Concentration's Bob Clayton

Johnny Olson used to commute from New York City to Miami in the 1960s for a job announcing “The Jackie Gleason Show.” So, naturally, there had to be a counter-balance. And that counter-balance happened to be Bob Clayton, who commuted from Miami to New York City in 1960s for a job announcing “Concentration.”

Clayton was born on this day 91 years ago.

Programmers today who look at tapes of the old NBC game show would probably be stunned about how simplistic it is. There were no flashing or strobing lights, no jumbo monitors, no overbearingly loud sounds, no nutso screaming audience. Host Hugh Downs droned quietly. A small organ that likely had played themes and bridges back in the network radio days provided the music along with a celeste. There were two cameras, maybe three at best, one of which was swung around to pan across the fairly polite audience midway in the proceedings. But it didn’t need all kind of video histrionics (as if they’re needed today). It stayed on the air because viewers became engrossed in the task of seeing if they could solve the puzzle before the contestants. And when Downs left, order was followed and Clayton was promoted in his place, though network executives, as is their wonted custom, bollixed things a bit.

Clayton didn’t come up through the ranks of the NBC announcing staff, but he did start in radio. Broadcasting magazine announced in its issue of June 7, 1948 that he had joined the staff of WWDX in Paterson, New Jersey. How he ended up in Florida is outlined in a story in the St. Petersburg Times of July 17, 1956.

Bob Clayton’s Love Of The Theatre Started Him On His Radio Career
By ANNE ROWE
Faint strains of “Dixie” floated through the control room as Bob Clayton, WPIN disk jockey, informed your reporter, “I’m from Georgia, ma’am,” in a non-committal voice.
Certainly, to hear Bob’s familiar vocal chords exercising over the 680 spot on your radio dial you’d never guess he’s a Georgia cracker by birth. But sho’nuff, honey chile, he is!
The interview with Bob took me behind the scenes at the WPIN studio in the Royal Palm Hotel.
Nestled comfortably behind the mike, Bob shuffled his attention between talking to me, putting on platters, reading commercials and conversing with his “partner in music,” Dick Baker, who’s voice is carried down to Bob from the lower shores of upper Sawgrass Lake. Bob and Dick do two shows daily via the telephone. It’s a pretty tricky set-up they’ve got, and the fans really go for it.
A love for the theatre started Bob on the road to radio work.
He spent a hitch in the Air Force. Flying high in B-29’s, Bob kept alookin’ toward the fture. He set his sights on becoming an actor and decided first thing he’d do when Uncle Same handed him his walking papers would be to enroll in a drama school. Now came a problem of where to go . . . Bob selected a school in New York City where he spent two years. His secondary objective (besides learning to act) was to lose his thick Southern drawl. Ironically, Bob’s first acting job called for him to play a Georgia marine on the Ma Perkins show. Bob’s theatrical work took him to many more soap opera studios, but mainly to summer stock theatres.
In 1948, Bob went to work for Art Mundorff, (new owner of WPIN) in Patterson, N.J. When Mundorff bought WPIN in 1950, Bob followed close behind.
So for six years now, Bob’s been behind that mike at WPIN and all you have to do is tune in to either “Party Line,” “Requestfully Yours,” or “Sunday Matinee” to learn that he really likes his job.
Bob’s personal tastes in music have little influence on his shows, since he played mostly requested tunes. However, Bob does have an aversion to “most” rock and roll. He sifts the records he plays, choosing only the ones that are in line with good taste. He feels a line has to be drawn somewhere.
As for his favorite type of music, Bob is most emphatic on that subject. “Show tunes are my dish,” says Bob, who claims Ella Fitzgerald’s new album for Verve, “Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book,” is just tops. In it, Ella sings 24 of Porter’s best. Bob realizes show tunes are not always on the Hit Parade, but still thinks they’re the grandest. He’s an avid fan of such greats as Rogers and Hart, Porter and Gershwin. Perhaps his strong tendency toward show songs can be “blamed on his love for the theatre” and the many miles between St. Petersburg and New York City that keep him away from that branch of entertainment.
Bob’s a married man. His wife is Syd Clayton, a model, who recently opened her own modeling academy here. Syd shares Bob’s love for show business, too, and they have hopes of someday being able to work together.
So, that’s Bob Clayton, a cheerful guy with a happy voice, a crew cut and a real love for music.
(Note: If your TV set can pick up Channel 6 from Orlando, tune in Thursday nights and you’ll see Bob sitting in on the wrestling show from those parts.)

