Percy Claus

Percy the cat is skipping along, courtesy of Carlo Vinci, in Cat Happy, a 1950 Terrytoon. He’s carrying a cake. Cut to a close-up of a banana peel. Yeah, he slips, the cake lands on him—and it turns him into Santa Claus, as Phil Scheib plays “Jingle Bells” in the background.



Animator/director Milton Knight points out Santa is by Reuben Timmins.

The cartoon, by the way, may feature Jim Tyer’s wildest animation ever as Percy gets high on catnip.

Christmas Cat

Sylvester is a great character. He’s expressive no matter who the director is.

Here are some frames from Gift Wrapped, probably my favourite Warner Bros. Christmas cartoon. Granny (Bea Benaderet) sees that the cat has eaten Tweety and yells at him. Friz seems to have loved sweat reactions; he has them in all kinds of his cartoons. There are a bunch of ragged-fur Sylvester drawings in this scene, but we’ll only post a couple. There’s a smear for good measure here.



More reactions.



Ken Champin, Manny Perez, Virgil Ross and Art Davis are the animators. Irv Wyner supplies some great background art. And Warren Foster is behind the various gag sequences. The cartoon was released in February 1952 and re-released in November 1960.

Ending a Feud For Christmas

Fans of Phil Harris, outside of the Disney animated features, think of him as the character from the Jack Benny radio show—self-loving, lady-loving, booze-loving, English language not-so-loving.

That’s not how his character started off on the Benny show.

When he replaced Johnny Green at the start of the 1936-37 season, Harris was pictured by the writers to be Jack’s antagonist. But, fortunately, the bickering between the two “officially” ended around Christmastime, 1936. The writers must have decided arguing doesn’t create a lot of laughter and slowly modified Harris over the course of the rest of the season. He became a larger-than-life ham, and the show lost a lot of oomph when he left in 1953.

The syndicated “Backstage with Homer Canfield” column of December 8, 1936 gave a preview and also explained how the Benny show was put together. The last bit of advice, Benny took, but quite unexpectedly. Within a month of the column, he and Fred Allen began their feud, and it was decided a trip to Allen’s base of operations in New York was needed to end it.

Jack Benny
"The world will little note nor long remember what we say here—"
Hollywood Dec. 8.—
HERE'S AN INSIDE TIP. THE Jack Benny-Phil Harris feud will end in handshaking Sunday night. Until Christmas peace and quiet will reign throughout the Benny troupe. When Jack gets his Christmas present from Phil . . . wow! watch out.
And don't look for any changes in the cast. No matter what you hear. Jack feels that the present gang is the finest he's ever had. I heard him say that he'll do everything he possibly can to keep them together.
This was Sunday night. I sat through rehearsals; at airtime, watched from the control booth. Although the show dropped below the level of the previous two weeks, Benny was in fine form. The half-hour gave birth to what is destined to become a radio classic.
Benny and Harris had just finished another round:
SOUND—Bell rings.
JACK—I'm so mad my ears are ringing.
MARY—That's the phone you dope.
JACK—Oh!
Outside of the writing surprisingly little time is devoted to the show. Rehearsals start on Saturday night when the cast gets together for a line reading. That lasts for an hour or so. Then Benny, his five gag men and Tom Harrington, the producer, really go to work. They re-write, re-write.
On Sunday afternoon at 12:30 the troupe meets again. They sit around and talk it over. Benny coaches each one in the enact reading of the lines. This takes an hour or more. Cuts are made, the script timed.
Now they're ready to take their place at the mikes. Jack and Mary work on one; the rest of the cast share another.
One more reading to check timing sound effects cues and to give the man at the controls an idea of what to expect. That's all there is. The show is wrapped up right then and there.
The band has been rehearsed the day before. The men never see the program until the first broadcast, which is at 4 o'clock. Easterners listen to this one. The musicians enjoy the show as much as anyone. Haw, haw, haw! Boy, is that funny! And through it all laughs Don Wilson. Sincerely, heartily, constantly. At one time during rehearsal he had to leave the studio. Tears were streaming down his face. Benny to him is the world’s only funny-man and the grandest of guys. And you'll find that all who work for him feel that way.
But while all this hee-hawing is going on, the loudest of laughs come from the script writers. Al Boasberg heads this unit. He sat in the audience, so I can't say about his reaction. But the rest were in the control booth keeping score on the laughs. Notes were made after every line. To serve as reference for future programs, no doubt.
Thirty more programs are left in this series. And all will come from Hollywood. As Benny said, “This is my home. I love California and I'm here to stay.”
Right here I can give Benny a tip. Spend at least one week in New York, Jack. The rest of your cast would like to see the bright lights of Broadway while Jello pays the bills. Nothing like keeping the family happy. You might also lose Phil Harris. Think it over.

