Sinatra Kills Me

Tex Avery marries the old “skunks always smell in cartoons” idea with the gag about Frank Sinatra being incredibly thin but attracting bobby soxers in Little 'Tinker, a 1948 MGM release.

There’s a scene where an old woman rabbit goes youthful and nuts for Frankie, finally leaping into the air and crashing into ground. A falling tombstone ends the scene.



Jokes about a scrawny Sinatra abounded on comedy/variety shows on radio, even during his guest appearances. One routine in 1950 had Jack Benny ask him what he had for lunch. “A raisin,” replied Sinatra, adding “Boy, am I stuffed!”

Animation in this cartoon is by Bill Shull, Walt Clinton, Grant Simmons and Bob Bentley. No writer is credited.

Comedians Stay Out of Brawls, Says Jack Benny

Do comedians have happy lives?

The public Jack Benny said “yes.” At least in 1952.

Later in life, Benny admitted he had his emotional ups and downs, confirmed by manager Irving Fein in his Benny biography.

He talked with the United Press about the life of a comedian, and nixed the idea of an autobiography. It turns out he started one and hefty portions of it were used in Joan Benny’s book about her life with her father. The ad next to the article is there for decoration, and to show that Jack and Arthur Godfrey shilled for the network's TV-manufacturing subsidiary in the press. Its failure is a whole other story.

Jack Benny Says Comedians Don't Have Time For Grief
By EDITH KERMIT ROOSEVELT
HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 2—(UP)—Jack Benny said Tuesday comedians are the goody-goodies of show business because they don't have time to get into mischief. "You don't find as many comedians getting divorces, signing papers they wish they hadn't or getting in night club brawls," he said. "You know why? We work too hard."
Benny said his love life had never been a problem. He's been happily married to the same woman for 26 years. Motion picture actors, he said, don't work every day. They have lots of time between pictures—and while they're making them. But comedians, he said, are on the go every moment. Benny himself, when he's not working on his CBS television show, is giving countless numbers of benefit performances.
HE SAID he even wakes up at 3 a.m. to write material for his shows. He doesn't leave it all to his writers.
"That's the headache with comedians—getting new material," he sighed.
"A guy like Jimmy Durante is such a lovable guy he doesn't have to worry so much as the rest of us," he said. "But getting new gags is always a problem—except for Milton Berle, of course," he wisecracked.
Another reason Benny gave for comedians being happy-go-lucky in their private lives is "we aren't intellectuals. I don't think a college man would make a good comedian," he said. "You've got to be down-to-earth in this business. You can't be highbrow."
THINKING too much gets a lot of people into trouble, he commented.
Benny said he guessed most people would say he had lived a rather dull life.
"Now that the life story of Eddie Cantor's being made into a movie and Tallulah's a best seller, they're telling me I should write the story of my life," he said. "But I don't want to. First place, it would be conceited to do it and then there's nothing to write about. I was never really down on my luck. Ever since I started it was a slow steady rise, earning more money every year."
Benny said the only trouble he ever had was once when he had pneumonia.
Although he came from a poor family, he said, he always had enough to eat and wear and his dad encouraged him in show business.

As a side-note, the Edith Kermit Roosevelt who wrote the column was not the former First Lady of the U.S. Teddy’s wife died in 1948. This was one of their granddaughters. She gave up show business reporting within two months of writing this story and found employment with a paper in Yreka in northern California. In 1954, she was back at the United Press in its Washington, D.C. bureau and later because a self-syndicated columnist. She died on July 22, 2003 in Miami.

That Ain't the Way I Heerd It

In the mid-1930s, when theatrical animation on the West Coast had reached the point where studios needed professional actors to voice their characters, they had a ready-made talent pool at radio stations.

It was not only still a time of dialects but the rise of impersonations, as someone imitating the voice of a talking picture or vaudeville star got laughs on the air.

One of these radio actors who got side-work in cartoons was Bill Thompson.

