Think With Bob and Ray

1960 was a good year and a bad year for Bob and Ray.

It was bad because CBS dumped their 15-minute Monday through Friday radio show on June 24th, replacing it with reporter Ron Cochran conducting interviews with people in the news. And critics panned their April 7th TV special where the two hopped around New York City nightclubs, with interruptions by Mike Wallace.

It was good because they released an LP of comedy sketches to favourable reviews. And, even if network radio didn’t like their humour, critics did.

Here’s the New York Daily News TV and radio column of April 27th. “Dr. Stanton” refers to the president of the network. The gag is Frank Stanton was not a medical doctor so he wouldn’t make house calls anyway.

Radio Has Its Virtues If Only Bob & Ray
By KAY GARDELLA
People reckless enough to interview Bob and Ray—Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding soon feel like a pigeon caught in a phenn game. If this sounds confusing, we've already proved out point.
The two comedians, stars of CBS Radio's nightly "Bob and Ray Show," act and look like sober, successful businessmen, until you start asking questions. "You'll have to excuse me," said Ray, a tall, elegant gent with a resonant voice. "I may not be at my best today—a crisis at home, you know. Our pet peeve was eaten by a giant slalom last night, and the kids. . . . well, they’re all broken up."
There was a glint of a tear in Ray's eyes, while Bob, medium-sized, sandy-haired and tweedy, clucked sympathetically. "This just doesn't seem to be our day,” No said. “Did you hear about the crisis here at CBS just half an hour ago? They have an emergency case in Studio 25 when Young Dr. Malone (a daytime serial) dropped his pince-nez during a delicate operation. They tried to reach Dr. Stanton, but he was out on a house call.
Adult Humor
This type of whimsical, irreverent humor, delivered in a dry, matter-of-fact tone, has gained innumerable fans for Bob and Ray among that rapidly growing number of people who prefer an adult type of comedy—comedy with a point of view, comedy with purpose, yet without a hard-sell "message."
Their radio program has a cast of dozens of weird and wonderful people—all portrayed by Messrs. Elliott and Goulding. Thus, it was no wonder a few weeks ago when exactly half of the cast suddenly had colds—Bob’s cold, to be exact. Among the most popular characters is Wally Ballou, a peerless special events reporter whose pompous nasal intonation is being imitated by kids all over the nation and whose remote broadcasts usually end in near disaster. Or take Kent Lyle Birdley, a has-been radio announcer of the Thirties now on his third come-back attempt; Mary McGoon, an elderly admirer of the two; or Webley Webster, a gruff, yet amiable gent with marbles in his mouth.
Inspire Boys' Leagues
These fanciful folk help to present some of the most off-beat features ever heard on the air. Take the "Bob and Ray Gourmet Club,” for example, a regular offering which takes listeners to a glittering affair where the “Mystery Celebrity Sandwich of the Month” is being unveiled. After a tension-filled period of anxious waiting, described by two ever-awed special events reporters, the sandwich is unwrapped amid fanfares and usually turns out to be a prosaic ham-on-rye.
To come back to the aforementioned phenn game, the boys recently invented this “ancient sport” which they claim originated in far-off Beluchistan. To their listeners they solemnly explained that “the old controversial outfield-in-phenn rule has been suspended by the 12-second double-rush period.” But, in true Bob and Ray fashion, they never got around to describing the game itself. The result was that college and high school boys who are among Bob and Ray's most loyal fans are now starting to organize phenn leagues, making up their own rules as they go along.
This brand of humor is possible only in radio, Bob and Ray explained. “On our show we can slip in and out of character in a moment, without a costume change,” Ray said, “and the glittering grandeur of our Gourmet Club would cost a fortune if we had to build a set." Added Bob: "But that doesn't mean we are neglecting television. We had our own TV series and have made many guest appearances on various programs. Before long, we will have a new animated cartoon series titled 'Bob and Ray’s Hollywood Classics,’ and are now working on a pilot film for it.”
Meanwhile, they’re also on radio and TV in various parts of the country by means of commercials, which they themselves produce—all beating the unmistakeable brand of Bob and Ray humor. Also, they have just put some of their funniest routines on a record album. "Bob and Ray on a Platter," which they hope will become a hit.

The animated cartoon series with Ed Graham, who co-owned their agency that provided commercials, didn’t come off. Here’s what the Associated Press had to say about their record. The column showed up in newspapers starting in mid-March.

Bob & Ray: Funny Business, Their Game
By HUGH A. MULLIGAN
AP Newsfeatures Writer
Who is Wally Ballou and what is he really like?
For the answer to this question turn to RCA Victor's "Bob and Ray on a Platter," another hilarious album of dead pan satire on broadcasting foibles by two of the funniest men alive.
You'll find Wally Ballou, mythical man with a mike, interviewing a cranberry grower who didn't know cranberries can served as cranberry sauce with turkey or crushed into cranberry juice. In the background, sirens wail, shots ring out, people go screaming and rushing about, but Wally Ballou doggedly sticks to the business at hand, probing the cranberry bogs for pithy quotes.
You’ll also meet Bubby Burkhouse, describing the between halves color of a Saturday afternoon televised football game. "Gee, it's a thrill to be here," he begins, while down the field boys riding elephants and antique automobiles signal the start of the half-game festivities. Soon a dirigible, made by the science department, appears overhead and 1,100 ROTC students bail out in parachutes made by the sewing department in the old school colors.
Bob and Ray also bring you a radio sports and weather show, sponsored by Rudy and Irma's Dance Studio, that gets so bogged down in commercials time runs out before they can give the other half of the Ohio State score.
Expertly satirizing Ed Murrow's "Person to Person," Ted Malone's poetry reading sessions, TV Westerns and TV program awards, Bob and Ray are in the groove all the way, delivering 40 minutes of deftly executed mimicry and satire that beats anything else around today.

