From Duck to Dick

Here’s a cute throwaway gag in a Bob Clampett favourite, The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946).

The premise is Daffy wants to be Dick Tracy. He knocks himself out into dreamland.

The scene switches to a detective office door. Daffy is in silhouette, wearing a fedora. The silhouette turns into Dick Tracy’s. These are consecutive drawings, each on two frames.



And back again.



Bill Melendez, Izzy Ellis, Rod Scribner and Manny Gould are the credited animators, with Tom McKimson drawing the layouts (notice the owner of the taxi cab).



Warren Foster wrote the story.

Dog Meets Grapefruit

Carmen Miranda jokes were out by 1950, I guess, so the nameless cat finds a different use for used fruit than creating a hat in Ventriloquist Cat (1950).

The shows some grace as it heckles Spike with the fruit.



A couple of quick "meows" while suspended in mid-air and the cash dashes out of the scene.



It sounds like Tex Avery playing the cat. Wait! I don't have to guess. I can look it up in Keith Scott's book. Sure enough, it's Tex. The cat's ventriloquist meows are by Red Coffey.

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: Industry on Parade

It’s all straightforward. The caricatures to the right are of Warner Bros. animation artists Abe Levitow and Bob Doerfler. They’re dressed as a moose and squirrel. Bill Scott wrote Warners cartoons. He produced Rocky and Bullwinkle. Therefore, he got the idea for the moose and squirrel series because he worked with Bob Doerfler, who drew the caricatures.

Unfortunately, there are people who did what I just did there—connect dots and make assumptions and post on the internet. They declare their “research” as factual animation history.

What has this got to do with Industry on Parade, you ask?

Look at the picture to your left. It is a frame from an episode of Industry on Parade (if you click on the picture, it should take you to the episode). To be specific, it’s a frame of Bob Doerfler. He must be the Warners guy, right? They have the same name, and both are artists. He’s the age of a guy who would be in the Chuck Jones unit in the ‘40s. And a lot of Warners people went on to other types of art after working in animation.

Yes, I was about set to connect the dots on this and post it. But then I paused a minute. They don’t really LOOK the same, do they? Is it possible there were two Bob Doerflers who were artists around this time?

We’re fortunate today that there are sites you can go (if you pay) to dig up information from old newspapers, city directories and government records. They’re not complete, but they’re better than scrolling endlessly through microfilm on the off-chance you’ll find something (which is how I did research 40 years ago). U.S military draft cards are among the items you can find, and here is one for Bob Doerfler. The key information here is his birthdate and location, middle name and mother’s name. From this we can hunt down other records and peer through newspaper clippings for matching information. In Doefler’s case, we learn his father Edd (with two ‘d’s) was an insurance agent. Doefler went to University High School in West Los Angeles where he was involved in a poster club. At Santa Monica City College, he was a club that went on sketching expeditions and created props for school plays. The 1940 Census gives his occupation as “new worker,” and we find him in the 1942 City Directory working for Schlesinger, though he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in January that year.

It’s unclear whether he was working for Warners when he returned from the war (he was wounded in the Marshall Islands in 1944), but in the 1954 directory for Whittier, California, his occupation is a draftsman for “North Am,” while a year later he was an electrical engineer.

From the U.S. Death Index for California, we discover he died in San Diego on Feb. 27, 1982.

Now, the Bob Doerfler with his sketch pad in the 1956 Industry on Parade segment reveals he was employed as a designer for the International Silver Company of Meriden, Connecticut. Fortunately, the archives of the local paper are available to search and we discover that a Robert L. Doerfler, Sr., born in Meriden in 1916, died in Florida on October 22, 2004. The obit reveals “He was a designer for International Silver Co. with over 30 years of service.”

So, yes, there were two Bob Doerflers who liked to draw.

This is a short lesson to be as thorough as possible if you’re doing research.

Now, on to Industry on Parade.

