Bat Overhead

Porky opens a door in an abandoned yacht club and out fly a number of bats. In fact, one with a moustache soars directly at the theatre audience.



Mel Millar’s story for It’s An Ill Wind (1938) also has a bear (actually a bearskin rug) that comes at the camera. Between a disobedient dog and a duck sidekick that won’t shut up (why did Warners love that kind of character in the late ‘30s?), the cartoon is more annoying than funny.

Bugs Hardaway and Cal Dalton are the directors, while Herman Cohen gets the animation credit. Mel Blanc and Danny Webb supply voices.

Eddie Anderson on his Boss

Perhaps next to Jack Benny, Rochester was the most popular character on the Benny radio show. That’s what the applause seems to indicate, especially on broadcasts in front of military audiences during the war.

Eddie Anderson always seems to be at least half in character when doing newspaper interviews, but in this piece in the TV Time column of the Hollywood Citizen-News, he’s being himself.

He’s not quite accurate when he says he was on with Jack the week after the “porter” show, but it probably seemed that way after the passage of time. One thing he’s right about—he did get plenty of laughs.

This was published October 26, 1963.

He Talks About Benny
By EDDIE (ROCHESTER) ANDERSON
About all I can say after 25 years with Jack Benny is that it’s been a ball. No money, just a ball.
Of course, I’m kidding; I’m sure everyone in show business— and a large part of the public— knows by now that Jack Benny is one of the most generous men alive.
As a boss he keeps a natural and relaxed attitude on the set— there’s very little of that high pressure and tension that you're always hearing about in television. As a result, everyone breaks his neck to do a good job.
THE REAL JACK
The hardest worker is Jack himself. I’m sure he realizes that no one can be perfect, but that doesn’t seem to stop him from trying. He probably wouldn’t be starting his 31st year in broadcasting if he did.
Any resemblance between the character I play on “The Jack Benny Program” and the real me is purely accidental. According to the script, my boss is so cheap that he refuses to have my room wired for electricity — he gave me a room next to the streetlight on the corner and told me to leave the blinds open when I wanted to read.
Now the truth is that I have a fine home—and have had for years— and a lovely family. And of course this is due almost completely to my years of work on the Benny radio and television shows and in his movies.
I’ll be appearing with The Boss again in many shows this season, our 14th on the CBS Television Network.
Along about this time every year with the new season starting and all, I have good reason to be grateful that luck— or something—was with me that day in 1937 when I auditioned for a part on the old Jack Benny radio show.
BENNY’S PORTER
Happily for me, I won the audition and played the part of a porter on a train that was supposed to be taking Jack and his cast from New York to Hollywood. The writers gave me a lot of funny lines.
Well, the part of the porter—Rochester—got so many laughs from the studio audience and so many people who heard the show wrote in that the producers had me back the next week.
The following week went the same way—loads of phone calls and letters—and so The Boss decided to make me a regular character on the show.
It would be hard to imagine being associated with any nicer and more talented people over the years than Jack Benny, Dennis Day and Don Wilson— not to mention the great behind-the-scenes staff.
It’s been a million laughs and it seems I’ve made millions of friends through my association with Jack Benny.
And, contrary to the image “the boss” likes to project, the money hasn't been half-bad, either.

The Search For Smith

You recognise these Warner Bros. characters, don’t you?



One is the Crusher in Bunny Hugged. The other is the meat-and-gravy-loving dog in Chow Hound. Both are from the Chuck Jones unit at Warner Bros. Both were released in 1951.

And both were voiced by John T. Smith.

This is a story of failure, failure to answer the question “Who was John T. Smith?”

Smith did get screen credit on cartoons—but not at Warner Bros. He appeared in a handful of shorts at Warners.

