Biscuit 1, Axis 0

Walter Lantz had the perfect aggressive cartoon character to take on Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo. For some reason, the Lantz studio never pitted Woody Woodpecker against the leaders of the Allies’ enemies. Instead, it was left to hillbillies in the Swing Symphony Pass the Biscuits, Mirandy (1943).

The first two-thirds of the cartoons involve the cliché of a feud amongst mountaineers set to the title song, with Darrell Calker’s brass and boogie-woogie piano arrangement in the background. The biscuits in question are as hard as rocks. The short takes a turn, a la the Gary Cooper film Sergeant York (1941) where the hillbilly menfolk are told to sign up for war. Mirandy does, too.

Look who shows up in a tank.



The uncredited director cuts to re-used footage of Mirandy being grazed in the butt and using a garter as a slingshot to launch one of her boulder biscuits.



Mirandy’s a crack shot. With one biscuit, she blows up the Axis tank.



An old animation trick of flashing colour cards to emphasize the explosion.



Bugs Hardaway and/or Milt Schaffer pull a switch on the food gag where Popeye punches a steer and beef products fall from the sky, or when a car hits a pig and a chicken and hams and eggs on a plate drop from above. Let’s see. We have a German, an Italian and a Japanese guy.



The title song irises out to make a familiar wartime push.



There’s more about the song and the cartoon in this post.

Teeth, Eggs and 39

How often is a star’s birthday front-page news? Especially if it’s not a milestone, like 90 or 100, but the same old birthday, year after year.

Well, it was in the case of Jack Benny.

Jack didn’t just get laughs when he claimed he was 39 when it’s obvious he wasn’t. He got publicity. It seems whenever February 14th rolled around (Jack began the “39” claim in 1948), at least one of the wire services wrote about his birthday. We’ve reprinted a number of these columns in this blog.

I’ve stumbled across another one, a rather short piece written for the Associated Press which hit the wires on the 14th and 15th of February 1964. It was picked up in papers from Honolulu to Portland, Maine. Remarkably, I’ve found it on the front page of the San Pedro News-Gazette in California, the Buffalo Evening News, the Daily Star-Journal of Warrensburg, Missouri and the Glens Falls Times in New York, to give you several examples. It shows you how much Jack Benny was enjoyed across the U.S., almost 32 years after he had begun his radio show.

The story echoes something George Burns used to tell about Benny—how Jack would rave, almost to the point of embarrassment, that he had just had “the best coffee I ever tasted” or “the best shoeshine I ever had.”

Oldest 39-Yr.-Old
Guess Who Is Not Really 39
By JAMES BACON
AP Movie-Television Writer
HOLLYWOOD (AP) — Jack Benny, the oldest living 39-year-old, celebrates his 70th birthday today.
He doesn’t look it or feel it.
He makes one comment:
“Thank God, I haven’t had a sick day in my life.”
The other day he had a polyp removed from his nose but that was just a minor interruption in his busy television schedule. The doctors asked him what anesthetic he was allergic to.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I’ve never taken any before. I’ve never even had a tooth pulled.
Enthusiasm is the key to Benny’s secret Fountain of Youth. No man in town enthuses about or remembers the little things of life as does Jack.
Once when he attended a party at the White House during the Truman administration, he and a friend decided to wind up the evening with a walk. A few blocks from the White House, they stopped in a little diner and ordered ham and eggs.
“You know,” enthused Jack, “these are the greatest ham and eggs I’ve ever eaten in my life.”
Five years later, the same two attended a White House party given by President Eisenhower.
Jack’s after party comment:
“I want some more of those ham and eggs.”

I was going to end the post here but decided to hunt around and see if anyone else wrote about Jack’s birthday on Feb. 14, 1964. The answer is “yes.” There were several columns, all praising Benny. I’ve decided to reprint a feature story from Newsday.

