No Help From the Audience, Please

Tex Avery had “theatre audience” members interact with the action on the screen in a number of his Warner Bros. cartoons. One is Thugs With Dirty Mugs.

See more here.

The Shrewd Showman

Ups and downs greeted Jack Benny’s broadcasting career, but few could boast they were on the air regularly for 33 years.

Read more here.

Happy He's Murray

Television would have been quite different if CBS’ “A Man of the Beach” had become a hit series in 1958.

It starred people who went on to TV fame after “Beach” failed—Max Baer and Gavin MacLeod.

Read more about MacLeod here.

Better to Have an Ache in the Stomach Than in the Head

Only Max and Dave Fleischer jumped into the feature cartoon waters with Walt Disney in the 1930s.

Of course, the Fleischers’ distributor was pushing for it. So it was that an animated adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels was crafted in southern Florida by the Fleischer studio.

Here is a syndicated story from 1939 about the feature.

RIP, Canadian Spiderman

The world knows him as a dentist-wannabe elf on a stop-motion TV Christmas special, and/or Peter Parker/Spidey in the tacky-but-loved ‘60s TV cartoon version of Spiderman (“IN COLOR,” ABC assures us).

Paul Soles, reports say, has passed away at the age of 90.

Read more here.

You Can Say That, But Not That

There’s nothing like inconsistency in foul language.

Take for example the Ub Iwerks cartoon Room Runners (1932). See more here.

And If Ya Feel Like Singin'...

The cat that hated people (from the Tex Avery cartoon of the same name) enumerated why he hated people before deciding, at the end of the cartoon, they weren’t so bad after all.

Read more here.

Eva of Hooterville

Green Acres started out as an attempt to get two prime-time series to cross over so viewers would tune in both of them. It ended as a surreal tale of a rural town where the odd was normal.

It made perfect sense, then, to plop into the proceedings a Hungarian actress who was known for marriages, sisters and not much else.

Read more here.

Drybrush Sylvester

Here’s how the ink and paint department handles some dry-brush work in Kit For Cat, a 1948 cartoon from the Friz Freleng unit.

See it in this post.

Hans Conried, Taxidermist Killer

A taxidermist with murder on his mind comes into focus as Woody Woodpecker emerges from being blacked out in Woody Dines Out. Woody glances at a sign then realises what’s about to happen.

See more here.

Flintstones Weekend Comics, December 1964

Well, here it is December in Bedrock, and there’s no snow. In fact, there’s rain in one of the Sunday Flintstones comics in December 1964.

Read the comics here.

A Writer Gets in on the Feud

It was supposed to last for the first 2½ months of 1937, but nobody wanted to let it go. That included Paramount Pictures, which put the Jack Benny/Fred Allen feud on the big screen in the feature Love Thy Neighbor three years later. And to promote it, James F. Scheer wrote this feature story in the December 1940 edition of Hollywood magazine.

Read more here.

Terry Lind

When the 1940s rolled around and credits loosened up on theatrical cartoons, named appeared briefly, and then vanished.

One is Terry Lind. See more in this post.

He's Too Bizet to See the Conductor

A trombonist isn’t too careful where he’s playing in a sketchy rendition of Bizet’s “Carmen” in the 1929 Mickey Mouse short The Opry House.

See cycle animation here.

Kill the Umpire? Nah, Kill the Other Guy

There’s more than just a baseball game being played by the stick figures in Tex Avery’s Batty Baseball (released April 22, 1944).

See more here.

The Wife, Mother and Ruby Keeler of 1961

Rose Marie had been a star on stage and radio back in the late ‘20s. Morey Amsterdam had been a variety show pioneer in early network television in the late ‘40s. Dick Van Dyke found success in a top Broadway musical in the earliest ‘60s.

And then there was Mary Tyler Moore.

Read more here.

Hold the Goat

In Hold Anything, the third cartoon released by Warner Bros., a goat eats a steam whistle, become bloated with steam and floats up to Bosko, who is in an office playing a musical typewriter.

See more here.

A Dog Doesn't Land on its Feet

The last Columbia short is about violence. A dog beats up a cat during the whole picture just for the sake it of it. Apparently, that’s the joke.

However, there is a break. See more here.

Jack, Is That Really You?

People on radio don’t look like you think. At least, that seems to be the general perception.

Read more here.

Friz vs Tex: A Study in Taxis

Streamlined Greta Green (1937) and One Cab’s Family (1952) aren’t the same cartoon but they share some of the same elements.

Read more here.

All Fowled Up Background

Dick Thomas at work. See more in this post

Bottled Stars

The Van Beuren studio loved the idea of a pencil that draws things that become alive so much, they used it twice in 1932.

See more here.

McLean's Failures

After a while, you had to feel sorry for McLean Stevenson.

Read more here

Small Screen Same as Big Screen

Tex Avery’s T.V. of Tomorrow may have been onto something.

See more here.

Wrap the Girl

A sign for Reynolds Wrap morphs into a little girl designed by Gene Hazelton at the start of his minute-long, 1950s TV spot. Here are the drawings; most are on twos.

See the frames here.

Benny to the Rescue

The star of a prime-time TV show didn’t know he was on the air. That’s because he was dead.

Read more here.

Beavers and a Pink Sweatshirt

How many cartoon producers had a sense of humour?

Let's hear from Jay Ward.

Doggie Daddy, Art Lover

Who would have guessed Doggie Daddy was a connoisseur of art? Well, he is in some cartoons.

Background artists whiled away the time by putting inside gags or other bits of inspiration in the paintings that appeared in cartoons. Judging by layouts for Tex Avery’s shorts at MGM, the background artists didn’t have total freedom.

See more here.

Quick Change For Betty

A screen with legs trots onto the screen, Betty changes, and the screen trots off stage in Stopping the Show (1932).

See more here.

How to Become a Skunk

Slowly, Spike transforms from a dog into a skunk as he plot to kill Droopy in Wags to Riches.

See more here.

Shapeless as a Scrambled Egg

In a day when radio announcers still intoned, Arthur Godfrey didn’t. He was the most relaxed, informal guy you could listen to.

And it was all phoney.

Read more here.

Tanks, Snafu

Private Snafu thinks the infantry sucks, so Technical Fairy First Class uses his magic wand to let him try out the other armed services.

See more from the Chuck Jones unit here.

<

Witchiepoo

65 years ago, she was a “New Face.” But in her most famous role, you never got to see her face.

Billie Hayes was packed under all kinds of make-up as the scenery-munching Witchiepoo on H.R. Pufnstuf, a live-action show nestled amongst the cartoons on Saturday mornings in the 1969-70 television season.

Read more here.

Moving a Herr

Hermann Goering realises something’s wrong when part of “Hitler”’s moustache comes off and sticks to his face. Bugs Bunny is disguised (rather poorly) as Hitler.

See more here.

No. 1 Jack

Wire services liked talking about Jack Benny during his radio and TV days, including his big concerts.

Here's a brief column by the Associated Press.

Phrases and Words and Newscasts

Education was candy coated on Saturday mornings in the early '70s.

Read more about a pair of mini-shows here.