Tonight! An All-New Fantasy Island! Then At 9...

You can hear his voice when you read the words: “The Loooooove Boat!”

Ernie Anderson was a new kind of network announcer. The staff voices at NBC were all very good. But they all had a very even, matter-of-fact delivery. CBS was the same. At ABC, Ernie soared high or growled, depending on the programme he was plugging. You have to be a bit of a ham and an actor to do it. And, even then, you have to have a special talent for it.

Anderson started out like many announcers. He worked at small stations and moved on to bigger and bigger ones. He finally reached Cleveland in the late ‘50s and moved into television. Within a couple of years, he played a horror show host named Ghoulardi, directed by a fellow named Tom Conway. Thanks to a recommendation from Rose Marie, who happened to be in Cleveland, Steve Allen hired Conway, who had to change his first name to Tim.

Being a non sequitur isn’t the usual way of jump-starting a career in the big city, but that’s what happened when Anderson moved to Los Angeles. This question appeared in a weekend magazine in the Southam newspapers in Canada on Sept. 13, 1969. Evidently they never watched a 1969 ABC series occasionally emceed by Conway called Operation: Entertainment, where the pair and guest stars entertained at various military bases. Interestingly, about four different syndicated columns had this question, all within a few months of each other.

Q. Who is Ernie Anderson? He is always shown in the audience of the Carol Burnett television show. Heather Wood, North Portal, Sask.
A. Until Carol Burnett started introducing him, Ernie was simply a character actor, and a sometimes straight-man for comedian Tim Conway in club dates. He was best known for his commercials, including a nifty one about potato chips that we don't get to see in Canada.
Then one night Ernie went along to see his friend Tim appear on Miss Burnett's show and, lo and behold, Miss Burnett spotted him in the audience while she was conducting her usual question and answer period. "There's Ernie Anderson," she said, suddenly, and it got a laugh.
Ever since, whenever Tim is on the show, Ernie attends and is introduced. When he isn't there, Carol still says "There's Ernie Anderson," and CBS simply cuts in an old tape, so that he seems to be there. It's worked out well for everyone, including CBS, which has capitalized on it by producing thousands of "Who is Ernie Anderson?" bumper stickers. Ernie sits back, in his San Fernando Valley home, with wife and kids, and reads his newfound fan mail.

This was before Anderson was announcing the Burnett show; Lyle Waggoner was doing it at the beginning. It’s certainly before he became the promo voice of ABC’s prime time shows.

His voice became so well known that newspapers wanted to talk to him. Here’s one interview, from the April 9, 1985 edition of the Boston Globe. Anderson doesn’t sound like JFK, so it’s surprising to realise he’s from Massachusetts.

