Shooting the Symphonic Slider

A duck gets caught in a dog’s trombone slide in the 1945 Walter Lantz classical music short The Poet and the Peasant. The duck’s head gets jerked around in perspective at the camera.



The duck has has enough.



The dog doesn’t get shot to death. His eyes are open. They later turn to face the audience.

Dick Lundy directed this, though it has some un-Lundyesque quick cuts in the sequence at the end, where a fox tries to catch a cross-eyed ballerina duck. Paul Smith and Les Kline are credited animators, but I suspect Pat Matthews and Grim Natwick also worked on this.

Naval De-Feet

Occasionally, an animation checker will miss something and part of a character’s body will disappear for one or two frames.

In Porky the Gob (1938), the captain’s shoes lose their shadow and turn a lighter colour, then the feet disappear altogether for one frame.



Carl Stalling liked putting J.S. Zemecnik’s work in his scores in his first year or so at the studio “Traffic” is heard several times on the sound track, and there’s a good portion of “Battle Music Number 9” at the end. And there are the usual Warners’ sea-going favourites, such as “Song of the Marines” (Warren-Dubin). I think that’s Danny Webb doing a deep voice for the captain at the start.

Garry Moore's Revelation

As trite as this sounds, the host of I’ve Got a Secret had a secret. At least, it doesn’t appear to have been common knowledge at the time the show was on the air.

Garry Moore revealed it to King Features Syndicate writer Harvey Pack in a story published March 9, 1963.

Moore had been on a network for 20 years at that point. In 1943, NBC quickly needed a replacement show, so Moore was hired and then paired with Jimmy Durante. The odd combination worked. Moore left in 1947 to branch out on his own, and he eventually was pulled into the Goodson-Todman stable, hosting Secret and then a revived version of To Tell the Truth before retiring. Moore died in 1993, 50 years after he first went on the air for Camel cigarettes. His cigarette habit did him in.

Moore Beat Speech Handicap
By HARVEY PACK
Many years ago in the city of Baltimore a 15-year-old boy who was destined to be one of America's highest paid TV personalities told, his friends, "If you call my house and there's no answer . . . it doesn't mean I'm not home. I never answer the phone because I can't say hello." Today, Garry Moore says more than "hello" to millions of fans every week and his loquacity is one of the key factors in his success.
"I stammered from the time I was 15 until I was 16 and a half," explained Garry, "the reason I couldn't answer the phone is that 'hello' is one of the hardest words for a stammerer and I just avoided it by not picking up the receiver. With my friends I wasn't so bad, but with adults I was terrible."
Ironically enough, even at that time Moore wanted to be an actor. "I knew it was impossible," he continued, "but it was similar to a crippled boy dreaming of being a ball player."
Garry doesn't try to analyze what caused the affliction, but he does admit that he was a poor student at the time and his older brother and sister ranked quite high in their class, a fact which psychologists would undoubtedly list as a cause. "The stammering didn't help my studies and vice versa," Garry theorized. "But in spite of my poor scholastic record, the headmaster of my high school wrote an article some years ago explaining that many miserable students are simply children who do not fit into the mold that is demanded by educators. He listed me as an example."
The cure was not affected by speech therapy, but by the theater. "A friend of mine was trying out for the school play and he had me accompany him as a friendly witness," said Garry. "They asked me to read a few cue lines and I found that when I wasn't responsible for making up the speeches, I was able to talk in front of an audience without stammering. They gave me the lead in the play . . . I was a big hit and every body was proud of me. I never stammered again."

