Secretaries for Street

Eve Arden once remarked how teachers loved her character on Our Miss Brooks. They liked how Connie Brooks was smart, witty, independent and how Arden never made fun of the teaching profession.

The same can be said for Barbara Hale on Perry Mason. Hale’s Della Street was intelligent and loyal, competent and independent. She was cool under pressure and in control. I suspect secretaries, legal and otherwise, were happy to see one of their television kin who wasn’t dependent or behave like an airhead.

Here are a couple of stories from United Press International about Hale’s relationship with real-life secretaries. First up is a story from July 18, 1960 followed by one from September 1, 1961. Since someone will mention it if I don’t, the “Billy” in the second column is known today as actor William Katt.

Hale’s portrayal won her an Emmy in 1959. She was brought back every time Perry Mason was revived in TV specials. She was 94 when she died in 2017.

Barbara Hale Gives Tips For Hopeful Secretaries
Editor's Note: UPI Hollywood correspondent Joe Finnigan is on vacation. Writing for him today is Barbara Hale, Perry Mason's TV secretary, who has become a heroine to the nation's stenographers.
By BARBARA HALE
HOLLYWOOD, July 17 (UPI)— I may not get the most fan mail in Hollywood, but of this fact I'm sure: I get the neatest letters of anybody in the industry.
THE REASON is that they are mostly from secretaries. Secretaries seem to like "Della Street," the character I've been portraying for three years on "Perry Mason" and are generous enough to tell us so. I thought, therefore, that the reasons why they do would be of interest to others who also like Della but who haven't paused to analyze her virtues.
Every conscientious girl who plans a secretarial career has, I'm sure, a preconceived notion of the ideal secretary. Schools and friends in business help to form this notion. National Secretarial Association publicity contributes.
DELLA SEEMS to exemplify the best, according to the research I've done on the letters of appreciation which have come my way. Following are the three factors I find most often:
She is loyal to her employer, but above all she is loyal to the job. In Della's case, she is a devotee of liberty and justice, and helping Perry Mason is the best way she knows how to advance her cause.
She never loses sight of the fact that she is her employer's secretary. She never presumes upon her friendship for him or his friendship for her. She dresses smartly and always in good taste.
CREDIT FOR DELLA STREET of course, goes to her creator, Erle Stanley Gardner, who has written 100 "Perry Mason" novels and who, every season, reminds the television production company of the "musts" he has established in portraying his principal characters.
And does he know what he's talking about? He hired his secretary more than 25 years ago and he still has her.
And her rewards? Among many is partnership in Paisano Productions, which not only produces "Perry Mason" but will produce eventually the many other Erle Stanley Gardner properties.

Barbara Hale Rates As A Celebrity To Legal Secretaries
By RICK Du BROW
UPI Hollywood Writer
Hollywood — (UPI) — It isn't often that an actress becomes a celebrity in the legal profession—but Barbara Hale, the perfect secretary of the Perry Mason TV show, is breaking new ground.
Miss Hale, who plays Della Street on the CBS series, is in constant demand at meeting of legal secretaries' associations—just as her video boss, Raymond Burr, often addresses lawyers' gatherings.
"Not long ago," said the shapely, dark-haired actress at a restaurant here, "I drove to a meeting of the National Association of Legal Secretaries in Monterey, Calif. and the gals told me the thing they liked best about me on the show is that I don't say much . . . yet I'm always around when needed.
"They also criticized me a little.
"They kidded me for sitting at the counsel table in court, because it's not legal."

