Cartoon Answer Man

Question: In Bosko’s Holiday, why is the dog licking a tire?



Answer: To set up a gag. The dog bites the tire and blows up like a balloon.



Question: In Bosko's Holiday, why is the dog licking Honey’s butt?



Answer: To set up a gag. Honey thinks it’s Bosko and slaps him to end the cartoon.



Question: In Bosko's Holiday, how can a huge bite in Bosko’s sandwich just disappear?



Answer: There's no real gag here. I guess it's because anything can happen in a cartoon.

This is another “Bosko and Honey go on an outing” cartoon. It stars an alarm clock and a candlestick phone in the first sequence. They’re funnier than Bosko and Honey.

Friz Freleng and Paul Smith are the credited animators in this 1931 cartoon.

Kenny Baker, Gee, He's a Thrill

Jack Benny had incredible good fortune when it came to singers.

Setting aside the Canada Dry show, which featured whatever vocalists the band had, Jack had one person hired to sing, and his batting average was pretty good. Michael Bartlett didn’t stay long, Larry Stevens doesn’t seem to have been trusted to do anything but warble and whistle, and Jack’s first non-band vocalist, Jimmy Melton, really didn’t seem to fit the show.

But following Melton came Frank Parker, who was popular, and after Bartlett left, Kenny Baker was hired. Both were capable of handling lines. After Baker quit, Mary Livingstone discovered Owen Patrick Eugene McNulty. They changed his name to Dennis Day and he became bigger than the other two, with much more of a flair for ridiculous comedy, and eventually demonstrating he was a showman, too, on stage in Las Vegas.

Still, I like Kenny Baker. His started out as a “bashful tenor” with a not-always-logical way of looking at the world. His character was a little more mature than Dennis’—he called Jack Benny “Jack” and not “Mr. Benny” like Day (and Stevens).

Kenny had ambitions beyond the Benny show and the silly character he had to play. He signed an exclusive deal with the Texas Company to appear on the Texaco Star Theatre and walked out on Benny. Unfortunately, he never achieved real stardom in the movies and his film career fizzled during the war. And while Fred Allen had a fake feud with Benny, he had somewhat of a real one with Baker, and he was dumped from the Star Theatre when it was cut to 30 minutes after the 1941-42 season (Allen had joined the programme a year after Baker). Benny, however, showed no ill-will toward Baker, who made a few guest appearances and was referred to in the Benny scripts, even into the 1950s.

The St. Louis Post Dispatch profiled Kenny in a feature story in its Sunday Women’s Magazine on April 18, 1937.

