He's Waiting For 39

Jack Benny had two kinds of tours. One was kind of an extension of his vaudeville career, except he was the one who packaged a revue and took it on the road. He was doing this very early in his radio days. The other was his charity concerts to aid symphony orchestras, their homes and the pensions of the musicians who played on them.

Quite a number of his stops were in cities where he had performed in the 1910s and 1920s.

One was Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he brought his performers in June 1950. Benny had recorded his last show of the radio season on May 11. The pair of Scranton performances were on June 5, a day after appearing in Carnegie Hall for the Runyon Cancer Fund.

Here’s how the Scranton Tribune reported on the event the following day:

7,000 Attend Benny Show in Youth Center
Comedian Ends Busy Day Here With 2 Performances
Paced by a 19-piece orchestra that filled the huge Catholic Youth Center to the last echo, Jack Benny, Phil Harris and gravel-voiced Rochester delighted two large audiences last night in their last personal appearances before going to England and Scotland this week.
It was a long night for the performers. Mr. Benny arrived at the CYC about 6 p. m.—an hour before the first two-hour show was to begin. He did not leave until soon before last midnight and immediately took a plane back to New York.
Nearly 3,000 attended the first show and there was a crowd of nearly 4,000 at the second.
The large audiences were receptive and gave the performers thunderous ovation.
The pattern for the show was based essentially on Jack Benny’s Sunday night broadcast. Missing, however, were Mary Linvingston [sic] and Dennis Day, both of whom are chief supporters to Mr. Benny’s running gags on stinginess.
An improvised stage had been especially erected opposite the Jefferson Ave. entrance. Curtains were draped and wings had to be improvised. This was not exactly a hardship, but it was definitely different from performing on a regular theater stage.
It was the second time for Jack Benny to play in Scranton in nearly 30 years. The first time was when he played vaudeville with his own act, which he described as “Just Jokes and I played my violin,” as he paced ceaselessly back and forth back-stage preparatory to responding to his many cues.
Hovering nearby was City Detective Leo Marcus who had been assigned to the famous comedian for the entire time he was in Scranton. He stayed with him until he boarded his plane for New York early this morning.
It took only a couple of gags to warm up the audience and from that moment on, Benny, Harris and Rochester just about had them rolling in the aisles.
Benny said that a lot of the stuff he pulls on the radio is not actually true. For example, he said, “I’m always gagging about being 39 years old. Humph. I’m not 39—but I can wait.” He said furthermore he is not stingy. And added, “yeah?”
He announced that he will dabble in motion pictures, but as a producer. He said he’s had experience as an actor. His first show will be Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in “The Road to Dunmore.”
Phil Harris and Jack Benny exchanged running fire gags with the latter on the butt end. During a serious point, however, Mr. Harris said that yesterday marked his 14th year with Mr. Benny.
Harris and Benny had several sharp exchanges, but the one that brought down the house was Mr. Harris caricature of Mr. Benny’s role of great love with Vivian Blaine as the love interest.
Thrusting Mr. Benny aside, Mr. Harris took over in the love department and said to Benny: “Dad you’re old enough to be playing with the Scranton Miners.”
Climax of the smartly-paced show was the appearance of “Buck” Benny and his Beverly Hill Billies. This troupe consisted of several members of the band and Miss Blaine with “Buck” Benny attired in blue overalls over red underwear as the leader.
The costumes were moth-eaten and the very appearances of the bedraggled musicians provoked gales of laughter.
To add an element of variety with fine entertainment there were the Wiere Brothers and the Peiro Brothers.
The two shows last night wound up an almost feverish pace for Mr. Benny and his two costars. Arriving at Avoca Airport, about 1 p. m., Mr. Benny was escorted to City Hall and a welcome by Mayor James T. Hanlon, and then appeared before several hundred at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon where he described the LIFE program as [“]one of the finest community efforts I have encountered in my tour of 21 cities.[”]

Gordon Evans, past president of the C of C and chairman of LIFE’s Business Division, was chief speaker. Attorney John R. Lenhan was toastmaster. Anthony Koveleski presented Mr. Benny with a miniature model of a Maxwell car, the counterpart of the decrepit car he owns.
On Friday Mr. Benny, Mr. Harris and Rochester will sail for London to play the Palladium, and later will appear at the Empire Theater in Glasgow.
The Scrantonian-Tribune Charity Foundation Fund received $600 from the proceeds of the two shows—$300 from Mr. Benny and $300 from the Buddy Club, sponsor of the shows.

The Tribune had several sidebar stories, including the seemingly-obligatory one that Jack wasn’t really like he was on radio. There was one praising Benny’s comedy.

