We're Not Disney

Walt Disney had been praised in the 1930s (with some help from his publicists) for the creation of Mickey Mouse and his foray into feature-length cartoons. As theatrical animation approached 1950, people—certainly film critics—wanted something different.

They got it, thanks to UPA.

The studio’s art looked modern. The stories seemed more mature. And critics tired of what some people called “slapstick violence” pitting animated humanised animals against each other.

Among the commentaries about the studio’s work was a one-page article in the May 21, 1952 issue of Pathfinder, the magazine for American Boy Scouts.

Movies: no more cats hitting mice?
UPA’s Gerald and Mr. Magoo typify the new school of cartoons with ‘intelligent freshness’
Two years ago Theodor Seuss Geisel, a La Jolla, Calif., advertising man, writer and cartoonist, wrote some cute verses about a boy whose vocabulary was limited to the sound of a gong. All the little fellow could say was “boing.”
Children’s records made from Geisel’s verses were a flop, although as “Dr. Seuss” he had written and illustrated successful children’s books including And to Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street and 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. Undismayed, Geisel took the verses and the story idea to United Productions of America, a cartoon studio started seven years ago by Stephen Bosustow, a former Walt Disney artist. Bosustow liked the story and bought it for $500, the second cartoon ever to command so high a price.
Heart Tugs. The tragedy of Gerald’s peculiar speech affliction—other children would not play with him and his teacher sent him home from school—plus his winsome smile and three-pronged forelock (added by cartoon director Robert Cannon) won the hearts of millions of moviegoers.
Geisel and Cannon provided a happy ending for the cartoon called Gerald McBoing-Boing: Gerald tries to run away from home, but is stopped by a radio scout who hires him to be the station’s chimes. After that, Gerald rises to fame and fortune.
His creator’s story had a happy ending too. Last spring, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences selected Gerald McBoing-Boing as the best cartoon of 1950.
Myopic Star. But UPA had another ace up its artistic sleeve—nearsighted Mr. Magoo, an amiable old fumbler with good intentions. Already eight Magoo pictures have been shown, and currently a ninth (Fuddy Duddy Buddy) is in the making. Magoo, who was developed by UPA artist-director John Hubley, is good enough to rate marquee billing in many a movie house, a rarity generally reserved for Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny.
Meanwhile, Cannon, who did not want to make McBoing-Boing into a series, was persuaded by public reaction to the original cartoon to cast around for a new story. Last week he was hard at work putting the final touches to Gerald’s Symphony (to be released next fall), in which Gerald replaces an entire symphony orchestra.
What is the secret of UPA cartoon successes? Cannon explains:
“We are not interested in making cartoons of cats hitting mice over the head with clubs. That sort of thing is dead. We are trying to bring an intelligent freshness to cartoons, plus an application of modern contemporary art.”



Another one-page summary can be found in the Feb. 1, 1952 edition of The Art Digest in a story written by the film advisor to CBS.

UPA, Magoo & McBoing-Boing by Arthur Knight
The cartoons of Walt Disney have dominated American screens for the past 20 years, setting both the artistic and technical standards for the dozen or more companies that are at once his competitors and his imitators. The imitators press close. As soon as the Disney studios invent a new character, a reasonably exact facsimile appears in the cartoon series of the competition. Disney introduces the Multiplane camera, a device to give the illusion of depth to his two-dimensional world, and variations of that camera immediately turn up everywhere.
But much as they try, the imitators never quite overtake their master. Disney has always been willing to spend more money, to take more time, to shoot higher than any of the others. Clearly, the only thing that any new outfit coming into the field could do would be to attempt something that Disney himself does not. And that is just about the story of United Productions of America, more familiar as UPA, the creators of “Gerald McBoing-Boing’” and “The Near-Sighted Mr. Magoo.” What the UPA people have set out to do—what the Disney studios have been neglecting —is to make cartoons.
Somewhere along the line, after the tremendous push that Disney early gave to the entire animation field, the first principles of cartooning seem to have gotten lost. The cartoon, whether in art or in the funny papers, is a simplification the details of which may be distorted for emphasis. The cartoon makes no attempt to imitate life: rather, it exaggerates and satirizes and underscores. In the animated cartoon especially, this freedom of the artist to depart from pure representation into pure imagination becomes the very basis of the form. Why attempt to draw a world that can be photographed so much more easily? Yet Disney and his imitators have been moving persistently toward an increased naturalism in their cartoon films. They draw water that shimmers like water, rain that falls like rain, people who move like people. They even photograph live action, laboriously tracing its outlines to guide the movements of their cartoon people. Inevitably, the art of the cartoon has been lost in the woods of its technique.
With the old established companies blindly following Disney’s lead, it is impossible to guess where all of this might have ended. But UPA, founded in 1945 by Stephen Bosustow, was set up in conscious reaction against both the Disney style and the Disney method, the method of a large-scale movie factory. Himself a former Disney artist, Bosustow gained additional cartoon experience in the creation of visual aids for industry before the War. From simple illustrations he moved to slide films, then on to animations. During the War his “Few Quick Facts” for the Army newsreels and his Navy training films were outstandingly successful in getting information across to troops painlessly yet tellingly. UPA still does considerable work for both the Armed Services and for industry.



