Ya Drunken Cow!

Molly Moo Cow decides to taste some ale in the Van Beuren cartoon Molly Moo Cow and Rip Van Winkle (1935) but is warned against it by a ghost-like conscience that comes out of her body.



Molly punches out the spirit, which disappears. She pours herself a pint, but the conscience returns, pours out the tankard and disappears (no fade out, the ghost drawing is simply removed from the frame).



Molly’s not going to let any conscious tell her she can’t have any ale. She pours herself some. It’s powerful stuff that leaves her twirling in mid-air and crashing to the ground. The conscience returns to wag a finger and say “I told you so.” Molly responds by dropping her into an empty barrel and proceeds to get as liquored up as a Van Beuren animator.



Burt Gillett and Tom Palmer co-directed this cartoon, the first of four Rainbow Parades starring Molly. Effort was put into it; Molly is animated on ones at times like Gillett would have directed at Disney. It appears when Van Beuren closed in 1936, Molly toddled over to Terrytoons along with some animators, as a cow that looks her shows up in some Terry shorts.

Jack Benny of the Radio, 1929

The claim has been debunked that Jack Benny made his radio debut on Ed Sullivan’s radio show on March 29, 1932, though we’ll concede this was the broadcast which led to Canada Dry signing him for the show that began his radio career (George Olsen disputed that, but that’s another story).

Some time ago, we dug up newspaper evidence from October 9, 1929 that Jack hosted something on the Don Lee stations called “The M-G-M Movie Club.” Well, we’ve ploughed our shovel once again into the fertile ground of newspaper archives and found some even earlier shows, including one on which Jack seems to have been the host, at least part of the time.

RCA, which owned NBC, and the Keith vaudeville chain, which owned the Orpheum theatre circuit, combined in 1928 to form the R-K-O movie studio. Another result of this deal appears to have been the creation of “The R-K-O Hour,” a late-night, coast-to-coast programme featuring the Orpheum’s stars. It ran Tuesdays from 11 to midnight; whether it was delayed for the West Coast, I do not know.

Jack’s first appearance on the show, at least that we can find in print, was on February 19, 1929. The Daily News in New York proclaimed Jack “an unusual pleasing master of ceremonies.” He spent 10 minutes on stage, splitting his time in between Walter McNally, Fanny Ward, Belle Baker, the Honey Boys and Winnie Lightner, with Rudy Vallee’s orchestra playing numbers to open and close the programme as well as in the middle.

Benny wasn’t long for New York. He was sent to Los Angeles for an indefinite run as the Orpheum’s emcee starting February 24th.

One disadvantage in going through old newspaper clippings is a number of the papers in the ‘20s owned radio stations and generally gave their own station the bulk, if not all, the space in their daily radio column. Thus we next find Jack emceeing the show again, this time from Los Angeles, on March 5th, with the Pasadena Post advising “Ray Samuels, ‘The Blue Streak of Vaudeville,’ Grace Hayes of musical comedy reputation, Neville Sleeson, a composer of musical comedies, and Mann Brothers’ orchestra have the call in a late program that presents Jack Benny as master of ceremonies.” Broadcasts that originated in the West for the East were rare in 1929 because of the huge phone line charges.

Once again, Jack appears on March 19th programme, along with Nick Lucas, Olsen and Johnson and Sidney Marion. The following week, the Post tells readers “Jack Benny, lackadaisical master of ceremonies, promises to lend a bit of humor to this program on which other vaudeville headliners of unknown identity are scheduled to appear.”

There’s no mention of Jack on the April 2nd broadcast, but it would appear to have aired on KFI at 8 p.m. then again at 11 p.m., with part of the show originating in Los Angeles and part from New York. However, he shows up the next night on another station at 8:30 p.m. The Post isn’t impressed: “KPLA This station is having a terrible time getting organized. The solitary program announced for tonight is a movie preview which has Jack Benny for master-of-ceremonies. He is to introduce film folks. Nick Lucas, crooning songster, sings maybe; Irving Berlin, noted composer, is introduced perhaps. The qualifications are used because we haven't forgotten the night when Lily Damita was to sing and didn’t, and other film notables were to appear, and didn’t.” The station was bought by Earle Anthony before year’s end and turned in KECA, which is now KABC.

