Hollywood’s Best (as of 1949)

The stars agree—Ashton Kutcher’s performance in ‘Dude, Where’s My Car’ is not the best of all time.

Mind you, there’s a reason, and it has nothing to do with Mr. Kutcher’s abilities as an actor. The stars were surveyed in 1949. At last check, Mr. Kutcher wasn’t around then. However, reporter Bob Thomas was, and he seems to have done a series of straw polls on the topic of Greatest Performances. You might have guessed some of the names on the list. A couple you may never have heard of.

Actors Cite Best Movie Performances
By BOB THOMAS
HOLLYWOOD, June 1.—(AP)—What was the greatest performance in the history of motion pictures?
This is a question that draws sharply divided opinion in Hollywood. I have asked more film stars for their verdicts, since they should be expert on the subject. Here are some of the latest answers:
Gene Autry—“The one I remember most is Greta Garbo in ‘Camille.’ I don’t think that will ever be topped.”
Lucille Ball—“Vivien Leigh in ‘Gone With the Wind.’ It’s a difficult role and she did a great job. I have seen it eight times and try to catch it every year.”
Fred MacMurray— “It’s hard to pick one, but I think Barbara Stanwyck in ‘Stella Dallas’ left the biggest impression with me.”
NEVER FORGET
Claudette Colbert—“I’ll never forget Helen Hayes in ‘The Sin of Madelon Claudet.’ I cried and cried.”
Robert Young—“John Barrymore was outstanding in anything . . . to name one, ‘Topaz.’
And Laurence Olivier’s job in ‘Hamlet’ was one of the best of all time.”
Joan Bennett—“Vivien Leigh in ‘Gone With the Wind.’
Irene Dunne—“Diana Wynward in ‘Cavalcade’ stays in my memory as the best. She was fascinating.”
Alan Ladd—“Clark Gable in ‘Gone With the Wind.’ That was the most perfect casting in history.”
Jimmy Stewart—“I think maybe Frederic March in ‘Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde.’ It was a frightening thing to watch.”
Marie Wilson—“Charles Coburn in ‘More the Merrior’ was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, especially the scene where he lost his pants."
Rosalind Russell—“Cary Grant in ‘None But the Lonely Heart.’ I had always considered him an expert comedian, but my opinion of him went up a hundred-fold when I saw him in that dramatic role.”
GARBO IN ANYTHING
Diana Lynn—“Garbo in ‘Camille,’ or anything.”
Erich von Stroheim—“This may sound like immodesty, because I directed her, but I would pick ZaSu Pitts in ‘Greed.’ A great tragedienne.”
Gloria Swanson—“I don’t see many pictures, but the best performance I can think of is Van Heflin in ‘Johnny Eager.’”
Gregory Peck—‘Charlie Chaplin in everything; he’s the greatest of actors. He can make you laugh one minute, cry the next. For the actresses, Garbo—especially in ‘Camille.’”
James Cagney—“For an all-round flawless performance, I’d pick J.M. Kerrigan in ‘The Informer.’ There was nothing you could find wrong with it.”
Maureen O’Hara (who didn’t see a movie until she was 18)—“I’d select three: Bette Davis in ‘Dark Victory,’ Fredric March in ‘Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde’ and Charles Laughton in ‘Mutiny on the Bounty.’”
Coleen Gray—“Laurence Olivier in ‘Wuthering Heights,’ especially the bedroom scene.”
John Lund—“Alfred Lunt in ‘The Guardsmen’—and he’s no relative of mine, either.”

It strikes me as odd that many actors insist comedy is more difficult than drama, yet “best performances” almost always tend to be dramatic, as if a comedic performance can’t be taken seriously because a comedy isn’t serious.

The mention of Robert Young, whose television career later overshadowed his work in films, gives me a chance to post another nice-looking newspaper movie ad, this one from 1939. Through the ‘30s and into the war years, there were all kinds of virtually plotless films solely designed for star-gazing. ‘Honolulu’ is one of them. Young was one of the stars.



