Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: Charlie's Haunt

By 1958, 55-year-old Edgar Bergen had wound down his radio career and was appearing in night clubs, at paid business engagements and occasionally on television.

He also found time to bring out Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd for a film project.

This wasn’t a feature for one of the big studios. Charlie’s Haunt was a half-hour film on safety, funded by Bell Telephone and produced by Jerry Fairbanks Productions.

The Library of Congress catalogue summarises it this way: “When off-the-job accidents increase alarmingly in a small town, Charlie McCarthy and his friends haunt people who act carelessly and therefore help to prevent accidents.”

The summer 1959 of the Bell Telephone Magazine reviewed the film this way:

STILL ANOTHER GOOD EXAMPLE of the system-wide interdepartmental approach is the Bell System movie, “Charlie’s Haunt,” in which safety ideas of all departments were coordinated. The picture was produced in 1958. “Charlie’s Haunt” is devoted primarily to promoting off-the-job safety. Included in the cast are Edgar Bergen, Charlie McCarthy, and Don Wilson.
In the picture, men and women employees of the various departments are shown performing their work safely; but away from the job they engage in similar activities with much less regard for safety. As the story unfolds, Edgar and Charlie, in their inimitable way, keep emphasizing the basic theme of “taking safety home.” While it is reasonable to expect that this will be done, the fact that it is not is well illustrated by the much larger number of accidents that occur to employees when they are off the job. . .
“Charlie’s Haunt”. . .this year received Award of Merit certificates from the National Committee on Films for Safety.”

Various publications reveal the film was shown at employee meetings, before community groups and PTAs, in elementary school classrooms, at Boy Scout affairs, and even in a kiddie programme at the Lincoln Theatre in Massillon, Ohio in 1964 (it was billed in one showing with It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World).

Bergen’s face wasn’t the only familiar one. The Los Angeles Citizen-News of August 21, 1957 reported: “Jack Benny’s genial pal Don Wilson has been signed by Producer Jerry Fairbanks to play himself in ‘Charlie’s Haunt,’ a public service film for American Tel and Tel shooting in color. Picture, which stars Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, is under the direction of Robert Florey.”

Yes, the same Robert Florey who directed Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), God Is My Co-Pilot (1945) and The Beast With Five Fingers (1946).

There’s a cast list on the credits, but it’s not complete. A pre-Dobie Gillis Sheila Kuehl is easily recognisable in the opening. And Mr. Smedley with the lawnmower (who has no dialogue) toward the end of the picture is character actor Herb Vigran.

Edward Paul, Fairbanks’ resident composer, comes up with a nice tongue-in-cheek score.

This looks to have been dubbed off a VHS tape, so it’s murky, but still watchable.

I still wonder if they came up with the punny title based on “Charlie’s Aunt” then built the film around it, or the other way around.

That's P-A-L-M...

Palm Springs was a getaway for show bizzers, but it was actually more than that for Jack Benny.

He broadcast a number of his radio shows from the resort and, reportedly, when Mary Livingstone got annoyed at the writers showing up at the Benny home to put together a show, they’d drive to Palm Springs to get it done.

The Palm Springs News of January 14, 1942, came up with a story (and a photo which we can’t reprint) about a writing session for the broadcast of January 18th. What’s interesting is nobody knew at the time their work would not air that Sunday. Two days after this story was published, Jack’s co-star in To Be or Not to Be was killed in a plane crash. Benny was so upset about Carole Lombard’s death, he refused to go on the air that weekend. A musical programme with Jack’s musical arranger, Mahlon Merrick, Dennis Day and the Sportsmen Quartet, introduced by Don Wilson was substituted.