Grant Simmons

He worked for Walt Disney, animated for Tex Avery and brought Spider-Man to the small screen.

Yet Grant Simmons is one of the many pretty much unsung people who worked in the Golden Age of theatrical animation. Perhaps it’s because he died in 1970 before animation historians were getting untracked interviewing as many people as they could.

We’ve found one interview with him, comparatively early in his career. The Deseret News of Salt Lake City published a little biography of him on June 15, 1943. Simmons’ Utah connection was his parents were from there and he had gone to Brigham Young University.

The 1930 Census shows Simmons working in a bank, and he was still doing it when he married in January 1937. This story talks about how Simmons moved on from Disney to Columbia/Screen Gems. It is hard to say which cartoon at Columbia was his first; Film Daily mentions him in its review of The Dumbconscious Mind, released October 24, 1942, calling it “amusing and skillfully animated.”

BYU Student Scores As Animator
Grant Simmons Leaves Disney For Screen Gems, Inc.
By Norma Jean Wright
(Deseret News Hollywood Correspondent)
HOLLYWOOD — (Special)— Grant Simmons is an Animator at Columbia's Cartoon Studios called Screen Gems, Inc. . . and is the chap who did (and got screen credit for) the Elephant Ballet in the "Dance of the Hours sequence for Walt Disney's "Fantasia" . . and likewise was screen credited on Disney's "Dumbo" for the clown sequence! But before that he was a red-headed kid who played tough basketball for Manchester L. D. S. Ward when that team offered rough competition for anybody. He used to come around my quarters with the rest of the gang and raid the icebox. And his wit and sense of humor revealed itself then in the dozens of cartoons he made of everybody he knew, and some of them were not very complimentary.
That was the thing that carried him into Disney Studios and cartoon animation. When he finished high school at the John C. Fremont School, Grant went up to the BYU and studied art under the late Professor Eastman. But he had to quit . . because money doesn't grow on trees . . came back to Los Angeles and went to work for the Bank of America. Which was quite out of Grant's line, but he stayed there for three years—spending all his spare time and evenings . . attending art classes and drawing humorous cartoons of everybody at the bank.
Then one day in 1937 he sent some of those cartoons over to Disney Studios—and a few days later he was called in for an interview. That ended Grant's days at the bank—and started his days with Disney. They put him to work on "Snow White" as an apprentice . . and from then on he went up. Soon he became a full-fledged Animator—and worked on dozens of those short bits of entertainment we've all enjoyed. He also wrote a couple of "Pluto" shorts and animated them.
To animate a cartoon film the Animator must draw hundreds of little cartoons (with the action of each just a little different) so that when they are photographed in continuity the character moves. To be able to do this the cartoonist must thoroughly understand the movements and characteristics of the animal or person being animated—or if it be a created character, he must rely on the play of his imagination to get the most amusing performance from the character. Of course all cartoons are highly exaggerated versions of the true subject. So that the imagination of the cartoonist (Animator) is the thing that either makes or fails to make the film amusing. In the matter of imagination Grant Simmons excels! He is capable of making anything funny . . . so that his work in cartooning is highly humorous and charming.
Grant was with Disney for five very successful years. But soon after "Fantasia" was finished (about two years ago) Columbia Studios offered Grant an advanced opportunity in their newly organized cartoon studio Screen Gems, Inc., under the producership of Dave Fleisher—and Grant accepted. There they whip out twelve Technicolor and eighteen black and white shorts a year with newly created characters for each picture. However, the continued pressure of the war has changed things somewhat so that for the duration it looks as thought they will do very little besides training and instruction films for the U. S. Army and Navy. But that won't stop Grant. He'll make those funny too—if they don't watch out.
Grant was born in Pima, Arizona, a little, town in the Gila Valley—a son of Wallace and Wilmarth Hundley Simmons, both formerly of Provo . . . and is the second child of a family of six. When Grant was eight years old, later, in 1920, the family moved to Los Angeles and settled In Manchester Ward—where Grant's father presided as Bishop for a number of years. Grant is married to Bessie Graham, a neighborhood sweetheart, and they have a three-year-old daughter Arlene . . . and live in an apartment in Hollywood.