George Burns and Gracie Allen were to supply the laughs but, oddly, one of radio’s most famous comedy couples spent virtually the entire film apart. Below is one of Gracie’s numbers. Yes, Gracie sings. And you’ll quickly perceive she’s not with the real Marx Brothers. They’re actually the King’s Men in disguise; they were singers on a show featuring another of radio’s most famous comedy couples, Fibber McGee and Molly.

The Greatest Backgrounds in Siam

Art Heinemann never seemed to stay at any animation studio for any length of time. He toiled for the Harman-Ising studio in the ‘30s, jumped to Disney, stopped at the Walter Lantz studio in between two stints at Warner Bros, was the responsible for the brief series of Daffy Dittys released by RKO in the late ‘40s, then moved on UPA and the John Sutherland studio, all within about 15 years.

Heinemann’s stay at Lantz wasn’t terribly long—June 3, 1943 to September 26, 1944 according to Joe Adamson’s research through the studio’s records—but it was memorable. He seems to have meshed well with director Shamus Culhane, no mean feat in itself. Not only is he credited with simplifying Woody Woodpecker’s design from the multi-coloured, stump-legged bird of the first few cartoons, he provided some great layouts for a couple of shorts featuring Miss X, Lantz’ answer to Tex Avery’s Red at MGM.



In ‘The Greatest Man in Siam’ (1944), Culhane relied on background art to meet Lantz’ budgets, which were below both Warners and MGM. This drawing is part of the opening scene of the exterior of the Siamese village. There’s no animation in almost the first 20 seconds of the cartoon—it’s nothing but camera-work over backgrounds—and there’s another 29 seconds of the same thing a little bit later. Less animation equals less money spent, and Culhane instead wisely used his animators later in the cartoon for dance sequences.



Heinemann came up with various angles for the interior settings in this cartoon. The archways are stylised which match some of the stylised animation. Here are a few of them.





The background artist is Phil DeGuard, who’s better-known to fans of old cartoons for his work with Maurice Noble in the Chuck Jones unit at Warners in the ‘50s (Heinemann designed for Jones prior to that). The animation jumps back and forth from standard ‘40s type to stylised movement. The credited animators are two of the best—Pat Matthews and Emery Hawkins. We’ll have some of their work in a future post.

A Smear Grows in Manhattan

Bugs Bunny gives “Lolly” his life story in ‘A Hare Grows in Manhattan,’ a fine 1947 cartoon by Friz Freleng. The credited animators are Manny Perez, Ken Champin, Gerry Chiniquy and Virgil Ross. It’s Virgil who was responsible for the expressive animation of Bugs in his hole, including a couple of smear drawings.




Bea Benaderet plays the not-too-veiled stand-in for Louella Parsons and co-writer Tedd Pierce supplies his voice for a couple of members of a Brooklyn dog gang.

The cartoon opens with a couple of pans over long backgrounds of somewhat stylised homes in Beverly Hills and ends with this street shot from a layout by Hawley Pratt.



Paul Julian disappeared from the Freleng unit for awhile around this time. Terry Lind and then Phil DeGuard (both late of the Walter Lantz studio) created the background art until Julian returned. It’s DeGuard’s work you see in this cartoon.

The Wives of Radio’s Funny Men Speak

Here’s a 1945 wire service article that’s pretty self-explanatory. Long-time TV and movie columnist Bob Thomas, in a feature story early in his career at the A.P., simply asked wives of some of radio’s comedians a couple of basic, and fairly unimaginative, questions: “Is he funny at home?” and “Is he like what you hear on the radio?”

There probably are no surprises here to anyone familiar with the people being discussed. Jack Benny was known as being a great laugher at someone else’s jokes, especially George Burns.’ Interestingly, Gracie Allen isn’t interviewed for this piece. It certainly wasn’t because she was a star because Thomas talked with Marian Jordan.

There’s a formality here that has long gone out of style. Who reads today of a wife being referred to be her husband’s name? It was considered improper to do so otherwise in a formal setting at one time; I recall reading an Emily Post column from years ago on the proper manner of addressing a married woman in formal settings. It would have been “Mrs. Bob Hope” not “Mrs. Dolores Hope.”

