Not a Dog and Tree Gag

When Tex Avery had a dog standing next to a tree, it was usually a gag where the dog needs to ... well, we needn't get into that. Ah, but there was a different dog-tree routine in one of his cartoons.

Screwy Squirrel pulls off the old “move-the-hole” gag in his debut, Screwball Squirrel (1944). Naturally, Meathead the dog dives toward the hole that Screwy dove into—but it’s not there now.



There are some frames of solid colour in between drawings to emphasize the impact, which has left an impression of Meathead’s head in a tree—with Meathead in it. The dog stretches his head back to snap it out of the tree. The chase continues.



The animators are Preston Blair, Ed Love and Ray Abrams. Heck Allen assisted with gags and Johnny Johnson is the background artist.

An Unmerrie Melodie

Leon Schlesinger’s cartoon studio was a mess not long after it opened in 1933. Leon hired animators Jack King and Tom Palmer from Disney, and appointed Palmer the studio’s production manager.

Palmer was a disaster. He got a supervision credit on two cartoons and was gone by the fall. The first was rejected by Warners until it was punched up. Palmer’s departure set up a bit of a revolving door on supervision credits before Schlesinger wised up and made Friz Freleng a director along with King.

Before that happened cartoons were “supervised” by Earl Duvall, a former Disneyite, and Bernard Brown. Friz Freleng told Jerry Beck in Animato! 18 published in Spring 1989 about Brown’s “supervision”: “That was just pure policy. He was a sound man. I don’t think Leon even knew what a director did.”

This brings us to Pettin’ in the Park, a 1934 release (copyrighted in 1933) that Brown is credited with overseeing. It’s maybe the most disjointed cartoon ever released by the studio.

The short starts off with a cop, a maid, a baby in a stroller and a guy in a car. We hear the title song. Then they all disappear. The story (if you want to call it that) switches to a penguin that had been running around in the first half of the short, and a race at an annual winter carnival that’s for birds only.

The penguin is in a bathtub that gets stuck in the mud, which is pumped all over some geese, along with some other items that must have been buried in the goo.



The geese chase the penguins.



The penguin gets caught in a turnstile for a bit, but is thrown clear. The geese get caught in it and their feathers fly off. They are thrown backward and land with their heads knotted together. Some climax, huh?



The cartoon ends with the penguin waving at the audience—twice. Once during the actual short and then again in front of the end title card. So long, folks! And not a moment too soon. Get Friz in here, quick!



Jack King and Bob Clampett get animation credits; Clampett’s first. I can’t help but think that Clampett suggested some gags, like the winged foot statue that reads “Athlete’s Foot.” Brown’s sound mix is atrocious on this; some of the dialogue is drowned out by Norman Spencer’s score.

Jack Benny's Temporary, Embarrassed Writer

Many a theatre and concert hall were saved in North America because of fund-raisers featuring that not-quite violin virtuoso, Jack Benny. One of them is the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver, the "new" Orpheum where he appeared in 1928 (he also played at the "old" Orpheum, torn down decades ago.)

Jack’s efforts to help preserve the 1927 structure prompted a reminiscence by Vancouver Sun columnist Jack Wasserman. He was something that doesn’t exist in Vancouver any more. He was the night-life reporter. The supper clubs with their big-name entertainment are long gone from the city. But there was an era where people in Vancouver didn’t have to go to Vegas to see Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett or Bobby Darin. They could head downtown to the Cave or Isy’s and watch them. A little sign memorialising Wasserman survives the rain at Georgia and Hornby not far from the ghosts of his night haunts.

Here’s his column from April 5, 1974, about six months before Jack died.

