Boogie Woogie WACs

Pat Matthews was known for his sexy girl characters at the Walter Lantz studio, especially his animation on “Miss X” in a pair of 1944 releases.

But there’s a nice little walk cycle of three women in uniform in Lantz’s Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company “B”, released three years earlier in 1941.

Whether Matthews was responsible, I don’t know. His son told animation blogger Kevin Langley that Matthews worked on Pinocchio but got caught at the Disney strike, which started in late May 1941, and went to work for Walter Lantz. This Lantz cartoon was released in early September, so it is possible the scene is Matthews’. I honestly don’t know who else at Lantz might have animated it. (Late note: a comment below points out the cycle is re-drawn from Scrub Me Mama With a Boogie Beat, released at the start in 1941. It’s unlikely, then, that Matthews animated this).

There are 36 drawings in this strut cycle. All but two of them are animated on twos, the other two drawings are one frame each to give a bit of a hitch in the walk. Here is a middle drawing, followed by two extremes.



They don’t look like much, do they? Ah, but here’s where the magic of animation comes in. Add the in-betweens and you get something pretty neat.



Alex Lovy and La Verne Harding get screen credit for animation. Danny Webb, who was in the army and on the other side of the U.S. from Hollywood when this cartoon was released, is the frog-voiced sergeant. My guess is the black vocalists who sing the title song provide some of the character voices as well.

It’s unfortunate there are a couple of stereotype clichés in this short and mangled Amos-and-Andy English (though not as bad). It’s not a great cartoon but you can enjoy Darrell Calker’s fine brassy score. Oh, and the Boogie Woogie WACs.

The Fudd Turnaround

For a rotund guy (for a while), Elmer Fudd could sure move.

Look at the speed lines in The Wacky Wabbit, a 1942 cartoon from the Bob Clampett unit. Clampett and his animators do something that Warners wouldn’t try years later. Elmer grabs his shotgun, then makes a stumbling, clockwise, 360-degree turn. Bugs then grabs Elmer and turns him around another 180 degrees and points with one hand, then another. It’d be considered a waste of animation by 1960 (think of the static Bob McKimson cartoons or Chuck Jones’ characters, inert except for a twitch).



I love this joyous drawing.



Sid Sutherland is the credited animator, while Virgil Ross, Rod Scribner and Bob McKimson likely animated this short as well.

Think Young, Stay Young

One of the reasons so many people were shocked when Jack Benny died was he looked not only healthy up until a few months before his death, but didn’t appear to be 80 years old, which he was.

He talked about youth to North American Newspaper Alliance columnist Cindy Adams, and talked about critics as well. Critics were generally kind to him, but he could get snippy about unfavourable reviews or low ratings. To be honest, though they are nostalgic today, at the time they aired Benny’s TV specials were really for Benny fans only. I doubt they attracted a new audience (especially followers of the counter-culture), even with overly obvious attempts to do it by booking “with-it” guests like Isaac Hayes who don’t look like they belong on the same screen with someone who had spent more than 20 years in vaudeville.

This was published April 26, 1968.

