Bing Crosby, Sitcom Star

There was a joke making the rounds on the network comedy/variety shows in the early 1950s about Bing Crosby avoiding the jump into television. He and Ken Carpenter and Rosemary Clooney were still on CBS radio in a very stripped-down, transcribed show as late as 1962.

Bing decided in 1964 it was the right time to try a regular TV show. However, unlike Jack Benny, Red Skelton and Jackie Gleason, he decided to go with the family sitcom format.

Why did he do it? That was the question every entertainment reporter seems to have posed to him. Here’s the answer he gave to the Associated Press in a story on the wire September 13. We should point out at the time, movie screens were showing Robin and the Seven Hoods

Bing Decides To Try Television
By JAMES BACON
HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 12.—(AP)—Bing Crosby, who said he never would do it, is embarked on a weekly television series.
People are asking why Bing, a millionaire, would want to tackle such a grind. Crosby’s answer is candid.
“I can’t work in movies any more so why shouldn’t I try weekly television?”
Can’t work in movies? “How many jobs are there for 60-year-old crooners?” Bing asks.
So come Monday evening, Sept. 14 the newest Crosby production, starring the crooner, comes to the little box in the living room.
In the new series, which precedes the successful Bing Crosby productions’ “Ben Casey,” Bing will play an electrical engineer with a wife and two daughters.
It’s situation comedy but a switch from most because it doesn’t make an idiot out of papa. Bing will sing.
Producer Steven Gethers explained how you can do a family situation comedy featuring a singing electrical engineer.
* * *
“I felt that a Bing Crosby without songs would be cheating the public,” says Gethers. “True, Bing plays an engineer but one who is a frustrated singer, dating back to his college days when he made a choice between show business and electronics.
“The songs are so integrated into the scripts that if Jimmy Stewart were to play the part, he would have to sing.
“He even kids himself even to the old time boo-boo-boo that was his early trademark.”
There’s a reason why Bing must keep busy.
“A man in my position has a tiger by the tail. He just can’t let go any old time. So many people become dependent on him for their 1ivelihood. If he quits, scores of jobs go down the drain. Each job represents a family,” says Bing.
In the series, Bing has a wife, Beverly Garland, and two daughters—Diane Sheery, 11, and Carol Faylen, 15. Carol is the daughter of veteran actor, Frank Faylen.
Young Miss Faylen, a sophomore at Los Angeles’ Immaculate Heart High School, was, turned down for all of her plays. Her first successful audition was for Bing’s show.
* * *
After the first five shows, Diane still doesn’t quite fathom the idea that she is working with a living legend of show business.
To a newsman, though, she did concede:
“I don’t know what we would do on this show without Mr. Crosby.”
The power of the Crosby name—one of the most durable in movie box office lists was so potent on Madison av. that the weekly show was bought by a sponsor for 26 shows without a script or a pilot.
Television shows usually are bought for only 13 weeks.
Meta Rosenberg, wife of Bing’s longtime agent, George Rosenberg, can be credited with Bing’s entry into weekly television. A few years ago Bing had been vehemently opposed to weekly TV exposure.
“I sensed that Bing had reached that point in life where he would welcome a new challenge. I had already sold the sponsor so I just had to sell Bing. My timing was right. He agreed provided we came up with a format he liked.” After nearly every comedy writer In Hollywood tried to develop a format, Meta and an associate, Mike Levee, finally hit upon the one audiences will see.
Says Bing: “I liked what they showed me and I thought I’d have a go at it.”
* * *
Bing has a schedule that, roughly, gives him three weeks off after three weeks work. This is done by shooting all scenes involving Crosby in lump form. Then the other actors pick up the other scenes while Bing is off golfing and fishing.
Even when Bing works, he’s relaxed. His long-time stand-in works the rehearsal shots while the lights and camera angles are being set.
When the actual scene is shot, Bing comes in with his natural spontaneity and glibness and makes it look as if he had been rehearsing for hours.
“I prepare hard for a role,” says Bing, “but I’ve never been one to go for all that standing around.”
In 1960, Bing received s platinum record as “first citizen of the record industry.” An industry spokesman says that Bing has sold more records than any star in history—more than 200 million.
His biggest seller—and usually rated the top record of all time—is “White Christmas.” It still sells every holiday season and has long passed the 12 million mark.
But Bing’s most lucrative — based on royalties received — is his “Silent Night,” which also sells every Christmas. All royalties on this go to charity.
Third is one he first recorded in the early thirties, written by his old buddy from Paul Whiteman’s rhythm boys—harry Barris: “I Surrender, Dear.”
Comments Bing: “Maybe this new TV series will help my record sales. Look what TV did for Walter Brennan? He makes albums and he hasn’t even got a one-octave range.”

