Killing the Bagpipes

What happened after Tex Avery left the Walter Lantz studio in April 1935? Tex went on to better things. Lantz cartoons pretty much went into the toilet until Woody Woodpecker came along in 1940.

A good example is Kiddie Revue, a September 1936 short directed by Lantz and animated by Manny Moreno and Bill Mason. It can’t figure out whether to be coy or funny. “Funny” means a spoiled brat sabotaging vaudeville acts because he can’t go on stage ahead of them. I’ve never found spoiled brats funny.

Maybe the best gag is when said brat pours sneezing powder into some bagpipes. As you might expect, the bagpipes sneeze. The bland version of Oswald the rabbit grabs a shotgun and puts the pipes out of their misery.



There are no takes or exaggeration. It’s ho-hum stuff.

Jimmie Dietrich composed original music for this cartoon, including “Hello Ev’rybody” sung by the coy rabbits, “The Parasol Song” (sung by Berneice Hansell as a bunny), two versions of “Over the Waves” and a melody called “(Le) Secret” which may be from the Gladys Goose/bubble sequence.

Ain't We in Da Wrong Pitcher?

Little Red Riding Hood runs past a title card in Swing Shift Cinderella (1945)—then realises something. She stops the wolf chasing her in mid-air and they go back to read the card. Tex Avery’s name has somehow vanished, but that isn’t what they notice. They’re in the wrong picture.



The wolf shoves Red out of the cartoon for good, and goes after the prey in the title card.



Preston Blair, Ed Love and Ray Abrams are the animators, while Frank Graham plays the wolf and Sara Berner does her Bette Davis and Barbara Jo Allen (as Vera Vague) voices.

Muriel Landers

Muriel Landers was nicknamed “the fastest ton in the West.” People weren’t too subtle back then. (Though considering the rudeness and crudeness on social media, things may actually be worse today).

“Plump” seems to have been the preferred word in the media to describe her, as she found her way into supporting roles on television. Her nickname in the San Francisco papers in the early ‘50s was “Lannie.”

Landers was a graduate of Northwestern University who moved to the Bay Area by 1949. There she opened a TV training school and soon married Bill Sweeney of KFRC, then got a job on the air at KYA in 1951. Sniffed Herb Caen in his column of April 12, 1951: “One Muriel Landers, who starts a midnight disc jockey show from the Papagayo Room Sunday, is ballyhooing herself as "Your Glamour Gal With a Brain." Such conceit. All other "glamour gals" (ich) are glamorons?” She was also part of an experimental colour TV broadcast in San Francisco in January 1950 by a company hoping to sell its technology.

The big-time came unexpectedly. Walter Winchell wrote in his column of November 16, 1951: “JACK BENNY laughed so much watching Muriel Landers when he appeared on Sinatra's program that he invited her to join him in his next Palladium (London) show. What a break.” Benny used Landers on radio and TV.

The big time meant “big” jokes. Perhaps Landers didn’t mind. Here’s a United Press story of March 11, 1952.

Plumpness Pays Off for This Gal in Hollywood
By ALINE MOSBY
HOLLYWOOD, Mar. 11. —(UP)— Beautiful girls are signed for pictures because of their slender shapes but Muriel Landers, a well-fed tourist from New York, was rushed into pictures today — because she's a perfect 42.
Twentieth Century-Fox studio's been scouring the cinema city for a caloried cutie to play 287-pound Thomas Gomez' Indian wife in "Pony Soldier." But the Hollywood dolls are too busy dieting. So when Miss Landers happened to visit the town and lunch with a friend in the Fox commissary, bedlam busted loose.
Whirled Through Routine
She was, to be exact, discovered over a piece of banana cream pie. The casting director leaped to her table and begged her to take a movie test.
The pretty brunette was whirled through the wardrobe department . . . tested in technicolor . . . and signed for the leading, role before her hefty lunch had a chance to settle.
"The studio claims I'm 225 but I'm only 201. Don't make it any worse," she chuckled, all over.
She's only 5 foot, 1 inch tall, too, just like two Marilyn Monroes.
Directors Happy

"When the casting director saw me he grinned as though a light had gone on," she said, "He called the director of the picture and they all were smiling broadly.
"After the test everybody around the studio looked at me and grinned and I thought maybe my slip was showing.
"Finally this big gentleman comes along and shouts 'How!' I said, 'Why?' He was Thomas Gomez, very big, and I knew why they were laughing. He says wait until I see the eight chubby papooses we have in the picture."
TV Character Roles
Miss Five-by-Five started out to be an opera singer in Chicago but ate her way out of that career. So she crashed into New York television to play character roles with Frank Sinatra, Ed Wynn and Jack Benny.
"I kept putting on weight, in layers," she smiled.
"My name isn't too well known, but anybody with a TV set can't forget my figure."
Always a Job
"I've never had to look for jobs," she shrugged. "In New York every time I eat in a restaurant some TV producer offers me a part. They welcomed me with open arms. Not being a glamour girl hasn't hindered me.
"I find audiences like me, too. After all, half the women in the audience are more like me than Lana Turner."

