Kal Kat Komedy

Friz Freleng and Tex Avery both remarked how they had to stop the comedy in Merrie Melodies cartoons and fit in a Warners-owned song.

The 1938 short Katnip Kollege is the opposite. It’s all-singing, all-dancing, all-smooching. But where’s the comedy? Or maybe it’s “komedy” because words in the title that start with “c” are spelled with a “k.”

Is it when a book is thrown at a cuckoo clock bird? (The freeze-frame impact is good).



Is it when an empty mesh wastepaper basket is crowned over the head of a student who then sings about Columbus being in the “juggaroo”? It looks like the student is behind bars. Like being in the jug. Get it?



Is it when the teacher sits on a tack and, well, that's it.



Apparently a dead can of oil against a fence came from the Bronx.



And there’s the inevitable dunce cap that populates cartoons. The Betty Boop short Swing School, released the same year, also includes a musically-inept animal forced to wear a dunce cap. When was the last time one of those was in an actual school?



I like inside gags, and there’s one during a pan shot of Professor Dalton. This cartoon was co-directed by Cal Dalton, who was born in 1908.



The cat on the statue isn't kissing it. He's bobbing his head on either side of Prof. Dalton's head. I guess his lips are pursed because everyone else's are.

However, I am again in the minority with my apathy for this cartoon. Motion Picture Daily’s review on June 3, 1938 calls it “A somewhat fantastic, but nevertheless entertaining cartoon in a standard sense is offered here.”

A theatre manager in the Sept. 10, 1938 edition of the Motion Picture Herald not only liked it, he preferred Warners’ releases over those from Uncle Walt.

KATNIP KOLLEGE: Merrie Melodies— As good a color cartoon as you could ask for. Disney will have to watch his laurels to keep first place. If Schlesinger used color as does Disney, I feel that the former would rank with Disney as his subject matter far surpasses the Disneys. Running time, 10 minutes. — A. J. Inks, Crystal Theatre, Ligonier, Ind. Small town patronage.

Joe D’Igalo is the credited animator, and the story credit goes to Dave Monahan. Thanks to Daniel Goldmark, we learn Monahan was the lyrist behind tune sung during the “Professor Dalton” sequence and when Johnny finally starts swinging (it’s called “No Name Stomp”).

The cartoon was officially released June 11, 1938 but, as you can see to the right, it was being shown at a theatre in Albert Lea, Minnesota, on May 31. Let that be a lesson to you.

The Infamous Horn

The Horn Blows at Midnight may, or may not, have been a lousy movie, but Jack Benny’s writers got an awful lot of mileage out of it. The first reference on the Benny radio show to it was on Jan. 23, 1944. How many others there were, I don’t know, but no less a person than movie mogul Jack L. Warner showed up twice to joke about it (in an appearance on Feb. 20, 1949, promoting a radio version on The Ford Theatre, he got unintentional laughs by butchering the dialogue).

One episode featured Mel Blanc playing a car lot attendant who had his Hollywood career killed by directing the film. Another was a funny episode which ended with the entire patronage of a drive-in theatre zoom away when Horn was announced as a special double-feature (aired Oct. 24, 1954).

Movie studios were notorious for planting BS to promote their films. Whether any other what was reported by the Associated Press in the 1944 story below is true, I can’t tell you, but we’ll pass it along.

Jack Benny Finds He’s No Angel
BY TED GILL
HOLLYWOOD, Feb. 12.—(AP)—Comedian Jack Benny is trying his best to be a good little angel—but frankly admits it's a devil of a job!
Benny is appearing in "The Horn Blows at Midnight," in which he's supposed to be No. 4 trumpeter in a heavenly symphony—but the Waukegan wisecracker, whom his arch-rival, Fred Allen, jokingly calls the neanderthal nit-wit of the airways—blithely confesses he doesn't know as much about trumpets as he does about violins—which, he adds, is practically negligible —so they dub in the sound effects.
Next, they had to denude Jack of his pretty white wings, because they were flopping grotesquely in everyone's eyes, and besides, pranksters were habitually plucking out feathers to use as pipe cleaners--so they compromised, and appliqued a small set of wings on Jack's white robe—and let it go at that.
In another scene, Benny's toupee accidentally got knocked off during a rough-and-tumble fracas with some children. Promptly one youngster grabs it up and dashes off, yelling: "Oh, boy, Fred Allen will pay me plenty for this!"
Benny admits he perhaps should have started being an angel a little earlier in life, but adds: "This probably is as close to heaven as I'd ever get, anyway."

