A Hunting We Won't Go

A comic relief hunting dog pulls his head out after getting it stuck in a tree, and then starts throwing punches like a boxer until he snaps out of it.



This scene is from Harman-Ising’s The Pups’ Picnic (1936) featuring two sickeningly cute little dogs. I guess some of these Happy Harmonies shorts were coupled with MGM features on DVD. It’s nice that they were released but they’re loaded with DVNR, which is a killer for scenes with lots of movement animated on ones, like this scene was. The best frames are really unviewable.

Julius Shoots Up the Place

Julius the Cat blazes his two guns to make the rescue in Alice in the Wooly West, a 1926 Alice comedy.

Walt Disney uses an effect that carried on well into the age of television. He uses solid light and dark to signify flashes of light and interposes a bunch of different drawings on ones. It’s still a good effect.



There are a couple of cute gags, like when Julius shoots out the torso of a mouse, but it runs away anyway.

By the way, where did all the animals go that had their hands up in the air?

Amazing

You didn’t have to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict one thing with certainty in the 1970s—the Amazing Kreskin would show up somewhere on TV.

He did the talk shows—Mike Douglas, Carson, Merv, Steve Allen—and he had his own show. Two of them, actually, produced at both ends of the decade in Ontario. You didn’t have to be the Amazing Kreskin to know that production costs were cheaper in Canada, even though the Canadian dollar was above par for a while.

I liked Kreskin. He looked like a high school science geek and came across as earnest. You root for guys like that. And I could never figure out how he did what he did.

Here’s a feature story from the Times-Democrat from Davenport, Iowa. To be honest, the columnist seems to be rubbing his nose in it at the end. Maybe she thought she was being funny, but it comes across to me as sarcastic and condescending.

