Tee For Two Background

The Tom and Jerry cartoon Tee For Two (1945) opens with a slow right pan over a long background of a golf course, showing increasing carnage as the camera moves along, stopping at a frustrating Tom trying to get a ball out of a sand trap.

The colours don’t quite match as I amateurishly snipped the frames together, but below you can see how the pan worked.



Tom swinging away is on a cycle of 12 drawings, shot one per frame. You can see Bill Hanna’s careful timing at work through the spacing of the in-betweens as the upper swing is slow, then the abrupt during the follow-through.



Crazy eyes on Tom? This must be Irv Spence animation.

As for the background, I presume it’s another one of Bob Gentle’s water colours. It looks like his credited work much later in the series, but I don’t know if Gentle was out of the military when this cartoon was made.

This short, by the way, is the one with the scene of Tom getting stung in the mouth by a ridiculously large swarm of bees, animated by Ken Muse.

Ray Patterson and Pete Burnett also get animation credits.

Here’s the cycle at about the speed you see it in the cartoon, minus Fred MacAlpin’s sound effects.

Crazy George

There are times when you see a name you don’t expect while going through old clippings.

Take, for example, Variety of August 30, 1950. The trade paper reviewed a musical comedy at the Las Palmas in Hollywood named High and Dry. I don’t recognise the principal actors. In the cast were character actresses Cheerio Meredith and Jesselyn Fax, who played older women on TV sitcoms. And down the list is “Policeman, George Schlatter,” who also sang and/or danced.

Wait a minute. George Schlatter. The Laugh-In George Schlatter??

As they say in the cartoons “Mmmmm....could be!”

Schlatter was definitely in Los Angeles at the time; writer/historian Hal Erickson’s book on the TV series mentions that Schlatter was producing student shows at Pepperdine University and joined talent agency MCA at age 19. A November 10, 1952 item in the Hollywood Reporter is most definitely referring to Laugh-In’s overseeing eye, as it says Schlatter had left MCA and moved into Ciro’s where he headed Herman Hover’s radio and TV department.

Laugh-In was likely my favourite TV show of 1968 and 1969. I knew Schlatter’s name from the credits and was quite delighted to see him appear one night in a cross-promotional episode of I Dream of Jeannie (both were on NBC, “The Full Color Network”). “So that’s what he looks like,” I thought.

I’ve always liked George Schlatter, despite knowing next-to-nothing about him for the longest time. I figured if he put Laugh-In on the air (and its genesis has been a bone of contention almost since the outset), he must have a good sense of humour.

He has an overwhelmingly long list of pre-Laugh-In credits you can look up elsewhere. He produced a show for Dinah Shore (including a South Pacific/Australia episode in 1960 which involved four weeks of shooting where the crew nearly froze to death in Australia, and engaged in negotiations with the British Royal Navy in Samoa to use power from a submarine). He produced five episodes of Judy Garland’s show, after which CBS told him they didn’t like his approach (by all accounts, Judy was quite happy with his producing; Schlatter told columnist Hal Humphrey at the time “I’m not sure what happened—maybe I forgot to play politics.”) There were specials. One was a Christmas show at the Radio City Music Hall, which featured composer Meredith Willson and 1,100 Marines. Another with Louis Armstrong starred Grammy winners (he did five Grammy telecasts).

Let’s jump to Laugh-In.

It began as a Schlatter-produced special in 1967. NBC liked it, and figured it would be the perfect replacement for The Man From U.N.C.L.E. On January 22, 1968, Laugh-In debuted immediately after Mel Brandt spoke underneath a familiar animated peacock. U.N.C.L.E. had inspired all kinds of parodies of spies in acronymic organisations, but Laugh-In quickly became a monster fad.

The King Features Syndicate decided to talk to the man behind the show to get his take on its instant popularity. This appeared in newspapers starting May 13, 1968.