Earl Wilson wrote about Landers in his syndicated column of May 17, 1957. By then she had made a bunch of TV guest appearances, played Rosa in the TV version of Life With Luigi and was cast in that Duke Mitchell/Sammy Petrillo classic, Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952).

Television's fat girl, Muriel Landers —height 5 feet, weight 200 plus—feels sorry for you skinny women.
And especially for bony fashion models.
"They have such a pained expression!" says Muriel, shaking with plumpish laughter. "They're miserable from hunger."
MURIEL, WHOM YOU'VE seen with Ray Bolger, Jack Benny, Jimmy Durante, Jackie Gleason, Jack Carter and others, is a comic herself.
"I get paid by the pound," she'll be glad to tell you. "When I was on Frank Sinatra's show, I lifted him. Yeah, that's when I started picking up men."
Muriel, a Chicagoan who started as a concert singer, was told when she arrived in New York hunting acting jobs. "They'll take one look and throw you out of the office."
"Now I'm afraid to diet too much because I'm doing so well," she says. "I took off 40 pounds, though."
"So what is your actual weight now?" I asked her.
"Two hundred is sexier than 250 isn't it?" she flung back.
"A LOT OF MEN like us heavy women," she rippled on. "I've never had any problem getting one."
Her wardrobe's full of expensive size 20's dresses, and at 28 she goes laughing through life.
LONDON AUDIENCES howled when she did pratfalls in Jack Benny's act at the Palladium.
"Most women in the audiences everywhere are more like me than they are like Marilyn Monroe," she says. "They say, 'She's got a glamour kind of a job, maybe there's a chance for me.'"
"Do you have any plans for marriage?" I asked her.
"Yes, I do have some plans for marriage," she retorted, "and hope it has some plans for me!"

One of the people on Laugh-In early in the first season was Muriel Landers. I thought she was supposed to be part of the regular cast but it looks like she only appeared on two shows.

A stroke claimed Landers at age 55. She died in the Motion Picture Country Home on February 19, 1977.

The Indian Chief Really is an Indian

Popeye and his trusty spinach (he eats the can, too) polish off some marauding Indians in I Yam What I Yam (1933). But wait! The chief comes at the sailor man from behind a rock. Popeye takes care of him with one punchk.



But wait again! Who is the chief revealed to be?



Why it’s Mahatma Gandhi! Wearing a diaper. Cartoons and radio comedy shows of the early ‘30s were big on fasting Gandhi jokes.

Now stuff from the chief drops from the sky and lands on Popeye. The Fleischer writers liked falling stuff gags; one ended I Eats My Spinach (1933) and Wild Elephinks (1934).



Billy Costello, Gus Wicke and Billy Murray (at least I think he’s Wimpy) provide voices, along with Margie Hines.

Let's Try This Plot, Rudy

“I know!” said one of the writers at Harman-Ising, “Let’s do a musical cartoon featuring a pile of little characters where a big bad guy comes in around the start of the first half, abducts the girl, everyone gangs up to finish off the bad guy, then they cheer to the end the picture.”

“Why didn’t we think of this before?” said one of the other writers.

Actually, they did. Over and over and over.

Here’s the version from the 1933 short for Warner Bros., The Dish Ran Away With the Spoon, animated by Ham Hamilton and Bob McKimson. It’s set in a bake shoppe. The bad guy—a huge piece of dough that’s eaten yeast and turned into a Mr. Hyde.

The pile of little characters sing and dance to the Warners-owned “Young and Healthy.”



The bad guy. The scream.



The pile of little characters realise he’s got the girl.



Let’s get him with cans of tomatoes. “Frank, play that music in double-time. We’ve never tried that before.”



“Hey, Rudy, let’s throw in a crotch pain gag. We’ve never done that before, either.” “Let’s do it three times. It’ll be three times as funny!”



The evil guy is turned into yummy baked goods.



And waffles! Hurray for waffles!



So long, folks!



“What’ll we write for the next cartoon?” “Say, I have an idea....”

“Shuffle Off To Buffalo” and “Am I Blue” are in Frank Marsales’ score, though the cartoon was likely plugging “The Dish Ran Away With the Spoon” composed by Paul Eisler in 1932.

Didya Hear the One About the Golfing Grasshopper?

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."

Satire the Ward Way

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."

Nyahh, Wolf!

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.

Chicken Soup, Please

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.