First Tooth

Car/baby analogies are what drives Tex Avery’s One Cab's Family (1952).

“Junior has his first tooth,” Daddy Sedan (Daws Butler) to Mommy (June Foray). Cut to the “tooth.” It’s a spark plug. The most creative thing isn’t the gag, it’s the dissolve into the next scene.



There are parts I like in the second half of the cartoon, which owes a lot to Friz Freleng’s Streamlined Greta Green of a dozen or so years earlier. The ending is better than Freleng’s Warners cartoon; the boy cab continues to be a ‘50s rebel.

Grant Simmons, Mike Lah and Walt Clinton are the credited animators.

Qomeback For Q

It’s hard to say where I saw Robert Q. Lewis first. I suspect it was as the host of Play Your Hunch after Merv Griffin left, but he seemed to be a panelist on all kinds of game shows. He tried to be amusing and urbane. That went over better at New York cocktail parties than on television so he never became a star on the level of Griffin. Still, he was pleasant enough, though off-camera he apparently could get pretty petulant. Arthur Godfrey, who changes “friends” like you and I change socks, employed him as his regular fill-in. He had a variety of network radio shows in the ‘40s and ‘50s, and ended up back in radio in the early ‘60s before a TV comeback.

Then, like many people in television, Lewis disappeared again. It’s jarring seeing him in colour; he belongs to the black-and-white ‘60s in my memory. In the early ‘70s, he was on radio again at KFI Los Angeles (long after its days as an NBC Red network affiliate) talking to celebrities of various stripes (“I am NOT a disc jockey,” he once snarked to the Los Angeles Times in an interview). Before the end of the decade, his radio career dried up and he was acting on stage, which is what he was doing in the latter half of the ‘60s.

Here’s Robert Q. in an Associated Press interview published January 13, 1963. His record-spinning days at KHJ Los Angeles (long after its days as an NBC Blue network affiliate) had ended.

Robert Q. Lewis Likes Familiar Surroundings
By Cynthia Lowry
AP Television-Radio Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — A funny thing happened to Robert Q. Lewis in the middle of a long and successful television career. Only it wasn't really funny: Suddenly, he couldn't get a job.
"I think it was a kind of over exposure," he reflected. "I don't think that audiences had gotten tired of seeing me around. But I do think I was overexposed to advertising agencies and network executives. Anyway, nobody would hire me."
Lewis, a native New Yorker who had entered show business at the age of 11 as a boy soprano on a radio kiddie's show, shrugged his shoulders philosophically and turned from broadcasting to the theater.
"Stock," he explained. "Most people think that stock companies today consist of summer stock in summer theatres. That's nonsense."
"There's fall stock, winter stock and spring stock, all over the country," Lewis said. "And if you've had television exposure, you can make good money playing in every contemporary American comedy written in the last 20 years and playing in them all over the country."
Three years ago, tall, slim, bespectacled Lewis did just that, appearing in such shows as "The Tender Trap," "The Gazebo," "Tunnel of Love," and "Seven Year Itch" in companies from Long Island to the Pacific Coast.
"It was great for me as a performer getting out all over the country, meeting people and getting the feel of an audience," he continued. "But the one drawback is that I'm a guy who likes his own home and to be in the middle of his own things. Hotel rooms are barren and dreadful."
Lewis, a dedicated bachelor, is a passionate art collector. He began as a child, when an uncle who was an art dealer took him to visit Pablo Picasso in the great painter's Paris studio. As they left, Picasso, who had taken a fancy to the boy, scribbled on a piece of paper, rolled it up and tucked it under his arm. It was a drawing, inscribed personally to Lewis. Today, worth many thousands of dollars, it is the keystone of a collection that includes paintings at well as sculpture.
"Obviously, you can't carry around paintings with you from hotel to hotel," Lewis said, "and, to be truthful, I get lonely without them."
Finally, he was fed up and asked his agent to find him a job in which he could settle down in one place.
"I'd spent years as a disc jockey," he said, "and decided to go back to it. There were many advantages. I decided I'd like to be in a place with a good, warm climate — either Florida or California."
His agent, fortunately for Lewis, found him an early morning spot on a local Los Angeles radio station where, in 1961, he resumed an earlier occupation, billing himself as "the world's worst disc jockey."
He promptly bought himself a house, complete with pool, took his collection out of packing boxes and within a few months became a rabid California booster. "It was a great life," he said, almost sadly. "I was up every morning at 4:45 to get to my show — it started at 6:30. I was finished by 10 and had the rest of the day to myself. That kind of a schedule meant I could accept television guest shots, wander through galleries and museums or just sit around the pool."
Lewis first entered broadcasting as an announcer on a Troy, N.Y., station in 1941 — and was the only announcer at the station on that Sunday in December when the first bulletin on the attack on Pearl Harbor hit the news wires. It was a busy day.
After an Army hitch, he became an announcer on a New York City station, with a morning program, a daily hillbilly sing and still a third daily comedy show. He joined CBS radio in 1947 and first came to major public notice substituting for Arthur Godfrey. He was a hit.
In the earlier television days he had a number of shows of his own — "The Name's the Same," "The Show Goes On," and "The Robert Q. Lewis Little Show" among them.
Then, when host Merv Griffin wanted to quit "Play Your Hunch" for a daytime variety show of his own, Goodson and Todman asked Lewis to come East for a two week on-the-air audition for the permanent job. Lewis won the job.
Now — paintings and sculpture along with him — Lewis is back in his home town again. But has he cut his ties with beloved California?
"No," he said firmly. "And I won't sell my home. It's just leased to my agent. Even if it's only on vacations, I'll be going back from time to time."
The initial Q. in his name? It doesn't stand for anything — just in there to make his name different from all the other Robert Lewises.

