Woody Comes to Rigor Mortis

Woody Woodpecker made several Western pictures and the first came while Walter Lantz was releasing through United Artists.

Fred Brunish provided the watercolour backgrounds for Wild and Woody (1948). Here’s a pan of part of the town site, with a gag sign that had to be from the mind of Bugs Hardaway (Heck Allen co-wrote this).



This is part of another background showing a livery stable. It is quickly panned from left to right, then director Dick Lundy cuts to a static scene of sheriff Wally Walrus addressing the townsfolk.



The background above actually starts with the camera focused on the sign below.



The golf course. The sheriff is eventually shot by Buzz Buzzard and buried here.



The sign approaching the town.



The sheriff's office. Brunish actually has three different paintings of it for different scenes. One has a hangman's noose to the left of the building.



Some interiors of the saloon. The swinging doors are on an overlay and the bar stool is partly animated.



There’s a lot to like in these United Artist Woodys. In this short, Pat Matthews has some funny, exaggerated animation, while Fred Moore opens the cartoon with some appealing, well-drawn footage of Woody singing while riding a pony, which is animated on twos, then on a cycle of 24 drawings, one per frame. It’s very smooth. Matthews and Moore would be gone after this short, along with every animator except Ed Love, who was left to finish the final U-A release before the studio closed for more than a year because of a lack of capital. When Lantz started up again and needed key artists again, only Brunish returned.

Knock, Knock. Who Are You?

Allen’s Alley made a huge impression on radio listeners, even though it was only part of Fred Allen’s show for a small percentage of the time he was on the air (1932 to 1949, with a couple of years off for health reasons). And only one version of the Alley made a huge impression—the one that developed in the 1945-46 season when Kenny Delmar’s Senator Claghorn and Parker Fennelly’s Titus Moody were added to Minerva Pious’ Mrs. Nussbaum (Peter Donald’s Ajax Cassidy arrived the following season).

The original Alley in 1942 was anchored around Alan Reed as Falstaff Openshaw, who was the only character Allen had developed at that point. Besides Mrs. Nussbaum, there were veteran Allen cast members Charlie Cantor as Socrates Mulligan and John Brown as John Doe, both of whom employed voices they had used periodically on the show over the years.

For anyone who likes Allen’s work, it’s fascinating hearing other characters in the Alley. Some didn’t last very long. There have been times where I’ve listened and wondered “Who’s that?”

One instance is on the December 19, 1943 broadcast, the second one of the season. Two voices were completely unfamiliar. Fortunately, the Orlando Sentinel gave a preview on that date and revealed the identity of the actors:

Orson Welles, who of recent days has established quite a reputation for throwing ad libs into his radio appearances, walks right into the one place where he is bound to meet some rough weather . . . Fred Allen’s “Star Theatre,” tonight at 9:30 over WDBO. Welles will tangle with the acknowledged quick-quip-like-a-whip, and he won’t get any help from Portland Hoffa, Al Goodman’s Orchestra, Alan (Falstaff Openshaw) Reed, Jack Smart, Everett Sloane, Betty Walker and Jimmy Wallington.

Yes, for several weeks, Everett Sloane was part of Allen’s Alley. Allen’s show came from New York. Both John Brown and Min Pious were in Hollywood and slumming on the Jack Benny show. Replacements had to be found. Sloane was in New York starring on CBS’ Crime Doctor, which signed off 35 minutes before Allen’s show started on the same network. He was a 15-year radio veteran and had been one of the members of Welles’ Mercury Players, so he seems to have been an unusual choice for a comedy programme, though he shot two movies in the 1960s with Jerry Lewis. On the December 19th broadcast, he opened the Alley routine as a new character—Mr. Hollister. Perhaps Allen sensed Sloane’s angry character bombed. “Well, Mr. Hollister won’t be with us long, I don’t imagine,” Allen said after the door slam. (An Earl Wilson column around this time said the character was to be named Runford Rant, an Allen-esque name if ever there was one).

Next he introduced Mrs. Nussbaum. Instead, a woman with a higher-pitched Jewish dialect answered the door. She didn’t even have a name. This was apparently Betty Walker. Her identity is a bit of a mystery, but she is likely an actress championed by Dorothy Kilgallen. Kilgallen’s column of Aug. 12, 1943 reported she was an 18-year-old secretary at United Artists signed to a Paramount contract. The following March 29 she had not appeared in any Paramount films. April 3 has Kilgallen reporting that Xavier Cugat wanted to marry Walker. She vanishes from the columns after that.

