Arise

There are so many great scenes in Rabbit Hood, it’s tough to pick a favourite.

One of the best is when Bugs, disguised as the King, “knights” the Sheriff of Nottingham. Chuck Jones’ timing, the wonderful animation (Ken Harris?), Mike Maltese’s punny names and Treg Brown’s metallic sound effect fit so well together. The frames below in each group below are consecutive.

Arise, Sir Loin of Beef!



Arise, Earl of Cloves!



Arise, Duke of Brittingham!

(This is an inside joke. Brittingham’s was a restaurant/watering hole adjacent to CBS/KNX radio on Sunset Blvd. This was a favoured spot of the Warners writer with the regal bearing, Tedd Pierce, who won the sobriquet “The Duke of Brittingham”).



Arise, Baron of Munchausen!



Arise, Essence of Myrrh!



By now, Jones has set up a rhythm in the situation, so he can cut to a close-up of Bugs. We don’t see the sheriff getting smashed now, but because Jones has established it, and we see the battered sceptre move and hear the sound effect, we still laugh because we can picture what’s happening.



This is just one frame of the sheriff struggling to get up. It’s all wonderfully rendered.



Jones’ animation team at the time was Harris, Phil Monroe, Ben Washam and Lloyd Vaughan.

Roller Dog

Roller skates play a role in one of Tex Avery’s sleep cartoons, Doggone Tired (1949).

The premise is a little rabbit does whatever he can to keep a dog up all night, making the dog too tired to hunt him in the morning.

As usual with many of Avery’s cartoons, dialogue is unnecessary. Here are some of the positions the dog is in when skating uncontrollably on the floor toward the not-unexpected open cellar door.



Ooooh, that bunny is so Disney-like, isn’t he? He was designed by ex-Disney artist Louie Schmitt.

Bobe Cannon, Walt Clinton, Grant Simmons and Mike Lah are the credited animators. Rich Hogan and Jack Cosgriff were the writers.

You Called, Mervyn?

It’s a television pairing that sounds improbable—singer and game show host Merv Griffin, and an actor who played condescending English butlers, Arthur Treacher.

But it worked.

Treacher was in his 70s when Griffin tabbed him to be an announcer. But not only did they survive together for several years and versions of The Merv Griffin Show, Treacher embarked on a second career as a canny businessman, first with a rent-a-servant operation and then lending his name to franchised fish-and-chip restaurants.

His first career apparently began at the Oxford Theatre in London in October 1919 when he appeared in a musical production of Maggie. In April 1926, he came to New York to appear in Shubert's latest Great Temptations revue with Jack Benny, Billy B. Van, Miller and Lyles and a young lady who later became known as Penny Singleton. Motion pictures followed, with television arriving afterward, including a guest appearance on the Tonight show with fill-in host Griffin. They connected again in 1965 when Westinghouse dumped Steve Allen to syndicate Merv.

Treacher had a wonderfully dry and sometimes withering wit that scored well with talk show audiences. Here’s a King Features story that appeared in papers on April 11, 1970.

