In Defence of Bela (Maybe)

It is without fear of contradiction that we stand before you and state that the most cringe-inducing movie posters of all time were the ones to promote MGM cartoons in the early part of the ‘40s.

Look to the right, if you dare. Would this prompt you to rush to your neighbourhood theatre and see these characters in action? Mind you, you wouldn’t see these particular characters. The ones on the one-sheet are so poorly drawn, any resemblance between them and the finely-honed designs on film by the Hanna-Barbera unit is purely coincidental.

Some time ago, the Cartoon Research website featured a post highlighting this nadir in the art world. In the comments, the late Cole Johnson identified the artist as New York-based Bela Reiger.

But hold on a minute!

To the left you see part of a poster re-produced in the May-June 1939 edition of the MGM house publication “Short Story.” The identity of the artist is identified in an article. And it’s not Bela Reiger.

Here’s what the publication had to say:

TO AID THEATREMEN in publicizing the new Technicolor cartoon series produced by Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising, M-G-M has obtained the services of the celebrated illustrator, Charles "Call Me Chuck" Mulholland who will do a special one-sheet poster on each release. His multi-color lithograph poster on the current release, "Art Gallery," as reproduced above, is now available at all Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Exchanges.

One of today's top-ranking illustrators, Mulholland hails from the wilds of Minnesota where, by his own admission, in spite of the art schools a prodigious native indolence protected him against the common or garden variety of provincial art.

Migrating ultimately to New York City he soon discovered that even Greenwich Village bohemians had to eat. So, totally innocent of the technique of lettering or the intricacies of mathematics he got a job teaching lettering and math in an institution for deaf mutes. During this period he picked up an interest in these two subjects which endures today. He has no idea, however, what the deaf mutes picked up.

After his pedagogic instincts were satiated Mulholland turned to newspaper and magazine illustration work. He did caricatures for the old New York World and then moved over to the Post as theatrical caricaturist for John Anderson. Subsequently he has illustrated for Cosmopolitan, Colliers, Good Housekeeping, Pictorial Review, Delineator, Life, This Week and for Manhattan's leading advertising agencies.

There’s not much else to tell you about Charles Joseph Mulholland. He was born July 30, 1900 in Minneapolis and attending the Minneapolis School of Art when he was drafted in 1917. By 1920 he was a designer for a bag company, then moved to New York within the next five years. He died in Manhattan on September 3, 1960. His wife Juliet was a book and magazine illustrator and researched antiques after her husband died.

So who do we blame for the graphic monstrosities with misshapen, disproportionate characters that advertised MGM cartoons? Has Bela Reiger been blamed unfairly all this time?

I don’t have the answer. I do know the posters are pretty ugly but, fortunately, never took away from the enjoyment of any cartoons.

Gene Deitch and Cartoon Salesmen

Gene Deitch won an Oscar, received tributes of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and ASIFA in Los Angeles, and has been praised for his adaptations of numerous children’s books animated in Communist Czechoslovakia. But perhaps he’ll be best known for a handful of Tom and Jerry cartoons that make some people want to bang their head against an iron curtain.

And that’s not quite fair.

Gene Deitch has passed away at the age of 95.

Deitch arrived in the sphere of theatrical cartoons because of his work in television. Animated commercials were hot in the 1950s. Artists who had been around for years joined newcomers in exercising their creativity in giving birth to 30 and 60-second cartoons that had a different look and sound—but were still entertaining. Deitch was one of the newcomers and he was quickly written up in trade publications (being part of the critically-loved UPA studio didn’t hurt). At the time, CBS figured it should do something with its newly-acquired Terrytoons studio besides broadcast old cartoons—something like get into the lucrative commercial animation business. So it was that Deitch was plucked from Robert Lawrence Productions in July 1956 to become creative producer at Terrytoons. Once again, Deitch proceeded to give birth to cartoons that had a different look and sound than what Terrytoons had been pumping out.

