Cartoon Dollar Days

Despite unionised jobs in the cartoon business, there were animators in the Golden Age took on side work. Some were hired for uncredited animation for other studios (UPA’s pre-UPA cartoons, the Jerky Journeys and Bob Clampett’s short for Republic come to mind). Others drew artwork or wrote stories for comic books.

Then there’s the case of Ken Champin, who worked for several years on newspaper panel ads for a Hollywood business association.

It’s regretful that little is known about Champin, whose name you will probably recognise from the Friz Freleng unit at Warner Bros. I have never found an interview with him. You’ll have to pardon the brevity of this snapshot; I suspect Devon Baxter has looked into him and has found additional information.

Kenneth Ferdinand Champin was born on August 11, 1911 in Clifton, New Jersey, at the time a small town about four miles from Passaic, to Ferdinand (Fred) and Eleanor Champin. The family moved to San Diego in 1918, where his father co-owned and opened the Liberty grocery stores and died at the end of the year at the age of 29. He and his mother moved in with an aunt in Pasadena. His mother later re-married.

The only mention of him in the local press is in a story in 1928 that he had signed to play tenor saxophone with the Box Scout band in the La Canada valley. Champin attended Glendale Union High School and was the staff cartoonist for the Stylus. The 1930 Census reveals he was an 18-year-old grocery clerk. He married in 1932.

The 1936 Glendale directory gives his occupation as “attdt Forest Lawn.” It would appear he started in animation in 1937 as in 1987, he was honoured for 50 years in the business at the Motion Picture Cartoonists Golden Awards banquet. The very first edition of the Leon Schlesinger Studio’s internal newspaper, The Exposure Sheet (Jan. 1939), announced the birthday of Champin’s son Jim on February 28, 1938. The younger Champin ended up in the animation business as well.

Unfortunately, the newsletter (published in 1939-40) has little to say about him. He was part of a studio table tennis team that included Bob Matz, Dick Thomas and Bob Holdeman. He appeared in one of the studio’s Sketch Pad comedies before Christmas 1939.

Champin’s first screen credit for animation was in Daffy–The Commando, released Nov. 28, 1943. The final short with his name is Pests For Guests, released January 29, 1955. This was apparently animated before the cartoon studio shut down for the last six months of 1953.

Sources on-line indicate Champin drew some Disney comic books and (in conjunction with ex-Warners artist/writer Dave Hoffman) a Tom and Jerry colouring book. Much of his time in the late ‘50s and 1960s was spent in commercial animation. Television magazine of Sept. 5, 1960 reported on the creation of Filmfair “by several executives formerly with Ray Patin Productions.” One was Champin, who was named their animation director and was later a vice-president.

He passed away on Feb. 25, 1989 in Palm Springs.

(No, I didn’t “forget” other credits. This is not a filmography. You can find lists elsewhere on-line).

In 1920, the Merchantors’ Division of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce came up with a semi-annual Dollar Day. Not only did businesses take out full-page ads in the Hollywood Citizen-News, it commissioned a one-panel cartoon to comically promote it. Champin was the artist. Here are some of the examples.

January 26, 1937

January 29, 1937

July 27, 1937

July 26, 1938

July 27, 1938

July 28, 1938

July 29, 1938

Here is a week’s worth from May 1939. Champin shows a good sense of composition. I really like his struggling horses pulling a streetcar.

May 15, 1939

May 16, 1939

May 17, 1939

May 18, 1939

May 19, 1939

There are actually quite a number of others ending, it seems, on May 16, 1941 with a couple of Africans. I don’t want to make this post too long, so we’ll end with these. Toward the end, Champin focuses on World War Two (Pearl Harbor hasn’t happened yet).

July 31, 1939

August 1, 1939

August 2, 1939

August 4, 1939

October 12, 1939

October 14, 1939

February 3, 1940

January 27, 1941

May 13, 1941

May 14, 1941

May 15, 1941

Friz Freleng lived long enough where he was honoured and interviewed many times over later in life. So was Virgil Ross, who spent a large portion of his career in the Freleng unit. Champin doesn't seem to have been as fortunate, but perhaps this fills in a few blanks.

Ruth Buzzi

One of the great strengths of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In was everyone did something unique. Jo Anne Worley was brassy. Goldie Hawn was a ditz. Judy Carne was picked on. And Ruth Buzzi came up with an ugly old maid character and took it all over the TV dial years after Laugh-In was laid to rest.

