Musical Roaches

Here’s Friz Freleng’s dilemma.

He had to make cartoons out of Warner Bros-owned songs. In 1935, Mort Dixon and Allie Wrubel wrote “The Lady in Red” for the Warners feature In Caliente starring Dolores del Rio and Pat O’Brien. It was a hit, so Friz and the writers went to work.

The feature was set in a Mexican cabaret, so the cartoon was set in a Mexican café, which just happened to have a cabaret attached. And what better to star in a cartoon set in Mexico than the most Mexican of all insects—cucarachas.

It was already a cartoon cliché to find musical purposes for ordinary items. In this scene, cockroaches are providing accompaniment to a Rudy Vallee roach singing Warren and Dubin’s “Sweet Music.”



One happy roach is playing a jar of jelly like a snare drum. Another jolly roach is playing a pipe like a saxophone. Bernie Brown’s score has neither a drum nor saxophone in it.

Here, peanuts stand-in for maracas.



Spoons and empty water glasses turn into a celeste.



False teeth click like castanets when they “see” a piece of really thin meat. I’m afraid the “gags” don’t get better than this.



The writers revert to the old Harman-Ising “villain shows up in the second half and is quelled by the gang” formula. At least in the H-I cartoons, you could guess the villain had romantic/sexual interest in his captive. I don’t know what the parrot’s motivation is to grab the Dolores Del Rio roach.

This is the best part of the cartoon.



Well, I always liked the jester.

Bob McKimson and Ben Clopton are the credited animators.

The Ol' Sucker Gag

In Pup on a Picnic (1953), Tom tries to distract Spike the bulldog with a wiener by pretending it’s a stick to be fetched.



The ruse works. Tom tosses it in a little pond. The pond turns out to be very shallow.



Seeing this, I thought “I wonder if Spike’s head is going to turn into a sucker, like in an Avery or Clampett cartoon.



Yes, I have watched too many cartoons.

Actually, Spike and Tyke are not on a picnic. They’re on a “pic-a-nic,” which is the way characters voiced by Daws Butler pronounce the word. Even if they’re not smarter than the average bear.

At'sa Scotti

You need an Italian with a stereotypical-ah accent-ah? Who do you hire?

Why, someone from California, of course.

In the case of one actor, it made sense. That actor was Vito Scotti, a native San Franciscan, home of the DiMaggios, whose family name was actually Scozzari, and who lived in Italy for a time.

Scotti was another one of those people who appeared everywhere in television in the 1960s and ‘70s. His career on the small screen goes back further, as fans of I Love Lucy will tell you. He was around so much that entertainment columnists wrote feature pieces about him.

This one is from the Monrovia Daily News-Post of April 18, 1953. This was after a re-casting of the TV series Life With Luigi. J. Carrol Naish (Luigi) and Alan Reed (Pasquale), who were on the radio series, were dumped because of pressure from Italian-America groups, and replaced with Scotti and Thomas Gomez.

VITO SCOTTI FINDS ‘LUIGI’ ROLE SYMPATHETIC
Vito Scotti’s Italian background provides him not only with an authentic characterization of the ebullient immigrant in “Life With Luigi,” Sundays at 8:30 p. m. on Channel 2, but also a desire to portray the earnest good will of America’s foreign-born citizens.
“I see Luigi as an individual,” declares Vito, “and not representative of Italians as a group.” Amiable and voluble himself, Vito expresses a consuming desire to make of Luigi a lovable, humorous, sincere patriot who thinks of his native Italy in a sentimental way and wishes fervently that America could be transplanted to his homeland or vice-versa.
San Francisco was Vito’s birthplace, and New York City’s Public School 21 takes credit for his early education. However, his practical schooling and comprehensive knowledge of all parts of the United States come from his tour of the theatrical circuits with his mother, a professional nightclub comedy singer known as Gine Santelia.
By the time he was 22, Vito had formed his own musical comedy company and toured with such shows as “Bloom Time,” “Vagabond King” and “Naughty Marietta.”
For a while his main source of income was small comedy roles in the movies, including “Kiss of Death,” “Illegal Entry” and “Disputed.”
Three years ago he married Irene Lopez, a Spanish classical dancer. They had met In New York City and moved to an apartment in Hollywood. They expect a “bambino” sometime in July.
Vito’s movie and video roles would seem to make him some kind of international histrionic potpourri. In the ABC-TV “Mama Rosa” series he created the role of a myopic French piano tuner with the improbable name of Nicolai. Lately he has been active as the portrayer of Rama, the Hindu pal of Gunga, in the CBS video series, “Smilin’ Ed’s Gang.” And one of his best professional breaks came when he landed the comedy lead, a Spanish Milquetoast, in the Republic film, “The Fabulous Senorita.” Actually, his only real claim to a cosmopolitan life is the brief period he spent in Italy as a child.
Like Luigi, Vito is earnest and a bit self-effacing, but innately intelligent and full of kindly humor.

