Jack Benny Checks Out the Pin-Ups

Jack Benny’s career as a comedian started while he was in the Navy during World War One, so it’s perhaps appropriate that he would have been among the stars traipsing around entertaining soldiers during World War Two. He did it at camps and bases in North America and, more importantly, overseas.

Jack didn’t have an astounding film career, but he did work with a number of funny and attractive leading ladies. He was also quite the ladies’ man before (and some say after) he settled down with Mary Livingstone. So it seems fitting that Jack should be the one interviewed about soldiers overseas and the ladies they want. Jack’s findings may be surprising.

The following feature story was printed in Every Week Magazine, one of those Sunday newspaper supplements. It’s dated June 11, 1944. The author has an annoying habit of using Jack’s given and surname throughout the story.

Pin-Up Favorites Abroad
By Dee Lawrance
HOLLYWOOD
Women with men overseas should love Jack Benny.
Women whose husbands, sweethearts, sons and brothers are on any of the fighting fronts should be very grateful to Jack Benny.
Because he’s the first entertainer to visit the boys and come back with a truly encouraging word to the girls back home.
Jack Benny feels, and backs up his feeling by having checked every barrack he came near on his travels, that pin-up girls are greatly overrated.
If any of you women have ever gazed enviously at a well-turned ankle on a movie starlet; wished you could boast of the same set of curves in the same places; yearned to be as pretty in the picture you are sending your “him”—just forget it.
So says Jack Benny, and he’ll oven thump his fist on the table for emphasis. Jack’s not the violent type, so you can see how much he means it when he says:
“The real pin-up girls of the American armed forces are the home girls. For every cutie I saw tacked up on barrack walls, pinned inside tents, pasted in planes and ships, I saw at least 20 pictures of the girls they left behind.
“By that,” amended Jack Benny, and the laughter lines around his gray eyes crinkled, “I don’t just mean sweethearts, either. In fact, wives—no matter how long a guy has been married —don’t get any competition from the smoothies from Hollywood in a pictorial manner. And kid sisters and mothers are right up there, matching the others in popularity.”
When you think of soldiers and pictures, you must never forget the wallets. Returning actors and actresses who have spent any time overseas all remark up on the readiness of G.I. Joe to haul out snapshots to show. In fact, more and more movie stars are sending fan pictures designed to fit in a wallet.
“The wallet pictures they carry,” continued Jack Benny, “feature home girls, first and foremost. And here’s a message to all wives, mothers, sisters, sweethearts—get as many pictures taken as you can, pictures of yourselves, of the house, of friends, of places and things he knows—and send them to him.
“You’ll never know, until you have been there and lived with our boys, just how much your pictures will mean. A snapshot can come in for an awful lot of attention when you’re sitting around waiting to go into action. They mean more than any of us will ever know.”
Having settled the hash of the pin-up girls, Jack Benny relented and admitted that there were pin-up pictures to be seen in the camps he had visited.
“Mostly,” he qualified, “when the boys haven’t got girls of their own, though. And there you will see Annie Sheridan’s lovely face plastered all over the place. Rita Hayworth is another favorite. So is Maria Montez—the boys like her for the exotic costumes she wears in her films. And Betty Grable, of course.”
