In this blog's numerous postings about Warner Brothers cartoons, it's amazing that this is the first post devoted to the one, the only, the peerless animator and director Robert McKimson (October 13, 1910 - September 27, 1977).
McKimson worked with Warner Brothers Animation directors Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Frank Tashlin, Friz Freleng and Chuck Jones and had much to do with the transition of Bugs Bunny from the chortling buck-toothed grotesque of Porky's Hare Hunt (1938) to the Oscar-winning rabbit and comedy powerhouse that debuted in A Wild Hare (1940).
Robert McKimson goes back to the first Warner Brothers cartoons. His animation is all over those early Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. Bob is the guy who was there at Warner Brothers Animation for the entire run, as Friz Freleng left for a brief time to direct Captain & The Kids cartoons for MGM.
After short stints with Walt Disney Productions and Romer Grey, Bob was cranking out animation for Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising when they were producing cartoons for Leon Schlesinger as independent producers in 1930-1933.
Shall, of course, be posting a slew of cartoons directed by Robert McKimson in today's post.
After all, he directed several of this writer's all-time favorite cartoons!
These include Hillbilly Hare, French Rarebit, What's Up, Doc? and Gorilla My Dreams.
The two Robert McKimson cartoons directed featuring Bobo the elephant rank high atop the list of favorites.
Love the lesser known albeit genuinely charming Hobo Bobo (1947).
Another classic cartoon we are particularly fond of is The Hole Idea (1955), which was animated as well as directed by Robert McKimson - and much enjoy Anthony's Animation Talk's take on this inventive Looney Tune.
The book by Robert McKimson, Jr. about Bob and his brothers Charles and Tom looks FANTASTIC, as well as a fitting tribute to the many contributions the McKimson brothers made to Warner Brothers cartoons.
Robert and ace film historians Michael Barrier, Jerry Beck, Mark Kausler and Mark Evanier all turn up in the documentary Behind The Tunes - Drawn to Life: The Art Of Robert McKimson.
Since he was on the same staff with Tex Avery, Frank Tashlin, Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng - and at one point animated for all of them, to some extent Robert McKimson's directorial efforts receive short shrift, as do the WB cartoons helmed by Arthur Davis; both developed an original spin on the Termite Terrace style. The Robert McKimson cartoons emphasize personality animation in a unique way, different from his contemporaries, Jones and Freleng.
No doubt Bob Clampett knew very well the incredible, creative and original animation Robert McKimson, Rod Scribner, Manny Gould, Bill Melendez, Izzy Ellis, John Carey, Norm McCabe, etc. contributed to his directorial efforts.
Robert hit the ground running when he started directing cartoons with Daffy Doodles (1946) and followed it with a series of very funny cartoons featuring Daffy, Bugs Bunny and other WB characters.
In particular, we are big time aficionados of Grover Groundhog in One Meat Brawl (1946). He has tons of personality!
Bugs Bunny subbing for a sourpuss rabbit as the Easter Bunny always gets big laughs.
As does the Peter Lorre caricature in the following Daffy Duck cartoon, Birth of a Notion (1947).
And McKimson's spoof of The Honeymooners!
Loud-mouthed rooster Foghorn Leghorn, Bob's favorite Warner Bros. cartoon character, made his silver screen debut in Walky Talky Hawky (1946).
Always in a tit-for-tat reciprocal destruction bargain with a dumb barnyard hound (with a wiseguy voice by Mel Blanc), Foghorn Leghorn would be the popular character favored most by Robert McKimson's production crew. Here are just a few of the loud-mouthed rooster's 30 starring vehicles.
Ducking The Devil (1957) is a particularly hilarious Tasmanian Devil cartoon.
One of the funniest of the Robert McKimson directorial efforts from the studio's final year was Banty Raids (1963). The beatnik rooster is a hoot!
Thanks for the laughs, Bob, Chuck and Tom McKimson!
Also extend respectful Fred Astaire top hat tips to key McKimson brothers collaborators Manny Gould, Herman Cohen, Rod Scribner, Bill Melendez, Phil DeLara, John Carey, Izzy Ellis, Emery Hawkins, Ted Bonnicksen, Keith Darling, George Grandpre, Cornett Wood, Richard H. Thomas, Warren Foster, Tedd Pierce, Sid Marcus, Mel Blanc, Sara Berner, Bea Benaderet, Arthur Q. Bryan, June Foray, Stan Freberg, Carl Stalling, Milt Franklyn, Treg Brown, etc.
