The Eyes Have It

The city wolf keeps covering the country wolf’s eyes to stop him from viewing Red and getting all excited. It’s a failure.



This is from Red’s farewell in Little Rural Riding Hood, animated by Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton, Bob Cannon and Mike Lah (the Red dance is reused Preston Blair animation).

Happy Hearts

A cartoon with bouncing, smiling hearts can’t be all bad, but there isn’t much good in The Queen of Hearts, a ComiColor short animated by Shamus Culhane and Al Eugster.

Any humour is semi-slapstick at best. Hearts and face cards come alive and enact the nursery rhyme about the Queen of Hearts. The hyper hearts make tarts but one accidentally pours soap powder into the mix. That results in all the characters blowing bubbles after being hit in the face with the tarts.



The hearts use clothes pins and bananas as weapons against the Jack of Hearts who stole the tarts (filling in for the Knave of the nursery rhyme).



This Ub Iwerks production was released in 1934. Art Turkisher supplied the score.

The Young Benny

People will always be cheap. People will always have a high opinion of themselves.

That’s the reason Jack Benny’s “character” works today. You could take Jack’s character type—someone who would go to insane lengths to save a dollar, who felt he was a great star, ladies man and musician—put it on some streaming service and people would binge-watch (if the writing and acting were good). You can’t do it with most of his variety show contemporaries. They’re singers of old songs and tellers of old jokes. (Look how Bob Hope became a sad shell on TV specials at the end).

That premise was picked up by a columnist with the Herald Tribune News Service in 1958. Granted this was before the socially-conscious ‘60s when comedians felt obligated to try to do hip routines on television and looked like someone’s grandfather embarrassingly trying to act 18. It was published on November 16th.

GOOD OLD DAYS ARE TODAY
Through Jack Benny, Fans Thumb Nose at the Years
By BOB SALMAGGI
(Copyright 1958, N. Y. Herald Tribune)
NEW YORK—Curious as it seems, TV audiences are inclined to accept Jack Benny as nothing but a latter-day comedian, even in the face of a rumor that it was he who stood by George Washington when he crossed the Delaware.
Each time Benny attempts to pass himself off as a mere stripling, audiences nod assent and laugh with him. Through him, people vicariously thumb their noses at the passing years. It's almost as if they were saying, See? Jack Benny doesn't know the meaning of the word old. . . he'll always remain young, no matter how time flies. . .there'll always be Jack Benny.
For with Benny, the chronological element is quickly dismissed. It's as if he invented the adage, "You're as young as you feel."

In effect, Benny, like so many of his contemporaries—Sophie Tucker, Fred Astaire, Ed Wynn, Ted Lewis—thinks young. He lives young, acts young, and consequently feels young. So what if there are a few streaks of gray, a wrinkle or two where they shouldn't be—Benny and his confreres laugh at the years, and point the way to bigger things with each passing century.
In Benny's design for entertaining, however, there is one notable factor that sets him apart from Durante, Cantor and the rest. He guardedly steers clear of nostalgia in his act. He shuns saccharine sentiment, doesn't glorify the "good old days," nor does he deprecate today's show business standards. He doesn't throw verbal bouquets at his contemporaries without purpose, or adhere to the old-timer's practice of "sticking together."
Benny wisely stays aloof, plays it cool, and basks in the aura of modernism. The only major concession he makes to the bygone days is his show prop, the ancient Maxwell car, but this is strictly for effect, just for laughs. His act is as modern as sliced bread, and as wholesome. Although devoted to the proposition that Benny hates to part with a nickel, his television show and his nightclub act, even his concerts, are fast-paced, stylized and strictly up-to-date.
When you think of Sophie Tucker, you think of vaudeville, one-nighters, and torchy blues of yesteryear. So too with the Jessels, the Cantors, and others of his generation. But there's no kindling of old memories or old associations when Jack Benny strides on stage in that familiar style of his.
He is regarded as a latter-day comedian, period—a comedian who came up during the early days of radio and vaudeville, to be sure, but one who made the transition to the fearsome new television medium, without so much as a dropped decimal point in his Hooper, or Trendex, if you will. Many who starred with Benny years ago tried to hurdle the obstacle of time and make a place for themselves on TV, but they weren't attuned to the times. They couldn't adapt themselves as did Benny, who has been riding high, wide and lucrative on radio and/or TV steadily since 1932.
In essence, his credo is to "keep working if you want to keep young." To this he adds: "I really hate it when I'm not busy enough. I mean that. When I'm idle it's then I begin to feel a little older. Look at Fred Astaire . .if he's not working, he's at home practicing like mad. He's better than ever these days . . but if he ever stopped working, well. . ."
It wasn't too long ago that Benny announced to a bemused world that he was going to turn forty. But these days he's feeling so chipper that he is "thinking about going back" to 39 very soon now.
"I was 36, you know, for a little over a year," mused Benny, "and then I turned 37 for a few years, but I hung on to 39 the longest. I guess I'll always be 39," he said with a sly grin.
"It's such a comfortable age."

