The background art is just tremendous in Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor. Even watching what must have been a semi-washed-out print on a black-and-white TV in the early ‘60s, I really appreciated it. Adding to it were the 3D-like scenes with backgrounds and foregrounds at moving at different speeds than the animation.
Watching a restored version in full Technicolor is a real treat. The background artists outdid themselves with the various colours. Here’s a great example, with a rock-skull and gnarled tree with a face.
This is part of a gag that I remember liking 60-some-odd years ago. Sindbad punches Popeye upward. Sindbad’s huge rokh grabs him, circles once (the animators had to draw the bird’s underside as the shot looks up) and flies into a distant volcano to finish him off.
Notice how the background the same setting is different than the one in the first frame. The Fleischers spared no expense.
Popeye's a goner. Or is he? A tornado whisks its way from the volcano to the foreground and provides the answer.
Here’s the background painting under the first set of titles. What a shame none of the background artists got credit.
Willard Bowsky led the animation crew on this, with Ed Nolan and George Germanetti getting screen credit.
When you think of Allen’s Alley, Senator Claghorn may come to mind. Or maybe Mrs. Nussbaum. You probably don’t think of the actor the Alley was built around, even though he’s known to some who have never heard of Fred Allen.
Allen featured ham poet Falstaff Openshaw on the Texaco Star Theatre, and when he created the Alley, Falstaff anchored the segment. Openshaw appeared in character as a guest on other radio shows and later had his own 5-minuter on ABC radio.
Openshaw was played by a man better known to people today as the voice of Fred Flintstone, Alan Reed.
We’ve talked about Reed’s Hanna-Barbera career over on the Yowp blog. He had a rather extensive career on radio before that and, as this story in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of Nov. 23, 1941 indicates, he had a pile of other careers.
Alan Reed, He’s on vacation and That Makes Him Pretty Happy But Again in Theater Guild's New Play He's Badly Dressed
We offer Alan Reed as an alarming example of what can happen if you let your son go-to journalism school.
Mr. Reed is the gentleman who is presently to burst upon Broadway as the bombastic Italian farmer in "Hope for a Harvest," the Theater Guild comedy by Sophie Treadwell, which opens at the Guild Theater Wednesday evening, and which presents, in addition to the redoubtable Reed, Mr. and Mrs. Frederic March.
The journalism school where Reed's whacky history starts is Columbia. How he escaped from it nobody knows. But one day he turned up in Oklahoma City, befriended by a candy manufacturer named Ralph Rose. This chocolate bar king dabbled in theatricals. He dabbled a bit too much, however. With a stock company, that included Reed as leading man, he lost his shirt.
And so Mr. Rose, his 12-year-old son and his great and good friend, Mr. Reed, came to New York. They had $600 when they arrived. A bit of dice manipulation (at which Mr. Rose Jr. was said to be proficient) ran it up to $28,000. Whereupon Mr. Reed and the Messrs. Rose started a candy business. Pecan pralines were the staple and the business prospered until hot weather, when the pralines turned what Reed describes as an "interesting gray color, like second-hand oatmeal."
That was about 1923. Two years later found our Mr. Reed acting in the Glencairn cycle of Eugene O'Neill at the Provincetown Theater. He doesn't remember why. Nor why he became, somewhere along the way from there to here, intercollegiate wrestler (that was at Columbia, but we forgot to mention it at the time), shipping clerk, real estate salesman, gym instructor and newsreel commentator. He also became manager of the Luxor Health Club, which, considering his fondness for sleeping late and Lindy's pastries, doesn't seem to fit.
At any rate, like some other misguided people, he eventually wandered into radio, where he became the No. 1 assistant comic. Cantor, Jolson, Jessel, Burns and Allen, and now Fred Allen—all have had his services. (On Fred A's current program he is Falstaff Openshaw, the Bowery Bard, as well as Clancy the Cop on "Duffy's Tavern.")
But where he really shines—ethereally speaking—is crime. He sat down one night and. having nothing better to do, totaled his radio-crime career for 1940. During the year, he estimated, he stole slightly more than $12,000,000, killed 37 people, participated in five kidnapings, perpetrated three felonious assaults and made one attempt to pull the badger game. In all of these cases he was convicted, killed by the police in a dark alley, driven to suicide when trapped by his own brutal actions or dispensed with in some satisfying way. Satisfying, at least, to the code of radio morality.
