Great Guns!

Bugs Bunny Rides Again has many great moments, including a throwaway gag in the middle of the cartoon.

Bugs is indignant with Yosemite Sam, and begins challenging him. At the same time, he’s turning Sam’s guns back on the outlaw. After a couple of seconds, Sam looks down, realises what’s happened, and turns the guns back on the rabbit.



The gag’s not set up by the dialogue. It just happens as Bugs challenges Sam verbally.

Mike Maltese and Tedd Pierce wrote the cartoon for Friz Freleng, whose wonderful timing is another highlight. Freleng knew how long to hold frames for their maximum impact.

His usual crew animates: Ken Champin, Virgil Ross, Gerry Chiniquy and Manny Perez, with Paul Julian providing some top-notch backgrounds.

Play, Don

Two men joined Jack Benny’s gang on April 6, 1934. One stayed for years. The other didn’t.

The date is when General Tire began bankrolling the show. Replacements were needed for announcer Alois Havrilla and band leader Frank Black from the Chevrolet programme. In fact, Benny was going to dump singer Frank Parker but it turned out the supposed successor, Bob Simmons, signed an exclusive contract for a show that never got on the air (Akron Beacon Journal, Apr. 6, 1934).

The diction-award-winning Havrilla, who, frankly, sounded too formal at times, was replaced by the jovial Don Wilson, whose likable personality kept him with Benny from radio into TV. Black, a fine orchestra leader, but who delivered his lines in a moan, left in favour of Don Bestor.

Bestor lasted through the half-season for General Tire, on the NBC Red/WEAF network, and the first season for Jell-O, on the NBC Blue/WJZ network. Bestor’s lasting accomplishment was writing the five-note Jell-O jingle that was still heard on TV commercials in the 1960s (the Chipmunks sang it on The Alvin Show). Warner Bros. cartoon fans have heard a reference to Bestor. At the end of Page Miss Glory (1936), the title character leans downward and says “Play, Don,” which is what Benny used to say to Bestor every week.

Benny and Bestor had worked together before. They appeared on an Orpheum bill in Western Canada and down the U.S. West Coast in early 1928. Bestor had a contract with Victor records at the time. Despite that, he wasn’t just handled the job. One press report said five bands were up for the gig. Bestor (or a ghost writer) explained what happened in a story in the Omaha Bee-News, May 19, 1935. He was working on the Nestle show with Walter O’Keefe and Ethel Shutta (the main vocalist on Benny’s first show for Canada Dry in 1932) just before jumping to Jack.

How It Feels to Be a Comedian’s Stooge
By Don Bestor
When the Jack Benny series of programs were in the process of realization, the sponsors, Jack Benny and Harry Conn, who writes the scripts, were casting about for an orchestra leader with not only a musically satisfying outfit, but with an ability to stooge for Benny's barbs.
Arranged for An Audition
My agent arranged for an audition for me, but, as a matter of fact, both he and I didn't think a great deal of my chances of clicking. I'd always been sort of serious minded, I'd never read comedy lines and had vague misgivings at being able to do so capably. So when the studio officials and Benny notified me I was in you could have knocked me down with Frank Parker. (See, I was getting funny already). Before the first rehearsal, Jack came to me and said:
"Look, Don, we're going to build you up as a very intellectual chap. Fastidious dresser, very polite, very formal and all that. You’re not a flippant guy and we won't write you the flip, Broad-wayish lines we did for Jimmie Grier, Ted Weems or any of the other orchestra leaders who have worked with me on the air. Rather, you’re to be played up as serious and quite studious. O. K.?
I said I thought it was a fine idea. We talked some more and got down to rehearsal.
Benny Is Target Of All Jokes
That was more than a year ago, but Jack says it only seems like 11 ½ months.
How does it feel to be a comedian's stooge? I wouldn't know, because I don't think I am one. Not that I'm above such plebian endeavors, but Jack Benny's style makes him the butt of all jokes at the hands of his assistants in fun. He says he can get more laughs that way than if he had all the smart lines himself. And who am I to argue?
A nice guy, Benny, though I still haven’t that Christmas present he promised me a dozen scripts ago.