His show business career started as a boy. Here’s a pretty good radio career summary from the Hollywood Citizen-News, March 10, 1952.

‘OLD TIMER’
Bill Thompson Does Various Characters
Millions of listeners to NBC radio's “Fibber McGee and Molly Show" know him as Wallace Wimple, shy, henpecked little man who studies his beloved bird book when not dodging his "big, fat wife, Sweetyface."
Or, as the Old Timer, who repeats old, trusted jokes at the drop of a hat.
Or, as Horatio K. Boomer, whose pockets are constantly crammed with all manner of strange devices.
Or, as Nick Depopolis, past master of the old Greek art of English mispronunciation.
Or as Bill Thompson, 'off-mike.'
Or, if there's a need for formal identification, William Henry Thompson, Jr.
Whoever or whichever, Mr. “Bill’s Good Enough" Thompson is one of the cleverest and most versatile young men in the business of radio dialects.
Brown-eyed Bill was literally born into show business — and practically smack on an international border. Shortly before his birth, his mother, then on a vaudeville tour in Canada with his father, was obliged to return to Terre Haute, Indiana post-haste, so Bill could be born in the United States. They arrived just under the wire!
Young William Henry's first stage appearance came six weeks later, when he was carried onto a Terre Haute stage by his proud and beaming papa. And hardly two years had gone by before Bill began his professional career with his parents by doing a tap dance with their act.
Even attendance at Chicago's Lemoyne Grammar School and Lakeview High School didn't keep the active young man off the stage. Each year, until he was 12, he toured the variety circuits with his mother and father, fitting into their set by dancing and telling dialect stories and jokes.
One of the high spots of his public appearances came in 1919 when he was awarded a citation by Secretary of the Treasury Carter Glass, for having sold more than $2,000,000 in Liberty Bonds!
In 1934, while an usher at Chicago's Century of Progress Exposition, gleeful Bill won an NBC audition and was put under contract to the network. His first appearance on a network show was on the National Farm and Home Hour.
After playing various radio shows in the Windy City for two years, Bill joined the ''Fibber McGee and Molly" program. He's been with the popular network show ever since, except for a two-year cruise in the Navy, from 1943 to 1946.
Today, Bill's greatest interest outside his radio activities is his work with the Boys Club of America.

Fibber McGee and Molly originated in Chicago. When Jim and Marian Jordan were signed to a film contract by Paramount in 1937, they moved the show to the West Coast. And there it stayed. Thompson came along.

It would appear, if I’m reading Keith Scott’s books properly, Thompson’s first cartoon was for Walter Lantz in Arabs With Dirty Fezzes in 1939. He took his Horatio K. Boomer voice to Warners Bros. for two appearances as W.C. Fieldmouse opposite Little Blabbermouse. Then, it was to MGM, where Tex Avery cast him as Adolf Wolf in Blitz Wolf and then as Droopy in Dumb-Hounded; that voice was more-or-less the same as Wallace Wimple's.

The story above indicates Thompson enlisted for war duty; a feature article in the June 5, 1945 edition of the Akron Beacon Journal stated he entered naval training at Great Lakes in February 1944 and became SP (A) William Thompson, U.S.N. The story went on:

The "A" in his navy title does not mean "Actor" . . . He is a part of the athletic department of the navy . . . originally commanded by Gene Tunney . . . which is similar to the Special Service corps of the army . . . His job as a physical instructor is putting men through athletic drills and entertaining.

Thompson had to put his radio and cartoon careers on hold. It’s thought Tex Avery himself voiced Droopy during the interim. Fibber brought in other characters instead of trying to duplicate Thompson's voices (though the old-timer was originally played by Cliff Arquette).

He returned to radio and cartoons after the war, finding a good chunk of work in features and shorts for Walt Disney in the 1950s. Radio was dying and NBC slowly dismantled Fibber McGee and Molly until all that was left were the two title characters. He had to find a new career.

