What's 80, Doc?

There was a Bugs Bunny before July 27, 1940. Studio publicity materials refer to earlier rabbits that appeared in Warner Bros. cartoons as Bugs Bunny. Chuck Jones even made an Elmer Fudd vs grey rabbit (with no name on screen) cartoon earlier in the year called Elmer’s Candid Camera.

But once Tex Avery took the rabbit, had Bob Givens redesign him, got Mel Blanc to come up with a snazzier voice, avoided the unfunny self-mumbles and added strong comic routines, it was a whole new game. Warners quickly started referring to the Avery rabbit in the press as a brand-new character and demanded Leon Schlesinger’s staff to make more cartoons with the wise-ass, Givens-designed rabbit.

Here’s a great routine, one that Avery would never have tried after leaving Warners because his humour at MGM didn’t unfold slowly there; it was pretty much slam-bang/on-to-the-next-gag. The scene works because the audience wonders what it is the rabbit’s going to go. And Avery (with gagman Rich Hogan) built it brick by brick.

Elmer leaves bait for Bugs. (“Wabbits wuvv cawwots,” he reveals).



Cut to a close-up of the carrot and Bugs’ hand extending from the rabbit hole. The hand feels around, discovers the carrot, taps and strokes it with a finger. Now here’s a finger with personality!



Aha!



The hand grabs it. Zoom back down the hole.



Cut to Elmer racing to the hole and aiming his rifle. Cut again to the close-up. The hand feels around again, touched the gun, toings it with a finger to produce a gun-like metallic sound, retreats to the hole, then returns the mostly-eaten character to the ground, pats the gun barrel and the hand disappears.



That’s a good routine right there but Avery hasn’t finished milking it. After about a 24-frame pause, the hand emerges to reclaim its prize. Elmer lowers the gun as Carl Stalling plays a horn stab for emphasis. The hand taps a finger as if deciding what to do next. Then the fingers walk past the carrot to “While Strolling Through the Park One Day” before the hand suddenly backhands the vegetable and goes back into the hole.



Virgil Ross is credited with the animation in the short. Whether these scenes are his, or Bob McKimson’s, or someone else’s, I don’t know.

If you haven’t had enough of Bugs’ birthday, read what we posted for the wabbit’s 75th in this post.

Cigars and Ad-Libs

The way one writer put it, Jack Benny practically went in and winged his radio show.

Even at the start of his career, that was doubtful. Benny worked closely with all his writers, one of them relating in later years how they would spend time debating whether one word was funnier than another during story conferences at the Benny home (or, sometimes, in Palm Springs).

A writer for the Universal News Service profiled Benny and his show in her feature column of March 4, 1936 as part of a series on radio stars (she also profiled Burns and Allen). We transcribe it below. Universal, by the way, merged with Hearst’s International News Service the following year.

The script for the first appearance of Mary Livingstone on the show exists and it is hardly the ad-lib fest described below. Her debut was carefully integrated into the broadcast.

It appears newspapers used archived photos to accompany this article; I’ve found several different ones. The photos you see with this post are from other sources. You’ll note a cast photo. It is from later in 1936 when Phil Harris took over from Johnny Green at the start of the 1936-37 season. I’m using it because I like it and the one I found with Green is very fuzzy.

