Treg Trivia

It’s hard to believe a man instrumental in the sound of Warner Bros. cartoons never got screen credit until 1956.

Of course, we’re talking about Treg Brown.

Tregoweth Edmond Brown was the film editor at the studio, cutting the music, dialogue and sound effects into the film, as well as creating the effects. Cartoon fans likely know a few things about him—he won an Oscar for the sound effects in Warner Bros.’ feature film The Great Race (1965). Before getting into cartoons he played with Red Nichols and his Five Pennies. And he was a licensed chiropractor.

Oh, and Mel Blanc credits Brown with hiring him in 1936 to voice cartoons. But it took another 20 years before Brown’s name appeared on screen, in Too Hop to Handle, released on January 28, 1956 (information courtesy of Jerry Beck).

Out of curiosity, I decided to hunt around and see what else I could find about Brown. You can read what he told the Exposure Sheet internal newsletter in its edition of September 15, 1939 below right (again, courtesy of Jerry Beck), but we have some odds and ends from various other sources.

Treg was born on November 4, 1899 near Gilbert, Minnesota, the oldest of four children; his father worked in the nearby iron mine, and later was an engineer at a school. His mother was French-Canadian. Brown’s World War One Draft Card from September 1918 gives his occupation as a timekeeper for a Mr. Pilling in Fayal, working for an iron company.

He showed some musical talent as a teenager. The Duluth Herald reported in 1919 that he was member of the chorus of the Oliver club in Eveleth, not far from Gilbert. The club put on minstrel shows.

Brown was off on a musical career. In 1922, the Virginia, Minnesota City Directory gives his occupation as “musician.” He started getting write-ups in Billboard. In 1927, Al Katz and His Kittens landed a winter gig at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas. With Katz, he sang and played banjo, violin and accordion. The band had a nightly show on KRLD. He spent five years with Katz, then left to form his own combo in July 1929. His first gig was at the Far East Restaurant in Cleveland, moving in October to the city’s Club Madrid (and heard on WHK, Cleveland), and in November to a new supper club in Youngstown. That year, he wrote the lyrics to I’ll Always Miss You (music by J.M. Bishop). It’s a shame Carl Stalling never used it at Warners. At the time he belonged to Local 362, Huntington, West Virginia, travelling from Local 10 in Chicago of the American Federation of Musicians. (Being in Chicago, he likely would have known union boss James C. Petrillo). The following year, he held travelling membership in Local 101 in Dayton.

In 1930, his band was called Treg Brown and His Georgia Crackers (even though he was from Minnesota) and engaged for a time at the Hotel Paramount in New York City.

The Chicago local lost a member in mid-1932 when Brown transferred out. At that point, he was based in Los Angeles as a member of Buddy Fisher’s Orchestra (according to an ad in Hollywood Filmograph magazine).

When did he arrive at the Leon Schlesinger studio? Michael Barrier interviewed him in January 1979, and was told Brown (Treg) replaced Brown (Bernard B.) a few months before hiring Blanc (Blanc’s version of events in the mid-‘40s became far more embellished years later on the interview circuit). He appears as chief sound engineer for Schlesinger in the 1937 Year Book of Motion Pictures. To quote from Barrier’s Hollywood Cartoons:

[H]e found work editing live-action features at Paramount. He came to Warner Bros, as a film editor, cutting both features and cartoons: "[Bernard] Brown and [musical director Norman] Spencer would do the sound effects and the music, and I would just cut them in." Eventually, when Bernard Brown left to become head of the sound department at Universal, Treg Brown assumed his responsibilities, "the sound and the editing and that sort of thing." Providing all the sound effects for the Warner cartoons was soon a far more important aspect of his job than it had been for his predecessors. By the time Brown joined the Schlesinger staff, a sound editor could accumulate a large library of sound effects that had been recorded on film— some of them picked up from the soundtracks of features— and add them to each cartoon as needed. An editor still had to invent new effects, but he had abundant resources at his command. Brown's skill in using such resources showed up quickly in sound effects that were both far more numerous and more pointed than before, attributes increasingly valuable as aggressively comic cartoons became more important in the Schlesinger scheme of things and musical cartoons like Freleng's Merrie Melodies less so.

