Not Enough Benny, Says Critic

What does a star do in between radio and TV seasons?

In the case of Jack Benny, at least in 1950, he hits the road with a varied company and raises money for charity.

Jack and company scheduled 21 stops starting May 16 that year, including one in Montreal. We’ve mentioned before that Canadian radio did not carry Jack’s show during the regular season after he changed sponsorships to American Tobacco. But we note a story in the Montreal Gazette of Tuesday, May 30, that CJAD broadcast Jack’s show for the first time the previous Sunday night as a promotion for his date at the Forum. Several transcribed shows were heard on the station on other Sunday nights at 7 when Benny was off the air for the summer in the U.S. (Oddly, CFCF was the Montreal station that picked up other CBS programming, including Amos and Andy, and Edgar Bergen).

The Gazette and the Montreal Star covered the Benny entourage during their short stay. You can see a picture from one paper to the right. The press revealed Phil Harris and Eddie Anderson (yes, the Star used his actual name) spent an afternoon at the track. A gentleman named Camil Deroches played a real-life version of Sheldon Leonard’s tout and apparently earned the pair some money. Some of the stories were non-bylined and generic, meaning they were likely standard hand-outs by Jack’s press relations people.

Both papers reviewed the performance. The Gazette’s on June 3 was brief and to the point.

Benny Plays Modest Part In Show He Brings Here
Jack Benny drew a large audience to the Forum last night with a show in which he played a very modest part. We discovered him as a master of ceremonies, and he can play the violin in spite of his supposed concentration on learning the other Franz Schubert's The Bee.
Benny was handicapped at the Forum by having to control a very large auditorium. He is a radio man whose whole approach to entertainment must, under the circumstances, be intimate. The superb timing, the instant wisecrack of the radio could not possibly have been achieved under these circumstances.
But the public liked him. Phil Harris was his strongest support. Harris worked like a trojan. He directed the orchestra and he gagged with Benny.
Between them they carried the first half of the show. Besides Benny, Harris and his orchestra there were some good acts interspersed. The Stuart Morgan Dancers were excellent. The Wiere Brothers were regular vaudevillians from Europe. Everyone welcomed Benny's first right hand man, Rochester, at the end of the program. There was also Vivian Blaine with songs.

The Star, on June 5, was much more fulsome in its review by S. Morgan-Powell. The typesetter got fouled up in one line.

