Who's Funny: Skelton or the Nelsons?

In 1947, John Crosby famously wrote a column for the New York Herald Tribune syndicate gushing about a Jack Benny broadcast, asking for a copy of the script, then penned a piece saying he had read it and couldn’t figure out why he laughed at it. You can read the column in this post.

This was actually the first of a pair of columns. The next day, he wrote a similar column about Red Skelton’s show. Crosby liked Benny. He didn’t think much of Skelton.

Here’s what he said. It was published on January 7, 1947. “Pat” is his announcer Pat McGeehan (cartoon fans will know him as the bear WHO CAN’T STAND NOISE in Tex Avery’s Rock-a-Bye Bear) “Rod” is Skelton’s other announcer, Rod O’Connor. “Wonderful” is Wonderful Smith, kind of Skelton’s answer to Rochester.

RADIO IN REVIEW
By JOHN CROSBY
Mr. Skelton Entertains
Yesterday, I expressed mild surprise at the fact that a very funny broadcast by Jack Benny emanated a from script that didn't appear to have a laugh line in it. Today, to complete your education I should like you to consider a script that wasn't at all funny, either when it was broadcast or when it was read. For this purpose I have at my elbow a script from a recent broadcast by Red Skelton, a comedian whose principal qualifications for his job are enormous vitality and great self-confidence. Mr. Skelton indulges in a brand of medieval humor which, while it has never made me laugh, never fails to astonish me. His comedy seems to have no antecedents and no connection with anything in my experience. Maybe you can figure it out.
* * *
PAT: And now we open our Skelton Scrap Book of Satires to the stories on doctors and hospitals. Chapter 34, each year thousands of new students enroll in our schools. We go now to a medical college where enrollments are in progress.
O'CONNOR: Next? Your name please?
SKELTON: Oh, heck! I always flunk on that question.
O'CONNOR: You don't even know your own name. You're really dumb.
SKELTON: Do you know my name?
O'CONNOR: No.
SKELTON: I guess we're both pretty dumb.
O'CONNOR: Come on, come on what's your name?
SKELTON: J. Newton Numbskull.
O'CONNOR: What's the stand for—Jerk?
SKELTON: That's right.
O'CONNOR: Have you prepared at a recognized college or university for your medical course?
SKELTON: Yup, at barber's college they said I'd make a terrific surgeon.
O'CONNOR: Is your family sending you thru med school?
SKELTON: Nope, they're against it. My mother had an awful experience in a hospital . . . me!
* * *
PAT: Chapter 35—The Ambulance driver.
(Phone rings).
WONDERFUL: Mr. Lump Lump, the phone is ringing.
SKELTON: Well, I didn't think a Swiss bell ringer. Sick people! I hate this place. Everybody is sick. Even the windows have panes. (Into the phone) Hello, General hospital. Private Lump Lump speaking. You want to report an accident? Okay, tattle-tale. Uh huh. Sounds serious. When did this happen? Two hours ago? Look, wise guy, call me back next week, it'll take us that long to get there. Why? Because we have a new ambulance and they haven't delivered the wheels yet.
WONDERFUL: Let's go back him up now 'cause you're getting to be the slowest ambulance driver in the country.
SKELTON: What do you mean? Just what do you mean? I got a guy to the hospital so fast once they had to wait five hours for the ailment to arrive.
WONDERFUL: Yes, and I remember the time you drove so slow with an expectant mother that by time you got to the hospital the kid was old enough to vote.
SKELTON: I'll drive.
WONDERFUL: You ain't really going to drive, are you' Every time you drive we look in worse shape than the people we pick up.
SKELTON: We save time when I drive. We don't have to go so far for an accident.
WONDERFUL: Take it easy around them curves.
SKELTON: If you're scared, do what I do. Close your eyes. Every second counts. There's nothing to worry about as long as one wheel is in the ground.
WONDERFUL: Yeah, but the only one touching is the spare tire.
SKELTON: Are you really scared?
WONDERFUL: Scared! I look like Al Jolson before he left home. You're in the downtown district. Put on the brakes.
SKELTON: Okay. Get them out of the tool box.
WONDERFUL: Where are we going?
SKELTON: That depends on what kind of life you've led. (Terrific crash.) Oh, well, one lucky break! We don't have to wait for an ambulance.
There is a great deal more of it but I think that's enough to give you the quaint quality of Skelton comedy. The places where you are expected to laugh are clearly indicated. The rest is up to you.

