Puppetoons Go to War

Hollywood went to war in a big way after Adolf Hitler decided an invasion of Poland was a sehr gut idea for the Fatherland. Animation studios played their part.

There were propaganda cartoons for the home front, with unsubtle pleas to Buy Bonds interrupting the story. There were even less subtle caricatures of Axis leaders (Hitler getting bashed around is still funny) and the enemy in general, especially the Japanese (which, I suppose, was funny at the time, but chopped from post-war prints). On top of that, allied governments contracted studios to make films for the military. Disney, Schlesinger, Lantz, Hugh Harman were among them. So was George Pal.

Watching Pal’s characters move is something I still marvel at. That’s not even considering the incredible amount of work that went into designing, making and shooting his stop-motion models. Then combine that with an inspired story and you get something really remarkable; Tulips Will Grow is an amazing film by any standard.

While this story in the Showmen’s Trade Review of December 2, 1942, refers to war-time work, it’s really about how Pal’s Puppetoons were made.

All the studios were hit with staff being called up for war duty. Pal was no exception. The magazine reported on October 10, 1942 that just as Pal’s Jasper and the Choo Choo began production, nine of his employees were told that duty called with the U.S. Army.

Pal got out of shorts in the late ‘40s; it cost too much to make them. He moved into features where he, arguably, received more fame and honours.

Pal Puppetoons Get Wartime Assignment from Uncle Sam
Famous Wooden Characters Star in Training Pictures; Creator’s Technique Detailed
Some years ago when George Pal had the idea of using wooden puppets in animated pictures to achieve third dimension, he probably never realized that his idea, besides revolutionizing the animated picture, would also prove valuable to a nation at war. But that's what has happened, for Paramount's Puppetoon King has joined the ranks of shorts and cartoon producers making training films for the United States Government.
Depth and perspective are important in projecting a realistic miniature scene of an actual maneuver or plan of action in these films, it is pointed out, with the result that Pal's technique is proving its usefulness in wartime.
Nearly a dozen years ago when George Pal received his degree in architecture in Europe, he hoped to make a career of designing sets for feature pictures. He did follow that course for a while, but the idea of making his own wooden puppets so that his pictures would have a third dimension caused him to change his course. He photographed puppets in all sizes and forms, photographed them with a stop-motion camera, studied their action, carried on endless experiments and developed his new technique to the point of perfection. He was then ready to produce pictures.
He Trained a Large Staff
In Eindhoven, Holland, he opened a studio, went to work. His Puppetoons were enthusiastically received in the first-run movie theatres in England and on the continent, and were warmly praised by film critics. Rushed in making pictures to meet the public demand, Pal trained a large staff of assistants. His studio became the largest animation studio outside the United States. It was there that he developed and perfected his revolutionary system of third dimensional animations.
From Holland and England his fame spread to America. Paramount brought him to Hollywood where, in little more than a year, he has become one of the most successful artists in the film capital.

Those stringless puppets romping across the screen represent the ultimate advancement in the field of animated motion pictures. The wooden figures perform against actual sets with synchronized music and special sound effects.
Whereas animated cartoons require a separate drawing in celluloid for each movement. Pal builds a separate wood figure or puppet. The result gives a more fluid action, with the theatrical advantage of complete third dimension.
First steps in the making of a Pal Puppetoon: writing the script, composing the music (done first so movement of the characters may be clearly defined before they are made) and designing the sets. The sets are just as real as in feature films, but small and according to exact scale.
Pal then makes color models of the first, middle and last phase of each movement of each character. Assistants complete the twenty-five or more models of the intermediate steps. Then they are photographed and projected to test the movements.
Each puppet is made up of three sections: body, head and legs. Contrary to common belief, a complete puppet is not made for every step in the action of the picture. Since the body remains the same regardless of the action, only one body is needed. Walking or running action is achieved by changing the legs. The heads number some 200, with varying expressions. For the proper expression. Pal's assistants record the sound track on the film, listen while the expression is run back. Then they select a head with a mouth of the shape and size to synchronize with the sound.
When actual filming begins, the position of the puppet is determined and holes are made in the floor of the- set in which the pin protruding from the bottom of the feet will be inserted. That will hold the puppet in the desired position. The other holes, past and future, are filled with removable pins until they are needed.
Shooting Time: Six Weeks
Altogether, approximately 10,000 individual pictures are taken for the subject that will run seven minutes. Actual shooting time is about six weeks, in spite of the fact that 90 per cent of the work on a cartoon is preparation that has nothing to do with the actual shooting.
The ordinary Technicolor camera takes scenes from behind three different lenses. Not so with the camera used to take a single frame at a time. This camera has a Technicolor attachment consisting of three different color filters. Each frame is "shot" three times, each time with the color changed. When the film is printed, the positive is exposed to each of the three different color frames of the same scene, one at a time. Result: one Technicolor positive, the same as a positive made from the ordinary three-film-color negative.
Hollywood producers have spent millions to develop animated mediums. In spite of the most careful measures to give wooden, plastic and clay subjects smooth animation, the problem had been long unsolved until George Pal came along with his highly developed Puppetoons. His famous little characters, while entertaining millions, will also carry out their acting assignment for Uncle Sam to speed the day of victory.

