And the Champeen Is...

In 1943, there was a war on, so you'd expect a certain amount of sabotage to be going on around the world. Unfortunately, one place where it shouldn’t have been happening was in the Warner Bros. cartoon studio, where Norm McCabe’s directorial efforts were continually sabotaged by weak stories.

One of them is the one-shot Looney Tune Hop and Go, released February 6, 1943. There are some pretty good visual touches in it, but the story (credited to Tubby Millar) stars three weak characters. There’s a dopey kangaroo (who doesn’t have an Australian accent), a rabbit (who has a Scottish accent for some reason) and another rabbit with no personality who barely speaks.

Somehow, Millar wants us to connect with these characters and to a plot about who is really the “champeen” hopper. But does anyone really care? Maybe he thought the early ‘40s love of heckling cartoon characters could somehow carry the film.

On top of that, McCabe seems to have been stuck shoehorning patriotic war stuff into his shorts. In McCabe’s The Ductators, it works well because the characters are clear-cut Axis bad guys. In this one, the ending just seems obligatory. And the best Millar could come up with a name for the kangaroo was "Claude Hopper"?

McCabe has future UPAer Dave Hilberman as his uncredited layout man, and the two try to be creative. The opening is shot at the kangaroo’s visual perspective with the scene hopping up and down. There are attempts at perspective animation. And there’s great use of light and shadow after the kangaroo is catapulted into the night atmosphere by the rabbits.



Claude lights a match to see where he is.



Suddenly, the sound of anti-aircraft fire. Claude twirls around, with his body alternating in shadow, or partly lit.



Now we see the anti-aircraft fire.



Cut to a long shot of Claude flying through the search lights.



There’s an explosion and a crate put in the kangaroo’s pouch by the rabbits jostles out.



As Claude falls, he realises what the crate contains and tosses it away. Claude hit the earth and hops away. The crate hits the earth. Nothing hops away.



Dissolve to Claude, telling us that we now know who the “champeen” is. Cut to a longer shot. Claude has destroyed Tokyo. Cue Porky bursting out of the drum.



Interestingly, the background artist (Dick Thomas?) spells it “Tokyo.” McCabe’s next cartoon spelled it “Tokio.” But the less said about that one, the better.

Cal Dalton is handed the rotating animation credit on this one. Izzy Ellis and John Carey are likely artists on this as well.

Pinto Colvig appropriates his Goofy voice for the kangaroo. Mel Blanc plays both rabbits, with one having his standard Scottish accent he gave to Botsworth Twink on the Abbott and Costello radio show.

He Was Never in Kirk Douglas' Swimming Pool

Who gave the toast at Roger Ebert’s wedding in 1992?

No, it wasn’t Gene Siskel. And don’t bother guessing the name of a big-name movie star.

It was Lou Jacobi.

He was one of those character guys who popped up continually on TV. He was at home in drama. He was at home in comedy. I remember him on Dean Martin’s TV show.

Jacobi has so many credits; Ebert wrote in 1999 about how Woody Allen wrote the play Don’t Drink the Water for him. Allen cast him in Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex. Barry Levinson put him in Avalon. Ebert told of Jacobi’s record albums: Tijuana Al and his Jewish Brass and The Yiddish are Coming! The Yiddish are Coming!. And he told how, in 1947, Lou was working a club in a dress, blonde wig, sprawled out on a piano and singing about a naughty lady named Sadie.

The purpose for Ebert’s story is to relate that he showed up to see Jacobi give a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame. Until reading the article, I didn’t know Jacobi was another Canadian export to the U.S.

Here are a couple of earlier clippings. First, from a weekend feature story by Morris Duff in the Toronto Star of Jan. 14, 1961. Americans reading this will think of Don Harron as a cast member of Hee-Haw.