Jack Smart played drunk Samson Souse and Reed anchored the sketch as Falstaff.

Allen must have figured some changes were needed. The December 26 broadcast isn’t available on-line and papers don’t say who was in the Alley that night, but the following week Elsie Mae Gordon shows up for the first time as Edna May Oliver-soundalike Mrs. Prawn. Scott debuts his Senator Bloat character and Cantor returns as Socrates Mulligan, to the audience’s applause, but a week later begins a short run as Mr. Nussbaum. Starting in April, Cantor is gone, with Pat C. Flick as Digby Rappaport (Allen loved the name “Rappaport”; it show up continually on his show). Pious returned on April 30 to handle the Jewish shtick, so Flick turned to a Greek dialect on May 7 and played restaurateur Pablo Itthepeaches (Flick also had his own half-hour show on Sunday afternoon on WMCA). They lasted out the season, then Allen was off the air for over a year, returning with the aforementioned revised Alley with Kenny Delmar.

One other unusual thing about the December 19, 1943 show: Orson Welles did not appear as advertised. He came down with the flu. Allen was forced to make a very last-minute substitution and brought in singer Jimmy Melton. I was quite stunned that Allen could come up with a completely-new script so fast until I realised he simply reused a show from November 22, 1942, with almost the same dialogue with Melton—and even the same song. Unfortunately, the version available has bad skipping (a quarter on the tone arm might have fixed that, though it’s not recommended) so a comparison isn’t easy.

By all accounts, Welles guested the following Sunday. In between, Allen appeared on a special programme for the Bakers of America.

I don’t like side-tracking posts, but I’m going to do it here. We mentioned Charlie Cantor, whose Socrates Mulligan became Clifton Finnegan on Duffy’s Tavern and whose voice was borrowed by Sid Raymond for cartoondom’s Baby Huey.

Here’s a story about Cantor from the Miami Daily News of June 13, 1943.

EQUATIC STOOGE FOR FRED ALLEN BAFFLES CRITIC
Rave Notice Given To Charlie Cantor For Unique Comedy
Take a slug of exploding bubble-gum plus a pinch of etaoin-shrdlu, throw it on a hot griddle and you have:
“Duh!-yea-a-ah!”
It's hydra-voiced Charlie Cantor, nine comedians in one, of CBS-WQAM's Fred Allen show Sundays at 9:30 to 10:00 p.m., who wins a multi-paged rave-critique from Author Jerome Beatty. Beatty attended the Allen show, saw Cantor (no relation to Edward) and came away with jigsaws in his thinkbox:
"The first time I ever saw Charlie in action I was as dumbfounded as if Herbert Hoover had risen at a banquet, manuscript in hand, cleared his throat, and begun talking in the outlandish jargon of Donald Duck. "It was at a Fred Allen show at a Columbia Broadcasting System radio theater on Sunday night in New York. Allen is one of my favorite comedians and I wanted to see him in action, but I also wanted to see ‘Socrates Mulligan,’ who is my favorite stooge."
Dignified Character
Beatty relates that when he saw the crowd of actors come on the radio stage before the show, he looked for Socrates Mulligan (Cantor) but couldn't decide which was he. "One of them was an immaculatelv tailored, middle-aged gentleman who was particularly conspicuous because he was the only man on the stage who was gravely sublime in a white stiff collar, plain dark tie, and a white shirt. I guessed that he was the chairman of the board of the sponsoring company.
Beatty had expected a character who would look the part of Socrates Mulligan, "the dumb, gabby, opinionated resident of Allen's Alley," but to his surprise, the man in the immaculate garb was Cantor.
"Charlie Cantor's comedy makes millions of radio listeners laugh every week. He's the Great Mr Anonymous of radio, the champion utility man who can play any part in any dialect except Swedish, and imitate lions, chickens, birds, dogs babies, railroad trains, police whistles, three kinds of good airplanes—one with engine trouble."
Per-Taters a la Mode
Cantor practiced for an hour and was able to play Yankee Doodle with his nose. For the Allen's Alley one Sunday evening he gave the public a brand new food delicacy. Author Beatty tells about it:
“Allen began asking about food, and called on Socrates Mulligan. Suddenly the dignified gentleman (Cantor) relaxed, screwed up his face and as I gasped at the transformation, out came water-front dialect saying, 'I'm nuts about per-taters. I eat 'em all day. I invented per-tater a la mode.’
“‘What,’ asked Allen, 'is potato a la mode?’”
'Dat's a baked per-tater,’ explaned Socrates Mulligan, ‘wid a cold per-tater on top.’”
Cantor has used one or more his voices on more shows than he can remember. On CBS he is a regular on the Allen show, and does parts for Kate Smith, Easy Aces. He prefers anonymity, so the fact that his name is seldom mentioned on the shows doesn't irk him.
Cantor, former shoe merchant, went broke in 1929, made use of his natural multi-voice talent to crash radio.

