Tex Avery Won't Flee Fleas

Mike Lah, I believe it was, said that Tex Avery started doubting himself, wondering if the cartoons he was making at MGM were funny.

He had reason to. Some of them after he returned from a year of medical leave in the ‘50s weren’t all that funny compared with his work in the 1940s.

Tex hadn’t lost it, though. He went over to Walter Lantz and directed three cartoons I really enjoy, some even borrowing ideas he seems to have liked (the fourth, “Sh-h-h-h-h-h,” leaves a bit to be desired in the story department).

I think Tex got caught in a world of change. Cartoons had become a lot calmer. America had become a lot calmer. In the ‘50s, there was no Depression, and the World War was done. America started getting out of the noisy, busy cities and wanted to relax on a lawn chair in suburbia and fire up the barbecue. Cartoons reflected this. Almost all the studios got away from noisy, busy characters (ie. Screwy Squirrel) and calmed down what they put on the screen (re-issues an exception). Inertness came along just in time for TV animation, as lack of action on screen was the only way the cartoons could make any money.

Back to Tex Avery...

It could be the insecure Tex felt he needed to go back to the tried and true to get laughs, especially in an uncharacterly pathos-laden short. Avery regurgitated a bunch of old concepts in The Flea Circus, released in 1954. He must have found fleas funny. A flea ends Dixieland Droopy, he came out with a hobo flea cartoon in the ‘40s (What Price Fleadom), and used a flea-on-the-stage gag at Warner Bros. in Hamateur Night (1939, itself a gag borrowed from 1935’s I Haven’t Got a Hat).

In The Flea Circus, we’re treated (?) to a string of flea-on-the-stage gags, complete with lowered microphone as per Hamateur Night. We even get a cuspidor gag (in 1954?). Avery borrows Droopy’s voice for some reason and puts it in a flea. Said flea even sings “Clementine” like we heard in Magical Maestro. Both of the earlier cartoons are much funnier. The “Droopy” flea doesn’t behave like Droopy. He’s self-pitying because he’s in love with a self-centered flea. Hey, Droopy François, she looks exactly like every female flea in the cartoon. Why not date up one of them?

I don’t know if there ever was a flea cartoon that didn’t have a dog in it, and one shows up in this cartoon at the stage entrance door, sniffing around like you’d expect a dog to do (at least, in full animation).



The fleas, who are dancing to “Applause” by Ira Gershwin and Burton Lane, lifted right off the soundtrack of the MGM musical “Give a Girl a Break” (1954), spot the dog and run off stage, stopping to do a spelling gag with an Ah-OOO-gah car horn in the background.



Here’s Mike Lah in action. Anticipation and take.



The dog runs away, the fleas in pursuit.



The dog trips down the stairs. The fleas find a new home. Another shock registration by the Lah dog, and a bit of scrambling in place before running away.



Tex ends the cartoon with a procreation gag, something he used (though not the same) at the end of the 1938 Warner Bros. cartoon The Mice Will Play. He did the same thing in Little Johnny Jet (1953). In that cartoon, as in this one, the male isn’t all that crazy about the idea but somehow having children is patriotic (“Vive la France!” shouts Fifi to conclude the cartoon). And very suburban.

MGM seems to have had a brief French fetish. Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera set two cartoons in France, both of which included the voice of Françoise Brün-Cottan, who plays Fifi in this short opposite Bill Thompson’s François.

Walt Clinton, Bob Bentley and Grant Simmons join Lah as animators, with Joe Montell painting backgrounds. If Ed Benedict designed the characters (I presume he did), he isn’t credited. An unsigned model sheet is dated July 27, 1952, almost six months before Fred Quimby shut down the Avery unit.

Loosey Goosey

In Porky’s Preview (1941), Porky makes his own child-like title cards for his movie. In Walter Lantz’s Mother Goose on the Loose (1942), the idea is extended to the opening titles.



“Fluke of the Month Club” is “Book of the Month Club.” Get it? “Fluke?” “Book”?

Yeah, that’s Bugs Hardaway and his puns at work.

To translate, Frank Tipper and Les Kline animate, Lowell Elliott co-wrote the story and Darrell Calker supplied the boogie-woogie, brassy versions of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” “This is the Way We Wash Our Clothes” and “Three Blind Mice” that open the cartoon.