Syndicated columnist Hal Humphrey came up with another explanation for Crosby’ decision. He wrote in his story published Sept. 12:

The horrible truth is that an entertainer or actor can’t work steadily today unless he’s on TV with a series.
Movie production continues to be a small puddle on the show business landscape.
The stage, except for summer theatre, is drying up.
Only about five night clubs outside of Las Vegas pay salaries big enough to cover the performer’s expenses.
“I guess,” says Bing, “I’ve given out half a dozen answers to the question of why I’m doing this. I think the truth is I’ve got to stay in the business some way, but I can’t play leading men in the movies at my age, and I don’t want to play granddaddies.”

Bill Irvin reported in his column syndicated by the Chicago American that Bing was asked if old movie cohort Bob Hope would show up on the show. “I’m afraid we’re a little above his intellectual level. We don’t want to get that hokey,” he joked.

Hope didn’t appear, but several episodes could have been from the Jack Benny Program. Jack guest starred in one show, Dennis Day in another and Phil Harris another, while former Benny writer Bill Morrow (who worked for Crosby afterward) penned one of the scripts (yet another sitcom spoof of the Beatles). Son Gary, despite a testy relationship with whom he called “Mr. Kathryn Grant” in his stage shows at the time, had an early guest shot. The actual Kathryn Grant showed up as well.

Crosby’s theme “Where the Blues of the Night” was replaced by new songs by Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn, though incidental music was supplied by his radio bandleader John Scott Trotter. Another announcer took over Ken Carpenter’s “brought to you by” chores.

The Old Groaner was given the honour of hosting ABC’s special previewing the fall season. Despite being sandwiched between George Burns’ Wendy and Me and Ben Casey, and being opposite John McGiver’s sitcom Many Happy Returns on CBS and the second half of Andy Williams’ show on NBC (on the East Coast), ratings were low. Matt Messina of the New York Daily News on Feb. 1, 1965 quoted ABC’s programming chief Edgar Sherlock as saying a final decision hadn’t been reached about cancellation but added “I don’t think Bing wants to come back. It’s just not fun for him.”

This comic strip from February 9, 1965 may provide a closer reason as to why the show wasn’t renewed:



Bing may have complained the cinema didn’t want him, but Harold Heffernan of the North American Newspaper Alliance reported on Feb. 19 that Crosby had signed with 20th Century-Fox to play Doc Boone in a remake of Stagecoach. There was no mention of the TV show. In March, ABC picked him to emcee its 90-minute The Grand Award of Sports special from the New York World’s Fair.

And Der Bingle’s production company got a few nibbles for the 1965-66 season to go along with its Ben Casey and Slattery’s People. ABC seriously looked at a half-hour fantasy comedy (remember, high concept shows were big) starring Bert Lahr, Phyllis Coates and Tim Matheson called Thompson’s Ghost, which the network blew off as a filler special in August 1966. BCP had better luck at CBS, which picked up a show with an improbable setting in a P.O.W. camp where the Allied prisoners outsmarted the Nazis every episode. Hogan’s Heroes ran about the same length as World War Two.

Other veterans felt the axe in 1965. George Burns’ and Jack Benny’s series left the air. For that matter, so did young Matheson’s Jonny Quest. Bing was in good company on the sidelines. And there was now more time again for fishing and golfing.

That's No Worm

A Lou Costello worm (Kent Rogers) tries to escape from a bird (Frank Graham) by jumping in a lake in Tex Avery’s The Early Bird Dood It! (MGM, 1942)



The early bird skids to a stop.



A familiar gag. I don't know when it was first used in cartoons.