There were some high points. His Tom Terrific cartoon serial that CBS plopped down on Captain Kangaroo was praised by parents groups everywhere for entertaining kids without all that “violence” found in the old movie shorts. It was inventive and droll. And as opposed to heroic characters for the ‘40s like Mighty Mouse, Popeye or Bugs Bunny, Deitch and his staff came up with flawed stars for the ‘50s, like the grumpy Clint Clobber the janitor and the neurotic Sidney the elephant. Unfortunately for Deitch, studio politics were thick and he found himself at a decided disadvantage. Deitch moved out in August 1958 and set up his own company. Within a few years, he had been hired by Bill Snyder, won an Oscar for a clever cartoon called Munro, dispatched to Prague to revive the award-winning antics of Tom and Jerry, fell in love, and stayed.

Instead of his work overseas, let’s have Mr. Deitch himself talk about the earlier phase of his career, the golden era of animated TV spots. He was asked to write about using cartoons as sales tools in the July 1, 1957 edition of Billboard magazine. Here’s what he said:

How to Spice Up the Com'l Break With Extra Hard Sell
By GENE DEITCH
Creative Director, Terrytoons
(The writer of this article is one of the bright young lights of the bright new era of animation. He was with UPA when Bert and Harry were created and had a hand in the original drawings. When John Hubley set up his own Storyboard operation, Deitch went with him. He then went to Robert Lawrence Productions. When Terrytoons was bought by CBS and entered the commercial field, Deitch joined it as creative director.)
If an advertiser can produce a smile on the consumers face and an image of his brand in the consumer's mind—at one and the same time—then, by gum, he has a nice little thing going for himself. Chances are the consumer will buy, consume and (if the product is good) buy again—regularly.
One way to achieve this happy juxtaposition is with the continuous cartoon salesman. The cartoon character, if handled honestly, can get thin the wall every TV watcher erects during commercial periods. A cartoon conies on as a bit of spice in a movie program and can be just as tasty on TV. If you give the viewer something — namely a little entertainment and the feeling you are 'leveling" with him—then he might feel like giving you something: His patronage.

A cartoon character can somehow project this honesty and good humor where a live announcer might not. For the true cartoon character, altho frankly a fantasy, is a caricature of reality that can be accepted as reality. The "real live" pitchman is publicly known to be a hired salesman, the people in live commercials are obviously actors, the ball players are paid for their testimonials—and up goes the wall between you and the consumer. But the cartoon character can leap over the wall, uttering hard-sell copy (while appearing to kid it) that a "live" commercial would have trouble in delivering convincingly.
A good cartoon character must personify the product. If he is unique and well liked, people will feel the product is also unique and will want to buy it. To be most effective the cartoon salesman must be a product identifier. As soon as the viewer sees the character on the screen, he should identify the product brand. Secondly, the viewer should look forward to more than just a sales pitch. Unusual animation and clever design are not enough. An animated figure becomes a "character" only when he has definite acceptable characteristics other than merely visual. Where does he come from? Who does he represent? What are his attitudes? How does he react to certain situations? Does he mean what he says? Is he a "real guy?"
A cartoon character becomes salesman when he represents the product in name, in quality and in purpose. A dancing cereal box or bouncing can of dog food does not necessarily present a sales message sage. Nor does a frolicsome fairy or merry jinnee relate to a real-life product. The character can be animal or human, but whatever specie, he must have personality depth. If the audience is to believe, he character must relate to contemporary experience in speech and action. To create a cartoon salesman, analyze your product. Is there a theme for the character to stand for? A well-known slogan, a visual device, ingredient, quality? Can the name of the product be name of the character? (that is usually best.) When you decide upon the character idea, build a background -make him real. He must be sincere and convincing but still unrestrained.

There is no need to to compromise. You are now in the world of fantasy. Be willing to kid yourself and the product a little to put yourself on-the-level with the viewer. Make yourself likable.
By developing his own character, a client benefits. He has property with the inherent quality of his product, an advertising campaign that has wearing ability. With each new story situation, a cartoon salesman grows in acceptance.
To use a character that has already been established in another medium is the animated version of testimonial advertising. In such a case, the cartoon salesman may tend to dominate the product. As a selling tool, he may not hate the "memory value" associated with an original product identifier. However, there is no denying the tremendous loyalty a hero like Mighty Mouse can generate with children.
For the film producer and the advertising agency, the cartoon salesman can be the perfect employee. He is not being paid to drink soda pop or shave his beard. He honestly typifies the product. He is ageless, sitting on the drawing board, ready to go to work at any time, never asking for a raise.
Being always available has many technical assets, too. Once the design of the salesman has formulated and his pattern of behavior charted, any animated film company can take the blueprints and produce a commercial. One series of spots featuring the cartoon star can be produced by one film company and another series can be produced by a completely different studio, with no apparent variation in the total effect. Just as comic strips, thru the years, have been drawn by a series of artists with no noticeable change to the reader, the same is true of an established television commercial property.
The cartoon character exists apart from the animator and the actor. Eton the voice can be imitated.
With cartoon salesman, the client is never troubled with props, costumes or location spots. The settings for commercial stories are unending.

