Space Wiener

Daws Butler played a seemingly uncountable number of cartoon characters in his career. He was a star at Hanna-Barbera in its early years. MGM, Warner Bros. and Walter Lantz regularly featured him in their cartoons. He was the voice of all kinds of animated TV commercials, and even wrote some. This doesn’t include children’s records, writing and appearing on Stan Freberg’s radio shows and manipulating and voicing puppets on Time For Beany. But perhaps his most unusual role was that of Cadet Frankie Luer.

Frankie was an animated wiener. Well, barely animated. In the brief clips available of him, only his mouth moves for the most part. And while he’s in a commercial, it doesn’t appear it was a television commercial. It was shown on a makeshift rocket.

If you’re a kid, it sounds like something fun. The Torrence Herald wrote in its issue of January 10, 1957:

Jim Dandy to Offer Trips To Moon at Lomita Store

Local children will be treated to tree trips to the moon tomorrow when Frankie Luer brings his huge space ship to the Jim Dandy Market at 24911 S. Western Ave. Free trips in the rocket ship will be available from 12 noon to 7 p.m.
Built by Luer Packing Co. to entertain their young friends, Frankie Luer's Space Ship is an authentic 60-foot replica of the giant interplanetary ship of the future.
Inside its metal hull, the space ship contains a comfortable 34-seat auditorium where children are seated for their seven-minute trip to the moon. During their trip the young space travelers experience all the thrills of supersonic flight, from the first surge of power as the ship blasts off to the final bump as it lands again.
Technically, the Luer Space Ship is a mechanical and electronic wonder. The full color animated film of the trip is projected onto the front "view plate" by means of a lens device that resembles a periscope. This allows a projection space of a few feet to accomplish the same thing as a huge auditorium projection room, and adds realism to the film.
Vibrators mounted in the tail of the ship give the illusion of flight with both sound and vibration. Other unique devices on the Luer Space Ship record altitude and flight time in a series of lights that can be seen by the passengers.

Charles Pappas’ book Flying Cars, Zombie Dogs & Robot Overlords reports the budding astronauts also received a promotional pamphlet called “Frankie Luer’s Space Adventures” where the space winner joins a boy named Davey Rocket on a trip to Venus, where they meet mushroom people and see moss-covered cities. On the back of the comic was a Flight Certificate which officially certified the bearer travelled aboard the Luer space ship. Mycomicshop.com adds the 5-by-7 full colour comic was 36 pages and included instructions for making a flying saucer sandwich. It was printed by Western Publishing. Comic price: ten cents. The Catalogue of Copyright Entries reveals it was written by the Dan D. Miner Co.

By the way, the Luer Space Ship was rescued from a life-time of increasing rust. Its story is on this web site run by its co-owner. I’ve spotted ads in Los Angeles papers up to 1968 advertising the rocket’s appearance.

Getting back to the cartoon, the always enjoyable Prelinger Archives posted bits and pieces to archive.org. Parts of the first two silent films were used to make the animated plug that apparently appeared at the beginning of the “space trip.” If you want to hear Daws, click on the audio player. You might be able to get it to match up with the first part of the first video and get a better idea of what it looked like to the kids in the rocket ship.







And below is silent footage of the space trip itself. Not very exciting and the animated portions are very limited. I couldn’t tell you who did the animation.

Flying Walrus

Shamus Culhane pulls off some of his wild camera shakes in Chew-Chew Baby, where Woody Woodpecker goes in drag to humiliate Wally Walrus.

After losing his disguise, Woody sticks a barbecue fork into a love seat (note the heart) as Wally drops from the ceiling.



Up he crashes through the ceiling after some perspective animation. Culhane’s cameraman shakes things up.



Wally falls to the floor, stopping momentarily in mid-air at a stop light Woody has conveniently whipped out of nowhere. There’s another violent camera shake. The camera is out of focus for two frames. Animator Bob Jaques tells me that was not deliberate; the camera operator didn’t focus when he changed fields.



Grim Natwick and Paul Smith are the credited animators. I imagine Don Williams is here, too. Layouts are by Art Heinemann, backgrounds by Phil DeGuard and voices by Bugs Hardaway and Jack Mather.

Three Pigs Are Three-er Than One

If it’s funny once, three times will be three times as funny.

Well, no, 1930s cartoon writers, it doesn’t work that way. Especially if it’s not funny once.

Alpine Antics, a 1935 cartoon directed by Jack King at Warners, is a good example. The plot of this one is a downhill race for cash that Beans pledges to win (the word “Beans” already tells you this is not a funny cartoon). One of the contestants is likely the early version of Porky Pig riding a hobby horse.



The bad guy cat, played by the great Billy Bletcher, decides to stop his downhill challengers by blocking the route.