The Newspaper Enterprise Association provided this look the same month.

Benny Doesn’t Like Heaven In His Newest Movie
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
HOLLYWOOD, Feb. 1 (NEA)—Heaven isn't all that it's cracked up to be, Jack Benny said.
He was having trouble, he complained, keeping his white robes clean. A man with a bottle of cleaning fluid had to follow him around.
Those gold sandals were breaking down his arches. Lugging a trumpet around all the time was very bothersome, too. The heavenly hours were too long. And he just didn't feel like an angel, Jack said, since the studio wardrobe department clipped his wings.
"All this and heaven, too. It's too much," Jack groaned.
The picture is "The Horn Blows at Midnight." The three principal angels—Benny, Alexis Smith and Guy Kibbee—played their first scene together and their wings got in each other's way. In the middle of the third "take" the tip of Alexis' wing stuck Benny right in the eye and Director Raoul Walsh stopped the scene.
Finally somebody came up with the idea of the angels wearing wings like the boys in the air corps do. So they clipped the wings of the angels and reseed on a pair of bright, red cloth wings on their white robes.
Since then life in heaven has run much more smoothly.
"The Horn Blows at Midnight" is a comedy about an angel sent down to destroy the earth—because there’s so much hate. Angel Benny is elected for the job. He's given a trumpet to blow at midnight, a book of instructions and a modern business suit. Then he's shoved into an elevator and a split second later he's walking down Fifth Avenue.
Fallen Angels
From then on, everybody hopes, there will be lots of laughs. Benny, you see, has been an angel for a couple of thousand years and things have sorts changed on earth. Besides he's a forgetful gent. He loses the instruction book, gets mixed up with a beautiful girl, Dolores Moran, and a couple of fallen angels who know the secret of the trumpet and eventually steal it from him.
Jimmy Kern, who wrote the script with Sam Hellman, was much more enthusiastic about it all than Benny, who is a natural worrier. “It's tailored for Jack," Kern said. "That one scene where he goes to a restaurant and orders a lot of stuff he's never eaten will be terrific."
We had to admit it was a very funny scene. Knowing nothing about earthly food, Benny first orders a banana split. Then he has some kippered herring. He sees someone eating a big dill pickle, so he orders one for himself. He winds up the meal with roast duck and oyster stew.
The unbelieving, astonished waiter, is played by one John Brown, who until a few weeks ago was a member of Fred Allen's radio show. Jack met Brown in New York, liked him and brought him to Hollywood as his protégé. But getting back to heaven, we noticed a large panel of photographs identified as “Fallen Angels." As Alexis explains to Jack, "Fallen angels can never come back here, and there's only one other place for them to go."
Cinema Caution
The photographs, Director Walsh pointed out, were all of people on the set—hairdressers, cameramen, carpenters, etc. There was even photograph of Walsh. Having once been sued for using in a movie the telephone number of a guy in Milwaukee, Warner Bros. studio takes no more chances. There'd probably be grounds for a suit, at that, if a model in New York or a politician in Oregon recognized his photograph playing a "Fallen Angel" on the screen.
We were surprised, though, that Benny, as a gag, hadn't slipped in a photograph of Fred Allen as one of the fallen angels.
"What!" groaned Jack, "and let that guy steal a laugh? I've got enough worries."
As a matter of fact. Jack Benny seemed to be a very unhappy angel.

