Carl Reiner, Movie Not-Quite-Star

Many hats have been worn by 91-year-old Carl Reiner over the years and one of them was a subject of a column by National Enterprise Association writer Erskine Johnson in 1959. At that point, Reiner had finished his career writing and performing with Sid Caeser. He’d moved on to writing for another variety show and performing as a supporting player in films. Johnson figured that was worth a profile. Here is it, appearing in newspapers beginning November 27th.

Hollywood Glances
BY ERSKINE JOHNSON
HOLLYWOOD (NEA)—Carl Reiner wears a hat labeled “Second Banana” with such an amusing flair that it’s always slipping just a little. When he was Top Banana Sid Caesar’s accomplice in TV laughter, it always seemed to me that Carl made things seem much more amusing than they really were. Emmy voters agreed and gave him a pair of best-supporting-actor awards.
Now that Carl is in the movies, he’s again “Second Banana,” to David Niven in “Happy Anniversary” and to Glenn Ford in “Gazebo,” and again things are turning out in hilarious fashion.
The story of how Carl ribbed Monique Van Vooren, the doll who thinks she’s another Zsa Zsa on the set of “Anniversary” will fracture you. Carl met Monique for the first time and insisted she was an old friend, a female impersonator named “Mike.”
He was still insisting she was old friend “Mike” when the film was completed and everyone went home—all New Yorkers who know Monique are still laughing.
Now that Carl and Charles Isaacs are writing all of Dinah Shore’s TV scripts, things are funnier than before, too.
Like the first time Carl typed out Dinah’s opening line:
“Hello and welcome to our show.”
The pixie added the stage directions:
“Dinah says this line with a smile.”

Even on Hollywood’s party circuit it’s anything-for-a-laugh Carl. As a transplanted New Yorker unaccustomed to Hollywood’s grandiose ways, Carl lifted both eyebrows the other night when he went to a party at Steve Allen’s home. A white-frocked lad opened his car door, handed him a numbered ticket and said, “I’ll park it, sir.”
While the other guests pocketed their parking tickets in blase Movietown style, Carl clutched his in hand and went straight to host Steve to say:
“Will you please validate this for me?”
How Carl Reiner landed in the movies, after 17 years of dreaming about leaving New York for Hollywood, could have been right out of his recently published book, “Enter Laughing.”
He came to Hollywood a year ago to play a role in “Tunnel of Love” but had to bow out, after waiting around for three months, because of an eastern TV contract.
When his agent phoned him months later at his New York home to say he had been cast in “Happy Anniversary,” Carl said:
“Great. When should I leave for Hollywood?”
“You’re not going to Hollywood,” the agent informed him. “They’re filming the picture in New York.”
Today he’s settled in Hollywood, doubling as an actor-writer, and there’s an air of permanency about his future here.
He's among those predicting a big movie revival since men in trench coats as private eyes and men in buckskin as Western heroes have knocked comedy off home screens.
Comedy faded from TV, he believes, when comedians started playing it too safe to compensate for increased production costs which do not permit room for failure. “But room for failure, a little more daring,” he says, “could revive comedy on television.
“On Sid’s show we would think of something so outrageous or so outlandish that it either had to be great or an outright disaster.
“But we would try it and if it worked it was fun and we were heroes.
“If it flopped we’d learn something. But at that time the whole 90-minute show cost only $18,000. Today the same show would cost $150,000, just for the network time alone.
“You can’t take chances with comedy at those prices — you have to play it safe. There’s no room in the budget for taking a chance on the outrageous or the outlandish.”

Johnson’s column skips one of Reiner’s accomplishments because it wasn’t really an accomplishment at that point. Reiner had spent a good portion of 1958 writing 13 episodes of a sitcom with himself as the top banana. A pilot episode was shopped around. There were no takers. However, a couple of months after Johnson’s column, Reiner reworked his ideas a smidgen at the behest of producer Sheldon Leonard and turned them into “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” No more second banana for producer Reiner. He had found his greatest success.

Telephones of the Future

Many of the animators who brought you characters like Bugs Bunny, Red Hot Riding Hood and Gerald McBoing Boing worked on non-theatrical cartoons as well. Some were commercials. Others were industrial films.

