Colourful Lift-Off

Coloured cards to augment effects were popular with a number of directors at Walter Lantz. Here’s an example from Ace in the Hole, a fairly lacklustre Woody Woodpecker cartoon directed by Alex Lovy.

A lit flare falls into Woody Woodpecker’s otherwise airtight pilot suit. The force of it makes Woody take off. The coloured cards and the effect animation are shot on twos.



George Dane is the credited animator. Woody is Kent Rogers, who was killed in a training exercise during World War Two.

Climbing the Ladder of Television

Don Pardo did more than “tell them what they won” on The Price is Right. Pardo wasn’t just the show’s announcer during its NBC days in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. He warmed up the audience, too.

He had an unusual method, as revealed in this unbylined story in the La Crosse Tribune of January 28, 1961.

Pardo remained on The Price is Right until 1963. The show moved to ABC, but Pardo remained loyal to NBC. The following year, the network picked him to announce and warm up the New York studio audience for a new game show called Jeopardy.

Don Pardo Is High Man On The TV Totem Pole For 'Price Is Right'
Don Pardo, amiable six-footer whose well-modulated tones introduce "The Price Is Right" to over 60 million viewers weekly, has had to call upon one of man's oldest props to get the show properly on the air. So unique is Pardo's technique other professional television announcers visit "The Price Is Right" set just to watch him perform.
* * *
About 15 minutes before "Price" goes on the air, Don Pardo hauls out a 12-foot ladder, climbs same while the startled 600 people in the theater audience wonder what kind of stunt is going to be pulled. Swaying atop his perch, Pardo hooks one lanky leg over the side for natural support and proceeds to "warm up" his audience. His easy style seems to make the use of such an out-of-place prop perfectly acceptable in the maze of television cameras and assorted electronic gear spread across the set.
The fact that "The Price Is Right" is aired from an old-fashioned theater on upper Broadway in New York, makes it necessary for Don to use his tall perch . . . simply to be seen by the 3-tiered theater audience. Friends of Pardo's think he would use the unusual prop regardless of the theater set-up to crack the ice in getting the audience to be friendly and join into the atmosphere of the show.
* * *
Don and his 12-foot prop seem to fit into the easy-going atmosphere of "The Price Is Right." From Bill Cullen, popular emcee, throughout the entire man-woman cast and crew—the climate on the set is precisely what is seen by over 60 million viewers each week ... a fun group, having a good time putting together some of TV's best entertainment. Don personifies this air of informality from his opening statements to the theater audience. It is quite important to the tempo and tone of the show to have the audience relaxed and to actually become a part of the show—and, while a pro like Pardo makes it look simple—it's no easy job to get 600 strangers to join together as one interest, fun-loving unit.
One evening, while Don was in the middle of his warm-up act, a chimp being used on the show climbed up Don's ladder behind him. To make matters worse, (if not shakier), the chimp was waving a crew members hat, swiped while running through his act. Don almost fell off his tottering ladder before the crew members finally coaxed the chimp (and waving hat) down again. At one point, the front row audience gasped when they thought Don, ladder and chimp would land in their laps. It's too bad little, colorful human incidents like this can't be caught by the cameras for the benefit of the national audience. In any event, sometime when you're watching The Price Is Right—should a tall man and a very tall ladder crash down on the set . . . you'll know what happened —another chimp is loose!
* * *
Don started out to be an announcer in the first place and seems born to the job. His early start following college groomed him well for his later bigtime jobs on television. He did such early successes as Four Star Revue, Firestone Theater and Colgate Comedy Hour. Later work included the Martha Raye, Sid Caesar and Perry Como summer shows, Max Liebman spectaculars Kate Smith Hour, Arthur Murray Show, World of Mr. Sweeney, Producer's Showcase, plus many NBC special colorcasts. Don has, among other professional awards, a Sylvania TV award for top narration—winning this one for his participation in Ford's two-hour 50th Anniversary Show.
Don reflects the same easy-going personality in personal life at home his do-it-yourself projects sometimes overlap each other, but they get done, he says. Just finished a nice new patio—that was simple ... no 12-foot ladder work involved! Don lives in Demarest, N.J., with a pretty young wife and five children.

