Hidden Reference, Sutherland Style

There are a couple of inside jokes in What Makes Us Tick, a 1952 John Sutherland cartoon produced for the New York Stock Exchange.

As the camera slides down a piece of machinery, little tags appear. Some are gag tags but two are named for people involved with the cartoon. Earl Jonas was the studio's production manager; he later served the same capacity for Chuck Jones at MGM. Ed Starr was the background artist for this short. Starr has been at Disney and, according to his nephew quoted on puertovallarta.net, marched into Disney’s office and quit, then smashed and buried every piece of Disney artwork he had at his home. He spent some time at Columbia, painting backgrounds for the inexplicable Kongo-Roo and other cartoons before the studio closed in 1946.



“Hawky” refers to Emery Hawkins, who animated part of this cartoon. While the studio had a “Higgy” (Bill Higgins) animating on this short, I don’t think it had anyone with the name “Smoe.”

George Gordon, Carl Urbano, Gerry Nevius and Arnold Gillespie are also credited on this short, with the music by Gene Poddany. Bud Hiestand is the narrator, with typical John Q. Public and a newsboy played by Herb Vigran.

Pull the Wool

Beaky, the Bashful Buzzard, swoops in to an innocent lamb (note the long eye-lashes) after his brothers capture sheep to bring them home for dinner.

The camera cuts back and forth on the lamb and Beaky, moving in closer.



Things don’t go according to plan. The lamb can’t be moved from her place—but her wool can.



The simpleton returns the wool and gets bashed with a brush for his trouble.



Bob Clampett directed The Bashful Buzzard from a story by Michael Sasanoff. It was released in 1945.

The Modest Man Was 39

Not only was Jack Benny’s death front page news, papers made space for sidebar stories, too. That’s how beloved Benny was to millions of people when he passed away December 26, 1974.

Here’s one of the many side stories that appeared in print. It’s from syndicated columnist Marilyn Beck, who managed to reach many of Jack’s long-time celebrity friends and get them to speak. She saw Jack a few weeks before he died.

Benny Was a Likeable, Charitable Guy
By MARILYN BECK
HOLLYWOOD—Although the thought of death frightened him, Jack Benny died the way he wanted to die—looking forward to his next work assignment.
"Work keeps me young; I never want to retire," the grand old trouper told me recently. He was just 49 days short of his 81st birthday when the end came; yet he was still acting like a "kid" of 39 until a few months ago.
Even a collapse and a hospital siege last October couldn't keep him down for long. The spring in his step had been dulled a bit, but the mind and the sparkle in his eyes seemed as lively as ever when he snapped back to prepare his annual NBC "Farewell" special, and to get ready for February co-starring stints with Walter Matthau in the MGM film adaptation of "The Sunshine Boys."
The last time I saw him, when he arrived at the Beverly Hills Hotel on Dec. 8 to receive the Outstanding Lifelong Achievement Award from the Hollywood Women's Press Club, he told me: "I still feel like I'm 39."
BUT AS IT turned out, his days were numbered, and the press club event would mark his final public appearance. Stricken with stomach pains before he had a chance to accept the award, he was rushed to doctors who would discover several weeks later their famed patient was suffering from inoperable cancer of the pancreas.
Paying a visit to his Beverly Hills home on Thursday night, while he slipped into his final, sedated sleep, were such famed friends as Frank Sinatra, Gov. Ronald Reagan, Danny Kaye, Rosalind Russell, Johnny Carson, and Bob Hope. It was Hope who summed up the sadness of the crowd by saying: "We'll be lost without him. Jack's got one of the most charitable hearts there's ever been in this business."
Hope also made the undeniable point: "This is the beginning of the end of an era; guys who started out together in vaudeville, who've been close all these years—and who've always been there to step in for one another at a minute's notice."
It's amazing, actually, that so many of the old crowd are still around, Bob realizes.
HOPE IS 71, George Burns (Benny's closest buddy, who underwent open heart surgery in August) is 79. Along with 84-year-old Groucho Marx and George Jessel, who's in his late 70s, they formed the group of cronies whose friendship spanned over half a century. They shared vaudeville bills in the ’20’s, went on to vie as radio comedy kings of the ’30’s — and have spent much time together during their twilight years in kibitzing sessions at the Beverly Hills’ Hillcrest Country Club, reliving the old days and the ribald stunts they’d pulled.
Jessel came close to collapsing when informed of Benny’s death. “We were friends for over 50 years,” he said. “And I’m destroyed over this. But I know that if there's a place where the good go — there will be a place for Benny.”
Though Jessel has delivered the eulogies of many filmland notables, Benny requested last year that Bob Hope handle such a task for him. At this point Bob is wondering what anyone can say that’s not already known about the gentle man who added so much to all our lives — who kept millions laughing and listening to his radio “family” that included his wife, Mary Livingstone, Rochester, Dennis Day and Don Wilson. And which fostered the gags that would become legend about Benny’s stinginess, his Maxwell automobile and his assaults on the violin.
ACTUALLY, he started out in vaudeville as a "straight" violinist, practiced religiously on the instrument even during all those years we laughed at his fractured treatment of "Love in Bloom," and in recent times raised millions for charity through violin performances with symphony orchestras.
Services will be held Sunday at Hillcrest Memorial Park, Los Angeles. He leaves behind a wife of 47 years who retired from show business in 1950; an adopted daughter, Joan; and four grandchildren.
The man who accomplished so much in a long life time and left only one thing undone, he had completed only three chapters of his autobiography at the time of his death. "It's really not important if I finish the book," he told me last fall. "After all, what does the world really care about the life and opinions of Jack Benny?"
Modesty was one of the most endearing qualities of the man born Benjamin Kubelesky in Waukegan, Ill., on Valentine's Day, 1894.

