General Tire and Jack

As inconceivable as it is, Jack Benny was fired by his first two sponsors despite his popularity with radio listeners. Canada Dry got annoyed at Benny having fun with the soft drink on the air (and being forced to fire a writer it imposed on him). Chevrolet’s boss, C.E. Coyle, decided he wanted something classier than a comedian and over the objections of franchise dealers, replaced the Benny show with Victor Young (who didn’t last very long).

Benny wasn’t out of work for long. He was quickly snapped up by General Tire and Rubber Company. His last show for Chevrolet was April 1, 1934. His first for General Tire was five days later. Mary Livingstone and vocalist Frank Parker stayed when the new sponsor took over. Significantly, a new announcer was hired and Don Wilson won the audition over the others in the NBC stable. He remained until the Benny TV series ended in 1965.

How the Benny show came to be sponsored by General Tire is outlined in the book A Whale of a Territory: The Story of Bill O'Neil by Dennis John O’Neill (with two Ls), published by McGraw-Hill in 1966. What the book doesn’t reveal was how it came to be unsponsored. Trade publications in 1934 stated that a deal was struck that Benny would be “loaned” to General Foods for the winter and General Tire would resume sponsorship in the spring. But it never happened; Jack and Co. stayed with General Foods for another ten years. What happened? We may never know.

Benny was finished with General Tire on September 24, 1934 and, after a short break, took to the air with General Foods on October 14th.

Here are the pertinent points about O’Neil and the Benny show from the book.

One of the reasons his associates—and competitors—were frequently taken off guard by Bill O'Neil's ideas was his habit of starting with an idea and using it as a launching pad for a vaguely related but quite different one. A good illustration of this was what happened as a result of his first exposure to radio. In the early 1930s, national radio shows had become the glamour advertising medium. The big stars were coming into American homes and making friends in a way never before possible. These people could influence potential customers, and W.O. had great faith in the power of the spoken word to sell ideas and products. W.O. felt that in many cases the stars received more advertising than some of the products they were paid to advertise, but this was because their sales talks were not properly prepared. One young fellow seemed to have an especially nice, easy way of weaving the advertising messages into the format of his show. So Bill O'Neil phoned his advertising agency and asked how much it would cost to sponsor Jack Benny. Characteristically, he did not ask for any listener ratings or for any other program suggestions. He had made up his mind that he wanted Benny.
The price floored him. General advertised heavily in the expensive media of national magazine and newspaper advertising, but W.O. figured that they had large equipment and inventory expenses, tons of paper to buy, and costly distribution and postal charges.
Theirs was a manufacturing business and these costs he could understand. Radio, he figured, had none of these expenses, or practically none. For days W.O. reasoned his case with everyone remotely connected with the problem. He stormed, pacing up and down his office, hands jammed into his pockets. He burned the long-distance wire to New York. In short, he reacted as he always did when his own ideas collided with an entrenched status quo.

Finally the temptation of being able to speak with millions of consumers in their homes became overpowering. So W.O. instructed his advertising agency to sign a contract for the Jack Benny program, including Jack's wife, Mary Livingston, tenor Frank Parker, announcer Don Wilson, and the orchestra.
The association was a success and W.O. enjoyed it immensely. During the initial weeks he found excuses to be in New York and attend the broadcasts. One reason he gave for wanting to be there was to familiarize Benny with tires— General Tires— so he could ad lib some sales points: it was Benny's knack of selling other products informally and effectively that had attracted W.O. to him in the first place. But the hazards of the technique showed up on one of the early programs. Frank Parker had just finished a popular song and Benny returned to the air to exclaim enthusiastically, "Wonderful, Frank! Wonderful! That was as smooth as General Tires!" With this remark Bill O'Neil's enthusiasm for the ad-lib commercial waned.
On the first program, Jack Benny told a story about his new sponsor and referred to him as Mr. O'Neil. On the second show he told another story and again referred to Mr. O'Neil. After that program, W.O. got his advertising man to one side and and said: "I don't feel comfortable having Jack call me Mr. O'Neil. Don't make a big issue of it, but see if he'd mind calling me Bill O'Neil. It sounds more natural."
The significance of W.O.'s early association with the Jack Benny show was that it gave him his first contact with radio. No one at the time attached much importance to the interest he showed in every detail of the business. After each of the early Friday-evening broadcasts he gathered together a group from the studio, usually the producers, engineers, time salesmen, agency men— the people who were knowledgeable about radio as a business. More often than not, they would go out to a restaurant for a late supper and talk radio for hours. The studio people had never met a sponsor quite like him. He did not want to tell them how to handle his show, or talk about his business at all. He wanted to talk about theirs. A most peculiar sponsor!
They liked him, not only as a big, attractive human being with wit, great personal magnetism and a naturalness that was refreshing, but also because he was obviously interested in their business and shoptalk.
Usually at the restaurant sessions, he would sell one or another a set of General Tires. He seldom missed an opportunity to do that. There was always a new face or two at these get-togethers, any one of whom might be the next eager caller at the New York General Tire store the Monday morning after hearing W.O. quietly paint a word picture of the difference between Generals and other tires. "Bill O'Neil said you'd give me a good trade-in and a good price on a set of Generals," became a familiar opening gambit of these radio friends calling at the store.
This was the seed of General Tire's eventual role as a major factor in radio and television through RKO General, today the largest independent operation in the field. W.O. learned enough about radio to know that the business was attractive to him. He felt at home in it. He felt radio to be the wave of the future. It would be a challenge— his ideas against larger entrenched forces. There is no question that he decided then that someday he would like to test them. And test them he did, very successfully.

