Jack Benny's Mystery Radio Appearance

It has famously been said that Jack Benny’s first appearance on radio was on Ed Sullivan’s show on March 29, 1932, and he opened his monologue with “Hello, folks. This is Jack Benny talking. ... There will now be a brief pause while you all say ‘Who cares?’”

Not only was that not Jack’s first time on radio—we provided an example in this post—but that wasn’t the first time he used that line on the air.

Buried in the Radio Guide out of Chicago for the week ending January 30, 1932 is this line that reader Tom Drinan caught on the air.

Jack Benny — Dec. 28th — 1:45 a. m.— WDAF:
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Jack Benny speaking. There will now be a brief pause while you say, ‘Who cares?’ "

The broadcast Mr. Drinan caught is surrounded in some mystery. Here’s all we can discover.

WDAF was a radio station owned by the Kansas City Star. You would think that the paper would have a complete broadcast schedule, maybe a side-bar story on a special broadcast. But there’s nothing.

The station’s listings in the newspaper of Dec. 27, 1931 show the station signed off after an organ recital from the NBC red network by Jesse Crawford. The next programme was the following morning at 7 a.m. If the time was wrong, and the broadcast was at 1:45 p.m., WDAF was airing “Spanish Serenaders.”

We know Jack's general whereabouts at the time. He and “Mary Marlowe” (ie. Mary Livingstone) were in Kansas City, appearing that evening in the road company of Earl Carroll’s Vanities.

It’s possible the stars of the Vanities were grabbed after the last curtain-call to go to the radio station, but if that happened, you would think the newspaper owned by the station would have mentioned it.

The stage show was no mystery. Jack was master of ceremonies and received the usual favourable press. Mary gave “a comic recitation,” no doubt similar to the poems she would later do on radio.

And the cast of the Vanities found time on Dec. 29 to give a little show for patients at the General Hospital.

The Other Bugs

Does Bugs Hardaway deserve more recognition than he gets?

About all he’s known for these days is he gave his nickname to a rabbit, who, within a few years, was completely re-designed in appearance and attitude to become a different Bugs Bunny than Hardaway started with. And his rabbit's personality suspiciously resembled Woody Woodpecker, whom Walter Lantz always took credit for creating.

Hardaway died long before animation historians existed, so he didn’t leave behind recollections to them. But allow us to pass along two newspaper pieces and something from the Schlesinger cartoon studio. The first is from the Nov. 18, 1916 edition of the Kansas City Post, which employed him at the time. His birth date was actually May 21, 1895.

ONE Halloween several years ago some naughty boys took a soap stick and drew a picture of a certain druggist on the front window of his store.
The druggist liked the art work so well he called in some painters who touched up the portrait and there it is to this day—on the same drug store front window.
The youth who drew the portrait was much pleased at the reception given his work of art and straightway gave up his newspaper route and applied for a position on The Kansas City Post.
He started out by drawing sport cartoons. His work drew favorable comment and he's been at it ever since.
Thus was the beginning of "Bugs" Hardaway, whose work you often have seen in The Post sporting pages.
Bugs' real front name is Benson, which he will admit after rigid cross examination, he was born at Belton, Mo., in 1894 [sic], but at an early age and without his consent his parents brought him to Kansas City. He attended ward school and Manual until two years ago, when he started his work on The Post.
Bugs is a student of the school of Goldberg and other famous cartoonists who follow the extravagant style of drawing. He spends all of his leisure hours playing baseball and is one of the valuable players in the Kansas City Athletic club league.

Hardaway served in the 129th field artillery in France during World War One. The Post of Nov. 4, 1918, noted he had been wounded overseas, but “the wound was not serious.” He resumed his work on the Post after the war. Here are several of 1915 sports cartoons, the death of the Federal League being a target.



How did Hardaway end up in animation? The Schlesinger newsletter, The Exposure Sheet, explains in its first issue in 1939.