From all of us here at the Tralfaz blog, here’s a cheery holiday song from Preston Ward, circa 1952. (Artwork by Tom McKimson, supplied by Devon Baxter).

A Ham for the Holidays

The closest Tex Avery got to a Christmas cartoon was One Ham's Family (released in August 1943), where the mean widdle pig outsmarts the wolf (both played by Kent Rogers) dressed as Santa.

The typical Tex Avery wolf notices the pig looking up the chimney for St. Nick. He shakes his head so violently, his eyes get left behind (okay, it’s really smear animation).



As this is a war time cartoon, there’s a meat ration-point gag. Didn’t most of these kinds of gags get cut in the post-war re-releases?



Later, the wolf dresses up as Santa Claus and gets bashed around by the Red Skelton piggie stand-in.

Kent Rogers, by the way, was dead 11 months after this cartoon was released, killed in a WW2 training exercise.

The King and Santa

The Van Beuren cartoon studio made a handful of cartoons involving winter, and Santa Claus appeared at the beginning of the Cubby Bear debut Opening Night (1933), but the studio made only one true Christmas cartoon—The Little King’s Pals (1933).

The king reads a sign in a department store window (note the spiked fingers).



He goes inside. You can’t see them very well in this murky print but there are radiation lines of glee around his head as he sees Jolly Old St. Nick. A little girl and her satisfied mother are frozen while the lines do their thing for several seconds of footage.



Santa is the only one who speaks in the cartoon. He tells the Little King to run along and he’ll bring some toys. He pats His Majesty on the head and then the two exchange a coy wave.



The cartoon stops when the Little King and one of his “pals” (he picked up a couple of hobos) crash into each other in the toy vehicles Santa brought.

This is the last Little King cartoon where Jim Tyer gets an animation credit. The style of his you’re used to at Terrytoons with shrinking heads and bodies that turn into weird shapes isn’t evident yet, but Tyer diehards seem to be able to pick out his work here.