It appears Bob and Ray sent out gag mailers to newspapers to get publicity (Jay Ward Productions did the same thing around this time). We’ve transcribed a few of them before. Here’s one picked up by The Atlanta Journal on January 30, 1960. It looks like the two were anticipating the 1-900 phone numbers of the ‘90s.

Bob, Ray Plan Thought of the Month Club
Bob and Ray will shortly establish the Bob and Ray Thought of the Month Club (BARTOTMC).
This new service of the Bob and Ray Enterprises Co., Inc., will supply thoughts for all occasions on a subscription basis to people whose busy schedules prevent them from cerebral exercising.
Under the slogan, "Leave the Thinking to Us," BARTOTMC will ship five thoughts a month, plus a free bonus thought every three months, to its subscribers with the guarantee that unused thoughts may be returned after 10 days.
TWO GROUPS of thoughts, couched in attractive language and produced by a trained staff, will be available.
One, in a lower price range, will consist of easy-going conversational-type thoughts (Group A Plan); the other, at a slightly higher fee, will comprise high-level, provocative thoughts (Group B).
If desired, the two plans may be intermixed.
Following are some thoughts which will become available beginning next February:
Group A:
"I think it’s not the heat, but the humidity.”
“I think it’s impossible."
“I think I need a haircut.”
“I think it’s a shame.”
“I think I go home.”
GROUP B:
“I think that true reality, expressing itself through all things, is a blind impelling force which manifests itself in individuals as a will to live.”
“I think that instrumentalism holds that various modes and forms of human endeavor are instruments developed by man to solve his problems.”
“I think that objective reality is known only insofar as it conforms to the essential structure of the human mind.”
“I think that, in the mechanics of relativity, the mass of a particle is determined by assuming that the actions of a system of particles do not change the total momentum with respect to a given system.”
SUBSCRIBERS to the Combined Group A and B Plans have a choice of either any three (3) of Group A and any two (2) of Group B; or any four (4) of Group A and any one (1) of Group B, plus an extra bonus thought every two (2) months.
Members of the Group A plan have the privilege of purchasing individual Group B thoughts at nominal fees.
Eventually, Bob and Ray plan to establish the Bob and Ray Thought of the Month Club Emergency Telephone Service (BARTOTMCETS) which will supply instantaneous, personalized thoughts at all hours.

1960 became 1961, and Bob and Ray carried on, though not on CBS. They continued to make appearances on Monitor on NBC radio, and hosted a Thanksgiving TV special on ABC. And one station continued to repeat Bob and Ray routines twice every weekday—CJBC, the CBC station in Toronto.

A Ton of Bricks

The challenge facing Tex Avery and his MGM writers, Rich Hogan or Heck Allen—find as many gags to fit within the storyline of their cartoon. They managed to do it time after time. And in Avery’s best cartoons there’s something unexpected at the end which makes the cartoon even more satisfying.

A great example is Bad Luck Blackie, officially released by MGM on Jan. 22, 1949.

The gags work around two premises—a black cat crossing your path means bad luck, and if someone needs help, all they need to do it blow a whistle. About two-thirds of the way though the cartoon, the sadistic snickering bulldog (played by Tex himself), grabs the whistle and uses it to entice the black cat to show up and thereby exact some revenge.

It doesn’t work. One gag features the two of them at a construction site. The cat continues to cross his path and stuff continues to fall from the sky on the dog.

A model sheet for the cartoon is dated Dec. 30, 1946. Two trade publications revealed on July 19, 1947 the cartoon was intended to be released in the 1947-48 season (that is, before Sept. 1948). The cartoon was re-released twice, once on Nov. 9, 1956 and again in the 1966-67 theatrical season.

Don't Try to Understand This

Mike Maltese wrote a weird situation in Stage Door Cartoon, a 1944 cartoon by the Friz Freleng unit at Warner Bros.

Bugs Bunny spends most of the cartoon harassing Elmer Fudd in a vaudeville/movie theatre, including pretending to be Elmer’s arms as he removes the hunter’s “cwothes” in a strip act on stage.

The next sequence has Bugs backstage dressing up as a southern-type sheriff.



Cut to Elmer on stage, curtain down. The “sheriff” approaches Fudd. “You’re under arrest for indecent southern exposure,” says the Yosemite Sam-like lawman. Cut to the “sheriff” with his rifle pointed at Fudd, taking him down the theatre aisle to “the hoosegow.”



Suddenly, we hear the Merrie Melodies theme. The “sheriff” turns around and the camera pans to a Bugs Bunny cartoon.



Excitedly, he says to Fudd “I just dotes on that critter’s doin’s. Sit, son. I ain’t a-goin’ ta miss this’un!”

