He'd Be Considered Tame Today

There are two words that will derail any discussion amongst fans of the original What’s My Line?

Hal Block.

If What’s My Line? were an immaculate Park Avenue penthouse, Hal Block would be an unmade bed. He was burly man with numerous nervous tics who people either loved or hated. He could either be clever or tacky. After a while, “tacky” didn’t cut it any more on a show that aimed for sophistication and good taste, and Block was cut loose.

By profession, Block was a radio comedy writer who realised the people who wrote the words for Bob Hope didn’t get paid as much as the man who spoke them, and decided to do something about it. The time was right because network television had arrived in earnest and needed new talent on the air.

What’s My Line? debuted in 1950 and producer Mark Goodson, a former radio announcer and host, realised after the first show changes had to be made quickly. Arlene Francis was put on the panel on the second week and Block joined her a week later (Dorothy Kilgallen was on the premiere, Bennett Cerf came later). Block was still on the show when radio/TV writer Ben Gross penned this column in the New York Daily News, August 2, 1952.

The Comedian Who "Hates" His Audiences . . . That's Hal Block, the gag-spouting panel member of "What's My Line?" (CBS-TV, Sundays, 10:30 P. M.; NBC-radio, Wednesdays, 8 P. M.). But don't get the wrong idea. For Hal's "hate" is really akin to love and it's merely an expression of his will to succeed.
"Other comedians may find it easy to win their listeners, but I have to do it the hard way," he will tell you. "Show business is an extremely cruel one. People are ready to destroy a performer the minute he pulls his first boner.
Don't Be Afraid . . . "So when I come on, I must reason that I may get the worst of it. I never feel that listeners are with me from the start. I've got to win 'em over with one or two quick yoks. Once any performer shows that he's afraid, he's licked. It doesn't matter who he is—and remember, I've written material for some of the most popular comedians in the world."
But if a performer strides on in a combative mood, doesn't that antagonize his audience?
"No," Hal says. "There's only the finest line separating love and hate. And, because of this, when an actor once proves himself, people loosen up and take him to their hearts. In other words, every new performance presents the problem of conquering the listeners. Others may have their own methods; mine is to come out fighting."
A Writer You can see by this that Hal is not only an articulate fellow but also one who has studied the psychology of his art. Maybe that's because, in addition to being a performer, he is a writer. In fact, a few years ago, Block was unknown as a comedian.
For years he had a reputation as one of the best gag and situation comedy concocters in the business. From his facile typewriter came the jokes and the skits which helped to build the reputations of funsters as Jack Benny, Fred Allen. Eddie Cantor. Red Skelton, Olsen and Johnson, Ken Murray, Burns and Allen, Edgar Bergen and—yes—even Milton Berle.
The listeners and viewers of "What's My Line?" may look on Hal as primarily a laugh-winner, a professional funny man, but he regards himself as a mere panel member.
Do you intend to become a full-fledged comedian?" he was asked the other day.
“I might,” he said, “if I could find a good writer!"
Studied Law . . . Block, who was says he was born 37 years ago, had good preparation for the quick give-and-take technique of his profession. For in 1933, he began to study law at the University of Chicago and eventually became captain of its track team. His bout with Blackstone and his foray into athletics developed powers of argument and of perseverance.
Then, in 1935, when Block started his show business career, he came to another conclusion. Deciding to become a gag writer for America’s top clowns, he said to himself: “In order to get along in this business, a fellow also has got to have guile, irresponsibility and a hell of a lot of stick-to-it-iveness.”
Baker's Brushoff. . . . . Both Hal and his partner at the time, Phil Cole, a school chum, showed plenty of these qualities when they called backstage at the Chicago Theatre where Phil Baker, the comedian, was headlining. "We're writers," they announced.
Baker, who had heard this story before, said: "Sure, sure; come to see me when I'm in New York. Next time you're there, look me up.”
They knew it was a brushoff, but accepted the challenge—by coming to New York! Here the boys were shooed away successively and emphatically by the comedian's personal manager, his agent and his radio program's ad agency representatives.
Crashed Home. . . But did that down the fighting gag men from Illinois? Not so you could notice it; for they hired themselves out to Mamaroneck, where Baker dwelt, and crashed the comedian's home. There they proceeded to display their wares and Baker finally gave them $30 for a joke he wasn't even certain he would use. But use it he did on his radio show and it convulsed the listeners.
That started them and by 1937, Hal Block was creating the singing commercials for Baker's gasoline sponsor. But an ad agency vice president was ready to tear down every idea submitted. And here's where Hal guile came into play, for he made the comedy star his ally and together they triumphed over the v. p. That is why even today, Block loves to quote Fred Allen's famous description of an advertising agency vice president:
"He's a Dartmouth graduate with a crew haircut who comes to the office every morning at nine. When he walks in he finds a molehill on his desk, and he has until five to make a mountain of it!”
Says He Won't Marry. . . . Hal is one of those superstitious fellows. For instance, if he’s forgotten something, he won't turn back for it—even if it’s his wallet. One evening, bound for one of his shows at the studio, be entered a cab and discovered he was without money. The driver took him to be a chiseler and he almost missed his performance. Luckily, a passerby recognized Hal and paid his 95 cents.
It's not superstition, however, that causes Hal to remain a bachelor. He simply refuses to get married, why?
"Because most women have no sense of humor," he says, "and besides, show me one of them who wouldn't insist on editing my gags!”
Note to the Gals—Remember, it’s Mr. Block who said that—not this writer.