By April 6th, Jack had finished five weeks at the Orpheum in Los Angeles and moved to the Orpheum in San Francisco. While “The R-K-O Hour” did cut away to the City by the Bay (and others), there’s nothing to show he was part of the programme now. On the 10th, it was announced he had signed a long-term contact with M-G-M.

Jack was back before the radio mike on June 8th from 7-8 p.m. on KHJ in a special show featuring stars of filmdom. “Besides Benny’s songs and humor,” reported the Times, he will present a novelty singing trio, the Brox Sisters” who chirped out numbers from The Hollywood Revue of 1929. We find him on the air again on August 7 as part of a two-hour jubilee from the Hollywood Bowl on KFWB.

We mentioned “The M-G-M Movie Club” earlier, and while I haven’t found when it debuted on KHJ, Jack was the emcee on the programme on August 8th, which included Kay Johnson, Johnny Mack Brown, Julian La Faye, the Campus Three and the Roamers male quartet. His vaudeville career resumed September 7th when he was hired to headline the bill at the Orpheum in Los Angeles. The next radio show I can find him on is the October 9th one we’ve talked about.

“The R-K-O Hour” carried on into 1930 but Jack Benny wasn’t on it. Emceeing vaudeville shows and the occasional movie kept him busy until he was really ready for radio in 1932.

Read more about Jack's early radio career in this post.

Cartoon Odds and Ends

There are times in a writer’s life (not that I’m a writer) where you run into information and wonder “What am I going to do with that?” There isn’t enough for a full post so it sits in a lonely file, half-forgotten.

Let’s fish a few of these out of the folder and pass them along.

To the right you see two members of Friz Freleng’s unit at the Schlesinger studio during the early ‘40s. On the left is Lin Larsen. The other is Dave Brown. He might be the only Schlesinger employee who died in the war. The story about him in the Los Angeles Evening Citizen-News of July 14, 1944 reads:

David Brown, Once Carrier, Now Missing
Another former Citizen-News carrier has been listed as missing in action.
The War Department has notified Mr. and Mrs. Frank F. Brown, 1565 N. McCadden Pl., that their son, First Lt. David William Brown, 26, was reported missing May 28 over Biak Island, New Guinea. Prior to entering the Army Air Forces about two years ago, Lieutenant Brown was an assistant animator for Leon Schlesinger Productions.
A bomber pilot, he was trained at Brooks Field, Tex., and Will Rogers Field, Okla., before going overseas seven months ago. He had completed approximately 30 missions.
Lieutenant Brown was a graduate of Hollywood High School, Los Angeles City College and Otis Art Institute. His father formerly worked in the Citizen-News job printing department.

Brown’s body was found and he is buried in Glendale. His mother was about 3½ months shy of 100 when she died in 1994.

Anyone who knows the biography of Tex Avery knows he was suspended by Schlesinger in 1941 in a dispute over the ending of The Heckling Hare. How much trouble Avery had with ol’ Leon before that isn’t known, but we can tell you he ran afoul of the censor. This is from Erskine Johnson’s column for NEA, March 13, 1939:

Hayes office censors are cracking down on celluloid burlesques of President Roosevelt. Scene of a worm labeled “FDR” and saying “my friends” was deleted from Leon Schlesinger’s new animated cartoon short, “Fresh Fish.”

Considering how Hollywood seems to have venerated Roosevelt, I can’t picture the footage to be insulting. But “respect for the presidency” in those days meant not putting him in a comic situation.

After leaving Walter Lantz in 1954, Tex Avery opened a one-man studio; layout man Jerry Eisenberg says he and animator Ken Harris used to go there. There were all kinds of these little commercial operators. It’s one reason there are huge blanks trying to put together the careers of some Golden Age animators; they went into these industrial operations where no credits exist.

The Citizen-News of September 16, 1953 tells where two of them went.

THE UNDERSIGNED do hereby certify that they are conducted an animated motion picture production business at 1515 Crossroads of the World, City of Hollywood, County of Los Angeles, State of California under the fictitious firm name of Associated Animators Productions, and that said firm is composed of the following persons, whose names and addresses are as follows, to wit:
RUSS DYSON, 11115 Camarillo St., North Hollywood, California.
RUDY CATALDI, 1447 Allison St., Los Angeles 26, California.

