Fall on the Frog

Think Tex Avery originated the super-long limo that went around corners? Perhaps not. We find one in the 1934 Columbia cartoon The Katnips of 1940.



The limo belongs to opera singer Mlle. Fifi La Frog. Fifi gets her throat sprayed. Then the gag. Her uvula is oiled.



Columbia cartoons always seem to have something inexplicable that’s just weird, not funny. In this cartoon, diva Mlle. Fifi is a humanised frog. She begins rehearsing on stage with Krazy Kat. A meddlesome, over-enthusiastic would-be chorus girl drops from high above the stage and lands on Fifi.



The blow transforms Fifi from a humanised frog to a real one. Why? Beats me. She doesn’t sound like a frog. She baaas like a sheep. Why? I give up. I’ll never understand some of the Columbia shorts.



Harry Love came up with the story and Allen Rose and Preston Blair get the rotating animator credits in this Charles Mintz production (see note in the comment section).

An Unmerry Merry-Go-Round

John Irving Pettybone’s obsession is conducting Dixieland records, and throughout Dixieland Droopy, he takes his record here and there to conduct it, only to get kicked out for annoying people.

In one scene, he decides to substitute his record for the merry-go-round music in an amusement park where children are riding wooden horses.



The Dixieland music makes the merry-go-round go-round faster. Gotta love the screaming kids.



Pan to the ticket seller. Here’s his take.



He has one those funny, hi-step walks like you find in the later Avery cartoons at MGM.



Droopy, er, Pettybone gets kicked out and it’s on to the next scene.

Mike Lah, Grant Simmons and Walt Clinton are the animators.

Censoring Comedy

Fred Allen spent his radio career being hounded by censors for the most ridiculous reasons over some pretty innocuous things. It got to the point where the network cut off about 20 seconds of his show because he was making a joke about a non-existent NBC executive. Allen won the P.R. battle in that case, but his show was soon a thing of the past, its ratings purloined by a noisy giveaway show on another network.

Allen had a kindred spirit in columnist John Crosby, and poured out his troubles to him. Crosby published some of network’s strange edicts against Allen’s gags, and that inspired him to do an eight-part series on radio censorship.

As we’ve transcribed the first column, let’s give you six more. We’ll reserve the final one for another post; Crosby allowed the network to respond. Below are Crosby’s columns of July 30 and 31, 1946.

Just a couple of remarks:

In the first column, there’s a reference to Mrs. Nussbaum. There’s no question some people found her to be a distasteful stereotype; Groucho Marx once wrote his displeasure with her ethnic sentence structure (Benny Rubin had the same complaint about Mr. Kitzel on the Jack Benny show). Allen admitted he got complaints from Irish people about Ajax Cassidy being a drunken rowdy. Allen was of Irish origin.

And I’ve never agreed with Allen’s contention shows should run long if they felt like it. He never seems to have considered the reverse. Imagine Allen’s reaction if he rehearsed and timed a half-hour show, then the previous programme ran five minutes into his time. He’d be livid. His advertiser who put him on the air bought a half hour. He gets a half hour. That’s it. If the script doesn’t fit, you cut it. A good joke can always be used another time.

Censorship on the Air
Fred Allen’s fourteen-year battle with radio censorship, some of which was reported in this column yesterday, was made particularly difficult for him by the fact that the man assigned to reviewing his scripts had little sense of humor and frankly admitted he didn’t understand Allen’s peculiar brand of humor at all. This censor, whom I’ve been calling Pincus, which isn’t his name, invoked each of N.B.C.’s censorship rules with the zeal of the Civil Liberties Union defending the Bill of Rights.
You can’t, for instance, offend individuals in a comedy show, which would be a reasonable rule if sensibly administered. However,