The keynote of the UPA films is simplicity, a technique which Bosustow relearned from the poster and the training illustration, and which he then returned to the cartoon film. One of the first UPA subjects to receive nation-wide attention was “Brotherhood of Man,” an ingenious and effective film argument for inter-racial, inter-cultural amity. As designed by John Hubley and Paul Julian, it emphasized the two-dimensionality of its characters, played with line and form and color. In many of the sequences, characters were no more than simple outline sketches.
In 1948 the young studio signed with Columbia Pictures to make a series of cartoons for theatrical distribution. At first they were constrained to use the sort of characters that turn up in conventional cartoon series—crows, foxes, bears, the usual barnyard personnel. But UPA refused to make its characters cute and cunning. “The Ragtime Bear,” for example, was a goggle-eyed, shaggy, simple-minded creature who only wanted to be left alone so that he could play his banjo. But soon the irascible Mr. Magoo—the first authentic caricature of a human in cartoons since “Koko the Clown”—put in his appearance, and he was followed by the prize - winning “Gerald McBoing-Boing.” UPA began to parody popular ballads, to satirize the gangster films, prepared modern versions of fables and legends. The animals have now all been returned to Disney and his confreres.
In all of UPA’s pictures, the creators’ familiarity with art, and particularly with modern art, is immediately apparent. In the recent “Family Circus” there is a dream sequence executed in a style reminiscent of the works of Klee or Miré. “The Oompahs,” their newest, tells the story of a family of brasses —Papa Tuba, Mamma Melophone and Junior Trumpet. All are delightfully stylized and grouped in patterns.
This is no accident, this familiarity with modern art. Many of the key figures on UPA’s small but gifted staff are men who have already won honors in the art world. John Hubley, now vice-president and supervising director of the organization, has exhibited at the Los Angeles and San Francisco Museums. Abe Liss, their production designer, is both a sculptor and painter. Paul Julian, designer and color expert for UPA, exhibits at the Los Angeles Museum and the Ferargil Galleries in New York. C, L. Hartman, an animator, has exhibited both at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the National Gallery in Washington. While Jules Engel, UPA’s color expert, won the purchase prize at the San Francisco Museum in 1950.
This same consciousness of modern art influences UPA’s choice of composers for their pictures. No baby-voiced sopranos lift their voices in soupy song hits here. The music is neat, efficient, expressive. It may be tuneful, but never hit-tuneful. Its writers are often the young moderns.
It is significant that the public has not merely accepted but welcomed these daringly different cartoons. A whole world of art separates their style from Disney’s, yet the mere appearance of the brightly colored UPA “Jolly Frolics” title card these days sets audiences twittering with the same delighted anticipation that once greeted a “Micky Mouse” or a “Silly Symphony.” A UPA industrial cartoon sponsored by Timken Bearings was so clever that it has been shown successfully in many regular theaters. “Bailing Out,” one of the UPA instructionals for the Navy, won acclaim at both the Edinburgh and Venice film festivals a year ago. And, as final proof of its popularity, UPA has grown in six years from a six-man outfit to an organization now employing over 75 people, has progressed from a cramped loft in a three-story walk-up in downtown Hollywood to a new, handsomely styled building in Burbank.
Does this mean that American movie audiences have suddenly acquired a taste for modern art? It would almost seem so—at least, for modern art presented in this manner. For although UPA’s pictures are shown simply and purely as hilarious and ingenious cartoons, the public is responding not only to their humor but to their freshness, their originality, their high imagination as well. Their reception strongly suggests that the American public, increasingly apathetic in the presence of the conventional cartoon, fully appreciates the stimulus of the UPA approach, an approach that is at once modern and basic.

UPA didn’t remain the darling of animation for long. Attention was being turned from theatres to television. The studio’s artists seemed to have been more hung up on design for design’s sake instead of entertainment. A CBS TV show with Gerald failed; its potential audience wanted to (and did) watch Mighty Mouse beat up cats in chopped-up old cartoons.

By then, John Hubley had become a victim of the nefarious blacklist. Soon Columbia lost interest in distributing its shorts. Internal squabbles resulted in Herb Klynn and others quitting to start Format Films. Then Bosustow was ousted after selling the studio to investor Hank Saperstein. By the mid-‘60s, Saperstein declared “Animation’s dead,” got rid of his studio’s equipment and artists, and was satisfied with re-packaging used cartoons.

Conducting the Conductor

“What will the audience least expect” was the Tex Avery credo. And he pulled it off in cartoon after cartoon after cartoon.

An example starts off the proceedings in Hamateur Night, a 1938 cartoon for Warner Bros. A theatre pit conductor gets the attention of his musical crew.



Swiftly, Avery switches the situation and the musicians conduct the conductor.



His eyes extend when the slide on his trombone extends.



The number being played is “It Looks Like a Big Night Tonight” by Harry Williams and Egbert Van Alstyne. After one chorus, the conductor ducks down and switches instruments for a fanfare.



Being a professional of the theatre, he bows to the audience in appreciation.



Jack Miller is given a story credit, though we wonder how much he contributed as the gags are typical of Avery’s sense of humour. Paul Smith is the credited animator. Did Virgil Ross do this scene?

It’s good to see this cartoon has been restored. It’s one of Avery’s finer efforts for Leon Schlesinger.

June Lockhart

Most sitcom moms, way-back-when, dealt with their child’s problems.

