Hand-Bashing

Shamus Culhane takes his time in a hand-bashing scene in Reckless Driver, a Woody Woodpecker cartoon released in 1946.

Wally Walrus slowly reaches off-scene to grab a mallet, while Woody looks coy. As four hands are held in place, Wally nods three times, then Wally is held while Woody blinks twice.



How deliberate is Culhane’s timing? He takes 116 frames from going to the above drawing to the one two drawings below where his hand has very slowly moved and Wally has shifted to the right of the scene.



From the drawing above to the drawing below, there are four in-betweens, animated on ones.



Then Culhane takes his time some more. It is 20 frames between the drawing above and when Wally smashes his fingers. This gives Woody plenty of time to move his hand and start filing his nails. (Note the “paw” in-between. It and the next drawing are consecutive).



The rest is all reactions. Wally looks down. Then he realises. His eyes form little mountains at Woody. Then at the mallet. Now he’s in pain. Culhane has Wally walk in pain, turning 360 degrees.



These are consecutive drawings. It’s evident a different animator works on the next scene.



Culhane directed only one more cartoon before Lantz laid him off. Les Kline and Grim Natwick are the credited animators. Terry Lind gets a background credit.

Money Can Be a Headache

Fred Finchley got a raise. What should he do with that extra money?

A TV announcer tells him: “You could spent it on a couple of nights out a week with the wife.” A champagne cork pops out, lands on a cymbal which dissolves into Finchley and his wife dancing to Dixieland music.



The scene dissolves again to a snare drum being rolled. “This seems like a lot of fun,” declares the narrator.



This is from the John Sutherland cartoon Working Dollars. The Sutherland cartoons drew their humour from juxtaposing the dialogue with the action on the screen. The drumsticks remain on the screen while the drum dissolves into Fred Finchley. The drumsticks then dissolve into an ice pack on his head. Clearly, it is not “a lot of fun.”



Sutherland co-wrote the story with former MGM director George Gordon and future Rocky and Bullwinkle producer Bill Scott.

Emery Hawkins, George Cannata and Jim Pabian are the credited animators. Ed Starr painted the backgrounds for director Carl Urbano.

Marvin Miller provides the voices of everyone except the stockbroker, who sounds familiar, but I can’t name him. The Langlois Filmusic library is heard in the background, and among the cues are “Comedy Suspense,” “School Life” and “Walking Briskly.”

The March 1956 edition of The Exchange put out by the New York Stock Exchange said previews of “Working Dollars” were held simultaneously in 19 cities on February 20, and prints were available free from Modern Talking Picture Service, Inc. It would be nice if one of those prints surfaced because the one generally found (without a time code) is pretty beat up (a better version of Sutherland’s Make Mine Freedom would be nice, too).

Before Making a Deal to Make a Deal

When you hear the name “Monty Hall,” the first thing that will pop into your mind is Let's Make a Deal. Before it went on the air, Hall hosted another game show called Video Village, which I watched on Saturdays (we had a home version of the game too).

But there was a third game show at the time connected with Hall. It was an NBC outing called Your First Impression which aired from the start of 1962 to mid-1964. Hall wasn’t the host. He and Art Stark produced the show; Stark moved to The Tonight Show in April 1963.

To get a flavour of the show if you never saw it, here is Allen Rich’s column in the Valley News of June 20, 1962. Play along if you’d like.

