A Little Trip With Jack Benny

One way that Jack Benny relaxed after a hard season of radio was to jump in a car with a friend and get out of California. (No, not in a Maxwell; I believe he owned a Packard then).

One of his trips in 1939 took him through several cities in Montana. Interestingly, he arrived in Montana a couple of weeks after Phil Harris, who appeared in Butte as part of a cross-country tour. Here’s the AP version about one of Benny’s stops.


Youthful Admirers Delay Jack Benny To Get Autograph
HAVRE, July 26.—(AP)—Jack Benny, screen and radio star, stopped Wednesday afternoon en route to Glacier National park for road information, but it took him three hours to get away after juvenile Havre located him.
Benny, accompanied by Jesse Block of the Broadway team of Block and Sully, planned to stop in Glacier park, and at Banff, Canada, before returning to Beverly Hills, Cal. The comedian left town with a weak arm, but countless boys and girls were happily displaying his autograph.

So what else did Benny do in the Treasure State? There were local press reports. Fortunately, the Fallon County Times of Baker, Mont. of August 3rd had a roundup of stories from nearby papers and digested two about Jack Benny. At least parts of the trip were planned in advance.

Glasgow Courier E.D. Benson, manager of the Fair store in Glasgow, is busy denying a persistent report that he replied “Yes, and this is President Roosevelt,” when he was greeted on the telephone early on Wednesday morning with the statement, “This is Jack Benny speaking.” As a matter of fact, it WAS Jack Benny, who was looking for S.H. Orvis, store owner, Benny’s second cousin. And further, Mr. Benson says, he has heard too many Jack Benny radio programs to be fooled, even by experts, on the voice of the Waukegan wise cracker. All of which also speaks well for sound fidelity either in telephones or radios, or both.

Dawson County (Glendive) Review Jack Benny, radio and screen comedian, visited briefly in Glendive Tuesday evening with George Robinson, manager of the Rose and Uptown theatres.

Mr. Benny and a companion were enroute from Minneapolis to Lake Louise in Albert [sic], Canada where he will spend part of his vacation. When they saw Mr. Benny’s name on the marquee of the Rose theatre where his show, “Man About Town,” was playing. Mr. Benny expressed a desire to meet the manager, Mr. Robinson, who was introduced to him.
The meeting with Mr. Robinson had its humorous side. Benny’s companion asked one of the ushers at the theatre how many people were inside. As it was fifteen minutes before show time, the audience was not very large, in fact it totalled just one person, and the usher so stated.
Benny’s face dropped a mile and he nearly lost his cigar. He looked almost as crestfallen as he does when told that his violin rendition of “Love in Bloom” was lousy. He regained his smiling aplomb however, when Mr. Robinson informed him that the show had not started that evening and had played Sunday and Monday to very good houses and the comment was all of the very best.

One Benny got to Alberta, a news conference awaited. After all, Man About Town had just been released. Any opportunity for publicity was welcome. This version appeared in the Calgary Herald but was picked up by other papers. If there were photos taken, I can’t find where they were published.

Human Touch Makes Radio Programs Successful, Says Ace Comedian Jack Benny
(By Our Own Correspondent)
Banff, July 29
Take it from Jack Benny—“it's the human touch that makes a radio program successful.”
“You don't want sophisticated entertainment for the smart listeners only; you don't want jokes alone; but you can hit all classes of people if you strike something basically human in every broadcast,” the top ranking comedian told newsmen at the Banff Springs hotel today.
Holidaying in the mountains with actor friend Jesse Block, Mr. Benny took time out from golf and sightseeing to talk about his own seven years in radio, and what they have taught him.
“Characters in the popular radio program should be very human,” Mr. Benny believes. “They should be like the people you know in your own home town, in situations which might be your own.”
Stay In Character
“Take my own radio character, for example, I've got something that's wrong with everybody. I'm mean, and stingy, and Mary's always picking on me. It's the same with the rest of the company, they never get out of character. Consequently it's not what they say, but the fact that they say it, that amuses people. They're not just gagsters.”
Benny talked too, of his favorite butler, “Rochester.” “The humor in his part lies in the fact that he's supposed to be working for me, and yet he says the things he does, and gets away with it.”
Mr. Benny doesn't take much stock in recent movies-radio altercations.
“I can only say, if you're in radio and make bad pictures, get out of the movies, and if you're in the movies and your radio work is weak, stick to the films. If the one doesn't bolster up your reputation in the other, then give it up.”
He'll Keep On
"Of course I've made bad movies myself," the comedian chuckled, "but my last one is good, so I'll keep on for awhile.”
Benny is no stranger to Canada, where for years he played the vaudeville circuits, “in big towns and little.” He thinks vaudeville was the greatest school of all for the actor, and he deplores its passing. The modern entertainment business is “harder work and greater strain” than in the old days.
“But I can't imagine not staying with it,” Jack Benny says.

