Mommy, Where Do Jokes Come From?

There’s a problem with telling topical jokes. There is only a limited number of topics to go around. So the same topics are joked about over and over and over again.

That certainly applied to radio comedy/variety shows in the 1940s, as Herald Tribune syndicate columnist John Crosby pointed out in his inches of June 17, 1946.

The topics weren’t restricted to radio, either. Fans of old cartoons will recognise most of the topics mentioned below. A whole Frank Sinatra parody was worked into Tex Avery’s Little 'Tinker. Avery even had a Truman presidential joke at the end of Droopy’s Good Deed. Woody Woodpecker dealt with the housing shortage at the start of Woody the Giant Killer. There’s a Warner’s cartoon with a Lost Weekend gag where a Ray Milland character is exchanging a typewriter. Hurdy-Gurdy Hare has a Petrillo reference in it. And you likely needn’t be told that Foghorn Leghorn’s personality was shifted a bit to more resemble Kenny Delmar’s Senator Claghorn.

In case you don’t know, John L. Lewis was the president of the United Mine Workers union and always seemed to be agitating for a strike. I.J. Fox was a New York-based furrier.

An Assortment of Jokes
Jokes, Jokes, Jokes.
Nothing gets standardized more quickly than an idea on the radio. In case that sentence opens too many vistas in your brain, I hasten to say I’m referring to jokes and only certain ones. Let’s see, there are nylon jokes, Sinatra jokes, President Truman jokes, “lost week end” jokes, Senator Claghorn jokes, housing shortage jokes, two-way stretch jokes, “owned and operated exclusively by Bob Hope”; Petrillo jokes and Jane Russell jokes.
Lately I have detected a regular path that these jokes traverse. The first person to become aware that something in the news is funny seems to be Fred Allen, who appears to read the newspapers rather than listen to other radio comedians. Edgar Bergen, or Charlie McCarthy, as we usually think of him, is another original wit who gets his jokes from the life around him rather than a gag file.
Then the jokes progress downward to Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor, Jack Haley and finally Abbott and Costello. Cantor, for instance, is still gagging about the nylon shortage. After all, nylons have been scarce for five years. For some time, Allen has been fashioning jokes out of nylon lines, which is a later manifestation of the shortage. Mr. Allen is more alert than Mr. Cantor.
I’ve amassed a huge file of these jokes and I don’t know what to do with them, but these jokes are non-inflammable, like pastifoam. You can’t drown them either. They float just like Ivory soap, although, so far as I know, they contain no secret oils. In fact, these jokes are virtually indestructible like those new Victor records. So to get rid of them, I pass the jokes back to the radio comedians so they may keep abreast of what’s going on in the rest of the industry.
As a gesture of respect, we’ll start with the Presidential jokes. Has every one got his laugh meter ready?

“I’m from Missouri”—
“Why aren’t you working in Washington?”
“Because I won’t play second fiddle to his piano.”
Here’s one about Sinatra from the Vallee program:
“Frank Sinatra walked in and all the girls fainted. Then I walked in and Sinatra fainted.”
And the nylons from the Cantor show:
“The bobby-soxers are wearing their stockings at half mast in memory of nylons.”
“Lost Week End” joke from Frank Morgan:
How would you feel if you rehearsed a role for thirty-five years and they turned around and gave the part to Ray Milland?
Clothing shortage from the Hope program:
“I bought a two-pants suit. I won’t say the trousers were large, but all the way home I was followed by a kangaroo.”
John L. Lewis joke from the Bert Lahr program. Same joke on the Allen show:
“Can you tell when it’s spring?”
“Sure, John L. Lewis comes up out of the ground.”
Housing shortage jokes from the Durante-Moore program:
“I’m going to become a hermit—if I can find an empty cave.”
Claghorn jokes from Art Linkletter’s “House Party”:
“A man was persuaded to sit on eggs like a chicken.”
“That’s a yolk, son.”
Just for contrast, let’s hear some real wit. Several weeks ago, Charlie McCarthy started a perfume business, and there’s an industry that’s wide open for satire. Charlie’s slogan was, “You look swell, but how do you smell?” He was marketing a perfume called “Love Life,” which came in 30 or 60 watt sizes. “Now, here’s a perfume for the outdoor girl,” Charlie told Bergen. “We call it High Heaven.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what it smells to. It’s also good for killing gophers. We make it from rose petals soaked in alcohol and mixed with diluted water—that’s hard to get. The other day when we were mixing some, a skunk walked in waving a white flag.”
On his Easter Sunday program, in a delightful bit of fantasy, Charlie went hunting for the Easter Bunny and bumped into an educated owl, who cried “Whom Whom.” Pursuing his search, he found the Easter Bunny, who told him mournfully that a rabbit’s life was a hard one.
“Yes, I suppose so,” said Charlie. “Hare today and mink tomorrow.”
I like mink jokes provided it isn’t the one about meenk is for football. Here’s another one from Fred Allen’s Easter Sunday show. Portland was telling Fred about the platoon of minks who paraded up Fifth Avenue to Fifty-seventh Street, where they spelled out I.J. Fox.
“Ah,” murmured Allen, “If only I.J. could read!”
Another hobby of mine is collecting insults, of which my collection is one of the world’s largest. The art of insult is as American as frankfurters, and some time soon I’ll string up a whole column of them.