By January 1953, Block was “on hiatus” and after a brief return, shown the door. Syndicated columnists Tom O’Malley and Bob Cunniff summed up the situation. This column is from June 15, 1954.

A Jinx Trails Dimples Block
NEW YORK—Bumped into Hal Block the other day. Remember Dimples Hal? He's the guy who used to get most of the laughs on "What's My Line" until he fell into disfavor with his employers and got the ax. It's been two years since he was bounced from the quizzer’s panel and people are still asking why.
Actually, Hal's heave-ho was due singly to a clash of personalities between himself and Producers Goodson and Todman, Dorothy Kilgallan, New York columnists and, to a lesser degree, John Daly.
Co-Producer Todman told these reporters: “Hal had a peculiar way of thinking verbally that he was responsible for the success of the show. It has even been printed that he originated 'What's My Line?’” and was its producer."
Block to the defense: "Am I crazy enough to claim I produced 'What's My Line?’ Everybody and his sister knows who Goodson and Todman are. They reel their names off at the end of every program—big as life."
According to Block, the controversy over his "taking credit for the show" flared up over an ad he took in Variety.
"They mis-read the ad," says Block, "so that it looked to them like the big type read 'Hal Block's What's My Line.’ It didn’t. It actually read ‘What's Hal Block's Line?’ Any way they got sore and wanted me to print a retraction, even though in the very same ad I paid them a tribute. Now what are you gonna do?"
SAYS BLOCK, "One night the panel was told by Todman before showtime to be very careful with our mystery guest for that evening. Well, as it turns out the guest was Margaret Truman and I displeased the boys again. You know what my question was? I asked, 'Are you adorable?’ Margaret loved it, but after the show I was reprimanded for saying it."
There were other tussles between the producers and Block—once over who should receive a TV award for the program. Says Hal: "The committee wanted me to accept. Says G & T: “Hal did the asking, not the committee. CBS chose us for the presentation."
It was no secret in the trade that Dorothy Kilgallen avoided Dimples Block—plague like. She hit his tenderest spot once in her syndicated column. It was an item about Hal—uncomplimentary—in which she referred to him as "a certain TV panelist." Block admitted he was crushed at the double slam, especially from a fellow panelist.
About the apparent cold war between himself and Dorothy, he says, "I wish I knew the reason myself."
Other columnists have freely taken snipes at Block. One wrote that Hal was working in a Detroit burlesque house billed as "Dimples Block, Star of What's My Line" after he had been dropped from the show. In reality he was playing an exclusive Michigan country club—and without such billing. (“I could have sued,” insists Hal.)
JOHN DALY, the show's emcee, had a few peeves against Hal, mostly minor. Urbane John died a little each time Block quipped his oft-repeated occupational guess—to wit, "I think he removes that the warts from pickles." Daly thought this classically unfunny.
Stormy petrel Hal left New York and went to Chicago (his home town) last October to begin anew. He latched on to his own local TV show there. But the Block jinx held sway. He was fired by the station a few weeks ago for kidding an M. D. guest on his informal program. Seems Hal pulled out a hot water bottle for a joke and waved it before the doctor. Complaints rolled in and he was out of work again. Bad taste, said the station managers.
Block is currently dreaming up another TV format on which to drape his ad lib talents. His friends still feel he should shuck the performer's garb and go back to being a gag poet, an occupation that has always paid him a fancy figure. Meanwhile Hal is taking some consolation that "What's My Line's" rating has dropped since he left. Something like a million less viewers than before.
It's doubtful Block is the sole reason for the slump, but a guy can be wistful, can’t he?