But if he is radio's baddest boy, he is also its busiest. Averaging a total of 25 to 30 radio shows weekly, it is an expensive luxury for Alan Reed to enter a Broadway play, for he has to give up his very lucrative crime-and-comic chores on radio.
But with "Hope for a Harvest," the gentleman is quite willing to forego radio profits in favor of the theater, and for a couple of excellent if unartistic reasons.
"With this job," Mr. Reed confides gravely, "I am working myself out a nice little vacation, a very nice little vacation. And why? Because here at last is a part I can throw my stomach into." He patted his facade. Did we mention that there is a good deal of Mr. Reed? Two hundred and thirty pounds at last counting. "Also I can let my hair grow. This it not like the last time. This is not Saroyan."
He was referring to his last Broadway stint, in the Mad Armenian's play, "Love's Old Sweet Song," which the Guild produced two seasons ago. In that epic Mr. Reed was the philosophical Greek wrestler, Stylanos Americanos. His hair was cropped to a fuzz and he had to train down to 210.
"Was I healthy? I have never been so healthy. I hope I am never so healthy again. Gym all the time, No Lindy's. No Lindy's pastries. But now—!” Now Mr. Reed is playing Joe de Lucchi, a middle-aged Italian with plenty of girth and a nice shock of hair. Mr. R. is barely in his thirties and worries because his nice middle-aged makeup never seems to register on photographs. "I look young," he moans in despair. "I look, you might almost say, juvenile! Always before I have been athletic. For business reasons. Now I can be athletic or I can skip it. So if I feel like it I'll be athletic. Otherwise—no."
Up to now it seems to be no. Except for handball, which Mr. Reed plays with furious enthusiasm, he is taking himself "a nice little vacation." Of course, he is working a little in "Hope for Harvest," but he gets such a kick out of the part he doesn't regard it as work. His only complaint about the part is the clothes he has to wear. They are not, says Mr. Reed, very snappy.
"Now here is the situation," he explained morosely, "I like clothes. You know what I mean? I am fond of them. I have one of the best tailors in New York. I have beautiful suits. I wear them like Esquire. So what happens? One the radio nobody sees me. I get a job on the stage in 'Love's Old Sweet Song'—and I wear a pair of trunks and the hair on my chest I was born with. So I think—Never mind, next time we'll wear clothes. So what happens? I get into ‘Hope for a Harvest,' and I wear overalls! Can you win? But outside of that I got no complaints. It's a swell show. I got a swell part. I'm happy."
So "Hope for a Harvest" has made Mr. Reed happy. He has made the author and the Theater Guild happy. All that remains is for the audience to be happy. Mr. Reed nods knowingly, and says they will be.
“Hope For a Harvest” was a flop. It ran for a month at the August Wilson Theatre. Radio Mirror reported Reed took the role to attract movie scouts, but then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and he was afraid to move his family to the West Coast.
But Reed found more stage work. This Eagle story is from Dec. 13, 1942.
Alan Reed, the Real Pirate, Is Also Broadway's Busiest Man By ROBERT FRANCIS This department claims to have found Broadway's busiest actor. Eight times a week he is the paunchy ex-pirate from whom Alfred Lunt steals Lynn Fontanne up at the Martin Beck and on Sundays he Broad a's his way through the Fred Allen program with the poetic quips and cranks of Falstaff Openshaw.
"But Saturday is Alan Reed's high spot. In the morning he motors leisurely from the Reed mansion in Riverdale (when he has the gas), to arrive at Radio City for 11:30 rehearsal of "Abie's Irish Rose." Alan is Papa Solomon Levy in this one. The rehearsal lasts until 1:30, which leaves just time to get over to the Martin Beck and make up for the matinee. At 5:30 he is back at the studio for more rehearsal and the following broadcast, which is over at 8:30.
Then down a waiting elevator and into a waiting cab pops Mr. Reed. Slithering across Broadway he sticks on his drooping mustache and goatee-and when the curtain goes up at 8:40 at the Martin Beck, Miss Fontanne is serenely fanning a hammock-sleeping "Pirate" on the stage.
