Today's post shall be devoted to films which debuted on April 17, which in godawful 2025 has been one awful day. Shall start with a U. S. Department of Agriculture short subject distributed by the U.S. Forest Service, starring Laurel and Hardy, with narration by MGM's Pete Smith.
Headliners from Famous Studios this writer actually likes: the wiseguy duo of Tommy Tortoise & Moe Hare.
Closing: the April 17, 1937 release Porky's Duck Hunt, a Termite Terrace piece-de-resistance directed by Tex Avery, featuring the first appearance of Daffy Duck and Bob Clampett's uninhibited animation.
Since comedy actors and standup comedians who also did voice work on animated cartoons remains a frequent topic here, it's surprising that we hadn't spotlighted Don Adams (April 13, 1923 – September 25, 2005), well known as Secret Agent 86 from Get Smart, in over 1380 posts. Here's Don on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson.
Alas, the blog forgot the Agent 86 centenary last year but posts on Don Adams' 101st today to both rectify that error and say missed it by that much.
Don Adams began his career as a standup comic, first seen nationally on The Steve Allen Show in the 1950's.
Comedy and 20th century pop culture historian Kliph Nesteroff elaborates at length in his 2014 article Don Adams, Joey Bishop and the Steve Allen Scandal: Television Comedy in the Early 60s. While we love Don Adams, it appears he was to some degree the Carlos Mencia of his day, albeit infinitely funnier, and was also why Bob Newhart became a standup comic and decided to be the only performer of his own material. That said, Don's appearance here as Mr. Surfboard is hilarious.
My sexagenarian and septuagenarian contemporaries first became familiar with the distinctive voice of Don Adams via the 1963-1966 Saturday morning cartoon Tennessee Tuxedo & His Tales.
Still enjoy the Total Television series and its excellent voice work by Adams, Bradley Bolke, Larry Storch, narrator Kenny Delmar and others.
The storylines were IMHO the best of Total TV shows (King_Leonardo and His Short Subjects, Underdog, Klondike Kat) and the Phineas J. Whoopee segments, featuring the Frank Morgan-esque voice characterization by Larry Storch, were always entertaining and informative.
And that, dear readers, brings us to Get Smart and the indisputable fact that instead of doing his homework, the guy who writes this blog watched the series' first episode on TV on September 18, 1965 and ended up ROFL.
As Don's frequent writing partner was standup comedian Bill Dana, the origins of the Maxwell Smart character can be seen in The Bill Dana Show, which also co-starred Jonathan Harris (later the sniveling and pathetic Dr. Zachary Smith in the Irwin Allen TV series Lost In Space).
As the intrepid (and much smarter than Max) Agent 99, Get Smart co-star, actress Barbara Feldon, brought wit, understatement and style to the series. Could another actress pull off the role of Agent 99 as gracefully? Probably not.
There were five seasons of Get Smart and numerous ties to 1960's pop culture beyond 007 and Inspector Jacques Clouseau. While episode one was penned by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry - and both would contribute to season one episodes - a good number of talented scribes penned very funny scripts through the entire run of the series.
Stan Burns and Mike Marmer, subsequently writers for Carol Burnett Show, made their mark on the series. Allan Burns and Chris Hayward, terrific Jay Ward Productions writers, penned many Season 4 episodes, often collaborating with Arne Sultan and producer Leonard Stern. Gerald Gardner and Dee Caruso, the writing team from The Monkees, penned many Get Smart episodes. Also among the writers: The Tonight Show's ultra-zany Pat McCormick.
After a stretch returning to stand-up comedy, Adams re-emerged with the Don Adams Screen Test show in the mid-1970's.
He also appeared as Agent 86 in TV ads.
There would be a big screen revival of Get Smart in 1980, the feature film The Nude Bomb, penned by Mel Brooks, Buck Henry and Arne Sultan. While this Agent 86 adventure has its moments and an appearance by 1940's movie queen Rhonda Fleming, the absence of Barbara Feldon as Agent 99 is much felt. The fact it doesn't include scenes featuring numerous individuals much better looking than Maxwell Smart victimized with naked aggression by The Nude Bomb does not help.
