Truth is Stranger Than Cartoons

Friz Freleng used Tex Avery’s format and a few of his standard gags in his spot-gag short Sports Chumpions.

He also borrowed Tex’s name.



What’s interesting about “Memorial” is, when this cartoon was released on August 16, 1941, Tex was pretty much gone from Warner Bros. He was under suspension after he and Leon Schlesinger argued about a short, and was hired at MGM in September.

Considering how long it takes to draw, shoot and ship a cartoon to New York for distribution, it’s likely Avery was still at the studio when this background was made, but it’s an interesting coincidence.

Fans of “Monotonous, isn’t it?” and “Mmmm...could be!” will see those gags coming miles away. Mike Maltese wrote the cartoon. My wild guess is Lenard Kester is responsible for this background drawing.

Dispelling the Benny Myths

Jack Benny was a great actor. People listened to his radio show and some of them believed it was a documentary, the real life Jack Benny.

It’s silly. But some deluded themselves into believing what they were listening to what was happening in Benny’s life. Jack gave who-knows-how-many interviews where he had to spell out that what was on the air involved a fictional version of him.

That’s how a feature profile of Jack started out in the October 1947 issue of Cosmopolitan. It’s lengthy so we’re going to cut it in half and post the second part next week. This part may have the longest description of lighting cigar in history.