Here’s one from 1962 from Jerry Fairbanks Productions. I won’t get into Fairbanks’ long history, but by the time this film was completed, he was making live action shorts for commercial clients. Occasionally, he’d use animation. I suspect he subcontracted the work in this one to Chuck Couch’s company.

You may recognise the names in the credits. Ed Love, Don Towsley and Dick Thomas were at Hanna-Barbera about this time. Towsley was mainly known for his work at Disney, Love was in the Tex Avery unit at MGM and animated for Walter Lantz as well, among many places. Thomas was a background artist at Warners, first for Bob Clampett and finally for Bob McKimson. Corny Cole had been at Warners, too. Tom Yakutis may be best known for work at DePatie-Freleng but he also spent some time at UPA. Bill Perez was responsible for titles at Hanna-Barbera after Art Goble retired in 1962. And director/writer Couch had been at Disney and Lantz. He had a bit of experience with industrial shorts about telephones. He wrote “Mr. Digit and the Battle of Bubbling Brook” the previous year for AT&T (the short was produced by UPA). Love worked on it as well.

This isn’t a terrific cartoon, but the designs may be of interest. Compare the future in this cartoon to the future as seen on “The Jetsons” the same year. Frankly, I enjoy the Jetsons’ interior and exterior designs a lot more. And fans of Ed Love will spot his animation right away.

The voice actors aren’t credited. I should know who they are, but I can’t say for certain. I think the crazed professor may be Johnny Coons. Dialer sounds a bit like a sped-up Doug Young at the start.

Fairbanks saved money not only by using limited animation but having Ed Paul cobble together stock music for the soundtrack. Most of it is from the Capitol Hi-Q library. Since you asked, the cue when Dialer is about to tell us about the future is EM-120 Dramatic Main Title by Phil Green and the last cue is LM-9A Light End Title by Spencer Moore.

The Flying Glasses

Animator Mark Kausler once pointed out director Jack King used a shock take where a character’s hat would fly off someone’s head, turn 360 degrees in mid-air and land back on the head. King did it with something else in the 1935 Warners cartoon “Hollywood Capers.”

Oliver Owl’s glasses do a leap and dive. Here are some of the drawings.



You’ll notice Oliver’s chair is not an inanimate object. Alas, the idea of random articles being alive that made a lot of early ‘30s cartoons so much fun was a dying breed.

Chuck Jones and Ham Hamilton are the animators. Jones would soon escape to the Avery unit.

Two-Headed Texan

Which Tex Avery cartoon used the “don’t-make-noise-and-wake-him-up premise” the best? Some argue “Deputy Droopy,” released in 1955.

Certainly the “quiet” gags roll on non-stop, one after the other. The weirdest comes near the end.



Droopy tickles the tall bad guy who is glued to the floor.



The tall bad guy exchanges heads with the short bad guy, who runs up the hill so the tall guy’s head can react without waking the sheriff.



Meanwhile, Droopy thwacks the tall guy with the small guy’s head.



Good ol’ Tex could have exchanged heads. But no. He makes the gag even more bizarre by having the small guy wear both heads and yell on the hill.

Avery and Mike Lah get co-director credits on the cartoon. Historian Michael Barrier revealed the Avery unit was shut down on March 1, 1953, Avery left MGM on June 24th and Lah stayed behind to finish this cartoon and “Cellbound.” Other than Walt Clinton, the rest of the credited animators are from the Hanna-Barbera unit—Irv Spence, Ed Barge, Ken Muse and Ray Patterson.

Lolly on Jack

Louella Parsons appeared on Jack Benny’s radio show on April 2, 1944, December 16, 1945 and October 26, 1952. The premise of the first and last shows was the same and even the scripts are pretty similar. Louella got a chance to plug her various print and broadcasting ventures. And she, in return, wrote about Jack in her columns. Of course, it wasn’t all about him. The Parsons ego always forced her to include herself in the story.

This one is from April 20, 1940.

