This weekend, we pay tribute to pioneering animation producer and director Walter Lantz (1899-1994). Posted a Lantz cartune-filled salute to Walt and Woody back in December 2024, but dang it, that ISN'T ENOUGH!
Do we LOVE Woody (both the woodpecker and San Francisco Giants curveballing LHP Kirk "Woody" Reuter), Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Andy Panda, Buzz Buzzard, Chilly Willy, and the excellent Swing Symphonies and Musical Miniatures series?
Yes, emphatically!
Here's Walter with his wife and ace cartoon voice artist Gracie Stafford Lantz (the voice of Woody Woodpecker after the departure of voiceman/storyman Ben Hardaway).
Walter Lantz began producing cartoons for J.R. Bray back in the silent era, with the Dinky Doodle, Unnatural History and Pete The Pup series. Walter appears in many of his silent era productions!
Over his many decades producing animated cartoons, Mr. Lantz was assisted very aptly by, to name just a few extremely talented collaborators, directors Shamus Culhane, Tex Avery, Dick Lundy, Alex Lovy, Don Patterson, Sid Marcus and Jack Hannah, animators Pat Matthews, Grim Natwick, Emery Hawkins, Manuel Moreno, Bill Nolan, Clyde Geronimi, Ray Abrams, Les Kline, Laverne Harding, Paul Smith, Art Davis, avatars of layout, backgrounds and character designs Philip DeGuard, Art Heinemann, Ray Huffine and Art Landy, storymen Ben "Bugs" Hardaway, Milt Schaffer and Cal Howard, voice artists Dick Nelson, Lionel Stander, Daws Butler, Dallas McKennon and (sometimes, before 1941) Mel Blanc, plus excellent music men Jimmy Dietrich, Frank Marsales and Darrell Calker.
Indeed, our mission, just a few days short of Walter's 127th birthday on Monday, is to continue deluging you with vintage Walter Lantz "Cartunes", starting with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit.
The gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog remain enthusiastic about the Lantz Ozzies of the early talkie era.
Here's the color segment (preceding the Ted Eshbaugh Studio's Goofy Goat Antics and the Disney Silly Symphony Flowers And Trees) starring Ozzie from the 1930 Universal feature THE KING OF JAZZ.
A caricature of Paul Whiteman, bandleader and star of The King Of Jazz appears in an Oswald The Lucky Rabbit cartoon, My Pal Paul.
Lantz' Oswald cartoons from 1929-1931 are filled with wonderful, cartoony, imaginative, way-out ideas and Bill Nolan's extra rubbery animation.
We close this too brief homage to the great Walter Lantz with cartoons directed by the equally great Tex Avery during his brief second stint there. That's right, the Tex Avery, whose first act after leaving the employ of Walter Lantz and joining the ragtag Leon Schlesinger Studio, producers of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, was to create "Termite Terrace" and give the middle finger to that other more famous Walt. Avery directed Porky's Duck Hunt (1937) and A Wild Hare (1940), effectively throwing down the gauntlet.
As always, the blazing and ever-inventive comic genius of Tex Avery is quite something to behold. Too bad Tex never met Buster Keaton when they were both working on the MGM lot.
That guy responsible for the first 20th century British Invasion and the international popularity of both going out to the movies and buying home movies (on 8mm, 9.5mm, 16mm, 28mm, etc.), Charles Spencer Chaplin, was born on April 16, 1889. Let's celebrate his 137th birthday belatedly by binge-watching a slew of Charlot clips and films, shall we!
The Chaplin Mutuals are still incredibly funny after all these decades.
And Chaplin's subsequent First National short subjects have their moments as well.
Even Chaplin's earliest films for Mack Sennett's Keystone, produced in 1913-1914, can be quite hilarious.
Some Chaplin Keystones co-star the great silent movie comedienne Mabel Normand.
One favorite Chaplin Keystone is The Rounders, in which Charlie's teamed with the rotund yet graceful and inspired slapstick funmaker (as well as the filmmaking mentor of Buster Keaton) Roscoe Arbuckle.
Now MUST watch Photoplay Productions' (Kevin Brownlow and David Gill) outstanding Unknown Chaplin documentary yet again.
The athletic and winsome Wanda Wiley was among several groundbreaking women in the rough and tumble world of slapstick comedy.
She headlined a series of fast-paced action comedies for Universal Pictures.
Starting her movie career doing stunt work in westerns, Wanda, the excellent "daredevil comedienne", stuntwoman and comic actress headlined her own series for Century Comedies and J.R. Bray Productions.
A rare blend of silver screen comedienne and action hero, Wanda made 50 films between 1924 and 1927.
