Bring Back Vaudeville

Jack Benny may have spent plenty of time in front of microphones, and for a while staring at a motion picture camera, but he never did give up appearing live on stage.

Of course, he began his vaudeville career before World War One. In the ‘30s, after becoming a huge radio star, he mounted his own personal appearance tour with a singer, acrobatic act, and so on, just like a vaudeville show. During World War Two, he and his little unit of singers and musicians appeared before soldiers around the world. He was still appearing on stage when he went into television in the early ‘50s, and then expanded that with violin concert performances until his health gave out in 1974.

It’s no surprise, perhaps, he was a little saddened by the demise of vaudeville at the hands of talkies and radio, and happy it got a boost 20 years later. He wrote for the UP about it (or someone ghosted for him) in a column published July 15, 1953. He, again, shows his affection and respect for other entertainers.

Benny Plans Tour In Vaudeville Show
(Jack Benny, CBS TV and radio star, is today's guest columnist during Jack Gaver’s vacation.)
By JACK BENNY
Written For United Press
NEW YORK (UP)—Recently I completed a three-week engagement at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco. While I was there, a young couple rushed up to me in the lobby of my hotel, and the boy breathlessly asked, "Are you Jack Benny?" I nodded yes.
"Mr. Benny," he said. "we are on our honeymoon and seeing you here and on the stage last night is the biggest thrill we've had."
This is a rather sad commentary on honeymoons, but it does emphasize the fact that people do love to see actors entertain in person. And entertainers also love to entertain—in person. I know that I got such a kick out of my three-week stand in San Francisco that I plan to play a lot of cities around the country next year in a good old-fashioned vaudeville show.
Danny Kaye, Judy Garland, Betty Hutton and a lot of us feel the same way about it, and we all owe this revival of vaudeville in America to one man and he isn't even an American. His name is Val Parnell, and he's managing director of the Palladium Theatre in London.
When vaudeville died in America in the 1930s, all of us who love the theatre were very sad about its passing and felt there was nothing to do about it except mourn a phase of show business that was outdated.
Although radio and television have been very good to me, I guess my first love is still the stage. I know I must be a ham. The old, trite familiar smell of the grease paint still smells good to me. And hearing the laughter and applause of a live audience night after night still sounds awfully pretty to those tired old ears.
In the old days, B. P.—Before Parnell—there weren't many of us who could take time off from radio and picture work to do a Broadway show. So, in order to go out and play to a live audience, we had to appear in the big picture theatre. We did make a lot of money. But five, six and seven shows a day is pretty tough when a man gets to be 39. And also, you always had the feeling that you were merely an extra added attraction.
But all this time, the variety theatre was doing very well in England, Ireland and Scotland, under the capable hands of Val Parnell and a few other showmen. However, in 1947, when business there started to slack off a bit, Val didn't shrug his shoulders and say, "too bad." He decided to import a flock of big name American stars to rejuvenate the variety theatre. His first big hit was Danny Kaye, and the rest is history.
Real Criticism

I think Parnell knows more about vaudeville than any man in the business. I played the Palladium four times in the first six years and every suggestion or criticism Val had to offer was constructive, and a great improvement to my show.
The Palladium policy is to do a strictly vaudeville first half of five acts, with a top star taking over the second half of the bill. All seats are reserved, and many Londoners buy their tickets a month in advance.
The night they come to the Palladium is a big event for these folks. And if the entertainment is good, they love every minute of it. Danny Kaye, Judy Garland, Betty Hutton, myself and many of the other Americans who came to the Palladium, kept asking each other "if the English people love this type of show so much, why shouldn't the Americans."
None of us had the guts to try it—except Judy.
Judy Did It
Judy, who hadn't sung before a live audience in years and years, stepped out on the stage of the Palladium one night and stepped off to one of the greatest ovations ever recorded a star in all history. And when she finished her engagement, she was so thrilled with the warmth of the live audiences, she decided to try it at the Palace in New York. As we all know, Judy stayed 18 weeks, and could have stayed 18 more. Danny could have done the same.
Judy, Danny Kay and Betty Hutton found that if you give them a good show, people will come to see whether it's New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Kokomo, London or Glasgow.
So I know I am speaking for Danny, Judy, Betty and all the rest of the entertainers in the U.S.A., when I publicly say, "thank you, Val Parnell, for bringing vaudeville back to America."

