McKimson's Farmer

Corn Plastered likely was an attempt by Bob McKimson to create another starring character in a barnyard; Carl Stalling even wrote a little theme song for him. But unlike Foghorn Leghorn, who was funny (for a while anyway), the unnamed crow in this short is annoying.

An old-timey farmer leaps into the air and runs off after the crow. These are consecutive drawings, animated on twos. They’re nice poses, nothing elaborate, but you don’t see them because the animation zips quickly along.



McKimson decided to hire actors other than Mel Blanc for his cartoons. Jim Backus (pre-Magoo), Sheldon Leonard, Lloyd Perryman and Herb Vigran only worked with McKimson at Warners. The crow in this one is played by Pat Patrick, who was Ircil Twing on Edgar Bergen’s radio show. It was likely the only cartoon he ever made.

Bill Melendez, Rod Scribner, Phil De Lara, John Carey and Chuck McKimson animated this short, released in 1951 and reissued in 1961.

I Made Jack Benny

Jack Benny appeared on Ed Sullivan’s CBS radio show on March 29, 1932 (8:45 p.m. Eastern) and the story goes the folks at Canada Dry heard him and signed him to a twice-weekly, half-hour show on NBC’s WJZ network.

That isn’t quite the way George Olsen remembered it.

He claimed he suggested Benny be signed to his programme, and was therefore responsible for beginning Benny’s fame and fortune on radio and TV.

Unfortunately—at least for now—there’s nothing I can find from contemporary sources which confirm Olsen’s version of events, or even that Olsen was signed first for the show.

Variety of April 26, 1932 reveals Olsen and Benny had both been inked to start May 2nd on a show for Canada Dry. Benny had, not too many days before, begun a co-MCing job on stage with Lou Holtz; I can find no hint anywhere he was in talks to go on radio. However, Variety of April 12th talks about Olsen negotiating with NBC as his CBS deal was running out. Olsen soon made an appearance on WEAF (the flagship of the NBC Red network) on Louis Sobol’s Lucky Strike show. Benny, of course, was sponsored by Lucky Strikes years later. There was another Benny connection—the announcer was Howard Claney, who later plugged Chevrolets on one iteration of Jack’s show.

One thing is clear if you listen to that very first Canada Dry show—it’s as much Olsen’s show as it is Benny’s. Olsen and his singers seem to take up about half the time with musical numbers, with Jack doing “funny” patter in between. Mercifully, a decision was made to bring Olsen and his wife Ethel Shutta into the chatter and soon that was expanded to include the announcer and actors hired to play characters. The show became more and more comic, relying less and less on music.

This feature piece came from the Hackensack Record, Feb. 8, 1958. As the story indicates, Canada Dry’s agency, N.W. Ayer, moved the show to CBS later in the year. Olsen and Shutta stayed behind at NBC and hooked onto a show with Baron Munchausen (Jack Pearl) before year’s end.

George Olsen Gave Jack Benny A Big Push
Paramus Restaurateur Was Noted Band Leader In Years Gone Past
By KENNETH G. WALLACE
To the present generation of teen-agers and young people, the name of George Olsen may not mean a great deal. But to us a bit, er, more advanced in years, reference to George Olsen and his music brings back fond memories. In the phraseology of the younger set — man, he was the greatest.
Olsen, now a Bergen County resident (he lives in an apartment in River Edge) and mine host at a favorite dining spot, Olsen's on Paramus Road in Paramus, has come into the news recently with an invitation to appear with Jack Benny on a television show next Thursday. On the show, Shower of Stars, Benny is slated to make a memorable step — he's going to celebrate his 40th birthday.
Olsen decided not to make the trip to the West Coast to appear with Benny, only after being strongly tempted to make the long jaunt.
But just seeing Olsen's name in the publicity released by the Columbia Broadcasting System, brought back a lot of memories. It surprised us a bit, too, to learn from the publicity that Olsen had been instrumental in Jack Benny's career, and as a matter of fact had been largely responsible for making Benny a big star.
It seemed like a good excuse to visit Olsen at his intimate place and to mix business and pleasure. So we got George Olsen to sit down with us while we ordered lunch, asked him about this Jack Benny T. V. show business and got him started talking about old times. Talking, that is, in between phone calls every five minutes from prospective dishwashers for whom George had advertised.
Well, then, what was this about giving Benny his start? It was back in 1931, Olsen recalled. He had just finished a 4-week engagement at the Palace Theater on bills which had included such other personalities as Milton Berle, Beatrice Lillie, the Mills Brothers, Fifi D'Orsay, and other big stars, when he was called to do another series of radio shows. It should be recalled here that for nearly 10 years before that, George Olsen and His Music was one of the biggest attractions in show business and that he had created a tremendous following on radio with one of the most popular air shows of all time.