There’s no worm there. The bird follows with a head-swirling take.



The bird turns and races in mid-air out of the scene. There's plenty more dry-brush here.



Irv Spence, Preston Blair, Ray Abrams and Ed Love receive screen credit for animation in this cartoon, the first put into production by the Avery unit (and the second one released).

My Pa!

Chuck Jones’ unit is in top form in A Bear For Punishment, the last of the Three Bears cartoons produced by Warner Bros.

Jones timing, the expressions given to the characters by the animators, Carl Stalling’s score, the voice work and Mike Maltese’s story with a ludicrous ending couldn’t fit together any better.

The basic story is Henry the bear (Billy Bletcher) wants to ignore Father’s Day. His wife (Bea Benaderet) and Junior (Stan Freberg) believe it is inevitable that it MUST be celebrated.

Their cave has a stage in it, so the mother and son put on a Father’s Day show especially for Henry. Jones would subtly change expressions so shots wouldn’t be static and to make the situation funnier. Here’s an example.



The curtain goes up.



“‘My Pa,’ by Junior Bear, age 7 and a half. My Pa!”



Cue the pye-anee accompaniment.



Cut to Henry. This drawing is held.



“When the nasty old Bogeyman fills me with fears”



“And my little old pinafore is all wet with tears”



“And my cute little pug nose is all red from cryin’ ”



“Who is it that saves me and keeps me from dyin’?”



“My Pa!”



Henry covers his head.



“When my little pink cheeks are pale with fright”



“Who is it that lifts me and holds me tight”



“And says, ‘There, there, little man. Everything is all right?’”



“My Pa!”



Curtain down.



Henry reacts.



The cartoon gets even better, first with Ma’s deadpan high-stepping dance (Maltese was an amateur hoofer) and then the patriotic finale (to the melody of J.F. Barth’s “Frat”) where mother and son dump Henry in a barrel of flour and dress him as the State of Liberty, showing us how gosh-durn patriotic Father’s Day is.

This is where one of our fine blog readers will have an answer. Years ago, I read that Maltese based “My Pa” on a sentimental old poem, which was posted somewhere. I can’t find the reference, nor the poem. If anyone knows anything about this, please post a comment.

Ken Harris, Phil Monroe, Ben Washam and Lloyd Vaughan are the credited animators.

Good Evening, Mr. Benny, Profiling a Writer, I See

Emergency! Crisis in radio’s top-ranked show!

In 1936, Jack Benny was number one in radio listener opinion polls. That satisfied just about everyone except Harry W. Conn. He was Jack’s writer, and publicly beefed he was hugely responsible for Benny’s success and demanded equal pay with the star.

It eventually became a case of I quit/No, you’re fired. Jack tried putting together some scripts on his own, but it was clear he needed help. To the rescue before the end of the 1936 season came a pair of scribes named Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin. Jack remained on top. Harry who??

The two evidently had AFRA cards as they occasionally appeared on the show. Beloin was on more than Morrow. I liked him as Radcliffe the diner counter man (paired with Frank Nelson as Gilroy), but he may be best known as Jack’s boarder, Mr. Billingsley, full of nonsense and non-sequiturs (and alcohol on occasion).

A few years after pairing with Jack, Beloin added a side-career. He co-owned an inn in Maine. The Portland Press Herald caught up with Beloin in a feature story published July 23, 1939. He talks about himself, Benny and the Benny show. The photos (sorry for the poor scans) are publicity shots from Hollywood supplied to the paper.

