Hicks

Dumbo remains, as far as I’m concerned, one of the finest animation accomplishments of the Walt Disney studio. One of the most impressive sequences of that feature is the dance of the pink elephants. One of the animators responsible was a gentleman named William Hicks Lokey.

Hicks Lokey was a native of Birmingham and a Phi Kappa Psi at Vanderbilt University, graduating in 1926. Next stop: a career in animation.

The local papers wrote about Lokey a number of times—his parents remained in Birmingham—so allow us to reprint a couple. First is a Birmingham Post article by New York correspondent Helen Warden. By this time, Lokey was working at the top studio in New York.

Hundreds Of Drawings Made For Movie Cartoon
Hicks Lokey, Former Birmingham Man Achieves Success As Betty Boop, Popeye And Little King Artist; Months Spent On One Release
Oct. 7, 1935.
Dear Alyce:
I invited Hicks Lokey in for lunch yesterday. I wanted hear about his work on Betty Boop and Popeye-the-Sailor!
Mr. Lokey’s father and mother, Dr. and Mrs. Charles Lokey of Birmingham, can be very proud of their son. He’s a grand person, with a nice sense of humor. (He’d have to have that to use Betty and Popeye for his guinea pigs.)
“I’m afraid I’ll have to eat and run,” Hicks explained, as he joined mother and myself at the luncheon table. “We’re working on a new Little King picture. I've got the Opera Singer on my hands, and she isn’t easy to handle!”
“Is she temperamental?”

"Yes. Want to drop down meet her this afternoon?”
“Perhaps,” I hesitated. "I’ll decide later. I’m afraid of difficult women!”
Mr. Lokey and his wife (the former Betty Louise Dangler, sister of an old schoolmate) live on Brooklyn Heights at 26 Middagh-st. The Heights are just across the East River. "We love the place,” Hicks said. “The houses are quaint, the streets are quiet and there is a neighborhood playhouse where we can go and hiss the villain!”
"How long since you’ve been back in Birmingham?” I asked, offering him a lamb chop.
"About five years,” he said. "But mother was up here last Thanksgiving. I’ve been with Max Fleischer two years. Before that I worked with Van Beuren on Aesop's Fables I started animating five years ago.”
“Have you always drawn?”
"I guess so. When I was a kid in school at Birmingham, they used to hop on me for sketching in my books!”
"Where did you study the art?”
“At the Art Students’ League here, and the Grand Central School of Art. I like this dessert—” changing the subject!
How do you animate your pictures?” I persisted.
“That’s a long story. Come meet the Grand Opera Singer, then I'll show you ‘round!”
Max Fleischer's offices are at 1600 Broadway. His factory—for that's just what the bee hive reminds me of—takes up three floors. Mr. Fleischer employs 250 people, mostly artists. Hicks Lokey is one of the chief animators.
"Meet the Opera Singer,” he said, when I arrived at his office. He held a pile of pencil drawings up for inspection. They were all sketches of one figure, a funny fat lady who looked like Mrs. Plush-Horse.
“She’s hard!” Hicks said. “I’m having trouble making her arms reach across her chest, when she trills.
"Is the sound worked out here?”
“No, we just have the music script.”
From what I picked up, I guess the whole thing, every story of Popeye, Betty Boop or any of the other animated cartoon characters which Max Fleischer controls start in the nut department. “There are six nuts,” Hicks said, “who work up ideas and wisecracks. They pass them on to us in manuscript form. We draw our conception of the characters in the rough!”
Then these sketches are given to assistants who work them out in detail. One batch of artists does nothing but ink in. Another flock colors the pictures and still another gang works on backgrounds. The result is a Betty Boop or Popeye reel!
"How many drawings do you make for picture?” I asked Hicks.
"I average about 1200,” he said. “It depends on the action. Sometimes the number runs higher!”
It takes about three months to do a full length film. Popeye, Sinbad and The Little King are in work now. "It's very funny,” said Hicks. “The Little King runs away from the Opera Singer's concert to a Betty Boop show!”
When Hicks stops drawing, he goes to a farm he’s bought near Southbury, Conn. “It’s a swell place,” he said. “Thirty-three acres. I haven’t built a house yet. But we just like to drive up and walk on land that belongs to us!”
A laurel wreath should go to Hicks Lokey for succeeding in a unique profession.
I have my eye on some more Birmingham boys who have made good in the big town. But—that’s for my next letter!

The Post mentioned him a number of times over successive years, featuring him again on its pages in October 27, 1948.

After graduating from Vanderbilt, Lokey worked for the Fables Studio owned by Amedee Van Beuren and run by Paul Terry until 1929. The 1930 Census for New York says he was an “independent” artist. Evidently he returned to the renamed Van Beuren Productions, then to the Fleischers; “Uncle Max” fired him in 1937 for his involvement in the strike against the studio. His next stop was at Walter Lantz in January 1938 and then Disney before entering the military during World War Two, enlisting July 20, 1941. Lokey returned to Disney after being discharged on February 16, 1947.