But getting back to the Benny story: Olsen was asked to add a feature to the radio show something along the line of the comedy business he had done with Norman Brokenshire in broadcasts from the Pennsylvania. That was when Olsen and Brokenshire exchanged gags and introduced a new angle to broadcasting technique.
So Olsen ran through a long list of comedians at a booking agency and came across the name of Jack Benny. Now Benny wasn't exactly an unknown; he had been well-known in vaudeville, did night club work, etc., and Olsen figured this was the man he wanted.
So the broadcasts started. Some of you may still recall those introductions of Olsen's when he'd say: "Ladies and gentlemen, this is Jack Denny." And Benny would interrupt: "No, Mr. Olsen, not Denny; it's Benny, Jack Benny." Or maybe Olsen would say Ben Bernie, and get the sheepish correction again.
And you may recall, too, that it was Olsen who was the penny-pincher then — a role Benny has himself assumed. Anyway, the radio shows went on for 26 weeks, and as well as adding luster to Olsen's already long list of credits, it created a new radio character named Jack Benny.
Olsen got another offer — an increase to move to another network but he refused, saying he'd stay loyal to those who had started him. Benny, however, moved over and so the Jack Benny show was born.
And the career Olsen had started blossomed.
Benny or no Benny, Olsen went on as a big attraction just the same, playing all over the county at all the biggest theaters, hotels, night clubs, and on college occasions, until 1950, when the great George Olsen and His Music aggregation was disorganized and Olsen himself went into temporary retirement.
Olsen was born in Portland, Ore., and says he migrated into show business naturally since his father was a moving man and he helped bring sets and equipment into theaters. Just one look at the theater did it — and he was in it for the rest of his life. He got his big break when the band he had organized in Portland was heard by Fannie Brice and she recommended him to Ziegfeld. Ziegfeld brought him cast and two big hit shows immediately followed, "Kid Boots" in 1923 and the "Follies" in 1924 with Will Rogers and W. C. Fields.
Most people in this section of the country remember Olsen best for his music at the Pennsylvania Hotel and Pennsylvania Roof, where he played for nearly three years straight, after which he left to go into "Good News" in 1927 and "Whoopee" after that.
Ethel Shutta, whom George had married several years before, joined the band as the star vocalist in 1930 (she had been in several shows before, one of them "Louis the 14th" with Leon Errol) and many long-run engagements followed, including two years at the Ambassador in Los Angeles; two years at the College Inn and five years at the Edgewater Beach in Chicago. The marriage to Ethel Shutta ended in divorce and Olsen is now married to a former Englewood girl, Claralee Pilcer.
One of the biggest attractions in show business during his time, Olsen saw the handwriting on the wall as early as the Middle Thirties for the band business. As George puts it, every player wanted a band of his own and soon there were five bands for every date and it began to take the shape of a cannibalistic business. Olsen refused to have any part of it — and his price was met by those who wanted George Olsen and His Music. It got tougher as time went on, particularly as the players grumbled about the long jumps and after 4 more years at the Edgewater Beach, Olsen called it quits in 1950.
He loafed around a bit, joined Hackensack Golf Club and frankly admits he would have gone nuts being idle if it hadn't been for golf. You'd see him, as a matter of fact, in Charlie Mayo's pro shop in the middle of winter, dabbling with his golf clubs to keep busy.
Then he heard of the chance to buy the place on Paramus Road. So George bought it after thinking about it only a few days, and he's in the restaurant business now.
It's not exactly new to him, though. He was in business before — restaurants and night clubs along with his handwork and one of the places in which he had an interest was world-famous — the gigantic International Casino on Broadway, long since folded.

NBC Comics, the Unanimated Cartoons

The first made-for-TV animated cartoons apparently appeared in 1929. At least, that’s what the Philadelphia Inquirer of May 19th of that year reported.

The newest thing in the broadcasting of television material seen is in the production of a series of short motion pictures, especially suitable for transmission at the present stage of the art, by Visugraph Pictures, Inc. These productions will consist of simple sketches and animated cartoons that are especially adapted for the purpose. They are being produced for transmission from Station W2XCR, at Jersey City, owned and operated by the Jenkins Television Corporation, and they may be tuned in at will by radio “lookers-in” who have receiving sets equipped for television reception and reproduction.

I have no idea if any cartoons were made, let alone have survived.

Cartoons and TV have been together longer than you probably realise. Old silent animated theatrical shorts were part of the regular broadcast schedule of W2XR in Long Island City in 1931. After World War Two, several enterprising people looked at the challenges of making cartoons especially for the small screen. It boiled down to money. Making cartoons like the ones in theatres in the volume needed for TV could never be profitable. Something else had to do.

This is where a gentleman named Don Dewar comes in. He was a vice-president of director John Ford’s Argosy Productions. He got together with ex Disney artists Jack Boyd and Dick Moores to come up with Telecomics.

Jim Hardy was a newspaper comic strip Moores had been drawing. The Los Angeles Times of March 29, 1950 advertised the debut of its local TV counterpart. The ad includes the word “Telecomics.” The cartoon show was a mere five minutes.

