Pig in a Poke

Oswald the rabbit is trying to serenade his sweetheart on a banjo, but his sheet music keeps blowing away from against a rock. He shows his silent-film anger.



He comes up with an idea. He’ll tack the paper into the rock so it won’t move.



Oh, wait. It’s not a rock at all.



There are some good little routines in this 1928 Walt Disney/Universal cartoon, Rival Romeos, or “snappy” as one trade paper called it. The goat spewing out musical notes after eating an instrument was used again in Steamboat Willie.

Hennepin Benny

True or false: Jack Benny performed with Steve Allen’s mother.

The answer is true. At least they performed on the same bill.

Belle Montrose (stage name) was married to another vaudevillian named Billy Allen. Belle was one of many performers on the Orpheum circuit, as was Jack. And we find them together at the Hennepin Theatre in Minneapolis the week of July 9, 1922.

The Hennepin was a “Junior Orpheum” theatre. Nine cities made up this version of the Orpheum circuit in the early ’20s. Acts first played the regular circuit then doubled back on the junior one, where theatres charged popular prices with no reserved seating. Read a bit more here.

In some cities, newspapers would give a preview of theatre shows arriving in town every week. The Minneapolis Star Tribune of July 9, 1922 described Jack’s coming appearance: “With the aid of a fiddle and rapid-fire line of funny gags, Jack Benny, gloom chaser, will undertake to banish the blues. He is both a comedian and a musician and promises to keep his audiences thoroughly amused the entire time he is on stage.”

Well, Jack did more than that. He stole the show from headlining contralto and former Ziegfeld star Emma Carus (“one of vaudeville’s highest-salaried artists,” the Star-Tribune confidentially told readers). Here’s what the paper said about the bill the day after its debut:

With a bill that provides no exercise for the brain but plenty for the ribs, the Hennepin this week has an ideal summer program and incidentally one of the best programs, for laugh-making purposes shown by the Junior Orpheum in several weeks.
Although Emma Carus, with J. Walter Leopold, a suave and talented pianist, is the official headlined act, it was Jack Benny who stopped the show at the opening performance yesterday. Benny wanders out on the stage with his violin, plays a little, talks and sings a little and succeeds in convulsing the audience. Benny has one of the best monologues in the profession.
As for Emma Carus, she is big and lively as usual. She might have chosen better songs, although the "Cat" number is immense. Belle Montrose as an amateur actress provides plenty of mirth. Ray Kern and Maree, Orpheum favorites, were received with equal enthusiasm at the Hennepin. Ethel Parker, a dancer of such ability that one wonders why she is not headlined with Ali Allen, offers one of the most engaging dancing arts in months. Luster brothers are superb contortionists.
The motion picture, with May McAvoy, is much better than the photoplays which the Hennepin has been showing recently. The bill as a whole well merits Manager Phelps' "summer festival" designation. Now, if the management would only assume that Hennepin patrons are sufficiently familiar with the operation of that efficient cooling apparatus, and would discontinue the movies thereof, even the most captious patron would find little cause for complaint.

The show also included a two-reeler from Mack Sennett, a Pathe Weekly, Topics of the Day and an Aesop Fable (which one was not disclosed).

Benny moved on next week to the State Lake in Chicago (Montrose went to Kansas City) before hooking up with Carus again the following week at the Junior Orpheum’s Rivoli in La Crosse, Wisconsin. He returned to the Hennepin at the end of January 1923, then again in the middle of November 1925, headlined the bill at the same theatre the week of July 3, 1927, and returned once more for the final week of January 1928. Such was the nomadic life of a vaudevillian that ended only when radio sponsors came calling.

Making the Alvin Show

ABC decided in December 1959 to pick up The Flintstones for its fall 1960 prime-time schedule, and that resulted in a mini-boom in night-time animated shows, only to quickly die when they never found the audience the shows needed.

One of them was The Alvin Show, the result of songwriter Ross Bagdasarian turning a production studio gimmick (voices sped up on audio tape) into a huge novelty record hit in 1958. He gave chipmunk personas to three voices and proceeded to cash in big-time by making them into animated cartoon characters.

That’s where Format Films came in.

There was a huge rift at UPA between owner Stephen Bosustow and a bunch of his staffers. Dozens left in a shake-up. On October 26, 1959, Herb Klynn, Bud Getzler and Jules Engel announced the formation of their own animation company, Format Films. The Hollywood Reporter chronicled its growth; all dates below are from that paper unless otherwise specified. Klynn quickly signed UPA director Ozzie Evans (Nov. 2), and started hunting for TV commercial business.

