Cat Smears

A Sylvester-like cat zips behind a chair in Catch As Cats Can, a 1947 release from the Art Davis unit.

Check out the dry-brush work.



He pops his head up.



Off he goes again. How about the stretch in-between in the first frame?



Multiple eyes are left behind as the cat zooms behind the couch.



More multiples as the cat pops up in a flower vase and zips into a corner.



No doubt this is the work of Don Williams. Basil Davidovich, Bill Melendez and Herman Cohen are the other credited animators; Cohen left the studio again after this cartoon. Dave Monahan came up with the story, but Bill Scott remembers he and Lloyd Turner worked on it as well. Monahan ended up at Screen Gems and then went into live action directing.

Director Davis used the Sylvester design in two of his shorts. In this one, Mel Blanc supplies a dopey voice, pretty similar to the original Barney Rubble voice.

A Mother To Many

There are people who appeared on TV screens so often at one time, it was almost impossible to remember when you first saw them.

One is Rosemary DeCamp.

Since I grew up in the 1960s, I probably saw her first on That Girl. Or maybe it was on Petticoat Junction. By then, she had been around a long time. DeCamp grew up in Jerome, Arizona, and appeared on stage in Phoenix for the first time in October 1927. Next, she enrolled in Mills College in Oakland in the late ‘20s and continued to appear on stage.

In 1935, she was in New York and not only assisting the drama critic of the Journal-American, but was heard on the CBS network supporting singer Frank Parker in a show for Atlantic Refining. It wasn’t long before her biggest radio break—playing next to Jean Herscholt on Dr. Christian.

As time ticked on, she signed a motion picture contract during World War Two and was handed mother roles. She was still playing them 20 years later on TV.

This story appeared in papers starting around June 2, 1967

Rosemary Has Knack With Mother Roles
By DONALD FREEMAN
Copley News Service
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Rosemary DeCamp, a fine-looking figure of a lady, has that special isolated knack that seems to fit her for the role of playing someone’s mother or sister.
At the moment she is playing Mario Thomas’ mother in “That Girl” and before that she was Bob Cummings’ sister (and, at the same time, Dwayne Hickman’s mother) in the old series of fond memory when Cummings as a photographer, with all the models, seemed to be occupied so often in the darkroom.
“It’s been nine years now since the Bob Cummings Show was on TV,” Miss DeCamp said, “and still people see me in public and they recognize me and they wonder why is it that I’ve aged in those nine years when, of course they obviously haven’t. And people sidle up to me and ask me about Bob Cummings. ‘How old is he really?’ they want to know. And I say ‘Oh he’s a man of great talent. By the way have you seen me lately in ‘That Girl’?”
And long before the Bob Cummings show in the early 1940s, there was Rosemary DeCamp playing James Cagney’s mother in “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and Ronald Reagan’s mother in “This Is The Army” — using a very heavy makeup job since she is, it turns out, younger than the aforementioned men.
Still, as Rosemary notes, portraying someone’s mother is less a matter of makeup than of demeanor, of stance and attitude.
"I have this nonaggressive, motherly look,” Rosemary concedes with a mock frown. “In characterization, I go for the mother everybody would like to be — that I’d like to be, too, with my four daughters.
“We all fail, I suppose, but it’s good to try. Now, as Bob Cummings’ sister, I was Miss Practical, saying, ’Oh come on!’ to Bob, who was the perpetual dreamer. Ah, but every woman with a dreamer for a husband or brother or son could identify with me.”
ROSEMARY was taking her ease with a pre-luncheon vodka and tonic, just before accepting an award from the California Federation of Women’s Clubs. For the last 15 years, she has voiced the commercials on "Death Valley Days,” the most durable Western of them all — “They call me the 21st mule,” she says — along with playing an occasional role as some cowpoke’s mother.
She is a great booster for the series. “The Old West, you know, wasn’t really settled by men,” Rosemary said. “The women did the settling.