1939 was probably a year he needed to relax. His jewelry smuggling case came up in New York City (he pleaded guilty and paid a $10,000 fine), was sued by former writer Harry Conn, who claimed he “made” Jack Benny, and saw singer Kenny Baker quit his show before the end of the 1938-39 season.

Fred Willard

For a while, he was hanging out with someone called Vic Grecco, and making appearances you probably don’t remember on the Garry Moore, Dean Martin, Ed Sullivan and the Summer Brothers Smothers shows. Eventually, he was making appearances you do remember with someone he was hanging out with named Martin Mull.

Fred Willard’s Jerry Hubbard was a one-of-a-kind character on a one-of-a-kind satire called Fernwood 2Night. Hubbard was oblivious but enthusiastic, a perfect character in a show filled with perfect characters for a parody of a small-town TV interview show.

Fernwood 2Night is one of my favourite shows of all time and I’m sorry to read Fred Willard has passed away.

Before he got there, he was part of a stand-up act. Let’s hear from his stand-up partner about how they climbed the ladder to success, pretty mild success considering where Willard ended up. This is from the San Francisco Examiner of April 14, 1963. The team was opening for Barbra Streisand.

Backing Up to the Top By Nancy Gray
Will success spoil Vic Grecco?
Actually, this is only half the question. Because if it spoils Vic Grecco, it's bound to spoil Fred Willard, too. Grecco and Willard are currently sniffing the sweet smell of success together from the stage of the hungry i. The shiny new comedy team is taking its first crack at San Francisco and the natives are getting their first crack at a fresh and apparently bottomless reservoir of laughs.
"We're opposites," Grecco explains. "I used to try to sell us to networks and I'd start off, 'One of them is tall and handsome,' I'd say. And they'd interrupt they'd always interrupt 'Yeah, and the other one is short and goofy looking.'
"Now I'd never thought of myself as goofy-looking and it hurt, so I'd reply, 'Well I think some people find him very attractive. He has a wife and daughter . . .' But no one ever listened. This is the story of our life: success.

"Back in New York I was a standout of some sort the salesman who didn't sell a thing. And then I was coordinator in a missile plant that made those parts they always blame when a missile forgets to move. Success."
Grecco goes on to tell how the unlikely pair met as actors three years ago off Broadway.
"At least we liked to tell people we were actors no one ever paid us. Anyway, we were in a play called 'Desperate Hours.' It spent three months in production and two desperate hours flopping. Success.
"From this though, we worked up some routines together and tried Greenwich Village coffee houses (They're theater restaurants now but they still serve the same terrible coffee depresso's what I call it).
"At Phase II, we shared the bill with Vaughn Meader—he got $7.50 a night and we got $10.50. I remember telling him to give up that Kennedy routine there were too many others doing it. Two weeks later the whole country knew him. And us? Success.
Hard as they fought it, Grecco, whose real name is Gus Mocerino ("See, I'm just one huge fake"), and Willard, whose name is really Fred Willard, caught on themselves last fall.
They broke into television on the Tonight Show and just last Friday made their first of two appearances with Steve Allen. What's more to continue the trend, they've moved from the coffee houses to the scotch and soda circuit. A record's in the offing. Success?

No, not the success Willard enjoyed when he was cast in a cult favourite which, unfortunately, decided to muck with its format and became a lesser show. Here’s a syndicated story from April 20, 1978.

The Chance As Second Banana Didn't Appeal To Fred Willard
By Dick Kleiner
Newspaper Enterprises Association
HOLLYWOOD—At first, Fred Willard wanted no part of the job.
He had been offered the spot of a right-hand man, a second banana. And he had played too many of them before, and felt he should hold out for something bigger, better, classier.
Willard had been on a couple of TV series already. He had just finished playing the District Attorney, with Michael Constantine, on his series, Sirota's Court. That hadn't worked, but Willard had come out of it with some nice reviews and some attention and some hopes.
And he had also starred on a pilot film that didn't sell, but still it was the star part and he liked that feeling.
So when the Norman Lear people asked him to take the second banana on Fernwood 2 Night, he balked.
"They told me it was a television talk show kind of thing," he says, "and that I was to be the assistant to Martin Mull, who was playing the show's host. I was supposed to sit on a couch, the end of the couch actually, and maybe add a comment now and then and introduce the guests.
"Well, it seemed like a step backward for me, back to being just another second banana. So I wasn't too enthusiastic, but it was for Norman Lear and it was a job."

