This Sunday Evening: Cartoon Carnival In Brooklyn

There are many ways to beat the July heat much of the world is experiencing, most involving guzzling copious quantities of ice-cold drinks, but this Sunday evening the brisk-brisk-brisk cool down involves watching classic cartoons on the big screen.

On July 24, 2022 at 7:00 pm, in the balmy summer evening air, The Cartoon Carnival series returns to Brooklyn's City Reliquary.

Vintage silent and early sound era animation, seen on glorious 16mm with an enthusiastic audience, shall reign supreme.



Here's the promotional trailer for Sunday's show, Cartoon Carnival #101: Shopaholics:



The press release adds:
This is a rain date for our May Cartoon Carnival, which had been cancelled. Now that we'll finally enjoy the 101st Cartoon Carnival program, get ready for something we've never featured before: Commerce, retail, and shopping-themed cartoons. Shop 'til you drop—vicariously—through some classic characters like Betty Boop, Popeye, Little Lulu, Heckle & Jeckle, and others!

Be sure to bring all your family and friends out to see these classic and now-rare cartoons the way they were meant to be seen—projected on 'reel' film, and enjoyed with a physical audience.



As this installment will be shopping themed, we'll also have a small tag sale of cartoony items in order to raise some extra funds for film archiving costs. You'll find all sorts of fun and vintage goodies available for your own collections, or to give as gifts!

And, as part of our opening Half-Happy Hour, the Reliquary will have bar refreshments available. You may bring your own food to this event, but please support the venue for all drinks consumed on the premises. Bar is cash only.

Happy Hour and Tag Sale: 7:00pm
Seating & Opening Remarks: 7:30pm
Show: 7:45pm-9:45pm



Cartoon Carnival #101 will sell out, so purchase advance tickets here. This is an all-vax event.



The City Reliquary is located at 370 Metropolitan Avenue in Bugs Bunny's hometown of Brooklyn, NY. For more info, call The City Reliquary at (718) 782-4842 or e-mail them at info@cityreliquary.org.

With Cartoon Carnival and the upcoming return of the Silent Clowns film series in the east and various San Diego Comic Con animation programs in the west, as well as the Niles Film Museum's 2022 Broncho Billy & Friends Silent Film Festival on July 30-31 and the re-opening of the spectacular Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto, CA, it appears - hallelujah - that screenings are returning. Now if these danged viruses could just GO AWAY. . .

Locomotion Cinema

Watching Richard Fleischer's amazing thriller The Narrow Margin on TCM's Noir Alley recently, realized that Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog has never devoted an entire post to movies with trains in them or set on trains. Fritzi Kramer of Movies Silently wrote an entertaining post on the origins of the Silent Movie Myth: Tied to the Railroad Tracks - that damsel in distress image from stage, deftly spoofed both by the likes of Mack Sennett's studio and, 45 years later, Jay Ward's Dudley Do-right of the Mounties cartoons - so by golly, we'll give this the old college try, starting with a musical interlude!



Since one of the first American-made movies to be a boffo hit was Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery, this sounds like a plan. So let's do the locomotion, first with Bulgarian-French Scopitone queen Sylvie Vartan.




Shifting from French Scopitones to animation, The Fleischer studio made lots of cartoons on trains over nearly 30 years in production, including many that preceded talkies. One of the numerous cartoons from the Fleischer studio's late 1920's Inkwell Imps series, Koko's Toot Toot, features Koko The Clown as an engineer.



Kitty From Kansas City, a 1931 Max Fleischer Screen Song cartoon, stars the one, the only Betty Boop and features crooner/comedian/actor Rudy Vallee.



Betty hosts her own train in The Betty Boop Limited, at least the second train cartoon - well, that we know of - featuring Betty. We assume Miriam Hopkins didn't want the job - and we are certain Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg were NOT interested, either! La Boop, under contract to Paramount Pictures, no doubt had to do this cartoon, since the Fleischer Studio's #1 rival Walt Disney and ace animator Un Iwerks had already made Mickey's Choo-Choo in 1929.



