Give Him Some Tongue

What Makes Cartoons Great No. 276: tongue sandwiches with real tongues singing “I’m Just Wild About Harry.” Like in Bob Clampett’s “Goofy Groceries.”



OK, the gag was first used in that disjointed mess known as “Buddy’s Beer Garden” over seven years earlier. It’s not as good, but you can’t hate tongues that sing “La-la-la!”



It’s quite possible Clampett could be responsible for the gag in the earlier cartoon. He said how he’d offer gag ideas to the directors at Schlesinger before he became a director himself.

40 Isn't Funny

The character traits Jack Benny invented for himself became so well-known, many people feel he had them forever. But there was a time on the radio that Benny didn’t have a butler named Rochester, didn’t drive a Maxwell and wasn’t 39. In fact, Jack’s coming-of-age-39 was a comparatively late development on the show; he hung on to a few younger ages until the late ‘40s. But, as Jack put it, 39 is a funny number, and that’s the one people remember today. Few remember than Jack actually turned 40 on the air.

It’s likely the idea came from Benny’s writers, as news stories can be found during the 1950s where Jack himself resisted the idea of adding another year to his age. But they gave it a try on television in 1958. The fact that people still think of Benny as a perennial 39 shows how successful it was.

Benny’s writers probably could have built a whole show around the age change alone, but they decided to go for another gimmick instead. They brought back a bunch of people who had been associated with Jack over the years on radio. It would have been pure nostalgia in some cases; obscure nostalgia in a few. Likely none of his audience would get the connection between Benny and bandleaders George Olson or Ted Weems. The fact that one news stories had to explain the connection of George Hicks shows how little-known it was.

Let’s go back to February 13, 1958 and the United Press.

Jack Benny To Note “40th” Birthday
By VERNON SCOTT
UP Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD (UP)—Jack Benny celebrates his 40th birthday on a TV spectacular tonight—24 years after the fact.
After eight years of being 39, Jack thought there might be a few yaks in his finally reaching 40, an age he doesn’t consider, as funny as 39.
“My real birthday is tomorrow, Valentine’s Day,” Jack said. “And because this show falls so close, I decided to celebrate on the air. Actually, I’ll be 64.”
Benny is as funny as a Kremlin purge offscreen. He seldom cracks a smile, refuses to tell jokes. He has an indifferent attitude that borders on boredom. “I’m only funny when I get paid,” he said.
Lunching in the dining room of the Hillcrest Country Club the comedian blinked his baby-blue eyes at leaden skies and debated as to whether he should play golf or return to his office He mumbled about it half a dozen times during an hour interview.
"This gag about .my age began back in 1944 on a radio show. The script called for Mary (Livingstone) to ask my age. When I said, ‘36,’ it got a big laugh. After that it took me six years to progress to 39. You might say aged gradually.”
In person Benny looks about 50.
As a birthday present to himself the comedian is holding a reunion party with many of the character actors and singers who helped build his show during the last 27 years.
Scheduled to be on hand for the CBS-TV “Shower of Stars” are announcers Paul Douglas and George Hicks, who preceded Don Wilson, Singers Frank Parker, Dennis Day, Larry Stevens and Jo Stafford will be there along with orchestra leaders Bob Crosby, Abe Lyman, Phil Harris, Ted Weems, Don Bestor, Johnny Green and George Olson, Mel Blanc, Andy Devine, the Sportsman Quartette and a score of other Benny regulars, past and present, will help cut the birthday cake.
How long will Jack remain 40?
“I’m not sure,” he said. "It depends on audience reaction. If it’s not funny I may become 41 next year.”
Benny generously credits his treatment of supporting players for much of his success. Through the years his show has been Valhalla to the “Little People” who earn their cakes and ale playing bit parts.
“I’ve always been careful how I handle guest stars and bit players,” Jack said thoughtfully.
“They usually bounce the funny lines off me while I play straight-man.”

But there was a bad omen reported that very same day. What may be remarkable to viewers in reading this today is that Jack’s show was to be done live. Of course, this wasn’t far removed from the network radio days where broadcasts were live for many years.

Rochester Fine After Collapse
HOLLYWOOD, Feb. 13 (AP) — Eddie Anderson, better known to Jack Benny fans as Rochester, collapsed during a television rehearsal Wednesday night.
A doctor said Anderson had suffered a stomach upset.
“He’s talking and he says he’s feeling fine,” the doctor reported after examining the 52-year-old actor.
Anderson fainted while rehearsing for a show he and Benny are scheduled to appear on tonight.