Nobody Cares If Jack Benny Doesn’t Rehearse—He's 'Tops'
Radio Comedian Prefers to 'Get in the Mood’
By Dorothy Roe.
NEW YORK, N. Y. (U.N.S.)—Jack Benny points his cigar severely at Mary Livingstone and demands: “Woman, don't you know we have to go on the air in 20 minutes?” Mary powders her nose, ruffles her script and trills: "Wouldn't it be funny if we didn't go on tonight?"
Jack replies severely: “Whaddaya mean funny?”
Rehearsal.
Mary widens her immense brown eyes and says innocently: “Well, I'll bet a lot of people would think we were funnier if we didn't say anything at all.” That is a sample of a Jack Benny rehearsal. Jack and Mary, who is his wife, always intend to rehearse. They go down to the NBC studios sometimes a whole hour and a half before their program goes on the air. But then Don Wilson, their cherubic announcer; Kenny Baker, their youthful tenor; Johnny Green, their orchestra leader; Harry Conn, their script writer, and the other members of the cast always have a lot of new gags and what with this and what with that, time marches on.
First Place.
But nobody seems to care whether Jack and Mary rehearse or not. The fact that the radio public has just voted them first place over all air programs for the second year in succession proves that.
And if the sounds of merriment that come through your radio of a Sunday evening make you think Jack and Mary and the boys and girls are having a good time earning their daily bread, you guessed right.
Radio's Number 1 comedian goes on the air with less preparation than probably any other artist of the air waves.
"In The Mood."
Benny, bland, carefree, chewing his eternal cigar, explains: “If we rehearse too much, the program would be wooden. You see, we gotta be in the mood.”
One reading of the script, with the entire cast, and one so-called "dress rehearsal" with the micro phone takes care of the preparation for the program, and that, it is explained, is done chiefly for timing.
Benny often changes his script after the program has started on the air, and Mary knows how to keep up with his ad libs.
Accident.
It was an accident, as a matter of fact, that launched Mary Livingstone on an air career along with her famous husband. One night the script ran short during a broadcast, and Jack had to improvise. He called to Mary, who was sitting with the audience, and started an argument over the mike! Mary kept saying in scared voice: “Hush, Jack, you're on the air. All those people will hear you.”
And the radio audience loved it. An avalanche of telegrams and mail proved that. So from then on Mary Livingstone was a part of the act.
Jack explains:
“Mary doesn't have to act. She just naturally has a deadpan voice. She not only is my best pal and severest critic, but my ideal deadpan straight man.”
From the Heart.
And that may be a new kind of romantic compliment, but it came from the heart.
While most radio script writers keep from two to six weeks ahead with their programs, the Benny gang never even thinks of what the Sunday night act is to be until along about Thursday.
Then Benny gets together with Conn, and the two map out the rough outlines of the script.
Nothing more is done about it until Saturday morning, when Benny reads through the script with his director and sponsors; that's to be sure the script is safe—that there is no danger of libel or censorship or any of the bogey men of radio.
“Skip It.”

The only real rehearsal takes place just before the program goes on the air and that is a performance which usually has even the studio page boys holding their sides. It goes something like this:
Jack: “Where are you reading? I'm on Page 9.”
Mary: “Well, I’m on Page 3. Skip it.”
During a broadcast Jack chews a cigar, makes faces at the audience, executes a few dance steps now and then, and hangs his head prettily during applause.
Broadcasts are held in one of the huge N.B.C. studios, before an audience of 1,500, admitted by cards from the sponsors or the broadcasting company.
Both Jack and Mary throw the pages of their script on the floor as the broadcast progresses, and if anybody reads the wrong lines, that's all right. It gives them a chance at ad lib, which they would rather do than eat.
Pinch Hitting.
Sometimes the announcer, roly poly Don Wilson, goes into such roars of laughter during a broadcast that he is unable to talk, whereupon Benny nobly pinch hits. All members of the company, including the orchestra leader and Jack's secretary, are pressed into service before the 30-minute period on the air is over. And they love it. So does the public.
Jack fell in love with Mary Livingstone one day in Los Angeles, when she called him a ham actor and hired six little boys to sit in the front row at his show and not laugh. They have an adopted baby, Joan Naomi, 21 months old.
Their closest friends are George Burns and Gracie Allen and their ambition is to get a million dollars so they won't have to be funny any more.

Regis Quits . . . But Not For Long

The man with the record for the most hours on American television once thought he wasn’t wanted on the air and walked off on camera.

Obviously, that didn’t last forever. In fact, Regis Philbin’s self-retirement as Joey Bishop’s announcer spanned only a few days until Bishop reminded him who his boss was—it was Joey Bishop. Joey told him he was coming back. He came back.

I suspect TV viewers today think of Regis as the indefatigable host of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? or shouting banter at Kathie Lee Gifford on a daytime show. Maybe even being a partner in some funny routines with David Letterman. However I am of such a vintage to remember his name from the days when ABC thought the dour Joey Bishop could somehow overtake Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin in the late-night sweepstakes. The overly-buoyant Regis was hand-picked to be the sidekick. After all, how could you forget a name like “Regis Philbin”?

The Bishop show debuted April 17, 1967. Critics weren’t kind to Regis. One exclaimed he didn’t seem to have anything to do. Another expressed her opinion that Regis was annoying even when he wasn’t on camera. Still others said there was no chemistry between Philbin and Bishop, whom they accused of verbally abusing his announcer (Bob Crane said he refused to go on the Bishop show because of it).