Disney Vs Warners

The famous Dean of Animation, Eddie Selzer, gave newspaper readers in 1952 an idea of how his staff put together a Warner Bros. cartoon.

OK, Eddie was not a dean, or even an artist. He was a company functionary handed the job of overseeing the cartoon studio after the Warners bought it from Leon Schlesinger in 1944. But he provides a pretty good description in this syndicated feature found in the Nashville Tennessean of February 24, 1952.

For good measure, the unidentified writer chatted with someone over at Disney to be able to point out the differences between the two operations.

Several comments by Selzer are interesting. One involves the “skunk” dialogue by Bugs Bunny. The closest I can think of this being said is in the 1953 short Duck! Rabbit! Duck! where Bugs calls Daffy “a dirty skunk.” The dialogue change he refers to later in the story is from the 1949 Bugs cartoon Rebel Rabbit, directed by Bob McKimson. I admit I am stumped about Foghorn Leghorn and the Brooklyn Bridge. And the comments about everyone keeping Bugs’ character were echoed elsewhere in interviews (this is off the top of my head) by both McKimson and Friz Freleng, as Chuck Jones tended to go off on flights of fancy.

These poorly photocopied publicity photos accompanied the story.

Stars That Make You Giggle and Roar Work Long, Tedious Hours Without Receiving a Cent
HOLLYWOOD—Some of the most popular stars hero are never paid a red cent.
They are, of course, the cartoon characters who have become so famous over the years. These pencil personalities—Snow White, Bugs Bunny, Cinderella and Donald Duck—have made movie audiences weep, giggle and roar as genuinely as do the flesh-and-blood stars of stage and screen.
Since they are mythical, Hollywood citizens never get to see them except on the screen, but a tour of Warner Bros. cartoon studio brought them to life as surely as if they breathed 16 lungfuls of California air every 60 seconds.
There are two representative companies here who produce cartoon movies. They are the Warner company in Hollywood and Walt Disney Productions in Burbank. Each has its own special family of characters and types of productions. Warner Bros. studio makes 30 animated cartoons of seven-minute length each year, and the Disney company, in addition to producing several short comedies, makes full-length features.
Both companies use the same basic method of production, and it requires only five words to describe the method: Hard work and good taste.
Cartoon production is the exact reverse of actual movie production—the cartoons are fitted to the sound effects.
The tour of Warner Bros. cartoon studio, with Edward Selzer, president, acting as guide explained how this is done.
Uses Jam Session
“I believe in jam sessions,” Selzer said. “If any man in this outfit gets a hot story idea, we let him draw up his idea and show it to us. We all pitch into it and decide where it can be improved and whether, as a whole, it has possibilities.”
It is on this story, or "premise" session, that the cartoon depends. The creator introduces his story with simple sketches in continuity. These, with caption text, are arranged on large boards, approximately five by eight feet, called the “story boards.”
After the story board has been approved, changed, improved and given the go-ahead, it is turned over to a director who guides each phase of the production. Then the musicians, layout men, background artists and animators are called in to integrate their various assignments.
In both the Disney and Warner studios, music and dialogue are recorded first. The animation directors study and analyze and break down the sound elements into the number of film frames that will be required pictorially.

For example, says Selzer, it takes about 48 drawings for Bugs Bunny to say: “You are a skunk.” In this particular statement, now under production in the studio, the artists let Bugs' body remain still, and provided animation in the 48 drawings for his mouth and jaws only. This saves a lot of work.
Music and dialogue and sound effects are run over and over on a small sound projector for timing and accent so that the picture and the music and the dialogue come out exactly synchronized. The animator has complete control of his drawings—his actors, as they are in the cartoon medium—at all times, frame by frame. The control is maintained by the cutting department, which prepares the work sheet or chart which shows in terms of film the length of words, the intervals between words, the vowel and consonant sounds, accents, inhalations and out-breathing. These work sheets look something like this:
Y—3 frames
O—3 frames
U—3 frames
(Pause here—3 frames)
A—7 frames
R—6 frames
E—4 flames
(Pause here—3 frames)
A—4 frames
(Pause here—3 frames)
S—3 frames
K—1 frame
U—1 frame
N—1 frame
K—3 frames
The many frames for “You Are” are required because Bugs is forming with words with precision and to make the statement sound nastier. The word “skunk” requires less frames because there is little mouth movement in it.
Same Pattern Applies
The same pattern applies to general sound effects, as, for instance, a clap of thunder or the song of the bird of the fall of a tree.
Key animators have assistants who work under and with them in completing any series of drawings. The animators draw the highspots of the action or character gestures. The assistants follow through along the course indicated by the top animators, and then the remaining drawings required for smooth progression are done by men and women called "in-betweeners" because they supply the drawings in between the key action drawings.



