Pre-Broadcast Clowning

There was a fascination, it seems, among radio fans about watching their favourite show in person as it was being broadcast. Fred Allen dismissed a studio audience as almost a lower class of people, content with watching people on a stage read a script aloud. But certainly the laughter enhanced every comedy/variety show aired in the Golden Days, and probably influenced not only the stars’ timing, but ad-libs as well.

We’ve put up several posts of reviews of the Benny show from someone either watching a show or a rehearsal. Here’s another one. It comes from the Memphis Commercial Appeal of Sunday, January 16, 1938.

Pre-Broadcast Period Found To Be Occasion For Good Acts Missed By Dialers
Many Laughs Escape Mike
Local Radio Man Relates NBC Studio Notations
By Robert Grey
REPORTS have been drifting in for several moons about what goes on in a broadcasting studio during that anxious period just before “on the air” signs go up. Many of the notations relate unusual behind-the-scenes incidents, such as a prima donna being too nervous to apply an even line of lip rouge before facing the studio audience or mike, or a screen idol being too upset to hold a cigaret.
A number of the stories concerned activities of program casts as they made final preparations to broadcast their wares to the country at large. Indications were that some of the best entertainment produced by radio artists occurred before the studio audience just before the program went on the air. This was said to be true especially with comedy programs.
While other detailed reports have been second-hand, we have just come into possession of a first-hand version in the observations of Milton Simon, local radio program producer and actor who recently returned from a visit to Hollywood. An experienced and capable radio performer in his own right, Mr. Simon was surprisingly enthusiastic over his good fortune in watching a broadcast of the Jack Benny program and getting to observe what happened during that period. Just before broadcast time. His impressions of Benny before the mike as well as behind the mike are such as to leave no doubt why listeners have been naming the comedian and his wife high among their favorite performers.
After waxing warmer and warmer in his admirations of Mr. Benny, Simon gave the following first-hand account of the period he witnessed just before watching the comedian lead his cast through one of their recent Sunday night broadcasts:
It's eight o'clock, Pacific Coast Time. The scene, NBC’s Hollywood Studios on Melrose, the setting for many a star-swept broadcast these days. On the stage is Phil Harris and his orchestra putting Kenny Baker through the final paces of the rehearsal. Front center are two microphones. Onto the stage strides a business-like individual in brown coat, brown hat, and a very brown cigar. With his back to the audience he views these last bits of rehearsals, munching in pre-occupied manner, on the cigar. Finally, after several minutes of recognition by the audience crowding the studio, he turns, removes the cigar, and stares with mock disdainful look, and says simply, laconically, and disinterestedly— "Hello."
It's Jack Benny, and on all sides people begin to rock with laughter. Why? It’s hard to tell. This man, as one woman puts it, is funny if he says nothing. He gives you the impression of a lightning quick mind about to seize upon anything at all and make it funny. He's fascinating, really, as he stands there, surveying the house, with cigar held between his fingers, saying nothing— just appearing.
Finally, and with the orchestra and Kenny going full blast in the background, he speaks after several minutes of silence.
"Still got a hang-over?"
The audience laughs good and solidly at this.
The brown eyes rove again, and he says with the Benny emphasis: "I still got mine from last year." Everybody laughs.

Phil Harris is spotted, speeding around the edge of the stage geting [sic] the last of the music in order.
"Say, Phil," cries this demon tease, "show ’em that tie. C’mon, Phil, show the folks that tie." And Phil Harris, handsome and ruddy faced, comes forth with the most gosh awful tie that ever went back the day after Christmas. Jack Benny continues to alternate his gaze between the tie and the audience with that contemptuous, knowing nod of his.
"Did you ever see such an outfit as that?" he goes on, calling attention to Phil's rich, plaid coat, the loud shirt, off-color trousers, and socks. It's the conventional Hollywood attire.
"Honestly," Benny asserts, "there must be some plane in town where you can buy a complete suit.” And the crowd howls.
The last minute rehearsals go on as Benny continues to stand in the wings and survey the house. Finally, the cigar comes forth and he says eagerly: "Would anybody like to buy my Maxwell?" No takers, but plenty of laughers.
"Honestly, I could let you have it at a bargain figure. I've bought a race horse." More laughter.
"Yeah, I bought a rare horse. I got to be in style with all the other boys. Only my horse always runs last. I dunno. But I finally decided how I could get my money's worth out of him. I painted a big sign on his back that says ‘Tune in the Jello Program’ and he comes down the stretch— talk about advertising!” The house "comes down" at this.
“And say,” he continues with a coy roll of his eyes, “since this Mae West business, have you noticed how clean our broadcasts are!"
It's now about 8:25. Kenny is going through the last few bars of his song. “Look at him," says Jack in mock jealousy, "always rehearsing. Everybody gets attention on this program but me. You haven’t seen anybody worry about me yet, have you? Everybody is important here but me."
At this point Don Wilson comes onto the stage and gets a big applause. With an outstretched hand, he bids the audience welcome, tells them to laugh in a natural sort of way, and then introduces the cast. Jack Benny, of course, is introduced last and with least gusto. After the introduction Don begins to give a really heartfelt talk on the feeling of allegiance the cast feels toward Benny; how they appreciate the wholesome helpfulness and genuine friendship of the man —a speech that Don clearly feels. Slowly over the house rolls a ripple of laughter that grows into a gale and drowns out the far-launched Wilson. Over in the corner, in mock-feminine modesty, with much eye rolling and coyness, Jack Benny is drawing down the house.
Wilson retreats, shamefaced and red. This is obviously not an act. It's Benny-clowning, always clowning. He is the funniest, most sophisticated showman before the public today.
And at 8:30, Pacific Coast time, is that audience ready to laugh with the show or is it? It is.