Christmas is On the Air

I don’t remember my first Christmas on the air. I think I was playing taped programming hosted by someone from one of the city stations (I was at a small town station 65 miles away then). I remember my second Christmas (different station). The morning man came in before 6 a.m., put down a 26er of scotch and offered me as much as I wanted. I didn’t want any. He polished off the whole bottle during a six-hour shift, and you’d never know it listening to him.

This was old-school radio in the mid-1970s. I am afraid I wasn’t in radio in the ‘40s, but we can get a glimpse back at what the four main American networks were running on Christmas Day 80 years ago.

The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor a few weeks earlier, so several of the New York stations were now on the air all-night, just in case something happened. Christmas morning, both NBC networks and CBS ran King George’s Christmas message live via shortwave (Mutual recorded it and ran it later). CBS featured two-way conversations between U.S. children and fathers in London, while NBC Blue broadcast British children living in the U.S., Canada and South Africa speaking to parents in England. The U.S. Navy Department has to relax censorship rules to allow it. A review the next day said shortwave difficulties marred the former programme.

Programming on NBC and CBS was still live then. It meant Rudy Vallee, Arthur Godfrey and Virginia Payne (Ma Perkins) had to come in to the station and do their shows on Christmas Day.

If you got a new, 1942 Emerson radio for Christmas, here is what the flagship stations were broadcasting the night of December 25, 1941. Not all stations along the network picked up each show. The information is a compilation from about a dozen papers.

You might be surprised to see television listings for the three stations in New York. Surprising to me was a blurb that the CBS station was broadcasting one programme in colour.

WABC (CBS)
6:15 p.m. – Norman Corwin’s “Plot to Overthrow Christmas.”
Norman Corwin’s radio classic, “The Plot to Overthrow Christmas,” is presented for the third time on Columbia network tonight at 6:15 o’clock over WGST. The production is broadcast from Hollywood, with Norman Corwin directing. It was first done on Christmas Day, 1938, in the CBS “Words Without Music” series as a Columbia Workshop presentation.
“The Plot to Overthrow Christmas” is the story of a diabolical scheme hatched in Hades by “Mephisto” and a group of historically-wicked characters to “purge” the Christmas spirit.
6:45 – The World Today.
7:00 – Amos ‘n’ Andy.
7:15 – Lanny Ross.
7:30 – Maudie’s Diary. A Christmas story, “Life is But a Dream.” With Mary Mason, Robert Walker, Betty Garde and William Johnstone.
8:00 – Death Valley Days: “Cornish Carols.”
A Christmas broadcast of Cornish music from a 2,000 shaft at the Grass Valley Mine, Grass Valley, California—a Cornish settlement. The songs are all traditional unpublished Cornish carols.
8:30 – Duffy’s Tavern. Guest: Fats Waller.
8:55 – Elmer Davis, news.
9:00 – Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour.
10:00 – Glenn Miller, Ray Eberle and Marion Hutton, vocalists.
10:15 – News; Saroyan Christmas Play “Something I Got to Tell You.”
Larry Walters, Chicago Tribune: There’s a characteristic Saroyan story behind the Christmas play, “There’s Something I Got to Tell You, which is to be on the air at 9:15 [CT] tonight over WBBM-CBS. Last year William Saroyan was asked by the network to write a Christmas play. Saroyan was in San Francisco at the time. Two days later he finished the play and transmitted it by teletype to New York.
A couple of days after Christmas a second play came from Saroyan with this note: “While I was writing Christmas plays I thought I might as well do two. I think this one is better than the first.”
The second one will be broadcast tonight.
10:45 – News; Mark Hawley.
11:00 – Christmas in the New World. CBS brings in Montreal, Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro for a picture of Christmas Day in the Western Hemisphere.