In closing, here's Rebel Rabbit, our favorite of the cartoons Robert McKimson directed and among the all-time best from Warner Brothers. And, yes, Daily Motion's policy of embedding ads before videos, while also not letting posters tweak with the embed code (NO AUTOPLAY, thank you very much), is annoying - just click through and then enjoy this fabulous cartoon.
Today's topic: September 7 is National Beer Lover's Day!
That's right, there is a National Beer Lover's Day.
Tom T. Hall elaborates:
We'll kick the sudsy tribute off with The Three Stooges.
There actually was a film titled Rhapsody In Brew. It was produced by the Hal Roach Studio and stars comedy heroes Billy Gilbert and Billy Bletcher.
This excerpt from the Chuck Jones cartoon Trap Happy Porky cracks the gang Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog up. Mel Blanc is particularly wonderful in voicing Porky Pig and the gang of inebriated felines.
Love the cartoons of British Animated Productions, especially Bubble & Squeek. Not surprisingly, the series' protagonist enjoys pub ale.
Is it true that dwarves got drunk in pre-Code Disney cartoons? Yes! Here they are, getting blitzed in The Merry Dwarves (1929).
Former Disney animator Earl Duvall directed cartoons for Warner Brothers, shortly after Leon Schlesinger started his studio. Our favorite? Buddy's Beer Garden! One of the credited animators is Frank "Tish Tash" Tashlin, then 20 years old.
Must follow Buddy's Beer Garden with a Charles Mintz studio Scrappy cartoon from the pre-Code era, so here's a fantastic one that razzes Prohibition (at that point just ending): The Beer Parade (1933).
Another terrific cartoon about Prohibition was produced by Ub Iwerks' Studio.
Over the past decade, this blog has posted a slew of animated beer commercials.
Last year's National Beer Lover's Day post, Cartoon Commercials Sell Beer, featured Mr. Magoo plugging Stag Beer, as well as the Piels Brothers ads and the Nichols & May commercials for Jax and Narragansett Beers. Also noted then that Mike Kazaleh wrote several excellent pieces about beer ads, including Pilsner Pranks - More Spots with Beer and Hops & Spots! for Cartoon Research. We love Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble hawking Busch Beer!
In closing, here are some beer commercials we love starring Bert & Harry Piels (Bob & Ray).
Enjoyed writing last week's post so much that a followup is absolutely necessary. We shall start with my favorite of all the post-Otto versions of Felix. The style of the 1995-1997 Twisted Tales series recalls Fleischer more than Messmer, but who cares - it's still lots of fun and extremely imaginative. Several super-talented people we are acquainted with worked on the series.
Speaking of super-talented, animator and comics artist Milton Knight, among the directors who worked on The Twisted Tales Of Felix, posted the following 1933 Krazy Kat cartoon by the Ben Harrison and Manny Gould crew, Russian Dressing. I'm a big fan of the Your Favorite Cartoon Moments videos on Milton's YouTube channel.
One of the best cartoons from the Harrison & Gould crew at Mintz, in this pre-Code rubber hose animation aficionado's opinion, is The Broadway Malady (1933). I personally prefer it to The Broadway Melody!
The following early talkie Krazy Kat is another favorite and a link between 1920's Disney and early 1930's Harman-Ising WB. Looks like Friz Freleng, Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising, Rollin Hamilton and other soon to be Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies animators worked on this extremely entertaining cartoon, packed with 1929 style funny animals, way-out sight gags and, of course, Prohibition-flaunting heavy drinking.
On the topic of animators, film producers and alcoholism, here's Felix Woos Whoopee, arguably the very best opus from the last three seasons of the Felix The Cat series. While producer Pat Sullivan by that time had been done in tragically by the bottle, Messmer's prodigious talent kept the series going into those dawn of talkies days. One wonders if Felix would have hung on a bit longer accompanied with sprightly soundtracks by, for example, Carl Stalling, Gene Rodemich or Jimmy Dietrich.
And, speaking of Gene Rodemich's peppy music, here is a cat-dominated Van Beuren cartoon we like a great deal. Don't mess with kittens!
