Changing Flip

Flip turns into a familiar personality, then turns back, in The Soup Song, released by MGM on January 31, 1931. This is about the easiest way to do a transformation in animation. Just don't show the transformation.



Why didn’t he do this when he wanted to change his look in Funny Face a few years later?

I think every studio had a Paul Whiteman gag or caricature around this time, even Van Beuren’s Cubby Bear wore a Whiteman mask.

Rango Was Wrongo

Alright, put your hands up now if you liked Rango.

Hmm. Not too many of you.

Well, I liked it. It starred Tim Conway doing his patented clumsy stuff as the laugh track filled the living room. Hey, it worked for Don Adams. Unfortunately it didn’t work for Conway. It lasted 17 episodes.

Years ago, failures on TV carried on for a full season. The networks had committed the time, sponsors had committed the money. But ABC changed all that. It dumped ratings losers within months and put new shows on the air in January, with the network’s PR machine screaming it was a “Second Season.” Hey, it worked for Batman. Conway’s show was a Western sitcom. Hey, it worked for F Troop.

These stories have more to do with Conway than his soon-to-be first TV failure. This syndicated story ran starting November 16, 1966.

Tim Conway To Ride Scout For Second Season Shows
By HARVEY PACK
NEW YORK—ABC's Second Season, known in some quarters as the annual overhaul, is only a few months away (January) and one of its brightest stars has already been dispatched to ride scout for the new premieres.
He's Tim Conway, the bumbling Lt. Parker of the network's successful "McHale's Navy," now about to leave the sea and mount up as "Rango," a bumbling Texas Ranger.
For an actor Tim is virtually unarmed, he does not possess a big ego. A former funny local personality on Cleveland TV, Tim wouldn't bat a bankbook if he struck out in Hollywood and had to pack up wife and family and move back to Chagrin Falls, his hometown and a suburb of his beloved Cleveland.
After trying to convince me that Chagrin Falls got its name because the first settler to spot an Indian near the Falls was admittedly chagrined, Tim talked about his happy days there on local TV.
TV RUSE
"We used to announce the imminent arrival of some big personality like the mayor to keep the audience watching while we showed some lousy feature film," he recalled. "Naturally, he'd never show up but we had him stuck in traffic or chasing a fire engine. Some people probably believed us but those that didn't had a lot of laughs."
Some day Tim would like to be rich enough to buy into a local station operation and then invite back all the people who got their start in Cleveland and make them his partners. "And we wouldn't starve," he added as if to defend his sanity. "There's plenty of money in that kind of operation and an awful lot of peace of mind. Who was it who suggested that the President could perform a great service by going on TV and ordering everybody to go back to their hometown? I believe in that."
No matter how busy his schedule Tim manages to get home as often as possible, particularly on weekends when his high school is playing football on Friday night and the Browns are home on Sunday. All this in spite of an immense fear of flying, which is so acute that on one occasion it threw an entire plane into a panic and actually delayed the flight.
"Rango" is the first joint effort under the newly formed alliance of Danny Thomas and Aaron "Burke's Law" Spelling. It was sold without a pilot and Tim was cast even before "McHale's Navy" submerged.
"I guess I was lucky," he said modestly. "The part fit my type of image and they thought of me. You know a lot of fans think I was the funniest thing on 'McHale's' but it's really not true. The star of a TV show is its concept and the way said concept is carried out. An actor is fortunate to be caught in such a situation."
Tim has already filmed several episodes of the new series and he sincerely expects to be lucky again. His co-stars, Guy Marks and Norman Alden, he thinks are just great and Conway feels they have a good chance of riding in on the crest of the second season ballyhoo and hitting like "Batman" did last year.
HORSE SENSE
Conway does not expect to have too much trouble adjusting to westerns since he was born in the saddle. "My dad was a trainer around the tracks in Ohio for years," he explained. "And for a while I was going to be a jockey. But I fell off so often I switched to football. There I merely busted my back and retired from sports to become a TV star," and he laughed and recalled how that came about.
"Rosemarie heard me in Cleveland and asked if I had any tapes of some of the wild semi-satirical humor we were pulling on our show. I did, she delivered them to Steve Allen and he invited me out to do his show. The offer to appear on 'McHale's Navy' came just about then. So I moved to Hollywood with my bride and we soon had four children. Now wasn't that a tough struggle?"
Conway concedes he has no training as an actor and, except for a recent one week guest star appearance in Chagrin Falls as Ensign Pulver in "Mr. Roberts," he's never done a live show.
“I did entertain in local clubs to pick up extra money but I was really awful. Even today I read the script and do the part the way it comes out.
“If the director wants something special he can’t get it from me because I don’t know that much,” concluded the very refreshing Tim Conway whose laudable ambition in this maniacal business seems to be not to become too ambitious.