Thompson had other interests, as we learn in this story from the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, March 25, 1962. It's interesting the columnist would know about Droopy. Thompson never received screen credit for the role and this was a time before animation history books

Old Timer Known for Aid To Boy Clubs
BY ELSTON BROOKS
The announcement said W. H. Thompson Jr. of the Union Oil Company would speak on "Juvenile Decency" at the First Methodist Church meeting of the North Side Kiwanis Club—and it certainly didn't sound like amusements column fodder.
But that wasn't just W. H. Thompson up at the rostrum Friday. It was Wallace Wimple and Horatio K. Boomer and the Old Timer and Nick DePopolous—and even Droopy, the hangdog pup of the Metro cartoons.
Bill Thompson, one of the most famed voices in show business, has been hitting the luncheon club circuit full-time in behalf of his beloved Boys' Clubs of America ever since Fibber McGee and Molly dropped their Tuesday night stranglehold on network radio in 1956.
"IT'S NOTHING NEW, this work for Boys' Clubs," he told us in his rarely heard normal voice. "I was doing it for 20 years before I quit showbusiness. Three days a week it was radio, four days it was work with Boys' Clubs."
Oddly enough, Thompson has never had a boy of his own, nor a "mean ole Sweetie Face," as Wallace Wimple used to describe his wife. At 49, Thompson still is a bachelor.
"I guess it's that I always wanted to be a Texas Ranger when I was a kid back in Indiana. But you can't always go on a police force, and I found out I could help in other says back when we did the Fibber McGee show in Chicago. "I saw a need for club activity for boys—not just gangs. I’ve been in the work ever since, continuing it when we moved the show to Hollywood."
• • •
TODAY, THOMPSON is public service representative of the Union Oil Company, a West Coast firm that allows Thompson to make his good will talks around the country. Herbert Hoover has appointed him national director of the Boys' Clubs of America, and Thompson, in turn, is elated at landing his old boss, Walt Disney, on the board.
"I did a lot of work for Walt," the diminutive, red-haired actor recalled. "I was the voice of the white rabbit in 'Alice in Wonderland,' and Mr. Smee, the pirate, in 'Peter Pan,' and the Scotty in 'Lady and the Tramp' . . ."
"And, of course, Droopy, the pooped pup," we reminded.
Thompson laughed, and came up with his most famous voice: "That's pretty good, Johnny, but that ain't the way I heerd it. The way I heerd it, one feller says to the other feller, sa-y-y-y, he sez . . ."
We felt obligated to ask another question, because the Old Timer rarely finished one of his stories. We asked him for a match—and got the response we were hoping for.
"Match, match, let's see," said Horatio K. Boomer in that W. C. Fields voice. "Here's a poem I wrote once, and a check for a short beer. Well, well, whaddya know? No match."

Thompson had a couple of cracks at stardom. ABC gave him a half-hour sitcom, opposite the Carnation Contented Hour and the Gulf Screen Guild Players. It lasted from March 4 to May 27, 1946 before the network cancelled it.

And then there was the lead role in an animated sitcom. He had a wife named Wilma and a neighbour named Barney, who was played by Hal Smith. Smith explained what happened in Tim Lawson’s book ‘The Magic Behind the Voices’:

Bill Thompson was a good actor, but he had something wrong with his throat. He couldn’t sustain that gravel they wanted in Fred, so Mel [Blanc] and Alan Reed started rehearsing. We had already recorded the first five episodes, and finally, we were recording one night and Bill would cough and he would stop and he’d say, ‘I just can’t keep that gravel,’ Joe Barbera was directing, and he called us in and said, ‘You know, this isn’t working.’ And I said, ‘Well, it really isn’t. It’s difficult for Bill Thompson to hang onto his voice like that because he just doesn’t have it.’ So he said, ‘Well, Mel and Alan have been rehearsing and practicing this, so I think we’re going to let them do it.’