Despite his poor scholastic showing, Garry was extremely well read and actually began his professional career as a writer. He has never forgotten his adolescent affliction and to this day he is quite active in the National Hospital for Speech Disorders.
"They do a remarkable job today," said Garry. "I don't really understand all their methods, but I get a kick out of going down there and watching these people get up in front of a class and try and talk. I was invited to address a group one night and I was introduced by the teacher, stepped up to the front of the room and said, 'I . . uh . uh . . mmm . . wouwou . . . wou . . .' I completely regressed and, for the first time in 25 years, I was unable to talk. The students laughed because they thought I was trying to be funny, but it actually took me five minutes to regain my composure."
The emcee of I've Got a Secret seen on Channel 12 Monday nights, has never kept his teenage stammering a secret and, as a result, he is constantly visited by parents whose youngsters have speech defects. "The pattern is always the same," said Garry. "The mother or father comes in to see me dragging the child behind them. The parent asks the child to tell Garry how good he is—say in sports—and before the kid has said one word the parent steps right in and takes over the explanation. They won't let the youngster get in one sentence without interrupting. When I tell the parent to wait outside, I always find the child loosens up and begins to speak much better.
"I think parents should examine their own methods of bringing up their children before classifying their offspring as candidates for speech therapy. In many cases, particularly very young children, it's simply a matter of the mind moving faster than the mouth and the impatient parent can actually aggravate this condition into a speech impediment."
As every viewer knows, the boy who won the lead in that Baltimore high school play has had no trouble getting work. His variety show — which spawned talents like Carol Burnett, Allen & Rossi and, more recently, Dorothy Loudon—will be back again next season on CBS. He doesn't seem to mind the strenuous schedule of a weekly one hour show, plus I've Got a Secret and a daily radio program.
When you ask him whether he's sorry he didn't do a film show and therefore lost out on the big fortunes performers have made by selling their old shows for syndication, the onetime stammerer proves himself a true ham by saying, "When you're on film nobody comes up to you the next day and tells you that the show was great . . . or even lousy. You sacrifice the excitement of the business and that's an awful lot to give up."
And to think . . . he once couldn't say "hello."

Sheep!?

Favourite Droopy? That’s easy. It’s Drag-a-Long Droopy (released in 1954). The “moo-moo-baa-baa” and “hey, taxi” scenes are as funny as anything Tex Avery did.

There are some great expressions, too. There’s the underplayed little burro who casually moseys along. And there’s the cattle baron, who has a dishevelled take when he’s told (by a worried cow) that sheep are on the way. This is one of the in-betweens.



Ray Patterson was added to the Avery unit for this cartoon, which had Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton and Mike Lah animating, along with Bob Bentley.

Headlines

Ub Iwerks had a thing for emotion lines radiating from characters’ heads. You could almost turn it into a drinking game, but you’d pass out before the first minute of a cartoon was over.

These frames are from the first 17 second of Nurse Maid (1932). And there are more and more of these expression-lines through the whole cartoon. And in the next Iwerks cartoon. And the next. And the next.



The Iwerks cartoons love those irradiating lines, where everything stands still, except for two frames of different lines that are alternated. Here’s an example with the Iwerks Crone. I’ve slowed it down a bit.



Iwerks used these effects until his last cartoon, the tedious Happy Days (1936). I don’t know about his later shorts for Columbia, but you don’t find them in the two that were released as Warner Bros. cartoons that were, more or less, Bob Clampett cartoons.

Mickey, Bernie and Benny

90 years ago today, the bill you see to the right is what was playing at the Colony Theatre in New York City. Mr. Yowzah, Ben Bernie, was the headliner, but item two is what has many cartoon fans excited today. It’s the first appearance of Mickey Mouse, or at least generally accepted to be. This makes today Mickey’s 90th birthday.

Steamboat Willie accomplished what it set out to do. It combined sound and animation in funny ways. And it put a dollar or two in Walt Disney’s pocket.

People liked the cartoon. It was reviewed the next day by Mordaunt Hall of the New York Times:

On the same program is the first sound cartoon, produced by Walter Disney, creator of “Oswald the Rabbit.” This current film is called “Steamboat Willie,” and it introduces a new cartoon character, henceforth to be known as “Micky Mouse” [sic]. It is an ingenious piece of work with a good deal of fun. It growls, whines, squeaks and makes various other sounds that add to its mirthful quality.

Variety’s review published November 21, 1928 went as follows:

"STEAMBOAT WILLIE"
Animated Cartoon
Powers Cinephone
7 Mins.
Colony, New York
Not the first animated cartoon to be synchronized with sound effects but the first to attract favorable attention. This one represents a high order of cartoon ingenuity cleverly combined with sound effects. The union brought forth laughs galore. Giggles came so fast at the Colony they were stumbling over each other. It’s a peach of a synchronization job all the way, bright, snappy and fitting the situation perfectly. Cartoonist, Walter Disney.
With most of the animated cartoons qualifying as a pain in the neck, it's a signal tribute to this particular one. If the same combination of talent can turn out a series as good as "Steamboat Willie" they should find a wide market if interchang[e]ability angle does not interfere.
Recommended unreservedly for all wired houses. Land [Robert J. Landry]

You can read more about the other cartoons released around this time in this old post.