We don’t actually see it happen, but the line trips up Porky and the hobby horse. They crash-land into the snow and wiggle their butts with a jingle bell sound effect on the track.



“Hey, Treg!” possibly said Jack King or someone else even less inspired, “If it’s funny when a pig does it once, it’ll be three times as funny if three pigs do it.” So that’s what we get, three pigs in a snow bank, wiggling their tails with Treg Brown playing a jingling sound effect.



Jack Carr is a credited animator on this short. He used to contribute gags to cartoons around this time. Either he was silent or uninspired when Tom Armstrong’s story department came up with this one.



Whew! A relief to theatre goers.

Car (Stop) of Tomorrow

“This car is equipped with the latest sure-stop, toe-touch hydraulic brakes,” says narrator Gil Warren in Car of Tomorrow. “Just barely touch these brakes....”



Director Tex Avery cuts back to the car. The camera shakes, there’s a skid sound and part of the car slides out of the frame. The camera then pans over. “...You stop,” concludes Warren. On to the next gag.



There’s no animation at all in the punch line scene; it’s all camera movement over one drawing.

Avery and writers Rich Hogan and Roy Williams seem to cram in every possible gag about early ‘50s cars and throw in stereotypes about women drivers, mothers-in-law, Indians, Scotsmen, Chinese and the Los Angeles weather for good measure.

A Bird in the Bush

How strong were the gags in a Mickey Mouse cartoon?

The earliest Mickeys, I like. Once the ‘30s started rolling along, things get really lame.

Take Mickey Cuts Up (1931), for example. A good portion of the cartoon is taken up by Mickey and Minnie whistling, part of the time while Mickey pretends to be a bird. That’s it.

The cartoon gets its title from the scene where Mickey (with huge pupils) is skipping along with gardening shears, what I think is a pair of rose clippers and some kind of hand rake/comb.



He sticks the end of the rose clippers in a bush to form a nose, grabs a couple of daises or something or other as makeshift eyes, clips a mouth and then pretends to be a barber. You can follow along with the frames.



Now the gag. Are you ready? A bird comes out of the bush and spoils Mickey’s work. Not even Minnie laughs at this one.



This is yet another cartoon where the climax involves Pluto creating complete mayhem by chasing something (a cat this time). If it’s all the same to you, I’ll take Galloping Gaucho, thanks.

The Squares' Master

Something didn’t seem right.

It was 1986. La Cage aux Folles was in performance at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver and the ads proclaimed the star of the show was Peter Marshall.

Peter Marshall? The Hollywood Squares Peter Marshall? What was he doing singing and dancing?

I suspect the first exposure many people had to Mr. Marshall’s talents was as the emcee of a game show and didn’t realise he had a whole career before that, including being part of a stand-up comedy team. The latter would come in handy on Hollywood Squares as he set-up gag answers from celebrities (in some cases via staff writers).

The show first aired on October 17, 1966 replacing a forgotten half-hour starring Joe Pyne called Showdown which had been on the air a whopping 3½ months. The Associated Press review the next day wasn’t all that favourable (read it to the right) but audiences liked the mix of the show and it’s been off and on the air a number of times over the decades.

Let’s pass along a couple of profiles of Mr. Marshall. The first appeared in papers around April 29, 1967, the second in Harvey Pack’s “TV Key” column of July 3, 1969. Casual viewers of the show may not have realised Paul Lynde was not a regular member of the cast at the beginning. “Mumbles” Dalton and Morey Amsterdam fell out as the series carried on, while Cliff Arquette died while still playing Charley Weaver.

Personality, Wit Mark Emcee
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
HOLLYWOOD — At first glance NBC's Monday through Friday mid-morning celebrity game show, Hollywood Squares, looks like a retirement home for out of work TV series stars.
The permanent panelists are Morey Amsterdam, Wally Cox, Rose Marie, Abby Dalton and Cliff Arquette.
But look closer and you'll see the Who's Who of Hollywood guest-starring at one time or another to play the game — a TV adaptation of the familiar Tic Tac Toe — emceed by Peter Marshall. Four stars, In fact, appear in week-long guest stints along with the regular panelists.