He Uses His Voice to Entice You
Ernie Anderson is prime-time pitchman for ABC-TV's programs
By NATHAN COBB
Globe Staff
EAST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — The voice rumbles around in the semi-darkness and cigarette smoke of ABC-TV's Audio Post 6, cutting through the Beachboys' version of "California Girls" like the thunder of a Harley-Davidson through a quiet night.
"Nathan's a Jersey boy who's headed for the promised land . . . the land of warm sun and beautiful girls . . . Califorrrrrnia Girls . . . the movie . . . all starting at 8, 7 central . . . on ABC."
"I had a frog on 'promised land,' " Ernie Anderson complains, his voice suddenly shedding several layers of titillation. "Can we do 'promised land' again?"
The voice. You know it but you don't, like an elusive melody that won't quite dislodge itself from your memory. A few hints: think of the network ads for "Roots," for "The Thornbirds," for "Winds of War," for "Hollywood Wives." Think, oh yes, think especially about this — of the voice that suggests all things are possible aboard "The Loooooove Boat." Think of 61-year-old Ernie Anderson, ABC-TV's prime-time pitchman, the Lawrence-born announcer whose resonance, roughened by years of chain smoking, makes each upcoming show sound as if it has the power to raise the dead, let alone the ratings.
Anderson's is the deep, familiar voice of ABC's lead-ins and promos, although such work represents only one of his many voice-over announcing jobs. On this particular sunny afternoon he will spend just 50 minutes inside a darkened studio hyping segments of "Wildside," "Three's A Crowd" and "Who's the Boss?" The combined audio and video tracks will then be sent via satellite to ABC's main facilities in New York for airing later in the week.
His attire is pure Southern California chic: striped fluorescent sweater, pink pants, black penny loafers. His face is well-tanned and deeply lined. When he speaks into the microphone, peering at his script through reading glasses whose frames seem to have been chosen to match his fire engine red socks, his left foot keeps time while his right hand does the conducting. He tends not to listen to playbacks. In fact, he seldom watches television at all, except for sports and occasional movies.
"Lunacy," he says.
Lunacy? This refers to a scheduling change that has him driving to another Los Angeles studio this evening to re-record several spots because of an unexpected Presidential news conference. "Lunacy," he says again to no one in particular as he twists open a bottle of cherry soda. "It's lack of planning. There's no reason to be fooling around in the studio at 6:30. No reason at all."
This means that Anderson will spend much of the afternoon driving around Los Angeles in his $37,000, black 1985 Jaguar XJS. He will drop into his agent's office, visit a local recording studio where he does voice-overs for a number of products and services (Honda automobiles, Parkay margarine, for example,) and drive to the Griffith Park Equestrian Center, where his two thoroughbred show horses are stabled. Mostly he will talk, greeting people with "Hey, babe" and "Hiya, honey," pressing the flesh, killing off the afternoon.
As he negotiates the traffic, Anderson talks about growing up in Lynn and Marblehead, attending Lynn English High School and Suffolk College, and eventually dumping his Boston accent for something the rest of America could understand. "I just tuned it out," he explains. "I had to lose it if I wanted to work outside New England." (His voice has remained behind however: He does the lead-ins to all the news shows on WCVB-TV, Ch. 5, and is the voice of radio commercials for The Metro dance clubs in Boston and Worcester.)
He also talks about radio jobs he held in Montpelier, Providence, Albany and Cleveland. "In Providence," he recalls proudly, "I was the hottest disc jockey in town." He was big in Cleveland, too: "I played Ghoulardi, the host of a TV horror movie show. People still remember me in Cleveland."
Anderson began recording sports promos for ABC-TV during the late 1960s, shortly after arriving in Los Angeles. From that modest beginning he has grown into the network's heavy-throated audio symbol. "But I don't actually live off ABC," he explains. "I live off my basic income, which is commercials. I don't really need the ABC money. And it can be a hinderance because I'm on so much. Sometimes I'm seen as an old voice. A Southern Califonia Chevy commercial came into my agent's office the other day, and the directions said, 'Not Ernie Anderson or an imitator.' "
Anderson's ABC style can make some shows sound like they've been lifted straight from the front page of the National Enquirer. Others seem to carry all the importance of a cure for cancer. "You go after the show pretty much on its style," he says. "But in order to earn my money, I've got to do something more than simply announce. I like to make a difference. If it's a sexy show, like 'The Love Boat,' I try to make it sound sleazy. Well, maybe 'sleazy' isn't the word. Like, maybe 'innuendo.' "
But Anderson also says he thinks the promos often reveal too much, thereby giving viewers reasons not to watch. "If it were up to me," he advises, "I'd tell them less about the story line, unless it's something like 'The Fonz is getting married tonight.' I mean, you say something like, 'Be sure to be watching when Jane meets Dave tonight.' Well, who the hell are Jane & Dave? Most people don't even know. But they do know that Jane and Dave sure ain't The Fonz."
Anderson is a suburban rancher who lives in a rambling, antique- laden house on three-quarters of an acre of land in Studio City. It is a life which features seven automobiles, six cats, five children (of the nine he has fathered), four birds, three dogs, his second wife, and a larger-than-life plastic cow which stands on the front lawn. On this particular day Anderson's chores include picking up his 14 year-old son, Paul, at a nearby private school.
"Hey, Dad, I got this great idea for you," Paul announces as he clambers into the back seat of the Jag. "You should put out a home videocassette called 'How to Train Your Voice.' It could tell people how you do what you do."
Ernie Anderson points the car back into heavy traffic, spinning the steering wheel with one hand. "The trouble is, I don't know how I do what I do," the familiar voice replies. "I just do it."