Jack Benny, at 39 Twice, Credits 'Thinking Young'
By CINDY ADAMS
NEW YORK (NANA)— At the age where he can almost celebrate his 39th birthday twice, Jack Benny is called by chums "the Jewish Dorian Gray."
Deep in the heart of his 70's, his smooth, unlined face is that of a man in his 40's. Being that I know Jack and being that I also hail from peasant stock, I asked straight out if he'd ever had his face lifted.
"No, but I'm certainly flattered you think so," he grinned. "Tell you one thing, though. If I had lifted it I'd gladly admit it. I'm in a business where I must look as well as I can. I'm not a fat clown like Buddy Hackett with a funny characteristic to fall back on or point up, so I have to try and look as well as I can.
"TO ME, THERE'S no shame in having a hairpiece or lifting your face or wearing a girdle. It's the same as fixing a broken arm or repairing a bent finger. I did consult my doctor recently about tightening the extra skin on my neck a bit, but he was against it I have diabetes and at my age he said he's prefer that I don't. If I badly needed it I'd do it, though. Meanwhile, when I'm being made up for television, we use a dark shade on my neck to make it less pronounced."
"You have your own teeth, your own hair," I said admiringly. "Tell me, what's the formula for staying young."
"Thinking young," said Benny. "In my act at the Waldorf, I have a teenage girl with me. I've always utilized youngsters. New talent gives you new life. Bob Hope and I are a toss-up as to who's the world's biggest ham. He says I am and I say he is. But the point is neither of us stop. We both keep up to date. We both travel. We both keep going. I still play as much golf as I can. Sometimes it's only nine holes but at least I play!"
BENNY'S LONGTIME manager, Irving Fein, and the Waldorf's publicity girl, Lola Priess, were shushking loudly in another corner of the suite. Benny peered over once . . . twice . . . then hollered, "Hey, . . . young lady . . . er . . . what's your name?"
"Lola," she hollered back. "Well, listen, Lola, do me a favor, will ya?" "Sure," came the returning holler.
"Shaddup," yelled Jack Benny. Then, grinning happily when everybody broke up, the professional cheapskate of radio and TV fame continued, "Of course, I have reached the point where I no longer stoop to pick up a penny. It now has to be at least a nickel."
And can a Jack Benny, at this stage in the game, ever flop on stage?
"NO, I DON'T really think so," he answered slowly, thinking about it. "My trouble is with critics, not audiences. If I've done two or three good shows in a row, they just figure it's time they rapped me, so they do. I feel that after my many years of producing good entertainment they should be more considerate, but they aren't.
"See, I know what's good for me. I know how to handle my audiences. That's why I'd be a lousy director. I'd always make everybody do things the way I'd do them because that is the only way I know.
"My comedy isn't funny on paper. It's only funny in the way I make it work. Even if my audience should be bad, they'll never know it and neither will anybody watching because someway, somehow, I'll be able to pull something out.
"Let me put it this way," he smiled. "I can always keep a show from not being as bad as some of my critics will say it was!"

The Art of Voice Acting

The greatest actor in cartoons was Mel Blanc. He could do almost anything, including have his characters imitate each other. Instead of Daffy Duck adopting Bugs Bunny’s voice, he sounds like Daffy trying to mimic Bugs. That’s sheer brilliance.

My favourite actor in television cartoons is Daws Butler. He starred in all the great pre-1960 Hanna-Barbera series, which mainly relied on dialogue to entertain people. Daws came up with some great voices and, being a writer as well as an actor, could add things to the words provided by Charlie Shows, Mike Maltese and Warren Foster.

Daws’ cartoon career, according to historian Keith Scott, began with a Columbia cartoon Short Snorts on Sports before he was hired by Tex Avery at MGM. His voice could be heard at the Walter Lantz studio, which gave him his first screen credit, as well as innumerable animated commercials in the 1950s. His career on A Time For Beany and with Stan Freberg has been well documented.

The New York Daily News had a chance to interview Butler (it only made reference to Blanc) at the height of his career. As an added bonus, it spoke with Tommy Morrison, the story director at the Terrytoons studio in New Rochelle. The article even included a picture (which we, unfortunately, can’t reproduce). He talks about voice work, taking credit for Mighty Mouse with no mention of the character’s singing voice, Roy Halee, or any of the actors freelancing at the studio, such as Lionel Wilson and Allen Swift, or people like Dayton Allen, Arthur Kaye or even Doug Moye, who originated some of his characters. Perhaps he did say something and it was edited out, as Morrison is barely quoted in the article.

It was published October 18, 1959.