On the other hand, Crosby had some affection for a fairly banal radio sitcom, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Despite bouncing around on the radio dial in the 1940s, the series settled in during the 1950s and remained on television for 14 seasons, going off the air on September 3, 1966 after 435 episodes.

Here’s Crosby’s column from Jan. 9, 1947. No, I don’t know why the drawing accompanying the Los Angeles Daily News version of this story shows Ozzie and Harriet had a daughter.

RADIO IN REVIEW
By JOHN CROSBY
Ozzie and Harriet
A great many young married couples strain mightily to portray marital bliss on the air but very few of them succeed. One of the most successful and certainly the most convincing of these young couples is Ozzie Nelson and his wife, the former Harriet Hilliard. The word young may be out of place in their connection. The Nelsons have been married 11 years, have two children, and appear to take matrimony more or less for granted. Possibly just force of habit gives their program an easy-going air, missing in most of the other of these connubial affairs.
Mr. Nelson, it will be recalled, was once a bandleader and pretty good one. Miss Hilliard was his vocalist. They were married in 1935 and, after Miss Hilliard had a brief fling in the movies, settled down in radio. The couple put in a long period of apprenticeship with Joe Penner and Red Skelton before they got their own program (“Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet CBS, 6 p. m. E.S.T. Sundays) two years ago. Originally the idea was for Miss Hilliard to sing once in a while but this idea was dropped and nowadays the Nelsons merely portray married life and make it sound very fetching too.
* * *
It’s difficult to catch in print the charm of the Nelson show. Much of Harriet’s dialog consists of such admonitions as "Drink your milk, David,” and the children’s conversation runs largely toward "Golly" and “Holy Cow.” The problems that beset the Nelsons are so minute that you sometimes wonder how in the world they'll last half an hour. They do though, chiefly because the Nelsons devote a good deal of time coping with the small, vexing details which make up much of our lives. They have difficulty getting David off to school, Ozzie up from the sofa, getting waited on in stores, and even finding a place to park the car.
Recently the problem was helping David with a theme that had to be produced at the end of his holidays.
“How much have you got to do?” inquired his mother.
"Not much.”
"How much is not much?”
"All of it.”
"Really, David, haven’t you done any of it? I don't know where you get such habits—such bad habits.
“Oh, it’s not so bed,” says his father.
"Yes, I do," remarks Mrs. Nelson.
* * *
Ozzie, a bland, frequently feather-brained, procrastinating sort of fellow, volunteers to help his son with the theme. He dispatches himself to the public library to do some research on the costumes worn in 1847 although his wife voices the suspicion that he is headed for the movies.
"Do you think I’d sneak off to the movies Instead of doing David's research?” he inquire indignantly. “I don't like the tone of what you're saying.”
Unfortunately, on the way to the library, he runs into his old friend Thornbury, who is on his way to "The Killers” at the Rivoli. "No, no, I can’t, Thorney,” says Ozzie, resisting temptation. “I've got to go to the library.” "Why don't you do this, Ozzie? Flip a coin and then it's not your fault. It's fate.”
"I haven’t got a coin.”
"Tell you what we'll do. We’ll go to the Rivoli and buy two tickets and then we’ll have a coin."
* * *
In the end it is Mrs. Nelson who does the research and I'm happy to report David got an A. He is a big-hearted lad and cheerfully gives his father credit for an assist on the though it isn’t quite clear what his father did to deserve it.
Ozzie is the spring around which most of the program revolves. He has a nice radio personality which will remind you a little of Jimmy Stewart in the movies. The rest of the family are pretty nice, too, including the two kids who play Rickey and David. They manage, somehow to avoid that air of precocity, which is so irritating other childish radio actors.

“1847” was a commercial tie-in. The show advertised “1847 Rogers Bros” silver cutlery. Ricky and David Nelson didn’t play themselves until 1949; Henry Blair was Ricky and Tommy Bernard was David when Crosby wrote this column.

We’ve mentioned three of Crosby’s columns for the week. The other two:

Wednesday, January 8: A look at the Ginny Simms show, featuring announcer Don Wilson, and comments about the pre-Chairman-of-the-Board version of Frank Sinatra, when everyone was making jokes about how scrawny he was.
Friday, January 10: a wordy examination of radio “contact men.” Crosby takes four paragraphs before he gets to his subject. He could have easily cut them out and started with “Whenever prosperity.” The drawing to the right is, like the other two, from the Daily News of Los Angeles.

You can click on the columns to read them better.

Jump! Jump!

