Woody Throws It Away

Some of the Walter Lantz cartoons in the 1940s featured bits of perspective animation, with a character or object moving to and from the camera.

Here’s a brief example in Woody the Giant Killer, directed by Dick Lundy and released in 1947. Woody (voiced by Bugs Hardaway) gets conned into buying “magic” beans by Bucky Beaver (played by Harry Lang). He shakes the box of beans into the dug-out ground.



Woody then throws the box away in perspective. Lundy holds the first drawing for three frames, the second for two frames, then the others are one frame each.



Woody has some good expressions in this cartoon. Not outrageous ones, but you know what he’s thinking. La Verne Harding and Ed Love are the credited animators. Pat Matthews is here, too; my guess is the final scene is one of his.

Writers Webb Smith and Hardaway make fun of the post-war housing shortage by mixing it with the beanstalk fairy tale.

Backing Up Bunny

“Think fast rabbit,” Bugs Bunny says to himself in Water, Water Every Hare (1952). After an 11-frame hold, he does. Cut to Bugs already moving, stopping on the fifth frame of the scene.

This is the second Bugs/Rudolph encounter. The first time was in Hair-Raising Hare (1946), when Bugs suddenly became a manicurist. He’s a hair dresser in this one. My stars!

Ben Washam, Ken Harris, Phil Monroe and Lloyd Vaughan are the credited animators in this one, with Carl Stalling playing “What’s Up, Doc?” over the opening titles.

Tarnish in the Golden Age

For every successful radio sitcom like Burns and Allen or Blondie or Our Miss Brooks, there’s an equally unsuccessful one, perhaps no one but extreme radio die-hards have heard of.

That’s Finnegan would qualify.

The series has the distinction of a name change, a cast change and a network change. About the only thing that stayed the same was the sponsor.

Household Finance announced, through agency Shaw-Lavally in Chicago, it was paying the bills for Phone Again Finnegan, which debuted on NBC on Saturday afternoons from 5 to 5:30 Eastern time starting March 30, 1946, replacing the equally-memorable Square With the World. Only 57 stations cleared time for it.

The Hollywood Reporter said the debut episode “bears too great a similarity to many other shows, living and dead.”

On June 27, Household Finance moved the show to CBS because NBC said it wasn’t good enough to put in a nighttime slow. Columbia gave it Thursdays at 10:30 Eastern. It appears the star agreed. The Hollywood Reporter announced Stu Erwin felt “the role he portrays is not suited to his talents” and he quit Sept. 19.

Herald Tribune syndicate critic John Crosby finally got around to reviewing the show, and his eye-rolling was published on January 15, 1947.

RADIO IN REVIEW
By JOHN CROSBY
Somewhere in "That's Finnegan," which, if you're not careful around 10:30 p. m. Thursdays, you're likely to hear on CBS, a Swedish Janitor name Larsen is almost certain to say "Yumpin Yiminy," a mild form of Swedish profanity. Besides substituting Y's for J's, Larsen also garbles metaphors and words in general.
"Did you ever pull a tendon?" he was asked.
"No, but I pulled a boner once."
Larsen is the Janitor of the Welcome Arms apartment, which is operated by Frank McHugh, or Finnegan as he is known on this program. The part was once played by Stuart Erwin, who, I think, was wise in getting into another line of work. Erwin and McHugh, no doubt everyone knows; are movie actors of almost identical personality — that is, addlepated, good-natured, butter-fingered and easily frightened by mice.
“Bills! Bills! Bills!” said Finnegan on this program. "I don't know where they all come from. When I go into a store, the salesmen are all billing and cooing. Now they're just billing me." (Don't blame me for these jokes. I’m just quoting them.) According to my notes, Finnegan said once; "I took her to a taffy pull and got stuck with her," a gag I wouldn't pull at a church social.
Originally titled "Phone Again, Finnegan," this inane little comedy series has been on the air for some time and was once on NBC at 5 p.m. Saturdays. Anyhow, Finnegan’s current problems don’t have much to do with the Welcome Arms apartment house but with his 14-year-old nephew Jiggs. Jiggs' conversation is dominated fairly heavily by exclamations such as "Gee," "Golly" and sometimes, when he's heated up to an extraordinary degree, "Gosh," and he has a girl named Helen.
"Gee, uncle, did you ever have a girl look at you and you got butterflies in your stomach?" he asks, referring to Helen.
“Not for quite awhile."
“Who was she?"
“Clara Bow."
"Gee, uncle, I've known this girl for a week now and I haven't even had a date yet — and I’m not getting any younger."
Helen is a breathless young thing who behaves like Judy Foster though in a more restrained way. The only scrap of her dialogue I seem to have on record is: "Gee, imagine making such a remark about a poor defenseless baby." I can't think what would provoke this statement, but it's fairly typical of Helen's conversation.
There isn't much else to be said about “That’s Finnegan." On the test program I heard, Jiggs tried to touch Uncle Finnie for five bucks and got a fine lecture about how well people could get along without money. One minute later, the Household Finance Company, a small loan outfit which sponsors the program, jumped in with a rather convincing argument about how difficult it was to get along without money. It's none of my business but it seems to me they're defeating one another's purposes on this program.
At any rate, Jiggs was reduced to earning his own five fish, which he did by tending Clancy’s baby for him. Clancy is a cop, naturally. (All people named Clancy are cops and conversely all cops are named Clancy. This is known as Crosby’s Law). Well, to get on with this, there's some pretty confusion about where Jiggs' money is coming from and when Finnegan finds Clancy is after him, he assumes the worst. "They won't railroad my boy Jiggs to jail,” he shouts.
“They don’t railroad them any more,” says the faithful Larsen. "It’s cheaper to send them by bus.
It all came out happily.