Once Stag Comic Now Character Star
NEW YORK—Everything Toronto-born Lou Jacobi touches turns to gold. This week he is rehearsing by day for the new Broadway comedy “Come Blow Your Horn.” By night he continues to play Schlissel, the synagogue-going atheist, in Paddy Chayefsky’s “The Tenth Man.”
At 47, Jacobi is entering the category of high-paid character actor. Just 10 years ago he was a borscht circuit comedian in Toronto making a living by playing stags, smokers, bar mitzvahs and banquets. In summer he travelled to Muskoka or other holiday areas as a social director at lodges.
Salary Jumps
Today, Jacobi’s salary is five times higher than the one he received just two plays ago when he first appeared on Broadway in “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
Don Harron, another Toronto actor in “Tenth Man” recalled meeting Jacobi in a restaurant on Bloor St. about a decade ago.
“He was a joke teller and I was a college actor,” Harron explained. Harron took a lofty view of his work and a low one of Jacobi’s, but the two became fast friends” At Harron’s suggestion the stag party comedian was invited to the New Play society to perform material written by Harron for “Spring Thaw.” He had a burlesque appeal the revue needed.
By 1951, Harron was in England and encouraging Jacobi to join him. Lou decided to accept and was about to leave when he got word that Harron was returning. “So I did a loner, Jacobi recalls. “I faced a new country with its fog and rain without friends.
Different Ambition
Harron had suggested he work in English variety. But a different ambition had been kindled in Jacobi. He wanted to get into the West End theatre.
Agent after agent turned him away with, “My dear fe11ow, what have you done?” Then he met a girl from Vancouver who was an agent’s switchboard operator. She told him about auditions for “Remains to Be Seen.”
The Canadían got the part as the chief detective, he found out later because he looked like the actor who did the role in the U.S.
“I played the part with a slight lisp,” Jacobi recalls. When the reviews came out they scorned the play but praised star Diana Dors and the policeman with the lisp.
Against Advice
Jacobi’s career in London developed through musicals such as “Guys and Dolls” and “Pal Joey.” Then, against the advice of his agent, he took a series of small parts in “The World of Sholem Aleichem.” He was seen in it by Garson Kanin who decided the Canadian should come to Broadway for the role of Mr. Van Daam in “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
Jacobi is the first to admit his career is filled with luck and breaks “Garson Kanin might not have come to England for another 20 years. But the point is when I got the breaks I was ready.
“An actor must prepare himself and always be ready and then he must get fortunate. Nobody heard me complaining when I wasn’t getting the breaks. I didn’t quit to go into some other business.”
In Jacobi’s view of Jacobi, his lack of a formal or the conventional theatre acting background has been a good thing. He feels his own background worked better.
Smokers Toughest
“To be a raconteur you have to be an actor. Entertaining men at smokers is the hardest thing to do. You have to get them right away. You have to be an actor to give it color. So I really had been an actor for years, without knowing it.
“My talent is intuitive. I can’t say how I do it. I’m a non-academic actor.”
A few days before “Tenth Man” opened, Jacobi got a call from movie producer Billy Wilder. He was wondering what Jacobi was doing in a new play when he had written a special part for him in an upcoming movie, “The Apartment.” It is generally agreed the role was wonderful and would have been great for Jacobi. Only trouble was Wilder neglected to tell Jacobi what he was doing.
Jacobi, who has appeared in several films, doesn’t consider loss of the movie role too serious. Next time, Wilder will know better than to expect Jacobi to just sit waiting.
Salt and Pepper
“And ‘The Tenth Man’ was wonderful for my career. . . . I like roles with lots of salt and pepper in them, I don’t like them to be bland. It was an exciting creative work.”
As the result of “The Tenth Man,” Jacobi was able to get a six-week “out” clause in the new play. If there is another call from Wilder, or if a particularly tempting movie or play role comes along, Jacobi will be able to give notice and take the new assignment.
“Actually I don’t think an actor should worry about his career. He should just move from job to job . . . trying to keep working and doing the best he can with whatever parts he has.
“Once an actor starts to worry about his career he’s in trouble.”

Here’s a 1963 column from the Newspaper Enterprise Association where Jacobi gives his feelings about Hollywood.

