Shock the Cat

You get electricity zapped through you every time you pick up the end of a power cord, right? You do if you’re in a Columbia cartoon.



Here’s the Screen Gems version of the gag from Big House Blues, released in 1947. The mouths change shape so the shot isn’t static.



The animation is generally good in the late Columbia cartoons. Grant Simmons and Jay Sarbry get the animation credits. Animator Roy Jenkins came up with the story. Directed by Howard Swift. Bill Weaver was the layout guy on the Rhapsodies when this cartoon was made.

Eddie Kilfeather’s music during the chase scenes has no urgency. It’s finger-snappin,’ toodle-looin’ happy. And it’s arranged for maybe seven pieces. There’s no full Warners or MGM orchestra at Screen Gems.

This is the last Flippy the canary cartoon. In fact, the cartoon studio had been closed for good when this came out.

Iris the Bride

“Whaddya want, Mac?” screeched the drug store waitress at Jack Benny.

She was new amongst Jack’s secondary cast in the early ‘50s, but Iris Adrian had been around a lot longer than that.

Adrian left Hollywood where she grew up to become a show girl as the Depression hit. She left Broadway to return to Hollywood, where she had a steady career in movies with titles like Too Many Blondes and Gold Diggers of 1937. Benny hired her and pretty soon, TV producers had her typecast as a hardboiled waitress.

Her career in the ‘60s took her far away from the land of leggy, plumed dancers. She was hired to appear in squeaky-clean Walt Disney family comedies like The Shaggy D.A. and The Love Bug. But she was also a regular in Ted Knight’s quickly-cancelled 1978 sitcom where he played the owner of an escort service. I suspect her lifestyle in New York might have made her aware of such establishments in real life.

Here she is in part two of a feature profile in the Charlotte News published May 24, 1975 (Click here for Part 1). She talks about her time with Jack Benny and how Jack’s wife played a role in her career. The photo below accompanied the article.

‘I Was Always Getting Wed’
By EMERY WISTER
News Staff Writer
HOLLYWOOD — Iris Adrian wears a diamond ring on her hand and the gem itself looks as big as a silver dollar.
"You can call it a wedding ring if you want," she said. "I was always getting married, I would get lonesome for some guy I missed and I'd marry another.
"My first husband was worth $60 million or so he told me. He forgot to mention his grandmother had already left her money to someone else.
"Then I married another guy. He expected me to support him so that ended right away. Then there was a third marriage in their somewhere.
“I MARRIED my fourth and present husband, Fido Murphy, 23 years ago. This marriage wasn't any better than the others. We should have got rid of each other right away but we just got used to each other.
"I guess we got on because he was on the road most of the time. He still is. He's a coach to the Chicago Bears professional football team. I don't travel with him. He doesn't want me.
“There was one rich man I liked. He had millions and I really should have gone ahead and married him and to hell with honour.
"He finally married a dame with big feet. If there was one thing I couldn't stand it was a man whose feet were smaller than mine and his were."
Iris Adrian was dancing in high school when she was in the ninth grade. That's when she quit.
"I couldn't see much sense to it," she recalled. "What did I have to learn about George Washington's habits for? So I just dropped out of classes altogether."
"BUT WHILE I didn't want to study, I didn't mind working. Once I was sweeping the sidewalk in front of my house and a Hindu man called me a pig. He thought it was disgraceful that a woman should be doing that kind of work.
"I used to own a lot of real estate. At one time I owned four houses, but sold them. People were beginning to think I was some kind of madam."
It must have been 30 years ago that the late Jack Benny's wife Mary Livingstone called her on the telephone and asked her to go on Benny's stage show. This was after Benny's radio show had gone off the air.
Iris agreed and she and another actress were teamed as the Landrews Sisters, a takeoff on the Andrews Sisters, then, a top singing team.
"I stayed with Benny about 30 years," she said. "I guess he was about the nearest person to God I ever knew.
“He used to say to me 'why can't you think of me as just a boob and not a star?' But I never could. When he died I felt a little alone without him. We went all over the world together, saw every place worth seeing with him."
IRIS ADRIAN started young and, in her own words, tried to stay young. She was about 15 when she got her first job in Fred Waring's show.
"They called the show 'Rah-Rah Days.' I got the lead when Dorothy Lee became ill. That must have been about 1929."
Then came New York and later Hollywood and people like George Raft, Ray Milland, the Marx Bros. She can't remember it all but she does remember a man named Jimmy Durante.