I Interrupt This Programme...

Woody Woodpecker is enjoying some hula dancers while cleaning his home inside a tree.



Suddenly, an announcer shoves the dancers out of the way to nervously interrupt the programme for word of an invasion from outer space.



Woody doesn’t like having his TV viewing interrupted for such nonsense. He changes the channel, but the same announcer shows up on a kids show and a wrestling match, shoving everyone on camera aside.



This is from Termites From Mars, a late 1952 Walter Lantz cartoon directed by Don Patterson. Ray Abrams, Paul Smith and La Verne Harding are the credited animators with Dal McKennon as the fear-struck announcer.

Roller Coaster of the Mardi Gras

The roller coaster chase and fight in King of the Mardi Gras (1935) may be my favourite sequence in a Popeye cartoon.

This short is so well thought out. The cloudy skies in the background waft to the right as the roller coaster cars zoom along the tracks, adding to the sense of movement. There are imaginative angles including one where the tracks twist. The wooden slats are animated as the cars roll over them, making it appear that the tracks shake. And there’s perfect timing where the tracks intersect and Olive, Bluto and Popeye almost hit each other. You can’t, unfortunately, get any of those effects through a few still frames. Search out for the cartoon and watch it.



There’s also one of those Fleischer background blurs to make the movement seem faster.



The cartoon includes bizarre heads along with the 3-D background effect in the opening scene, a great song sung by Gus Wicke and Jack Mercer, and Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” which the only melody that should accompany a Popeye fight.

Dave Tendlar and Bill Sturm are the credited animators.

On Fred Allen and TV Cartoons

Kenny Delmar went from working with Orson Welles to working with Fred Allen. It wasn’t a direct route, but how many people got to regularly share a microphone with two men of that brilliant calibre?

Delmar was an actor who, for better or worse, was forever connected with a catchphrase—“That’s a joke, son!” as Allen re-worked a character created by Delmar into a noisy, enthusiastic Dixiecrat. Even the Dixiecrats Delmar was parodying liked Senator Claghorn.

No, Delmar didn’t voice Warners Bros.’ animated rooster Foghorn Leghorn, but he did provide voices for, to be honest, some really third-rate TV cartoons.

(This is the part of the post where I post a link to Keith Scott’s research stating the facts behind Delmar’s Senator and Foggy).

In this syndicated column from April 29, 1961, Delmar talked about his cartoons, his work with Allen and his presence on Welles’ most famous radio broadcast (Delmar provided an FDR-cadenced voice on a character inspired by the president).

Kenny Delmar was 73 when he died in 1984.

Fred Allen Was Tops
By HAROLD STERN
Pat Weaver, the man responsible for the concept of the television spectacular (rechristened "special" by his ex-network NBC), was also largely responsible for the success of the late Fred Allen.
Back during Allen's radio heyday, Weaver, an ad agency executive at the time, insisted there was only one way to handle Allen—"Leave him alone!" With practically no interference from any non-creative buttinsky, Allen was a giant in the field of comedy.
Kenny Delmar, the Senator Claghorn of the old, "Allen's Alley" sequences was in a reminiscent mood the other day and, naturally, could find no subject more fascinating than Fred Allen.

