Tough stain on a piece of clothing. I take it to a dry cleaner. After a couple of days, I go pick the item up, and the stain is still there, but they’ve attached the cute little tag seen above. They want me to know that they didn’t forget what I asked them to do… just that they couldn’t do it.
Now, why would a lovely teenage girl with a delicious Good Humor be staring angrily at her friendly Good Humor Man?
I don’t know. I’m just putting the question out there.
The two of them look like they want to punch each other. And surely fistfights were a rare thing in proximity to Good Humor trucks.
That’s not a movie still. It’s some kind of news or promotional photo. If only we had a caption; something like “Even Juvenile Delinquents love Good Humors” would explain things.
Of course, if this was Glasgow instead of suburban America, and it was the 1980’s instead of the 1940’s, we’d know that the Glasgow Ice Cream Truck Turf Wars were to blame. But this probably does not represent a drug deal gone bad.
More likely, the teen-ager is simply fed up with all the damn advice the Good Humor Man is dispensing with his ice cream.
I’m guessing that The Good Humor Safety Club, which issued the pinbacks at right, was created in response to ice cream truck-related injuries and deaths. It’s a battle that’s still being fought: there’s a vocal group of anti-ice cream truck people out there who want to banish this already-vanishing summer tradition.
And not all of them are concerned about the potential for accidents. Some of them just hate the music, like the grouches in Vancouver, who don’t seem to realize that “…the chimes are the only way we have of knowing that the the [sic] ice cream man is in the neighbourhood.”
The petition suggests that the silent majority have no objection to the chimes and that the bylaw changes suggested by the city council would “…put us out of business!”
Good Humor once provided, to any customer who made a request, a giant placard sporting a huge letter “G.”
All you’d have to do would be to place the placard in the window of your home, and your friendly local Good Humor man would know to stop and stock your home freezer. (Few of these placards have survived, which explains why the IAICV is ignorant of this alternate business model… and why the example shown here looks kinda grungy).
But wait. If we put the industry back on the placard business model, we would lose those lovely chimes!
No.
In fact, if you want to hear ice cream music, you have other options. You can listen to ice cream music 24/7, if that’s your desire, thanks to a couple of CD’s that push the musical genre beyond its traditional limits.
Songs for Ice Cream Trucks is a CD released this year – that would be 2007 – by a very talented guy named Michael Hearst. Here’s the solution for all of those disgruntled people in Vancouver: buy this CD, and then… don’t play it.
I love this CD and highly recommend it, but then again, I’ve been writing about ice cream trucks for four days. But there’s at least one person out there as interested as I am. Check out the trailer for the documentary! (Thanks, MH!)
Actually, make that two, because we’ve also got the incredible music of John Charles Alder, who has released Ice Cream Truckin’, another CD of tunes (many of them using toy piano) that would sound just great anywhere. Even in Vancouver. His band is called Twink, and I also recommend checking out Broken Record, another Twink CD that samples old kiddie records in wonderful and hilarious ways.
You can listen to samples from each CD at the respective sites linked above.
If you want to watch ice cream trucks, rather than just listen, you have to hope that The Good Humor Man is released to DVD sometime soon. It’s a wild live-action cartoon from Frank Tashlin, the man who first won our hearts with his fabulous Porky Pig shorts of the late 1930’s.
Are Good Humor trucks dangerous places? Watch what happens to Jack Carson.
In case you thought product placement was a relatively new phenomenon, check out this Fawcett comic.
In a movie that is itself an eighty-minute paean to Dubl-stix, Humorettes, I-sticks, Regular cups, Large cups, and Sundaes, another sponsor bought in to the proceedings – Fawcett Comics, home of The Big Red Cheese (Captain Marvel to those of you who haven’t had the good sense to follow his adventures).
DC comics had filed a lawsuit against Fawcett in 1941 claiming that Captain Marvel was nothing but a crass rip-off of Superman. This took two tons of chutzpah, because Superman was himself a blatant rip-off of the pulps’ Doc Savage, whose “Man of Bronze” had been transformed into the “Man of Steel.” Savage also had something called a Fortress of Solitude in the arctic, and oh, by the way, Doc’s real first name was Clark. DC eventually prevailed, however, shutting Captain Marvel down in 1953. One can only imagine the collective wail that went up when the Captain suddenly disappeared. (If anybody should have sued Captain Marvel, it was Fred MacMurray, whose face had been appropriated by the Fawcett artists and given to Captain Marvel).
Given the fact that Captain Marvel and Superman were locked in a battle to the death for newsstand survival, some of you may well be aware of perhaps the greatest irony in the history of the cinema, which takes place when when we meet Mr. Nagel, the villain of The Good Humor Man (and the rival for girlfriend Margie’s affections). He’s introduced to us in his office at the Peerless Insurance Company…
[2021 note: Don's embedded video is missing.]
The Good Humor Man is so interesting for so many reasons.