All this led up to Philbin quitting the show during a taping session, a moment satirised by the great show SCTV when announcer William B. Williams walked off The Sammy Maudlin Show because he was “bringing it down.” (William B. then failed at his own show. By contrast, Regis had failed at his own show before the walk-off, having replaced Steve Allen in a syndicated series for Westinghouse).

Here’s an unbylined story from United Press International, Friday, July 12, 1968, explaining what happened.

Philbin Quits Bishop Show, Shocks Fans
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) – Regis Philbin, his voice breaking, said "I'm leaving," and walked off the stage of the Joey Bishop show amid cries of "No, no," from the audience.
The soft-voiced announcer, sidekick and comedy foil for Bishop on his late night television show, announced Thursday night he was quitting in an emotional dialogue that displaced the usual repartee that opens the American Broadcasting Co. program.
Own Show Dropped
"He gave me a break when nobody else would," Philbin said, referring to the period after his own syndicated show was dropped by Westinghouse Broadcasting Co. because of poor ratings.

"It's one thing to lose your own show, but it's another to lose someone else's," Philbin said, his voice beginning to crack. "I'm leaving."
"Don't leave," Bishop appealed.
"I'm leaving," Philbin said.
"I'll call you tomorrow. I'm very upset," he walked to the wings at the rear of the stage, shaking hands with a cameraman on the way out.
In tonight's show, taped Thursday night, bandleader Johnny Mann replaced Philbin and Bishop introduces the commercials himself.
"State of Shock"
Philbin, 35, told a shocked Bishop, "I am tonight in a state of shock. Last night I found out that the network still thinks I am wrong for this show."
"Maybe we should discuss this after the show, Regis," said Bishop.
Philbin said he believed he was kept on the show this long only because Bishop was "protecting" him from network superiors who wanted him dropped.
He said he was unaware of the pressure until recently.
"When, for 15 months, they have been on his (Bishop's) back because of me, and me not knowing this . . . fifteen months nagging him about me and I don't even know it. That's incredible."
ABC issued the following statement:
"ABC is surprised at the action taken by Regis Philbin. We feel that his statements were unwarranted and have no basis in fact."
The spokesman quoted Bishop as saying: "Regis is a fine but sensitive young man everything is going to be fine."
A network source said Bishop originally picked Philbin for the show before it went on the air 15 months ago. Bishop likes him personally and hopes to resolve the matter.
Someone apparently made Philbin feel he was not an asset to the show, the source said, and that the program might have been more successful securing sponsors and spot commercials without him.
"This," the source said, "is idiotic because many people felt Philbin has been a definite asset to the show because, while Bishop is considered by many people to be very eastern and very show business, Philbin is the perfect balance as a mid-western type, ordinary, down-to-earth guy people can identify with and the Bishop show is strong in the grassroots areas."

I like how the source describes the Bronx-born Philbin as “a mid-western type.”

Within four days, Regis calmed down and newspapers reported he was returning to the Bishop fold.

The Chicago Tribune News Service published this interview the following month.

Regis Philbin, Joey, Tell the Inside on the Hubub
BY NORMA LEE BROWNING
REGIS PHILBIN, television's latest dramatic drop-out, has a new respect for TV viewers.
"I am very impressed that so many people would take the time to write a letter or send a telegram," said Philbin, who is digging his way out of an avalanche in the wake of his walk-out from ABC-TV's The Joey Bishop Show.
Philbin, 35-year-old choir-boyish sidekick, foil, and walking partner of Pal Joey, was persuaded by Bishop to rejoin the show after an unprecedented protest from television audiences.
ABC-TV's Hollywood headquarters was bombarded with more than 300 telegrams in the first 24 hours after the walk-out. Network telephone switchboards were jammed on both east and west coasts. Letters are still pouring in.
A spokesman said, "We're inundated with tons of mail from North Dakota, "West Virginia, everywhere . . ."
Philbin interrupted to ask, "Is there an Ames, Iowa? I got the most lucid letter from a lady in Ames. She should be a TV critic. It's going to take months just to read all the letters.
"I wish I could thank everyone personally. Their letters show that we have a certain rapport with our audience because we're an ad lib show. People know it's for real, no script. Then, when something happens, they care enough to sit down and write you a letter. It's better than all the ratings ..." What is the real reason Philbin walked off the show?
The reason given to Bishop and a stunned studio audience on the night of the walk-off was that Philbin believed network officials wanted him dropped from the program (the network later denied this).
"It was no overnight decision," he told me in an exclusive interview. "Everyone knows the show got off to a rocky start, and I kept hearing that it was my fault, the opening wasn't right. I knew how much the show meant to Joey and I offered to get off. He said, 'As long as I'm on, you're on'. So I stayed. But every once in a while, I would hear the same thing—the opening wasn't right. And last Tuesday I heard it again. And after 15 months of batting my brains out, it really got to me.