Quiet!!!

Papa Bear spends all winter trying to hibernate but ends up battling noise instead in What’s Brewin’, Bruin?

Finally, when everything’s quiet in his cave and he can sleep, winter ends. Birds tweet. A moose bellows. Icicles drop on a metal tub. Papa looks outside. And reacts.



Everything reverses and winter returns. Papa Bear is pleased. Iris out.



Papa Bear is played by Billy Bletcher, except for the “Quiet!!!” line done by Mel Blanc.

Warners released this Chuck Jones-directed short in 1948.

Parading Jo Anne Worley

Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In fans will know Jo Anne Worley but they may not know Herminio Traviesas. Yet he had an ever greater effect on the show than Worley or any of the other cast members.

He was the NBC censor assigned to the show.

In 1970, Traviesas set his sights on one of Worley’s lines in the cocktail party segment: “Boris wanted a memento of our love, so he bronzed the back seat of the car.” Traviesas demanded it be taken out. “My job is to take out as many dirty jokes as I can,” he said. Executive producer George Schlatter sputtered: “You’re ruining the show! I've seen Dean Martin get away with worse than that.”

Whether it stayed in or out, I don’t remember, but Worley was always doing something loud and “zany,” a term that was probably passé when Laugh-In debuted in 1968. We dug out some old newspaper clippings about her last year. Here are some more. First, from King Features Syndicate papers of February 9, 1969.

A TV Keynote Feature
Laugh-In Has Bold Brassy Female To Keep Show's Tempo at Fast Pace
By CHARLES WITBECK
HOLLYWOOD.—There's always one in a crowd—the big, noisy, extrovert who helps set the room temperature. On "Laugh-In" Monday nights, the big laugher is a lady—dark-haired, boisterous Jo Anne Worley, endowed with a bray that bounces off walls, a kind of picker-upper inserted when the tempo threatens to cool off. Miss Worley's laugh is sorely needed in these troubled times, a commercial item keeping Jo Anne steadily employed except for one month during the last eight years. That's a pretty good track record for young comediennes.
Jo Anne comes by her loudness naturally, being raised on a Lowell, Ind., farm. "We did not have to worry about disturbing the neighbors," she says. "We yelled at the pigs and let go in general. Both my sister and I can never be accused of being quiet."
In Las Vegas
Laughing just comes naturally to Jo Anne. Over the Christmas holidays Ruth Buzzi, Allan Suess [sic], Dave Madden and Miss Worley played Las Vegas with bosses Rowan and Martin, performing "Laugh-In" type blackouts. Between shows the kids caught a hypnotist act and soon were on stage as guinea pigs. Ruth Buzzi went under at the count of two, even allowing the practitioner to stand on her 108- pound frame, while Jo Anne fell into a giggling spell.
"I couldn't open my eyes," she recalls. "It was a ticklish sensation which made me roar with laughter."
Jo Anne should have brought the hypnotist along on New Year's Day when she rode the Silver Slipper float in Pasadena's Tournament of Roses, because it was no fun. After finishing the Las Vegas midnight show with the "Laugh- In" gang on New Year's Eve, the comedienne took a 3 a.m. plane for Los Angeles in order to be in Pasadena at 5 a.m. She arrived at the parade formation area at 6 a.m. Both Jo Anne and her driver were unable to find the float, and officials were just as vague. The actress finally spotted the beauty, then stood by until 10:30 a.m. without coffee or any other relief, joking with the crowd.
"That was physical work," she reports. "Reacting to all those people. They wanted 'Laugh-In' gags and I did my best until I learned to pantomime, indicating a sore throat." Jo Anne was stunned by the number of youngsters who knew her name and her routines. "They know you so well," she said in awe. "Last spring Goldie Hawn and I felt we were doing absolutely nothing on the show. Then, this summer we went out on the road and discovered the 'little nothing bits' counted. The Rose Parade proved it once more."
It also taught Miss Worley a lesson about parades. Her float had mechanical troubles which almost crushed her at one point. At the end the actress dismounted with relief, thinking the worst was over, only to spend 4 hours getting out of Pasadena traffic.
“The only way they can get me back is to make me Queen,” she says.
Like many of the young comedy talents considers herself a writer, putting together her own nightclub act, using her wacky songs on "Laugh-In." Now she's reached the point in the club business where agents suggest hiring writers whose material isn't up to her standards. "They're submitting things I rejected when I was writing," she says, "and that rubs me the wrong way."
Jo Anne can't sit down and turn out material because she's trained another way—trying out gags before audiences in New York clubs like Upstairs at The Duplex where she once worked with Joan Rivers and Dick Cavett. She would chatter about her days as a door-to-door sales lady for Dabit, or her job as truck stop waitress. When the dialogue fell flat, Jo Anne mode faces, giggled and moved out among the audience, marking time while she was feverishly thinking of something. She can sweat out a crowd, but sitting down at a desk to write is simply too hard.
“I was born under the sign of Virgo,” she adds, “so I tend to be over-critical of myself.” For assurance and advice Jo Anne often consults a voice teacher who dispenses astrology lore, telling her former pupil "she can make things happen," offering general clues to future plans.
So far the voice teacher has high marks. "When I'm going out with a guy I bring him around to my friend to check him out," say Jo Anne. "It's handled very diplomatically and I can tell by her attitude if there's no future to the guy. The thing is not I get married if you can cool it.
There's another routine that should become a Worley act. Now if she can only talk it out or break the habit—sit down and let it just come out!