So, the 40th birthday party went on without Rochester. The New York Times wasn’t impressed with the whole proceedings. Here’s a review published the following day.

TV: Unhappy Birthday; Jack Benny, Finally at '40,' Worthy of More Fitting Party Than He Received
By JACK GOULD
JACK BENNY, who is 64 years old today, observed his “fortieth birthday” last night on the "Shower of Stars" program over Channel 2. The man who made a career of always being 39 on radio and television deserved a much more fitting party than he received.
Apart from the idea of having Mr. Benny age a year, the producers of the program were at a loss for anything to do. There were some nostalgic moments as colleagues of the comedian appeared briefly before the cameras, but there was no serious effort to organize any entertainment. The quips were labored, and on the home screen the element of sincerity seemed contrived and rehearsed.
At the instant when Mr. Benny started to respond to a mass singing of “Happy Birthday” he was cut off for a commercial. Rochester, Jack’s aide, was sick and unable to appear. Andy Devine did his best as a replacement. What so easily could have been a first-rate show was just uninspired television.

Whether Jack continued to try to pass himself off as 40 after this, or pretended that it never happened and went back to 39, I don’t know. I’m not familiar with the intricacies of his TV work. But, suffice it to say, the memory of it never stuck. Everyone thinks of Jack Benny as 39; his obituaries in 1974 all mentioned it and UPI’s wire story even deadpan-joked about it. Jack was right. The idea of a vain, aging man sticking to an age that he’s obviously passed long ago is good comedy. 39 is funny.

Disney Hates TV

One generation grew up with “The Mickey Mouse Club” and the “Wonderful World of Color.” Another did the same with “The Disney Afternoon.” And, of course, today we have The Disney Channel, Disney Junior and Disney XD (né Toon Disney). So it’s odd that Uncle Walt himself thought the idea of getting into television would be a terrible and costly one.

Of course, some context helps to explain Disney’s feelings. He expressed them in 1952, a time when panicky movie studios were selling off their back catalogues of films to the highest bidder, who’d shop them around to television; after all, studios made movies, they weren’t in the TV syndication business. That’s what Disney had in mind when he made his comments about TV to the United Press’ Hollywood correspondent. When Disney went into television, he did it differently, keeping his old films and reworking them into something completely different. Eventually, Walt would eventually become a recognisable TV star in his own right, introducing snippets of this and that, or introducing Ludwig Von Drake introducing snippets of this and that, cobbled together in an almost-seamless hour-long show.

But let’s go back 60 years to see what Disney had to say about the Box That Berle Came In.

Walt Disney Spurning $8 Million in TV Offers
By VIRGINIA MacPHERSON
HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 18 (U.P.) — Walt Disney, who’s turned down a reported $8 million in TV often, said today he did it because he doesn’t want to go into competition with himself.
“I still have confidence in the movie business,” the cartoon genius explained quietly. “I happen to think it’ll still be around for a few more years.”
And as long as it is, Disney’s a cinch to keep raking in the dough. Any time he feels he could use another old million or two, he just re-releases one of his full-length cartoons.
“The television people want to buy my films,” he shrugged. “But I’m not selling. Why should I? They’re still good for movie theaters. And, because they’re timeless, they always will be.”
Which is why he can’t see any sense in selling “Alice in Wonderland” or “Cinderella” or “Bambi” to the co-axial cable gents. He can make more dough putting ‘em in the vault for a year or two and then slamming ‘em out again.
But Disney makes one concession every Christmas. He puts on an hour-long TV show for the kids. This year his fantasy on CBS-TV will give ‘em a peek into “Peter Pan” and “Snow White,” which’ll be making the rounds again by Easter.
“But I insisted on one thing,” he added. “And the sponsors agreed with me. No commercials. All we do is tell you the name of the sponsor . . . and that’s that.
“My big beef with television is the stupid commercials. They’re in bad taste. And there are too many of ‘em. Why, I’ve watched shows that have been interrupted six times in 30 minutes to plug a product.
“This is bad showmanship. It’s hurting television.”
It could even be another reason why he turned down that $8 million. Disney makes cartoons because he loves ‘em. So do the 600 people who work for him.
Disney makes sure of this with a concentrated “love-thy-job” campaign. The commissary serves rare roast beef at half what it costs him. There’s even beer on ice. . . . The only studio in town that lets the bars down this far.
“Why not?” the boss shrugs. “This way they’re a lot more apt to have one beer and get back to work on time. If I didn’t sell it here they could go off the lot and maybe have a coupla martinis and never get back.”
He has a good way of keeping ‘em on their toes on the job, too. He shows ‘em what the competition’s turning out.
“Only the best ones,” he added. “I never show a bad cartoon from another studio. That tends to make everybody here get fat and lazy and smug.
“But when they see a good one somebody else has made they charge out and work twice as hard.”

