Friz on MGM and Tex

A number of the great Warner Bros. cartoon directors lived beyond the period where the only word in animation was “Disney” into a time of being honoured and interviewed about their cartoon careers.

Friz Freleng was one. He went on publicity tours and his thoughts were written in local newspaper feature columns.

There was a wonderful time, before the rise of the internet in the post-modem era, when fanzines flourished. My favourites were Mindrot/Animania and Animato!. The average fan didn’t have too much knowledge of theatrical animation history then, so every issue was, for me, a goldmine of information.

Happily, a number of the people who wrote for the publication 35 or so years ago are still with us, and still doing animation research.

With that brief introduction, let me pass along part of an interview published in Animato No. 18. It is from a chat between Jerry Beck and Friz Freleng on August 22, 1988. I hope I’m not violating any copyright by reproducing this portion, but some of what’s said may be news to some readers. The full magazine is available on-line at archive.org.

Jerry asked Friz a question about Chuck Jones, but it was never answered. Friz also doesn't mention, as he did in other interviews, his distaste at being assigned to direct The Captain and the Kids cartoons at Metro.

It's pretty well known now that Friz did not bring in Tex Avery for Meatless Flyday. Why Friz didn't correct Jerry on this, I don't know, but he went on to talk about another, unidentified cartoon.

You can see Friz wasn’t altogether enamoured at Tex’s style of humour.

You left Warner Bros. and took Hugh Harman's place at MGM for a while.

Fred Quimby tempted me to come over. He offered me a lot of money; for me at that time, it was a hell of a lot of money. I signed up in August, and my contract was up in October with Schlesinger. And Leon was madder than hell. He said, "You didn't give me a chance to compete before you signed up with him."
When I got there, Fred Quimby said to me, "Do anything you want to do. What are you going to do?" And I said, "I don't know. If I had something in mind, I would be making it over at Schlesinger's." He said, "You're right. Well, you can do whatever you feel is right."
I jumped from $250.00 a week to $375.00 at MGM. I thought it was going to be the same as over at Warner's: everybody cooperating with each other, nobody undermining the other guy. If they did [at Warner's], I wasn't conscious of it. I think Leon depended on me, and no one dared try to undermine me.
So when I got over to MGM, there was conspiracy right away. Joe Barbera, Dan Gordon, George Gordon, all them were working trying to put the New York people in front of the California people. And then there was real turmoil, because everyone was clamoring for position. I was so glad to get out of that place.

Did you last a year at MGM?

I was there about a year and a half [until April 1939]. Then one day I came home so disgusted with the whole thing I told my wife, "You know what? I'm going to swallow my pride, and call Schlesinger and see if I can get my job back."
And you know, that very evening, the phone rang. It was Henry Binder [Schlesinger's assistant]. I laughed, because nobody ever called me before. He was laughing, and I was laughing. He says, "I hear you're unhappy over there." So they must have got it through the grapevine.
So to make a long story short, I went over and talked to Leon, and said, "I don't want any more money. I'll take the money that I had before. I just want to get out of there." And he was very happy to get me back, because he tried two or three other guys there. A fellow by the name of Norm McCabe, and Ben Hardaway... And they were all making cartoons that just didn't have it. The cartoons never seemed to find the path, they kind of wandered about. There was no guide there. With Leon, it was like a ship without a captain. Everyone was going in different directions, and Leon just didn't seem to be able to handle that.
So I came back, and Tex started making better cartoons, and we all started imitating each other. We finally found a path.

There was that gag sensibility you got around 1940.

We finally found a direction. Clampett was very good at it.

What were your feelings about Tex Avery and Bob Clampett back then, and Chuck Jones even? What was your reaction to them as people?

I was so engrossed in what I was doing I didn't even care what the other guys were doing. You were always trying to do better than they were. Unconsciously, there was competition, naturally. We wanted to make the best pictures possible.
I think we all influenced each other. Without bragging, like where one guy thinks he created this and that. I don't think anybody created anything himself.
I think they were all little pieces of somebody else. I’d see something that Clampett did and I liked. I did it maybe in a little different way than he did. I'd see something that Tex Avery did, that Disney did... You don't create these things all yourself. They build from other people.
It was a creative thing. The guy who had the greatest imagination in the whole business was Walt himself. When I saw Snow White, it was an entirely different concept than anyone had ever thought of, ever. The concept of animation, even. Nobody animated like that; nobody drew characters like that; nobody put personality like that into the characters. It came from him.
I'm sure it influenced our thinking, and everybody's thinking in animation. They're still trying to imitate that.