Some things Scotti is generally not known for—being seriously mauled by a berserk six-ton elephant on the set of Andy Devine’s Gang (INS, Oct. 11, 1955; Devine was not on the set) and being the owner of 14 sets of teeth (Long Beach Independent, March 12, 1965).

He is known for regular roles on a number of comedies 55-plus years ago—McHale’s Navy, The Flying Nun and To Rome With Love are among them.

The Lincoln Star of Aug. 11, 1968 was one of a number of papers that interviewed him about his new job opposite Sally Field swooping through the air.

Veteran Actor Vito Scotti Lands ‘Flying Nun’ Role
By MARIE JOHNSON
A bumbling, frustrated, funny, stick-in-the-mud, devoutly Catholic Puerto Rican: these phrases sum up the new regular to be seen on “The Flying Nun” this Fall.
The character, played by veteran actor-comedian Vito Scotti, is Captain Gaspar Fomento, chief of police in San Juan, who is constantly getting into hot water and in the sisters’ hair.
In the first episode he arrests the nuns on suspicion of booking bets, and using the convent San Tanco as a front, and books Carlos Ramirez (Alejandro Rey), a friend of the nuns, as their outside accomplice.
Despite his blunders, disasters and misplaced accusations, the nuns are usually the ones who bail him out of trouble when his superiors take him to task.
Like many well-known character actors, Vito Scotti suffers from having most people remember his face but seldom his name. His ability to change his looks to fit the part has made many people believe that his roles have been played by more than one actor.
“I didn’t want to be tied to any one series before this,” he explained. “I was having too much fun playing different parts,” Vito continued, “but the part of Capt. Fomento was written expressly for me. It’s perfect for me and fits me like a glove. I have a free reign on the part and I can do as I like with it.”
The other members of the cast are very good to work with, according to Vito. “They welcomed me warmly to the show and made me feel that they appreciated what I could contribute to it.”
“It’s surprising to see the number of nuns that visit the set of ‘The Flying Nun,’” he said. When they ask him to explain how the nun flies, he answers “faith!”
Of violence on television, he said “trying to blame everything on television is like having a handful of thumbs. You need fingers so you can tell the difference between them and your thumbs. Television is the same way. Some violence is necessary so that youngsters will know good from bad, by comparison.”
“It can be overdone,” he continued. “Violence that is a part of the story is fine, but violence for the sake of violence is unnecessary.
“There are some things that should be left to the imagination of the individual. Do you remember the old “Inter Sanctum’ [sic] radio program? When that creaking door opened, you had to use your imagination to figure out what was behind it. This is the same quality neede[d] on television.”
Vito was born in San Francisco and shortly afterwards his family took him to Italy where he remained for six years.
“My folks were in show business and when I was seven they pushed me on the stage and now nobody can get me off,” he says.
On television Vito has been seen on several shows including “The Dick Powell Show,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “The Donna Reed Show,” “The Addams Family” and “The Wackiest Ship in the Army.”
Although basically a comedian, he has played dramatic television roles on “Playhouse 90” and “Climax.”
Among his feature film roles are a prisoner-of-war in “Captain Newman, M.D.,” the engineer in ‘Von Ryan’s Express” and the Mexican bandit in “Rio Conchos.”
Recently he played the Italian colonel in “The Secret War of Harry Frigg,” starring Paul Newman and Sylvia Kiscina, and had a cameo role in “How Sweet It Is,” a new comedy starring Debbie Reynolds and James Garner.

