No, He’s Not Joking About a Band

A guest appearance on the Ed Sullivan radio show of March 29, 1932 sparked Jack Benny’s radio career. After Benny debuted for Canada Dry on May 2, 1932, Sullivan showed up on Jack’s show a few times. And Benny made good enough copy for Sullivan’s columns in subsequent years.

Newspaper writers back in that era didn’t generally devote a whole column to one person, they had a bunch of short items about a variety of stars (gossipers like Walter Winchell and Louella Parsons followed the same format on radio). So here’s a short blurb about Jack from Sullivan’s column of August 19, 1932 in the New York Daily News.

Jack Benny Wins
HEREAFTER this department proposes to single out a comedian or writer who authors the smartest crack of the week. This will please the comedians and, what is more important, it will serve to fill a spot like this.
Jack Benny gets the award this week for his smart-cracking on his Wednesday night radio period. He broadcasts for a ginger ale period.
Talking about football, as he rambled along, Benny cleaned up with: "As I understand football, there's a fullback, two half backs and a nickelback on each large bottle you buy at the grocery store." If Mr. Benny will call at the office, he will get his prize.

As this was printed almost 90 years ago, I should explain the reference to “nickelback.” Jack and his writer Harry Conn came up with jokes and puns involving the sponsor. In this case, one of Canada Dry’s slogans involved getting five cents back on the bottle deposit. Benny and Conn used to find ways the humorously incorporate the slogan.

Canada Dry didn’t appreciate it. The company and its agency only understood stiff, straight, formal advertising. It tried to get around Benny and Conn by bringing in a new writer, vaudevillian Sid Silvers who had appeared on stage with Jack as far back as 1927. The two ganged up on him, forced him out, and then Canada Dry announced it was ending its relationship with Benny in early 1933.

To give you an idea how conservative the advertising business was, the Spokane Spokesman-Review of December 11, 1932 (Benny was still with Canada Dry then) takes a dig at how agency experts were sticks in the mud.

Variety gives the verdict of the Junior executives of advertising agencies on some of the current radio stars. These executives are known as "hardest boiled" radio critics because they judge stars by their ability to sell the sponsors' products, which they measure by the reception accorded them as entertainers. Here are some of their conclusions:
"Al Jolson, not so hot; Eddie Cantor, he's through; Ed Wynn, falling off; Jack Benny, terrible; Burns and Allen, stale; Kate Smith, old stuff; Mills Brothers, atrocious." What, no Jack Pearl verdict?

Audiences didn’t think Benny was terrible. Far from it. Benny ranked at, or close to, the top of the ratings and surveys of comedians for years and years. And he carried on making fun of the sponsor. It worked. For a time, General Foods couldn’t keep enough Jell-O in stock. And in the 1950s the song parodies shoehorning in references to Lucky Strike cigarettes (and making fun of American Tobacco’s numerous repetitive slogans) are among some of the best-loved parts of the Benny radio show by fans today. When it came to jokes about sponsors, Jack Benny had more hits than, well, Nickelback.

A late note: Of the Canada Dry broadcasts, only Benny’s debut exists in audio form (along with two partial shows from late in the run). But the scripts are still around. Benny scholar Kathy Fuller-Seeley has gone to the equivalent of Jack’s vault (which didn’t exist in 1932) to photograph and transcribe the first 26 scripts. They’ve been published in a book that’s available now.

The Jack Benny on these shows is far different than the one everyone thinks of. The shows themselves are quite different as well. Anyone interested in the development of early radio comedy should have this book in their library. You can find out more at this site (I am a mere fan, I get no kickback for this). And if you want to read the script where Jack and the Mary Livingstone character first met, it has been transcribed in this post from four years ago.

He Should Have Happened To a Dog

Animated commercials on television in the 1950s drew from the ranks of radio for their voices. In many cases, they were the same people who provided voices for animated cartoons from the major studios—people like Marvin Miller (UPA), Daws Butler (MGM/Lantz/Warner Bros), Stan Freberg (Columbia/Warner Bros/UPA) and Allen Swift (Terrytoons) come to mind. But there were others who never appeared in theatricals, so their identity in commercial voice work is far less known, no matter how successful the spot.

