Shrink Take

Jim Tyer's distinctive animation at the Terry studio has its devoted fans. He loved changing characters into either jagged or floppy takes. He also did a take where body parts shrank.

This isn't a good example; he was more outrageous in later cartoons. This is 1949's Hula Hula Land, starring Heckle and Jeckle, with frequent appearances of the Terry Splash™.

Dimwit the dog has been tossed ashore by a wave. Cut to his "boss" bulldog who is about to be thrown on top of him.

Dimwit realises what's about to happen. Some rubbery animation.

Now the shrink.

Back to full size as he exits stage left. (Sorry, wrong cartoon series).

Manny Davis directed this cartoon. The animators didn't get screen credit until Gene Deitch showed up in the later '50s.

Who is on Flip's Red Carpet?

Movie stars drop by for the opening of Flip’s drug store/cafeteria in Flip’s Soda Squirt (1933). Do I need to explain who any of these people are? Flip is covering the opening for radio, I see.



M-G-M, which released the Flip cartoons, turned Durante and Keaton into a comedy team for a few pictures. Laurel and Hardy they weren’t.



Okay, a bit of an explanation. Rasputin and the Empress was an Oscar-winning movie released by M-G-M in 1932. Lionel Barrymore played the evil hyponotist.

There’s room for a Paramount star in this premiere, too.

Joe E. Brown shows up later in the short, as does Tyrell Davis and his swish act.

The Butt-ram of Jokes

At the start of 1960, CBS was gamely hanging onto shreds of its radio network programming. A 7 to 8 p.m. comedy block was part of it. Of course, so was former cash-cow Arthur Godfrey in the mornings and evergreen soaps “Ma Perkins,” “The Romance of Helen Trent” and “Young Doctor Malone” in the afternoons. There was another 15-minute affair in the daytime, too, fronted by someone who was a perennial non-star—Pat Buttram.

Buttram was a side-kick, and proud of it. He founded with such sub-luminaries as Andy Devine and Ben Alexander a social club called “The Exalted Order of Sidekicks.” He was a wheezy con artist on “Green Acres” on television and played opposite Gene Autry and Champion in a string of B movies. But he came from radio. He was a hillbilly announcer on WSGN Birmingham and shoved into the national spotlight in October 1934 when he was signed to the staff of WLS Chicago and onto “The National Barn Dance.”

When Autry retired in the mid-‘50s, Buttram was signed by KNX, the CBS affiliate in Hollywood, to emcee a couple of shows that were picked up by the network. His twangy observation style of humour went over well with farm and city folks alike—he wasn’t a rube storyteller but used his wit on things suburbanites knew well.

Here are a couple of syndicated stories. The first appeared in newspapers around November 20, 1965 during the first season of “Green Acres.”

Pat Buttram Makes Another Comeback
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
HOLLYWOOD (NEA) – As you may have noticed Pat Buttram is a very funny fellow with a fast line.
About his film career he says, "I've been in 200 pictures, many of them movies."
About Disneyland he once said, "It's the first people trap ever built by a mouse."
About his rich, one-time boss Gene Autry he has flipped, "He couldn't act and he couldn't sing—but he could ADD."
And about being seated at the dais one night at the Friars Club along with Jack Benny, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, George Burns and Gene Autry, he stood up and said, "I'm the only one here tonight I haven't heard of."
The latter remark, in a way, launched another comeback for Pat Buttram, a fellow who has made more comebacks than a yo-yo. The retirement of Gene Autry had left Pat jobless after 40 movies and 130 telefilms as Autry's sidekick.
By sidekick to Gene he explains:
"I was the fellow he would turn to and say, ‘Shoot low, Pat, they may be crawling.’"
Well, anyway, his appearance as master of ceremonies for a Friars dinner honoring Autry gave him another comeback as master of ceremonies on the banquet circuit. He has averaged two a week for the last five years, plus comedy spots on TV with Ed Sullivan and Arthur Godfrey.
"And now it's funny," he chuckled in his dressing room, "here I am playing another sidekick. But actually the role is more of a bucolic Bilko."
This season the Pat Buttram wit landed him the regular role of sharp Mr. Haney with Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor in the new CBS-TV comedy series "Green Acres." It also gave him another comeback.
As a country slicker there is larceny in Mr. Haney's heart and as Pat sees the role: "Whenever a country slicker out-slicks a city slicker you know it's a good part."
Pat's career goes way back to the old days of radio and the National Barn Dance. He did a regular comedy spot on the show for 13 years, and then went out of orbit until making a comeback in the Autry movies.
Even before the first TV ratings put Green Acres in the top 10 this season, Pat had what he calls "whiffs of the sweet smell of success."
After the first show, he explains, a fellow who once marketed Gene Autry songbooks telephoned Pat about making rodeo appearances and also wondered if he could get Eva to lend her name to a country style cook book.
"Those," grins Pat, "are whiffs of that sweet smell."