Columbia closed its Screen Gems studio in November 1946 and a tickle of cartoons was released until 1949. Simmons’ last short for Columbia was Lo, the Poor Buffal, released November 4, 1948.

Meanwhile, at MGM, changes were going on in the Tex Avery unit. In January 1946, Preston Blair was taken out and handed his own unit with Mike Lah. Animator Ray Abrams went with him. This is likely when Simmons was hired. The first cartoon with his name on it was Li’l Tinker, released May 15, 1948; Louis Schmitt’s models for that cartoon (originally called Smellbound) are dated June 5, 1946.

He liked to give characters big teeth. You can see it in a number of shorts, including the scene at the top of this post from Avery’s Garden Gopher (released in 1950).

Simmons worked on every cartoon in the Avery unit (including the period Dick Lundy was directing while Avery had some emotional time off) until it was closed in March 1953. He and Ray Patterson (of MGM’s Hanna-Barbera unit) formed a partnership to produce animated commercials for TV. Then they were also hired in June by Walter Lantz (Variety, June 16, 1953) , who had decided to increase both his commercial and theatrical production. Simmons and Patterson made two shorts with unknown animators for Lantz—Broadway Bow Wow’s (released in 1954) and Dig That Dog (released in 1955). One background in the former plants references to Avery, technical supervisor Bill Garrity, camera technician Mickey Batchelor and “Grantray.”

The pair also worked with animators Mike Lah and Stan Walsh on the half-hour U.S. Information Service cartoon Tom Schuler—Cobbler Statesman. There are conflicting reports as to when this propaganda film was made by Curt Perkins’ Sketchbook Films, but it aired on television on July 26, 1954, so it was either 1953 or ’54.

By that time, Patterson and Simmons hooked up with a New York-based producer who also branched out with a Canadian subsidiary based in Toronto. Variety reported on July 21, 1954:

Robert Lawrence Productions, N.Y. based telepix commercials and industrial producer, has set up its own animation company on the Coast in association with Grant Simmons and Ray Patterson. New company, Grantray Animation Inc., will work in conjunction with Lawrence on the latter's commercials in cases where combined animation and live-action and complete animation are called for. Lawrence said the outfit was formed because of a growing trend toward animated commercials on the part of sponsors and agencies. Equally important for the future, he said, are color commercials, where animation gives a greater degree of color control than live-action tint footage. Move is another indication of a trend among producers to set up their own animation facilities.

By 1957 “Lawrence” was added to the name of the company, with Patterson functioning as president and Simmons as secretary-treasurer (that banking experience came in handy). The same year, the company acquired larger quarters on La Brea Avenue to accommodate live-action production. It also began to win awards. In 1958, the company won top prize in a contest conducted by the Brewers’ Association of American for a spot for Grain Belt Premium beer. Another for Minneapolis Gas won at the First American TV Commercials Festival and Forum in 1960. There were others.

The studio apparently attempted its own series. What appears to be a pilot episode for Planet Patrol was directed by Simmons around 1960 and has been restored. You can read about it here, especially Mike Kazaleh’s expert history.

Grantray-Lawrence was also hired by other cartoon producers. If you see either Patterson’s or Simmons’ name on a cartoon in the early part of the ‘60s, they were subcontracted to make it. Two series were Dick Tracy and Mr. Magoo (both 1960) for UPA. They also worked on part of the debut episode of The Jetsons (1962) and other projects for Hanna-Barbera.