Jack Benny a Hit in New Film Comedy
By Louella Parsons
HOLLYWOOD, April 20—What has happened to Jack Benny almost over night? All of a sudden he has become as great a movie star as he is a radio favorite. I'll tell you what I think happened to him. Everyone knows Jack Benny, his gags and his faculty for making fun of himself and letting others ridicule him. When he plays a fictional character he is just too well established as himself to make a dent as anyone else.
In "Buck Benny Rides Again" Jack is surrounded by all his familiar characters: Rochester, the delightful Negro comic, Phil Harris, Carmichael, the polar bear, Don Wilson, and although Mary Livingston isn't actually seen, we hear her voice coming over the ether as part of the Benny setup.
I spoke to Jack after I had seen "Buck Benny Bides Again" to tell him how thoroughly I enjoyed this comedy.
Benny is pictured in his radio skit as always driving a defunct car that is just about to fall to pieces. One of the funniest incidents in "Buck Benny Rides Again" is the old car, just three jumps ahead of the junk-heap, to make it even funnier, Rochester, who plays a Jack's valet his cook, his chauffeur and meld to Carmichael, drives a sporty, expensive roadster.

You might think Benny would have a few pangs of jealousy over Rochester's enormous popularity and the big part he plays in his picture. But not Benny—he is too glad to have an actor of Eddie Anderson's ability (Rochester's real name).
"Why," said Jack, "that boy is so popular that they are planning big doings for him in Harlem. I don't believe any Negro who has ever visited Harlem caused more excitement, with the exception of Joe Louis, of course."
My talk with Jack took place just before he and his troupe left for the East.
"I will be in New York." he told me, "for a personal appearance for "Buck Benny Rides Again" and, of course, Mary is excited. Like all women, she plans to buy clothes, have herself some fun and we will enjoy seeing all the new shows. I am planning now," he continued, "to see if I cannot do my last two broadcasts on this season's program in Honolulu in order to give us a longer vacation there. You see, I go to work at Paramount in June with Fred Allen."

And here’s Lolly gushing again, and rightfully so, over Jack’s performance in “To Be or Not to Be” (“That was the good one,” Ronald Colman once quipped in character on a Benny broadcast). This is from February 28, 1942.

Hollywood News: Ernst Lubitsch Launches Benny On New Career
"To Be or Not to Be" Presents Comedian As Romantic Hero
By LOUELLA O. PARSONS
Hollywood, Feb. 28 (INS)— Curious that “To Be or Not To Be,” the comedy that was born in tears, should be the one to perhaps change Jack Benny's whole career. The same Benny is synonymous with clowning horseplay and riotous slapstick. Who would ever have thought that Jack Benny, super comedian, clown and funny man, would turn out a romantic hero. Yet Ernst Lubitsch, by a simple twist of the wrist, converts Jack into a leading man with the appeal of a Tyrone Power.
Mary Livingstone has always kidded Jack about his thinning hair, his age and even his waistline, although he is not the least bit on the portly side. They have gotten some of their biggest laughs from the way she has ribbed him, pretending to fall for a young hero and ridiculing Benny in their hilariously funny skits.
I went to call on the Bennys at their home in Beverly Hills just as Jack was getting ready to go to San Francisco to do a radio show at the Presidio. Jack and Mary had been playing gin rummy and Joan, their little daughter, done up in a little pink nightie, had come to say goodnight.
Before I had a chance to even sit down Mary said, “Wasn’t he handsome? I fell in love with him all over again.” She had gone to the preview because Jack had not felt up to it. Carol Lombard’s tragic death a few days after they finished the picture had been such a blow he wanted to see the picture in the theater or in the privacy of a quiet projection room.
“I feel differently now,” he said, “After Mary said the picture was so good and the reviews so satisfactory. I know how happy it would have made Carole and she would have wanted everyone to see our movie. I am more glad for her sake that most people like it than I am for my own account.”
“Wait until Fred Allen and Bob Hope see you,” I said. “Won’t they burn? You have given Errol Flynn and our other dashing heroes competition.”
“When Ernst Lubitsch asked me to play the Shakespearian actor I was afraid,” Jack said. “You need a young, handsome leading man—a hero who will give the girls a thrill.”
“Ernst said he had written ‘To Be or Not To Be’ with me in mind and naturally I was flattered to do a picture with Lubitsch and Carole. If Lubitsch asks me to make another movie,” said Jack, “I won't even read the script. I’ll say ‘yes’ before he can say his own name.
“I hadn’t worked with Ernst two days before I knew what he told me to do was right. I had complete confidence in his judgment. In the scene where I make Robert Stack walk through the door first—we had shot it the other way first—with me in the lead. ‘Try following Stack,’ he said, and that scene is one of the biggest laugh sequences in the entire movie.
“Comedy, Lubitsch believes, must never be pushed. You must never force a laugh. Why I throw away my most important laughs and did nothing to call attention to the dialogue we hoped would be funny. The results showed that Lubitsch knows all the answers and the way to put over subtle humor.”
“ ‘To Be or Not to Be’ could very easily be a serious picture,” added Mary, “and a good one. It is so exciting and filled with such great suspense.”
“Ah, but the comedy,” said Jack, “is what makes the drama all the more potent and Lubitsch knew that so well.”
As I was leaving Mary and Jack walked to the door with me and waved good-by. Just then a dilapidated car with a man and woman and some children drove by. They drove to the curb and the man asked “Is that Jack Benny?”
I said yes. He said, “Well, I’m from Boston and Benny is the one person we came all the way to California to see.”
Guess that man and thousands like him all over the world are glad that “To Be or not to Be” is good for Jack is loved, not only by those who know him, but by Mr. and Mrs. Public all over the United States.

