The Show For People Slightly Weak in the Head

Critics hated Gilligan’s Island.

Don’t take my word for it. Read just about any newspaper column in 1965 about the show. They all pointed out critics hated the show.

I’ve tried to find even one columnist who didn’t. I have kind of succeeded. Donald Freeman of the Copley News Service admitted he watched the show, even though he found little good in it.

He wrote two columns about Gilligan in 1965, plus one after interviewing with Natalie Schaffer. We’ll bring you the first two.

This one appeared in papers around March 21, 1965.

Ridiculous, But Nevertheless Still Tops
By DONALD FREEMAN
Copley News Service
ACCORDING TO the latest Nielsen ratings, a CBS comedy show called "Gilligan's Island” now roosts in third position, tied with “The Fugitive,” giving it status therefore as one of the undeniable hits. How do you explain It? How do you explain hula hoops?
“Gilligan’s Island,” to put it another way, is this year's “Beverly Hillbillies," the comparison being apt all down the line.
Like its predecessor, this slice of nonsense fixes a group of ridiculous people in a ridiculous situation wherein they perform ridiculous antics. And next to “Gilligan’s Island," let me add that “Beverly Hillbillies” shapes up as advanced Noel Coward.
They share something else, these two epics—both “Hillbillies” and “Gilligan's Island” come on with a theme song that eloquently, step by step, states the premise of the series in its lyrics. They do this, you see, because our power of retention—yours and mine—is so severely limited. Or possibly—this is the more plausible theory—because the premise of “Gilligan’s Island” is so easily forgotten.
AS THE SONG explains, these weirdly assorted people set out on a cruise and a storm sets them instead on an uncharted island named for one Gilligan, the captain’s mate played with endearing idiocy by Bob Denver.
Playing Hardy to Denver’s Laurel is Alan Hale Jr. as the captain. Laurel and Hardy imitations are big this year, with Jim Nabors and Frank Sutton doing just that each week in “Gomer Pyle”—and that is meant as a compliment. In attempting to analyze “Gilligan’s Island,” I find myself wrestling first with my notes, which are largely incomprehensible—
“Count number of times Hale bumps into Denver is one message I seem to have jotted down here.
“Gilligan’s Island," clearly, is two-reeler silent comedy with dialogue as well as a kind of witless version of the Marx Brothers (never confuse mere motion with action, Hemingway once advised. This show has plenty of motion). THE NONSENSE that transpires on “Goilligan’s Island” may stir up some laughter If you are a child or unsober or slightly weak in the head.
Having thus caviled, I will now confess that I have occasionally laughed at “Gilligan’s Island” because I am slightly weak in the head—that is what television does.
Laughing at “Gilligan’s Island” is a secret, solitary, vaguely shameful vice on a level with handicapping the thoroughbreds behind a volume of Toynbee. If you were applying for a job, it is unlikely that under Hobbies you would list "secret laughing at ‘Gilligan’s Island’.”
Mostly I laugh at Jim Backus who wanders about the island as though it were his digs on Long Island Sound, doing a reprise of his old radio character, Hubert Updyke, the richest man in the world.

One person who strikes me as a man who never met an interviewer he didn’t like was the mastermind behind Gilligan’s Island, Sherwood Schwartz. He was 94 when he died in 2011, and always praised his creation. This story appeared in papers around July 24, 1965.