Old Pro Jacobi Looks at Hollywood
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD, Apr. 23 (NEA) — What people DON’T talk about on movie and television sound stages is bugging Lou Jacobi almost as much as why Kirk Douglas’ swimming pool is so “chic.”
As for some actors being reluctant to remove their make-up because, he reasons, they must not like themselves—well, he’s just sorry.
Before going into these idle but piercing thoughts-while-looing-at-Hollywood, let me introduce you to Lou Jacobi. The face may be familiar, but probably not the name.
Come to think about it, the face is tricky, too.
He’s always behind a beard or mustache for his movie and stage roles.
Behind mutton chops he was Franz Liszt’s manager in “Song Without End.” Behind a beard he was Mr. Van Daan in stage and movie version of “The Diary of Anne Frank.” Now he’s behind a mustache with ends that curl up like teapot spouts in “Irma La Douce.”
He plays a barman – raconteur called “Mustache” by Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine in the film, and he does more talking than listening.
Most of the time he’s way cut with cock ‘n’ bull stories about his adventures as soldier, sailor, 1awyer, doctor or what have you. Every story ends up with “Mustache” saying:
“But that’s another story.”
The way Lou Jacobi reads them the words could catch on as the year’s most quoted movie line.
As an old Pro (from Toronto, Canada) who has been in show business since the age of 12, Jacobi is amazed at what he hears on movie and television sound stages.
“No one talks about acting out here,” he grumbled. “It’s fantantic. The talk is about real estate, cars, money, where to go on vacations. The whole idea seems to be to ignore acting, grab the money and run.
“When not acting, everyone in town seems to be in Kirk Douglas’ swimming pool. That amazes me, too.”
This, he explained, came to his attention while living in a theatrical type apartment house in Hollywood, while working in “Irma La Douce”
“I knew swimming pools were chic out here,” he said. “But I didn’t realize you have to be in the swim in the RIGHT pool.”
While relaxing in the apartment’s swimming pool, he met a young actor also living in the apartment. Later they met again, at a big Hollywood party. In a group with a round of introductions, the young actor said to Jacobi:
“Oh yes, we’ve met before — in Kirk Douglas’ swimming pool.”
With mustache ends twirling, Jacobi stormed: “I’ve never been in Douglas’ pool, and I’m sure that young fellow hasn’t either. But an apartment house pool just isn’t chic.”
Jacobi says he’s one of those actors who can be happy as a person and “that’s rare these days.”
“The curtain” he explains, “comes down at 6 p.m. and then I’m just Lou Jacobi, another person.
“I feel sorry for actors who are reluctant to take their make-up off.
When they do, they must discover they don’t like themselves.
“As actors who like the roles they play better than themselves, they lose control of acting. To give a good performance, you have to control the roll 100 per cent.
“I’m grateful that I always have a self to come back to.”

Jacobi was 95, a widower and under care when he died in New York in 2009. He was a thoughtful actor, a keen observer, and his career went swimmingly in all but one way.

The Super Chief

Cartoons give their creator plenty of latitude in coming up with characters and situations that could never be real. Dream sequences expand that even more.

Much of Bob Clampett’s final release for Warner Bros., The Big Snooze, takes place in one of Elmer Fudd’s dreams that Bugs Bunny invades to turn into a nightmare. In one scene, he sets up a pop culture pun.

Here are consecutive frames. Clampett has some jarring edits in this short. Dialogue is cut off at least twice and the scene changes abruptly. Here, the background changes and the same drawing of Bugs moves closer to the camera. There’s no logical reason to shoot the scene this way.



Bugs ties Elmer Fudd, Pearl White-style, onto the railroad tracks. There’s a train whistle. Being a Clampett cartoon, Bugs reacts. Good gravy! Here it comes! The Super Chief!” Eventually, Bugs partly out of frame view.



The Super Chief, as everyone knew at the time of this cartoon, was a streamlined diesel passenger train running between Los Angeles and Chicago on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe line. Here’s the pun. The Super Chief is really Bugs in an Indian headdress.



Despite some odd cuts and animation with no dialogue (and vice versa), there are some terrific visuals in this we’re featured here before—the “multiplying” rabbit outlines stomping on Elmer, Elmer in drag doing a Russian dance, the “nightmare paint.” There’s re-use of the log/cliff routine from All This and Rabbit Stew (Tex Avery, 1941). And some Avery-like wolves at Hollywood and Vine chase after Elmer.

