Romeo in Rhythm

Think about it for a minute. How many cartoons take place on a low-budget theatre stage inside a scarecrow? I can think of a grand total of one—MGM’s Romeo in Rhythm (1940).

As you might expect in a Metro cartoon of this year, there is plenty of animation on ones, but because it’s a musical with singing and dancing, it doesn’t seem over-animated with movement for the sake of movement.

There’s a good story-line woven through the cartoon. Romeo woos Juliet in swing-time, but is constantly interrupted. That’s worked into the music, when Romeo kicks away his mandolin (a guitar is heard on the soundtrack) and sings “You’ve Got to Be Alone to Woo.” The song doesn’t come from an MGM musical. It was written by, of all people, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, with music by Scott Bradley. Hanna and Barbera’s lyrics are clever and a far cry from “Pixie Dixie, deedly dum, are the best of friends.”

In one scene, theatre backdrops roll down from the rafters, each painting suiting the verse of the song. Romeo and Juliet stick their heads through holes where heads should be on the painting, like a painted board on Coney Island. The stylised humans are certainly different for an animated cartoon of 1940.



This dissolve looks awkward when viewed frame-by-frame but when watching it on the screen, I suspect audiences weren’t put off by it because it happens at the end of a bar of music.



“At last you’re alone, just you two,” sings Romeo. At that moment, lights come up to reveal rows of heads. The camera pulls back to show a blinking sign. Romeo carries on with the lyrics: “You parked in that hole called the Hollywood Bowl.”



Another good sequence is earlier in the short where Romeo falls into a pile of metallic junk and emerges like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz. Bradley scores “We’re Off to See the Wizard” on the soundtrack as Romeo stumbles around and tries to remove all the junk. (The DVNR on the home video version of this is just disgraceful).



“Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Shorts Story” magazine of July-August 1940 gives a summary of the cartoon (crediting the direction to Hugh Harman instead of Rudy Ising, though there’s no screen credit for anyone). Boxoffice magazine of July 27, 1940 reported Bradley was scoring the short, while the Hollywood Reporter of August 5 announced the cartoon was finished (mentioning the score included songs from Broadway Melody). The release date was August 10 (“Woo” was copyrighted Sept. 3). No animators were credited but I would bet Mark Kausler knows if we are seeing the work of Jack Zander, Bill Littlejohn, George Gordon and Carl Urbano.

The cartoon got mixed reviews when it was released. Uncle Walt was still the gold standard (no doubt to the annoyance of Harman). Boxoffice called the cartoon “An acceptable cartoon, but not beyond...The cartoon work is standard, which reminds that it is not Disney. With emphasis on that score.” “Fair,” declared The Exhibitor in one word. Motion Picture Daily was more enthusiastic. “This is a travesty in cartoon on ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ produced skillfully by Hugh Harmon [sic]. It should add a bright touch to any problem. The characters are crows which sing a few snappy tunes in Harlem jive fashion.”

Showman’s Trade Review felt “There’s a good idea in this cartoon but it misses fire somewhere. A couple of birds (ravens) play Romeo and Juliet (colored version). There are a lot of gags some of which are funny, but the subject bogs down in the middle and doesn’t get anywhere. It results in just a fair cartoon.”

Motion Picture Herald liked it a little better, calling it “an amusing cartoon.” Exhibitor Walter Pyle of the newly-opened Dreamland Theatre in Rockglen, Saskatchewan pronounced to that publication “Just another cartoon. A few kiddies snickered a little.” A “Harlem” short seems like an odd choice for a Canadian prairie farm town of maybe a couple of hundred people. But it was screened as well in Bengough, Sask., where the manager told the Herald it was “very entertaining.” The paper was told by the operator of a theatre in Dewey, Oklahoma is was a “good cartoon” but “the kids did not understand or appreciate it.”

To be honest, it’s tough feeling sympathetic for Romeo at the end when Juliet leaves him and runs off to work. It’s because they’re not real characters and the situation isn’t real. They’re actors performing a play on stage.

Mel Blanc provides a couple of voices on this short but the star is Billy Mitchell, who puts in a fine singing performance as Romeo. Juliet is Lillian Randolph (right), who found more work in MGM cartoons as the maid in the Tom and Jerry series. They both lent voices to the MGM musical short Swing Social (also 1940), a cartoon featuring Amos ‘n’ Andy accents, Uncle Tom, fish with thick minstrel-show lips, a razor and irresistible fried chicken.