Script Writer For Jack Benny Tells What Makes Famous Comedy Program Click; Now in Maine Visiting Camden Shore Property
By Betty Foxwell
Special Despatch to Sunday Telegram
Camden, July 22.—Running over to Maine from California for the week-end is more than a gag in the life of Eddie Beloin, ace script writer for Jack Benny,—for Eddie recently became the owner of attractive shore property on Route 1 in this town, and has just arrived here from California for a few day to supervise the finishing touches on the Inn which his father built and opened this month. Speed and Eddie are practically synonymous.
From College To Top Rank
From college, in one jump, he landed in “Best Short Stories of 1933” with the first short story he had ever written, entitled “Baby.” Next he became script writer for radio comedian Fred Allen, and shortly after, at the age of 24, found himself at the top of the list of script writers with his partner, Bill Morrow, working with Jack Benny on his program, where he has remained for four years. (It would be interesting to hear those two wise-cracking gentlemen on the subject of whether Eddie’s jump from Fred Allen to Jack Benny was forward or backward!)
Speaking of speed, last Summer Eddie drove a stock car from New York to Hollywood in three and a half days, driving 16 hours a day. Figure out for yourself what his speed was.
But Maine’s winding roads were too much even for him this morning, this Interview being carried on at an average rate of 30 miles an hour with Eddie at the wheel, sight-seeing Camden and vicinity. Sandwiched in between comments on the Snow Bowl, Turnpike Drive and other scenic points the following data was gathered.
Seventy-five laughs to 18 minutes of continuity is the average for the Benny Sunday night radio program. But the funniest sketch of all the drama of the way the program is put together, has not yet been put on the air.
This “Rhapsody In Everything Except Blue,” starts “lento” on Monday morning when Beloin and Morrow, who usually live in adjoining apartments, get together and discuss the general idea for next Sunday’s program; whether it will be a stooge spot, sketch or continuity. About Wednesday, the pace is “allegro con moto” with Beloin and Morrow taking turns at the typewriter and striding back and forth about the room, writing seven or eight pages of script. (Incidentally gags are written backwards, the answer coming first and the “first line is the hard line.”
Thursday or Friday the tempo becomes accelerando and the volume “crescendo,” when, with much animation and enthusiasm, Beloin and Morrow take the script to Jack Benny and try to “sell” it to him. Benny is a great editor of humor. Instinctively he knows what will get over to the audience.
Now it is “presto” and “appassionato” as Jack Benny, Eddie, Bill Morrow and Jack’s secretary, Harry Baldwin, pull out the stops for the climax. Harry Baldwin, incidentally, seems to be something of a phychic [sic] phenomenon, writing down the script from the amazing repartee which goes on between the other three men, knowing instinctively which of the three has the line in its final polished form.
Benny, Eddie and Bill are now too keyed up Lo remain still, they must keep in motion physically, Ba1dwin and his notebook keeping up them.
Work In Different Place
Each week they work in a different place. At Ensenada, Mex., the natives were once startled to see four men in sun helmets and shorts, riding bicycles around and around the village, three of them shouting gags at each other, while the fourth man took them down in a notebook.
Sometimes they do roadwork to keep Benny’s waistline within specified limits, and then to the tour gentlemen in motion in added a fifth, Harvey Cooper, Benny’s trainer. Harvey is a great Charlie McCarthy fan and practices imitating Charlie’s laugh, so the wisecracks of the Benny troupe are followed by the derisive McCarthy laughter.