Don't Follow the Bouncing Ball

Cartoons have been considered kid stuff for so long, it’s refreshing to read a film critic who actually looked forward to going to the theatre and watching them.

Well, some cartoons, anyway.

Tracy Tothill was a columnist for the Abiline Reporter-News after graduating from the University of Oklahoma in Journalism in 1951. She revealed her love of cartoon shorts in her “Press Passes” column of August 3, 1952. Maybe we should qualify that by saying “West Coast cartoon shorts.”

Mrs. Tothill and I share a dislike for the Famous Studio bouncing ball cartoons. I always thought they were incredibly hokey and obvious, and I’ve never been crazy about the mixed chorus Famous hired. She wasn’t a fan of the Famous Popeyes (neither am I) and would have preferred someone silenced the operetta Mighty Mouse cartoons (I like them in small doses and some of the dialogue is clever).

But she cottoned onto filmdom’s newest star in 1952—Mr. Magoo. This was when Magoo was new and fresh, and hadn’t been run into the ground with the worn-out “misread the sign” bit, followed by Magoo being incapable of seeing anything for what it is. By then, Magoo had turned into a TV-only character and the sheer volume of the cartoons needed for the small screen must have taxed the abilities of a fairly adept group of writers.

This must be a rare column where someone noticed Hubie and Bertie, though the first name is wrong. I wonder what Bob McKimson (and even Kenny Delmar) would think of “Senator Laghorn.”

To finish the Tothill story, and it’s a sad one, she divorced and left Texas for New York. She was working on a book. She was found dead on her bed by a friend on September 3, 1974; she had been dead for several days. Tothill was 45.

About Movie Cartoons; The Singing Kind Flunked Out; Good Ones Are Hard to Get
Six "singing" (just follow the bouncing ball) cartoons at six successive movies were just too much.
This writer, who frankly admits the cartoons count as much as the shows, vowed to lodge a complaint.
The manager of the theater was very interested—but it seems the complaint was a little late.
Hollywood has given up making singing cartoons, he said. They just didn't go over, he added.
Hallelulia! Now if someone will just do something about those where the mice talks in lyrics, showtime will again be goodtime.
The manager also said it was nice to see an adult (supposedly anyway) take an interest in cartoons.
He said most of them love the cartoons as much as the kids do but getting them to admit it was another thing.
But for us "kids" who will speak up and grant that they're wonderful (sometimes), here's the lowdown on what Hollywood has planned.
Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker. Tom and Jerry, Slyvester [sic] and Tweety Bird, and Chip and Dale are still going strong and all are scheduled to be drawn during the coming year.
However, (unfortunately) so is Popeye. Also, still popular are most of the Walt Disney characters including Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Pluto.
New cartoon characters making their mark in this world are Yosemite Sam, Senator Laghorn [sic], Herbie and Bertie [sic] and that wonderful Mr. Magoo.
Mr. Magoo is this writer's current favorite.
Dear nearsighted Mr. Magoo.