It would seem the Christmas present routine was a running gag. The Star Weekly from Toronto on May 18, 1935 mentioned:

Jack Benny has not yet given Don Bestor a Christmas present. Because he has been worrying about it so much on his radio programs, listeners have been coming to his aid. Hundreds of packages in red and green wrapping have come to Jack with instructions that he should give them to Don. To date the orchestra leader has received, among other things, 17 neckties, a birdcage, 3 batons, 6 worn-out pairs of shoes, 11 books and innumerable pairs of spats of various hues and descriptions.

Bestor’s spats were another running gag. A number of press items came out about the May 5, 1935 broadcast, when Benny celebrated his third anniversary on the air, such as this one from the Victoria Daily Times of May 11:

Don Bestor, director of the musical destinies of the Jack Benny radio programme, has gone to Hollywood, by his own admission.
Much to the surprise of Benny and the studio audience, Bestor appeared for his second programme at Hollywood’s NBC studios clad in a grey sport ensemble, with low shirt and flowing tie.
And, horror of horrors, he had no spats on.
“Bestor, where are your spats?” shouted Benny across the stage.
“The southland has got me at last,” Bestor answered.

Other papers continued the exchange:

“Well, after this,” reprimanded Benny, “don’t forget your spats. What do you think we built that ‘spats’ gag up for anyway?”

The Brooklyn Times Union of May 12 reported the retort this way:

“After this,” counselled Benny, “come in shorts if you want, but don’t forget the spats. Your musicians will not recognize you.”

Some other Bestor-related high-jinks on that same show, first as mentioned in Jo Ranson’s column in the Brooklyn Eagle, then from “Michael O’Dial” of the Regina Leader-Post.

Benny got so fussed up at missing a line that he completely forgot about introducing Parker’s vocal number. The tenor-comedian had to do the honors for himself and in turn became so confused he announced one of Don Bestor’s tunes instead. The Benny cast, however, is so adept at ad-libbing and taking advantage of boners that the slip was not noticed on the air.

Jack Benny had Omaha as the winner of the Kentucky Derby in his script three days before the race, but was touted off the winner and bet on another horse an hour before. It was all because Don Bestor got a wire from a friend at the track who had a “sure thing.” Hence that “crack” Sunday night.



When he was on the Benny show, Bestor had band singers named Joy Lynne and Neil Buckley, but there seems to have been no consideration to employ the vocalists on the programme.

From the mid-1940s on, there was a joke about Dennis Day and Phil Harris having “two shows.” Bestor had two shows as well, at least during the month we’ve been talking about. Band remotes were big between 10 and 1 in the morning back then, with engineers plugging patch cords into Nemo inputs from various hotel ballrooms.

Bestor and his orchestra were heard on the Don Lee network on the West Coast almost nightly; one of his air dates was picked up on the full CBS network. It involved a bit of juggling on Bestor’s part. The first part of the month, his band was in the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. The Oakland Tribune reported on Sundays, Bestor let someone else lead his band in the Bay City. On the Benny show, the Los Angeles Times revealed he waved the baton in Hollywood over Harry Jackson’s orchestra.

The Los Angeles Evening Post-Record’s Dylan Wright had some gossip on that, published July 17, 1935, three days after the final Benny show of the season.

Don Bestor didn’t like the orchestra they gave him for the Jack Benny shows. The musicians’ union wouldn’t let him use his own band for the program. However, he used the same band which Bing Crosby used and which does much of the movie work locally. Bestor will not be with Benny when his NBC half hour resumes in the fall and it looks like big rivalry among other bands for the berth.