In addition, Disney made at least one train cartoon prior to Mickey's Choo-Choo. That would be the 1927 silent Hungry Hoboes, starring Oswald The Lucky Rabbit.



Since today's compendium of clips and cartoons will have one unifying factor, locomotives, we'll post arguably the greatest train cartoon ever made, the 1936 Max Fleischer Color Classic Play Safe, featuring the distinctive Fleischer visual style and a terrific score by Sammy Timberg.



There is a psychedelic quality to both the painted layouts and the 3-D tabletop sets a.k.a. the Fleischer setback camera technique throughout. The patented Fleischer 3-D effects in Play Safe are only surpassed by the studio's 1936 piece-de-resistance, Popeye The Sailor Meets Sindbad The Sailor.



Animation buffs have been arguing over The Fleischer Studio’s ‘Setback’ Camera vs. Disney realism for eight decades and maybe shall do this for at least eight more decades. Whether you prefer the Disney or Fleischer approaches, the multiplane camera or the revolving tabletop mini-sets, Play Safe remains one of the most imaginative cartoons to emerge from the Fleischer Studio.



As far as feature films set on trains go, this blogger's favorite, hands-down, remains Richard Fleischer's classic Narrow Margin, co-starring macho tough guy Charles McGraw with macho tough gal Marie Windsor. Yes, that's right - Richard Fleischer, son of Max Fleischer and nephew of Dave, the producers of the last three cartoons.



The very first train film this blogger was ever aware of was a silent movie starring comedian Monty Banks, Chasing Choo Choos. If Mr. Blogmeister remembers correctly, first saw this in one of the Robert Youngson comedy compilation features.



The Robert Youngson comedy compilation features, Laurel & Hardy’s Laughing 20's and Four Clowns in particular, constituted this writer's introduction to the films of The Hal Roach Studio.



There are so many Roach comedies involving trains - Get Out & Get Under, Now Or Never (Harold Lloyd), Berth Marks (Laurel & Hardy), Young Ironsides (Charley Chase), Sundown Limited, Railroadin’ and Choo-Choo (Our Gang) and Show Business (Thelma Todd & Zasu Pitts), just to name a few - it would take further posts to come close to getting into all of them.



A significant portion of one of the funniest of all Charley Chase talkies, Young Ironsides (1932), co-starring Muriel Evans, is notable for a hilarious scene that transpires on a train and features a recalcitrant green vegetable.



The mention of daredevil Harold Lloyd recalls another intrepid, triple-jointed acrobatic comedian from silents, Al St. John, who, very likely in response to John Ford's big budget epic of epics The Iron Horse, starred in the stellar silent comedy The Iron Mule. Roscoe Arbuckle, Al's uncle and frequent co-star (at Sennett and Comique) directed. And whenever there's a post-1922 Arbuckle and/or St. John picture, it's worth looking carefully for Buster Keaton, known to make cameo appearances in his friends' films.



And speaking of Buster Keaton, had the pleasure of seeing Buster's epic of epics to out-epic The Iron Horse, The General in one of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival programs and was completely, entirely blown away. If one is lucky enough to have an opportunity to see it on the big screen with an audience, don't miss it. The General is truly spectacular and loses a fair amount of its magic when viewed on the small screen.





One guy who very likely saw The Iron Horse, The Iron Mule and The General was cartoonist, animator and movie director Frank "Tish Tash" Tashlin. Among a slew of excellent Looney Tunes cartoons Tashlin directed, Porky's Railroad tackles the "modern vs. old reliable" storyline, bringing creative uses of pacing, editing, camera angles and great gags to the process.



Back to features, a big screen epic that very likely loses a great deal of its impact seen on TV, iPad or (God help us) smart phone is Cecil B. DeMille's 1939 Paramount opus Union Pacific, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea. Haven't seen it and thus cannot comment further with any authority or knowledge, but . . . WOW - the iconic Babs and McCrea are on hand and if the film is 1/10 as cool as the titles, it's movie fun exemplified. And besides, the Fleischers spoofed it with the Popeye cartoon Onion Pacific!



