As the distressingly knowledgeable 20th century history-savvy gang here inhabits what appears to be a permanent state of worry, tension and fear these days, we note that autumn shall soon end and winter will be upon us soon. The month of September is ending shortly, so today, we pay tribute to "Fall."
We'll start celebrating the season change with a Warner Bros. cartoon, the first but not the last on the topic of gambling; the 1951 Merrie Melodie Early To Bet, directed by Robert McKimson, cleverly and literally visualizes the gambling bug. Don't know if Frank "Tish Tash" Tashlin was into gambling, but we do know that at the very least three of our all-time favorite comedians, Phil Silvers, Ernie Kovacs and Norm MacDonald, were.
NOW THAT SUMMER IS GONE would be a fantastic companion to the Twilight Zone episode THE FEVER featuring the great Everett Sloane as a super-strict and super insufferable Calvinist moralist who goes to Vegas on vacation and gets utterly obsessed with slot machines and casino gambling.
Next, we'll answer the question of how many versions of the minor-key tune Autumn Leaves we can post. We'll start with mighty guitar geniuses Jimmy Bruno and Frank Vignola!
Vocalists want equal time!
As do tenor saxophonists. . . I saw this guy, Johnny Griffin, play a slightly less uptempo version of this song as the opener of his first rip-roaring set at San Francisco's Keystone Korner (750 Vallejo Street) on Thanksgiving night, 1978.
As a scandal involving our idiot Empire State mayor ensues, it's as good an excuse as any to go through a slew of good renditions of the song Autumn In New York, composed by the formidabke Vernon Duke in 1934. The dynamic duo of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong kick off the explorations of Autumn in New York with their customary brilliance.
Bud Powell could play both classical and jazz music with ridiculous technical facility and a haunting soulfulness.
Chet Baker gives us cool school Autumn On New York.
Invariably, tenor saxophonists will have the last word. Looks like John "Blue Train" Coltrane and "Stan The Man" Getz are accompanied by the A-1 rhythm section of Wynton Kelly (piano), Paul Chambers (acoustic bass) and Jimmy Cobb (drums). Everybody sounds great.
The Psychotronix Film Festival has been producing movie events in various venues since 1992 - and shall return to the Orinda Theatre at 2 Orinda Theatre Square (Moraga Way and Brookwood Road) with an improvised, sometimes ragtag, all over the map but highly entertaining lineup of films this Saturday night.
These films include 1950's commercials and "educational" films, the most bizarre obscure classic cartoons, trailers from the worst movies, the campiest musical shorts and TV programs that aired once or should never have aired.
The gang that produces these extravaganzas on glorious 16mm film started as DIY archivists/curators/showmen way back in the 1980's and worked on film presentations in the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento for several years prior to producing the first Psychotronix Film Festival at Foothill College, benefitting KFJC, in December 1992.
Rather amazingly, 32 years later, the Psychotronix gang keeps schlepping 16mm Kodak Pageants and reels in the service of big screen fun, featuring a different mix at every show, which is never repeated - and a new celluloid configuration will be hitting the big screen at the Orinda Theatre.
Said mix includes. . . TV ads!
Vintage car commercials!
Cheesy TV show openings!
Toy commercials!
Trailers from bad movies!
Musical short subjects!
And, invariably, Incredibly Strange Cartoons.
Again, the Psychotronix Film Festival, featuring "16MM Film, The Vinyl of Visuals," returns to bring its highly distinctive variant of big screen fun to the Orinda Theatre at 2 Orinda Theatre Square (Moraga Way and Brookwood Road) Saturday night, September 28, 2024 at 8:30 P.M.
Thanks, Sci Fi Bob Ekman, Scott Moon and Robert Emmett for your good work over these past three decades - and thanks to the Orinda Theatre.
Since this blog spotlighted Friz Freleng just a few weeks ago, Looney Tunes Collectors Choice volume 3 is out on Blu-ray, and we missed the Chuck Jones centenary for some inexplicable reason 12 years ago, that means. . . today is as good a day as any to travel from the absurd to the sublime and the sublimely absurd, which means it's high time we tip a top hat to Merrie Melodies master Chuck Jones a.k.a. Charles M. Jones. Here are what are arguably his best known three cartoons.
Here, the late great Robin Williams, no doubt a big time Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies fan boy, gives Chuck an Academy Award!