Miss Hale, who was born in DeKalb, Ill., 39 years ago, and Burr, who plays Erle Stanley Gardner's famed fictional lawyer-detective on the program, team up off the screen too by going to an occasional legal gathering together.
Miss Hale, who is married to actor Bill Williams, said she has a tremendous personal admiration for Burr — "and from a strictly professional viewpoint, I think he has fantastic sex appeal, too."
"I've played opposite guys like Jimmy Stewart and Frank Sinatra in the movies," she said, "but I've never seen such female reaction to an actor as I have for Ray.
"He's a knight-on-a-white-horse type, and women of all ages that I've met seem affected by him that way. I have a constant flood of mail from girls to old women who always ask me about him—you know, 'woman to woman.' They want to know what it's like working for him.
"And there's no question about it, he seems to get better looking. In addition to which he's a great cook and a real gourmet."
Miss Hale, who also has attended meetings of legal secretaries in Los Angeles and San Diego, Cal., said her five-year contract on the show runs out in another year — and although she'd like to stay on, "I'm tiring, and there are my three children to take care of. If the show goes on and on and on . . . well, I just don't know about staying.
"The hours kill me, and make it tough on family life, which comes first. The long days on a weekly hour-long show take their toll. At the end of our first year, all of us — including Ray — nearly collapsed."
The deep-voiced actress said, however, she's been particularly fortunate on the show because "the sexy, movie type" of star seems to take second place to less glamorous, more homey style women on TV.
"Don't forget, TV's right in your living room, with the kids," she said.
She said she was convinced of her success when her 7-year-old son, Billy, was asked on his first day of school, what his mother did, and he replied: "Mom's a secretary."
"That's when I knew I had arrived," she said.

Rubber Hose Disney

Rubber Hose Disney is Fun Disney.

There’s no real plot to The Jazz Fool. But it’s 1929. Music, co-ordinated sound effects and a topper gag-ending was all that cartoons needed back then.

It was also still the Rubber Hose Era. See how these cows whip their arms and legs around like spaghetti.



They wouldn’t be dancing like this in Fantasia.

Despite the title, there’s no jazz in the first half of the cartoon. We get a pipe organ playing “London Bridge is Falling Down” as the cows dance, accompanied by a cow bell which neither of them is wearing.

The Old Split Screen Gag

At Warner Bros., Tex Avery used a gag involving a split screen which turns out not to be so split.

The version in Thugs With Dirty Mugs (1939) involves Secret Agent 2 3/8s calling police headquarters. We see a pan of telephone poles in the upper half of the screen, then the police chief.

The chief can’t hear the whispering secret agent, and tells him, breaking the whole idea of the split screen.



Cross Country Detours and A Bear’s Tale (both 1940) have split screen gags as well.

The cartoon credited Jack Miller with story and Sid Sutherland with animation before the 1944 Blue Ribbon re-release.

Can Radio Hold Up in the Television Age?

Big-time network radio had been around more than 20 years as the 1950s began and some people couldn’t comprehend it changing.

But change it did.

As more and more television stations opened, more and more people abandoned radio. They wanted to see the stars, not just hear them. Advertisers went where the people went. There was only so much money for commercials and as more of it went into TV, less went into radio. The combination ended network radio as people knew it in the 1930s, though some programmes valiantly hung on into the early 1960s.

Jack Benny had been a star on radio starting in 1932. Almost 20 years later, he felt radio would still be there to grab those listeners unhappy with television. It never happened. In fact, Benny’s own show ended in 1955 when American Tobacco bowed out and another satisfactory sponsor couldn’t be found (even though Benny proposed reruns which would save production costs).

Here’s Benny on the subject in a 1951 Associated Press wire story.

Radio Can Hold Own With TV, Jack Benny Believes
BY WAYNE OLIVER
NEW YORK, Jan. 27. (AP)—Jack Benny says radio programs are going to have to be good from now on to stand up to television's competition, but that if they are good they can hold their own a long time yet.
Here for his second television show on CBS tomorrow (Sunday) night, Benny puts it this way:
"I don't think people are going to watch week in and week out just because they have television. "I think that if they have both radio and television and practically everyone who has television also has radio they're going to choose."
"I do think, though, the important thing in radio today is to see that your shows are good," he continues. "If the show isn't good, the listener will say to himself, 'Maybe I'd better see what's on television.' "
Enjoying the highest audience rating for any individual performer on radio, Benny is, nevertheless, a television enthusiast and anxious to get on the air with his second video show and others to follow.
"I like it because I'm stage struck," he continues.
"It brings me back to the stage—and I got my start in vaudeville."
Sticking to previously announced plans to make only a few video appearances this season, Benny says the date of his next television show after tomorrow hasn't been chosen. It will be determined after conferences with his cigarette (Lucky Strike) sponsor.
He says he would have to make a choice between radio and television if he were called upon to do a great deal of television. As it is, he has to record a radio show in advance in Hollywood for the Sunday he appears on video, for which he flies to New York.
Benny adds that the extension of the television network to the West Coast—due late this year—may ease the extra load caused by a video show if it permits him to do the show from Hollywood.