This syndicated story appeared in papers on February 4, 1967. The show was already in trouble after three weeks.

New Spoof on Old West Stars Funny Man Tim Conway
By RUTH THOMPSON
"You have a talent for creating problems," a wearied clergyman told Tim Conway in 1961 when he applied for permission to marry his godmother.
Tim's 1967 "problems" however, are principally those confined within the storylines of ABC's new Western spoof, "Rango." (Fridays - at 9:00 P.M.). And the Conway talents and creativity they're talking about this year have to do with his comedy impact. "Tim is a top banana," says his boss Danny Thomas who should know. A long-time top banana himself, Thomas has long also been one of television's top producers with a string of hit series that eventually cancel only because the actors tire of their roles with the passage of time. Contemporary situations and crisp comedy they had in common.
Right now for Tim, it's "do it or bust," but after hearing him for an hour, an insight strikes you for the future. Some day Thomas and his new partner Aaron Speling [sic] might do well to consider a series based on Tim Conway's own story. It was Danny Thomas, remember, who puffed contented cigars when his "Dick Van Dyke" property kept stacking up the Emmys. The Van Dyke show, of course, was based on the life of writer-comedian Carl Reiner. Like Reiner, Tim is a writer as well as a comedian. Also as I was told before I met him, "Tim is really a serious man who says funny things in a natural way. He's not a clown." And obviously the only man to play Tim Conway is Tim.
But Tim's serious side would have none of this "some day" talk right now. He was in town to do right by "Rango," which he himself finds funny and fun to do. For this new spoof on the Old West isn't so tightly written that Conway improvisations couldn't be sneaked in. Tim feels he's lucky, too, in Danny Thomas's casting of Guy Marks as the second banana. Says Tim: "Guy, who plays my Indian companion, Pink Cloud, and I met for the first time on the set. After ten minutes we were breaking each other up so, that they had to close things down for half an hour."
He goes on: "We stumble our way through the West at a pace that's more Laurel and Hardy than ‘McHale's Navy.’ Pink Cloud is no ugh-ugh Indian. He's educated." But not, it seems, in the ways of Indianship, which is supposed to add to the hilarity. Says Tim: "He can't read trails, doesn't want any part of violence, or buffalo meat, or smoke signals . . . in fact when he's ordered to build a fire, he burns the blanket.
Other Conway comments on "Rango:" "Yes, I can get on a horse. Once I was going to be a jockey because my father was a horse trainer," but for jogging along, Rango doesn't always need a real critter for closeups. Says Tim: "Sometimes we use a mechanical horse. Then I feel like a real idiot . . . getting up on four wheels and a truck."
As to villains, Conway assures: "Oh, you'll know the bad guys always in our series right away. John Wayne has already killed them several times."
As to himself, Tim concedes that having been born in a town called Chagrin Falls (Ohio) may have helped him develop his sense of humor early. He still visits his folks there often, describes it as "A New Englandish type village with high taxes and no industries."
He was also schooled in Ohio, and it was while he was a student at Bowling Green State that he made the serious decision to become a Catholic. Tim was dating a girl named Sue, thought they might marry and mother. The baptizing priest said no. So he settled instead for another school mate, Mary Anne Dalton, because "we didn't even like each other."
Then came the Army—two years each. Mary Anne went to Paris with Special Services. Tim was assigned to Japan but instead “guarded Seattle, Washington and some secret papers I had a rifle. And I lost it . . . but I did keep a broken fluorescent tube handy.”
At his release, Tim scooted home to Ohio, rounded up old friends and celebrated by giving himself a "surprise" birthday party. He surprised them by not showing up until midnight. Then all of a sudden HE was surprised. "Across that crowded room" he saw Mary Anne Dalton. He didn't hate her any more. She didn't hate him. And the priest had a fistful of red tape to unravel when they decided to wed.
Now they have four children. And a house in Tarzana, California which Tim first tried describing as "a 32-room cottage." Then scaled it down to kind of a barracks with a cafeteria. It's big, though, at least as far as bedrooms go. Because of the kids. A pool? No. Because of the kids. But when we turn the water on the ivy we let them run through." Then, seriously: "I've beamed the whole house myself and panelled it."
As to his career, the chubby Tim, who's not yet thirty, says, "It doesn't come any easier." His first job was answering mail at KWY in Cleveland for disc jockey Big Wilson. Big read some of Tim's letters one day and said, "You're funny. Why not write for me?" Why not? When Big went on TV, Tim went along, rapidly evolved into a producer-director-writer. Then one day Rose Marie the singer-comedienne was guesting in Cleveland, heard guffaws from the control room and investigated. "He's funny," she concluded and recommended him to Steve Allen. Next came "McHale's Navy," and four years for Tim as the inept, and very funny Ensign Parker. This year it's the starring role as the inept ranger, "Rango." All of which may be as "easy" as Tim says. Providing you're a serious funny man who's also noticeably ept and genuinely talented.

