Cartoon Familiarities

Time for a game! Put on a bunch of Harman-Ising cartoons from the early ‘30s.

● Take a drink every time a female character says “Yoo-hoo!”
● Take a drink every time a female character asks “Ain’t he cute?”
● Take a drink every time a male character does that slip-step dance.

I’ve never actually figured out the numbers, but I don’t think you’ll be able to walk after a while.

All three can be found in Moonlight for Two, the eleventh Merrie Melodies cartoon, released June 11, 1932.

Here’s Goopy Geer doing the stomp-in-place. Frames one and 11 are the same. Drawings one and six are held for two frames, the rest are on ones.



And the plant, shift and slide. We won't show the whole thing, just some key frames.



The title song was published in 1932 by Harms (as was The Queen Was In the Parlor, which also became a Merrie Melodie), with words by Irving Kahal and music by Joe Burke.

The credited animators are Friz Freleng and Larry Martin.

Backgrounds from UPA's Spring

Can anyone explain who was supposed to be entertained by the “Ham and Hattie” series from UPA?

In watching and listening to Spring (1957), I get the feeling it exists for little ones in cribs who can be diverted by the pretty colours and the calm, child-like song.

Hattie, her expression never changing, skips rope and rides her tricycle as other characters move with no in-betweens. Animator Fred Crippen doesn’t appear to have been overloaded with work on this short.

Something I do like are some backgrounds by Jules Engel and Erv Kaplan. Very attractive.



And here are the happy characters seen in this short. They don’t move. The camera pulls back and the cartoon is over.



Lew Keller, who went over to Jay Ward, is the director.

Fan Mail From Some Flounder

Does anyone send fan mail anymore?

In this age of social media, where stars communicate with their fans, maybe fan mail is obsolete. Or it’s changed into something else.

I’ve stumbled across a couple of newspaper columns from the same time frame in Hollywood talking about fan mail. The first one is from the North American Newspaper Alliance, December 5, 1937.

Fan Mail No Longer Awes Film Chiefs
Producers Like to Collect Cash, Not Stamps, From Stars’ Rooters.
By Harold Heffernan.
HOLLYWOOD (N.A.N.A.).—One of the sprouting buds on the contract list of a leading studio confided proudly to an intimate a short time ago that 17 “fan clubs” were sponsoring her throughout the country and that her fan mail total had leaped some 500 letters within a month. “My fans are my protection," she boasted. “If my contract were not renewed my clubs would start a young revolution.”
Fan clubs and a heavy letter total were promising omens to this starlet—an open sesame to better roles, richer financial rewards. Yet, when her contract came up for renewal a few days ago the bosses passed her up. Her mail count, one of the heaviest on the lot, didn’t mean a thing in her favor. The fellow wearing the brass hat didn’t inquire about her letter total. He merely sent word to the legal department to pass the option because the girl had no drawing power at the box office. And, to date, there has been no hint of a fan revolution.
A few years ago, under the same conditions, the young lady’s contract would have been renewed and boosted long before it had a chance to expire and she might have received a nice expensive gift from the boss to make her even happier. But studio attitude toward fan mail has undergone a radical change in recent years. Producers no longer scan their players’ letter totals with the avid interest once manifested. They’ve come to the conclusion that gate receipts, rather than the mail man’s load, is the most accurate measure of a player's popularity. What’s more, the Hollywood postman doesn’t groan today under the staggering pack he once lugged through studio gates. Inquiries at all fan mail departments reveal a reduction of approximately 40 per cent over the number of letters received five years ago.
NO STAR ever has or probably ever will approach Clara Bow's record-breaking total of 10,560 letters received in a month. That mark was established by the “It” queen back in 1929, when she was at the apex of her career. Extravagant claims are made for many of today’s favorites, but inasmuch as studios now refuse to release official figures, most can be written off as plain bunk. The truth is that most of the fan mail nowadays comes from children. Comparatively few adults write to the stars and those who do are usually asking for something—if not money, then photographs, autographs or trinkets and wearables seen in pictures. Bing Crosby still pays more attention to his fan correspondence than any other player in Hollywood. He encourages folks to write by maintaining an expensive organization that peruses each missive and offers an individualized answer in each instance.
Crosby’s signature appears at the bottom of each note; at least it’s a beautiful imitation of Crosby’s scrawl because three secretaries have been trained to relieve him of this arduous job. Otherwise, Bing would have no time to make pictures, perform his radio chores and look after the horses.
Claudette Colbert, Carole Lombard, Mae West and Marlene Dietrich are not so high as you’d suppose their popularity would warrant in the list of Paramount letter recipients. A young man named Ray Milland, who seldom gets out of “B" pictures, but who nevertheless has inspired a widening interest among correspondents, is found trailing close behind Crosby in letter totals. Shirley Temple is conceded to be the leading letter-getter of all the stars, her vast mail accumulation, reported in the neighborhood of 8,000 a month, coming from all parts of the world. Mrs. Temple estimates about 95 per cent of the writers are children of about Shirley’s age.
At Warner Bros., Errol Flynn has slowly taken first place, pushing Dick Powell out of the spot he held for more than three years. Oddly, the player receiving third largest amount of mail at that studio is Marie Wilson, an actress whose name seldom makes the marquee lights. Robert Taylor is still head man in a correspondence way at M-G-M, although he has fallen off somewhat during the past year. And since her marriage to Arthur Hornblow, Jr. a year and a half ago, Myrna Loy is not attracting nearly the number of letters she once did from admiring and lonesome males.
GINGER ROGERS remains far out in front at R-K-O. Fred Astaire and Jack Oakie lead the men there, although Wheeler and Woolsey, who are usually unmercifully panned by the critics and not particularly favoured by producers, draw a heavy load, especially from foreign countries. Katharine Hepburn's few fan writers are either very much for or equally against her, but she seldom asks to see any of her mail. Fan clubs seem to help fan mail totals, but it is all "repeat” business, the same “members” writing again and again. Many important stars whose box office ratings are higher than fan mail favorites receive scant attention from writers. Leslie Howard is one who doesn’t excite many letters. Jack Benny and Edward G. Robinson are others. However, they are established stars. It is the young players just getting started who really clog the Hollywood mails.