But Block may not have been responsible for his “ad-libs” which irked the panel. A case can be made to put the responsibility on the Goodson-Todman staff. Here are O’Malley and Cunniff again, from Jan. 20, 1955.

The Big Panel Shows, They Legit?
NEW YORK—Should the public be let in on television secrets? Is it wise for viewers to be tipped off on the backstage devices used by panelists? Are rehearsed ad-libs kosher?
These questions are getting renewed airing since Mark Goodson, co-producer of the panel show empire known as Goodson-Todman Productions (I've Got A Secret, What's My Line, Name's The Same), finally conceded in a recent magazine article that his panelists have been supplied with pre-fab questions, all loaded for yocks.
Ever since Hal Block used to flex his dimples and pop up with apparently innocent "double entendres" week after week on What's My Line, there has been a general skepticism about the legitimacy of panel shows. The television trade has known the facts all along.
For some reason, however, the public at large has doubted the legitimacy of the answers, rather than the questions. When we worked on a television publication a few years ago, the mail poured in almost daily, criticizing the intuitive powers of Dorothy Kilgallen or Bennett Cerf for nailing down the mystery lines with such distressing regularity.
Actually, it was the man who seldom unbuttoned the guest's occupations, Hal Block. Yet he was never accused, we doubt that Miss Kilgallen—especially Miss Kilgallen—was even approached in connection with a "rigging." The game the thing with anchor girl Dorothy.
As producers, Goodson and Todman are concerned principally with maintaining a spirited parlor game. The show can be a howling success, even if the contestants flub on every subject. On the other hand, a group of monotonously accurate panelists could sink the show into oblivion.
Frankly, we believe Goodson made a mistake in allowing that his charges are plied with ready-made quarries. Columnists and critics have been raising the question of panel show legitimacy for years, but for some reason they have failed to sway a healthy slice of Americana.
All Goodson has done is make a pronouncement that has dashed any lingering hopes that the critics might be a pack of over-suspicious meanies. When the head man admits it, there's no more to be said.
Actor Hal Block was fired from What's My Line many months ago, we approached him and asked him point blank if all was up-and-up with the show. He was a bitter man then. He felt he had been done wrong. He had lost his most valued possession his fame as a performer.
Nobody recognized Hal Block the gag writer. They did recognize Hal Block the panelist, however and he liked this role immensely. Yet even in his embittered frame of mind, Block wouldn't admit a rigging. Of course he was protecting himself, but he also maintained he felt duty-bound to protect the property from which he was bounced.
Now a few million suspicions have been confirmed that maybe dimpled Hal, as well as Steve Allen, Robert Q. Lewis, Bill Cullen, et al. weren't so funny after all. Too bad, Mark.
Now even the spur-of-the-moment laugh lines will look suspicious. Say it ain't so, boys, say it ain’t so.

