Hittin The Trail to Skeleton Land

Hittin’ the Trail to Hallelujah Land is a disjointed, lacklustre 1931 Warners release starring Piggy who is at the controls of a paddle wheeler like Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie.

For a while, the cartoon is about Piggy escaping from an alligator (to the background song of “Just a Blue-Eyed Blonde” by Gus Kahn and Ted Fiorito). Then it’s about Uncle Tom and skeletons in a cemetery. Finally, almost at the end of the cartoon, the villain shows up and Piggy has to rescue the girl pig.

The skeletons will likely remind cartoon fans of Disney’s The Skeleton Dance, especially in close-up.



There’s a non-Disney gag in here. A skeleton dog jumps out of a grave and barks. It’s kicked back into the grave. The odd thing is there’s a brief puff of dirt, then the scene quickly cuts away. It’s like something was edited out.

Rudy Ising is the director, Friz Freleng and Paul J. Smith are the credited animators. Joe Young and Rube Bloom wrote the title song in 1931 but for which Warners feature, I have no idea.



Yes, so long folks!

The Dog's Not Safe

The bulldog has possession of the whistle that’s been used to summon the cat that brings bad luck, and he’s going to use it to kill him.

The dog hoists a safe high above a spot to drop on the unsuspecting black cat after signalling him with the whistle. The cat simply moves the “X” that marks the spot. You can see the gag by following the frames below. A white card appears for three alternating frames to give a light effect.



Bad Luck Blackie (1948) is a fun Tex Avery cartoon with animation by Grant Simmons, Louie Schmitt, Preston Blair and Grant Simmons. Rich Hogan was Avery’s gag man.

Nanette

She once had a situation comedy based loosely on her own life, but perhaps Nanette Fabray’s show should have been more of a dramatic one.

She had success on the Broadway stage through the 1940s and early ’50—the newspaper PM profiled her in a full-page article in 1943—then was picked to work opposite Sid Caesar on television. Those were the highs.

But then came fears she was going deaf, divorce from David Tebet (later a TV executive), a nervous breakdown that required hospitalisation, then failure at TV stardom.

She overcame it all, going on to a long, high-profile career appearing on top shows.

Our first stop is December 1, 1955. By then, Fabray had left Caesar’s Hour in a display of public mutual admiration with her ex-colleague but over undisclosed contract problems. She had nothing regular to go to. She did what Imogene Coca did after parting ways with Caesar—became an itinerate TV performer.

