Today's topic: September 7 is National Beer Lover's Day!
That's right, there is a National Beer Lover's Day.
Tom T. Hall elaborates:
We'll kick the sudsy tribute off with The Three Stooges.
There actually was a film titled Rhapsody In Brew. It was produced by the Hal Roach Studio and stars comedy heroes Billy Gilbert and Billy Bletcher.
This excerpt from the Chuck Jones cartoon Trap Happy Porky cracks the gang Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog up. Mel Blanc is particularly wonderful in voicing Porky Pig and the gang of inebriated felines.
Love the cartoons of British Animated Productions, especially Bubble & Squeek. Not surprisingly, the series' protagonist enjoys pub ale.
Is it true that dwarves got drunk in pre-Code Disney cartoons? Yes! Here they are, getting blitzed in The Merry Dwarves (1929).
Former Disney animator Earl Duvall directed cartoons for Warner Brothers, shortly after Leon Schlesinger started his studio. Our favorite? Buddy's Beer Garden! One of the credited animators is Frank "Tish Tash" Tashlin, then 20 years old.
Must follow Buddy's Beer Garden with a Charles Mintz studio Scrappy cartoon from the pre-Code era, so here's a fantastic one that razzes Prohibition (at that point just ending): The Beer Parade (1933).
Another terrific cartoon about Prohibition was produced by Ub Iwerks' Studio.
Over the past decade, this blog has posted a slew of animated beer commercials.
Last year's National Beer Lover's Day post, Cartoon Commercials Sell Beer, featured Mr. Magoo plugging Stag Beer, as well as the Piels Brothers ads and the Nichols & May commercials for Jax and Narragansett Beers. Also noted then that Mike Kazaleh wrote several excellent pieces about beer ads, including Pilsner Pranks - More Spots with Beer and Hops & Spots! for Cartoon Research. We love Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble hawking Busch Beer!
In closing, here are some beer commercials we love starring Bert & Harry Piels (Bob & Ray).
Enjoyed writing last week's post so much that a followup is absolutely necessary. We shall start with my favorite of all the post-Otto versions of Felix. The style of the 1995-1997 Twisted Tales series recalls Fleischer more than Messmer, but who cares - it's still lots of fun and extremely imaginative. Several super-talented people we are acquainted with worked on the series.
Speaking of super-talented, animator and comics artist Milton Knight, among the directors who worked on The Twisted Tales Of Felix, posted the following 1933 Krazy Kat cartoon by the Ben Harrison and Manny Gould crew, Russian Dressing. I'm a big fan of the Your Favorite Cartoon Moments videos on Milton's YouTube channel.
One of the best cartoons from the Harrison & Gould crew at Mintz, in this pre-Code rubber hose animation aficionado's opinion, is The Broadway Malady (1933). I personally prefer it to The Broadway Melody!
The following early talkie Krazy Kat is another favorite and a link between 1920's Disney and early 1930's Harman-Ising WB. Looks like Friz Freleng, Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising, Rollin Hamilton and other soon to be Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies animators worked on this extremely entertaining cartoon, packed with 1929 style funny animals, way-out sight gags and, of course, Prohibition-flaunting heavy drinking.
On the topic of animators, film producers and alcoholism, here's Felix Woos Whoopee, arguably the very best opus from the last three seasons of the Felix The Cat series. While producer Pat Sullivan by that time had been done in tragically by the bottle, Messmer's prodigious talent kept the series going into those dawn of talkies days. One wonders if Felix would have hung on a bit longer accompanied with sprightly soundtracks by, for example, Carl Stalling, Gene Rodemich or Jimmy Dietrich.
And, speaking of Gene Rodemich's peppy music, here is a cat-dominated Van Beuren cartoon we like a great deal. Don't mess with kittens!
We tip our top hats to UCLA Film & Television Archive for the following restored (and cat-packed) Max Fleischer Color Classic!