Pick Benny as Top Radio Showman In Past 25 Years
Jack Benny has been acclaimed “the greatest radio personality during the latest 25 years” in a questionnaire poll of 330 of the nation’s leading radio editors by Radio Daily.
In selecting Benny, numerous editors polled by Radio Daily also wrote in their non-commercial choice. This honor went to the late Franklin Delano Roosevelt, of whom one radio editor said: “He relied almost entirely on radio to instill confidence, faith, and courage in this nation.”
Many editors supported their choice of Benny with comments on his master showmanship and his consistently top comedy programing over the years. Second choice was Bing Crosby who ran close to Benny in the balloting.
Honors for third place among the commercial radio artists were divided evenly between Bob Hope and Amos ‘n’ Andy.
Among the varied comments on Benny were:
“Jack Benny for his personal accomplishments and those he has helped to stardom.”—Nat Lund, Seattle Times, Seattle, Wash.
“Jack Benny is not necessarily the best or the greatest judge in terms of pure talent—but he deserves the title of the ‘greatest’ in the sense that his radio characterization has not only become a national tradition, but has maintained itself as such in the top levels of public acclaim longer than any other.”—Ben Gross, New York Daily News.
“If by radio persontlity [sic] you mean entertaining personality, I’d say Jack Benny.”—Peg White, San Diego Journal, San Diego, California.
“If F. D. R. is barred from competition, I’ll throw my vote to Jack Benny who had led the way so many years.”—John Crosby, New York Herald-Tribune.

The following story may be the most interesting of the additional ones. It was told a number of times in later years.

Taylor Vet to Remind Benny Of Narrow Escape in Europe
Jack Benny, the funny man, is going to have some pictures presented to him (if he’s willing) when he arrives in Scranton—pictures which almost spelled tragedy to his troupe while touring Germany in 1945. Benny & Co. appear tonight at the Catholic Youth Center.
The pictures are in possession of Tom Burdett, 25, 142 South Main St., Taylor, now a first sergeant of Tank Co., 109th Infantry Regiment, Pennsylvania Guard.
It all happened, according to Tom, when Benny, Ingrid Bergman, Larry Adler and Martha Tilton, were driving in a big, black car from Stutgart to Waiblingen, Germany.

Tom was then a member of Hq. Co., Second Battalion, 398th Infantry, 100th Division, which outfit had check points at two main points in town.
Benny and his troupe were stopped by the battalion CO. After conversing, the group left. Benny, Bergman and Adler were in the back seat of the car.
Miss Tilton was in the front seat with the chauffeur.
The chauffeur failed to heed a command to stop at the second check point. The guard drew his .45 and fired directly at the car!
The bullet went through the rear of the machine and was deflected by the steel slats behind the seats, Burdett, who was a member of the investigating party, said.
The Benny chauffeur stopped after that shot was fired.
Burdett said that had the guard had an M-1 high powered Army rifle, Adler, no doubt, would have been killed.
Tom has two pictures of the “big, black car,” bullet hole and all.
The incident didn’t get any publicity but Tom’s sure that Benny will remember that close call.
And if the funnyman’s willing, Tom will be around the Hotel Casey today and present him with the pictures just to remember.

Jack appeared in Scranton in 1925. The ad for the show is to your left. In promoting it, the Scranton Republican said: “Jack Benny will have the special comedy attraction position. He will appear in joyful moments with himself. His work is always along original lines and it has evoked laughter whenever given. He is expected to go strong with Capitol audiences.”

After the show opened, the paper reported: “He is seen and heard in ‘Joyful Moments,’ an act broad enough to enable him to do his cleverest in several lines of vaudeville work. He had his audiences with him from the start and received a welcome which must have warmed his heart. He is one of the big cards of the week.” Then the next day: “Jack Benny is a lone worker who has developed the art of comedy to a nicety and is responsible for a continuous ripple of laughter.”

It would appear audiences in the city felt the same way 25 years later.

The Venerable Vinci

Is there something about the cat’s expression that looks familiar?



This is from the rather weak Spike and Tyke cartoon Scat Cats, released by MGM several weeks after it closed its cartoon studio. The expression reminds me of Sourpuss or some other character at Terrytoons. That’s no coincidence.

One of the animators of this short was one of Paul Terry’s former star animators, Carlo Vinci. The “surprise” look by the cat on the right also resembles something in a Mighty Mouse cartoon.



(You know, if you put a blue bow tie on that orange cat, he’d look awfully familiar).

This post isn’t intended as a biography of Carlo Vinci. You can find that elsewhere on the internet. This is a collection of random items found here and there. Carlo was born Carlo Vinciguerra, but decided to shorten his name. When? The answer is to the right. It’s a legal notice printed in the New Rochelle newspaper during his time at Terrytoons. You can click on it to read it.

Carlo spent the last six years of his life in Ventura County, passing away at the age of 87 on September 30, 1993. Before that, he and his wife lived in Van Nuys. He was born February 27, 1906 in New York.

He recalled to historian Harvey Deneroff that he was an in-betweener at the Van Beuren studio in New York. Perhaps his biggest accomplishment there lay elsewhere. Joe Barbera, in his autobiography, told of his first day at Van Beuren. He was given a desk next to another in-betweener, who noticed Barbera’s bewilderment of the whole animation process. "You don't know anything about it, do you?" said his roommate, who was one Carlo Vinci. Barbera got instant quick lessons from Carlo on the rudiments of making characters move.

