Warren Foster came up with two great foils for Bugs Bunny—Rocky and Muggsy, the bank robber and his henchman, after director Friz Freleng tested the gangster idea in some other cartoons.
Bugs and Thugs (1954) includes the well-known scene about Bugs, Rocky and Muggsy in the stove, a variation on a bit Mike Maltese came up for Freleng in Racketeer Rabbit (1946). The former is the funnier of the two cartoons, but there are some nice bits in the latter.
In one sequence, Bugs calls police to tell them he’s got the bank robbers. Muggsy drags him out of the phone booth and shoves him in Rocky’s getaway car (“A 1952 Acme...Straight 8...Overhead valves!”) and drives away, with Bugs still on the phone.
The next gag is a still obvious. It’s one of those coming-through-the-phone gags. As the car zooms farther away (off camera) the cop Bugs was talking to is pulled through the phone from the police station. I’ve always liked how he bounces on the pavement and somersaults out of the scene.
This cartoon was made before the six-month 3-D shutdown at Warners in 1953. The animators are Virgil Ross, Ken Champin, Art Davis and Manny Perez.
Columnist Vernon Scott posed the question “What is Jack Benny really like” and tried to get the answer from his daughter Joan.
Years later after her dad’s death, she put the answer into a book, along with parts of an autobiography her father had set aside. It’s excellent reading for any Benny fan.
Here’s what she had to tell Scott of United Press International. This was published Christmas Day 1962.
Daughter Assesses Jack Benny
By VERNON SCOTT UPI Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) — What is Jack Benny REALLY like?
Not even his own daughter can provide the answer.
Joan Benny Rudolph, the comedian’s adopted daughter, spent the better part of three weeks touring the country in an attempt to enlighten the populace on the subject of parent Benny.
The pretty, blue-eyed young woman was hired by a public relations firm to spread the news that papa’s show had been switched from its traditional Sunday night television slot to Tuesday nights. But more interest was evidenced in Benny the homebody than Benny the comedian and sometime violin player.
"Daddy was surprised and somewhat indifferent when he learned I was going to be a press agent for his show," Joan said. "But he was pleased when he saw what a good job I did.
"My biggest problem was trying to explain what Daddy is really like when he isn’t performing. There just isn't any answer to that.
"He’s just like every other father, I guess.
"Daddy isn’t funny around the house. He doesn’t try to be. I know Milton Berle, Bob Hope and Red Skelton are funny when they aren’t performing, but Daddy’s different.
"Actually, he is very much the same kind of person he is on the show, except, of course, he isn’t a miser and he doesn’t drive a Maxwell. Daddy is never on when he’s at home. My mother (Mary Livingstone) is a little nervous, but not Daddy."
Joan is divorced and the mother of two children. She lives in Beverly Hills and sees her parents frequently.
"Daddy and I are very close, and we're both fanatic Dodger fans. We go to a lot of the games together.
"And I must say I approve of the way my parents raised me. I was unaware of being different from any of the other kids when I was a child. I really didn’t know I had very famous parents. Of course most of the other kids in Beverly Hills have famous fathers and mothers, too. It wasn't until I went to Stanford to college that people made any fuss over me."
Only once did Joan attempt to take advantage of her father’s position. In the old days his writers held conferences in the Benny home, plotting out weekly shows.
“One day I asked the writers if they would put together a script for me for my valedictory address from grammar school,” Joan recalled with a smile. “Well, they wrote one for me but it was so full of jokes I was afraid to read it for our graduation exercises. So I had to sit down and write a speech of my own.”
As a press agent Joan visited 16 major cities in three weeks. In each metropolis she was met by a CBS-TV representative who set up press conferences.
“I enjoyed myself, but there wasn’t enough time to really see and enjoy the cities. All I can remember about most of them was the long ride from the airports to my hotel rooms — usually about 45 minutes.
“I don’t have any plans for becoming a full-time press agent,” Joan concluded. “I’m happy enough being a mother. And if I ever discover what the ‘real Jack Benny’ is like I’ll let you know.”
Cartoon characters have been used over the years to shill products—think of Woody Woodpecker and a certain cola. And they’ve also been used in the field of public service.
You can think of Woody Woodpecker again.
