Lightning Only Strikes Once

The Hanna-Barbara unit was still at the top in 1947 when it came to expressions, as you can see in Old Rockin’ Chair Tom.

It’s one of a pair of cartoons when the maid replaces Tom with a better mouse-catching cat (the idea was re-used with Mr. Jinks on TV). Chair has some fine lightning effects (visual and sound), Jerry faking being surprised, Scott Bradley finding a place for “The Trolley Song” on the soundtrack (as well as “Old Black Joe”), and the maid not being Lana Turner (in another fine screaming performance by Lillian Randolph).

This is another swallow-something-metallic-and-pulled-by-a-hidden-magnet cartoon. My favourite of this type is probably the Warners’ short Bugsy and Mugsy (1957), though it goes back at least as far as Cracked Ice (Warners, 1938). In this case, the object is an iron.



Here’s a lovely sploosh against a wall.



The MGM ink paint department’s dry brush artists do a nice job in a four-drawing cycle (on ones) of Lightning turning in mid-air.



As in the later Jiggers… It’s Jinks! (H-B, 1958), the meeces mouse and cat team up against the intruder to restore order by the end of the cartoon. Tom doesn’t come through altogether unscathed. As Lightning kicked him out of the house, he returns the favour, but forgets the iron is still planted in Lightning’s butt.



The cartoon ends with the two of them sharing a lemon meringue or banana crème pie served by the maid to the sound of another MGM-owned song, “I’m Sitting on Top of the World.”



Ray Patterson, Ed Barge, Ken Muse and Irv Spence are the animators.

The cartoon's official release date was Sept. 18, 1948, but title was mentioned by Fred Quimby in stories in both Boxoffice and The Motion Picture Herald dated July 19, 1947. Scott Bradley's score was copyrighted on Nov. 24, 1947. It was playing Aug. 29, 30 and 31, 1948 at the Riviera Theatre in St. Paul, Nebraska, and got a "good" rating out of Boxoffice and The Exhibitor. The short was re-released on Dec. 30, 1955 and again in the 1964-65 season.

The Forest Rabbits

Forest rabbit Bugs Bunny is reading “Little Hiawatha” and gets to a line about the “mighty warrior” hunting “the forest rabbit.” Bugs suddenly realises that means him.



Bugs runs around in circles before leaving, stage left. To make the exit seem faster, Bugs develops multiples of himself. Some drawings.



Maybe Leon Schlesinger liked this cartoon as he put it into Oscar contention, but Hiawatha is too much of a dullard for me. (Clampett. Re-used footage. Yes, I know).

The original credits said Gil Turner animated some of this short for the Friz Freleng unit.

The Memory of Love's Refrain—Tonight on CBS

They were singers who starred on network radio in the 1940s—Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Al Jolson, Hoagy Carmichael.

Hoagy Carmichael?!?

I’m not old enough to have been around in the ‘40s, so my first exposure to Hoagy was on an episode of The Flintstones. Much later in life, I discovered he actually wrote “Stardust,” and had his name butchered at the Oscars in 1948 by Sam Goldwyn.

Just now, I’ve learned that Carmichael had his own radio show the same year. And much like Sammy Cahn did on Merv Griffin’s TV show years later, the composer sang. And not necessarily his own compositions, as we learn from music lover John Crosby in his syndicated radio column of Feb. 28. Crosby looks at a couple of other things, including more ridiculous radio censorship.