Out the same year as Union Pacific: one of the last British feature films of Alfred Hitchcock, The Lady Vanishes. Did Hitchcock have a thing about trains? Yes - both the prim Sir Alfred Hitchcock who made Number Seventeen and The Lady Vanishes and the not-so-prim Sir Alfred of Shadow Of A Doubt and Strangers On A Train. There are Hitch cameos three of the films!



Given that Hitchcock's 1936 feature Sabotage is not at all prim and in fact shockingly diabolical in its denouement, the character of Bruno Anthony in Strangers On A Train, played brilliantly by Robert Walker, remains the personification of the all-American movie psychopath and just one among several in the Hitchcock catalog: bloodthirsty scum of the earth, yet unnervingly clever.



It was no accident that when Patricia Hitchcock made an in-person appearance at an SRO screening of Strangers On A Train at the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto, CA many years ago (but decades after the film's original theatrical release), the line ran around the block!



Now just what the link between The Master Of Suspense and mid-1960's pop music is, we don't know, have no idea, but while this blogmeister can't remember a specific episode of The Monkees TV show that takes place on a train offhand, what the hey, who cares, Last Train To Clarksville is a great tune - one of their best!



A fellow 1960's pop music star and recording artist, Little Eva, gets the last word on today's post.

Betty Boop Meets Ethel Merman

Yes, while it wasn't meant for two megastars as big as Betty Boop and Ethel Merman to share scenes on the silver screen - that was simply not meant to be - the two showbiz icons did share billing in a few Fleischer Studio Screen Songs cartoons. The first was made in 1932 and released theatrically on May 20th of that year. Just follow the bouncing ball, dear readers.



Ms. Merman preceded her appearances in Fleischer cartoons by starring in a series of Paramount 1-reel musical shorts. The first features her bravura performance of "Sing, You Sinners." She did not appear in the extremely imaginative Fleischer Studios Talkartoon that also featured the song.













Knowing an up-and-coming performer when they saw one, Paramount and the Fleischer Studio featured Ms. Merman in three more Screen Song cartoons in 1932-1933.



Betty Boop was very much a featured player in both the Talkartoons and Screen Songs series, starting in 1930.



Our favorite of the group by far is Time On My Hands. Familiar with this song from Billie Holiday's 1940 version, we find that Ms. Merman also does a fine job interpreting those dreamy lyrics . . . "time on my hands - you in my arms."



And Betty Boop, as the mermaid, was never more charming.



After Song Shopping (1933), the last of the three Screen Song cartoons featuring Ethel Merman, in this case accompanied on piano by songwriter Johnny Green, the Paramount Pictures feature films unit cast the show-stopping vocalist in the Bing Crosby - Carole Lombard vehicle We're Not Dressing.



Betty Boop? Soon would be reduced to a pale and syrupy shadow of her former saucy self by rigid enforcement of the Production Code, which went into effect on July 1, 1934.

And The Winner Of The "1920's Cartoon With The Most Incongruous Soundtrack" Award Is. . .

NO CONTEST - and with the full understanding that there must be an Otto Messmer cartoon titled Felix Leaves This Earthy Dimension And Transforms Into An Alien Single-Cell Lifeform, inevitably backed by cheesy background music, this distinction goes to the following transfer of the phantasmagorical Fleischer Studio masterpiece Koko's Earth Control.



The jauntier, happier and peppier the generic "Movie Wonderland" track gets, the weirder, farther out and more apocalyptic this cartoon goes.

May Day 2015: Psychotronic Paul Presents The Pre-Code Follies!

On May Day, after a five year hiatus, Psychotronic Paul dons his Official Curator fedora and returns to the Edison Theatre at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum to present a comedy, cartoon and music-drenched program, Great Depression style.