‘Laugh-In’ Really Socked to Ol’ George
By MEL HEIMER
FOR THE last few months George Schlatter was busy, many nights until 1 a.m., producing, directing, cutting, editing and worrying over the Rowan-Martin "Laugh In" TV show—and, he says, nobody was more astonished than he, when he finally emerged into the open air, started going around the country . . . and found the program's catch phrases were the rage of the young.
"Sock it to me, George!" the high school and college kids told him, or "Very interesting, very interesting," not to mention "Here come' de judge!" Out of context, these may not seem much, but sprinkled all through "Laugh In," like the running gags in the old Pete Smith movie shorts, they bring on the belly laughs.
"I was floored," says the easy-going, hard-working Schlatter, who teethed on TV by producing the Dinah Shore and Judy Garland shows a few seasons back, "even though I spent two or three years trying to put this program together because I believed in it so much. I thought it'd be successful—but nothing like this. You know, we only had been on the air five or six weeks in ("Laugh-In” started in January), when we got eight Emmy nominations!"
George's partner, Ed Friendly, involved in the late, witty program, "TW 3," and there are overtones of that show in the Rowan-Martin one. "Except," Schlatter says, "we're less bitter. We make a little social comment here and there, but we're not a protest show; we don't shoot out venom."
From the beginning, Schlatter had the idea of a genuine crazy program—its early working titles were "Cockamamy" and then "Put On"—but he had to overcome network opposition to such an out and out nonsensical idea. "You can't carry it on comedy alone," they said. "You have to have guest stars. Remember, the viewer's mentality is twelve." And so on.
Doggedly, George stuck to his guns and today he has a great hit. "Or, sub-titled, a playpen for monkeys," he says wryly. "All our performers are nuts. It was fun working with them for the 14 shows this late in the season, but next year I may break down under a full program of tapings.
"It's a wild thing," he says, "when you come to work each day and wonder what'll happen. Everyone involved, especially the writers, is a renegade or cuckoo. Take Digby Wolfe, one of our writers." George shakes his head. "He'll be put away one day."
Rowan and Martin, who are bonkers enough to begin with, act as the liaison officers between the younger and older generations, George says. "They bridge the gap," he explains, "although sometimes I think they're just as daffy as the rest."
The performers involved in the "Laugh In" screwiness are the lively, exuberant, cockeyed kind of brash young people who used to found in bright Broadway revues. The revue is almost a dead art form now, however, and aside from this show, you only can catch up with this irreverent species by dropping into some of the sophisticated supper clubs, such as Downstairs at the Upstairs.
Mr. Schlatter looks forward a little hesitantly to next fall's new season. "Arte Johnson, our resident genius, wants to do bird calls—his specialty is cawing like, a crow—and we also have plans to pay red carpeted, brass band homage to Barbara Eden's navel, which NBC kept off the air for so long on ‘I Dream of Jeannie,’" he says. He shrugs. "If it all doesn't kill me, it should be an absorbing season."

Feature writer Heimer re-visited Schlatter’s navel pledge in his Dec. 18, 1968 column remarking "NBC “hasn’t given the go-ahead yet.”

Allan Neuwirth’s book They’ll Never Put That on the Air (2006, Allworth Press) includes a tete-a-tete with Schlatter and Dick Martin giving their views about the creation of the show—and the numerous creative differences they had before it even got on the air. James Brodhead of the Los Angeles Times went into the conflict as early as 1969. And Joyce Haber wrote an extended syndicated story in 1971 saying it wasn’t a cuckoo Laugh-In world behind the scenes.

Regardless, Schlatter carried on getting his concepts on the air. Some were hits (Real People). Some were not (Turn On, which he still champions). He’s written an autobiography and has a a web site. Still busy at almost age 95? You bet your bippy.

Daffy, the One Duck Band

Norm McCabe’s The Daffy Duckaroo has a lively start, with the newspapers revealing crooner Daffy Dackaroo has deserted films for the wild and wooly west.

