Veola

At the age of 6, she was known as “The Wild Rose of KHJ.” A few decades later, you could hear her on the Jack Benny radio show, playing perky French governesses, sales clerks from Alabama or sexy women, who got knowing laughs from the audience whenever a reference was made to her, um, physical appearance.

She was Veola Vonn.

Well, at least she was for a time. Before that she was billed as Viola Vonn, and when she appeared on KHJ radio in Los Angeles in 1924 she was named Vyola Von. It turns out they were all stage handles.

There were other names, too, thanks to holy matrimony. Vonn married radio actor Hanley Stafford in 1940 after he was involved in a rather messy divorce. The witness at their wedding was another actor, Frank Nelson. She and Stafford remained wed until he died in 1968, then Vonn married Nelson two years later (just after his divorce). That lasted until he died in 1986.

A little detective work using on-line government data has revealed a bit more background. To the right, you see Brazilian documentation stating her father’s name was Frank Von Frankerberg. Actually, that’s not correct. His last name was Von Frankenberg and his actual first name was Ingo, though he later went by Frank. He was a salesman from Pine Bluff, Arkansas who married one Rose Kerner in November 1917. Only Rose was better known, according to Variety at the time, as Peggy LaRue of the Reisenweber Revue, “The Girl With the Perfect Figure,” so Veola came by her show biz talent quite naturally.

Her parents remained in New York while he she headed for Hollywood; she was already in motion pictures when she began her regular appearances on KHJ. She could dance (a Los Angeles Times photo shows her dancing a buck-and-wing on the hood of two-tone Auburn) and in the ‘30s she was singing in clubs before Eddie Cantor put her on his radio show as Mademoiselle Fifi in 1937. Her French accent was extremely convincing, and she found steady work using it (and other accents) on network radio. After the death of Blanche Stewart, she began acting as Mary Livingstone’s stand-in on the Benny radio show.

Vonn’s press people decided to get hopping in 1953 as a number of short newspaper articles about her appear. We’ll pass along a few. The first is from March 12th.

Learning To Speak English Language Like Frenchwoman Pays Off For Film Actress
By BEN COOK
United Press Staff Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD — (UP) — The trick is not to speak French as the French would speak it, but to speak English like a Frenchwoman.
That is the system that paid off, anyway, for Veola Vonn, who parlayed a high school course in French into a successful radio career, and now into a screen career.
She never could seem to make any real headway when she studied French in high school at Los Angeles. But she did learn to toss in a "oui, oui" now and then and to shrug her shoulders and gesture the way an American thinks a Frenchwoman ought to.
She even fooled Charles Boyer, who mistook her for a real, honest-to-goodness French gal. It was one of her proudest moments.
"He began talking French to me," she recalls, "and I answered him in English—with accent, of course. I was doing fine until he asked me what part of France I came from."

In South Seas Film
Miss Vonn is displaying her stock in trade once again in an important role as a French hotel owner in "Sulu Sea," a Warner Brothers picture starring Burt Lancaster and Virginia Mayo. She plays the aunt of three teen-age nieces, and, instead of guarding them from a three-way romance with the worldly Lancaster eggs them on in true French theatrical tradition.
Veola entered radio 10 years ago on an Eddie Cantor program and since then has displayed her delightful French accent on nearly every big radio show. So well established is she as a French comedienne that radio script writers simply jot down, "a Veola part," when they want to describe a French character.
"Sulu Sea" is her second picture. Her first was "The Big Sky," in which she showed she could look as well as sound, authentically Gallic in the role of a French barmaid.
Miss Vonn was born in New York and is the wife of Hanley Stafford, radio actor who for years played the role of Baby Snooks' father.

It would appear Veola met with a gaggle of reporters toward the end of the year. Both the National Enterprise Association and United Press took the same angle in their stories. The first appeared in papers around December 22nd as part of a column on a number of celebrities, the second is from November 19th.

Veola Vonn Says Seductive Voice Beats Oomph Shape
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
HOLLYWOOD (NEA)—A Hollywood radio actress, hailed by Jack Benny and Edgar Bergen as "the girl with the most-undressed voice on the air," insists that a plunging contralto is more important to a woman's sex appeal than a plunging neckline.
"Voice seduction," says Veola Vonn, "is much better than a 38-inch bust. Marlene Dietrich could quote racing odds and still sound inviting."
A regular on the Benny, Bergen and other top CBS radio shows from Hollywood, Veola's theory is: "Too many would-be femmes fatales stress the wrong thing They're more interested in undressing themselves than their voices. Many an illusion has been shattered when a walking dream attempts to be a talking dream."

