Distaff Car of Tomorrow

Tex Avery’s Car of Tomorrow (released in 1951) has some topical gags making fun of the Hudson (step-down car) and the Studebaker (front is same as back), as well as some tried-and-true oldies (mother-in-law).

And the man who brought the world a sexy Red Riding Hood also gave us sex in a car.

Avery and writers Rich Hogan and Roy Williams concoct a sequence about a feminised car, with the clichéd description recited by June Foray. It’s a “stunning Paris creation...in a delicate shade of seashell pink.



The camera cuts to a close-up of the window curtains “in polka-dot Swiss organdy.”



There’s another close-up cut to what looks like pansies in the fender, but the narrator (or, in the ‘50s was she a “narratrix”?) informs us they are “Peruvian poppies.”



Cut to a longer shot of the side of the car with a description of the white lace, and then there’s another cut and a pan-down shot of the front of the car with a plunging neckline gag “revealing almost the entire fan.” This was a time when Faye Emerson “plunging neckline” gags were big.



Avery cuts back to the side view of the car and pans across revealing it has a butt “in a flattering bustle effect.” (He also pulled off a car/butt gag in One Cab's Family).



Background artist Johnny Johnsen saves money for producer Fred Quimby in this sequence. There is no animation at all, just camera movement over his paintings.

This was the second in Avery’s “Of Tomorrow” series, which began with The House of Tomorrow (1949), continued with TV of Tomorrow (1952) and ended with The Farm of Tomorrow (1954).

What's Ahead For TV in 1962?

The only reason for this post is because of this great drawing outlining the history of television to date. It’s the work of Dick Hodgins, Jr. of the Associated Press and accompanied the article below.

What was the trend on TV 50 years ago? The A.P. spoke with Mike Dann who, at this point, was at CBS. He had jumped from NBC, where he was part of Pat Weaver’s regime when Today was put on the air. He later pulled the Smothers Brothers off the air (he seems to have regretted it in later years) and was nervous about the idea of Mary Tyler Moore being divorced on her new sitcom (she was changed to being single but newly-dumped).

This story appeared on May 6, 1962

Trends Guide TV Programs
By CYNTHIA LOWRY
Associated Press TV-Radio Writer
NEW YORK (AP)—"I don't know,” says the television fan sadly, "something’s happened to television. They don't make the shows as good as they used to.”
Then he ticks off favorite programs that he doesn't enjoy as much as he used to. And he blames it on the shows, of course. But the truth is, he has been watching these shows—and shows like them—so long he has just plain gotten tired of them.
He's getting ready for a change—and pretty soon he makes it. And if you multiply that one viewer by satiated millions, you've got a new TV trend in the making.
When the 1961-62 season was but two months old—in November—it was obvious the public's fancy had been caught by another type of program.
Ben Casey and Dr. Kildare, both hour-long shows, had caught on immediately. Because they were pretty much alike in form—both about young, handsome, dedicated doctors, both with hospital backgrounds and both had disease as the principal villain—it appeared that the "new" television trend would involve a fresh set of copy-cat clinical dramas.
Not necessarily so, says Michael Dann, a CBS vice president whose job is putting together entertainment programs and arranging schedules. The current trend involves “character dramas,” which includes the two doctor series but also embraces “The Defenders,” which is about a father-son lawyer team.
After all, there have been TV doctors before (Hennesey, a comedy series, centers on a doctor). There certainly have been lawyer stories around for many seasons—Perry Mason, The Law and Mr. Jones, Harrigan and Son, and Lock Up, to mention a few. But—according to Dann's analysis—the focus on and development of the characters in the three new shows are the things that make them fresh and therefore attractive to the home audiences.

It is the peculiar nature of television to leap from trend to trend, with the newest knocking out all but the very best of the old.
The first big trend in programs was discernible in 1949—a year after TV really got moving. Since then there have been some seven types of programs that have moved up to peaks—and then quietly slipped down again.
By 1949, according to Dann's charting, people were caught by the hour-long, live dramas. Those were the days of Philco Playhouse, Kraft Theater, Robert Montgomery Presents and all the rest.
About a year later, a rival came roaring onto the home screen—the big, brassy, raucous comedy-variety show. For the next few years it appeared we couldn’t get enough of Milton Berle, Jackie Gleason, Ken Murray, Sid Caesar. But again people cooled off and fingers started turning the dials—to the panel shows. What's My Line?, Who's The Boss?, The Name's The Same, Masquerade Party, and on and on.
By about 1956 the panel show was beginning to make way for still another type of program: The big-money quiz show. Who can forget The $64,000 Question, Twenty-One, and all the lesser imitators.
Actually, the quiz craze was waning when the TV scandals broke in 1959 and wiped them off the air—so it was just a question of time anyway.
Riding into the picture was the hour-long western—the so-called adult western—that started with Gunsmoke and Wagon Train. But soon the cowboys and the marshals were looking nervously behind them. Private eyes and heroic policemen, with hour-shows, were gaining fast.
Eventually, they overtook the horse operas and it was the time of the "action" trend—77 Sunset Strip, The Untouchables, and similar stuff. But they started to fade, and this season were overcome by Casey, Kildare, and company. "Next season?" asked Dann. "There is a pretty good balance of programing coming along. And it is one of the few seasons in which it is almost impossible to find a strong trend."

