Got a Magnifying Glass?

One of the reasons Tom and Jerry won all those Oscars under Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera was because the characters were great actors. They were wonderfully expressive.

The Cat Concerto (released in 1947) is a fine example. Ken Muse turned out some fine footage of Tom as the high-brown pianist, with Irv Spence providing looney expressions when Jerry exacts revenge for having his nap inside the piano disturbed.

That brings us to Carmen Get It!.

In a way, comparing a cartoon made in the early ‘60s to one from the later ‘40s isn’t quite fair. At Warner Bros., what was being made in 1962 was pretty lacklustre compared to the cartoons from the period of Rabbit Hood or Back Alley Oproar. The later Tom and Jerrys produced by Hanna and Barbera weren’t as attractive as the ones made when they were winning Oscars (wide screens, flattened designs and a changeover of animators in the mid-‘50s didn’t help).

Still, cartoons should be entertaining. And I’m afraid the Tom and Jerrys under the eye of Gene Deitch were not.

One of a number of things that bothers me about them is what I mentioned off the top is the expressions. Deitch seems to have loved a number of things, and one of them was long shots. It’s smart to vary shots in a cartoon but the problem with Carmen Get It! and a number of other Deitch shorts is the characters spend too much time in wide shot, which eliminates any chance to give the characters expressions and let them act, as Hanna and Barbera used to do.

These are just some examples.



In the scene below, Jerry has a rose between his teeth. It’s a good idea, but Jerry is so tiny you can’t make out the rose. So what’s the point of it?



Okay, but the closer shots, you’re saying. The M-G-M animators—Ed Barge, Ray Patterson, Spence, Muse, Mike Lah—were able to make the characters act. You knew what they were thinking. What they were thinking motivated the next part of the story. Deitch’s animators simply went for goofy expressions.



And what about Tom below? I’m sorry, it’s a pretty wretched drawing. It’s more or less held for five frames. Could you picture Muse drawing something like this?



There are some good things going on with the story in this cartoon. The last scene was no surprise, but I like it anyway. But Tom and Jerry just didn’t mix well with Gene Deitch.

Deitch moved on to create a dozen cartoons starring Nudnik, a stylish little series. You won’t find long shots like those above. Nudnik’s actions and motivation are clear for the audience to see. Will Jones of the Minneapolis Star Tribune praised the Paramount-released cartoons in a column on Oct. 10, 1966, where he recommended arriving early or staying late to watch From Nudnik With Love at a local theatre. Among his “few nice words about the Nudnik cartoons,” Jones wrote:

Visually, the cartoonists who make the films indulge in the same sort of elaborate sadism that is a characteristic of the Roadrunner and the cat-chasing-mouse cartoons, but with a most important difference in point of view. It is not just one cartoon creature trying to do in another, or outwit another. It is Nudnik, simply trying to bring something pleasant into the world, who triggers the action. And it is the whole that is the sadist, rejecting Nudnik and anything he has to offer. . . .
A fellow named Gene Deitch gets credit as writer and director for the cartoons.

Deitch was praised for later films, winning the San Sebastian International Film Festival’s “Golden Seashell” in 1969 for Obri in the best short film category. (It was banned in Czechoslovakia, where it was made).

As for the aforementioned The Cat Concerto, we’ll have some words tomorrow.

It's All About the Money

Cartoons of the early 1930s included inanimate things that come to life for the sake of a gag. Dave Fleischer was great this because the springing-to-life came out of nowhere and ended quickly after a wisecrack or some silly bit of business.

Here’s an example from the Iwerks studio, in the Flip cartoon Laughing Gas (1931). A patient walks out of a dentist’s shop without paying its bill. Doctor Flip doesn’t do anything about it, but his cash register is outraged.

There’s no dialogue so these frames can tell the gag.



It’s not really funny, but it’s a cute scene.

Iwerks sure loved those irradiating lines, didn’t he? They all over his cartoons. (In an interview with Mike Barrier, Hugh Harman called them “flicker marks”).

Iwerks’ name is the only credit on the screen in this short.

Not Grouchy About Groucho

Alexander M. Jones had the right idea.

He put a personal ad in the New Brunswick, N.J. Daily Home News reading: “Alexander M. Jones earnestly and respectfully requests that his friends, business associates, relatives and all others refrain from telephoning his home, or otherwise disrupting its serenity between 9 and 9:30 o’clock of a Wednesday evening. These 30 minutes are regularly observed as the Groucho Marx half-hour.”