One dealt with more than that. She dealt with a dog and with a robot. And someone else’s three daughters.

That was June Lockhart.

She took a back seat on screen in the late ‘50s to Lassie. And when Lost in Space came along in the mid-‘60s, she took a back seat again to a scene-stealer who turned a space adventure series into camp comedy, with a sidekick robot and a reality-anchor boy whose performances made you appreciate what a good actor he was.

Then when Petticoat Junction star Bea Benaderet died, Lockhart was parachuted into the show opposite Benaderet’s three 20-something daughters. Despite her pleasant, smiling style, Lockhart didn’t quite fit in for me. The show had built a whole community of characters over a number of seasons and she hadn’t been among them; she was a sudden outsider to some viewers.

Instead of a mom, at one time Lockhart was known as a daughter, being the off-spring of actors Gene and Kathleen Lockhart. She worked in films and on the stage as a girl—even winning a Tony—but, the power of television being what it is, became known through a collie that also had a venerable film career.

Here’s an article from the Times-Mirror Syndicate that appeared in papers starting July 7, 1959. Lockhart was quite happy not dealing with stardom but she wanted more of the star’s camera time. The second line proved somewhat prophetic, given her career path.

Actress June Lockhart Loves That ‘Lassie’ Show
By HAL HUMPHREY
HOLLYWOOD. — June Lockhart wishes people would stop feeling sorry for her. Since she took over the TV role of foster mother to Jon Provost and Lassie, many of June’s friends and fans treat her as if she had volunteered to be the first woman shot into space.
“Why did you do it, June” they wail, solicitously. “Think what it can do to your career!”
These well-wishers don’t understand that her career is precisely what June had in mind when she joined the “Lassie” cast last year. (CBS-TV and Ch. 4 at 6 p.m. Sundays.)
“Everyone seems to be concerned over my missing ‘better things.’ My answer to that is, what are those better things?
“I’ve been a freelance actress and waited for the right script. They don’t come along very often, and being unemployed at the end of each one can be pretty dull,” says June.
Last March, during the seasonal recess between “Lassie” shootings, June went back to New York and appeared with Tom Ewell in “Square Egghead,” a very entertaining comedy on the “U.S. Steel Hour.” She not only luxuriated in a “whole week” of rehearsal but found herself the envy of every unemployed actress in Manhattan because she had a steady job.
STEADY WORK
“Steady work, a certain amount of creative satisfaction and dignity are the things an actor wants most, and I have found all three with ‘Lassie’”, June insists. Jack Wrather, the Texas oil and TV tycoon who planked out $3.5 million for the “Lassie” show three years ago, wanted June to play the boy's mother when Jan Clayton left two years ago, but June was having personal troubles which climaxed in a divorce. She didn't want to further complicate her life at that time with a TV role which demands that the actress’ private life be at least 99 per cent pure.
June got another crack at it when Jan Clayton's successor, Cloris Leachman, became disenchanted with the part and left “Lassie” after a season.
MOVIE ROLE
Wrather didn't have to introduce June to Lassie. In 1944 she was the ingenue opposite the canine in MGM's “Son of Lassie.” The original dog, incidentally, died last year at the ripe old age of 19. June's debut in the TV series this past season left her with little to do except stand in the background with a benign smile and less dialogue than the writers gave Lassie.
“I think you'll see an improvement next season,” says June. “Jack Wrather’s wife, Bonita Granville, will be the associate producer. She has looked at all of the ‘Lassie’ films from the beginning and wants to make it more gutsy. Hugh Reilly and I will shout at each other once in a while.”
Actually, the whole series can stand considerable beefing up. During the first two seasons producer-owner Robert Maxwell injected some real life problems into the lives of the characters, and there were entertaining episodes dealing with such things as racial tolerance and a boy's growing up pains.
After Wrather took over, things seemed to decline into the familiar, simpering boy-loves-his-dog situations.
STAY FOREVER
Next month June Lockhart will have a meatier part when she attends two Campbell Soup (her sponsor) sales conventions in Chicago and New Orleans and delivers herself of a speech on both occasions.
She was married to architect John C. Lindsay in April and with her two daughters (Anne, 5, and June 3) they live in the swank Brentwood home recently purchased from Dore Schary.
“It's very flattering to have people worrying about my career, but really I'm happy just the way I am," June re-emphasizes. “I never had that drive to be famous anyway. If I were doing ‘The June Lockhart Show,’ think of the responsibility I’d have. This way, I just do the job, take my money and go home—and, if Lassie will forever.”

Lockhart and Lassie left each other in 1964 and the following year we find her blasting off for three seasons on the Jupiter Two. Well, almost three seasons. Lockhart was suspended and didn’t appear on the last two episodes because she kept cracking up while filming a ridiculous show about alien vegetable people. Afterward she changed her mode of transport from space ship to steam train to Hooterville for two more years on the small screen.

It seems actors don’t like to be typecast once they get regular roles and by the ‘70s, June Lockhart appears to have chafed at being a benign, nice character. Here’s a syndicated feature story from July 17, 1971, cobbled together from several papers.