There was an occasional mention in the press, if there wasn’t on screen. Erskine Johnson’s column of August 14, 1943 remarked:

When you see a new Leon Schlesinger cartoon, “Corny Concerto,” you’ll probably marvel at the sound of bubbles bursting to the melody of “The Blue Danube.” Treg Brown, the sound man who created the novelty, nearly knocked himself doing it. He created the bubble bursting sounds by making a sound box of his mouth and rapping himself on the head.

To the right you see an unfortunately murky photo the December 12, 1948 edition of Parade, a weekend newspaper magazine supplement, from a story on art directors and other specialists in the movies.

Brown became active in Local 776 of the Motion Picture Film Editors. He began a three-year term as a director in 1959.

There was some side-work as well. The Pittsburgh Courier of April 20, 1940 reported that Brown handled the sound effects for Mr. Washington Goes to Town, produced by Dixie National Pictures. It starred Mantan Moreland and was described as the “first all-Negro feature comedy.” (Jack Benny fans note: Eddie Anderson isn’t in this, but Johnny Taylor is. The Courier reviewer remarked he had “played so much with Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson that he sounds him” and that one funny gag was when Taylor produced “an egg by magic and says, ‘That’s the egg that Jack Benny laid on the Rochester Hour’.”).

We mentioned Brown’s other career. The Hollywood Citizen-News reported on July 17, 1942:

Dr. Treg. E. Brown, chiropractor, today, announced that he would open new offices Monday [20] at 5658 Sunset Blvd. and specialize in dermaculture.

Brown also had a musical hobby that saw his name get mentioned in the Citizen-News starting in 1951. He was a square dance caller. Researcher Devon Baxter dug around and reported on Cartoon Research that Brown replaced Phil Monroe as the studio’s square dance instructor and caller (he was instructing the beginners class in February 1950), and was even featured on the TV show You Asked For It in 1951. Oddly, Brown wasn’t asked to voice the dance caller in the Warners cartoon Hillbilly Hare (recorded in mid-1949, released in summer 1950). The role went to John T. Smith.

What you may not know is Brown dusted off his lyricist skills and penned the words to a call. Here it is from the Sets-In-Order Yearbook of Square Dancing, 1957.

GOING GNATS
By Treg Brown, Los Angeles Calif.
Gals to the center and back to your men
The gents star right just as pretty as you can
Now back to the left, go across the track
Box the gnat and pet ‘em back to back
Now get along home get along get along—(CW)
And box the gnat before the gnat is gone
The gents star left to your left hand maid
And box the gnat, don’t be afraid
To take a little walk to your right-hand girl—(CW)
And box the gnat with a pretty little twirl
And the gents star left on your toe and heel
And meet your partner with a wagon wheel . . .

What is “Box the gnat,” you ask? Read this link. My guess is “CW” means “cake walk.”

No Treg trivia would be complete without noting the reference to him in the 1955 release One Froggy Evening (to the right). And Brown makes an appearance, of sorts, in the 1962 short Fish and Slips where he is seen on TV by Sylvester and Sylvester, Jr. with his prize catch: “a record-breaking, sharp-nosed Tralfaz.”

Brown died in Irvine, California on April 28, 1984.

Why Can't Magoo See?

Our Kartoon Kwestion Box has a Quincy query (better make that “Kwincy kwery” for more “komedy”).

“Since Mr. Magoo has trouble seeing, why doesn’t he get glasses?”

Well, the answer is, Quincy Magoo HAS glasses. They make an appearance in the second Magoo cartoon Spellbound Hound (released in 1950).

Mr. Magoo is on the phone in the Point Dim View Lodge when a dog peers through a window. Magoo thinks the window is a mirror. He sees the dog, then grabs his glasses for a better look.



This is what he sees in them.



Magoo can’t believe it. “Boy, I look terrible,” he says to himself.



The answer to the question, from the Tralfaz medical department: “He doesn’t bother with glasses because his astigmatism is so bad, they don’t help.”