Dyson had worked at Disney, but he was one of the “new” McKimson unit animators at Warners after the 3-D shutdown ended in 1954 and Warners decided a few months later to re-activate a third unit under Bob McKimson. None of McKimson’s animators wanted to return after a year away so a new group was cobbled together. Dyson was hired by November 1954 and was first credited on Weasel Stop, released in January 1956. He died at age 50 on September 25, 1956. I suspect there’s a reason it was not mentioned in the Warner Club News. The United Press put an account of it on the wire:

Screen Cartoonist Hangs Self in Jail Cell
SANTA BARBARA (UP)— Russell Beaumont Dyson, 52, identified as a Hollywood screen cartoonist and photographer was arrested as a drunk early Saturday and later hanged himself in a jail cell.
Dyson, of 7472 Hollywood Blvd., was found wandering in a field by U-S Highway 101. The California Highway Patrol said his car was parked in a northbound lane of the road.
CHP officers said he cried hysterically while being booked at Santa Barbara county jail. He hanged himself with his belt after being booked for drunkenness.

McKimson’s unit lost an assistant animator the following month with the sudden death of Chuck Whitton, whose wife had died only weeks before.

Cataldi went on to a long career in animation, including time with thrifty producer Sam Singer. We wrote about Rudy in this post. He died Jan. 4, 2019 at 91.

The McKimson unit at the time of Dyson’s death included animator Ted Bonnicksen. He, too, had worked for Disney and arrived about the time the unit started up again in March 1954. Where was he before he ended up at Warners? Well, the Los Angeles Daily News of August 31, 1949 reported the fall semester was underway at the Hollywood Art Center School, and...

David Brown, Once Carrier, Now Missing
Three new instructors have been added to the faculty. Including the dean of portrait painters, John Hubbard Rich, Robert W. Mallary, commercial layout artist and Ted Bonnicksen, cartoonist and animator.

Bonnicksen animated on the saddest of Warners cartoons—the ones at the very end. Yes, Cool Cat, Chimp and Zee, Merlin the Magic Mouse, all your least favourite characters. When Warners closed in 1969, Bonnicksen found employment at Filmation.

There’s a bit of a conflict in official records about his birth and death dates. His WW2 Draft Card states he was born September 8, 1915 (and working for Disney). This would match the 1930 and 1940 U.S. Census. Death records say he died July 22, 1971. A bit of trivia: Bonnicksen animated the Jack Benny tribute cartoon The Mouse That Jack Built (1959). Benny was from Waukegan, Illinois. That’s where Bonnicksen was born.

Ham Hamilton went back to the silent days with Walt Disney, then trailed after Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising, making cartoons for several studios, one of them for Warner Bros. via Leon Schlesinger. He ended up back at Schlesinger a couple of times, lastly getting screen credit on a pair of cartoons in 1939 in the Tex Avery unit. What happened next? The answer is buried in the July 28, 1939 edition of the Hollywood Reporter:

Rollin C. Hamilton, veteran animator, joins the Fleischer studios in Miami on a term ticket. He starts on Paramount’s all-color cartoon feature, “Gulliver’s Travels.”

Restorer/Historian Devon Baxter found him at the end of the decade. A ‘Help Wanted’ ad in the Hollywood Citizen-News of December 9, 1949 was looking for an animator at Pearson’s Studios, which mainly specialised in photography. The ad read “Attention, Ham Hamilton.” He died June 3, 1951 at age 52.

The trades will mention people who never get screen credit. Broadcasting magazine reported in March 1941:

AL SPAN, CBS Hollywood sound effects director, in addition to his network duties, has been signed by Walter Lantz, film producer, to handle sound on all cartoon pictures to be released through Universal Pictures Co.

How long Span was there is unclear. Al Glenn was the long-time sound man after the studio reopened in 1950.

And since we’re speaking of Lantz, our last item comes from the Valley Times. You may have read about the fascination with square dancing at the Warner Bros. cartoon studio in the early ‘50s. Even producer Eddie Selzer took part. But there was another producer who was into square dancing around the same time. Below you see a group in the San Fernando Valley called the “Woody Woodpecker Woodchuckers.” It’s a shame the scan is so poor because you can’t make out the Woodys in the photos, but you’ll notice Walter Lantz in the top picture. The Woody hats are really cool. There were eight married couples who were members of the group.

How to Make a Horse Leap

Bob Clampett looked to be on his way to a great career as a movie cartoon producer. He signed a multi-picture deal with Republic and made one cartoon. But by the time it was released in late 1947, Republic pretty much had decided to get out of the short subject business, and It’s a Grand Old Nag was the only cartoon he made for the studio.