Despite the revelation, the gag-line feeding carried on. The late Paul Lynde still gets praise for his catty quips on Hollywood Squares. They were all written for him.

As for Block, he drifted into obscurity. Perhaps the biggest headline he made after leaving the game show was in 1962 when sideswiped six cars in Chicago, telling police he took sleeping pills instead of reducing pills and got into his car. The Associated Press story called him a “former television personality.” He died in 1981.

I have mixed feelings about Block. Fred Allen was a natural humourist. Steve Allen would have something pop into his mind and blurt it out. Too much of the time, Block seemed forced, like he was trying too hard to be funny. There were other occasions where I liked what he came up with. But What’s My Line? was probably better without him. After he left, viewers watched the show for another 14 more seasons.

Spaghetti Mouse

Ah, the world of rubber hose animation, and a time when characters’ body parts stretched and curled for the amusement of the audience.

Let’s check out a mouse from the start of the Fleischer Screen Song A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight (1930). The mouse’s arms and legs wave around, spaghetti-like. The mouse even stretches out his nose.



He turns his tail into a spring.



Next, he stretches and curls his neck, then blows air over the rolled-up poster he's carrying.



Having hung up the poster, he congratulates himself. Another mouse pulls him inside the Town Hall, leaving shoes behind. The shoes then follow him back into the building to end the scene.



Dave Fleischer gets the only screen credit.

The early Screen Songs have lots of imagination (and Billy Murray). They deserve restoration.

Run, Clown, Run

There are some who say their first exposure to opera and classical music was from Warner Bros. cartoons. My father listened to classical music and opera, either on an F.M. station or from his own collection, so it was familiar around our house.

However, what I heard for the first time thanks to cartoons were songs from 1930s musicals and Broadway shows. “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” immediately comes to mind. Another was “I Love a Parade,” a 1931 composition by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler for the Cotton Club revue “Rhythmania” (for which they also composed “Kickin’ the Gong Around” and “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”).

The song became part of the “Let’s sell Warners’-owned sheet music” campaign via Harman-Ising’s Merrie Melodies cartoons. The song may be memorable, but the cartoon for which is it named isn’t. There’s no climax, let alone plot; the last gag is a lion getting rid of fleas, and then the cartoon just stops. There is the usual open-mouth-with-slit-tongue expression all H-I characters had, reversal gags (eg. a hippo rides a horse, the scene disappears and when it returns the horse is riding the hippo), a Ghandi caricature, plus the old run-toward-the-camera-with-mouth open routine, which went back to the silent days.

It follows cycle animation of a clown (who doesn’t appear outside the beginning of the cartoon) flipping over.



Tom McKimson and Ham Hamilton are the credited animators in the 1932 release.

The fast song over the opening titles is “Oh, You Circus Day!” a 1912 composition by James Monaco and Edith Lessing. You can hear it sung in the video below. Gee, that piano player seems familiar. I wonder if he has a connection with old cartoons.

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: A Sign of the Times

Before TV stars became TV stars, you can see them in the darndest places! One of those places is industrial films.

Bewitched’s Dick York was cast in a number of Coronet Instructional Films in the late 1940s in Chicago, where he was on radio. Harvey Korman co-starred in the 1959 Swift and Company-funded Carving Magic, where he learns how to carve meat sold by you-know-who (the film would have benefitted from Tim Conway as the meat-carving friend). Fame awaited them. And before his television fame, Martin Milner played a young suitor in the Bell Telephone industrial Of Many Voices, a 1951 John Sutherland production which also included Whit Bissell in the cast.

All these roles were uncredited.

You can add another one to the list.