WEAF (NBC Red)
6:30 p.m. – Rose Bowl Christmas program at Duke University.
6:45 – Three Suns Trio.
7:00 – Chesterfield presents Fred Waring’s Orchestra.
7:15 – News of the World with John W. Vandercook.
7:30 – Camel’s Cugat Rhumba Revue, with Margo, Carmen Castillo and Miguelito Valdes, vocalists, and Bert Parks, emcee.
8:00 – Maxwell House Coffee Time.
Having just received Motion Picture Daily’s award as the “best comedienne” on the air, Fanny Brice as Baby Snooks is expected to be in such a magnanimous mood on her Christmas Day broadcast of Coffee Time that she’ll return all the presents her daddy (Hanley Stafford) has given her during the year. The program is heard over WGST at 8 o’clock.
Meanwhile, “Kris Kingle Morgan Suh,” with Comedian Frank Morgan in the role of the protagonist, will display as fine a pair of reindeer as ever bettered the world’s top air speed of 837 ½ miles per hour—but only in conversation.
John Conte is your singing emcee, with Meredith Willson’s orchestra.
8:30 – The Aldrich Family.
Lawyer Sam Aldrich looks a Christmas gift horse in the teeth and the Yuletide spirit runs low momentarily in “The Aldrich Family,” starring Ezra Stone, over WSB at 8:30 o’clock tonight.
Too much Christmas candy, a mix-up in tags on the presents, and a burn from Henry’s new chemistry set put the head of the house in a very bad humor. He even says uncomplimentary things about the neighbors.
When they drop in for a visit, Henry demonstrates what he has done with his new recording machine. To the consternation of all, Lawyer Aldrich’s scathing remarks are repeated for the neighbors’ edification with only a needle scratch to dull their edge.
9:00 – Kraft Music Hall.
For the sixth consecutive year Bing Crosby will sing “Adeste Fidelis” and “Silent Night: on Kraft Music Hall’s Christmas program tonight at 9 o’clock over WSB. As a Yuletide novelty he will sing for the first time on the air “White Christmas” from his new film, “Holiday Inn.”
The guest panel will be composed by Fay Bainter, celebrated character actress of stage and screen, and tubby zany Frank McHugh. Danish comedian Victor Borge, who became one of the regulars with last week’s K.M.H. proceedings, will play and sing “The Bells Are Ringing for Christmas,” an old Danish folk song. Bing and his colleagues in the Hall will regretfully say farewell to songstress Connie Boswell, who leaves the show to fulfill a series of personal appearances in the east. Her sultry-voiced singing has been one of the pleasantest features of K.M.H. for more than a year.
10:00 – The Sealtest Show.
Lionel Barrymore’s inimitable portrayal of Ebenezer Scrooge in a radio dramatization of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” will mark the Christmas Day broadcast of the Rudy Vallee-John Barrymore program to be heard over WSB tonight at 10 o’clock.
Lionel Barrymore’s portrayal of Scrooge has become a Christmas tradition of American radio, and it is at Rudy Vallee’s invitation that he will carry on that tradition this year for the NBC-Red network audience. Vallee also will be heard in the dramatization of the Dickens classic.
Christmas music and carols sung by Rudy Vallee will be the only other features of this Christmas Day broadcast.
Dix Davis plays Tiny Tim with Vallee as Bob Cratchet.
10:30 – Frank Fay with vocalist Bob Hannon, Beverly and her Boy Friends, and the Harry Salter Orchestra.

WJZ (NBC Blue)
7:00 p.m. – Easy Aces.
7:15 – Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons.
7:30 – Schaefer’s Revue: Allen Roth's orchestra with Bud Collyer.
8:00 – The March of Time.
Re-enactment of the defence of Wake Island against the Japanese.
8:30 – Service With a Smile: Army, Navy and Marine talent. This week from Great Lakes Training School, with Garry Moore, and Ben Grauer, emcee.
9:00 – Rochester Civic Orchestra with Guy Fraser Harrison and conductor Mack Morgan.
10:00 – Metropolitan Opera Guild: Excerpts from “Hansel and Gretel.”
10:15 – First Piano Quartet.
10:30 – News with William Hillman and Raymond Clapper. (local?)
10:45 – Carmen Cavallero’s Orchestra.