Homeless Hare (1950, Chuck Jones, construction worker)
Hillbilly Hare (1950, Bob McKimson, Punkinhead Martin, dance caller)
Forward, March Hare (1953, Jones, sergeant)
Water, Water, Every Hare (1952, Jones, evil scientist)
There Auto Be a Law (1953, McKimson, narrator)
No Parking Hare (1954, McKimson, construction worker)

Keith Scott, who knows more about old cartoon actors than anyone alive, confirms the Hillbilly Hare appearance, which was recorded in June 1949. Keith says he lent his voice to Jerry Fairbanks’ “Speaking of Animals” series for Paramount, and was also employed by Walter Lantz. The former series isn’t available for viewing; much of the latter is but I can’t think of which cartoons he may have appeared in. He would have made a good Buzz Buzzard, but Dal McKennon was cast in the role.

1949 is a year you can hear his voice on shorts for UPA. One is in an industrial cartoon, The Seagull and the Sailor, a short by the U.S. Navy pushing re-enlistment. Smith is the sailor, with the “What, no gravy?” voice heard later in Chow Hound. Daws Butler is the seagull. He is also the crow in The Magic Fluke; for whatever reason, UPA didn’t wish to bring back Frank Graham when it was asked by Columbia to revive its characters.

UPA didn’t start giving screen credits for actors until early 1952. The following year, Smith played a father with a Southern drawl and several other characters in the studio’s “Jolly Frolics” short Little Boy With a Big Horn. They don’t sound like any of the growly, aggressive characters you associate with him.



Our cartoon trail goes cold for now.

Smith came from radio but, unfortunately, he never seems to have been interviewed about it, certainly not at the time. He also doesn’t appear to have been a regular on any show. Being a supporting player had disadvantages: lack of an on-air credit and lack of a mention in newspaper radio listings/highlight columns. Between the Hollywood Citizen-News and the Radio Goldindex, we have been able to assemble the following appearances; I imagine he made far more than these.

December 21, 1947: “Christmas Story,” starring Jeanne Crain, KLAC.
July 8, 1948: “The Last Chance” episode of Suspense (with Daws Butler, Shep Menken and Paul Frees), CBS.
January 21, 1950: “The Bid For Freedom” episode of The Adventures of Philip Marlowe, CBS.
April 4, 1951: “The Great Lover” episode of Dr. Christian (Robert C. Bruce also appeared), CBS.
April 17, 1951: “Grocery Budget,” episode of Fibber McGee and Molly (with Bill Thompson, Arthur Q. Bryan and Herb Vigran), NBC.
May 18, 1951: “Kristi” episode of NBC’s Short Story.
Sept. 7, 1951: “The Curious Fisherman” episode of This is Your FBI, ABC.
July 21, 1952: “Love Song” episode of The Railroad Hour, NBC.
Aug. 25, 1952: “Fantasie Impromptu” episode of The Railroad Hour, NBC.

The Citizen-News mentions other projects, the first of which is intriguing:

Jan 21, 1951: Jerry Corneaya Productions are making a film on chimps for the “Professor Lightskull and Dr. Twiddle” series for Bing Crosby Enterprises. Voices are by John T. Smith and Daws Butler.
Apr. 30, 1951: Radio actor John T Smith narrates the forthcoming movie "You Never Know.”
Sept. 14, 1951: John T. Smith, radio-TV actor, has completed dubbing the voice of the Jester and various others in the Alexander Productions color film "The Seven Ravens.”

I suspect the latter is from the Alexander Film Company, a commercial film maker based in Colorado Springs. Tex Avery did some animation work for it.

This is the easy part. The biographical part is where we have a dead end.



Keith says there was a small mention in a radio casting guide that he was from Oregon. A post by Devon Baxter on the Cartoon Research site says he was from Seattle. Regardless, in checking all kinds of records on-line, I’ve found a John T. Smith who was a newscaster at KYA San Francisco in early 1944 but I have no clue if it's the same guy. He’s not in any of the Radio Annuals, which would have been helpful. And there’s no explanation why he seemingly vanishes around 1954. Keith has a teeny bit more about him—he spoke to both June Foray and Daws Butler about him—but I’ll leave it for him to tell; I don’t want to steal his research.