George Stallings

100 years ago, if you mentioned the name “George Stallings,” the manager of the National League Boston “Miracle” Braves would come to mind. Today, diehard baseball history buffs should recognise the name. But keen-eyed fans of animation today might remember the name from title cards of Van Beuren cartoons of the early 1930s.

Cartoondom’s George Stallings was the son of the baseball field boss, and arguably can be considered one of the major figures in early New York animation. Donald Crafton’s book “Before Mickey” relates how Stallings was hired by the Bray studio about 1916 and eventually became manager of it until 1924 when he was replaced by Walter Lantz; Crafton says Stallings got sick, while Michael Barrier’s “Hollywood Cartoons” states Bray got tired of Stallings coming in late and fired him.

Leonard Maltin’s “Of Mice and Magic” relates how Stallings popularised the rotating disc on animation drawing boards.

Stallings Sr. retired to a home in Haddock, Georgia, and died there in 1929. The year before, the Macon Telegraph profiled his son in a feature story published on February 12. It outlines how he got into the animation business and the studios where he found employment in New York. You can also get an idea of the horrendous working conditions. No wonder the studios were able to turn out one cartoon a week.

How George Stallings’ Son Makes Comic Cartoons Move
Hundreds of Drawings Back Each Jump of Felix the Cat
A Peep Into the Studio of Vernon Stallings Reveals the Intricate Methods of Making Apparently Simple “Moving Picture Cartoons;” Studio Near Here
By WILLIE SNOW ETHRIDGE
THERE is a man spending the winter near Macon who has made millions of funny motions for your special amusement. It is a sure thing you have seen them if you have been to the movies anytime in the last ten years, for these funny motions go wigging and wagging and jumping and jerking across the screens daily.
The man Is Vernon Stallings and the funny motions are those in the pictures of Felix the Cat, of Tad’s Daffodils, of the queer little creatures in Aesop’s Fables and of all the other jumpy figures in the animated picture strips. Mr. Stallings has drawn pictures for every animated movie strip that has ever been shown in moving pictures. And that means millions and millions of pictures— and then some.
While watching one of those inimated [sic] strips did you ever begin wondering how those absurd little figures could be made to dash up and down rope ladders, swing houses about on their tails, drag pirates across the decks of ships and heave them into the ocen [sic] and do all the other fool things that they do in their brief moments on the silver screen?
If you have been wondering about it, you may now let your mind rest in peace, for I made a 30-mile trip into the country recently to find out this very thing from Mr. Stallings, who makes those odd creatures act that way. Mr. Stallings is visiting his father, George Stallings, who is known, even to the members of the femine sex, as the “miracle man of baseball.” George Stallings, as you perhaps know, has a country home five miles or more, and I believe more on the other side of Haddock. It is here that his son has been spending the winter months resting up from the grind of New York life.
Just as soon as I was face to face, or to be exact, face to chest, for he extends six feet five inches into the air, with Vernon Stalling, I jumped into this subject of how he made those comic figures so muchly animated. “It takes from three to five thousand drawings to make each one of those little strips which are shown in five or ten minutes on the screen,” he answered promptly.
“But that doesn't explain how it is done,” I argued.
“No,” he said with a smile and a very slight shrug of his broad shoulders. “It is not ae simple as that. Come on over to the shack where I do my drawings and I will explain It fully.”
So we left the house of George Stallings and crossed the yard to a little building which Vernon Stallings has dubbed the “Penny Arcade.” It is here that he had set up his studio for the months of his visit. The desk and tables were piled high with drawings and the chairs were filled with papers.
He pulled up two chairs to his drawing board and with great patience began explaining the process of making an animated movie. The drawing board had a rectangle in the center into which fitted a piece of window glass. Flush with the board and the glass, was a steel bar In which were fixed two cylinder pins about one half-inch in length. Beneath the window glass was an ordinary electric bulb.
Mr. Stallings placed a clean sheet of white paper which had holes punched in the top to fit on the cylinder pins upon the glass and with his pencil poised in his fingers announced: "Now we are ready to start on our strip. Let's Imagine we want to make a picture of a man tipping his hat to Leatrice Joy.”
Mr. Stallings’ pencil began to fly over the paper. With a stroke here and a stroke there, he was drawing a little man in the act of tipping his hat.
How It Is Done
“We draw the man,” he explained, as his pencil dashed about, “in the first position of tipping his hat. Then we place another sheet of paper right on top of drawing one. You see, the light under the board is showing the image of the first drawing even through the blank sheet on top of it, so we can now draw the next position of the man without disturbing the frst. This position is the final which his arms will move into, holding the hat in his hand.
However, the arm is the only part of the body in action, so that is all that is necessary to draw.”
Having finished drawing the arm, holding the hat, Mr. Stalling began flipping it up to see the drawing underneath.
“Now you will notice as I flip this paper that there is quite a gap from the first position of the man tipping his hat and the one I've just drawn with the hat in his hand,” Mr. Stallings continued, looking at me expectantly.
I gazed at the two drawings as hard as I could, but the hat seemed to be tipped all right to me. Nevertheless, I said “yes sir.”
"These two positions are not considered enough to make this action smooth with the proper timing of a man tipping his hat," he continued. "Still we have the extreme positions so we merely make two more drawings equi-distant in between, and now we have four drawings forming the entire movement. We number these drawings according to their sequence, the ne we drew second being numbered four, as that is the final position in the movement. You see?” I nodded my head.
“Well, now, unless Leatrice Joy freezes the man solidly he will put the hat on his head,” he continued. “New drawings are not necessary for this. Just reverse the old ones and the man replaces his hat. Now you are back to drawing No. 1.”
I gave a sigh of relief to be rid of the little man—and, yet, I wasn’t doing anything but looking on. Mr. Stallings was doing all the work.
“That would be merely the beginning of a strip,” he said with a smile. Then lifting up a stack of drawings about a foot deep from his desk, he mentioned that they were some he had just completed for Bill Nolan, who issues the Illustrated News Laughs. The plan of the Illustrated News Laughs is to take some item from the day’s news and make it into an animated series strip.
The News Laugh, on which Mr. Stalling had been worked, was the announcement of some noted educator that children are more ingenious than grown ups. Mr. Stallings had made 175 separate drawings showing a child in the act of picking up two bones for drum sticks. And that was just a small part of the strip. He had already made 1,500 drawings on the news laugh alone, and yet, it was far from being completed.
Making the drawings would seem to be enough of a job, but the animator has to think up the funny stunts for the figures to execute—and the more funny stunts, the better the strip, of course.
“If we say that, we take a lot of pains to be funny, that is just it,” Mr. Stallings declared, “The pains seem to get the laughs. If we stick a pin in a baby, it's funny. If horse kicks him in the face.it is funnier. So we are painfully humorous. The motion picture cartoon has first claim pn the First Aid Kit,for in these cartoons it is the license of the producer to distort and disfigure as well as parting the baby's hair with an ax. The kid can not only nibble on the bottle, but he can chew it up and swallow it. Then if he wails to, he can blow gazing crystals, tumblers, windshields or what have you. So our audience sits back and giggles at these nonsensical bits and says, ‘Oh, gosh, he really doesn't do that. He's only a drawing.’ But to us who draw him, he lives and we try to make him just as human as anybody else, except saxophone players."
