Hot Music

Musicians run wild at the end of one of Hugh Harman’s tributes to the black stars of Hollywood in Swing Wedding (1937). Harman made several swing cartoons turning Cab Calloway, Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong and so on into bullfrogs. The vocal imitations are extremely good.

They launch into a version of “Running Wild” that is so hot, the thermometer bursts. In this scene, Harman wipes in the musicians several ways in the background as the mercury rises.



The music is so hot, everyone is driver crazy. Fats and the other caricatures bash and destroy their instruments or each other.



A trumpet player smashes his instrument into a syringe in a rather unfortunate scene.



Louis Armstrong Frog takes in so much air, he floats into the lake and enjoys a rest in the water as the scene fades to end the cartoon.



Only Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising have their names on the screen. No animators or singers are credited. Even Scott Bradley's name is absent, though copyright documentation from the time shows he wrote the opening theme.

Do You Remember Joan?

In 1946, Motion Picture Daily voted her “Radio’s Queen of Comedy” for the fourth year in a row.

Who was it?

It wasn’t Gracie Allen. It wasn’t Penny Singleton (Blondie). It wasn’t even Barbara Jo Allen (Vega Vague).

It was none other than Joan Davis.

Today, if she’s remembered at all, it’s—ironically—for a television series called I Remember Joan. The “I” in this case was Jim Backus. By that time, Backus’ TV-squeeze had been de-crowned as Queen of Comedy by the main squeeze of another titular “I.” This “I” in this case was Desi Arnaz. I think you know who we’re talking about.

The start of the 1946-47 radio season didn’t go all that well for Davis, if reports in Variety are any indication. First, CBS boss Bill Paley rejected a storyline involving an amnesiac Davis only remembering serial numbers from “lucky bucks” (a contest gimmick involving real dollar bills in circulation). Agency Young and Rubicam moaned seven scripts would have to be tossed out.

Then sponsor Lever Brothers felt Davis was costing too much, which may be the reason announcer Harry Von Zell was replaced over the summer with Frank Bingman, competent, but a big step-down from a comic actor like Von Zell (vocalist Andy Russell also left Swantown, the setting for the Swan Soap programme). And a blurb in the trade paper reported in October “Some guy with a cackly laugh parked right under the audience pickup mike at KNX and almost ruined Joan Davis' Coast repeat. He got more and longer laughs than the mike-siders.”

That guy (perhaps it was Eddie Cantor) may have loved Davis, but she has never really done anything for me. Her show has the familiar one-note characters heard elsewhere on radio. Still, Variety liked her season opener. Even cynical critic John Crosby had good things to say about her, but not so much the ridiculously contrived plots of her show, or the unceasingly repetitious commercials. (Some papers in the syndicate did not mention the soap's name; free advertising, you know).

Here’s Crosby’s column from the Herald Tribune syndicate, Nov. 27, 1946.