And now from another of the syndication services, dated May 3, 1970.

Jo Anne Worley Says: "I Want to Be Loved!"
By PEER J. OPPENHEIMER
ATTACHED to Jo Anne Worley's telephone is a sign which boldly proclaims "I AM LOVED!"—almost as if she were trying to convince herself. And therein lies the struggle of tv's "Laugh-In" star, famous for her loud, raucous laughter, feathers and fringes, and exaggerated style of comedy.
From the very beginning of "Laugh-In," which made its debut in January of 1968, Jo Anne Worley has capitalized on her special brand of camp. Her now familiar offstage whoop heralds an on-camera performance in which Jo Anne mugs, hugs, sings, dances, makes google eyes, and casually tosses off throaty comic lines.
In private life, however, Jo Anne is shy and introverted, particularly where men are concerned. She has a down-to-earth Midwestern attitude, a religious background that causes her much consternation over today's changing mores, and a yearning to be loved.
This wanting to be loved dates back to her early school days in Lowell, Ind., when she towered head and shoulders over her classmates. "It was impossible to find a boy who could get enthused about that!" she exclaimed. (Today she stands 5' 8½" and weighs 135—"I'd like 10 pounds less!") Yet when she did start to date, Jo Anne's strict upbringing ("I was brought up under the commandment 'Thou shalt not touch'") caused her to be painfully insecure.
Jo Anne's childhood prepared her for hard work all right, but not necessarily theatrical work. She was one of five children who lived on a farm. She learned the meaning of taking one's responsibility, seriously. As soon as Jo Anne was old enough, she had to help with the farm chores—milking cows and feeding livestock.

It was not until Jo Anne began to feel something of a misfit in school because of her height that she struggled for acceptance through other means. She soon discovered that a gay, loud, and outwardly assured manner could cover up a lot of inner insecurities. Before long, Jo Anne became the "star" entertainer of her high school. The fact that she was not cast as a romantic type bothered her, but she kept that fact secret. Openly, she was a-laugh-a-minute. And very popular.
After graduating, Jo Anne headed for Los Angeles and moved in with her sister, who was living there. Jo Anne planned to attend City College there and get a secretarial job on the side. But soon she got wind of some auditions, turned up for them, and was signed for a spot with the "Billy Barnes People" revue which went on tour and ended up in New York.
Finding herself out of work, Jo Anne began making the New York audition scene and found that her old Hoosier luck had not left her completely. She found work in a number of small night-club revues, which opened the door to some tv-talk shows, particularly Merv Griffin's. A major break came when she understudied Carol Channing on Broadway in "Hello, Dolly." She then went to Las Vegas to appear on the "Bill Dana Show" and landed a regular spot with Joey Bishop's, "Son of a Gun Valley Players."
During this period, Jo Anne was in a good position to hear of anything that was happening on tv. And by now she had developed her comic personality more than ever. So it wasn't surprising when a friend told her about auditions for "Laugh-In" and thought she would be perfect for it. Executive producer George Schlatter thought she was perfect, too, and hired her for the show.
Jo Anne is the only one of her family never to have married. Some day she would like to—very much. And have a couple of children. She stems from a belief in marriage, a home, a life shared.
Currently there is a man in her life, actor Roger Perry, an old friend whom she met when she first went to Los Angeles and worked at the Music Box Theatre. Time will tell whether Jo Anne has finally overcome her shyness and insecurity enough to really share her whole life and allow herself to be loved and love in return. Sighed Jo Anne, "It would be lovely to get married—if it worked out. I am really a very normal human being! Otherwise I'd be in a nuthouse."

