Just got news from Tommy Stathes, curator/presenter of Cartoon Carnival programs in New York City.
"Dear Cartoon Carnies,
As a result of unforeseen circumstances, the upcoming Carnival program has been cancelled."
We at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog are very sorry to hear this and hope Tommy is okay.
That said, we'll shall re-present last Sunday's Cartoon Carnival here on the blog, starting not with Ozzie Nelson or Ozzy Osbourne, but with Universal's Ozzy the Lucky Rabbit!
Here's the surviving footage from the 1929 Walter Lantz opus COLD TURKEY.
Next up: two cartoons, produced for release by RKO Radio Pictures in 1930-1932 and created by 1920's Fleischer Studio animators Dick Huemer, Sid Marcus and Art Davis, who were given the opportunity to "go west young man" and work for the Charles Mintz Studio: Toby The Pup.
How do we follow Toby? With more cartoons made by New York animators who didn't go to California, at least until Walt Disney hired Bill Tytla and other talented honchos from Terrytoons (as was also the case with Dick Huemer, Fleischer animator hired by Mintz in 1930 and signed by Disney in 1933).
Pondering the issue of what silver screen character the guy who writes this blog would most like to be. One answer arose from the Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies Archive: the one, the only Goopy Geer, a pre-Code cartoon luminary who, along with Felix the Cat and Droopy Dog, ranks on the short list of "coolest guy ever." Note that much of this fabulous cartoon cleverly re-uses footage from the very first Merrie Melodie, LADY PLAY YOUR MANDOLIN (1931). It's among those highly imaginative "cheaters."
Another answer would be the Otto Messmer version of Felix the Cat.
The Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival is three days of films, lectures, and fun named in honor of the man who, as co-founder of Essanay Studios with George K. Spoor, brought the movies to Niles: "Broncho Billy" Anderson. Get festival passes or advance tickets for individual shows here.
This year's Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival includes extremely rare Essanay Studio Films, tributes to Women in Film who starred for Essanay in the early days of movies, ultra-wacky comedies featuring Mack Sennett Productions headliner (and, later, an excellent and most prolific character actor) Billy Bevan, Lenticular Kodacolor home movies, a film about Greta Garbo made for Turner Classic Movies by Kevin Brownlow and Patrick Stansbury among several documentaries on classic movies (The Love Goddesses, The Movies Go West, The Western Costume Company), a presentation by Bison Studios historian and author Marc Wanamaker and a Focus on Film Collectors noting their contributions to preservation of our cinematic heritage.
Friday, July 26 7:30 p.m.
The Love Goddesses
(1965, Walter Reade-Sterling Presentation)
Director Saul J. Turrell’s exploration of sex in the movies. From the silent era and Clara Bow to Cinemascope and Marilyn Monroe, see how the movie industry’s depiction of sex has changed through the decades. Here's an excerpt from it.
Preceded by the documentary, The Western Costume Company (1951)
From the NESFM website: This noteworthy business has been a landmark in Hollywood for decades. Not only has it been supplying “Western" costumes to movie producers, but costumes, armor, weapons, medals, furniture, and props of all kinds from all periods of history. We are shown through the various department of this huge facility, and follow a beautiful and fancy costume from its inception on a designer's drawing-board through its assembly end eventual clothing of a model, along with a number of other unusual and beautiful costumes used not only by motion picture studios, but by theatrical and television producers as well.
Saturday, July 27
11:00 a.m. Walking Tour of Niles
11:00 a.m. movies (FREE program) - Broncho Billy: The First Reel Cowboy (1998, Arkansas Educational Television Network)
This short film details the career of Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson, the very first cowboy movie star. Featured in more than 200 westerns, he preceded the likes of William S. Hart and Tom Mix as the silver screen's cowboy headliner.
G. M. Anderson, as star, producer and director, was instrumental in the formation and development of the western movie genre.
The influence of Broncho Billy is still seen today in films depicting the Old West.
The museum thanks the creators of this documentary for allowing us to screen it.