THE PATTER OF LITTLE FETES — For more than 20 years I've been brooding about the occasion when Jack Benny embarrassed the dickens out of me in a small cottage on the General Studios lot in Hollywood. His action, in fact, shoved my career in a totally different direction. I've finally stopped blushing but I still occasionally plot revenge. Jack couldn't possibly realize what happened and I've never discussed it until now.
A couple of weeks after this column began on a daily basis, the boss called me in and told me was going to Portland. It was a rainy day in May, and even Portland sounded like a wild trip. It was carefully explained that Jack Benny was bringing a big show to the old Denman Auditorium. In addition to Benny, there would be Gisele MacKenzie (Canada's own!) and The Will Mastin Trio, starring Sammy Davis Jr., who might its well have been Vancouver's own. The instructions were to interview the stars, cover the show, file a story and split.
The plane slopped in Seattle and Jack Benny got on. Les Wedman worked for the rival Province in those days. We introduced ourselves to Benny and his long-time associate, Irving Fein, on the aircraft. When we arrived in Portland, there was a big civic greeting and a police escort into town. Benny insisted that we had to ride with him. I don't know about Les, but it was my first time in an open convertible with a siren-shrieking motorcycle escort.
Because of the flukey meeting aboard the airplane, we wound up being greeted in Portland as part of Jack Benny's group. As I was to learn later, Jack is totally uncomplicated in his personal relationships. Certainly we would be doing some stories that meant publicity for his show. But Jack Benny is a star of the first magnitude. He didn't have to adopt us, but he did. It was Les' misfortune that he had to return to Vancouver late the following day. But I'd recently graduated to the columnist racket. I could go anywhere as long as I managed to get a column back to the news desk before morning.
For the entire week, I was included "in." When Portland big shots and political leaders entertained for Jack, I was automatically invited. It wasn't hard to get copy. Although Sammy Davis was well known in Vancouver from his Beacon-Palomar-Commodore days, he was only then reaching national prominence with a hit record called Hey There. I think he secretly suspected that The Sun had assigned a columnist to cover his triumphant return to the territory. "Wait until we get to Vancouver," he announced all over Portland, "I'm the mayor of that town."
Anyhow, I finally limped back to Vancouver a day ahead of the Benny road company. Then they arrived and it began again. By now, Mary Livingstone had flown up from Hollywood to join Jack because she has relatives in Seattle and Vancouver. Although Jack had a connection with Chrysler and there was a fleet of Imperials waiting to drive him where ever he wished to go, he'd look around and say, "Never mind, Jack will drive us." And he and Mary went everywhere in my beat-up Ford. There were days at the races, and the night at the old Stanley Park Armories when they made Jack an honorary Irish Fusilier.
Jack looked around the rickety old building, since destroyed by fire, and announced, "Imagine. I am now a star of stage, screen, radio AND GARAGES!"
When the group moved on to play a week in Seattle, the phone rang every day and when I picked it up I'd get a solo of Love in Bloom long distance and an invitation to a party. So, on the next weekend, I wound up in Seattle. All of which was pretty heady stuff for a neophyte columnist.
Several weeks after the tour, I received a small package in the mail. It was from Hollywood and it contained a gold money clip, engraved, "From Jack Benny." I wrote back, "I want to thank you for two things; one for remembering me, and two, for assuming that I have money."
Many months passed and I was in L.A. on vacation when I ran into Irving Fein, Jack's close friend and associate. Although I'd been on the entertainment beat for several years I've never made it a practice to look up people I've interviewed who generally conclude with an entreaty to "please phone when you get to Hollywood." But Irving insisted. And once more I was included "in."
Only these were working days. Jack was still doing a weekly radio show and a weekly TV show. I was privileged to watch an entire TV show take shape, from the writing session that started it all, to the final wrap-up. And that's when it all happened, the embarrassment I mentioned earlier. Still a neophyte, I was in a room with one of the world's top funnymen and his four writers, at that time considered to be the absolute tops in the trade.
It was a rare privilege and I was taking it all in as the situations and gags were honed into a hilarious script. Suddenly Jack looked at me and said, "C'mon, you can join in." Then he turned to his writers and announced that I was a very funny fellow, too, and recounted what he considered to be the priceless gag in my thank-you note. Laugh! I thought they'd never start.
I cringed in the corner, wishing the floor would open up. As I mentioned, it reshaped my career. And that's why I leave all the light humor to Allan Fotheringham.
But I've been plotting, Jack. If you happen to see a streaker run behind you during a solo at tonight's Save The Orpheum concert, well . . .