So he took the job. And he says he was lucky, in that he and Mull hit it off and had a good rapport. The result was that Willard, as Jerry Hubbard, Fernwood 2 Night's answer to Ed McMahon, was able to become a personality.
He gradually built the part up, made Jerry Hubbard an integral and well-loved part of the show. He and Mull, he says, ad libbed about half of what they said on the show, and what is written is often written for his own unique brand of humor.
And so Fred Willard, as Jerry Hubbard, became famous right along with Martin Mull and Fernwood 2 Night. When the show ran its course and went off, the public protested so vehemently that it is now coming back, with a new name—America 2 Night—and a slightly new format.
"The new show," Willard says, "differs from the old one in that we have all moved west. So we are now doing the show from Los Angeles. What that means is that we are able to have celebrity guests—we have already had Charlton Heston, Burt Lancaster and Cindy Williams on."
He says all three of them said they were fans of the first show, and were thus delighted to participate in the new one.
Willard is from Cleveland—actually a suburb, Shaker Heights—Mull is from Cleveland, and the show's creative supervisor, Al Burton, is from Cleveland. But the silly thing is that, so far, the show is not seen in Cleveland. So Willard says his parents don't know what he's doing.
(The show is syndicated, and some major cities do not have it because no station in that city has seen fit to buy it.)
Willard grew up with the goal of playing professional baseball. He was a first baseman, and played during high school, college (Virginia Military Institute) and, in summers, with many semi-pro teams. "But then," he says, "I realized I wasn't good enough for the majors, so I started looking around for something else to do with my life. And when I decided I wanted to act, I gave up baseball completely. Only recently I've started playing again."
He did time in the Army, then used his GI bill benefits to study acting in New York. He was one of the members of the Ace Trucking Company for seven years, which is where he honed his comedy-acting abilities.
"The group has broken up," Willard says, "but once in a while we still get together and play a date, just for fun."

Willard’s career didn’t end with America 2Night. In fact, he appeared in movies and regularly in a number of series, live action and animated, and was working up until his death. But he was never better than when he was cluelessly insulting lounge act Tony Rolletti by complimenting him. We need more Fred Willard, not less.

A Grain of Terrytoon Wisdom

The Terrytoons studio, by all rights, should still be around today.

The demand for new cartoons on television has never ended. CBS owned Terrytoons. The network could have produced its own cartoons—and did for a while—but decided to rely on Hanna-Barbera and Filmation to fill its Saturday morning airtime and the studio petered out in the late ‘60s.

The studio was founded by Paul Terry after his unceremonious dumping by Amadee Van Beuren from the Fables studio, which had just gotten into the sound business, releasing Dinner Time in 1928 before Walt Disney’s Steamboat Willie arrived on the screen.

Terry—at least at the outset—insisted he wasn’t the sole force creating his cartoons. He gave credit to animator Frank Moser and musical director Phil Scheib. Moser was shoved out the door in 1936. Scheib was still there after Terry sold the studio at the end of 1955 and, despite the repetitious musical arrangements in many of the later Terry-produced cartoons, was actually an accomplished violinist and composer. His scores became more interesting after the sale and even more so when Gene Deitch was brought in to give the studio a long-overdue creative overhaul.

Here’s Terry being interviewed by the Ossining Citizen-Bulletin of June 20, 1931 which features a brief look at how his cartoons were made and the backgrounds of the three main players. The frames are from a 1931 Terrytoon called Razzberries. The flying elephant is not Dumbo.

Our Famous Neighbors
PAUL TERRY OF LARCHMONT
By Muriel Vernon
Children adore them. Adults, too, all over the world, find laughs, relaxation, and a grain of wisdom in watching Paul Terry's cats and mice, dogs and elephants cavort right out of an ink-well onto the movie screen.
The famous creator of Terry Toons lives at 61 Beach Avenue, Larchmont, He has a small daughter, aged two, whose own claim to fame lies in her ability to hum the songs that accompany her daddy's cartoons some time before they reach the screen.
Mr. Terry insists he alone is not responsible for all the Terry Toon cut-ups.
"There are really three of us," were the words with which he greeted the interviewer at the gray-stone studio in the Bronx. It is on this movie lot that all the Terry Toon characters are created, "shot," and, at length, synchronized.
Has Two Aides
Mr. Terry, a genial, portly, middle-aged man whose appearance is much more that of the successful business man than the artist, introduced his two collaborators. They're Frank Moser, whose years of experience as a newspaper cartoonist and illustrator and movie cartoonist matches Mr. Terry's own, and who lives at 37 Hollywood Avenue, Hastings; and Philip A. Scheib of New Rochelle, musical composer, who scores and conducts the Terry Toon synchronizations. Mr. Moser has a 14 year old son; Mr. Scheib's family consists of "Just a wife and a canary."

