Swirling Head

A wimpy pilgrim thinks he’s caught a turkey hiding behind a log in Tex Avery’s Jerky Turkey.



Then, the realisation. There’s a head-spinning take, one of two in the cartoon. Here are some frames.



“Who, you?” asks the chief. The pilgrim is tongue-tied and gesticulates as he tries to answer. The chief hangs in mid-air.



The pilgrim runs away, leaving his teeth behind to continue trying to answer. They eventually race away as well.



Jerky Turkey sat on the shelf for a while. The Hollywood Reporter blurbed on May 2, 1944 the cartoon would be among eight cartoons to be released in the 1944-45 season starting in October. The October 6, 1944 issue of the Reporter said it was in animation (As a side note, the story also says Getting the Air was in ink and paint, and the House of Tomorrow was in animation. Thad Komorowski tells us the latter was rejected, then revived some years later. He believes the former became The Unwelcome Guest).

A short piece in the Dec. 6 edition of the Reporter reported on the “Is this trip really necessary gag” in the cartoon, but it hadn’t been released yet. Showman’s Trade Review of Jan. 13, 1945 reported producer Fred Quimby had set the release for February, but the official date was April 7. An ad for the Dome Theatre in Lawton, Oklahoma, reveals it was screened there on March 31 with Wallace Beery’s This Man’s Navy.

Boxoffice’s review of May 12, 1945 read:

Hilarious. The Pilgrim Fathers landed on Plymouth Rock minus a destroyer escort, gun crew and C card, and the Mayflower was not a Kaiser production. This modernized version of our Thanksgiving legend portrays the unsuccessful attempts of one of the Pilgrims to track down a turkey. The fowl in the case is a Jimmy Durante prototype, and plagues the hunter in a succession of hilarious situations, both are finally lured to Joe's diner, where the proprietor, a burly bear, utilizes them for his own holiday fare.

Heck Allen helped Avery with the story, while Preston Blair, Ed Love and Ray Abrams are the credited animators.

A Cob Blampett Cartoon

In a way, there are two sets of credits in Prehistoric Porky (1940). There are the ones at the beginning of the cartoon.



Then, as an inside gag, members of Bob Clampett’s unit are spoonerised on a drawing in “Expire” magazine.



Someone will know the answer to this. I don’t know who “Ray Blouse” is supposed to be, other than Ray Katz. The names below are Dick Thomas, Dave Hoffman, John Carey, Vive Risto, Bob Clampett, Warren Foster, Tubby Millar and then a surprising one: is that supposed to be George Gordon? Wasn’t he at MGM at the time? Or did the studio have a George Jordan? (Late note: there is a reference to George Jordan in the Clampett unit in the early June 1939 edition of The Exposure Sheet, the studio newsletter. He was born on a May 31).

Porky’s hand covers the next names, but I suspect they are Norm McCabe, Sid Farron, unknown (Rollie Hamilton?), Herman Cohen and Mary Tebb.

According to the May 13, 1940 edition of the Exposure Sheet, Clampett’s unit also included Lu Guarnier, Seymour Slosburg, Izzy Ellis, John H. (Jock) MacLachlan, Bill Oberlin and Pete Alvarado, along with Selma Fleishman. There are other names in other issues. Whether Tolly Kirsanoff was in the unit around this time, I don’t know. He was in mid-1939.

There are some very good visuals and layouts in this cartoon, and I like Thomas’ background work.

Being a Clampett cartoon, there are radio references (a vulture turns into Jerry Colonna, another is hit with rocks making noises reminiscent of the NBC chimes) and a movie star reference (the second vulture sounds like Ned Sparks; both are voiced by Mel Blanc).

The ending is a cliché Jewish line and gesture, but Blanc uses a regular voice, avoiding sounding like he came from the Garment District.

More Than Alice

Said the drama critic of the Virginia Gazette of a William and Mary freshman from Portland, Maine: “With pretty, fluttering mannerisms she effectively concealed the almost sadistic sense of humor of her character in an incongruous manner which kept the audience roaring.”

After her second play of the evening, on March 16, 1956, the same critic wrote: “Her singing, while not good, was not bad, either, and was handled with utter confidence and perfect diction.”