Mental Magic
By Barbara Lewis
In the first place I liked "The Amazing Kreskin." Now that the record is straight, let me tell you about our meeting. I was late.
I thought about the various excuses I would offer, but obviously I would have to tell the truth. The Amazing Kreskin, a favorite in the campus circuit, has an amazing reputation for knowing what's on people's minds. I had seen him on the Tonight show when he closed his eyes, put his hand to his forehead, seemed to go into another world, and then told a member of the audience the serial number on a $10 bill in her pocket book.
"SORRY I WAS delayed, the bus was late," I lied.
No reaction on his face.
"That's all right," he said amiably.
"What am I thinking about having for lunch today?" I asked him.
"What would you care to have?" he shot back.
"You tell me," I persisted.
"What do you think I am, a mind reader?" he asked—rhetorically, I thought. But I was wrong.
"I'm a mentalist," he emphasized. "And," he added, "I can't lead a normal life any more. Wherever I go, people ask me to tell them things like their Social Security numbers."
"Okay," I nodded, "What’s mine?"
"I don't know," the Amazing Kreskin said. "I don't even know my own. I can never remember it."
THIS ADMISSION wrecked all my preconceived plans for the interview. I had been toying with the idea of doing a silent interrogation. I was just going to think the questions and he was supposed to get the message and answer them.
"It doesn't work that way," Amazing Kreskin said, opening a black and silver box bearing the name, Kreskin's Krystal, and containing a square Lucite block. On one side are etched the words "Yes" and "No" and on the opposite side are Buy and Sell.
"You can't think questions, you think answers," he said, handing me a pendulum of Lucite to dangle over the Kreskin Krystal.
He pulled a deck of cards out of his pocket and asked me to pick one and place it on the table without looking at it.
"Now pick up the pendulum and think positively. Think of a number," he suggested.
"OKAY," I said, "I'm thinking of 5."
I dangled the pendulum and it swung in the direction of No. 3. "You are giving yourself the wrong answer. Think of another number," he implored.
I thought of 8. I was sure I was thinking of 8. But the pendulum stubbornly went another route. I tried a lot of numbers until the little Lucite ball swung vigorously in the direction of "Yes, when I thought of number 7. I turned over the card and there was the seven of spades staring me in the face.
"That is the power of positive thinking," the Amazing Kreskin said, although he modestly admitted that he was not the inventor of the phrase.
KRESKIN, WHO appears on more than 150 campuses a year, says that his Krystal can help students improve their grades. Not by giving them the right answers, he said but by teaching them to concentrate.
"Actually," he conceded, "a person could use a glass of water instead of the Krystal. And in the past, I've told this to students who always want to know what they can do to get higher grades. Generally, what they have in mind is learning how to send thought messages to their professors. Again I tell them to think for themselves.
"For instance, I tell them to use the power of concentration to wake themselves up in the morning for classes instead of using an alarm clock. I tell them to take a pendulum and use it like a divining rod over two glasses. One glass represents "Yes" and the other "No." Keep thinking of the number seven if you want to awaken at 7 a.m. Once the pendulum swings towards glass "Yes," I tell them they have it made. And they should wake up by themselves at 7."
Of course, the Amazing Kreskin and 3 M, the manufacturers of the Kreskin Krystal, would prefer buyers to concentrate with their product rather than the water glass. As Kreskin says, it makes a nice gift at $10, and one could hardly give two glasses of water as a present.
This is the second time Amazing Kreskin has been involved in a commercial venture. His previous success was known as Kreskin's ESP, which was marketed by Milton Bradley. The residual checks are still coming in to his home in Caldwell, N.J. where he lives with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. George Kresge, which also happens to be his real name.
But most often, Kress (as he is known to friends) receives his fee in less conventional places.
"When I appear at colleges, I tell the audience in advance that I have asked that my check be hidden and that if I fail to find it, I will donate my entire fee to the school's scholarship fund. Once I found it in the chandelier over the center of the auditorium. Another time it was in the brim of a policeman's hat. The most unusual," he recalled, "was in the stuffing of a turkey. The school was nice enough to issue a dry check in its place."
Kreskin, who holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J., insists there are no gimmicks and he has no confidantes. "I have a $20,000 offer to anyone who can prove that I have someone or something planted in an audience," he said.
He looked, at his watch and said, "Oh my gosh. I'm late for my next appointment. I forgot all about it."
I shoved Kreskin's Krystal at him and said triumphantly, "You see, you should have set it."
Then I suggested that he telephone to say he would be late. "I would but 1 can't find the number," he said, searching frantically through his pockets. "Now think positively," I said, handing him the pendulum. Start thinking about number 8."
He couldn't help grimacing.
As I said before, I liked the Amazing Kreskin. I'm not so sure the feeling was mutual.

Here’s a later Kreskin story, from the Dayton Daily News of November 30, 1976. It makes you wonder how many reporters got cutsy interview ideas in their heads when dealing with Kreskin. Enough with the gimmicks, just ask the questions.