VEOLA MAKES IT PAY
'Undressed Voice' Cloaked by Radio
By VERNON SCOTT
HOLLYWOOD (UP)—The name Veola Vonn is not well known, but her sultry voice has paved the way to a sparkling income in radio because, as she says, "A plunging contralto is more important than a plunging neckline."
Described by Jack Benny and Edgar Bergen as radio's most "undressed voice," Veola is well qualified to discuss physiques. She has a neat 38-inch measurement herself.

Too many would-be temptresses stress the wrong thing," according to Veola. "Gals are more interested in the measuring tape than in scales musical ones. Seductiveness begins and ends with a woman's voice as far as I'm concerned."
THE POLISH-Hungarian actress says many illusions have been shattered when so-called "walking dreams" turn out to be nightmares the minute they open their mouths. Veola, who uses a variety of dialects as a regular on the Benny program and other radio shows, once received a marriage proposal from a Frenchman who heard her as a sensuous Parisienne maid on the Benny program. She never studied the language.
"That just proves the importance of the sound of sex," Veola smiled. "No matter what the nationality, language, accent or dialect, the voice is still the thing. That sound has got to be there."
TO PROVE her point, Veola thought a minute and came up with a good example Marilyn Monroe.
"That gal has one of the sexiest figures in the business, and she has a vocal coach working to make her sound like she looks. And Lauren Bacall spent hours yelling at the top of her lungs until her voice was husky enough to suit Howard Hawkes who directed her first picture."
Summing up her theory, Veola says, "A girl with a good figure and no voice just can't make the grade. But give any kind of a gal a sexy voice and men will forget about her shape."

Vonn’s first appearance on the Benny show was January 25, 1942 as a French maid. By the time the radio show signed off in 1955, she was standing in for an increasingly absent Mary Livingstone and taking parts in playlets that Mary would have done in earlier years.

Vonn was born on July 27, 1918 and died in Glendale on October 28, 1995.

Fleischer Turtle Drum

The Fleischer studio’s love of makeshift gadgets manifested itself yet again in the Betty Boop cartoon Zula Hula where Betty and Grampy crash-land in the jungle and are threatened by Zulus (or is it Zulas?).

Grampy finally invents some musical instruments which get the natives dancing, diverting their attention so our heroes can make their escape in a monkey-propelled helicopter.

My favourite animation is of the mouth movements of the natives when Betty and Grampy arrive and of one dance scene where the shaking bodies turn into wavy lines. But there’s also a funny little scene where a frightened turtle is turned into a drum with a wrench beating on him thanks to a jury-rigged conveyor belt.



This cartoon is a great example of dialogue not matching mouth movements.

One theatre in Alabama debuted this cartoon along with the feature Ali Baba Goes to Town on December 13, 1937, eleven days before its “official” release date. Zula Hula was submitted for Oscar consideration but was not one of the final selections.

I’ve only been able to find one reference to the term “zula hula” that doesn’t involve this cartoon. A 1935 story in the Pittsburgh Courier reports on a basketball game involving the New York Rens, and calls them the “Zula-hula-skirted wonders of the court” (they had beaten the Celtics 7 out of 11 games). I haven’t seen any pictures indicating the players dressed in hula skirts as they took on white teams, but I’ll stand corrected.

He's in There!

Bugs Bunny points out where he is hiding to the big bad wolf in Little Red Riding Rabbit. After several misfires, it turns out Bugs actually is hiding where he’s pointing.

Through the magic of frame grabs, you can see at least one frame where Bugs is in two places at once.



Two Bugs.



Bugs runs out of the frame.



Mike Maltese got the story credit, and the same type of gag was used several times at Warner Bros. by different writers.

Manny Perez gets the rotating animator credit in one of Friz Freleng’s most enjoyable cartoons.

Cartoon Logic and Hugh Harman

Who can make a cartoon from a C-list studio interesting? Mark Kausler, that’s who. An example is to the right: Van Beuren’s Rough on Rats; his commentary can be found on-line.

He has done the same thing with A-list studios, too, as you would know if you’ve heard his DVD commentaries on early Tom and Jerry cartoons at MGM. No endless giggling. No wild fanboi theories masquerading as fact. No attention-seeking ranting. Just very easy-to-listen to explanations about cartoons and some of the stories behind them and who made them.

Mark has expanded well past the seven-minute short mark into a feature-length podcast interview. He’s been interviewed by animator Bob Jaques and historical writer Thad Komorowski about a subject Mark knows a lot about—pioneering animator/director/producer Hugh Harman. Mark was a personal friend of Hugh’s in later years so he has a treasure trove of first-hand information about Disney silents in the 1920s, the start of Merrie Melodies at Warners and the attempt to out-Disney Walt Disney at MGM in the 1930s.

