The gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog loves the Cartoon Logic podcast by Thad Komorowski and Bob Jacques almost as much as we love weird, bad, odd B and C-studio cartoons and are thrilled to read great news about further vintage animation restorations.
If ridiculously rare "lost film" silent era comedies starring the likes of Lloyd Hamilton, Max Linder, Marcel Perez, "Musty Suffer" and Alice Howell can get a DVD release, so can early 1920's cartoon rarities! Behold, a Kickstarter for the first Cartoon Logic video release, Aesop's Fables, The 1920's volume 1. Before Walt Disney's crew (Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising, Friz Freleng and Rollin Hamilton) began making cartoons, there were Paul Terry's Fables!
The Cartoon Logic podcast's resident animation historians Thad n' Bob, with musician/historian Charlie Judkins, are branching out into Blu-rays and DVDs. This, as well as the news that Steve, with animation experts David Gerstein and Tommy Stathes, have joined forces for upcoming Cartoons On Film releases on Blu-ray and DVD, is fantastic news for animation and silent movie aficionados! Is there a such thing as too much cartoon fun? No. Again, ladies and gentlemen, link to the Kickstarter here.
At the time when Fleischer Studio's Out Of The Inkwell and Otto Messmer's Felix were just getting going, before the two Walts (Disney and Lantz) starting making cartoons, the Aesop's Fables of Paul Terry were the rage.
While the Paul Terry studio’s Aesop’s Fables are not as sophisticated as the animation of Winsor McCay, Fleischer Studio and Otto Messmer, the cartoons are quite entertaining nonetheless, often extremely funny and quite bizarre. Don't knock Farmer Al Falfa until you've seen at least a few of his starring vehicles!
Unlike later cartoons and the work of Paul Terry's post-WW1 contemporaries, there's blood and gore aplenty in the 1920's Aesop's Fables; Mickey Rat characters brandish and shoot tiny but super-powerful pistols that would kill Clint Eastwood and patented Terry cats and rats even die, sometimes gruesomely!
Imaginative and unorthodox cartooning from the likes of Frank "fastest pencil in the east" Moser, Hugh "Jerry" Shields and Mannie Davis is, 100 years ago and now, fun to watch. 450+ silent Aesop's Fables cartoons were produced in the 1920's.
Read a Cartoon Research post that Jerry Beck penned earlier this month about his numerous efforts to secure some kind of distribution and releases on Blu-ray and DVD for the Terrytoons cartoons.
It is unfortunate that the owners of these cartoons have no interest whatsoever in making even a minimal buck off them; guess the big boys are too occupied by the need to screw actors, writers and directors out of residuals for work distributed on streaming video! Would all of us animation mavens at Way Too Lazy To Write A Blog love to see Terrytoons released on Blu-ray, or at least get included in MeTV’s Toon In With Me show along with the Lantz, Columbia and lesser-known WB cartoons? Heck, yeah. . . and no doubt Jerry will keep trying!
The Power of Thought with Heckle & Jeckle strikes me as an animated cartoon manifesto that still holds in 2023. Not even Tex Avery tried to explain the concept of cartoons to the moviegoing audience as the wiseguy magpies do here.
There are amazing one-shot Terrytoons that did not get airings on TV even way back when the New Rochelle studio's films were all over Saturday morning and weekday cartoon shows, as the Mighty Mouse, Heckle & Jeckle and later series (Tom Terrific, Deputy Dawg - alas, there's only one Terrytoon starring Flebus) did.
Many Terrytoons are up on YouTube and, just as they did way back when, feature the original, unfettered and highly inventive animation of Jim Tyer and Carlo Vinci.
Like the 1920's Aesop's Fables, the Terrytoons can be very funny and very dark. Speaking of the latter, HOW TO RELAX remains a favorite!
We are pleased as pomegranates to hear that the Van Beuren Studio's Little King cartoons will be released on Blu-ray!
The Little King was created by Otto Soglow and first appeared in the New Yorker in 1931. When Soglow's contract with the New Yorker expired in 1934, he took The Little King to King Features.