The impression I’ve always had of Walter Lantz is a friendly man, interested in his community (and constantly finding ways to cut down on expenses). It would appear he was approached to make a cartoon to encourage people to donate blood, and agreed to use his star character in them. Whether he did this from the goodness of his heart or charged for them is unclear. As the story below doesn’t state it was done for free, I would suspect Lantz got a cheque.
The artwork for this cartoon is, no doubt, in the Lantz archives at UCLA. The PSA itself, sadly, isn’t on line. All we can do is post this little news story wherein Lantz talks about how cartoons are made and the expense thereof.
It’s a little surprising to read musical director Clarence Wheeler had a 24-piece orchestra at his disposal (being paid at union rates). One of the 1950s Woodys he scored has little more than a small Wurlitzer organ in the background.
The story was published by the North American Newspaper Alliance on January 11, 1953; I haven’t found a version with a byline. Universal had released What's Sweepin' not too many days before this. It was directed by Don Patterson; the frames in this post are from that short.
Woodpecker Appeals For Blood
NEW YORK (NANA)—Woody Woodpecker, dear to juvenile addicts of animated cartoons and comic strips, is the first to do his stuff in the cause of humanity.
Perhaps you saw Woody on the screens of movie houses of the nation, performing under auspices of the Red Cross, in its appeal for blood. The little act occupied only 1 1/2 minutes, yet was compelling.
Creator of the nation's "laugh-bird" is Walter Lantz, current producer of Woody, Wally Walrus, Buzz Buzzard, and others, whose early pictures include The Katzenjammer Kids, Happy Hooligan, and Krazy Kat.
SHORT AS WOODY'S performance was, 45 artists from the Lantz studio in Los Angeles and an orchestra of 24 pieces were required to prepare it for screening.
Included also were several actors engaged to supply the woodpecker and other associates with voices. Hollywood actors supplement their incomes appreciably through talking the way ducks and walruses and mice and other cartoon subjects probably would talk, if they could. Pay depends upon what they have to do, but even the reader of a few lines receives $100. As for an actor of vocal versatility--four or five voices--rich is his reward.
Forty drawings, says Lantz, are required for a scene occupying 1 1/2 seconds.
"And a picture costs us $75 a foot, with that foot lasting two-thirds of a second. So," said Lantz, "you can see the process of shooting a cartoon is expensive. But," he added, "what with the sales to exhibitors and my cartoon books circulating 30 million annually, we happen to be able to stand production costs and make money besides."
WHY HAVE SO subjects of great popularity in past years either vanished from the screen, or appear only at long intervals?
"They have been killed off," Lantz said, "through too long and too frequent showings. Even Mickey Mouse, appears only occasionally these days. We have to watch for that. In the case of Woody Woodpecker, we limit him to seven pictures yearly. As time goes on we will have to reduce this number. Yet, after a complete 10-year lapse, we find our old pictures welcomed by a new generation."
A complete cartoon play, Lantz pointed out, involves at least 7,000 drawings and 100 persons of various capacities. Ten years are required for development of a new animated cartoon. Sound effects? Four to five hundred different voices, noises of various sorts, and other effects are used in every cartoon. There will be 600 or 700 drawings in every sequence of film play.
"Of course," said Lantz, "animated cartoon birds, animals, the like are accepted by kids as real. I just had word from Hollywood that the volume of Christmas mail addressed to Woody Woodpecker already has exceeded an estimated 15,000."
Walter Lantz, preceded in the animated cartoon and comic-strip field only by the late Winsor McKay [sic] and by the author of "Terrytoons," was born in New Rochelle of Italian parentage. He attended local public schools and later studied art at the Art Students League in New York. Of course, he loves animals and birds. He has a house full of them in Los Angeles.
Farmer Al Falfa’s car radiator needs water, so he fills it up. The water spills over into the car.
After Farmer Al drives away, we discover there were fish in the water.
Now the topper to the gag. When the jalopy breaks down, Farmer Al tries to crank the starter. Suddenly, a large fish jumps out of the car and pulls it away into the distance.
Well, I liked the gag, anyway.
This is from a 1927 silent short Small Town Sheriff directed by Paul Terry for the Fables Studio, which later became Van Beuren.
There’s a series of bird gags in The Isle of Pingo Pongo (1938) that, a few years later, director Tex Avery would be ridiculing instead of treating straight.
“We notice many rare and unusual birds,” says narrator Gil Warren. In the original Technicolor release, the scene must have looked great.