One was the voice of the Ford Dog. It was the voice of Hugh Douglas, who read news at KNX and announced Have Gun Will Travel, Bob O’Hara and a number of other CBS shows in the ‘50s. His voice was never heard in theatrical cartoons.

Certainly there are no voice credits on cartoon commercials (okay, Daws Butler got one for legal reasons in the ‘60s) but we know it’s Douglas because the Newspaper Enterprise Association interviewed him about his role at the time the commercial first aired. It was an instant smash. This column appeared in newspapers starting around June 11, 1959. Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce the wire photo that went with the article.

Hugh Douglas Finds Fame As ‘Voice’ From Doghouse
BY ERSKINE JOHNSON
NEA Staff Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD (NEA)—Hugh ("I'm A Dog") Douglas was wearing a neatly clipped mustache with matching crew cut, his usual horn-rimmed glasses and the sport togs he wears to work as a Los Angeles radio staff announcer.
Only his incredulous look was new.
After 17 years of obscurity as a radio voice, he had good reason to ponder the subject of sudden fame and unexpected extra cash.
As a human being, fame and sudden riches eluded him.
As the "voice" of a dog, he's found both.
He's enjoying such public recognition, in fact, that his regular news broadcast lights up the switchboard of the CBS radio-station here. People as incredulous as Hugh want to be sure:

"Wasn't that the voice of the shaggy dog reading the news?"
It is. Hugh Douglas is the benign voice of the huge, shaggy dog on that automobile (Ford) TV commercial which seems to have captured the public's fancy. What's more, he's the voice of another dog now in a movie.
He's “playing” a mongrel canine named Skippy who carries on long conversations with Jerry Lewis in a farce movie comedy from the Broadway hit, “Visit To A Small Planet.”
Producers of other TV commercials can't wait now to hire Hugh's voice to help sell their products. He has six new TV commercials in the works.
"I'm playing fairy godfathers, hipsters, beatniks and on one announcement they've even got me singing." the slim, smallish, merry-faced Douglas told me.
“It's crazy. I've done all sorts of characters before on the air but never an animal until now, and look what happens. Here I've been engaged in honest, hard work for 17 years on the radio but now that I'm in a kennel people recognize me.”
They do recognise him, too. By his voice, that is.
He needs but to open his mouth among strangers with as much as a "How do you do?" and his identity as the TV dog is out immediately. Beaming and enjoying it thoroughly, Douglas says:
“People really enjoy believing that the dog actually exists. They always want to know all about me and, of course, the dog. I carry pocket-size cartoon likenesses of the animal with me and the minute I spot a person about to pop the question, I hand out one of the photographs.”
Douglas reached into his pocket and handed me one.
Beside the photo of the dog are words:
"Yes, it's me."
Animator Bill Melendez at Playhouse Pictures, where the commercial was produced, knew about Hugh's penetrating, deep voice and called him in to do the recording. "Bill and I talked his dog over and I looked at the sketches.
"I saw him as an amiable, friendly, cool dog—so I applied my coolest voice."
Douglas also narrates films about rockets and guided missiles for Uncle Sam, but he's not allowed to discuss them. It's secret stuff. Last year he was named the best TV and radio voice in California at the state fair. Today you might say that voice has gone to the dogs.
Practical Jokers are sending Douglas dog bones, dog biscuits, miniature fireplugs and even small doghouses. The other morning even his wife observed that from now on maybe, she should be serving dog biscuits instead of corn flakes tor breakfast.
“To put you in the mood,” Mrs. Douglas kidded.
Hugh's answer, he told with twinkling eyes, was:
“Honey, at this salary I'm willing to eat dog biscuits for the rest of my life.”

Douglas left CBS in 1962 to freelance. He was represented by the same agency that represented June Foray and Paul Frees at the time. To the best of my knowledge, Hugh is retired from the business and still around.

Some other familiar names besides Bill Melendez worked on the Ford Dog commercials. We’ll see if we can put together another post on the campaign down the road.

Smoke Up! Have a Drink!

Smears and multiples abound in Riff Raffy Daffy (1948), another winning cartoon from the Art Davis unit. Get Daffy in fuzzy bedroom slippers!



This scene is animated on twos. Don Williams and his assistant give Daffy fun little expressions that you have to freeze frame to appreciate.

