Category Archives: Video Links

I'm embedding this because so many of my friends — including one George W. Bush supporter (!) — have e-mailed me the link to it. And also because it's pretty funny.

This is a short one…about a minute. Our pal Floyd Norman accepts his award at the Disney Legends ceremony last October. Floyd is a very clever writer and cartoonist who worked at Disney (with occasional forays elsewhere) from 1956 on, and he's lately been getting recognition for his fine work.

If you're interested in cartoon history, keep an eye on Floyd's columns for Jim Hill Media. Here's a page listing them all.

I know it's not a majority viewpoint but I always thought the best thing on I Love Lucy was Desi Arnaz. I never loved Lucy as much as some people but Desi always seemed so interesting and funny to me. Go figure.

Our clip today should give you some idea of what he was doing for a living before that show. He had a band that performed an act very much like what's in this film, which was a short subject he made some time in the forties. (The copyright date on the end says 1949 but I think that's just when this print was made.) At one point, Desi got a number of prints of this short and when he was touring, he or his representatives would contact movie theaters in cities he was about to play and offer them a deal: They could run the short for nothing if they also showed a slide or posted a poster announcing where he'd be performing in their town the following week. A very clever Cuban.

This is a Castle Film, meaning (in this case) a copy made to be sold on 16mm film for home viewing. The opening title, which the Castle Films people obviously made, spells his name "Desi Arnez," which is a pretty common misspelling. One whole season of I Love Lucy had in its closing credits, a music credit for "Wilbur Hatch conducting the Desi Arnez Orchestra." Someone erred but Desi, as producer, decided not to pay the money to have it corrected. As far as I know, he never spelled it that way.

If you ever get a chance to read Desi's autobiography, give it a look. It was pretty good, though others who worked on I Love Lucy had some different recollections. The book was called A Book and in it, Desi made the point of insisting that he'd written it without a ghost writer. Shortly after it came out, I met a gentleman named Marvin Moss, who was Desi's agent. I told him I was impressed by how well-written the book was and that I found it hard to believe that Desi hadn't employed a ghost writer. Mr. Moss said, "I swear to you he didn't." When I registered surprise, he added, "It's true. Desi didn't know he had a ghost writer. He dictated it all into a book and when he got back the manuscript, he thought that's what he'd said."

This runs a little under sixteen minutes…

I was a little sleepy last night when I wrote the text to lead into Today's Video Link. I know the difference between Edward Everett Horton and Charlie Ruggles but for some reason, my brain registered the wrong name. That's actually Mr. Horton voicing-over the commercial I said was Mr. Ruggles. Sorry, and thanks to the three million people (give or take 2,999,995) who sent e-mails to berate me.

Also, Anthony Tollin — who knows more about old radio than any mammal who walks the planet, suggests I clarify that while Fred Foy did do the traditional Lone Ranger opening like I said, it's someone else in the body of that commercial.

Fred was not the original announcer on the TV series. He'd only started announcing the radio series in 1948 and was apparently not yet considered a series fixture. The first season TV announcer/narrator was Gerald Mohr, best remembered for starring as Philip Marlowe on radio and the Lone Wolf in movies. (He also voiced Reed Richards and Green Lantern in 1960s Saturday morning cartoons.) Anyone know who announced/narrated the Lone Ranger TV series during the season when John Hart played the title role?

I believe the first network TV season to feature Fred Foy's introduction was Clayton Moore's last, the first and only season filmed in color (after Jack Wrather had purchased the series from George W. Trendle). A decade or two ago, a black & white version was struck off the color opening of that last TV season, and inserted into all the syndicated prints. Before that time, in many of the syndication prints, you'd see my friend John Hart rearing Silver in the opening while Clay Moore rode a different Silver up and later down the hill.

And I should toss in the interesting trivia note that Fred Foy was also Dick Cavett's announcer for most of Cavett's run on ABC. Or was that Charlie Ruggles? (No, it was Foy…)

Here's a thirteen minute package of old kid-oriented TV commercials…

First up are two spots from the old Space Patrol series. That's game show legend Jack Narz doing the pitch. He's followed by a Howdy Doody spot for Tootsie Pops that I must have seen more often in my childhood than I saw my Uncle Nathan…and I saw Uncle Nathan a lot. "Buffalo" Bob Smith is in this, and he provides the voice of Howdy.