Waltzing With Leon Schlesinger

Surely you remember seeing Griff Jay’s name in the credits of a Warner Bros. cartoon. Or Peter Gaenger’s. Or Art Loomer’s. Or Elmer Plummer’s.

Well, no, you don’t. All of them were background artists for Leon Schlesinger. All of them put their stamp on cartoons in the days before background painters got screen credit.

There’s another one to tell you about.

At this point, we interrupt our post to thank Steven Hartley. You’ll recall he was the author of the fine Likely Looney, Mostly Merrie blog which he, unfortunately, doesn’t have time to continue. Steven sent me a photo of a gentleman named John Waltz, who I had never heard of. Waltz was one of the background artists at Schlesinger’s in the mid-‘30s, the period when the studio was making cartoons with dancing bugs (not Bugs) and suddenly found itself in the presence of genius—someone named Tex Avery.

How long Waltz worked at the Schlesinger studio, I do not know. The Los Angeles City Directories are absent of information, and the 1940 Census only says “motion picture studio” (he earned $2500 in 1939). By the end of the ‘40s, he was a staff artist for a North Hollywood newspaper and painted murals. He died in Los Angeles on April 17, 1984.

As Steven isn’t posting any more, allow me to send you what he sent me. This photo and article appeared in the Indianapolis Star of November 8, 1936. It gives a list of his Warners credits to date.

Behind him, you’ll see some paintings from “Sunday Go To Meetin’ Time” (released 1936). There is an excellent use of colour in parts of this cartoon, and Norman Spencer’s score (wood block fetish aside) is pretty good, but fears over racial clichés removed this short from TV screens ages ago.