The Eyes Have It

The city wolf keeps covering the country wolf’s eyes to stop him from viewing Red and getting all excited. It’s a failure.



This is from Red’s farewell in Little Rural Riding Hood, animated by Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton, Bob Cannon and Mike Lah (the Red dance is reused Preston Blair animation).

Happy Hearts

A cartoon with bouncing, smiling hearts can’t be all bad, but there isn’t much good in The Queen of Hearts, a ComiColor short animated by Shamus Culhane and Al Eugster.

Any humour is semi-slapstick at best. Hearts and face cards come alive and enact the nursery rhyme about the Queen of Hearts. The hyper hearts make tarts but one accidentally pours soap powder into the mix. That results in all the characters blowing bubbles after being hit in the face with the tarts.



The hearts use clothes pins and bananas as weapons against the Jack of Hearts who stole the tarts (filling in for the Knave of the nursery rhyme).



This Ub Iwerks production was released in 1934. Art Turkisher supplied the score.

The Young Benny

People will always be cheap. People will always have a high opinion of themselves.

That’s the reason Jack Benny’s “character” works today. You could take Jack’s character type—someone who would go to insane lengths to save a dollar, who felt he was a great star, ladies man and musician—put it on some streaming service and people would binge-watch (if the writing and acting were good). You can’t do it with most of his variety show contemporaries. They’re singers of old songs and tellers of old jokes. (Look how Bob Hope became a sad shell on TV specials at the end).

That premise was picked up by a columnist with the Herald Tribune News Service in 1958. Granted this was before the socially-conscious ‘60s when comedians felt obligated to try to do hip routines on television and looked like someone’s grandfather embarrassingly trying to act 18. It was published on November 16th.

GOOD OLD DAYS ARE TODAY
Through Jack Benny, Fans Thumb Nose at the Years
By BOB SALMAGGI
(Copyright 1958, N. Y. Herald Tribune)
NEW YORK—Curious as it seems, TV audiences are inclined to accept Jack Benny as nothing but a latter-day comedian, even in the face of a rumor that it was he who stood by George Washington when he crossed the Delaware.
Each time Benny attempts to pass himself off as a mere stripling, audiences nod assent and laugh with him. Through him, people vicariously thumb their noses at the passing years. It's almost as if they were saying, See? Jack Benny doesn't know the meaning of the word old. . . he'll always remain young, no matter how time flies. . .there'll always be Jack Benny.
For with Benny, the chronological element is quickly dismissed. It's as if he invented the adage, "You're as young as you feel."