June Lockhart Tired Of Sweet Image
By MIMI MEAD
NEW YORK—Out of the bog of whipped cream and sugar that has enveloped her most of her acting life comes June Lockhart, ribs up, eyes shining, hair down, her enthusiasm as bright as any kid's, her conversation as salty as any old trouper’s.
June Lockhart “Lost in Space,” being Lassie's mother or practicing medicine in “Petticoat Junction,” is a far cry from June Lockhart off-camera. She is sick to death of the sweet and wholesome image, is the unofficial den mother for the Los Angeles company of "Hair," and happily embraces the outlook of “Hair,” and happily embraces the outlook of the more liberated young of this decade.
She is not, however, one of those dreary women who stalk about braless and hair-ribboned, less eager to genuinely embrace a new philosophy than eager to “pass” among the under-thirties. She is a cheerful, practical outgoing woman, a true professional in her work and a sensible kook in her private life.
She will be seen next Saturday (July 24) as hostess for CBS’ “Miss Universe Beauty Pageant” at 10 p.m. She performed the same function for the “Miss U.S.A. Beauty Pageant” (held this year on May 22 and won by Michele McDonald, 18, of Butler; Pa.), and it is her fifth year on the job. Bob Barker is co-host.
“In the six years I've done it I've never been on the air in the same shot with Bob Barker, not to talk to him,” she said smiling. “In fact, the Rose Bowl of '69 was the first time we've ever been on a show together.
LITTLE MINGLING
“I don't really have much to do with the girls themselves, you know. The girls I work with most are the girls who are giving up their crowns, last year's Miss U.S.A. and Miss Universe.”
Although her participation requires her to assume once more the peaches-and-cream-stately image, June said with a shrug, “I rather like it. The girls are very cordial. The Miss Universe girls seem to be more opinionated and better able to express themselves than the Miss America girls, which is nice. As a matter of fact, I heard they're going to encourage the girls to speak out even more this year.
“I know all about image,” said June with a giggle. “When I was on the Lassie show, I heard a great deal about how to conform to an image. I remember Dan Jenkins of TV Guide did an article on me in 1961 or so, the most marvelous article, and the sponsor almost didn’t get over it.”
Jenkins, who says he had gone to interview June thinking she was an awful-stuffed shirt and discovered she was a “delightful nut,” wrote the article in the form of an expense account memo in which he related that his first meeting with Miss Lockhart was in the Brown Derby and she was so eager to get downtown to nose around a sensation murder trial, that she ordered a jigger of scotch and left it half unused.
TEMPERANCE LECTURE
“Well, that scotch just about did for them,” June recalled. “They lectured me at Campbell Soup for one hour and 45 minutes about the image and concept of Lassie’s mother. Lassie’s mother doesn’t drink, and if she did she wouldn’t tell TV Guide. They harangued and each one took a turn at me. So finally I said, ‘Well, gentlemen, I made a mistake. Hasn’t any of you ever made a mistake?” And that started them off again.
“When Bonita Granville (‘Lassie’s’ producer) heard about it she was furious, and I must say I wouldn’t put up with that sort of thing today. But in those days I wasn't so sure of myself. Really! You would have thought I’d done something really inflammatory, like run naked through the park or something.”
And then, in a typical Lockhart departure, she illustrated with word and gesture some of the ways past Miss Universe candidates had expressed their inner selves, as well as some of the more intimate physical problems of being a beauty pageant entrant, to the edification of an apparently imperturbable waiter who revealed his genuine interest in the conversation when, he poured the tonic in the glass and the gin into the ice bucket.
June was in New York ostensibly to do promotion for the pageants but primarily it would appear to enjoy herself. She saw 14 Broadway shows in nine days, went shopping, went sightseeing and had a generally good time, accompanied by Bob Corff, an attractive young actor in his mid-20s with whom she was sharing her suite.
Corff played Claude in the Los Angeles production of Hair, and was assigned to escort June during the 1969 Peace Moratorium performances, and when pressed to explain their current relationship she smiles and said, “It isn't exactly romantic. Bob is a dear.” The one thing that does seem certain is that he is definitely not a beau of either of her two daughters, Anne Kathleen and June Elizabeth.
IN THE FAMILY
June Lockhart is a third-generation performer, the granddaughter of concert singer John Coates Lockhart and the daughter of movie actor Gene Lockhart. (Her daughter Anne, 17, with whom June taped a “Dating Game” show this spring, has signed with WilliamMorris agency to become a fourth-generation actress in the family.)
June made her debut at the age of 8 in the Metropolitan Opera production of “Peter Ibbetson.” She appeared in small movie roles while still in school, including “All This and Heaven, Too,” and “Sergeant York,” but her career started with a contract with MGM under which she made “White Cliffs of Dover,” “Meet Me in St. Louis,” “The Yearling” and—prophetically—“Son of Lassie.”

