Cat in a Guilded Cage

A cat is giving the evil eye to a sleeping bird in a cage in the Walter Lantz Musical Miniature The Overture to William Tell.



It’s the finale of an extended involving a violinist’s bow that just keeps going and going and going. In this part of the gag, the bow slides under the bird and carries it out of the door of its cage.





Rubber jowls move as the cat’s head turns to stare at the audience. Then the take. We’ll post the extreme.



Cut to the cat rushing to the edge of a fence to await the bird’s arrival. The frames are pretty self-explanatory. The cat keeps chomping down, moving to the left and until they’re back at the cage.



La Verne Harding and Casey Onaitis are the credited animators on this cartoon but surely others worked on it. Darrell Calker’s orchestrations of the Overture are top notch.

The Hams That Couldn't Be Cured Backgrounds

A very nice silhouette drawing opens the Walter Lantz Swing Symphony The Hams That Couldn’t Be Cured (1942).



My guess is Fred Brunish was responsible for the artwork above. Lantz’s cameraman moves in on it for about six seconds which, of course, saves money animating, inking, painting and so on. Here’s the exterior shot of Algernon Wolf’s home. Again, the camera trucks in. More $avings for Walter.



An interior. It’s a little longer than this but the scene cross-fades out.



One more brief interior. The door is on a cel.



The idea of the Big Bad Wolf telling his side of the Three Little Pigs story is a solid one; Warner Bros. used it at least twice in cartoons by my recollection, once by Friz Freleng and once by Bob McKimson. Unlike the others, this cartoon is based around Darrell Calker’s music. Unfortunately, the music is a swing version of the Kreutzer Etude No 2 which basically repeats the same four bars. As much as Calker’s arranger tried to get some variation out of it, the music’s fairly repetitive. The gags aren’t that strong; basically the wolf gets abused before the music blows up his house. Later Swing Symphonies included lyrics, something you can hang a story or gags on.

Alex Lovy and Robert Somerville get the screen credit for animation, while Dick Nelson (I think) and Kent Rogers supply the voices.

Why Helen Hayes Was Jigging

You might wonder how Jack Benny had the stamina sometimes.

Granted, being in your late 60s isn’t comparatively old, but I imagine it’s still a grind to fly into a town, meet the press, visit with dignitaries, take part in a rehearsal, try to get some food, perform a concert and then be the centrepiece of a meet-and-greet with wealthy premium concert ticket buyers, then try to sleep before packing and zipping to the airport to head to the next destination.

Benny did that for years, even as he was doing his weekly TV show.

Here’s a piece from the North American Newspaper Alliance about a trip to New York City. It was published December 11, 1960. The story is not quite correct. Jack did a stage show at the Roxy in New York in 1947, one with Fred Allen verbally bombing him and breaking him up. This story should give you a bit on an idea of the Benny grind.

Work Tires Out Jack Benny
By WARD MOREHOUSE
NEW YORK (NANA)—FOR THE MOMENT Jack Benny had lost his bounce. He was lying in bed, with the covers pulled up almost to his chin, looking rather lost amidst the grandeur of his Hotel Pierre suite. His violin, a Stradivarius, lay on the unoccupied bed next to him.
"Please forgive me, but I had to get into bed," he said, extending an arm rather limply. "I'm completely fatigued. The last two weeks have been very hectic. I've done three concerts and an Israel bond drive, and now New York."
He shuddered slightly, and groaned.
JACK, WHOSE home is in Beverly Hills, came East to see a bit of theater and to do two shows in his new weekly series. Since he has cultivated a reputation for penury as assiduously as some men seek a name for largess, he entertained while here at a black tie party at the Automat, distributing the nickels to his guests with a splendid show of reluctance.
"The party came out terrifically," he said. "I thought everybody would get dressed up because of the gimmick and that they'd stay a few minutes, then go home. But, boy, they stayed. Helen Hayes was still there jigging around when I left at 1 a.m.
"This might amuse you. I rented a Rolls-Royce and took Bennett Cerf and a few other friends to the party. When I told the chauffeur to go to the Automat, he went into convulsions. He thought I was crazy."
Jack made his last appearance on the New York stage in "Earl Carroll's Vanities" of 1930-31, a show celebrated for nudity, and which was halted briefly by the police. Earlier he was seen in the Shubert production, "Great Temptations." He made his first radio broadcast in 1932, now estimates he has given a thousand performances on radio and TV.
Yet here he was saying, "I'd like to come back to the stage if I could find the right play. But I'd have to give up television to do it."
JACK and his troupe, including Rochester who has been with him 25 years, and Don Wilson, Benny's announcer for 27 years, usually spend five days preparing for a single broadcast.
America's No. 1 comedian started out in life in Waukegan, Ill., and his early ambition was to be a violinist. His concert appearances, such as he made in Indianapolis last month, have raised thousands of dollars for symphony orchestras.