The Brief Stardom of Charlie Horse

“It’s a Grand Old Nag” is a fascinating orphan in the Golden Age of theatrical cartoons. It was supposed to be part of a series launching Bob Clampett as a cartoon producer, but the whole plan collapsed for reasons that were never publicly revealed.

Daily Variety outlines some of the pieces so we can get a limited idea of what happened.

First, a bit of background. Michael Barrier’s Hollywood Cartoons says a memo circulated at the Warners cartoon studio dated May 7, 1945 that Art Davis had been picked to replace Clampett as a director. Clampett had worked on Warners’ releases since 1930, eventually being named a director in a unit overseen in the late '30s by Ray Katz. Katz took over management of the Screen Gems studio on August 1, 1945 and, presumably, that’s when Clampett did some uncredited story work there.

Clampett had tried producing before. While still at Warners in July 1944, he set up an experimental TV cartoon operation which doesn’t seem to have produced anything. Now that he was on his own, he tried again. And he landed a deal. Here’s Variety from June 25, 1946.

Rep Enters Short Cartoon Field With 6 in Trucolor
Republic, for the initial time in its history, is entering the short-subject cartoon field. Prexy Herbert J. Yates yesterday revealed that negotiations have been completed whereby studio will release a series of six Trucolor cartoons in 1947. Deal was consummated with the newly-formed Bob Clampett Productions, who will produce the subjects for Republic distribution.
Clampett, whose studio is located at 6066 Sunset Blvd., comes to Republic with a great backlog of experience in the cartoon field. He had been with Warner Bros. for 16 years and is credited with originating the "Bugs Bunny" character.
Associated with him in his new venture are former mid-western exhibitor Walter W. Arnold, veepee and general manager, and Roydon Vosburg, secretary-treasurer. Understood that Clampett's deal had been brewing for some time.
Yates queried exchange managers, salesmen and theatre exhibitors on their reactions. When practically unanimous favorable response greeted his queries, and with the completion of facilities at Consolidated Laboratories to take care of an increased load of film for processing, in addition to the feature film already being handled by the lab, the deal was signed.
Clampett plans a gradually expanded number of single-reelers as well as probable novelty sequences in some of Republic's top-budgeted features.