Then the Telecomics found a network buyer. Daily Variety reported on August 7, 1950 that NBC had purchased them, and would air them in a 15-minute block. NBC Comics debuted on September 18, 1950, appearing from 5 to 5:15 p.m. Monday through Friday. By mid-November, Standard Brands sponsored the Thursday broadcasts. That seems to have given the cartoon show a bit of publicity.

Walter Ames of the Los Angeles Times had this to say in his column of November 20th:

The other day I was invited by Don Dewar, president of Tele-comics, Inc., to watch a showing of the new NBC Comics series and I came away with the thought that maybe it was the answer to many mothers' pleas for something to drag their children away from the westerns now flooding the television screens.

Don told me he and his three partners, Jack Boyd and Dick Moores started working on the idea several years ago and have been experimenting with the Jim Hardy series seen nightly on KLAC. Their present comics consist of Danny March, a private investigator; Space Barton, for the outer world minded offspring, and Kid Champion, for the rugged characters. Also included is the daily lesson on righteousness by Johnny and his dog, Mr. Do Right.
They are not animated but the pace at which the narration is carried and the action packed drawings make you forget this small item. As Don pointed out animations" of humans are unsatisfactory from a viewing point. So tonight, insist on the kids watching the first episodes of the NBC Comics on KNBH (4) at 5:15. I think they might solve some problems.

Billboard’s June Bundy reviewed the series in the magazine’s edition of November 15, 1950.

The NBC Comics is an experiment in low-budget video programing for children that doesn’t quite jell entertainment-wise. The idea of screening a series of comic drawings in close-ups, a la comic strip panels in newspapers, probably looked good on paper, but it’s slow-paced and difficult to follow on TV.
Instead of the balloon-dialog used in funny papers, the show has live talent read the lines off camera while mum’s the word on screen. Maybe the kiddies have faster reflexes, but this reviewer found it rough going trying to tell the Martians from the earthlings. The dialog often seemed to have no relation to the drawings and, at times, the whole thing took on the eerie aspect of a comic strip Strange Interlude. It was even harder to “tell the players without a program” when the producers economized, via long shots of several characters in silhouette.
In addition to the science fiction hero Barton, this program featured Kid Champion, a prize fighter resembling Joe Palooka, and a brief educational bit tagged Johnny and Mr. Do Right. The latter, which preached the golden rule, “Always cover your mouth before coughing or sneezing,” was the best of the lot. The commercials featured a sheepish grown-up emsee wearing a paper crown and looking like a fugitive from an audience participation show.
After several appetizing shots of Royal Pudding deserts [sic], he gave a big pitch for Standard Brands’ premium photo gimmick. The plug was strengthened when a freckle-faced young boy showed off his own collection of Royal’s movie and sports starts pictures.

NBC Comics aired for the last time on March 30, 1951. It was replaced by the soap opera Hawkins Falls, brought to you by No-Rinse Surf. One trade paper noted Lever Brothers bought the soap on February 13th with the idea of eventually taking the kids show slot.

Variety on May 30, 1951 reported Dewar was in New York with a first print of a new series which actually had a little more animation to it. There were no takers. Dewar and Boyd took over Moores’ interest in August. By then, the company was called Illustrate.

But this wasn’t the end of NBC Comics. Now that the cartoons were off the network, they could be syndicated. Variety of June 8, 1951 reported:

KTSL, on Monday, begins airing 13 first-run telecomics cartoon strips. The 15-minute, five-a-week juvenile-appeal show formerly aired on KNBH as "NBC Comics."
First 13 strips are first run; the rest will be second run of those aired over KNBH.

Figuring out 1950s TV syndication rights is a nightmare. Companies opened, closed, morphed, consolidated and formed multiple subsidiaries. At the start of 1954, they were in the library of Flamingo Films. When a couple of Flamingo executives moved over to NTA, the TeleComics came over as well. NTA, you may remember, syndicated some of the cartoons originally made by the Fleischers.

The TeleComics had some longevity. Channel 9 in Dothan, Alabama was broadcasting them in 1959 when they must have looked particularly shoddy.

The Billboard review above indicates what the problem was. The cartoons really weren’t animated. They were panel drawings over narration, and visually uninteresting panel drawings, too. There was no attempt to render something like Prince Valiant or Terry and the Pirates on the Sunday comic page. For example, Johnny Do-Right, the behavioural propaganda cartoon with Verne Smith speaking over top, had drawings that only got as elaborate as this.



Danny March.



Kid Champion.



And Space Barton!



A few NBC/Tele- Comics are on the web; they’re from 16mm reels that someone rescued. You can learn more about them in this post and this post. I imagine this blog has given these poor old cartoons more attention than they got when they first aired.