That's followed by a Lone Ranger Cheerios commercial with Clayton Moore behind the mask, and announcer Fred Foy doing the traditional Lone Ranger commercial. Then we have a Mattel spot for their Chatty Cathy dolls and yes, that's June Foray providing the dolls' voices. Then there's another spot for talking dolls of Matty Mattel, Sister Belle and Casper, with June (again) heard as all three dolls. The announcer on this one is Charlie Ruggles Edward Everett Horton, the great character actor who also narrated the Aesop & Son Fractured Fairy Tales cartoons for Jay Ward.

Next up is a commercial for the Beany Copter hats (another tie-in for the Beany & Cecil cartoons) and then an ad for Mattel's Dick Tracy toys. Is that a very young Billy Mumy? The announcer in this and a lot of the Mattel ads is Marvin Miller.

Then we have a G.I. Joe commercial and I believe the lead male vocalist is that New York based singer I've never been able to identify who was heard on all those Sandpipers recordings for Golden Records. Whoever he was, he was on the Mighty Mouse record that Andy Kaufman made so famous. This is followed by pretty boring commercials for Lionel Trains, the Remco Fat Cat toy truck and Blippo Choo-Choo. So don't worry if you don't make it to the end. But the first four or five are worthy of your attention…

Well, how about an episode of Diver Dan? Any of you remember Diver Dan from when you were a kid? I don't. If it ever ran on Los Angeles television, I managed to miss it. 104 of these were produced in 1960 and they aired in various cities in various formats — sometimes interspersed with cartoons, sometimes as a whole half hour of Diver Dan adventures.

The series was created by a cartoonist named J. Anthony (John) Ferlaine, who drew a comic strip I've never seen called Fish Tales. Ferlaine produced a couple of puppet shows starring characters from his strip and this project eventually morphed into Diver Dan. One of the writers on the show — you'll see his name in the end credits if you last that long — was Joseph Bonaduce, father of Danny Bonaduce.

The outstanding talent on Diver Dan was Allen Swift, who provided all of the puppet voices. Mr. Swift was a legend in kids' TV in and around New York, hosting Popeye cartoons for years as Captain Allen Swift on WPIX in that city. He was also the voice of many characters on Howdy Doody including, at times, the title character and he was heard in about half the cartoon shows ever recorded in Manhattan in the fifties and sixties. (He was a regular on Underdog and King Leonardo, to name two. On Underdog, he voiced Simon Bar Sinister, among other baddies.) He probably made his fortune — and set some kind of industry record — by doing voiceovers for a staggering number of radio and TV commercials…and I think he's still working.

Are you a fan of Allen Swift? Then you might be interested in a lengthy, fascinating interview with him that's been posted to YouTube. I'm not going to embed it because it's four parts, each of which runs a little over twenty minutes. But if you want to see it, here's a link to Part One and you should be able to find your way from there. I haven't watched the whole thing myself yet but I'm guessing that somewhere in there, he makes mention of his son, who is a brilliantly funny actor named Lewis J. Stadlen.

So here's an episode of Diver Dan. It runs about seven minutes. I don't find it all that much fun but I bet I'd have enjoyed it when I was eight.

Yesterday, we had a commercial for Beany & Cecil toys from Mattel. Today, we have a clip that has three of them but the third one's a repeat so you don't have to watch it.

The first one features a voiceover that is either by Frank Nelson or by someone doing a darn good impression of him. I think it's Frank and I call your attention to this article that I wrote about him. In this commercial, you get to hear a little more of the voices that Daws Butler, as mentioned, did for these toys. (As several of you noted, not only does his Beany sound like his Elroy Jetson but his Cecil sounds a lot like his Quick Draw McGraw.)

Then the second commercial is all animated and features Irv Shoemaker, who did the voices of Cecil and Dishonest John on the cartoon show. A nice little ad.

And then the third spot is the same one as yesterday and you can skip it. Here we go…

Here's another of those mysteries of life that few people will care about but I happen to be among the few…

In the fifties, when the Time for Beany puppet show debuted, its cast mainly consisted of Daws Butler and Stan Freberg, two great cartoon voice actors. Daws provided the voice of Beany. Stan was Cecil. After several years of this, they left and the show's producer-owner Bob Clampett replaced them with other actors. Beany was done by either Jim MacGeorge or Walker Edmiston (they switched off) and Cecil was done by Irv Shoemaker.

In the sixties, several years after the puppet version had gone off, Beany & Cecil came back in a new animated version that Clampett produced under a deal with Mattel Toys. For this show, MacGeorge provided the voice of Beany and Shoemaker spoke for Cecil. Butler and Freberg were in no way involved. In fact, they and Clampett weren't even on speaking terms.