The storylines were the material from a pair of top writers, R.S. Allen and Harvey S. Bullock. Hey, it worked for The Flintstones. And The Danny Thomas Show. And The Andy Griffith Show. It just didn’t work for Tim Conway.

Norm Macdonald

The head of the DPN Talent agency says “he defined American humor with honesty and blunt force.”

Leave to a Canadian to do that.

The Canadian was Norm Macdonald, who has died of cancer at age 61.

Norm truly was a Canadian comedian at the start. At the “Just For Laughs” festival in Montreal in 1986, one of his sketches involved the country’s three main political leaders—Brian Mulroney, John Turner and Ed Broadbent—in a Grade 2 arithmetic class. He also explained why NASA chose Canadian Marc Garneau to travel on the space shuttle. “They needed a subject for their motion sickness study; and it was either a Canadian or a chimpanzee.”

Parts of the festival were taped and aired on the CBC. The Toronto Globe and Mail described Macdonald’s bits as “unremarkable imitations” and “a few tired jokes.” It wouldn’t be the first time critics would assail his style of comedy. (The same Globe critic declared Andrea Martin “not particularly funny.” That gives you an idea of his headspace).

What else was his stand-up act like then? The Ottawa Citizen of March 9, 1987 revealed what he was performing for more than $30,000 a year:

He steps onto the stage and, staring into the lights, launches straight into his routine, seemingly unaware of the crowd.
"I was going to give up smoking," he says, "but then I heard the government was planning to give heroin to cancer patients. So I thought I'd hang in there for a while."
Laughter and scattered applause.
His material is topical and intelligent. Though most of the laughs are long and loud, a joke that was a hit at the early show seems to fly high above the heads of the people at the late show: Macdonald is doing a vignette from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar as it might be done by Archie and Edith Bunker.
"Beware the oides of Mawch," he squeals in a great Edith Bunker imitation. But the blank faces and near-silence that greets the material quickly tells Macdonald that the only Caesar this crowd knows about comes in a glass with a celery stalk.
"Never mind," he says, moving quickly onto more successful material.
In an interview after the show, Macdonald says one of the first things comedians have to do is "get a sense of the level each crowd is at.
"If something isn't working, it doesn't matter how well it went over somewhere else. You'd better find something they will laugh at, damn fast."
He once appeared at a London, Ont. club during lunch, when the audience consisted of "three little old ladies having a pension party. I scrapped most of my act and tried to remember every old Bob Hope joke I could think of."