Dann likely didn’t realise it, but the tube was headed toward comedy, the more outlandish, the better. The number one show in 1962-63 was The Beverly Hillbillies; a show Dann claimed in his autobiography he refused to watch after the pilot. It was soon joined by Gilligan’s Island, and high-concept shows like I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched and the beloved My Mother the Car. None of these had much in common with family comedies like Ozzie and Harriet, Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best.

And they had nothing in common with the “socially-relevant” comedies that would swamp TV toward the end of the Vietnam War.

Snafu Will Snore But It Isn't a Bore (For the Male Audience)

A sex gag starts off The Goldbrick (1944). Private Snafu is snoring.



The camera pulls back to show the effect of the snoring on a pin-up.



Like many of the Snafus, the dialogue is in a Seuss-like rhyme. We even get a Seuss-like incidental character flying out of an apple tree. (An apple tree? In the South Pacific?)



The cheescake is courtesy of director Frank Tashlin. This appeared in the Army-Navy Screen Magazine in September 1943.

Dancing For 40 Days And 40 Nights

For a little while after sound was added to cartoons in 1928, it was entertaining enough to see characters dance in time to the beats of the music. (It took time before theatres converted, in some cases due to the expense and in others because theatre managers viewed sound as a fad).

In Van Beuren’s Noah Knew His Ark (1930), the wind-up gag is the animals swim away from skunks because, as we all know, skunks in cartoons smell.

In the meantime, the second half of the cartoon is dancing and little else.

Noah dances.



Ostriches dance, for a time with their legs detached.



The ostriches lay eggs. The eggs hatch and dance.



Cut to elephants dancing. Whoever animated this scene did a fine job, especially for 1930.



Cut to a different animator. Check Noah’s weird right hand (I imagine this is an in-between).



Monkeys dance and scratch.



Hippos twist and turn in terpsichory.



Van Beuren had this thing about putting a tail in the mouth and playing it.



Sundry animals dance in the next scene. Note the high-quality drawing. Watch out, Walt!



There’s a cut to the ark. Even it dances.



There are a lot of re-used drawings in these scenes, but not a lot of humour. By this time, in another part of New York City, the Fleischers were adding little gags to their cartoons. Van Beuren never really caught up to them.

I can’t tell you the name of the song in the background of the dance, but the next one is Wendell Hall’s theme song from radio’s late 1920s: “It Ain’t Going To Rain No More.”

John Foster and Mannie Davis get screen credit for this short, along with musical director Gene Rodemich.

This cartoon remained on theatre screens into 1931. Van Beuren went bust in 1936 and the cartoons were sold by a distributor for home, school and community group use. We've found a school in small-town California in 1944 that screened it. And kiddies in Los Angeles on February 10, 1949 could catch it at 7:30 p.m. on KTSL.

How To Concoct A Jack Benny Radio Show in Early 1936

Research is valuable and invaluable. Unearthing long-lost or previously undisclosed information can change things.

Until Kathy Fuller-Seeley started her very thorough research, Jack Benny’s first writer was considered merely as an arrogant jerk, a victim of karma in later years. All this, as far as I’m concerned, is still true, but Kathy’s examination of scripts, newspapers and other sources has added a dimension. Harry Conn deserves some credit for moulding Benny-on-the-air into the basis of the character that made him popular for years, and helped create a form of radio copied through the 1930s and ‘40s.