A year later, she was a lead in the college’s mounting of Romeo and Juliet. All of this was a far cry from what she became best-known for—starring in a TV sitcom where audiences guffawed week after week at such wit as “Kiss my grits!” and “Stow it, dingy!”

Linda Lavin picked up an Emmy nomination and two Golden Globes for the title role on Alice. Viewers connected with her, as the series lasted nine seasons.

She was a hit on Broadway before and after Alice, winning a Tony in 1970 and being nominated five other times, up to 2012. She toured in the mid-1960s in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.

Lavin made her William and Mary debut on October 19, 1955 in Dial M For Murder. The locals claimed her as one of their own, and the Richmond Times-Dispatch of June 3, 1966 gave a summary of her career and her latest show on the Great White Way.

‘Glory’ Graduate Has Won Broadway’s Top Typing Job
By SUE DICKINSON
NEW YORK—A self-styled “rotten typist” has just landed New York’s most glamorous secretarial job.
Since March 29, Linda Lavin, a William and Mary graduate (1959) has portrayed Sydney, Girl Friday to gossip columnist Max Mencken, in the musical hit “It’s a Bird . . . It’s a Plane . . . It’s SUPERMAN” (Alvin Theater).
Fortunately, her new role does not tax her secretarial abilities. Instead, she livens the office of the Daily Planet by flirting outrageously with the prudish Clark Kent (played by Bob Holiday), almost discovering his true identity as SUPERMAN while she sings “You’ve Got Possibilities.”
Later she teases her egotistic boss (played by Jack Cassidy), for whom she has long carried the torch, with another Strouse-Adams hit “Ooh, Do You Love You!’
HER TYPING notwithstanding, Linda Lavin is assured of her job for many moons. Her way with a song and a comic line has evoked raves: “. . . pure imp . . . I wish she were in every musical and revue” (Stanley Kauffmann, N. Y. Times); “...a delightful comedienne . . . Singer, dancer, actress—Linda’s a comer.” (Emory Lewis, CUE).
Twice since she acquired her steno pad at the Planet has her picture graced the front pafe of the N. Y. Times Drama Section: in a Hirschfeld cartoon on March 27 and on June 5, when critic Kauffmaun cited her as one of those talented young actresses who “helped to make a dry season less of a desert.”
To make her job even more enviable Linda Lavin appears in a glamorous but very wearable career-girl wardrobe. Interviewed backstage, she explained, “Sydney is a chic girl and would be well up on fashion. And I’m glad for that.”
NOTING WITH PLEASURE that it was the first time a wardrobe had been specially designed for her, the attractive, black-haired actress pointed out that costumer Florence Klotz is short herself and so is very aware of the figure problems of us short girls.”
Linda Lavin changed into her own print shift in a dressing room that was virtually papered in congratulatory telegrams. A low coffee table patterned in green and blue tiles proved to be her own handiwork. “My sister, who was an actress before her marriage, helped me do it during a recent visit.”
The talented daughters of Mr. and Mrs. David Lavin were raised in Portland, Maine. They come by their talent naturally, for their mother, the former Lucille Potter, was a professional singer and had her own radio show in Portland.