Let me ask you some little specific questions. What happened when Tex Avery left Warner Brothers? Was it over them cutting a gag in one of his Bugs Bunnys? Do you know anything about that?

I don't think so. I think Bobby [Clampett] and Tex were always seeking something else. Because nobody really knew what the future was, and everybody wanted to be his own producer. But they didn't know enough about making deals, and they never really got anything out of it.
I think it was Speaking of Animals that Tex was working on before. I think in his book [Tex Avery: King of Cartoons, by Joe Adamson] he mentions that he proposed it to Leon, and Leon turned it down. I never knew what was going on, really.
The reason he went over to MGM was when I came back he knew there was a spot open. And when he asked me about it I said I left there because the politics were terrible. But MGM was the height of motion picture studios, and I said, "Tex, they'd love to have you there." I figured I'd warned him enough. He said, "You think so?" I said, "I know they'd be tickled to death to have someone like you."
Boom! He was over there, and he got the job. I didn't think he was going to go over there, because I told him about the problems I had. But I figured he must have figured, "Hell, that won't happen to me."
It happened to him. When he got over to MGM he was a very unhappy man, because Bill and Joe took over. He was second banana, no matter what he did. He tried desperately. I look at his cartoons and see elements of desperation.
He was afraid to do subtle things. Tom and Jerry had that. They had little personalities, and subtleties, and things like that. Of course they had the broad gags – they were stealing part of Tex's stuff, the broad stuff.

There was a cartoon about two or three years later, that you made about a spider, called Meatless Flyday.

Oh, it was terrible.

Well, I like that cartoon. And you used Tex's voice as the spider – did you say come over and do this for me, or something?

Yeah. I also had him do a character where he was supposed to sing in rhythm, and he just couldn't get the rhythm. I remember we put him in one of these booths you record in, and shook the booth, and said "Just sing to that rhythm." But he couldn't do it. He just never had a sense of rhythm.
He was a fun guy to work with. Everybody liked Tex, but Tex was so insecure. I felt about his cartoons that he overdid them because he was so insecure about them. He couldn't do a subtle cartoon. If he did something, it had to be twice as strong as anybody else, because he was insecure about what he was doing.
It seemed like he never came up with a strong personality after he left Warner's. Tex was so anxious to please he was overdoing everything. He should have come up with characters like Bugs Bunny, things like that...
But I think he created a kind of contemporary art with that desperation, when you look back. His stuff was nothing I admired.

What's great is that your stuff and Tex's stuff is different. It's different, and yet they're both funny, and they both use the cartoon medium to its potential.

Well, you put your own personality in. Tex was a very introverted man. I think he had real family problems. You didn't know Tex; I never knew him outside of his outer skin.

A lot of thanks should be given to people like Jerry and so many others who interviewed people in animation now long gone and laid the foundation stones of animation research. I appreciate them, anyway.

Crazy Dog

Little Shep throws fits at the end of Bone Sweet Bone after being told by a paleontologist professor that the bone he retrieved wasn’t a valuable dinosaur bone after all.

This gives animator Don Williams to move the dog in various poses, with dry brush strokes in between.



Considering the short was co-written by Bill Scott, it is appropriate the last pose has moose antlers.

Art Davis’ usual crew of Basil Davidovich, Emery Hawkins and Bill Melendez join Williams on this cartoon. Phil De Guard painted the backgrounds. The short’s official release date was May 22, 1948, though it was playing at the Rivoli in La Crosse, Wisconsin nine days before that.

Just a Quick Drink

There are scenes with very quick movement in The Mouse Comes to Dinner, released by MGM in May 1945.

In this one, Tom gulps down a glass of champagne. Director Bill Hanna times the drawings so the whole bit takes just over half a second (11 frames).

