A TV Newcomer Named Milton Berle

The Advertising Club in Baltimore declared him the “Outstanding Radio Personality of 1947,” but that isn’t how you know him. In fact, he was considered a failure on radio by one than one critic. You know him as Uncle Miltie. Mr. Television.

1948 was an incredible roller coaster for Milton Berle. He was left without a radio show on April 12th in a game of musical chairs involving two networks, a quiz show and Dinah Shore. Meanwhile, Broadcasting magazine revealed on May 10 that Texaco would be sponsoring a new TV show on NBC. There’s no indication in the trades when Berle was signed but his contract on the show originally ran only four weeks.

The show debuted on June 8, 1948. The Texas Company spent $10,000 on the hour-long broadcast that ran on seven NBC stations on the East Coast. It was an instant smash. Variety raved how several million people tuned in to watch vaudeville, 1920s style. Broadcasting was so impressed, it transcribed the entire opening commercial in its review. Still, in mid-June, Berle was talking with the Biow Agency about taking over Phil Baker’s quiz show. He needn’t have bothered. Suddenly, he was the hottest man in show biz. By early August, Bill Paley tried to lure Berle with an exclusive CBS contract. Nothing doing. NBC signed him by August 18th to a 40-week stint hosting Texaco Star Theatre. So much for any idea of rotating hosts. And ratings just got better and better. Berle has gone down in history as the man who, more than anyone else, kick-started the still-primitive television industry with his broad and hammy antics.

Interestingly, one critic who never seemed to be a fan of broad and hammy antics liked the show. It could have been that John Crosby accepted the show for what it was—a regurgitation of New York’s Palace Theatre on the small screen. It may have been old-fashioned, but that’s what the show was supposed to be. And it was top-flight old-fashioned.

Here’s Crosby’s review that appeared in papers on June 29, 1948. Interestingly, he omits the presence of Pearl Bailey and Senor Wences in the opener, probably because it would clutter up (or negate) the point about circuses he was making. Incidentally, John F. Royal was a former press agent who was hired as a vice-president at NBC in the ‘30s. He was put in charge of shortwave broadcasts, then foreign relations and, finally, television in 1946, a time when the network had few stations and didn’t even broadcast seven days a week.

VAUDEVILLE IS BACK
Milton Berle’s formula for getting laughs is relatively simple. His jokes are, to put it mildly, frayed, but he gives you twice as many as any one else. Before you have time to inspect the origins of a Berle joke, three others are whistling past your ear. He has an astonishing faculty for retrieving jokes that fall flat, rewinding them and pelting them right back at you, sometimes two or three times. You laugh, bub, or else.
The reason for bringing it up at this time is that Mr. Berle is master of ceremonies in a new and highly promising NBC television show called Texaco Star Theater and he's very good at it and very, very funny. As an emcee, Berle keeps up a barrage of what in my high school, baseball-loving days, we used to call the old pepper. The old pepper consisted of trite, spirited, morale-building remarks uttered by the infield in the general direction of the pitcher. (“Ya murderin’ the bum! Ya got him swinging like a garden gate!”)
Berle a special twist to the old pepper is to convince the audience that it is being murdered, that the jugglers it just witnessed are easily the most sensational act in all show business and that it should demonstrate its proper appreciation. He gives the illusion of inimitable artistry where sometimes there isn't very much, and he can fill a stage by sheer volubility. It's a great gift and I think NBC had best hang on to Mr. B., who promises to be much better in television than he is in radio.
As an idea of how things develop in television, Texaco Star Theater opened shakily three weeks ago with a program which sounded as if it had been written by a circus pres agent. Rosario and Antonio, “World's Greatest Spanish Dancers,” the Moroccans, “Tops in Aerobatics”—they were a bunch of people in burnooses doing flip-flops—Al Kelly, “Specialist in Utter Confusion.” The superlatives not withstanding, it seemed like a dull Wednesday at the old Palace, possibly the one that killed vaudeville.