“I WAS ALWAYS performing somewhere,” Linda Lavin recalls of her girlhood, but she had no theatrical aspirations “because I felt I wasn’t a strong enough character to cope with this rat race.”
Her matriculation at William and Mary was a matter of love at first sight. “A friend from Petersburg and I visited Washington, D.C. once,” she recalled. “She convinced me that it was part of my education to attend a Southern college and then took me to Williamburg. I fell madly in love with the college. It was just what I wanted—small and coed, with all that ivy and tradition.”
Her goal then was to be a French interpreter at the United Nations. “The French teacher talked me out of that, explaining that no American is that good in languages,” she laughed. “That made me realize how much I wanted to act.”
AFTER ONE WEEK on campus Linda Lavin auditioned for “Dial M for Murder” and was cast as the wife, a rare accolade for a freshman to be given a leading role.
“Miss Althea Hunt was director and head of the drama department then,” she remembered. “She is an incredibLe woman — vital, resourceful, dynamic. She made great demands on us. I owe her a great deal.”
The old Phi Beta Kappa Hall had burned the year before, so her initial dramatic endeavors were in loca1 schools and the gym.
“But my sophomore year they built the finest non-professional theater in the country. ‘Romeo and Juliet’ was the opening production; I was Juliet. The mechanical equipment is so advanced that New York theaters can’t afford. It doesn’t even bother me that I’ll never have another such theater, because I had one once. It was thrilling to work in such a place and learn so many forms and styles of theater.”
LINDA LAVIN NOTED that campus productions ranged from Shakespeare through Restoration comedy and Ibsen to contemporary drama. “There is no training ground for the theater now except in the academic situation,” she said earnestly.
Restoration comedy and today’s musical comedy are “very much alike in terms of style and dealing with an audience,” Miss Lavin said. “I had considered myself only a dramatic actress but found I could do comedy in ‘The Matchmaker.’ Howard Scammon, who took over after Miss Hunt’s illness, directed it. He has such a facility for pace, movement and design that he can make anybody funny. The New York theater could use his talents.”
Following her sophomore year Linda Lavin became a summer resident of Williamsburg to play the Widow Huzzitt in “The Common Glory,” appear in afternoon productions of “The Founders,” and, she explained with a grimace, “to repeat a history course I flunked.”
“THAT SUMMER conditioned me to doing two performances a day. And Howard Scammon really taught us to project our voice, because those amphitheaters had no microphones. It was a marvelous summer—wonderful to be in Williamsburg as a citizen,” she recalled, adding with the comedienne’s true talent for timing, “And I passed that history.”
During another vacation she visited her godparents in New Jersey and heard that singers were needed for a tent show there. “It was my first Cinderella story. I sang for director Bert Yarborough who for several years directed a summer stock company in Richmond, got a chorus job and floated back to New Jersey. We did 10 musicals in 10 weeks,” she remembered. “After graduation I was doing part-time work typing and read that he was casting ‘Oh, Kay’ for off-Broadway. I auditioned and got a part as one of the six Cottontails in my first New York show.”
HER FIRST BROADWAY production was “The Family Affair” in four small parts. Nothing that Harold Prince directed that musical and “SUPERMAN,” she added, “The world does come around to itself after all.”
Linda Lavin won a Theater World Award (1964-65) as one of the most promising personalities for “Wet Paint” and received plaudits for off-Broadway’s “The Mad Show,” which she left to take her current role. She has appeared on TV in “The Nurses and the Doctors” and hopes to appear in films some day.
But in the meanwhile she happily takes dictation at the desk next to SUPERMAN’S.

Calling Superman a “hit” was a bit premature. It ran for 129 performances on Broadway, though the musical was nominated for three Tonys and has been revived a number of times.

Lavin’s stage career carried on nonetheless. She was one of those people continually in demand, even at a time in life when age plays a factor in finding on-screen work. She was on a number of cable and streaming shows and most recently signed for the Hulu series Mid-Century Modern. Complications from lung cancer have claimed her at age 87.

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: Les Escargots

You can probably count on one hand, maybe on one finger, the number of animation directors who made their first film with the help of mental patients while working at a psychiatric institute.

This describes Frenchman René Laloux.

Some years later, he and writer/designer Roland Topor created the feature film Fantastic Planet (1973), a special award winner at the Cannes Film Festival.

The two of them toiled together earlier on an animated short film called Les Escargots (1965). It also won several awards in Europe.

“Surreal” may be the best way to describe it. It’s about as far removed from any studio cartoon in North America at the time. No one will mistake this for Honey Halfwitch or Daffy and Speedy.

Laloux died in 2004.

Hitler's Ghostly Goat

Frank Tashlin uses ghost multiples to enhance a fight scene involving Daffy Duck and a Nazi goat in Scrap Happy Daffy (1943).

15 examples.



The scene is animated on ones; the ghost drawings are on underlays. Sometimes, the ghost image moves while the other is held.

Art Davis is the credited animator. I suspect Izzy Ellis, Phil Monroe and Cal Dalton worked on this as well (others will know better who else was in the unit). The layouts were by Dave Hilberman.

Judging by Thad Komorowski’s site, this was the first cartoon put into production with Tashlin directing after taking over the unit from military-bound Norm McCabe. This is a sheer propaganda cartoon like McCabe was stuck making, but the pace is certainly quicker than anything McCabe directed.

