Inside Gags On the Way To a Fire

A couple of inside references in Frank Tashlin’s Porky the Fireman. The cartoon plugs its own series in one shot.



And in another scene, you can find references to director Friz Freleng and writer Tubby Millar (he wrote this particular cartoon).



Elmer Plummer? Griff Jay? I’m not sure who’s responsible for the backgrounds in the later ‘30s black-and-white Warners cartoons.

J.S. Zamecnik’s “Traffic” is featured prominently through the cartoon, including the opening scenes involving the fire truck.

Brooklyn's Star, Marvin Kaplan

Is Marvin Kaplan funny?

The answer to the question can be found in Adam’s Rib (1949), where Kaplan plays a court reporter reading back testimony without any regards to emphasis or punctuation. The part couldn’t have been played any better.

The answer can also be found in the broad antics of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) as he and the wonderful Arnold Stang fail to spare their gas station from the rampaging Jonathan Winters.

And the answer can be found in several other places, especially if you’re a fan of Marvin Kaplan.

Animation historian Jerry Beck has passed along word that Mr. Kaplan has passed away. He was 89.

Early in his long career in Hollywood, back home he was the local boy who made good. In the Brooklyn papers, ads for his movie appearances never failed to mention his hometown. The Daily Eagle even profiled him not once but twice in less than three weeks.

Here are the stories, the first (unbylined) from April 2, 1950 and the second from April 19th. The pictures came from the Eagle as well; note the young Nancy Walker at the far right of the last photo (which, unfortunately, has a photo from the other side of the paper bleeding through).

New Brooklyn Comedy Find In ‘Reformer and Redhead’
Marvin Kaplan, less than two years ago, was studying education at Brooklyn College while teaching on the side at Midwood High School, which is directly across the street from the college.
Today, he is being acclaimed a new comedy "find" by Hollywood.
After small roles in "Adam's Rib"and "Key to the City" he was cast by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in an important role with June Allyson and Dick Powell in "The Reformer and the Redhead," scheduled to open at the Capitol on April 8.
Before this new romantic comedy was previewed on the West Coast the name Marvin Kaplan was familiar to his landlady, his agent and a few personal friends, but nobody else in Hollywood knew of his existence. After the showing he was a celebrity.
That's what is known as overnight fame in the film colony.

More than 90 percent of the cards turned in by the preview audience commented on the young actor and expressed a desire to see him in more films, Hollywood is seeing to it that they will.
Actually, Kaplan never had any intention of becoming an actor when he went West. After graduation from Brooklyn College he decided to work for his master's degree at the University of Southern California. He was studying the drama with the intention of becoming a playwright.
Through friends at the university he became interested in the Circle Theater, an experimental group which puts on plays at a small actors' laboratory in Hollywood. He took a small role in a performance of Moliere's "The Doctor In Spite of Himself."
'Found' by K. Hepburn
If it hadn't been that Katharine Hepburn chanced to visit the theater one night, he might never have gotten into pictures. Miss Hepburn, impressed with his comedy style, suggested him to M-G-M for a role in “Adam's Rib.” The other two film assignments followed in short order.
Kaplan is continuing with his studies at U. S. C. and intends to let nothing interfere with his ambition to write plays. A short, stocky, studious looking young man who wears horn-rimmed spectacles, he looks more like the common conception of a playwright rather than an actor.
But Hollywood knows from experience that looks can be deceiving. Film executives recognize him as an actor with a unique comedy style.
Kaplan was born in Brooklyn, where his father, Dr. I.E. Kaplan has been a prominent physician for a number of years. He attended Public School 16, Junior High School 15 and was graduated from Eastern District High School in 1943.
He made his first appearance as an actor when at Brooklyn College. The play was Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew" and Kaplan portrayed the rear end of—the horse.
As anyone can see, his career has progressed considerably since then.

