Triangles, triangles

A novel way of opening a cartoon can be found in the Ub Iwerks ComiColor short The Headless Horseman.

If you know the story of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” you’ll know it involves a love triangle. After the opening titles, the characters are introduced in triangles and interact with each other.



The short tries to be creative with 3-D effects. Parts of the background move at different pan rates, so that makes the scenes look less like a flat newspaper panel. There’s one where Ichabod Crane’s desk turns, which was pretty good for its time. There’s no dialogue so Carl Stalling’s score has to create the mood.

The cartoon was in production in June 1934 and was the first of the ComiColors to be released, via States Rights, for the 1934-35 film season on October 1st.

Florence Halop

Short with huge glasses and a voice from a Brooklyn frog pond. That’s how everyone remembers Florence Halop, who had a short but memorable career on Night Court in the mid-‘80s.

That’s not how she looked about 30 years earlier, when she played the mother on Meet Millie. What you saw on screen back then wasn’t what she looked like, either. She put on 40 pounds of padding for the role, as she had barely turned 30 and looked more like the character she had been playing on Jimmy Durante’s radio show in the late ‘40s, Hot Breath Houlihan.

And she certainly didn’t look like she did when she appeared on a 15-minute show on WSGH in Brooklyn in 1929. That’s because she was six.

Halop’s role on Durante was so well-known, the characters in the book, movie and TV series “M*A*S*H” could play with it when referring to Major Margaret Houlihan.

She was busy on radio in the ‘40s, being a regular on several shows, including Passion DiMaggio on the Jack Paar show. Her best known role was that of Miss Duffy on Duffy’s Tavern. Halop amusingly recalled once how critic John Crosby referred to her as “the Grover Cleveland of Miss Duffys in that she is the only one with a split administration.” She took over the role after the first Miss Duffy, Shirley Booth, divorced her husband, Duffy creator Ed Gardner. She found Gardner a little too difficult to get along with and quit, only to return several years later after a revolving door of actresses in the part.

Here’s a story from one of the newspaper magazine supplements of December 12, 1943. Halop’s age is legitimate. Child and teenage stars were known to shave a few years off and keep them off through adulthood (Arnold Stang, Walter Tetley, Janet Waldo) to improve their employment chances. Well, for a while. Three years later, a New York Daily News story has only aged her by a year.

The New Help at Duff’s Tavern in Florence Halop
SHE'S a Dead End Kid sister—she played Mae West at the age of 12.
She's the new Miss Duffy of Duffy's Tavern: Florence Halop, pert, 20, red-haired, green-eyed, microphonic mimic and character actress.
Brother Billy Halop was a Dead End Kid of Broadway and Hollywood fame and his career moved the family from New York to California. Florence went to law school there but didn't let the wherefores and whereases interfere with getting before the camera with her brother and with Bonita Granville.
But before that, she had gotten herself off to a fine start in radio at the age of 5 by singing on "The Children's Hour" and falling off her platform in the middle of it, thereby furnishing her own sound effects.
At 12 on the March of Time program she did Mae West and skipped lightly from that to Shirley Temple all in the same night.
Before joining Duffy she was heard with Colonel Stoopnagle, and on the Kate Smith hour.
Out of hundreds of auditioners for the Miss Duffy part to replace Shirley Booth she won by an accent—Brooklyn, of course.
Florence says the funniest experience she's ever had in radio happened in Duffy's Tavern—and she'll probably say that again and again. Archie (Ed Gardner) was roughing up one of the guests—this time Orson Welles, who was tossing the words with Archie, but sitting down, for he had a broken ankle. Welles was monkeying around and Gardner suddenly ad-libbed—"for a guy with a broken ankle you certainly step on a lot of laughs."
Her biggest thrills, she says, came when working with Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony orchestra, and when doing a dramatic sketch with Madame Schumann-Heink. Her hardest part was being a cold-blooded killer on "District Attorney" while she gave her audience chills, she was running a fever of 102 degrees.
With her background in radio Florence is really in good condition to take on the unpredictable Archie. If she studies hard on his latest outburst, his "Duffy's First Reader," she should be able to hang on the required number of rounds. If he says toe-may-toe, she knows he just means a dame, but if he raises his eyebrows and lowers his voice a half octave with toe-mah-toe, why that's a dame from Park Avenue, according to lessons in grammar from his Reader. Vice versa to Archie is a reversible vice (he has something there), semipro is a ball player paid half of the time, maggot is a person of rank—as "a big financial maggot." Yes, she'll have a good time!

