Hiding the Duck

Tom Turkey realises he can get revenge on Daffy Duck for eating all his food and putting him through exercise hell in Art Davis’ Holiday For Drumsticks (released January 22, 1949).

Look at this expression from animator Don Williams.



When you see multiple cascading eyes, you know it’s Williams. Here are some fun frames when Tom hides Daffy under a rock, then changes his mind and pulls him out.



Also credited with animation on this short are Emery Hawkins, Bill Melendez and Basil Davidovich, with layouts by Don Smith and backgrounds by Phil De Guard. Lloyd Turner gets the sole story credit.

Don’t Tune in Tomorrow

As the calendars changed during the 1950s, one by one, the big-time radio network programmes disappeared as the audience—and advertisers—moved to television. By 1960, about all the networks were supplying was news and information, not entertainment.

CBS valiantly hung on. Its afternoon schedule had become the final home of that most ridiculed of formats—the soap opera. That changed on November 25, 1960. After 7,065 episodes Ma Perkins closed her lumber yard and put away the Oxydol. Young Dr. Malone gave up his practice. The Second Mrs. Burton no longer had to cope with the first Mrs. Burton. Listeners lost The Right to Happiness. They were the final four soaps on network radio. In addition, The Couple Next Door moved off the daytime schedule to oblivion, Whispering Streets became silent and Best Seller rung up a “No Sale” sign.

Ah, but there was a time the soaps had seen a Brighter Day. Through the 1930s and 1940s, they filled radio airtime. In 1940, CBS aired 25 of them while NBC broadcast 20. At their end, newspaper syndicated editorial researcher Richard Spong called them “steeped in misery, saccharine, and virtually inert.” Their dialogue, acting and plots were tailor-made for spoofing by Fred Allen, Henry Morgan and other comedians/satirists (on one of Allen’s shows, all the characters died but, regardless, listeners were told everything would somehow turn out all right, and to be with them again tomorrow, same time, same station).

New York Herald Tribune critic John Crosby was known for his caustic observations, but soap operas would have been too easy a target for him. Instead, he related what is really a sad story about a listener caught up in the world of one programme. This was his column in the Herald Tribune for Monday, December 30, 1946.

RADIO IN REVIEW
By JOHN CROSBY
Soap Opera Fan From Brooklyn
The dim twilight of soap opera is not everyone's world. It is a special world, it would appear, built purposely for those persons whose credulity has no apparent limits. To the skeptical listener with a ready fund of humor the agonies of soap opera offer neither escape nor amusement. For that sort of listener, of whom there are a great many, a far more rewarding study than soap opera is that of the people who listen to the darn things, or, as someone put it so well, the proper study of man is man.
Soap opera is not so much a taste as an addiction. Even broadcasters will admit that the soap opera fan listens not to just one but to several, sometimes five or six in a day, deriving from the later ones even more comfort than from the early ones as they sink further and further into the nebulous world of fancy and farther and farther from the prosaic world of the dishes. Just how virulent this soap opera drug can become was well illustrated by a recent occurrence in New Jersey.
* * *
A Mrs. Davis of Hillsborough Township near Somerville, N. J. recently received a note on which was scrawled: "Steve killed Betty MacDonald. Irma has him on her farm. I hope you will come out of this with flying colors." Mrs. Davis turned the letter over police who traced it without difficulty to a woman in Brooklyn, from whom they wrung this remarkable confession.
The writer told police that listened every day to a soap opera called "When a Girl Marries." On this program recently a Betty MacDonald was killed and Harry Davis of "Somerville" was arrested. The Brooklyn letter writer went on to explain that Harry Davis was really innocent. The real murderer, she told the startled cops, was a man named Steve, Betty's lover, who was now hiding out on Irma's farm. (Irma loved him, too.) She had written the letter to Mrs. Davis to reassure her that everything would come out all right and to assure her that her faith in Mrs. Davis and Harry remained unshaken.
* * *
That's all there is to the story. The police presumably told the Brooklyn lady not to write any more letters and may even have advised her against taking soap opera so seriously. The reaction of the Brooklyn addict to a visitation from the cops remains unknown. Does she still listen to "When a Girl Marries?” What went through her mind when she discovered that Harry and Irma and Steve were people of fancy, not fact? Was she outraged this betrayal of her implicit trust and, if so, has she found anything to take its place? Or, to put it more plainly, are there any other anodynes so satisfying and undemanding as soap opera for credulous ladies from Brooklyn?
The spy psychiatrists will have to take it up from there. This column is out of its depth.