Peter Robbins

It’s been something like 50 years since Peter Robbins faced a TV camera for purposes of regular employment. After that, he hosted a radio talk show in Palm Springs, pitched Peanuts merchandise at a shopping centre kiosk, managed an apartment building, sold real estate, dealt with addiction and mental health difficulties, and spent time in jail.

Now, the original voice of Charlie Brown has taken his own life.

Amateur psychologists and internet-made experts may be tempted to equate Robbins’ life with that of his most famous role. Instead, I choose to look back on happier times.

An unbylined promotional story appeared in newspapers at the end of 1978. By then, Robbins was out of show business but came back for a TV special. The following story isn’t quite accurate as far as I know, because Peanuts characters appeared on TV spots for Ford several years before the Christmas special.

Peanuts Celebrates Birthday
Charlie Brown was speechless when he met Peter Robbins.
The beloved little “Peanut” had spoken only through the inspired pen of his creator, Charles M. Schulz, his thoughts encased in comic-strip balloons for all the world to see—but not to hear—until Charlie and his pals took the giant step into network television with their first animated special on CBS in 1965.
Peter Robbins was the youngster selected, after exhaustive auditions, to be the voice of Charlie Brown in that historic debut.
Robbins, now a 23-year-old graduate student, is reunited briefly with Schulz and the “Peanuts” when he appears in “Happy Birthday, Charlie Brown,” a one-hour special that will celebrate the beginning of the 30th year of the popular comic strip, Friday, Jan. 5 from 8 to 9 p.m. on CBS.
Robbins remembers the first audition when he competed with some 50 other children in an intensive search for just the right voices to interpret the unique characteristics of each “Peanut” personality and bring them to life on the screen for the first time. He was nine years old and a young veteran of several motion pictures and television appearances—the only “professional” in the crowd of young aspirants.
“I was a ‘Peanuts’ fan even then,” Peter recalls, “and I felt I knew all the characters In the cartoon strip personally. I remember an enormous sense of responsibility when it was pointed out to me that the world would hear Charlie Brown for the first time through my voice. It was pretty heavy for a nine-year old kid.”
Producer Lee Mendelson remembers, too. “We listened to kids’ voices for days and days. I heard them in my sleep—if I got to sleep. We knew that everyone of Schulz’s millions of readers had his own idea of how each character should sound-especially Charlie Brown.”
The production team, Mendelson and animator Bill Melendez, selected Peter Robbins for the role because they felt he had “the Charlie Brown sound.” “It’s a wistful quality,” Mendelson explains, “an elusive something one feels rather than hears.”
Robbins voiced a half-dozen Charlie Brown specials and then “retired” from acting to concentrate on school and other activities. He is interested in film production and is a student in communications and psychology at UC San Diego.
“I haven’t acted in 12 years,” he said. Then looking around at the new troop of young voices, the cameras, the lights, the hurly-burly of the set, he said in a Charlie Brown-ish accent “Good grief! Maybe I’ll get back into acting after all.”

Let’s jump ahead to 1995. Dave Walker of the Arizona Republic had a chance to chat with him and the story was sent out to various papers. This was published December 10.

Peter Robbins is the Voice Behind the Peanuts Legend
Peter Robbins at the ripe old age of 9 years gave his dusky, down-and-out voice to Charlie Brown.
Robbins, now 39 and works as an account executive for a Palm Desert, Calif., advertising agency, said he got the lead role in “A Charlie Brown Christmas” at a standard Hollywood casting call. “They liked my voice, I guess,” he said. “I was very, very depressing. ‘This kid needs a break. Let’s give him a job.’”
After winning the role, Robbins and the rest of the cast worked out their parts individually with animator Bill Melendez, whose vocal inflections, he joked, gave Charlie Brown “a little Latin accent.”