RADIO IN REVIEW
By JOHN CROSBY
A Composer Sings
About twice in the Hoagy Carmichael show (CBS 5:30 p. m. EST Sundays), an announcer intervenes to urge listeners to get rid of that "stuffy, congested feeling" and "that scratchy throat” by using Luden's Cough Drops. Then Hoagy, who has a voice like a tired rasp, will sing another song in those scratchy, congested tones which sound as if he hadn't paid attention to the commercial.
Whether or not the Carmichael voice succeeds in selling any cough drops, it provides a pleasant and relaxing fifteen minutes. In his singing, Hoagy sums up the Carmichael philosophy. He doesn't like any one to be in a hurry; in his one book, his many songs, and his few screen appearances, he celebrates the sheer bliss of taking it easy, though how he manages to take it easy with so many activities is his own secret.
Two of his own songs—"Two Sleepy People" and "Lazybones"—sum up fairly well how he sounds on the air. He sings as if he were lying on a hammock, dressed in a worn sweater, scuffed shoes, and his oldest flannels, just on the verge of falling asleep.
* * *
Some songs shouldn't be sung by any one else. "Limehouse Blues" sung in that hoarse, haunting voice, puts the smell of fog in your nostrils. "Among My Souvenirs," the corniest tear-jerker since "Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage," almost sounds like genuine sentiment after he finishes it. Most of the songs on the program are blues numbers or just plain low-down numbers like "Baltimore Oriole" ("Send her back home. Home ain't home without her warbling.") While his voice resembles the croaking of a frog more closely than it does a singing voice, Hoagy's phrasing is meticulous. He is one of the few singers who sing lyrics as if they know what the words mean.
The song writer also composes what little dialogue there is on the show. Most of it is simply amiable chatter with his secretary, Shirley, or his accompanist. Buddy Cole, about his book "On the Stardust Road" or about his old, beloved car. It's as unpretentious and slow-moving as his screen acting. In fact, the Carmichael program comes pretty close to pure radio; that is, it's intimate entertainment designed not to get a studio audience into hysterics, but to entertain a few people in their own parlors.
Incidentally, Carmichael isn't the only song writer who can sing. Harold Arlen, composer of "Stormy Weather," "Blues in the Night" and "Old Black Magic," has been entertaining his friends for years with his throaty singing. Many women claim he possesses the sexiest male voice they ever heard, and he is due to charm a wider feminine audience over CBS in the near future.
• • •
Integrated commercials, according to most radio polls, are the most popular type with listeners. An integrated commercial, in case you didn't know, is one in which the advertising is brought right into the script such as the Johnson's Wax commercials on the Fibber McGee and Molly show. Integrated commercials reached a new high in the recent Jack Benny parodies on operatic themes, which were as funny as anything else in the show and maybe even a little funnier.
However, the millennium did not occur until recently when Jack Carson imitated Al Jolson In a commercial for Campbell Soup. Hordes of letters poured in from listeners requesting a repeat performance. The repetition of a commercial by popular demand is, of course, unheard of. As far as commercial radio goes it is probably the end of the line. We can all turn our attention to space ships now; there is nothing further to achieve in radio.
And while on the subject of ultimates, the final extremity in censorship was attained on a script of "Murder and Mr. Malone." A pause was deleted by an ABC censor. Too suggestive, he said.

As for Crosby’s other columns for the week, he completed his series from Hollywood:

Monday, February 24: Network headquarters in Hollywood.
Tuesday, February 25: Bing and Bob.
Wednesday, February 26: Cars and other freebies.
Thursday, February 27: Abe Burrows and Vine Street.

You can click on them to read them.

And Away We Go

Of all the people whose fame came from television in the 1950s, Jackie Gleason may have been the one with the biggest influence on theatrical cartoons. And not just from the Honeymooners sketches he turned into a series.

Gleason’s variety show started with a monologue, then called for “a little travelling music.” He moved to a mark near the stage curtain, lifted up his arms and legs, shouted “And away we go!” and dashed off stage in profile.

Cartoon characters were known to do the same thing; maybe a well-known example is Yogi Bear in his first cartoon, Pie-Pirates (1958). But it happened several times in the Walter Lantz cartoon, I'm Cold (1954), starring Chilly Willy. The cartoon was written by Homer Brightman and directed by Tex Avery, who turned his Southern wolf from MGM into a furry guard dog (played again by Daws Butler), commenting on the cartoon in progress in a little more of a low-key way than the wolf did.

Both the dog and Chilly have cycles of Gleason-action, four movements up, three movements down before vanishing out of the scene, leaving behind dry-brush strokes.



The cartoon is full of good gags inside a basic plot, and Clarence Wheeler’s music is suitably comedic, with percussion effects when necessary. Don Patterson, La Verne Harding and long-time Avery collaborator Ray Abrams are credited with the animation.

The Head's Coming at Us Again

Debate, if you want, that A Toytown Tale (1931) is a Christmas cartoon. Yes, it has “Silent Night” (and “Jingle Bells”), and snow and toys, but there’s no Santa or Christmas tree or presents.

What there is, is a truly disjointed story, the kind only the Van Beuren studio could conjure up. The moon comes out of the sky and hides behind some trees. A toy soldier flirts with a girl (they sing) but are threatened by a toy elephant. Suddenly, the elephant disappears from the plot and a monkey shows up. The soldier gets frightened. A new toy character comes out of nowhere to sock the monkey. Now the girl goes for him.

Meanwhile, a crazy jack-in-the-box shows up off-and-on throughout the cartoon to screech and clap and laugh. He’s clobbered by a toy policeman. Here comes the Van Beuren Head Zoom!



But the jack-in-the-box awakens, smiles, gives us a silly "Yankee Doodle" laugh and then sticks out his tongue to end the cartoon.



Then it’s another round of bootleg hootch for the writers.

John Foster and Mannie Davis get the “by” credit, and the music is supplied by Gene Rodemich.