Jack, Mary, Radio and Things

The question for Jack Benny in the late 1940s was—when are you getting into television? More and more stations were signing on and, crucially, more and more sponsor money was taken from radio budgets and dumped into the far-more-expensive visual medium.

Once Benny worked out a deal to begin occasional TV shows starting in 1950, the question changed to—when are you getting out of radio?

TV Guide mulled over that question in its issue of February 5, 1954. It turns out Jack had one more radio season left in him, but abandoning the medium wasn’t altogether his idea. Despite attempts reported in the trade press, no sponsor would come up with the money needed to put the show on radio for 1955-56.

Mary Livingstone pretty much left the programme in the last season. Whenever she did show up, it was either on a re-run, or from a tape recorded in the Benny mansion that was spliced into the broadcast. In the latter case, either Jeanette Eymann, Jack’s script secretary, or his daughter Joan would fill in on stage for the studio audience and read Mary’s lines. Joan later made a number of non-dad TV appearances and added her thoughts to fill out her father’s autobiography. It’s an excellent book I would heartily recommend.

You’ll notice the picture of Jack as Buck Benny. His series of Buck Benny sketches ended at least 15 years earlier, so the photo is an odd choice. It’s almost as if the editor picked the picture first and then wrote the start of the story around it. As it is, the story seems to be a collection of random items about Jack, not an actual narrative with a point to it.

HEADIN’ FOR A NEW RANGE?
JACK BENNY, still riding along on an even keel at the pinnacle of his career, is perhaps the least pretentious star show business has ever known. He’d as soon throw a wad of paper at a script girl as shake hands with the Queen of England, and he’s done both. The script girl and the Queen, to him, are two very likable human beings.
If there can be a secret to any man’s success, Benny’s lies in his enormous capacity to enjoy his work. He takes it seriously, but never to the point of undermining either disposition or health. He plays golf, shooting in the high 80’s and never worrying about the time he might have shot a 79. When, as he occasionally does, he feels that he has to get away from it all, he merely piles into his car and takes off.
When he works, he is a perfectionist. He spends as much time on his radio show today as he did ten years ago when radio was king and he was its crown prince. And he gets as much fun out of it.
Oddly enough, Benny’s wife, Mary Livingstone, suffers miserably through the whole business of a Jack Benny show. A mainstay on the radio show almost since its inception, she has no conception of herself as a star, dislikes publicity and would give her left arm to get out of it. She loves show business for Jack, hates it for herself. “This,” she says defiantly, “is absolutely my last season.”
May Abandon Radio
Jack himself is reluctant about returning to radio next year. “If the sponsor wants me to do TV every other week, that will be the end of the radio show.”
Benny thus far hasn’t found it at all difficult to come up with a TV show once every three weeks and feels at the moment that every other week won’t be any harder. “The ideas just seem to come,” he says. “We never point deliberately for a ‘great’ show. And if one does happen to come off better than most, we don’t knock ourselves out trying to top it. We just do ’em as they come along.”
Papa Won’t Push
If Benny has a major interest aside from show business, it is his adopted daughter, Joan, now 19 and a junior at Stanford. He and Mary have made it a policy from the beginning to keep her in the background and to let her grow up in as normal surroundings as possible. She has appeared on two or three of Jack’s radio shows and on one TV show, but the decision has always been hers. Benny is proud of his daughter and sure she can make her own way without undue help from him.
Perhaps the master of comedy timing onstage, Benny offstage can bumble along with the best of them. He frequently forgets names and is honest enough to become covered with confusion instead of trying to ad lib his way out with a funny line. The funny line, in fact, has never been Benny’s forte. He is more the introvert, a quiet man content to let things ride and preferring to have his audiences seated out front rather than gathered around him at a bar. Unlike most comedians, he invariably thinks the other fellow a very funny man and is known among his cohorts as “the best audience in the business.” With Benny in the front row, a comedian is guaranteed a belly laugh on even his worst jokes.

A Peachy Pear of Gags

In an increasingly corporate, HR-department world, maybe the practical joke has become a thing of a past. It was common at animation studios back in the theatrical days, and some of them got quite elaborate.