Clampett never got a director’s credit and there is no story credit. The animators are Manny Gould, Rod Scribner, Izzy Ellis and Bill Melendez, with Tom McKimson handling layouts and Phil De Guard responsible for the backgrounds. While this was Clampett’s last release, on Oct. 5, 1946, he had one more cartoon that went into production afterwards, Bacall to Arms, but was released before The Big Snooze, on Aug. 3, 1946. Art Davis told researcher Milt Grey “Bacall to Arms was the only one I had a hand in finishing. Any of the other pictures that had already been animated, I didn’t have much to do with.”

The cartoon’s name is inspired by the Warners feature The Big Sleep with Bogart and Bacall. I wondered if the two films were shown together and, sure enough, The Film Daily reported on Nov. 25, 1946 the Interstate circuit booked the two to be shown on the same bill. See an ad to the right.

And Red as Little Eva

Uncle Tom's Cabaña is a stew with ingredients Tex Avery used in other cartoons—visual puns, a climax where things ridiculously escalate, a character talking to the audience, a two phones gag, and, of course, Red on stage with cuts to reactions (by a human, not a wolf) at a cabaret table (and the concept of the cabaret-instead-of-small-home itself).

Even the starting point for the story—a send-up of Uncle Tom’s Cabin—had been tried by Avery at Warner Bros.



I really wish I could get more excited about this cartoon, but I can’t. Red aka Little Eva is too demure on stage. Avery and writer Heck Allen came up with tamer reactions by the wolfish-Simon Legree. Here, he is so fixated on the performance on stage that he substitutes the table for a pie.



The animators are Walt Clinton, Ray Abrams, Bob Bentley and Preston Blair, with backgrounds by Johnny Johnsen. The official release date was July 19, 1947 but, not surprisingly, the Fox Wilshire in Los Angeles screened it on June 24, along with Fiesta, starring Ricardo Montalban and Cyd Charisse. The cartoon was already being advertised in the trades as early as March 1, 1945 as a sequel to Red Hot Riding Hood.

I don’t need to tell you the black stereotypes are the reason this cartoon will never be restored. They outraged what was then called “the negro press” when the short was re-released on Feb. 6, 1954. This is from an unbylined writer in the Pittsburgh Courier, March 6, 1954.

’Uncle Tom’s Cabana’ Outrages Negro Audiences
What Price Brotherhood If Movies Play Up Handkerchief Heads?
[E-D-I-T-O-R-I-A-L]
The damndest thing in the world is to keep responsible Americans from writing dirty words on fences. The latest episode in this “ignorant compulsion” series is the motion picture cartoon “Uncle Tom’s Cabana,” a base stereotype and an insult to Negros. With the movies trying to buck television it is strange that a studio would distribute such a malodorous thing. What price brotherhood if movies up handkerchief heads?
Even though there has been a general loosening of the Production Code in order to hypo the boxoffice, there is no reason why Negroes should continue to be ridiculed and jeered at in the motion pictures. This medium reaches all levels of mentalities and feeds the flames of prejudice by projecting such canards as “Uncle Tom’s Cabana.”
This uncommonly poor cartoon is showing in theatres all over America right now. Will it be shown in other countries where communism is battling for people’s minds? Are ideas so lacking that movie short subjects must dredge up “Birth of a Nation” material. Or was this thing called “Uncle Tom’s Cabana” the result of thoughtlessness?
Motion pictures are designed to entertain, but the motion picture industry must face responsibilities to itself and the public it serves and seeks. The low buffoonery of Negroes on the screen is not appreciated. The callous depiction of Negroes as lackeys and cretins fresh out of the cotton fields leaves everyone cold because people know better.
It does require genius to point out that other racial and religious groups are never vilified on the screen. The pressure would almost wreck the movies. Negroes must rise in a mass and protest such antic foolishness and “Uncle Tom’s Cabana,” and all other films of this type.
Now where we the state censors when this film (“Uncle Tom’s Cabana”) was released? By showing this during Brotherhood Week was a kick in the teeth to wipe out prejudice in America. With the world in ferment, “Uncle Tom’s Cabana” set the movies back ten years. Withdraw the film immediately, huh?