Benny's 70 Today—What's His Secret?
By Shirley Wood
Newsday Special Correspondent
Hollywood—Quit? Are you kidding? Jack Benny, celebrating his 70th birthday today, has no intention of quitting. Not only is the comedian entering his fifth year of doing a weekly show on television but he also has elevated his violin from a joke to a second career. Show business is one of the most difficult fields in which to stay at the top, but Benny has been one of its top moneymakers for 30 years. Other and younger stars have fallen into semi-retirement or lesser roles in entertainment. But Benny goes on and on.
How does he do it? His secret in escaping the effect of time consists of careful preparation for growing old. This is evidenced in two ways: by maintaining a careful watch over his physical activities and by remaining alert to changes in the public's taste in comedy. Consequently, the Jack Benny Show seems ageless even though its star has in fact long since passed his perennial 39.
Cheats Father Time
Benny's appearance, to be sure, lends substance to the jest about his age. In face and carriage, in the quickness of his step and the sparkle in his blue eyes, he gives the impression of man no more than 50. "A woman cheats on her age a little bit and it's okay," Benny remarks. "Instead of cheating a little, I cheat a lot."
He is certainly not one to let his actual age interfere with his activities, but Benny has imperceptibly but effectively altered his pace to suit the advancing years. The comedian has always taken care of himself and is taking better care himself as he gets older.
"Jack was never one to live high," says Irving Fein, producer of the Benny program, "so he never developed any bad habits to abandon. But he is watching himself more carefully these days. His doctor tells him what he should weigh and he gets more than one or two pounds over, says, 'Oh no, I'm putting it on,’ and he diets moderately until he's back down again.
Regular medical checkups have been another part of Benny's recognition that time continues its march. He knows the unprejudiced eye of doctor can often spot a condition that a patient would ignore. So far Benny has had no extreme medical problems. Sunday he underwent surgery for removal of a benign polyp at the back of nasal passage. But his surgeon reported afterward that the comedian's condition was good. He went home Tuesday and is now convalescing without apparent ill effect.

In keeping his TV program apace with the times, Benny is a constant and serious student of the humor business. He watches new comedians in action and remains sensitive to changes in the public mood. He keeps his material up-to-date and alternates the many fundamental gags he has developed over the years, always presenting them in different ways.
Many stars of show business have succumbed to "over exposure" and Benny's type of weekly show is considered an easy medium in which to contract this frustrating ailment. One reason Benny has escaped this problem is his concept of what his own place in the show should be.
The Jack Benny Show without its star is inconceivable, but he isn't a camera hog. Over the years he has functioned on the basis of building up guest stars and members of his cast in the interest of the show as a whole. "You know," Fein says, "Jack has had whole shows without a really funny line for himself. If things work out so that Don Wilson or Dennis Day or Rochester get the big laughs, that's great." Benny describes his method this way: "I never have time for jealousy. To have a good show, you have to keep everybody happy."
Almost from the beginning of his days on radio, the Benny show had one quality that was unusual (and is even rarer today in television): continuity of personnel. This quality makes possible the smoothly functioning organization that allows Benny, at 70, to do a weekly show. There are key people, such as the producer, director, writers, announcer and half a dozen cast members, any one of whom could cause a minor upheaval if he were to depart. On the Benny show they don't leave. Fein, the producer, has been with Benny for 18 years. The two "new" writers, Al Gordon and Haln Goldman [sic], arrived three years later, joining Sam Perrin and George Balzer, who have been writing for Benny since 1941 [actually 1943].
Serious Joke
Benny used to play the violin purely for laughs. About six years ago he did a skit in which he dreamed he was a concert violinist. One of the studio violinists gave him a few lessons to add realism to the skit. To his amazement, Benny found that he could make music that wasn't bad. Now he practices as much as two hours a day. His concerts, in which he plays a little and clowns a lot, have raised nearly $3,000,000 for debt-ridden symphony associations all over America.
Jack Benny, at 70, looks to the future: "Doing my show gets easier every year," he declares. "I've never had a year that wasn't easier, and more fun, than the one before."

Even though Jack stopped joking about “39” toward the end of his life—he told reporters the gag had outlived itself—fans still associated it with him when he passed away. The venerable Los Angeles Times, in its obituary in 1974, simply wrote: “He was 39.” 50 years later, the gag lives on.

Gumby at NBC

Stop motion animation in the days of network television after 1947 meant maybe one thing—commercials. Jam Handy created a series of spots for American Tobacco featuring marching Lucky Strike cigarettes.

And then came Art Clokey.

Clokey had been a divinity student who found his religious training not so divine. A biography in an NBC news release re-written by Arlene Garber in the April 17, 1957 issue of the Hollywood Citizen-News revealed Clokey:

[A]t one time studied at the Hartford Theological School for entrance into the Episcopal ministry. Later when he felt that ministry was not his field he studied geology which gave him the chance to take color movies when he went on field trips.
After the war, Clokey attended USC where he had classes under Slavko Vorkapich, film pioneer. When he graduated on cinema work he realized the creative and research possibilities in the medium.
HIS BEGINNING
For some years after, he taught at a girls’ school in Santa Barbera courses which included algebra, chemistry, Latin and biology. In his spare time he did a three-minute silent commercial for a soup company. From that beginning and a $50 film investment plus innumerable telephone calls to all firms listed in the telephone directory, he gradually began making his film studies pay off.
When a national soft drink company signed him to do a commercial his lucky break came. Shortly afterwards, he made an abstract film, “Gumbasia,” using animated clay.
Then he started writing a story around the figure and called it Gumby. Because as he explained, “He’s made from plain gumbo, clay muck. Also, it’s suggestive of gum in its elastic character.”