Pincus extended this ban to include virtually every one living or dead and sometimes even imaginary people. Allen, for instance, once gagged about an imaginary society matron named Mrs. Biddle Pratt. Pincus wouldn’t allow it until Allen had combed all the Blue Books and Social Registers in the country to make sure there wasn’t a real Mrs. Biddle Pratt. He did and there wasn’t. Then there was a gag about Senator Guff of Idaho. Even a search of past and present Congressional directories failed to reveal the names of any Senator Guffs of Idaho, Pincus was not fully assured. He approved the line with considerable misgivings because, after all, there might some day be a Senator Guff of Idaho.
However, Allen was forbidden to use the harmless line “Brenda never looked lovelier” at the time of the Brenda Frazier wedding without the permission of the Frazier family, which could not be obtained. Another time, Allen tacked a cockney accent on a character identified as the first mate of the Queen Mary. This had to be changed because Pincus said the first mate of the Queen Mary was quite a cultured person in his own world and might not like a cockney accent affixed on him.
All networks are, of course, extremely careful to avoid offending any racial or religious group. No one can possibly quarrel with this but their caution is sometimes taken to outlandish lengths. You might be interested to know that Allen had a terrible time winning approval for the current Minerva Pious character, Mrs. Nussbaum. N.B.C. was fearful that Jewish-dialect comedy might offend all Jews. Wearily, Allen and his representatives pointed out that Jewish-dialect comedy had been in vaudeville and burlesque for thirty years without offending any one.
Since N.B.C. is a national network, it must be careful about hurting the feelings of towns or regions, which are sometimes even more sensitive than individuals. Allen once wrote a sketch concerning a town called North Wrinkle, a name he thought up all by himself. N.B.C. objected on the grounds that there might somewhere be a North Wrinkle whose inhabitants might not like Mr. Allen’s humor. A radio executive was unloosed on this problem and after considerable research, turned up with a deadpan report which I print below as an example of the radio mind at work:
“The most comprehensive list of towns in the United States is the United States Postal Guide. No North Wrinkle is listed there. The United States Post Office knows of no such town. However, they state that there is a possibility that there is such a community without a post office, but that there is no way in which they can check further unless we suggest a given state in which case they could make a more intensive search. I believe that it is safe to use North Wrinkle.” Allen not only couldn’t poke fun at individuals, he also had to be careful not to step on their professions, their beliefs, and sometimes even their hobbies and amusements. Portland Hoffa once was given a line about wasting an afternoon at the rodeo. N.B.C. objected to the implication that an afternoon at the rodeo was wasted and the line had to be changed. Another time, Allen gagged that a girl could have found a better husband at the cemetery. Pincus thought this might hurt the feelings of people who own and operate cemeteries. Allen got the line cleared only after pointing out that cemeteries have been topics for comedy since the time of Aristophanes.
Anything that might conceivably hurt the feelings of an advertiser or even a potential advertiser is, of course, scrutinized with extraordinary care. The incredible Pincus, for instance, objected to the line: “The zoo keeper told mama the mongoose was seeing aspirin.” Pincus was under the impression aspirin was a trade name. The line was cleared after Pincus was told that aspirin was not the exclusive property of the Bayer people.
Allen once wrote a sketch in which a woman character named the Widow Kane said she had forgotten to turn the gas off in her Kansas home before coming to New York.
“Good heavens,” said Allen. “Attention, Soup Ladle, Kansas. Go to Widow Kane’s home. Turn off the gas.” A few moments later the program was interrupted by a mock news flash. Soup Ladle, Kansas, has been blown off the map. N.B.C. deleted the entire sequence because the gas companies objected to calling attention to the explosive properties of their product.

Censorship on the Air
Pincus, which is a name I arbitrarily selected to designate the man who once censored Fred Allen’s scripts for the National Broadcasting Company, was a man of little if any humor but he was a stickler for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In one script, Allen remarked that Schopenhauer was a sustaining program that year under the name of Pick and Pat. That, said the distressed Pincus, simply wasn’t so. Schopenhauer, said Pincus, died in 1860 and was never on any radio program. Allen finally succeeded in convincing Pincus that it was a joke, son, and the line was cleared.
The veteran comedian was not so lucky in convincing the radio censors that radio itself is a suitable topic for comedy. Of all radio’s sacred cows, radio itself is the most sacred, and, while Allen has repeatedly lampooned the industry that pays him $20,000 a week, he has also lost many a battle to the censors. In 1938, for instance, after Orson Welles scared the daylights out of half the Eastern seaboard with his invasion from Mars, Allen wrote an introduction to his program which poked a little fun, not at Welles, but at the people who ran all over New Jersey looking for the Martian invaders.
Sound Effects Imaginary

