One of the best-known moments of revenge in animation history.
“Chow Hound” is another product of the mind of writer Mike Maltese. The credited animators in the Chuck Jones unit are Lloyd Vaughan, Phil Monroe, Ken Harris and Ben Washam. Vaughan, Harris and Jones get additional mention in an inside joke in the classified ads. Phil DeGuard painted these from Bob Gribbroek layouts.
“M. Hinkle” has yet to be identified. The only one I can find in the Los Angeles Directory is “Mary Hinkle.” Considering the character in the cartoon is played by Bea Benaderet, perhaps that’s who it is and Mary worked in ink and paint. Just speculation.
John T. Smith is the voice of the dog who gets the gravy and the zoo curator. Mel Blanc plays the cat, mouse, Vaughan and Harris.
There’s a neat visual effect in several Chuck Jones cartoons. Someone zooms out of a scene and leaves multiples of something floating in the air in their wake. In “Bully For Bugs,” it’s hooves. In “Bewitched Bunny,” it’s bobby pins. And in “No Barking,” it’s feet.
There’s a smear drawing of Claude Cat, too.
Ken Harris gets the only animation credit. Whether he had an assistant on this one, I couldn’t tell you.
Fred Allen’s best-known radio routine was one that had a comparatively short life on his show—Allen’s Alley. It was Fred’s chance to satirise stories of the day and toss in a bit of regional humour by taking a mock straw opinion poll of four residents of a stretch of back road. The Alley debuted on December 2, 1942, 10 years after Allen began regular broadcasts. It morphed into “Main Street” in the early part of the 1948-49 season, Allen’s last. And the characters everyone associates with the Alley weren’t the original denizens. Three of them were played by Alan Reed, John Brown and Charlie Cantor, all of whom left the show before the Alley achieved its fame.
The best known today of the four who settled in the Alley is Senator Claghorn, played by Allen’s announcer, Kenny Delmar. He’s known no doubt because of the repeated television showings of that blowhard cartoon rooster, Foghorn Leghorn. The two shared many of the same traits and if you’re wondering which came first, you can do no better than read Keith Scott’s research on the question.
Claghorn was a modification of Counsellor Cartenbranch, a character Delmar played on ‘The Alan Young Show’ during the 1945-46 season. In Allen’s hands, the Senator became instantly popular (the Alley had an earlier Senator Bloat, played by Scott Smart). The nascent Eagle-Lion ‘B’ film factory quickly jumped on Claghorn, and spun a whole 63-minute movie starring Delmar as the Senator, with a plot separate and apart from anything on the Allen show. Shooting on “It’s a Joke, Son!” began in Hollywood in July 1946.
The movie wasn’t really a success. It was almost an impossible task taking a two-minute routine and trying to turn it into a feature film (something many stars of “Saturday Night Live” would learn about their characters years later). The Senator may have been from, I say, he may have been from the South, but fans were used to his natural setting in the Alley. The fast pace of the verbal radio gags gave way to the languid pace of an hour-long piece. And Delmar had the distinct disadvantage of trying to be a visual version of a character people had already pictured in their own minds. He may have sounded like Senator Claghorn but he didn’t look like him to many viewers; I pictured the Senator to be an older, grey-haired wheeler-dealer.
Unlike some actors who embellished their stories over the years on the talk show circuit, Delmar was consistent about how he came up with the Senator. Let’s read two articles from 1946. The first is from the National Enterprise Association. The second is by the International News Service’s maven of show biz gossip, Louella Parsons. You’ll notice how Lolly loved to insert herself (and, in this instance, her news service) in the story of what she’s covering.
