Animation Sans Animation

As the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog eagerly awaits Game 1 of the Giants vs. Dodgers NLDS tonight and ponders how to follow posts that paid tribute to all-time comedy greats Bill Scott and Norm Macdonald, we, like Great White North/Canadian Corner hosts Bob & Doug McKenzie find ourselves just a tad stumped. . .

Eureka! We've got it! Today's post shall cover the humble beginnings of kidvid and even humbler beginnings of made-for-TV animation. Kicking off today's kidvid cornucopia, loaded with CRAP-TASTIC cartoons: a word from our sponsor!



In the very early years of what Ernie Kovacs termed "the orthicon tube," when "Uncle Miltie" Berle was Mr. Television, before the popularity of Your Show of Shows, The Colgate Comedy Hour and Broadway Open House, the very first TV series specifically for children, Howdy Doody and Cartoon TeleTales (the latter, in which children on the show were taught to draw, was covered at length in Kevin Scott Collier's book) aired.

Both shows proved extremely popular and exerted a significant impact on the rapidly growing medium.

Howdy received the ultimate tribute: to be spoofed by Ernie Kovacs!



The Howdy Doody show, Andy Kaufman's favorite, did not feature animated cartoons early in its run, but did include clips from 1920's Hal Roach and Mack Sennett comedies as the regular "Howdy Doody Olde Time Movie" feature. This may well have created the first wave of Baby Boomer silent era comedy aficionados!

In their original 1940's incarnations, these shows did not - well not just yet - spotlight animation (old or new). Soon enough, the need for lots and lots of material to fill the programming hours meant the return of 20-year old theatrical cartoons, which created both vivid nightmares and lifelong animation buffs in the first wave of Baby Boomers.



While such studios as Van Beuren and Terrytoons cranked out cartoons in mass quantities and at blinding speed, their prodigious output was not enough to entirely fill the many hours of kidvid programming.



The medium was increasingly hungry for material, bringing to mind the question of how an enterprising film distributor/animation producer can meet that demand? Here's how - produce new animation with ABSOLUTELY NO MOVEMENT WHATSOEVER! One example of animation without actual animation was the Telecomics series a.k.a. NBC Comics. These were quite literally comics, still frames.



Not to be outdone, Sam Singer, the David O. Selznick of TV cartoon drek and described by Jerry Beck as the "Ed Wood of animation", produced The Adventures Of Paddy the Pelican! In full Thomas Ince fashion, the series was. . . Created by Sam Singer. . . Directed by Sam Singer. . . Voices by Sam Singer. Six episodes were produced in 1950.



Wikipedia elaborates on the Paddy the Pelican's non-animated comic strip adventures: This show appeared on the ABC network in the fall of 1950, but for only one month. The show aired on the ABC television network weekdays between 5:15 and 5:30pm from September 11, 1950 to October 13, 1950.

The show is noted for its pencil tests that were never finalized to the actual animation, reused animation, rambling and apparently improvised voiceovers by the creator himself, muffled and poorly synchronized soundtrack made by an organ, and general low-budget problems.

The only music is a few chords played on an organ, although the title card is accompanied by a man making noises apparently intended to sound like a pelican squawking.



Most of the characters were voiced by Singer, however one character was voiced by an uncredited actress.

Sam Singer continued to make TV series well into the 1960's. These included the execrable Bucky & Pepito cartoons, described accurately by author and animation expert Harry McCracken as having “set a standard for awfulness that no contemporary TV cartoon has managed to surpass."

Is it possible to produce an even worse cartoon than Pow Wow The Indian Boy, which periodically found its way into the Captain Kangaroo TV show in 1956-1958 and subsequently was syndicated? The short answer, in addition to Bucky & Pepito, is yes. Think Mighty Mr. Titan and Big World Of Little Adam.

Pow Wow featured even less movement, humor and creativity than a Scooby Doo episode, but unlike the later and inexplicably popular Hanna-Barbera series, did not catch on in a big way with the kidvid audience. At least, unlike unsold Sam Singer Productions pilots, it survived long enough for a couple of dozen cartoons to be produced.

Unlike the Scooby Doo series, gems from Sam Singer Productions did periodically land in "psychotronic" and "worst cartoons ever" screenings many decades later - and were invariably shown right before intermission.