A DIRECTOR: J.B. "Bugs" Hardaway, better known as "Laughing Boy", was first heard from when his mother entered him and his brother in a Baby Contest at a County Fair in Belton, Missouri. Bugs walked away with the grand prize - a calf - for being the ugliest infant in the contest!!! His brother only won a ribbon for being the prettiest.
Two years of school on a farm went by before Mother and Father Hardaway - with eight little Hardaways - moved to Kansas City. With school finally completed, a paper route was the first business enterprise for Bugs. To be a baseball player was the big dream at the time, and this was later realized.
When he was sixteen, he rode a bicycle from Kansas City to St. Louis, a feat for the papers. (Get him to show you his clippings) In 1912 he worked for the first suburban picture-show in Kansas City as janitor, ticket-seller, and when the projectionist was "indisposed", Bugs did his work, too.
Next we find him traveling day after day on the Santa Fe from Kansas City to Denver. You might not have recognized the deep, bass that barked: "Ice cream, cream without ice, sandwiches - or maybe an orange." All was sweet profit until the day they changed trains and Bugs lost a crate of apricots! That spelled "finish" to his career as news butcher. Then his dream came true: he joined a girls' baseball team -the original "Boston Bloomer Girls". Try to picture Bugs as a girl in bloomers (?) and a wig! He next joined the Oklahoma Indians’ baseball team, and was the only blond Indian in captivity!
From here we jump to the Kansas City Slide Company. Here Bugs placed black borders around slides that were to be used between reels three and four. To wit: "LADIES KINDLY REMOVE YOUR HATS". Or: GENTLEMEN WILL PLEASE REFRAIN FROM SPITTING IN THE AISLES." Then on to the Kansas City Post. His boss was none other than Griff Jay. Fay King, whose work now appears in the Los Angeles Herald, was also there as a cartoonist. The owners of the paper were the two famous characters in Gene Fowler's book "Timberline", Tammen and Bonfils, who later took over the Sells-Floto Circus.
The next time Bugs looked around, he was in the army where he remained for 26 months, 14 of those were spent in France with the 35th Division.
On his return to the U. S., he went back to the Kansas City Post where he remained until it was sold to the Journal. Then followed a year of selling advertising. This led to the Film Ad Service, there he found himself working with Walt Disney, "Tubby" Millar, Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harmon, Art Gobel, "Frizz" Freleng, and many others. In 1928 Bugs became Branch Manager for this firm in the Milwaukee branch, and for the next four years all was rosy. Then the stock market -- and all went black! When the smoke cleared, Bugs was in Los Angeles, working for Ub-Iwerks. Then came Walt Disney's, and in 1933 Bugs came to roost at Schlesinger's. As far as hobbies are concerned, Bugs is a whizz at pool, and he takes to the Santa Anita ponies -- and vice versa.

Hardaway was a writer for Schlesinger when he arrived, then given eight Buddy cartoons to direct, starting in 1934. Buddy vanished a year later and Hardaway went back into writing. He got a story credit (though it seems all writers pitched in at the time) in Daffy Duck and Egghead, released in 1938. When Friz Freleng left for MGM, Cal Dalton was named a director working, first, with Cal Howard, then Hardaway.

You’ll notice no mention of Bugs Bunny. The late Martha Sigall, in her wonderful book Living Life Inside the Lines (University Press of Mississippi, 2005), had personal knowledge of what happened.

I had heard he [Hardaway] was going to be directing, and I wished him luck. It was at this time that he told me he would be doing a Porky Pig hunting cartoon and that he was going to "put a rabbit suit on that duck." I got it, a character who would look like a rabbit, but have the crazy personality of Daffy Duck. A few months later, our department was painting a lot of scenes with a white rabbit. Soon after, "Porky's Hare Hunt" was shown in our projection room and received many laughs. I also saw that cartoon at the Warner Bros. Theatre in Hollywood and the audience just loved it. Of course, I reported this to Bugs the next time I saw him. He seemed pleased, but he never showed much emotion one way or the other. I think our studio was more than pleased however, because the publicity people at Warner's received lots of calls and letters from fans wanting to see more "of that rabbit."