So much has been written about Steamboat Willie, in context of the creation of the Disney empire (and legend) as well as in the context of the rise of sound film (and the death of silent), there’s nothing I can add that hasn’t been said. I’ll end this short birthday tribute to Mickey with a trivia note:

A week after his Colony debut, Mickey shared the billing with a headliner who, about 32 years later, was also in cartoons—the man who became voice of Joe Jitsu, Benny Rubin. What a journey animated shorts went on in between.

Benny at the Crossroads

Was Jack Benny’s weekly TV show shoved off the air by NBC or did he quit?

We may never really know the answer to that question.

We do know a couple of things because they played out in the media at the time. Jack was not happy that CBS’s Jim Aubrey changed his lead-in show in the 1963-64 season to Petticoat Junction. Soon after the season started, it was announced Benny had signed a one-year contract with NBC for the following year. It would appear Aubrey didn’t “fire” Jack Benny, as some fans (and authors) claim. He told CBS to stick it.

Also known is Aubrey put Gomer Pyle up against Benny when the 1964-65 season started and more people tuned into hear “Goooollly, Sergeant Carter!” than “Well!” Pyle ended up as the third most-watched show that season. Not to Jack Benny, though. Whenever a TV show beat him in the ratings, he sniffed that the ratings weren’t accurate.

Stories bubbled up very early in the season that Benny was done for or, at best, his future was uncertain. Finally, news came out in early April 1965—there doesn’t appear to have been an official announcement by anyone—that Jack would continue on NBC but not on a series; he would do specials.

Whose decision was it? Again, we may never know. But something else we know is Jack was just past 70 years of age and leaning toward the idea of only being seen periodically (though whether that was brought on by a case of Gomer-itis is a matter of speculation).

Here’s a feature story from the January 17, 1965 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer Jack talks about how his script is put together—even Jeanette Eymann had a role—and what the future may have in store for him.

