Vallee, the King, Santa and Ozzie

John Crosby wrote four columns a week for the New York Herald Tribune and its syndicated papers and below you’ll find a week’s worth from 1949.

Read more here.

The Cartoon That Jack Built

Celebrity spoofs and references provided story and gag material for cartoons soon after sound became popular.

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Oswald Talks

Cartoondom’s most famous rabbit before Bugs made a successful transition from silent pictures to sound though, to be honest, Oswald didn’t have a distinctive voice and the best gags in his sound cartoons were visual ones, at least judging by the few early shorts I’ve seen.

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He Knows His Stuff

Jack Benny drew crowds with his movies in the 1930s but his films don’t do a lot for me.

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Joking With Jim Tyer

Here’s a wonderful tale by Howard Beckerman for Back Stage published April 13, 1984.

Read it here.

Putting the Magoo in Christmas

As much as A Charlie Brown Christmas and How the Grinch Stole Christmas are loved and seen every Yuletide season on TV (and whenever people want on DVD), they weren’t the first animated Christmas specials on the tube.

Read more here.

She Missed Glory

Leadora Congdon is credited in only one cartoon—for the streamlined designs in the 1936 short Page Miss Glory.

But she may not be a complete mystery.

Find out more here.