A Commercial About Commercials

Television had a problem in 1959. It was called the Quiz Show Scandal.

What a less jaded and cynical society were we in the ‘50s. We trusted television. Television was our friend. But then television betrayed us. We discovered we had been lied to and what was airing on those big-money game shows with real people was all fake.

Broadcasting, like any business with huge money involved, preferred to make sure the government didn’t interfere with its inward cash flow, promising self-regulation. It had to move fast when the quiz show scandal finally outraged everyone (including politicians who saw “hearings” as a way to score vote-equalling PR points). So the National Association of Broadcasters created the Television Information Office, kind of at arm’s length, designed to provide information about the industry. It began a PR campaign as well. And cartoons were part of it.

Those of you who grew up in the 1960s and early ‘70s will remember stations would occasionally show a slide of the NAB’s “Seal of Good Practice” and a booth announcer would explain how the station followed the Television Code, etc. (I haven’t a clue when stations stopped doing that). In addition, in 1960 the TIO hired advertising agency McCann-Erickson to come up with two one-minute and two 20-second spots to explain the Code.

Broadcasting magazine goes into great length about the TIO and NAB in its issue of September 26, 1960. Unfortunately, it didn’t reveal what company received the contract to make the animated spots. It did, however, post frames along with some dialogue.(My wild guess is they were done in New York).





Whether the actual PSAs from this campaign are hidden away on the internet, I have no idea. But I have an affection for 1950s industrial and commercial cartoon designs and that’s the reason behind this post. You can see that these designs are turning away from the really angular and highly-stylised ones of the ‘50s.

Commercial and public service animation is a huge subject to cover. I don’t know how big the interest is, but it would be great to see more study and research done on the topic. Thunderbean Animation has come out with collections of non-theatrical films from that era and, some time ago, Amid Amidi put out the book “Cartoon Modern” with some examples of beautiful and brilliant designs, but so much more could be done.

It's Only a Cartoon

Heckle and Jeckle forget that they are birds and, thus, can fly in Satisfied Customer (1954). They plummet after escaping a large bubble in mid-air.



They shake hands goodbye. This is the end.



“Don’t worry, chum,” says Heckle. “This is only a cartoon.”



The scene pulls back to reveal it is a cartoon. The two bounce safely into an inkwell.



Well, if it’s good enough for Max Fleischer in the 1920s, it’s good enough for Paul Terry in the 1950s.

Not Quite a War Dance

The Old Pioneer (1934) feels more like a Merrie Melodies cartoon than it does a Happy Harmonies short, which is what it is. Maybe it’s the presence of “California, Here I Come” and a few other tunes that remind of Carl Stalling.

Or maybe it’s the gags. They seem more at place in a 1934 Warners cartoon. Here’s an example. An Indian in a war dance suddenly switches to a strut-walk, with Scott Bradley changing the music to kind of a blues. I wonder if the Indian is supposed to be Cal Calloway-ish; the music isn’t hokey enough to be Ted Lewis or Eddie Jackson.



Bradley doesn’t get screen credit. Neither do the animators.

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.