Presence of Dour Arthur Treacher Enhances a Television Broadcast
By CHARLES WITBECK
HOLLYWOOD—What this country needs is more grumblers.
This comes from a dour old man, Arthur Treacher, Merv Griffin's associate, who makes a very comfortable living grousing. You'd think Treacher would want to keep quiet about his secret in an age where friendship, the big smile, the glad hand and assume interest are considered essential to getting ahead.
But Arthur isn't worried about competition. The man has sinecure with his boss who only asks, "When will you have had enough?"
"When I feel badly," answers Arthur. Going on 76, he knows full well the beauties of his position. No other job could come close in matching benefits. Treacher leaves his house at three in the afternoon, and returns at 8:45 in the evening having performed, and taken time for drink and probably an excellent dinner at Sardi's, or some other good restaurant, where he reacts kindly to acclaim and familiarity from guests and waiters.
He represents the grand old man accustomed to receiving tribute and respect from associates, and he doesn't have to do a blasted thing in return, except peal off a few anecdotes about Hollywood days, or put on a look of disgust for the television camera when the guest becomes a bore. The man doesn't even to think to live this way.
Treacher really cinched this dream job by submitting to 85 minutes of silence on an old Griffin show, listening to guests prattle on, before he broke in with "I think you're all idiots.
"Is that all you did?" questioned Griffin, trying tp recall how the show went off.
"That's enough," Treacher replied, and his boss agreed.
Naturally, any employer with this kind of forebearance deserves recognition. Arthur puts Merv at the top of the list with this example of the understanding leader. He was grumbling a bit before the show one afternoon within earshot of the host, who touched Treacher on the arm and said, "You seem to be in bad temper. Go get yourself a drink before we begin."
Mr. Treacher's temper is decidedly on the bilious side these days because of a hepatitis bout, which means laying off the alcohol, a condition foreign to the man. "I have always been a credit to the distillery people," he said, anxious not to ruin his image.
Perhaps a liking for drink and bad temper go hand in hand. The perfect example is W. C. Fields, a man lionized by the young, a type needed desperately for their lack of humanity to the kiddies. Treacher isn't quite sure whether he agrees with this line of reasoning, but he knows grumbling is welcomed by youth. With Arthur this attitude came more or less by accident.
In his Hollywood days, Treacher was typecast as the English butler, competing for parts with Eric Blore. The two finally met in an M. G. M. picture in which they were rude to each in church, and Treacher admits he was far nicer than Blore, who "grumbled beautifully" even off the screen, but he picked up, Eric's trade secret.
Treacher doesn't expose his true nature on the air. Most of the act is a put-on, since it would take effort to use true feelings which are kept hidden. The actor claims he has a black heart, and says he's sick to death of “everyone sitting around on their hind ends talking about pollution, and not doing anything about it. If you're going to beef, action must follow, an English tradition.”
Naturally, at his age, grousing without backing it up, is accepted. The trick is to do it with humor, and not become a bore. Wit is essential, a good memory necessary, plus an ear for the latest anecdote. Treacher keeps in touch through cab drivers, newsboys, waiters and doormen.
“I never send food back,” he reposts, "nor am I ever rude to waiters, doormen or taxi, drivers. I even let some call me Artie, which like Perc, is an abomination."
For his pleasure, Mr. Treacher merely reads and frequents Aqueduct race track, an 18-minute ride from home. As for television, he never looks at the set. "It's too exciting," he says, deadpan.

CBS didn’t want Treacher on the show to begin with, Griffin once wrote, claiming the network’s research said he would only attract an older audience. The ratings showed otherwise. CBS then tried to use Griffin’s move from New York to California in September 1970 to get rid of the esteemed gent. But Treacher saved them the trouble, telling Griffin he did not wish to go back to the West Coast.

Here’s a story from the Rome Daily Sentinel of July 23, 1974 where Treacher shrewdly gets almost a quarter page of free publicity for his business.