This writer first spotted him in a side-splitter in which he attempted to engage a Colonel somebody or other in a tennis match. Because of Magoo's nearsightedness, he ended up playing tennis with a walrus.
Hotel house detectives were horrified—but even when Magoo was convinced of his mistake he persisted in his friendship. He decided he liked the walrus better than the colonel. Mr. Magoo was seen on the screen in Abilene recently in a job called "Dog Snatcher".
His nearsighted campaign against an arrogant city hall tax collector and dog snatcher led him into the circus grounds, where he mistook a panther for his mutt, Cuddles.
Panther on lease [leash], he confronted the dog snatcher, who was all too happy to pay for the license himself.
The informative theater manager also told this writer that the local theaters have a ton of trouble getting good cartoons.
The reason is they're so complicated to make.
Every time a cartoon character moves so much as a little finger another picture has to be drawn.
He said that the normal cartoon runs eight minutes and that the film will travel through the projector at approximately 90 feet a minute. The film averages one picture to every inch so (if the arithmetic isn't off) that would mean 8,640 pictures have to be drawn for every single cartoon.
The manager also added the interesting sidelight that one man, Mel Blanc, is the voice for all the Warner Brothers cartoons. Their menagerie includes Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Herbie and Bertie, Tweety Bird and others.
Seems he should more properly be called "The Voice" than one other who has that monicker.
Latest addition to the cartoon world is a character named Pepe LePew, a skunk. He's a great lover and talks in a Charles Boyer voice. This writer hasn't seen the Great Pepe—but folks who have are raving about him.

Walky Talky Tree

Foghorn Leghorn steals the show in the Henery Hawk cartoon Walky Talky Hawky (1946). Director Bob McKimson scored a hit on this one. Showman’s Trade Review rated it “excellent.” Ray McFarlane of the Arbuckle Theatre in Arbuckle, California told the Motion Picture Herald: “One of the best cartoons we have had for a long time.” It was nominated for an Oscar (and lost to The Cat Concerto with Tom and Jerry).

Warren Foster’s inventive idea of a chicken hawk that doesn’t know what a chicken is sets up the cartoon takeover by loud-mouthed, aggressive Foggy, who is in the midst of harassing the barnyard dog.

The cartoon opens with an establishing shot of a tree. The camera “looks down” to the ground from mid-tree, then pans up to the top. It’s all on one drawing, so artist Dick Thomas had to paint it with an odd perspective when you look at the complete background (which, of course, the audience never did).

Mel Blanc changes voices on the father chicken hawk after the first line and Henery tosses away a Lucky Strike cigarette catchphrase for good measure.

Since the Foghorn-Leghorn-is-Senator-Claghorn story keeps making the rounds, you can do no better than to click on this research by Keith Scott who actually delved into the origins and timeline to come up with the truth, using Warner Bros. studio records.

Foggy had some pretty good outings at first. McKimson’s cartoons got tamer and tamer as the ‘50s wore on and were inert compared to some of the wonderful thrashing about you can find in the earliest shorts.

McKimson had recently taken over the Frank Tashlin unit, so Dick Bickenbach, Don Williams and Cal Dalton animated this cartoon; whether Art Davis worked on this, I will leave to the experts.

Turkey Eyes

Tex Avery liked eye gags. Eyes either became really huge or they took on a life of their own (such as the eyes unable to get back into a closet in Who Killed Who?).

In Jerky Turkey (1945), the turkey’s eyes did a bit of shocked travelling when the bird realised the pilgrim hunter had planted a bazooka in his snout.



Unfortunately, Avery and writer Heck Allen couldn’t figure out a way to finish the gag. The bazooka fires and that’s it; it’s on to the next scene.

Preston Blair, Ray Abrams and Ed Love are the animators on this cartoon.

The Santa With Two Bags, One Under Each Eye

This story needs no explanation, other than it was published in the Indianapolis Star, Christmas Eve, 1974. I suspect the drawing of Allen’s Alley is by Sam Berman.

THE MYSTERY SANTA
By FREDERICK JOHN
DURING THE Depression, Dorchester, a residential section of Boston, was faced with unemployment and other problems of the times. Still, there were occasional happy faces, especially at Christmas.
Somehow the people of Dorchester managed to pinch together enough pennies to assure loved ones of the gifts of the great day. And there were the “mystery Christmas presents.”
They came from nowhere during the holiday season. Nobody knew who sent them. Once they arrived, for a few days at least, hard times were forgotten in Dorchester.
There was another reason for good feeling in Dorchester. Fred Allen, a local vaudeville juggler, had hit it big on radio as a comedian. There was even talk he would soon be making movies in Hollywood.
“IT'S Town Hall tonight,” the announcer said. “And here comes Fred Allen now, leading Jack Benny and a parade of guests.”
Clancy got up from his chair long enough to snap off the parlor radio.
“Can't stand that guy,” said Clancy. “Give me Pick and Pat every time. They're what I call funny.”
“Fred's funny, too,” his wife, Maggie insisted. “You're jealous. He grew up in the same neighborhood. He's on the radio making big money. You're sitting home doing nothing.”
Clancy snarled.
“What about the waiter's job?” his wife asked. “They would have hired me, Maggie,” the husband said sadly, “only I didn't own one of those black suits. They told me they'd be able to give me work if I had one of those waiter suits with the black bow ties.”
Maggie sighed. “It's going to be a sad Christmas,” she said. “No money's coming in and everything's going out. They'll be no joy for us this holiday.”
The next day, Christmas Eve, a messenger knocked on the door of Clancy's flat. Clancy, it should be noted, was not his real name. The messenger left a Christmas package and departed. Inside was a black waiter's suit which fit Clancy perfectly.