The next story is from the International News Service, January 12, 1938.

Fan Mail For Stars Comes Principally From Children
Importance of Players Has Little Bearing On Amount of Letters.
By Carlisle Jones
HOLLYWOOD, Jan. 12. (INS)—Although fan mail is no longer considered an absolutely accurate measure of a star's popularity, it is regarded as important by the studios, and much time and money is spent in seeing that the writers are supplied with the information and pictures they desire.
The truth is that most of the fan mail that floods the mail bags addressed to Hollywood comes from children. When schools start the amount of fan mail drops off. When vacations start, it picks up again. But all told, the quantity now is much less than it was eight or nine years ago when Colleen Moore was receiving, on an average, more than 15,000 letters each week an amount generally considered the high spot in fan mail received by any motion picture star.
Flynn Ahead of Powell.
At the Warner studios, Errol Flynn has slowly taken first place in the fan mail rating, pushing Dick Powell out of the spot he has held for more than four years. Flynn's mail averages some 4,000 letters and cards each month now, and was much higher than that before the public schools started this fall. Dick Powell now trails this figure, his average being about 3,500.
Oddly enough, the player receiving the third largest amount of mail at Warners is now Marie Wilson. She had better than 3,000 letters in December. The Mauch twins are fourth and Bette Davis is fifth. From there on the players rank as follows: Anita Louise, Olivia de Havilland, Dick Foran, Joan Blondell, Kay Francis and Wayne Morris.
The importance of the player has little bearing on the amount of fan mail addressed to him. A new star collects an enormous amount of fan mail the first few weeks or months after his initial appearance; and then this invariably drops off to a steady flow that maintains an average over a long period of time.
The fan mail of Wayne Morris and Fernand Gravet followed this average "curve." Wayne received more mail than any other player on his lot for many weeks after his first appearance in “Kid Galahad.” Now he gets about 1,200 each week since the release of “Submarine D-l,” with the prospects of another boost in reading matter with the forthcoming “The Kid Comes Back.”
Gravet got a good deal of attention right from the first, and his allotment has not fallen off as much as might have been expected with a personality who has made only one American picture. “Food For Scandal” should send his rating up again.
Fan Clubs Help.
Fan clubs help fan mail, but it is all "repeat" business, the same "members" writing again and again. However, it boosts the totals.
Many important stars, whose box office ratings are higher than that of the fan mail favorites, receive comparatively small amounts of mail. Leslie Howard is one who does not evoke many letters, and Edward G. Robinson is another. However, they are established stars. It is the younger players, just getting started, who really clog the Hollywood mails.
The care a star gives his fan mail is always reflected in the amount he receives and the way the "curve" keeps up. Dick Powell has undoubtedly taken more care with his mail than almost any other Hollywood star of recent years, and the result has been that he is still the second ranking favorite on the lot.
Probably 80 per cent of the fan mail received by any other star is made up of requests for a picture together with a brief complimentary note. A smaller proportion of the letters praise or complain about the sort of pictures the player is making. There are some begging letters, mostly asking for clothes. Even these have fallen off, however, because the public is gradually learning that stars will not (in fact they cannot) answer such requests.
A very small amount of the fan mail is objectionable as to content. This is occasionally turned over to the postal authorities, but is usually destroyed by the studio before the player sees it. Christmas invariably brings many presents, some of them of considerable value, to the more popular players.
The depression years brought about a severe drop in fan mail totals, but this is new being slowly rebuilt back toward the old records. Studios do not pay their stars by the amount of fan mail each receives, but in the long run the popularity that fan mail indicates is important to a player's career.