One of the funniest extant Wanda comedies, A Thrilling Romance, was featured on episode 16 of The Silent Comedy Watch Party.
How Wanda did not attract the attention of Universal head Carl Laemmle after these 50 films and continue her career, we'll never know.
For a stretch in the teens and early 1920's, Fay Tincher, born on April 17, 1884, was one of the top comediennes in motion pictures.
She had a 15 year movie career that spanned stints with The American Eclair Company, Komic Komedies, Triangle, Christie, and Universal.
Fay's funny and outrageous performances as the over-the-top Ethel The Stenographer in the Bill The Office Boy series for Komic Komedies made Fay a major movie star in 1914.
Fay, a reluctant comedienne of stage and screen whose background was in musical theater, went on to co-star in a series of 5-reel dramas and comedies with DeWolf Hopper at Fine Arts Film Company.
After leaving Fine Arts, she formed The Fay Tincher Comedy Company.
Fay, with ambitions to work behind the camera, produced and starred in a series for World Film Corporation.
Unfortunately, none of the three Fay Tincher Comedy Company films (Main 1-2-3, Some Job and Oh, Susie, Behave) survive. All that exists from the 1918 productions are stills.
Since film comedy in the silent era was frequently regarded as undignified and unladylike, not acceptable as a stepping stone to prestigious dramatic roles in feature films (or, for that matter, producing and directing), Fay hated getting cast as a comedy headliner and was very disappointed to see her World Film Corporation series end after three films. She headlined Christie Comedies beginning in 1919.
ROWDY ANN (1919) remains her best known film.
Most of her starring vehicles do not survive, so this diehard film buff is thankful for the few that do.
A super talented actress and comedienne, Fay retired from movies in 1930 after playing Min Gump in Universal's The Gumps series. She left show business, dropped out of the public eye and successfully evaded all interviews for the last 50+ years of her life.
And then there's that most swashbuckling of movie headliners, Harold Lloyd, whose films are still unequaled in their blend of comedy and thrills with the action hero ethos exemplified by Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.
Lloyd, the always indefatigable go-getter, regarded as one of silent comedy's Big Three, along with Chaplin and Keaton, was born on April 20, 1893.
Starting with Lonesome Luke and "glasses character" 2-reelers produced by Hal Roach's Rolin Co. in 1915-1917, Harold starred in numerous classic comedies.
In closing, here's Harold Lloyd's World Of Comedy - enjoy!
The diehard classic movie aficionados at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog salute silent comedy royalty big time! Laughs are our friend!
Today we salute the innovative producer, director and animator Norman McLaren.
A splendid post from Scotland.com adds: Norman McLaren (1914–1987) was a pioneering Scottish-Canadian animator, director, and producer renowned for his innovative work at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).
A pioneer in hand-drawn, abstract, and pixilation animation, he won an Oscar for Neighbours (1952) and a Palme d'Or for Blinkity Blank (1955).
That means it's time to get pixillated!
NEIGHBORS may be the first pixillated film this film buff ever saw in which the menacing creatures were humans and not prehistoric monsters!
A few years before the Beatles discovered Ravi Shankar, his soundtrack is a cornerstone of pixillated McLaren opus A Chairy Tale.
Along with the films of Oskar Fischinger, McLaren's work got this movie buff, unlike the viewer played by Mel Brooks in The Critic, to be just fine with colors, shapes, lines and movement synchronized to music as the beating heart of a short film, as seen in BEGONE DULL CARE.
Also admire anyone who would think of scratching the emulsion of the film and seeing what the heck happens! No budget, no problem!
Submitted for your approval, a selection of vintage Norman McLaren art films - he made over 60 - that make this blogger want to see them again.
Why are these shapes and designs so hypnotic? I don't know - play it again!
Here at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, today's holiday means Easter movies, rabbit-laden cartoons and TV show clips.
Kicking off the compendium of rabbit-packed Easter cartoons, here's the Easter egg-filled and downright rabbit-infested Silly Symphony Funny Little Bunnies.
That would be Easter Yeggs (1947), one of the very best cartoons ever helmed by director Robert McKimson.
We're delighted that METV has shown the Walter Lantz Studio's contribution to the Easter cartoon genre, Oswald The Lucky Rabbit in The Egg Cracker Suite (1943).
The Egg Cracker Suite is the last of the theatrical Oswald The Lucky Rabbit series.
Ozzy was subsequently purloined, along with all but a couple of the Disney animation staff, by Charles Mintz.
After a year of Winkler Oswalds, Mintz received the heave-ho from Carl Laemmle and Walter Lantz took over the character and made a gazillion Ozzy toons for Universal Pictures.
Happy Easter to all from Oswald, Bugs Bunny and Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog!