Wearing a cowboy hat that covers his head, Daffy rides a burro into the cartoon, strumming a guitar and singing “My Little Buckaroo.” After removing the hat (and the hats underneath), Daffy gives a “Howdy, you all!” to those of us watching the cartoon and carries on with the song.



Things gallop along, with Daffy quickly pulling a honky-tonk piano from a trap door in his travel-trailer (complete with a stein of beer on top). After two bars, he reaches behind the piano, pulls out a trombone he plays for three-quarters of a bar, honks a horn twice for the rest of the bar, then gives another two bars on the piano.

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McCabe cuts to Daffy scatting the song from various positions, including extended bouncing legs that we saw when he shouted “woo-hoo” in those pre-greedy, pre-Speedy days.



There are several animated character twirls. Here’s a frame from one.



Tubby Millar’s story leaves a bit to be desired. Daffy’s motivation isn’t well thought out. I get using sex as a weapon against your opponent, but Daffy takes it a little far for no necessary reason. There’s no real ending; the cartoon stops when a character who had nothing to do with the plot shows up out of nowhere (I can’t help but wonder if McCabe was told his cartoons had to end with a war public service message). But it’s likeable enough, certainly in the first half.

I learned something today from a note from Matt Hunter:

There’s a brief bit of footage cut from most prints of this. The camera pans back to reveal Daffy’s trailer, which advertises him as a Warner Bros. Star.
This was likely done when the cartoons went to TV through the Guild/Sunset films deal…Jack Warner wanted all references to the studio removed from anything that went to television. He felt (at the time) that TV was inferior to theatrical films, and didn’t want his studio’s name associated with it.

You can see the murky, low-resolution frame grabs. I have two versions of this cartoon (three counting a Fred Ladd colourised re-trace). Both are fuzzy and the other is muddier than this one. You can’t appreciate the animators’ work (Cal Dalton gets the screen credit). McCabe deserves better than this.

The song over the opening titles is “I Can’t Get Along Little Dogie” by M.K. Jerome and Jack Scholl. I swear I’ve heard either Judy Canova or Jerry Colonna sing this on an old radio show. It sounds a lot like Jerome and Scholl’s “The Old Apple Tree,” sung by the McKimson crow in Corn Plastered.

Breaking the Ice

Tex Avery loved literal gags. At MGM, Symphony in Slang was nothing more than slang being taken literally.

Just about everything Avery did had a genesis in his cartoons at Warner Bros. Here’s a literal gag from Land of the Midnight Fun. It’s silly at worst.

“In these thickly frozen waters,” intones narrator Bob Bruce, “passage would be impossible without the aid of these ships called ‘icebreakers.’ Let’s see how it’s done.”



Dissolve to the gag. He’s an icebreaker, all right.



Sick of Disney? Like Tex Avery? Los Angeles Times critic Philip K. Scheuer was and did. In his “heresy note” published December 17, 1939 he “rises to remark that the Walt Disney shorts for the past year have not been what they ought to be. Mickey is slipping; so is Donald Duck, their latest shenanigans lacking the wit and ingenuity of, say, M.G.M.’s ‘Peace on Earth,’ or ‘Land of the Midnight Fun,’ a Merrie Melody.”

Scheuer admits that Disney was concentrating on features, but it’s interesting to see him refer to an Avery cartoon that wasn’t groundbreaking (though ice-breaking).

The National Board of Review announced approval of the cartoon in its weekly guide of Sept. 14, 1939, calling it “An amusing satire of a travelog, with the Northern capes as a setting. In color.”

The revolving story credit goes to Tubby Millar and the animation one to Chuck McKimson. The cartoon was released Sept. 23rd. We find it playing the day before at the Capitol in Pottsville, Pa.

Benny the Motor City Maestro

Besides making millions of people laugh, Jack Benny raised millions for symphony orchestras, venues and musicians’ pensions funds.