“Green Acres” was among the shows dumped in CBS’ rural purge in 1971; Buttram is the one credited with saying the network cancelled everything with a tree in it. That didn’t end his career. Animation fans know about his feature work for the Disney studio. There were other things, too. This article was published around July 20, 1972.

Pat Buttram spreads talent far and wide
By DON FREEMAN
Copley News Service
HOLLYWOOD — It was Pat Buttram, the noted rural philosopher, who once observed: "I'm proud to say that Hollywood has a heart. In Hollywood, if you need sympathy, love, affection, money or friendship, all you have to do is look in the Yellow Pages under pool halls."
Now Pat was saying that things really are tough in Hollywood, with the decline of movie-making and not enough TV jobs to go around. "There's nothing sadder," said Pat, "than an actress running out of money in the middle of a facelift."
I nodded sympathetically and Pat went on: "Why, this one actor I know in Hollywood, he's already spent the $1,000 he thought he'd get if McGovern were elected." Actually, Pat Buttram is no stranger to hard times. "Where I come from," says Pat, "the 'Beverly Hillbillies' show was considered a documentary."
Pat is from the rather small community of Addison, down in Alabama, where his father was a circuit-riding preacher and, he insists: "We were in poverty before it got fashionable."
Today, Pat visits the bank regularly and his career is still winging along — as a comedian, actor, writer, talk show guest, after-dinner speaker and master of ceremonies at show business gatherings and also, at present, emcee of shows at the Southern California Exposition.
For seven profitable years, Pat played in "Green Acres" as Mr. Haney, the country slicker, the rural con man. "Made a nice living as a second banana in a TV series," Pat said. "Should have done it a long time ago. I had a hankering to get into a series once but I took this fella's advice and turned it down. He's real smart, this fella. He's the one who told Eddie Fisher to sit tight until it all blows over...."

For all of his down home country manner, which goes well with his Alabama drawl, Pat Buttram won't sing any folk songs. "You know what a folk singer is," said Pat. "That's someone, who sings through his nose by ear. Which reminds me of a line about folk singers I just sent to Eddy Arnold. Goes like this: ‘A kid who never had to roll a car window down by hand can go out and sing about how tough the times are.’"
Pat writes for an assortment of people. Occasionally, he even sends lines to his old friend, Gov. Ronald Reagan, which might end up in a speech or two. "What I write for the governor are little observations," Pat said. "Like, for instance: ‘If a man holds you up with registered gun and you shoot him with a gun that isn't registered, you're in more trouble than he is.’"
Pat spreads his talents in all directions. Recently he turned out a baseball joke book which, he says, is selling at the rate of 300 a day in ballparks across the country. "I've got a line in the book I first said about the New York Mets when they were so bad. I said that the Mets play like a box of Kleenex — they're soft and gentle and they pop up one at a time."
"I mean, we've got some mighty strange laws. Why, you can see an X-rated movie, where they do everything on the screen, and they can't arrest you. But if you call a friend and tell her about how bad the movie is, they can arrest you for making an obscene phone call."
With his background of 17 years as a bearded sidekick Gene Autry, on movies and TV, and before that his 13 years as a comic on. radio's National Barn Dance out of Chicago, Pat finds himself at home writing for Ken (Festus) Curtis of "Gunsmoke" fame.
"Festus goes out on the real corny fair and rodeo circuit," Pat said. "I give him lines like, ‘Beauty is only skin deep but ugly goes clear to the bone.’ One thing about jokes for the rural circuit — you can go into the bathroom but you better stay outa the bedroom. They love outhouse humor but the only sex jokes they'll take are about cows and bulls."