“This is a comedy program,” wrote Allen. “Any sound effects or dialogue you hear during the hour will be purely imaginary. If you hear a phone ringing (and he demonstrated) don’t answer it. If you hear a knock on the door (another demonstration), don’t rush to open the door. Just sit back and relax. Nothing is going to happen.”
N.B.C. not only blue-penciled the entire introduction but flatly refused to allow Allen to make any allusion to the Welles incident, which had frightened the entire broadcasting industry. Allen carried his appeal up the chain of command at N.B.C. all the way to Lenox Lohr, then president of the network. The appeal was rejected. N.B.C. didn’t want to hear any more about the invasion, particularly over the air.
Probably the funniest battle Allen ever lost involved a sketch about the movies. One line in the sketch read: “Motion pictures are your best entertainment.” No greater uproar could have been caused if a Mahometan had called the faithful to prayer in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Even a hint that there is any other form of entertainment, especially a better one, than radio is blasphemy in broadcasting circles.
Caused A Small War
The line caused a small war at N.B.C. Allen and his representatives argued the point from the executive to executive right up to Mr. Lohr and got nowhere. The broadcasters refused to concede that it was a joke, they didn’t think it was funny. The line was thrown out and, to my knowledge, no such sacrilegious sentiment has ever been expressed at N.B.C.
Naturally, over a period of fourteen years, this stifling censorship has aroused considerable bitterness in Allen, one of radio’s great wits. This is only too apparent in his shows. In the last few years, there have been repeated and biting references to N.B.C. vice-presidents. (“The man with the mould on him is a vice-president.”) The network has never issued any flat ultimatum to Allen to stop this but N.B.C. executives have pleaded unsuccessfully with him for years to lay off the vice-presidents for the sake of N.B.C.’s dignity.
Allen continues to make fun of the N.B.C. vice-presidents, and no wonder. Another of Allen’s pet peeves is the automatic cut-off at N.B.C. White other networks will allow a big show to run a minute or two past its time and will make it up to the next show, N.B.C.’s cut-off is operated by an automatic clock which stops the show exactly on the hour or half hour. Even those chimes are mechanically operated.
Once, to work off a little steam at both N.B.C. executive staff and at that automatic chime, Allen inserted a line in his script in which a stooge remarked: “I must balance my chime report. Lenox will be furious.” Even Allen had no hope of getting such a crack at the N.B.C. president on the air and, of course, it was cut out. The comedian finds some consolation in the fact that he has outlived, or at least outlasted, three N.B.C. presidents and he may outlast the present one.
Among the more recent excisions from an Allen script was a reference to an imaginary summer resort called Gromyko’s Grotto. N.B.C. deleted the line on the grounds it might offend the Russians.
“My God,” said Allen wearily, “everything else has offended the Russians. We’re the only thing left. We might as well offend them, too.”

The columns for August 1, 2, 5 and 6 are below. You can blow them up to read them. One involves censorship and banning of songs on the radio, another deals with the infamous Mae West appearance on the Edgar Bergen show in the late ‘30s. To me, West fans would hardly be offended by anything she’d say—they know what her reputation is—and kid listeners wouldn’t get it anyway. But it caused such a flap that West stuck to movies and then stage appearances during the war.

Call Eddie

Background artist Bob Gribbroek buries an inside gag on the wall of Tuffy’s Tavern in Hush My Mouse starring the annoying, talks-too-much version of Sniffles.

The cartoon’s one of those programme parodies Tedd Pierce liked to write, except television wasn’t big yet so he focused on the radio show Duffy’s Tavern. It opened with a piano version of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” and manager Archie on the phone with Duffy using the same line every show.

We have the same thing in this cartoon. You’ll notice by the phone there’s a phone number: Eddie GL-4131. That happened to be the phone number of the Warner Bros. cartoon studio and Eddie is producer Eddie Selzer. Below is phone number NO-17449. I suspect the Normandie exchange number belongs to the background artist himself.



The parody’s weak and Sniffles makes you want to smack him. But there is bit of smear animation on consecutive frames.



Lloyd Vaughan, Ben Washam, Ken Harris and Basil Davidovich are the animators, with Earl Klein handling the layouts for Chuck Jones. Mel Blanc and Dick Nelson provide the voices (I can never figure out Nelson’s voices, but Thad Komorowski can and did on this one).

My Dears

It seems every cartoon studio in the ‘30s fit in one of those “Whoops, my dears!” gags. Van Beuren, for example, had a swishy goose in at least two of its cartoons.

Walt Disney wasn’t immune to such antics in Barnyard Olympics. One scene shows three speed walkers waving their butts around.



This attracts someone in the stands who says “Whoops!” and waves with a hand on the hip to the athletes.