“How do you know when you have made enough funny movements for a motion picture cartoon?” I asked Mr Stallings when had finished laughing at the humorous manner of his speech.
“Well, that takes some more explaining,” he said, and I screwed up my eyes again as tight ae possible, and began concentrating as hard as I knew how.
"When we have completed our drawings,” he continued, “they are placed and photographed one after the other under a camera. They are consequently recorded in sequence on the long roll of film within the camera. However, there is a tempa or timing on this action which makes them pause properly, and do things in a natural way. This timing is arrived at by natural arithmetic. There are 16 pictures to one foot of motion picture film, and when these pictures are run off on the screen, they move at the average rate of 16 pictures a second.
“If we want to hold a certain pose for a second, whe [we] photograph that single picture 16 times. If for half the length of time, it to photographed eight times and so on. If a figure walls [sic] into a scene very slowly, then each position of the walk is given three exposures. Normally it is given two exposures, and if the action as rapid as with pinning, it is given one exposure for each drawing. Exposure sheets are usually written with each scene. Opposite the number of the drawing is the number of exposures with which that drawing is to be photographed. This is very simple to follow under the camera, and if the total number of exposures are added and divided then we know exactly how many feet of film are required to photograph that scene. The usual length of a cartoon is between 500 and 600 feet.”
Mr. Stallings got up from his drawing board and showed me some film and focused a camera to make the explanation clearer to me, but I had already taken in all I could, so I didn’t understand even what he was making more clear. “What I really want to know is how you got into this intricate business?” I asked when the explanation had been completed and he had settled himself ones again before his drawing board.
First Hardships
“All my life I wanted to draw,” he said with a smile, as he turned a drawing pencil between his long fingers. "When I was a buy I spent hours drawing. And then when I went to the University of Georgia, I was so much more interested in drawing than I was in my studies. I left there after the first year. I went to New York and studied cartooning.
"In 1911 I came back to Georgia and got a job on The Atlanta Journal in the art department. After about a year on The Journal, I went to New York and began doing sport cartoons for the Adams Newspaper syndicate. All the time I was drawing these sport cartoons, I was experimenting on the animated movies, which had just begun. The first animated movie was Winsie McKay's [sic] Gertie. All the money I made from my newspaper work I spent on the movie cartoons. You know how that is.
“About this time,” Mr. Stallings continued, “I met a man both rich and influential—sounds like a story doesn’t it?—who arranged for me to do movie cartoons with the Gaumont movie people. Just as I thought I was all fixed, it was discovered that a man named Bray ad had the animated movie patented and no one else could make them. The only thing left for me to do was go to work for Bray. He was drawing the Heeza Liar series and I worked with him.”
Later the cartoonists discovered there was a way to get around Mr. Bray’s patent and various producers began to make the animated strips, according to Mr. Stallings. So Mr. Stallings left Bray and went to Barrie [Barre] at Fordham to make the animated strips of Mutt and Jeff.
“When you say, Mr. Stallings, that you drew animated cartoons of Mutt and Jeff do you mean that you put the action into the strips Bud Fisher had already drawn for the newspapers?” I asked.
“Oh, no, no,” Mr. Stallings exclaimed. “Barrie bought from Fisher only the rights to his characters. He paid Fisher $1000 a week in royalties for the use of the two characters alone. It was up to the animators with Barrie to make up the scenario for the characters. All the stunts that you have seen Mutt and Jeff do on the screen are the brain children of the animators.
“The making of an animated strip is not a one man job,” Mr. Stallings continued, “but like a one man top [sic] it takes a lot of people a long time to put up what one man thought of. The average studio, turning out a picture every week requires a staff of from 30 to 55 people. They are known as animators, the men who pencil the actual movements and are responsible for the acting and the comedy; the inkers, those who ink in the penciled drawings of the animators; the tracers, those who complete the drawings, put in the blacks and tones and check up on all mistakes; and the camera man who is the automaton who give each drawing the number of exposure each drawing calls for.”
At one time, Mr. Stallings was in entire charge of all the International animated cartoons. They included Jerry on the Job, Silk Hat Harry, Tad's Daffodills, the Katzen Jammer Kids, The Hearst cartoons, for the International cartoons were owned by Hearst, were very popular for about six years, according to Mr. Stallings. Then Hearst divided the International Productions into the Cosmopolitan Productions, which included only feature pictures, and into the International News Reel. Mr. Hearst abandoned entirely the production of short comic strips.
A New Idea
Mr. Stallings was associated with Paul Terry in the production of the Aesop's Fables for a year and a half. The Aesop's Fables had a tremendous, circulation according to the cartoonist. They cost Terry about $2,000 a week to make, and they brought in around $22,000 a week.
"The short strips have always been the step child of the movie game,” Mr. Stallings said. “They have always been considered fillers, and yet, they were so in demand at one time that we worked all day and night frequently. Our field is not overflowing with good men and at the heighth of the cartoons' rage we had no hours at all. A man just worked until he was carried out on a shutter. I have seen the whole staff, girls and all, work from 9 o'clock one morning until 9 o'clock the next. Through the wee hours of the morning we would send out for coffee. The container was usually a thousand foot film can and the odor of gun cotton made the coffee taste like paregoric. But we would drink marbles in those days. We would drink half the can, saving the balance. An hour or so later some one would be struck dumb with a doughnut in his wind pipe and hasten to heat the coffee. This was done by placing the tip end of an electric light bulb In the coffee so the liquid did not come in contact with the socket attachment. If there was anything else we couldn't or didn't do we never found it.”
Mr. Stallings is somewhat at a loss to understand why they have dropped off in popularity to such an extent.
"People tell us they like the cartoons and reports on them prove them to be popular, but It Is a job to sell them,” he said a bit ruefully. "We don't know and will probably still be cutting paper dolls when we find out. However, so many of the picture houses are “de luxing” their programs with vaudeville and have discarded short subjects in favor of this new attraction.”
Mr. Stalling was with the Out of the Inkwell Producing company before he came South this fall. They are the people who do the clown cartoons. And now, though Mr. Stallings stays busy from early morning until night drawing cartoons — he has made 700 small drawings in one day — he is working in his spare moments on a new idea.
And this new idea, which is a dark secret now, will cause quite a sensation if it works out as it should. When it is fully worked out, Mr. Stallings will leave the “Penny Arcade'' and return to his family, which consists of a wife and two children, in Now Rochelle. And if his big idea takes as many drawings to explain it as one of these strips he has been making, he will surely travel heavily laden.

