"Chow Hound"

Many animation sites have for the last two days celebrated Charles Martin Jones, especially by mentioning his 1957-present shorts ":What's Opera Doc" to the MGM.Suess/Kipling specials, to a ceerrtain special about a frog suinging and a rabbit and duck
in a cave of jewels. But there was a time when superioir shorts by the 100-year-old Chuck Jones actually were made, through the early 50s. One actually being quoted and having among the most use of characters outside ceelebrity character-stuff come to life shorts:
"Chow Hound"(officially released June 16,1951)
CHOW HOUND
Rel.by WB studios as a Tech.Merrie Melodie on June 16,1951, rereleased as a Merrie Melodies Blue Ribbon in 1958(? brown rings, came out ahead being a reissue of the new films in
production with the same season ring colours, continued through 1963).
Director:CHARLES M.JONES
Story:MICHAEL MALTESE
Animation:BEN WASHAM, KEN HARRIS,PHILLIP MONROE and LLOYD VAUGHN (wants to do a "Vaughn Monroe" joke now)
Background:PHILIP De GUARD
Layout: BOB GRBOREK
Film Editing/Sound FX:TREGOWERTH BROWN
        CAST
The Dog/The Zoo Kepper/JOHN SMITH
The cat/Mouse/Medics/Male Domestic Pet Owners/MEL BLANC
Female Per Owner/BEA BENADARET
("Voice characterizations: MEL BALNC")
Music Director: CARL STALLING
MUSIC:
Open.."Merry Go Round Broke Down"/CLIFF FRIEND, DAVE FRANKLIN, CARL STALLINGS
Unknown, titles
"Meow"/MOE KAUFMAN/STALLING-FRANKLYN, open shot
original mysteriosis with cat snekaing out/STALLING
"Baby Face"/AKST-DAVIS, the "Harold scene"
Most is original music with the ending exception of
"Am I Blue"/DE SYLVA/HENDERSON"  the pet doc scene
"When the Swallows Come Back"/?? final scene with mousie and cat
Reprise of "Merrie Go Rond" at ened
Producer:ED SELZER
-----------------------------
This is the last seriously dark WB short for anyone in a llng time, though another director Friz Freleng, did one of the occasional gems of the post-50s, "The Last Hungry Cat".


It's late at night, and a guy is feeding and bidding off to bed, his cat, "Butch". "Butch" has a steak for dinner. However in the darkest hour of night,
he is off with the steak and then runs into a put bulldog who grabs him rudely, saying, "Hand it over". It turns out that the cat is working for this dog (as it were)
and the dog eats it but.."What? No Gravy?" (the famous line of the cartoon). So the cat then escapes, with the pooch stepping on hsi tail. "Oh.,.Going someplace".
Looking at his little book (resourceful Rover) he then says 'Cmon stupid..then at another house, he 1) ties a blue bow, 2) says "Now make with the motor" (read:purrr) and then 3) passes him off as
"Harold", a lady's cat ("Harold! You naiughty creature!") Bringing his food to thje dog,m the cat gets it-"What? No Gravy?"