Speaking of Betty brings up an amusing anecdote from Jack Benny’s trip some months ago which took in Egypt, Nigeria, the Sudan, Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Persia, Sicily and South America.
“In Brazil,” he said, “I arrived just after the news of Betty Grable’s marriage had reached there. And everywhere I went the soldiers said: “Grable can’t do this to us—a fine thing, that lovely creature going off and getting married!
“As a matter of fact, when any of the glamor girls, whether it's Rita, or Betty, or any of them get married, the boys make a great thing of it—and get a lot of fun moaning about their bad luck in losing still another gal to wedded bliss.”
Right now, Jack Benny is working on plans for another trip overseas. The popular comedian feels, as do all entertaining personalities who have gone overseas on visits to our forces, that there is nothing now as important. On his last trip, Benny’s troupe was composed of Anna Lee, a songstress named Wini Shaw, and the famous harmonica player, Larry Adler.
“The girls,” Jack recalled, “were amazing. Not a whimper out of them at hard conditions, traveling difficulties, strange places to stay.
“They took everything like a man and were, on the whole, much less complaining than many a man I have known. Place either of them on a camel, in a jeep, plane, truck or just on their own feet, and they went along beautifully. Don’t ever try to tell me the gals can’t take it. I watched Anna and Wini—and I know!”
Just taking it and not making a fuss is only the first requirement of an entertainer in far-off camps and outposts. Just as important, perhaps even more so, is the ability to laugh and talk with the lonely men, to make them laugh and talk with you.
QUESTIONS about the home folk—with emphasis on the feminine gender—led all the
other questions the boys shot at the visitors from home.
“Chiefly, they asked whether they looked as pert and pretty as ever,” Jack Benny went on.
“ ‘Do they wear bows in their hair and how short are their skirts, and how about their stockings—are they having a hard time getting them?’ they would ask.
“They wanted to know, the ones who had been in longest, how food rationing had affected life at home. Was the rationing of gas a hardship? They showed a tremendous concern for the happiness of the ones they had left behind—and you should have seen the satisfied faces, the smiles, when we assured them the home folks were fine, and behind them 100 per cent.”
Anyone who has ever gone on one of those extended trips with an entertaining troupe knows the difficulties and hardships of them They are constantly on the move. Hardly a day passes without miles put behind the troupers, never a day passes without at least two shows. You can’t be a slouch and go on one of these trips.
Yet Jack Benny said it was a rest for him.
“For 33 years,”he explained, “I have been on the radio. One program a week, performed
twice, 52 weeks a year. And for each program you have to write 12 pages of jokes, out of which 15 pages have to be good—or you’re out.
“Then there have been movies in between to make. It keeps a guy busy. And so you can see why the tour was a rest —and why I want to be allowed to make another trip as soon as I can.”
In a few months he will be seen again—playing an angel. “The Horn Blows at Midnight” might be the title for any sort of picture, particularly a serious one. Yet the fact that it stars Jack Benny guarantees that it will bring a spot of gaiety to a war-torn world.