Hoosier Artist Makes Rapid Strides as Designer Of Comic Animated Cartoons for Motion Pictures
JOHN A. WALTZ, native Indiana artist, who had much of his training in Indianapolis, is one of the younger group who is making good as a designer for the movies. Starting in at the Walt Disney studio about a year ago--in November, 1935—he worked on three of their pictures, "Elmer Elephant," "Mickey's Opera" and "Three Little Wolves."
Immediately following this first experience, in which he had taken advantage of every opportunity to learn each phase of the work, he went over to the Leon Schlesinger Productions at Warner Bros. studio. The sixteen pictures with whose design he has been connected as working artist since he became a member of the Warner Bros. organization are as follows: "Let It Be Me," "Bingo Crosbyanna," "Sunday Go to Meeting Time," "At Your Service, Madame," "Toy Town Hall," "Westwood Whoa," [sic] "Fish Tales," "Shanghaied Shipmate," "Porky's Pet," "Porky the Mover," [Porky’s Moving Day] "Porky the Rainmaker," "Porky's Poultry Plant," "Don't Look Now," "Milk and Money," "Boulevardier From the Bronx," and "Little Beau Porky."
Excellent Year's Work.
A year's total of nineteen sets of funny animated cartoons for the cinema, upon which an artist has helped in the art creation, is a record of which to be proud. And it is quite possible, before the year is wholly rounded out, the total will be somewhere in the twenties.
It was in June, 1901, that young Waltz left New York to join his mother, Mrs. C. A. Waltz and his sister, Ida, for residence in Los Angeles, Cal. There were several commissions and art jobs and work as a free-lance artist, for the first. few years, that led up to his present responsible position an background artist for Merry Melodies and Looney Tunes, produced by Leon Schlesinger for Warner Bros.-First National Pictures, Hollywood, Cal.
Carolyn Ashhrook Given Credit.
Carolyn Ashbrook, on the art staff of Shortridge High School for a number of years, was responsible for John Waltz's good start in drawing, painting and design. A scholarship from Shortridge, upon his graduation in 1927, took him to the John Herron Art School, where he studied with William Forsyth, Clifton Wheeler and Myra Reynolds Richards. While working as designer and illustrator in the school annual department of the Indianapolis Engraving Company, he studied life drawing in the night classes conducted by Elmer Taflinger.
After one year with Taflinger, he studied for a year with George Bridgman and Kenneth Hayes Miller. While a scholarship student during the second year, he was an assistant to Mr. Miller and also did free-lance work for Lordley and Hayes, the American Medical Association and for the International Dental Society. For the last-named organization young Waltz designed and painted fifty large panels that illustrated the development of dentistry from 600 B. C. to modern times. These panels were exhibited in New York and were afterwards displayed in Paris.
Good Background for Success.

With such a background of study, zeal for work, and recognition from those with whom he has been associated, it is no wonder that the efforts of the young Hoosier bring success.
George C. Calvert, Indianapolis art connoisseur and art collector, has been watching the career of John A. Waltz ever since his sister, Marjorie, Waltz (for many years Mr. Calvert's secretary in the office of the Indianapolis Clearing House Association, and now Mrs. O. P. Rush of Kansas City), brought to the office some pen and ink illustrations that John had made for the Shortridge Annual. And when Mr. Calvert attended a bankers' convention in San Francisco this fall, he stopped in Los Angeles to see John and his latest work.
The twelve large panels that depict California sports in a landscape setting were viewed by Mr. Calvert in the A. G. Spalding building in downtown Los Angeles. Forming a frieze eighty-eight feet long and three feet high, the mural decoration is painted on the fascia of the mezzanine floor.
Correct Handling Makes Appeal.
The anatomically correct handling of the figures in various athletic poses, which were painted about three-quarters life size, made special appeal to Mr. Calvert. "The figures are well drawn and the anatomy is good, but there is no sense of restlessness for the beholder," said Mr. Calvert. Keyed rather low, with tans and warm greens predominant in the color scheme, the mural was designed and executed as a commission from the A. G. Spalding firm in April, 1935.
Earlier commissions in Los Angeles had meant the creation of ten package designs for the California Milling Corporation, work that brought favorable comment in many national exhibitions, Mr. Calvert said, while later work included drawings of the San Diego Exposition, made for a San Francisco client.
The artist gave Mr. Calvert twelve small paintings from his work for the movies series. Done in gay colors on rectangles of celluloid, these pictures were made while Mr. Waltz was doing figure designs in which little pig and dogs and roosters and ducks and other fowls and animals play a leading part, as well as a humorous one, in baseball games and orchestra concerts.
Studied With Best Instructors.
In discussing with Mr. Calvert the various periods of his work, from the time he sold his first efforts when he was only 13 years old, Mr. Waltz said: "Since that time I have worked in almost every field of art and have studied with the best instructors. This experience has given me a feeling of respect for the art profession that will not allow me to sell work that I am ashamed of, or live in a garret atmosphere painting stuff for mv own selfish interest.
"I think there is a place for everyone to do the best work he is fitted for and is capable of doing. That work must have a definite patronage and appreciation, otherwise the worker is a parasite, living off the efforts of others. During the depression I learned the relationship of the artist to the economic structure. That is why I turned my back on easel pictures for several years. People were not interested in looking at pictures, much less in buying them, when they didn’t know where their next meal was coming from."
In referring to his work for the California Milling Corporation. Mr. Waltz said that his twelve package designs so increased the sales of flour and cereal products that it meant the employment of more than one hundred additional workers.
Tells of Experience.
"I had the same practical idea in mind when I painted the mural decoration for the A. G. Spalding building,”continued the artist. “In painting it I hoped to make golf, tennis, swimming, football, basketball, baseball, track and badminton interesting enough that those who saw my paintings would want to buy the equipment to participate in those games.
"After finishing the Spalding decorations I thought I had at least reached the goal for which I had been working . . . that of being a mural painter. I soon realized that such commissions do not come every day, so I became interested in painting backgrounds for animated short subjects, hoping to be able to apply my knowledge of color and design and gain knowledge to apply to mural decoration. The opportunity for doing the latter has far exceeded my expectations, because painting a background is like doing the sketch for a mural decoration. You have to think of its enlargement to the size of a motion picture screen and design the color and form to carry on that large area.
Studies Exposure Sheet.
"While working in Walt Disney's studio I learned the history of the animated cartoon from its source in Egypt in the Temple of Rameses II and on through the years to its present development, action analysis in relation to animation, the use of a single line to design a form with weight and volume, perspective for camera angles and a study of the exposure sheet which is a technical graph laid out by the director and used by all departments of the studio in the production of a cartoon.
"I have found the work fascinating in every way . . . each day learning something new and, incidentally, doing work that has a definite patronage and appreciation. If you don’t believe that ask any theater manager how much an animation short subject contributes to his program.
“About mural decoration? Well, there is a big one waiting for me and when I think I have learned enough, I will start work on it.”
John A. Waltz was born in Franklin, Ind., May 26, 1909. His present home address is 152 South Serano street, Los Angeles, Cal. Two sisters, Mrs. J.H. Bell and Mrs. Margaret Houghton, and a brother, Ray Waltz, are residents of Indianapolis. It is recalled that Miss Ida Waltz was the first nurse in the original school for crippled children in Indianapolis. She is now a nurse in the Los Angeles county clinic.—LUCILLE E. MOREHOUSE.