A First Rate Show
Jack Benny Scores Hit
Big Reception by Seven Thousand at The Forum
SEVEN thousand Montrealers attended the Jack Benny Show at the Forum Friday night. Among them there were probably not more than a handful who remembered Mr. Benny's last public appearance in this city when he was seen on a vaudeville bill at the Princess Theatre. He was not at that time widely known in Canada but since then he has become a familiar entertainer to literally millions of people all over the North American continent through the medium of the radio. He was recently voted by a nation-wide USA radio poll the most popular artist on the air.
Watching him and listening to him through his performance at the Forum, it was easy to understand why he has held so vast a public over a quarter of a century.
* * *
IN the first place Benny is a natural comedian endowed with a dry and pungent wit. He has an keen and excellent wit. He has an easy and fluent delivery, an excellent speaking voice, and a smooth, polished style that enables him to get all his points easily across the footlights. He never seem to be making an obvious bid for applause, or to be handling comedy of set design; though his programs are undoubtedly carefully prepared, they carry the complete illusion of spontaneity, and the quick repartee, the skilful timing, and the intimate rapport with the audience which he establishes at the outset and maintains throughout the evening enable him to keep the stream of humour flowing unceasingly.
Mr. Benny has capitalised throughout his radio career on a comedy style which depends upon his being a target for his associate performers just as much as they are targets for his own barbed wit. This has enabled him to build up a reputation unique in the entertainment world. It explains his radio success, and it lends itself admirably to stage show work as well. It is invariably sure-fire; there are no planned pauses for pencilled-in applause. Mr. Benny wins his audience with witty comment on his first appearance, and he never loses touch with them. Chuckles, roars of laughter, rounds of applause testify to the fact that the audience is enjoying Mr. Benny quite as much as he appears to be enjoying himself.
* * *
IF one criticism suggests itself, it is that Mr. Benny takes perhaps too subservient a position in the general show, but when one regards it in retrospect it is seen as one of the secrets of his perennial success. He and Phil Harris are at it hammer and tongs all the time they are on the stage. I think it would have been better if nobody had used the microphone on Friday, because it magnified the volume of several of the voices almost deafeningly, and in consequence marred the finesse of some exchanges and also blurred the words of some of Phil Harris' songs. He is a resourceful comedian and long experience with Mr. Benny has taught him how to maintain the balance of the comedy. He does not need spotlight help, nor does his exchange of gags need the physical display he employs in their delivery; this also seems to apply to his direction of his band. There is no doubt, however, that he is a tower of support to the show.
Rochester, Benny’s man Friday, got a great welcome but his delivery also suffered from overemphasis due to the far too loud PA system which once more requires material toning down at the Forum. Nothing, however, could interfere with the delightful comedy of his soft shoe shuffling dance.
* * *
ADVANCE stories about the Benny Show had emphasized the high quality of the supporting acts. In this there was no exaggeration. The Wiere Brothers are in the front rank of the very best comedy trios in our entertainment world today. Their European reputation is of the highest and they have duplicated it on this side of the Atlantic.
Their violin playing is a riot in itself. They really can play the violin when they want to, but they show what a wealth of comedy can be got out of it in the fantastic things they do when they combine their diverting tricks on the strings with some of the cleverest comic dancing Montreal has seen for decades. They are essentially clowns of the cleverest type, and it is by clowning that they present an act which has no parallel before the North American public today, if we may accept the testimony of the American press. The audience gave them an ovation, and it was well deserved.
* * *
THEN there were the Peiro Brothers from South America, whose juggling with hats and sticks is, so far as I know unique, in today’s stage shows. Their sense of balance is uncanny. They do what you never expect them to do in a way you could never have imagined, and it is pure comedy throughout.
We have had the Stuart Morgan dancers here before, and they are always welcome. The manner which these four athletes handle their girl partner in whirls and tosses and balances has to be seen to be believed. A dozen times you feel certain she is going to crash, but she always ends up in a graceful pose in the air. All these specialty acts scored definite hits, and so did Vivian Blaine, who is a first-class screen comedy singer with an effective microphone technique and a voice she has under good control.
The concluding appearance of Mr. Benny with his hillbilly band is the best thing of its kind I have seen in a stage show here. Altogether, the Jack Benny Show must be rated as excellent in comedy, in balance and, let it also be added, in clean entertainment. Mr. Benny proves that a stage show can be free from any suggestiveness and yet keep an audience laughing all evening.

Jack made another appearance in Montreal the following year. This one was on the radio. He narrated a transcribed broadcast on October 26 for the United Israel Appeal in a programme called “The Incredible Village,” starring John Hodiak. A special message by Dr. George Stream, Chairman of the Montreal Campaign, was part of the programme.

This production aired on CBS and its affiliates the night before, and depicted the story of thousands of blind immigrants to Israel who needed special help to adjust to their new home in Gedera. The goal was to raise 35 million dollars for food, housing and medicine for the village.

It seemed if there was a charity in need, Jack Benny was there to help.

Man on the Land

There must have been an incredible feeling of irony going through the UPA studios when they won the contract to make Man On The Land.

It was an industrial short released in 1951. UPA wasn’t exactly populated by members of the John Birch Society. Director John Hubley and publicity man Charles Daggett lost their jobs because of pressure from right-wingers (Bill Scott was treated to the same fate thanks to guilt by association). Yet here was the studio crafting a 15-minute film for Corporate America—and Big Oil, at that.

It was clothed a bit in 1950s leftist sensibilities. Through the film, there is a guitar-strumming folk singer (off screen). After footage of a farmer and a truck driver, he sings “That’s what it takes to make a country strong. A man on the land who knows right from wrong.” The only thing here is “wrong” means the supposed ideals of pinkos and Commies, and the “man on the land” is supposed to be “ready to fight” to protect the glorious American free enterprise system.

UPA gets a credit at the end. None of the people who worked on this cartoon are mentioned, but we do know a few of them, thanks to publications of the day. The musical score and folk song were provided by Hoyt Curtin, who made a number of films for UPA before being hired at Hanna-Barbera. The Nov. 1953 issue of Music Journal also reveals the singer is Terry Gilkyson. Art Direction, in its April 1953 edition, identified Bill Hurtz as the director.