A TENOR TURNS TO THE FILMS
Youthful Kenny Baker, Who Has Been Heard by Millions Over Radio, to Be Seen in the Movies.
By H. H. Niemeyer
HOLLYWOOD, April 17.
EVERY Sunday night for a good many weeks now radio listeners have been thrilled, if they are the thrill, hero-worshiping type, at the singing of Kenny Baker on the Jack Benny program. Four or five million air fans hear him every week. Maybe it's 10 million—we're not up on radio figures. Kenny himself modestly places the crowd at a million or so, but whatever the number is, Kenny's audiences have never seen him Or practically never. But all that is about to be changed. Young Mr. Baker is getting a real chance in the films now and will be on display shortly.
The customers will be rather agreeably surprised, too. Kenny is, as everyone knows, a tenor, and the public’s idea of most tenors is a little fat man who sings romantically but who doesn't look the part. This, of course, doesn't take in the movie tenors. Screen heroes—and all picture tenors just have to be heroes; you couldn't have a cinema villain clutching a machine gun while reaching up in the clouds for a high note, could you?—must be reasonably handsome. And Kenny Baker is not little or fat. In fact, he's a pretty husky lad, standing 6 feet tall and weighing 170 pounds. Something of an athlete, too. Plays golf rather well and better than the average game of handball. Strange to say—and this Is no mere publicity stunt—his hobby is chopping wood, which is, to say the least, an unusual one for any tenor. He likes to get out with an ax and chop down trees. Maybe, as each one falls, he says, to himself, of course, “There goes Bing Crosby," or Allan Jones, or Dick Powell, or some other tenor, leaving himself standing, majestically, among the ruins.
Be that as it may, Kenny Baker CAN sing, and he is good-looking. The necessary touch of romance for a screen hero is furnished by a thick mat of light brown hair which is "naturally wavy." Also, if you care to know, his eyes are blue.
—o-o—
STRANGE to say, Kenny Baker, who has had a small part in one picture and who is about to be starred in “Mr. Dodd Takes the Air,” a film version of Clarence Buddington Kelland’s story, “The Great Crooner,” has been under contract to one of Hollywood’s most widely known picture producers, Mervyn LeRoy, for two years, but it just now coming into the spotlight. LeRoy picked him up one night at the Cocoanut Grove, where the young man—he was then 23—was singing. Thought he sounded promising, got his name on the dotted line and then, apparently, more or less forgot about his discovery.
Now, at 25, Kenny ranks among the first three male singers of the radio and LeRoy figures he has something worthwhile. Kenny hopes so too, for he has more assurance now than he had that night two years ago when, as a very nervous boy, he stepped before the microphone and was presented by Orchestra Leader Eddie Duchin to the assembled guests from filmdom and Los Angeles society, as just another tenor.
Baker didn't know it at the time, but his destiny was in that room. LeRoy, one of the top-notch directors of Hollywood, and the man famed for his discovery of Clark Gable, Loretta Young and Fernard Gravet, was seated at one of the tables among the cocoanut paIms. and heard Baker sing.
LeRoy numbers among his friends Jack Benny and he arranged for the personable Benny to hear his new find, with the result that was given a trial booking on the Jack Benny hour in October, 1935. A seven-weeks contract was followed by another for 13 weeks and a trip to New York.
—o-o—
THIS was the first time that young Baker had ever been on a train. In fact, it was the first time that he had ever gone out of California, the state in which he was born, The date of that event was Sept. 30, 1912, and the place was Monrovia, a little town in the foothills of the Sierra Madres of the Rocky Mountain range. Monrovia is about 30 miles from Holly wood. It is considerably more remote than that, insofar as the temperament of its people is concerned. Most Monrovia folks look upon Hollywood as a place of iniquitv and shake their heads at the idea of a fine boy like Kenny Baker being there.
The only child of Gordon C. Baker, a Monrovia furniture dealer, and his wife, Dorothy, Kenny has been singing ever since he could toddle, but like those other movie singers, Bing Crosby and Dick Powell, his first musical inclinations were instrumental rather than vocal. He wanted to become a violinist, and he spent much to Los Angeles—for business reasons, not on account of Kenny's fiddling and the boy, then in knee pants, became assistant leader and concert-master of the Robert Louis Stevenson junior high school orchestra.
Later, when his family moved again, away from their proximity to Hollywood, down to Long Beach, Baker discovered that he possessed an exceptionally wide wage of voice, and he sang at school assemblies and entertainments. However, for a time a shyness, not often noticeable among tenors, lack of professional training and encouragement hampered his progress.