Selling Corn Toasties, the Cartoon Way

Animated TV commercials, other than those plugging cereals, reached their peak in the mid-1950s but commercials in a cartoon format went back to the pre-network days. In 1941, a cartoon lamb appeared during ads for Botany Mills on the weathercasts of WNBT New York.

Television grew—very slowly at first—after the war years. In July 1947, there were only 12 stations on the air in the U.S.: WNBT, WCBS and WABD in New York; WPTZ in Philadelphia; WTTG and WNBW in Washington; WKGB in Schenectady; WWJ-TV in Detroit; WBKB in Chicago; KSD-TV in St. Louis; W6XAO and KTLA in Los Angeles. WNBW had signed on in late June, KSD first went on the air in February. W9XZV, the Zenith station in Chicago, and W2XJT, radio repairman Bill Still’s station in Jamaica, New York, were conducting occasional test broadcasts but neither became commercial stations.

Live sports events were extremely popular with televiewers in 1947. WCBS aired the Brooklyn Dodgers games and sold time to General Foods. The company want to advertise its Post cereals, and decided to use cartoons to do it. They used a balop, which is kind of like a slide. I don’t believe they were animated.

There were some hurdles to overcome, as reported by Television magazine in its July 1947 issue.

Big problem facing Young & Rubicam was to put across the six' products in the Post's family of cereals.
Best way of solving it, they decided, was to concentrate on one product per game, tying in the entire line at the opening so as to build up overall identification.
Briefly, their present commercial pattern on the Dodger games consists of a singing jingle (live); balop cartoon commercials after the third and seventh innings; product identifying scoreboard between innings; pickup of billboard on field whenever possible; closing commercial and oral plugs throughout the game.
When the season started, CBS had not shut down its studio broadcasting and a pre-game live commercial was given, immediately after the jingle followed by a balop after the fifth. Under revised conditions, live commercials now have to be given in an improvised studio in the control room at the field, using but one camera. Lighting also presented a problem and limited experimentation along the live line.
However, agency has come to the conclusion that the tricks which can be played with balopticans are certainly less expensive and may prove to be better commercials for this type of pick-up. For one thing, the weather cares little for baseball schedules—and rehearsals on a live commercial, only to be rained out, added up to a large chunk out of the budget with nothing to show for it.
Overall aim was to experiment with different commercial approaches with an eye toward the day when the audience would he practically unlimited and they had the same kind of money and the same commercial problems. Because they have the whole game to put the message over, agency feels that hard hitting selling is out-that commercials should be made as palatable as possible.
To achieve overall identification at the opening, a "curtain" with all the Post cereals on it opened to disclose a quartet in baseball uniform, complete with trick gay '90 mustaches, singing a jingle about the Post family of cereals and the game. Curtain closes at the conclusion of the jingle and cut is now made to the field. Quartet is picked up from the studio in the control room at the ballpark. Currently a wall card is used as an opening curtain.
Cartoon Commercials
Cartoons used on the baloptican also have an exaggerated, comic approach. Typical of the types tried the one illustrated is here. Balops formerly came after the fifth inning when the live pre-game commercial was used. Now, however, agency feels that they will get higher identification with balops after the third and seventh innings. Such slides, when handled with a light, amusing touch, sell well and there can always be one slide which will pay off with concentration on the product.

There is an animation connection to this, one discovered by cartoon expert/restorer Devon Baxter in Variety. These commercials were created at the New York studio of Ben Harrison, who had laboured for years at the Charlie Mintz studio, co-directing Krazy Kat cartoons in both the silent and sound eras for release by Columbia. Devon picked up the phone and interviewed Harrison’s daughter. Read his findings in this post.

Stork Eyes

“Have you ever wondered,” as Andy Rooney might have said, “what you can see in cartoons if you watch them watch them frame by frame?”