Heard but not seen
The men who provide the voices for TV's cartoon characters are stars in their own right
By BOB LARDINE
In the world of TV where anonymity is a fate worse than radio, there is a group of men, numbering not more than 10, that thrives on being unknown. Daws Butler, Mel Blanc and Tom Morrison rank foremost in this select clique. Rarely, if ever, seen on television, ignored by celebrity seekers as they walk along the street, these gents nevertheless are quietly getting rich supplying the voices for some of today's popular TV cartoon characters.
One such character, Huckleberry Hound, is now being seen on 175 stations, including New York's Wpix. Millions chuckle at the antics of the hound, but few realize that the syrupy drawl emanating from the Southern bowwow comes from Daws Butler's pipes. Butler also does Dinky and Jenks [sic] on the show as well as Quick Draw McGraw for another series. So popular has Huck Hound become that the University of Washington recently held a "Huck Hound Day" on the campus, and 11,000 joined his fan club. Southern Methodist University in Dallas also will dedicate a day to the pooch, and Texas Christian University in Fort Worth will follow suit.
Although Huck Hound is now a TV favorite, Butler has yet to make his first appearance on the medium. "I've never had much interest in being seen." says Butler. "Besides, voice work is lucrative and you don't burn out as quickly as the performer constantly seen live."
However, the 42-year-old native of Chicago knows what it's like to be in front of an audience. He was part of a night club act called the "Three Short Waves," which enjoyed more than moderate success before the war.
In the 25 years he has practiced his specialized art, Butler has done more than 1,000 different characters, including many voices behind cartoon favorites on commercials.
"You need a background of comedy to do voice characterizations," says magic-larynxed Butler. "Each character has a personality of its own; each has its own humor value. You must have the knack of giving life to the drawings."
But even when you have the knack, voice and experience, it still is arduous work to create a top-flight cartoon. The usual procedure is for all concerned to meet at the recording studio. Joe Barbera, the co-producer, then takes out a story board, which is nothing more than a sheet of paper divided into squares to represent frames of film. The dialogue is written underneath the squares, which contain the drawings. It is estimated that it takes over 90 separate drawings to create a laugh movement. A total of 10,000 individual drawing frames make up a half hour of cartoon enjoyment.
Barbera takes the parts of all the characters, telling Butler and the other voice men how he wants the cartoon characters to sound.
Butler, a man with a middle baritone, tries it once, twice, sometimes as many as 15 times until everyone concerned is happy. Barbera then retires to the control room as they run through a scene.

More or less the same tactics are used at other studios for the initial approach to cartoon making. At Terrytoons, Tom Morrison holds sway as a "50-year-old Mighty Mouse," as he describes himself. His voice characterization of the little cheese snatcher brings laughter to many a youngster watching the Mighty Mouse Playhouse on CBS every Saturday morning.
Flexible-voiced Morrison also speaks for such cartoon characters as Dinky Duck, the Terry Bears, Gandy Goose and Sour Puss, as well as serving as story supervisor at the studio. "If you have the voice range, you can do them all." says Morrison. Though Morrison, like Butler, has never appeared before the TV camera, he may become more widely known as the Mighty Mouse voice through an album just issued by RCA-Victor called "Terrytoon TV Cartoon Time." But Morrison really doesn't care who knows he's Mighty Mouse as long as they make the check out correctly to him.
Mel Blanc, Mr. Bugs Bunny himself, also doesn't give two carrots whether he's recognized or not. "People recognize my voice," says the multi-toned Blanc, "and, that's the important thing to me." He has appeared on TV a few times, mostly as a comic on the Jack Benny show. But mainly he's heard as Bugs on Fred Scott's wnew-tv show.
One executive in the cartoon-making business can only speak of Blanc with awe. "He has an iron voice," says the exec. "One minute he's doing Bugs, and the next he's barking like a dog. It's simple for him to change volume. Another marvelous thing about Mel is the way he reads a drawing. One time and it's usually 99 per cent correct. All in all, a funny guy and an A-1 technician."
Due in no small measure to the voice experts, the appeal of cartoons seems to be getting stronger all the time. There's more production of comical strips for TV than ever before. As Daws Butler explains it: "Adults can see the off-beat humor in a cartoon, as Huckleberry Hound for instance. They appreciate the fun in the dialogue and the different nuances. The kids go for action."
As an afterthought, Butler adds: "Maybe the attraction of TV cartoons today can be explained in that viewers don't get as tired of cartoons as they do of people." END

Buggy Auctioneer

A glum tobacco bug spits out a radio catchphrase (and tobacco) in Crazy Cruise, written by Mike Maltese and begun by the Tex Avery unit, which then became the Bob Clampett unit.

“We are able to hear it by means of our super-sensitive microphone,” says narrator Bob Bruce and a cut-out of a hand holding a mike is shoved into the scene.



Suddenly, the bug goes from a chewing sound to a tobacco auctioneer’s spiel, ending brightly with “Sold to an American!” before spitting out some chaw and carrying on with his lazy chewing.