Sherwood Schwartz: Man Behind A Successful Myth
By DONALD FREEMAN
Copley News Service
SOMEONE suggested recently that the real star of “Gilligan’s Island,” that crazy mixed-up comedy, was one of the tallest leprechauns who ever punched a typewriter. a producer-writer with the liltingly mellifluous name of Sherwood Schwartz.
But Mr. Schwartz, a man of startling plasticity whose expression can change in a twinkling from that of a genial professor to a disbarred lawyer, sidesteps the compliment.
"No, it's the idea that’s the star of our show,” said Mr. Schwartz the other day, sitting in shirt-sleeved splendor in the cubicle that serves as his office at CBS Studio Center. "The idea, the concept—a deserted island suddenly inhabited by seven diverse types. That’s the star.”
Mr. Schwartz goes back 25 years in the comedy business, having started out as a writer on the Bob Hope Show in radio. Most recently he was on Red Skelton's staff. He has, you would say, a general idea of what makes people laugh. A touch of truth helps, he points out.
"All right, take the first show of the coming season,” Mr. Schwartz said. "It's called ‘Smile, You're On Mars Camera.' Crazy Idea? Yes, but timely. The camera has a soft landing on Gilligan's Island—but the scientists believe it landed on Mars. Enter the sub plot—Gilligan is gathering feathers. Who knows why? But Gilligan is gathering feathers and soon everybody is wearing feathers, a sight the camera faithfully records.
"NOW THEN,” Mr. Schwartz continued, rubbing his hands with glee, "sitting in their labs the scientists see all these crazy people in feathers.
"Ah, they all say exultantly, so that's what life is like on Mars. Wild, yes?”
Wild, yes.
I mentioned the critics and the reactions to "Gilligan's Island" and Mr. Schwartz shrugged. "Well, the critics didn’t enjoy the show when we first came out," Schwartz noted. "But there's more public than there are critics. Next year the Intellectual critics will probably take another look at ‘Gilligan’s Island’ and then they'll write learned treatises on our 'social satire on many levels.'
"Maybe the professors will look for deeper satire. All I want is for everybody to have a little fun and not get gray-headed. The first time I explained my idea of the island and the people to a bunch of agency executives I happened—just happened, mind you—to use the word 'microcosm,' a world in miniature, which is what 'Gilligan's Island’ is.
"There was a hasty shuffling of seats and a tentative clearing of executive throats. A MICROCOSM? ‘Mmmmm,’ said one. ‘Isn’t that too lofty?’ To think that somebody once considered ‘Gilligan’s Island’ too ‘lofty!’” I asked Mr Schwartz if he had acquired his idea from "Robinson Crusoe.”
“Once the idea of the island occurred to me,” Schwartz said, "I recognized the universality of the concept. And then I did some research into ‘Robinson Crusoe.’ I learned it's been translated into 63 languages and that it’s the 16th top selling book of all time.
"EVERYBODY has said to themselves, ‘What would I do If I were left on a deserted island?’ I've said it myself. Not lately . . . but I have said it "Now the question arises, when someone like Wrong-Way Feldman lands on Gilligan's Island, why doesn't he return from civilization later with a rescue party? Good point, except that Wrong-Way Feldman, as you'll recall, is not internationally known for his sense of direction.”
What is the source, the wellspring of the popularity that “Gilligan’s Island" has enjoyed?
"We appeal to everyone,” said Mr Schwartz. “The kids love Bob Denver as Gilligan. Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer hit the sophisticates. Tina Louise and Dawn Wells are girls.
"A touch of reality, however, is very important. When the scientist on the island uses sea water, copper pennies, coconuts and bobby pins to recharge a battery, kids went to their science teachers. ‘Does that work?’ they asked. ‘Sure,’ the teachers said.
“Comedy,” said Mr. Schwartz, "fortified by truth.”

Gilligan’s Island was silly. Critics didn’t like silly. They wanted clever. But, sometimes, people want silly. And the characters were likable.

The internet tells me, right now, you can pay just under $3 to watch the Skipper hit Gilligan with his hat. Paying good money to watch something you may have seen for free 60 years ago? Sherwood Schwartz would be laughing at that.

Your Beatin' Heart

Tom’s captured Jerry in Kitty Foiled (1947). Let’s bring in the heart-pounding joke, says Joe Barbera.



Jerry tries to shove the heart back to where it should be.



Barbera uses the joke later in the cartoon with a bird helping Jerry. We get a butt version.



And speaking of butts, there's a butt walk by Tom.



Ken Muse, Ed Barge, Irv Spence and Irving Levine receive animation credits in this short.

A Goofy Golf Swing

I’m not a Disney fan. The endless product hype, studio superiority complex and self-love, including the deification of Walt Disney and “princesses,” has annoyed me for decades.

Other than some of the earliest Mickeys, about the only other Disney shorts I enjoy and will watch over and over star Goofy, all of them directed by Jack Kinney. Motor Mania is a great cartoon and will ring true to viewers so long as there are jerks on the road. And the “how-to” cartoons are good, too.

Tex Avery had some funny stick figures in Porky’s Preview (1941). Kinney employs some in the Goofy cartoon How To Play Golf (1944). A stick-figure version of Goofy appears to show him fix his really bad swing.