“I could write a book about him. I remember he used to date a girl named Harriet Fish. Once he gave her a fur coat and a day or two later it was stolen. In those days men were accused of giving a girl a coat and then hiring some thug to steal it.
"I LOVED New York in those days. There weren't so many people in the world and it seemed like I knew everybody in town. Walter Winchell, Ed Sullivan and all those fellows would come to the restaurant where I liked to eat every night. Today I don't know anyone. And today's living has done something to men. They stopped cheating on their wives. They found TV is better.
"I don't go to the movies any more. I don't like 'em any more, and besides I'm too busy being interviewed about the good old days.
"Jack Benny gave me a wonderful party when I was 60. I don't mind telling my age. Like I said, I'm 62, and I don't look on my age as some disease I've contracted. If I say I'm 42, people will say 'Who does this old bag think she's kidding?' So then should I say, well, I'm really 48 and if you don't believe it, I'll punch you in the nose.
"Most people don't know this but Jack Benny contracted diabetes when he was just 56. It was the best thing that could have happened to him. It made him keep his figure and he was active right up until the time he died at 80."
TWICE A MONTH, Iris Adrian can be found standing in line at the unemployment office collecting a check for $180.
"Many of the old stars won't do this, but I'm going to do it. I get $90 a week but in order for me to collect, I still have to earn about $3,000 a year. I was offered a television series but I don't want to start that now. I'm not running out of money but out of time. You have to do something with your life when you're young.
"I don't want to go back to New York now. I don't know anybody there. All my friends have either died or gone to the chair.
"I never had any children, not by any of my marriages. I didn't want any. All the time I was married to my millionaire I was afraid I'd get pregnant and be stuck with him and the baby. I had to take care of mother and grandmother and they were enough for me."

Life at the Charles Mintz Studio

An office boy once claimed he was responsible for the Charlie Mintz cartoons making it onto the screen. Which may explain a lot about their lack of quality.

Actually, the office boy was kidding, and I suspect everybody at Screen Gems worked long and hard. But the Columbia releases don’t really show it. In the Mintz years, there were some funny cartoons at the outset in the ‘30s; who can dislike a cartoon with opening animation of an elephant playing his trunk like a saxophone? But by the time Mintz died at the end of the decade, something had gone haywire. The studio relied on show biz caricatures, and plots were someone undeserving got harassed. Even Mel Blanc’s voice work lacks amusement as he reads lacklustre dialogue. He yelled too often.

Things didn’t improve before the studio closed in November 1946, having been taken over by Columbia. Some animation was expertly done but there were too many cartoons that left you wondering “What did I just watch?”

Despite this, there were talented people and some of the cartoons shine through.

Here are a couple of stories about the Mintz operations. There were actually two studios in the ‘20s. Mintz’s brother-in-law George Winkler made Oswald shorts in Caligornia for Universal until it decided to sign a deal with Walter Lantz. In New York, another team made Krazy Kat cartoons. Mintz combined everyone on the West Coast in early 1930 and formally merged both corporate studios the following year.

This first story appeared in newspapers starting January 18, 1930.

Animated Cartoons Explained
NEW YORK—Animated cartoons form one of the most interesting novelties upon the screen. They represent an entirely different technic from the ordinary motion picture. The cartoon and the feature film both commence with a scenario and from that point diverge into different channels.
The Winkler Film Corporation from whose studio the famous Krazy Kat Kartoons issue is the oldest company in the industry devoted exclusively to the production of animated cartoons. For over fifteen years under the supervision of Charles B. Mintz, president of the concern, animated cartoons have been created in the Winkler Studios of New York and Hollywood. During that period nearly every animator of importance has worked for the firm at some time or another.
The Krazy Kat Kartoons, now being released by Columbia Pictures Corporation, are the creations of Ben Harrison and Mannie Gould. The two men work together plotting the antics of the educated feline and after having arranged a complete continuity turn it over to a staff of twenty animators, who make the separate drawings that go into the film.
It takes approximately 9,000 separate drawings made with pen ink to produce a six minute cartoon. Twenty men work for four weeks perfecting the extraordinary athletic maneuverings which go into these few minutes.
The introduction of sound has brought certain changes in the animated cartoon in the way of speech, synchronized scores and sound effects so elaborate that the drawings must be more carefully made in order to fit the music closely. Under Joe DeNat, musical director, a ten piece orchestra prepares and executes the musical score while four effect men under the direction of an expert in queer and unusual sounds provide the incidental noises. When the drawings are completed, they are filmed a drawing at a time. The completed animated action film is then synchronized with the speech, effects and music.