Nanette Fabray Now Awaits Own Weekly TV Production
By MARGARET McMANUS
NEW YORK — Nanette Fabray, the second of Sid Caesar's ex-television wives and winner last season of two of the top Emmy TV awards, is currently returning to the medium in a series of guest appearances.
A week ago, on NBC-TV's Saturday night spectacular, she revived the musical "High Button Shoes," in which she starred for a year on Broadway. A few weeks ago she appeared as a special guest on Jack Benny's show. On Dec. 20, she will have a straight dramatic lead in Playhouse 90's production of 'The Family Nobody Wanted," CBS-TV.
Granted these are all important roles on important television shows, but what Miss Fabray wants is a weekly television series. The lady wants a show she can call her own.
"After I left the Caesar show last spring, I knew there wasn't time to get a television show ready for this season," she said, "but I'm working on a filmed series for next fall. I've fallen for television. I'm plain hooked. For me, it's the most exciting and challenging of all entertainment mediums."
The former musical comedy star said that before she joined the regular cast of "Caesar's Hour" last year, she had the required amount of lofty indifference to television and she was certain that the theater would continue to be her true love.
"At first I just couldn't believe it was possible to do a show like 'Caesar's Hour' every week," she said. "It's like putting on a new musical comedy every six days. I was overwhelmed. But once I got into the rhythm of it, I loved it. Professionally, it was so stimulating to be able to meet the demands."
Miss Fabray said that for all the old talk about the intimacy of having an audience just across the footlights from you, there is actually much more sense of contact with the television audience. "The immediate applause of a live audience is rewarding," she said, "but there is a definite aura about people in the theater and in the movies. The audience regards you as a race apart. In television, the audience thinks of the performers as their own special, particular friends.
"That night on the Caesar show when I got conked on the head by a falling beam, NBC had to put on extra switchboard operators to handle all the calls. Twelve different women, each one claiming to be my mother, called from 12 different states, trying to find out exactly how I was.
“They weren't trying to pry or probe. They were terribly concerned. So many people tried to get into the hospital to see me that the hospital finally put a guard outside my door. Can you imagine what this means to a performer? Performers delight in this kind of affection and attention. It's intoxicating!"
A slim, brown-eyed woman, with a kind of wide-eyed prettiness, which should deceive nobody, Nanette Fabray is a tremendously hard-working, determined, gifted actress, with talent for both comedy and drama, plus the ability to sing and dance.
Born in Los Angeles, she made her professional debut at the age of four as Baby Nan, did a vaudeville tour with Ben Turpin, the comedian of silent movies, and had a running part in the "Our Gang" comedies, now bring revived on television.
She has not yet seen herself on television in any of the "Our Gang" comedies and she does not look back on her days as a child star with any particular pleasure.
"It's a terrible thing for a child to have to compete in an adult world," she said. "A child should have to worry about nothing more urgent than which doll to take to walk."
She said she was a student at the Los Angeles Junior College, when she won a scholarship to Max Reinhardt's Dramatic Workshop. This seemed to cinch, once and for all, her destiny for the theater.
"I'd been entertaining hopes of becoming a doctor,” she said, "but this scholarship was worth $3,600 and I couldn't afford to pass it up. I guess I'd have been a poor doctor anyway."
Miss Fabray, who is not married at present, has a house in Beverly Hills, "a large, small house, only six rooms, but big, comfortable rooms." She also keeps an apartment in Manhattan. She is a frequent commuter between here and the Coast and even though she spent ten steady years here on the Broadway stage, she regards California as her home.
"My mother and father live in Los Angeles and I have brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews and we're all very close," she said. "But I do get a bit weary of this shuffling back and forth. I like to think that some day I'll get married again and settle down and have a family."
This doesn't necessarily mean she would retire from show business, for television is not incompatible with a domestic family life. And of all the fugitives from Broadway and the movies now on television, no one is more enthusiastic about it than Nanette Fabray.
And since she seems to be one who takes a direct aim at her target and has very few misses, the moral of this tale would seem to be that if Nanette Fabray wants a regular television series, it is merely a matter of time before she gets her chance.
And though it has nothing to do with TV, the stage or screen, Nanette Fabray can even cook—took lessons from the chief chef at the Cordon Bleu.

It took some time, but Fabares got her own, awkwardly-named show, The Westinghouse Playhouse, replacing The Westerner at the star of 1961. It was supposedly taken from her new married life with her step-kids.

“Almost every episode is based on actual happenings in our household,” she told UPI’s Vernon Scott. “It’s very adult and sophisticated.” Cynthia Lowry of the Associated Press disagreed after a viewing. “It was played far too broadly by all concerned, and was full of pretty tired situations and dialogue,” she decided, adding “Nanette Fabray is a great comedienne and seems wasted in the trifle.”

It wasn’t on the schedule for the following season. Fabray continued guest shots, especially with Carol Burnett, and appeared with some frequency on Hollywood Squares. That’s where many viewers noticed her doing sign language when announcer Kenny Williams introduced her.

Here’s a bit of an explanation from a syndicated column of Sept. 14, 1970.

