Scrambled Aches Backgrounds

The mid-1950s saw a change in art styles at pretty well all of the cartoon studios, adopting a more stylised approach to characters and backgrounds.

Settings in the Roadrunner cartoons became increasingly representational. Here are some examples from Scrambled Aches, released by Warners in 1957. Maurice Noble laid out the cartoon, with Phil De Guard painting the backgrounds.



This is the most stylised art in the whole cartoon.



An attempt to identify the music over the opening credits has ended in failure. It may be a Milt Franklyn original.

A Cab Ride With Tex

Droopy warns the escaped con wolf not to move. Of course, we know what’s going to happen.

He gets in a cab that makes a wild perspective 180-degree turn. Here are some of the frames.



The cartoon is Dumb-Hounded (1944) by Tex Avery. No animators are credited, but we know Ed Love, Preston Blair and Ray Abrams worked on this, with Johnny Johnsen painting the backgrounds, Heck Allen helping with gags, and Frank Graham and Bill Thompson providing voices.

Toreador, That Allen's Not a Bore

Fred Allen was known for his clever observations on various things, especially those he saw as inane, such as the bulk of show business. But he joined with writer Nat Hiken to come up with parodies of all sorts, from the musical Oklahoma to the operetta HMCS Pinafore to husband-and-wife morning radio shows. Several were re-used with some modifications; writing this kind of material would be impossible for 39 episodes a season.

Allen took aim at the radio advertising industry when he found the chance, but he didn’t leave it at doing a phoney commercial. On one show, he worked his puncturing of cigarette ads on the air into a version of the opera Carmen. His guest star that evening was Shirley Booth, whom we don’t exactly think of as a singer.

The broadcast was reviewed in the New York World-Telegram by Harriet Van Horne. We’re transcribed some of her reviews before. She seemed very sour on radio and television. In this review, though, she lauds Allen and Booth for their work.

Unfortunately, this story from the Allen scrapbook in the Boston Library has no date other than “1945” on the picture taken of it. After poring through old newspapers, it would appear the show was from February 9, 1947. Booth also guest-appeared with Allen on October 12, 1947 but the Daily Worker reported they starred in a parody of “Brigadoon” called “Broken Doon.” Allen brought her back on January 11, 1948 for a send-up of “Finian’s Rainbow.”