Mitchell was a veteran at the time, billed in The Billboard in 1922 as “the boy with the insane feet.” The same year these two cartoons were released, he appeared as the Lord High Executioner in “The Swing Mikado,” with an all-black cast. By the late ‘40s, Mitchell was a pioneer of the parade of party-record comedians, with one release called “The Bumble Bee Invaded the Nudist Colony,” and appeared year after year at the Club DeLisa in Chicago. He was dead by the late ‘50s. Judging by newspapers of the day, Romeo in Rhythm vanished from screens long before that. It was never re-issued.

Two in One Animals

Tex Avery and gagman Heck Allen try out an impossible gag in Half-Pint Pygmy (1948). During a seemingly endless chase, George and Junior run after the aforementioned African, who tries to escape up a giraffe’s neck.



The gag is the giraffe has two ends and no heads.



Tex evidently liked the gag so much, he pulled a variation in the next sequence. The three run on top of a camel (to the music of “The Campbells Are Coming”). The scene reveals the camel has two heads but no ends.



A camel-y take.



Louie Schmitt, Bill Shull, Grant Simmons and Walt Clinton are the credited animators.

And the Mystery Animal Is...

A few early Disney sound cartoons had characters back away from the camera to reveal themselves. Plane Crazy (1928) is one. Uncle Walt liked it so much, he repeated it in the opening of The Barn Dance (1929).

It’s a cow in both of them. Here’s the Barn Dance version.

Both shorts have "Ruben, Ruben" on the soundtrack.

Ub Iwerks gets the animation credit.

Mickey Mouse loses at the end. Minnie runs off with a cat. The early Terry cartoons had mice-loving cats, too. Someone will have to explain the interspecies fixation of the era.

The Dashing Joker

The main villains on the Batman TV show were all quite different from each other, and I think the variety helped the series.

Burgess Meredith’s Penguin was snarky. Frank Gorshin’s Riddler was unhinged. Cesar Romero’s was happy, even gleeful, in committing crime.

Of the three, Romero was the biggest name at the time, having appeared in all kinds of movies in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Over the years, Romero was interviewed many, many times, especially by local entertainment columnists whenever he appeared in dinner theatre in a city.

For a good summary of Romero’s career, here’s a wire service story published on June 23, 1984 (depending on the newspaper). You’d never know he worked in television or on a Batman movie (1966) reading this.

Romero celebrates 50 years in film
By BOB THOMAS
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — Fifty years ago, a young Broadway dancer came to Hollywood to appear with William Powell and Myrna Loy in "The Thin Man." Unlike most of his contemporaries, Cesar Romero is still here. Not only is he here but he's working, as he has done since 1934, minus service in the Coast Guard during World War II.
He recently was feted on his 50th anniversary in show business with a party on the Santa Fe, N.M., location of "Lust in the Dust," his 134th movie. Or is it 152nd? He's lost count.
"The New Mexico Film Commission presented me with a trophy for my 50 years in films," Romero said in an interview. "I said I was happy to get it — considering the alternative."
He has played almost every kind of role, but “Lust in the Dust” is a first. “I play a priest who used to be a rabbi. No explanation is given. I think it's going to be a very funny picture — not campy but funny.
"The cast is great: Tab Hunter, Lanie Kazan, Henry Silva and Divine, who happens to be a female impersonator. The director, Paul Bartel ('Eating Raoul’) is a charming guy. I had a great time."
Through great films and duds, Romero has brought the same brand of enthusiasm to his work. Still classically handsome at 77, he'll get another award for his career achievement this month from Nosotros, the organization that has sought more work for Latino actors.
"I guess I was lucky; I was never typecast in films," he remarked. "I played a wide variety in most of my career. It has only been in later years that I seemed to be thought of as an Hispanic. That surprised me. I was born in New York City, my mother was born in Brooklyn. I never considered myself a part of the Latin group."
Still, he is proud of his Latin heritage:
"My grandfather, Jose Marti, was the liberator of Cuba," Romero said. "The Cuban war of independence was planned in my grandmother's house. In 1965, I attended the ceremonies when a statue of my grandfather was unveiled at 69th and Avenue of the Americas in New York. It was quite a day. The pro-Castro Cubans lined up on one side of the statue, and the anti-Castro Cubans on the other, and it ended in a riot.”