Gumbasia didn’t star Gumby, or anything else. It was a short film with morphing geometric shapes. Gumbasia caught the eye of Sam Engle at 20th Century Fox, and he had Clokey create a 15-minute film called Gumby Goes to the Moon.

Meanwhile...
The year: 1956. The place: Somewhere in New York...

NBC had decided to move Howdy Doody, which aired Monday through Friday, into what was becoming exclusively children’s time—Saturday morning; it was getting walloped in the ratings by The Mickey Mouse Club on ABC. Either producer Roger Muir, or host Buffalo Bob Smith, or both, decided it was time to freshen the show. That’s when a deal was reached with Clokey to make short Gumby adventures to drop in the programme. The revamped Howdy Doody debuted June 16, 1956. Kids liked Gumby. The Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch of July 21, 1956 had this to say:

A Personality in Clay
Gumby of Howdy Doody Show Lives in Fantasy
A small wedge shaped character named “Gumby” is fast becoming one of the favorite features of the Howdy Doody Show (Saturdays, 9 am., WVEC TV.)
Created by Arthur Clokey, Gumby is a hand-sized moppet who gets into all the trouble ordinary moppets encounter—except that he has a lot more fun. Made of clay—and highly plastic clay at that—Gumby can do any of the magical things that clay can do.
He can change into limitless forms, roll himslef [sic] into a ball, take on a [l]ong serpentine shape or divide, amoeba like, into many parts but always returning to his familiar Gumby form.
* * *
Gumby comes to life in a boy [toy] shop when the proprietor has closed up for the weekend. From a set of modeling clay, he molds himself into his wedge-shaped form and sets off on his adventures among the other toys, all of whom become life-like under his touch.
The man who really molds the stuff that Gumby’s made of is Arthur Clokey, film creator and producer, who works with the little man in a small Hollywood studio jammed with toys.
* * *
Clokey's basic idea for getting Gumby on film came when he was a student of Sivko Vorkapich at the University of Southern Califomia. Vorkapich, a leading film theorist and former director at RKO and MGM opened up new horizons for him, Clokey says.
Finally, after absorbing many new film ideas, Clokey put his ability to work at television commercials. This success led him to the creation of Gumby and the application of the stop-motion techniques for a children’s film series. Most cartoon films are made by the animation process.
Gumby lives largely in a world of fantasy in which his unique plastic structure makes him somewhat of a superman. However, unlike most children’s heroes Gumby has a built-in weakness. He can stand neither extreme cold not heat and when he disregards his Achilles Heel, he winds up in trouble.

Garber’s article revealed Clokey drove 40 miles in Hollywood to supervise production of the films by a staff of four.

When you read about the first TV spin-offs, Gumby isn’t mentioned. But he quickly graduated to his own half hour on March 16, 1957, placed in the time slot following Howdy Doody, displacing reruns of I Married Joan. Muir and Hultgren of the Doody production team oversaw the show. Variety reviewed the debut in its edition of March 20.

THE GUMBY SHOW
With Bobby Nicholson, Bob Smith
Producer: E. Roger Muir
Director: Bob Hultgren 30 Mins.; Sat. 10:30 a.m.
SWEETS CO. OF AMERICA (alt. weeks)
NBC-TV, from New York
(Moselle & Eisen)
“Gumby” is a delightful piece of stop-motion animation, and the little clay character is considered by NBC-TV as the backbone of its new Saturday ayem half-hour stanza for juves. There are, however, other facets of the program taking up as much time, which are not quite as good as the 10 or 12 minutes that were devoted on the preem to “Gumby” but were mostly sufficiently strong to hold moppet interest. Until sometime in May, Sweets Co. of America will skip-week its bankroll (other week is presently open) and then pay the weekly wad.
Gumby, a wedge-like mound of clay who resembles the gingerbread boy, was a sometimes thing on the old “Howdy Doody Show.” The whimsical star was involved in a pleasant, cleanly developed yarn during the initial outing called “The Little Lost Pony.”
Bobby Nicholson was the blustery emcee, going by the name of Scotty McKey. Nicholson brought a lot of the characterization he gave to the puppet Mr. Bluster in the latter days of “Doody.” His performance had no quality to make him other than ordinarily identifiable to the juves. Help on the first show—and on shows to come for the next couple of months —was given by Bob Smith. (Buffalo Bob did the heavy share of commercial pitching in his oily fashion). Notch above the video norm was the closing cartoon; it was nicely done art work, though not in the Gumby class. Art.

Clokey spoke to Norman Shavin of the Atlanta Journal about his story philosophy and how the films were made.

