The Golden Age Of Radio Cartoons

Pondering the links between animated cartoons and the Golden Age of Radio today.

Radio was a cornerstone of numerous cartoons, especially those of the B-studios. Terrytoons' The Nutty Network stars a simian-staffed equivalent of NBC, ABC and CBS, along with the studio's Bert Lahr lion, in a spoof of Orson Welles' War Of The Worlds broadcast.




It would be an understatement to note that the cartoons of the Charles Mintz Studio frequently featured caricatures of stars from movies and radio. This was the Columbia cartoon studio's stock in trade. Included in the 1938 Color Rhapsody THE BIG BIRDCAST: Rudy Vallee, Jack Benny, Walter Winchell, Eddie Cantor, Joe Penner and Ben Bernie.



Joe Penner in particular is caricatured in numerous 1930's cartoons and would be the prototype for bumbling Merrie Melodies star Egghead.





The Fleischer Studio featured radio and movie stars in the Screen Song series.



These included such early 1930's radio regulars as Arthur Tracy a.k.a. The Street Singer.



Spiders, ghosts, ghouls and skeletons run their own radio station in the Fleischer Studio's Halloween-themed BOO BOO THEME SONG.



None of this is surprising, as the Fleischer Studio got into the broadcasting ring early, notably with the 1929 Talkartoon RADIO RIOT.



The first cartoon about radio this blogger recalls seeing on TV (with the "Wheeler & Woolsey in the soup pot" bit excised for obvious reasons) was the 1933 Merrie Melodie, I've Got To Sing A Torch Song.




Among the celebrities caricatured in the first post-Harman and Ising Merrie Melodie cartoon were radio sensation and soon-to-be Hollywood movie star Bing Crosby.

Even us boomers who know our Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Bob Hope, Burns & Allen and Bob & Ray - and have actually tried to find episodes of Joe Penner's Baker's Broadcast shows - can be periodically stumped by the radio star caricatures in animated cartoons. This writer knew who Ed Wynn was before starting kindergarten because of repeated viewings of I've Got To Sing A Torch Song!

Did not know the extent to which I've Got To Sing A Torch Song was infamous in the history of Warner Brothers animation until decades later. It was at first deemed too terrible to release and eventually remade and re-tooled extensively by Friz Freleng after Leon Schlesinger fired director Tom Palmer.

This wasn't even the first WB cartoon to feature radio as a main character. Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising produced Crosby, Columbo & Vallee, in which braves are horrified by the extreme popularity of radios and crooners with squaws on the reservation. As is the case with many entries from the first season of Merrie Melodies cartoons, it is mostly an excuse for the ever-peppy protagonists to bounce around to the jaunty Frank Marsales score.



Don't know how star of vaudeville, the Ziegfeld Follies, movies and radio Will Rogers, arguably the best known 1930's Hollywood luminary who was a Native American, regarded cartoons along these lines. An excellent caricature of Rogers was featured, following radio star Eddie Cantor and preceding Ed Wynn, in Harman and Ising's 1933 Merrie Melodie, I Like Mountain Music, the first in the "book and magazine covers come to life" genre seen in WB cartoons directed by the likes of Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Frank Tashlin and Friz Freleng.

Harman and Ising would go to this well frequently, combining it with a radio theme in the 1934 MGM Happy Harmonies cartoon Toyland Broadcast. The incredibly bad taste moment at 6:20 ended its inclusion in TV broadcasts, along with such fellow and jaw-dropping MGM Happy Harmonies as The Old Plantation (1935).

Frank Tashlin's The Woods Are Full Of Cuckoos is an especially clever Merrie Melodie cartoon featuring many radio stars. References to the very popular Community Sing, Allen's Alley (a.k.a. The Fred Allen Show and Al Pearce & His Gang shows abound.



And, as is also the case Tashlin's wonderful 1938 Merrie Melodie Have You Got Any Castles? it's difficult not to love a cartoon featuring a caricature of Alexander Woolcott.

An intrepid expert on radio and classic movies posting under the name radiobov has painstakingly gone through the entire cartoon, start to finish, annotating every movie and radio star appearance, in many cases with their star turns in other movies. This is fantastic work, and the gang here encourages the poster named radiobov to upload more.



Any look at the relationship between animation and radio brings to mind George Pal's puppetoons.



George Pal's career in animation began with a series of theatrical commercial films selling Philips radios.



George Pal's 1934 film The Ship Of The Ether is innovative - and all about selling those radios.



The Ship Of The Ether was just one of a series of elaborate mini-musicals George Pal's studio produced for Philips.



Several of the George Pal Philips films are included in Arnold Leibovit's two Puppetoon Movie Blu-ray sets.



Although Bob & Ray’s very funny and most original radio show, filled with spoofs of other radio shows, was never re-imagined as a cartoon, the droll duo starred in a series of terrific animated beer commercials as Bert & Harry Piels.





Prepared for this post by visiting Radiomuseum and listening to Jack Benny and Fred Allen master radio comedy. They played this genre as expertly as Jack's hero, Isaac Stern, worked that Stradivarius.

The only way Jack's hilarious radio show or these cartoons about radio can conceivably be topped is with the absurdist feature film, IT'S IN THE BAG (1945). Fred Allen, Jack Benny and a slew of very funny character actors star - and are incredibly funny, even by jaded and oh-so-hip 2022 standards.