Cracking Up Spike

Spike thinks he can get rid of the title character in Garden Gopher (1950) by clobbering him with a sledgehammer. The rodent outsmarts him again, and we get Tex Avery’s cracking-up gag—several times for a change—ending with a mini-Spike tapping his foot in disgust.



Grant Simmons is responsible for this scene, with additional animation by Mike Lah and Walt Clinton. Rich Hogan is the storyman.

Disney had a garden gopher vs. dog cartoon the same year, but you know Tex Avery’s is funnier. Poor Tex gets no respect, though. The theatre ad to the right thinks it’s a Tom and Jerry cartoon. The short was re-released March 22, 1957.

There's an Inside Gag Here

Backgrounds of Warner Bros. cartoons occasionally had inside gags in them. It looks like there’s one here in this painting from Saddle Silly, released in November 1941.



If you look closely, the number is He 2878 (Hempstead exchange). And a check of the Los Angeles phone directory around that time tells us who it belongs to. That was the phone number of Elmer Plummer.

Plummer’s watercolours had been exhibited through the 1930s but, more germane to our story, he had been in the background department at the Schlesinger studio. Off he toddled to Disney after, according to this internet post, he worked on Porky in Wackyland (and was replaced with Dick Thomas). And despite the acrimonious Disney strike, Plummer remained when it was all over, and was very active in the Screen Cartoonists Guild. You can see a union contribution to the war effort to the right.

Jones and his unit apparantly were staunch Guild supporters, so perhaps the reference to their former Schlesinger colleague was a little bit of solidarity.

Plummer died in 1987. There’s a short biographical piece in this post.

Paul Julian was painting Jones’ backgrounds until he left the studio in February 1942 and was replaced by Eugene Fleury. This frame is by one of them, depending on how long films were held up before release at that point during the war.

Note: a Yowp of thanks to Austin Kelly, who supplied a non-laser disc version of the frame that’s nice and clear.

Pennies From Benny

Besides helping himself to a bigger pay envelope starting at the end of 1948, Jack Benny was helping others, too.

Granted, the tax department and Benny had to go into a prolonged legal battle at what rate he should be taxed (income vs. capital gains), but as he switched networks to start 1949, he also launched a drive for the March of Dimes. He had been involved with the charity for a number of years, prompting feuding Fred Allen to remark “there hasn’t been a dime minted that could march past Benny.”

The Hollywood Reporter of December 27, 1948 helped him along with a bit of publicity. Jack was very familiar with almost all, if not all, of the cities from vaudeville. The first six mentioned were all part of the Orpheum circuit (though not in order) after an act finished its stop in Vancouver.

Benny Will Launch Dimes Drive Today
Jack Benny and his radio troupe will highlight the ceremonies today launching the 1949 national March of Dimes campaign from the steps of City Hall. The “Pennies From Benny” drive will in inaugurated for fighting polio.
Major portion of the event will be the dedication of a covered wagon, donated by Benny, which will tour 24 major cities to dramatize the drive for funds. Civil leaders will be on hand to get the campaign officially under way.
The covered wagon will visit Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Omaha, Denver, Kansas City, Dallas, Memphis, Louisville, Atlanta, New Orleans, St. Louis, Chicago, Minneapolis, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Richmond and Washington.

The campaign got loads of publicity because of Benny’s name, but Jack was busy doing a radio show so he didn’t go along with the caravan.

The wagon, which newspapers pointed out was once used by General George Armstrong Custer, didn’t actually roll all the way across the U.S. It was transported by plane. When the pennies reached Washington, they were to be presented to President Harry Truman, who wouldn’t give them hell, but would give them back to Benny in exchange for a $5,000 cheque.

Even cities not on the group of 24 were civic-minded enough to pitch in, with local community groups from the territory of Hawaii to the state of Maine doing their part to raise money. It’s a nice reflection of post-war small-town America. Here’s a story from the Shreveport Times of January 20, 1949, where the local CBS affiliate joined service clubs in raising cash.