This post is one of a series transcribing one week’s worth of columns by Crosby, a suggestion made some time ago by radio/film researcher and scholar Kathy Fuller-Seeley. We’re going to deviate to give you a post-script. The same day CBS killed its radio soaps, its night-time schedule bade farewell to its last entertainment show: The Amos ‘n’ Andy Music Hall. The stars had gone through several different formats; perhaps the best-known was a weekly half-hour sitcom. The Music Hall was their last gasp, as the title characters were little more than disc jockeys with comic dialogue in between records.

When Monday, November 28, rolled around, CBS’s morning entertainment block of Arthur Godfrey, Art Linkletter (House Party), Garry Moore and the transcribed Bing Crosby/Rosemary Clooney show (where they, more or less, introduced themselves on record) was still standing. So were three network dramatic shows: Gunsmoke, Suspense and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. They eventually dropped away. Bill Conrad’s Marshall Dillon hung up his badge on CBS radio on June 18, 1961, while Johnny Dollar cashed out on September 30, 1962, immediately followed by the last time radio listeners could listen to a tale well calculated to keep you in Suspense.

As critics noted, it was cheaper for affiliates to hire a disc jockey to play records than to pay CBS for programming.

If you’re wondering how the soaps wrapped up their plots, Bud Sprunger of the Associated Press told newspaper readers the next day:

Dr. Malone, the hero of “Young Doctor Malone,” decided in the last chapter to return to his job as director of the clinic at Three Oaks. Dr. Malone polished things off by convincing Scotty’s mother that the young man’s love must be shared. The mother said she would attend the wedding of Scotty and Jill.
Ma Perkins...ended with Charley Lindstrom accepting a job in the East. As the family gathered at Ma’s house for Thanksgiving dinner, the philosophical heroine saw happiness ahead. Anushka, an immigrant girl, and Ma’s grandson, Junior, at to be married next month.
Claudia Nelson...was the heroine in “The Right to Happiness,” which was the story of an attractive widow with a teen-age son named Skip...As things ended, Grace assured Skip he was the only boy in her life. Dick Braden was paroled from prison. Lee’s court case came to a satisfactory close and Lee and Carolyn faced the future with assurance.
“The Second Mrs. Burton” [involved] a social dowager who lives in Bickston, a Hudson River community near New York...the Second Mrs. Burton [was] the dowager’s daughter-in-law. The daughter-in-law, in the final chapter, stops the dowager from making a fool of herself over an artist and everybody concentrates on getting ready for a Christmas bazaar.



Now for Crosby’s other columns to finish out 1946 (and start 1947).

Tuesday, December 31: When the winner didn’t take all on Winner Take All.
Wednesday, January 1: Year-end honours.
Thursday, January 2: Detective dialogue.
Friday, January 3: Maisie, starring Ann Sothern.

The artwork above comes from the Los Angeles Daily News, which skipped the column of the 31st.

The Pool Caper

W.C. Fields makes an appearance at the start of Hollywood Capers, a 1935 Warner Bros. cartoon directed by Jack King.



Fields, or “Mr. Seal” as a security guard calls him here, goes to the entrance of the “Warmer Brothers Studio.” (The mouth movements don’t match the dialogue).



The scene carries on. The ersatz Fields hands his walking-stick-on-a-wheel to the security guard, puts his hat on the guard’s head and his cigar in the guard’s mouth.



Fields then takes an expandable cane out of his pocket, aims it like a pool cue and hits the ashes off his cigar.



He puts the cane back in his pocket, retrieves his hat and cigar, and strolls through the studio entrance.



The security guard scratches his head to end the scene.



The guard was probably puzzled about whether that was supposed to be a gag. Fields did have a very funny act with a trick pool table he used in vaudeville. He began his film career with the short Pool Sharks in 1915 and included a pool routine in the 1934 feature Six of a Kind, so audiences watching this cartoon would be familiar with Fields handling a pool cue.

