How To Make a Christmas Tree

Nothing says Christmas than a cartoon starring a Depression-era orphan in a shack unexpectedly getting presents from Santa Claus. Harman and Ising made one of those cartoons in The Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives (1933). And the Mintz studio did it a few years later in Gifts From the Air.

Much like in the Fleischers’ Christmas Comes But Once a Year, where Grampy invents toys from household items for kids in an orphange, the waif in this Columbia release creates a make-shift Christmas tree from things around the tumbledown home. First, a tattered umbrella.



Now, ornaments made from bubbles, including a star at the top.



A kitty cat conveniently shows up. The orphan rubs his fur to create static electricity, plugs the cat’s tail into a barrel and lights the tree. Hey, it’s better than Herman shoving a motionless Katnip’s tail into a light socket to do the same thing as in Mice Meeting You (1950). The electricity around the bubbles is hard to see in this pixilated video file.



This Color Rhapsody was copyrighted on December 22, 1936. While the official release date was January 1, 1937, a few theatres got it on their screens before then. The ad to the right is for a movie house in Ft. Worth on Christmas Day. The Ritz in San Bernadino showed it two days earlier with Bing Crosby’s Pennies From Heaven (an orphanage was in that one).

Ben Harrison came up with the story, with the animation credit going to Manny Gould. My guess is the song by a female trio as the boy is looking at toys in a shop window is a Joe De Nat original (“It’s Christmas time, it’s Christmas time, the glad time of the year. With lots of toys for girls and boys to bring them Christmas cheer” and so on). De Nat adds “O Come All Ye Faithful” and the inevitable “Jingle Bells” to the score. The cartoon ends with “Auld Lang Syne.”

The second half of the cartoon features something Columbia seems to have loved to put into its cartoons—radio star caricatures. Cantor, Bing, Bernie, Whiteman, Wynn and several others are here.

Motion Picture Exhibitor’s review of the cartoon in 1937 says “...a little boy gets a lot of fun out of some broken down toys. He prays and then believes the toys come from heaven.” Unless something has been edited in the re-release prints posted on-line, there’s no praying.

Wait a minute! What happened to the train and the elephant between scenes?



Mintz’s other Christmas time cartoon is the Art Davis-directed The Little Match Girl (1937) though there’s a Christmas sequence in the Scrappy-sans-Santa short Holiday Land (1934). (If I have missed one, leave a note in the comments).

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: Tim Conway and Ernie Anderson

Before he cracked up Harvey Korman on The Carol Burnett Show, before he bumbled around with Joe Flynn on McHale’s Navy, Tim Conway had another partner in comedy.

Conway was a writer/director/actor on two TV stations in Cleveland in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, hooking up with an announcer and host named Ernie Anderson. Anderson ended up as Carol Burnett’s announcer after Lyle Waggoner left but is maybe better known as the voice of ABC-TV (“The Loooooove Boat” a specialty).

With the Yuletide season upon us, what better way to celebrate than with Conway and Anderson together on some short spots for Ohio Bell. They hold poses at the end for a voice-over tag.

He Banished the Blues

Jack Benny had several stage names before Benny Rubin (so goes one version of the story) suggested Ben Kubelsky change his name to Jack Benny. He had been using Ben K. Benny prior to this, but apparently Ben Bernie complained about the similarity and Jack adopted the name he was to use for the rest of his life. (One of the Salt Lake City papers announced Bernie was coming to the local Orpheum when it meant Benny).

Jack’s act was popular with pretty well all the newspaper critics. Let’s see what some of the papers had to say in 1920. One of his tours that year took him on the Orpheum circuit across Western Canada and down the West Coast. The Marx Bros. were on the bill with him until San Francisco, rejoining him when he was held over for a second week in Los Angeles.

Incidentally, following Benny and appearing at the Pantages in Vancouver starting April 1 was “just a young fellow trying to get along.” He was a juggler and ventriloquist named Fred Allen.