Screenings
By JANE CORBY

You’ve seen ''The Reformer and the Redhead" at the Capitol Theater. You haven’t? Well! Have you got a treat coming up! Anyhow, if you've seen it you already know what a hit that young Brooklyn fellow, Marvin Kaplan is making in it, and if you haven’t, you might as well be tipped off now that it would be a good idea to catch this newest Brooklyn comedian as soon as you can.
Marvin, now 23, is the son of Dr. and Mrs. Isidor E. Kaplan of 537 Bedford Ave. He’s at home for a short rest, following some minor surgery at Wickersham Hospital. Marvin was surprised when Sammy Kaye (So You Want to Lead a Band) and Nancy Walker, headliners in the Capitol stage show playing with 'The Reformer,' came to visit him at the hospital, bearing forsythia and a scroll, making him a member of the F.F.B. (First Families of Brooklyn). This is not the first time Marvin has been pleasantly surprised.
“I was surprised when I got a part in ‘Adam’s Rib.’ (His first picture). I wasn’t even looking for a role in the movies,” he remarked.
Studying Playwriting
He was, in fact, minding his own business, finished up his credits for a Master’s Degree in playwriting at the University of California, and working with a little theater group for the experience, because how can you write plays if you’ve never got the feel of being behind the footlights? His little group had been playing Moliere for 12 weeks, and he had a dumb role, that of Lucas in “The Doctor in Spite of Himself.”
“One night we had about 10 people in the house, things weren't going so good, everybody was kind of down. That was the night Katharine Hepburn dropped in. “After the show she talked to all of us. She asked my name and where I came from and said she liked my performance. I thought that was nice of her, but that was all. Next day I got a call from M-G-M.
“‘Your agent, Katharine Hepburn, thinks you ought to have a part in “Adam's Rib,” ’ they told me. (Miss Hepburn and Spencer Tracy starred in this comedy, which made the rounds several months ago).
Marvin got the job, playing the court stenographer in the picture, and, now being a film actor willy-nilly, got himself an agent and began accepting roles. He played a small part in “Francis,” among others. His current part in “The Reformer and the Redhead” is his biggest role to date. He plays an assistant in a law office, who gets $25 a week and is always asking for a raise.
“They asked me if $25 was a reasonable figure for a clerk,” said Marvin. “I said it was. After all, when I worked as law clerk for my sister’s firm, I didn’t get anything.”
Marvin’s sister, the former Eleanor Kaplan, had her own law office before she married Abraham Pecker, Brooklyn businessman. Rene, another sister, is still in school.

Brooklyn College Graduate
People keep asking Marvin if he's acting when he's playing comedy, or just being natural. He says he's just being natural, but it’s natural for an actor to act, off stage and on.
He is looking forward to having to learn a lot of things he has passed up so far.
“You have to know how to do everything in the movies,” he explained. “They asked me if I ever rode a horse. I told them yes, for about 20 minutes in a Brooklyn riding academy.”
He is a graduate of Brooklyn College and of Eastern District High School. His mother has a drawer-full of medals and awards he won in his school days.
His movie career notwithstanding, Marvin still thinks of himself as a playwright. The screen career pleases him, but he admits to being baffled by it. “Why, I never even had a screen test,” he said. “Probably I wouldn’t pass it.”

First Bad Man Meets First Self-Defending Woman

“He stole our prettiest gals, too,” says narrator Tex Ritter about the title character of The First Bad Man (released in 1955). The Stone Age desperado scoops up the women in a saloon and takes his pick. However, she can take care of herself.



Ed Benedict, who designed the Flintstones a few years later, designed the characters in this Tex Avery cartoon. Walt Clinton, Ray Patterson, Mike Lah and Grant Simmons are the credited animators.

Monitoring Monitor

Something had to be done about radio.

Radio networks were set up to supply stations with comedy, drama, variety, mystery, soap operas, kids adventure serials and quiz shows. In the mid-1950s, the networks were still there, but all those programmes were now on television. People didn’t want them on radio any more. The networks had to decide what to do to maintain their huge investment in radio.

One man had an idea. An idea he, ironically, borrowed from television.

NBC’s Pat Weaver figured if the Today show could work on TV, it could work on radio. Weaver’s original idea for Today was to have a “communicator” throw live to people and places all over the world, including someone in studio reading the latest news, or a young woman in front of a weather chart. Critics laughed a bit at Weaver’s obsession for going places for no particular reason other than to go there. But Today worked through the bugs and gained an audience. So why couldn’t it do the same thing on radio?