Laugh-In made stars out of the ensemble cast, but they all had been around the block a few times. Buzzi had shown up on Marlo Thomas’ That Girl series (in another case of being on fewer episodes than one recalls) and, before that, voiced Granny Goodwitch in Linus the Lionhearted.

She passed away yesterday at age 88.

This profile hit the news wires when Laugh-In was in its second season, December 20, 1968.

Ruth Buzzi Is Repulsed by Own Laugh-in Character
By VERNON SCOTT
United Press International
HOLLYWOOD – The most courageous woman in all of show business is Ruth Buzzi, the misbegotten old baggage of “The Rowan and Martin Laugh-In" Show.
The NBC-TV top rated series features Miss Buzzi as a forelorn old maid in futile search for a man—any man.
But even the Boston strangler would recoil at sight of Gladys Ormphby, the character played by Miss Buzzi. By comparison, Phyllis Diller is a bewitching beauty.
Gladys has a face that would top a sundial.
The thought of her in a bikini would sicken a marooned sailor. She is the repulsive female loser, a modern Medusa.
While Miss Ormphby is a real dog, Miss Buzzi is an attractive, charming young lady from Wequetequock, Conn., who frets at the thought viewers think Ormphby is the real Buzzi.
"GLADYS IS SO repulsive I can barely watch her on the show," Ruth said the other day.
"She wears a tight hairnet and is completely stripped of makeup. To make her even more convincing I brush my eyebrows together so they meet above my nose. Then I dress in a baggy dress, a boy's sweater, brown lisle cotton stockings for women over 90 and black oxfords with laces and Cuban heels.
"Gladys Ormphby is utterly without style. And you'd be surprised how many people think that's the real me."
Ruth Invented Gladys when she was playing the role of Agnes Gooch in a road company version of "Auntie Mame" in Pennsylvania. When she appeared on stage for the first time in her revolting costume she stopped the show cold. The audience laughed for 10 minutes.
“I had to turn my back to the audience in every performance to stop the laughter," Ruth said with pride.
“When I left the show I decided to keep the character, but I had to give her a new name. I was working at my desk as a secretary between acting jobs and I dreamed up Gladys Ormphby.
"I played the character a couple of years ago on the old Carol Burnett Show, 'The Entertainers.' But she didn't speak."
RUTH WAS ASKED why, if Gladys is so man-hungry, she repulses the passes of Arte Johnson, who plays the old lech in the park bench sketches on "Laugh-In.”
"Look," Ruth said. "No woman, no matter how desperate, would allow that dirty old man to get near her—not even Gladys."
Ruth confuses viewers who aren’t quite certain whether Gladys and Ruth are separate people on the show because Miss Buzzi frequently appears in routines as herself.
"About 90 per cent of the time I'm Gladys," Ruth said mournfully. "The rest of the time I'm me."
And Ruth Buzzi wants the whole world to know that.

She talked a little less about Gladys in this feature story in the Charlotte News of December 7, 1968. With the American election over, Ruth expressed the same opinion as executive producer George Schlatter about a famous guest shot.