It almost seems that it must be done with mirrors, but Alan is an inventive cuss. He doesn't remove his makeup when he finishes the matinee. He has had a double breasted suit turned to zoot proportions so that it goes over and off the pirate costume. This and a titanic dickey turn him into Mr. Levey.
Of course, after the theater his time is practically his own. He just has to taxi back to the studio for the repeat broadcast.
"It isn't mirrors," he grinned the other night, "but it does take stamina—and stamina is something I got a lot of. Did you know I used to be intercollegiate wrestling champion at Columbia?"
Strangler Reed rears up in his dressing room shorts and exhibits a mighty torso.
"Of course," he apologizes, "I'm softened up now. But you get the idea."
Your correspondent does. He would not care to tangle with Mr. Reed.
Incidentally, you may remember Alan as the hookah-smoking Greek grappler of Saroyan's "Love's Old Sweet Song" a season or so back.
"I enjoyed that one," he says. "It was such fun spilling Walter Huston."
Alan hasn't been on Broadway half as much as he should during recent years. Radio has kept him too busy. He broke into show business back in 1927 at the old Provincetown Playhouse, but except for an occasional play, most of his dialect comedy has been devoted to the air waves and comic commentating for Pathe News. In between times he managed to run his own gymnasium.
"Had to give that up, though, a while ago," he grins. "I work out once in a while up at Reilly's—but no more wrestling.
"What do I want to do now? Man, I'm satisfied. Two radio shows and this play. And I think I'm going to do a movie this Summer. The war's got 'em so they finally need guys like me out there."
If the movie doesn't come through, we'll bet Mr. Reed figures out something else to fill in the time. He's not a guy to sit still.
Reed appeared off and on in movies—we’ll spare you a list of them; you can find that elsewhere—returning to work with Fred Allen during fallow periods.
And, yes, we could mention Life With Luigi, Baby Snooks and other radio shows but we will point out that Reed started out in radio using his real name, Teddy Bergman. He gave a short biography to one of the syndication serves and the story to your right appeared in newspapers in mid-1932. Bergman also appeared in television at that time, meeting actress Finette Walker on W2XAB. They enjoyed a long and happy marriage.
For a time, Reed was also on the Board of Directors of AFRA, the radio actors union, with fellow Allen’s Alley denizens Minerva Pious and John Brown, and Verna Felton, who played his mother-in-law on The Flintstones.
The ad you see above is for a company Reed set up after network radio wound down and he hunted around for television work. He ended up handing operation of it to his son after Bill Thompson was unable to do the voice of a caveman, and Hanna-Barbera had to find someone else to play Fred Flintstone. That gave him a steady pay cheque (especially from commercials as Flintstone) for the rest of his life.
It’s the back of Spike’s head as he runs away in perspective from a lawnmower-riding gopher in the 1950 MGM cartoon Garden Gopher.
Here are some frames of Spike running away and the gopher (top-of-head shot first) after him.
And now the other way.
Some of Avery’s favourite gags, like the “drag-arousal-chase” also found in Ventriloquist Cat; the “huge-hole-in-body” as is Señor Droopy, Ventriloquist Cat and The Chump Champ, and the “explosion-creates-blackface” found in Droopy’s Good Deed show up.
Rich Hogan helped Avery with gags, and the animators on this short are Grant Simmons, Mike Lah and Walt Clinton.
Warner Bros. cartoons had names hidden in the backgrounds, and other studios did the same thing.
Here’s an example from the UPA short Barefaced Flatfoot (1951) starring a somewhat tetched Mr. Magoo.
On the billboard advertising the movie “Scandale” (opening Oct. 14) are the names Novotny and Pilchard. Who they were, I don’t know.
Another billboard advertises a talk by “Dr. Julius Engel. Jules Engel gets the “color” credit for this cartoon.
The sign on one building is a little unusual. The name is “Danch.” Bill Danch was a cartoonist and radio writer whose name you’ll find on some early ‘60s Walter Lantz cartoons with Tedd Pierce. He is not on the credits for this short, but he co-wrote Grizzly Golfer and Wonder Gloves, both UPA cartoons that were released the same year as this one. Danch later wrote the syndication Jim Backus Show, where Backus runs a newspaper.