Nanette To Tell Life Of The Deaf
By TOM GREEN
Gannett News Service
HOLLYWOOD — The publicists call her a "lovely lady."
No argument. Nanette Fabray is, indeed, a lovely lady.
She is also a lovely busy lady. In the next month or so, starting with the Broadway musical adaptation of "George M.!" on NBC last Saturday, she is making five special appearances on television.
Among them will be a CBS documentary on deafness to be shown throughout the nation beginning Sept. 22.
In the lobby of the Ambassador Hotel, she sat on the edge of an overstuffed couch giving a demonstration in the difficulty of lip reading.
"See if you can tell what I'm saying," she said.
Her lips moved three times. Each of the words she was forming looked the same.
"Do you know what they were? Pretty, pregnant and present. They all look the same, don't they?"
Nanette Fabray believes that deaf education that concentrates solely on teaching the deaf person to speak at the expense of learning sign language is not right.
"I think the individual need of the child is what's important. Speech is lovely, but education is much more important. Speech comes when the child wants it to. And sign language is very beautiful. It has a grammar and syntax all its own. Kids learn it secretly."
Ask the lady who should know. She was moving toward deafness herself until her hearing was rescued in an operation.
"No one has done a program on what it's like to be deaf. In all the things that have been done they turn off the sound and you lose your audience. In this they use me as a narrator and they show a deaf person driving and going to the store and just coping in everyday situations."
It is obvious that Miss Fabray's work with the deaf is very precious to her. She talks freely about her career as comedienne and her other charitable work, but nothing matches the affection she has for talking about the deaf.
The day before, she had been appointed to the National Advisory Committee for Education of the Deaf. She had gotten congratulations from California Sen. George Murphy.
"I once made a screen test with George Murphy, so I told him now he is a senator and I'm a national advisor."
Add that advisory chore to other assignments with such groups as the National Association of Hearing and Speech Agencies, the UCLA Hearing Foundation, the New York University deafness research center, the National Theater of the Deaf, and much more.
"Of course the roughest part is that you have to show up at board meetings all over the country. But I won't just lend my name to something. I like to work at it."
She is on the board of at least seven national organizations and she admits she runs as much as two to six months behind in her mail.
"I do all my own secretarial work. Well, I can type faster than I can dictate, so that puts me one up. And I have a crazy filing system."
She and her husband, Ronal [sic] MacDougall, the writer-producer who developed "The Name of the Game" series for NBC, live in Pacific Palisades, which is home and office for her.
If there is any interest apart from her work with the deaf that is getting a lot of attention from her these days, it's her membership on the board of the Los Angeles Museum of Science and Industry. "It's amazing that a museum can be so much a part of the lifeblood of a city."
At the museum, she has been involved in a transportation presentation to the city for a monorail system for Los Angeles.
"Alweg built the Disneyland monorail partly to show what could be done. A monorail for Los Angeles has been turned down as not in the public's best interest. But they're talking about adding a bus lane to the freeway. What kind of nonsense is that?"
She is also involved with the museum because her 11-year-old son is taking part in a science workshop program there and is studying things like computers and indexing, radiation and biology. "Honestly, it makes you tear up to hear what the kids do."
Somewhere along the line she manages to work in a full show business career. Like playing George M. Cohan's mother, Nellie, in "George M.!" Or the deaf special. Or a special called "Howdy" with Glenn Ford on ABC Sept. 26.
Or an appearance with Carol Burnett on CBS Sept. 28. Or an ABC movie called "I Don't Want to Get Married" in early October.
"Well, things do go to pot once in awhile. I'm going to have to vacuum the front hall one of these days."
Nanette Fabray has won Broadway's Tony Award and three Emmys for her work with Sid Caesar on television. But those aren't the kinds of things she talks about.
"I'd like to get a total approach to education for the deaf — any means to teach the child the concept of communication—without abandoning strict speech and lip reading training."
That's what Nanette likes to talk about.

Operations gave Fabray her hearing. Producers gave her roles. Fabray was 97 when she passed away in 2018. Variety called her an “exuberant, indefatigable actress-singer.” The Hollywood Reporter dubbed her “the effervescent comedienne.” The New York Times’ assessment was a Tony and Emmy winner with “enthusiastic charm, wide smile and diverse talents.” She was all those, and deserved accolades for her work to support and lobby on behalf of others who couldn’t hear the applause they gave her.

Brodie's Hands

Art Davis directed only one Bugs Bunny cartoon, Bowery Bugs (1949) and there are a few interesting things about it.

For one thing, there are a bunch of animation-saving stills for almost the first minute of the cartoon. For another, Lloyd Turner and Bill Scott’s plot involves Bugs being a con-rabbit in New York City. It’s a nice change and a very appropriate setting for him. On top of that, Bugs adversary isn’t a gun-toting danger like Sam or Elmer, but is still a threat and good for one animated short. Billy Bletcher was the best choice for his voice.

Davis’ pacing and timing will never be mistaken for a Freleng or Jones cartoon with Bugs, but seems fine for this short. A few verbal jokes are a little hokey but not treated as punch lines; they’re said without any real emphasis and the music and action carries on.

Emery Hawkins, Basil Davidovich, Bill Melendez and Don Williams are the credited animators. They aren’t as wild as they got in a few other cartoons for Davis, like with Shakespearean dogs or Daffy Duck. Here’s how Steve Brodie goes from one pose to the other. It’s animated on twos. I like the brushwork on the hand outlines.



Don Smith handled layouts with Phil DeGuard painting the backgrounds.

As I have opined before, I wish Davis had directed more Bugs Bunny cartoons but I suspect studio politics got in the way.