Jack Benny's Next Week Show Born In Steam Bath Here
Scripters Sweat Out Gags In Terry Hunt’s; Benny's Show Biggest On Radio; Facts On Show & Benny
Jack Benny’s radio show for this week was born last Monday night in a rock steam bath. The show’s basic plot and gibes on the much-heckled Benny were scribbled down on some steam-soaked notes by script writers Bill Morrow and Eddie Beloin, with assistance from Harry Baldwin, Benny’s secretary.
It all happened in the rock steam bath at Terry Hunt’s health unit here, when the merry lads gathered to cook up some gags. The room temperature was 150 degrees. Wag Morrow, with merely a towel about his manly hairy figure, and perspiring bucketfulls, said somewhat weakly:
Benny Gets It
“We’re in here to get some gags. And also because we always have trouble with the show’s Finnish."
“That’s right,” said Beloin. “We’re cooking three eggs for the show instead of laying them."
One of the lads then said something about Benny always getting them rooms in a hotel WITHOUT a bath and they HAD to come to Terry Hunt’s to get clean. This was all sort of mumbled amid the heat and perpsiration [sic].
Doll & Dollface
Then amid the heat and all they figured what Benny & gang would do next week. Of course, Benny has a lot to do with shaping up the program. Then there is the highly vocal partner in the show, Benny’s wife, Mary Livingstone, a one-time stocking clerk in the May Co., L. A. nee Sadie Marks. A smart asset to the show, Miss Livingstone often depresses her fellow workers by the firmness she exhibits in advancing her convictions.
Benny calls his wife “Doll”; she calls him “Dollface.” They’ve been married since 1927, have a 7-year-old daughter named Joan Naomi.
11 Million Families
Benny today is the biggest voice on radio, omitting Franklin Roosevelt, who’s considered an amateur. Silver haired, with a smooth witty tongue, he has a Crosley rating of something near 42.4. His Jello show audience is estimated at 11 million families. General Foods, who make Jello, spend almost three-quarters of their advertising budget on Benny & Show. For his 35 half-hour shows over N.B.C., Benny this year will take in some $630,000. After he pays for orchestra, gagmen, announcer & cast he’ll have a net of some $350,000. Almost $200,000 of this goes out in taxes. Travelling expense are further deducted.
All Tires Okay
This is Benny's 8th year with Jello, 11th on the air. His real name is Benjamin Kubelsky, which he changed to Ben K. Benny, then to Jack Benny because of confusion with Ben Bernie. As a kid in Waukegan, Ill., Benny fiddled in juvenile orchestras. His parents’ hope wax he would become a concert violinist. He teamed up at 17 with a pianist named Cora Salisbury and plunged into vaudeville. He discovered his gift for ingratiating patter when doing a recruiting show for the Navy, 1917, which he’d joined. Today he has a 15-room French Colonial mansion in Beverly Hills. And despite last week's show, ALL the tires are reportedly on his car.
March Field Show
Besides radio, Benny takes in almost $100,000 for a picture. His last film finished two weeks ago, a United Artists release and Alexander Korda produced is “To Be Or Not To Be.” It's rumored he’ll do another soon for Warner’s. The Jello air show is planning a trip to New York some two weeks now to do a couple of shows and return via the Great Lakes region where they’ll toss in a show or two. The March Field show last week was called a success by the cast, who found the army boys extremely quick getting the gags. Benny said afterwards he regretted he couldn't give more of them for the boys in the camps.

The paper had a couple of other mentions of Benny in the same issue; one columnist admitted he or she backed into Benny’s car at the Racquet Club, where he answered the phone in the steam room. The same columnist mentioned Dennis Day sang “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody” at a local club—with Dick Foran! (It must have been impromptu).

Benny attended MGM producer Joe Pasternak’s wedding while he was in the city.

The other Palm Springs paper, the Desert Sun, may have published something but the January 1942 issues are not available. The newspaper came up with a different story about the Benny writers, published February 20, 1942.

Benny Writers Go For Horseback Riding on Desert
Enthusiastic horseback riders now are Eddie Beloin and Bill Morrow, writers for the Jack Benny radio program, and their wives, as result of the efforts of Jack Best to interest them in the sport.
Best, local swimming instructor and organizer of the popular C-Circle B Club for youngsters of Cub Scout age, took the Beloins and Morrows on a horseback trip to Andreas Canyon last week and the winter visitors loved it.
Neither Beloin nor Morrow had ridden before. Now they are so enthusiastic about it they have bought Western apparel and are anxious to go on many rides when they return to the village again. Both are interested in the work of the C-Circle B and were sworn in as honorary members with due ceremonies at the meeting last Thursday.