The first documentary I recall seeing on Warner Bros cartoons (on the heels of the epic and groundbreaking Film Comment article about animation by Greg Ford and Mark Kausler) was CAMERA 3 THE BOYS FROM TERMITE TERRACE (1975). It's also a blast from the past for me since I saw both Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett (live in person) in 1975! The one-hour TV special's host is a very young John Canemaker. Tex Avery, the ringleader of Termite Terrace, does not appear in the Camera 3 special, but Friz Freleng, Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett and Mel Blanc do.
A number of worthy documentaries spotlighting the great work of Chuck Jones and his colleagues followed.
And, now for some interviews.
Here's Chuck on the Dick Cavett Show in 1979.
Don't know how many episodes of The World Of Cartooning with Mike Peters exist, but two feature Chuck Jones!
The first Chuck Jones cartoon I remember seeing was DAFFY DUCK AND THE DINOSAUR (1939), a Merrie Melodie which got frequent run on local TV stations way back when.
After a stint as a cel washer with the Ub Iwerks Studio, Chuck was hired by Leon Schlesinger and ended among the various renegades and rapscallions in Tex Avery's crew at Termite Terrace.
He would animate in the crews of Tex Avery, Ub Iwerks (whose studio made a few Looney Tunes cartoons subcontracting with producer Leon Schlesinger) and Bob Clampett before getting his own production unit in 1938. Whether Chuck directed any sequences during his stretch working with Bob Clampett's crew I don't know - would need studio drafts for corroboration.
When head animator Robert McKimson passed on the opportunity to direct, Chuck Jones got to helm Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, starting with The Night Watchman.
Jones' early directorial efforts were by far the most Disney-esque cartoons ever to emerge from Warner Brothers Animation. Tops among them would be the highly imaginative 1941 Looney Tune JOE GLOW THE FIREFLY, which features a beautiful score by Carl Stalling - that guy who started with Disney.
Among the most Disney influenced cartoons of all to emerge from the Chuck Jones crew was TOM THUMB IN TROUBLE (1940).
One starts seeing a change in style from this Disney-influenced approach to the wackier Looney Tunes credo in such cartoons as PORKY'S CAFE, featuring the porcine powerhouse with the short-lived pantomimist character Conrad the Cat.
Best starring Porky Pig opus by the Chuck Jones crew?
Well, possibly in a tie with the horror-influenced cartoon SCAREDY CAT, that would be THE WEARING OF THE GRIN, a leprechaun-filled tale distinguished by demonic dancing shoes.
If one Merrie Melodie or Looney Tune can be identified as the key transitional piece in Chuck Jones' 20+ years as Warner Bros. cartoon director, that would be THE DRAFT HORSE (1942). The aforementioned Greg Ford's commentary track on this cartoon, which features the stellar character animation of key Jones collaborator Ken Harris, elaborates.
The transition to the zany Looney Tunes style continues further in THE DOVER BOYS, a hilarious spoof of 1890's morality tales. The voice acting genius of one of our favorites at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, the inimitable John McLeish, is a key factor in the success of this cartoon.
Sometimes Mr. Jones remade his early Disney-influenced cartoons. THE CURIOUS PUPPY was recast with wiseguy mice Hubie and Bertie.
Inevitably in a Chuck Jones tribute, we find it's time for more cartoons!
LOVE the commentaries that were on the DVD releases of these cartoons.
Again, to the outstanding animation of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies stalwart and classic comedy aficionado Chuck Jones, we extend respectful tips of battered top hats worn by Marcel "Tweedy" Perez, Max Linder, Charlie Chaplin & Roscoe Arbuckle (in THE ROUNDERS) and tipsy Arthur Housman in a 1932 Laurel & Hardy 2-reeler!
Thinking of the gifted writers from the Algonquin Round Table, while also thinking of vintage animated cartoons, so Robert Benchley and Walt Disney share the spotlight today.
One of the very best among that band of scintillating and seething scribes who quaffed, socialized and collaborated at the midtown Manhattan Algonquin Hotel was the great humorist Robert Benchley.
Benchley, columnist, New Yorker/Vanity Fair essayist and prolific reviewer of 1920's Broadway shows, was born on this day, September 15, in 1889. The Harvard Lampoon writer had no intention of going into show business, but to some extent was drafted by friends and colleagues at university into performing as an actor and comedian, due to his specialty of hilariously spoofing dreadful after-dinner speakers. Benchley would contribute a distinctively witty presence to stage and screen until his untimely passing in 1945.