In the podcast, he talks about the Harman-Ising partnership, Harman’s lean years (Ising was living in Bel Air; Harman was bumming cash). He has stories you probably have never heard before. The one that caught my attention was a lawsuit Harman and Ising launched against Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera over Ruff and Reddy.

Poor interviewers make themselves the subject. Jaques and Komorowski never do. They ask a question and get out of the way to let Mark tell his stories.

You can hear the podcast below. Mark comes in after a three-minute introduction. You can also go to the Cartoon Logic page and find links to previous podcasts. There should be at least one subject of interest to people who want to learn more about the history of animated cartoons.

Sitting In With Jack Benny

What was it like going to a Jack Benny Jell-O broadcast? The answer is in this newspaper story from May 10, 1937.

The reporter managed to have a chat with Jack afterwards. Perhaps the most surprisingly thing is Jack’s claim that when his radio show started in 1932, most of his material was made up. That would be a surprise to Harry Conn, who developed the show with Benny until he quit/was fired about a year before this article saw print. Perhaps Mr. Benny wanted to wash any thought of Mr. Conn out of his mind. Regardless, he has an interesting theory about sophisticated city comedy vs. rural hokum comedy.

The broadcast, by the way, was on April 25th. There was one for the East Coast and another for the West Coast in those days. There’s no mention of a second broadcast in the story, nor a warm-up prior to each show.

When Jack Benny Talks, 27,200,000 Listen
No. 1 COMIC OF THE AIR GETS A MILLION A YEAR FROM FILMS AND RADIO
Fred Allen's Bosom Enemy Tells Brundidge How He Plans Broadcasts — Big Problem Is Comedy Subtle Enough for Farm Belt Folks, Not City Sophisticates.
All Gags and Chatter Are Written and Revised, but Only One Rehearsal Is Held Hour Before Performance — How Jack Met and Married Mary Livingston.
BY HARRY T. BRUNDIDGE.
Copyright, 1937, by St. Louis Star-Times.
HOLLYWOOD, May 10.— His name is Benjamin Kirselsky [sic]—Jack Benny to you—and he is the world's number one radio entertainer. His radio sponsors pay him $12,500 a week (not stage money) and out of this he has only to pay the men who write his programs. Paramount Pictures pay him $125,000 in a lump sum for his every production and his 1937 income will top $1,000,000.
Under the system of rating radio stars, now accepted as authentic, he is on the top spot with 34 points; each point represents 800,000 listeners and according to this system some 27,200,000 persons hear Benny every Sunday.
On a recent Sunday I went to the little theater in the NBC studio to watch him stage his program, which had been rehearsed for the first and only time an hour before. Benny hates rehearsals, says they take the punch out of a program. "My rehearsals are the worst in the world," he told me. "If they were good I'd be worried about the regular broadcast."
The little theater was packed to capacity. Tickets to broadcasts are not sold; all are given away to applicants, usually weeks in advance. (You apply in January and get a ticket for a May show.) Because tickets are hard to obtain, the visible audience is always one that is highly appreciative, ready to laugh at a joke they heard grandpa tell forty years ago. But the boys and girls on the stage at ALL broadcasts do NOT depend on the spontaneity of the audience. Someone on the stage at EVERY broadcast gives the audience the cue and laughter is turned on and off with a mere wave of the hand.
AS I settled down in the "wings," to watch the performance, Jack Benny, the star; Mary Livingston, his wife; Phil Harris, the orchestra leader; Don Wilson, the announcer, and others of the cast took their places on the stage. Michrophones [sic] were at strategic points. Each member of the cast has a copy of the script because nothing is memorized; everything is read from a script that has been prepared by professional writers, and approved by the advertising agency which represents the sponsor, and by officials of the broadcasting company. Now and then there is some extemporaneous joke or comment, but that is infrequent.
The stage manager, stop watch in hand, watches the seconds tick away. Then, with a long sweep of his arm he indicates that the program "is on the air."