He was honoured in return, as John Gardiner of the Windsor Star reported on Oct. 29, 1959.

Jack Benny, appearing as violin soloist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra Friday, Nov. 13, at the Ford Auditorium in a spectacular benefit concert for the orchestra, will receive the Laurel Leaf Award of the American Composers Alliance for his outstanding contributions to such organizations eight days later in Washington, D. C.
The Laurel Leaf presentation will be made at the Third Annual President's Ball of the National Press Club in Washington by Ben Weber, A.C.A. president, who will be introduced by William Schuman, Juilliard School of Music president.
Benny has raised more than $1 1/2 millions for the leading American symphony orchestras by appearing with them as soloist. His Detroit performance under Paul Paray will find him playing Sarasate's "Gypsy Airs" and the first movement of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in minor.
Tickets for the Detroit benefit concert are priced at $5, $10, $25, $50 and $100.
Among previous recipients of the Laurel Leaf Award, presented for distinguished service to music in America, are Leopold Stokowski, George Szell, Martha Graham, Howard Hanson and Howard Mitchell.

If you’ve read any reviews of Jack’s concerts, you’ll know it was pretty much the same act, just like in vaudeville in the ‘20s when you’d have a routine and take it from city to city. Reviews are, generally, the same, too. Music critics enjoyed Jack’s performances, as much as the audience, it seems. My guess is they were pleased that Jack respected classical music, and did not ridicule it. He ridiculed himself, just like he had done on radio and TV all those years.

Here’s what the Detroit Free Press critic had to say the following day.

When Benny Stood Up to Play
BY J. DORSE CALLAGHAN
Free Press Music Critic
Sixty thousand dollars is not to be laughed at, but Jack Benny in his role as a violin virtuoso definitely is.
The dollars came from the sale of tickets at a top of $100 each for Benny's appearance with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra Friday night at the Ford Auditorium.
They went to swell the orchestra's maintenance fund.
And everyone who laid out the price of a ticket was amply repaid. The Benny adventure was a hilarious event all the way.
Even conductor Paul Paray and concertmaster Mischa Mischakoff revealed unsuspected gifts for comedy.

THE FACT that Benny is more than a mere fiddler kept the comedy turn within good taste. Most of the fun, in fact, was completely musical.
We had the good fortune to experience it twice. Once in the early morning at rehearsal when Benny laid out the comedy routine, and again in the evening at the formal presentation. The big laughs involved Benny and several members of the orchestra. When the comedian began to falter in his performance of a brilliant passage in the Sarasate Ziegunerweisen," Mischakoff gallantly came to his rescue.
The indignant Benny waited out the display of violin fireworks by Mischakoff in splendid indignation.
At the next pause he held a whispered conference with Paray, who then banished Mischakoff from the stage. Mischakoff, the picture of dejection, moved into the wings.
SIMILARLY, Gordon Staples later came to Benny's "rescue." This time, though, the assistant concertmaster banished himself.
A like fate overtook percussionist Arthur Cooper for his temerity in sounding too frantically on the cymbals.
Competition wasn't entirely eliminated, however.
When a stage hand brought in a music stand for Benny, the comedian handed over his Strad.
The "stagehand" immediately flashed through a dazzling set of finger exercises and handed the instrument back to Benny.
It was an incident without words, in the best Benny tradition.
BENNY, in his project of raising money for maintenance funds of major orchestras, broke all Detroit symphony box office records with a net of $59,000. This ran his contribution for the week to more than $100,000, including an appearance with another orchestra.
Benny's part in the proceedings otherwise included his impersonation of the concert styles of four world famous violinists, and an "intimate" discussion with the audience.

The only thing that marred the Benny visit was beyond his control. Isaac Stern had a recital in at the Masonic Temple in Detroit the same evening. Stern and Benny were friends and I’m sure the conflict must have bothered both of them.