This may be my favourite pro-corporate propaganda TV series. Here’s Variety from October 25, 1950:

National Assn. of Manufacturers has launched a video newsreel program, “Industry on Parade,” for use by TV stations. Reels are being made available cuffo to 50 stations, on an exclusive basis, and may be used as a sustainer or commercial. Vidpix run 13 minutes, allowing time for local bankrollers, and two 40-second segments can be deleted if more commercial time is needed. NBC-TV news department is lensing the subjects (such as U. S. arms production, new synthetic yarns, innovations in furniture manufacturing, etc.) on assignment from the NAM. G. W. (Johnny) Johnstone, NAM radio-TV director, has taken on A. Maxwell Hage, former Mutual news editor, to work on the project.

One of those 50 stations was WNBT New York, which popped it in a 1 p.m. time slot on Oct. 28th.

At one time, there were all kinds of filler shows on television to eat up time during the daytime on weekend instead of running a test pattern. Industry on Parade were put together just like a newsreel—a title card followed by silent footage edited together, with voiceover narration and stock music. In between its salute to various companies (NAM members, one suspects), there were right-wing messages about high taxes on business, federal government interference and how the Commies wanted to destroy what made America great (free enterprise). The series was well-written and expertly edited. As a bonus, it used the Filmusic library composed by Jack Shaindlin. There were hundreds and hundreds of cues, some later heard in the background of the earliest Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

Here’s one that’s a snapshot of life in the 1950s. First, we see a company that is so good to its workers, it prints a company magazine. In fact, it helps explain the American Way of Life to people in other countries. Of course, since the boss is giving a free magazine, he’s your friend. No need for one of those unions.

Next, the story of the largest ink producer in the U.S. We’re reminded America is “the best read, best informed nation on Earth.”

Ah, but the show breaks for a warning. The American dollar has been devalued! Why? Too much spending by the U.S. government (read "Democrats"). Taxes are unfair (read "businesses are overtaxed"). Sound money means a strong and free America! Cut to a waving flag.

Next, a look at the main competitor to Dixie Cups. We see how Lily Cups are made. Just throw them away after using them once! And there’s something new called “take out food.” I quite like the opening cue, which is among the hundreds not in my Langlois collection.

Well, today there’s no need for a company magazine with the internet, meaning no need for ink. And the Lily Cup people ended up getting bought as part of a leveraged buyout by Morgan-Stanley. Take out food is still around, but how did they order it back then without a delivery app on their phone?

The internet will tell you the series ran on television until 1960. It has episodes in colour labelled from the 1950s, even though you’ll easily spot 1963 model cars and 1964 hair styles in them.

It seems we have a way to go when it comes to "research."

Jack Benny For Christmas

What’s your idea of the perfect radio show?

The answer for a number of people was Jack Benny.

We’re talking about radio in 1935 here. This is the Jack Benny before Phil Harris, before Rochester, before Dennis Day, before Mel Blanc, before age 39, before the Fred Allen feud, before Frank Nelson going “Yeeehhhhs?” It was during the time Harry Conn was still writing the Benny show.

I can’t think of anyone who believes this era of Benny is better than the Murrow-Beloin years or the post-war era for American Tobacco. But, in its day, it was popular with audiences.

It may be too early for Christmas decorations in stores, but it’s never too early for a Jack Benny Christmas-time story. This one comes from the January 1936 edition of “Redbook,” and randomly surveys people about the perfect radio show. Fittingly, Jack is one of the people interviewed. (The drawing of radio listeners is from a different edition of "Redbook."