Schlesinger wasn’t happy. He induced Freleng to return. Hardaway was bumped back into the story department, where there was a sense of self-preservation and maybe insecurity. Mike Maltese spoke to Mike Barrier about it in 1971.

When Maltese started in the story department, he recalled many years later, it occupied two rooms, one for "the Kansas City boys"—Ben Hardaway chief among them—and the other for a younger, looser crew—Pierce, Monahan, Richard Hogan, and Cal Howard. The Kansas City boys tried to freeze him out, Maltese said; they were working on a Porky Pig cartoon about a bullfight (apparently Clampett's The Timid Toredor, released in 1940), and they scornfully rejected every gag he suggested. "I got wise," he said. "I wrote down all my gags." After two weeks, Schlesinger's assistant Henry Binder summoned Maltese, "and he said, 'Mike, you didn't work out .... Bugs Hardaway says you didn't open your mouth once. You didn't make any suggestions: I said, 'Is that so?' Ta-dah! I whipped out pages of gag material. 'Look—two weeks' work.’ ” When Binder sent him back to the story department, Maltese said to Hardaway, "who the hell did you expect, Mark Twain?"

Hardaway didn’t last much longer. He joined the Walter Lantz studio on August 12, 1940, three and a half months before the first screen appearance of Woody Woodpecker. Given the time it takes to produce a cartoon, it appears he wrote Knock Knock as a freelancer.

We mentioned his war service. Battery D of the 129th Field Artillery was under the command of another Kansas Citian named Harry Truman, who went on to bigger things. The Valley Times used the connection to profile Hardaway in its issue of March 17, 1947

Film Gagman Truman Buddy in First War
President Harry Truman and Joseph Benson Hardaway, North Hollywood film cartoonist and gagman, have two things in common—they served in the same Army outfit in World War I and each, according to Hathaway, is a "hot" piano player.
Harding [sic], a neophyte pianist in his early entertainment career, explained that he has first hand information on the president's keyboard talents, having been entertained with Truman piano selections at an exclusive Los Angeles breakfast in 1944.
Occasion for the breakfast was a get-together of Southern Californians who had served under the president, then Capt. Harry Truman, in Battery D, 129th Field Artillery, 35th Division.
Got Telegram
A telegram notified Hardaway and the six other Los Angeles members of old Battery D of their former commanding officer's pending arrival. "Fall in, Battery D" it read and was signed "Capt. H. Truman."
Hardaway and the other World War I veterans met the train and ttok priority over a batch of politicians when Harry Truman stepped off at Union Station. Truman "ordered" his former GIs to breakfast with him at the Biltmore, where in due time the future president improvised for their edification on the piano.
"Mr. Truman is a wonderful fellow," Hardaway reminisced. "He's down to earth, honest as the day is long, loyal and all that . . . but he is a 'corny' piano player."
Identification Cards
Hardaway said that so many outsiders are claiming to have served in old Battery D that the bona fide members have been forced to issue identification cards to distinguish the real from the phoney veterans of the organisation. His card, number 47, was issued in 1945 and bears the signatures of Harry Truman and Ernest L. Schmidt, secretary-treasurer of Battery D.
Before the Armistice of 1918, Hardaway rose from corporal to sergeant major- He was in the service 26 months and participated in five engagements during thirteen months overseas under Truman's command.
Hardaway, who lives at 11211 Kling st., North Hollywood, said his own "mildness" at the piano is traceable to an arm injury received when he was a semi-professional baseball pitcher as a youth.
"Every since then," he explains, "I have not been able to play properly with my right hand." At one time, however, he played the piano in a movie theater.
Music In Family
That music runs in the Hardaway family is attested by the eminence attained by his son Bob, 19, who played the saxophone and clarinet with several name bands before joining the Army. Currently, Bob plays with the Army Air Force band at Bolling Field, Washington, D.C. Both Bob and his sister, Mrs. Jack Evan Kirby, are graduates of North Hollywood high school.
Hardaway himself came to the Valley in 1931 and since has been associated with animated cartoons in the motion picture industry. Although he never took an art lesson in his life, he created "Bugs Bunny" in 1938 and has had the satisfaction of seeing the animal character win popularity with newspaper comic strip readers as well as motion picture fans.
Story Editor
Hardaway is story editor for Walt Lantz Productions at Universal Studios, where the animated cartoons "Woody Woodpecker" and "Andy Panda" are filmed. He also is the "voice" of the woodpecker character.
He got into motion pictures via newspaper cartooning. He was political and sports cartoonist on the old Kansas City Post for seven years before becoming associated with the United Film Ad Service of Milwaukee, where he worked twelve years.
Walt Disney also was once employed by the Milwaukee firm and through a friendship formed there, Hardaway later was employed at the Disney studios in the Valley.