The Powell show mentioned above, which aired on Jan. 1, 1963, involved him playing a goat-herder on a goodwill tour of the U.S. from Bandoria. Scotti’s character only spoke Bandorian.

Of course, there is no Bandoria and Bandorian doesn’t exist. But, for Scotti, there was no problem. As a publicity handout for the episode read: “I throw in a few Italian sounds, some Japanese sounds, and then top them off with some Egyptian and German sounds. If this show is ever sent overseas, it’ll make people all over the world think their television set has gone on the blink.”

His career found him in front of the cameras in The Godfather and in front of the mike in The Aristocats. And many more you can find checking out those sites that keep track of these things.

Scotti died of cancer on June 5, 1996. He was 78.

What Happened There, Toby?

When cutting from an action shot to a different view of the action shot, the action should look the same.

That doesn’t always happen in an animated cartoon, and it can look pretty jarring.

Here’s an example from Circus Time, a January 1931 cartoon starring Toby the Pup and made by the Dick Huemer-Sid Marcus-Art Davis team at the Charles Mintz studio. These are consecutive drawings. The first one was held for eight frames then cuts to the next one. Joe De Nat’s music plugs away like it should, so it’s not a splice in the film.



Perhaps something was edited before the cartoon was scored.

The Tobys were released by R-K-O until it decided it didn’t need any cartoons other than the ones made at the studio it partially owned, Van Beuren Productions.

I like the Toby cartoons I’ve seen, though they could use stronger gags.

Tex and Chilly

I’ve always liked this sneaky expression on Chilly Willy as he tries to steal a warm fox fur in I’m Cold, a 1954 release by the Walter Lantz studio.



Tex Avery made two Chilly Willys for Lantz and they’re both entertaining. This is the first one. Avery borrows his southern wolf character from MGM, but turns him into a dog and makes him much more low-key. Chilly doesn’t speak. The dog comments to the audience constantly as the wolf did at MGM. Chilly squeezes the dog’s nose before running away, similar to what Screwy Squirrel did to Meathead at Metro.

There are some cute gags about trying to slice off a tail. The action moves along nicely throughout.

Clarence Wheeler’s score is good, too. He uses a flute when Chilly scurries about and there are percussion effects in the comic scenes to add to reaction shots.

Ray Abrams, Don Patterson and La Verne Harding are the animators, with Homer Brightman getting the story credit.

The second Chilly by Avery is The Legend of Rockabye Point, an even better cartoon in my estimation, as Tex resorts to his “sleep/noise” routine.

Vaudeville vs Radio

You’d think the grind of vaudeville would be tougher than radio for comedians.

Vaudeville consisted of months on end of train trips to different towns, living out of a suitcase, and multiple stage shows a day using your own props. Despite work and work and work, some acts never made the big-time. Compare this to radio, where you were on the air for a half an hour and rehearsed maybe the day before.

But Jack Benny says it wasn’t all that simple.

Jack and his gang went up to Oakland in 1940 and broadcast his East and West Coast shows there to benefit the March of Dimes. Admission wasn’t a dime; it was 50 cents or a dollar for the afternoon broadcast to the East and Midwest, a dollar or $1.50 for the later show.

Besides the radio broadcasts, Jack met five small patients at the Children’s Hospital in Oakland, and sat in on plans for a special party for disabled kids at the Jefferson School.

At the inevitable news conference, Jack referred to his days on the Orpheum Circuit in the 1920s which included stops in San Francisco and Oakland. He compared vaudeville and radio in this story in the Oakland Tribune of January 25, 1940.