“The men were all too busy fighting one another, but before they knew it their women were planting gardens and having kids and organizing an early PTA and then when the men went back into the house to get some more ammunition — lo the West was settled.”
Rosemary DeCamp is herself a product of the West, born in Prescott, Ariz., the daughter of a mining engineer. “You know about Bodie, once a big mining center and now a ghost town off the highway as you get near Death Valley.
“My grandmother and grandfather were married there in Bodie. Very beautiful woman, my grandmother, but there was always some question in the family as to just what she was doing in a town like Bodie.
“Grandfather was a wetback from Canada — by that I don’t mean he swam across the Great Lakes but he did sneak across the border. His name was DeChamps but he figured, when he hit the West, that was too fancy a name for a miner. So he called himself DeCamp instead. Which led in time to Rosemary DeCamp. Sounds like a stripper doesn’t it?”
THE WIFE of Superior Court Judge John Shidler, Rosemary is a woman of many sides and undoubtedly the only actress equipped with a masters degree in psychology (from Mills College).
Several years ago, she spent four months in Pakistan in a State Department cultural exchange program, lecturing on drama and poetry while her husband spoke on law at Pakistani universities.
She’s a member of the fund-raising arm of the USO. She’s written newspaper columns and a successful children’s book entitled “Here Duke!” and she’s won awards for her enameling.
And long ago in the pleistocene age of TV, she played wife to Jackie Gleason in a series which later in form and concept would form the basis for “The Honeymooners.” The show won the very first Emmy in 1949.
“Jackie,” Miss DeCamp, recalled “stayed sober, he dieted, he was nice and he was awfully funny. He was always so shiny and immaculate and, the odd things that you remember, he always smelled so nice.
“We had a producer who shelled out to buy caps for Jackie's teeth. Well, he and Jackie got embroiled in a big feud and this producer would yell at Jackie, ’Remember, Gleason every time you smile — you’re smiling with my TEETH!”

About the original Riley TV show, DeCamp told Arizona Republic columnist Maggie Savoy in 1962: “Nobody had any sets; we shot our ‘Life of Riley’ series with two cameras and old radio scripts. It was rugged: We’d shoot 50 pages of dialogue every five days. But we invented many techniques that are in use today—and walked off with the first Emmy award.”

She had more to say about Riley and playing a mother in this syndicated column from April 8, 1967. Evidently the “teeth” story played well with the media.

Sabu To Marlo Thomas, She’s Forever A Mom
By RICHARD K. SHULL
She'd probably give you a belt in the chops if you said it to her face, but Rosemary DeCamp is the mother of television.
For more than a quarter-century, she's been the Hollywood image of the all-American mom. Way back in 1942, before the first of her own four daughters was born, she played Jimmy Cagney's mother in the movie "Yankee Doodle Dandy." Cagney was colder than Rosemary.
Her dozens of celluloid progeny range from Sabu to her current child, Marlo Thomas, in the "That Girl" TV series.
Of course, that's not to consider her radio mom roles in her earlier days during the 17 years she also played Jean Herscholt's nurse on the "Dr. Christian" series.
For the past 15 years, she's been the motherly pitchwoman from U.S. Borax Co.'s products on TV, even using her own children as props in the early days.
"I had the first TV commercial contract with the Screen Actors Guild," she said. "It's historical now, but at the time I was looked down upon for doing commercials because I was still doing feature films."
Now the members of the Screen Actors Guild draw more than one-third of their combined incomes from TV pitchwork, and the actors scramble for the privilege of commenting on "really good draft-brewed beer" or declaring "boss, you have bad breath."
The change in attitude on commercials is only one of many passing moods Miss DeCamp has witnessed in her long career.
Sitting at lunch, she recalled one of her earliest ventures into a TV series—"that was in 1949 when there were 47,000 sets in the country," she said.
"Jackie Gleason and I did 26 episodes of 'The Life of Riley.' That show won the first Emmy for filmed TV in 1950."
Gleason? "Life of Riley?"