The funny thing is you can find pretty much the same story before this. The headline in one paper in 1930: “Fan Mail No Longer Governs Producers.” Of course, it was the producers who supplied fan mail numbers to the columnists.

Still, I wonder if a general tweet to a K-Pop fan equals the thrill in 1960 of a cartoon lover getting an autographed picture in the mail of Bullwinkle J. Moose.

Screwy

Screwy Squirrel wants to know from Meathead if he’s the guy who chases the screwy squirrels that bust out of a mental hospital? After getting an affirmative answer, Screwy whips out a Napoleon hat (the symbol of insanity) and tells him to start chasing.

Screwy heckles the dog, whipping out a mallet and a kid’s stick horse before galloping out of the scene.



The scene is from Happy-Go-Nutty (1944), a cartoon animated by Ed Love, Preston Blair and Ray Abrams. There are some great in-betweens of Screwy in this scene, too. The Independent Film Journal of July 22, 1944 simply said “Laughs galore.”

Squiggly Fears

An old animation trick to show fear was to draw characters with wavy outlines and alternate the drawing with another with smooth outlines.

Here’s an example from Van Beuren’s The Bully’s End, a 1932 cartoon directed by Harry Bailey.



The animation is vastly inferior to the average Fleischer cartoon made across the street from Van Beuren. The story has some structure, though. A runty duck takes on an arrogant, abusive rooster. The hero duck wins by cheating!

Gene Rodemich sticks “Hold That Tiger” in the background behind the fight scene.

Tobacco Leaf Carusos

It was a case of advertising the advertising.

“Have you heard the chant of the tobacco auctioneer?” asked print ads in 1938 for Lucky Strikes. The question referred to F.E. Boone, who spieled his auctioneer pitch during radio commercials for the cigarettes.

Billboard liked the idea, at least as a sales tool. In its May 8, 1937 edition, an unbylined writer opined:

Best commercial heard in moons is the Lucky Strike presentation of the tobacco mart auctioneer selling his wares. These auctioneers open their spiel on the final bid slowly, then work to an unbelievable rapidity of speech with a definitely liquid effect. It’s impelling was a fine display of technical perfection, and education for those who go in for that sort of thing. Same material, presented from a studio, would have been terribly dull.

The spots were effective, but Boone almost lost his job. Boone’s chant emanated live from Lexington, Kentucky and it cost American Tobacco $1,200 a week to plug Lexington into the network feed. Several papers in late 1937 talked about having someone else do the chant in New York. But Variety reported “Boone has few successful imitators” so the solution evidently was to have Boone go to New York.

Presumably, Boone started off on the “Hit Parade” shows but he also appeared in 1938 on a five-minute syndicated show called Lucky Strike Presents along with two other auctioneers: L.A. Speed Riggs and Joe Cuthrell. Riggs later joined him on the Lucky spots on the various network shows.

The success of the ads brought up the obvious question among listeners: “Who is this guy?” It was answered in a syndicated newspaper column that appeared starting around Nov. 26, 1937.