Benny and his various teams of writers got good mileage out of Palm Springs. They dredged up and re-worked their “Murder at the Racquet Club” sketch, featuring early sound era star Charlie Farrell, mayor of the city and owner of the aforementioned club. The Christmas shopping show was set in Palm Springs one year. One episode had the police chief stick it to Jack after a long gag set-up involving Mary bobbling her lines and saying “grass reek” and then there was the time Jack and Rochester tried to hide the fact from Polly the parrot they were going you-know-where, only to have their ruse spoiled by a spell-the-words radio announcer (played by Benny Rubin). The city was more than a holiday haven. It was another element of the humour that kept the Benny show on top on radio for years.

The Life of a Talkartoon

All the talk of A.I. replacing everything and anything isn’t new.

Witness this article in Popular Mechanics of July 1931 after a staff writer toured the Fleischer cartoon studio. Whether this “artificial sound” method was ever used at Fleischer’s, I don’t know, but I certainly don’t recall any cartoons without an actual orchestra providing background music.

Regardless, it gives you an idea about how the Talkartoons were made.



How Artificial Voices Are Given Film Funnies
ALL NATIONS LIKE ROBOTS
8,000 Drawings Required for Seven-Minute Reel.
AN ARMY of unpaid actors dance, sing and cavort in theaters throughout the civilized world every night, performing superhuman feats that bring forth tears and laughter.
Their seven-minute performance costs about $20,000 and weeks at labor on the part of 100 people.
These robot actors have given birth to an industry capitalized at four million dollars, and they boast 100 million followers all over the globe. They are flesh-less actors but nobody denies them life.
In a breathtaking shift of scenes, the hero swings a lariat and lassos a running locomotive; in an auto race he makes Colonel Campbell's roaring "Bluebird" look like a snail; sailing an airship through the sky, he wipes his brow with the moon as a handkerchief, and commandeers Mars to protect him from the sun’s rays; with one stroke, he slays the great dragon, and in the next stroke conquers the vicious octopus.
Animated cartooning is a hand-made industry; every detail of the action must be drawn out laboriously by artists. From 16 to 24 drawings are necessary to complete one action such as the winking of an eye or the throwing of a rope, and from 8,000 to 10,000 drawings are necessary for a seven-minute reel.

But invention has recently come to the aid of art and will soon make the animated cartoon movies more wonderful to behold, more breathtaking and more awe inspiring. A long painstaking search to find a method of creating synthetic sounds on film has recentty been rewarded by a patent to the Fleischer studios, which supplies Paramount with one "talkartoon" each week.
THE method is really a system of "fingerprinting" sounds, whether they be made by voice or by mechanical device. By first making sound tracks of all the letters In the alphabet, then combining these sounds into words, It has been possible to create characteristic patterns for letters, words, musical notes, and other specialised sounds. Synthetic dialog and synthetic music can now he inserted at precise places in a film, so as to carry out the story. The artist with his pen and brush and magnifying glass enters into the scheme. By magnifying the sound track of a given voice, the artist is enabled to reproduce all or any part of it by copying the horizontal lines and shadings. The drawing ran be reduced optically and printed photographically on a film sound track.
So, by dispensing with paid entertainers, costly orchestras, studios and elaborate machinery, the talkartoon producers can economize on overhead.
FOR example, an artist will be able to examine a photographic sound track made by any individual, and create therefrom either dialog or vocal music. In a new series of experiments now under way, the research staff hopes to develop a method of making to order any instrumental or vocal music, in solo or orchestral form. When filmed and sound tracked, the series of drawings would be ready for the projector.
When the moving picture was in its pre-sound days, the whole animated cartoon industry might have been purchased for a mere $250,000. Spectators were inclined to regard such entertainment as a form of moving picture trickery. But with the aid of sound, the handmade movies achieved a huge popularity. They appeal alike to the Chinese coolie and Alaskan Indian. But sound multiplied production costs to the extent where producers were driven to beg aid from inventors. To make the sound record on a film in the usual way involves great labour, time and expense. The orchestra must rehearse painstakingly; special sound experts are employed. Besides, sound records frequently have flaws, and sometimes a voice or dialog may accidently be omitted.



