Tail Vs Penguin

Tex Avery made two cartoons with Chilly Willy and they’re both very good. The first is I'm Cold (1955), where Chilly tries to steal a fur coat (or just any old fur) from a warehouse being guarded by a watchdog with a real deadpan Southern accent (Daws Butler).

Along the way, Willy gets the idea of chopping off the dog’s furry tail. When he first tries to do it, the dog is a step ahead of, and has it crammed in a milk bottle.



In this scene animated by Don Patterson, the penguin’s attempt to cut off the tail is thwarted by the dog blowing into his thumb, which rolls and unrolls his tail like one of those party favours with the paper that unfurls like a snake when you blow into it.



“This is a lot of fun, man,” says the dog to the audience.



Chilly holds down the tail but gets caught in it. The dog then blows into his thumb, unfurls the tail and Willy zips into the milk bottle.



The gags flow into each other very nicely in this cartoon. Clarence Wheeler’s score is also a plus. He uses musical effects in time with expressions and has a little flute piece for when Willy is running. There are places where there is silence except for an observation from the dog. Everything on the soundtrack fits together.

Ray Abrams and La Verne Harding join Patterson as animators on this short.

George, Gracie, Gildy

George Burns and Gracie Allen moved from vaudeville to radio to television fairly seamlessly. I enjoyed them on TV more than their radio show. George’s “stage manager” routine where he talked to the audience was a novel approach, and gave him a chance to be more than a straight man.

The TV version seemed a little more tightly organised as well. On radio, Gracie had sundry friends who would pop by on an irregular basis. TV pretty much stuck to the Burns, the Mortons and Harry Von Zell. Radio had Bill Goodwin, who was fine. But for a while the show had a second announcer (Tobe Reed). It didn’t need two.

And somehow, Gracie’s screwy logic seemed more plausible when you could actually see her saying it.

In the middle of September 1946, the big shows were returning from their summer vacation. Here’s columnist John Crosby looking at Burns and Allen in his column of September 18, 1946.

RADIO IN REVIEW
George Burns and Gracie Allen
By JOHN CROSBY.
NEW YORK, Sept 18.—I caught up with the new Burns and Allen program a week late, which for me is unusually prompt. As a matter of fact, I tuned in with some trepidation, because when I heard them for the last time last Spring, Burns and Allen were showing signs of wear. George was trying, as I recall, to get a part in a Western motion picture. George had taken over Gracie's zany personality and Gracie was playing it straight. It didn't fit either of them very well.
In the new show (NBC, 8.30 p.m., Thursday), Gracie is again attacking windmills with her wide-eyed, misdirected energy. Perhaps my judgment has been weakened by too many Summer comics, but I thought it was pretty funny. When I tuned in, Gracie was explaining a theory that would absolutely eliminate crime.
"How would you stop it?" inquires George.
"Well, the minute a man commits a crime, they put him in jail."
"That's a mistake?" says George.
"Well, sure. You meet a poor class of people in jail."
"Oh."
"I think every American family should adopt a criminal."
George doesn't think much of this idea, but Gracie plunges into it with zest. She goes to City Hall and asks a guard where she can locate a nice, house-broken criminal.
"Right here at City Hall,” says the guard.
"Oh, I don't mean THEM," says Gracie.
"I mean the jail is right here in City Hall."
Gracie invades the office of the warden. "I'd like to rehabilitate one of your burglars, please."
"Come again," says the warden mildly.
Gracie explains patiently what she is up to, but the warden says she can't get a criminal out of jail unless she puts up bail.
"Oh, I didn't know they cost money. Well, have you got a good burglar for $4.98? I'll go to $5.95 if he's in good condition."
"Lady," says the warden, "you can't spring any of these crooks for less than a hundred bucks."
"Why that's outrageous. I'll take my business to another jail."
"Tell you what. We got one we'll spring for nothing—Big Louis."
"Why for nothing?"
"We got nothing on him."
"Oh, I couldn't take him home in that condition."
It's the old Gracie, all right. She puts a sort of lyric enthusiasm into misapprehension. The world, to Gracie, is a beautiful place, though she suspects she is the only sensible person in it. By mid-winter I may be a little tired of It, but right now I’m glad she's back.
I'm used to her.
And that brings us another old peeve. Radio is a habit. In spite of one of my sourpuss friends who refers to it as an "acquired distaste,” I get used to people and pretty soon find myself forgiving their sins on the basis of old friendship. Any one who has read this column any length of time has probably noticed how polite I am to the veterans to Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Amos 'n' Andy, and the rest.
Many of them have been in show business for 30 years and I respect their grey hairs, even their grey routines. They devoted years to developing those routines in vaudeville and on the stage. When they came to radio, they were fresh personalities and highly skilled entertainers. If the bloom has worn off, it’s because they have been imprisoned by their own popularity in the same routine. They have been beset by so many imitators that the routines seem threadbare, even in the original. They have not failed radio. Radio has failed them.