Here’s a feature story from the Los Angeles Evening Citizen News of May 28, 1936. The photos accompanied the article. It’s a shame these are scans of photocopies of the newspaper, not the actual photos. My thanks to Devon Baxter for supplying them.



Animating Cartoon Seen Snail-like in Pace
110 Specialists ‘Combine’ To Turn Out 7 Minutes Of Screen Allure
By MORTON THOMPSON
A man with a atop watch sits in his shirtsleeves at a draughtsman's desk. The ticking of metronome punctuates his pencil strokes. At the end of the board a cigaret burns unnoticed into the wood. A cartoon comedy has begun for the screen.
Five months later, 110 specialists will have developed the animated cartoon idea begun to those first nimble sketches into the finished screen product.
The man with the stop watch paces a rough draft of his ideas. He hands it to the studio’s staff of composers. Music is scored to fit each minute action.
A staff of animators continue the sketches. They leave many gaps. Dozens of draughtsmen fill in the progress of action in these gaps. A roomful of girls trace the completed drawings on celluloid. Other girls brush in color. A special camera department films the result in careful sequence. As cautiously as a surgeon times his strokes in an operation near a beating heart the cutting room crew edits the completed film. And at length, after many projections and executive conferences, the cartoon comedy is finished.
It will be set before on audience. It will run exactly 420 seconds.
Machine Precision
That is the story back of one of the cinema’s most popular short features— the animated cartoon comedy. Like a well drilled army of scientists, each move timed, each line exact, each detail as precise as a mathematical formula the work goes painstakingly and never-endingly on.
At the Charles Mintz Studio at 7000 Santa Monica Blvd., an institution which pioneered in the industry, such a picture of activity has been in progress for years.
Animated cartoons are costly. That seven minutes entertainment you saw on the screen cost from $15,000 to $22,000 to produce, Mr. Mintz disclosed.
His plant ran never satisfy the demand. Their goal is 26 pictures a year. Usually they manage to eke out 20 or 21.
Temperament Lacking
There are no problems of actors or director's temperament on an animated cartoon studio producer's mind, but there is a large staff of highly trained experts— artists if you like— working at constant tension and high speed, to be considered. And each has an inordinate pride in his work.
Mr. Mintz, for instance, will confide with a sympathetic smile that Joe De Nat, the studio composer, has a very important role to fill.
"The picture is made or marred right here in the music department," Mr. De Nat avers strongly.
Something in the same line is expressed with the same certainty by Ben Harrison, the man with the stop watch. “The picture,” he smiles confidently “is made or marred right here in the story idea department.”
And Art Davis, Sidney Marcus and Al Rose, the animators, will draw you aside to whisper that of course the really IMPORTANT work is the animator’s work and of course Eddie Killfeather, the arranger, and Bernie Grossman, the lyricist, smile tolerantly at this for they KNOW.
Credit Where Due
And over the entire scene Mr. Mintz and Jimmy Bronis, his assistant, grin benignly, “Come and see us again soon,” they urge. “Nice how the boys shoulder responsibility for the picture's success, isn’t it. We like to encourage them in their attitude. Naturally, you know, the picture couldn't get to first base without the producing staff.”
It would have made a very impressive speech if the office boy hadn't stopped us as we were leaving. He had his arms full of manuscript bundles and drawings, and he was evidently bound on some brisk errand into the labyrinth of drawing room.
"Say" he croaked “you ain't letting them big shots fool you are you? Where would they be,” he pleaded, “if it wasn't for me bringing the stuff around to them to get started on in the first place? All I gotta do is be five minutes late. Why the whole picture is made or . . .”
The man with the stop watch had already begun a new picture.

Fansites for all kinds of things have come and gone. Pietro Shakarian toiled on a site devoted to the Columbia cartoons, including post-Mintz. It’s not on-line anymore but has been preserved at Archive.org. And you can view Harry McCracken’s obsession with Columbia’s Scrappy series in our right-hand list of sites.