Ben Benny, the violinist, will offer his repertoire of operatic excerpts and popular selections calculated to banish blues. He will play and gag in such a way that he will keep his audience thoroughly amused until like Oliver Twist, they will ask for more. It is Benny’s ambition to prove that a violin in capable hands possesses a sense of humor. Winnipeg Tribune, Feb. 21, 1920

Ben K. Benny plays sweetly on the violin and talks even better. He was one of the best numbers on the show. Winnipeg Tribune, Feb. 24, 1920.

A violin is meant for something besides difficult concerns. In the proper hands it possesses a sense of humor. Of course, these must be the hands of a comedian as well as a musician and this is just what Ben.K. Benny is. He plays a little, gags a great deal and keeps his audience thoroughly amused. Just to show that he is really a musician he plays one operatic number, but the rest of the time he occupies the stage is devoted to banishing blues. Calgary Albertan, Feb. 26, 1920

A few minutes with Ben K. Benny only make the house wish it could have an hour with him and his violin and patter. Victoria Times, March 6, 1920.

A few minutes with Ben K. Benny with his violin will prove an acceptable offering. Benny can play his violin seriously, but he prefers for the moment to get comedy out of it. He plays a little, sings a little, but all the while his act is one that is meant for banishing blues. Vancouver Sun, March 6, 1920

Ben K. Benny makes himself most popular. A violin is his only companion and this he turns into a comedian. He intersperses trick playing with classical numbers, dispensing entertaining patter all the time. Vancouver Daily World, March 9, 1920

The “few minutes with Ben K. Benny” were all too short. He plays the violin well and is a still better comedian. His comedy is new and never forced and the big applause he received was merited. Daily Province, Vancouver, March 9, 1920.

Ben K. Benny, a talented boy with a violin and the gift of comdy offers an exceedingly entertaining turn. Ben looks like the twin brother of the accordeon [sic] “nut” we heard here last week. Vancouver Sun, March 9, 1920 (The accordionist, by the way, was Phil Baker)

Ben K. Benny gets all there is to get out of a violin, interspersed with a clever line of patter. Daily Province, Vancouver, March 12, 1920.

Ben K. Benny uses a violin to advantage in putting over his monologue. His “line” is new and his playing good. He shared honors with the headliner for applause Sunday. Seattle Star, March 15, 1920.

Ben Benny is a likable young chap of ingratiating personality who tells stories, mostly about a girl he claims in Seattle. When he plays San Francisco next week the girl will have moved to Portland. She’s a nice enough girl, according to Ben, but her family has its faults. “Whenever you see two men talking on a corner and one of them looks bored to death, the other one is her brother,” explains Ben. For commas and periods and exclamation marks in his chatterlogue Benny fiddles delightfully. Leone Cass Baer, Oregonian, March 22, 1920

Ben K. Benny says that he is the brother of Phil Baker, who was here last week, and since he is quite as amusing as Baker and has all the tricks of voice and expression, why dispute him? He has a good line of rapid comedy. San Francisco Chronicle, March 29, 1920

Ben K. Benny, with his violin and a battery of witty remarks, also proved a popular feature, drawing down several encores. Oakland Enquirer, Apr. 5, 1920

Ben K. Benny Heads Orpheum Bill
Ben K. Benny gives Orpheum audiences a few worthwhile minutes this week with his violin and comedy chatter. Benny has a monologue that gets across big and a personality that makes him many friends. Sacramento Star, April 12, 1920

Ben K. Benny took possession of the audience with his pleasing personality, his captivating smile and last but not least his whimsical way of playing the violin. He wanders along chattering the way, with a stop now and then to draw a strain or two of music from his fiddle. Sacramento Union, April 12, 1920

A few minutes with Ben K. Benny are sufficient to bring out his ability as a comedian and trick violin player. In his more serious moments he gives evidence of his skill with the bow. Sacramento Bee, April 12, 1920