"I've worked with exciting people all my life," he said, "but there will never be another Fred Allen. I remember when I joined him. I was working with Alan Young, and Fred hired me. Would you believe it, the sponsor wasn't even aware that I was part of Fred's company until he heard me on the show? Can you imagine anyone in television having that much confidence in a performer.
"I don't know why Fred didn't make it in television." he mused. "He was a success in the theater, he did well in movies and his radio career was without parallel. I have a feeling he might have done well, giving his kind of commentary on the news. Maybe the big problem with Fred was that you couldn't watch his mind functioning. He wasn't a clown, he was a wit—and there just doesn't seem to be room for wit on television.
"I think a lot of Fred's old material would go well on television," Kenny continued. "His 'One Long Pan' episodes and his courtroom sequences would still be hilarious. His Christmas show was a classic. And one show I'll never forget is one he did with Orson Welles playing a timid little boy. The Allen's Alley concept certainly worked on television. Steve Allen used the idea for his 'Man On The Street' routines.
"Steve Allen's characters weren't nearly as diversified as Fred's, though. We had a good group: Parker Fennelly as Titus Moody, Minerva Pius [sic] as Mrs. Nussbaum, Alan Reed as Falstaff Openshaw and myself as Senator Claghorn. That was my character, but Fred named him. When Alan Reed went to Hollywood, Peter Donald took his place as Ajax Cassidy."
Now TV Regular
Today, Kenny's in television on a regular basis, but he might just as well have stayed in radio. He's a voice on a highly successful "King Leonardo and His Short Subjects" Saturday morning cartoon series on NBC, on which he plays "The Hunter," "Flanagan the cop" and the narrator. It's sort of intriguing to note that Kenny's producer is a southerner named Treadwell Covington who professes to be a long-time fan of the garrulous southern Senator Claghorn.
The Claghorn character is one which Kenny continues to hold on to no matter what else he does and it is currently the basis for a series of one-minute spots which he and his son have worked up under the title "The Senator Looks at . . . " And again in the role of Claghorn, Kenny has a sales movie designed for sales banquets and conventions in which the Senator is the salesman of the year.
With his career spanning several decades and encompassing all entertainment media. I asked Kenny if he could recall his most frustrating experience and his single outstanding show.
"Many years ago," he recalled, "when I was working for CBS radio on an around-the-clock basis, I had to send out for my meals. The service was so bad that in self-defense I opened my own restaurant near CBS. I figured if nothing else could, that should guarantee me good service. Well, the restaurant became so successful that the service got worse than the other restaurant's.
"And if you ask for the single outstanding show of my career," he added, "I'd have to say it was the famous Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre 'War of the Worlds' show, after which we had much of American believing that earth was being invaded by Mars. That created more of a furor than any other program in radio history. For weeks after the show they were trying to find some law under which they could prosecute us as criminals," he said.
Needless to say, Kenny Delmar was not prosecuted as a criminal and remained "clean" long enough so that today, on The Hunter sequence of King Leonardo, he plays a private-eye bloodhound.

A Tyerd Cat

A cat running from an ordinary mouse? That’s the animation that opens the Mighty Mouse cartoon A Cat’s Tale (1951). It may be an ordinary mouse, but the animation’s no ordinary animation. Some random (albeit fuzzy) frames.



Jim Tyer’s animation is even crazier when the cat locks and bolts the door of his cave. We'll do a post on that some day.

Tyer never got screen credit. None of the animators did until Gene Deitch arrived toward the end of the decade.

There’s some mighty cross-promotion in this cartoon as several scenes feature Mighty Mouse comic books.

Here I Am in the Fifth Row!

Tex Avery erases the line of what’s on the screen and what’s in the movie theatre in the end gag of Cinderella Meets Fella (1938).

There are Averyisms throughout the cartoon, but the ending has the Prince following the original fairy tale and showing up at Cinderella’s house. The plot veers off into Averyland again, when instead of having Cindy try on the slipper (which disappears after an earlier scene), the Prince looks at a note. The artist goes for fleshy, fingernailed hands.



The Prince is inconsolable until a shadow appears on the screen. It’s Cindy in the theatre watching him in the cartoon (that she’s actually in). She leaves the theatre and rushes onto the screen.



Reunited, the Prince and Cinderella both leave the screen for the theatre through the closing iris to watch the coming newsreel. End of cartoon.



There’s plenty of familiar Avery to go around. The fairy godmother enjoys her gin (we see the bottle, but she doesn’t drink from it). The radio talks back to Cinderella. She gives out an advertising slogan before turning it on. We get Jimmy Fidler’s catchphrase “And I do mean you!” spouted as a post-script by the evil step-sisters with the NBC chimes lightly in the background. The Prince, of course, is based on comedian Joe Penner (the impression is by Danny Webb). Avery resisted the temptation to have him screech “You naaasty man!”

The Motion Picture Herald of July 23, 1938, was impressed, though I don’t think the dancing qualifies as “jitterbugging.”