The Movies Go West (1974, Bell) This film is one of the first visual explorations of the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company as it existed in Niles 100 years ago. Filmmaker Geoffrey Bell was at the helm for this project, which was narrated by Hal Angus, one of the players at the old studio and husband to the head of the scenario department, Josephine Rector. The Niles Museum's Rena Kiehn elaborates:
The Movies Go West includes invaluable images of Niles in the 1970's, including film taken of the original barn that Broncho Billy settled in when first arriving in town, before building a then state-of-the-art studio a block
away.
1:00 p.m. The Women of Essanay
A selection of Essanay Film Manufacturing Company films made in Chicago and Niles, featuring top movie actresses of the day, including Ethel Clayton, Martha Russell, Dolores Cassinelli, Ruth Stonehouse, Eleanor Blevins, Marguerite Clayton, Evelyn Selbie, Bessie Sankey and Margaret Joslin. The program also includes stories about those who were instrumental behind the scenes and involved with getting the productions completed.
A special screening of Garbo, the Photoplay Productions (Kevin Brownlow, Christopher Bird and Patrick Stansbury) documentary celebrating the centenary of the birth of the iconic movie star of iconic movie stars. It covers the early years of Greta Garbo in Sweden, her movie career, early retirement from showbiz and subsequent life in NYC. It features interviews with Greta's friends from later life, friends and such filmmakers who worked with her as Clarence Brown.
7:30 p.m. Flesh And The Devil
(1927, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) In Greta Garbo’s breakthrough picture she delivers a luminous performance as a new type of vamp: less consistently cruel and more subtle than earlier styles. Director Clarence Brown recalled, “Flesh And The Devil was my first picture for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and it really made Garbo.” Her name was listed under the title, which would change after the film’s phenomenal success. She became the most famous woman in the world and the leading film actress. Starring Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, and Lars Hanson. Directed by Clarence Brown.
Opening the Saturday night show, two Mack Sennett comedy shorts featuring goofball du jour Billy Bevan, leader of The Charge Of The Mustached Brigade!
The Golf Nut (1927, Mack Sennett Comedies) Co-starring Vernon Dent. Billy plays a wacky photographer and terrible golfer who brings unmitigated disaster to the links.
Ice Cold Cocos (1926, Mack Sennett Comedies) Billy and his pal Andy Clyde impersonate two ice-delivery men in a suburban town. Mayhem ensues.
Jon Mirsalis, Kurzweil Keyboard Accompaniment
Sunday, July 28
10:45 a.m.
Special Behind-the-Scenes REAL vs. REEL program (FREE program)
Vintage Los Angeles film studios expert and special guest Marc Wanamaker will share some behind-the-scenes images and amazing tales of REAL California history intertwined with motion picture history, the REEL kind. He will share images from two recent books he co-authored: Hollywood: Behind the Lens - Treasures from the Bison Archives (with Steven Bingen) and Hollywood’s Trains and Trolleys (with Josef Lesser).
12:30 p.m.
Hidden Colors of the California Nursery and Beyond: Lenticular Kodacolor Home Movies (FREE program) Back for its second year, with different films! See rare home movies of the Niles Nursery and beyond in color for the first time in 90 years! Local horticultural historian Janet Barton and our museum's own Zack Sutherland walk you through this long-defunct technique of color film processing, and the resulting footage taken in Niles and elsewhere in California. Piano Accompaniment by David Drazin. (High-definition Digital presentation)
2:30 pm - Focus On Film Collectors featuring The Isle of Hope (1925, Richard Talmadge Productions)
Film collector Michael Aus was scrolling through eBay one night when he found a print of The Isle of Hope, a formerly-lost film for sale. After acquiring the only print, Aus deposited the film here at our museum – thus giving us an opportunity at this year's festival to demonstrate how film collectors have been essential
over the decades to making rare or lost material visible to the public.
