I'll be Skiin' You

Olive Oyl needs rescuing (is that really a surprise?) in I-Ski Love-Ski You-Ski, a 1936 cartoon which opens with 3-D backgrounds and a song.

There’s perspective as Olive is sliding down a mountain and then into mid-air. The camera comes closer on her screaming so it looks like the mountain is directly underneath her.



Popeye catches her (in a manner of speaking). He sings, toot-toot, we’ve seen it all before.



Yes, Popeye mutters “I’ll be skiin’ you” in this cartoon.

Willard Bowsky and George Germanetti are the credited animators with Jack Mercer, Gus Wicke and Mae Questel providing voices.

Now I've Seen Everything

A ship carrying Horton the elephant braves the briny, choppy, ocean blue.



Appearing in the water....



... a Peter Lorre fish.



“Well,” Lorre Fish tells the audience, “now I’ve seen everything.” It’s a Warner Bros. cartoon so you know what’ll happen next.



Bob Clampett directed, Mike Maltese and Dick Hogan adapted Dr. Seuss’ story, with layouts by Nic Gibson. Horton Hatches the Egg was released in 1942.

It's Not Easy Being Funny

Radio’s earliest stars didn’t just walk into a radio studio and suddenly become stars, though the nation-wide exposure on a weekly basis certainly brought them larger fame. Almost all had been around for some time, playing vaudeville theatres across North America, appearing on the New York stage, or both.

When Canada Dry signed Benny for its radio show in 1932, he had already been on the stage for more than two decades, though his popularity rose as the ‘20s waned. Here’s a story in the Buffalo Evening News of May 26, 1933, talking about his career to date, which was still minus Jell-O, Sunday nights and Don Wilson. The source of the quotes in the column is unclear. Some of this showed up later in the year in a Sandusky, Ohio newspaper article we transcribed on the blog last year.

Anyone used to the later radio years, and certainly when Jack was on TV, may not be aware of Mary Livingstone’s huge popularity at the outset. I can’t help but wonder, as people mistake celebrity impersonators’ quotes for the real thing, if Mary wasn’t the one who first said “Come up and see me some time.”

Navy Showed Jack Benny
How to Make His Talk Pay
Radio Gagster Began as Violinist, But Put It Aside When He Found Words Were More Profitable Than Music.
By JOE HAEFFNER
Jack Benny is radio's glibbest son of the great god Gag. But it took a World war to start him talking.
Now nobody on his Friday night program can stop him. Frank Black may start his music, Howard Claney may announce a blurb, James Melton may do a solo and Mary Livingstone may interrupt him-—but Jack is undaunted. The suave, silken, sly Mr. Benny, goes on talking.
Listeners like to hear his gabbing and gagging. That's why you'll find plenty of folks gathered round their sets at 10 P. M. Friday to hear him over WBEN-WEAF. To get back to the war. Before joining the Navy he played a violin in vaudeville and said nothing. After an attempt to raise funds with a musical appeal at a seamen's benefit, Jack dropped the violin and started talking.
Talked Through Several Revues.
Since then he has talked his way through several Shubert musical revues, two editions of Earl Carroll's Vanities, half a dozen feature motion pictures—and into radio as one of its most popular masters of ceremonies.
Jack's family lived in Waukegan, Ill., but Jack was born in Chicago. They then carried him back to Waukegan and he stayed there for 17 years.
"My father gave me a violin and a monkey wrench," Jack told an NBC reporter, who passed along the information to us. "He told me not to take chances. Plumbing isn't a bad business, he said."
From all appearances Jack and the monkey wrench didn't get along so well, but he was practicing on the violin before he was 6 years old. At 16 he started playing in a Waukegan orchestra. A year later he and a piano-playing pal formed a vaudeville act.
Started Talking In Navy.