We mentioned the arrival of Claghorn and Moody when Allen returned to radio in 1945. There were two other newcomers in the Alley—songwriters McGee and McGee. Allen loved parody songs and jingles, and brought in the McGees to replace the rhyming poetry of Falstaff Openshaw. One was played by veteran novelty singer Irving Kaufman. Why he left is unknown, but the McGees were replaced by Falstaff at the start of 1946. The Alley itself was replaced for the 1948-49 season with the same concept called “Main Street.” Allen came up with a few new characters, perhaps feeling the old ones were getting worn out, but they never caught on.

No one remembers “Main Street” today. But old radio fans still know about Allen’s Alley.

A Nutzi Kiss

Nazi spy Hatta Mari gives off an electric shock kiss to “woman hater” Daffy Duck in Plane Daffy (1944). Four colours.



The old "melt" gag.



Let’s try the gag again.



Director Frank Tashlin and writer Warren Foster throw a switch.



Daffy channels Jerry Colonna. “Ah! Something new has been added!”



An old-style, Clampett-esque Daffy “Woo-hoo!” exit.



Now, an inside joke.



My best guesses at the studio personnel referred to here: Fred Abrams, Warren Foster, Tubby Millar, Dick Thomas, Curt Perkins, Leon Schlesinger, Ray Patin (or maybe Ray Katz), Ace Gamer and Cal Dalton.

Being the best kind of war cartoon, Hitler is embarrassed by the “secret” message and Himmler and Goering Goebbels commit suicide. In real life, Hitler followed. As Daffy tells us, “They lose more darn Nutzis that way.”

Carving Out Gags

The propeller on George and Junior's boat propels them over dry land as they chase Lucky Ducky (from the 1948 cartoon of the same name). And it carves out a few things.

First, they go across a log. Oh, for a sign popping up that says “Nice bridgework!”



Then, up a tree and down the other.



Finally, over the face of a mountain. Scott Bradley plays “America the Beautiful” after the last gag.



This short has one brilliant gag (“Technicolor Ends Here”) and a fun visual pun (“School Crossing”) and some routines that vary in inspiration (Rich Hogan helped Tex Avery with the story). The original ending is imaginative but has been shorn from available prints. Read about it here.

Walt Clinton, Grant Simmons, Louie Schmitt and Preston Blair are the animators on this cartoon.

Track Five For Vancouver, Edmonton and Cucamonga

Vancouver was, at one time, the home of Mary Livingstone, but it was her husband—Jack Benny—who seems to have spent plenty of time in the city in later years.

Benny played the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver during vaudeville—in 1917 (with Lyman Wood), 1920 (as Ben K. Benny), 1923, 1926 and 1928, the last year at the current Orpheum, which he helped save with a benefit show three months before he died in 1974.

He broadcast his weekly half-hour from the city in April 1944, notable as it was Dennis Day’s last show before going off for war duty (which mainly consisting of singing). But there were other times Benny visited as well.

One of the years was 1965. By that time, Jack’s weekly TV show had come to an end.

Vancouver has a reputation of “No Fun City.” It’s true. If you go the downtown business core late some nights, there is nothing happening, outside of a bit of traffic. But there was a time the city had incredibly popular nightclubs (filled with hard-drinking newspaper reporters, almost all male) where big American acts were imported. The clubs have all been replaced by office towers; all that remains is a tiny street sign at Hornby and Georgia reminding the diminishing few who actually remember that this was “Wasserman’s Beat.”

Vancouver Sun nightlife/celebrity reporter Jack Wasserman wrote about Jack’s arrival in the Dec. 4, 1965 issue. CKNW disc jockey Jack Cullen, who could match anyone scotch for scotch, had a huge collection of radio transcriptions, some of which he liberated without permission from Canadian Army stations during the war.

