Miscast Cronkite

Careers on television take detours, even for someone as venerable as Walter Cronkite.

Uncle Walter wasn’t quite as venerable in 1954 as he was when he took over the CBS Evening News eight years later, and is today considered to be a yardstick of integrity in news broadcasting. But he was in the top echelon, having anchored the 1952 political conventions and election night coverage on television.

At the start of the year, he was narrating the historical re-creation show You Are There when the network brain trust decided he was the perfect person to put up against America’s number-one chimp, J. Fred Muggs.

Thus was born The Morning Show.

CBS’ answer to Dave Garroway’s Today show went on the air March 15, 1954 (it was not broadcast on the West Coast). A syndication service talked to Cronkite about his expectations for it.

CBS Brass Has High Hopes For New ‘Morning Show’
By TV KEY
Snooping around at rehearsal for CBS’ upcoming “Morning Show”—which bows in tomorrow at 7:00 am—in search of anchor man Walter Cronkite, we couldn’t help noticing the small platoon of brass-encrusted network bigwig who had come to take a look. We sidled over to CBS head Hubbell Robinson to get his reactions they were favorable. We tried the same tactics with News and Special Events’ Chief Sig Mickelson. He was ecstatic. Then we talked to newsman Charles Collingwood, who will be handling the reporting on the show. “People want to know what’s happening in the world when they get up in the morning,” he said, “And we’ll tell them. How can that miss?”
When we finally pried Walter Cronkite away from the run-through he radiated the same general enthusiasm. “This will be basically a news show,” he told us. “We’ll have features, too, but we’ll try to give all of them a news peg. We’ll do interviews with as many interesting people as we can get—authors, actors, prominent figures. We have the Bairds (Bill, Cora, and puppet retinue) for a lighter angle. No, we don’t have anything specifically designated as women’s features—for that matter there’s nothing specifically for men, either. If we have film or interviews about, say, sports or fashions, all well and good, as long as they tie in with the news. That way they will interest everybody.
“Of course,” said Mr. Cronkite slowly, “there will inevitably be people who say we’re imitating ‘Today.’ We are—but in the most complimentary way possible. We did independent studies for a year to find the best formula for a morning show and we came up with this format. (During the last few months a virtually unprecedented six kinescopes of the “Morning Show” were made employing different people, and the best elements of each were retained for the present format.) It’s inevitable for a show like this.
Of course, the day may come when people will sit down and stare at TV for long periods in the morning, but until then, this is pretty much the way it will have to be. Our main attraction, we feel, is content, And personality. And the warmth and friendliness of a smallish group that knows and likes and respects each other.”
Mr. Cronkite lit a cigarette and looked around at the jumble of cameras and sets and stagehands and machines that was gradually shaping up into a television show.
“Being an anchor man involves more than people think,” he said. “It’s not like being an old vaudeville m.c. with no time problems and everything worked out so you just have to announce it. Here there’ll be practically no rehearsal, practically no forewarning. I’ve got to be able to come in at 4:30 a.m., pick up the items for that day, and take off from there, working out the sequence, padding between items to make the time come out right, moving from area to area without losing the cameras. Most of that work is done behind the scenes; if it’s done well nobody notices it, but if it isn’t, the whole show falls apart. You’ve got to be able to think on your feet—and at 4:30 in the morning.
Mr. Cronkite grinned. “I thought I was through with those kind of hour. 10 year ago when I gave up the early shift at UP, but here I am again, jumping into the shower before dawn—and waking up all the neighbors. You get used to it, though. In a few weeks maybe I could even be singing in the shower. If I could sing. . .”

If you’re wondering how Cronkite’s show went, we can do no better than reproduce Herald Tribune syndicate John Crosby’s column of March 18.