Lantz laid off his creative staff for a planned three months on December 15, 1947, and Mike Barrier’s Hollywood Cartoons says the studio never really reopened again until it closed completely at the end of 1948. For Hardaway, that meant the search for work. Evidently, he thought his Truman connection would help. E.O. Costello discovered Hardaway applied for a government job during the shutdown. However, he ended up back at Warner Bros.; the Warner Club News of December 1948 said he had been hired to write in the Freleng unit.

Hardaway received only one screen credit for story, on A Bone For A Bone, not released until 1951. Freleng’s unit was in a state of story man flux. There is no story credit on A Stooge For a Mouse (1950) and Cal Howard has a co-story credit with Warren Foster on Canned Feud (1951). Before all this, Freleng had been using Tedd Pierce, who ended up being switched with Foster in Bob McKimson’s unit, as was announced in the May 1949 edition of the Club News.

When and why Hardaway left Warners may be buried somewhere; in 1950, there is no occupation next to his name in the U.S. Census, while his wife was running a restaurant. In 1954, he was advertising a cartooning course.

He finally found work in cartoons again. He was writing stories for Pow Wow the Indian Boy cartoons produced by Sam Singer’s Tempe-Toons. He died of a heart attack at his home on Feb. 4, 1957. He was 61 (all his newspaper obits claimed he was 66).

So what are we to think about Hardaway? Setting aside Buddy and Pow Wow, he seemed to favour out-of-control hecklers—Daffy Duck, Woody Woodpecker and his Bugs-Bunny-In-Name-Only. He liked corn—witness the groaners and puns in his early Lantz cartoons. He was demoted twice as a director at Schlesinger, then returned to Warner Bros. as a writer, only to vanish for unknown reasons.

He clashed with Shamus Culhane at Lantz, who complained Hardaway’s sense of humour was unsophsticated, while Hardaway couldn’t understand Culhane’s style of direction. (He called a scene in The Barber of Seville “a Chinese goulash.” Hardaway does not seem to have liked Chinese food, referring to it in an extremely racist term in a 1920 cartoon for the Post). When Lantz started hunting for staff in July 1950, to get his operations going again for Universal-International, Hardaway was not brought back.

We wrote about Hardaway in an earlier post. And Tom Klein put together more information in this post some time ago on Cartoon Research. It's a shame we don't have his own story in his own words.

Shining Tex's Shoes

The running gag in The Peachy Cobbler doesn’t run very long as Tex Avery and writer Rich Hogan cram in as many shoe/shoemaking gags as possible.

Twice, an elf is polishing only to have another elf driving a boot splash some convenient mud on it.



This happens twice. Avery puts other gags between them. Then we get to the third time. The elf sees the boot coming around the corner. He decides to splash mud on his shoe so the other elf can’t have any effect.



The elf, instead, drives the boot into a shoe stall. The gag is the reaction. No wide eyes here, just some claw-hands.

