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.
Watching a very odd entry from Republic Pictures' low-budget Jerky Journeys series brings to mind the topic of very odd animated cartoons. We'll start with the most inexplicably odd but hilarious cartoon from Tex Avery's lengthy career, the Walter Lantz opus SH-HHHHH, supposedly based on a popular - and very odd - comedy recording (The Okeh Laughing Record).
Ted Eshbaugh's classic cartoons, especially his 1933 take on The Wizard Of Oz, are wonderful while invariably a bit odd.
Ted Eshbaugh's oddest cartoon may be his Cinecolor tale of a truly abominable snowman. The title character is not a nice guy!
Arguably both among the oddest but most beautiful animated cartoons is John Hubley's "Frankie & Johnny" sendup and ultra-stylish post-modernist musical Rooty Toot Toot.
Entirely on the other side of the artistic spectrum is this very odd one-shot Aesop's Fable from the Van Beuren studio, frequent producers of the oddest of the odd from early 1930's Cartoonland. It's primitive. weirdly imaginative and weirdly compelling; saw the audience at one of the Psychotronix Film Festivals give the 1933 cartoon, as well as Eshbaugh's The Wizard Of Oz, a rousing response.
The only cartoon to feature a caricature of Oscar Levant and also spoof the Information Please radio show, THE HERRING MURDER MYSTERY is another favorite. Dun Roman, later of Jay Ward Productions, directed this wonderfully odd musical one-shot with originality and panache.
Another very odd one-shot from the Columbia Color Rhapsodies series, THE DISILLUSIONED BLUEBIRD, is a calypso musical. The main character is a jerk - that may be why this cartoon is a one-shot - but the music carries the day.
Less musical but also clever and definitely odd is the film noir spoof Flora, just one of a slew of very odd cartoons written with perverse glee by wacky Screen Gems Studio storymen Cal Howard and Dave Monahan.
The Cartoon Carnival is returning to Bugs Bunny's stomping grounds, Brooklyn.
Tommy's press release elaborates: For this special return installment, the theme centers around something prevalent in the news, lately: the public domain, copyrights inevitably lapsing, and the liberation of Walt's early 'Steamboat Willie' version of Mickey!
In addition to showcasing that beloved and notorious mouse film, we'll have fun with a whole slew of other classic early & Golden Age cartoons, featuring noteworthy characters, that have enjoyed public domain status for the past few years (or even decades).
Come and enjoy the likes of Koko the Clown, the original Tom & Jerry (the humans, not the cat & mouse!), Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, Popeye, Betty Boop, Felix the Cat, Molly Moo Cow, Little Lulu, and others.
The cartoon fun commences at 5:00 p.m. Space is very limited.
For more info & advance tickets, go to cartoonsonfilm.info. There will be a followup stop-motion animation Cartoon Carnival matinee at the Roxy Cinema on 2 Avenue of the Americas on Sunday January 28 at 3:00 pm.
Am I guilty of getting my mind off unending terrible current events news over the past eight years by watching videos of squirrels eating nuts? Yes - guilty as charged.
It turns out there actually is a Squirrel Appreciation Day, which precedes Groundhog Day and in 2024 falls this Sunday (January 21). Am now pondering asking Madame Blogmeister to award me a nut gift bag along the lines of what these squirrels are perusing in the following video.
Is the following fake or real? I don't care - it's entertaining and the model airplane is very cool.
After writing a blog post about sleuths in cartoons on January 12, gave a thought to 1960's cartoon star and sendup of the 007/Secret Agent (Patrick MacGoohan version)/Man From U.N.C.L.E. spy craze Secret Squirrel (in the series produced by Hanna-Barbera, not the 1993 version by Genndy Tartakovsky of Dexter's Laboratory fame).
My favorite aspect of the series is the terrific voice acting by Mel Blanc and Paul Frees as Secret Squirrel and Morocco Mole.
Secret Squirrel was among a slew of mid-1960's Saturday morning shows - Magilla Gorilla, Peter Potamus, Adam Ant - that were quite literally pitched at my generation. All these decades later, these series leave me cold, especially in comparison to Jonny Quest and the more satiric competition from Jay Ward Productions and Pantomine Pictures (Roger Ramjet). On the other hand, I find Hanna-Barbera's Yogi Bear, The Flintstones and The Jetsons very enjoyable.
Couldn't finish a post Squirrel Appreciation Day post without a reference to Tex Avery's nose-thumbing anti-hero anti-cartoon Screwy Squirrel. Wally Maher plays the ultra zany protagonist who always has a head cold.
Screwy is a deliberately obnoxious cartoon character, sticking his tongue out at the camera while breaking the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh walls a la Bertolt Brecht - and strictly a vehicle for unrelenting gags.
First saw Screwy Squirrel on TV in the silliest cartoons ever made at a tender age, as a kindergartener, and loved the sniffling wiseguy - don't ask me why.
Would have written to Tex if I knew how in 1961!
Find the least funny of the Screwy Squirrel cartoons, Big Heel Watha, actually pretty hilarious. Has this writer been known to ROFL at dubbed versions of Screwy Squirrel cartoons? Yes.
Tex Avery provides several voices, including that of the dumb dog.