Above the Terry desk is a mirror, in this case a very important studio "prop." First, the pilot of the newest Terry Toon is decided upon. Then Cartoonists Terry and Moser get busy. On the flimsiest paper imaginable they must sketch every gesture, every movement each character would be likely to make in "doing his stuff" on the screen. The mirror insures continuity.
Mirror Helps Out
If the word "you" is what the talkie mouse has to say, the artist must see how the word looks on his own lips. This the mirror shows him, so that he can go ahead and transport the proper expression to the actor. Sometimes the cartoonist finds he has to get up and execute a jig, or sing a song before the mirror to see how it reflects. So you see, the business of making animated movie cartoons really is a lot of fun.
Before becoming their own movie producers, both Moser and Terry had years of newspaper illustrating experience; both ran their own comic strips in various newspapers throughout the country, and both previously created animated cartoons for other movie producers.
Moser and Terry began to draw in their early 'teens. Back in 1906, Terry got his first job in the art department of a newspaper. It was on the San Francisco Chronicle, and he might have been there still if the earthquake had not come along and thrown him out of a job. In 1915, when animated cartoons were just being introduced to movie audiences, Terry was an Illustrator on the New York Globe. At that same time, his partner, Moser, was illustrating the Sunday supplement of the New York Press.
Both Made Good

You may remember the Alonzo dog series, a comic strip in the New York Call. That was Terry's. Among the strips created by the quiet, pleasant Moser was a Sunday series known as Fan Fanny in Sport, a cartoonization of a man, his wife, and their dog.
Moser's story is that of the boy who came to the big city and made good. Though he's been drawing since he was 17, It took him until he was 24 to land his first job on a paper.
Among the other Terry achievements was the famous Aesop's fables, which Terry "animated" on the screen for nine years. The artists he trained to succeed him still do the work.
Mr. Scheib, is the musical conductor of the trio. His working props consist of countless racks of sheet music and an upright piano installed in his office. He writes all the lyrics for the Terry Toons and composes music that must flawlessly match the capers of Toon characters. Mr. Scheib studied at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin.

Apple For Teacher

Blackboard Jumble (released by MGM in 1956) is full of warmed over Tex Avery gags and reused Tex Avery animation with modern backgrounds by Fernando Montealegre.

One gag starts out with the world’s longest doorknob handle but turns into a bunch of stuff exploding in the southern wolf’s face, the same thing that happened to Spike in one of Avery’s Droopy cartoons earlier in the decade.



Irv Spence has an animation credit on this cartoon, along with journeymen Bill Schipek, Herman Cohen and Ken Southworth. Ed Benedict is the layout artist and Daws Butler provides uncredited voices.

Despite this being called a Droopy cartoon (and Bill Thompson’s greeting in the opening credits), Droopy doesn’t appear.

Fishy Piano

Flip the Frog’s quasi-Mozart piano playing inspires a statue holding a goldfish bowl to come to life and toss droplets of water like flower petals.



A hungry fish strolls into the scene.



The statue starts drinking the water. The fish starts sweating. In water!



The fish flies into the cat’s stomach. We get more of the Iwerks studio’s endless irradiating lines. And smoke coming out of the cat. Smoke?



Maybe it’s a smoked salmon. Yuk, yuk, yuk. Hey, that’s funnier than just about anything in this tedious cartoon.

This is The Music Lesson, a 1932 effort from Ub Iwerks.

Batfad

Batman was the most fun there was on TV for a brief period in the mid-1960s. The villains were crazy or calculating and, therefore, a real menace. Alfred was unflappable. Aunt Harriet was clueless and dithering. The Batmobile had a neat design. Words like “Zowie!” suddenly appeared on the screen. And you had a day to guess how Batman and Robin would get out of their seemingly-fatal predicament (ABC, in a stroke of genius, aired two-part episodes on Wednesday and Thursday nights).

The series became a monster fad. Newspapers wrote about it being a monster fad. Newspapers rewrote stories about it being a monster fad.

Here are a couple. The first is from the Cincinnati Enquirer of March 19, 1966 and gets into the business of Batman. It makes you wonder about shows today that spend fortunes on merchandising and then the show flops. It also makes you wonder why “experts” are so humourless. The second one is mainly from the Orlando Sentinel of January 12, 1967. A few other papers ran a longer unbylined version. Other newspapers earlier in the month had a similar syndicated story by Gretchen Carroll with some of the same words and many of the same quotes of Adam West. Judging by reactions in the story it’s evident some people took the show waaaaay too seriously.

Yes, the Batfad died for a time as the pundits predicted. The show killed itself by casting Milton Berle as a villain that wasn’t The Joke Stealer and Ethel Merman who was known to be evil only to Ernest Borgnine. And the Batman-as-the-Pied Piper episode showed the producers gave up on any premise of adventure or suspense and just went with the ridiculous. As a kid, I was insulted. But almost 55 years later, the series still has a following. As well it should. Where else can you get an accomplished actor like Burgess Meredith quacking and yelling “Bat boob!”

Batman?? What About Your Goldfish, Dad??
BY LOYALL SOLOMON
Enquirer Business Writer
Hey Dad, the next time Junior dons his Batman sweat shirt, combs his bangs down over his eyes, slams the front door and heads for that stripped down hotrod with the bullet hole decals, think before you groan and wonder, "What is this younger generation coming to?"
Remember the racoon coat, the ukelele, the hip flask and the Stutz Bearcat? Take heart, because the Dynamic Duo probably will fade into history Just like the racoon coat, the uke, the Stutz and the nickle goldfish from Woolworths that you swallowed by the handful.

