Royal City Benny

Mobs of fans and Canadian military members came to see Jack Benny broadcast his show from Vancouver in April 1944, but that wasn’t his first stop when he arrived in British Columbia to raise money for the Victory Loan drive.

Two days before taking the stage at the old Forum, the Benny gang gave a performance in New Westminster.

Even then, it was an easy drive or interurban trip (the two cities are maybe 10 miles apart downtown to downtown) for people from the Royal City to go to Vancouver for a show. But evidently the local Victory Loan Committee decided a stop in the former colonial capital was a good idea (New Westminster has been overshadowed by the newer, larger city for decades).

The show in New Westminster was a smash, according to the following account in the Vancouver’s Province newspaper of April 21, 1944. Actually, there were two appearances, as Mary Livingstone skipped the first. You can get an idea how much Jack was loved in the southwest corner of Canada.

(The photo above was taken at a performance in Vancouver and is courtesy of the City Archives. Read about it in this post).

RADIO STAR IN SHIPYARD RUSH
JACK BENNY STORMS ROYAL CITY
5000 Admirers Give Comedian Big Hand at Victory Loan Show
NEW WESTMINSTER, April 21.—It must have been just like old times for Comedian Jack Benny here Thursday when the comedian staged a Victory Loan show, complete with a genuine Maxwell car, chauffeured by Rochester...just as he has done many times on the national radio. He even played "Love in Bloom" on his violin.
To the lusty cheers of some 5000 admirers, Benny, Rochester, Phil Harris and other members of the troupe arrived at the New Westminster City Hall aboard the ancient Maxwell. Mary Livingstone, feminine lead in the troupe, did not attend.
WELCOMED BY MAYOR.
They were officially welcomed by Mayor W. M. Mott, who introduced Don Wilson, announcer. A speech by Wilson was followed by an informal act by Jack Benny in which he "kidded" the crowd and his own assistants, spoke briefly to the Victory Loan, and finished with his famous violin solo.
Wavy-haired Phil Harris sang a "jive" song, and later introduced Rochester and his cigar. He received an ovation from the crowd as he stepped up to the microphone. The dusky comedian told several stories, mainly at the expense of his boss.
Girls' Bugle Band from the Duke of Connaught High School played several selections.
Thousands In Rush At City Shipyards
All available guards were pressed into service to protect Jack Benny and his troupe when they appeared before several thousand workers at a Vancouver shipyard and at Dominion Bridge Co., Burnaby, Thursday.
So great was the rush to see Benny and his troupe when they approached the flight deck of an aircraft carrier that two girls were trampled and received minor hurts.
Guards were required to form a ring about the famous troupe in order to protect them from the wildly enthusiastic crowd of some 3000 to 4000 shipyard workers and navy personnel.
GETS CHOICE SEAT.
An added touch to the hilarity of the scene was the appearance of one shipyard worker who took up a position on the swinging "hook" of a giant dock crane in order to obtain a clear view of proceedings.
Following his show, Jack Benny made an urgent plea for greater-than-ever support of the Victory Loan. Benny told workers and others that he had come to fully realize the importance of such loan campaigns from knowledge gained first-hand at the war fronts.
Mary Livingstone was presented with a bouquet of roses and iris by a woman worker.
RUSH FOR AUTOGRAPHS.
Similar precautions were necessary to protect Benny and his company from the welcome of about 1500 employees of Dominion Bridge fabrication and ordnance plants attending the second personal appearance show. With 50 per cent, of the audience women workers, there was a frantic crush for autographs and only swift action of guards in helping the visitors to leave quickly after their performance kept them from being mobbed by the crowd.
AT UNITED SERVICES.
Civilians and members of the armed services—500 strong—waited outside the entrance of United Services Centre Thursday night for arrival of Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone, Rochester, Bill Harris [sic] and Don Wilson.
Inside, a uniformed throng of 2500 thundered their approval of the air waves and screen celebrities.
Applause followed each as they went into their routines with the servicemen going "wild, simply wild" over Phil Harris.
Mink-coated, diamond-bedecked and stunningly gowned Mary Livingstone presented a picture and friendly smiles and merry laughs.
Screaming for more, the crowd forced the troupe to overstay its schedule, demanding encore after encore.