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Mike Lah, Grant Simmons and Walt Clinton are the animators. Voices by Daws Butler. Footwear by Johnsen.

A Dusting of Cleanser

Old Dutch Cleanser doesn't just "chase dirt." It appears in a Bosko cartoon as well.

Bosko goes cleaning crazy in Bosko's Store (1932). He dusts off some eggs (which hatch) and then turns his attention to a cut-out, stand-up ad for an obvious-but-unnamed cleanser. The maid comes to life and gives out with a squealing giggle.



Evidently, she's fickle. She turns around and bops Bosko.



Bosko staggers back from the blow. But, no matter. He resumes his dancing and dusting like nothing happened.



There's another pop culture reference. On the phone, Bosko yells "Okay, Chicago!" It comes from Walter Winchell on the Lucky Strike radio show. On November 3, 1931, Winchell and his magic carpet appeared on the Red network (WJZ) for the first time, and switched to different dance bands around the world with an "Okay... (name of city)." That was the cue for the engineer to switch lines. It was parodied in a syndicated newspaper cartoon of the day.


There's a crotch/pain gag and a piano, something not uncommon in cartoons made on the West Coast in the early 1930s.

Friz Freleng and Bob McKimson receive the animation credits. Bosko sings "There's A Rainbow On The River" by Dave Oppenheim and Sam H. Stept (copyright Jan. 25, 1932) before giving us his version of "Turkey in the Straw."

The Face is New. And Familiar

Her name isn’t one you think of what you hear of someone in church singing “The Old Rugged Cross.”

Nor do you think of her as a “new face.”

But both can be used to describe Alice Ghostley.

She was another person who was seemingly everywhere on TV at one time. But in 1945, she made a trip back home to Henryetta, Oklahoma where the proud local paper pointed out she was studying voice in New York City.

In 1949, she was at the Hilltop Theatre in Baltimore starring in a musical comedy fantasy called Saturday. A 1950 newspaper review of her performance in another musical comedy there said “Prominent in the proceedings was Alice Ghostley, who took part in nearly every musical number and scored again and again as singer and comedienne, running the scale from blues to slapstick.”

Her first huge break came in the monstrously successful Broadway revue New Faces of 1952 with a cast including Paul Lynde, Eartha Kitt, Robert Clary and Carol Lawrence, with writing by Mel Brooks. The local paper printed glowing reviews from the New York Times, Journal-American (it compared her to Bea Lillie), Post, Time, Collier’s and elsewhere. The International News Service profiled her. This story appeared starting around Oct. 26.