Romero's yen to act started in boarding school when he played four roles in "The Merchant of Venice." His father, who lost his fortune when the sugar market collapsed, found his son a job in a Wall Street bank. He spent his evenings at debutante dances and met an ink heiress, Elizabeth Higgins, who suggested they form a dance team.
After a career in nightclubs and in musicals, Romero won a contract at MGM. Summarily dropped, he landed at Universal, then caught the eye of Darryl Zanuck. When Zanuck's 20th Century merged with Fox, Romero was added to the contract list. He stayed 18 years.
He said his best three movies were "Show Them No Mercy," "Captain From Castille" and "any one of the musicals — 'Weekend in Havana,' 'Springtime in the Rockies,' 'The Great American Broadcast,' etc." The three worst? "A couple I did at Universal: ‘Armored Car' and 'She's Dangerous,' with Tala Birell," he said, "also one for Sam Katzman at Columbia, 'Prisoners of the Casbah' with Gloria Grahame and Turhan Bey."
For 37 years Romero lived in a Brentwood, Calif., house he originally bought for $15,000 and sold for $400,000.
He's on the road much of the year playing dinner theaters, returning to the apartment he shares with his sister, Maria. He has never married.
"How could I, when I had so many family responsibilities?" he said. "I was living with my parents, two sisters, a niece and a nephew. Could I tell a girl, 'Let's get married and you can come and live with my mother, my father, two sisters, a niece and a nephew'?
"I have no regrets, no regrets. Right now I'm seeing a lady quite a bit younger, and we have a good relationship. It'll stay that way."
Romero said he would never retire. "What the hell would I do if I quit? I can take time off when I want, and work when I want," he said. "It's an ideal situation."

What did Romero think of working on Batman? Interviews he gave over the years are consistent. He thought of it as fun. Here’s the Associated Press again; the story was published starting May 8, 1966.

Long a Lover, Now ‘The Joker’
By GENE HANDSAKER
HOLLYWOOD (AP)— For years Cesar Romero played suave leading men. Handsome lovers in white tie and tails. And, as he puts it, "playboys, heavies, gigolos and lounge lizards."
Now he was hardly recognizable in pasty white makeup, a clown's painted grin and a wild thatch of green wig.
This was romantic Romero as, zounds, The Joker of "Batman!"
MOVIE VERSION—Cast and crew of that television hit are making a movie version. Over lunch the smooth Latin from Manhattan said of his new career as comic villain.
"I love it. It’s a kooky, way-out character, the easiest I ever played. I can be as hammy as I like and do all the things we were told not to do: mug, overact, accentuate. It's fun because you're not tied down, inhibited."
As Batman's fiendish but never quite successful adversary In the film, Romero has a grand time staging a kidnapping, flying by umbrella like Mary Poppins and wielding a disintegrator that turns humans to powder.

NEW YORK BORN—"And I don't have to worry about circles under the eyes or whether my hair is combed," he noted.
Romero, 59, a towering 6-foot-3 and 200 pounds, has been in pictures 32 years. “This town,” he said, “has been very good to me.”
He was born in New York City to a Cuban mother and Spanish father. As a boy vaudeville fan, hanging around stage doors, he knew that show business was for him. After a turn as a $17.30-a-week bank clerk he teamed up with a girl dancer and appeared in supper clubs.
STAGE DANCER — He became a stage dancer in musicals along with a youth named George Murphy, now U.S. senator from California, who later in Hollywood gave Romero his nickname—Butch.
Dancing led to stage acting—"Strictly Dishonorable," "Dinner at Eight," etc. M-G-M brought him to Hollywood in 1934 for a role in “The Thin Man.”
Romero became one of the town's most attractive bachelors, escorting Joan Crawford, Virginia Bruce, Loretta Young, Ann Sothern, Barbara Stanwyck. He still occasionally takes Jane Wyman to dinner parties at friends' homes.
NOT ELIGIBLE—In 1940 he built a house in Brentwood where he lives with a spinster sister. Marriage? "It just never happened," he said. "There's nothing very eligible about me now, and I have no intention of changing my status.
"In many ways I regret not marrying. I would have liked to have children."

I’ve gone through more than a dozen interviews made over the decades with Romero and in all of them, he’s asked why he’s single. He pulled his punches, but that’s not surprising given the era (and, perhaps, it probably hasn’t changed for really big names in Hollywood).