RADIO IS TOUGHER THAN VAUDEVILLE, DUE TO STANDARDS REQUIRED IN PROGRAM PREPARATION, JACK BENNY BELIEVES
March of Dimes Show Bid Accepted to Compare Present Audiences Here With Old Ones
By WOOD SOANES
Jack Benny, Waukegan’s gift to show business, stepped down from the highly rarefied atmosphere of the ether lanes yesterday to prepare to walk the earth like a common man on his way to the March of Dimes benefit at the Auditorium on Sunday.
“And don’t for a minute get the idea that I’m conferring a favor on anybody,” grunted Benny as he shifted his cigar pugnaciously. “I speak for the whole troupe when I say that we snapped at the invitation to come to Oakland for these shows.
“I wanted to see what the place looked like after vaudeville collapsed. I wanted to see if audiences were just as tough as they used to be on those old Monday shows at the Orpheum. Brother, you had to be good then. Radio is a cinch by comparison.
NO CHANCE TO REFUSE
“Anyway, I had no chance to refuse. Can you imagine what my life would be like from now on if I passed up a bid from Rochester’s home town. As it Is he steals every scene that isn’t tacked, and he isn’t half trying. He’d probably sick Carmichael on me.”
Mention of Rochester, who is Eddie Anderson, a product of West Oakland who made his start as an entertainer hoofing in the night spots some twenty years ago, turned the conversation into a more serious vein and took up the problems of radio entertaining.
“I never listen to comedians on the air,” he said, “not because I don’t think the other fellow is funny or that I am envious of his gags, but because I can’t get into the spirit of the jest. All I can think of is the hours of sweat and struggle he put into the preparation of the broadcast.
In the days of vaudeville, you worked out a routine, bought or manufactured a few jokes, practiced a few tunes, tried the sketch out for a week or so in the smaller houses and then sallied forth on a tour that ran anywhere from 20 to 52 weeks without a worry in the world.
RADIO FAR DIFFERENT
“In radio as soon as the final commercial is given on a show, I go into a huddle with Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin. We try to get an idea for the next bill. It we get it, swell; if we don’t, headache. Once we have it, all three of us are in a turmoil until it is put on paper.
“And that’s only the beginning. It has to be worked over and polished, transposed and altered, submitted to the sponsor, arranged for production. Granting that everything goes without a hitch—and it rarely does—we are then ready for a series of intensive rehearsals.
“What we are striving for all through this is to achieve what passes for spontaneity. We want it to sound as if we are having a lot of fun—very frequently we are, but we’re always on the spot. We have so watch the clock, we have to get the gags snapping over, and we have to think of the unseen apdience [sic].
TWO AUDIENCES
“For programs such as ours there are two separate and distinct audiences—the fellow who says: What’s on tonight? Benny? Oh well, let’s give him a whirl!”—and the fellow who makes a ritual of the program, who insists that his wife make no engagements for Sunday nights, who demands that the children keep quiet, and who won’t allow a paper to be rustled while he’s listening.
“The trick is to make a regular of the casual listener; and to keep the regular listener happy. Oddly enough, the regular listener is easier to please. He is familiar with the characters—we try to build interesting characters more than hilarious incidents—and he understands that we can’t always be a hundred per cent funny.
“But even the regular’s patience is short. Give him three bad programs in a row—let’s say they are not even bad but dull—and you’ve lost him. It’s like pictures. They say that three stinkers In a row will kill the biggest star in Hollywood. I wouldn’t know about that. So far they keep giving Spencer Tracy the nod on those Academy Awards.”
ABOUT ‘BUCK BENNY’
I wanted to know if “Buck Benny Rides Again” would turn the trick for him.
“For my money,” Benny chuckled. “It’s got everything that the cinema needs, if you know what I mean. The upshot of it will probably be that Rochester will get the award.
There are many sides to Benny’s character beyond that of the clown who prefers to be the Patsy Bolliver in his programs, who is heckled by his man servant, twitted by Mary Livingatone, badgered by Phil Harris, and accused of penury by every taxi man, telegram boy and waitress.
Benny’s interest in the “March of Dimes” benefit may have been prompted, as he argues, by his desire to walk the boards again, but the underlying fact is that he has a tremendous interest in the other fellow, particularly in youngsters who classify generally as underprivileged.
HAS HAD EASY GOING
“I’ve had it pretty soft all my life,” he admitted. “Back home in Waukegan we never knew what privation was. We were what is generally known as ‘comfortably fixed.’ In show business, I had easy going. Then the radio and pictures got me into higher brackets. I’m kept pretty busy, but not too busy to look around and see that other people have pretty tough sledding.”
This interest of Benny’s in the underpup is not something that has come with wealth and acclaim. In his salad days as a variety comic and occasional violinist, he was always the first to agree to attend a benefit performance. He has given more free shows, I venture to say, than any entertainer except Eddie Cantor and George Jessel—and he’s done a lot less talking about it.
Benny will be in seclusion in Oakland for the next few days working on the radio program to be broadcast from the Auditorium. Later in the week he will be joined by other members of his troupe who are coming up from Los Angeles. He will give two shows here on Sunday, one in the afternoon, for the eastern lanes, and in the evening for the Coast area.
The comedian’s plans for the future involve nothing but radio until Summer when he takes his annual lay-off and will put in the time at Paramount working on a picture with his ancient “enemy,” Fred Allen. “Buck Benny Rides Again.” his next opus, is set for general release on May 31.