We’ll continue our promise to post a week’s worth of Crosby columns. The comedy quiz It Pays to Be Ignorant was reviewed by Crosby on June 18, 1946; we posted his pronouncement on it here.

Meredith Willson’s summer replacement show got a look in the June 19th column. Willson was the composer of The Music Man. He was the musical director on the Burns and Allen show for a time in the late ‘40s and later waved the baton on The Big Show, NBC’s star-studded radio spectacular series of the early ‘50s.

The various types of murder mysteries on the air was Crosby’s subject on June 20th. While the types of narrative may have been various, many of them had the same kind of characters, ripe for parody.

Crosby’s first television review was printed on June 21st. You don’t think of television being around in 1946. There were about a half dozen commercial stations and a handful of non-commercial stations in all of North America then. ABC didn’t have a station yet, let alone a network. Du Mont’s network was still experimental and the company had no studios yet. Stations were forced by the FCC to be on the air 28 hours a week; Du Mont claimed that was a hardship. Yet the American Television Society handed out its second annual awards that month (there were no Emmys yet), and the ceremony was scheduled to be aired live on Du Mont’s WABD. (Broadcasting, June 17, 1946). At this point, TV broadcasts on the East Coast generally consisted of films or remote pick-ups; Crosby is reviewing a remote. Broadcasting of June 24, 1946 gave the telecast huge coverage with raves from a number of New York newspaper columnists.

Crazy, Darn Fool Duck

It’s another glorious moment in a Warner Bros. cartoon. Porky Pig pulls out the script for the cartoon and protests to Daffy Duck that what just happened on screen wasn’t in it.

“Don’t let it worry you, skipper,” replies Daffy. “I’m just a crazy, darn fool duck!” Daffy crosses his eyes for the moment that he says “crazy.”



Daffy proves it by woo-hooing and bouncing across the water, disappearing into the background.



You think Buddy did anything like this? Or a little Dutch plate? Or Beans the cat? Naw. Tex Avery is here to show us how a funny cartoon is made.

Porky's Duck Hunt was released in 1937. Virgil Ross and Bobe Cannon get the rotating animator credits.

Oceans of Beer

What did I just watch?

A Spanish Twist has to be the most disjointed Tom and Jerry cartoon from the Van Beuren studio. First, Tom and Jerry are on the ocean menaced by an octopus. Then suddenly they’re in a cantina in Spain where a rubber hose dancer gets the spotlight. Then they’re beating up bulls in a ring with no gags in sight. Suddenly the cartoon is interrupted by an aged Western Union boy. The message?



Yes, Prohibition is over. Hurrah! Tom kisses the Western Union deliverer then kicks him out of the cartoon.



As Gene Rodemich plays “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” on the soundtrack, our heroes (?) row their way back to the U.S.A., the whitecaps forming a glass of beer, then an American flag.



What?! Wait, the cartoon is over? That’s it? I swear the writers and animators partook of a bit too much of now-legal beverages before writing this thing.

John Foster and George Stallings get the “by” credit.

The title tune is a 1926 song called “In a Little Spanish Town (‘Twas on a Night Like This)” written by Sam Lewis, Joe Young and Mabel Wayne. Listen to the Paul Whiteman version below.