Evidently, the reviewer somehow missed continual Jewish and Chinese stereotypes in films, cartoons and otherwise. Or the perennial depiction of gays as limp-wristed swishers. Or all Scotsmen being cheapskates. Perhaps they were too busy raising the tired old “Communist” scare.

Regardless, the cartoon doesn’t do a lot for me. Some of the parts are better than the whole.

Jack Benny Will Not Be Seen Tonight. Almost

The show must go on, goes the old entertainment saw.

For Jack Benny, that wasn’t always quite true.

In the radio days, he had an extremely serious case of pneumonia (originally downplayed in the public press) in early 1943 and missed five shows; Orson Welles filled in for him on most of them. There was another show in the late ‘30s when he was bedridden, and then too emotionally upset to do his Sunday show after the death of Carol Lombard in 1942.

It also happened when Benny took on television, and that provided the starting point for a newspaper feature story about him.

The broadcast was supposed to be a live one on February 22, 1953. Reading the story from the Associated Press, I can’t help but think of the pancreatic cancer that claimed Jack’s life at the end of 1974; he complained of stomach cramps then, too. The story made the front page of the Los Angeles Times and several other papers.

Benny Ill, Watches TV Film From Bed
HOLLYWOOD, Feb. 23 (AP)—Instead of appearing on television last night as scheduled, Jack Benny, stricken by the flu, sat up in a hospital bed and saw himself on a TV film. A spokesman reported his condition “fine.”
The comedian was taken to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital early yesterday after suffering from severe stomach cramps. He was stricken about 11 P.M. Saturday after dining at the home of Dory Schary, MGM production chief.
Benny’s wife, Mary Livingstone, took him home and nursed him through the night. Dr. Myron Prinzmetal, summoned early yesterday, drove Benny to the hospital. He will remain there a few days.
Ann Southern Show On
The comedian’s regular Sunday radio show went on the air on schedule; it was taped several days ago. A filmed television show starring Ann Sothern, which occupies the TV tie spot between his appearance every fourth Sunday, replaced his scheduled live TV show.
Benny saw the Sothern telecast in which he had played a bit part.
In his own TV show, he was to have played the role of Dr. Jekyll in the Benny version of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

The show was rescheduled for a month later. The Jekyll idea actually originated on radio in late 1941.

The temporary illness gave the Washington Post entertainment writer a chance to do one of those Benny-Isn’t-What-He-Is-On-TV/Radio stories. This was published March 1, 1953.

