Cinemascope Scare

Former assistant animators Lew Marshall and Bill (Victor O.) Schipek have been promoted and add to some of the weird shapes in the Tom and Jerry cartoon Timid Tabby (1956), joining ex Lantz animator Ken Southworth, along with Ken Muse and Irv Spence (who would leave MGM later this year).

The premise is straight-forward. Tom’s hitherto-unknown cousin who is afraid of mice pays a visit. Among other things, he tries hiding from Jerry behind a window blind.



Jerry trying to be scary.



The cartoon’s basic premise was reused by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera in the Pixie and Dixie cartoon Scaredycat Dog.

Laughing at Jack

There’s something cringe-worthy about 1960s sitcom laugh-tracks. They all sound the same (in many cases, they were). And they sound so phoney.

Having listened to Jack Benny radio show when it was still live, it’s jarring watching his filmed TV shows and hearing the identical tired laugh track heard on other episodes. There’s a world of difference.

Jack knew it, too, and wasn’t altogether happy with it. He talked about it on several occasions, once with the Associated Press after CBS ordered him in 1960 to insert a disclaimer that phoney laughs had been cut into the soundtrack (part of the network’s knee-jerk response to the dishonest quiz shows it had been airing). This United Press International column appeared in papers on May 17, 1968. By then, Jack no longer had a weekly show and had reduced his workload to occasional specials.

The Laugh Track
By DICK WEST
WASHINGTON (UPI)—Most people think of Jack Benny only as a comedian and concert violinist, not realizing he is also an ardent social reformer.
I didn't realize that either until Benny came here this week for a series of recitals at the Shoreham Hotel. During a press luncheon, he advocated a social reform that caused me to jump up and shake his hand.
Benny came out in favor of realism in laugh tracks, which surely ranks with honesty in advertising and truth in lending as among the most needed reforms. Laugh tracks, as if you didn't know, are pre-recorded titters, giggles and gaffaws that are spliced onto taped television shows.
Okay When Accurate

When done with verisimilitude—that is, if the laugh track matches what is happening on the show—there is no quarrel with the practice. But you have only to watch one of the so-called situation comedies to recognize that mismating is rife and that liberties are being taken to the detriment of the viewers.
Laugh track synchronizers are constantly dubbing in cackles alter jokes that clearly call for chuckles, or, as is often the case, dead silence. Their worst offense is inflation.
When a show is slipping in the ratings, the usual remedy is to juice up the laugh track. Lame little jokes that merit a snicker at best are bolstered with full scale boffos. This is outright deception, and creates confusion and irritation in the home audience.
I don't know of anything more disconcerting than to find myself barely sniggering when my TV set is rocking with merriment. Makes me think I'm a hopeless square.
Rates Wit
Benny, as I was saving, understands this. Long experience performing before live audiences has taught him to evaluate the mirth-provoking qualities of any given witticism.
He said that when he uses canned laughter on a television show he personally selects the hilarity category to prevent a knee-slapper from being represented as a side-splitter, and vice versa.
Once, Benny said, when he was taping a show with living laughter, he broke everybody up with a gag that he regarded as mere chuckle material. Fearing the overkill might alienate home viewers, he snipped out the authentic belly-laugh and dubbed in a more restrained response.
It was an open-and-shut case of laugh track heresy and may explain why Benny no longer has a regular program.

We Want Quackenbush

Buried on the page of The Animator newsletter for April, 1945 is this line about the doings at the Walter Lantz studio: “Stan Qwackenbush back from European theatre”.

The fact Quackenbush, to correctly spell his name, was at Lantz is news to me. He never received screen credit. In fact, he rarely received screen credit anywhere else. Quackenbush was one of many animators who toiled in the Golden Days in obscurity, at least to the general public.

Fortunately, after he retired to Arizona, a newspaper printed a feature story after interviewing him. It doesn’t say a lot, and it certainly doesn’t contain a full filmography or studiography, but it’s nice to read about someone who contributed to theatrical cartoons way-back-when.

Louis Stanley Quackenbush was born on November 14, 1902 in what’s now Bellingham, Washington. His family moved to San Diego when he was young and returned to Bellingham where Quackenbush went to high school. In college, he was an unusual combination of a boxer and an artist.