We have the tale of something that happened at the Warner Bros. studio. It’s a shame the participant’s name isn’t known at this late date. But first, a gag pulled on someone in the live action film world. This was related in the National Enterprise Association’s Hollywood column starting around April 3, 1940.

Englishman Baffled by Labels
Canned Goods Never Turn Our as Named, His Pals Make Sure
By PAUL HARRISON
HOLLYWOOD — The entertainment factories have come out of their taxation doldrums and things are beginning to hum again. The mood of the town is chipper. And one of the most encouraging things is that people are beginning to play jokes.
The joke I like best involves a methodical little Britisher who works in the technical lab at United Artists. A thrifty man he has been in the habit of bringing two sandwiches to the studio each day. He supplements these with a pint of milk and a can of fruit bought at a grocery across the street and he lunches at his desk, in which he keeps a can opener, paper napkins, a glass and a spoon.
One day some of the other technicians called him out of the buildings just before he began his lunch. During his absence, another joker took the label off his can of plums and put it on a can of beans which he left on the desk. When the Englishman was ready to eat plums and found beans, he went to the store and got his money back. The grocer said such things can happen, but that they were very rare.
Decides to Share Story With England
But they weren’t rare. It went on like that. The next day the Englishman opened a can of peaches and found tomatoes inside. When he was drooling in anticipation of nice crisp pineapple, he got spinach. After buying apricots, he came up with a spoonful of salmon.
The jokers had visited the grocer, explained the gag, and promised to pay for all rectified “mistakes.” The Englishman wasn’t angry, though; he was amused and amazed at what he considered an example of American carelessness and inefficiency. After a week of encountering misbranded merchandise, he decided to write a humorous article about it for a London magazine. He rather fancied the result, and read it to his pals in the lab before mailing it.
Next day he went to the grocery and bought a can of peaches, wryly remarking that it was probably soup. By the time the boys had switched the label to another can, he actually did have soup. But floating in the soup was something else— a little glass tube. Inside the tube was a note, and the note was signed (presumeably) by the editor of the London magazine. It read:
“I don’t believe a word of it.”
The little technician goes around telling people about this astonishing experience, but of course nobody will believe him.
Boy Is Kidded, Gets Better Job
At Leon Schlesinger’s cartoon studio, some of the boys thought up a rib that lasted two weeks. A youngster there handled thousands of sheets of celluloid, the “cells” on which animations are painted. He had to dust and stack them, and on dry days the dusting caused small sparks of static such as you can generate from a cat.
So somebody told him that this was very dangerous work, because the celluloid might ignite and explode and blow the whole studio to Kingdom Come. The only precaution said the gagster was to ground himself.
They got a long piece of wire and wrapped one end around the youngster’s bare right leg, under his trousers. The other end was tossed out the window and connected to a water pipe that came from the ground. The fellow worked that way dragging the wire around, carefully reconnecting himself whenever he came in. People from other departments would drop in to watch him and comment on his bravery. In that way everybody, got to know the kid and like him, and the other day he was given a better job.

Slapping the Bass Bottom

A little combo plays a number while a bird wearing a derby makes a home out of drumsticks in The Fowl Ball, a 1930 Walter Lantz cartoon.

One of the players is a frog that slaps a bass. He turns the bass around during a bar break, rips down its “pants” and starts slapping its bottom. The bass grows a head and starts crying.



The cartoon ends with Oswald the rabbit and frog musicians inside a pelican's stomach.

I don't know the name of the number that takes up the first part of the cartoon.

Deems Fudd

Freeze-frame some animation and what looks like flowing movement under director Bob Clampett reveals a raft of quirky poses.

Here are some random frames from the opening of A Corny Concerto (1943), where Elmer Fudd fails miserably at being concert music commentator Deems Taylor a la Fantasia, thanks to a dickey that won’t stay down.

Only the Clampett unit would have a character with his hands down his pants.



Clampett cuts to a closer shot. Fudd’s hands are the best part of this, but there’s also a continual flow of facial expressions.



Bob McKimson is the credited animator on screen. Dick Thomas is the background artist.

Television's Anti-Parking Meter Crusader

J. Edward McKinley popped up everywhere on 1960s comedy shows as kind of an impatient businessman. It seems that’s how he began his acting career.