Bill Melendez, Basil Davidovich and Emery Hawkins animated this cartoon as well.

Hey, That Was the....

A sheriff with Dal McKennon’s stock Western voice walks away after spotting the fugitive Indian he’s looking for. Then he realises what’s happened.

Director Paul J. Smith times each drawing of the take for two frames but moves the background at the same pace as when the sheriff was walking to give the scene a bit of extra movement.



Bob Bentley, Herman Cohen and Ray Abrams are the animators on this short, Chief Charlie Horse (1956). This cartoon features the lamest cartoon “fire dance.” Lantz’s ‘40s animators like Pat Matthews could have done a great job with that scene.

Betty and Allen

If there was ever an ideal TV game show couple, it was Betty White and Allen Ludden.

White had been a game show panelist. Ludden was a game show host. They married in 1963 and stayed happily that way until his death in 1981. Ludden was a well-educated man. White has become more and move beloved as the years roll on. If I may boldly venture an opinion, it is impossible to hate Betty White.

Their coupling attracted newspaper columnists who filled everyone in about their lives, separately and conjointly. You can find out more in these two Sunday newspaper features. The first one was in the Yonkers Statesman of March 14, 1964 while the second came from the Associated Press of May 16, 1965.

The Allen Luddens — 'At Home' In Chappaqua
For Him, The Password Is 'Education'
By JANE F. BONNEVILLE
What the general store once was to the small town, the supermarket is to modern suburbia — a meeting place for the community. So look sharply next time — that handsome young couple pushing "his and hers" shopping carts may well be Allen Ludden, host of TV's "Password" program and his bride, TV star Betty White.
Now residents of Chappaqua, they share the weekly marketing chore in typical suburban fashion. And, like many husbands before him, Mr. Ludden sometimes expands the shopping list.
For some reason, unexplained, he specializes in buying pepper, ground pepper. "We have enough boxes now to last for years," commented his amused young wife. Mr. Ludden just smiled, and patted her hand.
Married last June, the Luddens are confirmed suburbanites. "Neither of us has really ever lived in a city and it never occurred to us that we would," said Mr. Ludden, a former Briarcliff resident.
Charmed By The House
Their new home, in the hills north of the village, was a farmhouse 100 years ago. "Originally right on the road, some years ago it was moved back and joined to the barn. Now the barn is the living room, the master bedroom, and a playroom in the basement," explained Mrs. Ludden, with a bride's pleasure in showing others her lovely house. And the home makes an ideal "backdrop" for the captivating Mrs. Ludden, a tawny haired import from California.
"When we first saw this house, surrounded by lilacs in bloom and fruit trees in flower, it was love at first sight for us all." She then spoke of discovering a waterfall while she and her husband were walking about the grounds, a discovery more exciting than finding oil on the land.
The collective "we" she used includes the children of Mr. Ludden, who was a widower. His son David is at Andover Academy; Martha is a Horace Greeley High School student, and Sarah attends the Robert E. Bell School.
Mrs. Ludden, who likes "anything out of doors," is also an advocate of shared family fun. Both are at hand with a swimming pool which doubles as a skating rink in winter.