QUITE a few people in Fred Allen's old neighborhood were listening to him that Christmas week. Mrs. Cappadona was among them. She almost smiled when Jack Benny tried to sell her former neighbor a second hand car.
Mrs. Cappadona had trouble smiling. True, her husband had a job, there was enough money for food, coal and other essentials. But all Mrs. Cappadona's upper teeth had been removed a few months earlier. She lacked the money for an upper plate—$42, the dentist wanted.
The morning after the Allen show—Christmas Eve—Mrs. Cappadona received a telegram from her dentist (she couldn't afford a phone). The doctor wanted her in his office immediately.
“It's a good thing I made those impressions,” the dentist said, as he placed the brand new set of uppers into Mrs. Cappadona's mouth. "You'll be able to enjoy a hearty Christmas dinner.”
“I can't pay for these,” she reminded him.
“The teeth are a Christmas gift,” the dentist revealed. “They came from an old friend of yours.”
“I don't have any friends who can afford $42 gifts,” she objected.
“Yes, you do,” he said.
Mrs. Cappadona's smile at that was genuine, although the name is not.
MARGARET O'Shea was another Dorchesterite who enjoyed the Allen radio show that Christmas week. She had reason to be happy. Her husband was earning enough to get by on and there would be gifts for young Tommy. They were concealed in a bedroom closet.
Where the gifts came from she would never know. The doorbell rang and a messenger came in loaded down with Christmas toys, including the red fire engine her son had dreamed of getting.
Tommy, 5, wanted to be a fireman. But a few days earlier Tommy had been hit by a car near his home. The injuries had been minor, but the day in the hospital had cost all the money Mrs. O'Shea had put away for Christmas.
Mrs. O'Shea was not, however, her real name.
She told Mrs. Nellie O'Connell about having to spend the Christmas money on medical bills.
“Maybe something will come up,” said Mrs. O'Connell, who really was named Mrs. O'Connell. “Maybe there really is a Santa Claus and maybe he'll drop by your house on Christmas Eve.”
MRS. O'Connell headed across the street to confer with her good friend Elizabeth Lovely.
Mrs. Lovely was Aunt Liz, Fred Allen's aunt, the woman who raised him on Grafton Street in Dorchester after his parents died.
Elizabeth Lovely, Nellie O'Connell and the Rev. William Ryan, pastor of St. Margaret's Church in Dorchester, all are gone now.
So is Fred Allen. He died in 1956.
But all four played an important part in making Christmas merrier in Dorchester. They were the ones responsible for delivery of the “mystery Christmas presents.”

Even in the 1940s, when there was prosperity, the gifts continued to be delivered to those who needed a helping hand.
“Fred Allen never forgot where he came from,” said Daniel O'Connell, Nellie's son, now in his 60s. “One time, one of the kids on a local baseball team got hurt. Fred paid the medical bills and nobody ever knew he did.
“FRED lived with Aunt Liz, her husband, Mike, and another aunt, Jane Herlihy. They lived on the second floor and I lived on the first floor with my mom and dad.
“Every year during the Depression, Fred sent a check to his Aunt Liz. It always came a few weeks before Christmas and it was always a big check. Fred believed in sharing his blessings.
“There would be a note with the check. Fred always asked his aunt to check out families in the old neighborhood and to help those who needed a helping hand at Christmas. He always wrote, ‘Use your own judgment, Aunt Liz. You'll know the ones who really need help.’
“Then Mrs. Lovely would call my mother upstairs and they'd swap information for an hour or so. After that, Aunt Liz and my mother would go to St. Margaret's where they'd chat with Father Ryan, the pastor, for quite a while. He'd make some phone calls to other priests and ministers and rabbis in the area and eventually a list of people in need of help at Christmas would be compiled.
“If there was a real emergency, Mrs. Lovely would go right over and hand the people some money,” concluded O'Connell. “In most cases though, the gifts, or money, were sent anonymously. Those who needed help never knew where it came from.”
Toward the end of his Christmas show more than four decades ago, Fred Allen stepped out of character long enough to say: “From all of us here in the studio to all of you at home, may your Christmas be a joyous and blessed one.”
If you are still alive Clancy and Mrs. Cappadona and Margaret O'Shea, at last you know the identity of your mystery Santa Claus of years ago.
He had baggy eyes.