First up is a hummingbird. You can guess the gag.
Next, a mockingbird. You can guess the gag again. The narrator, a little miffed at being echoed, says “Hmm. The bird must have been crossed with a cuckoo.” The mockingbird repeats the line, then realises what it just said.
Now a weak little canary. You know what Avery’s going to do, just like he does any time there’s a weak or timid character—the character becomes momentarily strong, loud or obnoxious. In this cartoon, it calls to its mother.
This was the first of Avery’s spoof on MGM’s Fitzgerald Travelogues. It got this rave review from the manager of the Strand in Schroon Lake, New York: “This is one of the best shorts I've seen on any screen, and has been highly commended by my patrons, who have asked me to repeat the booking. Audience consisting of many vacationists who are accustomed to better type entertainment, advise me it is the cleverest thing done in animation, including by Walt Disney.” Another review came from something out of an Avery cartoon: “‘Merrie Melodies’ comes through with a good one again. Lots of fun and good musical accompaniment. Probably the funniest ‘Merrie Melody’ ever shown here. Great for adults and children alike.” It was from the Director of Recreation at the State Prison in Trenton, New Jersey (Children in the State pen?)
The Strand won’t be repeating the booking any time soon, and you won’t see this cartoon on TV either, thanks to the stereotyped South Pacific natives taking up the second half.
Today, if there was an America’s Prettiest Teacher contest, it would reviled and denounced on social media as sexist and objectifying. In the early 1950s, it was welcomed because it broke the stereotype of teachers as old sourpuss crones.
Such a contest was staged in conjunction with the TV/radio show Our Miss Brooks, in which Eve Arden played an independent woman who taught high school. The old sourpuss on the show was a man. Principal Osgood Conklin was played by someone who went on to a career as a bellowing grump—Gale Gordon.
Another career woman was Aline Mosby of the United Press, who was the wire service’s Moscow correspondent but spent time before that on the entertainment beat. She interviewed Arden a number of times and Arden filled in for her twice when he was on holidays.
In the first story, July 12, 1952, Arden talks about the appreciation teachers had for her humanising of their profession. In the second story, June 15, 1954, Arden talks about another teacher—Wally Cox’s Mr. Peepers—and opines about gimmick plots not working (Peepers was cancelled after the 1954-55 season). In the third story, June 24, 1956, she puts her spin on the cancellation of the TV version of Our Miss Brooks (it remained on radio until 1957 with old scripts reused). Arden talks about returning to TV. She did after a year off, but The Eve Arden Show only lasted a season.
Arden’s last series was The Mothers-in-Law, which lasted two lacklustre seasons. She then went on to fame for the post-Brooks generation in the movie Grease and its sequel.
Eve Arden Is School Teacher Idol of Today
By ALINE MOSBY United Press Hollywood Writer
Hollywood (UP)—Today’s idol of the nation’s school-teachers is a gal who's rescued them from the horn-rimmed glasses-and-frown legend and given them a shot of sex appeal.
Movies usually caricature teachers as gray-haired monsters who go in for wrist-slapping with a ruler and never give a thought to romance.
But nowadays schoolmarms are voting thanks to Eve Arden and her "Our Miss Brooks” radio and television shows. Eve plays a pretty teacher who has romances, gets into scrapes and spouts bright lines for the pupils.
"I try to show a schoolteacher as a human being,” says Eve. "Too many youngsters think of a teacher as an instrument of discipline instead of as a person.”
The teachers let her know they’re grateful for glamourizing them, too. She recently accepted a gold plaque from the Alumni Association of Teachers’ College in Connecticut "for the best contribution to education by her human characterization of a schoolteacher.”
Thirty more plaques and scrolls from PTA’s, Educational groups and schools hang in the trophy room of her Brentwood home.
Twice she’s been invited to speak at National Teachers’ Conventions in Los Angeles. One group presented her with a golden apple.
A community in the East wrote her their new school would be named the "Our Miss Brooks schoolhouse.”
A Hermansville, Mich., high school principal asked her to "please make Miss Brooks play principal for a while. I’d love to see what she'd do in Old Marblehead’s shoes.”
A Stewart, Nev., high school wanted a script of the program to use as a senior class play. And a Gauleybridge, W. V., teacher wrote that her principal suggested she spend her summer vacation in Hollywood in order to see the show.