He got a summer job working in a Los Angeles furniture store and used every cent of the money he earned for vocal lessons. So ambitious was he that he tried out a dozen different teachers within a few months.
Now he knew that he had the makings of a successful singer, that he had the voice to begin with, radiant health and youth. But the next summer vacation, he got a job helping build Boulder Dam and later on a farm in New Mexico, and it was impossible for him to take any voice lessons in those places. His quest for a singing career waned a little, but did not die.
Upon his return to Los Angeles, it was rekindled brightly when he got a few days work singing with a choral group in a Ramon Novarro picture. That was the boy's first contact with films.
His mother, who always encouraged him in his ambitions to sing, now persuaded him to enter the current trials for the Atwater Kent auditions, and he began to study with Edward Novis, brother of Donald Novis, a former Atwater Kent prize winner. But young Baker could, finish no better than second in the Long Beach district.
After this setback he entered Long Beach Junior College, and then he began to learn to sing by singing. He sang at every conceivable sort of function. For the Rotary Club, the Kiwanis, the Lions, a parent-teachers group, a church social. In fact, any place where they wanted a singer—without charge.
And all the time Baker was developing a likable personality which now, says Mervyn LeRoy, is going to make him a great screen star. He got his radio start, singing for 15 minutes with Ted Bliss, at Station KFOX, Long Beach. This didn't pay very much money, but it gave him confidence—and a local reputation.
May 6, 1933, was a red-letter day in young Baker's life, for he married Geraldine Churchill, who had been his best girl all during his days in high school. They are still married, even though four years is a long time for such things in Hollywood.
Now singing was a bread-and-butter proposition for him. He had to make it pay. He got a job singing at a Christian Science church, then he was given $19 a week and meals for himself and his wife for singing tenor in a radio quartet at California Christian College. He sang solos at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, too, every once in a while.
There is a man in Hollywood you seldom hear of, but he plays a mighty important part in the making of movies. His name is Dudley Chambers and he provides voices for the background music you hear in the movies—the large choruses and choirs. Baker became acquainted with Chambers, and worked as a “background singer" at Paramount, Fox and the Walt Disney studios. But he received no "screen credit" for these vocal efforts and Hollywood heard him without hearing of him.
One day when Baker was singing "background" again, in Lawrence Tibbett's "Metropolitan" picture, he was notified that he would be given an audition next morning in a Texaco radio contest sponsored by Eddie Duchin. He sang and was notified that he would enter the semifinals the next day. This was getting somewhere. He sang so well in his next attempt that he entered the finals—and won. This netted him his first national broadcast and also a week's engagement at the Cocoanut Grove at $100 for the week. It was his first important money.
It was then that LeRoy saw him and launched him on the road to fortune and fame.
In October, 1936, when Jack Benny returned to the air waves after a long absence, Kenny Baker joined him again, but this time as featured soloist. For 39 weeks Baker's voice thrilled the air-minded millions, and enabled him to place third in two national radio polls.
Then LeRoy began to realize what he had and gave him his first picture opportunity in "The King and the Chorus Girl," one of the big hits of the last few weeks. Baker appeared in the Folies Bergere number, singing the "For You" song. It wasn't much of a part, to be sure, but Kenny was launched in pictures.
However, "Mr. Dodd Takes the Air" is the picture which will show moviegoers the real charm and talents of young Mr. Baker. He's making it now.
He is still studying voice an hour each day, with Edward Novis as his coach. But he does not aspire to sing opera. His ambition is to step into the shoes of John McCormack. Ballads and semi-classical numbers are his favorites and he tries, in each singing appearance, to take full advantage of his exceptional voice range. Maybe you've noticed, over the air, how he has pulled many a bum ballad out of a bad hole by going up to High C or thereabouts, at the finish. Good old Chauncey Olcott used to do it the same way to the great delight of his Irish audiences at Havlin's Theater. Chauncey Olcott never played anything but Irishmen, you know, but he wasn't really an Irishman. Neither is Baker. John McCormack is still one up, there, on the boy who wants to fill his place in the music world.