Next up: Bob Clampett's memorable and hilarious The Hep Cat (1942), noted in the previous "Feline Follies" post. Love it for the theme song alone - it's tough to top "I love the goyls and the goyls love me, just like the Sheik Of Araby."
After all, we love Bob Clampett - and especially his classic Martian invasion cartoon Kitty Kornered (1946).
The following two Chuck Jones cartoons feature the playful kitten character Pussyfoot and his protector Marc Anthony the bulldog. In both cartoons, the cuteness works quite well.
Closing today's Feline Follies: the extremely funny Friz Freleng cartoon Birds Anonymous (1957), which successfully skewers 12-step groups, insufferable moralists, Sylvester the cat and animated cartoon conventions in one fell swoop.
After watching a bunch of very funny Snub Pollard 2-reelers produced by Hal Roach and directed by Charley Parrott Chase, plus Universal Jokers co-starring goofball comic Billy Franey and (frequent Chase co-star) Gale Henry, some directed by William "One Shot" Beaudine, the gang here is thinking of silent era cartoons - especially all-time favorite Felix The Cat, that gem from the inspired pen of the incomparable Otto Messmer (1892-1983).
Author, animator and Messmer expert John Canemaker elaborates.
Have devoted entire blog posts to Messmer and Felix. Our family even had an amazing and playful tuxedo cat named Felix!
The blog has posted numerous Felix cartoons but somehow missed the very first entries in the series.
So, here, submitted for your approval, are first two Felix The Cat cartoons, made back in 1919.
While Messmer's essential and trademark minimalism is there from the beginning, Felix' design is different and more angular in these early cartoons.
Since the awaited Blu-ray release of Rainbow Parade Cartoons volume 2 by Thunderbean is just around the corner, must find a spot in today's post for the following 35mm scan of Bold King Cole, one of the three Felix cartoons from RKO Radio Pictures' Rainbow Parade series.
Am under the impression that Otto was not involved in the making of the Van Beuren Felix cartoons; no surprise there, as Messmer's magical cat is, while enjoyable, a bit sanitized in the Rainbow Parades. He did go on to animate the lights fantastic in Times Square - on that more later.
How do we show proper respect for Mr. Messmer and Felix? With a few more cartoons featuring cats, beginning with one produced by the Van Beuren Studio that looks a tad like those last Felix cartoons from 1930, but features a much better and downright jaunty music track, courtesy of the excellent Gene Rodemich. The co-star, Countess Cat, sounds like the Betty Boop voice who preceded Mae Questel in the boop-oop-a-doop part and also played Olive Oyl when Ms. Questel was unavailable, Margie Hines.
SASSY CATS is one of Columbia Pictures' Scrappy cartoons, created by three all-time animation greats, Dick Huemer, Art Davis and Sid Marcus, for the Charles Mintz Studio. The gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog finds the outrageous pre-code cartoons and animation of Heumer, Davis and Marcus hilarious.
Davis and Marcus ended up at Warner Brothers; the former would be a head animator with both Frank "Tish Tash" Tashlin and Friz Freleng, while the latter collaborated with Bob McKimson both on creating The Tasmanian Devil and such cartoons as The Hole Idea (1955).
After leaving the Mintz Studio in 1933, Mr. Huemer spent decades as a top Walt Disney Productions storyman, working as a team with Joe Grant, contributing to Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, etc. He was, on record, not a fan of his Mintz cartoons.
Speaking of the Charles Mintz Studio, the crew there led by Ben Harrison and Manny Gould were among those to bring the Krazy Kat from comics and the universe of George Herriman (1880-1944) to animation.
The Harrison Gould production team did this once and it's a pretty darn good attempt at George Herriman's Krazy, as opposed to the rubber-hose generic Krazy seen in the previous Mintz Krazy Kat cartoons.
In the opinion of this cartoon fan, the 1936 Mintz cartoon comes closer to capturing the George Herriman universe than the WW1 era Krazy Kats produced by International Film Service, Inc. (a.k.a. Hearst).