It very well could be John T. Smith was a stage name; a young actor named Robert Van Orden decided to change his screen name in 1954 to John Smith. But there’s no point in speculating.

For now, we’ll just have to wait to see what other information comes to light. It’s got to be out there somewhere.

My thanks to Keith Scott and John Hayes for IDs on this post.

B.S. (Bull Slingshot)

The confident bullfighting Tex Avery wolf is seemingly under control in Señor Droopy (1949). The bull charges at him over and over, but the wolf is prepared.

In this gag, the graceful matador wolf makes a slingshot appear from nowhere.



It turns into a signboard gag, where part of a sign rips off and attaches to someone. Here, the sign is for a ballet school, so the bull turns into a ballerina when he smashes into the fence. He drops to the sound of a tympani, flips and lands again. Scott Bradley underscores the scene with some light, twinkly ballet music.



Bobe Cannon, Preston Blair, Mike Lah, Walt Clinton and Grant Simmons get animation credits on this short. Bill Thompson is Droopy, Tex does his familiar chuckle for the bull, and Keith Scott has identified the emcee as Nestor Paiva. I can’t tell if he’s also the scared guy who lets the bull in. Of course, we get Lina Romay in live action at the end.

Art Metrano

There are people who suddenly appear on TV with a routine that’s funny. That was the case with Art Metrano.

He has passed away at age 84.

His obits talk about Police Academy. I remember him doing an odd comedy magic act where his gimmick was da-da-da-ing the melody to “Fine and Dandy” while he screwed up. He popped up everywhere with it, especially on The Tonight Show.

Metrano wasn’t really an overnight sensation—Walter Winchell led off a column with his name in 1958 when he was at the Burt Lane Theatre Workshop on West 46th Street. Fast forward more than ten years later to when I may have seen him first. He was a cast member on one of Tim Conway’s innumerable failures. I readily admit I watched any show Conway starred in. Usually once.

Here’s a syndicated column from around July 20, 1971. He was now famous. Or was he?

No More Da, Da, Da
By TOM GREEN
Gannett News Service
BEVERLY HILLS—"Oh, aren't you the one from the Tim Conway show?"
Art Metrano looked up from his menu at Nate and Al's Delicatessen and was face-to-face with a harried-looking waitress in the throes of recognition.
"Yep," he smiled, bursting into the little tune that has become his trademark. “Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da-a-a-ah! It's me.”
"I loved you! I loved that show! I used to always watch it. Why did they ever take it off?"
"Because there weren't enough people like you," smiled Metrano, and the waitress hustled off.
Stocky little Art Metrano beamed as the waitress disappeared into the kitchen. That "da, da, da" bit, which he sings to accompany himself as a magician doing tricks, has brought the one-time football player a long way in the last year or two.
This fall, he'll play Big Nick, an Al Capone gangster-type and chief adversary of the quick-witted operator of a speakeasy, Dean Jones, on CBS' spoof of the prohibition era, "The Chicago Teddy Bears." It means goodbye to the “da, da, da” for a while, but Metrano is excited about the project. "People like gangsters. Look at Bogart and Cagney and those guys. There's some kind of magic about being a gangster. I know that crime is not supposed to pay. But, boy, it sure does pretty good.
"I'm going to like doing it. I can't wait to go to Chicago if the show's a hit to meet the real boys."
Metrano is also going to be seen soon as Jon Voight’s brother-in-law in “The All-American Boy,” a major Warner Bros. feature film.
“I’m basically a dramatic actor. I’ve spent most of my years studying drama . . . I was part of a Shakespeare group in New York. But I was never around long enough because I was always on the road getting $75 a weekend doing a comedy team act in the Catskills.”
Actually, Metrano started out headed for a career as a pro football player. He was an all-American in high school and won a football scholarship at what is now the University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif. But he always acted on the side.
"I couldn't see any future in pro football. At the time I had a 19-inch neck and weighed 267 pounds. It would take days to recover from a game.
"I realized I really liked to perform. I was always clowning around in the locker room. As big as I was, I felt aesthetic. So I went to New York to study professionally."
The waitress was back with a plate of sausage and eggs.
“You know, Doris Day usually sits right here,” she said, pointing to the seat next to Metrano. “Milton Berle comes in here all the time. But it’s you bright young talented people I like to see.” “I may take a room here,” Metrano said, as the waitress disappeared again.
In New York he got a scholarship to an acting workshop in which John Cassavetes was involved. Then for three years, he studied with Stella Adler and by the time he decided to pack off to Hollywood, he was a method actor.
He came West cold three years ago with no job prospects, partly because he had read an article by Jackie Gleason in TV Guide which advised an aspiring actor to do so. He finagled a job selling telephone systems with Hollywood as his territory.
"It was a snap. If you just walk by the guards at any studio in this town with a briefcase and look like you know what you're doing, you can get in."
He started trying to sell studio brass the phone system and at the end of every pitch, he would pass out an 8x10 glossy of himself with his resume.
Finally, he got into an educational television play and a stage production of Norman Mailer's "Deer Park." The critics liked him and panned everything else about the stage play. So Metrano sent out a flurry of copies of the reviews and wound up with an agent.
In a few months, he got his first televsion acting job in "The Outcasts." Then came two lines on a "Bewitched" segment in which he impressed director William Asher. He was brought back four times, each time with an expanded part.
He played a fat marathon dancer in "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" and became a regular on "The Lohman and Barkley Show," KNC’s Emmy-winning comedy show. Here he started the "da, da, da" bit, sung to the tune of "Fine and Dandy."
A number of television appearances followed that and he was signed to last fall's short-lived Tim Conway show.
“I did da-da-da first at a Christmas party. We were clowning around and the tune hit me. It reminded me of all the opening songs you've ever heard for magicians. I just started doing it, no matter what I did.”
"You're just great," the waitress said, back again. "Just great. Could I have your autography? My grandson's name is Bobby. I don't know your name."