On the second program, the talent was better—Bill Robinson and Harry Richman—but the total effect, due to the absence of Berle, who was sick, was worse.
The third show last week was a whingding in all respects. Bert Wheeler, that deadpan and skilled comedian, was both appealing and hysterical in one of his old revue acts, Harry Richman sang “Puttin’ on the Ritz” in the way that laid ‘em in the aisles in the 20s. (I could just hear Dutch Shultz tap dancing in his grave.) Berle and Richman produced what “Variety” refers to as a socko finish by donning blackface and imitating Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson in high style. It was a bit of pure showmanship that would appeal not only to the oldsters but to the youngsters as well.
Those were just the highlights in a full hour. There were also a performing dog act, at which I sniffed generously and forgivingly, ballroom dancers who were lithe, muscular and restful, and, I believe singers. (You can't do without singers.)
It was a good show and it brings to mind John F. Royal's statement that television would have to return to first principles of show business, that a comedian shouldn’t follow another comedian (as is the practice in radio).
Television, he said, should be a balanced whole with each part enhancing, rather than competing with its components. However. I have an uneasy feeling that television is going to reach its peak in pure entertainment in the next year and that it'll never be that good again. Harry Richman can't very well sing “Puttin’ on the Ritz” indefinitely. Bert Wheeler's repertoire is large but not unlimited, and the performing dogs—echoing a melancholy thought recently expressed by Billy Rose—can do only a few things really well. Once you've seen it, you've seen it. One other thought on the same subject. Following a particularly strenuous routine, Berle mopped his brow and muttered: “And for the money!” Right now the money isn't large and the Berles, the Richmans, the Bert Wheelers are playing for peanuts because they don't know where it might lead. But, when salaries go up, how long can television afford such a lineup of veteran entertainers?
Just a line on the commercial. The Texaco commercial, a very clever act, is done by a shell game artist who speaks double talk, sells quack remedies, fleeces the passer-by and somehow brings Texaco into all this. It's as painless a commercial as I can remember but I keep wondering how long Texaco will consent to being represented by a con man with all that that implies for their oil products. In one show he drank the stuff. Very funny to me, but did the board of directors of the Texas company like it?

John F. Royal turned out to be wrong about a balanced evening of programming on TV. Comedy blocks worked in radio. Comedy blocks worked on television, too. And Crosby’s fears of “what’ll they do for an encore” turned out in the long run to be unfounded. Television has carried on well past 1948 with all kinds of new programming (granted, thanks in part to technology that Crosby would never have dreamed about back then). But in the short term, he was correct. People soon tired of Berle’s antics, Crosby included. Old vaudevillians became old hat. The revue format (with the exception of Ed Sullivan’s show) evolved into the variety format and new hosts came along to become stars.

But that didn’t mean the end of Milton Berle’s career. His place in history as Mr. Television almost guaranteed him guest appearances. As long as there were variety and talk shows, there was a place on television for Uncle Miltie.

Anti-Aircraft Gun of Tomorrow

I wonder if people who grew up in the P.C. world of television programming get some of the gags in Tex Avery’s T.V. of Tomorrow. “P.C.” meaning “pre-cable.” That’s when you had an aerial on top of the roof of the house or a rabbit ears antenna on top of your set. Neither guaranteed pristine reception and that’s what Avery and writer Heck Allen are parodying in the cartoon.

One of the problems was outside interference screwing up your picture. Ah, but Tex and Heck have fixed that. “This advanced model automatically eliminates picture distortion from passing airplanes,” says Paul Frees to set up the gag.



“However, it does clutter up the living room,” he adds, and then the camera pans across the living room.



Judging by the designs, it looks like Ed Benedict has worked on this cartoon. The animators are Ray Patterson added to the usual Avery crew of the ‘50s—Walt Clinton, Grant Simmons, Mike Lah and Bob Bentley. Avery started on the cartoon in 1951. By the time it was released in 1953, the axe had fallen in a money-saving move. It turned out TV of Tomorrow had been made by the Unit of Yesterday.

I'm Forever Breaking Bubbles

Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising’s debut cartoon for Warner Bros., Sinkin’ in the Bathtub (1930), isn’t as good as some of the Oswald cartoons they worked on for Walt Disney at Universal a few years earlier, and it’s certainly tamer than what the Fleischer studio was making in New York. But it has its moments. I like the balletic bathtub and the cow-blocking-railway-tracks gag reused from Oswald’s Trolley Troubles (1927).

Here’s Honey dancing on (and breaking) bubbles in mid-air to the tune I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles.