ANOTHER invention designed to make animated cartoons more natural is a machine which combines two kinds of action on a single print. Thus it is possible to film a background of a busy street, using the ordinary camera. If it is desired to show a robot actor making his way through traffic, the machine combines the two films, one showing the moving vehicles and the other the cartoon actor.
The end product is a single film which portrays a mythical character crossing a real street. The separate actions are so well controlled and co-ordinated that movie fans are mystified.
This invention opens a whole new realm for animated moving pictures. The artist is saved all the labor incident to drawing in a moving background, and the producing cost is reduced proportionately. Hence we find film funnies progressing swiftly and offering manifold opportunities for man’s imagination.
The ordinary photographic camera can reveal only the external activities of man. The animated movies attempt to film what goes on inside the brain. In the short career and in the success of this new industry, its backers have suddenly discovered what passionate interest men take in the picturizations of the brain. What thought do we have on entering a graveyard? An animated carloonist thinks that a dance of skeletons would depict the scene in some people's heads, and that is what he draws.
Earthbound men have often thought of flying through the air on feathered wings. The animated cartoonist brings this thought to life and actually shows how a man imagines he would fly if he had the wings of a bird. The troupe of robot actors leap out of a magic lantern after millions of scratches have been made on sheets of paper.
The original drawings are made in pencil. Then the actors move to the inking department where artists design their clothes; every drawing is traced with ink on celluloid. They are colored in various shades of gray, white and black.

In their costumes the actors march to the filming room to be "shot," The camera is suspended over a table. The robot actors, face up, are placed beneath the lens and photographed in their various poses and moods. Frame by frame, the photographer records their pictures. This method of grinding out film is much slower than the ordinary one used by moving-picture lots.
FOUR cameramen turn out only 1,000 feet of animated movies each week. That means each operator can film only five feet per hour. The finished reel is 1,000 feet long, but one-third of this footage is cut out in editing. Hence, the seven-minute reel showing in the theater measures between 600 and 700 feet, costing from $20 to $30 per foot.
The United States is the home of the animated cartoon and at present practically monopolizes production. Windsor McKay [sic], the cartoon, is said to have made the first successful effort at causing handmade pictures to move across a screen, but he never patented the idea, so that now the basic principle is used freely by half a dozen studios whose yearly productions average about 150 reels.
In the synchronization department, the orchestra conductor and his musicians follow the cue sheet and interpret in tunes and dialog what the cartoonist has imagined. Using hundreds of queer contraptions, the “effects men” can simulate the laugh of the moon, the gurgle of a brook, the fall of rain, the noise of a comet, the roar of a locomotive, the dance of a snail and the wheeze of a walrus.
Amng the studio’s domestic hardware, one finds sandpaper, tinfoil, washboards, toy trains, bricks, bats, building blocks, egg beaters and electric fans. The orchestra leader faces a screen across which the robot actors jump, walk and dance. His musicians face him and follow his directions at the precise moment.
The popularity of film funnies is explained by one producer who paraphrases the old Chinese proverb: "A good cartoon is worth a thousand words." At a time when cartoons were "stills" and consisted of only one drawing, the old proverb held good. But now that cartoons are animated and it takes 8,000 of them to complete one film, the producer argues that one reel is worth 8,000,000 words.

A LEADING animated cartoon producer says that the robot is tending to become more and more simple in his makeup. The present trend, he thinks, is toward more imaginative action. The cartoonist aims to give us impressions of the life around him, not illustrations of it. The imaginative picture is impossible any other way.
Movie cartoonists have made capital of the fact that animals have an intense human appeal. Bimbo and Mickey, two famous characters born in inkwells, are now better known than a good many actors in the flesh. A picture of Bimbo would be as readily recognized in China as in the United States.
The role of the artist becomes more and more important as the film funnies achieve greater popularity. In forthcoming productions more artists will be necessary, since no machinery so far invented can make a cartoon character go through his antics.

The Talkartoon series began in 1929 with Noah’s Lark. Betty Boop pretty much took over the series, which ended in 1932 with The Betty Boop Limited. The cartoons are full of imaginative little gags and are generally great fun to watch.

You can read the article here.