This version of the story came from the Indianapolis Star. Corbin Patrick’s “Between the Acts” column published the same day gave you an idea of the kind of money Benny helped raise for symphonies, concert halls and the like with his violin performances. Benny had performed in Indianapolis on November 2nd as the city’s symphony orchestra launched its endowment fund campaign. Patrick checked the tote board and wrote: “Final nation-wide returns indicate that his effort here was the second most successful of five similar benefits he played in 1960. Benny helped raise $37,200 in the Circle [Theatre] frolic. This gross was exceeded only by a whopping big $46,270 in Cleveland. It topped a take of $36,100 in Cincinnati, $25,300 in Denver, and $23,600 in Honolulu.”

Jack kept up with his performances until the year he died, including one in Redlands, California. It’s appropriately just down the 210 from Cucamonga.

Frank Marsales

Fess up. You wouldn’t know “Shuffle Off to Buffalo,” “Freddie the Freshman” and “We’re in the Money” if it weren’t for old cartoons, would you? The man who first put them into a Warner Bros. cartoon was Frank Marsales.

It’s a shame so little is known about Marsales because his work had an influence on Hollywood animation. When Carl Stalling arrived to work on Warner-released cartoons in 1936, he started out doing the same as Marsales at the studio in 1930: he cobbled together a score using some original music, public domain tunes and—especially—tunes under the possession of any of the Warner Bros.-owned music publishers. Stalling soon finessed the concept far beyond what Marsales did, but Marsales laid the ground-work.

Friz Freleng wasn’t impressed with Marsales’ work. Daniel Goldmark’s Tunes For ‘Toons (2005) quotes Friz as saying Marsales’ music “was like something you’d find in the street. It was absolutely lacking in anything you needed to make a picture good; he didn’t synchronise. . . . Before Carl, the music was only used to set the tempo, which was usually impossibly slow, unless we picked it up for something he’d understand, like a chase.”

To be honest, I don’t think Friz is being fair. A composer doesn’t write scores in a vacuum; a cartoon’s director would have to consult with him regarding tempo and, certainly the case in the early ’30s, which Warners’ song to highlight. His work compares favourably with what Stalling was doing at the Iwerks studio, Joe De Nat at Columbia/Mintz and Jimmy Dietrich at Universal/Lantz. For the audience, it may have been better as they got a taste of current popular tunes; the Harman-Ising shorts for Warners’ were like animated music videos and audiences seemed to like them. Critic Abel Green wrote of Freddie the Freshman (1932): “it has the same skillful Frank Marsales’ musical orchestration. Very entertaining.”¹

Franklin Alfred Marsales was older than the young animators who populated the Harman-Ising operation from 1930 to 1933. He was born on August 31, 1886 in Yarker, a little town in eastern Ontario, to Robert Lambert and Lena Burns Marsales. The family made its way to the U.S. the following year and had settled in Los Angeles in 1892² after living in San Francisco.³ His father was employed as a machinist for a good period of time, but he was also known as “Professor R.L. Marsales” who gave lessons for violin and cornet.⁴ Marsales learned music early and the Los Angeles Times reported on him performing with his parents at a wedding anniversary in 1903.⁵

Marsales put together his first band in 1913. The Times claimed he had “ten years experience in Los Angeles and at the beaches”⁶ at the time he created the Ocean Park City Band; he was 27 at the time. He was active in the Elks Club and also directed for Los Angeles Lodge No. 99.⁷ Interestingly, his 1917 draft card states his occupation was “Oil Well Leaseman”; his father’s death certificate in 1945 mentions ownership of an oil well. The draft card also reveals he only had three fingers on his left hand. In 1920, he was employed by Goodyear Tire and Rubber and directed the company band.⁸

Marsales got his name in the news in an unusual situation. The Times reported on December 2, 1922: “Frank Marsales was arrested on a charge of grand larceny and at his preliminary hearing his case was dismissed. He sued George W. Dewey, the man who caused his arrest, for $10,000 damages. Yesterday a jury in Judge Monroe's court denied him any financial balm. They held that he was arrested with probable cause.” What the case was is unknown; Dewey had had problems with Marsales’ father some years before, accusing him of stealing a stove.