By ERSKINE JOHNSON NEA Staff Correspondent Hollywood, Aug. 11 — Senator Claghorn was sitting at the north end of the bar, sipping a Manhattan. He saw us coming and switched to the south end, but he couldn’t do anything about the Manhattan. “Why Senator,” we said, “how come you’re not drinking a mint julep?” The Senator put a finger to his lips and whispered: “Shhh! Nobody knows me out here in Hollywood. I’m having fun.” But, he assured us, he wasn’t living in North Hollywood. As you’ve probably read, Senator Claghorn — Kenny Delmar — is a movie-star. You’ll soon be seeing “It’s a Joke, Son,” starring Kenny, which Bryan Foy is producing for the new Eagle-Lion Film Company. No Beautiful Girls But the Senator was unhappy. “There are no beautiful girls in Hollywood,” he said. “Where are all your beautiful girls? I saw beautiful girls in Texas, but none here.” We assured him a couple might show up after lunch, and that seemed to make him happy. (They didn’t show up.) Kenny was a surprise to us. He didn’t look at all as we had imagined he would. He’s a stocky little man with bushy hair that stands up in different directions, and he wears big, black, horn-rimmed glasses. In fact, he looks something like a fat Harold Lloyd. We told him so. “That’s what they said at the studio, too,” he told us. “They won’t let me wear my horn-rimmed glasses because with them on I look too much like Lloyd. In fact, they gave me a flock of makeup tests, and I looked like too many actors — like Jean Hersholt, Edward G. Robinson, J. Carroll Naish, and Ed Wynn.” But after 36 makeup tests, he assured us, he finally wound up looking the way people think Senator Claghorn should look. He’ll just wear his own face plus big, bushy, prop eyebrows. He’ll have no beard and no mustache, and his glasses will be the pince-nez type. The South Can’t Lose There will be plenty of gags about the South, of course, in “It’s a Joke, Son.” This is one of them. Una Merkel, Claghorn’s wife, tells him to come into the house — “a north wind is blowing, and you’ll catch cold.” Replies the Senator: “There is no such thing as a north wind. That’s just the south wind coming back home.'” Kenny came to Hollywood, free, in the president’s private car on the Southern Pacific railroad. (Everybody wants to get in the act.) “But it was pretty rugged,” Kenny groaned. “I had to do 38 broadcasts and make about 48 speeches all' through the South. Anytime there were four people at the station they dragged me out of bed to make a speech. “I should have taken Fred Allen’s advice. He said I’d be a wreck. After walking around in 110 degrees in Tucson while they made me a member of the Sunshine Club, I was a wreck.” But, said Kenny, he’s going to take Fred’s advice about not associating in Hollywood with people who are sun-tanned. Before he left New York, Fred warned him: “Avoid the people with sun-tans. They’re the ones who are not working.”
Delmar Tells How He Met ‘Claghorn’ While Hitch-Hiking By LOUELLA PARSONS HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 14 (INS)—I grew to know Kenny Delmar (Senator Claghorn) as well as it he wore a close friend, nil the weeks I was in the hospital. He was a must on Fred Allen’s show and the old Southern Senator and his drawl that smacks of down yonder below the Mason and Dixon line was one person I wanted to meet. Considered the find of 1946 in radio, I was curious to see him and to hear first hand all about the Senator’s n e w movie, “It’s a Joke, Son,” which he came to Hollywood to make. The Senator—Kenny, that is—was one of my first visitors, and he is no joke, son. He is an affable, attractive young man, who is still wondering what good luck symbol hit him square on the head. His only complaint at the moment is a bad case of sinus trouble which has kept him from being as happy as .ho feels he should be with all the golden success poured into his lap. “HOW DID you got your sinus trouble?” I naked, when he sadly informed me he was gradually feeling worse and that he was told he had an allergy. “I stopped at every town on the way out here,” he replied. “I never worked so hard in my life. I had to write something different about each town, and it was so hot that when I returned to the air cooled train, I caught a terrible cold.” “The penalty of fame,” I said, and for just a split moment the smile turned into a question mark. I think he had a feeling I was being sarcastic, and ribbing him which, heavens knows, I wasn’t, so I quickly said, “Tell me all about yourself—where did you find Senator Claghorn? Are you married? Do you return to Fred Allen’s show? And how do you like the movies?” “ONE QUESTION at a time,” Senator Kenny laughed. “This isn’t my first movie,” he replied. “I was Joseph Schildkraut as a little boy in D. W. Griffiths’ ‘Orphans on the Storm.’ I tried awfully hard to get back into movies after that picture, but no one wanted me. It was really while I was hitch-hiking to California that I got my idea of Senator Claghorn. “The Senator is the evolution of Dynamite Gus. An old western rancher with a rattletrap broken down car picked me up. He had to yell so I could hear him over the noise of the wheezy motor. He would preface each sentence with ‘I say’ and finish it with something like this, ‘I planted wheat, that is.’ So I turned Dynamite Gus into Councilman Cartenbranch, and he eventually became Senator Claghorn. I wrote the first two shows for Fred, but all the others are written by him.” WHEN KENNY goes back to New York City, he will have his own show three times a week, besides his stint on the Allen comedy half-hour. He told me that he had once worked for the Hearst organization. “The radio, that is,” he laughed. “I did a part in Jungle Jim,’ advertising the American weekly.” Now for you who will read this before Kenny’s movie is shown, let me describe Kenny, He is 34. His mother was one of the Delmar sisters in vaudeville. He was on the stage at the age of seven, and from his maternal side he inherits the love of art, beauty and poetry. His mother is Greek and English. He married one of the Cochrane twins, those lovely ballet dancers who appeared at the Metropolitan. He has a son aged five, who, he says, he expects to let hitch-hike because that’s where you meet the real American people. And here’s a laugh — Kenny says he can no longer use his own gag, “It’s a joke son,” which he made famous on the air, on account of too many other radio comedians have used it. P.S.: I used it myself on my show, and did I feel guilty when he told me how often it had been swiped.
When television killed network radio, it pretty well killed Fred Allen’s career and wounded Delmar’s; he never enjoyed the stardom of his time in Allen’s Alley. He remained based in New York as TV moved to Hollywood, but worked steadily in guest roles through the ‘50s (the commuting to and from the West Coast killed his marriage), briefly formed a comedy partnership with fellow ex-American Tobacco pusher Del Sharbutt and even produced industrial and sales films, at least one featuring a certain Senator.
In the ‘60s, Delmar became one of a handful of voice actors in the New York animation community along with Allen Swift, employed by Total Television Productions. Florida beckoned, where Delmar enjoyed retirement in West Palm Beach. The native New Englander died in Stamford, Connecticut on July 14, 1984, age 73.
We don’t suppose too many of you will sit and watch the entire version of “It’s a Joke, Son!” But a few minutes of the Senator’s bluster will give you a bit of an idea of what audiences liked on Fred Allen’s show. The dialogue director (who helped Delmar with his accent) was vaudeville veteran Benny Rubin and you’ll see a young June Lockhart. And, yes, that’s Foghorn Leghorn’s “Camptown Races” in Irving Friedman’s medley over the opening credits. Credits, that is.
Anyone care to guess how many times Tex Avery pulled off this gag?
This time, the body-leaking gag comes from “The Hick Chick” (1946). The bad guy with the Charles Boyer voice has stabbed Lem several times with a pitch fork. “Ah, ya didn’t even touch me,” Lem says. Then the gag.
Tex pulled it again in “Garden Gopher” (1950) with Spike and a rake.
The story isn’t one of writer Heck Allen’s best; the ending is unsatisfying because it’s a running gag without a topper. You can see it coming and expect to build to something more. But the fight inside Lem’s clothes has to be unique.
The credited animators in this cartoon are Ed Love, Walt Clinton, Preston Blair and Ray Abrams. Avery and Allen use Red Skelton’s Clem Kadiddlehopper (and Daisy June) as a starting point for the cartoon; I’m not a Skelton fan so Skelton’s catchphrases aren’t any more amusing coming out of animated characters.
It sounds like Pat McGeehan supplying the voice of the Avery Wolf-behaving villain (complete with moustache), Sara Berner as Daisy June and Frank Graham as the bull.