‘Amazing’ gift lies in keen mind, Kreskin explains
By VINCE STATEN
Daily News Staff Writer
Here was the plan: Go in with a list of questions in a sealed envelope, concentrate on the questions, and let the Amazing Kreskin write the answers on a sheet of paper.
It had all the makings of a cream puff interview. The mentalist who performed Monday night at the Victory Theater would give a private showing of his extra-sensory skills.
Only it turned out even easier than that.
The writer didn't have to write out the questions and concentrate on them. Nor did he have to think them up.
In an interview, Kreskin supplies the answers and the questions.
DESPITE A 102 DEGREE fever, the Amazing Kreskin amazed the writer with his non-stop lecture on mentalism, psychology, parapsychology, meditation and the entertainment business. He also amused, enthralled and enlightened.
Kreskin (born George Kresge, in West Caldwell, N.J.) says flat out: "I am not a psychic. I have no supernatural powers."
He says he is a "hypersensitive, a mentalist and a mental wizard, comparable to a blind person who develops an acute sense of hearing."
The best way to define his powers is by listening to a story he tells about a Reno, New, murder case he helped solve.
"THE POLICE CAME to me and wanted me to help solve this murder of a young girl," he said. "And I told them thai it wasn't within my capacity to hold objects and get vibrations on who the murderer might be. I asked to see each of the witnesses separately. They'd all seen the murder but none of them could remember it.
"What I did was stimulate their imaginations," he added. "I told one girl to still-frame the action of the man she had seen. She started describing the man in vivid detail. And I told another witness who said he had been too far away to see the man's face to 'zoom' in like a zoom lens. And he described the same man. All of them did."
Kreskin says none of the four was hypnotized, that he merely helped them remember what they had seen and heard.
"I couldn't produce information that wasn't there," he said, "but I could help bring it up."
It was not until the interview was nearly over that the sealed envelope was mentioned.
Kreskin demurred, saying he'd tried it once for an interview in Houston and it didn't work too well.
But how about this?
SO IN A TINY ROOM in the southeast corner of the Biltmore Towers Hotel, while the temperature outside hovered near 20, for an audience of one, the Amazing Kreskin, through mental processes still not fully understood by science nor the writer, did cause a 25-cent piece to fall from the writer's hand at the same time that the words "jack of spades" were uttered.
And mysteriously, when a card with an "X" on the back was turned over, it was that same jack of spades.
Amazing, Kreskin! But the writer has seen that kind of magic before. Only the last time it was at an all-night poker game and it cost him money.

We don’t hear a lot about the Amazing Kreskin any more. He’s still around, though. He even has a Twitter feed. “Even now, I know what you're thinking!” his Twitter page says. I suspect he therefore knows I have finished this post.

Buck Egghead Rides For the First Time

The best part of Egghead Rides Again is he never rode before. This was his first cartoon.

It opens with Egghead borrowing the “Buck Benny rides again!” catchphrase (which he paraphrases throughout the cartoon) and riding a bucking bronco.



Only it’s not a Ford Bronco, let alone the bucking variety. Some expressions.



Paul J. Smith and Irv Spence are the credited animators for director Tex Avery. This was Spence’s first credit at Warners. He came to work for Leon Schlesinger from the Ub Iwerks studio. Smith had been moved over from the Friz Freleng unit. My guess is the two were put in with Avery because he lost Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones to roles involving cartoons subcontracted to Iwerks. Sid Sutherland and Virgil Ross also animated this short.

Wile E. Catote

Tedd Pierce and Bob McKimson borrow a Wile E. Coyote routine in the 1958 cartoon Cat’s Paw. Sylvester uses a stick to loosen a rock to fall on the best of a bird he’s trying to catch. But the rock hits a branch and sproings back up.



I can’t remember which Roadrunner cartoon used that idea (I’m sure it found a home in a number of studios), but the next part comes from the 1956 short There They Go-Go-Go.



The similarity to a Wile E. adventure is accentuated by the barren, rocky mountain, which was designed by Bob Gribbroek, who was responsible for the backgrounds on the earliest Roadrunner shorts.

Oh, and speaking of re-used routines.



Has anyone kept track of how many times that was used?

Benny and the Beavers

Jack Benny put some classic Christmas shows on the air. Hallowe’en? Well, not so much.

Oh, he had Hallowe’en shows. The radio broadcast of October 31, 1954 had a couple of perfunctory jokes about trick-or-treating then re-used a script from 1946 about firing the Sportsmen (in 1946, the firing built up over several episodes while, here, it came out of nowhere).

There were a few others, including one with a guest appearance by Basil Rathbone. In 1948 and 1952, he went trick-or-treating with the Beverly Hills Beavers, the neighbourhood kids group where he somehow became treasurer. He spends most of his time making up phoney stories of personal grandeur to the kids, but he displays a fatherly kindness to them, so he’s not a total putz.

The Beavers evolved. Jack used boy characters at the start of the 1947-48 season and it was decided there was a potential for more laughs if they were organised into a club, so the Beavers were born February 15, 1948.