The ever-inventive Gene Deitch also made 34 episodes of a series based on Herriman's Krazy Kat in the 1960's at his Prague studio, no less. Many can be seen on the Comic Kings YouTube channel. Perpetual wiseguy Ignatz Mouse is played by none other than Paul Frees.
Given the difficulties translating the otherworldly qualities of George Herriman's comic strip to animation, still find the early 1960's take on Krazy and Ignatz quite entertaining.
These are among the more clever made for TV cartoons. "Stoned Through The Ages," second one in the following Krazy compendium, was definitely dope back in 1966!
Gene, thankfully, did us the favor of writing about such key collaborators on the 1960's Krazy Kats as Al Kouzel in his ROLL THE CREDITS series.
What's the best way to wrap this cat-packed post up? With an extremely funny Warner Brothers cartoon in glorious Cinecolor directed by one of those fellows responsible for Scrappy at the Charles Mintz Studio, the great Arthur Davis.
The cat, Louie the parrot's pal Heathcliff, may qualify as the single dumbest character ever in an animated cartoon.
For the next Feline Follies, there are many more options, including the Hugh Marman MGM cartoon THE ALLEY CAT, Terrytoons' Little Roquefort, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera's Tom & Jerry in CinemaScope, and especially Bob Clampett's WB masterpieces The Hep Cat (1942) and Gruesome Twosome (1945), that could be added.
Unfortunately, did not find a complete print of Irv Spector's enjoyable Modern Madcap cartoon Cool Cat Blues (1961), featuring stellar voice work by impressionist Will Jordan, as all transfers on YouTube and Daily Motion appear to be missing footage for some reason. This cartoonologist prefers the satiric qualities of the 1960's Modern Madcaps to the more formulaic 1950's Famous Studios cartoons.
After almost 19 years writing Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, this is post #1400.
While, admittedly and embarrassingly, I deleted at least two or three posts due to laughably egregious errors, shall proclaim this Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog entry to officially be the 14 hundredth! Yay!
How does the blogmeister feel about writing post #1400? Feel like Virginia O'Brien, the deadpan diva, in this great song from PANAMA HATTIE, which should begin with her slapping overbearing Red Skelton across his overacting kisser (and, bear in mind, we like him as Red Skeleton in the Tex Avery MGM cartoon WHO KILLED WHO).
So this blog shall celebrate post #1400 without bubbly (thanks T2 diabetes, ya rat bastard). We'll start with some supercharged improvisational proto-metal British rock from Deep Purple, live in Belgium. Yes, indeedy, Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord and Ian Paice had chops.
How will we celebrate the silver screen stuff we love, while also kicking ourselves for missing the 80th anniversary of the execution of Benito Mussolini and Clara Petacci on April 28. With a respectful nod to the enduring classic movie genre that broke big time during World War II, film noir.
The Burt Lancaster starring vehicle Brute Force is an inspired cross between Jimmy Cagney style caper thriller and film noir.
Nearly eight decades after noir's heydey, celluloid heroes Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame still bring the heat.
Don't recall any other noirs featuring larger-than-life Charles Laughton (except the harrowing tale of evil he directed, Night Of The Hunter), but the following classic, THE BIG CLOCK, is a chiaroscuro dilly and post 1400 worthy.
Prominent in the "silver screen stuff we love" category is silent era comedy. Here are several all-time favorites from all-time favorite silent movie comedians, starting with Buster Keaton in ONE WEEK.
Next up: vintage musical short subjects from way back when Sammy Davis, Jr. thrilled vaudeville as a ridiculously talented child entertainer and Frank Sinatra was studying the phrasing of Bing Crosby and Russ Colombo. Especially love those pre-Code musical short subjects, especially Vitaphone's Melody Masters series.
Here, in the 1932 Vitaphone musical classic, The Yacht Party, the mindblowingly limber Melissa Mason does her best terpsichorean triple-jointed impersonation of the even more mindblowingly limber and quadruple-jointed comedienne Charlotte Greenwood. All we can say is "go, Melissa, go!"