RIGHT now, in the inner sanctums of all the “creative geniuses” who provide you with your radio programs, the conferences are going on far into the night. Wires and phone-calls flash between New York and Hollywood. Pencils are gnawed to the stub, and fingers to the bone. The boys are straining, groaning, struggling, pondering, desk-pounding, conferring, fighting and generally raising up a terrific furor in trying to answer that ever-puzzling question: “What does the public want for its Christmas radio program?”
In our big-hearted fashion we thought we’d help the sweating toilers a little bit. So we called on a lot of very bright people, and others not so bright—a goodly cross section of the minds of the country, and spoke to them in this fashion:
“If, among your Christmas presents, you could have your own personal hand-tailored radio program, what would you want? In other words — your idea of the perfect radio program.”
We found out; we found out a lot of funny things we never knew before. We found out that Jack Benny is certainly walking off with the honors. We found a few answers that we couldn’t print because this is a nice respectable family magazine, we’ll have you know. We found that if some sponsor were able to give the radio Christmas present most people ask for, it would probably cost him no less than fifty thousand dollars a broadcast.
How does your taste check with Ben Hecht’s, Peter Arno’s, Helen Hayes’, Walter Winchell’s, Beatrice Lillie’s and all the others represented here?

PETER ARNO
He doesn’t want much — only a full-hour show with Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Colonel Stoopnagle and Budd for comedy. (It oughtn’t to take more than twelve thousand dollars to pay for this little comic present.) Also under the same heading he’d like Parkyakarkas—without Canton He then goes on to say he would like Alexander Woollcott without his bulging bay window, and Johnny Green’s music without all of those dialects he’s attempting. He also would like to include in his Christmas program Boake Carter, also without dialect.

HELEN HAYES
“Among this group of experts on radio programing, it seems the better part of valor to confine myself to a field in which I have had some experience — dramatics. Some day I should like to hear a series of really great plays in which fine and beautiful language is the most important element. For the Christmas season I think Bruce Gordon and Frankie Thomas in ‘The Blue Bird’ would be pretty fine.”

DOOR-MAN AT THE WALDORF
“I’d like Jack Benny for some real good laughs — and why has nobody ever put Charlie Chaplin on the radio?”

BEATRICE LILLIE
“Either Uncle Don announcing a March of Time with ‘hurry’ music by Paul Whiteman—
“Or Alexander Woollcott as Cap’n Henry and a cast including Helen Hayes, Amos ‘n’ Andy, Fred Allen, Burns and Allen, Col. Stoopnagle and Budd, and Grace Moore, giving their own idea of Showboat, with music by Rudy Vallee. Or, neither.”

WALTER WINCHELL
“Any program would be marvelous without Ben Bernie.”

JACK BENNY
“The radio has great music, brilliant drama and outstanding news-commentators. Sports events and political speakers fill the loud-speakers. What the broad casting industry needs are some good comedy programs. we don’t know why this field of entertainment has been neglected. If any sponsors are reading this, REDBOOK will be glad to notify them how to get in touch with a very funny guy. Modesty prohibits my mentioning his name. What have you people got that I haven’t got? Possibly aching sides from tuning in on Jack B--- Sunday nights. I wish I could sympathize with you, but I can’t. I have never been able to hear him, though they say he’s terrific.”

BEN HECHT
“Myself and Alexander Woollcott. Myself for the comedy and Woollcott for the heavier and more dramatic part of the program.”

A TAXI-DRIVER ON FIFTH AVENUE
“Business is kind of lousy, and I got plenty of time to hear the radio in my cab. Poisonally, I like Jack Benny, Showboat, Bing Crosby and Al Jolson. It’s funny what people listen to in my cab. Sweet old ladies go for the blood-and-thunder stuff. Guys wit’ faces chipped outta concrete will listen to Kate Smith’s mush, and like it. While you’re at it, what about a Christmas program with Shoiley Temple? Why don’t somebody put her on the air?”

LAWRENCE TIBBETT
“A Christmas evening broadcast might well include an orchestral arrangement of ‘March of the Toys’ between vocal renditions of ‘Evening Star’ and ‘Tannhäuser,’ and ‘The Sleigh’ by Kountz.”