“Most of the time Gumby is made of clay about seven inches tall. However, sometimes he is 14 inches tall and made of various synthetic rubbers and plastics. To fit certain toys we have animated Gumby in the 1 ½-inch size. This required tweezers for some movements.
“The figures are cut in two sections by devices resembling cookie-cutters. Implanted between two halves is a special wire armature to give stability to the clay and plastics.
“For talking, the editor measures first the number of frames per syllable of each prerecorded word. Then the animator moves the clay lips or jaw to match the frame count. With bodily movements, on the average two exposures are made for each movement. The animator therefore must make about 12 adjustments for every second of action.
“With three camera crews, we are able to shoot an 11-minute adventure in seven days. The main problem is creative story writing talent trained for our special visual medium.
“Gumby is a curious new being, strictly functional in shape; he combines certain qualities of a super clown with genuinely human traits.
“Since he can enter into book there is no place he cannot go for adventure. Yet he is always obedient to his parents, he never willfully engages in mischief, he has a double Achilles’ heel—if he gets too hot he melts into a helpless blob; if he gets too cold he becomes rigid.
“Our aim in the Gumby adventure series is to develop a wholesome contribution to child culture. Good fantasy, we believe, is important to the creative of sound minds and spirits in our children.”

Considering how shows on Saturday mornings are rerun over and over and over, you’d expect The Gumby Show to be an evergreen at NBC. But it was cancelled. Clokey sounded bitter about it. He pointly told the disappointed Shavin:

“Besides an attack of the flu, difficulties in the NBC programming have distracted us. First, Pinky Lee was put on the show against our wishes [replacing Bobby Nicholson on June 8]; then, the only time slot available was opposite the strongest CBS show, ‘Mighty Mouse,’ Now, NBC has not been able to get a sponsor for the ‘Gumby’ show. Therefore, the show goes off the air Nov. 16. There is some talk of going into syndication. There you have it: No sponsor, no network and no show.”

Gumby did go into syndication. In March 1958, 22 episodes in colour were offered to stations by Victory Program Sales (in Canada, the CBC aired them in English and French); the company had acquired licensing rights when the show was still on NBC. Gumby and Pokey bendable figures became huge hits with kids. The old shows were so popular, new ones were made in the 1960s. Meanwhile, Clokey announced on December 2, 1958 he was planning another stop-motion show tentatively called Jamie and Ginger (Variety, Dec. 3). The former ministerial student went on to create Davey and Goliath for the Lutherans on Sunday mornings beginning in 1961.

The Gumby adventures were surreal in plot, with amateurs providing the original voices (later, actors Dal McKennon and Norma McMillan played the star). The Gumby Show was one of the first programmes to use the brand-new Capitol Hi-Q library. For example, the title cue over “Too and Loo” is PG-168J FAST MOVEMENT by Phil Green (the episode aired on July 6, 1957, according to the Oklahoma City Advertiser of the day before). L-983 ANIMATION LIGHT by Spencer Moore opens “The Eggs and Trixie” (aired May 25, 1957, as per the Winston-Salem Journal of that date). The Langlois Filmusic library surfaces in Lion Around. At 5:54, the background cue is Jack Shaindlin’s LAF-25-3 (I don't have the name), heard at the end of the Yogi Bear cartoon Baffled Bear, among others (it aired May 18, 1957, according to the two papers mentioned above).

Despite what Clokey said at the time, NBC had announced Gumby’s cancellation before Lee ever showed up. Variety of May 15, 1957 reported Pinky was booked until September 28, when the sponsorship deal for the show with Sweets was due to expire. Andy’s Gang, sponsored on alternate weeks by the 3-M company, was supposed to replace it on October 5. That didn’t happen until November 23, when 59 NBC stations cleared time for Andy Devine and Froggie.

But Andy survived a mere three weeks in the time slot. Something was swirling around the mind of producer E. Roger Muir. He was still sold on the idea of a show with a live host and cartoons, but with a difference. Instead of stop-motion, he wanted cartoons newly-made for television. So it was that Muir pushed for a deal with Screen Gems, who contracted with a company run by George Sidney, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera for a new show. On December 15, Andy’s Gang was moved to a different time slot and in its spot was placed the series that started the Hanna-Barbera empire: Ruff and Reddy.

Mitzi McCall

Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In went into its second season with producer George Schlatter adding to the cast. Among the newcomers were a pair of nightclub comedians—Mitzi McCall and Charlie Brill, “the fun couple.” The two of them married in 1960 and stayed that way for 64 years.

Mitzi has passed away at the age of 93.

She came from Pittsburgh, where she hosted the Kiddle Castle children’s show on WDTV. She was married to director Jack Tolen, who was hired in June 1953 to be the programme director of the new NBC-TV station (KFSD-TV) in San Diego. Her husband put her on Studio Ten, the station’s weekday afternoon housewife/variety show. Her big break came soon. Leon Gutterman led off his column for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Nov. 19, 1954 with a story about her.