A larger job came in 1966. Variety reported on March 23rd:

Getting in on the swing to kiddie camp, RKO General reports it has bought for $1,000,000 a package of 105 6 1/2-minute color cartoon segments of Marvel Comics cartoon characters from Krantz Films. Already in production at Grantray-Lawrence Studios, Hollywood, the package will be programmed on RKO General's tv stations in New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Boston and Memphis. Producer is Robert Lawrence.

Robert J. “Tiger” West, who had been with the pair since 1953, was upped to vice-president, with Sid Marcus and Don Lusk directing with Simmons and Patterson. A long-term lease was signed for new production facilities at Universal City Studios. Then Simmons, Patterson and Lawrence signed another deal with Krantz Films in January 1967 to animate 20 half-hour Spidermans to air on Saturday mornings in September.

But then it suddenly ended. Grantray-Lawrence closed in 1968. Its death doesn’t seem to have been noticed by the trades at the time. Patterson, who lived until 2001 and into the era of interviews by historians, simply said “We trusted the wrong people.”

Simmons banged on Friz Freleng’s door. He was hired in 1969 to direct the TV cartoon series Here Comes the Grump and also piloted a couple of DePatie-Freleng’s theatrical shorts. Simmons also directed some episodes of the Saturday morning Doctor Dolittle animated series that aired on NBC starting in September 1970.

He could do no more. Grant Alden Simmons died in Los Angeles on October 31, 1970 at the age of 57.

Someone loves putting together compilations of classic animators’ work, and has done it with scenes by Simmons. I can’t speak for the veracity of the identification but enjoy some fun animation.

My thanks to Kathy Fuller-Seeley for her great assistance on this post.

Screen Gems Santa

“Certainly here was a friend of the downtrodden!” says narrating dog Ronny, as the camera focuses on a long shot of a Salvation Army-type Santa Claus.



“Gratefully, I thawed my soul with the warmth of his abundant heart,” says the narration. The whole cartoon is based on the juxtaposition of the dialogue and the actions on screen. In this scene, Santa is anything but warm or abundant. He swats Ronny out of the scene with his bell.



Columbia/Screen Gems made some train-wreck cartoons, but this isn’t one of them. Flora (released 1948) is my favourite of the 1940 Columbias.

Gerry Mohr is perfect as the dog/narrator. I can’t recall him being in any cartoons until Hanna-Barbera hired him in the ‘60s for The Fantastic 4. Animation is by Grant Simmons, Paul Sommer, Chick Otterstrom and Jay Sarbry, with Dave Monahan joining Cal Howard on the story. The only disconcerting thing is you keep wondering when Woody Woodpecker will pop up because Darrell Calker scores part of this like a Woody cartoon.

Everybody Dance!

Love's Labor Won (1933) has a few things to like—a singing, overstuffed chair and a singing tiger rug, but it suffers from crude animation here and there, and the discovery by the story department that there’s less than a minute and a half to go and the villain hasn’t shown up yet. The fight scene doesn’t have time to build; Cubby and the wolf exchange a few punches and then the cartoon’s over.

Instead we get a couple of songs and a lot of dancing. A pair of fish seem ecstatic about this.



There’s another scene that you’ll find in a number of Van Beuren cartoons where the background moves from side to side while a screen full of characters dance in the foreground.



Unfortunately, this isn’t a strong Cubby Bear cartoon. And this was only the second of the series. Still, I like it.

John Foster and Mannie Davis were responsible for this short.

The Last Little Godfrey

Arthur Godfrey called nine people into his office after his morning programme went off the air on April 15, 1955. The first thing he said to them was “I will read you a press release prepared for the wire services.”

That’s how they learned they were fired.

When Godfrey finished reading, singer Marion Marlowe asked Godfrey if that means “as of this moment.” Godfrey replied “Yes. Any other questions?” She then said “No,” and Godfrey simply responded “Thank you for your cooperation. Good bye.” That was it.

Marlowe quickly signed with Ed Sullivan at $3,000 a show. Godfrey had been paying her half that—for an entire week (Godfrey was on five days a week on radio).