One of Conn’s responsibilities until a final blow-up in mid-March 1936 was to ghost-write articles in the printed press. We’ve transcribed several here over the years. During an appearance in Pittsburgh at the start of that month, Jack “wrote” articles for two of the daily papers. We transcribed the one from the Pittsburgh Press IN THIS POST. This article is from the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph of March 3rd. Jack did a Jell-O broadcast from the city on the first, then had a several-shows-a-day performance at the Stanley Theatre that week. It included Mary Livingstone, Kenny Baker, George Metaxa (who also appeared on a Benny show from Washington, D.C. that month), the Stuart Morgan Dancers and, I suspect, the Chicken Sisters as Blanche Stewart, Vi Kline and Kathrine Lee were on the Pittsburgh broadcast.

Jack Benny Batting Says:
Batting for Karl Krug
By JACK BENNY
Hello, folks, this is Karl Benny—er . . . Jack Krug—er, I mean Jack Benny. That's it, this is Jack Benny batting for Karl Krug . . . Whew! I'm glad I got that straightened out. I'm just a little nervous writing a feature column, AS THIS IS NOT MY RACKET. No kidding, I'd sooner walk out on a stage and face 50 people—no more, no less—than write a column.
But I'm in no mood to dicker. I did try to get out of it by explaining to Karl that I had five and six shows a day at the Stanley Theater, in addition to preparing my radio program, which leaves me just about enough time to eat. But he just looked at me, smiled, and said, “Oh, yeah? Well, thanks, Jack. I'll expect you to have that column ready by 4 o'clock Monday.”
Jack as Good a Gambler as Actor
Well, after all, folks, if Karl Krug can prepare a column EVERY day, I guess I can by it once. I'm just as good a gambler as he is. Now a lot of people given this opportunity would start right in by mentioning all of their friends. I am no exception.
To begin with, I think that Mary Livingston (not because she's on our program) is a great artist and (not because she's my wife) a line woman. I also think that Johnny Green (not because he conducts our orchestra) is a great musician, and Kenny Baker (not because he's our tenor) has an excellent voice.
Benny Gives Formula For High-Class Broadcast
I have been asked through fan mail and other sources, how to prepare a successful broadcast. Well, there really is no formula. However, I can give you a recipe which the sponsor will not get wise to for at least 13 weeks, and here it is:
Take a few well-seasoned Sally Rand jokes and mix them with essence of stooges. Beat the stooges thoroughly and add a joke about the Dionne Quintuplets, then put in one chorus of "Music Goes Round and Round," a pinch of ad lib, and stir with microphone till it comes to a croon. You then add one commercial plug and serve within half hour. If it happens to be an hour program, you beat the stooges even more thoroughly, add a bit of slightly used repartee and then serve.
Mary Finally Gets Poetical Opportunity
Well, I guess my half hour is up now. . . .
Mary—Oh, Jack, Jack.
Jack—What is it, Mary?
Mary—Aren’t you going to put in my poem about Pittsburgh?
Jack—I don't think so, Mary. This column is long enough. And anyway—
Mary—Well, I think it's the least you can do after all the trouble I went to.
Jack—All right, Mary, let's hear your poem. You say it's all about Pittsburgh?
Mary—Yes.
Jack—Go ahead.
Mary—New York City, New York City,
It's great be to back here again.
And see the same faces
In the same places
On Broadway, where men are men—
Jack—(Mary, I thought this was about Pittsburgh.)
Mary—I'll get to that later.)
Jack—(All right, but hurry up.)
Mary—Where are the stars of yesterday
Like Sam Bernard and Eddie Foy,
Weber and Fields, Caruso, and Shakespeare,
Who thrilled us when Dad was a boy.
Jack—(Mary, I'd get Pittsburgh in there if I were you.)
Mary—(I'm coming to it.)
Jack—(Oh!)
Mary—Where are the theaters like Wallacks and Daly's
Who played all the stars that were great?
Where is Old Hammerstein’s,
It’s gone—alas!
That’s why we’re going to play Loew’s State.
Jack—(I’m a little embarrassed, folks)
Mary—But don’t be downhearted, old Broadway
As a Main Stem you are still okay—
Jack—Mary, what about Pittsburgh?
Mary—Here it is . . .
Dear old Pittsburgh, dear old Pittsburgh.
What a city you are, hey hey . . . .
That's all, Jack.
Jack—Hm! Good-night, folks.
(Note: The conductor of this column flatters himself that such pitter and patter as he may come upon in his daily quest of the elusive item is of more interest than a press agent-written "guest" column. However, a rule was broken today to permit Jack Benny, now vacationing in Pittsburgh, to say his say. Jack really wrote it himself; after reading it, perhaps you will be of the opinion that it might have been better had Harry Conn (Jack's writing man Friday) been the author. Anyway, it gave me the first chance in two years to clean out my desk.—Karl Krug).