In effect, Benny, like so many of his contemporaries—Sophie Tucker, Fred Astaire, Ed Wynn, Ted Lewis—thinks young. He lives young, acts young, and consequently feels young. So what if there are a few streaks of gray, a wrinkle or two where they shouldn't be—Benny and his confreres laugh at the years, and point the way to bigger things with each passing century.
In Benny's design for entertaining, however, there is one notable factor that sets him apart from Durante, Cantor and the rest. He guardedly steers clear of nostalgia in his act. He shuns saccharine sentiment, doesn't glorify the "good old days," nor does he deprecate today's show business standards. He doesn't throw verbal bouquets at his contemporaries without purpose, or adhere to the old-timer's practice of "sticking together."
Benny wisely stays aloof, plays it cool, and basks in the aura of modernism. The only major concession he makes to the bygone days is his show prop, the ancient Maxwell car, but this is strictly for effect, just for laughs. His act is as modern as sliced bread, and as wholesome. Although devoted to the proposition that Benny hates to part with a nickel, his television show and his nightclub act, even his concerts, are fast-paced, stylized and strictly up-to-date.
When you think of Sophie Tucker, you think of vaudeville, one-nighters, and torchy blues of yesteryear. So too with the Jessels, the Cantors, and others of his generation. But there's no kindling of old memories or old associations when Jack Benny strides on stage in that familiar style of his.
He is regarded as a latter-day comedian, period—a comedian who came up during the early days of radio and vaudeville, to be sure, but one who made the transition to the fearsome new television medium, without so much as a dropped decimal point in his Hooper, or Trendex, if you will. Many who starred with Benny years ago tried to hurdle the obstacle of time and make a place for themselves on TV, but they weren't attuned to the times. They couldn't adapt themselves as did Benny, who has been riding high, wide and lucrative on radio and/or TV steadily since 1932.
In essence, his credo is to "keep working if you want to keep young." To this he adds: "I really hate it when I'm not busy enough. I mean that. When I'm idle it's then I begin to feel a little older. Look at Fred Astaire . .if he's not working, he's at home practicing like mad. He's better than ever these days . . but if he ever stopped working, well. . ."
It wasn't too long ago that Benny announced to a bemused world that he was going to turn forty. But these days he's feeling so chipper that he is "thinking about going back" to 39 very soon now.
"I was 36, you know, for a little over a year," mused Benny, "and then I turned 37 for a few years, but I hung on to 39 the longest. I guess I'll always be 39," he said with a sly grin.
"It's such a comfortable age."

Waltzing With Leon Schlesinger

Surely you remember seeing Griff Jay’s name in the credits of a Warner Bros. cartoon. Or Peter Gaenger’s. Or Art Loomer’s. Or Elmer Plummer’s.

Well, no, you don’t. All of them were background artists for Leon Schlesinger. All of them put their stamp on cartoons in the days before background painters got screen credit.

There’s another one to tell you about.

At this point, we interrupt our post to thank Steven Hartley. You’ll recall he was the author of the fine Likely Looney, Mostly Merrie blog which he, unfortunately, doesn’t have time to continue. Steven sent me a photo of a gentleman named John Waltz, who I had never heard of. Waltz was one of the background artists at Schlesinger’s in the mid-‘30s, the period when the studio was making cartoons with dancing bugs (not Bugs) and suddenly found itself in the presence of genius—someone named Tex Avery.

How long Waltz worked at the Schlesinger studio, I do not know. The Los Angeles City Directories are absent of information, and the 1940 Census only says “motion picture studio” (he earned $2500 in 1939). By the end of the ‘40s, he was a staff artist for a North Hollywood newspaper and painted murals. He died in Los Angeles on April 17, 1984.

As Steven isn’t posting any more, allow me to send you what he sent me. This photo and article appeared in the Indianapolis Star of November 8, 1936. It gives a list of his Warners credits to date.

Behind him, you’ll see some paintings from “Sunday Go To Meetin’ Time” (released 1936). There is an excellent use of colour in parts of this cartoon, and Norman Spencer’s score (wood block fetish aside) is pretty good, but fears over racial clichés removed this short from TV screens ages ago.