Clampett had a company. Now he needed staff. And, along the way, he decided on his first cartoon under the contract. More clippings:

Clampett Signs Towsley
Donald Towsley has been inked by Bob Clampett Productions as head animator and starts work at once. Towsley is former head animator on Donald Duck shorts for Disney's. Clampett will release inkers through Republic. (August 21, 1946)

Republic Makes Initial Cartoon
Republic entered the short subject field over the weekend with start of production of the initial cartoon short, "It's A Grand Old Nag," at the Bob Clampett Cartoon Studio. Development marks another step in rounding out studio's program for 1946-47, with slate of six Trucolor cartoons to be released on this year's schedule. Studio plans a gradually expanded number of cartoon shorts, as well. (September 16, 1946)

James Palmer sold his song “The Filly With the Twinkle In Her Eye” for use in the Republic picture. "It's a Grand Old Nag." (October 9, 1946)

Ed Love has been signed as one of top animators in Bob Clampett's cartoon unit at Republic. (October 9, 1946)

Jeff Alexander set by producer Bob Clampett as musical director for "It's a Grand Old Nag," first cartoon for Republic release. (October 10, 1946)

William De La Torre, formerly with Disney, was signed yesterday by Clampett as animator on Republic's Trucolor cartoons. (October 16, 1946)

Assignments: Paul Smith, chief animator, "It's A Grand Old Nag," first Bob Clampett cartoon to be released by Republic. (November 8, 1946)

Republic Will Release 17 Pix in Trucolor
[Republic] also will distribute six cartoon shorts in same color process. (November 25, 1946)



Bob Clampers "It's A Grand Old Nag," his first Trucolor cartoon for Republic release, was turned over to Consolidated lab yesterday for processing. Short, initialer in first series of cartoons Rep has ever distributed, is expected to go into release in about two months. (April 11, 1947)

Finally, the short was ready. But a little warning was buried in the Variety story about it.

"Old Nag" Hits Wire
Bob Clampett Productions yesterday wound lab work on "It's A Grand Old Nag," Clampett's first Trucolor cartoon under his six-shorts-a-year deal with Republic. Work on second cartoon in series is being held up till exhibitor reaction to new equine cartoon characters is determined (May 13, 1947)

And that’s where things sat. What exhibitors thought isn’t known, but Republic decided to cut the number of cartoons under the Clampett deal by two.

Republic will expand its program for 1947-48 by six features over number for previous season, it was announced yesterday by prexy Herbert J. Yates.
New production line-up includes 27 features, 20 outdoor action dramas and westerns, one novelty feature, four serials and four cartoon shorts. Additional pictures will be encompassed in company's variety group of B-films, which will number 16.
Yates reported that circuit operators and indie exhibs have promised to give increased support to this type of product.
Color will be emphasized on overall program. In utilizing its own Tru-color process for 12 outdoor releases, several features and the cartoons, Republic will turn out more tinters than at any time in past (August 27, 1947)

And things sat some more. The cartoon finally had a limited release on December 20th, according to Boxoffice magazine. Film Daily and Boxoffice both reviewed the cartoon. Film Daily said on the 8th:

"It's A Grand Old Nag"
Republic 8½ minutes Lot of Fun
First color cartoon from this company packs a lot of wit, imagination in its brief time and delivers hilarity all the way. Plot takes film production, techniques and the like over a burlesque route wherein a horse is engaged to double for a star horse. It is sly kidding from that point on and should give the laff register a workout.

And Boxoffice wrote on the 13th:

It’s a Grand old Nag
Republic (Trucolor Cartoon) 8 minutes
Very good. First of Republic’s new cartoon series in Trucolor, this kids Hollywood and film-making in laugh-provoking fashion. Charlie Horse, a dimwitted nag reminiscent of Disney’s Pluto, is a happy farm animal until a movie director picks him to go to Hollywood to play with Hay-de LaMare, his dream horse. He finds he is only needed to double for the male star, but when a studio fire breaks out, Charlie charges in and saves Hay-de.



The reviews likely pleased Clampett, but he was hamstrung. He wasn’t making any other cartoons while Republic mulled over things.