Here’s an example in Apes of Wrath, a 1959 effort from the Friz Freleng unit at Warners. I like the decision to give the drunken stork pink eyes. But when he hiccoughs, his eyes have more than one pupil.



Art Davis, Gerry Chiniquy and Virgil Ross are the credited animators. Warren Foster, who wrote the story, was hired at Hanna-Barbera four days before this cartoon was released on April 18, 1959. He had been working for John Sutherland Productions since November 1957.

Swirling Simple Simon

The inking department at the Ub Iwerks studio got a chance to use their brushes to create swirling effects on the Comicolor short Simple Simon (1935).

Basically, it’s another just-there imitation Disney fairy tale from the studio with Carl Stalling filling it with songs. The pie man is chasing Simon’s pet goose but gets caught in a fair turnstyle.



Simon rushes up a giraffe and jumps onto a trapeze, sending him somersaulting through the air. (One of the characters that grabs him looks like Willie Whopper’s girl friend. Willie wasn’t doing much in 1935).



Simon lands inside a barrel, which is rolled by two different performers. I like the guy with the Robin Hood hat in the lower left hand corner. If it’s supposed to be Walt Disney, that’s funnier than anything else in the cartoon.



The barrel crashes. Staves come flying at us in perspective.



The impact has Simon imagining harem girls—with curly antenna on their heads! He starts hugging one but she dissolves into the angry pie man.



Much like the recording of Bill Hanna’s yell that was used in all kinds of Tom and Jerry cartoons, the Iwerks frightened warbling yell is heard two or three times in this short, and a number of other Comicolors. Actor unknown.

He Doesn’t Speak Arabic

Hans Conried was articulate, sophisticated and, like other actors who catch the fancy of the public, very employed at one time.

Conried once told host/historian Chuck Schaden he began his radio career doing Shakespeare on KECA in Los Angeles. And while the Hollywood Reporter of June 26, 1937 reveals he had been cast in the second show of the Shakespearean series (“Richard III”), the same paper of February 24, 1937 reveals his employ in a comedy-satire on the “Hollywood Theatre” programme on KHJ. And his career carried on from there (even though he has no occupation in the 1940 U.S. Census).

Somewhere in this blog (I’m pretty sure I posted it), Conried gave Mel Blanc credit for getting him into radio comedy after the war, as he played the head of Zebra Lodge when Blanc had his own show on CBS for a season.

Television didn’t stop Conried’s career when radio died (for him, in 1953, he told Schaden). He was making semi-regular appearances on several shows. He talks about two of them in the article below, published April 11, 1958. The “tattoo” show was on the Target anthology series and aired on November 24. The same night you could see him on Danny Thomas. And as you can see by the newspaper ad, he was in the cast of a music film that year.

Conried Fears TV Overexposure
By HAROLD STERN
"I don't know anything about Dody Goodman! I don't want to know anything about Dody Goodman! But everywhere I go, people buttonhole me, begging for inside information!"
Hans Conried looked at me despairingly. "All I want," he said, "is for Jack Paar's office to keep calling me to ask when I'll be available again. I'm not at all controversial. I'm everybody's friend."
Hans, who may currently be seen on almost every television show on all three networks, is now preparing for his next major T. V. appearance, that of the witch in Yasha Frank's April 27 N. B. C. production of "Hansel and Gretel". Whatever you may think of the merits of doing "Hansel and Gretel" on T. V. and whatever your opinion of Hans Connects talents, you’ll have to admit this is pretty exotic casting.
"It's been over a year since I've had a week off," Hans Conried admitted, "and though you say you see me everywhere now, that can rebound: People may say: 'Oh, Conried's all right, but who wants him again?' "
At the moment, that thought hasn't entered any one's mind. In recent weeks Hans has been on the Jack Paar Show, Omnibus, the Red Skelton show, the Danny Thomas Show as an old Shakespearean actor, Maverick, plus several films completed but not as yet released.
He'll continue to reappear on the Danny Thomas Show as Uncle Tonoose and will occasionally play other roles as well. His success on that series almost frightens him.
"Because of my appearance as Uncle Tonoose," he told me, "I have acquired a whole new following of Syrians and Armenians. Now, when I make public appearances," he added incredulously, "they expect me to make speeches in Arabic. I don't speak Arabic!"
Also coming up is a Telephone Hour Science Show in which he plays the heavy, the Mad Hatter, in "The Alphabet Conspiracy", an investigation into linguistics (he won’t have to speak Arabic here).
"I have an excellent film coming out soon," Hans exclaimed. "In it I play an international dope pusher, posing as a tattoo artist, who gets pinned against a wall by a fork lift. It's the kind of action I do well. Unfortunately, I don't remember the title or the series, but you "can't miss it."
Getting back to "Hansel and Gretel", I asked Hans if he had any thoughts on what seemed to be a trend of fairy tales to T. V.
"Well, why shouldn't there be?" he answered. "Here the industry is barely 10 years old and we've written ourselves out. There isn't enough talent in the world to feed this medium. And, if you're fond of horror stories, think of what television will be like in 30 years!"