Walt is still passing himself off at the benevolent employer, kindly supplying food and drink to his hard-working (and anonymous) crew. Reporter MacPherson apparently didn’t contact Art Babbitt for reaction.

Disney also apparently didn’t really mind commercials too much—so long as they were made by his studio for a profit or, better still, were infomercials plugging his latest ventures.

Fortunately, Disney had the foresight to find a way to put his old material on television in a way that he wasn’t re-releasing it to theatres. He not only provided memories for today’s geezers—even I tuned in occasionally on afternoons to watch some great opening animation ending with Donald Duck banging a gong—he introduced people on Sunday evening to some of the fun sound shorts of the late ‘20s and early ‘30s. And unlike Warner Bros., whose cartoons were making money for AAP and Sunset and everyone but Warner Bros., Disney kept reaping the financial benefits that allowed him to move into the future. It all happened because Walt Disney finally gave television a try.

(Above right: Big Bad Wolf, voiced by Billy Bletcher, getting pounded in “The Three Little Wolves”).

If You're Ever Down in Texas

One of my favourite pieces of animation in a Tom and Jerry cartoon is in “Texas Tom” (1950) when the cat goes all western and serenades a girl kitty.

Tom strolls out, jingle-jangle-jingling in his cowboy garb. He ever-so-casually flicks up his hat to the lady (where did he suddenly develop such skill?)



Then he rolls his own cigarette and blows smoke into the air. The smoke forms an introduction.



Next, he pulls a guitar out of nowhere and inherits Ken Darby’s voice as he sings “If You’re Ever Down in Texas (Look Me Up).” He even steals a stretchy kiss.



And, as a silly bonus, Joe Barbera’s story unexpectedly tosses in a chorus of cows for a couple of bars. First, the moms, then a pan over to the calves.



Jerry, of course, moves in to gum up things.

The usual MGM Hanna-Barbera crew worked on this one—Ken Muse, Ray Patterson, Ed Barge and Irv Spence.

Outlining Woody

“The Screwdriver” is as about appropriate as you can get for the title of a cartoon about the early version of Woody Woodpecker being a menace on the road. This is the wonderful wide-legged, Mel Blanc-voiced version of Woody who drove someone insane at the end of a cartoon (writer Bugs Hardaway brought the plot device over with him from Warner Bros.).

Woody occasionally popped from pose to pose in 1941, but his body parts were never stretched in between poses. Instead, the animators (or their assistants) used lines or outlines to show Woody’s movement. Here are a few examples at the outset of “The Screwdriver.”



Alex Lovy and Ralph Somerville are the credited animators. Ralph Jay Somerville was born in Oskaloosa, Iowa on December 6, 1905 (at ten pounds) to Rev. Jay Wilbur and Jessie Meredith (Burdick) Somerville. His father and maternal grandfather were both ministers in the Methodist Episcopal Church, his mother died about two months shy of her 101st birthday. The family moved to Bloomington, Ill. in 1907; Wichita, Kansas in 1910 and were in Fulton, New York by 1920. Somerville graduated from high school in Warrensburg, N.Y. in 1923, went to work at the Fleischer Studio in New York City by 1930 and was in Los Angeles by 1935. Around the time this cartoon was made, he was pulling down $3120 a year at Lantz. Somerville was also married to the former Xenia Beckwith as of May 27, 1938. The two divorced on June 7, 1943 (Somerville was a sergeant with the U.S. Army Air Forces in the China-Burma-India theatre) during the war) and Xenia went on to marry Lantz animator Ed de Mattia (who also saw military service) on April 5, 1945. That marriage ended in divorce. All three worked at the Hanna-Barbera studio in the early ‘60s. Somerville later spent time at Filmation and was one of many old-timers who animated the stiff Spider-Man series for Grantray-Lawrence. He retired to Weed, California in 1974 and died on February 13, 2000.

The Quintessence of Nothing

Was there a radio star more quoted than Fred Allen?

It’s hard to pin down Allen as a cynic, pessimist or a realist. Perhaps he was a bit of all three, judging by what he had to say about the entertainment industry of his day and California, a particular topic of dislike. Many of his observations have been preserved and requoted, but some are buried in old newspaper columns that we have endeavoured to pull from dusty archives and bring to you.