The stick-Goofy steps through the maze of stick-golf clubs to go over to provide some instruction.



Not only does the animator give us Goofy multiples and dry-brush, the blue background is treated like paper that the stick-Goody falls through, creating a hole.



This is sure better than some unintelligible duck who needs anger management squawking at some chipmunks.

At least Paul “Woolworth” Terry gave his directors a screen credit in 1944. Mr. Tiffany Disney didn't.

A Few Words About Phil Harris

Phil Harris started his career with Jack Benny as just another bandleader and ended it as a unique character that followed him the rest of his life.

Jack spent his early years at odds with the guys who led the orchestra on his show—in one, he and whiny-voiced Frank Black had a duel—and it was no different when Harris replaced Johnny Green. The studio audience in the early Harris shows seems awkward as Jack is petty and childish toward him; the laughter is very uncomfortable at times. But Benny and writers Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin were no dummies. They decided to expand on the lady-killer aspect they had given Harris’ character and turned him into a relaxed party hound, one who reveled in bad jokes, cheerfully self-congratulated himself and was oblivious to his inability to spell or read.

This was a new kind of character on radio. Benny and the writers had to be careful not to upset the network by glorifying drinking. Harris was never, ever drunk on the show. Effects of any imbibing were commented on some time after the fact, all of them ridiculous. How much of this reflected this real Harris has been debated; but he loved the easy lifestyle of hunting, fishing and golfing. And he was known to have a drink or two.

This improved Harris was loved by listeners. When he married Alice Faye, he still had his eye for the ladies, but more characteristics were piled on. Their young daughter was smarter than he was and commented on his preening and extreme self-confidence. He parlayed all that into a show of his own, first as a summer replacement for Kay Kyser, then as a permanent replacement for Cass Daley on The Fitch Bandwagon. Walt Disney picked up on the easy-going, carefree part of the Harris character about 20 years later and started casting him in feature cartoons.

Here are a couple of random Harris stories. The first one is part of a column in the Lincoln Sunday Journal and Star of November 27, 1949.

Radio In Review
BY REX L. GRIMMELL
PHIL HARRIS is a very busy man every Sunday evening. He not only appears on succeeding programs, but must dash from one studio to another to do it. He is featured on the Jack Benny show at 6:00 over CBS and then stars in his own NBC show at 6:30.
Since the two studios lie three-tenths of a mile apart on a crowded thoroughfare, this would seem to pose a problem. But, through the co-operation of Jack Benny, Harris appears during the first half of the former's show and is free to leave by 6:15.
It then takes him about four minutes—via the parking lots which separate the studios—to reach the rear door of the NBC building. Thus, by 6:20, he is on his own stage performing the all-important task of "warming up" his audience. Next year will be different. Because of the heavy competition of the CBS Sunday night lineup, NBC is planning to switch Harris to Tuesday nights. There, his audience will be all set up for him—he'll follow Bob Hope and Fibber McGee and Molly.

If you’re wondering about the distance from NBC to CBS, check out this map.



Harris seems to have settled down to a family life in Palm Spring with Alice and the kids (he forsook a television show) when he and Bing Crosby (or whomever) weren’t armed with reels after elusive trout or British Columbia salmon. There was a time before that he, like Benny until his death, took to the road to put on some shows. In August 1940, he and his band appeared in Fort Worth, Galveston and Amarillo. At the time, he was appearing in a half-hour late-evening music show on the Texas Quality Network/Mutual Broadcasting System. Philsie was front page news in these towns. The paper in Lubbock even announced the time of his brief stop at the local Santa Fe station. This story is from the Galveston Daily News from Aug. 12, 1940.