The same week, Crosby at looked Hal Peary’s series The Great Gildersleeve. This appeared in print September 20th.

RADIO IN REVIEW
The Great Gildersleeve
By JOHN CROSBY.
NEW YORK, Sept 20.— "The Great Gildersleeve," one of the most masterful bits of eclecticism in radio, has returned to the air at a new time (NBC, 8.30 p.m., EDT. Wednesdays) to bring great, rejoicing into the hearts of his many, many fans. I am one of the more lukewarm members of the club. Gildy doesn't stir any very violent emotion in me one way or another.
I like many of the characters in the small town of Summerfield, hut I don't quite trust Summerfield as a community. Possibly this is because I don't know where it is. Leila, that dripping honey chile, appears to be from the South, though I suspect you will find more Leilas in the Pennsylvania drug store at 45th Street and Broadway than you will in Georgia. Then there's Peavey, the druggist, whose every line is a whiff of old New England, probably Vermont.
As for Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve, the vain, bumptious, touchy head of the cast, he appears to be out of Frank Morgan by Booth Tarkington—in other words, of mixed blood. I like his tantrums and his foolish, little boy pride. I can't say much for that laugh, which must be one of the oldest comedy tricks in the theatre.
"The Great Gildersleeve" has borrowed fairly thoroughly from tried and true characters all over the place—the theater, books, movies and the slick magazines but it has been a pretty shrewd job of borrowing. The characters have a diversity that keeps the program moving.
My own favorite character on Gildersleeve this program is Peavey, the druggist, whose nasal tones are perfectly adapted to his dialogue.
"How are you?" Judge Hooker asks him at one point.
"I'm holding my own.”
"How's your wife? Enjoying good health?
"Well, she has it, but I can't say she's enjoying it."
Peavey sticks his neck out about as far as the late Calvin Coolidge at a press conference.
Within the very precise and narrow limits of this type of radio comedy, the writing and direction are almost perfect. I don't quite believe in Leila, but I must admit she's consistently herself.
"Ah'm re-ally exhausted," she moans to Gildersleeve when she returns from her vacation.
"How about a good-night kiss?"
"Mercy, Ah'm so exhausted ah re-ally wouldn’t enjoy it."
Whatever else you can say about that, it’s comedy of character rather than gag-writing, and that alone is a healthy influence in radio. The pace of the program is leisurely and it's usually soundly constructed. The sound effects are wonderful and the advertising is unobtrusive and in excellent taste.
In spite of all that, I am frequently just a little bored by Gildy and his friends. They have been going on and on so long that they have become becalmed in my imagination. Now and then when I'm listening I find my attention wandering. I guess Throckmorton just isn’t my sort of person. I don’t know why, but he seems to be pasted together out of old magazines and books and to me he’s never quite come alive.

Of the other three columns that week, we looked at the Sept. 19th story on Mel Blanc here. September 16th involves commercials, elocution and other odds and ends, while his column the next day looks at the inanity of quiz shows, particularly one hosted by Warren Hull, who emceed games on early network television. Read them below.

No Yen To Be a Hen

Not one person thinks there’s something insane about substituting a rabbit’s brain for a chicken’s brain in the Bob McKimson short Hot Cross Bunny.

This being a 1948 McKimson, it means the doctor is waving his arms around. Every time he says “rabbit,” he put his fingers by his ears and wiggles them.



Bugs Bunny is the rabbit involved. Naturally he objects to be turned into a chicken. At the end of the cartoon, the scientist, purely for plot purposes, puts on a metal cap and he and the hen reverse personalities. Bugs does a bend-down laugh that I’m sure I’ve seen in other McKimson cartoons.

Manny Gould, Chuck McKimson and Phil De Lara are the credited animators.

Groucho, Zeppo, Chico, Harpo and Birdo

Get on with it, Walt!

Sometimes, it takes forever to get to anything mildly amusing to happen in a Silly Symphony. In The Bird Store (1932), the audience is treated to nothing but singing birds for about two minutes. Finally, get we get some funny shaped birds.



And then the only celebrity reference in the picture.