We tip our top hats to UCLA Film & Television Archive for the following restored (and cat-packed) Max Fleischer Color Classic!
Next up: Bob Clampett's memorable and hilarious The Hep Cat (1942), noted in the previous "Feline Follies" post. Love it for the theme song alone - it's tough to top "I love the goyls and the goyls love me, just like the Sheik Of Araby."
After all, we love Bob Clampett - and especially his classic Martian invasion cartoon Kitty Kornered (1946).
The following two Chuck Jones cartoons feature the playful kitten character Pussyfoot and his protector Marc Anthony the bulldog. In both cartoons, the cuteness works quite well.
Closing today's Feline Follies: the extremely funny Friz Freleng cartoon Birds Anonymous (1957), which successfully skewers 12-step groups, insufferable moralists, Sylvester the cat and animated cartoon conventions in one fell swoop.
After watching a bunch of very funny Snub Pollard 2-reelers produced by Hal Roach and directed by Charley Parrott Chase, plus Universal Jokers co-starring goofball comic Billy Franey and (frequent Chase co-star) Gale Henry, some directed by William "One Shot" Beaudine, the gang here is thinking of silent era cartoons - especially all-time favorite Felix The Cat, that gem from the inspired pen of the incomparable Otto Messmer (1892-1983).
Author, animator and Messmer expert John Canemaker elaborates.
Have devoted entire blog posts to Messmer and Felix. Our family even had an amazing and playful tuxedo cat named Felix!
The blog has posted numerous Felix cartoons but somehow missed the very first entries in the series.
So, here, submitted for your approval, are first two Felix The Cat cartoons, made back in 1919.
While Messmer's essential and trademark minimalism is there from the beginning, Felix' design is different and more angular in these early cartoons.
Since the awaited Blu-ray release of Rainbow Parade Cartoons volume 2 by Thunderbean is just around the corner, must find a spot in today's post for the following 35mm scan of Bold King Cole, one of the three Felix cartoons from RKO Radio Pictures' Rainbow Parade series.
Am under the impression that Otto was not involved in the making of the Van Beuren Felix cartoons; no surprise there, as Messmer's magical cat is, while enjoyable, a bit sanitized in the Rainbow Parades. He did go on to animate the lights fantastic in Times Square - on that more later.
How do we show proper respect for Mr. Messmer and Felix? With a few more cartoons featuring cats, beginning with one produced by the Van Beuren Studio that looks a tad like those last Felix cartoons from 1930, but features a much better and downright jaunty music track, courtesy of the excellent Gene Rodemich. The co-star, Countess Cat, sounds like the Betty Boop voice who preceded Mae Questel in the boop-oop-a-doop part and also played Olive Oyl when Ms. Questel was unavailable, Margie Hines.
SASSY CATS is one of Columbia Pictures' Scrappy cartoons, created by three all-time animation greats, Dick Huemer, Art Davis and Sid Marcus, for the Charles Mintz Studio. The gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog finds the outrageous pre-code cartoons and animation of Heumer, Davis and Marcus hilarious.
Davis and Marcus ended up at Warner Brothers; the former would be a head animator with both Frank "Tish Tash" Tashlin and Friz Freleng, while the latter collaborated with Bob McKimson both on creating The Tasmanian Devil and such cartoons as The Hole Idea (1955).
After leaving the Mintz Studio in 1933, Mr. Huemer spent decades as a top Walt Disney Productions storyman, working as a team with Joe Grant, contributing to Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, etc. He was, on record, not a fan of his Mintz cartoons.
Speaking of the Charles Mintz Studio, the crew there led by Ben Harrison and Manny Gould were among those to bring the Krazy Kat from comics and the universe of George Herriman (1880-1944) to animation.
The Harrison Gould production team did this once and it's a pretty darn good attempt at George Herriman's Krazy, as opposed to the rubber-hose generic Krazy seen in the previous Mintz Krazy Kat cartoons.
In the opinion of this cartoon fan, the 1936 Mintz cartoon comes closer to capturing the George Herriman universe than the WW1 era Krazy Kats produced by International Film Service, Inc. (a.k.a. Hearst).
The ever-inventive Gene Deitch also made 34 episodes of a series based on Herriman's Krazy Kat in the 1960's at his Prague studio, no less. Many can be seen on the Comic Kings YouTube channel. Perpetual wiseguy Ignatz Mouse is played by none other than Paul Frees.