A roll of dollar bills and a price tag jump over each other in the John Sutherland cartoon Why Play Leap Frog?

Both have little arms and feet. It takes 32 drawings for the two to leap frog, animated one per frame in a cycle. Unfortunately, the graph background doesn’t match at the start of each cycle, so we can’t put together a repeating version. Instead, you can see all 32 drawings below. There’s some slight movement, then a stretch up and down again.



The cartoon is copyright March 1, 1949. The music cues by former Disney composer Paul Smith are copyright September 26, 1949. This is one of the Sutherland cartoons MGM put on its release schedule, with a date February 4, 1950.

The first showing of the cartoon we can find so far was on July 26, 1947 at a meeting of the Batesville, Arkansas Lions Club at which members were warned about the bogey-man of socialism, “now the accepted philosophy in many sections of the United States,” according to a report on the event the next day in the Batesville Guard. The message of the cartoon is if Joe wants a raise, he’d better be a more productive worker, otherwise prices will jump to keep up.

The capitalist propaganda short made immediately before this, Meet King Joe was also screened.

There are no credits on the short. Bud Hiestand is the narrator, Frank Nelson plays a couple of characters, but I haven’t been able to identify the voice of Joe.

The Cartoon With Two Meanings

Symphony in Slang looks to have been an experiment by Tex Avery in several different areas—stylised backgrounds (except for the opening), limited animation and a story consisting of nothing except visual puns.

Avery and writer Rich Hogan shoved in as many literalized phrases as they could string together to make a narrative. They come at the audience quickly.

Just one: “My breath came in short pants.”



Avery uses a 20-drawing cycle for the pants flying out of the hipster's mouth.

Years ago, we posted a link to screen grabs of the gags and to the dialogue. The links are still active.

Tex suggested to author/historian Joe Adamson if MGM cartoon boss Fred Quimby had his way, the cartoon never would have been made.

We got smart, and we would wait until it got close to our deadline and we'd say, “Chief, this is all we’ve got! The only way to keep from making this show is to lay the animators off. This is all we've got!”’ So we got by with some things. That's how we did Symphony in Slang, where we illustrated literally a lot of popular expressions—‘‘I was in a pickle’, “‘I went to pieces.’ He had a hell of a time trying to understand that one.

The short seems to have sat on a shelf (try saying that five times). Variety reported on Aug. 5, 1949 that John Brown was recording three different voices for it. Brown, at the time, was Digger O’Dell, the friendly undertaker, on The Life of Riley and deadbeat boyfriend Al on My Friend Irma. Then this story popped up in the papers; one was published Aug. 27th.

SCENES FOR SLANG
HOLLYWOOD—Largest number of scenes ever listed for a one reel cartoon are scheduled for M-G-M’s “Symphony in Slang,” Producer Fred Quimby states. An entirely new cartoon technique will give five feet each to individual slang expressions. The cartoon will also be different in that it will have commentation behind the action for its entire length.

Scott Bradley's score was copyright September 11, 1950, but the cartoon’s official release date was the following June 16th. However, to the right you see it advertised for screening on April 29 at a theatre in Waverly, New York.

I can’t imagine this cartoon went over in theatres outside North America, but it did go over well at one American institute of higher learning. Reported the Hollywood Reporter on Dec. 27, 1951:

Cartoon Lesson
E. A. Warren of Notre Dame has requested Fred Quimby, producer of MGM cartoons, to show “Symphony in Slang” before the English classes at the University. Cartoon pokes fun at some of our more familiar slang clichés.

As the cartoon’s hipster might say, “Ain’t that a kick in the head!”

A Jack, a WAC and a Camel

Jack Benny couldn’t make it happen again.

He had success on his radio show when a pet polar bear became a part of it. Carmichael even played a role in the feature Buck Benny Rides Again (1940). Benny and his writers decided to bring other animals onto the show, but they didn’t last very long. Audiences didn’t seem to connect with them. One was an ostrich. Another was a horse that replaced Benny’s Maxwell (which reappeared after the war years). Another was a camel.

Unlike the others, the camel had some basis in reality. Jack, Larry Adler and others toured the Middle East in 1943, entertaining soldiers in the sweltering heat, afterward going to Italy. The Los Angeles Daily News had some information in its edition of Oct. 22, 1943.