Gulf Oil sponsored A Sign of the Times, a 1963 film urging gas station operators to maintain competitive prices. A little more than a quarter of the way into the film, a uniformed pump jockey walks up to a 1959 Chevrolet. He’s known better for a string of sitcom failures (Tim Conway would fit that, too) and one large success—as Col. Blake on M*A*S*H. Yes, it’s McLean Stevenson.

While some of the other actors in this industrial film seem familiar, there’s something in it that sounded familiar to viewers watching this in 1963, and maybe even today. Depicto Films of New York used the Capitol Hi-Q music library in the background, and one of the cues is ‘TC-430 Domestic’ by Bill Loose, better known as the theme for The Donna Reed Show. Likely, the contract terms with Reed’s producers gave the show exclusive television rights to use the cue, but that wouldn’t have covered films.

The film opens with ‘C-20 Light Activity’ (Loose). At 3:38, you’ll hear ‘TC-431 Light Activity’ (Loose-John Seely) and at 5:58 ‘LM-11A Metro Main Title’ (Spencer Moore).

This film isn’t all that campy, like other industrial films (okay, maybe that the tacky imitiation of a Top 40 rock jock is). But it gives you a chance to watch Stevenson being friendly and earnest, check out the late ‘50s/early ‘60s cars, and cringe at the price of gas and groceries.

Molehills and Jersey

Fred Allen’s feud with Jack Benny began with an Allen ad-lib in late 1936 and carried on even after Allen’s radio show came to an end in 1949.

Radio fans know (I hope) it was all fake. But his real feud was with network and sponsor ridiculousness, climaxing, perhaps, with Allen’s show being cut off the air for almost a half-minute in 1947 when he started to make fun of an imaginary NBC executive. The public, rightfully, sided with humorous Allen over the humourless network.

There was one place where NBC couldn’t fade him out—well, other than newspaper interviews where he continued to drip venom on radio and television—and that was during his audience warm-ups. One can only imagine the reaction in the sponsor’s booth while he did this.

That fine publication, Radio Life, published a series on audience warm-ups; unfortunately not all of them are available. The first one was about Allen’s show, published on July 25, 1948.

Acid-Tongued Fred Allen Takes Advantage of His Warm-up Time to Enlarge on the Subject That Once Got Him Faded From the Network!
NEW YORKERS will tell you that one of the best shows to see in town is one that isn't advertised and not listed in those “where-to-go" guidebooks. Natives and visitors to the city both try to accomplish the difficult feat of getting in to see it. Money can't get you in, since the show costs nothing to produce or to see. Only three hundred people can be admitted to the theater where it plays.
This entertainment rarity is Fred Allen's fifteen-minute audience-warm-up period before each of his Sunday broadcasts. The small studio at NBC in New York holds the three hundred lucky devotees who've managed to wangle tickets to the broadcast.
Veepees vs. Allen
Fred, famous for his acid views on certain phases of radio, gained extra fame a season back by suffering a rather severe reprimand for poking sarcastic fun at the network vice-presidents. He was cut off the air. He takes advantage of the warm-up period, naturally, to express himself more fully on the vice-president subject.
“Radio's vice-presidents are men who do not know what their jobs are," Allen explains to the audience, "and by the time they find out, they are no longer with the organization.
“In the early days of radio, the vice-presidents used to work hard.
When they arrived in their offices ... in the morning, they used to find a molehill on their desks. Their job was to build that molehill into a mountain by 5:00 p.m.
“ . . . all vice-presidents were haunted by the fear of going to 'heck.' 'Heck' is a word invented by the National Broadcasting Company, which denies the existence of hell and the Columbia Broadcasting System, though not necessarily in that order." According to Fred, these are the sins that speeded a vice-president to “heck"; “tearing a clean memo, sprinkling water at the water cooler or springing the buzzer in a fit of executive pique. On the other hand . . . if they did their jobs well, they were assured of going to the Rainbow Room, where the cover charge was to be eternally removed."
Now, however, times have changed for vice-presidents. “They function by means of conference —a conference is a group of people who singularly can do nothing and collectively agree that nothing can be done." Fred does admit that when they are rushing around the corridors they make a colorful picture — “so colorful that the travelogue people come every spring to take pictures of the vice-presidents going up-carpet to spawn."
Other Gag Targets
Second favorite Allen target is radio itself. He begins his warm-up by explaining that he has a cold. For this ailment he claims to have followed the prescription of a guest expert (“an interne in a pet hospital") on radio's outstanding medical program, “Young Doctor Malone." “I swallowed a remedy which claimed to fight colds four ways," he continues. “The tablet worked one way four times and, as yet, the other three ways have not been heard from." Concerning warm-ups, Allen warns the audience about “one of the more animated comedians in Hollywood who overdid his warm-up and cremated three hundred and fifty people in his audience." [Note: an Earl Wilson column revealed Allen was talking about Red Skelton].
Another great favorite among Allen's comedy topics is people from New Jersey. This is evidently a local joke in New York, in much the same spirit as Hollywood's Anaheim routine. Allen tells a poignant story of how a group of New Jersey dance-lovers made an expedition to the Radio City Music Hall to see the Rockettes. Becoming confused, as people from New Jersey are apt to do when they emerge from their natural habitat, they wandered into the RCA Building and were borne into the Allen show. To console this group for the temporary loss of the Rockettes, Fred lifts a trouser leg delicately to display the Allen calf.
At one time the comedian used to create a new warm-up for each show, but he found that they were too well appreciated. Other comedians were showing a touching regard for his material. Now he sticks to pretty much the same routine and it's still greeted with the same hilarity — particularly by network vice-presidents and people from New Jersey!