Cartoondom's Most Famous Bathtub

“If you think Mickey Mouse, Aesop’s Fables or Krazy Kat funny wait until you've seen Bosco and His Sweetie in their first of ‘Looney Tunes.’” cried an ad in one newspaper.

Sinkin’ in the Bathtub debuted, according to Michael Barrier’s Hollywood Cartoons, in April 1930; trade publication Harrison’s Reports of May 31 of that year gives the date as May 7 while the Motion Picture News editions for the first half of 1930 give no date, but reviewed the cartoon on May 10. Despite this, an ad for the cartoon appeared in the Los Angeles Times of April 24, 1930. The magazine Hollywood Filmography of the same day announced:

MUSICAL CARTOON SERIES FOR VITAPHONE VARIETIES
A series of twelve musical cartoons will be produced as Vitaphone Varieties, it is announced by George E. Quigley, vice-president and general manager of the Vitaphone Corporation. They will be called "Looney Tunes," and each is to be based upon a Warner Bros, musical hit.
The first of the "Looney Tunes" is "Sinkin' in the Bathtub," based upon Winnie Lightner's big hit in "Show of Shows." The principal characters are Bosco and his Sweetie Honey who will appear in all twelve of the musical cartoons. The second subject will be "Congo Daze," [sic] the theme song being one from a First National picture. It is a jungle reel filled with wild animals.
Leon Schlesinger is producing the series of "Looney Tunes." The cartoons are by Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising, with musical score by Frank Marsales and animation by Isadore Freleng.

We know when the cartoon opened in New York City. The Film Daily of May 9, 1930 ran an ad calling Sinkin’ in the Bathtub "a laughing Riot at premiere of the 'Song of the Flame' Warner Bros. Theatre, New York" which happened to be May 6th.

The reviews started coming in. The Motion Picture News of May 10, 1930 remarked:

Sinking in the Bathtub
(Vitaphone Variety — 1 Reel)
Hit Cartoon Comedy with Music
LAUNCHING a new series of Vitaphone Varieties which will be extremely popular if the pace is maintained, "Sinking In The Bathtub" is decidedly clever and original; resulting in plenty of laughs.
Idea incorporates cartoon action in rhythm to musical accompaniment of popular tunes in Warner and First National features. In this case, "Singing In the Bathtub" and "Tip Toe Through The Tulips" were used.
Action opens with lady love in bathtub when boy friend calls, to the strains of the first-named number. It's a laugh riot. Then they swing into the second melody with the orchestra, and comedy action is built around the tune for more laughs. Finale brings the characters into the open for a fast-tempo chase. For laughs and originality, this one ranks with the best of cartoon comedies.
Good subject for any bill anywhere, especially where positive laughs in large numbers are required.

And what of that “finale”? Well, the chase involving Honey in a runaway car and Bosko running after it is reminiscent of the Oswald cartoon Trolley Troubles made by several years earlier (Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising worked on both shorts). This one ends with the two principles falling off a cliff (along with a bathtub). Bosko is caught by a tree branch, Honey and the bathtub end up in the water. Fortunately, the splash creates a hand which unites them all. Bosko plays lily pads like they are xylophone keys, while three ducks briefly quack to the music to bring things to a finish.



Someone at Warners must have had Variety’s ear. It wasted no time in publishing a How-Looney-Tunes-Are-Made story. It appeared in the May 14, 1930 edition and we’ve reprinted it in this post.

Sime Silverman’s review in Variety concluded that the Looney Tunes “has made a flying comedy start” and “WB has something worth a lot here if the series can commence to hold up to its start.” Sime was dead-on. It’s impossible to calculate the huge sums of money that has poured into Warner Bros. over the last almost 90 years because of its cartoons.

Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny and other characters may have become the studio’s huge stars, but they wouldn’t have been around had there not been a Bosko.

Woody Outlines

Dr. Horace N. Buggy isn’t very happy with Woody Woodpecker vanishing in his office only to come knocking at the door (How did it happen? Because anything can happen in a cartoon).