The feature story will get more into his biography, but he was married in 1928, divorced and married again in 1937. He headed to Florida in 1939 before returning to California not long after. The story skips whole swaths of his career but he worked in Vancouver, likely at Canawest which had a subcontract with Hanna-Barbera. Among the shows animated there were the Abbott and Costello cartoons that ran in syndication (including on Canawest’s parent operation, KVOS-TV in Bellingham) and Wait Till Your Father Gets Home. Canawest had offices on Burrard Street south of Davie Street, but former Canawest manager Vic Spooner remembers the animation was done in six rented houses along Pacific Boulevard, which I suspect are the lovely wood-frame homes that have been restored west of Burrard.
This story appeared in the Arizona Republic on August 21, 1977.

Former Disney animator still draws smiles from children
Story and photo
By MARY JANE ALEXANDER
When Stan Quackenbush of Mesa recently took neighborhood children to see the original movie version of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," he had a special interest in seeing how well the animated characters have weathered the last 40 years. Quackenbush happened to be at the other end of the pencil when many of the seven dwarfs came to life on paper.
And today, at 74, Quackenbush is still drawing regularly, using much of his cartoon work to delight children in the Mesa Public Schools.
When he went to work for Walt Disney Studios, he was "at a loose end". He had been in the advertising business in San Francisco until the Depression closed all of his accounts overnight. He had returned to Berkeley, Calif., where he had graduated from the University of California in 1925, to plan his future.
Quackenbush and his wife Marjorie had decided if they had to sit around for a few years, it might as well be in Europe where the money they had saved would get a better exchange rate.
"I had wanted to study modern art anyway, so we went to Munich, Paris and Florence. I particularly liked the Louvre—you can go there every day for months and always see something new and beautiful," he says.
Because his money finally ran out and he and his wife had drifted apart, Quackenbush returned to his hometown of Bellingham, Wash., where his parents were still living. "I didn't want to go back to San Francisco and fight the battle of advertising again," he stresses.
A year later his brother in Oakland, Calif., sent him a newspaper clipping stating that Walt Disney was recruiting animators to work on a feature-length animated movie.
"They only had seven or eight animators, and for a full-length movie, my goodness, you need 30 animators or more. So a lot of people came to Hollywood to apply—about 20 of us, and they eliminated all but three of us.
"They took us on full-time, but before we could get to work on 'Snow White' the story people and those making the characters had to finish working. How are you going to animate a character that you can't see?

"So while we were waiting I worked on some shorts — I did a lot of Mickey (Mouse). Mickey was drawn by Walt in 1928 just after sound was added. I worked on the first one that combined sound and movement, called 'Steamboat Willie', and it was a fair success. Of course, in those days a short only got about $25 for every showing.
"By the time I went to work for Disney, we'd already started on what they called the 'Silly Symphonies.' They were all in color, and I worked on one of the first ones — 'Flowers and Trees'. It had flowers and trees swaying to the music," he recalls.
Quackenbush says Walt Disney knew "Snow White" had to be in color, leaving a big job for the inkers and painters. In those days inkers had to trace the animators' pencil sketches onto sheets of transparent celluloid called cels, then painters added colors on the reverse side.
The movie, over four years in production, was released in time for Christmas in 1936. While the number of individual drawings it required is countless, Quackenbush estimates that he did 5,000 sketches for just one three-minute sequence of the dwarfs bathing in a stream, because even the, drops of water falling had to be drawn separately.
"At a film speed of 24 frames per second, you could use one drawing for two frames if there wasn't much action, but with fast movement, each frame had to have a separate drawing," he explains.
"To draw an animal, I was given a model sheet showing the character I was going to animate in profile, back and front views. I copied it many times until I was completely familiar with the little guy and how he moved. After a while I got so I could see his proportions and was able to make him move the way he should," he recalls.
It was a bit of a letdown for Quackenbush when the "Snow White" project was finished. "I was used to animating 50 feet (of film) every two days, but after that I'd sit around for two days a week with nothing to do," he says.
He then joined the Fleischer brothers in Miami, Fla., to work on another full-length animated film—Gulliver's Travels. But World War II interrupted any further pursuits for him in animation. He joined the U.S. Navy in 1940 and stayed through the Korean War, becoming discharged finally in the summer of 1954.
Quackenbush then spent five years in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, working part of that time for Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. on shorts with Abbott and Costello and Moby Dick characters.
"Then on May 3, 1972, I looked out the window and it was snowing—and I said to myself, 'Oh no. I do not live like this.'
"My sister-in-law lives in Mesa and she had been telling me how great Arizona was, so I came here four years ago," he says.
Since his arrival here, Quackenbush has been active in volunteer work and in cartooning for a community newspaper. He has over 650 hours of volunteer work on record with the Tri-City Retired Senior Volunteer Program based at Mesa Community College.
His projects have included caricatures of children at Franklin Elementary School jn Mesa, posters for RSVP, Mesa Public Library, Scottsdale Blood Services, Mesa Veterans of Foreign Wars, and he has just started preparing a brochure for Phoenix public schools.