There’s a cut to Bugs on the screen, and then back to the lawman, jabbing Fudd with his elbow and slapping him, laughing “What a scalawag!”



Maltese’s plot takes a quick turn. Freleng cuts back to the screen that shows Bugs dressing up as the sheriff (in slightly different animation than before).



Fudd gets wise. “You’re the wabbit in disguise!” he declares and grabs the sheriff’s clothes. “Off with it, you twickster!”



But it really IS the sheriff. Anticipation and extreme below as Elmer grasps the situation.



“You’ll swing for this, suhr!” proclaims the sheriff as he and his gun follow Fudd out of the theatre.



“Hey, where did the sheriff come from? How come he’s there all of a sudden? What about Bugs?” I pondered as a young cartoon fan watching this in the 1960s. Then I decided, as Tex Avery once said, “anything can happen in one of these here cartoony pictures.”

It turns out Bugs is in a Leopold Stokowsky wig, conducting the pit orchestra. The cartoon ends with another radio reference as Bugs, emulating Jimmy Durante, tells us “Ah-ha-ha-ha! I gotta million of ‘em!”



Jack Bradbury is given the rotating animation screen credit.

On the Road With Benny

He advertised himself (as a joke) as “star of stage, screen and radio,” but Jack Benny was only one of those 100 years ago. He didn’t get into the movies until they started talking and didn’t get into radio until the networks were established and began beefing up night-time programming by inducing top comedians to go on the air.

What was Jack doing 100 years ago this month? Resting overseas, it appears. He boarded the Berengaria for London on July 17th (I can’t find that he performed while in England). It wasn’t until September 1923 that he resumed his vaudeville act in the U.S.

On Sept. 10, 11 and 12, he appeared at Proctor’s Fifth Avenue, and moved to Proctor’s Mount Vernon for the bill of Sept. 13, 14 and 15.

Jack always received decent to rave reviews, it seems. How did he do this time? Here’s what Variety of Sept. 13 had to say. I must admit I’m not up on my show lingo of the ‘20s and really have no idea what the first sentence says. Nor am I knowledgeable enough on the intricacies of a vaudeville line-up to know the significance of the second and fourth spots on a seven-act bill.

5TH AVE.
A seven-act bill that started out to be a whirlwind slowed down and then cantered in under wraps about totals the first half effect around lower Broadway. The show picked up momentum as it ran until the "World of Make Believe" entranced, followed by Frank and Teddy Sabini, who ruined 'em with hoke, but nevertheless lingered too long. At that, Alice Morley, deucing it, and Jack Benny, No. 4, could easily have changed places. The Five Remos (New Acts) in the closing spot gained continuous applause and finished with an amount to spare to result in an act that is a "pipe" closer for any small time house and can also fill the bill where the patrons are more exacting. [They were a 12-minute acrobatic act].
Alice Morley threw out the first stop sign with her high yella make-up and rag singing. An aggressive girl who steps right out and makes 'em like it. Adhering closely to her former routine, when working with the sister, the material remains refreshing enough to gain laughs and suffices for the purpose. According to the applause outburst at the finale, there is no telling where this feminine single will climb should she start out to gather new material. Certainly the ability seems to be there.
Boudini and Bernard playing accordions led off and were in no little way responsible for the amiable frame of mind the house was in for the succeeding turns. A nicely mapped out schedule of selections based upon a neat manner of rendering same and a nice appearance shapes this mixed duo as able to step into their assignment without a qualm or a fear.
Robert Emmett Keane and Claire Whitney [Mrs. Keane] secured more than the usual allotment of attention this house devotes to a sketch, and profited thereby. The story caught on immediately, and with Keane's presentation of the theme the act was "in" long before the curtain. Jack Benny succeeded, doing well enough by means of his monolog, having an assisting violin. Some of the gags connected, some didn't, but on a whole Benny entertained without overdoing.
The flash act, "World of Make Believe," brought laughter in one or two spots where same might have been deemed unnecessary, but the action was fast enough to overcome what tittering was manifested. Those present were particularly partial to the dancers, and there was a very meagre amount of stepping on the bill, so that the finale was normal, although somewhat of a let-down after what had preceded. Frank and Teddy Sabini were gravy in the next to closing position and would have been more so were they to have eliminated at least five minutes. If Teddy were to tone down it would help, too, and 26 minutes is a long time in any theatre. The Remos closed. Skig.

As a side-note, Robert Emmett Keane and Jack worked together some years later. He played director Raoul Walsh on the June 20, 1937 broadcast of the Benny radio show (Jack gave him credit at the end), then appeared with Benny on screen in The Meanest Man in the World (1943).

What about the second half of the week in Mount Vernon? The Daily Argus reviewed the show in its issue of Sept. 14. You will notice not all the acts from the Fifth Avenue were part of the bill.