Bob Clampett and Bugs Bunny on TV Animation, 1945

You likely watched animated cartoons on TV when you were growing up, including Bugs Bunny, Popeye, Mickey and/or Mighty Mouse.

Putting old theatrical cartoons on the air is a concept that goes back to the days when there were only a handful of television stations across North America.

You could find them in prime time during World War Two, a time when people don’t think there was any TV. Stations could fill time cheaply with old short films. WNBT in New York, for one, bought or leased cartoons from companies that marketed 16 mm. films to schools, churches, service clubs and anyone with a movie projector.

No, people wouldn’t see Bugs, Popeye or the aforementioned mice. What was available were cartoons from defunct studios. You wouldn’t see the cat and mouse Tom and Jerry from MGM, but you would the human Tom and Jerry from Van Beuren. The Van Beuren prints showed up regularly on prime time, even a few years after the war ended. For example, on December 23, 1944, WNBT aired the 1931 Aesop Fable Toy Time.

One of the people extremely interested in television during the war years was Warner Bros. director Bob Clampett. Stories in Variety followed Clampett’s interest during the time he was with the studio and for a while afterwards. He really was a visionary, He predicted animated commercials, which filled screens in the 1950s and provided employment to many Golden Age animation artists in small studios as the large theatrical operations were contracting. And he also predicted limited animation. Unfortunately, the war years were still a little early. Los Angeles only had one barely-operating station until 1943 (today it is KCBS-TV) then two stations until 1948 (the second is now KTLA).

In 1945, Clampett gave an interview to Television magazine, as himself and in character as Bugs Bunny. Bugs wouldn’t show up on TV until 1956 when Associated Allied Productions bought 337 Warners cartoons and made a mint offering them to eager television stations.

This full-page story was published in the July-August edition.

“Dey’ll Never Get It Off De Ground”
by Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny and his creator, Bob Clampett of Warner Bros. Cartoon Studio, discuss some of the high-points of cartoons in television.
"Howdy folks! Dis is Bugs Bunny speakin'.
What's all dis chatter about throwin' movin' pitchers around tru de air elec-chronically?
But seriously now, folks, dis television ting–if you ask me
"Dey'll never get it offa de ground." Why – just de other day I wuz sittin' around, over at de Warner Bros. Cartoon Studio, gassin' about television wit me friend – Director Bob Clampett. For a coupla years he's messin' around nites wit new cartoon techniques, and 'dis here television stuff.
"Listen, B.C.," I'm sayin', "You're oofty-magoofty – or Looney-Tuney or sumpin', t' spend all dis time messin' wit a ting of de fewcher.
What d'ya wanna do – have a noivuss break-up, or sumpin? Why,
"Bugsy, ol' boy," sez Bob, "Dis television ting is gonna be big. Lots bigger dan you or I."
"Bobsy, ol' boy," sez I, "Dey'll never get it off de ground." Den Bob slips me de $64 question –
"And how about Macaroni and his wireless telepathy?" sez he.
"A fluke," sez I. "A Sunday punch if I ever saw one. But just supposin' dis elec-chronic business really is de McCoy," sez I. "Where do I come in? What about cartoons over television?"
"Now we're gettin' somewhere," sez Clampett. "Draw up a chair and lend me your ears. Foist off–lemme say – animated cartoons over television gives a sharpness and clarity superior to any other technique because of its line quality – and sharp, simple tone images.
“And, foidermore," continues Clampett, "de cartoons' faster tempo, and direct approach – makes it able to tell a story or punch over an advertising point much more briskly dan –”
"Quick like a wabbit?" I interpolates.
"Quicker, yet. And, besides – ," continues Clampett wid'out even takin' de pause dat refreshes, "de animated cartoon is poifect for puttin' over everyt'ing from kids serials to 25 second commercials. From –”
"O.K. – O.K. – " I interrupts. "Who do ya t'ink ya are, anyhow – Dr. Tree De Forest – or sumpin? Givin' off wit' all da facts and figures – "
"No, Bugs – I'm no expert."
"O.K. – O.K. – Mr. Smartypants," I'm tellin' him. "So let's say dis television proves t'be de real malarky – and let's say cartoons come over like a million bucks – den comes de defoogalty!"
"What's de rub, Rabbit?" asks Robert.
"Just dis, bright-eyes. Cartoons'll not only look like a million bucks – dey're liable to cost a – "
"Million bucks?"
"Well, not exactly – but it won't be hay. Pen and ink monkeys don't work for peanuts anymore, y'know. And Wabbits may wove cawwots' –but when pay day rolls around –we're all just like mother and daughter."
"Y'mean – ah – workin' for de Yankee dollah?"
"Precisely."
"So?" asks Clampett.
"So – what bodders me is dis," sez I. "Who's gonna pay de freight on cartoons at de present price per foot?"
"A civil question," admits Clampett, "which desoives a civil answer."
"Y'see, Bugs, we, in de production end of cartoons, have realized dat television during it's [sic] formative years – will be faced wit dis cost problem you speak of. We've given it a lotta thought and we already have a few of de answers.
"Foist off – you must remember – a film made t'be shown on a gigantic theatre screen is one ting – an' one made t'be shown on even de largest television screen is anodder. In a 7 minute animated cartoon – every pen line is a cost. Therefore – SIMPLIFICATION is de answer.
"Say, f'r instance," continues Clampett. "Disney leaves de' buttons off of Mickey Mouses' pants –
"Sorta risky, ain't it?" I asks.
"Can't you ever be serious, Mr. Wabbit. What I'm attempting to point out is this. On the small television screen – the absence or presence of such a small detail would never be noticed. And yet, one button, when carried through a series of thousands of consecutive drawings – can cost a pretty penny – and a few Yankee dollahs t' boot."
"Therefore, – on television – simplification of detail in both character and background is better – not only commercially – but artistically."
"I still don't think Mickey's gonna like it – goin' around wit' no buttons on –"
"Besides, Bugs," continues Clampett, "De cartoon will make its costs justifiable on de spot announcements and station breaks by virtue of dere' many repetitions. We've stumbled onto a lotta other time and cost savers – but, de real ideas'll come when de Hollywood cartoon makers really start grindin' out films for television.
Out here in de Land of Oz we have de greatest grouping of animation experts in de world today. When dese animators, writers, and technicians get dere teeth in tele-cartoons – you'll see de quick development of a sensational new style of cartoon–tailored to television. Both artistically – and monetarily."
"Bravo! Mr. Clampett," sez U.
"Thank you, Bugs," sez Bob.
"I'm glad you're beginning to see it my way."
"But. if you ask me, Bob," sez I nonchalantly takin' a bite outa my carrot. "Dey'll never get it offa de ground!! . . . . . or will day?????"