The good-looking Ben K. Benny has lost his baby stare and acquired a monologue since we saw him last, but he still plays the violin to a flirting obbligato, or vice versa, just as you please. Ask the girls on the front row. Anyhow he stops the show. Los Angeles Times, April 20, 1920

Phil Baker wanders on and off the stage the entire program, just as a bad boy from a good family should. He plays the accordeon a bit, chats a while and gets the laughs generally. He assists Ben K. Benny and his violin, although Mr. Benny is well able to take care of himself with his stories and foolishness. Los Angeles Record, April 20, 1920

Ben K. Benny is still popular with his violin and line of stories. Los Angeles Times, April 27, 1920

There’s always one in the crowd who disagrees. After Los Angeles, Jack moved to the next spot in the circuit: Salt Lake City.

Ben K. Benny plays the violin a little and talks endlessly. He would add to his act materially if he were to play more. Deseret News, May 6, 1920

The anonymous critic liked all the other acts.

Jack carried on with stops in Denver, Lincoln, Omaha, Kansas City (where he finished the season) and a few others according to ads in local papers. Variety’s weekly round-up of vaudeville bills isn’t altogether complete as it does not mention, for example, the Orpheum in Victoria, B.C. which, at one time, was where acts bought booze and tried to get it through customs into the Prohibition-strangled U.S. via Seattle. Not always with success.

The following September 13 when he appeared in the Monday matinee at the State-Lake in Chicago, after a stop at the Orpheum in St. Louis, he had a new name. So it was that Benny Kubelsky’s career as Jack Benny began.

Being a Cartoon Musician

Is there any doubt that Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf was the most popular song written for a cartoon short in the 1930s?

It was composed by Frank Churchill with Ann Ronell. Churchill went on to write “Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho,” “Whistle While You Work” and “Some Day My Prince Will Come.”

It would seem there would be no better person to talk about cartoon music to Tempo magazine than Churchill. This feature story is in the January 1938 issue.

Cartoon Comedy Scores
How They are Written And Synchronized
by Frank Churchill
(As told to Charles Gant)
THE music for a cartoon comedy is planned when the story is prepared and written, before the cartoons are drawn. I start by getting together with the writers—“story men,” we call them—in a conference in which we sit around and discuss the plot and its characters. The music must suit the characters emphasized in each scene or sequence and the next step is to lay out a “break-down” in which the sequences are separated into footage-shots. The secret of synchronization, one of the most important items in our type of work, where the characters usually perform in rhythm with the music, is merely a mathematical problem. We know how many frames of film fall to the bar of music and write the music accordingly. Of course, this method has its difficulties, but nothing that can’t be overcome with knowledge and experience. It is a matter of timing the tempos and rhythms to correspond with the proper number of frames of films.
It is possible to use any kind of time 4-4, 2-4, 6-8, even 5-4, providing the fundamental beat is kept in synchronization with the proper number of frames. When this is done it is a relatively simple matter for the animators (those who make the series of drawings that give movement to the figures) to keep their characters in time with the music. For example, a horse is to gallop with his hoofs moving in time with the music. The animator contrives that the horse’s movements coincide with the required number of frames and there’s no chance for error.
Recording

