Another Looney Tunes Background Mystery

Little Kitty doesn’t want to go out in front of the classroom to recite “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and gets shoved onto the makeshift stage in the Merrie Melodies short I Haven't Got a Hat.



Wait a minute! There’s a phone number on that blackboard. Whose number is GR 7358? It’s someone who was never credited in a Warner Bros. cartoon—the person who likely painted the background and left his number on it. The number belongs to Griff Jay.

Jay was never credited because no one painting backgrounds got their name on the screen until the mid-‘40s. So you’ve never seen Art Loomer’s name, or Peter Gaenger’s, or Nic Gibson’s, or a bunch of others. We gave a biography of Jay in this mouldy old post. Jay might appreciate the mould. Chuck Jones once told interviewer Greg Ford “In the first few pictures I worked on, we used a man by the name of Griff Jay, who was an old newspaper cartoonist—and he did what we called ‘moldy prune’ backgrounds. Everyone used the same type of thing back then.”

Both Griff and his father Will S. Jay were newspaper men. He grew up in Nebraska and was a cartoonist on the Lincoln Journal when he was married in 1905. The new couple spent most of 1907 in Spokane. By 1912, Griff drew illustrations for the Kansas City Post in an era before artwork gave way to photos. However, he was working in the ad department of the Jones dry good store in Kansas City in 1909 when his brother Merwin shot and killed himself. Death seems to have followed the poor man. Both his father and mother died (separately) at his home and his wife passed away at their residence in August 1924. By October that year, he not only was living in Los Angeles, he had remarried.

It’s unclear when he got into animation. In 1926, he was an artist for the Wurlitzer Company, later had his own business in the Metropolitan Theatre building and then worked for commercial artist S. James Marsh, apparently for a year. In 1933, the City Directory records his occupation as “salesman” but in 1934, he’s an artist once again until 1936 where he’s listed as “writer, Columbia Pictures Corp.” Two years later, he’s back to being an “artist,” so it could be he worked at Schlesinger’s, went to Columbia for the better part of two years, and returned. In 1939, the Directory shows no occupation and the following year, he had set up an art studio in his home.

Jay died in 1951 and you can read his Los Angeles Times obit to the right. Jones may not have been impressed with Jay’s style, but someone in the “Mid West Musician” of Kansas City wrote in 1912: “Lovers of art will, without doubt, take immediate notice of the beautiful design upon the front page of our cover and some perhaps will wonder who ‘Griff’ Jay, the designer, is. Mr. Jay is one of the staff of high class artists employed by the Kansas City Post and is considered one of the most original and creative geniuses among the craft in the west. A careful inspection of his study for the ‘Mid-West’ cover will reveal a wealth of detail work seldom bestowed even on such high class magazines as ours.”

Today's 1939 Radio Reference

A couple of related radio references highlight the ho-hum Hardaway/Dalton effort Hobo Gadget Band, released by Warner Bros. in1939.

Hobos are kicked off a train and slide down an embankment. Note the old-style radio station transmitter in the background of the frame below.



Here’s a take. I’ve left out the in-between drawing; this is just the extreme.



The sign is a parody of the thrice-weekly Uncle Ezra’s Radio Station, broadcast from “the powerful little five-watter down in Rosedale.” The NBC Red show was sponsored by Alka Selzer. Earlier in the cartoon, a hobo takes some “soda fizz” and says “just listen to it fizz,” which was the Alka Selzer radio slogan at the time.



Pinto Colvig supplies some voices here; he was writing for Warners in between gigs at Disney and Fleischer. Dick Bickenbach is the credited animator, while Jack Miller was given the story credit. Herman Cohen , Rod Scribner and Gil Turner were in the unit at the time.

Mad Cat

“I was going mad, insane, out of my head, cracking up, crazy, cuckoo!” says the tormented cat to himself, and the realises it’s the cuckoo clock in the house that’s turned him into a wreck.



From Tex Avery's The Cuckoo Clock (1950), animated by Grant Simmons, Mike Lah and Walt Clinton, with backgrounds by Johnny Johnsen.

$64,000 Feldon

Resting prone on a tiger-skin rug and purring about some hair product isn’t the accepted model to make your TV career take off.