By the time this review was in print, the show had already been cancelled. Broadcasting magazine of January 6 said Household Finance was replacing it on March 27 with a show far better remembered by radio fans—The Whistler (Signal Oil continued to sponsor The Whistler on the CBS Pacific Coast network on Monday nights).

As for Crosby’s other columns for the week:

Monday, January 13: The former Edward VIII spoke on American radio for the first time since abdicating the British throne in 1936. This speech was only picked up on ABC, and the network admitted he may not have attracted a large audience. He attracted a very unflattering drawing by Alan Ferber next to Crosby’s column in the Los Angeles Daily News.
Tuesday, January 14: Better late than never, I suppose, but Crosby relayed predictions for radio for the coming year from a number of sources, including a note about television. There were still fewer than a dozen stations in the U.S. at the time and limited networks in the east. He also promoted a new Norman Corwin series.
Thursday, January 16: WMCA, a local station in New York, imitated Orson Welles’ most famous radio broadcast except, in this case, atom bombs attacked New York City. Crosby’s drily dismissed the drama.
Friday, January 17: ABC mounted a new version of stories based on Sherlock Holmes, pointing out there wasn’t much new about Conan Doyle’s character, though he thought the English-isms in the script were jolly good fun.

You can click on the columns to read them better.

Poor Cinderella

John Foster and Harry Bailey go for pathos in a scene from Cinderella Blues (1931).

After dropping and breaking the family dishes, Cinderella sits dejected by the fireplace. As violins play in the background, words of sympathy are formed by the flames.



Gene Rodemich’s scores for the Tom and Jerry cartoons at Van Beuren are made up from newish songs used as mood music but in this cartoon, he seems to be trying to score to the action, especially to dance numbers likely choreographed by Jack Ward.

There’s some really atrocious animation, with Cinderella walking into her limo like it’s a flat drawing, and the dialogue is over enunciated, but the cartoon does have a happy ending.

The Home of John Pettibone

After some night-time shots of a junkyard, there’s a fade to inside a shack that is the home of John Pettibone, the alias given to Droopy in Dixieland Droopy.



Director Tex Avery pans from right to left. You'll have to click on this to enlarge it.



The name of the artist is hidden three times in the background. This is the work of Joe Montell. The right-hand bag covering the window is for Montell Flour. And it’s tough to read but the stove is a Montell brand. The towel over the window is from the Hotel Mondello. Mondello was his family's surname.

By the time this cartoon was released in 1954, the Avery unit had been shut down at MGM and Montell was working for John Sutherland Productions.

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: Freedom 2000

There was plenty of talk in the 1970s about the saving the environment and, by extension, saving the Earth. From it was born the environmental protest movement.

This also seeped down into Saturday morning television at a time when pressure groups demanded cartoon producers teach “correct” behaviour to children, naively believing this would end things like racism, pollution, violence and other world ills.

Hanna-Barbera responded with a TV movie called Yogi’s Ark Lark (1972), which was turned into a series. Its message to the kids: clean up the planet.

But this wasn’t the studio’s only foray into what was called ecology back then. There was another film, this one by Hanna-Barbera’s industrial division and funded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Freedom 2000 (1974) follows planet inspectors from another world, first as they look at a world killed by its peoples who couldn’t get along with each other. Then they zoom to Earth, where the “captain” champions the American economic system as the best. From here, there is a history of how the system came to be and then the usual warning from the Chamber about the government stifling it, with another veiled threat about Communism. “A totally-controlled economy has within it the implication of a totally-controlled populace.”