The second and third drawings are the same, but the camera (by Jack Stevens?) trucks in just slightly in the third frame.

Swinging the arm up takes up two frames, as does the next drawing. The remaining drawings take up only one frame apiece.



You’ll notice when Tom first raises the glass, there’s nothing in it. Nobody would catch that watching the cartoon and it saves some painting.

I suspect a few years earlier, Hanna would have had Tom daintily sip the champagne, with Tom in various poses like in a Rudy Ising cartoon. The quicker way is the funnier way.

Ray Patterson, Ken Muse, Irv Spence and Pete Burness are the credited animators. Harvey Eisenberg (uncredited) would have drawn the layouts.

What'll You Do, Robert Q.?

The world got way too much of Robert Q. Lewis.

At least, Lewis thought people thought so.

Lewis seemed to be everywhere in the 1950s. He had a couple of shows, he filled in for Arthur Godfrey, he made appearances on panels of game shows. Then it all dried up.

1960 saw Robert Q. touring the U.S. in “The Gazebo.” And complaining to J. Don Schlaerth of the Buffalo Evening News. This is part of a column published Aug. 24, 1960.

COMEDIAN Robert Q. Lewis admitted today that he is a victim of a television malady known as “overexposure.”
The star of the summer stock production, "The Gazebo,”' a comedy-mystery playing at the Garden Center Theater in Vineland, Ont., visited Bill and Mildred Miller on their WHEN-TV telecast this afternoon and stopped long enough to discuss his case.
"There are dozens of people in show business who are suffering from too much exposure," explained the candid entertainer, "and I'm one of those finding it tough going. Arthur Godfrey has suffered from it and so has Jack Paar. I think Steve Allen will have some difficulty this season."
Lewis stated that his TV outlook is "chilly" at the moment "because show producers and advertising agencies seem to feel that the public is tired of me."
• • •
LEWIS RECALLED that he was on both network radio and television steadily from 1946 to 1959. "At one time I had shows five days a week and once in the evening. It got to the point," he said, "where the average housewife saw more of me than she did of her husband."
Stating that he was far from starving, Lewis said the current period in his career gives him tme to concentrate on his art collection and enjoy summer stock.
"I plan to guest on a number or TV panel shows this season when the regular panel members vacation," he went on, "but I have to wait to be called."
• • •
IN THE MEANTIME, he said, there are plans for a TV series based on the Harold Lloyd movies. “We’re working on a shooting script and may be able to film the pilot in November. I’ll be working for a mythical Federal Bureau of Space."
The performer also said he would like to do a Broadway play soon. “It’s important when you're in the position that I'm in right now to watch your emotions. Some actors become very upset. You've got to plan and wait for your time to come around again. It usually does and then you’re better off than before."

Robert Q. was still complaining about “overexposure” more than 12 years later during a time he hadn’t been getting a lot of national exposure. He never seemed to accept the fact that everyone’s career goes up and down. Newcomers arrive and get attention. Old stars get shoved out along the way by the public. That’s how the entertainment business works.

In various interviews in 1960, he talked about buying a radio station on Long Island. Maybe he was going to move to Miami. The show about a Harold Lloyd-type character (with writer Howard Tichman) went nowhere. Instead, Lewis ended up on the West Coast at a radio station, starting Aug. 7, 1961. This wire service feature story was published on Aug. 19.