Just a Nice Guy
The Real Benny’s a Real Doll
By Sonia Stein
THE influenza bug that bit Jack Benny last Sunday must have had cast iron nerve. If ever there was a man who looked to be in the peach of condition (Californians seem to stay perpetually peach instead of pink) it was Benny. For a man who celebrated his thirty-ninth birthday for the twentieth time on Valentine’s Day, Benny cuts a fine figure.
This should come as a terrible blow to fans of the 20-year-old radio character Jack Benny. They know him (Sunday nights at 7 on WTOP) as stingy, aging, bald, foolish, fat, vain and unloved. His gag-writers have created—with his enthusiastic approval—a querulous bachelor covering his baldspot with a toupee in a fruitless attempt to make his friends think he is 39. His acute parsimony leads him to cheat his employes, to take in laundry, to charge guests for refreshments and cigarettes, to wear seedy clothes and to drive around in a moribund Maxwell.
THIS character is so well planted in the American consciousness after Benny’s years as America’s top-rated radio comedian, that a hatcheck girl once flung a dollar tip back at him and begged, “Please, Mr, Benny, leave me some illusions!” If you feel as the hat check girl did, look the other way, because we must in conscience report that Jack is handsome, generous, well-loved, intelligent, happy to admit his 59 years, slim, modest and the owner of a fine head of white hair which he tints steel grey for photographic reasons.
A quietly tailored man, Benny has, nonetheless, a look of the actor about him. He has a commanding “presence” even when he is silent. This looking-like-an-actor situation puts Benny in mind of a joke.
“When I first got on Broadway I wanted people to point at me and say ‘There goes an actor!’ So I bought a flashy Broadway outfit that looked like sunset with buttons. Then, one night as I was leaving the theater I heard a stagehand remark, ‘There goes Benny. He always looks like an actor.’ For a moment I floated on air. Then I heard his companion reply, ‘Yep, Benny always looks like an actor—except when he’s on stage’.”
He does worry about his waistline and diets rather carefully the last two weeks before each of his TV shows (once a month Sunday nights at 7:30 on WTOP-TV). But even during his dieting period last month Jack relaxed his vigil. When a waiter set before him a creamy strawberry parfait at a press luncheon Jack looked sternly at it a moment and then dug in with the explanation that, “It’s not fattening if you don’t order it and I didn’t order it.”
THE conceited aspect of the fictional Benny seems to be practically nonexistent in real life. When Benny was here February 7 to entertain at the Radio Correspondents Association dinner, he had an appointment, at the White House with President Eisenhower, whom he had met In Europe when he was touring Army bases to entertain the troops. Affairs of state necessitated moving the Benny appointment a couple of times. Instead of being hurt or angry, Jack was wreathed in smiles: “Say, that’s very complimentary to me I think. It would have been so much easier for them to just cancel the appointment than to move it, but they keep moving it to try and fit me in,” he said.
On his program Jack not only plays straight man and butt of the jokes for every member of his cast, but works hard to build the others into rounded, popular characters. “People don’t say ‘I listened to Jack Benny last night and he was good,’ they say, ‘I listened to the Jack Benny Show last night and it was good’,” Jack explains. And he considers that smart business tactics. (It’s a little hard to quibble with him on business tactics, since he sold Amusement Enterprises, Inc.—the company under which his various activities are organized—to CBS for $2,260,000. As owner of 60 percent of the firm he got $1,356,000.)
Benny’s program is also the first one on which I ever heard any credits given to the writers.

MENTION of Benny’s writers always brings up the subject of whether or not Jack can be funny on his own. Not noted for ad lib ability on the air, Benny is frequently described as a gifted comedian who can judge humor well and deliver it perfectly, but who cannot write it at all, This certainly doesn’t appear to me to be the case. Although he does not keep up a steady line of gags and tends to discuss his work on a very serious level in terms of general approaches rather than specific jokes, he has a delightful wit which comes through when he is relaxed.
At a recent conference with the press, Benny was discussing the virtues of repeating some of the good shows after a suitable time lapse. “You can repeat the good ones and skip the bad ones,” he said. Then, leaping to his feet as if he had been insulted, be demanded to know, “Who has bad shows?”
Benny has never been accused of off-color humor except by isolated persons who found some item offensive. His good taste in humor goes unchallenged. Ronald Colman, long shy of radio because of a few unpleasant encounters, finally entrusted himself to Benny because he trusted Jack’s sense of good taste. After several succesful [sic] appearances with Benny, Colman and his wife became radio stars on their town show. Dennis Day and Phil Harris also blossomed out with shows of their own after learning some tricks at Benny’s knee.

While Jack personally got positive ink like you just read, his shows didn’t. When the Jekyll episode finally aired, C.E. Butterfield of the Associated Press remarked:

Jack Benny, back on television after missing his February appearance because of a sudden illness, demonstrated that he is at his best when doing a satire. This time he gave attention to “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” which he had rehearsed for February. More rehearsing in March got out all kinks and the end product was near the ultimate in entertainment.