ONE of the advantages of writing this column for Redbook is the privilege of including one’s own opinion among those of the celebrities above. Rubbing shoulders with the great, in print, so to speak.
If anyone were to ask me what radio program I’d want for Christmas (nobody has, but I’ll answer it anyway), I would say that I’m in the happy position of being able to hear just what I want.
At five-thirty on Christmas day I shall tune in my radio to Lionel Barrymore and Freddie Bartholomew. They will be doing “Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. It will be tender and poignant and very lovely, precisely in the Christmas spirit. Barrymore as Scrooge will be superb. And Freddie Bartholomew’s gentle charm and juvenile Oxonian accents have ever been a delight. As a matter of fact, my problem has been settled for a full five years. A far-sighted sponsor has contracted for the services of these two performers that far ahead. And each year at Christmas they will bring you this dramatic ornament to shine in your living-room.
God bless you, one and all!
Reeve Morrow

In 1921, Aesop Said...

Jay Ward and Bill Scott’s “Fractured Fairy Tales” and their cousin Aesop’s Fables are still great fun to watch, but the idea for the segment really wasn’t that original.

Back in the silent cartoon days, fairy tales were spoofed in Pathé’s “Aesop’s Fables” series under the direction of none other than Paul Terry.

Terry doesn’t get a lot of love these days. He spent as little as possible to make repetitive cartoons, too many with characters only die-hard fans would remember. He restricted Paul Scheib’s music scoring. He got rid of the great Bill Tytla to save money and waited out employees during an ultimately failed strike in the late ‘40s. He never gave animators or actors a screen credit. He promised Manny Davis and other long-time employees a share of the money when he cashed out. They didn’t get a penny when CBS bought the Terrytoons studio.

Yet it was a different story in the 1920s. It’s a familiar quote that Walt Disney aspired to make cartoons as good as Terry’s Aesop Fables.

The trade papers anxiously awaited Terry’s newest endeavour. Motion Picture World of June 4, 1921, gave a plug. There appears to be some Pathé butt kissing here. How could the writer call the Fables “realistic” with a straight face?

Aesop’s Fables for Release in Animated Form Beginning June 19
At last the rich mines of picture material contained in Aesop's Fables have been suitably developed for popular screen use. This interesting information comes from Pathe Exchange announcing an arrangement with Fables Pictures, Inc., for the weekly release, beginning June 19, of a series of "Aesop's Fables Modernized," in the form of animated cartoons by Paul Terry.
The first Pathe release will be Cartoonist Terry's up-to-date adaptation of the fable of "The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg," which has an honored place in the popular literature of every civilized race and country. It will be followed at weekly intervals by other equally familiar Aesop subjects. The Pathe release schedule shows "The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg" followed successively by "Mice in Council," "The Rooster and the Eagle," "Ants and the Grasshopper" and "Cats at Law.”
It is reported that when the Pathe Exchange authorities viewed the first half dozen or more of these "Aesop's Fables Modernized" they were of one mind with Fables Pictures, Inc., regarding their intrinsic screen merit and popular appeal. Many exhibitors and picture patrons will remember Paul Terry as the cartoonist of the "Farmer Alfalfa" series, which won speedy accceptance a few years ago; also the "Terry Burlesques," animated cartoon travesties of popular screen features.
Those who have been present at projections of Paul Terry's Aesop adaptations appear to agree, it is said, that they are superior to anything of the kind heretofore produced. The comic action of the animal and bird characters is said to be so realistic as to cause the beholder to forget that it is all obtained by the animated cartoon process; moreover, that the modern exceedingly laughable dramatization in pictures and the force of the moral are just as "Aesopian" as in the immortal originals.
The obvious vast advantage of the screen utilization of material so universally familiar, and so highly relished, as the fables of Aesop has been the motive for many attempts to make it effective. Usually they have failed, it is said, through inability to seize the comic spirit inherent — though seldom emphasized — in these ancient classics in which human conflicts are illuminated in the words and actions of familiar animals. In other instances an attempt at modernization has not been accompanied by sufficient creative invention to make the screen fable-drama complete. The use of mechanical animal figures — since there is no "school of acting" of proved efficiency in the case of ducks, geese, donkeys, roosters, wolves and other inhabitants of barnyard and forest — has seemed to be unsatisfactory. So it has remained for Fables Pictures, Inc., to present Cartoonist Paul Terry's solution of the problem — for distribution by Pathe.