UPA director John Hubley probably had a better explanation, recorded in Leonard Maltin’s Of Mice and Magic: “It wasn’t just that he couldn’t see very well; even if he had been able to see, he still would have made the same dumb mistakes, ‘cause he was such a bullheaded, opinionated old guy.”

Spellhound Hound is certainly not a static cartoon. There are some enjoyable stretch in-betweens. I like the short, squat version of Magoo. Even some of the visual-mistake gags are funny because they come out of nowhere. Who expects Magoo to mutter “Yo-yo fish” when he catches his rod pulls a doorknob out of the lake?

Pat Matthews, Bill Melendez, Willie Pyle and Rudy Larriva are the credited animators. Jim Backus shows more emotional range as Quincy Magoo in the early cartoons. Jerry Hausner plays Ralph and likely the dog.

Hiding the Duck

Tom Turkey realises he can get revenge on Daffy Duck for eating all his food and putting him through exercise hell in Art Davis’ Holiday For Drumsticks (released January 22, 1949).

Look at this expression from animator Don Williams.



When you see multiple cascading eyes, you know it’s Williams. Here are some fun frames when Tom hides Daffy under a rock, then changes his mind and pulls him out.



Also credited with animation on this short are Emery Hawkins, Bill Melendez and Basil Davidovich, with layouts by Don Smith and backgrounds by Phil De Guard. Lloyd Turner gets the sole story credit.

Don’t Tune in Tomorrow

As the calendars changed during the 1950s, one by one, the big-time radio network programmes disappeared as the audience—and advertisers—moved to television. By 1960, about all the networks were supplying was news and information, not entertainment.

CBS valiantly hung on. Its afternoon schedule had become the final home of that most ridiculed of formats—the soap opera. That changed on November 25, 1960. After 7,065 episodes Ma Perkins closed her lumber yard and put away the Oxydol. Young Dr. Malone gave up his practice. The Second Mrs. Burton no longer had to cope with the first Mrs. Burton. Listeners lost The Right to Happiness. They were the final four soaps on network radio. In addition, The Couple Next Door moved off the daytime schedule to oblivion, Whispering Streets became silent and Best Seller rung up a “No Sale” sign.

Ah, but there was a time the soaps had seen a Brighter Day. Through the 1930s and 1940s, they filled radio airtime. In 1940, CBS aired 25 of them while NBC broadcast 20. At their end, newspaper syndicated editorial researcher Richard Spong called them “steeped in misery, saccharine, and virtually inert.” Their dialogue, acting and plots were tailor-made for spoofing by Fred Allen, Henry Morgan and other comedians/satirists (on one of Allen’s shows, all the characters died but, regardless, listeners were told everything would somehow turn out all right, and to be with them again tomorrow, same time, same station).

New York Herald Tribune critic John Crosby was known for his caustic observations, but soap operas would have been too easy a target for him. Instead, he related what is really a sad story about a listener caught up in the world of one programme. This was his column in the Herald Tribune for Monday, December 30, 1946.