Conried didn’t have many starring vehicles. Two were in feature films released in 1953—The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T and The Twonky, both too odd to generate huge box office response. He shot a Mr. Belvedere pilot film in 1959 but none of the TV networks picked it up. He may have been relieved. He told columnist Erskine Johnson “I'm not sure I want a show of my own. I'm the happiest when I'm doing something different every week.” Oddly, he found most of his work after the 1950s (Jay Ward Productions notwithstanding) on the stage where you’re doing the same thing every night. And he toured college campuses.

The story mentioned The Alphabet Conspiracy, a fantasy/educational film “Produced under the personal supervision of Jack L. Warner.” A beat-up copy that’s been on the internet for ages (surely, someone must have restored this) is posted below. Hans Conried gets a credit, but there’s no music credit. That’s because the music was supplied by the Capitol Hi-Q library. The opening theme is by Bill Loose, but I haven’t found it in my ‘M’ series collection. At 2:56, you’ll recognise cues by Spencer Moore if you know your Gumby or Huckleberry Hound music before Conried’s entrance.

Crashing Kitten

A poor abused kitten is toinged toward the ceiling by a bulldog in Tex Avery’s Bad Luck Blackie (is “toinged” a word).



The bulldog looks concerned about the fate of the kitten.



It’s all a ruse. His expression changes and the kitten splatters to the floor. The bulldog (played by Avery) lets out with a wheezy laugh. Somewhere else in the MGM studio, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera think “Hey, we can steal that from Tex and use it in a dog at our own studio someday.”



Rich Hogan assisted Avery with gags and the animation was by Preston Blair, Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton and Louie Schmitt, all of whom had worked at Disney before this. In 1949 Disney was filling the screen with Donald Duck squawking at Chip and Dale. The cartoon was re-released in 1957 and 1967, and even appeared in 1963 at the Chilliwack Drive-In about 20 miles from where I grew up.

Barney, It's a Cliff

The first go-around of Barney Bear cartoons (there were three, a fourth was announced) didn’t feature eye takes, but here’s one in The Unwelcome Guest (released Feb. 17, 1945). It’s not exactly Tex Avery territory, but I wouldn’t expect it in a Barney Bear cartoon.



Mindful of the war still going on Showmen’s Trade Review of April 28, 1945 called this “One of the most delightful characters that ever graced the imagination of a cartoonist’s pen is delineated in this Technicolor short in the form of a playful skunk who threatens the life of the placid berry-picking Barney Bear. For children this should prove to be a barrel of fun; for the elders it might bring them back to a world less strewn with sorrow.

Mike Lah, Jack Carr and Ed Barge are the credited animators. This was the last Barney cartoon until his revival in 1948.

Note: Thad Komorowski has pointed to an unpublished interview with George Gordon and Mike Lah that Lah directed this short.