WACS 'draft' Jack Benny as he returns with head unbombed
Jack Benny, the only entertainer to return from an overseas tour without claiming he had been subjected to gunfire, was met at Union station yesterday [21] by a mob scene that included a detachment of WACS and a stuffed camel. The WACS were on hand to “swear" Benny in as an honorary recruiting officer in the current campaign, while the camel's presence was explained to be in connection with a "gag” Benny had broadcast from Cairo.
It seems that while the entertainer was entertaining in that Egyptian city he let loose with the remark that he had bought a two humped camel, the two hump model on the ground that “you can get a better tradein deal, and besides you can keep dry ice in one."
Press agents from the broadcasting company here, hanging on every word, immediately instituted a search for a two humped camel, which was located by a safari at Goebel's Lion farm on Ventura blvd.
It was thought best to rent a stuffed camel, rather than a live one, it was explained, the latter being “a little unpredictable, front and back."
Benny, when he got off Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe's Chief and stood in the midst of an admiring group, said he had had a fine time on his trip.
“But, kids,” he cautioned, “if you want to make a Frank Merriwell story out of this, I can't help you. I had a wonderful, exciting time, practically a vacation.”
In 10 weeks and 15,000 miles, Benny played 150 shows in Africa, Sicily and Italy, points on the Persian gulf, and Iceland on the way home.
“The big thing was the trip to Italy," Benny said. “It was the only place we made a hazardous trip, where we had no business going.”
Though he had been in what the army designated as combat zones, Benny said, he hadn’t been up at the front. No bombs, no shells.
The comic, who said that he had put on 15 pounds which he would have to take off for his next picture, ran into a lot of people “over there."
“I ran into Bruce Cabot in Tunis, and, what’s the name of that fellow who was married to Joan Bennett and Hedy Lamarr?”
"Gene Markey?" somebody said.
“Yeah, Gene Markey,” Benny continued. “And then I ran into people like my caddy from Hillcrest. That was in Tunis, too."
Asked what he thought the troops overseas needed by way of entertainment Benny said “More live entertainment, they could stand. Especially in places where there isn’t any combat duty."
When Benny arrived in New York, he was quoted as having said that some of the pictures being shown the boys were so old that Shirley Temple hasn’t been born yet and Francis X. Bushman is the lending man."
Yesterday he explained that he hadn’t meant it quite that way.
“I don’t like to start a thing all ever again," he said. “My statement was that in two places, Sicily and Persia, I saw old pictures. But in other places I saw very late pictures."
Among the military present to greet the homecomer was Lt. Col. Clifford Henderson, staff officer to Maj. Gen. Jimmie Doolittle, on detached service with the air transport command.
Benny and the colonel had missed seeing each other in Benghazi by about 10 minutes, and if the colonel had gone away mad when the train didn't come in on time yesterday, he would have missed him again.
The reason the colonel was there was that he is giving some indirect help on the WAC recruiting drive, and what with some WACS being at the station to meet Benny it all adds somehow.
In New York Benny picked up his radio troupe for the return home.
With him were his wife, Mary Livingstone; Phil Harris and Mrs. Harris (Alice Faye), Rochester (Eddie Anderson), Dennis Day and Don Wilson.
Day got off at Pasadena and Harris and Miss Faye at Union station, the latter two availing themselves of invisibility to avoid the crush.
A station passenger agent, long since used to anything Hollywood can spring on him, was unimpressed by the presence of the stuffed camel. “That's not so bad,” he said. “When Fred Allen came in they brought him a calf."
And before that, when a consignment of Cover Girls was shipped to a local movie studio they were met at the station by a Russian wolfhound.
The presence of live or stuffed stock is rapidly becoming standard equipment at these trainside events.

The Cairo broadcast was a special programme on NBC on Sept. 13, 1943. You can listen to it below.



Benny’s pet camel debuted on his show of January 9, 1944. You would think the role would have been given to Mel Blanc, who had been appearing with Jack. Instead, it was handed to 17-year-old Alhambra High School student Stan Freberg, who went on to a career in the public relations department of McCormack General Hospital (and a few other things).

Freberg did the one thing you never did on the Jack Benny show. He pissed off Jack Benny. In his anxiousness during a rehearsal, he rushed to the microphone to do his camel voice (supporting players sat on chairs on stage) and threw off Benny. Benny then threw off Freberg. He never appeared on the Benny radio show again, and evidently took the camel with him.

Making a Terrytoon Starts With Paul Terry

“Paul Terry took an active part in the story work not only by feeding his own gags to the stories but by a sort of assault-tactic on the story department,” recalled writer Izzy Klein about his former employer.