Dark-rimmed glasses give him a scholarly appearance but Mr. Ludden's conversation is liberally bespattered with drollery. "I tell people, modestly of course, that we have the most beautiful house in the world."
Author, Ex-Teacher
That scholarly look is genuine however, for Mr. Ludden is a scholar, author and former teacher as well as entertainer.
He holds B.A. and Master's degrees from the University of Texas, and a Phi Beta Kappa Key, which he doesn't talk about either. He taught at the University and a Texas high school before entering the Army in 1942.
At war's end he had the rank of captain, a Bronze Star, and valuable experience working with Maurice Evans, gained while producing and directing more than 40 Army shows in the Pacific.
The entertainment field soon demanded his full attention, but Mr. Ludden never lost his deep interest in young people. He was with a Hartford, Conn., radio station for some time and conducted an award-winning teenage discussion program, "Mind Your Manners." Later he wrote several books based on interviews, and letters he received.
For several years he moderated another award winner, the TV program "G-E College Bowl."
And Mr. Ludden has the distinction of being the only person in the performing arts to receive the Horatio Alger Award, given for "outstanding achievement in free enterprise and the American tradition of equal opportunity." But he brushes off such honors in favor of talking about education and what free enterprise holds for youth.
"If people don't think opportunities exist, they should wake up and look around. The future 'or youth is greater now than at any time in the past 100 years." Mr. Ludden feels the Peace Corps is also awakening youth to the fact that young people are now part of the whole world.
However, It Is his opinion that the educational system in this country has shown little professional progress since the 1900's.
"If It had improved as much as the telephone in the past 60 years we would have one — of an educational system in this country."
"Children will have opportunities galore if equipped to meet them. It boils down to the citizen and the school tax. Just because one's own children are through school, or one has no children, does not absolve the citizen of responsibility to his country."
Served In Dobbs Ferry
Mr. Ludden no longer sat relaxed on the gold covered sofa. He leaned forward, serious, intent. "Money spent for education is the only investment in the future we can make. Youth is our natural resource."
His is not lip service to a theory but conviction born of experience. Some years ago he served on the Citizens' Committee for Schools in Dobbs Ferry.
"I saw children in elementary schools attending double sessions for four years. I went into homes where people said, 'this system was good enough for me'." Mr. Ludden termed this a "hard corps system of an old community."
"For years," he continued, "inadequately educated generations have voted down school bond issues. People sit around complaining about school boards, yet many times these very people do not even know who serves on the boards."
While he praised the education in some Westchester areas his sense of duty to others is strong. "I feel a responsibility, and keep trying to prevent 'Dobbs Ferry' from happening again." So he plugs improved education and better schools at every opportunity, even on his TV programs.
A New Book
He keeps in touch with young people through his books. The latest, "Plain Talk for Young Marrieds" came out early this month. It deals with problems encountered early in marriage but Mr. Ludden emphasizes that he does not pretend to be an authority — merely expresses his own opinions. Many such problems," he remarked, "are, I believe, due to failure in communication and lack of respect for others."
These are not problems in the Ludden home. Within the walls of the tasteful, cheerful house live people whom "behavior experts" would describe as a "strong family," meaning happy, salubrious, contented, and to use a popular phrase, adjusted.
Mrs. Ludden will retain her identity as Betty White, free lancing as guest celebrity on TV game shows and doing commercials. Recently she has appeared on "The Price Is Right" and "Match Game."
But it is also quite evident that this radiant young woman has no intention of permitting her career to interfere with her newest, but favorite role — homemaker for the Ludden family.

Life Is Just Games for Allen Luddens
EDITOR'S NOTE: After playing games on television 52 weeks a year; Allen Ludden likes to drop it when he's at home. The Password master of ceremonies is a writer and gardener. His wife, Betty White, also a television gamester, is decorator, actress and gin rummy winner.
By CYNTHIA LOWRY
Associated Press Writer
New York—Allen Ludden, a Phi Beta Kappa and former university instructor, plays games professionally — on television — 52 weeks of the year. Even his vacation period is filled with programs which are pre-taped.
Betty White, his wife, is an actress who plays games professionally — on television — two weeks out of every four.
And what do the Allen Luddens do when they are relaxing at home?
They play games, of course. At the moment of this writing, Ludden is murmuring darkly because in a two-year-old cumulative Gin Rummy score, his wife has a lead of almost 6,000 points.
The couple, who base their activities in New York where Allen's daily Password is produced, have lived since their marriage two years ago in a big, old and beautiful house in Westchester County, about 35 miles from mid-town Manhattan. There are three Ludden children (Allen was a widower), David, 17, Martha, 15, and Sarah, 11. They are as eager gamesmen as the adults in the family.
• • •
THE FAMILY often plays Password at dinner; chess, checkers, bridge, cribbage or anything else in odd moments. Allen and Betty met on Password, having arrived at their professional status by two very different routes.
She grew up in Los Angeles, studied acting and moved onto radio, with bit parts in such shows as This Your FBI, The Great Gildersleeve and Blondie. In 1951 Betty became the star of a local Los Angeles TV program—on the air five hours a day, six days a week, which explains her easy manners before the cameras. Later she starred in Life With Elizabeth, a live comedy show seen all over the country, and in 1954, the daily Betty White Show on NBC.
Allen, meanwhile, had become interested in dramatics as a student at the University of Texas and directed an Austin Little Theatre Group while teaching there. He produced many army shows in the Pacific during World War 2, and later became personal manager and advance man for Maurice Evans on a nationwide tour of "Hamlet." Eventually, he got into radio, with a teenage interview show, Mind Your Manners on a Connecticut station. This led him to New York as moderator of the radio version of College Bowl.
• • •