Leading Comedienne Proves Small Town Gals Make Good
By PHYLLIS BATTELLE
INS Woman’s Editor
NEW YORK —INS— Comedienne Alice Ghostley entered this world as only comedienne Ghostley could enter it—in a train station at Eve, Mo. three minutes ahead of the 7:14.
It was hectic going for Mr. Ghostley who was the station master and for Mrs. Ghostley who was visiting Mr. Ghostley at the time.
But little Alice was in a hurry to get her start, and you can't blame a girl for having ambition.
Today Eve, Mo., is no longer on the map but Alice most definitely is. As the biggest laugh-getter in the Broadway hit, "New Faces of 1952," she has come out ahead of a great deal more than the 7:14. . .and the way she did it is proof positive that small town girls with big time courage do get places in this city of alleged defeat, deceit and despair.
There never was a smaller town girl than Alice.
Born, as indicated, in Eve, Mo., she and her family soon moved to the more prosperous metropolis of Seloam Springs, Ark., from whence they moved up to the more cosmopolitan community of Henryetta, Okla.
"It was in Henryetta," describes Miss Ghostley in a droll voice that drags on like a yawn, "that I learned about the thee-et-a. Once I learned, they could do about as much with me as just-washed hair."
She studied singing and dramatics ("they have culture in Henryetta, really") and when she reached college, was a pretty solid soprano, by University of Oklahoma standards.
"And then—as they say in one of the old songs from the repertoire of Dinah Shore—the runaround began!"
Miss Ghostley, equipped with a modest operatic-type voice and the blessings of the appreciative citizens of Henryetta, journeyed to New York.
Like almost every other small town girl who journeys to New York with a modest something-or-other and blessings, she worked for peanuts and a tough boss.
Started As Usher
"I started my career," she recalls loftly, "as an usher at the Imperial Theater, for $11.88 a week. The show playing at the Imperial was Milton Berle's 'Ziegfeld Follies,' which could get a little dull eight times a week. . . .
"Except not for me. This was my first Broadway show and I loved every hammy line of it."
She loved it while she was in the theater, that is. ''Every night after the show I would run home and start crying. Did it regularly, like brushing my teeth."
She also had part-time jobs, typing, clerking, doing all the usual fill-in jobs between dream and success.
One day at an audition for a musical revue—her 648th audition as she recalls it—Miss Ghostley was accosted by a producer, writer and comedian. "G." convinced her that she was a comic instead of an operatic-type singer, and persuaded her ("Gee, it was easy") to join him in an original singing-comic duo.
They went over big at Greenwich Village night spots. Alice began to eat again.
Then Imogene Coca spotted Broadway's newest comedienne at a supper club and told Leonard Sillman about her. Leonard Sillman is the producer of "New Faces." the persistent, almost-annual revue in which Miss Coca got her start in 1934.
Now Alice Ghostley is on top. When she sings a sophisticated little number called "Boston Beguine," she even tickles the Royale theater's musty Chandeliers. And how does she feel about this dizzy rise from a depot to a dressing room with a star on it?
Like a couplet from "Boston Beguine:"
"The strings of my heart seem to be knotted;
"Even the palms seem to be potted!"

The 1950s wore on and Ghostley appeared on Broadway and in television; newspapers around March 8, 1953 reported on her first regular TV role: as John Beal’s wife on Freedom Rings, a comedy-audience participation show that aired twice weekly on CBS. There were appearances on The Hallmark Hall of Fame, on the Julie Andrews version of Cinderella and with Jackie Gleason on Westinghouse's The Best of Broadway and on a Hallmark Hall of Fame version of Twelfth Night with Maurice Evans.

In the 1960s, Ghostley was with Gleason again, playing Agnes opposite his Arthur in regular sketches on his "American Scene Magazine" show. She picked up a Tony in 1965. She won the role of the overly-mothering mother of Captain Nice (1967), Buck Henry’s super-hero spoof that was like kryptonite to viewers. She’s probably better known for Bewitched, though she was only on periodically. She was the bumbling witch, taking the place of the late Marion Lorne, who did it far better in my estimation (she, Lorne and Henry all appeared in the movie The Graduate.

Here’s a Newspaper Enterprise Association column that appeared around Sept. 21, 1969 in various papers.