Clayton moved to WCKT-TV in Miami in 1958 and landed a break when he nailed a part in the Jerry Lewis film “The Bellboy” being shot there. Lewis liked him so much, he brought Clayton to Hollywood in 1960 to make a pilot film for a TV show Lewis was directing. Somewhere along the way, Clayton made the acquaintance of Hugh Downs, and that not only translated into an announcing job on “Concentration” in 1963 but earlier fill-in work for Downs as the announcer on Jack Paar’s “Tonight” show.

October 2, 1961, Clayton debuted as the host of the ABC game show, “Make a Face.” He took over as host of “Concentration” on January 6, 1969. But something was going on among the numerous vice-presidents of NBC. Ed McMahon had been hosting another game, “Snap Judgment” and someone must have remembered when McMahon emceed “Concentration” on a special anniversary edition in 1967 (Downs and Clayton played for prizes). Clayton was demoted back to his announcer’s job and McMahon took over as host on March 31st. McMahon is practically revered these days for his long career as Johnny Carson’s “Tonight” sidekick, but “Concentration” fans could have torn him into puzzle parts. They wanted the friendly Clayton and concentrated their lobbying on NBC to get him back. They got their wish on September 29th (in a wonderful smokescreen, the network said McMahon “resigned” because his other business interests, suddenly and miraculously, got heavier).

Here’s an Associated Press column on Clayton and the show, dated July 1, 1972.

'Concentration' Highly Popular Game Show After 14 Years
By CYNTHIA LOWRY
NEW YORK — (AP) — A studio contestant, about to start playing "Concentration" during a recent taping, suddenly became very nervous. As host Bob Clayton moved with accustomed ease to simmer her down, the woman remarked plaintively, "I'd feel a lot more comfortable if I did this with my ironing board in front of me."
The remark helps explain what seems to, be a mystery to so many television viewers with 9-to-5 jobs; the continued popularity of daytime game shows, panel shows and, of course, soap operas. The daytime shows, for most women, offer companionship.
"I don't think any of us feel as though our show is the Holy Grail," Clayton said. "I believe we just hope it will please and entertain people.
"Concentration" is, quite simply, a memory game, with two contestants competing to match numbers on a board of 30 squares — an adaptation of a child's game involving a rebus. The remarkable thing about the game, which doesn't try for humor or even to stretch the viewer's intellect, is that it is now in its 14th year on the network. Some soap operas are older, but it is the dean of the game shows; an area in which a newcomer who survives for more than the first 13 weeks is counted as almost a hit.
Clayton, who has been with the program almost since its inception, was the central figure in a rare demonstration of the power and loyalty of the audience. Hugh Downs had served for the first ten years as quiet-mannered host of the show, with Clayton backstopping him as announcer and substitute, host.
Downs stepped but of the series in 1969 and for some three months Clayton temporarily took over the hosting chores. When NBC decided to put announcer Ed McMahon into "Concentration," letters poured in from viewers, outraged at what they considered unfair tactics. Worse, the ratings of the show started to decline.
"Of course I was upset and thought about leaving," Clayton said. "But I liked the show, and I like having a steady job. Anyway, after, about six months, I was moved back."

The five-a-week series now is perking away comfortably — somewhere in the middle of the daytime list to terms of popularity and without too tough competition: reruns of old situation comedies on CBS and local programming on ABC stations and affiliates.
While some game-show hosts consider their jobs a sort of rip-off and busy themselves with other projects, Clayton makes a full-time job out of his. He spends one day just answering his mail.
Six shows are taped each week, with "Concentration" using a studio two days and "Jeopardy," another NBC using it another two.
"That extra show each week builds up so that we can occasionally take a break," Clayton said. When he is not guiding contestants through their paces, Clayton is likely to be flying around making personal appearances, presiding over ribbon-cuttings, addressing groups — "I'll do almost anything useful if it gives me a chance to talk about "Concentration," he remarked.
The job of being shepherd to contestants, usually persons who have had no experience with either cameras or microphones, is more complicated than Clayton makes it look.
One problem often is keeping the studio audience from blowing the game.
"Most of the people who come to see our show play it at home," he said. "Naturally they continue to do that when they are here and, often unconsciously, call out answers."
Prizes on the show range from gags — on a recent game the gifts matched up by contestants included "a candy kiss" and "an old flame" — to large and expensive items including jewelry, wardrobes of clothes, 1,000 books, mink coats, vacation trips, cash. Most are gathered by the show staff in exchange for program credits, the normal procedure on programs of this kind.
Clayton himself has been interested in show business since his teens — "I wanted to be an actor but I was perfectly terrible."