TV Editor Plays First Impression
Studio City's Monty Hall, a former emcee of such high-rolling quiz and game shows as Strike It Rich, Twenty One and also of the only recently departed Video Village, is co-creator-packager and executive producer of Your First Impression.
It took Mr. Hall three and a half years to get this daytime show on the air (NBC) and I would be tempted to go out on a limb and predict great success for it, except for one thing.
It is a very intelligent show, and even a tyro in the TV jungle knows you are flirting with danger when you put an intelligent show on daytime television.
Daytime TV belongs mostly to the inane emcee, the stumbling contestant, the silly game and the ever-so-bright, "Ha, ha, so you're from Brooklyn" quip.
FORMAT OF Your First Impression is simple and diverting.
The panel tries to guess the identity of a mystery guest by firing incomplete questions at the unseen subject. The guest must answer within two seconds or the question doesn't count. Then are no prizes, no competition.
The game may best be explained by repeating some of the recent instant answers furnished by the guests.
The incomplete question asked of the guest is listed first, followed by the guest's answer, and then name. As follows:
There ought to be a law . . . Against intolerance—Sammy Davis, Jr.
When I see a married man flirt . . . God bless him —Andy Griffith.
I can't stand a man who doesn't . . . Look—Marie Wilson.
A female lawyer ... Talk, talk, talk—Dr. Frank Baxter.
It's a mistake to . . . Get married — George Jessel. (Well, he should know!)
The morning series, emceed by Bill Leyden, is luring onto the air such guests as Davis, Milton Berle, Gordon MacRae, Nick Adams, Chuck Connors and others of equal stature. Panelists past, present and future are the likes of Lorne Green, Jan Sterling, Pat Carroll, Paul Winchell, Jim Backus, Abby Dalton and the etc.
AFTER MR. Hall gave me these names and felt confident I would plug his show he looked at me cunningly and said, "Now we will have some fun. We, you and I, will play the game. I'll ask the questions . . . you give me the instant answers.
I said, okay, but let me call my regular psychiatrist first. The request was denied.
The questions are in light-face type—my answers in bold face. Here they are.
A friend . . .
What's that?
I Need money . . .
Not again.
My Editor is . . .
Great, simply great. (He may read this . . . I hope!)
Lights are low and the music is soft . . .
Go to sleep.
"Well," I asked brightly, “would your panelists be able to identify me from my answers?"
"Oh, yes indeed," commenced Hall. "Most revealing. They would know you are a fellow without friends who always needs money and is too old for women."
I am now trying to forget the whole thing.
Intelligent game, indeed!

Video Village had gone off the air on June 15. In this newspaper syndicate story from May 4, Hall talks about producing, though he admitted he liked hosting more. This is even though he began Monty Hall Productions in Canada after quitting CBC radio in 1949 and was soon under contract to Colgate-Palmolive to produce and perform in their show. (Yes, "America's Big Dealer" was a Canadian).

Monty Hall Prefers To Emcee TV Shows
By HAROLD STERN
NEW YORK — John F. Kennedy may not wear any hats, but the hat industry can take some consolation in the fact that TV personality Monty Hall is a man who wears two hats. On CBS-TV, Monty is the daily host of "Video Village." On NBC-TV, Monty is the producer of the daily "Your First Impression."
According to Monty, emceeing is preferable to producing.
"When you're a producer, you have all the headaches," he said. "When your show is on the air and something goes wrong, you're powerless. On 'Video Village,' I'm on top of the show constantly and I have a good working relationship with my producers. Yes, I tell you, a producer is a worrisome thing."
Don't let him kid you, Monty Hall does enjoy being the producer of a show that's on the air, particularly of a well-received show.
"I didn't explain the show to NBC," he said. "I demonstrated it and sold it immediately. It's literally an analysis game. It uses psychology and doesn't give away a thing. It calls for mental agility and the ability to associate and to literally give your first impression.
"I think NBC should be congratulated for taking a chance on the show," Monty remarked. "It's nighttime TV in the daytime. In fact. NBC has had us prepare a nighttime budget for the show, so we have our fingers crossed.
"I've had a lot of fun working on the show and meeting all the people we've had on it," Monty said. "We've used over 200 personalities during our first 26 weeks, including just about every TV star."
Since the show involves the analysis of a personality on the basis of the compilation of ideas, without knowing who the personality is, the show is taped ahead and occasionally, though not often, deletions are made in the completed tape. Such deletions are made on the grounds of taste.
Lists Deletions
For example, one of the personalities (name withheld for obvious reasons) competed the thought "Fat men are . . ." with, "overbearing and pugnacious like William Morris agents." That was deleted.
Another deletion took place while Dinah Shore was in the booth and one of the panelists said: "It couldn't be Dinah Shore because this person loves her husband and Dinah Shore couldn't care if her husband lived or died."
Another time, a former movie star was in the booth and a panelist said: "This person is either very old or very dull," That went in a hurry.
A couple of statements that remained were one by panelist Dennis James who remarked: "This woman is over the hill" while Nina Foch was concealed in the booth, and a comment by guest Kathy Nolan who completed the thought: "The worst thing that's happened to this country was . . ." and she tossed in: "John F. Kennedy."
Kennedy fans will be pleased to note that Miss Nolan was recently fired by "The Real McCoys."