The Cherry Man and his Sea Serpent

It’ll probably never be written, but someone should objectively tell the tale of Snowball, the studio set up by Bob Clampett to make Beany and Cecil cartoons in the early ‘60s.

In theory, Snowball could have grown to become another Hanna-Barbera. The studio had some very good talent. But it had an extremely short life-span. Animator Fred Kopietz spoke to historian Mike Barrier about money troubles, assistant editor Pete Verity remembered the almost-impossible deadlines and network meddling. And then there was the matter of timing. Clampett put ‘Beany and Cecil’ on the air in early 1962 during the boom in prime-time animated cartoon shows. But as soon as the first failures sunk in the ratings, networks quickly looked to other kinds of programming.

Here’s a syndicated newspaper feature dated March 4, 1962 where Clampett talks about the show and why he feels other prime-time cartoons failed. Interestingly, Clampett is pretty deprecating about his work at Warners. And if success followed the Beany and Cecil puppet show because he “threw away the script,” it naturally follows that the success was due to the ad-libs—by puppeteers/voice actors Stan Freberg and Daws Butler, meaning Clampett had nothing to do with it.

By CHARLES WITBECK
HOLLYWOOD — ABC has ushered in another cartoon series on Saturday nights at 7.00 p. m. entitled “Matty’s Funnies with Beany and Cecil.”
*
“Matty’s Funnies” used to be a collection of old cartoons. Now it has teamed up with Beany, a little boy with a propeller on his beany, and a friendly, semi-stupid sea serpent called Cecil. As puppets in Los Angeles during the pioneer days of TV, Cecil and Beany were quite the rage. Even grownups got home early to pat their kids on the head and catch the show. Creator Bob Clampett used to throw out scripts and have the puppets talk up for the benefit of the grownups during most of the half hour. The next morning fans called into praise or damn the proceedings, so Clampett knew where he was going. Cecil, a hand puppet with a very mobile cloth face that screwed up in a most engaging way, was a celebrity equal to the Lucky Strike marching cigarettes. While Kukla, Fran and Ollie had the east coast sewed up, Beany and Cecil were LA heroes.
The puppets have become cartoon characters and in five minutes initiate heroics that used to take Bob Clampett six weeks to tell. In other words, the chit-chat for grownups has disappeared, this cartoon series is strictly for kids.
*
And that’s why Clampett, a man who looks like he'd just gotten out of bed, isn’t worried about the series’ success. “ ‘Top Cat,’ ‘Calvin And The Colonel’ (Bob has other names for them) were aimed too high,” he says.
Bob is going to ignore the adult class and concentrate on the population explosion of unending youngsters. “We’ll have a whole new audience every year,” he says, meaning an audience range of from six to 11. It can go lower. Clampett’s year and a half old daughter, Baby Ruthie, can sit through five cartoons without wandering, and his five-year-old boy, Bobbie, can say all the names of the Clampett characters.
Would Clampett list a few? Bob nodded and pulled out illustrations of Go Man Gogh, a painter with a mobile wrist: Flora the Clinging Vine, a girl-like plant who goes for Cecil; Jack the knife; Normal Norman; Davy Crickett and his leading lady bug; Careless the Mexican Hairless; a lobster called Snapsie Maxie; The Boo Birds; and Lil Homer, a baseball playing octopus who cavorts in the little leagues under the sea. There’s Twinkle Twinkle, the starry-eyed starfish: the town of Los Wages; So What and the Seven What Nots. And that's only the beginning. In case you didn’t get the idea, Mr. Clampett likes names.
*
The Saturday night show of five minute cartoons is billed as “The cleanest show on TV.” The reason — a Cecil bubble bath will be on the market along with other toys like Dishonest John games and a Cecil jack-in-the-box. The sponsor is a toy maker and he has nine months to capture the Christmas market with his cartoon characters.
Clampett has been a cartoonist and gag men since the age of 15. He spent 15 years learning his trade at the Warner Bros, cartoon division. “I was low man on the totem pole over there during the thirties.” he said. “The cartoon division was above a grocery store and I spent most of my money buying bags of cherries.” At noon, young Clampett joined the cartoonists at the drug store counter. “We filled up most of the seats,” he said, “and when a stranger deigned to sit with us. We would put on a little show. The fellas used to burp with great skill, and we often put on a small concert for the stranger, working down the counter from right to left. Few stayed to finish their meal.”
During this time Clampett dreamed up “Tweetie” and thought about Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd during working hours. “I tried every gag that came into my head,” said Bob. “Most of them were terrible, but it was the only way to learn.”
Clampett used to preview his cartoons in seven Los Angeles theaters and reactions would change from place to place. “Some jokes would be a dud even where and we were forced to take them out,” he said. “I learned to make many changes, but in general I wrote what I thought was funny.”

There was always something disconcerting about the “Beany and Cecil” cartoons to me as a kid and I never could quite pinpoint what it was. In watching them now, I think I know what the problem is. The old theatricals and the Jay Ward cartoons featured wise-cracking protagonists who deservedly got the best of their opponents. Beany was expressionless, creepily so. The Captain played virtually no role in the action. And Cecil was constantly physically and mentally abused, as if sadism is supposed to be funny. Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise, considering how Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck were treated in a few of Clampett’s cartoons. And the stars of the supporting cartoons were lacklustre. Dishonest John was the show’s best character and even he wasn’t as over-the-top as Ward’s Snidely Whiplash, a little ironic considering Clampett was Warner Bros.’ most over-the-top director some 15 years earlier.

Still, I’ll take Beany over ‘Calvin and the Colonel’ any day. You can’t dislike a cartoon series with a jolly version of “Rag Mop.”