First and foremost, let's answer the salient questions about the May Day extravaganza, featuring cool cartoons, musical clips, comedy shorts and genuine 1929 "naughty flapper" music by chanteuse Kitten On The Keys.



Can one buy advance tickets online? Yeah, baby - RIGHT HERE!



Do members of the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum get a discount? In the immortal words of the San Francisco Giants' beloved right fielder Hunter "The Preacher" Pence, YES YES YES! By all means, become a museum member - they have been and are doing fantastic work. If you adore classic film and especially silents, blow off the multiplexes and support the crew at Niles instead.

What will we show?



The Pre-Code Follies reflects Psychotronic Paul's love for Busby Berkeley, Fleischer Studio and Van Beuren cartoons, lecherous wisecracking comedians, vintage Tin Pan Alley tunes and 1929 musicals featuring scantily clad chorines prancing through way-out production numbers (and yes, all of this writer's enthusiasm for such things is well documented). In the immortal words of Ed Sullivan, the "rilly big shoe" shall include all of the above on 16mm and 35mm a.k.a. FILM, GLORIOUS FILM.



How about that "live in person" performance?



Kitten On The Keys, who knows ALL the ditties from those "dawn of talkies" movie musicals, is a genuine throwback to the sprightly entertainers of yore.





And Kitten will tickle those ivories while singing these great classic tunes between the toons.



How do I get to Niles? Well, with the full understanding that this blog's readers are more tech-savvy than Mr. Blogmeister is, here's the museum's location, 37417 Niles Boulevard, from Google maps.



If we decide to just show up, when should we arrive to get a seat? No later than 7:30, in our estimation.



Is it necessary for me to know how to tap dance like Ruby Keeler in 42ND STREET? No, but it may be necessary to think about doing so.



Can I get in free for knowing who Alice White AND Marjorie White were?



No, but you will receive a copy of the home "Pre-Code Follies" game, provided you have a place to store nitrate film!

Happy Halloween 2014 From Way Too Lazy To Write A Blog

Photo by Christopher Walters

Happy Halloween! Since the last post covered musical short subjects of the early 1930's and it wasn't possible to get ALL of them in, here, straight from the cartoon universe and the deep subconscious, is the following stunner from Fleischer Studios. No matter how many times Mr. Blogmeister sees the following phantasmagorical cartoon, he's floored by the cinematic invention of it all. Making history as the dancing apparition: Cab Calloway.



Also pretty darn wonderful is this Aesop's Fables cartoon produced down the block from Fleischer's by the Van Beuren studio. Main characters Don & Waffles pretty much spent their entire screen career getting chased around by skeletons, goblins, ghosts and any ghoul who had a SAG card.



Many of us born at a certain time grew up watching The Dean Martin Show, which always had at least one comedian as a guest. Usually, if said comic was not Dom DeLuise, the featured comedian on Dino's variety program was the hilarious Paul Lynde.



Yes, THAT Paul Lynde, the one who repeatedly got away with flagrant censorship flaunting of the first degree inhabiting "the middle square" on The Hollywood Squares. So, submitted for your approval, here's The Paul Lynde Halloween Special, which features, among others, Margaret Hamilton, Tim Conway and Kiss.



With a big time tip of the Max Linder/Raymond Griffith top hat to the San Francisco Giants, who beat an exceptional Kansas City Royals team to win the 2014 World Series, here is the dapper Parisian himself, Max Linder in Ah Secours!, a hallucinogenic and surreal black comedy more akin to The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari than Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush - and directed by Abel Gance of Napoleon fame.

The Best New Year's Eve Cartoon Ever

Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog bids a not particularly fond farewell to 2011 with this stellar, upbeat and good-natured seasonal cartoon, which is available for purchase on the Popeye The Sailor 1933-1938 DVD box set.