Robert Q. Moves West
By RICK DU BROW
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) — Robert Q. Lewis, accompanied by his white poodle and bolstered in morale by occasional glances at his Rolls-Royce, has come West to settle dawn as a Hollywood disc jockey.
"This is where the action is," said the bespectacled, nasal-voiced funnyman who once shared network radio and television eminence with Arthur Godfrey, Dave Garroway, Garry Moore and Jack Paar.
"This is Mr. Lewis' first Hollywood interview," said his press agent.
"And you couldn't have picked a bigger star," said Robert Q.
Looking "Hollywood" to the core—with a deep tan, sun-glasses and a wide-striped dark sports shirt open at the neck Lewis sat on the terrace of an outdoor cafe and explained why he left New York:
• • •
"I NEEDED A job. Arthur Goldberg and I decided there was too much unemployment. No. Seriously, this station out here (KHJ) wanted to be No. 1—not that they aren't now. My gosh, how do you say this? Well, anyway, I'm here. It's a good deal. I wanted to be a disc jockey again. I like doing a job five days a week.
"I haven't had my own show for two years, and I don't have the actor's temperament of being able to relax. My kind of show—the informal, anything goes daytime thing—is in disrepute since filmed syndication took over, and it's affected all of us—Godfrey, Moore.
"All of us are radio babies. We gripe, but we're never happier than when we're on the air every day projecting our own self-idolized images. Paar says he's going to quit, and he may well do it—but be in pain missing the outlet every day.
“Moore got his night-time show but begged CBS to put him on radio 10 minutes a day. Godfrey went through cancer but kept his radio show.
"I was on the air since 1945, and my problem is overexposure. The average American housewife saw more of me than her husband."
• • •
ROBERT Q. confessed that some people considered his move from network to a local show something of a comedown.
"I suppose people along this Sunset Strip or on Madison Ave. might consider it so," he said, "but I don't. I'm looking forward to it. I think there'll be a rebirth of my kind of show. The TV set once was an altar in the living room. Now it's become a pennance box. Hmmm —that's not a bad line."
What has he done for the past two years?
"Primarily griped," he said. "I did summer stock, winter stock, spring stock. Believe me, I know now why they call it stock. I've been in just about every contemporary American comedy."
Lewis, whom bigwigs believe will wind up network from here, said,
“Sure, I’ll miss New York. I’m a native and lived within a radius of 20 blocks all my life. But I always wanted to live here. I'm a sun-worshipper. I bought a house within two days, got a housekeeper the third and wallpaper the fourth.
"Wait'll I give out freeway instructions on the air: ‘This is Robert Q. Lewis and as for you on the freeway—I don't know where the heck you are.’ Did you ever hear those cheerful disc jockeys in the morning? Not me. Who's cheerful in the morning?
• • •
"FRANKLY, I haven't the slightest idea what I'm going to do on the show. But you'll hear such names as Jimmy Stewart, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. Of course, Bette Davis may turn out to be a stenographer, and Stewart a worker from Lockheed. But some days, it might be the real thing.
“Awhile back, I had an idea for a wonderful show. It would be called ‘Breakfast with a Bachelor,’ and it would start out with me saying, ‘Today our special guest is—what's your name, honey?’ For heaven's sake, don't print that!" Lewis got up from the table and headed for the parking lot.
"I really wanted a compact limousine, but no American manufacturer was making one," he said. "By the way, do you know anybody who wants to buy a $65,000 duplex in New York?"
An elderly couple recognized him and said, "Hello, Mr. Lewis." He returned the greeting and said: "I hired them from Central Casting."

The love affair with morning radio and the West Coast didn’t last too long. On Nov. 19, 1962, he was back at NBC New York, with Johnny Olson introducing him as the host of Play Your Hunch. He replaced Merv Griffin, who had accepted an offer from the network to host an afternoon talk/variety show. When that didn’t pan out, Merv was back on a game show again on Sept. 30, 1963 hosting Word For Word, which replaced Robert Q.’s show.

The two men crossed paths a number of times, starting when Merv was hired to sing on Lewis’ daytime TV show in the mid-1950s. Griffin ended up marrying Q.’s secretary. Though Robert Q. came across to viewers as somewhat sophisticated and glib, Merv bluntly stated (after Lewis’ death) he was crazy. Behind the scenes, Lewis would throw furniture and fits.

Mark Goodson continued to put Lewis into a fill-in host or guest panellist slot until the host’s job at Get the Message came open on Sept. 28, 1964. There was no overexposure on that show. It was cancelled on Christmas Day.

There was more stage work, then another West Coast radio gig (at KFI) in the ‘70s. By the 1980s his name in print was associated with others who had worked with him in the Golden Age of Television. Robert Q. passed away December 11, 1991 at 71.

Telescope Eyes

They were re-issued as “A Columbia Favorite.” Whose favourite, I’m not quite sure.

Dog, Cat and Canary must have been someone’s favourite, as it was nominated for an Oscar, losing in 1945 to the Tom and Jerry short Mouse Trouble.

