Four Mouths in One

All kinds of things come alive in the Oswald short The Navy (1930). Among them are a concertina, a ship, and an anchor.

Oh, and funnels. Not only do they come to life, they sway and sing like a quartet. On top of that, they pull off a gag beloved by the Van Beuren studio—they combine their “mouths” into one and continue singing.



Jimmy Dietrich has a nice jazzy score with trombones toward the end.

Clyde Geronimi, Manny Moreno and Ray Abrams are credited animation, with Tex Avery, Pinto Colvig and Les Kline mentioned in smaller lettering. With Avery and Colvig on staff, you can guarantee gags will be crazy. There’s even a “two mouths” gag involving Oswald, the same as in the 1933 Lantz cartoon Merry Dog.

Are You Warm Yet?

Not too long ago, we posted about Johnny Olson’s unseen talent for TV viewers—his studio audience warm-ups.

Let’s continue the topic with two stories, one involving radio, and the other television.

First, we go back to 1948 and this feature piece by the International News Service. In the radio days, many comedy/variety stars liked to do their own brief warm-ups; Jack Benny and Phil Harris did. They’re not part of this story.

Tricks Used in 'Warmup' To Put Studio Audience in Mood
BY JOHN M. COOPER
NEW YORK, March 3 (INS).— When a radio broadcast comes on the air with the studio audience laughing, even the most innocent listener may suspect something has just happened.
He probably thinks the comedian has just made a funny remark.
He doesn't know the half of it.
The comedian's pants may have fallen down. Or a dozen other things may have happened, possibly involving the efforts of several Stooges in the audience.
It’s all part of what’s known in radio as “the warm-up”—a pre-broadcast entertainment designed to put the studio audience in a happy mood and get the show off to a good start.
A warm-up can be simple or elaborate. The simple one might consist of a few jokes, told by the comedian. The elaborate one, usually put on before big Hollywood broadcasts, may be the equivalent of a 45-minute variety show.
A Big Headache
When Al Jolson recently was heard telling the audience at the opening of his broadcast, “If you don’t laugh, get the hell out of here,” he was finishing the warm-up.
Unfortunately, he misjudged the time and the microphone was opened during the last remark. That happens every once in a while—often enough to give network officials a headache.
For Jolson it was a peculiar coincidence. He usually finishes his warm-up with the phrase “you ain’t heard nothing yet.” On this occasion he changed it, and probably wishes he hadn’t.
Different stars have their own routines for the warm-up. Fred Allen, for example, may talk about the wonders of Radio City and its inhabitants. Some of them, he says, have been wandering around its subterranean passages since the place was built and have never seen the light of day.
Red’s a Knockout
Edgar Bergen exchanges gags with Charlie McCarthy. Red Skelton really knocks himself out with acrobatics and pantomime. The jokesters on “Can You Top This” tell jokes.
Ralph Edwards whose “Truth or Consequences” show is a madhouse, takes the place apart during the warm-up. Stooges wander across the stage and through the audience in sort of an Olsen and Johnson routine.
But despite all these earnest efforts, the all-time high in warm-up gags ever pulled by a comedian was unintentional. He rushed onto the stage just before air time, slipped and fell flat on his face in front of the mike. The fall didn’t quite knock him unconscious, but he was so groggy that he didn't know what he was doing until the show was half over. The audience thought it was wonderful, and he got a big hand.

Let’s jump ahead ten years and look at two guys you never heard of, though their press agents managed to get them into four different syndicated columns in 1958.

TV Warmup Comedians Set the Mood in Studio
By REX POLIER
North American Newspaper Alliance
NEW YORK, Aug. 20 – Barney Martin and Artie Roberts are members of the strangest corps of television performers. They are comedians who are never seen on TV sets. And, in an industry in which popularity is rated in the millions, their weekly audience seldom exceeds 300.
Barney Martin and Artie Roberts are warmup men, the unsung funnymen who soften up audiences before the big show goes on. The two shows they work are the Eydie Gorme-Steve Lawrence program and Jan Murray's "Treasure Hunt.”
No TV star ever goes on the air before the audience is prepared. A “warmed-up” audience is ready to laugh, sympathetic to the show, willing to co-operate. A “cold” audience is unpredictable: anything might happen, from a wiseacre shouting ad libs to the M. C. to a well-wishing old lady calling answers to a quiz contestant. And, without a warm-up period, an audience might sit in stony silence while a comedian tosses off one gag after another.
It takes Barney and Artie about 45 minutes to get an audience into shape. For the Gorme-Lawrence Sunday night show, which is produced in Brooklyn, they begin in the buses (four of them) that bring the audience from Manhattan. Barney tells how they do it:
"We get dressed up in wacky costumes. Me, I wear Bermuda shorts and a crazy tie, and I carry a beach ball. Just as the bus starts to pull out I jump aboard and yell, ‘hey, driver, this bus going to Coney Island?’ It kills ‘em right off.”
En route, Barney and Artie keep changing buses and get into blustering arguments with one another over where to sit. They pass out balloons and bubble gum (“to make folks feet right at home”) and without cease, fire gags at the passengers.