"Yes, Jackie Gleason. I'd already done the movie version with Bill Bendix [in 1949], but Bill wouldn't stoop to nickelodeon TV in those days. So they brought in this unknown from New York," she recalled.
"Jackie was marvelous. He had no temperament. He was a quiet, hard-working guy. Of course, the show itself was a nightmare. In the 26 weeks we filmed, we ran through eight directors and five cameramen. One director committed suicide, but I don't know if it was because of the show," she said.
"Irving Brecher was the producer, and he paid to have Jackie's teeth capped. When he'd get mad at Jackie, he'd say, 'Remember, when you smile, that's my smile.’
Jackie told him, 'I'll never mention your name again.' If you've ever noticed, in any biographies of Jackie or in his interviews, he never mentioned 'Life of Riley' or Irving Brecher," Rosemary said, smiling with her own teeth.

Later on TV, DeCamp played Shirley Jones’ mother on The Partridge Family and Buck Rogers’ mother in an episode of the 1981 series. In the movies, she was George Gershwin’s in Rhapsody in Blue. There was one other mother DeCamp almost played. She was signed by Leonard Stern (who had his own Gleason connection as writer on his variety show) in 1975 to portray Patty Duke’s mother and “no-nonsense” landlord in a sitcom co-starring Duke’s husband, John Astin. It evidently went nowhere.

When Bea Benaderet was ill, she filled the “mom” breach on Petticoat Junction as Aunt Helen. Perhaps she was simply too busy to be a permanent addition to the cast when Benadaret died; June Lockhart was hired instead. She was exhibiting her copper enamelling work, raising money for the USO and active in the Democrat Party. On top of that, her memoirs, Tales From Hollywood was turned into an audio book.

Despite all that, the Institute of Family Relations once granted her its Mother of Distinction award for doing “more to glorify American motherhood through her film portrayals than any other woman.”

She died of pneumonia at age 90 in early 2001.

Hatching a Heart

Playing card gags open the great Fleischer short Ace of Spades (1930), with the dialogue done in song.

Bimbo is standing at the door of a place where a (we suspect, illegal) card game is going on. He has nothing in his pockets.



He turns around and pulls four aces out of somewhere.



He turns around again and shuffles a deck.



The best gag of all is when the deck is collapsed by his butt, he puts the squashed deck on top of his head, covers it with his hat, and...



It appears two sets of aces come out of his butt.



One more gag: cards grow out of Bimbo’s shoes and crack. Dave Fleischer must have loved this gag as he did it twice.

For good measure, Bimbo plays his tongue like a banjo.

The Film Daily reviewed the cartoon thusly: “Right up to the high standard of the Fleischer cartoon product, Bombo [sic], playing the part of a card sharp, enacts his comicalities at a card game. Some numbers are done in a negro spiritual vein. Whole job is well handled, and the subject should click anywhere.” Variety agreed, saying: “Perfect synchronization with pantomime and action, plus nice set-up of special songs of the Negro spiritual type, effectively sung, set this cartoon apart from the run, and, together with general workmanship in other respects, gives it better than average rating. Spottable on any bill anywhere. Animal character is Bombo, cat [sic], who’s a card sharp, and most of the action centers around a poker game. The special songs are written to the tune of well-known spirituals. Recording, drawings and photography good.”

The Motion Picture Herald put the release date at Jan. 17, 1931 but we’ve found it on the bill on Christmas Day in Fresno (see ad to right).

Rudy Zamora and Al Eugster are the credited animators.

As a side note, this was a wonderful time for fans of short films. During this season, Paramount had one and two-reelers starring, to name a few, Burns and Allen, Smith and Dale, Louise Fazenda, Chester Conklin, Eddie Cantor, Georgie Jessel, Ethel Merman, Tom Howard, Lulu McConnell and Dorothy McNulty (aka Penny Singleton). The company was distributing Fleischer Talkartoons and Screen Songs.