In 1947 she appeared on Broadway in “For Love or Money,” for which she won the Donaldson Award, the Theater World Award, the Tony award and was named the AP Woman of the Year in Drama. Brooks Atkinson said, “She is enchanting and should be kept . . . from returning to Hollywood.”
“I like it all, all kinds of media,” she said happily, “as long as I am working. I really do enjoy my work very much. I sympathize with those millions who go to work every day hating what they do. What I want now, though, is to get back to what I was doing because I was Lassie’s mother,” she added wryly. “I used to play nymphos, drunks, crazy ladies, everything.
“My favorite of all was once on ‘Gunsmoke,’ when I was the whole thing, with breasts hanging out and the bottle and everything. I was an alcoholic, nymphomaniac murderess who was retarded and had a 12-year-old mind. But she was sorry afterward which made it all right.”
As far as the stage goes, “I’m thinking about it more and more,” June said. “I would like to do a play if I don't have to go through the agony of that out-of-town tryout and rehearsal period. Replacing someone would be lovely, when all the dirty work is done,”—a remark, incidentally, that is sensible and practical and absolute heresy to the average stage star who wants to “create” a role herself.
One of her great enthusiasms, as stated, is for Hair. “I was a Hairophile. I had seen the show three or four times, and I called to see if I could participate in one of their Moratorium performances and I went to Washington to show middle America that someone over 20 cared about the war in Vietnam.
After that I've done several things with them. I arranged for them to play Chino Women’s Prison, for instance, which hadn’t had a professional performance in 10 years. And on a more personal level, a couple of the kids were picked up by the police for marijuana and I vouched for them.”
She also acted as unofficial advance man for the show in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, and was then hired to do advance work for it in Minneapolis.
DOES HER OWN THING
Lockhart gives very much the impression not of “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may” but of doing your own thing. Twice divorced, she lives with her daughters Anne, 17, and June, 15, and there is obviously very little generation gap.
“They're a kick,” said June. “We really do have the jollies together. I’m a very permissive parent, really. I figure they're going to be adults much longer than they’re going to be children, so we might as well expose them. And they haven’t become jaded.
“But there are several ways of exposing them. Even though Annie and Junie have been raised in and out of the atmosphere of show business, their appreciation of good films, good theatre, good music is very high. They love the symphony, for instance, and Zubin Mehta (conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra)—Zubie baby, as we call him—is one of their favorites.
“Of course, when I became the den mother of the Hair company, I really made marks,” said June Lockhart delightedly.

Lockhart continued to appear on TV—sometimes in recurring roles—and heard, as well. In 1993, she called up Bob Camp and said she was a big fan of Ren and Stimpy. Camp found a place for her.

If she wanted to cast in a show far from her “type,” she found it. Ren Hoek is no Lassie.

Carnegie Hall in Bloom

Jack Benny’s radio show began in New York, but when the film capital beckoned, he packed up and moved to Los Angeles. He and his cast made periodic returns to city—for personal appearances, war-time morale-boosting shows for the military, and in the early days of TV when network shows came out of Big Town (there was also the jewellery smuggling trial, but we’ll skip that).

In January 1943, Jack was in the east for several reasons. Wherever he went, reporters would follow.

Billboard assigned someone to a rather large news conference to push a charity event. Jack never failed to give reporters some kind of amusing angle to put in their stories. This one appeared on January 16th.

Benny Ad Lib Session Launches Drive
NEW YORK, Jan. 9.—If there were any doubts left in the trade as to whether or not Jack Benny could show his face in public without a script, they were dispelled Wednesday (6) when Benny treated upwards of 500 cohorts, hangers-on and lunch time expendables to an ad lib session which marked the opening gun of the drive of the amusement division of the Federation of Jewish Charities.
Benny, guests of honor at the two-buck-a-head feed at the Hotel Astor, threw plenty of good-natured but well-aimed needles at Paramount (Barney Balaban is chairman of the drive), and there were enough Para big shots on the dias [sic] to cringe with laughter.
Louis Nizer, Paramount attorney and banquet orator, in introducing Benny with the eloquence these affairs always seem to bring out, cited the comedian's contribution to the morale of the armed forces and even quoted Sigmund Freud on humor and the will to carry on.
Benny, however, said that even Freud couldn't ask him to be funny after signing a donation pledge. There isn't a worthier cause, said Benny, but he suspected that Balaban, in his letter asking him to appear, addressed him as "Dear Jake," so that "If I didn't appear it would make me feel as tho I were turning down a relative."
One of the reasons for Benny's coming to New York, in addition to appearing at eastern army camps, is to arrange a deal for him to produce his own pictures. Said he's working on a deal with United Artists now to "write, produce, direct, finance and blow my brains out." Paramount came in for a bit of heckling in his reasons for switching to Warners. Not only, he related, did he get tired of trying to steal his pictures from Rochester, but the straw that broke his back was that his next picture was to be The Life of Booker T. Washington. Said that under his first independent schedule he hoped to star Bob Hope and Fred Allen in The Road to Grossingers.
Only other speakers were Judge Samuel Proskauer and Davis Bernstein, Loew executive. Advice from the judge was to give plenty this year and deduct it from income taxes. Bernstein said that naval officers at Lakehurst Air Station, where Benny made an appearance, told him that nothing done so far has built up the morale and efficiency of the men stationed there as much as Benny's visit.
Benny, in a more serious vein, told the gathering that he was really honored to have this clambake tossed for him, because it's the first testimonial dinner in New York where he was the guest of honor. Back in the old days, he related, he was always toastmaster at the Friars, but couldn't get the top spot because the two people who had the guest of honor racket tied up were J. C. Flippen and Doc Michel.