RADIO IN REVIEW
By John Crosby
The Plot Thickens
The rules and regulations for female radio comics are now fairly well established and more or less undeviating. The radio comedienne must be brassy voiced, energetic, full of unpredictable enthusiasms and mildly sex-starved, though not enough to get into difficulties with the censors. Joan Davis (CBS 8:30 p. m. Mondays) does not violate these precepts to any great extent but is possibly a little better at it than her contemporaries.
The Joan Davis show is situation and, in a sketchy way, character comedy of a sort that will remind you strongly of Mack Sennett. Most of the characters might have walked right out of the Sennett comedies. Also, there are a lot of policemen around and Miss Davis usually gets mixed up with them. Surrounding Miss Davis, whose outlines you must recognize, are her Cousin Cornelia [played by Verna Felton], an irascible, dictatorial lady who thinks Joan is a nincompoop and says so; Cousin Selenus (I think that's how it's spelled), who is a nincompoop; a rich girl called Barbara Willoughby, who is a sort of female Hubert Updike 3rd; a man who never finishes a sentence; and Wally, Joan's boy friend.
I mention all these people because I'd like to make a synopsis of a Joan Davis plot, all of which are as thick as molasses and almost as wildly improbable as some of Shakespeare's comedies. On a recent program, for instance, Miss Davis, who runs a restaurant on this show, gets into an argument with Cousin Cornelia and later blurts out something about an accusation that “cut Cousin Cornelia like a knife.” Somehow this is construed as meaning she has cut Cousin Cornelia with a knife. Just about this time, Cousin Cornelia goes back to mother or anyway goes someplace else. Then—now follow along closely here—Miss Davis buries some old bones from her restaurant kitchen in her backyard. Well, sir, just about this time Wally decides to go fishing and while digging for worms, he comes upon the bones.
Now pay attention, it starts to get complicated here. Miss Davis has been having some sort of mental disorder and has called in a psychiatrist, who diagnoses it as Cousin Cornelia trouble. He teaches her to say, "Cousin Cornelia is no more,” as mental therapy. Then Wally (are you still listening?) comes in and hears this curious sentence and you can imagine the reaction of a man who has just dug up all those bones. Murder!
Stick around, this is just beginning. A casual acquaintance drops in and leaves his gorilla skull with Joan. (I don’t know where he got it either; just something kicking around the house.) Well, Joan puts it in the hall closet where she keeps all her skulls and there Wally comes on it. “Yow!” he howls, “Cousin Cornelia! I’d recognize that face anywhere."
So he buries the skull to protect his beloved, but a dog digs it up and then Miss Willoughby, a snob about homicide, calls the police. Miss Davis is charged with murder but Cousin Cornelia shows up in the nick of time to fix everything until next week, same time, same station. As you'll notice, there is almost as much plot as “Gone With the Wind,” all in half an hour. Another plot in my Joan Davis collection revolved around a Cadillac she won in a limerick contest. The license plates were inadvertently placed upside down which made it a hot car. Again she landed in the hoosegow, and that's enough about plots for now.
* * *
Miss Davis performs these shenanigans with humor and a certain amount of style. She is a sort of female Bert Lahr without that great man's zest for the ridiculous. Her special knack is vast and startling range of emotions. She can jump from rage to tears to glee all in one sentence. If the material us a little ridiculous, the blame is not entirely hers.
Incidentally, Miss Davis is sponsored by Swan Soap, which is one of the marvels of the age. This soap has so many virtues that one announcer can't handle all of them. He is assisted by a Greek chorus of housewives. It goes something like this:
ANNOUNCER: There is a difference between an ordinary fiddle and a fine handmade violin. Yes, there is a difference in soaps, too. As one housewife says . . .
FIRST HOUSEWIFE: Swan is an utterly different soap.
ANNOUNCER: Yes, Swan is an utterly different soap.
SECOND HOUSEWIFE: My face feels so fresh, so bright, so young after using Swan.
THIRD HOUSEWIFE: My face feels so different when I use Swan.
FOURTH HOUSEWIFE: I can always be sure of this—Swan agrees with my skin.
FIRST HOUSEWIFE: Swan is an utterly different soap.
ANNOUNCER: Yes, friends, Swan is an utterly different soap. No other soap can give you all these advantages. Yes, it rinses away so thoroughly. And it lasts longer, too, because it doesn't leave excess soap dish goo. Yes, friends, Swan has everything, or almost everything. The only claim they don't make is that it’ll get the dirt off.

As for Crosby’s columns during the rest of the week, Tuesday the 26th looked at a Mutual show called “Broadway Looks Back.” Another Mutual programme grabbed his attention on Friday the 29th. Newsman Gabriel Heatter’s claim to fame is the phrase “Ah! There’s good news tonight.” Mutual seems to have spun that into a feature news programme with Heatter dispensing happy or touching stories. On Thursday, the 28th, Crosby relates an unusual broadcast about a humanised sound effect on a dramatic anthology series on ABC’s “World Security Workshop.” Ray Bradbury was one of the writers. You can listen to one episode here and learn more about this interesting series.

Kathy Fuller-Seeley suggested to me a few years ago it would be nice if Crosby's early columns were available someplace. We have transcribed or screen-shot them from the New York Herald Tribune on this blog from Day 1 to November 30, 1946, with the exception of sound effect column below, which comes from an Ottawa newspaper as the Herald Tribune for that date is missing pages on-line. They are on the John Crosby link to the right. And you can click on the three below to read them.