Another profile talked about the Camel Lights that weren’t far from his reach. If they helped him with his 27-year career at ABC, he paid a price. Anderson died on February 6, 1997 of lung cancer. He was 73.

More Eyes, More Feet

Daffy Duck takes on a Hawley Pratt-designed dog as he tries to get a home for the winter in Cracked Quack (1952).

The duck distracts the dog by throwing a bone out the window. The dog chases after it and stops instantly, with gravity doing its work.



Multiple eyes when the dog realises it’s in mid-air.



A mad scramble to get back to the window. The dog sprouts extra feet. These are some of the frames, animated on ones.



Manny Perez, Ken Champin, Virgil Ross and Art Davis are the animators.

Barn Dance

Lem and Daisy Goon square dance in a barn in Tex Avery’s The Hick Chick (1946).



The background is by Johnny Johnsen.

I don't know if this is a Preston Blair scene, but he, Ed Love, Walt Clinton and Ray Abrams are the animators.

Sex, Shoes, Benny, Burns

Jack Benny talking about s-e-x?

Well, not quite.

After Jack got out of the weekly TV business, he produced and starred in a number of TV specials; he was working on one at the time of his death in 1974. One was named after Dr. David Reuben’s famous book “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask” (substitute “Jack Benny” for “sex”). Reuben even appeared on the special (picture to the right).

The sketches didn’t really rise above the tepid kind that filled variety shows of the era. The highlight may have been Phil Harris barging in like he used to do in the radio days (in fact, they repeated a routine about Doo Wah Ditty from a radio show).

Yes, the special skirted around the sex subject (or, more accurately, Reuben’s book), but it came up in promotional interviews, too. Here’s one from February 22, 1971 (the special aired March 10th).

Jack Benny Says Nude Scene in 'The Graduate' Was Sensational
By MARILYN BECK
When I visited the NBC rehearsal of "Timex Presents Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Jack Benny—But Were Afraid to Ask" I never expected Jack and I would end up in the network commissary talking about sex. Somehow it just didn't fit the Benny image.
One of the guests on Jack's March 10 NBC special is Dr. David Reuben, author of the best-selling "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex—But Were Afraid to Ask." Which just naturally led Jack into easy discussion of the universally popular subject, although he did allow, "I don't know why everyone's so preoccupied about it. Most everything you need is common sense."
It's rather a gas to hear the 77-year-old comic, who's so famous for his prim and proper "W-e-e-l-l!" stage line, says he thought the nude scene between Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman in the "Graduate" was a classic, "Absolutely sensational!"
Not only does he keep up with today's films, but he's pretty darn hip when it comes to the best-selling sex manuals. His thoughts on "The Sensuous Woman": "Awful! Simply a waste of time! I think it's a hoax, secretly written by a man for gullible women."
Jack was getting so warmed up to his subject that when I reminded him, after an hour, that the crew was expecting him back at rehearsal, he joked, "Oh, let them wait a while and if they complain I'll have two choice words for them, both of which can be found in Sensuous Woman."
W-e-e-l-l! For goodness sake, Jack, you'll, shatter all the myths!
Actually, the idea of the NBC special was to unveil the man behind that famous myth. From what I could catch at rehearsal, you end up with some awfully funny moments, including Lucille Ball playing a Goldwyn Girl and Jack a lecher in one skit, but at fade-out the real Jack Benny still stays pretty well hidden.
"We even had to cut the skit that shows I'm not a cheapskate," he said. "I guess we'll have to save that for another show."
Jack's not the typical star who knows little about his projects until rehearsal time. He takes active part in the writing, the casting, the final editing.
"Usually I can tell at first draft if it's going to be a good show. But this one was different. I didn't feel really confident until Lucy, George Burns, Phil Harris, Dr. Reuben all came into rehearsal raving about their bits."
Jack went into rigorous preparation for the show the day after returning from a 12-day ocean cruise to Acapulco. His wife, Mary, didn't accompany him on the trip, "Because she hates that sort of thing, all that lying around in the sun."
About his marriage to Mary Livingston, his one-time professional partner, he says, "We've been together 44 years now, and each year keeps getting better, happier for us."
Those who know the Bennys know at least part of the reason for their happiness. He's a very real, very warm, very nice man.