Jerry Lewis Predicts Stardom for Mitzi McCall
HOLLYWOOD—Comedian Jerry Lewis, who is feeling a lot better these days—he was ill for quite a while—has predicted to his Hollywood friends that the new discovery, Mitzi McCall, who’ll be playing opposite him in his new film, “You’re Never Too Young,” is destined for quick stardom. Jerry picked Mitzi from 200 girls interviewed by himself and Paramount representatives. He insisted: "I'd have selected this sensational personality in a minute from 5,000 girls if it had gone that far."
To those of us who knew pretty Mitzy McCall [sic] when her name was Mitzi Steiner, and saw her doing occasional acting and singing engagements over radio and in Los Angeles and in Pittsburgh, this comes as no surprise. Now that Paramount has signed Mitzi and is ready to begin grooming her for stardom, we predict she'll replace Betty Hutton as the studio in a very short time.
Mitzi’s story has a Cinderella plot to it. For months she went from agent to agent in Hollywood pleading for some kind of chance. Nobody saw anything in her. In fact, very few agents even gave her the courtesy of an interview. Jerry Lewis heard about her from director Norman Taurog. Norman took her to Jerry's house and right into Jerry’s bedroom where the young comedian was recuperating from his illness. Mitzi walked in and began impersonating Jerry Lewis for Jerry Lewis. Jerry says he almost fell out of his bed howling with laughter. Mitzi, still under terrific tension, went through her other bits of mimicry. Jerry shouted, "'That's enough! That's the kid we've been for! Let's sign her right away!”

Erskine Johnson’s column of Oct. 3, 1954, quotes Mitzi as telling Lewis when she first met him: “You must meet my husband. He’s not like me—he’s refined.” “Just like my family,” Jerry replied. “My wife is refined, too.”

Both jettisoned their partners (in Jerry’s case, we mean Dean Martin), and carried on with their careers. Mitzi became part of a double act. But, as the Los Angeles Times reported at the end of 1960, it was with Joan Shawlee. She and her husband didn’t go on stage together until December 1961 with an appearance at the hungry i in San Francisco, but not before a “good luck” call from Jerry Lewis.

How was it the two came to be on Laugh-In? They explained it to the syndicated TV Key column on Sept. 19, 1968.

They Said Program Needed Them
By HARVEY PACK
HOLLYWOOD—Mitzi McCall and Charlie Brill are a comedy team who specialize in improvisations and zany repartee.
When they saw "Laugh-In" last season on NBC, they began to salivate because it was obvious to McCall and Brill that the program desperately needed them.
In addition to sharing the stage, Mitzi and Charlie share a home, child and telephone because they are married. Charlie picked up the phone and called "Laugh-In" producer George Schlatter. As soon as he was connected he handed the phone to Mitzi because she takes care of all family appointments.
"Hello, is Mr. Schlatter there?" asked Mitzi. When she gave her name to the secretary, she was told Mr. Schlatter was not available. "Oh," she said, and Charlie could see the wheels turning. "Well, tell him McCall and Brill returned his call and we're tired of having him pester us."
After she hung up Charlie wanted an explanation. "I couldn't think of anything else to say," laughed the Pittsburgh-born pixie. "Let him figure out that message."
Thus began a series of unanswered phone messages from the Brills' "Laugh-In" office. Hardly a day went by when George Schlatter wasn't told to stop bothering the Brills because they were not interested in doing his show. It paid off. One day Charlie and Mitzi were asked come in and meet their adversary face to face. When “Laugh-In” reconvenes Charlie and Mitzi will be seen regularly for what they are, a funny married couple.
"It's a new version of something from the early days of TV called 'The Bickersons' which featured Don Ameche and Frances Langford,” explained Charlie. "They asked us to listen to an old album but we didn't want any preconceived ideas."
The Brills are always "on" even when they're alone. It's an infectious kind of banter best described as Burns and Allen, vintage 1968. "Charlie," blurted Mitzi right smack in the middle of the interview. "We're supposed to see a man about a commercial today."
"When?" asked Charlie.
"Two hours ago," moaned Mitzi looking at her husband's watch. "I'll go call him . . . excuse me. . .”
"She's kind of crazy all the time,” explained Charlie as his wife went scurrying off to a phone. "I'll bet she doesn't remember our home phone number." He asked her the number when she returned and she rattled it off immediately but she had a bit of trouble with their address.
Bankruptcy to Success
"You know we've had it rough," continued Brill, the Brooklyn born half of the team. "We went to New York to do a guest spot on the 'Tonight' show," [on Sept. 14, 1962] and when we found out we wouldn't get the $320 for several weeks, we had to answer one of those ads in which they give you a car to drive to California and pay for the gas. Otherwise we couldn't have made it back to the coast. I could have gone to my relatives in Brooklyn but how do you explain that kind of bankruptcy to people who think you're a big success because were on the 'Tonight' show?"
But things are looking up; the Brills hope the "Laugh-In" is the big break. "We're been married eight years," said Mitzi. "And outside of our daughter who arrived on our eighth anniversary this is the best thing that's ever happened to us."
They met when Charlie auditioned for the Jerry Lewis Comedy Workshop, of which Mitzi was already a member. She sat with Lewis, watched Charlie do his routines and decided right, then and there that this was it. When she confided her plans to Charlie, the two were married.
Charlie likes to be told he looks like Peter Sellers. Mitzi panics when told she reminds one of Jo Anne Worley. “I love Jo Anne,” she explains, “But she’s on ‘Laugh-In’ and I don’t want any confusion.” “Nobody will be confused,” interrupts her husband. “Everybody will know you’re the one who works with Peter Sellers.”