There are some very low res Columbia cartoons on a few of the video sites for you to check out. Perhaps some day we’ll see them treated better and DVD releases from 16mm or 35mm prints available. The demand may only be for die-hard classic animation fans, but the shorts deserve preservation and an examination by a new generation of cartoon lovers.

Is the Next Gag Going to Be Better?

Tex Avery pretty much invented the spot-gag cartoon. He got Oscar nominations for a couple. The idea was copied by every cartoon studio. It’s, therefore, really sad to see the master and inventor of the format fall so far by coming up with The Farm of Tomorrow.

For one thing, the picture smells of cost-cuts. There are plenty of static shots used to set up a gag. They’re nice-looking though. They have coloured outlines.



But the gags! Ouch. We get a bunch involving crossing a chicken with something. In this case, it’s a chicken and a parrot. It means when the chicken lays an egg, she can shout to the farmer “Come and get it!”



The best part is fans of Paul Frees, June Foray and Daws Butler get to hear their favourite voice artists.

MGM released this in 1954 after Tex had left the studio.

Cloud Choreography

It’s raining in the Flip the Frog cartoon The Cuckoo Murder Mystery (1930). Rain clouds are dancing in the sky.



They join together and twirl in a circle.



The clouds are now one semi-smiling cloud surrounded by lightning bolts.



Ah, that's how we get rain.



Ub Iwerks would have you believe he did this cartoon himself.

Archie Was a Carpenter

There are two transitions in show business that can prove difficult, and Robert Francis Hastings made both of them successfully.

He jumped from network radio to television, and he went from child stardom to an acting career as an adult.

“Three famous guests will appear on tonight’s ‘Barn Dance’ program over WHAM at 9:00 p.m.,” announced an ad in the September 23, 1939 edition of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. “Alec Templeton, wizard of the piano; Bobby Hastings, twelve-year-old singing wonder, and Johnny Burke, old-time vaudeville comedian, who for twenty years has been known as ‘The Man Who Won the War.’”

Hastings’ radio career took him from Nick Kenny’s WMCA programme in New York to the Barn Dance (in Chicago) to the title role in the Saturday morning radio show “The Adventures of Archie Andrews” through a circuitous set of circumstances. “Archie” started off on the Blue network on May 31, 1943, airing for 15 minutes on weeknights. Jack Grimes was Archie. It was rejigged and turned into a half-hour Friday night show on Blue, then shrunk back to a 15-minute daytimer, then expanded to a 25-minute show on Friday nights. Jack Grimes was still Archie until he turned 18 and the U.S. Navy claimed him in April 1944. Bert Boyer was now Archie. The show was had moved to Mutual and shrunk to 15 minutes again at the start of the year. Anyway, Archie began life anew on NBC on September 29, 1945. Charles Mullen was now Archie. Bob Hastings took over the role by April 1946.

I’ve found a Christian Science Monitor interview with Mullen at the time but poor Bob Hastings doesn’t seem to have received much publicity during his spell as Archie. That didn’t happen until his most famous TV role came along in 1962—toadying tar Lt. Elroy Carpenter on McHale’s Navy, a series he joined after the pilot episode for what was supposed to be a solo appearance. Here’s a United Press International story from September 9, 1964.

Hollywood Loser Is In Luck Now
By JOSEPH FINNIGAN
UPI Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD (UPI)—Actor Bob Hastings, an all time Hollywood loser, has struck it rich, signing a seven year television contract which could make him a rich man.
Its good news to Hastings’ wife and their four children. The wife of a free lance actor sometimes never knows where hubby’s next paycheck is coming from.
In Hastings’ case, things weren’t that bad. He has been a regular on “McHale’s Navy” for two years, his title as a loser coming from the fact that he plays Lt. Carpenter, aide to the hapless Capt. Binghamton.
Lt. Carpenter seems always to get it in the neck as he pays for everybody else's mistakes. But even television's losers get a break in real life. Hastings good fortune is well deserved. He’s a talented actor and a nice chap.
Glad To Have Contract
"After two years I got a contract, said Hastings over cocktails in a Chinese restaurant across the street from Universal Studio. I’m happy about it. And with a wife and four children I’m glad to have it.”