Benny and KWKH to Aid 'March of Dimes' Drive
A 250-pound iron vault, symbol both of Jack Benny's generosity and of his miserliness, will be at the corner of Texas and Market streets today through Monday to collect Shreveport contributions to the 1949 "March of Dimes" campaign for the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.
The "Ten Pennies from Benny" campaign is the largest single promotion campaign to be conducted by the national foundation in their 1949 drive, having originated in Los Angeles Dec. 27 when Benny presented his "vault" to officials of the foundation and the city.
The Shreveport “Ten Pennies From Benny” drive is under sponsorship of radio station KWKH. Benny' vault is an express safe turned over to the local CBS station by F. W. McConnell, Shreveport agent of the Railway Express agency, for collecting pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters and currency. The Railway Express will call for similar "March of Dimes" strongboxes at the 170 CBS stations over the nation and deliver the entire shipment on January 30 to the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis at the Treasury building in Washington. Each safe will arrive at Washington containing the original coins and bills donated.
An express truck will be parked at Texas and Market streets, marking the location for the programs which will continue today through Monday from 11:45 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. daily. KWKH folk song acts will make personal appearances, broadcasting their programs from the express truck, weather permitting.

Among these are Zeke Clements, Cousin Emmy and Her Kinfolks, Cousin Wilbur, Johnnie and Jack and the Tennessee Mountain Boys, Hank Williams, Harmie Smith, and the Bailes Brothers and their West Virginia Home Folks.
Before 11:45 a.m. and after 1:30 p.m. members of Shreveport Civic organizations will be in charge of "March of Dimes" donations near the express truck. Members of B'nai Brith will man the March of Dimes booth on the postoffice corner today. Other civic clubs and their days to solicit dimes at the booth are as follows: Optimist club, Friday; Shriners, Saturday; Shreveport firemen, Monday, Jan. 24; Rotary club. Tuesday, Jan. 25; Kiwanis club, Wednesday, Jan. 26; Lions, Thursday, Jan. 27; Civitan club, Friday, Jan. 28; and Shreveport policemen, Saturday, Jan. 29. Dimes will be solicited from about 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. each day.
On the two Saturdays of the drive, the Rotary and Kiwanis clubs of Cedar Grove will jointly man the Cedar Grove March of Dimes booth, which will be located in front of Yearwood's department store, 129 East 70th street, according to E. C. Thomson, Caddo parish chairman of the campaign.
Jack Benny has already placed in his vault ten of the first pennies he ever earned, as his contribution toward the $1,000,000 goal he hopes to achieve with the "Ten Pennies From Benny" campaign. Benny will buy back" the ten old coins with a $5,000 donation to the Infantile Paralysis Fund if the million-dollar goal is reached. He also has contributed his screechy violin, which has been treasured by him as his professional trademark for many years.
"I'm ready to oil the old vault door and dig down deep for the 1949 'March of Dimes' and I sincerely hope that the people of our nation will do their part for this great and urgent cause," Benny has said. "If we, as a nation, can meet such challenges as we've met in the past decade, and win over them, then with the same effort we can defeat infantile paralysis."

There were also five and 15-minute transcribed radio programmes promoting the March with different guest stars. I don’t know whether Jack was a guest on any of the 1949 shows, but Al Jolson was featured in the five-minute campaign, and Bob Hope and stooge Irene Ryan appeared on one 15-minute show. There were television campaigns as well, with Hope standing firm on stage for 75 minutes straight in a four-hour broadcast in Cleveland. Jack had appeared on special programmes for the March in previous years.

Jack Benny was known for his charitable work helping preserve old legitimate theatres and keeping symphony orchestras alive. That was in the 1950s onward. Before that, he involved himself with other good causes. This was only one of many.

Painting a Panda

One of the more delightful books taking readers through someone’s personal history in the days of the great theatrical cartoons was “Life Between the Lines” by Martha Sigall. She was an inker and a painter, supposedly at the bottom of the cartoon hierarchy but someone who plays a vital role in getting cartoons onto the big screen.

Many years ago, one of the Los Angeles-area newspapers profiled another ink-and-painter—Marie Hines, in a piece about women at the Lantz studio. Naturally, that would also encompass La Verne Harding, the veteran animator who jumped to Hanna-Barbera in 1959 (presumably for more money) and later worked at DePatie-Freleng. Harding’s death in 1984 made it onto the national news wires. She disproved Walt Disney’s silly theory that women didn’t have what it takes emotionally to act with a pencil.

Anyway, here’s the story from the “Women’s Activities” page of the Valley Times, November 1, 1946.