"I was discouraged, and I told Joey that night I didn't want to do the show. He said, 'You've got to go on'. So I did."
Why did he then decide to do his walk-off in front of the studio audience, as well as millions of TV viewers?
"I didn't want to leave Joey with the burden of explaining my actions. I decided to explain them myself."
He walked off the stage, into his dressing room, removed his make-up and then went for a cup of coffee at a restaurant near Hollywood and Vine streets. An elderly couple came in and recognized him. They had followed him even from his pre-Joey Bishop days in San Diego TV. "I'm so happy you've found steady work," they said. They wouldn't see his taped show with the walk-off until the following night.
"Joey went out on a limb for me, gave me a break, and stuck by me," said Philbin. "I feel a great sense of loyalty to him and I would never leave him for my own gain. But I felt that I was putting him in a position of compromise, of having to defend me."
Why did he go back on the show?
"Joey reminded me that I am under contract to him, not the network. He also asked, 'Who are you hurting if you don't come back? Me. This is what I want'. He said I was too thin-skinned and shouldn't pay any attention to some fifth or sixth vice president who didn't know what he was talking about."
Bishop says Philbin is too "sensitive". 'It's tough to please everyone' He doesn't exactly fit the Hollywood mold. He's a graduate of Notre Dame, where he majored in sociology. After college he served a hitch in the navy in the Pacific, and later broke into television from the ground up as a page boy at NBC in New York.
"The Joey Bishop show had only 44 station outlets assured at its inception, but began with 119, now has 155 outlets. It's [sic] ratings have sometimes surpassed Johnny Carson's in some area[s].
The show is owned by Joey Bishop, not the network. The comedian's comment: "We've proved the show is a success. All this network nitpicking always comes from some guy who has been given a title and has nothing else to do."

Ironically, Bishop walked off his own show at the end of November 1969 and left behind on stage to pick up the pieces was Regis Philbin. When it was bounced off the air a month later, Rege picked up the pieces again and carried on with his career. He had a pretty good one, too.

Let's Hear From June Foray

The world loves June Foray.

And because the world loves June Foray, allow me to post two feature newspaper feature stories about her from February 1970.

The Pogo TV special was being rerun that year, so it appears June went out on the publicity trail or the producers lined up interviews with her. The first one concentrates on money, the second from the King Features Syndicate delves more into her career.

By the way, if you check this blog and over at the Yowp blog, you’ll find more Foray fun. Click here, here and here for starters.

June Foray Finds Small Fortune In Doing Voices For TV Cartoons
By MARILYN BECK
TV Time Syndicate
Hollywood
POGO POSSUM and Mademselle Hepzibah have two important things in common. The same man, cartoonist Walt Kelly, created them, and the same woman, June Foray, gave them voices.
June Foray considers it an honor that she was chosen to be the voices of those famous cartoon characters for their transition from cartoon strip to television in "The Pogo Special Birthday Special." Aired last year, the program will be rerun on NBC Sunday, 8:30-9 p.m.
"Actually, I had been hired to narrate the character of Hepzibah, the French skunk. But then Walt Kelly decided he'd like me to handle both roles."
Actually, Walt Kelly and producer Chuck Jones should feel rather honored that June found the time to work on the special. For she's the actress who's discovered in the last 20 years that there's a lot more gold to be panned in Hollywood standing behind the cameras instead of in front of them.
SHE'S the gal that just about everyone hears, but few ever see. She plays Rocky and Natasha on the "Bullwinkle" show, Granny in the "Tweety Pie" series, Jerry in "Tom and Jerry." She has handled countless TV commercial assignments, and has imitated the voices of scores of stars in movies when there are sound track difficulties.
For, as she pointed out, "My end of the business is fantastically lucrative." An actress works all week doing a guest shot on a series, is paid a flat sum, and then gets limited residuals from a maximum of six reruns of that show.