'Naughty' Arthur Treacher denies fame, admits greed
By JEFF COPLON
At 80, Arthur Treacher is the perfect jocular old Englishman, complete with red lace, jutting chin and a presence at once commanding and gentle —Winston Churchill with a wink.
Treacher walks a little stiffly these days, his face is jowled, his pants rise high over a comfortable paunch. But he is nonetheless a rare octogenarian who has been more mellowed rather than declined with the passing years; the brain is still alert, and the delivery and timing are faultless, like that of a lead actor in a long-running hit play.
Now the king of a tartar sauce empire known as Arthur Treacher's “Fish ‘N Chips”. Treacher has spent the last two days in the area promoting local franchises.
There are now nearly 300 "Fish ‘N Chips,'' and in two years, according to Treacher, there will be 1,000. Their namesake spends a fair amount of time on the road.
Treacher will be at the Rome "Fish N Chips" franchise at 6 p.m. today.
While insisting that he's "not a traveling salesman," Treacher spends a fair amount of time on the road promoting the nearly 300 “Fish 'N Chips” throughout the country. He said he genuinely likes the product's he's hawking— "thank God, it would be awful if I didn't" — and even goes so far as to rate it higher and less greasy than the British original.
Treacher is bemused but hardly defensive about this latest twist to a career which has ranged over two continents and a half-century in on stage, screen, radio and television, most recently as the naughty but lovable sidekick to popular talk show host Merv Griffin.
"I don't think I've brought anything to the culture of the world." he said "When I did movies, I always looked at how much I got from them. My favorite film picture was the one I got paid the most for."
He is equally unimpressed with his growing fame: "People say I'm famous, but then so was Capone. I don't want any of this."
Treacher worked in his last play, “Camelot,” eight years ago, and he cannot conceive of doing another one.
"Theatre, the thought of going out every night and performing the same lines, bores me stiff. And it's not the same any more We used to have more fun in the early days, we'd go to a restaurant after the show and people from other plays would come and we'd kid each other.
"But after Camelot, everyone went their separate ways after the performance, there was no camaraderie."
Treacher also laments the disappearance of "the great, great stars, where the people went to see the star and didn't care what the play was.
"There were magnetic people like Al Jolson. It was just a joy to be with him near the end of the show, he'd get sick of the play sometimes and asked the audience if they wanted to know what happened at the end.
"Then he'd tell them, and he would sing and dance for them for an hour or more He was a man's man."
Treacher lists his favorite leading ladies as Joan Crawford, Ethel Merman, Ethel Barrymore and Shirley Temple, with whom he made six films, either as "a butler or a broken-down vaudeville man."
His own career began with a role as chorus boy in a 1919 London production. "I had always wanted to be an actor when I was a boy." he said. "My parents would take me to the theatre and the circus and I took to it right off."
In 1926, Treacher came to New York, and he's lived in the area ever since. He has returned to England for a few visits, but says he doesn't really miss it.
"When you get to be 80," he said, "most of your friends are dead. And England has altered a great deal physically. The houses in my mother's village have all been made over into apartments and condominiums. "
Treacher conceded, a bit coyly, that his image as a dignified and occasionally inebriated rake on the Griffin show was "all true — I went to Sardi's often to have a few drinks before doing the show." But was he ever actually . . .
"Sloshed? Oh yes, not enough to upset my brain, but my eyes were sometimes quite bloodshot. One time I told Griffin: ‘To be on your bloody show, you've got to be drunk.’"
More seriously, Treacher said he had a great affection for Griffin, and that "his was the only show I would ever go on." In between his bouts of promotional work, Treacher pursues his hobbies of French cooking and reading in his country home in Douglastown, Long Island.

Griffin carried on talking without Treacher until the mid-'80s; he ended up extremely wealthy due to smart business deals in real estate and television. He always talked warmly of his association with the former film and stage star, even after Treacher died in December 1975.

Ah, the Old Pepper Gag

Disney’s second-rate version of Felix thinks (you can see the wheels turning) and an idea pops out of his head in Alice’s Balloon Race (1926).



Julius engages in the pepper-creates-sneeze cliché to get a hippo to blow Alice’s downed balloon back into the air.



I imagine the pepper gag dates back to newspaper comic strips before this.

The cartoon bears the name of Walt Disney and producer M.J. Winkler.

Eyes of Lantz

Abou Ben Boogie gets a load of Miss X as Darrell Calker’s brassy score plays in the background of this 1944 cartoon from the Walter Lantz studio.

In the first part of the scene below, there’s movement in every frame. Gravity (follow-through action) moves Miss X’s clothes in one frame, then her drawing holds in the next frame while Abou’s eyes combine and enlarge. The action alternates like that.

You’ll notice the eyes throb in a way; they pull back in a bit, then extend.



Miss X is on a held cel as Abou looks up and down, blinks twice, and his eyes pull back in. That part is animated on ones and twos.



Pat Matthews animates the dance scenes and they’re truly well done. Director Shamus Culhane uses only solid colour in the background in a number of places and, for whatever reason, has cycle animation of Miss X strutting, but you can only see the upper third of her body.

There are dopey, cross-eyed characters as well, so you know Bugs Hardaway had to be involved in the story.

Unfortunately, Abou Ben Boogie was the second and final of the Miss X cartoons. She was too much for the censors.

Jack on Jokes

“New jokes are hard to find,” claimed Jack Benny. In the vaudeville days, you didn’t need to look very often. An act moved across the continent and took the same gags with it. Only with radio was a fresh show needed every week.

The Benny solution was, eventually, to create new characters and situations and then use variations on old jokes. Jack didn’t write these—he had Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin come up with the Maxwell and Rochester and Dennis Day’s battle-axe mother and Phil Harris’ carousing—but he watched over the writers meetings to ensure they got the best show possible.