Hoosier Artist Makes Rapid Strides as Designer Of Comic Animated Cartoons for Motion Pictures
JOHN A. WALTZ, native Indiana artist, who had much of his training in Indianapolis, is one of the younger group who is making good as a designer for the movies. Starting in at the Walt Disney studio about a year ago--in November, 1935—he worked on three of their pictures, "Elmer Elephant," "Mickey's Opera" and "Three Little Wolves."
Immediately following this first experience, in which he had taken advantage of every opportunity to learn each phase of the work, he went over to the Leon Schlesinger Productions at Warner Bros. studio. The sixteen pictures with whose design he has been connected as working artist since he became a member of the Warner Bros. organization are as follows: "Let It Be Me," "Bingo Crosbyanna," "Sunday Go to Meeting Time," "At Your Service, Madame," "Toy Town Hall," "Westwood Whoa," [sic] "Fish Tales," "Shanghaied Shipmate," "Porky's Pet," "Porky the Mover," [Porky’s Moving Day] "Porky the Rainmaker," "Porky's Poultry Plant," "Don't Look Now," "Milk and Money," "Boulevardier From the Bronx," and "Little Beau Porky."
Excellent Year's Work.
A year's total of nineteen sets of funny animated cartoons for the cinema, upon which an artist has helped in the art creation, is a record of which to be proud. And it is quite possible, before the year is wholly rounded out, the total will be somewhere in the twenties.
It was in June, 1901, that young Waltz left New York to join his mother, Mrs. C. A. Waltz and his sister, Ida, for residence in Los Angeles, Cal. There were several commissions and art jobs and work as a free-lance artist, for the first. few years, that led up to his present responsible position an background artist for Merry Melodies and Looney Tunes, produced by Leon Schlesinger for Warner Bros.-First National Pictures, Hollywood, Cal.
Carolyn Ashhrook Given Credit.
Carolyn Ashbrook, on the art staff of Shortridge High School for a number of years, was responsible for John Waltz's good start in drawing, painting and design. A scholarship from Shortridge, upon his graduation in 1927, took him to the John Herron Art School, where he studied with William Forsyth, Clifton Wheeler and Myra Reynolds Richards. While working as designer and illustrator in the school annual department of the Indianapolis Engraving Company, he studied life drawing in the night classes conducted by Elmer Taflinger.
After one year with Taflinger, he studied for a year with George Bridgman and Kenneth Hayes Miller. While a scholarship student during the second year, he was an assistant to Mr. Miller and also did free-lance work for Lordley and Hayes, the American Medical Association and for the International Dental Society. For the last-named organization young Waltz designed and painted fifty large panels that illustrated the development of dentistry from 600 B. C. to modern times. These panels were exhibited in New York and were afterwards displayed in Paris.
Good Background for Success.