MUSICAL ACT HEADS PROCTOR’S NEW PROGRAM
One of the most entertaining musical acts that has been seen at Proctor's in many months was presented there yesterday as a headline feature in the new bill tor the last half of the week. This is a melange of about every art known in Thespia and is entitled “The World of Make Believe.” It is staged with a smoothness that was refreshing and with a wealth of detail, and likewise splendor in scenic investiture and costuming that proved really impressive—distinctions that few vaudeville acts attain. It really is an act far above the ordinary and is so recognised in vaudeville, and it was announced at the local theatre yesterday that the attraction is booked for a trip across the country, and is already in big demand. A big company, headed by the talented and spirited Nola St. Claire, presents this fine act.
The bill for the last half of the week is varied and entertaining in almost every respect. Jack Benny, droll in speech and mannerims [sic], told jokes that kept the audience laughing constantly and also played several violin solos in a humorous manner. There was also a pleasing dance act by Kelly and Birmingham, some unusual acrobatic stunts by Strobel and Mertens (another European novelty), and singing and comedy by Jean Granese nnd company. "Modern Matrimony” is the name of the feature picture, a big production, with Owen Moore as one of the stars, which means some comedy of a popular order.

It would appear Jack’s next stop was Keith’s Jefferson in New York at 214 East 14th Street. He’s not in the “Bills Next Week” section of Variety, but his appearance is reviewed in the Thursday, Sept. 20 edition. There were eight acts on the bill, beginning with the Phondell Four, two men and a woman who juggled and swung clubs. Next were Ulis and Lee, a two-man musical act, followed by Dave Harris’ music act (assisted by a man and a woman). The paper didn’t have anything good to say about his Jolson impersonation. The Variety Pioneers followed with their five-person old-timers revue, and then, the paper reported:

Following them was Jack Benny, the conversing violinist, with conversation patterned along the lines formerly done by Ben Bernie. Benny has an effervescing personality and a faculty of getting over his points with a finesse that is commendable. At the start the going was a little hard for Benny, but he felt his customers out and soon had them within his grasp to do as he willed.

Jack spent Sept. 24th to 26 at Keith’s Fordham, then the rest of the week at Moss’ Coliseum on Broadway between 181st and 182nd Streets in Washington Heights before starting October at Moss’ Flatbush on the bill with the Aunt Jemima Band.

By the way, if you were wondering about Fred Allen, he was on the Shubert circuit at the time in “The Passing Show of 1922” with the Howard brothers (held over in Detroit), and writing his “A Small Timer’s Diary” humour column for Variety. The two of them tussling on radio was some years away.

Rudy Zingler

Many, many people who worked on Warner Bros. cartoons never got credit on the screen in the 1930s—even animators.

Painter Martha Sigall wrote a wonderful autobiography with her memories working for Leon Schlesinger and mentions names of artists who were unknowns to the public. They include Harold Soldinger, Murray Hudson (who had worked at Iwerks), Lewis Cavett (who we profiled in this post) and Rudy Zingler, who you see on the right in a photo from Martha’s book.

Let’s hear from Zingler.

The Olympian of Olympia, Washington interviewed him about his animation career in a feature story published November 27, 1983.

Rudolf Alfred Zingler returned to the Pacific Northwest after getting out of the cartoon business. He was born in Germany in 1905, grew up near Kendall, Washington and graduated with brother Hans from Columbia Valley Elementary in 1922. The two attended Whatcom High in Bellingham and received diplomas in January 1926. During his time at high school, his car bashed into another one carrying students and he ended up paying $25 bail when police discovered he didn’t have a license. His car ran over him on a farm somewhere east of Ferndale in 1930 (whether it was the same car is unknown). He got married in Everett in August 1927. In August 1928, he filed for divorce, claiming his wife was addicted to alcohol and cigarettes and had deserted him. She counter-sued. (He won his case).

When Zingler arrived in Los Angeles isn’t quite clear. The Everett Directory for 1926-27 shows he was working in the Great Northern Railway shops; his father had a sewing machine business there. In 1928, the store moved to Bellingham as Rudy was assistant manager of it. In 1930, he was crossing the border into Vancouver and listed as his employer “F. Miller.” Zingler was a bellhop in the 1933 San Francisco Directory. He was living in San Francisco when he re-married in May 1936, and apparently graduated from art school that year. An interview in the Tacoma News Tribune in 1983 said he was hired by Disney in 1937 for $14 a week. He was gone from California by 1948, as he appears in the Directory for Kelso, Washington that year.

Zingler has misremembered a few dates. The Disney strike was not in 1939, and Hollywood Steps Out was released in 1941, not 1947. He takes credit for the caricatures in that cartoon which I always thought were created by Ben Shenkman. How he met Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera at either Warners or Disney is a mystery. The first Roadrunner-Coyote cartoon was released in Sept. 1949 and though Zingler was back in Washington State a year before then, it could take two years for a Chuck Jones-unit cartoon to go from a story session to a theatrical release. And while Zingler says he “drew” characters in Snow White, it doesn’t say whether he was animating, assistant animating or in-betweening. However, it’s an interesting, first-hand perspective of that period of animation.

