Tomorrow Night: Cool Animation On TCM

Turner Classic Movies will devote an entire evening to classic cartoons in their Monday night presentation, Back To The Drawing Board.



Animator-documentary filmmaker-historian John Canemaker, author of Winsor McCay: His Life And Art, introduces The Cartoons Of Winsor McCay, featuring Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), Little Nemo (1911), How a Mosquito Operates (1912), The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918), Bug Vaudeville (1921), The Pet (1921), The Flying House (1921), The Centaurs (1921), Gertie on Tour (1921) and Flip's Circus (1921).



Silent era animation expert Tommy José Stathes of The Bray Animation Project introduces a program on the 100th Anniversary Of Bray Studios. Cartoon rarities include: The Artist's Dream (1913), How Animated Cartoons are Made (1919), Farmer Alfafa Sees New York (1916), The Circus (1920), The Mad Locomotive (1922), A Fitting Gift (1920), The Best Mouse Loses (1920), Colonel Heeza Liar, Detective (1923), Bobby Bump's Pup Gets the Flea-Enza (1919) and Dinky Doodle in Lost and Found (1926).



We at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog adore the cartoons of the Van Beuren Studio and are thrilled to see that the guy who has been personally responsible for restoring so many of them, who literally tracked down 35mm nitrate prints of Aesop's Fables, Don & Waffles/Tom & Jerry, Cubby Bear and Little King cartoons for DVD transfers, Steve Stanchfield of Thunderbean Animation, will be interviewed on TCM by Robert Osborne.



The Animation From Van Beuren Studios lineup includes the Aesop's Fables The Fly's Bride (1929), A Swiss Trick (1931), Silvery Moon (1933) and Rough On Rats (1933), the Burt Gillett Toddle Tales cartoon A Little Bird Told Me (1934), and three classics - The Wizard Of Oz (1933), The Sunshine Makers (1935) and Pastry Town Wedding (1934) - by 1934-1935 Van Beuren Studio director and independent cartoon producer Ted Eshbaugh.

Some of the aforementioned films are on a favorite Thunderbean compilation of Monsieur Blogmeister, the Technicolor Dreams and Black and White Nightmares DVD/Blu-ray combo.



Lotte Reiniger's take on the Arabian Nights, The Adventures Of Prince Achmed and the first feature by the Fleischer Studio, Gulliver's Travels (1939), will wrap up the evening.



If this TCM presentation leaves the animation-crazed heart yearning for more, Steve has a YouTube channel that is a veritable cornucopia of classic cartoon coolness.