Forget, It Flip. It's Chinatown

If they made this cartoon today, there would be outrage.

It’s enough it’s called Chinaman’s Chance, but it features Flip the Frog getting high on opium.

But no one saw anything wrong with showing it on TV kids programming in the 1950s. Kids back then turned out okay. Oh, well. People today are a product of their times.

Ub Iwerks’ staff employed some camera effects on a scene when Flip inhales and exhales the contents of an opium pipe in a hidden den in Chinatown.



There’s double-exposed animation and the camera not only appears to swirl around, parts of the footage are out of focus as Flip floats in the air.



Officer Flip comes upon jail escapee Chow Mein, but is so stoned, he thinks the evil Chow is a beautiful woman and caresses “her” face.



Flip comes down from his high and sees who he’s been putting the make on.



Iwerks gets the only credit in this 1933 release.

The Death of Tedd Pierce

Cartoons were seen in movie theatres in bygone days, so it was fitting that Frederick B. (Tex) Avery and his writers would play around with that for laughs.

Several of Avery’s cartoons include gags with silhouettes of someone in the theatre audience blocking the light from the film projector and showing up on the screen in silhouette. Thugs With Dirty Mugs and Cinderella Meets Fella are two examples.

Another is Daffy Duck and Egghead, “officially” released in 1938 but which appeared at the Warner Bros. Hollywood and Downtown theatres in Los Angeles on Christmas 1937. Egghead (Danny Webb) is trying to find where Daffy Duck (Mel Blanc) is hiding in the bullrushes along a lakeshore when a silhouette lopes onto the scene. Anyone familiar with the cartoon studio staff will recognise the Roman nose belonging to writer Tedd Pierce.



Twice, Egghead tells the shadow to be quiet and sit down. Each time, the silhouette drops out of sight for a moment, but then pops back up and begins to move.



Egghead takes care of the situation by shooting the shadow.



Carl Stalling cuts the music. A snare drum roll is heard on the soundtrack as Pierce's shadow twists and turns and finally falls backward. When the silhouette is off-screen, we hear a cymbal crash. Theatre-goer Pierce is dead

>

Egghead makes with a fine "Well, that takes care of THAT!" expression and carries on with the hunt.



Virgil Ross gets the animation credit, and Bugs Hardaway the rotating story credit. You all know Hardaway later rejigged the cartoon for his own unit, and turned the duck into a rabbit. Pierce survived to write cartoons for another 25 years.

Pre-Broadcast Clowning

There was a fascination, it seems, among radio fans about watching their favourite show in person as it was being broadcast. Fred Allen dismissed a studio audience as almost a lower class of people, content with watching people on a stage read a script aloud. But certainly the laughter enhanced every comedy/variety show aired in the Golden Days, and probably influenced not only the stars’ timing, but ad-libs as well.

We’ve put up several posts of reviews of the Benny show from someone either watching a show or a rehearsal. Here’s another one. It comes from the Memphis Commercial Appeal of Sunday, January 16, 1938.

