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.
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.
Today, we pay tribute to the great artist and animator of Felix The Cat, Otto Messmer. While producer Pat Sullivan took all the credit for the creative escapades of the famous feline in his 1920's heydey, Messmer was the driving creative force behind the character.
Turns out August 16 is both the day entertainer Elvis Presley died of opiates, fame, celebrity and deep-fried food in 1977 and the day one of the most amazingly talented and original of all comic artists and animators, Otto Messmer, was born, in 1892 (in West Hoboken, New Jersey - now Union City, NJ).
Have a hunch that readers of this blog are enthusiastic fans of Mr. Messmer's consistently imaginative and inventive work, from comics to animated cartoons to the legendary neon lights on Times Square.
And, speaking of animated cartoons, here are several of this blog's all-time favorite Felix The Cat adventures. . .
Dont know if it is possible to purchase a Blu-ray or DVD of John Canemaker's outstanding documentary about Otto Messmer - sure hope that is the case. Here's an extended excerpt from it - and thanks, Mr. Canemaker, for this and the superlative book Felix: The Twisted Tale Of The World's Most Famous Cat.
After drawing and supervising the Felix The Cat comic strip (which he would do until 1954) and working on Times Square, Otto Messmer returned to animation in the mid-1940's at Famous Studios, where he and Bill Turner collaborated on stories for the Popeye, Little Lulu, Noveltoons and Casper series. Several, most notably the Popeye cartoon ROCKET TO MARS, are among the best Famous ever produced in its checkered history.
Still, one associates Otto Messmer's animation with the minimalist but intergalactic and indefatigable 1920's version of Felix.
Created by Otto Messmer (1892-1983) for the Pat Sullivan Studio, Felix The Cat was the most internationally popular of cartoon stars. Producer Pat Sullivan was a ferocious marketer who promoted the living daylights out of the resourceful black cat with the magic bag of tricks; in this sense, Sullivan predated and paved the way for Disney's merchandising of Mickey Mouse.
By most accounts, the first Felix The Cat cartoon, Feline Follies, was released 100 years ago today, on November 9th, 1919.
Others suggest that Feline Follies was released to theatres earlier, in August of 1919, but we'll go with this date, as November 9 - also the birthday of comedy greats Mabel Normand, Marie Dressler and Ed Wynn - is being celebrated as the Felix centenary.
Otto Messmer began his career in 1912 drawing comics for local newspapers in 1912, but eventually. . . he would sacrifice his art and go in the movies!
Felix' intergalactic animated adventures remain funny, imaginative and highly original nearly a century later. The visual philosophy can be perspective and atmosphere-bending, and is closer to the sensibility of the Fleischer Studio's Out Of The Inkwell than to Paul Terry's Aesop's Fables.
Cranking out cartoons almost as blindingly fast as Paul Terry's studio produced Terrytoons, Messmer would make some of the greatest short films of the silent era.
The indefatigable Felix soon would go paw-to-toe with box office champion Charlie Chaplin and surpass the other cartoon characters of the era as a hit with movie audiences.
Competing cartoon producer Walt Disney, in his live-action + animation Alice In Cartoonland series, actually had a continuing feline character named Julius who looked somewhere between Felix and the cats who were bedeviled by Mickey Rats in Paul Terry's Aesop's Fables cartoons of the 1920's.
Felix could delve into futuristic science fiction by shrinking to the size of a molecule.
Felix traveled around the world in a lot less then 80 days in his many adventures.
One would assume Pat Sullivan was unimpressed by the jaunty rapscallion with a "Mickey Rat" quality that starred in the Walt Disney Comic Plane Crazy (produced as a silent, then later dubbed with a music track and sound effects). He and other producers of animation not named Walt Disney very likely got caught by surprise by the devil-may-care rodent's first sound cartoon.
Steamboat Willie, released theatrically on November 18, 1928, both featured a somewhat more refined version of Mickey Mouse and changed the game with its advanced concept of mixing sound and image, not just slapping a music track on a silent.
Pat Sullivan at first refused to convert to sound production, as did much of the industry, but eventually made Felix cartoons with music and sound effects.
The Felix cartoons with soundtracks from the 1929-1930 season remain fun and creative, much as Messmer's remarkable silents were, but it seems that the music tracks were essentially tacked on as an afterthought. Although Messmer continued making very enjoyable cartoons after sound became the rage, since Disney's latest cartoons had synchronized sound and, most importantly, incorporated the music into the animation, the Felix The Cat series soon, as inventive as they were, became something of an anachronism.
By the time progress had been made to adapt Felix to the world of synchronized sound, music and sound effects, as far as the character's popularity was concerned, the ship had sailed.
Still, even at the end of the run, there were individual cartoons such as Felix Woos Whoopee that were as wonderful and full of unfettered imagination as any in the series.