There was a bit of inconvenience for the Benny gang during one military stop. The Hollywood Reporter told readers on Jan. 12th:

Jack Benny Certain Sherman Was Right
Rigors of war-time traveling for theatrical troupes were impressed upon Jack Benny and his troupe on their present tour of eastern Army camps. Arriving in Bangor, Me., recently in sub-zero weather, Benny's gang could find no red caps or taxicabs at the depot, so the company of 39 carried their luggage for six blocks to a hotel.
They ran the gauntlet of autograph seekers, who clamored for the frozen-fingered Benny to sign his name, but none offered to carry his bags. Next day they rehearsed in a cold theatre because of the fuel oil shortage, and that night did three shows to accommodate all the men at Dow Air Field.
Returning to Boston the following day, the blue-nosed performers rode all day in an unheated coach, with no dining car attached. They missed lunch and didn't have dinner until after 11, when their show at the Boston Navy Yard was over. They left Boston at 1 a. m. that night, arriving in New York in the cold dawn.
The Benny troupe has scheduled future shows at the Maritime Service Training Station at Sheepshead Bay, New York; Camp Lee, Virginia; Fort Mead, Maryland; Quantico, Virginia; Norfolk Navy Yard, and then around Toronto, Chicago, Great Lakes and St. Joseph, Mo. Transportation expenses of the troupe are being paid personally by Benny.

There was another reason for Benny to surface in New York City in January 1943. It found its way into the plot of one of his radio shows. The New York Times of January 14th had this story:

JACK BENNY SET FOR VIOLIN DEBUT
Comedian Will Invade Carnegie Hall at Concert on Sunday to Help Paralysis Fund
TO PLAY 'LOVE IN BLOOM'
Oscar Levant Will Be the Piano Accompanist in Super-Special Arrangement of Favorite
Jack Benny's prowess as a violinist will undergo its most severe public test on Sunday evening, when he invades New York's shrine of classical music, Carnegie Hall. This was announced yesterday by Basil O'Connor, president of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, under whose sponsorship Mr. Benny's performance will be held.
The occasion for his appearance is a concert for the benefit of victims of infantile paralysis, in which Metropolitan Opera and concert stars will participate. The other artists will be Marjorie Lawrence, who recently recovered from paralysis; Gladys Swarthout, Jarmila Novotna, Jan Peerce, Ezio Pinza and John Charles Thomas of the Metropolitan Opera; Josef and Rozina Lhevinne and Oscar Levant, pianists, and Isaac Stern, violinist. Deems Taylor will be master of ceremonies.
The first announcement that Mr. Benny would "do his stuff" came several days ago. But when the foundation's publicity department sent out a release giving the news there was an unexpected reaction from some of the recipients. Three of them telephoned excitedly demanding explanations and accusing the organization of pulling their legs.
E. A. Powers, campaign director for Greater New York, realized the seriousness of the situation. He told all and sundry to come to his office yesterday afternoon and they would see for themselves that it was no joke.
Skeptical, reporters turned up. So did Jack Benny. And Oscar Levant, too. There was no kidding. And each bought—and paid for—five tickets. Photographers took pictures to prove that to the world, too.
But, you may ask, why was Oscar Levant there ? The answer is Simple. He will be Mr. Benny's accompanist.
The press was told that the performance will be the comedian's "much discussed, long awaited debut as a concert violinist." But no one need take that too seriously. Jack says it will be both serious and funny.
What is he going to play? "Love in Bloom," of course. Persons close to Fred Allen say he does not dare try anything else. Anyway, this time it will be a super-special arrangement for piano and violin.

Ben Gross of the Daily News Ben Gross didn’t review the concert, but he waxed about the Benny radio broadcast in his column of Jan. 18th:

The Jack Benny broadcast last evening (WEAF-7) abounded in laughter again. Oscar Levant proved an amusing guest star, even if the burlesque on "Information Please" was not so funny as it might have been. A new comic to radio, a funster named Besser, made his bow in a wacky stooge role. His rather effeminate spoof was a veritable riot with the studio audience. Being present at the broadcast, I naturally wondered how he sounded over the loudspeaker. On returning to the office, my assistant, Bill Levinson, remarked: "That fellow Besser was very funny, but not quite the howl over on the air that he seemed to the visible audience." Benny's easy going, casual technique improves with the years, and, as for Dennis Day, the singer, he, too, is becoming more and more of an outstanding comedy attraction. P.S.— All of the aforegoing was but the prelude to the real wow of the evening, Jack's appearance as a violin soloist at a benefit show in Carnegie Hall.

Three thousand packed Carnegie Hall. The Times story on the 18th about the concert mentioned “sporadic clashings of a cymbal” during the Benny/Levant performance. But we’ll leave the final word to Jack’s “foe” as reported by Ed Sullivan in the Daily News on Jan. 20th:

After Jack Benny tied up the Carnegie Hall show in a knot, with Oscar Levant at the piano, Fred Allen sneered to Alfred Hitchcock: “First time a violinist combined his debut with his farewell performance.”

Allen, of course, was joshing. And years after his death in 1956, Jack was still on stage with his violin, raising millions of dollars for various causes. They were stopped only by Benny’s passing in late 1974.

A Meddling Kid For Over Half a Century

A lot of people love Don Knotts. It would seem a cinch, therefore, that being hired to be part of the cast of his variety show would mean fame and oodles of cash. Not like doing a fairly straight voice in some new Saturday morning cartoon show a year earlier.

The Don Knotts Show was cancelled after 24 episodes in the 1970-71 season. The cartoon show? It may never die.

Its name is Scooby Doo, Where Are You! and the actor in question is Frank Welker.