Descendant of Daniel Boone Does His Pioneering at Microphone
TOBACCO AUCTIONEER BIDS FOR FAME WITH WEIRD CHANT
By NORMAN SIEGEL
NEA Service Radio Editor
New York, Nov. 26—The “Tobacco Leaf Caruso” whose rapid-fire chant has become radio’s newest novelty is a Kentucky Boone, all the way back to Daniel of the coonskin cap. Forest Boone is his name and he’s a nephew four or five generations removed of the famous Indian scout of the history books.
Daniel Boone probably never suspected, when he began raising tobacco out in Kentucky, that his line would produce a new kind of radio announcer. But that’s what happened when Forest Boone began opening the “Hit Parade” program on the Columbia network with his weird chant.
Actually his announcing rigamarole is perfectly intelligible. It consists of a series of numbers and the words “dollars” and “bid.” The secret of the confusion is the speed at which tobacco auctioneers, of which Boone is one of the best known, have to talk. Tobacco auctions are carried on at break-neck tempos in order to accommodate all the farmers who bring their crops to the big selling warehouses.
Has to Work Fast

A fair day’s selling for Boone is between 300,000 and 400,000 pounds of tobacco. He has been known to auction as high as 700 piles an hour. The auction takes place in a huge warehouse with about a dozen buyers grouped near the auctioneer. An appraiser sets the original figure. Then Boone begins his work. The buyers seldom speak. Competition is keen and they’d rather not say what they’re bidding. Each buyer simply indicates, by a series of almost imperceptible gestures, whether or not he accepts the figure Boone is chanting. One may wiggle the little finger on his left hand. Another twitches a muscle in his jaw. A third may wink, or tug at his coat lapel.
Boone never misses such a gesture of acceptance. Immediately he raises the price. His eyes are so well-trained that he follows this by-play with the greatest of ease, although he finds it difficult to focus his eyes on his own name on a calling card. He considers himself a sort of umpire between the warehouse and the tobacco buyers.
“I call the strikes,” he told us.
He is also a little like an opera singer. He has a practical and instinctive knowledge of voice production. Although he never took a lesson, he talks about keeping his throat “open” and never “forcing a tone.” He has learned to say “hawlf” just like a singer. “Forty” is also a danger word. It closes both lips and throat Boone modifies it to something that sounds like “whorty.”
Must Get Back on Job
He started in the field when he was 19. His only training was listening to all the auctioneers at the tobacco warehouses near his home in Lexington, Ky., until he could imitate some of them.
Then he went to a Lexington warehouse and asked for a job. The warehouse manager let him put on a mock sale. Afterward the manager took Boone regretfully aside and advised him to take up some other line of work. He’d never make an auctioneer. Two months later he was auctioneering at Mt. Sterling, Ky.
His radio experience began several years ago. He has never been the least bit nervous before the mike, though he says he does miss the excitement of studying the reactions and the pantomime of his tobacco buyers.
Next month he’ll be going to the biggest burley tobacco market in the world at Lexington to handle the sales. However, his chant will still be on the airwaves as it will be picked up from his hotel room. It’s a voice you can’t forget.

If you’ll pardon the pun, the auctioneer chant was a boon to Lucky Strike. It got all kinds of free publicity in parody form on radio shows and animated cartoons.

Boone was already famous when Jack Benny switched sponsors to American Tobacco in 1944 and suddenly found two auctioneers (and several announcers) from New York opening and closing his show. His last appearance on the Benny radio show was Nov. 21, 1948. Riggs went solo after that. The commercials had moved to the West Coast in 1947; Variety reported the switch from New York saved $100,000 a year.

Boone’s wire service obituaries indicate he was still working until about the end of 1951 when he retired because of illness. He died of heart problems in Robertsonville, North Carolina, on July 1, 1954.

As for Riggs, he loved show biz. When The Hit Parade’s Lanny Ross appeared on stage in New York in 1939, Riggs was part of his act, demonstrating how he sold tobacco. He toured selling bonds during the war. The Associated Press profiled him in 1952.