What follows — save for the scripts in the hands of the performers — looks exactly like a scene from a musical comedy. Don Wilson, the announcer, introduces the program by naming it and saying it is starring Jack Benny, with Mary Livingstone and Phil Harris and his orchestra. The orchestra opens the program with "Hallelujah, Things Look Rosy Now."
The number is completed. Wilson steps close to the nearest mike.
WILSON: Spring's the time to wake up and live . . . swing into the new tempo ... go places and do things ——"
As the announcement (or plug) is finished and the music fades, Benny reads from his script:
JACK: Hey, Mary, come here. Don't you love the way Phil wiggles around when he leads the orchestra? Look at him.
MARY: Yeah! If he could only see himself. (She giggles.) He sure is cute though, isn't he?
JACK: Yes, but he doesn't have to show off so much. After all it isn't television.
WILSON: Jack, quiet, your microphone is open.
JACK: What?
WILSON: Everybody can hear you.
JACK: Oh, I'm sorry.
(MUSIC UP AND FINISH.)
CROWD: (Applause.)
THE foregoing is direct quotation from the script. Even the crowd's cue is written in! But why the applause at that point? Ask the script writers— I don't know!
With the broadcast at an end, there was a mad rush of musicians, spectators, electricians and others to gain the street; Benny, his secretary, Harry Baldwin, and I joined the milling mob, battled through the perennial autograph seekers and finally reached the seclusion of a booth in "The Grotto," next door to the Melrose avenue studio.
"Maybe I ought to feel a little impressed with myself for within a few days — May 2 — I will celebrate my fifth year on the air," Benny said. "But as a matter of truth I am far more impressed with radio than with myself. I've made some strides in those sixty months and may be a bit more polished on May 2 when I give my 287th broadcast, than I was on my first, but radio has moved ahead so rapidly that in the same period I feel my own progress has been that of a snail on a treadmill by comparison.
"In common with other so-called funny men on the radio five years ago, most of my stuff was made up as I went along. We didn't spend much time working over a script for we figured that if a joke was bad we could think of something on the spur of the moment that would make it a lot better.
THAT was a fallacy. Many times as we stood before the mike our brains wouldn't think up anything and many times the jokes we did think up were more feeble than those they replaced. That is one of the improvements comedians have made. Scripts are written by experts, far in advance of a program, read, revised, worked over and, usually, revised again after a rehearsal.
"Compare the picture of my first broadcast with the one we did this afternoon. In the first broadcast I had an audience of forty or fifty persons jammed into a small corner of a studio that wouldn't have held twenty in comfort — if everyone breathed right. Then I was in a glass cage, separated from the audience. While radio listeners could hear the suppressed giggles of my visible audience, I couldn't. I had to watch the audience through the sheet of glass and wait until they closed their mouths so I could go ahead with the next joke. I got to be a great lip reader, but since I wanted to be a comedian and not an interpreter, I had the glass taken out and the sounds let in. When others found that this idea worked without blasting the microphone off its foundations, they did the same thing, and we haven't been bothered by glass partitions since."
"There were other odd little customs in broadcasting five years ago. The first time I stepped up to a mike I was told that if I so much as moved my head, the listeners would be unable to follow my words. I did a lot of broadcasts with my head glued to one spot in front of the microphone, and I suffered from chronic stiff neck. Today I can stroll all over the stage, virtually go out for a walk during a broadcast, and still be picked up by the small mikes now in use, for they have been made that flexible and sensitive. The NBC trademark letters would have to be made small enough to hang on a woman's charm bracelet to find the mikes we actually use today.
"My hope is that for the next five years radio will decide to amble along at the leisurely pace we comics have taken so that we comics can make the advances that radio has made."
BENNY, five feet, eleven inches tall, well groomed, with blue eyes, brown hair, and weighing 160 pounds, has a far-away look in his eyes and goes off into daydreaming trances. In one of these he elbowed me and returned to mere earth with, "I beg your pardon—what were you saying?"
WAUKEGAN, ILL., was my birthplace," said Benny," and the date was 1894. I was a St. Valentine's Day present. Father was a haberdasher in Waukegan and I grew up with a collar and shirt under one arm and a fiddle under the other. It's the same fiddle which Fred Allen has been discussing for weeks — discussing whether I can play it. Pop thought that as a haberdasher's clerk I would make a good fiddler, but orchestra leaders put that thought in reverse, so I decided to go into vaudeville with a monologue and a fiddle. Theater managers, listening to me, decided pop, the orchestra leaders and myself were all nuts because, as a monologist, I was a good fireman or deckhand on a boat.
"We got into the war and I left vaudeville flat and joined the navy. I thank the navy. Were it not for the sailor suit they gave me at Great Lakes I still wouldn't have the nerve to try to get away with what I have been getting away with ever since. That sailor suit gave me a lot of confidence because people respected wartime sailors; they were supposed to be hard guys.
"The war ended and I went back into vaudeville. More and more I cheated on fiddling and leaned heavily on nonchalant chatter. It got so I was being paid good money just for idling through fifteen minutes of monologue.
"Eventually I worked up to $2,500 a week and I'm frank to say I was making almost as much or more at $2,500 a week than I'm making now — and that goes for everything I'm making. I do not pay off the stage show out of my income; I pay only my writers. But Uncle Sam with his income tax law is the guy I'm really working for.
"I told you before the broadcast about writers — the important thing is that a writer should know what is bad. If he can select the good from the bad he's a genius. You can take my word for it. The bad material is what hurts.
MOST writers try to be ultra-sophisticated and in the attempt, forget that with the coming of the automobile, the radio, and the motion picture, city limits were all but wiped out. The line between the urban and the suburban today is so fine as to be almost indistinguishable. There's no such thing as a 'hick' any more and the 'small' town has vanished. The Missouri Ozarks farmer demands an ever higher grade of entertainment — and a newer joke — than the New York City broker, because the Ozark fellow spends more time at the radio, listening, than does his city cousin and knows all the answers.
"Comedians used to say 'It will be great for the hicks in the sticks but Broadway will give you the horse laugh.' Now the comics assert: 'Broadway and Hollywood will giggle but toss it out — it won't get by in the sticks.'
"No longer do the so-called horny-handed sons and daughters of the man with the hoe weep at such songs as 'You Made Me What I Am Today;' they're too busy singing Robin and Rainger love songs, and they're swinging about the barn to the tunes of Benny Goodman and Phil Harris and can't be bothered with 'Turkey in the Straw.'
I SHALL illustrate my point. We had a gag that laid them in the aisles in New York. Here it is:
" 'Q. Who was the lady I seen you with last night?'
" 'A. What were you doing in that part of town?'
"But you should have read the fan mail from the farms, villages, and small towns; letters that topped that gag in 100 different ways, and all old.
"The Burns and Allen program is one of the most popular on the air and it couldn't be that without the warm following of fans in the rural districts. I happen to know that their fan mail shows that one of their most rib-tickling gags was appreciated far more by their rural listeners, than by the so-called city folks. Here's the gag: Milton Watson was leaving the Burns and Allen program and after the usual build up, Gracie told Milton to kiss her goodby. There were a series of torrid kisses and then:
GRACIE: Goodbye GEORGE. I'm going with Milty.
"Modern?
"To be successful, on the air you have to write up to the small towns and rural districts, not down. The greatest mistake a comedian can make is underestimating the intelligence of the audience. Those who make that mistake don't last long. They're too lazy to dig up new material, or too dumb to understand that people in the 'sticks' also enjoy subtle humor."