The music may be recorded without even seeing the picture, though we often make piano soundtracks to use with the rough tests just to check up. In recording, the conductor, and many of the musicians wear earphones, through which they get a beat supplied from a mechanical device which supplies a beat adjusted to fit with the film when it is run. The rhythm section always wears earphones.
Composing
When I joined the Disney company, about a year after the advent of sound-pictures, it was customary to use excerpts from familiar—often too familiar—sources. I was engaged to adapt music of this kind and discovered very soon that it was impossible to avoid hackneyed themes of the well known “spring song” and “flower dance” type. It was sometimes difficult to synchronize these themes with the action, so I started composing original scores. Since that time I have batted out some 75 complete scores, not to mention countless sequences discarded because of changes in the picture during production, which necessitated turning out new music to go with the new sequence. For me, writing has become easier as the time went by, each score seeming to supply ideas which could developed rapidly for the next one. After a number of years of this kind of work it gets to be just another routine job to the writer who spends so many hours a day at it, but I believe I find the work as interesting as that of any of the studio music writers. However, when I’m through with the day at work I rarely feel like attending a concert or listening to the radio. I’d rather sit down to a game of poker or go to a prize fight.
Songwriting
For the score of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, I did, in addition to most of the background music 10 songs (lyrics by Larry Morey), two of which were cut out of the picture but which will be published along with the others. Some of these I wrote as much as three years ago when we first started work on Snow White. Tune writing has always been easy for me. It’s just a knack, I guess, that some people have and others don’t.
One of the best known studio composers, who has turned out some outstanding scores, can’t write a tune to save his life. I have some tunes among the Snow White songs that I think arc pretty fair melodies. One of the best I wrote in five minutes. If some of the Snow White songs go over as well as I hope, I may devote more time to songwriting in the future.
Recording Musicians
The musicians we use for recording dates have to be thoroughly schooled men, all-round performers who can “cut” anything at sight, and in addition they have to be handy at putting in the odd effects we use in cartoon music, and doing them in the right way. The cartoon comedy music calls for the same high degree of ability necessary for any studio musician and often a little more. Many of the odd effects you hear in cartoon comedy music sound as though they had been produced by novelty instruments, and while we do use “jug bands” and other novelty instruments at times, many of the effects are just standard instruments playing the “trick stuff” we write for them. A knowledge of how to write these effects into the music, and an ability on the part of the musicians to play them, are important features in this kind of work.

The “Studio Briefs” item referred to in the photo reads:

Reorganization of the music department for Universal’s Walter Lantz productions (Oswald Rabbit Cartoons) brought in Nat Shilkret as musical director, Frank Churchill (see Page 6) as composer, Frank Marsales as arranger and sound technician. Lantz office said purpose of new set-up was to give productions musical background of the highest possible character. It is also rumored that Shilkret has contract for music on an ambitious series of commercial cartoon pictures to be sponsored by a toothpaste company.

Lantz seems to have decided to cough up a good deal of money around this time, also hiring Burt Gillett to direct and Willy Pogany to paint backgrounds.

Why Churchill left for Lantz after Snow White may be told in some Disney history book, but Lantz began to have money troubles and Churchill returned to write for Dumbo and Bambi. The stress of work, perhaps coupled with alcohol, got to him. ”My nerves have completely left me,” he wrote in his suicide note to his wife. He died May 14, 1942, age 40. Neal Gabler’s book on Disney says:

Always sorrowful and sensitive, he had no doubt been further depressed by Walt’s ongoing dissatisfaction with his work on Bambi. (Churchill had written a great score for the “musical circle of Hollywood,” Walt griped, but one that was monotonous and did not provide the excitement the movie needed.)
Churchill’s last request was that “Love Is a Song,” which he had written for Bambi, be dedicated to his wife, Carolyn, who had been Walt’s personal secretary from June 1930 to January 1934, when she married Churchill. But even that was denied since the song had already gone to the publisher.

The incomparable theatrical cartoon movie expert Daniel Goldmark deserves thanks for this post, alerting me that a number of old music publications are available on-line, albeit behind a paywall.

I don’t want to end this post with a suicide, so here’s a low-resolution photo from Tempo of July 1934. This may be the only shot of Carl Stalling with Art Turkisher. It shows they worked together on films at Iwerks.


The copy accompanying the photo reads:

ARTHUR TURKISHER
Born in New York City, Turkisher is the youngest musical director in any motion picture studio. Prior to his coming to Hollywood he was employed in the New York Paramount Studio, where he assisted in the scoring of pictures when sound was first adopted in the studios.
He has appeared with the Columbia Broadcasting Company and secured an assignment at Fleischers to assist in the technical direction and synchronizing and scoring of animated cartoons. He has acted as musical director on more than 130 pictures.
For the past fourteen months, he has been employed by UB Iwerks as musical director for scoring and arranging, and directed many Flip the Frog,” “Willie Whopper and “ComiColor” cartoons.
Turkisher is a concert cellist.