The Dirty What?

Popular culture is popular for only a while. Then new generations come along and have their own ways of doing things. They don’t know about things that were commonplace at one time. I’ve had to explain to younger people who Al Jolson was (and he was before my time), and not only how a rotary dial phone works, but why phone numbers had letters and numbers.

So it is with many old terms and sayings, too. People today may never have heard of them, though they were known 100 years ago. To your right is a frame from a Buck Rogers comic strip. Even though Buck is in the future, he uses an obsolete “oath” as they called it then. I’ve heard “You dirty dog!” before. No one says it today; people are less genteel and think nothing of using foul language our forefathers wouldn’t have dreamed of. But “The dirty pup!” is an old one that’s a new one on me.

It was common. Here it is in a Salt Lake City newspaper, 1908.

Portland, Oregon paper, 1916.

1915. Los Angeles Times.

This is from 1910.

St. Paul, Minnesota, 1892.

Here’s Bosko in Bosko’s Picture Show (1933).

Yeah, it’s possible he didn’t say “The dirty pup!” at the “cur” on the screen. But, to me, it’s more likely he did than fanciful tales of shouting a four-letter word that is far too common today but never used in polite society in an earlier day. Regardless, some people will believe it anyway because “slipping something past a censor” makes a much better story. Today, it seems, there are those who are quite prepared to accept and cling to fanciful tales as fact and reject everything else.

Hay and Hey

“I Heard” (1933) is full of great little gags tied to a fine song by Don Redman and his orchestra.

One scene cuts to a table and two donkeys bouncing in time to the music. “How’m I doin’?” sings the vocalist. A bucket drops down a chute. It and the donkeys turn to the camera and shout “Hey, hey!” The bucket is full of hay.



And the donkeys chow down for the next couple of bars of the song.



Willard Bowsky and Myron Waldman are the credited animators in this fun Betty Boop cartoon.

Stuntman Benny

“Inert” is a good way of describing Jack Benny on stage.

Anyone who saw him on television knows his standard expressions. Basically, he stood there and stared. He moved his hands into a few different positions and that was about it. But only some of the time.

Benny was hardly a physical comedian, and certainly not a slapstick one, but there were times he had to rise to the occasion.

Faye Emerson was a columnist in addition to a TV personality, and here she is talking about Jack in newspapers starting around April 11, 1957.