Coronet magazine interviewed Jack for its July 1941 edition. He breaks down humour more than I’ve seen him do it in other magazine features.

GAG-COINING AND GAG-FILCHING, AS DISCUSSED (WITH DETOURS) BY AN EXPERT ON BOTH SUBJECTS
THIS ONE WILL SLAY YOU
by Jack BENNY
DON’T get me wrong. I’m no Woollcott, but, well, there are lots of people who think I tell a swell story—among them Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone, and my relatives in Waukegan, Illinois.
Maybe I’m an authority on forms of story and joke-telling because I’ve had many half-hour programs of practice on good citizens whose only defense is a quick flip of the dial. Maybe it’s because I have learned from bores I have had to listen to, what not to say. (This last statement is not necessarily meant for Fred Allen.)
Why, anybody knows you don’t have to be a Woollcott to bring down the house—private or public—with a gag, joke, or story. And it doesn’t even have to be a new anecdote you’re telling. But it has to have a new twist.
Just the other day Mary pulled the latest variation on the oldest joke while talking with Don Wilson, who asked, “Who was that lady I saw you with last night, Mary?”
“That was no lady,” she answered. “That was Jack. He only walks that way.”
Unless you get a new twist, you may as well detour around a gag like that. It might be a good idea to do it anyway. New gags are hard to find or build. Ask any jokesmith. But there are certain standard forms that are the skeletons for all jokes. “That was no lady” is just one. A second cousin to that skeleton Methuselah, the “my but you have a kind face—the funny kind” gag came out like this in Bob Hope’s latest version: “You have a face like a saint—a Saint Bernard!”
Which not only brings to light gag-remodeling to fit changing times, but also the epigram, the parlor artillery of Mr. “Information Please’ Levant. I don’t want to steal even a clap of Mr. Levant’s thunder, but just as a fact, the epigram is old enough by hundreds of years for pension.
Now if Fred Allen, who loves me like a relative—a distant one —were going to insult me, he might build it up in this way:
“Jack, you know.” He smiles and pats me on the back. “You know you’re beginning to grow on me.” (A pause for effect.) “Grow on me—like a tumor!”

The whole thing amounts to an O. Henry twist. The unexpected comes where you expect the expected. Or does that sound like Gerty Stein? Psychologists have tried to find out what makes people laugh. They are about as successful as celebrities who try to keep stork secrets from Winchell. Even gag-writers who help put words into our mouths can’t make two and two equal two and two. They can throw out laugh-lines, but they can’t write a thesis on the whys and wherefores of them.
Most lives of the party are epigrammists, if you’ve noticed. It doesn’t take an Einstein I. Q. to fashion them. Even I made one up once—the “tumor” gag—and then what did I do with it? I gave it to Allen. All I did was get a pattern. Say, for instance, you wanted to tell someone off. Perhaps your wife, landlady, husband, sweetheart, or a speed cop. You might say, “You do something to me”—very earnestly and as an afterthought—“nauseate me.”
The old refrain “everything’s been done before” covers the joke situation. Script writers who work tooth and nail on my screen and radio shows—I find cuticle among the pages—say there is a limited number of dramatic situations. Change of settings and character make them sound different.

HERE’s an example of what I mean with a follow-up of the most modern version. Remember the one about G. B. Shaw who was approached by a beautiful actress whose brains were at a one to four ratio with her beauty? Well, the gal proposed their marriage and union, saying, “With my beauty and your brains think what a child we could have.”
Shaw deliberated for a moment and answered, “Think how tragic it would be if it had my beauty and your brains.”
Well, the other day Joe E. Brown dressed that one up in 1941 togs, explaining that in his boyhood he had had two main ambitions: to play ball like Tris Speaker and speak like William Jennings Bryan. “I played ball like Bryan,” he concluded ruefully.