Buried amongst Fred’s disappointments and annoyances are some cute one-liners that he would have used on his radio show—if he had a radio show. At the time of this column, December 19, 1951, he barely had a TV show. He, Jerry Lester and Bob Hope were appearing on a rotational basis as the hosts of “Sound Off Time,” a live Sunday night variety show that petered out in early 1952. At least one TV failure awaited him before he found a modest level of comfort (and he decidely looks uncomfortable on certain broadcasts) as a panelist on “What’s My Line.”

Fred Allen Raps Favorite Targets
BY BOB THOMAS 
HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 19.— (AP)—Sour-faced comedian Fred Allen, here for a movie stint, paused long enough to level a blast at his favorite target—vice presidents. Allen has long been a critic of the executive mind, particularly in the air networks and advertising agencies. He blames such bigwigs for television’s failings, including his own.
“My shows have been pretty bad,” he admitted openly, “except the last one. The reason is that until now I had been doing what everybody else said I was supposed to do. But on the last one, I disregarded their advice and did the kind of show I wanted. The sponsor was dropping the series anyway, so what, did I have to lose?
Many Screwy Notions.
“These executives have a lot of screwy, notions about TV. They say everything has to have movement. Even if you’re standing still and doing a monologue, there has to be two guys running around behind you.
“After all, entertainment is entertainment, whether you’re running a race or standing still. But you can't convince executives of that. I’ve always thought that the meeting of executive minds produced the quintessence of nothing.”
The Boston comic has had many a run-in with executives. It started back with his first air show. The wife of one of the sponsors liked organ music.
“We were trying to put on a snappy show,” recalled Allen, “but we had to stop in the middle of it to switch to the New York Paramount for two minutes of organ music.”
Influence Rapped.
He believes that the advertiser’s influence in TV produced a bad effect, “just as it did in radio.”
“The TV performer has the same importance as the label on a can,” he argued. “The show itself is not important; it’s whether the show can sell the product. “I think it’s bad in any medium when the entertainment quality is not the important thing. A discriminating audience has certainly helped the movie business. Pictures had to get better, because people found out they could eat popcorn right out in the open; they didn’t have to go in darkened theaters to do it.”
Allen is here to play a TV performer in a sequence of “We’re Not Married.” I asked him if he planned any more pictures.
“No,” he replied. “I was never any good in pictures, and I never really had pictures written for me. I did my first one because they couldn’t get Ned Sparks. I did another because they liked the first one. Then, I did one with Jack Benny because we were supposed to be fighting on the radio.
“Besides, I’m tied down to an exclusive deal with NBC. They won’t let me work for any other network. Even when I’m not working, I’m not working for NBC.”
I remarked that he was looking amazingly well for Allen. Even the bags under his eyes were small valises.
“I’ve been on a diet for two years because of my high blood pressure,” he explained. “I can’t eat anything with salt. In fact, I can’t even return to New York by way of Salt Lake City when I go back; that's how strict it is.
“I had to give up drinking and smoking, too. At my age (57), I’m not allowed any pleasures. Why do I work? Just for the convenience of the treasury department.”

Happy Nude Year from Elmer Fudd

Bugs Bunny pulls the phoney New Year’s bit on Elmer Fudd in “The Wabbit Who Came to Supper” (1942) in a funny scene animated by Dick Bickenbach. Here he is about to get away when Elmer realises he’s been had.



The oddest thing in the cartoon isn’t the gag. It’s Elmer’s house. He has a women’s powder room, a pink bottle of “Sissy Stuff Petunia” in the bathroom and female nude portraits on the wall. Here are a couple.





And, for some reason, he has kind of a topographical map on another wall.



The cartoon was directed by Friz Freleng and anyone familiar with his unit knows that Paul Julian spent a number of years as his background painter. But Graham Webb’s Animated Film Encyclopedia says the backgrounds were done by Lenard Kester from layouts by Owen Fitzgerald. Julian left Jones’ unit in February 1941 but apparently didn’t join the Freleng unit right away. In 1942, he was creating murals for public buildings under a WPA programme.

Kester was born in New York City on May 10, 1917, grew up near the East River, studied at Cooper Union, then got a job at the Fleischer Studio in New York and went with it to Miami. In 1939, he took a vacation to Los Angeles and decided to stay. The Film Daily Year Book of 1941 lists him as an art director at Schlesinger’s (along with Johnny Johnsen and John McGrew). He then worked for Walt Disney, but I have no information about when he changed studios. So it could very well be Kester’s work on this cartoon.