Phil Harris Delights 15,000 With Concert
BY BOB NESBITT.
Phil Harris, fugitive from Jack Benny's Jell-O program and the nation's No. 1 band leader in the eyes of many Galvestonians made yesterday afternoon memorable on Galveston beach with another of his swing concerts which delighted possibly 18,000 people who gathered at the beachfront center around the Buccaneer Hotel and Murdoch's pavilion.
The personable, smooth-talking orchestra maestro was neatly attired in a tan coat, gray trousers, sport shoes and red socks, but he soon got around to shedding his coat and loosening his tie.
It wasn’t too hot, though, for the crowd, fortunately shaded by the tall, majestic Buccaneer, was cool.
But Harris who apparently had more fun than anyone else more fun than anybody else, chooses to lead his easy-to-listen-to hand by the jump and jive method rather by the less strenuous process of wielding a baton. That he should shed his coat soon was inevitable.
Not only that, but he had many of his audience swinging to his rhythms — moderately, of course — shortly.
Though booked as a swing concert for the enjoyment of alt who could crowd within ear's range of the canopied bandstand on the upper deck of Murdoch's, the occasion was actually Harris’ home-coming from the minute Mayor Brantly Harris (no relation to Phil) introduced the leader and his band to the crowd as “a man who is as much a part of Galveston as the sea breeze, the beach and the one-piece bathing suit.”
After experiencing difficulty edging himself to the microphone through the rows of closely arranged chairs on the bandstand, Galveston’s genial, portly chief executive presented the famous bandsman with a special card as Galveston's ambassador of goodwill.
The mayor set a record for himself by saying not a word about Galveston's pleasure pier plans, but this may have been just an oversight on his part.
Responding, Harris, who is now nationally known as comedian Jack Benny's irrespressible and ungrammatical stooge over the nation's airwaves on winter Sunday nights, said that he owes a lot to Galveston because it was here he got his real start to success about nine years ago and that it was in Galveston too that Jack Benny first called upon him to appear on the Jell-O program.
Starting with a tricky arrangement of "The Wolverine Blues," the Harris aggregation made the hour between 4:30 and 5:30 appear very short indeed. Aided by Ruth Robin, girl singer, and Harry Stevens, banjoist-singer from Georgia, Harris put on a fast-moving show.
Although his orchestra was at its best, Phil was even better. A smooth artist before the microphone, he seemed to enjoy himself thoroughly yesterday afternoon and the audience ate it up.
Best of all was Harris' presentation of several of the songs for which he is best-liked here. These included "My Galveston Gal," a nationwide hit in 1933, "That's What I Like About the South," and "Nobody."

Less than five week later, actress Marcia Ralston was granted a divorce from Harris, claiming he never took her anywhere and “embarrassed her” socially. His marriage to Alice Faye ticked away for more than 50 years until his death in 1995.

His departure from the Benny show in 1952 was under circumstances that may be considered cloudy because there were several explanations at the time. One was Harris now had an exclusive contract with NBC which covered television; Benny was on CBS. Another was radio was dying; the big sponsors moved their money into television and cut radio budgets, including salaries. Harris wouldn't talk about it at the time. Bob Crosby was brought in. He had a very low-key CBS television show. He was very low-key with Benny. Benny didn't need low key. He needed Phil Harris. His radio show was never quite the same.

Cartoon Commercials of 1960 and Ray Patin

Cartoon studios were already cutting back operations in the late 1940s. MGM and Warner Bros. closed units, Screen Gems was shut down altogether and Walter Lantz stopped production for a little over a year.

Meanwhile, television was growing, especially in New York and Los Angeles, and as stations signed on, advertisers jumped on board. One thing they found was they could get their message across using animation (they didn’t believe the hooey that cartoons were only for kids), so a number of the Golden Age animators set up their own studios, providing places of employment for former co-workers through the 1960s.

I love animated commercials of this era. Thousands were made but only a handful seem to be out there to view. Amid Amidi’s wonderful book Cartoon Modern examines the period.

Television Age magazine came out monthly and not only published news about the commercial houses (live action and animation) but provided frames from the spots. It’s a shame the issues available on line are low resolution so you can’t get a great view of what the artwork looked like, but here are some examples from the May 16, 1960 edition.


I won’t try to go through a dissertation about the companies mentioned above; all top-flight operations. Off the top of my head, Adrian Woolery of UPA was the man behind Playhouse, with Bill Melendez as one of the directors. Jack Heiter—who is still out there—was one of the people behind Pantomime. Pelican was one of the companies which put Jack Zander in charge of its animation. Earl Klein was behind Animation, Inc., but Irv Spence and Ed Barge were there, too. Abe Liss, formerly of UPA, started Elektra (it was responsible for the NBC “Living Color” Peacock animation). Ray Favata had designed spots for several studios, including Academy Pictures in New York. And Ray Patin had been a Disney striker.