RADIO AND TELEVISION
Bouncing Benny Beats 'Age' Battle
By FAYE EMERSON
Jack Benny, the perennial "39-year-old" dean of comedians, could well be a living testimonial for a health club, what with his strenuous schedule and his amazing physical agility.
Those who know Benny — and realize he fudges a year or two on his birth date — are constantly amazed at some of the physical contortions he puts himself through in presenting his show for CBS Television.
Recently Benny was rehearsing a show in which he and Ginger Rogers do an extremely athletic dance routine. Benny confessed to the cast and crew, with a rueful grin, that he had trouble putting on his overcoat, but a few minutes later he disproved this when he lifted Ginger clear off the floor at the end of a swirling turn.
"I did that?" Benny asked. "George Burns will never believe it for that matter, even I don't believe it!"
But actually Benny, despite his admitted 39 years, is in excellent shape. In a "Shower of Stars" show, for example, he did a 10-minute skit in which he played football in his living room, he jumped over chairs and couches and tumbled about the floor like a two-month-old kitten.
In a more recent show, he did a fencing scene in the Tower of London that actually had touches of such dashing hero-types as Errol Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
The amazing thing is that Benny has to learn each of these feats of physical legerdemain as they are written into the script. He had never even held a fencing foil before he was called upon to learn the art well enough to make his fencing scene in the London show believable.
This, at anyone who has ever fenced knows, means countless hours of hard work.
But apparently Benny thrives on it and anything he can do himself he never relegates to a stunt man. In his Venice show, for example, broadcast in March, he falls into a canal. Jack said, not without a touch of pride, that he really did the fall, but added with his famous dead-pan expression. "After all, how much talent does it take to fall into the water?"
Whether or not it takes talent to fall in the water is a matter of some conjecture, but it does take a man in excellent shape to maintain Benny's schedule.
He does his own "Jack Benny Show" every other week; a once-a-month "Shower of Stars," plays, benefits and violin concerts, and still finds time to make records. He recently made a children's record for Isaac Stern.
In addition to all this, he takes an active part in writing his scripts, he helps direct the activities of his own company, J and M Productions, which produces the "Marge and Gower Champion Show" for CBS Televison. and still manages to cet in a few rounds of golf from time to time.
A busy schedule — even for a man who is "only 39."

Why Are Cartoons For Kids?

There was a reason the big screen was populated with fairy tales and stories of little animals. That’s what the people wanted.

Walt Disney had won an Oscar for a cartoon starring flowers, trees, a fire. Mickey Mouse was a sensation when he debuted. Humans like Van Beuren’s Tom and Jerry and Ub Iwerks’ Willie Whopper were pretty much failures by comparison.

But one critic in England decided the screen needed didn’t need barnyard characters, it needed people. And he felt putting that on the big screen would create a whole, and necessary, British film industry.

The English had a movie industry over the years, and periodically jumped into animation. There were the Bonzo cartoons of the pre-sound era, the Rank Organisation hired ex-Disney director David Hand to run a studio in the ‘40s, and Halas and Batchelor came along with an interesting potpourri of designs over the course of several decades.

This thoughtful column appeared in Kinematogrpahy Weekly of January 24, 1935. I’m at a loss when it comes to the M-G-M series mentioned in it.

Give Us Adult Cartoons
says R.H. CRICKS
THE modern cartoon film has reached a high state of perfection, earlier problems of synchronisation have been entirely overcome, and the illusion of reality is lent to such incongruities as animals, and even furniture, talking. The cartoon provides an excellent vehicle for the demonstration of colour systems, and Walt Disney obtains a beautiful range of colours.
Some of Max Fleischer’s cartoons go further in obtaining a remarkable illusion of third dimension. One film in particular, “Little Dutch Mill,” appears to have been produced with the aid of models with superimposed cartoon characters; by movement of the camera position—the oldest known method of attaining stereoscopy—in conjunction with suitable construction of the sets, the background actually appears to be far behind the foreground.
Yet for all this perfection of technique, the majority of the cartoons are designed to appeal chiefly to the child mind rather than the adult. Is this a sound policy?
THE cartoon film takes the place in the kinema programme of the comic strip in our daily newspaper, or of “Our Usherette” in the KINE. itself; it provides a little light relief from the more serious part of the programme, and justifies the old couplet “A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.” But there is the one point of difference between the newspapers’ comic strips and the majority of film cartoons. If the said strips, instead of basing their appeal upon showing people like ourselves doing things that we should never dream of doing, were suddenly to become all whimsy, showing us fairy princesses and fantastic animals, would they be as well appreciated by adult readers?
There is only one answer: such strips would be relegated to the children’s section. Yet our kinema patrons have so far been offered little in advance of fairy tales and fables.
CARTOONS have admittedly obtained an immense popularity by the use of such characters. Mickey and Minnie Mouse have won for themselves an unassailable place in the hearts of the world’s picture-goers. But it is no everybody who can create a Mickey and a Minnie, and there is no earthly reason why other producers should slavishly attempt such an imitation.
It has been argued that such cartoons appeal to the child mind, and the children can be relied upon to bring their parents along to see the rest of the programme. This may be a sound argument when children are home from school and out to enjoy themselves with their parents; but at normal times it is doubtful whether an appeal to the child mind is likely to bring much additional business. An attraction which merely succeeds in selling half-price tickets is not the most profitable of films.
PARAMOUNT has undoubtedly the right idea in taking for its characters the subjects of popular American newspaper strips. The doings of Betty Boop and of Pop-eye the Sailor are read by millions of Americans every day; they are syndicated to more than 250 American newspapers.
Is there not an excellent opportunity for British producers to effect a similar tie-up with the characters of some of our own daily comic strips? Characters which occur to one are The Nipper and his fatuous father in the Daily Mail, Colonel Up and Mr. Down of the Express, Jane of the Mirror, Dot and Carrie of the Star, Jiggs of the Sketch, Alec of the Herald.
THESE are characters designed to appeal to the love of nonsense in the adult mine. Jane in particular, like Betty Boop, has the valuable quality of sex appeal; the fault even of inimitable Minnie is that such sex appeal as she shows appeals rather to the schoolboy mind than the average adult.
F. Watts, of Pathé, recently deplored the fact that there appeared to be nobody in this country capable of making sound cartoons.