Buttram had a chance for stardom on TV. We go back to January 1960, when he was still doing his CBS radio show. 20th-Fox signed Hal Kanter to create “Down Home” for him. It never got on the air. Regardless, he had a steady career and died in 1994.

No Product Placement Here

It’s fun, at least for me, to watch cartoons from the 1930s with punny labels or inside gags on product packages. But they didn’t appear all the time.

A good example is in Homesteader Droopy (1954). A third of the way into the short, Tex Avery has the camera focus on a door for a bit so we can read the puns on the inscription.

Later in the cartoon, Droopy Jr. is drinking milk from a garden hose attached to a cow. The bad-guy cattle rustler shoots a hole in the hose. The baby screams out a quick cry.

Mom hears the cry and rushes off scene to solve the problem. Cut to a canister. You’ll see there are no inside gags here, just some phoney printing.

Maybe there’s no gag here because Tex and Heck Allen couldn’t think of one, or they didn’t want to stop the action for the audience to clue into a gag name.

Johnny Johnsen is the background artist and, I imagine, Ed Benedict was responsible for the layouts.

More Inside Warners Gags

I get a kick out of seeing references no one in the theatre is supposed to get in Warner Bros. cartoons. There are a few in the opening of Half-Fare Hare, a rather dull outing from the Bob McKimson unit and released in 1956.



The cartoon’s layout artist is Robert C. Gribbroek. The first railway car belongs to the R.C. & G. Railway. It’s nice to know Bob serves outer space. I don’t think that’s part of his phone number. In 1956 it was HO 5-3688.



Don Foster not only lettered the title cards at Warner Bros., he was in fruit business it seems.



This rail car refers to animator Russ Dyson, who also got screen credit at the beginning, with George Grandpre, Ted Bonnicksen and Keith Darling.



The Gribbroek Pacific Lines own this rail car. That is not a zip code you see. It had not been invented yet.



Again, we get a reference to Don Foster, via initials. I don’t know if there was a FL phone exchange in Los Angeles at the time.

This is another cartoon where writer Tedd Pierce obsesses about The Honeymooners. Kramden and Norton are turned into hoboes in this short, both voiced by Daws Butler (Daws’ phone number in the 1956 directory was Crestview 6-9260). Dick Thomas is the background artist.

Benny and Connie

Jack Benny’s treatment of guest stars on his television show got a ringing endorsement, but it shouldn’t have been much of a surprise.

Everyone in Hollywood certainly knew Jack was no baggy-pants comic squirting seltzer at anyone on stage with him or hogging all the lines. They knew from radio that he made himself the butt of the jokes, and showcased the people who appeared with him, such as Ronald and Benita Colman or Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Marilyn Monroe and her multitudinous handlers trusted Jack more than anyone for her to make her TV debut.

Harold Heffernan’s syndicated column for the North American Newspaper Alliance revealed another name, someone who appeared on Benny’s final season. CBS’ smiling cobra Jim Aubrey may not have liked Jack (who hightailed it to NBC in 1964) but a popular singer certainly did. This short piece was part of one of Heffernan’s columns around October 22, 1964.

High-Priced Coach
Hollywood, Cal. (NANA)—Guess who's turned into the highest-priced coach in show business? Jack Benny, that's who, and he won't take a dime for his services.
He has only one pupil, too, and she's a rich and famous one at that.
The student is Connie Francis, who makes her second appearance on the "Jack Benny Program" over CBS October 30.

"And Jack's the only comic with whom I'll appear," says the brunette singer whose record sales and bank account both run into the millions. "That's because Jack coaches me so beautifully on timing and how to read and put over lines in just the right way. I can't help but look good and let’s face it, I can't afford not to look good on such a popular show as his.
“One must consider, too, that I haven't had quite the years of experience playing comedy that Jack has, because I'm not 39 yet," she grinned impishly. Connie, like all top singing stars, is in great demand from variety shows reaching out for novelty pepper-uppers, but she’s turned down all but Benny. "Nobody else offers me free coaching and pays me big for singing just a couple of songs,” she explains.