“We each (recorded) our own little segment separately because having 7-, 8- and 9-year-ods in one room together was too chaotic,” Robbins said. “I would mimic Bill, who would basically break up the dialogue into little segments.”
Although “Peanuts” creator Charles M. Schulz has said he didn’t like Robbins’ voice, it set the standard for Charlie Browns for years to come. Robbins provided Charlie Brown’s voice for four subsequent TV specials (including “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”) and the first Peanuts movie, “A Boy Named Charlie Brown.”
Easier than being on TV: “It was a relief to do a voice thing like this,” Robbins said. “On other shows, you’d have to get up early and wear makeup, look nice, have your hair combed. For this, I could just come in after school and play around in a recording studio and say ‘Rats’ and ‘Good grief.’ Then I went home.
“It was a lot easier than doing some of the other stuff.”
Some of that other stuff included TV commercials, feature-film parts and guest roles in such classic TV series as “Dragnet,” “Gunsmoke” and “F Troop.” But Robbins’ acting assignments began to dry up about the time he reached high school.
These days, there’s no way a new acquaintance could guess that Robbins once spoke for Charlie Brown. His voice sounds nothing like the perpetually discouraged cartoon character. But folks never fail to be impressed when they learn.
“They usually find out through friends, ‘Robbins said.” ‘Hey, you were the original Charlie Brown?’ Then they say, ‘Say something.’”
On a resume that includes appearances on such TV series as “Get Smart,” “The Munsters” and “My Three Sons,” as well as several motion pictures, including Sonny and Cher’s camp classic, “Good Times,” “A Charlie Brown Christmas” remains Robbins’ favorite credit.
“I’m quite proud of it,” he said. “If you can be the voice of any cartoon character, I’d pick Charlie Brown.
“As I get older, I appreciate it more. It really has turned out to be a classic.”

It was inevitable the Charlie Brown role would have to be re-cast if Peanuts TV specials were to carry on into the future indefinitely. Robbins’ mother didn’t want the money train to stop. Robbins told the Santa Fe New Mexican in 2005 his mother fed him female hormones to try to keep his voice from maturing.

All kinds of glib, Peanuts tie-in endings for the post are coming to my mind, but they just don’t feel right. I was pulling for Robbins and hoping life would be good for him again. I’m sad that it didn’t turn out that way.

Screwy Water Fountain

Screwy Squirrel heckles Big Heel-Watha by substituting a sign at the Old Faithless geyser with a drinking fountain. You can guess what happens. Then we gets dry-brush swirls (there was a lot of that in the first few Screwy cartoons) and then the take.



MGM released Big Heel-Watha in 1944. Screwy doesn't make his appearance until about half-way into the cartoon. Ed Love seems to animate a lot of Heel-Watha, the Droopy Indian, but not here. Preston Blair and Ray Abrams are the other animators, with Johnny Johnsen painting some fine forest backdrops.

It's Time

The construction foreman wonders if his pocket watch is working in the 1928 Oswald silent film Sky Scrappers. He bangs it against some humanised contraption pulling a rope.



The rest of the scene goes like this.



Only Walt Disney gets credited, along with Winkler Productions.

What? Me Worry?

Stories abounded in print at the time about how Jack used to worry all the time in the days of network radio. Evidently TV changed that, judging by this story in the Philadelphia Inquirer of October 27, 1957.

During the ‘50s, Jack’s show wasn’t on every week, but he was still busy on TV. He periodically hosted a show called Shower of Stars for the Chrysler Corporation. In fact, that was the programme where his 40th birthday was celebrated (and soon forgotten).

The story gets into ratings. Jack occasionally got testy when interviewers asked him about them when he was opposite Maverick, which had numbers that kicked Jack out of the Sunday 7:30 p.m. timeslot at the end of the 1958-59 season. He’s more relaxed about them here (Sally didn’t last the full season).