"I can always tell when there are teachers in the audience at the broadcasting studio," grins Eve. ‘‘Once I had a script about higher pay for teachers, and several in the audience let out a whoop.
“I pattern the part somewhat after a teacher I had when I went to Tamalpals high school in Mill Valley, Calif. She was a lot of fun.
“Too bad more students don’t get to know their teachers socially."
‘Miss Brooks’ to Remain Single on TV Show
By ALINE MOSBY United Press Hollywood Writer
HOLLYWOOD (UP)—Eve Arden said today she thinks Mr. Peepers made a mistake by getting married on television, and she’s one single TV character who intends to stay that way.
Wally Cox, who portrays the timid Peepers, recently revolutionized his show by at last catching his lady love in the script. In the lives of citizens who follow such doings on the home screens, this was a major event.
But the “Our Miss Brooks” of television was among those Peeper fans who didn't approve of the video match.
“I think he made a mistake," she said. “Now it’ll be another husband-and-wife show.
“I get many letters from fans who want to see Miss Brooks catch Mr. Boyington [sic] on my program. Oh, we give 'em a teaser now and then, like the time they had a fling but it turned out to be a dream. I’m quite sure Miss Brooks will stay single.
“She’s a schoolteacher, and that's the show. If she got married, it would be a different program.” Expecting First Baby
Off-screen, the red-haired TV star is very much married. Her last few filmed shows for CBS were harried because she is expecting her first baby in two months. Lucille Ball incorporated her own pregnancy into “I Love Lucy,” but as a spinster schoolteacher Miss Arden could not.
“The last program was rough,” she smiled. “They had to write a script that would allow me to wear an artist’s smock. That show will be on next fall and everyone will think I just didn’t lose weight after the baby was born.” Turns Farmer
As her second season as Miss Brooks ended, Eve has turned lady farmer. She and her husband, actor Brooks West, and their three adopted children recently moved to a 38-acre ranch 52 miles from the cinema city.
She proudly claims she planted the vegetable garden herself. She and West plan to buy a small herd of sheep and some chickens and plant alfalfa and hay on the land.
“We hope the place will pay for itself eventually,” she said. “The alfalfa will be winter feed for the sheep, which we will raise to sell.
“It's quite a business. Alan Ladd, our neighbor, got his ranch for horses. They cost so much to feed he had to raise chickens and sell the eggs to pay for the horses!
“I love the land,” she added. “Other gals can have their minks and diamonds. I'll take that dirt.”
Eve Arden Explains Why TV Serials Get the Chop
By ALINE MOSBY United Press Hollywood Writer
HOLLYWOOD (U.P.)—A platoon of television serials is biting the dust this fall, but one of the departing stars, Eve (“Our Miss Brooks”) Arden, admits she's in favor of the cancellation because serials get “stagnant” after a few years.
Several faces familiar to you armchair viewers won't decorate the TV screens come September. Eve will continue “Our Miss Brooks” on CBS Radio but the television series is finished except for syndication of the reruns.
Off CBS-TV also will be “Navy Log,” “Brave Eagle,” “Four Star Playhouse,” “I Remember Mama,” “It's Always Jan” (Janis Paige) and “Life With Father.” "Medic" Among Failures
NBC has laid more serial shows to rest: “Medic” (although it may return next spring), “Big Town,” “Frontier" and “It's A Great Life.” (The Jimmy Durante, Milton Berle, Pinky Lee, Gordon MacRae and “Truth or Consequences” programs also will not return this fall).
But, fortunately or unfortunately depending on what you like on TV both networks are rushing in replacements in the serial ranks.
CBS new entries are “Oh, Susanna,” (Gale Storm); “Buccaneer,” “The West Point Story” and “Hey, Jeannie” (Jeannie Carson). NBC will try to get ratings with “On Trial” (a “Medic” for lawyers), “Hiram Holliday” (Wally Cox) and “Circus Boy.” Some Serials Survive
The durable serials which have braved all storms are “I Love Lucy,” “Dragnet,” “The Loretta Young Show,” “Father Knows Best,” “Private Secretary” and “Make Room For Daddy.”
Miss Arden now is thumbing
through offers for other acting roles. She plans to take a year off to accept parts in movies and TV plays. Then, although some stars tire of serials, she’d like to start another one in the fall of 1957.
“For a year I can do just what feel like doing — including travel,” said the wise-cracking redhead.