COLLEGE BOWL, a top-speed quiz show went on television and led him logically to the day-time Password when it started in 1961.
Allen has a cultivated taste for games: Betty was born with it.
"I come from a family of compulsive game players," she said. "Last week when I was flying east with my mother, we made up a little game. I gave her initials, and she had to fit them to the titles of old movies."
Ludden, the author of four non-fiction books and a novel, all directed at readers under 21, is more inclined to non-game pursuits in his spare time.
He is a gardener, and in two years the spacious grounds and gardens of their old colonial home have been restored to mint condition. While he is involved in two writing projects, Betty has been busy redecorating the interior.
BOTH OF THEM KEEP active, too, with stock engagements. They have appeared together in “Critic's Choice,” “Janus,” “Mr. President” and “Bell, Hook and Candle.”
Betty has starred in six different productions of "The King and I," in "Take Me Along and "Brigadoon." Next month she will tackle the part of Nellie Forbush in “South Pacific” in Milwaukee's Melodytop Theater, an assignment for which she is now taking dancing lessons.
"Actors love to play television games," Betty said. "Mostly because, if they are good at it, games reveal the performer as a person, which has never happened before. But game-playing can also be a problem — type-casting. If you are an actress by trade and have played games a lot on television, lots of luck on your career. That is one reason I'm delighted to play stock so they remember . . ."
"The audience soon forgets that she's Betty White," added Allen. "But I'm afraid it always remembers that I'm Allen Ludden who is acting a part."
Whatever the audience thinks, such is the power of television that they have been breaking house records wherever they appear.
Ludden, who developed College Bowl into a furiously paced intelligence contest between two crack college teams, thinks of it more as a "spectator sport" for the TV audience than a game that the audience can play along with the personalities on camera, true of Password.
• • •
"PLAYING GAMES on television demands only one thing," said Betty. "That is concentration on the game, which means forgetting the cameras."
Ludden, whose principal television exposure for more than 10 years has been on game shows wants to expand his television horizons. He is thinking about a talk show and perhaps a variety program.
"But I never want to leave day-time TV," he said. "There you find a continuing audience."

Brementown Chicken

A rooster is very pleased with its crowing at the start of the ComiColor short The Brementown Musicians (1935).



The crowing doesn’t impress the farmer (you’d think the old guy would have been used to it by now) who throws an alarm clock at the bird to silence it.



In this Ub Iwerks’ adaptation of the fable, the rooster and other rejected animals join together to throw burglars out of the farmer’s house. The cartoon ends with some gags (?) showing the animals rewarded by enjoying a lazy life, concluding with the rooster who needs not crow any longer, thanks to 1935 entertainment technology.



Carl Stalling gets a musical credit but no animators receive mention on the screen.

Mouse on the Attack

The slap-happy lion (from the cartoon of the same name) runs into a corner to escape a terrorising mouse. The mouse has generally just said “Boo” to frighten the lion, but now he launches an all-out assault, finally kicking him out of the scene and making him snap.



This cartoon is an attempt by director Tex Avery to see how many wide-open-mouth shriek takes he can put in one cartoon.

Bob Bentley, Ray Abrams and Walt Clinton are the animators in this 1947 cartoon. Frank Graham plays both the lion and the mouse.

Benny Keeps Punching

Jack Benny’s television series wasn’t on every week at the beginning, and the comedian seemed to vacillate over how many appearances in a season were best for him.

In 1953, he had moved from once a month to once every three weeks. He didn’t appear once a week until the 1960-61 season. Yet back in ’53, he mulled over whether that would have been better for him. (We’ve posted other interviews here where he thought once a week was overkill).

Here are a couple of stories from New York-based reporter Jack Gaver. The first is from September 20, 1953, the second was published September 4th. The first was part of a column of miscellaneous items; I suspect he held onto it from his original story to get some extra inches from his interview.