The routine is completely self-contained and has nothing to do with anything else in the cartoon. The story is all over the place. First, it’s a celebrity caricature cartoon. Then it switches to the shooting of a film starring Leon Schlesinger’s version of “Our Gang.” A little more than half-way through, it switches to a vanquish-Frankenstein’s-monster cartoon (a real monster in a film studio??) as Little Kitty and the rest of the Gang disappear.

The tune under the Fields scene is Benee Russell’s I Saw a Robin from the 1935 Warners feature Miss Pacific Fleet. As usual, musical director Norman Spencer double-times the melody during the good guy vs. bad guy scenes toward the end of the cartoon.

Writers didn’t get screen credit at Warners yet, but Tedd Pierce and Bugs Hardaway have their names inscribed on one of the backgrounds, so it’s very possible they contributed to the proceedings.

Sunny California

Tex Avery sets up Cellbound with a simple premise: escaped prisoner Spike is trapped in the warden’s TV set and has to enact something on the screen so he won’t get discovered. What we don’t know is how Spike will do it.

The warden looks through his newspaper’s TV listings. “Ah, horse racing,” he says.



Reaction take.



Spike reacts with a convenient watering can (filled with water) and a sign.



“Sunny California,” mumbles the warden. And it’s on to the next gag.

The Avery unit was gone almost 2 ½ years before this cartoon was released. Avery used his regular gagman, Heck Allen, and layout artist, Ed Benedict. But his animators were gone, except Mike Lah, who finished up the picture as Avery looked for work. The Hanna-Barbera unit’s animators were brought in—Irv Spence, Ken Muse and Ed Barge, with Lah animating as well.

Writing For Benny

Jack Benny was regularly on radio or television for 33 seasons and, unlike pretty much every comedian on a variety show, only used a handful of writers.

After Benny and his first writer, Harry Conn, parted very unamicably in 1936, the majority of those who came afterward stayed with him for years.

One of them, Milt Josefsberg, wrote a book about his time with Benny, while George Balzer gave a number of interviews over the years. Both had nothing but good to say about Jack, and Jack had nothing but good to say about them.

Here’s how he put it in a column that appeared in papers starting July 1, 1964.

TV Comedy Writing Is Serious Business
For at least 38 of his 39 years, Jack Benny has been a regular visitor in the nation’s living rooms. He will be around again next season, returning to NBC after a lengthy sojourn at CBS. Here Jack, in an unaccustomed serious vein, gives tribute, where at least part of the credit is due, to his writers. Still, without Benny and his fabulous sense of comedy timing, those writers would not be a part of an American institution, “The Jack Benny Show." Today Jack Benny is the writer—as a guest for Cynthia Lowry, who is on vacation.
By JACK BENNY
Written For The Associated Press.
HOLLYWOOD, Calif.—We have many guest stars on my program. But before these personalities are scheduled to appear, I get together with my writers and we come up with a point of view that will fit each one. Actually, we always start out with a clear slate—we let ideas grow, tossing them back and forth.
The one program that is the exception—one that we pretty well know about ahead of time—is the annual show we do with James Stewart and his wife Gloria, my neighbors in Beverly Hills.
As almost everyone knows, the business of writing comedy is a serious one. Those who doubt this need only visit my set on Stage 2 at Revue Universal Studios. Look for the saddest-appearing men around. They will be my writers. They get together to play with ideas. They call me after a while and say: “Jack, we’ve got it. This is fine. We think we have a good story-line now."
They tell me where they are going with the show—what the script will be. We spend a great deal of time editing. We never let a show reach the cameras exactly the way it was first written.
But when you stop to think about it, my four writers have good reason to be happy fellows.
In addition to their unprecedented tenure with me, their love of life can be explained by the two Emmys and six Emmy nominations they have received from members of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
They have the opportunity to write lines for some of the biggest names in the entertainment business.
They have an employer who bears no resemblance to the miserly figure they have created.
My writers are Sam Perrin, George Balzer, Al Gordon and Hal Goldman. I think their team work is a record lifespan for a group of comedy writers. Perrin and Balzer have been writing for me for 22 years. Gordon and Goldman can chalk up 17.
I can be fooled more easily than my writers. Sometimes I make the mistake of reading a script and saying, “Fellas, I don’t think this is very funny. I think the lines should be changed.” Every time I do that, I spend more time apologizing than you’d believe.
But once I was adamant. I was sure that I had them this time. I kept arguing, and one of my writers said: “Jack, you may be right, the four of us could be wrong." Well, it turned out to be the same old story, and I wound up saying: “Sorry Fellas.”