The stories also crow about his great physical condition. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the situation at the end. He was hospitalised with severe bronchitis and pneumonia and died from complications related to a blood clot on New Year’s Day 1994 at age 86.

Auntie Angela

Mention Angela Lansbury’s name and many will think of Murder, She Wrote. Some will think of her warbling in Disney films such as Beauty and the Beast.

But fans of show tunes the world over will talk about her performance in the title role in “Mame,” even if they’ve never seen it. She performed it on the Great White Way for almost two years then went on the road with it.

Lansbury was an unusual choice, judging by this wire service story of March 27, 1966.

Angela Exercises For Musical 'Mame'
By WILLIAM GLOVER
Associated Press Drama Writer
NEW YORK — Angela Lansbury is limbering up like an athlete for another and, she hopes, more durable go at Broadway musical comedy.
"I just can't tell yet how much energy I'm going to need," she explains, "so I want to have plenty."
Miss Lansbury, who has romped quite a dramatic gamut over the years, reaches Broadway's Winter Garden May 24 in a show derived from the adventures of that incredible book-play-film heroine, "Auntie Mame."
To avoid confusion with all earlier incarnations, the new exhibit is titled plain "Mame." And, the star vows, the portrayal is going to be "completely different"—if she survives.
"The whole thing is being plotted very carefully so I don't have to keep running around out of breath," she says, ticking off an awesome assortment of chores. Besides taking part in 11 songs—a rare number for even an Ethel Merman or Mary Martin—Miss Lansbury's assignment includes dance variety from tango to Charleston and "about costume changes."
ONLY ONCE BEFORE HAS she essayed musical performance, in a fast flop two seasons back, "Anyone Can Whistle." Although she emerged from the debacle with good reports, a lot of testing was done before she got this new role.
"They first called me in last August," recalls Miss Lansbury, "and I think I was competing against every leading lady in the theater. The thing went on until the end of November."
Oddly, Miss Lansbury never saw any of her famous predecessors in the straight stage comedy. Rosalind Russell did it first on Broadway just 10 years ago, and the following parade there and in multiple touring troupes included .Constance Bennett, Bea Lillie, Sylvia Sidney and Eve Arden.
"That's all to the good—I'm going in like a clean sheet of paper. No one can say it's a carbon."
Jerry Lawrence, who along with Robert E. Lee wrote both the original play and the musical adaptation, figured Miss Lansbury could do it.
Another early supporter was Jerry Herman, “Mame’s” composer (who three years ago penned another little opus called “Hello, Dolly!”).
“Both of them wanted an actress — not a dancing cutie — so that Mame would come out a whole person,” continues Miss Lansbury.
Miss Lansbury, as a matter of record, did sing briefly in two films prior to “Anyone Can Whistle”—namely “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and “Till the Clouds Roll By.”
After “Whistle,” the energetic star “did a lot of big, fat movies—four or five” so that she could clear her calendar for this stage excursion. The Lansbury screen career began at age 18 (“Gaslight,” 1944) and she didn't do her first Broadway show until 15 years later. She confesses one mild reservation.
“I'm an early person except when I'm in a stage role,” says the lady who likes to rise by 7 A.M.
“The one thing I object to about being in a show is having to miss half a day. You can get so much more done in the morning.”

Lansbury received almost universal praise for her opening night performance. The Daily News’ Douglas Watt was a hold-out, basically saying Lansbury didn’t have the depth or ability to pull off a lead for the entirety of musical, and Bea Arthur stole scene after scene from her.

Earl Wilson’s column addressed some whispering at a New York City theatrical night spot.

As the tall, willowy, 41-year-old British-born blonde Angela Lansbury was being standing-ovationed as the greatest new star for her spectacular success in "Mame," there were a few dirty dogs around today who were muttering that her last show, "Anyone Can Whistle," was a fast flop.
And she was Carroll Baker's mother in the film "Harlow," another loser.
So maybe she was an accident altogether?
"Not at all," said Jerry Herman, composer of "Hello, Dolly!" as well as "Mame." He remembered her singing—and acting—from "Anyone Can Whistle."
"I suggested to Jerry Lawrence and Bob Lee that we get this lady, who was an actress who could sing," he said. There were those who thought that Lucille Ball should play it. But Herman preferred somebody less comedic. "I got together with this lady and taught her one song, 'It's Today,' And—she got the part."
AND THEY WERE asking in Sardi's this morning, whether any show had ever received a standing ovation before.
"Oh, I'm sure there have been some!" Miss Lansbury was saying to her husband, son, dtr. and mother, as she cavorted about in a blue Norwegian fox wrap and silver-and-gold lame gown.
"I'm not so sure," some oldsters were answering.
It was the biggest, maddest, wildest evening at the refurbished Winter Garden . . . in the crazy celebration party at the Rainbow Room they even “bravoed” the reading of a review . . . This is not to overlook occasional opinions that the show was not the greatest of all time. (I say this as a compleat reporter.)