CARL STALLING
Born in Lexington, Mo., Carl Stalling had his own orchestra in Kansas City for ten years, during which time he specialized in the pipe organ which he played in conjunction with his orchestra work in Kansas City, Chicago and other cities in the Middle West.
Stalling joined UB Iwerk’s [sic] animated Pictures Corporation studio in Beverly Hills about three years ago and has created innumerable scores for animated cartoons, many of which have been played over national radio networks, this with particular reference to his original musical creation of “The Little Red Hen” which was played over the Pacific Coast network on an average of twelve times a day for a period of three weeks when the picture was released.

Turkisher never got screen credit on Jungle Jitters (released July 28, 1934). He seems to have had the same relationship with Stalling that Milt Franklyn did when Stalling replaced Norman Spencer at the Schlesinger studio.

Turkisher was back in New York by 1938 as he was on the executive of AFM Local 802. You can read more about him in this post. One thing not included is a piece from the Santa Barbara Morning Press of July 3, 1934:

Mr. and Mrs. Frank Morley Fletcher of Los Angeles are the guests of Charles Hinman Graves for a few days. Mr. Fletcher, well known for his color prints done in the Japanese manner, but essentially a portrait painter, has just refinished a life-size canvas of James Culhane, prominent moving picture director, and Mrs. Culhane. His portrait of the young Hungarian ‘cellist, Arthur Turkisher, given its first public showing in Los Angeles recently, was enthusiastically received by critics in the southern city.

Culhane and Turkisher worked together at Iwerks.

Hearing the Dover Boys

The Dover Boys is yet another Chuck Jones cartoon where oodles has been written about it (including by Jones himself on numerous occasions) being some kind of animation breakthrough.

It also includes a hoary gag that dates back to the silent cartoon days, when a written word would come out of a character’s mouth.

The scene focuses on the Dover Boys’ arch-enemy Dan Backslide (“coward, bully, cad and thief”) playing a solo game of pool inside a haze of cigarette smoke.



Backslide draws himself up (with a little dollop of cloud on top of his head), puts his hand to ear and exclaims “Hark.” Just like in a Felix the cat cartoon from the 1920s, the letters of the word come out of his mouth before floating upward and out of the scene.



One of the things this cartoon is known for is its stretch in-betweens. Here are a couple of examples in this scene.



I wonder how animator Ken Harris felt about the buck teeth on Backslide, since the character is a caricature of him.

Reviews of this cartoon at the time of release (Sept. 19, 1942) didn’t wax on and on about Chuck Jones’ employment of limited animation. Here are two from the Motion Picture Herald:

This is a college satire in a big way and definitely should get its share of laughs from your audience as it did from ours.—Thomas DiLorenzo, New Paltz Theatre, New Paltz, N. Y.

I report one short every five years (only because of exceptional merit or the very opposite). This is of the latter variety. This is a poor one in the midst of a fine series of cartoons.—L. V. Bergtold, Westby Theatre, Westby, Wis.

Tedd Pierce receives the story credit on screen, while it was Bobe Cannon’s turn for the rotating animation credit.

The Computer of 2000

Your Safety First is a cartoon that looks into the future before The Jetsons did, and uses some of the same futuristic ideas for the sake of comedy.

It was made in 1956 and set, partly, in the year 2000. A man is leafing through a newspaper or magazine (well, they still had newsprint in 2000) and spots an ad for the bubble-topped Turbopusher II. They inspire him to buy a new car.

Cut to a shot of him asking his secretary Millie how long he’s had his old car.



The shot pans over to his secretary at a desk with a computer with a punch card slot on the wall (okay, they didn’t quite predict this one right).