Allen Hits Top Form When Spoofing Radio
By HARRIET VAN HORNE
When Fred Allen sets his mind to parody, satire or burlesque, he is touched by moonbeams from a distinctly superior lunacy. At no time is his cutting edge keener than when he takes for a target the radio business itself.
Last night Fred took careful aim at the cigaret commercials. It was, in the opinion of many in the trade, the best score of the season. The oratory and balderdash of radio’s most objectionable tobacco plugs were lampooned in an operetta that made use of the melodies from “Carmen,” with lyrics from a pen dipped in vitriol, blended with Allen’s special brand of spoofing powder.
Singing the role of Carmen was Shirley Booth, whose razor-edged soprano will take anything—and frequently did in the early days of Duffy’s Tavern, when she played Miss Duffy. Her version of Carmen had a Brooklyn accent and a brazen way of sliding over and under the key.
Fred was Dr. Allen, the eminent cigaret authority, commissioned by the makers of Puffos to improve their product. Only thing wrong, he discovered, was that the cigaret contained nothing but tobacco. No treat, no treatment, no vapor-rub, no formaldehyde. “Gentlemen, you’re 50 years behind the times,” he told them. To the strains of the Habanera, Fred noted that “Raleigh cigarets were up a tree, ‘till I invented ‘whoosh,’ nine-o-three.”
“American Tobacco paid me a pretty penny,” he carolled, “for a Lucky that would sell in spite of Benny.”
To give the operetta some semblance of plot, Dr. Allen had a secret formula, which Carmen (last name Houlahan) is suspected of stealing. She denies this, and protests her love for Dr. Allen. “I fell in love with your pitcher . . . it was in the Medical Journal. You was doin’ somethin’ to a guinea pig.”
Somewhere along here, Carmen sings the Gypsy Song. In this case the words proclaim her the Queen of Nicotine. As a special fillip at the end, she quavers, “I don’t mean drene, or kerosene, just nicotine!”
To Dr. Allen’s accusations that she has designs on his new formula, Shirley confesses, “I came here, sent by my father dear, to snoop and pry and peer.” Her father, it turns out, is Mr. F.E. Boone of Lexington, Ky., the auctioneer on Jack Benny’s program.
But love for Dr. Allen is greater than duty, Carmen decides. She returns the formula (pronounced formerla) to Dr. Allen. Then a second complication arises with the appearance of Dick Riggs. He (Allen) would have you believe he is the father of Speed Riggs, Benny’s other tobacco auctioneer. He seizes the formerla and flees to the latakia drying room. He bars the door, a natural song cue. But this time the music is the Toreador Song. Fred brought the house down by bellowing, “Richard, I implore! Open the door!”
But there is no need for Richard to open the door. Carmen has given him the wrong paper. The Allen formula is safe; the new Puffo is saved. It is a miracle of blends—dried seaweed wrapped in oil-skin with a sponge tip. To this one of Dr. Allen’s colleagues asks meaningfully, as if he hardly dared hope, “You mean—?” “Yes,” said Fred. “It’s the only cigarette you can smoke under water.”
* * *
There aren’t many occasions when radio rises to the hopes its pioneers had for it. But Mr. Allen, when is good, comes closer to the ideal in radio entertainment than any other performer. His operatic satires are witty, sharp and wonderfully contrived. Wisely, he uses melodies familiar to all and keeps his lyrics simple. In the field of radio humor, and its [sic] an uneven field with foolish, dilapidated scarecrows marking the ruts—Mr. Allen is, it seems to me, our finest artist. I hope he never retires.
* * *
A special accolade is in order for Shirley Booth. She should be on the Fred Allen show every week, and if there’s ever a good-sized vacancy in Allen’s Alley, I hope Fred sees fit to give her a lease. If you listen to Shirley with a script in hand, you realize the fine creative artistry of her humor. She can make the most prosaic, pass-me-the-salt kind of line outrageously funny.
The dialog leading up to “Carmen” last night had some deft Allen touches. Shirley gave Fred a brief sketch of her operatic background. Besides being chanteuse on the Weehawken Ferry, she told of spending two seasons with Phil Spitalny.
Fred: You sang with Spitalny?
Shirley: No, I was in charge of the girls who played the ‘cellos.
Fred: You coached the ‘cello players?
Shirley: No, after each program, I helped pull their legs back into shape.
When Phil began calling his show The Hour of Charm, Shirley quit. “I didn’t wanna make a liar outa Phil,” she explained.

CBS signed Booth in early 1948 and hoped to develop a sitcom for her. It did. The show was about a Brooklynese school teacher. It was called Our Miss Brooks. As Variety put it in its April 21st edition: “CBS and the comedienne couldn’t see eye to eye and board chairman William S. Paley...was unhappy over the original audition record that was cut, and troubles and temperaments apparently piled up at the second auditioning last week.”

Booth went back to Broadway and collected three Tonys, as well as an Oscar before knocking on the Baxters’ door in 1961, getting hired as Hazel and winning two Emmys in the process. Allen continued to be praised in the press even after his death in 1956.

The Show Must Go On

Fire is destroying Andy Panda’s piano but he is determined to finish Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu Opus 66.



Woody and effects animator Sid Pillet are a little late, but they put out the fire. It's a musical triumph!



La Verne Harding and Les Kline are the credited animators in Musical Moments from Chopin, released in February 1947. Ben Hardaway and Milt Schaffer provided the story, with Ted Saidenberg and Ed Rebner providing the piano music under the direction of Darrell Calker.

