The Blanc Two-Step

An almost fatal car accident didn’t stop Mel Blanc. (You can read an account about it in this Yowp post).

He continued recording voices for Hanna-Barbera and Warner Bros. He had formed Mel Blanc Enterprises to produce humorous commercials. And there was a happy, Christmas-time reunion on the Jack Benny television show in 1961.

But he obviously slowed down. In looking through newspapers in the first half of 1963, I can find only two on-camera appearances—one with Benny and another, somewhat improbably, with Arthur Godfrey.

Godfrey had been ubiquitous on CBS television in the 1950s. Things had changed by the end of the decade, perhaps because of the discovery that he wasn’t as charming and laid back in real life as he was on camera. It didn’t quite kill his career. He co-hosted part of a season on Candid Camera in 1960 before walking off annoyed at the show’s owner, Allen Funt (who didn’t have much good to say about Godfrey, either).

The network was still interested in Godfrey’s talents and signed him to host specials. One in early 1963 featured Blanc. It turned out the two men had something in common, as Earl Wilson reported in his column of March 8, 1963. As you might have expected, Blanc had a Jack Benny story.

INJURED, BUT THEY'LL DANCE
Arthur Godfrey and Mel Blanc—each survivor of a near fatal auto accident, each held together by silver plates and pins—will try to forget March 18 that they've had to use canes . . . and will try to dance on TV.
Mel Blanc, while still on a cane, learned about this ambitious undertaking when he reported to the big red-head Arthur (who’ll be 60 in July) for rehearsal for CBS' "Arthur Godfrey Loves Animals" TV show.
"Tell me about your accident," Arthur said first.
"Well, this leg here had 22 breaks in it . . . I had five fractures in my spine . . . I was unconscious for 21 days . . . they kept telling my wife, Estelle, that I couldn't make it . . . she'd cry and beg them 'Please don't say THAT!" . . . there were 18 doctors on duty at the UCLA Medical Clinic . . . practically all of them worked on me . . . I was in a cast eight months, but it was two months before they could put me in a cast . . . “I've still got six silver screws through my leg . . .”
Blanc’ll do Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Speedy Gonzales, and Pepe Le pew, the French skunk, as well as the sound of Jack Benny’s expiring Maxwell, on the Godfrey show.
"THE ONE MAN who never forgot us when I didn't know whether I'd pull through," Mel said, "was Jack Benny. He’s come to see us every 10 days."
“One night we were having chicken-in-the-pot in the kitchen. He said he had to go to dinner at Dave Chasen's, but he'd just have some soup with us. Pretty soon he said he'd have dinner with us, and have dessert at Chasen's. Then Estelle brought out dessert and he said ‘Never mind, I’ll just have coffee at Chasen’s.’ He wound up going to Chasm's for an after-dinner drink."

A news release about the special said “With Mel Blanc, Arthur gets a taste of the wiles of Bugs Bunny when the sassy rabbit tried to fast-talk him into a television appearance while Sylvester and Pepe Le Pew interrupt with idea of their own.” The Boston Globe’s review added Blanc demonstrated the voices of “Sweetie Pie” and “baby Deeno.” Percy Shain evidently needed to watch more cartoons.

There was an interesting and unique follow-up to this story in the Fremont Tribune of June 17, 1963. The columnist in this Nebraska newspaper was not an entertainment writer. He was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. We’ll leave him with the last line, again showing the selflessness of a supposed 39-year-old.

Reflections
Two Entertainers Offer Lesson in Enduring Woe
By CHARLES S. RYCKMAN
The capacity for achieving amazing triumphs over physical handicaps seems to be in some people in proportion to the severity of the disability. The most complaining and despairing sometimes are those with minor and temporary impairment of their bodily faculties.
Those with major loss of physical powers, and especially those with long and perhaps permanent experience with agonizing suffering, often rise to the highest peaks of endurance and accomplish the greatest degree of mastery over the tragedies with which they must live for the remainder of their years.
The current activities of two great entertainers offer vivid illustration of these facts. Radio and television personality Arthur Godfrey is one. The movie and TV veteran Mel Blanc is the other. They appeared together on Godfrey's television program in March, supporting themselves on canes. They danced, told jokes, kidded each other and themselves, treating their own disabilities so lightly and casually that viewers had little understanding of the bitter hell both men have known, and still must know as long as they live.
Arthur Godfrey was an auto accident victim many years ago. He has had so many operations he has lost all count. His body is so pieced and patched that what he was born with and what now holds him together are so intermingled that identification, like the lady's hair color and her hairdresser, is known only to his surgeons.
* * *
Mel Blanc went down into his purgatory by the same route, but much later. One leg had 22 fractures. There were five breaks in his spine. He was unconscious for 21 days. It took two months to get him in condition to wear a cast, and he wore the cast for eight months. He still has six silver screws in the formented leg.
But you knew mighty little of this as they danced, gagged and entertained millions of people. They themselves seemed scarecely conscious of the tortured road by which, they had come. They know about it, well enough. Neither is a stranger to pain and fear nor ever will be again.
And, for a wry item, of all Mel Blanc's friends only one was a constant visitor at his bedside through-out the long months of his ordeal. That was comedian Jack Benny, who works so hard to develop an image of himself as a selfish man.