There’s an early UPA-stylised stack of metallic garbage on a background near the start of the cartoon that Tashlin pans up.

Tashlin directed ten cartoons for Warners in, this, his third time at the studio, before jumping to the Sutherland/Morey stop-motion operation.

Friz

Friz Freleng was not a disciple of the school of thought that animation must be over-the-top and outrageous.

His unit at Schlesinger/Warner Bros. created cartoons that are as entertaining as anyone else’s. You Ought To Be in Pictures, Bugs Bunny Rides Again, Back Alley Oproar, Little Red Riding Rabbit, Birds Anonymous, I could keep going and going. As a producer, his Pink Panther series was the class of 1960s theatrical animation.

Friz passed away in 1995, well after interest in old cartoons blossomed into books, fanzines and newspaper feature stories. There’s a wonderful chat with Friz and Jerry Beck in Animato 18 (Spring 1989), as well as a column of praise in the same issue by Harry McCracken. There are others interviews, of course, as Friz was called on to talk about Bugs Bunny’s 50th birthday, or a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, or The Looney, Looney, Looney Bugs Bunny Movie or various exhibitions of Warners animation art.

Here’s a feature story about him long before those days. It was published in the Kansas City Star, August 20, 1946. He wasn’t called “Friz” until he left Kansas City so that may be why the unbylined writer didn’t know how to spell it.

FUN IN A VISITOR’S PEN
ISADORE FRELENG, CARTOON CREATOR, RETURNS “HOME”
A Director for Warner Bros. Studio, the Master of Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and Daffy Duck Renews Friendship Here
One of a half-dozen cartoonists who left Kansas City in the early ‘20s to become animators and producers of pen and ink motion pictures, Isadore (Fritz) Fre1eng, returned to his home town this week for a visit.
As a director in the Warner Brothers cartoon studio Freleng created the popular “Looney Tune” series and now controls the antics of such “Merry Melodies” characters and Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and Daffy Duck.
ART IN SCHOOL PAPER FIRST

When Freleng lived here at 4543 Mercier street, he attended Westport high school. Some of his cartoons appeared in school publications during his 1919 to 1923 high school career. To earn pocket money he caddied at the Kansas City Country club and recalls that one of his fellow mashie-toters was now-famous professional golfer Jug McSpaden.
“After school I worked at Armour & Co. as a visitor’s guide for a while, then went out to United Film Service, Inc., at 2449 Charlotte street as an animator.”
It was here that Freleng became acquainted with Walt Disney, creator of Mickey Mouse; U. B. Iwerks, creator of “Flip the Frog;” Fred Harmon [sic], originator of the Red Ryder” strip; Hugh Harmon, his brother, who, with Rudy Ising, another United man, later made the “Harmon-Ising” musical cartoons.
Disney was the first of the Kansas City group to strike out for Hollywood. Later, the others followed, all becoming Disney animators. In 1931, Freleng became associated with Warner Brothers, where he has been since.
PORKY PIG TO STARDOM.
Another Kansas Citian in the Warner office is Carl Stalling, musical director of the animated cartoon section, who formerly played the organ at the Isis theater here. “Bugs Bunny, the most popular character of ‘Merry Melodies,’ was created as a combined result of several directors and artists,” Freleng said. “I began Porky Pig in a ‘bit’ part in my third picture. He’s jumped to stardom since.”
Musicals, of the “Rhapsody In Rivets” and “Three Pigs in a Polka” type, where the action of the characters Is timed to the exact note of some well-known piece of music instead of to a set rhythmic tempo, are a Freleng innovation.
Friends at the Warner studio term Freleng the original “worry wart” because of his pessimistic view of each new picture. The slightly built, balding, blue-eyed man assures everyone that “this is my worst, and probably last, cartoon.” So far, the strips happily have proved Freleng wrong.

Several other features were printed by the Star about their native son. Let’s see what he had to say to the paper more than 40 years later. This was published April 11, 1989.