As for Lucy getting the part, well, it happened. Further comment is best left unsaid.

Considering her monster success, she should have become another Carol Channing on the Great White Way. It didn’t quite happen. A $720,000 loss over 132 performances for her musical “Dear World” in 1969 didn’t help. Soon, she was filming “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” for Disney before heading alone to Germany for a film and then to Ireland to try to get her head together.

Judging by the rest of her career, she was able to do just that.

Expressive Pooch

So I’m watching this scene in Squirrel Crazy, a 1951 Terrytoon, and wondering if Jim Tyer animated it. Suddenly...



To borrow from another cartoon studio, "Mmmm...could be!"

It seems the writers also borrowed from a cartoon studio.



I don’t know what’s worse—Lillian Randolph’s Amos-n-Andy style dialect in the Tom and Jerry cartoons or the ridiculous suburban WASP-tinged-with-a-bit-of-the-South voice the unnamed maid has in this one.

This cartoon stars “Nutsy” who, let’s face it, isn’t very nuts compared with a certain MGM squirrel. Tyer animated a pile of scenes with the dog.

The cartoon was part of the “Terrytoon Toppers” re-release series, and returned to the big screen in October 1957.

Surprising the Weasel

Bob Clampett got a chance to direct a couple of colour cartoons with his original unit in 1941 before taking over Tex Avery’s crew later in the year and leaving black-and-white shorts behind.

Both featured familiar routines. Goofy Groceries was another stuff-in-a-store-comes-to-life shorts, with Farm Frolics was a spot gagger.

Clampett goes for a weasel gag that starts off the like the bobcat gag that Tex Avery planted in Cross Country Detours (1940). Avery had the weasel stalk an innocent young quail, as narrator Lew Marcelle and composer Carl Stalling set up the suspense. Suddenly, the weasel breaks down and says “I can’t do it,” pounding the ground in footage inspired by Avery acting before a studio camera.

Here, Clampett and writer Warren Foster start off the same way as narrator Bob Bruce’s trembling voice matches Carl Stalling’s trembling strings. The weasel creeps closer and closer.



But Clampett goes a different route than Avery. Suddenly, the eggs hatch and the chicks yell “Boo!”



The surprise almost kills the weasel. “Don’t ever do that!” he says. It may be Joe Penner’s catchphrase, but Mel Blanc treats the line with a fairly straight voice.



Whoever animated the scene did a nice job with the weasel’s fingers and hand expressions. John Carey and Izzy Ellis are the credited animators. Dick Thomas is the uncredited background artist. Foster gets in some good gags and the opening is creative where the scene is sketched by a “moving” hand and then there’s a wipe to turn it into a coloured background.

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: Match Your Mood

The ‘60s were, well, the ‘60s.

The times, they are a-changin,’ sang some fellow through his nose. Certainly no one would mistake the pop culture clichés of 1969 with those of 1959. And certainly, ad agency execs who, at one time, liked Ike suddenly had to switch gears and be With It.

It meant advertising reflected kind of an ersatz, watered-down version of the late ‘60s. After all, ad agency salesmen were never really With It.

But that isn’t necessarily a bummer.

Here’s a fun example of something made in the late ‘60s that borrows chunks of the culture to try to appeal to the Flower Power generation.

Match Your Mood is a plotless industrial film made for Westinghouse by Jam Handy out of Detroit. It opens with a model in a mod outfit making her through the woods, flouncing her hair, on her way to feed some Canada geese in a placid lake.

But what does it all mean? What are the geese? Are they geese? Are they representative of America’s neighbours to the north, a placid nation while America is ripped in two by the turmoil of assassinations, student unrest and the Vietnam War?

Yes, reading something profound into nothing was the ‘60s.