Bell, Book and Wood

The “books come to life” cartoons at Warner Bros. always gave the opportunity for the background artist to sneak in a reference to cartoon studio staff. We’ve mentioned this about Bob Clampett’s Book Revue in this post. There’s a name we didn’t catch until now. Observe the author(ess) name on the fifth book from the left.



Raynelle Bell worked under Clampett at the “Katz” division in the 1930s (making a sojourn to Florida and the Fleischer studio before returning to the West Coast), and was his ink and paint supervisor when he opened Snowball and made the Beany and Cecil cartoons in 1962. Bell was a cousin of inker Dixie Mankameyer, who later married animator Paul J. Smith.

Raynelle was born January 21, 1916 in Kansas City, Missouri; her father was named Ray and her mother was named Nelle. The family moved to Tulsa in 1920 where her father ran Bell's Cafe on Third Street until 1927. The Tulsa papers in the ‘20s report she and Dixie were pupils of Rose Arnott Littlefield and took part in her recitals.

The Bells arrived in Los Angeles between 1928 and 1929. Raynelle was a graduate of Hollywood High School (where she led the volleyball team) and USC. While in the land of the Trojans, she received honourable mention for a poster in an “Art in America” contest. In 1935, she won a suntan contest sponsored by the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce.

She was remembered fondly by the wonderful inker and painter Martha Sigall in her autobiography, who said Warners hired Raynelle in August 1936.

When she got married in June 7, 1944 to Cpl. Franklin Eugene Day, she was employed by Walt Disney; Day had been a singer and employed at MGM before enlisting in 1941. She was back at Warners by early 1945, judging by the company's Club News photoshoot published in April that year. Evidently, she got out of the animation business to raise her two young children as she has no occupation next to her name in the 1950. Martha worked for her at Snowball, and later at Kurtz and Friends. Raynelle moved to Eugene, Oregon after retiring and died there on November 9, 2002.

The backgrounds in this cartoon were painted by Cornett Wood. A native of Indianapolis, Cornett Francis Wood was born September 12, 1905. He was a member of Troop 43 of the Boy Scouts as World War One was winding down. He attended Shortridge High School, where he was on the art staff for the high school annual. He entered a number of art contests and in 1925, he won a $130 winter scholarship given by the Indiana Poster Advertising Association.

Wood had the unfortunate situation in 1932 of testifying in the juvenile delinquency trial of his 17-year-old sister Vera who, it was claimed, held up either nine or eleven people with a toy pistol, was obsessed with crime novels, got angry easily and was addicted to cigarettes. “I think she is subnormal,” he told the court.

The Indianapolis Star of Sept. 8, 1933 gives a short biography in connection with a painting demonstration at the state fair art gallery:

Wood [was] a graduate of the [John] Herron art school in 1927 and later a student for one semester in the Pennsylvania academy under Daniel Garber and George Harding.
For two years Cornett Wood has been doing commercial art for the Bemis Brothers Bag Company. He designs pictures and lettering that are printed on the front of flour bags and coffee bags. In spare time he paints pastel portraits that are unusually artistic He had months experience as a sailor, following the period of advanced study in the Pennsylvania academy, when he shipped on a freighter with the American Export Line and went to Italy, remaining on the boat while it put in at ten or twelve Italian ports.

The Star reported on Sept. 15, 1936 that Wood was now in Los Angeles working for Walt Disney. A story in the Santa Barbera News-Press of Apr. 1, 1945 about a demonstration and lecture he was conducting about making animated cartoons said:

Wood is considered one of the outstanding artists in the field of animations. He worked at the Disney studio for nearly seven years, and during the past three years he has been made Warner Brothers’ cartoons. At present he is designing backgrounds, which is the stage for the characters.

Book Revue was the first Warners cartoon where Wood got a screen credit. After one more cartoon with Clampett, he was moved to Bob McKimson’s unit to handle layouts. He left the studio after making Dog Collared (released Dec. 2, 1951) and was replaced by Pete Alvarado.

He had an interesting distinction at Warners, at least according to the Dec. 23, 1949 edition of the Palm Springs Limelight-News, which called him the “well known creator of Bugs Bunny.”