The doc grabs Woody by the throat and pulls him toward him. The outline drawings are consecutive frames. The Walter Lantz studio seems to have liked outlines and they’re found in the studio’s shorts for several years in the ‘40s.



Mel Blanc is both Woody and the doctor while Berneice Hansell and Margaret Hill-Talbot also provide voices. The animation is credited to Alex Lovy and Ray Fahringer.

Leon Schlesinger in All His (Old) Glory

It’s 1939. You’re a cartoon producer who isn’t making a feature and isn’t named Walt Disney. How do you get publicity?

You wave the flag.

Leon Schlesinger managed to keep his name in the trade press, thanks to publicity director Rose Horsley. Some of the news spilled over into the popular press—such as when he withdrew his shorts from Oscar contention because of Disney and when he worked out a deal with Jimmie Swinnerton to put his Canyon Kiddies in a series (which turned out to be one cartoon). But one story which garnered a jackpot of press was when the studio made Old Glory.

With war brewing overseas, Warner Bros. had decided to make a series of patriotic two-reelers in live action. Schlesinger quickly jumped on the idea and soon let it be known to the world he would “personally supervise” the production of a patriotic Porky Pig cartoon in time for Easter release (Film Daily, March 21, 1939). The Newspaper Enterprise Association’s Hollywood columnist nibbled and interviewed Schlesinger about it. Leon seems delighted to have been able to talk about himself.

In Hollywood
BY PAUL HARRISON
HOLLYWOOD—(NEA)—The movies’ patriotic parade has even reached the field of animated cartoons. Leon Schlesinger’s cartoons, anyway. He makes the Merrie Melodies and the Looney Tunes which are released by those busy eulogists of the land-of-the-free, the Warner Brothers.
Thus it may be possible during a single evening in the theater (preferably the evening of July 4) to see a stupendous patriotic feature, a mildly colossal four-reel featurette from American history, a patriotic newsreel and a patriotic Porky Pig.
“The Star-Spangled Banner” probably would be heard, too. It already is being played in many of the Warner theaters at every performance by executive order. Nearly all the Schlesinger films are satirical, but “Old Glory” will be played as straight as is consistent with the whimsical notion of Porky sitting on Uncle Sam’s knee and listening to stories about Paul Revere, Bill of Rights and Yorktown.
At the beginning, Porky is lying in the grass trying to memorize the Pledge to the Flag. He finds it difficult and gives up to take a nap. So along comes Uncle Sam, in a dream sequence, and shows him some inspiring flashes from the past. In fact, just about the whole cavalcade of American history is being put into a seven-minute color cartoon.
Tries Anything—Once
Schlesinger makes more movie cartoons than anybody else in the business. His output is 42 a year now and the studio is geared for 52—one a week. Walt Disney’s huge factory, pre-occupied with three features, produces only 18 shorts a year.

The Merrie Melodist doesn’t expect ever to be bothered with full-length animations, although his personal slogan is “I’ll try anything once.” He just doesn’t believe that cartoon features will be very popular if they get out of the novelty category.
“Double bills promise to be pretty generally abolished one of these days,” he said, “and that’s going to boom the shorts market. We may make a few two-reelers here, but nothing longer. I think 650 or 700 feet (about 6 minutes) is the ideal length. Hit ‘em and run, leaving ‘em wanting more. The best compliment anybody can pay me is to say, ‘Your stuff is too short.’”
The cartoon factories all are rather remarkable for their lenient, generous treatment of employees and the co-operative spirit they foster. The reason is, of course, that hand-made movies are an especially exacting, nerve-wracking task requiring rest periods and relaxation. Also, the spontaneity and zip of these short films depend a lot on the enthusiasm of the many departments through which they pass.
Coach Inspires Cartoonists
Schlesinger is a good boss with the inspirational talents of a football coach. His staff of 200 is smaller, compared to annual output, than that of any other animator. Yet he is the only one who actually is ahead of his production schedule. He was the first to inaugurate the five-day week, and his plant never has worked Saturdays or Sundays except for the many shifts of cameramen who work every day and night.
This studio, unlike Disney’s, also gives screen credit to its producers, directors, writers and animators.
Every outgoing picture is subjected to the criticism of every employee. They file into the theater and are handed printed forms for their comments. These forms are not signed when they are filled out. On the strength of these opinions Schlesinger has held back many a film for revisions.
He let me see a picture made last winter for the studio’s annual Christmas party. The staff worked on it secretly for weeks in its spare time, and the film is a pretty biting satire on the organization’s morale and its esteem for the big boss. Schlesinger is prouder of it than if it had been a fulsome tribute on a golden scroll.