This is one of many parodies of the Lucky Strike cigarette routine that began on radio in 1937 when two tobacco auctioneers appeared on commercials, ending their indecipherable sales babble with “Sold American!” (Luckies were made by the American Tobacco Company). They began on the “Lucky Strike Hit Parade” but may be better known for their work on the Jack Benny radio show until 1951 when American Tobacco retired them (possibly in a money-saving move).

Variations on the “Sold American!” catchphrase were used in other Warners cartoons, as E.O. Costello’s Warners Cartoon Companion website shows.

Playing With Candy

Personally, I prefer Waffles the cat when he was paired with Don Dog in Van Beuren cartoons in the earliest of the 1930s. But it appears he was handed a girl friend named Countess Cat by the studio and the two of them appeared together in various Aesop’s Fables.

Film Daily reported on December 10, 1932 that Margie Hines had been inked to an exclusive cartoon voice contract by Van Beuren to play Countess, but had already appeared in Venice Vamp and Pickaninny Blues.

The two co-starred in The Wild Goose Chase and then returned in Silvery Moon (both released in 1932). I like the first cartoon better because there were more odd characters. There are a few in Silvery Moon as well. The backgrounds are pretty imaginative, where things in Candyland are made out of candy canes, including musical instruments played by the two cats. But the plot is the same old music-for-the-sake-of-music which was becoming passe. Still, it’s Gene Rodemich music and his scores for the studio generally set a nice mood.

It’s a shame the animation at the top of the film is cut off.

Music expert Chris Buchman has pointed out this sequence isn’t exactly original. He says it is almost verbatim (other than the characters) what is found in the 1931 Van Beuren cartoon Toy Time, including the music in the background, “The Siamese Patrol March” by Paul Lincke.

The animation in this cartoon doesn’t match the gold standard of Disney at the same period. Variety wasn’t impressed. From the December 27, 1932 edition:

AESOP FABLE
‘Silvery Moon’ (Cartoon)
6 Mins.
Mayfair, N.Y.
Radio [R-K-O]
Up until the minute before they enter the moon this cartoon promises to present something original. After that it’s the regular routine of dancing by pen creatures between wallowings in ice cream and candy.
Very, very young children, preferably graduate infants, will enjoy this short if for no other reason that its suggestion of a visit to the corner candy store right after the show.

My thanks to Devon Baxter for supplying the screen grabs.

John Harlan Speaking

If you yelled out John Harlan’s name at me, I’d probably respond “Password.” Harlan did an awful lot more than that show during his announcing career. Where I heard him first, I don’t know. It might have been on “Queen For a Day.” He actually appeared on camera on that show, as you can see in the frame grab to the right.

Trying to track down biographical information on people who really weren’t huge stars can be challenging. There are bits here and bits there. In peering through old issues of Variety, Broadcasting, the SAG/AFTRA site and various contemporary newspapers, I can tell you Harlan spent his teen years in Fresno. He was in the Boy Scouts, an officer of his DeMolay Chapter and in a high school drama club which put on a play that aired on KMJ in 1942. Harlan ended up at the other local station (KARM) the following year, and returned after his wartime military service. He was hired at KGO in San Francisco in 1949, and then wound up in May 1950 at KECA in Los Angeles which was just about to put a TV station on the air.

The most interesting aspect of Harlan’s career may have been his jump into all-news television in 1973. KMEX-TV decided to broadcast 8½ hours of news during the day; Harlan was one of the anchors. This early effort at a news channel died after three months and three weeks. A lack of money and being primarily a Spanish-language station on UHF killed it. Harlan told the Los Angeles Times that people would come up to him and say “I didn’t know you spoke Spanish” (the news was in English). He also remarked one of the 110,000 people who tuned in was Flip Wilson.

Harlan was the announcer on Wilson’s variety show. Announcers don’t tend to get much publicity but someone—connected with the Wilson show, it seems—sent out one of those publicity/biography news releases and a number of newspapers put it in their weekend TV section. I first spotted it in a paper published January 15, 1972.