The plot involves a rough guy trying to cheat to win a race. Naturally, Mickey Mouse overcomes adversity to claim the trophy and kisses from Minnie. No “whoops!” going on there.

The ABCs of Jack Benny

Here’s a different kind of post on Jack Benny, inspired by a reader (and I’ve forgotten who) that came up with an alphabet list and suggested one could easily be done for Benny.

Easy it was, in a way. The difficulty is Jack’s career went so long and he had so many familiar facets on his radio and TV shows that there were multiple choices for a bunch of letters.

So, sorry, “vaudeville,” you don’t make the list. Neither did “Waukegan,” Jack’s home town. Or “Carmichael,” the polar bear. I’m sure Benny fans reading here will have their own, better, selections.

A- Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga
B- Blanc (Mel) made him break up on the air
C- Cheap
D- Don (Wilson and Bestor)
E- Ed guards his vault
F- Feud with Fred Allen
G- Generals Tire and Foods, two of his sponsors
H- Horn Blows at Midnight, The
I- Interruptions by Harry Baldwin knocking on the door
J- Jell-O
K- Mr Kitzel, the hot-dog seller
L- Lucky Strikes, so round, so firm, so fully packed
M- Maxwell
N- Now cut that out!
O- Oh, Rochester!
P- Phil Harris, who liked the South
Q- Quartet, as in Sportsmen
R- Remley (Frank), the soused guitar player
S- Sing, Dennis!
T- Thirty-Nine
U- Unlucky at scoring with big female stars
V- Violin, which he didn't play well on the air
W- Well!
X- Virus X, one of the reasons Mary didn’t show up for broadcasts
Y- Your money or your life!
Z- Zybysko (Gladys), Jack’s girl-friend

Beating Each Other Up is Jolly Good Fun

Why do people want to dictate what other people should watch?

Self-appointed censors and watchdogs have been around since who-knows-when, bolstering themselves with “facts” from “experts” which, by an amazing coincidence, just happen to match their own biases. Why it’s their business that I want to tune in Quick Draw McGraw and watch him get shot, I don’t know. Perhaps it’s just human nature.

We live in an era where if even one person is offended by something, then that something should somehow be unacceptable to everyone and there are angry demands for elimination. But at what content should the line be drawn? Should there even be a line? Unfortunately, there will never be 100% agreement. Debate on the matter turns into noise and rancour, accompanied at times by complete falsehoods as “proof” someone is correct.

Anyway, any more on this and I will start ranting, which is not the point of this post. We’re going to go back in time, a little over 60 years ago when “advisories” were issued by groups about what they insisted was acceptable and what wasn’t. This is before the 1960s era of protests when the tongue-cluckers decided to become pressure groups and took direct aim at advertisers and networks.

I suspect in the list below, a case could be made for a completely opposite opinion than what is given. Woody Woodpecker is “excellent,” yet in many cartoons he defied and ridiculed authority figures. And I laugh at the idea that “animals beating each other up” is “full of fun” as I suspect some bluenoses today would be horrified with that suggestion.

Readers of the Yowp blog will know I roll my eyes at some of Charlie Shows’ dialogue at Hanna-Barbera, so his fans will no doubt feel vindicated with the piece’s opinion “Tricks with words can lay a fine foundation for language skill.”

It’s a shame more cartoons weren’t mentioned, particularly Bugs Bunny and Popeye as they were syndicated almost everywhere, but other do-gooder groups denounced the violence in Popeye shorts (the inane ones by Jack Kinney, et al, for TV hadn’t been made yet) and Bugs, Daffy and Porky were considered old hat and overexposed. Conversely, critics all seemed to love the Huckleberry Hound Show as it was gentler than the old theatricals made by the very same people.

This appeared in the Des Moines Register of November 22, 1959.