An awful lot of Jack’s radio scripts were adapted for television, including some of the ones involving the Beavers. He’s a story from the Boston Globe of February 27, 1955. Yes, little Harry Shearer grew up to write for Fernwood 2 Night, Saturday Night Live and voice umpteen characters on The Simpsons.

Benny, 39, Still in Quest of His Youth With Bearer Patrol Boys Aged 9 to 12
ELIZABETH L. SULLIVAN
TV & Radio Editor
Jack Benny's present TV schedule has him on the air every other week. We honestly think he would like to be on camera every day. He is almost alone as a performer who works with ease before the TV cameras. Many stars these days are shouting: "TV Is a killing job. Let me put my shows on film!"
Next Sunday, Benny s telecast will be an all-color presentation and his special guests will be The Beavers. For more than six years, listeners have enjoyed the shenanigans of the Beverly Hills Beaver Patrol. Now the patrol will be seen in action—their first appearance on TV.
The Beavers, ranging in age from 6 to 12, are a mythical group which Benny has featured from time to time on his C. B. S. radio series. On TV, their roles will be enacted by Jimmy Baird, Harry Shearer, Ted Marc and Stevie Wooten. There will be fun galore next Sunday when Benny takes the children to a carnival. And they will have the time of their lives—plenty of it at their host's expense.
Of course, Benny is a member of the patrol. As such, he portrays a frustrated grownup who tries to recapture lost youthful adventures. At one time the boys even honored Benny with an official mantle. To show further esteem, Benny was elected treasurer of the Beavers organization—his reputation for stinginess won him this spot. True to tradition, on one occasion he called an executive meeting to decide whether the patrol should purchase a three-cent stamp.
Benny, the underdog always, had a bitter pill to swallow the year he was up for election. He locked horns with a 12-year-old rival. It was a David-Goliath contest that rocked the film colony. Jack licked his wounds in bitter defeat, went home to devote his undivided attention to his own cash vault.
A few weeks ago viewers saw the Benny vault in a TV skit which included scenes in the Benny boudoir. The safe, hid behind a picture on the wall, was devoid of valuables as a porcupine is of curls!
Other hijinks by Benny with the patrol included Halloween pranks as well as periodic trips to the ole swimming hole. Benny's Gang has come in for its share of jabs. Benny has brought Dennis Day, Mary Livingstone, Mel Blanc and Don Wilson to the Beavers' Clubhouse so that the Beavers could do impersonations of the Gang.
With this introduction of the Beavers to TV, undoubtedly Benny will bring them back occasionally. There should be many laughs in next Sunday’s telecast out of Ch. 7 at 7:30 p.m.
Wife Mary Livingstone appears only rarely on Jack Benny’s TV shows. On a recent visit to Boston, Benny told us Mary prefers not to be on radio or TV!

One pleasant piece of trivia from those 1948 and 1952 shows—the song being parodied during the Lucky Strike commercial is “Ghost Dance.” It was written by Cora Salisbury, Benny’s first partner in vaudeville when he was just out of junior high school. Jack had to have known about this, and perhaps it meant its use would provide a little money to the Salisbury estate.

Toby

Toby the Pup gets lost in the history of animation. His cartoons were never seen on TV over and over like Bugs Bunny and Popeye. In fact, his cartoons weren’t seen on TV at all.

The Toby series was produced for one year for R-K-O by the Charles Mintz studio, which had the rest of its cartoons released through Columbia. When Columbia took over Mintz some years later, I wonder if anyone in the upper echelon knew the cartoons had even been made. They seem to have been thought of as lost and, in fact, there are some shorts in the series that have not been tracked down.

Recently, though, there’s been some interest in poor Toby. A DVD set of some of his cartoons came out a couple of years ago. They have some imaginative little gags, like a Fleischer cartoon, but they remind me more of some of the Krazy Kats I’ve seen that Columbia was also producing.