By the time the buses arrive at the studios there isn’t a frown in the group. And the audience the TV cameras scan for transmission to Sioux City or New Orleans is one of happy, eagerly attentive faces. Off-stage and off-camera, however, Barney and Artie are mopping their brows. Their jobs are done.
Barney and Artie are only two of about two dozen accredited warmup men in the New York television industry.
Some are professional announcers who like to "ham it up" from time to time, others are members of production staffs who want to take cracks at being comedians. And a few, such as Barney and Artie, are professional funnymen hoping for a chance in the big time Sometimes a warmup man does get a break. For example Gene Wood did ouch a good job warming up audiences for the Arlene Francis show that Arlene made him the show's comic.
Among New York's veteran warmup men are Wayne Howell, who does the “Dotto” warmup this year, and who last year had no less than 22 shows to warm up! Another is Johnny Olson, veteran radio man who currently is doing the "Play Your Hunch” warmups.
But you'll never see the warmup man in action unless you get away from your TV set and come to the studio.

Bernard P. (Barney) Martin was an ex-policemen awarded medals twice for surviving gunfights and was the associate producer of “Treasure Hunt.” Artie Roberts served as a lieutenant in the merchant marine and used to go door-to-door selling Fuller Brushes while trying to make it in the Borscht Belt. They teamed up, warming up Steve Allen's audiences with announcer Gene Rayburn. In 1958, they set up a joke-swapping service for comedians. They also spent time on TV stages before the cameras were turned on, getting audiences ready for the big show ahead.

They weren’t laughing in July 1960 when they were charged ten counts of commercial bribery and conspiracy after being accused of splitting winnings with their friends they put on the quiz show ($6,420). Jan Murray himself went to NBC about eight months earlier with suspicions about the pair. Both got one-year suspended sentences after pleading guilty. Roberts survived the scandal and went to work—in front of Rotary Club lunches and on camera on Candid Camera. As for Barney Martin, he went on to better things. He died in 2005 at the age of 82, after a gig on TV playing Jerry Seinfeld’s father, Morty.

Hitching a Ride The Speedy Way

Speed lines and outlines predominate in one scene of Porky the Wrestler.

A wiener dog is trying to hitchhike to the wrestling matches.



The dog stretches out then zooms back into position. Here’s how the animator (and the painter) handles it. These are consecutive frames.



The cartoon was copyrighted in 1936 but released in early 1937. Elmer Wait gets an animation credit. He managed to live to see it. He died July 20, 1937 at the age of 23. To the right is an ad from the Los Angeles Evening Express when he won third prize in a contest in 1926. He was 12.

At the risk of beating the dead old grey mare, but on the “Porky 101” there’s a sound edit between the title theme music (“Puddin Head Jones”) and the first cue of the cartoon. I don’t know the reason for this because the soundtrack on other versions of the short is just fine. There’s also a picture jump and another edit when the scene changes to a wrestling fan lifting up a ratty old window shade to look outside.

Joe Dougherty is Porky, except for when he yoo-hoos like the future Daffy Duck when Mel Blanc takes over. Dougherty's cartoon voicing career was about to end as Leon Schlesinger added more and more professional actors to his roster.

This is the Tex Avery cartoon with the sequence where the bad guy wrestler swallows a pipe, starts blowing smoke like a locomotive, then Avery and the writers heap one train gag on top of another in a wonderful moment of twisted logic.

Two Crows From Tacos Backgrounds

Irv Weiner (on screen as Irv Wyner) was Friz Freleng’s background artist at the time the unit’s cartoons were released by Warner Bros. in 1956. One of the shorts he worked on was Two Crows From Tacos.

