Cramped, unsanitary, and generally uninviting, Scrappy’s Chowateria could not match the success of most of the animation eateries. Owner Charles Mintz converted the building into a ranch house and lived there quietly in the final years of his life.
Sadly, not every animation restaurant was a smashing success. Take, for example, Scrappy’s Chowateria, a diner
erected in Yorba Linda, California by the hastily-organized food services division of Charles Mintz’s company in
1937. (The popularity of the Scrappy character, never immense, was already on the wane.)
While we have no reason to believe that the establishment’s food and service were extraordinary, Mintz invested
considerable time and money in fabricating costumes of Scrappy and his pals: his brother Oopy, his girlfriend Margie,
and his dog, Yippy. At first, the Chowateria’s employees donned these outfits, but it soon became clear that the
practice didn’t make sense. In the heavy, oversized costumes, it proved impossible to perform such tasks as operating
the cash register or preparing even the restaurant’s limited menu (hamburgers, chili con carne, milk shakes, and
11,000 varieties of pie). Aware of the problem but unwilling to concede that the expensive costumes had been a
mistake, Mintz ordered a new policy: from then on, each customer was required to don a costume upon entering the
premises. This practice proved enormously unpopular, and the restaurant quickly shuttered its doors, only months
after it opened.
One historical footnote concerning Scrappy’s: a young Yorba Lindan named Richard “Milhous” Nixon was among its
staffers. The disgraced-former-president-to-be prepared hand-dipped milkshakes, in the role of Margie.
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C’mon, Get Scrappy Cramped, unsanitary, and generally uninviting, Scrappy’s Chowateria could not match the success of most of the animation eateries. Owner Charles Mintz converted the building into a ranch house and lived there quietly in the final years of his life. |
Terry’s entry into the restaurant field was surprisingly innovative. The Terry-Mat, opened in Brooklyn in 1938,
was one of the first fully automated restaurants in the country. Constructed entirely of pre-fabricated Bakelite,
the interior of the building was devoid of decoration except for a single framed picture of Terry’s characters
of the time (Kiko the Kangaroo, Puddy the Pup, and Thelma Toad). A series of pneumatic tubes connected the building
to Terry’s animation facilities, serving to carry food from the studio commissary to the restaurant and cash proceeds
back to the studio vaults. Sanitation was a watchword — promptly at closing time each night, the entire restaurant
was piped full of boiling soapsuds (a practice guaranteed to startle lollygagging diners).
The Terry-Mat’s prices were low and its clientele undiscriminating; it was an immediate hit. Success led to expansion,
and there were soon five more Terry-Mats, in Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, Tuscon, and Düsseldorf, Germany.
As popular with the hoity-toity as the teeming masses, the restaurants became part of popular culture. Irving Berlin
commemorated them in song (“The Terry-Mat (is the Only Mat for Me and that Old Hometown Sweetheart of Mine)”),
and Frank Capra set portions of no less than two films at Terry-Mats (Mr Deeds Returns from Washington and
the wartime documentary Why We Squabble).
Terry, delighted with the situation, promoted his restaurants zealously. Indeed, studio documents indicate that
he came to think of his company’s animated films primarily as advertising vehicles for the Terry-Mats. From 1940
onwards, Terry mandated that every character in every scene be drawn brandishing one of the restaurants’ trademark
meat sandwiches in at least one hand. (This was a considerable technical challenge in the many cartoons that featured
fifty, sixty, or more mice tormenting studio star Farmer Alfalfa.)
Soon, every Terry-Toon concluded with a scene in which the characters exhorted moviegoers to dine at a Terry-Mat.
The requests, at first genteel and good-natured, gradually became surly, then frightening. In the 1944 cartoon
The Wicked Cat, Mighty Mouse spends three-quarters of the running time pacing nervously, mumbling references
to his ex-wife, issuing incoherent demands, and threatening the audience in increasingly intemparate language.
In retrospect, it is perhaps not entirely startling that this strategy eventually backfired. The first signs of
a problem came when parents of frightened children complained to theater proprietors, but soon, grown women and
men would flee theaters in terror when the Terry-Toons logo appeared on screen. President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
it was rumored, screened a Sourpuss cartoon shortly before his passing in 1945.
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Mighty Tasty Paul Terry’s Terry-Mats, like his cartoons, were no-frills ventures, although the menu expanded to include gazpacho in 1944. Napkins were provided only in the chain’s final months. |
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