Charlie Jones' Charlie Dog

Animation sites and blogs aplenty are marking the 100th birthday of Charles Martin Jones today. I’ll leave to others an analysis of his evolution as a cartoon director but will remark there was a wonderful period in the mid-1940s to the early-‘50s where he didn’t try to use art to impress the viewer, he used it in an equal measure with comedy and acting, at times very subtle acting. That’s when he made some of best cartoons in Warner Bros. history.

There was no mistaking they were Chuck Jones cartoons, either. They had poses that screamed Jones. For example, would you find this shot in a Bob McKimson cartoon?



That, of course, is Charlie Dog. Though you have to wonder: Jones insisted that each of his characters represented a part of himself. Does that mean Charlie Dog represented the side of Charlie Jones that craved for acceptance but kept being rejected? Was Charlie Dog the insecure part of Jones? Did Charlie disappear from the screen because Jones’ ego overpowered his insecurity?

Oh, here I am analysing when I said I wouldn’t. Let’s look at a cartoon instead.

Charlie Dog was one of several characters developed by Jones’ writer Mike Maltese in that fine period who never became real stars. They headlined a number of cartoons before Jones moved on to something else.

Charlie’s cartoon “Dog Gone South” (released in 1950) featured some smear animation. Ben Washam and Lloyd Vaughan both animated on it and both were known for smears. Here’s one from the start of the cartoon when Charlie is kicked off a train. There’s some nice acting here, too. Charlie sniffs a flower then puts it in his hair.







Another smear.







Smear with banjo. Another fine expression in the last frame.







I like this effect at the end of the cartoon. Brush lines and multiples as Charlie zips into the scene.






Besides Washam and Vaughan, Ken Harris and Phil Monroe animated on this cartoon, along with Emery Hawkins.

Dog Trouble

More scare reaction shots of Tom, this time from “Dog Trouble” (1942).

Angry Tom is after Jerry.



Uh, oh. He sees the dog.







He runs face-first into the dog, slowly gets up, and sees the dog again.












Tom runs in one spot in mid-air before taking off, with the dog behind him.

There are no animator credits on this cartoon.

The Q Stands For Quick, Fill In

Imagine you’re 24 years old, have been doing a 15-minute local morning show for only a few months and suddenly you’re asked to make your network debut on a half-hour evening variety show.

That’s what happened to Robert Q. Lewis.

To me, at about age six, Robert Q. was the guy who suddenly replaced Merv Griffin as the host of the game show “Play Your Hunch.” What I didn’t know, being a kid and all, was that Lewis had probably gone through more shows than anyone else at the time. Radio and TV listings through the late ‘40s and into the ‘50s show a revolving door of time slots and programmes, none of them seeming to last very long.

Lewis first appeared on WEAF New York on November 20, 1944. Then C.E. Butterfield, veteran radio columnist of the Associated Press, reported the following April 7th:

New York. April 7—(AP)—A new comedy show which NBC believes offers possibilities, steps suddenly onto the network at 7:30 tonight. Assembled almost on the spur of the moment, it is being built around Robert “Q” Lewis, a 24-year-old broadcaster who has been displaying his talent in a local morning series six times a week, under the title “Listen to Lewis”. He is to have the help of Mae Questel, veteran mimic, with variety music coming from the Murphy Sisters and Dave Grupp’s orchestra. His humor, of the Zany Type, depends to a large extent on the use of contrasting voices. The program fills the time given up by the discontinued sponsored, series, The Saint. Lewis insists he inserted the initial “Q” in his name solely for identification purposes.

Actually, the “Lewis” was inserted as well. His real name was Robert Goldberg, born in New York and raised in the Bronx. You wouldn’t know it by his voice; Robert Q. always affected a bit of a cultured tone.