Halop took a break from supporting roles on radio shows (The Falcon, Gangbusters) to visit Florida. We learn a bit more about her in this story in the St. Petersburg Times of May 19, 1946.

“HELLO, BIG BOY”
Blond Florence Halop, Star Of Screen. Radio Visits City
Florence Halop—vivacious blond actress-model of radio, stage and screen—has two kinds of "personalities:" The type Johnny Mercer sings about and the witty charm that makes for conversational laughter and popularity.
She brought both of them with her to St. Petersburg for a short vacation and at the moment she has most of the 14-year-olds at Admiral Farragut academy acting in their "Best Foot Forward" menner [sic]. She and her mother are visiting Joel, 12-year-old Farragut cadet and Florence's younger brother. Her big brother is Billy Halop, famous "Dead End Kid" of stage and screen.
RADIO is the main medium which has transported Miss Halop's talents all over the nation and the world. She is the second "Miss Duffy" of Archie's Tavern. She was Kay Kyser’s commedienne and originator of the “Oh, your father's moustache!” line. She made "Hello, Big Boy" a favorite salutation when she appeared on the Ballentine show as a "low down sexy dame. She had comedy spots on the Maizie show with Ann Sothern recently, and plays often on “Mr. D. A.” programs and on “Mr. and Mrs. North.”
"I was a sneaky murderess with a southern accent on the North show one night and Joel wouldn't write to me for two weeks!" Florence laughed.
She credits her success in radio to something called "the breaks," but a brief look at her career reveals the important presence of hard work and good sense.
FLORENCE began following Billy to radio shows at the age of four, and soon began reading parts herself. When she was 10 she became the voices of "characters," Shirley Temple and Mae West on the old "March of Time" cast under Orson Welles' leadership.
When Orson formed his famed Mercury theatre, Florence joined and played in plays from ancient Greek to modern ones. She became a great admirer of Welles, declares him "misunderstood." She says, "He acts like a ham and a conceited genius because it's good publicity, but he's really wonderful and very loyal to his old friends."
Florence was strictly dramatic (from Ophelia to Topsy) until she began farce comedy on Kate Smith's bond tour five years ago. After that her zany characterizations highlighted the Col. Stoopnagle show (remember "Veronica Puddle?") and she became man-crazy "Miss Duffy" when Shirley Booth left Archie's Tavern.
IT WAS ON ARCHIE'S show that Florence became friends with Bing Crosby, the only person ever to throw her "out of character." It seems that Crosby, famous for ad libbing, changed a "What did you say?" to something like "Dig me another load of that wack, Jack" and Florence doubled into convulsive laughter. Other favorite stars are Errol Flynn ("not what he's painted") and Peggy Knudsen, Warner Bros, actress.
Florence returns to New York soon to resume radio acting and fashion modeling for Columbia and Mutual. She hopes to find a higher niche on the legitimate stage and make her face as well known as her voice and her acting ability.

Betty Grable clashed with Halop on the set of the picture Spring Reunion (1956). Perhaps that’s why Halop took a couple of years off before appearing on The Untouchables in 1959. Occasional TV work followed—she got into the commercial business in the mid-‘70s by appearing as a character in Top Ramen Noodles ads—before a regular role on St. Elsewhere came along, followed by Night Court. She died after only 20-some-odd episodes.

Halop spent virtually her entire life in show business. It sounds like she enjoyed every minute of it. Listen below to an interview she did with broadcaster Chuck Schaden in 1976.

Jeeper's Creepers Backgrounds

Appropriately creepy backgrounds take up a good portion of the first third of Jeepers Creepers, a 1939 cartoon from the Bob Clampett unit.

