Bob Gribbroek and Background Reruns

Television in the 1950s was ready to be spoofed. Radio comedians had been doing it. Jack Benny, for example, had one show where he was tuning in a television set and got nothing but Westerns. In fact, Screen Gems joked about the video box in a theatrical cartoon as early as 1940 with Tangled Television.

Over at Warner Bros., writer Tedd Pierce figured there were shows on the air that could stand a gentle kidding. Thus Superman inspired Stupor Duck (1956), Boston Blackie gave birth to Boston Quackie (1957), and You Bet Your Life, You Asked For It, Liberace and several shows (as well as KTTV in Los Angeles) found themselves lampooned on Wideo Wabbit (1956).

One TV series in the ‘50s was so popular, Pierce was sparked to write three cartoons based on it. The show was Jackie Gleason’s The Honeymooners (1955-56 season). Pierce came up with the idea of turning the characters on the show into mice. That was pretty much the gag. There wasn’t any real exaggeration of the Gleason series. The mice had close proximities to the voices, thanks to Daws Butler and June Foray, and repeated the same catchphrases, but that was about it.

The first short was The Honey-Mousers (Dec. 8, 1956), the second Cheese It, the Cat (May 4, 1957) and the last Mice Follies (Aug. 20, 1960).

The plot of the second cartoon was similar to Frank Tashlin’s A Tale of Two Mice (1945) where Abbott and Costello knock-off mice try to get past a cat to get cheese from a refrigerator. Pierce did a fine job as the Abbott mouse, but Warren Foster’s story is superior in gags and the animation is far more exaggerated and fun in the older short. Bob McKimson oversaw Cheese It and was the most lacklustre of the three directors at the Warners studio in 1957.

While art styles had become more abstract by then, McKimson employed the most literal background people possible. Dick Thomas painted the settings for The Honey-Mousers, then after leaving the studio (he ended up at Disney), was replaced by Bob Majors; whose hiring was announced in the April 1956 edition of the Warner Club News. His replacement, Bill Butler, was first mentioned in the News the following August.

It doesn’t appear Majors did all the work on Cheese It. McKimson re-used some of Thomas’ paintings, a practice unheard of at Warners. Any changes were slight.

Check and compare.


The Honey-Mousers


Cheese It, the Cat


The Honey-Mousers


Cheese It, the Cat


The Honey-Mousers


Cheese It, the Cat

The first interior shot. Majors seems to have given Bob Gribbroek’s layout a new paint job.


The Honey-Mousers


Cheese It, the Cat

Here’s some of Majors’ work from Cheese It. It’s reminiscent of Thomas’ work in the earlier cartoon. Gribbroek’s layouts utilise thimbles, match boxes, postage stamps, a spool of thread and other small household items as furniture; Tom and Jerry cartoons of the ‘40s had the same thing of thing.

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Ajax comes in a box, apparently.



The lady of the house doesn’t keep a box of Tide detergent.



An inside joke. Ed Selzer ran the cartoon studio, retiring March 1, 1958 after 28 years with Warners and 14 years overseeing the animation department. He couldn’t draw. He’d been a PR flack on the main lot.



Here’s an inside joke in Thomas’ background in The Honey-Mousers. I’m under the impression Tedd Pierce preferred martinis over beer.



We provided some information about Dick Thomas on the Yowp blog and Bob Majors in this Tralfaz post. I thought I had posted a biography of Bob Gribbroek but cannot find it on the blog. At the risk of lengthening this post, let me pass along a few notes:

Robert Carter Gribbroek was born in Rochester, New York, on March 16, 1906. His grandfather owned a grocery store that employed four sons, including Gribbroek’s father. In 1915, one of the sons was found shot in the head. The wife of one of the other sons was charged with murder but cleared due to lack of evidence.

In his ‘20s, he became interested in New Mexico and its native population. In 1929, while art director of the Hutchins Advertising Company in Rochester, he spent a month among members of the Pueblo, painting portraits and scenes. By then, his parents had separated (his father died in Los Angeles in 1935).

In the 1930s, he was living both in Taos and Rochester, with his work in oil and charcoal being exhibited in both cities. A story in one New Mexican paper reports about a gallery exhibit: “As part of the entertainment, Robert Gribbroek danced the Varsoviana and a Schottish with Mrs. Esco Leibert.” In 1940, he was working for the New Mexico State Assessment Authority. His draft card dated that year has a note in pencil that he moved to Hollywood. We find him and his mother in the Los Angeles directory for 1942, where he is listed as an “artist.” A squib in the Los Angeles Times of April 25, 1943 reveals he and six others from the Taos Art Colony (he was a founder of the Transcendental Painting Group in 1938) were working in Southern California war factories. After his service, he returned to live with his mother.