Hanna-Barbera still had a spot for Thompson. He went on to the far less memorable role as Touché Turtle in the early ‘60s.

Thompson’s animation career didn’t last much longer. He had just turned 58 when he died on July 15, 1971.

Scary Jerry

The Lonesome Mouse (1943) is an unusual cartoon in some ways. In the early years of the series, Tom and Jerry battle each other, but when the maid comes into the room, she only yells at Tom, while Jerry hides somewhere. In The Lonesome Mouse, the housekeeper actually interacts with the mouse.

Jerry is supposed to be scaring her, but his expressions are more goofy than frightening.



Cut to the “pull up multiple skirt” gag. I don’t have these cartoons memorised so I can’t tell you which other cartoon re-used this. I’m pretty sure one of them did.



The other unusual thing in this short is there is dialogue between Tom and Jerry to drive the plot. It doesn’t seem right to have the characters talking. I thought Cal Howard was doing Tom’s dopey voice—it’s speculated he played the dog in the Screwy Squirrel cartoons and was writing for the Hanna-Barbera unit—but Keith Scott says it’s Harry Lang. Lillian Randolph is the maid, and even gets to sing a few bars of “How About You?”, written by Burton Lane and Vancouver-born Ralph Freed (his father owned a furniture shop) for the 1941 feature Babes on Broadway.

A Hole in the Ground

Ah, yes, the old cartoon gag of lifting up or moving a hole. Here’s an example from the early days of sound in Walt Disney’s The Picnic (1930).

This scene features a rabbit with one of those belly-buttons beloved in cartoons in the 1920s. and an early version of Pluto (named “Little Rover” here). The fun is in the dog`s woozy expression after crashing into the ground.



The little birds that fly around from a dot, shrink back into one, which becomes exploding lines.

There’s a lot of dancing and cycle animation in this cartoon, starring Mickey and Minnie, and that turn-of-the-century favourite song, “In The Good old Summer Time.”

He's Not Tom Ewell

“Spot the character actor” was a fun game to play when watching TV in the 1960s. There were plenty of them who worked on different shows but would be on the screen regularly.

“There’s Henry Jones!” was one exclamation from young me. I saw him in the films Support Your Local Sheriff (he appears to have filmed a string of Westerns in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s) and The Girl Can’t Help It. Where I spotted him first in the ‘60s, I really don’t remember. Offhand, I remember him on Bewitched. Oh, and Lost in Space.

Besides a pile of guest character shots, there was one series where he was actually a co-star. There was a short period of “relevant” TV dramas in the early ‘60s that tackled issues of the day. One of them was Channing. No, it was not about a “Hello, Dolly” star playing a daffy blonde. It was about issues surrounding a college.

Alan Patureau of Newsday wrote about it in the paper’s Sept. 18, 1963 issue.

Racial discrimination, exam cheating, Communist influences and all sorts of meaty subjects COULD be treated on ABC-TV’s new college campus series, “Channing” debuting tonight—and perhaps they will, says star Henry Jones, if some good scripts can be found.
“Our first purpose is to be entertaining,” Jones chuckled the other day on a trip East. “As the great George S. Kaufman said, ‘If nobody comes, who gets the message?’”
Not that “Charming” is to be a retread of the treacly old “Halls of Ivy” series, Jones said. “We’ll have no rah-rah stones, no panty raid capers; some of the scripts are real rockers.”
“Channing,” which is the name of a small, mythical Midwestern university, bows tonight at 10 PM on Channel 7, and Jones has the top role as kindly Dean Fred Baker.
“Negroes have taken two speaking parts in the series so far, and are seen in every classroom shot, so ‘Channing’ definitely intends to portray campus life—outside the South—as realistically as possible, with no more cowtowing to timid Sponsors,” Jones said.
“Channing” is rara avis in TV-land. It has been in production a full year and there are 15 one-hour episodes in the can. None of the too-common, frantic last-minute filming and script patching here. The series was spun off from Fred Astaire’s “Alcoa Premiere,” where it appeared as a one-hour drama in March, 1962, with its current stars, Jones and Jason Evers.
How was Jones lured into a TV series after 28 years on Broadway and in movies?
“Simple,” he said, peering over big bifocals. “In show business I’m known as the guy who looks like Tom Ewell. With weekly exposure in a major TV series, I hope to gain true star status—become a boxoffice draw. Ewell can be the guy who looks like Henry Jones. I’ve gone as far as I can go in the theater without a boost from another medium.”
“Channing” is being shot at Revue Studios, one of Hollywood’s busiest TV mills. In one corner is a small-scale reproduction of World War II (for the “Combat!” series) and in the other is the set for Channing U., replete with quadrangle, football stadium, the whole works.