Outstanding Cartoon
Hardly classically reverential in its treatment of the hallowed and ageless fable of the little slavey girl who meets a Prince Charming boy is this jazzed up version from the iconoclastic pen of Leon Schlesinger but even the youngster most ardently devoted to the fairy fable lore will lose his bewilderment in witnessing the desecration of one of his favorite tales in gales of childish glee. The free hand of the artist has drawn Cindy's magic fairy godmother in screwball shades and the soundman has given the curly haired heroine a set of "Betty Boopish" vocal cords. As for the glamorous and dashing Prince, the female contingency in the audience will be startled after admiring the "Snow White" edition of the royal gentleman to witness the "goofy" picturization of the princely chap in this cartoon. The famous ball scene is reduced to a jitterbug session. The finale finds the romantic couple at a neighborhood showplace. However, the drawings, taken in the insane spirit in which they are sketched, will produce an hilarious audience response and should flavor any programme with a welcome touch of amusing nonsense. The technical makeup of color and musical background provide excellent help in creating the atmosphere for the subject. — Running time, seven minutes.

By the way, the same year as this cartoon, Bunny Berigan came out with a B-side called “When a Prince of a Fella Meets a Cinderella.” Coincidence? Mmmmm....could be. Oh, wait, Avery skipped that radio catchphrase in this one.

Virgil Ross was the credited animator. Sid Sutherland, Paul Smith and Irv Spence were Avery’s other animators at the time. Cinderella is Berneice Hansell. Mel Blanc is heard, and the godmother could be Elvia Allman.

Let's Try the Artificial Sweetener Angle

There are just so many things you can write about a star when there’s really nothing new to talk about.

In Jack Benny’s case, I suppose that speaks well toward his longevity in show business, but once he settled into television, it proved to be a challenge for columnists. After all, he had been on the air for so long, what possibly could be said about his coming fall season that hadn’t been said before?

Such was the challenge of the New York Herald Tribune’s TV columnist, who rose to the challenge in her paper’s edition of October 8, 1958 (the column was syndicated as well). She managed to find something.

Jack Benny's Not Stingy with Time
By MARIE TORRE
NEW YORK — JACK Benny is in New York on a business trip to extend an annual hello to his sponsor, his CBS boss Bill Paley, and members of the press. The practice has paid off in good will.
Benny's attention to the amenities of public relations, not to mention the fact that he's a helluva comedian, has kept his sponsor (Lucky Strike) happy for 15 years and has enabled the comedian to enjoy the status of top dog at Mr. Paley's network. As for TV reporters . . . well, naturally, they're flattered no end when a CBS man calls and says "Jack Benny is coming to town and he wants to talk to you."
Normally, it's the other way around. And sometimes, to the frustration of a reporter tracking down a performer in the headlines, we find the star doesn't want to talk to us.

But Benny has never minimized the value of publicity, and he's always ready to talk — even when he has nothing new to say. When he was asked about "changes" in his TV series, for instance. Everybody in TV, you know, feels the need to refurbish every other year or so.
"Changes?" Benny echoed over the breakfast in his hotel suite. "No, I'm not changing anything. There's nothing to change. I don't have a format. The situations hinge on the guest personalities, and since the personalities are different in each show, each situation is different.
"Frankly, we're all very happy with the way things are. The sponsor's happy, too. Do you know that in 15 years, I have never had any criticism from the sponsor about the commercials I integrate in the script. Not once. Every year Paul Hahn — he's the president of Lucky Strike, you know — comes to California with his wife and we all get together for an evening. First thing Hahn usually says is, 'Well, your shows have been great,' and then we all go out and have a good time."
In the interests of an "angle," we turned the subject to his wife, Mary Livingston, inordinately TV-shy last season.
"Oh, I have an awfully hard time putting Mary to work," Benny said, "she gets nervous when she works. She loves show business as an observer, but not for herself. Unless I come up with a show idea which positively requires her appearance, she won't do anything."
The subject of Mrs. Benny yielded nothing in the way of news; maybe he had some fresh opinions on the inability of other TV comedians to match his lasting success.
"Well, like I always said, and I don't mean this to sound egotistical," Benny answered, "I've got it made. I was lucky. Twenty or more years ago I stumbled on the idea of playing a cheap character and it's good enough to last a lifetime. It's good because it's a composite of every thing that's wrong with human beings. Everybody has an uncle who's stingy, or a coward or who thinks he's a great violinist. The identification factor is there, if you know what I mean.
"But I can see where TV is tough on the other comedians. They have to create new situations and characters all the time. I notice that whenever comedians refer to their troubles in TV they invariably mention me as the exception. All I have to worry about is to keep my show from stinking."
Our attempt to uncover something new about Benny, incidentally, wasn't a total loss. At the breakfast table, he announced he was on a health kick and he produced both a bottle of sucaryl and a tin of "non-fattening butter" (some form of margarine, actually) he had brought all the way from California. The products, however, weren't used under the most effective circumstances. The waiter had forgotten to bring milk for the berries, whereupon Benny shrugged, sprinkled the non-fattening sucaryl on the berries, devoured a slice of toast with non-fattening butter, and then with delicious abandon, poured very-fattening cream on the berries.