Benny’s weekly appearances ended in 1965 when his show was killed off in the ratings by Gomer Pyle. He followed the Bob Hope format afterwards—occasional specials under his NBC contract—and did that until he died. He still popped up as a guest elsewhere, meaning these was still lots of Benny on TV for his fans.

Benny Favors Weekly Show, Citing Continuity of Gags
By JACK GAVER
United Press Staff Correspondent
Despite what would seem to be a lot of extra work, Jack Benny feels it would be easier to do a television show every week instead of once every three weeks, as he is doing this season. Last year he was on once a month.
"The reason is simple," the comedian explained on a recent quick trip to New York. "With a show once a week you can have some continuity of gags or situations working for you. We've done that in radio for years.
"But when you come on only once every three or four weeks, you're starting from scratch each time. The listener can't be expected to carry around for that length of time some thought you might have expressed on your previous show."

Waukegan Virtuoso Starts Another Season
By JACK GAVER
NEW YORK (UP) — The old—39, that is—virtuoso from Waukegan was in prime shape to start another radio-television season last Sunday and he attributes this happy state of affairs to the attitude of himself and staff toward their work.
"We work always with the idea of doing the best we can,” Jack Benny explained, “but we don’t fret about it. If we happen to hit a low spot one week — and everyone does now and then—we don’t get into a panic and tell ourselves the next show has to be extra good to make up for it. We just try to make the next one good.
Do Not Press
"Also, if we happen to have an unusually good program, we don’t begin to press with the idea that the next one has to top it or we’ll look bad.” The comedian and his usual radio family will be operating at the old CBS stand every Sunday night. This will be Benny's fourth season on TV and his most active. This time he will do a Sunday TV show every three weeks instead of one a month as last season.
Taped in Advance

"The radio shows will be taped in advance, as we have been doing for some time,” Benny said. "Most of the television shows will be ’live,’ but we nave put four of these half-hour programs on film already and we will spot them when circumstances make it difficult for me to do a ‘live’ show.
“Funny thing, doing a half hour TV show of my type is tougher than if I did an hour show. In an hour show you can make clean breaks for the commercials. With the half-hour type you have to integrate the commercials so you don’t lose any more time than necessary.
“Everything in a half hour show has to be dovetailed and pointed to getting in the most in that space of time. I have to keep punching every minute. With an hour show, I could wander in and out from time to time, using a long sketch it I wanted to, and other performers would get more of a chance.
Public Reaction
"Now, last season we did a long Jeykll-Hyde sketch on one program. Writers and directors who saw it said it was the best thing we'd done. But the public’s reaction wasn’t nearly so good. You know why? The sketch used up nearly all of the 30 minutes and there wasn’t time for the usual fooling around that the audience has come to expect from me when I’m out there just as Jack Benny.”

UPA at 10

Film critics of the 1930s were ga-ga over Walt Disney’s “realistic” animation. Critics of the 1940s were hip to the irreverence of Bugs Bunny. But critics of the 1950s were tired of both. They wanted something more sophisticated, kind of like how they praise art-house feature films over populist ones even today.

Enter UPA.

Gerald McBoing-Boing was the first to catch their attention. Mr. Magoo was next. Why? Because they weren’t animals trying to be sedate and cute, or running around and lippy. They were humans who were reminiscent of something you’d find in panel cartoons in magazines like the Saturday Evening Post. In other words, they weren’t children’s fare, therefore they were far superior.

But like Bambi and Bugs Bunny, the heaps of praise on the UPA characters abated after an initial burst of enthusiasm. Perhaps it was because any interest in new cartoons was drying up, including by the studios themselves. Less money was being spent on them, except at MGM where no money was being spent on them after mid-1957. Meanwhile, kids ate up Disney and Warner Bros. cartoons whenever they appeared on television.

Here’s a feature story from the praise days of UPA. It comes from Richard Dyer MacCann’s “Hollywood Letter” column in the Christian Science Monitor of November 17, 1953. Technically, I suppose it’s correct about the studio being 10 years old, but it really never released anything for mass consumption until 1948.