Left to right, director John Hubley, designer Abe Liss, John Hubley (backwards) and Sherm Glas (backwards), the unit manager.
Hartman’s Pipe Shop. This could be for C.L. Hartman, an animator who worked at several studios, including Disney and Hanna-Barbera. He, too, got animation credits at UPA for Magoo’s Moose Hunt (1957) and Scoutmaster Magoo. Hartman also worked for Hubley at Storyboard, Inc.
Magoo is no chortling, Rutgers-reminiscing softie hawking beer or light bulbs in this cartoon. He decides to become a detective (with an appropriate radio mystery show organ in the background) and even gets nasty with Waldo.
This was the fifth cartoon in the series, before Columbia ordered UPA to includes Magoo’s name in every short.
Jack Benny turned 40. He didn’t like the idea but, in the end, it made no difference.
It was just like the Maxwell. The car, in the Benny radio plot-line, was donated for scrap during World War Two. After the war, it was back. No one cared. Jack kept doing Maxwell jokes and people laughed.
Jack was convinced to turn 40 on the air in 1958. So he had a 40th birthday party on the Shower of Stars show on CBS-TV. Jack then simply went back to doing ‘39’ jokes and people laughed until the day he died.
1958 was some 26 years after he began his radio show. And he kept right on going. One veteran columnist who analysed Jack’s continuing popularity was Ben Gross of the New York Daily News. Like pretty well all the New York critics, Gross enjoyed the Benny on-air high jinks. In promoting the Shower of Stars show, he explained the reasons Benny continued to appeal to viewers after years in the entertainment business. In this story, Gross latches onto the canard that Benny never appeared on radio before his guest shot with Ed Sullivan in 1932. Gross was reviewing radio before then, and opened his February 20, 1929 column praising Jack's emceeing on the RKO radio series on the NBC Red Network.
Stars Hail Jack Benny On His '40th' Birthday
Out in CBS-TV City, Hollywood, the boys and girls readying themselves for one of the biggest parties of recent years last night. Jack Benny was slated to announce that he is now 40 years old, during the Shower of Stars program, 8:30 to 9:30.
This, the evening before St. Valentine's Day, which is his actual birthday. The Waukegan Fiddler, now really 64, has finally decided to abandon the legend that he is still only 39, an event worthy of the notice of every comedy lover in America.
As the program listings have already informed you, a lengthy roll of stars who were once or still are features, of the Benny show had been lined up for the event. Mary Livingstone, Van Johnson, Paul Douglas, Dennis Day, Bob Crosby, Frank Parker, Don Bestor, Mel Blanc, Andy Devine, and the Sportsmen Quartet were among the names mentioned. And, of course, there could be many more.
In this connection, some of the publicity released about the event said that Benny "got his start in broadcasting on the radio program of George Olsen, the orchestra leader back in 1932.” It's true that Jack appeared on George’s show at that time.
But to set the record straight, I must point out that Benny's first appearance on the air took place via Ed Sullivan's program that year. It was the comedian's debut on radio. Four Lifetimes
That was 36 years ago—three or four lifetimes as far as broadcasting is concerned. And one may well ask: "Why has Jack Benny lasted so long? Why is he one of the few radio comedians—Milton Berle, Burns and Allen, Red Skelton and Ed Wynn are among the others—who have been able to survive in television?"
The first and most obvious answer that comes to mind is that Jack Benny is a great comedian. In the opinion of many including this column he is unequalled by any other current funmaker in poise, timing and the art of the double-take. But there have been and still are others almost as good and yet they have failed to on uninterrupted year after year with like success.
I think you will find the key to Benny's phenomenal survival, despite the countless vogues in comedy that have come and gone, in a statement he made to me many years ago while he was starring here at the Roxy Theatre. He said, "Above all, I'm a good editor." Cuts Ruthlessly
What he meant by this is that he not only works closely with his veteran writers and has an almost unerring understanding of the material, the types of scripts that are best for him. He cuts ruthlessly lines that are out of key with the Benny character, even though these might win big laughs. He uses only dialogues and scenes that bolster his comedy personality. And this comedy personality, it should be emphasized, is a true bit of character creation. It may be obvious or simple; but nevertheless it's a living, breathing character.