His first credit in a Warner Bros. cartoon was in Chuck Jones’ Hare Conditioned, released August 11, 1945, where he painted the backgrounds from Earl Klein’s layouts; it doesn’t appear Jones’ cartoons had full credits before this, but Gribbroek’s picture is in a staff photo montage dated April 1945. His last credit for Jones was in Don’t Give Up The Sheep, released Jan. 3, 1953. He was replaced by Maurice Noble and it appears he left the studio. He is not listed in the studio staff birthdays in 1954 in the Warner Club News. More of his artwork was being exhibited in New Mexico in 1955. This wasn’t his only cartoon work. His name is on the credits for The 3 Minnies: Sota, Tonka and Ha-Ha, the second of the four Jerky Journeys cartoons made by Impossible Pictures for distribution by Republic, and released April 15, 1949. Gribbroek was also an illustrator, providing art for Howdy Doody’s Island Adventure (Whitman, 1955).

Jones recalled Gribbroek had begun training as a bullfighter in New Mexico but, after one lesson, realised he could not get away fast enough from a charging toro, so quickly gave up the idea (Gribbroek was gone from the studio when Jones made Bully For Bugs). He also said Gribbroek had lived in an adobe house in Taos, but used green hay that sprouted flowers every spring. The Warner Club News of January 1955 featured a picture of Gribbroek and chinchillas he was raising in Taos.

Gribbroek was also an accomplished amateur chef, winning a $10,000 prize from Kaiser Aluminum in November 1959 for his Pork Tenderloin Javanese. He had written the paper in Taos the previous August, saying his car had been hit by a driver who turned left without signalling and had been left with whiplash that used up his sick time and vacation days, though he had just started working on the Bell System Science Series film on Genetics that had an impossible deadline.

He returned to the studio after Noble left in 1953, handling layouts for Two Scent’s Worth, released on Oct. 15, 1955. After three more cartoons for Jones, including One Froggy Evening, he was transferred to Bob McKimson’s unit, with The High and the Flighty the first cartoon to be released on Feb. 18, 1956. Into the ‘60s, he began to handle both layouts and backgrounds for McKimson. His last Warners cartoon was the final Bugs Bunny short, False Hare, released on July 16, 1964. By then, he had been hired by Walter Bien’s SIB Tower 12 Productions to re-join Jones, who was making Tom and Jerry shorts for MGM. His first was Is There a Doctor in the Mouse? He also did some moonlighting at Hanna-Barbera as a background designer on the feature Hey There, It's Yogi Bear (1964).

In August 1970, the local paper reported he had moved back to Taos after five years in Barcelona and Sitgas, Spain, where he had worked on an animated feature and as an actor in TV commercials and four feature films. He died there on October 13, 1971.

To get back to a possible reason Thomas’ backgrounds were re-used after he left the studio, Bob McKimson may have dropped a hint in an interview with historian Mike Barrier.

I had a layout man—he was a very good layout man—who was a queer, and a background man at the same time who was a queer, and they were just at each other's throats all the time. So finally I had to get rid of the background man.

As Dick Thomas was quite heterosexual, we leave you to draw your own conclusions about whom McKimson is referring.

More of the Crazy, Darn Fool Duck

Daffy Duck somersaults forwards and backwards and twists around for director Tex Avery in Daffy Duck in Hollywood (1938). A few drawings in order.



This may be the one Hollywood cartoon without celebrity caricatures, though the producer is clearly based on Leon Schlesinger, with his double-breasted suit and carnation in the lapel. Daffy was the most frantic character on the big screen at the time. Avery and the duck worked well together; Porky’s Duck Hunt, Daffy Duck and Egghead and this short are all fine cartoons. Bob Clampett glommed onto Daffy and started livening up the Looney Tunes series with him.

Dave Monahan gets the rotating story credit, while Virgil Ross is credited with animation (Paul J. Smith, Sid Sutherland were also animating in the unit at the time).

Bear and Robespierre

When you think of a cartoon where a character comments on the action, another character talks to the audience and another character holds up a sign, you probably think of Tex Avery. He used all these devices, both at Warner Bros. and MGM. They got laughs so seemingly everyone started doing the same thing.

Frank Tashlin was known more for aping live action cinematography, then adding touches you could only do in animation. In Booby Hatched, released in October 1944, he has a few of overhead camera angles, and shooting scenes looking up from the ground. But he also tries out a few Avery touches in a story by Warren Foster.