What Stallings’ invention was, we may never know; he doesn’t seem to have patented anything. With the coming of sound, cartoons became popular for theatre-goers, and Stallings’ career briefly ascended at Van Beuren. He was part of the team that created the human Tom and Jerry in 1931 (borrowing an awful lot from the Don and Waffles cartoons made a little earlier), directed the two efforts starring Amos ‘n’ Andy, and then became head director. The last cartoon where he receives screen credit is on Fiddlin' Fun, starring Cubby Bear. There’s a noticeable improvement compared with the Van Beuren cartoons made a few years earlier. Cubby’s design is appealing and consistent throughout. Stallings has chosen various angles of action. And there are decent stretches of animation, perhaps thanks to the presence of Carlo Vinci on the staff.

Then Stallings found himself on the outs. In 1934, Amadee Van Beuren hired Burt Gillett, the director of Walt Disney’s Three Little Pigs, to take over the studio and the Gillett broom swept clean. Ironically, Stallings found himself at Disney in 1935 (according to his obit in the Valley Times) working on stories and even being given some kind of supervisory position on Merbabies, which was made by Harman-Ising Productions for Uncle Walt. The 1950 census lists him living in Burbank, divorced, and working 60 hours a week as an “artist-writer, motion picture cartoon,” though the studio is not reported. His obit stated he was the author of the Uncle Remus comic strip for 18 years—Stallings grew up with Joel Chandler Harris’ children—and created the Soapy Smith strip.

He was born in San Jose, California on Sept. 9, 1891 and died of cancer at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills on April 9, 1963.

A Musical Rescue

The gag of someone creating musical notes that form a stairway goes back to the days of when the sound of the notes came from someone in the theatre orchestra pit.

Here’s an example from Walt Disney’s Alice the Firefighter (1926). A dog pushes a piano out of a burning building and starts playing. Notes form to a window and mice leap down on top of them to safety.

Offhand, I can’t name any cartoons that have done the same routine; I’m pretty sure it happened in a silent Felix short. Sinkin’ in the Bathtub (1930) has a switch on the gag by having Honey come down from a balcony on bubbles made by Bosko’s saxophone.

It’s a shame copies of the cartoon from the available print are so poor. There are companies like Steve Stanchfield’s Thunderbean coming out with beautiful restorations of cartoons from B-list studios like Iwerks and Van Beuren. You’d think a mega-corporation like Disney would treat its old shorts the same way. (This post was written before the announcement that 27 restored cartoons would air on Disney+).

Bouncy Woodpecker

Arts and Flowers is an unusual cartoon as Woody Woodpecker is animated in ways that weren’t done very often. He’s got a stiff-legged loping walk, multiple heads and cross-eyed expressions in a number of scenes.

One scene has him behave like a tame version of the original Daffy Duck. He does handsprings and leaps as he leaves.



The credited animators are Don Patterson, Robert Bentley and Herman R. Cohen. The cartoon was released in 1956.

Some of the gags you can see coming. Homer Brightman and Frank J. Goldberg got story credits. Goldberg was somewhat infamous in Hollywood, called as a witness in a trial against Confidential magazine for supplying a story with dirt on—gasp!—Sonny Tufts.

Lux Presents...

Radio fans loved mistakes.

Every verbal screw-up by Don Wilson or Mary Livingstone on the Jack Benny radio show brought howls from the studio audience. People loved them so much, a fellow named Kermit Schafer cut a number of albums featuring on-air mistakes, though some were re-creations.