Connie evidently changed her mind very quickly. Or maybe her agent changed it for her. Jack was the “only” comedian for another ten days. On November 9th, she appeared on The Jonathan Winters Show, a special on NBC.

As for Jack’s TV show, the 1964-65 season was the last and filled with sketches reminiscent of earlier days when they were done arguably better. The one Francis appeared in had been done twice on radio, except it had the benefit of Mary Livingstone, Dennis Day, Andy Devine, a live audience, and Mel Blanc getting a huge, long laugh from the audience by playing a jackass.

Despite this, Jack and Miss Francis worked well together. And they did appear together again. They performed in a benefit at the Riviera in Vegas in November 1966 for the St. Jude Ranch for Homeless Children.

Explaining Magoo

UPA set out to tell animated stories with a more modern drawing style than generally seen on the screen, with mature characters (that is, no funny animals).

It succeeded. The studio won critical acclaim for its adaptation of Gerald McBoing Boing and then with a grouchy old man named Mr. Magoo. There was just one problem.

The general public.

People generally want something familiar, something they already like. They don’t want one-shot cartoons. They want to see characters they enjoy. They wanted more Gerald and more Magoo. That’s what they got.

But why did they enjoy Mr. Magoo?

That question was answered by someone named Rita Cummings. She wasn’t an animator or a cartoon writer. She was UPA’s PR flack. She capably gave some insight to the Los Angeles Mirror-Daily News in an article published March 3, 1955.

Studio Pal Gives Lowdown on Magoo
In the hot race for the Oscars this season, and the speculation that centers around Bing and Judy, Grace and Marlon, there is still Mr. Magoo to be considered. He, too, is a nominee for the Academy Awards.
Because he is myopic, Mr. Magoo may not know all the time where he's going, but he has many fans, most of them new, who will tell you he is on his way to greater things.
Fascinated particularly by Mr. Magoo’s quaint stumbling, mumbling and bumbling in "When Magoo Flew," his first Cinemascope picture (and the one that got him the Oscar nomination) we called on Rita Cummings, a young and zealous co-worker of Mr. Magoo’s at the UPA movie-cartoon studio, to give us the lowdown on the cantankerous, but lovable gent.

"Well, I think that it is interesting that Magoo wasn't created and cast to star in these pictures," she declares. “He made his original appearance in ‘The Ragtime Bear’ as a supporting player to the bear and Magoo's nephew Waldo. But by the force of his own personality he stole the picture and since that time the roles have been reversed. They sometimes support him.
“Mr. Magoo is usually guided by the best of motives. But due to his inability to see, he has almost always made a basic mistake in what is going on around him, and so goes tearing off on wild tangents from reality. Magoo is about 60 years old. He is retired, has had a comfortable amount of money long enough to be unconcemed with many mundane problems, but is apt to rage if he is being cheated.
Here, though, it is the principle of the thing and not the money itself, which concerns him.
“He likes to think of himself as a hard-headed, practical businessman, but actually, he is a softie who allows himself to be moved solely by his emotions.
“His temper and irascibility are a defense mechanism, a mask on his weakness of vision. He has glasses, but they don’t help him very much, and he won’t wear them anyway. He almost never admits that he can't see. Even when it is brought to his' attention, he will deny it with a line such as, “Why don't they put up a sign?”
“He lives in an ornate gingerbread mausoleum, furnished in cluttered and overdecorated Victorian style, containing everything from paperweights to pugdogs. But he also has a TV set and a garbage disposal unit. His attitude toward Waldo, his callow and none-too-bright nephew, is at once overbearing and tender. He will rage at the lad over some trifling matter, then buy him a car for his birthday.
“Magoo is a literate person. The malaprop does not become him. But he admits to no unfamiliarity with anything. He considers himself conversant on any subject automobiles, golf, insurance, politics, or what have you. So, as he plunges afield, he frequently gets his terminology mixed up.
“He is a helper—a do-gooder and being a forceful personality he always takes charge. His arrangements result in anxiety for others, but he, of course, is blissfully unaware of this.
“We have found that the most successful Magoo stories are based on legitimate and universal themes—something as commonplace as buying a used car, collecting on an accident policy, playing a game of golf or tennis. The charm is in Magoo’s way of handling these situations.
“Magoo is a person who grows on you. I feel I have benefited from my association with him. I admire him honesty and forthrightness.”