It’s only toward the last four minutes the film segues back into the environment, with the captain opining how technological change is adversely affecting the eco-system. But, hurray!, Corporate America is up to the task of doing its part.

The superior aliens, having reviewed the situation (as big business sees it), promise to return to Earth in the year 2000 to see if any advancement has been made.

We know the answer.

You’ll recognise the voice of Korann as Janet Waldo. Vic Perrin is the narrator. Having made these notes, I didn’t realise there are credits at the end. Gerald Baldwin directed the cartoon and co-wrote it with George Gordon and Art Scott. The animators were Alan Zaslove, Ruth Kissane, Fred Crippin and Bob Bachman, with backgrounds by Bob McIntosh and layouts by Rosemary O’Connor, Wall Batterton, Charles McElmurry and Cliff Roberts.

Ross Martin and Richard Carlson supply the other voices and the string-filled score is by Dean Elliott.

Coffee With Jack

Comedians and critics both praised Jack Benny for his timing. Some pointed to the way he slowly unfolded a story, ignoring any interruptions that happened along the way, which made the ending even funnier. Others pointed to his waits and his expressions, which he held as the laughs built and built.

Jack told interviewers over the years he told stories, not jokes. That wasn’t necessarily true. Here’s an Associated Press story from 1958.

Jack Benny Is Unperturbed At Losing A Joke
BY CHARLES MERCER
NEW YORK, Oct. 14 (AP) — Jack Benny ordered some hot coffee sent up to his hotel suite the other day during a visit to New York.
"Please," he told room service, "make it so hot that you can’t carry it.” Hanging up the telephone, he said to a visitor, “to be honest about it, that line is stolen from George Burns.”
“THAT REMINDS me of a story," said a friend of Benny. "There was this kid 3-4 years old who seemed perfectly normal in every way except that he wouldn’t talk. His parents were worried sick about it. They did everything possible but the kid wouldn’t say a word.
“Finally one morning when they served him his cocoa, he tasted it and yelled, ‘Gee, that’s too hot!’ His parents burst into tears of joy, kissed him and asked, “Why haven’t you ever spoken before, dear?’ The kid said, ‘there hasn’t been anything to complain about before.’”
Benny, laughing, said he could use that joke. The visitor told Benny’s friend he could use it too and would try to rush it out before Benny did.
BENNY WAS philosophical about the loss of a new joke. After all, he knows millions of them. Besides, he’s a very philosophical guy—extraordinarily calm and unharassed in his 26th year of radio and television. Calmer, really, than Perry Como.
Without belaboring that joke which may be old to everybody but the visitor, you might say that Benny has never sounded off a great deal because he doesn’t feel he’s had anything to complain about.
Week in and week out his CBS-TV show (Sundays, 7:30 pm) still is the most risible half-hour comedy show on the air. He does not worry about "changing format” problems because the format of the show always is changing from week to week anyway. What are his working habits on the program?
As he tells it, they sound more like playing habits. His staff and writers have been with him for a long time; they know one another thoroughly.
“SOMETIMES YOU have a show in a couple of hours,” Benny says. "Sometimes it’s a couple of weeks before it’s together. It doesn’t matter who gets the ideas. We’re all working together. I guess I work, but I also have time to play golf and some days I get in a couple of hours’ practice with that—”he pointed to his violin on a table.
The first 10 years are the hardest, he feels. He used to work like a dog after he began his radio program in 1932, "scared every week that they’d fire me if it wasn’t the best show ever.” But after nine years on television he doesn’t worry any more.
Why did he start the happy myth that Benny is the most tight-fisted man in the world?
“It began as an accident on radio,” he said. “I did a couple of jokes about being tight and it caught on. Apparently everybody has a skinflint in his family. I went on with it because people demanded it — I had to. It was like being carried along by an avalanche. And now it’s a permanent fixture of me as an entertainer.”
The waiter brought in coffee. Benny tipped him heavily. The waiter left with a shocked expression.
That waiter must have worn gloves to carry the coffee. Benny thought it barely warm enough, but his visitor scalded his tongue.
"Serves you right for stealing jokes,” Benny said mildly.

See how Jack waited and waited and when it was the right moment—Wham!!—casually gave the punch line.

Now, that’s timing.

Mickey's a Hit

So much has been written about Steamboat Willie that I am loath to say much about it on this blog. Mind you, I said that the last time I briefly posted in 2018 about its debut.