And here’s the rotating rump routine used at a bunch of studios.



Finally, Honey lands on the ground, breaks the last bubble and it’s on to the next scene.



Friz Freleng gets the sole animation credit but I can’t help but wonder if Max Maxwell and Ham Hamilton worked on this as well.

Thanks to Steve Carras for proof-reading one of my "did I really write that?" lines.

Life At 80

One of the reasons so many people were shocked when Jack Benny passed away in 1974 was that even though he was 80, he had the appearance and energy of a man who was, well, not 39, but considerably younger. It just shows how insidious cancer is and how quickly it can kill.

Jack seems to have been on a never-ending parade of media interviews up until he died. Both Jay Sharbutt (Associated Press), Vernon Scott (United Press International) and Peer J. Oppenheimer (Family Weekly) interviewed him around his 80th birthday. We’ve re-printed Oppenheimer’s and Sharbutt’s feature stories (Sharbutt’s father was Del Sharbutt, who was one of the Lucky Strike announcers on Jack’s radio show). Here is Scott’s, published February 10, 1974.

Jack: 39 for 40 Years
By Vernon Scott
HOLLYWOOD (UPI)—Jack Benny will celebrate his 80th birthday this week when Frank Sinatra hosts a party for him in Palm Springs.
The comedian contemplated the celebration with mixed feelings. Clearly he did not relish turning 80—two years older than his pal George Burns. But he was looking forward to the Sinatra clambake.
Benny sat in his Beverly Hills office puffing contentedly on a cigar. He was dressed in expensive blue slacks, sports shirt and highly polished shoes. Whenever possible he directed the conversation to his activities and away from his age.
For a man who told national radio and television audiences he was 39 years old for 40 years, Jack took no notice that he more than doubled those years.
Benny's mind is keen, his memory unfailing. He walks more than three miles to his office every day. His weight is 145 pounds, lighter than he has been for many years.
"I don't eat very much so I don't have to worry about getting fat," he said. "I have a highball before dinner at night with Mary. Other than that I don't drink.
"I play golf as often as I can. And the caddy who gets me is lucky. He rides in the cart and I do all the walking. Best thing in the world for me.
"Most nights I go to bed early unless we go to somebody's house to see a movie. I'm usually in bed by 9 o'clock and fall asleep watching TV."
Benny has his own projection room but seldom uses it. His home is a large mansion surrounded by manicured gardens, set well back from the street in Holmby Hills, a fashionable enclave of the wealthy tucked between Beverly Hills and Bel-Air.
He wears his wealth unostentatiously. He wears his years lightly.

"I've made more than 500 appearances on television, counting my own shows and guest shots," he said with a note of pride. "I can still remember the exact date of my first radio job.
"It was May 10, 1932. I'll never forget it. If you asked me any other date I couldn’t tell you. I remember my opening line of my first show: "Good evening ladies and gentlemen, this is Jack Benny—I will now pause while everybody says,'Who cares?!'"
As it turned out, millions cared, and still do.
Jack Benny recently starred in the television special "Jack Benny's Second Farewell Appearance." His first won the highest ratings he'd ever received. He plans a third, fourth and as many other farewells as he can.
But through the years the comedian has given higher priority to his violin concerts with symphony orchestras for which "I don't get paid a dime."
He reckons he has saved dozens of such orchestras in the United States from bankruptcy. "I should practice the fiddle more. But I do take two lessons a week and I try to practice two hours a day.
"Actually, I'm playing better than ever now. I love the violin and it's a great form of entertainment for me because I can play and talk at the same time.
People come to the concerts out of curiosity. They hear the best violinists in the world, so I can't play too lousy.
"Isaac Stern, my closest friend in the music world, tells people, 'Jack plays the violin well enough for his purposes.' But I'm proud to say no critic has ever panned my playing.
"I love getting into white tie and tails and walking out in front of a 90-piece orchestra. It's the greatest feeling in the world. At every concert I get a lot of laughs, but I'm also playing the very best I can."
Jack, who enjoys good health and good friends, has no plans to retire. His youthful outlook forbids even mentioning the word retirement.

Fun From Pelican Films

In the 1950s, some of the best-looking cartoons didn’t appear on theatre screens or TV sets. They were shown in schools or workplaces. They were made by companies that mainly specialised in industrial and advertising films.