“Then I’d like to do a fairly different serial, but still a comedy. The problem is to pick a character that will last. We did four years of Brooks on television, and this will be our eighth year on radio I'm glad to be doing something else. You can get in too deep a rut, kinda stagnant, doing the same character year after year.
“Lots of people have written indignant letters about Brooks leaving TV. But the syndication of the episodes will keep it on some stations for years, anyway.”
Gene Deitch uses background colour changes to indicate mood—at least, that’s what I think he’s doing—in The Tom and Jerry Cartoon Kit (1962).
Jerry swallows some watermelon seeds and starts sounding like a maraca. Tom captures him in a jar. See how the colour changes once Jerry is in the jar.
The colour is a little lighter when the camera switches to a medium shot.
The colour changes to a magenta when Tom dances around shaking the Jerry maraca in a jar. Below is a really ugly in between.
The colour changes back when the maraca sound suddenly stops. Tom looks in the jar. Jerry spits out the seeds. There are a bunch of those coloured jagged rings outlined in white that Deitch liked to use.
Chris Jenkyns provided the story for this cartoon.
An attractively drawn version of Tom and Jerry dance to a song I haven’t been able to identify dance on the African ground in Jungle Jam (1931).
Wait! The ground has grown eyes.
Yes, they’re alligators. Tom, as he’s apt to do in Van Beuren cartoons, gets all a-scared in a cycle of six drawings. Look at Tom’s hands in the first drawing. They’re little circles on a bigger circle.
There’s a lot of dancing and a lot of cannibals in this and some of the odd humour you’d normally expect in a Van Beuren cartoon.
John Foster and George Rufle handle the direction.
No, Jack Benny did not spend eight years in university. No, he did not want to be a radio announcer.
Those are some of the gag responses he gave (written, I suspect, by his writer Harry Conn) in an interview he gave in 1934.
The rest of the biography in this feature story published in the Charleston Daily Mail of December 4th seems reasonably accurate. For some reason, it skips the Salisbury and Benny debut of his professional career. His screen debut was actually in a 1928 Warner Bros. short Bright Moments. His comment about relatives is a quip; he only had one sister. And I’m a bit sceptical that his father handed him a monkey wrench; I suspect Meyer Kubelsky would want him to take over the family business.
The reference to television shouldn’t be surprising. New York City had several experimental stations with regular programming in the early 1930s. It just took a while to move from mechanical to electronic TV sets, decide on transmission rates and wait for the war to end so programme (and set manufacture) could be expanded.
Jack Benny Talked His Way Into Broadcasting
Despite His Violin
Jack Benny, funnyman of the air, was sealed in the National Broadcasting company studios in New York rehearsing for his program when approached by the interviewer.
“Oh that's O. K., shoot. I don't mind but please spell my name right—I'm Jack Benny and not Jack Denny of orchestra ‘ennys. Get it right. Benny—B, as in Bean Soup—E, as in Sharkee, the fighter—N. as in Knickers—another N. as in pneumonia and Y. as in the state of Yoming.”
“O. K., Mr. Benny. Do you like broadcasting?”
“Do I like broadcasting. I like it very much. You can't hear the audience hiss.”
“Where were you born Mr. Benny?”
“What cities do you like best.”
“Oh I like Mount Vernon, Los Angeles and Boston.”
“That's fine; make it Philadelphia.”
“Were you really born in Philadelphia?”
“No, but I like Philly and as soon as the Athletics get a real team the pennant will be a cinch.”
“But where were you born?”
“I tell you son, there's nothing like fresh air and spinach to tone you up for rehearsals.”
“Where did you say you were born?”
“This fellow Roosevelt is certainly doing a grand job.”
“Where were you born?”
“I think his Gettysburg speech hit the right spot.”
“Do you think we'll have free beer next week?” Born in Illinois
“Well, if you are going to keep harping on that subject, I was born in Lake Forest, Ill. I had one father and one mother. I spent eight years at college, the University of Illinois . . . and don't ask me if I was a freshman for eight years. It was only two. I didn't attend classes: I was a cook. Then I wanted to become a radio announcer, so I practiced talking to myself, but I never got the job as a few people listen in to every program and talking to yourself does a person no good.
“What's that, rehearsal. O. K.”
“So long, remember—the name's Benny.”