He drew our favorite cartoon characters
But life in Hollywood was not a pretty picture to Rudy Zingler
Story by Glenda Helbert
Photos by Brian Saunders
Bugs Bunny and Snow White. Porky Pig and the Roadrunner.
Rudy Zingler helped build our favorite childhood cartoon memories.
As an animator for Walt Disney Studios and later for Warner Brothers, he worked during the golden age of animation in the 1930s and 40s, when every move was captured with painstaking detail, and cartoon characters swaggered and breathed and glided across the film like living creatures.
But that was years ago. Rudy Zingler moved from the smog of Los Angeles to the green grass of his home state. He's retired now, and spends his days doing odd job construction work for friends and trying his hand at sculpture, an art form beloved by him, but one for which he has not had time since he was a young art student.
It’s a life that’s worlds away from the life he led as an animator, who knew and worked with Walt Disney and many other best and bright talents that ventured to California to get into glittery movie business.
The first step on Rudy's road to Hollywood began with horses, wild horses that once galloped free on the deserts of Eastern Washington.
“I was born with a pencil in my hand,” Rudy said, but it was those horses that roamed near Soap Lake where his family settled in 1914 that inspired his pencil to draw with furious intensity, capturing every beautiful move.
“We children loved it, but Dad hated it,” he said of the place they lived where there were not only wild horses to draw, but Indians too, and coyotes and wide open spaces in which to play, roam and dream.
It’s not suprising [sic] that his father, Alfons Zingler, hated the life. Rudy was born in Breslau, Germany, in 1905, and the Zinglers came to America in 1913 so his father, an agricultural professor, could study irrigation systems in Eastern Washington for a year and then return to prepare a paper on his findings.
But World War I broke out, the Zinglers could not return hom, and they found themselves stranded in a peach orchard near Soap Lake. His father was reduced to manual labor, a man who was a well-to-do member of the respected professional class in German society, who spoke seven languages and was used to being waited on by a house full of servants. That however did not stop him from doing what needed to be done. He put in a grim year working in the peach orchard. When work grew hard to find he built a covered wagon and in the winter of 1915 moved the family to Deming, Wash. lt was a 350-mile trip that required a trek over Snoqualmie Pass, on road then little more than a cow trail.
Rudy still has a drawing he sketched at age 10 of that trip, the family huddled together on the wagon buckboard, his father’s hands steadying the reins. They arrived at their destination in a snowstorm.