The Pink Panther’s Partner
Ex-Kansas Citian remains fond of famous creation
A portrait of Friz Freleng’s family would, of course, show the short, bespectacled Freleng flanked by his wife and children. But the picture also would have to include some world-famous offspring who live only in his imagination.
That sawed-off character with the droopy mustache and floppy ‘49ers hat? Yosemite Sam. That stuttering swine? Porky Pig. The feline with the saliva-slinging tongue and the canary with the oversize head? Sylvester and Tweety Bird, of course. And dominating them all would be the dapper Pink Panther, created by Freleng for the 1964 movie and still paying the family’s bills.
The 83-year-old animator, who has won five Oscars and three Emmys, has returned to his hometown of Kansas City for this year’s 25th anniversary festivities for the Pink Panther. The silver celebration is being undertaken by Hallmark Cards Inc., which licenses the Panther’s image for use on greeting cards, wrapping paper, toys, paper plates, napkins and other merchandise.
In Kansas City, Freleng will look up old friends and drive by his boyhood home in the 4500 block of Mercier Street and Westport High School, from which he graduated in 1923. It was at the old United Film Advertising Service at 24th and Charlotte streets that young Freleng met a co-worker named Walt Disney and began his career as an animator.
“United Film was a slide company that started making filmed ads to run in movie theaters,” Freleng recalled Monday in an interview. “Walt experimented with some animated films and got very excited about the idea of making animated shorts to sell to theaters. He figured California was the place to do it, since at that time all the animation was being done in New York.”
When Disney took off to realize his dream, Freleng took over Disney’s position, teaching himself the art of animation from a book checked out of the public library. Meanwhile, Disney was founding his studio and in 1927 summoned Freleng to join his stable of animators.
“I think I lasted nine months,” Freleng said, noting that he chafed under Disney’s dictatorial style. “I didn’t hold it against him. Walt was a genius, and a genius does what he wants. He doesn’t do what you want.”
Freleng returned to Kansas City but soon got an animation job on the Krazy Kat series in New York. Within a year he was back In Los Angeles an employee of the Warner Bros. studio, which had started its own animation department. There he stayed for 33 years.
“I did the first Looney Tune and the very last one. There were two cartoon series at Warner’s, Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies [sic]. They had the same animators and characters, but Merry Melodies were a promotional effort for Warner’s music publishing business. They were always musicals, and each cartoon’s title was based on a song.”
Although is considered the creator of Porky Pig, Yosemite Sam, Sylvester the Cat and Tweedy Bird [sic], he acknowledges that those characters had many fathers.
“The animators, the writers—we all did our own thing,” he explained. “We’d introduce a character and over the course of several films it would come to life.
“You can see it if you look at the old cartoons. In his first cartoon Porky hasn’t developed his whole personality, but all of us could see the possibilities. One guy would add a little of this to his personality, the next guy would add a little of that. It was like a football team cooperating. No one person could do it all. And everyone wanted his contribution to be better than anyone else’s. So we stole a little from Disney, stole a little from the guy next door, and the characters developed their own personalities.”
Today the Warner Bros. cartoons are relished for their anarchistic slapstick humor, but in the old days recognition was slow in coming. “For years and years Disney got all the accolades,” Freleng said. “Disney automatically walked away with the awards. Disney aimed for cuteness; we did slapstick. And we couldn’t beat Disney for artistic beauty. It wasn’t until 1947 that I won the first Oscar that a Warner’s animator ever got—for ‘Tweety Pie.’”
One reason the Warner’s cartoons have worn so well is that they weren’t made for kids, he said. “I made cartoons for an adult audience. It wasn’t like TV, where you know just what audience you’re aiming for. Our cartoons were meant to be seen in a theater, often by audiences that were totally adult.”
By the early ‘60s the heyday of the animated short was winding down. Cost-conscious theater owners were eliminating short subjects, cartoons and newsreels, thus allowing one more showing each day of the feature film. Warner Bros. folded its animation department and Freleng set up his own studio, directing animated commercials and industrial shorts.
Then director Blake Edwards approached Freleng about designing the title sequence for his 1964 comedy “The Pink Panther.”
“Of course, there was no character called the Pink Panther in the film,” Freleng said. “The Pink Panther was a stolen jewel. I had to find a way to personalize it on the screen.”
The obvious answer was to design a big pink cat. “When Blake saw the story board he loved it. He didn’t touch a frame. It was the longest title sequence ever seen on a film up to that time—seven minutes.
“I used to sit outside the box office where it was showing. People would walk up and want to know if the movie had begun. If they were told the title sequence had already run, they said they’d come back later. They wanted to see the cartoon. In fact, Time put the Pink Panther on the cover and said the titles were better than the film.”
Under the aegis of United Artists, Freleng’s studio between 1964 and 1979 made 192 Pink Panther shorts, all intended for theatrical play although they have since become staples of television programming. The character was wildly popular, but the cost of animation was such that when production on the short ended Freleng was $600,000 in debt.
“And then came TV syndication and merchandising,” Freleng said. “Now the Pink Panther is making a living for all of us.”
Asked to describe the Panther’s near-universal appeal, Freleng noted: “He’s a pantomimist, just like Charlie Chaplin. Most cartoons today are verbal—in fact the characters talk more than they move. But the Panther did nothing but move.
“Also, he is a mysterious creature. Henry Mancini’s music dictated a lot of that—very mysterioso. So that was a big part of the character. Also, the Panther was always thinking. The old Warner’s stuff was slapstick, but not the Panther. You always figured he was thinking how to outsmart someone.”