Occasionally the script is written while they are swimming, with Harry Baldwin, in bathing suit, with notebook, sitting on the edge of the pool. Here Jack Benny’s line is “Dive down for a gag, boys.” Out of this slightly insane symphony a program emerges, for which by 10 o’clock Saturday morning there is an informal rehearsal.
The Benny programs are tops because of their spontaneity and sparkle. One reason for this la the way they are fashioned, as outlined above. Another reason is that there is no rehearsal. Except for this informal rehearsal Saturday morning, none of the cast has seen the script till it goes on the air Sunday night.
When the radio audience hears Mary, or Don Wilson, or Kenny Baker or members of the orchestra laugh, it is because the gag is as new and funny to them as to the audience. Jack, Eddie and Bill are the only ones who know exactly what the script is to be.
Inspects Snow Bowl
Time was taken out here in the interview, while the summer quarters of the Snow Bowl were inspected. Back in the car more information about Eddie was requested.
Eddie met his partner, Bill Morrow, by chance, in a Detroit hotel room. They tried out a script together, found they synchronized, and have teamed together ever since.
His hobbies are collecting wood carvings, reading and playing badminton. He is unmarried, but Winchell predicted that he would be married on his arrival in New York last week, and Winchell usually hits it pretty close.
Among the movies he and his partner have written are “This Way Please,” “Artists and Models” “Artists and Models Abroad, “College Holiday,” and “Man About Town.”
The movie title “Buck Benny Rides Again” has been sold to Paramount and work starts on it Oct. 15. Eddie and his partner work best under pressure, and write on the set, sometimes hammering out additional lines while a scene is actually being shot. They are known as “additional dialogue writers” and work very closely with the director on the picture, polishing up the lines and giving them sparkle.
Turning the questions from the subject of Eddie to Jack Benny, it was interesting to this Benny fan to learn that Jack, who is always being kidded on the radio about pinching pennies, is in actual life extremely generous and pays double the salaries to his staff that other radio headliners pay.
Likes Hot Weather
Benny, who likes his weather hot, is taking a cruise through the Panama Canal this Summer. Later he wi1l probably take an auto tour through the United States, indulging in his pet hobby of stopping at hot dog stands. In contrast to Eddie who gets [to] places quickly, Jack is an extremely cautious driver, having been known to wait five minutes for another car to approach before making a left turn.
On Sept. 1, Jack goes on a vaudeville tour, appearing at the San Francisco World’s Fair and large Eastern cities.
Jack, Eddie and Bill are taking turns this Summer listening to tenors, as Kenny Baker is leaving to go on another program this Fall.
In June, Eddie and Phil Harris attended the wedding of ‘Rochester,’ who plays the part on the radio of Jack’s colored valet and is in real life a gentleman of color, named Eddie Anderson. The wedding for which the cream of Los Angeles colored society turned out, was a very formal affair, with receiving line, until the gin was served, when all formality was dropped!
What makes the Benny program click? For one thing, because it is original and spontaneous. And one guesses, too, that here is a team of four brilliant and keenly humorous men. Benny, Beloin, Morrow and Baldwin, who physically speaking, are so sensitive to each other’s thoughts that they automatically work together as one personality. Such teamwork, plus the Benny slant on the radio, is what is responsible for the program’s winning for five years the “Radio Guide” fan poll, and for six years the World-Telegram national radio editors poll.