Incidentally, a dime did eventually show up. As the San Francisco Examiner reported on January 25, 1940:

[Jack Benny] invited visitors into sprawling on a low divan in his suite at the St. Francis, then searched the cushions and the floor and came up with a ten centavo piece which he carefully tested with bicuspids that Mary Livingston [sic] says have a habit of slipping out.

After the broadcasts, Jack and his two writers spent several days in Yosemite National Park. No doubt this gave birth to a series of episodes of the Benny show involving the park and Jack skiing into a lodge after being called out on his “ability” to go down the slopes.

They Animated Cigarettes

It’s safe to say anyone reading this grew up watching old theatrical cartoons. There was a time when anything outside of Disney was pretty much ignored until we were blessed with animation researchers who started building a base of fact and knowledge that, about four decades later, is practically taken for granted. It seems inconceivable today that people had to be told a person named Arthur Q. Bryan voiced a cartoon character.

There has been an awful lot of digging over the years. More digging remains. With the passage of time, animation history becomes more difficult to research.

One area is animated television commercials. Very little is known about the studios and animators who made the majority of them. The lack of credits is a factor. Adding confusion is an advertiser or its agency would not use the same studio for all its spots, or would hire a different studio the following year, maybe on the other side of the country.

Trade magazines of the 1950s and 1960s can be somewhat helpful. Some animated spots were subjects of feature stories. Some were advertised with frames showing what they looked like. Some won awards and the trades would name the studio, the director and maybe even the designer.

Unfortunately, the lack of information results in educated guesses which may not be correct. A good example is the stop-motion commercials for American Tobacco’s Lucky Strike cigarettes. The assumption by some is they were made at the Jam Handy studio in Detroit. After all, Jam Handy did some fine stop-motion work, and objects in some of its industrial shorts did some high-stepping like the cigarettes.

It turns out Jam Handy had nothing to do with the original Lucky Strike marching cigarette commercials that appeared on TV in 1948. We have the trade magazines to thank for providing some details. The spots were the product of Sarra, Inc. out of New York.

Sarra was an extremely active producer. It took out trade ads showing frames from its spots. Some were live action. Some were animated. Who animated for the studio, I couldn’t tell you. Perhaps Devon Baxter will eventually turn up information in the animation union local’s newsletter (if they were a union shop). For now, let’s talk about its marching cigarettes.

This story and poor-quality photo (and incorrect spelling of the announcers’ names) come from the May 1948 edition of Business Screen magazine.

Sarra Television Commercials Set a Standard
♦ SARRA, Inc. has included among their recent releases the first of a series of black and white third dimensional animated film commercials, especially prepared for television, for the American Tobacco Company, together with a production story, filmed at Willow Run, for the Kaiser-Frazer Car Company.
The Kaiser-Frazer spot, produced by Cullen Landis, Director of Motion Pictures for Sarra, has been appearing on Sunday evenings as a commercial announcement on the K-F sponsored Major Bowes Amateur Hour over WABD, New York [the Du Mont flagship station].
The Lucky Strike commercial, produced in Sarra’s New York studio, represents the coordinated efforts of John Boor, of American Tobacco, John Freese, of Foote Cone & Belding, Valentino Sarra and Bob Jenness, who is creating and directing the program for the Sarra organization.
Squads of marching Lucky Strike cigarettes burst from the background of a tobacco leaf and perform intricate maneuvers to the tune of a snappy martial air with the familiar announcements of Basil Rysdale and Andre Barouch in the background.
Extensive tests were conducted by Valentino Sarra and Director Bob Jenness for lighting effects and background created expressly for the video medium. For example, a rough, contrasty background of finely corrugated wood was discovered to be far superior to a neutral shade of board or cork. As the video receiver frame usually contains a narrower angle of view than the film frame being televised, action in the Lucky commercials is confined to center portions of the frame during photography. Extra footage is photographed to allow for fades and smooth transitions at the beginning and end of the show.
The Lucky Strike commercials have been used many times on New York stations as well as 17 other stations throughout the country,
(All Lucky Strike television activity has recently been assigned to N, W. Ayer & Co.)
Variety Accolade to Luckies
♦ VARIETY commenting recently on a Lucky Strike television show (WABD—New York) said that the commercial was one of the best parts of the program. Other video critics have praised Luckies for taking the lead in smart visual selling.