You Bet Your Life still makes me laugh. Groucho is funny to begin with, but You Bet Your Life producer John Guedel had the brilliant idea of keeping the TV cameras running after a half-hour and then editing out the weakest parts for a stronger show. It’s even funny on radio. In fact, even in the dying times of network radio in 1950s, Groucho was re-run over the summer because audiences wanted it. He remained on the nightime schedule on NBC radio into mid-1960.

Groucho’s return for the 1954-55 season caught the eye of Los Angeles Mirror columnist Hal Humphrey. He gave it a rave in his column of September 24, 1954.

THERE’S ONLY ONE GROUCHO
For sheer pleasure and entertainment Groucho Marx still gives the video viewers the biggest bargain.
A half-hour invested with this jester and master of the quick quip gets you drama, comedy and the keenest insight into human nature since O. Henry.
Last week Groucho began his eighth year as the "You Bet Your Life" maestro (his fifth for both radio and TV), and on this first show proved that he is better than ever.
This Marx brother has the happy faculty for making intelligent comedy out of situations where the average emcee or quizmaster is content to shout some inanity at the contestant like, “You don’t say so!"
Groucho’s talent for balancing his remarks precariously between pure kidding and the barbed crack is a camouflage which fools everyone and no one at the same time. Even George Fenneman, Groucho’s trusty announcer, frequently looks askance at the master in a failed attempt to discern the real meaning of certain "Marxisms."
He can pull a contestant’s leg, so to speak, and the audience thinks they are in on the gag, until they see the contestant laugh, too. When this happens, the audience no longer is laughing at the contestant, but with him. And the contestant is laughing because Groucho Marx is a funny man saying funny things.
A Knowing Look Gets a Laugh
A WAC corporal teamed up with Gen. Omar Bradley was asked by Groucho why she wasn’t wearing any medals.
"Haven’t you seen any action?" he asked her.
When the gal replied she had not, Groucho asked if she had a Good Conduct medal.
“No, I haven’t," she replied.
"Why, you rascal, you," countered Groucho, "I think you’ve seen more action than you care to admit.”
By the time Groucho got to Gen. Bradley with the same question and the latter admitted he had no Good Conduct medal either, the quiz maestro didn’t have to do a thing but cast that knowing look at the audience to envelop it in gales of laughter.
A few of his jealous colleagues and those people who take great pride in being "in on the know” will tell you that anyone could do the show. If he had all of the help Groucho has.
They point to the fact that many contestants are hand-picked, that the show is filmed and taped (for radio) for 50 minutes and edited down to just the cream, and that there are writers hovering in the background.
Groucho even is accused of rehearsing some of his contestants, a canard with no basis in fact. He has a capsule dossier on his subjects—their hobbies, background, etc.—as do all quiz and panel emcees, but has met none of them prior to the show.
Viewers Not Aware of Film
The fact that the show is filmed and edited simply attest the shrewdness of Groucho and his producers. It not only is a better show being on film, but explodes the "immediacy" myth of so-called live" TV.
Many viewers of the TV show are not aware that Groucho is on film. Most people attending a studio performance are amazed to see the eight 35mm. film cameras grinding away as he works over the contestants.
But to a legion of fans it doesn't matter what the mechanical procedure is, or how Groucho does it. All they know, or care to know, is that he comes up each week with a brand of entertainment which tops most of the stuff on TV or radio, and apparently defies imitation because there is only one Groucho Marx.

Groucho’s jokes weren’t confined to radio, television or his colleagues at the Hillcrest Golf and Country Club. Erskine Johnson of the Newspaper Enterprise Association related this in his column of Jan. 5, 1954.

A TV rating company’s Tuesday night telephone call to the home of Groucho Marx, who told them he was listening to Groucho Marx. “But you’re not on a Tuesday,” a pal said when Groucho told him about it.
“I know,” said Groucho, “I just want to see if I can get a Tuesday night rating, too.”

One of the great things about the internet is, with a simple connection, one can watch or listen to Groucho whenever they want. Today, he could have a Tuesday night rating. And one every day or night of the week. Alexander M. Jones’ home would have trouble not being disturbed.

Curious Puppy Backgrounds

Paul Julian is probably known best for his background art seen in cartoons directed by Friz Freleng after World War Two. However, he worked on Warner Bros. cartoons before then. Julian was Chuck Jones’ background artist before leaving the studio to paint murals as part of the war effort.