Pre-Broadcast Period Found To Be Occasion For Good Acts Missed By Dialers
Many Laughs Escape Mike
Local Radio Man Relates NBC Studio Notations
By Robert Grey
REPORTS have been drifting in for several moons about what goes on in a broadcasting studio during that anxious period just before “on the air” signs go up. Many of the notations relate unusual behind-the-scenes incidents, such as a prima donna being too nervous to apply an even line of lip rouge before facing the studio audience or mike, or a screen idol being too upset to hold a cigaret.
A number of the stories concerned activities of program casts as they made final preparations to broadcast their wares to the country at large. Indications were that some of the best entertainment produced by radio artists occurred before the studio audience just before the program went on the air. This was said to be true especially with comedy programs.
While other detailed reports have been second-hand, we have just come into possession of a first-hand version in the observations of Milton Simon, local radio program producer and actor who recently returned from a visit to Hollywood. An experienced and capable radio performer in his own right, Mr. Simon was surprisingly enthusiastic over his good fortune in watching a broadcast of the Jack Benny program and getting to observe what happened during that period. Just before broadcast time. His impressions of Benny before the mike as well as behind the mike are such as to leave no doubt why listeners have been naming the comedian and his wife high among their favorite performers.
After waxing warmer and warmer in his admirations of Mr. Benny, Simon gave the following first-hand account of the period he witnessed just before watching the comedian lead his cast through one of their recent Sunday night broadcasts:
It's eight o'clock, Pacific Coast Time. The scene, NBC’s Hollywood Studios on Melrose, the setting for many a star-swept broadcast these days. On the stage is Phil Harris and his orchestra putting Kenny Baker through the final paces of the rehearsal. Front center are two microphones. Onto the stage strides a business-like individual in brown coat, brown hat, and a very brown cigar. With his back to the audience he views these last bits of rehearsals, munching in pre-occupied manner, on the cigar. Finally, after several minutes of recognition by the audience crowding the studio, he turns, removes the cigar, and stares with mock disdainful look, and says simply, laconically, and disinterestedly— "Hello."
It's Jack Benny, and on all sides people begin to rock with laughter. Why? It’s hard to tell. This man, as one woman puts it, is funny if he says nothing. He gives you the impression of a lightning quick mind about to seize upon anything at all and make it funny. He's fascinating, really, as he stands there, surveying the house, with cigar held between his fingers, saying nothing— just appearing.
Finally, and with the orchestra and Kenny going full blast in the background, he speaks after several minutes of silence.
"Still got a hang-over?"
The audience laughs good and solidly at this.
The brown eyes rove again, and he says with the Benny emphasis: "I still got mine from last year." Everybody laughs.

Phil Harris is spotted, speeding around the edge of the stage geting [sic] the last of the music in order.
"Say, Phil," cries this demon tease, "show ’em that tie. C’mon, Phil, show the folks that tie." And Phil Harris, handsome and ruddy faced, comes forth with the most gosh awful tie that ever went back the day after Christmas. Jack Benny continues to alternate his gaze between the tie and the audience with that contemptuous, knowing nod of his.
"Did you ever see such an outfit as that?" he goes on, calling attention to Phil's rich, plaid coat, the loud shirt, off-color trousers, and socks. It's the conventional Hollywood attire.
"Honestly," Benny asserts, "there must be some plane in town where you can buy a complete suit.” And the crowd howls.
The last minute rehearsals go on as Benny continues to stand in the wings and survey the house. Finally, the cigar comes forth and he says eagerly: "Would anybody like to buy my Maxwell?" No takers, but plenty of laughers.
"Honestly, I could let you have it at a bargain figure. I've bought a race horse." More laughter.
"Yeah, I bought a rare horse. I got to be in style with all the other boys. Only my horse always runs last. I dunno. But I finally decided how I could get my money's worth out of him. I painted a big sign on his back that says ‘Tune in the Jello Program’ and he comes down the stretch— talk about advertising!” The house "comes down" at this.
“And say,” he continues with a coy roll of his eyes, “since this Mae West business, have you noticed how clean our broadcasts are!"
It's now about 8:25. Kenny is going through the last few bars of his song. “Look at him," says Jack in mock jealousy, "always rehearsing. Everybody gets attention on this program but me. You haven’t seen anybody worry about me yet, have you? Everybody is important here but me."
At this point Don Wilson comes onto the stage and gets a big applause. With an outstretched hand, he bids the audience welcome, tells them to laugh in a natural sort of way, and then introduces the cast. Jack Benny, of course, is introduced last and with least gusto. After the introduction Don begins to give a really heartfelt talk on the feeling of allegiance the cast feels toward Benny; how they appreciate the wholesome helpfulness and genuine friendship of the man —a speech that Don clearly feels. Slowly over the house rolls a ripple of laughter that grows into a gale and drowns out the far-launched Wilson. Over in the corner, in mock-feminine modesty, with much eye rolling and coyness, Jack Benny is drawing down the house.
Wilson retreats, shamefaced and red. This is obviously not an act. It's Benny-clowning, always clowning. He is the funniest, most sophisticated showman before the public today.
And at 8:30, Pacific Coast time, is that audience ready to laugh with the show or is it? It is.

