Trying to cheer up, mostly unsuccessfully, the pissed-off and snowstorm-addled reprobates at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog are watching Toby The Pup cartoons.
Seven of the 12 Toby cartoons remain in the lost film Twilight Zone. The Tobys are less gritty in design and sensibility than the Scrappy series, and in some sequences resemble Ben Harrison and Manny Gould's contemporaneous Krazy Kat, also produced by Charles Mintz.
Alas, the Toby The Pup cartoons were so unloved that several in the 12-entry series remain lost almost 100 years later.
One urban legend goes that producer Charles Mintz was so incensed by the failure of the Toby cartoons to score a boffo Mickey Mouse style mega-hit for RKO Radio Pictures in 1930-1931 that he had all the original 35mm negatives and prints buried! That's a great story, but seems unlikely. . .
Produced by the Charles Mintz Studio for RKO Radio Pictures release, the Tobys were made by the same crew that subsequently produced Columbia's Scrappy series.
That crew would be led by the highly imaginative Dick Huemer, supported by his fellow ex-Fleischer animators Sid Marcus and Art Davis. The jaunty musical scores were by Joe De Nat, who re-used the Toby The Pup opening a few years later as main title theme for Columbia's Color Rhapsodies.
Huemer, who ultimately spent three decades working for Walt Disney Productions as part of a prolfic story writing team with Joe Grant, regarded his Mintz Studio cartoons as dreadful at best, an embarrassment. No surprise there: he subsequently worked on Pinocchio and Fantasia.
In this writer's cartoon-crazed opinion, the Tobys equal or surpass the wacky Fleischer Studio hijinx from the same period and also rival the contemporaneous Disney cartoons for animation technique, early 1930's "rubber hose" style.
Serge Bromberg of Lobster Films has found heretofore lost Toby cartoons with French titles. Hence, it is possible to compare two versions of Toby in The Museum.
The Toby cartoons never got distributed to U.S. television and were largely unseen for several decades. They were mentioned in Radio Pictures' print ads, presumably with some expectation that the cartoons would give Mickey Mouse at least a bit of competition for the Depression-era moviegoing audience.
Watching a very odd entry from Republic Pictures' low-budget Jerky Journeys series brings to mind the topic of very odd animated cartoons. We'll start with the most inexplicably odd but hilarious cartoon from Tex Avery's lengthy career, the Walter Lantz opus SH-HHHHH, supposedly based on a popular - and very odd - comedy recording (The Okeh Laughing Record).
Ted Eshbaugh's classic cartoons, especially his 1933 take on The Wizard Of Oz, are wonderful while invariably a bit odd.
Ted Eshbaugh's oddest cartoon may be his Cinecolor tale of a truly abominable snowman. The title character is not a nice guy!
Arguably both among the oddest but most beautiful animated cartoons is John Hubley's "Frankie & Johnny" sendup and ultra-stylish post-modernist musical Rooty Toot Toot.
Entirely on the other side of the artistic spectrum is this very odd one-shot Aesop's Fable from the Van Beuren studio, frequent producers of the oddest of the odd from early 1930's Cartoonland. It's primitive. weirdly imaginative and weirdly compelling; saw the audience at one of the Psychotronix Film Festivals give the 1933 cartoon, as well as Eshbaugh's The Wizard Of Oz, a rousing response.
The only cartoon to feature a caricature of Oscar Levant and also spoof the Information Please radio show, THE HERRING MURDER MYSTERY is another favorite. Dun Roman, later of Jay Ward Productions, directed this wonderfully odd musical one-shot with originality and panache.
Another very odd one-shot from the Columbia Color Rhapsodies series, THE DISILLUSIONED BLUEBIRD, is a calypso musical. The main character is a jerk - that may be why this cartoon is a one-shot - but the music carries the day.
Less musical but also clever and definitely odd is the film noir spoof Flora, just one of a slew of very odd cartoons written with perverse glee by wacky Screen Gems Studio storymen Cal Howard and Dave Monahan.
Do we have favorite post-1940's cartoons that precede Futurama and the first SNL bits by Robert Smigel's TV Funhouse but follow Super Chicken, Tom Slick and George Of The Jungle? Yes. Several were produced by Marv "Bambi Meets Godzilla" Newland and International Rocketship Limited.
Especially love SING BEAST SING, which features excellent work by several all-time favorite animators and a tres cool soundtrack by Chess Records stalwart Willie Mabon. Is the character of Vern a young Tex Avery?
The music is just one of the amazing singles Willie waxed for Chess way back when.
How can one follow a fabulous cartoon like that? By going to Chicago, not for Second City troupe improv comedy, modern jazz (especially The Art Ensemble), Cubs baseball or Da Bears but for some serious blues, courtesy of the great Willie Mabon and Hubert Sumlin.