Reflections on TV
P.-T. A. Eye On Series
By Ogden Dwight
HERE is a digest of the "evaluations" by the National Parent-Teacher, official P.-T. A. magazine, of some TV series seen in this region.
These judgments can be challenged, first because they are far too lenient about shoddy production, and second because it can be stated without risk of contradiction that the series considered so far by the P.-T. A. do NOT constitute the things on television that most children watch most.
Where possible, the P.-T. A. comments are accompanied by similar evaluations of the National Association for Better Radio and Television (NAFBRAT), a Los Angeles-based group that has been hollering about bad TV for years. This association almost without exception classes westerns, violents and crime programs as "objectional" or "most objectionable."
Here are the two organizations' comments:
HECKLE AND JECKLE. Animals beating each other up, smashing cars and furniture, catching people in traps, pushing them into wells and dropping things on them . . . suggest exciting ideas for vigorous play. A heap of rubbish. (NAFBRAT: Full of fun and amusement, jolly tricks. Good)
RUFF AND READY. Scenes are those of Wonderland; characters whimsical and elfin. But other sequences are humdrum cartoon staples. Tricks with words can lay a fine foundation for language skill. But there's such a thing as form—in art, however it may be in life—and form begins with unity and continuity. (NAFBRAT: Cunning animals, surprises, tricks, fantastic adventures. Good.)

WOODY WOODPECKER. Incidents usually wholesome, even when absurd. Lovable little animals' simple, honest code might work for children as well. Far too noisy; otherwise imaginative. (NAFBRAT: Hilarious, clever, noisy. Excellent )
LEAVE IT TO BEAVER. Entertaining, meaningful. Realistic enough, never commonplace; children learn to value each other more truly, and parents learn, too. Regular viewing for all families, to take into their heads and hearts. (NAFBRAT: Sympathetic, sensible, well-drawn, well-plotted, completely believable, most commendable. Excellent.)
REAL McCOYS. Plots are pretty silly, but this loving, industrious, hopeful farm family is as American as gingerbread. Earthy humanity, faithfulness to reality, respect for work, differences of opinions, compassion, courtesy—wholesome.
SEA HUNT. Pictures of underwater life and action are accurate, detailed and awesome. Plots lean to the sensational, but are auxiliary to setting. Recommended.
WYATT EARP. Lesson to be learned from TV westerns—good guy shoots straighter, kills deader than bad guy. Another way to make right prevail is to enforce it with violence, not invoke the law. Quick instruction on how to beat a man's face into pulp, with another trait added—insolence. A show for the whole nation to view with alarm.
BAT MASTERSON. Glittering with sin; for adults of certain tastes, not for children.

77 SUNSET STRIP. Less violent than other crime shows, no less sensational. In fear and frenzy people rush about committing and solving crimes, falling in and out of something they call love, dropping into bars to plan a robbery. They batter or caress each other, with hands that itch for money, prestige or power. Wisecracks and jive talk rattle with meaningless monotony. False glamour of such scenes may be dangerous to the immature; how are children to know they don't portray a real or desirable world?
WHIRLYBIRDS. In view of the regularity with which the helicopter hirers prove to be felons fleeing from justice, one might wonder why the young pilots never ask for references. But once this implausibility is accepted as a necessity of plot, everything is straight, clean, absorbing adventure. Violence is not prominent; heroes are capable of rising fully to crises. Helicopter itself becomes a character. (NAFBRAT: Element of crime makes it unsuitable for children. Objectionable.)
ON THE GO. Free from sensationalism or pressure, it is usually entertaining, occasionally touching, sometimes a little dull. We can learn from these expeditions, but without proper background or interpretation, the information may be as superficial or even false as back yard gossip. Not intended for children; for adults, at best it is informative, at worst a cut above listening in on the party line.
Postscript: One of the big reasons TV is in such low esteem is that evaluators and viewers make too many excuses for it.

Despite that “low esteem” and any “excuses,” people watched television anyway. They didn’t care so long as they were entertained. Perhaps that’s human nature, too.

Head-Turning Mouse

The difference between Disney and Terrytoons?

Paul Terry didn’t worry about the “illusion of life.” Here’s a good example from Three’s a Crowd, a 1950 Terrytoons short.

Little Roquefort is singing about his lady-love and turns his head. But the eyes and mouth move from one side to the mouth first, then the nose. No anatomy could possibly move like this.



Percy the cat gets burned a couple of times and feminized to end the cartoon.

A Beer on the Job

The Herring Murder Case is crammed with all kinds of gags, and there’s a great one involving prohibition.

Detective Bimbo knocks on the panel of a wall. The panel opens and out comes a hand with a pint of beer. “Good morning, officer!” says a voice (Billy Murray?). Another hand uses a razor to brush the foam off the mug, then Bimbo drinks the beer before carrying on his work.



Can it be that speakeasies in New York paid off beat cops with a beer so they would go on their merry way?

Oh, if only the Fleischer Talkatoons could be restored. This cartoon deserves it.