Bestor, reports said, wanted to go back East and perform there, as Benny was staying in California making movies for Paramount. In the fall of 1935, he also played on a 15-minute programme, apparently on transcription.

Benny responded by hiring pianist/composer Johnny Green. He found a replacement for Frank Parker in Michael Bartlett, who survived only five shows before Kenny Baker replaced him. Jack still didn’t quite have the show put together the way we remember. Phil Harris, Rochester and Dennis Day were yet to come.

The Canadian Bugs Bunny

Did you know a Canadian created Bugs Bunny?

I didn’t either.

We’re not talking about Charlie Thorson, the artist from Winnipeg who came up with the design for the goofy rabbit that Bugs Hardaway used in a cartoon he directed in the late 1930s. We’re talking about Les Barker.

Who?

We point to a portion of an article in the Montreal Gazette of March 31, 1954:

Cartoonist Stars Ruby Foo’s Show
An act with a new twist, a cartoonist who uses a projector on stage, has come to Ruby Foo’s Starlight Roof in the person of Les Barker.
Mr. Barker, the creator of Bugs Bunny, draws his cartoons rapidly and smoothly on the table of a small machine which projects the drawings on to a big screen behind and above the artist. He does not just confine himself to drawing figures from the film cartoons, but sketches local personalities and even members of the audience. By using a superimposed sheet for certain parts of his drawings he can make his cartoons move, usually to illustrate some gag he is pointing up.
In addition to his talents as a cartoonist, Mr. Barker also has considerable ability as a comedian. His patter is good, comical and friendly, and he makes full use of the standard stockpile of gags.

This item isn’t an isolated one. When Barker performed in theatres in the 1950s, newspaper ads proclaimed him either “Bugs Bunny cartoonist” or “creator of Bugs Bunny.”

This still doesn’t answer the question of who he was. Or what Bugs Bunny cartoons he worked on.

Well, he didn’t draw anything in the Hardaway cartoons or when he was redesigned and plunked into Tex Avery’s “A Wild Hare” in 1940. He wasn’t even in the United States then. In fact, he wasn’t Les Barker yet.

There’s information about him on various comic book sites on the web you can search, but here’s what we’ve divined from newspapers and other contemporary sources.

Barker was born Leo Henry Bachle in Toronto on November 23, 1922. A day after his 22nd birthday, he moved to the United States. His application for admission states he was on his way to join a friend living in Brooklyn. He was Jack Mendelsohn, who we can only presume was the artist and writer who worked in comics, animation and as a writer in live-action (he was one of gagmen on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In).

Bachle changed his name when he began touring in the early ‘50s doing his sketches on stage—and even on ice.

The Toronto Star of January 9, 1960 goes into a bit of his background and ambitions after returning to Canada around 1959.