As we all know, they got it off the ground–to inestimable profits. Bugs was a part of it. And so was Robert Emerson Clampett.

Slipping One Past the Censor

Professor Crackpot tells us he bade his wife a fond farewell, but (and here’s the gag) she actually threw him out of the house.



Here’s a throw-away gag. His suitcase bursts open. Inside is a nudie picture.



The cartoon is The Egg Collector, one of Ub Iwerks’ last theatrical cartoons under a contract to Columbia/Screen Gems. (Hmm. Maybe the nude was left over from a Flip the Frog cartoon).

This cartoon gives us a radio reference that’s pure Warner Bros. The professor asks a uniformed guard: “Is this the train to the Gobi Desert?” The Chinese stereotype turns Jewish, specifically into Kitzel from the Al Pearce Show, and answers: “Hmmm...could be.”



Boxoffice magazine’s review is anything but complimentary: “A crackpot professor offers a lecture with the aid of motion pictures. The Technicolor cartoon attempts to satirize similar ventures but instead of being sharp and witty it is dull and preposterous.”

Maybe the best gag is another cultural reference, one involving another cartoon. The narrating professor tells us about spotting “a wild, duck-billed platypus.” Cut to a dinosaur with a duck bill. After looking at the cartoon viewer, he launches into a Donald Duck impersonation, his fists up, and unintelligibly quacking in annoyance just like Clarence Nash.



There’s no animation credit on this, just music credits for Paul Worth and Eddie Kilfeather. Mel Blanc provides a couple of English accents and some other voices.

Is That a Bomb in Your Pants?

Rice-Puddin’ the Mad Monk believes he has escaped from angry villagers by turning his escape donkey into a helicopter in Wake Up the Gypsy In Me (1933).



Then he realises one of the villagers has slipped a bomb in his pants.



There’s an explosion and Rice-Puddin’ turns into a familiar face in early 1930s cartoons.



Ghandi isn’t the only famous caricature. I’ve lost track of how many studios used a gag where an orchestra leader turns around and turns out to be Paul Whiteman.



Friz Freleng and Larry Silverman are the credited animators.

Lew Pollock, Harry Miller and Lew “Monkeys is de Cwaziest Peoples” Lehr wrote the song in 1932; it is the only time it is heard in a Warners cartoon. The words “Wake up the gypsy in me” are found in Cole Porter’s 1929 song “Find Me a Primative Man,” while Ira Gershwin’s “Embraceable You” heard in the Broadway show Girl Crazy a year later says how someone can “bring out the gypsy in me.”

Of Sloops, Dolphins and Mauve

A pleasant half hour could be spent on a weekday afternoon in the 1960s watching four people in show business uncover liars.

