Leo De Lyon

About the only thing most people know about Leo De Lyon is he was on Top Cat.

Read more here.

Triggered by a Butt

Snafu can’t get his fat butt past the censor’s infra-red ray in the 1944 cartoon Censored.

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Howard Hesseman

Anyone who worked in the radio business in the 1970s will likely tell you they knew some of the characters on WKRP in Cincinnati.

They’ll likely feel a kinship with Dr. Johnny Fever, the itinerant rock jock portrayed by Howard Hesseman, who has died at the age of 81.

Read more here.

Jack Benny, Sailor and Lyricist

Laughter can fight an enemy.

Jack Benny could tell you that.

Read more here.

Tex Avery Won't Flee Fleas

Mike Lah, I believe it was, said that Tex Avery started doubting himself, wondering if the cartoons he was making at MGM were funny.

He had reason to. Read more here.

Loosey Goosey

In Porky’s Preview (1941), Porky makes his own child-like title cards for his movie. In Walter Lantz’s Mother Goose on the Loose (1942), the idea is extended to the opening titles.

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Quiet!!!

Papa Bear spends all winter trying to hibernate but ends up battling noise instead in What’s Brewin’, Bruin?

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Parading Jo Anne Worley

Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In fans will know Jo Anne Worley but they may not know Herminio Traviesas. Yet he had an ever greater effect on the show than Worley or any of the other cast members.

Read more here.

Peter Robbins

It’s been something like 50 years since Peter Robbins faced a TV camera for purposes of regular employment. After that, he hosted a radio talk show in Palm Springs, sold Peanuts merchandise at a shopping centre kiosk, managed an apartment building, sold real estate, dealt with addiction and mental health difficulties, and spent time in jail.

Now, the original voice of Charlie Brown has taken his own life.

Read a couple of old interviews here.

Screwy Water Fountain

Screwy Squirrel heckles Big Heel-Watha by substituting a sign at the Old Faithless geyser with a drinking fountain.

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It's Time

The construction foreman wonders if his pocket watch is working in the 1928 Oswald silent film Sky Scrappers. He bangs it against some humanised contraption pulling a rope.

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What? Me Worry?

Stories abounded in print at the time about how Jack used to worry all the time in the days of network radio. Evidently TV changed that.

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A Balanced Meal of Cartoons

In 1926, he was a student artist and journalist at Redlands High School, winning fifth prize for his Orange Show poster (it showed orange trees and a farmer holding a box of golden oranges against a background of mountains).

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6,504,385,632

Prisoner Spike decides to dig himself out of prison in Cellbound (1955), a Tex Avery cartoon finished up by Mike Lah.

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Do They Love the Cop on the Beat?

I’m still not quite sure what to make of the opening of Magic Mummy, a 1933 Van Beuren short.

See and hear more here.

I Don’t Want to Be Stereotyped

Let’s face it. If a TV audience likes a character, they want to see the actor playing that character do it until they get tired of it—if they ever do. Some actors have a problem with this, even though they know it’s pretty much inevitable.

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Cartoon Rule 219: Hypodermic Needles Stab You

Yes, folks, whenever a cartoon character has a hypodermic needle, you know what’s going to happen.

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Changing the Push

“Why don’t we see anything about Hippety Hopper on your blog?” asked absolutely no one.

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De-Corning America

Fred Allen certainly thought comedy was retrograding and griped about it in the early ‘50s. But Jack Benny didn’t think so. He felt just the opposite. He may have been right.

Read more here.

Flintstone Daily Strips, October 1961, Part 2

Some standard situations make their appearance in the Flintstones daily comic strip in the final half of October 1961, which was the first month of publication.

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Party With Jay Ward

Who’s the greatest cartoon producer?

When it comes to promoting cartoons, the answer has to be Jay Ward.

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Locking up Bimbo

I’ve always liked how characters come out of nowhere in Fleischer Talkartoons. They may be inanimate objects that grow hands and a face, or something that just comes out of nowhere and gets into the scene.

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Exclamation Mark

The cat in Ventriloquist Cat really hates dogs. He says so.

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Slappy

There was a great to-do in the early 1960s about black comedians working in front of white audiences.

Read more here.

Can I Borrow a Cup of Gags?

Pigs in a Polka is expertly timed by director Friz Freleng to Brahms’ music, including the obligatory scene where the Big Bad Wolf huffs and huffs but can’t blow down the pigs’ brick house.

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Shock the Cat

You get electricity zapped through you every time you pick up the end of a power cord, right? You do if you’re in a Columbia cartoon.

See more here.

Iris the Bride

“Whaddya want, Mac?” screeched the drug store waitress at Jack Benny.

She was new amongst Jack’s secondary cast in the early ‘50s, but Iris Adrian had been around a lot longer than that.

Read more here.

Life at the Charles Mintz Studio

An office boy once claimed he was responsible for the Charlie Mintz cartoons making it onto the screen.

Read more here.

Is the Next Gag Going to Be Better?

Tex Avery pretty much invented the spot-gag cartoon. It’s, therefore, really sad to see the master and inventor of the format fall so far by coming up with The Farm of Tomorrow.

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Cloud Choreography

It’s raining in the Flip the Frog cartoon The Cuckoo Murder Mystery (1930). Rain clouds are dancing in the sky.

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Archie Was a Carpenter

There are two transitions in show business that can prove difficult, and Robert Francis Hastings made both of them successfully.

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Send Him Down!

Colour, design and effects animation make Heavenly Puss a treat, even if you’re not a fan of Tom and Jerry.

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Porky's Bear Facts Background

A left-to-right pan shows Porky’s tidy farm compared to the one across the road in Porky’s Bear Facts, a 1941 cartoon by the Friz Freleng unit for Warner Bros.

See the full background and hear a music bonus by clicking here.

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: The Photo That Won In a Walk

Vivian Vance and Bill Frawley just couldn’t shake being Ethel and Fred.

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Iris the Showgirl

It’s quite a change from the Ziegfeld Follies to playing opposite That Darn Cat. But so went the career of Iris Adrian.

Read more here.

Flintstones Daily Strips, October 1961

Over the years, the Yowp blog has posted the Sunday (Saturday in Canada) colour comics starring Yogi Bear and The Flintstones syndicated by McNaught. There were also daily cartoons in the papers as well, a single panel for Yogi and a strip for The Flintstones.

See comics here.

MGM Odds and Ends Part 3

The MGM cartoon studio went through some changes in the third quarter of its existence (1948-52).

Read more here.