Once the cartoon was finished, Mrs. Horsley supplied some facts and figures to reporters and United Press put together the following story. Note that it’s as much about Schlesinger as it is about the cartoon. It mentions no names of anyone who worked on it.

First Patriotic Cartoon In Hollywood's History Set for July 4 Release
200 Artists Work 10 Weeks at Full Blast Turning Out "Old Glory."
By Frederick C. Othman
United Press Hollywood Correspondent.
HOLLYWOOD, June 16—Leon Schlesinger, the cartoon producer who couldn't draw a picture if his life depended on it, completed today Hollywood's first patriotic cartoon for July 4 release by the brothers Warner, flag-wavers extraordinary.
This is important news for number of reasons:
1. Schlesinger set an all-time record for speed by producing and photographing 20,000 separate drawings in 10 weeks flat; the average cartoon of the same length takes 10 months to make.
2. The picture marks an extraordinary turnabout of the old phrase, "From the sublime to the ridiculous." Schlesinger's cartoon went from Porky Pig to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
3. It was an excellent production and included more American history in one reel than ever has been packed together before. Schlesinger said live actors would have taken a full-length feature picture to tell the same story.
The business of producing a cartoon in 10 weeks, with drawings in full color being made at the rate of 2,000 a week, turned the Schelesinger headquarters inside out. When he thought of the idea in bed one night in March, the boss told his scenarists to write a patriotic story and then he set all his 200 artists working on it. For the full 10 weeks, they didn't do a lick of work on a merrie melodie or a looney tune, the Schlesinger specialties which he turns out at the rate of 42 a year.
"And it costs me 25 per cent more than any other cartoon," he said, "and I'm bound to lose money on it. Only return I'll get is the satisfaction of having made it."
Called "Old Glory."
The film is entitled "Old Glory." It opens with Porky Pig trying to memorize the pledge of allegiance to the flag: he falls asleep and in his dream Uncle Sam comes to life and shows him the history of the United States, including high points in the lives of Paul Revere, Patrick Henry, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, with some thing of the American epic westward, thrown in for good measure.

A 50-piece symphony orchestra plays patriotic music and when the picture ends with Porky Pig learning the pledge, letter-perfect, it gives you a bit of a tingle in your spine. That is an accomplishment. No movie pig ever caused anything before but chuckles.
The gray-haired Schlesinger is something of an anachronism, even in the movie business. He makes more film cartoons than any other producer, yet he never has even been interested in trying to draw pictures. As a boy, he was an usher in a Philadelphia theater; later he became a vaudeville press agent, and eventually he came to Hollywood in 1922 as sales manager for a raw film factory. Three years later he organized the Pacific Title and Art Studio, which still flourishes in the manufacture of fancy titles for feature pictures.
This concern, of course, had to be staffed with commercial artists who could draw pictures and designs for shining on the silver sheet. It thus was a cartoon studio, fundamentally, even before the drawings were cartoons.
"You Make, I'll Sell."
So Schlesinger hired scenarists and animators and told them to make cartoons; he said he'd sell 'em.
"I always figured that I was a business man and that art and business didn't mix," he said. "I never saw an artist who could handle his own bank account. And never saw a business man who was any ready hand with a paint brush. So I merely hired the best artists and writers I could get and let them go to it. It seems to have worked out all right."
Schlesinger has a $300,000 annual payroll, a plant of his own, a Beverly Hills mansion and a medium-sized yacht. And that's not bad for a cartoonist who admits he can't draw anything but checks.

Old Glory was released July 1 but the trade press got a sneak peak. Film Daily called it “Stirring entertainment,” and referred to director Chuck Jones, animator Bob McKimson, as well as Johnny Burton, Milt Franklyn, narrator John W. Deering and the Paul Taylor vocalists by name; the latter four likely never got screen credit. Motion Picture Daily declared it “compact and pleasantly palatable lesson in Americanism” and “a nice job of cartooning, more serious than most” while Showmen’s Trade Review dismissed it as “okay as propaganda.”

