What does Halloween mean to the guy who writes this blog? David S. Pumpkins! Don't know why this guy cracks me up, but he does. . . only every time, without fail! Kenan Thompson, Kate McKinnon and Beck Bennett, not surprisingly, shine in supporting roles.
Why post David S. Pumpkins two years in a row on Halloween? Because we MUST - David S. Pumpkins and his two dancin' skeleton assistants, played by SNL writer/performers Mikey Day and Bobby Moynihan, inevitably get this blogmeister at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog ROFL! "Ah'm David Pumpkins, man! Any questions?"
There was an animated David S. Pumpkins Halloween Special made in 2017. It's not bad, albeit not anywhere near as funny as the previous two sketches. However, you do get the excellent comedienne and SNL stalwart Cecily Strong, along with Tom Hanks, among the voice talents.
On what day can it be considered a good idea to both watch David S. Pumpkins AND post a film in which comedian, actor and prolific cartoon voice artist Billy Bletcher is chased by a giant lobster? Halloween, of course!
It's no surprise to readers of Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog that we're big fans of Halloween cartoons.
Produced in 1942 for MGM by Rudy Ising, the musical cartoon BATS IN THE BELFRY is, while not at all scary, very odd and very enjoyable. Sounds like at least one of the three goofball bats was voiced by the ubiquitous Pinto Colvig.
Since we've posted numerous Halloween classics from Fleischer Studios, including BOO, BOO THEME SONG, a skeleton and ghost-filled 1933 "follow the bouncing ball" Screen Song, the brilliant 1934 Popeye opus SHIVER MY TIMBERS and the super-surreal Talkartoons SWING YOU SINNERS and MYSTERIOUS MOSE before, let's find a Halloween-themed Popeye never posted before on Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog.
Here's one: Popeye in GHOSKS IS THE BUNK (1939)
Is there something else we absolutely MUST do, while watching yet more spooky cartoons - or, as in the case of the following Columbia Color Rhapsody cartoon produced by the Ub Iwerks Studio, not that spooky - to get in the spirit of the holiday - and wishing all a Happy Halloween?
Yes - close today's Halloween post with a Count Floyd Monster Chiller Horror Theatre sketch from SCTV.
When asked the question who is your favorite comedian and who makes you laugh the hardest the answer, in a tie with Laurel & Hardy, is Charley Chase (1893-1940).
Along with L&H and Our Gang, he starred in very funny short subjects series produced in the 1920's and 1930's by Hal Roach Studios.
Charley, A.K.A. Charles Parrott, was the brother of director/comedian James Parrott and worked steadily in front of and behind the camera, beginning in 1913-1914, at Christie Comedies, Mack Sennett's Keystone, King Bee, Fox and Hal Roach Studios.
Charley was a brilliant comedian who could sing, dance, act, write and direct.
Charley Chase began directing with Sennett in 1915 and largely stayed behind the camera, piloting Snub Pollard's absurdist 2-reelers and contributing (with Robert MacGowan and Tom McNamara) to originating the Our Gang series, until beginning starring in 1-reelers for Hal Roach in 1924.
Charley is best known today for his role as the obnoxious, loudmouthed conventioneer in the 1933 Laurel & Hardy feature SONS OF THE DESERT.
In what unfortunately, with his untimely passing in 1940, ended up being a short career, Chase starred in numerous short subjects, while also directing other comics, from The Three Stooges to Smith & Dale to Lloyd Hamilton to the Hal Roach Studios "female L&H" team of Thelma Todd & Zasu Pitts. He directed comedy short subjects through his late career stint in 1937-1940 at the Columbia Shorts Department.
Chase's silents and early talkies produced by Hal Roach Studios crack me up!
The silent comedies Charley starred in, co-directed and wrote with Leo McCarey in the mid-1920's are certainly among the funniest ever made.
These are the classic comedy films that, no matter how many times I have seen them, get me ROFL!
Chase made a smooth transition to talkies and brought his musical talents and songs to the hilarious 2-reelers.
