Friday, June 17, 2022
Back From Hiatus - with Ub Iwerks and Flip The Frog
Returning from a calamitous and illness-filled hiatus, this blogger yearns for good cheer and levity. Thankfully, the 2022 NBA champion Golden State Warriors have brought a heaping helping of the former; extending big time kudos, bravos and huzzahs to the W's on winning four championships in eight years with joy, hard work and style. As far as the latter goes, IT'S SHOWTIME and nothing creates levity like BIG SCREEN FUN!
And, invariably, movie fun accompanied by unhealthy food!
Since SHOWTIME means plenty of quality time spent with classic cartoons, the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog is thrilled to hear that Steve Stanchfield and Thunderbean Animation have been making excellent progress on the upcoming Blu-ray release featuring the Ub Iwerks Studio's rowdy Flip The Frog.
Making his froggy silver screen debut a decade before Tom & Jerry, Flip was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's first entry in the cartoon universe.
All 38 Flip cartoons will be on the Blu-ray.
No doubt a certain factor we 21st century audiences love about the series - the unabashedly randy pre-Code part of the equation - displeased the MGM brass no end.
In particular, Soda Squirt is not just one of the ruder, nastier Hollywood cartoons of 1933, but the only one to feature both a way over-the-top caricature of way over-the-top character actor Tyrell Davis and a sight gag involving a melting, dripping ice cream cone.
Is there any joke or storyline the Ub Iwerks Studio crew won't do because it's in incredibly bad taste? No - absolutely not.
The completed Flip restorations that have been posted on YouTube thus far look fantastic.
You know you're a diehard classic movie buff when you actually watch YouTube to see original theatrical titles from 1930's movies; not the complete films - the titles.
Since the Flip cartoons were largely seen on 16mm film via prints by Blackhawk Films, Commonwealth Films and Official Films, these original MGM titles are brand new to us in 2022.
Love these cool titles, seen by 21st century classic movie fans for the first time, featuring the fabulous MGM Lion.
Steve and Thunderbean Animation are among the few who love and relish Great Depression-era animated cartoons as much as we at this blog do.
Enjoyed Thunderbean Video's last plunge into the Ub Iwerks Studio catalog, into the series that followed Flip the Frog.
That was the 2015 Willie Whopper set, chock full of incredble cartoons.
Alas, Willie, the tell-tale tellin' Baron Munchausen kid, would not take the moviegoing public by storm, as Felix and Mickey did.
Nonetheless, Willie Whopper, the kid with the wild and unfettered imagination a la Charley Bowers, is the central figure in a bunch of highly inventive and enjoyable cartoons.
As is the case with Flip, the Willie vehicles are unabashedly wacky, undeniably randy and closer to the cartoon universe of the Fleischer Studio than to Disney, partly due to the wildly imaginative animation of ex-Fleischer (and future Disney) animator Grim Natwick.
The Flip The Frog and Willie Whopper cartoons were lots of fun, but not interested in "cuteness" in any way, shape or form and this may have sunk them with 1930's movie audiences that wanted something at least somewhat cuddly and adorable.
The suits at MGM couldn't have been pleased.
Again, nine decades later, the weird, wacky and surreal qualities of the Willie Whopper and Flip the Frog adventures endear them to animation fans and classic movie buffs. . . as much as the irreverent cartoons became anathema to those at MGM who signed the contract with Ub and Pat Powers.
To a lesser degree, this sensibility would extend to the Iwerks Studio's Comicolor Fairytales series.
The Iwerks studio would hold on for a few more years after the Flip the Frog and Willie Whopper series (and, most importantly, the contract for theatrical distribution by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) ended.
None of the other major studios offered to distribute the Ub Iwerks Studio's ComiColor cartoons, so P.A. Powers' Celebrity Productions marketed the series using the state’s rights system of selling to regional distributors.
The Comicolor Fairytale series would not have the advantage of big studio distribution and, thus, could not be booked into anywhere near as many movie theaters as the Flips and Willies did.
With the lion's share of the Comicolor Fairytale series being in the public domain, animation presenters, film collectors and archivists have frequently featured these cartoons in screenings.
Many in the series possess originality and a fair share of clever and inventive moments.
Some Comicolors, such as Summertime (1935), revisit the Silly Symphony format quite successfully, presenting more a tribute and homage to the 1929 Disney cartoons Iwerks, with music director Carl W. Stalling, did so much to create and develop than an out-and-out imitation (a la the mid-1930's Merrie Melodies and Happy Harmonies, made by Ub's ex-Disney mates, Friz Freleng, Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising).
The following, one of the very best of the Comicolor series, The Brave Tin Soldier, manages to combine a genuine fairytale with a surprisingly adult storyline.
How adult? See 6:40 - 6:42, two seconds which always elicit gasps whenever this cartoon is screened.
The penultimate entry from the Comicolor series would be the otherworldly and dreamlike - no, make that downright nightmarish - BALLOON LAND a.k.a. THE PIN CUSHION MAN.
Happily for animation buffs, a Blu-ray collection of the Comicolor Fairytale series is forthcoming.
Even the frequently maligned and overlooked Iwerks Columbia cartoons from late in his studio's ten year run have their charms and in this animation aficionado's opinion rank among the very best of the Columbia Color Rhapsodies.
Yes, they can at times be in pre-1950 style bad taste, but not nearly to the degree that the pre-Code Flip the Frog cartoons are.
An added plus: stellar contributions from Mel Blanc and other ace voice artists.
One noteworthy Ub Iwerks Columbia cartoon that is quite striking and imaginative is THE HORSE ON THE MERRY GO ROUND (1938). Again, the aforementioned edge, weirdness and utter lack of cuteness that made these not a hit with 1930's moviegoers ends up a factor in the Iwerks cartoons' favor in the 21st century.
After over a month spent unhappily "adulting" in hospitals and doctors' offices, along with such not-fun experiences as insurance disenrollment, count this blogmeister happy to be back posting, hopefully every week to ten days.
Topic of the next post: a YouTube channel, which appears to be spearheaded by historian and author Jane Fleischer, devoted to the terrific cartoons of the Fleischer Studio.
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