RADIO IN REVIEW
By JOHN CROSBY
Soap Opera Fan From Brooklyn
The dim twilight of soap opera is not everyone's world. It is a special world, it would appear, built purposely for those persons whose credulity has no apparent limits. To the skeptical listener with a ready fund of humor the agonies of soap opera offer neither escape nor amusement. For that sort of listener, of whom there are a great many, a far more rewarding study than soap opera is that of the people who listen to the darn things, or, as someone put it so well, the proper study of man is man.
Soap opera is not so much a taste as an addiction. Even broadcasters will admit that the soap opera fan listens not to just one but to several, sometimes five or six in a day, deriving from the later ones even more comfort than from the early ones as they sink further and further into the nebulous world of fancy and farther and farther from the prosaic world of the dishes. Just how virulent this soap opera drug can become was well illustrated by a recent occurrence in New Jersey.
* * *
A Mrs. Davis of Hillsborough Township near Somerville, N. J. recently received a note on which was scrawled: "Steve killed Betty MacDonald. Irma has him on her farm. I hope you will come out of this with flying colors." Mrs. Davis turned the letter over police who traced it without difficulty to a woman in Brooklyn, from whom they wrung this remarkable confession.
The writer told police that listened every day to a soap opera called "When a Girl Marries." On this program recently a Betty MacDonald was killed and Harry Davis of "Somerville" was arrested. The Brooklyn letter writer went on to explain that Harry Davis was really innocent. The real murderer, she told the startled cops, was a man named Steve, Betty's lover, who was now hiding out on Irma's farm. (Irma loved him, too.) She had written the letter to Mrs. Davis to reassure her that everything would come out all right and to assure her that her faith in Mrs. Davis and Harry remained unshaken.
* * *
That's all there is to the story. The police presumably told the Brooklyn lady not to write any more letters and may even have advised her against taking soap opera so seriously. The reaction of the Brooklyn addict to a visitation from the cops remains unknown. Does she still listen to "When a Girl Marries?” What went through her mind when she discovered that Harry and Irma and Steve were people of fancy, not fact? Was she outraged this betrayal of her implicit trust and, if so, has she found anything to take its place? Or, to put it more plainly, are there any other anodynes so satisfying and undemanding as soap opera for credulous ladies from Brooklyn?
The spy psychiatrists will have to take it up from there. This column is out of its depth.

This post is one of a series transcribing one week’s worth of columns by Crosby, a suggestion made some time ago by radio/film researcher and scholar Kathy Fuller-Seeley. We’re going to deviate to give you a post-script. The same day CBS killed its radio soaps, its night-time schedule bade farewell to its last entertainment show: The Amos ‘n’ Andy Music Hall. The stars had gone through several different formats; perhaps the best-known was a weekly half-hour sitcom. The Music Hall was their last gasp, as the title characters were little more than disc jockeys with comic dialogue in between records.

When Monday, November 28, rolled around, CBS’s morning entertainment block of Arthur Godfrey, Art Linkletter (House Party), Garry Moore and the transcribed Bing Crosby/Rosemary Clooney show (where they, more or less, introduced themselves on record) was still standing. So were three network dramatic shows: Gunsmoke, Suspense and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. They eventually dropped away. Bill Conrad’s Marshall Dillon hung up his badge on CBS radio on June 18, 1961, while Johnny Dollar cashed out on September 30, 1962, immediately followed by the last time radio listeners could listen to a tale well calculated to keep you in Suspense.

As critics noted, it was cheaper for affiliates to hire a disc jockey to play records than to pay CBS for programming.

If you’re wondering how the soaps wrapped up their plots, Bud Sprunger of the Associated Press told newspaper readers the next day:

Dr. Malone, the hero of “Young Doctor Malone,” decided in the last chapter to return to his job as director of the clinic at Three Oaks. Dr. Malone polished things off by convincing Scotty’s mother that the young man’s love must be shared. The mother said she would attend the wedding of Scotty and Jill.
Ma Perkins...ended with Charley Lindstrom accepting a job in the East. As the family gathered at Ma’s house for Thanksgiving dinner, the philosophical heroine saw happiness ahead. Anushka, an immigrant girl, and Ma’s grandson, Junior, at to be married next month.
Claudia Nelson...was the heroine in “The Right to Happiness,” which was the story of an attractive widow with a teen-age son named Skip...As things ended, Grace assured Skip he was the only boy in her life. Dick Braden was paroled from prison. Lee’s court case came to a satisfactory close and Lee and Carolyn faced the future with assurance.
“The Second Mrs. Burton” [involved] a social dowager who lives in Bickston, a Hudson River community near New York...the Second Mrs. Burton [was] the dowager’s daughter-in-law. The daughter-in-law, in the final chapter, stops the dowager from making a fool of herself over an artist and everybody concentrates on getting ready for a Christmas bazaar.



Now for Crosby’s other columns to finish out 1946 (and start 1947).

Tuesday, December 31: When the winner didn’t take all on Winner Take All.
Wednesday, January 1: Year-end honours.
Thursday, January 2: Detective dialogue.
Friday, January 3: Maisie, starring Ann Sothern.