For instance, the use of the Three Stooges sound effect library (Good Humor Man was a Columbia picture).
[2021 note: Don's embedded video is missing.]
I’m having too much fun to stop… Part Four tomorrow.
First, watch the clip… the opening scene from The Good Humor Man (1950).
The unusual sound was created by Sonovox, a device invented in January 1939 by Gilbert Wright, an engineer and radio operator. Wright hadn’t shaved that particular day and was idly scratching the coarse stubble around his adam’s apple. He noticed that the sound of this action traveled through his neck and emerged from his mouth as a buzzing. Intrigued, he tried silently forming words with his mouth, lips, and tongue… and was surprised and amused to find that the words were intelligible using this odd alternate source of sound.
Ultimately, the Sonovox (essentially a set of small speakers which pumped a tone into the the neck) became a medical device. It served as an artificial larynx that restored speech to people who had undergone laryngectomies. Since the Sonovox created no variation in pitch, the resulting speech emerged in a somewhat robotic-sounding monotone. Today, there are artificial larynges small enough to be hidden in dental work which can vary pitch in response to user movements, creating much more natural-sounding speech.
All that came later, though. Initially, the Sonovox was used as a gimmick for the movies. Because you could send anything through those speakers, vocal shaping could now create words “inside” music, sound effects… you name it.
Disney, whose exclusive deal with Technicolor had served him well just six years earlier, made an offer for exclusive cartoon rights to Sonovox. The first feature to use the device was Dumbo, released in October of 1941, but a demonstration of Sonovox is part of Robert Benchley’s tour of the Disney Studio,released as The Reluctant Dragon in June of that same year (Sonovox creates Casey Junior’s “I think I can/I thought I could” dialog, in the finished film).
By 1950, Sonovox was pretty much “old hat,” but Frank Tashlin, who moved into live-action features after directing cartoons for Warner Brothers, found a very clever and appropriate use for it to open The Good Humor Man.
More about Tashlin, more about Good Humor, and more about a very funny picture titled The Good Humor Man… in Part 3.
Link to a “Kiddie Record” that uses Sonovox. Link to a YouTube video of the Kay Kaiser Band showing the Sonovox in use.
The bite out of the bar. The little square cutouts that not only draw your eye to the bar, but also present the opportunity for additional, strategically-placed icicles. The white reflections on the bar suggest it’s shown actual size. A happy, open, simple upper- and lower-case font presents the company name; a company name that doesn’t mind at all if the stick and the bar partially obscure it; they are that easy-going. Then… the all-caps “brick” of ice cream at the bottom. I’m not a designer, but is this not brilliant?
And the sheer brilliance of the name itself, suggesting that no problem exists that cannot be solved by a little ice cream and a smile. From Unilver, who now owns the brand:
In 1920, Harry Burt, a Youngstown, Ohio candy maker, created a special treat called the Jolly Boy Sucker – a lollypop on a stick. The same year, while working at his ice cream parlor, Burt created a smooth chocolate coating that was compatible with ice cream. It tasted great, but the new combination was too messy to eat. So, Burt’s son Harry Jr. suggested freezing the wooden sticks that were used for Jolly Boy Suckers into the ice cream. Burt called his creation the Good Humor Bar, capitalizing on the then widely held belief that a person’s “humor,” or temperament, was related to the humor of the palate (the sense of taste).
Times have changed. If somebody told you they had a special treat for you called the Jolly Boy Sucker… you’d call the cops. And, of course, they made a teeny little revision to the Good Humor logo in recent years:
Oh, this works, right? Designed by the same people who created the beloved biohazard logo, Good Humor picked this new logo up on the cheap at a garage sale held by The American Heart Association, who a) remind you to substitute fat-free milk and nonfat or low-fat frozen yogurt for whole milk, cream and ice cream, and b) rejected this as the AHA logo because it was ‘too clinical.’
Consider the Good Humor Truck.
Friendly, right? Clean, open, driven by the friendly man who sells Good Humors, who is outfitted in an all-white uniform and who takes this ice cream business very, very seriously.
You don’t see that guy driving one of these great old trucks on the road much any more. What you see instead is some variation on this:
Oh, my God. This panel van contains stuff in it that people actually purchase and eat? This is not the friendly man who sells Good Humors.
This is the man afraid to leave the truck, the man currently cowering behind the steel mesh teller’s cage, waiting anxiously for the installation of his new “Good Humor Drawer.”
Watch the following 11 second video clip, and pay no attention to what Davy Jones says. Focus on the fine print.
[2021 note: Don's original embedded videos are missing; this is the entire program on YouTube.]
This program is a recreation of an awards presentation.
It is no such thing. This program is a fictional, simulated, meaningless, mindless travesty of an awards presentation. And I am sorry to say it was my idea.
No, I’m not making this up. I wish I were. Together with an unnamed colleague (whose legions of fans would be shocked and saddened to learn of his participation) I wrote the script for this… this.. infomercial.