Terrytoons, well-known for thirty years as a theatrical cartoon company, has only been in the business of the animated cartoon commercial for one year. However, the studio has already been involved with three cartoon salesmen -P. J. Tootsie and Bert and Harry Piel.
P.J. Tootsie, the Candy King, was created by Terrytoons to sell Tootsie Rolls for Sweets Company of America. The campaign of three one-minute spots was directed mainly to children. According to an independent survey of youngsters, the commercials rated as high as the entertainment on the same program. Mr. Tootsie was quickly identified as "The Candy King."
The flamboyant executive, P. J. Tootsie, is intent on selling his product in each spot. His techniques are so exaggerated that they amusingly spoof the sales attitude of an advertising executive. Everytime P. J. Tootsie repeats the slogan, "Everybody loves me, because I make Tootsie Rolls," he gets a firm plug for his product.

Deitch’s reference to Mighty Mouse is ironic, considering he banished the ripped rodent from the big screen in favour of his own “up-to-date” characters.

And Deitch’s assessment that “unusual animation and clever design are not enough” was something the people he left behind at UPA didn’t quite realise, contributing to the studio’s demise.

Until days ago, he was chatting away with animation lovers on Facebook, posting pictures of the changing seasons in the neighbourhood behind his home and coping with being stuck indoors because of the present worldwide health emergency. He maintained humour and friendliness to the end, even to those who didn’t think much of his work about 60 years ago with a cat and mouse.

Rest in peace, Gene.

Jitterbug Tommy

Little Tommy Tucker is a brat in Jitterbug Follies, a 1939 MGM cartoon, one of two concocted by Milt Gross during his brief time at the studio. Mother Goose (who is a showgirl in disguise) sings about how the jitterbug infected people: “Tommy Tucker got bit, too, singing for his bowl of stew.”

Tommy growls in song at a theatre audience: “Darling, I am growing hun-gry.”



The audience pelts him with food, like a lousy vaudeville act. Whoever animated this provides some fun expressions.



But Tommy’s hep to the jive! He’s keen to the scene! He rips a pair of drumsticks off a turkey thrown at him and starts playing the produce tossed at him like drums.



One last pumpkin comes flying toward him. He smashes it like bass drum. Scott Bradley has all kinds of percussion sounds playing in the background.



Gross fan afoul of politics and was quickly shown the door. History claims someone at MGM thought this rowdy cartoon was “beneath the dignity” of the prestigious studio. Within a year, MGM told Hugh Harman to start making rowdier cartoons, like the ones released by Warner Bros. Or like this one. Go figure.

Standard Avery Gag No. 153

“Interesting to behold is the evolution of the tropical butterfly,” narrator Robert C. Bruce tells us in Aviation Vacation (1941). “Let’s watch this curious transformation, as from this lowly, insignificant little cocoon emerges a full-grown butterfly, vividly marked with all the gorgeous colours of the rainbow.”

Well, there would be gorgeous colours if this cartoon had been restored. Instead, we get lots of green and faded hues. Regardless, that doesn’t affect the gag, which is one of Tex Avery’s standards.

First butterfly.



Second butterfly.



Third butterfly. Well, sort of.





Cut to a close shot of the shaking, bloodshot-eyed insect. “Say! What in the world happened to you?” asks the narrator. Avery fans can shout the answer at the screen: “Well, I’ve been sick.”

This cartoon leaves you with the feeling that Avery had some gags left over from some of his other travelogue parodies and shoved them in here. There isn’t a lot to do with aviation in this one.

Dave Monahan got credit for the gags, Sid Sutherland for animation (Virgil Ross and Bob McKimson are here, too) and Johnny Johnsen supplied the greenery.