Laugh-In added to the cast in the second season, and subtracted as well. It would appear McCall and Brill were too busy with nightclub work to stay on the show. The following February, after 13 Laugh-Ins, they were in Hawaii as part of the Jack Jones show. “People recognize us now. Isn’t that wonderful?” they said to the Honolulu Star Advertiser.

While a handful of people may remember them with Dan and Dick, animation fans will know McCall from her work on The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show and other cartoon series. Game show fans will know her from her energetic appearances with her husband on Tattletales. And entertainment history buffs will know the two of them from the night of February 9, 1964, when they followed the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. It would have been an unenviable situation to begin with, but Sullivan changed their act at the last minute. Mitzi got in an ad-lib that, backstage, she had stepped on a beatle. They’re better known for years of telling interviewers of how big a disaster their appearance had been than the appearance itself.

Yes, the two of them did other things (the 1953 photo to the left should read “Shirley Jones”), but this little reminscence should you give you a good idea about Mitzi McCall’s sense of humour that kept her employed for quite a while.

Hanna and Barbera Save Money

Whether the mighty Metro Goldwyn Mayer studio told Fred Quimby to save money on his cartoons, I couldn’t tell you, but that’s exactly what he did.

The third unit headed by Mike Lah and Preston Blair was disbanded and Metro, for a time, distributed cartoons made by John Sutherland Productions. The Tex Avery unit was shut down in 1953. And the Hanna-Barbera unit pinched pennies by finding ways of reusing animation.

Here’s an example from Cruise Cat, released in 1951. Tom pursues Jerry into a movie theatre on a ship. They stop.

The camera pans right to left over one of Bob Gentle’s backgrounds and stops at the movie screen. It’s showing Texas Tom, made in 1950.



Sorry, the shot moves not only across, but down the background so I can’t put the frames together. Tom and Jerry settle in to watch their cartoon.



The film then uses footage from the old cartoon from 4:43 to 5:11 before cutting to new reaction animation of Tom and Jerry by Ken Muse.



From 5:15 to 5:36, it’s back to the re-used footage before cutting back to new animation for the rest of the cartoon.



Hanna and Barbera found different ways to incorporate footage from previous cartoons in cartoons such as Jerry’s Diary (1949), Life With Tom (1952) and Smarty Cat (1954—a Daws Butler cat shows “home movies”). Of course, other studios did the same thing.

Finally, MGM found a way to save lots of money on cartoons. It stopped making them. Hanna and Barbera moved on to a new project in 1957, but that’s a story for another blog.

We Want Betty

An audience of animals cheers Betty Boop after her on-stage impersonation of Maurice Chevalier in Stopping the Show (1932).



That is one drawing from one of a number of animation cycles in this enjoyable cartoon from the Fleischer studio.



The frame above is one of 26 drawings in a cycle. Below, you can look at the cycle slowed down.



The animation in the cartoon is credited to Doc Crandall and Rudolph Eggeman. The artwork is attractive, far more so than at the other New York theatrical animation studios.

In the Motion Picture Herald, one theatre manager proclaimed of the Betty Boop cartoon “These are always good” while another said “A very clever cartoon.” Abel Green was a little less enthusiastic in Variety. He wrote on August 16, 1932.

‘STOPPING THE SHOW’
Betty Boop Cartoon
6 Mins.
Rialto, N. Y.
Paramount
Another in the Max Fleischer series, built like a vaude show with a succession of acts until Betty Boop comes on and is vociferously greeted by her menagerie audience.
She does imitations, besides her own style, of Chevalier and Fannie Brice, the former not so good.
Has lots of novelty and comedy and is an okay short all around.

Below is the cycle at a speed closer to what you see on the screen.

Before He Was Hippie and Dippy

My knowledge of George Carlin goes back to high school days, when people played comedy albums at parties (as a smell wafted through the air from a then-illegal substance I didn’t use). Later, I saw clips of him from aged TV shows where he had short hair and a thin tie. And, improbably to me, I discovered he worked with Jack Burns in the pre-Avery Schreiber days.