The claim is Conn wasn’t responsible for this. Yet Conn bragged he was responsible for all of Mary’s poems. Would Jack misspell his wife’s last name? On top of that, a squib in the entertainment column in the other paper noted that Jack was writing the radio show for March 1st in between performances at the Stanley with two men taking notes. How he could have time to write a column under these conditions?

There is an unanswered conundrum: who were the two men with notepads? Was Conn one? Who was the other?

Kathy’s research found Conn abandoned the Benny show in Baltimore before a March 22nd broadcast and an issue of Variety soon after claimed Benny wrote the April 5, 1936 show because Conn was “sick.” That was the same excuse Jack gave on the air at the end of the season. It wasn't true.

The Benny show became better and better without Conn. New writers added the party-hound version of Phil Harris, Rochester, Kenny Baker then Dennis Day, the Fred Allen feud, the vault, the Maxwell, Jack’s age of 39, violin lessons with Professor Le Blanc, Frank Nelson’s “Yehhhhhhhs?” and many other things we associate with Benny today. Because of this, Jack still has a fan-base that enjoys his radio and television shows, almost 50 years after his death. You don’t need research to tell you that.

Did You Notice?

Layout artist Maurice Noble buried a gag in the design of the interior of the space ship in Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century.



Dodgers’ control panel is a piano keyboard.

Noble and painter Phil De Guard came up with some fantastic backdrops for this Chuck Jones cartoon; Jones analysed some in depth in his book Chuck Amuck. Exhibitor magazine, on July 29, 1953, caught a preview and called the cartoon “excellent.” Jones had some winners in the 1952-53 theatrical season, including Duck Amuck and Bully For Bugs.

The official release date was July 25, 1953, the same day Warners released another short called Ride a White Horse (narrated by Art Gilmore, directed and written by Owen Crump, music by Howard Jackson and edited by Rex Steele) in the Sports Parade series. No one clamoured for a sequel to that one reeler, but there was one for Duck Dodgers. Mike Maltese was brought in to write it. Mike Kazaleh has a copy of the original storyboard, created in June 1979, and you can get the story behind the storyboard in this post on Jerry Beck’s history site. (Incidentally, we have found newspaper ads for showings of the original cartoon at the Lyric Theatre in Ft. Collins, Colorado as far back as June 5th).

Maltese told the Los Angeles Times in 1979: “I really didn’t want to go back to work. I was enjoying my retirement, but Chuck called me and it was hard to say no. He’s such a nice guy—I’d like to punch him in the mouth, he’s so nice.”

As for the original cartoon, he said: “One day, 26 years ago, I had a Daffy to do. We’d done story adaptations before, like putting Porky and Daffy in ‘The Scarlet Pumpernickel,’ so I though, hum, Buck Rogers, Daffy Duck, ‘Duck Dodgers’! We just decided to do that. It could have been anything.

“The funny thing is that we never thought these things would last. We were just doing a job because we had rent to pay, babies to raise. We did a cartoon, they released it and we forgot it. Now, years later, it comes back to haunt us like an antique.

“It was a lot of fun working on those shorts,” Maltese went on. “When I was a kid, I wanted to be a stuntman. I wanted to be in pictures so bad and those cartoons gave me a chance to act, to dance, to write, to do all those things. They gave my show-off ego a chance to express itself.”

The animators on the cartoon were Lloyd Vaughan, Ken Harris and Ben Washam, with Harry Love handling effects. Carl Stalling drops “Powerhouse” onto the soundtrack, but the music over the titles is one of his original tunes (See note in the comments below).

Predicting the Jetsons Predicting the Future

I chuckle a bit when I read how “The Jetsons invented (fill in the blank).” The Jetsons didn’t invent much of anything. The show itself was a time inverse of The Flintstones, some of the settings owed something to World’s Fairs in Seattle and New York, and the “inventions” can be found in “Popular Science” and similar magazines that the writers brought to the studio for gag ideas.

They can also be found in the John Sutherland industrial cartoon Your Safety First, produced for the Automobile Manufacturers Association in 1956. It has a number of things in common with The Jetsons, which first aired in fall 1962.

There’s no food-a-rack-a-cycle, but the family in this cartoon enjoy a meal that is in pill form. The dinner tray is wheeled in automatically, just like those robot vaccuums of today.



Hmm. How to spend the evening (at home, of course).