Unless you’re Barbara Feldon.

She had been making commercials for Revlon in the 1960s when one featuring the aforementioned animal rug routine caught everyone’s attention—more for Feldon than the product. The next thing she knew, she had been cast as Agent 99 in Get Smart, one of the smartest TV shows of the mid-‘60s.

Like any bonefide actor, Feldon struggled for a while. Here’s a feature story from the Associated Press which hit the wire June 27, 1965. She had already been cast as the reality base of the show opposite Don Adams.

Aspiring Actress Finds Lots Can Happen On Tigerskin Rug
By Cynthia Lowry
AP Television-Radio Writer
NEW YORK (AP)—Barbara Feldon, who was thoroughly discouraged knocking on the front door of the acting profession, has sneaked in by the service entrance. All pretty much to her surprise.
Pretty, dark-haired Miss Feldon may currently be seen stretched out on a tigerskin rug, indulging in sexy growling and urging males to race to the nearest store and buy a certain brand of gentlemen's toiletries. It is a commercial which has caused considerable comment pro and con, largely from ladies. This pleases the sponsor—so much in fact, that Miss Feldon and her intimate, slightly tongue-in-cheek way with a sales talk is nailed down to a long exclusive commercial contact.
This in no way interferes with her budding career—at last—as an actress. She has been signed as a regular in NBC's forthcoming "Get Smart," a fall comedy series which spoofs the current rash of secret agent books, movies and television shows.
The costar assignment is only the last in a series of unexpected events that have dropped like gentle rain on Barbara since she left her native Pittsburgh for the big city in quest of a Broadway career.
Jobs were scarce when Barbara came to New York from her native Pittsburgh, but she picked up a job in the once - famous "Copa line," a nightclub famous for the pretty girls in its chorus.
This led to a showgirl part in the Beatrice Lillie revival of the "Ziegfeld Follies," which in turn led to a spot as a contestant on "The $64,000 Question." Barbara—expert on Shakespeare—survived almost three months and won $64,000 before she fell.
"People didn't think of her as an actress but as a freakish sort of thing," recalls her husband, then her best beau. She had offers for personal appearances in Las Vegas, but it blew her chances for a Broadway show because it had—well, destroyed her actress image. So she just sort of went into retirement. And she still hates to talk about it."
After a period of recovery she tentatively resumed her quest for acting jobs.
"The best I ever had were small parts in off-Broadway flops," she mourned. "And I found going around and sitting in sleazy offices was just too awful. I decided to give it up."
Barbara, nee Hall, meanwhile had met and married Lucien Feldon, a young fellow from Antwerp, Belgium, who was a successful but fed-up young advertising executive.
They chucked their respective careers and started a downtown art gallery, handling only abstract expressionist art. It was in a loft so they lived there as well.
"Our artists were interesting, but they were interested in strong social protest," she explained. "So most of their work was pretty strong meat for living room walls. Nothing sold."
For two years, the Feldons endured a very thin time in their Greenwich village loft. It was not all had: Barbara's weight dropped from a husky 145 pounds to a svelte 120—just right for cameras. Finally, hungry Lucien decided that the workaday world wasn't so bad after all and returned uptown as a representative of photographers—the kind that take artistic, unusual shots for the slick-paper women's magazines.
Then, at a party, Barbara met Gillis McGill, one of the leading photographers' models, who was immediately struck by Barbara's photographic potential.
"I didn't believe her," she recalled. "I had only been happy-snapped before—nothing like the things they do in a good studio—and looked awful. But Gillis called an agency, they got me a Job and all of a sudden I decided I could forget acting forever."
Barbara had always thought modeling "uncreative," but she learned about wearing clothes and applying makeup as a house model for the fashion designer Pauline Trigere. Then after six months she moved on to being a freelance photographer's model.
"I discovered high fashion modeling was fascinating," she continued. "Travel all over the world, and lots of money."
Eventually she was approached about a TV commercial.
"Nonsense," said Miss Feldon. "When I was acting, a woman in an agency told me that I'd never be able to sell a thing—that my delivery was too intense and too sexy."
The first offer was to sell a deodorant, and she tried it.
"I memorized the lines," she said. "That freed me from the cue cards. Then we improvised—with a bath towel. And it was the single, most valuable experience I've ever had."
It was a wildly successful commercial and kicked her off on a new tangent. She was signed by the cosmetics house. Then she decided she wanted to do something else in her spare time—panel shows, maybe.
"Nobody would take a chance on me, but I got a nervous small walk-on in an episode of 'East Side, West Side' about a year ago. That opened some doors. Then I got on 'Missing Links,' and stayed a year."
Last season she played guest roles in five or six TV series, including one as a funny, slightly nutty girl detective in "Mr. Broadway." That role may be the one happy circumstance of the whole, soon-canceled series. It led directly to "Get Smart" and the regular part. "Get Smart" is widely rumored to be next season's probable big hit.
"I'll be spending a lot of time in Hollywood, so I'm going to take a small apartment," she said. "I'm going to take my cat out with me for company. And my husband promises he'll fly out almost every weekend when I'm working.
"It does seem to be the total of a series of small coincidences, doesn't it?" she remarked.