I suspect what you’ll read below was originally contemplated as George Burns promoting the Benny special. But Burns is always full of stories, and they’re far more readable than pushing a TV show, so the column only has a brief mention of the special. This appeared in papers February 19th.

Burns Talks About Benny
By TOM GREEN
Gannett News Service
HOLLYWOOD — George Burns sat in his office with a cup of coffee and the inevitable cigar and talked about the miserly concert violinist.
“Jack Benny,” said George Burns, “is working more now than he did last year. The older he gets, the more he works. He's two years older than I am and I wouldn't do it.”
Burns, who is 75 and seems to be enjoying the luxury of semi-retirement, had just completed a guest appearance on 77-year-old Benny's second television special of the Season for NBC, "Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know About Jack Benny, But Were Afraid to Ask." It airs Wednesday, 9-10 p.m.
"I don't know why he does it," says Burns. "He just loves the business."
There's nothing offhand that Burns can think of that he'd like to know about Benny that he doesn't already know. The two have been friends for well over 40 years.
"There's some things I'd like to forget," he smiles.
He met Benny while he was dating Gracie Allen, his late wife and show business partner for more than three decades. Benny started dating a girl who was rooming with Gracie. That was before he met Mary Livingston.
"He was doing a good single then. He was making $400 a week, which was a good salary. He was doing stingy jokes even then. When Jack was young, stingy jokes were fun. They came from Scotland. Jack made being stingy a national institution. Now the Scots make jokes about Jack Benny.
"The first time I met him, actually, was on the phone and we were disconnected. That made him laugh. Up until then. I didn't know I was a comedian."
Burns has done his share of having fun on stage with Benny's well-known eccentricities, but he is obviously very fond of the man.
"Just before we taped this show, Jack had two wisdom teeth taken out. He felt bad. He came in with an overcoat on. But as soon as he got to the script he forgot about it. There was that vitality. When they called off the rehearsal at 1 p.m., he said if that was all he was going to take a violin lesson. And he did."
Benny's enchantment with the violin makes Burns smile, too.
"He's mad about it. The other things he does are just a sideline. His big therapy is the violin. There's nothing that Heifetz has that Jack doesn't have, but when they play it's an entirely different thing. If Jack didn't play, he'd be just like Heifetz.
"When he bought his Stradivarius. I was there and Isaac Stern came over. It didn't sound like they were playing the same fiddle. Jack knows how good he is. He plays fast numbers so if he misses a few notes, no one knows."
Burns doesn't even try to keep up with Benny's work pace.
"Why should I?"
He maintains an office and he comes in at 10:30 in the morning and is gone by noon.
"I do about six shows a year, a few talk shows and a few commercials for a bank. You couldn't pay me to get back into weekly TV. I'd like to play Las Vegas four weeks every two years."
Besides Burns, the television show guest stars John Wayne, Lucille Ball, Phil Harris and Dionne Warwick, along with Dr. David Reuben, author of "Everything . . . About Sex." Bob Hope makes a surprise appearance.
Burns likes to tell this story to illustrate what makes Jack Benny laugh:
In the early days when he was working with Gracie, the two of them and Jack had the same agent, Tom Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick was a very religious man, one who didn't have the heart to tell an act that it had been laid off. Instead, he would start shuffling in his desk drawers. It happened to Burns and Allen one day. "The minute he did that, you knew you were fired."
Burns ran into Benny out on the street right after getting the news.
"Are you working?" Benny asked.
"No," said Burns. "He looked in his drawers."
The line wiped Benny out and he stood there and laughed while a crowd of 30 or 40 people stopped to see what was going on.
"He finally went into a shoe store and bought a pair of shoes he didn't need."
Burns, of course, is keeping up with his singing.
“I'm a natural-born singer. I enjoy my singing. I've never walked out on myself.”