Radio in Review
By JOHN CROSBY
SINCERE FLATTERY
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then CBS-TV’s new program, “The Morning Show” (7 to 9 a. m. Mondays through Fridays) is the nicest compliment that has ever been paid to its two-year-old opposite number on NBC called “Today.”
The chief difference between “Today” and “The Morning Show” is that Walter Cronkite has a moustache and Dave Garroway hasn’t, and Garroway wears glasses and Cronkite doesn’t. Of course, it’s just possible this is the only kind of show that is possible so early in the morning and that imitation is inevitable. But it does seem to me they went a little far, that there might have been some points of departure that might have been explored.
* * *
As it is, the morning audience now has to choose between Garroway who is urbane, relaxed, witty and intelligent and Cronkite who is urbane, relaxed, witty and intelligent. (If there are any bopsters around, Garroway is slightly the cooler of the two but they’re both pretty cool, man.)
* * *

Like “Today,” “The Morning Show” goes in heavily for news and though CBS is renowned for its news coverage and its commentators, it has not managed to grapple with news any more successfully than the NBC program. On both shows you get headlines endlessly repeated.
There is not even an attempt to dig under the headlines with comment and interpretation which news so desperately needs today. I realize the boys are dealing with what they consider successive platoons of husbands dashing off to work who are supposedly only half listening. Still, it would be nice if CBS every morning supplied one very serious and thorough breakdown of the most important news story of the day from one of its stable of topflight correspondents scattered all over the world. Maybe they will.
For features, Cronkite first interviewed a toy-maker named John Peter who informed us that cardboard was the biggest news in toys this year. He displayed some huge cardboard toys which were apparently as indestructible as if made from cement.
“Did you know that America spent $450,000,000 on toys last year,” asked Mr. Peter.
“I believe it,” said Cronkite. “I spent most of that myself.”
* * *
There ensued five minutes of news from the local communities which happens to be an exact replica of the way they do things on “Today.” Then Cronkite showed us a live shot of commuters scurrying to work at Grand Central. It just so happens that Garroway on “Today’s” opening show also showed us shots of commuters wandering around Grand Central. These boys just can’t seem to get out of Grand Central. If ABC decides to have a morning show I respectfully suggest they take us to Penn Station just for a novelty.
Where “Today” has a chimpanzee, J. Fred Muggs, “The Morning Show” has Charlemagne, the lion, a puppet operated by Bil and Cora Baird who sounds a little like Finnegan in “Duffy’s Tavern.” Charlemagne plays records and trades badinage with Cronkite. While the records are playing, the Bairds’ inexhaustible supply of puppets make like they’re singing or dancing or playing instruments. This bit is done with great charm and ingenuity and grace. It’s a lot of fun to watch.
“The Morning Show” is not quite as gadget-happy as “Today” but they do have an electronic weather map, product of nearly a year’s research by the network’s new effects department, which is supposed to show rain where it rains, snow where it snows, and so forth. To me it just looked like a lot of lights flashing on and off but if the new effects department is happy with it, I am too. Frankly, though, I think Garroway’s little informal chat with the weatherman in Washington is more entertaining than all those lights.
* * *
Other features included a very nice interview with Stephen A. Mitchell, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and with Ivy Baker Priest, Treasurer of the United States. Best of all was a telegram from another network to the effect: “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.’’ It was signed Dave Garroway, Jack Lescoulie and Frank Blair who have been in this exhausting business a couple years now.

Cronkite became unhappy rather quickly. Whether chatting about the stories of the day with a puppet was a factor wasn’t revealed, but the New York Times reported on July 20 that Cronkite “has notified the network that he does not want to continue in the role if the show stresses amusement and entertainment features” and that Cronkite “prefers to be known as a newsman and commentator and not a clown.” This was despite the fact he became the host of a Goodson-Todman quiz show called It’s News To Me that month.

The following day, the Times revealed Cronkite was out as of August 16, Jack Paar was in, and the show was being moved from the news division to the programme department. Paar told a story for years and years—one that first appeared in Earl Wilson’s column of September 9, 1954—that his mother wrote CBS saying she hated to see Cronkite leave.

Paar was gone soon, too, but both he and Cronkite went on to bigger things. Television was better for it.

Rat Tale

A kitten tries to pull on a rope, or something. Its kin attempt to help.



They fall after unable to budge whatever it is. No matter. The tail belongs to a rat, which comes out of its hole. This being a Van Beuren cartoon, the kittens are a basic design. The rat turns into a circle at times.



I like the design of the rat. But what’s with the silly expressions on the kittens? Shouldn’t they recoil in fear?



The rat turns into a circle again. This part of the scene shows Van Beuren tried to add a little extra. After capturing the black kitten, the rat hoists up the other two by its tail and then drops them. The rat could just have easily turned and gone back into its hole without the additional action.



Rough on Rats tries to be a pleasant, Disney-like atmosphere cartoon with the kittens frolicking without evoking laughs. There’s even a happy, Disney-like song with a female chorus. But the kittens are nowhere drawn as well as anything at Disney and they don’t have any individual personalities.