No Private Worrying For Jack Benny
At ease when off-stage, he finds it profitable to do all his worrying in front of the camera
BY HARRY HARRIS
TRADITIONALLY, public funnymen are private worry-warts. Punchinello to Pagliacci at the drop of a curtain. CBS' Jack Benny, a versatile switch-hitter—from stage, screen, radio and TV to concert hall and "The $64,000 Question," with equal ease—reverses this hallowed procedure, too.
Jack does his worrying—about his age, his finances, his appearances—for all to see, hear and enjoy. The real Benny, however, is blithe and unruffled. Other TV comics may head, neurosis-ridden, for the hills. Other frequent visitors to TV screens may shiver and shake at the idea of "overexposure." Other program hosts may fret over the tightening guest star market. Not Benny.
"I love TV," he told us enthusiastically, "just love it. I don't know how other comics feel about the medium, but we have so much fun with it. Ours aren't worrying shows. There are no ulcers. We even have fun during the writing and during the rehearsing."
So while other members of the laugh-it-up fraternity are carefully limiting their video visits, Jack's launched on a 1957-1958 season that will include 10 live and six film Sunday night half hours, five hour-long "Shower of Stars" assignments, guest shots with Gisele MacKenzie, Danny Thomas and others, and—if suitable scripts come along—a drama or two.
The first "Shower," Thursday at 8:30 P. M. on Channel 10—with Carol Channing, Fred MacMurray, the Lennon Sisters and Jimmie ("Honeycomb") Rodgers in attendance—will have a Western theme. "Buck Benny" rides again!
On Western bandwagon
Although George Burns is his closest friend, Jack denies that this spoof of the all-over-the-channels cowboy sagas will be part of Burns' announced campaign to "laugh Westerns off the Air."
"We're doing it only because audiences are so Western-conscious these days," he said. "We used to do the Buck Benny things before there were TV Westerns—or TV." Jack denies he shares non-cowboys' widespread cowboyphobia, even though one of his every-other-Sunday competitors, ABC's "Maverick," has been showing surprising strength in the ratings, galloping past Steve Allen and closing in on Ed Sullivan.
As for published reports that Frank Ross, Joan Caulfield's husband and producer of her "Sally" series, deliberately asked NBC to schedule "Sally" against Benny, on the theory that, after eight seasons, it was time for Benny's TV popularity to start slipping, Jack only shrugs.
He doesn't "sweat out" the ratings after each show, he said, "but sometimes they call me and tell me." For his second show of the season, Oct. 6, the Trendex scoreboard was: Benny, 24.9; "Maverick," 14.7; "Sally," 10.1.
Benny admits he was pleased. "You've got to see that your first two shows are good," he said. "The first one is always the weakest, because lots of people don't know you're back on. But if the first two are OK, people say, 'It looks like he’ll have another good year. "
He's not planning any radical changes from past seasons to combat his new Sunday night competition. "I figure that would be difficult for me," he said. "I just go along trying to have good shows. If the opposition is tough, there's nothing I can do about that.
"You can't buck everything. Of course, I wish nobody at all was on against me, but . . ."
He's not planning to stress audience-luring, big-name stars, either, though last Sunday he played host to Hal March. That was a follow-up to his gag visit to "The $64,000 Question" earlier this month, when he quit and demanded cash after answering the first, or $64 question.
"No," he grinned, "$64 wasn't bad for 10 minutes' work." (Actually, he returned the money, chipped in by various people on stage.) "We're always looking for things to do that will furnish a couple of shows. Last year it was my Carnegie Hall concert and the concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra. This year it's The $64,000 Question'."
Ginger Rogers appears on his first film show of the season, next Sunday, and Van Johnson on a later film, but Jack's guest star policy is, "We sort of think of people as we go along."
Guests no problem
He doesn't worry about the guest shortage this season, he adds, because "Our shows can be written without guest stars.
"Besides, I can always get wonderful people like Dennis Day, Rochester and Mel Blanc when I need them. There's only one member of our old radio gang I can't get to do a live show with me."
Who that?
"My wife Mary!"

A Balanced Meal of Cartoons

In 1926, he was a student artist and journalist at Redlands High School, winning fifth prize for his Orange Show poster (it showed orange trees and a farmer holding a box of golden oranges against a background of mountains). He beat fellow Redlands student Elmer Plummer, who went on to work for Walt Disney.

In fact, he did, too, after graduating from Pomona College in 1933, getting additional training at the Otis Art Institute and animating Oswald the rabbit at Lantz/Universal and Krazy Kat and Mintz/Columbia.