Given the difficulties translating the otherworldly qualities of George Herriman's comic strip to animation, still find the early 1960's take on Krazy and Ignatz quite entertaining.
These are among the more clever made for TV cartoons. "Stoned Through The Ages," second one in the following Krazy compendium, was definitely dope back in 1966!
Gene, thankfully, did us the favor of writing about such key collaborators on the 1960's Krazy Kats as Al Kouzel in his ROLL THE CREDITS series.
What's the best way to wrap this cat-packed post up? With an extremely funny Warner Brothers cartoon in glorious Cinecolor directed by one of those fellows responsible for Scrappy at the Charles Mintz Studio, the great Arthur Davis.
The cat, Louie the parrot's pal Heathcliff, may qualify as the single dumbest character ever in an animated cartoon.
For the next Feline Follies, there are many more options, including the Hugh Marman MGM cartoon THE ALLEY CAT, Terrytoons' Little Roquefort, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera's Tom & Jerry in CinemaScope, and especially Bob Clampett's WB masterpieces The Hep Cat (1942) and Gruesome Twosome (1945), that could be added.
Unfortunately, did not find a complete print of Irv Spector's enjoyable Modern Madcap cartoon Cool Cat Blues (1961), featuring stellar voice work by impressionist Will Jordan, as all transfers on YouTube and Daily Motion appear to be missing footage for some reason. This cartoonologist prefers the satiric qualities of the 1960's Modern Madcaps to the more formulaic 1950's Famous Studios cartoons.
Transitioning from late-night TV to silent movies in an ungainly manner, we applaud the indefatigable film historian and Blu-ray producer David Glass for starting up a Kickstarter to raise the dough-re-me to produce a grand spanking new Blu-ray set featuring comedy rarities. This compilation stars the guy who made the greatest number of films for Hal Roach Studios, Australian comic Harry "Snub" Pollard (1889-1962).
At Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, we regard Snub as the funniest, along with Ben Turpin, of the "mustache brigade" comics, with second place (or honorable mentions) going to Billy Bevan and Clyde Cook.
As the following video notes, the set shall include not only a slew of Snub starring vehicles, but several comedies in which Mr. Pollard was a key supporting player for the Hal Roach Studios' first star, Harold Lloyd. Snub, leading lady Bebe Daniels and bad guy Bud Jamison made a gazillion comedy short subjects with Harold; Steve Massa's latest book Lonesome Luke's Lively Life covers Mr. Lloyd's early years at the Rolin Film Co. in depth.
Ran the following Snub classic (which will be on the set mastered from a 35mm print) in one of the Psychotronix Film Festivals I co-programmed with Sci Fi Bob Ekman and Scott Moon and it always got a lively crowd response. The eternally nonplussed Snub in the magnet car always gets big laughs
Don't know if the following film, Sold At Auction, is among the 26 on the set, but it was directed by none other than Charley Chase and features laughs aplenty and way-out ideas galore. While the following print appears to be a 16th generation dupe, the gags and Snub's adept physical comedy are still quite funny.
Donated to the Kickstarter and look forward to seeing sight gag-packed slapstick from Snub, Harold, excellent leading lady Marie Mosquini and such inspired supporting players as Hughie Mack, George Rowe and the ubiquitous Bud Jamison.
Between this Kickstarter for the Snub Pollard Blu-ray, another fundraiser author Thomas Reeder and the Library Of Congress' Rob Stone have launched for a Blu-ray set of ridiculously rare Universal Joker Comedies and Thad Komorowski's silent Terrytoons compilation, there will be much anticipation among avid fans of classic comedy and silent movies.
Early cinema expert Thomas Reeder has penned a new book on the Universal Joker Comedies, Ten Minutes of Mirth: Allen Curtis and His Joker Comedies, 1913-1917, along with a second book of photos from the studio. In addition, Lea Stans of Silent-ology posted a well-researched and informative article about the Universal Jokers.
The Kickstarter for the Blu-ray of Joker Comedies ends Sunday, while Snub's fundraiser ends on the morning of September 15.