The story doesn’t explain why “The Saint” was suddenly pulled in favour of a non-sponsored show. But Robert Q. lasted until June 2 before his programme was replaced with a dramatic series. Mae Questel continued her career as the cartoon voice of Olive Oyl while Lewis moved back into local radio before another network shot, at CBS, in 1947. Despite what the New York Times declared was “fey humor” the show failed, though Neil Simon and Paddy Chayefsky were among the show’s writers.

CBS kept trying and trying with Lewis (he finally got out of his contract with the network in 1951). New York Herald Tribune radio columnist John Crosby decided Robert Q. was trying, too. This is from the Oakland Tribune, December 24, 1948.

Radio in Review
By JOHN CROSBY
Robert Q. Lewis, the strolling minstrel of the Columbia Broadcasting System, is back on a five-week schedule again (not broadcast in west), changing over from a once-a-week show (Sundays). At least that’s the way things sound as this is written. You never quite know where Lewis will be from hour to hour. Lewis has roamed all over CBS, from the Godfrey show to the late shift on the elevators or from Paley to breakfast, as the saying goes.
Either he's getting better or I’m getting less critical or the Christmas season has filled me with unwarranted benevolence. My current opinion, subject to change without notice, is that Robert Q. is a good-natured humorist whose efforts are certainly on the side of the angels.
A CBS press release refers to him as “honest, eager and thesauric” and after pausing briefly to look up “thesauric,” I feel inclined to agree with that description. The fact there’s no such word as “thesauric” either in Webster or Funk and Wagnalls hasn’t swayed me. There should be such an adjective, meaning encyclopedic, or full of largely useless information.
PLEASANT PIXIE
At any rate—to get this back into English—Lewis is a pleasant pixie who, I’ve always felt, worked a little too hard at being natural. He used to strain so widely at being casual he made me nervous which is hardly the idea. Lately he’s succeeded at informality, a difficult business, and the listeners can relax. His is a friendly, unassuming, largely satiric humor which ranges in quality from excellent to terrible—a wide range. Here’s Lewis concerning his Christmas show which took place last Sunday, the night of New York’s third largest snowfall. “Either it’s snowing outside or the Rinso people are overdoing it. This is our Christmas show and there’s no one in the studio except reindeer. I was hoping to have my favorite carol on it but Madeleine was busy.”
Lewis likes to poke gentle fun at Christmas customs, guest stars, announcers, capital gains deals, or anything else that happens to be on the back pages of the newspapers, leaving the front pages for the more eminent authorities like Gabriel Heatter.
GIRL PROBLEMS
He has a rather special attitude toward girls. Most of his girl friends seem to be homicidal maniacs of grotesque proportions. “We sat on George Washington Bridge and you dangled your feet in the water.”
For a long while there was a nasal girl named Ruthie who called him up every broadcast and confused him. This sort of routine: “Hello, Ruthie?” “Speaking.” “'What?” “What number you calling?” “You called me.”
He has no armor against puns, falling victim to almost any pun: “I dropped in to say hello to the High Lama. I said ‘Hi, Lama’. He has a cute girl—Lama Turner.” Lewis also suffers from self-deprecation, a weakness of all radio comedians. Many of their complaints sound too authentic to be funny. “I was practising my singing this morning. The canary threw himself to the cat.”
BURSTS INTO SONG
When he isn’t making jokes, he bursts into song, plays the slide whistle, heckles his announcer or does everything but turn somersaults in an effort to amuse—which indicates a nice generosity of spirit. As a singer, he is hard to define—falling somewhere between Helen Kane and Ted Lewis. In other words, cute, monotonous and vaguely ineffable.
His choice of songs is rather odd, too. He likes to sing some of the fact there’s a girl snail for every boy snail, a girl quail for every boy quail, a girl whale for every boy whale but there isn’t one for him.
Besides Lewis you’ll find Howard Smith’s orchestra, which sounds a little like 1922 Paul Whiteman, and the Ames Brothers, an excellent quartette, which spells the head man now and then but not often.