The following Vitaphone 1-reelers present absolutely amazing and talent-filled mini musicals, the glaring preponderance of 1920's and early 1930's style racial stereotype bits notwithstanding. That's The Spirit stars the comedy team of Flournoy Miller & Mantan Moreland (yes, that guy, Sidney Toler's sidekick in Charlie Chan flicks), The Washboard Serenaders, powerhouse singer/tapdancer/actress Cora La Redd and Noble Sissle's red-hot swing band.
Alas, as there was still a color line, big time, in 1932, Cora La Redd, who would have mopped up the floor with all tapdancers not named Eleanor Powell and given the Sophie Tuckers of the world a run for their money, did not subsequently get to appear, even briefly, in RKO, Paramount and MGM musicals.
Backing actress of stage and screen, vocalist and dancer Nina Mae McKinney, star of King Vidor's Hallelujah, Eubie Blake's band headlined the following 1932 Vitaphone short. The super-talented kids whose exceptional dancing brings this Vitaphone Melody Master to a rousing finish:
The Nicholas Brothers.
Another of Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog's all-time favorite films is Smash Your Baggage (1932), starring Small's Paradise Entertainers. Jazz legend Roy Eldridge is in the band!
Lupe's co-star in this terrific comedy is the fast talking EPITOME of pre-Code. . . the one, the only Lee Tracy.
Also on hand: the familiar croaking voice of Eugene Palette.
Of course, the pre-Code flick we REALLY want to see is Convention City (1933).
The phrase pre-Code and the names of splendid actresses, Aline MacMahon and Ann Dvorak mean the gang here is watching this movie! And it features screen immortal Lyle Talbot, two decades before Plan 9 From Outer Space, as an oily rat bastard!
Of course, we also love pre-Code cartoons, even those Ub Iwerks Studio productions starring Willie Whopper!
Watching Iwerks Studio cartoons, must extend kudos, bravos and huzzahs to animators Grim Natwick, Shamus Culhane, Berny Wolf and music director Carl Stalling.
Also love the very pre-Code version of Tom & Jerry by New York's Van Beuren Studio.
Any Fleischer Talkartoon featuring Betty Boop, Koko and Bimbo is sure to be a winner.
Always liked this 1932 Screen Song featuring Betty Boop as a mermaid and using a certain Bert Kalmar & Harry Ruby ditty from the Marx Brothers opus Horse Feathers.
What's the best way to finish post #1400? Warner Brothers cartoons!
Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog extends multiple hat tips to the directors of these cartoons, Bob Clampett and Frank "Tish Tash" Tashlin. Love those guys!
It's the sincere hope of the gang here that we shall be lucky enough to still be alive, kicking (even slowly) and blogging for post #1500 down the road.
Now how does National Name Your Poison Day relate to this blog? Well, frankly, it's as good an excuse as any to post a bunch of classic cartoons that feature inebriation, a well as clips of great movie comedians delving into that topic (at least onscreen).
One film that never fails to get me ROFL is Laurel & Hardy in BLOTTO.
In this classic 1930 short, the boys think they're brazenly putting one over on their wives by sneaking out to get smashed on bathtub booze.
The greatest cartoon involving altered states would be. . .
Of course, for this blog, National Name Your Poison Day means Prohibition-era cartoons, starting with Fleischer Studios.
Felix the Cat stars in one of the very best in that mind-bending genre. Otto Messmer and crew always deliver the goods - and producer/promoter Pat Sullivan very likely was stone drunk somewhere during the making of this cartoon.
Hands-down, this writer's favorite of all the early Harmon-Ising Merrie Melodies is YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOIN' (1931). The unabashed inebriates who heckle the cartoon's plucky protagonist, "Piggy," resemble characters from another great early Merrie Melodie, GOOPY GEER (1932).