Before long, Barbera and Vinci became assistants to animator Reuben Timmins, who had worked in the early ‘30s for the Fleischers. “Timmins would rough out — and I mean rough — the animation. Carlo and I would do the breakdowns and the in-betweens as well,” Barbera wrote. “We also had to clean up Timmins’s roughs, making sure they were neat.”

Van Beuren closed in mid-1936. Both Barbera and Vinci were hired at Terrytoons. Barbera left about a year later when Fred Quimby was looking for people to start the MGM cartoon studio. Vinci stayed.

Terrytoons were “the crassest of unadulterated crap” in the eyes of Gene Deitch, who determined to modernise its cartoons when he arrived in the later 1950s. And working conditions weren’t any better. Tom Sito’s book “Drawing the Line,” an examination of unions at cartoon studios, relates how Vinci and four other artists were fired on May 16, 1947; this was after a two-week labour dispute involving 36 employees “ended” earlier in the month. The Screen Cartoonists Guide set up picket lines. Unfortunately for the union, Terry held all the high cards in this game. He had finished cartoons on shelves waiting to be released. Sito relates the locals in New Rochelle thought Terry was terrific and yelled “You dirty Reds! Go home to Russia!” at the strikers. Summer came. Fall came. Winter came. The striking employees’ bank accounts shrunk. Says Sito: “Terry had secret meetings with a number of key animators. He told them he was old and was planning to retire. He promised them that if they broke ranks and went back to work, he would sell them his studio. On November 15, Terry's remaining striking regulars—Jim Tyer, Joe Rasinski, Carlo Vinci, and Theron Collier—crossed the picket line and went to work. The rest of the strikers thundered and called for expulsion and fines, but they were helpless.”

Carlo carried on working under Paul Terry, perhaps hoping the old man wasn’t lying when promising to make him part-owner of the studio. While carrying on with his animation, he also continued his education in the field of art. The picture to the left is from the Sept. 15, 1948 edition of the Standard-Star of New Rochelle. You can see the back of his head.

The same paper reported on Aug. 24, 1949 that Carlo was fined $10 for speeding; he was going 44 miles an hour.

Vinci never got screen credit for any of his work on Terrytoons. And he never got ownership of the studio. Variety reported on Dec. 28, 1955 that CBS was wrapping up the purchase of all assets of Terrytoon, Inc. for $5,000,000. Terry got every cent (after taxes). It was about this time Carlo got out. Animation author Thad Komorowski has remarked there was still some bitterness against Carlo for crossing the Terry picket line in 1947.

Margaret Vinci related her life story on reaching 100 years of age to the Ventura County Star on April 14, 2012. She and Carlo met at a dance in 1938 and married a year later. She talked about going to California: “Leaving my family behind didn’t bother me while we were traveling, but once we arrived in California, I went into a deep depression. My husband said ‘Let’s try it for two years, and if you still feel that way, we’ll go back.’”

They didn’t.

The inexperienced animator he once mentored, Joe Barbera, was now the top cheese with Bill Hanna at the MGM studio and offered Vinci a job. Daily Variety reported he was hired February 15, 1956. The first production Vinci was assigned to was No. 313, Give and Tyke, released on March 29, 1957. At MGM, Carlo was criticised privately by his own assistant animator, who remains unidentified. Dan Bessie’s autobiography of his time at MGM and elsewhere in animation, “Reeling Through Hollywood” (published, 2006), quoted the assistant “that his animator, hired on from Terrytoons, ‘draws all his Toms like the alley cats chasing Mighty Mouse, so I spend all my time changing them.’” Vinci isn’t mentioned by name, but it couldn’t possibly be anyone else.

Carlo’s timing wasn’t that great. MGM announced at the end of 1956 it had a huge backlog of cartoons, so it was going to wrap up the operation. Dick Bickenbach claimed to historian Mike Barrier he was laying out Ruff and Reddy during the last week of the studio’s existence, so it’s obvious Joe and Bill planned to go into business for themselves. The story goes that Barbera got Walt Disney to hire Vinci to work on the Disneyland TV show until Hanna-Barbera Enterprises got off the ground.

He also found freelance work at a commercial studio owned by Paul Fennell; the studio designer was Ed Benedict, who had landed there after the MGM closure. Thanks to Mike Kazaleh, here is a Vinci spot for Ipana.



H-B Enterprises went into business on July 7, 1957. On December 14, Ruff and Reddy debuted on NBC. Carlo Vinci settled in for the long haul.

I like a lot of his work on the first season (1958-59) of The Huckleberry Hound Show. There are fine poses in a number of Huck cartoons, including Hookey Daze, and he invented Yogi Bear’s butt-waving bongo walk. His animation is distinctive and easily recognised. Perhaps the H-B cartoon most people talk about when they mention Vinci is The Flintstone Flyer (aka “The Inked Disaster,” according to Jack Gould of the New York Times), specifically the tippy-toes bowling scene.

