Orchestra From Another World

If all of Ub Iwerks’ cartoons had the imagination behind the Willie Whopper short Stratos-Fear (1933), who knows how much longer he would have been in business. This is a great cartoon, filled with wonderful oddities reminiscent of Walter Lantz’s Mars (1931) and Warners’ Porky in Wackyland (1938).

Here’s a sequence where other-worldly musical instruments play themselves (with a Harpo Marx stand-in making music from a lyre bird).



The only lame part of this is the ending. Willie is supposed to make up stories. Instead of being creative and having Willie invent some fantastic story of how he escaped from the alien world, they just make it a dream. Booo.

Fans of old cartoons can thank Steve Stanchfield’s company for rescuing Willie from the pit of obscurity a few years ago and restoring his cartoons, especially an excellent print of the colour version of Hell's Fire (1934).

I'd Love To Take Orders From You Backgrounds

I’d Love to Take Orders From You (1936) has director Tex Avery doing a Friz Freleng cartoon—a young boy and his father, with danger vanquished and a twist ending.

Avery was in a separate building from the rest of Leon Schlesinger’s animation staff, so he had his own unit of animators. You’ve probably seen the picture of them standing at the door of Termite Terrace—Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, Sid Sutherland and Virgil Ross. They were the only ones over there, though. Cecil Surry was another animator. He was an import, like Ross, from the Walter Lantz studio.

As for Avery’s background painter, ex-newspaper artist Johnny Johnsen was in Avery’s unit and re-joined him soon after he left for MGM in 1941. How long he worked with Avery, I don’t know, so I can’t tell you if these watercolors are Johnsen’s. I suspect they are; they certainly are as detailed as Johnsen could get. The first one opens the cartoon, the second one comes a little later.





At MGM, Avery would be making fun of the kind of background you see in the opening, with animals (like Sammy Squirrel) making their way along as the painting is panned left to right. You can probably tell there are trees on overlays in the foreground. Unlike later Avery cartoons, they aren’t panned at a different rate than the rest of the background, which gives a nice 3D effect.

The Quizzical Youth

What was Jack Benny doing 100 years ago today?

He was about to play a full week at the Palace in Chicago.

Jack wasn’t the headliner back in 1921. The bill also featured:

Gus Edwards’ Revue
De Haven and Nice
Joe Rome and Lou Gaut (in “When Extremes Meet”)
Sandy
Norton and Nicholson (in “A Dramatic Cartoon”)
Paul Gordon and Ame Rica
The Cavana Duo, Harry and Nancy

How did Jack do? The Chicago Tribune’s Sheppard Butler reviewed what he saw of opening night on Monday, November 7th under the headline “A Good Show at the Palace.” As you can imagine, with Gus Edwards as the top act, he gets the bulk of the ink.

MR. GUS EDWARDS is an earnest gentleman who takes precocious youngsters and makes them more precocious. He teachers them to sign sentimentally or dance their heads off, and then he puts the Peter Pan curse on them, forbidding them to grow up. This, unhappily, they always do, become people like Eddie Cantor or the Duncan sisters or Lila Lee of the movies (all these were his protégés) and Mr. Edwards has to look around for some one else. Perhaps that is why he has the saddest eyes in vaudeville.
He always manages to find somebody, however, and his entertainments, though immature, have a quality of engaging sprightliness that every one seems to like. At the Palace this week he submits such an entertainment, his “Song Revue of 1921,” a lively, tuneful jumble of this and that, peopled by more boy and girl performers than you can conveniently keep track of.
Those I remember best are Miss Alice Furness, a demure blonde who sings, and Chester Fredericks, who looks like a cherub by Raphael and dances like a young demon. These and many others go through a variety of spirited evolutions, illustrating the changing modes in melody, from the songs of the moment back to “Annie Rooney” and “The Sidewalks of New York.” It’s a clean, mannerly show, and the customers love it.
* * *
Other items of an uncommonly good bill are:
“Sandy”—An urchin with an infectious grin and a comic Scotch burr, giving imitations of Harry Lauder. He is one of Edwards’ performers, but, for no apparent reason, is given a separate place on the program.
Ethel Forde and Lester Sheehan—With Marion Forde, in picturesque dances. Marion is an extraordinarily lumber young woman, who doesn’t seem to mind in the least if she breaks her neck.
Jack Benny—A quizzical youth with a glib tongue, who talks and fiddles intermittently. He “stopped the show” yesterday, which means they wouldn’t let the next act go on for a while.
Miss Norton and Paul Nicholson—In one of those “tough” comedies.
De Haven and Nice—Dancing and cutting up in a series of droll travesties. Their antics with two enormous red balloons are a classic example of sheer nonsense.
* * *
It was 5 o’clock when I left yesterday’s matinée, and there were two acts to go. This was due partly to certain impromptu interruptions, which are getting to be characteristic of Monday performances in the varieties. Thus, Eddie Cantor was in a box, explaining that he couldn’t sing because of his contract with the “opposition.” Frisco, the comedian, also was present and put in his oar now and then, as did several other notables in the audience. Vaudeville isn’t as formal as it used to be.