Hey, Harry, Give Me Your Job

Being able to read off a piece of paper doesn’t mean you can be a voice actor or announcer.

It’s true today and was true in 1946 when the subject came up in Radio Life magazine. The November 24th edition profiled three of the best-known announcers on West Coast comedy shows of the day—Don Wilson from the Jack Benny show; Harry Von Zell, who had his own 15-minute show in 1946 and appeared in two-reelers; and Ken Carpenter, who hung out at the Kraft Music Hall with Bing Crosby. All three had puttered around radio for a bit before winning auditions for big-name comedy/variety shows that shot them to fame. They all stayed on top for many, many years because they were very good. They also proved to be more than just an announcer; they interacted with the star and became a part of the cast, especially Wilson.

There were many others in that glorious era of network radio who found themselves doing more than announcing—Kenny Delmar (who was primarily an actor) is one—but these three come to mind as being at the top of their profession. And, as the story indicates, it wasn’t always easy street for them.



“Aw, ANYBODY Can Be An Announcer”
Everybody Wants to Get Into Their Act, So Let's Take Some Time to Re-examine The Careers of These Veteran Mike-men
By Betsy J. Hammer
ONE of the phenomena of this post-war world seems to be the desire of about one out of every ten of our male population to become a radio announcer. Somehow, sometime in the last five years it has occurred to an awful lot of people that the announcer's life is the life for them—glamorous, well-paid, easy . . . Urn-huh!
We came up against these hard facts when we called on Thomas Woods of AFRA, the radio actors' guild. According to Mr. Woods there are about 125 staff announcing jobs in this area and about 450 names of professional announcers on file in the AFRA office. This isn't even counting the great number of people who are studying or hoping to become announcers and who are not registered with the guild.
Is there no ray of hope in all this? Well, yes—Mr. Woods further informed us that many times an unknown out-of-towner will audition and win a staff job on the local stations where many experienced local people have failed to connect. “And a staff announcing job is not to be sneezed at,” says Woods. “It's still the best opportunity to get somewhere in radio.”
We've gotten many letters from frustrated people who have made tentative efforts to break into the announcing field. Here we print a hypothetical letter which includes most of the statements and queries that are usually contained, together with answers gleaned from the careers of three of our most successful mike-men, Ken Carpenter, Harry von Zell and Don Wilson.
“Sirs: I think it's time some of the big -name announcers moved over and gave someone else a break. While I was in the service (or working in a war plant, etc.) they got into radio and got all the soft jobs. You have to have friends and a pull to get anywhere. Why don't they give someone else a chance for the fame and easy money—they've had theirs.
I have a good voice and anybody could read from a script the way they do . . . etc. . . . etc. . . .”
Veterans All
Well, let's see now—“while I was in the service, etc. . . .” Harry von Zell went into radio twenty years ago, Don Wilson's voice was first heard on the air from KOA, Denver, about twenty-two years ago, and Ken Carpenter, the baby of the bunch, started his mike career locally over sixteen years ago. Hardly what you'd call getting into radio while anyone was in the service!
“You have to have friends and a pull to get anywhere . . .”
Yes, Ken Carpenter had a friend who got him his initial audition. The only thing wrong with this argument is that Ken didn't get the job. During a lean period, Don Wilson applied to a guy named Harry von Zell for a job at KMTR. Don was turned down cold. Many years later he asked friend von Zell why he hadn't gotten the job. "Your job ?" Harry exclaimed. "I was scared to death of my own job!"
“Fame and easy money, etc. . . .”
Harry von Zell handled announcing chores on twenty-one New York shows a week at one time—for less than $100 each week. He didn't become the full-fledged emcee comedian he's famous for being now until the summer of 1945 on the Eddie Cantor show, though he did perform similar duties for Fred Allen. That's only nineteen years after his initial start in radio! Ken Carpenter sat in the lobby of KFI for over two weeks until chief announcer Don Wilson hired him. This same Wilson got a job as staff singer locally in 1928 and became a member of an early bird program. He worked early and late at the station and then got fired because he bought a different make car than that which the owner of the station carried in his agency.
“Anybody could read from a script. . .”
When Don Wilson became a staff member of NBC in New York he did half-hour newscasts cold. That means he had no time to check pronunciations (and you know the pronunciations that show up in the news!) or read the copy through before he went on the air. Don had been a football star at the University of Colorado and when he decided to forsake his singing career for one of announcing, he was fitted for becoming one of the best-known sports announcers on the coast. Though Harry von Zell was one of the best announcers in the business, it was Harry's own natural flair for comedy and his great sense of humor that prompted Fred Allen to start writing Harry into his comedy scripts. Ken Carpenter has been pushed through a plate glass window while covering a parade, tackled and trampled by players during a Rose Bowl game, hit in the solar plexus with a bat while describing a baseball match, kicked by the race horse, Alcazar, at Santa Anita; went alone into a lion's cage to interview Leo, the lion; slipped off the top of a mountain in Elysian Park while telling the folks at home about the famous "moving mountain." "Believe me," says Carpenter, "it wasn't in the script!"
So there you have the fame and easy life that have marked the careers of these three announcers! It adds up to perseverance, hard work and a great natural ability. And it can still be done. If anything, Harry, Don and Ken will leave their field in radio a better one than they found it. Don, through his wonderfully natural reaction to Benny's comedy and his humorous handling of the commercials; Harry with his great flair for comedy, and Ken, who made ringing the NBC chimes for "Kraft Music Hall" a national institution not so long ago, have proven that a good announcer is a very important part of the whole show. If you become an announcer, you'll find that these three have already paved the way for you to become a real radio personality in your own right!