People in animation padded their resumes in the day before historians started digging around to find the facts. I sincerely doubt Quackenbush ever worked on Steamboat Willie. The 1930 census has him living in Carmel and employed as a commercial artist.

I am baffled by Quackenbush’s claim about snow. Vancouver rarely gets snow, and any snowfall in May would be a real quirk of nature. Furthermore, the local papers of the date in question show the weather was sunny with highs in the mid-50s and lows in the mid-40s. Incidentally, around that same time, I read a biography of W.C. Fields where it said he and some of his drinking buddies would go to football games and incongruously shout “We want Quackenbush.” Hence the title of this post.

Stan Quackenbush died in Mesa, Arizona on September 10, 1979.

Fish and a Pan

There’s nothing like joyful little fish, and that’s what we get at the start of Playful Pan, a 1930 Walt Disney cartoon.

The fish swim along happily in a lake, skate on the water with the bodies, slide down a log (the animation is reused) and attach themselves to a turtle’s tail before Pan jumps onto dry land and the fish leave the cartoon for good.



This isn’t an all-dancing, all-music cartoon. Disney’s moved beyond that. A fire burns down the forest as Uncle Walt fill the screen with characters, and Pan puts out all the flames, albeit after every single tree has burned down.

Hassan Open!

Hassan continues to guess at the magic words that will open the entrance to the cave, and is shocked when he actually makes the right one. (It’s not “Open Saddlesoap”). Some drawings.



You likely know this is from Ali Baba Bunny, animated by Ken Harris, Dick Thompson, Ben Washam and Abe Levitow. It was released in 1957.

Larry Bud

Late Night With David Letterman was quirky and inventive when it began airing on NBC in 1982. Of the many incongruous things that attracted viewers was a character named Larry “Bud” Melman. Viewers weren’t sure whether he was in on the joke as he awkwardly went through the motions and read cue cards—and was utterly lost when he was left on his own.

Columnists sought him out to find the answer. One of the many feature stories written about him was this syndicated piece that appeared in newspapers on August 8, 1984.

As fans eventually learned, Larry “Bud” was an obscure actor named Calvert DeForest. Viewers loved him because he seemed so genuine and helpless. He was unique. He died in 2007 at the age of 85.

The Real Larry ‘Bud’ Melman
By MANDALIT DEL BARCO
Larry "Bud" Melman celebrity. He conspicuously takes a walk around Rockefeller Center outside the NBC studios where he irregularly appears in comedy sketches on “Late Night with David Letterman.” He poses for a photographer, smiling a seemingly toothless smile, and making baby gurgling noises. He pretends to eat a Chipwich and, later, to read a bus schedule. These are the kinds of stunts for which he is famous.
Several fans from Queens and Illinois come up to ask him for his autograph. He signs and continues walking as the whispers and snickers of awe-stricken Melmanites follow him. They recognize his trademark black glasses that give him that goofy aura. They spot his space-cadet expression and are reminded who he is when he begins to laugh a silly little cartoon chortle that reaches down to shake his belly. This mild-mannered star looks a little like Casper the friendly ghost. In "real life" he is actually funny man, Calvert De Forest, 63.
He rounds the corner and a limousine pulls up. Out comes another star. It's the new Miss America! Suzette Charles!
"Larry Bud Melman!" she screeches as about 10 photographers click away. After posing with the beauty queen, he walks away, saying, "Ooh, she's cute. She's so tiny!" This from an adorable man who is 5 foot 2—a man with hands and feet so small he has to wear boy's shoes.