Still, I like this cartoon. It doesn’t drag and we get a climax where the kittens vanquish the rat with everything in sight, as the female chorus ooooos ominously. Harry Bailey directed.

You're Out of the Picture

We’ve had a post here about Northwest Hounded Police with the Tex Avery unit’s huge takes. We’ve had another post with Johnny Johnsen’s backgrounds in the same cartoon.

The one post we haven’t done is from, arguably, the most famous scene in the cartoon.

Avery and story man Heck Allen employ perfect physics. If someone is going too fast and trying to make a turn, the laws of dynamics mean it’ll take extra distance to slow down to be able to do it. Avery applies this principal to the wolf running to escape Droopy. In this case, the “extra distance” means he slides off the film of the cartoon he’s in.



The wolf uprights himself and is able to run back onto the film.



Notice how Avery has the film sprockets only on every other frame.

Avery used outrageous shock takes in later cartoons (the eye in Droopy’s Drouble Trouble comes to mind) but this short probably had the ultimate in that kind of reaction in his work at MGM. There weren’t too many places to go from here.

Jack Benny, Music Devotee

The Palace in New York may have been the desirable destination for many a vaudevillian, but it was just one stop on the prestigious Keith Orpheum circuit, which stretched across the U.S. and Canada.

There were Orpheum Theatres down the West Coast from Vancouver to Los Angeles. One of them was in Portland, and one of the many stars who appeared there to delighted audiences was Jack Benny.

Long after vaudeville died, Jack decided to go stage again—this time to help symphony orchestras and their homes raise money through his violin concerts. One of his stops was in Portland.

In 1964, organisers in the city put together a “Benny Weekend” with the hope of raising part of the local symphony’s expanded $290,000 budget for that year. On the Saturday, there was a Benny Ball at the Multnomah Hotel (the cost, a thrifty $10) and on Sunday, a concert at the Auditorium (prices were $12.50, $7.50 and $5, though seats without much of a view of the stage could be had for $3).
Here’s part of a story about Jack and his concerts from Martin Clark of the Oregon Journal, November 2, 1964.

ALTHOUGH THE famed comic has built a radio-TV image of himself as “an unspeakable violinist”, he has played Sarasate’s “Aiguenerweisen”, Mendelssohn’s E-Minor Violin Concerto, and similar demanding classics with such notable conductors as Leonard Bernstein, George Szell, Fabien Sevitzky, and Alfred Wallenstein, as soloist with 33 symphonies from Honolulu to New York.
Since 1956, without fanfare, the alleged skinflint has raised more than $4 million for orchestras’ maintenance, pension, and endowment funds and side causes — retarded children, local hospitals, the City of Hope, and the committee “To Save Carnegie Hall.’ Never charging a fee, only modest expenses, Benny has brought in sums ranging from $21,000 for the Bloomington Symphony to $1,200,000 in Toronto.
JACK BENNY’S violin prowess is not a simple matter of playing “Love In Bloom” out of tune. Isaac Stern once told him his bowing arm was “still perfect” and Benny says of his concerts “although the orchestra and audience don’t always realize it, I play the best I can.”
A first-line performer longer than any other currently active TV personality. Benny’s goal at 70 (his real age) is to appear with every major symphony orchestra in the U.S. . . . and everyone has entered a standing invitation to him.
Here’s what Benny has to say on the subject, “Why I give concerts”:
“THE MOST IMPORTANT reason for my giving violin concerts — which have been doing for the past eight years — is because I am definitely a frustrated violinist.
“Some of my frustrations come, of course, from the fact that my wife, Mary, long ago banished me to a far corner of the house when I practice. It’s a small room, 90 per cent tile and 10 per cent towel — the same place in better circles is known as the powder room.
And she has long since stopped apologizing to the neighbors who live on that side of the house. We did once hear them wonder why they never saw the cats we obviously house, and didn’t know about the kennel laws in Beverly Hills, but we ignore those slurs.
“IF BY SOME miracle, I could become another Isaac Stern or a Yehudi Menuhin overnight, I would gladly give up my career as a comedian. As it is, I have managed to combine the two careers. One pays more than the other, however. Fortunately.
“I have given concerts with practically every major symphony orchestra in America, and to show you the guts I have, i appeared first at Carnegie Hall. I fear nothing.
I have been acclaimed by such great conductors as Alfred Wallenstein, Leonard Bernstein, Paul Paray, Izler Solomon, George Szell, Paul Kletzki, William Steinberg and Stanislaw Skcowaszewski to name a few. (In fact, the last name sounded like a few.)
DURING MY LIFETIME I have also played duets with Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern, Yehudi Menuhin, Joseph Szigeti, the late Albert Spalding, Jayne Mansfield and Henny Youngman.
My closest friend in the world of classical music is Isaac Stern. He insults me more often than George Burns, who has been a friend of mine for 40 years. I’ll never forget a remark that Isaac made to me after a concert I gave in Philadelphia.
We went out for a bite to eat afterwards and suddenly he looked up at me and said, “You know, Jack, when you walk out on the stage with your violin, dressed in tails, stand in front of a 90-piece orchestra, you actually look like the world’s greatest violinist . . . It’s a darn shame you have to play.”
If he had stopped in the middle of that sentence, I would have appreciated it much more.