Hollywood Studio Magazine of July 1969 reveals a side benefit Carlo received at Hanna-Barbera. He won two first-place prizes in the studio’s third annual employees art show, one in the Portrait and Figure category (a self-portrait) and the other in the still life category (his painting was called “Still Life”). Judging took place in Bill Hanna’s office and Hanna handed Vinci two $50 cheques.

Carlo was also one of the veteran animators hired by Ralph Bakshi to work on Heavy Traffic, released in 1973. One of the more junior members of the crew was one of the animation world’s most helpful people ever, Mark Kausler.

Any post on Carlo Vinci cannot ignore his top-rate animation for Paul Terry. Whenever a dance was required, especially one involving a sexy female character (almost always a mouse), Vinci was handed the footage. His animation holds its own with anyone’s. One of the remarkable things about Vinci’s dances is their variety. No two are the same. Here are two collections of his work.

Brooklyn's a Funny Woid

Listen to old-time radio comedy/variety shows and you’ll find laughter or applause any time Brooklyn is mentioned, especially on programmes based in New York. In fact, people like Bob and Ray, Fred Allen and Henry Morgan did jokes about studio audiences guffawing about the borough.

Evidently, cartoon writers thought whatever anyone found funny about Brooklyn was transferrable to their medium, the same as jokes on the radio about Cucamonga.

An example of that comes from the Columbia/Screen Gems studio. In Kongo-Roo (1946), writer Cal Howard, director Howard Swift and background artist Ed Starr start the cartoon with a pan across a painting of nature. The camera pans past a sign that sets up the gag.



The camera stops on the gag sign. Okay, it’s not “Brooklyn.” But it’s a sign over a flat bush. Get it? Flatbush! It’s in Brooklyn!



And here’s the gag topper. A tree pops up, accompanied by the usual Screen Gems spring sound effect.



Look! The tree is growing in a flat bush! It’s like that novel “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” Get it? Brooklyn! It’s a funny woid!

Actually, if I may go out on a limb (a limb of a “flat bush” in this case), there’s almost nothing funny about Columbia’s Phantasies or Rhapsodies or whatever series Kongo-Roo is in. The cartoon has a weird ending, with characters shrinking and being eaten by an ostrich, and gags that go for Warner Bros. zaniness (the old one with “No Sale” signs in the eyes shows up here, while the hunter turns and talks to the audience like Elmer Fudd would).

Grant Simmons is the credited animator, with layouts by Bill Weaver, who worked for Ted Eshbaugh in New York at one point. Eshbaugh was a block and a half from Times Square, which is not in Brooklyn.

Baloney Dog

Want to slice a character into little slabs but not make it seem painful?

Just add some peppy music from Frank Marsales. (Do people say “peppy” any more?)

Here are examples from Bosko’s Store (1932). First, a dachshund runs through an electric fan, getting sliced like a salami, to the sound of a bassoon and tuba melody. Don’t worry. He reforms on the other side.



Later in the short, Wilbur the bratty cat falls into a meat grinder, with drips coming out forming mini-Wilburs (a gag going back to the silent Oswald days) that run into each other to re-form one, solid Wilbur.



The jumpy music is “I Love To See the Evenin’ Sun Go Down” by Maceo Pinkard and Jack Palmer, which ends the cartoon. Some other tunes: “There’s a Rainbow on the River” (Bosko sings while washing the window); “Doggone, I’ve Done It” (Bosko answers phone, gets baloney to slice); “Having a Good Time, I Wish You Were Here” (Mouse dials phone, asks about dry fish); “In the Hills of Old Missouri” (Bosko sweeps the wooden sidewalk in ¾ time); “How Can You Say No” (Bosko and Honey dance to player piano).

Bob McKimson and Friz Freleng are both credited as animators. Despite that, it’s a pretty lacklustre cartoon. There’s dancing, dancing and more dancing, all for the sake of dancing.

Laughin' Before Laugh-In With Arte

They weren’t overnight successes, most of the original cast of Laugh-In. Judy Carne had starred in Love on a Rooftop. Ruth Buzzi showed up on That Girl. Jo Anne Worley had appeared on The Merv Griffin Show.

Arte Johnson had not one, but two TV series. Likely you don’t remember either of them.

Johnson was a nightclub comic who was signed for a role in It’s Always Jan, a sitcom which debuted in 1955 that CBS decided It’s No Longer Jan on its schedule after a year. Then in 1958, Johnson was added to the cast of Joan Caulfield’s NBC comedy Sally—after the show was cancelled. He and Gale Gordon were signed for the last seven episodes. Gordon played (this won’t surprise you) a pompous, disapproving grouch. Johnson played his bumbling son. Johnson was signed after series writer Phil Shuken saw him in “No Time for Sergeants” on Broadway.

He was considered on the rise once he hired for Janis Paige’s show. Here are a couple of articles, first from April 9, 1955.