Otto Messmer only got credit for his amazing work in animation many decades after Felix' heydey as an international star, as booked in grand movie palaces around the world as Rudolf Valentino. Here's a clip from Jane Canemaker's interview with the legendary animator in his documentary Otto Messmer & Felix The Cat.
After the end of the animated series, Messmer drew Felix The Cat comics. The series lasted for 31 years. These comics have been compiled into a book which is gorgeous, but, alas, now out-of-print and, buyer beware, it can vary in price.
It isn't possible to keep a good magic cat down, so a few years after the 1930 season of Jacques Kopstein/Copley Pictures entries that concluded Otto Messmer's Felix series, the Van Beuren Studio, former specialists in primitive, bizarre, grotesque, rather weirdly funny (and frequently in bad taste) animated cartoons, bought the rights to Felix The Cat.
The Van Beuren studio opted to change course and get Disney-fied by hiring former Walt Disney Studio animation director Burt Gillett to make Rainbow Parade cartoons.
The Rainbow Parade series, along with the Fleischer's Color Classics, Ub Iwerks' Comicolor Fairytales, Charles Mintz/Columbia's Color Rhapsodies, Walter Lantz' Cartune Classics, Warner Brothers' Merrie Melodies and Harman-Ising's Happy Harmonies, number among the entries in the "let's copy - I mean emulate - the Walt Disney Silly Symphonies" sweepstakes.
While, unfortunately, Gillett didn't bring such key Disney animators as Norm Ferguson and Fred Moore along with him to Van Beuren, he did bring Disney animator and later Schlesinger/Warners director Tom Palmer, whose films Buddy's Day Out and I've Got To Sing A Torch Song, the first two releases of the fledgling post-Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising WB animation crew, compelled the powers that were to beg Friz Freleng to take over the directorial reins.
The three Felix cartoons among the Rainbow Parades are a substantial step up from these Schlesinger (not especially) Looney Tunes, as well as other entries in the RKO Radio Pictures series produced by the Burt Gillett crew.
While Otto Messmer's name is not in any of the screen credits, it has been written in several places that he supervised )or at least acted as a consultant for) the Felix series at Van Beuren. Steve Stanchfield posted one of the 35mm prints at UCLA, scanned in standard definition, of a Felix cartoon from the Rainbow Parade series in his Cartoon Research entry Rainbow’s End: The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg.
In this animation buff's opinion, while Felix the Cat and the Goose That Laid The Golden Egg does not inhabit the deep realm of the subconscious imagination that the Otto Messmer silents and the 1990's Twisted Tales Of Felix TV series does, it remains a charming and enjoyable cartoon. It brings Felix more into a Fairbanks-ian action/adventure storyline, as opposed to the fourth wall-breaking tales starring the insouciant anti-hero of silents.
After the comeback in Burt Gillett's Rainbow Parade cartoons ended in 1936, due to Walt Disney Productions contracting with RKO for theatrical distribution (and instantaneously finishing the Van Beuren animation studio), Felix The Cat would continue a successful stint in comic strips until a series of made-for-TV Felix cartoons were produced by Trans-Lux, Joe Oriolo's studio, from 1959 to 1961. Oriolo worked with Otto Messmer on many a Felix comic book.
These cartoons - 260 of them - are not without their charms and have a good humor not seen often in low-budget made for TV series.
The TV series is frequently quite entertaining, to a significant degree because of the fun voice work throughout by Jack "Popeye" Mercer and Jim Tyer's always distinctive animation. One would think that limited animation would slow Tyer down, but in this and other television series he worked on, if anything, Tyer gives his hilariously extreme approach to extreme poses some extra zest. Tyer's characters move in a funny way and his humor serves the storylines.
While there have been Felix feature films and TV shows going into the 21st century, our favorite by far, produced three decades after the Trans-Lux Felix cartoons, remains the superb Twisted Tales Of Felix show. Many productions have brought the character back for an encore, but this series alone did a fantastic job both bringing back Messmer's imaginative 1920's approach - and also combined it with the phantasmagorical Fleischer school of animation from early talkies.
Although episodes of The Twisted Tales Of Felix can be found on YouTube, frankly, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog would REALLY like to see the complete series released on Blu-ray - and would buy that release in a heart beat.
There is an Official Felix the Cat YouTube channel, which includes several films seen in this post, as well as the following documentary about the magical cat.
In 1929, the talkies were officially set the entire industry upside-down. In the early talkies, wisecracking Broadway comics were wilder, chorines' costumes were skimpier and the cartoons were weirder - even those produced by Walt Disney.
When the combo of producer Walt Disney, music director Carl W. Stalling and the fastest pencil in the west, Ub Iwerks, did not just master making cartoons with sound - Paul Terry also produced one, Dinner Time, in 1928 - but maximized synchronization's impact by working creatively with the protean elements of rhythm, melody and musicality, this effectively threw down the gauntlet. The first Mickey Mouse cartoons and Silly Symphonies in particular - and Ub Iwerks' animation - are rather amazing in this regard.