McKinley had a knack of finding interesting ways to get publicity. Witness this wire service story from 1951:

Radio Station Sells 30 Seconds of Silence
HOLLYWOOD, Calif., Jan. 26 (INS)—A Southern California radio station—KMPC—boasted today that it had sold thirty seconds of silence.
The unusual sale was chalked up by Ross Mulholland, doing a daily campaign for the March of Dimes on his show Thursday.
J. Edward McKinley, co-owner of the Chef Saw Manufacturing Co., dropped in to add $10 to Mulholland’s March of Dimes. But instead of asking for ten dollars worth of music, he asked—and got—$10 worth of complete silence.

The not-yet-actor’s next PR effort involved parking meters. Well, some parking meters. It’s one of those things that just about anyone can identify with. A wire service picked up McKinley’s populist crusade and put it out on May 10, 1958.

Parkers’ ‘Good Shepherd’
HOLLYWOOD (AP)—J. Edward McKinley hates parking meters that run too fast.
So much so that he is conducting a one-man campaign against them along Sunset Boulevard.
His crusade began a year ago when police tagged his car for overtime parking. He checked the curb parking meter and found that the meter was a cheater.
McKinley, a salesman, took the ticket to court. A judge, impressed by his defense, dismissed the case on the technicality that the ticketed car was registered not to McKinley but to his wife.
McKinley then declared an all-out war on parking meters. He ranged up and down the boulevard and found most of the meters ticked faster than his trusty wrist watch.
Flush with success, McKinley said yesterday that he is expanding his crusade to include parking zones whose colors have faded.
“I spotted a while passenger-loading zone on Whitley Avenue,” McKinley said. “The paint was more than 50 per cent rubbed out, making the zone invalid.” The average motorist hasn’t the time to go to court over minor traffic violations, McKinley contends.
“People are just paying their fines like sheep,” he said.

The publicity got McKinley on television. On October 6, 1958, he starred in an episode of Police Station, a 30-minute drama produced by KTLA in Los Angeles. McKinley explained the circumstances in a wire story on June 5, 1960.

McKinley Slated For Films and TV
HOLLYWOOD (AP)—J. Edward McKinley built a $2 parking ticket into a $25,000-a-year acting job.
"It's crazy," McKinley says. "One day I grabbed a parking ticket off my windshield and a few weeks later I was an actor."
He fought and beat the rap on the parking ticket. Appearances on television news and interview shows followed because of the uproar over the case.
"Next thing I knew," he says, "the movie producers were calling up making me offers to act in straight dramatic shows."
McKinley appeared in 51 television shows and motion pictures. Among the TV shows have been "Alcoa Presents," "77 Sunset Strip," "Mr. Lucky," and "Colt 45." He has played lawyers, judges, crime bosses and scientists.
He still is hanging on to his sales promotion business and owns part of an oil company in Colorado.
He's still interested in traffic tickets, promoting a plan for night traffic courts so that the working man can fight tickets.
McKinley, who hasn't got a ticket since he went into acting, has taken nine citations to court and lost but one.

Besides cameras, courtrooms continued to beckon McKinley. This is from a southern California paper of December 20, 1960:

Former President’s Nephew Scores Ninth Time In Court
By DAVE HOLLAND
Valley Times TODAY Staff Writer
J. Edward McKinley has done it again. For the ninth time in 11 tries, the grand nephew of former President William McKinley has beaten a traffic ticket in court.
McKinley, 6909 Oporto Dr., Hollywood, was accused Monday in Burbank’s Municipal Court of making an illegal U-turn on Riverside drive near its intersection with Valley street, Burbank.
When the incident took place last Oct. 9, McKinley didn’t believe it was illegal.
He told Judge Edward C. Olson why he didn’t think so yesterday. The judge apparently agreed. The defendant deserves the benefit of the doubt, Olson said, then added, “Not guilty.”
“It was those same two words that started me on my new career three years ago,” McKinley said. “I’m an actor now and have appeared in 67 TV shows since then all because I appeared in court on my own behalf and won.
The 44-year-old, graying man told this story:
“It all started when I found a meter violation ticket on my car. I insisted that it was the meter’s fault, not mine. The meter was fast and I proved it with a stop watch.
“Sam Taylor, traffic department director for Los Angeles, said that was one meter in a 1,000. We picked out 15 in a row, timed them all, and found more than half of them to be fast. I won the case.”
From the notoriety he received during the trial, McKinley was asked to appear on different television shows, including the Groucho Marx and the Paul Coates programs. A quiz show followed, then others. Finally someone talked him into tackling a dramatic part rather than just guesting on TV.
His first part? A defendant on Night Court. His last? A U.S. Senator on Stagecoach West. His next?
“I think I’m ready to play a lawyer,” McKinley smiled.