The show left the air on March 23, 1973. It couldn’t compete against flashing lights, loud sounds and Johnny Olson shouting “Come on down!” on “The New Price is Right” on CBS, and was replaced the following Monday by “Baffle” with Dick Enberg. Ironically, “Price” moved to a new time slot that day as well. And ABC countered with a new programme called “The $10,000 Pyramid” featuring as its announcer one Bob Clayton. He died November 1, 1979 in New York.

Clayton isn’t remembered as well as the ‘A’ list game show hosts of the ‘60s, probably because his on-camera career was comparatively short. But he came across as affably down-to-earth, and deserves to be remembered on his birth date.

Flea Circus Backgrounds

Joe Montell was a buddy of Ed Benedict’s, and Ed got him a job working for his boss at MGM. So it was that Montell’s name appears as the background artist on several Tex Avery cartoons, including “The Flea Circus” (released in 1954).

Here are a few of the background drawings. Montell draws a different theatre scrim for each of the acts on stage.



And there’s a long one that I can’t snip together from frame grabs without the colour changing, but it follows a large sewer pipe about to be laid in the ground from one end to the other. Notice the Leaning Tower of Eiffel at the end.



Montell later worked for John Sutherland, Hanna-Barbera and Jay Ward.

Tex reuses some old themes here—fleas, lovelorn-ity, and an ending with insanely large numbers of children. And Bill Thompson reuses Droopy’s voice for the clown flea. It sounds like Francoise Brun-Cottan and Pat McGeehan are supplying the other voices.

What Year is It?

Some people make up animation history. They come up with a conclusion and state it as “fact.”

A good example is the “fact” that animation backgrounds were redrawn at Warner Bros. to change dates on them (such as magazine covers in one short) so a cartoon wouldn’t look “old” to the audience. This odd claim has never been substantiated and, to be honest, I can’t picture anyone years ago sitting through a re-released cartoon in a theatre to either notice or care. To me, it’s just a weak gag, like when you see a wall calendar in a cartoon that reads “September 32nd.”



Here’s one such calendar in a long school house interior in Porky Pig’s painful debut “I Haven't Got a Hat,” released in 1935. There’s a calendar on the wall which, if you blow it up and look close enough, reads either “1943” or “1949.” This is from the original cartoon with original titles, not some Blue Ribbon re-release from the ‘40s. So it obviously wasn’t altered. It’s just the anonymous background artist doing something silly, just like the lame joke that the map shows the country of “Mehico.”

Incidentally, if you’re wondering about the book on the teacher’s desk, it’s entitled “History of Kansas.” The fine, but abandoned, web site Looney Tunes Hidden Gags goes into detail about how the backgrounds around this time featured inside jokes about Tubby Millar and his hometown of Portis, Kansas. I suspect this is another one of them.

Long Before He Said "Come On Down!"

Johnny Olson was (and still is) my favourite game show announcer and I always got a kick out of seeing him on camera. It happened rarely in the ‘60s and, usually, it was a quick, dark shot of him off-stage. When Goodson-Todman revived “The Price is Right” in the ‘70s, he started being placed in little showcase sketches which were the best part of the show.

Little did I know back then that Johnny had appeared on camera in the early days of television. He hosted a number of shows but, for reasons I still don’t quite understand, ended up announcing instead of hosting. And little did I know that Johnny had emceed several daytime shows in the latter days of network radio, some of them with his wife Penny. In fact, his radio career goes back to at least 1926, when he interviewed taciturn President Calvin Coolidge.

I stumbled onto this feature story about Johnny and Penny in the Radio and Television Mirror of November 1949. Johnny had a Saturday morning radio show at the time and was also on TV on the DuMont network (where his replacement on “To Tell the Truth,” Bill Wendell, was on the staff).

The Mirror was a magazine aimed at housewives, who were Johnny and Penny’s main audience. So it’s no surprise that the article talks an awful lot about cooking, keeping house and marriage—and this is from a woman who also had a career on radio at the time—with a bit of soap opera-style adversity thrown in. It sounds old-fashioned and hokey, but they were married 46 years until Olson died so it must have worked for them.