Three-in-One Dinosaur

You Van Beuren cartoon fans reading this will know, in the early ‘30s, the studio loved to mush the mouths of singing quartets together to form one mouth.

The studio liked to do the same thing with bodies.

Here’s a good example from the middle of Stone Age Stunts (released Dec. 7, 1930). Three dinosaurs lumber onto the stage of a saloon to engage in a ballet (with a wood block sounding every time their feet hit the floor).



Suddenly, for no reason, they mush into one dinosaur with three heads, which shout “Rah! Rah! Rah!”. The conjoint dino plops down on the ground exclaims “Hey!” to end the performance. Why? Because it’s a Van Beuren cartoon. It doesn’t have to make sense.



The summary from The Motion Picture Herald, which rated this one “Good”:

A considerable amount of originality makes this Aesop Fable highly entertaining, combining modern civilization with cavemen days. The prehistoric mouse and his sweetie are having a gay time in a cabaret located in a skyscraper mountain when it catches fire, and the brave firemen, elephants who spray water through their trunks, save the lovers.

I don’t know how much “originality” there was in the designs of Milton and Rita Mouse.



George Stallings and Eddie Donnelly are the credited animators, with music and dance synchronisations by Gene Rodemich and Jack Ward, who later worked for the Fleischer/Famous studio. The melody over the opening titles is “I Just Roll Along.”

In case you want to travel back to 1936, you could rent this short from the YMCA Motion Picture Bureau, 347 Madison Avenue, New York, for $1.25 a day (in 16 mm.).

Woody Comes to Rigor Mortis

Woody Woodpecker made several Western pictures and the first came while Walter Lantz was releasing through United Artists.

Fred Brunish provided the watercolour backgrounds for Wild and Woody (1948). Here’s a pan of part of the town site, with a gag sign that had to be from the mind of Bugs Hardaway (Heck Allen co-wrote this).



This is part of another background showing a livery stable. It is quickly panned from left to right, then director Dick Lundy cuts to a static scene of sheriff Wally Walrus addressing the townsfolk.



The background above actually starts with the camera focused on the sign below.



The golf course. The sheriff is eventually shot by Buzz Buzzard and buried here.



The sign approaching the town.



The sheriff's office. Brunish actually has three different paintings of it for different scenes. One has a hangman's noose to the left of the building.



Some interiors of the saloon. The swinging doors are on an overlay and the bar stool is partly animated.



There’s a lot to like in these United Artist Woodys. In this short, Pat Matthews has some funny, exaggerated animation, while Fred Moore opens the cartoon with some appealing, well-drawn footage of Woody singing while riding a pony, which is animated on twos, then on a cycle of 24 drawings, one per frame. It’s very smooth. Matthews and Moore would be gone after this short, along with every animator except Ed Love, who was left to finish the final U-A release before the studio closed for more than a year because of a lack of capital. When Lantz started up again and needed key artists again, only Brunish returned.

Knock, Knock. Who Are You?

Allen’s Alley made a huge impression on radio listeners, even though it was only part of Fred Allen’s show for a small percentage of the time he was on the air (1932 to 1949, with a couple of years off for health reasons). And only one version of the Alley made a huge impression—the one that developed in the 1945-46 season when Kenny Delmar’s Senator Claghorn and Parker Fennelly’s Titus Moody were added to Minerva Pious’ Mrs. Nussbaum (Peter Donald’s Ajax Cassidy arrived the following season).

The original Alley in 1942 was anchored around Alan Reed as Falstaff Openshaw, who was the only character Allen had developed at that point. Besides Mrs. Nussbaum, there were veteran Allen cast members Charlie Cantor as Socrates Mulligan and John Brown as John Doe, both of whom employed voices they had used periodically on the show over the years.

For anyone who likes Allen’s work, it’s fascinating hearing other characters in the Alley. Some didn’t last very long. There have been times where I’ve listened and wondered “Who’s that?”