Incidentally, the TJS bug on the frames shows this is from the collection of Tom Stathes. His site can be found by clicking here.

Baseball Bowling

The pitcher in Tex Avery’s Batty Baseball (1944) winds up, and his baseball turns into a bowling ball.



He bowls down the “lane” (once found in all major league parks).



The sound effect and position of the pitcher tell you he got a strike.



The umpire, catcher and batter are re-set as pins and then pop into human shapes.



Rich Hogan gagged this cartoon with Avery. The animators are Preston Blair, Ray Abrams and Ed Love. Johnny Johnsen is the background artist.

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: Peter Cottontail

UPA’s animated TV commercials are full of striking and appealing designs, interesting movement, with a gentle dash of humour.

The studio came up with a couple of seasonal shorts designed, I guess, for television stations. Unlike the pretentions of too many of their theatrical cartoons, these are fun to watch.

One is Peter Cottontail, made in 1951. The poses and designs are strong, and there are some really creative animation touches, including outline characters and effects animation when a shotgun goes off.

There’s very little about this short on-line, such as the artists responsible (Art Babbitt? Pat Matthews? Grim Natwick?). Hill and Range copyrighted the song by Jack Rollins and Steve Nelson in January 1950.



Forgive the bug put on the film by its uploader, as it shouldn’t spoil the enjoyment.

Another Record For Benny, the Wichita Wow

For years, the Jack Benny show, on both radio and TV, featured a routine where Jack and his gang took a train from a station where he was verbally harassed.

While it’s true they did travel by train to get to performances in different parts of the U.S. and Canada, after World War Two, air travel was far more feasible and common. They were able to fly to a different state in between Sunday radio broadcasts.

That’s just what happened in the middle of May in 1950.

The Benny show pulled off two performances on a Tuesday in Wichita, Kansas. Actually, they did three—one was for a group of veterans at a hospital.

How the show actually came about isn’t altogether clear. Jack told a Mrs. Mary Floto that she could designate the charity that was to receive 10% of the gate. She chose the Institute of Logopedics.

At the time, Jack was carried on KFH in Wichita, which was owned by the Wichita Eagle. This did not hurt publicity for the event.

Here are several stories that appeared in the paper on May 17, 1950. We note that Eddie Anderson got to do his “Sunny Side of the Street” number that he later performed on television. And there are a couple of references to Sammy Weiss, the orchestra drummer who remained with the show when Phil left (guitarist Frank Remley stayed as well, which reportedly caused some friction with Harris).

8,200 at Show in Forum
Jack Benny's Troupe Plays As Radio Audiences Like It
By TED HAMMER
(Eagle Staff Writer)
If Wichita dads are asked soon to repair the roof and rafters of the Forum, blame the Jack Benny-Phil Harris show which played there to two standing-room-only audiences Tuesday night, setting a new stage attraction attendance record. More applause and laughs were provided by the show than ordinarily might come from a good season of top attractions.
The principals just played themselves as radio audiences have learned to like them. Jack Benny appeared hurt when numerous performers declined to let him accompany them on his violin, he finally got to play "Love in Bloom," and Phil Harris showed him how to play a love scene. Eddie (Rochester) Anderson was brought on after a telephone bell interrupted a Benny speech, just as it happens on the radio every Sunday night when the CBS show is broadcast by KFH, KFH-FM here.
Benny found the easy way that if he doesn’t get a new radio contract and doesn't click in television, he can return to his old time single act, a monologue. And Wichitans loved Jack just as they did back in 1922 when he played at the Orpheum, before he became famous on screen and radio.
There just wasn't time enough for Harris to satisfy the audience with his southern style songs, but he had to sing four of them before he and Benny started a new routine to stop the applause. Vivian Blaine of the films did three songs which proved why she has been given her own television show next fall. And Rochester demonstrated that his singing and dancing are just as good as his gags spoken in the crackly, high pitched voice which radio fans enjoy so much.