Anyway, the film switches to still photos of furniture and decorations around the kitchen and living room. Anyone growing up back then will recognise walnut panelling and rattan furniture.

But around half-way through, we see a pair of scissors. We hear guitars and a Hammond organ. People are groovin’ to cut-out, hip panels that seem to be pasted on refrigerators, cupboards and FAR OUT! There are fireworks and a fold-out Hallowe’en pumpkin and FAR OUT AGAIN! There’s a really bad cut in the soundtrack and it’s New Years’ Eve. Some guy in a green jacket is dancing like Jerry Lewis. Psychedelic!

The camera closes in on a logo. The music ends. A woman’s voice says “Westinghouse. The complete refrigerator. Compare.”

What? This is a refrigerator commercial? What about the teapot? And the Sherlock Holmes hat? And those geese?

And, again, we’re left to ask “What does it all mean?”

Actually, there’s only one reason I’m posting it, and it’s not to make fun of the ‘60s. I was listening to the soundtrack of this short and kept thinking “I know this music.” Then it dawned on me. Spiderman!!

Jam Handy leased Johnny Hawksworth cues from the KPM library that were heard on the last, weird season of the Spiderman cartoons on ABC (1969). There are huge fans of the cartoons and the library that will be able to name every single cue. I can’t, but I know the last one is “The Eyelash.”

Mel and Jack

No, not everyone who works together in radio hangs out with their boss, though it sounds like they’re close buddies on the air. Take Jack Benny for example. Don Wilson and Dennis Day don’t seem to have been part of his social set. He hung out with Barbara Stanwyck and Paulette Goddard as well as vaudeville cohorts like George Burns.

There was at least one exception.

Mel Blanc.

Mel’s autobiography and Jack’s book written partly by his daughter mention the relationship the two had. And while I imagine Mel wasn’t at the Bennys’ big, fancy Hollywood parties, they did see each other at the Blancs’ cottage at Big Bear Lake, and Mel could come over and entertain Joan Benny with his array of cartoon voices.

And Jack certainly was close enough to Mel to call on him in hospital after the horrific car accident in 1961 that came close to killing Blanc. Eventually, Mel was well enough to return to Jack’s TV show in a very touching portion of a Christmas season episode.

Here’s a feature story from the Hartford Courant of December 24, 1961. Nowhere does it say Jack visited Mel “every day” in hospital as some stories say. Nor does it tell the story of a comtose Mel being woken after repeated attempts when a doctor talked to him as Bugs Bunny (Mel alternately confirmed and denied that one). But it does give you an idea of the friendship between the two and what a thoughtful man Benny was.