The next comeback for Don Adams would be a return to animation - and portraying a much more formidable sort than Agent 86 - in the 1980's TV series Inspector Gadget.
The Don Adams version of Agent 86 would return in 1989 for the TV movie Get Smart Again! (prior to subsequent 21st century revivals starring Steve Carell), this one a lot more successful than The Nude Bomb, in large part due to the presence of Barbara Feldon. Enjoy!
Alas, instead of preparing for this weekend's National Raisin and Spice Bar Day and National Caramel Day, the gang here has been watching the stock market party like it's 1929, crash like a motor sports catastrophe and plummet like a cheating knuckleballer's 78 mph pitch laden with foreign substances. Even Bert Lahr is losing it!
All we can think of (as we bite what's left of our nails) is the movies and cartoons of the Great Depression, a time no sane person wants to return to. Among the best: Frank Capra's 1932 film American Madness, starring Walter Huston.
One of the most memorable of the short subjects that tackled the Depression was Charley Chase in the Hal Roach comedy THE PANIC IS ON (1931).
A slew of animated cartoons from the early sound era directly address the Depression. Ub Iwerks' Flip The Frog series frequently places our cartoon heroes on the streets and in bread lines.
Even the always plucky Oswald The Lucky Rabbit got hit by hard times.
The Charles Mintz Studio practically specialized in topical cartoons in the early 1930's.
THE FLOP HOUSE is as much an excuse to go-for-broke in the wacky sight gags department as social commentary. Were destitute cartoon animals, no doubt wiped out by the stock market crash, living in flop houses? Yes. Did the ever-enterprising Scrappy run a flop house? Yes.
Eventually, the extended hard times led to a sub-genre of cartoons, known as "let's beat that darn Depression with good will, hard work and a happy song." Hugh Harman & Rudy Ising's jaunty musical from the MGM Happy Harmony series, Hey-Hey Fever (1935), brings the Great Depression and its devastation to Mother Goose Land!
The epitome of this sub-genre remains the Ben Harrison & Manny Gould crew's Color Rhapsody LET'S GO (1937). Even insects got clobbered by the 1930's!
The baseball season is on, so let's celebrate with some classic cartoons, starting with two rarities from Japan.
From the "Fox" series of shorts directed by Satoshi Morino, with animation by Osamu Satomi, KITSUNE NO HOMERUN-O.
Continuing this compendium and traveling from Japan to New York City, here's a Paramount cartoon featuring comedian/monologist Eddie "The Old Philosopher" Lawrence, ABNER THE BASEBALL (1961). Have spotlighted it here on Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog two consecutive years!
Thanks a million, "The Old Philosopher" and Irv Spector, as well all involved in creating and researching the Cartoon Research post including Abner The Baseball (Jerry Beck, assisted by Ken Layton, Mike Kazaleh and Paul Spector).
Two decades earlier, the animators at Paramount, working for Max & Dave Fleischer, made a baseball opus as part of the 1940 Stone Age Cartoon series.
An all-time favorite from Warner Brothers Animation is Gone Batty, directed by Robert McKimson.
Gone Batty was also included as the opener of an excellent episode of Cartoon Network's TOONHEADS (#203), which also includes Batty Baseball (1944 Tex Avery MGM) and Baseball Bugs (1946), the Friz Freleng crew's piece de resistance.
In closing, from Disney's 1946 compilation feature Make Mine Music, Casey At The Bat.
From the history of animation, one of the luminaries who intrigues the dyed-in-the-wool cartoonologists at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog most of all is gagman, story sketch artist, writer, animator, sometimes director, voice actor, comic books artist and recipient of an Annie Award for Lifetime Achievement in animation Cal Howard (March 24, 1911 – September 10, 1993).
Did anyone else in the history of animation work on a writing team with Allan My Son The Folksinger Sherman and ridiculously prolific TV comedy writer Stan Burns (who, with Mike Marmer, wrote many Get Smart episodes and countless sketches for The Carol Burnett Show)? Did anyone else work on idiosyncratic mid-1940's animated cartoons AND wacky mid-1960's sitcoms (Camp Runamuck) for Screen Gems? Well, none that I can think of, offhand.