Benny seemed to have a sense of when a gag had worn itself out. By the 1970s, he was telling reporters he was downplaying the “age 39” gag because he felt it wouldn’t work on television when he was in his mid-70s. George Balzer elaborated on this in what looks like a PR release from Benny’s production company or CBS. It appeared in newspapers starting Jan. 11, 1964.

Shaping The Character Of Jack Benny
Comedy has changed noticeably in the past two decades and so have comedians—even Jack Benny.
Benny, whom almost everyone knows as the one man in the world who has made time stand still and who hasn’t spent a dime foolishly in all his 39 years, nonetheless has undergone a subtle metamorphosis.
This comes from a fellow who should know. He is George Balzer, a comedy writer who has helped shape Benny’s public character for more than 20 years and who continues behind the scenes with “The Jack Benny Program” on the CBS Television Network.
The fact is that some of the things consistent with Benny’s character simply aren’t appropriate today, Balzer says.
"Take money, for example. Today, Jack will spend money almost recklessly if there's a good reason for it—a reason like, say, he's under hypnosis and not accountable for his actions,” smiles Balzer.
Too, in the old days, Benny never would give Rochester, his companion and Man Friday, a day off.
“Now,” says Balzer, “he’ll cut Rochester for high card to see who does the housework.”
Jack Benny couldn’t drive a Maxwell today, Balzer says, because “a Maxwell would be too expensive to maintain.”
Therefore those wonderfully evocative Maxwell jokes, like the rear tires being recapped with old tennis shoes and Jack feeling that someone was sneaking up on him when he drove on dark nights, are confined to the files. Balzer and his fellow writers—Sam Perrin, Al Gordon and Hal Goldman—are keeping Benny a cheap and vain character, but in terms of the 1960s.
But, Balzer says, “He wants the entire cast to get laughs. Sometimes he’ll change funny lines we’ve given him and give them to another character.”
One thing about Benny never changes, Balzer points out: “He always wants to be the butt of the jokes—the fall guy.”

Balzer wasn’t in the writers’ room when Jack put together his final TV show in 1974. Hal Goldman and Al Gordon were. So was Hugh Wedlock, Jr., who wrote off-and-on for Benny with partner Howard Snyder starting in 1936, though neither got credit in the radio days. There were a few age jokes, a bunch of cheap jokes, and references to Mary Livingstone and Rochester. The writers’ material still worked.

Walter Lantz Goes High Class

Walter Lantz had a bonafide star in Woody Woodpecker. But as World War Two was ending, he wanted something more.

The “something more” wasn’t Andy Panda. Even Lantz understood Andy’s potential stardom was limited. He talked about it to the United Press in this story from June 22, 1946.

Children Favor Cartoon Figures Which Get into Mischief
By PATRICIA CLARY
HOLLYWOOD—(UP)—Cartoon Producer Walter Lantz believes that children like brash cartoon characters because they get away with mischief that would bring the youngsters a spanking.
That's why, Lantz said, his cocky Woody Woodpecker was more popular than gentle Andy Panda, and why noisy Donald Duck outdraws Mickey Mouse.
"Seeing cartoons is what you might call psychological sublimation for the kids," he explained. "They wish to do the things Woody Woodpecker does, but they can't get away with it. So they let off steam by watching him get away with it."
Lantz has other ideas for the children, however. He's going to improve their musical intelligence with cartoons based on famous classical pieces.
"I think that the time is ripe for good music," he said, "but it has to be presented in an understandable way. The stories behind our music will not necessarily have anything to do with the opera, for instance, from which it is taken. But the stories will bring the moods of the music to life."
His animators are having plenty of trouble filling an assignment like that. But they've been well trained for it. It takes nine years, he told us, to train a topflight animator. And there's no way to learn except by working. "We worked out a careful analysis of our training periods in order to help the many veterans who are working as cartooning apprentices under the GI Bill,” Lantz said.
"A first class animator, for instance, starts with an idea and roughs out sketches here and there in the continuity to illustrate his idea.
“Then the class-two animator gets the idea from that and draws every other sketch. The apprentice animator consequently has a close pattern to follow when he draws the in-between panels."
Sometimes, Lantz said, his animators get so well-trained at drawing animals that they forget how to draw humans. Then he tells them to take a week off at art school and get back in form.
But there won't be any human characters in Lantz's cartoons. Not any longer. One pretty—a Latin miss—was enough.
"The censors got after me," he said. "Said she swung her hips when she walked. Who doesn't?"
"I'll stick to animals," he said. "You can't offend them."