As part of the show's commerce, Mattel put out dozens of Beany & Cecil playthings, many of which were in the toy company's "chatty" line. These were dolls that talked when you pulled a little ring. Today's clip is for a commercial for Beany and Cecil dolls that talked. But here's what's odd. The voices of both dolls were not recorded by MacGeorge and Shoemaker who were concurrently doing the voices on the cartoon show. The voices of both dolls were recorded by Daws Butler. You can even note how Beany sounds like his Elroy Jetson voice. For Cecil, he approximated the voice that his old partner Stan had done for the puppet show.

Why did Daws do this? There's the mystery and it was one of those things I wondered about when I was a lad. I was able to recognize voice actors and I couldn't figure out why they hired Daws. He certainly wasn't cheaper than the other guys would have been. He surely wasn't picked by Clampett.

When I met Daws, I asked him and he said, "I have no idea. They called me to do it so I went out and did it." I also asked Bob Clampett. Bob was a pretty sharp guy but on this one, he just looked baffled and said, "You know, someone told me that was Daws on those and I never knew how that happened." Both men have since passed away and I don't know of anyone else I could ask…so I guess that's it. Just one of those puzzlements with which we all must live. Here's the commercial…

From an unknown year: William M. Gaines, publisher of Mad Magazine, appears on To Tell the Truth. My thanks to Kliph Nesteroff for telling me about this.

My only guess as to the year is that at the end, mention is made of Dick DeBartolo, who worked on To Tell the Truth and also wrote for Mad. Gaines says that Dick has been in the magazine for seven years without missing an issue. DeBartolo first appeared in Mad in issue #103, which was dated June, 1966…so if Bill's being accurate, this episode would have been around 1973. (DeBartolo has kept that streak going, by the way. He has now been in Mad every issue since then for a total of 399 consecutive issues over 42 years.)

Dick, by the way, sent me a note I ran here some time ago about this segment on To Tell the Truth. Here it is.

And here's the clip. You may notice that the audio is a little out of sync. So was Bill Gaines.

Here in two parts, we have a little less than twenty minutes of highlights from the 1999 Broadway revival of Annie, Get Your Gun, which starred Bernadette Peters. Carolyn and I saw this shortly after it opened and I believe we took along our pal Rick Scheckman. A guy I know got me tickets and assured me they were "great seats"…and I guess they were if you like being in the front row. That's a little too close to really enjoy the show. On the other hand, we could sit there and marvel at the fact that up close, Ms. Peters looked like she was about 26 years old.

This was a nice, fun production of a show that I usually find rather boring — a couple of great, hummable tunes livening up a story no one much cares about. I am told that as fine as Bernadette was in the role (and she was terrific), the whole show got even better when she was replaced by Reba McEntire. Not that Ms. McEntire is a better stage actress but she was "righter" for the part and gave it an amazing energy…or so they said. I didn't get to see it with her in it. Here's a look at Bernadette's version. The male lead is Tom Wopat…

This is a long (90 second) commercial for the original Broadway production of 42nd Street starring Jerry Orbach and Wanda Richert. It opened in 1980 and has the distinction of being the first Broadway show I saw in the Broadway district.

I was not there, of course, on its legendary opening night. As the first-nighters and critics were standing and giving the show a tremendous ovation at its close, producer David Merrick marched out and in a rather callous manner, announced that its director, Gower Champion, had died that afternoon. It and other things about the show are discussed in this article about the closing of that legendary production and then after you read that, you can watch the commercial…

Here's another rare performance by Tom Lehrer. This is from a 1980 episode of Michael Parkinson's chat show in the U.K.

Two commercials for Dutch Masters Cigars with Ernie Kovacs. They speak for themselves…

From a 1965 episode of Hollywood Palace: Frank Sinatra introduces the King of Insult Comedy — at least before Don Rickles broke through — Jack E. Leonard. Fat Jack, as they called him for obvious reasons, was one of those performers who never had much in the way of material but he had the attitude and style to "sell" just about anything. This clip is a good example of him getting away with comedic murder, blustering his way through a monologue that obviously didn't get a lot from the studio audience and was heavily "sweetened" with fake laughs in the editing room. Still, I always found him fun to watch. See if you do…

From a 1965 episode of The Dean Martin Show, three great male vocalists — Dino, Vic Damone and Allan Sherman — a sing a mess of song snippets by Mr. Sherman. About half of these were on Sherman's records but quite a few were from his nightclub act and were never recorded anywhere else. Good stuff.