Besides being an actor and a traffic meter challenger, McKinley turned to record production. The Hollywood Reporter informed readers on May 25, 1962:

J. Edward McKinley, appearing in Otto Preminger’s “Advise and Consent,” has been signed by Del-Fi Records, Hollywood, to produce three new singles featuring comedian Jackie Curtis. McKinley has had his own compositions published and recorded in the past and will be a record producer for the first time.

I keep thinking of McKinley as the perennial client on Bewitched. Apparently, he appeared on ten episodes.

McKinley died in 2004. Part of his obit is posted to the right. Evidently, playing opposite Dick Sargent brings wealth as McKinley not only lived in Beverly Hills, he had a collection of classic cars. We presume none of them ever got a parking ticket.

Storm of the Cuckoo Clock

Artwork, sound (music and voice) and camera movement aren’t the only things that play a role in animation. So does lighting.

Here’s a good example from the opening of Tex Avery’s The Cuckoo Clock for MGM. The cartoon starts during a creepy thunderstorm, so colour and lighting are used to create a lightning effect over Johnny Johnsen’s background painting.



I suspect Tex would have indicated the effect he wanted on the sheets given to cameraman Jack Stevens (I believe Stevens was still at Metro when this was shot).

Mike Lah, Grant Simmons and Walt Clinton animated this cartoon, with narration by Daws Butler.

Oh, Boy, This is Ducky

Popeye wasn’t the only one to eat spinach in the Fleischer cartoons. Olive chowed down on it to turn beat the crap out of a woman gym rat in Never Kick A Woman (1936). Bluto had it shoved down his throat to beat up Popeye and put him in hospital with nurse Olive in Hospitaliky (1937). And Popeye fed it to a duck to turn it into a helicopter in I Never Changes My Altitude (also 1937).



The duck and Popeye reach the chortling Bluto, who has thrown Olive Oyl out of his plane. You know what’ll happen next.



Willard Bowsky and Orestes Calpini are given the animation credits.

Belle Province Benny

Allied troops around the globe took a brief break from World War Two by enjoying one of the top comedians of their time in front of them on stage.

No, we don’t mean Bob Hope. We’re talking about Jack Benny.

This isn’t meant to denigrate Mr. Hope’s dedication. But Benny showed up in the jungles of New Guinea, bore the sweltering heat of Iraq and even took down the names of injured servicemen and hand-wrote to their families once he got back home.

The Benny radio show went on tour, too. It broadcast from various American military bases, and appeared in Vancouver and Toronto for Victory Loan efforts.

Let’s talk about a Canadian stop wasn’t part of the broadcast schedule. Benny and his cast appeared in Montreal on February 10, 1943, playing at the Home of the Habs, the Forum. The Montreal Gazette gave a fine account of the show the next day, along with a sidebar story about Benny’s coming tour. Unfortunately, it was waylaid a month later when he was bed-ridden with pneumonia and couldn’t appear on the air for five weeks.

Let’s give you the sidebar first, followed by the review. Unfortunately, the photo in the paper of Jack and his cast on stage doesn’t reproduce well enough to augment this post. Being the keen showman, veteran vaudevillian Benny lined up his show well, reserving the last spot for Rochester, who was loved by audiences everywhere. McIver’s orchestra appeared with Benny on his Toronto broadcast on February 14th.

Jack Benny Signs U.S.O. Contract
Will Go Overseas to Entertain Troops, Comedian Says Here
Jack Benny and Company, which include Mary Livingstone, Dennis Day, Don Wilson and Rochester, will be heading overseas this summer to entertain the American troops. The comedian signed a contract with the U.S.O. Camps Shows just before he left for Montreal to launch his voluntary tour for Canadian servicemen here yesterday.

