Cooking With Wimpy

Wimpy was used for side-gags in some of the early Popeye cartoons, and he’s a pretty funny character. Generally, he silently carries on doing his business.

In The Spinach Overture (1935), he casually fries a hamburger patty while playing the snare drum. A clash of the cymbal flips the burger and another sends the patty flying into his mouth.



My favourite Wimpy moments elsewhere are when he stalks after a duck with a meat grinder, and when he blithely pulls a switch, opening a trap door and sends eliminated dance contestants below the floor.

Seymour Kneitel and Doc Crandall are the credited animators.

Horace Walks

One of the endearing things about early ‘30s animation made in New York is characters would do things just for the sake of doing them. Somehow, it worked.

One of the early ‘30s New York studios was Terrytoons, and it was still doing the same kind of thing years later.

In the 1953 cartoon Blind Date, Horace the millionaire has a silly walk at times. Why? Just to get a laugh. There’s no reason for him to walk that way; Carlo Vinci gave Yogi Bear a funny walk but the way his body was constructed, it made sense. This is just a rubbery thing solely to look stupid. Some sample frames. (Sorry for the fuzziness).



There’s an even odder sweeping-leg walk cycle later in the cartoon. Eddie Donnelly directed this short.

The Age of Benny

What about comedy? What about comic timing?

Jack Benny seemed to be asked about those two things constantly.

There certainly was a good reason. Jack had spanned virtually the entire life of comedy/variety on network radio and plunged into television with continued success. His colleagues (if not his viewers) marvelled at Jack’s joke timing, some quoted they wouldn’t dare try to use silence the way Benny did.

The San Francisco Examiner focused on Jack a number of times over the years, and not only when he paid the City by the Bay a visit. Here’s a story from June 21, 1959, with an age comparison, the exaggerated story about his “first” radio appearance (it wasn’t but it can be argued it was his first influential one), and how CBS protected him in the TV ratings when Maverick on ABC started killing off the competition, including the erstwhile Buck Benny.

The Old Showman, Young Jack Benny
By Dwight Newton
SOMEBODY said television was a young man's game. Haw!
This year the TV academy awarded two Emmys (one for "best comedy series" and one for "best actor in a comedy series") to a man who is older than Utah. Everyone knows Jack Benny is only 39, yet he is older than the whole bloomin' motion picture industry. Jack was born on Valentine's Day, 1894, and not until two months later did Thomas Alva Edison present the first public showing of his Kinetoscope at 1155 Broadway, New York. That was the year of the Chinese-Japanese War, Coxey's march on Washington, the Dreyfus trial and the great Pullman strike. Grover Cleveland was President, Robert Louis Stevenson died and Arthur Fiedler was .born. So were Irene Castle, Jeanne Eagles, Fred Allen and Walter Brennan.
Jack and Walter (of "Real McCoys") and their 1894 colleagues were here before the airplane, the dirigible, the depth bomb and the disc plow. They preceded cellophane, wireless and the X-ray. In Illinois, they still haggle humorously about which came first—Waukegan or Jack Benny. Waukegan is currently celebrating its Centennial and Jack is the in-person head-liner for Jack Benny Day.
The incredible thing is that after all these years in fiercely competitive show business, old Jack still receives the highest awards in America's youngest entertainment medium.
The Benny story began when Meyer Kubelsky emigrated from Poland to peddle wares with a pack on his back in and around Chicago. He settled in Waukegan and his first born was Benny. Kubelsky gave his son a $50 violin when he was barely 5. At age 8, Benny was giving solo performances. At 17, he went into vaudeville with a pianist partner. He called himself Ben Benny, later changed it to Jack Benny to avoid confusion with better known Ben Bernie.
During World War I, he joined the Navy and was assigned to the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, Chicago. While there he reported for a Naval Relief Society show and during rehearsal, the story goes, he amused his fellow sailors with timely quips and funny sayings. The show's hard-pressed writers worked them into the script and that was the birth of Benny, the comedian.
"Up until then for six and a half years," Benny recalls, "I'd never opened my mouth on the stage. I'd been a violinist." After the war, he went back to vaudeville, doing a monologue as well as fiddling. He played the Palace in New York. He did musical comedies. Another fateful day in his life was March 29, 1932. He was in "Earl Carroll's Vanities" and Ed Sullivan, who was then doing a radio show, invited him to appear on it.
It was Jack's first radio appearance. His first words were, "Hello, folks, this is Jack Benny. There will be a slight pause for every one to say 'Who cares?' "A few weeks later NBC signed him as a Sunday night comedian. He became an overnight sensation.
By 1937, Jack was radio's most listened-to comic. In 1941, NBC gave him a lifetime option on Sunday night at 7. In 1949, he shifted to CBS for what was then the all-time biggest package deal. When reporters besieged him for details, Jack told them, 'They have free parking at CBS.'
When radio began to falter in 1950, the two highest rated shows were Jack's and "Lux Radio Theater." In October of that year, Jack did his first TV show and I predicted that "Benny, the Mr. Big of radio, will become the ditto of television."
He did—and he still is the Mr. Big of the comedy field.
But big as he is, Benny last season could not compete commercially with the newest television phenomenon—the action western. Mighty "Maverick" came on to soften Sullivan, drive off Steve Allen, then "Bachelor Father" and now Benny. Last week's rerun was Benny's last show in the old Sunday at 7:30 slot. Tonight he'll be temporarily replaced by "I Love Lucy" reruns and when he returns to CBS-TV, Oct. 4, he'll be scheduled at 10 p. m., with George Gobel as his alternate week running mate.
About the westerns that knocked him out, Benny told me, "I think people like westerns. I like them. I like anything good. But if comedians did everything the same like the westerns, everybody would be sore."
Though Benny is forever identified with numerous trademarks (the toupe, the Maxwell, the violin, the age 39 stunt, the stinginess), he probably has attempted more new things than any comedian of comparable stature. Sometimes they boomerang.
"But I'm never sorry about anything I do," he said. "If you have an idea, do it—otherwise you'll stagnate. If your idea flops, you won't be thrown out of show business. You gotta be brave, you gotta try everything."
Like him or not, Benny's record proves that he is one of America's greatest living showmen. He is the master of the pause that builds laughter. He can do with expressions what Bob Hope does with dialogue. His timing is unsurpassed.
"Timing is very difficult to define," he confided. "Gracie Allen has probably the greatest timing of anybody I know and she probably has no idea why. Perhaps it's best you never know why. Some people have it with fast talk, others with slow talk. Nobody can teach that. They can't say, 'Now I'll teach you timing.'
"Judy Holliday is just great. Ed Wynn was sensational with it. It's easier for me to time on a live show than on film, for I let the audience do it for me."
Next month, after his trip to Waukegan, Jack plans to throw his golf clubs in the car and drive wherever the urge takes him. Later he may go to England for a week or two. In mid-August he'll take a new, combination variety-symphony into the Los Angeles Greek Theater for two weeks. Then he'll resume filming TV shows, the first with Red Skelton. He already has filmed two for next season one with Ben Blue, the other with his regular crew, Dennis Day, Rochester, Mel Blanc and Frank Nelson.
In addition to his regular series next season, he tells me he'll do two or three CBS "specials" and he expects to make at least three road tours—in the East, the Northwest and definitely in Texas.
Have a swell vacation Jack, we'll be tele-seein' you in October.