Auctioneer Chanter Has Envied Job
By Bob Thomas
HOLLYWOOD, Feb. 29—(AP)—One of the most envied jobs in all of show business is that of L. A. Speed Riggs, the tobacco auctioneer.
For 15 years his work has consisted largely of delivering his gibberish chant at the beginning and close of his sponsor’s radio and television shows. The stint takes eight seconds. Lately he has not even been required to come to the studios. His chant is inserted by tape or film and his salary check comes in as usual.
Riggs is paid well for his eight second performance. He said he could not reveal his salary because of the possible jealousy of the other performers for the sponsor. But he admitted that he earned more than the $40,000 annual salaries which top tobacco auctioneers can draw in their normal pursuit.
But even such a handsome deal can have its drawbacks.
“For 15 years I was under exclusive contract,” he explained. “I couldn’t do anything else. The inactivity is almost enough to drive you crazy.”

For sidelines he had a ranch in the San Fernando Valley where he raised Palomino horses and white- faced Hereford cattle and invested in a print shop and a furniture factory. But even these interests weren’t enough to keep him busy. So when his contract came up for renewal recently he insisted on a non-exclusive pact. The new seven year deal permits him to make outside appearances as long as they aren’t for another cigarette.
“Now I can do some of the things I had to pass up before,” he remarked. “I’ve had many offers to do film roles in the past and now I can take them. I also have some ideas for a TV show for myself. One of them, called ‘Beat the Auctioneer,’ is being considered by CBS.”
Speed is a likable leather faced man of 39 years and no stranger to appearing before the public. He first developed a yen for his profession at the age of seven when his father took him to a tobacco auction in his home town, Goldsboro, N.C. Speed was intrigued by the chant and began practising it. At 17, he was a full-fledged auctioneer, the youngest in the business.
Fate intervened in a promising auctioneering career when Speed was 25. The tobacco advertising genius, George Washington Hill, decided to put auctioneers on his radio shows and sent talent scouts to the tobacco country.
“I was chosen after they had listened to 42 other auctioneers,” Speed recalled. “I noticed these men following me around all morning, but I didn’t know who they were. Afterwards they made me an offer. It was much more than I was making—$45 a week a an auctioneer and $12 a week as a disc jockey, so I took it. I’ve been working for the company ever since.” Also chosen was F. E. Boone who has since retired.
Speed hasn’t done an actual tobacco auction for a couple of years but he hasn’t lost his touch.
“When you learn the job you don’t forget it,” he remarked. “It’s straining work, not only on the voice, but on the eyes and mind. For instance, I would have to know at least 15 men who represent the buyers and keep my eyes on them for their signs. I have to know all the farmers and remember the tobacco that I had already sold and who bought it.
“I trained myself so I could look at you and also see what was going on many feet away. My eye doctor has told me that’s the reason I have to wear glasses now.”

By the time the article was published, Riggs was off the Benny show. He was phased out in October 1951. Eventually, sponsor announcer Del Sharbutt got the boot, too. American Tobacco already had Don Wilson on the show. He began plugging the tobacco (oh, there’s another unintentional pun) with a chorus and then contractee Dorothy Collins chirping about it in song. It meant more money saved on radio to spend on television.

Riggs did some acting with Benny. He found himself part of the plot of the second-last show of the 1950-51 season where he gently kidded himself and his tobacco hawking style.

Tobacco advertising ended on TV in the U.S. on New Year’s Day 1971. Lee Aubrey Riggs had retired by then and moved back to North Carolina about 13 months before his death in 1987. Something you may not have known was the charity work he was involved in. You can read that story on this web page.

Mister Lookit

Bill Golden’s lasting contribution to television is the CBS Eye logo. He created it as the network was growing in the early ‘50s and it’s still on the air. Why tamper with success?

Golden was the network’s chief designer, and came up with something else around the same time which wasn’t as lasting, but is still charming to anyone who likes puppets. He’s the creator of “Mister Lookit.”

The stop-motion jester showed up in short promos in the 1953-54 season. He was made by Lou Bunin, noted for a feature-length version of Alice in Wonderland, two years before Walt Disney, who took Bunin to court to stop its release. The character was voiced by Phil Kramer, whose distinctive whine could be heard a few years later on Paramount cartoons. (He was the emcee in the 1939 Warner Bros. cartoon Hamateur Night).