The story consistently spells their name “Olsen” with an “e.” So do some newspaper obituaries. But he spelled it with an “o” and that’s what’s on his grave.

The photos you see here accompanied the story.

Come and Visit Johnny Olsen
By Helen Bolstad
In Penny's voice, the enthusiasm and happiness bubbled like champagne when she telephoned her invitation. “Our new apartment is finished at last. Radio Mirror readers had a hand in it, you know. How about coming over to visit?”
The idea was fine. For all their success, Johnny and Penny Olsen remain the young couple next door. The New York locale doesn't count. Half an hour after you first meet them, you feel as though you were in the middle of a class reunion with your best friends.
As viewers and listeners long ago guessed, Johnny and Penny are home folks. Johnny, born in Windom, Minnesota, still reads the Cottonwood County Citizen each week. Instead of talking about celebrities at Sardi’s, he’ll convulse you with an account of how, when at a small station in Mitchell, South Dakota, and singing with Lawrence Welk’s band, he joined the musicians in turning mechanics, converted two cars into a bus, and started the trek toward big bookings.
Penny, whose roots strike equally deep into Wisconsin soil, can still name the top performer at WLBL, the Stevens Point station where she began singing at the age of six. She met Johnny at a country dance where he was an announcer at Milwaukee’s WTMJ. He wooed her by writing new words for his theme song each day, proposed on a boat during a Lake Michigan storm, and married her in Decorah, Iowa, the place his family first settled when they came to this country.
A visit to the Olsens is always delightful. The only problem was time.
Reminded of it. Penny pondered. “Oh yes, the schedule. The wonderful, thrilling, awful schedule. All we need is some hours.
“Let’s see . . . Rumpus Room goes on every morning, and so does Luncheon Club. Saturday is ABC’s for Johnny Olsen’s Get Together, and then there’s Prince Charming on Mutual, I mustn’t forget What’s My Name with Arlene Francis, and Fun for the Money, televised from Chicago. ...”
It sounded like the start of what television people call a “hassle,” for Johnny and Penny, these days, are probably the busiest couple on the air.
Penny found a solution. “Let’s make it like an old-fashioned progressive dinner where you move to a new location for each course. Just latch on and keep up until we can go home.”
It sounded hectic but fun. In the WABD dressing room, where Penny was firmly lipsticking a televisable mouth and Johnny slicking his smooth hair down just a little slicker, there was only time enough to ask, “How’s Lena, the good luck poodle?”
Forty-five minutes and a half-dozen quiz contestants later, in a taxi, Penny caught her breath to answer, “About Lena—I just clipped off all her hair, and she’s the funniest sight. I was walking her on Riverside Drive the other day when a boy stepped up to ask, ‘Lady, is that really a baby lion?’”
Lena’s position, officially, is that of mascot. Her arrival marked the end of a run of hard luck and sorrow which Radio Mirror readers, too, had a hand in breaking.
“You remember all the awful things which happened to us after our little dog died last winter,” says Penny. “That was the start, and a deluge followed, Johnny’s father passed away, and we were both terribly broken up. Then it was the apartment. That meant an awful lot to us, for it was the first real home we’d had in years. We sent for our antiques and started to settle down at last.”
Her face clouds at the recollection. “It never occurred to us, when we talked about it on the air, that we were inviting disaster. On a Rumpus Room broadcast, we announced it was finished. That same night, on another show, we got word it was on fire. We rushed home and found that we had been robbed, too—all we had left was the clothes on our backs.
“It hit doubly hard because I had to go to the hospital for an immediate operation. Next, Johnny’s best programs cancelled. We felt as though we had lost our last friend.
“We were feeling so low that John Gibbs, Johnny’s friend and agent, decided to take a hand,” Penny continues. “He brought us Lena, assuring us a new dog would change our luck.
“It was the strangest thing, but do you know she did? The very next day, Johnny got a new show. Then the Radio Mirror story ran—but let us show you, rather than tell you, what happened after that.”
When the taxi delivers you on Park Avenue, Lena, the animated good luck piece, makes herself heard before she is seen. Her happy yips start as soon as the elevator lands, and when the door opens, she hurls herself, ecstatic with joy, into Johnny’s arms.
Says Penny, “She’s the jumpingest dog. Sometimes I think she’s crossed with tomcat or jackrabbit.”
Although the Olsens look out on the towers of Manhattan, the interior of the apartment presents a rustic aspect. Johnny and Penny, forever homesick for the country, have created a sky-high version of a Midwest farmhouse.
Antiques furnish the spacious living room, and each one has a story. Stopping in front of the open-front maple dresser, Penny lifts a plate. “This china came from Johnny’s home, and the milk glass was my mother’s.”
“And Penny’s grandfather carved the settee in the hall,” Johnny volunteers.
“We’re sort of sentimental,” Penny confesses, "I guess we both like old- fashioned country things best of all.”
“We’re sentimental about our fans, too,” says Johnny. "Our families’ fire shower surprised us, but the second shower, from Radio Mirror readers, really knocked us for a loop. Come on. Penny, let’s get the things.”
They return, arms heaped high with hand towels, bath towels, dish towels and sheets. “I’ve never had such linen in my life,” Penny says. "I received some of the most gorgeous luncheon sets.”