Even dramatic shows had their share, though I doubt the studio audience guffawed through them. Certainly not during the broadcast of a venerable programme like Lux Radio Theatre. It debuted on the NBC Blue network on Sunday afternoon, October 14, 1934, and moved to CBS on July 29, 1935. It made a far more important move in June 1936, when the show packed up and headed from New York to Hollywood to attract the major film stars. It helped when Cecil B. DeMille was hired at $2,000 a week to host the series. Radio historian John Dunning related in his book how movie companies stood idle while its stars rehearsed for Lux, getting up to $5,000 an episode and—what the studios wanted—huge, free publicity for their coming attractions.

DeMille and his successors were figureheads. The real work was handled by others, who also bore the headaches, especially when things went wrong. Here’s a wire story from 1953 to give you some examples. It also leaves you an idea of the timidity of network radio, even compared to the heavily-censored movie industry.

Fluffs and Muffs Turn Producer's Hair Gray
By ALINE MOSBY
United Press Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 12 – The oldest radio dramatic program, The Lux Theater, begins its 20th year Monday and considering its narrow squeaks the record is a victory, its producer sighed.
Nineteen years ago, John Boles and Miriam Hopkins launched the series with “Seventh Heaven.” Since then more than 800 one-hour versions of popular movies have been broadcast, starring every big movie luminary except Charlie Chaplin and Greta Garbo.

“But we've had some catastrophic events,” producer Cornwall Jackson said with a shake of his head.
BURT WASN’T MISSED
“BURT LANCASTER forgot to change his watch to daylight savings [sic] time and arrived 12 minutes after the program started. A bit player named Ira Glosser [sic] read Burt’s role— cold— and then Lancaster took over the part. I was listening at home and couldn’t tell the difference.
“Ira,” he added, became Jeff Chandler.
Van Johnson showed up a minute before broadcasting time, causing Jackson to consider switching to the shoe business. The scare was surpassed, however, when a star dropped her false teeth in the middle of a speech but popped them back in her mouth without missing a beat.
MOST MOVIES “TOO ADULT”
HELEN HAYES did “Peg O' My Heart” without one rehearsal after Margaret Sullavan became ill. On another program, Edward Arnold was blissfully ignorant of introducing “Rasil Bathbone.”
Not counting wayward actors, Jackson’s biggest headache is finding movies suitable for broadcast. Most are "too adult” for a family radio show, he said.
The show has become such an institution that some fans think producer Cecil B. DeMille still is master-of-ceremonies. He quit in 1945 rather than pay a $1 union fee. He was succeeded by William Keighley and later Irving Cummings.
TWO YEARS ON TV
LORETTA YOUNG and Fred MacMurray hold the record with 25 Lux appearances; Olivia de Havilland celebrated her 20th Monday with “My Cousin Rachel.”
Two years ago, Lux Theater made its TV debut with original plays—“Can you imagine the movie studios giving us their scripts for TV?” mourns Jackson. Thursday, Maureen O’Sullivan and Ronald Reagan opened the Lux TV season from Hollywood. Lux was thus the first big television show to switch from New York to Hollywood, giving CBS something to do in their huge black-and-white television city.
“So far on the television show nobody’s even fluffed their lines,” said Jackson.

By this period, network radio was withering away from a lack of cash, which was being moved by ad agencies into television, where the audiences were going. Lux was one of the last big sponsors which finally gave in. The Radio Theatre was moved to NBC for the 1954-55 season, with Lux dropping the show after the broadcast of June 7, 1955.

There was still some life in radio, and there was still some life in the dramatic showcase. The network continued to air the show sustaining as NBC Radio Theatre until January 4, 1960 when it, My True Story, the weekday version of Monitor and It’s Network Time were lopped off the schedule. The last-named was a short-lived, two-hour afternoon variety show hosted by, of all people, $150,000-a-year newsman Frank Blair. It was a far cry from a programme that, year in and year out, opened with the regal phrase “Lux presents Hollywood.”

Gaston, Il N'est Pas Magnifique

Gene Deitch bewailed the old-fashioned cartoons being pumped out at Terrytoons when he arrived there in mid-1956 and decided he wanted something modern. In the process, he went back to an idea from 1932.

Pencil Mania was a Van Beuren cartoon where Jerry’s pencil drew things that came to life. Deitch and his writing team decided, almost 25 years later, to do the same thing in a new character called Gaston Le Crayon.

Five Gaston shorts were made, the first being Gaston is Here (copyright May 29, 1957). In this scene, the skinny-limbed Gaston draws a coffee pot and then paints coffee in it, all in jerky limited animation.

Gaston lays down to rest and sip his coffee, and sighs “Zat’s a cigarette.” A cigarette? No, it’s coffee.

“Ze coffee blake” (as a cuckoo watch calls it) is interrupted by construction of a movie studio on top of the hill he lives inside.

Gaston complains to either the construction company or the studio executives about the destruction of his home. But next thing we see, is Gaston cheerfully helping people enacting scenes in movies. Why? Does he think these are real people in distress? Who knows. I honestly can’t figure out this cartoon. All I know is he’s an annoying chatterbox.

In one scene, he draws something to help an actor who is playing a thirsty man in a desert. The best part of this is the irony that he’s drinking water as the Hitchcock-ish director is describing the scene.

The gag-topper is he draws a fire hydrant after all the water came out of it. Uh, okay.

Perhaps he’s exacting revenge in the next scene as Gaston draws a rocket on the director, lights a fuse, and sends him into the air with more irony, as the director says to an actor “One of us must go.” Gaston shouts upward: “Don’t forget to send packages.”

Next is an actor on the set of “Arctic Peril,” bemoaning his “frozen fate.” Gaston rushes in and draws a toaster around him. He runs out of the scene, then comes down on a sandbag from the top of the stage. This, somehow, pops the actor out of the toaster. The actor is now the shape of toast, which the director, chasing Gaston, runs through.