Benny, in the minds of millions of radio and TV fans all through these years, has been a lovable, violin-playing penny pincher who always manages to come out on the short end of any deal. No matter whom he meets or what happens, that is the image that remains. He's likeable, laughable—and human.
This basically, is his secret. And it undoubtedly explains why through the years of depressions and booms, wars, revolutions and so-called peace, the Waukegan Fiddler has managed to stay on top. May he do so for a long time to come!
The 40th birthday show is an odd one. It’s mostly nostalgic than comedic. There is a parade of people Jack worked with and few of them are given anything to do. Van Johnson seems so out of place as he was no more a regular on Benny’s show than Sarah Churchill. Kenny Baker was noticeable by his absence. George Olsen turned down an invitation to appear. Eddie Anderson collapsed in rehearsal and his routines had to be re-worked). And I’m afraid I’m not big on singing/dancing tribute numbers. The best part came near the end when Phil Harris ad-libbed a zinger at Jack who collapsed in laughter; it shows you how much Phil was missed when he left the show.
If you haven't seen it, the show should be embedded below if it hasn't been taken down. It opens with Art Gilmour speaking.
He may have voiced more cartoons uncredited than anyone in the business.
Even at a time when Daws Butler and Don Messick’s names were appearing on televisions in the early 1960s, his was not. And, his obit says, he voiced 220 Popeye cartoons for the small screen in a year.
We’re talking about Jack Mercer.
Of course, this doesn’t include 240 Felix the Cat TV cartoons for Trans-Lux where he did every voice. Nor the dozens and dozens of theatrical shorts for the Fleischer and Famous (Paramount) studios going back to the mid-1930s.
As you likely know, Mercer did get screen credit in the glory days of cartoons—for stories. He was an inker who was moved into the story department near the end of the Fleischer studio in the early ‘40s.
Mercer also got very little public press until the era of book-writing cartoon historians. One time was the serendipitous occasion when he married the Miami studio voice of Olive Oyl, Margie Hines, in 1939.
Another occasion can be found in an unusual place. He was mentioned in a feature story in an Australian newspaper, the Macleay Argus of Kempsey in New South Wales. It also sums up how a cartoon was made at the Fleischer studio. The story appeared in the issue of May 20, 1938; the local theatre was showing Puddy’s Coronation, a 1937 Terrytoon.
Something interesting is the revelation of the voice of Wimpy in the cartoons of the time. Frank Matalone was an imitator who won an amateur contest on Fred Allen’s Town Hall Tonight of April 15, 1936, imitating a traffic whistle, a cuckoo clock, a pair of rolling dice, and the opening of the bottle. I suspect he came to the Fleischers’ notice because his last imitation was Jack Mercer as Popeye, singing the spinachk-eating sailor’s theme song. You can hear him below at around the 49:55 mark. The Brooklyn Times-Union reported at the time he had done the Popeye impression at an amateur night a month earlier at the RKO Albee
(As an aside, the next amateur is a harpist who plays the Friz Freleng favourite “Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms.” No one explodes).
Mae Questel rates a mention as Betty Boop and Olive Oyl but the singer who portrayed Bluto is left out of the story. Gus Wicke was part of a long-time “Gay 90s” revue at a New York restaurant. E.O. Costello put together a fine, annotated biography at the Cartoon Research site.
Substitute the word “newspaper” for “screen” in the third paragraph.
WHO IS THE VOICE OF POPEYE? HOW CARTOONS ARE MADE
For many years the animated cartoon has been a highlight during most programmes, and has introduced many figures that have left favourable impressions in everyone’s mind, the most important of these being “Popeye,” “Betty Boop,” “Felix the Cat" and “Mickey Mouse.”
To-day we have “Popeye” the spinach eating sailorman, a name that is widely known throughout the world, not only as a movie cartoon, but also as a newspaper comic strip. “Popeye” made his debut in screen cartoons in the year 1929 [sic] in “Thimble Theatre,” starting as a supporting character. Gradually he gained popularity, eventually becoming the star of what is known to-day as the greatest cartoon figure.