For six years Jack toured the country—and said nothing. Then came the war and Jack joined the Navy. At a benefit fund performance his violin playing brought applause—but no contributions.
Mr. Benny thought it over. If you want money you have to work for it—and ask for it. He put down the instrument and broke a six-year silence. He got contributions—and laughs. He repeated the trick. When the war was over he changed from gobbing to gagging. He returned to vaudeville—as a monologist.
His post-war vaudeville tour brought him to the Orpheum theater, Los Angeles. He stayed there eight straight weeks, broke a house record—and was headed for the talkies.
The glib Mr. Benny might have been in Hollywood yet had it not been for a Los Angeles girl. We think the girl must have said, "Hello, dark and handsome. Why dontcha come up sometime?" Anyway, Jack met her and continued to talk. The young lady, according to reports, just nodded her head—and suggested an eastern honeymoon.
Lives In New York.
You're right. The girl was Mary Livingstone, whose Mae West line about "coming up" is panicking millions weekly. Mary manages to sing a chorus, too, on these Friday WBEN programs. Jimmy Melton is her singing tutor.
The Bennys arrived in New York just as Earl Carroll was casting his annual edition of the Vanities. At Carroll's request, Benny dropped in to witness a rehearsal. When the curtain went up on the opening night, Benny was still there—in the show.
The Bennys live in New York. Jack doesn't understand why some actors balk at radio.
"I've got ham in me. What actor hasn't?" he told Whitney Bolton, a friend of his. "I've got enough ham in me to like facing an audience and feel it responding to my work. But on the air you reach a million or so.
Likes the Letters.
"And the letters you get take more time and thought than mere handclapping in a theater and they mean so much more."
It's not easy to be a funny man, says Jack, who takes his clowning seriously, like most comics. He's very businesslike offstage. When he's working up a "situation" gag, he prowls up and down his apartment, his brows wrinkled.
Jack Benny is this department's favorite comedian. He's the glibbest of the gagsters. He's certainly one of the most original comics.
He writes all of his stage monologues himself, most of his radio programs. Often he makes himself the butt of the jokes—and you know how people like to see the head man on the spot!
It may be inconsequential, but Jack broadcasts with his hat on. One of his hardest jobs is convincing people that Jack Benny is his real name. It is.

Metro Myths

It’s time on the Tralfaz blog for “MGM: True or False?”

1. Daws Butler voiced characters in Tex Avery’s 1945 cartoon Jerky Turkey.
Answer – False. Butler was still on military duty and had never stepped foot in Hollywood. His first MGM cartoon was Out-Foxed (1949) where he plays the Ronald Colman-esque fox. And Bill Thompson was on service in Chicago so he’s not in it, either.

2. Tom and Jerry cartoons occasionally included a character named “Mammy Two-Shoes.”
Answer – Likely False. There’s no evidence that I’ve seen from MGM model sheets or contemporary trade publications that the character had a name at all. If someone has definitive evidence, and I don’t mean “the name’s in a bunch of books” or “Wikipedia says...” please post it.

3. Tom and Jerry were originally named Jasper and Jinx.
Answer – Maybe. Certainly the cat was named Jasper; the housekeeper/maid refers to him by that name in the first Tom and Jerry cartoon, Puss Gets the Boot. The mouse’s name is never mentioned in the cartoon. Joe Barbera’s autobiography My Life in ‘toons (published in 1994) says “Jerry didn’t even have a name yet.” (pg. 74). Bill Hanna referred to him as “Jinx” in his autobiography, A Cast of Friends (published in 2000). But MGM had a name for the mouse in 1940, and it was neither Jerry nor Jinx.

The studio had a publication called “Short Story” which, basically, promoted its short subjects to exhibitors and included plot summaries from its various one and two-reelers, including the Pete Smith Specialites, John Nesbitt’s Passing Parade, the Our Gang films—and cartoons.

In the January-February issue, it featured two cartoons—The Fishing Bear and Puss Gets the Boot. The summaries would have been written in late 1939, before Puss ever reached screens. Here’s the item on that cartoon; the storyline will be familiar if you know the cartoon.

You’ll notice the absence of any mention of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, who we know today as being responsible for Puss, with credit given to Rudy Ising, whose name appeared on screen. An Associated Press story later in 1940 revealed Hanna and Barbera were behind the short; how that news got to the public press is, I suspect, a fascinating bit of studio politics yet to be uncovered.