The Working Ham

Jack Benny liked to work. He said it to interviewers. And he proved it by appearing on stage and television almost until his death. He was working on another TV special when cancer felled him in 1974.

Here’s a feature story on Jack, talking mainly about work. It’s dated May 11, 1963 and from one of the syndication services. About the only thing I’ll take issue with is Jack’s hair colour. It wasn’t brown in 1963. It wasn’t brown in 1943, and I don’t believe it was brown in 1933. He coloured it for years.

Workhorse Benny Will Never Retire
By ISOBEL ASHE
AMERICANS, FOR the most part, are sentimental people. They revere traditions like Mom's apple pie and the Fourth of July. They grow misty-eyed over helpless puppies or abandoned babies.
And they are loyal, almost without exception to old-timers in show business who have made them laugh over the years.
Of the living legends, less than a handful have remained in the most grueling of show business mediums, television. Most of them made the transition gracefully from radio or movies.
♦ ♦ ♦
Left today are only Bob Hope, Red Skelton and Jack Benny doing regular shows. And of these three, it’s a toss-up who works harder, Hope or Benny.
As Jack says, “Bob and I argue who is the bigger ham. We’ve never resolved it. All I know is that we’re agreed on one thing: we’ll never retire. I don’t think either of us would know what to do with our lives.”
Entertainment industry folk gasped when Benny announced a few seasons ago that he would switch from a monthly television show to a weekly series.
♦ ♦ ♦
“How can he do it at his age?” some asked. “Why does he want to do it?” others pondered. “Why should he do it?” was another question.
Jack’s answer was the same to all the queries. “Because I like to work.”
The impression should not be gotten from this statement that the blue-eyed comic is a man of only one facet, at loose ends when he isn’t poring over a television script.
♦ ♦ ♦

He golfs almost daily at Beverly Hills’ swank Hillcrest Country Club, and any dedicated golfer knows this sport can become a full-time preoccupation.
He is an authority on art and artists, and discusses their works with knowledge. He is an exceedingly well-read man and can converse, again with knowledge, on the latest novels and nonfiction books.
And — oh yes — he is a violinist. Of course, he is a master at his profession — comedy.
♦ ♦ ♦
The line, “Jack Benny couldn’t ad lib a belch after a Hungarian dinner” has been variously attributed to the late Fred Allen and Benny’s best friend, George Burns.
In any event it is apocryphal, because it isn’t true at all. Jack Benny is a very funny man even in conversation with friends. But he will decry it. His modesty shows all the time.
Getting back to the weekly tele­vision show, “I didn’t regard it as a challenge,” Jack comments. “Actually I was far more nervous when I used to be in radio. When you do a show once a month on television, it’s regarded as something rather special and you have to live up to this.
“But every week, well, you don’t have time to think whether you’ve been spectacular. You just keep on working.
♦ ♦ ♦
“I do think, however, that since we’ve been doing a show every week, we’ve been good. We’ve never been really bad,” he puffs thoughtfully on the ever-present small cigar.
Last season, Benny was moved from his 30-year-tenure of Sunday nights to Tuesdays on CBS Television and gloom-guessers thought his audience wouldn’t make the switch with him. They couldn’t have been more wrong.
The ratings on the Jack Benny show this past year have been better than ever, and professional television critics maintain the shows have been better too.
♦ ♦ ♦
One close friend observes: “The man is a workhorse. He was less bored this year and he had more physical ideas for the shows, for publicity value.
“Take the Tarzan show he did with Carol Burnett, swinging from vines. Or re-creating the USO show with Martha Tilton. And that Dennis Day Irish Mikado stunt!
“Jack works hard on all these shows, but he still maintains he works a total of only 13 hours a week. I don’t believe it! I think he’s working all the time, even when he’s on the golf course or practicing his violin.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Of course, to Jack practicing the violin isn’t work; it’s a release. He always has a fiddle with him, not necessarily the Stradivarius he plays with symphony orchestras around the country, but valuable and expensive instruments just the same.
“That’s really my escape,” Benny says. “If I’m upset or worried about something, I play the violin for an hour or two and I feel better.
“I would like very much to make a violin album. So far, no one’s asked me,” he grins.
♦ ♦ ♦
And it is, of course, a source of considerable satisfaction that through his guest appearances with symphonies around the country, he has raised well over $3-million for the various musicians’ funds and helped perpetuate their orchestras.
There was a classic instance, at one concert, where at the first rehearsals, the orchestra was having difficulty.
“They’ve got to get better at the concert,” Jack insisted. “They have to be better, to make me look bad. There isn’t enough contrast at this point.” They did get better, of course, to Benny’s gratification and to the benefit of the box office’s ailing coffers.
♦ ♦ ♦
There are those who maintain the Benny scores at these symphonies are purposely written incorrectly so he can make his classic goofs. Not so, insists his violin teacher, Larry Kurkdjie.
“Jack plays to the best of his ability,” says Kurkdjie, who is a member of the Benny television show orchestra. “He might have been great, if he had continued after he started as a little boy. But there was a lapse of some 60 years when he didn’t play at all, until he resumed.
“And considering this, he does very well,” Kurkdjie puts it tactfully.
Currently preparing shows for the 1963-64 season, Benny plans no radical changes in his Tuesday night CBS television format.
He will continue using guest stars, since last year the fan mail coming to his office was highly favorable toward such guests as Jimmy Stewart and his wife, singers Frankie Avalon, Connie Francis and Frank Sinatra Jr., who made his professional debut with Benny.
“The mail for Sinatra Jr. was tremendous,” says Ned Miller, Jack’s longtime friend.
♦ ♦ ♦
Miller, who met Benny back in 1921 when the comic was in vaudeville and Miller was writing what he terms “Chicago songs” (“that was because of the beat they had— songs like ‘Why Should I Cry Over You,’ ‘You Don’t Like It, Not Much,’ ‘Don’t Mind the Rain,’ and other novelties”), now doubles as Jack’s stand-in on the television show and handles his fan mail.