In a clever gag, the covering of the dinner tray acts as a vacuum and inhales the table cloth and the dishes. Wheeling itself somewhere, the table lifts up to become a big screen TV as the chairs around the table re-arrange themselves so the family can watch. Where are the cries of “John Sutherland invented the big screen TV?”



Because this cartoon was made in the 1950s and not the future, there is a 1950s gag about the ubiquitousness of Westerns on television.



Your Safety First also features Jetsons-like bubble-top cars and the George-like father complaining that his four-hour work day of the future is too long.

No, the father isn't voiced by George O'Hanlon. It's Marvin Miller doing his Captain Cosmic voice from Destination Unlimited. Gerry Nevius and Charles McElmurry are the layout artists and likely had a hand in the designs. Neither worked on The Jetsons.

It's a shame a reddened, battered print is the only one in public circulation.

Everybody Sings

The early Fleischer cartoons are loads of fun as objects come to life, or pop out of nowhere to say something then disappear.

In the Screen Song “I’d Climb the Highest Mountain,” everyone gets into a yodelling number, starting with three Mickey look-alikes.



Then a tree with a mouth.



Then a bird, followed by her newly-hatched off-spring.



Next, a door in an apple opens and a worm pops out to lend its voice.



Mountains in the mid-brackground join in.



The singing quasi-Mickeys are blown off a mountain-top by a singing crescent moon.



Evidently the song has exhausted the moon as it grabs a cloud and pulls it over as a blanket.



Seymour Kneitel and E.R. Timinsky (later known as Reuben Timmins) are the credited animators.

Soitenly!

Television gave new life to old short films that had been rotting away on a shelf after being seen once or twice (if reissued).

Not all of them, of course. There were musical series, newsreels, travelogues. They were of no use to television.

Cartoons and two-reel comedies were. Kids would eat them up. They could be run over and over and over. TV brought more fame (and life) to Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse than theatres ever did.

Of all the comedy series produced in the sound era, perhaps the one that benefited the most from constant airings on television was The Three Stooges.

Self-appointed do-gooder groups HATED the Stooges. So much pointless violence! But Columbia Pictures, which ground out the Stooges shorts, found gold in those old films. Thanks to television, the studio discovered millions and millions of kids loved them. They were silly. And no one really got hurt in them.

Their fans are still loyal. No doubt you don’t have to go far on the internet to find a debate over which replacement Stooge was the best/worst.

Columbia got out the pick-axes and started mining more Stooges gold. Here’s an Associated Press column from May 28, 1959.

Three Stooges Are Amazed At Popularity
Comedians Were On 'Finished' List Year and Half Ago
By BOB THOMAS
AP Movie-TV Writer
HOLLYWOOD (AP)—Here's evidence of how fantastic show business can be: the Three Stooges are starring in a feature movie.
A year and a half ago, the Stooges were finished, washed up. They had come to the end of a record stand of 24 years at Columbia Pictures making shorts. Their knockabout comedy was considered passe, the market for short subjects had vanished.
Then it happened.
Released to TV
The Columbia subsidiary, Screen Gems, released the first batch of old Stooge comedies to TV. Wham! The Stooges, a show business team for a third of a century, found themselves at the height of their fame.
When they were making shorts, they earned $70,000 from the filming and picked up an equal amount on personal appearances. This year they are already guaranteed a $275,000 gross, and the figure may go much higher.
The boys have returned to Columbia, but not to make shorts. They are filming "Have Rocket, Will Travel," their first feature as a starring team. Back in the '30s. they appeared with their old boss Ted Healy in some MGM movies. And more recently they have done some quickie musicals.
“But this is the first time we've been starred in a feature,” said Moe Howard proudly. "And we're getting 25 per cent of the take."
Moe is the leader of the Stooges. He's the one with the black bangs. Larry Fine has the operatic hair-do and Joe Derita is the fat one who takes most of the knocks. He was preceded in his post by Moe's brothers, Curly and Shemp, both now deceased, and comic Joe Besser.
Leisurely Pace
I found the trio on a stage with a mass of space-travel props. Unlike the days when they were making shorts, their pace was almost leisurely. They've got a shooting schedule of 10 days and may go 11. They used to make the two-reelers in as little as two days.
"It's fantastic what has happened to us," Moe mused. "We've got more offers than we can handle. Now we're doing all kinds of merchandizing—hats and other things with our faces on them. We've got an advance from a bubble gum outfit that is bigger than they gave the entire National League!"
Flat Salary
The Stooges made 218 comedies and profit not a cent from their showings on TV. Not directly, that is. Like Laurel and Hardy and other comedy pioneers, they worked for flat salaries. But the results of their newfound popularity are considerable.
"We're the only act that is bringing kids into night clubs," Moe said. "The kids are bringing parents who had never been inside night clubs themselves. We play matinees for the kids and give them three shows. First, we come through the audience and greet each kid personally, then we do the act, then we sign autographs.
"A lot of trouble, yes. But let me tell you, those kids are okay. Look what they've done for us!"