PUSS GETS THE BOOT...
SINCE Eve evolved from Adam's rib, cats have waged constant war against mice. Now comes a one-mouse revolution brought on by a cat, that ends in victory for the mouse.
This story, as told in Rudolf Ising's latest M-G-M Cartoon, "Puss Gets the Boot," relates how this one small mouse, taking advantage of one large cat's shortcoming, subdues the larger warrior in a battle of wits and with the aid, of course, of circumstances.

Ising's cat feels particularly wicked, this day. Before putting an end to the mouse of his choice, he decides to toy with it. As the mouse pokes his head out of his hole, friend cat grabs him with his tail, flips him in the air, and lets him fall to the floor senseless. The cat then dips his paw into some ink and draws a false hole in the wall for the mouse. As soon as he awakens, the mouse makes a dash for his hole, runs into the solid wall and is knocked unconscious again. This time, when he awakens, he is angry. With great courage he strolls up to the cat and punches him right in the eye.
Furious, the cat runs after the mouse, and dashes right into a pillar that supports a beautiful vase. The vase falls to the floor, crashes into a thousand pieces, and the cat, Jasper, by name, is in for it. Immediately, the housekeeper chases after Jasper with a broom, beats him, and warns him that if anything else is broken in the house, he will be thrown into the street forever.
Now, the mouse, named Pee-Wee, knows how to handle Jasper. If Jasper tries to hurt him again, he'll break something and blame it on the cat. The next time Jasper chases Pee-Wee, the mouse runs to the edge of a table, grabs one of a set of cocktail glasses, and defiantly shouts that he will drop the glass if the cat comes any closer. With each of Jasper's lunges, Pee-Wee threatens to drop the glass. Finally, just to be ornery, Pee-Wee does drop the glass which Jasper catches, before it breaks, by the skin of his teeth. Another glass and still another come hurtling down with Jasper catching each one before it hits the floor. Now Jasper gets wise and places soft cushions all over so that even if Pee-Wee does drop the glasses, they won't break.
Jasper moves toward Pee-Wee, who threatens to drop another glass. Jasper laughs, the mouse drops the glass and it falls on the pillows and doesn't break. Immediately, Pee-Wee is in Jasper's tail, being tossed up and down like a ball of wool. But Jasper flips Pee-Wee a bit too high. The mouse catches on the ledge of a mantel on which there are many valuable plates. Immediately he starts throwing them to the floor. The cat dashes around madly, catching each dish until his arms are full.
Calmly, Pee-Wee comes down from the mantel, and kicks Jasper right into next week. Up in the air goes every dish, and down they come. The housekeeper catches the cat and banishes him from the house forever.
Calmly, and with great confidence, Pee-Wee strolls back to his hole, sighing, "Home, Sweet Home."

Whether “Pee-Wee” was a temporary name (like “The Flagstones” for a certain Hanna-Barbera prime-time cartoon), appeared on model sheets or was something merely used in-house, I can’t tell you. But it was the mouse’s name. The only references I’ve discovered stating “Jinx” was Jerry’s name are from decades after Puss Gets the Boot was made.

By the way, the artwork which accompanied the story must be a cel set-up. It doesn’t occur in the actual cartoon. But the background is in it, and so is Jerry being held in Tom’s tail. They’re in two different scenes.



Oh, one more MGM true or false:

4. Fred Quimby is a red-faced jerk.
Answer – Cal Howard thought so (according to interviewer Charles Solomon). Howard’s role at Metro, devoid of screen credits, is a story for another time.

Willie or Won't He Have a Fish Gag?

Grim Natwick and a few others brought a bit of a Fleischer sensibility to the Ub Iwerks studio—unfortunately not enough of it to make its cartoons truly funny.

Dave Fleischer liked little unexpected throw-away gags with little characters. There are a couple of these in Robin Hood, Jr., a 1934 Willie Whopper cartoon.

Willie, as the title character, throws a mop in Prince John’s face. The prince spits out the water that in the mop. There’s something else—a fish that winks at him.



The prince calls for his guards. One moves to reveal a pair of mice kissing. They are shocked to be discovered.



Natwick gets an animation credit, with the original score by Carl Stalling.

The Booze Goes South

“Deeper in the mountains,” intones narrator Frank Bingman, “we come upon a revenue agent closing in on a notorious moonshiner...”