That is what Jack Benny, comedian, wit, and silent violin player had to say about himself. However, this youthful looking, sprightly radio star, is as interesting as the many situations he portrays on his programs.
A bit under six feet, gray-tinged hair, ruddy complexion and seldom smiling, Jack Benny is the antithesis of what one in his occupation should be like.
Jack Benny by training, origin and practice was a fiddler. His friends say it took a World war to start him talking. Before joining Uncle Sam's sea forces (the navy, he means) Benny played a violin in vaudeville and said nothing. After one attempt to raise funds with a musical appeal at a seamen's benefit, he dropped the violin and started talking.
Since, then Jack has talked his way through several Shubert musical revues, two editions of Earl Carroll’s “Vanities,” several Pacific coast theaters, half a dozen motion pictures and into radio as a laugh-getting master of ceremonies.
He is noted as a wit, monologist, comedian. His quips and stories have enlivened stage, screen and air shows. But by force of habit, Benny still carries his violin when making stage appearances. He never plays it, just carries it, looks at it wistfully and gives the customer the impression he couldn’t play it if he wanted to. Someday, he says, he’s going to use it again, provide he can stop long enough to talk. Learned the Violin
Always an ambitious youth, Benny learned to play the violin with the same ease he learned to talk. His family lived in Waukegan, Ill. For 17 years Jack remained in that community, because it was the only place he could eat free. At six he started his violin. One of his favorite gags is to run his bow across the strings in screechy strains and yell, “It’s five o’clock Ma, can I go out now?” That shows he liked to practice. At 13 he changed his mind and really took a liking to the violin. At 14 he determine to enter on a professional career with his violin.
He started with a Waukegan orchestra playing the dances in and around the home town. He was 16 then, and after one year with the orchestra decided he had sufficient professional standing to go on the stage. With a partner who played the piano while he played the fiddle, Benny launched his first vaudeville act.
For six years he toured back and forth across the United States, playing his violin and saying nothing. Then the United States entered the war, and Benny joined the navy. As a musician he was soon drafted for sailor shows for the seaman’s benefit fund. His violin playing brought applause—everybody applauded free talent—but no contributions. After all, reasoned Benny, if you want money, you have to ask for it. Even at that time he knew human nature. He put the instrument down and broke a six-year silence.
He got contributions. But what surprised him more, he got laughs. Gingerly, he tried out a few more gags. A wave of laughter swept through the audience. At the next show, Benny played less and wise-cracked more. When the war was over he returned to vaudeville—as a monologist.
In the years that followed, Jack Benny, a glib young man carrying a silent violin, became a celebrated comedian. He was a headliner in vaudeville, and one of the first and most successful masters of ceremonies in Broadway revues, He was a popular night club entertainer.
Apparently, he was permanently attached to the theater when the end of a transcontinental tour in vaudeville brought him to the Orpheum theater in Los Angeles. Benny stayed at the Orpheum for eight straight weeks, establishing a new house record for a single artist. Meanwhile talking pictures and the first wave of screen revues came to Hollywood. Talked Way In
To keep the talking Jack Benny out of the “talkies” would have been a real problem. Nobody tried to. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer promptly offered him a contract, and he made his screen debut as a master of ceremonies in the Hollywood revue “Chasing Rainbows”, and “Medicine Man” followed. Other features followed that. Then comedy shorts, and Mary Livingtone.
And Mary Livingstone after hearing Jack Benny talk on and on and on, just nodded her head, and came east with him as Mrs. Jack Benny. She is the Mary you hear on his broadcasts.
They arrived in New York, just as Earl Carroll was casting the annual edition of his Vanities. At Carroll’s request, Benny dropped in to witness a rehearsal. When the curtain went up the opening night Benny was still there. He was, in fact, the star of the show.
For two years he was the leading comedian and master of ceremonies in the Carroll revue. Then came radio, and “maybe television will soon be here so they see my violin,” he says.
Talking of the violin, Benny's proudest possession is a letter he received after one of his violin solos (he called it that) on the air. The letter read:
“Dear Mr. Benny: For several months our family had been starving the wolf was at the door. Then one night we tuned in on your program. By the time you finished your violin solo, the wolf had left forever.”
When broadcasting, Benny always wears his hat. Unlike most people he likes relatives, “because they send mail to my sponsors.”
And back to his violin again, he says:
“My father gave me a violin and a monkey wrench. He told me not to take chances. Plumbing isn't a bad business.”