Midas Mufflers was an early client (Feb. 5, 1960) with June Foray hired to voice spots. Gold Bond Stamps, Adorn Hairspray and Folger Coffee followed (Feb. 25). But Klynn had his eye on TV cartoons. On April 6th, Klynn announced a contract with Al Brodax of King Features to make 100 Popeye shorts under producer Jack Kinney, and had hired Ed Friedman, Volus Jones, Ken Hultgren, Harvey Toombes, Noel Tucker and Bob Givens to work on them. Assistant animators Harris Steinbrook, Doris Collins and Ruben Apodaca and background artist Boris Gorelick were hired within a week (April 12).

Plans were made to move the studio’s staff of 62 from Burbank into a larger building in North Hollywood (May 17). Klynn was ambitious. And on August 10th, it was announced a deal had been signed to produce The Alvin Show starring David Seville and the Chipmunks. The staff kept growing. Storyman Bob Kurtz, animators Bill Southwood and Jack Parr jumped aboard (Aug. 26). Shep Menkin was signed as the voice of Clyde Crashcup (Oct. 18). Chuck Harriton, Dan McRae and Fred Calvert were poached from New York (Back Stage, Aug 11, 1961), Hal Ambro was inked as a director (Aug. 14) as was Gil Turner (Sept. 5).

Meanwhile, Format announced a deal on September 28th for a second half-hour animated show, The Shrimp, based on Sy Gomberg’s short stories. Leo Salkin was named story editor; June Foray, Ross Elliott and Kathleen Freeman were tabbed as voice actors, and Klynn was meeting with potential sponsors by November. There was talk in Variety on March 1, 1961 about CBS airing Alvin and The Shrimp back-to-back, but it never happened. The Shrimp was delivered to Four Star (March 21) and there it sat forever. The studio also was sub-contracted by Creston Studios to make some Calvin and the Colonel cartoons for prime time (Aug. 31, 1961).

General Foods (Jell-O) signed for alternate week sponsorship of Alvin (Variety, March 8) while General Toy pulled out (Variety, May 31) because CBS didn’t expect finished footage to show the company until July. So the show was only half sold going into its American debut on October 4th; Sponsor magazine of Sept. 25th reported each show cost $43,000 to make.

That brings us to this story from the Valley Times of North Hollywood of November 18th. Its reporter chatted with Klynn about the making of the series and the potential problem with its time slot.

Alvin, Pals, Cavort in Valley Cartoon Plant
By ALLEN RICH
Valley Times TODAY TV-Radio Editor
Among the Valley’s mushrooming television facilities is Format Films Studios on Laurel Canyon boulevard presided over by a dynamic North Hollywood man, Herb Klynn.
It is here that creator-producer Ross Bagdasarian’s “Alvin Show,” featuring the chipmunks, Alvin, Simon and Theodore, is fashioned into the animated cartoon series you see on Channel 2 each Wednesday night at 7:30.
The chipmunks are not worried over the fact that their show is spotted opposite the block-busting Western, “Wagon Train” on NBC, and the rapidly improving “Steve Allen” affair on ABC.
“We may not achieve the rating of a Wagon Train, but according to the Nielsens we get our fair share of the total audience,” Klynn told me when I visited his studio. (He meant that more people per sets-in-use watch Alvin than is indicated by the rating. Maybe little people, but still people, he explained happily.)
Klynn took me on the 40-cent tour of this modern, animated film cartoon plant and it proved to be an entire revelation. I am sure that no one, except in the business, has any idea of the complex manner in which a half-hour cartoon is turned out for television on a weekly basis.
“I will take you to the story department first,” he said, “because all shows, like anything else, must start with ideas.”
Never having been in a cartoon plant I expected to enter a room and see maybe a couple of writers sitting in front of typewriters waiting for inspiration, It is nothing like that.
In this story department the writers must think in pictures, instead of words.
Instead of a script, each of these writers, and I believe there are eight, gets his idea, then draws a small picture of the action and puts words descriptive of the action underneath.
These are then pinned, in sequence, onto a “story board” about four feet high by eight feet long. The Alvin Show is composed of two 3½-minute segments, and two 7-minute segments.
Each 7-minute segment requires of the “writer” 160 key drawings, with accompanying captions. The completed 30-minute segment of the Alvin Show contains 17,000 individual drawings!
It is impossible for a layman on a quick trip through the studio to entirely interpret what he saw into lay language.
But as near as I could make out, the next step is to record the dialogue.
Subsequent operations find animators completing each of the 160 original key drawings so that each will give the effect of motion when seen on the television screen.
Other artists paint in the background, be it a house, tree or what have you.
Inasmuch as a number of complete Alvin shows are in work at the same time how do you keep track of the progress of the 17,000 drawings necessary to each complete production?
This is done by what is known to the cartoon fraternity as an exposure sheet. The exposure sheet is the keynote of the industry. Each artist in all the various stages and departments notes the progress of each individual drawing on this sheet as it comes to him for his part of the work. It is comparable to a bill of lading on a railroad or a dispatch sheet in an aircraft factory, only terribly more complex.
While all this is going on, various key personnel make checks and color checks to see that every one of the drawings is perfect and will jell when fused into the whole production.
Final stage is the filming. Two cameras work two 10-hour shifts to film the 17,000 drawings the artists have already completed. These cameras are valued at $30,000 and $20,000 apiece.
Producing an animated cartoon is a very painstaking and costly proposition. Competent artists and animators are paid between $250 and $300 a week. Completion of an Alvin takes more than four months from story department to camera. The budget is somewhere between $65,000 and $70,000 for each episode.
The length of time in production is quite surprising when you consider that regulation one-hour filmed TV dramas are turned out, so far as the actual production at the studio is concerned, in five or six days.
Klynn’s Format Studios have moved three times in the past several years, each time to a larger plant. He now employs 160 animators, artists and others and most of them are working on Alvin, the studios No. 1 project.
There’s a lot more to it than this, of course, but I hope you have at least a sketchy idea of how an animated cartoon is turned out by now.
Whatever the eventual fate of the chipmunks and their pal, David Seville, may be, of this I’m sure: executive producer Herb Klynn is sparing no expense, even to the inclusion of a live orchestra which often numbers 28 pieces, instead of canned music as used by many of the big “regular” shows.
When I first met cartoon men Bagdasarian and Klynn at the studio I quipped “Okay, so draw me a picture.”
It didn’t seem so funny to me after I had been privileged to see the magnitude and scope of the operation.