In The Roaring 20's, the association of Walt Disney, and the animation industry in general, with wholesome family entertainment was still quite a few years in the future. Illustrating this: another Silly Symphony featuring blazing animation and unfettered imagery courtesy of Ub and his stellar crew of assistant animators.
Felix The Cat, created by Otto Messmer for the Pat Sullivan Studio, was the most internationally popular of cartoon series in the 1920's. Felix' intergalactic animated adventures remain funny, imaginative and highly original.
While de facto producer Sullivan caroused, the ever-inventive, facile and frequently brilliant Messmer created some of the greatest short films of the decade.
Although Messmer continued making very enjoyable cartoons after sound became all the rage, Sullivan at first refused to convert to sound production. The Felix The Cat series did not adjust to how thoroughly and rapidly that jaunty "Mickey Rat" in Plane Crazy and especially Steamboat Willie profoundly changed the game. This oversight may be also due to Sullivan's mounting debts, as well as legal and personal problems. The Felix cartoons with sound remain fun and very creative, as Messmer's remarkable silents were, but it seems that the music tracks were essentially tacked on as an afterthought. The series did not last beyond the 1930-1931 release season. Too bad - Felix was a wonderful character and Mr. Messmer a most prodigious talent.
Although most cartoon studios tried their best to incorporate the Disney approach to sound into their personal style, some, like the Pat Sullivan Studio, did not attempt to digest what Disney, Iwerks and Stalling had done in 1927-1928 and just continued what they had been doing in the Roaring 20's.
Tops among this group would be Paul Terry's Terrytoons, animated in 1929 by Hugh "Jerry" Shields, Cy Young, Paul Terry's illustrator brother John C. Terry, Charles Sarka and arguably the fastest pencil in the east, Frank Moser, as well as the Van Beuren cartoons, produced by a crew of former Terrytoons staffers led by Mannie Davis, John Foster and Harry Bailey. Both studios feature quite literal Mickey Rat characters - and lots of them.
There is a very odd charm peculiar to the Van Beuren cartoons in particular. Much of it is due to a certain good-natured goofiness, combined with a complete lack of anything remotely resembling skillful animation technique.
Ever-cheerful crudity of execution, gratuitously bizarre moments, out-of-nowhere blasts of genuine imagination and frequent lapses into "sick humor" define the unique cartoon universe created by the Van Beuren Studio in 1929-1933.
The Walter Lantz studio landed the rights to Disney's first cartoon headliner, Oswald The Lucky Rabbit, and took the series in a wonderful, way-out direction in the early talkie era.
The Lantz cartoons plunge deeply into the "this is a cartoon, so what the hell, let's do something completely bizarre and see how it looks" quality, driven by the inventive and super-rubbery animation of Bill Nolan. The Disney studio would already be moving away from this approach by the end of 1929. Ozzie's wild hijinx would go on a year or so, eventually shifting to a much less out-there approach by the 1932-1933 season.
The Fleischer Bros. studio, responsible for some of the wildest and wooliest 1920's cartoons, especially in the late silent Inkwell Imps series, changed the overall look of their cartoons from "slash" animation on paper to cels and backgrounds. The very distinctive pen-in-ink look the silent Fleischer cartoons share with the Felix The Cat series (due to the technique known as "slash" or "slash and tear" animation - cartoons were drawn directly on the paper and after each pose the paper torn off) was jettisoned. With the switch to cel animation with painted backgrounds and foregrounds, the weird and wonderful sight gags continued, with a distinctive New York City flavor to the settings, plus a touch of the risque, joining the mix.
Dick Huemer, key animator of the Inkwell Imps and Screen Songs series, would subsequently go to California and make cartoons for the inimitable Charles Mintz. The first series, Toby the Pup, released by RKO Radio Pictures, shows a verve, musicality and joie-de-vivre equal to any cartoons produced at the time. For decades, the only surviving Toby cartoon was The Museum, very good and in both reminiscent of and more advanced than Fleischer in 1930.
It's no accident that Walt Disney eventually made ace animator Dick Huemer an offer he couldn't refuse. When Huemer left Mintz, it was comparable to a Miles Davis Quintet or Art Blakey & The Jazz Messenger's star soloist splitting to start his own band, an irreplaceable virtuoso guitarist leaving a rock n' roll group, or an MLB team's cleanup hitter signing with another ball club as a free agent. The Mintz cartoons instantaneously got a LOT less interesting.
The rest is history. Dick Huemer collaborated with Joe Grant at the Mouse Factory; together, they would be key participants in the Disney Studio's subsequent success. For more, read the fascinating and incredibly thorough oral history Mr. Huemer did in 1968-1969, conducted by all-star film historian Joe Adamson.
