Let's Use This Radio Catchphrase Again

Tex Avery made some brilliant cartoons. And he made some real disappointments, too.

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Stretched Spies

There are some fun visuals you can see in the Chuck Jones-directed Snafu short Spies (1943), but here’s one where you have to freeze the frames.

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Lisa Loring

There was a time when “dark and edgy” on television meant The Addams Family.

Cast member Lisa Loring has died. Read more here.

A Visit With Jack Benny at Radio City

Anyone fortunate enough to get tickets to see the Jack Benny radio show on stage got a bonus. They got to see the audience warm-up by the performers, including Jack.

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There's More Than Disney Out There

Leon Schlesinger had a number of different ventures before he became owner of a cartoon studio in 1933. He had been a theatre manager, so he knew the value of publicity.

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Tom Take

The radio warns of an explosive-filled white mouse that could blow up the whole city. Tom listens as a newscaster cautions: “The slightest jar will explode this white mouse.”

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Ub's Alien Woman

Grim Natwick was the man who developed Betty Boop for the Fleischer studio, and when he moved across the country to Ub Iwerks’ studio in Beverly Hills, Willie Whopper had a part-time girl-friend named Mary who rather suspiciously resembled Betty.

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A Visit by Ray (No Bob)

Some fans of Bob and Ray like to engage in an exercise where they pick their favourite version of the twosome’s radio show.

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Now, An Optical Illusion

The gags from Tex Avery and credited storyman Dave Monahan in Believe It Or Else run the gamut from surreal to obvious.

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Who Needs Spinachk?

“If it’s good enough for that sailor man,” declared an explorer in a Frank Tashlin cartoon at Warners, “it’s good enough for me.” That’s the attitude taken in the first UPA cartoon for Columbia, Robin Hoodlum (released Dec. 23, 1948).

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Larry Adler on Jack Benny

Jack Benny had his radio gang—Mary, Phil, Dennis, Rochester—but he had another gang, too.

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The Teenager Who Would Be Disney

In 1960, he had a cartoon studio on Cahuenga Boulevard and invented a caveman named Fred.

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High Hopes For T.C.

Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera had high hopes for Top Cat.

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Silhouettes and Auto Workers

Art styles were changing in animated cartoons in the late ‘40s, and there are some good examples in the John Sutherland Productions industrial short Why Play Leap Frog (copyright March 1, 1949).

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The Old Pepper Gag

Felix the Cat probably wasn’t the first, but he was among the silent cartoon characters to drag out the pepper/sneeze gag that got good mileage in cartoons for decades into the sound era (ie. starting in 1928).

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The Irritating Jack Carson

Jack Benny evolved a “gang” type comedy and a character in the early 1930s that others were stealing more than a decade later.

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It's Not Chicken Salad

No plot, but there’s lots of dancing and musical synchronisation in the barnyard in Musical Farmer, a 1932 Mickey Mouse cartoon.



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Oops! Not Done Yet

The good news was Leon Schlesinger had finally rid movie screens of Buddy in 1935. The bad news was he was replaced by Beans.

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Miltie and Donzie on Jack

Jack Benny’s comic abilities were lauded by everyone and so were his kindness and charity. That includes praise from some people in show business who weren’t universally praised.

Read two interviews here.

Life of Lantz

Walter Lantz always strikes me as a decent enough man, even though his cartoons left a lot to be desired as time went on.

Read about him here.

Four-in-One Mouth Time From Van Beuren

What would a Van Beuren cartoon be without mouths joining together in song?

See it here.

If the Sheepherder Counts Sheep, Then ...

It is nighttime in one of Johnny Johnsen’s background paintings for Drag-a-long Droopy (1954).

See more frames here.

Monkee See on TV

Their theme song picked up on discontent about the status quo by young people.

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Today's Inside Joke

A shot of a fake newspaper with some real names opens the pre-Bugs Bunny cartoon Hare-Um Scare-Um (1939).

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A Frog in the Throat

Wonderful weirdness abounds in the Krazy Kat cartoon Alaskan Nights, a 1930 production of the Charles Mintz studio.

See a few frames here.

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: What's Happening To Television

You hear it all the time. Television was so much better in the old days.

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Jack on Comedy and Chimpanzees

What does Harry Truman have in common with a couple of simians?

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Tex Avery's Clementine

You have to admit some of Tex Avery’s ideas at MGM were the same as the ones the other unit at the studio put in its TV cartoons when Metro shut down production.

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Pieces of Spike

Daredevil Droopy is a compilation of gags that you can probably figure out how they’re going to end, at least if you’ve seen enough Tex Avery cartoons.

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Mouse Musicale

There’s a cartoon where a mouse heckles a piano player. Tom and Jerry, you say? Bugs Bunny, you say? No.

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That Show Seems Awfully Familiar

Even as a pre-teen kid, I noticed after watching Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, a bunch of Laugh-In imitations popped up on TV.

Little did I know ... Read more here.

How Dry He Is

Andy Panda tries catching a woodpecker by putting salt on his tail in Knock Knock (1940) but is thwarted by the crafty-but-insane bird several times until the end of the cartoon.

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Today's Inside Gag

Inside gags found their way into Friz Freleng shorts from the mid-‘40s to the mid-‘50s when Paul Julian was responsible for background art. But...

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Behind The Feud

“Fred Allen Forecasts 1937” reads a yellowed newspaper clipping of undermined origin. One of Fred’s prognostications simply states “Jack Benny will win the World-Telegram Radio Editors’ Poll.”

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