Alvin’s debut beat Steve Allen for second spot in the ratings, with 32 share, compared to Wagon Train with a 48 share. By November 8th, Variety was opining the series was in trouble. Broadcasting was reporting rumours along agency row that the cartoon might be switched to a cheaper Sunday 6:30 p.m. time slot. There was even talk two days later in the Hollywood Reporter of a meeting between Klynn and Bagdasarian about a Clyde Crashcup spinoff. But it was finally announced on April 17, 1962 that CBS would move The Alvin Show to Saturday mornings in the fall with a mix of repeats and first-run shows it hadn’t blown off yet.

Format kept busy before the prime-time failure of Alvin. From issues of the Reporter:

● Sept. 22, 1960: Klynn meets with Burl Ives meets to talk about a live action/animation feature,
● Oct. 21: Format signs Ray Bradbury to produce theatrical short Icarus Montgolfier Wright,
● Dec. 1: Studio contracted to make opening titles for The Hathaways, a sitcom with Peggy Cass,
● Dec. 2: Studio joins with Kinney and Brodax to produce Barney Google cartoons for syndication,
● Jan. 19, 1961: Half-hour animated series Keemar, the Invisible Boy announced, with Alan Zaslove directing from a Klynn and Engel concept.
● Jan. 24: Shep Menken and Ross Martin to voice Keemar,
● Jan 26: June Foray and Kathleen Freeman to voice Keemar, Dennis Farnon to supply background music, Mel Leven to write theme,
● Feb. 13: Animated inserts to be made for a Secret Life of James Thurber TV series from Four Star Productions,
● Mar. 1: Opening/closing commercial inserts to be made for the Danny Thomas Show,
● July 6: Prep work begun on feature animated/live action The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury.

Some of Format Films kept busy before the prime-time failure of Alvin. From issues of the Reporter:

Some of Format’s work after Alvin is better known. In July 1964, DePatie-Freleng signed a contract to revive Warner Bros. cartoons, some of which were subcontracted to Herb Klynn & Associates, Format’s new name as of the previous January, which became Format Productions by December. In January 1966, CBS and Jack Wrather Productions agreed to bring a half-hour animated Lone Ranger to the small screen. Wrather hired Format, which announced in April that none other that former Disney genius Bill Tytla would be directing sequences. In the meantime, it created main titles for I Spy, Honey West, The Smothers Brothers, Hey Landlord, Rat Patrol, Glory Guys, and a show originally titled Everywhere a Chick Chick (later Accidental Family). The company would later add the animated inserts on Hee-Haw to the list in 1969.

There were all kinds of failed projects, too, including an animated half hour with the Mamas and the Papas (Variety, Sept. 16, 1966), The Polar Treasure, an adventure feature live-action production (Variety, May 11, 1967) and Hubird a comedy cartoon short in association with Warner Bros. (Variety, July 17, 1967).