Leap Frog Backgrounds

Animated cartoons were moving into representational background art as the 1940s moved toward the 1950s. Even an industrial studio like John Sutherland Productions, founded by a former Disney-ite, realised stylisation was the way to go.

In Why Play Leap Frog? (commercially released in early 1950), you can see that buildings and other things in the background are represented by line art. It makes the foreground stand out better.

Ah, the Travelsnatcher 6! Note the number "1948" above the doors. I wonder if that’s when this cartoon was started.

It’s really a shame none of the artists are credited on this short, one of a number of pro-business propaganda cartoons made for Harding College, some of which were released by MGM. I like the leapfrogging roll of money and price tag, and the bull going to market, but this is a weaker cartoon to me than Make Mine Freedom and Meet King Joe, which were released earlier.

Bud Hiestand is the narrator and Frank Nelson supplies a couple of voices. I don’t know who is playing Joe.

An-Udder Gag

An out-of-control airplane takes aim at a cow in Plane Crazy (1928).

Comedy ensues as we get a perspective of the propeller-driven plane going under the cow’s udder.

Next comes the Mickey-gets-a-face-full-of-milk gag. This was used in Steamboat Willie the same year. Did it appear in one of the Disney Oswald cartoons?

Finally, Mickey gets back on the plane by pushing in the cow’s tail, and lengthening its neck in the process.

Ub Iwerks animated this short with a bit of assistance from Ben Clopton, according to Mike Barrier's book The Animated Man.

The Fickle Finger That Touched Mary Hilt

This is the story of a woman who went on a TV show she didn’t watch and didn’t even like, a woman who won a prize then said it wasn’t enough to meet her needs but asked for something less, a woman whose husband chose a dolphin over the vice-president of the United States, a woman who kicks televisions and chickens.

This was published in the Albany Times-Union of March 8, 1970.