There’s No Hairnet To Be Seen
Boo-Boo Gave Ruth Buzzi Funny 'Laugh-In' Skit
By EMERY WISTER
News Entertainment Writer
HOLLYWOOD— "If Hubert Humphrey had accepted our invitation to appear on the 'Laugh-In' TV show, he and not Richard Nixon would have been elected President."
The speaker was Ruth Buzzi, the plain-Jane girl with the hairnet on her head who yocks it up with the rest of the gang on the NBC-WSOC laughfest each Monday night.
"If Mr Humphrey had done it he would have been elected," she repeated, sipping on her orange juice at a mid-morning breakfast. "We made a pitch to get him. He came out to the NBC studio to tape a newscast. But we couldn't get to him. We couldn't get any farther than his aides and they said no.
"NIXON DID the bit, the sock-it-to-me thing, I mean. But it was done with taste. The fact we had Nixon say 'Sock it to me? as a question made the difference. That made it tasteful."
And the show's publicist, sitting at the table with her, confirmed her opinion by saying that Humphrey's refusal to appear on the new show was "a colossal mistake."
"It's not a very nice thing to think that a simple thing like that could influence the election but with so many people hesitating to go one way or the other, it could have had an effect." he said.
Now, how about the off-screen Ruth Buzzi? Is she the same homely mournfully man-hungry girl she is on the air?
NOT ON your life. She's a short, bouncy lass and though not pretty is decidely on the attractive side. And there's no hairnet to be seen.
"Tell you about that," she giggled as she poured herself another cup of coffee. "I was putting on a net one morning and got it on wrong. But it looked so funny just decided to leave it.
"A lot of men may not know what it is but all the women will. Some people say it makes me look as though I have a bullet hole in the head."
Does she write the funny lines she says on the show? Well— "I have to give the writers credit," she said. "They create the material. But some of the funniest things I have done I thought of myself."
Until the "Laugh-In" came along, practically no one had heard of Ruth Buzzi. She was just another face in the crowds of shows on and off Broadway in New York. She was featured in the production of "Sweet Charity" and wound up in Hollywood mainly because the show closed there.
l YOU WOULDN'T believe her home town.
"Write it down," she said. "It's Wequetock, Conn. That's near New London."
She was in Julius Monk's "Baker's Dozen" show in New York's Plaza Hotel and later worked on the Garry Moore "The Entertainers" and Mario Thomas "That Girl" TV shows. And then came the "Laugh-In."
"We started with a special and then they brought us back for the series," she said. "I thought the thing was sheer bedlam at first but I was never so wrong. I have to remind myself now that it's work.
"Our morale is great. We have so many people no one has to learn very many lines. That keeps us all relaxed. We all had a tight schedule on the Marlo Thomas show and believe me I can appreciate what I have now. I had no life of my own shooting “That Girl.”
WHAT KIND of schedule does she have now? Well, the “Laugh-In” parties are taped each Wednesday at noon. They rehearse on three other days and that’s about it.
“People may think it’s tougher this year since we have parties in the beginning of each half hour instead of just one in the beginning. But the only thing different is we split it up. Before we each had two lines to say in one party. Now we have one line in each of the two segments. So it’s the same thing.
“To make it easier, we have cue card holders off camera to help us with our lines. Actually, we tape from 60 to 65 minutes of material a week. Nothing is thrown away.”
And there’s the thing that the producers call “The Library.”
“That’s when they bring in those celebrities,” she said. “They tape those things at various times. That’s why I’m not working today. We have so much material in the library they gave us the day off. And we have two weeks off at Christmas plus the summer vacation.

When Laugh-In left the air (she and Gary Owens were the only originals remaining besides Rowan and Martin), she turned to cartoons and children's programming. She explained why in this story syndicated by the Washington Post. One paper printed this on Christmas Day 1993.

'Laugh-In' regular joins ‘Sesame Street.’
Ruth Buzzi, long active in children's TV, plays the owner of Finder's Keepers thrift shop.
By Scott Moore
WASHINGTON POST
The image of dowdy Gladys Ormphby may be etched into the minds of many adults, but Ruth Buzzi has found a new identity among viewers too young to remember her many roles on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1968-73).
Buzzi, 57, brought on board with seven new Muppets for the 25th season of PBS's Sesame Street, plays the proprietor of the Finder's Keepers thrift shop.
"It's me," Buzzi said of the Ruthie character, who explores the shop's treasures and entertains children and Muppets with her storytelling.
"I love this opportunity to be me. Plus, there's nothing better than being able to be you and also be other characters. Because then, when people see you being a character and being yourself, I think they can enjoy more what you're able to do."
Though she has not been as visible in her post-Laugh-In career as co-stars Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin, Buzzi has been busy with children's programming.
"Agents don't like it, because there's not enough money in it for them, but I always like to do children's shows because to me it's like money in the bank for the future," she said. "The children grow up very, very quickly, and before you know it, you have fans who are adults. I'm not afraid to act like a nut for kids. I love to make them laugh."
In addition to her scheduled 40 appearances this season on Sesame Street (which runs three times a day weekdays and twice a day on Saturdays and Sundays on Channel 12), Buzzi provides the voice of an Neanderthal woman in the Children's Television Workshop-produced Cro. The animated science and technology program airs Saturdays on ABC (8 a.m., Channel 6).
She also has provided voices for Linus the Lion-Hearted, The Beren-stain Bears, Pound Puppies, Paw-Paws and The Nitwits (with Laugh-In's Artie Johnson), and appeared in nine movies. She has won four Emmy nominations along the way.
To teenagers, Buzzi is known as the mother of Screech in NBC's Saved by the Bell. Her picture sits in his dormitory room on the new Saved by the Bell: The College Years.
Buzzi obviously likes the work, though the current Sesame Street role almost didn't come about. "They tried to get me [for a guest spot] about 10 years ago, but my agent at the time said I wasn't interested." Not true, she said.
Luckily, Sesame Street writer Judy Freudberg suggested that they try to get Buzzi for the show's new cast located "around the corner" from Sesame's main street.
"Not only are they giving me a chance to be crazy funny for the kids ... they're also allowing me to do things every now and then that are delicate, and I can show a sweet, easy side of myself," Buzzi said. "I love it when I have a reason to have to put my hand on a little Muppet and feel sorry for it or try to make it understand a point."
That's not to say there is no Gladys Ormphby zaniness. Last month, in acting out a fairy tale about a grouchy princess, Buzzi even incorporated some of Gladys' apparel.
"They asked me if I would be willing to do [Gladys] a couple times on the show. I said absolutely. The original dress is put away, but ... I'm wearing the original shoes and the original sweater, which is getting really, beat up.
"The designers of this show ... are looking to see if they can find me another sweater like the Gladys sweater. What I got originally was a boy's sweater ... but for some reason or another they're just not making brown cardigans for boys anymore. I can kind of see why, can’t you? Who would want to wear one?"