The way Lantz is talking, you’d think he had mini-versions of Fantasia in mind. Of course, that kind of animation would be expensive, but Lantz, musical director Darrell Calker and his writers found ways to incorporate gags around a framework of classical music.

Universal released The Poet and the Peasant as an Andy Panda cartoon on March 16, 1946, though Variety reported on June 15, 1944 that cutting had been completed. The cartoon was nominated for an Oscar. Lantz decided to go ahead with a Musical Miniature series, though it doesn't appear all the cartoons bore that title:

Musical Moments from Chopin, (Universal, February 24, 1947, Oscar nominated).
The Overture to William Tell, (Universal, June 16, 1947).
The Bandmaster, (United Artists, December 22, 1947).
Kiddie Concert, (United Artists, April 21, 1948).
Pixie Picnic, (United Artists, May 28, 1948).

The Chopin cartoon was ready well before its release. It was previewed in an interview with Lantz in the Valley Times, October 15, 1946, who explains how they were made.

Valley Cartoon Master Believes in Artistry
By HAZEL FLYNN
The other night at a preview I saw an unusual cartoon called “Chopin’s Musical Moments.”
Here for the first time was some of the world’s great music combined with cinema art and animation.
The leading character was a cute little fellow, Andy Panda. Andy sat down to play a concert in the barn and was doing nicely when a saucy red-haired chap, Woody Woodpecker, came in to polish the piano. Deciding he could play too, he joined in and soon such selections as “Fantasy Impromptu” and “Scherzo" began to emerge.
Imaginative
Then it waxed dramatic. A fire started and the flames took over, evening running up and down the keys. But did the intrepid performers cease playing? They did not until note of the Polonaise had died away.
It was humor and it was culturally satisfying. I knew at once that it had Academy Award possibilities, so I decide[d] to find out more about it.
Yesterday I met the producer and creative artist back of “Chopin’s Musical Moments"—Walter Lantz. Mild-mannered, greying at the temples, he admits being 46 and one of the industry’s pioneers line.
Valley Studio
At his Valley studio he has turned out literally hundreds of animated subjects. A former New York American employe he created “Colonel Heezaliar," one of the earliest silent cartoons more than 27 years ago. He worked for the famous Bray studios. Ask mother or dad about the early Bray cartoons, such as “Out of the Inkwell”). Lantz was brought to California by the late Carl Laemmle to start a department at Universal . . . He’s been here ever since . . . What is more, he can still draw—which cannot be said of many producers in the same game.
Besides creating Andy and Woody he publishes the Walter Lantz New Funnies magazine, one of the best read comic books in the country. He gets thousands of fan letters from kids who want to know what Woody and Andy eat—whether they are kept in cages, etc. Naturally, he never intends to lose this audience if he can help it.
The Chopin picture is one of the series he calls “Musical Miniatures.” Another uses Rossini’s Overture to William Tell, with a 45 piece orchestra performing. Still another will incorporate the Zampa overture and he may soon do one based on “Die Fledermaus" as well as “The Nutcracker Suite.”
Music Comes First
He has an odd way of doing these “Miniatures." He picks the music first, then has the story tailored to fit—a difficult job, he admits.
The classics are never distorted in Lantz cartoons, for he feels that in making use of them he is doing something which will prove educational as well as entertaining, especially to youth.
Lantz lives in Encino in a ranch house with his wife, the former Grace Stafford, star of the Henry Duffy players for seven years, two great Dane dogs and the "only indoor barbecue in the Valley which doesn’t smoke. He figured out a way to prevent the smoking and paid through the nose to have his plan followed.
Smoke-abater Lantz is president of the Cartoon Producers’ association and he regrets that the cartoon is still underrated. He points to how this type of film has improved in the past ten years. Whereas 2500 drawings were used in silent days, a cartoon today may use more than 25,000. The artists are better. Most of the artists and animators today are art school graduates. The cost of Chopin's Musical Moments” is another example of how they have improved. The negative cost alone was nearly $50,000.
Appreciation Lack
Yet, he says, the average cartoon is still billed as an also-ran, even in critical comment. He hates those "also on the bill" cracks. And the revenue derived from these important portions of the theater program has not increased either. He says cartoons have not benefited from lush easy money, war days.
Perhaps with elimination of “B” pictures the situation will change. Walter Lantz hopes so. He also feels that the vogue for introducing cartoon sequences in big features may help exhibitor appreciation. He did one of the first of these sequences in technicolor for Paul Whiteman’s "King of Jazz."
Another thing which would help the cause would be a new name, he feels. Just imagine, he says, if full length pictures were billed as “longies." The term might run patrons right out of the theaters. Therefore, he’d like a word to substitute for the term "short.”
If you can think of one, let Walter know. He’s pitting his lance on the side of cartoons for culture—and more cash. And don’t you dare call them "shorts," either.