The artwork above comes from the Los Angeles Daily News, which skipped the column of the 31st.

The Pool Caper

W.C. Fields makes an appearance at the start of Hollywood Capers, a 1935 Warner Bros. cartoon directed by Jack King.



Fields, or “Mr. Seal” as a security guard calls him here, goes to the entrance of the “Warmer Brothers Studio.” (The mouth movements don’t match the dialogue).



The scene carries on. The ersatz Fields hands his walking-stick-on-a-wheel to the security guard, puts his hat on the guard’s head and his cigar in the guard’s mouth.



Fields then takes an expandable cane out of his pocket, aims it like a pool cue and hits the ashes off his cigar.



He puts the cane back in his pocket, retrieves his hat and cigar, and strolls through the studio entrance.



The security guard scratches his head to end the scene.



The guard was probably puzzled about whether that was supposed to be a gag. Fields did have a very funny act with a trick pool table he used in vaudeville. He began his film career with the short Pool Sharks in 1915 and included a pool routine in the 1934 feature Six of a Kind, so audiences watching this cartoon would be familiar with Fields handling a pool cue.

The routine is completely self-contained and has nothing to do with anything else in the cartoon. The story is all over the place. First, it’s a celebrity caricature cartoon. Then it switches to the shooting of a film starring Leon Schlesinger’s version of “Our Gang.” A little more than half-way through, it switches to a vanquish-Frankenstein’s-monster cartoon (a real monster in a film studio??) as Little Kitty and the rest of the Gang disappear.

The tune under the Fields scene is Benee Russell’s I Saw a Robin from the 1935 Warners feature Miss Pacific Fleet. As usual, musical director Norman Spencer double-times the melody during the good guy vs. bad guy scenes toward the end of the cartoon.

Writers didn’t get screen credit at Warners yet, but Tedd Pierce and Bugs Hardaway have their names inscribed on one of the backgrounds, so it’s very possible they contributed to the proceedings.

Sunny California

Tex Avery sets up Cellbound with a simple premise: escaped prisoner Spike is trapped in the warden’s TV set and has to enact something on the screen so he won’t get discovered. What we don’t know is how Spike will do it.

The warden looks through his newspaper’s TV listings. “Ah, horse racing,” he says.



Reaction take.



Spike reacts with a convenient watering can (filled with water) and a sign.



“Sunny California,” mumbles the warden. And it’s on to the next gag.

The Avery unit was gone almost 2 ½ years before this cartoon was released. Avery used his regular gagman, Heck Allen, and layout artist, Ed Benedict. But his animators were gone, except Mike Lah, who finished up the picture as Avery looked for work. The Hanna-Barbera unit’s animators were brought in—Irv Spence, Ken Muse and Ed Barge, with Lah animating as well.

Writing For Benny

Jack Benny was regularly on radio or television for 33 seasons and, unlike pretty much every comedian on a variety show, only used a handful of writers.

After Benny and his first writer, Harry Conn, parted very unamicably in 1936, the majority of those who came afterward stayed with him for years.

One of them, Milt Josefsberg, wrote a book about his time with Benny, while George Balzer gave a number of interviews over the years. Both had nothing but good to say about Jack, and Jack had nothing but good to say about them.

Here’s how he put it in a column that appeared in papers starting July 1, 1964.