What!?! Barbara Feldon was on a scandalised quiz show?

Yes, it’s true. She won $64,000 on June 25, 1957 (personality-rich Ed Sullivan was hosting that night). Three weeks later, she lost the $128,000 question. Her journey of wealth was covered by the wire services and newspaper columnists talked about it, accompanied by pictures of her in her show-girl outfit.

By mid-August 1958, federal investigators started sniffing around about claims of quiz show contestants being given answers in advance and told to gin up the suspense part of the game. The investigators started talking to winners. Let’s pick up Barbara Feldon’s story from the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, October 16, 1959.

Barbara Hall, City's Lone $64,000 Winner, Clams Up
By ARNOLD ZEITLIN
Barbara Hall, former Ziegfeld Follies show girl who became Pittsburgh's lone $64,000 winner, has clammed up for the duration.
She said yesterday in New York:
"I don't want to spend any time in Washington . . . I'm trying to start a career in New York." She was referring to reports Congressional investigators would subpena "The $64,000 Question" winners in connection with the examination of rigged television quizzes. She hasn't heard from from Congressional process servers.
BARBARA, 26, tall, brunette, almond-eyed lovely, won $64,000 for answering questions about Shakespeare in June, 1957. A Carnegie Tech grad, she is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. R. D. Hall Jr. Said Barbara:
"I don't want to say anything for the newspapers. I think they are giving the stories too much space."
Barbara since has married Lucien Feldon, former Belgian pilot. They recently opened an art gallery in Greenwich Village. They plan to exhibit works of art at the Pittsburgh Playhouse around Thanksgiving.
After she collected her money, Barbara said:
"I was only an average Shakespeare student in college—C plusses. But I studied 14 hours a day for this quiz. Anyone could have done it."
First time this writer met Barbara—shortly before it was announced she would appear on the quiz show—she was clutching a paperback edition of the Bard's "King Lear." She also mentioned at the time she was "scared to death" of classics.
SHE APPEARED ON the show after a magazine story mentioned she scored 100 per cent in an intelligence test given to six show girls In the 1957 Ziegfeld Follies. Entertainment Productions Inc., producers of the quiz, booked her.
Barbara wants to be a serious actress. After the Follies she appeared in a play that folded before it reached Broadway. Her booking agency now is trying to get her a niche as a television commercial hostess.
Said Barbara: "I'm not holding my breath."

Did she cheat? She told syndicated columnist Dick Kleiner in 1965: “The scandal didn’t rub off on me. It was more on ‘Twenty-One’ than ‘The $64,000 Question,’ anyhow. My friends used to joke about it, they would tease me about getting the answers in advance. It was all joking. But sometimes there is seriousness behind joking.”

That doesn’t quite answer the question. Maybe we should get Agent 99 on the case.

Mice on an Endless Move

Paul Terry was sure obsessed with two things in the early sound days—mice and cycles. He’s littered Club Sandwich with them.