Whatever you want to call them, they had top animators working on them—Freddy Moore, Pat Matthews, Emery Hawkins, Ed Love, among them—and former Disney animator Dick Lundy directing. They may not have been as funny as, say, Rhapsody Rabbit, but they’re enjoyable enough to watch. Hawkins fans, especially, should love his work on The Poet and the Peasant.

This was a high period for the Lantz studio which ended before the decade was out. Lantz’s deal with United Artists went sour and he shut down his operation for over a year, spending his time touring. Erskine Johnson’s column of Feb. 15, 1949 talked of a Woody Woodpecker feature when Lantz returned. When Lantz’s stripped-down studio re-opened, there was no feature. And the Musical Miniatures were finished, too. You can read more about them in this post and enjoys Devon Baxter's examination of one in this entry at Cartoon Research.

Mouth of Oswald

Oswald the rabbit’s girl-friend hears music. She wants to hear it better. Here’s the gag.



Cut to an overhead shot of Oswald and his banjo. Oswald pokes his head toward the camera, like Van Beuren did in its cartoons a few years later.



This is from Rival Romeos (1928), one of the Disney Oswald shorts. A theatre manager in Manitoba told one trade paper: “Excellent cartoon. Best in some time.” Chester J. Smith of the Motion Picture News put it: “The various characters are put through a series of evolutions that should provoke considerable mirth.” I guess he means it’s funny.

Peter Marshall

He was heralded as part of the second coming of Martin and Lewis. About the only thing Peter Marshall had in common with them is he and his nightclub partner split up.

Neither Dean or Jerry starred in La Cage Aux Folles, but Marshall did. He appeared on stage in Vancouver as part of a touring company, though he missed a performance to fly to Los Angeles to tape a TV commercial.

Comedian. Actor. Singer. Those labels will likely never be applied to Peter Marshall. He’s known to just about everyone as the “master” of Hollywood Squares.

Like just about everyone in show biz, it was a slow rise to fame for Marshall. His first appearance on television I can find is on September 21, 1949 on KBNH’s “Hollywood Premiere Theater.” Wrote columnist Zuma Palmer: “A top act was that in which Tom Noonan and Peter Marshall took off various types of radio programs, among them man-in-the-street interviews and Mr. Anthonys.”

