If It Worked At Warner Bros....

Fans of Tex Avery’s cartoons at MGM likely know he took ideas he used at Warner Bros. and incorporated them into shorts at his new locale.

An example is the silhouettes of audience members moving in front of the action on the screen, like the camera is at the back of a theatre shooting the action, including the film that’s being projected. You can see it in Avery’s Little Red Walking Hood, Daffy Duck and Egghead and Thugs With Dirty Mugs.

Here’s a version in Who Killed Who?, a 1943 MGM cartoon with Billy Bletcher as the voice of a detective who bursts into a room in a creepy mansion after its occupant (Kent Rogers doing his Richard Haydn voice) is killed.

“Everybody stay where you are! Don’t nobody move!” he shouts as we see a silhouette of an audience member get up and move “across the row.”



The detective takes care of things.



“That goes for you, too, bud!” he yells at the figure writhing in head pain.



And the cartoon carried on.

No animators are credited. Just Avery.

How Green Acres Survived

Television critics in the 1960s tended to lump together shows where characters spoke with country-fied accents. But they generally didn’t really have anything in common. No one would mistake Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. for The Beverly Hillbillies.

Even the three Filmways “rural” shows on CBS—Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction and Green Acres—were dissimilar. Despite an attempt to locate them together geographically, which always struck me as an attempt to import Hillbillies’ huge audience, only one was set on a farm.

And Green Acres’ atmosphere was entirely different. It was filled with odd denizens and surreal, unexplainable situations that were treated as normal life by everyone but the confused Oliver Wendell Douglas. Grocery store owner, and reality anchor, Mr. Drucker never questioned it. Even Oliver’s sophisticated, Park Avenue-loving wife Lisa settled in and developed her own brand of illogic that meshed with the Hooter(s)ville folk. Only the setting made it rural. The tone could have come from one of those “Behind the Eight Ball” shorts that Richard Bare directed at Warner Bros. before his time behind the cameras on Green Acres.

Here’s a bit of background behind the show. This appeared in papers from October 22, 1966 onward, when Green Acres was into its second season.

Don’t Under Estimate Corn
By BOB THOMAS
AP Movie-Television Writer
HOLLYWOOD (AP) –Some observers of the television scene drew this lesson from the first Neilsen ratings of the 1965-66 season: Never underestimate the value of corn.

This is the attitude of certain sophisticates who sniff at the fact that among the top 10 shows in audience ratings were such offerings as “Green Acres," “Gomer Pyle,” "The Andy Griffith Show" and “Beverly Hillbillies.”
The most impressive showing among series in the ratings was made by "Green Acres," which captured the No. 3 position below the blockbusting Sunday night movie, "The Bridge on the River Kwai.” Do they grow corn on those "Green Acres”?
"I don’t think so," says Jay Sommers, who created, co-writes and produces the series. "I think it’s a fairly sophisticated show."
Sommers, a rotund, owlish veteran of the gag-writing jungle doesn’t really care what the smart crowd thinks of "Green Acres.” It’s his baby, and as long as the public buys it, that’s all that matters.
The inspiration for the show came from Sommers' boyhood, of which two years were spent on a farm in Greenvale, N.Y. His stepfather went broke trying to earn a living from the soil and the experiences remained with the boy. He capitalized on them with a 1950 radio show, "Granby’s Green Acres,” which starred Gale Gordon and Bea Benaderet, the latter now star of "Green Acres", sister show of “Petticoat Junction.”
When “Green Acres’ went on CBS last season, the original plan was to exchange performers with "Petticoat Junction.”
"We’re getting away from that concept now,” said Sommers. "It’s awfully hard to schedule when the actors will be available, and they are busy enough with their own shows. Besides, I think “Green Acres” should stand on its own feet.”
The series is doing a good job of it. Credit is due Sommers who spends a 12-hour day at General Service Studios, overseeing everything from script to cutting. Despite the rural nature of the show, it is filmed almost entirely on the lot. "The people are important, not the settings," explained Sommers.
The secret of "Green Acres' " success?
"I think it appeals to a basic human urge; everyone would like to buy a farm," Sommers theorized. "And we came up with a brilliant combination in Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor. They work together like a dream.”