 For the next house, they take out a can of tune and a rock, revelaing that they have been here, and revealing a falsette (Mel Blanc?)
mouse, who is a bigger pussy than the pussycat. An old old man (based on animator Ken Harris, accoridng to Greg Duffell, of Lightbox Canada), now welcomes him in as Timothy! "You;ve earned your keep", as the dfog is nusing the mouse for a dead mouse for the cat
(hey, the mouse had to be for something). And of course, the food fopr the dog, but "No Gravy?" Mousie tries to challenge the dog who onl needs to rap him woith a doctor's knee capreflex testing small mallet,
and agrees to nap.
At the zoo, we see a familiar looking cat, our hero. He then  gets a stick of dynamit ein a steak of the starving dog. He gets blown up. Oh. And no gravy. Too slow, too slow, with pet s missing, but then this inspires the dog, so we see Jones, Maltese, and Washam, ad "M.Hinkle"
names displayed across want ads, so now we hear from, and then soon the dog goes to the woman and two gents, in a baby cradle with trap door,
 with cat, who seems somehow willing to go along(not that he has any CHOICE)..then the nouse makes a return to complete this journey, taking him to the zoo.
The mouse openly complains..in that high fluty flasetto of his as he did before ("how humniliating") dressed as a now un PC Ubangi, and seels the keeper the animal.
We don't see for a while any of the cat or mouse but the bulldog now has money from "returning" so much a smention as buy a butchery but eats too much, eating his wya to a vet-hostpital. As a result,
we see our anti-hero on the bed. Oh. He has two visitors. The cat & mouse. THIS time they DIDN't forget the gravy, not that our canine anti-hero now wants it!
This came aorund the time that J.L.Warner seems to want to end these "dark humor" shorts-in Jones's unit alone, Hubie and Bertie, the Three Bears, and Charlie the Dog, who Yowp on http://tralfaz.blogspot.com/2012/09/charlie-jones-charlie-dog.html illustrates in next to last short "Dog Gone South",1950,  were nixed.
Furthermore, yesterday's burthday boy started getting soft, then synical, then critically loved then finally for the first time overrated. But thankfully that was still in the future in1 951 when Chow Hound came out. The title character was not voiced by Mel Blanc but a character actor named John T.Smith, who also played
in the same voice, the "Homeless Hare" construction worker", and using different voices, the "Hillbilly Hare" dumb hillbily, and one time narrated, "There Auto Be a Law". Blanc did do most of the vpoices, with Bea Benaderet as the standard lady (a laBlanche Morton "Harold",conjuring up the Marc Anothony the bulldog or Dodsworth the fat cat owners that she'd playe as well.)
The last of the "Want ad" name,s M.Hinkel (no relation to Rankin-Bass's mad magigician Prof.Hinkle) may have been named for Mary Hinkle, an inker and painter. The Zoo k eeper is also voiced by John Smith and sounds a bit like Sterling Holloway, only adding to the odd'flavour of this seven minute short.


Now where is MY gravy?

Hansel? HANSELL??

As the Prince would say in "Bewitched Bunny".

Sorry for the three month wait for a new post, but there will be more.

So you think that you know about the voice of Sniffles, the cherubic WB cartoon mouse, or maybe some MGM squirrells, rabbits, dolls,mice,etc. or
Disney or Lantz cartoon animals. You probaly now have heard of BERNICE HANSEN. You know what the name is...
And she was a nonentity.,.
AND she was a child actresss.. blah blah..

Well...you'd be both right [on the roles EXCEPT Sniffles!] and MOSTLY WRONG...for starters:
Berneice Edna HANSELL [fill in your "Bewitched Bunny"[WB,`1954] quote]
was bkorn 7/11/1897 in Los Angeles, California, died 4/3/1981.
She was a seamstress as as well, and got into more trobule than her cute little animal alter egos ever did.
So you think that you know about the voice of Sniffles, the cherbuic WB cartoon mouse, or maybe some MGM squirrells, rabbits, dolls,mice,etc. or
Disney or Lantz cartoon animals. You probaly now have heard of BERNICE HANSEN. You know what the name is...
And she was a nonentity.,.
AND she was a child actresss.. blah blah..

Well...you'd be both right and MOSTLY WRONG...for starters:
Bernice Edna HANSELL [fill in your "Bewitched Bunny"[WB,`1954] quote]
was bkorn 7/11/1897 in Los Angeles, California, died 4/3/1981.
She was a seamstress as as well, and got into more trobule than her cute little animal alter egos ever did.

<a href=http://tralfaz.blogspot.com">Yowp's second blog</a> has the story.

She was just one of many of theser thirties-mid forties voices [including Sniffles, who lasted till the end of "Porky in a Drum" ending, 1945's "Hush My Mouse"]..and, now, here is the BIG thing..remember at the TOP when I wrote "she was the voice of the cartoon mouse S NIFFLES".?
Well, for ten years it was been mentioned the lamented ANIMATO! that someone else was..in addition to the CORRECT name given and date.. It is that real name BERNICE NAHSELL I plan to use when in reference to her.
As for the  REAL Sniffles, it was revealed and publicised by Keith Scott, Hames Ware and Graham Webb in ANIMATO!`, the 1990s animatiun magazine, that Gay Seabrooke was the voice as I and others have already mentioned, and Sara Berner took over.
As also known, Bernice Hansell retired in 1940 but DID NOT die [see top and Tralfaz Blog by D.M.Yowp]


So who did the other cute child voices in the thirties [and for a while into the WW forties]?

I posted early in this blog's history.