There were many of these companies, some of them owned by animators from the Golden Age of Cartoons who, in the late ‘40s, saw that theatrical animation had reached a cash crisis and decided to go into business for themselves. They were helped by the rise of network television, where major advertisers were starting to pump money they had put in radio, and who discovered that cartoon ads were incredibly effective sales tools.

Among the companies on the East Coast was Pelican Films, owned by Jack Zander, whose animation career dated back to the ill-fated Hollywood studio started in 1930 by Romer Grey. Zander retired some 55 years later after stops at Warner Bros. (Harman-Ising version), Van Beuren, Terrytoons, MGM, the U.S. Army Signal Corps animation branch on Long Island and then a number of East Coast commercial studios.

The New York Post announced on November 7, 1946 his hiring as the animation director for Willard Pictures. His first TV ad was a 60-second spot for Chiclets, fully-animated for $3,500. He left for Transfilm in 1948 where he was an animation director (the watermarked photo to the right from 1951 appeared in an article in Sponsor magazine; Zander is on the left). Zander, Thos. Joe Dunford and Elliott Baker co-founded their own company, Pelican Films, in July 1954.

This post isn’t intended as a full biography or filmography of Mr. Zander, but I ran across some neat designs from a couple of cartoons he directed at Pelican and wanted to pass them on. They’re from the pages of Business Screen Magazine. I don’t know who Zander employed as a designer in the ‘50s; Chris Ishii had left UPA and was at Pelican by 1960. Earl Murphy was there for a time.

One of Pelican’s earliest films was Ernest Jones, Double Duty American, similar in plot to 90 Days of Wondering, a 1956 industrial directed by Chuck Jones. The design, at least in the frame below, is pretty conventional for 1954.

SPONSOR: U. S. Army Reserve.
TITLE: Ernest Jones, Double Duty American, 12 min., color, produced by Pelican Films, Inc.

Ernest Jones, the typical young man coming out of his Army service, represents a sizeable government investment. After the Army has trained him for two years to top efficiency in his military job, back he goes in civilian life perhaps to forget all he has learned.
Although every discharged soldier has an eight-year obligation of service in the Reserve, the Army would like to encourage inactive Reservists to join an organized unit in their communities, thus maintaining a Ready Reserve of organized and trained men.
As a part of its program of fostering the Organized Reserve units, the Army Reserve Corps, through ad agency Dancer-Fitzgerald-Sample, Inc., is now using this animated cartoon limning [?] the post-service life of Ernest Jones. No one could be happier to get out of the Army and enjoy the delights of civilian life than Jones. At first he wants no part of the Army in his future, until he becomes convinced that (1) his country still needs him; (2) it will still pay him well for his part-time service; and (3) by joining an Organized Reserve unit he can “belong” to the Army in his own home town, and train with his own neighbors.
Ernest Jones, Double Duly American, get a lot of mileage out of its limited animation. An original score is played to good effectiveness by piano and drum.
The U. S. Army Reserve will distribute the film through its own units.

Who knew there was a Better Heating-Cooling Council? Well, there was, and it commissioned a film in 1958 imaginatively showing aliens and Ben Franklin.

SPONSOR: The Better Heating-Cooling Council.
TITLE: You Lucky Earth People, 13 1/2 min., color, produced by Pelican Films, Inc.. through Film Counselors. Inc.
People about to build or re-model a home are the target of this new film which extols the qualities of liquid heating-cooling systems. With no hot air, the film is a gentle, entertaining reminder that no system can do the job like water. Designed, primarily, for public service television showings, it is a cartoon depicting the frustrating adventures of little space-man. Bebop Bobap, who is assigned the job of selling his planet's "Galaxy Heating System" to earth people.
Long-lived Bobap begins his pitch in 18,000 B.C., but his puttering air heater won't function properly in the caveman's cliff dwelling. Bobap is persistent, however, and goes on to show his heater to Nero and to Ben Franklin before coming to grips finally with a modern prospect.
In an earth-man's new home Bobap finds a hot water system that is silent, efficient and economical, and even removes snow from the driveway. And in summer, the same system cools through chilled water. "You Lucky Earth People," says Bobap, as he packs up his Galaxy clunker and takes off in space with plans for a modern system in his kick.
The film is cute and funny, more than a big selling venture. The Council knew that you can't really sell hard, or pack the tv air with technical facts, so wisely seeks only to amuse and plant a seed of home heating wisdom that a plumber or contractor may later sprout into a sale. A most proper activity for an association and well done.