There Alfons Zingler found a job building railroad beds, and after a few years he moved the family to a farm near Sumas, and in 1921 to Bellingham so that the children could attend high school [photo to left]. When Rudy graduated, his parents, who were delighted with his drawing talent, encouraged him to attend art school.
Rudy moved to San Francisco, where he studied fine art and sculpture at the California School of Fine Arts. He also picked up a teaching certificate at the University of California, in case he couldn’t find a job in the field of his choice.
But even in those Depression times, Rudy found California truly to be his land of opportunity. His first wife Frances, who he met and married there, had a brother who invited him to join the staff of Foster-Kleiser Ad Agency, one of the most prestigious ad agencies in the country at that time.
But Rudy had other ideas. He had heard that the Disney Studios in Hollywood were growing like fury. Disney was in the midst of producing a feature-length animated film “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” and he was advertising for animators.
Rudy had one thing going for him to get that job. He had an art degree, and Disney required his animators to have art degrees. But it was one thing to be an fine artist and quite another to be an animator.
“You’ve got to be an actor yourself,” Rudy said. “You can jump a rabbit over a fence many ways.” You had to feel the moves before you could draw the moves.
“A lot of people told me I’d never make it as an animator,” Rudy said, and a lot of artists tried and failed during a grueling three-week trial period that Disney animators went through to prove their stuff. Rudy didn’t know the first thing about animating, but in those three weeks he watched and listened and learned enough to land the job.
He started out doing backgrounds for Mickey Mouse film shorts, but was soon was drawing the characters who bounced through those backgrounds.
“I had to. Disney was so far behind on the Snow White project, that if you couldn’t produce, you were out,” Rudy said.
Rudy drew the prince, Dopey the dwarf and some of Snow White's scenes for the film which went on to become an international success. It represented one of the biggest gambles in the career of Walt Disney, an artist with some ad agency experience who had gone bankrupt trying to start his own film ad company in Kansas City. Disney began his cartoon-making career by moving to Hollywood in 1923 and going into partnership with his brother Roy.
Before the project was finished Disney, was heavily in debt, the film which was to have taken two years to complete took four because of Disney’s mania for perfection. Not such a good artist himself (the primitive, early Mickey Mouse cartoons are from Disney's own hand), he hired top flight animators to put his ideas into motion, and he wanted them done exactly as he envisioned them, Rudy said.
Many a drawing was rejected before it suited Disney’s tastes, and for the animators that often meant working day and night to keep up. To make a cartoon character move effortlessly on the screen requires thousands of drawings depicting every subtlety of those walking movements.
Put together and run at high speed on film they produce the walking motion. It took 16 drawings to make Mickey Mouse take one simple step, 24 drawings for each second of a cartoon character’s movement.
Animators were expected to draw 25 feet of drawings a week, Rudy said. One second, or 24 drawings, represents a foot.
To meet standards meant doing many more drawings to animate a character. For example, when a character took a step, not only his feet moved, but the body moved up and down, the coat flapped in the breeze, arms moved, facial expressions fluctuated and the grass the character was walking through waved around him.
It was a far cry from today’s cartoons in which the only part of the character’s body that is moving is his feet.
Rising costs forced the frozen images of cartoons, Rudy said. It became too expensive to pay for the thousands of extra drawings and hours of work needed to add all the extra movements that resulted in a better quality cartoon. If an work was rejected at Disney’s studio he was expected to redo it plus keep up with the regular workload demand. Sometimes those rejections came not because the work wasn’t first rate, but because Walt Disney was having a bad day.
“He was not consistent with his criticism,” Rudy said.
He recalls the struggle of his friend Paul Smith, one of most talented animators, to get the dancing Hippo in the cartoon film “Fantasia” to move to Disney’s requirements.
Smith created the hippo over and over again, her ballet-shoed hooves moving to the strains of classical music. He worked on the hippo for a year, his work rejected over and over by Disney.
Smith was sick of the whole project, and after a final rejection decided to submit the very first drawings that he had made of the hippo for approval. They were accepted, and he was asked why he didn’t do this quality of work in the first place.
“I did,” Smith said.
There were lots of red faces in the studio that day, Rudy recalled.
Working with talented people like Smith made the frenetic work bearable.
At Disney and later at Warner Brothers studios he rubbed elbows with the likes of Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and Daffy Duck; with Bugs Hardaway, the originator of the Bugs Bunny character; Mike Maltese, creator of cartoon character Pepe le Pew; and William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, animators who later founded their own successful cartoon production company.
His move to Warners in 1939 was prompted by a strike of Disney Studio workers. Everyone walked out, the studio closed down for three months, and some of the reasons were Disney’s harsh ways of handling employees.
Those were the days of the yellow dog contracts, Rudy said, a worker hired for six months, working till his pay scale reached a certain level, then his contract was torn up and he was fired.
Zingler was incensed enough seeing this sort of treatment take place to become one of the founders of the Screen Cartoon Guild.
At Warners Zingler went on to create some of his most memorable cartoon characters.
He helped originate the Roadrunner, that speedy cartoon character who was always leaving Wiley Coyote in the dust.
“I laughed myself sick doing it," he said. The writers in the gag department, whose job it was to think up the funny lines of the characters, kept the place in stitches. They would climb on chairs and fake an eagle swoop, or trip a tumbling fall, spitting out the lines and honing them to match the movements of the characters.
Rudy also drew caricatures of famous movie stars for the Warners animated film “Hollywood Steps Out,” released in 1947. The exaggerated likes of stars such as Cary Grant, Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, and Joe Brown flowed from his pen, and for each one he had to obtain an approval from the star before it could be used. Most liked what they saw, even though sane of the drawings harshly exaggerated the stars most prominent facial features.
Bing Crosby was the only one who didn’t take to Rudy’s caricatures. “I practically had to do a portait [sic] of him to get his approval,” Rudy said.
The death of his father prompted Rudy to give up the life of a Hollywood animator. Alfons Zingler had established a sewing machine retail store in Longview, and mother Eleanor wanted him to take over the business.
It was the opportunity he needed to follow through on his plan forming in his mind for some time. The plan was to move home.
“I hated Los Angeles with a passion,” he said.
The smog and the crowds and the stressful fast pace of life were becoming too much for him. Divorced now and ready for a change, he took his mother’s offer.
It didn’t work out though. After a year of running the business he found he was no good at selling sewing machines, and so he sold the store and went to work for his brother who ran an appliance business in Tacoma. But Rudy still was where he wanted to be, back in Washington, and there was an added bonus. While running the sewing machine store, he met his present wife Delores, who ran a barbershop next door. [They married in 1951].
When Rudy retired they built a home on Mason Lake, and lived there for 14 years, and started a home security patrol business. They moved to Olympia two years ago when they decided the property tax on their lakefront property was too high.

Rudy said he doesn’t miss his Hollywood life one bit. It was nice to be associated with such talented people, but the fast-moving life that went with it wasn’t worth it.
He’s always enjoyed the outdoors and now he spend[s] as much time working and playing out in the fresh air as his heart desires.
He stays in touch with his old animator buddies in California, although there aren’t many still alive. The ones that are alive wear thick glasses, the result of eye damage caused by years of staring into bright light tables as they drew cartoons on transparent sheets of celluloid.
“I got out just in time,” Rudy said, his unlensed clear gray eyes crinkling around the edges with a smile.
(Glenda Helbert is a staff writer for The Olympian)

The biography skips the fact that after he and Dolores were married in Washington State, they moved back to California for a few years where he taught art at the Folsom Prison. It also missed out on his UFO sighting, reported to the News Tribune in September 1950. He also drove a school bus and piloted the Mason Lake fireboat.

Zingler was in a nursing home in Olympia when he died of heart problems on January 10, 1985 at age 79.

Coming To Bat...

Baseball being America’s Pastime, it’s a subject ripe for spoofing in animated cartoons. No doubt you’ve seen Baseball Bugs, Porky’s Baseball Broadcast, Tex Avery’s Batty Baseball and others.

The earliest one may be The Ball Game a 1932 Aesop’s Fable from the Van Beuren studio. It stars insects. Here’s one coming to the plate.



The fly lifts its head. Why it’s none other than (as of 1932) the greatest ball player of them all, Babe Ruth. You can tell by the pig nose. The Bambino was unflatteringly drawn with a pig face in Ub Iwerks’ Play Ball (1933).



Being an insect, he has a bat for each pair of “arms.”