A thick Hungarian accent didn’t stop Eva Gabor from giving interviews about her series. Indeed, columnist Hal Humphrey talked to her about it in 1965 and 1968. Read them in this post. He also talked to her in 1966. This story appeared on Sept. 5, 1966.

Eva Gabor Spoils Image
By HAL HUMPHREY
Los Angeles Times Service
HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 5—Eva Gabor, of the Hungarian Gabors, has a particular reason for being happy that her and Eddie Albert's TV show, Green Acres, survived its first season.
“It gives me a chance to spoil my image. Everyone always thinks I am the temperamental actress. I remember the very first time I did a TV show, the producer had a girl standing by to take over. They thought I either wouldn’t show up or would walk out after the first act.”
A similar type of storm signal went up when Eva was signed to play Lisa Douglas in the comfed “Green Acres” series. Besides insisting on the town’s most expensive makeup man and her own hairdresser, Eva held out for the chic Jean Louis to do her wardrobe.
IT WORKED
“But you see? It worked, didn’t it? With Gene Hibbs doing my makeup and Peggy Shannon my hair, I really saved the producer money, because I am always ready. And I don't like to take too much credit, because Jay Sommers and Dick Chevillat write marvelous scrips, but I established this character when I wore a chiffon negligee to chase a chicken across the barnyard.

The scene just described by Eva was in an early episode at the beginning of the season with Lisa trying to adjust to living on the farm her husband, Oliver (Eddie Albert), had just purchased. Instead of the ordinary robe prescribed originally, Eva persuaded the director that if Lisa ever chased chickens at all, it would be in a Jean Louis negligee.
“I know this character,” Eva maintains, "because she is like me. When Lisa wears jeans, I make sure they have diamonds for me to wear with them, and I mean real diamonds. If I know they are real diamonds, then the viewers believe it, too.”
STRIVE FOR QUALITY
When Eva digs in adamantly for such conditions, she does not consider it temperament but a striving for a standard of quality that will benefit everyone concerned. She knew she was running the risk of blowing the whole deal by insisting on Jean Louis gowns, diamonds, etc., and Eva wanted this break of co-starring in her own series. “But, darling,” as she says, “what is a break, if it is not done right?”
And, of course, she is right. In one “Green Acres” episode the past season Eva wore a Jean Louis she had worn few weeks earlier. Within two days she had letters from fans demanding to know, “What happened? Can’t you afford a new dress?”
The only temporary setback Eva encountered in her battle for quality was over a proper dressing room. Her first one was a portable job which even the chickens in “Green Acres” might have declined to roost in.
HAS EVERYTHING
“Ah, but after the first Nielsen rating came in, you should see my dressing room. It has everything! But why not? This lunch you and I are having is the first time I've been out of my house or the studio since June. I don’t go to parties. I have to train like an athlete. But I don’t mind. I adore acting. That is why I am 10 minutes early on the set every morning. Also, what these Hollywood people don't realize, I come from the stage and I have discipline.
“I believe there is such a thing as ‘the show must go on.’ Just yesterday I get word that Jolie, my mother, has fallen getting out of her swimming pool and broken her kneecap in three places, a horrible thing. And on the same day my little dog has a stroke, so I am very worried, but I am on the set working anyway.”
MORALE RISES
Eva’s morale has risen since her husband left his stockbroker's job in New York and moved to Hollywood (he waited for the third Nielsen rating on “Green Acres”). Soon after arriving, he became a vice-president for Filmways, the corporation that produces “Green Acres.”
Only two things have not worked out for Eva according to plan. She dare not wear in private life any of the 160 Jean Louis dresses accumulated from the show, because everyone has already seem them on TV. Second, the hillbilly slang on “Green Acres” is spoiling her not-too-recent mastering of the American idiom. When someone on the set mentioned sex the other day, Eva said, “Don’t kick it.” It took a few seconds for the assembled group to figure out she meant “Don't knock it.”

The second season carried on bizarreness (Lisa’s hen lays square eggs) and sly satire (Arnold the Pig gets a draft notice) and continued to get renewed until 1971 when CBS wiped the show off the schedule after 170 episodes.

