Turned Down Again

Poor Little 'Tinker (aka B.O. Skunk). He can’t get a date because of his smell (in cartoons, it can’t be shut off).

He spots a rabbit. She takes a whiff. The frames tell the gag.



The credited animators in Tex Avery’s Little 'Tinker are Bill Shull, Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton and Bob Bentley; Louie Schmitt was the layout artist.

A Chicken Joke

Long before introducing Woody Woodpecker on a half-hour TV cartoon show, Walter Lantz played himself in silent pictures.

Here he is in the Pete the Pup cartoon The Lunch Hound from 1927. Pete is ready to eat a roast chicken that Lantz “drew,” but Lantz puts his pen to the paper and turns the bird into a live chicken that escapes.



I believe this is supposed to be an exclamation mark.



Walter thinks it’s funny. Then again, he thought the Beary Family was funny.



Lantz made this for the J.R. Bray studio. This is from the Tommy Stathes collection. Please support his Cartoon Roots discs. Anyone interested in silent animation will enjoy them.

New Comedians and Jack Benny

The vaudeville way was the better way, in the minds of many people who trod the boards at places like the Regent in Muskegon, Michigan (photo to the right). Entertainers could judge their acts in small towns and, if they weren’t fired by the theatre manager, try different things to make improvements and, hopefully, get bookings in bigger cities and better venues.

Then vaudeville vanished. So how were acts supposed to get better? That’s the question old vaudevillians were asking.

But get better they did. It wasn’t like a complete unknown was shoved on the Ed Sullivan show to sink or swim. They found a way.

Jack Benny talked about how vaudeville worked for him. In this syndicated newspaper story dated November 13, 1961, he also talks about giving new comedians a spot on his show—and then explains why he’d rather go with someone else.

Evidently the reporter was only fed salt and pepper during the interview.

Jack Benny Offers Glass Of Water To Newsman
By Jim Doyle
North American Newspaper Alliance
New York, Nov. 13—Jack Benny, the highest paid violinist since Paganini, came to town for a few days recently. He was in New York, as he has been once a year or so lately, to accept, as gracelessly as possible, the adulation of the public and a laurel wreath or two from his fellow longhairs.
He also received a hungry newspaperman for a 9 a.m. breakfast.
The offstage Benny is quite different from the performer Benny. He is a much better violinist, for one thing. For another, he's Mr. Generosity himself, having raised $1,000,000—tax free—in the last year or so for the symphony orchestras he plays with.
The Sunday night TV Benny saves toothpicks from the hors d'oeuvres for next time; the Monday morning Benny is an openhanded host, from time to time saying, "are you sure you won't have some more salt and pepper?' or "another glass of water perhaps?" and appearing to mean every word of it.
The bumbling, irascible, miserly Benney [sic], as we see him on television, is a deliberate creation, a continuing work of art that was started nearly half a century ago and is still far from finished.
How He Did It
Jack Benny made his professional debut in 1912 as a vaudeville fiddler, became a funny violinist, then a master of ceremonies and graduated to Broadway (musical) and the movies in 1929. He started in radio in 1932 and has been in television practically sine the day it started, proving, incidentally, to be one of the few comedians who successfully made the transition and one of even fewer who lasted in the monster medium that regularly eats its young.
The years have taught Benny a thing or two. One is that you can’t please everyone and perhaps that is why he has worn so well. “I wish I had $5 for everybody who thinks I’m terrible,” he says. Another is that show business gets tougher every day.
“I’m glad I’m not trying to break in today,” he said.
“George Burns puts it this way: ‘There’s no place for an actor to be lousy any more.’
"I spent years developing and polishing ‘Jack Benny the miser.’ I started by being a bum violinist; then, as an emcee, I got the idea of being the sort of guy who does everything wrong—I would announce one act and another one would come out—and blame everyone else for it. Gradually, the old meanie of today emerged.
Tough For New Comics
“Today, you've got to be good, you almost have to be perfect the first time. A new comedian gets a guest spot on television; everybody in the country sees him, and so does every critic.
“There are nightclubs, of course. But there are the big ‘showcase’ places and almost nothing else. There's no chance to experiment or try out new ideas." The new comedians are always welcome on the Jack Benny Show, but not as welcome as some others.
"I like to see the new people come up," he said. "A few years ago, if somebody new got a lot of attention, I might have been nervous about the competition, but what do I care about that now? I'll give them every break I can.
"But I've found, over the years, that straight actors make better guests than comics. Put a good dramatic actor in a funny situation and give him funny lines, and he'll turn out funny. Ronald Colrnan was always a great guest. So is Jimmy Stewart. I guess it just means that to be a good comedian you have to be a good actor first."
The breakfast interview over, the still-hungry reporter went to the nearest counter place and ordered a coffee.