THE WHEE! PEOPLE — I'll admit that I'm hooked on Jack Benny. I haven't even seen the show he'll do tonight and Sunday night at the Queenie but I'm prepared to wager it will be an evening of first-class entertainment for the whole family. It has to be good because, in my book, he can't do anything bad.
In this column writing business you meet more than your share of nuts and bores. They make good copy but they're awfully hard to be around. From a column-eye view, the trouble with Benny is that he's much too normal — sort of like an uncle that comes to visit from time to time. Within seconds you forget that he is one of the most fantastically successful entertainers of the past three decades in terms of both audience appeal and financial rewards. He headlined at the Lyric when it was the Orpheum back in 1926; he was one of THE radio names in the thirties, forties and fifties. And he's been a major TV star for the past 15 years.
* * *
There's a cliche that goes: "Age is not a time of life — it's a state of mind." In Jack Benny's case, it's for real. He's 72, going on 39, because he's with it. At Friday's press conference Jack Cullen, the disk jockey and show business historian extraordinary, turned up with his tape-recorded bag of tricks and proceeded to put Benny through the memory hoops. Cullen confronted Benny with a rare sound track of the only song the comedian ever sang in the movies and similar memorabilia. Benny didn't remember much of the ancient material. It isn't that his memory is failing. He's too much involved with today to indulge himself in show business senility.
F'r example, Jack is probably the world's oldest Wayne Newton fan. After he concludes his Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary run he goes into a show in California with Newton, about whom he raves. He's entitled to. Benny spotted the young hillbilly doing a show in Australia, and as Wayne himself told me many times, he did more than anyone else to propel Newton towards stardom.
* * *

Although we've talked on the phone several times I hadn't seen Jack for more 10 years. We met accidentally in the hall outside his Georgia Hotel suite. Almost his first words after the initial greetings were exchanged was a suggestion that I run out and buy Sammy Davis Jr.'s excellent autobiography, Yes I can: He has a vested interest in Sammy, too. It was Benny who spotted Davis, the youngest member of the Will Mastin trio, and took him out of the sawdust joints and put him on the road to stardom. It's easy to say now that, sooner or later, Sammy Davis would been discovered, but the fact remains that it was Benny who gave him his first real shot at stardom, on the bill of a powerful package that played Vancouver, among several other centres, in 1954. Sammy hasn't looked back since.
Many of the old-time stars pose as boosters of young talent but it's really a form of insurance. They often have the youngsters tied up to long-term contracts. Not Benny. Anybody he thinks is talented is worthy of a helping hand.
* * *
The subject came up during Friday's press conference. "Are the young people grateful?" a reporter asked. "Certainly they are," Jack replied, "but they can't be expected to go on being grateful forever." By coincidence a young blonde named Betty Robertson happened to come in at that moment. She's a Toronto singer currently appearing at the Marco Polo, but she's done shows with Benny in the past, and she'd dropped by to say hello. Benny's purpose in holding the press conference was to sell tickets for his own show and to introduce Pat Woodell, the young star of Petticoat Junction, who does 18 minutes of the Hour and Sixty Minutes with Jack Benny. But that didn't stop Benny from pointing out Betty Robertson. He stopped everything and announced, "Now there's a talented little girl I just adore," and he launched into a rave about the singer for the benefit of the assembled press.
Later on we went downstairs for dinner and Jack went through the usual routine of trying to find something that fitted his diet, and then eating everything placed in front of him whether it was on the diet or not.
It was all so darn homey, with Jack's manager, his secretary-valet, the girl singer, Jack's cousin-in-law Edie Giant, from Seattle — Mary Livingstone Benny has 30 or 40 relatives between here and Seattle — and Edie's grandson, Gary. To see us sitting there nobody would have realized that the fellow with the glasses in the middle of the group did a command performance for Queen Elizabeth in London a few weeks ago and was a dinner partner of the young Queen of Greece the following night.
“She was so young and I forgot myself at one point and said, ' "Look here, honey'!” Jack was saying. “Then I tried to apologize and I said, 'I'm sorry. You just don't look like a queen to me.' She laughed.” You will, too.

How did the show go? Let’s turn to the city’s other paper, the Province, of Dec. 6 1965.