Only six Miniatures were made before Walter Lantz temporarily suspended operations. They all have something to enjoy; this one has the drunken horse on the barn rafters.

Octopopeye

An octopus becomes a weapon as Popeye and Bluto fight over an immobile treasure chest under water in Dizzy Divers (1935).

In maybe the most imaginative gag in the cartoon, which takes half a reel just to get to the treasure, Popeye punches the octopus (while muttering “puss” a lot) into a pinwheel, which rolls and picks up Bluto before crashing into a sunken a ship.



The octopus collapses in a heap and ends its acting career.



Willard Bowsky and Harold Walker are the credited animators in this ho-hum effort. Wimpy is wasted with very little to do. There are few real off-the-wall gags you expect from the Fleischers and there is reused punching animation.

Looking Forward — Except for Dinner

You can’t be bright and cheery all the time.

Jack Benny wasn’t.

He was reaching close to 80 in the early 1970s and seems to have been doing an awful lot of travelling. It had to have taken a toll. Witness this feature story from the Palm Beach Post of May 11, 1972. Jack has flown in for a convention appearance in Florida, and then had to fly to New York City for another performance. He seems particularly cranky—tired of “cheap” jokes, dismissive of his 23-year career on radio, basically telling Irving Fein to get lost when (and I would bet this wasn’t the first time) trying to get some food into him.

This isn’t the first time, by the way, Jack told reporters he didn’t want to think about what he did in radio. In this case it’s odd, considering a PBS special aired the same night as this story where he, George Burns, Edgar Bergen and others were interviewed about what made them successes on radio. But he went on the record saying he looked forward, not backward, in his career. Radio was backward in time.

It's Vintage Jack Benny
By SUSAN HIXON
Post Staff Writer
The invitations stated "black tie only'' and there stood Jack Benny wearing a navy blazer and a red-striped tie.
"It's my fault," the public relations man for the National Association of Chain Drug Stores convention said. "I forgot to tell you."
"If it's your fault, then I won't go change." Benny said. "I'll just make a joke about it when I go on tonight."
He walked in front of a full-length mirror at the Breakers Hotel.
"I don't look so bad." he said, turning around. "I know a joke," his manager said. "Tell them that if you had known it was formal you would have rented a tuxedo."
Benny didn't laugh. "Or you could tell them you couldn't afford one," someone else suggested.
Jack Benny had heard his own jokes before, and wasn't particularly amused.
"Actually, I have two tuxedos with me," he said, "but when I eat I always get food all over myself."
Benny was performing last night at the convention in Palm Beach, before flying to New York for a Friar's Club testimonial dinner for himself and comedian George Burns.
"George and I have been friends for 50 years," he said. "A dinner for both of us should be exciting."
It is hard to imagine Benny is 78. Only his hands showed his age.
"I've been in show business more than 60 years," he said. "And I think humor today is the same as yesterday and yesteryesterday and yester-yesteryesterday. What I've been doing the past 60 years has been the same thing, only I've gotten a little better about it."
He wasn't interested in the "nostalgia" theme of last night's entertainment or reminiscences about his old days in radio.
"If anyone tells me how good I used to be. I say thank you, but I don't care. What I'm interested in is my next special or my next show and how good that will be."
He started off into space. "Nostalgia," he snorted, "those were the days, my eye. Those were the days only when we were living them. These are the days."
"But that doesn't mean," he shrugged, "that I'm going to undress or be in a pornographic movie. I still don't believe in those things."
Benny's manager, worried about the time, said. "Mr. Benny, your meal is ready."
"I'm not hungry," Benny said, "I'd rather talk."
His manager retreated, but looked reproving.
"It just happens that I'm not hungry." Benny ("Now everyone call me Jack") repeated.
He talked about things that aren't funny, as well as those that are.
"There are certain things I won't joke about, " he said. “I don't like political jokes. Oh, I do a few, but I don't deprecate anyone."
He looked at his small audience of reporters to see if they were agreeing with him.
"What I think about politics has nothing to do with what the country thinks," he said.
He laughed. "I did do one joke about the primaries: I said all the money the candidates are spending is like spending money on a girl who hasn't said yes yet. His manager approached again. "You've got to get something to eat before you go on."
Benny shrugged his Benny shrug. "All right, but I'm not hungry."
A photographer stopped him. "Before you leave, could I have one of those classic Jack Benny poses?"
"What's a classic Jack Benny pose?" Jack Benny asked. And then he folded his arms and tilted his head and everyone said "That's it." "So that's a classic Benny," he smiled.