Contented Cows

The Carnation Milk people weren’t the only ones with contented cows in the 1930s. The Charles Mintz studio had them, too. Here’s a cow delighted to be milked by Oopy in Technoracket. (Note the cow is wearing shoes).



Everything on the farm is fine until Scrappy reads a paper crowing about the wonders of technology. “You’re fired!” he says to the animals and Oopy with a wave of his hand, and brings in mechanical animals and workers.



The mechanical cow gives milk—right in the bottle. It’s amazing! It’s technology!



Crazed, destructive, dystopian robots? Think that’s an original idea in overly post-produced, CGI-laden feature films today? Pah! It’s here in a 1933 Scrappy cartoon where Oopy, angered at his summary dismissal, destroys the robot control panel and the mechanical men run amok, including chasing Scrappy with axes.

Sid Marcus came up with the story, which is pretty inventive, and Art Davis gets the animation credit.

Sorry for the contrasty, fuzzy screen grabs. It’s all I can find on the internet.

I had never heard of Scrappy until I read Leonard Maltin’s Of Mice and Magic soon after it was published. I (and likely many others) learned much about Scrappy cartoons thanks to a great pair of articles in the wonderful magazine Animania (né Mindrot) some 35-plus years ago. I have a lot of fondness for that pre-internet era where some terrific, studious researchers (many still around today) dug and dug and found out information about cartoons that people take for granted today. Back then, I never would have dreamed of ever seeing obscure cartoons like Scrappy whenever I wanted to in my own home.

Harry McCracken, among many things in life, has chronicled as much as he can about Charles Mintz’s beloved Scrappy so we all can learn more. He has reprinted those Animania articles on his website and you can find them right here.

Bouncing Off the Cow

Whenever there’s a train in 1920s cartoon, there always seems to be a cow on the tracks. Here’s one in perspective in Mickey’s Choo-Choo (1929).



The rubbery cow runs into a tree. A runaway box car with Mickey and Minnie...well, you can see what happens. The gag is all about funny cow shapes.



Down comes debris from the runaway rail car which forms a hand-car. Down come Minnie and Mickey.



They ride off into the distance. We get to see Minnie’s butt.



Between that and a belch gag earlier in the cartoon, people were complaining (at least by 1930) about bad taste jokes finding their way into Mickey Mouse cartoons. Bluenoses didn’t want their kids seeing these kinds of things. 40 years later, these same kinds of people complained they didn’t want their kids seeing “violence” in TV cartoons.

No Razzin the Fazzin

You should recognise one of the stars in the ad to the right from an Akron, Ohio newspaper of 1950. Johnny Olson soon became one of the best-known and liked game show announcers around. At the time he was broadcasting on the ABC radio network. But this post has nothing to with Johnny O. It has to do with the guy below him.

Art Fazzin was hired as the morning man of the ABC affiliate in 1949 and stuck around for a couple of years. He decided to seek his fortune in Big Town. Kenneth Nichols’ “The Town Crier” column in the April 7, 1952 edition of the Akron Beacon Journal let Fazzin’s former listeners know how he was doing.

NICE WORK IF: Art Fazzin, former WAKR announcer, is now doing free lance TV work in New York and is quite enthusiastic about it—which is understandable.
“The lowliest extra in a crowd scene, who has no words, no action, no nothing, gets a minimum of $45. If he has less than five lines in a half hour he gets $85 and, if he has more than five lines, he gets $125 plus clothes expense, plus overtime rehearsal at five dollars an hour.”
Art's principal activity at the moment is as a specialty director for the TV man-and-wife skits starring Eddie Foy and Marie Foster. The latter is Art's sister. Wonder what a specialty director gets?

Fazzin’s career eventually took off. He shucked the name “Fazzin” and adopted another one. And despite no experience, he was hired as the host of the most erudite TV game show of the 1960s, Jeopardy.

Yes, this post is about Art Fleming.

Fleming, to me, will always be the host of Jeopardy. Fleming could be bubbly, but he also had a grace and a bit of dignity about him, which was perfect for the style of show he hosted. He gave the answers to contestants through the NBC years (1964-1975) and on a syndicated version in the late ‘70s.

Several syndicated newspaper articles about Fleming appeared during his Jeopardy run. This one is from March 4, 1967 from the King Features Syndicate and goes into a bit of his background.

The Man Who Turned His Back On Residuals
By MEL HEIMER
NEW YORK—Long ago Harpo Marx meditated a bit on the writer Alexander Woollcott and then described him as "just a great big dreamer with a good sense of double-entry bookkeeping," and it may be that Art Fleming falls somewhere into the same category.
On the one hand, the big, good-looking, open-faced Art is a show-business performer, currently m.c.-ing the popular NBC- TV show "Jeopardy," with a solid background of acting and announcing behind him.
On the other, he's a skillful businessman, who for four years or so dredged possibly more money out of television commercials than anyone on the dodge, and who has his own TV- filming company (Pegart) that is among the real comers in its field.
Which of these Jekyll-Hyde sides gets the upper hand? Well, Fleming doesn't care to say, or maybe he doesn't really know—but it is a matter of record that three years ago he temporarily junked his enormous TV-commercial income (six figures a year) just so he could get back in front of the cameras as the "Jeopardy" host, which he figured was closer to genuine performing than holding up a pack of butts and saying they taste good like a cigarette should (he was the first spokesman for that brand's catch-phrase).