Julian’s work wasn’t given screen credit then. All background artists at the studio suffered the same fate. One of the shorts he worked on was The Curious Puppy, a 1939 effort. Jones put two dogs in several cartoons that may have been his version of Disney’s Pluto. They don’t talk. They react to situations. This cartoon has a lot of doggie head-shaking.

The Curious Puppy was released many years ago on laser disc. Fortunately, Strummer has sent me a restored copy and the colours are much brighter than on the murky disc.

Here is some of Julian’s art from this cartoon.

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This was the last cartoon from the Jones unit to be released in 1940. Julian was soon gone, replaced by Gene Fleury in February 1941. The layouts for this short were by John McGrew, who told historian Mike Barrier he became Jones’ layout artist in 1939 and Julian began to paint the backgrounds. Julian revealed to Barrier that McGrew provided “small color sketches I would turn into backgrounds.” You can get an idea of McGrew’s and Julian’s creativity from the frames above.

Tex's Twisker Punch

Even lesser Tex Avery cartoons have something worthwhile in them.

Here’s a gag from Avery’s final black-and-white cartoon at Warners. A hen and a chick are fighting over a watermelon in Porky’s Garden (from the cartoon of the same name).



The chicken takes care of the chick, who walks off feeling sorry for itself.



The chick comes to a stop at an inside gag. A plant doesn’t come from garden seeds. It comes from JONES garden seeds. But the chick isn’t thinking about that. It knows, no doubt from watching Fleischer cartoons, that spinach means only one thing.



The best part is that the chick doesn’t grow Popeye-like muscles. It turns into Popeye, complete with muttering, growling voice (likely supplied by Danny Webb). There’s even a line about “sweet peas.”

The music after the transformation switches from “Chicken Reel” to the Warners-owned “Shovin’ Right Off Again” from the Warners feature musical The Singing Marine, released the same year as this cartoon.



Now the chick takes care of business.



The reference to Chuck Jones wasn’t the only inside joke. Here’s another one.



Bobe Cannon was out of Avery’s unit and into Bob Clampett’s by now.

I wonder if this is someone on staff as well.



The credited animators on this cartoon are Sid Sutherland and Elmer Wait, who died two months before this cartoon was released at age 23. Virgil Ross, Paul Smith and Irv Spence were animating in the unit at this time, as far as I know

Another Oops

Radio audiences liked it when actors blew a line. Sometimes, the mistake got bigger laughs than what was in the script.

On the Jack Benny show, Bea Benaderet organised a pool, taking bets about which line announcer Don Wilson would mangle. His most famous one was when he tried to explain he read about Jack’s new suit in Drew Pearson’s column, but it came out “Dreer Pooson.” The writers pounced on it, and later in the show, when Jack asked Frank Nelson, standing in front of Romanoff’s, if he was the doorman, Nelson blurted out “Who do you think I am, Dreer Pooson?” It came out of nowhere and the audience—and Benny—went into convulsions.

Mary Livingstone had her problems getting out lines, too. My favourite is a lesser-known one. She was talking to Eddie Anderson and said “That’s okay, Mr. Rochester,” then fumbled afterward, realising the character’s FIRST name was “Rochester.” Jack ad-libbed a response to the extent that in the studio, she could call him “Rochester,” but outside she could call him “Mr. Anderson.”

Two of her better-known ones among Benny fans are when she substituted “grass reek” for “grease rack” (which had a wonderful post-script in a later broadcast when the police chief of Palm Springs talked about a skunk fight on a lawn and ended with “Boy, did that grass reek!”), and when she ordered a “chiss sweeze” sandwich.

We pass along this tale of one you don’t know about. The reason is it is from 1935. Only 2 1/2 recordings of the shows from that year exist, none when Michael Bartlett was Jack’s vocalist. This was documented in K.L. Ecksan’s column in the Sunday Oakland Tribune on November 10, 1935.