The first reference I can find to Toby is in Film Daily of May 5, 1930.

CHAS.MINTZ TO PRODUCE CARTOON SERIES FOR RKO
Charles Mintz, of Winkler Pictures, has contracted to produce a series of 26 cartoons, under the title of “Toby the Tar.”

Where “tar” and the number 26 came from, I don’t know, but the trades had the correct name and number (12) by the end of the month.

Here are the cartoons and their release dates; the first two come from Motion Picture News, the rest from Harrison's Reports.

Toby in the Museum, Aug. 19, 1930
Toby the Fiddler, Sept. 1
Toby the Miner, Oct. 1
Toby the Showman, Nov 22
Toby in the Bughouse, Dec. 7
Toby in the Circus Time, Jan. 25, 1931
Toby the Milkman, Feb. 20
Toby in the Brown Derby, March 22
Toby Down South, April 15
Toby Hallowe'en, May 1
Toby in Aces Up, May 16
Toby the Bull Thrower, June 7

We’ve cautioned before here about taking release dates for shorts as dogmatic. Theatres were able to show films as soon as they got to the exchange. The Museum is a fine example. It was appearing at RKO-Keith’s in Washington D.C. on July 27, 1930, according to a newspaper review.

Some random newspaper ads for shows with Toby on the bill.

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Variety reviewed Toby’s first cartoon in its edition of August 6, 1930:

Cartoons have become disposed to follow routines. As a consequence each creation has followed the design of a preceding success until nearly all of them possess much sameness. But this one has a marked quality of novelty that marks it suitable for filler on any type of program.
It is in the setting. Where most of the animal cartoons have resorted to woodland scenes or in general outdoor settings, this “Toby” cartoon takes an indoor setting and with it a comedy dance. It’s the Art Museum where “Toby” works as a sweeper and makes funny antics as he strums on makeshift instrument and statues of Alexander, Napoleon and Caesar dance with him.

But not a lot of attention was given to Toby. He wasn’t the only new cartoon character of 1930—there was Flip the Frog at MGM and Bosko at Warners, in addition to the brand-new Terrytoons shorts. What looks like a short news release appeared in the San Francisco Examiner on February 15, 1931.

Toby the Pup Catches On
Toby the Pup, contrary to predictions of the wise guys, has not gone Hollywood. Nor has he waxed temperamental in any sense.
And this, despite the fact that he is single in a land of beautiful four-footed sirens, and is not restrained by any morality clause.
Toby the Pup, in other words, is just one swell and easy proportion to handle, according to Charles Mintz, producer of the. Toby the Pup cartoon series now being distributed by Radio Picture.

But the end was nigh for Toby, thanks to corporate deal-making. RKO purchased Pathé in January 1931. Pathé had been releasing Van Beuren’s Aesop Fables, so there was no need for a separate deal with Charles Mintz for cartoons. That spelled the end of Toby, who was replaced on RKO’s star roster with the human versions of Tom and Jerry.

In keeping with the season, let’s look at one of the Toby cartoons. Hallowe'en is an odd one. The first half has nothing do with the second. In the first half, Toby’s kissing girls, getting shamed by Patsy in song, then plays the piano (and a goat).



The scene cuts to an interior of a church at night, with the bell separated from building playing that “horse’s ass” tune. It’s time for Hallowe’en fun with a stylised witch, heads floating in the darkness and, my favourite gag, a skeleton drinking punch. Dick Huemer or whoever wrote this milked the gag and we get four skeletons, each of reduced size, doing the same thing.



The cartoon ends with Toby scaring away ghosts by crowing like a rooster, then discovering he’s laid an egg, from which a baby ghost pops out.

I’ve liked the few Tobys I’ve seen and it’s too bad the series didn’t continue, especially considering some of the lame shorts the Mintz studio put out in the late ‘30s. Do a search on-line and see what you think.