Americana Hotel late show doesn’t let me get to bed til 3 a.m. I’m still asleep,” she apologized, disappearing to change outfits.
Returning in a pink quilted robe with matching shoes, she flashed an enormous cocktail ring and noted with a straight face that the main purpose of the compartmentalized jewel was as “a receptacle for storing my front tooth caps in during meals. If I put ’em on the table the waiters sweep them away,” she explained, demonstrating the storage process.
The ring is one of the few remaining pieces in her jewelry collection, practically wiped out by two burglaries. The most recent, in Cleveland, netted the burglars $100,000 worth of gems, “pieces it took years to collect; one-of-a-kind things we can’t replace,” she said woefully.
About the only off-stage trace of the on-stage Phyllis Diller is her raucous “aw-ha ha-haaaa” laugh, which she insisted is “natural; it comes with the package.”
But the laugh is carefully nurtured — its an important part of her act.
“Great comedy,” she explained, “is a combination of material, delivery and attitude. You must have all three.”
Just as the laugh is important, so are the blond “fright wigs,” teased to look as if the wearer had her finger in an electric socket, and the wardrobe crafted by “Omar of Omaha.” Omar (actually a woman named Gloria Johnson) has come up with such gems as a turkey feather dress for Thanksgiving performances and a “spring outfit” covered with paper flowers.
“I couldn’t get near the impact with conventional clothes,” Miss Diller said. “I’ve tried it at benefits where I was dressed to the teeth and, my dear, I laid such bombs you couldn’t believe it. Hot dang! ”
Phyllis may have spent a lot of time reading cue cards with Bob Hope on television, but she kept working almost until the end. She appeared on the soap The Bold and the Beautiful only months before her death in August 2012. She was 95.
One of the great things about the Fleischer cartoons of the 1920s and early ‘30s is characters would morph into something else. Their shapes would change, using simple line drawings.
How different were things later on. Even the MGM studio, which had money to spend the time making those types of drawings, copped out in Wild and Woolfy (1945), another wolf-Red-Droopy cartoon.
Here, bad guy Wolfy points his six-shooter at a big hombre in a bar. He becomes a chicken. But instead of changing shapes, Tex Avery has his animator superimpose chicken animation and fade out the hombre animation (Walter Lantz did the same thing in Hot Noon, a 1953 Woody Woodpecker cartoon.
There’s an effort at perspective as the chicken runs out of the foreground and out of the cartoon. The sound of the old tune "Chicken Reel" is in the background.
Ed Love, Ray Abrams and Preston Blair are the animators. Bill Thompson was still away on military service in the Chicago area so he’s not Droopy in this one.
Today’s version of this ancient gag comes from Flip the Frog’s 1931 cartoon Laughing Gas. Flip is a dentist who, instead of using ether to put out his patient, comes up with another idea: a skunk.
The credits say the cartoon was produced and drawn by Ub Iwerks. There are some fun bits in this cartoon and Carl Stalling does a good job matching his score to the action with solo instrumentation.
Jack Benny could ad-lib. He preferred polishing his scripts with his writers, in some cases spending time debating whether a word—one word—was going to play well. That didn’t stop him from throwing in a one-liner or make an aside shout-out to someone listening (he once ended a stretch of radio show dialogue with Blanche Stewart with the word “Brenda,” Stewart’s role on the Bob Hope Show).
Here’s a piece from the San Francisco Examiner of October 15, 1961 that starts out about Benny’s ad-libbing and then meanders over to his violin concerts, the longevity of his staff and how he got his stage name.
The Truth About Jack Benny's Ad Libs
By Dwight Newton
FRED ALLEN once said that Jack Benny couldn't ad lib "I do" at his own wedding.
Substitute "wouldn't" for "couldn't" and you have the key to Jack's long term success in show business.
Jack never ad libs anything if he can possibly avoid it. He insist that all dialogue be fully memorized, that all action be thoroughly rehearsed. He won't even permit a teleprompter on his show, nor cue cards.
Jack's TV gospel can be summarized in one word: Preparation.
The payoff to always being prepared has led to a double anniversary tonight—the beginning of Jack's 30th consecutive season in network broadcasting, and his 12th in television (9:30 p. m., channels 5-3E-8-10-12-30).