Three Alabamians Work On Disney Characters
Walt Disney, of course, is the father of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, but a Birmingham man certainly is at least a stepfather of these and other animated characters that romp across the nation’s screen to delight movie-goers.
He’s Hicks Lokey, 43, Birmingham artist and son of Dr. and Mrs. C.W. Lokey, Sr., 4344 Cliff-rd.
Although he was born in Talladega, this veteran animator in the Disney studios first was acclaimed as an artist by a kindergarten teacher here.
This talent with pen and sketchpad was heartily supported by his parents and then by teachers at Paul Hayne High, where he studied for a year before going to Castle Heights Military Academy, Lebanon, Tenn.
STUDIES ART
But things military took second place to art and Hicks went to Vanderbilt and then to New York to study with the Art Students League.
Then his talents took him West [sic] to work with Paul Terry Studios and later to animate that plump little cartoon creature, Betty Boop. He did a stint with Universal Films, and in 1939 joined the Disney staff.
Two years later came Pearl Harbor and things military again took a place in Hicks’ life. A major in a tank destroyer outfit, he was among the first to fight on Anzio Beachhead.
Hospitalized at Metz, he was flown home from France and spent a year and a half in Northington General Hospital.
NEW FEATURES
Then back to California. There the man who’d worked on “Fantasia” and “Dumbo” got a new assignment.
He started animation jobs on the “Johnny Appleseed” sequence in “Melody Time.” This completed, he turned to another legendary character in Armericana, Ichabod Crane in the “Two Fabulous Characters” show.
Among Hicks’ most ardent admirers in Birmingham, and justly too, is his father, who is a well-known dental surgeon here.
Hicks, who doesn’t get home too often for a visit, can’t get very homesick in the Golden West, however, for working at the same studio with him are two other Alabamians.
One of them was born in Fairfield. She is Mrs. Beryl Ward Kemper, proficient artist in the Inking and Painting dep’t.
Mrs. Kemper, who puts the finishing touches on characters before they go to the camera, moved from Alabama with her parents when she was two years old.
The third Disney worker from Alabama is Mary Tebb, Montgomery native.
A supervisor in the Color Model dep’t., she helps identify thousands of tints and color shapes and keeps them standardized for use by artists.
She joined the studio in 1930, later took charge of the Inkink [sic] and Painting dep’t. girls, left the studio for several years and finally returned to her present position three years ago.



When Lokey left Disney, I don’t know, but one of the Birmingham papers revealed in 1957 he was animating TV commercials in Los Angeles, though it didn’t name the studio. The Cartoon Research site says he was working for Paul J. Fennell, which had the Keds account from U.S. Tire and also animated spots for Ipana Toothpaste by 1958. He settled in for a long run at Hanna-Barbera, being named in a full-page ad in Variety on June 23, 1960 by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera thanking staff for the Emmy win for The Huckleberry Hound Show that year. He must have been new there, as his name doesn’t appear on screen until the 1960-61 season.

His name continued to appear in credits at H-B through 1986 on Paw Paws, where a large number of veteran artists used what talents they could in limited animation, including Ed Love, Virgil Ross, Ken Muse, and director Art Davis and Bernie Wolf, who both went back to the silent era in New York. Wolf’s work also appeared in Fantasia. Lokey was honoured, with many other long-time animators, at the First Golden Awards in 1984.

In his spare time, he served a stint, starting in 1958, as president of the San Fernando Gun Club.

He died in 1990 at age 84.

Someone was good enough to post a sampling of his animation, which you can see below.

Screwy is Not Dead

Tex Avery reuses animation and dialogue at the end of Lonesome Lenny (1946).

The first time, Lenny crushes a bone and a water dish, as he tells us he wants a little friend, that he had one once, “but he don’t move no more.” Lenny reaches into a pocket and pulls out a dead mouse (as Scott Bradley plays “Taps” in the background.

The second time, he pulls out Screwy Squirrel.

Except in this case, Screwy DOES “move.” He opens an eye and holds up a sign. Bradley doesn’t play “Taps.” He plays “If I Only Had a Brain” because, if Lenny had a brain, he’d know Screwy is alive.

Some animation fans love to connect dots and invent their own history. Screwy is dead, they say, because (Dot 1) “Tex didn’t like Screwy,” (Dot 2) “Tex didn’t make another cartoon with him,” (Ergo) “So, he killed him.”

Sorry, fans. Screwy doesn’t play a harp while ascending to the heavens, or wear a halo, Avery’s signals that a character is dead (see the ending of Batty Baseball). Screwy is still alive. Come to think of it, Sylvester’s nine lives and a gowned, haloed Elmer Fund rise toward heaven in Back Alley Oproar, but no one every claims Friz Freleng killed them.