Hastings’ enlistment in “McHale’s Navy” started out as a short term affair.
“I came in as a one shot guy and they decided to make me the captain’s aide,” Hastings said. “The first year I did about 24 shows out of 38 and the second year I did 36 out of 37. Then they decided to sign me. They had built the part up to my advantage. Now I’m putting money in the bank every week. I’m guaranteed 40 weeks work out of 52. Thank God, I’m working. I’ve been around a long time and this is the easiest work I’ve ever done.”
Hastings character of Lt. Carpenter could have been dismissed from the show after that first appearance two years ago. But since then, Hastings’ talented portrayal of the rule-reciting naval officer has made the character an integral part of the show.
Plays Fall Guy
“He’s become a down-the-line jackass,” said Hastings, describing the character. “He knows all the rules, goes by the book. ‘McHale’s’ crowd knows none of the rules and they come up smiling. I get it in the neck.
“A great asset to me in the show is that I work with Joe Flynn (Capt. Binghamton). Flynn is one of the finest comedians. He has great timing and I feel the way we have worked together has kept me on the show. It made my part important."
As we said, it’s good to see the loser win once in awhile. Bob gets batted around enough on that show. The least the television brass can do is give him a little financial security.

Here’s a column from the Newspaper Enterprise Association dated February 1, 1965.

Hastings Still Gets Nervous During Show
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
HOLLYWOOD (NEA)—After three years of regular stardom as dopey Lt. Carpenter of ABC-TV's "McHale's Navy," Bob Hastings says he's still nervous every time the director asks for action. But he's not nervous about being nervous.
He's happy about it.
"It is my theory," explains the boyish father of four, "that an actor can't give a good performance without being nervous. It keeps you on your toes. So I work this way. I only learn half of my lines, skim over the other half. So now as Carpenter I'm doubly nervous. I keep getting more scared all the time."
That Hastings' method is working for him is obvious. He made his debut on the show three years ago for only one appearance but quickly became a regular. Now, teamed with Joe Flynn, their scenes together have become show stealers.
Success, however, has also left him nervous—about money. He's earning more than he's ever made. “But,” he laughs, "I can't quite get used to it. I don't have the nerve to go out and buy a $200 suit. When my wife (former radio singer Joan Rice) and our four children go out to dinner, the kids know they each have a $1 limit.
"The other night we stopped at a fancy restaurant and when the menu arrived, the kids went into a panic. The cheapest dinner was $3.60. I noticed their panic and smiled, 'Okay, kids. $3.60 is the limit tonight, but no more,' Well, they looked at me like some kind of hero."
Bob Hastings has been in show business all his life, first as a singer on the National Barn Dance, then as an actor on network radio (Archie Andrews) and live television.
"Usually as an actor," he says, "I played fast-talking characters sort of in the Jack Carson style. This Carpenter role is something new for me. When I moved out to Hollywood from New York in 1960, things were slow for me. I played bit roles, such as a house painter on 'The Real McCoys.' I was sort of being typed as a smiling heavy when the role in 'McHale's Navy' came along."
He has a younger brother, Don Hastings, also an actor who has been starred for four years now on the TV soap opera, "As The World Turns." They often confuse fans. "Our voices are the same and we look somewhat alike and I'm getting letters now from curious people who write. 'How can you play a daily TV role in New York and also work with McHale's gang in Hollywood?'"
His idol as a comedian is Joe Flynn, who plays his captain in the series. "We have a lot of fun in that office," he grins. "Joe's always dreaming things up for me to do. I'm grateful to him for the way things have turned out on this series.

Hastings’ other well-known TV role was on a show that was a far cry from the tone of “McHale’s Navy.” He showed up periodically as Kelsey, the owner of the bar frequented (and later purchased by) Archie Bunker on “All in the Family.”

The role that Hastings should have got, but didn’t, was that of Archie Andrews. We’re talking about the cartoon version of Archie produced by the Filmation studio. Hastings was familiar to the people at Filmation as he had played Superboy in the studio’s “New Adventures of Superman” in 1966. Instead, Dal MacKennon was hired to impersonate Dick Crenna as Walter Denton on “Our Miss Brooks.”