George Stallings

100 years ago, if you mentioned the name “George Stallings,” the manager of the National League Boston “Miracle” Braves would come to mind. Today, diehard baseball history buffs should recognise the name. But keen-eyed fans of animation today might remember the name from title cards of Van Beuren cartoons of the early 1930s.

Cartoondom’s George Stallings was the son of the baseball field boss, and arguably can be considered one of the major figures in early New York animation. Donald Crafton’s book “Before Mickey” relates how Stallings was hired by the Bray studio about 1916 and eventually became manager of it until 1924 when he was replaced by Walter Lantz; Crafton says Stallings got sick, while Michael Barrier’s “Hollywood Cartoons” states Bray got tired of Stallings coming in late and fired him.

Leonard Maltin’s “Of Mice and Magic” relates how Stallings popularised the rotating disc on animation drawing boards.

Stallings Sr. retired to a home in Haddock, Georgia, and died there in 1929. The year before, the Macon Telegraph profiled his son in a feature story published on February 12. It outlines how he got into the animation business and the studios where he found employment in New York. You can also get an idea of the horrendous working conditions. No wonder the studios were able to turn out one cartoon a week.

How George Stallings’ Son Makes Comic Cartoons Move
Hundreds of Drawings Back Each Jump of Felix the Cat
A Peep Into the Studio of Vernon Stallings Reveals the Intricate Methods of Making Apparently Simple “Moving Picture Cartoons;” Studio Near Here
By WILLIE SNOW ETHRIDGE
THERE is a man spending the winter near Macon who has made millions of funny motions for your special amusement. It is a sure thing you have seen them if you have been to the movies anytime in the last ten years, for these funny motions go wigging and wagging and jumping and jerking across the screens daily.
The man Is Vernon Stallings and the funny motions are those in the pictures of Felix the Cat, of Tad’s Daffodils, of the queer little creatures in Aesop’s Fables and of all the other jumpy figures in the animated picture strips. Mr. Stallings has drawn pictures for every animated movie strip that has ever been shown in moving pictures. And that means millions and millions of pictures— and then some.
While watching one of those inimated [sic] strips did you ever begin wondering how those absurd little figures could be made to dash up and down rope ladders, swing houses about on their tails, drag pirates across the decks of ships and heave them into the ocen [sic] and do all the other fool things that they do in their brief moments on the silver screen?
If you have been wondering about it, you may now let your mind rest in peace, for I made a 30-mile trip into the country recently to find out this very thing from Mr. Stallings, who makes those odd creatures act that way. Mr. Stallings is visiting his father, George Stallings, who is known, even to the members of the femine sex, as the “miracle man of baseball.” George Stallings, as you perhaps know, has a country home five miles or more, and I believe more on the other side of Haddock. It is here that his son has been spending the winter months resting up from the grind of New York life.
Just as soon as I was face to face, or to be exact, face to chest, for he extends six feet five inches into the air, with Vernon Stalling, I jumped into this subject of how he made those comic figures so muchly animated. “It takes from three to five thousand drawings to make each one of those little strips which are shown in five or ten minutes on the screen,” he answered promptly.
“But that doesn't explain how it is done,” I argued.
“No,” he said with a smile and a very slight shrug of his broad shoulders. “It is not ae simple as that. Come on over to the shack where I do my drawings and I will explain It fully.”
So we left the house of George Stallings and crossed the yard to a little building which Vernon Stallings has dubbed the “Penny Arcade.” It is here that he had set up his studio for the months of his visit. The desk and tables were piled high with drawings and the chairs were filled with papers.
He pulled up two chairs to his drawing board and with great patience began explaining the process of making an animated movie. The drawing board had a rectangle in the center into which fitted a piece of window glass. Flush with the board and the glass, was a steel bar In which were fixed two cylinder pins about one half-inch in length. Beneath the window glass was an ordinary electric bulb.
Mr. Stallings placed a clean sheet of white paper which had holes punched in the top to fit on the cylinder pins upon the glass and with his pencil poised in his fingers announced: "Now we are ready to start on our strip. Let's Imagine we want to make a picture of a man tipping his hat to Leatrice Joy.”
Mr. Stallings’ pencil began to fly over the paper. With a stroke here and a stroke there, he was drawing a little man in the act of tipping his hat.
How It Is Done
“We draw the man,” he explained, as his pencil dashed about, “in the first position of tipping his hat. Then we place another sheet of paper right on top of drawing one. You see, the light under the board is showing the image of the first drawing even through the blank sheet on top of it, so we can now draw the next position of the man without disturbing the frst. This position is the final which his arms will move into, holding the hat in his hand.
However, the arm is the only part of the body in action, so that is all that is necessary to draw.”