Michael Sasanoff had a short but productive career at the Leon Schlesinger studio, though much of his work was uncredited.
Sasanoff, from what I’ve been able to gather, took over as the background artist in the Clampett unit when Johnny Johnsen left for MGM in 1941. Clampett, himself, had acquired the unit from Tex Avery not too many months earlier. Clampett finished up a bunch of Avery cartoons and then put his own into production. One is the charming “Horton Hatches the Egg” (released in 1942).
It opens like a number of Avery cartoons—with a pan over a background drawing. There is foliage on a foreground cell panned at a different speed than the background so I can’t snip it together. But what you see below gives you an idea of Sasanoff’s work on the cartoon, as Clampett tried to give a flavour of the designs in the Dr. Seuss book the cartoon was based on.
Sasanoff moved into management, according to The Film Daily Year Book of Motion Pictures, 1943 edition, and finished his career at Schlesinger’s with writing credits on several of Clampett’s cartoons in 1944 and 1945. Then, he vanished. It turns out he got out of animation and into the advertising business. Billboard magazine of April 3, 1948, tells us where he went:
Schenley Distributors, thru Biow Agency, this week signed to televise film commercials on a co-ordinated sked calling or simultaneous airing of identical spots over 11 video outlets daily. The 10 film strips, which plug Cresta Blanca wine, were completed in Hollywood last week by Biow’s tele production chief, Michael Sasanoff. Sasanoff returns to Gotham next week to present finished series to agency toppers.
Sasanoff moved from agency to agency in the ‘50s and ‘60s, eventually opening his own firm. You have to laugh at this snippet of a story from a 1957 edition of Radio Daily-Television Daily:
MICHAEL SASANOFF, creator of Warner Brothers’ “Tweety Bird,” and partly responsible for “Bugs Bunny,” has been added to the copy staff of NW Ayer & Son, Inc., Philadelphia. He will be with the New York radio-television department.
Considering his ex-boss Clampett had a reputation for taking credit for creating almost every major pre-‘45 character at Warner Bros., it’s ironic Sasanoff took credit for a character Clampett did create (Tweety).
By the late ‘50s, the Sasanoffs had settled in New Canaan, Connecticut, where his wife Rose was involved in an amateur acting troupe along with Peter Van Steeden, Fred Allen’s ex orchestra leader. He died in Wilton, Connecticut on December 20, 1984, almost six months after becoming remarried. He was 81.
It seems reporters and columnists had a check-list of things they had to mention in any of their stories about Jack Benny in the 1960s. They all seemed to
● Juxtapose “39” with his real age. ● Reveal he isn’t really a cheapskate. ● Mention how he laughs at everyone else’s jokes. ● Opine that he really isn’t a horrible violin player.
And maybe it’s my imagination, but a lot of the interviews seem to have been conducted in Jack’s hotel room with some incident occurring in the room before, during, or after the interview mentioned in the story.
This one is from 1966 from the Associated Press’ New York-based TV-radio writer (an obsolete title in 1966; the beat was strictly television by then), written for newspapers to use in weekend editions. Of course, it also plugged Jack’s coming special. which was the reason for the column in the first place. There’s a factual error I’ll mention after you read it.