REP HALTS CARTOON PRODUCTION; MAY DROP SCHEDULE
Further production of cartoon shorts is being held up by Republic pending decision by studio execs this week on whether or not the program will be continued.
Studio made a releasing deal with cartoonist Bob Clampett over a year ago for a series of the animated shorts, but he has made only one, "It's a Grand Old Nag." It goes into national release next Tuesday, when local bookings also start, at the Guild, United Artists, Ritz, Studio City and Iris. Short is in Rep's own tint process, Trucolor.
W. W. Arnold, general manager of Clampett Productions, said yesterday that firm's Melrose Avenue plant has closed down pending decision of Rep execs.
Clampett was formerly an animator with Leon Schlesinger when latter made Warners' cartoons. He branched out as an indie with his Rep deal. (March 2, 1948)

And the studio decided to drop the idea of distributing cartoons, leaving “It’s a Grand Old Nag” Clampett’s sole picture for Republic.

The movie continued to booked into theatres that wanted it—it was advertised opposite a Disney feature at a house in Kokomo, Indiana in March 1951—and today remains a curiosity on the internet. Clampett moved on to an Emmy-winning puppet show on KTLA called “Beany and Cecil.” His final crack at animation was when he set up the Snowball studio and made Beany and Cecil cartoons for TV, featuring the same kind of forced punny names you find in “Nag.”

What a Maroon, Pig Version

“What a maroon!” is one of Bugs Bunny’s immortal lines—I think he said it first in “Falling Hare” (1943)—but other Warner Bros. characters used it, too.

One is one of the three pigs in “Windblown Hare” (released 1949), a really funny cartoon and an atypical early directorial effort for Bob McKimson. His Bugs is easily conned, and characters have huge mouths and gesticulate an awful lot. Here’s the pig saying “What a maroon!” and slapping his knee.



Chuck McKimson, Manny Gould, Phil De Lara and John Carey animated on this one.

Boop BGs

Devon Baxter has sent along some backgrounds he plucked from several Betty Boop cartoons. He didn’t identify all of them. These first two come from “Betty Boop’s Museum” (1932), which features skeletons aplenty.



And these are from some miscellaneous Boop cartoons, back when Betty was still lots of fun with anything and everything coming to life and little animals popping up for a gag then disappearing for the remainder of the film. ID’s by Mark Kausler are in the comment section (the ripples in the pool in the final one are animated).



Unfortunately, the Fleischer studio background artists at the time were anonymous on screen.

Kinescopes Aren't Wynn-derful

Technology has supposed to have come far even within the last few years but, in some ways, it hasn’t. Just go to any video sharing site on the internet and you’ll find someone who taken their cell phone, pointed it at their TV monitor and recorded something. They used to do that in the 1940s, too. Except they used something called a kinescope.

Without getting into an involved history, Eastman Kodak came up with an invention in September 1947 to record images from a TV screen. There was no coast-to-coast circuit then and no videotape. Until both were developed in the ‘50s, any TV show that had been performed live and was re-broadcast was recorded on a kinescope. Network TV began in New York, meaning many shows were kinescoped there and shipped to stations in Los Angeles and elsewhere. For the record, the first show kinescoped in Los Angeles and shipped to New York was Ed Wynn’s CBS variety show. It was aired on kinescope on 14 stations in the east two weeks after the live broadcast on KTTV (still a CBS station at the time).

Wynn had seemingly been around forever when he landed on television; his first monster hit in vaudeville was “The Ziegfeld Follies of 1914.” He was hugely successful on radio in the early ‘30s and was so widely listened to, he begat legions of Ed Wynn imitators (Howie Morris was doing a Wynn-type voice in commercials as Mayor McCheese four decades later). The early TV industry liked Wynn; he won an Emmy in 1949. But his show wasn’t a hit. It changed sponsors from Speidel to Camels before the year was up and moved to a new time slot. The quality of the kinescope was blamed for the failure; Billboard reported viewers in the Midwest complained about the lousy picture. Wynn moved to NBC the following season.

Everyone’s favourite acidic radio critic, John Crosby of the New York Herald-Tribune, took a look at Wynn’s show soon after it signed on. He was kind to Wynn, whose routines must have been corny even when this review first appeared on October 25, 1949. Crosby was not so kind to Eastman Kodak’s recording device.