We mentioned the Benny-Allen feud. If you’re wondering whether Allen varied his warm-up when Benny showed up on his show, here’s a portion of a column from the Des Moines Register of July 8, 1979.

Silence wasn't golden in radio's golden age
By ED KINTZER
A big event each year on radio was when Jack Benny brought his cast from the West Coast to New York so he and Fred Allen could exchange guest shots — usually for their last shows of the season.
This was the scene at NBC's Radio City studios on Sunday, June 27, 1948.
Fifteen minutes before the 7 o'clock air time, announcer Don Wilson walked onto the large, uncurtained stage of Studio 8-H, welcomed the audience and introduced Phil Harris, who led the band in a number with wild and exaggerated musical directions.
Then Wilson introduced the rest of the cast as they took their places on stage: Sportsmen Quartet, Dennis Day, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Artie Auerbach (who played "Mr. 'pickel in the middle, mustard on top' Kitzel”) and Mary Livingstone. Benny sauntered out from behind the 8-H control room throwing kisses, and while he was joking briefly with the audience, a nasal-twanged voice came from the rear of the studio: "I wouldn't throw a fish a line like that." Fred Allen came down the middle aisle and joined Benny on stage to trade Insults until air time.
Later that night down in Studio 6-A, Fred Allen's warm-up consisted of Fred Allen. Unannounced, he stepped before the curtain and welcomed the audience, and then proceeded to throw barbs at his sponsor, the Ford Motor Co. Less than a minute before the 8:30 air time, the curtain opened. Announcer Kenny Delmar, script in hand, and orchestra leader Al Goodman, baton raised, watching the control room for the go-ahead signal.
No introduction was made of the cast seated in front the orchestra: Parker Fennelly, who played “Titus Moody”; Minerva Pious, "Mrs. Nussbaum”; Peter Donald, "Ajax Cassidy”; Portland Hoffa; Jack Benny, and the five singing DeMarco Sisters. Announcer Delmar also played the popular Senator Claghorn.

You’d think Allen would have brought Benny up on stage, as the audience would no doubt have loved it, but Allen doesn’t appear to have wanted to waste any off-air time he could spend attacking things he couldn’t slice and dice on the air.