Now it’s time for some Van Beuren strangeness. Because Babe has more than one bat, the pitcher calls in his infielders and outfielders and they all have balls to throw at home plate. Some are regulation white. Others are grey. The Sultan takes his swats.



Babe goes into his home-run trot, tipping his cap to the fans. Suddenly, he is pelted with baseballs.



The Van Beuren staff decides to end the cartoon with one of their chaos scenes. Hundreds upon hundreds of balls are thrown in cycle animation at stick-figure fans, who run from the stadium.



What’s the score? We never know. There’s no attempt at a story in this cartoon, let alone building to a game-winning climax. It simply boils down to this: “Let’s do a baseball cartoon with bugs. Who’s got some gags?”

John Foster and George Rufle are in the credits. Gene Rodemich has a good helping of Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler’s “I Love a Parade” (from the 1931 Cotton Club show “Rhythmania”) and “In a Shanty in Old Shanty Town” by Ira Schuster, Jack Little and Joe Young. I’d love to know the melody Rodemich uses when the first bug is up to bat and is stung by the mosquito with the ball. As you likely know, Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising used “I Love a Parade” as the basis for a 1932 Merrie Melodies cartoon. You can hear the song below.

The Elf Nailed It

The Peachy Cobbler (released in 1950) is set up the way Tex Avery seemed to like to do cartoons. There’s the bare framework of a story crammed with a lot of quick gags, in this case without any real dialogue. He and writer Rich Hogan throw in a running gag as well.

It’s their take on The Shoemaker the Elves tale. (Friz Freleng did the same thing with Holiday For Shoestrings in 1946, though that cartoon had classical music to tie it together).

One gag involves an elf hammering nails in the bottom of a shoe, with an assistant handing him the nails. Then they run out. The extremes below speak for themselves.



Avery and Hogan go back to an old favourite to end the short—a catchphrase from the Kitzel character ten years earlier from the Al Pearce radio show where the bird/elves shrug and say “Mmmm...could be!” (At the time this cartoon was made, Mr. Kitzel had been on the Jack Benny show for about four years and the catchphrase had been abandoned).

Walt Clinton, Mike Lah and Grant Simmons are the animators.

How A Snooty Rich Woman Helped Sara Berner

Radio actors in the Golden Age had to be versatile. That was one way to get steady employment. When you could only hear them and not see them, performers didn’t get typecast. Frank Nelson, Joe Kearns and Elliott Lewis were equally at home on comedy and dramatic programmes.

There were specialists, too, who could spout in different dialects, celebrity impersonators, animal noises or vocal effects.

Sara Berner mastered various accents and celebrities. It helped her land work on radio and in animated cartoons. Director Bob Clampett called Berner “an important voice artist at Warners” and “our female Mel Blanc.” Tex Avery’s recollection was Berner and other actors got $75 a session, with an extra $5 if they did more than one character.

Besides this, there were novelty records, too. Berner managed to attract enough attention that she was given a starring role on her own radio show in 1950-51, though it quickly fizzled. She also had personal and health problems in the ‘50s after marrying her ex-manager.

We’ve reprinted articles on her career before, but let’s give you a few more. This piece is from the Oregon Statesman of Feb. 26, 1937. Major Bowes had a radio amateur hour (later taken to television by his protégé, Ted Mack) which netted him a small mint. He hired his best contestants and put them in little troupes that travelled all over the U.S. to perform in theatres.

Bowes Unit Will Come Next Week
Sara Berner, Who Failed as Salesgirl, One of Stars in Troupe
She mimicked the customers in a department store. So the manager fired her.
But today Sara Berner, young brown-eyed, good-looking brunette, appears before thousands of persons, travels throughout America and makes more than five times the weekly salary she earned as a saleslady—by mimicking.
She entertains Salem theatre fans with Major Bowes all-girl unit which comes to the Capitol theatre for one day only on Friday, March 5.
Miss Berner studied drama two years at Tulsa University in Oklahoma, but family reverses forced her to quit college. Department store salesgirl . . . fired for mimicking . . . New York . . . Job in department store . . . stage frightened amateur broadcasting to millions of listeners . . . a nod from Major Bowes . . . show-girl . . . that's the Horatio Alger story of Sara Berner to date.
With 15 other clever talented young women on the same bill, the Bowes all-girl unit promises to be outstanding among stage presentations.

Keith Scott’s Volume 2 on cartoon voice actors points out Berner’s first role at Warner Bros. was in Daffy Duck in Hollywood (1938) as the hen with the Katherine Hepburn voice. You can hear her at MGM, Columbia and elsewhere. More on that from this feature story published May 1, 1946.

Sara Berner Known As The Voice in Behind Scenes Of Movies
By HAROLD E. SWISHER
Motion Picture Editor of United Press Radio
If Sara Berner had paid any attention to the adage about good little girls should be seen and not heard, she might have got an “A” in deportment, but she would have missed out on a career.
As things have turned out Sara is always heard, but never seen. Which is a pity, because she's a pert and petite redhead, with shining brown eyes.