Toby's Dressed Up

The Milkman is a cartoon with three not-all-together acts. The first part of the short features Toby the Pup delivering milk with his horse and wagon with a series of gags, bottles landing here and there, and the horse deciding to go to sleep.

Next, Toby abandons his horse in a little car conveniently in his wagon, and runs into a storm, with rainfall jokes taking up footage.

Our hero (and a small tree) take up refuge in a house which, somehow, has a huge dance hall, and we get musical jokes to finish off the short.

The Toby shorts, and there were 12 of them made by the Winkler (Charles Mintz) studio for release by RKO, are kind of Fleischer Light. Considering Dick Huemer was involved in them, that’s not much of a surprise, but they don’t have as many unexpected throw-away gags as you’d find in a Bimbo Talkartoon short.

The Milkman does have some enjoyable bits. After the horse blows a steam whistle, Toby throws away his bottles.



He reaches into a hidden pocket to put gloves over his gloves.



Next, he reaches behind himself to pull out some spats, which he wears after putting them on over his head.



Now he pulls something out of his belly button. At first, it looks like a cane, but it’s actually a top hat.



Hidden under his, uh, fur, is a cigar and a cleaver, which he uses to chop off the end of his cigar.



Why Toby decides to put on formal wear isn’t apparent, at least to me.

Harrison’s Reports of the day listed the release date as February 20, 1931 while the Motion Picture Herald gave February 25. Despite that, The Film Daily of July 21, 1930 reported “Animation for ‘The Milkman,’ third of the ‘Toby, the Pup’ cartoons has been completed, according to the report from Mintz. It is now in the recording room.” There is a York Daily News-Times ad for the cartoon on the bill at the York Theatre on October 12, 1930. Toby lasted one season. RKO already owned Van Beuren Productions, which made Aesop’s Fables, and replaced Toby with in-house animated shorts starring the human Tom and Jerry.

He's My Hero

Daffy Duck is ecstatic Dick Tracy (in his comic book) has nabbed the criminals. There’s a fun scene where Daffy leaps around for joy. Here are some frames.



“Oh, boy! If I could only be Dick Tracy, I’d show those gooney criminals,” says Daffy, swinging his fist to punch out some crooks. He punches himself into dreamland instead.



The Great Piggy Bank Robbery is full of the kind of energy you’d find in Bob Clampett’s shorts for Warners. It was the last he completed for the studio. He began work on Bacall to Arms, but left and it was finished by Art Davis. Neon Noodle and the rest of the Chester Gould-esque villains were released to theatres, according to Boxoffice magazine, on July 27, 1946. The cartoon didn’t appear at the Strand (a Warners theatre) in New York until the end of August, but was screened at the Strand (a Warners theatre) in Altoona, Pa. on its release date.

Manny Gould, Rod Scribner, Izzy Ellis and Bill Melendez were the credited animators.

Jack Benny Every Week

Leave it to George Burns to explain why his buddy Jack Benny changed his mind about television.

Benny was trepidatious about going into video, even in the 1930s, according to one article we’ve reprinted here. By the end of the ‘40s, television was inevitable. Jack started out slowly. Occasionally, he’d express a worry that a weekly show would overexpose him. But that changed in the 1960-61 TV season when he showed up on home screens every seven days.

This story in the Los Angeles Times tried to find out why.