One guest star has been known to upset many a TV show, but when they add up to NINE, well —
"Well, it may sound fantastic, but I've had trouble with only one guest since we started the show last October," says Marshall, who started big time show business life as Tommy Noonan's partner in a nightclub and TV variety show comedy-singing act. Marshall was the straight man who also sang.
The guest star with whom Marshall clashed on the show was a woman, and, he says, "she was unbelievable. She never stopped talking and she even tried to rewrite the questions I ask on which the whole game is based."
By contrast, Zsa Zsa Gabor is a dream, he reported. “She's been on the show 10 times and has never interrupted anyone.”
The need for a personality who could banter ad libs with the likes of Amsterdam & Friends was the reason Marshall landed the job after co-starring for a year on Broadway with Julie Harris In the hit musical "Skyscraper."
"I guess they figured I had been through the mill with Noonan because I knew nothing about the workings of a TV game show and I still don't know."
What Marshall does know is that Hollywood Squares is climbing in the popularity ratings and that he has never before enjoyed such personal recognition.
"For 15 years I've lived next door to the same neighbors who I guess never knew exactly what I did because now all of a sudden I'm a celebrity to them."
About Amsterdam, he has great praise. "He never knows what category the questions will be in, but if it's diamonds, for example, he has three jokes about diamonds even before I get to the questions."
About ex-partner Tommy Noonan, Marshall tells you:
"We're great friends. He's delightfully crazy. I appreciate his insanity — now."

Peter Marshall's Diverse Background Helps Him Emcee ‘Hollywood Squares’
By HARVEY PACK
NEW YORK—Peter Marshall, the hip guy who rides herd over the “Hollywood Squares,” NBC's popular daytime game show, was in New York recently to plug his new record album "For the Love of Pete." By his own admission Pete would go anywhere to put in a pitch for his singing career because as happy as he is picking up a weekly paycheck on "Hollywood Squares" he's put in too many years in this business to relegate himself voluntarily into the category of quiz show emcee.
"When I was first approached for the job on 'Squares' a lot of my friends advised against it claiming it would be the end of me as an actor But I kind of liked the format and since I do have a wife and four children I thought I'd give it a go."
Pete was picked because of his background as an actor and the experience has paid off for the show. Marshall's theatrical background goes back almost 20 years and includes such diverse activities as page boy at NBC, co-starring in a Broadway musical with Julie Harris and being part of a successful comedy team, Noonan and Marshall. "Now I'm asked to play straight man to nine performers five times a week and that not only calls for a lot of timing but even requires continuous change of pace. For example you can't throw a straight line to Wally Cox the same way you feed one to a comic like Jan Murray.

When “Hollywood Squares” first premiered all the guest stars had a ball and everybody around the production thought it was going over great. Everybody that is except host Peter Marshall who took time off from the golf course to watch the show on TV. "I noticed it had no pace." explained Pete, "and I blamed the whole* thing on me.
“I was giving the stars a chance to go off on tangents as they tried to be funny and often succeeded. But by not sticking to the basic game we were letting the thing get away from us and while we were enjoying it—it meant very little to viewers.”
Marshall spoke up and the producers listened. The game became the thing, stars were told to shorten up their anecdotes and gags and emcee Marshall kept the game going. The amount of questions asked doubled and the rating went up. The idea of selecting an emcee with theatrical experience paid off and "Hollywood Squares" became an NBC daytime staple.
"No matter who the guest is I don't let him run off with one of his answers," says Pete. "Except for Wally Cox. Wally must set his own pace and it generally works out funny."
Delighted with the security he has achieved with "Squares," Marshall has obviously not given up on other aspects of his career. In addition to the new record album, Peter is still shopping around for Broadway roles, will spend his summer vacation appearing in a play in Chicago and has written four screen plays.

Jack Benny on TV, 1939

You’ve likely read that Jack Benny made his radio debut on an Ed Sullivan radio show in 1932. Jack made the claim himself. It’s wrong. He made a number of appearances on radio before that.

And you’ve likely read that Jack Benny made his television debut during the ceremony dedicating KTTV on March 8, 1949.

Guess what?

Broadcasting magazine reported on a much earlier televised appearance of Jack Benny in its edition of September 1, 1939.

RCA was pushing television hard at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, airing daily programming on W2XBS, its experimental station that went commercial in 1941. But amazingly, Benny didn’t appear on small screens there, but in Minnesota.

There wasn’t a TV station there at the time, but there was a radio station (and still is) called KSTP. RCA was barnstorming the country with a mobile unit, or units, and one parked itself in Minneapolis in early August 1939. KSTP worked out an arrangement to televise the American Legion Convention parade to a solitary set in the convention’s headquarters at the Radisson Hotel. Coincidentally, Jack Benny happened to be in town, on a summer break from his radio show. The circumstances of how or why Benny got on camera haven’t come to light—the Minneapolis Star didn’t even report he was in town—but you can read the photo article below from Broadcasting.

The Man From A.U.N.T.I.E.

John Sutherland Productions was an off-shoot of a company Sutherland and fellow ex-Disneyite Larry Morey set up that made “Daffy Dittys” shorts for United Artists in the ‘40s. They were mainly stop-motion (the final one was a cartoon and released in 1947). Morey went back to Disney, so Sutherland started a new company to make animated films for business and educational clients.