The War Against War Cartoons

Mrs. Besa Short has been credited with saving Tom and Jerry from being one-shot characters when she wondered when theatres in her Interstate chain would be able to show more shorts starring the cat and mouse.

The woman responsible for booking programmes for 175 movie houses in the U.S. Southwest also came to the defence of Bugs Bunny.

The Showmen’s Trade Review of July 4, 1942 published this curious squib:

“For making vicious attacks on Bugs Bunny and short subjects generally, particularly Defense Shorts,” Mrs. Walter Ferguson, syndicated columnist, was placed “in the dog house” in a recent issue of Besa Short Shorts, short subject house organ for Interstate managers down Texas way.

Mrs. Ferguson was a columnist for the Scripps-Howard service and at the time had been writing for newspapers for 12 years. There exists today in Oklahoma a journalism scholarship named for her. I have gone through months of her columns and cannot find any reference to Bugs Bunny, though she took a shot at patriotic films in 1941, including those of the Defence Department, questioning whether were effective, especially with young people.

However, I did find this column from February 26, 1942, where she sends mixed messages about another cartoon character.

Propagandist Duck
By MRS WALTER FERGUSON
USING Donald Duck for propaganda purposes was not a good idea. As a movie fan, I was disturbed to learn that Congress had objected to paying Walt Disney $80,000 for his latest short, "The New Spirit," featuring the nation's favorite feathered hero. But, as a taxpayer, I was delighted by the news.
To the ordinary man and woman $80,000 is still a sizeable sum, although the Treasury may not think so.
Mr. Disney, we are told, was commanded to make the picture so we might be inspired to fork over our income taxes more joyfully. He was promised pay for it — the pay, of course, coming from Mr. Taxpayer's pocket. The Government believes our morale can be improved by the right sort of entertainment, so the entertainment is ordered up and charged to us.
"The New Spirit," now being shown in major theaters, is neither good Donald Duck nor good propaganda, but a hodge-podge of both, which peters out into incongruity. The combination of a cartoon breathing fun and a commentator's voice breathing hate makes for an uncoordinated whole — a headache for adults and a heartache for children.
We must remember that Donald Duck is better known in younger circlet than Donald Nelson. He belongs to a fairy world where the guileless spirit always triumphs over evil, and where blundering by those who are good brings about happy endings. Alas and alack, such is not the case in the grown-up scene where so frequently Right battles futiley [sic] against Wrong.
I think our lovable Mr. Duck has been badly treated and deserves an apology. Surely ten times $80,000 could not compensate his creator for being asked to turn the gay and gallant bird into a propagandist.

She turned her focus onto cartoons, briefly, again in her column of February 15, 1944. Her claim is preposterous. She believed people would not be able to tell real from fiction if they watched a war movie then a cartoon. For years, theatres had been running cartoons and newsreels on the same programme. No one was confused. She must have thought the movie-going public was incredibly stupid. And she pulled out the tired “think of the children” boogie-man. As a kid, I watched Daffy Duck and Fred Flintstone. I also saw Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. I could figure out the difference,

War Movies
By MRS. WALTER FERGUSON
A YOUNG air cadet from Newport, Ark. questions the wisdom of my criticism of grim war movies.
“If you refer to the blood-and-thunder Hollywood melodramas,” he says, “I agree.”
“However there have been excellent semi-official reels which depict battle scenes as they truly are.
“If the soldier can look upon and participate in such chaos why can’t the civilian stomach it? The people at home have failed their fighting men if they turn their faces from death and ignore their sacrifices I say more power to official movies which bring home with force the fact that men are giving their lives for freedom.”
His point is well taken, although he seems to have missed mine. What I object to about the official war picture is their presentation. They always come to us tied up with some Hollywood feature or short, which means that the audience gets a hodgepodge of the true and the false.
Duty doesn’t enter into the question. People don’t go to the movies from a sense of duty. They go to be entertained.
A poll taken recently among soldiers shows their preference for the lighter, gayer types.
The cinema is a form of escape. By this means men and women take flight from the drabness of their todays and the hopelessness of their tomorrows. Therefore I contend they are cheated when they go to a show expecting such release and are forced to sit through a program which tears them to bits inside and sends them home upset.
There should be special programs of war picture offered. Perhaps every adult should be required to see them, but the honest course is to separate the phoney from the real. As it is, audiences are asked to skip quickly from a battle to a jitterbug contest or a Looney cartoon. It results in mental confusion. In the end, the war briefs seem as unreal as the movie plot. And what about our children? They jam the movie house these days. What will be the effect of the horror pictures upon their minds and character!