In several interviews, Chuck Jones looked back and looked down on the background artists at the studio in the ‘30s as a bunch of old, hack artists. Waltz was neither old nor, it seems, a hack. By around 1940, things were changing. Jones was working with Paul Julian, Bob Clampett with Dick Thomas, Tex Avery with Johnny Johnsen and Friz Freleng with Lenard Kester; there may have been others who moved from unit to unit. The 1940 Census lists Waltz as an artist in motion pictures, making $2500 a year. His draft card that year revealed he was at Disney. He served in the war and the 1950 Census tells us he was an art director for a newspaper.

John Adams Waltz passed away on April 17, 1984. The drawing below is from the Los Angeles Times.

Flower of Fickleness

Felix the Cat should know women cats in cartoons can’t be satisfied.

In Felix Finds Them Fickle (1924), he gives in to his angry girl-friend’s demand by climbing a mountain to get a flower. He has to conquer a bear at the top to do it. Then she complains she didn’t want THAT flower.



In one cartoon, he tears up the girl-friend (she is a cartoon, after all). In this one, he faints to end it.

Stick or Sausage?

Can’t draw a horse in perspective? Pshaw! It’s no problem for the artists at the Van Beuren studio. Just draw a stick-figure horse.



He’s a little more like a sausage when he gets closer.



This is from the 1932 Tom and Jerry cartoon In the Bag. The music playing in the background of this scene is Carl Stalling’s old favourite at Warner Bros., “Cheyenne.” I don’t know what tune opens the short.

John Foster and George Rufle receive the “by” credit.

Getting Away With Old Corn

There weren’t all that many radio sitcoms in the Golden Days that came out of New York City. There was only one that came out of Puerto Rico—Duffy’s Tavern.