We can first find him with the Santa Monica City College theatre arts department in January 1966, on stage in “A Phoenix Too Frequent.” There were other productions, too, including The Wizard of Oz (One wonders if he did a Bert Lahr impression. Or Snagglepuss, even).

He soon joined the throng of “fastest rising young comedians.” In July 1967, he worked for Disney. Not in cartoons, but on stage at Disneyland. He landed a gig at the Purple Onion in San Francisco the following month. The next year, he showed up on the daytime talk show Pat Boone in Hollywood. His next break came when he toured with the Righteous Brothers. A columnist named Barney Grazer reviewed their stop at the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles in late May 1968:

The opening act posed the question: what’s a Frank Welker?
Take a standup comedian, remove his standard tux, suit him in mod threads, grow his hair longer, equip him with a rubbery face and soundbox and let him go to work mimicking a dog, bird, duck, John Wayne, Walter Brennan, LBJ, Mayor Yorty, Bobby Kennedy, the Queen Mary’s toot, and 15, yes 15 ducks singing “Wish You a Merry Christmas.”
That’s what a Frank Welker is, a new generation comedian adjusted to the times and its laughter.

John L. Scott of the Los Angeles Times of May 25 decided:

A young comedian, Frank Welker, opens proceedings with a series of pretty fair impersonations which climax with hilarious avante-garde mimicry featuring, believe it or not, 15 ducks singing “I Wish You a Merry Christmas.” Welker reveals a good comedy potential.

Then came a blurb in the Hollywood Citizen-News of May 27, 1969 that he and Casey Kasem, Nicole Jaffe, Don Messick and Stefanianna Christopherson had been signed to lend their voices to a half-hour animated series which needs no introduction.

The Great Dane continued to be a cash cow for Hanna-Barbera. But it was “only” a Saturday morning cartoon. So it was that Welker didn’t get a lot of recognition. However, the Thousand Oaks News Chronicle profiled his voice career in a full-page story in its Dec. 23, 1988. This may have been the first time he talked on the record about being hired for Scooby-Doo.

You may not recognize the face or know the name, but he has a household voice
Frank Welker sounds like a winner
By BRIAN McCOY
News Chronicle
Give Frank Welker's resume a quick read and you might think he's among that breed of marginally successful journeyman actors that Hollywood literature and lore so love to depict.
A three-sport letterman at his high school in Denver, the Agoura resident had never seen a play before coming to Southern California in 1965. He had a way with a joke, though, and some radio experience, so he was able to pay the bills as both a standup comic and comic actor.
Welker's career began to bloom as the decade waned. He parlayed his joke-telling into gigs opening for the Righteous Brothers and Brasil '66 and landed some face-in-the-crowd roles in a few far-from-distinguished films.
Television then beckoned, and in the early '70s Welker appeared on a number of shows, even made a few pilots. His best shot at the TV big time fell victim to the network ax, however, and Welker's face has appeared on the small screen irregularly over the past 15 years.
Asked to construct a story around that framework, most novelists would cook up some neo-Gothic tale of Hollywood's seamy underside. Big-eared kid comes to LA. to earn his fortune but winds up playing the struggling actor, just another nameless face on countless cattle calls.
But that "Sunset Boulevard" scenario couldn't be further from the truth Frank Welker enjoys. He lives on a pricey, rambling estate that includes a pool and tennis courts. He counts Jonathon Winters and Howie Mandel among his friends. He can barely keep up with all the work he gets.
Very few people outside the entertainment business know Welker's face, of course, but everyone knows his voice. From commercials. From movies. From the dozens of Saturday morning cartoon characters he's spoken for over the past 18 years. Welker — the man behind such animated favorites as Slimer on "The Real Ghostbusters," baby Kermit and Skeeter on "Muppet Babies" and Hefty and Poet Smurf proves you don't need a high profile to flourish in Hollywood.
"Since I started in the business. I've never stopped working. I guess it's like medicine; once you're in medicine there are a million things you can specialize in. The key is they can't hold you down; you can do anything you want."
And during the March-to-September animation season, Welker's voices keep him running from sunrise to sunset.
"I'll probably do on the average three shows a day with commericals [sic] in between and sometimes a radio show. I may start at Rick Dees at seven in the morning, go in and do some voices for Han (Hanna-Barbera) and then go to a commercial session and do a chicken or something."
Voices are Welker's mainstay, but he's always kept a hand in his other interests and it's his comedy that's receiving the attention now thanks to his recently released album, "Almost Sold Out."
"I guess I enjoy doing it all and I find that I'm busiest now doing voices but ... I never let (comedy) get too far away because it brings good stuff."
Among the “good stuff” were appearances on "Laugh-ln" —Welker was set to become a series regular when the show was cancelled — and his first commercial.
"I was working a nightblub [sic] in Westwood and I do this dog-and-cat-fight routine in my act. And this guy...was doing a commerical for Friskies dog food and he said, 'Hey you do great dogs, come and do a voice-over.'
"I didn't know what a voice-over was, so I said sure and I went in did the voice of the tail of the dog."
That was in 1970, Welker says, "and the way those things go, his girlfriend worked for ABC and she was casting 'Scooby Doo.' So I went in to read with Don Messick and Casey Kasem and a bunch of other people and read for the dog.
"I didn't get the dog but they called me back and said, 'Look, why don't you read for the part of Freddy.' So Casey got Shaggy, I got Freddy and Don Messick got the dog. That was my first cartoon show."
Welker's first film had come two years earlier, when he landed a small role in Elvis Presley's final feature. "The Trouble with Girls (And How To Get Into It)."
During the seven weeks he worked on the film, Welker got well acquainted with Presley, who would often ask him to do his dog-and-cat fight.
"He was so great and all the people traveling with him were so friendly on the set. And he was going into Vegas to start that cycle of his life and was real excited about it.
"Just the way happenstance goes, I never really touched base with him again. I was working with Ann-Margaret the night he died and I was standing where he played at the (Las Vegas) Hilton."
Welker's decision in the mid-'70s to put his on-camera career on hold was not a conscious one, he says, but it did give him more freedom.
"I found that in '74-'75, I started hooking up with the nightclub act and getting out of the on-camera stuff.
"That's so confining, when you're doing on-camera stuff. You're again at the mercy of basically the way you look, what look is in, whether you're going to get this part based on this or that.
"There are so many things involved. With standup, you can look any way and you can create your own material. With the other thing, you count on too many other people."
Welker says he loves what he does, though the anonymity his career provides is a "double-edged sword."
"I think there are times when I would like that kind of exposure, but on the other hand it's awfully nice when I watch what happens (to the famous faces) when they're tilting to eat."
And, he says, he doesn't need mass adoration for his ego either.
"I get a lot of nice ego builds from the people I work with. In fact, I work with Jonanthan Winters [sic] on 'The Smurfs' and when he turns to you and goes, 'Oooooh, good voice' that's like worth a year" of applause.