The McKimsons Go North

Golden Age directors and animators never got residuals for the cartoons they made, any more than 1940s newsreel narrators, trombonists in musical shorts, or uncredited supporting actors in the ten-minute Joe McDoakes comedies.

But a few of them lived long enough to make a bit of money when the limited-edition cel business took off in the late ‘80s. Some were hired to draw them, then travelled around the continent, meeting fans, talking with reporters and promoting their wares.

Tom and Chuck McKimson were among them. Their more well-known brother Bob didn’t have the chance; he died in 1977. (In the photo, the order is Bob, Tom, Chuck). Among the stops were the two major cities in Alberta.

The Calgary Herald interviewed them for its edition of October 23, 1994, where there was a bit of reminiscing.

Animators Draw on Rich Talent
By FRED HAESEKER
Animator Tom McKimson won't reveal his exact age, but he began his career as a trainee at the Disney studios in 1928.
“I'm over 39,” is all he'll say. “Older than you think.”
In Calgary over the weekend with his brother Charles -- also an animator -- to promote their limited-edition cels and drawings at a local gallery, McKimson looks back fondly to the golden age of movie cartoons.
There were three talented McKimson brothers, and Tom was hired by Disney along with his late brother Bob. They worked there for two years before moving on to a new cartoon studio founded by Romer Grey, the son of western novelist Zane Grey.
Around 1930 the Disney studios were producing the Silly Symphony cartoon series, in which the action on the screen was made to match the rhythm of a pre-recorded music track, reversing what had until then been the customary production sequence.
Disney was also pioneering the use of color in animation.
“Color was new then,” McKimson said.
“Disney at that time had an exclusive on the three-strip Technicolor process. Warner Bros., and the others weren't able to use it till later.”
Walt Disney is known in Hollywood history as a hard taskmaster, but McKimson just says he was “real great” to work for.
“I played polo with Walt later on,” he said.
Bob and Tom eventually moved from the Romer Grey studios to Warner Bros., where they were joined in 1937 by their younger brother Charles.
Warner Bros., was the studio that spawned the most distinctive cartoon characters of the '40s and '50s, among them Bugs Bunny, the Road Runner and Daffy Duck. The McKimsons personally were responsible for the bombastic rooster Foghorn J. Leghorn, the manic Mexican mouse Speedy Gonzales, the slobbering Tasmanian Devil and Tweety, the baby-voiced canary perpetually pursued by the slow-witted puddy tat Sylvester.
“At the storyboard sessions we'd all pitch in” said McKimson. “The whole studio was divided into several animation units. Each unit would consist of a director, four or five animators, four or five assistant animators and four or five ‘in-betweeners.’ Then came the painting and the inking.”
The actual story was created on the storyboards.
“We'd make rough sketches of the action till we got a good setup,” McKimson said.
The dialogue was pre-recorded, and the sound man would mark the animation sheets so that the animators could synchronize the speech, music and sound effects with their drawings.
In the 1930s, when the McKimsons began working there, the Warner Bros., studio was still located in the heart of Hollywood.
“It took up most of two or three blocks along Sunset Boulevard,” McKimson said. “The Hollywood Freeway now cuts through there.”
The animation units were housed in an old two-storey wooden building in a corner of Warner's live-action lot -- a building that became known as “Termite Terrace” when it was discovered to be infested with the insects.
Tom McKimson worked at Warner Bros., from 1932 to 1939 and again from 1942 to 1947 after putting in a stint producing training films for the U.S. armed forces. He took an “indefinitive [sic] leave of absence” in 1947 -- a leave that turned into a career of more than 30 years at Western Printing and Lithographing. There McKimson supervised a staff of more than 100 illustrating comic books, comic strips and coloring books that featured characters from Disney, Walter Lantz and Hanna-Barbera cartoons as well as Warner Bros.,' Looney Tunes.
Comic books featuring such live-action movie heroes as Tarzan, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers were also produced, with each being assigned to a specialist, McKimson said.
In recent years, Tom and Charles have been working on a book about the careers of all three McKimson brothers, but catering to a booming market in animation art has kept them very busy.
“We're travelling all the time,” said McKimson. “Last year we made 15 personal appearances, in New York, Denver, North Carolina, Seattle -- all over the place.”