Moo To You

On paper, it looked like a great idea.

Amadee Van Beuren decided to get out of the third-rate cartoon business, and hired Three Little Pigs director Burt Gillett to bring Disney magic to his cartoon studio.

It was a disaster.

The Van Beuren studio didn’t only need Disney calibre artists. It needed Disney calibre characters and stories.

What Van Beuren got was a weak live-action/animation combination, pointless cartoons with parrots, and a new star—Molly Moo Cow.

Molly was kind of a silent character, in that she didn’t talk. She mooed like she was belching and her cowbell was an annoying distraction by clattering half of the time.

And although Van Beuren was assembling a staff of good young artists, the drawings looked pretty ugly at times. Here’s a frame from Molly Moo Cow and the Indians (1935)



Whoever wrote this for directors Gillett and Tom Palmer is going for either drama or pathos in this scene. Molly is in tears, pleading with the Indian to save the lives of the two ducks he wants to eat.



Finally, the Indian throws the hoof-in-mouth Molly out of the scene. Someone should have done the same thing with the footage.



Gillett or someone must have realised things like the Molly, the Parrotville cartoons and the “Toddle Tales” shorts were not entertaining. They were all short-lived. The studio purchased rights to established characters like Felix the Cat (who talked) and the denizens of Fontaine Fox’s Toonerville (including the Trolley).

People on staff like Dan Gordon and Joe Barbera could have developed them into solid characters, but RKO had seen enough. It signed a deal with Walt Disney, effectively scuttling the cartoon studio it partly owned (Van Beuren continued with live-action shorts for another year).
Barbera, Carlo Vinci and others found work at Terrytoons. One of their cartoons featured a very familiar-looking cow.

Don't Ask Bugs Any Questions

There are fine expressions and a mystery surrounding the end of Rabbit Every Monday, a 1951 release from the Friz Freleng unit at Warner Bros.

Yosemite Sam forces Bugs Bunny into an old oven to cook him. The tricky rabbit manages to convince Sam there’s a party with “goils asking for you” inside. He helps the enthusiastic Sam into the oven and slams the door shut. See the glee on Bugs’ face.



“Imagine him fallin’ for a gag like that,” Bugs remarks to us cartoon-watchers.



But then is overcome with regret, which he also tells us. Note the expressions again.



Bugs tells Sam to come out, that the party is only a gag. A balloon floats out of the oven. See the anticipation then the extreme.



Cut to the “inside” of the oven.



Take.



More delight from Bugs, this time as he dives into the party.



Bugs emerges to talk to us one last time in an attempt to explain how his made-up party became the real thing. He indulges in the old Jerry Colonna catchphrase from the Bob Hope radio show: “I don’t ask questions. I just have fun.” And we get more expressions, a wink and a laugh as he goes back into the oven and the iris closes.



The credited animators are Manny Perez, Ken Champin, Virgil Ross and Art Davis. Who isn’t credited is the writer.

The Warner Club News of December 1948 announced Bugs Hardaway’s hiring as a writer for Freleng. E.O. Costello's research has found Hardaway was "laid off" in April 1949. Then the News of May 1949 reported Freleng and Bob McKimson had switched writers, with Warren Foster going to the Freleng unit and McKimson being given Tedd Pierce. This and another cartoon made at this time have no story credit. Afterwards, one Freleng short gave a co-credit to Cal Howard and another had a credit to Hardaway before Foster appears regularly on the Freleng cartoons. (The 1950 Census has no occupation for Hardaway; his wife ran a restaurant).

The story is a little unusual. Someone will correct me, but I think this is the only short where Sam behaves like Elmer Fudd, in that he wants to hunt and eat the rabbit.

Paul Julian painted the backgrounds from Hawley Pratt’s layouts.