The publication, a week later, reported the cartoons had been booked throughout the Keith circuit, arguably the largest theatre chain in the U.S. at the time, as it operated (with the Orpheum) a huge number of vaudeville houses.

The first of Terry’s Fables was a success, judging by this review in Exhibitors Herald of July 9, 1921.

AESOP'S FABLES
(PATHE)
Paul Terry, the cartoonist, has awakened new interest in the ancient Greek classics, by his clever animation of the Aesop's fables. The first to be shown in Chicago was "The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg," and if succeeding pictures of this series are as funny as the first, their success is assured.
At the new Adams theatre, where this one was shown, it met with hearty approval. Terry has taken the familiar story of the farmer and his greedy wife and with a few deftly written titles, and his "gimme" cat, made as delightful a one-reel subject as has flashed across the screen in some time. The animation is good, the photography excellent, and he gets a laugh without striving for it in every' scene. Let us have more of these unique cartoons.

Moving Picture World, reviewing The Ants and the Grasshopper in its July 21, 1921 edition, declared “Paul Terry has done some excellent work in this fable,” and proclaimed the cartoon “just as amusing and instructive as the three earlier members of this series.”

“More of these unique cartoons,” theatres got. Through the 1920s, Terry pumped out one a week, 52 cartoons a year. But that would soon have to change. Nowhere in these stories is there any mention of the man who had the money behind the Fables studio—Amedee Van Beuren. Sound arrived in earnest in 1928 and Van Beuren wanted to add it to the Fables cartoons. Terry didn’t. Terry soon found himself out of work.

Van Beuren carried on with the no-longer-noiseless Fables under the banner of Van Beuren Productions. Terry set up his own studio—by now, he had no choice but to include a soundtrack—first with partners and then on his own, releasing his cartoons through Educational Pictures, which was swallowed up by 20th Century Fox. Fox exchanges continued to send Terrytoons to theatres well into the age of television.

Terry died in 1971. His Fables will live on, if a fund-raising campaign is a success. They won’t be altogether silent; musician Charlie Judkins will provide his usual well-thought-out piano accompaniment to these pictures. You can find out more about the project at this site.

Botox Boy

The American Humane Association may have loved it, but Columbia’s A Boy, a Gun and Birds still has that weird factor that a lot of Screen Gems cartoons couldn’t shake.

The studio already had Scrappy, but I guess they decided he should be restricted to black-and-white shorts and not the higher-budget Color Rhapsodies, so a new boy character was invented.

It’s bad enough Sparky’s nose looks like a pig snout but, in what’s supposed to be a touching scene of remorse and sorrow, he has a 1940 version of botoxed lips. They form creepy shapes as he jerks his head around during his monologue to the bird he’s shot. Some of the drawings are held for seven frames, some for only one frame.



This short was another example of “We can make cartoons as good as Walt Disney.” The screen is full of flying birds for the sake of flying birds because, well, Disney would have lots of them, too. There are shadows (Chuck Jones loved those in his Disney period). There’s even a Disney-like fly-in-formation-under-the-crotch joke.

Note some insight into the origin of this short in the comment section.

Other than the Humane people, trade paper reviewers thought the short was fair at best.

Ben Harrison directed the short with Manny Gould getting an animation credit. Joe De Nat found plenty of public domain music to put in his score. The short was copyright December 18, 1939, but released on January 12, 1940 and turned into a Columbia Favorite re-release on November 26, 1953.

Doggone Explosion

The scenes in Doggone Tired (1949) alternate between light and dark, so director Tex Avery has to employ a subtle use of colour.

At the end of the cartoon, Avery reprises a gag—an explosion when Speedy the dog blows out a candle (the first time, it was actually a stick of dynamite. This time, it’s an actual candle).



It’s tough to tell looking at stills, but in these five consecutive frames, Avery goes back to a night-time blue. You can see it if you look at the dog’s hands. (On the screen, five frames whip by in less than a third of a second).



Bobe Cannon, Walt Clinton, Grant Simmons and Mike Lah are the credited animators, while Louis Schmitt designed the character. Rich Hogan and Jack Cosgriff sat in on gag sessions with Avery.