Having finished drawing the arm, holding the hat, Mr. Stalling began flipping it up to see the drawing underneath.
“Now you will notice as I flip this paper that there is quite a gap from the first position of the man tipping his hat and the one I've just drawn with the hat in his hand,” Mr. Stallings continued, looking at me expectantly.
I gazed at the two drawings as hard as I could, but the hat seemed to be tipped all right to me. Nevertheless, I said “yes sir.”
"These two positions are not considered enough to make this action smooth with the proper timing of a man tipping his hat," he continued. "Still we have the extreme positions so we merely make two more drawings equi-distant in between, and now we have four drawings forming the entire movement. We number these drawings according to their sequence, the ne we drew second being numbered four, as that is the final position in the movement. You see?” I nodded my head.
“Well, now, unless Leatrice Joy freezes the man solidly he will put the hat on his head,” he continued. “New drawings are not necessary for this. Just reverse the old ones and the man replaces his hat. Now you are back to drawing No. 1.”
I gave a sigh of relief to be rid of the little man—and, yet, I wasn’t doing anything but looking on. Mr. Stallings was doing all the work.
“That would be merely the beginning of a strip,” he said with a smile. Then lifting up a stack of drawings about a foot deep from his desk, he mentioned that they were some he had just completed for Bill Nolan, who issues the Illustrated News Laughs. The plan of the Illustrated News Laughs is to take some item from the day’s news and make it into an animated series strip.
The News Laugh, on which Mr. Stalling had been worked, was the announcement of some noted educator that children are more ingenious than grown ups. Mr. Stallings had made 175 separate drawings showing a child in the act of picking up two bones for drum sticks. And that was just a small part of the strip. He had already made 1,500 drawings on the news laugh alone, and yet, it was far from being completed.
Making the drawings would seem to be enough of a job, but the animator has to think up the funny stunts for the figures to execute—and the more funny stunts, the better the strip, of course.
“If we say that, we take a lot of pains to be funny, that is just it,” Mr. Stallings declared, “The pains seem to get the laughs. If we stick a pin in a baby, it's funny. If horse kicks him in the face.it is funnier. So we are painfully humorous. The motion picture cartoon has first claim pn the First Aid Kit,for in these cartoons it is the license of the producer to distort and disfigure as well as parting the baby's hair with an ax. The kid can not only nibble on the bottle, but he can chew it up and swallow it. Then if he wails to, he can blow gazing crystals, tumblers, windshields or what have you. So our audience sits back and giggles at these nonsensical bits and says, ‘Oh, gosh, he really doesn't do that. He's only a drawing.’ But to us who draw him, he lives and we try to make him just as human as anybody else, except saxophone players."
“How do you know when you have made enough funny movements for a motion picture cartoon?” I asked Mr Stallings when had finished laughing at the humorous manner of his speech.
“Well, that takes some more explaining,” he said, and I screwed up my eyes again as tight ae possible, and began concentrating as hard as I knew how.
"When we have completed our drawings,” he continued, “they are placed and photographed one after the other under a camera. They are consequently recorded in sequence on the long roll of film within the camera. However, there is a tempa or timing on this action which makes them pause properly, and do things in a natural way. This timing is arrived at by natural arithmetic. There are 16 pictures to one foot of motion picture film, and when these pictures are run off on the screen, they move at the average rate of 16 pictures a second.
“If we want to hold a certain pose for a second, whe [we] photograph that single picture 16 times. If for half the length of time, it to photographed eight times and so on. If a figure walls [sic] into a scene very slowly, then each position of the walk is given three exposures. Normally it is given two exposures, and if the action as rapid as with pinning, it is given one exposure for each drawing. Exposure sheets are usually written with each scene. Opposite the number of the drawing is the number of exposures with which that drawing is to be photographed. This is very simple to follow under the camera, and if the total number of exposures are added and divided then we know exactly how many feet of film are required to photograph that scene. The usual length of a cartoon is between 500 and 600 feet.”
Mr. Stallings got up from his drawing board and showed me some film and focused a camera to make the explanation clearer to me, but I had already taken in all I could, so I didn’t understand even what he was making more clear. “What I really want to know is how you got into this intricate business?” I asked when the explanation had been completed and he had settled himself ones again before his drawing board.
First Hardships
“All my life I wanted to draw,” he said with a smile, as he turned a drawing pencil between his long fingers. "When I was a buy I spent hours drawing. And then when I went to the University of Georgia, I was so much more interested in drawing than I was in my studies. I left there after the first year. I went to New York and studied cartooning.