Variety announced on June 9, 1943 that Beloin was leaving Benny to write for the movies. He and Morrow moved on before American Tobacco took over sponsorship of the Benny show but, occasionally, broadcasts they had written in the General Foods days were lifted in part, or reworked, by the new writers.

Beloin wrote and produced films and television until he retired almost three decades later. He died in Florida on May 26, 1992 at age 82.

Let Me Tell You About Bullwinkle

It took a little time, but newspaper columnists slowly discovered a cartoon series starring a moose and a squirrel bathed in send-ups and puns.

Production delays pushed back the start of Rocky and His Friends on ABC until November 19, 1959. The Copley News Service profiled the show, and producers Jay Ward and Bill Scott, in a column published in a newspaper in Ontario, California on July 24, 1960. The writer doesn’t seem to have watched the show at all up until that point.

Scott’s story about leaving the Warner Bros. cartoon studio is pure fiction and written for laughs, though he didn’t have anything good to say years later about producer Ed Selzer, who fired him.

Unlikely Pair Plan Adult Cartoons For Next Season
By DONALD FREEMAN
HOLLYWOOD (CNS)— Animated cartoons for adults as well as children are going to be big on television next season. One such series is “Rocky and His Friends,” the brainchild of two unlikely young men named Jay Ward and Bill Scott. The show itself was on the air for 26 weeks last year, in the coming season it will grace the American Broadcasting Co. on Sundays and Thursdays.
Who are Jay Ward and Bill Scott?
To begin with, both are on the plump side and each, confiding to you, expresses the solemn view that the other looks exactly like a bespectacled fire hydrant.
In common with everyone I have ever bumped into in the animated cartoon field, Ward and Scott are blessed with minds that shoot off in — well, unusual directions. This is illustrated at the mindset by the nature of their hero — Rocky, the star of the cartoon, is a flying squirrel.
Now, conjuring up such an animal demands special gifts and both Ward and Scott (with their wild, wild eyes behind their respective glasses) breathe such gifts in abundance.
“We work well together,” said Ward, who takes delight in the fact that he drives a 1948 Packard, “because I am nearsighted and Scott is farsighted. We discard our glasses and we see things quite differently. However, we agree on food — our favorite combination is pizza and popcorn. Brainfood, you know.”
Actually, Ward and Scott have excellent track records in animated cartoons. Scott, who calls himself a “heavy-bottomed Puck,” and “the world’s oldest callow youth,” broke into the cartoon writing business with Warner Bros. in 1946.
“I was writing clever dialogue for Okapis, fruit bats and other odd beasts,” Scott recalled. “After a year of this I got into a terrible fight with an aardvark over the way a scene I’d written should be played. When I found out the aardvark carried more weight with the producer than I did, I left in high dudgeon.”
Later Scott worked on “Time for Beanie” and then moved to UPA studios as a writer and by 1956 was the assistant producer of the “Gerald McBoing-Boing” show. Among others, he has written scripts — yes, even cartoon people must have scripts — for the nearsighted Mr. Magoo and the redoubtable Bugs Bunny.
As for Ward — “I was born in San Francisco with a silver spoon in my mouth. Fourteen years later someone suggested that I remove it. Naturally, I was dropped from the Social Register, but I at least lost my boyhood nickname of ‘The Mumbler.’
Professionally, Ward was co-producer of “Crusader Rabbit,” first cartoon series filmed expressly for TV and, two years ago, he joined forces with Scott to concentrate on “Rocky and His Friends.” They are also at work on other TV cartoon shows, among them being one called “Super Chicken” starring Louis Nye and Don Knotts from the Steve Allen repertory group.
Among the cohorts in “Rocky and His Friends” are such nature’s noblemen as Peabody, a Genius Dog, who adopts an orphaned boy (“The judge,” explained Ward, “ruled that if a boy can have a dog, a dog can have a boy”) and Bullwinkle the Frog [sic], who reads poetry aloud.
I was curious about the plots that would unfold and the creators of the show were quick to relate several of them. “First shot out of the box,” said Scott, “Peabody the Genius Dog invents a time machine and this starts us off on a whole series of improbable histories. For instance, we have one about Gen. Custer. In our story, Gen. Custer is captured by a famous Indian chief, but thanks to Peabody’s culinary skill, Custer manages to escape, just in time for the battle of Little Big Horn...
“We have many more improbable histories, including the story of how Ponce de Leon finds the Fountain of Youth — but his men overdrink and this causes certain problems with the Indians. And there’s one about Napoleon suddenly finding himself helpless in battle, someone having stolen his suspenders. Napoleon therefore is unable to salute, to draw his sword or order his troops forward.
Ward put in, “And we’ll also have what we called ‘Fractured Fairy Tales,’ such as our version of ‘The Princess and the Pea.’ In this one the court jester, known to everyone as ‘Million Laughs Charlie,’ tries to put over a fake princess on the unsuspecting king. Fortunately, the jester’s scheme backfires and the true princess is found.”
“And,” Scott pointed out, “there’s Bullwinkle’s poetry. In ‘Wee Willíe Winkie,’ for instance, Bullwinkle ‘runs upstairs and down, in his night gown’ — until the police begin to wonder.”

Ward couldn’t sell Super Chicken to the networks in 1960 and he brought back the idea as a segment of George of the Jungle in 1967. The voices were re-cast. This is all covered in Keith Scott's book, "The Moose That Roared."

The Modesto Bee of Aug. 28, 1960, gave potential viewers a bit more about the series, including a couple of lines about the directors of some of the cartoons; both died in the 1960s. There’s also mention of Marvin Miller, who did a lot of narration for industrial films, for UPA, and appeared on The Millionaire. He didn’t work for Ward, as far as I know. Hans Conried was hired for Fractured Flickers (1963) and the animated Hoppity Hooper (1964).