The two of them performed together at the National Press Club appearance mentioned above. Washington columnist Lucian Warren took their friendship as the angle of his column on November 26, though he didn’t mention the Detroit scheduling problem.

FEUD—Guests at another recent Press Club function were treated to a mock between Jack Benny, the comedian, and Isaac Stern, world renowned violinist.
Introducing the audience to a couple of highly classical violin solos, Stern said he wished to do so “before this program disintegrates as it is bound to do when Jack Benny appears a little later.”
The laughter which greeted this sally prompted Benny to shout from the audience: “Quit making them laugh. That’s my department.”
When Benny did appear, the pair staged a violin duet of the “Flight of the Bumble Bee,” with Stern doing the intricate rhythms and Benny interjecting an occasional simple note or two.
A moment later Benny played the violin with Vice President Richard Nixon as the piano accompanist. Benny said that the vice president had demanded “equal time” after Benny’s recent performance with another famous piano player, former President Truman. The Benny-Nixon selection—“The Missouri Waltz.”

One of the magnificent things about Benny is he continued these charity concerts year after year after year, even after he turned 80 in 1974. The only reason he stopped was because of the pancreatic cancer that claimed his life at the end of the year. He had concert-lovers laughing and applauding to the very end.

Calvin, the Colonel, Amos and Andy

Amos and Andy finished their radio career on CBS on November 25, 1960. With a promise.

At the end of the programme, Freeman Gosden said: “For the past few months, we have been working on another idea which we hope to present to you in the not-too-distant future. It will be entirely different from anything we have done in the past.”

That cryptic announcement may have been explained in Fred Danzig’s TV column for United Press International on February 1, 1961: “Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, creators of the ‘Amos ‘n Andy’ voices, will create new voices for ‘Calvin and the Colonel,’ a new half-hour animal cartoon series that ABC-TV plans to present in the 1961-62 season. Producers are Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, creators of ‘Leave It To Beaver.’” They had also written the various Amos and Andy shows for the final 15 radio seasons.

Danzig’s counterpart at the Associated Press, Cynthia Lowry, noted in her column the following day that “Instead of playing the well-known human characters (who were not popular with organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Gosden and Correll will be the voices of a bear and a fox.”

What Lowry didn’t report is that Gosden and Correll simply couldn’t instantly concoct an Amos ‘n’ Andy cartoon series out of thin air if they had wanted to. They didn’t own the names to the characters and hadn’t for years. CBS did. The two would need to strike a deal with the network to revive them in animated form, irrespective of the NAACP. The Amos ‘n’ Andy TV series was still in syndication at the time, by the way.

1961 was the year of Great Prime Time Cartoon Experiment. The Flintstones were a hit on ABC after a September 1960 debut, so the networks were eager to have similar animated successes. It never happened. All the new shows were cancelled. Some went to Saturday mornings in reruns.

Calvin and the Colonel began with a lot of promise, and a bit of distancing from its origins. The story from the King Features Syndicate’s TV Key service appeared in newspapers around Sept. 2, 1961.