Larry "Bud" Melman, just a regular guy. Seriously folks. He's lived in the same Brooklyn apartment for years. Takes the subway to Manhattan when he's called in to do a sketch for the Letterman show. But when he's not working, which is most days, he's sitting at home watching the soaps. No fooling.
Oh, sure, there are the vacations he takes in California, with pal Pee Wee Herman, another Letterman semi-regular. There are the galas at New York's famous Hard Rock Cafe with Eddie Murphy and Lauren Bacall. Heck, he's tired of going to Studio 54, and besides, "that's passe." But deep down, he's an ordinary bachelor who likes Mexican food and country music. Off camera, he is just as unassuming as on. His ordinariness really has no business being on national TV. And yet that is his appeal.
Since he got out of high school, he's done odd jobs, such as working as a file clerk for a drug company or working in a department store, so that he could pursue his acting career. He appeared in community theater and off-Broadway shows such as “A Streetcar Named Desire,” “Philadelphia Here I Come” and “Here Comes Mr Jordan.”
He also appeared in several New York University student films, which brought him to the attention of people at the David Letterman show. In one titled “The King of Z,” he was cast as the actor in a studio on poverty row who had to play all the parts. De Forest was "discovered" two years ago by then-head writer Merrill Marko [sic] when the students who produced the film were on the “Late Night” show and a clip from the film was shown.
Marko decided to give him the whacky name Larry "Bud" Melman and cast him in a short sketch in which he played the president of "Melman's bus lines." Larry Bud was a hit explaining the merits of buses with a completely straight face reading his lines from a cue card and messing up.
From there, he was put on the show as a semi-regular, appearing twice every three weeks or so. The “Late Night” writers invent his material. He writes nothing himself. His antics have included promoting "Toast on a Stick," peddling "Melman's Mystery Dinners," interviewing tourists atop the Empire State Building, greeting surprised passengers at a New York bus terminal with hot towels and wearing a bear outfit and walking around the NBC studios. His latest stunt is "Ask Mr Melman" in which he gives straight answers to stupid questions.
For laughs, he need only appear onstage. And many of the laughs are on him like when the audio gets messed up while he's standing on location in a blizzard, and Letterman keeps cutting back to an obviously freezing Larry Bud throughout the show.
Letterman on working with Melman: “It’s a supreme joy.”
Melman on working with Letterman: “Working with David is a riot. He is really funny.”
Steve O’Donnell, “Late Night” head writer, on Melman: “He’s the sweetest man in the world. He’s always surprising us. I guess that’s part of the excitement he creates for us on television.”
Candy Carell, makeup artist for the show, on Melman: “He is by far one of the most special, humble people I have ever met, and success hasn’t spoiled him. You just look at him, and you feel good. He’s just naturally funny. I glue things on him, we’re constantly changing him. We put him through so much. And he never complains.”

What price fame? Last February, De Forest was fired from his receptionist job at a New York City drug-rehabilitation agency, after his bosses found out about his second career. A spokesperson for the agency said the job had been intended for elderly people with no more than $6,075 outside income. He had kept his job at the center because his work on the Letterman show was part time and spur-of-the moment. He doesn't want to discuss this ugly incident, except to say, "It's really got me upset. The point is I did nothing criminal."
His lucrative career, however, has him on the rebound. He has been performing a stand-up routine as Larry "Bud" Melman around the country on college campuses and at comedy clubs. The act includes reading jokes off a cue card and making mistakes. He swears he can't remember any of the material. Even so, his shows at Los Angeles' Improv and San Francisco's Other Cafe were sold-out smashes.
"The crowds were just — Ah! Beeeeeuteeful. Nice reviews," he says, leaning back in a chair in an NBC public relations office overlooking St Patrick's Cathedral.
"Where I live it's 'Oh, no, it can't be. You mean you live around here? I can't believe it’," De Forest says of his adoring public. "I see them on the subway and they think I should be riding in a limo. I say 'Of course I'm like everybody else.' It's amazing how they separate a celebrity from an ordinary person. They're exactly the same."
He gets stacks of fan mail, mostly from college kids who want to know more about his "Toast on a Stick," or from women who want a date with him. He's received marriage proposals ("not that many, maybe two or three") even a letter once from a woman in New Orleans who claims he fathered her child. It is a cruel and vicious allegation Larry Bud denies. "I told David that I've never even been to New Orleans."
He insists he's not a legend in his own time.
"I’m not that much of a sex symbol," the lifelong bachelor says, completely seriously. "I'm no threat to Tom Selleck or Robert Redford. They’re perfectly safe."