A GOOD memory is handy for the person who wants to be known as a wag. He has to remember those upon whom he has inflicted his jokes. None of the 57 varieties of bores is worse than the one who is loyal to his gags for a lifetime—except the life of the party who takes off on a joke, works up enthusiasm, and comes down the home stretch without remembering the climax.
I know. I’ve been a member of this group more than once, having to say, “I don’t know just how the ending went, but it was very funny—ha, ha, ha.” And that was a solo laugh.
On a par with us who sometimes forget the punch lines are those who through lack of imagination or memory miss the point entirely when they record a good joke and muff it in telling. For example, the traveling Englishman who was overwhelmed by the thousands of acres of golden corn waving over Iowa. Hour after hour he had been seeing it on both sides of the train.
At a weatherbeaten rural station, a farmer in straw hat got on the train, sitting beside the Englishman because that was the only empty seat. Seeing his chance, the Englishman, monocle and all, turned to the farmer:
“I say, my good man, what do you do with all these hundreds of thousands of acres of corn?”
“‘Waaal, I tell you,” said the farmer slyly, “we eat what we can, and what we can’t we can.”
It took the Englishman five minutes for proper reactions, and he laughed with proper reserve, vowing he would pull the joke on his friends at the Drones Club when he got back to London. He did. He described the corn at length, giving the story a sound buildup. Then one of his impatient friends interrupted—“But, listen, old fellow,” he said, “what do they do with all that corn?”
Beaming and on the threshold of triumph, the Englishman capped it off: “Simple. Very elementary indeed. They eat what they can, and what they can’t they tin!”
While I’m on the subject of bores, I might mention the raconteur—Roget’s Thesaurus is on my left—who takes an evening’s lease on the floor. Inasmuch as most people have at least a favorite joke or story to contribute to the chatter, the monologuist freezes them out and sours his own audience.
Among the most obnoxious bores I have known is the variety that condescends, throws Boston “A’s” all over the room, and explains the obvious.
Platform speakers, equipped with water pitcher, glass, and note-stand, rarely if ever start a lecture without first winning the audience by revealing an embarrassing experience they’ve had, or some humiliating incident that can be tied in artfully with the lecture.
Once the speaker has his audience’s sympathy, he is ready to go to bat. A story told briefly usually has more punch than the long-winded kind.
Choosing the right words and details is important, but choosing an interesting subject is even more so. Ripley has something in his oddities. He knows what every parlor entertainer should know—that the spotlight should focus on unusual facts about a subject—not on facts we all know.
Chuckles and smiles a fellow gets from his audience depend a lot on his listeners’ mood. But by exaggerating, using punchy colorful words, speaking in a modulated voice—monotones are out this season as they are in every other he can put a lift into his stories. In a minute I’m going to sound as heavy as H. L. Mencken; so I’d better put a stop to this. But, first, have you heard the one about Samuel Johnson, the great literary critic of the eighteenth century?

ALL RIGHT. A brittle and sharp wit, Johnson was so sought after in literary circles that the Emily Post of her day could hardly omit inviting Johnson to her supper party, despite what she had heard about his boorish table manners.
She sat at the head of the table aghast. Everybody was for that matter. Everything they had said about Johnson was true. He siphoned his soup with such vigor that the veins in his forehead bulged and his face glowed. Perspiration beaded above his brows. Glances that withered the lettuce —glances from the many shocked —didn’t faze Johnson. He elbowed through his main course under par to the dessert, a steaming hot pudding.
Before anyone else started, Johnson began fanning the pudding with his napkin. Every guest at the long table gaped. What next? He dug in his spoon, shoveling it into his mouth. Suddenly he howled with pain. It burned his mouth, and he spat the blob of pudding back into his dish. Glaring angrily at his hostess, he snorted, “A fool would have swallowed it!”
Stories, jokes, and anecdotes are born every day—perhaps new ones or perhaps remodeled ones. Some of us can remember them. Others can’t. Although a memory would be doing us a favor to forget some well-worn stories, the point is, a storyteller must have a good stock on tap, a better than average memory, a feel for what’s dramatic, a clear vision of his story, and a capper line at the end.
There I go into things deeper than Joe Miller. First thing you know I'll be talking about something I don’t know a thing about.
But, as I said in the beginning, I’m no Woollcott, but you could do a lot worse than read what I have to say about story-telling. For instance, you could talk with Fred Allen!