Amos and Andy Speak For "Calvin and the Colonel"
By HAROLD STERN
HOLLYWOOD—Back in the good old days, when radio was king, the world came to a grinding halt every Monday through Friday at 7:00 p.m. It was Amos and Andy time, and that was enough for most people.
This season, in an era which has seen the collapse of monarchy, when television is king, there's a wild possibility that history might repeat, this time at 8:30 p.m., EST on Tuesday night (Premieres Oct. 3) on the ABC-TV network. The occasion will be a new animated series called "Calvin And The Colonel.”
THE REASON THERE is even the slightest hope that "Calvin And The Colonel" might have the same impact on America that Amos and Andy once owned is that Freedom Gosden and Charles Correll, the voices of Amos and Andy, will also be the voices of Calvin and the Colonel. And Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, who wrote 12 years worth of Amos and Andy scripts, are producing and writing the series.
"The characters of Calvin and the Colonel are southern characters, but they're not Amos and Charles Correll told me. "There are no malapropisms, no mispronunciations, no Negro dialects.
"We created the characters," said Freeman Gosden. "'We used to kid around telling each other 'Colonel' stories in order to keep from getting to work, Then we realized we might have something here. We'd been talking about animation for a long time and we decided we'd do it with animals.
"The Colonel is a fox," said Correll. "Calvin is a bear, a bit bumbling fellow. In preparing for the series, we learned that the bear is the most popular of all the animals. In the show the bear has a favorite expression which he uses whenever he passes a pretty girl. It's ‘Howdy-do.’ We have a toy coming out for this Christmas, which is a replica of Calvin the bear. He takes off his hat and says ‘Howdy-do.’ We expect it will catch on.
UNLIKE THE "Amos and Andy" show, Gosden and Correll will not be doing all the voices for this TV series. Gosden plays the Colonel, Correll plays the bear and various other actors play the other roles.
For example, both Calvin and the Colonel have wives, and the Colonel's wife has a sister. So, she's being played by Beatrice Kay. Paul Frees is the voice of an attorney called Oliver Wendell Clutch.
"Our show is not directed at children,” said Gosden with conviction. "We hope the children will be attracted by the animation, but the show is being aimed strictly at adults. And with an 8:30 time slot, it's on the prime adult evening time on ABC. Do you know that we had a suggestion to eliminate the animation and use puppets. That would have been terrible. You can't believe puppets, but you can believe animation."
"We had thoughts of doing 'Amos and Andy' in animation," said Correll, "but that's as far as it went. I think 'Amos and Andy' has had its day. We put in about 37 years at it in radio, television and we even did one motion picture as the Amos and Andy characters. It was called 'Check and Double' [sic] and we'd be just as happy if you said no more about it."
"Did you know we recorded 24 sides for Victor as singers?" asked Gosden.
"That was way back,” said Correll. "We were known as staff artists at the time. We were going great guns as singers until the rhythm boys came along [the Rhythm Boys included Bing Crosby].
ACTUALLY, THEY didn't do that well as recorded singers, but they still chuckle over their "hit" record, a tune they don't even remember. After stumbling around with records for a while, suddenly one of their records took off and as Gosden and Correll went around from record store to record store asking for it and gleefully finding it was sold out they felt: "Finally, public recognition!”
The day of reckoning came when someone pointed out to them that their song was on the back of a Gene Austin number and Austin was the hottest recording artist of his day.
That may be true of records, but as for "Calvin and The Colonel," the only backing it can use is that of the public.
"I have a sneaking hunch that 'Calvin and The Colonel' will work out," said Gosden. "Connelly and Mosher are good writers and their scripts for the series are just great. They are primarily very funny men. They can produce all the other shows they want to, but writing good comedy scripts is what they do best."

Unfortunately for Gosden and Correll, it didn’t work out. It wasn’t for a lack of trying. The programme became the first casualty of the TV season. It was taken off the air on Tuesday, Nov. 14, 1961, re-worked, and then returned in two months. But suddenly, it’s no longer an adult show. Or is it? Holy mack’rel, Andy!

This syndicated story from January 6th goes into the production of the series.