Among the stories about commercials in this edition:

Two designers for Robert Lawrence Animation two weeks ago exhibited close to 50 of their paintings at the company’s studios, just to prove, apparently, that there’s no conflict between art and commercialism. Both men—Cliff Roberts and George Cannata—design animated tv commercials during working hours. Mr. Roberts, who holds five awards for designs of commercials and industrial films, is also a book illustrator, and he recently held a one-man show at Long Island University. Mr. Cannata has had his paintings exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art three times since 1955. He was cited for his designing of a Lestoil commercial at the International Advertising Film Festival at Cannes in 1959 and has also won numerous Art Directors Club awards.
Ray Patin Productions is producing a series of semi-abstract animated color spots for Hudepohl Beer (Stockton, West, Burckhart, Cincinnati). The spots, to be telecast in color, will be seen in regional broadcasts of the Cincinnati Redlegs baseball team.
The first annual International Animation Film Festival will be held in Annecey, France, from June 7 to 12.
Several appointments have been made by UPA Pictures, Inc. Jerry Hathcock has been named supervising director for all animation, Errol Gray has been appointed to the post of production supervisor, and Robert F. Kemper has been signed as mid-western representative for the company. Mr. Kemper, who will also continue to represent Jerry Fairbanks Productions, headquarters in Chicago.
A number of new series of Ford commercials, including one introducing the “Linus” character to television, is being prepared by Playhouse Pictures. In addition to the “Linus” spot for Falcon, they include two two-minute “Peanut” spots and two more “Shaggy Dog” commercials. All are in color. The agency is J. Walter Thompson, New York.
Format Films, formed by Herbert Klynn last year, now has more than 40 employes and is preparing to move into a new studio in Studio City. The company has just completed six more spots for Folger’s coffee (Fletcher, Richards, Calkins & Holden, San Francisco) utilizing a coffee-bean character.
Animation, Inc., is producing two more spots featuring a talking cow for the Michigan Milk Producers Association (Zimmer, Keller, & Calvert, Detroit). The first in the series won a Chicago Art Directors gold medal last year.

We’re going to make a left turn away from ‘50s commercials because I found some stuff on Ray Patin I want to pass along. The story below was published in the Lafayette, Louisiana Daily Advertiser of March 28, 1930. Patin and his parents had been in Los Angeles for 11 years at this point. He was working as a clerk at an car dealership.

Ray Patin, Former1y Of This City, Making Good Progress On The Road To Art Fame
Engaging in drawing as a side-line occupation for the present but intending to adopt it as his profession later, Ray Patin, formerly of Lafayette, now residing in Los Angeles, California, has already made considerable progress along the road that leads to fame in art.
Many Lafayette citizens will remember Mr. Patin as a boy. His father was at one time a local newspaperman.
“As much as I like art work I haven’t yet gone into it professionally,” Mr. Patin writes a friend here. “However, I am preparing myself, through night study, and all the spare time I can find, to some day make a big splash into it and bat s thousand per cent from the start. My greatest ambition is to become a strip artist, not of the ‘slap stick’ variety, but the ‘Big league’ type with drawings and stories of real value, educationally and entertainingly. However, it’s mighty hard to say just what type of art work I will fall into. It’s easy to say you’ll do a thing but still another proposition to ‘put out the stuff’ and prove you’re all that you boast of yourself. I’ll keep plugging though, and if ‘stick-to-it-iveness’ is the right road to success than I should stand some chance, as I have led to buckle down real seriously to the work that has always been my hobby.”
Born in Breaux Bridge, Mr. Patin, who is 24 years of age, spent eight years of his early childhood in Lafayette. The family then moved to the west, and eventualy [sic] located at Los Angeles.
“We like it out here an awful lot but we can never forget our old friends and my dear relatives in Lafayette and Louisiana,” Mr. Patin states.
The young artist received most of his training as a cartoonist on the staff of the paper published at the high school he attended In California, to which he contributed a cartoon weekly. Far [for] a while he also drew a weekly comic strip in the Junior Secetion [sic] of the Los Angeles Times but was forced to disctontinue [sic] this for lack a time. He was submitted to the Los Angeles Herald seven or eight cartoons, most of which have been accepted. One is reproduced on this page. He has also turned to more serious themes than cartoons, and has produced a series of etchings of southern California missions.
“I have always liked to draw,” the former Lafayette boy declares. “In fact, the desire to have a pencil in my hand and something to draw on put me into quite a few ‘pickles’ at school when friend found something else behind a geography book besides an inattentive pupil.”
Mr. Patin comes by his artistic talents naturally, for his father Maurice Patin, is well-known to many residents of this section as an able writer. and also skilled as an amateur artists. The father was for several years connected with the former Daily press here and later with the Lafayette Gazette which was purchased by the Daily Advertiser.