The Show For People Slightly Weak in the Head

Critics hated Gilligan’s Island.

Don’t take my word for it. Read just about any newspaper column in 1965 about the show. They all pointed out critics hated the show.

I’ve tried to find even one columnist who didn’t. I have kind of succeeded. Donald Freeman of the Copley News Service admitted he watched the show, even though he found little good in it.

He wrote two columns about Gilligan in 1965, plus one after interviewing with Natalie Schaffer. We’ll bring you the first two.

This one appeared in papers around March 21, 1965.

Ridiculous, But Nevertheless Still Tops
By DONALD FREEMAN
Copley News Service
ACCORDING TO the latest Nielsen ratings, a CBS comedy show called "Gilligan's Island” now roosts in third position, tied with “The Fugitive,” giving it status therefore as one of the undeniable hits. How do you explain It? How do you explain hula hoops?
“Gilligan’s Island,” to put it another way, is this year's “Beverly Hillbillies," the comparison being apt all down the line.
Like its predecessor, this slice of nonsense fixes a group of ridiculous people in a ridiculous situation wherein they perform ridiculous antics. And next to “Gilligan’s Island," let me add that “Beverly Hillbillies” shapes up as advanced Noel Coward.
They share something else, these two epics—both “Hillbillies” and “Gilligan's Island” come on with a theme song that eloquently, step by step, states the premise of the series in its lyrics. They do this, you see, because our power of retention—yours and mine—is so severely limited. Or possibly—this is the more plausible theory—because the premise of “Gilligan’s Island” is so easily forgotten.
AS THE SONG explains, these weirdly assorted people set out on a cruise and a storm sets them instead on an uncharted island named for one Gilligan, the captain’s mate played with endearing idiocy by Bob Denver.
Playing Hardy to Denver’s Laurel is Alan Hale Jr. as the captain. Laurel and Hardy imitations are big this year, with Jim Nabors and Frank Sutton doing just that each week in “Gomer Pyle”—and that is meant as a compliment. In attempting to analyze “Gilligan’s Island,” I find myself wrestling first with my notes, which are largely incomprehensible—
“Count number of times Hale bumps into Denver is one message I seem to have jotted down here.
“Gilligan’s Island," clearly, is two-reeler silent comedy with dialogue as well as a kind of witless version of the Marx Brothers (never confuse mere motion with action, Hemingway once advised. This show has plenty of motion). THE NONSENSE that transpires on “Goilligan’s Island” may stir up some laughter If you are a child or unsober or slightly weak in the head.
Having thus caviled, I will now confess that I have occasionally laughed at “Gilligan’s Island” because I am slightly weak in the head—that is what television does.
Laughing at “Gilligan’s Island” is a secret, solitary, vaguely shameful vice on a level with handicapping the thoroughbreds behind a volume of Toynbee. If you were applying for a job, it is unlikely that under Hobbies you would list "secret laughing at ‘Gilligan’s Island’.”
Mostly I laugh at Jim Backus who wanders about the island as though it were his digs on Long Island Sound, doing a reprise of his old radio character, Hubert Updyke, the richest man in the world.

One person who strikes me as a man who never met an interviewer he didn’t like was the mastermind behind Gilligan’s Island, Sherwood Schwartz. He was 94 when he died in 2011, and always praised his creation. This story appeared in papers around July 24, 1965.