Women Artists Happy in Make Believe Lantz-Land
By TIMPE
Curiosity took Gene Weber, a Valley Times photographer, and this reporter on tour of the Walter Lantz cartoon studios, located next door to the Universal-International studios. Curiosity, and a search for women who have embraced an artist's profession of a specified nature—that of cartoon musicals.
Old timer around these premises is La Verne Harding, a top-notch animator. LaVerne has been with her present employer since 1930. First in the inking department, then to in-betweening, she progressed to the fine accomplishments of animating in 1934.
“Cynical Suzy,” an original comic strip created by our pencil artist, ran for one year in a Los Angeles newspaper in 1932, and was then syndicated. The Harding ability is natural, as her only training was at a local art school some years ago.
The workaday life of an animator is a pleasant, ever changing series of imaginating and creating.
At present LaVerne is working with Dick Lundy, director of a Woody Woodpecker feature, “Solid Ivory.” As director, Lundy gives the animator his ideas on a certain scene already background drawn, to be filled in with the action of the cast. The animator must have the imagination and talents to envision and create that action for each scene.
Characters penciled by the animator join the cartoon production line that leads to the inking and painting department. Marie Hines, a twelve year employe of Walter Lantz, takes over in that field. Marie views a test reel of the pencil drawings and from it tries out a full series of trial coloring for the cartoon; counsels with the background man and director, a huddle with her own tastes and talents, then Marie goes to work on color-scheming. She designates all coloring for Lantz productions.
Marie began as a painter, went on to inking, setting syllables to music, camera work, a touch of office work and finally to the color model or painting department. An outside hobby, that of developing a more practical glaze for ceramics, has resulted in a glaze mixture process evolved by the Lantz veteran that heretofore had proven unsuccessful.
Among the dozen or so young women in the painting and inking department is the 19 year old daughter of Lowell Elliott, a Lantz employe of long standing. She is Patricia Elliott, working as an inker since her graduation from North Hollywood high, school in February, 1945. The winsome Pat studied for one year at Chouinard Art school. Her dreams of success will be realized when she becomes a full-fledged costume designer.
An inker’s duties are to trace precisely on celluloid the original drawings made by the animator in outlining ink. For any painting or drawing student, Pat will heartily recommend a phase of inking for the industry as a trainer.

Marie was born in Marie Martha Schmidt in Shelby County, Illinois on November 18, 1901. In 1920, her family was living in Denver, was in St. Louis by 1927 and California by 1931. By 1940, she was divorced and living with her two children at her widowed mother’s home. She died in Los Angeles on December 26, 1997.

Thanks to Devon Baxter for his help with this post

Happy Landing, Martian!

The designs are the highlight of my favourite John Sutherland cartoon, Destination Earth (1956). But there’s fun in the dialogue in that what you see on the screen conflicts with the narration.

Captain Cosmic heads on a mission from Mars and spots the U.S.A. “I set her down like a feather,” he tells us, and the footage then shows him crashing through a water tower, a billboard, slicing through telegraph poles, trees, TV antenna, crashing through a barn and a chicken coop, finally resting against a broken tree.



Bill Scott, George Gordon and Michel Amestoy created the story, with the designs by Tom Oreb and Vic Haboush. The backgrounds were painted by Joe Montell, and you can see some of his ticks in here (the same as ones in his backgrounds for Hanna-Barbera several years later). Marvin Miller provides all the male voices (it’s your guess who plays the chickens and the one-line farm wife).

Bursting Dream Bubbles

The Little Match Girl (1937) was a tour de force by the Columbia cartoon studio, with a story credit going to Sid Marcus and animation to Art Davis, who once called it “a heck of a good picture.” Unfortunately, the artists responsible for the layouts and backgrounds never got any credit and their work is far above and beyond anything the old Charlie Mintz studio had put on the screen. The choice of colours is outstanding in many places.

Here’s a neat cinematic touch. Bubbles rise and swirl. A large red one comes toward the screen, and bursts, revealing the next scene. This happens several times.



Emery Hawkins is one of the uncredited animators and Mark Kausler says he designed the doll-like title character, whose dream is violently snuffed out along with her life, as an angel takes her body into the stars. It was justly nominated for an Oscar.