“The mail is divided. Among fan mail for Jack and the guests, asking for autographed pictures and questions about Jack’s personal life, are letters from violin owners.
“We get hundreds of letters from people who have violins which they think are old, or genuinely worth a lot of money.
“They ask Jack to whom they should take them for an appraisal, or how to sell them. He’s considered an authority on the subject,” Miller says.
♦ ♦ ♦
Obviously, Benny is considered a authority on many subjects, from violin-appraisals, to money-raising for symphonies, to comedy, and to show business longevity.
Fans, seeing him in person at his television show, at personal appearances in Las Vegas or Lake Tahoe or the recent Ziegfeld Theatre Broadway show in New York, exclaim at how he looks.
“I don’t think I look 69 either,” Jack says. And he doesn’t. He’s slimmer than he appears on television. There is no gray in his brown hair. And he moves like a younger man.
“I simply don’t believe in retirement,” he repeats. “I heard of an acquaintance, younger than I, who did retire and practically overnight he changed.
“His speech became slower, his walk more pronounced. He almost fumbled. And I think it’s because he had no reason for being. Nothing with which to occupy his time or his thinking.
“I know from this man’s experience, and from my own observations—for me life has zip and purpose only when I’m working.”
With termination of his present CBS contract still a year away, workhorse Jack is already making audible noises about doing a straight play on Broadway. Benny the matinee idol? Who knows?
He put his feet up on his desk and commented, “Besides, I'm too old now to be thrown out of show business. They can let me out, if they want to — thank God no one's made the offer, yet.”

Alvin and Calvin (And The Rest)

Three half-hour cartoon shows didn’t make it in prime time in 1961. Top Cat, The Alvin Show and Calvin and the Colonel were all cancelled after one season; Calvin was even pulled from the airwaves for a while for some re-tooling. T.C. ended up in Saturday morning reruns and, occasionally, Hanna-Barbera brought him and the gang out of retirement. The biggest success of them all was Alvin. 1961 was a very minor setback. The Bagdasarian family built a huge empire out of the Chipmunks long after the record label which brought them to life went bust.

The Cincinnati Enquirer’s TV editor, Luke Feck, wrote about one of the three shows in his column of September 15, 1961 and the other two the next day. Two consecutive newspaper columns devoted to TV cartoons! That might have been unprecedented.