Jack got loads of favourable press in Portland, even days after his appearance. There are a number of stories we can pick from. Here’s one from the Oregonian of Nov. 22, 1964.

Jack Benny’s First Love Good Music, Not Comedy
By HILMAR GRONDAHL
Music Editor, The Oregonian
Jack Benny is an extraordinary person. And his devotion to serious music is touching. You might have thought that after the Jack Benny Weekend in Portland he might have looked forward to a gay party following the concert with the Symphony Orchestra. But no, he wanted nothing so much as to talk about music. So in his suite at the Benson Hotel he engaged some of the city’s best in that kind of discussion until into the morning hours.
Benny said at his press conference here that the work he enjoys most is these concerts. They represent something for his inner spirit which the adulation he gets from his role as a comedian can not satisfy.
It is interesting to recall that Benny began his professional life as a musician. His father, a clothing story [sic] owner in Waukegan, started him on violin lessons at an early age. As a kickerbockered boy in grammer [sic] school he played in the pit of the Barrison Theater, and at high school doubled between this orchestra and the school band. There was only a year of high school, however, and this fact later became one of Benny’s adult regrets. He had studied the violin for ten years when, at 16, he went into vaudeville. That was about 1912.
During the World War I, Benny’s routine in the Navy’s Great Lakes Training Station Revue was mainly musical. But one night during his performance the electricity failed and the lights went out in the auditorium. To keep the crowd from getting restless Jack and pianist Zev [Zez] Confrey started talking. The audience roared, and this ad libbing in an emergency told Benny that he could be funny. So he was off to a career as a comic which earned him a great deal of money, and immense popularity.
But through it all the yen for the violin ate at his complacency.
Benny will be 71 in February. When he reached 62 he decided he couldn’t stand not getting ahead with his violin, so he hired a teacher. He practices every day with diligence and serious purpose.
When you hear Mr. Benny perform before a symphony orchestra you are hearing him play the very best he can. He may make a glaring mistake. When he does, he knows it, and is apt to let the audience in on the blooper with the expressive lift of an eyebrow.
He may have been a prodigy as a boy, but he has not returned to that rare status. And he knows it.
Concerts Liked
It is easy to understand why Benny loves his concert appearances more than anything else he does these days. He admits that the quality of the audiences is a joy to him. And he feels greatful [sic] that he can ward off orchestral deficit and build up capital funds by his efforts in this direction.
The gross take from his weekend in Portland was $55,000.
Leonard Bernstein, conductor of the New York Philharmonic said, “Benny has done more than raise millions of dollars to eradicate operating deficits of major orchestras. He has brought multitudes of people who would not otherwise be there into the concert halls to learn that good music can be entertaining and rewarding.”
Jack Benny has said of himself that he is “a frustrated violinist.”
Some of the frustrations must be wearing away in these many concert appearances in which he performs creditably, if not really up to the standard of his friends, Heifetz and Stern. But, as his daughter Joan says, “who does?” Benny’s attitude toward serious music is a measure of his basic values.
The Jack Benny purpose toward music now goes beyond improving his technique and playing with fine orchestras. He is working on a violin concerto, which is said to contain autobiographical implications.
Everyone who met Mr. Benny during his stay in Portland has been pleased by his kindly and generous nature; this includes doorkeepers, society matrons, business executives, press people, and orchestral musicians.
As we suggested at the beginning, Jack Benny is an extraordinary person. And his devotion to music is touching.