Davis told interviewer Milt Gray “I don’t know what it would look like today.” I suspect it would bring out emotions in viewers just like it did during the Depression.

Entertainment Headlines, 60 Years Ago

When years come to a close, the media likes to look back. It’s easy filler. The story’s pretty much been written. And, for whatever, reason, people like to look back, though I imagine a lot of people this year would like to look forward and hope the pandemic will soon be a memory.

So let’s look back at a look back. Here’s a column from the end of 1960 looking back at the “big stories” in entertainment that year. Apparently, weddings were the big thing for the Associated Press that year.

It Was Quite A Year For Hollywood
By BOB THOMAS
(AP Movie-TV Writer)
HOLLYWOOD (AP)—Oh, it was quite a year!
Any year is bound to bring a lion's share of news and surprises from the town called Hollywood. In 1960 it was more so. Rarely have a year's events seemed so varied.
Some news was momentous, some monumentally trivial, some sad, some amusing. As the first year of the new decade ended, it appeared that despite its business woes, Hollywood would continue to add its contribution to American culture and legend, for better or worse.
Here are the 10 stories that seemed the most newsy and or significant to this reporter during 1960:
1. The death of Clark Gable. No movie death in recent years received such worldwide prominence. The reason was simple: Gable had been a part of everyone's life for more than 30 years.
2. The movie strikes. The already invalided film industry seemed in grave danger of extinction when hit by strikes of writers and actors. The gentlemanly strikes, without picketing or name-calling, ended in compromise when the guilds realized the producers wouldn't give them a royalty on old films sold to TV.
3. The Desilu schism. TV's most famous team came to a personal and corporate division when Lucille Ball divorced Desi Arnaz.
4. The Monroe-Miller split. Marilyn was seldom out of the news, and her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller was rumored in danger of a backstage romance with Yves Montand. The marriage shattered, but the Montand issue remained unsettled.
5. New moral attitudes. Hollywood films were bolder and franker in 1960. This brought a wave of reaction from Roman Catholic bishops and Protestants, too, with indication of rough relations ahead between the film industry and the moralists.
6. Ben-Hur wins big race. The chariot race was nothing compared to "Ben-Hur's" triumph in the academy sweepstakes: A record 11 Oscars.
7. The squared-off triangle. Debbie Reynolds wedded Harry Karl quietly. She formerly was married to singer Eddie Fisher, now husband of Elizabeth Taylor.
8. Liz's ailments. Few toothaches earned as much coverage as Liz Taylor's, which delayed filming of "Cleopatra" amid much turmoil.
9. Hollywood's runaways. The most significant business development was the rise of production overseas. Main reasons: Tax breaks for stars living abroad; subsidies and cheaper coats.

10. Million-dollar-wedding. Starlet Jill St. John supplied the Cinderella tale of the year by marrying heir-speedster Lance Reventlow.
And there was other news, too. Gary Crosby made it a grand slam by marrying a Las Vegas chorine, like his brothers. Elvis was back. Eva Marie Saint startled a banquet by using a word that is unprintable except in war novels. Hollywood helped put on a party in July for Peter Lawford's brother-in-law.
Brilliant Buddy Adler was a cancer casualty. An era ended with the passing of Mack Sennett. Wagonmaster Ward Bond died suddenly. An unfriendly witness, Dalton Trumbo, wrote two of the year's biggest epics. Frank Sinatra tussled in a parking lot.
Cheryl Crane spent a restless year, and James Garner proved a real maverick by escaping from Warners. Sammy Davis, Jr. got married.
Yes, quite a year. Fasten your safety belts, here comes another one.

Mr. Thomas neglected any events involving animated cartoons in his 1960 highlights so, as this blog touches upon that particular subject, let us put together a short list in no particular order.