He Makes Career Of Being' Unseen'
"The George Wyle Orchestra Plays 'Flip Flop", a lighting effect spelling out F-L-I-P comes to life, and a voice seemingly from nowhere announces: "The Flip Wilson Show".
The voice belongs to announcer John Harlan.
Harlan confides, not at all remorseful, "Last week I had 17 words." Seventeen or so words on several shows over a period of years have made quite a career for him.
In 1963, Harlan joined Ralph Andrews Productions and has worked in television production and announcing ever since. His announcing credits include such series as "You Don't Say", "It Takes Two", "The Judy Garland Show", "The Brighter Day" and countless specials starring such personalities as Carol Channing, Julie Andrews, Jimmy Durante and Danny Thomas.
He is the announcer of the annual Grammy Awards presentations; president of Professional Arts, Inc., a company that produces educational films; and announcer for "Password" and the syndicated series "It's Your Bet" in addition to "The Flip Wilson Show".
On Flip's show, however, announcing is only one facet of Harlan's job.
"The most interesting part is chatting with the studio audience," he says. "I do what is commonly called the 'warm-ups' just before the show and between scenes.
"The real stars in the audience," according to Harlan, "are the children. I ask them to come on stage and tell their favorite jokes. One little boy came up, told his joke, and I continued to talk to him. Finally, he looked up in despair and asked, 'Would it be all right if I sat down, my knees are trembling?'"
Waiting in the wings to be introduced, Flip Wilson, amused at the boy, remarked, "Heck, my knees are the ones that are trembling. That kid's trying to steal my show!"

Harlan was more than a guy introducing Tom Kennedy. He was also involved in the production end of game shows, including “Get the Picture,” “It Takes Two” and a rebooted version of “Name That Tune” where he was involved in picking contestants. Here’s a neat story from the San Francisco Examiner of April 2, 1976 about how the show’s staff hit the road to find people to appear.