Don't Simonize Your Car! Feminize It!

The censor appears to have been at work on the Willie Whopper cartoon Play Ball (1933).

The Sultan of Swat swats one of Willie’s pitches over the fence. Willie jumps over the fence and races after the ball in a flivver.



In the background, you’ll see a billboard for Barko. Next to it is a building with Chinese characters above the shuttered windows. Yes, the ball park is in Chinatown.



Naturally, this means a laundry gag. Willie runs into a laundry man.



When the laundry clears, there’s a shot of the flivver wearing a bra and panties.



But the shot lasts two seconds before a cut, hardly enough to register. Even though Carl Stalling’s music in the background maintains the beat (“Good night, Ladies” is on the soundtrack) it seems clear the censor thought this was too naughty and the gag was cut. Sex was bad then. Racial stereotypes were just fine. Hey, Willie throws baseballs at black people. Fun-ny!

Babe Ruth is portrayed in this cartoon with a pig nose. We presume the Iwerks animators were Brooklyn Dodgers fans.

Tex and Jinx and Jack

Tex McCrary and Jinx Falkenburg were a married couple with a pleasant little chat show on New York radio after the war. She had been a model and an actress, Tex was a newspaper reporter. Soon, they were put on the NBC radio network and then given a TV show in April 1947. For some months, about all that was on during the daytime hours was Tex and Jinx.

The pair also had a newspaper column in the Herald Tribune where they talked with celebrities and people in the news. Jack Benny made a trip to New York in early 1950 to do a pair of radio shows, and one of his stops was at a restaurant where, for a gag, Jinx picked up the cheque.

Spending was pretty much the topic that the two explored with Jack in a column published February 5, 1950. The column was written as if Tex handled one part and Jinx did the other. The two seem obsessed with exclamation marks.

Hedda Hopper reported in May 1949 that Jack was testing for Father of the Bride with Jane Powell. Liz Taylor and Walter Pidgeon were originally supposed to have the roles, though Pidgeon claimed to Hedda he had never heard of the picture. By June Jack was pretty much out of the picture for reasons she never explained.

To me, the biggest revelation is trivial but interesting. Jack talks about his real butler. I gather his early risings to walk around Beverly Hills are one reason why he ate with his staff.

NEW YORK CLOSE-UP
IN THE year 1932, two world-famous Americans discovered network radio—Franklin D. Roosevelt, candidate for the Presidency, and a young vaudeville headliner named Benny Kubelsky of Broadway and Waukegan, Ill. Both became quick masters of the fireside chat. Among statesmen, Roosevelt scored the highest Hooper rating; among comedians, the highest Hoopers still belong to Kubelsky—better known as Jack Benny.
Today, Jack Benny’s trademarks are as familiar as Uncle Sam’s chin whiskers or dollar sign—his stinginess, his violin, Rochester and Mary—are all part of American folklore.
“Pinching pennies on the radio costs me a lot of money every year—just in tips alone. If I heave a normal tip, people say ‘Lookit him! What a spender!’ So I have to leave as big a tip as I would if I’d made my money in Texas oil wells.
“And what’s worse, it’s the same for everybody who works for me—they all have to be twice as generous as normal people, just to prove Jack Benny isn’t really selfish. That gag costs my whole gang plenty!
“Only once did it ever work out right for me. We went to Earl Carroll’s night club one evening, and of course I checked my hat and coat. At the end of the evening, I went to pick it up and gave the hat check girl a crisp new dollar bill for a tip. She was very upset . . . handed it back to me. She asked me please to leave her at least one illusion!
“Of course, I have no real grudge against the gag—it’s the greatest gimmick for laughs in the business. There’s no other situation in comedy that can get more laughs than stinginess!”