You Just Can't Keep Mel Blanc Down
Man of 300 Voices Fights Back from Near Tragedy
By H. VIGGO ANDERSEN
Television Editor
A man with 300 different voices telephoned me from Hollywood the other day. That could be a bit confusing, you know. Even disturbing. Happily, he was using only one voice that day. The one he was born with and a very pleasant one it is.
You would never dream, as we sat there chatting over the transcontinental phone, that Mel Blanc, out there in California, was confined to a wheel chair, still convalescing from extremely painful, near-fatal injuries suffered in a grim automobile accident about 11 months ago. He was cheerful, uncomplaining, eager to talk about his work which he still carries on busily, undaunted by his handicap.
"I'm a very lucky guy," he said, and meant it. "Lucky to be here at all. Know what the doctor told me when I asked him how many bones I had broken? He said if any friends of mine ever told me about breaking a bone, any bone except the left arm, I could tell them I had broken the same ones! That covers quite a bit of territory, including my head, which was pretty well smashed up, too."
Mel was driving to work that fearful evening and was in the curb lane on Sunset Boulevard near UCLA. Suddenly a youngster, driving a car at a fast clip, crossed the double lines from the other side of the boulevard, veered across the inside lane and then plowed head on into Mel's car. It took rescuers more than a half hour to saw him out of the wreckage and then they hurried him to the hospital of the nearby university more dead than alive.
Fortunate Coincidence
"Just by coincidence I had entertained the faculty at UCLA a few days earlier, and when I was brought in one of the doctors recognized me. Man, did he go into action. He's a bone specialist. Well, he and a head specialist and 14 other doctors worked on me all that night. I was on the critical list for three days. Since then I've been wearing all sorts of casts and bandages, but, by gosh, I'm still here and doing fine," said the indomitable man of many voices.
"Just the other day," he went on cheerfully, "they took the cast off my right leg and it is in a brace now. With the help of crutches I am beginning to get around a bit. In two or three months I should be pretty much myself again."
One thing that has kept Mel Blanc's spirits up during the dark, painful months since the accident has been his work. Almost as soon as he got out of the hospital and returned to his home in Pacific Palisades he resumed making hilarious magic with that wonderful, flexible voice of his. He does the voices of 97 per cent of the characters in all the Warner Bros. cartoons, you know, including such prime favorites as Bugs Bunny (his top favorite and one he has been doing for 25 years), Speedy Gonzales, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Yosemite Sam and many others.
How did he manage to carry on, lying in bed all swathed up like a mummy. Let him tell it.
Son Built Him A Studio
"My son, Noel, is a pretty clever boy," he said proudly. "He's a lieutenant in the Army. Well, he built me a studio right here in my own home that is as complete and well equipped as any you'll find in Hollywood. I lay here in bed and made sound tracks so that the boys down at Warner Bros. could keep going with the cartoons, including that new and highly successful one, 'The Flintstones.' "
You probably heard one track he made like this for Jack Benny, in which a small squirrel hid in a bunker hole and watched Benny whiff the breeze futily several times without connecting with the golf ball. At last the squirrel burst out sarcastically: "It's cool now. Hit it."
And once the conversation had touched Jack Benny, Blanc was off on his favorite subject. "I've worked with just about all of them and he's the best. I'm not just talking about his superb talents as a comedian, but Jack Benny as a man. He is one of the kindest, most considerate men walking the earth today. Do you know that in all the time I've been laid up he has found time to visit me in the hospital and here at home at least once in every 10 days. He has been a source of tremendous inspiration and encouragement to me. What a great guy he is!"
Together Again Tonight
Blanc and Benny, who have been working together since 1940, back in radio days, will be seen together again tonight on Benny's Christmas show, but not in the familiar roles of annoying Christmas shopper (Jack) and utterly frustrated clerk (Mel). In tonight's show Benny visits the house-bound Blanc and they do a scene sitting beside each other. "Jack has seen the tape, and he tells me it's very funny. I hope you and everyone else will think so." (I'm sure we will.)
I asked Blanc how early in life he had learned that he had an outstanding gift for mimicry.
"Back in grammar school days. I guess," he said. "I used to do a lot of silly imitations for the other kids. I got started by talking to foreign born people in my native Portland, Oregon. For instance, a Japanese fruit pedlar. I'd point to the various fruits and vegetables he was selling and ask him what they were. Get him talking. Then I'd listen and when I left him I could do a pretty fair Jap dialect. I've been doing that sort of thing ever since I can remember picking up accents, dialects and odd sounds everywhere I've been."
"Is it true that you actually have 300 different, so-called voices?" I asked him.
"Oh, I guess it's really more than that," he said in all modesty.
Blanc had his first radio show on station KGW in Portland in 1927, just after he had been graduated from high school and he has been in show business ever since, and his is a voice (or voices) known and beloved to millions of listeners.
From Portland, Blanc drifted down to Hollywood where he began his career as a voice specialist for Warners, a job he still holds. Then came radio and his signing with Jack Benny in 1940. His first appearance with Benny was for the role of "Carmichael the Bear," and he was such a success Jack made him a permanent member of the cast. He became famous in his own right as the station master (remember him? Anaheim, Azusa and Cuca-monga) the clerk in the annual Christmas show and as the sound of the famous old Maxwell.
Feared TV
When Benny went to television, Blanc had some serious doubts about his ability to make the switch. For so many years he had been cloaked in anonymity, just a voice. He didn't believe he could perform as effectively as a visual entertainer. He couldn't have been more wrong for he turned out to be the perfect image of all his radio voices and characters. The public loved and still loves him. In addition to his cartoon work, and his career on the Benny program, Blanc also owns his own commercial company, known as Mel Blanc Associates. The concern produces humorous commercials for many of the top accounts in the country and Blanc admits he "loves those residuals."
A mighty busy and contented man, this courageous Mel Blanc. Happy in his work, still very much in love with his wife of many years, Estelle, and so proud of son, Noel, he has every right to describe himself as "a lucky guy." And he's a mighty nice one, too.
Why don't you look in on him on the Benny show tonight? He'd love to have you. And you are guaranteed some laughs from a man who not so long ago had very little to feel funny about.