The year is 1931 and the Terrytoons studio is churning out a cartoon every two weeks, so every cycle helps. Here are two from back-to-back scenes. The first one is ten drawings. Note how the mice at the top of the stairs and the once with the swords don’t move.


This cycle is 13 drawings and it’s slower than in the cartoon. There were some early Terrytoons which included a scene with an interesting layout and this is one of them. How high is that house anyway?


The cartoon also features mechanical horses and a skeleton donkey. Oh, and Farmer Al Falfa being dragged off into the distance as the proceedings end.

Opening Night Kiss

The great thing about the Fleischer cartoons was something unexpectedly coming to life and pulling off some odd gag.

I wish it happened more in the Van Beuren cartoons, but there’s an example in Opening Night, the 1933 debut short for Cubby Bear. A lion is playing a harp (yes, it’s a piano on the soundtrack) with a decorate head. After the harpist’s almost solo (there’s a violin in the background, too), the head stretches out to kiss him. G’wan!



Gene Rodemich gets the only credit, for “synchronization.”

Script Helper to the Star

Several members of Jack Benny’s staff would show up on his radio show and one of them actually made the jump to television.

Jeanette Eymann was the show’s script assistant starting sometime in the mid-‘40s. You could tell she wasn’t a radio actress, but she read her small parts effectively and got laughs.

A script assistant, among other things, notes the changes in the script made during writing sessions and ensures the revisions get to the cast and crew.

She was originally from Illinois and the local paper in Bloomington wrote about her and her career in show biz, and published the pictures you see below. It appeared in the edition of December 15, 1963.

Script Secretary Gives Jack Benny Full Marks--He's Great, She Says
By LOLITA DRIVER
Comedian Jack Benny is "just great" in the opinion of a former Twin Citian who has been his script secretary for 18 years.
"I wouldn't have been with him this long otherwise," says Jeanette Eymann Barnes, Pontiac-born and ISNU-educated.
Jeanette, now living in Van Nuys, Calif., with her husband Kenneth, and his two sons, 9 and 12, says the comedian is even-tempered and not the temperamentalist he might have a right to be.
SHE HAS BEEN tapped several times to appear on his shows four altogether this year. "I've been a nurse so many times I'm type-cast as one," she said in a telephone conversation from her office in Beverly Hills.
In a recent Robinson Crusoe sequence in the Benny Show, though, Jeanette was the girl in the library.
A 1941 graduate of ISNU where she majored in art, speech and English, Jeanette taught school in Highland and Galesburg before moving to California 20 years ago. She answered a blind ad as a secretary to Jack Benny's producer and got the job after working as associate producer ("glorified term for secretary to the producer") for the Amos and Andy Show.
Jeanette's five-day working week runs from 9:30 in the morning till around 3:30 or 4, "when the writers usually quit for the day." She does a lot of her typing at home. Since she appears as an actor in some of the Benny Shows, she holds membership in the Screen Actors Guild.
THE BENNY company, J and M Productions (Jack Benny and Mary Livingston), which is at 9908 Santa Monica Blvd. in Beverly Hills, ground out 13 of this year's shows last summer and had five or six more to do to carry the show through April, Mrs. Barnes said last week. The ReVue Films are produced in Universal City.
In radio days, Jeanette subbed for Mary Livingston on the shows, standing in for Mary who had earlier taped her lines. Miss Livingston disliked appearing on the radio shows in person, Miss Eymann says.
Mrs. Barnes describes herself as "five feet, 4 inches tall, weighing 112 pounds, with dark hair and glasses," and Mr. Benny as "blue-eyed, about five feet 10, no toupee and 69 or 70 next February."
Jeanette lived in a rooming house near the ISNU campus while in school here, and friends here recall that she referred to herself as "the genius" in those days. She still has that sense of humor, the telephone conversation revealed.
She also worked briefly for State Farm Insurance while living here.
THE BARNESES installed a pool at their home last summer and are fond of California. Mr. Barnes is associated with Lockheed Aircraft., Her mother, Mrs. Joe Eymann of Pontiac, who usually spends her winters in California, is out there now in an apartment near Jeanette. Jeanette's brother, Dale, who is also remembered here, is in the public school system in Los Angeles, and another brother, Kenneth, is in Minneapolis.
A great-aunt, Mrs. John B. Eymann, also lives in Pontiac.