We’re speaking of To Tell the Truth.

The panel evolved until it featured my favourite version—Tom Poston, Peggy Cass, Orson Bean and Kitty Carlisle. Like all good panel shows, the four had a chemistry but were all a little different from each other.

This is where I know Poston the best. The newspapers of the day reported CBS wanted a comedian on the panel, so Poston auditioned as a fill-in on January 20, 1959 and soon was given a regular job (Bye, bye, Hy Gardner!). More people today probably think of him working on a Bob Newhart sitcom. His fame came well before that, as one of the man-on-the-street interviewees on Steve Allen’s Sunday night variety show on CBS from 1957 into 1959.

Of course, fame is never instant, and it’s interesting seeing what people did along their path to bigger things. In 1946, Poston and his brother Dick were featured in the Del-York Players’ production of the Corliss Archer comedy “Kiss and Tell” at the Rehoboth Beach resort’s Straw Hat Theatre. “Tom is plenty funny and droll,” decided the critic for the Salisbury, Maryland Times on Aug. 8.

Three years later, he appeared with the famous Kenley Players in summer stock in “Petticoat Fever,” starring the famous Sonny Tufts. The theatre page Mahanoy City Record-American of Sept. 21, 1949 contained this verdict: “we have found his performance outstanding. He just doesn’t seem to know how to ‘do’ a bad job. This week, as a British nobleman, he deserves every complimentary adjective that can be paid an actor for a stellar performance.” (Poston told Associated Press entertainment reporter Cynthia Lowry in 1964 that “it was great experience but financially disastrous.” He and Dick had formed the stock company in Delaware).

It was on to the New York stage for Poston. And television. Sid Shalit, in the Daily News of March 11, 1955, wrote: “Tom Poston, the much-heralded young satirist, is beginning to liven up WABC-TV’s daily two and a half-hour ‘Entertainment’ stanza. He is highly personable and quick-witted with a professional aplomb far beyond his young years.” At the start of that year, he had been appearing in a satire on stage at the Plymouth Theatre on West 45th. Columnist Earl Wilson gave him a spotlight in this feature column of Feb. 17, 1955:

Actor Tom Poston Has Lots Of 'Homes' In Ohio
By EARL WILSON

NEW YORK—I’m almost willing to bet that young actor Tom Poston was kidding me with his explanation of why most of Ohio is his "home town.”
We were chatting backstage where he’s making big hit on Broadway with his drunk scene in “The Grand Prize,” starring June Lockhart. Critics praised Poston for his "shrewd characterization of an inhibited young man liberated by drink."
“Whereabouts are you from?” I asked innocently.
"Well," Tom said, leaning back in an armchair, "I'm from Steubenville, Massillon, Canton, Williamsport, Mount Gilead, Toledo, Marion, Cleveland, Columbus, Akron and Upper Sandusky.
"BUT I WAS born on a sloop off the coast of North Carolina. Birth certificate's registered in Charlotte.
“The reason we moved around so much,” he went on with a smile, "was that Dad always liked to keep one step ahead of the sheriff. He was busy in those days making 90-proof beverages without the bother of labels and stuff."
"You mean he was a moonshiner?"
"Please,” Tom held up a hand in apparent shock, "Dad calls himself a chemist.
“That explains why I happened to be born aboard a sailing sloop."
AND, OF COURSE, you could only expect, in the light of his background and the part he's now playing, that Tom claims he hasn't a had a drink in three years.
“My first Broadway show,” he said, "was Jose Ferrer’s ‘Cyrano de Bergerac.’
Then I was in his production of ‘The Insect Comedy.” I followed that up with ‘King Lear,’ starring Louis Calhern."
Poston also did a few productions in the Children's World Theater. "I was a wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, he said, and a more pooped wolf you never saw. Besides having more lines than Hamlet, that wolf had to dance, sing and tumble, shouting all the lines through a heavy mask. At the end of the second act, I just lay down on the stage.
“In that part I near to died!”
"By the way,” I said, hoping to pin him down to a specific Buckeye town, "got any relatives in Ohio?"
Nope," he replied, "most of them are in Kentucky.”