One of my favorites bits is the "asparagus" routine in YOUNG IRONSIDES (1932), featuring a recalcitrant green vegetable and, as Charley's co-star, the winsome Muriel Evans.
Collectors of classic movies, way back in the pre-VHS, Beta, DVD and Blu-ray days, much enjoyed the 16mm prints of Charley Chase comedies (silents and talkies) available through Blackhawk Films.
Ran 'em over and over and over. The following Chase classic, THE HASTY MARRIAGE (1931), co-stars Laurel & Hardy nemesis Jimmie Finlayson and the Gracie Allen-ish comedienne Gay Seabrook.
Charley Chase's patented comedy of embarrassment - a.k.a. "whatever the worst thing I fear can happen to me is about to happen - and worse than imagined" - translates quite well to talkies.
We thank Blackhawk Films for making these classic 2-reel comedies available on 16mm back in the 1960's and 1970's.
Charley played four roles in the appropriately titled 1934 short subject FOUR PARTS.
Every year on October 20, I make sure to thank Charley for the laughs and watch a few of his films.
I also tip the battered Max Linder top hat to the guy who designed many posters promoting Chase's Hal Roach comedies, the great Al Hirschfeld.
We're thrilled and delighted to have lived long enough to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio opening in Hollywood, after an early stretch making Newman's Laugh-O-Grams in Kansas City. We're glad we got to see Leslie Iwerks, Ub's granddaughter and author (with John Kenworthy) of The Hand Behind the Mouse: An Intimate Biography of Ub Iwerks, do a presentation on Ub and Walt many moons ago:
We are saddened that two of the best cartoonologists and Walt Disney Productions historians, Jim Korkis and Russell Merritt, have passed and presumably found the drawing board and screening room in the Happy Hunting Ground. Have a hunch that Russell knows where the pristine 35mm nitrate prints in the next world are!
Today's post pays tribute to the early days of the Disney Brothers studio.
Walt and Roy moved with the Disney family to Kansas City, Missouri in 1911. The first Disney Brothers studio was located at 31st and First Avenue in Kansas City.
This is where Walt began his illustrious career as an animation producer.
The Disney Brothers studio relocated to the West Coast and began making cartoons in Walt and Roy's uncle Robert's garage at 4406 Kingswell Avenue in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles . . . on October 16, 1923.
In the same year in which Buster Keaton's Three Ages, Charlie Chaplin's The Pilgrim, Harold Lloyd's Why Worry and the Otto Messmer cartoon classic Felix in Hollywood were released to movie theaters, the Disney brothers studio, now in Los Feliz, began following Alice's Wonderland with 56 Alice comedies, combining animation with live-action. Alice's Wonderland, the unreleased Newmans Laugh-O-Gram, turned out to be the series pilot.
Alice comedies ran until the Disney studio started making Oswald The Lucky Rabbit cartoons for Universal Pictures in 1927.
Alice Comedies - several very entertaining entries poste don the YouTube Channel of Craig Davison, who has posted numerous animation rarities from the silent era.
Wikipedia elaborates: Kingswell Avenue in Los Feliz was home to the studio from 1923 to 1926. Kansas City, Missouri natives Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney founded Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in Los Angeles in 1923 and got their start producing a series of silent Alice Comedies short films featuring a live-action child actress in an animated world. The Alice Comedies were distributed by Margaret J. Winkler's Winkler Pictures, which later also distributed a second Disney short subject series, the all-animated Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, through Universal Pictures starting in 1927.
Upon relocating to California, the Disney brothers initially started working in their uncle Robert Disney's garage at 4406 Kingswell Avenue, then, in October 1923, formally launched their studio in a small office on the rear side of a real estate agency's office at 4651 Kingswell Avenue. In February 1924, the studio moved next door to office space of its own at 4649 Kingswell Avenue. In 1925, Disney put down a deposit on a new location at 2719 Hyperion Avenue in the nearby Silver Lake neighborhood, which came to be known as the Hyperion Studio to distinguish it from the studio's other locations, and, in January 1926, the studio moved
there and took on the name Walt Disney Studio.