Jeanette was born December 5, 1919 and died April 14, 2012 in Castaic, California.

Playhouse's Ford Dog

Some of the cleverest and best-looking animation in the 1950s was on TV commercials.

There were top-flight small houses on both coasts where a number of animators, layout artists and background painters took refuge from the major theatrical cartoon studios.

The commercials were hits, and well known to TV viewers of that era.

Here’s one example that was profiled in the June 1959 edition of American Cinematographer. It’s a shame the photos are low resolution, but they’re the first time I can recall seeing pictures of Chris Jenkyns (ex Sutherland, later of Jay Ward), Sterling Sturtevant (ex-UPA) and Bill Higgins (ex-MGM and Sutherland).

Note: Mike Kazaleh points out that Sterling Sturtevant is not in the second picture. It's actually Ade Woolery, who owned the studio.

THE TELEVISION COMMERCIAL EVERYBODY IS TALKING ABOUT
...and how it was produced
By GEORGE W. WOOLERY

It started as a gag, according to Bill Melendez, director for Playhouse Pictures, producers of television film commercials in Hollywood. “When Tom de Paolo of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency asked us for some new ideas for the TV spot campaign of the Ford Dealers of Southern California, we worked up one or two story boards to submit to the agency. Then, in somewhat of a brain-storming fashion, we hit upon our ‘Thinking Dog’ as a gag. We liked it, sketched it out, and sent it to de Paolo along with the others for a chuckle.”

Two days later, Playhouse Pictures received the word that the choice had been made. It was the “Dog.” And that was the beginning of the one television commercial everybody is talking about.

Playhouse has created and produced commercials for the Ford Motor Company for the past five years, ever since the popular “IT’S a FORD!” commercial—probably the only other spot that has created as much comment for the company. But aside from the fact that the “Dog” was the most talked about commercial locally, it was not destined for greater exposure until the news of its success spread to other branches of the J. Walter Thompson agency that represent local Ford Dealers associations. In this manner, it caught on exactly like its predecessor of five years ago, and has zoomed to national prominence.

Within two weeks after its debut, the agency was besieged with requests for prints for use in San Francisco, Salt Lake, Seattle, Boston, Pittsburgh and other cities. It was shown nationally on the Ford Show, NBC-TV, and is being considered by the New York office of J. Walter Thompson for showing on an expanded schedule.

The success of this 20-second spot led immediately to its characterization in other media. The Dog has appeared in direct mail circulars, radio spot announcements, newspaper ads, posters for Ford Dealers’ show rooms, and 35mm prints have been made of the spot for showing in Drive-In theaters in the San Jose-San Francisco area. Doggy banks have been ordered by Ford Dealers as a give-away item for the kiddies. In fact, the commercial sparked a whole new campaign which will feature the Dog character in subsequent spots.

For those who may not have seen the commercial, it opens with a dog dusting a Ford and being queried by an off-stage voice. John Hiestand is the announcer; Hugh Douglas the voice of the Dog. The dialogue goes like this:

Announcer: “Ah, you there. What are you doing?”
Dog: “I’m dusting a Ford.”
Announcer: “Oh, are you a Ford owner?”
Dog: “No. I’m a dog.”
Announcer: “Do you think everyone should be a dog?”
Dog: “Well, that’s something everyone should decide for themselves . . . but I do think everyone should be a Ford owner, don’t you?”
The dog then enters the car and drives off.

Much of the credit for the commercial’s success is due to the J. Walter Thompson agency and to the agency’s Tom de Paolo who sold the idea to the Ford Dealers. For they had faith enough in the spot to purchase a saturation campaign in prime time to exploit the commercial.

The artis[t]ic and creative credit goes to Playhouse Pictures’ director Bill Melendez; Sterling Sturtevant, for layout and design; and to Chris Jenkyns and Ed Levitt, story and story sketch.

Including time for story development, planning and final approval, it took eight weeks to produce the 20-second spot. A variety of production problems arose during its animation and shooting. The first 300 drawings that went to make up the commercial were discarded after the pencil test, because the dog looked more like a porcupine than the canine that was desired. More drawings ensued, and eventually a character was conceived that animated more readily and looked more like the shaggy dog the production staff had in mind.