"In 1911 I came back to Georgia and got a job on The Atlanta Journal in the art department. After about a year on The Journal, I went to New York and began doing sport cartoons for the Adams Newspaper syndicate. All the time I was drawing these sport cartoons, I was experimenting on the animated movies, which had just begun. The first animated movie was Winsie McKay's [sic] Gertie. All the money I made from my newspaper work I spent on the movie cartoons. You know how that is.
“About this time,” Mr. Stallings continued, “I met a man both rich and influential—sounds like a story doesn’t it?—who arranged for me to do movie cartoons with the Gaumont movie people. Just as I thought I was all fixed, it was discovered that a man named Bray ad had the animated movie patented and no one else could make them. The only thing left for me to do was go to work for Bray. He was drawing the Heeza Liar series and I worked with him.”
Later the cartoonists discovered there was a way to get around Mr. Bray’s patent and various producers began to make the animated strips, according to Mr. Stallings. So Mr. Stallings left Bray and went to Barrie [Barre] at Fordham to make the animated strips of Mutt and Jeff.
“When you say, Mr. Stallings, that you drew animated cartoons of Mutt and Jeff do you mean that you put the action into the strips Bud Fisher had already drawn for the newspapers?” I asked.
“Oh, no, no,” Mr. Stallings exclaimed. “Barrie bought from Fisher only the rights to his characters. He paid Fisher $1000 a week in royalties for the use of the two characters alone. It was up to the animators with Barrie to make up the scenario for the characters. All the stunts that you have seen Mutt and Jeff do on the screen are the brain children of the animators.
“The making of an animated strip is not a one man job,” Mr. Stallings continued, “but like a one man top [sic] it takes a lot of people a long time to put up what one man thought of. The average studio, turning out a picture every week requires a staff of from 30 to 55 people. They are known as animators, the men who pencil the actual movements and are responsible for the acting and the comedy; the inkers, those who ink in the penciled drawings of the animators; the tracers, those who complete the drawings, put in the blacks and tones and check up on all mistakes; and the camera man who is the automaton who give each drawing the number of exposure each drawing calls for.”
At one time, Mr. Stallings was in entire charge of all the International animated cartoons. They included Jerry on the Job, Silk Hat Harry, Tad's Daffodills, the Katzen Jammer Kids, The Hearst cartoons, for the International cartoons were owned by Hearst, were very popular for about six years, according to Mr. Stallings. Then Hearst divided the International Productions into the Cosmopolitan Productions, which included only feature pictures, and into the International News Reel. Mr. Hearst abandoned entirely the production of short comic strips.
A New Idea
Mr. Stallings was associated with Paul Terry in the production of the Aesop's Fables for a year and a half. The Aesop's Fables had a tremendous, circulation according to the cartoonist. They cost Terry about $2,000 a week to make, and they brought in around $22,000 a week.
"The short strips have always been the step child of the movie game,” Mr. Stallings said. “They have always been considered fillers, and yet, they were so in demand at one time that we worked all day and night frequently. Our field is not overflowing with good men and at the heighth of the cartoons' rage we had no hours at all. A man just worked until he was carried out on a shutter. I have seen the whole staff, girls and all, work from 9 o'clock one morning until 9 o'clock the next. Through the wee hours of the morning we would send out for coffee. The container was usually a thousand foot film can and the odor of gun cotton made the coffee taste like paregoric. But we would drink marbles in those days. We would drink half the can, saving the balance. An hour or so later some one would be struck dumb with a doughnut in his wind pipe and hasten to heat the coffee. This was done by placing the tip end of an electric light bulb In the coffee so the liquid did not come in contact with the socket attachment. If there was anything else we couldn't or didn't do we never found it.”
Mr. Stallings is somewhat at a loss to understand why they have dropped off in popularity to such an extent.
"People tell us they like the cartoons and reports on them prove them to be popular, but It Is a job to sell them,” he said a bit ruefully. "We don't know and will probably still be cutting paper dolls when we find out. However, so many of the picture houses are “de luxing” their programs with vaudeville and have discarded short subjects in favor of this new attraction.”
Mr. Stalling was with the Out of the Inkwell Producing company before he came South this fall. They are the people who do the clown cartoons. And now, though Mr. Stallings stays busy from early morning until night drawing cartoons — he has made 700 small drawings in one day — he is working in his spare moments on a new idea.
And this new idea, which is a dark secret now, will cause quite a sensation if it works out as it should. When it is fully worked out, Mr. Stallings will leave the “Penny Arcade'' and return to his family, which consists of a wife and two children, in Now Rochelle. And if his big idea takes as many drawings to explain it as one of these strips he has been making, he will surely travel heavily laden.