I don’t know when the Marx Bros. first appeared one way or another in a cartoon, but this certainly must be one of the earliest.

Did You Hear the One About...

A symbiotic relationship bloomed between columnists and stars. Columnists needed to fill space. Stars needed publicity. What better way than for a star (well, their PR people) submitting a joke to a print reporter to finish off a column with a little fun?

It happened all the time, once upon a time. Sometimes it seems odd. One never thinks of Alan Reed as a comic, but I’ve read a bunch of old columns that go “Alan Reed says...” followed by a somewhat corny observation about mothers-in-law or bosses or some such thing.

Jack Benny found his name in print the same way.

A nice gentleman named Phil Wala has collected a bunch from the early ‘30s, before Jack was appearing on radio. We’ve found a few others prior to that. They all come from Walter Winchell, back before he became rabid and vengeful, destroying friendships in his path. I think the one about Frank Fay was closer to truth than humour. Evidently, straight vaudeville was considered dead in 1930. And though we still use “Brits” and “Yanks” as contractions today, others employed once upon a time aren’t deemed as tasteful any more.

Winchell’s stuff showed up on various days depending on the newspaper, so these dates aren’t all accurate for all newspapers.

December 28, 1928
Jack Benny, vaudevillian, brings back the one about the student who was on the university football team, but was never allowed to participate in any of the games for three years, being on the bench all of that time. One day the captain gathered the eleven in the clubhouse and warned them that they had to win the game. "It is imperative, he yelled, "our good name is at stake."
Then he looked around and observed the lad who warmed the bench for three years sitting in a box of resin.
"What the hell's the big idea, sitting in that resin?" he asked. "You don't think I want to slip off that bench in such an important game, do you?" was the retort.

February 13, 1930
Jack Benny telegraphs that during his travels west he discovered a vaudeville theater still open in Duluth!

April 27, 1930
It is Jack Benny’s tale of the heavily-insured old man who left his young bride while he went on an ocean trip. The shop was wrecked and all hands drowned except the heavily insured old husband.
A month later when he was delivered at an English port he cabled this message: "I was the lone survivor of a shipwreck. Please break the news gently to my wife."

June 1, 1930
Eddie Conrad and Jack Benny were talking about rival comedians in Hollywood.
"Howz Frank Fay doing out there?" asked Conrad.
"Very good," was the retort, "but not nearly so good as he thinks he's doing."

June 5, 1930
JACK BENNY, the two-a-dayer, tells the one about the drunk who zig-zagged into a third rate restaurant and clapped his paws madly for some service.
A waiter, whose right leg was shorter than his left, suddenly appeared.
"I'm in a hurry," hiccoughed the stew, "Just bring me a swish sheez "shandwish."
The waiter with the gimpty leg gimped away, bobbing up and down on his crippled stem.
"Aw!" bellowed the impatient drunk, "if you have to go down shtairs for it—then the hell with it!"

July 19, 1930
Jack Benny, of "Vanities," who wasn't arrested because they didn't know him with his clothes on, says that things are getting worse in Chicago. "I just heard," he bellows, "that the gunmen out there have giyen the Chicago police 24 hours' notice to get out of town!"

March 24, 1931
Jack Benny, the nimble-witted monologist, is appearing in Baltimore this week. Last week he played one of those immense sized movie theatres in Washington. "The house was so large," he writes, "that they do not hire a manager every four years. They elect a governo !"

March 27, 1931
One of the newspapers contained a layout of photos of Mayor Walker. One showed hizzoner in a beret and bed sheet, another, on a stage coach driven by cowboys, and one pictured him in New York.
"Look," said Mrs. Jack Benny to Jack, "here's one of him in New York."
"Hmmm," hmm'd Benny, "they must have snapped that one quick."

May 31, 1931
Jack Benny tells of the two long idle vaudevillians who were growling to each other about their professional brethren.
"Show business is gettin worse 'n' worse," said the first as they ankled up Broadway through the Furious Forties, "the minute you think up a new joke or a new sit-cheeashun, what happens? Along comes some rat and he steals it from you. You can't tell a gag at the Palace any more and expect it to be yours exclusively after the opening matinee!"
As he grumbled, a messenger boy on a bike was felled by a taxi, which sent the kid sprawling.
"Humph!" growled the other with disgust, "get a load of that pirate! Chaplin got laughs with the same stunt year ago!"

June 5, 1931
Jack Benny of the Big Time says that maybe it is a good thing that the Sharkey-Carnera fight has been called off.
"I'm afraid," says Jack, "that Sharkey couldn't hit Carnera high enough to foul him."