After it was animated, Melendez decided that the picture had to be entirely reanimated to develop more subtle and funny movements for the dog to better fit the voice on the sound track. So, another 300 drawings were discarded; and with air time already purchased for the commercial and the date drawing dangerously near, a new technique was tried to save valuable production time.

This time the dog was animated with pencil directly on frosted cels, thereby saving the time that would be required for inking in the conventional animation method. However, the dog had to be painted on the reverse side of the cels in order to appear as a solid figure against the Ford in the background, so this stage could not be skipped.

After the third set of 300 cels were checked and arranged in sequence by the scene checker, cameraman Allan Childs took about six hours to shoot the finished production, not counting eight hours of pre-production camerawork for pencil takes and changes. The production schedule had been met, and 16mm prints were ordered and delivered on March 21st for the air date deadline of March 23rd.

Perhaps the most difficult problem of all in the production of the commercial, was the search for the Dog’s voice. It had been earlier decided that the Dog’s voice had to be different, yet not irritating or rasping, and not imitating numerous voices of other cartoon dogs —rather, a welcome visitor to the family living room for its client, Ford.

Over sixteen well known character-voice actors were interviewed and auditioned. Hugh Douglas, CBS staff announcer, was chosen to give voice to the dog. This has led to casting him in a number of other commercials, and as the voice of a dog in an upcoming motion picture feature by Hal Wallis. John “Bud” Hiestand was cast as the offstage announcer who queries the dog. A cartoon character has since been developed for him that is being used in the sequel spots that are to follow the original “Thinking Dog” commercial.

The Ford Dog has skyrocketed Playhouse Pictures into national prominence. The studio, which was founded in 1952 by Adrian Woolery, a former partner at UPA, is now ranked one of the top five producers of animated commercials for television. But “Ade” Woolery is the first to point with pride to his talented staff. Almost all of them received their training in major studio cartoon departments. Sterling Sturtevant, layout and design for the dog, did the same work for the Oscar-winning animated cartoon “The Day Magoo Flew” at UPA. Chris Jenkyns was the story originator of the “John and Marsha” Snowdrift commercial. And Bill Melendez was nominated in 1958 for the highest award bestowed by the National Society of Art Directors.

All have worked on the many award-winning commercials Playhouse has turned out in the past, including the Gold Medal winner at this year’s Los Angeles Art Directors Club Exhibit, “Energetically Yours,” a color industrial film designed by Ronald Searle, which was produced for Transfilm and the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. In all. Playhouse has been the recipient of six gold medals for its commercials, ten other first place awards, and over 40 certificates of merit or honorable mention prizes during its six years of operation. The studio has produced over 2,000 animated television commercials, business and entertainment films, since its founding.

Has the Ford Dog spot established a trend? In satirization perhaps, but more important, it has increased the value and prestige of the production studio as a story consultant for television commercials. Rare indeed are the times when a studio has the opportunity to lend an assist in a large campaign such as this. But it is in the field of story and story ideas that more studios are specializing in creating television commercials and utilizing the drawing wealth of experienced talent in the Hollywood entertainment field.

TV viewers throughout the country will he seeing more of the Ford Dog. A 20-second animated sequel now being televised in Southern California, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada, features for the first time an animated cartoon character along with the shaggy mutt. The dialogue in the sequel runs like this:

Man: “Sit Up! ... Roll Over! . . . Speak!”
Dog: “Ford, Ford, FORD.”
Man: “No . . . say. Bow, Wow, Wow!”
Dog: “Oh . . . Ford, Ford, FORD.”
Man: “Look . . . Why can’t you say, Bow, Wow, Wow! like other dogs?”
Dog: “My mother came from Detroit.”
Man: (Resigned) “See your Ford, Ford, FORD dealer, today.”

Judging by its reception, this spot, too, will probably be seen nationally in the footsteps of its predecessor, for it generates a whole new series of gags, speculating on the exact ancestry of the popular Ford “Thinking Dog.” ■

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.