There was something called the National Lubricating Grease Institute. Its monthly publication was The Institute Spokesman, which wrote in its Oct. 1951 issue:

New York — The dramatic story of how man has been able to wrest today’s high standard of living from Nature and the Land is the theme of a new motion picture sponsored by Oil Industry Information Committee.
Entitled “Man on the Land,” the action-packed motion picture was made for the Committee by United Productions of America—the firm which won an Academy Award in 1950 for an animated motion picture [Gerald McBoing Boing]. The same style of animation and full technicolor is used in “Man on the Land.”

This unusual film tells the story of agriculture in 16 swiftly-paced minutes— from the time that man first scratched the earth with a forked stick to the present age of oil-powered tractors, petroleum fertilizers, insecticides and other petrochemicals.
It illustrates graphically how every one of the nation’s 150 million people benefits in one way or another from the side by side progress and the inseparable relationship of two of America’s great industries—agriculture and petroleum. A ballad singer carries the story instead of the conventional narration.
The new motion picture is now being made available to oil companies, trade associations, agriculture societies and organizations, and other interested parties. It is available in both 35 millimeter and 16 millimeter prints. The film is expected to receive thousands of showings from coast to coast, particularly during the period of October 14-20, when the industry observes Oil Progress Week.
Production of the motion picture was supervised by Film Counselors, Inc., of New York, and a subcommittee of the Oil Industry Information Committee headed by Philip C. Humphrey, public relations director for The Texas Company, New York.

Humphrey, told the Public Relations Journal of Feb. 1952 the short played at the Royx Theatre in New York for three straight weeks for free. The film was also broadcast on the DuMont network on its Better Living Television Theater (Wednesdays, 10:30 p.m., WABD). It was propaganda, pure and simple, with the broadcast being preceded by a panel discussion involving the chairman of Seaboard Oil, the president of Power Oil and the agricultural counsellor for the aforementioned institute (as per the May 1954 issue).

The film is mentioned in a feature article about UPA in the April 1953 edition of Art Director & Studio News. It was penned by the PR man whose career at the studio was killed in the blacklist.

UPA breathes modern spirit and style into traditionally romantic movie
CHARLES DAGGETT, UNITED PRODUCTIONS OF AMERICA
“The cleverest movies, foot by foot and frame by sophisticated frame, that are coming out of Hollywood are the animated cartoons made by United Productions of America.”
Thus the Los Angeles Times for Sunday, February 8, 1953...
“United Productions of America — familiarly known as UPA — is the new movie-cartoon studio that has recently worked to the fore as a virtually revolutionary producer in the field of the animated film. UPA is imposing what amounts to the spirit and style of modern art upon the traditionally romantic and restricted area of the movie cartoon. The UPA people are unhampered by any urge toward the literal. Their drawing and designs are imagistic, contrived mainly from subtle colors and fluid lines.
“Staffed for the most part by artists with young minds and progressive ideas, whose talents extend beyond the field of the screen cartoon to the fine arts (many of them are exhibited in the galleries of Los Angeles and New York), the UPA studio out in Burbank, Calif., is a West Coast center of artistic industry. The whole place — a cheerful California ranch-type studio building — breathes freedom, imagination and taste.”
Thus Bosley Crowther, motion picture critic of the New York Times, in his Sunday magazine piece on December 21, 1952 . . .