The animators work on an illuminated drawing board. This is done so that after one drawing has been completed, a second piece of transparent paper can be placed on top of it and the new drawing varied just enough to make the movement smooth and natural looking.
When the drawings have been tested for animation, they are sent to the inking and painting department, where trained girls transfer the drawings to sheets of transparent celluloid and outline the characters with pen and ink in such a skillful manner that they lose none of the charm of the original drawings. Other girls apply the chosen colors of paint to the reverse side of the celluloids so that the inked outlines will show.
After the celluloids are finished they are sent to the camera department, where each is placed over the correct background and photographed.

The backgrounds are another phase which requires much painstaking labor and thought. By way of simple exclamation, if Farmer Brown is supposed to chase Foghorn Leghorn across Brooklyn bridge, then the background man simply draws Brooklyn bridge, and slides it under brown and the rooster while the photographer takes animated pictures of them.
From here on out it is the same as movie production. The film is previewed and sometimes undergoes further editing.
At present the Disney studio, with its hundreds of artists and technicians, is concentrating its creative labors on the elaborate forthcoming production “Peter Pan.” This full-length feature needs no flowery description, since movie fans throughout the country have already recognized Disney’s excellent technique through other features—"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Cinderella," and "Alice in Wonderland."
"Peter Pan," adapted from Sir James M. Barrie’s famous fantasy of the boy who never grew up, and his astonishing adventures with the Darling family, moves swiftly in its various excitements and wonders. It will reach the screen in at least 200,000 separate drawings especially painted for the technicolor cameras. This is the amazing factor of animated cartoons. Often the number of drawings a key animator does in a week's time will zip through the theater projector in 10 to 15 seconds. "Peter Pan," when it is released in 1953, will have been in production three years.
Selzer likes to discuss his cartoon personalities, and speaks of Bugs Bunny as a veteran of the screen whose character is so well established that it requires many sessions of the story men and directors to see that this character does not go astray.
He recalls with a chuckle one cartoon in which Bugs visited Washington to see why the government offered many dollars in bounty for wolves, coyotes and foxes, but only a few cents for rabbits. Bugs was insulted.
“Bugs is a guy who is cheerful and resourceful and a menace to the "wittle hunter who hunts wabbits,” he declares, “but you’ll notice he only plays his dirty tricks in self-defense. In this particular story he was originally supposed to kick a Washington cop, and tell him to make a note that Bugs Bunny had been there. He was also to slap the secretary of the interior a couple of times, and throw ink in his face. We changed the cop to a chauffeur, and we toned it down so that he only flipped ink from a pen in the secretary's face.”
But there is one trick of Bugs that has become his stock in trade. It occurs when the cop grabs him by the leg, or the hunter pokes a gun in his face, or the bear raises a club over his head, and Bugs, needing time to think, looks up angelically and asks—
“What's up, Doc?”

Olive Oyl's Brotherly Love

There’s no fight at Patterson Square Garden to-night. Instead, the Brotherly Love Society has taken over the venue for a rally led by Olive Oyl in the centre ring where she sings a great opening theme song by Sammy Timberg.

This gives the animators a change to have Olive’s arms gesticulate all over the place. At one point, she does a quick high-step dance in a circle and wraps her arms around herself to signify love.



This being a Popeye cartoon, you know what’s going to happen. Popeye’s attempts at brotherly love will end in fisticuffs and battered bodies against a dingy New York streetscape.

Brotherly Love was released in 1936 with animation credited to Seymour Kneitel and Doc Crandall. This has all the elements I like about Popeye—the ship’s doors opening and closing on the titles, a fun song, goofy-looking characters and run-down city backgrounds.

And Kiss Her And Hug Her And...

