First the bad news – USC only has three months of Warner Club News for us in ’46. The good news: there’s lots of odd stuff for us to decipher among these few pages.
August, 1946
According to Warren Foster, Mike Maltese had a back operation that has kept him away from the studio; Treg Brown is writing magazine articles on the side; Bill Scott and Lloyd Turner joined the staff; Bob McKimson became a Shriner; …and Tedd Pierce was in the vending machine business?
October, 1946
With the staff on vacation, production manager John Burton takes over and reports on what the staff did during their time off. He also mentions that Jack Warner screened Rhapsody Rabbit; that Carl Stalling and Milt Franklyn completed their 350th cartoon score; and Jean Blanchard is organizing a bowling team.
November, 1946
Maltese returns to tell tales of Lloyd Vaughn cutting his eyeball (“yike!”) with a sheet of animation paper; that Pete Burness and Maurice Noble are joining Chuck’s unit; and that Treg Brown played guitar with Red Nichols, Jack Teagarden and Gene Krupa.
NEXT WEEK: 1947
Jerry Beck is a writer, animation producer, college professor and author of more than 15 books on animation history. He is a former studio exec with Nickelodeon Movies and Disney, and has written for The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. He has curated cartoons for DVD and Blu-ray compilations and has lent his expertise to dozens of bonus documentaries and audio commentaries on such. Beck is currently on the faculty of CalArts in Valencia, UCLA in Westwood and Woodbury University in Burbank – teaching animation history. More about Jerry Beck [
Benny Goodman, Jack Teagarden, and Glenn Miller were all in Ben Pollack’s band for a while. Perhaps Treg Brown played with them.
That would have been around 1928. Would Treg have been old enough to hang out with those guys back then?
He had his own orchestra in 1929 that was playing regularly on WHK Cleveland, so I’d think so.
I’m wondering if any of the magazine articles that Treg Brown wrote still exist.
I wonder how may studios had their own bowling teams? According to the article, at least Warners and MGM had them.
Note the ad in the top left of the last page, for Earl Hays Press – then and now, printers of prop newspapers for use in films and TV shows. I presume “Cinema Inserts” referred to those close-ups of newspaper headlines or articles that move a film’s plot along….
Treg was a part of Red Nichols’ “Five Pennies” (as guitarist) in 1930. In fact, he’s heard on Red’s 1930 recording of “The Sheik of Araby”. He starts the disc singing a chorus, but Jack Teagarden butts in, chiding him for his “corny” vocal {“Dontcha’ know that’s all out of date??”}. “Why, who are you?”, Treg wonders. Big T demonstrates with a memorable chorus that sets up the band’s classic rendition of the song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsiczuYwy1s