These are only two of the scores of superlative comment UPA has earned in the past few years with its brilliant new animated film techniques. Mr. Crowther’s on-the-scene report particularly emphasizes the key to UPA’s success. This success lies in the hearts and minds of an outstanding group of artists who are permitted the fullest freedom in expressing themselves. At the head of this group is Stephen Bosustow, 42 year old President of UPA, who provides the enlightened production leadership that permits artists to work as they please in the animated film medium.
The chief differences between UPA’s entertainment and commercial films and the films of other companies are those of story, design, color, animation, and contemporary art. UPA’s greatest impact in the motion picture field has been made through its entertainment films such as “Gerald McBoing-Boing,” “Rooty Toot Toot,” the Near-sighted Mister Magoo films, and scores of others produced for Columbia Pictures’ release. However,
UPA recently blazed new trails in the commercial film area with “More Than Meets the Eye,” which it produced for CBS Radio. This was the striking story of CBS Radio’s tremendous influence over the buying habits of millions of Americans and was the first business documentary film ever to be told in terms of abstract modern art.
The ingredients used by Bosustow to build UPA into prominence in the brief span of years were business initiative, an artistic and creative background, good taste in story and art selection, a marked organizing and executive talent and a large amount of intestinal fortitude.
Ten years ago, Bosustow was working for the Hughes Aircraft Co., as head of production scheduling and control on the giant experimental flying boat Howard Hughes was building. His business sense and his ability to express an idea in simple drawings attracted the attention of the Consolidated Shipyards in Long Beach (Cal.). The shipyard needed a film to teach some safety rules to welders. Bosustow made the picture, a slide film called “Sparks and Chips Get the Blitz” and began his career as head of an industrial animated motion picture company.
Within two years his Industrial Films and Poster Service had turned out score of animated training films for the Navy, the Army, the Office of War Information, the State Department and several business firms.
There were a half dozen employees when UPA was incorporated eight years ago. Today there are 75 employees, the company does a $750,000 yearly business, has its own studio in Hollywood and consistently produces the most modern and mature animated cartoons in its field. In New York, UPA also has a studio that is devoted to making television commercials and industrial documentary films. UPA won the New York Art Directors Club award for the best television commercial of 1950 and won both the New York Art Directors Club and the Los Angeles Art Directors Club awards for the best television commercials of 1951.
UPA, although it won film awards from the beginning of its existence, was really “discovered” when it produced “Gerald McBoing-Boing,” the Academy award winning cartoon for 1950. This year, for instance, UPA won three Academy nominations for its productions. In the cartoon field, nominations were for “Madeline,” a charming children’s story by Ludwig Bemelmans, directed by Robert Cannon, and “Pink and Blue Blues,” a rousing chapter in Mister Magoo’s career as a baby sitter, directed by Pete Burness. In the documentary short subjects field, UPA’s production of “Man Alive!”, for the American Cancer Society, also was nominated. This film was directed by William T. Hurtz.



Cannon, who directed “Gerald McBoing-Boing,” and “Madeline,” has a particularly fluent ability to make whimsical and amusing films. Burness, who does the Mister Magoo series for UPA, is also one of the most skilled directors in the animated film field. Hurtz, who did the Cancer Society picture, two years ago, directed “Man on the Land” for the American Petroleum Institute, and it won a Freedom Foundation award in 1952. At the present time, Hurtz has switched over to the entertainment field and is now finishing the “Unicorn in the Garden,” a grim and amusing story of domesticity by the great American wit, James Thurber. Ted Parmelee, another of UPA’s directors, is now making one of the most experimental films UPA has attempted. This is Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart.” The Poe story is a horror tale and does not follow the conventional cartoon story line. Artists working with Parmelee on this film have been allowed to do highly abstract backgrounds, which should make the short picture a melodramatic shocker.
In New York, the directors are Abe Liss and Gene Deitch. Deitch specializes in TV commercial direction. Liss also works on commercial films but presently is directing one of UPA’s entertainment cartoons for Columbia release.
Among the artists who contribute so much to the outstanding quality of UPA films are Paul Julian, Jules Engel, Robert McIntosh, Robert Dranko, Michi Kataoka, Sterling Sturtevant, C. L. Hartman, and Abe Liss.
UPA’s films have met with wide acclaim throughout Europe as well as the United States. The company now has plans for making a full-length feature. In this production, UPA will adhere to the use of fine modern art, modern music and adult story telling. Among the stories being considered for production are James Thurber’s “Battle of the Sexes,” and “Don Quixote.”

You can watch a muddy dub of the short below. The voices aren’t named, but Vic Perrin is the narrator and Jerry Hausner as the scoffer who appears through history.

Flip Bit

These images were a bit puzzling to me. What IS that thing biting Flip anyway?

This is from the early Flip the Frog cartoon Flying Fists, where he is preparing for a boxing match. Earlier in the scene he is “punching a bag.” I think it’s supposed to be a pear, but I’ll accept anyone else’s guesses.

He knocks the bag around him and it grows a face.

Iwerks is the only person credited but the score must be by Carl Stalling.

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.