Tagging Along With Howard Beckerman

Howard Beckerman is not only a veteran of the Golden Age of animated cartoons and a respected instructor, but he’s an author, too. We’re not just talking about his book at his web site. Howard wrote a column for Back Stage, a New York-based periodical.

We posted this great remembrance by Mr. Beckerman about Jim Tyer. The article below won’t mean as much to some fans, I suspect. He goes on a little tour of part of Manhattan, and talks about the commercial production studios that briefly flourished during that great period when black-and-white TV sets were filled with cleverly-designed animated commercials. While there were many small studios on the West Coast then, there were a handful based in New York. They deserve a bit of attention by cartoon fans, hence I pass it along.

This was published August 6, 1982. New Yorkers may appreciate this post more than others as they’ll know the streets named.

Mr. Beckerman has a nice, friendly style of writing. He is still around and will turn 90 next year.

Errands
It is summer, and contrary to many other summers, animation assignments have been coming to many of the studios on a hit and miss basis. Time was when summer meant beefed up schedules to meet fall deadlines and the rush to produce pre-Christmas announcements. With everyone apparently holding back this season, the small studio operator finds he’s got some extra moments on his hands. He or she can use the time to make additional calls to usual work sources or prepare some artwork for an ad to be placed in a trade journal. Back Stage for instance is receiving material its special animation issue scheduled for September 10th.