There’s some good animation. In this scene, the cat’s eyes become telescopic, checking out the canary and the sleeping guard dog.



Then the rest of the cat’s head comes up to meet the eye pupils. These drawings are animated on twos.



The characters? Eh. Just another cat and bird and dog. They don’t really stand out, not like the Oscar-winning Tom and Jerry who were pretty expressive characters in the mid-‘40s. Despite that, the canary was turned into Flippy (at least according to Boxoffice Barometer of Nov. 17, 1945) and appeared in some forgettable cartoons. The Exhibitor of January 24, 1945 rated the cartoon “fair.”

Howard Swift directed this short, with animation credited to Volus Jones and Jim Armstrong, and the story to Grant Simmons.

The following year, Rippling Romance was Columbia’s Oscar nominee, losing again to Tom and Jerry. It was the final Screen Gems short up for an Academy Award. The studio gave the bird to the animation world and shut down.

Who's the Real Monster?

Tex Avery tried a split screen gag in 1939 in Thugs With Dirty Mugs, and did it again the following year in Cross Country Detours.

Narrator Lou Marcelle intones over a tympani roll the next scene is quite gruesome, so the screen will be split with one side for grown-ups and one side for children.



Grown-ups get a “hideous gila monster” snarling and growling. Children get a recitation.

Avery loves violating split screen gags, and he doesn’t disappoint us here.



Avery uses a split-screen again in A Bear’s Tale (1940), Tortoise Beats Hare and Aviation Vacation (both 1941). The “Mary Had a Little Lamb” recitation routine goes back to Harman-Ising’s Bosko in Person and Bosko's Mechanical Man (both 1933). Avery used it in Hamateur Night (1939) and again as late as 1954, when MGM released The Flea Circus.

Rich Hogan is the credited story man on this short, with Paul J. Smith getting the rotating animation credit and Johnny Johnsen getting no credit for backgrounds.

As Old as Aristophanes

Publicity departments churned out all kinds of material in the days of yore.

In radio, networks or agencies or producers would bash out copy and send them with photos to newspapers hoping to get some free ink.

I suspect that’s what happened in 1952 when the Ogden Standard-Examiner printed a life story of Jack Benny in a special TV edition on Nov. 12, 1952. The article was unbylined, so it likely didn’t come from a newspaper staff writer, and specifically mentions CBS TV stations, so it likely came from the network P.R. department. At the time, Benny's TV show aired on KSL-TV on Sundays at 5:30 p.m. Mountain.

As a biography, there are a few things you could quibble about when it comes to accuracy, but it’s a good summary. I find it remarkable that among Jack’s movie accomplishments there is no mention of To Be or Not to Be, arguably his finest picture, and one he was proud of. It should be noted “The Bee” programme of Fred Allen’s in December 1936 was not a take-off. Allen actually conducted an amateur show on the second half hour of his weekly broadcasts for several seasons. I half-expected a joke about Jack's age next to the mention of Aristophanes but we all know Aristophanes is ridiculous.

There was a nice caricature of Jack, his violin and Rochester that was printed with this article but I can’t fix the lousy scan to make it look decent.