While Benny and his friends joked about the “mediocrity” of The Horn Blows at Midnight, there was one picture Jack really did not like. He told the Knoxville Sentinel-News on Jan. 2, 1944, in an unbylined story, after a description of Horn:

The idea is an amusing one and Benny's got his fingers crossed.
Last time he heard of an amusing story, he insisted on Twentieth Century-Fox buying it. It was called "The Meanest Man in the World" and it did seem funny, until the experts got through with the script.
"I pleaded with them to throw it away," Benny said. "They had spent about what my salary amounted to and I told 'em I would gladly do another picture free, if they'd only forget this one. The embarrassing thing was that it was my idea in the first place to make it, and I could not talk them out of it."
• • •
Called Worst Movie
WHEN completed the picture was so bad, according to Benny, it could not be released. One of the greatest of the movie makers (who shall be nameless here) went to work on it and finally let loose upon an unsuspecting public a movie. Some critics for whom we have respect, grimly called it the worst movie Hollywood ever made. That is a broad statement. There have been worse.
"Let's just call it bad," said Benny, "and try to forget it.”
It was the only really terrible movie he ever made. The three before it, including "Charley's Aunt," "George Washington Slept Here," and "To Be or Not To Be." were smash hits and Benny has hopes the customers will remember those.

Indeed, To Be or Not To Be received critical acclaim, and Charley’s Aunt was another film seized upon by Benny’s radio writers, including some where Jack dressed in his old woman’s costume (once to escape Ronald Colman, Apr. 25, 1948).

Our Horn trivia: Louella Parsons broke the story on May 19, 1942 that Ida Lupino had been signed to star in the film, then was the first to report on May 11, 1943 that Benny would play an angel in the movie. In the meantime, Lupino bowed out.

Our non-Horn trivia: Jack and his co-star from George Washington Slept Here, Ann Sheridan, were supposed to appear together on the Screen Guild Players' version of Nothing But the Truth on Feb. 21, 1944, but the broadcast was called off and a different one with other stars substituted. No reason was given in the press.

The biggest story involving Jack in Feb. 1944 wasn’t his movies. Newspapers revealed his show would no longer be sponsored by General Foods as of June 11, but by American Tobacco for the coming radio season (the Associated Press didn’t mention specific products while the United Press did). Jack had been getting $22,500 a week to plug the only cereal (I can think of) with a double-plural name, Grape Nuts Flakes. The deal for Lucky Strikes on radio lasted until the end of Jack’s show in 1955.

Now, a Drawing From Our Sponsor

Animated television commercials in the 1950s had great designs, clever copy and fine voice-overs. They were made, for the most part, by artists who had worked on theatrical shorts.

Television Age magazine included stories or blurbs about cartoon commercial production and, best of all, one-frame samples.

These are from the Feb. 8, 1960 issue. To the right is José, the spokes-monkey for Kellogg’s Cocoa Krispies. Eventually, the role was taken over by Snagglepuss. Kellogg’s was sponsoring his cartoons on the Yogi Bear show, and other Hanna-Barbera characters were already featured in commercials, some of them animated by Ed Love.


It’s a shame high-resolution copies of the trade paper aren’t on-line.

We’ve spoken about Ray Patin Productions in this post; Patin had been at Disney, then moved to Warner Bros. The issue reported:

RAY PATIN PRODUCTIONS, INC.
Completed: IXL Food Co. (food products), Armand Productions; Purex Corporation, Ltd. (bleach), Columbia Pictures; Skippy Peanut Butter Div. Best Foods, Inc. (Skippy), GB&B; General Foods Corp. (Jell-O), Y&R; Bardahl Oil Co., Inc. (oil), MMH&H.
In Production: General Mills, Inc. (Cheerios), D-F-S; Johnson & Johnson (Perfron), Y&R.

Bill Melendez was an animation director at Playhouse, run by Ade Woolery of UPA. Former MGMer Jack Zander was connected with Pelican Films for a time. Elektra was started by Abe Liss, who had been at UPA. Ray Favata was a designer at a number of commercial studios in New York, including Tempo in the 1950s and Gryphon in the early '60s. Lars Colonius had worked at Disney and was the man who brought you the nuke-scare cartoon Duck and Cover. Bill Sturm had animated at Fleischer/Famous.