The Caped Crusader and his Holy Smoking sidekick Robin burst onto the American [scene] a couple of months ago just like James Bond, Agent 007, did last year, just like Davy Crockett did before that and just like the hoola hoop before that.
The popularity of the scourge of evil-doers was strongly demonstrated Wednesday night when all of the TV networks gave live coverage to the Gemini 8 flight and plight. Officials of the American Broadcasting Co. and affiliate stations were swamped with thousands of calls from irrate [sic] viewers who preferred Batman to Gemini.
WKRC-TV, the Cincinnati ABC affiliate, received "several hundred calls" with News Director Tom Jones answering 180 of them personally. Only three were complementary. The rest? "We want Batman."
But while it may be only a brief fling, Batman will leave a monetary mark on the nation and will be responsible for quite a wad of currency changing hands. In fact, quite a wad already has changed hands—Batman sweat shirts. Bat decals, plastic models, costumes, just to mention a few items.
Just like James Bond, Davy Crockett, the hoola hoop and others. Batman is a fad that caught the public's fancy. And since American industry is geared to provide what the public wants, industry immediately jumped on the band wagon ... or is it bat wagon.
Within a matter of days after the first Batman program premiered on TV a variety of Batman sweat shirts, T-shirts with Batman decals, model Batmobiles and other such items hit the market. More than 500 items have been licensed for public distribution.
What's behind this sudden clamor for such commodities? Two members of the University of Cincinnati faculty, a sociologist and a psychologist, were just about as perplexed as the rest of the public.
"Actually Batman seems to be a part of a trend toward the atrocious—the worse the better," said Miss Gail Williams, a member of the UC Sociology Department staff. "The program is drawing crowds of adult viewers who seem to be using it as a conversation piece," she added.
Following closely on the heels of James Bond, Batman seems to be another "hero" who resorts to gadgetry instead of brain power when he finds himself in a tight spot, the sociologist commented. "In the Bond movies and books it seems that when the spy finds himself in trouble he whips out a new gadget I think people are watching Batman to see how long it can last and just what new gimmick he will come up with next," Miss Williams said.
To her, the trend toward anti-intellectual entertainment seems to be growing. "With the Bond series it appears that sex and sadism in over doses is very tolerable," Miss Williams said.

Dr. R. J. Senter, a member of UC's Psychology Department staff, commented that it is his feeling that many adults began watching Batman on TV because of their memories of their youth when they followed the adventures of the Dynamic Duo in comic books. "It is a fad and just what spurs a fad, I can't explain," said Dr. Senter. "If I could predict fads I woulnd't be in this business," he added.
Both Miss Williams and Dr. Senter feel that the Batman fad will be short lived. "While Batman does appeal to a wider age span, I don't believe it will last as long as some of the other fads lasted," Miss Williams said. And Dr. Senter added that in his opinion Batman could fade out just as rapidly as he came into sight.
Another UC staff member, Dr. George E. Hartman, head of the Marketing Department, pointed out that the speed with which manufacturers hit the market with Batman items shows that industry is becoming better prepared each day to jump quickly into production when public demand is expressed. "I am very sure that it can't last much longer," Dr. Hartman said but he added that Batman has proved a point for American industries in showing that they can jump on the bandwagon very quickly.
"This is an era of change. Most marketing organizations are better able today to grab the ball and run with it when the time comes," he said. And, he added, many organizations are becoming pretty good at predicting just what the public may come up with next in the way of fads.
Marketing groups are predicting that Batman merchandise sales will hit between $75 and $80 million before the year is out.
In 1965 James Bond items sold to the tune of slightly over $50 million. The problem is growing for many retail outlets as to "Just how many Batman sweat shirts (or Batman models, or Batmobile models) should we order? How long is this craze going to last? Do we order 300 or 3000?"
Pity the poor department store buyer who stocks up with 10,000 Bat masks on Friday and Monday finds that Batman is "out" and the Green Hornet is "in."
And who's to say that if Batman looks like a fairly permanent feature that the Green Hornet or the Shadow or Wonder Woman or even Felix the Cat won't be the next big demand.