“...who soon learns he cannot escape the long arm of the law.”

At this point, the revenooer’s arm stretches in a visual pun, smashes the booze and the still, plunks a hat back onto the hillbilly’s head and wags his finger in criticism.



This may be the closest you get to a Tex Avery style scene in a Hanna-Barbera unit cartoon at MGM. In fact, one theatre manager wrote the Motion Picture Herald and remarked how MGM cartoons had “gone wacky” like the Schlesinger cartoons. Who wrote the cartoon is open to conjecture. Joe Barbera always left the impression he was responsible for stories and gags in his unit, but there were uncredited gagmen, too, including Pinto Colvig and Cal Howard.

The Goose Goes South was released April 26, 1941. Hanna and Barbera would soon exclusively toil on Tom and Jerry, despite good reviews for this short.

Man of Letters

Egghead is Captain Johnny Smith in Johnny Smith and Poker-Huntas, as identified by the title on screen.

The title becomes part of the action when Egghead knocks over the letters.



Tex Avery and Rich Hogan have several other gags where characters interact with things that aren’t generally interacted with (title cards, a radio). The pace of this cartoon is quicker than Avery’s fake travelogues at Warners, where a narrator needs to set up each gag. A few of the gags are reminiscent of things he would try out at MGM after left Warners in 1941.

Mel Blanc provides a silly laugh for Egghead while Berneice Hansell is Poker-Huntas.

Two Husbands, Two Wives, One Refrigerator

Fred Allen disliked giveaway shows even before one of them knocked him off the air in 1949. He made fun of just about every kind of radio programme over the years, and the inanity of giving things to people who, in some cases, weren’t altogether bright, was a perfect target.

John Crosby quotes dialogue from one of them in his column of July 5, 1946. For those of you who don’t know, the Alsops were columnists Joseph and Stewart Alsop, brothers who wrote with Crosby on the New York Herald Tribune. I.J. Fox was a famous furrier. Mr. Anthony was a counsellor with a radio programme parodied by Allen and others. Maybe Allen thought “refrigerator” was a funny word, as he used it in other giveaway spoofs.

Minerva Pious and Charlie Cantor are the bride and groom. Cantor had been a regular stock player on Allen’s show going back to the mid-‘30s, and his Clifton Finnegan was one of the characters in the early Allen’s Alley sketches before Cantor moved to Duffy’s Tavern. Sid Raymond does an impersonation of Finnegan as Baby Huey.