I wondered when he first appeared on television and, on hunting around, was surprised to learn he came from local radio; I’d never read any of his background. The photo you see to the right is from the Shreveport Observer of March 1, 1957, which reported Carlin had “ambition and initiative” but had never been in radio before being hired to do afternoons at daytimer KJOE.

He performed in theatre in Shreveport, sometimes as George D. Carlin. He’s almost unrecognisable in the photo to the left for a play in August 1956. His name begins to appear in radio listings in Boston in March 1959, jocking afternoon drive at NBC affiliate WEZE immediately after Pepper Young’s Family. NBC made wholesale changes to its programming and the last mention of Carlin at WEZE is in August, in late evening immediately following the weekday version of Monitor. He jumped that month to an evening shift at KXOL in Fort (Don’t Call Us Dallas) Worth.

Burns worked at WEZE, too. The two teamed together at KXOL, but didn’t stick around there that long. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Elston Brooks followed their early career and reported on February 28, 1960 “KXOL’s George Carlin and Jack Burns have left the station to break in their new comedy act on the West Coast.” It doesn’t look like they appeared on TV while in Texas.

Either they got noticed quickly or had a good manager (in the early days, it was Murray Becker). 1960 fell in the Golden Era of Comedy LPs and the pair signed a record deal. Variety of June 29, 1960 reported:

Era: Burns & Carlin
Hollywood, June 28.
Burns & Carlin, new comedy team currently headlining at Cosmo Alley nitery, inked a recording pact with Era Records and cut “The Cool World of Burns and Carlin” as their first album. Discussions are on for Mort Sahl to pen the liner notes.

There was significance about the mention of Sahl. We’ll get to that in a moment.

Variety of August 3, 1960 mentioned “New comedy team of Jack Burns & George Carlin, is set to etch nitery turn for Era Records during four-week Playboy Club, Chi, booking in November.” Whether this was the same album is unclear, but the internet tells me it wasn’t released until 1963.

If you’re wondering about their act, Variety reviewed it in their July 27, 1960 issue. You didn’t hear “seven words you can’t say on television.” In fact, it doesn’t sound like you even heard one.

JACK BURNS & GEORGE CARLIN
Comedy
35 Mins.
Cloister, Chicago
Two young, attractive fellows, in first significant booking to date (they’ve been out only a few months, show good potential as a comedy pair, albeit a need for some help in the script and concepts departments. As act now play its’ okay parody, but trend of modern comedics should cue duo toward the sharper satire which they only skirt.
They open topically (Jack Kennedy, southland sit-ins, etc.) seguing to situational stuff, none of it particularly venturesome, even by commercial saloon standards. They rib Huntley-Brinkley, the “beats,” tv pitchmen, Murrow’s P-to-P teleshow (Person to Person), and a tv kidshow with sicko angles that was their funniest at review session.
As of now there’re somewhere between stock commercial and off-beat, and not enough either way for sock register in either league. Some of the lines are potent (for sporadic yocks), but most of the promises are fairly ordinary. Some eye-popper viewpoints and perhaps fresher tandem concept could spark a basically talented team. Meanwhile, duo could profitably cut at least five minutes from present turn. Pit

It sounds if the act was being kept mostly family-friendly, which would make it ideal for television.

This still doesn’t answer the question of when Carlin made his first TV appearance. The Star-Telegram’s Brooks blurbed on September 28 “George Carlin and Jack Burns, the KXOL-exes who formed a nightclub comedy team, have an L.P. comedy album and an appearance on the Perry Como show coming up. Playboy magazine has written them up.”

Como debuted that season on October 5. But neither Carlin nor Burns were on the show. The stand-up comedy was supplied by Shelley Berman. It would appear their TV debut was in New York. The syndicated TV Key Previews column mentioned in the highlights for the day’s programmes on October 10, 1960:

11:15 p.m. (NBC) JACK PAAR SHOW—Arlene Francis gives Jack Paar a night off and plays host to visiting Irish playwright Brendan Behan and actress Constance Cummings. She also introduces Broadway singers Rita Gardner and Kenny Nelson for a duet from their show, and Burns and Carlin, a comedy team, for an act. (Color)

Brooks’ column two days later opined: “We know that Jack Burns and George Carlin, the Fort Worth comedians who appeared on the Paar show Monday night, must have hot material or else they coudln’t [sic] have gone so far so quickly. But they may have suffered from strict TV censorship Monday night.”

Network executives are extremely timid by nature. What could they have found in the act that could be censorable? No, they didn’t do a “water closet” joke like the one Paar told that was cut by NBC earlier in the year and caused him to walk off his own show. The answer may be contained in a Variety review published February 15, 1961.