The Fiddler From Waukegan
This will come as a shock to many of his listeners, but Jack Benny in real life isn’t a tightwad. As a matter of fact, he never lets anybody else pick up the check. Here is a complete and entertaining study of one of the most popular comedians of our time
By MAURICE ZOLOTOW
Jack Benny never ceases to be perplexed by the fact that many of the twenty-five million people who listen to his Sunday evening radio program take its improbable happenings with more than a grain of salt. Last year a lawyer in Cleveland wrote Benny complaining because he paid Rochester, his valet, so little money. Benny laughed at the letter and ignored it. The lawyer sent more letters, accusing Benny of white chauvinism, antilabor tendencies, reactionary ideas and enmity toward the common man. When the lawyer started writing to Rochester, too, Benny was stung into making a reply.
“Please stop writing these foolish letters,” he told the lawyer. “I only hope that you’re making in one year what Rochester makes in a month.”
Rochester, as a matter of fact, makes two thousand dollars a week for an appearance of about three minutes on the Benny show. He lives in a fifteen-room house in southwest Los Angeles. He has three servants, two cars, a breeding farm and a racing stable.
On his radio program, Benny refers to the Ronald Colmans as his next-door neighbors. He drives an ancient Maxwell automobile and forces Dennis Day to mow his lawn, as well as sing on the program, for eight dollars a week. He represents himself as a tight, grasping show-off who is constantly being exposed and humiliated and ridiculed by Mary Livingston, Phil Harris, Don Wilson and other members of his cast. They make sneering references to his baldness and his anemia.
But Benny often has to stop and explain, sometimes even to his intimate friends, that the Colmans in real life live about eight blocks away from him. His next-door neighbors are actually a couple named La Chappelle who are not moving-picture actors. His lawn is mowed by a gardener named William Holden. He drives a maroon Cadillac convertible. He has a receding hairline, but he is not bald. He is not sickly.
And Benny is not a pinchpenny. He pays his actors and writers the highest salaries in radio. He gives gifts lavishly and supports a horde of relatives and down-at-the-heel vaudeville actors. He is a heavy tipper. His wife—the Mary Livingston of the radio show—is one of the smartest dressed and most generously jeweled women in Hollywood. He never allows anybody else at his table in a night club to pick up the check.
By submitting himself to such public abasement and embarrassment every Sunday at seven o’clock (Eastern Standard Time) over 161 stations of the National Broadcasting Company, it would seem that Jack Benny has an almost neurotic urge to be derided on a mass scale. A psychiatrist might find this mania an interesting case of psychopathic compulsion.
Jack Benny, however, is as psychopathic as a fox. Since 1932, his willingness to undergo these weekly half hours of public humiliation has grossed for him about ten million dollars. While almost all the great names of radio in the early 1930’s have drifted into obscurity, Jack Benny still remains steadily at the top of the Hooper ratings, which measure the number of listeners for every network show. He is usually in first, second, third or fourth place on the list, battling it out with Bob Hope, Fred Allen, Fibber McGee and Molly, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.
In May, 1947, Benny made his first theater appearance in ten years, a vaudeville engagement at a Chicago movie house. In one week he grossed $113,466, setting an all-time record and beating by twenty thousand dollars previous records established by Danny Kaye and Frank Sinatra, two Johnny-come-latelies who are the hottest box-office attractions of our time.
So there is a method in Benny’s mania. Still he can’t quit understand why his listeners mistake the carefully rehearsed realistic effects of his show for true facts in real life.
“If I was really such a skunk on my program, he says, “would I broadcast it to the whole world? How am I supposed to get laughs. Should I be a spendthrift?” Then he explains, “The humor of my program is this. I’m a big shot, see? I’m fast talking. I’m a smart guy. I’m boasting about how marvelous I am. I’m a marvelous lover. I’m a marvelous fiddle player. Then, five minutes after I start shooting my mouth off, my cast makes a schmo out of me. Wherever I go, I get into trouble for no good reason at all.
On a recent program, Jack Benny goes to a ticket window at the Union Station and says that he is taking the Chief to Chicago, and he wants to know if the clerk at this window is validating tickets. “What,” snarls the clerk, “do you think I’m doing with this rubber stamp—voting for Hoover?” Benny still wants his tickets validated and the clerk, a character named Nelson who appears in many guises on the Benny program, continues to frustrate this perfectly reasonable request. In the midst of the argument, a man comes to the window and wants to know if the train on track eight is going to Pasadena, Anaheim and Glocca Morra. Nelson beams genially and says that it certainly does. The man thereupon inquires how are things in Glocca Morra and is the little brook still leaping there and does it still run down to Donney Cove, through Killey-beggs, Kilkerry and Kildair. To these questions, Nelson courteously replies while Benny quietly goes out of his mind.
“It’s difficult,” remarks Benny thoughtfully, “to analyze why a situation like this is funny. It’s a certain kind of insane humor. I go to the ticket clerk strictly on business, and me he hates. Another guy comes up and pesters him about Glocca Morra, and to him he explains the whole thing politely. But me, he hates.”