Television Age of November 1953 profiled Sarra in a feature story. It pointed out the 48-second animation and stop-motion opening for the Lucky Strike Hit Parade was made in 1948 at a cost of $9,500 and was used for four years.

It also revealed something about two of the creative people at the studio, names you likely don’t know.

Chief creative man in the firm’s tv setup is Rex Cox, who has been with Sarra for six years following an 11year stretch as an animator and story director for Walt Disney. For every production Rex works with a story board which he describes as being “a series of rough sketches indicating the action and staging of a film.” Sarra does no work on speculation. The fee for submitting a story board is from $350 to $500.

When stop-motion is required, tv production chief, Bob Jenness, credited with 18 years of experience in the field with animators like George Pal and Charles Mintz, steps in. He defines his specialty as “animation done in three dimension.” The basic technique is the same as in animation except models instead of drawings are used. For each job Jenness must create different devices—called jigs—by which he controls the movements of the models and props.

At the time, Sarra was responsible for the animated and live-action opening “Come see, come save at A & P” for Paris and Peart, Stopette’s live and stop-motion “Poof ... there goes perspiration” for Earle Ludgin and Pabst’s animation and stop-motion “What’ll you have?” spots for Warwick & Legler. We caution the article does not state exactly which footage it is referring to. Claiming the “Poof!” opening on What’s My Line? is what it mentioned is only speculation, unless further information is made available, though another article reveals Sarra made commercials for a powder that appeared during the show. Fact A + Fact B don’t always equal Fact C. To the right are some frames of some of the animated commercials made by Sarra in the 1950s; the top one is for something named Musterole.

There is a post-script to the story involving someone stop-motion fans should be familiar with. Ray Harryhausen sued Sarra in 1957, claiming he brought the stop-motion cigarette march idea to the company and it was rejected. The next thing he knew, there it was on television. If you want more information, a transcript of the testimony can be found here.

Doing the Pillow Stretch

Stretch in-betweens are among the highlights of To Duck or Not to Duck, a 1943 cartoon from the Chuck Jones unit at Warner Bros.

We’ve featured some of the stretch frames in the past on the blog. Here are some from another scene, after Daffy has been shot by “sportsman” Elmer Fudd and is falling from the sky. Fudd’s hunting dog gets prepared for the landing.



Larrimore (who says he isn’t Larrimore) lays down a pillow to cushion Daffy’s fall. These are consecutive frames.



The consensus I’ve read is Bobe Cannon is responsible for these scenes (including the in-betweens). He received screen credit, along with writer Tedd Pierce.

What Was That I Just Passed?

Animator Ed Love doesn’t go for a huge Tex Avery-type eye-take in the Woody Woodpecker cartoon Drooler's Delight.

In a time-honoured comedy tradition, Woody goes in drag to distract his enemy, Buzz Buzzard.



Buzz strolls along then realises he just walked past a babe. Here’s how Love handles it (we aren’t posting all the in-betweens).

Buzz (and his cigar) get hot.



This was when the Walter Lantz studio was at its peak, with some great animators, a number of them formerly with Disney. In fact, it shut down after this cartoon when Lantz’s deal with United Artists went sour.

Love animated almost all of this 1949 cartoon on his own, if I understand the situation correctly, with some help from an assistant. Dick Lundy directed the short.