The Captain's Inside Jokes

These two in-betweens likely don’t strike you as being from an MGM cartoon.



This is from Mama's New Hat, a 1939 Captain and the Kids short directed by an uncredited Friz Freleng.

There are some names in the cartoon, buried in the background. As a side note, I could have sworn I posted this some years ago but I can’t find it, so away we go.



If you check the door, you'll see Fred Quimby's name. The name on the awning refers to Bob Kuwahara, who must have been an assistant or in-betweener at MGM. He was an animator for Terrytoons in later years.



Fred McAlpin was MGM's sound editor. A few of his effects found their way into cartoons made by the Hanna-Barbera studio after MGM closed.



The “Harris” reference is puzzling as I don’t know of a Harris who worked at Metro. Ken Harris was, of course, at Warner Bros.



Here we come to a reference to character designer Charlie Thorson. The term “pansy” isn’t exactly complementary (Thorson was married with a small son). By the time this cartoon was released, Thorson would be gone from MGM.

He was a Canadian who had moved to the U.S. in 1934. He got a job with Disney. Thorson’s biography tells how he was working on two cartoons at the Harman-Ising studio in May 1937 that were to be part of the Disney release when he got a confidential invitation from Quimby. MGM was going to dump the Harman-Ising studio and make its own animated shorts. Thorson signed with Metro on June 7, 1937, several months before the studio actually opened.

Thorson became disillusioned with the factionalism at the new operation and wrote his feelings in a letter to Quimby on April 15, 1938, saying how displeased he was with the quality of the cartoons. He quit the studio a month and a half later and went to work for Leon Schlesinger, designing Sniffles for Chuck Jones and a rabbit for the Hardaway/Dalton unit. Next, he found work with the Fleischer studio in Miami and in 1941 with Terrytoons in New Rochelle. He later joined Dave Fleischer at Columbia/Screen Gems and then designed for George Pal’s Puppetoons. Thorson returned to Canada where his sugary-cute drawing style became obsolete. He died in Vancouver in 1966.

Boogie Woogie Army

A training dummy comes to life and turns things around for a soldier in the 1941 Walter Lantz cartoon The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company “B”.



This short was nominated for an Oscar, perhaps because of Darrell Calker’s score. It can't be the gags. Bugs Hardaway and Lowell Elliott are responsible for a story about an army that beats up bugle boys and goes back to sleep while reveille is playing (at least, I think that’s what they’re doing).

Lantz pushed this through production. The Hollywood Reporter disclosed on April 9, 1941 that Lantz had purchased the cartoon rights for the song, then on July 30th the short was already before the cameras.

Alex Lovy and La Verne Harding get the animation credits. Danny Webb supplies his froggy voice while Hot-Breath Harry is, I suspect, played by one of the singers.

Thirsty Tulips

Betty Boop waters her plants on her penthouse as she sings “Penthouse Serenade” by Jason and Burton.

First, she waters the dirt in her plant box and tulips sprout.



Now she pours from her watering can and the tulips drink the water. The last one grabs a glass, lets Betty fill it and drinks from it.



Willard Bowsky is the only credited animator in Betty Boop’s Penthouse (released 1933).

Willie Or Won't He

In the less-than-halcyon days of quiz shows, contestants were coached on how to give the correct answers. On at least one show, though, they were coached on how to sound like they were giving the correct answers.

That show was a panel show. To Tell the Truth featured someone of renown and two people pretending to be him/her. Four show-biz people on the panel had to guess which one was the real person.

The show would have been a disaster if the two phoneys were left to wing it. They got some help. One of the show’s staff members was Willie Stein, a former songwriter. He explained to his local newspaper how they found the fakes. This story is from the Yonkers Herald-Statesman, October 25, 1960.