What was Friz Freleng’s legacy? It’s hard to say, as he wasn’t an innovator like Tex Avery or the people at UPA. But he developed a number of characters loved today and excelled in musical cartoons. His precise gag timing is admired. In short, he and his unit made an awful lot of animated shorts that people have laughed at for years and years. That’s “cartoony” for me.

A late P.S.: Paul Groh asks a legitimate question in the comments about Friz' nickname. Freleng claimed he was named after a "Congressman Frizby" character in the newspapers. I have no reason to think Freleng made this up.

In the late 1920s and through the 1930s, King Features Syndicate published a satirical grab-bag column by Ted Cook, originally called "Cook's Coo-Coos." He had several different characters, one of whom was a Congressman Horace W. Frisby (the middle name changed on a whim), who lived in the Washington Monument. The humour reminds me, and this is a little inadequate, of the surreality of Stoopnagle and Budd on radio. For example, one column had a request from Frisby for readers to send him bananas for sustenance because he lost his false teeth. Another was enactment of “Mash Prevention Week,” where he proposed to forbid policewomen from wearing lipstick and rouge, and forcing them to wear cotton stockings to stop them from getting unwanted advances. To the right is the best drawing of Frisby that I can find; it is from 1939.

Jim Tyer is Nuts

Can we all agree on this?

Here is Exhibit A: the third scene from the 1951 Terrytoon The Cat's Tale. He animates the first scene of the cat getting chased by mice. It's got frizzy tails and weird shapes that only Tyer would do.

Then his animation gets crazier as the cat frantically seals the door to his cave home to stop the mice from getting in. Look at the angles. They're insane.



Tyer animates parts of this scene on ones, so there’s no penny-pinching going on.

That’s not all. The next scene features weird pupil shapes as the cat pushes his head toward the camera. And there’s Tyer smear animation.



Tyer wasn't credited on this cartoon. None of the animators were until Paul Terry sold his studio and Gene Deitch was hired in 1956. Good for you, Gene!

Jack Benny, Gone For 50 Years

Jack Benny died 50 years ago today.

The intervening time has taken away many of his fans. Time also brings new fads and stars to popular culture, pushing out the old. Network radio, at one time the principal medium of home popular culture, has been gone longer than Benny. But the two are really inseparable.

On the air, Jack Benny gradually evolved. His initial popularity was sparked by parodies of films, and making gentle fun of his sponsor and the general stuffiness of radio commercials. Later, Benny regularly lampooned movie western serials, with characters breaking character and the “real world” intruding on the playlets.

Over time, Benny built a cast whose characteristics and personalities assigned to them on the broadcast mixed and meshed well with each other. Eventually, the standard variety show premise gave way to a situation comedy about people ON a variety show. Benny’s radio career could have carried on longer had the sponsor money put into radio not been transferred to television. Such was inevitable. Popular culture was changing.

By then (1955), Benny had been on the home screen, too, with his own show and appearing periodically on The Shower of Stars for several seasons. When his series ended in 1965, he was still wanted for occasional specials. One was in production at the time of his death.

The reason for the longevity (not even including his vaudeville career in the 1920s) is simple. People liked Jack Benny and the people he surrounded himself with.