The comparison to Ivy is a little unfair, as it was mainly a comedy show, though there was one marvelous episode on radio where it attacked racism very straight, something completely unexpected in a 1950s sitcom.

The syndicated column below published Nov. 9, 1963 delves into Jones’ career.

Channing’s Dean, Henry Jones, Has A Sense of Humor
By RUTH E. THOMPSON
It’s a tossup who has to deliver a longer list of credits to rate his job, a real university dean, or Henry Jones — actor — who’s starring as Dean Fred Baker in ABCs “Channing” (Wednesdays, 10:00 PM).
“Incidentally I certainly would not have taken the role.” Henry says cheerfully, if by any chance they’d gone in for the stereotype of a stuffy, pompous dean. As a matter of fact every one I’ve known has had a considerable sense of humor and problems.
“But I’m not really a dean, remember, I’m no authority on education. I’m art actor.” A pretty well-educated actor, however, and definitely an authority in his field (500 television shows, a dozen films, countless Broadway appearances). He’s also an authority on sense-of-humor. He started developing his own early through his some quixotic schooling.
“My mother sent me to boarding school in Canada for the seventh grade so I could learn French . . . but none was spoken there at all. She’d neglected to check. It was an English language institution.”
He thereafter also went to Georgetown Prep and to St. Joseph’s College in his home town of Philadelphia. Though he admired his surgeon-father, he had no desire to emulate him and hot-footed off instead to Jasper Deeter’s legendary Hedgerow Theatre where he swept floors, worked as a stage hand, learned the switchboard and — against his wishes — honed the sense of humor some more.
“For a while, in fact, it looked as though I was doomed to be a comedian. No matter what I did on stage, people laughed.”
His first speaking part was in the grim war epic, “Journey’s End.” “Since it was about Englishmen, I worked on an English accent then in my role as a coward I chirped out, ‘I cawn’t go on.’ The audience broke out laughing and nearly broke my heart.”
But along came another role (again a coward, the locale a submerged submarine. Came his moment, tense, dramatic. He snarled, “If you don’t let me go. I’ll kill every one of you with my hare hands.” Comments Henry further, “Only trouble was they looked like a bunch of football players. I’m five-ten. Unintentional comedy again.”
During the winter he thought maybe he’d try his hand at business and sell oil-burners door to door. The firm’s star salesman was resting. Finally he shared his wisdom. “Nobody has ever sold a heater here in this season.”
Henry was actually relieved. Business was not for him. The theatre life had its own challenges and rough spots, but this was really his dish, this he could handle and back he went to Hedgerow to learn both acting technique and show business.
This time he also house-managed. “In fact I did every job at that theatre except box office. There were about six kinds of tickets; regular, subscription, students, press. Some were subject to federal tax, some to local, some to none.” His head for business being what it was it was agreed the theatre would be money ahead if somebody else handled the arithmetic and the cash.
Then in 1938 he debuted on Broadway in a minor role in Maurice Evans’ five-hour “Hamlet.” Successive role grew bigger, then in 1942 he was drafted into the Army which promptly drafted him into its camp show (later a movie) “This Is The Army” which played bases the world over.
“Solid Gold Cadillac” with Josephine Hull was his first lasting post-war role. Then came “Bad Seed” in which he was so good as the sneaky janitor he was afraid for a while he’d be typed as a psychotic. However, that blooming new medium television saved his “sanity” as well as his reputation for flexibility.
“I played 50 different roles in one year, then I realized,” he says with a smile that lighted up his sage humor again,” that the greater the exposure, the less they were paying! So, I started appearing less often and in longer programs.”
Meanwhile, back on Broadway Henry Jones was becoming more and more a name to reckon with. He walked off with the 1958 Tony award for best supporting actor for his Louis McHenry Howe role in “Sunrise at Campobello;” and in 1960 he got star billing in the Broadway production of “Advise and Consent.”
Though he suttled [shuttled?] back and forth for a time between New York and Hollywood for movie commitments, the “Channing” schedule keeps him in Hollywood except for an occasional trip East on network business or to visit his children 17-year old David and 13-year-old David [sic, it should read Jocelyn]. Divorced now, Jones lives a bachelor life when he is in California.
“Any series is very hard work but I find ‘Channing’ satisfactory all around. And you know, I like our not limiting our stories just to the campus. By going afield in flashbacks, or by following a crisis in a person’s life and tieing in with his days at Channing University we are able to show the long range influence of education and of college memories.
“Then too we have good guest stars. It was good to work with Wendell Corey again, he was Hedgerow, too, you know. And Gene Raymond was just great.”
And where is Channing University? “In the mythical town of Channing of course.” And with an interesting guy like Henry Jones as its leading light, it’s a school and town we should keep hearing about.