1. Prime Time Adult Cartoon. The Flintstones debuted on ABC, marking the first time cartoons had made the big time, ie. the big-bucks world of prime time. It was no more adult than Woody Woodpecker, but I guess anything that isn’t a nursery rhyme or full of kiddie animals is "adult."
2. UPA Gets Sold. Hank Saperstein shoved Steve Bosustow out of the picture and took over what had been the artiest theatrical studio. Soon he was making TV cartoons with Dick Tracy, who did nothing while familiar stereotypes solved cases. At least it kept Irv Spence employed.
3. On With the Show. ABC (and CBC in Canada) began airing a half-hour Bugs Bunny Show, with really fun wrap-around cartoons tying the show together in a theme. This marked the start of Bugs’ perennial appearance on network TV.
4. New Cartoons for Saturday mornings. Until now, kids up on Saturday mornings were forced to watch old theatrical cartoons or a series (Ruff and Reddy) with some old theatricals. 1960 saw the first full-half hour of new animation strictly for TV on NBC thanks to King Leonardo and His Short Subjects. Slowly but surely, more and more new TV cartoons took the place of used movie shorts.
5. Like, I Am What I Am. Al Brodax unloaded cheap Popeye cartoons on the television market, subjecting kids to Gene Deitch’s creepy boiiiings and Kent Hultgren’s Popeye butt-chin for the first time. Still, I have a soft spot for Coffee House because that Brutusk is, like, out of this orbit, man.
6. And the Winner Is... The Huckleberry Hound Show won an Emmy, the first cartoon to do so and the first syndicated show to be given that honour. The Emmy apparently ran past the same table seven times.

By the way, Coffee House wasn’t the only cartoon in 1960 where you can hear Jack Mercer as a quasi-beatnik. Dig this crazy one from Paramount. By then, Paramount’s animation was so ho-hum, they didn’t even bother showing the cat get zapped when his tail inevitably gets plugged into a light socket by a mouse. I think that’s Bob McFadden doing the other voice but I can’t sit through the whole thing to listen to it. Sorry if the aspect ratio is wrong.

Cat Got Your Tongue?

Tom sticks out his tongue at the bulldog in The Framed Cat (1950). So the dog clobbers him with the bone to cut off the cat’s tongue while it flaps in mid-air for a couple of seconds.



There’s a soundtrack edit at 3:54. I have no idea what, if anything, was taken out of the cartoon.

Ken Muse, Ed Barge, Ray Patterson and Irv Spence are the credited animators. Someone draws the dog (is he Spike or Butch in this cartoon?) with two teeth filling his mouth (animated on twos); I have no idea who did that. My wild guess is Jerry Mann supplied the dialogue.

You've Seen These Gags Before

You’ll be waiting a whole cartoon to get any laughs out of the Bugs Hardaway-Cal Dalton short Gold Rush Daze. They just aren’t there. Three years earlier, Tex Avery (wait for it) MINED the same scenario in Gold Diggers of ‘49, which had original and funny bits. This one just has a few lame puns like one you just read.

I don’t know when the first sucker/transformation gag ever showed up in a cartoon, but it’s in this 1939 short.



The owner of the Eureka Bar grabs the sucker, hauls him inside, and forces him to sit down at a card table with some other guy. Why? Beats me. The cards shuffle themselves in mid-air (that’s a gag?) and then the guy slowly pulls five cards out of his vest.



Yes, it’s the old “five aces” gag. I must admit Carl Stalling’s honky-tonk piano adds some atmosphere.

This whole scene becomes pointless when someone runs into the bar and yells “They’ve found gold in the hills!” The plot changes altogether.

Mel Millar gets the story credit, while Gil Turner is the credited animator. Joe Twerp and Mel Blanc provide voices.

Farewell, NBC, says Jack Benny

Jack Benny was no cheapskate. But Jack Benny was not one to put up with the U.S. government siphoning away huge amounts of his radio pay cheque in income tax. So his wily managers at MCA figured out how to package him into a corporation that would be taxed at a lower rate, and then shopped around the corporation to the radio networks.

There’s been a lot of dot-connecting and speculation over the years about what went on behind the scenes, but we can unequivocally remark that a deal was signed by CBS, and Jack Benny’s show left NBC after December 26, 1948.

Benny had been known and loved by radio audiences for years so the move brought a lot of attention from inside and outside the industry—the government wasn’t going to lose all that tax money without a fight. Papers quoted from the final NBC broadcast. Trades talked about NBC trying to sign Martin and Lewis before the network dumped Horace Heidt’s young people’s talent show into the Benny slot and pushed it as the number-one time slot in radio; Variety reported on one on-air promo from an unusually cheeky NBC—a sexy-voiced woman exclaimed “Darling, you’re wonderful . . . but Horace Heidt at 7 is even more wonderful.” That didn’t stop the spot from no longer being number one on NBC any longer. (Variety shrewdly sold box ads to CBS stations heralding the impending Benny arrival.