Paul Frees

What does Larry Mitchell, Crime Correspondent, have in common with Baron Otto Matic of Tom Slick?

They’re both played by Paul Frees.

Mind you, that applies to an awful lot of characters on radio, TV and films. Frees even played himself; a radio station hired him for a late-night show for a little while in the early ‘50s.

In 1949, Frees landed starring parts on two shows—the aforementioned Crime Correspondent and then the title role in The Green Lama.

Frees was already catching the attention of columnists in the late ‘40s. This appeared in the Ottawa Citizen on May 29, 1949.

Here's a young actor who recently won two important radio awards in one week—one of which named him as the "outstanding supporting player of the year"—and still scarcely anyone, outside the business, knows who he is.
Did you ever hear of Paul Frees? Remember the deep, ominous voice of the narrator on "Suspense"—the guy who gives you the shivers as he introduces ". . . a tale well calculated to keep you in—Suspense!" That's Paul Frees.
Remember the hilarious Peter Lorre impersonation on Spike Jones recording of "My Old Flame." That's Paul Frees, too.
Frees is, in a sense, a victim of his own versatility—for he has so many voices that he has no single identity. Described by Spike Jones as "one of the greatest impersonators in the world," he has simulated the voices of virtually every celebrity you can think of, from the late Franklin Roosevelt to Sidney Greenstreet. He does every dialect known to human speech, and often takes several roles in a single production."
"It's fun," says Paul, "but I'd rather be a star."
If radio performers ever start electing their own stars, you can bet that Paul Frees' name will be high on the marquee—a thought which should be some consolation.

Cartoon fans know Frees from all kinds of places. In the theatrical world, he was hired by MGM, Walter Lantz and Walt Disney. On television, Jay Ward, Hanna-Barbera, UPA and Rankin/Bass found animated characters for his voices. Oh, and Format Films. Oh, and those Beatles cartoons. Oh, and... well, it’s probably easier listing where he didn’t work than where he did. This isn’t including animated commercials.

Let’s not bother with lists and move on to an unbylined article that appeared in a bunch of newspapers in 1961; I spotted this in papers published in August through November.

Paul Frees has never been able to follow the parental dictum that he be seen and not heard.
In fact, Paul is the talkingest man you're likely to meet and he's seldom seen at all.
One of the group of performers known as "voice men," he's virtually unknown outside casting offices and advertising agencies, yet there's hardly an adult in the United States that hasn't heard his voice.
Paul figures he's played in 15,000 radio shows, more commercials than he can count and currently, he's the voice of Professor Ludwig Von Drake on "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color" and of Boris on "The Bullwinkle Show," both on NBC-TV. Of all the roles he's played, he likes Professor Von Drake best.

"Walt Disney gave me a lot of liberty in portraying the professor and I've made him more personal than any of my other characters," Paul says, resisting a temptation to slip into the German dialect he uses on the show.
"The professor is bright, good natured, has a sense of humor and is marvelously absent-minded at times," Paul adds. "But he has character. He's always driving at something and he's not beyond scolding you for lack of attention."
A German dialect like the professor's is just one of the things Paul carries in his bag of voice tricks.
"I can duplicate any voice and any dialect I hear," he says, confidently. Besides, he says he can deliver three or four versions of each of the common dialects and, in one feature picture, "A Time to Live and Time to Die," he took the speaking parts of 17 different German characters.
So good is he at voice duplication that he did the voice "stand in" work for stars like Orson Welles and Humphrey Bogart and once, he says, did a half hour radio show for Bogart when the actor couldn't make it.
Radio listeners will remember him as the voice of the old "Suspense" and "Escape" shows and TV viewers have heard him as the voice on “The Millionaire” series, among other shows.
Paul began training for his unusual profession when he went into vaudeville at the age of 13. Along the way, he's been a singer, dancer, nightclub emcee and impersonator. His impersonations paved the way for his present voice work.
Last year he won nine awards at the Commercial Film Festival. Those, he added to more than 100 others he's won over the years.
Paul has literally talked himself to success and, although he's a competent TV actor, he's happy right now to go on being heard and not seen.
"Sometimes it creates an ego problem," he admits, "but nothing so serious I can't overcome it when I look at the bank balance."