Caped Crusader Ends First Batyear
By SANDRA HINSON
ABC's "Batman" celebrated its first anniversary on the network beginning a three-part episode guest starring The Joker (Cesar Romero) and The Penguin (Burgess Meredith) and Venus (Terry Moore).
Last night's episode was par for the parody. The Joker called Batman the Caped Cabbage Head and the Caped Creep and Robin, the Boy Blunder. He called himself the Master of Maudlin Mockery.
The three-part adventure will be a dabbling in astronomy. In the first segment The Penguin was little more than The Joker's assistant. He was a foul fowl set up as a decoy while The Joker set out to steal items listed on the Commissioner's Rare Art Map (for the sign of the Ram).
First he nabbed the rock 'n' roll rage of Gotham City the Twins. Then he broke up a performance of opera singer Leo Crustash (for the Lion and the Crab), and stole a rare statue representing Virgo the Virgin. Terry Moore was a voluptuous Venus who carefully followed Joker's dictate to maintain "the larcenous mind in a limber body."
Batman, however, solemnly maintained that she may be a nice girl deep down inside but she has fallen in with bad company-and probably had a rotten home life to boot.
Though the series set itself a rigid pattern that very first night last year, it's certainly inventive in its corny play on words and many of its devices and, taken in small doses, maintains a fair amount of comic interest.
STAR ADAM WEST has been stunned by the success of the show. "This has been the most exciting year of my professional life," he says. "I felt sure it would be successful, but I wasn't prepared for everything that's happened since—it still surprises me."

There's no doubt that Batman's overnight sensation was a national phenomenon. The Batmobile, the Batcave, the Batarang, the Caped Crusader and Dynamic Duo are terms that have become part of our popular jargon.
In the first few months following the show's premiere, the country was inundated with Batmania. Everything came up Batty.
Discotheques took up the Batusi, saloons featured the Batini, and Batwigs or Batcuts plus Batdresses were a rage. By April, there were more than 150 Batman products in toy stores, and youngsters everywhere sported Batman capes, T-shirts and complete costumes. Neil Hefti's "Batman Theme" was so successful that five other Batman records were soon on the market.
In Moscow, Pravda took heed and, predictably, branded the caped crusader "The representative of the broad mass of American billionaires." At home the super-hero was called either "camp" or "pop," although the description invariably set off arguments as to just what it meant.
On March 16, the unexpected difficulty with the Gemini 8 flight caused "Batman" to be frequently interrupted by news announcements. Across the country a storm of protesting viewers jammed the ABC switchboards.
The next morning, the Minneapolis Star ran four photographs from the show on its front page—and Astronauts Armstrong and Scott requested that the show be re-run since they, too, had missed it.
A Congressman wrote to Executive Producer William Dozier to request that seatbelts become an integral part of the Batmobile—having missed the episode where Batman cautioned Robin on just that subject.
When an automobile club criticized Batman's "reckless" driving, the caped crusader took to TV to defend his driving speed and stress his safety precautions, and have since taken care to fasten their seat belts.
And when a Columbus, Ohio, billboard company recently put up an enormous "Batman is Dead" sign as a gag, Sigma Pi Fraternity immediately sent pickets out to protest.
On the show itself, Hollywood's top stars flocked to the casting office for special guest villain roles. Stellar villains have included Cesar Romero, Burgess Meredith, Shelley Winters, Cliff Robertson, liberace, Anne Baxter, Otto Preminger, Frank Gorshin," Julie Newmar, Carolyn Jones, Art Carney, Van Johnson, George Sanders, Michael Rennie, David Wayne and Maurice Evans. In addition, such people as Jerry Lewis, Tim Conway, Sammy Davis, Sonny and Cher, Dick Clark and Phyllis Diller have done "cameo" roles.
How has all this affected the cast?
Both Adam West and Bart Ward have made frequent pubic appearances and have been seen in person by thousands of people. Says West, "I have always wanted to sign professionally and Batman afforded me the chance. I have sung onstage in San Francisco, New York, New Orleans and Detroit, as well as on The Hollywood Palace and The Milton Berle Show."
West has also cut a single record, "You Only See Her," with an album in the offing. Burt Ward also cut a song, "Boy Wonder, I Love You," and the personal popularity of both performers has soared. With the TV series and the feature film "Batman" currently breaking records in England, their popularity continues to expand. Multiple film offers await their convenience.
West continues: "The thing that pleases me most about the show is that I feel it is getting better. The comedy has always been pretty broad, but it is becoming more and more satirical, and I think that assures it a lively place in television entertainment. With episodes like 'Hizzoner the Penguin', which spoofed every phase of elections, I think the show is making a social statement, in a nutty kind of way at any rate; we've still got a lot to offer."
In addition to the overwhelming popularity of the show, all concerned were honored this past year with an Emmy nomination for the best comedy series. Quite a lot to celebrate.

She Has Oomph

“Hello, Ann. How’s the ‘Oomph Girl’ tonight,” enquires Eddie Robinson of Ann Sheridan (known as the ‘Oomph Girl’) in Hollywood Steps Out.

Being the Oomph girl, she responds as you might expect. “Oomph, oomph, oomph,” she tells Edward G. Notice her hands.



There’s a pause. But she’s not through. “Oomph!” she adds and startles Eddie in the process.



The original titles for this are hiding somewhere. We know Tex Avery directed this, Carl Stalling scored it, and the backgrounds are by Johnny Johnsen. The celebrity designs came from assistant animator Ben Shenkman and voices are supplied by (I presume) Kent Rogers, Mel Blanc and Sara Berner.