From reading about Cal, derive an emphatic impression that he was a fun guy to be around and must have been a blast to interview. IIRC, Mike Barrier and Milt Gray got the opportunity to do just that when researching the comprehensive and epic HOLLYWOOD CARTOONS book.
Arguably best known today for his work as a storyman and co-director of Merrie Melodies at Leon Schlesinger's Studio, Cal was a buddy of Tex Avery's at the Walter Lantz Studio who followed him to Termite Terrace.
Prof. Klein's article adds: "And the Universal animator who most shared Tex’s love of provocation was Cal Howard, who—a bit shorter in stature and more slight-of-frame—might have seemed like an Avery sidekick. These two men were a prankster duo who prowled for victims, offering daily hijinks in the midst of the work at Universal. They were both gag-initiators. They punked their colleagues and they were in equal measure considered among the best gag contributors to the Oswald cartoons.”
Cal collaborated off-hours with Tex (while working days at the Walter Lantz Studio) on the storyboard for GOLD DIGGERS OF ’49, the first Schlesinger Studio cartoon that Avery directed - and a Looney tune on which Tex, Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett receive screen credit.
How many Tex Avery WB cartoons did Cal write gags and sketch storyboards for?
It's a good question, since, IIRC, Tex drew his own boards and hired such storymen as Cal, Rich Hogan, Heck Allen and others as sounding boards to talk sight gags with. Whatever the case is, Cal spent a significant chunk of his career working with Tex at both Lantz and Schlesinger's.
Cal got screen credit for writing Tex Avery's Merrie Melodies cartoons "Little Red Walking Hood" and "The Sneezing Weasel."
A major claim to fame for Cal Howard at Warner Brothers would be the three cartoons he co-directed in 1938 with prolific animator Cal Dalton.
RE: A-Lad-In-Bagdad, there is something about Egghead's Joe Penner voice and goofy sensibility that gets me ROFL, only every time.
Here, from the Archive.org Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies archive (which quite literally starts with the 1929 pilot for the Looney Tunes series), is ths writer's personal favorite cartoon of these cartoons credited to Cal Howard, the oddly charming collegiate musical KATNIP KOLLEGE, featuring stellar singing by swing band leader Johnny "Scat" Davis and comedienne Mabel Todd.
After leaving Schlesinger's, there was a pit stop at Lantz (1938), followed by a stretch, along with fellow artist/voice actor Tedd Pierce, at the Fleischer Studio in Miami (1938-1942), where he was a storyman and voice actor on GULLIVER'S TRAVELS.
There at Fleischer's, he got to play his second shrill character named Gabby, as Howard was the voice of the equally unmemorable and soon abandoned Looney Tunes co-star Gabby Goat at Warner Brothers.
Then it was on to MGM (1942-1945) and Screen Gems (1945-1946). Several articles and sources, including the MGM cartoon wiki, have named Cal as one of the storymen on Tom & Jerry, a series that did not credit writers.
Would need studio drafts to determine once and for all whether Cal wrote stories and gags for the Bill Hanna & Joe Barbera crew.
And then, inevitably, there's the hated Screen Gems Studio, where Cal Howard wrote a bunch of cartoons in the Phantasies and Color Rhapsodies series and contributed voice work to many of them.
This scribe may be the only person who has ever written pieces about animation who actually likes them! IMO, it has become fashionable to trash the Columbias and make sure everyone knows how much you hate them.
The cartoons Cal wrote stories for Screen Gems include some that this writer finds both enjoyably bent and hilarious, others that don't quite work and others (Lo The Poor Buffal) that really, really don't work but at least have periodic moments that are extremely funny.
While well aware that Leonard Maltin and other historians describe the Screen Gems product as "pale carbons of WB cartoons" (and some titles indeed are, especially those attempting to emulate Friz Freleng's "cat chases bird/mouse" cartoons), for the most part, I don't agree with that assessment. The Phantasies and Color Rhapsodies from the mid-1940's are frequently downright WEIRD and completely unlike Warner Brothers cartoons, especially those directed by Robert McKimson and Friz Freleng.