Among his early successes were a series of Chiquita Banana commercials shown in movie theatres and a number of cartoons for Harding College that got theatrical releases from MGM, which had dismantled its Preston Blair/Mike Lah unit.

The Sutherland films, in my estimation, were wonderfully-designed and animated, and it’s a shame so few of them are available for viewing. Where Sutherland’s archives are today is anyone’s guess, so it’s impossible to know how many films he made.

Sutherland was still in operation in the ‘60s and still producing award-winning industrial cartoons. One of them has a title that anyone who grew up then will recognise as a spoof—The Man from A.U.N.T.I.E. It was Sutherland production no. 1599, and Back Stage magazine from New York indicates it was released in June 1967.

A copy of it recently sold on an on-line sales site and the seller graciously put up some frame grabs on-line.

Unlike some of the earlier Sutherland shorts, this one did not appear in theatres but was broadcast on TV. Sterling Movies’ TV department made other Sutherland industrial cartoon available for stations starting in 1958, including What Makes Us Tick and Working Dollars.

The Business Screen Magazine issue of July 1967 gave A.U.N.T.I.E. a short review:

Underwriters’ Cartoon Fantasy Shows Origins, Use of Insurance
A new cartoon film, The Man from A.U.N.T.I.E., is now playing extensively on television public service time via Sterling Movies, Inc.
John R. Galaxy, the man from the Association of Underwriters Needed to Insure Earthlings, visits our planet in his flying saucer. His task: discover how Earthlings use insurance. Animation and a clever story line maintain a swift, active pace throughout the film.
Meanwhile, the quarter-hour explains the origins of insurance and how it grew to meet demands of the times, various kinds of insurance and the protection each one offers, how rates are determined, and the role insurance plays in our economy. The Man from A.U.N.T.I.E. was produced by John Sutherland Productions, Inc.

The Weekly Underwriter magazine went into it in a little more depth in an edition in 1970. We’ve omitted the reference to a second film.

I.I.I. Films Get Wide Exposure
New York—A green-complexioned, pointed-eared character from outer space named John R. Galaxy has helped to bring the serious story of property and liability insurance in an entertaining way to an “astro”-nomical audience of earthlings.
The elfin Mr. Galaxy is the pivotal actor in an animated color film presented by the Insurance Information Institute which has been seen by 8.7 million people over a three-year period....
“The Man From A.U.N.T.I.E,” a 14-minute animated film, stars Mr. Galaxy as a saucer-flying agent from Venus assigned to investigate terrestrial insurance practices.
While Mr. Galaxy carries out his mission, the film achieves its objective of painlessly teaching a few basic facts — the different types of policies, what determines costs and a brief, amusing insight into the origins of property and liability insurance. ...
Of the 19,416 bookings, “A.U.N.T.I.E.” has received, 62 per cent have been in public schools at all levels, colleges and universities. ...
The total audience for “A.U.N.T.I.E.” includes 1.6 million persons at live showings and 7.1 million television viewers in 48 states and the District of Columbia. An evaluation of 19,181 reports on viewer attitudes toward this film revealed that 65.8 per cent rated it “excellent” and 25.3 per cent considered it “very good.”
Subsequent evaluations continue to show mostly “excellent” ratings for this free-loan, award-winning film produced for I.I.I. by John Sutherland Productions and distributed by Association Films, Inc.

The cartoon won the gold medal for insurance films at International Film and TV Festival Awards in New York in October 1967; several other Sutherland films were honoured as well. It also received a Chris Certificate at the Columbus Festival.



Director George Gordon had been a fixture at Sutherland. He began his career at the Paul Terry studio in 1930, writing and directing more than 50 Terrytoons. In 1937, he moved to California to join the new MGM cartoon studio and eventually became a director on the first Barney Bear series. He left MGM during the war and worked for Hugh Harman and Sutherland on at least two occasions, sandwiching in a stint with Mike Lah’s Quartet Films. Eventually, he headed to Hanna-Barbera where he freelanced on storyboards and direction for many of its TV shows. He died May 24, 1986 in Apple Valley, California, after a six-month illness.

Unfortunately, the seller didn’t provide a frame listing the animators on this particular cartoon. Oh, and to know who provided the voices.

Sutherland chugged along in 1967, coming out with an animated short for the Office of Economic Opportunity called The Owl Who Gave a Hoot. Among its other films in distribution that year: The Modern Corporation (Alfred P. Sloan Foundation); Buy Wise (Office of Economic Opportunity); The Text Case and More Than a Living (both for A.T. and T.); Make a Mighty Reach (Charles F. Kettering Foundation) and Lexicon (UCLA). It’s unclear how many were animated.

Perhaps some day we’ll see a full Sutherland filmography as well as the company’s animated films current resting in 16mm cans, and forgotten.