Noonan and Marshall puttered around nightclubs, including La Martinique in New York in 1950. They were booked into the New Golden Hotel-Bank Club starting June 11, 1952. “The meteoric rise of the Noonan-Marshall comedy duo has been nothing short of phenomenal,” wrote the Reno Gazette, “meteoric” evidently meaning three years. “Disciples of wholesome, family-style comedy, they climax each performance with their now famous “Television Chef” routine. Their performance was one of the highlights of the Warner Brothers’ recent movie production, ‘Starlift.’ In addition to their wholesome comedy as a team, Peter Marshall departs from his ‘straight-man’ role to sing several of his recent recording vocal renditions.”

After Martin and Lewis split, Twentieth-Century Fox figured the world was ready for a replacement, so in 1959 it cast Noonan and Marshall in the feature The Rookie directed by someone no one thinks of as a film director—the voice of George Jetson, George O’Hanlon. In 1961, they made one motion picture—Swingin’ Along, written by former animation director Jerry Brewer. The same year, Marshall and Paul Gilbert shot a failed pilot for NBC called Shore Leave.

Then came Hollywood Squares.

Marshall admitted in his autobiography he took the job because he didn’t want Dan Rowan to get it. Noonan was suffering from a brain tumour (he died in 1968) and Marshall felt Rowan was being a Dick Martin (subtract the word “Martin”) to his former partner. The game show was a huge success and Marshall was now a name.

Here’s a piece from the Associated Press that appeared in papers in October 1969.

A DAYTIME HOLLYWOOD SQUARE
By CYNTHIA LOWRY
AP Television Writer
Peter Marshall has an identity problem. He is not related to the late chaplain of the U.S. Senate whose name was the same. Nor is he related to Russell Nype or to Gene Rayburn, with whom he is sometimes confused.
This Peter Marshall is the man who has been serving for four years as host on one of NBC's more popular daytime game shows, Hollywood Squares, and is, as a consequence, better known to the distaff side of the audience.
• • •
MARSHALL WAS born Pierre LaCock and grew up with his sister Joanne in New York City. When Joanne got into modeling, her agent renamed her Joanne Marshall. When Pierre decided to get into show business, he simply translated his first name into English and adopted his sister's modeling surname. Then, just to make everything good and mixed up, Joanne moved on to Hollywood where director Howard Hawks renamed her Joanne Dru, under which name she became a star.
Although no one has, as yet, developed an adequate tag for that small band of television performers who ride herd on game and panel shows—"host" or "M.C." are commonly used and neither really fits—the ones who are assigned to successful network ventures of the genre are in clover.
The compensation is excellent, the hours are superb—Marshall and his troupe tape a week's worth of shows in one day—and the exposure to the public is subtly beneficial. Marshall has the other four days of the normal work week to pursue other interests, including acting, singing—he just cut an album—and business.
Perhaps the greatest of these is business, because Peter Marshall's most lucrative a vocation involves commercials. As a matter of fact, it was the commercials that got him into television, Hollywood brand.
• • •
"I WAS DOING a show in New York—playing with Julie Harris in 'Skyscraper,' " Marshall recalled. "My agent asked me if I'd like to do some television commercials."

Marshall drew himself to his full height and announced he would not like—"I am an actor."
The agent, however, was persuasive, and the reluctant Marshall did one commercial spot for a cereal company. The result was a three-year, exclusive deal.
Before Hollywood Squares, Marshall packed in a lot of show business experience. After serving as an NBC page, he teamed up with comedian Tommy Noonan and, as a straight man for 13 years, played clubs all over the country.
"I think those years as a straight man were the most valuable asset I had when Hollywood Squares came along," Marshall said. "In one sense, the host on a game show is a straight man."
After Noonan died, Marshall had the male lead in the London company of "Bye, Bye Birdie" and continued in musical comedy with the Julie Harris vehicie. In between, he was appearing in minimusicals in Las Vegas—as far back as the 1950s—with occasional excursions into stock.
• • •
MARSHALL ENJOYS working with the regulars on Hollywood Squares who include Cliff Arquette, Wally Cox, Abby Dalton, Rose Marie, Paul Lynde and Jan Murray.
The game, physically based on tic-tac-toe, has the stars answering questions, in comedy style, with members of the studio audience winning small prizes by deciding whether the answers are true or false.
There was a small rhubarb when it was learned that some of the stars received "help" on the answers to the questions, but since the help had nothing to do with the winning or losing by the audience contestants, the producers had not announced it on the show. Now there is a printed notice to that effect.
Marshall says most of the stars do receive what he calls "hokes" to leaven their answers.
He, his wife, and their four children live in the San Fernando Valley.
Marshall, in some of that dandy spare time, has written one film play, “Mary Jane,” and recently has collaborated with Dick Gautier on another, “God Bless You, Uncle Sam,” a black comedy which will soon go into production.
"In a way," he said, "it all really started with those commercials I didn't want to do. That's where the producers of the game show first saw me. I'm glad I was persuaded to sell cereal."