Area Mother's Gag Is a Laugh-In Matter
By BILL KENNEDY
How did Mary Hilt of Averill Park wind up as an anonymous gagster on the Rowan and Martin "Laugh-In" that's due for local showing Monday night?
Here's how Mary tells it:
"I was out delivering eggs one night and Butch said, a detective is coming out to see you. You won a contest. Then this man from the Burns Detective Agency showed up with a four-page affidavit and the first thing I said to the kids was get out or you'll queer it, whatever it is, and I put them out in the chicken coop."
Butch, who brought the good news, is one of the seven Hilt children ranging from 15 to six (Pam, Wendy, Butch, Marjorie, Nicky, Nancy and Alison) who wound up in the coop where the Hilts keep their chickens. The chicken business started three years ago when Mary ran the Park Perkies, an Averill Park 441 Club which had 25 chickens. By the end of this year the Hilts will have 9,000 chickens.
"If I knew in the beginning what I know now, Mary said, "I'd have gassed them all."
So the detective sat in the Hilt kitchen and told Mary she'd won a contest sponsored by Breck, the shampoo firm, but he didn't know the details. He just wanted to know if she had any connection with Breck or the Laugh-In or the advertising agency which represented Breck. She didn't. She was a legitimate winner of The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Contest.
"It was a moron contest," Mary said. "I didn't write anything. It was just a sweepstakes and you sent in your name and address. There were 212,000 entries and out of 30 drums they picked 300 names and took the names to Miami for Miss Breck to pick the winner.
WHEN MARY HEARD that she'd won she checked back to see what the prize was and found it was $20,000. So the Hilt family sat down together and figured out the things they all needed and made a discovery. "The $20,000 wasn't enough," Mary said.
The next day they made an other discovery. Mary had won second prize, not first. That was $1,000 plus a week in California, all expenses paid, and an appearance on Laugh-In. A man from Breck called and told her the prize. She said she couldn't take it.
"I've got seven kids and a lot of chickens," she told the caller. "I could cut off the chickens' heads and put them in the freezer but I couldn't do that with the kids."
So come out for four days for $1,500, the man suggested. We'll pay baby sitters. Fly out, fly back. But I don't fly, said Mary. You don't fly? No said Mary. And I don't even watch Laugh-In and I don't let the kids watch it because of the dirty jokes. Then why, asked the man, did you enter the contest?
"I WANTED A FLYING Fickle Finger of Fate," Mary said, referring to the replica of the Laugh-In gag award — winged finger on a bronze hand.
The Breck man cajoled but Mary resisted. Send us a color TV set and we'll call it square, she suggested. She explained: "My husband won't buy a color set till our black and white one gives out. I been kicking it, we all kick it when we go by it, but it won't give out."
The powers of persuasion prevailed, at last, and the Hilts decided to accept the prize and spend the four days in beautiful Burbank. The decision, said Mary, was chiefly her husband's. Leonard Hilt, a foreman with St. Regis Paper Co. in Scotia, had been a paratrooper in World War II. "He was up 18 or 20 times," Mary said, "but he always got pushed out the door and he said it'd be nice just once to come down with the plane."
It was also Leonard Hilt's decision to immerse the family in chickens, business "Best of the Nest" that grew to such proportions that the Hilts have built (themselves) a $15,000 poultry house, 40 by 100 feet.
"MY HUSBAND thinks this is the way to raise kids," Mary said, "shoveling manure and plucking chickens. Anything to keep them out of jail. The kids've made up a song they call The Poultry Plucker's Plea. One chicken attacked me the other day and I kicked it in the head and killed it, poor thing. I made believe it had got leukosis, but my husband came in and saw it and said to me, 'You been kicking chickens again?' I'm laughing, but I'm not happy. You ever been that close to chickens?"
The Hilts went west on separate planes and Mary went into the rehearsal hall and started looking around for celebrities. The place was full of them, all the Laugh-In regulars and Milton Berle and Carol Channing, but Mary didn't recognize anybody.
"I thought Buddy Hackett was a plumber," she said.
Finally she saw one, obviously a movie star. It turned out to be Ed Friendly, one of the originators of the Laugh-In. "He wasn't a movie star," Mary said, "but he was stunning."
Mary drew applause from the Laugh-In cast when she entered the set. The public relations people asked Mary if they could do anything for her. "Yes," she said "would you mind clearing the set while I say my lines? I heard Bette Davis did that once."
MARY'S LINES — two — come first during the party sequence of the show when all participants are dancing and gyrating. She sits quietly on a stool, looking, she says, like a visitor from the Legion of Decency. She at last says: "That's a no-no." But she doesn't know what it's in reference to. That was to be put in later. The second line comes when Dick Martin takes her by the hand and leads her off-camera. She comments as they go: 'Why me? Why always me?" She's not quite sure what that means either.
Her appearance is never explained on the show, nor is she introduced. "It's all a put-on," explained Mary.
When it was all over and they were leaving they found out that Spiro Agnew was next door at a studio being taped for the Bob Hope show and was scheduled to speak downtown the following day.
"I WANTED TO see him," Mary said, "but my husband wanted to go to Marineland and see Flipper so we missed Sprio." [sic]
The whole event has been an odd experience for Mary Hilt and her family, but then odd experiences are not totally new to her. Some years ago Topps department store in Menands burned down and Mary wrote the owners and expressed regret and explained how much she'd liked the store and wondered whether they'd build another one. Topps liked her letter so much that they paid her $500 to come to the opening of the new store with her family to cut the ribbon. Her husband resisted and Mary retorted: How can I go down there with seven kids and no husband? Finally, Leonard Hilt agreed to go.
His attitude, Mary recalled, I was like that of a man touched by the flying fickle finger of fate: "Who else but my wife would write to a burned-down store?"

You may be thinking we’re dealing with an oblivious, humourless couple of people in this story. Remarkably, that’s not the case. Mary Hilt later became a newspaper columnist, kind of a local Erma Bombeck looking at the odd, ordinary things in life. She was a very community-minded individual, and it’s sad to learn her last years were plagued by Alzheimer’s. She died in 2012. You can read about her interesting life here.