HFH Productions was Dan Hunn, Ronald Fritz and Howard H. Henkin. Henkin was gone by 1961 and working for Fred Niles' new office in New York, so Hunn and Fritz changed into D & R Productions. Hunn, in 1990, was animating on the Jetsons movie for Hanna-Barbera. Bandelier was operated by Robert Stevens, with Dan Bessie, an ex-MGM assistant animation, as director. TV Cartoon Productions was run by Robert Leo Hovorka and Robert J. Mills, former students of the Art League of California. Paul Kim and Lewis Gifford set up a studio bearing their names in 1959.

Morphing Musical Instruments

Schoolboy Bimbo (wearing glasses so the teacher won’t hit him) grabs a banjo and strums the old chestnut “School Days” in the finale of the Talkartoon Teacher's Pest (released Feb. 7, 1931).



Bimbo keeps time with his left foot. In the frame above, the upper part of the shoe detached from the sole (note the nails). Later, the whole shoe stays on the floor and his foot lifts out of it.

The banjo morphs into a sax. When he squeezes it, a cat jumps out of the bell.



The instrument becomes a trombone, which wraps itself around Bimbo and tries to crawl away like a snake.



He pulls it back, and it briefly goes from a mandolin into a bass violin, which he plays from the hole with a saw.



The large fiddle explodes and when the dust clears, Bimbo plays the woozy stars above his head like a xylophone.



All kinds of things come to life in these early Fleischer shorts. The continents on the teacher’s globe start slapping in rhythm. A pen and pencil dance on a sloping desk. And, in a terrific visual, letters and numbers from a blackboard dance and break apart in mid-air, with silhouettes of students behind them.



Yeah, crappy TV “message” cartoons from the ‘80s can get restored, but we can’t get a pristine set of the inventive Talkartoons and Fleischer Screen Songs. Bravo to anyone working on these. Still, these frames are certainly better than nothing.

Grim Natwick and Seymour Kneitel are the credited animators. “School Days” was co-written in 1907 by Gus Edwards for his young people’s revue on Broadway. Edwards appears with a really off-key kid in a Screen Song with that name, released Sept. 30, 1932.

Here’s a version of the song from that era.

Oswald Gets Dressed

A bulldog grabs onto Oswald the rabbit, who is trying to grab a roast chicken cooling on a window sill in Weary Willies (1929).



The dog pulls Oswald’s black ink right off him.



Oswald is left in his underwear (with a flap). How embarrassing for a major cartoon star!



A shadow now appears where there had never been one before.



Yeah, the shadow telegraphs the gag. But I like it anyway (Didn't Felix do the same thing once?). Some representative frames.



Exhibitors Herald World, on June 29, 1929, reviewed the short:

"Weary Willie" (Universal Cartoon — One Reel)
THE bright, extremely clever, the unexpected and agreeable, the skillful manipulation of comedy quirks are not very often met with in pictures. Here, though, is a cartoon, one of the Oswalds turned out by the Winkler boys, that has plenty of these rare ingredients that are conducive to laughter. And it contains them in profusion. Ninety-nine out of every one hundred persons should get a laugh out of the rabbit's adventures with a tramp bear. Touched up with sound effects, this one hurdles all obstacles and grabs a laurel wreath labeled : first-rate cartoon comedy. — RAYMOND GANLY.

The cartoon was made during the period Charlie Mintz took control of the Oswald series from Walt Disney, and offered jobs to Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising, Ben Clopton, Ham Hamilton and another ex-Disney staffer who directed this cartoon.



Another animator on staff was Walter Lantz, who happened to be a social friend of Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal, which distributed the Oswald cartoons. On April 9, 1929, Universal announced it was setting up its own cartoon studio. Walter Lantz was put in charge, with Bill Nolan assiating. Farewell to Mintz, Harman, Ising, Freleng and the ex-Disneyites that Mintz enticed to join him. Lantz recalled to Leonard Maltin (quoted in "Of Mice and Magic") his first job was to add sound to six Winkler cartoons that hadn't been released. Presumably, Weary Willies was one, though a low-resolution print with music added by someone is all that's available to view. The cartoon came with sound on film and on disc.

Motion Picture News reported the cartoon was released July 22, 1929. Exhibitors World Herald eventually gave a date of Aug. 5, 1929. The last Winkler cartoon released was Saucy Sausages on Aug. 19, according to Motion Picture News. It was directed by Ben Clopton.