It’s too bad. The cartoon is briskly paced, the animation is first-rate, the voice work is well done and even first-time, the story flows well with some good (and familiar) gags and the music fits, despite the composer never having worked in animation.

Bumpkin-like Charlie Horse (played by Stan Freberg) is hired by Gregory Ratoff-ish director (played by Dave Barry) to be the latest stunt double for an arrogant star. In one scene, Charlie is supposed to jump off a cliff. His hoofs won’t do it. The director finds a way to help. Clampett cuts to an interesting perspective. The footprint on the butt is a nice touch.



Steve Stanchfield and Thad Komorowski can be thanked for finding a print of this rare cartoon. If you want to learn more about it, see this post, or search on "Republic" on the blog.

Fish and Flies

Why, oh why, won’t someone restore the Fleischer Talkatoons?

There’s always crazed stuff going on in them and, of course, we get cool versions of hot-cha music of the ‘20s.

The highlight of Wise Flies, released July 19, 1930, is a version of “Some of These Days” sung by the spider to a female fly that has escaped his sticky web. There’s a ukelele playing in the background.

The spider’s so upset by the fly leaving him (yeah, there’s sexual tension in Talkartoons, too) that he cries into his top hat. Cut to three fish, jumping out of the pool of tears in the hat, swaying to the music for a few bars, then jumping back in.



The camera cuts to a close-up of the spider’s mouth. His molars grow legs and start dancing!



There’s rubber hose animation, too. Willard Bowsky and Ted Sears are the credited animators.

It's Not Corn, It's Golonka

What was the appeal of Mayberry R.F.D.?

Maybe it was because of people looking for those non-existent “simpler times” before the Vietnam War, assassinations and accompanying unrest. Maybe it was because the show was concocted from the fumes of The Andy Griffith Show.

Maybe it was because of Arlene Golonka.

Okay, maybe not. But she moved from the Wicker Park Junior Players of post-World War Two Chicago to fame in Mayberry, then went on to 3400 Cahuenga Boulevard where she voiced characters in a number of Hanna-Barbera series.

Actually, she made her name because of her name, as we learn from a Sunday feature story from The Record of Hackensack, New Jersey on October 5, 1969.

She Had To Be Better
By DAN LEWIS
SOMEHOW, a Golonka sounds like the clunk from a clout on the head. One doesn't really expect a Golonka to be a pretty, 5-foot-5, 112 pound, somewhat kooky blonde actress verging on stardom.
I can remember a number of years ago when an old friend, comedian Phil Foster, called me one afternoon and, in his dulcet tones demanded: "You wanna interview a gal who's gonna be a great big star? Then you'd better interview Arlene Golonka."
Arlene Golonka? Nobody could be a star with a name like that. But I followed the dictates of friend Foster and went over to the Playhouse on the Mall in Paramus, where indeed I found Arlene Golonka, in a supporting role to Foster in a play whose title now escapes me and since this pre-Broadway tryout ended in Paramus, it's just as well. I also met two other supporting players in show, one humorous little guy with glasses named Arte Johnson, and another tall, handsome young man named James Farentino.