Robespierre is an unhatched duckling, with only his feet sticking out under the bottom of the shell. He’s lost in the woods in a vicious snowstorm. “I’m lost-ed! Help! Save me!” he yells as he ploughs through the snow. Suddenly he stops, the blowing snow is held in mid-air and the dramatic music ends. He turns to the audience and comments “This is the saddest part of the picture folks.” Then, he turns, the blowing snow and music return and he resumes his trudging.



Tashlin’s animator is up to the challenge of moving a speaking character without a mouth or arms. The egg nods around while the legs bend at the knees.

The camera pans right to a wolf looking forward to a duck dinner. Sign gag.



Robespierre zooms under a sleeping bear in a cave (to the sound of Fingal’s “Cave Overture). Tashlin indulges in some nice timing here. The bear wakes up, widening its eyes. It moves its lips, looks down, lifts its right leg and sees the egg.



Tashlin holds the bear in place for 36 frames. The bear lowers his leg, closes his eyes as if he’s going back to sleep. Tashlin holds the bear for another 17 frames, then it opens its eyes and says to the audience “So I laid an egg.”



For some reason, Tashlin has the bear’s mouth half-covered when the line is said.

Izzy Ellis is credited, while Art Davis and Cal Dalton are likely among the other animators. Dick Thomas is uncredited as the background artist. Carl Stalling opens the short with a minor-key version of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” and we get some familiar tunes, including “Am I Blue?” (the eggs turn blue) and Raymond Scott’s “Toy Trumpet” (when the mother duck and ducklings are marching).

He Wasn't Odd

Jack Klugman won a pair of Emmys for playing Oscar Madison on The Odd Couple. Surprisingly, they weren’t his first.

Klugman was honoured by the Television Academy in 1964 for his work on The Defenders, starring E.G. Marshall and Robert Reed.

His career went back further, with an attention-grabbing role in Mr. Roberts at the Erlanger Theatre in New York starting in July 1950. He appeared on TV even before that, performing in sketches with Frank Sandford and Nancy Coleman on Hollywood Screen Test on KECA-TV in Los Angeles the previous April. After getting out of the service, he enrolled at Carnegie Tech and took to the stage in a production of The Time of Your Life in October 1946. Eventually, Broadway beckoned with a top-notch part. He was interviewed about it in a syndication story published Aug. 20, 1959.

Musical Star Admits He Can’t Sing
By STEVEN H. SCHEUER
Jack Klugman, who plays an agent and Ethel Merman's love interest in "Gypsy," the biggest musical smash hit Broadway has had in years, credits his performance as an agent in Playhouse 90’s "The Velvet Alley" for the opportunity to play the Broadway role.
Tonight, Playhouse 90 repeats "The Velvet Alley," and you can see for yourself why Klugman was approached to play a major role in a musical.
"I have an agent with guts," is the way Jack prefers to tell it.
In a way, Jack knows what he's talking about. Though he's a veteran of the legitimate theater and has over 400 TV acting roles under his belt, his only previous experience with a musical was in the recent TV version- of "Kiss Me Kate," in which he played one of the comedy gangsters and croaked his way through "Brush Up Your Shakespeare."
Learned Sons
"When I auditioned, for 'Gypsy,' " Jack said, "the only song I knew was 'Brush Up Your Shakespeare' and they refused to let me sing it. So I learned 'Isn't it Romantic' and I sang that at the audition—but rotten! You have never heard anyone sing anything so rotten! Finally, from the dark of the theater a really disgusted voice said: ‘All right! Read lines!’ So I did and then the voice said, almost beggingly: 'Can't you sing anything?'
"I answered, 'Sure, "Brush Up Your Shakespeare’," Jack continued.
"And the voice, full of resignation, said: 'Oh, all right Sing it!' So I did and I was hired.
"Luckily, 'Gypsy' has such strong dramatic values that it doesn't matter that I'm the worst singer on Broadway. I'm not out to prove I can sing," Jack insisted. "I can't."
Free Time
Anyway, Jack has what could amount to a lifetime job in "Gypsy." So all he talks about now is TV. He's writing TV scripts and he expects to do an awful lot of acting on TV this season.
"I've never had so much free time in my life," Klugman said.
"All my days and all day Sunday. And with 200 spectaculars [specials], lots of them on tape, I’ll act myself silly. TV's going to have to turn to Broadway for actors, and I'm ready."
It should be interesting to see what sort of roles Jack Klugman ends up with on TV this fall. Like so many other working actors, his career has run in cycles.
He put in a couple of years in which he played nothing but mean gangsters and was usually the first actor anyone thought of when a part like that came up.
"Finally," Jack said "my agent said 'No more gangsters!' and I started playing nothing but cops. Now nobody casts me as a gangster any more. It's been years. I'd love to play a good nasty part again."
Oddly enough, despite his 400-plus TV roles, Jack has appeared in only one western, a truly fantastic record. "It was a 'Gunsmoke,'" he reminisced, "and one was enough. Can you imagine going on location in 110-degree heat, surrounded by tarantulas?"
Considering that he's now prominently identified with Broadway, Jack Klugman hasn't turned on TV the way so many other performers have done. On the contrary, he feels he's still a part of it.
"I've found more fun and more opportunity and more integrity in TV than in almost everything else I've ever done," he said. "I'm only sorry that it's almost impossible to find any of those good, juicy, controversial scripts they used to do.