CBS hoped to move Robert Q. into television in May 1949 with a revue format but, instead, made him the summer replacement for Arthur Godfrey on the Chesterfield show. That began his career as the number one back-up host on TV. He finally got his own show on January 19, 1950, replacing “Film Theatre.” Here’s Crosby again, from February 20, 1950, saving his biggest dig for owners of nightclubs.

Television in Review
By JOHN CROSBY
Robert Q. Lewis claims his middle initial doesn’t stand for anything in particular. My own theory is that it stands for Quo as in “Quo Vadis.” “Whither Lewis?” people keep asking me. I snap back that I have no idea whither Lewis is headed or whither he’ll get there. (You can’t hang around Robert Q. Lewis very long without becoming afflicted with puns.)
Robert Quo has done about everything over at CBS except play Ma Perkins. His most recent venture is “The Show Goes On” which CBS rather too generously distributes both on television and on radio. On television, it’s an hour (not in West); on radio, the program is wisely pruned to half an hour (KCBS, 8:30 p.m., PST Fridays). If you don’t possess either a television set or a radio, drop in on CBS. He runs six of the elevators there. And in his spare time he took over all of Arthur Godfrey’s manifold duties while Godfrey was in Florida. There’s no money in it but he's getting lots of experience. (He hasn’t time to spend money, anyhow.)
BUYERS ON HAND
“The Show Must Go On,” to get down to it, is a switch on Godfrey’s Talent Scouts and on all the other amateur or semi-pro programs where the talent displays its wares in an effort to get jobs. Here, talent buyers, eager to give jobs away, are on hand. Lewis has rounded up the talent or what passes for talent. The talent does its stuff. The talent buyers shudder or smack their lips, depending on circumstances. Then they either buy the stuff or shrug it off.
To you, it probably sounds quite a lot like the other talent shows. To me, it sounds like a slave market. The buyers—booking agents, night club impressarios, a few Broadway producers—may hire the acrobats on the spot or take a 25-hour option on them. Or say no. No one, to my knowledge, ever says no. If worse comes to worst—and it frequently does—they take a 24-hour option, sneak out the side door and leave the country.
There are several dozen similar shows beating the bushes for talent. Lewis is last man to get a shot and the plumper quail have been brought down before he gets there. Consequently, you are likely to hear a good many, say, girl singers who under normal circumstances would never have got much farther than choir practice.
SEVERAL GOOD ACTS
You'll also hear a couple of good acts. One girl who looked and behaved quite a lot like Judy Garland was hastily snapped up by Ed Sullivan, an exercise of judgment of which I didn’t think him capable. A male comedy team made noises like a newsreel, an act as indescribable as Danny Kaye and almost as funny. For the rest—well, they got to beat those bushes harder.
On television, Robert Q. Lewis looks remarkably like Harold Lloyd, does quite a lot of muggling, double takes and Bob Hopeisms, and still has a lamentable habit of ruining good gags by running past them instead of stopping at the end. (On radio, he still resembles Robert Q. Lewis to a remarkable degree, though he is beginning to calm down a bit, a fortunate thing.)
There is nothing much the matter with “The Show Goes On” except it sounds like too many
other shows. Its greatest contribution, to my mind, is the intimate glimpses one gets of some of the night club owners, sharp-faced little ferrets in pin-striped suits, the sight of whom may keep some of the listeners out of night clubs for the rest of their lives.

“The Show Goes On” went on until December 29, 1951. Sponsor Gillette was unhappy CBS changed its time slot from Thursday to Saturday and cancelled. The show did accomplish something, but not for Robert Q. Billboard of March 25, 1950 reported Tony Bennett’s price tag jumped from about $125 to $750 on the basis of one shot on the show.