Tom McKimson was a little more forthright to one of the Edmonton papers covering his visit. This was published two days earlier.

Cartoon Creators Still Laugh About Their Characters
By HELEN METELLA
Journal Entertainment Writer
Is there anyone raised on Saturday morning cartoons who doesn't break into a grin at the sound of Tweety's immortal line, “I tot I taw a puddy cat?”
Tom and Charles McKimson do, but for reasons different than yours or mine. The two brothers were animators at Warner Brothers studios during the golden age of cartoons.
In fact, Tom created the character of an adorable baby bird who mercilessly teases arch-enemy Sylvester the cat.
“But when Tom did the original model she [sic] was a pink, naked little bird,” chuckles his younger brother Charles.
“The censors wouldn't allow us to show a naked bird, so that's why they gave him feathers and colored him yellow.”
Despite being 87 and 85 years of age respectively, Tom and Charles McKimson clearly remember such anecdotal details of the cartoon era, an era whose artistic details have been largely lost to the junkyard.
Each second of a classic cartoon required the sketching and painting of 24 separate acetate cels, all meticulously done by hand. For a feature-length animated movie such as Snow White, that meant 300,000 individual cels.
The McKimsons personally produced thousands of cels to animate dozens of characters, many of which (Tasmanian Devil, Foghorn Leghorn, Speedy Gonzales and Sylvester Jr.) were created by their late brother Robert, who died in 1977.
However major studios such as Warners and Disney destroyed 95 per cent of these cels in the first 50 years of film animation's history. They didn't regard them as valuable original art and during the war years, they also needed to recycle the petroleum-based celluloid on which the images were painted, said Christina Van Dam, co-owner of the Edmonton gallery called The Art of Animation.
“It makes me just sick,” said Charles McKimson, who with his brothers, managed to save a great number of original drawings and cels.
Parts of that private collection will be on sale Sunday, when Charles and Tom appear at the gallery to sign Warner Brothers cels owned by local art connoisseurs.
The current boom in animation art began in 1984, when a former Disney animator named John Basmajian took 400 cels he'd preserved, to Christie's Auction House in New York City. The resulting excitement from buyers convinced both the studios and other private collectors that the curiosities they owned were worth big bucks.
Van Dam and her husband Christopher Reeves were in-the-know even earlier. The Edmonton natives began collecting cels in 1982, while they were living in Southern California, running a computer business. When they sold it a few years later, they began investing in earnest.
In 1992, the duo opened their first animation art gallery, here in Edmonton. Since then they've expanded to Calgary and Vancouver, with locations in Victoria, Kelowna and Winnipeg opening before the end of the year.
Annual sales are now over $4 million and the duo has ambitious plans for a 25-store franchise by the end of 1996.
An original production cel from a movie appreciates an average of 51 per cent a year, says Clay Stam, assistant manager at The Art of Animation.
“Two or three years ago you could have bought Der Fuhrer's Face (from the cartoon Donald Duck in Nutzi Land) for $4,200. Now it's $10,000.”
The world's most expensive cel -- a black and white Mickey Mouse -- recently sold at auction for an unbelievable $1.2 million.
There's nothing that pricey in the Edmonton gallery, but vintage cels (from the '30s, '40s and '50s) have tags of $15,000 and up and many are sold. Last week someone paid $29,000 for a cel of Snow White, which is possibly a bargain, considering less than 130 cels exist from that movie.
Stam says novice collectors should remember these guidelines when buying animation art:
* Original production cels were created for and used in the actual cartoon. They were hand-drawn by a team of animators (usually four or five) working to an individual director's interpretation of a character (which is why Bugs Bunny looks a bit different in cartoons directed by different people.) OPCs were then hand-painted by another set of technicians, usually on both sides of the cel. These are the most expensive cels to collect.
* Limited edition series cels were created by the studios after 1984. Using the original animator's drawings, they authorized another 200 to 500 pieces to be hand-painted, numbered and authenticated.
* Series cells are computer-generated reproductions produced by the studios after 1989. They are not hand-painted, although they are limited in number. They're the least expensive cels.
* The most valuable cels feature major cartoon characters (Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny). They should show full bodies, centred in the frame and with eyes open. Signatures of the directors and animators increase the value.

