Here's another one of those 1986 educational spots that the Warner Brothers cartoon people whipped up for ABC. This one features the Coyote and the Road Runner asserting your Constitutional Right to chase a bird up a mountainside and plunge into an abyss.
It's followed by the end credits for that season's Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show with, annoyingly, the theme song removed. But do note that June Foray received a voice credit, which was something that didn't happen often on WB cartoons.
Back in the eighties, Saturday morning kids' shows were full of little educational spots, some of which were offensive in how condescending they were to younger viewers. But some were actually quite entertaining. Most of the Schoolhouse Rock segments, f'rinstance, were better and more memorable than the shows they came between. I can sing "Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here" but I can't hum the theme songs from some of those shows, many of which I wrote.
ABC was the most insistent on public service spots. In 1986, they ran this one with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck for a while. Rumor has it that the spot was yanked off the air because of a few objections from folks who were opposing then-current attempts to insert some amendment or other into the Constitution. They felt that kids were being indoctrinated into the notion that the Constitution can easily be changed and should be. Here's what these people were protesting…
This one's from the TV show, Shivaree, which was one of those dance party thingies from the sixties that some of us watched just to see the dancers wiggle. The date is September 11, 1965 and you'll also be watching Ted Cassidy, who played Lurch on The Addams Family, introducing what was perhaps the least popular dance craze of the day. I have the feeling that not one human being on the planet ever actually did this dance if they weren't being paid to do it in this number on this show.
Cassidy was an interesting guy. Hanna-Barbera used him often for voices (and occasionally for on-camera parts in their productions of that nature). When I worked for Bill 'n' Joe, I used to see him around the halls all the time. It was difficult to not notice the guy. One time, I was running somewhere for some reason and he came out of a doorway and we darn near collided. It felt like I'd just barely run into the Empire State Building. I'm 6'3" and not used to being around folks who are substantially taller than I am.
He was looking for his wife who was somewhere nearby and I couldn't resist. I actually said, "Did she leave you in the lurch?" even though it didn't make a whole lot of sense and I'm sure he'd heard such remarks many times before. Still, he laughed the deepest, lowest-register chuckle I've ever heard in my life.
At the time, Mr. Cassidy had an odd gig. He was doing the roars for Godzilla for the Saturday AM cartoon series about everyone's fave gargantuan reptile. He'd come in every week or so and just roar into the microphone as the director told him, "Okay, Ted…now in this one, you just stepped on a hot dog stand…now, you're swatting away attack planes…"
That was in the first season of the show. Cassidy passed away before production started on Season #2 and Hanna-Barbera did auditions to find a "sound-alike" who could match the roar. Dozens of actors "read" (roared) for the part and they'd tentatively selected another very tall person, a friend of mine named Stanley Ralph Ross. Then it suddenly dawned on someone at H-B that they had hours on tape of Ted Cassidy roaring. Why not just use that? After all, it wasn't like the writers were writing new, innovative roars for Godzilla. So Stanley didn't get the odd gig. They used Cassidy's old recordings and paid his estate. Stanley complained that Ted Cassidy, dead, was getting more work than he was, alive.
Here's Ted Cassidy performing a dance that even I could do but won't. Thanks to Ken Plume for telling me about this clip…
Here we have a pleasant little commercial for the Kellogg's cereals, showing us that the characters on their boxes get up every morning and eat the cereals that they appear upon. The legendary Thurl Ravenscroft provides the voice of Tony the Tiger (as always) and that's him doing the voiceover in the middle, presumably as Tony.
I was a fan of the sixties musical group, The Turtles. Always liked them and the fact that they performed with a kind of "We can't believe we're getting paid to do this" attitude. For a year or two there, they seemed to turn up on every TV show and I was amused that they were always moving their lips and miming to pre-recorded tracks…and not even trying too hard to pretend they were singing live. In this clip, you see them wandering about with no regard to where the microphones are…and I think they even switch off a few times as to which voice each band member is assuming is his. It's like everyone but the lead singer was told, "If you feel like it, move your lips approximately in time to some voice, not necessarily yours."
This clip is from the Smothers Brothers' show on CBS in '67. It's the title song from the movie, A Guide for the Married Man, and no bouncier tune was ever recorded during that era. The Turtles had nothing to do with its composition. Leslie Bricusse wrote the intricate lyrics and John Williams did the music.
Give it a look…and then if you didn't see it when I linked to it last October, go watch this clip of the same two guys you'll see singing the main parts in the clip below. It's them, many years later, explaining the quaint legal problems that dogged the group during its brief but wondrous heyday…
As I mentioned, I'm lecturing up at U.C.L.A. on Saturday (here are the details) about Li'l Abner. I'll be talking a little about the strip, a lot about the Broadway show and a little about the 1959 movie based on the Broadway show. I won't spend much time on the Li'l Abner animated cartoons…and I bet it'll surprise a lot of people to know that there even were Li'l Abner animated cartoons. They're among the most obscure cartoon shorts ever made, to the point where a lot of well-versed cartoon scholars have never seen one.
There were five of them: Sadie Hawkins Day, Amoozin' But Confoozin', A Pee-kool-yar Sit-chee-ay-shun, Porkuliar Piggy and Kickapoo Juice…all produced by the Columbia Cartoon Studio in or around 1944. The films made by that studio are rarely shown these days even though some of them were pretty good. Then again, a lot of them weren't much better than the Li'l Abner shorts, which were low on budgets and pretty much devoid of the wit that was so prevalent in Al Capp's newspaper strip. The folks who made these cartoons seem to have thought that Mammy Yokum was just Popeye in drag. (One of the directors was even Dave Fleischer, one of the men responsible for the classic Popeye shorts.)