The Isle of Hope is a stunt-filled adventure feature film starring Richard Talmadge, a former circus tumbling performer turned movie actor and producer, later turned Hollywood stuntman. Also featured are Helen Ferguson (a former player at the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company in Chicago), James A. Marcus,mand George Reed. (High-definition digital presentation)
4:30 pm Film Is Dead, Long Live Film! (2024, Cold Eye Films)
This award-winning documentary explores the vanishing world of private film collecting: an obsessive, secretive, often illicit realm of basement film vaults, piled high with forgotten reels. Condemned as pirates and hounded by the FBI, film collectors have long lurked in the shadows. Yet their efforts have resulted in the survival of countless films that would otherwise have been lost to history. Journeying to film festivals, dealer rooms, archives, film storage and workspaces, and ad-hoc screening rooms, a trove of interviews is amassed which
profiles the people involved with collecting and preserving film, underscoring their motivations and legacies. Produced and directed by Peter Flynn.
Preceded by short subjects from the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum's archive:
Ringling Brothers Circus Parade (1902) A visiting circus and onlookers in a street scene.
Suzie Loses Her First Tooth (early 1920s) This early example of an infomercial is an animated tale of heroes and villains in a battle over dental hygiene.
Piano Accompaniment for shorts by Bruce Loeb.
The Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival shall hold forth at the Edison Theater and the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum at 37417 Niles Boulevard, Fremont, CA 94536. 510-494-1411.
There will be Special Festival Hours for the museum and store.
What got this scribe through the too-many months of COVID related lockdown in 2020-2021 and the unending years of pure awfulness that followed? Standup comedy and our pets (a.k.a. official mascots)! One standup comic we like a lot is Patton Oswalt, who links to National Fried Chicken Day as follows.
When it comes to the topics of fried chicken and fast food in general, can't think of anyone funnier than Jim Gaffigan.
Jim is in frequent rotation here, as is Mr. Oswalt.
Just realized that fried chicken is just about the only food that's NOT in the Saturday Night Live Taco Town sketch, which features Jason Sudeikis, Bill Hader and Andy Samberg.
Shifting from comedy to food, the skilled and frequently very funny chefs at Babish Culinary Universe have tried to replicate the epic Taco Town mega-taco-gordita-crepe-pizza, etc.
Tops in the category of the funniest, most informative and most scientific of cooking show hosts? Hands and measuring devices down, that would be Alton Brown of "Good Eats."
How to we top Alton? Chicken-centric tunes from long, long ago.
The British blues band Chicken Shack didn't play Chicken Strut or ChIcken Scratch as part of their repertoire, but there is a familiar face here - singer/songwriter/keyboardist Christine McVie, a year or so prior to her joining Fleetwood Mac to counter the departure of guitarist Peter Green and a few years before the band's pop juggernaut years in the latter 1970's.
So, the official post for National Fried Chicken Day 2024 ends as many Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog posts do, with cartoons from long long ago.
RE: Sudden Fried Chicken (1946), a Famous Studios cartoon directed by the great Bill Tytla, the animation by such talented Fleischer veterans as Orestes Calpini is invariably quite good and the voice work by Sid Raymond, Jack Mercer, Arnold Stang and others is also terrific.
On one hand, the premise of marital abuse as yuk-yuk comedy falls as flat as a poorly cooked pancake. On the other hand, the cartoon becomes quite funny about 4 minutes in, starting with Herman the Mouse smoking cigarettes.
How storymen Jack Mercer and Carl Meyer missed the opportunity for a hilarious topper gag in which horrific Henrietta Hen, after seeing Henry as an hard drinking ultra-macho tough guy, instantaneously becomes a sex-crazed love machine a la horny hot-to-trot hillbilly Possum Pearl (the star of a very enjoyable Noveltoon cartoon Jack Mercer wrote the story for a decade later), we'll never know. Blame the Hays Office!
Viewing the Noveltoons' Herman & Henry series makes one wonder if someone on the Famous Studios staff in the mid-1940's was stuck in a hideously awful hell on earth marriage. Readers, if you find yourself in a similar situation, GET OUT IMMEDIATELY AND RUN! RUN FAST AND FAR! DON'T TURN BACK!
Closing this National Fried Chicken Day tribute: the Jay Ward Studio's Super Chicken.