But Macdonald told the paper he had to leave Canada to make big money because there were ten times as many comedy clubs in the U.S. And that’s what he did.

His timing was good. American cable TV seemed to be filled with stand-up comedy programmes and Macdonald seemed to get a shot on all of them.

Then he got a big break with regular appearances on a late night show. No, not Carson. Here’s part of an interview with him in the January 6, 1990 edition of the Ottawa Citizen:

Four years ago he was a mild mannered Ottawa file clerk who worked up the nerve to get up on the stage at Yuk Yuk's and tell some jokes.
Now Norm Macdonald is making monthly appearances on the Pat Sajak TV talk show, he has an apartment in Los Angeles and performs in comedy clubs across the United States.
For 28-year-old Macdonald, success in the competitive world of stand-up comedy has come faster than he ever expected. ...
He's an improved comedian from the one who faced the hot lights for the first time on amateur night at the club and told some jokes about Joe Clark and John Turner, he says.
"I don't remember what my jokes were. They were pretty lame. I did political jokes, social jokes, because I thought that's what I should be doing, since this was Ottawa," Macdonald said in an interview at the club Thursday night after his first performance.
"I think they laughed, but not very much. But I knew I could be better. I knew I could come up with better material, so I kept at it."
Before taking up comedy full time, Macdonald had a variety of unsatisfying jobs, including a file clerk at an insurance company. He says he decided to try comedy because he suspected it was something at which he would succeed.
"I was never the class clown. I'm not a wisecrack. I don't have fast comeback lines in a conversation. But I knew I could be funny when I have time to develop some material." ...
After a few performances, Macdonald says he learned quickly to abandon the political material and find humor from experiences in his own life.
"People relate more to things that happen to you every day. That stuff almost always goes over better," says Macdonald, who spent his teen years in Ottawa and attended Gloucester High School. ...
On being caught smoking by his father: "I was eight. Or 11. One of those ages. He grabbed a giant cigar and made me smoke it right to the end. (Pause) "That's when I started smoking cigars really heavily."
On his doubts about the Oedipus complex: "When I was eight years old I couldn't even understand my dad's motivation. Dad, she makes a nice baloney sandwich, can't you leave it at that?"
In a segment on the moronic questions on The Dating Game, he launches into a falsetto voice to imitate the airheaded contestants: "Bachelor number one: If I were a Popsicle, what would you do with me?"
He deepens his voice to imitate the typically razor-sharp wit of bachelor number one.
"Well, first I'd unwrap you, if you know what I mean. Then I'd hold your sticks, if you know what I mean."
He even sends up formula stand-up jokes in a lengthy segment on smoking.
"I quit cold turkey. Next I'm planning to give up smoking. (Pause). "HA HA HA. A little kindergarten joke there for you."

Macdonald’s obits mention he died of cancer. He first battled the disease more than 30 years ago. The Montreal Gazette of May 4, 1991 reported:

MacDonald has slain them twice on David Letterman's show in recent months, and just finished shooting a one-man comedy special to be broadcast next week on the U.S. cable service HBO. ...
MacDonald's career is back on track after a detour: the former furniture-mover received several promising offers after his gig at the '86 comedy fest, but then he was afflicted with stomach cancer. He spent a year recuperating, and had to start again from scratch on the comedy-club circuit.
MacDonald now kids about giving new meaning to the expression "dying on stage." And routines about fallen cliff-divers trying to make a comeback are more than just gags - they seem like eerie metaphors of his career.
Although recovered, he's uncomfortable discussing the past.
"I tried joking about it in my act at first," says MacDonald, sprawled on the king-sized bed of his Montreal hotel room. "But it didn't work. People thought I was making it all up. And when they realized I wasn't, I think it freaked them.
"It certainly gave me a new perspective on my career and life. I live better, and I quit smoking. But my attitude has changed too. Before I used to do a lot of dark material with an edge - now I try not to offend people as much, although I'm still as dry as I was."