Seven generations of show business stretch behind Art. His parents were a successful ball- room dance team, his great-grandpa was a conductor at La Scala, the world's greatest opera house in Milan, his sister Marie is an actress, and he even has a black sheep in the lineage—an uncle who was an opera critic.
"Me, I started as a barker for an Ohio circus," Fleming says, "and it was marvelous. I learned how to short-change a customer and can still do it better than a racetrack ticket seller. After that, I went from usher to one of the managers of the new Roxie movie house in New York, took three years, two months and 18 days out to fly a PBY in the Navy Air Corps, and then got into radio as an announcer in North Carolina and later Ohio."
Art came to New York as a staff announcer for ABC, and soon was Ralph Bellamy's stunt man in his "Man Against Crime" TV series.
"I emerged with some nicks and scratches," Art says, "and the memory of a lovely, wildly funny period in television—live TV."
Merv Griffin developed the "Jeopardy" game—which resembles that "Question Man" that Steve Allen used to kid around with, where someone supplied the answers and he gave the questions—and Merv's wife suggested Fleming for the m. c., after seeing him do one of those ungrammatical cigarette commercials. He's been doing it ever since and now it reportedly is the most popular noontime video show in the country.
Married to Peggy Ann Ellis, who used to sing blues with Eddie Condon and the Dorsey brothers' orchestra, Art has one of the most, unusual hobbies of all. He's a Custer nut. He has just about everything written, spoken or drawn about General Custer's famous last stand at the Battle of Little Big Horn—including a print of the movie "They Died With Their Boots On," with the intrepid Errol Flynn galloping around as the controversial general.
His considerable spare time—"Jeopardy" is taped twice a week, three shows a day—gives him time to indulge in another, costlier hobby. Years back Art starred in "International Detective," a series made in England—and he fell so in love with England that he and Peggy return to London two or three times a year. There is, I suppose, no accounting for tastes.

Those Winston ads were the starting point of another syndicated article the same year, appearing in papers starting around August 16th.

Announcer's Job Goes Up in Smoke
By Frank Langley
NEW YORK—When TV's Art Fleming decided to quit smoking a few years back, it cost him his job. “If I make up my mind on something, that's it,” the tall, and untypically straightforward actor-host-producer said recently.
“The decision to quit smoking was based on its potential dangers and the fact that I was making my living at the time as the announcer for a cigarette company didn't change my mind a bit. I quit smoking and the job too. There was nothing else I could do.”
This type of integrity is not common in the world today and is a rarity in show business where Art daily toils in several capacities.
First, he hosts the daytime game show, “Jeopardy.” He also owns Pegart Productions which produces a radio series called “Guide Posts,” a series of inspirational dramas which is distributed free to radio stations through the National Council of Churches.
He is also an actor having starred in such series as “The Californian” and “International Detective” and in the film version of “A Hatful of Rain.”
SPARE TIME

In his spare time he is producing two feature films, one in Paris and the other in Australia, and a television series being shot in England.
“It doesn't give me much time for hobbies,” said with a sigh “which really doesn't bother me. I guess you can call Jeopardy my relaxation.
“Too many people just slough off game shows as wasted time, but they are dead wrong.
“First of all, the brain needs exercise just like any other part of the body. Television game shows give us the opportunity for that exercise and at the same time allow for relaxation and entertainment.
“It is a triple threat that can't be discounted.”
ACADEMIC FLAVOR
The seriousness with which Fleming attacks all his projects is evident with “Jeopardy” as well.
Both Fleming and producer Bob Rubin felt that the program had an academic flavor that should be exploited.
“So we created a National College Scholarship Contest both for the purpose of promoting education and giving aid to deserving youngsters.”
Despite the wide range of his activities, Fleming sees no possibility of his leaving “Jeopardy.”
“I would curtail my other activities first,” he said. “Any time a man wakes up in the morning looking forward to going to work, he'd better stick with that job, just like I'm sticking to mine.”

The 1960s game shows seem quaint by our standards today; I can’t find it now but someone sent me a photo of staff behind the primitive-looking Jeopardy board sliding individual cards to reveal the answers on the other side. There was no grand entrance or hyped up crowd or flashing lights or swooping cameras overlooking the set. It was all pretty basic, and all pretty enjoyable to watch. The Art Fleming version with announcer Don Pardo was even ripe for ribbing by Weird Al Yankovic. Even the great Johnny Olson couldn’t make that claim.