WOR (Mutual)
7:00 p.m. – Fulton Lewis, News Commentary.
7:15 – Here’s Morgan.
7:30 – Confidentially Yours, with Arthur Hale.
7:45 – Inside of Sports.
8:00 – Morton Gould’s Orchestra, with Jimmy Shields, tenor.
8:30 – Boake Carter, News Commentary.
8:45 – Eddy Duchin’s Orchestra.
9:00 – Gabriel Heatter, News.
9:15 – News from Manila with Royal Arch Gunnison.
9:30 – America Preferred. Deems Taylor, commentator; Alfred Wallenstein’s orchestral Salvatore Baccaloni, basso.
10:00 – Raymond Gram Swing, News.
10:15 – Spotlight Bands, Ray Noble’s orchestra.
10:30 – War at Sea, with Paul Schubert.
10:45 – Under Western Skies, Ramona and the Tune Twisters with the Mountaineers.

Television
WNBT
8:30 p.m. – Hansel and Gretel. Musical Fairy Tale with Adriana Caselotti and Ivy Dale.
9:00-9:30 – Christmas Varieties with Yola Galli (songs), Carla and Fernando (dancers), Southernaires Quartet.

WCBW
2:30-4 p.m. – Christmas party; Police and Fire Department toy campaign. In Color!
8:00 – News.
8:15 – Bob Edge, sports.
8:30 – Visual Quiz.
9:25 – News.

W2XWV
7:30-9 p.m. – Tests and Selected Films.

And for readers in Canada, here is what the CBC was sending out that evening from Toronto. Not all stations picked up every programme and Western stations had a different line-up after hearing from General McNaughter, who had been wounded overseas. Incidentally, "Stag Party" eminated from CBR Vancouver and starred a young local man named Angus Young. He decided "Angus" was a bit stuffy for a comedian, so he changed his name to Alan Young. He also wrote "Stag Party." As for the 6 p.m. news, it is quite likely read by (unless he got Christmas off) Canada's Voice of Doom, a gentleman named Lorne Greene.

6:00 - CBC News Service.
6:15 - “Hello Children.”
Greetings from British Parents to Children Over Here.
6:30 - Programme summary, etc.
6:45 - BBC London News.
7:00 - “The Mysteries.”
Drama of the Nativity.
8:00 - Montreal Variety.
9:00 - Chuhaldin’s strings.
9:30 - “Stag Party” from Vancouver.
10:00 - Period of the Drama.
Christmas Carol, 1941, a 20th century version of the immortal story of Scrooge. Scrooge, in this version, is a hard-boiled businessman, who is taken in hand by the spirits of Christmas past (in a London air raid shelter); Christmas present (in Germany occupied countries) and Christmas that is yet to come (if Canada loses sight of her precious heritage of freedom). What Scrooge sees, and the conclusion he draws, carry an important message to Canadians on their third war-time Christmas. [Summary from the Windsor Star].
10:30 - Toronto Choristers.
10:45 - The King’s Message (rebroadcast).
11:00 - CBC News Service.
11:15 - Lt. General A.G.L. McNaughton, commander of the Canadian Corps in Britain, by phone direct from London.
11:30 - The BBC News Reel.
12:00-12:30 a.m. - Romanelli Orchestra, dance music.

Mutant Santa

Scat-singing Pooch the Pup? Check.

Talking door that slugs a wolf? Check.

Gangster mouse in a sedan firing a machine gun at a cat? Check.

It’s all part of Merry Dog, a 1933 Christmas cartoon by the Walter Lantz studio.

There’s a scene of a cat and mice fighting in Santa’s beard (worn by a sociopathic wolf in disguise) but an odd scene has, for absolutely no reason, Santa with three noses and two mouths singing “Jingle Bells.”



Like a Harman-Ising cartoon, toys (and a Christmas tree) gang up in the second half to quell the villain with fire/butt gags.

The “artists” listed on the title car are Manny Moreno, George Cannata, Fred Kopietz, Les Kline, Bill Weber and Tex Hastings. Jimmy Dietrich provides the score.