Hall had to wait until Dec. 30, 1963 for his game show hosting job. The pilot for Let’s Make a Deal is below. Note the funny, attention-grabbing contestant costumes were in the future, and the announcer is not former ABC staffer Jay Stewart; it’s the man who pushed Pepsodent on the Bob Hope radio show.

Cuckoo Kitten

It’s good some attention is being paid to the mid-1930s Warners cartoons so they’re upgraded from laser disc and VHS dubs to something more pristine.

But funny? Uh….

In The Cat Came Back, a kitten is being swept away in the sewage system. A cuckoo clock drifts into the scene. The kitten tries to grasp it. The cuckoo bird comes out. The kitten swats at it (never making contact). Apparently it was so funny the first time, it happens again with the same animation.



The third time, the bird pecks at the kitten before going back inside and the clock continues its journey over top of the cat.



Yeah, that’s the gag.

Friz pulls off one of those surprise turnabouts at the end where the happy cat and mouse families start fighting again (and why is the mother mouse the same size as the mother cat?)

The restoration is a Blue Ribbon (13 re-issues were released in 1943-44 because of a lack of raw film stock; this was one of them). This means there are no credits, though Jerry Beck must have seen a print with them as his book with Will Friedwald lists Bob McKimson and Ben Clopton as the animators.

There is no mistaking the score is by Norman Spencer, arranged by Norman Spencer, Jr. It features his beloved backbeat woodblock, and double-timed theme song played by muted trumpets in the “chase” portion. Spencer’s music, together with the squealy voice of Berneice Hansell, the Rhythmettes quietly crooning the opening song, and the concentration on kid animals makes this an atypical mid-‘30s Merrie Melodies short.

Iron Ball, Folks

There’s a narrator (John Wald) in Batty Baseball but Tex Avery and his anonymous writer are content to let the action do a lot of the talking.

There are a number of “pitching” gags. This one involves the pitcher hurling a shot put instead of a baseball. The force of nature causes the bat to shake when the heavy ball hits it.

What to do next?

Simple. The vibration from the bat transfers to the batter, then along the ground to the pitcher. Avery’s animator tosses in reaction expressions along the way.



Being a Tex Avery cartoon, there has to be a sign and commentary to the audience on the action. In the scene below, you can feel the weight as the pitcher struggles to lift the ball, dropping it at one point. A caption appears on screen, the pitcher gets some comic relief from it, and comments to us “Good joke!” before guffawing like Goofy (He’s played by Pinto Colvig so that shouldn’t be a surprise. Maybe Pinto helped with the gags).



My guess is Ed Love is responsible for the above scene. Preston Blair and Ray Abrams supplied animation as well.

The Blanc Two-Step

An almost fatal car accident didn’t stop Mel Blanc. (You can read an account about it in this Yowp post).

He continued recording voices for Hanna-Barbera and Warner Bros. He had formed Mel Blanc Enterprises to produce humorous commercials. And there was a happy, Christmas-time reunion on the Jack Benny television show in 1961.

But he obviously slowed down. In looking through newspapers in the first half of 1963, I can find only two on-camera appearances—one with Benny and another, somewhat improbably, with Arthur Godfrey.

Godfrey had been ubiquitous on CBS television in the 1950s. Things had changed by the end of the decade, perhaps because of the discovery that he wasn’t as charming and laid back in real life as he was on camera. It didn’t quite kill his career. He co-hosted part of a season on Candid Camera in 1960 before walking off annoyed at the show’s owner, Allen Funt (who didn’t have much good to say about Godfrey, either).

The network was still interested in Godfrey’s talents and signed him to host specials. One in early 1963 featured Blanc. It turned out the two men had something in common, as Earl Wilson reported in his column of March 8, 1963. As you might have expected, Blanc had a Jack Benny story.