Back to music—in 1924, Marsales jumped up to San Francisco to organise an orchestra for the Rialto Theatre.⁹ Then Paul Whiteman hired Marsales as an arranger. In 1927, he formed an orchestra at the Royal Palms Beach and Country Club in Palos Verdes.¹⁰

Talking films gave Marsales a boost in his career. Films needed music, music, music. And that’s what Marsales wrote, wrote, wrote. Variety of July 17, 1929 reported: “Frank Marsales suffering from writer’s cramp. Turned out 25 15-part orchestrations for Universal’s music department in two days.” Is it any wonder he took a job at the new Harman-Ising operation the following year? According to Jerry Beck and Will Friedwald’s Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, he only scored four cartoons in 1930. And he got his name in various trade ads as a bonus.

Evidently Marsales had the ear of columnist Ralph Wilk at Film Daily as Wilk wrote a few squibs about him.

Frank Marsales, who is scoring music for “Looney Tunes,” the animated cartoons being produced by the Harman-Ising studios, was formerly musical arranger for Paul Whiteman and Paul Ash. He also made a world’s tour with the “Ingenues,” who were featured in the Ziegfeld “Follies.” (Oct. 16, 1930)

Frank Marsales feeding his four pet chipmunks. (Dec. 21, 1930)

Frank Marsales, musical director for the producers [Harman, Ising and Leon Schlesinger], agrees with Sherman that "war is hell," as "Bosco" is the noisiest subject he has handled. [he had scored Bosko the Doughboy]. (Sept. 16, 1931)

When Frank Marsales, musical director for Harman-Ising Studios, which produces “Looney Tunes” and “Merry Melodies,” declared he was too busy to go to football games and did all his playing in his studio, Robert Edmunds, the cartoonist, was an interested listener. “However, Frank does a lot of scoring in a day,” [Edmunds] commented. (Oct. 26, 1931)

Frank Marsales, musical director of the Harman-Ising Studios, producers of "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies," has enlarged his "menagerie" by the addition of a flying squirrel. The squirrel is now a neighbor of Frank's four chipmunks. (Dec. 27, 1931)

Frank Marsales, musical director of the Harman-Ising Studios, which produces "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies," in association with Leon Schlesinger, is a wrestling enthusiast. He is hoping the proposed “Strangler” Lewis-Jimmy Londos match will be staged in Los Angeles. (Apr. 17, 1932)

There was friction between Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising and Leon Schlesinger, the middle-man between them and Warner Bros. Hugh and Rudy went looking for work in 1933. Some employees jumped to Schlesinger’s new studio, Marsales stayed behind. Composer Scott Bradley remembered to authors Mike Barrier and Milt Gray about Paramount hiring the studio for an animated sequence that “Marsales was working for Rudy and Hugh, but his hand was injured. . . . I was at home and not working at the time, and they called me. I had never met them nor they met me.” Thus Marsales’ career ended with Harman and Ising.

Radio was growing and Marsales found work as the musical director of Famar Recording Studios¹¹, which had gone into the transcription business, likely supplying musical programmes for stations looking to fill non-network air time. In the meantime, he added some raccoons to his assortment of pets. Marsales was lured back into cartoons in 1937 as the “arranger and technician” under conductor Nat Shilkret and composer Frank Churchill at the Walter Lantz studio.¹² He was soon promoted to the studio musical director’s post and his first credit was on Man Hunt (released on Feb. 7, 1938). His last credit was on the Woody Woodpecker debut short Knock Knock (released on Nov. 25, 1940).