What's the Name of That Studio?

I used to boo at the screen as a kid watching the made-for-TV Magoos. They were little more than an endless string of myopia-mistake jokes with Jim Backus rarely taking a breath for six minutes. (Once in a while, there were cartoons that looked better than the rest. I suspect they were theatrical releases).

However, here’s a neat little inside joke in Magoo’s Surprise Party. Magoo is driving his old touring car with stickers on the windshield that would obscure anyone’s view (except Magoo’s because he can’t see properly). One of the stickers is the studio’s logo, with UPA’s letters in separate coloured ovals.



UPA continued to have unique designations for its staff. Vic Haboush is the art director in this cartoon. Bob Givens gets credit for “production design” while Gloria Wood and Jack Heiter are colour stylists. Bob Singer handled layouts.

X and O = Iwerks

Ub Iwerks’ ComiColor shorts simply weren’t at par with the Walt Disney Silly Symphonies they were trying to imitate. They had Disney’s past musician (Carl Stalling) and Disney’s future animators (Shamus Culhane, Al Eugster). Of course, Ub himself was Disney’s top animator until early 1930. But something was missing, despite the colour and songs.



Take, for example, Puss in Boots (1934). It opens with the hero young man playing the bagpipes, pussywillows turning into meowing cats, and then the scene cuts to kittens playing noughts and crosses. Song time! No one will mistake the lyrics for the Tin Pan Alley stuff in Warner Bros. cartoons.



Just a little game of tic-tac-toe
Makes time fly when the clock goes slow.
Three little crosses in a row,
That’s the game of tic-tac-toe.

The brown kitten is a sore loser and attacks the winning kitty.



Iwerks’ story people (I think Otto Englander was there at the time) decided to turn the tic-tac-toe thing into a running gag. The kittens swirl around in a cage that lands on top the ogre’s head. When they escape, it’s revealed they played the game there.



Disney loved butt attack jokes. Therefore, so did Iwerks. The kittens get into the ogre’s pants. Cut to a scene of Xs and Os on the ogre’s naked obese butt. Fun for the whole family!



Hey, if one butt joke is funny, a second will be twice as funny! The cartoon ends with the hero being attacked by a kitten and showing the handiwork. Everyone laughs just like at the end of a ‘70s Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Rooby rooby roo!



Iwerks’ story people sneak in one Warner Bros.’ type gag. The little princess, turned into a bird, yells at the ogre “You naaasty man!” just like Joe Penner.

The Iwerks’ ColiColor shorts went for the charm of Disney, but never got there. Lame stories and weak direction (no real suspense builds in this cartoon) were major problems.

Some more of the song lyrics:

Oh, you saved my tots
And I thank you lots!
I’m your friend until the whole world rots.