Weaver dredged up his buzz word of “communicators” and invented Monitor, sending the programme live all over the place. It lasted on NBC for almost 20 years (19 of them post-Weaver). The programme still has real die-hard fans.

However, let’s go back to its debut; actually it’s pre-debut. Here’s columnist John Crosby reviewing a promo for Monitor in his column of April 22, 1955.

NBC Pulls Out All Stops To Regain Radio Interest

NBC has as elaborate plan to restore interest in radio. Starting June 12, the network will present “Monitor,” a program that will start at 8 a.m. Saturday and continue 'till midnight Sunday every week-end. The program will be a “kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria,” according to Pat Weaver, president of NBC, a man whose prose style strenuously resists interpretation.
“Monitor” will consist of—let's see now—news, sports, time, and weather (every hour), comedy, music, drama, music theater, sound track from films, records, top dance bands around the country, simulcasts from TV shows— if you happen to be in a car and want to catch Maurice Evans declaiming "Macbeth", for instance—or—well, any other kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria that happens to occur to the people over there between now and June 12.
Weaver wants attentive listeners, not what he calls secondary listeners — those people who just leave the radio on all day and pay only dim attention. According to an NBC press release “Monitor’ microphones will be equally at home in the White House or the dressing room of Sid Caesar”. In other words, the mobility and speed of radio will be emphasized.
It’s Big—Naturally
Naturally, this Weaver brainstorm is being done in a large way. NBC is constructing something called Radio Central at a cost of $150,000. Radio Central is just a consolidation of all the new facilities over there so one man can pick up a remote newscast by pushing a button. The show will be run by "communicators." (At least Weaver will call them "communicators." No one else will, including their own wives.) The communicators haven't been picked yet. NBC now has a tape of the sort of things we are going to hear on "Monitor" and it sounds pretty good, though I'm not at all sure NBC can keep it up week after week. The tape begins with Dave Garroway announcing National Observatory time and calling off the seconds past the hour. Next Morgan Beatty chimes in with a little news—or rather headlines. Art Buchwald, who is “Monitor’s” roving correspondent in Paris, does a clever little bit about the Germans as seen through the eyes of the French.
Next you get Groucho Marx, supposedly at a bar in Beverly Hills, singing “My beer is Rheingold, the dry beer.” Then he remarks “Imagine the patience of this brewery. A hundred and two brews before they found one that satisfied. Can you imagine how lousy thirty-seven must have been?”
And in a trice we switch from a Beverly Hills saloon to one in Germany where everyone is singing (in German) something called “The Nicest Place Is At The Bar.” And the next thing you know you're at the Lido, that elaborate tourist trap in Paris, with an announcer trying to describe all those lovely, naked girls in the floor show.
From Hollywood comes a brief commentary on the movie "Blackboard Jungle", and then there's an excerpt—a pretty exciting one—from the film. The next voice you hear is Ogden Nash, remarking: “People are very brave. People are the bravest things there are. People are composed of men and women and men are brave enough to marry women, all women are brave enough to marry men.” And then he recited a poem about women's hats.
Then, by George, we heard a description of the race between Sea biscuit and War Admiral at Santa Anita, a bit of news that has been around for some time. And pretty soon, there is the tape of George Gobel warming up his television audience before his show—which was just as funny as George Gobel on the show and maybe a little funnier.
And if that isn't a kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria, then I don't know a kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria when I hear one.

Well, the reviews came in. Let’s pass on a couple of them. First, one from the International News Service.