Bands took up Marsales’ attention. When he left Lantz he led the Musicians Union Band, then the Long Beach Municipal Band, then the Los Angeles Military Band. He composed several marches and at least two three-act operettas for children, “Safety First” and “Mr. Stork.” He retired in Long Beach where he died on August 15, 1975.

My thanks to Charlie Judkins for finding the picture of Marsales from 1940 that you see above.

---

1 Variety, March 8, 1932, pg. 14^↩
2 Robert Lambert Marsales death certificate, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L9SV-B97P-Z?i=830&cc=2001287^↩
3 Los Angeles Times, Jan. 22, 1892, pg. 7^↩
4 Los Angeles Herald, Jan. 24, 1897, pg. 4 ^↩
5 Times, March 1, 1903, pg. 34^↩
6 Times, Dec. 13, 1913, pg. 12^↩
7 Times, July 16, 1916, pg. 23^↩
8 Times, July 8, 1920, pg. 27^↩
9 San Francisco Examiner, March 24, 1924, pg. 12^↩
10 Times, June 26, 1927 pg. 81^↩
11 Broadcasting, Nov. 1, 1933, pg. 36^↩
12 Variety, Dec. 6, 1937, pg. 9^↩

How an Old Brown Horse Walks

Poor 18th-Century Jonathan had to exchange his dream of a carriage with coachmen and two white trotting stallions after paying off his employees, backers and taxes in It's Everybody's Business. The vision of a ride in luxury pops like a bubble and is substituted for a broken down wagon being pulled by a worn-out nag.

I really like the cycle here. It’s on 12 drawings, animated on twos. Check out the leg positions of the horse.



This is what the animation looks like. This is pretty close to the speed it’s seen in the cartoon. Notice how the horse’s left foot sweeps.



It’s Everybody’s Business is a 1954 John Sutherland industrial short for the Chamber of Commerce of the United States. Maurice Noble was the art director, Bill Scott was a co-writer, Les Baxter contributed to the score. The animators were Bill Melendez, Emery Hawkins, Abe Levitow and Bill Higgins. MacDonald Carey narrated the short, while Herb Vigran was the voice of Jonathan. Carl Urbano, formerly at MGM and later at Hanna-Barbera, was the director.

We wrote about the cartoon in this post before a nice version of the short was made available on the Library of Congress web site (though there’s an obvious edit at one point).

Mice See Cat

“Will there be anything else, gentlemen?” sarcastically says Claude Cat, pretending to be a waiter after he’s caught Hubie and Bertie eating cheese.

It’s time for a Chuck Jones take. Hubie, the smart mouse, realises right away it’s a dreaded cat. Jones, if you don’t know by now, went for subtle poses. Here, Hubie becomes rigid, except for his ears, which move in two positions so the take isn’t static.



Bertie is the slow one. “No, no, thanks, he says,” turning to the cat, and keeps talking until it suddenly kicks in who he’s conversing to. Another rigid pose with two ear positions.



This is from The Hypo-Chrondri-Cat, with animation by Ben Washam, Phil Monroe, Ken Harris and Lloyd Vaughan.

Jones is never without a knowing glance to the audience somewhere in his cartoons. Here is it in this one.

Mr. Wilson Wears a Dress

Network radio in the 1940s had a small group of actors constantly in demand for both dramatic and comedy shows. One of them was Joe Kearns.

The dramatic show he may have been best known for, at least on the West Coast, was The Whistler. He was a regular on Suspense and showed up frequently on Lux Radio Theatre and Hollywood Star Time.

Kearns was a fine comedic actor, too. He had regular roles on The Mel Blanc Show and The Judy Canova Show and the short-lived Harold Peary Show. He’s remembered fondly by fans of the Jack Benny radio show as Ed, the man who had guarded Benny’s underground vault seemingly since the Revolutionary War, but Benny found other parts for him to play.

An early starring role was in a 1939 NBC Blue network show called Parents on Trial where he played a judge. Bea Benaderet and Elliott Lewis, two other A-list supporting actors, also appeared.

Those shows are just a very small sample.

When television came along, Kearns finally got audience recognition; such is the nature of seeing someone every week instead of hearing him. Kearns was cast as Mr. Wilson on the Dennis the Menace series and played the part until his sudden death in 1962.

This only scratched the proverbial surface of Kearns’ talents. Here’s a story from the Salt Lake Telegram of January 20, 1924. The paper had a columnist in New York who reported on people from back home.