Hastings did have more shots at starring as radio’s Archie, even though the series went off the air on September 14, 1949 before returning on Saturday nights at 7:30 on January 14, 1950 until April 1, then moving to 11:30 a.m. on May 13, and, well you get the idea. In later years, he and many fine actors appeared at various old time radio conventions where programmes of yester-year were re-created. Hastings passed away in 2014 at the age of 89.

Send Him Down!

Colour, design and effects animation make Heavenly Puss a treat, even if you’re not a fan of Tom and Jerry.

A cat taking reservations for the Heavenly Express tells Tom, who has died, he’d better Jerry’s forgiveness or he’ll miss the train and be sent to another destination.

Billy Bletcher is the Satanic bulldog here, with some fine expressions. Green eyes, green boots, green trident and wonderful shades of orange.



Look at the change in colour as the TV screen to Hell goes blank.



The usual crew animated this. It’s too bad Al Grandmain didn’t get a credit for the effects. The background painter deserved to be mentioned, too.

I don’t know who voiced the reservation ticket agent.

Boxoffice mentioned this in its September 25, 1948 issue as one of its releases for the coming season. Showman’s Trade Review of December 11th said it had “come off the drawing boards at MGM.” It was on screens July 9, 1949, and re-released Oct. 26, 1956, then again in 1965.

Porky's Bear Facts Background

A left-to-right pan shows Porky’s tidy farm compared to the one across the road in Porky’s Bear Facts, a 1941 cartoon by the Friz Freleng unit for Warner Bros.

Bob Holdeman apparently painted the background. Holdeman left the Leon Schlesinger studio some time in 1940.

Mike Maltese wrote the cartoon and, I’m presuming, supplied special song lyrics. Porky sings revised lyrics to the Sammy Cahn/Saul Chaplin song “The Girl With the Pigtails in Her Hair,” while the lazy bear in the rundown shack sings a modified “Heaven Can Wait,” a Jimmy Van Heusen/Eddie DeLange composition. Here’s a version of Porky’s song with the original words.

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: The Photo That Won In a Walk

Vivian Vance and Bill Frawley just couldn’t shake being Ethel and Fred.

We all know them as the Mertzes on “I Love Lucy.” But they played another Fred and Ethel. At least, we can assume they’re a different Fred and Ethel because Fred, in this case, was a newspaper editor.

The year was 1959 and this gig was for charity. The United Fund of Alleghany County hired Vance and Frawley to appear in a fund-raising short called “The Photo that Won in a Walk.”

The star of the film is actually another familiar face from TV. Eddie Albert plays a jaded newspaper photographer who, as you might expect, quite suddenly becomes an old softie at the end, thanks to a girl played by child actress Tammy Marihugh.

Vance introduces the plot as Vivian Vance. And there’s no mention of Lucy, though I suspect might have imagined she was the person Ethel was talking to on the phone.

An article in the September 14, 1959 edition of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette mentions it was a new film and was to be shown at a pre-funding raising campaign rally the following evening. The local press reveals the short was appearing in theatres and was also broadcast on WIIC Channel 11 at 2:15 p.m. on October 23rd.

The short was directed by Nick Grindé, whose career went back to the silent era at MGM. There’s no indication where it was shot, though the executive producer was a local Pittsburgh filmmaker.

You can watch it below.

Iris the Showgirl

It’s quite a change from the Ziegfeld Follies to playing opposite That Darn Cat. But so went the career of Iris Adrian.

Iris played brassy dames in the movies. Jack Benny started using her on radio in the early ‘50s where she squawked insults at him from behind the counter of a drug store café. He put her in his stage one in a later incarnation of what started out as the Chicken Sisters act in the mid-‘30s. She appeared with him on TV. She was funny.

Given her background, it’s no surprise she was acquainted with hoods and gangsters. Feature stories were written about her in the ‘30s, but years later the Charlotte News interviewed her for a feature story that was split into two halves. I’m not sure when we’ll get around to posting the second half, but here’s the first from May 17, 1975. Her press agent must have been busy as I’ve found a few stories about her from roughly the same time.