He gave some interviews during the time on To Tell the Truth. We’ve mentioned the one with Lowry. He once told the Miami Herald how he slept in and Johnny Olson was forced to pad his warm-up to make up time until he got to the studio. There’s an interesting one from Rick DuBrow of UPI (click on story on the right) about the time the two appeared together in a show at Northwestern University and “helped” Poston’s career. Well, it actually wasn’t an interview as Poston didn’t say anything.

That’s kind of like this syndicated half-pager from January 20, 1967. Poston never did talk about the game show. Instead, he showed the quirky, and I suspect deliberately mischievous, side of his sense of humour.

In Search of the 'Real' Tom Poston
By LEE VINSON
NEW YORK—Of the four knowing panelists on CBS-TV's To Tell the Truth, Tom Poston has the highest rating when it comes to identifying the genuine character and shunting aside the bogus "expert." His batting average, in tabbing the genuine article, is 75 per cent.
And so, just as Lewis Carroll once ventured on the trail of the snark, I set off in quest of Poston.
"Sure," he said on the phone. "Drop by the stage door right after the show and we'll talk it up."
WE MET AN hour later. In sports jacket and faded slacks, he had the casual air of a man just back from raking leaves. His blue eyes met the world straight on. His stance was one of leniency toward his peers.
"How about lunch someplace?" I asked. "No better place than the Stage Delicatessen," he said.
"Kind of noisy for conversation," I ventured.
"But quiet enough for Hungarian goulash," he replied.
En route to the delicatessen, I asked him how one man in one lifetime had stored up so many irrelevant facts.
"YEAH, LET'S talk about that," he said. "But first, we'll stop in here for a minute."
We entered another CBS-TV theater where Garry Moore was rehearsing his show. Everybody smiled at our companion.
"Hey, Tom,” someone called. It was Morey Amsterdam with Rose Marie. "Tom," Amsterdam said, "you know everything. Do Dolphins really . . . ?”
"Dolphins are okay," Poston assured him. "But are you aware that Lake Nicaragua in Central America is the only fresh water lake in the world which has man eating sharks in it?"
"No kidding,” said Rose Marie, aghast.
AMSTERDAM said, "But do Dolphins—?"
"See you," Poston told them, and waved at everyone as we left.
By the time we got to the corner, a production assistant from To Tell The Truth was trying to hail a cab.
"How'd you know about the sharks in Nicaragua?" I asked.
"Let's help her grab a cab," Poston said. So Poston went into the street and did all the waving to flag the cab, ushered the lady into it and saw her on her way.
We made it almost another block when Poston stopped to observe a building whose side was newly exposed because another structure had been torn away.
"LOOK AT that faded sign," he said, pointing. "An ad for liver pills. There's a date. 1912."
We studied the side of the building carefully, with minds full of wonder about liver pills and all the events of 1912. Eight people joined us, staring at the sign, and maybe they, too, were thinking about 1912. But, after all, in New York, people will stare at anything. As we walked away, they stared at us.
"Nice bunch of people," Poston said.
"They seemed to get along fine," I agreed. I was thinking of a conversational gambit to plumb the depths of Poston's knowledge when he pulled a manuscript from his jacket pocket. "Interesting why O'Neill is spelled that way," he said.
"GOING TO do a play?"
"No, not this one anyway. It isn't O'Neill, or anything worth a hang. I'd like to find a good one."
"Tough, huh?"
He waved at an elderly couple who were waving at him. "You know most of the stuff written today isn't very funny. Nor very stimulating. I read all the time, but I haven't found anything. You're a writer, aren't you?" "Well, yes, but now let's talk about you. Why do you have the best batting average on the series?"
"OH, THOSE things happen. Ever see such a day like today?"
Now we were at the delicatessen. We were offered a table in the corner, but he chose a small table flanked on either side by people and slurping sounds. He ordered a roast beef sandwich and urged me to have the goulash. "I guess you've picked up all that knowledge from events in your life. You were a bomber pilot, weren't you?"
"Were you in the service?" he asked. "Say, where are you from?"
"Texas originally. I read you were born in Kentucky.”
"OHIO," HE said, and autographed the menu for a man seated at the next table. "That's funny," I said. "I read a bio of you and it said Kentucky."
"Well, I was almost born in Kentucky," he explained. "My mother was on a train, and the train got to Ohio in time.”
I didn't say it, but I had also read that he was born on a river boat in Missouri.
"Were you born on anything?" he asked.
"On anything?"
"WELL, A SHIP or something."
"No. I was born in a bed. Just a regular bed."
"Just a bed," he mused. "Well, we better get out of here so they can have the table."
On the street, I said, being born on the train . . .”
"I'll never take over anyone else's role again," he told me.
"Terrible. Terrible. The other actors who have been in the play all along get locked into hearing a line said a certain way. The guy who created the part might have been saying it all wrong, but the rest of the cast is used to it. When you say the line your way, they feel you're some kind of nut.”