But “Trau” declared it “was not one of his better efforts” and went on:

There might have been some who regarded as inventive the fact that Dennis Day did a “surprise” personation of the Hyde character for the snapper finish, causing Benny to observe that the interference snafued the show. He could have been kidding on the square. The stanza did contain some rewarding sight bits, but not sufficiently to carry the half hour. Jeanne Cagney did what she could as the nurse, Bob Crosby as the interne, with Don Wilson appearing as a London bobby in narration (plus a neatly integrated Lucky Strike plug), and the décor was extra special. Best piece of business was Iris Airian [Adrian], as an old bag, overpowering Benny in his Hyde form in a series of physical tussles that had JB gasping. That and Mel Blanc’s solid sound effects. Overall, the heartiness of a Benny show was missing.

There was also a network transmission glitch, as reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

A segment of the Jack Benny Show, telecast locally by WCAU-TV, hit a technical snag last night when trouble developed on the coast-to-coast audio line “somewhere west of Chicago” and some of the spoken parts of Benny’s version of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” faded and became inaudible.
Benny was presenting the show with Jeanne Cagney and Bob Crosby from the CBS studios in Hollywood when the interruption occurred. A spokesman in WCAU’s control room laid the blame to trouble on the line “somewhere west of Chicago.” He said he did not know what was missing in the dialogue.

Despite mixed reviews (he also got them for his January TV show), Jack’s TV series eventually expanded and stayed on the air for another 12 years. For Jack Benny, the show must go on. And it generally did. For longer than many TV stars.

Fred Brunish, Inventor

We all know Fred William Brunish (named for his father and grandfather, incidentally) was a background artist for Walter Lantz and also made stop motion films for him during the war.

He was a tinkerer, too, and filed for a patent for an automatic slide projector in 1934.

Here's a link to his patent application. It's not all that exciting, but what do you expect from a patent application?

Brunish was born in the Bronx on Dec. 18, 1902. The 1920 Census reports he was a 17-year old fashion sketcher (a 1925 classified ad in the New York Times is below). In 1930, the Detroit city directory gives his occupation as the vice president of the Consolidated Advertising Corp. He didn’t remain in Detroit long. The next year, his family was living in San Diego, where was employed as Consolidated’s art director. He was living in Los Angeles the following year. The City Directory in 1933 lists him as “artist,” and various Voters Lists from 1936 onward give his occupation as “art director.” He was the chief sound engineer and art director for the Royal Revue Film Studio in Hollywood in 1938. Brunish belonged to the Laguna Beach Art Association and there were showings of his work in the mid-1930s.


The 1940 Census says “cartoon picture studio artist.” Walter Lantz cartoons didn’t credit any background artists until 1944 and Brunish’s name doesn’t appear ON screen until the end of 1946, when he is credited on The Wacky Weed. However his 1942 Draft Registration states he was employed at Lantz, and the photo of him above is from when he was working on war-time films for the studio. Late Note: Devon Baxter mentions Joe Adamson's notes state Brunish started work at Lantz on Oct. 24, 1937. Joe wrote a fine biography of Lantz, so he would know.

That year, he was involved with the Motion Picture War Chest drive that year. He also contributed in 1942 to “Communique,” a weekly publication by the Hollywood Writers Mobilization for Defense in cooperation with the Office of Emergency Management. Brunish designed posters alongside Cy Young, Tom McKimson, Frank Tipper, Ozzie Evans, John Walker, Chuck Whitton (both at Lantz) and Ed Starr (later of Screen Gems and Sutherland). In 1947, his watercolour “Sunset on the Pacific” was displayed at the Screen Artists show at the Los Angeles Art Association galleries. Other artists who exhibited works may be familiar from various cartoon studios, including Starr, Ralph Hulett, Basil Davidovitch, Barbara Begg and George Nicholas.

The Lantz studio shut down because of a cash crunch in 1949. In the 1950 census, dated April 5, Brunish is listed as a cartoonist who wasn’t working. When Lantz resumed full operation, Brunish was back. The last cartoon with his name on it was The Great Who-Dood-It, released Oct. 20, 1952 (one of his backgrounds is reconstructed below).


Brunish died on June 25, 1952 of cirrhosis of the liver. His Los Angeles Times obit mentions nothing of his patent or his film work; it lists him as a "landscape artist" and that he left behind a widow, a son and a sister.

Note: this is a reworking of a post that appeared on the late GAC forums.