“Duh, folks, uh, I’m not the real Grandma. I’m the wolf. See?” The bumpkin wolf pulls up the grandma nightcap to reveal wolf ears.



Naturally, we know how the story is supposed to go; the wolf is supposed to eat Red Riding Hood. We also know from the opening credits that Little Rural Riding Hood is a Tex Avery cartoon so we can forget the story. “But I ain’t-a goin’ ta do it,” says the wolf, wagging his finger.



“All I’m gonna do is chase her and catch her and kiss her and hug her and love her...” The wolf gets so aroused, he snuggles with his bedsheet. Some random poses.



Pinto Colvig is the wolf. The credited animators are Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton, Mike Lah and Bobe Cannon. Johnny Johnsen supplied the backgrounds.

Good News and Good Night

In 1956, he was a newscaster doubling as a disc jockey at WROW in upstate New York telling the local newspaper’s music column that Nanette Fabray’s "How Soon" and Mark Fredericks's "Mystic Midnight" were real comers on the charts. In 1976, he was still a newscaster—likely the best-known fake newscaster on television.

He was Ted Knight.

If Knight was known for anything prior to being cast as anchorman Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, it was for providing narration and other voices on cartoons for Lou Scheimer’s Filmation. Even then, he was a struggling actor. And Moore once admitted that Knight was not what the pilot story called for—a younger, possible love interest was what was in mind—but he was hired anyway and there were no regrets.

Knight told United Press columnist Vernon Scott in 1977 he was unhappy on the show because some episodes were centred on other characters and he had little to do. It made him neurotic; it would appear Knight was a little insecure. That certainly wouldn’t have been helped when he got his own show after MTM finished its run. It lasted six episodes; he played the owner of an escort service. Critics sliced it apart.

Scott interviewed Knight a number of times over his career. First up is a column from July 1971 and the second from February 1973. Knight was only 62 when he died on August 26, 1986.

Preparation pays for 'newscaster' on 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show'
By VERNON SCOTT
HOLLYWOOD (UPI)—Ted Knight devoted years of his life to preparation for his role as the pompous little newscaster on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."
Knight humorously recounts a succession of radio and television jobs on local channels in New England.
He was Uncle Ted, Farmer Ted, Windy Knight, Milkman Ted and other cornball characters in and around Albany, Troy and Schenectady, N.Y. It was minor league work, but he came across a dozen prototypes of super-ego Ted Baxter.
Off-screen Ted Knight has little in common with his video character.
Knight moved to Southern California in 1957. For the past 14 years he has done voice-over commercials, cartoon voices and played small roles in motion pictures along with appearances on television.
His current job is the big time.

HE HAS BEEN married to his wife Dorothy, who also is a native of Connecticut, for 23 years. They are the parents of Ted Jr., 17; Elyse, 11; and Eric, 8. In turn, the children are the masters of a trio of Siamese cats: My Guy, Chopstick and San.
All live in a Spanish style home in the San Fernando Valley. They are a bit crowded with growing children in a three-bedroom house. But there is a spacious yard and a large swimming pool.
In most respects the Knights are a typical suburban family, as far removed from the bright lights of Hollywood's social activities as if they'd never left New England.
Their closest friends are other members of the series.
Four days a week Ted drives to CBS Studio Center to rehearse the show. On Friday nights the episodes are taped before a live audience.
Otherwise Ted makes it home in time to have dinner with his family, a luxury enjoyed by few television series regulars.
On long summer evenings Ted often enjoys a game of basketball with his sons.
Ted Knight has probably one of the most unusual avocations among the film colony's performers—collecting ventriloqual memorabilia.
A sometimes ventriloquist, Ted entertains neighborhood children with his talent. He has an expensive figure —"never called dummy" —named Duncan. He is a smart alec child who tops Ted with quips and various conversational gambits.
Knight is surprisingly adept. He learned the art over the years on those small television stations and now collects books, magazines and other information relating to ventriloquism.
HE HAS NO PLANS for becoming a professional ventriloquist.
Ted once was a golfer but the combination of smog and slow play on Los Angeles links have made a beach enthusiast of him.
Currently Dorothy and Ted are house-hunting in Santa Monica. They want a home closer to the ocean and the cooler climate.
Almost the only time Ted can be seen wearing a necktie is on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." At home and at small parties he invariably wears sports clothes. "When you move west," he says, "one of the benefits is throwing away your neckties."