NBC Strives By 'Monitor' To Aid Radio
By JACK O’BRIAN
NEW YORK (INS)—Once before when network radio first was being pushed on its face by television, the National Broadcasting Co. tried to make a final furious last-gasp gaudiness make do for its drooping programming.
They enlisted Tallulah Bankhead to utter some classic vulgarities which drew fine reviews, a lot of publicity, but small audiences.
Called "The Big Show," it was what its title suggested in everything but ratings and inevitably fizzed into a noisy memory.
Now NBC is at it again, with another fling aimed at warming over a fairly dead network audience. Called "Monitor," it had its premiere Sunday and is scheduled to continue each Saturday and Sunday from now on.
ON RADIO, TV
Its premiere had its first hour on both radio and TV, the network probably figuring rightly the best place to advertise radio wares on a Sunday afternoon would be via Television to which, if the home folks dial anything, TV would be it.
Its "communicators" (an NBC word meaning emcee) include Dave Garroway, Jim Fleming, Clifton Fadiman, Morgan Beatty, Bob & Ray, Walter Kiernan. Red Barber, many others. Even NBC Pres. S. L. "Pat" Weaver joined in.
It's the sort of mishmash anyone could and did get woven into its free-form, or irrelevant notions, to occasionally deadly-in-earnest. Its content dashed around every point of compass; its music was poured in hurriedly. Not time enough quite to enjoy.
CRITICISM
There were quick human interest interviews at San Quentin prison (good), news (too sketchy), a clumsily stated and fuzzily indefinite "editorial analysis" of the news by the plainly nervous Roscoe Drummond (not so good), a double-talk sports whatever-it-was by Al Kelly (didn't come off).
Each portion, in fact, was injected so hurriedly and was chased off the air so quickly that it seemed a series of off-hand notions, little spasms of continuity strung together not so much by high imaginations but rather a clear desire to make whatever followed so different from what went on just before as to jar a listener to rapt attention.
The parts were many, varied and amazing in their scope; but settle to a sameness in their brief expandability. By attempting far too much, the effect was far too little.

No doubt Pat Weaver and the other suits at 30 Rock picked up this review in the following day’s New York Times.

Radio: N.B.C. ‘Monitor’ Scans All
Projected Forty-Hour Show Has Premiere
Remotes, Music, Talk and an Oyster Heard
By JACK GOULD
Sylvester L. (Pat) Weaver, Jr., broadcasting’s most unpredictable president, started something yesterday afternoon over his National Broadcasting Company’s radio network. Just what it is, however, he may be the only many to know for a while.
Mr. Weaver’s radio project is titled “Monitor,” and in format it is a cousin of his successful television innovations, “Today,” “Home” and “Tonight.” The show is something an electronic grab-bag, designed to keep a listener guessing as to what’s coming next.
On the premiere, the pickings were mixed. In part, “Monitor” was new and different, engendering a radio equivalent of the narcotic TV quality that keeps a viewer watching, for instance, Steve Allen. A listener was curious to know what would happen next. In part, “Monitor” was familiar N.B.C. radio in a slightly different garb.
“Monitor” got off to a bizarre start at 4 P.M. The first hour was simultaneously over N.B.C. television and radio, and the two media got tangled up to produce a hodge-podge. Then “Monitor” seemed to hit its stride. But by 10 o’clock in the evening, the show had lost some of its steam and was only interesting, but not unusual listening.