Meanwhile, after the first year's worth of Oswalds, Walt Disney attempted to renew his contract with Winkler Pictures, but Charles Mintz, who had taken over Margaret Winkler's business after marrying her,
wanted to force Disney to accept a lower advance payment for each Oswald short. Disney refused and, as Universal owned the rights to Oswald rather than Disney, Mintz set up his own animation studio to produce Oswald cartoons.
Ultimately, the joke would be on Mintz, who was subsequently informed that he didn't actually own the lucky rabbit. Ozzie was actually owned by Universal Pictures and the character would continue well into the sound era, thanks to the Walter Lantz studio.
Walt Disney's pre-Mickey Mouse cartoons from the 1920's are covered in depth in Russell Merritt and J.B. Kaufman's superlative and highly recommended Walt in Wonderland: The Silent Films of Walt Disney book.
As far as that lucky rabbit goes, well, what can the Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog gang say other than we LOVE Ozzie!
The following video of Oswald cartoons feature excellent commentary tracks by Mark Kausler, who knows more about animation history and the technique/practice of animation than anybody.
The Ozzie cartoons, notable for stellar work by such animation legends as Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising, Friz Freleng and Rollin "Ham" Hamilton are both enjoyable and fascinating, with early examples of what would turn up a couple of years later with Disney's Mickey Mouse and the early WB Looney Tunes cartoons.
Am partial to the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit series over the Alice Comedies, partly due to the more advanced animation in the 1927-1928 series. David A. Bossert, J.B. Kaufman (Foreword) and David Gerstein (Archival Support) wrote a terrific book devoted to the Disney Oswalds.
It's still available and a tad pricey, but well worth it for those who love animation history, silent cartoons and the evolution of Disney.
For the Disney Studio, it would be on to the successful Mickey and Silly Symphonies from here. Former Disney animators such as Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising formed their own studios.
"Working with Monk brought me close to a musical architect of the highest order. I felt I learned from him in every way--through the senses, theoretically, technically. I would talk to Monk about musical problems, and he would sit at the piano and show me the answers just by playing them. I could watch him play and find out the things I wanted to know. Also, I could see a lot of things that I didn't know about at all."
- John Coltrane (1960, in Downbeat Magazine)
Have a favorite song? Well, here's one of many by Thelonious Sphere Monk, born on October 10, 1917. It will be a few years before Friday the 13th falls on a Friday again, so here are a few renditions of Monk's catchy (yet very difficult to play) Friday the 13th.
There's a holiday for all 365 days in the year now - and it turns out that October 6 is Mad Hatter Day, which invariably gets me thinking of the following cartoon. The Mad Hatter (1940) has nothing to do whatsoever with Lewis Carroll but exemplifies the wonderful strangeness of the Charles Mintz/Screen Gems studio. This bizarre cartoon about a day in the life of an office worker AND insane hat makers was made by Sid Marcus and Arthur Davis, a few years before they both ended up at Warner Brothers (Davis as a top animator for Frank Tashlin and Friz Freleng).
The Walter Lantz studio created a surprising number of excellent classic cartoons, especially during the 1940's stretch when Shamus Culhane and Dick Lundy were directors. Among them, The Mad Hatter is one of this cartoon aficionado's favorite Woody Woodpecker adventures and includes stellar work by the legendary Disney animator Freddie Moore.
While October 6th being Mad Hatter Day remains news to me, it's not a bad idea, as cinematic attempts to realize Lewis Carroll's stories date to the very beginning of movies. There were two Alice In Wonderland movies BEFORE 1920!
My favorite cinematic version is still the enjoyably grotesque, dreamlike and surreal 1933 Alice In Wonderland, produced by Paramount Pictures, directed by Norman Z. McLeod and starring Charlotte Henry as Alice. LOVE IT!