It's all uphill
Going straight to the top with TV's 'Name That Tune
By Art Harris
Grinning Glenn Ford and frowning Broderick Crawford have gone silent on the screen in room 247 of the Americana Motel, where "Name That Tune" contestant coordinator Judi Barlowe has turned down the volume on the morning ' matinee to answer the phone. Another local hopeful has seen the ad ("You can win $100,000 on TV, etc."), started fantasizing about microwave ovens, freezers, shiny new cars and dialed up for an audition.
The motel switchboard has been flashing every five seconds—1,000 calls a day—since "Name That Tune" came recruiting this week in San Francisco. The callers all remember last year when 78 personable, Ipana-smiling middle Americans got to harvest the Money Tree; 9 lucky winners on the 39 taped shows walked off with $15,000 in cash and prizes.
And this year three people will defeat all comers, win the honor of sitting in a special glass booth, get zapped by a blinding light (so they can't see the audience), quiet flapping butterflies, name the tune and waltz off with the one hundred thousand big ones to be doled out in annual $10,000 increments "Look," says Miss Barlowe, a slinky, 27-year-old ex-airline stewardess who landed her TV job after winning $19,285 on "Name That Tune" two years ago, "I can't promise that you'll make it. I didn't think I'd make it. I was just coming down to meet a friend who was going to try out, and when he didn't show up, the TV-people said, 'Why don't you give it a try. Two weeks later, I was $20,000 richer. If I can do it, anyone can do it."
Not really. Even if you make the first cut by passing the "Name That Tune" cassette test (10 second fragments from 20 songs), make the second cut a month later when producer Ray Horl, in person, comes to town to check you out and finally get an invitation to Hollywood next summer (at your own expense), you have no guarantee of getting on the air.
"We won't ever guarantee they'll be a contestant," says smooth, baritone-voiced John Harlan, the show's announcer and chief recruiter. "But it's rare that once we ask them to come to L.A., we won't use them." It has happened, though.
"We had a guy once who had the interview and then he got to L.A. and said, 'Where's my dressing room, where's my makeup man?' He had stars in his eyes. So we, said, 'You're not the same person. We can't use you.'"
Harlan explains all this to one room of hopefuls—Hillsborough housewives, a policewoman, an unemployed waterbed salesman, bartenders, insurance men, mechanics, nurses, computer programmers, lawyers—but no one really hears him. They have stars in their eyes. In three days of testing, Harlan has interviewed some 600 people out of 4,000 Californians expected to try out in the next month. They watch the show every Friday night at home and overflow with confidence. They always guess the tunes; their children have urged them to come down and bring honor to the family name. They know they have what it takes.
But they don't. Harlan knows his boss, Ralph Edwards, who owns the syndicated game show, only wants certain types. "He wants 'up' kinds of nice people," confides Harlan. "He wants 78 good, happy people with vim, vigor and vitality who like to have fun." He doesn't want any dullards.
"They may be the greatest namer of tunes in the world." says Harlan, "but if they're dull, the show is dull." And that means people in TV land change the channel, the ratings drop, the ad billings fall, Ralph Edwards gets fuming mad and John Harlan may be pounding the pavement. "He hires us to find good contestants."
Bill Silva, a 35-year-old singing bartender from Oakland, is just right. He appears articulate and manly and' he has an "interesting" job. Silva and his customers at the Bella Napoli bar play "Name That Tune" every afternoon with the jukebox. It has prepared him well—he makes the first cut. This will make a neat story on the air. Harlan writes it down.
But Silva, whose stage presence has been smoothed from past TV work, is a ringer. Last year, he won $25,000 on High Rollers as the undefeated five-day champ. To boot, he walked away with two trips to Mexico, a houseboat vacation at Lake Shasta, ovens, freezers, a $2,000 diamond-studded gold watch and a gleaming $300 ring made from a $5 gold piece."
A friend pointed out the ad for "Name That Tune" tryouts, says Silva, and he hoofed it on down. "I've always been a ham."
Two past game show appearances would have disqualified Silva. NBC rules.
"Please don't say, 'Oh, God,' or anything that might distract people," instructs Harlan as the room throbs with silent anticipation. The test is about to begin. He asks everyone to fold over their paper "so eyes don't wander" and reminds them of the $100,000 at the end of the rainbow.
"OMIGOD!" says San Carlo housewife Susan Kauk, taking a deep breath. "Do you nave a tranquilizer?" No one does.
The test begins.
A mix of pop, rock and big band tunes wafts over the tape. Everybody chews on pencils, scratches heads, pulls hair. And then it is over. The room is in shock. "I thought I knew music," grumbles a minister. Everyone looks down and shakes their heads as Harlan retires to Miss Barlowe's room to grade papers.
"First the good news," says Harlan, returning with a big smile on his face. "A lot of you don't have to worry about traveling all the way to L.A." He announces the first cut. Susan Kauk is one of the six lucky ones. She can't believe it.
"My adrenalin started racing and my palms were sweating," she says, recalling her panic during the test. "I could remember the words, but not the titles." Harlan reminds everyone "not to wait by your phones. If we don't call you within four weeks, you probably won't hear from us."
Mrs. Kauk sighs. "I've gone through three cans of deodorant."

Harlan announced on American Gladiators and the last of the Bob Hope specials in the mid-‘90s but when he retired, I’m not certain. He was on the local AFTRA board in the mid-2000s and active with the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters. He died in 2017.

The Car (End) of Tomorrow

In 1947, Studebaker came out with a car with a back end that looked like a front end.



Tex Avery and writers Rich Hogan and Roy Williams parodied it in Car of Tomorrow. Narrator Gil Warren points out it’s difficult to tell if some new models are coming or going. Even arrows aren’t very helpful in determining the front end and the back end.



Then the wheels turn. We now learn which is the front end.



The “step down” Hudson gets parodied later in the cartoon.

Mike Lah, Walt Clinton and Grant Simmons are the animators.

How To Get From One Pose To Another

Here’s one way to do it. These are shot on twos.



Guess who directed this cartoon? Here’s a hint.



Actually, the character layouts were by Abe Levitow, but he never drew anything like this when he left the Chuck Jones unit for UPA.

This is from the 1957 industrial Drafty, Isn’t It?

Reviewing the Revue

A cast of 75! A budget of $250,000! Singing! Dancing! Talking!

That’s the hype that accompanied MGM’s “The Hollywood Revue of 1929.”

And among the “more stars than there are in heaven” caught in this was Jack Benny.

It was 1928 and sound was beginning its eventual strangling of silent films. Sound meant studios were looking for stars who could talk (and sing and dance). Where else to find them but the vaudeville stage?