Kayo kiss a clue to Benny success
By LORNE PARTON
Jack Benny grasps the girl firmly and plants a great buss on her lips. He holds the pose—and holds it. Finally, the girl's arm goes limp and drops at her side.
Benny comes slowly out of the embrace and gazes at the arm hanging free. The audience roars. He moves the hand and it swings back and forth. He looks at the audience. It roars again.
He moves the hand again. Something catches his eye. He lifts the hand and stares at it Then he pulls at jeweller's loupe from his pocket and inspects the diamond ring on her finger. All this time she is still in a swoon.
Blackout and uproarious applause.

To students of humor in general and Jack Benny in particular, this is not only a classic study case, but a clue to his success.
Benny is the master of timing and facial expression. The bit with the girl is a silent movie in itself. First the passionate lover, then the bemused man who is proud and a little awed at his success, then the avaricious miser who covets the diamond.
It's an old routine, but the audiences that caught Benny Saturday and Sunday night at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre ate it up.
Who else can just turn his head and stars at the wings and reduce the crowd to hysterical laughter?
Who else can play Sweet Georgia Brown on a violin and receive applause equal to Menuhin's?
This show Benny does is essentially a one man show, as he points out, but he does have a 12-piece orchestra, a singer and straight girl, Pat Waddell [sic], and a plant in the audience, 15-year-old Toni Marcus.
Toni's routine involves her walking on the stage, asking Benny for an autograph in the middle of his violin solo, eventually playing his Strad better than he does. It's old and its [sic] corny, but its [sic] popular.
In every successful concert show in a place like the QueenlE, there is a reciprocity of warmth and respect between the audience and per former, and the weekend show was an example of this.
At 72, Benny seems indestructible.

About four thousand people, Wasserman later reported, saw the two Benny shows.

What did Jack do between performances? He visited patients at the Shaughnessy Military Hospital, greeted by the 55 members of the Surrey Schools Concert Band.

Days later, he was in Edmonton for another show, before which he was presented with a bright yellow Klondike hat by the local B’nai B’rith Lodge. Then it was back to California for Jack Benny Day on the 15th for a parade in Azusa, sponsored by Chambers of Commerce of Anaheim, Azusa and Cuc.

On top of that, he performed on Christmas at the Carousel Theatre in West Covina. Some 55 years after beginning in small-time vaudeville, Jack Benny was still in demand.

Amonga.

Keith Darling

Keith Darling had a surprisingly lengthy career working on Warner Bros. cartoons. His name can be found on credits for cartoons by the Bob McKimson unit in 1963, but Devon Baxter mentioned in a post on Cartoon Research that he had been an assistant animator at the studio (then owned by Leon Schlesinger) as far back as 1937.

He was never an A-list animator so very little has been written about him. We’ve cobbled together some odds and ends; as we’ve said in similar posts, this is neither a complete biography or a filmography.

To the left you see his birth certificate. The penmanship isn’t the best, but this document claims his first name was “Niram” (short for Adoniram, I imagine). Elsewhere, it’s given as his middle name. There are also conflicting birth dates, but most sources agree he was born on Nov. 24, 1914 in Kokomo, Indiana. (You can click on it to read it).

The Schlesinger studio newsletter, The Exposure Sheet, provides a short biography of Darling in its October 20, 1939 issue. He moved to Tampa, Florida in 1925. A hurricane and a boom that went bust put him in Milwaukee in 1927, then in Los Angeles in 1929. A classified ad in the Los Angeles Times that year has him selling a Florida bungalow—as a teenager! The 1930 census lists him, age 15, living with his father. The return claims his father was widowed, but that wasn’t true at all. Keith’s mother was quite alive and living back in her home town in Burlington, Wisconsin.He graduated from Inglewood High School, as you can see by this 1932 picture to the right; Darling told The Exposure Sheet it was one of six high schools he attended.

He “bought a motorcycle and spent about six months above Stirling City, California, placer mining. . .camped most of the time in an old abandoned hotel. However, with the bar still intact, it wasn’t bad. . .After that I came back to Los Angeles, and got a job at Northrup Aviation, working on fuselage assembly, and after this I worked in a bakery. Then came some more mining east of Big Pine, California, and also for a short while on a mine belonging to a friend between Tonopah and Mina, Nevada.”

He moved on to college. The Burlington Free Press of June 6, 1935 reported: “Keith Darling, son of Mrs. Ruth Darling of Burlington, won second place last week in a poster contest sponsored by the Los Angeles chamber of commerce for the most effective symbolic picturizations of the national foreign trade week program. Keith, student at Los Angeles Junior college, won his prize with his second attempt at poster design.”