Fellow radio comedians couldn’t resist making fun of what was a very public move. What they had to say was documented by the New York Times Herald’s John Crosby in his December 30, 1948 column. Crosby was generally a Benny fan; occasionally, he’d complain about the show’s repetitiveness but he knew (as did Benny) that’s what the audience wanted, and it paid off in ratings. The reference to “Mr. Gitzell” is puzzling. I’m pretty sure Crosby knew Frank Nelson and Mr. Kitzel were two different characters. Maybe his copy editor was testing the contents of a bottle in a desk drawer before looking at the column and sending it to the composing room.

Radio In Review
Death of a Joke
By JOHN CROSBY
Jack Benny bowed off NBC last Sunday after 17 years with gracious thanks for a pleasant relationship, thus ending an era and terminating a joke that has served the comedians well the last few weeks. Benny, who owned the 7 p.m. time (EST) on NBC, the only radio personality so honored, will be heard hereafter at the same time on CBS and to commemorate this great migration from one kilocycle to another I have collected a little list of jokes that has circulated about it.
Commenting on Benny's possession of 7 o'clock, Fred Allen commented: "Benny is the only comedian who ever owned a slice of eternity and he's giving it up for a paltry $2,000,000." The general stampede to CBS provoked Allen to remark that "even Eisenhower has gone over to Columbia." And last Sunday, Portland Hoffa remarked "After all these years, it'll seem funny without Jack Benny."
"It always seems funnier without Jack Benny than with him," said Mr. A.
* * *

Bob Hope spoke up the other night as follows: "Gee, the poor little Christmas tree all alone on that lot. It must feel like Fred Allen on Sunday night." Later, he was overheard to remark: "And if I'm not telling the truth may I never get an offer from another network."
The only person who kept silent during this gagfest was Mr. Benny himself. He kept quiet that is, up until the last minute. Then Rochester told his master: "There's an airplane over the house skywriting 'Jack Benny moves to . . ."
"Moves to where?" asked Benny.
"I don't know. NBC's anti-aircraft shot it down."
So much for the jokes which had that special intermural intimacy characteristic of running gags in radio. As to Benny himself taking his switch from one network to another as an excuse to discuss someone who requires no particular explanation he is certainly a remarkable man. A couple of years ago his program dove headlong in popular favor. No one quite knows whether it was because the show was tired or the public was tired. Then he suddenly bounded back to the top again.
This year he was picked by radio editors in Motion Picture Daily's annual poll as Champion of Champions, a title more appropriate to a dog show than to a radio comedian, and also as best comedian. I don't know as I'd call him best comedian exactly. He is certainly the most durable and the most consistent. Almost accidentally, he appears to have solved the problem of entertaining a few people in a living room, not just once a year but once a week.
* * *
He has surrounded himself with diverse people each with his or her separate characteristics—the cynical, efficient Rochester; the rowdy Phil Harris, the innocent Dennis Day, the hearty Don Wilson, the acid Mary Livingston; and, when necessary, others equally well-defined—the suave Ronald Colman, the rude ticket salesman, Mr. Gitzell [sic]. The Benny program is closer to a vaudeville act than it appears on the surface. Each of these people appears and displays his special personality for a minute or two like a juggler doing his act.
This is the most economical of all comedy. A single joke can be bandied about by Wilson, by Harris, by Mary, by Dennis Day—each giving it his own inflection. The joke ripens as it goes along like a family joke.
Benny, the master of inflection and timing, unlike Fred Allen or Edgar Bergen, is no deep thinker. But he's the best editor in the business of the material his writers provide. It's a great gift, worth Benny's weight in gold. Well, actually, it's worth more than that. Two million dollars weigh quite a lot more than Benny.

Earlier this year, this humble blog posted this story of one newspaper reviewer listening to the first CBS show. However, Variety, in its December 29, 1948 edition, set aside some space for a humorous speculation dialogue of what might happen on the first night of the network change in the home of likely the only couple in America that did not know about the change. It was written by Alan Lipscott, one of the men who laboured on scripts for the Jackie Gleason version of The Life of Riley.