He Started at Full Speed
Believe It or Not, Jack Benny Was a Child Prodigy on the Violin
Jack Benny, who for 18 years on radio had created solely through his voice one of the greatest of comedy characters, entered America's living rooms "in the flesh" when he made his debut on the CBS Television Network Oct. 28, 1950.
And the millions of delighted fans who saw him on television for the first time found he fitted exactly the penny-pinching, frustrated, lovable laughmaker they had so vividly imagined him to be.
Jack Benny made four broadcasts from New York during the 1950-51 season. He launched his second season Nov. 4, 1951, in a transcontinental broadcast originating from the CBS-TV outlet, KNXT, in Hollywood.
Benny was one of the first of the major comedians to make the changeover from vaudeville to radio, in 1932. Vaudeville was going out, bigtime radio coming in. Benny bumped into columnist Ed Sullivan one night in a Broadway restaurant. Sullivan asked him, that night in 1932, to guest on his radio program the following evening. "But I don't know anything about radio," Jack protested. "Nobody does," Sullivan replied.
Gave It A Whirl
Benny offered to give it a whirl, gratis, and on this first broadcast of his life introduced, himself with an immortal line: "This is Jack Benny talking. Now there will be a brief pause for everyone to say, 'Who cares?' " Millions did care, as Benny soon found out. The same year, 1932, he had a sponsor and a network program. He was a sensation from the start.
Benny on television, as on radio, is the central figure in what historians of comedy call the classic insult method, which goes back to Aristophanes.
His knack of building unknown personalities into stars in their own right is well known. Dennis Day, Eddie Anderson, who plays Rochester, and Phil Harris are notable examples.
Benny's sense of timing and spontaneity of delivery have been underscored by critics and fellow comics alike, qualities which contrast strangely with the dither he works himself into in preparing his scripts. He sweats out the lines which appear to flow effortlessly and merrily over the air. Although a battery of top gagsters whip together the raw material, Benny does the final editing, unifying and polishing.
To keep the lines fresh, he cuts rehearsals to the minimum. And during the broadcast he rarely ad libs, but stops the show and howls with unrestrained laughter when others put over an unscheduled nifty.
From Waukegan
Waukegan, Benny's home town, is a suburb of Chicago. His father, a haberdasher, insisted that his son take violin lessons at an early age, and he was considered a child prodigy on the fiddle in Waukegan. One of Jack's early triumphs was playing "The Bee," a short violin piece that has been the butt of Benny jokes on the air for a decade. "The Bee" sparked his famous radio feud with Fred Allen. A moppet in an Allen skit which was a take-off on amateur programs played the song and Fred commented afterward that it was Benny's old vaudeville specialty.
"Only eight and you already can play 'the Bee'," Allen joked. "Why Jack Benny ought to be ashamed of himself."
The next week Benny on his own show, indignantly declared he could produce four persons who would attest that he had played "The Bee" at the age of six. And the feud was on. "The Bee," by the way is not "Flight of the Bumble Bee," but a piece composed by a Franz Schubert —but not the Franz Schubert. Seems confusion is the word for Benny.
At 13, Jack was a fiddler in Waukegan's leading dance orchestra and also a regular of the Barrison Theater orchestra, a lone knickerbockered figure surrounded by grownups. Since his teachers recall him more vividly for his wisecracks, it wasn't surprising that Jack quit school before he was 17 to team up with a vaudeville pianist named Cora Salisbury.
Jack billed himself as Benny K. Benny and at $15 a week he toured Midwest theaters with his partner. He didn't tell jokes, but he managed to draw laughs by sawing away on his violin, with the little finger of the bow hand affectedly extended while his eyes followed its movement in mock curiosity.
Benny Joins Navy
Afterward, Jack joined another pianist named Lyman Woods, and their tours took them, at the outbreak of World War I, to London's famous Palladium. They broke up and Jack joined the Navy. In a Navy revue, he played the fiddle without much success, until one night he paused to make a few wisecracks.
The crowd roared, Jack Benny the comic was born and "The Bee"-playing violinist was no more. Thereafter, Jack was pencilled into the show as "Issy There, the Admiral's Disorderly," and for the duration he convulsed both the Navy and the public with his ingratiating patter.
Upon his discharge, Benny returned to vaudeville. To avoid confusion with another fiddling comic, Ben Bernie, he adopted the "Jack Benny" tag. As a topflight funnyman. Benny worked with the greats in the heyday of the two-a-day, and went on to further success in Earl Carroll and Shubert shows on Broadway.
His movie debut was as auspicious as his radio bow. A talent scout spotted him in a Los Angeles theater in 1929. Benny got the lead in “The Hollywood Revue,” clicked big, and has been starred in a number of pictures since, including "Charley's Aunt," "The Horn Blows at Midnight" and "George Washington Slept Here."
Benny and his wife, Mary Livingstone, have been stage and broadcasting partners for 20 years. She was Sadye Marks, a salesgirl in a Los Angeles department store when they were married in 1927. She recalls that he practically had to drag her on stage to make an actress out of her. But it was not long before she became an invaluable ingredient is the Benny fun formula.
The Bennys have a beautiful home in Beverly Hills, Calif., and their home life has been a happy one. Their daughter, Joan Naomi, adopted at the age of four months and now 17 years old, is the joy of their lives. As practically every Benny fan knows, Jack is the exact opposite in private life to the penurious, protesting character he plays on the air. He is notorious for his over-tipping. His genial manner and friendliness have made him one of the most popular figures in Hollywood.
Benny gets little time off to play, what with television schedule, weekly radio show and business interests, but when he has an hour or so to loaf he's usually out on the golf links.
Sponsor of the "Jack Benny Program" is American Tobacco Co.