UPA Cartoons 10 Years Old
Hollywood
It was just 10 years ago that Stephen Bosustow embarked on an independent course as an artist and founded the company which has for so long been referred to as “that new cartoon studio where ‘Gerald McBoing-Boing’ was made.”
Mr. Bosustow feels pretty sure that UPA is now becoming a quality trade-mark for American movie-goers—even if some of them don’t realize that the initials stand for United Productions of America.
UPA is now known also as the studio that makes the “Mr. Magoo” series, and lately there has been interest in an experimental subject based upon Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

“Christopher Crumpet,” in which a youngster turns into a chicken whenever he doesn’t get his own way, is another recent release. Furthermore, Mr. Bosustow has at last achieved the beginning of his ambition to put James Thurber’s drawings on film: “The Unicorn in the Garden” is a brief transcription of a Thurber fable.
* * *
Things are moving right along at UPA, what with precedent-breaking plans for three cartoons produced especially for television, a third story about the cacophonous Gerald McBoing-Boing, and (as usual) something just a little different, called “Fudget’s Budget.”
That last item is a simple tale about two people who live very carefully within “a vine-covered budget,” but gets overconfident when the boss grants a raise in pay. Robert Cannon, the director of this sadly ironic piece, has planned a constant, unobtrusive background of column-ruled paper and scrawly arithmetic for everything that goes on.
Mr. Cannon’s second sequel to the Academy Award-winning “Gerald” consists of an attempt to get the precocious little fellow (who can’t talk, you know, but goes “Boing! Boing!” instead) to learn, after all, to talk.
His parents take Gerald to Professor Joyce to see what can be done about his voice, but even shock treatment can’t get the woeful child to say “How now, brown cow?” Suddenly the professor remembered that the telephone company has a wonderful scrambling and unscrambling device for overseas calls. They try a phone call to Gerald—via Paris. What a surprise to hear the elaborate electronic equipment come forth with Gerald’s solemnly intelligible address to the aforesaid cow!
* * *
Perhaps the biggest new at UPA is the company’s imminent TV debut. It will take place on the Ford Foundation’s Sunday program, “Omnibus,” some time in December. First of a series of three films optioned by “Omnibus”—all of them to be made available to theaters later—it is a story by Heywood Broun called “The 51st Dragon.”
In this symbolic adventure, Gawaine Le Coeur-Hardy is a cowardly young lad who is taking courses at knight school “He was tall and sturdy, but lacked spirit. He would hide in the woods when the jousting class was called. Even when they told him the lances were padded, the horses just ponies, and the field unusually soft, he wasn’t enthusiastic.”
Nevertheless, Gawaine is persuaded to undertake training as a slayer of dragons. Fortified with the knowledge that he has a “magic word” to protect him, he wields his enormous ax with abandon. As to what happens when he confronts his fifty-first victim, that is for you to find out.
* * *

Mr. Bosustow is very much wrapped up in his TV dragon project, and takes keen delight in explaining how the ax is a key element in the design, how the wallpaper pattern sets the mood for each episode, and how the set pieces that stand for the mountains are not unlike the scenic technique of Oriental theatricals. Sterling Sturtevant is the designer of this one; Herbert Klynn is the associate producer and Art Heinemann the director.
“Mr. Magoo Goes Skiing” is the straightforward title of that near-sighted old gentleman’s newest escapade, and it need hardly be said that he and his nephew and a large bear all manage to get onto his pair of skis at once as he goes over a cliff.
Another item now being pencilled in on the story board is a promising cartoon called “Cine-magoo” in which Mr. Magoo mistakes an airline marquee for a movie entrance. When he leaves his first seat to get a better view of the show somewhere else, he manages to pop out the door of the airplane and discovers how really tremendous the new wide screens can be.

Super Autograph

“Is it a comet? Is it a meteor?” asks the narrator.



No! It’s Mighty Mouse! And he’s come to...sign autographs?!?



The really bad audio edit should tell that “Mighty” was added later. If that doesn’t clue you in, Mighty Mouse’s autograph should.



This was back before the character’s name had to be changed. The cartoon’s title was Super Mouse Rides Again when it was released in 1943.

Here’s a hammy pre-takeoff pose for good measure.



As a side note, this may be the only Mighty Mouse cartoon which has a lake but does not include the Terry Splash™ on the soundtrack.