Ironically, didn't work at, at least one L.A. studio..
She was just one of many of theser thirties-mid forties voices [including Sniffles, who lasted till the end of "Porky in a Drum" ending, 1945's "Hush My Mouse"]..and, now, here is the BIG thing..remember at the TOP when I wrote "she was the voice of the cartoon mouse SNIFFLES".?
Well, for ten years it was been mentioned the lamented ANIMATO! that someone else was..in addition to the CORRECT name given and date.. It is that real name BERNICE NAHSELL I plan to use when in reference to her.
As for the  REAL Sniffles, it was revealed and publicised by Keith Scott, Hames Ware and Graham Webb in ANIMATO!`, the 1990s animatiun magazine, that Gay Seabrooke was the voice as I and others  have already mentioned, and Sara Berner took over.

As also known, Berneice Hansell retired in 1940 but DID NOT die [see top and Tralfaz Blog by D.M.Yowp]
So who did the other cute child voices in the thirties [and for a while into the WW forties]?
I posted in the second post on this..

The "little voices" that wne a long way through the long, impoverish Depression

As if no one else has done a bunch of classic theatrical golden age animation but here's another familiar fan's one..and the first POST-introductory post, that is.

Various posts, most recently a Golden Age Cartoons forum post by Sanek on "Sniffles takes a Trip" from 1940, whid references obsucre Margaret Hill-Talbot, and Graham Webb and Keith Scott and others who have explained the Shirley Temple like cute animal voices heard so often, especially in the early days, the Depression, which such blobgs as Steven Hartley's excellent Warner Bros.blog, Likely Looney, Mostly Merrie is chronologically posting, and such, have prompted this first post on my new blog, TOON SNOOT [pardon my palinbdrome based title.] Bernice Hansen, a elusive type if ever there was one, was pinned for many years as the voice until more later research in the 70s-80s turned up these.. In Hollywood alone: Bernice Hansen
Leone Le Deoux
Gay Seabrook
Margaret Hill-Talbot
Sarah Berner
Dorothy Varden
Rochelle Hudson
Dorothy Compton
Mary Moder [the two ladies above had the honors of playing Walt Disney's more dimwitting little pigs to Pinto Colvig's practical one]
and others.



In New York at Fleischer, which seems to have the memorable ones Mae Questel. This was largely before the MGM/WB etc. revolution where these were used less.. The late, much-missed Animato! mag had a bunch of articles by Keith Scott and Graham Webb and Hames Ware, who heard a 1969 tape identiofying Shirley Reed as Petunia. Bob Clampett rememebred Bernice Hansen as the voice of HIS cutie charcters, and, maybe in a way that further detracted from his status with the others, misidentified Bernice as doing CHUCK JONES":S Sniffles, yet Gay Seabrooke [the mother in Hal Roach's Little Racals, pre-MGM] was identified in the 1990s or earlier from a raido program with the role model for WB's Egghead, Joe "Wanna buy a Duck" Penner [1904-1941], and discovered the voice match, as well as seeing a Stooges Columbia episode "Men in White", with Bernice. Berner was presumed the voice for Sniffles and similair later through similiar means. Some boys nlike Tommy Bond also of Rascals appeared in WB shorts., Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising at MGM had a handful of others ["The Little Mole"'s title character, for one] whose voices are yet to be ID'd. And many others. You can look all of the names up on Google., Aren't you glad that there's Google? :-)

So many of these "cutie cutie" voices, apparently many Shirley Temple based, sound so similiar as unaninamously agreed, it can be hard to identify them..On Brandon Pierce's page, Keith Scott who I hope reads this mentioning much of what I wrote and then some, said pretty much the same thing!

However, it musty noted as http://tralfaz.blogspot.com [Yowp's second site along with the http://yowpyowp.blogspot.one], and in Thad Komoroski's excellent http://www.whataboutthad.com
blog, the Holy Grail on info on Miss Hansen, who is Berniece E.Hansell, has come out, and what she also did besides acting.

And finally, as you alreayd may have known through the grapevine [cue Marvin Gaye, CCR, Gladys and the Pips, Calif.Raisons] that Berniece Hansell NEVER played Sniffles.:) At least three have been identified, Gaye Seabrooke, Maragret Talbot and Sara Bernewr. Maragraet Talbot and Margaret McKay may be the same entity.

[None of those voiced my buddy Gumby's girlfriend Goo in the 1960s Gumby's; Norma MacMillan did.:) She did't enter cartoons till the 60s.]