The next cartoon was released on Sept. 2, 1929. Race Riot bore the names of animators Walter Lantz, Bill Nolan and Tom Palmer, with synchronisation and score by Bert Fiske. Rollin C. (Ham) Hamilton replaced Lantz as an animator while David Broekman, the head of Universal's music department, took over from Fiske before the end of the year.

Freleng had been credited on other Oswald shorts for Mintz/Winkler: The Fiery Fireman (Oct. 15, 1928); Homeless Homer (with Rudolf Ising, Jan. 7, 1929); Hen Fruit (with Ising, Feb. 4, 1929); and Wicked West (June 10, 1929).

Colonna Entertains Troops, Real and Fake

Jerry Colonna will always be associated with Bob Hope, but another comedian gave him his big break.

Colonna was a mainstay on Hope’s radio show starting in fall 1938, along with Vera Vague (actress Barbara Jo Allen), Brenda and Cobina (Elvia Allman and Blanche Stewart) and Pepsodent plugger Wendell Niles. Colonna would end up in silly, impossible situations that everyone accepted and turn them into a routine that ran during the broadcast. Hope dismantled his show in fall 1948 when ratings fell. Colonna was sent packing, though Hope brought him back periodically.

But it was on May 27, 1936, that Colonna almost became known to radio audiences. “Almost” because he wasn’t billed other than “Boris,” speaking unintelligibly in a Russian accent and then bellowing “The Road to Mandalay.” The show was Town Hall Tonight, and the comedian was Fred Allen. Colonna made a return engagement Feb. 24, 1937 and at least one more afterward.

How was it he ended up on the other coast and working with old Ski Nose? He reminisced in a column in the North American Newspaper Alliance, published Jan. 27, 1964. There’s nary a mention of Allen.

Jerry Colonna Credits Crosby for Success
By HAROLD HEFFERNAN
Hollywood (NANA) — Jerry Colonna has been picking up regular checks for a longer time than most Hollywood personalities. So a tip from him isn't to be taken lightly.
Says the stony-faced comic with the popped eyes and walrus mustache: "It isn't necessarily what you know but who you know, if you want to get along in this business."
Jerry was reflecting on his career, pointing back more than 25 years to a meeting with Bing Crosby and a friendship that has continued ever since.
He was taping a string of toothpaste commercials to be delivered on the Crosby A. B. C.-T. V. special on February 15. He doesn't go in for ad plugging as a regular bit but is happy to be a part of anything his old helpmate does. We went on to trace their association:
IN TROTTER ORCHESTRA
"We met in Spokane where I was playing trombone with John Scott Trotter's orchestra and Bing was doing his radio show. It all started there, and shortly afterwards when my wife and I were house guests at Bing's home near San Diego — that's when he was running the Del Mar Race Track with Pat O'Brien — he introduced me to Bob Hope. That was the turning point. Bob wrote a spot for me on one of his radio programs, and our palship has gone on from there."
Colonna has never made the big time in the publicly accepted sense, but his bank account shows a much fatter balance than those of most Hollywood figures rated as stars. He's never hired a publicity agent, is invariably in the background—even is proud of a criticism written about him early in his career by a New York reviewer — "He sounds like a Harvard professor who hasn't quite made it."
The point is, Colonna has made it. It consists of a couple of dozen movies with Hope and Crosby; and a successful night club act of his own which keeps him on the road 36 weeks every year.
"After all those overseas tours with Bob, I'm used to packing; can't stand the dust on my suitcases when it starts to accumulate," he grins.
"I like this deal with Crosby's T. V. operation. Some people say it's beneath an actor's dignity to do commercials, but I don't agree. I figure if a company is smart enough to hire an actor or a comic like me to help sell the product, he should be flattered.
"Besides," he said carefully smoothing that thick trademark (he hasn't shaved it since the 1925 sprouting year), "I don't have the temperament to be a dramatic actor. Far as I'm concerned. 'Hamlet' is a miniature Piglet."