In the December 1973 edition of Cartoonist Profiles, he said: “During my first two weeks Terry seemed to be a quiet soul, but soon enough his crash method of forcing a story out every two weeks became evident. He considered himself Mr. Story Department for Terrytoons, from whom all ideas originated. Other people’s ideas were merely fillers. Nevertheless, he expected and demanded support from the ‘backfield.’”

If anyone disbelieves Klein’s opinion, they need look no further than the April 1945 edition of New Dynamo magazine. This was an internal publication of 20th Century Fox, which released Terrytoons until the studio stopped making them. The issue features a rather lengthy feature story on Terry, how his studio made cartoons, and an overview of what exhibitors were getting in the current season and would be available at film exchanges in the next season.

It’s worth reading for its, at-times, almost poetic recitation of superlatives about Terry and his product that Fox was distributing. About the studio, it states:

The keystone of the structure is its President. His personal and professional history and temperament have been the core around which this cohesive and efficient organization could readily form and absorb enough of the Terry character to compose a unified, consistent and smoothly-working mechanism.

Due to the length, we won’t reprint the full article. It is available for your pleasure at the handy Archive.org site (off-line until further notice). Instead of the portion about Terry himself, we’ll transcribe the portion about how Terrytoons were made. Note what is said about stories.

Thirty years after his venturesome plunge into the animated cartoon arena, and, despite the many strenuous intervening years, expended in inspiring and superintending successful production in a highly competitive field, Paul Terry today shows few signs of wear and tear. Most people at first sight would estimate his age as being ten years less than it actually is.
This is because he has long since made the virtually perfect adjustment between the ideals and fancies of the creative artist, and the practical thought-processes of the executive, that is so essential to the role he has to play in the world.
To constitute the driving and controlling force of an organization like Terrytoons, as he does, it is necessary first for Mr. Terry to be an originator, a creator. This faculty, of course, had to be born in him, and it was developed by the art education of his very early years, by his work as a newspaper artist and cartoonist, and still more rapidly and fully by the flowering of his imagination and technical abilities after he had plunged into the swift and turbulent stream of animated cartoon work and found himself thoroughly at home there.
Acting on his life-long belief that one must "take in" in order to "give out," Mr. Terry reinforced his natural talents and his training by studiously delving, over a long period of years, into the fictional lore of all nations. Beginning with Aesop, and completely absorbing every recorded word that the ancient genius ever uttered, he stored his mind with the narrative masterpieces of thousands of years and of every country on the globe.
From this rich and inexhaustible stock of themes, characters, situations, backgrounds and miscellaneous ideas, Mr. Terry, adding the indispensable ingredient of original conception, distills the concrete inspiration which starts the machinery rolling on the production of another cartoon.
Over a course of many years, Paul Terry has assembled a staff of executives and artists, most of them long known to him, who can work with each other and with him harmoniously and with the highest degree of effectiveness. To the specialized experts of the Story Department he hands the theme and the principal ideas of the new cartoon-to-be, and they shape it in elaborate detail, over a period of two weeks, in sketch form. Backgrounds are visualized, the successive situations are worked out so as to tell the story in the most forceful and cogent form, the "gags," which are to bring the laughs from the audiences, are conceived and inserted in the places where they will be most effective, and the dialogue completed down to the carefully-selected last word.
Even sound effects are calculated with care and precision. A staff of talented and experienced scenarists, headed by John Foster, who has been a noted Story Director for many years, handles this end of the work. Mr. Terry, however, keeps his eye on this vital task and frequently alters the course of the story for the better, or suggests new situations, "gags," or bits of dialogue to sharpen it up.
The completed story consists of hundreds of sketches, depicting, in order, the various scenes that have been carefully knit together — their backgrounds and their action — and a script describing all the action in detail, with the dialogue and sound effects.
One of the picture directors, who are assigned pictures in turn, takes over the story in this form, and he cooperates with the musical director, Philip Scheib, in "timing" all the action in the cartoon. This is a long and involved task, in which every movement of the characters is measured in fractions of a second, and the exact time consumed for each is set down in the music sheets, for the accompanying music, which is so important, must synchronize exactly with the action of the figures.
Mr. Scheib, a musical director of wide reputation over a long period of years, next takes charge of the music sheets. He composes a score calculated to accompany and illustrate all the action throughout the picture, indicate the changing moods, and emphasize the high points. The music must stimulate and excite the listener in one place, uplift him in another, soothe or charm him in other passages. The Music Department is one in which Terrytoons particularly excel.
The score, with sound effects and dialogue, is recorded at the 20th Century-Fox Sound Studio in New York, under the supervision of Mr. Scheib and the picture director, with the assistance of an orchestra and various actors and singers who have specialized in this form of work.
The director in charge of the picture now takes over the music sheets, where the score as well as the action, dialogue and sound effects have been set down in finished form. He spreads the multitudinous sketches delineating the story, on a great board filling one wall of his office, and gets down to work. The director must be a craftsman of long experience and exceptional talent, familiar with all departments of animated cartoon work, as well as a forceful executive. He now plans, in detail, the execution of all the scenes in the picture, and calls in the layout men to make careful drawings of characters, key action attitudes, and backgrounds.
The next step is for the director to hand out the scenes of the picture, which may be anywhere from 45 to 70 in number, to the various animators, with the layouts for each scene and detailed instructions as to how it is to be treated to achieve the best effects in respect to action and humor. Twenty animators and as many "in-betweeners" work for a month, or longer, completing the scenes for each cartoon. Nine or ten thousand drawings in elaborate, smoothly-coordinated sequence, are necessary to depict in finished fashion the action of the average Terrytoon.
The drawings are next taken to the Tracing and Painting Department, where about 50 young artists, most of them girls, carefully trace the drawings on to celluloid sheets, and paint in the variegated colors in which the characters appear.
All this time, the Background Department has been working up, in full color, charming, whimsical, dramatic or fantastic settings (whichever may be called for) from the drawings furnished by the layout men. The Background Department is staffed by outstanding landscape artists, whose distinctive work is one of the superior features of Terrytoons, adding much to the vividness and charm of the pictures.
The thousands of celluloid sheets, with the action drawings traced and painted on them, are now taken to the Camera Department, where seven great modem color cameras dominate a full equipment of every mechanical device known to the improved production of animated cartoons. Scene by scene, the backgrounds are fitted under the vertical cameras, and on them are laid the celluloids depicting the action, three or four at a time. This process continues under the various cameras until the entire cartoon is photographed.
The picture has now been completely recorded on a long roll of film, and this is dispatched to Hollywood by airplane, printed in Technicolor, and the prints swiftly returned by plane to the New Rochelle main office of Terrytoons. There the picture is projected with all executives and workers present, when criticism is invited and changes are made if found necessary. Changes, however, are actually infrequent in the case of these cartoons, as every operation involved in their creation has been executed with the utmost care, from the sketching of the first idea to the final click of the camera in the last scene.
This, in brief, is the story of the evolution of a Terrytoon. Many details of the process have been omitted, and whole departments vital to the conduct of the business have been overlooked. However, the foregoing is an adequate summary of the most important moves in the production of a modern animated cartoon of the first order, calculated to please, thrill and bring the boon of happy laughter to millions of followers.