Jack speaks of comedy the way technicians would talk about the hydrogen bomb—he is a master of punch lines and timing. Sure-footed as a mountain goat now, much of his career was sheer accident.
His father gave him two presents at the same time—a plumber’s monkey wrench and a violin. If he had followed the wrench to its logical destiny, he might have would up as a big industrialist and a sponsor; if he had stuck to the violin seriously, he might have wound up in Toscanini’s symphony orchestra, still on N. B. C.!
“The trouble was, I always wanted to play instead of practice,” Jack recalls. “And one more thing—I found out that when I extended my little pinky on the bow, people would laugh!”
That’s how comedians are born. But it was not the violin, but stinginess that sparked Jack’s longest and loudest laugh: Bandits were holding him up. One of them snarled: “Your money or your life!” No word from Jack. The bandit jammed his gun deeper into Jack’s ribs and barked once more: “Your money or your life—and hurry up!” Said Jack Benny, “Wait a minute, I’m thinking it over!”
Digging back into his memories, Jack unearthed another important crossroads in his career:
“I might have wound up as a fifth to the four Marx Brothers—I was playing the fiddle in the orchestra in Waukegan and the Marx Brothers came through our town. Their mother asked me if I would like to travel with them as their director—my mother wouldn’t let me leave. Oh, sure I’ve reminded them of it since, but they don’t remember it. I play golf with Groucho all the time, and he says the whole thing must have been his mother’s idea!”
Proximity has been a potent force in Benny’s career—his wife Mary used to work in the May Company store across the street from the Orpheum in Los Angeles, and Mary’s sister was the match-maker. Now she’s a pillar of his show.
Even the reserved Ronald Colmans have not been immune to Benny’s magic chain reaction—repeated guest performances by the Colmans on the Benny show revealed their unsuspected vein of pure humor—and now even though Benny has moved to C. B. S., Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Colman are on N. B. C., with a brand new comedy show of their own, called “Halls of Ivy.” Mr. Colman plays the part of a college president, but he would be the first to admit that like his fellow alumni, Phil Harris and Dennis Day, his most valuable degree should read “BB”—by Benny. TEX.
Postscript
Thousands of Americans and all Englishmen think that Rochester is really Jack Benny’s butler. Just for the record, Jack explains:
“Our real butler’s name is Donald, a white-haired, sweet, very dignified Englishman. I generally have breakfast with Donald, and the other help, very early, in the kitchen. Why? Because it’s warmer in the kitchen.
“And it’s fun—they think I can do no wrong. My wife, Mary, and her sister in Chicago are my worst critics.”
Movie critics have been rough on Jack’s screen ventures; we asked him if he had ever thought of risking his radio reputation by tackling a play on Broadway, where critics can make or break you. “I’d love to try a play—but I’d hate to move everything from California for what might be a one-week run!”
There had been rumors that Jack would be the star of the movie version of “Father of the Bride”—patting his balding head, he spikes that rumor: “I was considered for the part, but they gave it to somebody else . . . said I was too young for the role.”
For still photographs, every star has a “favorite side” for profile shots; I asked Jack which was his for our Close-up picture: “Doesn’t matter any more, Jinx—I’m bald on both sides now.” JINX

That Loafing Mighty Mouse

Terrytoons don’t exactly have a reputation as fine-grained cartoons, but a few people showed long-term dedication to the studio. Directors Connie Rasinski and Manny Davis come to mind. So does background artist Art Bartsch. And then there’s Tommy Morrison, who not only worked on stories, but shouted the words “Here I come to save the day.” (He didn’t sing for Mighty Mouse. That was Roy Halee).

After CBS shut down (rather foolishly, in my opinion) the Terrytoons studio in New Rochelle around 1970, Morrison retired to—where else?—Florida. While Paul Terry, who owned the studio into the mid-‘50s before selling to the network, may have been a cheapskate, Morrison doesn’t seem to have suffered as a result.

A future Associated Press entertainment writer met up with Morrison to talk about his years in animation. This was published (with drawing) in the Fort Myers News-Press of October 20, 1975. Ignore the headline that tries to equate animation with a comic strip. If you’re looking for dirt on Paul Terry, there isn’t any. It’s not quite the point of the story. And Morrison gives no credit to Gene Deitch for Tom Terrific. I’m pretty positive a creative person like Deitch would have had some input into that debut cartoon, especially since the character was his brainchild.