Here’s a tip (?) to do
Something nice for you
Now we’re going to make a prince of you!
Meow, meow!

The trade papers of the day revealed this was the third ComiColor cartoon put into production. The colour must have looked pretty good when these were first released; the screen shots you see here are from a tired print transferred to one of those budget DVDs of “public domain” cartoons that came out once upon a time. It’ll be nice to eventually see these given a good, cleaned-up video release.

Has Jack Benny Gone High Hat?

Radio comedians very quickly discovered the difference between their new gigs and their old ones in vaudeville. In the 1920s, they could take their act from town to town to town, performing the same show on different stages. After all, no one had seen it before.

Radio was vastly different. Once an act went on the air, everyone heard it. The comedian had to come up with something new, week after week. In Jack Benny’s case, it was twice a week at the beginning of his radio career. And there was no summer break until later in the 1930s.

It’s no wonder comedians didn’t have as much time to hang out together like they did in vaudeville. They had to concentrate on next week’s show. Every week.

Yowza Ben Bernie griped his buddies were being “high hat” by not socialising. No-za, Ben. They were plain old too busy, especially when Hollywood came calling and started putting radio stars in the movies. Here’s an article about it from the Santa Cruz Evening News of May 16, 1936.

Ben Bernie Moans "My Old Pals Are Going High Hat!"
His Former Friends Hide Behind Bland Secretaries While They Look For Gags
By RICHARD POWELL
THEY used to call each other Sadie and Eddie and Joe and Jack, back in their vaudeville days. They used to gather around cafeteria tables and discuss their joys and troubles after their five-a-day performances were finished. But now they call each other hard names and will only talk about how much money they make. For radio came in the door and love flew out the window. Ben Bernie, the Old Maestro, sighs as he gives the lowdown on the airways. He puffs a little faster on his cigar and smooths his thinning hair.
"Radio is screwy, he grumbles. My old pals of vaudeville are wearing the high hat. The money they make, the fan letters they get, have given them the old inflation of the cerebellum — or whatever they use instead of heads. It's like that gag about Boston society, only in this case the Lowells speak only to the Cabots and the Cabots only speak over the radio.
"Take one radio comedian who sells gasoline over the air. If any of his old friends want to see him, they have to consult his secretary. Maybe they're important, so the secretary makes an appointment for them to see this comedian from 5 o'clock to four minutes after 5 two weeks from Sunday. He's too busy looking up jokes in his filing cabinets to be bothered by a pal."
MOST of radio's top comedians are products of vaudeville. Eddie Cantor and Ed Wynn went to the musical-comedy stage from vaudeville, and from there to radio. Others went directly from vaudeville to the air — Burns and Allen, Amos and Andy (Correll and Gosden), Phil Baker, Jack Benny and Joe Penner. Ben Bernie was in vaudeville long before he formed his band.
Back in 1920 a few people were tickling a bit of crystal with a wire and yelling with joy when they picked up the time signals from Arlington. Most of the present top-notchers in radio humor were touring the vaudeville circuits. Maybe friends wouldn't see each other for months, but when they got together they celebrated. They dreamed of the day when they might play the Palace in New York vaudeville's show shop and perhaps get a contract for $200 or $250 a week. Few earned anything like that. Between $40 and $80 a week for a single was good money. Out in Hollywood, they knew, a little fellow named Chaplin had graduated from vaudeville into the big money, thousands a week. But that was a one-in-a-million shot and they didn't spend much time dreaming about it. Their biggest worries were the immediate ones of paying their bills and getting a couple of bows at each show, so that the house manager wouldn't write the booking office that they were terrible. If these vaudeville comedians had any pet hates, they were for the acrobats who opened the shows and the trained-seal act that sometimes got too much applause.
Now when they get together they don't celebrate. They bore each other with tales of how they are wowing the radio audience.
BACK in the old days the boys used to lend each other a helping hand. They all knew what a tough job it was to make a cold audience unlimber its applause. Sometimes their jokes became stale and they couldn't invent any new ones. Often they couldn't afford to pay a professional gag man to map out a new act.
"I was in a bad spot once during the war," Bernie said. "I had just changed my act from a straight violin number to a comedy number. Then one night the tough munitions workers of Bridgeport razzed me off the stage. It cost me my contract and I had no money to pay for a new act. My friends rallied around. A bunch of them, including Frank Fay and Joe Laurie, Jr., each contributed one of their best jokes to me. With that material I built a new act and got started again. If you think radio headliners now would give up a swell joke to help a pal, you can trade In your car for a horse and buggy."
SUCH a joke as the following, which was used by several radio comedians, is an example of the type that starts broadcasting wars.