In 1959, his name is found on two film strips made for the Girl Scouts of America.

Wood died May 16, 1980. He had been living in La Canada.

Clampett's name can be found on various books in the background of this cartoon. Perhaps the most interesting one is to the right of a comic book.



“Invisible Man” aptly describes Clampett at this point. The cartoon was released on January 5, 1946. The Warner Club News of June 1945 announced Art Davis had replaced Clampett as a director. Considering it took months to have Technicolor prints struck for completed cartoons, it’s likely Clampett was still at Warners when Wood painted the backgrounds. But it’s a neat coincidence.

Escape From Clampett

Bob Clampett’s Book Revue is an energetic tour-de-force of perspective animation, huge open mouths with curly tongues, and stretch in-betweens that are worth stopping the film just to look at.

Below are 24 frames—one second of animation. The Big Bad Wolf is breaking out of jail. He races up “past the camera.”



Here is the animation slowed down.



Clampett loved radio and pop culture references. There are plenty of them here, with a send-up of The Whistler and The Aldrich Family, and caricatures of Gene Krupa, Harry James, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Bob Burns, W.C. Fields, the inevitable scrawny version of Frank Sinatra, and Daffy Duck impersonating Danny Kaye. (See E.O. Costello's comment; this cartoon pre-dates the radio show Escape; I was thinking of Suspense).

Rod Scribner, Manny Gould, Bill Melendez and Bob McKimson are the credited animators.

My favourite drawing in this cartoon is Daffy turning into an eyeball. You can see the frames in this post.

Tomorrow, we'll have a hidden gag from this cartoon for you.

Tubby Fights the Civil War

A Union military commander gives a pep talk like a baseball coach in Friz Freleng’s Confederate Honey.



Cut to a shot of the Northern soldiers.



Movie fans in 1940 wouldn’t have noticed, but Warners staff would recognise three of these soldiers. On the left is writer Tubby Millar. Next to him is Leon Schlesinger’s office manager Henry Binder. On the right is animator, and future Lantz director, Paul J. Smith.

It was inevitable that some cartoon studio would parody Gone With the Wind. Friz and his writing staff (Bugs Hardaway gets the story credit on this) decided to stick Elmer Fudd, previously seen in Elmer’s Pet Rabbit (also 1940) in the part of the Rhett Butler send-up. Because the two have an awful lot in common.

The Exhibitor, in its April 17, 1940 issue, rated the cartoon “excellent,” adding it was “by far the slap-happiest and most laugh-provoking reel of color cartooning ever put out by Leon Schlesinger (and that takes in a lot of territory)” and that it “had a projection room audience doubled up with laughter.”

This was the third Warners cartoon where Bryan gave a character his Waymond Wadcwiffe voice from radio. The first was in Dangerous Dan McFoo (1939), which didn’t feature a Fudd role.

Warner Bros.’ pressbook for Tear Gas Squad suggests pairing the feature with Confederate Honey, calling the cartoon “a mirthful mélange of satire and good-natured fun.” Well, I guess in 1940, lazy Stepin Fetchit types were yuck-fests.

She's a Piano Top and an Underwater Pen

Is it possible to pick a favourite voice of June Foray?

There are so many of them, and likely all kinds we have never heard because of the countless commercials she was hired to do.

It’s a treat to run into articles about her. She must have entertained millions of people so any recognition is welcome, especially in the 1950s and ‘60s when almost all voiceover people were anonymous (unless they appeared in cartoons).

Her first screen credit for animation came from Walter Lantz, despite her long career at Warner Bros. She worked for MGM, Format Films (The Alvin Show) and, well, I’ll stop there because long lists are the province of other places on the internet.

Here’s a short column from the Copley News Service that appeared in papers in 1963. Jay Ward would be interested to know he didn’t come up with Fractured Flickers. And Foray’s predecessor at Warners, Bea Benaderet, gets her name spelled wrong again.