Willie Stein Seeks 'To Tell The Truth' But Teaches Six Persons A Week To Lie
By HONEY JOAN ALBERT
For a man who pledges to tell the truth, Willie Stein is in a funny business. As associate producer of CBS TV'S panel show "To Tell The Truth," it's his job to teach six people a week to lie about everything they can.
It's not really as bad as it sounds because it's all a game and everybody knows it — everybody except Polly Bergen, Tom Poston, Kitty Carlyle and Don Ameche. They're the panelists on the show who try to guess who's what he says he is and who isn't. The whole idea comes across better in the watching than in the telling.
"Many odd things have happened to me looking for imposters," said Mr. Stein, who lives at 15 Manor House Drive, Dobbs Ferry. "If I see someone walking down the street, or just sitting quietly in the subway, I'll approach him and tell him I can use him on television."
The "approach" system doesn't always work so well. Once he saw a lady boarding a bus he thought would be perfect as "a side partner for a store detective. When he told her so, she headed for the policeman on the corner. Mr. Stein walked quickly in the other direction.
Another time, he almost followed a girl into the locker room of Hunter College for Women in New York City. This time a policeman volunteered his services without ever, being asked. It didn't take too long before Mr. Stein began to carry credentials and avoid the line, "Do you want to be on television?"
"Finding people, briefing them, and preparing them for the show is a very intricate business," he explained. "We work only from week to week because it takes that long- to get everything in readiness."
The week's show has its beginnings on Wednesday and Thursday evenings when the staff gathers to submit names of the central or "real" characters. People will write in to make themselves available but this practice is not encouraged as it is on Truth's sister shows, "I've Got a Secret," and "What's My Line."
From Magazines, Newspapers
"A man might write that he shot down 30 Japanese planes in the war, but we once had on the show a man who shot 3,000 enemy soldiers and received the Congressional Medal of Honor. "We find out about people like this from magazines and newspapers, Mr. Stein explained.
Finding people in the flesh isn't so hard to do because the staff will make it its business to gather in the places which will attract the type of person needed. An "outdoorsy" person with a ruddy complexion might best be found at a football game, for example. "When we set out to select the three spots each, week from the big pot. we must remember that we're aiming for balance and appeal for all," Mr. Stein cautioned. If we have a serious personality we'll balance him with a man in the next spot who will appear amusing to the audience. There are 750 people who will be watching in the studio."
The next step for Mr. Stein is to draw up a list of the kind of people he needs, with all the physical characteristics carefully stated. Then the staff is on its own.
Interviews Thousands
All day Monday and Tuesday, he interviews people five or ten minutes at a time—so he must size them up accurately and quickly. He sees approximately 50 people a week but the staff takes pictures of each prospective contestant so the files are jammed with thousands of photos. Mr. Stein, in the four years he's been with the show, estimates that the number of candidates he's spoken with has also run into the thousands. Sizing them up gets more accurate all the time.
"The first quality I look for, even before appearance, is intelligence," said Mr. Stein. "I try to determine accent and background also. Similarity to the essential character isn't important, in fact, we stay away from people who are too similar."
Tuesday evening, the wrangling begins again, not for the central characters who have already been chosen, but for the imposters. After they are decided upon, Wednesday is set aside for the briefing sessions. The central character will lecture on his profession to the others, and Mr. Stein, thanks to a bout with the encyclopedia the night before, will fill the gaps. He learns a lot of things that way.
Never Reject A Candidate
"We never totally reject any one candidate," Mr. Stein said. "If we don't use someone for one show, we'll hold him over for another so that everyone who comes to us may eventually be used." He recalled the case of one girl initially selected for a partner to a champion swimmer. She was rejected four more times and finally showed up as a dog-shower.
Friday, the show is ready to go with everyone supposedly knowing how to say that he is what he isn't, with a straight face and a head filled with details about someone else's life. It's a foregone conclusion that every contestant has a good memory.
Everyone except a memory expert, that is. Once Mr. Stein chose one as a partner to a spy in World War II. The expert called before show time to say he had forgotten where he was supposed to be and what time he should be there.
"Goofs" Could Fill Book
The "goofs" that have occured on the show could fill a book. Once a girl who had to stand on a platform wailed that she was afraid of heights, with some minutes to go for show time. Mr. Stein told her to take off her high heels and march — she did — trembling, but the panelists never knew.
"Another time, we had on a Siamese princess with a hard name to pronounce. The first imposter stumbled, the real princess had the intelligence to stumble too, and the third panelist did the same. The show was saved," Mr. Stein said.
Rarely do people refuse to be a contestant, unless business committments prevent. They can win up to $333 and no one goes home with less than $50 because each time a panelist casts an incorrect vote, it's $250 for them. It pays to be a convincing liar.
In recent shows, Mr. Stein has lined up such teams as the man in charge of the animal quarantine station with a carpet designer and a cocoa bean buyer, a baseball trainer with an ice skating instructor and a parking lot owner, and a collector of funds for an advancement society and Garry Moore's assistant.
Records 'Private Hits'
Mr. Stein isn't new to television, or even radio. He had experience in both media as a parody and special material writer for some five shows in 10 years. And most people remember Nat King Cole's "Orange Colored Sky" which he penned 10 years ago. He can claim the credit for 60 records, even though he describes them as "private hits."
Larry, 7, and Judy, 16 months, may well follow in their dad's footsteps. He's convinced they have an ear for music. He's proud of them and of his wife, Ruth, whom he married 12 years ago. They're looking for a new home in the vicinity, and they'll probably take with them their "go away" mat, but they don't mean it.
Mr. Stein was born in New York City, and earned his degree in advertising from night school at City College of New York. Dobbs Ferry residents four years, the Steins are active in the Parent-Teachers Association, the Greenburgh Hebrew Center, and participate in community drives. Mrs. Stein is a member of Hadassah and a recent chairman of the cancer drive.