Besides the concert and the ball, Jack met with students at the University of Portland where the daughter of writer George Balzer was attending. 60 years later, Bonnie Balzer Neel remembered the day with fondness in a conversation on the International Jack Benny Fan Club page on Facebook.

Jack also received a life membership in the now-Petrillo-less America Federation of Music. And he met the press, as Miles Green of the Journal reported in a page one story:

Sitting behind a bank of microphones and holding a long cigar which he never got around to lighting, the comedian answered a wide array of questions ranging from “Who are the best young comedians?” to “Are you really as insecure and frightened as they said you were in that magazine article?”
HE NAMED Buddy Hackett, Joey Bishop and Alan King as among the best of the current crop of comedians and noted young entertainers today don’t have the proving ground of vaudeville and burlesque that he and his contemporaries had. “As George Burns has said, it is unfortunate that no one has a place today to be lousy” he said.
Benny noted he had spent several years on these circuits, including frequent appearances in Portland, and they gave him a chance to polish his style. “If you didn’t have a good act in Portland, you could improve on it at your next stop. Now, when a young comedian gets a pretty good act, he is thrown to the wolves and is put on television.”
Of the magazine article which pictured him as an in secure and moody person despite his fame and fortune, Benny said he told the interviewer first that he was happy most of the time and then said at times he had bad moods (“maybe a couple of hours a month.”)
HIS MOODINESS was greatly magnified in the article, however, he said. “Since then, people have been sending me encouraging letters and books to read” he noted.
Although the statement doesn’t square with the “stingy character” role which has become his trademark, Benny claims he enjoys playing the violin free for benefit performances more than any other type of entertaining, “It’s a role that doesn’t fit any other comedian,” he said.
It is also a role in which he has been eminently successful. He has raised more than $4 million for symphonies all over the nation and is expected to raise several thousand more here Sunday night.

Portland mayor Terry D. Shrunk noted that day that Jack “in the short span of 39 years” had attained recognition as “America’s foremost comedian” and “the world’s foremost violinist.” Only the vain Benny radio/TV character would have believed the latter, but there were many in 1964 who would have agreed with the mayor’s assessment of Jack’s comic abilities.

Tendlar and Betty

In 1950, a local newspaper staff writer named Erma Bombeck told readers about alumni artists from Stivers High School in Dayton. First on the list was Milt Caniff. Second was an animator by the name of Dave Tendlar.

Tendlar’s career in animator stretched more than 50 years. He was cartooning a little before that. The Dayton Daily News of March 14, 1926 mentions he had been drawing for the student newspaper. A 1925 story mentions he was musically inclined, but didn’t state what instrument he played in the Stivers Orchestra.

His father was a tailor and by 1930 had moved the family to the Bronx, where the elder Tendlar was in the fur business. The Census that year lists Tendlar’s occupation as “cartoonist, movie.” He told the late Jim Korkis, quoted on Cartoon Research: “I started at Fleischer as a painter [in 1927]. It was opaqueing, but now they call it painting. I was there a very short time but they reorganized Fleischers so I went to Krazy Kat for a couple of years. And then I went back to Fleischer as an animator.” There was also a stop at the John McCrory studio in between.

Tendlar’s first screen credit was on the Betty Boop/Bimbo short Crazy-Town (copyrighted 1931 but released in 1932). He followed the Fleischers to and from Miami, where he was president of the Flippers social club (the club had a 40-page magazine called Flip. Oh, if copies survived!).

He was part of the staff when Fleischers became Famous. Evidently, he left the studio briefly, then returned, as the 1950 Census records him as “cartoonist, novelty films.” He was back at Famous that year. When Gene Deitch arrived at Terrytoons, Tendlar was hired to work for him. Near the end of the 1960s, he had moved west where he worked for Filmation and then Hanna-Barbera, where he was picked to train new animators, among other duties.

In 1936, the Dayton Herald announced he was coming to town to visit friends. The Daily News followed up with a story about him in its August 7, 1936 edition. He talks about the changes in Betty Boop's design.