Among the other films the studio made in 1958 are (and I swear I’m not making up the first one): Motion Pictures: The Inside Story of a Chicken Gizzard Grinding (Granite Grit Inst.-Wildrick & Miller); Kingsbury Thrust Bearings (U.S. Navy); Wind & The Navigator (U.S. Air Force); Making Soybeans Pay With Chemical Weed Control (U.S. Rubber). TV Commercials: For Robert Hall Clothes; (N.W. Ayer); Marathon Gas (N.W. Ayer); Lucky Strike, Campbell Soup, Wildroot (BBD&O); Hostess Cup Cakes, Twinkles (Ted Bates); Folgers Coffee (Cunningham & Walsh); Ipana, Mum Mist, Ammens Medicated Powder, 4 Fisherman Fishsticks (Doherty, Clifford, Steers & Shenfield, Inc.); Nucoa (Dancer-Fitzgerald-Sample, Inc.); Parliament Cigarettes (Benton & Bowles); Joy (Leo Burnett); Kinney Shoes (F. B. Stanley); Cinzano Vermouths (Burke Dowling & Adams). A Business Screen article stated that 75 per cent of Pelican’s business was fully-animated or animated/live-action commercials.

We all know the havoc wreaked on the movie industry by television in the 1950s, but the living room tube had an insidious but little-remembered effect on another bastion of Americana—card playing. To counter that, Pelican was asked to come out with a low-budget industrial film urging people to turn off that vile Donna Reed Show and joyfully spend the evening with a friendly round or four of Canasta. Once again, Pelican drags out historical figures in its pitch.

SPONSOR: Association of American Playing Card Manufacturers.
TITLE: It's All in the Cards, 11 min. color and b/w, produced by Pelican Films, Inc.

Recent survey figures show that some 20% of homes do not own playing cards. On the presumption that card-playing has been overlooked in favor of television, the Association of American Playing Card Manufacturers has set about finding a method of showing the fun of cards to tv-equipped homes.
Public service television seemed to offer the most possibilities within the Association's budget, and J. Walter Thompson advertising agency decided on an animated film to be offered stations for this purpose.
Pelican Films, Inc. was selected to produce the film. Since the budget was quite limited, multi-cel animation was held to a minimum and the animated effects were achieved through techniques made possible by motorized camera equipment designed by John Oxberry.
Two stylized characters, Mr. Meek and Mr. Boomer, are featured in the film. Mr. Meek is a quiet little poll-taker calling on Mr. Boomer who shouts and hollers with a voice like a bullfrog and exhibits the manners of a bull. Mr. Boomer likes television all right, but his special enthusiasm is card games.
Mr. Meek asks Mr. Boomer if he watches television frequently and the answer is "yes." Soon the conversation swings over to cards and continues on this subject till the final word is spoken. Although Meek claims he never plays cards. Boomer gets him to try gin rummy and later Meek wins, much to Boomer's dismay.
While the sound track carries the conversation between Boomer and Meek in this part of the film, several cost-saving techniques are used to add interest to the picture. As Boomer explains how George Washington, Napoleon and Columbus played cards, drawings of these characters flash on the screen. The camera focuses on one of these portraits at a time and they come alive through use of only a few drawings.
To animate Boomer's word story that tells how George Washington kept a record of his card wins and losses, the scene flashes to a notebook showing the tally and another entry which reads "also crossed Delaware." Napoleon's portrait shows him holding a fanned-out group of cards in his left hand with his right hand thrust typically into his jacket. Just before the shot dissolves out, Napoleon winks and pulls his right hand out of his jacket with a hidden card.
Designed as a modest public relations venture, It's All in the Cards has proved to be a sleeper. Demand has been so heavy that the original stock of prints available were quickly booked months ahead. With more prints now available, the film is certain to reach hundreds of thousands of hitherto non-card-playing homes.

Evidently the diminishing numbers of bridge players in the U.S. put the American Playing Card Manufacturers in a real panic. Not only did they commission this film, they also had published a 14-page, 5½ by 7½ brochure with the same title as the film to prevent further rummy rejections in American homes.