The scene is the Louis-Baer fight. Baer comes back to his corner after taking a terrific first-round mauling. Before Baer can speak his second pats him on the shoulder and whispers, "Nice work, Maxie. You're doing great. He didn't lay a glove on you." At the end of the second round Baer reels back in worse shape than before. Again the assistant tells him quickly, "Nothing to it, Maxie. He can't touch you." Following the third round Baer staggers to his corner. Before the assistant can say a word, Maxie groans. "Yeah, yeah, I know all about it. He hasn't laid a glove on me. But keep your eyes on that referee, because somebody in that ring is giving me a whale of a beating!"
Just as the boys started accusing each other of stealing that joke, it was found that it had been used quite a few years ago, about the second Dempsey-Tunney fight, about the Dempsey-Willard fight and probably for as many years as Marquis of Queensbury rules have governed the fight game.
One headliner is very funny over the microphone, but has lost whatever personal sense of humor he once had. He is air sales man for a tasty dessert.
"One night," the Old Maestro states, "Walter Winchell and I decided to drop into the studio while this fellow was giving his weekly program. Our names impressed the page boys and got us into the room. We made funny faces at this radio comedian, thinking that he would turn the joke back on us by ad-libbing something about us to his audience. Instead, he got huffy and motioned us out angrily. The next day he tried to have the page boys fired for letting us in."
The vaudeville performers who once hoped to get $200 a week now think in terms of thousands and talk in millions. As much as $5000 was paid to Ed Wynn for a half-hour program once a week. Most of radio's aces get between $2000 and $5000 weekly from their sponsors. Hollywood money has been offered and taken by almost every radio star. Personal appearances and night-club engagements increase the weekly total. Eddie Cantor often makes $15,000 a week on theatre appearances. Cantor, Burns and Allen, Benny, Bernie and Joe Penner have clicked in the movies.
And so the ex-vaudeville performers have had their ideas turned topsy-turvy. They have been knocked dizzy by the strange power of the microphone. Bernie points to one man who has been successful on the radio, stage and screen. "He's a nice guy in many ways," Bernie says, "but he's a little screwy. For years he has made little jokes about politics. Now he thinks he can turn the course of any election by his radio chatter. I guess he believes he could blast the career of any political candidate whom he didn't like."
Ben Bernie was a vaudeville fiddler, teaming with Phil Baker, who played an accordion, in a musical act. Bernie never said a word onstage. Then one night a violin string broke in the middle of the act.
Bernie drawled, without thinking: "There must be a critic in the house."
Patrons howled with glee at the unexpected joke, and Bernie decided to become a comedian. Later he formed his own orchestra for a new metropolitan hotel and went on the air with his music and dry humor. It started the comedy master-of-ceremonies rage on the air.
JACK BENNY'S experience was much like Bernie's. Jack was a violinist until the war, when he entered the army and started joking while playing to soldier assemblies.
Gracie Allen was just a schoolgirl when George Burns met her. He thought she would make a good "stooge" for his vaudeville act. Their first engagement was for $5. Naturally Burns had written the act so that he would get all the laughs. Strangely, Gracie's dumb questions brought more merriment than George's bright answers. So George decided to give her the answers.
"In the old days, radio's top-notchers had time to enjoy everything," Bernie recalled. "Now many of them sleep, eat and think radio, to the exclusion of everything else. An earthquake might bother them, but only if it sets up enough static.
Copyright, 1936.

Assembly Line Art in New Rochelle

1955 was a pretty good year for Paul Terry. He was still tied in with 20th Century Fox to put new cartoons in theatres. He was putting his old ones on television thanks to a network deal. And at the end of the year, he decided to take the money and run by working out the sale of his studio to CBS for $5,000,000.