May one suggest, rather, that the difficulty has been that no British film has hitherto been willing to see a British cartoonist through his teething troubles, and, consequently, no British cartoonist has had an opportunity of mastering the technique of the coloured sound cartoon?

As mentioned elsewhere, a British-made series of cartoons in Dufaycolor is now in preparation for M-G-M, which is a step in the right direction. One necessary feature of these cartoons is that specially composed music is to be provided by a composer whose work may reasonably be expected to attain a certain popularity of its own, just as have the Walt Disney tunes.
The enormous popularity of the cartoon provides just the opportunity for not one, but several British films to seek out the few competent cartoon workers, link them up with known humorists, and get them busy on making adult cartoons, preferably of well-known newspaper characters, thus cashing in on the continuous publicity so assured.

But It Works For Bugs Bunny

Dressing in drag works for every Warner Bros. cartoon character, right?

Not Wile E. Coyote in Going! Going! Gosh! (1952).

The Roadrunner simply races past him, then returns to explain why before turning around and resuming his running.



Lloyd Vaughn, Ben Washam and Ken Harris are the credited animators, with Bob Gribbroek laying out the short and Phil De Guard working on the backgrounds. Both Carl Stalling and Milt Franklyn get credits.

Spot the Radio Stars

You’d expect Toyland Broadcast to have radio caricatures in it. And you would be right.

This is a 1934 Harman-Ising MGM cartoon but it feels like one of their shorts for Warner Bros. Probably because it has animation from It’s Got Me Again (1932) and The Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives (1933).

Celebrity stand-ins: The Boswell Sisters.



Bing.



The old expended-balloon-air gag, turning a girl into Kate Smith.



The soldier is channeling Charlie Winninger of the Maxwell House Show Boat: “It’s only the beginning folks, only the beginning!”



Paul Whiteman.



Rudy Vallee, noted saxophonist.



Dave Rubinoff and his violin (of the Eddie Cantor show).



The Mills Brothers. They are actually white soldiers who become black when girls drop chocolates on their heads. Who thought of that gag, Hugh?



Aunt Jemima, who had a radio show at the time.



The cartoon begins with a spoof of the NBC chimes, which is how a number of these radio parody cartoons began.

No Cantor, Walter Winchell or Ed Wynn this time.

No animators are credited.

Grey Hair on Red's Gags

Red Skelton? Sorry, I’ll take a pass.

On radio, he played an obnoxious child. I don’t find obnoxious children amusing. He played loud dopes. I dislike loud dopes. On television, he could piously bleat “God bless” at the end of his show, but filled the stage with the foulest language during warm-ups.

Skelton could be quick and clever, though. I’ve heard him ad-lib on a couple of Jack Benny radio shows and he was very funny.

Herald Tribune syndicate critic John Crosby wasn’t crazy about Skelton, but for another reason. He clearly explains in this somewhat acidic review dated September 23, 1946.