His star guest will be another veteran of the comedy circuit, Phil Silvers, who'll bring along three surprise guests—including Garry Moore and Alan King, I understand. Betty Johnson will be the songbird of the night. The story line concerns Jack's visit to New York for a talk with his sponsor about his new contract.
It may be a turkey. Jack has had many of them. It may be a hilarious half hour. Jack has had many more of those. One thing is certain. It will be the best he can offer under the circumstances. Jack never short changes the public deliberately.
He is in good shape for this season, having filmed 12 programs in advance. One stars Raymond "Perry Mason" Burr defending Jack against charges of a capital crime.
ANOTHER headlines Tennessee Ernie Ford. En route from NBC last year to ABC next year, Ernie stopped by CBS to do this one comedy show for Jack.
Mr. and Mrs. Jimmy Stewart will return for the third time. Other programs already filmed feature Bobby Rydell, Mickey Rooney, Jane Morgan, Shari Lewis, and Roberta Peters who sang on the recent "Carnegie Hall Salutes Jack Benny" program."
That was a spellbinder, the TV musical treat of the year climaxed as Jack on the violin dueted with Isaac Stern in front of the Philadelphia Orchestra. For the first time, Jack let home viewers see a portion of the act that has raised over $2,000,000 for symphony orchestras throughout the country.
The fiddle that foundered so often on "Love in Bloom" has become a financial boon to serious music. Last season, Jack performed with symphony orchestras in Indianapolis, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Dallas and New York--and with our own symphony orchestra two years ago. He plays Mendelssohn and Rimsky-Korsakov, draws the crowds, charges up to $150 a seat and evokes classic humor lines from master musicians.
Says Isaac Stern: "When Jack walks out in tails in front of 90 musicians, he looks like the greatest of soloists. What a shame he has to play!"
The fiddle is a continuing Benny trademark along with the Maxwell, the toupe, the age 39 constancy, and the stinginess. Said Benny a while back: "The good things that really happened to me were by accident. I never thought that if I was a stingy character or a lousy violinist this would keep me going 25 years later."
Well, they didn't really. It was Benny who kept them going by applying the Benny Law of thorough preparation before each performance. Add to this his unique talent for hiring able associates and holding them. His senior writers, Sam Perrin and George Balzar [sic], have been with him for 19 years, the others for 12 years.
He has had only four vocalists in 30 years—Frank Parker, Kenny Baker, Larry Stevens and Dennis Day. Rochester was hired to play a Pullman porter on one radio show only and remained for a quarter of a century.
DON WILSON has been his announcer for 28 years. Benny recalls that he auditioned for announcers and signed Don because he laughed loudest at Benny's quips.
They'll all be back this season with veteran Frank Nelson, musical director Mahlon Merrick (28 years) and Benny Rubin, a lifetime friend who gave Benny his first handle, Jack.
Jack was born Benny Kubelsky and changed it to Ben Benny when he went into vaudeville as a violinist. At the St. Louis Orpheum one week, the Vaudeville Managers Association sent a wire requesting he change it. Ben Benny was too similar to Ben Bernie, a vaudeville fiddler of much greater fame.
Benny Rubin was on the same bill. As they discussed it at dinner that night a sailor came by the table and said "Hi, Jack." "That's it!" exclaimed Benny Rubin. "Jack—Jack Benny," And Jack Benny it has been ever since.
Two weeks ago, the Jack Benny name coined by Benny Rubin received new recognition when Jack returned to his hometown, Waukegan, Ill., for the dedication of a new Jack Benny Junior High School. Jack filmed the event and the school dedication will be the scene of next Sunday's telecast.
It may be the most famous and naïve cartoon involving the Cold War.
Duck and Cover was a live action short with animated portions telling kids that when their neighbourhood gets nuked, just fall to the ground, cover your body with your arms, and you’ll be okay. What about radiation? Well, the cartoon kind of glossed over that point. That’s probably why the film has become a camp favourite and written about extensively.
The cartoon was made by Archer Productions, a company set up by former Disney artist Lars Colonius in New York in early 1949. Broadcasting magazine of February 20, 1950 revealed “all of his staff also are former Disney animators” (among them were John Ployardt and Carl Fallberg). The company had made more than 40 TV and film commercials by that point, with Chevrolet as its first client, followed by Blatz Beer and Pepsi-Cola before it somehow won the contract to make Duck and Cover.
The New York Herald Tribune told readers about the film’s impending debut in its issue of December 2, 1951.