BURNS & CARLIN
Comedy
25 Mins.
hungry I, San Francisco
Jack Burns and George Carlin are disciples of the Lenny Bruce-Mort Sahl “sick” school, and handle their fresh, if derivate, material quite nicely.
They come on with a Huntley Brinkley bit, which quick1y switches Into a Kennedy-Nixon bit, then go into a Hollywood sci-fi film, some ordinary Faubus gags and some takeoffs.
Interestingly enough, Carlin does a rather extended impression of Sahl—interesting because six years ago on the same stage Sahl was breaking in his act. This comes as a kind of jolt to Frisco nightclub goers with any sort of memory and sitz-power.
Burns goes on to a David Susskind impression, in which Carlin acts as a German Nazi) professor being interviewed: here’s where the racial and religious gags, a la Bruce, play their role. They wind up with what they call an “Ode to Madison Avenue,” which consists two tv kiddie-show pitchmen pitching booze and narcotics in the 5-6 p.m. slot. This is fairly funny, even deft, at midnight in a nightclub. Elsewhere, no.
All of this, of course, is more social commentary than straight-out comedy. The team uses very few one-liners, depends on audience knowing their frames of reference. Burns & Carlin, therefore, are okay for the hip cellar circuit, but would have a tougher time using this material on tv or even radio. Their delivery and timing are good and they figure to acquire more poise with time. Stef.

We’ll end this post with the words of syndicated New York columnist Hy Gardner. He caught Burns and Carlin’s show on October 31-November 1, 1960, and analysed it the next day. It was under rather unusual circumstances. Gardner was out on the town when there were shootings at saloons at Broadway and 52nd Street.

We missed the police action by a hundred yards and a couple of hours. At midnight we were sitting in a near-by basement bomb shelter known as the International Cafe. Here a minor Presidential rally was being staged by the president of A. G. V. A. [the vaudeville performers association]. Joey Adams was reintroducing the Guild’s Monday Night Auditions, giving talent scouts, bookers and newspapermen an all-too-rare opportunity to see and hear new talent. We were especially taken with a new comedy team, Jack Burns and George Carlin. These clean-cut youngsters are refreshing in their attitude, their material and their delivery. They write their own topical routines and, without showing a single symptom of sickness, draw continuous howls of merriment. Their take-offs, for example, of Huntley and Brinkley and Nixon and Kennedy, are classics in comedic caricatures, sharply etched but not cutting enough to show scars. Carlin’s impression of Mort Sahl (on whom we wrote a similar rave review when Mort first appeared in a Greenwich Village boite) would stop any show, anywhere, in any medium. And Carlin does it the hard way—without a sweater!
In our opinion the team of Burns & Carlin is destined to become the hottest partnership in the business—and if and when they do, their union can take a bow for giving them a chance to shine, then rise. . . . The boys say: “It’s wonderful to live in a country where you can overthrow the government by farce.” It’s also wonderful to live in a country where a keen sense of humor can make a celebrity out of a nonentity overnight.

Burns and Carlin broke up in 1962, and Carlin made his solo debut at the Gate of Horn in Chicago on March 20. Will Leonard of the Chicago Tribune caught the show and proclaimed Carlin “is as funny by himself as the two were together.” That may be true but, as time wore on, fans appreciated Carlin’s caustic and blunt “social commentary” more than they did his “straight-out comedy.” He was a king of honest observations that continued until he died in 2008.

Big City Red Riding Hood

A highlight of any of the Red cartoons Tex Avery made at MGM are the reaction takes. Here’s an example from Little Rural Riding Hood.

The country wolf gets a telegram (and photo) from his city cousin.



The scene isn’t just a big-eye take. The wolf ties his body in a knot (in mid air), then clicks his heels as his body flies apart. It’s difficult to see in still frames, but Avery adds to the movement by having the torso and the legs rise on the background.



The wolf pulls himself together, then the eye take. These three frames are consecutive.



Avery doesn’t simply hold the take. The big eyes move slighty toward and away from the picture. The wolf’s whole body is animated on ones. Then the eyes retract and move in on the photo for a closer look.



The wolf bounds up and down, then side to side.



Next, he stomps on his own head. His body moves slightly downward; it’s not static. The action is also animated on ones.



Finally, the wolf’s tongue rolls onto the floor as his head bobs up and down.



From the wolf’s first reaction until Rural Red leans back into the scene, Avery takes a little over six seconds (149 frames). The cartoon zips along when it needs to.

Bobe Cannon, Grant Simmons, Mike Lah and Walt Clinton animate the short, with Scott Bradley (perhaps under duress) scoring “Frankie and Johnny” under the scene (the tune under the held shot of the telegram is the even-more-ancient “Reuben and Rachel”).

The cartoon was released on September 17, 1949. Perhaps Avery felt there wasn’t much more he could do with Red as she was retired, though this short was re-released by MGM in 1956 and 1966.