"IS THERE any script you think you might do? I need something like that for my story.”
He turned into a building doorway, and we went up in the elevator and into an office. He introduced me to the secretary, and dropped off the play script.
"Tom," I said, when we were on the street again. I felt I now had the right to call him Tom.
He sensed that I was going to say more than his name. He knew there was going to be a return to the question, to what now would be known as The Tom Poston Question.
AND SO HE bobbed into another doorway. We took another elevator. We entered another office. We said hello to another secretary, and Tom pointed to the paintings on the wall. "There's a fine one," he said, "but look at the border. Mauve."
It was his agent's office. His agent was out.
"There's never been a real mauve period for paintings," Tom said. "The yellows, yes. And the reds and blues. But mauve, no."
"You're a student of the fine arts?" I asked.
And he wheeled and took us back to the street. There he met Martin Balsam, an old pal of his. "This man is a writer," Tom said to Balsam.
"Send me something," Balsam said. "I read everything."
"SWELL," I told him. "I've got to get back. See you fellows another time."
From a block away, I looked back. Poston was standing talking to four people, and I wondered about what. Not about Poston, for sure. Not about all the time he's spent on the stage in roles he himself created. Not about the bomber he piloted in World War II.
Not about the old Steve Allen show that made him famous. Or his training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Or the movie. Or the University of Virginia. Or his degree in chemistry.
TO TELL the truth, there was no telling what he might be talking about. But the four people were pleased to be with him. Just as I had been. It's good to see a man like him around.
If we don't bump into him again soon, we'll see him on television anyway. And we'll probably never know how he comes by all the stuff he knows. But do we have to?
Does it really matter if the real Tom Poston never decides to stand up?

I always liked Tom Poston. He struck me as a pleasant man who could be funny instead of a man trying to be funny. And quirky is good, too.

Flipping Betty

The Fleischer studio did what it could to freshen the Betty Boop series.

In a 1938 cartoon, we get an old Fleischer concept in the title—Out of the Inkwell. Actually, Betty doesn’t come out of the inkwell. She goes into it at the end.

The short also has live action and stop motion. A janitor in Max’s office reads a conveniently-place book on hypnosis and puts Betty on a background drawing in his spell.



He causes her to flip around. There are nine drawings on a cycle.



The drawling, lazy janitor is pure Stepin Fetchit.

Tom Johnson and Otto Feuer are the credited animators.

The Rule of Three

Tex Avery sets up a scene in Ventriloquist Cat with two false starts, and then the gag.

The premise of the short is the generic Avery cat throws his voice to lure and cause harm to Spike (because, at the beginning of the cartoon, he tells us he hates dogs, as a matter of principle, I guess).

In this scene, the cat throws his voice to two store mannequins, and then a cop outside the store. Spike hears the noise, and rips off the clothes of each to find the cat.



See how Avery uses poses and expressions. Spike stops, looks and reacts as he realises his mistake. Tex could be a master of poses just as much as Chuck Jones.



My guess is the scene is by Mike Lah, judging by the angles on the characters and the conjoined eyes (which he drew in his cartoons for Hanna-Barbera). Walt Clinton and Grant Simmons also animated this 1950 release, with the story credit to Rich Hogan.