Comic Movie Artist on Visit
David Tendlar, native of Dayton, but now one of the most interesting of the commercial artists in New York is home on a visit to family and former haunts. And with him is Mrs. Tendlar on her first visit.
Tendlar is the leading artist of a group of animators for the “Betty Boop” and “Pop-Eye” cartoons, seen in the movies. He spends a full working day either drawing one of the characters, depending upon which one is in production at the New York studios of Max Fleischer.

When interviewed at the Biltmore where he is domiciled while in Dayton, Tendlar, personable, jolly and interesting, said that the making of an animated cartoon such as those he works on was a great job. “An artist makes about four and one-half feet a day,” said he; “that is all he can do. The average visual length of a completed film is about six minutes on the screen. Ninety feet of film pass in one minute, so you see the cartoon is about 550 feet in length. Each move is a frame, and each frame is a separate shot for the photographer, and that makes more shots than one could figure up in a few moments.
“We sketch our figures on thin paper, and the first move is placed on another piece of paper, and so on and on. A bright electric light bulb is under our sketching desk, and in that way we watch the progress of the figure across the screen.
“The figures are then placed on transparent celluloid and colored, as the background is stationary for each scene, only the figures are changed.
“About 10,000 separate sketches are made for each cartoon,” and with that amazing statement Mr. Tendlar was asked to sketch the figures of the famous Betty and also Pop-Eye, Olive and Wimpy in the interviewers book which he did. Said the artist, “We have lots of fun with Pop-Eye, and we can make these figures do anything, fall down, hit each other, and indulge in all sorts of slap-stick comedy, hut it is different with Betty. She is always dignified. She must never fall, never be treated too roughly, and for that reason she is a very difficult character.”
Eagerly the idea to include Betty’s missing garter was made, but it seems that the censors preferred to have Betty eliminate that obsolete piece of apparel, and also to observe that the fashion trend was for an added inch or so on her skirt length, and so that is the reason why Betty flirts a longer skirt.
Tendlar went to Stivers high school, and was interested in art always. When quite a youngster he admits that he went in for cartooning and copying all sorts of pictures, and chose the wall paper (on the wall) for “bigger and broader fields.” Martha Schauer was the teacher of art at Stivers, and encouraged Tendler and Milton Caniff, also a Stivers student, when they sketched for the Stivers paper. Caniff lives in New York.
The first visit of Tendlar in some years is finding him visiting various places which he remembers most happily. For instance, Thursday afternoon was to be spent at Lakeside park and the Soldiers home. Tendlar wanted to see the lake, and the spots in Lakeside park in which he remembered having good times.
Max Fleischer owns Betty Boop, and has been making cartoons with this character for eight years, also with Pop-Eye, although the character is copyrighted by someone else.
Saturday Mr. and Mrs. Tendlar will complete a number of social gatherings which have feted them during the week of their visit in Dayton, and will then return to New York to start work on several technicolor cartoons.

Tendlar was 84 when he died in Los Angeles on September 8, 1993.

Hold It

Thanks to DVDs (and Blu-Rays), it’s easy for the animation fan to stop a cartoon and look at an individual frame. The Fleischers did this for theatre-goers in 1938 with the release of the Color Classic Hold It.

At the end of the cartoon, director Dave Tendlar (listed as an animator with Nick Tafuri) has joyous cats jumping into the air. Then they “hold it.” The soundtrack goes silent and the drawing below is held for 15 frames.



There’s a fun series of drawings of two cats, twirling 180 degrees then back again in a cycle. Did any other studio try anything like this before 1938?



The cartoon also borrows a gag from the defunct Van Beuren studio. Four singing cats join their mouths together to form one mouth.



UCLA did a great restoration job on this cartoon.

One of the cats in this short is named “Myron,” no doubt in honour of Mr. Waldman (I do not know if he animated any of this cartoon. Someone likely does).

Jack Mercer does a fine job as a raspy cat singing the title song. The short begins with Bing Crosby’s theme “Where the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day.”

Heir-Conditioned Background

Heir Conditioned (1955) opens with a left-to-right pan over an Irv Wyner background.



In case you are wondering who wrote this cartoon, observe the newspaper on the ground below.



This is one of the Warners cartoons made for the Sloan Foundation, which promoted capitalism, though this one is less bombastic as the same kind of cartoons made by John Sutherland Productions, some of which were released by MGM.

There’s a cameo appearance by Tweety in this cartoon, and one of the cats has the same voice as Huckleberry Hound supplied by Daws Butler.