It's Helpful, Anyway

The best gag in Tex Avery’s first cartoon at Warner Bros. follows his credo of being something unexpected. And, in this case, it fits the context of the story quite beautifully.

“Gold!” shouts Beans the cat, as the townsfolk rush out to stake claims in Gold Diggers of ‘49 (1936). Beans thinks he’s found something buried underground. Porky Pig pulls it (and Beans) out as “Rural Rhythm” plays in the background.



What’s in the chest? Something appropriate for a gold field.



Then Avery tops his own gag.



There are a few gags that Avery would continue to use as his career wore on. The bad guy (played by Billy Bletcher) envisions an outrageously long limo. Well, outrageous for 1936. Tex would make them more ridiculously long, and funnier, when he moved on to MGM in 1941. There’s the briefly-interrupted song gag. Oh, there’s, um, a blow-up/blackface gag, too (Bletcher gets to imitate the Kingfish from Amos and Andy).

During the chase scene leading to the climax, we are treated to J.S. Zamecnik’s “Hubby Hobby.”



Enjoy your stardom while you can, Beans. After a few more cartoons, “that’s all, folks” for you.

Fishy Vodka

The first Terrytoons cartoon was Caviar, released February 23, 1930. It starred—are you surprised?—mice.

In this scene, the hero mouse is being chased underwater by a swordfish, who stabs him in the butt a couple of times. The mouse turns around and stops him.



The mouse pulls out a bottle of vodka (this is a Russian-set cartoon after all). The swordfish’s eye grows big, perhaps in amazement about how the size of the bottle has somehow grown in the hands of the Terrytoons animator.



The fish drains the bottle. I like snaggleteeth.



Now the happy swordfish (he shows no signs of intoxication) is the mouse’s friend and offers the mouse a ride. I also like the scrunched fish drawing in the last frame. It’s crude but it works.



“Crude” may be the best way to describe the cartoon. Wolves appear on the scene in a bunch of animation cycles. One is drawn with his head way too big, another has eyes that are almost at the top of his head. However, the girl mouse is rescued by the boy mouse by the cartoon’s end.

Phil Scheib scored this cartoon but it doesn’t sound like those repetitive Scheib woodwind scores of a few years later. Scheib was classically trained and employs a lot of strings in this cartoon. Not as many as in a full orchestra—he was working for the King of Cheap, after all—but enough to provide a nice light symphonic arrangement.

The Muse of Labor Day

Long before a Maxwell and age 39, one of Jack Benny’s biggest running gags was Mary Livingstone’s poems. A newspaper article published on December 1, 1935 claimed Mary “has recited 36 poems, ‘Labor Day, Oh, Labor Day’ having made the biggest hit.”

Mary was the only cast member of the show in the Harry Conn-written years (1932-1936) that didn’t do something else like sing, announce or lead the orchestra. For the others, acting was secondary.

Mary’s first poem that waxed in emotional tribute to Labour Day was on September 5, 1932. It evidently got enough laughs that Conn started to add more poems. Eventually, the poem became a running gag with Mary breaking into “Labor Day, O Labor Day” show after show just to get a laugh. It became a catchphrase; you can see the line mentioned in newspaper stories dealing with Labour Day. When Mary appeared on stage with Jack in their tours through the 1930s, columnists and critics almost always seemed to mention her poetry.

The poems were so popular that newspapers reprinted them. Let’s pass along a few. First, the original from Labour Day, 1932. I must give profuse thanks to Kathy Fuller-Seeley who has scanned the early Benny scripts and intends to post them on-line. This is quite different than what followed, both in meter and content; it’s more of a non sequitur than some gag lines.

JACK: That was the last number of the thirty-seventh program on the 5th of September. What an exciting time we had in the Studio!
SADYE: Jack -- oh, Jack!
JACK: What is it, Mary?
SADYE: Jack, I made up a little poem for Labor Day, which I think is swell. I think it would fit this program - do you mind if I read it?
JACK: No, of course not.
SADYE (STARTS TO SNIFFLE): Jack, it's awfully sad.
JACK: Go ahead, Mary - that's all right. Read it.
SADYE (READS POEM):
As thru life we wander - often even as we go
Troubles - worry - care endure us yet
Something listens in our ear as oft it was - and still
Isn't it the truth as what you get?
When the night begins each morn or afternoon we feel,
That times are not just what they used to be.
Labor Day - Oh, Labor Day!....
It just seems to reveal
That a rolling stone is not your friend at all,
Old pal of mine ... Isn't that sad?
JACK: Much sadder than I expected.
MARY: Oh, I have another one -–
JACK: Goodnight, everybody -- I'll see you Wednesday.

The Pittsburgh Press of December 23, 1934 examined another bit of Mary’s poetry. You’ll notice a “Labor Day” reference tossed in.