Perhaps inspired by a CBS ad in the New York Times in November 1953 announcing the character, Broadcasting magazine wrote about Mister Lookit on January 18, 1954, along with a local station promo puppet on the New York NBC station.

Messrs. 'Lookit' & 'Four' Make the Break
Puppets at WCBS -TV and WNBT (TV) now are trying their hands with commercials at station breaks promoting shows and stars that appear on their respective stations.
PUPPETS, which from the first days of television have shared the spotlight and the public favor with live entertainers before the tv cameras, have now expanded their operations into the field of commercial announcing. New York viewers in recent weeks have become well acquainted with "Mister Lookit," who pops up between shows on WCBS -TV to plug other CBS video programs, and "Mister Four," who performs similar chores for NBC's teleshows on WNBT (TV).
"Mister Lookit" is a jester puppet, wearing the traditional cap and bells, who, according to CBS-TV, "lives in your television set ... just leave the dials turned to WCBS-TV and he'll be along in no time.
"He may seem impertinent at first, but don't let his manner throw you. Like most show people, he's merely trying to be entertaining. Admittedly, he's a ham, but we think you'll find him pretty valuable to have around. He'll keep the inside of your picture-tube clean, he'll battle the static and he'll help to unscramble the ghosts in your set. Most important of all, however, he'll keep you posted on the best shows on television-the shows on the CBS Television network."
"Mister Four" is a puppet "but he's no dummy," WNBT said in its introductory ad for him in New York newspapers. "Actually, he's real smart," the copy read. "Without moving a muscle or ever touching the dial on his tv set, he watches the finest in all television ... He pops into sight between programs on ch. 4 and calls your attention to NBC shows so spectacular they excite even his mahogany heart.
"Rather stylish is Mister Four. Always dresses for the occasion. Describes a western program wearing chaps. Chats about our fancy evening-time shows garbed in white tie, topper and monocle, and trousers."
Noting that "Mister Four" is not the only "symbolic puppet in New York television," the WNBT ad reported "there's a new puppet too on one of our delightfully competitive tv stations. And while we would be the last in the world to start a Hatfield-McCoy between two puppets, we must report that our puppet thinks our neighbor's puppet has sawdust in his head."
This slur has so far been ignored by "Mister Lookit" and by William Golden, creative director of the CBS Television advertising dept., which brought the jester puppet into the world of television and promotion. Filmed by Punch Films in a series of 132 different 20- second trailers for CBS video programs, "Mister Lookit" is available to all of the network's tv affiliates.
In contrast, "Mister Four" is strictly a WNBT employe, confining his activities to the New York area served by that station. He is the brainchild of Max Buck, director of advertising, sales promotion and merchandising for the station.



CBS figured there was merchandising money in Mister Lookit. “Operation Quietly Efficient” was set up to push CBS-owned items, such as Charlemagne the Lion on The Morning News, in the form of toys, games, books, clothing, even newspaper syndication. A set of Mister Lookit party clothes was yours for the proper cash payment.

For whatever reason, Mister Lookit was cancelled. Maybe there wasn’t enough promo time available for him. Maybe the network thought puppets were for kids only. Maybe they thought he wasn’t classy enough for CBS.

I’m sure you’ll want to see Mister Lookit in action. Rick Prelinger’s archives can make it possible. The first promo below is for Lucy, the second plugs You Are There and the third pushes Red Buttons. There are others on the site for Ed Sullivan, Jack Benny, Jackie Gleason and some forgotten shows like Medallion Theatre with Janet Gaynor.

Radio References in the South

Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera indulge in some radio star references in The Goose Goes South, a 1941 non-Tom-and-Jerry short.

In a little mountain cabin in Virginia, a hillbilly father gesticulates to his lazy son to “get up and get to work.”



Cut to a close-up of Zeke. “Why daddy?” he says coyly, just like Baby Snooks.



“Why, it’s the songbird of the south!” exclaims narrator Frank Bingman, as a hefty canary whistles “When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain” on a tree branch. “Hello, anybody!” she says to the camera, spoofing Kate Smith. (Yes, she was known as the ‘Songbird of the South’).



There are no animator credits on this cartoon. You can hear Mel Blanc, Sara Berner (as Zeke/Snooks) and Cliff Nazarro doing his double-talk routine. And if you’re wondering where the title came from....