In WISE QUACKS (1939) just one of many outstanding cartoons directed by Bob Clampett, Daffy Duck is a tad nervous about becoming a father and relieves stress by getting hammered on "corn juice." It creatively re-uses segments from the brilliant 1936 Looney Tune directed by Frank Tashlin cartoon, PORKY'S POULTRY PLANT and, as is the case with Clampett's crew, animated with a certain crazed glee. This review by the gang at Anthony's Animation Talk gets into the nuances.
Yes, even dogs get obliterated in Columbia cartoons from both the Charles Mintz and Screen Gems studios and dont ask how Rover got blitzed on local anesthetic in the following opus. If it's jokes about hallucinations and dangerous levels of inebriation you want, look no further than the work of director/gagman Sid Marcus!
Is it possible to make an entire cartoon about a cat who gets wasted on pickled herring? Yes. That might not be a good idea, but it's possible.
Are there any cartoons for National Name Your Poison Day that don't involve booze? Yes, this way-out 1938 Hugh Harman MGM cartoon, Pipe Dreams.
This "goodie goodie monkeys" opus definitely anticipates the hippie era by almost three decades, especially the scene with the simian trio taking hits off a pipe like Dennis Hopper thirty years later.
What was in that Helz Fire tobacco?
These monkeys act like they're smoking kif!
Any letters between MGM brass and Hugh Harman demanding an explanation for this cartoon must be hilarious - and we all know darn well that Harman ignored them!
Hugh Harman made some wonderful weird cartoons, including all three of the Gothic ones featuring the "goodie goodie monkeys."
In closing, noting that there is a dark side to National Name Your Poison Day, here's the late, great Robin Williams making comedy out of the painful realities of alcoholism and jumping into the flaming center of that volcano (in a definitely NSFW clip).
Today's post shall be devoted to films which debuted on April 17, which in godawful 2025 has been one awful day. Shall start with a U. S. Department of Agriculture short subject distributed by the U.S. Forest Service, starring Laurel and Hardy, with narration by MGM's Pete Smith.
Headliners from Famous Studios this writer actually likes: the wiseguy duo of Tommy Tortoise & Moe Hare.
Closing: the April 17, 1937 release Porky's Duck Hunt, a Termite Terrace piece-de-resistance directed by Tex Avery, featuring the first appearance of Daffy Duck and Bob Clampett's uninhibited animation.
Since comedy actors and standup comedians who also did voice work on animated cartoons remains a frequent topic here, it's surprising that we hadn't spotlighted Don Adams (April 13, 1923 – September 25, 2005), well known as Secret Agent 86 from Get Smart, in over 1380 posts. Here's Don on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson.
Alas, the blog forgot the Agent 86 centenary last year but posts on Don Adams' 101st today to both rectify that error and say missed it by that much.
Don Adams began his career as a standup comic, first seen nationally on The Steve Allen Show in the 1950's.
Comedy and 20th century pop culture historian Kliph Nesteroff elaborates at length in his 2014 article Don Adams, Joey Bishop and the Steve Allen Scandal: Television Comedy in the Early 60s. While we love Don Adams, it appears he was to some degree the Carlos Mencia of his day, albeit infinitely funnier, and was also why Bob Newhart became a standup comic and decided to be the only performer of his own material. That said, Don's appearance here as Mr. Surfboard is hilarious.
My sexagenarian and septuagenarian contemporaries first became familiar with the distinctive voice of Don Adams via the 1963-1966 Saturday morning cartoon Tennessee Tuxedo & His Tales.
Still enjoy the Total Television series and its excellent voice work by Adams, Bradley Bolke, Larry Storch, narrator Kenny Delmar and others.
The storylines were IMHO the best of Total TV shows (King_Leonardo and His Short Subjects, Underdog, Klondike Kat) and the Phineas J. Whoopee segments, featuring the Frank Morgan-esque voice characterization by Larry Storch, were always entertaining and informative.
And that, dear readers, brings us to Get Smart and the indisputable fact that instead of doing his homework, the guy who writes this blog watched the series' first episode on TV on September 18, 1965 and ended up ROFL.