This writer regards the mid-1940's Screen Gems cartoons less as copycats but more as unconventional, very odd, oddly constructed and even more oddly timed fever dreams which start on a premise of producing something vaguely in the vein of Warner Brothers and MGM cartoons. Granted, while one finds no masterpieces a la the Bob Clampett crew's THE GREAT PIGGY BANK ROBBERY or BOOK REVUE in the group and none of the Phantasies and Color Rhapsodies are in the same league as mid-1940's Avery, Jones, Tash and Friz at their best, this animation aficionado will still take the off-kilter Columbias over the substantially less odd and more sensical contemporaneous cartoons from Terrytoons and Famous Studios.
Even the Screen Gems cartoons that feature Howard and Dave Monahan's truly head-scratching stories and try crazy ideas, but clearly fall short, still make this animation buff laugh. . . and that is even after conceding that offbeat comic timing and characterization (or lack of it) are recurring problems.
Bob Clampett was there at Screen Gems ever so briefly in 1945 and found an alarming absence of esprit d' corps, but also (in a conversation a gazillion years ago with the writer of this blog) praised director Sid Marcus for his originality.
Don't know if Mike Barrier and Milt Gray asked Bob specifically about working with Cal Howard at Screen Gems.
The following Color Rhapsody cartoon bears the mark of director/gagman Sid Marcus and, like UP N' ATOM, features specific gags and extremely wacky ideas seen in Marcus' other Columbia cartoons. This is a partial remake of A HELPING PAW, a particularly aggressively bizarre Color Rhapsody cartoon involving a hallucinating drunken dog. Is it funny? Yes, definitely, provided one is not losing a battle with alcoholism/drug addiction and suffering with delirium tremens!
Such Screen Gems cartoons with stories by Cal Howard as Mother Hubba-Hubba Hubbard definitely made a strong effort to emulate the ultra-zany style of Cal's friend Tex Avery's MGM cartoons, not so much the Warners approach.
Phantasies with stories by Cal Howard include Snap Happy Traps (1946) and The Schooner The Better (1946), the last black & white cartoons produced by a Hollywood or New York cartoon studio. They are atmospheric, Gothic, unusual and, as was the house style for the pre-UPA Columbia cartoons, unapologetically bizarre.
The most disliked of all the last B&W cartoons from Screen Gems remains the Columbia Phantasy (in more ways than one) Kongo Roo, set in the outback with main characters including a pygmy and a kangaroo. It's in very, very bad taste even by 1946 standards. Generally, even the historians and 1940's animation buffs hate, loathe AND detest this cartoon, but, for this writer, there's something about the "what the hell - let's try this and see what happens - it's a freakin' cartoon for cryin' out loud, not WAR & PEACE" modus operandi that appeals to this Monty Python's Flying Circus fan.
Cal Howard was among the very few, along with Bob Clampett, to leave cartoons and go directly to working in television as far back as the 1940's. Warner Brothers Wiki elaborates: "In 1949, Howard moved from California to New York City, to work on NBC's Broadway Open House and Your Show of Shows. When Broadway Open House ended he was hired by Pat Weaver to be an associate producer and writer for the development of NBC's Today show. He left NBC early in 1952 to return to California and work with Ralph Edwards."
Is there anything we can offer in this post not seen in the afirementioned historians? Yes, thanks to film collector/curator/historian Ira Gallen of TV DAYS, a complete episode of Broadway Open House! Co-starring comic Jerry Lester and blonde bombshell comedienne Dagmar, it was THE first late-night show, years before Steve Allen, quite funny and offered a mix of early TV and vaudeville. The spiritual descendents of Broadway Open House are less the 1950's and 1960's late-night gurus Steve Allen, Jack Parr and Johnny Carson, or wannabees Joey Bishop and Jerry Lewis, than the much more freewheeling comedy sensibilities of David Letterman and Conan O' Brien, decades later.