All Work Is Really All Play to This Jack
BY CECIL SMITH
LAKE TAHOE—Around the lake last week, the gag was that Jack Benny was fiddling while Tahoe burned.
It was an obvious gag because Jack opened his only night club engagement of the year at Bill Harrah's sumptuous South Shore club as the huge Donner Lake forest fire blacked out the lake resorts, Reno and much of northern Nevada. With emergency generators the opening went off as scheduled with Jack in his usual superb form, assisted by a sprightly Australian singing lass named Diana Trask and a lavish show built around Leighton Nobel's orchestra.
Well of Talent
Blackout or no, fire notwithstanding, the audience loved Jack onstage (he will be at Harrah's twice nightly through Sept. 7). And I among them, applauding as loud as any. But at the same time marveling.
Marveling at the enormous well of talent and energy that is Jack Benny.
At 66, he's at the top of his profession, one of the world's great funnymen, honored throughout the world. And he's working harder than any kid on a corner dancing for pennies.
As a matter of fact, this year Jack is taking on the biggest television assignment he's ever tried he's embarking on the perilous seas of doing a weekly comedy show.
While Jack did weekly comedy on radio for two decades, he's never tried it on television. Matter of fact, Jack has always treated TV tenderly.
He entered it in very easy stages, like a fat woman entering a swimming pool—first sticking a toe in to do four shows back in 1950, gradually increasing the load until he was doing a show every other week for the last few years (he alternated weekly with George Gobel last year).
And weekly television has been a graveyard for many a great comic. I flew here to find out from Benny why he wants to chance it, why he wants to work this hard.
I found him on the day before his opening bouncing through the crowded casino as happy as a teenager with a cut-down Ford.
"I went down in my dressing room," he said, "to try and learn my lines for the show. And what did I do? Practiced the fiddle the whole time I was down there."

"About the weekly show, Jack ..." I began.
"Practicing the fiddle for my concerts. Isn't that funny? Here I'm opening a show tonight. And I've got the TV show beginning in October. But what am I rehearsing for the symphony concerts?"
“The weekly . . .”
"I don't do the first till November. I'm doing four of them in November—Indianapolis, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Baltimore. They are my real kicks, you know. And for no money."
About That Show
"Jack," I said. "Television, Jack. The weekly TV show."
"What about it?" he said.
"Why?"
"You know, it's easier. It's actually easier. We put 10 of them in the can for next season. Filmed them before an audience at Desilu in the live manner, using three cameras. Did them back to back. And it was easier.
"Something happens doing a show a week. You get into a kind of groove. You develop a rhythm. You don't seem to be pressing so hard, not trying to make every show the greatest show you've ever done. And I think they're better shows."
"But a weekly show," I said, "is the toughest work in the world. Why take it on?"
"I had three choices," Jack said. "I could go on doing the show every other week. I could do six specials and let it go at that But I chose the weekly show ..."
Work Defined
Somebody said that Mr. Benny was wanted at rehearsals and Jack dashed away after his violin.
George Burns, Jack's great and good friend who was here for the opening, looked at me thoughtfully and murmured:
“This isn't work. The thing Jack's doing. It's not work. He loves it.
That's Work
"Work is sitting round Hillcrest flapping your arms wondering what to do till dinner. Work is haunting an agent's office, wondering when you'll get on a bill. Work is playing a split week in Schenectady for an audience that yawns at you.
That's work.
"The thing Jack's doing is something he loves to do for an audience that loves watching him do it.
“That’s not work—that's functioning in the world. That's living. That's what Jack's doing—living."

Benny and CBS president Jim Aubrey got into a disagreement in the 1963-64 season. Jack was upset Aubrey put Petticoat Junction as a lead-in to his show. Aubrey wasn’t going to let some old star tell him how to schedule the network. Benny moved to NBC where he was killed in the ratings by Gomer Pyle and was finally cancelled in 1965.

Jack went back to occasional specials—praising the concept of not being on every week—and appeared in them, to loads of good publicity, until he died.

The Man Behind The Scrappy Scenery

The Little Match Girl is, arguably, one of the finest animated shorts to come out of the Charles Mintz studio for release by Columbia Pictures. Animated in part by Emery Hawkins, it was nominated for an Oscar. The suffering of the child in this cartoon has brought some viewers to tears, while others feel unhappy endings are inappropriate for cartoons (but just fine for live-action feature films).

Credits are maddening incomplete in the first decade of sound cartoons. Hawkins receives nothing on screen for his work in this 1937 release. Art Davis is given the animation credit, Sid Marcus was responsible for the story adaptation and Joe De Nat, as usual, provided the music. And that’s it.

But we do know who painted the backgrounds for this acclaimed short, and others of that period at the Mintz studio, thanks to an article in the Lancaster, Pa. Sunday News of July 17, 1938.