INJURED, BUT THEY'LL DANCE
Arthur Godfrey and Mel Blanc—each survivor of a near fatal auto accident, each held together by silver plates and pins—will try to forget March 18 that they've had to use canes . . . and will try to dance on TV.
Mel Blanc, while still on a cane, learned about this ambitious undertaking when he reported to the big red-head Arthur (who’ll be 60 in July) for rehearsal for CBS' "Arthur Godfrey Loves Animals" TV show.
"Tell me about your accident," Arthur said first.
"Well, this leg here had 22 breaks in it . . . I had five fractures in my spine . . . I was unconscious for 21 days . . . they kept telling my wife, Estelle, that I couldn't make it . . . she'd cry and beg them 'Please don't say THAT!" . . . there were 18 doctors on duty at the UCLA Medical Clinic . . . practically all of them worked on me . . . I was in a cast eight months, but it was two months before they could put me in a cast . . . “I've still got six silver screws through my leg . . .”
Blanc’ll do Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Speedy Gonzales, and Pepe Le pew, the French skunk, as well as the sound of Jack Benny’s expiring Maxwell, on the Godfrey show.
"THE ONE MAN who never forgot us when I didn't know whether I'd pull through," Mel said, "was Jack Benny. He’s come to see us every 10 days."
“One night we were having chicken-in-the-pot in the kitchen. He said he had to go to dinner at Dave Chasen's, but he'd just have some soup with us. Pretty soon he said he'd have dinner with us, and have dessert at Chasen's. Then Estelle brought out dessert and he said ‘Never mind, I’ll just have coffee at Chasen’s.’ He wound up going to Chasm's for an after-dinner drink."

A news release about the special said “With Mel Blanc, Arthur gets a taste of the wiles of Bugs Bunny when the sassy rabbit tried to fast-talk him into a television appearance while Sylvester and Pepe Le Pew interrupt with idea of their own.” The Boston Globe’s review added Blanc demonstrated the voices of “Sweetie Pie” and “baby Deeno.” Percy Shain evidently needed to watch more cartoons.

There was an interesting and unique follow-up to this story in the Fremont Tribune of June 17, 1963. The columnist in this Nebraska newspaper was not an entertainment writer. He was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. We’ll leave him with the last line, again showing the selflessness of a supposed 39-year-old.

Reflections
Two Entertainers Offer Lesson in Enduring Woe
By CHARLES S. RYCKMAN
The capacity for achieving amazing triumphs over physical handicaps seems to be in some people in proportion to the severity of the disability. The most complaining and despairing sometimes are those with minor and temporary impairment of their bodily faculties.
Those with major loss of physical powers, and especially those with long and perhaps permanent experience with agonizing suffering, often rise to the highest peaks of endurance and accomplish the greatest degree of mastery over the tragedies with which they must live for the remainder of their years.
The current activities of two great entertainers offer vivid illustration of these facts. Radio and television personality Arthur Godfrey is one. The movie and TV veteran Mel Blanc is the other. They appeared together on Godfrey's television program in March, supporting themselves on canes. They danced, told jokes, kidded each other and themselves, treating their own disabilities so lightly and casually that viewers had little understanding of the bitter hell both men have known, and still must know as long as they live.
Arthur Godfrey was an auto accident victim many years ago. He has had so many operations he has lost all count. His body is so pieced and patched that what he was born with and what now holds him together are so intermingled that identification, like the lady's hair color and her hairdresser, is known only to his surgeons.
* * *
Mel Blanc went down into his purgatory by the same route, but much later. One leg had 22 fractures. There were five breaks in his spine. He was unconscious for 21 days. It took two months to get him in condition to wear a cast, and he wore the cast for eight months. He still has six silver screws in the formented leg.
But you knew mighty little of this as they danced, gagged and entertained millions of people. They themselves seemed scarecely conscious of the tortured road by which, they had come. They know about it, well enough. Neither is a stranger to pain and fear nor ever will be again.
And, for a wry item, of all Mel Blanc's friends only one was a constant visitor at his bedside through-out the long months of his ordeal. That was comedian Jack Benny, who works so hard to develop an image of himself as a selfish man.

Bell, Book and Wood

The “books come to life” cartoons at Warner Bros. always gave the opportunity for the background artist to sneak in a reference to cartoon studio staff. We’ve mentioned this about Bob Clampett’s Book Revue in this post. There’s a name we didn’t catch until now. Observe the author(ess) name on the fifth book from the left.