There was a time, long before instant communications of today, when newspapers would bank a feature story for whenever they had available space, even months after getting it on the wire. The earliest I’ve found this piece was January 15, 1945.

Comedians Play It Straight Off Stage
By ROBERT THOMAS
Associated Press Newsfeatures
HOLLYWOOD — Does Jack Benny give his wife $1 spending money weekly?
Are Fibber McGee’s closets piled with junk?
Does Bob Hope whistle at girls who pass his home?
Radio and movie fans may wonder where a comedian’s characterization ends and his home life begins. Their wives will tell you that the funnyman is like any normal husband around the house, except for a more marked sense of humor. And the wife’s function is equally normal, except for the duty of delivering a verdict on the comic’s latest gag.
Mrs. Bob Hope says her husband is “very delightful” at home, but no cut-up. “He is an intelligent, well-balanced man,” she declares, “and he has his serious side as well.”
* * *
TRIES OUT JOKES
Sometimes he tries out untested jokes on her. She listens faithfully to every broadcast and will tell him if he seems off his routine, providing he inquires.
Hope’s large-scale wanderings to entertain servicemen would seem hard on the wife at home, but Mrs. Hope considers herself “much luckier than the wives who haven't seen their husbands in two or three years.”
Mary Livingston thinks her husband, Jack Benny, has “a wonderful sense of humor,” but the “Love in Bloom” virtuoso is little different from any other husband. “He doesn't wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me a new gag he has just dreamed up,” she assures.
Mary says Jack doesn’t invariably convulse guests at their home. “He is usually laughing at someone else.”
Sylvia Fine, who is Danny Kaye’s wife and writer, says her husband is even funnier at home than professionally. She adores his “child’s sense of humor,” which she says is keener than most people’s.
* * *
SEES HUMOROUS SIDE
“You can't make him be funny when he doesn’t want to be,” she remarked, “but usually he sees the humorous side of everything—even little things about the house.” She says they have a perfect domestic arrangement—“He bawls me out for taking so long to dress and I criticize his professional performances.”
When told her father was a funny man, Bob Burns’ young daughter replied, “Yes when we have company.”
The man with the relatives says he soft pedals the gagging at home for fear of driving his family bugs, but Mrs. Burns opines that he is “decidedly funny.” That is no small tribute from Mrs. Burns, who hears his radio gags many times since she does his stenography.
As to that now-famous bit of plumbing, his wife says Robin plays the Bazooka very little around the house, usually only for company. Anyway, Mrs. Burns adds, she likes it.
* * *
NEAT FIBBER McGEE
Marian Jordan (Molly) testifies that unlike his Fibber McGee counterpart, Jim Jordan is very neat and thoughtful about the house and doesn’t accumulate masses of hardware and junk in closets. Also unlike the sage of Wistful Vista, Jim is very mechanically minded and handy at fixing things.
His family thinks he is even funnier at home than on the air. Jordan was a singer before he found the gold mine in comedy and loves to sing around the house, whether or not company is present.
Eddie Cantor is a card around the house, says his wife, Ida, but still can be very serious and is a strict father to his famed five daughters. They are also very strict with him—when he tries out his gags on them. Failure to evoke laughter from his feminine audience usually outlaws a joke from his repertoire.
Mrs. Cantor says she picked Eddie out of the crowd when they were teen-agers in New York’s East Side because of his sense of humor. He was even funnier then, she reflects.

A Bob Clampett Debu-uuuuuut

Only one man would make a 1960s children’s TV cartoon featuring a character singing while rubbing her nose and scratching her butt at the same time.

It wasn’t Jay Ward or Bill Scott of ‘Bullwinkle’ fame. And it certainly wasn’t Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. No, it was that man whose animated likeness and lyricised name were featured in every cartoon, Robert Emerson Clampett. The show was ‘Beany and Cecil.’ Eventually.

Both Bob Clampett and his cartoon invention had lineages in the entertainment business. Clampett started working on Warner Bros. cartoons in 1930, eventually being promoted to a director’s job and crafting theatrical shorts featuring Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. He moved into early local television in Los Angeles and developed several puppet shows, the first of which revolved around a boy and his buddy, a sea serpent named Cecil.