The year was Terry’s 40th anniversary in animation and that made him good copy for national newspaper writers. After all, he pre-dated that Walt guy everyone was so giddy about. Here are two of the stories. The first one appeared in papers around January 18th and the second around March 7th.

The Marquee
By Dick Kleiner
Sure, a little bit of Hollywood fell from out the sky one day, and nestled in New Rochelle right next to the railroad tracks. It's quite surprising, but it's been in that suburban Westchester town for years.
Paul Terry makes his fabulous movie shorts, Terrytoons ("Mighty Mouse," "Tom and Jerry," "Heckle and Jeckle," and so forth), in a pleasant New York suburb. Few people, outside the movie business, know about it, because Terry isn't the type to go around beating drums.
He's an elderly, hearty, philosophical man, primarily an artist, who was one of the first to go into animated cartoons. In those trail-blazing days, all movies were made in the New York area. The live stuff moved to California for weather purposes, and many cartoon studios followed. But Terry stayed where he was and he's still there.

He likes to recall how the chain of events that led him to his present spot started with the San Francisco quake. He was a newspaper artist there at the time, then left and went to Montana for a few years. From there he joined the general eastward movement of artistic young men, and landed in New York.
"My early years seemed sort of aimless," he says. "I drew for newspapers, learned something of photography, developed an interest in the theatre. And then, in '13, I saw the first animated cartoons. I knew then that my aimless wanderings had all been with some point--and this was it. In animated cartoons, I could fuse my interests in art, photography and the theatre into one project. So I began to make cartoons immediately."
His first, "Little Herman," came out in 1915. And he's been making them steadily ever since. Since the name Terrytoons was coined, there have been more than 650 of the six-minute shorts.
The Terry factory—for that's what it is, assembly-line art—works steadily. There are always several shorts in the works—one being written, one being animated, one being filmed, one being colored. Usually more than one in each stage. The place is always humming: it's animated itself.

Animated Cartoon Pioneer Going Strong on TV Show
By WAYNE OLIVER
NEW YORK, March 7 (AP)—A pioneer of animated cartoons who predates Walt Disney is going strong on daytime television.
He's Paul Terry who began with newspaper comic strips 50 years ago and since 1915 has been doing animated cartoons for the movies, for the past year and a half he has been showing his Terrytoons on CBS' Barker Bill five afternoons a week.
"We've got the top rated daytime show on television," beams the 68-year-old cartoon tycoon who, like Disney, makes his big money from the movies but couldn't resist the lure of TV.
"It's due to the power of the cartoon," he declares. "I think the cartoon is one of the best mediums of information and education. It can put over ideas without personalities it doesn't hurt anybody."
"The cartoon is truly an American art," he continues. "It embodies all the arts.
"You have the composer who puts everything he has into the music for the cartoon, the painter who concentrates on providing the most artistic background he can, and the animator responsible for the acting.
"Because they're all shoved at you at the same time, you really enjoy a cartoon more the second time than the first."

Terry was born in California and began his career there, but reversing Horace Greeley's famous admonition, came East and remained.
"In those days the whole motion picture industry was here," he explains. "Then they started moving to Hollywood because of the light. Movies were mostly made out of doors then and the prime reason they moved to California was because of the light.
"Now, with modern lighting a large part of their production is indoors. The movie industry could just as easily have been here if modern lighting had been available then.
"There never was a reason for our end of it to move. There was always indoor lighting."
Terry's studios are in suburban New Rochelle where he still turns out about 26 movies cartoons a year for 20th Century-Fox.
"And they're all switched to Cinemascope now," he adds.

Smart Willoughby

“George” the fox tricks Willoughby the dopey dog to jump off a cliff twice, then after rescuing him from a vicious bear, tricks him a third time. Director Tex Avery uses the same running animation and camera pan down the cliff to set us up for the switch.



This time, the camera quickly pans down the same mountain with broken tree limbs. Except Willoughby doesn’t crash-land.



“Ya know,” he tells us with a large, floppy tongue, “I ain’t so dumb,” then rests up as the iris closes.



The titles in Of Fox and Hounds give the draft numbers of the writer and animator. It’s late 1940 and American involvement in the war is about to escalate.

55 or so years ago, this was probably the most-shown Avery cartoon on the channel I watched that incessantly aired Warners cartoons. I still like it. And I ain’t so dumb.