Patrons leaving early wasn’t just something restricted to the Monday matinée. Variety reviewed Wednesday’s daytime performance and noted that people started leaving after 5 p.m., so they missed Rome and Gaut and the Cavana Duo. Rome and Gaut were moved up in the evening performance. Jack Osterman attended at least one performance and bantered from the theatre.

Variety’s review of Benny was concise: “Jack Benny came into his own, spotted just right; not a gag or line was muffed. It only proved that position on some acts does count, and on Benny anything less than four spells disaster, which was proven in the last two times seen. He walked away with the laughing hit of the bill.”

In case you’re wondering, Gordon and Rica were the opening act; patter, songs and trick bike riding by Paul Gordon.

All aboard!! Jack got on the train and headed east without any of the other acts. Jack played a split week, with performances in Dayton, Ohio and Lexington, Kentucky. Variety called it “the best show Keith’s has had since inaugurating the three-a-day policy.” As for Jack, he was a hit: “Jack Benny stopped the show in No. 2, taking two bows after his encore. Benny is very versatile and capable. He can monologue with up-to-date material and his violin touch is very pleasing to the ear.”

The Dayton Herald of November 15th had this to say about the bill which also included a 50-minute dramatic film:

MUSIC AND COMEDY MAKE UP KEITH BILL
Exceptional Dancing To Be Seen in Tabloid Revue Which Is Headliner.
Music and comedy in initial proportions make up the really excellent bill at Keith's Strand theater the first half of the week. It is one of the most entertaining shows seen locally in a long time.
Music and dancing exemplified in Billy Lightelle’s revue, with Billy and five girls, open the show, and give it a good start on the road to popularity. Lightelle himself is an exceptional dancer, and has several song numbers.
The second act is Jack Benny, who makes his violin do all sorts of comedy stunts, as well as furnish real music. The minute Benny speaks the audience feels that he's one of 'em, and they all laugh together. He proved his ability as a violinist Monday. Bob Cook and Dot Oatman, who sing and play, have all sorts of ability, and use it to good advantage.
Some choice blackface comedy and harmonizing is provided by Fred Fenton and Sammy Field, who are adepts at their art, which includes clever eccentric dancing. The vaudeville bill is closed by the Wilhat Trio, who ride about on all sorts of outlandish cycles, including their "krazy kar," which is all the name implies. It is a laughable act.
"Who Am I?" tells the story of a girl owner of a gambling house who’s uncertain as to her parents, tries to learn her own identity, and has all sorts of adventure doing it.

As for Lexington, here’s what the Leader said on Thursday, November 18th about the opening the day before.

BEN ALI VODVIL
PAIR OF BLACKFACE PERFORMERS CATCH CROWD AT ONCE— EXCELLENT PROGRAM IS OFFERED
The audience at the Ben Ali theatre “fell hard” for a couple of blackface performers labeled Fenton and Fields that feature the week end program which began Thursday. Fred and Sammy dashed into the spotlight with a snap that is lacking in most vaudeville acts and dashed out with a lot more. The terpsichorean antics of this outfit seemed to have been the funniest thing the crowd had seen in a long time, for it fought manfully for an encore, the cheering lasted clear into the next act. This pair, which has been here before on the legitimate rostrum, also carries a lot of harmony, but rather devotes its time to tickling the audience than singing to it.
The Janet Sisters opened the bill with a singing and dancing act that was very pleasing.
Jack Benny scored another run for the natural gas company in the second inning. Jack had a violin and occasionally played it, but he was so busy poking the crowd in its funny bone, he didn’t need the old Strad.
The Wilhat Trio didn’t say much but it certainly did act queer. A bird brings out a parody on an automobile and the machine plays a stellar part of the act. The offering also includes some good cycling. Love us, love our dog, was the slogan of the trio and the crowd did, for the dog displayed a lot of intelligence.
Bob Cook and Dot Oatman grabbed a hearty round of noise with their singing. Dot is one of the few good comediennes seen here this season, and the crowd appreciated it by asking for more so insistently that the duo was forced to return for an encore. This act is just a bit bold in spots — and maybe that’s what made it so popular.
The Joe DeKoe Troupe, which winds up the bill, presents a well distributed offering of plain and fancy tumbling, with most of it in the latter class. This act was an unusual one for this type, and won a great deal of applause.
Will Rogers’ drollery is the feature of the motion picture, “A Poor Relation.”