Cartoonist Strips Away Career
By FRAZIER MOORE
Cape Coral Bureau
When he and his wife moved to Cape Coral 2 1/2 years ago, he left behind a flock of cartoon luminaries including Mighty Mouse, Deputy Dawg, Heckle and Jeckle, and Tom Terrific— personalities he helped father during four decades of putting fantasies on film.
Now Tom Morrison, 67, lives the life of a loafer.
That's how he describes his current leisurely existence, based on hardly more than the bounce of a tennis ball from the courts of the Yacht Club, where Morrison spends part of nearly every day wielding his racket.
"I've never had it so good," he declares in his tight New York accent.
Meanwhile, his whimsical compatriots live on in more than 1,000 Terrytoons cartoons Morrison helped produce during a career spanning 41 years.
And if his career is behind him, his affection for the profession lives on.
"It's a challenging art form," he says of cartooning. "It's a combination of music and visual arts and acting. And even math.
"All animation is controlled by math," he explains. "It's a matter of speed how you space the drawings to create the illusion of motion."
From the outset, Morrison possessed an interest in theater and writing and acting.
"But my family had other ideas—they wanted me to go into business. So I went to Wall Street."
He was just in time for the '29 Crash.
"I went through the panic," he recalls, "and I nearly developed an ulcer at an early age.
"I saw a chief order clerk jump off the building because she made a mistake on an order. A junior partner shot himself in his office. People were that high-strung. And I said to myself, 'This isn't for me.' "
It so happened that Paul Terry, a pioneer cartoon producer, was a neighbor. He offered the erstwhile financier a job in his firm, and soon Morrison found himself steeped in the company's frantic effort to polish off a new cartoon every two weeks.
Although for years Terrytoons' product was channelled toward movie theaters, as short subjects began to vanish from the local bijous, television was emerging as the new market. In 1956 the CBS network purchased the entire Terrytoons operation.
One of the first projects Terrytoons tackled under the new ownership was creating for the network a cartoon serial to boost the audience for a new and rather shaky children's show called "Captain Kangaroo."
Morrison also wrote the pilot script for "Tom Terrific" (not to mention the lyrics for its jingle: "I'm Tom Terrific,/The greatest hero ever./Terrific is the name for me,/'cause I'm so clever. . .")
For over a decade the enormously successful "Captain Kangaroo" series was further brightened by the exploits of this precocious lad with the funnel cap and the lackadaisical canine companion named Mighty Manfred.
By then, Morrison's role at Terrytoons was that of creative director. Besides writing, he bought and edited story material from freelancers, hired voice talent, supervised recording, and assisted the music director.
"But I did very little sketching," Morrison says. "People down here think I was primarily an artist—they say, 'Draw Mighty Mouse.' But the actual drawing I had little to do with."
He did nearly everything else, however, and he can still brandish a pencil or pen, sweeping strokes across a sketch pad to make Mighty Mouse or Tom Terrific magically appear.
And as another indication of his numerous abilities he'll demonstrate the voice he lent to Mighty Mouse when that notable rodent chose to speak: "Hi, kids," Morrison says with wide eyes and his finger spearing the air, "we've got a great show for you today."
But these days, Morrison thinks the shows aren't so great. He terms the current generation of cartoons "hackwork."
"TV ruined the art of animation," he says. "The wonderful life-like movements that necessitated so many drawings just couldn't be accomplished on TV economically."
Furthermore, he objects to the indiscriminate banishment of violence for children's programming.
"It was a vicarious release for kids," he says of cartoon violence. "It provided exciting adventure where kids could live it without doing it. It was the little guy winning over the big guy.
"Surrounded by all those big adults telling them what to do," he says, "kids got their kicks over the little mouse beating the big cat."
As a specialist in both kids and cartoons, Morrison should know. He with his wife Betty have two daughters and a son, and boast nine grandchildren.
And then, of course, there are those 1,000 cartoons.
But lengthy friendships are hard to break, and yacht club members are advised not to be thunderstruck on finding Morrison engaged in a frenzied tennis match with a tiny flying figure in a scarlet cape.

Morrison enjoyed retirement for only a few more years. He was born in New York City on April 22, 1908 and died in Cape Coral on March 1, 1978.

That Duck!

A Nazi comes across a limp-wristed mouse in the Snafu cartoon Fighting Tools (1943).

The mouse drops to the ground, holding his nose. But wait a minute! What’s coming out of that cannon?

Could that be Daffy Duck? Or is director Bob Clampett just re-using Daffy’s design?

I say the latter, but there are fans who insist that if it looks like a character, it must be the same character (eg. a skunk in an Art Davis must be Pepe Le Pew even though it doesn’t act like him in the slightest).

Since this is a Clampett cartoon, there has to be a pop culture reference. One of the ducklings flies back and says “Rallly they are” like Kate Hepburn before zipping out of the cartoon.

The cartoon ends with Snafu captured naked and becoming a horse’s rear end, with music to match.