People still collect animation cels (real and reproduced) and drawings, though they’re perhaps not as hot as they were at one time. And, fortunately, a book on the McKimsons did come out in 2012 authored by Bob’s son Bob, Jr. By then, all the senior McKimsons were gone. Tom passed away in 1998, Chuck in 1999.

Willie's Jungle Mate

Hmmm. Yes, they’re there.



They’re there even in poorly drawn in-betweens.



Willie Whopper’s jungle princess has breasts. The lei doesn’t cover her up, like they do in most of that Betty Boop cartoon about Hawaii. Of course, a Betty-like designed seemed to be used for all the heroines in the Willie series.



The National Board of Review magazine rated this cartoon “family.” Maybe it’s for the Stepin Fetchit stand-in, the Kingfish dialect from Amos ‘n’ Andy, or the dice and Ubangi jokes. One theatre manager in South Carolina simply put it to the Motion Picture Herald: “A very poor cartoon,” though one in North Carolina cheered it as “a good comedy that pleased all who saw it.”

Bob Stokes and Norm Blackburn, two former Harman-Ising artists, are credited with animating this Iwerks short, Jungle Jitters, with Carl Stalling handling the score. Harman-Ising would soon be taking over the MGM release from the Iwerks studio on September 1, 1934. This cartoon was still in production on June 4th, according to the Hollywood Reporter, and released July 28th.

Dixieland Droopy Opening

Tex Avery loved opening a cartoon with a pan of a background with an overlay on top of it to give it a 3D effect. He did it at Warner Bros. (In A Wild Hare, he also has Elmer Fudd animated between the overlay and the background) and he carried on doing it at MGM. He did it in Dixieland Droopy, a 1954 release.

We can’t show you the effect in still photos because the background moves at a different speed as the foreground overlay, but this will give you an idea of how the cartoon opened, and the style of art employed. The fence and wrecks are on the overlay. Avery then moves the camera in on the background and dissolves into a painting of the home of our hero, John Pettybone (played by Droopy).



I really love the stylised backgrounds in this short. They’re by Joe Montell, who later went to John Sutherland, then Hanna-Barbara and then Jay Ward. He later wrote a somewhat autobiographical book on being a gay artist.

I suspect Ed Benedict drew the layouts, but he only got a credit on Avery’s last two MGM cartoons. Mike Lah, Grant Simmons and Walt Clinton are the credited animators. Uncredited is the narrator, Pee Wee Runt, played by blacklisted actor John Brown. His character’s name is a parody of Pee Wee Hunt, a Dixieland trombonist. Brown died three years after this cartoon was released at age 57.

Faking It On a Game Show

Contestants told they had to be excited when the camera was on. Hosts who didn’t care if the contestant won or lost.