In this era of residuals, it is unfathomable that film actors were paid like fast food cooks—you get paid per shift, whether you flip a burger once or ten times. But that’s how it was. Granted, no one foresaw life for a John Nesbitt Passing Parade, an RKO Pathe Sportscope with Andre Baruch, or a Stooges comedy after it appeared once in a theatre. Larry talked to the North American Newspaper Alliance about it in a column printed on May 3, 1968.

Three Stooges Know How Cruel Television Can Be
By HAROLD HEFFERNAN
HOLLYWOOD (NANA) — Three fellows who know better than anyone how cruel television can be are Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Joe De Rita, famed the world over as “The Three Stooges.”
When TV struck a heavy blow at the motion picture business 20 years ago, it began reaching out for every available old movie with which to feed its insatiable demands for day and night entertainment. Short comedies were in particular demand, and the two-reel knockabout slap-stickers— 228 of them— starring the Three Stooges became the hottest item on the market.
They were run and rerun until the sprocket holes were chewed to bits and new prints were rushed into TV projectors. A brand new generation was paying homage to the three zany clowns.
“The Three Stooges” were sitting atop the world— but in name only!
“Everyone got the idea we must be piling up millions,” said Larry Fine, the mad one with the wild fuzzy hair, the specialist in face slapping and anatomical dropkicks. “But the sad fact is we weren’t getting one thin dime. We were going broke and were out of work as we watched all the furor our comedies were creating.”
The demand for more Stooge movies became so great that Columbia Pictures, which produced the original shorts, called them back to inaugurate a series of feature comedies. Among these were “The Three Stooges Meet the Gunslingers,” “The Three Stooges Meet Hercules,” and "Have Rocket Will Travel.”
Their sixth feature-length film now shooting at Allied Artists Studio is something of a space epic titled “Flying to the Moon Looking for Green Cheese.” Marquee title appeal isn’t so important with this trio— just as long as the “Stooge” magnet goes up in the bulbs.
The reason the Stooges, along with other stars of their era— including Laurel and Hardy —never were able to cash in on the fat TV returns traces back 15 or more years to the lack of a definite plan of action on the part of the Screen Actors Guild in obtaining a residual sharing agreement with the studios selling products to TV.
Only in rare special instances were actors able to cut themselves in on the gravy train. Actually, it was not until Feb. 1, 1960, that contracts were completed whereby those participating in pictures made after that date, not before, were to share in the TV runs.
"We were at least 12 years late in forcing TV to cough up a share of the proceeds," said Fine, who figures he and his partners should have cut a melon of at least $2 million during the blacked-out period.
"A lot of us were really hard hit. While TV stations all over were burning out our old comedies, the studios weren't interested in giving us more films to make simply because we were being overexposed. It was a rank double-cross all around."
If any team was harder hit than the Stooges, it had to be the hilarious combine of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. The arrival of TV found the two at the sunset of their career. Both were suffering from crippling afflictions.
Comedy-maker Hal Roach sold 60 of their famous shorts and features for a staggering sum, yet the two stars died more famous than ever and virtually penniless.
On the other hand, Bill (Hop-along Cassidy) Boyd engineered a special profit-sharing deal before his western features began flooding the airwaves and today he’s living but his life in Palm Springs luxury.
Another kind of the late show, John Wayne, never received a dollar from his 25 features still flashing through the tubes, but fortunately, the Duke and all his heirs are not ever likely to be in need of residuals.
Fine, whose troupe is an offshoot of the famous “Ted Healy and His Stooges” musical comedy act of the 1930s, places blame for the actors’ belated TV deal directly upon the governor of California.
“Ronald Reagan Was president of the Screen Actors Guild at this most critical point in the TV negotiations,” he charges “He sold the old-time actors down the river while he feathered his own nest by arranging to receive 50 per cent of all revenues of the shows he made for General Electric and the Borax people who sponsored ‘Death Valley Days.’ ”

Columbia Pictures had no pretentions about the Stooges films. It churned them out, spending less and less on them as time went on. The Stooges had no pretentions, either. Their humour was low-brow and hokey. They were anti-pretention. Maybe that's why they made people laugh. And still do.