MY BIGGEST thrill in radio was when a guy in the Ohio state penitentiary, about to be electrocuted, wrote and told me he was very much interested in my feud with Fred Allen, over the subject of whether I could really fiddle. He wrote that he wanted to know the outcome of that feud before sitting on the hot seat. Allen and I both wrote to him and told him how the feud would end. The next week the guy got a commutation of his sentence to life imprisonment and wrote us the Ohio prison inmates had a hearty laugh on the two of us because they knew all along that our feud was bound to end that way.
MY LIFE has been mostly work. I never did anything last night that the world was crazy about the next day. Nothing I ever said tonight was commented on tomorrow. It has just been a procession of programs. I've spent twenty-five years climbing up the greasiest ladder that was ever greased and believe me, you can slide down a damned sight faster than you can climb up.
"My routine hasn't changed. I'm doing the same thing on the air to day I did when I was a master of ceremonies at shows in the Orpheum Theater in St. Louis.
"My most exciting experience on the radio was the night of March 14 in New York. Fred Allen and I had been going after each other for three months and on that night we got together, threw away our scripts and went after each other, tonsil to tonsil.
BENNY, now making his eighth motion picture, was preparing to leave and I reminded him he had told me nothing of Mary Livingstone, his wife.
"Sorry," he said. "I met her in Los Angeles. She was a sales girl in a department store and was pinch hitting for a girl with whom an actor friend had made a date for me, but who failed to show. Mary kept the date and, although I didn't know it, I fell in love and that fact didn't dawn on me until I wrote to her sister and learned Mary was engaged to a guy in Vancouver, B. C. I suggested a trip to Chicago. Mary came to Chicago and I proposed and was accepted. We were married on Friday instead of Sunday because we both figured if we waited until Sunday the wedding probably would never take place.
"Would you believe it, we've been married ten years and six months and it only seems like ten years?"

Twurtling Norm

He was a disc jockey who admitted he accepted payola. He was a promotions man for an amusement park that was reorganising after bankruptcy. Then he set his sights on something completely different—making an animated feature film with no experience in cartoons.

And he succeeded.

His name was Norm Prescott.

You know him best as the co-owner of Filmation. But before he bought a 40% stake in the struggling animation company from Lou Scheimer, he came up with the idea for a feature film with a completely goofy concept: he would take Pinocchio and put him in a modern-day setting in outer space.