Oh, how game shows aren’t what they appear on camera.

TV Key columnist Harvey Pack interviewed the great Bill Cullen at least four times between 1960 and 1970. Let’s bring you a pair of columns with Cullen telling some tales. First up is a piece from February 23, 1963 where he talks about the fakery—no, we don’t mean telling people what that trip to Rome costs—and how networks could be cheap when they wanted to be.

$557 Raise for Talent
By HARVEY PACK
Right after the war, around 1946, CBS radio carried a non-sponsored afternoon quiz show called "Winner Take All." A network staff announcer used to introduce the sustaining program by saying, "Sound your buzzer . . . (BUZZER), sound your bell (BELL) . . . it's time to play 'Winner Take All.' "
The program was produced by a couple of youngsters named Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, and the $43 a week announcer was a Pittsburgh boy named Bill Cullen. Cullen has been giving away prizes for Goodson-Todman ever since.
"The job was no big deal for me," explained the affable Cullen over lunch. "It was part of my staff job and, in addition to doing that every day, I handled band remotes and the other chores networks gave their announcers.
"Funny thing, at the end of the program I had to say the program was produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, and the next day I was under orders to reverse it to Bill Todman and Mark Goodson. They were names in those days, not an institutional trademark."
Then the regular emcee of "Winner Take All" was fired and CBS brought in a parade of semi-names to run the little quiz. After a few weeks, Goodson and Todman offered young Bill a shot and he did so well that he was permanently assigned to the program.
"This, too, was no bargain," said Bill with a smile. "Now I was doing 'Winner Take All' five days a week, plus all my other tasks for the same $43 a week. The show still wasn't sponsored, but I asked someone at CBS if they could get me an extra $10 or so for the added chores. The word came back . . . no more money but we'll try and eliminate your other assignments."
Bill worked the show under this arrangement for a while and then CBS suddenly sold the program to local sponsors on a participating basis, and the $43 a week announcer was told that his next weekly paycheck would contain an increase for "talent fee."
"I opened up the envelope to see how much more I was making and there it was . . . 'pay to the order of Bill Cullen, $600.' " Wow! Bill shook his head in disbelief as he recalled that check. "I stared at it for about an hour, and then I rushed out of the building, went to a bank and had it converted into green, negotiable coupons. Know what I did then? I walked over to Fifth Avenue, entered the fanciest leather goods store in New York, bought a wallet for $80, stuffed the other $520 into the wallet, and I left that store feeling every bit a millionaire."
Thanks to one of the most winning TV personalities in the business, that wallet has never really been empty. His Goodson-Todman association continued to be a perpetual good luck charm for all parties. He currently handles "The Price Is Right" for them and is a permanent panelist on one of their original properties, "I've Got a Secret."
"For a while all I had was 'I've Got a Secret' so I accepted a coast show called 'Place the Face,' even though it required me to fly to California once a week and return. "But I didn't regret the commuting," he explained, "because I did the beach bit on the coast. Also, and this is the most important, my announcer introduced me to his sister-in-law and I married her."
After getting his share of sunshine and latching on to a lovely wife, Bill took a job on local New York radio, and the commuting was over. "I had to be at the studio at 6 a.m. so the first few years of marriage I had my bride up at 5 to make me breakfast. I stayed with it because it was quite lucrative, but once 'The Price is Right' clicked I knew I'd have to find an out and slow myself down," said Bill.
Contestants Coached
Cullen figured "The Price Is Right" would last about 13 weeks and then be dropped because, as he put it, "People will get tired of seeing the same prizes." He was wrong. The "gimmick" of bonus extras plus the other tricks that Goodson-Todman shows always seem to invent has made the game, sometimes called "What Price Greed," a TV standard.
Many viewers of the show have often wondered why a contestant who lives in the middle of the Mojave desert screams, "I'd just love that, Bill" when a prize they cannot possibly use, like a boat, appears on the turntable.
Bill explained this animated enthusiasm. "We spend a lot of money for those prizes, and it would look terrible if the contestants made a crack about not having any possible use for 'that junk.' Actually, we tell them to act delighted . . . ooh and aah . . . and jump with joy when they land a bonus. The contestants are really nice people, and very good sports."
Bill, his wife and that $80 wallet are now in Florida enjoying a three week vacation just like winners on "The Price Is Right."