Benny’s death was a stunning event. It brought forth a cascade of grief and remembrances. Columns in many newspaper editorial sections contained tributes to, and nostalgia about, Jack Benny. Always positive. They treated him like an old friend. Considering he had been in living rooms for decades, that shouldn’t be a surprise.

We’ve published a number of these editorials over the years. The one we’ve picked for today has a different perspective. It was from Stanley Reynolds’ column in the Arts section of the Manchester Guardian, Dec. 28, 1974. The English loved Benny as much as the Americans, though it appears his TV series didn’t air there. Reynolds’ perspective of Benny comes from the years of the Battle of Britain. The U.S. was attacked once at Pearl Harbor. The Brits had to deal with Nazi bombers over their homes on a daily, continual basis. As Winston Churchill inspired them, Jack Benny cheered them.

HERE HE IS walking home alone at night. His footsteps ring with that lonely nighttime sound and to keep his spirits up he starts humming. The song of course is Love In Bloom which is his theme song like Hope’s is Thanks For The Memory. Suddenly a bandit steps from the bushes and demands:
“Your money or your life.”
And then there is a long, long pause. The only sound is the audience falling about.
“Well?” the bandit finally says.
“I’m thinking it over,” says the oh so very familiar exasperated voice of Jack Benny.
How he used to milk that simple gimmick about being tight-fisted. And how difficult it is for us to believe he is dead. We know that so many of the great comics have gone. But there they are, Ollie and Stan on TV on Christmas morning and our own children know their routines by heart. Harpo and Chico are also alive and well in a double bill on BBC-2 on New Year’s Day.
Jack Benny will be less alive than the others. Not because he was any less a master of comedy but because he did his best work on radio. His films were few and his television appearances rare: usually as the guest star on someone else’s show, or topping the bill at the London Palladium.
Still, the few films that Benny did make were so good that he will survive as a character actor. I am particularly fond of To Be Or Not To Be, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, with Benny playing opposite Carol Lombard. They were supposed to be in a troupe of travelling actors who suddenly found themselves trapped by the Nazis in Poland. The film is probably unique in Worlds War II comedy because it makes fun of Hitler’s anti-semitism and the Gestapo, which is referred to as Der Hotfoot Department. This was, you see, 1942 and no one really knew how bad things were; when they found out good taste prevented any further comedy of this sort. But Benny is marvellous in the film and the satire on Hitler and his Nazi elitism so keen and on the mark that you know it is a classic which will someday come into its own again.
Probably Benny’s greatest success as a film actor was with Ann Sheridan in George Washington Slept Here in 1942. This was the film version of the Broadway hit, one of the modern classics of the American stage, and Benny showed what a fine character actor he could have been if he had not made so much money making people laugh on the radio.
Which leads me to what is probably the most important thing about Jack Benny. He was unlike any, other comic. He was not, for example, either a clown or a buffoon or even a mocker. I think it was Kenneth Tynan in his drama critic days who first pointed out that Benny was basically a straight man. The great Groucho was the eternal mocker, an aggressor doing battle with a boringly sane world. But Benny was simply a fellow who suffered at the hands of the world, usually in silence, arms folded across his chest, vain1y rolling his bright blue eyes heavenward.
He would plead his innocence to Mary Livingstone to Rochester, his gravel-voiced valet, to the US Treasury Department, and anyone else who wanted to take his money from him. Clownish enemies and aggressors surrounded him, all after his money or, like Fred Allen, his arch-enemy of the old radio days, simply trying to get the better of him comically. And Benny would simply react to their blows. Usually the reaction was a long silence, followed by a long drawn out “Well, I’ll tell you” or “Now look here.”
He had, of course, gimmicks galore—the avariciousness, the appalling fiddle playing, the ancient Maxwell motor car, his feud with Fred Allen, and his age (he was 38 for years and then became 39 and stayed there)—but his greatest gimmick was that long silence. This was his alone, perhaps because no other comic had Benny’s sense of timing. Even such masters as Hope and the great William Claude had to keep saying things; Benny could get a laugh just staying mum.
I suppose this was the most unusual sort of talent to be let loose on radio—especially American radio which has always been a bit frantic and where silence is “dead air time” and could be used to sell somebody something. I am well aware of my own failure here really to give anyone, especially the young, a good idea of this great idiosyncratic underplaying of Benny’s. He belonged to the radio in the great days of radio, of the depression and the war years. He was listened to all over America and was, in an era of some truly wonderful radio comedy shows, the most popular of the lot. His radio show was also heard here during the war years and much appreciated as were his many appearances at the London Palladium.
His voice for those of us who were small children then was familiar as a household object. We knew it like we knew the giant hands of our fathers and mothers — eye-level objects of childhood. When I hear the name Jack Benny it is a long ago winter night, and a schoolday in the morning, and I and my sister have been shushed off to bed but we leave the bedroom door open and listen, sometimes stealing out to the hallway to hear the radio better, for Jack Benny is on.
The world had gone mad and we children were well aware of it. If we were geographically 1ucky enough not to have bombs falling on us, well we had nightmares about it just the same. But here was this extraordinary man who lied about his age and hated spending money, and was silly in a most extraordinary way for a grown-up to be silly. Somewhere the grown-ups had gone mad and were killing children but Jack Benny was on the radio with Rochester, and Mary Livingstone and Dennis Day, and he was getting in a terrible state about having to spend money to buy Christmas presents and it seemed all very peaceful and calm,” sealing off thoughts of school and the real world outside.