As Don's frequent writing partner was standup comedian Bill Dana, the origins of the Maxwell Smart character can be seen in The Bill Dana Show, which also co-starred Jonathan Harris (later the sniveling and pathetic Dr. Zachary Smith in the Irwin Allen TV series Lost In Space).
As the intrepid (and much smarter than Max) Agent 99, Get Smart co-star, actress Barbara Feldon, brought wit, understatement and style to the series. Could another actress pull off the role of Agent 99 as gracefully? Probably not.
There were five seasons of Get Smart and numerous ties to 1960's pop culture beyond 007 and Inspector Jacques Clouseau. While episode one was penned by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry - and both would contribute to season one episodes - a good number of talented scribes penned very funny scripts through the entire run of the series.
Stan Burns and Mike Marmer, subsequently writers for Carol Burnett Show, made their mark on the series. Allan Burns and Chris Hayward, terrific Jay Ward Productions writers, penned many Season 4 episodes, often collaborating with Arne Sultan and producer Leonard Stern. Gerald Gardner and Dee Caruso, the writing team from The Monkees, penned many Get Smart episodes. Also among the writers: The Tonight Show's ultra-zany Pat McCormick.
After a stretch returning to stand-up comedy, Adams re-emerged with the Don Adams Screen Test show in the mid-1970's.
He also appeared as Agent 86 in TV ads.
There would be a big screen revival of Get Smart in 1980, the feature film The Nude Bomb, penned by Mel Brooks, Buck Henry and Arne Sultan. While this Agent 86 adventure has its moments and an appearance by 1940's movie queen Rhonda Fleming, the absence of Barbara Feldon as Agent 99 is much felt. The fact it doesn't include scenes featuring numerous individuals much better looking than Maxwell Smart victimized with naked aggression by The Nude Bomb does not help.
The next comeback for Don Adams, after three seasons of the Canadian sitcom Check It Out, would be a very successful return to animation - and portraying a much more formidable sort than Agent 86 - in the 1980's TV series Inspector Gadget.
The Don Adams version of Agent 86 would return in 1989 for the TV movie Get Smart Again! (prior to subsequent 21st century revivals starring Steve Carell), this one a lot more successful than The Nude Bomb, in large part due to the presence of Barbara Feldon. Enjoy!
Alas, instead of preparing for this weekend's National Raisin and Spice Bar Day and National Caramel Day, the gang here has been watching the stock market party like it's 1929, crash like a motor sports catastrophe and plummet like a cheating knuckleballer's 78 mph pitch laden with foreign substances. Even Bert Lahr is losing it!
All we can think of (as we bite what's left of our nails) is the movies and cartoons of the Great Depression, a time no sane person wants to return to. Among the best: Frank Capra's 1932 film American Madness, starring Walter Huston.
One of the most memorable of the short subjects that tackled the Depression was Charley Chase in the Hal Roach comedy THE PANIC IS ON (1931).
A slew of animated cartoons from the early sound era directly address the Depression. Ub Iwerks' Flip The Frog series frequently places our cartoon heroes on the streets and in bread lines.
Even the always plucky Oswald The Lucky Rabbit got hit by hard times.
The Charles Mintz Studio practically specialized in topical cartoons in the early 1930's.
THE FLOP HOUSE is as much an excuse to go-for-broke in the wacky sight gags department as social commentary. Were destitute cartoon animals, no doubt wiped out by the stock market crash, living in flop houses? Yes. Did the ever-enterprising Scrappy run a flop house? Yes.
Eventually, the extended hard times led to a sub-genre of cartoons, known as "let's beat that darn Depression with good will, hard work and a happy song." Hugh Harman & Rudy Ising's jaunty musical from the MGM Happy Harmony series, Hey-Hey Fever (1935), brings the Great Depression and its devastation to Mother Goose Land!
The epitome of this sub-genre remains the Ben Harrison & Manny Gould crew's Color Rhapsody LET'S GO (1937). Even insects got clobbered by the 1930's!