Klynn left Format in 1982. Though this is not a complete filmography, someone will scream if I don’t mention Klynn’s The Duck Factory sitcom in 1984 about a cheap animation studio. He died in 1999. By then, Format Films was a memory. Those chipmunks were still harvesting cash aplenty for the Bagdasarian family.

Party at Tom's

It’s party time at Tom’s place in Saturday Evening Puss (1950). His buddy cats whoosh through a window and start to play jazz.

One puts on a chef’s hat, grabs a spatula, then treats LPs like pancakes as he flips them onto a turntable, beating the spatula in time to the cymbal and electric guitar.



Another plays the piano. He treats the sheet music like a typewriter, pulling it back to the left side after it reaches the “end” of the piano and dings.



And the little cat plays some empty wine glasses like a xylophone.



All this looks like Ken Muse’s animation. There seems to be a lot of Muse in this cartoon. I think that’s Irv Spence at the start when Tom holds an “O.K. For The PARTY” sign. Ed Barge and Ray Patterson are also on the credits. It appears Patterson didn’t work on this short but Mike Lah did during some chase scenes.

Gonging Simple Simon

Jack Bunny has been gonging amateur acts like Major Bowes and sending them through a trap door. A simpleton bird steps up to the mike and stammers “Simple Simon” so badly he realises how lousy he is. “Oh, well, shucks,” he says in a normal voice, then gongs himself and fall through the hole in the floor.



This is Tex Avery at work in the 1936 Warners cartoon I Love To Singa. Despite the tight story, I am likely the only person who doesn’t like this cartoon. The song has always bugged me, and so does the little owl boy’s white-bread voice.

Avery draws from the radio station next to the cartoon studio for the voice. The stuttering dullard is played by Lou Fulton, who was half of the Oscar and Elmer comedy team that was appearing on KFWB's "The Last Nighter" comedy show when this short was made ( I use the word "comedy" advisedly. It would have taken a crew all day to clean the cobs out of the studio from all the corn).

Chuck Jones and Virgil Ross receive the animation credit. Bob Clampett, Sid Sutherland and assistants Bobe Cannon and Cecil Surry would have worked on this as well. The score is by Norman Spencer.

By the way, “Jack Bunny” isn’t the only Jack Benny radio show reference in this cartoon. When the boy hatches, he says “Hello, stranger,” the catchphrase of Schlepperman (vaudevillian Sam Hearn) on the Benny programme.

A Censor Explains Censorship

Networks have a reason to censor things. It may not be a good reason, but it’s a reason.

So discovered Herald Tribune syndicate columnist John Crosby when he began a series on some of the ridiculous scissoring of Fred Allen’s radio scripts in 1946.

In his final column, he decided to get the network’s side of things and printed their explanation. As promised a couple of months ago, here’s Crosby’s final word on the subject, which saw print on August 7, 1946.