To repeat an immortal phrase, that's all ver-r-ry interesting, since Arte Johnson, on "Laugh-In" and James Farentino, going into "The Bold Ones", and Arlene Golonka are all starred on TV this season. Arlene plays Millie Swanson, the girlfriend, on "Mayberry R.F.D.", opposite Ken Berry. The show had a big opening season and shrilly-voiced Arlene, the happy blonde from Chicago, is ecstatic about its success and the prospects of the new season.
Foster turns out to be quite a seer, too, in the light of Arlene's success. But when I met with Arlene again in Hollywood recently here, I couldn't help but wonder why she never changed her name. Whoever heard of a star named Golonka?
"I'm always asked the question," replied Arlene. "And I tell them I once considered changing it—to Sam Golonka."
There is, of course, a better reason. Arlene explained:
"I began to get recognition in the days when we had stars with names like Marlon Brando, Tab Hunter, Rory Calhoun, Rip Torn, and Rock Hudson. I just thought it would be nice to have an Arlene Golonka in there."
Preservation of her name was not an ulterior motive, either. She found its awkward sound an asset, in a way one wouldn't suspect: "When I would go into an audition, and write my name down," said Arlene, "the director would call out, 'Arlene Golonka!' and he would expect to see a big, heavy gal. Then I would step up and I bad to be better than anything they expected."
Arlene exudes excitement over her television success. "It was the loveliest year of my life last year. I love doing television because it goes so quickly. I found movies very dull—boring. There's always so much waiting around."
In reality, though, she recognizes the importance of making movies. "The ideal situation, my Utopia," she claimed, "would be a television series, 3 months in an important play, and one movie a year. Maybe go to Europe to make the movie."
Arlene's career has been marked by continued progress—after her first flop. She came to New York from Chicago, and worked as a waitress in the Gaslight Club until she got her first stage role. It was in a play called "Night Circus".
The play costarred Ben Gazzara and his wife Janice Rule.
"They (her fellow employes) gave me a party at the Gaslight," Arlene said. "They also gave me presents. Then the show played one week in Detroit, Boston, Philadelphia, and New Haven. Then a week on New York, and it closed. I went back to the Gaslight Club. It was so embarrassing. I didn't know whether to give back the presents."
Things got much better after that. She appeared in six more shows, including "Take Me Along" with Jackie Gleason, and then was summoned to Hollywood for her first movie, "Penelope", with Natalie Wood.
Arlene, who married handsome, 6-foot-2 Larry Delaney, a publicist-turned-actor (he has one guest appearance on "Mayberry" early in the season), has a 5-year-contract for the show and isn't the least bit concerned about the prospect of being tied up that long. "I've had other offers now, as a result of the 'Mayberry' show," she confided, "but this is a funny time for me. I've got to stop doing the little parts. I did four cute vignettes in films but I know I must be more choosey."
To what does she attribute the show's success?
"We're not part of recognized show business," she answered. "But we're not really corn. We're really human."

The San Bernadino Star-Telegram checked in with her a season later. This was published November 28, 1970.

Especially Arlene
Mayberry Boys Like Girls
By TOM GREEN
Sun-Telegram Staff Writer
HOLLYWOOD — The boys of Mayberry were sitting around the farmhouse set of "Mayberry R.F.D." ogling in the finest Mayberry fashion an attractive young cousin of series regular Arlene Golonka.
"George, you stay away from my girl friend," Jack Dodson chided George Lindsey. "She's very nice," said Ken Berry, who was holding the girl's purse in his lap and trying to concentrate on a script.
Arlene Golonka was enjoying the attention her visiting cousin was getting from the male cast of CBS' ratings powerhouse.
"The boys of Mayberry like women," said Arlene, who has no doubt gotten a little adrenalin flowing herself. "But they're barking dogs that don't bite."
Little wide-eyed Millie, the bakery girl, got comfortable in her chair.
"Ah, the simple life of Mayberry...A woman is a woman. We seldom get to wear slacks. There's no women's liberation. We're not the dumb ones. We're the women. We cook and have babies. Of course, you have to get married first."
Arlene plays Ken Berry's girlfriend on "Mayberry."

"Millie is living to marry Sam. But I don't think we'll get married until the show gets in trouble."
The women's liberation movement doesn't exactly have a fan in Arlene Golonka.
"Many years ago, I felt women needed the freedom that liberation is going for. Still, I'd rather have a man open the door for me. I think abortion should be legalized. And I think women should have a career with good pay. But the women fighting for liberation are so ridiculous. No man would want them."
Last year, Arlene tried to break out of the Mayberry mold a little. She opened a nightclub act at the Playboy Club in Hollywood.
"It was a fiasco. I invited all my friends in the show to come down and I was dreadful my opening night. I could hardly talk. I didn't know you're supposed to go out of town before you perform for your friends.
"I thought if I had a chance once in my life to be a nightclub entertainer, why not? No, I wouldn't do it again...It was difficult. For one thing, I'm allergic to smoke and I don't drink I woke up every morning with a headache."
Feeling good is pretty important to Arlene Golonka these days.
"I'm a vegetarian, you know. I've been on it now for two months. It's my third try, but this is going to be a way of life for me. I just feel better. I could go to a retreat somewhere and live the rest of my life."
Her eyes light up as she starts talking about yoga and exercise and health foods and the eating regimen she has established for herself.
"For lunch today I'm going out, so I'll have a salad. If I were at home I'd have fruit. At night I'll have an organic baked potato or an egg plant. I make salad with oil and lemon juice and oregano and a dill pickle and lettuce and tomato."
She stopped for a second.
"I still have yogurt. I do love it so."
In her spare time, she munches nuts and grains, reads books like "Yoga, Youth and Reincarnation" takes four yoga lessons a week, and works on getting her husband to join the lettuce for lunch bunch.
She and her husband, publicist turned actor Larry Delaney, have taken up tennis.
"We're flipping over the game. It'll be like our sport."
Her husband likes football, so she gave him some tickets to some Los Angeles Rams games. She doesn't exactly thrill to football, so she takes her needlepoint along.
"I tell him, 'I'm here with you, that's enough."
Arlene isn't working as much on "Mayberry" as she'd like. She worked 17 out of 26 weeks last season.
"As an actress, you want to work. I'll be home and my husband will say, 'Vacation, again, huh?' It's not a vacation. There's just no work."
Her husband dropped onto the set to take her and her cousin to lunch.
"I've just been married a year and a half. George Lindsey introduced us. Didn't you, George? I changed my husband all over. He's now an actor. He's done four TV shows and he's up for a pilot. I love having an actor for a husband. Our interests are the same and there's understanding."
Arlene told him she had been talking about their new eating plan.
"What's this 'our' stuff?" he laughed.
"Well, he eats more lettuce and vegetables. But I still give him a little meat."