The three Wiere Brothers, who also have been in pictures and are internationally famous, could have stayed on the stage another half hour with their violins dancing and comedy. They proved more than equal to advance billing as top jugglers, with some hat and stick feats new to Wichita theatregoers. The Harris band was responsible for much of the show's success.
The Stuart Morgan Dancers, three fellows and cute girl, did some breath taking adagio which made the audience believe Benny when he said he went to a lot of trouble to get them.
Closing the show was a musical routine featuring Benny and Miss Blaine with members of the Phil Harris band. Dressed in weird costume, they provided "mountain music,” with Benny as director and violinist, while Miss Blaine played it deadpan. Sam the drummer and Frank Remley, guitar player, were in this group, the "Beverly Hillbillies."
Good as the others in the cast are, it was Benny-Harris show marked by gags and songs of the type for which they're famous—even including the band leader's "That's What I like About the South" and "Is It True What They Say About Dixie?"
The Wichita shows were attended by more than 8,700 with some 100 persons allowed to buy standing room, to set a new record. Extra seats were placed down in front and in corners at the last minute to accommodate a few more persons, according to Mrs. Mary Floto who handled the ticket sale.

Benny and Company Make Vet Patients Noisy with Mirth
A hollering houseful of patients at Veterans hospital Tuesday saw a funfest fostered by Jack Benny and his company.
In the end they found that Benny, the consummate master of ceremonies, can really play the violin. Hot violin, too.
He’s no Joe Venuti, but he can finger the fiddle. With confidence and savoir-faire that best can be described simply as Benny-like, he finally fiddled after frustrating interruptions by Phil Harris, Rochester, and Vivian Blaine. The latter interruption was most welcome to Benny and audience.
An eight-man outfit from the Harris orchestra pulled the curtain ahead of schedule and entertained the ex-GI’s with improvisations that added up to Dixieland. The drummer, a bigger man than Broderick Crawford, used a folding chair and a tissue box for traps.
Benny entered to assure the vets that he isn't stingy. "I throw money away. Not very far, but . .”
Harris interrupted for a routine with the boss and then did "Preacher and Bear” and "Darktown Poker Club." The boys found out that Harris is not good, but perfect, and that he has to be a lot faster than it sounds like on the phonograph.
Vivian Blaine insulted the be-junior out of the boss with a frank appraisal of his sex appeal— zero—then caressed the patients with two numbers, including a job on "You Made Me Love You” that created a lot of hot but harmless humidity.
Then came Rochester, who apologized for making the boss look like a cheap skate. (“I have all the luxuries. Shoes, bread . . .”)
Rochester, of course, stopped the show with "Sunny Side of the Street” and a return to his original occupation hoofing that gave the lads a laugh with every lunge.

It's Informal But Lively at Rehearsals
In rehearsals of the Jack Benny-Phil Harris show, it's "Phil, or Curly" when members of the band or cast address the leader. And everyone calls Benny "Jack" or "Jackson." The latter is the nickname used by Harris since they became associated 14 years ago.
When the drummer was called to the telephone during rehearsal at the Forum Tuesday, Harris took his place, even going through a number he was to sing in the show.
While Harris handled much of the musical rehearsal, Benny took care of "business” and timing. When Vivian Blaine asked Benny If she could use a different opening song than previously rehearsed, he told her "fine” and she ran through it with the band.
"After all, Wichitans don’t know that we had the other number ready," Benny said as he resumed his chair in a corner of the Forum stage. He was on his feet a moment later to hurry back and forth, making suggestions.
Once, while Miss Blaine, Benny and Harris discussed a bit of business, the drummer called out, "Let’s go, we’ve got a show to do tonight.” Show time was four hours away, but everybody laughed.

In less than a week, the show was in Scranton. We'll have that story in a future post.