The animated Little King series, distributed by RKO Radio Pictures, was produced by Van Beuren Studios in 1933-1934. The Van Beuren Studio, known as the "Fables Studio" - the animation producers split into two studios when Paul Terry left to found Terrytoons in New Rochelle - made the Aesop's Fables, Tom & Jerry and Cubby Bear series, primitive and at times crude yet often extremely funny animated cartoons.
The focus on Van Beuren cartoons and The Little King means two consecutive blog posts featuring the blazing animation genius of Jim Tyer (1904-1976).
Jim Tyer is noted and celebrated by animation buffs for his wild, wooly and way-out animation on numerous Terrytoons, especially Heckle & Jeckle. Jim puts the extreme in the word extreme with his imaginative approaches to character animation and the staging of action.
Preceding those stints as an animator with Terrytoons (Paul Terry, oddly enough, left Jim alone to express a highly original, unfettered and uninhibited imagination) and before that, with Famous Studios, were Tyer's years working on Van Beuren's various cartoon series. Some of the Incredibly Strange Cartoons quality in the Van Beuren Aesop's Fables can definitely be traced to Jim Tyer's unique drawing style. His wacky humor can be seen in the "Dancin' Farmer Al Falfa" segment (at 2:01), among innumerable bits that emphasize the "cartoony" in cartoons throughout Tyer's career.
The Little King series was preceded by two animated cartoons, A.M. TO P.M. and A DIZZY DAY, featuring Otto Soglow’s lesser known character Sentinel Louey. He's not as charming a guy as the Little King - actually, Louey's a bit of a dick - but the cartoons successfully immerse the viewer into Otto Soglow's universe and very specific graphic art milieu. Love how the opening music of A.M. TO P.M. is the Boswell Sisters' classic Crazy People.
While only ten Little King cartoons were produced, they will all be on the upcoming Blu-ray set. Here are a few of them, which successfully blend some of the more weird, bizarre and irreverent permutations of the Animated Cartoon Universe with the goofy charm of Otto Soglow's character.
The Thunderbean press release adds: This special collector’s edition ‘Official’ replicated Blu-ray features the complete series, including the pre-Little King Sentinel Louey cartoons, plus Fleischer Studio’s 1936 Betty Boop cartoon featuring the Little King, restored from the best available original 16mm and 35mm film prints from collectors and archives around the world. This set has been in progress off and on for five years and is finally coming together. We anticipate a summer release. Pre-orders will get a special bonus disc featuring raw scans of the cartoons from various source materials.
Marching Along is one of the very best Great Depression-themed cartoons.
Again, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog are pleased beyond measure to hear that the Van Beuren Studio's Little King cartoons will be released on Blu-ray later this year.
The gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, among the numerous movie buffs and collectors to use Official Films 16mm prints of public domain Van Beuren cartoons as aces in the projection hole in screenings and film fests, are happy to give Thunderbean a plug for this Little King Blu-ray and upcoming compilations of Ub Iwerks Studio cartoons!
Paul Terry was both an early animation innovator and the classic unrepentant robber-baron of cartoon history. He dangled a cut of the profits as a carrot for his longtime employees, then screwed ALL of them by hoarding 100% of the loot when he sold the studio to CBS. It was said that, if you interviewed for a job with Mr. Terry, he'd tell you right off "if you don't want to make shit, don't come to work here."
The creator of the Aesop's Fables series was also a silent animation pioneer and inspiration to young hopefuls (like Walt Disney) in the early days, but arguably way too much of an activist producer, strictly controlling direction and story content, to be an exemplary "cult cartoon" maker.
Terry, oddly enough, did offer his animators a certain amount of leeway within the strict formulas; he employed patron saint of cult cartoon animators Jim Tyer and, amazingly, left him alone to express a highly original and unfettered imagination. Just in case you're not an obsessed animation historian and haven't heard of Mr. Tyer, here are some samples of his distinctive handiwork.
The fact that Tyer, one wild and crazy guy, was actually free to animate this way - and create sequences like the following - gives Mr. Terry a place in the cult cartoon panorama.