As a side note, the article mentions that Bert Parks announced the Vaughn Monroe Show on CBS, but the warm-up act was someone who never appeared on the programme—Frank Fontaine. Before long, Jack brought him on the Benny show to do variations of his John L.C. Sivoney night-club act (and impressions), and the exposure gave a huge boost to his career.

It’s also interesting to read that Jack was given cavernous Studio 8-H at Rockefeller Centre. It was designed for Arturo Toscanini’s NBC Symphony radio broadcasts but people today know it as the home of Saturday Night Live. You, perhaps, are familiar with Allen’s small Studio 6-A. A gentleman used to broadcast a late-night show from there. His name is David Letterman.

TV Spots

You couldn’t get much more honest in the name for a company that made commercials for television than TV Spots.

Here are some trade paper ads from 1955 and 1956 showing off some of the designs in the company’s animated commercials. You can click on each strip to make it larger.



TV Spots got into the television business when there were only two stations in Los Angeles, and only one was allowed to air commercials. It was the brainchild of animator Bob Wickersham. He had been a cartoonist in high school and contributed to the Los Angeles Times as early as 1926. His obit in the April 30, 1962 issue of Broadcasting says he joined Walt Disney Productions in 1932, and moved to Columbia/Screen Gems in 1941. In 1943, Wickersham was responsible for the art in a campaign by Mobil Oil about “gremlins.” And we learn from the Oxnard Press-Courier of April 25, 1946 he drew sequences for the Rosalind Russell movie “She Wouldn’t Say Yes” and “To Each Their Own” starring Olivia de Havilland.

The obit states he organised TV Spots, Inc. in 1947. Evidently business wasn’t altogether good for a while, as his name turns up on screen at Warner Bros.

Now, Shull Bonsall enters into the picture. Bonsall had money and he liked to play hardball with it. He bought Consolidated Television Sales in 1954 (Variety, March 3) which gave him ownership of 195 Crusader Rabbit cartoons made several years earlier by Alex Anderson and Jay Ward. His next move was buying control of TV Spots in 1955 from Wickersham (Broadcasting, Aug. 8) and shipping the company president to New York, putting creative director Sam Nicholson in charge of production. As you might guess, Wickersham knew he had no future at his old company. In 1956, he became president and partner of Chadwick, Inc., in New York, then left two years later to work as the art director for TV commercials produced by Leo Burnett in Chicago. Wickersham died in 1962 at age 51.

Bonsall had big expansion plans for TV Spots. He owned the old Crusader Rabbit cartoons and wanted to make new ones. As Keith Scott’s book The Moose That Roared explained, Bonsall threatened Ward and Anderson with lawsuits to drive them into bankruptcy if they didn’t sell him all rights to the Crusader characters. Defeated, they accepted a paltry $50,000. Bonsall then announced he was making new Crusader cartoons (Crusader’s voice, Lucille Bliss, received her own my-way-or-the-highway threat from Bonsall. She chose the highway. She claimed Bonsall mounted a campaign against her in revenge).

Regardless of what was going on behind the scenes, TV Spots was turning out some pretty attractive, modern-looking commercials for clients on both coasts. In 1958, the company’s animation director was veteran Paul Sommer, who soon accepted an offer from Hanna-Barbera.

H-B was getting rave reviews for its half-hour syndicated shows and more ratings success with the debut of The Flintstones on ABC in fall 1960. Animation in prime time was suddenly hot, and Bonsall wanted a chunk of the potential profits. He set up a division of TV Spots called Creston Studios to make television cartoon series. After animating for Leonardo Productions’ King Leonardo and his Short Subjects for Saturday morning, a handful of Popeyes for syndication directed by Gerry Ray, and some Fractured Fairy Tales for Jay Ward, the studio broke into prime-time in 1961 with Calvin and the Colonel. Creston’s “nifty animation” was praised in a review of the debut show in Variety, but chided “No matter how you slice it, it’s still Amos ‘n’ Andy, and times have changed.” The show lasted a season.