Wherever he travels around the country to do his stand-up routines, which he began doing a few months ago, he is mobbed. "At the airport in Milwaukee it was like the Beatles. The crowds were unbelieeeeeevable," De Forest recalls in his strongest Brooklyn accent. "They had to get me in the limo back to the hotel. I thought 'Oh, this is sooooooomething!' Then another car would be following and waving 'Hi Larry.' It felt great." v He admits to being starstruck. “I get a bigger kick out of meeting people like Robin Williams, Joe Piscopo, Eddie Murphy. I’m thrilled by them. They’re the ones who are great.”
But his biggest thrill, he says with an enormous amorous sigh, would be to meet Bette Davis.
“Just to meet her once!” he says, almost drooling. “David’s never had her on the show. I’ve been tempted to ask him, ‘cause Johnny’s had her on his show. I’ve gotta get the courage up.”
De Forest is a trivia buff, able to cite the “real” names of Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor, and says he loves gossip and “Entertainment Tonight.” At the tender age of 12, he saw his first movie, the silent version of “Seventh Heaven” with Janet Gaynor. From then on he was hooked on watching the Busby Berkeley big productions, and, of course, Bette Davis flicks. “Ya had better stars back then,” he laments “Mosta yer legends are gone.”
Women in clubs go up to kiss this man, but Miss America refused, shaking her finger and saying 'no' when he leaned toward her with his lips puckered. "Oh, she's gotta keep her image pure," De Forest explains. Perhaps it was just a chance encounter, meeting Suzette Charles on a typical day, perhaps it was fate. "What a thrill. Who expected that?" a tickled De Forest snickers.
It must be his great timing.
“Yes. Being in the right place at the right time. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” says Larry “Bud” Melman, celebrity.
“That’s show business all the way. Faaaaaaaaaaaaabulous!”

Oh, My Sides!

I don’t know who wrote the 1958 Paramount cartoon Travelaffs. You could have written it. I could have written it. Anyone could have come up with its all-too-obvious groaners that greeted theatre-goers who weren’t buying popcorn. The fact “laughs” is spelled “laffs” should tip you off that this is not going to be funny.

“Smash your baggage?” asks dog porter Jack Mercer. So he does. Are you rolling with laffter? By the way, is “smash your baggage” an actual term used at railroad stations?



“Check my bag,” says pig businessman Jackson Beck. You know what’s going to happen next. The dopey clerk is Sid Raymond.



“Carry your trunk, sir?” asks the Jack Mercer mouse that sounds just like the earlier dog. Trunk!? You know what the punch-line is going to be.



Well, as Popeye used to say in these late Paramount cartoons, “I can’t stands no more.” We get more spot-gag footage the rest of the way.

The one pleasant part of the cartoon is the narrator. Anyone familiar with Henry Morgan’s radio show will recognise the voice belonging to actor/announcer Charlie Irving.

Hungry Sheep

Droopy’s sheep eat everything in Drag-a-long Droopy, including a river and an Indian teepee.



Tex Avery explored the eat-everything concept in full in the next cartoon he put into production, Billy Boy.

This 1954 short features Avery’s usual animators—Walt Clinton, Grant Simmons, Mike Lah and Bob Bentley, as well as Ray Patterson. The “Moo moo moo/baa baa baa!” and “Hey, taxi!” routines in this short are among my most favourite moments in MGM cartoons.

Who is Alex Trebek?

If you look at the right side of the bottom row of this football team, you’ll see a head sticking out between two uniformed players. That head went on to great fame, but not in football.

The head belongs to Alex Trebek.

At the time, he was better known as Alexandre Trebek when he was going to school in the Ottawa area. The photo is from 1956.

Trebek did some acting in school but needed money. One place where actors could find some pay was at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which not only mounted TV productions but still had live radio drama. The CBC hired him. But not as an actor.

The Ottawa Citizen made Trebek the cover story of its TV Weekly magazine of Saturday, June 17, 1961, and also showed headline writers don’t always read the stories they’re captioning very well.