"I, on the other hand, will spend less than two hours taping the voice for a commercial, get paid residuals for 10 reruns of the spot. And, well, it's easy to end up making from $6,000 to $8,000 for that few hours work."
SHE STARTED in the business doing radio voices as a teenager, was signed by Capitol Records to narrate children's records, and was soon hired by Disney Studios to handle the voices for many of their animated characters.
"There were strictly mercenary reasons that made me decide to specialize in behind-the-scenes work," admitted the pint-sized lady who's become a giant-sized talent in the industry.
But, she admits, too, there are some other advantages to staying away from the camera lens.
"I try to keep myself up on fashions, and wear my hair in the latest styles, but only because I want to I don't have to, and believe me, that's a nice difference!
"I don't have to worry about costume changes. I could show up for work in slacks if I liked. And, nicest of all, I'll never have to go through the horrible worries of most actresses: fear that you might grow too old for a part, that a line upon your face means you've aged yourself out of the business."
THE ONLY thing June must worry about is her voice, that remarkable voice that can shift from a Russian accent in the middle of a sentence, to the sexy one which she portrayed on the Bandini commercials, to the twang of a teenage Southern lad which Walt Kelly decided is the proper sound for Pogo Possum.
Among the countless narration chores she's handled has been the squeaky, saccharine-tinted lisp of the Chatty Cathy doll. Millions of children and their parents have grown accustomed to the recitals of charmin' Chatty.

She’s Pogo Miz Bus O' And Cathy
By HARVEY PACK
TV Key Writer
NEW YORK — If you own a TV set you've heard June Foray’s voice. In fact you may have heard June eight or ten times during the same day without ever actually listening to her normal speaking voice.
June Foray is the leading lady in a small clique of Hollywood performers whose vocal characterizations are in constant demand for commercials and cartoons. Her biggest TV hit, “The Pogo Special Birthday Special," starring the familiar Walt Kelly creations and featuring the many voices of June Foray will be telecast again on NBC Sunday.
For one thing June plays the title role—Pogo. But why hire a large staff of actors when Miss Foray manages to come up with just the right tones for Mlle. Hepzihah. Miz Bug and five other assorted roles. She’s a one woman mob scene and her voice has been her fortune ever since she began in radio as a teen-ager in a children’s series entitled “Lady Make Believe."
This big and precious voice belongs to a charming and literate lady. The valuable larynx is housed in a petite 4-foot-11 frame but boasts a range of 6 to 70 plus animal voices capable of satisfying the imagination of youngsters.
A lot of you may even have June’s voice hiding in your youngster's toy closet. She is the voice of the famous Chatty Cathy doll which says “I love you” and other assorted things to little girls who pull its string.
Miss Foray made the master tape for the doll for a flat fee. But when her husband novelist Hobart Donovan caught a TV commercial for the toy which used that master tape to help sell the doll the Donovans went to court and the voice of Chatty Cathy was awarded commercial residuals.
“I’m rather pleased about Chatty Cathy" she says. “Of course I have a special adult version in which Chatty says a few naughty things after she admits she loves you."
For a change of pace and a chance to be a ham, June occasionally accepts roles in TV shows where she is seen, even though wasting a full week on an episode generally costs her in recording fees. She did a Mexican lady on a recent "Green Acres," and has been seen in sketches on the Red Skelton Show.
In addition to the "Pogo" special where she does seven voices, June's cartoon credits include Jerry in "Tom and Jerry," Rocky and Natasha in "Bullwinkle," and starring roles in "Drummer Boy," "Frosty the Snowman" and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas."
Not only does the Hollywood voice clique earn huge fees but they frequently have so much fun they go overtime because of breaking up over dialogue."
With a lot of the animators the job is such a ball you think you're stealing when you get paid. The big problem is turning down jobs when you're overbooked because if they request me and I can't make it they may have to postpone the recording session. I don't know whether I'm that good . . . maybe they're just used to me."
There are times when the schedule can get out of hand. One of June's favorites is Stan Freberg who always uses her talents on his records and commercials. The trouble is that Freberg works weird hours.
"He's a night person. Once I had a day job and his office put in a call for me for 7 p.m. and, for Stan, I accepted. After recording all day I showed up at seven . . . no Stan. He arrived at nine but he hadn't written the script yet. We worked all night which meant I had been recording for almost 24 consecutive hours. That's what happens when you work for a genius."
No matter how many voices she's doing in the same show she always manages to come up with the right one at the right time which is a tribute to her professionalism. Her list of credits attests to her ability. And, as for talking to the real June Foray . . . she's such a nice lady we never even asked her to do one of her voices because we enjoyed her natural one.