Clampett brought the characters back and they debuted on Saturday, January 6, 1962 as the stars of a revamped ‘Matty’s Funnies,’ an early-evening show that brought together tired old Paramount cartoons like Baby Huey and Little Audrey. No doubt the time slot was picked because Hanna-Barbera had three very successful half-hour cartoon shows in the early evening on different weekdays (same generally time, but not on a competing day). The Associated Press’ intrepid West Coast TV columnist told all about it in a story that appeared in newspapers a week later. For reasons unknown, Bob Thomas spells the lead character’s name incorrectly.

Beanie And His Pal Back On Television
By BOB THOMAS
AP Movie-TV Writer
HOLLYWOOD (AP) — Beanie and his pal, Cecil the seasick sea serpent, are back on TV!
This news may be received with apathy east of San Bernardino. It’s a joyous event for many Southern Californians.
“Time for Beanie” was one of the pioneer TV shows in Los Angeles and later was syndicated in other parts of the nation. It developed a large and sometimes fanatical following here.
I recall hearing from Lana Turner that she and her then husband Bob Topping would allow nothing to interfere with their watching of “Beanie.” Lionel Barrymore was an enthusiastic viewer. Groucho Marx wrote a fan letter to producer Bob Clampett.
“Time for Beanie” went on KTLA in 1948, began as a series in 1949. The stringless puppets, made a hit in those pioneering days with their literate humor and boundless imagination. Most of us adult fans thought it was much too good for kids.
The show lasted eight years. Then Clampett decided to call a halt.
“My Eastern distributor said that the dam was about to break,” he explained. “The film companies were going to flood the market with Bugs Bunnies and Popeyes, etc. We couldn’t hope to compete with cartoons that had cost $30,000-$40,000 to make.”
Clampett ended the five-day weekly grind and spent a year doing the things he had wanted to do during the eight arduous years. But he wasn’t ready to give up on Beanie and Cece. He bought up all rights to the characters and started working up a backlog of stories.
“I still wanted to do the series as puppets,” said Clampett, a tall-brush-haired man with quiet voice. “But all the Eastern people told me puppets were out. Animation was in.”
The producer adapted. He made a deal with United Artists for releasing the Beanies as theater shorts abroad. A toy manufacturer signed up as TV sponsor, planning a direct pitch for toys based on the show’s characters. ABC scheduled the show for 7 p.m. EST Saturdays. (Monday nights in Los Angeles.)
I can report to the aging members of the local fan club that Beanie and Cece are as ingenuous as ever in animated form, and Dishonest John is just as outrageous with his puns and nefarious deeds.
“Animation gives us more scope for the adventures,” Clampett observed, “but we also lose a human quality that we had in puppets. I still think there is room for a puppet show on TV.”

The ‘Matty’s Funnies’ name was dropped fairly quickly and the show was known by the names of the lead characters.

There was always something odd about Beany and Cecil. Beany rarely had any variation in expression. Captain whatever-his-name-was had no real personality and seemingly existed to read strained puns that appeared on the screen. Really warped things used to be inflicted on Cecil (not unlike Clampett’s Bugs in ‘Falling Hare’). And then there’s the woman mentioned above: So What (a name reworked from another Clampett Warners cartoon).

At times, Clampett couldn’t resist following the path of self-indulgence blazed by the 1950s UPA studio (full of designs made only to please the designer) and Chuck Jones (who made cartoons for himself). The audience sometimes was a secondary consideration. In a gag that went over every kid viewer’s head, So fixes a black wig in place, her body shape inexplicably morphs and she starts rubbing her nose and scratching her butt as “Squeely Smith.” Later in the scene, she’s suddenly back to normal with no explanation.

On the other hand, Clampett’s writers could pull some brilliant stuff. In this cartoon, Clampett repeats his ‘An Itch in Time’ routine at Warners (perfected by Tex Avery) where he stopped the picture for a comment to the audience. Dishonest John is being painfully zapped with electricity, except for a moment when he asks viewers in an aside “Do you think there’s too much violence on television?” Jay Ward’s characters tossed off contemporary show biz cracks like that all the time and they always work because the audience is in on the joke.