Terry and CBS signed a contract in 1953 to put 112 Terrytoons on television. The Barker Bill show debuted in November. Then he started closing a deal in late 1955 to sell his studio to the network. Terrytoons continued to be made for about another 15 years. Say what you will about him, but Paul Terry was an animation pioneer and produced cartoons popular with more than one generation.

The Ears Have It

In the 1930 Disney cartoon Wild Waves, there's an awful lot of repetitious action. We see four penguins dancing on a beach. Then they go through the same steps a second time. Same with Minnie Mouse trying to escape some high waves.

There's an interesting take that I don't believe was used very often. Mickey sees a fishing net he can turn into a harp (which sounds like a piano). He's so excited about it, his ears detach in a three-drawing take (one per frame).



The first half of the short is Mickey rescuing Minnie, the second half is characters dancing or singing.

The internet can’t make up its mind when this cartoon was released. We have this report from New York by Phil M. Daly, Jr. of the Film Daily of Jan. 16, 1930; it was in theatres by then:

Charlie Giegerich is happy over the treatment given “Wild Waves,” Celebrity cartoon, at the premiere of “Hit the Deck” the other night at the Earl Carroll.

Celebrity was Pat Powers’ company and Giegerich was his right-hand man. Later in the year, Powers would poach Ub Iwerks.