Willie and Odie Payne toured Europe and rocked the house wherever they played back in the 1970's.
The 2025 edition of the Noir City film festival at Oakland's Grand Lake Theatre is on and pays tribute to the genre's formidable femme fatales, many of whom were interviewed onstage by festival programmer/curator/film preservationist and Czar Of Noir Eddie Muller. TCM's Alicia Malone (seen in the Noir City 22 poster) co-hosts this weekend's shows.
Noir City returns to Oakland's spectacular art deco movie palace, the Grand Lake Theater on 3200 Grand Avenue, with a great lineup of classic movies.
Today we pay tribute to one of the most important figures in 20th century pop culture: vocalist, songwriter, producer, civil rights activist and recording/music publishing entrepreneur Sam Cooke (January 22, 1931- December 11, 1964).
Second only to Elvis Presley as a maker of hit records at the end of the 1950s and early 1960s, Sam Cooke was poised at the time of his death to be one of the kings of show business.
How big was the Cooke phenomenon in the late 1950's and early 1960's?
He appeared multiple times on THE TONIGHT SHOW (in this instance on February 7, 1964).
Here's Sam with fellow titan of early rock, pop and soul Jackie Wilson.
Cooke was also a passionate advocate on the front lines in the civil rights movement.
This is reflected powerfully in Cooke's best known and most covered song, A Change Is Gonna Come.
Sam Cooke began his career as the star of the top gospel ensemble The Soul Stirrers and would be among the few to successfully transition from gospel to r&b and pop.
The following interview with Dick Clark indicates the direction Sam Cooke was going in at the time of his death, as head of a record company that produced hits with a roster of artists as Berry Gordy had begun doing at Motown/Tamla Records.
Sam had been running his own L.A. label (SAR Records), as Curtis Mayfield would do a few years later, as part of a team that ran Curtom Records, but did not live to see his ambitious expansion plans come to fruition. One wonders if organized crime and sleazy music industry individuals joined forces to make sure Sam did not succeed A.K.A. rub him out.
There are a several documentaries, all worth watching and more than a bit sad, on the life, times and tragic demise of Sam Cooke.
The sordid circumstances of the still unsolved murder of Sam Cooke at the seedy Hacienda Motel couldn't be more fishy if they were a massive catch (no doubt including flounder) left out in the sun to stink. Why there was NO investigation, we can only imagine.
In closing, will spotlight the Sam Cooke recordings. A favorite record of the r&b aficionados at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog is Cooke's classic Live At The Harlem Square Club.
While Cooke's music tended to be more in a pop vein than soul, the incendiary sounds of Live At The Harlem Square Club rock the house with blazing r&b and look forward to Otis Redding's devastating set from the 1967 Monterey Pop festival.
While thinking of those affected by the Southern California wildfires and suggesting Operation USA as a good place to donate, we turn to the topic of today's post, cartoons appropriate for National Milk Day, an event originated in India and now set on January 11. We'll start with Toby The Pup.
While perusing the Borden Dairy Products Commercial Archive on YouTube, we continue with a cartoon which is not a milk commercial per se but got a second life when Borden's Milk re-issued it. Produced by Ted Eshbaugh's studio for RKO Radio Pictures as part of its Rainbow Parade series, The Sunshine Makers is an all-time favorite and a most jaunty tale of happy dwarves and sunshine milk which instantly cures depression and literally glows. What's in that sunshine milk and how can I procure some?
There actually is an ad for SUNSHINE MILK. . . and it's powdered milk, something familiar to those of us who grew up in the 1950's and 1960's and greeted the product without as much as a hint of anticipation or enthusiasm.
Since this blog showcased animated commercials last October 19, October 12, October 4 and September 9, here are a bunch of ads appropriate for National Milk Day, beginning with American Dairy Association and its little animated BUTTER fellow that resembles a piece of bread.
Responding to tough guy Pet Milk Pete, must admit that evaporated and/or condensed milk is pretty darn good for use in pumpkin pie filling.
This cheesiest of cheesy ads hails from New Zealand.
In closing, here are some stylish John & Faith Hubley Storyboard ads in the Cartoon Modern tradition.
The new year begins and with that we celebrate the natal anniversary of one of this blog's favorite silver screen comediennes, the very funny, talented, genuinely charming and unfairly maligned Marion Davies, born Marion Cecilia Douras in Brooklyn, NY on January 3, 1897.
It would take dozens of blog posts to scratch the surface of her life and times, relationship with newspaper publishing magnate/tycoon William Randolph Hearst, numerous movies and even lengthier list of philanthropic endeavors.
For a quick reminder of how funny she was, here's Marion, doing impersonations of fellow silent movie divas Mae Murray, Lillian Gish and Pola Negri in THE PATSY (1928).