When things are a bit slow I find that it’s a good time to do errands. It gets me onto the street for some needed exercise and I get to meet some of the people that I only get to know through the less personal method of telephone calls. This morning for instance I decided to retrieve a negative from Movielab. While the many messenger services in the city are capable and dependable there’s nothing like doing it yourself and perhaps knocking off a few more errands on the way. It’s also a good way to get some bills paid in person and save a few cents on the high cost of stamps. I left my studio on 45th Street, but first stopped into:
A.I. Friedman’s art store to pay a bill and say hello to George, the manager. Then I headed over toward the Avenue of the Americas, more properly known as Sixth Avenue. As I passed 49 West 45th Street I recall that it was here that such studios as Bill Sturm Productions and Academy Pictures had once occupied the same office space at different times, and both had gone out of business in that same space.
I began to ponder how many animation studios had come and gone in the little buildings along this street and are now moved on and the buildings replaced by high rise shiny glass and metal behemouths [sic]. At 165 West 46th Street, former home of Back Stage, the studio, Animation Central once operated with such talents as Paul Kim and Lou Gifford, Pablo Ferro and Ray Favata. As I headed toward Seventh Avenue I spotted a dime on the street and picking it up I realized that one of the other benefits of doing errands, you find money. When you go home and your spouse asks if the agency sent the $10,000 check you can answer, “No but I found a dime.” It’s actually very gratifying when you realize that the 10 grand gets paid out to employees, landlords, services and taxes but the dime is all yours!
Heading past 723 Seventh Avenue I realized that this was another address for the old Bill Sturm animation studio where partners, Bill Sturm, Orestes Calpini and Bert Hecht made some of the earliest television commercials. A couple of blocks north at 49th Street the Embassy 49 is showing Disney’s “Bambi.” It struck me that this theatre had not too long ago been an X-rated movie house and here they were all nice and tidy showing Disney G-rated films. This was the same theatre that was called The World and back in the late 40’s exhibited Roberto Rosselini’s “Open City” for a year, featuring the writing skills of a former cartoonist, Federico Fellini.
At 51st and Seventh I took a moment to drop in to TR’s Gallery, which offers for sale original cels from Disney films. Here for about $175 you can get a hand inked colored cel of Winnie the Pooh or characters from “Jungle Book” or “The Rescuers.” Turning the corner and moving onto 53rd and Broadway I passed the Broadway Theater and was reminded by a plaque in the lobby that this was once the Colony Movie Theater and in September of 1928 Mickey Mouse premiered on the screen in an early synchronized sound cartoon, “Steamboat Willie.” The plaque dutifully includes the engraved likeness of Mickey for the perusal of all those arriving the [to] see the current musical production, “Evita.”

I headed down through 55th Street past the DuArt building and recalled that in the early 50’s Lee Blair’s Film Graphics was situation here and we did many spots for many of the prominent shows of the day. “I Love Lucy” was one of the hits of home television and animation director Don Towsley kept us all struggling on the openings for this series. DuArt’s administrative offices today are where Deborah Kerr once performed for a public service spot. Upstairs was a studio called Loucks and Norling which specialized in technical animation for scientific films. Continuing on top Movielab over in Potamkin Country I passed by 450 West 54th Street where you can just barely make out the faded logo of Fox’s Movietone News. On this street ABC has a sound stage and I recall that not too far away Robert Lawrence had a live action stage and an animation studio across the street in the early 1960’s.
Eventually I arrived at Movielab and picked up the material that was waiting there for me. When I started back to my office the late morning heat was beginning to settle in. I arrived once more at 45th Street about an hour from when I had begun my errand and I realized that it was here on this same street that I had also begun my career in this field working at Famous Studios at 25 West 45th Street. Here at the studio that had once belonged to Max and Dave Fleischer we produced Popeye and Casper the Ghost theatrical shorts. Next door at 34 West there had been the animation studio of Ted Eshbaugh just before the Transfilm organization took over the same building. Today the buildings, 25, 35 and 45 West 45th Street still house several studios, among them, The Optical House, John Rowohlt Camera Service and Eighth Frame Camera Service. Suddenly I realized that I had gone in a complete circle, not just from my office to the lab and back, but as it happens to everyone, I had gone on another errand between the past and the present and back again. Though the term errand boy is often used disparagingly, it must be remembered that the very nature of the film business requires that everyone become an errand boy at sometime. There is hardly a producer no matter how high in status who has never carried a reel to an editor, a lab, an optical house or a screening. Sometimes it’s the only way to get it there. We are all candidates for the errand boy’s job, and like any conscientious errand boy, we do our job with care and responsibility, we are professionals. The call comes and we pick up and deliver. The agency picks up and delivers for the client, and we pick up and deliver for the agency. We speak of art and technique, of style and moody, but what it comes down to is, can you pick up and deliver?
As I entered the welcoming air conditioned confines of my studio and even before the small beads of perspiration had dried on my forehead, the phone rang. It was an assignment. Pick up and deliver.

Tweety and the Beanstalk Backgrounds

There are three cartoons released by Warner Bros. in 1957 made by the Friz Freleng unit which have no background artist credit. One is Tweety and the Beanstalk. Irv Wyner had been painting backgrounds and was replaced in the credits with Boris Gorelick. It’s unclear when Wyner left; his birthday wasn’t listed amongst the September celebrators in the “Warner Club News” for that month in 1956. I don’t know enough about Wyner’s style to determine if he possibly worked on this short; his last credited cartoon was The Three Little Bops.