Here’s a reconstructed background that was panned to open the cartoon.



Some random backgrounds.



Let’s overlay a cel with tree on top of the background.



How’s this for design and colour? This is the background at the end of the cartoon.



This cartoon stars two lazy Mexican-stereotype crows and a grasshopper with no personality. For some reason, Tedd Pierce wrote this. It could be Warren Foster, who was creating stories for Freleng before and after this according to production numbers, was tied up with other duties. The same for animator Gerry Chiniquy, who is not credited as an animator on this short, but is on the cartoons begun by the unit before and afterward. (Abe Levitow directs several shorts with the Chuck Jones unit about this time).

Carl Stalling has the music credit, but the score sounds more like Milt Franklyn’s to me. And the score is mostly original, as opposed to plenty of sampling of familiar Warners-owned music.

Dollars For Day

It took a little over seven years for the pieces of the Jack Benny radio show to be put together.

The last one was found for the start of the 1939-40 season. Kenny Baker had suddenly quit after accepting an exclusive contract with the Texas Company (he was billed for the last show of the previous season but never appeared) and Benny needed a new vocalist.

That’s when Dennis Day was added to the regular cast of Mary Livingstone, Don Wilson, Phil Harris and Eddie Anderson.

I liked Baker better as a vocalist but there’s no denying Dennis was able to expand his role as a timid singer into a comedic actor, with over-the-top dialects and impressions that were more than good enough to work in the context of the show. I must admit I laughed more at Day than Baker. And Day was no dummy when it came to the business side, either.

The North American Newspaper Alliance published this profile on May 11, 1950. Only in print could someone make a “Chesterfield” reference to a star of the Lucky Strike show; a network or ad agency would never allow it.

Dennis Day’s Income Close to Crosby and Hope
By HAROLD HEFFERNAN
HOLLYWOOD, May 10—(NANA)—Millions of radio fans who listen to him heckling and being heckled by Jack Benny on the radio every Sunday have come to regard Dennis Day as only a naive mamma’s boy with a rare tenor voice. Dennis is a lot more than that. Still on the sunny side of 35, he’s scampering up the financial ladder so fast that the mighty Crosby, Hope and Godfrey must soon move over and make room.
Dennis revealed on the set of his new movie, “I’ll Get By," now In production on the 20th Century-Fox lot, that already run up such a tote on the income board that his occasional personal-appearance tours around the country mean nothing on the profit side. But Dennis feels the P. A.s are part of his responsibility.
“Even If you lose money on a tour,” he explained in a strident tone far removed from the guileless manner affected professionally, "you must let your radio fans see you in person. It’s a tough assignment to take on at the end of a working year, but necessary. You play six shows a day and sing eight or nine songs at each. And you can chat with the people—Lord love em! This year they’re going to see me in a motion picture, so no P.-A. tour. I get a real vacation on my boat as a result.”
Has Two Air Shows
Squeezing a picture into his work schedule requires some tight planning for radioman Day. He has two air shows—his own, “A Day in the Life of Dennis Day,” and his stint on the Jack Benny show. He owns two music-publishing companies and personally looks over all material submitted after it gets the green light from his brother, John McNulty, who manages his business affairs. Also he must make enough recordings to fill public demand—no small task.
“A record put me where I am today,” said Dennis, “so I keep pretty close watch on that end of the business. I was studying law at Manhattan college and my singing and imitations were regarded as a bit of play by myself and my family. I had an appendectomy and while I was recuperating I would amuse myself by cutting a record or two by way of passing the time. One day some fellows from a Canadian recording outfit were in the next booth. I was recording “Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair” and when I finished they offered to buy the disc. They gave me $75 and suddenly I was in business.
“I used to sing now and again on a radio show, just for spending money, but I was all for criminal law—a branch of the profession which has always interested me immensely. About this time Kenny Baker pulled out of the Jack Benny show and they were looking for a tenor. Mary Livingstone heard my recording of ‘Jeanie’ and persuaded Jack to audition me. I guess I sang 20 songs before we were through. There were so many applications for the spot that I had no hope of getting it. You can imagine my surprise when my name was called out by Jack.
Has Wit and Poise
“I said ‘Yes, please!’ I was very nervous, my voice was higher than normal and eager to please as a spaniel. Jack turned to Mary and said ‘That’s our boy—I want him just like that—eager, shy, with his mother somewhere in the background all the time.’”
That, Dennis said, is the type character he plays in “I’ll Get By”—the naive lad who says the things other people only think.
In real life Dennis, (born Eugene Dennis McNulty in New York's Bronx) is a lively, personable fellow who dresses meticulously in British-tailored clothes. He’s quick with a witty retort and his social poise is enviable. He can balance a cup of tea and a sandwich and give a rattling good interview with the air of a Chesterfield.
His lawyer mind prompts him to analyze each angle of his work. He plans a season’s programs as he would a lawsuit. He takes a singing lesson nearly every day.
“You can't afford to drift in the entertainment field,” Dennis remarked. “There are too many clever fellows about and a lot of ‘em can sing.”
He lives in a modest section of Los Angeles and is one of the few big-money men in the Hollywood entertainment world who has no swimming pool. His wife, the former Peggy Ahlmquist, is a non-professional. They have two small sons, Dennis and Patrick.