Patin’s first animation commercial on television appears to have aired on June 25, 1948, back when Los Angeles still had only two stations. The Times wrote:

A telecast over KTLA at 7:14 tonight by Security-First National Bank will probably be the first commercial television program sponsored by a bank, the Financial Republic Relations Association said today.
The program will be an animated film on checking accounts made by Ray Patin, former Disney artist, under the supervision of Foote, Cone and Belding.

The “program” would have aired during the Judy Splinters Show. Considering the air time and the fact an ad agency was overseeing it, as opposed to an industrial client, I presume it was a commercial.

While this was going on, Patin was drawing a daily strip for a group called the Artists Associated Syndicate. This appears to have been a joint venture of some animators—Gus Jekel (Patin’s designer), Gil Turner, Dick Moores, Fred Jones, “Mitchell” (ex Warners writer Dave Mitchell aka Milt Kahn?), Jerry Hathcock and “Bob Dalton” (Bob McKimson and Cal Dalton?) were among the artists; most, but not all, the small papers that picked up the strips were in California. This one is from Feb. 20, 1948.



Milford, by the way, was an animated character. Patin had him star in TV spots that ran in the early 50s during Industry on Parade on a station in Oklahoma City (whether Milford was on the KTLA commercial, I don’t know).

Patin also designed a character for a beer can. Ray Patin Productions animated commercials for the Rainier Brewing Co. that aired in the Pacific Northwest.

Work began drying up for animated commercial studios as the 1960s wore on. Clients switched to live action, which had become less expensive. Patin’s operation, which had been at 6650 Sunset Blvd., ended up at 3425 Cahuenga Blvd., almost across from Hanna-Barbera’s new brand-new studio. In 1967, 45 members of H-B’s commercial and industrial division moved to the other side of the street into the now-empty Patin building. When Patin Productions closed, I don’t know.

Patin died January 17, 1976 in Panorama City, age 69.

I was just about to put this post to bed, but have discovered Ray Patin's daughter Renee has a website. She's written an autobiography. You can check out her site at this link.

So Which One is the Peasant?

A wild ending of fox vs. ballerina duck greets viewers of the Walter Lantz classical musical The Poet & Peasant (1946).

The fox chokes the duck. The duck quickly turns things around and clobbers the fox. Look at the expressions.



Dick Lundy directed this cartoon and the pacing is a lot more frenetic than I'm used to in his work at Lantz.



These four frames are almost consecutive. The action’s fast and Lundy cuts further back in the final frame.



Finally, the duck blows the horn and rides the fox into the background.

Paul J. Smith and Les Kline receive screen credit for animation, but could this be anyone's scene but Emery Hawkins'?

Milt Schaffer and Bugs Hardaway get the story credit. Darrell Calker did a fine job with the music. There is no dialogue. Terry Lind is the background artist.

The short was nominated for an Oscar.

Killing Technology

Flip the Frog built a robot. Scrappy built a robot. Bosko built a robot. In all cases, they became uncontrollable monsters. Well, you wouldn’t have a cartoon plot if they didn’t.

In Bosko’s Mechanical Man, our hero desperately launches a small barrel of TNT at his metallic creation. That takes care of him. I like the greys in the explosion scene.



The end result.



There’s no post-script with Honey going “My hero!” and the robot chugging to life for a final indignity before the iris closes. It just ends with the scrap metal and a cuckoo bird. I guess Hugh Harman thought that was enough.

By the way, can someone answer this?



This, as any Bosko fan knows, is Bosko with his dog Bruno.



So what dog is this one, the one with the squeak-toy bark?

Friz Freleng and Tom McKimson are the credited artists on this short, released in 1933.