The firing story related by Judith Crist in the New York Herald Tribune quoted Godfrey as saying “new ideas and personalities” were needed to jack up the ratings. But Godfrey kept about half of his performers. One writer was spared—a gentleman named Andrew A. Rooney. And so was announcer Tony Marvin.

One can only imagine Godfrey’s reaction when Marvin, about two weeks later, appeared in a nightclub act with the Mariners, the racially-diverse quartet that Godfrey had fired.

Here’s the story from the Boston Globe of April 30, 1955. In it, Marvin relates how he got into the radio business and his take on the latest Godfrey turmoil.

Tony Marvin, Mariners, Join Voices in Club Act
By ELIZABETH L. SULLIVAN
Globe Radio-TV Editor
That tremendous roar you heard late yesterday afternoon when it rained hardest wasn’t a clap of thunder. It was simply the deep baritone voices of Tony Marvin and the Mariners in greeting at the Latin Quarter. Tony had just arrived from New York to join the Mariners act of last night. He will remain here until Sunday.
After exchanging greetings, the group gathered around the piano on stage and the Mariners became a "quintet." Waiters, preparing the tables for the evening trade, paused with the press to enjoy the fine singing. There were no long faces here. The boys were having fun, despite their dismissal from the Arthur Godfrey show.
Tony Marvin isn’t fired . . . yet. And since he is under contract to the C. B. S. network, he is sure of his job. “I arrive for rehearsal each morning at 9, driving in from my home on Long Island. When I finish my TV day, I head right for home and the golf links,” said Tony.
“Of course, some TV days are longer than others. Wednesday is a long day and when 9 p. m. comes, we on the show know we've put in a hard day. It was especially rough learning our parts for the ice shows and special performances, but from now on there won't be the big casts connected with the Godfrey shows,” continued Marvin.
No Prompter for Tony
“Do you use a teleprompter on the commercials?” we asked. “They are so letter perfect, yet you don't appear to be consulting one.”

“No teleprompter. But I do use cue cards. If one has a good product to demonstrate and one knows the subject matter thoroughly, one needn't have difficulty getting the commercial message across,” replied Tony.
Night club work is new to Tony, although he frequently entertains at outside functions with the Little Godfreys. The group will put on a performance in another few weeks when the Indianapolis Speedway races get under way.
Where was he when Godfrey lowered the boom? Out to lunch. When he returned to C. B. S., the street was lined with newspapermen, photographers and the curious. Tony was collared by the press. “What happened?” asked Tony.
“The cast was fired” . . . this was news to Tony.
“I look upon my position as a job. I enjoy my work and do it as well as I can. Once in a while I talk out of turn; perhaps, but it isn't harmful. If anything, it churns up a bit of unexpected laughter. Work over, I head for home.”
Tony is staying with Boston friends during his Latin Quarter engagement. Weather permitting, he will be out on the golf links today.
Sidetracked Doctor
Viewers know Tony as a walking encyclopedia. Godfrey hasn't stumped him many times. Tony is quick to smile, is witty and is looking forward to meeting his TV followers at the Latin Quarter. He is excellent on the emcee chores, sings a little and tells stories in that delightfully resonant voice of his.
Tony is about 45. His ambition was to become a doctor. He attended Long Island College of Medicine for two years, but the depression interefered. He did odd jobs in the theatre but was channeled into radio by Jerry Wald, who had a talent show on radio and asked Marvin to emcee it.
Meanwhile, his voice won him the leading bass part with the New York Operatic Guild and after that he got into musical comedy, playing in such hits as "White Horse Inn," "Virginia," and "Having Wonderful Time."
Eventually he got parts in daytime radio programs. One day during a visit to New York's municipal station, WNYC, he walked into an audition session. He tried out . . . and won a job. The late Mayor LaGuardia heard him and appointed him announcer and chief of special events for the station.
When the World's Fair opened, Tony became chief announcer. He closed the fair, walked over to CBS and got a job. He has been with the network since 1939.
He has been with the Little Godfreys for seven years. He thoroughly enjoys the group. “They're a wonderful bunch,” says he, refering to Haleloke, the Mariners, Marion, etc., as if the family was still intact.
The Marvins have one daughter, Lynda Ann, age 14. “She doesn’t know whether she wants to be a scientist, a doctor . . . but she does know she doesn’t want to be an entertainer,” chuckled Tony.