Mary Livingstone thinks it's all right to give father applause for Christmas and let him pay the bills. Ever since Mary broke out with her "Oh Labor Day, Labor Day," she has been laboring under the delusion that folks wanted more of her poetry. She got by with one on Thanksgiving Day, feeling sorry for the turkey as she pushed it in the oven.
"And now," as the announcers say, here's Mary saying "I'm a couple of days early with my Christmas poem but what do you care as long as you're healthy?"
CHRISTMAS
By Mary Livingstone
Xmas time arrives once more
Just as you and I expect it.
And we're happy as of yore
‘Cause we have not been neglected.
We get stockings from our brother
And more stockings from sis and mother,
Stockings from our friends and bosses—
We wish we had four legs like hosses.
And our boy friends—they get neckties.
Everybody gives them neckties.
Purple, brown, pink, blue and yellow.
What else can you give a fellow?
And our mothers—what do they get?
Checks for twenty, should be fifty
Or a hundred if you're working.
It's your mother, so be gift-y.
Now comes father, poor old daddy.
For him, what has Santa Claus?
He pays all the bills for Xmas
So we all give him applause.
So—come on, folks—get the spirit;
Do things in a great big way.
Now's the time to give the presents,
Not on good old Labor Day.

Evidently NBC or Young & Rubicam was sending out news releases with Mary’s poems because the 1935 Labour Day tribute appeared in a number of newspapers with the following introduction attached (and incorrect when it comes to when the first poem was heard).

Mary Livingstone, distinguished American poetess, has been induced to pen a sequel to her famous poem, "Labor Day," which was first heard on Jack Benny's pre-Labor Day broadcast in 1934. Though Miss Livingstone will not be on the air this Labor Day, since her new series with Jack don't [sic] start until Sept. 29, she has written another set of verses for poetry-lovers, and here they are:
LABOR DAY (2nd Edition)
By Mary Livingstone
Labor Day; oh, Labor Day,
We're glad you're here again.
We love you dearly, Labor Day,
We girls as well as men.
We're awfully glad you come right now,
For if you came in December
You'd be Christmas. But since you don't
It's Labor Day we remember.
Christmas has its Santa Claus,
Valentine's Day its Cupid—
You have nothing, Labor Day—
Now don't you think that's stupid?
But don't feel badly, Labor Day,
For if you're feeling gloomy.
To make you gay, I'll have Jack play
His favorite . . . "Love in Bloom-y."
So let's all give a rousing cheer
Because you come but once a year
It might be nice, if you happened twice—
But you can't—‘cause you fall on Monday.

Let’s give you two more. Again, I wonder if Young & Rubicam was involved because the poems refer to the sponsor’s product. In the second poem, some newspapers didn’t bite and printed “eloquently” instead of “jelloquently.” The first is from 1936 (courtesy of Bill Pennell’s column in the Miami News; Pennell was a voice of Bluto at one time) and the last from 1938.

LABOR DAY
By Mary Livingstone
Labor Day! Oh, Labor Day,
You're back again, I see;
It's just one year since you were here,
But it seems 12 months to me!
Other folks hail July the Fourth,
As well as the first of May.
They can keep December 25th,
But give me Labor Day!
I like you better every year,
And I know it ain't no sin.
To tell you, dear old holiday.
You sure get under my skin.
I'll greet you for Jack Benny, too;
Because, dear Labor Day,
For the past few years he's never said
"Hello" without a "J."
Labor day, you hit the spot,
You hit it every time,
Like strawberry, cherry, raspberry,
Orange, lemon and lime.

LABOR DAY POEM
By Mary Livingstone
Labor Day, oh, Labor Day,
Now, for the seventh time,
I'm going to pass the hours away
Putting you in rhyme.
For all of these past seasons now
(They have been six, delicious)
I've been jelloquently lauding you
Although I thought you vicious.
I know you've got a lot of uumph
A lot of this and that-a
That people like you whether spent
At seashore or regatta.
But Labor Day, please Labor Day, Give me this information.
Why should we like you very much?
You end all our vacations!

Mary’s poems continued periodically until 1943. There were three more within the next five years and that was the end of them. Benny’s writers seem to have decided they could get more and better laughs from Mary by having her read letters from her mother (which may have been easier and faster to write than rhyming verse).

One thing that bothers me is a matter of English. To me, the line should use the interjection “O” as in “O Christmas Tree” or “O Canada,” as it precedes a proper noun, instead of “Oh” as in “Oh, my head hurts listening to Mary’s poems.”

Walt Disney Says "We're Not a Company"

A company? Gosh, shucks, no, we’re just a bunch of guys without a boss sitting around making cartoons for the fun of it.

So said Walt Disney.

At least, he said it to the press. But I can’t help but wonder if that’s what he really thought, and that’s why he was so hurt when his “bunch” went on strike against him. Mind you, the attitude Disney expressed was in 1929 and there was a big difference between the Disney studio then and the picketed operation of 1941.