ABC had a decent Wednesday night line-up that season: Ozzie and Harriet, Patty Duke, The Price is Right, Ben Casey and then Channing. But this was CBS’ year and Channing ran 26 episodes. Howard Heffernan of the North American Newspaper Alliance wrote at the time that Jones “was permitted in the earlier episodes to drift in and out,” suggesting TV producers wanted to go with the more photogenic Evers to attract an audience. But ratings fell and Jones was shoved to the forefront. It didn’t help and the show was replaced over the summer with reruns of 77 Sunset Strip (featuring the photogenic Kookie and his comb).

So it was that Channing did not give Jones “true star status.” He went back to character parts (and a regular role on the sitcom Phyllis) and acted until the early 1990s. He died May 17, 1999 at age 86.

Nutsy Blur

Confusions of a Nutsy Spy (released in December 1942) is full of angled shots and varying perspectives in a war-time tale of a really stupid Porky Pig trying to capture a bomb-carrying Nazi spy.

There’s also a pan shot reminiscent of the Fleischers in the late 1930s. To simulate speed, the pan is blurred. Not by the camera pan itself but by brush work over the background painting. I can’t snip this together to give you the full background, but here are some frames that may give you an idea.



The backgrounds are likely by Dick Thomas.

Norm McCabe directed this war short, which has some of the most tedious and obvious puns you can find in a Warners cartoon, supplied by Don Christensen.

The cartoon opens with a rather low-key violin and clarinet version of “Hey Doc!” by Edgar Sampson and Kim Gannon. You can hear a different version below.

How To Escape From the Moon

Tex Avery’s nameless black cat (Pat McGeehan using a Durante voice) has had enough of abuse on the Moon and wants to return to the abuse of Earth (specifically, the United States of America) in The Cat That Hated People.



But how to get off the Moon when your space ship that crashed into a heap of metal? It’s easy when you’re in a Tex Avery cartoon. “A body can do just about anything,” said one of his characters when Tex was still at Warners. In this case, the cat pulls down a backdrop of a golf course, sets himself on a tee, yells “Fore!” (to nobody in particular, but that is what one does at a golf course), and swats himself toward Earth.



You can check out frames from the next scenes in this post.

Heck Allen gets a story credit, with Louis Schmidt, Bill Shull, Grant Simmons and Walt Clinton credited as the animators.