Ah, The Chicago Teddy Bears. It was supposed to be Metrano’s big ticket to stardom. That isn’t where the ticket took him.

There was plenty of talent on the show but few laughs. Maybe it tried too hard to be funny. Maybe it was too full of stereotypes. All I remember is I don’t think I got through the first episode. Only twelve more followed before cancellation.

Metrano had huge hopes, as you can see by this story from the Newspaper Enterprise Association of September 9, 1971.

Teddy Bears Try Laughs
Metrano’s Can’t Shoot Straight
By JOYCE GABRIEL
NEW YORK — (NEA) — In this age of the non-Mafia, CBS-TV has dared to schedule a fall show about gangland. It's produced by Untouchables producer Jerry Thorpe, but it's doubtful any Italian Americans will object. The show, Chicago Teddy Bears, is a spoof on the gang-ridden Chicago of the 1920s and '30s. played strictly for laughs.
Art Metrano plays the gang leader. Big Nick, a Capone-type character, without Capone's menace. Big Nick is a defused bad guy because his big bad plans never work out. They don't work out because Big Nick is not big on brains. He is a caricature of the sly, tough, cunning underworld creature.
Metrano looks as if he could be a gangster, albeit stereotyped. Short and squat, his body is past a plump. His complexion is swarthy, his hair curly and his stubby fingers are made to clutch a cigar. He wears an Al Capone fedora, tilted over his brow the way Capone wore his.
Metrano’s clothes for the series are pure Prohibition: wide-lapeled pinstripe suits and a huge topcoat he wears thrown over his shoulders. “I wear the topcoat like a cape—it makes me look important, like a count or something.” Metrano says.
His car is an old Duesenberg. His walk is a swagger.
“It’s a walk I picked up from a kid I grew up with in Brooklyn,” he explained. “This kid was tough—football player and all. He was small, but he strutted. You knew he could take you.” Metrano paused and shook his head sadly. “He’s in prison now.”
Metrano changes his voice for the part. As Art Metrano, his voice has only traces of his former Brooklyn accent. Its tone is gentle. As Big Nick, the voice becomes lower, more gravel-laden, and the accent is strictly Flatbush Avenue.
“Ya always gotta sound like you don’ want nobody to know whatja talkin’ about,” he said in a rough whisper. “See whad I mean? There’s gotta be a feeling of toughness in the voice, ya know? Because if ya talk too good, they’ll think you’re a fairy. You gotta say ‘dame’ when ya mean woman, and when you want somebody, ya say, ‘You! C’meah.’ ”
Metrano’s gangland buddies are as broadly comic as he is.
Huntz Hall, one of the old Dead End Kids, plays Big Nick’s valet.
“He never stops ‘valeting’ for a minute,” says Metrano.
“He’s always touching me, flicking dirt off my lapels, straightening the crease in my pants, cleaning my glasses. He even carries an atomizer with him—he uses it to spray the carnation in my lapel.” Mickey Shaughnessy plays Big Nick’s bodyguard and Jamie Farr is “Lefty,” Big Nick’s driver.
Dean Jones costars as Metrano’s cousin—and foil—in the series. He plays all-American boy, Linc, to Big Nick’s “hood.” John Banner plays their mutual uncle and Marvin Kaplan is Jones' nasal-voiced accountant and the only one who is afraid of Big Nick’s bluster.