My first experience with Colonna wasn’t with the human Colonna at all. It was with Warner Bros. cartoons. Whenever a character said “Greetings, gate!” Or “I don’t ask questions, I just have FUN!” or “Monotonous (or another word), isn’t it?” that was Jerry Colonna. Friz Freleng made a short in 1941 called The Wacky Worm, with the title character suspiciously resembling Colonna. The worm made a return appearance in Freleng’s 1943 short Greetings, Bait.

I’ll spare you a list of Colonna stand-in appearances, but will mention he’s caricatured in Tex Avery’s Hollywood Steps Out (1941) and there’s a funny performance of a vulture singing a la Colonna in Bob Clampett’s Prehistoric Porky (1940), played by Mel Blanc.

The first time I saw Colonna was as a guest star on McHale’s Navy. I didn’t know Colonna was an actual person. I thought it was a character invented for the episode, not having listened to any old Bob Hope radio shows at the age of eight.

This story appeared in newspapers on April 10, 1965. I suspect it was from the ABC promotion department.

Jerry Colonna Visits Only GI Island He Missed
Jerry Colonna has finally dropped down on the only island he missed in 23 years of entertaining U.S. troops abroad. It's the one in possession of "McHale's Navy."
Guest starring in "Hello, McHale?—Colonna!", the episode of the TV series to be televised at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, Colonna said he felt right at home.
"Hope (Bob) and I used to travel from island to island in PT boats," he recalls. "Our skipper was usually George Halas, owner-coach of the Chicago Bears. Reminds me a lot of Ernie Borgnine."
Jerry, who looks about three weeks older than he did in 1944, professes to be alarmed by the way some servicemen greet him at overseas base. "Hey, Jerry," they say, "I remember when I was a kid, my dad told me about a show you and Bob Hope put on at Kwajalein."
Colonna adds, "It's a new generation, but one thing stays at the same. They still laugh at the same jokes. They're the best audiences in the world."
Reminiscing about those audiences, which at times numbered as high as 50,000, Colonna chuckled as he recalled one of the Bob Hope troupe's most memorable performances.
"It was in Alaska, a hundred miles from anywhere. Our plane was in trouble, and we set down, at an emergency landing field. A GI rushed over, saw Hope and me, some pretty girls and musicians, and almost passed out. Then he asked, very timidly, if we could do a few songs and jokes for the troops. We said sure. So in a minute he came back with the troops—both of them.
"While the pilot worked on the plane, we went through every joke, song and dance we know for two and a half hours. Finally, Hope told the three boys, 'Well, fellas, that's the show. We've run out of material.' " 'Oh, that's okay,' one of them piped up. 'Just do it again. '"
Colonna continued: "That's the answer to the question we're often asked—'How long are you tottering old geezers going to run around the world putting on shows for the servicemen?" "For as long as the boys say, 'Just do it again.' "
In this McHale’s Navy chapter, arrangements for Colonna’s visit hit a snag. It develops that Colonna’s plane only touches down at bases with at least a 50-bed hospital. McHale’s island hospital has only 28. So McHale’s men take steps to change the situation.

Colonna entertained troops with Bob Hope during World War Two. He wrote a book in 1945 about his overseas escapades with Hope called “Who Threw That Coconut!” (We can only imagine what he couldn't print).

"Professor" Colonna made 15 annual appearances with old sickle-snoot at military bases, ending with a second tour of Vietnam in 1965. He missed 1966 because of a stroke that partly paralysed him. Hope was loyal. Before making his 1966 Christmas appearances in Vietnam, he presented Colonna with a plaque from Los Angeles City Council honouring his 15 hundred shows for soldiers, and the four million miles he travelled to entertain.

Hope found a place for him in a 1970 TV special, despite not looking well. Colonna continued to have heart problems, though he died of kidney failure in 1986 at age 82.

Many of us grew up watching Hope TV specials where he read old-hat routines off cue cards. His Pepsodent radio show was far different. Hope was quick, ad-libbing and fairly entertaining. But to me, the best part was the ridiculous nonsense spouted by the energetic Jerry Colonna.

Dolly Parton

At one time on the radio, there were “cross-over songs,” where a tune designed for one audience would also find another audience. Some country songs would be heard on rock or MOR stations.