Dennis added to his brood and carried on appearing, off and on, with Jack in between a steady career of nightclubs, fairs, a touring company of “Brigadoon” and the like. Jack’s regular weekly appearances on TV ended in 1965. Day talked to Vancouver Sun reporter Les Wedman about it, and his career, in a story published May 6, 1965.

Dennis Day is feeling pretty sad that The Jack Benny Show is being dropped from television, not because it means he's losing the job he's had for 25 years but because he knows how tough it will be for the famed comedian not to be working regularly.
"With nine kids I can't afford to retire," Day declared. "Jack isn't exactly penniless but he isn't happy unless he's working.
Of course, the way things are in TV, all of this season's Benny shows were on film by the end of last January. However, Day explained it wasn't until just a little while ago that anyone knew that NBC wasn't renewing the program.
"Gomer Pyle did it," Day said. "Our ratings just dropped and sponsors only look at the ratings." One sponsor was willing to pick up his part of the show again next fall but with Benny's series being the most expensive half hour on the air, Day said, it would have meant the comedian taking a substantial cut.
"It's an end of an era," Day added. "No other comedian made the successful transition from radio to television. Benny has been doing TV since 1950, which means he's been on for 15 years."
Day, who's really 47 but insists he's younger because Jack Benny is only 39 and nobody on the show can be older, says his association with Benny has meant everything to him. "We've been like one family—Don Wilson, Rochester, Mahlon Merrick, the writers."
Benny, said Dennis, is a generous man, and all the time he's been with him he's never heard the comedian get angry at anyone.
Day is here for a singing engagement at Ken Stauffer's New Cave Theatre Restaurant. At the end of May he goes to London for some TV appearances and then to entertain servicemen in Germany.
He will be doing Brigadoon in San Francisco. He's hoping for more guest shots on TV like his Burke's Law and Bing Crosby Show this season. He'd also like to do concerts and a Broadway show but has no plans for a TV show of his own.
He once had one—The Dennis Day Show, with Cliff (Charley Weaver) Arquette. They were on for 2 1/2 years.
The half-year is accounted for by the show being knocked off the air by a more popular opponent . . . the I Love Lucy series.
Jack Benny has several specials lined up for next season's TV and he'll also guest on shows and make personal appearances, Day said. Benny doesn't have any other television shows his production company owns. "He hasn't been very lucky with the ones he did have—the Marge and Gower Champion show, the Gisele MacKenzie show and the Wayne and Shuster summer series," the singer stated.
Day has made more from The Jack Benny Show this year than ever, because CBS is running the old shows on its daytime schedule. This means residual payments for everybody.
He also gets paid handsomely for two TV commercials—one for cigars and another for a detergent. Day said he doesn't smoke at all so he doesn't mind trying to improve on the bad image cigars got in the days when Edward G. Robinson and other movie bad guys were smoking them.
But he occasionally does do dishes so he can really be convincing about soap.

Looking at the big picture, Dennis wasn’t a huge star. His TV series never achieved the popularity of shows starring other singers, such as Perry Como, Andy Williams or Dean Martin. The advent of rock and roll didn’t help his music career.

In the end, he’ll always be associated, more than anything, as a member of the Jack Benny cast. As a 1965 Vancouver Province story put it “the ageless Benny...frequently slips into Dennis Day’s conversation.” But the Benny boost wouldn’t have happened if Day didn’t have talent. Day arguably went farther in show business than any of Jack’s other vocalists. Ask Michael Bartlett.