This story appeared in the New York Daily News, as did the poor-resolution drawing accompanying it (we’re produced it from another source elsewhere in the blog). In it, Disney was already pushing the image of his superiority over the other cartoon studios, which would have meant Universal on the West Coast and Mintz, Fables (Van Beuren) and Fleischer back east. Disney’s cartoons arguably looked slicker than the rest but I still think the Fleischer shorts were funnier.

The line about a good relationship between Disney and distributor Pat Powers turned out to be wishful thinking.

One-Eyed Connelly, by the way, was famous years ago for slipping past ushers at ball games and political conventions in Chicago.

Animated Cartoons Going Over Big
How Silly Symphonies And Micky Mouse Hit the Up Grade
By FLORABEL MUIR.
Hollywood, Cal., Nov. 30.—The old gag about making such mouse traps that even One-eyed Connolly would come crashing through the woods to buy one certainly applies to Walt Disney and His gang.
They are making the public rock with laughter with the antics of the animated cartoons, “Mickey Mouse” and the quaint members of the cast in the Silly Symphonies series.
While movie millions are juggled around in mergers and high priced screen stars are tossing their temperaments all over the studio lots, “the bunch of us,” as Disney describes his outfit, gather together in a little unpretentious building on Hyperion st., far from the cinema throngs, and turn out so much delightful nonsense that every picture company here is envious in trying to get some short sketches whipped into shape that will compete with the Disney creations.
A Headless Company.
A crew of cartoonists and an orchestra working under the supervision of Walt Disney turn out the work while Walt looks out to see that the bills are paid and enough money rolls in to meet the payroll.
“Who's the president or head of this concern?” I asked.
“We haven't any president or any other officers,” Walt explained. “In fact, we are not even incorporated. I guess you couldn't call us a company. We just get together, the bunch of us, and work things out. We voice our opinions and sometimes we have good old-fashioned scraps but in the end things get ironed out and we have something we're all proud of.”
Walt began his career in Chicago where he went to art school. When he was about 17 he picked up odd jobs on the Chicago Tribune, working on layouts, and from there he drifted to Kansas City and tried to peddle his talents to the Kansas City Star.
“But I guess fate was against letting me be a successful cartoonist,” he told me. “Gosh, how I used to envy the guys who were knocking out what looked like big jack in those days and I wondered if I could ever reach the top. I finally turned my eyes to Hollywood, where I decided I would go and try to become a director.”
The Proverbial Pot of Gold.
His ambitions along that line always feel short of realization, too. but he dabbled around the studios, getting what odd jobs he could. Then came the talking pictures and brought him what appears to be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
A year ago Pat Powers began together, promoting the Cineophone [sic] talking picture apparatus. He was bucking the powerful Western Electric company and it looked like a forlorn hope but the Disney brothers cast their lot with him and began synchronizing their animated cartoons.
Right away they clicked. It didn’t matter to the public whether a company with millions back of it was giving them these entertainments. They were funny, that’s all anyone cared.
There was a dearth of good short movie bits and still is for that matter, so big houses grabbed greedily for Mickey Mouse when the first symphony appeared called the “Skeleton Dance,” it made such a hit that Roxy ran it for a stretch in New York and booked it again two weeks later for another run.
Fox west coast theatres have tied up the cartoons on the Pacific coast. The Manley theatres spoke for it on the east coast and “The Bunch” are beginning to taste the sweet joy of having their efforts appreciated.
Success hasn't made anybody high hat around the lot. They are one big family doing their stuff and having lots of fun. I asked for some pictures to illustrate this yarn and Jack King, who made a reputation in New York as a newspaper artist sat down and drew his impression of “The Bunch,” catching the characteristics of each with a grotesque humor.
The movie cartoons are drawn by a group of artists working over a glass board with a light underneath it. It takes about 5,000 different sketches for each of the symphonies. These are then re produced on celluloid.
A camera transfers the sketches to the movie film. On another film the music is photographed and then the two films are worked in together.
“It is the rhythm that has appealed to the public,” Walt told me. “The action flows along and we have to work hard to keep the movement flowing with the music. We had to work it out mathematically.
“We try to get something in the cartoon besides just nonsense. Some idea such as in the ‘Silly Symphony’ where the idea of thousands of members of the animal kingdom preying on each other was carried out. We have to be careful not to get the sketches too silly.
Money? What's That?
It costs about $7,000 to make a Silly Symphony. The biggest expense is the salary of the artists. The orchestra varies in size from eight to twelve pieces. The director, Carl Stallings, has much to do with the successful enterprise. He writes all the scores. The scenario of one of the cartoons is written on a sheet of music.
“Don’t ask me if we’re making money,” Walt begged. “I wouldn’t know about that. I know we’re getting by all right. My brother turns up here each week with enough to pay everybody off. We haven’t found time yet to sit around and count our profits.”
“Everybody here has his shoulder to the wheel,” Walt said. “Maybe some time we’ll all be rolling in wealth and move into more pretentious quarters and put on the high hat, but we won’t be making any better movies.”