Show Biz’s Busiest ‘Youngster’ by Cynthia Lowry NEW YORK, Nov. 26 (AP)—Jack Benny opened the door of his hotel suite, then quickly retreated into another room and reappeared in a dressing gown: “Forgive me, forgive me,” he apologized. “It’s this time difference from California. His manager, Irving Fein, who accompanies him on all professional journeys, appeared from an adjoining room, and everybody sat down to breakfast. Benny, whose manner and mien belie his years, eyed two glasses of orange juice and one slice of Persian melon. “Who gets the melon?” he demanded, in that petulant, ready-to-get-my-feelings-hurt voice he has developed over 35 years of radio and television. Then he laughed, and said he’d rather have orange juice anyway. Benny, in spite of the fact that his official biography states that he was “born 39 years ago in Chicago,” will be 73 in February. And, although in semiretirement from television for two seasons, he manages to be about the busiest senior citizen in show business. A professional errand of mercy jetted him to New York this time—to be a guest star on CBS’ “Garry Moore Show,” part of a desperate effort to save the show from sagging ratings. Benny had just finished making his annual special, and was also using his time to plug it. A spoof on beauty pageants and loaded with former contest winners, it will be broadcast next Thursday on NBC. Benny is not the funniest man in the world off-camera. In fact, he is a bland, somewhat understated fellow who is rated by his colleagues as the greatest audience for humor in the world. Steve Allen, in his book “The Funny Men,” says that Benny is “to humor what Arthur Rubinstein is to music: ‘a performer of genius.’ He calls Benny ‘the world’s greatest reactor’ to jokes and situations, which usually are on him — “straight man for the whole world.” Over years of show business Benny has honed his professional character: a conceited tightwad of easily punctured dignity. Years of limelight have also developed what is widely believed to be his real character — a generous, outgoing and modest man who is an inordinately big tipper and a: lavish appreciator of other people’s humor. In an interview, Benny will have pleasant words about all his colleagues. He will discuss his recent move from his Beverly Hills home to an apartment close to his favorite golf course. He speaks of enjoying freedom to spend more time in his Palm Springs home —although he has not done so yet — and the pleasures of doing charity concerts all over the country with top orchestras. Benny practices on his violin at least two hours a day. He is a much better violinist than he appears to be; it takes considerable skill play delicately off-key. He goes to his office daily. He performs on a lot of stages. “It is a good life,” he says. “I enjoy playing a few weeks a year in Nevada — once I get accustomed to the turnaround in hours. And I like to be able to work on a concert or a show for a few concentrated weeks and then take time off.” Over the years, Benny shows have been real innovators. The old radio show and the newest special, however, are built from the same brick and mortar. There will be the stingy jokes and several samples of his fantastic timing. Benny’s first radio broadcast was a 1932 Ed Sullivan show, and his opening lines were: “This is Jack Benny. There will be a slight pause while everyone says, ‘who cares?’” Today, Benny can produce laughter merely by exploding “Cut that out!” or just by facing the audience thoughtfully and droning, “hmmmmm.” Over 35 years, the audience has come to know the character and is conditioned to laugh, Benny’s timing is peerless. Don Wilson once told a magazine writer that when Benny turns to the audience for his famed long “reaction,” other actors are not allowed to continue with their lines. The signal to resume comes when he again faces his fellow, performers. Benny jumped off the Sullivan Show into his own NBC series in 1932 and was one of the network’s big stars until, the famous “Paley’s Raid” of 1949 when CBS wooed away big names like Benny, Bergen and Skelton. He continued the radio show until 1955, but in 1950 started his television series. These continued, in one form or another on CBS until 1964, after which he returned to NBC for one season of specials. When the weekly show was discontinued for low ratings, Benny was not exactly happy, but obviously he has adjusted to the idea of one special a year, plus as many guest shots as he wants to take on. “Listen,” he confided, in mock exasperation, “I am an awfully easy fella to get along with. I like everything I do and I’m happy with everything I do. I like to work and I like to practice. I even like to walk down Fifth Avenue and have people say hello to me.” And, for his amour-proper, he’d also like is very much if his “Jack Benny Hour” Thursday landed him on top of the Nielsen ratings. Oh, yes, and he did, after all, eat the melon.
Now the factual error:
Just about everyone today seems to cite a 1932 appearance on Ed Sullivan’s interview show as Benny’s debut on radio. When this became part of the Benny legend isn’t clear but it’s not true. Benny celebrated his tenth anniversary on the air in a show broadcast in 1941, and that was quite correct. Jack appeared on the radio for the first time in 1931 and it was not with Ed Sullivan. We’ll have that story next week.
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