June 7, 1931
At the Palace Joe Wong, a China lad, and his oriental act start the program.
Jack Benny, the master of ceremonies, follows the turn. "You must admit," says Benny with a poker face, "that we have an unusual act to begin the show—a Chinese act! Gosh, I always thought in vaudeville you had to have Japs or better to open!"

July 5, 1931
And it was Jack Benny who said that he a horrible dream. He dreamed Dracula ran into Jimmy Durante.
"And what happened?"
"Dracula ran like Hell!"

July 19, 1931
Jack Benny relates the one about the dialecticians, who crashed a snooty and exclusive country club which also featured swimming, fishing, boating, tennis, etc. On their first day at golf they drew the states and frowns of members, because they were attired in overalls, instead of golf outfits.
"Of all things!" they heard people say, "they do not even know what to wear for golf! What etiquette!"
The next day at breakfast, however, the members were kindlier, for the dialecticians were smartly attired in white shirts, ducks, red ties, white shoes and golf sweaters.
But their prestige was lost again when they put on silk top hats and Moe turned to Jake and chirped: "Jakey—deed you remamber to breeng de feeshing teckle?"

September 14, 1931
Jack Benny's thrust at Abe Lyman (at the Palace): "Aw, if your musicians didn't show up what could you do with that stick?

October 2, 1931
When Jack Benny, the big-time comic was in London recently he discussed Evelyn Laye, the British star, with his booking agent there.
"Her name," said the agent, is not 'Ev-lin' but 'Eve-a-lyn'!"
"But it always sounds so funny," said Benny, "to hear you all say 'Eve-a-lyn' when you mean 'Ev-lin.'"
"Please," begged the Englishman "It sounds just as funny to us to hear you Americans say 'Ev-lin.' Don't forget. After all, we came first!"

November 16, 1931 (Okay, this is from O.O. McIntyre, not Winchell)
Jack Benny tells of the dialect Bronxite who popped into a delicatessen to look around. He inquired the price of various articles, such as preserved fruits, home made cakes, roast turkeys and the like.
Finally, pointing to a hefty Kentucky ham, he asked the price. As he did so there was a violent clap ot thunder and vivid flash of lightning.
Cowering and looking upward, the Bronxite whined: "Can't I even esk?"

April 17, 1932
Jack Benny says that too many of us try to stop the show and only succeed in slowing it up.

This pretty well brings us up to when Jack’s show for Canada Dry debuted May 2, 1932. It’s conceded he got the job from his appearance on Ed Sullivan’s 15-minute show on March 29, 1932 on CBS. “Sisters of the Skillet” was on at the same time on the Blue Network while the Red Network was airing “Mary and Bob.” One of the many fish stories that grew over time was that the Sullivan appearance was Jack’s first on radio, which is poppycock. We’ve given a number of examples; one was on September 4, 1931 on the NBC Red network.

Fedora! For Dora!

It’s taken almost 11 years to post something about My Green Fedora, a Friz Freleng effort released in 1935. Part of it because only murky versions of this cartoon existed for years. Mainly it’s because I have never liked this one. I am not a fan of Joe Penner. I am not a fan of obnoxious children. To be honest, I wouldn’t have been upset if the weasel that shows up mid-way through this short ate baby Elmer Rabbit. He’d probably get indigestion, though.

The funniest thing may be unintentional. Peter Rabbit may have the worst falsetto in cartoons. His “I’m coming Elmer” is ridiculously scratchy (I think it’s Tedd Pierce, but I can’t be sure). It doesn’t sound like a child; it sounds Jack Lemmon trying to do a woman’s voice in Some Like it Hot.

The best part of the cartoon is the pristine opening title card now available.



When I was a child decades ago, I got excited seeing this title card and hearing the music that was different from the Warners cartoons I was used to watching because it meant it was a really old cartoon. Only one station I could get on my TV set aired them. It was KTVW in Tacoma and the signal was poor. There were days it didn’t come in at all, but when it did the picture was snowy and faded in and out. There’s just no comparison looking at this restored card and what I tried to pick up on a black-and-white set 55 or so years ago.

The “jester” cartoons themselves were a mixed bag when it came to humour. Tex Avery was just arriving at the studio and pinpointed one problem with the Merrie Melodies series around this time. He told Mike Barrier in 1977: “We were forced to use a song, which would just ruin the cartoon. You’d try like a fool to get funny but it was seldom you did.” Barrier points out in his book “Hollywood Cartoons” that Freleng cut the number of complete choruses from two to one.