It’s a matter of speculation why Jones was picked. The other directors at the time were Cal Dalton/Bugs Hardaway, Bob Clampett and Tex Avery. Clampett was working on animation on the Republic feature She Married a Cop while the Dalton/Hardaway unit had finished sequences on the Robert Benchley short How to Eat for MGM. Jones may have been the best choice but the cartoon suffers through his slow pacing, though perhaps he (or Leon) wanted a reverential gait.

The Shy Guy

The Students Stock Company of the Wallis School of Dramatic Art in Los Angeles celebrated the school’s 14th anniversary in September 1922 by performing a four-act comedy. The name of one of the supporting players should be recognised by fans of The Andy Griffith Show—Howard McNear.

He was 17 years old.

McNear carried on acting until he physically couldn’t. He suffered a massive stroke while working on Griffith and when he returned, he had trouble moving and, worse, remembering his lines. He was almost 64 when he died in 1969.

Before the Griffith show, McNear’s biggest claim to fame was on the radio version of Gunsmoke; he played Doc. McNear learned you could be anonymous in radio because no one ever saw you, but television was different and brought a whole bigger level of fame.

Here are a pair of articles where McNear talks about his career. The first pre-dates Griffith and the latter was published just after he started on the show. The first column is by Hedda Hopper and is dated January 12, 1960. It gives you an idea of the kind of man Jack Benny was (Joe Kearns had played McNear’s part earlier on radio). The second story appeared starting around April 1, 1961.

Howard McNear Discusses His Portrayals
HOLLYWOOD, Jan. 11 — When top comedians chew the fat about their craft, Howard McNear's name is bound to come up. He's played with all of them, bringing a unique type characterization to their shows which no one has succeeded in imitating.
I knew him first on my radio shows, later as the "Mr. Hamish" of the George Gobel time. I've watched him with George Burns and Gracie Allen, Tennessee Ernie Ford and with Jack Benny. Recently he stepped out of his favorite characterization to play the doctor in "Anatomy of a Murder"; it's brought him a slew of offers for straight roles.
George Cukor will pay him his price to read one line in his inimitable manner: . . . "But I don't like to play straight parts any more," he told me. "Just last week I turned one down.

IRKED—"My agent could have killed me and so could my wife. But it was a serious thing — they wanted me for a judge who was committing a girl to a mental institution. I don't think it was right for me. I prefer specialized bits."
McNear, who refers to himself as "second banana" in the laugh field, realizes his jittery frustrated character, who leaves sentences hanging in the air at times while pantomime finishes out the idea, is too intense to be done too often.
"He's a sort of nervous wreck and you can't be on too much with it," he explains.
"I fitted him into the part of an absent-minded lawyer for a Jack Benny show which isn't released yet and he's called me for another show on the 18th.
AGREEMENT — “At first he wanted me to play it straight and I tried it for a couple of rehearsals. Then they agreed it would be better for me to do it my own way. Jack said he thought I was master of this peculiar thing and he couldn't remember anyone's doing a character quite like it."
He has a theory that such characterizations aren't copied from any one thing or combination of things the comedian has seen or heard.
"I think they evolve from the person himself. I think perhaps it's my own mannerisms—exaggerated of course. I've often wondered if such portrayals aren't built up from the subconscious. I've worked with practically all the big comics and have arrived at that conclusion after analyzing their techniques.
PAINFULLY SHY —"As a young fellow I was painfully shy. I'm still shy. I really feel perfectly at home only when I'm on stage. Meeting people is far harder for me than being behind the footlights; perhaps that's because I can feel I'm someone else when I'm acting.
"I was trained for an architect because my father was an architect and bank vault engineer."
Howard McNear has played Doc in radio's "Gunsmoke" for eight years with the same producer. "Bill Conrad plays the Matt Dillon role that Jim Arness does on TV and is also a director."
IMPACT—"They use the radio scripts as a tryout for the TV," he said. "I think radio has great emotional impact and that it was sold out too fast. Recently I got a letter from a Coast Guard family stationed where there is no TV.
"They wanted a picture of our cast and when they came to San Diego for Christmas phoned to tell me how much it meant to them.
"There are drop-off places where there's not only no TV but where radio scarcely reaches — places like Eagle Pass, Tex. We get wonderful letters from shut-ins and from the blind and near-blind who live by radio."