When “Monitor” goes on a forty-hour schedule next week-end—from 8 A.M. Saturday to midnight Sunday—it will have its work cut out for itself. In beginning “Monitor,” Mr. Weaver announced that it was the program’s intent to throw away the radio clock and establish a new pattern—a continuous flow of items determined by their worth.
The headquarters of the show is a new studio called “Radio Central,” equipped with all the gadgetry necessary to make pick-up from every where. With Mr. Weaver’s usual flair for the different, the N.B.C. participants are not listed as people but as “communicators.”
The first “preview” hour covered such sundry matters as a pick-up of a Los Angeles swing band, a visit to San Quentin Prison, a visit with Al Kelly, the double-talk artist, a political commentary by Roscoe Drummond, a talk by Dr. Nathan M. Pusey, president of Harvard University, the noise made by an oyster, a visit to the Bucks County (Pa.) summer theatre, a scene from the new Jerry Lewis picture and a pick-up from a trans-Atlantic plane leaving Idlewild Airport. Unfortunately for the debut, more attention was given to the TV aspect than to the radio, but undoubtedly Mr. Weaver achieved his objective of calling attention by means of TV to the fact that there still is sound broadcasting.
The second “Monitor” stretch, the first designed for radio alone, was a good deal more successful. There was news, a live dance band, a book review, an evaluation of Nehru, a jazz unit, a pick-up from Berlin, a pickup of a ceremony in Scotland, a return to San Quentin, a touch of Bob and Ray, some music from Nick’s Tavern and an interview with Mary Martin and Helen Hayes, etc.
It was this stretch that had the most pace—a liveliness and an uncertainty that held the listener’s attention.
But as the hours ran on, the problem of repetition began to assert itself. The national news became fixed at the beginning of each hour, and at roughly similar periods there were further returns to San Quentin Prison and to the plane, now winging its way across the Atlantic.
Dave Garroway, a veteran communicator, handled the 8-to-10 period, and it wasn’t too different from his old radio program. He is not the best of interviewers, as was evident in his talk with Marilyn Monroe. The pickup of Carl Sandburg was much more stimulating.
Too, the short wave pick-ups, not too many of which worked very well, lost a good deal of their value when nobody had anything special to say on the plane or on the liner United States off the Azores. Gadgetry won’t sustain “Monitor.”
A big, if unidentified, hit of “Monitor” was a young lady who delivered weather reports for just about every city in the world except New York. She made the report sound like an irresistible invitation to an unforgettable evening.
“Monitor” has such a flexible format that in the weekends to come Mr. Weaver will be able to experiment to his heart’s delight. If his past accomplishments are a criterion, he will. Which is perhaps the best guarantee that at long last network radio is going to receive a shot in the arm.

As you can see, NBC pumped promotional money for Monitor into the trade magazines. Its success can be judged by the fact that by September, stations in Denver, Trenton, New Brunswick (N.J.) and Watsonville (Calif.) were imitating parts of Monitor, with roving mikes covering news and fluff (a chat with a beauty queen, and orphans saying their goodnight prayers were among the “stories”) and “beeper” telephones (the “beep” quaintly signified to the caller they were recorded for air). ABC Radio launched its New Sounds For You series on weeknights from 7:30 to 10, though its programming was consistent from night to night.

On November 7th, Monitor moved into weekdays with the moniker Weekday, airing from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., though NBC maintained the hoary old 15-minute soaps The Right to Happiness, Young Widder Brown, Pepper Young’s Family and The Woman in My House as well as The Lone Ranger on its daytime schedule. Weekday didn’t last long. NBC cancelled the show the following July 27th after four large stations announced they were leaving the network because of its weekday programming. It was replaced by a music show featuring bands that were increasingly becoming old folks music. However, Monitor carried on, petering out in 1975 after being hacked and slashed and turned into little more than an MOR disc jockey show punctuated by standard-issue network newscasts. By the end, new and daring it wasn’t. But it was almost all that was left of network radio.

You can learn more about Monitor on this loving fansite.

Proud As a Duck

Fleischer cartoons always found time to stop the plot for a gag, sometimes quick, sometimes extended.

Here’s a routine from “I Yam What I Am” (1933) where Indians are firing arrows at ducks in a pond. Some of the arrows land on a duck’s butt. He’s outraged at first, but ends up as proud as a peacock (as “Turkey in the Straw” plays in the background).



Seymour Kneitel and William Henning receive the animation credits.

Mickey's Perspective

A couple of perspective drawings from Just Mickey (1930).



Suddenly, the curtain in the background changes. These are consecutive frames.



They could just have easily called this cartoon Few Gags. Mickey spends most of the cartoon playing the violin. Uh, yeah.

A $1,000,000 Violin

During World War Two, a reluctant Jack Benny handed over his beloved Maxwell car to the scrap drive. Of course, this was only a gag on the radio. But Benny really did contribute to the war effort, performing for soldiers around the world (sometimes in oppressive conditions) and emphatically plugging war bonds on his programme.

One of Benny’s fans contributed a little something, too. A million dollars.

Well, perhaps we should qualify this a bit. We can’t say for certain that Julius Klorfein was a fan of the Benny show. One of a number of press reports revealed his adult offspring were. Regardless, Klorfein achieved some brief fame when he pledged to buy $1,000,000 in War Bonds. In exchange, he got a violin that Benny played on the air, on stage and as a child.