Marion crammed two or three eventful lifetimes into her 64 years on this earth - Ziegfeld Follies showgirl, movie actress, humanitarian, San Simeon "hostess with the mostest," businesswoman/entrepreneur, activist and founder of The Marion Davies Children's Clinic.
Thankfully, Lara Gabrielle's book Captain of Her Soul: The Life of Marion Davies has done as detailed and thorough a job as humanly possible chronicling those many roles on and offscreen. It even got a most favorable review from Will Hearst, the grandson of William Randolph Hearst.
Hearst a.k.a. "W.R." launched Davies in movies in 1917 and preferred her as a grande dame in epic period pieces. On one hand, Hearst made it possible for Marion to be a movie star. On the other hand, in both strongly resisting featuring her in comedies and interfering with productions, Hearst also hindered the progress of her silver screen career.
That said, When Knighthood Was in Flower and Little Old New York were the biggest box-office hits of 1922-23. Hearst's hunches regarding the degree of Marion's onscreen charisma and star power turned out to be correct.
Beverly of Graustark, The Cardboard Lover, Enchantment, The Bride's Play, Lights of Old Broadway, Zander The Great, Yolanda, Beauty's Worth, The Restless Sex, The Red Mill, and Tillie The Toiler were also box-office hits.
This writer and silent film fan is partial to her end of silent era comedies directed by King Vidor, The Patsy and Show People - and extends big time thanks to the San Francisco Silent Film Festival for providing opportunities to see Marion get laughs on the big screen in these two terrific films.
The Patsy and Show People, both directed by King Vidor, are hilarious!
Marion co-stars with the larger-than-life Marie Dressler in the former and wry comic actor William Haines in the latter. Why Irving Thalberg did not propose a potential Marion Davies - Marie Dressler - Buster Keaton MGM feature as a possibility we'll never know.
Show People remains one of Marion's most memorable starring vehicles.
Marion followed her performances in The Red Mill, Tillie The Toiler, The Patsy and Show People with a successful transition to talkies, which included several musicals. She is among the numerous MGM stars to appear in The Hollywood Revue Of 1929, beginning at about 50 minutes, after Laurel & Hardy's segment.
Another celebrated pre-Code film, the Marion Davies vehicle It's A Wise Child, exists in a 35mm nitrate print at UCLA, but, due to rights issues, has been entirely out of circulation for decades. Asked the expert, Davies biographer and historian Lara Gabrielle about this and learned that it still can't be shown publicly because, while the rights still technically belong to the heirs of the fellow who wrote the play the screenplay was adapted from. . . there are no heirs.
It's A Wise Child was adapted from a play by Laurence E. Johnson, who died in 1933. Johnson's estate, however, still owns the rights to the movie. This, rather than risque content would appear to be why it was not among the films not chosen when the Metro-Goldwyn Mayer package of features was released to television. The account from one person who was seen UCLA's 35mm print, Nick Langdon of the Marion Davies tribute website, it is among her very best films.
Maybe this excellent Davies comedy will eventually be extricated from the legal entanglements and rights Twilight Zone and made available to the classic film loving public. Then again, maybe not. One would hope the rights issues could be resolved, 94 years after It's A Wise Child was produced.
She co-starred with then up-and-coming star Bing Crosby in one of his first feature films, Going Hollywood.
Marion Davies was the Turner Classic Movies star of the month a few years back and it's great that the intros and outros to her starring vehicles are still up on YouTube.
Thanks, Alicia Malone and TCM!
Marion finished her career at Warner Brothers, retiring from movies in 1937.
Her last film was Ever Since Eve (1937), co-starring Robert Montgomery and ace comedy actors Patsy Kelly, Frank McHugh, Allen Jenkins and Louise Fazenda.
Marion Davies' zany sensibility would be a forerunner of the screwball comedy style that emerged as she was finishing her career in the mid-1930's.
Thankfully, there are very good films of hers, silents and talkies, available on Blu-ray and DVD. For more, check out the documentary Captured on Film: The True Story of Marion Davies (2001), which includes interviews with biographer Fred Lawrence Guiles and the late Cari Beauchamp, expert on Ms. Davies' friend and frequent collaborator Frances Marion.
This and the biographies by Fred Lawrence Guiles and Lara Gabrielle go a long way to dispel the myths, misinformation, lies and b.s. - thanks, Mank - about Marion Davies, who is finally getting her due for her many contributions to the art of motion pictures more than 60 years after her passing.
At least Orson Welles tried to correct the wrongs done by the otherwise marvelous Citizen Kane by writing the forward to the 1975 book of interviews with Marion, and restore her place among the great comediennes of motion pictures.
Closing note: the second Mrs. Charlie Kane, Susan Alexander, was based on horticulturist and incredibly unsuccessful diva Ganna Walska, at one point the high-profile mistress of Chicago press tycoon/industrialist Harold McCormick.