(Wyner, incidentally, was born Irving Weiner to Benjamin and Ethel Weiner, a pair of Russian emigres. He was living in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1935 when he won a scholarship to the New York Students Arts League. He arrived in California with his wife Joanne and son Richard in 1949; Richard was born in Minnesota. Wyner died in 2002; a plate with Yosemite Sam, Bugs Bunny and Sylvester is on his gravestone).

First is the opening shot; the camera trucks in on it. You can see how Hawley Pratt handled layouts involving the rising beanstalk, and Tweety in a cage with Sylvester below.



Warren Foster’s story fills six minutes and does little else; he actually wrote more fun fairy tale parodies at Hanna-Barbera.

Colourful Lift-Off

Coloured cards to augment effects were popular with a number of directors at Walter Lantz. Here’s an example from Ace in the Hole, a fairly lacklustre Woody Woodpecker cartoon directed by Alex Lovy.

A lit flare falls into Woody Woodpecker’s otherwise airtight pilot suit. The force of it makes Woody take off. The coloured cards and the effect animation are shot on twos.



George Dane is the credited animator. Woody is Kent Rogers, who was killed in a training exercise during World War Two.

Climbing the Ladder of Television

Don Pardo did more than “tell them what they won” on The Price is Right. Pardo wasn’t just the show’s announcer during its NBC days in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. He warmed up the audience, too.

He had an unusual method, as revealed in this unbylined story in the La Crosse Tribune of January 28, 1961.

Pardo remained on The Price is Right until 1963. The show moved to ABC, but Pardo remained loyal to NBC. The following year, the network picked him to announce and warm up the New York studio audience for a new game show called Jeopardy.

Don Pardo Is High Man On The TV Totem Pole For 'Price Is Right'
Don Pardo, amiable six-footer whose well-modulated tones introduce "The Price Is Right" to over 60 million viewers weekly, has had to call upon one of man's oldest props to get the show properly on the air. So unique is Pardo's technique other professional television announcers visit "The Price Is Right" set just to watch him perform.
* * *
About 15 minutes before "Price" goes on the air, Don Pardo hauls out a 12-foot ladder, climbs same while the startled 600 people in the theater audience wonder what kind of stunt is going to be pulled. Swaying atop his perch, Pardo hooks one lanky leg over the side for natural support and proceeds to "warm up" his audience. His easy style seems to make the use of such an out-of-place prop perfectly acceptable in the maze of television cameras and assorted electronic gear spread across the set.
The fact that "The Price Is Right" is aired from an old-fashioned theater on upper Broadway in New York, makes it necessary for Don to use his tall perch . . . simply to be seen by the 3-tiered theater audience. Friends of Pardo's think he would use the unusual prop regardless of the theater set-up to crack the ice in getting the audience to be friendly and join into the atmosphere of the show.
* * *
Don and his 12-foot prop seem to fit into the easy-going atmosphere of "The Price Is Right." From Bill Cullen, popular emcee, throughout the entire man-woman cast and crew—the climate on the set is precisely what is seen by over 60 million viewers each week ... a fun group, having a good time putting together some of TV's best entertainment. Don personifies this air of informality from his opening statements to the theater audience. It is quite important to the tempo and tone of the show to have the audience relaxed and to actually become a part of the show—and, while a pro like Pardo makes it look simple—it's no easy job to get 600 strangers to join together as one interest, fun-loving unit.
One evening, while Don was in the middle of his warm-up act, a chimp being used on the show climbed up Don's ladder behind him. To make matters worse, (if not shakier), the chimp was waving a crew members hat, swiped while running through his act. Don almost fell off his tottering ladder before the crew members finally coaxed the chimp (and waving hat) down again. At one point, the front row audience gasped when they thought Don, ladder and chimp would land in their laps. It's too bad little, colorful human incidents like this can't be caught by the cameras for the benefit of the national audience. In any event, sometime when you're watching The Price Is Right—should a tall man and a very tall ladder crash down on the set . . . you'll know what happened —another chimp is loose!
* * *
Don started out to be an announcer in the first place and seems born to the job. His early start following college groomed him well for his later bigtime jobs on television. He did such early successes as Four Star Revue, Firestone Theater and Colgate Comedy Hour. Later work included the Martha Raye, Sid Caesar and Perry Como summer shows, Max Liebman spectaculars Kate Smith Hour, Arthur Murray Show, World of Mr. Sweeney, Producer's Showcase, plus many NBC special colorcasts. Don has, among other professional awards, a Sylvania TV award for top narration—winning this one for his participation in Ford's two-hour 50th Anniversary Show.
Don reflects the same easy-going personality in personal life at home his do-it-yourself projects sometimes overlap each other, but they get done, he says. Just finished a nice new patio—that was simple ... no 12-foot ladder work involved! Don lives in Demarest, N.J., with a pretty young wife and five children.

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).