Perhaps Klugman’s next significant role on Broadway was replacing Walter Matthau as Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple. This led to Garry Marshall casting him in the TV version. It carried on for several season, boosted by some cast-cutting (farewell, Garry Walberg and Larry Gelman) and being filmed in front of an audience.

Klugman still wasn’t happy. He was interviewed almost annually through the second half of the ‘70s by Marilyn Beck of the Gannett News Service. When he was starring as Quincy, he told Beck almost every year the scripts stunk and he was going to quit. The situation seems no different when he was shooting The Odd Couple. This appeared in print Nov. 24, 1974.

Two Odd Couples May Not Survive Another Season
By Marilyn Beck
Jack Klugman says he can thank The Odd Couple for a lot: “For fame and fortune but more than that for an attitude of arrogance.
“That's right," said the fellow who has carried his portrayal of Oscar Madison, lovable slob, from the Broadway and London stage to five years of video stardom. “The series has made me a very arrogant person. Its success has given me self-confidence and strength for the first time in my life. I used to be afraid to assert myself for fear of hurting someone’s feelings. Now I do what’s best for me. I’m true to myself.”
Arrogance has resulted in some dramatic changes in the life of the veteran actor. He started off the year testing newly discovered muscles of inner strength by parting from Brett Sommers, his wife of 18 years.
“She told a friend that I left because ‘he wanted his freedom — whatever that means.’ And that about sums it up. There was no one else involved. It was just well. Brett’s a strong woman and suddenly I realized I’d be happier setting my own mood, leading a life as a loner.”
He credits Brett with having taught him tremendous lessons about life and acting, and said, “I don’t really know what happened to us. I do know I owe her a lot. But I've got to do what makes me happy now. And I’m much happier living by myself at our Malibu Beach condominium.”
As he moved deeper into discussion of his marital situation, it turned out that Brett had actually been the first one to move out. “She had always warned me that if we ever split, she didn't want the children. So she left me with the house and kids. But I knew she wouldn’t be happy without them, and she wasn't. She came back, and I left.”
The bonds that tied the Klugmans together for nearly two decades of matrimony are obviously still strong. He visits their sons (10-year-old Adam, and David, who is 15) often. “When I go over to the house I usually end up sitting and talking with Brett ’til 2 o’clock in the morning,” he said. “Hell I don’t even do that with my girl friends.”
He had the look of a Basset Hound awaiting a gesture of affection as he said, “You know what happens to me? I go out with a young chick and all of a sudden a voice goes off inside me. ‘Aren’t you ashamed?’ it says. ‘How do you have the guts to pull a line like this?’ So I get up and tell her I’m taking her home.
“It's like Brett is watching over my shoulder,” he complained with a self-conscious grin. “She always told me she wasn’t worried about the young, dumb women taking over with me. It was the smart, homely ones she was worried about.”
Though he expects the estrangement to continue, he said he had no plans for divorce. “Why divorce?” he asked. “Who wants to remarry? Things are fine this way — an easy relationship with Brett, the same joint checking account we always had. Except now I'm free to be me.”
A rumble of laughter accompanied the comment, “See what happens in Hollywood? There's no place else in the world where it's so easy to escape reality.”
There had been times when his family lived in Connecticut that he and Brett had almost split, he admitted. “I'd yell, ‘I’m leaving” and I’d walk. But where the hell was there to go? I’d drive around for a couple of hours, sleep in some crummy motel. And the next day I'd be back home.
“Out here you split and 20 minutes later you’re in paradise, you’re at the beach. Yeah, it does make it much easier to escape out here.”
He would never have asserted himself in such a permanent independent way, he said, if it wasn't for The Odd Couple. “Wow, how self-confidence can change you,” he said with a laugh.
He has spent 29 years developing such professional confidence and looking back recalled that the early years "were hell.”
“Like a lot of others I almost starved waiting for my break,” he said. “I sold blood for $2 a pint. Charlie Bronson and I used to live in a place that had a community kitchen— and would steal food from the icebox. It was either that or go without food for days.”
He spent decades paying his professional dues before Odd Couple stardom came along, gaining a solid theatrical reputation with a decade of summer stock work, over 400 T V guest appearances, featured roles in such films as “Goodbye Columbus” and “There Must be a Pony,” and Broadway performances that ranged from “Golden Boy” to “The Odd Couple.”
“Let me tell you,” he said. “After all that time you learn something: You know what’s best for you. And after you finally land a series— and you’re lucky enough to have a hit— you know what’s responsible for that hit. It’s the star.
“Sure it’s arrogant to say that, but it has to be said. Any hit series has more to do with the stars taking over that it has to do with producers or writers or directors.”
He noted my reaction and he asked, “You don’t understand? You think that’s a terrible thing for me to say? It is, but I’ll tell you why I have to say it: A good performer puts himself into the hands of a producer and he dies. Carroll O’Connor and Redd Foxx know what’s better for them than Norman Lear does though he produces Sanford and Son and All in the Family. Any actor knows what’s best for himself.”
I disagreed but Klugman was not to have his theory denied. It’s hard to argue with success, and he has chalked up five successful seasons as a television star. He’s convinced the responsibility for that victory can be credited strictly to him and costar Tony Randall.
“We’ve got 60 years of combined experience and training in this business,” he said. “We’re the well-oiled team that makes the show go always, throwing ad libs to one another, polishing up a script to cover weak spots.”
If he has ever done battle over the series’ direction, it has never been with Randall, he said. “How can you argue with a guy who doesn’t fight back? Me, I hold a grudge. Man, it can be personal vendetta time where I’m concerned. But Tony, he apologizes even when he’s right. You can’t get mad at someone like that.”
Because he and Randall have maintained a united front against management, “we’ve usually managed to get what we want,” Klugman assured.
“But I want you to know, whatever disagreements there have been have been ironed out before we shoot. There have never been temper tantrums on the set. When the cameras roll it’s time to be professional.”
He expects— he hopes— the Odd Couple cameras to shut down permanently the end of this season. “I want out after this year. I know, with the competition from The Waltons it would take a miracle for the show to survive. But even if it does, I want to move on. My series’ exposure has given me enough of a reputation that I’m able to say to a theater owner, ‘This is the play I want to do.’ And he’ll say, ‘O.K., do it.’ ”
And that’s exactly what Jack Klugman intends to do: Devote his time to growth on the legitimate stage.
He said he’s going to continue to do exactly what he wants to do instead of what others might decide is best for him.
After nearly 30 years of paying his professional dues, that’s what success has done for Jack Klugman.