Among world-famous violinists, Jack Benny is ranked as the foremost radio and screen comedian. His rendition of The Bee is too well known to require comment. Benny lives in Hollywood with his wife, Mary Livingstone, and an adopted daughter, Joan. He points out that in five years in pictures he has never won an Academy Award and is confident that he will never mar this perfect record.

McKimson on Cartoon Art

I have mixed feelings about Bob McKimson, at least when it comes to the cartoons he directed. Some of the stories in his earliest cartoons are a little off-kilter for me; The Grey-Hounded Hare being only one. The Sylvester/“giant mouse” routine was beaten to death. In the later ‘50s, there were too many mild TV parodies (did anyone laugh at “The Honeymousers” shorts?). There is nothing hysterical in the cringe-inducing Pre-Hysterical Hare. Then there was his demand that Rod Scribner “calm” his animation; Scribner eventually moved on to UPA (McKimson’s other wild animator, Manny Gould, hightailed it to Jerry Fairbanks Productions in 1947). And, for some reason, for a while he gave caricatures little craniums and huge mouths.

He did try to vary the sound of his shorts by hiring people other than Mel Blanc (Jim Backus, Sheldon Leonard and Lloyd Perryman among them). Some of the early Foghorn Leghorn cartoons are full of raucous action. His Hillbilly Hare may be considered overrated by some, but I still enjoy it. There are others he directed I quite like. I feel bad for him because he quite unfairly and undeservedly ran afoul of office politics. "I've got scars all over my back," is how he put it to historian Mike Barrier. Friz Freleng wrested Warren Foster away from him and McKimson complained he was asked to accept "borderline" artists. And it should be remembered that when you read of the six-month cartoon studio shut down in 1953, McKimson’s unit was out of business for a year. It was closed several months before the shut down and revived in 1954.

The opinion seems to be unanimous that McKimson was an excellent and subtle animator, and created the definitive look of Bugs Bunny. He didn’t give many interviews over the years, but we’ve found one in the Hollywood Citizen-News of April 24, 1937. He was appointed chief animator of the studio by Leon Schlesinger in August 1939 but here he is referred to as the “head animator.”

Art Need in Movies Told
"Even in comedy the trend is toward the artistic and less toward the grotesque," Robert McKimson, head animator for Loony Tunes [sic] and Merry Melodies [sic] at Warner Bros. studio said today. "To achieve this aim some of the finest artists in the country are in the various studios now, while six or seven years ago there ware comparatively few."
McKimson, who studied art at the Theodora Lukits school even after drawing and looking at sketches all day, explained that the person who wishes to become a cartoon animator must have a good foundation in art.
"Each little character in animated cartoons is constructed and goes through the identical motions, although exaggerated, of a human being," the artist explained, “so it is necessary that an animator study anatomy for construction to train the eye for a definite sense of proportions and to acquire a sense of weight balance.
"Now that Technicolor is used almost entirely in all movie cartoons, a knowledge of painting is a great aid. The color of a character is of vital importance. The color must harmonize with the background and yet not fade or clash with it."
Many studios, including Walt Disney's, recognize this need for anatomy and color study and to further it have training departments for young artists in connection with the studio. McKimson stated, however, that since he had been studying with Lukits for the last three years he has noticed a gradual improvement in his own animation.

McKimson only did a little bit of animating at Warners after becoming a director. He animated almost all of The Hole Idea (finally released in 1955), but it’s more a triumph of story than anything else. The character designs are not very daring and the movement is not stylised.

Perhaps McKimson’s cartoons of the ‘50s were the product of the decade. The ‘50s were sedate. Ed Murrow wasn’t amongst bombs and armed soldiers as in the ‘40s; he was behind a desk. Husbands and fathers weren’t on the battlefront. They were urged to avoid the enemy by hiding the family in a bomb shelter. Families relaxed in front of televisions or around back yard barbecues. Stress was eliminated through over-the-counter pills. It was all so inert.

McKimson’s cartoons reflected this. Characters talked and talked. Movement wasn’t exaggerated all that much (a hole doesn’t move at all). The pace of his shorts was fairly leisurely (the same can probably be said of Jones and Freleng as the ‘50s wore on). It’s unfortunate there wasn’t something more captivating to make up for the lack of the frenetic energy of ‘40s cartoons (such as the designs in ‘50s animated commercials) but McKimson simply may not have had it in him.