A Henny the Bear Cartoon

It’s a safe bet that you’ve never seen a cartoon starring Henny the Bear.

In fact, I’ll bet you’ve never heard of Henny the Bear.

That’s because the animation studio for Henny was in a room in a house in Johnson City, Tennessee.

The story of Henny is one of a number we have stumbled across involving teenagers who wanted to be animated cartoonists, created their own characters and stories, then went to work.

One was Glenn Francis Dale. He later graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Tennessee. Evidently he was a draft dodger. In 1968, he was indicted by a grand jury for what apparently was non-enlistment. He moved to Toronto. The other, Larry Dale Carroll, not only served in Vietnam, but awarded several medals. He attended East Tennessee State University and later was employed by the university as a graphic artist. His obituary in the Johnson City Press in 2000 states “as a high school student he created cartoons, advertisements and commercials that were used by the local media.” It appears the two partially achieved their goal.

The city’s Chronicle newspaper profiled them, as well as Henny, in its edition of March 30, 1958.

Two Local Boys Produce Their Own Animated Cartoons Starring Henny
By DOROTHY HAMILL
Henny is a personality you’ll want to know better. Henny is a teddy bear who, it's safe to predict, is going to bring fame to his creators. For Henny is the hero in a series of animated cartoons designed, planned, written, drawn and filmed by two 16-year-old boys, Glenn Dale and Larry Carroll.
The Dale and Carroll Productions, of which Henny is star, has been in operation for two years. And it’s astounding what these two boys have accomplished in that time, building much of their own equipment, experimenting, doing the hundreds of painstaking drawings necessary for animation, writing their own story sequences. To borrow some adjectives from the movie industry—stupendous and colossal. [Tralfaz note: “And it’s good, too!” From “Daffy Duck in Hollywood”].
High School Juniors
The young artists—whose parents are Mr. and Mrs. Glenn Dale, West Locust Street, and Mr. and Mrs. E. S. Carroll, West Grand Avenue—have known each other since elementary school days and are now juniors at Science Hill High School. They are both highly gifted in art, and have done some beautiful oil paintings.

After reading the story of Walt Disney, they became interested in that vastly technical field of animated cartoons. "We used to make flip books,” they explained, “the kind where you’d draw characters on each page and they would move as you flipped the pages.” And when Glenn got a movie camera for Christmas, they were ready to begin film animation.
They chose their central figure from a teddy bear Glenn had had when a child. "Henny is to us what Mickey Mouse is to Disney," they declared. During vacations and weekends of the school year, they tried out ideas, discarded some. and investigated new methods. Now they have five series on film, and two they are presently working on. To make it even more remarkable, they’ve done a sound tract, synchronized with the film, for one episode, and they even wrote the theme music themselves. The tune is a catchy, quick-beat rhythm, which they played for recording on their clarinets, with Glenn's brother, Donald, helping on the piano. They also did sound effects and spoke Henny lines.
Work At Dale Home
The workshop of Dale and Carroll Productions is a room in the Dale home. Most professional looking it is, too, with a couple of adjoining tables, typewriter, cameras, paints, record player, microphone, story board.
“First,” Glenn said, "we try to get an idea of the story, making it as original as we possibly can. We feel that originality is very important in movie-making. Then we sit around and discuss the story, and when we have it in mind, we write down the outline.”
During this process, they decide on the characters and what each character will do. After that, they make a series of small sketches highlighting the main bits of action. Some of these they do in pen and ink or, as on a recent occasion, they use shoe polish as a paint material. A few of these individual pictures are pinned on the “story board” which they made of beaverboard. With these before them, they can continue filling in the story idea.
“Every camera angle has to be figured, too,” Larry continued, “and then, of course, comes the drawing." For a seven-minute cartoon, they revealed, over 9,000 separate frames or drawings are needed. If, for instance, Henny should be throwing a ball, a series of sketches must be made, in each one the position of arm changed every so slightly.
Separate Films
Every sketch, also, must be filmed separately. On the movie camera is a device which enables them to film one frame at a time While Glenn operates the camera, Larry moves the pictures, or vice versa.
"Lighting has been a problem and we’ve experimented a great deal," Glenn said. They use photo flood lights, and several are necessary. Each one lasts only about three hours.
The first three cartoons they made are what they refer to as “gags.” They are mainly isolated incidents such as Henny investigating a firecracker that blows up. “The House That Henny Built,” completed about a year ago, is more ambitious. In this the teddy bear decides to build a house in the woods. He stops to rescue a rabbit attacked by a fierce bear, and when the bear goes for Henny, the other animals succor him and then aid in completing the house. This is the cartoon for which they composed background music and did sound effects and spoken lines. The sound tract was made to synchronize with the film.
In the beginning, Glenn and Larry drew in background, then cut it out and superimposed it on the picture. Now they draw their character on a sheet of heavy cellophane and place it on top of the background.