Joe Gavan was a young artist whose career in animation seems to have been brief. Let’s look at the newspaper article about his work on the West Coast, which also goes into other parts of his career. It also describes a title card eliminated when Columbia cartoons were reissued years later.



He Has A Picture Of It
Joe Gavan Pursues His Art For Backgrounds Into Hollywood’s Famous Cartoons
After three and a half years hobnobbing with Hollywood stars—such as Krazy Kat, Scrappy and others—Joe Gavan is still able to talk for three consecutive sentences without saying “terrific” or “colossal.”
That’s quite an accomplishment, even if he hadn’t done anything else. Which he very definitely has.
Joe is one of a growing colony of Lancastrians transplanted to movieland, including comedian Bob Burns, radio announcer Bob Longenecker, of Lititz, and others.
Visiting Relatives
Joe has spent the past several weeks visiting his brother, Frank N. Gavan, and his wife at 61 Cottage avenue in Millersville.
You’d think he’d be glad to get away from the celluloid world for while, if you didn’t know Hollywood and you didn’t know Joe.
Joe’s one constant companion, however, is his notebook. In it you’ll find sketches of just about anything a movie director could ask for. And as Joe will testify, movie directors are likely to ask for anything, including a design for a bench in the Ephrata Cloisters or the "hex" sign on a Lancaster county barn.
Anyway, Joe will be fortified with a lot of Lancaster scenery when he heads back for the cinema center of the universe in a few days.
Watercolors Of County
He’ll be able to impress the Hollywood bigwigs, for instance, with watercolors and sketches of the old covered bridge at Williamson’s park, and with pictures of classic Lancaster barns and farmhouses.
"Everybody’s an expert out there,” he explains, "and you've got to be an expert on everything to get along with them.”
Every one of the tricky titles to animated short subjects produced by the Charles Mintz studios for several years has been the work of Joe Gavan. Maybe you remember “Bluebird’s Baby,” which started out with the title written across a blue-checked baby blanket decorated with safety-pins. Or "The Little Match Girl," the studio's masterpiece to date.
Cartoon Sets Elaborate
"Sets” for the cartoons, although they're only on paper, are just as elaborate to prepare as a full-size movie stage. Joe spent a full week doing just one of the highly-detailed and colorful backgrounds for the “Match Girl."
While he’s still very much involved in the doings of Scrappy and Krazy Kat, Joe is also taking a large interest these days in the more involved careers of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara.
For, like all the rest of Hollywood, he’s got the "Gone With the Wind" bug. His bug, however, is likely to get him farther than most of the boys who are just hoping.
Joe has actually been working on the picture, spending weeks in research on accurate interiors and exteriors for the picture's acts. He hasn’t really landed a job with the show, but with the pages and pages of neatly sketched dropleaf tables and ladderback chairs and pillared mansions he has prepared, he feels ready to go in and corner whoever’s running things and say, "See here—“
Aims At Big Features
That never-falling notebook of Joe’s, crammed with drawings he made years ago and brought up to date with a series of watercolors painted within the past few weeks in a swing around the nation, is the springboard he hopes will take him from the cartoon studios into the art side of big feature pictures.
Not that the cartoons are anybody's snap stuff, though. When Donald Duck cavorts across the street in search of trouble, the picture looks simple enough from where you sit. But back of that little scene is a whole aspirin-box full of headaches for hundreds of people.
Take the average Krazy Kat cartoon, for example. They're the ones on which Joe has been working, among others, for the duration of his stay in Hollywood.
Through Long Process
Krazy starts out as a ghostly critter sketched on an evanescent background in a conference of directors. That fuzzy picture goes from the conference where the theme of the picture and the appearance of the characters are determined, to the head director’s assistant.
He makes the picture a little more distinct—and hands it to HIS assistant. This fellow has the dirty work of actually drawing in the scenes as they ought to be, but the real detail of the intermediate pictures is handled by other subordinate assistants.
The actual artistic end is handled by Joe Gavan and his associates. They do the color backgrounds against which the action takes place, and on which so much of the impression of the picture depends.
The motion of the characters is poured in by another roomful of cooks—girls who draw the thousands of separate pictures which must be made so that the figures will dance or walk or beat each other across the ear in smooth continuity.
1,500,000 Drawings
The average color cartoon which takes only a couple of minutes to show is likely to consist of perhaps 1,500,000 separate drawings. The studios figure about fourteen drawings to the “beat" of music, ninety beats to the foot of film, and 1,200 to 1,400 feet of film. And since each figure has to be done separately, you can do your own arithmetic for a mob scene.