Beany and Cecil was a cartoon series that was inconsistent and unpredictable but still worth watching. You can probably say the same thing about its creator.

Proof That Times Change

81 years ago, there were the most popular guests in America’s living rooms.



Today, you can’t even mention their names without starting a debate.

‘Check and Double Check’ was released in 1930. Sources today say it wasn’t really a success because the two-man dialogue of the 15-minute radio show didn’t quite translate into a feature film, but newspaper ads of the day show the movie did business for almost a year. Still, if there were plans for a sequel, they were shelved. After the release of this movie, with the exception of a couple of lacklustre animated versions, Amos and Andy avoided the big screen and stuck to selling Pepsodent on the airwaves.

Swing You Sinners!

Maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems there were reels and reels of cartoons out of New York in the early ‘30s involving characters caught in nightmarish or out-of-control situations. One of the best is ‘Swing You Sinners’ (1930).

The Fleischer studio was, far and away, the tops of the three major cartoon operations in New York. At their best, the Fleischer cartoons are fun and extremely warped (though you can say the same thing for Terry and Van Beuren, too). ‘Sinners’ benefits from a never-ending flow of things on the screen. Something is always morphing into something else. Things suddenly sprout a mouth, arms and legs and behave like humans.

A really interesting effect happens at the beginning of ‘Sinners.’ Bimbo gets into a fight with a chicken. To emphasize the violence, the background drawing is rotated clockwise behind the animation. Look where the chicken coop is in the top drawing.




And, yes, Bimbo and the chicken have exchanged heads. Some of the gags are so casual and so much is going on, you miss them the first time. That’s just one good reason to watch the Fleischer cartoons over and over.

Ted Sears (later a Disney writer) and Willard Bowsky (who died in France during World War Two) are the credited animators in this.

It’s a shame the Fleischer cartoons got watered down as the ‘30s wore on but there was a time when a point could be made they were more entertaining than the cheery animated antics that came out of the West Coast.

The Joys of Noise

Anyone who is a fan of old network radio shows knows the vital role played by the sound effects man. Newspapers, especially in the ‘30s, sang his praises but, generally, he toiled in anonymity; though a cute song praising the work of Virgil Reimer made a couple of appearances on ‘Fibber McGee and Molly’ (Reimer created from scratch the only thing many people remember about Fibber today—the clatter from the cascading junk in the McGee hall closet).

The poor old sound effects department got even more of a short shrift in films. The first Oscar for Sound Effects wasn’t handed out until 1963, more than 30 years after sound films displaced silents. Sound, it could be said, pre-dates sound films. A good pit orchestra or a Mighty Wurlitzer could pump out musical effects to enhance silent films. Yet the seemingly innumerable Hollywood columnists didn’t really pay much attention to the “sound” part of sound films after the novelty wore off by about 1930.

A rare exception is this 1948 column by the Associated Press that delved into the MGM sound effects library.