Last year they built themselves a multiplane—a contrivance whereby the camera can be set at the top and take pictures on three different levels, thus giving depth. The homemade multiplane wasn’t sturdy enough, so now they are having a stronger one made for them. The boys designed what they wanted and gave plans to the company building it.
Mix Own Paints
Glenn and Larry mix their own paints, using mostly water color, with oils for the background. They also constructed their sound equipment, using a camera tripod for the base, with another tripod on top and the microphone hung on one arm.
By this time, Henny has become a real person to them. "Henny is the kind of character who always gets himself into unpleasant situations, but he has an ingenious way of getting out of them,” they said. “He looks stupid, but he’s really intelligent. And he's invariably pleasant.”
At the moment, the boys are working hard a cartoon in which Henny goes to the moon. They’ve been reading and doing research on outer space to make the background as scientific as possible. They are using some Stravinksy music as background, and plan to tape in some tunes of their own composition. They’re trying to finish the film by the end of school, and a friend is going to send it to Walt Disney. This friend, by the way, has a relative who close to Disney, so that film is sure to get a viewing by the great expert.
Another cartoon in the process of development is called “For Sale,” and concerns Henny’s attempt to buy a dog. “The idea here,” Glenn declared. “is boy meets dog, boy loses dog, boy gets dog.”
Although this is a close working corporation, once a story is planned out, the boys can draw separately at their individual homes. But preliminary drafting, filming, and the major portion of the work go on in the workshop.
Would Stay In Field
Larry and Glenn both would like to go into the animated cartoon field professionally when they are fully grown. To that end, they are endeavoring to learn all they can on motion picture techniques, ordering books to read and gathering any material on the subject. The amazing amount they’ve learned so far has come largely from their experimenting and the developing of their own methods.
They are now experimenting with color film, and plan to see if they can do something on the principle of cinemascope. Stereophonic sound is another idea they want to follow through, revealing to a bewildered reporter that this means getting voices at different spots on the screen.
To illustrate the thoroughness with which these boys work, they do a short test reel in order to check lighting, characters, etc. The expressions on the faces of the animals, in the films we were privileged to see, are marvelous. And the animated action is something that left us breathless with wonderment.
Other plans in the hopper of this brilliant twosome include a possible cartoon strip for their school paper, and the preparation of some television commercials with animated characters. They will probably make up new characters for this last project.
But Henny will remain their top star. Just this week they got Henny copyrighted. That teddy bear, without doubt, is going places. Move over, Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse! Here comes Henny!



You’d think, judging by the huge eyes and pupils on Henny, the guys were influenced by Japanese animation. But in Tennessee of 1958, I doubt they ever saw any.

Their style is interesting enough that it’s a shame the series never went further, especially if the animation is good as described by reporter Dorothy Hamill. (Yes, I know. Same name as a figure skater. Let’s move on).

However, we hope we’ve been able to provide you with an interesting footnote in the history of animation toward the end of the Golden Age.

Cat Faces

Jerry attacks Tom with the lid of a garbage can in The Midnight Snack (1941).



MGM cartoons feature dry-brush work and multiples. You don’t see many of the latter because they are used as in-betweens to quickly move the characters. In this scene, you see a lot of them as the vibration action is on screen for several seconds.



This shows you MGM had a talented paint department, which is considered the lowest rung in the animation system (outside of a cel washer, which took no artistic ability). Ink and paint people get little recognition, which is why I was so pleased the late Martha Sigall published her memoires, giving fans of the Warners and MGM cartoons a fresh viewpoint.

Incidentally, publicity from MGM at the time of release named the cat and mouse Jasper and Jerry. The maid (played by Lillian Randolph) never had a name. You can read the story here.