Deeply serious for a moment, Johnny says, “Tell everyone how much we appreciated the gifts, will you? We’ll never forget what our friends did for us.”
Says Penny, “Much as I love every single present, I can't help feeling people shouldn't have done it. I know some of them had to sacrifice things they needed themselves in order to send these to us.”
"Well," says Johnny reflectively, “there’s joy in giving, as well as receiving. We’ve handed out over a million prizes, but I still get just as much kick out of it as the contestant, providing it's a fun prize—something which doesn’t amount to a great deal, but which the person will enjoy using.
“This may be a strange thing for a quiz master to say, but it turns me sick to have a contestant get within reaching distance of a whopping big award and then miss the question. When I see that shocked, dead look come over their faces, I realize that winning, to them, meant getting rid of the mortgage or paying for an operation. I know they’ll forever reproach themselves for missing the question.”
Penny, well aware of Johnny’s habit of carrying his listeners’ problems home with him, seeks to switch the conversation to a lighter vein. “I won a quiz prize once. In fact, because of it, I actually got on ABC before Johnny did.”
She goes on to tell how, when Johnny came to New York to apply for a job, she waited in the corridor until a man came by and asked if she would like to be on Ladies Be Seated.
Penny says, “I had never heard of a ‘regular’—a person who goes to every audience show—and I certainly didn’t know that their badge at that time was a red hat. Ed East, with a then-new show to run, thought it wise to choose a few persons who had seen a microphone before. He spotted the red hat I had on and invited me in.
“I answered my questions, and I’d won an ironing board before it dawned on me that would be pretty clumsy to tote home to Milwaukee if Johnny didn’t get his job. I also thought of how little cash we had. So I asked East if he would buy it back. He gave me the most disgusted look. He must have figured he had a real nut on his hands and it was worth anything to keep the peace. He gave me three dollars.”
The big clock booms three deep notes. Johnny looks up with a grin. “Coffee time?”v “Coffee time,” Penny agrees. Leading the expedition into the kitchen, she comments, “After ten years of learning Olsen's Norwegian habits, you’d never guess my ancestors were Irish.”
She sets the coffee to perk, then says, “It will take only a minute or two to get dinner started. We’re having Johnny’s favorite dish — Norwegian hamburger soup.”
“It’s really like a stew,” Johnny explains. “My mother, having ten children, used to cook it to make the meat stretch. We’d make a meal of it.”
Penny takes a fresh recipe card from her file box. “Let me tell Radio Mirror readers how to make it. Giving the recipe is one way to say thank you for the shower. Just follow these directions:”
Norwegian Hamburger Soup
Break an egg into a mixing bowl. Beat slightly, and to it add salt, pepper, a dash of sage, a chopped onion, and just a little garlic. Add the hamburger, mix thoroughly, shape into small balls, and roll the balls in flour. Melt fat in a dutch oven, and when it’s sizzling, drop in the hamburger balls to brown. Add some water, and let simmer for about three hours or more.
When the meat is cooked, add the vegetables—carrots, celery, potatoes, peas, green beans, cabbage and tomatoes. Simmer for an additional thirty minutes.
“Then add one more line,” Johnny instructs. “Deeelicious! Penny is my favorite cook.”
“And it’s just lucky I like it,” Penny continues, “for Johnny never wants to go out to eat. I suppose the only way we manage the schedule we do is because when we’re through, we come home, get into old clothes and really let our hair down and relax.
“Johnny has his record collection, and I’ve got my cooking for hobbies. The most fun I’ve had in a long while was when my niece came here on her honeymoon. I’d always wanted to cook a wedding dinner, so we put all the leaves in the table and called our friends and relatives. “I set the table with my best linen, and of course there were flowers. First of all, we started with cream of chicken soup, and after that, we had fried chicken, carrots and peas, potatoes and gravy, and green salad. For relishes, I had home made dill pickles, stuffed celery, and radishes. I baked Parker House rolls and served them with melting butter. For dessert, we had strawberry shortcake, followed by mints and coffee.”
“Just a simple little meal, tossed together after a day over a hot microphone,” says Johnny with a grin.
Penny matches his smile. “Savour the recollection, my lad, for you get store-bought cake with your coffee today. The housekeeping suffers when I fly out to Chicago to watch you televise Fun for the Money.”
“It’s worth it,” Johnny replies. “We’ve worked together so long that I’m lost without Penny. Even if she isn’t on the show, I need her in the audience. We are partners in everything we do. One is no good without the other.”
“How’s about a little partnership in setting the table?” Penny suggests.
“The hamburger balls are almost brown enough, Lena wants to be fed, the coffee’s ready, and everything seems to be happening at once.”
“Sure,” says Johnny, ambling into the yellow-walled dining room. He takes dishes from the china closet, then holds up a cup for inspection. The pattern is a scene which might have been drawn from Penny’s Wisconsin hills.
“See,” says Johnny, “we can’t get away from it, even in dishes. We may live in the biggest city on earth, but Penny and I like to think we’re still country kids.”

