How to Turn a Car Inside Out

Puns, parodies and impersonations fill the screen in Tex Avery’s Thugs With Dirty Mugs, a 1939 short for Warner Bros., but there’s an impressive little scene involving the bank robbers’ getaway car.

It turns a corner. There are some frames where the car is tipped on an angle as Avery goes for a cinematic effect. Someone in his unit had to be able to draw a car convincingly for this.



The gag is the car skids to a stop and the force turns it around—and inside out. These are consecutive frames.



Sid Sutherland is the credited animator (or was until a Blue Ribbon re-issue in 1944). Jack Miller got a writer credit.

Follow the Bouncing Cop

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.

Joan Benny on Her Dad

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.”

Bloody Woodpecker

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.

Fishy Flivver Fable

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.

The Birds of Pingo Pongo

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.

Eve Arden on Teachers and Peepers

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.”

Colour and Mood

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.