Radio In Review
By JOHN CROSBY
Perfect Foot, Imperfect Kinescope
Kinescope, or television recording, the process of filming a television show off the receiving tube, is almost never put on the air in New York where there are more live shows than sometimes seems necessary. Therefore, the arrival of the Ed Wynn show, the first kinescope entrant from the West Coast, was awaited with bated breath. Well, we all can unbate our breath now. Kinescope, to put it mildly, needs work.
On your home television screen, kinescope resembles a particularly decrepit Western or one of the old, old silents. But it’s not silent. The Wynn show, at least, is all-singing, all-talking, all-dancing, as they used to say of pictures back in 1928 when sound was new. There are only two shades on the Wynn show—black and white. There’s nothing in between. Also the film jerks unexpectedly in spots. Or else Ed Wynn has arthritis.
AT STAKE here is something much larger than the Wynn show itself which we'll get to in a minute. A lot of people, who are fastened by golden strands to Hollywood and pictures, would like to get into television via kinescope. Kinescope, if it ever gets any better than this, will mean that any city with a television station can enjoy first-rate shows, coaxial cable or no coaxial cable. It’ll mean that Hollywood with its hordes of entertainers and magnificent technical equipment can become capital of the television world as it is capital of films and radio. On the basis of the Wynn show, that day is pretty far away.
APART FROM its technical limitations, the show is as pleasant a half hour as you’ll find in television. It's nice to have Mr. Wynn’s extraordinarily disheveled profile, manic eyes, quavering voice and boneless, expressive hands in full view again. So many people have been helping themselves to Wynn’s material in recent years that he appears at times to be imitating himself. However, I'm happy to report that Wynn seems more at home with his own material than any of the other comedians.
His show is a remarkably unpretentions affair, consisting largely of Mr. Wynn. He tells those foolish stories, crackling with puns; he ogles the pretty girls; he drifts around aimlessly in his clownish hat.
While it doesn’t produce the boffolas of the Berle show, you’ll find it a good deal more restful and, in the long run, it may wear better.

LIKE THE WYNN shows of old this one abounds in sight gags. A man asks for a long-playing record and Wynn rolls out something the size of a wagon wheel.
“It ought to play about a month,” he explains.
Wynn gets tangled up in a phone booth, a comic bit too intricate to reduce to English. He confides to the audience that he is appearing this evening through the carelessness of his sponsor and that television, like crime, does not pay.
A lone guest star lurks about the premises every week. One of them was Carmen Miranda, whose exuberant countenance I find hardly credible even under the rest of circumstances. On kinescope, Miss Miranda looked as if she had just been disinterred.
ANOTHER GUEST was Mel Torme, the velvet fog, who came off somewhat better. Torme’s personality, incidentally, appears to have been completely redecorated in Hollywood.
When he left New York, he was a gangling youth, resembling an adolescent bullfrog. On television he was a poised, attractive kid and, most surprisingly, his face seems to have been redesigned from chin to hairline. Perhaps he just grew into it.
The Wynn show as a whole probably will please the old Wynn addicts, but I doubt it’ll create any new ones. Mr. Wynn is stacking the cards against him by appearing on kinescope.
I can’t quite understand why, either. Of all the entertainers in Hollywood, he is probably the most footloose and he easily could have come to New York and done the show live.

Television changed during the ‘50s. Variety was out. Wynn made the switch, too, faltering after 16 episodes of “The Ed Wynn Show” where he played a wily widower raising two granddaughters in a show that was part drama, part light comedy. But anyone who thought Wynn was just a giggling baggy-pants comic was truly mistaken. Wynn may even have shocked himself with his fine dramatic performance in “Requiem For a Heavyweight” on “Playhouse 90,” which led to his Oscar-nominated role in “The Diary of Anne Frank” (1958).

Wynn died of cancer in 1966. The kinescope died before that. Wynn’s death was mourned. The kinescope’s may not have been but perhaps it should be. The kinescope captured and preserved many television broadcasts we, today, would never have had the chance of viewing. Including Ed Wynn’s.

Mickey Drinks

Proof that Mickey Mouse was actually a fun character at one time.



Mickey drinks beer in “Gallopin’ Gaucho” (1928).