A little labour unrest disrupted things at Disney, so he was among a number of animators who were hired at MGM. He’ll be remembered for animating the starring character in Red Hot Riding Hood.

By now, you should know we’re talking about Preston Blair.

Blair left California in 1949 and made a home in Connecticut. He made some animated industrial shorts for his brother Lee in New York and took on outside work, including animating at least one episode of The Flintstones (“The Social Climber,” November 17, 1961 according to Lew Gifford’s column of that day in Back Stage).

I suspect Hanna-Barbera’s Stone Age series wasn’t to his liking. He joined the “children must be educated by cartoons” crowd, as we read in this story in the Louisville Courier-Journal, published October 8, 1970.

Animator Is Critical of Cartoons
By IRENE NOLAN
Courier-Journal Staff Writer
Preston Blair, who is in the business of making cartoons, has some definite ideas about Saturday morning television fare. He thinks it leaves much to be desired.
Blair, an animator who was in Louisville yesterday for the dedication of WKPC-TV's new building, thinks one might compare what happens on Saturday morning television to turning a group of children loose in a supermarket and having a rating service analyze what they chose to eat. The result, he said, would be carbonated beverages, popsicles, ice cream and candy.
What Blair would like to see happen, and what he would like to help happen, is "not give the kids a diet of spinach and celery" but a balanced meal.
A balanced meal, he thinks, would include animated cartoons that are still entertaining, but that have an educational message.
Blair and his long-time friend, Allen Blankenbaker, director of film graphics for WKPC, would like to see the educational television get into the Saturday morning cartoon market and compete with commercial television for the child's attention.
Blair describes himself as "from the enemy camp." He has never done any work for educational television, but concentrated his efforts on commercial ventures. He is a former feature animator for the Walt Disney Studios, where he worked on sections of "Bambi," "Fantasia," and "Pinocchio." Among his other well-known works are several episodes of "The Flintstones." He now owns a production company in Connecticut, where he lives with his wife and son.
He thinks animating for the "Saturday morning shows" is "wasted talent."
Blankenbaker indicated that he has always been interested in educational cartoons for children and now plans to make use of the new equipment and Blair's knowledge of "what the children want to watch."
"This (the station's new building) should be a place that would serve as a springboard to do children's programming that is both entertaining and educational. Up to now such things have been done on a local level but now we can do it nationwide."
Blair said that the state of Saturday morning television is "not the fault of the animators or of the people in the business." He said the problem is "just that it is such a large business . . . backed by the toy companies who are afraid to sponsor anything but what the children demand."
Blair, who has a lively face with a twinkle in his eye, feels his most interesting work was the animation of the hippos in "Fantasia."
"The interesting thing about Disney animation is that it is all researched with live action. For the hippos we photographed heavy ballerinas in action to see what hippos dancing would look like."
(At this point Blair advised the writer that she might say that studying the live action of girls was often hazardous for animators. One animator studying a girl in the role of Snow White, "succumbed and married her, but no, I didn't marry one of the heavy ballerinas.")
Blair said that animating cartoons takes more time than most would expect. A half-hour episode of the Flintstones usually took three months to produce and most feature-length cartoons take three or four years.

The years ticked on and toy companies continued to find ways to market their wares, sometimes in syndicated half-hour shows that have gripped former kids with nostalgia. There were less-than-subtle “message” series. For Blair, cartoons became left in the past. He returned to California in 1984 and settled in Carmel, where he developed animated systems for teaching reading. He held five patents for video interactive video technology. Teaching seemed to be on Blair's mind, considering the how-to books on animation he wrote that are still recommended to students.

Blair died of heart failure on April 19, 1995 at the age of 86.

6,504,385,632

Prisoner Spike decides to dig himself out of prison in Cellbound (1955), a Tex Avery cartoon finished up by Mike Lah.

20 years passes and Spike has finally counted his last spoonful of soil: 6,504,385,632.



The gag topper is nobody in the prison has noticed the huge pile of dirt outside his window.



Lah and designer Ed Benedict were the last of the Avery unit to work on this cartoon. The animators all came from the Hanna and Barbera unit—Ken Muse, Irv Spence and Ed Barge, along with background artist Vera Ohman.