You could probably count the number of cartoons Frank Welker voiced before and after this story, but it would take up a lot of time. Happily, he is still working as of this writing. Considering his talent, that’s no mystery for some meddling kids and their dog.

Hot Head

Tex Avery and writer Heck Allen set up a premise and use variations of it throughout Red Hot Rangers (MGM, 1947). George and Junior try to catch a living flame. Junior screws up every attempt. George kicks him in the butt. The little flame then moves across the screen as they look at him.

In one sequence, George’s butt is on fire. Instead of grabbing a pail of water, Junior picks up a bucket of gasoline. George sits in it. The flaming butt causes the only possible result (You can see some frames in this post).

Tex isn’t done yet. George’s hat catches on fire. The frames tell the story as the premise plays out.



Like a Hanna-Barbera TV cartoon, the main violence (Junior bashing George’s head with the shovel) happens off camera. And if Carl Stalling were scoring this, you’d hear “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” as the flame makes his appearance.

Showmen’s Trade Review of April 5, 1947 had this story about the cartoon.

Forestry Service Seeks ‘Red Hot Rangers’ Tieup
The United States Forestry Service has asked MGM for a special preview for its Washington staff and for a national tieup on the Technicolor cartoon. "Red Hot Rangers," Fred Quimby, head of MGM's short subjects department, has announced. The cartoon, produced by Quimby, was directed by Tex Avery and it features George and Junior in a story that concerns the dangers to forests by careless smokers.
Quimby also announced that negotiations have been completed with William C. Erskine, New York merchandising executive, for the development and merchandising of various types of novelties, toys, jewelry, dolls and comic books displaying the MGM cartoon characters, Tom and Jerry, Red Hot Ridinghood, Barney Bear, George and Junior, Skrewy Squirrel and many others. Erskine will handle world-wide distribution of these articles in department stores, news-stands and shops everywhere.

The cartoon was used as a public service message, as the Review reported on Aug. 9 that year. Tex gets “top spot.”

Good Tie-in Bill
Manager James LaRue of Interstate's Kimo Theatre, Albuquerque, N. M., had a ready-made tie-in bill for the observance of Forest Fire Prevention Week. The feature, appropriately enough, was MGM's "Sea of Grass," and the principal short subject was the same company's "Red Hot Rangers," a Technicolor cartoon.
Accordingly, he utilized a show window which advertised both the feature and short subject (with the short getting top spot) and displayed forest fire-fighting equipment plus instructive placards put out by the Forest Ranger service.

Layouts in this cartoon were drawn by Irv Spence (uncredited) while Preston Blair, Ed Love, Ray Abrams and Walt Clinton got animation credits.

How to Hurt a Tail in Nine Frames

Tex Avery gets credit for picking up the pace of theatrical cartoons in the 1940s, but the artists at MGM were quite capable of fast action before he got there.

In one scene of Wanted: No Master (1939), Count Screwloose races into the bathroom, races out, then races in again. J.R. the Wonder Dog’s tail gets caught behind the door.



The reaction drawings below are all one per frame. I love the exaggerated open mouth. It’s like something in an Avery cartoon.



There’s some really frantic animation as J.R. tries to free his tail. Devon Baxter tells me it its all by Bill Littlejohn. No animators are credited on the film (frames from Mark Kausler).

This short was the product of New York newspaper cartoonist Milt Gross, whose career in the MGM cartoon department lasted from May to September 1938. The California-based animators didn’t hit it off with easterner Gross, and producer Fred Quimby didn’t like his work, either. Pretty soon, Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising were brought back in to stem the turmoil, and wildness in the studio’s cartoons pretty much had to wait for Avery’s arrival.