Gopher Stretch

Should the gophers open the trunk that says “Not To Be Opened Until Xmas”? One gopher inspects the label. His head enlarges as he moved toward the label.



When the gopher's head moves back, we get some stretch in-betweens.



Two Gophers From Texas is a tour-de-force for Emery Hawkins, who draws the dog at all angles and with different sized eyes. Don Williams, Bill Melendez and Basil Davidovich also animated this 1948 Warners release. Art Davis directing.

Christmas on Stage

What was Jack Benny doing 50 years ago at Christmas time? Working, naturally.

He was appearing in Las Vegas.

How’d he do?

We’ll find out in just a moment. But first, a word from Irv Kupcinet’s column of January 6, 1972.

JACK BENNY, starring with Della Reese at the Sahara Hotel, was asked why he, at 78, continues working while Frank Sinatra, many years his junior, has retired.
"W-e-l-l," drawled Benny, "I can explain that. Frank is very wealthy and he has so many hobbies—all young ones."
Benny's constant companion here is former Chicago songwriter Ned Miller, who has been at the comedian's side, strictly as a friend, for almost 50 years. Benny had an explanation for that, too: "Ned has the same blood type as mine and you can't be too careful."

Del Webb must have liked Jack because his bookers hired the old vaudevillian several times. The San Francisco Examiner reported on March 19, 1972:

Jack Benny has turned 39, times two, and at 73 he is busier than when he first reached 39. Benny opened his second three-week engagement of the year at Hotel Sahara last week and has another scheduled for May.
During the 21-day stay he is doing a total of 42 shows, two each night.
Retire? Not if he can help it!
"I've known men who retired and immediately got ill," says Benny. "I enjoy keeping active, and playing benefits and nightclub engagements is what I enjoy most."

As for the holiday season stage show, here’s what Variety wrote on December 28, 1971:

SAHARA
($7.50 minimum)
Las Vegas. Dec. 27—The drolleries of Jack Benny are moving fair-sized audiences to much laughter, with the warbling expertise of Della Reese seconding the entertaining motion of this 11-day Sahara stand.
Benny tends to pace a trifle slower, although the punch jabs lose no effectiveness. His timing is still up there with the best in the funny-biz. He naturally dwells upon his vaunted parsimony as principal raison d'etre for most of the comedic thrusts. Without this w.k. [well-known] identification mark, there are some excursions into subjects of retirement (he rejects the mere idea of it), George Burns feud over the years and, of course, the fiddling around.
This trip he brings out his teacher, lissome blonde, Gloria Chappell, who keeps a close watch upon his left hand manipulation of the Stradivarius strings as both please with Sarasate's "Zigeunerweisen." His taped voice of thoughts while fiddling is a solid closer.
Miss Reese moulds her songs into pleasing forms with introductory narration. Hers is a bright pattern woven all the way, from "Let Go," through a song about a frog, and medley of youth poptunes about love. Following a bit of sparring with Benny and shooting down some planned dialog for extra laughs, she closes with a brace of mod spirituals.
The Jack Eglash crew, augmented by a bank of strings (two violins), have plenty of kicks backing Miss Reese and on the receiving end of some special sotto quips directed their way from Benny. Eglash also has a couple of lines with Benny without fluffing one syllable. Johnny Mathis opens Jan. 4. Will.

“A song about a frog”!! Billboard’s Laura Deni (who focused on Reese in her review) revealed it was “It’s Not Easy Being Green” which, even not digging too deeply, is actually about something else. She also sang “I Feel Pretty,” “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” and “Proud Mary.”

Easter fell during his second stint at the Sahara and he and Reese took a break to entertain during an Easter Seals telethon. In between runs, he played a benefit for Mexico City’s blind with Vikki Carr. And about a week before his Christmas season shows, he presented old friend Rosalind Russell with an award for her work helping people with arthritis (which victimised her).
Considering all this, and his various charity concerts around North America, Jack was in the Christmas spirit of giving all year round.