LAND OF TV OPPORTUNITY
Cartoonist Comedian for Hire
By MORRIS DUFF
Sixteen years ago Toronto-born cartoonist Les Barker left for the land of opportunity—the U.S. to draw “Captain America” comic books and the Bugs Bunny movies.
Now Barker is looking to what he feels is a new land of opportunity for his particular talents—Toronto.
This city will soon have a new TV station, he reasons. From the beginning it must offer 45 per cent Canadian programming. Barker, like most people, feels this means talk and panel shows by the gallon.
Barker considers himself a good ad lib comedian. Years ago he gave up normal cartooning and now works the clubs with an act that keeps him talking and drawing at the same time.
Paar-Type Show
“What I have in mind is a Paar-type show except that I would draw pictures of guests as we chatted,” Barker explained. From working banquets in Toronto, Barker feels he knows tight rope walkers, mimics and other performers who are unknowns, have an interesting story and a good act.
Born on Seaton St. in Cabbagetown, Barker started out as a cartoonist drawing things like "The Brain,” “Thunderfist” and “Johnny Canuck” and for the black and white comic books that grew up in Toronto during World War II.
US comic book interests—always on the lookout for new talent—spotted Barker and took him to New York to work on “Captain America." That strip soon outsold “Superman,” Barker recalls.
"I also drew ‘Batman’ and ‘Captain Marvel’—what we called nightshirt characters in the trade.
“Those things all went in cycles. All of a sudden everybody quit reading the nightshirts and romance was the big thing. It died as suddenly and was replaced by crime comics. Then horror comics came along.
“The change would come for no reason at all. One day a person would have a stable of the biggest comic characters in the business. Overnight he wouldn't be making money.”
More Security
And this is one reason Barker turned to the night club circuit. Even it has more security than comic book drawing or working on the assembly lines that pour out movie cartoons.
At first he just told jokes and didn't use his art training Barker still considers his act primarily straight comedy, but feels the drawing gets that extra laugh that's so important sort.
“I’m sort of like Victor Borge using his piano as a prop."
Barker played the night club circuit from 1951 until a couple of years ago. In one club a group of gangsters walked in. Barker was warned he could draw the gangster leader and tell jokes about him, but to be careful.
"This guy looked more like a chimpanzee than a man. He had big bushy eyebrows and a monkey mouth.
“I was afraid he would take offence if I accentuated his bad looks so I did the reverse and drew a picture of Tyrone Power. I knew that was risky too, but I thought less dangerous.
"After the show he called me over and asked if considered the drawing a good likeness. I told him I thought so but one of his henchmen interrupted to say I made him too good looking.
“The leader wheeled around and slugged the guy right across the teeth. ‘I’m much more handsome than this picture,’ the leader said.
“If I'd drawn him straight he'd have had me tossed in the river."
Barker gave up night clubs because he covered playing banquets is more profitable. His routine is to go to a city and through contacts made in the clubs, get a few jobs.
Word is soon passed among agents that a good fresh entertainer is in town. Jobs come in until the circuit is worked out. The Barker moves.
He hopes the banquet circuit in Toronto will hold together through most of 1960. By then Toronto's new TV magnate should be chosen.

The TV station in question was CFTO-TV, which signed on December 31, 1960. I’ve found no evidence his dream of a talk-art show materialised. The Star reported on May 31, 1962 he had opened an after-hours club on Yonge Street. The same paper revealed in its issue the following November 19th the club had closed because it couldn’t get a liquor license. Barker went back on the road with his act in southwestern Ontario. He claimed to the Star that Screen Gems was “interested in a television games show idea” he had come up with.

If anyone has any evidence he went to the Warner Bros. studio work on “movie cartoons,” you’re welcome to pass it along. Eminent Canadian writer Pierre Berton explained the “Bugs creation” claim in his Star column of May 2, 1962:

One of his [Barker’s] lasting contributions to art was his new characterization of Bugs Bunny, whose face he changed considerably from its motion picture image when Bugs appeared as a comic book figure. As a result, Barker says, the movie image began to change, too, so that the Bugs Bunny you see today is partly Barker’s creation. It was all done for the sake of quicker drawing, natch.

Later newspaper ads plugging his appearances said he was “direct from Europe,” “formerly with the Mickey Rooney Show” and “well known having performed at the Beverly Hills Motor Hotel.” Oh, and he was still “the original creator of the Bugs Bunny cartoon” (Brantford Expositor, Aug. 14, 1970). In 1974, the Niagara Falls Review told readers he was now a “psycho-graphologist,” giving lectures to schools, club meetings and police departments under the sponsorship of Bic Pen of Canada, that he analysed handwriting of inmates at the Kingston Pen, had appeared in a movie called Class of 44 and was soon to be seen in another Canadian feature, 225 Rooms of Comfort. He continued performing in Ontario until the end of the ‘80s; some of his events were for charity.

By 1990, he had moved to Miami, but soon returned to the Toronto area. When he became hospitalised, he spent his time generously entertaining his fellow patients. His death was reported in the May 13, 2003 edition of the National Post.