Dick Thomas is responsible for these. There’s an establishing background. Then the camera trucks in. It also jerks sideways a bit. Warners cartoons always seemed to be doing this in the late ‘30s; it’s not a smooth shot and I don’t know why the studio liked doing this.



There are some lovely long paintings that I can’t put together from frames because of camera movement or effects animation. Here’s part of a house shot.



Looking up.



The shutters are on frames as they’re animated. The camera pans up to the roof.



Here’s a great living room painting that Manny Corral pans over, back and forth and in and out. Because of that, I can only show four portions.



The camera pans in then dissolves to a background featuring a radio.



Carl Stalling picks J.S. Zamecnik’s “Storm Music” to use over the footage of the house.

Ernie Gee wrote the story and Vive Risto got the rotating animation credit.

Triggered by a Butt

Snafu can’t get his fat butt past the censor’s infra-red ray in the 1944 cartoon Censored.



Frank Tashlin’s a real master of direction in this. There are lighting effects and perspective animation. Oh, and a leggy woman in lingerie. However, back to Snafu. He realises he’s caught and tries to escape.



Snafu is stopped in every direction by a wall of bars which create a cage, taking him back to the censor who tears up his letter.



I haven’t any idea who is responsible for these scenes, but Art Davis, Izzy Ellis and Cal Dalton were in the Tashlin unit, along with George Cannata for a brief time.

Howard Hesseman

Anyone who worked in the radio business in the 1970s will likely tell you they knew some of the characters on WKRP in Cincinnati.

They’ll feel a kinship with Dr. Johnny Fever, the itinerant rock jock portrayed by Howard Hesseman, who has died at the age of 81.

Hesseman had some experience to draw from, as we learn from this wire service story of July 9, 1979.

WKRP's Johnny Fever Spent Time Underground
By TOM JORY
Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP)—Howard Hesseman's portrayal of Dr. Johnny Fever, the laid-back DJ at Cincinnati's WKRP, is so convincing, it's no surprise the actor actually spent some time spinning records for a radio station, underground rock at that.
Hesseman says of his stint at KMPX in San Francisco, "Very little and very poor." Nonetheless, you get the feeling—through Dr. Johnny Fever—that Hesseman learned a good deal in six months on the air. "While we were making the pilot for 'WKRP,' a number of people I'd known in radio would slide into the back-brain," Hesseman recalls. "The character originally was Johnny Sunshine—narrow lapels, cheap dark suit—and I said that just didn't seem right to me.”
Hesseman says Hugh Wilson, the show's producer who wrote the pilot, was receptive to his suggestions for changing the Howard Hesseman character, and the eccentric, dissheveled Dr. Johnny Fever emerged.
"Nobody serves as a specific role model," the actor says. "In a symbolic and sentimental way, it's a salute to those guys we've all heard on the radio. It seemed like an excellent way of personifying a sort of minor cultural hero."
"WKRP in Cincinnati," which airs on CBS Monday evenings at 8:30, in the gap between "M-A-S-H" and "Lou Grant," got off to a bumpy start last fall, suffered from several pre-emptions, and was pulled back until after the first of the year.
The comedy was a big success on its return, and has been renewed for the fall.
It's the story of a small station that turns to rock ‘n’ roll under an energetic new program director, played by Gary Sandy, in an effort to attract new listeners and advertisers. Dr. Johnny Fever signs on as WKRP's first rock disc jockey.
Several strong and independently developed characters share the lead in "WKRP in Cincinnati"—Gordon Jump as Arthur Carlson, the station manager, Loni Anderson as Jennifer Marlowe, the station's secretary, Richard Sanders as news director LesNessman, Tim Reid as D J Venus Flytrap and that, perhaps, is the strength of the series.