Metrano has immersed himself in the Big Nick role. There’s even a practical joke he is planning.
“One day, when we break for lunch, me and the boys (Shaughnessy, Hall and Farr) will take the Duesenberg to one of those drive-in restaurants. We’ll wear our gangster clothes, too. That would shake people up,” Metrano said.
It has taken Metrano 10 years in show business to get this series. For seven of those years, Metrano couldn’t make a living in the business. He worked as a hairdresser to support himself. His father would tell him, “You’re a bum, why don’t you go into the family business and start working for a living?” But Metrano stuck and three years ago he started getting acting jobs in TV series.
What he’s best known for now is the comedy routine he does on guest shots: a magic act that isn’t. Metrano does nontricks while singing “da-ta-da-ta” to the tune of “Another Opening, Another Show.” It’s an act people either love or hate, because the humor depends on the absurdity of what he’s doing.
Metrone’s father is dead now, but his mother is alive to appreciate his success.
“I go home to the old neighborhood in Long Beach, L.I., and my mother says, ‘You gotta go see Rose next door. She’s been so nice to me and she’d like to see you.’ So Rose comes in and I sit in a chair, like the Pope waiting for an audience, and I give her my autograph and I tell her, “Yeah, so-and-so star is really like he seems on TV.’
“To my family and the people in the neighborhood, I’m a superstar already.”

Metrano’s fortunes changed for the better when he went to the other side of the law. From being an old-time gangster, he became a cop in the Police Academy movies.

But an even funnier Metrano was born of tragedy. In 1989 he fell off a ladder at his home and was paralysed from the neck down. “What a shmuck! You fell on your own property! You can’t even sue!” he told himself, quoted in a Miami Herald interview in 2013. “You knew better — Jews don’t belong on ladders!”

After 21 operations and getting around on a motorised wheelchair, Metrano wrote and performed a one-man show called “Jews don’t belong on ladders!” to help others with spinal cord injuries.

To more than his family and people in the neighbourhood, that should have made him a superstar.

Dancing Teeth

A punching ball obeys the basic laws of physics in The Bull Fight, a 1935 Terrytoon. A bull smacks it and it comes right back at him, knocking out his teeth.



The teeth grow little feet, move around in time to Phil Scheib's music, clicking like a castanet, then jump back into the bull's mouth.



Paul Terry was nuts for operettas back then, so the cartoon’s dialogue is sung.

The Motion Picture Herald declared in its March 23rd edition: "An amusing, though largely average subject in the Terry-Toons series, wherein the young Spaniard, taking his sweetheart to the bull fight, jumps into the arena when the matador is routed, and proceeds to clean up the ring with the energetic bull, at the same time, vanquishing numerous of his horned compatriots. His bravery wins him the plaudits of the crowd and the hand of the girl, while the subject should bring several laughs from the audience."