Here's Variety's review of Jan. 22nd:

“WILD WAVES”
Disney Cartoon
8 Mins.
Carroll, N. Y.
Columbia
Fast-moving comedy cartoon, which isn’t on long enough to bore many, no matter if it isn’t always laugh provoking. Doesn’t rank with the best of the recent crop, but will fit any program.
It’s one of the Mickey Mouse series, unwinding the usual antics of the cartoonist’s imagination. Most of the action attempts to keep the rhythm of the synchronized score, but the resultant gag maneuvers not being overly strong. Some of the cartoons are mimicking the voices of the figures in certain spots, a mistake, as it rudely interrupts any illusion the drawings may have previously invoked. That’s overdoing the sound thing.
The cartoon one-reelers are riding in front at present, with a wealth of material to pick from to make it tough to offset their strength. Carelessness and an attempt to turn ’em out too fast can undermine as fast as the novelty of sound and a couple of great ideas sent them out as pace makers. Their main asset is that they’re built for laughs, and people primarily go to the theatre for that purpose. Sid

The uncredited director is apparently Burt Gillett.

Mitzi Gaynor

Mitzi Gaynor was a dynamo.

She appeared in movies and in stage shows, and was continually lauded for her ceaseless energy.

In 1950, producer Georgie Jessel saw her, shoved her into the cast of the Betty Grable/Dan Dailey picture My Blue Heaven, borrowed a surname from Janet Gaynor and turned Mitzi Gerber into Mitzi Gaynor (the original Gaynor was reportedly not impressed with 20th Century-Fox unilaterally absconding with her moniker).

Her biggest film role was likely Mary Martin’s leading part in the stage musical South Pacific (1958) but she was out of movies within a few years.

Why?

The Associated Press hunted for the reason in a column published May 31, 1964.

Movies Wrong For Gaynor
By JAMES BACON
HOLLYWOOD (AP) – Mitzi Gaynor is a victim of box-office chemistry.
And that may also be what’s wrong with the movies.
The last time Mitzi was cast opposite the right leading man — Rosanno Brazzi — the picture, “South Pacific,” wound up seventh in the top 10 list of all-time moneymaking films.
Her next two pictures were comedies opposite Yul Brynner and Kirk Douglas.
Result: Mitzi had to go into the nightclub field where she commands $40,000 a week.
At the Las Vegas Flamingo she was given two points—two per cent — of the action of the entire hotel-casino operation to sign a 10-year contract.
Jack Entratter of The Sands, who wishes he had her under contract, comments:
“She’s the only new night club star to emerge in the last decade.”
But there are no movie scripts. Josh Logan once said Mitzi can do more things better than anyone else in Hollywood. That’s partly her trouble. When Brynner and Douglas, both serious actors, chose Mitzi, she was so good that she made them look bad.
A smart producer would cast her opposite Jack Lemmon or Cary Grant — and you would have a female Sandy Koufax pitching against a Willie Mays.
Also, she was producer Ray Stark’s first choice to do “Funny Girl” on Broadway, but declared:
“I knew I wouldn’t be believable as Fanny Brice so I turned it down. And look what Barbra Streisand is doing with it.”
Jack Bean, her husband and manager, explained why she refused the role.
“Fanny Brice was no beauty. Neither is Barbra—she kids about it herself. Look at Mitzi. How can you make her unpretty?”
Now Stark has a Broadway show called “The Passionate Witch,” based on the old Fredric March-Veronica Lake movie “I Married a Witch.”
Mitzi’s interested. If she takes it, you may see a repetition of the Betty Grable saga.
For years Betty get herself arrested around Hollywood. Then she did “Dubarry Was a Lady” on Broadway and the movies discovered her.
For the next ten years, she was in the movies’ top 10 box office list—usually the only woman there.

She shone on the Vegas strip. She toured nightclubs. Vancouver loved her. She tried out her Vegas material in the city. Gaynor first appeared in Vancouver in 1966. There were long lines outside the Cave supper club. Two weeks became four. People were still turned away.

Gaynor didn’t cancel a vacation in Banff and stay in Vancouver just for the money. The Bolshoi Ballet was arriving and she wanted to catch their matinee performance. Actually, she decided to do more than that. She asked local show producer Hugh Pickett to invite them to her late performance and then take them all to a nearby Italian restaurant. “But, my dear, there’s 140 of them.” It ended up the invitation was accepted by the company’s 30 principals.

She returned a number of times to Vancouver, though the days of expensive supper club shows being funded in higher-valued American money were waning. A columnist for the Province tried to get Gaynor to be introspective in a column published May 24, 1969.