George Trebek Youngest Announcer
George Alexander Trebek is probably the youngest CBC permanent staff announcer in Canada.
Alexander, who is of Russian and French descent, was born in the northern Ontario city of Sudbury. He came to Ottawa seven years ago to attend the prep school of the University of Ottawa . . . and has been here since except for a few short stays in the United States.
Alex has just completed the Sedes Sapientiae where all his philosophy subjects were taught in Latin. This fall, he will receive two university degrees, a bachelor of arts degree with a major in philosophy, and a bachelor of philosophy degree.

Alexander began his announcing career quite by accident when he was hired as a summer replacement on CBO radio last year. He was again a replacement during the Christmas holidays, and then in February of this year joined the permanent announce staff in order to help pay his tuition at the University.
His main interests lie in the entertainment field in general, and drama in particular. During the course of his university stay he was first a member and then president of the University of Ottawa Drama Guild. Among his other interests are music and travelling.

There are some in the CBC who gravitate to Toronto to further their careers. That’s what Trebek did. By May 1964, he was Canada’s Dick Clark, hosting a TV show called Music Hop. Two years later, he hosted Championship Curling. It sounds like an SCTV sketch—two curling rinks competed for, well, I’m not really sure. Next he was paired with Canada’s Pet, Juliette, in a three-times-a-week mid-day live chat show. In the early ‘70s, he got a shot (as did many others) at being Canada’s Dick Cavett by hosting a late Thursday night talk show.

The CBC decided to put Trebek at the other end of the clock and made him the local radio morning host in Toronto in October 1971. The format was supposed to be information-based but one Toronto newspaper critic tutted it had too many records and commercials. It lasted until the end of 1972. The CBC decided to make a change.

The Globe and Mail profiled Trebek in its edition of November 25, 1972. By then, he was now Canada’s Allen Ludden. He was on local CBC-TV hosting the high school equivalent of the G.E. College Bowl called Reach For the Top—which WAS an SCTV sketch (at least a parody of it was). It’s evident Trebek’s number one priority was, despite talk about spending time “thinking,” advancing his career.

Trebek: cautious, eligible and ambitious
By EDNA HAMPTON
“Well, are you going to do a hatchet job?” Alex Trebek slips the question into our conversation as we walk from the CBC radio building on Jarvis Street to Yonge Street where he drops off a pair of ski boots he wants to sell.
That’s much the way the interview goes. Several hours later, he is still giving a lot of yes and no answers to questions.
Alexander Trebek is not about to show a bleeding heart—if he has one. He denies that he does. So does his producer, Fred Augerman. But the fact remains that both are unhappy about the CBC’s decision to drop them as host and producer of the 5-to-9 morning slot on CBLT [sic].
There’ll be a new host (as yet unnamed) and two producers, John Barberash and Mary McFadyen, in the new year. Trebek was invited to stay on until April but declined.
He’s not worried about the future. He’s got 10 weeks leave due and he just wants to relax, ski and work on the chalet he is building at Collingwood. At least for a while.

He has four offers for television shows and he still hosts Reach for the Top so that “hopefully” he won’t be spending much time back on the announcers’ roster filling in station breaks.
Trebek doesn’t mention more lucrative jobs in the United States but Augerman does. The producer believes that Alex Trebek is as good as the $85,000-a-year hosts on private U.S. networks.
The situation with the morning show is a paradox for Trebek. He was brought in 15 months ago because the CBC wanted to change the format. The former morning host, Bruce Smith, was moved to the afternoon slot. Now the CBC wants another change. Augerman says the decision was made by Ottawa.
“They’re just changing the format, that’s all,” Trebek explains. “They came up with a new format last year, a format I liked and felt reasonably sure I could operate in and now they’re decided that’s not what they should be doing. I think they’re wrong getting away completely from what they’ve been doing. They don’t really know what they’re doing.” And he admits “I was a little cheesed off. I supposed because I don’t think it’s the right move.”
Augerman, who is probably Trebek’s number one fan, says that “Alex doesn’t have to take a back seat to anyone. He’s New York, Chicago, Los Angeles. I think he’s probably the most underrated broadcaster. His versatility scares the hell out of me.”
Trebek’s experience ranges from acting as host of Swan Lake to the horse races. His detractors tend to say he is equally glib on them all.
As the CBC’s early morning man, Trebek has been getting up at 4 a.m. and dashing (it takes seven minutes) from his George Street home along the few blocks in central Toronto to the CBC. He usually carried his briefcase in one hand and often a can of pop in the other.
His three-story house, which is paid for, was bought “because I wanted to own something.” He restored it himself. It’s attractively—but for some tastes a little too carefully—decorated. A chess board is set up. It’s no casual bachelor’s pad thrown together with Crippled Civilian and Salvation Army furniture but it’s in the style of an Eaton’s College Street store window. Trebek has, and obviously cherishes, a fine collection of paintings, including some by a friend, John Gould.
There’s a handsome dining set where he can entertain up to eight dinner guests. The son of a Sudbury chef, he likes to cook and enjoys going to and giving dinner parties.
He grins (and for the first time in the interview he appears to relax) when he’s asked if he doesn’t agree that he’s a good catch. He agrees, modestly.
At 32, he’s handsome, and has plenty of ambition. “No, I’m not romantically involved,” he says. “I don’t have a big romance with any one girl.” He says he likes “attractive girls with something on the ball. I haven’t met the right one yet. It’s probably because I’ve been too busy pursuing my career to have a stable, emotional relationship with anyone.” He notes the divorce of his parents and many friends.