Ted Knight Anchors TV Series' Laughs
By VERNON SCOTT
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) — The man who play's the biggest horse's neck on television doesn't care much for this distinction but as Ted Baxter on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" he has become a certified celebrity.
Ted Knight sighed deeply: "It used to bother me playing a national dummy on television. But I've got enough confidence to overcome that now."
He even has enough self-confidence to live down his real name, which happens to be Tadeusz Wladziu Konopka.
On the weekly CBS comedy series, Knight is the ultimate fat-headed, egotistical, inept newscast anchorman audiences would happily strangle.
The portrait of Ted Baxter resembles Knight in physical characteristics only. At least the actor hopes that is the extent of it.
"I didn't believe people could have as much pomposity, vanity and bigotry as Ted Baxter," said his alter ego. "When you think about it I'm the only one in the series who doesn't play a hero."
There was a touch of regret in Knopka's voice. But he brightened when reminded he also gets the biggest laughs on the show.

"Ted Baxter is the butt of all the jokes," he continued. "They all bounce off him. But it's been rewarding where the public is concerned. Viewers all love Ted and sense his innocence and vulnerability.
"He's escaped into a bubble of unreality. And a lot of people in this country would like to find a bubble like that.
"The character may be somewhat exaggerated. But I've bumped into people with an ego almost as big as his."
To break the monotony of rehearsals, directors on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" often ask Knight to stay in the Ted Baxter character between rehearsal scenes. The rest of the cast picked up on the inside joke and were loosing zingers at Knight-Baxter as they do in the script.
"I started getting paranoid about it," Knight, ne Konopka, reflected. "They began laughing at me when I was trying to be serious. The first two years it was touchand go whether I was a Jekyll and Hyde character. Now Ted Baxter has become a classic. An original."
Last year Knight played television's biggest dunderhead with such authority he was nominated for an Emmy Award.
Why, one asks, is a dumbell, kept on in his anchorman post Knight answers: "Comedic license is all that keeps him on the job." Knight's role has been beefed up the past season to wring as many laughs as possible from Ted Baxter, whose only, virtue is his love for his mother.
There is an almost Laurel-Hardy relationship between the characters of Ted Baxter and Lou Grant, the beady-eyed boss of the show's news operation. Most of the comedy is played off the two of them.
"Lou and Ted are funny guys," Knight said. "Ed Asner and I work well together. The important thing is that it works. And so does the show."

A Drive With Woody

Woody Woodpecker is in a car singing his original theme song in The Loan Stranger (1942). He opens The Screwdriver (1941) the same way but the animation and the song lyrics are different.

In the short, Woody flies for a bit and pops out of different parts of his car.



Some people bash these early Woodys but he’s still fairly expressive to me. He knocks on his head when he sings “Knock on wood.” We even get some perspective animation when he sings “So are you!!” and points at the theatre audience.



Frank Tipper gets the animation credit. He left the studio during the war. Alex Lovy is the director (Tipper and Lovy were related for a time through marriage).

Writer Vs Writer

There’s going to be a fight, according to a poster that is actually part of a movie studio set in Hollywood Capers, a 1935 Warner Bros. cartoon.



To your right in the background is an advertisement for a match between “Punchy” Pierce and “Hurricane” Hardaway. The reference is to Leon Schlesinger’s writers Tedd Pierce and Bugs Hardaway.

The pool game poster mentions “Fancy” Spencer, which would refer to musical director Norman Spencer, who dragged out his woodblock yet again in part of the score of this short.

The bartenders are signing the Wrubel/Dixon tune “Sweet Flossie Farmer.”



Here’s another inside joke: a memo signed by Ray Katz, who was the personel director at the studio (and Leon Schlesinger’s brother-in-law).

Jack King directed this short with the Schlesinger animal gang. We get Little Kitty, Oliver Owl, Miss Cud, Tommy Turtle and the star: Beans (voiced by Tommy Bond). Oh, there a grown-up version of Porky Pig for a few frames. Remind me not to have King place my bets at a race track. Chuck Jones and Ham Hamilton are animators; my guess is Jones is animating the scene where the ersatz Frankenstein monster is being blown by the wind machine.

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.