Rocky and His Friends Are Virtually Unknown—So Far
By Pat Morrison
Rocky And His Friends is called a subliminal cartoon series by its producers Jay Ward and Bill Scott, because apparently nobody has ever heard of it though Rocky has been on the air since November.
The sponsors do not seem to care about publicizing it and apparently are happy about the children who do watch the bi weekly productions—Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5 PM on channel 7 and 5:30 PM on channels 3 and 47.
Rocky, a flying squirrel, is helped immeasureably by Bullwinkle, the Moose, Boris and Natasha, a couple of delightfully “sneaky type spies from Pottsylvania, Cloyd and Gibney, two moonmen currently doing a socko duo on the nightclub circuit and Mr. Peabody and his boy, Sherman—”every dog should have a boy.”
Each half hour segment contains two episodes of the adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, usually bring pursued by Boris and Natasha in a manner that makes The Perils of Pauline look like a Sunday picnic. Each stanza is appropriately titled and subtitled—Below Zero Heroes or I Only Have Ice For You, The Snowman Cometh or An Icicle Built For Two and The Boundary Bounders or Some Like It Shot.
The first saga is followed by a Fractured Fairy Tale as related by Edward Everett Horton. The moose comes on for his sally into culture with Bullwinkle’s Corner, a stab at poetry and classic tales, appropriately animated. Mr. Peabody and Sherman, with the help of the way back machine, illustrate segments of Improbable History and the half hour closes with another cliff hanging chapter with Rocky and Bullwinkle.
Although the show is being televised on a national scale, it so far has not reached the heights of Huckleberry Hound or Quick Draw McGraw. But producers Ward and Scott feel as long as the sponsors are happy they are in business. But the sponsor did try something. Rocky And His Friends was put on at a later time, 7:30 PM. in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the squirrel walked off with a whopping 30 rating.
By simple deduction the producers feel with a time change and a little publicity, Rocky might jump into the limelight. However, no changes are in sight.
Their main problem is just to get the cartoons out and they go about this in a strange way. For instance, their animating plant, with 70 workers, is situated in Mexico City. The idea, of course, is to put out shows at a lower cost. The writers think up the stories in Hollywood and the animators do the drawing below the border.
With the success of Huckleberry Hound and other cartoons, Scott feels the TV cartoon industry can only grow. He only wonders where the new talent is going to come from.
Most of the staff members of Jay Ward Productions have put in time at UPA, Disney or one of the movie cartoon series. Scott is a former writer for Mister McGoo [sic], Gerald McBoing-Boing and Bugs Bunny. Ward created the first TV cartoon series, Crusader Rabbit, director Pete Burness handled many McGoo shows and director Bob Cannon won two Academy Awards plus those from Venice, Cannes, and Edinburgh.
Probably the most familiar thing about the Rocky shows is the voices. The nervous voice of Edward Everett Horton lends itself to the Fractured Fairy Tales. Hans Conreid, Marvin Miller, Don Knotts and Louis Nye can be heard.
Besides these, add the two of the most talented voice men in Hollywood, Daws Butler and Paul Frees And as the credit line at the end of each show will tell you, “these are only some of the people who make this show impossible.”

Rocky was clever and fun, but the show's attitude shows you how times have changed. The series made fun of the stupidity and incompetence of the U.S. government and military, but it was all good-natured. Today, satire on the same subjects is angry and denigrates into personal insults, more so than the acrimony of the Nixon years. I prefer the Ward/Scott way better.

That Pitch is Dynamite!

In the war years, Tex Avery and Bob Clampett were known for large takes. Frank Tashlin tried it on occasion, too—the sexually-laden ram’s horns in I’ve Got Plenty of Mutton comes to mind.

Here’s a fairly modest one in The Unruly Hare (1945). Tashlin was working in colour and had begun using Bugs Bunny.

In this scene, trickster Bugs turns into a baseball catcher, treating Elmer Fudd like a pitcher and a stick of dynamite as a ball.

Elmer winds up for the pitch, then realises what’s actually going on.



No, Elmer does not blow up here. Instead, writer Tubby Millar sets up a war reference. When the dynamite explodes, it begins laying ties and tracks for a railway to the melody of... well, you can guess this one. A train almost runs over Fudd. Bugs is on it, but jumps off, reminding Americans they shouldn’t be doing any unnecessary travelling (leaving train travel to vacationing or returning soldiers).

Unfortunately, the still frames don't give you the timing of the take, which is very good.

There’s a Jerry Colonna reference and a Joe Besser reference.

Carl Stalling’s soundtrack includes “What’s Up, Doc?” and one of his favourites, J.F. Barth’s “Frat” during the phoney relay and baseball footage.