Included among the many artists are three people whose voices have made you laugh very heartily, and yet their names and features are absolutely unknown. That deep-chested voice, which bellows forth continual challenges to Bluto, Popeye’s most dangerous opposition for Olive Oyl's heart, is furnished by Jack Mercer, while Mae Questel puts all the “thrill appeal” into her pleas when Olive Oyl is the cause of some argument between these two tough men.
Olive Oyl was one of the original characters created by Segar in 1919, and it was not until many years later that she saw the light of the screen in the talking pictures. Mae Questel, who is partly responsible for the success of this beauty (if we may say that) is also talented in such a way that she puts over the voice for another character, “Betty Boop.” It was thought for quite a long period that the voice of “Betty” was that of an old screen favourite, Helen Kane, and owing to this public opinion, Miss Kane tried to sue Miss Questel, but her efforts proved futile, so Miss Questel still carries on with both jobs.
Again in 1929 Mr. E. C. Segar introduced another personality known as “Wimpy,” and the vocal substitute is Frank Matalone.
The making of these cartoons does not, as most people think, incorporate about a dozen people; on the contrary, it necessitates a regiment of workers, each one skilled at his particular job, working in close contact with the others. Altogether this one reel cartoon passes through the hands of 15 different departments, which, all told, amounts to 200 persons.
The first to deal with “Popeye” is the scenario department. Writing themes for cartoon characters presents quite a different problem from that of the human actor. They must concentrate on themes that are farcical and yet humorous. From this department the finished scenario is sent to the animators.
The boys (and girls, too) who do the original drawings, are the highest paid employees in this type of work. It is on the efforts of these people that the success of the whole cartoon is placed. The expressions, the actions of each measured foot, is entirely their responsibility, and each position requires not only one drawing, but perhaps a dozen, to give the full natural appearance of life. As mentioned previously, many drawings must be made before a cartoon can become really animated. The average one-reel cartoon takes 15,000 separate drawings. If a scene requires 12 sketches to give complete naturalness, the head animator may draw, say, 1, 5, 10 and 12, and the “inbetweener” as they are called, will fill in the missing drawings.
But the pencil work does not finish at the 15,000 drawings. After close scrutiny of the original drawings, to see that each one will give perfect action and not jump from one movement to another, the tracing depart-partment [sic] comes into the picture. Each drawing and movement made has to be traced on to black celluloid. This is a long tedoius [sic] business, which must be done so that the backgrounds, which are just as important as the characters, will be visible when the photographer places them in front of the highly sensitive lens.
That covers the drawings which amount to 30,000—15,000 original sketches and the same number of tracings.
We now leave the departments that are responsible for the foundation of the cartoon, and visit the colouring and inking copyists. It is the job of this classroom of copyists to fill in “Popeye’s” body with colour, taking particular care about the shading, and making certain, too, that all colours correspond with these of his fellow workers. Some colours have more than seven definite variations in shade.
Up to the present, the concentration has been entirely pointed to the making of flat-surfaced black and white cartoons, but with the advance of motion picture science, Max Fleischer and Paramount have experimented for two years in the creation of third dimension (stereoscopic) and have at last finally succeeded to get it into workable state.
The main difference between the flat and the stereoscopic is found in the backgrounds and settings, as the characters have the same process as told above. In the ordinary cartoon, the backgrounds are drawn and then photographed, but with the new process it has to be built in correct proportion and full perspectiveness. This means all sides are erected, not merely as motion picture sets, but just the portion that is visible to the camera.
These sets are then placed on a turntable, and as the action travels from one scene to another, the turntable revolves so as to keep “Popeye” and his confederaes [sic] in a continual line with the lens of the camera. The camera never moves.
And now that you are thoroughly conversant with the making of a “Popeye” cartoon, it should be easier for you to appreciate that it is not just eight or nine minutes of entertainment, but a highly skilled piece of work.
Mercer finally got screen credit for Popeye when Hanna-Barbera licensed the comic strip characters from King Features in 1978 (another one of Paramount’s cartoon writers, Larz Bourne, was story editor of the series). He told the Associated Press’ Tom Jory in 1979 that Hanna-Barbera made him audition for the series. His wife was astounded. “What?” she asked, “He has to audition for his own voice.”