Love, Honor and Obey
Now and then I get a streak of laziness and let Fred Allen write this column for me. It’s a practice which entrances the Allen fans and violently irritates the non-Allen people. Those in the latter category had best turn to the Alsops this morning, because I feel another streak of laziness coming on.
Last Sunday, on his last broadcast of the season, Mr. Allen, one of the few comedians in radio who writes his own scripts, presented a parody of the “Bride-and-Groom” program. “Bride and Groom” is a daytime program on which a couple is married every day from coast to coast and then laden with gifts from department stores which get a lot of free advertising on the air simply by donating a wrinkle-resistant raincoat. The program represents possibly the nadir in taste on the air, and that alone is sufficient excuse to offer a slightly condensed version of Mr. Allen’s parody, entitled “Love, Honour and Obey.”
ALLEN: Our lovely bride is regal in a flouncing double-breasted Mother Hubbard of stained cheesecloth with an organdy belt drooping in the back. Peeking through the cheesecloth we see m’lady is wearing lavender herringbone puttees. Carelessly over her left shoulder, she is wearing a bear claw—courtesy of I.J. Fox. Before we present our jumbo gift—the Igloo electric refrigerator, I would like to . . .
BRIDE: Where’s the refrigerator?
ALLEN: In a moment, Miss Slinger. And now for the love story that brought this happy couple together . . .
BRIDE: I don’t see no refrigerator.
ALLEN: Later, Miss Slinger. Now, Clifton, tell us about your courtship.
GROOM: (Played by Clifton Finnegan of “Duffy’s Tavern”) I foist seen Beulah about ten years ago—in Gimble’s basement.
ALLEN: Cupid was lurking in Gimble’s basement?
GROOM: I was the store detective. I was just prowlin’ around one mornin’—and there she was.
ALLEN: Beulah?
GROOM: Yeah, she was shopliftin’.
BRIDE: He cased me. Didn’t yer, Clifton?
GROOM: Yeah. She was jammin’ moichandise inter here umbrella. Our eyes met over the garter belt counter.
ALLEN: It was love at first sight?
GROOM: She sees me badge and starts runnin’—being coy.
BRIDE: He cornered me in men’s underwear.
ALLEN: What was your next move, Mr. Finnegan?
GROOM: I pinched her. She became docile.
ALLEN: And that’s how love blossomed?
GROOM: Yeah. In the patrol wagon, through the handcuffs, we was holdin’ hands.
ALLEN: That was ten years ago. And it took you ten years to ask her to marry you?
GROOM: Yeah, she just got out this week.
● ● ●
Here the bride and groom were married by Fenton Boswick, Justice of the Peace, “available at reasonable rates for weddings, births, burials—also oil burners repaired.” The bride brushed aside the ring and inquired anxiously: “Where is the refrigerator?”
ALLEN: And now, Mr. and Mrs. Finnegan, “Love Honor and Obey” has planned your honeymoon. Waiting for you outside is a truck furnished by the Sanitation Department that will whisk you to the city limits. There two men will be waiting to walk you to Niagara Falls. When you return, you will appear as King and Queen of the Fulton Fish Market Flounder Festival. That night you will sleep in the honeymoon window at Macy’s. Breakfast at the Mills Hotel . . .
BRIDE: When do we get the refrigerator?
ALLEN: Right now! There you are—a genuine white casual porcelain Igloo electric refrigerator—and it’s all yours!
BRIDE: Boy, what a beaut!
GROOM: Yeah, I gotta tell Lulu about this. Where’s the phone?
ALLEN: Wait a minute. Who’s Lulu?
GROOM: My wife.
ALLEN: Your wife! Miss Slinger, this is bigamy. We’ve married you to a married man.
BRIDE: So what? Charlie told me it’s okay.
ALLEN: Who’s Charlie?
BRIDE: He’s me husband.
ALLEN: You mean your husband told you to come on this program and marry another man?
BRIDE: How else could we get a refrigerator today?
GROOM: Mr. Allen.
ALLEN: Yes, Clifton.
GROOM: Which way is Mr. Anthony?
● ● ●
This will be the last Fred Allen script to appear here until October, when the Allen show returns to the air. Tommy Dorsey and his band will fill the Allen spot until then, but he isn’t Fred Allen, kiddies.

Here are the rest of Crosby’s columns for the week. On July 1st, Crosby is again harping about quiz shows and creates his own. The next two days are taken up with broadcasts about nuclear tests. On the 4th of July, Crosby is horrified by a local broadcast where real politicians have a bit of innocuous fun with a fake politician, Senator Claghorn of the Fred Allen show. He seems to feel comedy is beneath the dignity of political figures. It’s fortunate he’s not alive today. Click on any of them to enlarge.

Great Big Bunch of Used

There’s no gang rescuing the girl for the hero in A Great Big Bunch of You but just about all the Harman-Ising clichés of 1932 show up in this cartoon. It’s your basic “everything comes to life and sings and dances” short.

Celebrity Takeoffs
The discarded department store mannequin portrays Maurice Chevalier, Ted “Is Everybody Happy” Lewis, borrows Walter Winchell’s “magic carpet” and “Okay, America!” from the Lucky Strike radio show of that period, and then sprouts curly red hair and plays the harp like a certain Marx brother.



Slide Step
I’ve lost track of how many cartoons had characters do that little stomp/slide step dance. Hugh and Rudy even had Cubby Bear do it in the cartoon they made for Van Beuren. The dummy does it in this one three times.



Chirping Female Chorus
The Rhythmettes (as identified by Keith Scott) showed up throughout the 1930s at a number of cartoon studios. Here they are mannequins.



Whoops My Dears!
This time the gay character is a cuckoo clock bird.



So Long, Folks!
Tom McKimson and Ham Hamilton are the credited animators.



By the way, the title is from a Harry Warren/Mort Dixon song copyrighted on May 6, 1932.