It took Prescott some time to get the puppet-boy back from the cosmos and onto theatre screens.

In 1960, Daily Variety had been covering testimony at the U.S. government’s payola hearings; Prescott had quit his job at WBZ Boston in July 1959 and testified it was in disgust for accepting $10,000 from various record pluggers. After a short-lived job as a promotional guy for Embassy Pictures, he took a job at a theme park but decided to get into animation production on the side. The trade paper reported on August 10th that he was getting into the cartoon business. A longer version of the story appeared a week later in Variety out of New York.

Norm Prescott's European Animation Film Project
Boston, Aug. 16.
Norm Prescott, former disk jock on WNEW, N.Y., and WBZ, Boston, and former veep with Joe Levine's Embassy Pictures Corp., on "Hercules" and "Hercules Unchained," is now veep in charge of exploitation of Pleasure Island, the $4,900,000 family amusement park in Wakefield, Mass. He's also going into animated film production.
Prescott, who has set up Norman Prescott Productions, flys to Brussels Sept. 9 to supervise start of production on his first full length color Cinemascope animated film, which will also be a tv pilot. As yet untitled, the film deals with a new cartoon character adventure series.
The film is being made in Zurich, and Prescott will spend three weeks in Europe with his animation director and is bringing his own music, dialoge and sound effects track, story board and pre-directed exposure sheets with him.
He plans to launch the production immediately and get the cells into work. He hopes to make several European deals for the "film with several meetings set up, and will have the film ready by Jan. 1, 1961, for Easter release in the U.S.

Variety later reported on jaunts to Denmark and Switzerland where the animation was supposedly going to be done. Boxoffice magazine gave an update in its May 21, 1962 edition. Prescott’s promotional concepts may be more hilariously outrageous than anything dreamed up for his Filmation cartoons.

First Full-Length Animated Feature by Norman Prescott Almost Ready

BOSTON—Norman Prescott, for 13 years Boston’s leading radio and TV personality, and now executive vice-president of Pleasure Island, 79-acre family fun park at Wakefield, Mass., has announced the near completion of his first full-length animated feature film “Pinocchio’s Adventure in Outer Space.” Two years in the making, the production is now being completed in Europe.
Prescott started in the film business with Joseph E. Levine’s Embassy Pictures as vice-president in charge of the television and music departments. While with Embassy, he became interested in the animation phase of the business and, after a year and a half, left to set up his own production company producing animated features.
With Fred Ladd, writer-director of television’s “Greatest Fights of the Century” series, he formed Prescott-Ladd Productions. The producers spent six months at the Hayden Planetarium gathering latest government space data plus authentic pictures and drawings to be used as backgrounds in the film for authenticity. Martin Cadin, writer of more than 100 books on space, and foremost authority on the subject, currently science reporter from Cape Canaveral for WNEW, New York, was hired to act as technical adviser.
FILM HAS THREE SONGS
The picture has three songs entitled: “Goody Good Morning,” “Doin’ the Impossible,” and “The Little Toy Shop.” The cast includes the voices of Arnold Stang; Jess Cain, morning radio personality WHDH, Boston; Minerva Pious, radio’s famous “Mrs. Nussbaum” on the Fred Allen Show, and other New York radio voice personalities.
The new film, under the name of Prescott-Ladd Productions, will be the first Boston-based film production in the animated field with offices in New York. The new company is of special interest to Bostonians, not only because Prescott is a local man, but also because many other Boston figures are involved in it.
Prescott says he chose “Pinocchio” as the hero of his story because as a child he recalled that the wooden character would not be involved in future adventures of a continuing kid since the author had written only one story. Knowing that millions of other children must feel the same way spurred Prescott to create the idea of projecting the wooden puppet into the year 1962. Ladd wrote an original screenplay immediately based on the space theme.
Commenting on the picture, for which a Boston press reception and screening is now being arranged, Prescott said: “With so many films being made on sex, violence, perversion themes and not enough wholesome attention being given the youth of the world, this film could not be an ordinary science-fiction picture, but, rather, is based on entertaining science fact and educational material.”
PLANS BOSTON PREMIERE
Prescott plans to premiere the animated film in Boston with a daytime word premiere for children from all over the world with the help of UNICEF.
According to plans now being worked out, children will be flown in from many European countries to the U.S. to attend. Plans are also being made for Lassie and Dennis the Menace, Jay North, to head special premiere parades in Boston with Bozo, the Clown, Rex Trailer and other Boston television personalities participating. Also special science contests are planned for airing over television with the winning boys and girls going to Washington to meet the President, and visiting Cape Canaveral.
Already in production is a second animated feature, as yet untitled, Prescott revealed, for which Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen have completed two songs and are currently finishing up two eight additional songs in Hollywood.