Millie never had to marry Sam because the ratings didn’t slip. But Mayberry had too much of a hickory-smoked flavour for CBS executives, who got rid of all comedies even hinting at rural sensibilities in 1971.

Which brings us to where we started. I found Mayberry R.F.D. bland, but perhaps it was that rural sensibility, or at least a relaxed, small-town one, that attracted an audience across America. And part of it was pert Arlene Golonka, who has passed away from Alzheimer's at age 85.

Colour Change For Impact

Want to add violent impact into your cartoon? Use a solid color background, kind of like it’s a flash of light.

Here’s an example from Sufferin' Cats, a 1942 Tom and Jerry cartoon.



This happened elsewhere in the cartoon. We gave an example in this post.

George Gordon, Pete Burness, Ken Muse and Jack Zander are the credited animators.

No Help From the Audience, Please

Tex Avery had “theatre audience” members interact with the action on the screen in a number of his Warner Bros. cartoons. One is Thugs With Dirty Mugs, where “Killer” starts outlining his robbery plan to his gang, but then a silhouette comes into view at the bottom of the screen. It’s the same thing that happens when someone in a theatre gets in the way of the projection; their shadow appears on the screen.



Killer stops and tells the silhouette audience guy to sit down until the picture is over.



Dissolve to the next scene of the police chief pacing. “I could trap that Killer if I could only get a tip off on his next job,” he says to himself. Suddenly the silhouette rises and waves a hat. He tips off the captain. “I sat through this picture twice,” he adds to solidify his veracity. The chief thanks him, rushes out the door, then comes back in, leans toward him, and says “You little tattletale!” as the shadow recoils. That ends the silhoutte’s part in the plot.



Jack Miller is the storywriter for this 1939, one of my favourite Avery cartoons at Warners. Danny Webb is Killer. The chief (and one of the henchmen) is John Deering.

The Shrewd Showman

Ups and downs greeted Jack Benny’s broadcasting career, but few could boast they were on the air regularly for 33 years.

That’s despite the fact that Jack went through a revolving door of sponsors in the early years and his career could have ended with any non-renewal. But his shows were popular, therefore agencies and potential advertisers were interested in signing with him.

Benny’s popularity was explained by many newspaper columnists to their readers (and, presumably, listeners). One example is in Bruce Nicole’s “Behind the Mike” column of the Lincoln Journal and Star, May 5, 1940. It also outlines the time-line to get the broadcast on the air.