Millie puts a card into a slot, continues reading a book while the computer calculates and spits out the card with the answer.



Now comes the gag. First the artificial intelligence powders her face, then plunks a hat on her head. It doesn’t have Saturn-type rings like Jetsons clothes do.



It’s time to go home. The Jetsons had similar dialogue, as the man complains he works a four-hour day (with two hours for lunch), three days a week.

There are other gags found later in the Jetsons, too, such as food tablets for dinner (also found in a 1931 Fleischer industrial called Texas in 1999), and a big-screen TV that the people on it can leave and walk into the living room. Cars only fly to pass. And safely.

The Automobile Manufacturers Association is paying for this short, so their message is about how safe cars are today and into the future.

The man has a George Jetson-like voice, supplied by Marvin Miller (in a couple of places, he sounds extremely close to George O’Hanlon, who said he never did cartoons before The Jetsons). I couldn’t tell you who plays Millie or the man’s son.

A battered old print of this cartoon is all that’s been in circulation for years on-line. We can hope a better version will surface, as it’s an enjoyable cartoon. The animators are Ken O’Brien, George Cannata, Cal Dalton and Fred Madison, with layouts by Gerry Nevius and Charles McElmurry. Backgrounds are by Joe Montell, formerly with Tex Avery at MGM, and the music is by Carl Stalling’s former copyist, Eugene Poddany.

A survey in Variety in 1958 voted this one of the “50 Outstanding Free TV Films.” It was the only animated one. We found it in the listings of the NET station in Chicago (WTTW) on May 14, 1957 as well as the NET station in San Francisco (KQED) on June 10, 1958, among other stations.

Henny

Henny Youngman was on the air making them laugh in 1937. He was still doing it almost 60 years later. And I’ll bet he was using the same jokes.

Youngman wasn’t supposed to be a comedian. This story in the Montreal Gazette, July 6, 1942, explains.

If the swing fad had struck America in 1930 instead of 1935, Broadway would have lost one of its best comedians. His name is Henny Youngman, and he is now headlining the show at El Morocco where, tonight, he opens the second week of his engagement here.
It was only the annoying stress of economic need that compelled the lanky gentleman with the droll face to desert his hot violin. Youngman was raised in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, and began annoying the neighbors with jive choruses on the fiddle from the time he was eight years old. His parents had fondly intended their first-born to be another Heifetz, but his father made the mistake of purchasing a bargain lot of second-hand records to play on family phonograph. Intermingled with a Heifetz recording of Bach's Chaconne and a Mischa Elman solo of Rubenstein's Melody in F were two records by Joe Venuti and his Blue Four.
When Youngman heard Venuti go to town, his destiny, so he thought, was sealed. His heart would hence forth belong to jazz. While the Youngman household declared a week of mourning over the death of their hopes for a Henny Youngman concert at Carnegie Hall. Henny himself vigorously set about organizing Brooklyn's first swing band. He enlisted the services five neighborhood kindred spirits, and the Swanee Syncopators were born. Included in the personnel were Mike Riley, who years later wrote The Music Goes Round and Round, Lou Bring, who was to become Helen Morgan's pianist, and Manny Klein, today rated one of the great hot-trumpet men in the business. From there, through varying fortunes, Youngman went on to success.

While the Gazette’s ad for his show (at 1410 Metcalfe) reads “Explodes Wit with a Machine-Gun Tempo,” the story above mentions nothing about comedy. The Paterson Morning Call of October 13, 1941 fills us in:

It happened one night at a little night club called the Clifford Lodge in Richfield, N. J. The regular master of ceremonies, ill, was unable to perform.
So they selected one of the musicians from the club band to pinch hit for him. He was a violinist named Henny Youngman. Clifford Lodge has long since been torn down. Nobody remembers the master of ceremonies who couldn’t perform because of illness. But Youngman, the pinch hitter, is now regarded as one of the greatest comics in show business.
His radio performances on the Kate Smith program, his stage appearances and his Columbia Pictures shorts have established him as a favorite from coast to coast.