"For network television," says Hesseman, "there's an awful lot of give and take between the actors and the writers. I came from an improvisational background, and I seem to have blundered into a situation where a lot of improvisation is not only allowed, but welcomed.
“Each character is different, and all of us have slightly different relationships with one another," the actor says. "I see Johnny as rather remote, restrained, not a joiner, whose one prime motivation in life is to do a good job."
Hesseman, born in Oregon, didn't take up acting until he moved to San Francisco after graduation from the University of Oregon. He acted in "Murder in the Cathedral" with the Company of the Golden Hind in San Francisco, and later appeared in productions of The Committee, an improvisational revue.
He appeared in his first movie, "Steelyard Blues," with Jane Fonda, in 1971, and has since acted in a dozen films, including "Petulia," "Billy Jack," "Shampoo," "The Sunshine Boys," and "Silent Movie."
His TV credits include parts in "The Life and Times of Sen. Joe McCarthy," "The Ghost of Flight 401," and "Howard, The Amazing Mr. Hughes," as well as several series.
“I’m negatively oriented,” he says of his commitment to a series. “The schedule can only be looked on by me as preventative to doing the kinds of work I could do on a freelance basis.
“It wasn’t, I’m pleased to say, the first series I was offered, and I took it because it seemed to offer some real promise.
"Comedy, with the blessing of the Great God of Satire, has been easy on me," Hesseman says, "but I would very much like to do more straight work, as it were."

After WKRP went off the air, Hesseman told the press he didn’t want to do another series. He ended up working on two, one being the lead in the school comedy The Head of the Class.

Hesseman quit after the fourth season. Anyone could see it coming. He told syndicated writer Frank Lovece at the end of 1987 he wasn’t happy with the writing:

“We did an episode where one of the characters breaks into a computer network to obtain information,” he explains. “Somebody says something to the effect of, ‘But you can’t do that,’ and the joke is, ‘Sure I can. Look.’” The culprit was not reprimanded, which bothers Hesseman. “In my mind, that seems to be condoning felonious behavior,” he says. “It may be only on a subliminal level, but the message is less than responsible — someone lies or breaks the law under some banner he’s waving in order to achieve his ends.”

And Scripps Howard writer Luaine Lee heard the same thing in August 1989 as Hesseman was about to begin his final season. To quote from the story:

It’s not necessarily true that there’s no socially redeeming value to his hit TV show “Head of the Class,” Howard Hesseman says. “It’s true in my opinion,” he adds with a wry smile, “but not necessarily true.”
“We’re not doing the show that I was led to believe I’d do. And it’s difficult for me to get off that,” he says. “I don’t want to air dirty laundry in public, but I do feel that the educational arena is one that offers a variety of story ideas as a means of investigating our lives — what we mean to one another and what’s important.”

What kind of show Head of the Class was is almost irrelevant. When you think of Howard Hesseman, that isn’t the show you think of.

The CBS publicity photo to the right has Johnny Fever holding a stack of carts. Back when WKRP was on, they were used to play recorded commercials and, at some stations, songs. With computer technology, I’d be surprised if any station still uses them. Back when WKRP was on, guys like Johnny Fever would go from one job to the next, finding a new station after being inevitably fired at the last one. Radio was their life. Today, radio stations sit empty, owned by corporations that save money by airing satellite programming.

The kind of radio that gave the world people like Dr. Johnny Fever is long gone. And, now, so is the actor who played him.

Jack Benny, Sailor and Lyricist

Laughter can fight an enemy.

Jack Benny could tell you that. During World War One, he was in a U.S. naval uniform entertaining not far from his native Waukegan, Illinois. He was assigned to the Great Lakes Naval Training Station in May 1918 and that’s where legend has it he cut a lot of the music from his vaudeville act and added a comic monologue. No doubt it was a welcome morale boost to the men in uniform.

Since this is before jokes about the Maxwell and being heckled by Mary Livingstone, the question comes up about what exactly did he do in his act?

An eyewitness had the answer for Washington Star amusements writer E. de S. Melcher in the paper’s Oct. 24, 1934 edition.