None of this makes a lot of sense, and I can only conclude that Deitch and his writers (three of them worked on this cartoon) decided to come up with an early Daffy Duck or Screwy Squirrel-type character. In other words, Gaston Le Crayon is nuts. On top of this, we have the “run-through-to-create-hole” gag that Tex Avery used in a bunch of his cartoons, such as Garden Gopher (1950).

At least the early Daffy was funny. Screwy wasn’t likeable, but the gags were good. Gaston just doesn’t do it for me. Sorry Gene. I’d rather watch Pencil Mania, bad draughtsmanship and all.

Phil Scheib has a Tom Terrific-type score with lots of solo instruments and dissonant sounds. Allen Swift supplies all the voices.

Wanna Buy A...

Legend is Tex Avery wanted to have a group of ducks harassing Porky Pig in Porky’s Duck Hunt, but animator Bob Clampett convinced him it would be funnier to have only one screwball duck.

There is one scene that includes a number of heckling ducks. Row-boating Porky reaches to his sandwich to eat it and the ducks quack at him. He turns to fire his rifle at them and they fly away.



Porky goes back to the sandwich. In reused animation, the ducks return. Porky gets fouled up and instead of shooting at the ducks, he turns around his rifle.



As Porky stares wondering what just happened, we get a celebrity cameo appearance.



Danny Webb provides the voice of Joe “Wanna Buy a Duck?” Penner. (Late note: Keith Scott believes the voice belongs to Jackie Morrow. I'll defer to his knowledge about this).

Bobe Cannon and Virgil Ross are the credited animators.

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: Cheers For Chubby

There are thousands upon thousands of animated films made in the 1950s that have not had a real serious examination or compilation by historians.

That’s because most of them never appeared in theatres.

There were film studios across the U.S. and parts of Canada which made cartoons for corporations and institutions. Commercials, too. Generally, you couldn’t really consider them animation studios because they produced live action films as well.

We’ve spotlighted some of the world of John Sutherland Productions, which worked out a deal with M-G-M to release some of its pro-capitalism/anti-big government cartoons, including A is For Atom. Other fans gravitate to the works of the Jam Handy studio in Detroit, which employed animation talents such as Max Fleischer, Gene Deitch and Jim Tyer, and produced the Nicky Nome series.

One of the many studios rarely touched on is Jerry Fairbanks Productions in Los Angeles. Some will recognise his name from the deal with Jay Ward that put Crusader Rabbit on the air. He produced several filmed series in the dawning days of television syndication. But he mainly was an industrial filmmaker, and put together a cartoon division after the war. In September 1947, he hired Manny Gould from the Warner Bros. studio to supervise all his animation production.

We’re going to focus on one of Fairbanks’ cartoon shorts, a public service message sponsored by Metropolitan Life in 1951 called Cheers For Chubby.

Met Life treated this as a big deal and took out full-page magazine ads promoting it, offering a free copy of a booklet on weight. The secretary of the American Medical Association wrote in the June 1951 edition of California Medicine:

Metropolitan Life Has New Movie on Overweight. I have just seen the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company’s new movie entitled “Cheers for Chubby,” and it is exceptionally well done. It will be presented in commercial theaters throughout the country.
The movie is based on information obtained in interviews with the A.M.A., the Public Health Service, and the Milbank Memorial Fund, as well as various nutrition agencies, hospitals, clinics, medical schools and health departments.
This 8-minute theatrical animated short in color was made because of the growing feeling that overweight is a major health problem and that control of it, particularly after middle age, should result in a substantial increase in health and longevity.
Dr. D. B. Armstrong, a Metropolitan vice-president, said the film would be made available within a short time to state and county medical societies for showing in their areas.

The Library of Congress catalogue describes it this way:

Summary: An animated cartoon. Discusses the dangers and discomforts of excess weight, points out the importance of seeking and following the doctor's advice in reducing, explains some of the fundamentals about reducing diets, and describes the importance of determination and patience in achieving weight control.

The Motion Picture Herald of May 12, 1951 pointed out it was made using a new Du Pont colour process.

This was one of several “don’t pork out at the dinner table” industrials made at that time. Coronet came out with Good Eating Habits (1951) with Jam Handy producing Weight Reduction Through Diet (also 1951) for the National Dairy Council.

As for Cheers For Chubby, the animators aren’t listed, but Gould and Art Scott get direction credits and Lou Lilly is the animation supervisor. Scott was a former Disneyite who made the Mel-O-Toons in the late ‘50s, worked on Beany and Cecil for Bob Clampett then settled in at Hanna-Barbera. Lilly was an ex-Columbia animator who found work at Warner Bros. and opened his own studio in the 1950s.

Bing Crosby’s announcer, Ken Carpenter, narrates this short; he performed the same duties on other Fairbanks shorts as well as Paramount’s “Speaking of Animals” series. Ed Paul was Fairbanks’ in-house composer, though the studio switched to the Capitol Hi-Q library in the ‘60s, probably to save money.

An 11-minute version of this short was produced for television with a live-action prologue and epilogue, and entitled Losing To Win

This dub is a little fuzzy. Perhaps a better version will surface on-line.

Not Tonight Jack

“Check your local listings” sometimes didn’t work in the Golden Age of Radio.

Jack Benny toiled for NBC for most of his radio career. Sitting in an office at 30 Rockefeller Plaza was a gentleman named J. Vance Babb. In 1938, he was the manager of the Press Division of the NBC Publicity Department. His staff communicated with the press to make sure the local listings were correct.

All the networks issued press releases about their programmes, hoping they’d be picked up by local papers to give free publicity. One newspaper that was extremely cooperative was the Greenville News in South Carolina. It owned WFBC radio, which happened to be the local NBC affiliate. And judging by the paper’s radio page of the time, it apparently filled space with oodles of NBC news releases (and posed photos) promoting shows to air that day.