Benny replies to questions about humor and his program with an air of worried concentration. He hates talking to strangers. He dislikes making conversation. He paces nervously back and forth in the library of his fourteen-room house in Beverly Hills, an impressive cream-colored Georgian mansion which he built in 1939 at a cost of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. His rumpled, sparse gray hair falls over his forehead. Benny is dressed as he usually is in sports clothes: gray flannel slacks, a checked blue sports coat, gray cashmere sweater, a flamboyant tie of reds and yellows and blues. At the last count, he owned thirty-nine sports coats, eighty-nine sweaters, one hundred and twenty pairs of gray flannel slacks. He thumps an empty pipe into the palm of his left hand. He is not supposed to smoke cigars but he dislikes pipes. He sits down, knocks the pipe against a smoking table. He chews his thumbnail. He rubs his gray suede wing-tip shoes against his trousers. He picks up the pipe. He lays it down. Finally, he sighs. He springs up and strides toward a humidor in a corner of the room and helps himself to an Upmann Perfecto. He removes the cigar from its glass container. He lights it. He breathes in the pungent smoke with a sigh of relief. Then he drops into an arm-chair and stretches out his legs.
“Now,” he murmurs, speaking as he always does in a shy, self-conscious, ill-at-ease voice, his round face weary and apparently confused, “what is the humor of the Jack Benny program? Take Nelson—the humor of Nelson is: Why does he hate me? The humor of Phil Harris is: How can a man that is supposed to be working for me go on getting drunk, chasing women, insulting me, and still I don’t fire him? The humor of Rochester is: How can he get away with it? If Rochester and I share a bedroom on a Pullman he rushes in first and grabs the lower, and I have to sleep in the upper berth. The whole humor of Jack Benny is: Here’s a guy with plenty of money; he’s got a valet; he’s always traveling around, meeting important people, and yet he’s strictly a jerk.”
Far from being the brash, boastful, vain, garrulous egomaniac that he is on the air, Benny in real life is a self-effacing, brooding sort of person. Strangers, meeting him for the first time, find him dull.
“Away from the stage, Benny is one of the most boring people I have ever met,” a friend says. “He has no violent ideas on any subject whatsoever. I never heard him express a strong opinion on anybody. He doesn’t seem to hate anybody. The worst he’ll say of a person is ‘He’s not too nice.’” Since the second most popular sports in Hollywood is ripping apart reputations, it’s obvious why Benny is considered boring company there. “The only thing Benny will get really excited about is a glass of water or a chocolate soda. He’ll come up to you and say, ‘I just had the greatest soda in the world. I’ll take an oath on my life it was the greatest soda in the world.’ Or, ‘I just drank the greatest glass of water in the world.’ But you take a subject like politics or Darryl Zanuck, and you’ll never get an opinion out of Benny one way or the other. In fact, I don’t see how he ever came to be a comedian. I have yet to hear Jack Benny say one single funny thing."
Ed Beloin, one of Benny’s writers for seven years and now a Paramount script writer, says, “Benny is the most naïve and unsophisticated person I know.” Because Benny is a placid person in public a theory has arisen that he is not at all witty, that his comedy stems entirely from the minds of his four writers, Sam Perrin, Milt Josefsberg, George Balzer and John Tackaberry.
When he was defeated on one occasion in a sharp battle of wit with Fred Allen, probably the quickest impromptu comedian alive, Benny muttered in all sincerity "Fred, I'd give a thousand dollars if I had been able to say that." Another time Allen was taunting him about his legendary anemia. "You're so anemic,” Allen said, "that if you were eating celery the people at the next table would think it was a stalk of rhubarb."
"You wouldn't talk like that to me," said Benny in desperation, "if my writers were here.”
Yet in his own pianissimo fashion, Benny is not unwitty. His humor is based on subtle understatement. Usually his punch line does not sound funny when it is removed from the particular situation that Benny was in at the moment he delivered it. And its humorous effect is largely due to Benny's velvety, petulant, apologetic tone of voice and to his masterly sense of timing. According to John Crosby, radio critic of the New York Herald Tribune, this is true not only of Benny's personal humor hut also of the humor as a whole in his radio show.
One night Crosby listened to a particular Benny program and felt that it was one of the funniest half hours he had ever heard. He sent for a copy of the script and read it over carefully. On paper, Crosby discovered, the show seemed dull. It had gone over big on the air because of the good acting, superb timing and the easygoing air of informality.
Despite the jokes on his program, Benny is a fairly competent violinist. Once, at a benefit for Grcek War Relief, he amazed all Hollywood, when, during his turn, instead of telling stories, he slowly walked on the stage, placed a handkerchief on his shoulder, poised his violin on the handkerchief, solemnly nodded to the conductor, and proceeded to perform an elaborate concerto arrangement of ''Love in Bloom," replete with trills, staccatos and arpeggios. After the final note, the audience burst into applause. Benny did not crack a smile. He bowed to the audience. He bowed to the maestro. Then he slowly walked off the stage.