Asleep at the Switch
By ALAN LIPSCOTT
The Time: Sunday, Jan. 2. 7 p.m.
The Place: A flat in Brooklyn.
The Wife: Doris.
The Husband: Joe.
Doris: Seven o'clock, Joe. It's time for Benny.
Joe: (Chuckles, as he fiddles with dials on radio). Ah, that Rochester. What a joke he cracked last Sunday about the . . . what's the number of the station, honey?
Doris: Again with that "What's the number of the station, honey?" The same question every Sunday for the past 15 years. How can you be so stupid?
Joe: Well, what's the number?
Doris: How should I know! How many times have I told you, the number is written down on a paper bag behind the third tube in the radio! Such a shmo I never. . . .
Joe: (interrupting) Pipe down already. I got the paper bag. It's 660. (Dials) Here. . . .660, right on the button. Now, let's keep quiet and listen.
Doris: Dear, it's not Benny.

Joe: It's 660. I'm not a dope, you know.
Doris: Dope, or no dope, on the program you just tuned in, somebody's giving away money. It can't be Jack Benny. Now, please, dear, tune in 660. F. E. Boone must be finished already and. . .
Joe: Here wise guy, look for yourself.
Doris: (looks at dial) I must admit, you're right. It is 660. (Looks at wrist watch) Maybe my watch is wrong.
Joe: Could be. Remember, yesterday, you fished it out of the drain?
Doris: But the clock on the mantlepiece has the same time.
Joe: Could also be a cheap clock. Remember, it was your brother's wedding present.
Doris: I'll dial the time operator, (dials phone) Thank you. Joe, it's time for Benny.
Joe: You can't trust those operators. Always got boys on their minds.
(Clanking of a can heard outside kitchen door).
Doris: Joe, it's time for Benny. The garbage man is here.
Joe: Still no proof. Maybe he's still working on daylight saving.
Doris: Joe, I'm warning you. If I miss Dennis Day's song, and it's your fault, you can start looking for another wife and children.
Joe: For God's sake, Doris. You saw for yourself. It's 660!
Doris: (Frustrated) What'll I talk about in the butcher shop tomorrow? I'll feel so ignorant. Joe, honey, please, once more look at the paper bag.
Joe: (Pokes around in back of radio) Alright I'll burn my fingers again. Ouch! Here it is. Still 660.
Doris: (Quietly) Joe, wait a minute.
Joe: I'm waiting.
Doris: Maybe today ain't Sunday.
Joe: It's gotta be Sunday. The bank calendar says so. See for yourself.
Doris: But dear, that's the same bank where you pick up blotters that don't blot.
Joe: Aw g'wan! It must be Sunday, otherwise why did we have chicken for dinner.
Doris: You got a point there.
Joe: And how could your two nephews and your sister be here for dinner if it wasn't Sunday? They work every other day.
Doris: (tearfully) All I know is, if the Colmans are on tonight and I miss them, I'll kill myself.
Joe: Look, maybe Benny is sick. Too much New Year's celebration. That's it, he must be drunk.
Doris: Men with blue eyes don't get drunk. Phil Harris yes, but Benny, no!
Joe: (Still fooling with dials) Maybe the earthquake in California made a big mishmash of the meridians and knocked the whole time schedule for a loop. Could happen, you know. I was just reading last week, where Einstein said. . . .
Doris: (sore) Joe, will you stop with that Einstein already. All I know is, that I'm not in the kitchen washing dishes and you're not on the couch snoring, so it must be time for Benny.
Joe: (dials furiously. Suddenly he tunes in on Benny saying "Hmmm." Very excited) Doris, I got him. I, I, I, got him. It's Benny already. Sure. Nobody can say "Hmmmm" like he can. Shhh! Now be quiet!
Doris: (Whispering) On 660. like on the paper bag?
Joe: (Whispers back) No, on 880. Shhh!
Doris: What's 880?
Joe: How should I know?
Doris: It must be the radio.
Joe: Yeah! I'll have it fixed the first thing tomorrow.
Doris: Yeah! And before you do anything, put the number 880 on the paper bag behind the third tube.
Joe: Good idea.
Doris: And cross out 660.
(Pokes around in back of radio.)
Doris: Shhh! Quiet, dear. Dennis is going to sing.

Changing networks weren’t the only thing Jack and his gang were doing at the start of 1949. That story next week.