In 1992, he landed a gig writing for Roseanne Barr (years later, getting grief for defending a racist comment she had made) was added to the cast of Saturday Night Live a year later and then being chosen over Al Franken to do the “Weekend Update” section of the show (Franken then decided to leave).

Critics hated the show and hated Macdonald. A sampling of reviews at the time:

● Norm MacDonald [w]as the stiffest Weekend Update anchor since Kevin Nealon. – Manuel Mendoza, Dallas Morning News and syndicated.
● Norm MacDonald, who has taken over “Weekend Update” from Kevin Nealon, isn’t working out at all. – Jim Bawden, Toronto Star.
● [T]he "Weekend Update" sketch was at first a showcase for the wonderfully weird and schizoid talents of a young Chevy Chase. Everyone else, emphatically including the latest occupant of Chase's chair, Norm MacDonald, has been simply a script-reader. – Robert P. Laurence, San Diego Union.
● This season Norm MacDonald has taken over anchoring duties from Kevin Nealon, but the switch is hardly an improvement. – Diane Holloway, Austin American Statesman.
● Norm MacDonald has been upgraded to “Update” anchor, but is watering down the dark misanthropy that made him such a welcome bit player. – Rick Marin, Newsweek.

However, Macdonald did have a supporter in John J. O’Connor of the New York Times:

[T]he venerable "Weekend Update" has perked up considerably with the arrival of Norm MacDonald as the new anchor delivering the non-news, things like Ken Burns's next television project being a series on "History of the Dorky Haircut" or a "Cats" anniversary on Broadway being "the 5,000th time a guy turned to his wife and said, 'What the hell is this?'"

And Frank Wooten of the Charleston Post and Courier noted in a column in the December 6th edition:

On Saturday's "Weekend Update," deadpanner Norm MacDonald, who hasn't fired many winners, finally scored a direct hit after reporting the in-prison slaying of Jeffrey Dahmer:
"Just before the fight, Dahmer threatened, 'Hey, don't mess with me, pal - I used to eat guys like you for breakfast.'

Macdonald’s “Update” began to rankle NBC West Coast president Don Ohlmeyer who, according to Tom Shales’ and James Andrew Miller’s book ‘Live From New York,’ “mounted a relentless, obsessive campaign to get Macdonald removed from the post. Ohlmeyer was a long-time golfing buddy of O.J. Simpson, but insisted Macdonald’s removal in January 1998 wasn’t because he would open a “Weekend Update” after Simpson’s acquittal with “It’s now official: murder is legal in the state of California.”

Macdonald didn’t want to carry on with SNL after that; he complained he had to “put on a Bob Dole mask” and “appear in people’s sketches every week on some lame premise.” (Dole apparently liked Macdonald’s impression). He finally got off the show and moved on to other things. Perhaps they were lesser things. But Macdonald is being remembered today for his bemused expression giving way to quirky and sometimes forthright humour.

You Know What? I Get the Girl at the End

Droopy started out in cartoons slow and morose. At the end, he was a little more up-tempo, but he was never like he was at the end of Wild and Woolfy (1945). Red kisses him, but then finds her usual man-tease backfires as he gets excited and chases her on his pony. He grabs her and holds her while riding stage left as the iris closes.



Preston Blair, Ed Love, Walt Clinton (in the original release) and Ray Abrams are the credited animators.

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."