However, I came across a 1928 clipping from Kansas City where, I’m sure you know, Disney and a slew of people involved in animation came from. It’s about a showing at the Madrid Theatre at 38th and Main.

Ads for the Madrid in the Kansas City Star for the week ending Saturday, December 1 don’t mention any cartoon at all (with the exception of a Fable shown on the Monday). The newspaper did publish an article about it on December 2. The name of the cartoon isn’t given, so I can only guess it is Steamboat Willie. The story is not bylined.

A Madrid theater audience last week was entertained with a well-appreciated although unadvertised short subject from the Walter Disney studios. It was an animated and synchronized cartoon, “Mickey Mouse,” and marked the entrance of three Kansas City men—Mr. Disney, Carl W. Stalling and H. O. Wheeler—into the synchronized animated cartoon field.
Synchronization of such a subject differs from that of a legitimate movie. All the cartoons must be drawn and photographed, the score written, and then the accompanying music played by an orchestra and recorded. In the case of “Mickey Mouse,” the picture was made in Hollywood and the music recorded in New York. The score was written by Mr. Stalling, who also directed the orchestra. Mr. Wheeler assisted in the arrangement of the music.
Trade papers have given the Disney synchronized cartoons most flattering reviews. The Disney studios are synchronizing on the Powers Cinephone, but the records are made on both film and record and are interchangeable with Phototone, Movietone and Vitaphone.

If I have to explain who Carl Stalling is, you are reading the wrong blog. Henry O. (Harry) Wheeler died in Kansas City in 1940. He was a music teacher and band leader there for decades and, at one time, the arranger for the Newman Theatre Orchestra, the theatre where Disney drew the animated Laugh-O-Grams before going west.

Considering the torrents of publicity Mickey Mouse, Walt Disney and his studio have flooded the public with over the generations, it’s surprising to see very little talk about them in the studio’s early months. Unfortunately, newspapers then didn’t always list the cartoons they were showing. And some haven’t been scanned well to show the correct text on-line.

The Mark Strand Theatre at Fulton and Rockwell in Brooklyn (“The House of Talkies”) showed Mickey Mouse cartoons toward the end of 1928 and into 1929. Newspaper theatre stories conflict but it would seem Steamboat Willie played a week starting on December 29, 1928, with The Gallopin' Gaucho appearing on screens beginning January 12, 1929.

There are some reviews. Willie was advertised with the Warners all-talking On Trial starting January 13, 1929 at the Fabian (“The House of Sound Talking Pictures”) in Paterson, New Jersey. The Morning Call of January 18 had this to say:

One of the latest novelties that has been produced with sound accompaniment is a Walt Disney cartoon, making this individual subject the most popular subject on the program. It is the first time since the sound motion pictures have been at the Fabian that great applause has greeted any one subject.

The Wilmington, Delaware Every Evening of January 29, 1929 simply said “Sound has been added to comedy cartoons and in ‘Steamboat Willie’ now at the Aldine, there are many original laughs.”

The Buffalo Times of Feb. 4, 1929 announced it was being shown with the H.B. Warner-Louise Fazenda “100% Talking Picture” at the Great Lakes Theatre (another Warners house). Its review:

One of the outstanding features on the bill is a cartoon, “Mickey Mouse,” in sound. The ink comedies that always drew laughs before the advent of sound pictures, now throw the audiences into a paroxysm of mirth with such incidents as a mouse “razzing” a cat, and a goat who swallowed a sheet of music, singing “Turkey in the Straw.” It is as entertaining as it is unique.

With favourable comments like these and theatres in early 1929, perhaps reluctantly, realising sound pictures were here to stay, is it any wonder that the Fleischers started production on the Screen Songs, both Oswald the rabbit (Lantz, sound was announced in Exhibitors Daily Review on Nov. 19, 1928) and Krazy Kat (Mintz) began making noise, and Van Beuren added music and effects to the Aesop’s Fables in May (against the wishes of Paul Terry, who was fired).

Recently, Steamboat Willie itself has taken a back seat to all the chatter about going into the public domain, but it’s not only a significant cartoon in the history of animation, I think it’s still a fun one.

Cat Fight

Animators will use ghost images, multiples or airbrush strokes to indicate speed in cartoons.

In Ub Iwerks’ ComiColor short The Brementown Musicians (1935), an uncredited animator uses lines to show speed as a cat attacks one of the robbers in his home. Here are some random frames. The drawings are shot on two frames.



Only Iwerks and composer Carl Stalling receive screen credit on this short, distributed on a state’s rights basis.