Dance Floor From The Dance Contest

Here’s another blurry-middle background from a Popeye cartoon, this time from “The Dance Contest” (1934). The blur helps simulate speed when a character is quickly panned across it. The effect works really well.



The great background artists at Fleischers back then were uncredited. A real shame.

Now You're Callin' the Jive, Jackson

Toots the cat is delighted, shocked and awed by the Zoot Cat knocking at her door. It’s really Tom in a home-made outfit. Here is one second (24 frames) of her reaction.



Ken Muse used the little overlapping upper lip (see first drawing) when he drew Mr. Jinks some years later at the Hanna-Barbera studio. Muse wasn’t exactly known for these exaggerated takes, though I can think of one he animated of Jinks in “Judo Jack” at Hanna-Barbera. Muse, of course, didn’t do all these drawings; he would have an assistant and an in-betweener. I don’t know who his assistant was.

Sara Berner plays the girl cat; Jerry Mann provides the male dialogue.

P.S.: I gather this is a "colour corrected" version of the cartoon but these colours are not correct.

Yermo For Jack

When you think of Las Vegas comics, you think of loud, brash guys like Buddy Hackett and Don Rickles or Rat Packers like Joey Bishop. You don’t think of someone like Jack Benny. But Jack played Vegas, and that was only after his wife Mary Livingston convinced him that if a sophisticated humourist like Noel Coward could be a smash in Sin City, so could he.

Syndicated Broadway columnist Earl Wilson caught Benny’s Vegas show in 1958 and couldn’t resist the idea of talking to TV’s best-known cheapskate about being in a city where people willingly throw their money away in hope of landing The Big Jackpot. And he also wrote a bit about Jack’s act, some of which was incorporated into sketches on his TV show. Fans didn’t care if they heard and saw it all before. They wanted to see it live. And that’s why Jack was a Vegas smash.

This column was published in papers beginning July 19, 1958.