Unfortunately, limited research hasn’t discovered the identity of the artists who worked on these industrials, but a note in Variety of April 24, 1957 reveals Arthur Anderson provided voices and vocal sound effects for the studio’s Marathon Gas spots.

Pelican went through some corporate and staff changes in 1969 and the following January was hit with a lawsuit by actress Marilyn Hassett, who demanded $1,900,000 from five co-defendants after falling off an elephant (evidently not animated) during the filming of a TV spot. Zander left in July to form Zander Associates with five staffers and later changed the name to Zander’s Animation Parlour, with Henry Lehn as the head designer and Emery Hawkins, Jan Svochak and former Van Beuren and MGM colleague Bill Littlejohn among the animators. Zander closed up in the mid-‘80s, picking up an Emmy along the way. Jack Zander died at the age of 99 on December 17, 2007. He left behind a huge body of work. It’s a shame his industrial and commercial animation isn’t as readily available to view as his fine work on MGM’s Tom and Jerry or even Van Beuren’s lamented Molly Moo Cow series, even if one example is the “rhythmic grinding cycles of a chicken's gizzard in action” as one industrial film catalogue put it. The above articles from a defunct trade paper will have to do for now.

Yeah, We Get It, Walt

Ho hum. Walt Disney’s The Gorilla Mystery (1930) is a tame-fest. A third of the cartoon is Mickey and Minnie singing, dancing and piano playing, and most of the rest of it is about a slobbering gorilla. The beast approaches the camera not one but three times over the course of seven minutes.



The older shorts at least had pianos or piano stools or fish or trees come to life and dance along. This one has none of that kind of charm. It has two chamber pot jokes, though. It is a Disney cartoon, after all.

The Chickens Love Sinatra

The ridiculous extent of how over-anxious and hyper-romantic teenaged girls are gripped by boy band fanhood was satirised by Frank Tashlin in the Warner Bros. cartoon Swooner Crooner. Of course, there were no boy bands in 1944. But there were crooners. And the two biggest ones were Frank Sinatra and the old groaner Bing Crosby.

One of the hens hears the Frankie rooster oozing out the hit It Can’t Be Wrong.



Whether Tashlin was doing his own layouts, I don’t know, but loved angles and cinematic effects. Note how he also reuses animation of the hen shadows, first as they run to hear Frankie, then after they turn around and run to hear Bing.



A fun gag is how Frankie’s singing turns one hen into a pool of, uh, well, I’m not sure what.



And from the famous between-Frankie’s-legs scene.



Carl Stalling packed this cartoon with Warners-owned songs. Vocalised are:

It Can’t Be Wrong (K. Gannon, M. Steiner), Frankie
Shortenin’ Bread (traditional), Nelson Eddy?
September in the Rain (A. Dubin, H. Warren), Jolson
Lullaby of Broadway (A. Dubin, H.Warren), Durante
Blues in the Night (H. Arlen, J.Mercer), Calloway
When My Dreamboat Comes Home (D. Franklin, C. Friend), Bing
I'll Pray For You (A. Altman, K. Gannon), Frankie
Trade Winds (D. Franklin, C. Friend), Bing
Always in My Heart (K. Gannon, E. Lecuona), Frankie
You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby (J. Mercer, H. Warren), Bing

And Stalling tosses in a good helping of Raymond Scott’s Powerhouse in the henhouse sequence and a little bit of As Time Goes By.

The cartoon was nominated for an Oscar but lost to MGM’s Mouse Trouble.

The cartoon was released May 6, 1944. On August 31st, Variety announced Tashlin was leaving Warners to work for Morey and Sutherland as the supervising director for their cartoon series released by United Artists. By October next year, he was writing for live-action at Paramount.

I don’t believe Sinatra ever recorded It Can’t Be Wrong, but he sang it on a radio show. You can hear it below.

You're Charlie the Bank Teller, Right?

He appeared on the New York stage in October 1939 in William Saroyan’s comedy The Time of Your Life with Gene Kelly, Celeste Holm and Ross Bagdasarian. His Broadway credits included Of Mice and Men and I Am a Camera, And once he got a firm hold on television in the late ‘50s, he seems to have appeared on everything. He was the perfect stuck-up boss in sitcoms. He was a callous businessman in dramas.