When you dig around the byways of animation history, occasionally you run into some puzzling things. One is a story published in the Baltimore Sun of January 10, 1937.
New Type Short Film To Be Produced In Technicolor And Will Feature Color Images Produced By Sound Waves
Hollywood.
A UNIQUE type of short subject, featuring color images created by sound waves, is to be introduced this season.
Though the method by which the shorts are made is shrouded in secrecy, they will be in technicolor and will include the use of miniature comedy characters.
Oscar Fishinger, inventor of the novel technique, will create the subjects and Leon Schlesinger will produce them.
The first subjects will be experimental in character and, if they meet with the anticipated response, will take a prominent place in the array short of subjects.
The new productions, it was stated, are definitely not cartoon comedies.
"It is something entirely new to the short subject field," stated Jack Chertok, head of the short subjects department, "and will be presented in one-reel length.
The first will be ready for showing early next year."
What’s odd is Jack Chertok was the head of short subjects at MGM. Leon Schlesinger released his shorts through Warner Bros. How could they be connected?
Leon’s deal with Warners wasn’t exclusive. The Hollywood Reporter of November 19, 1936 announced:
SCHLESINGER, FISHINGER ON MGM TUNE-COLOR PIC
An unusual short will be made by MGM that brings together Leon Schlesinger, Warners cartoon producer, and Oscar Fishinger, imported by Paramount from Austria, to produce a short in Technicolor featuring color images tied in with music.
Fishinger, inventor of the process, was employed by Paramount to produce his unique color-music footage for "The Big Broadcast of 1937," but the studio could find no place in the picture for the footage. The inventor has now left Paramount. Schlesinger's arrangement as producer for MGM on this short does not effect [sic] his Warner status.
The short will be in the nature of an experiment, with more to follow if it is successful. Jack Chertok will supervise production.
The agreement was very brief. Film Daily of November 24, 1936 reported “Leon Schlesinger has been released from his contract with MGM to produce a series of color-musical cartoons using a new process of Oscar Fishinger. Schlesinger's release came at his own request.” Could this have been the deal the Baltimore Sun was reporting on, just a little bit late? Papers back then sometimes withheld feature stories for months.
More research will have to be done about that. In the meantime, the story leaves another question—were Oskar Fischinger’s animated shorts ever released?
Fischinger may be known to animation fans for his work on Walt Disney’s Fantasia more than anything else. He had been involved in experimental animation in Germany in the early ‘20s before coming to the U.S.
His first stop was Paramount. Here’s a 1936 story.
Hollywood News and Gossip
By PAUL HARRISON NEA Service Staff Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD, June 15.—One of these months when you go to the movies and are brought face-to-screen with visual music in color and in agitated futuristic forms don’t scoff audibly. It’s art. And don’t say you weren’t warned either.
The sole impresario of this new art form is a man named Oscar Fischinger, who just now is hidden away in a laboratory on the Paramount lot.
He toils there in happy obscurity, and the only persons who know anything about him are a couple of executives, some painters acquainted with his work in Europe. and a few highbrow musicians such as Leopold Stokowski.
Fischinger doesn’t speak English and so is spared from spending all his time explaining just what it is he’s trying to do.
The simplest explanation is that he makes designs which move on the screen in accompaniment to music. The designs don’t look like anything you ever saw outside a kaleidoscope although they are not so stylized nor always geometric.
There are dots and lines, circles, and columns, blocks and balls, streaks and wings of light that swoop, swirl, dance, quiver, diminish, grow, and glow all over the screen.
Fischinger may “see” a heavy drum beat as an orange sphere shooting down a purple tunnel, or the music of many violins as a battalion of yellow lines converging into a crescendo of red rings. Crazy, but Nice
Sounds crazy? Maybe it is. But it also is pleasant to watch. The artist says his shifting color patterns are abstractions.
Hollywood will find a better term because it knows that American lay critics of the arts have a private suspicion that all abstractionists, together with surrealists, cubists, and futurists are only a couple of jumps way from the boobyhatch.
You can kid the public by hanging in a snooty art gallery a mad jumble of blatant blobs and labelling it “Nude Playing Badminton” or “Eggbeater No. 7,” or anything you like. But you can’t kid the public in a movie theatre.