Snafu on (Kitchen) Patrol

The camera pans down a huge mound of potatoes and stops at the bottom, where Private Snufu is griping as he cleans a frying pan.

That’s the opening of Gripes, apparently the second Snafu made at the Warner Bros. studio as part of the “Army/Navy Screen Magazine.”

This was the work of Friz Freleng’s unit (there’s a hidden Friz reference in the letters of an eye-chart), where Manny Perez, Jack Bradbury, Gerry Chiniquy and Dick Bickenbach were among the animators. I don’t know whether Lenard Kester was responsible for potato mountain or the other backgrounds.

A Seuss-like rhyme does open the short
Where K.P. makes Snafu a very poor sport.

A Look Back at Jack by Dennis Day

If there was anyone who owed his career to Jack Benny, it’s Dennis Day.

Don Wilson was a big-time network sports announcer before being hired for Benny’s show in 1934. Phil Harris starred in an Oscar winning short and had several radio shows with his band (and vocalist Leah Ray) before hooking up with Benny in 1936. Eddie Anderson had appeared high in the credit roll of cast members in a number of movies.

But Day had been a singer on a couple of somewhat obscure local radio shows in New York City using his real name. Benny and his writers built a whole character for Day after being hired in 1939, then fine-tuned it and brought out talents beyond singing that Day may not have known he had. (Stories indicate Day became a pretty savvy businessman, too).

He always expressed his gratefulness to Benny in interviews. Here’s a great example published April 30, 1982 in the local paper in Twin Falls, Idaho. Benny had been dead for over seven years at this point.

Loyal friend
Singer Dennis Day still considers Jack Benny one of best
By STEPHANIE SCHOROW
Times News writer
TWIN FALLS — Even when singer Dennis Day was pushing 40, he was always "that kid" to Jack Benny, his show-business mentor.
For 25 years, on radio and then on television, Day played the naive youngster to Benny's exasperated senior.
"Even up to the very end, he'd say, 'That kid drives me nuts,'" Day recalls.
It's a lasting tribute to the cheapskate comedian that former sidekicks like Day continue to lavish praise on Benny's humor, timing and style.
"When I say Jack and I were like father and son, I mean it. You see, he adopted me, so he didn't have to pay me." Or so Day would say on the show.
Day, who is appearing with banjo player Scotty Plummer today, Saturday and Sunday at Cactus Pete's casino in Jackpot, is eager to discuss the Benny legend.
"There's very few (comedians) able to approach Jack Benny. There's no question he was a master of timing."
As an illustration, Day can't resist launching into the famous skit when a mugger puts a gun to Benny's back and growls, "Your money or your life."
"Wellll, (pause) I'm thinking."
Day, born Owen P. "Eugene" McNulty in New York City in 1917, was fresh out of college when he auditioned for the Jack Benny Show in 1939. He had done some radio shows and sent in tapes of his songs to Benny, who was looking for a replacement for singer Kenny Baker.
He first was signed on a two-week contract, and the character of his domineering mother, played by Verna Felton, was introduced until the young man achieved enough confidence on his own.
Day became a regular on the show, along with Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Mary Livingstone and Don Wilson. He later appeared frequently on Benny's television show.
Day also had his own radio show for five years, "A Day In the Life of Dennis Day," and his own TV show, which ran from 1952 to 1954.

The still-powerful tenor singer now performs standards, Irish songs and old favorites at conventions and nightclubs throughout the country. He recently toured with "The Big Band Show," along with Harry James, Gordon MacRae and the Ink Spots.
Day also has begun lecturing, mostly to women's clubs, about radio, early TV and Benny.
He answers the inevitable question about whether Benny was really as cheap as he appeared. "Jack had to be the exact opposite. He was the easiest man in the world to work for.
"I never saw him lose his temper except once to a bit player. Thirty seconds later, he went up to him and said, 'I didn't mean it."
Day's own zany image on the show never bothered him. "I was always the silly kid. On stage, I was silly and naive and downright stupid."
Yet, there was always "logic" in his lunacy, "logic to answer the needs of Jack Benny," Day says. The audience found "I could be silly and stupid, and yet accept the fact I could still sing beautiful songs.
Moreover, the dumb-kid routine only worked with Benny. "You couldn't do that silly character with someone else."
Making the transition from radio to television also brought strange reactions. Previously, people had imagined his visage, now they saw it.
"There were either those who thought I'd be short and fat, or tall and slim with hay seeds coming out of my ears."
Day says Benny's Everyman brand of humor continues to win followers in a new generation. "They still love that timelessness about him.
"After all, he was the butt of all the jokes. He was the straight man for us. I always got the better of him. So did Rochester."
He becomes momentarily somber when he recalls how shocked he was when Benny died in 1974. "It doesn't seem possible it's been that long a time."
The father of 10 children and grandfather of eight, Day plans to continue performing. "After all, this May 25, I'll be eligible for Medicare, by George."
But still ringing in his ears before every performance is the familiar command, "Sing, Dennis."