Cartoon Turtle To Teach Pupils Air-Raid Rules
U.S. Putting Out 3,000,000 Leaflets in Which ‘Bert’ Says: ‘Duck and Cover’
WASHINGTON. Dec. 1—A new cartoon character, “Bert the Turtle,” will make his bow next week to American school children, but he will have a grim purpose—teaching them how to "duck and cover" in the event of atomic bombing.
The Federal Civil Defense Administration is distributing to states and territories 3,000,000 copies of a 16-page illustrated booklet entitled "Bert the Turtle Says Duck and Cover." Additional millions of the cartoon booklet are expected to be distributed to school children throughout the country.
“Bert” also is a motion picture and radio star. He appears in a ten-minute movie of the same title as the booklet, to be distributed later this month.
He likewise will be heard throughout the country on a transcribed radio program running 14 minutes, 30 seconds. Platters are now being sent to state civil defense directors for distribution to local defense units. Bert Shows the Way
The cartoon leaflet opens with Bert, equipped with air raid helmet, strolling along nonchalantly upright, while a monkey, swinging from a nearby tree, holds a lighted firecracker on a stick over his head. Bert sees it: and the legend is "Bert ducks and covers—he's smart, but he has his shelter on his back—you must learn to find shelter."
The atomic bomb, the booklet says in the two succeeding pages, is a new danger which explodes with a flash brighter than any ever seen before by school children, and they must be ready to protect themselves.
"Like Bert, you DUCK to avoid things flying through the air," the leaflet advises, showing Bert withdrawn into his shell alongside a small boy, prone, with his head covered.
Civil defense sirens and other alarms will warn of an attack, usually the booklet continues, whereupon all must take shelter. But if there is no warning, children in school must take shelter under or behind desks and other objects, it adds, noting “there is always something to shelter you indoors.” Speed Stressed
Outdoors, counsels the booklet, which shows children abandoning toys and bicycles to take shelter behind walls and trees, even a hollow in the ground, is better than no protection, while in a bus or automobile, children should crouch behind or under seats.
“But remember, do it instantly—don’t stand and look! Duck and cover,” is Bert the Turtle’s parting admonition.
The Government Printing Office will sell copies of the booklet for five cents each, or 100 for $2. Plates and mats will be made available to communities wishing to reproduce it for free distribution.
The film starring Bert the Turtle was produced by Archer Productions, Inc., of New York City, in co-operation with the Federal Civil Defense Administration and the National Education Association. It will be distributed by Castle Films division of World Films, Inc., New York City, on a non-exclusive basis to film dealers, camera supply store, 16 mm. film libraries and other channels through which prints may be purchased or rented. The 16 mm. sound print sells for $17.50.
Archer Productions’ opus appeared on television. WCBS ran it on Saturday, February 22, 1952 at 6 p.m. then again at 6:20 p.m.
Now it was ready to make its debut in schools. The Herald Tribune was there. This story appeared in its issue of March 7, 1952.
City Film Shows Pupils What to Do in Atom Raid
10-Min. ‘Duck and Cover’ a Hit at Class Premiere; Every School to See It
The first of the city’s school children to see “Duck and Cover,” a ten-minute film on the precautions youngsters should take in case of an atomic bomb attack, gave every indication that the movie will become a smash hit.
The thirty-two sixth-graders at Public School 33, W. 27th St. and Ninth Ave., who were the first to view the film, fifty-eight copies of which will now circulate throughout the city’s public, private and parochial schools, fulfilled the fondest hopes of the educators who selected it.
“Very instructive,” “not too frightening for children” and “interesting and funny in spots” were the unanimous conclusions of the amateur critics who agreed further that the film was “not too babyish” for high school students nor “too grown up” for first-graders. First Indorsed by N. E. A.
The film, written by Ray J. Mauer and produced by Archer Productions, Inc., is the first on civil defense to be indorsed by the National Education Association. Part animation and part live action, it takes as its symbol a cartoon character, “Bert the Turtle,” who ducks and takes cover at the first sign of danger and does not uncover until all danger is past. Almost all the live actors are city school children. The atomic blast is depicted only by a bright flash.