What Stallings’ invention was, we may never know; he doesn’t seem to have patented anything. With the coming of sound, cartoons became popular for theatre-goers, and Stallings’ career briefly ascended at Van Beuren. He was part of the team that created the human Tom and Jerry in 1931 (borrowing an awful lot from the Don and Waffles cartoons made a little earlier), directed the two efforts starring Amos ‘n’ Andy, and then became head director. The last cartoon where he receives screen credit is on Fiddlin' Fun, starring Cubby Bear. There’s a noticeable improvement compared with the Van Beuren cartoons made a few years earlier. Cubby’s design is appealing and consistent throughout. Stallings has chosen various angles of action. And there are decent stretches of animation, perhaps thanks to the presence of Carlo Vinci on the staff.

Then Stallings found himself on the outs. In 1934, Amadee Van Beuren hired Burt Gillett, the director of Walt Disney’s Three Little Pigs, to take over the studio and the Gillett broom swept clean. Ironically, Stallings found himself at Disney in 1935 (according to his obit in the Valley Times) working on stories and even being given some kind of supervisory position on Merbabies, which was made by Harman-Ising Productions for Uncle Walt. The 1950 census lists him living in Burbank, divorced, and working 60 hours a week as an “artist-writer, motion picture cartoon,” though the studio is not reported. His obit stated he was the author of the Uncle Remus comic strip for 18 years—Stallings grew up with Joel Chandler Harris’ children—and created the Soapy Smith strip.

He was born in San Jose, California on Sept. 9, 1891 and died of cancer at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills on April 9, 1963.

A Musical Rescue

The gag of someone creating musical notes that form a stairway goes back to the days of when the sound of the notes came from someone in the theatre orchestra pit.

Here’s an example from Walt Disney’s Alice the Firefighter (1926). A dog pushes a piano out of a burning building and starts playing. Notes form to a window and mice leap down on top of them to safety.

Offhand, I can’t name any cartoons that have done the same routine; I’m pretty sure it happened in a silent Felix short. Sinkin’ in the Bathtub (1930) has a switch on the gag by having Honey come down from a balcony on bubbles made by Bosko’s saxophone.

It’s a shame copies of the cartoon from the available print are so poor. There are companies like Steve Stanchfield’s Thunderbean coming out with beautiful restorations of cartoons from B-list studios like Iwerks and Van Beuren. You’d think a mega-corporation like Disney would treat its old shorts the same way. (This post was written before the announcement that 27 restored cartoons would air on Disney+).