Robert Benchley was one of the comedy performers who exemplified the transition to talkies - and actually preceded the reigning silver screen comedy mega-stars Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd in doing so.
Here's his brilliant sendup of corporate-speak in the 1928 Fox film The Treasurer's Report, which was based on the monologue Benchley first performed at the April 30, 1922 Algonquin Round Table stage presentation No Sirree.
In The Sex Life Of The Polyp, another early talkie produced by Fox in 1928, he cheerfully skewers inept lecturers.
In a film that still rings true in 2024, Robert Benchley lambasts arrogant financiers and "prosperity gospel" hucksters as he evaluates how the heck we ended up with the Great Depression.
The rather unexpected success of the Fox Movietone short subjects led to an even more unexpected movie career.
This included starring in short comedies for MGM and Paramount, as well as periodic stints as a character actor in such films as Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent.
He is yet another of the 1000 reasons the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog loves the 1943 film The Sky's The Limit.
Now, as we are also - as always - thinking of vintage animated cartoons here at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, we note that not only did the Knight Of The Algonquin Round Table work with Walt Disney, Benchley played a role as himself in the entertaining 1941 Disney feature The Reluctant Dragon. As far as we know, he didn't know the other Uncle Walt, Mr. Walter Lantz. . . and that is too bad, as Lantz Studio director Shamus Culhane may well have jumped at the chance to collaborate with Robert Benchley.
In The Reluctant Dragon, Mr. Benchley tours the Disney Studio and learns how cartoons are made, so the 1941 film presents a most worthy addition to historian Charles Gardner's Cartoons About Cartoons articles from Cartoon Research's Animation Trails series.
It's tempting to wonder which was the more interesting first time meeting, Robert Benchley and Alfred Hitchcock or Benchley and Walt Disney!
Love the following paint-mixing segment (which, for some reason, reminds me of segments from Hugh Harman's 1936 MGM cartoon Bottles), although the YouTube poster's tampering with it via voice-over, frankly, leaves a lot to be desired.
That said, this sequence reminds us all these decades later, well into the 21st century, how outstanding the hard working Walt Disney Productions ink and paint staffers who meticulously painted countless cels were.
Not surprisingly, Benchley gets The Reluctant Dragon's closing laugh line, with an assist from Clarence "Ducky" Nash (note: don't know who plays the insufferable and verbally abusive wife).
For more, check out the Robert Benchley Society. Also recommend that readers get some Benchley books, especially Benchley At The Theatre, in the (not nearly as fun) 21st century way, purchasing them online - or by visiting your friends at the local public or university library, bearing an Algonquin Round Table book list. Way back in the halcyon 20th century days when sellers of used books and records were everywhere, especially college towns, this blogger and many other unrepentant bookworms sought out print copies of Benchley's excellent writings.
Yes, it's true - there is a National Beer Lovers' Day (9/7), so here are ads (print and animated) sellin' suds for National Beer Lovers' Day.
Enjoy a quaff or three with the accordion-wielding Miss Rheingold of 1956!
And guzzle some pints of Blatz Beer with film noir tough guy Dan Duryea!
How shall we celebrate National Beer Lovers' Day? With green beer?
No, we'll celebrate with a slew of classic animated beer ads, invariably seen directly after consuming highly hopped and headache-inducing 9.5% alcohol green ales!
The terrific writer Mike Kazaleh has beat all of us reprobates at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog to the Hefeweizen punch (and subsequent hangover) by writing several outstanding Cartoon Research pieces on animated commercials for malty, hoppy brews - including
Pilsner Pranks - More Spots with Beer and Hops & Spots!.
Alas, many of these great animated ads posted in Mike Kazaleh's articles back in 2014 have since been taken down. We shall attempt to re-construct Mr. Kazaleh's cornucopia of clever cartoon commercials as follows, starting with Gene Dietch TV spots featuring Bob & Ray!
Stag Beer starring Mr. Magoo
In closing, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog enthusistically salute the talented creators of these animated ads, as well as the splendid voice work by comedy aces Jim Backus, Mike Nichols & Elaine May and Bob Elliott & Ray Goulding. Love the Piels Brothers ads and the Nichols & May commercials for Jax and Narragansett Beers.
Also extend a big time Raymond Griffith top hat tip to Mike Kazaleh, the excellent writer/animation historian and suggest checking out his tres cool YouTube channel.