There. I’ve said it.
Not that the producers actually used the script. It was thoroughly and completely cut, gutted and rewritten until each sentence, each utterance, had achieved the grammatical and logical perfection of, for example, “I know you want to be a part of it… we all were.”
I would suggest this enigmatic phrase serve as epitaph on Davy Jones’s tombstone, beneath which I’m sure he wished he were when this thing aired… we all were.
[2021 note: Don's embedded video is missing.]
How would you define “dancing?” Could we agree that, generally speaking, it is the movement of the body in time with, and in response to, music? OK, then, under what circumstances would you slow down the movements of a dancer, or a group of dancers, thus severing any and all ties between the motion and the music? I heard someone in the back of the class say it… “only when there were no ties between the motion and the music to begin with.” Exactly correct.
Good for you. I’m keeping these clips as short as possible, but I must warn you that the next one lasts 26 seconds.
[2021 note: Don's embedded video is missing.]
You have just seen a mock award announced with infinitesimal excitement… and received with poorly feigned surprise. All those poor people from The Monkees Fan Club in rented tuxedos and prom dresses locked into a Philadelphia theater at 4 AM cheering the bogus award as it is bestowed yet again in take 6 – and it’s my fault. My slip of the tongue. My everlasting shame.
All I said was, “Infomercials are fake TV shows. Fake cooking shows; fake talk shows. The goal is to sell old Don Kirshner music; why not create a fake “awards show” where every song included in the set is “nominated” for “an award?”
Previous half-hour music infomercials had relied on black and white stock footage, stock photos and graphics, and a gaggle of sincere amateur dancers. Why not make this one different? Why not make this one classy? “The Don Kirshner Rock Awards.” WARNING: Next clip about one minute. You sure you don’t want that novocaine?
[2021 note: Don's embedded video is missing.]
As the script devolved, all of the old tried-and-true elements worked their way back in – the dreary smeary stock footage (some of which is clearly from the 50’s), the mind-numbing graphics, the clumsy dancers. The “classy” opening, as shot, features a dazzling sign so glamorous that it had been previously been used to announce bake sales and tractor pulls. One limousine goes round and round the block, picking up rock n’ roll superstars at the back of the building and dropping them off in front of the fifteen people who symbolize an adoring crowd at the front entrance.
My unidentified co-conspirator and I were proactive in preventing screen credit for ourselves. We were invited to the taping but escaped with our lives – if not out honor – intact.
Mr. Kirshner, Mr. Jones, Mr. Derringer, Mr. Maestro, Mr. Siegel, Mr. Cavaliere, Mr. Dante – this is the public apology for which you’ve waited decades. I’m sorry. We all were.
The Washington Post reported in 2004 that Don Kirshner, Upsala College’s most famous graduate, currently resides in a gated community. No word regarding which of two possible functions they had in mind when they separated Kirshner from the rest of the world with that gate.
At Warner Brothers, we were very fortunate in that we had terrible men we worked for… Leon Schlesinger and Eddie Selzer were two of the most abysmal human beings that I could possibly get, outside of a decadent zoo. We had an advantage of Leon because Leon… he was lazy. And that’s really what got us starting doing good pictures.
For on-line listening or MP3 downloading:
Interviews not only with with Chuck Jones, but also Brad Bird, Buck Henry, Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, Michael Powell, Marty Scorsese, Thelma Schoonmaker and quite a few others.
The latest – with Laura Linney, Tamara Jenkins, and Philip Bosco – was taped a few weeks ago. The earliest – with Sidney Poitier – dates from March of 1989.
…and equally how enjoyable it is while floating weightless in space.
I have always been a fan of The Little Rascals & Laurel and Hardy, and have always searched for recordings of their music, but never came across any until a few years ago, when my brother told me about the Beau Hunks.
The level of work and concentration aboard the space shuttle are pretty intense during the flights. So the relaxation of listening to music during short breaks or before sleep are priceless. I listened to The Beau Hunks on many occasions during [April 1997 and July 1997] flights, usually during an hour break when I was able to float in front of a window and watch the world go by.”
- NASA Astroanaut Don Thomas, who sent his shuttle-flown Beau Hunks CD (“still in good shape after traveling over 11 million kilometers”) to the Beau Hunks in July 1998.
I’ve posted this link before, but neglected to mention the greatBeau Hunks DVD, a live, pro-shot concert performance that includes a complete showing of Laurel and Hardy’s Their Purple Moment with live BH accompaniment.
"Isn't Life Terrible" is a Charley Chase short from 1925. The title was derived from a 1924 D.W. Griffith film, "Isn't Life Wonderful?" Other Charley Chase film titles that ask questions are "What Price Goofy?" (1925), "Are Brunettes Safe?" (1927), and "Is Everybody Happy?" (1928). Chase abandoned his titles with question marks for titles with exclamation points during the sound era.
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