The Urchin With the Nose

Jimmy Durante was loved because he came across as a sincere guy, who rose from poverty through hard work to become someone. People love that kind of story. Durante loved his audiences, so his audiences pulled for him.

A while ago, we posted the first of a three-part series from United Press International on Durante. Here’s the second part which goes into his early years. It appeared in papers in November and December 1959. Part three will be posted later.

The Remarkable Schnozzola
Clayton Joins Durante's Stage Team and a Great Star is Born
By Vernon Scott
HOLLYWOOD (UPI)—What would you do if you became the parent of a baby that looked like Jimmy Durante?
That's what happened to Barthelmeo Durante, a barber, and his Italian-born wife, Rosea Milliao Durante, back in February 1893. Even to these kindly people Jimmy's appearance came as something of a shock. His gargantuan nose was as proportionately striking then as it is today.
But the outsized proboscis came in handy when Jimmy was an odd-looking little urchin selling papers in New York. People became customers for laughs, unwittingly shaping the boy's future as a comedian.
“I'm peddling papers along the streets, passing the jernts and peeping under the swinging doors," Jimmy recalled. "I'm thinkin’ the swellest job in the world is the guy banging da piano in a saloon. I wants to be him."
Pianist at 16
After a couple of years of lessons the Schnozz' dream came true. At 16 he was punishing the 88 in a third-rate Coney Island gin mill glitteringly emblazoned "Diamond Tony's."
Jimmy moved on to another joint, a cut above Diamond Tony's in New York's Chinatown. This one was called the Chatham Club. It was during this stage of his life that he fell in love with a girl he identifies only as Gladie. The nose had been tweaked by cupid and was all for marching to the altar. Gladie, however, jilted the funny-looking little piano player for a guy with a reasonable nose. Durante was heartbroken.
He remained a bachelor, hobnobbing with the Manhattan hoods of the era, and becoming increasingly popular as a ragtime pianist.
Then in 1918 he met Maud Jeanne Olson, a Midwestern girl who wandered into the club Alamo in Harlem where Jimmy was working with a five-piece combo. They were married in June, 1921.
Joins Jackson

By this time the Schnozz had joined forces with Eddie Jackson. They became a successful team in the smoke-shrouded saloons. It wasn't until 1924 that Lou Clayton, the man who exerted the most influence on Jimmy, joined the act to make it one of the most famous of the roaring '20's.
The partners opened the Club Durante, and shrewd businessman Clayton ran the team. Jimmy was devoted to Clayton, and still is.
"I loved that man," Jimmy said. "He was the finest, most honest guy I ever knew. He made me a star—that's what he did."
Vaudeville paged the trio during the late '20's and early '30's and all three partners prospered, blowing their earnings on high living and gambling. In 1932 Jimmy bucketed off to Hollywood to star in the movies with Clayton acting as business manager and Jackson stringing along for laughs. But the pattern was broken. Jimmy stood alone as the star.
The Great Day
"Yeah, them were the great days," Durante recalled. "There was something doing every minute."
But the carefree prosperity palled. Jimmy's pictures began to slow down at the box office, and by the early '40's work wasn't easy to find. The partners split up.
Jeanne died in 1943, and Jimmy still visits her grave. Clayton, after a long, painful illness, passed away in 1950. Until his death, Clayton's doctor and hospital bills were picked up by little Mr. Malaprop. Whenever his old friends died Jimmy paid for the funerals.
When the movie rug was pulled out from under him, Jimmy went to work on radio and returned to night clubs, making ends meet and conquering new fields. "But I never changed my act, and Eddie Jackson came back with me," he said. "Audiences would be disappointed in me if I didn't sing all the old tunes, like 'Inka Dinka Do.'
Same Songs
"I been doin' some of them songs 20-25 years. It's all a part of the Durante tempo—‘I know I Can Do Without Broadway, But Can Broadway Do Without Me?’ and 'Have You Ever Had the Feeling that You Wanted to Go. And Still Had the Feeling That You Wanted to Stay?'
"They is ageless on accounta the tempo. They ain't got lyrics in 'em like ‘Wait 'Till the Sun Shines Nelly.’"
Jimmy's butchered lingo is not strictly an act. He never went beyond the seventh grade. But in typical Durante secrecy, he refuses to say how much of his mangled syntax is purposeful. When asked, he merely gets a twinkle in his eye.
"It's mortifyin’ sometimes to have people laugh at the way I talk," he grinned. But it's also satisfying. However them are the conditions that prevail." Another Durante secret is his famed signoff line, "Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, Wherever You are!”
Jimmy won't tell anyone the meaning of his mysterious, but deadly serious adieu. The two best guesses are that Mrs. Calabash was an affectionate nickname either for his wife or for Clayton. But no amount of wheedling will extract a straight answer.
"I ain't talkin’ about it,” Jimmy says flatly. "It's a very special thing to me, with a very special meanin’. Maybe some people have guessed the meaning of it. But they'll never hear it from my lips." (Next: A day with the Schnozz).