Stein once told New York magazine how he almost tackled a 6-foot-10 man on Lexington Avenue, and asked him if he could come on the show as an imposter for NBA star George Mikan. The man replied “I am George Mikan.”

He left the show some years before it went off the air (temporarily) in 1968. Among his later stops was the daytime version of the David Letterman Show. Stein died of cancer in 2009 at the age of 92.

Watch Out For That...

“I’m the guy that’s going to catch the fox,” says Willoughby to the theatre audience viewing his cartoon, “because I know every tree in this forest. Every single tree.”



About 12 frames later....



Willoughby isn't fazed, though. He points to the tree he just galloped into and says, very earnestly, “There’s one now.”



This scene is from Of Fox and Hounds (1940), where Tex Avery has decided to turn Bugs Bunny into a fox and Elmer Fudd into a dog. The TV station in my area that ran Warner Bros. cartoons when I was a kid may have broadcast this one more than any other. I like Willoughby (“I ain’t so dumb,” as he and director Tex Avery switch a running gag at the end). Friz Freleng made a Bugs vs fox hunting dog cartoon a few years later. It has its moments but I still like this one.

Dave Monahan and Rich Hogan were Avery’s story team at the time.

Happy 90th Jack Benny

Jack Benny likely never thought that people could listen to his first show 90 years after it aired.

But they can.

It was on this date in 1932 that the Canada Dry programme debuted.

The show does not feature the Jack Benny you would expect to hear. There’s no Mary, Rochester, Maxwell, age 39, vault, or Frank Nelson going “Yehhhhhs?” All that was in the future.

The show seems to have been designed as a co-starring vehicle with Jack and George Olsen’s orchestra. Olsen played musical numbers and Jack joked between them. The first broadcast had no audience at a studio in the former roof garden of New York’s New Amsterdam Theatre. Benny’s patter came from his vaudeville appearances.

Unlike other comedians, Jack was hired to be on the air twice a week, on Monday and Wednesday nights. Radio chowed down pretty quickly on his Orpheum routines. The only solution was to get some help, so Jack hired writer Harry Conn.