Raynelle Bell worked under Clampett at the “Katz” division in the 1930s (making a sojourn to Florida and the Fleischer studio before returning to the West Coast), and was his ink and paint supervisor when he opened Snowball and made the Beany and Cecil cartoons in 1962. Bell was a cousin of inker Dixie Mankameyer, who later married animator Paul J. Smith.

Raynelle was born January 21, 1916 in Kansas City, Missouri; her father was named Ray and her mother was named Nelle. The family moved to Tulsa in 1920 where her father ran Bell's Cafe on Third Street until 1927. The Tulsa papers in the ‘20s report she and Dixie were pupils of Rose Arnott Littlefield and took part in her recitals.

The Bells arrived in Los Angeles between 1928 and 1929. Raynelle was a graduate of Hollywood High School (where she led the volleyball team) and USC. While in the land of the Trojans, she received honourable mention for a poster in an “Art in America” contest. In 1935, she won a suntan contest sponsored by the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce.

She was remembered fondly by the wonderful inker and painter Martha Sigall in her autobiography, who said Warners hired Raynelle in August 1936.

When she got married in June 7, 1944 to Cpl. Franklin Eugene Day, she was employed by Walt Disney; Day had been a singer and employed at MGM before enlisting in 1941. She was back at Warners by early 1945, judging by the company's Club News photoshoot published in April that year. Evidently, she got out of the animation business to raise her two young children as she has no occupation next to her name in the 1950. Martha worked for her at Snowball, and later at Kurtz and Friends. Raynelle moved to Eugene, Oregon after retiring and died there on November 9, 2002.

The backgrounds in this cartoon were painted by Cornett Wood. A native of Indianapolis, Cornett Francis Wood was born September 12, 1905. He was a member of Troop 43 of the Boy Scouts as World War One was winding down. He attended Shortridge High School, where he was on the art staff for the high school annual. He entered a number of art contests and in 1925, he won a $130 winter scholarship given by the Indiana Poster Advertising Association.

Wood had the unfortunate situation in 1932 of testifying in the juvenile delinquency trial of his 17-year-old sister Vera who, it was claimed, held up either nine or eleven people with a toy pistol, was obsessed with crime novels, got angry easily and was addicted to cigarettes. “I think she is subnormal,” he told the court.

The Indianapolis Star of Sept. 8, 1933 gives a short biography in connection with a painting demonstration at the state fair art gallery:

Wood [was] a graduate of the [John] Herron art school in 1927 and later a student for one semester in the Pennsylvania academy under Daniel Garber and George Harding.
For two years Cornett Wood has been doing commercial art for the Bemis Brothers Bag Company. He designs pictures and lettering that are printed on the front of flour bags and coffee bags. In spare time he paints pastel portraits that are unusually artistic He had months experience as a sailor, following the period of advanced study in the Pennsylvania academy, when he shipped on a freighter with the American Export Line and went to Italy, remaining on the boat while it put in at ten or twelve Italian ports.

The Star reported on Sept. 15, 1936 that Wood was now in Los Angeles working for Walt Disney. A story in the Santa Barbera News-Press of Apr. 1, 1945 about a demonstration and lecture he was conducting about making animated cartoons said:

Wood is considered one of the outstanding artists in the field of animations. He worked at the Disney studio for nearly seven years, and during the past three years he has been made Warner Brothers’ cartoons. At present he is designing backgrounds, which is the stage for the characters.

Book Revue was the first Warners cartoon where Wood got a screen credit. After one more cartoon with Clampett, he was moved to Bob McKimson’s unit to handle layouts. He left the studio after making Dog Collared (released Dec. 2, 1951) and was replaced by Pete Alvarado.

He had an interesting distinction at Warners, at least according to the Dec. 23, 1949 edition of the Palm Springs Limelight-News, which called him the “well known creator of Bugs Bunny.”

In 1959, his name is found on two film strips made for the Girl Scouts of America.

Wood died May 16, 1980. He had been living in La Canada.

Clampett's name can be found on various books in the background of this cartoon. Perhaps the most interesting one is to the right of a comic book.



“Invisible Man” aptly describes Clampett at this point. The cartoon was released on January 5, 1946. The Warner Club News of June 1945 announced Art Davis had replaced Clampett as a director. Considering it took months to have Technicolor prints struck for completed cartoons, it’s likely Clampett was still at Warners when Wood painted the backgrounds. But it’s a neat coincidence.