Marshall talked a bit more about the show in this Dec. 1971 feature story from the TV Key syndicate.

Peter Marshall, the handsome host of NBC's long-running game show "The Hollywood Squares," was a juvenile until he turned 40. "I had to go around the track once before I matured," he said. "Something like an actor I know who was refused a role because he was too pretty. The producer said he had the kind of face that needed a scar. I guess that was my problem. And now that I've aged properly, I'm straight man for a game show board of screwballs, but I'm good at it."
Marshall's appraisal of his performance on "Squares" is an honest one. He claims he has seen himself turn in some terrible acting jobs, but when he watches "Squares," he is convinced they got the right man for the job.
"To my way of thinking," he said, "all game show hosts should be compared to Bill Cullen and Monty Hall. They're the top, and you grade down from there. But on 'Squares,' I'm in a slightly different arena. I have no way of knowing what kind of line the stars are going to throw at me — even if it's a prepared gag, I'm not told — and I have to be ready to react or counter with an appropriate straight line. I was a working comedian for many years — all to prepare me for 'Squares.' "

NBC is so pleased with Peter, Charlie Weaver, Paul Lynde, Wally Cox and the semi-regulars who fill out the board, that people over there renewed the show for five years and ordered extra editions to be syndicated nationally for nighttime viewing. The deal is such a lucrative one that Peter has gone into the game show business on his own hoping to make a nice profit by reinvesting his extra cash.
"I have a children's show idea at NBC which looks pretty good," he said. "It's based on a process I have taken an option on which makes drawings seem to talk. I used it for a children's quiz."
If Marshall occasionally looks over his shoulder, it's because he expects to be arrested for stealing. He still considers doing "Squares" great fun and the "work" schedule is ridiculous.
"I meet a few friends one afternoon a week, and we throw a few jokes back and forth while NBC tapes two episodes," Marshall said. "Then we go out for dinner, laugh like crazy, come back and tape three more. Naturally, by now we've worked so hard that we go out, drink and have a party. And we're being paid?"
Prior to "Squares," Pete was a successful comedian and actor. He appeared in musicals on Broadway, and the experience is now paying off in unexpected dividends. When the summer stock season rolls around, everybody in the business knows that Paul Lynde is big box-office in middle-America, but Marshall proudly reports that he is closing in.
"I did tremendous business in 'The Music Man' last summer in St. Louis," said Marshall, "and I'm looking around for something to try this season. Suzanne Pleshette and I are thinking of teaming up to tour in Frank Gilroy's play 'Only Game in Town.'"
Unlike may people who've been doing the same thing professionally for some years (I'll discuss Monty Hall in the near future), Pete Marshall hopes "Squares" runs forever. He paid his dues on the nightclub circuit, stock companies and just knocking around, although he proudly asserts that his handsome, juvenile face was rarely unemployed.
With "Squares" requiring only one day a week, he busies himself writing (an original story of his is being made into a film), packaging TV shows and doing guest shots.
Born in West Virginia but raised in New York, Marshall now lives with his wife and four children in California. His eldest son, Peter Leacock Jr. [sic] (apparently Peter Marshall and his sister, actress Joanne Dru, were originally named Leacock) is a highly touted outfielder in the Chicago Cubs' farm system, and Pete expects to be seeing the boy in the major leagues very soon.

NBC cancelled Hollywood Squares in 1980 and the show's syndicated run ended a year later. Marshall got a chance to sing on television on his own syndicated variety show while Squares was still in production. I don't recall if he ever sang a bar or two on the game show, but he recorded its original theme song (Bill Loose was asked to write a similar tune, which replaced "The Silly Song").