He complains with good humor when he explains that every time he mentions on air where he was the night before, the girls with whom he dates speculate who he was with. “That’s why I end up going lots of places alone.”
Some dates end by 10 p.m. “Any girl who dates me has time for two dates on the same night.” In 15 months of doing the early show, he’s never been late.
Trebek enjoys being a radio and TV celebrity. “It’s enjoyable being recognized. It’s good for your ego. Everybody likes being rubbed, petted, or whatever.”
Born in Sudbury, he moved to Ottawa as a child and stayed there long enough to study philosophy at the University of Ottawa and to establish himself at the CBC. He came to Toronto in 1963 [sic] to do Music Hop—“a rock ‘n’ roll teeny bopper show on TV. I was fairly young. I was all right. I suppose.”
He likes to clown around both on and off the air—a bit that led to his suspension for a few days recently. “Just make some vague reference to it,” he says. (An offhand remark offended some members of a religious group.) He admits that he finds few subjects sacred.
Is he ever serious? “I’m serious when I think about politics.” He has political ambitions, “Maybe federal politics eventually but a start at the local level. I like politics. It appears to whatever things like that are supposed to appeal to a person of my character. He says—and he does not seem to be kidding—that there should be a degree course at university for politicians.
He adds that if he ever does get to the House of Commons and has a say in the management of the CBC. “I’d make changes. I’d do a little house cleaning. I think the CBC takes up too much of the taxpayer’s dollar for what it gives out. But that can be said for the entire Government.”
Later, he says he would like to work in films either as an actor or producer. “Film is where it’s at. We’ve got a budding film industry in Canada.”
In the meantime he plays to take it easy. “I’ve been working pretty hard for a long time. Maybe I’ll do some reading and some thinking. I’d think to get away from the showbiz atmosphere for a while. But broadcasting is fun. And it sure beats working.”

The only change in the CBC that Trebek made was his employment status. Augerman called it. Trebek became Canada’s Monty Hall, making a Hall-esque jump from the Mother Corp to a hosting job in the U.S.A. Broadcasting magazine reported the following June 11th that Trebek would be emceeing The Wizard of Odds on NBC starting July 16th. “Does his job passively though unimpressively,” sniffed the Globe and Mail, whose columnist looked down on “the worship of possessions.” Another critic compared him to someone other than Hall. “Lacks [Gene] Rayburn’s real or manifested manic enthusiasm,” declared Variety.

Odds was replaced with High Rollers almost a year later but Trebek was on his way. When 1984 rolled around, syndicated show pushers dredged up a bunch of old game show ideas. One was Let’s Make a Deal. Another was Name That Tune. There was even a new edition of High Rollers. Trebek wasn’t involved in that one (Tom Kennedy hosted) because he landed a job on the biggest plum of all: a “high-tech” version of Jeopardy in spite of being labelled, as syndicated columnist Gary Deeb called him, “a thoroughly unremarkable fellow.” And despite critics initially complaining the new Jeopardy was less intellectual and more shallow than the old version, it stayed on the air.

And, in the process, Alex Trebek became the world’s Alex Trebek.