The title song in this short was written by Joseph Meyer, Al Sherman and Al Lewis and copyrighted by Harms, Inc., a Warners-owned music publisher, on June 30, 1934. The Boston Globe of August 8, 1934 reported the song could be heard that evening on a 15-minute CBS radio starring Gordon, Dave and Bunny (they also sang “I’ve Got Rhythm” in case you’re wondering). The song found its way into this cartoon, which was formally released May 4, 1935. We’ve mentioned before that release dates for cartoons are only approximate; whenever a short got to an exchange, a theatre could snap it up. You see an ad to the right from the April 1, 1936 edition of the China Press showing the cartoon screening in Shanghai.

A love song about wearing a hat with a play on “Fedora” and “For Dora” doesn’t sound like something a boy bunny would sing to his baby brother. It is within the realm of possibility, and perhaps some real proof will surface, that Joe Penner sang it on the air, considering Peter and Elmer are both doing Penner impressions during this cartoon. Not only that, but the other two times the song was put in Warners cartoons, characters are doing Penner impersonations and the animation from this short was reused. One is Freleng’s Toy Town Hall (1936), where we even get a baby in a crib giving out with the Penner laughter. The other is The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos (1937), a Frank Tashlin-directed cartoon where I believe Danny Webb is doing the voice.

Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett are the credited animators. Clampett told Mike Barrier, as revealed in 1970 in Funnyworld No. 12, he entered a studio contest and came up with the concept that was later made into this cartoon. The animation’s pretty good in places and I like how Friz found stuff to do in the slower-paced cartoons of the 1930s. Here, the weasel that has captured Elmer and is holed up underground waits for him to pop through a hole. The expressions are natural and solid. Some of the animation is on ones.



The weasel punches Peter through a tunnel that comes up on the other side of the weasel's hideout. The bad guy punches him again. Friz resists any temptation just to reverse the drawings and ink the other side to save money.



This may the only cartoon in animation history which features pepper but no sneezing gag.



The extended piece of music that is heard during this chase scene was added to future scores by Carl Stalling, particularly Falling Hare with Bugs Bunny and the gremlin. I mentioned to the late Earl Kress years ago that I had a copy of it on the Capitol Hi-Q library, and he said he had been trying to find the title of it for years. Capitol got it from the Sam Fox library, put its own title on it and deleted the composer’s name. It wasn’t until Earl passed away I learned the cue was “Traffic” and written by the great silent film composer J.S. Zamecnik. The Warners cartoons in the mid-‘30s seem to have had a Zamecnik piece in every cartoon, even after Carl Stalling replaced Norman Spencer.

There’s a cringing sound edit (well, maybe to those of us who edited sound for a living) when the score goes from “Traffic” to “I’m Wearing My Green Fedora” (in the usual double-time that Spencer loved using during chases or rescues). Part of a note seems to be missing and it’s not a clean transition.

Peter and his trusty garden hose (assisted by a convenient cactus) vanquish the villain.

Freleng ends the cartoon with the hose being used on Elmer, who annoys Peter with his Penner laugh, Penner scrunched shoulders, and Penner’s limp wrists at his chest level. Elmer goes up with the rush of water and lightly thumps to the ground. He blinks as the iris closes. Not exactly hilarity, but you have to end a cartoon some way.



The restored jester looks great, even in two-tone Technicolor.



That’s all, folks!

Electric Woody

Woody Woodpecker comes up with an evil idea in Solid Ivory.



A dumb cluck (ie. a clueless hen) thinks Woody’s cue ball is one of her eggs. To get rid of her, Woody decides to lure it out of the chicken coop with a cob of corn (swung in perspective at the camera) on a fishing rod.



Alright, so the chicken isn’t all that dumb. After sucking off the corn, she plugs the cob into a light socket.



Consecutive drawings.



A fine (Sid Pillet?) explosion effect follows. A star zooms into the camera, making the background white. When it disappears, we see Woody is now multi mini-Woodys. We don’t see him re-form when he hits the ground; director Dick Lundy cuts to animation of the delighted chicken following the action with a spy glass. Drawing all that separating and rejoining would bust Walter Lantz’s budget.



Grim Natwick and Hal Mason get screen credit for animation but as Lantz had only one unit, likely every animator in the studio got a piece of this.

The version on DVD is loaded with DVNR. I wanted to show a scene of Woody with an axe but there are so many erased lines, it’s a disservice to whoever animated the scene. It’s nice that the cartoons are available and if you watch it, the action goes by so fast you don’t notice it. But still...