That would be the 1938 Fleischer Popeye opus Let's Celebrake, one of the rare cartoons in the series in which Popeye and Bluto aren't literally at each other's throats. That's a refreshing change. It is NOT a rare instance among the Fleischer Studio Popeyes in which voice artists extraordinaire Jack Mercer, Mae Questel and Gus Wickie outdo themselves throughout.

To all readers of this blog, make it a fun and safe New Year. In other words, don't booze it up, toke it up and drive, PLEASE - that's what friends' couches and cheap motels are for!

Fleischer Studio, 1921

Follow The Bouncing Ball

By all means, forget your tribulations and sing along through this Fleischer Screen Song cartoon, Kitty From Kansas City, co-starring Betty Boop and Rudy Vallee.

One Great Psychotronic Fleischer Cartoon Deserves Another

Betty Boop's Museum (1932)

Ready for a cartoon starring horny statues and skeletons? Well, the skeletons are hornier in a 1934 Krazy Kat cartoon in which a gay skeleton, dancing with Napoleon, cops a feel on Nappy's rear - but this still fills the bill. One of those great inexplicable cartoon moments comes when a skeleton (with a Bluto voice) points at Betty and demands "SING!"

About that Krazy Kat cartoon. . . one of the perpetrators of that classic gag (maybe he animated it) was the great Manny Gould, a few years before contributing fabulous animation to Warner Brothers for. . . guess who, Bob Clampett!

Another Great Psychotronic Cartoon

This truly psychotronic (psychoactive?) cartoon, Betty Boop in Mask-A-Raid, epitomizes everything I love about the Fleischer Studio, circa 1930-1933.



I consider the part (at 2:43) when two "Mickey Rat" characters behind huge weird masks sing sublime gibberish right up there among the greatest moments in the history of world cinema.

Fleischer Popeyes Hit DVD

The new DVD set of 1933-1938 Popeye cartoons, mastered from the original negatives, receives its official release today.



Indeed, this is an amazing treasure trove for film buffs and includes a host of intriguing extras. If you're an animation or classic movie buff, just buy it and enjoy.




Kudos to Jerry Beck and many others who made this happen!

Silent-Era Psychotronic Cartoons By The Fleischer Studio

KO-KO's HYPNOTISM Max Fleischer Cartoon
Uploaded by NilbogLAND

Still More Psychotronic Cartoons By New York's Fleischer Studio

1932-Betty Boop - Sink or Swim (S.O.S.)
Uploaded by iToons

More Psychotronic Cartoons

Betty Boop - The Dancing Fool (1932)

Psychotronic Cartoons, Exhibit B

Here's yet another amazing piece of work by the Fleischer Studio, Bimbo's Initiation (1931). If only we could be rewarded for our travails with a roomful of Betty Boops (dog ears or not)!



Although the cartoons got tamer and less risque as the 1930's progressed and the Production Code took effect in July 1934, the Fleischer Studio still periodically came up with wondrous, wildly imaginative and brilliant stuff, such as this tremendous futuristic cartoon about the 1939 New York World's Fair. The bit with the robot dance partners is one for the books.

Psychotronic Cartoons, Exhibit A

We slip a fair number of classic (and not-so-classic) cartoons into the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festivals. The early 30's work of New York's Fleischer Studio - surreal, macabre, bizarre and loaded with unabashed risqué humor, pre-Code style - remains the epitome of the "psychotronic" cartoon. Here's a good one: Silly Scandals (1931), uploaded by voiceman91.

This Fleischer classic could have been included among the Truly Obscure Animated Cartoons I have been posting, except for the appearance of Betty Boop, resplendent in her early 1930-1931 "dog ears" incarnation. Betty sings "You're Driving Me Crazy", a classic standard recorded in 1930 by the incredible Louis Armstrong and in the 40's by Peggy Lee. The song is also the cornerstone of a wonderful 1931 Screen Song cartoon. Clearly, somebody at Fleischer's was musically hip.

We concur with the audience of Fleischer cartoon animals: WE WANT BETTY! WE WANT BETTY!