Musical Mickey

While the Fleischers were filling their cartoons with surreal gags in the early ‘30s, Walt Disney was still having cheerful Mickey Mouse playing various objects like musical instruments.

Mickey Steps Out (1931). It opened with the mouse shaving, and “playing” the sink with his razor, with percussion noises provided by banging the toilet seat up and down. The only gag (at least I think it’s supposed to be one) is when Mickey loses his soap in the toilet.



The next little sequence has Mickey on a wooden sidewalk (the slats are alternately white and grey) like he’s on a xylophone (which is what you hear in the background). I guffawed and roared when I saw him trip over a rock and momentarily lose his straw hat. Okay, I didn’t. But someone must have because the scene uses the same “humour” twice, along with Pluto jumping on Mickey and shoving him into a mud puddle.



Cut to Minnie playing the obligatory piano and Mickey whistling along with her bird. Then we see some singing birdies.



The cartoon is at the halfway mark. I think I’ll watch Bimbo instead.

A Squirrel is the Only Thing Screwy About This Book

The finest piece of news about the Golden Age of Animation this year is out.

Keith Scott’s long-promised book on cartoon voice actors is at the printer, and you can buy it starting September 20th.

When I was a kid in the ‘60s, you had to rely on credits on (mainly TV) cartoons and listening to similar voices to figure out who was in your favourite animated efforts. But even then, no one knew there was an Arthur Q. Bryan, unless they listened to certain old radio shows and heard him do his Elmer Fudd voice there. Then in the 1980s came books by animation historians, fanzines, chatter amongst experts on Usenet and finally a full-blown internet. They discovered there was a Danny Webb and a Sara Berner.

Into this mix came Keith Scott, an impressionist with a massive collection of old radio shows and a huge interest in cartoons. Besides having the chance to interview fellow cartoon voice actors when making trips to Los Angeles (such as Daws Butler, to the right), his ear was able to match radio actors to cartoon voices of the era because they used the same voices in radio and cartoons. Pretty soon, we started hearing about Kent Rogers and Jack Lescoulie and Frank Graham and a pile of people no one knew about. (Hands up if you had known before Keith Scott told you that Lloyd Perryman was in a cartoon). And he confirmed information with legitimate studio records resting in archives, as well as newspaper clippings from when the cartoons were actually made.

Keith has been talking about writing a book on the subject for, well, I don’t know how long. But a bit of a layoff during COVID gave him time to work on it. There are still some mysteries he hasn’t solved (one, I think, is the title character in the 1935 Merrie Melodies short The Country Mouse) but anything accurate, even if incomplete, is better than nothing.

One of the identities Keith discovered (if he isn’t responsible, he’ll let me know) is that of Screwy Squirrel. It’s an actor who used the same voice on a comedy show called Tommy Riggs and Betty Lou. His name was Wally Maher. In honour of Keith’s book (and Screwy, I guess), here’s a little information about him. This story from the Cincinnati Enquirer of January 31, 1943 doesn’t mention cartoons because Screwy didn’t come along for another year.

BUDDING STAR
Is From Cincinnati.
Wally Maher Credits His Success To Ambition
To Be Actor Despite Lean Times—First Job Follows Prayer In New York.
The "Queen City of the West" lays claim to a devotion to the cultural arts and quite frequently some of her native sons go forth to prove that contention. Almost everyone knows the success scored by Tyrone Power, but not many realize that radio has a budding star, who stems from this neighborhood and who first was heard from nationally, over station WLW.
No one who hears Wally Maher in the part of Wilbur, the goon-child pal of Betty Lou on the "Tommy Riggs and Betty Lou" show, would suspect that he is a tall, nice-looking chap, intelligent and devoted to his family. But Wally does have all of those characteristics.
Claiming Cincinnati as his native city, he credits his current success in radio to his constant ambition to be an actor.
Born on August 4, 1908, Wally hadn't completed his high school training when he abandoned further education in favor of a career. First as an amateur, then later as a stock company "regular," he started climbing from the bottom in show business.
He made his radio debut in 1930 as Paul Baumer in "All Quiet on the Western Front." However, roles were scarce for youthful actors at that time, and some lean years followed. At one time he was particularly depressed financially, with no job on hand or in sight. He passed a precious half-hour in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, asking for divine guidance through and out of that troublesome time.
That same day a friend told him of a radio audition at one of the large studios. Before dark Wally was cast in the first of many successful roles.
Since his first utterances over the airlanes here, radio audiences have heard him on Jack Benny's program, on the Radio Theater, with Burns and Allen, Rudy Vallee, "One Man's Family," "I Love a Mystery," and Shirley Temple in her "Junior Miss series." He appeared five different times, thereby setting a record for guest artists, on the "Hollywood Showcase" program with Mary Astor.
He first appeared on the "Tommy Riggs and Betty Lou" as a temporary stooge, but his portrayal of Wilbur was so successful that he was signed as a permanent member of the cast.
Wally is married to the former Carmella Bruno of Hamilton, Ohio. They have two children, Wally Maher, Jr., 4 1/2, and Patricia Ann, 1 1/2. Maher enjoys boating and boxing, but for real sport he prefers to play with a good "nine" on a baseball field.

