A Fleischer Assortment

Here are sundry frame grabs from some 1932 Fleischer cartoons, randomly selected by reader Devon Baxter for your viewing pleasure.



“Boop-Oop-a-Doop.”



“Betty Boop For President,” animated by Seymour Kneitel and Doc Crandall. FDR won.



“Betty Boop’s Ups and Downs,” animated by Willard Bowsky and Ugo D’Orsi.



“Betty Boop’s Museum,” animated by Bill Henning and Reuben Timinsky (later Timmens).



“Betty Boop’s Ups and Downs.” The church is for sale, too.



“Boop-Oop-a-Doop.”



“Betty Boop, M.D,” animated by Willard Bowsky and Tom Goodson. The jippo gags are a lot of fun.



“Betty Boop’s Bizzy Bee,” animated by Seymour Kneitel and Bernie Wolf.

Tracks Aplenty

Frank Tashlin tries a gag from an overhead perspective in “Porky’s Railroad” (1937). Porky’s old-fashioned, decrepit steam engine is pulling 11 cars. When they get into a rail yard, the cars separate onto different tracks then come together again when the rail line becomes a single track again.



Tashlin apparently didn’t worry about a consistent background. These are two consecutive frames. The soundtrack isn’t cut so there was no edit of the final film; Carl Stalling keeps chugging along with “California, Here I Come.”



Bob Bentley and Joe D’Igalo are the credited animators. Volney White was in the Tashlin unit at that time, too.

Today's (1947) Radio Quiz

Sam Berman was commissioned to draw caricatures of NBC’s top stars that could be used in the network’s advertising starting in the 1947-48 season. Below, you see an edited two-page ad crowing that 19 of the top 25 radio shows (according to the Hooper Report of November 15-21, 1947) were on NBC.

Can you name the stars of the 19 shows based on Berman’s drawings?



Remarkably, even though we’re talking about an aural medium, most of the stars should be easily recognisable to fans.

I’ll give you number 8 because I suspect the only people who will know are either those really familiar with Berman’s drawings or have memorised 67-year-old radio ratings. It’s Jay Jostyn in his role as “Mr. District Attorney.” Number 14 is a little confusing because he really should have dark hair. Number 9 is pretty clever.

Try a Tex Tux

Occasionally, background artists in old-time animated cartoons would put the names of co-workers in their work; Paul Julian at Warner Bros. may have been the most famous for this. Here’s an example from Tex Avery’s MGM cartoon “Hound Hunters” which refers to Avery himself.

There’s one scene when Junior runs down the street before turning and running toward the audience. Unfortunately, the versions of the cartoon that are out there are fuzzy so you can’t really see all the names of the businesses.



This building features a hotel, Molinari and a shoe store.



Stokes Delicatessen is on the right. Bob Stokes worked at several studios in the ‘30s and ‘40s. I’d love to think “Hanna-Barbera Hardware” is on the building on the left but I can’t read it.



Here we have a cleaner on the left with “Tex Hotel” and “Tex Tux.” Polamari is on the right.



Alas, this one is unreadable.



This one isn’t readable, either.



Hopewell and Goode is next to what looks like the Cheriet Dairy Lunch (note: Dave Mackey solves this one in the comment section. Thanks, David).



And, finally, Crenshaw’s Groceteria, Inc. is the last business as Junior turns the corner.

Although he’s not credited, presumably the backgrounds are by Johnny Johnsen.

Cartoon Commercials of 1948

Here’s a cartoon you wouldn’t have seen on Saturday mornings or in syndicated packages.



That’s because it’s a little over a minute long. This is a frame in a Sponsor magazine story from March 1948 about TV commercials. With television growing, albeit there were maybe a dozen stations in the U.S. at the time, the demand for non-live commercials was growing, too.

The John Sutherland studio had signed a deal with the United Fruit Company in February 1947 for a series of 60-second cartoon spots. Said Sponsor about this particular little fully-animated film:

He [Sutherland] has been able to take the Chiquita Banana character right out of the singing commercial radio spots and bring her to life with full color, comedy, and sales effectiveness. These pictures are basically for motion picture showing but even though they're in full Ansco color they can be effectively scanned for TV without loss of impact. Not that all color motion pictures make good TV fare. Some are shot without regard to how they'll show up in black and white and wash out when scanned by a television camera. However, many agency and motion picture men watch their gray scale when shooting color and the result is as good a picture in black and white as in full color.

Daily Variety reported on May 14, 1948:

FOURTEEN SHORTS which John Sutherland produced for United Fruit Co. in 35m Ansco are to be switched to Technicolor, for reduction to 16m. Ansco is reported by producer not particularly conducive to reduction from 35m to 16m, since finished product becomes fuzzy

And on May 17, 1949:

John Sutherland will adapt 22 one-minute Technicolor shorts originally made in animation for United Fruit Co., to television, in black-and-white.

If you’re familiar with the seven-to-eight minute “educational” shorts Sutherland did for Harding College that were released by MGM in the late ‘40s, you’ll notice the similarity in character design style to the Chiquita frame above.