Something started to happen. Jack moved away from monologues, instead kibitzing with the NBC staff announcer as well as Olsen and his vocalists. Parody plays were added. Commercials for Canada Dry were somewhat dismissive of the soft drink.

Benny scholar Kathy Fuller-Seeley has discovered that within eight weeks, Jack was talking about hiring someone to handle the show’s volume of mail. But it doesn’t appear all that many stations were airing it. A check of newspapers for May 2, 1932 is a little maddening. One version of the Associated Press radio schedule sent to member papers had outdated listings, with two 15-minute shows in the Benny time slot. However, the following stations were scheduled to run the first Canada Dry programme:

WJZ, New York
KDKA, Pittsburgh
KWK, St. Louis
WMAQ, Chicago
WBZ, Boston
WLW, Cincinnati
KOIL, Council Bluffs, Iowa
WREN, Lawrence, Kansas
WJR, Detroit
WKCR, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
WSM, Nashville
WBAL, Baltimore
WHAM, Rochester (second half only)

Charles E. Butterfield, radio writer of Associated Press, promoted the new show in his column of May 1, so word of it reached people who might have to haul in a distant station to listen to Jack.

The show aired on the NBC Blue network. It was the less prestigious of the two NBC national chains. Jack was not heard on the West Coast until Canada Dry moved the show to CBS in October 1932. No Canadian station picked it up, either. The Ottawa Citizen of May 2 opened its “On the Air Tonight” column this way:

Jack Benny, as master of ceremonies (m.c. or emsee) in screen productions which were usually flops, could always make us laugh no matter how terrible the picture. About the most ingratiating of his tribe, Jack injects his laughs slyly into the continuity, never spoiling a sense of intimate nonsense with the audience. Now he’s on the air, premiering a new series with George Olsen’s orchestra from NBC-WJZ at 9:30 p.m.

The day after the debut, Ben Gross’ column in the New York Daily News called it “a delightful melange of fun and music.” A week later, he was more enthusiastic. “WJZ’s 9:30 program, with George Olsen’s Orchestra, Ethel Shutta and Jack Benny,” wrote Gross, “has qualified as one of our brighter radio attractions. The Olsen music is first rate and so is the Shutta warbling. Benny has surprised many, including this eavesdropper, by the deft manner in which he handles the master of ceremony assignment. And the secret of it all is that these performers inject an informal, spontaneous note into their divertissement.”



Some trivia notes:

● The announcer for the first 15 shows was Ed Thorgerson. He went on to voice sports newsreels for 20th Century Fox, and challenged DuMont’s Captain Video and NBC’s Kukla, Fran and Ollie for viewers as the 7 p.m. newscaster on New York’s WPIX, Channel 11. He died in 1997.
● Not counting the opening/closing theme, there were seven musical numbers in the first programme. At the end of Jack Benny’s radio run in 1955, the band had no number and there was no song if Dennis Day didn’t appear.
● The night before the broadcast, Jack took part in a National Variety Artists’ Fund show at the Met. George Burns and Gracie Allen handled some of the m.c. duties. On May 7, Jack returned to the Met to perform in the Friars Club annual frolic.
● People with future Benny connections were on the air the same evening. The announcer of “Parade of the States” on the NBC Red network was Howard Claney, who pushed Chevrolets when the car company sponsored the Benny show. Also on the Red network was the A&P Gypsies, featuring vocalist Frank Parker, who had a two-year career with Benny. And beaming out that evening from KGO San Francisco was Phil Harris’ orchestra, which spent more than 15 years with Jack.

You can listen to the first programme on the media player below.



As a Tralfaz special feature, author Kathy Fuller-Seeley, who is annotating and commenting on the Benny show's first scripts in a series of books, gives us her insights in the raw interview below. Apologies for the distortion; turning down the level on the mike simply cuts the volume but not the over-modulation.

Late note: For reasons I do not understand, there is visual break-up playing this on some browsers. However, you don't need to see me anyway.