The whole thing is set to music, in the Mintz studios’ case, by Columbia pictures—and then it’s sent back for the preview.
"If three out of the three hundred studio people at the preview applaud, we know we have a success," Joe says.
After working with it for months the studio is generally so heartily sick of the cartoon that the whole staff is ready to pull it into little pieces the minute it flashes on the screen. But they’re their own worst critics, and they can always be sure the movie public Is going to like it a lot better than they do.
Designing backgrounds has been Joe's big job In Hollywood. But the background he's designed for himself is no less interesting.
Has Stage Txperience [sic]
He's a graduate of Lancaster Boys' High school and Franklin and Marshall academy. He's breezed through art schools at Harrisburg, New York, Chicago, and two at Los Angeles. He worked for nine months in New York doing displays for the Chicago World’s Fair, and he and his brother designed and built the scenery for Lancaster’s 1935 Welfare pageant. While working for a scenery building firm in Harrisburg, Joe painted and set up fourteen stages in Pennsylvania, including two In Harrisburg, and as many more in Ohio and several other states.
In Hollywood he's been enlarging his invaluable portfolio with water-colors and sketches made in the great museum of the University of California, where furniture and costumes of all nations and periods are on display.
And Magazine Covers
He's also been doing magazine covers and layouts for a new movie magazine published (at large financial loss, so far) by Hollywood people in search of something other than the dirt-and-scandal type of publication. So Joe's heading back to Colossal-town with a rumbleseat full of Lancaster county on paper, just in case. And if you see a familiar-looking farmhouse or buggy in G. with the W., blame Joe.

Joseph Bernard Gavan was born in Lancaster on October 22, 1910. By 1940, he was out of the animation business. The April 1940 Census gives his occupation as “advertising, motion pictures” (at Cartoon Films, Inc., perhaps?) while his Draft Card the following October states he was employed at the May Co. in downtown Los Angeles. He married in 1942 and again in 1945, and spent part of the late ‘40s living in Hawaii. By 1950, he was divorced again and working in advertising in Los Angeles. His watercolours continued to be exhibited.

He returned to Lancaster for the last four years of his life and died there on March 24, 1974.

Playing My Theme Song

Lucky. Rabbit.
The Lucky Oswald Rabbit.
Nicest. Rabbit.
That You Ever Knew.

Those are the opening lyrics to Walter Lantz’s theme song for the Oswald cartoons, sung by Oswald himself in Mars 1930.

Oswald sings his song to, presumably, the King of Mars, and accompanies himself on an odd plant with hands growing out of the ground. I suspect Pinto Colvig and others are making the tooting sounds coming from it. The song and some of the artwork of Oswald come from animation an earlier 1930 cartoon, Africa.

The duck-billed, lion-maned king’s body bops up and down to the music, swings his hips (like Mickey Mouse in The Opry House), and then he dances left to right across the Martian landscape in a 12-drawing cycle, animated on ones.

The king’s body separates into three parts and the top and bottom kick around the ball-shaped middle part for a while before the body goes back together.

Cut to the next scene with a wonderfully-designed, musical-instrument character that strolls right to left playing “Yankee Doodle” (yes, on Mars).

Gerry Geronimi, Manny Moreno and Ray Abrams get animation credits, with Tex Avery, Pinto Colvig and Les Kline in smaller letters underneath. The always-helpful David Gerstein has found the Oswald lyrics are by Bernie Grossman and the melody by Walter Lantz’s composer Jimmy Dietrich. Lantz and Bill Nolan share the director credit. For a while in 1930 and 1931, they were going for single-word titles of their cartoons. This was one of three Oswalds released by Universal in December 1930 (Africa and Mexico were the others).

There is more on the cartoon in this old post.