The USO Jaunt, whether to Alaska or North Africa, will not come, however, until the holiday break in his radio program leaves him free. It means, however, that instead of staying in Hollywood to make a film, he will start travelling for Uncle Sam.
He has just completed one picture, The Meanest Man In The World, which is to be released shortly. He says it returns to an older pattern of film-making for him, with Rochester teaming up with him throughout. But on the whole, the comedian finds the type of film like To Be Or Not To Be, Charley's Aunt or George Washington Slept Here more satisfactory. In them he felt he was playing a straight part, with a character being created other than that he has built tor himself on the air.
Benny likes making pictures because they are comparatively restful after the grind of broadcasting. For the air there is always the driving immediacy of the next week's program and the endless conferences with script writers. For the screen everything has been worked out by the studio. The possibility of retakes, if a laugh line doesn't quite go over, eliminates much of the nervous strain of the radio, where a thing once said can never be improved.
But despite the fact that now, in addition to the radio show grind, he and his wife have the strain of steady troops shows, both of them looked well and fit as they chatted with reporters and servicemen at the Windsor Hotel yesterday. Mrs. Benny (or Mary Livingstone) had a relapse two weeks ago but is recovered and looking forward to the week in Canada. Both she and Mr. Benny feel it's a privilege to be allowed to play for the troops, and that goes for anywhere they are sent, be it Alaska or overseas.

TROUPE PLAYS TO PACKED HOUSE AT LOCAL FORUM SHOW
Local Servicemen Pack Forum, Accord Benny Rousing Welcome
With a crowd of about 14,000 whistling and cheering servicemen and their girl friends, Jack Benny and the personalities of his radio show launched their whirlwind tour of shows for the Canadian troops at the Forum last night. In a show that lasted over an hour and a half, the radio comedian won the wholehearted applause of Canadian troops and the title of "Public Morale Builder No. 1" from Air Vice Marshal Albert de Niverville, who thanked him at the close of the show.
This was a show for the troops, with a minimum of formality attending it. At about a quarter to nine, the men of Alan McIver's band walked onto the stage at one end of the vast building, by that time packed with an expectant crowd of soldiers, sailors, airmen and men of the Merchant Marine. They were followed by Jack Benny and the show was on.
The appearance of the grey-haired comedian, walking onto the stage with the familiar swagger, brought the first burst of applause of the evening. He walked out to the bank of microphones and quipped, "H’m he looks a lot older than he does in the movies, doesn't he!"
He then looked around about him and off into the far reaches of the Forum and exclaimed: "Why, it's bigger than Waukegan."
The show which followed was the show which Benny and his associates have built up from extensive touring of U.S. Army posts. It differs from the regular broadcasts in being a series of solo specialties by the members of the cast, rather than a show built on a consecutive comedy theme. And, contrary to expectations, neither Benny or the others worked from a script.

First of his company to be introduced was Mary Livingstone, with an admonition from Benny: "She's my wife, fellows, so lay off." And Miss Livingstone's contribution, as all had hoped, was one of her famous poems. It was a salute to the Canadian forces and finished up on a high note of international amity:
"Here's to the Canadian people,
"Our neighbors loyal and true,
"Although our flags are different
"They're both red, white and blue."
A guest singer, Alice Rowe, came on next and sang three songs, leading up to the introduction of the regular Benny vocalist, Dennis Day, who scored a hit with his tenor rendering of I Just Kissed Your Picture Good Night, There Are Such Things and an old Irish tune.
Don Wilson, genial and rotund announcer of the program, was next in line with a few remarks, including a reminder of the Benny-Allen feud, by now an integral part of any Benny show. Sam Hearn, well-known as Schlepperman to audiences of a few years ago, came on with more comedy, including a lengthy parody set to a medley of popular tunes, and a clever imitation of three violins.
Schlepperman's violin duet with Benny introduced what was one of the high-spots of the evening when Benny played his famous Love In Bloom. And just to show that he wasn't as bad as all that, Benny followed it up with a bit of string swings. More music was supplied by Jimmy Shields, vocalist of The Army Show, who made a guest appearance which won him generous applause.
But the loudest single burst of applause of the whole evening came with the introduction of the next performer, the inimitable Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, complete with a double-zoot suit and broad-brimmed hat. The crowd opened right up then and let the colored comedian have a real Canadian welcome. Rochester sang a bit, danced a lot and had to beg his way off the stage.
Then suddenly, and all too soon, the show was over, and Air Marshal de Niverville was saying a few brief words of thanks to the assembled company. Jack Benny and company had finished their first big troop show in Canada, and Montreal servicemen had set a high standard of appreciation for the gesture which brings them that rare phenomenon, a first-rate American comedy star, to brighten their lives and further establish a bond between Canadians and Americans in wartime.