There had actually been a Duffy’s Tavern on 44th Street between Broadway and 6th Avenue in New York. It was run by Big Bill Duffy, manager of boxer Primo Carnera. The tavern had a habit of getting raided in the early ‘30s. Something about prohibition. The fake Duffy’s Tavern was on Third Avenue and opened for business on an episode of Forecast on CBS on July 29, 1940. It starred Archie the bartender, a character Ed Gardner had originated the previous year on This is New York.

Critics liked it. The network decided to turn the one-shot into a series, to be broadcast from New York. Gardner immediately hired his wife, Shirley Booth, to play Duffy’s daughter, and the show debuted March 1, 1941, with Gardner collecting $4,000 a week.

Gardner, it seems, always looked for a way to save a buck, and moved the radio show to Puerto Rico in 1949 when the territory gave him a huge tax break. The series ended on Friday, December 28, 1951 on NBC.

Television was still waiting for radio shows to make the jump onto the small screen. Gardner planned on showcasing Duffy’s Tavern on NBC’s All Star Revue on May 31, 1952. The sponsors then saw what they were getting and were shocked. They wrote NBC complaining the script was sub-par and the show never left the tavern the whole time (Variety, April 24, 1952). The show was pulled with the idea the film could be edited down to a pilot for a series. The series finally appeared in syndication in 1954. Variety proclaimed Gardner “clumsy” and “awkward” as a TV actor; series writer Larry Rhine said pretty much the same thing years later.

However, as a radio show, it could be enjoyable to listen to. Certainly discerning critic John Crosby liked it and quoted extensively from the final script in the 1945-46 season in his column of June 24 1946. Gardner cleverly found a way to get laughs out of hokey material. He put it in the mouth of hokey Archie, which worked. The episode became a parody of a worn-out stand-up act.

The ‘Closing of Duffy’s Tavern’
“Duffy’s Tavern,” where “the elite meet to eat,” shuttered its windows for the summer a week ago Friday, which means we’ll have to struggle through the hot months without the sage advice and intricate phonetics of Ed Gardner, a man who uses the English language with wild enthusiasm. Closing “Duffy’s Tavern” presented a number of rather special problems.
“We got some free lunch left,” Arch tells Duffy over the phone. “What’ll we do with it? . . . Give it away? Duffy, we been tryin’ to do that all year. . . . .Duffy, I told you the garbage man refused it three times. You have no idea how well seasoned the stuff has become.
* * *
Eddie, the bemused and cynical waiter, breaks in to call attention to another perplexity. “What’ll we do with Moriarity?” he asks.
“Is he still lyin’ over there in the corner?”
“He’s been layin’ there ever since New Year’s Eve.”
“Well, that that noise-maker out of his hand and put some summer underwear on him so his wife won’t realize he’s been away so long.”
Clifton Finnegan, the man with the impenetrable skull, wanders in carrying his suitcase and announces he’s off on his vacation.
“Where you going?” asks Archie.
“Upon on the roof. . . . You seem astonished.”
“Well, Finnegan, you got to admit it ain’t quite normal. Well, have a nice time up there, and when you get a chance let me hear from you.”
“I’ll do that, Arch. Walk by the house any time and I’ll drop you a postcard.”
“Finnegan, it’s too bad you wasn’t twins. You’d have made a lovely pair of bookends.”
Before he reaches the door, Archie warns Finnegan he doesn’t want the side window busted when he comes back in the fall.
“Just a second, Arch,” says Finnegan. “Your tone is rather accusatory. Don’t blame me for that busted window.”
“Oh, no?” says Arch. “Then what was your footprint doin’ in the alleyway?”
“How do you know it was mine?”
“Cause the footprint had six toes.”
“Left or right foot?”
“The right.”
“That clears me. On me right foot I got seven toes.” “What do you mean—seven? What about the one you lost the day the landlady caught you reachin’ for the extra butter?”
“Yeah, but, Arch, I started with eight.”
“Case dismissed.”
* * *
With Finnegan out of the way, Arch turns his mind to the problem of a place to spend his vacation. Poring over a map, he muses: “Let’s see, Bali, Java, Sumatra—hey, that guy’s even got an island named after him. Honolulu—hey, that’s the place.”
He phones United Airlines and asks for a plane reservation to Honolulu. “On one of them new four-motor jobs—the Consternation. What’s the fare? . . . Uh huh. Got any gliders goin’ out?”
Arch finally decided he can’t spend a vacation on $15 and, although “the thought abhors me,” he’ll have to work this summer. After a little subtle misrepresentation he gets a tentative opening as a master of ceremonies at a summer resort in the Catskills, providing he brings his own floor show. Finnegan is pressed into service to do bird calls, of which he knows two—Bob White and Rinso White.
* * *
But the feature of the show is Arch, “your laughing M. C.,” whose line of chatter runs like this:
“Well, sir, a funny thing happened to me on my way up here to the mountains. An elk walks up to me and says, ‘Look, dear, have you got a buck for a cup of coffee? I ain’t got no doe.’ So I says, ‘This is moose to me, but if you feel like having a little fawn, I’ll take you out to a stag.’ Yes, sir, it’s sure great to be back here in the mountains.
“Speaking of rabbits—yesterday a couple of them got in my garden, so I took these two rabbits, locked them in a closet and shook a stick at them. This morning I went back and there were more rabbits than you could shake a stick at. Mother, turn the hose on me, I’m hot tonight. All new material, you lucky people! Yes, sir—it’s sure great to be back in the mountains.”
Well, have fun in the mountains, Arch, and don’t take any wooden nickels. We’ll miss you.