One of the more interesting ones appeared in the October 16, 1938 edition promoting the evening’s Jack Benny Program. That’s because the show advertised was not the show that made it onto the air.

I presume the NBC PR department had a deadline to write their releases. Jack and his writers began meetings on Tuesday to come up with a rough draught of a show, and then polished it. On several occasions, this blog has mentioned shows that were tossed out and re-written the night before the broadcast. When that happened, NBC’s carefully crafted news release would be out of date.

This is what the paper published on the 16th:

JACK BENNY CAST CALLS ON DEVINE IN SHOW TONIGHT
Don Wilson, Andy To Be In Weighing-In Contest As Added Feature
KENNY PICKS HIT
Jack Benny and his gang will smoke out Mayor Andy Devine from his office in Van Nuys, Cal., during the broadcast with Mary Livingstone, Kenny Baker, Phil Harris and Don Wilson over the NBC-WFBC network today at 7 p. m. Gravel-voiced Andy will be making his microphone debut of the season, postponed from last week when a movie retake kept him out of the show.
The diligent mayor will desert his offices behind the old cowshed on his Van Nuys rancho with malice aforethought this time. Andy is trying to dispose of his home-grown crop of "Havana filler" tobacco at Jack's expense. If Jack buys the crop of manufactured stogies, it probably will be at some one else's expense.
As an added feature of the broadcast, Jack will stage a weighing-in contest between his heavyweight aides, Don Wilson and Andy Devine, both former star footballers. Don, who steadfastly maintains that he lost three chins and a hangnail during the summer, is giving odds that he tips the beams at a lower figure than his gravel-voiced competitor for the local beef-trust title. With the aid of diet, strenuous exercise and nerve-wracking lack of sleep, Don has shrivelled to a mere 220 pounds. Andy, on the other hand, has been trying to fill out to the proportions of his political job.
Timid tenor Kenny Baker will battle through the smoke screen to sing the popular favorite "I Used To Be Color Blind" and Phil Harris' orchestra will play "For No Reason In Rhyme." The band also will unfold a new arrangement of "Don't Cross Your Fingers."

About the only thing accurate is Andy Devine did appear, and Harris played the two numbers mentioned, although Don Wilson introduced one as “For No Rhyme or Reason.” Kenny’s song was “I’ve Got a Date With a Dream.”

The plot outlined in the NBC release never happened. At all. It wasn’t postponed to a later broadcast. There are other occasions where the Benny summaries aren’t quite the same as what went on the air, though the broadcasts on the Sundays before and after this show reflect what was promoted. Why such a drastic change was made is open to speculation.

What actually went on the air was a programme bidding farewell to the NBC studio at Melrose and Gower. The following day, the network was to open its “Hollywood Radio City” on a 4 ½ acre site at the northeast corner of Sunset and Vine. The Los Angeles Times reported a three-storey lobby linked the office building with four auditorium studios linked together with glass brick walls. A mural 25 feet high and 40 feet wide portraying radio covered the entire curved half of the northeast wall. Naturally, this lovely building was torn down starting in May 1964.



It’s possible because the building was a huge deal to NBC, Benny and his writers decided instead of a show involving Don Wilson’s weight, they’d build a programme promoting the new network West Coast headquarters.

It’s actually a pretty funny show, though it’s a little odd at the end where one of the NBC demolition workers, who have been called Laverne and Mervin, suddenly turns out to be network vice-president John Swallow.

Listen to the show here. Elliott Lewis is Laverne, Ed Beloin is Mervin.

A Wolf, a Pincushion and a Keystone Kop

One of the great voices of animated cartoons started his career on film in the silent era.

He’s Billy Bletcher.

Bletcher was one of the first professional actors to be hired to perform dialogue in cartoons in the 1930s as they evolved from using studio staff to speak whatever words were heard underneath synchronised music and effects. But not too many years earlier, he was one of the famous Keystone Kops. In later life, he was one of the last of them and toured around the U.S., meeting silent film fans.

Animation fans reading here will likely know he was the Big Bad Wolf in Disney’s The Three Little Pigs (1933). He soon seems to have started popping up at other cartoon studios, especially Warner Bros. He voiced evil villains (lawyer Goodwill in The Case of the Stuttering Pig, 1937), comic villains (Colonel Shuffle in Mississippi Hare, 1949), not-quite villains (Owl Jolson’s father in I Love to Singa (1936) as well as the frustrated Papa in Chuck Jones’ Three Bears cartoons.

Keith Scott’s wonderful two-volume set on cartoon voice actors reveals Bletcher was interviewed about his cartoon career, and recalled Tex Avery was “a great booster for me. He’d say, ‘What are you fooling around for? Get Bletcher.’” But the book also quotes Avery as admitting he stopped using that type of voice in his cartoons. It also quotes Bletcher about losing roles to Mel Blanc because Blanc was under contract at Leon Schlesinger’s studio and using him saved money. Bletcher worked at other studios, including a memorable role as the Pincushion Man in Ub Iwerks’ Balloon Land (1935) and even showed up in the John Sutherland short Make Mine Freedom (1948). There were many, many more.

But let’s talk about his silent career. His hometown papers wrote of him a number of times. This story was unbylined in the Lancaster (Pa.) New Era of August 5, 1916. It tells of long-forgotten films and non-remembered actors.