The Tennessee Teacher

Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales was one the first made-for-Saturday-morning cartoon series, but unlike the old theatricals and refugees from other time slots, they weren’t altogether entertainment cartoons.

There was an education component that fit completely with the plot of the cartoon, so kids didn’t realise they were being taught something (or perhaps, in some cases, it was something they already knew).

Critics have bashed Saturday morning shows for so long, it’s hard to believe there was a time where they applauded programming. The reviews of Tennessee were favourable.

Here’s a syndicated story from May 17, 1964.

Children Learn By Talking Penguin
BY DON ROYAL
NEW YORK—Why aren't there more good and popular educational television shows for children? Thousands of parents and television critics—to say nothing of the Federal Communications Commission—would like to know.
Not that the networks have completely abdicated their potential, the power to disseminate education and encourage the development of curious young minds. They have tried, but apparently have, for the most part, failed to find a workable formula.
One children's educational show that seems to have found one is "Tennessee Tuxedo," seen on CBS-TV Saturday mornings. When the program came on the air last fall, it was given only average chance of success.
That it did better than average is indicated by the fact that it has been renewed for a second 52-week season. It will not leave the air all year, even for the usual summer hiatus. "Tennessee Tuxedo" dominates all network viewing when it is on the air, with an estimated 10 million plus viewers weekly.
By this time you may be ready to ask: "Who—or what—is Tennessee Tuxedo?"
Tennessee Tuxedo is the name of a hyperthyroid penguin with the native curiosity of a five-year-old and the brash, know-it-all bravado of a young teenager.
Along with his yes-man, a chumpy (what else?) walrus named Chumley, he walks out of the zoo each week only to become helplessly— and hilariously— involved in the complex human world around him.
For instance, the penguin's sheer brashness lands him a job as an automobile mechanic. But he doesn't know a carburetor from a cardinal.
In the process of learning, he—and his young viewers—are given a beautifully simplified explanation of the workings of an internal combustion engine.
In another episode, the penguin makes an effort to link all the cages in the zoo by phone so the animals can chatter sociably with one another.
He works himself into a series of embarrassing situations while discovering the essentials of telecommunication.
And so it goes, like when Tennessee and Chumley manage to wreck the zoo's huge clock. In a do-it-yourself repairing spree, they illustrate the principles of Einstein's relativity theory so graphically that its basics can be grasped even by 5 to 10 year-old minds.
In similar fashion, the perky penguin and his pals explore the fields of farming and irrigation, astronomy, space, physics, photography, sculpture and music, bridge building, ancient history, marine navigation, party politics, democratic electoral systems, and others.
Their frequent companion is a Frank Morganish genius named Mr. Whoopee, the proprietor of a magic blackboard with the tremendous power of reducing complex subjects to easily comprehensible essentials.
The program is the brainchild of Cyril Plattes, cereal marketing chief of the vast General Mills corporate empire, which spends some $45,000,000 on advertising annually.
Public Service
Plattes figured some of this money should be spent in furthering television's potential as a medium for uplift and public service.
" 'Education' has always been a dirty word in show business," he says. "Attach it to a movie or television show and it's the kiss of death.
"The networks haven't been entirely delinquent about educational shows: they have tried with such laudable efforts as 'Exploring' and 'Discovery,' but too many viewers stay away.
"It was my contention these and other shows did not fail because they were educational, but because they did not properly cultivate and maintain an audience."
"Education is easier to digest if you think your swallowing something else. "It's like an exotic foreign delicacy say, stewed butterfly wings or chocolate-coveted ante. I'm told they taste great if you don't know what you're eating."
Plattes knew his projected series had to entertain if it were to educate, and it had to win a large audience and help sell cereal if it were to survive.
If he were to please the youngsters, he had to discover what appealed to them most. Instead of consulting a team of psychologists, he consulted the kids themselves.
"We employed a firm to question thousands of children of all social strata across the country. They told us that of all entertainment forms they like animated cartoons the best. And they liked to laugh.
"So we decided to use comedy as a teaching tool and animation as our medium."
Plattes enlisted the aid of a long-time New York manufacturer of video programming, Peter Piech and a creative animation firm, TTV (also known as Teaching Television).
Inborn Hunger
Together, they realized the best way to hold a child's wandering interest was to involve him in the adventure at hand, to bait him with his own inborn hunger for knowledge.
With this in mind, they tabulated a set of questions kid most frequently ask. How big is space? Why do airplanes fly? How does steam move an ocean liner? What is fire and how is it fought? What is electricity, and how does it produce light?
The questions and their answers form the basis for each of the weekly half-hour shows. Subjects are very carefully researched and the nation's schoolteachers were even invited to submit suggestions.
The voice of Tennessee Tuxedo is provided by Don Adams, a nightclub comedian and the father of a nine-year-old girl. He is never seen on the show, only heard.
"One recent Saturday," reports Adams, "my daughter came running into the bedroom, woke me up and hollered, 'Daddy, there's a bird doing an imitation of you on television.'
"I asked if the bird were a penguin and she said yes. I told her to relax—it was me imitating the penguin."
Adams enjoys doing the show. He and his associates, including mimic Larry Storch, assemble in a New York recording studio once a month and are given four new scripts. They rehearse a while, then record the dialogue. The resultant soundtrack is then shipped to the cartoonery where animators draw the many thousands of individual full-color sketches that make up each program.
Educators have been lavish in their praise of "Tennessee Tuxedo," and recognized authorities claim the program has pioneered new techniques in visual education.
Reduction of inherently complex matters to easily understandable premises can be difficult, but this program manages it.
What makes the show all the more remarkable is that it doesn't deal with sex, violence, hillbillies or cowboys and Injuns.
It is, however, an adventure series—an adventure in learning so subtly executed the viewer doea not know he's learning anything.
The sponsor is happy with the results. The audience has built steadily and remains loyal.
Surveys indicate youngsters look at the program of their own volition—parents do not drive them to the set.
But a surprising number of parents look in, too.