One instance is on the December 19, 1943 broadcast, the second one of the season. Two voices were completely unfamiliar. Fortunately, the Orlando Sentinel gave a preview on that date and revealed the identity of the actors:

Orson Welles, who of recent days has established quite a reputation for throwing ad libs into his radio appearances, walks right into the one place where he is bound to meet some rough weather . . . Fred Allen’s “Star Theatre,” tonight at 9:30 over WDBO. Welles will tangle with the acknowledged quick-quip-like-a-whip, and he won’t get any help from Portland Hoffa, Al Goodman’s Orchestra, Alan (Falstaff Openshaw) Reed, Jack Smart, Everett Sloane, Betty Walker and Jimmy Wallington.

Yes, for several weeks, Everett Sloane was part of Allen’s Alley. Allen’s show came from New York. Both John Brown and Min Pious were in Hollywood and slumming on the Jack Benny show. Replacements had to be found. Sloane was in New York starring on CBS’ Crime Doctor, which signed off 35 minutes before Allen’s show started on the same network. He was a 15-year radio veteran and had been one of the members of Welles’ Mercury Players, so he seems to have been an unusual choice for a comedy programme, though he shot two movies in the 1960s with Jerry Lewis. On the December 19th broadcast, he opened the Alley routine as a new character—Mr. Hollister. Perhaps Allen sensed Sloane’s angry character bombed. “Well, Mr. Hollister won’t be with us long, I don’t imagine,” Allen said after the door slam. (An Earl Wilson column around this time said the character was to be named Runford Rant, an Allen-esque name if ever there was one).

Next he introduced Mrs. Nussbaum. Instead, a woman with a higher-pitched Jewish dialect answered the door. She didn’t even have a name. This was apparently Betty Walker. Her identity is a bit of a mystery, but she is likely an actress championed by Dorothy Kilgallen. Kilgallen’s column of Aug. 12, 1943 reported she was an 18-year-old secretary at United Artists signed to a Paramount contract. The following March 29 she had not appeared in any Paramount films. April 3 has Kilgallen reporting that Xavier Cugat wanted to marry Walker. She vanishes from the columns after that.

Jack Smart played drunk Samson Souse and Reed anchored the sketch as Falstaff.

Allen must have figured some changes were needed. The December 26 broadcast isn’t available on-line and papers don’t say who was in the Alley that night, but the following week Elsie Mae Gordon shows up for the first time as Edna May Oliver-soundalike Mrs. Prawn. Scott debuts his Senator Bloat character and Cantor returns as Socrates Mulligan, to the audience’s applause, but a week later begins a short run as Mr. Nussbaum. Starting in April, Cantor is gone, with Pat C. Flick as Digby Rappaport (Allen loved the name “Rappaport”; it show up continually on his show). Pious returned on April 30 to handle the Jewish shtick, so Flick turned to a Greek dialect on May 7 and played restaurateur Pablo Itthepeaches (Flick also had his own half-hour show on Sunday afternoon on WMCA). They lasted out the season, then Allen was off the air for over a year, returning with the aforementioned revised Alley with Kenny Delmar.

One other unusual thing about the December 19, 1943 show: Orson Welles did not appear as advertised. He came down with the flu. Allen was forced to make a very last-minute substitution and brought in singer Jimmy Melton. I was quite stunned that Allen could come up with a completely-new script so fast until I realised he simply reused a show from November 22, 1942, with almost the same dialogue with Melton—and even the same song. Unfortunately, the version available has bad skipping (a quarter on the tone arm might have fixed that, though it’s not recommended) so a comparison isn’t easy.

By all accounts, Welles guested the following Sunday. In between, Allen appeared on a special programme for the Bakers of America.

I don’t like side-tracking posts, but I’m going to do it here. We mentioned Charlie Cantor, whose Socrates Mulligan became Clifton Finnegan on Duffy’s Tavern and whose voice was borrowed by Sid Raymond for cartoondom’s Baby Huey.

Here’s a story about Cantor from the Miami Daily News of June 13, 1943.