Cartoon's Cavett

One of the many fun sidelights of watching Warner Bros. cartoons from the ‘30s and ‘40s is to spot gags that are not designed for the theatre audience. They were made by the artists for their own self-amusement. Paul Julian especially seems to have liked scrawling staff members names on backgrounds he painted for Friz Freleng. In other instances, staffers appeared in caricature, such as in Page Miss Glory (1936), where we see part of Tex Avery’s unit as farmers.

These were never meant as actual gags except in one instance that I can recall. In Hollywood Steps Out, the panning camera stops at a table where Henry Binder and Leon Schlesinger are sitting. The Merrie Melodies theme plays in the background. A rough cut was screened for Schlesinger on April 23, 1941, and The Hollywood Reporter of the next day suggested the gag was done solely to surprise and kid their boss.

There’s a really obscure in-joke in Fagin’s Freshmen, a cartoon from the Hardaway-Dalton unit released in November 1939. Observe the name in these backgrounds (artist unknown).



The reference is to Louie Cavett. I don’t know whether he was an assistant animator, an in-betweener or another kind of artist, but I do know one thing about him—the poster reading “Do you need money?” was on the mark.

“He was a loan shark,” the late Martha Sigall recalled. She revealed he would loan money and charge interest. Her comments came on a commentary track over a Schlesinger gag reel which features a voice saying “Do you need money? See Louie Cavett.”

Here’s what little we can tell you about Cavett (accent on the last syllable; it’s not pronounced like Dick Cavett). He was born on April 2, 1914 in Los Angeles. Where he went to art school is yet to be found, but he’s listed on the 1934 city directory as a commercial artist. The 1936 Voters List gives his occupation as “cartoonist.”

He was married in July 1939 and still working at Schlesinger’s. But he didn’t stay much longer after that. He was gone by late January 1940. His 1940 draft card reveals he was employed by Norris Stamping. Cavett was called up in 1943 and died in a military training exercise in North Carolina on January 6, 1944. His death certificate states he died instantly and accidentally of a fractured skull after parachuting.

He never received screen credit; by 1939 the only artists who got their name on a title card were animators and even then it was one and on a rotating basis. But we are happy to point out that Louie did get his name projected in theatres thanks to this cartoon.

Pop Goes the Cat

You’d think the natural reaction would be to run when you get into trouble. But not Tom in High Steaks. Twice he’s just sat there chewing his nails and then lets out a big grin.



Mind you, if Tom ran away, there wouldn’t be much of a conflict in the plot unless something impedes him.

Director Gene Deitch or his animators doted on spikey coloured rings for impact in these Czech-made Tom and Jerrys. The rings litter this cartoon. One example:



Tom’s anger-challenged owner (voiced by the fine Allen Swift) forces cola (aka “kola”) into Tom.



Unmatched shot. These are consecutive frames.



The camera work is really odd here. The camera slowly trucks back, which makes perfect sense. But then the camera suddenly goes back to the position it started and begins to truck back again. The scene is 12 frames before the cut and looks really jerky because of this.

More impact rings. Actually, the second one isn’t. The body merely stretches up (it doesn’t snap) but we get the jagged ring anyway.



To add to the strangeness, the score is full of reverbed jazz that changes time signatures, though parts fit the action nicely (such as the idling car at the end of the cartoon). And fans of the Tod Dockstader “Boinng-nng!” will not be disappointed.

This was the fourth of the 13 Tom and Jerrys produced for MGM by William Snyder. Vaclav Bedrich gets an “animation direction credit.”

I'm Comin'

Petey Parrot’s mother (played by Elvia Allman) runs to the rescue of her son, who is drowning after a storm wafts its way over a lake.

“I’m comin’!” she yells. Suddenly, her run turns into a finger-wagging strut and she starts singing “I’m comin’ ‘cause my head is bendin’ low.” Then she resumes her run, desperately shouting “I’m comin’!” again.



This cartoon was shown over and over when I was a kid and I always liked this gag because I knew the song (“Old Black Joe”) and it somehow seemed right the parrot should turn buoyant and briefly sidetrack into its lyrics.

Tex Avery has another “interrupt” gag in the cartoon when the noisy, talkative parrot stops, pokes his head at the audience and says “Ain’t I the talkin’est little guy?”

I understand Petey is played by child actor Robert Winkler. It would appear (and none of this is confirmed) he was born February 18, 1931 in Los Angeles. It looks like he went to Santa Monica City College and gave up acting in the late ‘40s. If he’s still around and reading this, he’s more than welcome to post a comment.