Frees had some great cartoon roles (Boris Badenov, Ludwig von Drake) and some mediocre ones (Charlie Beary, Squiddly Diddly) but he always gave a top performance and that’s why fans still love his work, even today.

Radio Ruckus

Sonny isn’t impressed with snoozing dad listening to Mendelsohn’s “Spring Song” on the radio and changes the station to get a screaming-type Gangbusters show. Suddenly dad isn’t sleeping any more. Here are some of the drawings as he jumps from his chair. Some are animated on twos, others on threes.



The kid isn’t happy.

The animation’s reused in the same scene when an off-screen phone rings.

This is some of the gentle humour in the propaganda cartoon Meet King Joe, an industrial short by the John Sutherland studio. This was one of the Sutherland cartoons that MGM put on its release schedule after disbanding its Lah-Blair unit, no doubt in a cost move.

The Sutherland cartoons were slickly made. There are some stylised backgrounds in some scenes; building outlines over a flat colour. Former MGMers like George Gordon and Carl Urbano were at Sutherland when this was made but there are no credits on the short. Bud Hiestand is the narrator but I don’t know who is voicing Joe, though it’s a Hollywood radio actor.

Your 1930s Opera Reference For the Day

Frank Tashlin’s You’re An Education (1938) seems to have been made solely to see how many cultural and musical puns can be shoved into one cartoon.

Perhaps the most obscure one today is the one involving a man singing in front of a travel poster for Tibet.



It is opera star Lawrence Tibbett. Yes, the accent’s on a different syllable, but a pun is a pun.



There’s been some kind of edit before this scene takes place. You can hear part of a note on the soundtrack as the picture fades out and then the first note of whoever is doing the Tibbett singing is faded up.

Broadcasting Bing

He had a 30-plus-year career on radio, much of the time hosting a variety show, but he wasn’t a top comedian.

He’s Bing Crosby.

Crosby bracketed his career with a 15-minute singing show on CBS, the first one airing in 1931 and the last one co-starring Rosemary Clooney leaving the air in 1962. In between he may be best known as the host of the Kraft Music Hall starting in 1936 before changing network radio in 1946 when he insisted his new show, Philco Radio Time, be broadcast via transcription. Pretty soon, other major stars were recording their programmes for network broadcast.

Bing had a casual, breezy approach on the air which, no doubt, helped maintain his popularity. But it was all calculated; you can’t wing a half-hour variety show. Bing had the good fortune to have Carroll Carroll as his writer for a number of years. Carroll wrote the show to suit Bing’s relaxed style. The old shows are still enjoyable today.

A syndicated columnist named Homer Canfield dropped in on Crosby’s Kraft show fairly early in its run to do a two-part story on how it was put together. It appeared in papers on December 23-24, 1937.

It seems to me this was around the time where there was a gimmick where announcer Ken Carpenter told Crosby on the air he would not ring the NBC chimes. This function, by 1937, would normally be done by a network staff announcer, ie. someone other than Carpenter. In the second story, Carpenter’s intro has been modified by the columnist to delete the sponsor’s name. No free newspaper plugs!

HOLLYWOOD — I GLANCED nervously at the clock over the engineers booth. The hands were straight up and down. Here it was 6 o'clock, and Ralph Bellamy, the guest star, hadn't arrived, hadn’t seen the script nor rehearsed a line. It was Thursday and the Music Hall had to hit the air at 7 o’clock. (KFI). No excuses would be acceptable. Producer Calvin Kuhl and Writer Carroll Carroll weren't particularly worried. A two-year apprenticeship with the Music Hall had hardened them to this sort of thing. They knew Bellamy was tied up on a picture and would get there just as soon as he could. That’s the way producers, writers and stars on big-time shows have to work. All I can say is that it’s a good thing they haven't the Canfield nervous system.
Earlier in the afternoon I had dropped over to Studio B on the NBC lot to pay my respects to the Music Hall gang and watch Ken Carpenter’s masterful performance on the bells. On entering the studio at 4:30 o’clock, I had expected to find a boiling pot of activity. Instead, I found only a few stray musicians swapping stories. Bing Crosby, Bob Burns and John Scott Trotter were no where in sight.