Today's Animation Question

How does Casper hear when he has no ears?

A Little Off the Top

There are a couple of gags in Little Johnny Jet involving the title character and his B-29 bomber dad buzzing the tops of, first, a US Navy blimp and, then, the Sphinx. The end results?



Tex made funnier cartoons, but maybe the Yankee Doodle-ism of this Korean War-time short was enough to give it an Oscar nomination. I believe this was the first one he put into production after returning from his year-or-so off at MGM.

Rising Star Elizabeth Montgomery

A witch? A witch who doesn’t really want to be a witch? Who’s going to buy that?

An awful lot of TV viewers, that’s who. And it was mainly thanks to a lovely actress named Elizabeth Montgomery.

Bewitched stayed on the air for eight seasons despite a pretty ridiculous premise. Montgomery, though she played a witch, was the reality anchor of the show. She came across as natural and believable, even as the seasons rolled on and the show got more and more cartoony and over-the-top.

The show featured a couple of extremely skilled dramatic actors, Agnes Moorehead and (on occasion) Maurice Evans. Montgomery may not have been in their league, but she appeared on TV drama in the 1950s and leaned toward dramatic roles after finishing her career as Samantha Stephens.

She was profiled very early in her career. TV Guide of July 24, 1953 featured her and her father, actor and furniture salesman Robert Montgomery (her mother is absent from any mention in the article).

Montgomery died of cancer at the age of 62 in 1995.



Like Dad, Like Daughter?
ELIZABETH MONTGOMERY WILL HAVE TO PROVE IT TO BOB
ELIZABETH MONTGOMERY hopes some day to be known as the famous daughter of a famous father, Robert Montgomery. But if she does, it won’t be because she tied herself to her father’s shirt-tails.
Like any good father who has taken an interest in his offspring’s career, Montgomery is providing as many breaks as he can. He signed her this year as a member of the stock company on his summer TV series. But despite the obvious boost, both father and daughter insist that Liz is to shape her own career.
“I have a standing offer with Liz,” her father said. “Any tie she wants to discuss her career with me, I’m available. But the decisions are hers.”
Because of his lengthy show business experience, however, Montgomery thinks he knows what is best for his daughter professionally.
Liz sat for some publicity pictures, for example, prior to doing her first TV show. When she and Montgomery looked them over, he spotted one he deemed unflattering. He immediately insisted that Liz rip up the copy and have the negative in the network publicity files destroyed.
The younger Montgomery freely admits that she derived her acting ambitions from her father. Now an attractive 20-year-old, she was growing up during her father’s hey-day in Hollywood. “I grew up with Dad’s acting, which probably raised my hopes of becoming an actress,” she said. “But I think I’d have wanted that even if Dad had never acted.”
Liz Competes for Roles
Liz recalls an incident, which she cites to prove that this father-daughter relationship isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Anxious to get a role in Eye Witness, she requested a screen test, which her father granted her. “The only trouble with that,” Liz said sadly, “was that another actress, Ann Sheldon, got the part.”

Liz finally won a part in one of her father’s productions several years later, but this time it was TV. She played the role of the father’s daughter in Top Secret, in 1951. He has his own memories of that experience.
“The last line in the show was the best one in the script,” he recalls. “It was originally to have been mine. But Liz wanted it, so I had to give in. What else could I do?”
Liz hopes some day to emulate her father’s Hollywood success but wants to establish her reputation first in TV and on Broadway. She was graduated in March from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts’ two-year course. To gain further experience, she served as an apprentice last summer at the John Drew Memorial Theater, in Easthampton, L.I.
Plays Ingenue Parts
She is playing ingenue roles in Montgomery’s TV stock company this summer, and because of her youthful experience, is already fearful that she may be typed. “Even though I’m 20 now,” she says ruefully, “everybody thinks I’m about 15. If this keeps up, I’ll probably be playing ingenues until I’m 40.”
Again following in her father’s footsteps, Liz would prefer to play comedy roles. She would also like to try her hand at musical comedy but confesses, “I can’t sing.” She has had ballet training, in case a Broadway musical ever materializes.
With the exception of that one role in her father’s show, she has done not TV, mostly because the Academy frowns on its students doing outside work. Liz is thankful to the Academy for teaching her to reach lines ell, something which her father has been impressing on her for years.
“Dad taught me to read everything since I was a little girl,” she said.
Although he still intends to let her live her own professional life, Montgomery will be on hand all summer to produce the TV series in which Elizabeth plays. But he insists he won’t favor her over others in the cast, including John Newland, Margaret Hayes and Vaughn Taylor. She’ll have to prove herself.