Calvin and the Colonel’ Back from Repairs
By ISOBEL ASHE
It’s a weary cliché out Hollywood way that no one ever set out to make a bad movie. These days of television, it’s also become truism that all TV shows are intended to be great, garner high ratings, stay on the air a minimum of three years, and earn their creators retirement-type fortunes.
It was therefore a bit of a shock when the much-heralded Calvin and the Colonel, starring the perennials of Amos and Andy, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, was cancelled after a short run.
Devotees of the bear and the fox can take heart, however. The show is returning, in a switch unparalleled in TV’s short history. On Saturday night, Jan. 27, at 7:30 p.m., Calvin and the Colonel will resume on the ABC television network.
"We wouldn't knock Perry Mason." says a spokesman for the show. "That would be like something bad about Mom's blueberry pie, because Mason has become an institution. But being opposite that show isn't all that horrendous. There are an awful lot of children who don’t understand legalistics or don't want to. And they're the audience toward which we are aiming."
It was never intended for Calvin and the Colonel to be a kiddies' show, and even though changes will be made in the new version returning to the air, Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, the producers, feel they've got something to attract all age-groups, other than frustrated lawyers, of course.
The mechanics of producing Calvin and the Colonel are unique ones. Only in a cartoon show are the actors allowed the latitude given Gosden and Correll, Paul Frees who plays Oliver Clutch, Beatrice Kay as Sister Sue and Virginia Gregg, who is Maggie Belle.
As in all shows of this type, the story board is The Word. A board is exactly like the story comics in the daily papers. It has illustrations with the words in the words in each segment.
From the story board, the script is written exactly as a live television script, with the dialogue on one side of the page, and description of the action opposite it. And perhaps the session of the live actors' weekly recording voices is the most interesting aspect of the series' production.
Explains recording executive Clif (for Clifton) Howell, "'We get together at 7 on a given evening at Radio Recorders Studios in Hollywood. Freeman and Charlie are always there first, along with the engineers and me. They're both sticklers for punctuality and if one should arrive late—well, they don’t like it.
"The reason we record at night is that many of the actors we use work during the day on other TV shows or in movies.
"Just last week, Virginia Gregg came right from a Wagon Train show she'd done, complete in Old West costume and makeup. Quite a contrast to Beatrice Kay in her black chiffon basic sheath, high heels—she's not even five very feet tall, you know—and Virginia at 5'8" or thereabouts and that costume—well, quite a contrast, as I said," Howell laughed.
The recording session commences with a table reading, with all the cast members, seated around a long table, and Howell directing. "Actually," he continued, "very little direction is required. These people are all pros, and they can pick up a script with a dry reading—no advance preparation—and make it sound as if they'd worked on it for days. They've all had plenty of radio experience, and that's what we need on the show."
In addition to the cast regulars, Gloria Blondell plays the manicurist, June Foray, described as the girl with a thousand voices, does several of the Calvins, as do Lurene Tuttle and Hans Conreid.
According to Screen Actors Guild pertaining to actors working on cartoon shows, they are permitted to “triple”—do three voices on one show.
"And that's why we like to use people like June Foray for example, who has so many voices and so much versatility. She's really incredible.
"Paul Frees, for example, is another one. He looks like a wealthy beatnik since he shaved off his handlebar mustache. He's got that florid complexion and wears Texas-type boots with a wild shirt and scarf. The coat never matches the pants—they're usually dark Ivy League and the coat’s an olive-yellowish corduroy.
"But the voices he does! He's told me he's done as many as five and six in one commercial, and I'm sure if you were familiar with all his voices, you'd hear him dozens of times in one evening watching television or listening to radio," Howell marvels.
Each script runs approximately 25 minutes, and the first table reading takes roughly 35 minutes, allowing for interruptions from Howell or the actors themselves who may not be satisfied with the first interpretation. They stop for a coffee break of 5 or 10 minutes, and then the actual recording session commences.
Gosden and Correll share one microphone, just as they did in the days of radio. Beatrice Kay stands at one mike with Virginia Gregg behind her. Explains Howell: "Beatrice talks up into the mike, and Virginia talks down. It works very well. The other actors come on mike when required and get back, again exactly as in radio. They're all so experienced in the technique, it presents no problem. And then we take it from the top.
"There's no pressure. If an actor fluffs, or we want a different intonation on a line, we get it. And we mark on the tape where the change was made, so immediately after the recording session, the editing is done and we've got a clean and perfect tape.
"We don't record sound effects at this session—that’s done later—and we don't record music.
"We use all original music with 11 to 14 musicians under the direction of George Bruns who is our composer too. He did cartoon music for Disney for years, and now is associated with us in the same capacity."
After Bruns sees the show, he works on his ideas with animation producer Bob Ganon of Creston Studios, and he decides what type of music the action requires—if there will be tuba bass notes, whistles, glissandoes, rhythm shuffling, or music for a chase.
Bruns points out, "Often music will give an effect that you can't get with dialogue and that's the most important part of my job, to create the effect we want."
There is little clowning around during the recording session. Some of the actors are tired from a day's work on other shows, and all of them want to get home.
Says Howell, "Freeman will tell a joke now and then, or an anecdote about his last golf game. He spends a lot of time in Palm Springs with former President Eisenhower, and he might tell us of something that happened the last time he saw him. Or comment on what the stock market did that day.
“Charlie’s son, Richard, works on Leave It to Beaver, and he's with him most of the time on that set. So he'll tell us what happened there. But for the most part, we're all here to do a job, and we do it.
“We rent the studio from 7 to 10 but I can't recall a single instance when we've worked until 10. The recording takes about 35 minutes, and we fix up the mistakes, stop for another cup of coffee, and that's it."
All told, Howell estimates some 35 people are directly involved in each segment of Calvin and the Colonel and he's highly enthusiastic about changes in the upcoming shows. The characters will remain the same, of course, but they will look slightly different. The mouth movements will be different. The bear will have a more lumbering walk. The two women will be prettier, and there will be new openings and closings.
"To sum up, you could say we'll have more slapstick for the kids and more action for the grownups. I like the new approach and I think the people will too," he says confidently.