Throwing the Bull in the Silent Film Days

Terrible Tom from Toronto takes advantage of a beat-up old steer in a bullfight with a $10,000 prize—but the sorry-looking animal unexpectedly gets vicious when the cat tosses him into a cactus.



A tail take.



Swirls substitute for fight action. When the swirls end, Tom is vanquished. The bull bows to the crowd.



This is from Alice the Toreador, a 1925 Disney silent short. Alice does a bull-by-the-tail twirl like Popeye in Throwing the Bull, some Terrytoons character in 1935 in The Bull Fight and Droopy in Señor Droopy. Judo Jack did the same circular mid-air spin with Mr. Jinks in a 1958 Pixie and Dixie cartoon. In this case, the crowd yells “FAKE” when it’s revealed the bull she defeated was really Julius the cat wearing a cow-skin. A nice twist ending. Cheaters never prosper, Alice!

Pull on a Bull

Daffy discovers he’s pulling on a bull, not a sickly calf, in Porky’s Last Stand, an early 1940 release from the Bob Clampett unit. Some examples of expressions he’s given.



These are consecutive frames.



Izzy Ellis received the animation credit in this short, with Warren Foster coming up with a weak ending. Backgrounds by Dick Thomas.

As you can see from this Hollywood Reporter story on the right, Warners was releasing pairs of shorts every week. Three cartoons in two months was a pretty big workload for the Clampett unit, and may be one of the reasons his black-and-white cartoons seemed watered down in 1940-41.

The Perspiring Palm

To radio listeners in 1932, Jack Benny was a rising comedian who made fun of his sponsor on the air. Behind the scenes, things were a little more tumultuous.

Canada Dry wasn’t happy with Benny’s show, which debuted May 2nd. It pulled the programme off NBC and moved it onto CBS at the end of October. Benny lost his bandleader and singers as well as his announcer as they were bound by contract to remain at 711 Fifth Avenue. More significantly, Canada Dry saddled Phil Baker’s former stooge, Sid Silvers, on the show as a writer.

Silvers started coming up with a storyline that included more and more of him. That would mean less of Benny’s wife, Mary Livingstone. Benny wasn’t happy, Livingstone wasn’t happy and original writer Harry Conn wasn’t happy. The three of them forced a showdown. Silvers was out before year-end. Canada Dry soon decided the Benny show was a huge headache and pulled it off the air entirely. The last Canada Dry show was January 26, 1933.

(Evidently there were no hard feelings. Silvers stooged for Benny in the MGM feature Broadway Melody of 1936, co-written by Conn).

Jack had become popular enough on the old Stromberg-Carlson that Radio Guide profiled him in its October 1, 1932 issue. The show hadn’t moved to CBS yet; that came at the end of the month.

I believe the “manager” being quoted is Harry Baldwin, who appeared on Benny’s show until his induction in World War Two.