Youngman ended up on Kate Smith’s show in late 1936 when the booker for Loew’s theatres in New York asked him to do a benefit. It was broadcast, Youngman’s first time on the air. Smith and her manager Ted Collins were listening, and Collins called the next day, asking him to come on a Christmas Eve show as a guest star, no audition needed. He was soon signed to a three year contract.

Youngman celebrated 25 years in show biz in July 1958. A month later, he was subbing for Jack Paar on the Tonight Show. Youngman kept right on going.

There are many newspaper feature stories about him that could be reprinted here, but we’ll pick the “My New York” column by Mel Heimer that appeared in October 1953. Youngman was no dummy. He knew the value of clever promotion.

Brooklyn has any number of odd little communities—including ones called Brownsville and Red Hook, which can make for a little fear and trembling because the aura of Murder, Inc. still hovers over them—but the one named Bay Ridge is its most important, I think. This is because Mr. Henny Youngman, the saloon comic, comes from Bay Ridge, and this morning I am in a mood to quarrel with anyone who says Henny is not one of the world's funny men.
A sense of humor is a sharply personal thing and I even know intelligent persons—well, nearly intelligent—who think the Ritz brothers, Bobby Clark and Fred Allen are funny. However, I would think it tough to argue about Henny especially since he is so reminiscent of Groucho Marx. He talks like Groucho, but, what is more, he has the same lovely, warped mind that Groucho has.
In the course of breaking a little bread with Henny—who has been playing at Bill Miller's Riviera, across the George Washington bridge from my digs—he told me proudly that he was the man who, during the course of a train ride to California with Harry Brandt, a movie bigwig, had a telegram sent ahead so that while he and Harry were eating dinner, the train stopped in Pittsburgh or somewhere and a Western Union man came in and handed Harry the wire. It read. "Please pass the salt. Henny."
How can you go wrong with a man like that?
A PRACTICAL AND CANDID MAN, (he's the kind of guy who, when someone asks him how he's doing, answers "I'm not working. And you?”) Henny remembered for me some of the gags he has engaged in for pure publicity's sake in his 20 years in show business.
"They're the same sort of thing I used to get thrown out of school for in Brooklyn," he said. "When I was in Miami Beach one season, for instance, I sent Chanel No. 5 bottles full of sand to the New York columnists with telegrams saying 'This stuff costs me $30 a day to sit on; I thought you might like a little.’”
When Fred Allen got into his celebrated hassle with radio executives and was cut off the air for making cracks about wireless vice presidents, Youngman sent phonograph records, completely blank, to newspapermen. "This contains the 30 seconds of Allen's banned radio comments," he noted. Another time he had a whole batch of letter mailed from China, announcing proudly he has opened a Chinese laundry, complete with appropriate gag list of services.
From Atlantic City, he sent the columnists boxes of taffy with notes, "Will send teeth later." Again from Florida, he sent crates of fruit, wiring "If you pass by Carmen Miranda, put this on her head." On another occasion he mailed boxes containing "Pastel bathing out fits"—bars of yellow soap and green washcloths.
MARRIED 25 YEARS, to a pleasant and attractive blonde, Henny mentions his wife in his cafe act as a remarkably efficient woman "so much so that when I get up at 3 a. m. for a glass of water, come back and find the bed made up." Henny still lives in Brooklyn, having progressed to a community called Flatbush, and is the idol of two young Youngmans, 19-year-old Marilyn and 13-year-old Gary.
He is kind of dogged about insisting he does not resemble Groucho in his comedy, although of course he does. Only recently Henny was fascinated by the idea of spending $500 a day to hire the use of a giant signboard overlooking Broadway, so he could have painted on it something like "HENNY YOUNGMAN—NOW AVAILABLE," but the realty people who owned the sign would have none of it.
He left me today with this valuable and wonderful bit of advice. ''You got some guy you want to drive out of his mind, some real no good dog?" he said. "Try this. It never falls. Send him a telegram that says, simply:
"IGNORE FIRST WIRE."