Jackson Beck, the post-Fleischer voice of Bluto (and Brutus in the 1960s TV cartoons) claimed in a 1990 story in Newsday that Mercer “was the cleverest voice man I ever knew. He could do more than Mel Blanc. He played animals. He did motors. He was a little wimpy guy who never had the guts to ask for the money he deserved.”
Matalone didn’t pursue show business, other than being part of a touring company made up of some of Fred Allen’s contest winners; another person on the tour for a while was a musician by the name of Vic Mizzy. The Miami News of March 11, 1936, the day Matalone was supposed to appear on Allen’s show, called him a “Baltimore art student and chauffeur.” This is more than likely the Frank Matalone who worked 54 years as a chauffeur for the village of Hempstead, New York, and was a member of the village volunteer fire department for 41 years. He died July 19, 1976 at the age of 78. He was born in Italy on December 23, 1897. There was no mention of Fred Allen or cartoons in his newspaper obituary.
It happens. The animation checker misses something and an overlay cel doesn’t get shot, meaning something on the screen vanishes.
In Guided Muscle, released in 1955, Wile E. Coyote lays a spoon and a knife next to a pepper mill on a cactus.
Wile E. picks up the mill, and the utensils disappear.
The drawing above is held for two frames. Next drawing.
Two more frames.
Ah, they're back!
The animators are Dick Thompson, Ken Harris, Ben Washam and Abe Levitow. This was the last cartoon from the Chuck Jones unit put into production before the Warner Bros. shutdown of 1953. Maurice Noble was gone, so Phil De Guard takes over layouts and Dick Thomas from the former McKimson unit (it was eliminated 3 1/2 months before the shutdown) paints the backgrounds.
A contented door swallows Ub Iwerks’ version of Don Quixote.
Whoever came up with the story on this cartoon created a few interesting transformation idea, including a steam shovel that Quixote believes is a fire-breathing dragon. There’s also the cliché of the beautiful princess who turns out to be an ugly, man-crazy crone, with the design you see in countless Iwerks shorts. (I guess you could count them, but who wants to?)
Carl Stalling is credited with the score in this 1934 cartoon. No animators are mentioned.
Fred Allen wasn’t finished with radio in 1949 when his show for Ford went off the air. In 1950, there were guest appearances on other NBC shows—and even Jack Benny’s over on CBS. He stayed out of radio “to get a taste of oblivion. I shall be the only radio comic with a preview of oblivion when television really takes over,” he was quoted in a Louisville newspaper that January.
Allen still exercised his wit and opinions in the popular press that year. Here’s a column from UP from Feb. 18th.
Fred Allen Doesn’t Like Radio, Video or Anything Else By ALINE MOSBY (United Press Hollywood Correspondent)
Fred Allen yesterday said he’s very happy to be temporarily retired because: Radio’s dying, television isn’t grown up yet and the movies never have made a funny man out of him.
The sourpuss comedian quit radio last year because of illness. He says he has little intention of working again, either.
“Television won’t kill radio. Radio’s doing a pretty good job of killing itself,” cracked Allen. “It’s half dead, but rigor mortis hasn’t set in.
“And I’m not sure I’ll want to get into television even when it’s perfected. People tire of you more quickly when they see you every week.
“Besides, it’s anti-social. It won’t ruin sex but it’s ruining small talk. It’s getting smaller and smaller. Instead of talking you sit and watch some second-rate television show that you wouldn’t go out of your home to see.”
“Besides,” he groused, “it doesn’t pay him to work, anyway.
“With taxes what they are, there’s no incentive to do anything. The only thing that keeps a lot of performers going is their ego. Well, my ego is under control.
“Therefore I see only futility in any temporary adulation I would get on TV by the portion of the unwashed public that hasn’t seen me before.”
Allen trekked to California, “which is founded on one objective, sunny,” to star in the radio version of his latest movie, “It’s In the Bag,” on NBC’s Screen Directors’ Playhouse, last night.
“I’ve made five movies, the latest in 1945, all of them bad. Every few years somebody comes around and says nobody knows how to handle me in pictures so he wants to try. So I make a movie with him—and it’s bad. “In Hollywood acting ability or talent doesn’t count. You have to be photogenic.”