Censorship on the Air
The National Broadcasting Company, which has been unable to keep anything on its stomach since I started this series on censorship, invited me over yesterday to explain its point of view on censorship. I happily accede to this, since so far I have presented solely the viewpoint of the disgruntled artist. After an hour-and-a-half conference with C.L. Menser, vice-president in charge of N.B.C. programs—whom “Variety” refers to as “Menser the Censor,” Tom McCray, national program manager, and Wade Arnold, assistant manager of the script division, I am still convinced N.B.C. suffers from an excess of timidity and the three executives remain convinced they have the best program policies in the business.
During the discussion a good many lines that have been cut from various scripts were brought into the discussion. Mr. Menser, for instance, mentioned several lines cut from an Eddie Cantor script. In each case he had to explain why they are off-color. Mr. Menser said I had failed to acquire a “listener’s ear.” I retorted that he suffered from a “broadcaster’s ear.”
* * *
Mr. Arnold accused me of printing deletions from Fred Allen’s scripts of eight or ten years ago which, he said, hardly applied to the present time. So we took a look at the deletions in Mr. Allen’s recent scripts, and also deletions from the Fibber McGee and Molly program.
For example in a Fibber McGee show, a character made a remark about getting pinched by an accordion. The script writers were forced to insert the phrase “in the stomach,” to make sure no one would get the idea she’d been pinched in some unmentionable place. Such a thought would never have occurred to me, a listener, and is an excellent example of what I call “broadcaster’s ear.” Neither Mr. Arnold nor Mr. McCray could understand why I failed to catch the implication. We’re poles apart—we listeners and the broadcasters.
“We’re conscious,” said Mr. Arnold, of the prurient-minded woman in Iowa with an eleven-year-old child who doesn’t want to explain these things to her child. Right there lies the root of the trouble, and to a large extent the blame falls on us listeners rather than the broadcasters. For the broadcasters are acutely conscious of the fact they operate a public utility, unlike a newspaper where editorial judgment lies in the publisher’s lap. The broadcasters are the victims of every pressure group from the women’s clubs to societies for the advancement of Brooklyn.
Each one has its own complaints and, while few of these complaints are very harmful, cumulatively they rob radio of thousands of well springs of humor, wit, wisdom and story. Let’s take one example from a Fred Allen script, which the broadcasters showed me yesterday.
“Why doesn’t Russia have Thanksgiving?”
“Because she can’t get that piece of Turkey.”
That, of course, was during the period when Russia was eyeing Turkey more or less omnivorously. The joke was deleted on the ground of poor political taste. I don’t defend the gag, but I defend to the death Mr. Allen’s right to say it. The pressure group in this case was the United States government—more specifically the State Department—which was having enough trouble with Russia at the time and didn’t want any more.
When Gromyko made his first exit from the United Nations Security Council, Allen tried another gag about installing revolving doors at the U.N. so Mr. Gromyko could get out faster. It, too, was “political poor taste.” So far as I know, there is no such thing as “political poor taste” except in Washington, and I’m bitterly opposed to it as a reason for cutting out the joke. Much of our national humor, from Mr. Dooley to Will Rogers, has been based on politics. Now that the nation is conscious of the international scene, it is reflected in our humor and it should be reflected in the humor over the air, too.
* * *
At one point in his discussion, Mr. Menser explained that his department sometimes threw out story lines for daytime serials even before they were written because they knew how certain writers treated certain themes. It sounded all right in principal, but let’s get specific. “For instance,” said the vice-president, “some writers will use suicide as a way out of a bad situation. We can’t allow that.”
“You don’t allow suicide,” I muttered. “Orson Welles did ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Friday night, suicide and all, and did a beautiful job. Wouldn’t that have been allowed on N.B.C.?”
“That’s different. It’s a classic. We accept many things in the classics that we wouldn’t allow in a daytime serial.”
In other words, Shakespeare wouldn’t last two weeks in radio. I disagree, and I think most people would, but let’s not place all the blame on the broadcasters. If every one is going to pressure the broadcasters to get their point of view on the air—or at least to prevent their point of view from being stopped on radio is in for a tough time and so are we, the listener.
I close this article with the most illuminating remark I heard at this conference. During one argument on the acceptability of a certain line, Mr. McCray murmured: “Yes, but anyway it wasn’t that funny.” That was the first time I heard of anything being deleted because it might not amuse you or me. To paraphrase a thought often expressed in Washington, “every one has a lobby but the public, or in this case—the listener.”
(This is the eighth and last of a series of articles on censorship on the air).

The remaining two columns of the week dealt with technical accuracy in commercials and the sitcom Blondie. Surprisingly, Crosby liked the latter. Blondie strikes me as one of the most banal, predictable sitcoms in radio but our discerning critic found some things to like about it.

Your Obediant Saw-vant

Isn’t that nice? Bugs Bunny is reading “Poe Kiddie Komics,” a book perfect for the young tykes.



But a construction worker is determined to remove Bugs from his home to make way for a freeway in No Parking Hare (1954). A buzz saw ought to do the trick.



Afraid not. The saw is very obedient to signs, such as the one casually posted by Bugs Bunny. The saw changes direction and chops into a high voltage cable. The construction worker turns various shades in neon before dropping to the ground.



Phil De Lara, Chuck McKimson, Rod Scribner and Herman Cohen animated this for the Bob McKimson unit. Sid Marcus supplied the story.

Cuckoo Eggs

A customer in Tom and Jerry’s dinner orders two fried eggs. “Fry two!” shouts Jerry at a cuckoo clock in the kitchen. Jingle bells are heard and the cuckoo comes out on a plank. “Okay, colonel!” he replies (the mouth movements bear no resemblance to the words).



Back into the clock he goes. The clock starts shaking as the bird lays. A shute emerges from the clock’s doors and two eggs tumble down it. The crookedness of the shute makes it funny.



The eggs sprout faces, do a little dance to the sound of a woodblock, then collapse into the shape of fried eggs.



For the Van Beuren studio, the scene is pretty inventive and the pace is quick.

John Foster and George Rufle get the “by” credit in Pots and Pans released by RKO. Gene Rodemich supplies the score, which opens with “Cupid on the Cake” by Erell Reaves and Sherman Myers (1930). Listen to a slower version of it below.