The same paper on January 24, 1946 had this cute tale.

A Career of Crime
Wally Maher, Ex-WLW Actor, on "Suspense;"
Young Man From Madisonville Makes Good
Wally Maher, who either is murdered or murders someone himself every Thursday night on “Suspense,” began making crime pay, at AFRA rates, on WLW in 1934. Wally says he was hired by Ed Byron, currently producing “Mr. D. A.,” to play the leading corpse on “Famous Jury Trials.” “Later I worked up to the position of leading murderer,” he says.
Wally has been doing network dramatics on the West Coast for 10 years, but his former radio colleagues around town remember him chiefly because of Frank Komarac, a delicatessen owner near the Arlington street studios. In this food shop the acting staff was wont to gather for a snack between shows— mostly on the cuff.
After Wally left town for the coast, Frank went to a movie. The feature went off without a hitch, but suddenly, as a “Crime Does Not Pay” short was flashed on the screen, the audience was startled by a cry of pain from one in their midst. It was Mr. Komarac, pointing wildly at the screen. “That's Wally Maher,” he hollered, “And he still owes me for his last sandwich.”

The radio column in the December 9, 1945 edition of the Pittsburgh Press pointed out that Maher “murders only the nicest people. In three years he has killed 31 persons, stole five million bucks and—we almost forgot to mention this—he was slain by the police 18 times...He strangled Agnes Moorehead to death, shot and stabbed Lucille Ball, shot Myrna Loy, poisoned Joan Lorring, drown George Couloris and beat Ronald Colman to death.”

What did Maher say about his animation career? If he said anything publicly, it’s hiding in some hitherto undiscovered newspaper. Earle Ferris’ syndicated column of January 28, 1943 only revealed:

The voice of ‘Wilbur,’ created by Wally Maher for the Tommy Riggs and Betty Lou show, is heard as that of a squirrel in the new Metro movie cartoon, “Nuts in May.”

Daily Variety was still using the Nuts in May title in October. It was the working title for what became Screwball Squirrel. Screwy’s first cartoon took some time to hit theatres. A model sheet for it is dated December 12, 1942 and the short was finally released April 1, 1944. Maher made five cartoons as Screwy. Some fans insist director Tex Avery killed off the character in his final cartoon, based on the fact Avery publicly said he disliked his creation and in the finale of the squirrel’s last short, co-star Lennie pulled out what appeared to be a dead Screwy. If Screwy’s dead, how can he hold up a sign and open his eye? I say Screwy is playing yet another trick and faking his demise.

Any long career in animation for Maher was cut short by an early death. The Los Angeles Daily News informed readers on December 27, 1951:

Wally Maher, radio actor, taken by death
Radio actor Wally Maher, 43, one of the top local artists for many years, died today in St. Vincent's hospital after a long illness.
Maher, who for many years was radio's detective, Michael Shane, was admitted to the hospital only last night. Recently he had undergone major chest and heart surgery.
He started in radio 22 years ago and worked in Cincinnati, New York and in recent years, here. Lately he was acting in CBS' “Lineup,” a mystery show.
He leaves his widow, Molly, three children, Patricia, Wally Jr. and Judy; his parents, Daniel and Mary Maher, and a brother. The family home is at 1017 Fairmount road, Burbank. Funeral arrangements are pending.

Keith has discovered other MGM cartoons where Maher can be heard. No doubt there are real revelations—perhaps some for the first time—in his book (actually, it is in two volumes). Anyone interested in the identities of actors you hear on those great old animated theatrical shorts should get it. Now, if he can only tell me who played the title role in John Sutherland’s propaganda cartoon Meet King Joe.