I’m afraid I’m with the 1961 TV audience in finding no appeal in Calvin. Other than the score, I could never get into Top Cat, even with Arnold Stang as the lead. As for The Alvin Show, the theme’s good, the opening and closing was imaginative, but Alvin himself is an annoying jerk and the musical segments mostly featured tired, worn-out songs. The “sped-up singing harmony” bit gets tired fast. The cartoons with Clyde Crashcup are still my favourite part of the show.

Feck’s first column also includes a note about The Bullwinkle Show. It aired Sunday evenings at 7 p.m.; I don’t really consider that prime time (in the ‘70s, they called it “prime time access”). Bullwinkle was the funniest series of the four; it was faster-paced and made fun of ridiculous things, like politics and pop culture.

In a column earlier in 1961, Feck proclaimed himself “the regional defender for Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear” against those who would insist “cartoons are kid stuff.” It’s no wonder he got a chance to chat with Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, who tried to differentiate between “limited animation” and “planned animation,” but never really specified what “limited animation” was; I can only guess they considered it along the lines of NBC Comics or the original Crusader Rabbit, where there wasn’t much movement. But, still, Bill and Joe...

As for the second column, I’ll bet the unpublished first-hand tales about the heydey of Amos ‘n’ Andy were funnier than anything in that Calvin series.

Animated
HOLLYWOOD—Trend spotting can be almost as much fun as bird watching. TV, which has almost had it with the horses (hear them galloping off?), will lay many of its eggs in the animated cartoon basket.
Over at ABC, that prolific paid, Hanna-Barbera, who followed their syndicated success of "Yogi Bear." "Huck Hound" with the "Flintstones," have conjured up still another gimmick from their pens.
"Top Cat," a Bilko-like cat with a feline following similar to the platoon, makes its debut Wednesday, September 27, in a trashcan-forested Manhattan alley.

The voices, one of the treats of earlier H-B productions will be supplied by Arnold Stang, Allen Jenkins, Maurice Gosfield (Bilko's bestial Doberman), Marvin Kaplan, Leo De Lyon, and John Stephenson.
Hanna, who had just come from a 7:45 a. m. dental appointment, found the porcelain filling impaired his chewing but he minced no words in speaking out on his favorite subject: cartoons.
"We do over two hours of cartooning a week for TV. In the movies that would be a full year's output. The secret is in the animating." Barbera said.
"The movies use full animation, trying to be as lifelike as possible. Limited animation (a herky-jerky animation form) is too shoddy for TV. Ours is called planned animation where each move is planned and there is a lot of closeup facial work."
Hanna said voices are awfully hard to come by. "Over 80 people read for the "Top Cat" role. You just have to close your eyes and listen to them talk. The voice must fit the cartoon, not the actor." (Arnold Stang has the "Top Cat" voice.
Now firmly entrenched in the prime time firmament, H-B are already planning ahead for next year. In the works: Touchee Turtle, Lippy Lion, Hardy Har Har a baboon and Wally Gator, any one of which may be slapped into the breech [sic] next fall if a familiar series falters.
Bullwinkle
Jay Ward, who heads up one of the funniest publicity campaigns ever, "I'll give you a pewter spoon warmer if you watch us," brings his clod-[l]ike, plodding moose (named Bullwinkle?) to the home screens in color September 24 on NBC.
"The Bullwinkle Show" promises such stalwart regulars as Dudley Do-Right and the maliciousest meanie of them all, Boris Badenov.
The word out here is that you can expect some sharp satire from Jay Ward—one-time Mr. Magoo and Gerald McBolng Boing scripter—and his associate, Bill Scott.
Tomorrow, two more cartoon series are visited.

Amos ‘n’ Ross
HOLLYWOOD—Amos 'n' Andy's white-haired human counterparts, Freeman Gordon and Charles Correll, sat at Rominoff's dispensing their patented cure-all: Laughter.
Gosdon, a raconteur of the old school, and Correll, a 71-year-old composite of one-line jokes, were on hand to discuss their latest venture into show business: "Calvin and the Colonel" on ABC-TV.
Rambling off into marvelous, and frequently unprintable yarns about the heydays of Amos 'n' Andy, the pair would be casually guided back into line by an ABC publicist—which is a nice word for press agent.
The pair, after 33 years together, have found TV just what they need in their later years. "We work two or three hours a week doing the voices for the series, Gosden drawled in his Richmond, Va., voice.
"We have had some practice working with our voices together," Correll added in the understatement of the day.