There is even a cartoon segment, The Walrus and The Carpenter sequence, beginning at 3:16. It was animated, strangely enough NOT by Max and Dave Fleischer's studio, the producers of Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons for Paramount, but by the Harman-Ising Studio, led by Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising and Friz Freleng, who cranked out Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies for Leon Schlesinger at Warner Brothers.
Paramount's 1933 version of Alice In Wonderland may have played theatrical bills with the Fleischer Studio's very entertaining riff on Alice, Betty In Blunderland. It's one of the last Betty Boop cartoons released theatrically before strict enforcement of the Production Code hit the gal "made of pen and ink who could win you with a wink" like a ton of bricks in July 1934.
Never to be outdone, ESPECIALLY by the Fleischer Studio, the Walt Disney Studio, producers of the mid-1920's Alice In Cartoonland series (which is more reminiscent of Paul Terry's Aesop's Fables than Lewis Carroll) tackled Alice In Wonderland twice. 15 years before the 1951 feature, Disney made a top-notch Mickey Mouse cartoon with Mick taking on Lewis Carroll, Thru The Mirror. This is on the Walt Disney Treasures - Mickey Mouse In Color DVD collection, but, unfortunately, not available on Blu-ray; it appears Disney is more interested in selling their cartoons via HD streaming than on Blu-ray.
Walt Disney Productions' 1951 feature length take on Alice In Wonderland is an odd and very busy version of the Lewis Carroll universe dominated by the voice work of Ed Wynn and Jerry Colonna.
Disney's Alice was not the only late 1940's - early 1950's animated version of Alice In Wonderland. Animator, puppeteer, artist, and pioneer of stop-motion Louis 'Lou' Bunin (28 March 1904 – 17 February 1994) tackled Thru The Looking Glass. Do we love the creative stop-motion of Lou Bunin? Yes! Carol Marsh played the lead role of Alice, in a Wonderland populated by a cast of puppets Bunin created.
Stop-motion fans, there is a Louis Bunin Alice In Wonderland playlist. Many of us curators and film collectors have 16mm prints of the Castle Films excerpt from Bunin's Alice.
Which Alice In Wonderland movie is the most mind-blowing and creepiest of them all, much farther down both a rabbit hole and through several warped layers of looking glass than the silent and animated versions? That would be Jan Svankmajer's hallucinogenic Alice!
Svankmajer's Alice is definitely not made for children and at times recalls the equally mind-blowing work of fellow surreal stop-motion genius Ladislaw Starewicz.
There are many more Alice In Wonderland movies and animated shows, but must stop at some point or otherwise will be writing this post for the next three weeks! Hanna-Barbera produced a 1966 version of Alice In Wonderland featuring H-B's customary excellent voice work throughout. Alice is played by Janet Waldo, voice of Judy Jetson. It's entertaining and includes a fun cameo by Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble but makes this cartoon fan pine for Jay Ward Productions or H-B cartoons from a few years earlier. On the plus side, there's Sammy Davis, Jr. as the cheshire cat.
Sounds like sipping some hot tea and watching these aforementioned movies is a good way to spend Mad Hatter Day!
A felicitous followup to today's plunge into the rabbit hole and through the looking glass shall be two outstanding Sunday screenings, big fun for East Coast cartoon and silent comedy fans. Tommy José Stathes presents 16mm Cartoons: Rude, Sexy, & Risqué, randy cartoon fun for mature audiences beginning at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, October 8 at Roxy Cinema TriBeCa on 2 Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. Buy tickets here. On Sunday evening at 6:00 p.m. silent film historian Nelson Hughes presents That Slapstick Show: Silent Comedy Treasures From the Library of Congress, vol. 5, at QED Astoria, 27-16 23rd Avenue, Astoria, Queens.
In closing this post for Mad Hatter Day, here is a brilliant John Tenniel "Tea Party" illustration and one of the best Lewis Carroll inspired songs this writer has even heard.
That would be White Rabbit, performed by Grace Slick and the Jefferson Starship at San Francisco's Winterland on November 8, 1975. My guess is that the Jefferson Starship band members would have enjoyed Jan Svankmajer's take on Alice In Wonderland immensely.