Well, Mrs. Ferguson, kids who watched Bugs and Donald back then survived rather nicely. And Bugs adorned warplanes and other equipment designed to crush the Axis. Bob Clampett once remarked that Bugs was never more loved than during the war years. He was a boost to morale. He was a part of the war effort, where a columnist liked it or not.

Dad's Troublesome Tuba

The gentle Southern father has bought his son Ollie a tuba in Little Boy With a Big Horn, a 1953 UPA cartoon. He regrets it after hearing the boy’s loud practices. He tells the child it’s a nice horn, then yells “But don’t play it when I’m home!” He leaps up and down and becomes split (in outlines; it is a UPA cartoon after all). His wife has to pull him together.



Bobe Cannon loved kids in cartoons. He directed Gerald McBoing Boing. He directed this one. Gerald becomes a radio star despite his noisy handicap. In this cartoon, the noise simply has Ollie banished from his home town. He seems rather nonplussed about the whole thing as the cartoon ends with his puffing on his tuba at a music school (with no teacher in sight).

Bill Melendez, Frank Smith and Tom McDonald are the animators, with George Bruns handling the music score.

Porky the Tashlin Way

Frank Tashlin sure loved huge eyes on Porky Pig. An example from Porky’s Spring Planting (1938). He doted on close-ups for some reason, too.



Oh, and grotesque takes, too.



Joe D'Igalo gets the animation credit in this lacklustre cartoon, written by George Manuell. There are two radio jokes, a Stan Laurel joke and a Jewish joke.

Gene Rayburn's Career Wasn't a Blank

No answers about tinkling, no Old Man Periwinkle, no Brett or Charles.

You wouldn’t find those on the original version of The Match Game which debuted on Boxing Day 1962.

One thing you would find was host Gene Rayburn, asking pretty tame questions like “Name something you eat for breakfast.” (Goodson-Todman Productions got a lot of mileage out of that format. The company shifted it over to Family Feud when the second version of The Match Game was filled with double entendres and celebrities having a few nips in between tapings). Rayburn had been around NBC for a good period of time by that point and was perhaps best-known for being the announcer on Tonight with Steve Allen.

Hosting a game show was not Rayburn’s driving ambition. He wanted to sing and dance. In fact, he did. He replaced Dick Van Dyke on Broadway in Bye Bye Birdie. But game shows got in the way.

Here are a couple of stories from the time of the original Match Game. First, from the Associated Press of January 31, 1964.

Panel Shows Not So Easy, Says Rayburn
By CYNTHIA LOWRY
NEW YORK (AP) — Gene Rayburn, the witty incisive young man who guides NBC's day-time "Match Game," with the gentle firmness of an English nanny, insists that participating in a panel show is not as easy as it looks.
Players and host not only must concentrate on the game but also give the session "dimensions of vitality, lightness and humor, he says.
Rayburn often turns up as a panelist on other shows.
"To Tell the Truth," he says, is the most difficult.
"People seem to think the panel has some advance information about the contestants," he said. "We don't know a single thing until the information is read off. It's a fast game in which a lot of information helps. Peggy Cass, on the panel, absolutely amazes me."
Page Boy to Star
Rayburn grew up in Chicago, got into radio by becoming an NBC page boy and moved on to announcing. In 1942 he had a radio show on a New York station, then teamed with Jack Lescoulie (now of "Today") for a comedy show and built a reputation for light-handed wit and nonsense. For the past 12 years Gene has worked as a single—announcing, hosting, sitting on panels and occasionally doing a dramatic role.
The five "Match Game" programs are taped over a period of two days a week, but Rayburn's job occupies most of his time.
"I've been a host so long, that's no problem any more," he said. "My biggest headache is trying to figure out new ways of introducing the panelists, i write out five different sets of introductions for the show's celebrities each week."
After all his experience, what is Rayburn's favorite occupation.
"I love to act," he said, almost wistfully.

This is a feature piece from the Hartford Courant, July 14, 1963. Again, he hopes for an acting career that never happened.