First, a Cartoon From Our Sponsor

Animated commercials in the 1950s are loads of fun. They have great designs, good writing and excellent voice acting. And they provided jobs to animators who had worked on theatrical cartoons.

How many of the actual commercials still exist is anyone’s guess. But thanks to publications like Television Age, we can view frame grabs of a whole pile of them. The trade magazine came out twice monthly and for several years featured articles about animated spots on TV.

Below are some of the ones found in the May 2, 1960 edition.



We’ve talked about some of these companies before. Animation, Inc. was run by Earl Klein, ex-layout man for Chuck Jones. Playhouse Pictures was, more or less, Bill Melendez` baby at one time. Pantomime Pictures later made the Roger Ramjet cartoons. Ray Patin was a former Warners and Disney animator. In New York, Pelican Films’ big creative guy was Jack Zander, Elektra Films was operated by Abe Liss, an ex-UPA artist, while HFH was owned by Howard Henkin, Ronald Fritz and Dan Hunn. And the Albuquerque company was, in 1960, creatively run by Dan Bessie, an ex-assistant animator at MGM.

Television Age included news blurbs about commercial or animation production, usually mentioning executives. The May 2nd issue has line of note: “Stephen Muffatti, formerly with Transfilm, Inc., has been appointed director of commercials for Terrytoons, Inc.” Mufatti went back much further, employed at the Fleischer studio and directing Cubby Bear cartoons for Van Beuren.

Even more interesting are the following two items: “Format Films has added several new staffers to work on the Popeye series being animated for King Features. Hanna-Barbera Productions is in negotiation with CBS-TV for a 90-minute animated Huckleberry Hound spectacular.” How far Hanna-Barbera got on the Huck special is anyone's guess, but you have to wonder where the studio found the staff to work on it. The Flintstones was in production, and that would have taken up much of the studio's efforts. The Format staff members added are not mentioned, but the April 12, 1960 edition of the Hollywood Reporter said Harris Steinbrook, Doris Collins and Ruben Apodaca (assistant animators), Evelyn Sherwood and Jane Phillipi (checkers) and Boris Gorelick (background) had been hired to work under Jack Kinney.

It also mentioned awards by the Art Directors’ Club of New York, with a gold medal going to an animated spot for Instant Butter-Nut coffee produced by Stan Freberg and awards of distinctive merit to Alex Anderson and Fred Crippen for a cartoon commercial for Rival Dog Food Co., produced by Pantomime, and an Olin Mathieson Chemical Corp. spot by Saul Bass produced by Playhouse.

Here’s another strip of frames.



Since we’re passing along cartoon news from May 2, 1960, allow me to give you items from the pages of The Hollywood Reporter of that date:

Format Doing Nine Spots
Hebert Klynn, president of Format Films, has signed contracts to do a series of nine animated cartoon TV spots for the Reddi-Starch Co. Leo Salkin will direct the spots, and June Foray, Shepard Menkin and Paul Frees have been signed to record them.

Jay Ward Expands
Jay Ward Productions moves tomorrow to larger quarters at 8218 Sunset Blvd. Move is being made to accommodate a staff of 125 artists, who are preparing three new animated TV series.

Cartoon Strip For TV
New York.—Affiliated Television Productions has acquired rights to the cartoon strip “There Oughta Be a Law” from the McClure Newspaper Syndicate, syndicated in newspapers in over 180 markets. It will be made into a half-hour animated series for national sponsorship.

Among the Ward projects was Super Chicken, which finally became part of the George of the Jungle series toward the end of the decade. Format was still a year away from getting The Alvin Show on TV while the Oughta project was one of a number which was either never made or never sold.