NBC's Jack Benny Still Has Schedule Trouble
By HARRY HARRIS
Of The Inquirer Staff
ONE consequence of Jack Benny's shift to NBC this season after 15 years at CBS is that he can team with NBC-"owned" Milton Berle.
In the "Jack Benny Program episode Friday at 9:30 P. M. (Channel 3) Benny-Berle boffolas stem from Jack's adoption of a "very large little boy" Milton, eager to inherit Jack's jack.
Benny's hopeful that the half hour will lure laughs, although he concedes, "It isn't always easy for a comedy show to do a great show with another comedian. It's the toughest writing job.
"When you have a dramatic actor as a guest, it becomes a real scene, and if it's essentially a funny situation, even an amateur, given the right lines, can get laughs."
He feels that this week's show is "different," but then, he notes, "no two of our shows are alike. There's no way to ‘change our format,’ because actually there is no format!
"Sometimes our show is like situation comedy, and sometimes I do a whole show in 'one' (on the portion of a stage closest to the audience). One of my best shows, a New Year's Eve show, I did all by myself.
"We use Dennis Day and Rochester about 12 times a season, but we never write shows for them. We just fit them in. This season we've added a new character, Jane Dulo, who plays a cook, someone new to heckle me in the house. I'm trying to keep up with the times with an 'integrated' house staff.
"We don't knock our brains out working in guest stars. When an idea looks pretty good, then we approach a guest. We've never had any trouble getting the people we want. The best way to handle a guest star is to treat him right, and no one has ever suffered on my shows, radio or TV.
"Sometimes we do make an all-out effort to come up with the right idea when we want a guest for young people, like a 'hot' singer.
"Everybody in my organization has been with me a thousand years. I sold my company to Revue, but I have my own offices and my own people, and they let me do what I want to do as long as I'm reasonable.
"They let me spend a lot of money, but if I wanted to hire Maurice Chevalier because I had one good line in French, they might say, ‘Come on, Jack, $8000 to say 'Voulez vous something?’
"My writers work differently from others. They go home and make notes, and then I edit with them, twice. There's more time spent editing than writing. "Do I know what gets laughs? Yes, but I can be fooled. I can be fooled easier than the writers.
"Sometimes they bring in a script and I say, ‘I don't think that's funny.’ If they don't agree, we discuss it a long time. As a rule, I have four writers, and if two agree with me and two do not, I lean my way.
"If there's no decision, I call the script girl and ask, ‘Jeanette, how do you feel about this?’ and then I sort of go that way.
"Once I was adamant. I was sure I was right. I didn't want a particular gag. The writers thought it was OK, and they said, ‘The four of us could be wrong!’
"They're always insulting me, but I'm always apologizing to them. I'll apologize 28 weeks a year, as long as the show comes off. I don't want to have a lousy show just so I can say, ‘See, fellows, I was right!’
"I've got to keep up the standard. More than that I can't do. We all do the kind of show we know how to do.
"Eventually I'm going to have to go off, though I'd like to get out before I'm thrown out. I'd prefer to have good shows and not be thrown out, but if I am thrown out, I'd rather it was with good shows."
Benny's present pact with NBC is for a single year, and whether he'll return next season is still moot. Although his time spot between Bob Hope, one of his best friends, and Jack Paar, whose radio career he once gave a tremendous boost seemed a promising one, his ratings have plummeted.
Previously, he says, he was out of TV's "top 20" only once when scheduled against the potent "Bonanza."
"I knew I was in trouble," he recalls, "when one night Bill Paley (chairman of the CBS board) called from New York, where programs are on three hours earlier, to say, 'I saw the show you're doing tonight and it's wonderful, so be sure to look at it.'
"I thought I'd watch the first half of 'Bonanza' and then switch, and you know what happened? I got so interested, I wouldn't go to my own show. If wouldn't, how could I expect others to?
'That was a very tough spot; you can't get a tougher one than being against the middle of a good hour show."
This season, however, apparently has posed a tougher one he's pitted against one of the most popular of the new entries, a consistent Nielsen "top 5" contender, "Gomer Pyle, USMC."
"I don't believe in ratings," Benny quips. "I put 90 phones in my house and I didn't get one call, not even from friends!
"I can't believe they're authentic when I find that one phone call can make a difference of thousands of watchers. And I don't see how a show can be a half point before or behind another show.
"I don't put much stock in them, but it's very difficult for me to say that now. When I was No. 1 in radio, that was the time to say I didn't believe in ratings!
"I guess they have to go by something, but I'd prefer they went by the quality of the show and how the sponsors are doing with the sale of their products." Although he'll be 71 on Feb. 14, St. Valentine's Day, "39-year-old" Jack has no intention of retiring.
"As George Burns says," he notes, "I'm too old to retire and too old to be thrown out. Besides, I have nothing to retire to.
"Force a man to retire and you've got an old man. I have fun working all the time. It doesn't make so much difference what I do, as long as I do something.
"I'd be satisfied to do a few TV shows each year and a lot of concerts.
"I hope I'll be around for a long time, and not only on NBC. I have a schedule that's so well organized that Irving Fein, my executive producer, can tell me what I'll be doing four months from Thursday at 3 o'clock.
"For me it's very, very easy. Editing takes far less time than it used to. My boys know what I'll take out or add to.
"I work about 12 or 13 hours a week. Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays, I have nothing to do if I don't want to. I don't have to be back until Wednesday, and Thursdays everybody works but me, blocking out the cameras. I show up if I feel like it.
"So I'm past 70, but I don't look it and I don't feel it. I agree with Chevalier. When he was asked how it felt to be 75, he said, ‘When I think of the alternative, I like it.’
"How would I like, by some miracle, to go back to really being 39 again? I'd want to do it only if I felt as good as I feel now!"

What Noise Does a Pinto Make?

Walt Disney didn’t like his cartoon voices to get credit, something to do with spoiling the illusion that the characters were like real people. Bugs Bunny is no less loved because people know Mel Blanc was his voice, but the logic at the Disney studio was otherwise.

Still, there was occasionally a newspaper feature on the voices in the studio’s animated shorts. Here’s one from November 13, 1946 about Pinto Colvig, perhaps known best as the original voice of Goofy, as he attended the premiere of Song of the South in Atlanta.

Colvig already had a full career by the time he arrived at Disney from the Walter Lantz studio in 1930. He had been a cartoonist at the San Francisco Bulletin, performed in vaudeville (clarinet a speciality). He freelanced on radio, later providing the original, pre-war, sound of Jack Benny’s car. After his cartoon career took him to Paramount and MGM then back to Disney, he starred on records and Los Angeles television as Bozo the Clown. Colvig died in 1967.