Morris C. Finkel, principal of the school, said the film would be tried first on sixth-grade classes, then fifth, and on down. For yesterday’s trial, Sol Kraft, a teacher in charge of the district educational film library housed in the school, conducted the lesson while the classroom teacher, Miss Rosalie Donlin, and Mr. Finkel observed it. One Bit of Slapstick
The showing was “motivated” by a class discussion of accidents, precautionary measures and quick action in emergencies. After the film was shown, the lesson was “clinched” by questions about what principles of emergency action they had learned and by answering questions the students had as a result of the film.
Today, we may view Duck and Cover as a quaint relic from a time of American paranoia about Russian nukes (which also gave birth to fallout shelters) but back then, some people were deadly serious in wanting to ban poor old Bert. The Worker of April 6, 1952 reported on a conference to “Safeguard the Welfare of Our Children and Our Homes” where a recommendation was made that “American Women for Peace” protest the film, claiming school atom bomb drills were objectionable. In reading between the lines, their solution to America’s nuclear fears was simply to end wars.
Another “Committee” with an elongated title (membership number unknown) met to turn its turtle noses up at the cartoon, using a bit of convoluted logic to reach its conclusions and offering only a vague solution of basically shielding kids from any discomfort. This story appeared in the New York Times on November 21, 1952. I’ve omitted a portion that lists some of the attendees.
FILM ON ATOM WAR BAD FOR CHILDREN Experts Think Movie Promotes Rather Than Eases Tensions, but Some Aren’t So Sure
By DOROTHY BARCLAY
Showing in schools of the film “Duck and Cover,” a movie intended to help train children in immediate self-protection in case of atomic attack, is “inadvisable,” members of the Committee for the Study of War Tensions in Children held this week. The film, which was made under the aegis of the Federal Civil Defense Administration and the National Educational Association, performs an “actual disservice” to children, they declared. Showings of the film have been going on in local schools since spring.
The movie was shown before an audience of psychiatrists, psychologists, educators, social workers and parents, at a meeting called by the committee Monday night in the New Lincoln School, 31 West 110th Street. A panel discussion, which included active audience participation, followed the showing.
[...] Serious Limitations Found
At the first public showing of the film in January a grade school principal held that air raid drills instead of alarming youngsters gave them a sense of security that came from knowing what to do. The opposite was held to be true by almost everyone who spoke at the meeting. The criticisms varied widely, but all but a few speakers agreed with the committee’s statement that the film had “serious limitations” and was more apt to “promote anxiety and tension in children” than to help them escape physical and emotional injury.
Dr. Clark [Kenneth Clark, a psychologist] said he personally was deeply distressed by the film, but that his young son, who had seen it in school, appeared to take it as a matter of fact and without undue concern. He questioned whether the film’s effect on children could be gauged by adults on the basis of their own reactions and urged research on the problem. Dr. Hilde Bruch, psychoanalyst and pediatrician, expressed a similar point of view.
In the main, however, participants in the discussion strongly opposed showing the film. Protective and civil defense measures are essentially the responsibility of adults, the committee officially held, and to involve children—especially when there is so much uncertainty about the whole procedure—“can only create fears in children with which their resources are inadequate to deal.”
The committee concluded that the community and the schools should instead “turn their attention more positively toward counteracting the contagion of fear and tension already being promulgated among children by TV, the movies, the radio and sections of the press.”
Archer Productions survived a few more years. Sponsor magazine reported on March 10, 1952 the company was producing a soap opera with a musical theme, and a comedy based on the King Features strip, Hubert, but it doesn’t appear any of these projects went anywhere. Colonius opened Lars Colonius Productions by 1955, then sold the business in 1966 to Jack Zander’s Pelican Films where he became the man in charge of animation.
Duck and Cover came and went. Kids don’t appear to have been stressed out about it one way or another. The short was rediscovered in 1982 and found its way into The Atomic Café, an independent documentary film looking back at Cold War propaganda. It got a release on home video in 1991 in U.S. Government Classics. Then the internet came along and, eventually, video sharing sites where Bert, Cub Scout Tony, the flash of light, and Robert Middleton’s soothing fatherly voice were posted for millions around world for instant pleasure.
Sylvester fights the “giant mouse” in Who’s Kitten Who? (1950). A few of a nice set of drawings used in a cycle in this scene.
Oh, the shame of it!
Phil De Lara, Emery Hawkins, Chuck McKimson and Rod Scribner are the animators. Tedd Pierce wrote this version of the Sylvester-Hippety Hopper concept that director Bob McKimson ran into the ground.