Scouting about a bit I found Calvin Kuhl in John Swallow's office. He was busy dictating wires to be sent to New York.
This young, friendly producer of one of radio's most popular variety hours bid your Uncle Canfield welcome, and I collapsed in one of the easy divans. Executives offices are always filled with easy chairs. Carroll Carroll was stretched horizontally along another divan. Both looked at me inquiringly. I knew they expected to be asked some questions, so I started: “How many weeks ahead do you work on the show? “
Carroll: “Well, I know exactly what’s going to happen next week up to the point where Ken Carpenter says, ‘And here’s Bing Crosby,’.”
Kuhl: “When you came in I was sending some wires east for clearances on next week’s music. You know, of course, that we have to have permission for every song programmed. That’s to prevent repetition of the same numbers on other programs. Then, too, we know that Basil Rathbone, Madge Evans and the Choral Society will be on next Thursday’s show. Otherwise, were as free as the birds.”
“How do you achieve that fine touch of informality which runs throughout the show?”
Kuhl: “By not over rehearsing. We usually run through the script once and then forget it until airtime. Because so many of our stars are busy with other work, we never do a dress rehearsal. In fact, we haven’t even gone over all of tonight's show. When Bellamy gets here at 6 o’clock well run over his lines with Bob and Bing.
“How do you get the stars to do and say some of the unusual things you write for them?”
Carroll, whose small stature and youthful appearance belie the fact that he’s one of the broadcasting bands ace scripters, gave this question a bit of thought. “That seems to be comparatively simple,” he replied. “Probably on Monday I’ll drop around and see Rathbone. We’ll just sit around and talk. Something will bob up in the conversation that will give me a lead. But maybe I won’t find anything. Maybe I’ll have to look up some of his friends and try to get an idea from them. What I search for first is a finish. It’s easy enough to bring the stars to the microphone, but it’s something else to end their act with something of a punch.”
“Do they ever object to the informal treatment they get in the Music Hall?”
“No. Most of them have heard the show at one time or another and are prepared for what’s to happen. Like anyone else, they’re eager for some fun. As long as the script doesn't make them appear ridiculous something we strive never to do they're willing for almost anything.”
Kuhl’s remark that the show never sees a dress rehearsal had just pierced my brain and awakened more questions.
“How do you get an accurate timing on the show? After all, you've got an even hour on the air, no more, and no less.”
“We know the exact number of minutes and seconds each individual orchestral, concert number and song will take. We time the dialogue at the first rehearsal. Then we add to this a few minutes for laughter and ad libbing, and we have approximately the length of the program. If necessary, we cut a musical number or a scene or have another musical number put in the show, depending, of course, whether or not were on the long or short side.”
“Is it as simple as all of that?”
“Well, not exactly. A good many of our cuts are made while the show is on the air. At a certain time in the program I know we're supposed to be at given place in the script. If we're running long then I have to figure out some cut that will make up for the time lost. Each broadcast has its own particular problems and I’ve yet to find two alike.”
“Would you like to come up to rehearsal with us now and watch the broadcast from the control booth?”
Would I? Would you?
“Just lead the way,” I said, “and I’ll try not to get in your hair.”
(More Tomorrow)

HOLLYWOOD — Yesterday we left off with Producer Calvin Kuhl inviting us to witness the last of rehearsal, and to catch the Music Hall broadcast from the control booth. And it's not like your Uncle Canfield to pass by an invitation like that.
Kuhl led the way upstairs to studio B with Carroll Carroll, the show's diminutive writer, and myself tagging along. The studio presented a far different sight than I had seen earlier in the afternoon. Much activity was now taking place.
Bing Crosby and John Scott Trotter were on the stage indulging in a bit of horseplay. You couldn't have missed Bing. Not with that red and white contraption he calls a shirt. And it's altogether impossible to overlook John. Why, with the poundage he's carrying, on a clear day you can see him ten miles away.
Paul Taylor, stubby and stout, and his Choristers are straggling into the studio. Anne Shirley, one of the guest stars, is comfortably tucked away on a folding chair, and looks delightfully youthful and deliciously beautiful what with her fur coat, red hair and intelligent eyes. But things are much, too much matter of fact for my money. No one seems in the least disturbed that it's now five minutes to six and Ralph Bellamy, a guest star, hasn't as yet put in an appearance. Of course, he hasn't promised to be there until six, but there's no time like the present to worry, that's the Canfield motto.