Alice Ghostley Sneezes Magic on Series
By STAN MAAYS
HOLLYWOOD (NEA) — With a name like Ghostley, what better place to be than on a program populated by witches and weird manifestations. So it comes as no great surprise to learn that Alice Ghostley is a regular on ABC-TV's Bewitched.
Miss Ghostley plays Esmeralda, a witch whose power to do magical things suffers from a lack of spiritual voltage. Esmeralda is summoned by her old friend Endora, who, upon hearing Samantha Stephens is expecting a second child, decides she'll need help around the house.
To Samantha's twitch you can now add a sneeze as a gimmick welcomed by the technical staff of the series. Each time Esmeralda ahhh-choos! strange things happen, which will open up all kinds of film magic.
Miss Ghostley, who made her debut, appropriately enough, in "New Faces of 1952" on Broadway, is exactly the mild, pleasant sort of person you'd expect her to be away from a Screen Gems sound stage.
"I was on the series three years ago when Samantha was pregnant the first time," reveals Miss Ghostley in an almost inaudible voice. And then with that familiar humorous, expression she added, "I was a housekeeper who couldn't do anything right."
Producer William Asher wanted Miss Ghostley to join the series shortly after as a replacement for Alice Pearce, who died while playing Samantha's neighbor. But she turned him down for the simple, understandable reason — "I couldn't because I knew her."
When Paul Lynde makes one of his all-too-infrequent appearances on Bewitched — and if it's in an episode with Miss Ghostley — it will make another reunion. Lynde was also in "New Faces" and has worked with Miss Ghostley on several Jonathan Winters shows. "People always thought we were relatives," she said, turning on Lynde's famous shark smile.
This recognition came about mostly after her appearances on Jackie Gleason's series, pointing out the power of TV exposure.
"I used to leave stage productions in full make-up and nobody would recognize me outside of the theater," she says, "and, mind you, this was after doing Broadway shows for 10 years! But, after just the second Gleason show, a cab driver knew me."
One thing Miss Ghostley regrets is the few chances she has to do good dramas these days. "You do all those shows for prestige, but no money," comments this winner of a Tony for her work in Broadway's "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window."
"I guess I'm stuck with comedy roles from here on out," she sighs. "I got the feeling my agents, bless their hearts, are too young to remember the good things I did."

Indeed, she had a role in Too Kill a Mockingbird, a movie not known for laffs.

“Replacement” seems to be the operative word in her television career. She and Kathleen Freeman shared the role of Colonel Klink’s sister in Hogan’s Heroes. Then when Francis Bavier had more than enough of playing Aunt Bea, she was brought in to assume the housekeeper role on Mayberry R.F.D. (with Ken Berry, photo right).

More comedy happened to her off-camera than on, much of it sounding like something out of Bewitched. She was late for an interview with a syndicated columnist because she didn’t drive and had to hitch a ride, but not before stopping off to get an unemployment cheque since she didn’t work that week.

When she and her husband bought a home in Hollywood in 1968, it took six months to put in a driveway, then the pavement buckled. The lights kept going on and off. Then there the Oscar she accepted. It wasn’t hers. It was Maggie Smith’s. Maggie was in London doing a play and asked Ghostley to accept for her. Her husband’s car was missing hubcaps and his tux didn’t fit. Her dress still had a price tag on it. Everyone expected Jane Fonda to win, but when Smith’s name was called, Ghostley didn’t know how to get on stage. On top of that, she didn’t think to call Smith to tell her about the Academy honour.

A little less amusing was when she recalled to Canadian columnist Rick Forchuk in 1988 she got paid for six reruns of Bewitched and it was now costing more to mail her residuals than the actual payment. At the time, she was a “special guest star” on Designing Women and appearing on stage.

It was quite a journey from singing a hymn for five cents at the age of five in a small Oklahoma church.

Shishkabugs Backgrounds

Tom O'Loughlin was hired at the Warners cartoon studio by October 1957 and replaced Boris Gorelick as the background artist in the Friz Freleng unit. His first work appeared on screen in 1958. He stayed until the end of the studio, and carried on at DePatie-Freleng. O'Loughlin had been a painter before coming to the studio. We put together a short bio in this post.

The studio was running on fumes in 1962. One of his unit’s cartoons released that year was Shishkabugs. O’Loughlin provided the backgrounds. Here are some of them. They’re not terribly inspired but they do their job to give an appropriate place for the characters. I have managed to paste together the opening pan upward; it is in two pieces.

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Bugs is pretty tame in John Dunn's story. He finally shows up at the 2:15 mark. His antics include kissing the king (who has done nothing to him) and rigging a custard pie to hit the king's face. Oh, and he becomes the cook and serves the king a carrot. That's it. No sparkling dialogue. No outrageous reactions. Friz, give me Baseball Bugs or Bugs Bunny Rides Again instead.

Virgil Ross, Gerry Chiniquy, Bob Matz, Art Leonardi and Lee Halpern are the animators on this short, released Dec. 8, 1962. Freleng had resigned from the studio the previous month. Everyone knew the end was near.