With such a background of study, zeal for work, and recognition from those with whom he has been associated, it is no wonder that the efforts of the young Hoosier bring success.
George C. Calvert, Indianapolis art connoisseur and art collector, has been watching the career of John A. Waltz ever since his sister, Marjorie, Waltz (for many years Mr. Calvert's secretary in the office of the Indianapolis Clearing House Association, and now Mrs. O. P. Rush of Kansas City), brought to the office some pen and ink illustrations that John had made for the Shortridge Annual. And when Mr. Calvert attended a bankers' convention in San Francisco this fall, he stopped in Los Angeles to see John and his latest work.
The twelve large panels that depict California sports in a landscape setting were viewed by Mr. Calvert in the A. G. Spalding building in downtown Los Angeles. Forming a frieze eighty-eight feet long and three feet high, the mural decoration is painted on the fascia of the mezzanine floor.
Correct Handling Makes Appeal.
The anatomically correct handling of the figures in various athletic poses, which were painted about three-quarters life size, made special appeal to Mr. Calvert. "The figures are well drawn and the anatomy is good, but there is no sense of restlessness for the beholder," said Mr. Calvert. Keyed rather low, with tans and warm greens predominant in the color scheme, the mural was designed and executed as a commission from the A. G. Spalding firm in April, 1935.
Earlier commissions in Los Angeles had meant the creation of ten package designs for the California Milling Corporation, work that brought favorable comment in many national exhibitions, Mr. Calvert said, while later work included drawings of the San Diego Exposition, made for a San Francisco client.
The artist gave Mr. Calvert twelve small paintings from his work for the movies series. Done in gay colors on rectangles of celluloid, these pictures were made while Mr. Waltz was doing figure designs in which little pig and dogs and roosters and ducks and other fowls and animals play a leading part, as well as a humorous one, in baseball games and orchestra concerts.
Studied With Best Instructors.
In discussing with Mr. Calvert the various periods of his work, from the time he sold his first efforts when he was only 13 years old, Mr. Waltz said: "Since that time I have worked in almost every field of art and have studied with the best instructors. This experience has given me a feeling of respect for the art profession that will not allow me to sell work that I am ashamed of, or live in a garret atmosphere painting stuff for mv own selfish interest.
"I think there is a place for everyone to do the best work he is fitted for and is capable of doing. That work must have a definite patronage and appreciation, otherwise the worker is a parasite, living off the efforts of others. During the depression I learned the relationship of the artist to the economic structure. That is why I turned my back on easel pictures for several years. People were not interested in looking at pictures, much less in buying them, when they didn’t know where their next meal was coming from."
In referring to his work for the California Milling Corporation. Mr. Waltz said that his twelve package designs so increased the sales of flour and cereal products that it meant the employment of more than one hundred additional workers.
Tells of Experience.
"I had the same practical idea in mind when I painted the mural decoration for the A. G. Spalding building,”continued the artist. “In painting it I hoped to make golf, tennis, swimming, football, basketball, baseball, track and badminton interesting enough that those who saw my paintings would want to buy the equipment to participate in those games.
"After finishing the Spalding decorations I thought I had at least reached the goal for which I had been working . . . that of being a mural painter. I soon realized that such commissions do not come every day, so I became interested in painting backgrounds for animated short subjects, hoping to be able to apply my knowledge of color and design and gain knowledge to apply to mural decoration. The opportunity for doing the latter has far exceeded my expectations, because painting a background is like doing the sketch for a mural decoration. You have to think of its enlargement to the size of a motion picture screen and design the color and form to carry on that large area.
Studies Exposure Sheet.
"While working in Walt Disney's studio I learned the history of the animated cartoon from its source in Egypt in the Temple of Rameses II and on through the years to its present development, action analysis in relation to animation, the use of a single line to design a form with weight and volume, perspective for camera angles and a study of the exposure sheet which is a technical graph laid out by the director and used by all departments of the studio in the production of a cartoon.
"I have found the work fascinating in every way . . . each day learning something new and, incidentally, doing work that has a definite patronage and appreciation. If you don’t believe that ask any theater manager how much an animation short subject contributes to his program.
“About mural decoration? Well, there is a big one waiting for me and when I think I have learned enough, I will start work on it.”
John A. Waltz was born in Franklin, Ind., May 26, 1909. His present home address is 152 South Serano street, Los Angeles, Cal. Two sisters, Mrs. J.H. Bell and Mrs. Margaret Houghton, and a brother, Ray Waltz, are residents of Indianapolis. It is recalled that Miss Ida Waltz was the first nurse in the original school for crippled children in Indianapolis. She is now a nurse in the Los Angeles county clinic.—LUCILLE E. MOREHOUSE.

In several interviews, Chuck Jones looked back and looked down on the background artists at the studio in the ‘30s as a bunch of old, hack artists. Waltz was neither old nor, it seems, a hack. By around 1940, things were changing. Jones was working with Paul Julian, Bob Clampett with Dick Thomas, Tex Avery with Johnny Johnsen and Friz Freleng with Lenard Kester; there may have been others who moved from unit to unit. The 1940 Census lists Waltz as an artist in motion pictures, making $2500 a year. His draft card that year revealed he was at Disney. He served in the war and the 1950 Census tells us he was an art director for a newspaper.

John Adams Waltz passed away on April 17, 1984. The drawing below is from the Los Angeles Times.

Flower of Fickleness

Felix the Cat should know women cats in cartoons can’t be satisfied.

In Felix Finds Them Fickle (1924), he gives in to his angry girl-friend’s demand by climbing a mountain to get a flower. He has to conquer a bear at the top to do it. Then she complains she didn’t want THAT flower.



In one cartoon, he tears up the girl-friend (she is a cartoon, after all). In this one, he faints to end it.