Young Man With A Future
Arte Johnson Enters T.V As A Delivery Boy
By TV KEY
New York—Twenty-three-year-old Arte Johnson seems to be a young man with a bright future. Despite his relative youth, Arte is a veteran of night clubs, radio and T. V. Currently he's causing quite a stir in New York with his appearance in the sell-out "Shoestring Revue". It was during his run in the show that opportunity knocked loudly.
Artie Stander, a writer who created a new T. V. series, remembered him from a C. B. S. audition of the preceding year and called to offer him a job. There was to be a new T. V. film series, starring Janis Paige, aNd Stander had written in a part specially for Johnson. When Artie asked Arte if he'd be interested, our boy took a leave of absence from "Shoestring Revue" and flew post-haste to Hollywood.
"I didn't want to appear anxious," he told me.

The show, tentatively titled "The Four Of Us", concerns the adventures of a night club performer-widow and takes place in New York. Arte plays the delivery boy from the grocery downstairs. "Believe me," he said, "it's a different type of part. I'm an intelligent delivery boy.
"I had a long talk with Artie Stander about the role, and we both agreed that the best way to approach it would be to emphasize the human values and not try to dig for laughs based on slapstick or improbable situations. I'm the delivery boy and I like the people upstairs. So when the owner of the store refuses to advance them credit, I do."
He agreed that this did not sound like the epitome of intelligence.
"After all," Arte explained, "I'm basically a performer. If the part changes, all I can do is complain. But I do honestly believe the approach is right.
"I don't care what happens now. (He really does care.) Doing the film was the greatest experience of my life. I met all kinds of people I never dreamed I'd get close to—Desi Arnaz, Lucy, Ray Bolger, Danny Thomas, who's one of the producers, Sheldon Leonard, our director, Janis Paige. . ." He didn't say much after that name, he just sighed.
"We rehearsed the show for four days and then shot it before an audience. With laughter, it ran 38 minutes, and we had to cut out laughs to get it down to 27 minutes. That hurts.
"I haven't seen the pilot film yet. I understand the show is on the verge of being sold, but I'm almost afraid to look at it. I've been invited to another screening which will be held in New York, but I don't know whether I'll be brave enough to go even then."

The Indianapolis News gave readers this profile on Nov. 1, 1955. The typesetter seems to have had problems with the show’s name.

Don't Sell a Short Man Short
By JACKIE FREERS
Arte Johnson, the bespectacled young comedian in It's Alway Jan [sic], is in television because he couldn't see over the top of a counter.
The 5-2 Arte worked as a production assistant at a publishing house.
"I worked behind a desk," he said, "and didn't have the nerve to become a salesman. A friend dared me to go on the stage, and since I couldn't see over the top of the counter anyway, I joined the road show of ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blonds'."
A native Chicagoan and a graduate of the University of Illinois School of Journalism, Johnson went to New York in 1952 and joined the publishing firm. He made his first appearance in the cafe circuit, at Le Ruban Bleu and later on at the Village Vanguard.
Contrary to the experience of most people in TV, Arte finds the work relaxing. His aim is direction and production on TV.

"We work four days out of the week, we rehearse three days and shoot the fourth, before a live audience," he said in a long-distance telephone interview.
"There is not the pressure of live TV on our shows," he added. "We work on film with the advantage of a live audience." Arte said that he had a minor role in "Miracle in the Rain," new movie which features Jane Wyman and Van Johnson.
"My role will probably end up on the cutting room floor," he laughed, "but I love that money. It's so pleasant."
Arte has one brother, Coslough Johnson, just returned from Japan. "He was going to change his name to Howard but he thought people might laugh," Arte said. He says there is a great, influx of young talent to Hollywood right now and that "within five years, live TV will come only from New York, The filmed material will all be done in Hollywood."
It's Aways Jan [sic] is carried here on Saturdays by WISH-TV.

One of the advantages when you’re not known on television is you aren’t typecast. You can try out for different roles. Johnson appeared in a movie in 1965 playing something no one would associate with him today. This appeared in papers in August 1965.

Arte Johnson Scores Hit
By DICK KLEINER
Newspaper Enterprise Association.
HOLLYWOOD—When you see "The Third Day," an old-fashioned melodrama starring George Peppard and Elizabeth Ashley, you'll probably be impressed by a little man playing the psychopathic heavy. You are not alone.
Arte Johnson's performance is creating a lot of talk here. Johnson says that Helmut Dan-tine, whom he had never met, saw the picture and called him to say that "You will be the next Peter Lorre."
This is perfectly fine with Arte (pronounced Artie), but it amuses him. You see, he started out on the musical comedy stage in New York, came to Hollywood nine years ago and has been doing comedy in television and in night clubs.
He never made much of a splash here—"I was an owl actor—mention my name and people would say ‘Who? Who?’ "—but he did well enough to get by.
But then his old pal, Peppard, insisted that he play the evil one in "The Third Day."
"George called me," Arte says, "and he said, 'I've just read you in a script—a hostile little man.'"
Arte, who is 5'3" and weighs 125 pounds, says he guesses he is hostile.
"All little men are inclined toward hostility," he says, "and all comics are inclined toward hostility. So I guess I'm doubly inclined toward hostility."
He smiled as he said it. Hostile smile, it was.