After the show, somebody said, "Jack, I didn't realize you played the fiddle so beautifully."
"Listen," Jack said, with a grim expression on his face, "when I was younger they used to call me another Heifetz." He paused and glowered, "Not this Heifetz ... another Heifetz!"
In April, 1944, Benny took his company to Vanconver to stage a gala benefit to open the Fourth Canadian War Loan. After the show, they flew back to Los Angeles. Somewhere over Oregon, the ship ran into a heavy fog that turned into sleet and snow. Jack was playing Casino with Phil Harris when the plane was sucked into an air current that suddenly whipped them at the rate of a mile a minute. Benny's hand, in the act of lowering a card, was paralyzed in mid-air due to the air pressure. Benny said nothing. He went white. The plane took a series of sickening dips and began to wobble. Then the pilot appeared on the scene. "'The de-icer isn't working," he announced. "The radio has gone dead. Somewhere ahead of us lies Mt. Rainier, and I'm afraid we're not on the beam."
“Hmmmmm,” observed Benny gently.
"I think," pursued the pilot, "we could make Los Angeles tonight, but it's a little risky. I'd rather turn back and stop off at Corvallis. Oregon, where there's a good field. What shall I do?"
"Hmmmmmm," said Benny.
The plane turned back to Corvallis. It bumped safely to stop on the field. One by one, the troupe emerged. The pilot approached Benny and asked, "Now, sir, is there anything I can do?"
"Yes,” said Benny, “just get me a room in a nice one-story hotel.”
During the summer of 1945, Benny, together with Ingrid Bergman and harmonica-virtuoso Larry Adler, played the USO circuit in Europe. One night, following a performance before our troops in Stuttgart, the three stars were riding back to their quarters. They were sitting in the back of a jeep. As it rattled along, an MP stationed at a corner ordered the driver to stop. He was a little slow about it, and the MP fired several shots at the car. Benny heard the bullets whooshing through the air. The driver braked quickly. The bullets had missed their heads by only a few inches. After their papers were examined, they were allowed to proceed. They returned to the jeep and a few blocks later, when the driver paused to get his bearings, a huge black cat stepped off the curb and padded across the street directly in front of the jeep. All four of them watched the cat. Benny sighed and said, "NOW he tells us!"
But Benny isn't particularly proud of his ability to comment on a situation. He would rather be able to coin such quotable quips as Fred Allen's "Hollywood is a great place if you're an orange." Or Mizner's "I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education." Or Solly Violinsky's "Hollywood is a wonderful place. No matter how hot it gets in the daytime there's no place to go at night." Or Joe E. Lewis's remark when someone visited him in the hospital and asked how he felt: "I've taken a turn for the nurse."
A remarkable fact about Benny, remarkable because actors are the most egocentric persons alive, is that he would rather watch comedian perform than perform himself.
“Benny," says Danny Kaye, "is a sensational audience for a comedian. He's the kind of audience every comedian dreams of. He doesn't just laugh at you with his mouth, but with his whole body."
To provoke Benny to hysterical laughter has become a personal hobby of Kaye's. When they are both invited to a dinner party, Kaye always manages to be seated facing Benny. Benny knows what is coming and tries not to look at Kaye, but his eyes are inevitably drawn in that direction. For Jack's benefit, Kaye has two routines at a dinner. He prongs some food on a fork and passes it to his mouth but the fork keeps missing his mouth and jabs his cheek, his head, his nose and his neck. Or he rapidly shovels food into his mouth and whips his neck around from one side of the table to the other, like a piston rod, as if he is trying to hear every bit of conversation on every side of him.
By the end of the soup course, Benny is in convulsions and is pounding the table, choking on his food, and sputtering in agony. People who do not know Benny think he is either drunk or having an epileptic fit.
"Because Benny is such a great audience, in fact the greatest audience," says George Burns, "he has everybody in the business working for him. I know lots of comics would rather do an hour's entertainment for Jack, in Jack's living room, than play a week in a big theater in New York. Benny gets a million dollars' worth of entertainment for nothing. When Groucho Marx or Lou Holtz or George Jessel run into Benny, right away they're on. Benny has a wonderful time." Benny has a curious appreciation for humor. He has almost the mania of a collector. Once, in Romanoff's at luncheon, he noticed Helen Ferguson, the head of a large publicity office in Hollywood, sitting with Gene Raymond. Raymond said something, and she laughed heartily. Benny—who did not know either of them—approached their table and asked, "Pardon me, but what did you say that made her laugh like that?"
Of them all, Burns makes Jack laugh hardest. Benny has been laughing at Burns for twenty-five years. It's reached a point where all Burns has to do is wave a key ring at Benny, and Benny roars. When Benny was lunching at the Brown Derby recently Burns hefted Benny's glass of milk and snarled, "Laugh."
"That's not funny," said Benny. "I won’t laugh.”
“I said—laugh,” insisted Burns, raising the glass higher and scowling.
“No, I won’t."