Shall attempt to wrap this non-chronological series about late night TV a la The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson up in an untidy way. This will be yet another too many clips, WAY too many clips proposition. Where to start? With a nod to The Story Of Late Night, the 2021 CNN series directed by John Ealer.
The six episode series is overall good, the utterly inexplicable omission of our favorite show of all the post-1990 late-night series, The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson notwithstanding.
The guy who sat behind the coveted host desk for the greatest number of late night shows other than Johnny Carson and David Letterman was (drum roll). . . Jay Leno.
He didn't just helm The Tonight Show from May 25, 1992 to May 29, 2009 and from March 1, 2010 to February 6, 2014, Jay guest hosted for Johnny 333 times; the second and third most prolific Tonight Show guest hosts were Joan Rivers with 201 shows and Joey Bishop with 177.
Tonight Shows featuring Johnny Carson and Jay Leno together could be pretty darn hilarious.
We’re okay with Jay, like him best as a stand-up comedian (and also enjoy his recent Jay Leno’s Garage videos about classic cars). With his hosting literally hundreds of Tonight Shows is it possible to forget how good Jay was at stand-up? Yes.
Jay and Jerry Seinfeld were the hardest working stand-up comics in showbiz and toured ALL THE TIME back in the 1970's and early 1980's.
In succeeding The King Of Late Night, Jay Leno ended up in the same boat as Shemp Howard, who followed Curly in The Three Stooges. No matter how good his version of The Tonight Show was, Jay was destined to be compared to Johnny Carson. Both Shemp and Jay make this comedy fan laugh, but that's the breaks.
Believe it or not, Jay frequently appeared on Late Night With David Letterman in the early to mid-1980's, as he did on The Tonight Show.
There's one compilation of Jay on Letterman in the early 1980's we didn't post because it was three hours long. Meanwhile, Mr. Letterman, who thought he would be the successor to Johnny Carson, has had plenty to say over the decades about his relationship with NBC and Jay Leno.
Further late-night wars involving NBC and The Tonight Show engulfed Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien (spotlighted in Part Four of this series).
Notably, Conan, a writer for Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons prior to hosting Late Night With Conan O’Brien, brought Robert Smigel of Triumph The Insult Comic Dog fame with him as part of a crew of ace writers that included Brian Stack, Brian McCann, Mike Sweeney, Dan Cronin, Berkley Johnson and Matt O' Brien.
At least Conan got Norm to appear on his last Tonight Show!
Jay, interviewed by fellow comic Howie Mandel, elaborates:
And then there was The Late Late Show With Craig Kilborn. Don’t know what Mr. Kilborn, host of The Daily Show from 1996-1998 and The Late Late Show With Craig Kilborn from 1999 to 2004 is doing these days. Had Kilborn, the snarkiest snark other than David Spade, been in showbiz 30 years earlier, one could envision him as a guest host for Johnny Carson. And, yes, that's right, he preceded Jon Stewart AND Craig Ferguson as host of their respective shows.
Mr. Ferguson, in this writer's opinion the funniest of the latter-day late night hosts, took The Late Late Show into ultra-zany and uncharted territory.
Especially like appearances by Lewis Black, another outstanding stand-up comedian, on The Late Late Show.
While Mr. Ferguson, after ten seasons of his show, has been off the air for a decade, he still has very enthusiastic fans on YouTube. There is a 9 hour compilation of its highlights, playlists from the YouTube poster named Fergufool and the Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson Archive channel, which, among numerous clips, includes excellent comedy from season 7, season 8 and season 9 of the series.
Currently, Craig has his own You Tube channel, where he posts his stand-up specials - the latest is great - and entertaining interviews.
With that, we call this a wrap, having gone as far into modern day 21st century entertainment as this blog ever goes. Won't be covering the more recent series (Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, James Corden), the non-Tonight Show style programs that ran on late night (Later With Bob Costas, and Late Late Show With Tom Snyder) or sketch comedy shows - Fridays, SNL, SCTV - that aired at 11:30 p.m.
Alas, an accurate and complete history of late night TV, sadly, not unlike a history of silent movies, would demand that all those shows that ended up dumped in the East River show up again in pristine condition. After all, Groucho, Ernie Kovacs, Mort Sahl and Bob Newhart all hosted!
How do we finish this series? With The Tonight Show Band playing Johnny Carson’s favorite tune, Here’s That Rainy Day.
