Remembering Jack Benny

Jack Benny’s death on December 26, 1974 affected a nation.

Newspapers in big cities and small towns reported it on their front pages. Days later, countless editorial sections across the U.S. (and Canada and other countries) included something on Benny’s character and his comedic touch. There were feature stories, some radio-era reminiscences from columnists, thoughts by others like Alan King, Goody Ace and Larry Adler, all of whom knew Jack personally for a long time. There were photos, some dug up by papers from their morgue, and all kinds of others supplied by wire services.

Here are some editorials, picked purely at random, from Sunday papers three days later. First, from the Lansing State Journal:

Master of Laughs
In a not so funny world where "big star" comedians rise briefly and then disappear, Jack Benny was a rare exception who stayed on top nearly a half-century and brought laughter to generations.
Jack Benny's rise to fame through vaudeville and then radio centered on a pose as the world's tightest tightwad and embraced his outrageous violin solos, and he succesfully [sic] carried his act over into television when many others failed. He continued to star until his death.
Something about Jack Benny—his mastery of timing, the violin, the Maxwell, the vault in the basement—made millions laugh in the dark depression days of the thirties. The grandchildren of that era found humor in the same routines a generation later.
Perhaps Comedian Steve Allen summed it up best when he said Jack Benny was "to humor what Arthur Rubenstein was to music." His "laugh-at-me" posture made him "straight man for the whole world." The world will miss him in these times when laughs again are not easy to come by.

The Post-Crescent of Appleton, Wisconsin:

Sunday belongs to Benny
We are saddened and much impoverished by the passing Friday of the beloved Jack Benny, whose very special gift it was to make us laugh and forget our troubles for more than 40 years.
His unexpected death of cancer darkens this holiday season. There are other comedians, but there was only one Jack Benny.
Younger people may recall him only from an occasional television special or for his frequent appearances on TV talk shows. But to most older Americans Jack Benny was an important part of the flavor and joy of life back in what we call today the ''golden age" of radio. Sunday nights belonged to Jack Benny, and Jack Benny belonged to all of America.
Miss a Benny show? As well think of missing Sunday dinner.

We remember his wife, sharp-tongued Mary Livingstone, and the major domo of the Benny menage, Eddie (Rochester) Anderson. And jolly Don Wilson, Benny's announcer, and his dim-bulb vocalist, Dennis Day. And the musical directors, Don Bestor, and, later, Phil Harris. The ancient Maxwell car, the creaky old money vault in the basement, the supercilious floorwalker in the department store where Jack did his miserly Christmas shopping, and the famous "feud" with the late Fred Allen.
With that air of perpetual indignation, Jack Benny was forever the butt of his own jokes. He was a gentle and amiable comedian, hurting no one and offending no one. We saw our own human foibles though his eyes and his art, and we are the better for having lived and laughed with him.
And now Jack Benny is gone. The obituaries say he was 80 years old, but Jack insisted he was only 39. Let him never grow a day older in our memory.

The Anniston [Alabama] Star:

Jack Benny, 39
The deceptive simplicity of Jack Benny's humor almost concealed the genius behind it—his pose of the vain, stingy, somewhat pompous man who was a natural target for a con artist, who was endlessly the butt of his friends' practical Jokes and wisecracks.
Benny masterfully surrounded himself with a first-rate stable of talented players, gave them all the funny lines and, as often as not, topped them with his exquisite sense of timing, his pained stares, his patented rejoinder: "Welll!"
The long-running Jack Benny Show—radio first through the Thirties and Forties, later on television—left millions with memories that still make them smile: Singer Dennis Day's perpetual bubbly adolescent; all those characters brought to life by Mel Blanc's vocal mastery; Phil Harris' whiskied misadventures; Mary Livingston's gentle put-downs; Rochester's gravelly croaked insubordinations.
All of them bounced arrows of needles of deflation off the Benny character in loving but knowing fondness, and in Benny Americans saw themselves and all their foibles, vanities, pretensions. We saw, through Jack Benny, that people, all people, can be funny, and Americans loved him dearly for that gift.
With a small handful of others, who must include Fred Allen and George Burns and Gracie Allen and Fibber McGee and Molly, Jack Benny gave the world a marvelous and too brief golden age of comedy, and as one of the newsmen reporting his death last week remarked, he will always remain Jack Benny, 39.