That’s where Jack Benny could be found. He was signed to a deal by Warners and made a short called “Bright Moments.” Then came 1929 and Metro wanted a huge blockbuster where it could toss in all its big players. Thus Jack Benny was hired in April and acted as co-master of ceremonies in a filmed musical extravaganza called “Hollywood Revue of 1929.”

It opened at Grauman’s Chinese on June 20, 1929. Civic groups in Hollywood were so confident “the fame of the film capital will be broadcast to the four corners of the earth” because of the movie, store owners along Hollywood Boulevard were asked by the local business group to decorate their buildings and the city was asked to allow them to put up lit stars on lamp posts along the street (Los Angeles Times, June 3, 1929).

Women’s Wear Daily (yes, it had an entertainment section) of July 29, 1929 proclaimed: “ ‘The Hollywood Revue’ is the most spectacular sound picture that has yet been produced. In Los Angeles, where it is now being shown at Grauman’s, it has been running for many weeks to packed houses and is accounted the biggest success of any of the ‘talkies’ yet presented.”

The New York Times of August 11, 1929 bleated information from Metro’s press releases: “more than 1,500 persons took part in the designing, recording and photographing ... more than 3,000,000 feet of film were used to secure the final eleven reels ... More than ninety songs were written by the twenty-three song writers at the studio, of which the twenty best were selected ... chorus of 125 girls ... 1,500 applicants ... ten microphones frequently were at use at the same time ... Laurel and Hardy blew out a number of light valves in the sound apparatus ... Buster Keaton introduces a new dance he calls a Sausage Dance.” When the movie opened on August 14th in New York, Exhibitors Herald World screeched: “Beautiful show girls in costume sing and dance atop the worlds greatest theatre electric sign at the Astor, N. Y. Broadway has never seen so amazing a spectacle. Police hold back thousands along the Great White Way as crowds watch Hollywood Revue promotion stunt.”

Anyway, that gives you enough of a sense of hype.

But what of Jack Benny?

Benny was a co-emcee in the movie with Conrad Nagel (who sang). Nagel represented the Hollywood film community, Benny the Broadway show folk. Jack talked about his first major experience in the movies with the Los Angeles Times in an interview published on July 7, 1929. His quotes come across as a lot stiffer than anything I’ve read elsewhere; one wonders if they are actually the writer’s paraphrases. It’s interesting that despite being featured in one of the biggest talkies to that time, movies were not where Jack made his fame.

The last quote is very revealing and turned out to be quite true. Jack never abandoned live appearances, whether in vaudeville, his radio audience, his television show (filmed in front of a live audience off-and-on) and his concert stage appearances, not to mention benefits and roasts. He continued to work in front of living, breathing people until cancer stopped him.

LAUGH BUSINESS SERIOUS
Jack Benny, Gentleman of Comics, Explains How Brands of Merriment Differ
BY PHILIP K. SCHEUER
Nice Nellie would refer to him as John Benjamin, but he is and always will be Jack Benny to most of us. He is in, as those who know their vaudeville win testify, the business of laughs—and a mighty serious one it is. A gentleman to his fingertips, Jack Benny must remain ever a stranger to the bawdy, the vulgar, the slapstick; he and a custard pie must never meet.
But what, interrupts the dissenter fresh from an evening at "The Hollywood Revue" in Grauman's Chinese Theater, where Jack Benny officiates as a shadow master of ceremonies—what about the so-delectable birthday cake which descends with such unerring aim on the impeccable brow of this same Mr. Benny? A custard pie by any other name is still as squidgy!
The answer is significant. Pie or cake, the basis of the situation, or "gag," lies not in the generous and indiscriminate spread of dough and icing over the dignified features of Mr. Benny, but in the fact that the gentleman rises superior to the calamity and, with no loss of aplomb or change of expression, proceeds to announce the next act on the program! In the industry, they would call it “topping a gag;” the discerning person will recognize it as the mark of the true comic artist.