Mitzi Gaynor . . . way it is all right by her.
By KAY ALSOP
Offstage, too, she’s a life-size Barbie doll—same round eyes, pert nose and that incredible figure . . . Watching her perform, the way she wound an audience around here finger, I’d thought to myself: “Nuts—no woman over 21 can be all that adorable. She’s GOT to be bitchy before breakfast, or have some dirty shoulder straps—SOMETHING!”
Then I met her—Francesca Mitzi Marlene de Charney von Gerber Bean—Mitzi Gaynor.
I had been talking to Cave band-leader Fraser McPherson, and hadn’t noticed her approach until suddenly:
“Hi!” she bubbled. “Waiting for me?”
And in the dim light, there at the top of the stairs, I swear it was like she was lit by sparklers!
Easy now, I thought. Adorable, eh? You’re going to have to show me . . .
While she chattered on about this and that—(“Hey, like to sit here? I think I’ll sit myself—phew!”)—I grabbed a couple of sneaky peeks around at the star’s dressing room.
During the past few months I’ve been in it several times, and seen it in all manner of disarrat. And you know? This time it was parlor-tidy, costumes lined up, plastic-covered. No powder spills on the table, lounge laid tidily with cotton cover.
I looked at this doll, composed on a straight chair, a flame-colored shirtwaist playing up those curves, silk scarf knotted at the throat, eyes swagged in two-inch lashes.
She read my mind.

“My face is ready,” she cracked. “And believe me, it takes time. These eyes are a production!”
“Listen,” I began, “I’ve got only three questions, all ‘how-do-you-keepers.’ First, how do you keep your bounce?”
“Easy,” she said. “I’m naturally energetic, but I take vitamins too, tons of them. And I try to get enough sleep. Even though my life is topsy-turvy—I go to bed at 4 a.m. and get up at 2 p.m. But I do run down occasionally, and when I really get tired I flop! (and she slumped dramatically in the chair to show me.)
“Then my husband drags me off for a rest, and I don’t do a thing but plop! Otherwise I’m lucky—I have lots of git-up-and-go.”
“Okay—second question. How do you keep your figure?”
“Exercise,” she said instantly, “and I watch my diet. I was REALLY fat fifteen years ago, you know—42 inch hips, 23 inch waist (normally, I’m 21 inches around the middle). I looked like this: (and she drew parentheses in the air to indicate balloon proportions.)
“I was engaged to Jack then, and he told me bluntly: ‘Diet!’ So I did. I lose 35 pounds in three months. My stomach growled all day long. I was so grouchy. But I got my shape back.
“Since then I don’t really diet, but (she looked at me levelly) let’s face it—I work a lot of it off out there on the stage. And I exercise regularly every day.”
“Final question. How do you keep your husband?”
Her answer came back like a shot.
“I ADORE him, and I tell him so CONSTANTLY! He’s the boss, he’s my manager my companion, my love and my friend.
“We’ve been married for fourteen years, and I can hardly wait for the next fourteen. I wake up in the middle of the night and suddenly get panicky. I think: ‘My God! What if I had never met Jack? What if something happened to him? What would I DO?”
“Sometimes I get terribly crabby, like when I’ve sprained my ankle, or cut my finger, or put my back out. I feel disgustingly sorry for myself then. But Jack knows all I need is lots of loving. And I GET it!”
I had forgotten the ‘adorable’ bit by now. I was remembering, instead, that Mitzi Gaynor was one of those ‘overnight’ successes who had been slugging away for more than 20 years before she was ‘discovered’ in “South Pacific.” I was recalling that the crew she works with—the backstage people who really know a star—dote on her.
I thought about the fat girl who gritted her teeth, ignore the famished stomach, and whittled her 42 inch hips down to a curvy 36. And I looked at this performer who, in the best tradition of show business, worked doggedly at her craft, polishing, practising, till she was letter-perfect and gesture-sure.
My mind flashed back over the number of female performers I’ve interviewed in the past, whose off-stage lives loomed bleak and lonely because they’d not known how to work at a marriage as well as a career, and I mentally applauded this Gaynor gal for her shrewd, basic logic, her ability to put things in proper perspective, first things first.
She’s at the top of the heap, earning some $45,000 a week at Las Vegas. Vancouver crowds line the streets and the stairs, waiting to squeeze in to see her perform. Critics rave. And Mitzi Gaynor raves too—about her husband!

At age 66, the Cave long demolished, Mitzi was emotional when her 1996 performances at the Vogue Theatre in Vancouver prompted the city to declare July 9th as Mitzi Gaynor Day. Just shy of 80, she performed at a Vancouver-area casino. Entertainment critics still lauded her enthusiasm on stage. She gave her all to her audiences. She'll be long remembered for it.