Somers never divorced Klugman, but she played Oscar Madison’s ex in some funny episodes of The Odd Couple. It has been said that Klugman pushed to get her as a panelist on The Match Game in 1973 (he appeared on the pilot), and it turned out her banter with Charles Nelson Reilly resulted in some of the best moments on the show.

Throat surgery in 1989 didn’t stop Klugman’s career. He sounded like Jack Klugman with laryngitis. He also reunited with Randall in New York stage productions of The Odd Couple and The Sunshine Boys. He died of prostate cancer on Christmas Eve 2012. He lived to 90.

Bosko Kills Planes Dead!

The Harman-Ising team grabbed some familiar gags and situations to throw into Dumb Patrol (1931). An example: they reached back to The Great Train Robbery (1903) to have the bad guy fire his gun at the camera. To no great surprise, there’s a scene with Bosko playing a piano.

They borrowed a gag from Oswald’s Ocean Hop (1927) and Mickey Mouse’s Plane Crazy (1928) for the climax. Bosko creates a make-shift plane from a broom and a dachshund, twisting the wiener dog’s head to get the “plane” aloft (it was the body in the other shorts; there’s a switch on the gag in Bosko’s Hold Anything involving a goat, and a flower in Ain't Nature Grand, both 1930).

The bad guy gorilla shoots a cannon at Bosko’s plane (in reused animation), and the cannon ball is swallowed by the open-mouthed dog (for some reason, the plane now stays in the air without the dog’s head twirling like a propeller).

Bosko develops long spaghetti arms and fires back.



The explosion turns the enemy aircraft into dozens of mini-planes buzzing around (the gorilla conveniently disappears from the picture).



Bosko flies into the scene with an insect spray can.



Harman ends the cartoon the same way he did Crosby, Columbo and Vallee (1932)—instead of a flame, the last plane is killed by spit.



Friz Freleng and Max Maxwell receive the animation credit; Bosko and kinky-haired Honey look a little cruder in this one. The opening is imaginative with explosions behind the opening title card, reversing the black and white colours.