Sound Men Have Huge Noise Library
By JACK QUIGG
(For Bob Thomas)
HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 22—(AP)—A short burp, the plaintive whistle of a distant train, a cougar’s cough and a gallows’ clatter are a few of thousands of odd noises that are the daily concern of movie sound men.
The noises, recorded on the sound tracks of standard movie film, are kept for short notice use. This, if Mickey Rooney’s sneeze comes off key, sound men merely dub in one of hundreds on file in the library.
MGM’s collection is typical. Sounds from airplanes to zippers are carefully catalogued and stored in fireproof vaults. This “library” consists of four walk-in vaults, each holding 2,000 cans of film.
Under airplanes, for example, are listed sounds of planes idling, taxiing, taking off, landing and diving, as heard from both inside the craft and on the ground. One card even reads: “old bi-plane, fairly hot. circling.”
Most animals found in zoos, and many that aren’t have had their vocalizing immortalized on celluloid. On hand are a bull elephant’s bellow, the chatter of a squirrel and the unmistakable warnings of rattlesnakes and bumblebees. Camels are classified as barking, growling or crying. Dogs are listed by breed.
There may be as many as 40 or 50 subclasses under a general heading. Thus the sounds of auto engines are recorded by make and model back to tne Maxwell, Stanley Steamer and the Bean (an old English make).
Belches are classified as “long,” “short,” “man’s,” “boy’s,” “through a hankerchief” and numerous other ways.
The sounds of a pea shooter, a candle being blown out, a spittoon being hit, a skull crushed are there. Native chants and yells are catalogued geographically. Baby’s cries are listed by age and whether the infant is happy or fretful.
“Our sounds are 99 per cent authentic,” says Mike Steinore, in charge of the library. “It’s easier to record the real thing than it is to invent a substitute.”
MGM has been adding to its files since 1926. Occasionally a film will require a noise for the mixing skill of an expert chef.
The “Green Dolphin Street” script called for an avalanche. By blending the sound of thunder with the crash of falling trees, tearing timber and falling glass—done inside a greenhouse for greater resonance—an avalanche was achieved.
For the atomic bomb explosion in “The Beginning of the End” the sound men simply amplified and extended their biggest explosion, a 16 inch cannon blast.
“Often it’s the simplest sounds that are the hardest to record,” Steinmore says. “Getting Lassie to give out with a remorseful bark is as hard as anything.”
His toughest assignments, Steinore says, were duplicating the din of the earthquake in “San Francisco,” and the rustle of millions of locusts for the plague in “Good Earth.”

To anyone who thinks ‘The Jazz Singer’ (1927) at Warners broke the silent barrier in films for good, it’s a surprise to see MGM began collecting sound the previous year.

Cock-A-Doodle Dog

Tex Avery talked about using the element of surprise in his cartoons, coming up with a gag that the audience least expected. By the 1950s, Tex was still doing that, but there are other gags that fans can see miles away. The fun is watching how he handles them.

‘Cock-A-Doodle Dog’ (1951) is a good example. Tex hangs the cartoon on a simple premise he used a number of times—sleep vs. noise. Tired Spike the bulldog tries to stop a scrawny rooster from obsessively crowing so he can get some rest. Since roosters are supposed to crow, Spike doesn’t have a chance in his effort to change the natural order of things.

Toward the end of the cartoon, Spike throws a cake of soap at the rooster, who swallows it. The rooster blows a huge soap bubble which floats into Spike’s dog house. You can see a nail on the wall. You know what’s going to happen—the bubble will burst and loud crowing will come out of it to wake up Spike—but you don’t know what kind of crazy take Tex is going to pull off. Here’s just one of the drawings.



There’s a gravity gag I really like, where the rooster and Spike back into each other, then start walking up into the sky as their feet touch each other. Finally, the two realise what’s happened. In ‘Ventriloquist Cat’ (1950), Avery uses a fright gag with the cat’s fur standing on end. He does the same thing with the rooster here (feathers standing on end?).



The animators are Avery’s truncated ‘50s MGM crew—Mike Lah, Walt Clinton and Grant Simmons.

Kevin Langley looked at this cartoon 4½ years ago and you can read his post here.

What’s Wrong With this Wabbit?

If you’ve watched enough of the old cartoons, you’ll see an occasional error. Generally, it’s in animation—a limb disappears for a split second, there’s a brief colour change, or something like that. Once in a while, there’s a continuity error. There’s one in the 1942 Warners cartoon ‘The Wabbit Who Came to Supper.’ Look at the telegram that Elmer Fudd gets in the forest.



Now, here’s Elmer at home.



No wonder he’s surprised. He’s in the wrong house. The address on the mailbox isn’t the same as the one on the telegram (And it doesn’t exist in the 1942 Los Angeles City Directory). The wrong house would explain why Elmer could afford a “Steinbeck” piano. Here’s a reconstructed background of Elmer’s living room that was panned in the cartoon. Click to enlarge.



There are no layout or background credits on this cartoon, but Graham Webb’s animation history book says Lenard Kester constructed the backgrounds from layouts by Owen Fitzgerald.