The Story of Christmas

A quiet, gentle version of the birth of Jesus came from the National Film Board in the 1973 animated short “The Story of Christmas.”

Director Evelyn Lambart created some very charming shorts for the NFB starting in the 1940s. She was a 1937 graduate of the Ontario College of Art. Lambart died in 1999.

This particular short won a blue ribbon at the American Film Festival in New York in 1976 in the religion and society category. The NFB’s site gives this description:

This short animation tells the familiar story of Christmas in an innovative and colourful way. Filmmaker Evelyn Lambart uses glowing zinc cut-outs to give this traditional tale a contemporary twist. Akin to a joyful medieval manuscript, the film is embellished by the artist's own whimsy—heraldic trumpet sounds, luminescent light, and wildflowers in every scene tell the message of rebirth. A film without dialogue.

“The Story of Christmas” is a fitting short to end our series of animated Christmas films.

The Great Toy Robbery

There’s nothing like a clever spoof, and that’s what you get in “The Great Toy Robbery,” a 1963 short directed by Jeff Hale for the National Film Board. Santa Claus is plunked into a Christmas-style hold-up a la “The Great Train Robbery,” and western film clichés abound. The designs and score are a lot of fun.

The cartoon got released in the U.S. by Columbia Pictures (which had been inflicting the second-rate Loopy de Loop shorts on theatre audiences) and was generally sent out with Dr. Strangelove. By that time, Hale was working for Cameron Guess Associates in San Francisco.

It was the top winner at the Irish Film Festival in the animated and cartoon films category in 1963.

The Unmerry Story of a Hollywood Christmas

The festive part of the festive season may not have been so, well, festive, in the city where there’s tinsel all year round.

True, stars and their families celebrate Christmas-time with a tree and gifts and parties and the various trappings we’ve come to know. In fact, Hollywood Boulevard was annually transformed into Santa Claus Lane with lights, decorations and a huge parade. Jack Benny was involved in the parade one year, as you shall see.

But something was wrong.

National Enterprise Association columnist Paul Harrison wasn’t in the Christmas spirit when he penned this jaded column that appeared in papers starting December 16, 1939. The Los Angeles climes didn’t make things feel like Christmas. And, in his mind, Hollywood’s holiday season was a whole lot of fakery. He doesn’t point it out in his column, but Benny, Andy Devine and some real horses were wrapping up shooting on a movie called Buck Benny Rides Again around the time his journey down Santa Claus Lane was taking place. Benny’s appearance in the parade was merely a film publicity stunt, a parade designed by merchants to attract customers to stores along the route.

HOLLYWOOD
BY PAUL HARRISON
NEA Service Staff Correspondent
In some ways, this doesn't seem much like the Christmas season. It's more like a fiesta sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce, staged by the major studios and directed by Busby Berkeley. The star in the east is a Neon sign on a hovering blimp. Technicolor cameras guard the manger. Holy music comes to you by courtesy of the Upsy-Daisy Brassiere Co.

One trouble is that the “season” begins, by commercial decree and with a big parade, on the day following Thanksgiving. That made it Nov. 24 this year. It is almost as difficult to sustain a mood of sentimentality for a full month as it is to drive along Hollywood Boulevard when the traffic lights are obscured by lines of large tin Christmas trees.
The premiere pageant invariably includes several floats covered with cuties, along with swing bands, military bands and drum-and-bugle corps. You can't play "Jingle Bells" on a bugle. And you are not reminded of peace-on-earth, unless ruefully, while watching a mounted, uniformed troop flourishing unsheathed sabers. But for an ultimate discordant touch, I nominate the spectacle of Jack Benny astride a stuffed horse followed by Andy Devine with a shovel.
SANTA BETRAYS SLIGHT ACCENT
After the first, big parade, the Santa Claus float moves up and down the boulevard each evening unattended except by a couple of motorcycle cops. This month the whiskered saint betrays an accent as he shouts greetings into a microphone—“Folks, dis is de toiteenth year dat I been ridin' down Sandy Claus Lane . . ." In decoration and illumination, his huge conveyance looks faintly Japanese, but pure Hollywood is the blowing device which erupts every few seconds and showers the float with bleached-cornflake snow.