Colvig appeared at schools, hospitals and on the radio in Atlanta during the week of the premiere. Clarence Nash (Donald Duck) went with him. So did Adriana Caselotti. I don’t believe she was involved with Song of the South, but as the voice of Snow White about ten years earlier, she’d be a popular draw.

This story is self-explanatory. It’s nice to see Colvig get some ink. He was a funny man by all accounts.



Meet Film’s Noise Man Of Renown—Mr. Colvig
By KATHERINE BARNWELL
Howls, groans, barks, yelps, put-puts, pops and assorted nameless noises have blended not too harmoniously with the hum of polite conversation at most of the “Song of the South” social festivities here.
“What’s that?” has been the customary question posed by Atlanta matrons bejeweled a la premier, as these unexpected sound effects exploded in their midst. The answer, which could be swiftly supplied by Walt Disney and company, was simple:
“That’s Pinto . . . Pinto Colvig.”
Explaining who Pinto Colvig is, however, is not so simple.
Pinto is Pluto the Pup and Goofy the Hick. He is Grumpy of the Seven Dwarfs and the “soul kiss” of Snow White and the Prince. He is Dopey’s hiccups and the Practical Pig of the Three Little Pigs. He is the Hound of the Baskervilles and the belch of the bugs. He is a New York subway and an Argentine bull. He is a train or a hay bailer or a mosquito.
He is Hollywood’s soundmaker par excellence.
In Atlanta for the premier simply because he is the voice of innumerable voices in Disney cartoondom, Colvig shared his unique talent, both when requested and when not. He can’t help making queer noises, because they are part of him, he said.
A tall, loose-joined, ex-circus performer, Colvig has an elastic face. He can blow it up or sink it in. He can stretch it vertically or horizontally. He does all of these things while producing sound effects, and the cartoonists, he explained, copy many of his expressions in drawing the animals he speaks for.
How did he get that way?v “When I was a little child,” quipped he, “my mother put a crazy quilt over me, and I’ve been crazy ever since.”
Colvig claimed he has no favorites among the animated characters for which he speaks. But he said that “Goofy,” who is the epitome of all the “hicks” in the world, is the easiest to portray, explaining:
“Guess that’s because I’m a cornfed hick myself.”
Pluto the Pup is probably the most popular animal for which Colvig vocalizes. Being able to bark like a dog has its advantages, Pluto’s voice added, since “it scares the burglars away.”
“My cocker spaniel and I both bark when we suspect burglars are around,” Colvig barked. “But there’s no professional jealousy between my dog and me. My dog figures that the more his master barks, the more kennel rations we’ll both have.”
Colvig is 54 years old—a self-styled “juvenile delinquent in my second childhood.” Contrary to Hollywood custom, he has been married for 31 years to one wife and he’s one up on Crosby when it comes to boys. He has five.
Although Colvig makes most of his sounds with his lips, breath and voice, he has a battered old trombone, for which he gave $2 in a Los Angeles hock shop, that he uses to produce metallic sounds if needed. He figures the $2 instrument alone has grossed him $22,000 to date.
Colvig thinks his job is one of the easiest in the world. He has no difficulty producing the wildest facial contortions or the weirdest sounds.
“The hardest thing for me to do,” he gulped, “is at act natural.”

Flying Failure

The dopey cat in Birdy and the Beast (1944) is flying. Until the Bob Clampett version of Tweety informs him he’s flying. Reaction time.



Tom McKimson is the credited animator. Bob McKimson, Manny Gould and Rod Scribner toiled anonymously. Warren Foster’s story includes a chicken that clucks “As Time Goes By.”

Sailing to America, Thanks to Maurice Noble

“It wasn’t so long ago in the history of man’s voyage toward a better world that ships were carrying eager passengers toward the shores of a new nation that was just in the building.” So says narrator Macdonald Carey in the John Sutherland industrial cartoon It's Everybody's Business (1954).

Maurice Noble provided the art direction for this cartoon, funded by the Chamber of Commerce of the United States. Here are portions of the opening pan as the ship sails from Europe across the Atlantic.



Finally, they are about to each America.



Noble does a beautiful job with this cartoon. The background artist is not identified (Joe Montell may have been at the studio at that point) but the animators are Bill Higgins, Abe Levitow, Emery Hawkins and Bill Melendez.