"Oh," said Burns, "so you're going to be tough today!" At this, Benny promptly collapsed into a quivering heap.
Recently, at a party at Benny's house, George Jessel, Burns, Kaye and several other professional comedians, were amusing everybody with their lightning-like repartee, Around eleven thirty Benny could stand it no longer. He arose. He announced, "Everybody gets laughs around here but me. And it’s my own house." He strode upstairs. Fifteen minutes later, he reappeared. On his head was a battered brown fedora. A bandanna was tied around his neck. With mascara, he had drawn a thick mustache on his upper lip. He had his fiddle under his chin, and he played Italian street songs in the wheeziest style of which he was capable. Convinced this was hilarious, Benny then passed around the old hat for money.
Nobody laughed.
BENNY usually wakes up at six in the morning. He is a light sleeper. Six mornings a week he prepares his own breakfast and then goes to the Hillcrest Country Club and plays golf for two or three hours. He shoots in the eighties. His time during the rest of the day is dominated by his radio program. His only other diversions are taking long walks, running off movies in his home and driving his automobile. Barbara Stanwyck, one of his closest friends, claims that he is the worst driver in the world. "When he sits behind the wheel," she says, "he goes all dreamy-like. He'll be driving along Wilshire Boulevard, with nobody bothering him and nothing in front of him, and for no reason at all he will suddenly shift into second."
So many comedians are either drunks or violent gamblers. Benny often takes one Scotch highball before lunch and two Scotch highballs before dinner, but whisky doesn't lift his spirits. The more he drinks the moodier he gets, so he does not drink much.| Playing cards for any length of time he finds boring. Shooting craps he regards as a stupid occupation.
Goodman Ace is a devout follower of the nags. "And I've got the canceled checks to prove it," he adds. Ace is responsible for such remarks as "I had a good day at the track. I broke even." Also: "I broke even at the track today, and I certainly needed the money." Ace has tried to interest Benny in betting on horses. Once, in Florida, he took the comedian and his father, the late Mayer Kubelsky, to Hialeah. Ace got Jack all excited about a horse in the fourth race and Jack bet five hundred dollars on the nose. The horse lost. Jack was downcast. "That's terrible," he moaned.
"Don't worry, Jack," his father said. "After all—horses are only human!"
THERE is something helpless and mutely suffering about Jack Benny that arouses the sympathy of all his friends. They worry about him. They constantly tell him he is smoking too many cigars. He smokes about fifteen to twenty a day, although his doctor has told him to cut out smoking. The fact that he is sponsored by a cigarette company does not deter Benny from smoking cigars. When he walks out on the stage of Studio A in the Los Angeles NBC studios, he puffs at his cigar brazenly, knocks off some ashes, waves the cigar in the air and says maliciously, "Welcome to the Lucky Strike program!"
His friends worry about the fact that he does not sleep well, that he eats too fast. Benny eats rapidly, like a machine. He has no strong preferences in food. He usually asks everybody around him what they are ordering and then orders the same and gobbles it down.
Sometimes, when he falls into a really desperate mood of boredom, he tells his wife, "You know, once I played a good violin. If only I had practiced hard and stuck with my fiddle, I would be a fine violinist today."
And Mary usually answers, "But then you'd have lost all the humor of being a lousy violinist on your program."
"Yeah, but then I wouldn't have a program."
"Which is better?" she asks.
"I guess you're right,” he replies, sighing.
Violinists are about the only people for whom he feels serious respect. Whenever Heifetz, Szigeti, Ricci or Isaac Stern gives a concert in or around Los Angeles, Benny is there, sitting in a front-row seat and watching the fingers of the virtuoso with a concentrated stare. He envies them. And when he has a chance to talk to Szigeti or Heifetz he becomes ecstatic. He treasures the fact that Heifetz once told him he had a rich tone, and that he should never have neglected his music when he was a boy. Whenever Stern gives a concert in Los Angeles Benny insists on putting him on his program as a guest star. His writers go crazy trying to invent a reasonable situation in which Benny, Rochester, Dennis Day and Phil Harris can be blended with Stern playing the "Melody in F" or the "Hora Staccato."
Last fall, he had already signed up Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Colman to appear on a certain program. The Colmans received six thousand dollars for their personal appearance. Then Isaac Stern turned up in Hollywood, and Benny insisted on putting Stern on the same program. Since Stern's fee was five thousand dollars, and since Benny is allotted no more than ten thousand for guest stars on anyone broadcast, this meant Benny was paying one thousand out of his own pocket. When a friend asked why he was doing this, he replied, "Well, it was too late to cancel out the Colmans, and that night was the only Sunday Stern had open. But I had a wonderful time during rehearsal. Of course, I had already made up my mind what numbers I wanted Stern to play, but I didn't tell him. I asked him what he had in mind, and he started playing some tunes. I had him playing solos for me for two hours. I guess he played about twenty selections. It was wonderful."

Read part two of the Cosmo story in this post.

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.” ■