Long before anybody thought of giving Frank Sinatra the title, Sara Berner was known around Hollywood as the voice. That's because she has been the voice for everything from little Jasper in George Pal’s Paramount Puppetoons, to the tauntingly vocal fish in The Road To Utopia.”
Miss Berner became a career girl by what seemed at the time an unhappy accident. It was 10 years ago and she was a youngster working as a salesgirl at the stocking counter of a Philadelphia department store.
One day a pompus dowager came in, showering snooty syllables all over the place. Sara couldn't resist doing a satirical take off right on the spot. The lady overheard, and the little clerk made a quick sprint to her boss, quitting a split-second before she could be fired.
Next day she went into radio, working 12 hours a day at station WCAU.
Today Miss Berner makes 300 dollars for a one-minute appearance weekly on a top comedy program (the Jack Benny show) where she does a stint as Mabel Clapsaddle, a gum-snapping switchboard operator from Brooklyn. Her chores as Jasper’s voice in “Jasper in the Jam,” and other puppet features, net her a comparably pleasant and rewarding sum.
Of course she hasn’t a thing in the world to cry about, but Sara bawls like baby for a series of radio transcriptions advertising a diaper service.
Among other things, this versatile mimic has been the voice of Universal's Andy Panda, and of Daisy Mae and Pansy Yokum in the “Li’l Abner” series of Columbia cartoons. She has provided voices for dogs and cats, cows and chickens, skunks and foxes, snakes and pigs.
Many’s the fan who delighted in telling about the camel in “The Road To Morocco” who turned to the audience and said: “this is the screwiest picture I’ve ever been in!” That was Sara.
With her talented vocal chords, and somebody else’s art work, she danced with Gene Kelly in “Anchors Aweigh.” She was the mouse, of course. She’s Jerry in the Tom and Jerry shorts, too.
But Jasper is Miss Berner’s favorite assignment. Originally Jasper’s voice was recorded by a little negro boy. But time passed and one day his voice cracked and changed midway through a Jasper film. Then Sara took over.
Only once since the Philadelphia accident has Sara been perturbed -by one of her vocal creations. That was when she did the speaking chores for a vulture. To her horror and consternation, when the vulture spoke from the screen, the voice that emerged was an all too-perfect mimicry of her hardboiled landlady of that time. It’s hardly necessary to add that she has since moved.
And her most valued treasure is a cigaret lighter presented personally by Canadian Prime Minister MacKenzie King as a token of Canadas gratitude for a series of victory loan shows she did in the dominion.
To the rest of us her top treasure appears to be those versatile vocal chords.

Berner revealed to a Los Angeles Daily News columnist that at WCAU, she was given a 15-minute show that was written by Arthur Q. Bryan, who you know as the eventual voice of Elmer Fudd.

Unfortunately, Berner ran afoul of someone who was normally very dedicated to his cast—Jack Benny. I read a short blurb about it once, but found the specifics in Paul Price’s column in the Daily News of Jan. 18, 1954. Jack was generally dedicated to his cast but would stop calling in someone if they annoyed him. Berner played one of the telephone operators for the final time on radio on Dec. 27, 1953. She was replaced, first on Benny’s TV show.

Benny’s vault doors close on Sara Berner
Those massive doors on Jack Benny's famous vault were creaking so slowly yesterday that they prevented Sara Berner, the original "Mabel Flapsaddle,” from appearing on Jack's TV show.
You might say she was shut out at the safe.

Sara, who originated the character of the gabby telephone operator on Benny’s show some 12 years ago and so far as I know has played Mabel ever since, was dropped from the cast at practically the last minute.
It must have been practically the last minute because Sara’s appearance was widely publicized by the CBS press department until late Friday afternoon. Then there was a sudden switch in plans and the CBS press corps got on the telephone to say that Shirley Mitchell had been substituted.
So. if you missed a familiar face yesterday and thought “Mabel Flapsaddle” looked a little different, here’s the inside story.
SARA NOW, she’s the real flip, talky one and Bee Benadaret [sic] plays the other operator—was called several days ago to do the Benny show. Unfortunately, nobody talked money and Sara assumed she was to get her regular salary for a guest spot.
Somebody on the Benny show, however, assumed otherwise and Sara was offered approximately $250 below her asking price. "That is fine, but not for me,” was Sara’s attitude and who can blame her? After all, in a sense, she represents "Mabel Flapsaddle,” and besides how much difference can $250 make to a major production such as the Benny show?
It was a deadlock, and on Friday Producer Ralph Levy made the switch to Shirley Mitchell. Well, it’s all in a day’s work, but some persons might think that 12 years’ service and identification with a character is worth an extra $250 on an occasional TV show.
Especially when you figure that the budget on the program, excluding air time, must go to $30,000.
Sara took it all in stride, however. She said:
"Well, it’s only money.”
See Jack? Or should it be, see Ralph Levy?

Actually, it should be “See Jack?” There’s no way a casting change like that would be made without Benny’s approval.

Mitchell was Mabel when the character appeared on radio again on Feb. 14, 1954 and until the series ended. Berner was hired only once more for Benny’s radio show, and that was to play the nasal singer in a 1955 episode.

Work dried up. She was in fair condition in hospital in early September 1969 and died just before Christmas, without any notice from Variety or The Hollywood Reporter. Nor any wire service, as best as I can tell. Berner was a fine comic actress and impressionist. She deserved better. At least over the last number of years, as people become interested in the people on radio and in cartoons who made us laugh, Sara Berner is getting some belated recognition.