Of course the local weather, distressingly dry and enervating at this time, conspires against a Christmasy feeling. In previous years the shouts of newsboys could be depended on for a helpful touch. "Big Blizzard Sweeps Through East!" they'd holler. But the war has forced those stories off the front pages.
There are no sleds in the toy departments, and skates are for the refrigerated rinks. Only local ski slide is a slope covered with pine needles. The palms that line the avenues are dusty and brittle, though now and then some citizen will decorate one with colored lights in observance of the season.
In dozens of vacant lots, Christ mas-tree merchants sell dispirited little firs and spruces that have been tracked in from the mountains, many of them across the desert from Arizona. When a tree begins to droop and lose its luster, the merchants take a tip from movie prop men end spray them with bright paint. Besides misery green trees, there are pink, blue and platinum blond ones. In an uppity store here is a tree painted jet black and decorated with pearl ornaments. It'd give you the shudders.
POOR RICH KID CAN'T WATCH TOYS
In any town lucky enough to have seasons, the nip of winter enhances a grateful sense of snugness for people who have clothes and food and homes. Tingling cold is a reminder or others' needs, and a stimulant to human sympathy. But in Hollywood the street crowds seem to feel that the hot sidewalks are enough to keep Salvation Army kettles boiling. And the perspiring bell-clanging Santa Clauses, lifting their whiskers now and then to mop their faces, give little more than comic symbolism to charity.

This morning I watched a couple of raggedy kids with noses flattened against the window of a department store toy display. But then appeared a far more pathetic figure—a third boy, this one in a limousine that drew up at, the curb to let a woman alight. The youngster flattened his nose against the car window and tried to see the animated toys. He couldn't get out. His wealthy father and second stepmother are afraid of kidnapers.
On Christmas morning, he'll have plenty of toys, and a governess and a bodyguard to help him play with them. His dad and the blond dish whom he calls "mother" will he up at Late Arrowhead with their gang.

Now, Tralfaz Sunday Theatre brings you the aforementioned parade-promoted film: Buck Benny Rides Again.

Christmas Every Day

Back when cynic Henry Morgan had a show at the tail end of network radio’s heyday, he featured a play with some kids wishing it were Christmas every day. They get their wish and soon regret it.

Mr. Morgan’s writers (and he had good ones) weren’t all that original. A former editor of The Atlantic Monthly, William Dean Howells, explored the same subject in 1892.

Howells’ story was adapted a number of times over the years, including once for an animated half-hour special. “Christmas Every Day” didn’t join the pantheon of classics such as “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” It aired on CBS in 1986 and, well, vanished unnoticed within a few years.

The interesting thing is this special was not the product of Hanna-Barbera, DePatie-Freleng, Filmation or even a studio in Japan. It was co-produced by a guy who recorded hundreds of funny radio commercials and was known by industry insiders as the man behind the syndicated satiristic series Chickenman: Dick Orkin.

Orkin had a stock company of actors—Patti Deutsch and John Stephenson come to mind—and he used some in this animated effort. You’ll recognise Orkin’s distinctive voice in several roles and Edie McClurg as the Christmas Fairy. Orkin’s home base was Chicago, and the city’s Calabash Animation was hired to make this special. Orkin’s company also produced the animated half-hour “The Canterville Ghost” in 1988 with Janet Waldo, Nancy Cartwright and Susan Blu in the voice cast (along with Orkin, who seems to have been heard in almost all the radio commercials he produced). Orkin’s sense of humour is evident in the story adaptation (such as no television set or radio in the living room of 100 years ago).

My apologies for the wowwing soundtrack on this archive.org upload. The print is pretty beaten up.

Mole and the Christmas Tree

A delightful little series of animated shorts starring a mole was produced by Krátký Film in the Czech Republic. One was centred around Christmastime—“Mole and the Christmas Tree.”

This one is aimed at the very young kids and co-stars Mole’s friend Mouse. You’ll have to forgive the wowwing soundtrack on this archive.org upload. It spoils the Wurlitzer organ music on the soundtrack. This film dates from 1976 and got shown in North American libraries and other such places at Christmastime to the kids.