Here are Crosby’s other columns for the week. To the right, you see him ridicule news commentator Gabriel Heatter, who is known for the phrase “Ahhh, there’s good news tonight!” No one seems to know when exactly Heatter started using it (it was some time during World War Two). He started out in print and then moved to radio in the early ‘30s; in fact, he was on WOR in New York before it became the main station of the Mutual Broadcasting System. He spent his career with Mutual, which may partly explain why he didn’t have a television career. Mutual had the most affiliates of any radio network in the U.S., but it seems an awful lot of them were in small towns and were stations with limited wattage or signed off at sunset. Mutual never set up a TV network. Heatter also didn’t have a warm, conversational delivery like Doug Edwards or even John Cameron Swayze, and sounded like he was reading his script from the upper register of his voice (Heatter wrote and read human interest stories on a show called A Brighter Tomorrow which Henry Morgan ripped apart on one of his variety show episodes). Heatter died in retirement in Florida in 1972. The column is from June 28th.

The June 25th column deals with some radio documentaries and a dramatic series which aired from New York, the column of the 26th talks about a new CBS news programme, as well as Meet the Press, which still airs every Sunday on NBC TV. It started on Mutual in 1945 and seems to have filled a bunch of network programming gaps. The June 27th column involves a CBS special focusing on world starvation. Click on any of the columns to see them better.

The Old Traffic Light Gag

Ceiling Hero (1940) is full of gags that you can see a mile away and some that Tex Avery used over and over again. (The cartoon ends with the “Mmmm...could be!” catchphrase of Mr. Kitzel from the Al Pearce radio).

One of them that Tex pulled off every once in a while is the stop-and-go gag. This one is the variation that involves the big-small aspect (like the beer sliding on the bar in The Shooting of Dan McGoo in MGM). A stop sign goes up. A plane waits for a little plane to cross the “intersection.” The go sign goes up. The plane carries on.



You’ll notice the “Go” sign is cut off. That’s because there’s a inking error and the plane is going right through it.



It seems only the dog/tree gag of Avery’s repertoire is missing.

Rod Scribner is the credited animator. Dave Monahan contributed to the gags. These spot gaggers at Warners were getting awfully tired by 1940.