The second feature was a version of “The Wizard of Oz,” which had a gestation period of more than a decade.

Since we have heretofore spared you a summary of Ladd’s odd plot, suffice it to say it begins with Pinocchio’s punishment by being turned into wood again. To be returned to human state, he must go into outer space where he meets up with a space turtle (or twurtle as the movie calls him) named Nurtle played by Arnold Stang. They take on a space whale named Astro (not to be confused with a space dog named Astro owned by the Jetsons). “Based on entertaining science fact and educational material.” Yeah, right, Norm.

Daily Variety reported on October 25, 1962 that sound editing was being done on “Pinocchio.” The national version of the paper published on the 31st went into a bit more detail.

Offbeat Scoring in N.Y. For Denmark-Animated 'Outer Space' Feature
Boston, Oct. 30.
Boston-based producer Norman Prescott returned here from Europe, where he put the finishing editing touches on his animated film feature, "Pinocchio's Adventure in Outer Space." Film is a 75 min., animated wide screen, Eastman color production.
Scoring of the picture and sound effects will be completed at Titra Sound Studios, New York. Scoring will take an estimated three months because of the intricate electronic sounds to be created. Arrangements and original sound track will be done entirely with tympani and electronic music creating an unusual sound effect for the outer space sequences.
Walter Scharf, who just completed the Jerry Lewis picture, "It's Only Money," will do scoring. Picture was made in Denmark. It will be ready for summer release, 1963.
Prescott said he had completed a deal in Europe with Editions Du-Lombard, Belgium, for publishing, printing and distribution of hard cover, soft cover and comic books, based on the film, for distribution throughout the world in 18 languages.
Prescott said he has not shown film to any distribs yet, and will await its final completion before doing, so.

Sound editing was still being done as of July 1963, according to an edition of Variety that came out that month. Then there was silence. Prescott was continuing to work on Oz, he had worked out a deal for a Marx Brothers TV series that never got made (Mike Maltese was hired to write it) and had bought into a new company called Filmation that was doing some work on Oz. Finally Variety reported on August 4, 1965 that Universal had agreed to distribute the feature at Christmas time.

Why the delay in Pinocchio’s release? I’ve not been able to find an explanation. It could be distributors just weren’t interested or they couldn’t reach terms with Prescott and Ladd. Universal would appear to be an odd choice. It was still releasing shorts from Walter Lantz (I shudder at the idea of a Beary Family feature). And Pinocchio has nothing to do with Christmas.

Reviews were mixed. Parents’ Magazine gave the movie its medal for December and rated it “very good” for children 8 to 12. Howard Thompson of the New York Times noted “some pretty, imaginative colored backgrounds, moving along with an easy sense of fun for the space-minded young...a trim, winning little package aimed at the small fry.” Variety’s “Robe” wasn’t terribly impressed, stating “The occasional sci-fi sections (and a very good pre-title sequence) are considerably better than the original character depiction” and called the screenplay “simple, direct, and unimaginative.”

What about a sequel? “Robe” continued: “Possibilities of follow-ups are indicated by final comment that ‘you haven’t seen the last of Pinocchio.’ Depending, obviously, on percentage of turnover at the ticket wicket. It is doubtful that Disney has any reason to worry.”

There was no sequel or prequel. Prescott was suddenly busied with an offer received by Filmation to make a Saturday morning animated Superman series. It aired starting in the fall of 1966 and was a huge hit. Filmation followed it with an even bigger success—the first of a bunch of cartoon series starring Archie.

Nurtle the Twurtle and Astro the Whale are still waiting for their comeback.

As for Walt Disney, Variety’s edition of November 24, 1965 had this huge faux pas:

Houston Dome Screen: 185 Feet By 65 Feet
Houston, Nov. 23.
World’s largest motion picture screen will be installed at the Domed Stadium here during the Christmas holidays for the world premiere showing of Walt Disney’s “Pinnochio in Outer Space.” There is a possibility that Disney might be here for the premiere activities.

Somehow, we think Uncle Walt took a pass on this one.

The Return of Animato!

Once upon a time, there was no internet. If you wanted to see cartoons, you watched them on TV or (if you were lucky) bought some on 16 millimetre film and ran them through a projector.

If you wanted to read about cartoons, you went to the book store or the library. There, you could thumb through Leonard Maltin’s “Of Mice and Magic” and discover whole chapters devoted to studios you had never heard of. You could pick up a book by Joe Adamson and learn all about an unfamiliar man named Tex Avery who made funny cartoons. Things like this were the building blocks of animation historical research that we, frankly, take for granted these days.