Sherwood Schwartz: Man Behind A Successful Myth
By DONALD FREEMAN
Copley News Service
SOMEONE suggested recently that the real star of “Gilligan’s Island,” that crazy mixed-up comedy, was one of the tallest leprechauns who ever punched a typewriter. a producer-writer with the liltingly mellifluous name of Sherwood Schwartz.
But Mr. Schwartz, a man of startling plasticity whose expression can change in a twinkling from that of a genial professor to a disbarred lawyer, sidesteps the compliment.
"No, it's the idea that’s the star of our show,” said Mr. Schwartz the other day, sitting in shirt-sleeved splendor in the cubicle that serves as his office at CBS Studio Center. "The idea, the concept—a deserted island suddenly inhabited by seven diverse types. That’s the star.”
Mr. Schwartz goes back 25 years in the comedy business, having started out as a writer on the Bob Hope Show in radio. Most recently he was on Red Skelton's staff. He has, you would say, a general idea of what makes people laugh. A touch of truth helps, he points out.
"All right, take the first show of the coming season,” Mr. Schwartz said. "It's called ‘Smile, You're On Mars Camera.' Crazy Idea? Yes, but timely. The camera has a soft landing on Gilligan's Island—but the scientists believe it landed on Mars. Enter the sub plot—Gilligan is gathering feathers. Who knows why? But Gilligan is gathering feathers and soon everybody is wearing feathers, a sight the camera faithfully records.
"NOW THEN,” Mr. Schwartz continued, rubbing his hands with glee, "sitting in their labs the scientists see all these crazy people in feathers.
"Ah, they all say exultantly, so that's what life is like on Mars. Wild, yes?”
Wild, yes.
I mentioned the critics and the reactions to "Gilligan's Island" and Mr. Schwartz shrugged. "Well, the critics didn’t enjoy the show when we first came out," Schwartz noted. "But there's more public than there are critics. Next year the Intellectual critics will probably take another look at ‘Gilligan’s Island’ and then they'll write learned treatises on our 'social satire on many levels.'
"Maybe the professors will look for deeper satire. All I want is for everybody to have a little fun and not get gray-headed. The first time I explained my idea of the island and the people to a bunch of agency executives I happened—just happened, mind you—to use the word 'microcosm,' a world in miniature, which is what 'Gilligan's Island’ is.
"There was a hasty shuffling of seats and a tentative clearing of executive throats. A MICROCOSM? ‘Mmmmm,’ said one. ‘Isn’t that too lofty?’ To think that somebody once considered ‘Gilligan’s Island’ too ‘lofty!’” I asked Mr Schwartz if he had acquired his idea from "Robinson Crusoe.”
“Once the idea of the island occurred to me,” Schwartz said, "I recognized the universality of the concept. And then I did some research into ‘Robinson Crusoe.’ I learned it's been translated into 63 languages and that it’s the 16th top selling book of all time.
"EVERYBODY has said to themselves, ‘What would I do If I were left on a deserted island?’ I've said it myself. Not lately . . . but I have said it "Now the question arises, when someone like Wrong-Way Feldman lands on Gilligan's Island, why doesn't he return from civilization later with a rescue party? Good point, except that Wrong-Way Feldman, as you'll recall, is not internationally known for his sense of direction.”
What is the source, the wellspring of the popularity that “Gilligan’s Island" has enjoyed?
"We appeal to everyone,” said Mr Schwartz. “The kids love Bob Denver as Gilligan. Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer hit the sophisticates. Tina Louise and Dawn Wells are girls.
"A touch of reality, however, is very important. When the scientist on the island uses sea water, copper pennies, coconuts and bobby pins to recharge a battery, kids went to their science teachers. ‘Does that work?’ they asked. ‘Sure,’ the teachers said.
“Comedy,” said Mr. Schwartz, "fortified by truth.”

Gilligan’s Island was silly. Critics didn’t like silly. They wanted clever. But, sometimes, people want silly. And the characters were likable.

The internet tells me, right now, you can pay just under $3 to watch the Skipper hit Gilligan with his hat. Paying good money to watch something you may have seen for free 60 years ago? Sherwood Schwartz would be laughing at that.

Your Beatin' Heart

Tom’s captured Jerry in Kitty Foiled (1947). Let’s bring in the heart-pounding joke, says Joe Barbera.



Jerry tries to shove the heart back to where it should be.



Barbera uses the joke later in the cartoon with a bird helping Jerry. We get a butt version.



And speaking of butts, there's a butt walk by Tom.



Ken Muse, Ed Barge, Irv Spence and Irving Levine receive animation credits in this short.