He shows up in the Los Angeles City Directory for the first time in 1936, occupation “cartoonist.” Schlesinger didn’t pay junior staff terribly well; the 1940 census shows he made $1,800 in 1939 (he was living in a boarding house on North Wilton Place, about six blocks from the studio at Van Ness and Fernwood).

1940 is also year Darling registered for military service; he was still employed by Schlesinger. He was called for duty in September 1941. The Free Press published portions of letters to his mother. He was a Master Sergeant with the Army stationed in London in Sept. 1942. In August 1943 he was 2nd Lieutenant with the Signal Corps and spent time censoring outgoing mail. He had just finished a brief leave in Cornwall. That December, it reported he was to head back to the U.S. to instruct soldiers; his picture was published by the Associated Press. After the war, he was promoted to Captain and was in Los Angeles by early January 1946 in the Officers’ Reserve Corps.

He also seems to have brought back something from England—a woman. Ynys Rosemary Applin and he were married on June 14, 1946 in Los Angeles; she was 11 years younger than him.

Devon’s research has found that Darling animated on Chuck Jones’ first directorial effort, The Night Watchman, released in 1938, but got no screen credit. He didn’t for years, even though drafts show Darling provided footage for cartoons. Among them are Rabbit’s Kin (a scene of his with Pete Puma walking up a tree was deleted), The Turn Tale Wolf (Darling scene to right) and Fool Coverage (all McKimson, 1952) and Of Rice and Hen and Muscle Tussle (both McKimson, 1953). The first cartoon on which Darling receives screen credit is Beanstalk Bunny (Jones). It was released in 1955 but seems to have been put in production before the studio’s six-month shutdown starting in June 1953 (the McKimson unit was out of commission almost a year).

When normal operations resumed, Darling returned in March 1954 and shuttled between the Jones and McKimson units. He also animated for Abe Levitow who took over Jones’ unit when Charles M. was assigned to other duties, then stayed for a bit. These cartoons must have been on the shelf for a while. Who Scent You? wasn’t released until April 1960. The writer was Mike Maltese, who left Warners for Hanna-Barbera in November 1958. The Club News reported in April 1956 that Darling had left the studio. The word “terminated” is used; I’d hardly think an in-house publication would report a firing.

The Club News of April 1960 mentions his return. It would appear the first cartoon he animated when he came back was What’s My Lion? (McKimson, 1961, frame to left). His final Warner’s short was Aqua Duck (McKimson, 1963).

We run into another mystery. What he did after this isn’t known. Unlike just about everyone in animation, he didn’t go into television. He isn’t found in any newspapers in the 1960s which I can access. Los Angeles directories don’t exist on-line for that decade. He would have been 49 at the start of 1964, which is awfully young to retire. There is no obituary for him in the Times. So, more digging is required. The information is likely out there somewhere.

Darling died in Los Angeles on Dec. 1, 1974.

That Sound Looks Like Lightning

Bosko gets knocked down by his punching bag in Battling Bosko (1932). The phone rings. Three drawings, animated on ones, are used in a cycle, showing lightning bolts representing noise.



The hook for the receiver becomes an arm that hands the receiver to Bosko.



Why, look! Honey’s at the piano. Has anyone tried to count the number of early ’30s cartoons with someone playing the piano? (In Bosko’s next cartoon, Big-Hearted Bosko, he plays the piano).



It seems like this is another cartoon that Hugh Harman couldn’t figure out how to end. Honey, listening to sports announcer Graham Cracker on the radio, rushes to the ring where Bosko is lying. What’s the climax? There isn’t one. Bosko looks at her, says “Aw, uts-nay,” pulls the canvas over himself and goes to sleep.



That’s all, folks.

Friz Freleng and Paul J. Smith are the credited animators. Frank Marsales wrote a title song that Bosko sings (and scats). He also composed “Turkey Strut,” “Ha Ha Ha,” “The Barnyard Serenade,”and “Hen’s Parade,” all copyrighted Feb. 19, 1932, for this short, as well as several other Bosko cartoon tunes copyrighted the same date. The last cue when Honey at ringside is, for some reason, “The Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives” by Harry Woods.

You can see how beat-up this old television re-issue print is. Poor Bosko deserves better than this.