Bing runs over a number with the orchestra, nonchalantly crooning into the microphone while he studies the expression of the engineer in the control booth. Bing makes no effort to save his voice for the broadcast. The pipe he's usually puffing on dangles out of his shirt pocket. Did I say shirt? Anyway, if he wasn't rehearsing a song he'd be off in some corner whistling or singing. It's natural for Bing to sing. I firmly believe he was born burping and boop-boop-ba-booing. It's just a very happy accident he gets paid for it. Ask Bing, he'll tell you the same.
Across the stage and back to the dressing rooms I take myself. I'm looking for Bob Burns. The tall Arkansan is an old favorite friend of mine. Bob is in the dressing room with his gagman, Duke Atterbury, concocting one of his fanciful tales to amaze the populace.
Bob's been pretty busy, so he's had to wait until the last minute to fashion this one. Burns is not any too happy about it because he's not patterned for this last-minute stuff. Out of desperation, a long winded yarn about Ralph Bellamy is given a verb and a predicate. It'll have to do. And it does, as I found out later during the broadcast.
Then back to the studio. It's five minutes past six. Bellamy comes breezing in the door. I shot a hasty look at Kuhl and Carroll. Not a change of expression. They're hardened to this last minute thing.
At 20 minutes to seven the audience is ushered into the studio. That means, by the time Bellamy settles down, they've got just 25 minutes to rehearse his lines. Which include two scenes, and to rehearse him in a song with Bob Burns playing a bazooka obligato. Not a great deal of time, you must admit, for a show as important as the Music Hall.
Bob comes bounding out of his dressing room like an old fire horse smelling a flickering ember. Bing is on the job and the three give their lines a try, so a reading veteran troupers, so a reading seems to suffice. Kuhl holds a stop watch on it, notes the result and makes some hasty tabulations on the script. He's worried about time. Are the scenes too long? Apparently not. He looks over at Carroll and gives a nod of satisfaction.
Now comes the Bellamy vocal rendition. "Home on the Range" is the song. Bob blows blast after blast of bazooka obligato as delicate as a hurricane.
With Bellamy's part rehearsed, the show is ready to be sprayed over the nation through the thin wires of the network. And it's just about airtime, too. The audience has filed into the small auditorium, which seats a little over 200.
Bing strolls around the stage like one of the hired help. He looks less like a big time radio and movie star than anyone in the business. Even Charlie McCarthy sports a top hat and white tie. But not Bing: He'll stick to the Hawaiian shirt and he walks around with his two arms hanging to his sides like he was expecting any minute to grab on to the working end of a wheelbarrow. He eyes the audience; makes cracks at Burns; thoroughly enjoys himself.
Producer Kuhl stays on the stage and Writer Carroll takes me into the holy of all holies, the control booth.
The engineer, partly surrounded by a panel of dials and gadgets, is clearing lines and waiting for the network’s signal. Ken Carpenter is at the mike watching the control booth. A red light flashes on. Ken takes the cue and says: “The Music Hall, starring Bing Crosby with John Scott Trotter and his orchestra, the Paul Taylor Choristers, and Bob Burns.”
A nation is listening.

Clocking the Clock

He punches a clock into little clocks and watches. Yes, that Popeye is a true example of masculinity.



Oh. Maybe not. He’s wearing a corset.



This is from Popeye’s debut in a 1933 Betty Boop cartoon. Seymour Kneitel and Doc Crandall receive the screen credits for animation.

Crazy Spike

After a wonderful huge-eye take, Spike sputters as he attempts comprehend there are two Droopys and is ultimately driven crazy in Droopy’s Double Trouble.



There’s a story hole at the end. Spike calls out Droopy. Droopy appears. But so does twin brother Drippy. Drippy isn’t impersonating his brother during the cartoon, so why he’d appear when his name isn’t called?

Rich Hogan is the gagman, while the animation is handled by Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton and Mike Lah, who uses some of those same odd geometrical mouth shapes you can find in his Yogi Bear and Pixie and Dixie animation at Hanna-Barbera.