Allen furthermore th1nk he’s doing the public a favor by staying jobless for a while.|
‘An actor is like a cinder in the public eye,” he went on. “People need relief from him. The public should be very grateful to me. Everybody else is boring the hell out of them in pictures and radio. The tax boys are getting a rest, too. They don’t have to bother counting all my money.
“Next year I’ll write a book. The year after that I’ll read it and the next year I’ll tear it up. That’ll take up three years.
“Meantime I’m out here getting movie stars to donate their swimming pool to New York to help the water shortage.”
He began his television career that fall as one of the hosts appearing on a rotational basis on The Colgate Comedy Hour (he was gone by December to Florida for health reasons). He also wrote two books, though he died before completing the one about his vaudeville/stage life before radio. As for taxes, he beat the state of Massachusetts over a $90 tax bill, proving before a judge he no longer lived in Boston.
Allen used some of the same lines when he returned to New York and spoke with Earl Wilson. The column showed up March 3rd or 10th, depending on the paper.
Fred Allen Busy Doing ‘Nothing’ It’s Tougher Than Working, ‘Retired’ Comedian Finds By EARL WILSON
NEW YORK—"In California," said Fred Allen, who's just back from there, "people don't know the meaning of the word ‘happen’ because nothing ever does.
"It's so crowded that all the oranges are on the ground because people are living in all the trees.
"They say Los Angeles is booming—just because the streets are full of people all the time.
"But those people in the streets are people moving from one house to another house. Naturally, when anybody moves into one of those California houses, he moves out of it and into another one right away."
Fred, you can see, had a good time in California. I met him at the Plaza Oak Room where his agent was trying to persuade him to go back to work.
Fred isn't very eager, however.
"You used to save your money for a rainy day. With taxes the way they are now, you save your money and when it rains all you've got to hold over your head is an income tax receipt." I suggested that anybody with his talent must also be ambitious to have a vast audience every week.
"Nowadays," Fred replied, "You keep your nose to the grindstone and you wind up with your nostrils full of emery dust."
"So you have no plans?"
"I've got no more plans than a dead architect."
"Don't you like to be busy?"
"Why, I'm busier doing nothing than I was when I was working. In Hollywood I was on the Bob Hope show and on the way from the dressing room to the microphone, I did two benefits.
"Everybody in Los Angeles was trying to invent something. One guy was making his own Sanka. He put sleeping pills in his coffee.
"I saw trailers with television aerials on them. Guys that hadn't got homes yet had TV sets out in their yards. It got so cold while I was there, they put smudge pots under people.
"California is a state made famous by an adjective. Without that adjective ‘sunny,’ California would be another Nebraska.
"I like San Francisco. I don't know why they should build all those bridges. The people are so nice, no one would ever want to leave there."
"Don't you miss being on the air?" I asked.
"Those other guys are treadmill comedians, quantity comedians. They think they have to be on all day, and after they are, you can't remember a thing they say."
"Now that you've commented about California, what have you to say about New York?" I said.
"New York! The hotels have no water. The clerk gives you a bath towel and a divining rod."
Fred got up to go. "I have to see my dentist," he said. "Want to come along and have a tooth pulled on me?"
Wilson was one of few critics who liked Allen’s TV debut. Most the rest of the reviews I’ve seen, with the exception of Sid Shalit’s rave in the New York Daily News, rated it, as they say in baseball, “swing and a miss.” Wilson’s column of September 27, 1950 opened with:
NEW YORK—Fred Allen’s first TV show was for intelligent people—but I liked it anyway.
It had “class.” Fred discussed big NBC executives. He said one was so big he had a wastebasket to throw people in. He also said, “There is more to television than meets the nose.”
Backstage, Fred and guest Star Monte Wooley [sic] talked about the unbelievable amount of work that goes into a show. They had rehearsed for more than a wek. “Do you think you’ll do much television,” I asked Wooley.
Tossing his heard in the air, he snorted, “I shouldn’t think so.”
The Herald Tribune’s John Crosby pointed out Allen “seemed ill at ease in front of all those cameras.” I don’t think Allen lost that. Even on What’s My Line? he never really appeared comfortable. He once said he liked the panel show because it left him plenty of time to write. As he showed again and again, the place where he was most at ease was a place with words.