The five cartoons have occasionally been available on videotape and have recently been in a syndicated package of Columbia cartoons that haven't been sold to any U.S. markets. Some of the prints that are around aren't very good and some are even "traced" cartoons. If you don't know what those are, I'll explain in the next paragraph. If you do know, you can skip it.
Over the years, there have occasionally been old black-and-white cartoons about which some studio head or other exec said, often wrongly, "You know, if these were in color, we could sell them to television." Back in the days before computer "colorization," this was done by having artists trace the entire black-and-white cartoon back onto paper…and then these drawings were colored and photographed like new animation. Usually, the work went to the lowest-paid artists overseas and the results looked it.
The Abner cartoons were made in color but at one point a few decades ago, the negatives were missing and no color prints were available…so black-and-white prints were traced into color, and when these made the rounds, they further diminished the reputation of these cartoons. Small wonder that most animation buffs know little about them. (Even the voice credits on these are mysterious. Frank Graham, who was in an awful lot of cartoons of the forties, is in these but I can't identify the other players.)
Here's two-fifths of the complete run of Li'l Abner cartoons. The first of these is Sadie Hawkins Day and it was released May 4, 1944…
And this one, which is a black-and-white print of what was originally a Technicolor cartoon, is Kickapoo Juice, which was released on January 12, 1945. It was the last one in the series…and I think it's pretty easy to see why these didn't catch on with the public…
Speaking of the Reprise! shows: One of the best I've seen was their version on On the Twentieth Century, which I raved about way back in this posting in 2003. A highlight of that show is our video link for today. It's the wondrous Mimi Hines singing "Repent!" Lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, tune by Cy Coleman.
Did you ever wonder how they came up with the name for Kellogg's Raisin Bran? Yeah, me neither. But I always love to hear the voices of Daws Butler (who plays Mr. Jinks in this spot) and Don Messick (who plays Pixie). Here's a vintage cereal commercial…
Here's a bit of TV history. For many years, a man named Mike Stokey made a decent living by producing and hosting a series of programs where celebrities played the game of Charades. The one in our clip today was called Stump the Stars and it ran on CBS primetime from 1962 to 1963. Originally, it was hosted by Pat Harrington, Jr and then Stokey, who'd usually hosted in its previous incarnations, assumed command.
Most of its previous incarnations were called Pantomime Quiz or something similar. It started as a local (Los Angeles) show in 1947 where it was reportedly produced on a budget of under $500 per half hour. Subtracting Mr. Stokey's cut and union scale for the celebs, it was probably still done for about that throughout much of its existence. It was one of the shows that was rarely out of production for long. When something else got cancelled, the network would hurriedly order up episodes of Pantomime Quiz. When they needed a summer replacement for some series, the network would hurriedly order up episodes of Pantomime Quiz. It was at various times on CBS, NBC, ABC and Dumont, plus there were also a couple of syndicated versions.
Here's a little over six minutes of an episode that aired on February 25, 1963. The announcer is John Harlan.
Here's a little less than three minutes of Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks doing The Two Thousand Year Old Man. No further explanation necessary.
Speaking of Jimmy Durante — as we were here a few days ago — here he is selling Kellogg's Corn Flakes…
If this or a link to this hasn't appeared in your inbox, it will. This is the long (three and a half minute) version of a piece of amazing CGI animation that's making the rounds of a "fantastic machine." Some of its web appearances are shorter and many suggest that this is not animation; that it's a video of an actual invention cobbled together from parts of an old John Deere tractor (!) or various household items. Do not fall for this.
It was actually done and done brilliantly by a company called Animusic and that's a link to their website where they sell a DVD of such goings-on.
This is from some film or TV show of the fifties…Eddie Jackson and Jimmy Durante entertaining the heck out of a roomful of extras. It's four minutes and I'll bet it makes you smile.
Have you ever seen Avner the Eccentric? I haven't for about a quarter-century but it's good to know he's still out there, still touring with his odd brand of mime, magic and juggling. Avner Eisenberg puts on a fine show…the kind adults love but you could take a kid to it and he'd not only enjoy it but want to learn how to do all the neat things Avner does. If he comes near you, get a kid (or just be a kid) and go. Here's his current touring schedule —
— and here's four and a half minutes of Avner being eccentric. (Oh…and take a moment and read Avner's Clown Principles. They should give you some idea of what's on his mind as he's performing and more importantly, what's not on his mind.)
Last night, television achieved some new "first" in the way of continued shows. Things got started on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart…then the bit continued on The Colbert Report…and finished, more or less, on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. It was a great idea and I wish I could tell you that it was funny but…well, maybe it was just me. I don't think any of these three guys, except maybe Colbert, is that great at physical comedy or at playing angry. Perhaps you'll find it all more amusing than I did.
Here's the first part from The Daily Show…well, actually during the strike he's calling it A Daily Show with Jon Stewart…
Then comes the second part from The Colbert Report…
…followed by Late Night with Conan O'Brien. And by the way, did you notice that the "outside in the hallway" scenes for all three shows were taped outside 6B at NBC? Just one of those things we spot.