My thanks to Steven Thompson for the idea for this post.

Draft Board!?!?!!

Draftee Daffy wasn’t high on my list of liked cartoons when I was a kid. Not being an American, the flag-waving didn’t resonate with me and the cartoon seemed to be little more than seven minutes of Daffy running.

Well, it’s actually more than that. It was rather audacious of Bob Clampett to make this one, considering the hyper-patriotic films and songs swirling around during the war. Here’s a character who doesn’t want to serve in the military, something I imagine reflected the feelings of some Americans at the time.

As for the running, we’re fortunate today that DVDs were invented so we can watch this cartoon frame by frame and enjoy Daffy’s emoting.

There are plenty of scenes to pick from but here’s one (Manny Gould’s animation?) where our favourite duck joyously sings about the man from the Draft Board coming to see him. Then he realises what that means.



Below, some anticipation drawings following by curly-tongued extremes.



Daffy goes up. And down.



Clampett and writer Lou Lilly toss in a send-up of the Sinatra-associated song “It Had To Be You” (written in 1924, long before Frankie began his singing career). “It couldn’t be him,” Daffy cries, pointing to a goldfish that shows up in the cartoon solely for the gag. I like the expression on the fish.



“It couldn’t be you,” he wails as he points to a mirror. Since he’s in the mirror, it could be him!



Daffy trembles. “Get ahold of yourself,” he says. So he does. Literally.



Clampett seems to have loved including radio show references in his cartoons. The man from the Draft Board sounds like Mr. Peavey (played by Richard LeGrand) on The Great Gildersleeve, who remarked “Well, now, I wouldn’t say that” on the show. Clampett treats the line as a running gag.

The cartoon ends with Daffy being chased through the underworld by the Draft Board guy dressed as Satan. The message: draft dodgers can go to Hell. It seems Clampett made a patriotic cartoon after all.

Walking Running Gag

A running gag ends with a topper in the fine Tex Avery cartoon Little Red Walking Hood (1937).



A wolf goes after Red Riding Hood (first, romantically, then gastronomically) but stops every time Egghead strolls through a scene, whistling “The Organ Grinder’s Swing.”



In a clever scene, Egghead helps move the plot along.



The speeding wolf ignores the hitchhiking Egghead, who manages to get a ride anyways. How did he get on a car that went past him? Anything can happen in a cartoon!



The wolf can’t open the front door or a closet door, but Egghead can.



In the climax, Red struggles to get away from the-better-to-eat-you-with wolf. Egghead incongruously saunters through yet again.



Finally, the curious wolf stops him. “Now, who the heck are you, anyways?” he asks.



Look how casual Egghead is as he opens his violin case.



Egghead now becomes a little dopey as we discover he’s not carrying a violin.



“I’m the hero in this picture,” he chortles. Iris out. Music ends.

Wait! Tex has fooled us. The cartoon is not over. Iris in for a quick kissing finale as the Carl Stalling-led orchestra blasts out a final note. Iris out again.



There are so many great things in this short. Characters comment to you on the plot as you watch the cartoon. There’s a theatre patron-silhouette gag. There’s a radio reference (the wolf becomes Al Pearce as Elmer Blurt at the front door). Elvia Allman provides a fine satire on Katherine Hepburn’s voice. Tedd Pierce is excellent as the wolf, especially when he does a Ted Lewis-like sing/speak of the tune “Gee, But You’re Swell.” The license plate gag is fun. I love Johnny Johnsen’s coloured-pencil backgrounds; they suit a fairy tale send-up. And there’s fine animation from the creditted Irv Spence, including the final scene (mostly animated on ones).

Mel Blanc is Egghead. Cal Howard gets the rotating writing credit. The cartoon was Blue Ribboned on August 17, 1946 but the version on DVD, fortunately, has the original titles. The cartoon was first released on November 6, 1937.