EQUATIC STOOGE FOR FRED ALLEN BAFFLES CRITIC
Rave Notice Given To Charlie Cantor For Unique Comedy
Take a slug of exploding bubble-gum plus a pinch of etaoin-shrdlu, throw it on a hot griddle and you have:
“Duh!-yea-a-ah!”
It's hydra-voiced Charlie Cantor, nine comedians in one, of CBS-WQAM's Fred Allen show Sundays at 9:30 to 10:00 p.m., who wins a multi-paged rave-critique from Author Jerome Beatty. Beatty attended the Allen show, saw Cantor (no relation to Edward) and came away with jigsaws in his thinkbox:
"The first time I ever saw Charlie in action I was as dumbfounded as if Herbert Hoover had risen at a banquet, manuscript in hand, cleared his throat, and begun talking in the outlandish jargon of Donald Duck. "It was at a Fred Allen show at a Columbia Broadcasting System radio theater on Sunday night in New York. Allen is one of my favorite comedians and I wanted to see him in action, but I also wanted to see ‘Socrates Mulligan,’ who is my favorite stooge."
Dignified Character
Beatty relates that when he saw the crowd of actors come on the radio stage before the show, he looked for Socrates Mulligan (Cantor) but couldn't decide which was he. "One of them was an immaculatelv tailored, middle-aged gentleman who was particularly conspicuous because he was the only man on the stage who was gravely sublime in a white stiff collar, plain dark tie, and a white shirt. I guessed that he was the chairman of the board of the sponsoring company.
Beatty had expected a character who would look the part of Socrates Mulligan, "the dumb, gabby, opinionated resident of Allen's Alley," but to his surprise, the man in the immaculate garb was Cantor.
"Charlie Cantor's comedy makes millions of radio listeners laugh every week. He's the Great Mr Anonymous of radio, the champion utility man who can play any part in any dialect except Swedish, and imitate lions, chickens, birds, dogs babies, railroad trains, police whistles, three kinds of good airplanes—one with engine trouble."
Per-Taters a la Mode
Cantor practiced for an hour and was able to play Yankee Doodle with his nose. For the Allen's Alley one Sunday evening he gave the public a brand new food delicacy. Author Beatty tells about it:
“Allen began asking about food, and called on Socrates Mulligan. Suddenly the dignified gentleman (Cantor) relaxed, screwed up his face and as I gasped at the transformation, out came water-front dialect saying, 'I'm nuts about per-taters. I eat 'em all day. I invented per-tater a la mode.’
“‘What,’ asked Allen, 'is potato a la mode?’”
'Dat's a baked per-tater,’ explaned Socrates Mulligan, ‘wid a cold per-tater on top.’”
Cantor has used one or more his voices on more shows than he can remember. On CBS he is a regular on the Allen show, and does parts for Kate Smith, Easy Aces. He prefers anonymity, so the fact that his name is seldom mentioned on the shows doesn't irk him.
Cantor, former shoe merchant, went broke in 1929, made use of his natural multi-voice talent to crash radio.

We mentioned the arrival of Claghorn and Moody when Allen returned to radio in 1945. There were two other newcomers in the Alley—songwriters McGee and McGee. Allen loved parody songs and jingles, and brought in the McGees to replace the rhyming poetry of Falstaff Openshaw. One was played by veteran novelty singer Irving Kaufman. Why he left is unknown, but the McGees were replaced by Falstaff at the start of 1946. The Alley itself was replaced for the 1948-49 season with the same concept called “Main Street.” Allen came up with a few new characters, perhaps feeling the old ones were getting worn out, but they never caught on.

No one remembers “Main Street” today. But old radio fans still know about Allen’s Alley.

A Nutzi Kiss

Nazi spy Hatta Mari gives off an electric shock kiss to “woman hater” Daffy Duck in Plane Daffy (1944). Four colours.



The old "melt" gag.



Let’s try the gag again.



Director Frank Tashlin and writer Warren Foster throw a switch.



Daffy channels Jerry Colonna. “Ah! Something new has been added!”



An old-style, Clampett-esque Daffy “Woo-hoo!” exit.



Now, an inside joke.



My best guesses at the studio personnel referred to here: Fred Abrams, Warren Foster, Tubby Millar, Dick Thomas, Curt Perkins, Leon Schlesinger, Ray Patin (or maybe Ray Katz), Ace Gamer and Cal Dalton.

Being the best kind of war cartoon, Hitler is embarrassed by the “secret” message and Himmler and Goering Goebbels commit suicide. In real life, Hitler followed. As Daffy tells us, “They lose more darn Nutzis that way.”