"The cartoon, done by Creston Studios, is all about some animals from the South. Charlie plays a bear named Calvin and I'm a fox called the Colonel," Gosden said. "Everybody wants to know if we'll be doing the same voices we did on radio. The answer is definitely no. "By the way, Charlie has a little bit, that he uses every time he sees a girl. He gives a little tip of the hat and says 'How de do.' It should catch on." It is impossible to report here just what went on for the next several moments as Correll went through his hat-tipping exercises for any and all social occasions. Calvin and the Colonel will make its Cincinnati debut October 3 on Channel 12. The series is being put together by Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher of "Leave It To Beaver."
Ross Who?
"How would you like to talk to Ross mumble jumble mumble," a CBS press agent asked the other day.
"Ross who?" I asked. "Bagdasarian, the fellow with the chipmunks," he said.
Then it dawned on me who he meant—the guy with that nutty collection of chipmunks which, for want of a better word, sing those nutty songs.
Ross, as he shall be henceforth called because of an economy move, was a former farmer in the raisin racket. In 1949 he produced a bumper crop just as the bottom fell out of the market. He went to Hollywood with an unpublished copy of "Come On-A My House" which he wrote with his cousin, playwright William Saroyan. The song sold—making Rosemary Cloony [sic] a star—and Ross was on his way.
Now he's busy bringing his famous trio of rodents to animated fame. "Our necks are stuck way out on this. We are going to do something entirely different. This will be like a cartoon variety show. When Alvin sings (two songs each half-hour usually with his brothers) it will be a regular production number," Ross said.
"The backgrounds to the song will try to take on the flavor of the country. In Japan, for example, the artwork will have a Japanese motif. Most of the cartoons, however, use the contemporary format familiar to UPA cartoon enthusiasts.

All the animal voices will be supplied by Bagda, whoops, Ross. "It's really a difficult thing to do," he said. "When you record, you must talk at half speed, but what that really means is that you have to be thinking at half speed. That's something my teachers always insisted on for me anyhow.
"There are 160 people working on various stages of this production and I'm always around to overlook better make that oversee. Whenever someone asks if he should do it like (sic) It was done somewhere else, I tell him no. We are not going to be like anybody else in the animated cartoon field. Like I said, our necks are stuck way out. If we die, we die but with dignity." Outside of the chipmunks and their songs, one other character will be introduced an inventor named Clyde Crashcup who invents things like shoes, jokes, horses, yes even babies, long, long after they're been invented, discovered or created as the case may be.
And as for Ross, at the end of each show, his name will be spelled out to a tune similar to "M-I-C-K-E-Y   M-O-U-S-E."
"If people can pronounce it after the series, I know we're a hit."

Boom Boom Bust

Jack King decides to cram a bunch of film transition techniques into Boom Boom, a 1936 Warners cartoon starring Porky and Beans. He didn’t cram it with gags. It simply isn’t funny.

I like the lighting highlights on the fence as the cartoon opens. They flash, though you can’t tell from this solitary frame.



The next scene has animation in silhouette.



King decides to show off with a bunch of wipes and dissolves.



Gags? One scene-ending gag is Beans eating a can of beans. That’s a bigger bomb than the ones seen in the cartoon.

Sandy Walker and Cal Dalton are the credited animators. Joe Dougherty is Porky and you’ll hear Billy Bletcher on the soundtrack, too, along with composer Norman Spencer’s obsession with a backbeat woodblock.

Jail Break!

The cry of “Jail break!” goes up in the Mickey Mouse cartoon The Chain Gang (1930). Prisoners run amok (some in cyclical animation amok). In one scene, we have running prisoners near the background and others running in the foreground. Some even stop and yell at the camera.



Later, we get prisoners running in perspective past the camera and some falling from the sky.



When in doubt, turn the drawing around and give it a different paint job.



It’s 1930, so there isn’t a plot. Mickey Mouse is in jail. For what crime, we don’t know. Maybe on a made-up charge of stealing his design from the Van Beuren studio.