The next stops were a week in Pittsburgh (“three bows,” noted Variety) and the following week of November 28th in Youngstown, Ohio.

We could go on with the reviews, but this shows you how well Jack was received by audiences long before his days in radio.

Heeza Funmaker

When you think of cartoons of the silent era, you probably think of the characters of the mid to late 1920s—Felix the Cat, Oswald the Rabbit, Koko the Clown—and maybe the Fleischer Screen Songs with the bouncing ball. Commercial animation pre-dated that with comic strip characters from the Hearst (and other) newspapers.

But before them was Colonel Heeza Liar, the product of the J.R. Bray studio.

Bray eventually restricted himself to educational cartoons, but he put old man Heeza on the big screen starting in November 1913 through 1917 and again in the early ‘20s.

Either film magazines doted on the little colonel, or Bray’s PR machine worked overtime. A number of newspaper and magazine articles were written about him, with Film Fun even turning the Bray cartoons into full-page comic strips. Bray spent a chunk of space promoting all the patents he “allowed” others to use (for a fee; this lasted into the sound era).

The article (and picture) comes from the February 1916 edition.

He's a Busy Little Funmaker
THERE isn't a funmaker on the screen to-day who draws more laughs to the minute than the busy little Colonel Heeza Liar, who was invented and created by J. R. Bray some three years ago. He keeps six cartoonists, twenty assistant artists and four camera men constantly at work getting them out.
Now, you want to know how he does it, don't you? Just how he makes the queer little Colonel Heeza Liar go through his extraordinary antics, and how his funny animals laugh and trot about and seem so human in their endeavor to amuse the public. Well, we'll let Mr. Bray himself tell you about it. Once in a while he will stop long enough from his work to explain the motive power of the busy little chap, although, as a rule, he is too occupied in his work to stop to talk.
"It's a lot of work," says Mr. Bray. "There are thirty-four different processes to go through for each cartoon, and there are about four thousand cartoons in each thousand feet of completed film. First, I make a background on a sheet of heavy paper. This background is printed on many sheets of tracing paper. In this way it is necessary only for the artist to draw the parts which are to appear in motion. You see, the background remains stationary throughout the scene. We can easily erase or draw over this background.
"Each position must be drawn in. And in order that the movement on the screen will run smoothly, we have to use great care in the drawing. See that artist over there carefully tracing off a figure? He is drawing it for a new motion, and in order to get it exactly right, he traces over the figure with the thin tracing paper and draws in the new motion from that.
"There isn't a drawing that I do not personally supervise, and I make the first sketch of the plot. Sure, I create all the plots. My cartoonists do most of the sketching and filling in, but I draw most of the movements. When a set of drawings is completed, the camera men photograph them. I have an invention for controlling the speed of action in the picture done by varying the number of photographs taken of each cartoon. Here, for instance, you watch that camera man there, and you will see what I mean. That scene requires an object to move rapidly, then slowly, and finally come to a stop for a moment. The pictures representing the quick action will be given one exposure, and as the movement of the object diminishes in rapidity, each picture is given a correspondingly increasing number of exposures. As soon as the action stops, a number of photographs are taken of the same picture, the number being dependent upon the length of time that the action is suspended. In this way I can control the speed of the different parts of the picture.
"I couldn't tell you just where I did get the idea. It simply evolved, I guess. I was a newspaper artist on the New York papers for seven years, and I always had a notion in my brain of this funny little chap going through all sorts of amusing adventures. Everybody likes kid pictures and animal pictures, no matter how old they get, and Colonel Heeza Liar was popular from the start. There is a promising future in the animated cartoons, and I am figuring on some surprises for the future.”
Mr. Bray is drawing cartoons for the Paramount Program.

Here’s a little extra from the December 1916 edition.

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?