Now, to a column from March 1, 1965. You think game show hosts are phoney? It’s because they are, or at least some of them, according to Mr. Cullen. I must admit I’m puzzled, but maybe I’m just different. I’ve given away stuff on the air (including cash into the four figures), and I don’t want to see someone be wrong and lose. If you’ll pardon the poor grammar, I can’t picture not hoping someone will guess all six answers and win the $10,000 Pyramid. And Cullen tells a story that must be about Jack Barry.

They Call Bill Cullen A Good Luck Charm
By HARVEY PACK
NEW YORK — I always seem to run into Bill Cullen just as he's about to embark on his annual winter vacation and since the affable emcee of "The Price Is Right" and panelist on “I’ve Got a Secret” always has a few comments to make on the lucrative part of the TV business where he is fast becoming the grand old man, I broke bread with him before he and his lovely wile headed south.
"People call me a good luck charm because my two current jobs, 'Secret' and 'Price' have been on the air a combined total of over twenty years," began Bill. “It comes to about 12½ for ‘Secret,’ and the balance for ‘Price.’ I like the reputation as a guy whose very presence insures success, but I've been on many a 13-week wonder and I'd mention their names but even 'I've Got a Secret.'
Cullen has been employed almost continuously by Goodson-Todman since, as a staff announcer at CBS radio, he took over the quiz-master role on their first creation, "Winner Take All." I asked him what one characteristic an announcer needs if he hopes to jump out of the confines of a “voice-over” job and join the well-paid jovial joes who happily say hello to contestants on TV's many game shows.
“Brashness is the key,” said Bill after a minute's thought. "I know a lot of the boys may appear to be humble and shy, but you can bet your bottom dollar it's an act. I've met a lot of capable announcers who've wanted to try their hand at emceeing a game show, but when we've offered them the opportunity they've backed away. And in every case it's been because they lacked the necessary brashness to face a studio audience and a group of contestants."
Part of The Act
On the old quiz shows, according to Bill, the quizmaster had to be a bit of an actor. Hal March, Cullen said, best exemplified this breed because March could sweat it out with the poor contestant who was searching for an answer and make the viewer think he was one hundred per cent on the side of the contestant. “I never did a big money quiz show,” added Bill, “and I was offered plenty of them. The reason was quite simple. I knew I wouldn't care whether a guy won or lost and I wasn’t ready to put on an act. Hal March probably did care, but it was the way he did it that made him a top quizmaster.”
Cullen recalled the classic story of a quiz emcee who was rooting against the contestant. It seems this emcee was a partner in the program and he had already received his post-scandal cancellation when he went on the air with his final show, which included a $50,000 dollar question for some carry-over contestant. Now, Cullen explained, as a partner in the show that 50 grand, if won, would come right out of our hero’s pocket which would have been great for the ratings if the show had been renewed but now represented a potential total loss.
The emcee asked the question and waited breathlessly, for the answer which was given almost immediately by the confident contestant. There was a pause while the audience waited to hear if the expert had scored and was about to be awarded the 50 big ones. Well, concluded Cullen, the answer had been incorrect and the emcee, unable to contain himself, laughed right in the poor’s man’s face while telling him he was wrong. “It was beautiful,” summarized Bill, “Those of us who understood the financial background of the situation viewed it like a Charles Addams cartoon.”
The brash Mr. Cullen tried his hand at comedy writing before hitting the mother lode with Goodson-Todman and he frankly admits he was anything but funny. “Goody kept me on and that pay-check was there every week. It was stealing and if Goody Ace were to make an issue about it today I'd return every cent to him.”