Glum-visaged, low-spirited folk wouldn't last long around the Jack Benny rehearsals and broadcasts in the NBC studios in Hollywood. Why? Because that's the time and place for spontaneous laughter—ad lib gags, practical jokes and the gentle art of "ribbing."
It's a fact that the Benny clan stumbles onto more good hearty laughs than the average script writer who gets paid for originating just that sort of thing. Writer Harry Conn, one of the wittiest wits who ever owned a typewriter, liberally sprinkles his continuity with usable jokes, but by the time Benny and his stooges wade through one rehearsal at least two jokes grow where one stood before.
For instance, on a recent broadcast Benny had a line in which he said, in effect, "That guy Michael Bartlett isn't such a much," and Mary Livingstone was supposed to answer, "Well, fifty million women can't be wrong." When Mary came to her line she read, "Well, fifty willion momen," which was spontaneous enough to "break up" the entire cast. Patient practice throughout the balance of Saturday night and Sunday made Mary letter-perfect in the line. But when it came broadcast time she still couldn't unscramble her m's and w's. Mistake or no, it proved the biggest laugh of the program.
An occurrence of similar spontaneity took place on the first broadcast of the new series when Bartlett and Benny were engaged in a bit of rube dialogue. As the conversation went on, Bartlett—doing the first rural dialect of his life—kept pitching his voice higher and higher. Unconsciously, Benny kept railing up on his toes and boosting his own voice, until he was stretched to his full height.
Then Benny's sense of humor got the better of him and he called across stage to Bartlett, "Mike, I'll come down, if you will." And Mike did, but not without having created the best laugh of the show.
The Benny-ites have got to be good-natured. Else how would hefty Announcer Don Wilson be able to take it when Benny describes him in uncomplimentary terms?
The same goes for Mary Livingstone, who really does like poetry. Every time she composes a rhyming gem her fellow-troupers point significantly at their heads and move one hand around in a circular motion. Whenever Johnny Green and Michael Bartlett do a particularly effective musical number their co-workers walk away. It's all part of an act, of course, for underneath, every member of the cast is sure that the other one is tops in his particular endeavor, Benny wouldn't trade his stooges for a tentfull of another comedian's helpers. And the stooges wouldn't trade Benny, either.

Did someone ask about the Benny-ites away from the microphone? Well, they're a busy crew. Every waking hour and some of the dozing ones, too, Benny spends at M-G-M, where he is regarded as the current sensation. Jack came to Hollywood six months ago to do "Broadway Melody of 1936" and took a short lease on Lita Grey Chaplin's former home in Beverly Hills. It's really the first home life the Bennys have had, after all these years in vaudeville, and living in hotels and apartments. The climate clicked with Jack, and Jack clicked with M-G-M, so M-G-M renewed Jack, and Jack renewed the lease. Benny figured on leaving after his second film, "It's in the Air," but his picture bosses figured otherwise, so Benny has taken an indefinite lease on the home, and Mary is even planting flowers in the back yard.
Speaking of the home, it was a big laugh the other night when the Bennys had a house full of guests and Jack turned on the electric organ. The selection was "Love in Bloom." Half way through the number the organ stuck. Benny and all the guests took turns at turning switches on and off, pushing and pulling pedals and pounding the back and front of the console. After two hours of the same high note, slightly off-key, Jack managed to get an organ technician over from Grauman’s Chinese Theater, and the recalcitrant console was repaired.
Michael Bartlett, who is no longer with Jack Benny, is no less busy. He is another sensational newcomer to films, having been a smashing success in Grace Moore's latest picture, "Love Me Forever." He is starting production on another movie this week. Incidentally, an odd note of a Hollywood coincidence is that Writer Harry Conn just took a new apartment and found that it was the one Bartlett had vacated a few weeks before.
Johnny Green hasn't got his Hollywood legs He still misses his New York, but is so busy arranging music for the broadcast he doesn't have much time to notice his loneliness. As for Don Wilson, Los Angeles is his home. He started on the NBC station, KFI there, as a sports announcer.
So that's a quick and candid camera shot of the Jack Benny cast in Hollywood. They're a swell lot of folks, and very busy, as well as happy.

Bartlett was replaced by Kenny Baker, who stayed until walking away the show one broadcast before the end of the 1938-39 season. Green stayed for a year, then Benny had the great fortune in 1936 to hire Phil Harris as his bandleader. Wilson stayed until the Benny show ended on television in 1965. Conn’s ego caused him to flame out before the end of the season and Jack brought in Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin to write. Incidentally, this blurb popped up in the Sunday Oregonian on November 17:

Harry Conn, the Jack Benny script writer, says the days of radio gags are over, and that hereafter the big comedy programs will have to depend on original situation routines and travesties of current plays and motion pictures.
Harry considers “The Bennys of Wimpole Street” the funniest script he has ever written.

That was heard October 28, 1934. About two-thirds of the broadcast still exist; it is missing the opening commercial and the musical numbers, including “Easter Parade,” written by Irving Berlin in 1933. Blanche Stewart plays golfer “Masha Niblick” and Elizabeth’s maid, while Mary Kelley is Maureen. You can listen to it below.