No, He’s Not Joking About a Band

A guest appearance on the Ed Sullivan radio show of March 29, 1932 sparked Jack Benny’s radio career. After Benny debuted for Canada Dry on May 2, 1932, Sullivan showed up on Jack’s show a few times. And Benny made good enough copy for Sullivan’s columns in subsequent years.

Newspaper writers back in that era didn’t generally devote a whole column to one person, they had a bunch of short items about a variety of stars (gossipers like Walter Winchell and Louella Parsons followed the same format on radio). So here’s a short blurb about Jack from Sullivan’s column of August 19, 1932 in the New York Daily News.

Jack Benny Wins
HEREAFTER this department proposes to single out a comedian or writer who authors the smartest crack of the week. This will please the comedians and, what is more important, it will serve to fill a spot like this.
Jack Benny gets the award this week for his smart-cracking on his Wednesday night radio period. He broadcasts for a ginger ale period.
Talking about football, as he rambled along, Benny cleaned up with: "As I understand football, there's a fullback, two half backs and a nickelback on each large bottle you buy at the grocery store." If Mr. Benny will call at the office, he will get his prize.

As this was printed almost 90 years ago, I should explain the reference to “nickelback.” Jack and his writer Harry Conn came up with jokes and puns involving the sponsor. In this case, one of Canada Dry’s slogans involved getting five cents back on the bottle deposit. Benny and Conn used to find ways the humorously incorporate the slogan.

Canada Dry didn’t appreciate it. The company and its agency only understood stiff, straight, formal advertising. It tried to get around Benny and Conn by bringing in a new writer, vaudevillian Sid Silvers who had appeared on stage with Jack as far back as 1927. The two ganged up on him, forced him out, and then Canada Dry announced it was ending its relationship with Benny in early 1933.

To give you an idea how conservative the advertising business was, the Spokane Spokesman-Review of December 11, 1932 (Benny was still with Canada Dry then) takes a dig at how agency experts were sticks in the mud.

Variety gives the verdict of the Junior executives of advertising agencies on some of the current radio stars. These executives are known as "hardest boiled" radio critics because they judge stars by their ability to sell the sponsors' products, which they measure by the reception accorded them as entertainers. Here are some of their conclusions:
"Al Jolson, not so hot; Eddie Cantor, he's through; Ed Wynn, falling off; Jack Benny, terrible; Burns and Allen, stale; Kate Smith, old stuff; Mills Brothers, atrocious." What, no Jack Pearl verdict?

Audiences didn’t think Benny was terrible. Far from it. Benny ranked at, or close to, the top of the ratings and surveys of comedians for years and years. And he carried on making fun of the sponsor. It worked. For a time, General Foods couldn’t keep enough Jell-O in stock. And in the 1950s the song parodies shoehorning in references to Lucky Strike cigarettes (and making fun of American Tobacco’s numerous repetitive slogans) are among some of the best-loved parts of the Benny radio show by fans today. When it came to jokes about sponsors, Jack Benny had more hits than, well, Nickelback.

A late note: Of the Canada Dry broadcasts, only Benny’s debut exists in audio form (along with two partial shows from late in the run). But the scripts are still around. Benny scholar Kathy Fuller-Seeley has gone to the equivalent of Jack’s vault (which didn’t exist in 1932) to photograph and transcribe the first 26 scripts. They’ve been published in a book that’s available now.

The Jack Benny on these shows is far different than the one everyone thinks of. The shows themselves are quite different as well. Anyone interested in the development of early radio comedy should have this book in their library. You can find out more at this site (I am a mere fan, I get no kickback for this). And if you want to read the script where Jack and the Mary Livingstone character first met, it has been transcribed in this post from four years ago.

He Should Have Happened To a Dog

Animated commercials on television in the 1950s drew from the ranks of radio for their voices. In many cases, they were the same people who provided voices for animated cartoons from the major studios—people like Marvin Miller (UPA), Daws Butler (MGM/Lantz/Warner Bros), Stan Freberg (Columbia/Warner Bros/UPA) and Allen Swift (Terrytoons) come to mind. But there were others who never appeared in theatricals, so their identity in commercial voice work is far less known, no matter how successful the spot.

One was the voice of the Ford Dog. It was the voice of Hugh Douglas, who read news at KNX and announced Have Gun Will Travel, Bob O’Hara and a number of other CBS shows in the ‘50s. His voice was never heard in theatrical cartoons.