Indeed the first time one of Fischinger’s shorts was shown in a movie theatre there was a free-for-all fight. That was in Paris in 1921. Some customers thought it was swell; others were outraged. Form of Ballet
But that was before the days of talkies and color. Now he has put them all together so that music has color, sound, form, and movement. You can best liken it to a ballet.
In fact, some of his sequences immediately suggest dancing figures on a stage. But the forms do tricks that Nijinsky, Pavlova, and Fred Astaire never dreamed of.
A lot of European art critics have raved immoderately over Fischinger’s visualizations of music. He has received prizes at the International Film Expositions in Venice. Academics of art exhibit his stuff to students.
The public likes his work. I saw a review from a Holland newspaper which devoted nearly two columns to one of his shorts. At the end were two paragraphs about the premiere, on the same program, of Grace Moore’s latest picture. Started With Shakespeare
Fischinger was a young engineer in Munich when he began monkeying with abstract motion pictures. His first one was made to illustrate a lecture he gave about Shakespeare. The audience thought he was pixillated.
But his fame grew and he moved to Berlin and established a laboratory. Now he’s in America to stay. What he’s working on today is a special sequence that will be part of “The Big Broadcast.” After that he’ll make shorts as he did in Europe.
He works mostly from printed scores, without bothering to hear them played. Squints at the notes and figures how they ought to be represented on the screen.
He draws and colors key designs, and four girl assistants do the rest. Actual production is exactly like the process of animating cartoons; thousands of paintings must be made and photographed one at a time. Blue in Red
Through an interpreter I asked Fischinger how he’d score “Rhapsody in Blue.” He said he’d probably do it mostly in red.
In a story the following month, George Shaffer of the Chicago Tribune Press Service described the visualisation of the music: “little geometric figures move in graceful unison. Sometimes they undulate, sometimes they advance or retreat, move right or left. For staccato notes, the little figures explode. For minors they sway. On long sustained notes a group of the figures slide down a long tunnel. Fishinger’s novelty is hard to describe, but is pleasing to the eye.”
Paramount decided to pass on Fischinger’s abstract film ideas and that took him to Metro. He managed to get some films made. Variety reported on February 16, 1938:
Oskar Fischinger, German technician at Metro, is the entire production staff—producer, artist, effects man, cameraman and cutter—on a screen oddity titled ‘Optical Poem,’ in which surrealism runs amok. One-spooler features color movement against a dark background, using circles, squares, arrows, etc. Creator insists colored symbols play on the human emotions in the same manner as music.
The Manchester Guardian of March 24, 1938 explained the film was “an abstract visual accompaniment to Liszt’s ‘Hungarian Rhapsody.’ It is in colour and took six months to make...It will be interesting, all the same, to see whether Hollywood has managed to introduce any popular element into this most esoteric branch of the cinema.”
An Optical Poem was released to theatres on March 5, 1938. It was part of an umbrella series of released called “Miniatures.”
Someone who got a chance to view the short was, of all people, Ed Sullivan. This was back when he was a syndicated New York gossip columnist, long before his TV variety show days. He had a sojourn in Hollywood and wrote on March 30, 1938:
At M-G-M your reporter sees a short that will most certainly with a special academy award. . . . Oskar Fischinger, who conceived it, convinced Short Producer Jack Chertok that music could be expressed in tones of color. . . . As the second Hungarian Rhapsody plays, curved and straight lines of color appear on the screen and gloves of blue, brown, orange, and scarlet engage in minuets of motion. . . . This sort of thing finds Hollywood at its cultural best.
Harland Rankin, manager of the Plaza Theatre in Tilbury, Ontario told the Motion Picture Herald it was “One of finest musical interpretations ever shown. The audience gave it a nice hand.” MGM made it available in the mid-‘40s for schools to rent.
This film was apparently his solitary short for Metro. The Los Angeles Times reported on February 18, 1940 that Composition in Blue, from Nicolai’s Merry Wives of Windsor Suite and Divertissement of Mozart had been held over but it had been made by Fischinger in Germany.
After Fantasia, he continued with his experiments. His Motion Painting No 1 won the Grand Prize at the 1948 Brussels Film Festival. His artwork was the subject of exhibits. Fischinger died of a heart attack in Los Angeles on February 1, 1967 at the age of 66.
Fischinger’s official web site is still active and you can learn more there about his interesting career.
You can watch An Optical Poem, complete with MGM titles, below.