Suddenly, the prime-time animation craze was over. Creston proposed a satire series called Muddled Masterpieces (Fractured Fairy Tales ripoff, anyone?), another about a talking dog called Shaggy Dog Tales, and Sir Loin and Socrates, an English version of Don Quixote, all designed by Norm Gottfredson. None of them sold. By February 1963, Nicholson was producing The Funny Company for former ad agency senior v-p Ken Snyder; Broadcasting of Feb. 11 stated he had been creative director of TV Spots since 1953. Creston Studios, the corporate name for TV Spots since late 1961, was no longer listed in the Radio Television Daily Yearbook. It was bye-bye Bonsall.

Did Someone Put a Curse on the Columbia Cartoon Studio?

We at the Tralfaz blog sometimes watch cartoons so you don’t have to.

Today, we have, with mouth wide open in astonishment over how bad it is, sat through yet another six-minute waste of time from Columbia/Screen Gems, a black-and-white “Phantasy” from 1944 called As the Fly Flies.

Narrator John McLeish needed someone like Chuck Jones to keep him under control (as in The Dover Boys (1942). At Columbia, he must have thought the more over-the-top you are, the funnier it is. His wild overacting is unnecessary and irritating.

Ed Seward’s story is a zero. The main character, Professor Puzzlewitz, for no discernable reason, hides, rides a unicycle, wears a Napoleon hat, and looks through a pipe like a periscope because, well, I guess Ed Seward thought it was funny.

The professor shows off his invention. It’s a house that kills houseflies. He explains a Rube Goldberg contraption, where a phoney female fly lures its victim through a door. That results in a match lighting a wheel of fireworks, which sets off an ancient gun, where its bullet (more like a ball) is shot around inside a French horn and lands on a button, which activates a conveyer belt that moves the house and smashes it.



The cartoon is half over. Having spent all this time setting up this machine, it doesn’t figure into the story. Instead, Puzzlewitz spends the rest of the cartoon shooting at a fly with his blunderbuss (because they look funny!). He aims at machinery. Could the end result be telegraphed more? We all know what’s going to happen.

His “palatial estate” (which looks like an observatory) destroyed, Puzzlewitz crazily yells he’s killed the fly. Cut to the fly, very much alive. Why did he think it was dead? Wait. I’m expecting a Columbia cartoon to make sense?

Howard Swift directed this mess. Grant Simmons is the credited animator, who went on to work on to work with Tex Avery (talk about outhouse-to-penthouse). Puzzlewitz sounds like a Harry Lang voice but this cartoon has left me so unmotivated, I won’t go through Keith Scott’s book to check.

Eventually, Columbia put some good cartoons on the big screen. They were made elsewhere and starred Mr. Magoo.

Not Quite a Candlelight Dinner

Tom was one of the great pantomime cartoon characters of all time. The expressions the crew of animators gave him (and Jerry) over top of Scott Bradley’s scores is what made them shine on the screen.

Here’s an example from The Mouse Comes to Dinner, released in 1945. Jerry sets up the situation.



Check out Tom’s varied expressions.



Huh?? He’s seen something and turns to check it out.



He realises. There’s an eight-frame (half-second) stare at the camera as the flames rage, just long enough to register with the audience. Then the reaction (some random frames).



If you’re looking for a logical story in this one, forget it. The maid sets out a full dinner, then disappears. She’s gone so long, Tom has time to call a girl over to join him to eat it. But where are the dinner guests? Who leaves a dinner sitting on a table that long to get cold? Why doesn’t she hear the noise Tom and Jerry are making (like she does in other cartoons)?

Oh, well. The cartoon exists so Tom and Jerry can show off their range of expressions (and the cat can get beat up), and Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera’s animators were able to draw excellent ones for a good many years.

Pete Burness is part of the H-B unit on this short, with Ken Muse, Ray Patterson and Irv Spence.