They Remember My Name in Sheboygan

Jack Benny was proud of the town where he grew up, Waukegan, Illinois. Sometime toward the mid ‘30s, it became one of the subjects used for joke fodder on the Benny radio show. It’s familiarity with Benny’s huge audience gave someone a brainstorm—instead of Hollywood, why not premiere Benny’s new movie in Waukegan? It’ll be different! It’ll be a homecoming! Think of the extra publicity!

And that’s exactly what happened when Man About Town opened in June 1939 in Jack’s hometown. NBC even got in on the act by broadcasting Benny’s final show of the radio season from Waukegan. Reporters from all over flocked there, from papers big and small.

One of the small papers was the Sheboygan Press of Sheboygan, Wisconsin. It had its own Benny connection, once removed. Benny was part of a vaudeville act with pianist Lyman Wood (though they were billed as “Benny and Woods”). When Benny went solo, Wood eventually found his way to Sheboygan. The Press’ reporter covering the premiere got a comment about Wood, and came back with a story full of festiveness (Wood died in California in 1967).

Sheboygan And Lyman Wood Remembered By Jack Benny
(By Staff Correspondent)
Waukegan, Ill.—(Special)—This entire city and thousands of kibitzers watched Jack Benny be a "Man About Town" both in real and reel life here Sunday.
The occasion was a "local-boy-makes-good" homecoming, the highlights of which were his national broadcast from the stage of the Genesee theatre here and the premiere showing of Jack's latest picture, "Man About Town." With him were his entire radio cast and Dorothy Lamour, who takes a leading role in the picture, and who was introduced to the huge audience immediately after the broadcast, just before the showing of the picture.
During the day Jack Benny's man about town activities consisted of chatting with newspapermen from all over the country, signing autographs, greeting old friends, and staging rapid exits when the crowds got too huge.
“Sure I remember Sheboygan,” Jack Benny told your correspondent. “I played there with my violin act many years ago—but don't mention how many. And Lyman Wood? Say, he and I put on an act together—where is he now, anyway?”
Put On Premiere
Just about then, Andy Devine interrupted, saying "Mary's here, Jack," and Mary Livingstone joined the group. There was no more time for talk then, for photographers hurriedly snapped a few pictures, and Jack, Andy, Mary and the rest of the cast rushed over to the theatre to rehearse the broadcast.

The premiere was put on in typical Hollywood fashion. The streets were roped off and the natives and visitors who didn't have tickets for the broadcast or premier stood on the other side of the ropes for hours to catch a glimpse of their favorite son and hear him and Miss Lamour make a few remarks over the public address system before going into the theatre.
Inside Jack put on an impromptu show for his guests during the 20 minutes which awaited broadcast. He ad-libbed about Fred Allen, walked through the aisles making wisecracks, and finally grabbed a violin and played a number in A-Number-One fashion just to show that he really can play without hitting the sour notes always heard on his radio programs.
Incidentally, the number he played was "My Honey's Lovin' Arms," a favorite that he and Lyman Wood "used to play in vaudeville and which Lyman played nightly when he was playing at the Calumet Inn in Sheboygan and was also being featured over Station WHBL.
Addresses Guests
Shortly before the broadcast Jack addressed his guests.
"There's only one request we have to make and that is to limit the applause, cut it off whenever it looks as though we were resuming the broadcast," he said. "That's necessary because the broadcast is timed to the split second, and we have to finish on time. But you can laugh all you want, and say—you'd better laugh!"
Soon everything became silent and tense on the stage. Jack Benny lighted up one of those huge cigars he smokes and paced up and down. The rotund Don Wilson took his position at a microphone on the other end of the stage. Phil Harris said a few-words to his orchestra and located himself in front of the band, ready to direct the opening number.
And then the broadcast went on.
Immediately after its conclusion Jack Benny, greeted by a storm of applause, again spoke briefly, thanking his audience and telling them he hoped they'd enjoy his new picture. The picture followed, and a first rate comedy it is, with Jack and Dorothy Lamour at their best and with Rochester stealing a number of scenes very deftly.
The picture over, the streets again were jammed with people from the three theatres where it was shown, and the routine of signing autographs and rushing to hotel rooms was resumed by the visiting celebrities.
All in all it was a big day for Waukegan, its home town hero, and his friends.