There’s another cartoon ad frame in the same issue of Sponsor.



The studio which made the above spot for International Salt Co. isn’t mentioned but it was booked through ad agency J.M. Mathes. Cartoon Films, Ltd. had made some animated ads for International’s Sterling Salt in 1940-41; they were designed for movie theatres. Sponsor reported Mathes billed $4,050 to $6,750 (90 feet at from $45 to $75 per foot) for animated commercials. Something tells me this one wouldn’t go down well today.

The same edition of Sponsor has a story featuring a cartoon character plugging something, but not in cartoons. Bugs Bunny was used by the maker of Chuckles in a radio campaign. I would like to think Mel Blanc voiced the spots but I’ve never heard them. Oh, if those transcriptions were around today! Bugs looks great in the trade ad, similar to some poses in the Bob McKimson cartoon “Easter Yeggs.”

This post gives me a chance to once again plug Mike Kazaleh’s cartoon ad posts at Jerry Beck’s Cartoon Research web site. Those 1950s animated ads can be a lot of fun. This past weekend, Mike also linked to a UPA industrial short featuring the voice of Stan Freberg. I won’t guess at the animators on it, but Pat Matthews and Bobe Cannon were at UPA then. And there are some General Electric spots featuring Mr. Magoo; to the right you’ll notice a trade ad for the commercials.

You can see the post HERE.

Good Weekly TV is Impossible

People wanted to hear and see their favourite stars. That’s why there was no turning back to silent films when talkies came in for good. And, for the networks, there was no turning back to radio as a primary entertainment medium once television arrived for good. Besides, there was simply far more money to be made in TV than radio. And the networks were in it for the money.

Still, it must have been hard to conceive or perceive around 1950 that radio, really, was finished. After all, it had been around for a full generation. It had stars, big stars. One of them was Jack Benny, who doesn’t seem to have grasped that network radio, as everyone knew it, was ending. He was mistaken that TV was only a fad and would co-exist with the kind of radio that would remain a full-fledged, big-time, dial-twisting box of show business.

He was astute enough to realise the inevitable about TV in the days before it was possible to tele-view something in Los Angeles and New York at the same time—that he and everyone else in radio would have to go into the new medium. And he was astute enough to understand television ate up material faster than radio. But he also thought he would remain in both radio and TV. That ultimately wasn’t his choice. The home audience decided that wouldn’t happen. It abandoned network radio before the networks abandoned it themselves.

This column is from February 5, 1950.

Matter of Simple Mathematics
Benny Tells Why No TV for Him
By WAYNE OLIVER
Associated Press Staff Writer
New York—Jack Benny doesn't claim to be a mathematical wizard, but he can tell the difference between four million and 85 million—even without his glasses.
That's the current ratio between television sets and radio sets in the United States. So the CBS comedian is content to perch on radio's throne a while longer before bidding for a place in video's growing but much smaller domain.
Benny, always at or near the top of Hooper radio audience ratings and always one of the leaders, says that when television has 10,000,000 or 15,000,000 sets in use “we’ll all have to get in.”
The Waukegan wit may take a whirl at television next season—Rochester, Maxwell and all—depending on the plans of his sponsor. But he expects it to be on an occasional basis, perhaps once in three months, “to make it an event.”
When he goes into television regularly, Benny says he will hold out for an every-other-week basis, and probably will ask to be relieved of his radio program.
“It's impossible to do anything good on television on a once a week basis with our type show,” says Benny, in from Hollywood for a brief New York stay.

Benny explains that although everyone in his radio show has been with him from 11 to 18 years, there still are major changes to be made as late as Saturday rehearsals for the Sunday night broadcasts.
“It takes us a whole week to prepare the radio show,” he points out. “So how are you going to do all that, and learn lines and positions by heart, and do a good television show every week.”
Meanwhile, Benny says any very good radio program will not have too much trouble from television for some time to come “although a mediocre radio program will not be able to compete with even mediocre television.”
After the novelty of television has worn off with a viewer, Benny says, it had better have a good program on the air or he will turn back to radio. That's provided, of course, radio has a top notch show going on at the same time.

Benny stopped making radio shows in 1955. It boiled down to money. His sponsor was putting it in television. But, in a way, Benny didn’t leave radio altogether. Those local radio stations didn’t fill all their time with news, disc jockeys, contests for housewives, play-by-play sports and Sunday religious broadcasts. There was a place for the past, too. Some stations ran copies of transcriptions of old network radio shows. A whole new generation got to hear, and become fans of, Jack Benny. But not in prime time, and not on a large, nation-wide hook-up funded by big-money sponsors. Those days were gone.

Remember, Doc, Keep Smiling!

Happy Easter, Bugs! Three consecutive frames from “Easter Yeggs” (released 1948).



The only credited animators are Izzy Ellis, Dick Bickenbach and Chuck McKimson.

And here’s Elmer Fudd’s Easter home. Layout by Cornett Wood, background by Dick Thomas.