Forget Banking. Draw Gabby Instead

An animator getting paid the same as a bank president?

Really?

That unusual theory was propounded in one of a number of newspaper features in the wake of the release of Gulliver’s Travels. I suspect it generated more laughs amongst the staff at the Fleischer studio than the Gabby or Stone Age shorts they soon found themselves making.

Max Fleischer talked with the New York Herald Tribune’s Tom Waller about the genuine need for more people in the animation, and training for them. With his company making features, Disney making features and a number of studios turning out a regular series of animated shorts, Fleischer knew there weren’t enough people to make them.

Even then, drawing was just one aspect. Characters had to move and they had to show their personality through movement (including expression). The rubber hose of the 1930s wouldn’t do by the end of the decade; Walt Disney’s people had raised the bar.

(Of course, there were other parts in the animation industry. One person left banking and became a cartoon story writer. He ended up making more than a bank president. He was Joe Barbera).

This version of the story appeared in the November 23, 1939 edition of one paper; a cut down version showed up a day later in the Miami News (I cannot find the Trib’s original copy). It appears to have a dropped word which I have added.

Talent Needed For Animated Cartoon Work
Special From the New York Herald Tribune to The Dayton Daily News
NEW YORK, Nov. 23.— Only when colleges become sufficiently cartoon-conscious to recognize the value of a new course, and artistically young men and women are made to realize that “acting at the end of pencil” often pays the wages of a bank president, will the drawn characters in feature-length cartoons become serious rivals of the flesh and blood players who act today before Hollywood cameras.
This is true, according to filmdom's oldest producer of animated cartoons, Max Fleischer, who originated the “Out of the Inkwell” screen strip over 20 years ago. He declares that mass production of such long cartoons as “Gulliver's Travels” and “Snow White” and “Pinnochio” is today handicapped virtually to the point of being stymied by this dearth of men and women who can drain acting ability from system to fingertips then transfer it successfully to celluloid.

While this condition exists the American film industry, [he] reports[,] will be lucky if it can turn out two full length cartoons a year. The ones made so far have been in the process of production two years or more. So the time is not in mind—at least in the professional screen cartoon mind—when Gullivers and Snow Whites can be popped into theaters at a speed comparable to the 400 feature pictures Hollywood grinds out in the course of a single production year. In fact, opines this veteran, it may well not be until some future generation that the film industry will be able to obtain enough skilled animators; that the question of mass feature-length cartoon production and when it will start might then be answered with a degree of accuracy.
Young folks feeling around for a career, and hearing on all sides that law is over-crowded and medicine is worse, that there are too many stenographers and too much regimentation among bricklayers, have a field almost to themselves in screen animation. The jobs pay $200 a week, and up. But, reminds Fleischer, like everything else that is worthwhile, talent and technical training go hand in hand. One is worthless without the other; that why he stresses the need for many colleges to consider this field and include the essentials of it in their curriculum, making this available to all students who show promise of becoming professional animators.
In the entire world today there are less than 500 first-class animators, men who can do all of the original drawings for all of the cartoons that are projected on theater screens, reports Fleischer. Since he opened his studio in Miami, incidentally, the only branch of the film industry to become permanently established in Florida and away from Hollywood, this producer has interested local art schools to the point where they have introduced classes in animation which now have as many as 200 students. Some of these students today are working on "Gulliver's Travels," now in the last stage of production since it is scheduled to make its world premier during the Christmas holidays.

Some 40 odd class animators and as many assistants, as well as 600 other persons in various capacities, have worked on this picture which entered production in May, 1938, almost a year before the Fleischer studios moved from New York to Miami. Fleischer, himself, figures it takes between five and six years of training to become an animator and another two to four years to rate really as a master craftsman.
When youngsters start from the ground up in his plant, Fleischer makes them opaquers or in-betweeners, which identifies them generally as copyists. The pay is small and the work nerve-wracking, but every day their copy is scrutinized and they are promoted according to their persistence and adaptability. Naturally, failures are in the majority, as they are in many other walks of life. Out of an average group of 60 persons, 20 may be selected to "show what they can do" as assistant animators. Of these 20 the average that makes the grade is not over eight.
Thus, as Fleischer points out, under the present set-up the American film industry is way behind in the matter of talented animators and with little means to establish the machinery which Hollywood has, for instance, in obtaining new talent for the screen. While a talent scout ran get a fairly good idea of whether a legitimate actress will make a go of things before the camera, after simply-watching her in stage show, a talent hunter for animators—if there were such a man—wouldn't get very far by viewing some art class at work, since the best landscape artist, according to Fleischer, often would fail dismally if he were suddenly confronted with the many geometrical and action problems which are a part of every good animator's job.