Lewis moved on, hosting his own shows or filling in. To show you how television changed, one of Lewis’ guest hosts in 1956 was a young man named Johnny Carson. Before doing “Play Your Hunch” in New York, he was hired in 1961 as a disc jockey by KHJ Los Angeles, arriving in a Rolls-Royce with his white poodle (the Rolls was part of his contract with the station). By 1972, Lewis had been hired by KFI and was opining to the Los Angeles Times that he couldn’t get work in television because he had overexposed himself and programmers thought he was too old. He was two months younger than Bill Cullen, 2½ years younger than Gene Rayburn and seven years younger than Garry Moore. By 1974, he was moved to the all-night show and was reviewing films for the station. He spent time acting in comedies on stage (Las Vegas was one of his venues) but he was a rare sight on television, and his name had become one from the past. It’s a little jarring seeing his face in anything but black and white.

Lewis effected an air of elegance on occasion. He was from an era where the elegant smoked. He sold Chesterfield cigarettes while filling in for Arthur Godfrey. He died of emphysema on December 11, 1991, age 72.

Here’s Robert Q. in one of his fill-in jobs, with a group of young men, a definitive panel and the best announcer in game show history, Johnny Olson. And a package of cigarettes.

That’s Oswald, 1928

Oswald the Rabbit started 1928 being produced by Winkler Pictures, Inc. for Universal. Oswald finished 1928 being produced by Winkler Pictures, Inc. for Universal. But something happened in between. At the start of the year, the cartoons had been drawn by a crew headed by a chap named Walt Disney. By the end of the year, almost all of Walt’s staff had deserted him and went to work for Winkler himself. Walt, as history shows, got the last laugh.

Oswald went through a few more changes, but the other one in 1928 was that he became a sound character. Exhibitors Daily Review announced on November 19 that the first Oswald in Movietone sound would be “Oswald’s Ragtime Band.” Theatres not wired for sound would get the silent print.

Winkler, or perhaps his boss Charlie Mintz, pushed Oswald in the pagers of Film Daily. Between July and December 1928, there are 28 box ads for Oswald, all with the same layout and typeface as the ads for Mintz’ studio’s Krazy Kat. They’re pretty cute. Oswald has long ears in some, and stubbier, tongue-depressor shaped ones in others. There’s one with some pigs that looks like it could have been in a Harman-Ising cartoon at Warners in the early ‘30s. All but one of the ads (which is mutilated) have been posted below, interspersed with reviews of the Oswald cartoons. The dates are publication dates, not release dates.

Anyone familiar with animation around 1930 should be familiar with the future careers of the names in the clippings. Roland (Ham) Hamilton was a top animator for Harman-Ising. Tom Palmer went to Disney, had a disasterous career with Leon Schlesinger and high-tailed it to the other side of the U.S. to work for the Van Beuren studio. Walter Lantz ended up producing the Oswald cartoons for Universal in 1929, leaving Mintz, Winkler and Disney’s former animators looking for work.






July 29, 1928
"Hot Dog"—Oswald
Universal
Circus Fun
Type of production....1 reel cartoon
The circus comes to town, and Oswald the rabbit tries all sorts of schemes to get into the big top without paying. He experiences a series of exciting adventures as the cop chases him. He takes refuge in the lion's cage without realizing what he has done, but when the lion sees his membership card in the Lion's Club he treats him like an honored guest. Finally as the cop chases him he gets a hitch on a wagon—but it turns out to be the patrol wagon, and poor Oswald is pinched anyway. The kids will like this one.

August 5, 1928
"Skyscrapers"
Winkler—Universal
Clever
Type of production..1 reel animated
Oswald gets a chance to show his skill as a construction hand on a new building. Walt Disney has worked up some exceptionally clever cartoon material with a steam shovel and a donkey engine that are almost human. In fact they look like live creatures, and their expressions and actions are highly amusing. This Oswald cartoon is a good number featuring some fine cartoon ingenuity.






August 26, 1928
"Mississippi Mud"
Oswald—Universal
Clever
Type of production. . . .1 reel cartoon
Oswald is deck steward on a Mississippi river boat, and when the villain kidnaps the beautiful heroine and takes her away on the boat, then the fun begins for all hands. The cartoonist has evolved some very clever cartoon gags and sketches for showing the antics of the animated rabbit, and of course it winds up with the hero rescuing the girl and proving his right to her love. Well up to the high standard of this series.