ACTRESS PROFITABLY FATED TO BE HEARD, NOT SEEN
By DONALD FREEMAN
HOLLYWOOD, July 4 (CNS)—Although she would dearly love to be entrusted with a serious dramatic role, it is June Foray's enviable financial fate to be summoned whenever producers need the voice of a cat or a dog or a parrot. Or, for that matter, a visitor from the moon or a pen that's so happy to be writing under water or the evil Natasha on the "Bullwinkle" show or any of a hundred voices that comprise this gifted actress' repertoire.
This coming season, for instance, she will be heard as Bunny, girl friend to the title character in the new "Beetle Bailey" cartoon series.
She’ll be several voices on Hanna-Barbera's new "Fractured Flickers" show. And she'll be all kinds of voices on a variegated roll call of commercials, some of them easy assignments, some not so easy.
"But then, we voice people do have a certain—ah, artistic freedom," Miss Foray pointed out the other day. "They ask you to be the sound of the top of a piano being polished—who knows what the top of a piano sounds like? Who knows what a girl from the moon sounds like? In a word, we wing it."
• • •
MISS FORAY, A CHARMING package who stands about a whisper over five feet tall, is one of a handful of voice specialists in Hollywood, There are perhaps seven or eight performers available who can rattle off at least 10 voices each. In that department the list begins and virtually ends with such people as Mel Blanc, Alan Reed, Bea Benadaret [sic], Daws Butler, Paul Frees, Dave Barry and Jim Backus (who is, incidentally, the Little Old Winemaker) and Miss Foray herself. Because of this scarcity and the great demand for a diversity of voices, the pay is quite ample.
"Financially — let's face it — it is utterly fantastic," Miss Foray noted. "What does 'fantastic' mean? Well, if you make more money than the president of the United States that, to me, is fantastic. Back in radio I used to make a nice living wage but 15 years ago if someone would have said, 'June, you're gonna end up with a tax problem,' I'd have howled with idiot laughter."
• • •
RARELY ON TELEVISION does Miss Foray emerge as her own pert self although last season she did just that on an Arthur Godfrey special, demonstrating some of her voices. She has supplied six voices for "The Flintstones," for example, and all the female voices, from Natasha to Nel Fenwick, on the "Bullwinkle" show.
If duty calls, she can do the voices of cats, chickens, roosters, parrots, lambs, goats, donkeys, crows and on and on in the bird-animal kingdom. She does eerie sounds that would frighten Alfred Hitchcock.
Name a dialect and Miss Foray can rattle it off in any voice you ask—Irish, Cockney, Swedish, French, Russian, sectional accents from every section of the land from Southern to Brooklyn to Eastern to Texas.
Miss Foray herself is native to Springfield, Mass., and started in radio at age 12.
In private life, Miss Foray is married to the writer, Hobart Donovan.

June Foray is one of those people who makes me smile when I hear her voice and feel happier afterwards. That’s actually not a bad accomplishment for the top of a piano.

Let the Game Begin . . . After a Slight Delay

There’s a problem starting a football game in Bosko the Drawback (1932). The timekeeper’s gun doesn’t have a bullet. It has an egg. The egg drops out of the barrel and hatches.



The problem is a short one. The chick pulls out a whistle and blows it to begin the first half of the game.



This may the only Warners football cartoon which does not include “Frat” or “Freddie the Freshman” in the score.

The animation credits go to maybe the studio’s best draughtsmen at that point, Bob McKimson and Friz Freleng. There are better gags than this I would have posted but the available versions of this cartoon are from VHS copies (and not first generation) that are rife with digital pixilation which makes the frames murky and the action difficult to see.

Bosko was Warners’ first star and his Looney Tunes deserve something better than 40-year-old technology.

Porky's Celebrity Guest

Hunter Porky Pig decides to eat a sandwich on his rowboat, but it interrupted by a quacking flock of ducks in Porky's Duck Hunt (1937)



Porky goes for his shotgun. I like how the ducks simply fly up with their butts in air, like someone hit the reverse button on them.



The second time, Porky somehow gets his gun twisted around shoots a hole in the boat.



Out of the lake comes Joe Penner and Goo-Goo (his duck). This gives Penner a chance to shout one of his catchphrases—“Wanna buy a duck?” The scene ends.



Director Tex Avery didn’t know it, but this cartoon was the forerunner of another hunting cartoon starring a different character, a rabbit in complete control of the situation instead of a darn-fool duck being crazy. It also launched the duck on a wild career of several personalities.

Boxoffice magazine had this to say in its issue of June 7, 1937:

The grown-up kiddies, as well as those of school age, will doubtless find enjoyment in this first-rate Looney Tune produced by Leon Schlesinger. The little stuttering pig decides to go duck shooting and, although well equipped with bullets, decoys and a complete hunting outfit, he has difficulty locating the elusive ducks. When he finally finds one it proves to be entirely too smart for him, so much so that it even shows Porky the proper way to fire his gun. After many more mishaps Porky returns home empty-handed where the scornful ducks outside his window give him the “bird.” Deserving a spot on any program, this cartoon is lacking in only one element, that of color.

Interestingly, about the same time, Walter Lantz released a duck hunt cartoon starring Oswald the rabbit and his dog Elmer. It was the forerunner of, well, nothing.

Bobe Cannon and Virgil Ross are the credited animators of this landmark Warners short, with the best drunken fish in cartoondom.