Much more could be said about Benny. How he spent time during World War Two to write to families of soldiers he had visited in war zones. How his concerts starting in the 1950s raised money for orchestras, musicians’ pension plans and perservation of old theatres, including the Orpheum in Vancouver months before his death.

Suffice it to say, Jack Benny made people happy for several generations. Despite changes in popular culture, many of his radio shows are on the internet. He still makes people happy today.

From All of Us At Tralfaz

Yowp here.

I’m not a Christmas celebrant, but some of you reading are, either of the religious or secular versions, so I’m taking this time to thank you for stopping by this blog. I hope it’s been entertaining and/or informative. We will be on indefinite hiatus again soon.

The number of readers here is quite small but generally dedicated, and helpful if I get something wrong in one of the posts.

Below is a little Christmas song by one of the fine voice actors of the Golden Age, Mae Questel, from a 1937 Decca recording.



Another great cartoon actor was Daws Butler. We’ve talked about the “Talking Komics” he made with Marian Richman. Here are two sides of one involving Christmas, called “Sleepy Santa.” Radio veteran Ray Erlenborn provides the sound effects and the music is by Bob Mitchell. Bob Bellem wrote the story and lyrics. Marian Richman may be best known as Ralph Phillips’ mother, and she worked at UPA in addition to Warner Bros. We wrote about her in this post.

King Crowned For Christmas

Of the dozens of cartoons made by the animation division of Van Beuren Productions from 1929 (when it changed from Fables Pictures following the firing of Paul Terry) to the animation division's demise in 1936, only one was Christmas themed.

The Film Daily of Dec. 19, 1933 reported:

Otto Soglow, creator of the famous “Little King,” has drawn a special Christmas animated cartoon subject for RKO-Van Beuren wherein the merry monarch becomes a good samaritan with charitable purpose and comic effect.

I suspect Soglow didn’t draw anything; that was left to the Van Beuren staff under Jim Tyer, who got screen credit for animation.

“Comic effect” is in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps audiences of 1933 laughed at a king who behaved unregally and more like a child. But perhaps not, as the Little King series lasted ten cartoons and the king was dethroned when Burt Gillett was hired to run the studio.

The plot of Pals involves the Little King altruistically picking up two hoboes (one of whom is wearing a bra) on Christmas Eve, inviting them to bathe with him before a sleepover, and then coming downstairs the next morning to see what Santa Claus has brought. The King gets a small car, one of the hoboes getd a miniature fire truck, which they crash into anything and everything (“comic effect”?).

The two vehicles collide head-on. Positive and negative drawings emphasize the impact.



When the smoke clears, the woozy King is in the middle of a Christmas wreath.



Then he hiccoughs and a bubble comes out of his mouth to end the cartoon.



Yes, I know, it was one of the hoboes who swallowed a bar of soap and started bubbling away. Why is the Little King doing it now? The writers evidently thought it was hilarious. Methinks they were swallowing something a little stronger than a bar of soap.

Gene Rodemich fills the soundtrack with “Jingle Bells.”