THIS for you, Jack Benny. Thought it might remind you of the old days—a couple of them anyway:
“Dear Mr. M————: I read with interest your summary of Jack Benny’s career which you printed in the Sunday Star, and thought you might be interested in one or two additional items. During the war Benny and I, along with about 100,000 others, fought and bled for our country at the Great Lakes Training Station. I was just a humble hospital apprentice. Benny—well. I doubt if he knew himself what his rating was, but he was nominally attached to the station headquarters and his real job was to act as entertainer at the various recreation halls scattered over the camp—boost the morale, and so on. And a very good job he made of it, too.
“I first saw him in action one evening at the Red Cross Recreation Building on the hospital grounds. The hall was packed with convalescent patients, with a good quota of doctors, nurses and hospital corpsmen. When the Red Cross director announced that the next act would be ‘Benny Kubelsky and his jazz fiddle,’ there was a big outburst of applause that made me think that we were in for something good. Benny came strolling out, with the same bored, nonchalant manner that he has today, and looking very much as he does today except that he was wearing a sailor’s uniform, with a white hat stuck over his “starboard eyebrow” (do you know which is your starboard eyebrow, sir?)
“He started playing—he really played the violin in those days, instead of carrying it—and in less than 5 minutes I was one of his most enthusiastic admirers, which I have remained ever since. I have never heard any one who could play jazz on a violin as he could, and his dry, satiric humor laid me out cold. I was not alone in that, for from the minute he came out he had the crowd in the hollow of his hand.

“After a few numbers he stopped to let the applause die down, looked the crowd over sadly and said: ‘Gosh, when I think of it. Six months ago I was getting a good salary in big-time vaudeville: and here I am, playing jazz on a fiddle for a bunch of dumb gobs — and for 30 bucks a month.’ Whistles, cat calls and miscellaneous noises greeted this remark. Benny asked the crowd what it wanted him to play next, and on learning that they wanted ‘The Darktown Strutters’ Ball,’ he tucked his violin under his chin, then put it down, glanced mournfully at it and said: ‘It’s a shame to treat a fine instrument like this. No use playing anything good, though — you guys wouldn’t appreciate it.’
“In the moment of silence that followed, some one in the back of the hall gave Benny the bird. It was a beauty. Benny raised his eyes soulfully to the calling and said, ‘Ah, my public, my public!’ “However, Benny and his public understood each other thoroughly. The applause he got after each number made the rafters ring. The prize number was one of Benny’s own compositions, a catchy little thing that started off:

“‘Monday roast beef. All you little rookies, we wish the same to you.
Tuesday haa-ash.
Monday roast beef.
All you little rookies, we wish the same to you,’

“And so on, with additional lines for each day of the week, through fish for Friday, Saturday inspection and Sunday lunch.
“I have always considered Benny to be a wit of the first rank, and I think it is a credit to the intelligence of the Great Lakes personnel that they appreciated so thoroughly his brand of humor. During the intervening years I have seen him whenever I had a chance, and this Saturday evening will find me at the National to witness his initial venture into the ‘legitimate theater.’ I haven’t read the reviews yet, but I have no doubt about the outcome. Very truly, “EUGENE GUILD.”

You don’t think of Jack Benny as a song-writer, but the U.S. Copyright office actually registered the running gag song “When You Say I Beg Your Pardon, Then I’ll Come Back to You” in Benny’s name on October 19, 1951. (Today, it is registered both in Jack’s name and that of his arranger, Mahlon Merrick).

His help for the war effort went beyond camp shows. The Great Lakes Bulletin of October 24, 1918 talks about how Jack and others from the Training Station “worked indefatiably [sic] night and day, playing and singing at the many street booths in Chicago’s loop district and in the hotel lobbies during the Fourth Liberty Loan Drive...Wherever these talented man stopped and entertained thousands of dollars worth of bonds were sold and a large measure of the credit for putting Chicago over the top belongs to them.”

Among the names are Edward H. Sobol, the pioneer television director at NBC and Edwin E. Confrey, a pianist and composer better known as “Zez.” Confrey and Benny had an act called “Fooling Around With Piano and Fiddle” and the Bulletin of February 25, 1919 reported they were booked for vaudeville as soon as Confrey could get his discharge. But on March 12, Jack was doing a solo act at the Orpheum in Madison, Wisconsin, using the name “Ben K. Benny.” More laughs were ahead—and a little over 20 years later, more soldiers to entertain.

Funding for this post came from The Kathy Fuller-Seeley Foundation.

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.