None other than Warner Bros. cartoonmeister Chuck Jones termed many of the made-for-TV toons "illustrated radio" - and there were positive and negative examples of this. It all started in the 1940's with the first cartoon series produced specifically for TV, the witty Crusader Rabbit.

Jay Ward and Alex Anderson devised the formula for how to make entertaining cartoons quickly and cheaply; write exceptionally funny scripts (closer to Bob & Ray than to Mickey Mouse) that appeal to all ages and then spend the budget hiring the best available voice actors.



Crusader Rabbit, as lively and funny as it was, mostly consisted of still frames. Except for bits in the opening and closing titles, animation as such was mostly nonexistent, save an occasional walk cycle sequence. Still, the comedy writing and clever storylines by Anderson, the excellent voice work by Lucille Bliss and the series' central characters proved consistently funny.







Making the worst, most artistically and aesthetically indefensible Filmation, Hanna-Barbera or Trans-Lux made-for-TV cartoons look like Disney's Pinocchio and Fantasia by comparison would be those series produced using the patented Syncro-Vox technique, which involved superimposing live-action human lips on squared jawed ultra-macho cartoon characters.



Devised by cinematographer Edwin Gillette, the Syncro-Vox technique made possible action/adventure cartoons without actual action - both an odd variety of bang for the buck and a means for delivering lots and lots of programming at minimal cost. The surprise remains that, even as the Syncro-Vox series (Clutch Cargo, Captain Fathom, Space Angel) are definitely the artistic and spiritual descendents of Telecomics, these cartoons that comic artist and pilot Clark Haas originated for his studio, Cambria Productions, remain quite entertaining - and not just from latter-day snarky animation buffs making fun of the weird looking live-action lips.

Storylines in the Syncro-Vox cartoons effectively present comic book adventures and very likely influenced such subsequent TV series as Hanna-Barbera's Jonny Quest.



The series that's, in the inimitable Syncro-Vox non-animated adventure universe, far and away tops: sci-fi spectacular Space Angel!



The animation technique or lack of it notwithstanding, one must wonder if Gene Roddenberry ripped off any ideas for the first Star Trek series from "another exciting episode of Space Angel."



Here is the Syncro-Vox Valhalla - the advertising film for a prospective series based on the Moon Mullins comic strip! The pilot didn't sell, but there's something indescribably hilarious about it.




The plethora of cheap cheap cheap made for TV cartoon series, produced both on a minimal budget and auto pilot, included Spunky & Tadpole by Beverly Hills Productions and all the aforementioned Sam Singer Productions syndicated TV shows, including Bob Kane's Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse in 1960 and Sinbad Jr. and his Magic Belt a few years later.



And then there's arguably the worst of the worst: Trans-Lux Productions' The Mighty Hercules, stirring theme sung with gusto by Johnny Nash notwithstanding.



Ultimately, even the Canadians got into the low-budget TV cartoons act in the 1960's with the Rocket Robin Hood TV series, which aired on CBC Television from 1966 to 1969.



Produced by Krantz Films, Inc. by Toronto's Trillium Productions Limited and including contributions from American animators (and executive producers) Shamus Culhane and Ralph Bakshi, Rocket Robin Hood was both entertaining and unintentionally funny, exemplifying a certain inimitable "camp" appeal (New Sherwood Forest Asteroid? Little John built like Mr. Olympia?) and giving superheroes from Tobor the 8th Man to Space Angel to Space Ghost a run for their kidvid money.



Described in Don Markstein's Toonopedia as "medieval adventure in extremely unconvincing science fiction drag," Rocket Robin Hood brings to mind not its superhero TV-toon contemporaries but a series that started on the short-lived but hilarious Dana Carvey Show (and then subsequently on Saturday Night Live) 30 years later: TV Funhouse.

How will the writer of this blog recover from traumatic and near-lethal mass exposure to Paddy the Pelican, Bucky & Pepito, Spunky & Tadpole, Clutch Cargo, Space Angel, The Mighty Hercules and Rocket Robin Hood?



By watching the new and outstanding Tex Avery's Screwball Classics volume 3 Blu-Ray, that's how!