Utahns In New York
By ELSIE GREENE THEW.
NEW YORK, Jan 19.—"Miss" Kearns of Salt Lake advanced gracefully to center front of the big stage, cavernous without its customary scenery. The eminent critics stopped talking golf to take a look and lend an ear to this latest and prodigy of Ned Wayburn. Ned's proteges generally were worth looking at. "Miss" Kearns proved no exception.
"Her" appealing blue eyes, round girlish face and golden curls rivaled those of the fair Lillian Gish. "Her" plaintive soprano voice evoked forgotten memories. "Her" dainty feet and neat ankles repictured memories more vivid. And "she" certainly could dance! Imagine, then, their surprise when this vision of feminine pulchritude snatched the blond tresses from a most masculine haircut and commenced singing in a tenor a la McCormack. Ned Wayburn then steps to the front. "Beg pardon, gentlemen, my mistake. Let me introduce you to Mr. Joe Kearns of Salt Lake."

The critics applaud. "Where did you find him?" "When are you going to present him to the public?" "Another Julian Eltinge . . . and like comment. Joe Kearns had "gone over" with the critics, whose opinions shadow the taste of the theatre-goers.
Backstage, Joe Kearns was modestly accepting tribute from those most interested—mother, sister, grandmother and Ned Wayburn.
Joe is the son of Joseph Albert Kearns, who is in the wool business in Salt Lake. He is only 17 years old but his remarkable aptitude for female impersonation, as well as decided ability in stage and costume designing, led him to New York some six months ago. C. Clyde Squires, the Utah artist, was instrumental in bringing him to the attention of Ned Wayburn, stage director and producer of Ziegfeld Follies, who immediately became interested in the lad.
Joe commenced his professional stage training under Mr. Wayburn's direction last September. He receives ballet instruction from Alexander Yakoloff, formerly Anna Pavlova's dancing partner. Soft shoe and toe dancing he is learning from Robert Connely, the late Bert Savoy's manager. His vocal lessons are under the care of Vere Richards. On January 5, Mr. Wayburn arranged a tryout to see if his belief in the boy's genius was justified. Apparently it was, for Joe is to go on with his studies until such time as Mr. Wayburn thinks it advisable to place him on the stage.
The other night Joe Kearns was presented to a number of Utah people at an informal gathering in the Kearns apartment. The guests were enthusiastic and predicted a most successful future. They were greatly interested also in a miniature stage designed by this talented Utahn. It was an exact reproduction of a big stage with a special lighting effect and scenery of unusual coloring devised by young Kearns. Costumes for a complete revue of his designing were also exhibited. Among the guests were Mrs. Ella Squires and her son Harold.
Mrs. Kearns and her mother, Mrs. Lehl Peterson, are to return to Utah within the week via the Panama canal. The daughter Beth precedes them by train.

Kearns did not become the next Julian Eltinge (perhaps vaudeville’s top female impersonator of the 1920s). His career didn’t take off in New York. He went across the country to Los Angeles and enrolled in the Marta Oatman School of Theater, co-starring in a performance of Eugene O’Neill’s “Diff’rent,” mounted at the Sum-Toy-Sho Theatre on March 6, 1926. His professional debut occurred at the Pasadena Playhouse in “What Price Glory” in February 1927, with Clark Gable in the cast. The Los Angeles Times of February 13th gave a summary of Kearns’ brief career, pointing out he first appeared on stage at the age of 5 in Salt Lake City playing a little girl.

Kearns continued writing plays and returned to Salt Lake to announce at KSL. He was back in Los Angeles in 1936, appearing in the title role of Peer Gynt in a serialised version of the Ibsen play broadcast starting in mid-November on KECA. He returned to KSL in July 1937 but was back on the air in Los Angeles by October.

Since we’ve talked about some of the high points of Kearns’ radio career, let’s jump ahead to July 30, 1961. Kearns had been on Dennis the Menace for two seasons and it seems there was a bit of friction on the set as certain adults who thought they were going to be featured found themselves watching Kearns’ Mr. Wilson take up piles of screen time. He explains why in this Associated Press column.