I’d be hard-pressed to answer “no” if you asked me whether a day went by in the ‘60s that I didn’t see Edward Andrews on some TV show. Bewitched. I Dream of Jeannie. The Beverly Hillbillies. Love American Style. He even got a regular role in one of the versions of The Doris Day Show. He appeared in several Disney movie comedies, including The Absent-Minded Professor. He did The Twilight Zone. And that’s just what I can remember off the top of my head.

One downside to being a character actor is that you’re not the star, so nobody thinks of interviewing you, even though your face may be everywhere. However, it appears after Andrews landed a co-starring role on the sitcom Broadside in 1964, the producer’s PR department tried to get him some ink. I’ve found a few squibs quoting Andrews but only one newspaper column that featured him. It was by syndicated columnist Hank Grant and appeared on April 4, 1964.

Busy TV Actor Edward Andrews Half-Recognized By Public
By HANK GRANT
Hollywood—Edward Andrews is one of the busiest character actors in Hollywood, both in movies and TV. Almost every night he is seen in one series or other. In fact, one night, Andrews was seen on five different shows! Yet, he has a most unique problem: in private life, he's only half-recognized.
Andrews, despite the image he's built in his villain roles as a cold, cruel, calculating man, gazing stoically at you through his horn-rimmed glasses, is one of the warmest men I’ve ever met. While congratulating him on his signing for his first series, "Broadside" (for ABC on Sunday nights in the fall), he told me about his peculiar problem.

"There's something about this face of mine," he said, "that is paradoxically both distinguished and undistinguished. People recognize me as someone they know, but invariably never as someone they're seen on the screen.
"More often than not, I've had perfect strangers approach me with: 'Hi, Charlie, how’s the wife and kids? It turns out I’m either a lodge member, a teller at their bank, an insurance salesman or even a friend of a friend. When I try to explain, they'd seen me on TV and I never met them before, believe it or not, they're insulted. One fellow even tried to take a poke at me for being, as he put it, a wise guy!"
A drummer? — "Department stores are anathema for me. People are always taking it for granted I'm the floorwalker, me without even a carnation in my lapel!
"Once, I thought I had that problem licked. Instead of wearing a business suit, I went shopping in casual slacks and a Hawaiian sports shift. Would you believe it? A fellow came up to me and asked if I wanted a job for Saturday night. He was a musician and he was positive I was a drummer he'd worked with before.
"One reason I grabbed onto this series (Broadside) is that finally, I hope, I'd get an identity with exposure every week in the same role. The amusing thing is that Ed Montagne, who also produces this series, first offered me the Captain Binghamton role in his ‘McHale's Navy’ and I turned him down. After seeing what a wonderful job Joe Flynn is doing with the role, I keep kicking myself for what, apparently, was a stupid decision.
"The Patsy! This series is roughly a distaff version of McHale's Navy. Like Binghamton, I play a frustrated officer in the Navy, but with this difference: my hecklers aren't seamen, they're WAVES, a swarm of pretties, headed by Kathy Nolan and, in co-starring positions, Joan Staley and Lois Roberts.
"Like Captain Binghamton, I'm sure, I’ll be the patsy they pull out of the ocean dripping wet (in his first year, Joe Flynn suffered dunkings in at least 10 episodes)."

Fans recognised the show for what it was—McHale’s Navy Light—and brushed it off after a single season, despite comic relief from the great Arnold Stang. The cancellation didn’t hurt Andrews’ career. He was still very much in demand up until he died on March 8, 1985 at the age of 70.

Little Rural Riding Hood

The rural wolf (Pinto Colvig) can’t control himself after city Red finishes her performance in Little Rural Riding Hood and races to the stage to do Avery-knows-what with her. He’s stopped by a mallet from the terribly reserved city wolf (Daws Butler), and rolls off scene like a wheelbarrow (his head is the squeaky front wheel).



Avery climaxes the cartoon by turning around the situation in the next sequence—the city wolf erupts into instant lust when he sees rural Red (Colleen Collins), only to have the mallet-wheelbarrel routine repeated by the smiling rural wolf.

Bobe Cannon, Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton and Mike Lah are the credited animators.