The comedian's job of making people laugh is the toughest phase of broadcasting. Perhaps that is why the turnover of radio comics is exceedingly high. But tonight a radio comedian who has conducted one of radio's most popular shows for the past eight years will mark the start of his ninth year on the air.
The comedian is Jack Benny who came to radio from vaudeville and the stage and is now paid $10,000 a week for his efforts and an additional $15,000 weekly for time and talent.
Benny had an advantage over other comedians who came to radio when vaudeville folded. His vaudeville act consisted of "ear" gags rather than "eye and ear" gags. His humor could be propelled across the footlights by his voice alone. A shrewd showman, Benny saw that gags wouldn't be enough to sustain him on the air for a long period. So he mapped out a formula which has drawn to his weekly program millions of regular listeners.
The Benny character in radio has been based on Jack's philosophy that the performance must be real— at least the listeners must think so while the show is on the air. His character on the air is aimed dead-center at the universal tendency to howl at the self-confident man who makes a fool of himself. He isn't the wise guy that knows all the answers, but on the other end of the gun. He is the target for most of the gags because he is a combination of everybody's faults.
His cast also represents characters whom everyone knows in real life—Phil Harris the typical fresh guy; Mary Livingstone, the fresh dame; and Dennis Day the very naive character. There's also another block in the Benny comedy foundation. It is his ability to outline quickly a basic situation so that the listener can readily grasp its fundamentals. He doesn't depend on the conventional question-and-answer routine. He builds a crystal-clear picture of himself in a given situation and because it is so clear, it's simple for the audience to follow him through the laugh-provoking complications that develop out of a situation. This is because they understand completely the basic humor of the situation and his relation to it.
For example, when Benny was on the skis during his mythical trip to Yosemite it was a real situation, a real person engaged in a struggle to master a problem. Gags about skis or skiing which were probably plentiful but never used, because the situation was in itself humorous. Benny's situations are never contrived for the purpose of working around to a preconceived gag or a specific joke which does not fit properly into the idea of the show. His laughs are placed where the audience is least expecting them.
How does he go about getting the laughs? Benny is a workman. His humor is the result of long and carefully rehearsed effort. Unlike his friend Fred Allen, who is the master of the quick retort and writes his show from inspiration, Benny builds his show slowly and methodically.
Following his Sunday night broadcast, Benny and his two script writers, Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin, get together on an idea for the next week's show. Out of this huddle comes a theme for the program. Monday and Tuesday Morrow and Beloin work out a rough draft and present it to Benny on Wednesday. The three of them spend Wednesday and Thursday polishing up the script. They spend from eight to eighteen hours a day, depending on whether they're clicking or not.
Friday they rest and Saturday the cast is called for the first rehearsal, sometimes in the studio sometimes at Jack's home. The whole cast comments on the script, changes are made. Then Benny, Beloin and Morrow, together with the producer of the show mull over the script until late Saturday night.
The cast rehearses all day Sunday until 4 p. m.. (Pacific coast time) when the first show goes on the air. Sometimes the scripts are revised for the rebroadcast to the Pacific coast three hours later. While this is the routine, the infinite labor of getting the right line and situation to produce the right effect often boils down to laboring over a one minute dialogue for several hours. Even the slips made in rehearsals, if they sound funny, are put into the script. All the informalities which suggest spontaneity to the listener have been carefully rehearsed.
They also make the studio audience laugh. That's important, Jack thinks, because if the studio crowd doesn't laugh the air audience feels the show is a flop.

Happy He's Murray

Television would have been quite different if CBS’ “A Man on the Beach” had become a hit series in 1958.

It starred people who went on to TV fame after “Beach” failed—Max Baer and Gavin MacLeod.

MacLeod’s real breakout role was on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” He had a series before that. He appeared as Happy at the outset of “McHale’s Navy” before walking away for a movie role. He wasn’t missed. The cast was far too big and the comedy antics were soon given to Joe Flynn and Tim Conway, not MacLeod and the rest of Quinton McHale’s ragtag Bilko wannabes.

Occasionally he got focused in what were likely handouts from the network to fill entertainment columns. One mentioned how Carl Ballantine ad-libbed with a pair of scissors and removed what little of MacLeod’s hair he had left. Another called him the show’s good-luck charm because every time he announced his wife was expecting, the ratings went up or the show got renewed.

MacLeod was kind of “the other guy” when he was cast as writer Murray Slaughter on “Mary Tyler Moore.” Ed Asner and Ted Knight got meatier newsroom characters to play. UPI columnist Vernon Scott seems a little challenged to find something interesting about MacLeod himself in this wire story of February 20, 1971; the earliest national attention I can find that MacLeod received.