Historians struck the spark. Soon, others interested in old animated cartoons found each other and began writing and sharing. This sprouted fan magazines which collected and revealed things for the first time, such as every cartoon made featuring Scrappy, or the history of Mighty Mouse.

More years ago than I care to remember, I somehow happened upon a little publication called “Mindrot.” I subscribed. I saved copies; they’re ten feet away in my bookshelf. Then I ended up subscribed to something called “Animato!” (there seems to have been a debate about how the word was pronounced). One day I renewed my subscription and the magazine stopped coming. I wrote a letter (no e-mail then) and asked why. I never got an answer. I still don’t know why.

Anyway, “Animato!” was edited for a time by Harry McCracken who has taken time away from valuable Scrappy research to scan and post seven editions he edited on archive.org for, we hope, permanent preservation.

You can link to them right here.

Those of you used to a couple of decades of instant, in depth information about cartoons, their makers and their studios, may think these magazines are a little quaint, bare bones, and perhaps primitive. I wish to point out some of the finest historians of their time wrote for it and anything they have to say, regardless of how much more we know today, is worthy of perusal.

Many of the authors are still writing in one venue or another, and I’m pleased some are even friends on Facebook. It’s worth your time to flip through these editions.

Summertime

Steamboat Willie started a simple formula in sound cartoons—action on the screen synchronised to music or sound effects. That was in 1928. Other studios started doing the same thing when they went to sound. For a while, that sufficed as entertainment.

Ub Iwerks’ studio was still doing it in 1935. In the misnamed short Summertime (it is set during the start of spring), the plot is full of Disney—scenes of frolicking animals and plants with the gentlest of humour.

An example is a scene when two turtles are playing Xs and Os on a sleeping turtle. It’s all timed to the classical music. The gag is the mildest possible as the turtles emote. A take consists of one turtle’s neck stretching up. Regardless, you can tell what the turtles are thinking by their expressions.



The turtles may have been laughing, but I’ll bet the audience wasn’t.

Meanwhile, over at Schlesinger’s, Friz Freleng was directing musical cartoons that stayed away from coyness and went for a few laughs. Still, the few reviews I’ve read from when the cartoon came out are positive. Colour and gentleness could still entice critics. Despite this, the Depression was tough for an independent studio (Iwerks) and distributor (Pat Powers) and the ComiColor series was gone about a year later.

I’m looking forward to the day when the ComiColors will finally be restored and get a public video release.

And I Will, Too

Poor Hay-De La Mare! The screen star is trapped in an accidental fire on the set of her film. Who will save her?



Why, it’s none other than the stunt stand-in for the star (who cowardly slithered away like a snake when the fire started). It’s the Mortimer Snerd-like Charlie Horse, who stops his daring rescue to look at the audience and exclaim “And I will, too!”



There’s a running gag in the cartoon about workmen carrying a flat across the screen in front of Charlie. It’s used as a gag topper, as when the flat passes by Charlie going into his rescue, we discover he’s somehow rescued Hay-De.



The cartoon is Bob Clampett’s final theatrical, It’s a Grand Old Nag, released on December 20, 1947 by Republic Pictures. This was intended as part of a series of cartoons (four originally) that Republic was set to release. However, this wasn’t exactly the best time to be a cartoon producer. MGM and Warner Bros. eliminated units, Columbia closed its Screen Gems cartoon studio altogether and Walter Lantz would soon go on a year-plus hiatus due to a lack of cash after changing distributors. Showmen’s Trade Review of March 6, 1948 reported:

Republic revealed this week it is considering dropping production of short subjects. Over a year ago Republic made its first shorts’ commitment with Bob Clampett Productions, but complications that ensured kept the program from getting into gear.
Accordingly, the studio executives are watching closely the reaction to “It’s a Grand Old Nag,” first of six scheduled Trucolor cartoons which goes into national release March 9. If it gets solid reaction, the rest may be resumed. Otherwise, Republic will remain shorts-less.

Despite Clampett’s groaner punny names (his Beany and Cecil cartoons for TV were littered with them) and switches on some familiar gags (the insanely long limo), this was the only Clampett short released by the studio and he would soon concentrate his efforts on TV. We posted about the cartoon here before Thad purchased the print from which these images come.

Dance of the College Footballers

It’s the day of the Chili Bowl, and the field goal kickers are warming up. They’re also performing a satisfied little dance.



This is from Screwball Football, a 1939 Tex Avery cartoon loaded with obvious puns. Virgil Ross gets the animation credit. The narrator is not Robert C. Bruce or Gil Warren.