However, as inevitable as night follows day, Godfrey’s sharpened axe fell on Tony Marvin. How abruptly it happened is unclear but Marvin was very classy about it in public. This is from the Herald Tribune syndication service of June 30, 1959.

Stardom Is Goal Of Tony Marvin
By MARIE TORRE
Having overcome the initial effects of bad news, Tony Marvin drew himself up to the full height of his magnificently tailored six-foot frame and determined to become what former boss Arthur Godfrey is, a full-fledged TV and radio star.
"Right now," said the announcer whose pearl-shaped basso profundo filled the Godfrey shows for a record run of 13 years, "My agent and manager are conferring about a Tony Marvin television show and a Tony Marvin radio show. I hope the American public loves me as much as they did or said they did during the years with Arthur.”
Though the Godfrey disconnection was not entirely unexpected (“Since Arthur’s operation, none of us knew what would happen”), Marvin reacted to the dismissal notice with the numbness that afflicts all people when adversity comes.
"I felt disembodied for a moment," he elaborated, “but I soon recovered. After 13 years with a guy you can’t accept something like this with a smile on your face, even though you understand the situation. In his letter, Arthur said that his radio show next season would be an informal sort of thing, and ‘a man of your high calibre would be a luxury.’
"The old flatterer. I'll miss him. I love the guy. I hope he lives to be nine thousand years old."
At present, Marvin's distinctively resonant voice is heard on the Godfrey replacement programs, "The Robert Q. Lewis Show" on radio, and "The Sam Levenson Show" on TV. He is assured of employment through the end of September, after which he'll be on his own and he shouldn't find it difficult to succeed, if only for that 13-year record with Godfrey. Is there another living American who can make that claim?

Well, Don Wilson could make that claim, but let’s not get sidetracked.

The Tony Marvin TV show never happened. In 1961, Marvin moved over to the Mutual radio network and spent a number of years reading top-hour newscasts before the network headquarters moved to Washington and he went into semi-retirement. In the mid-‘70s Marvin had a disc-jockey show in Connecticut and even operated his own board. He packed up for Florida where he emceed benefits in his smooth style and was the “voice of the Boca Pops” for a good 20 years.

Tony Marvin passed away in 1998 just after his 86th birthday.

Santa is Buried in the Canadian Woods

Mountie Elmer Fudd is chasing Bugs Bunny under the Canadian snow in Fresh Hare, a 1942 cartoon written by Mike Maltese for the Friz Freleng unit at Warners.



Ah, the old “Split before going around the tree gag.” Bugs does it. Elmer, well, you know what’ll happen.



Now an unexpected sight gag. The tree shakes off all its snow to reveal it’s a decorated Christmas tree. Elmer pops up from the snow and he’s wearing a Santa hat. Now Bugs pops up and exclaims “Merry Christmas, Santy” as Carl Stalling plays “Jingle Bells” on the soundtrack.



Manny Perez is given the animation credit and I suspect Lenard Kester is the background artist.

Ground Floor: Pigs, Santas

Rich Hogan and Tex Avery agreed. Fairy tales are worn out. How many parodies did they make at MGM?

One Ham's Family (1943) barely starts with the premise of the Three Little Pigs. We do have three pigs and a wolf, but that’s about all it has in common. The wolf ends up dressing up as Santa to try to get into the home to eat the baby pig.

Avery has to throw in the unexpected, though sometimes his ideas aren’t too surprising. Here, the little pig sees the soot of Santa descending. The gag: Santa’s actually in an elevator.



Preston Blair, Ray Abrams and Ed Love are Avery’s animators in this one.

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre—Emergency Numbers

Yes, times have changed. Here’s a short cartoon to prove it.

Today, we just programme emergency numbers in our cell phone. In 1984, you could bash in a window with one of those brick phones—if you owned one. Likely you had a phone button phone (more modern than those old dial things) and emergency numbers listed at the front of a nearby phone book.

This 1984 National Film Board animated short from Oscar winner John Weldon involves a cat and dog fight that also reminds us to keep emergency numbers close to our telephones.