Howard subsequently worked at NBC as a gag writer for "The Johnny Dugan Show" and then became an early associate producer and writer for the "Today Show". At the end of the 1950's, he resumed working on cartoons as a freelancer,beginning with Format Films. Thus, Cal ended up working on the last gasps of both the Warner Brothers and Lantz studios, before returning to Disney in the 1970's. Alas, the budgets and production schedules were tight on these 1960's WB (produced by Bill Hendricks) and last Woody Woodpecker cartoons, but not nearly as tight as a certain unsold pilot for a TV show among numerous films in the Cal Howard Archive. . .
And with that psychotronic moment from the unsold pilot The Adventures Of Superpup, we close and tip our fedora once worn by Tex Avery to Cal Howard and realize we barely scratched the surface of his five decade career in show business. Again, mucho thanks for your stellar research Devon, Tom and Don!
St. Patrick's Day 2025 is right around the corner, on Monday. We know many will be getting hammered as they raise toasts to Jimmy Cagney and Pat O'Brien on Sunday night.
This blog's suggestion to young hard-partyin' folks (decades younger than this old geezer teetotaller blogger is), by all means, DON'T drink green beer, especially that Green Rooster stuff from Neptun/Carlsberg!
Trust me on this, don't drink St. Patrick's Day green brew - you will live to regret it!
Pondering what's best for St. Patty's Day viewing always involves cartoons. Famous Studios made several Noveltoons starring a bunch of freakin' leprechauns. Of these cartoons, The Wee Men (1947) is tops!
Always liked Phony Baloney, Terrytoons' tall tale tellin' Irish answer to Baron Munchausen.
Of course, it is required by law that all leprechaun-laden cartoons be followed by cheesy St. Patrick's Day commercials.
The first sign that you really got blasted on St. Patrick's Day is that you want to eat Lucky Charms.
Alas, I'm compelled to admit it - I WANT a Shamrock Shake!
Animated St. Patty's Day fun invariably begins with the question, "remember that Porky Pig cartoon with the leprechauns?" I do - and here it is, followed by an excellent review of this Chuck Jones classic from Anthony's Animation Talk.
Today's topic is MGM musicals. We'll start with an all-time favorite from It's Always Fair Weather, combining the marvelous dancing of Cyd Charisse, a snappy tune, ace character actors worthy of Guys & Dolls, Nat Hiken's You'll Never Get Rich and Car 54 Where Are You and stellar direction by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly.
Do we love Cyd, one of the greatest dancers to ever appear in motion pictures, whose natal anniversary is right around the corner on March 8, our enthusiastic response is yes, yes and YES!
It's a tough call, but the favorite MGM musical of the gang here is still The Band Wagon. How can one not love Vincente Minnelli's imaginative direction, the incredibly creative set designs and costuming, all-time greats Astaire and Charisse rocking the terpsichore within a Freed unit style noir based on Mickey Spillane?
Now this brings this post to the animation part of the program? Who do we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog like almost as much as Cyd, Fred, Gene and such terpsichorial heavyweights as Vera-Ellen? Jerry the freakin' mouse, that's who! Jerry gets the nod because Droopy, Red Hot Riding Hood, The Wolf and the rowdy "Peter Arno grandmother" never appeared in an MGM musical.
In all these years and years of writing this blog (1382 posts), never posted that great clip of cartoon stars
Tom & Jerry w/ the swimmin' musical star and MGM aquababe Esther Williams. Let's rectify that oversight right now, shall we?
As part of our post last July on Bill Hanna, we extolled the virtues of the splendid live-action meets animation musical Invitation To The Dance (1956).
We dearly love the animation, cool Cartoon Modern design and Gene's dancing in the Sinbad number of this outstanding film.
In closing, shall bring your attention to a terrific piece that author Greg Ehrbar, the man on all things Hanna-Barbera, posted on Cartoon Research about Gene Kelly, Jerry Mouse and the Columbia recordings based on Anchors Aweigh.
Mr. Ehrbar does amazing work as usual - and, like the great MGM musicals, animation, art, music and classic movies in general, we need all of the above more than ever in unrelentingly off-the-rails 2025.