But, yeah, Tex didn’t make any more Screwy cartoons after this one. Too bad. I liked Screwy and some of the gags were pretty clever and inspired.

Almost Bunny Slippers

A sentry on the mountain has told warn the townspeople of The Old Man of the Mountain in the cartoon of the same name.

He grabs a pair of rabbits from his hut. This being a Fleischer cartoon, the rabbits morph into something else. In this case, roller skates.

It appears skating isn’t fast enough. The rabbits gallop like race horses.

Showing how things haven’t changed, there is a pothole in the main road in the nearest town.

It’s a shame the lion’s mane doesn’t flap toward the camera like a bird. It goes upward instead, the lion goes downward into the hole, and the scene is over.

The highlight is the song by Cab Calloway. Like Betty Boop’s Snow White (also made with Calloway in 1933), there’s a great background painting with skulls and menacing faces. Unlike Snow White, the ending’s pretty weak. The Old Man’s nose gets tied in a knot and, well, that’s it for this cartoon.

Bernie Wolf, soon at Iwerks, and Tom Johnson are the credited animators.

The Pine Ridge Party Line

Rural and hayseed humour has been a staple in radio and TV for years. And it isn’t just the rubes who lap it up. I know people who religiously tuned in Hee Haw even though they had never been on a farm. The National Barn Dance was hugely popular for years on radio (come to think of it, both shows featured Minnie Pearl).

Perhaps radio’s greatest rural comedy show was Lum ‘n’ Abner. It still has a large fan base. There were annual conventions for a number of years and Mena, Arkansas hosted the Lum & Abner Music & Arts Festival again this year (the show was set in Pine Ridge, Arkansas). Despite its popularity—it aired for more than two decades on radio—the show never made it to television.

Herald Tribune syndicate columnist John Crosby liked sophisticated material, eg. the Fred Allen show. But he admits enjoying at least one episode of Lum ‘n’ Abner, and goes through its storyline. This column was published December 19, 1946.

RADIO IN REVIEW
By John Crosby
Lum ‘n’ Abner
The country store, that hallowed American institution, is paid suitable reverence five days [sic] a week on the “Lum ‘n’ Abner” program (A. B. C. 8 p. m. EST Mondays thru Thursdays). The country store is still very much in evidence in almost any part of the country. However, the ones I have seen have been modified by the years or, at any rate, the conversation of the inmates has been brought up to date to a considerable degree since the advent of the talking motion picture and the radio. Lum 'n' Abner, however, still talk pure Silas Canfield.
Their corn is so unabashed that sometimes it’s pretty funny. The tip-off is contained in the opening words of the announcer: "Got cracker barrel handy?" he asks. “Drag it up and join Lum ‘n’ Abner in Pine Ridge, America's favorite country storekeepers."
Pine Ridge, from the sound of it, is almost more a crossroads than a town. At any rate, it's a good deal smaller than the other towns you keep hearing about in radio series. However, the bus stops there, and Lum, who is the brain or, if that's too strong a word, the protagonist, of this store, has just added a restaurant to it to earn an extra dollar or two. By some sort of double-dealing he had persuaded the bus to stop there for lunch. The menu apparently consists almost entirely of pancakes cooked by Lum and the quality is low.
* * *
The debut of the restaurant is quite a strain on Lum. He has assembled Abner and several of his cronies including Doc, a nasal-voiced patriarch with an inexhaustible fund of anecdotes, and Cedric, a bird-brain, to help out. “Each feller has one job to do and if one feller don’t do his job, that upsets the assembly line, breaks the production chain,” says Lum, who is greatly impressed by industrial terminology.
Besides this assembly line, Lum has pressed into service Barrelhead, eon of the saloon keeper, to give him a ring on the party line when the bus passes the saloon. Everyone co-operates so well, though the Doc insists on telling a long, frequently interrupted and apparently pointless story about a basketball game.
“Well, sir,” said Doc, "the score was 32 to 41 when Beanpole reached up and made a basket and got his arm stuck up there. The score was then 29 to 32."
“I thought someone had 41?”
“That was earlier in the game. Well, sir, that night Bessie started out to a quiltin’ bee.”
That should give you a fair sample of the way people talk on Lum n' Abner. There's lots of it.
“If I'da had to whip up one more plate of pancakes, I'da fallen right flat on my face,” says Lum after the first busload is fed and gone.
“Did I make a good waiter?” asks Cedric. "Oh, you done good. Never forgot nothing.”
* * *
It develops the only person who forgot anything was Lum, who forgot to ask the customers to pay for their meals. The first day’s receipts went up in smoke. Anyhow, it soon is apparent that the restaurant needs more than the bus trade to keep it going. After hearing a spot announcement on the radio, Lum, the brain, gets an idea. Pine Ridge does not possess a radio station but it has a parly line. Lum decides to make a spot announcement on the line every hour.
It was the most fascinating spot announcement I ever heard and went something like this:
“Stand by, every one,” says Lum, after cranking the handle of his telephone. “This is Lum Edwards, proprietor and cook of the Meadowlark restaurant, right in the heart of downtown Pine Ridge.”
At that point Cedric interposed with his bird-call symbolising the Meadowlark even more perfectly then that Rinso White call. Then, just like the big time, Lum ‘n' Abner presented a little drama of the sort with which we are so dearly familiar from the other spot announcements.
“Oh, Gwendolyn, my dumb wife. What have you did? You have burned the pork chops. But don't worry. Throw the pork chops away and we will go downtown to eat.
“There ain't a decent place to eat in Pine Ridge,” says Gwendolyn, who is impersonated in falsetto by Cedric.
“What! You have never heard tell of the Meadowlark? For good eats remember the Meadowlark. And now, folks, we give you the correct time, courtesy of the Meadowlark Restaurant right in the heart of downtown Pine Ridge. Doc, what times's your watch say?”
* * *
Like all of these daily 15-minute programs, Lum 'n' Abner stretches a little thin on some days. But, if you like that sort of corn-fed comedy, they certainly provide it, straight from the silo.