Klorfein was a little embarrassed by all the sudden attention, as you can see in this story from the New York Herald Tribune of February 23, 1943. He was one of those self-made success stories that Americans love—a poor immigrant who, through hard work, became a rich man and then gave back to his country.

Benny’s Fiddle Puts Purchaser In the Limelight
—————————
Julius Klorfein, Who Paid Million in Bonds for Relic, Is Loath to Talk About It
—————————
Julius Klorfein, the man who created a sensation early yesterday at Gimbel Brothers’ war bond rally by pledging himself to buy a million dollars worth of war bonds for the right to acquire Jack Benny’s old violin, submitted reluctantly to his first press interview in a lifetime of anonymity.
Mr. Klorfein, a genial, quiet-spoken man of fifty-eight, who is present of Garcia Grande Cigars, Inc., with offices in the Empire State Building, sent reporters scurrying to their files after he made his record offer, only to have them discover with amazement that there was not a single mention of his name in any of the accredited sources.
No Time for “Who’s Who”
“I never went in much for publicity,” Mr. Klorfein explained apologetically last night in his penthouse apartment at 411 West End Avenue. “I’ve just spent my life working hard and building up my cigar business, and I guess I didn’t have any time to get in Who’s Who or What’s What or anything like that.”
Jack Benny’s old violin, the same fiddle the radio comedian played in Waukegan, Ill., when he was a youth, and played again almost twenty years later last month in Carnegie Hall, lay in Mr. Klorfein’s lap as he spoke. Mr. Klorfein gazed at it fondly and strummed one of the strings.
Asked whether he was a violinist, Mr. Klorfein smiled. “If I was a violinist I wouldn’t be able to buy a million dollars worth of war bonds,” he said cryptically.
Mrs. Klorfein, who married her husband thirty-three years ago when he was manufacturing the first Garcia Grande cigars in the window of a little shop in South Brooklyn, had to urge her husband to tell the reporter something about his life.
Cigar Maker at $18

There was not much to tell, Mr. Klorfein said. He came to this country from Russia more than forty years ago. At eighteen he was sitting in a window making cigars and devising the formula for the Garcia Grande. The business grew, because the cigar he blended was mild and inexpensive. Soon there were factories making millions of Garcia Grande. Soon there were factories making millions of Garcia Grandes. Soon he was raising shade-grown tobacco in Connecticut, packing tobacco in Cuba, manufacturing cigars in Puerto Rico. Later he was a member of the Stock Exchange and the owner of valuable Manhattan real estate, including the twenty-story apartment building where he now lives.
“My hobbies are work and finance,” Mr. Klorfein said. “I am active in many Jewish charities, and once I backed a Broadway show, but it was a failure. That’s about all there is to tell.”
Wife Buys Some, Too
He added as an afterthought, “My wife bought some bonds at the Gimbel party, too. How many was it, dearest?” he asked Mrs. Klorfein.
Mrs. Klorfein said it was only $175,000 worth—a mere bagatelle compared to her husband’s purchase. “But, of course, I’ve been buying war bonds all along,” Mrs. Klorfein explained.
She told the rest of the story. There have three children, two sons, Boatswain’s Mate First Class Arthur Klorfein, of the Coast Guarrd, and Jerome Klorfein, and one daughter, Mrs. Maxwell Rapoport.
Mrs. Klorfein had just returned from a neighborhood public school, where she obtained her ration books. She is active in war work as a member of the American Women’s Voluntary Service, and is a hostess at the Stage Door Canteen and the Merchant Seaman’s Club.
“It was very exciting at the Gimbel party,” Mrs. Klorfein said proudly. “When my husband’s million dollar offer was announced for Mr. Benny’s violin the auctioneer asked if anybody would top it. There was a hushed silence and then a lot of applause. My husband stood up and bowed. It was the first bow Julius ever took.
$2,775,925 Bonds Sold
Including Mr. and Mrs. Klorfein’s $1,175.000, a total of $2,775,925 in bonds were sold at the rally which started shortly after midnight in the spacious Gimbel’s bargain basement. Admittance to the rally, which was conducted by the American Women’s Voluntary Services with the assistance of the War Savings Staff of the Treasury Department, was $750, the price of a $1,000 war bond.
Gimbel brothers contributed several items to the auction sale to match Mr. Benny’s “Love in Bloom” violin—so called because that is the only tune ever to have been played by the radio comedian on the instrument.
Billy Rose, theatrical producer, pledged purchase of $100,000 in war bonds for a letter written by George Washington dated July 28, 1780, and a man who asked that he remain anonymous pledged $100,000 in war bonds for a Bible which belonged to Thomas Jefferson.
Mrs. Myron C. Taylor, co-chairman of the rally committee, announced that $750,000 in war bonds were sold for admittance to the rally.
Danny Kaye, star of “Let’s Face It,” was auctioneer and master of ceremonies. Music was by Meyer Davis’s orchestra. Brief speeches were made by Frederick A. Gimbel, managing director of the store; Bernard F. Gimbel, president; Mrs. Alice T. McLean, founder and president of the A.W.V.S.; Mrs. Douglas Gibbons, chairman of the war savings staff of the A.W.V.S.
Frederic Gimbel, in a short address, referred to the rally as “the world’s greatest bargain sale.” He quoted Hitler as saying: “A department store is a monument to decadent democracy,” and added: “All I can say is that this is the best answer of democracy to Hitler.”