Meet the Artist
Jack Benny
BY LEE RONELL
WE sat and talked and watched many busy people scurrying around that thirteenth floor of the National Broadcasting Studios.
Or rather I sat and talked and watched Jack Benny did nothing but say "Hello, Pal" . . . "Howre yah, Westerner?" Well, well, well, if it isn't Ned, you old so and so." Because everybody on that thirteenth floor knows
Jack Benny. The Canada Dry Orchestra members all have admiring smiles for Mr. Benny. The receptionist has a great big grin for him. And everybody else has many hellos." In fact, every time he really got going on what promised to be an interesting statement about something or a revealing fact about himself . . . another person had shouted “hello” . . . and ankled over to see what Mr. Benny was doing at the moment.

Considering that the Canada Dry rehearsal had to start rehearsing in just a very few minutes. I thought it a bit inconsiderate of Mr. Benny to have so many friends, and inconsiderate of him to greet them so effusively. But that's Jack Benny, folks. Just a great big "hello" man. Cordial, beaming, unexcitable, very nonchalant. Wouldn't dream of snubbing anybody. Not the least bit high hat.
You'd hardly know Jack Benny off the air. I begged him to say something funny. He groaned. And his manager . . . only one of the various "stooges" that was hanging around, intercepted with, "He can't say anything funny. Never does." And Mr. Benny said, "If even my manager says I'm not funny, I guess I'm not."
Most of his ideas for his continuity come to him on the golf course, he confided to me. Just as he gets his stance all perfect and his eye on the ball ... he gets a thought. That's why his golf is so bad. But he loves it. He loves golf and his wife. They've been married for six years ... I mean Benny and his wife. And still just as delirious. No scandal mongers have anything to do with the Benny's. They realize it's just unnecessary eye-strain . . . peeping through the Benny keyhole on Central Park West.
Mrs. Benny is known professionally by any one of a dozen names on the stage and air . . . and has recently put in some work for Jack's program. "She only appears to help me out," says Jack. "In fact she never had any connection with the stage before she met me. She married me and part of the marriage vows said something about being a ‘help-mate’ so she got included in my work. That's what you call utilizing a wife."
Jack Benny started trouping years ago.
Started off from his home town, Chicago, Illinois, and traveled around the various vaudeville circuits in these United States. Several seasons with the Shuberts and Earl Carroll on Broadway. Several more seasons making Hollywood pictures for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ... the biggest of which was "The Hollywood Revue." Some more time spent making "shorts" for Paramount and then back to New York to be master of ceremonies at the Capitol and other large playhouses on Broadway.
Canada Dry was Jack's first try before the mike ... and it got him pretty panicky at first.
“The second time I was on the air I dropped one page from my continuity script without realizing it. When I came to that page, I stopped . . . dumb. I couldn't talk. I couldn't look around. I thought nine hours had passed and the end of the world had come. Ethel Shutta, standing next to me, discovered my plight and thrust the missing page into my perspiring palm. Nothing like that catastrophe could happen on the stage. You could bluff it out. But not over the air."
Jack's got no ambition. I mean he doesn't care about being president or anything pretentious like that. He wants to keep going on pretty much as he is. Wants to stay on the air as long as he doesn't go stale, he started off being terribly funny and he says very seriously that it's up to him to keep the pace. "You never compete against others on the air," says Jack. "You compete against yourself. It makes no difference if you're better than somebody else. You've got to be as good as you are at your best. If you start off with a bang . . . you've got to keep it up or you flop. Listening to others on the air doesn't mean a thing. What they're doing doesn't affect me directly. It's what I'm doing that makes the difference."
"Canada Dry" a page sang out.
“That’s me," said Mr. Benny. "Say, I forgot to tell you what I dislike. I dislike interviews. Not good at them at all. You should talk to the wife. She can tell you things about me that she never thought of before. Why don't you get in touch with her?"

For his fans, Jack never got stale. He stayed on the air, albeit reduced to occasional specials, until his death in 1974. Despite any “dislike,” he kept doing interviews until then, too.