“The moviegoer,” Mr. Benny comments, “is still an unguessable quantity. We who have learned to gauge our abilities to amuse by the known quantity of response in an audience are finding it difficult to a standard for laughter in the talkies. I have noted the reactions a professional gathering, at the premiere of ‘The Hollywood Revue,’ and of the typical crowd of merrymakers that attends a midnight show. They are not alike, but still they bear more resemblance to one another than they do to what is known as an ‘average audience.’
“Yet it is this average audience which we must play. My best lines, I am frank to admit, are lost in the revue. This is not our fault the audience’s; it is just a lesson by which we must profit. The first-nighters caught more of the wisecracks because they were trained experience to listen quickly for them—and not, as you may suppose, because they were necessarily more critical or harder to please. “Let us go into it further: The average spectator, I am told, breaks into hearty laughter when William Haines expresses his delight at meeting me by ripping off my collar. Instead of diminishing, the laughter increases as Haines tears the buttons from my coat one by one. This is a reaction natural in the man educated to the pantomime the films; but by giving way to he completely misses the accompanying dialogue, which is the basis the humor we intend to convey. To wit:
“Haines, as he attacks each button, prefaces the act with the remark, ‘I saw you in Detroit,’ ‘I saw you in Chicago,’ and so on—with button for each city. He leaves me, you will remember, one button; and this, after a suitable pause, I jerk loose myself, with the dry comment, ‘You forgot Minneapolis.’
“Timing, it is probable, would have extracted the full humor from the situation so that everyone could appreciate it: and still it might not have. That is something that only experience will teach; the movie goer may be as unwilling to accept the formula of the theater a year from now as he is today. Who knows?”
HOUSEWIVES MISSED
The greatest loss to a “personality comedian” of Mr. Benny’s calibre, on the screen, is the power to improvise speeches, or “ad lib.” He relates, for example, that a matinee audience at the varieties always includes enough of that large class known as housewives to make comment like, “I’ll bet there are plenty of sinks filled with unwashed dishes this afternoon” surefire, in the parlance. In the same manner, comical reference to a preceding act on the bill, particularly one which has “gone over big,” never fails to elicit laughter.
“A reference of this kind, or the mention of any current news topic,” Mr. Benny explains, “establishes an intangible bond with an audience, which senses or believes it senses that, the reference being impromptu, one’s entire monologue must be!
“Still, in a talking film, one has the satisfaction of knowing that one’s performance will be as fresh and amusing the five-thousandth time as the first. Provided,” he added, with a twinkle, “that it is any good the first time.

“So both mediums have their advantages.”
Mr. Benny speaks of the differing methods employed by other comedians. Al Jolson, he says, possesses the gift of making his auditor believe in him utterly. Ken Murray has a glib tongue and this failing can resort to slapstick for a laugh. Olsen and Johnson, though unfunny themselves, use the elements of surprise and incongruity in staccato order successfully. The extremely garrulous Joe Cook and Julius Tannen pour forth unconnected nonsense in perfect seriousness. And Robert Benchley and Donald Ogden Stewart represent the average fellow in what is usually called a tough spot.
“For myself,” Mr. Benny confesses, “I am definitely committed to the sort of thing I am doing now. I have been in vaudeville and revues for seven years; it was not until I first tried acting as a master of ceremonies three years ago, that I varied my monologue at all. I didn’t dare; I was too frightened!
“Curious, isn’t it, that my chief stock in trade is my nonchalance, when really I am so timorous? I have never been able to overcome it; I bemoan the inadequacy of my powers of speech, and the microphones certainly do not encourage it. I shall be glad to get back on the stage again, if only for a while. I feel the need of that human response—and badly.”

As a post-script, Benny appeared on local radio to, no doubt, promote the movie. This is from the Santa Ana Register, August 8, 1929.

Jack Benny Will Preside Tonight on KHJ Program
Jack Benny, one of the two masters of ceremonies of the “Hollywood Revue of 1929,” and famous Keith-Orpheum headliner, will be master of ceremonies at the weekly Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer program to be presented over KHJ between 8 and 9 o’clock tonight. Jack Benny will introduce on this program Kay Johnson, noted stage star, now appearing in “Dynamite,” Johnny Mack Brown, Julian Lay Faye, baritone under contract with M-G-M and the Campus Trio, three girls with pleasing voices, under contract with M-G-M for a series of short subjects. Also featured on this program will be the “Richfield Roamers,” well known to listeners over KHJ.