McLeod Likes To Write And Paint
By VERNON SCOTT
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) – Gavin MacLeod, the harried news writer on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," is an unharried family man who writes plays, not news, in his spare time.
A native of Mount Kisco, N.Y., MacLeod is married to Joan Roovik.
She was a Rockette and he an usher at the famed Radio City Music Hall when they met at a church communion breakfast.
They were a steady twosome for a couple of years before they married and moved to California.
Their children are Keith, 10; David, 9; Julia, 8; and Meghan, 6.
Thanks to the children, the family also includes a St. Bernard named Gillian of Moose Lake; three eats, Georgie Boy, Sam and Owl, and two nameless lizards.
Fortunately for their neighbors, the MacLeods live on a half acre of San Fernando valley real estate in the foothills of Santa Monica mountains. Gavin has his eye on a larger home and grounds where the family can keep a horse and own a swimming pool.
Their current house has three bedrooms—which means two daughters and two sons in each of the kids’ rooms—and is decorated in the popular French Country style. MacLeod is a collector of abstract and impressionistic oil paintings by young California artists.
He dabbles in art himself. And it is not uncommon to see all the family on a weekend painting canvases or sculpting in clay. MacLeod says it is an excellent way to communicate with his off- springs.
He works on the CBS show five days a week, usually arriving at the studio at 9:30 a.m. after a 45-minute freeway ride.
Almost invariably he is home for dinner. Unlike many a husband who boasts of his wife's dexterity in the kitchen, MacLeod says Joan is a good cook when she wants to be. Translation: when there is company.
The MacLeods don't entertain often, but when they do, Joan can cook up a stuffed cornish game hen with the best of them.
Sunday morning is a special delight for the younger MacLeods. Old Dad struggles out of bed and prepares breakfast for the entire family.
His specialty is making hotcakes in the shape of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, snowmen and other figures. Little Meg is especially delighted with her father's talent for fancy pancakes.
Actor MacLeod has worked in 18 movies, including “Kelly’s Heroes,” and has appeared in 250 television shows. At the moment he would like to see “The Mary Tyler Moore” show run for the next decade or so.

In the early years, the show’s writers would make him the centre of plots on occasion, though one episode about Murray driving a cab was pretty much stolen by Joyce Bulifant as Murray’s wife. Time took care of things as the characters became more three-dimensional as the seasons chugged along.

This syndicated story appeared in papers around July 15, 1972:

Gavin Likes Nice Role
By DICK KLEINER
Hollywood (NEA)—GAVIN MacLEOD is a member of what is probably television's finest comedic ensemble company, The Mary Tyler Moore Show on CBS. This is a fairly big surprise to MacLeod, because of some years he was typed as depraved.
As Murray Slaughter, Mary's newsroom pal, MacLeod is certainly one of the good guys. And he likes being a good guy. It has helped his home life and it is giving him a pleasant public image.
"For years," MacLeod says, "I always played the depraved, the vile, the awful. And, really, it affected my home life. I remember once, I was in 'The Connection,' and I'd come home and I'd use vile language around the house. Fortunately, we only had one child at the time and he was just a baby."
HE SAYS he hasn't any idea how the men who put The Mary Tyler Moore Show came to think of him as a good guy. He knows they saw him in an episode of Hawaii Five-0 playing a depraved, vile, awful drug pusher—and they asked him to come in and read.
“I don’t know how it happened,” he says, “But I love being nice. And the public thinks I’m nice because Mary likes me on the show. People stop me after church and in supermarkets and it’s always, ‘Hi, Murray,’ with a big smile. It’s a great feeling.”
Now that he's discovered the joys of being a good guy, he wants to do more of the same. At the moment, he’s studying singing. He wants to do stage musicals. And he and his wife, Joan, who was a Radio City Music Hall Rockette when they met, want to start their own small stage theater, perhaps somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.
MacLeod is from Pleasantville, N.Y., which is the home address of The Reader's Digest. His father died when he was 13 and from then on he's always worked. His first job was as a waiter—"I was the youngest waiter in Pleasantville"—and on his first day he spilled soup on a customer. But he decided he’d rather act than spill soup, so he worked hard and won a scholarship in drama to Ithaca College in upstate New York. That’s where he learned to act—and get his first taste of being depraved.

MacLeod got fired from the WJM newsroom in 1977 and immediately boarded “The Love Boat” for a long and lucrative voyage. It never aspired to be anything other than cheesy fun and it made MacLeod even more popular with an aging TV audience.

His TV career was bookended with boats, but he was at his finest with an ensemble cast that’s lauded by many as among the best ever on the small screen.