September 9, 1928
"Panicky Pancakes"
Oswald Winkler
Universal
Lively
Type of production. .1 reel animated
Oswald is running a concession at the county fair, when various animals start to interfere with his business. First the elephant drains his lemonade bowl through his trunk, and then a pup steals his pancakes as he flips them in the air. Finally the bandit mice steal his cash register and Oswald has some exciting time before he recovers it. Good gags put over at a lively pace. Hamilton and Palmer are now handling the work on this cartoon series.






September 17, 1928
Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit, has made a departure in his amusement program. Heretofore there has been nothing topical in the cartoons in which Oswald is depicted. But the imagination of Oswald's creator, the Winkler Company, was so fired by Commander Byrd's determination to reach the South Pole, that they have made and will release in a very short time a picture entitled "The South Pole Flight."

September 23, 1928
"Fiery Firemen"—Winkler
Universal
Clever
Type of production..1 reel animated
Oswald, the funny rabbit, turns fireman, and proves himself a hero when he tries to save Miss Hippo, but she falls on him and flattens him out. Some tricky stuff is worked in by having the firemen sleep or mechanical beds that are almost human and answer the fire alarm and do almost everything that the firemen do.






September 30, 1928
"Bull-Oney"—Winkler
Universal
Animal Fun
Type of production..1 reel animated
This time Oswald, the rabbit finds himself a trainer for the bull that is picked to do his stuff in the bull ring. Before Oswald realizes what has happened, the bull has him in the center of the ring, and a real scrap is staged that the crowd didn't expect. Oswald finally escaped by a narrow margin. The audience consists of all the various animals, who arrive for the fight by transportation methods and vehicle sthat are laughable and original. Cleverly animated, and with lots of comdey action.

October 14, 1928
"Rocks and Socks"—Winkler
Universal
Peppy
Type of production..1 reel animated
Oswald, the rabbit starts out for a day's shooting. He tackles a little tiger, and is lambasting it when the mother conies along and makes things hot for Oswald. Escaping finally from the tiger, he encounters other strange monsters of the jungle, and is glad to call it a day. The cartoon work is very unique and some clever technique is employed. It carries the laughs also.






October 28, 1928
"The South Pole Flight"
Winkler Cartoon—Universal
Type of production. . 1 reel cartoon comedy
These lucky Oswald rabbit cartoons provide a real kick for any kind of audiences. They are exceedingly clever, and some of their exaggerated silliness is good for real guffaws. This one shows Oswald making a dirigible flight to the South Pole, and the difficulties he encounters, only to land at the desired spot, to place an American flag at the Pole.

December 2, 1928
"Farmyard Follies"—Oswald Cartoon
Universal
Original
Type of production. . .1 reel animated
Artists Hamilton and Lantz put a lot of clever animation into this one. They show in their work that they are striking out along new lines, and the line of gags they develop for the funny rabbit Oswald are amusing. Oswald attempts to take charge of
things on the farm. He washes the little pig, and tries to milk the cow, but with poor success. His chief trouble is with a sassy young chicken that insists on mixing things up generally till Oswald applies the ax to her neck. A very enjoyable cartoon comic for old and young.






December 23, 1928
"The Yankee Clipper"—Oswald
Universal
Clever
Type of production. . 1 reel comedy
Oswald, the funny rabbit goes through his cartoonatics in great form. This time he is a barber with a very up-to-date establishment. The animated barber pole picks up pedestrians off the street and shoots them into the barber chair. This helps trade a lot. The climax shows Oswald made up as a manicurist in order to please the villain wolf whom he has kept waiting. Wolf takes him for a necking party in his car, and when he discovers that Oswald ain't that kind of a gal, he throws him out with a pair of roller skates.





1928 was a watershed year for animated shorts. I’ll have a timeline post encompassing studio highlights from the pages of The Film Daily in the future.