A columnist in the Press-Union of Atlantic City on July 28, 1941 remarked “Today he is a star, in demand by all producers; tomorrow he’ll be one of the country’s chief comedians and the pessimists will still be wagging their heads over the scarcity of new talent, only this time they’ll be saying . . . ‘where are the Henny Youngmans of tomorrow’?”

83 years later, there isn’t a Henny Youngman of tomorrow. There can’t be. Youngman’s style of joking could never work with a young comedian today. Only he could get away with “Take my wife. Please.” Youngman was like someone from the Borscht Belt who stepped out of a time machine. He did on stage exactly what you’d expect.

If you’re used to Henny doing his shtick for Johnny Carson, you can listen to a Command Performance broadcast below. It’s from March 18, 1942. He is introduced by none other than Fred Allen. You’ll hear how little his humour changed over the years. It didn’t need to. And be sure to read this remembrance from Mark Evanier with more funny Henny stories.

Limited Animation of Tomorrow

As he got further and further into his tenure at MGM, Tex Avery didn’t waste time when pulling gags, and didn’t waste animation if he didn’t have to.

Here’s an example of one of his gags in Car of Tomorrow. It takes up four seconds of screen time, and contains no animation.

Narrator Gil Warren describes various features of futuristic cars at an auto show. There’s a shot of a car. He says “The newest thing in sun visors.” The camera pulls back on Johnny Johnsen’s drawing for the gag.



Full page ads in trade publications in 1951 shouted the cartoon was screened at a sneak preview of An American in Paris at Loew’s 72nd Street in August. There is no mention of Tex Avery. Just Fred Quimby.

In Johnsen’s painting, you’ll notice the bullet nose in the front, influenced by the 1950 Studebaker Champion. The 1949 Ford had a bullet nose as well and the company released a 25-minute, live-action film in June 1952 called Tomorrow Meets Today, which featured futuristic designs. General Motors’ Oldsmobile division came out with a 25-minute live-action shot made by Jam Handy in 1948 called The Car of Tomorrow, Today. (GM was back in 1956 with Your Keys to the Future, made by Dudley Films).

“A cartoon which will delight all motorists,” declared the Motion Picture Herald on Nov. 22, 1952.

There’s no indication who came up with the designs for the cartoon. The animators were Mike Lah, Walt Clinton and Grant Simmons.

Silhouette Felix

Breaking the fourth wall? Felix the cat did it in the silent era all the time.

Here’s one of many examples. This scene is from The Oily Bird. Here’s a summary of the plot by Raymond Ganly in the March 10, 1928 edition of the Motion Picture News:

Felix the cat continues his lonesome way in this one from the Sullivan studio. For all the world like another Lonesome Luke, the cat is always getting into trouble. His mistress accuses him of stealing her jewels, hence his ignominious ejection from the house. Learning that a hen has swallowed the gems he chases her in order to clear his good name. The bird, in desperation, digs a hole to escape from Felix. The tumult that results in the hole when the cat goes in after he causes an oil spout—much to the joy of the cat’s mistress. Entertaining.

In the scene below, Felix suspects a goat has swallowed the jewels (goats in short films eat everything). Felix points and looks at the theatre audience and winks.

The goat is drawn in silhouette. Felix finds a way to get around that.



Cut to a close-up. Felix looks at the audience again and shakes his head, realising there are no jewels.



Silhouette drawings found their way into a number of Felix cartoons in the late ‘20s. It’s tough to tell because of the angle, but Felix turns into a silhouette, then the goat does as he turns to butt Felix out of the frame.



Otto Messmer gets the credit by fans for these Felix cartoons, though the Sullivan studio had a team of animators. I don’t have a clue which one is responsible for this short.