Mickey's Cab Keeps It Clean

Traffic Troubles (1931) contains some familiar gags: trying to fit a hippo into a small vehicle, a car going above another car hogging the road, a car biting another car, an angry car exploding black smoke at someone from the exhaust pipe. Walt Disney and his breakaway animators, Ub Iwerks and Hugh Harman/Rudy Ising used them all.

There’s also a license plate gag in Traffic Troubles. Mickey’s car blows a tire. As the car sinks to the right, the license plate turns upside down.



There are some good routines in this one. Mickey’s interrogated by a cop that won’t let him talk. Bumps in the road change the price on the taxi meter. And there’s a bizarre scene where Minnie plays a concertina while Mickey jumps on a pig attached to a hose. The jumping forces air from the pig through the hose and into the flat tire. There’s a great smash-up at the end so Disney’s animator can show off how many feathers he can animate in one scene.

Fans of Piggy Pack Theatre

Everything rocks back and forth to Frank Marsales’ beat in You Don’t Know What You’re Doin’ (1931) as patrons, including an enthusiastic duck, stream into a theatre.

There are 24 drawings to this cycle, animated one per frame. This is close to the timing in the actual cartoon.



This starts out as a typical Harman-Ising cartoon for Warner Bros.—familiar character design, girl-friend with a falsetto voice singing “la la la” while getting ready, blackened character exclaiming “Mammy!”—but takes a turn toward the end with some wilder animation as alcohol envelopes the proceedings. Gus Arnheim’s band bubbles away nicely.

This was one of two cartoons starring Piggy.

Friz Freleng and Norm Blackburn are the credited animators.

Pssst...Wanna Real Bargain?

Once the “cheap” aspect of Jack Benny’s radio character got established, there was no end of stingy jokes. It’s a little odd, then, to go back and read a story about Jack frivolously spending money (in later years, those stories juxtaposed his character with the way he was in real life).

This appeared in the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph of March 2, 1936. Jack’s show hadn’t moved permanently to Los Angeles at this point; he only went there from New York when he was making a movie. The paper’s entertainment section used a gimmick for about two years that the office cat would write columns in the form of letters to entertainment reporter Jane Hamilton. The drawing of the cat (there were different ones) that accompanied the article is below.

Jack Benny Buys Two Tickets To See Himself Broadcast From Radio City
By EBBERBELLE (the office cat.)
Dear Jane:
Well . . . spring is within a gunshot of being here! And here am I full of the wanderlust and indulging in my week's work.
As I look back over the week . . . grasping for things to report that you never heard before . . . my brow furrows . . . The most interesting news . . . was that story that Tom Harrington told about the Jack Benny tickets.
Harrington was the production man on the the Benny program last night . . . He's the production man on all the Benny shows, for that matter, and he was telling about the ticket situation in New York.
Somebody said they had two tickets for the Benny program they'd sell for $40 apiece . . . Now that's a laugh . . . you know, because you can't be allowed to sell broadcast tickets . . . they're free . . . if you cart get them which you usually can't.
Well, Harrington was telling about a time once in New York when he and Jack Benny had gone out to get a bite to eat between broadcasts . . . and were going back into Radio City . . . A furtive looking young man approached them and said . . .
"I've got a couple of tickets for the Benny show . . . want to buy 'em?"
Jack Benny said, "Sure . . . How much?"
"Oh," said the dumb egg, "they're for the late show . . . they'll only be $2.00 . . . I let a couple for the early show go for Five."
Jack Benny gave the guy $2.00 . . . and walked into Radio City for his broadcast.
Yeah . . . I thought that was funny, too.