Actor Howard McNear Became 'Barber', Won Greatest Fame
By J. A. ST. AMANT
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) – Howard McNear, a member of a pioneer Northern California family from Petaluma, so-called "egg basket of world," has been an actor for years, but he had to become a barber to start being recognized on the street.
After long years with stock companies, on the radio and in the movies, he's achieved his greatest fame through TV playing Floyd, the fussy barber, on the "Andy Griffith Show" (CBS-TV), and his services are much in demand.
"I can't understand it," he said. "After all these years, now people are beginning to recognize me on the street and in restaurants. They even mistake my brother for me and he's quite flattered."
He's appeared on TV with George Gobel, Jack Benny and in the Peter Gunn series among others, and for 10 years had been voice of Doc in the radio version of "Gunsmoke."
“My first TV show was with George Gobel,” said McNear in an interview. "I was scared going out there in front of 30 million people—all at once—but George was very helpful to me.”
McNear said he was shy as a boy and he claims he still is shy.
He speaks in awe of Jack Benny – "He's a big star but he took the trouble to call my wife once and tell her how well he thought I did in one of his shows. My wife was in tears afterwards—she was so happy."
Sometimes it is difficult to tell whether McNear, in his whimsical fashion, is pulling one’s leg.
"They say Jack Benny is cheap," he said, but I don't think so. He paid me $800 for a little commercial."
Howard got his first dramatic training from Patia Power, mother of the late film star Tyrone Power. "My mother agreed to let me go to the school," he recalled, "but I was so shy I walked up and down in front of it for three days before I had the courage to go inside."

McNear was born in the heart of Los Angeles at Hope St. and Jefferson Blvd. His mother was born in Petaluma. His father died at age of 27, but there are many McNears left in northern California.
The family name is perpetuated along the coast in such spots as McNear's Beach and McNear's Point.
McNear grew up in San Gabriel near Los Angeles and drew inspiration from a kindly neighbor, John S. McGroarty, California's beloved poet laureate. McCroarty wrote and staged the annual Mission Play depicting the life of the Franciscan missionary Junipero Sevra. McNear got his first taste of theater life as an usher at the play and then won a part in it.
For many years he was with the Savoy Players Stock Company in San Diego, Calif.
He was not confined to comedy in those days.
“I played the part of a young man who was executed in a very dramatic thing called ‘The Noose’,” he said. “I played the part of a prizefighter in ‘Izatso?’ and my opponent hit me harder that he meant to oh the nose. I bled all through the next act.”
At 55, McNear is content with his career. One of his main interests in life these days is his 16-year-old son, Christopher—Kit.
The boy was named after a McNear ancestor who was a sea captain.
Young Kit doesn't want to be on actor like his dad.
“He wants to be a fishing boat captain,” said shy Howard, shaking his head at the intrepidity of the youngster.

That Old Banjo Tongue Blues

Early ‘30s cartoons were sure musical. Almost everything became musical.

In the Fleischer studio’s Hot Dog (1930), Bimbo whips out a banjo in court and starts playing a blues song. At one point, everything in the courtroom sways to the music.

The court reporter takes testimony (the scat lyrics Bimbo is singing) and plays his tongue like he’s strumming a banjo.



It’s a shame the bulk of Talkartoons haven’t been restored. They’re fun and weird.

No animators are credited. Dave Fleischer gets a screen credit as a director.

Doggone Blow Out

Screwy Squirrel uses tacks to slow down a truant officer dog chasing after him. The dog suffers a blow-out. Fortunately, he’s prepared for just such an emergency.



“Oh, brother! Now I’ve seen everything,” laments the squirrel, who simply goes on to the next gag.

The Screwy Truant has familiar sign, dog breed and title card gags you all know and love, as well as a war/pop culture reference at the beginning. It was animated by Preston Blair, Ed Love and Ray Abrams.