On Broadway
Gaming Tables Won't Get Jack Benny's Bucks
By EARL WILSON
LAS VEGAS, July 19 - Jack Benny, on vacation here from television, gave me an exclusive explanation of his secret system of not losing at the dice table. (He doesn't play.)
Actually, he doesn't play much. He'd been sitting in the Flamingo coffee shop with George Burns about 5 p.m. when he yawned and George said, "What are you going to do? Take a nap?"
"I think I might go lose $20, he said.
And so one of the richest men in show business, in shorts and sports shirt, was seen leaning over a hot dice table a few minutes later, risking a few silver dollars—while next to him several nonentities with much lesser fortunes were betting $50 chips.
"I limit myself to $100 a day," Jack told me earlier. "And if the $100 is gone by noon, that's still my limit. If I didn't—being here a whole month—I could get killed."
In his Flamingo night club act—a big sellout—he tells it somewhat differently.
"We all get about the same salary here but I take mine home," he says. "Oh, I may risk a few dollars. But by that time, the house has bought me four cigars and six drinks, and I'm ahead. I may become an alcoholic but never a gambler."
Jack's fascinated by the high-rollers. We discussed a well-known figure who won $1,000,000 in a card game.
"That guy can't sit down to lunch without making a bet—such as how many seeds there are in his slice of watermelon," George Burns said. "Or whether the waitress will serve you or me first," Jack said, "Those guys know how to gamble. I don't."
Jack's playing it safe, too, by starring here in a cafe show. "I was such a big hit the first time they brought me right back only 11 months later," he says.
JACK WORKS with fellow fiddler Gisele MacKenzie—and has something fresh and novel for cafe crowds: The Jack Benny fan club from Yermo, Nev., a small town near here. The Jack Benny fan club turns out to be, Jack says, "dames all about 80 years old."
Actually, some are only 60.
"I tried to get them to work nude," Jack tells his audience.
When the fan club is invited up on stage, one fan titters "I haven't been so excited since I danced with President Buchanan."
They invite Jack to the convention of the Jack Benny fan clubs which, they say, is to be held in Minnesota.
"Why Minnesota?" asks Jack.
"Well we've tried other places,” one of the "girls" says, "but we seem to do better the nearer we are to the Mayo Clinic."
Jack also tells his audiences that he conducted a poll to find out whether people preferred his TV show live or on film.
"I was surprised," he says, "by how many didn't like me at all."
The truth is that Jack's looking forward to another big year on TV. "There's no way of changing my format because I have no format," he said.
He felt one of his best shows last year was his takeoff on Jackie Gleason and "The Honeymooners."
"I'd like to repeat that in New York!" he said. "And get Gleason to come on at the end. I'll have tell Gleason to stay fat so I can do it."
"Jackie's slim again," I said.
"That would be better!" he decided. He thought Audrey Meadows was great on that show.
If they want an exciting new star on Broadway, they should get Audrey Meadows," he said. I think she's sensational."
JACK'S WIFE Mary came over at this point to say she'd been on the phone all day. "Do you know what all those calls were for?" she said. "Reservations, what can I do about them, Jack?"
“You can't do a damn thing," Jack said. The room where he performs has a sign over it saying, "Jack Benny's Vault." The lettering is in pennies. The club even removed chairs from Jack's dressing room so more customers could be accommodated.
Jack asked me how I liked "The Music Man" and I told him about a man in it who drops a valise with a loud crash. When asked what he does, he says, "I'm an anvil salesman."
"Isn't that an old vaudeville bit?" I asked Jack and George Burns.
"I never saw it," both said.
"But I think it's very funny,” Jack said. "If it were given to me, I'd do it."
George Burns sucked his cigar. "I'm going to do it!" he announced. "Not only that, I'm going to wire them and tell them to take it out of the show because I originated it and it's mine."
Jack laughed for two minutes.
That's why they say he's the world's best audience and one of show business' nicest people.

Just a note about Jack Benny, Jackie Gleason and the publicity photo above. Shortly before the Benny TV show finished its long run, Jack did a parody of the Gleason show, featuring a sketch with Benny as Gleason as Joe the Bartender and Dennis Day as Frank Fontaine as Crazy Guggenheim. Benny was responsible for giving a huge boost to Fontaine’s career in the radio days. Fontaine developed the Crazy character, known as John L.C. Sivoney at the time, in his nightclub act. Benny got him to do it on several broadcasts and was barely able to control his laughter over Fontaine’s routine. So it was that Benny worked with the real Fontaine and a fake one.

An Assistant Animator

People under 25 may find it inconceivable that were was a time when cartoon fans didn’t even know who directed some of Golden Age cartoons that had been on TV screens for years. The credits had been taken off them. The information had to be ferreted out by people like Leonard Maltin (“Of Mice and Magic”), Jerry Beck (“The Warner Brothers Cartoons,” with Will Friedwald) and those many knowledgeable people who wrote for animation magazines (Mark Kausler, Harry McCracken, Paul Etcheverry, Mike Barrier and a host of others). Pretty soon, there was information about animators, background artists, writers, voice actors and others as experts dug and dug; there’s plenty of information that may never be uncovered at this late date.

Little has been said about assistant animators, especially those who were never elevated to the rank of animator (or at least got credit as one). You can even see pictures of some of them on animation web sites but have no idea about their work. Dan Bessie wrote a book and included some tales of his time as an assistant at MGM at the time its cartoon studio closed (he was laid off in late 1956).