This was not too many months after comic roles as an efficiency expert (Many Happy Returns, John McGiver’s starring vehicle), a playboy son (The Cara Williams Show) and Samantha’s elf cousin (Bewitched). There was some on-location comedy during filming of The Third Day. Johnson’s dialogue couldn’t be heard over the mooing of cows in a pasture.

Perhaps that’s what dissuaded him from a career as a character actor (he got some favourable reviews). By 1967 he was guesting on sitcoms, and then stories began popping up in newspapers in August that he would be in the cast of a special featuring take-offs and put-ons that NBC would air the following month. Dan Rowan, Dick Martin and producer George Schlatter promised quick sketches and a different format. UPI’s Rick Du Brow proclaimed the humour mixed but added “the one-shot show was memorable for the brilliant comedic singing, dancing and line-handling of Arte Johnson, whose pseudo-Russian song was priceless, and, as I understand it, impromptu.

NBC picked up the “one-shot” Laugh-In as a series. Arte Johnson’s career was changed forever.

I'll Have the Chicken Chevalier

Ub Iwerks’ ComiColor cartoons were supposed to be based on fairy tales, nursery rhymes and children’s classics but, despite that, finding good gags for a story line seemed to have been a real problem for the studio’s writers.

Let’s look at Old Mother Hubbard (1935). Once you get past enacting the famous six rhyming lines, then how do you fill the screen time? Being 1935, everyone was imitating Disney, so Carl Stalling filled the soundtrack with original songs that kind of told the story, like an operetta.

But gags?

Well....

Old Mother Hubbard’s poor dog ended up in the King’s kitchen and started chowing down on a roast chicken. The cook delivered a platter to the King, removed the cover and—why, it’s the dog with his head buried in the bird.



The King (who has no neck) thinks it’s funny. I’ll bet theatre audiences didn’t.



The dog tries to remove the chicken from his head. Stray dogs jump through a window and join in. No, we haven’t hit the funny part yet.



The strays have eaten the meat off the chicken. The dog finally shakes the bones off his head. They reform into a chicken skeleton. And—it’s alive! You’re yucking it up now, right?



The bird gives the dog the butt-bird then throws a spittoon at his head. Fuh-nee!



The spittoon crushes into something that’s supposed to resemble a straw hat. The dog then develops a thick lower lip and starts to do the worst Maurice Chevalier impression in history. It’s like the voice actor had never heard a French accent before. It truly is stupefyingly inept.



However the stiffly-animated king (where are Irv Spence and Dick Bickenbach when you need them?) thinks it’s great and all’s well for Mother Hubbard, the King and the dog at the end, who dance and reprise the song “Cheer Up.” In case you want to sing along the next time you watch the cartoon, the lyrics go:

Cheer up!
Why do you look so sad and grumpy?
Cheer up!
Why do you sigh?

Cheer up!
Your road of life is not so bumpy.
Cheer up!
Take it in high.

Why do you sit around so humble,
Mumble, jumble, groan and grumble?

Cheer up!
A king should sing
For that will bring
A smile. Be a regular guy!

Carl Stalling’s score and arrangements are actually pretty solid (he gets screen credit). He even incorporates a minor-key version of the aforementioned melody. Within a year, the ComiColors were finished and Stalling would move to Leon Schlesinger and lasting fame.

Wags To Riches Backgrounds

Johnny Johnsen invents a long living room over which Tex Avery pans in Wags to Riches (1949). I’ve had to break it up because it’s really long.



I have no idea who was doing Tex’s layouts at this point.

To Be

Jack Benny synonymous with clowning horseplay? Riotous slapstick?

Was Lolly into her fifth martini when she came up with that?

Benny was the very opposite of “riotous slapstick.” He stood there and looked out at the audience. They laughed. He kept looking. They laughed harder. “Clowning horseplay” was for people like Red Skelton or (especially) Milton Berle.

But that’s what Louella Parsons told her readers in her column of March 1, 1942. It wasn’t like she and Jack were strangers. She even appeared on his radio show twice.

The subject is mostly Jack’s latest movie, To Be or Not to Be. Lolly, as usual, injects herself into her own story.