Beauties and Brains All in a Day Far Busy Emcee Gene Rayburn
By H. VIGGO ANDERSEN
Sunday Editor
Some guys have all the luck! Imagine having to drop everything, rush down to Miami, live in the plushest of surroundings, and spend your days and evenings with some of the most beautiful girls in the world, all of whom are trying to impress you with their beauty, poise and intelligence.
That's what's happening to Gene Rayburn all this week in preparation for the finals of the annual Miss Universe Beauty Pageant which you can look in on Saturday night, July 20, from 10:00 to 11:30 on Channels 3 and 12. Gene will be the on-stage master of ceremonies, just as he was last year.
Gene called this writer the other day from New York to talk about the pageant and his share in it. When I told him be was a lucky stiff on a very soft touch, he snorted in indignation.
"Emceeing a beauty pageant of this stature is anything but a soft touch," he disagreed. "You've no idea how much behind the scenes preparation goes into one of these affairs. We work long, long hours. Sure you meet some interesting people and most of them are beautiful. But it can get to be a grind.
Enjoyable Experience
"After a period of getting acquainted with the girls—and it goes without saying, this is highly enjoyable—we get to the business of setting up routines, finding out what we want to do and then learning to do it. This isn't as easy as you might think. | "Then we go into four nights of elimination, on stage, each a formal black tie affair for me before an audience. Now we are really underway, as the girls are judged in swim suits and evening gowns, and for poise and personality." His sympathetic sigh came over the telephone wire. "Here's where the heartbreak conies in when, one after another, girls are eliminated until only 15 have been chosen for the white-tie-and-tails event Saturday night, July 20, when the finals are broadcast over the CBS-TV network for 90 minutes, with Lord knows how many viewers looking in from all parts of the country."
Disagreed With Judges

Rayburn is by no means always in agreement with the judges of the pageant. Last year his choice for Miss Universe was Miss Republic of China.
"She had everything," he enthused, "a beautiful face, lovely figure, lots of poise, and she was one of the most gracious people I've ever met. I hated to see her lose out to Norma Nolan of Argentina. Not that Norma hasn't plenty on the ball too," he hastened to add. "She's gorgeous."
Let's hope Miss Nolan doesn't read this between now and next Saturday night. She'll be on stage with Gene and John Daly, to hand over the sceptre and crown of her office to the new Miss Universe.
But to depart from the beauty mart. After all, Rayburn's participation in this annual Miami marathon is one of the least of his claims to fame. The voice that was coming to me over the phone has been familiar to millions of radio listeners and TViewers for years. He came to New York via Chicago and Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, with the ambition to get into broadcasting and before you could say NBC he was with it—as a page! But the ambitious Gene wasn't satisfied with this. He enrolled in the network's announcing school, studied hard, and then was sent to Station WGNY, Newburgh. N.Y., where he remained for a year.
Subsequently be saw duty in Philadelphia, Baltimore, etc., until another form of duty called and he enlisted in the Air Force. After his discharge. Gene went to Station WNEW, New York, where he teamed up briefly with Jack Lescoulie, and subsequently with Dee Finch. Their program, "Rayburn and Finch," was to become one of New York City's all time popular radio shows. It lasted five years.
Switches to TV
Inevitably, of course, came the switch to television and Gene made it with the greatest of ease, his first big impact coming when be became the announcer on the Steve Allen Show. When Steve landed the "Tonight" berth, Gene went right along with him. He was in the big time now and he has stayed there ever since. Currently he is host of "Match Game" on NBC-TV, one of the highest rated daytime television programs in the country.| Concerning any and all quiz shows—and he has taken part in a good share of them—Gene feels that the amount or quantity of the prizes is not the important thing. "Putting on a good show is what really matters," he says. "For example, on 'To Tell the Truth,' the prize money, usually split three ways, was $50, no great shakes, you'll admit. Yet that show had a tremendous following."
But while his emceeing chores have brought him wealth and fame Gene likes to think of himself as an actor, and the highlight of his career, he told me, was when he replaced Dick Van Dyke in "Bye Bye Birdie" in New York. Be stayed with that smash Broadway musical for 26 weeks. "And the funny part of it is that I'm neither a singer nor a dancer, but somehow I managed to do both. How I got by I'll never know. But I'd like more of same."
With this difference, however. Next time he doesn't want to replace anyone, but create a role. He has read a play that has been offered to him but confessed he is not enthusiastic about it. "And you've got to be or it's not good," he said.
In the meantime he has plenty to keep him busy, what with the Miss Universe Pageant, "Match Game" and his 3-hour radio stint every Saturday on "Monitor." A busy, happy, successful man, Gene Rayburn is married to the former Helen Ticknor and is the father of a daughter, Lynn. They reside in New York City. As I said in the beginning, some guys have all the luck!

Considering Rayburn never accomplished a song-and-dance or dramatic career, maybe he didn’t have all the luck. But he had a fine career.

Sachmo on the Run

The head of Louis Armstrong, superimposed from live action, turns into a cartoon head, which turns into a cartoon African native chasing Koko in I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead You Rascal You (1932).



Bimbo bashes the native, turning him into four garbage cans that he jumps on. The chase carries on in the next scene.