However, I’ve run across a couple of news stories about one assistant, Dan Karpan, who worked at the Disney studio and then retired back home to Iowa. He was interviewed by the local paper a couple of times, once just after Walt Disney died. And he talks a bit about his assistant work.

Some biographical stuff: Daniel Robert Karpan was born July 1, 1911 in Eddyville, Iowa, the son of John and Katherine U. Karpan. He worked for the Columbia and MGM cartoon studios; the 1940 census doesn’t reveal which studio, but he made $650 in 1939 over a 32-week period. He went to work for Disney in 1944 after serving in the U.S. Navy during World War Two. He assisted on “Peter Pan,” “Alice in Wonderland,” “Sleeping Beauty” and “101 Dalmations.” He was laid off (with “about 450” other Disney employees, he said), then went to work for an ad agency before retiring. Karpan died in Albia, Iowa on June 20, 1986.

Karpan was interviewed by a journalism student, whose resultant story appeared in two Iowa newspapers. This is from the Carroll Daily Times Herald, June 8, 1976.

Cartoonists Put a Little of Themselves into Character
By Kathy Kusa
Drake Journalism Student
ALBIA (IDPA) — Dan Karpan's scrapbook is filled with painstaking pencil sketches from his 23 years as a Hollywood cartoonist, including 16 years with Walt Disney Studios.
"It's a funny thing about cartoonists," said Karpan, 64. "When they draw a character, they put a little of themselves in it. Now you take a tall, skinny fellow, he'll draw a tall, skinny duck."
Karpan still has the first set of drawings, he made commercially and, by riffling the pages, he can make a pair of penguins waddle jerkily across the paper.
But Karpan now discourages requests for his talent. He suffered a stroke in 1960 and he never fully regained his drawing ability. "For three months I couldn't even write my name," he said. After therapy he regained use of his right leg and arm, but he walks slowly and he said the tips of his fingers tingle all the time.
Lifelong Goal
Karpan, born near Eddyville, said he wanted to be a cartoonist even in high school. "I started drawing on the pages of my books and the teachers used to give me heck for it," he said.
After high school, Karpan worked in a coal mine. "But I hated that work," he said. "I wish I hadn't wasted those five years, because I got a late start in animation. I used to take slate and draw cartoons all over the side of the (coal) car if I had time" — the coal car checkers "knew it came from me — it was the only one coming out that way."
Karpan went to Hollywood "at the height of the depression" and discovered he didn't have enough art training to become a cartoonist, so for three years he attended the Chounaird School of Art in Los Angeles and did odd jobs.
He caddied, bused dishes, sold soft drinks and sharpened razor blades until he was hired by the Charles Mintz Studio (now called Screen Gems — the animation department of Columbia Pictures).
Joined Navy
Karpan worked as an animator for the Mintz Studio for several years and then moved to the animation department of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios.
During World War II, he joined the U.S. navy, where he spent two years working on training films and booklets for a torpedo school. After a medical discharge in 1944 because of an ulcer, he went to work for Walt Disney Studios.
"I had to kinda start over," he said, "to learn the characters. See, you had to know the characters . . . For about ten years I was what they called a key man — seeing that the ducks remained consistent ... if the duck was tall and skinny, (I'd) have to shorten him." Karpan stayed with Disney 16 years. He worked on short cartoons as well as feature-length films such as "Peter Pan", "Cindrella" and Alice in Wonderland".
"If you did 32 drawings (about 1 1/2 seconds of actual footage) that was a day's work," he said. The animation for a feature-length film takes a studio three years to complete.
Assistant Animator
Karpan was never a full-fledged animator; he was an assistant animator. "The animator was just concerned with the action and his first assistant was just concerned with drawings out of the roughs and little changes if the animator was busy.
"An animator works on a board on a glass that the light shines through (so) you can see four or five drawings at one time. We'd flip with our left hand and draw with our right," Karpan said. He compared it to "looking through a lampshade for eight hours."
Karpan retired in 1960. He now lives with his dogs Buddy Boy and Rusty Dusty just outside of Albia.
In 1969 Karpan finished a cartoon mural in the children's room of the Albia public library. The mural includes characters from the comic strip Peanuts as well as many characters Karpan is familiar with from his years in Hollywood.
Karpan said he tries to encourage young artists whenever he can.
His activities are restricted by poor health but Karpan said he still draws "once in a while. If I get in the mood I make little pencil sketches."