No, Mr. Howell, they didn’t. Variety reported on April 4, 1962 Calvin and the Colonel had been cancelled in late March. It didn’t get the Saturday morning rerun treatment by the networks; instead MCA-TV put the 26 episodes in the syndication market in 1964. There don’t appear to have been a lot of nibbles outside of stations in Los Angeles, Boston and Philadelphia.

For kids, the problem with the show was none of the characters were likeable like Yogi Bear, Bugs Bunny or even blowhard Fred Flintstone. Kids didn’t root for them like they did when Mighty Mouse vanquished evil cats. Calvin and the Colonel were a schemer and his slow-on-the-uptake friend. In other words, they were Amos and Andy. Even without the dialect, their voices were pretty much the same. News articles about the cartoon series continued to refer to the old radio show, not surprising because that’s all Gosden and Correll were known for. One paper in Wisconsin even had a drawing of the two in costume and blackface, like it was still 1928.

However good Gosden and Correll’s intentions were, by 1962 America pretty much had enough of that. Even if it was hidden in animal-face instead.

The Danger of Dog Food

You know how the Claude Cat/Frisky Puppy cartoons work, right? Claude tries to do something, Frisky barks, the barks scare Claude, Claude flies upward, when he drops he lands on his feet because that’s what cats do.

If nothing else, the formula gave director Chuck Jones a chance to do a whole bunch of his poses and expressions. Claude’s a great villain because you always know what he’s thinking.

Terrier Stricken (1952) opens with Claude finishing his food, then eyes Frisky’s full dish. He checks to see if no one will catch him stealing. Just as he’s about to eat—BARK! BARK! BARK! And away Claude goes.

I like how Jones (or maybe Maltese on the storyboard or maybe the artist) turns Claude’s tail into a devilish pitchfork. Some frames:



A pose by Frisky. Jones has the ears moving a little bit (gravity, you know) so the shot isn't static. Follow-through. Just like at Disney.



This is all one scene by one animator. The first cut is to Claude. There are three drawings used in the chattering cycle.



Ken Harris, Lloyd Vaughan and Ben Washam receive the animation credits. If the first scene is by Harris, someone can let me know. Bob Gribbroek contributes some good layouts.