All Roads Lead to Jack Benny

Let’s peer into the Tralfaz question box. There is a Jack Benny connection here, but we have to set things up.

More in this post.

Sugar Bear

There are people you hear in cartoons all over the place. Then there are others who seem to show up in one animated series and that’s it.

Gerry Matthews was one of them.

Read more here.

Between a Rock and a Rock

The sheepherder wolf in Drag-a-long Droopy tries over and over to hide behind rocks from Droopy’s sure-shot guns (Droopy’s reading comic books while the guns do all the work)—but to no avail.

See more here

J.L. Will Hear of This

Daffy Duck didn’t talk to an unseen artist for the first time in Duck Amuck, released in 1953.

See more here.

Bud Hiestand

It’s safe to say when you think of people who voiced animated cartoons in the Golden Age, Bud Hiestand’s name doesn’t come to mind. There’s a reason.

Read more in this post.

Not The Illusion of Life

The Karnival Kid (1929) has a great opening scene where crazy, funny stuff keeps happening.

See more here.

Rabbit Take

The snow in the The First Snow (1947) lasts only 24 seconds.

More from this Terrytoon in this post. Splash!

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre—The Wink and Alex of Tomorrow

What’s 1999 going to be like?

Find out from Wink Martindale and Alexander Scourby in 1967 here.

Flintstones Weekend Comics, September 1964

Back for a limited time only: Flintstones newspaper comics. See them here.

St. Joseph, Jack Benny and Cockatoos

The Benny-Allen feud wasn’t just for radio and motion pictures. The venue shifted to newspapers on occasion.

Read Part Two of Jack Benny and St. Joe in this post.

A Panther Lives in Burbank

The most stylish theatrical cartoon series of the 1960s?

Read what Friz Freleng and David DePatie had to say here.

I'll Take Mine Neat

“Symbolic of this cold alpine region,” says narrator Bob Bruce, “is the brave and faithful St. Bernard dog, ever on the alert in search for lost travellers.”

See the gag from Tex Avery's Crazy Cruise here.

I Ain't Got No Body

The Van Beuren cartoon studio had a skeleton fetish.

Read about one cartoon here.

Flip

America and Johnny Carson may have discovered Flip Wilson when he appeared on the Tonight Show in 1965 but, as is usually the case, he had been around before then.

Read more here

Multiple Snafus

Ben Washam treats us to more stretch in-betweens in No Buddy Atoll, a 1945 Snafu cartoon for the Army/Navy Screen Magazine.

See more in this post.

What's on the Tangled TV Set Today?

Tangled Television (Columbia/Screen Gems, 1940) isn’t really about television. About half the cartoon is about tuning in to Africa and Italy instead of a TV show.

See more here.

They DID Love Him

It started with Rochester singing “Blues in the Night.” From that, Jack Benny’s writers blew it up into a running gag.

Read more about Benny and “St. Joe” here.

The Search For Norman Spencer

Trying to dig up information about animated cartoons decades after the fact is like solving a jigsaw puzzle. The pieces have to fit.

Read more here

He's Still a Top Cat

It’s tough to say how much the older Hanna-Barbera cartoons are in the public consciousness these days, but Top Cat is getting some ink.

Get links to some recent newspaper clippings here.

Love Woody Woodpecker

Ed Love has some strong poses throughout Drooler’s Delight (1949), the last cartoon he made for Walter Lantz, and the last before the studio closed for well over a year.

See more in this post.

No Phone-y Ending

A silhouette ends Hold the Wire, a 1936 Fleischer cartoon.

See more in this post.

Mamie

In the 1950s, there seems to have been a pecking order when it came to blonde starlets.

Read what Mamie Van Doren had to say in 1963 in this post.

Not a Dog and Tree Gag

Screwy Squirrel pulls off the old “move-the-hole” gag in his debut cartoon, Screwball Squirrel (1944).

Read more here.

An Unmerrie Melodie

Leon Schlesinger’s cartoon studio was a mess not long after it opened in 1933.

Read about one disjointed cartoon HERE.

Jack Benny's Temporary, Embarrassed Writer

Many a theatre and concert hall were saved in North America because of fund-raisers featuring that not-quite violin virtuoso, Jack Benny. One in Vancouver brought back memories.

Read more here

Selling Corn Toasties, the Cartoon Way

A cartoon commercial on TV in 1947. (Okay, so it's not animated. But it is 1947, after all).

See “balops” (frames) in this post

Le Hound et Le Bear Yogi

Thanks to Internet TV host Stu Shostak's latest addition to his collection, we can see frames from a Huckleberry Hound Show mini-cartoon not on DVD.

More at the Yowp site.

Stork Eyes

“Have you ever wondered,” as Andy Rooney might have said, “what you can see in cartoons if you watch them watch them frame by frame?”

See more HERE

Swirling Simple Simon

The inking department at the Ub Iwerks studio got a chance to use their brushes to create swirling effects on the Comicolor short Simple Simon (1935).

Read the post here

He Doesn't Speak Arabic

Hans Conried was articulate, sophisticated and, like other actors who catch the fancy of the public, very employed at one time.

Read More Here

Crashing Kitten

Will the dog rescue the kitten in Bad Luck Blackie?

Read the post here.

Barney, It's a Cliff

The first go-around of Barney Bear cartoons didn’t normally feature eye takes, but there’s one in The Unwelcome Guest.

Read the post here