Certainly there are no voice credits on cartoon commercials (okay, Daws Butler got one for legal reasons in the ‘60s) but we know it’s Douglas because the Newspaper Enterprise Association interviewed him about his role at the time the commercial first aired. It was an instant smash. This column appeared in newspapers starting around June 11, 1959. Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce the wire photo that went with the article.

Hugh Douglas Finds Fame As ‘Voice’ From Doghouse
BY ERSKINE JOHNSON
NEA Staff Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD (NEA)—Hugh ("I'm A Dog") Douglas was wearing a neatly clipped mustache with matching crew cut, his usual horn-rimmed glasses and the sport togs he wears to work as a Los Angeles radio staff announcer.
Only his incredulous look was new.
After 17 years of obscurity as a radio voice, he had good reason to ponder the subject of sudden fame and unexpected extra cash.
As a human being, fame and sudden riches eluded him.
As the "voice" of a dog, he's found both.
He's enjoying such public recognition, in fact, that his regular news broadcast lights up the switchboard of the CBS radio-station here. People as incredulous as Hugh want to be sure:

"Wasn't that the voice of the shaggy dog reading the news?"
It is. Hugh Douglas is the benign voice of the huge, shaggy dog on that automobile (Ford) TV commercial which seems to have captured the public's fancy. What's more, he's the voice of another dog now in a movie.
He's “playing” a mongrel canine named Skippy who carries on long conversations with Jerry Lewis in a farce movie comedy from the Broadway hit, “Visit To A Small Planet.”
Producers of other TV commercials can't wait now to hire Hugh's voice to help sell their products. He has six new TV commercials in the works.
"I'm playing fairy godfathers, hipsters, beatniks and on one announcement they've even got me singing." the slim, smallish, merry-faced Douglas told me.
“It's crazy. I've done all sorts of characters before on the air but never an animal until now, and look what happens. Here I've been engaged in honest, hard work for 17 years on the radio but now that I'm in a kennel people recognize me.”
They do recognise him, too. By his voice, that is.
He needs but to open his mouth among strangers with as much as a "How do you do?" and his identity as the TV dog is out immediately. Beaming and enjoying it thoroughly, Douglas says:
“People really enjoy believing that the dog actually exists. They always want to know all about me and, of course, the dog. I carry pocket-size cartoon likenesses of the animal with me and the minute I spot a person about to pop the question, I hand out one of the photographs.”
Douglas reached into his pocket and handed me one.
Beside the photo of the dog are words:
"Yes, it's me."
Animator Bill Melendez at Playhouse Pictures, where the commercial was produced, knew about Hugh's penetrating, deep voice and called him in to do the recording. "Bill and I talked his dog over and I looked at the sketches.
"I saw him as an amiable, friendly, cool dog—so I applied my coolest voice."
Douglas also narrates films about rockets and guided missiles for Uncle Sam, but he's not allowed to discuss them. It's secret stuff. Last year he was named the best TV and radio voice in California at the state fair. Today you might say that voice has gone to the dogs.
Practical Jokers are sending Douglas dog bones, dog biscuits, miniature fireplugs and even small doghouses. The other morning even his wife observed that from now on maybe, she should be serving dog biscuits instead of corn flakes tor breakfast.
“To put you in the mood,” Mrs. Douglas kidded.
Hugh's answer, he told with twinkling eyes, was:
“Honey, at this salary I'm willing to eat dog biscuits for the rest of my life.”

Douglas left CBS in 1962 to freelance. He was represented by the same agency that represented June Foray and Paul Frees at the time. To the best of my knowledge, Hugh is retired from the business and still around.

Some other familiar names besides Bill Melendez worked on the Ford Dog commercials. We’ll see if we can put together another post on the campaign down the road.

Smoke Up! Have a Drink!

Smears and multiples abound in Riff Raffy Daffy (1948), another winning cartoon from the Art Davis unit. Get Daffy in fuzzy bedroom slippers!



This scene is animated on twos. Don Williams and his assistant give Daffy fun little expressions that you have to freeze frame to appreciate.

Bill Melendez, Basil Davidovich and Emery Hawkins animated this cartoon as well.