So it was that you could hear Dolly Parton all over the radio dial.

She started her career in music very early, as you can see by the ad to the below right from July 8, 1957 in the Kingsport, Tennessee, Times.

Dolly was a local phenomenon at first. The Knoxville Journal of Aug. 25, 1962 pointed out she was on the way up.

Sevier Radio Singer Has New Record
Dolly Parton, 16, Sevier County High School student, who has a five-year contract with a recording firm, has a new record out which reported is selling well. The recording, "Sure Gonna Hurt" and "The Love You Gave," is the singer's first try in the popular music field.
Miss Parton has appeared on radio and television talent shows since she was 10, singing country, western and religious songs. She and her uncle, Billy Earl Owens, guitar player and singer, have a song writers contract with a Nashville company.
She is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Lee Parton, of the Catons Chapel Community in Sevier County.

I don’t suspect a lot of 21-year-olds have a day named in their honour. Dolly did. The Knoxville News-Sentinel of Oct. 1, 1967 talked about it.

Sevier To Have Dolly Parton Day
SEVIERVILLE, Sept. 30 (Special)—Dolly Parton Day will be observed in Sevier County next Saturday. County Judge Ray L. Reagan proclaimed it in honor of the country music singer and writer.
She will be welcomed into town in an escorted motorcade at 10:30 a.m. With her will be Porter Wagoner and his Wagonmasters. Dolly recently became a member of the Wagoner show for television and personal appearances.
Mayor Bob Howard will present a key to the city and flowers. Dolly, Wagoner and the motorcade will then go to Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg for appearances. The climax of activities will be a music show on the court house lawn in Sevierville at 2 p.m. All will be sponsored by Radio Station WSEV, where Dolly and her uncle and personal manager, Bill Owens, cut their first record and provided their own accompaniment.
Dolly was born in a farm home on Pittman Center Road, one of 12 children in the family of Robert and Avie Lee. Dolly often played and sang in school programs. She graduated from Sevier County High School in 1964. Her first success was as a songwriter.
She was married in May to Carl Dean, a contractor.

This post doesn’t really have anything to do with her music. I’m not big on country tunes, new or old school. But I notice that in Nashville in 1965, she appeared with some big names: Boots Randolph, Ray Stevens, Chet Atkins and Floyd Kramer in a special Toys For Tots concert sponsored by the Marine Corps Reserve.

It strikes me that Dolly has always been doing something for someone else, especially children. As a newspaper article written at the time of Dolly Parton Day put it: “I found her to be...very ‘down to earth’.”

Being helpful, kind and sincere is something that transcends music. They’re qualities we need in this world. I imagine that’s why many are mourning the death of Dolly Parton at age 80.

How Not To Get Rid of a Starfish

Aloha Hooey is said to be a cartoon Tex Avery started before he left Warner Bros. and was finished by Bob Clampett directing his unit.

It’s a pretty tame cartoon for either of them. There’s a dullard crow with buck teeth (Pinto Colvig doing his Goofy voice, same as in Little Rural Riding Hood for Avery at MGM) and a slicker seagull (Mel Blanc, sounding much like Technical Fairy First Class in the Snafu shorts). They two engage in a competition for an island bird (Sara Berner). Unlike Avery’s Spike vs. Droopy at MGM, neither of them is evil; the bad guy shows up out of nowhere near the end of the cartoon and is quickly quelled. And the procreation gag at the end is familiar, too.

There are really few highlights, but one is for freeze-frame fans. Cecil Crow tussles with a starfish that attaches itself to various parts of the body, which seems like something in an early Jones cartoon. This provides dry-brush work for the ink and paint department. Cecil shakes his head to no avail.



Cut to a medium shot. The swirls remind me of the ones with Bugs and the sumo wrestler (by Virgil Ross?) in Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips (1944). First, the starfish attaches itself to Cecil’s butt (and kicks it), then puts him in a toe-hold.



Ross is the credited animator on this short, with story by Mike Maltese. Carl Stalling fills the soundtrack with Arkansas Traveler.

This frames above are from a laser disc.