IN REVIEW
Skelton Dusts Off Old Ones
By JOHN CROSBY.
NEW YORK, Sept 23.—Red Skelton, who has reappeared over the National Broadcasting Company network (10.30 p.m. EDT Tuesdays), presented recently several sketches from what he refers to as "The Skelton Scrapbook of Satires". It's quite a scrapbook and should bring back vivid personal memories to any one over 102.
The first of these precious, yellowing sketches to be unhooked from Mr. Skelton's scrapbook was about a character named Clem Cadiddlehopper, whose opening remark is: "Wull, here uh am, huh, huh."
Clem needs a haircut. "Uh could wait till Spring", he says. "Don't know, though. Three times muh mother had to buy muh back from the dog-catcher. Huh huh." The barber gives him an estimate on the job $1.50 for both heads. "How come the price is going up", asks Clem. "Hair go-in' up these days? Huh huh."
Then we were introduced to Cousin Sarah who says "Howdy, Clem" in those slow, lugubrious tones that were the trademark of stage rustics from the early 1880's until Weber and Fields put it in mothballs around 1911.
"Head comes to a point, don't it?" says Cousin Sarah, after agreeing to cut Clem's hair. "How did it get that way?"
"By giving directions to tourists with both hands full, huh huh, says Clem.
"What's that tattoo on your chest?"
"That ain't no tattoo. That's muh laundry mark. Muh mother sends muh out in one piece to save money. Huh, huh."
When Cousin Sarah finishes the haircut, Clem inquires: "How come one side's shorter than the other?"
"Uh couldn't help it. The floor slants."
"Oh! For a minute uh thought one laig was shorter than the other."
The last time I heard that sketch, or one very like it, was in a tent show many, many years ago. Even then the satire was a little misty around the edges. Village idiots were no longer very numerous and weren't considered as funny as they had been in 1885. Even the rustic Cousin Sarah seemed a little improbable since by then most of the rustics got to town at least once a week in their Model Ts.
Still, I was just a boy then and I found it hilarious. But time passes and tastes change. I found myself wondering idly why Mr. Skelton feels called on to satirize the 1880's when there are so many other things crying out for satire. Maybe, I thought, he's satirizing the tent shows. It seems hardly worth while for his nationally known talents. There are so few tent shows left and those remaining are immune to time, jibes and the radio.
In another satire, Mr. Skelton played his "mean widdle kid" character, certainly one of the most obnoxious brats ever created, who goes to the barbershop and shaves off a customer's eyebrows while the barber is on the telephone.
That transported me up into the more recent past. First time I saw that sketch—or "satire" as Mr. Skelton labels it—was in a Mack Sennett comedy in the early 1920s. Harold Lloyd or Ben Turpin— some one like that—was in it and I thought it as awfully funny then.
Well, it was fun rummaging in the attic with Mr. Skelton, but somehow I like my satire more up to date. How about a satire on Daddy and Peaches Browning, Red? Or the Teapot Dome scandal, or the Hall-Mills case, or Queen Marie's visit to the United States? Let's get on top of the news, Red.

Crosby took aim at a couple of other comedies in that week’s bunch of reviews. He isn’t impressed with Rudy Vallee and the Mad Russian in his September 24th column, and wanted more structure in Victor Borge’s show. Don Ameche is his target on September 27th, while the issue before he looks at a CBS preview broadcast which would appeared to have included Arthur Q. Bryan doing his Elmer Fudd voice. The Sept. 25 column involves a local station news commentator.

Singing Faces

Flip the frog sings to faces on the wall that urge him to have one of them attached to his head in Funny Face.



“You can’t go wrong with a face like mine,” says one face, grinning. “A face like his? Ha ha ha!” sings the other faces. The poor face becomes forlorn.



“A pan like this will suit you fine,” sings the next face. “A pan like that? Oh, ho, ho, ho!” is the response from the chorus, which provokes Iwerks’ usual radiating lines from the head.



Now the stereotypes. “I’m sho’ handsome, as you can see, the gals down South, sho’ go fo’ me,” says the black face. He doesn’t have much of a drawl and the chorus doesn’t make fun of him; the camera pans to the next stereotype.



Time for a gay joke. “How would you like to look like me?” says the tarted-up man. “Look like him? Whoops my dear!” adds the chorus. “How would you like to look like me?” he repeats, then starts kissing the air, then turns and looks coy.



Flip doesn’t get any of those faces, and at the end of the cartoon, the girl-friend that treats him like crap through the cartoon accepts his real face, and they’re happy together at the end.

Iwerks is the only one to get credit in this 1932 cartoon.

Personally, I think it would have been funny to have one of the rejected faces look like Walt Disney.