Shakespearean Comedy May Alter Jack Benny's Career
CLOWNING ACTOR CONVERTED INTO ROMANTIC LEAD
Carole Lombard Has Lead Role in "To Be or Not to Be," Proclaimed a Hit.
By Louella O. Parsons
Motion Picture Editor, I. N. S.
Hollywood, Cal. — Curious that “To Be or Not to Be,” the comedy that was born in tears, should be the one that perhaps will change Jack Benny's whole career. The same Benny is synonymous with clowning horseplay and riotous slapstick. Who would ever have thought that Jack Benny, super-comedian, clown and funny man, would turn out a romantic hero? Yet Ernst Lubitsch, by a simple twist of the wrist, converts Jack into a leading man with the appeal of a Tyrone Power.
Mary Livingstone has always kidded Jack about his thinning hair, his age and even his waistline, although he is not the least bit on the portly side. They have gotten some of their biggest laughs from the way she has ribbed him, pretending to fall for a young hero and ridiculing Benny in their hilariously funny skits.
Mary Likes Preview.
I went to call on the Bennys at their home in Beverly Hills just as Jack was getting ready to go to San Francisco to do a radio show at the Presidio. Jack and Mary had been playing gin rummy and Joan, their little daughter, done up in little pink nightie, had come in to say goodnight.

Before I had a chance to even sit down Mary said, "Wasn't he handsome? I fell in love with him all over again." She had gone to the preview because Jack had not felt up to it. Carole Lombard's tragic death a few days after they finished the picture had been such a blow he wanted to see the picture in the theatre or in the privacy of a quiet projection room.
"I feel differently now," he said, "after Mary said the picture was so good and the reviews so satisfactory. I know how happy it would have made Carole and she would have wanted everyone to see our movie. I am more glad for her sake most people like it than I am on my own account.
Afraid of Role.
"Wait until Fred Allen and Bob Hope see you," I said. "Won't they burn? You have given Errol Flynn and our other dashing heroes competition.”
“When Ernst Lubitsch asked me to play the Shakespearian actor I was afraid," Jack said. "You need a young, handsome leading Shakespearian man—a hero who will give the girls a thrill."
"Ernst said he had written ‘To Be or Not to Be' with me in mind and naturally I was flattered to do a picture with Lubitsch and Carole. If Lubitsch ever asks me to make another movie," said Jack, "I won't even read the script. I'll say yes before he can say his own name."
"I hadn't worked with Ernst two days before I knew what he told me to do was right. I had complete confidence in his judgment in the scene where I make Robert Stack walk thru the door first—we had shot it the other way first—with me in the lead. ‘Try following Stack,’ he said, "and that scene is one of the laugh sequences in the entire movie."
Laughs Must Be Natural.
"Comedy, Lubitsch believes, must never be pushed. You must never force a laugh. Why I threw away my most important laughs and did nothing to call attention to the dialog we hoped would be funny. The results showed that Lubitsch knows all the answers and the way to put over subtle humor."
" 'To Be or Not to Be’ could very easily be a serious picture," added Mary, "and a good one. It is so exciting and filled with such great suspense."
"Ah, but the comedy," said Jack, is what makes the drama all the more potent and Lubitsch knew that so well."
As I was leaving Mary and Jack walked to the door with me and waved goodbye. Just then dilapidated car with a man and women and some children drove by. They drove to the curb and the man asked, “Is that Jack Benny?" I said "Yes." He said, "Well, I'm from Boston and Benny is the one person we came all the way to California to see."
Guess that man and thousands like him over the world are glad that "To Be or Not to Be" is good for Jack is loved, not only by those who know him, but by Mr. and Mrs. Public all over the United States.

Despite her characterisation of Benny’s comedy, Parsons seems to have got one of the few interviews with Jack immediately after the film’s release. I’ve found plenty of reviews in newspapers in 1942, but nothing quoting Jack to any great extent. Maybe he didn’t give interviews because he was busy with his radio show. Or Lombard’s death still upset him.

Years later, it was different. Jack proclaimed it one of his best pictures and critics agreed. As he got laughs on radio by ridiculing his last movie for Warners, The Horn Blows at Midnight, the studio audience reacted the same way when cast members praised it. Not exactly “riotous slapstick,” is it?

Animation's Vet

He was a cartoonist/illustrator/sculptor who served in the Spanish-American War and died in 1966.

Yet Vet Anderson’s animation career petered out in the early sound era after stops at Van Beuren, Walter Lantz and Ted Eshbaugh.

This is not going to be a biography or essay on Anderson. That’s somewhat way, way over my head. Someone who REALLY knows about Anderson is Charlie Judkins, and I’d urge you to read about him in this old blog post.

However, in hunting for something else, I came across this rather forlorn article in the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine of June 29, 1935. I thought I’d pass it on for what it’s worth.