Peter D. Bunzel of the Los Angeles Times:

Last Call for Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga. . .
It is appropriate to write a memorial to Jack Benny without ever having met him or having seen him perform on stage except a couple of times. Benny entered the American consciousness as a voice, a pause, a “Well!” For those of us who grew up in the great days of radio, his self-deprecating comedy, punctuated by quiet exasperation, will remain in our ears long after his interment today in Hillside Cemetery.
Benny's stock in trade was poking fun at himself. Indeed, among all the standup comedians of his era, he played a genuine character that became more indelibly etched in our awareness than his own. He was the middle-aged skinflint the incompetent fiddler who could barely play "Love in Bloom" but who, by his own insistence; magically never grew older than 39.
The laughs—not jokes, really—grew out of this parsimonious character, and his humor was always subservient to it. His radio family—Mary Livingstone, Rochester, Don Wilson, Kenny Baker (later Dennis Day)—all fell into the rhythm of this mythical Silas Marner, feeding him the lines or, more often, being fed them by him.
This essential generosity was a tipoff that the real Jack Benny was exactly, the reverse of the character he played. It was this knowledge we all intuitively shared that made the portrayal so endearing. The foibles he ridiculed were more ours than his, but being, a gentleman, he would never come out and say so.

His radio "family" became an extension of all the actual families out there listening. We saw the same pinch-penny qualities in our own fathers, and when Mary cried, in her Plainfield, N. J. voice, "Oh, Jack," that was the sound of own mothers losing patience.
So every Sunday night at 7 o'clock we gathered around the radio as Don Wilson intoned "Jello again, it's the Jack Benny Show," The sounds of that program are the sounds of our childhood: the growling bear guarding Benny's vault, his sputtering Maxwell, the train announcer calling out "Anaheim, Azusa, Cucamonga" towns that, in later years, many of us were surprised to find were real.
Those were the years when Sunday night required a family vigil by the radio. Jack Benny at 7, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy at 8, Fred Allen at 8:30, with everyone getting their comeuppance at 9 as Walter Winchell informed Mr. and Mrs. North America and all the ships at sea that the real world was filled not with "Love in Bloom" but with gossip, gangsters and meanness.
The world etched by Jack Benny was infinitely preferable. It made us laugh, but it also spread a certain sweetness and decency.
It is a wonder that Benny made this kind of impact just by being heard, for as we came to know from his television and stage appearances, seeing him added a whole new dimension. He had an almost cat-like elegance that was feminine as well as masculine the embodiment of everyone's vulnerability and, with luck, grace under pressure.
Now, as he makes his final trip, we join in calling out the stops along that memorable route: “Anaheim! Azusa! Cucamonga."

There are so many more we could post, but we’ll conclude with an editorial from the city where loved him. This is from the St. Joseph News-Press:

Jack Benny Got Enthusiastic Welcome on 1945 Visit Here
ORIGINALLY, WE had planned to do a column such as this next February, which would have been the 30th anniversary of Jack Benny's radio broadcast from St. Joseph. But the death Friday of the 80-year-old comedian has moved up the date for this article.
Jack Benny was perennially 39 years old and a tightwad; that was the image he had given himself, one that he parlayed into fame and fortune. As a comedian, he was in a class by himself. His strong point was his timing. He could stretch a mild titter into a belly laugh by dragging it out.
For some reason never explained, Jack started using the line, "They love me in St. Joseph" on his radio programs some time around 1940. It got laughs for some still unknown reason, and Jack capitalized on it.
St. Joseph people didn't mind, and eventually they invited Jack here for a broadcast. This was in World War II days and travel was greatly curtailed, but finally Jack's management accepted and the date was set for Feb. 18, 1945. That was a Sunday, the day of all of Benny's broadcasts and Jack and company arrived in town on Thursday the 15th. It was a festive day in St. Joseph and school kids didn't have to attend class. Business men were called in to a briefing session at the Chamber of Commerce to be told how to act in the presence of such an eminent character as Jack Benny.
The general impression was that Jack was more of a businessman than a comic. But he got a good reception.
A luncheon was held at Hotel Robidoux in Jack's honor and only those at the head table got steaks. As we said before, there was a war on. Nobody told Benny that only he and the other top guests were getting steak and in his remarks he indicated he thought everyone was feasting on prime St. Joseph T-bones.
The committee had heard Jack's favorite salad was cold asparagus, and that is what he got. It turned out that except on the stage, he never touched the stuff. But Jack apparently enjoyed his lunch, though he indicated he was in a hurry to get on to a study of his show.

Phil Harris was the orchestra leader. He brought a few key musicians and relied on Local No. 50 to provide the others. Don Wilson was the announcer.
The actual broadcast was from the stage of the Auditorium. Admission was by ticket only and tickets were given to those who donated to the blood bank. Jack made an appearance at the Red Cross and was photographed purportedly in the act of giving. Actually, he suffered from a cold and was forbidden to donate blood on that day, but the pictures were made anyway.
There were two shows at the Auditorium, the second being the actual broadcast. The place was packed to the rafters and many had to sit on the balcony steps. The crowd was enthusiastic, though some of the script seemed a bit derisive of St. Joseph, making it appear as a hick cow town.
A typical joke: During the show, somebody pulled off one of Jack's boots. "Look, toes!" shouted the puller. Replied Jack: "What did you expect, a bunch of bananas?" Yet people laughed at such humor in those days.
Jack, Rochester, Mary Livingstone and the others stayed over to Monday, when another and smaller luncheon was held at the Robidoux. Then they left and so far as we know Jack never returned to the town that he said loved him. But he would have been welcome and we can't help but believe our town was a little better by his having been here.

Said the Argus-Leader of Sioux Falls: “Jack Benny dead? No, not really. Jack Benny will live forever: in the hearts and minds of millions of Americans who laughed with him and at him.” The Columbian of Vancouver, Washington, summed up its opinion column with “In short, just about everyone will miss him.” Today, almost 50 years after his death, many people still do.

Felix Sees Stars

Depicting violence in an animated cartoon is more than just a punch in the mouth.

Otto Messmer used a great effect in the later Felix the Cat cartoons made for Pat Sullivan. He created a flashing effect using positive and negative silhouettes, and black and white drawings of stars. Generally, the drawings were shot on only one frame, quickening the pace.

Here are some examples from Daze and Knights, released October 30, 1927.

Messmer was never credited on these shorts, let alone the animator.

The same type of effect was used in the sound era by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera at MGM, and Shamus Culhane at Lantz, with coloured cards inserted on the screen.

Bagging the Cat

How many cartoons did Sylvester, Jr. do this?

This is from Who's Kitten Who? (1952), written by Tedd Pierce. It seems like young Sylvester was always shamed by his father’s inability to catch a giant mouse, but dad, the kid and the kangaroo only appeared in seven cartoons together.

However, Jr. pulled out the bag again in The Slap-Hoppy Mouse (1956).

The bag makes another appearance, though the "giant mouse" does not. Sylvester gets beaten up by a dwarf eagle and a butterfly in Cat's Paw (1959). Pierce uses it as an end gag.

Here’s the gag for a final time from Goldimouse and the Three Cats (1960). Mike Maltese wrote this cartoon.

Maltese left for Hanna-Barbera, where he developed Augie Doggie (named for one of wife Flossie’s relatives), who had some Sylvester Jr. "Oh, the shame of it" tendancies (but no paper bag).

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.