The Herald Tribune didn’t quite tell the whole story. A wire service piece from the St. Petersburg Times of May 23, 1943 quotes Klorfein:

“Benny’s violin has caused me a lot of grief,” he said. “Actually I didn’t bid on it. I had previously subscribed for one million dollars in bonds during the February drive and somebody thought up the stunt of tying the violin in with the purchase.”

Klorfein wasn’t finished. He bought three million dollars more in bonds by September.

After the war, Klorfein busied himself with large real estate and stock exchange deals. He died at his home in New York on November 27, 1958 at the age of 79. The Associated Press obituary mentions how he arrived in the U.S. from Poland with $35 sewn into his clothing, and his activity in several Jewish philanthropies, but nothing about Jack Benny or violins. Somehow, I suspect Mr. Klorfein would have liked it that way.

My thanks to Kathy Fuller-Seeley for passing along this clipping.

Oswald Posters

If you’ve looked into the history of old animation, you likely know the story behind Oswald the rabbit. He was created by Walt Disney in 1927 for films released by Universal. What Walt apparently didn’t realise is that when you work for someone, what you produce belongs to the someone. That meant Universal owned Oswald. With that in mind, Charlie Mintz, who had contracted with Disney to make the Oswald cartoons that he sold to Universal, raided the Disney staff in 1928 and started making Oswald cartoons himself, leaving Walt and Ub Iwerks to come up with a mouse we all know today.

What Mintz thought was a smart business move blew up in his face when Universal turned around and decided it wanted Walter Lantz and Bill Nolan to make its cartoons. Lantz, by his own account, was in tight with Universal boss Carl Laemmle. So Oswald moved to the Lantz studio in 1929.

Universal’s in-house magazine published these full-page ads for Oswald in 1933-35. Oswald had gone downhill by that point. Like most characters in the early ‘30s, he sang and danced and did things while weird stuff happened around him. That became passé. He became pretty watered down and Lantz started looking for new starring characters to take his place. But these ads are pretty attractive. One isn’t actually for Oswald but has a rabbit design similar to what Oswald ended up looking like in the later ‘30s.

It's Mouse Man!

The Great Piggy Bank Robbery is full of freeze-fame fun, like a lot of Bob Clampett’s colour cartoons for Warner Bros.

Here’s Duck Dwacy after following the tracks to discover Mouse Man. A couple of stretch in-betweens.



And later in the scene. Consecutive drawings.



Bill Melendez, Izzy Ellis, Rod Scribner and Manny Gould get animation credits in this Clampett tribute to/parody of Dick Tracy (and to Fibber McGee and Molly at the end).