Lucky Brought Her Chicken
By EMERY WISTER
News Staff Writer
HOLLYWOOD — The shapely young blonde with the innocent face of a child was reading a magazine in her living room when there came a knock on the door. There stood a man with a paper bag in his hand.
"It was Charlie Luciano, you know, Charlie Lucky, the fellow who was supposed to be running all those rackets," recalled Iris Adrian, still pretty at 62. "Charlie Lucky liked my mother and I. He was always coming to our house on Sundays. He would bring us chickens and other things to eat, and he had a chicken in the bag this day."
THAT WAS IN the early 1930s and Miss Adrian, who began her dancing career in high school in her native Hollywood, was in the chorus of the Ziegfeld Follies in New York.
Since that time she's danced in other Broadway shows, appeared in a few score motion pictures, and worked in a theatrical show starring the late Jack Benny.
Always a familiar face but seldom a star, Iris Adrian is still working, her latest role being in the new Walt Disney movie "The Apple Dumping Gang" to be released this summer.
"I started young," she said. "I went to Hollywood High School, and that's where they looked for dancers in those days. I won a perfect back contest when I was just 12 years old. I was a little too young to win a perfect front contest then.
"Women never worked in those days. My grandmother owned a lot of property in Hollywood. My grandfather even owned a town in Cororado he'd founded.
"BUT THEN CAME the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression, and times and fortunes changed. Iris Adrian Hostetter became the breadwinner in her family, and both her mother and grandmother looked to her for support.
At 18 she was dancing in the follies, the first woman in her family to have to work for a living.
"Let me tell you the girls in the follies were very sweet and virginal and pure," she said. "We had to be that way.
"Charlie Lucky was very solicitous of us. If one of his men started paying too much attention to any of us, he'd tell the fellow he would have to quit seeing us.
"We thought he was in love with us, but then we learned he owned a string of bawdy houses and didn't want us as competition.
"He'd say 'girls I want all of you to stay straight. But in ease you don't, I have a job for you.'"
IRIS ADRIAN danced in the follies a few years then went on to another top-rated show called "Hot-Cha-Cha." Meanwhile, Billy Minsky, the king of burlesque, was eyeing her figure. One night he came backstage to see her.
"How about coming with my show?" Minsky asked her. "I'll pay double what Ziegfeld is paying you." "For what?" she asked.
"For stripping," said Minsky. "That's what."
"I didn't know," she recalled. "I couldn't decide if I wanted to do that. So I went to Ziegfeld and asked what he thought about it. He said, ‘I'd rather you'd work for Ziegfeld.’
"So I never worked for Minsky. I never worked in burlesque. Now I sort of wish I had. I would have made a great stripteaser and made a fortune. But I was always a little above about it."
SO IRIS ADRIAN went on to the movies to play sweet young things and flappers. This was in the days when movies were still being made on Long Island near New York City.
"The last stage show ended at 4 am then I would get a short nap and go out to the studios. I didn't even bathe. I had to sleep some time so I just played dirty."

FLORENZ ZIEGFELD paid her $150 a week and that was a lot of money in those days. She picked up an extra $200 a week in the movies. Finally she was summoned to Hollywood for a grand salary of $750 a week.
"I finally got up to $1500 a week for the few movies I was starred in," she recalled. "I worked with people like George Raft, Bob Hope and Betty Grable. "She was the first star I knew who didn't have bandy legs or was cross-eyed. A lot of top movie people had things wrong with them.
"George Raft said he wanted me in one of his movies and took me to the Paramount Studio. Right away they said they wanted me for the lead, but Raft didn't like that. He wanted Carole Lombard and she got the job.
"I knew Jean Harlow, too. People were saying such had things about her and how could they be true? She was so tired all the time, she wouldn't have had time to do all the bad things people were saying she did.
IRIS ADRIAN was with Bob Hope in "Paleface" and "My Favorite Spy." She worked with Milton Berle in "Always Leave 'Em Laughing." She was with Elvis Presley in "Blue Hawaii" and went back into history for Cecil B. De Mille's story of Jean Lafitte "The Buccaneer."
More recently she played a role in the film version of "The Odd Couple" and also was in the Disney Studio's "That Darn Cat"
She'd always had a tendency to gain weight and in her early screen days went on diet pills. Eventually she became ill.
"I got thin too fast and got malnutrition. I decided to go back to the New York stage. Let's see, what the hell was the show? Oh yes, I remember now. It was Milton Berle's revue."

My understanding of the situation is showgirls tend to attract men and marriage proposals. Iris did. She talks about them in part two.