TV Comedy Writing Is Serious Business
For at least 38 of his 39 years, Jack Benny has been a regular visitor in the nation’s living rooms. He will be around again next season, returning to NBC after a lengthy sojourn at CBS. Here Jack, in an unaccustomed serious vein, gives tribute, where at least part of the credit is due, to his writers. Still, without Benny and his fabulous sense of comedy timing, those writers would not be a part of an American institution, “The Jack Benny Show." Today Jack Benny is the writer—as a guest for Cynthia Lowry, who is on vacation.
By JACK BENNY
Written For The Associated Press.
HOLLYWOOD, Calif.—We have many guest stars on my program. But before these personalities are scheduled to appear, I get together with my writers and we come up with a point of view that will fit each one. Actually, we always start out with a clear slate—we let ideas grow, tossing them back and forth.
The one program that is the exception—one that we pretty well know about ahead of time—is the annual show we do with James Stewart and his wife Gloria, my neighbors in Beverly Hills.
As almost everyone knows, the business of writing comedy is a serious one. Those who doubt this need only visit my set on Stage 2 at Revue Universal Studios. Look for the saddest-appearing men around. They will be my writers. They get together to play with ideas. They call me after a while and say: “Jack, we’ve got it. This is fine. We think we have a good story-line now."
They tell me where they are going with the show—what the script will be. We spend a great deal of time editing. We never let a show reach the cameras exactly the way it was first written.
But when you stop to think about it, my four writers have good reason to be happy fellows.
In addition to their unprecedented tenure with me, their love of life can be explained by the two Emmys and six Emmy nominations they have received from members of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
They have the opportunity to write lines for some of the biggest names in the entertainment business.
They have an employer who bears no resemblance to the miserly figure they have created.
My writers are Sam Perrin, George Balzer, Al Gordon and Hal Goldman. I think their team work is a record lifespan for a group of comedy writers. Perrin and Balzer have been writing for me for 22 years. Gordon and Goldman can chalk up 17.
I can be fooled more easily than my writers. Sometimes I make the mistake of reading a script and saying, “Fellas, I don’t think this is very funny. I think the lines should be changed.” Every time I do that, I spend more time apologizing than you’d believe.
But once I was adamant. I was sure that I had them this time. I kept arguing, and one of my writers said: “Jack, you may be right, the four of us could be wrong." Well, it turned out to be the same old story, and I wound up saying: “Sorry Fellas.”

Benny seemed to have a sense of when a gag had worn itself out. By the 1970s, he was telling reporters he was downplaying the “age 39” gag because he felt it wouldn’t work on television when he was in his mid-70s. George Balzer elaborated on this in what looks like a PR release from Benny’s production company or CBS. It appeared in newspapers starting Jan. 11, 1964.

Shaping The Character Of Jack Benny
Comedy has changed noticeably in the past two decades and so have comedians—even Jack Benny.
Benny, whom almost everyone knows as the one man in the world who has made time stand still and who hasn’t spent a dime foolishly in all his 39 years, nonetheless has undergone a subtle metamorphosis.
This comes from a fellow who should know. He is George Balzer, a comedy writer who has helped shape Benny’s public character for more than 20 years and who continues behind the scenes with “The Jack Benny Program” on the CBS Television Network.
The fact is that some of the things consistent with Benny’s character simply aren’t appropriate today, Balzer says.
"Take money, for example. Today, Jack will spend money almost recklessly if there's a good reason for it—a reason like, say, he's under hypnosis and not accountable for his actions,” smiles Balzer.
Too, in the old days, Benny never would give Rochester, his companion and Man Friday, a day off.
“Now,” says Balzer, “he’ll cut Rochester for high card to see who does the housework.”
Jack Benny couldn’t drive a Maxwell today, Balzer says, because “a Maxwell would be too expensive to maintain.”
Therefore those wonderfully evocative Maxwell jokes, like the rear tires being recapped with old tennis shoes and Jack feeling that someone was sneaking up on him when he drove on dark nights, are confined to the files. Balzer and his fellow writers—Sam Perrin, Al Gordon and Hal Goldman—are keeping Benny a cheap and vain character, but in terms of the 1960s.
But, Balzer says, “He wants the entire cast to get laughs. Sometimes he’ll change funny lines we’ve given him and give them to another character.”
One thing about Benny never changes, Balzer points out: “He always wants to be the butt of the jokes—the fall guy.”

Balzer wasn’t in the writers’ room when Jack put together his final TV show in 1974. Hal Goldman and Al Gordon were. So was Hugh Wedlock, Jr., who wrote off-and-on for Benny with partner Howard Snyder starting in 1936, though neither got credit in the radio days. There were a few age jokes, a bunch of cheap jokes, and references to Mary Livingstone and Rochester. The writers’ material still worked.