The other Crosby columns for the week:
December 16, 1946: Kenny Baker’s “Glamour Manor.” We posted the review HERE.
December 17, 1946: ABC’s “Dark Venture.”
December 18, 1946: The success of “The Lone Ranger.”
December 20, 1946: A look at Louella Parsons.
Click on each column below to read them. (The artwork in this post accompanied the Crosby columns in the Los Angeles Daily News).

Not Mark VII

The 1954 Woody Woodpecker cartoon Under the Counter Spy ends with a TV reference that some people might not get today.

Homer Brightman’s story is a send-up of the TV show Dragnet with its monotone narration and investigating-crime time checks. Naturally, it ends the same way as Dragnet, which had a sweaty hand holding a hammer pounding a metal stamp with the words “Mark VII Limited.” Brightman finds a logical way to make fun of it.



The villain of this short, “The Bat,” is designed in silhouette, giving director Don Patterson liberty to have his animators turn him into all kinds of odd shapes (I suspect Patterson also animated on this).

Brightman’s ending is maybe the most head-shaking one he wrote at Lantz. Woody captures The Bat in a trunk. But when he gets to the police station, all that’s in the trunk is a baseball bat and a bottle of Woody’s Redwood Sap Tonic. But ... what? Huh? How? Oh, well, no point in trying to find a logical explanation.

There’s a smart use of colour here, with Woody turning kind of a forest green when his tonic wears off. Clarence Wheeler has a pretty effective score. The voice providing narration and speaking for the Joe Friday/Frank Smith stand-ins is Dick Nelson.

Wait! Does This Mean Gravy?

Chuck Jones was the opposite of Tex Avery when it came to expressions. Avery was known for his wild takes. Jones was very subtle. You’ve probably seen his takes in profile when all that moves is the pupil of an eye (egs. Wile E. Coyote, Tom).

Here’s a bully dog’s realisation take from Chow Hound (1951). Note the expression of the cat on the held drawing. Devon Baxter has identified this as Lloyd Vaughan's work.

The dog looks to the side.

Cut to a sign. Jones has the word “REWARD” zoom forward for emphasis.

To me, this is one of Mike Maltese’s best-constructed stories. During the cartoon, he perfectly sets up the revenge by the cat and a mouse at the end.

Carl Stalling’s choice for the tune over the opening titles seems to be an odd one unless it is meant as irony, considering the ending. The song is “It’s A Great Feeling” from the Warners musical of the same name. Hear the virginal Doris Day sing it below to a lovely arrangement.

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: The Information Machine

The story of computers in 1957 was one of huge machines taking up a room, even though they had less storage capacity than what you can hold in your hand today.

IBM commissioned a short film that year outlining kind of a fanciful development of computers from the start of mankind. Still drawings, limited animation and some live action footage were blended together over top of an Elmer Bernstein score that reminds me of something from a National Geographic TV special in the 1960s.

The Information Machine was written, produced and directed by Charles and Ray Eames. A book on their work states:

The film was commissioned by the Eameses’ colleague and friend, Eliot Noyes, then director of design for IBM, and presented at the company’s pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. Launching the Eameses’ career as cultural ambassadors and interpreters of American society, The Information Machine was explicitly about IBM computers, but its implicit message to foreign audiences was about America, a land of beneficent corporations and advanced technologies working “in the service of mankind.”

Dolores Cannata provided the artwork. The film won awards at the Edinburgh and Melbourne International Film Festivals. The uncredited narrator is Vic Perrin.

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.