The City of Forgotten Men
By JEAN BOSQUET
BETWEEN the glistening shores of the blue Pacific and the great California university in the rolling hills of Westwood there Is a strange world of forgotten men.
Many of the forgotten ones have made their marks in life. During their span of usefulness they were leaders, some of them, in their fields of endeavor, which run the gamut of human accomplishment, from music to engineering. It is in no sense a sorry world, although there is pain there and suffering; but over all this these men have laid the soft, comfortable blanket of cherished memories and, thus, the driving hopes, the searing ambitions, the fierce competition that in these modern days drive men to distraction are happily missing at the National Military Home in Sawtelle.
Live In the Past
The men shuffle from barracks to mess hall, from ward to ward; or else they lie very still. All of them have the look of men whose minds dwell in the past.
Yet not all are hopeless. Some who have achieved great successes are determined to win to the heights again. Others, though, have given up.
Take Jesse Sylvester Anderson, today perhaps the fastest man In the animated cartoon field, an artist who was a member of the "big three" in the world of newspaper art in America thirty years ago, a trio composed of himself, Homer Davenport and Richard Outcalt.
"Vet" Anderson is a veteran of two wars. One was the Spanish-American conflict. He was fifteen days too old for Plattsburg when the World War beckoned to the Americans, so he went in with the British. He entered the newspaper field at the close of the Spanish-American War, beginning as a cartoonist with the Detroit Free Press in 1899. The New York Herald called him a year later. He made his first mark by caricaturing Tom Platt and Dick Croker, New York politicians.
Famed for Drawings
With John Kendrick Bangs he put out what was perhaps the first syndicate feature in American Journalism, "Who's What and Why, in America." He followed this by sketching Congress and originating a series called, "The Posthumous Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes," The Herald, Morning Telegraph and World used him in their art departments until 1909, and during this time he studied portraiture. He entered the animated cartoon branch of the movies In 1909, turning out the first of these pictures. Until his services in the World War he continued this work.
The animated movie versions of "Mutt and Jeff and "Aesop's Fables" flowed from his prolific pen. Then, when the great war ended, he went to Paris and studied in the Academie on Mount Parnasse until 1921.
"Vet" Anderson's great painting, “Memories." created a sensation in the spring salon in Paris in that year. It became known as "the talk of the salon." He was famous. He went to London and introduced the American method of producing animated cartoons for the films, then the movies called him back to New York.
He bought a farm In New Jersey, because in the beginning he had lived on a farm. He had toiled at farming as a boy in Michigan; the soil called to him. He commuted between his New Jersey furrows and the New York studios. Then tragedy came.
While he was at the seaside over a week-end with his wife and two children, fire razed his farm home, and in the dwelling were all of "Vet" Anderson's sketches, the accumulation of his life work, his credentials in art. Their value was beyond computation, to him.
He staggered up from the blow, built another identical house above the ruins, lived in it but one month.
"It couldn’t replace the other . . . you see, there was so much that I had put into the other one . . . "
Tasted Tragedy

He turned his face toward the West, packed up and moved with his family to Hollywood. At first he did well. At one studio he became a sensation, with his speed at the animated cartoon. He turned out fifteen to twenty feet of film a week, as compared to three and five feet produced by the other artists. The others organized a union, commanded him to join. He refused. Trouble came, and he left. Then he tried his luck with a man who had ideas about colored cartoons in movies. It didn't pan out and "Vet" Anderson began to taste bitter things. He was on the down grade.
He found his way into the lines before the desk of the S.E.R.A. and was given a job. At 62 years of age the artist finger muscles alone had been developed during his life of sketching, painting and sculpting bent his back at a plow, pick and shovel. It broke him.
He had never given a thought to pension or to government hospitalization during the years he was "tops" as an artist. He staggered into the National Home last January, virtually crippled. As soon as he could stand erect he gave ear to the whisperings of his genius.
Staging "Comeback"
They gave him vari-colored wool thread and some cloth screen to work with, and with a needle he began doing the things his pen, brush and modeling tools had done before.
All the skill gained from years of caricaturing and the study of portrait painting went into the makeup of the portraits in thread, as he worked. First came President Roosevelt, then Henry Ford, then Will Rogers, each faithfully reproduced on the cloth screens.
"I had to wind up in a hospital bed to find myself. I have something now. I'll be out of here in time to exhibit at the exposition in San Diego, just as sure as you live . . . "

Anderson turns up in San Francisco in the 1938 Voter Registration as an artist. He’s in the San Jose area in the 1942 Registration in San Jose as an artist. The 1950 U.S. Census for San Jose lists him as unemployed. That’s where he died on January 14, 1966.

We mentioned a blog post by Charlie Judkins. He wrote about Anderson at the Cartoon Research site. We look forward to the day Charlie has the time to compile all his research of New York’s animation studios into a book.

Anchor's Aweigh

The Silly Symphony Frolicking Fish (1930) is from a period where cartoons could get away with no, or next-to-no, story, so long as there was animation synchronisation in time to the music. Thus we get scenes of fish dancing because that’s about all that is required of this cartoon.

There’s also an octopus that is alternately menacing or goofy, depending on what’s needed for a particular scene.

In the cartoon’s climax, a fish escapes from the octopus and conks him with an anchor.



Bubbles pour out of the octopus and fill the screen. Since bubbles opened the cartoon, director Burt Gillett ends it that way.



Disney skips a chance to have “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” in the background. He’d have to pay for it.

To be honest, I like the Aesop Fable The Haunted Ship, also released in 1930, better than this. It has weirdly-designed sea creatures, and a barbershop quartet of drunken tortoises.