Child Stars Don't Worry Joe Kearns
By CHARLES DENTON
HOLLYWOOD (AP)—The late W. C. Fields once observed that a man who hates kids and dogs can't be all bad.
Applied to child actors, the first half of that epigram has plenty of private subscribers in show business. But publicly, of course, few have dared to evince anything less than loving deviation to moppets, fearing that failure to do so meant theatrical disaster.
Thus show folks have been slightly startled in the last couple of years by the success of amiable, bespectacled Joe Kearns as a sort of every boy's curmudgeon next door, the fusty, perpetually exasperated Mr. Wilson of CBS' “Dennis the Menace” series.
SURPRISE REACTION
Actually, two men scarcely could be less similar than the bumbling, bombastic Wilson, and Kearns, a gentle-mannered, 54 year old bachelor whose favorite hobby is playing his enormous, theater-type pipe organ.
“In fact,” he admitted with a shrug, “I really didn't want to do the part at first. I just couldn't see myself as Wilson at all because in the cartoons he's an old guy with a paunch and no hair.”
Kearns has none of the former and plenty of the latter. “Then, when I got into it, I gave the show a year at the most,” he went on. “I figured: How far can you go with a kid getting into mischief? It's surprised me. I guess it's surprised everyone.”
NATURAL DEVELOPMENT

More surprising to Kearns and to the rest of the cast has been his emergence as the No. 2 personality in the company. Neither he nor anyone else imagined at the outset that the unfriendly neighbor who spent most of his time chasing Dennis (Jay North) home would become the star's leading foil.
“I know it's caused some . . . well, sensitivity among the rest of the cast,” he said. “But it certainly wasn't my idea. It wasn't planned that way. “I guess the writers just found it easier to create situations for Dennis and Mr. Wilson than anything else.”
Kearns, who says he “only wants to be a good actor, that's all,” has never been troubled by the thought that the series could make him a childhood symbol of the neighborhood meanie.
FRIENDLY CHILDREN
“It hasn't worked out that way,” he adds. “People often ask me if I'm getting a stigma I'll never live down, but I don't see it. A lot of children ask for my autograph, and they're never less than very friendly.
“I think one reason is that Wilson has been pasteled down from the cartoon character. He still has his rough edges. He's an old fraud, really, but he's very fond of Dennis down deep inside.”
Kearns doesn't share the common theatrical loathing for working with children. Having started his own career at the age of six, he understands and sympathizes with child actors.
“Working with kids isn't nearly as bad as it's cracked up to be,” he demurred. “Sure, some are . . . Oh, you know. But the kids on our show are good children, and they get in there and work, too.”
And Kearns candidly concedes that it's a bit late for him to be concerned about being “typed” by his role.
“At my age,” he sighed, “the only way a character actor can be a success is playing a neighbor.”

The article mentions Kearns’ theatre pipe organ in his home. Kearns lived for years at 6122 Carlos Avenue, not too far from Hollywood and Vine. In the 1950s, he designed and built another house behind the first one and had it constructed around his organ. The organ was featured on an album on Liberty Records; a picture of the second home shows the exterior hasn’t changed a lot from what’s on the property today. One Robert F. Robertson, who lived with Kearns since the mid ‘40s, occupied the “organ” home.

In February 1962, Kearns had a cerebral haemorrhage and fell into a coma. He died in hospital almost a week later at the age of 55. United Press International quoted someone at CBS saying “That’s the end of that show. He was the whole show.” That wasn’t quite the case. Gale Gordon was quickly brought in to fill the nemesis role. But the calendar isn’t kind to youth. The boy who played Dennis, Jay North, was outgrowing the role. The series lasted one more season. Gale Gordon toddled off to work with Lucille Ball. North found other work. Kearns remained a fond memory for TV and radio fans.

Anticipation

Everyone knows about the almost-instantly huge eye takes that Tex Avery loved smacking the audience with. There’s a great one at the end of Droopy’s Double Trouble (1951). At the beginning, though, there’s a far more subtle piece of eye animation.

Droopy brings his twin brother to see the snooty butler. You can see the butler’s eye opening and then getting larger.



Avery and writer Rich Hogan now decide to have the butler leap into the air. The scene follows standard animation principles—anticipation then action. Here are the drawings (on twos) Avery uses to get to the anticipation part.



And away he goes!



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