A LANCASTER BOY WHO SCORES IN THE MOVIES
Billy Bletcher, By Hard, Persistent Work, Has Won a Name For Himself—In Big Demand Also As Vaudeville Artist and Singer
One of the “livest” of the fraternity of players in the motion picture world and the son of the Red Rose city who has best made his mark in that greatest of public theaters to-day is "Billy” Bletcher. Through an unshaken belief in himself despite any discouragement encountered and a determination to “make good" in the attainment of his ideals, Billy has faithfully "followed his star," and today occupies an enviable position in the “movies” where he has appeared with some of the best, has made a good impression among fellow-actors and, what is more important, has through his gameness, independence and undeniable talent won the respect and admiration of the managers of the various big companies upon whose films he has appeared in the past, and is appearing more prominently than ever to-day. His role is mostly that of the fun-maker and at this he is an adept. Audiences from coast to coast of the continent have been convulsed with merriment through the presentation of his acting.
Has Won Place In Front Rank.
By hard work, with few advantages in the way of preparation, and with no pull or drag as some people call it, Billy Bletcher has won a place in the front rank of entertainers. A fair field and no favors has been his motto. His every effort has been an artistic success and his future is assured.
Alone and unaided, his career began before he was seventeen, and he has been less than five years before the public. With ability and versatility, he has that irrepressible energy commonly called nerve. In Demand as a Juvenile.
At the tender age of nine he began to show great aptitude as a mimic and was in demand for juvenile entertainment. One of his favorite stunts was to ring the bell at a down-town Lancaster auction sale. His pay for this service was collected nightly and spent the same night to get into one of the theaters. He became so busy ringing that bell that he did not get to choir rehearsals and finally the musical director said: “Billy, you're fired.”
Was Cabaret Singer.
But he was undaunted. It was as a cabaret singer that he made his debut in the amusement world. In addition to regular engagements in cabarets he sang on a contract with Jos. W. Stern & Co., introducing their latest song hits. After a tour through Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and New England he had a reputation as “the little fellow with the big voice” and came back to Broadway to find vaudeville and minstrel engagements waiting for a performer of about his calibre. In fact, wherever he has been his services have been in demand as a vaudeville entertainer, from Boston to Jacksonville, Fla. In the latter place he played a number of vaudeville and concert engagements in addition to picture work with the Vim Film Corporation.
Played By Ralph Ince.

His first venture in the movies was with the old Reliance Film Company, where he was seen in good parts with Rosemary Theby. After this company went to the wall because of financial difficulties through lawsuits he returned to vaudeville; but not for long, as he had “the bug” and wandered into a vitagraph to take a chance again at the bottom of the ladder. Ralph Ince, the comedy director, soon noticed him and had him play all kinds of parts in farce comedy. In “He Danced Himself” Bletcher played four different parts, in only one of which he looked like himself. In the other three his identity was hidden completely, especially as the corpse brought to life by the “lively” waltz and a slight accident.
Starred in Jarr Family.
Director Davenport, of the Vitagraph Comedy Co., started a serial entitled “The Jarr Family.” In it Rose Tapley, Billy Bletcher, and some of the very best farceurs of that company had Lancastrians going every week to see Jarr, his troubles and joys. It was with the Vitagraph that Bletcher scored some of his best hits. Among these were: "Tomboy and Freckles” and "The Methods of Margaret,” in both of which he supported Lillian Walker; and “Whose Husband?” in which as the old sea captain he played the best of four good parts with: Flora Finch, Kate Price and Jay Dwiggins. With this company he played other good part too numerous to mention; but he could be seen every week and oftener on the screen at the leading Lancaster photo-play houses. Not to be passed without note, however, are the Sidney Drew comedies in which he always had especially good parts.
Mrs. Billy Bletcher.
It was during his engagement with the Vitagraph people that he met Miss Arline H. Roberts, of Brooklyn, who was to become the future Mrs. Bletcher, then playing parts in motion pictures with the same company. Mrs. Bletcher is a rising young artist, who has made good in ingenue parts, and will be heard from in the near future.
It was while he was with the Wizard Film Company, a branch concern of the World Film Corporation, that he played prominent action parts in “Marrying Money,” "Over Night,” etc.
Working In Jacksonville.
Last December 15 the young Lancastrian and his wife started to work for the Vim Comedy Co. at Jacksonville, Fla. Some of the pictures produced there, in which they appeared, were shown at two Lancaster theaters and seemed to please many people. These films were of the wild, rollicking, “slap-stick” variety.
At the present time Billy Bletcher is in New York City, and its environs, where he is working every day with that determination and enthusiasm which have marked his whole career and insure him a great future.

His cartoon career was briefly mentioned in several articles in the ‘30s, with the exception of this story from 1937; it appeared in papers over the course of months whenever an editor needed entertainment filler. The writer was at one time with the Associated Press; I believe he was freelancing for a syndicate at this point.

Hollywood News And Gossip
BY ROBBIN COONS
Hollywood— The man with a thousand voices has just signed away one of them.

For 15 years—in vaudeville, on the air, in pictures—Billy Bletcher has been in show business. His weird ability to mimic anybody or anything practically stole away his own identity. He found himself becoming a “voice” — or many voices.
Once, on the air, he substituted for a famous comedian and 1isteners never knew the difference. When Hollywood’s animated cartoons began to talk. Billy spoke for all of them. Vocally, he has been pig, frog, dog, rabbit, mouse, horse, cat, practically all the creatures of the animated screen. In spare time he has played parts in feature pictures, sung on the air. His tenor is trained for music, too.
Metro was launching a new series of talking cartoons, “The Captain and the Kids.” For it, Bletcher was signed to a contract. He will speak for the Captain—and he cannot use that voice for any other purpose.
But he is still free to use the other 999 voices in his repertory. He calls it the ideal contract.

Bletcher continued to appear on camera after sound came in. He made shorts with Billy Gilbert. One of his roles was in the Jack Benny feature Buck Benny Rides Again (1940). Jerry Lewis cast him, too. His last hurrah may have been a 1971 turn as Pappy Yokum in an ABC-TV special, filmed on a lot where he had made motion pictures more than a half-century earlier. He died in 1979 at the age of 84.