Willard Bowsky and Ralph Somerville get animation credits in this Betty Boop cartoon from the Fleischer studio.

Red Hot Wolf

The curtains part and camera pulls in on the stage. It’s Red Hot Riding Hood, rolling her eyes seductively. The wolf reacts. He turns 180 degrees, then swings back around and toings into the air.



The 1943 cartoon has no credit except one for director Tex Avery, though we know the animators were Ed Love, Ray Abrams and Preston Blair.

From the Independent Film Journal of July 22, 1944 comes this indication how much the allied forces liked Red and Wolfie:

Red Hot Riding Hood” has gone to war!
At the request of Lieutenant James W. Dunlap and his crew of a B-24 bomber of the 111th Air Base Unit at Langley Field, Virginia, MGM has given permission for the title of its record-smashing cartoon to become the name of the plane. Studio has also forwarded colored likenesses of "Red” and the Wolf for mounting on the fuselage.
The Wolf is also a star in his own right, since a drawing of him now graces the sides of all the "ash cans” of T.N.T. hurled through the air by the crew of Coast Gaurd cutter #8333, who requested the Wolf as their insignia.

Guests and Gaslights

Imagine a TV show being told “You can’t parody that! We’re suing.”

It’s ridiculous. Especially when it came to one episode of the Jack Benny TV show.

Benny was a pioneer when it came to burlesques of movies. He did it regularly on radio in the ‘30s, less so as time went on. In the ‘40s, his radio show did a send-up of the film “Gaslight.” He tried to do it again with old friend Babs Stanwyck on TV in January 1952. Suddenly the author of the Gaslight story and MGM’s parent company were suing Benny, CBS and American Tobacco to stop it from airing, claiming copyright infringement. Benny’s argument was people are free to make fun of things. In fact, he’d been doing it for years.

Things were always uneasy between film producers and other media. Whenever Benny (or others) did parodies of films, the name of the movie company was always mentioned. Stars “appeared through the courtesy” of whatever studio they were working for. That’s when they appeared at all. Film studios owned them and told them if they would be permitted to appear on what they saw as competition instead of a free promotional tool.

Remarkably, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Benny in early 1958.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Here’s the New York Daily News from October 8th. There actually wasn’t a lot to say about “Gaslight,” so the Daily News’ reporter added something about landing a big-name Hollywood star, one who had appeared on his radio show.

Benny’s ‘Gaslight’ Parody May Yet Hit TV Screens
By MATT MESSINA
It’s been a long time coming, but Jack Benny’s TV parody of the 1944 MGM movie, “Gaslight,” may yet flicker into life on one of his upcoming laugh sessions. He is now negotiating with the company for a go-ahead signal, Benny told us.
The CBS star originally planned to screen the video burlesque in 1953 [sic]. MGM went to court and the hassle finally wound up in the Supreme Court earlier this year, where the comedian lost out to a four-four tie no decision (one Justice was absent). So a lower court ruling banning the skit remained in effect.
Oh, putting it on the air or not isn't going to change my life,” Benny said, "but the skit is prepared and it's funny — very funny."
In fact, Benny's Sept. 21 season opener included an amusing takeoff on Westerns, in which guest star Gary Cooper was featured.
How He Got Cooper
How did he snare Cooper, who has been as elusive as a good rating for most TV impresarios?
"That goes back a couple of years," Benny related. "Gary, an old friend of mine, wanted to appear in a live TV show and he said he would do it with me. I thought of a good idea, but when my writers and I started to work on it, we saw it wasn’t right for Gary. So I called him and said: ‘I'm not going to let you do this show—it's not right for you.’
"I've never asked a star to come on unless I have a good idea for him. Not only does he suffer, I suffer. Anyway, getting back to Gary, before the season started, I thought of something that was good for him, and he came on. Now, I can get him any time I want to." And Cooper may be back with Benny before the summer rolls around—"If I get a great idea for him."
Cooper, according to Benny, was very happy over the results. “A couple of days after his appearance, I saw Gary and he told me: ‘Jack, I've been in pictures all my life, but I never got the reaction I did with your show.’ I said: ‘Why not? More people saw you in one night on TV than see your big hit pictures ever.’” And that, kiddies, is why they call it a mass medium.

Hollywood’s attempts to play power moves against television were failing. Benny got to air his old film of “Gaslight.” But it may have been a case of the film industry, after corporate upheavals in some cases, realised a fight was stupid and there was money to be made in television. Warner Bros. and Columbia (through Screen Gems), in particular, produced all kinds of shows starting in the late ‘50s.

Read more about the “Gaslight” show here.