While Adams gets mentioned, it should be pointed out the voice work overall was solid. Larry Storch does my favourite Frank Morgan impression and, here, he becomes a character rather than an imitation of someone. His Mr. Whoopee easily holds the interest of young viewers. Brad Bolke is likeable as Chumley. Mort Marshall's Stanley Livingston is amusing (he used the voice elsewhere at TTV). And I've always been a fan of Kenny Delmar, who never seems to get credit for his versatility (everyone thinks of him as Senator Claghorn on the Fred Allen radio show but he did much more than that).

Add to that stories that don't pound things into kids' heads (unlike any didactic TV cartoon from the '80s) and you have a fairly entertaining series that deserves a look even today.

Ha Ha! Ha ha ha! Too funny!

Original comedy abounds in those dazzling, 1969 Warner Bros. cartoons.



A horse yells for help. After sound effects lifted from a Squidly Diddley cartoon, the horse says “Give me a hand.” I don’t possibly know what could happen next.



What?? Cool Cat claps?! As in “giving him a hand”? Oh, my sides! Who could guessed that was coming?

Or this? The Indian Brave says “Me give-um you squaw,” hands a hefty woman to Cool Cat, and then runs away. The suspense is killing me about the response.



“Indian giver!” yells C.C.

Don’t you get it?? He’s an Indian who gave. Indian Giver! That’s genius. Aren’t you uncontrollably shaking with laughter? I don’t know if I can take any more of this hilarity.

Hey, an Indian is painting eyes, a nose and a mouth on a bucket.



“Me, pail face.”

Pail face! Paleface! I’m retching with laughter. I know you are, too.



Thus ends Injun Trouble, the last Merrie Melodies cartoon of Hollywood’s Golden Age. About time for a Cool Cat reboot, isn’t it? Maybe team him with the Marvel Universe or Sonic or the Tennessee Williams Snagglepuss in that comic book series. Now that’s comedy!