It's not the first time a cartoon studio took this formula and cast it with an aggressively obnoxious protagonist - there's the irritating mouse star of the Lou Lilly Columbia Fable Kitty Gets The Bird, as well as the pre-A Wild Hare loudmouthed version of Bugs Bunny (in Ben Hardaway & Cal Dalton's Porky's Hare Hunt and Hare-Um Scare-Um).
Now, if it is not possible to travel to these classic movie events (either the Cartoon Carnival at Rubulad in Bushwick, NY or the epic Noir City festival at the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland, CA) - perhaps, as we are, you're snowed in - take heart, yesterday was Dolly Parton's birthday, her 78th - so break out some tunes and listen to her numerous excellent records, alternating with cool stop-motion animation made by Joop Geesink's Dollywood.
Today's cornucopia of WAY TOO MANY CLIPS, inspired by viewing Jack Kinney's excellent noir-toon Duck Pimples and that "sleuth in training" tested by a Richard Haydn type in the way out Columbia Phantasy cartoon The Vitamin G-Man yet again, involves detectives in animation. That means the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog has been. . . Watching The Detectives.
Chuck Jones' Deduce, You Say (1956) strikes me as the best Sherlock Holmes spoof among the hundreds in cartoondom. The usual suspects - Ken Harris, Abe Levitow, Ben Washam, Michael Maltese, Maurice Noble, Mel Blanc and June Foray among others - shine brightly as usual. Did not find a complete version of this online, but the three minutes of Daffy Duck as an utterly inept Sherlock here conveys the Bleeker Street flavor - and the likelihood that Chuck Jones was an A. Conan Doyle fan.
We now segue to 1960, plunging into the TV-toon era with the following. . . Q.T. Hush, produced by Animation Associates. Have had a soft spot for this series since it ran on TV way back when.
This, along with the 1949-1950 version of Crusader Rabbit by Alex Anderson and Gene Deitch's Tom Terrific are among my favorite animated cliffhangers and I love the opening theme that reminds me of Hammond B-3 ace Jimmy Smith. Find the character designs frequently very clever. Here's one of the "capers."
From 20+ years later, there was Inspector Gadget, a TV series with a heckuva theme song and a good premise. Go go gadget femur!
The satiric stop-motion of Robot Chicken took on Inspector Gadget with its usual cutting edge.
Those of us of a certain age, much older than the Inspector Gadget and Robot Chicken audiences, just think of GET SMART and The Bill Dana Show!
On to the topic of terrible theatrical cartoons produced between 1930-1960, here's Buddy a.k.a. Mr. Excitement in Buddy the Detective.
There are two viewpoints here. . . One is that there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to ever watch any Warner Brothers cartoon from the period that commenced when Leon Schlesinger established an in-house animation studio in 1933 (beginning with the infamous - and infamously unfunny - Buddy's Day Out) and ending with the 1935 arrival, not a moment too soon, of Fred "Tex" Avery.
There's something to this; many 1933-1935 Warners cartoons are indeed, unlike the features starring Jimmy Cagney, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, etc. pretty lousy.
Among the turkeys: arguably the single worst cartoon ever released by Warner Brothers, the Merrie Melodie GOIN' TO HEAVEN ON A MULE, made in 1934.
The other viewpoint is that most of these are not all that bad and both entertaining and enjoyable when viewed through the right lens, provided the point of comparison is not Pinocchio, Fantasia, the Fleischer Supermans and the best of the best from 1940's Warner Brothers and MGM.
Infinitely less terrible - actually quite good - is the following 1954 opus from Famous Studios, Private Eye Popeye. It's an international adventure framework, quite entertaining and indicates what the crew at Famous could have done with the right storyline. Formidable voice talents Jack Mercer, Mae Questel and Jackson Beck are in top form. Beck plays a jewel thief and does his usual excellent job.
Famous Studios could still succeed when avoiding formula, which is the case with Popeye cartoons from late in the run such as this one and Insect To Injury (1956). There’s no Bluto, eliminating the tired Popeye vs. Bluto over Olive scenario, which Famous Studios beat like the horse in the 1935 Fleischer misfire Be Kind To 'Aminals’. Screen credits note Famous/Fleischer veterans Seymour Kneitel, Tom Johnson and Frank Endres.
Screen Gems, of course, contributed a unique and uniquely strange Sherlock Holmes sendup, The Case Of The Screaming Bishop, to the mix. Along with Deduce, You Say, this is by far the most British of the sleuthing lot and both the stellar voice work and original gag mind of John McLeish are evident throughout.
The running gag about "the best bones of all go to symphony hall" refers to a radio commercial - "the best bones of all go to Carnegie Hall" - from Your Hit Parade.
Tex Avery made a cartoon for MGM featuring a detective based on character actor Fred Kelsey. It is more in the whodunit school than the gumshoe school and, as is Tex' custom, loaded with gags, many extremely funny.
Never to be undone, Bob Clampett at Warner Brothers created the masterpiece THE GREAT PIGGY BANK ROBBERY, starring Daffy Duck as "Duck Twacy." Is this the greatest of all WB toons? It's certainly way up there on the short list. Clampett's crew clearly had a field day bringing to life Chester Gould style bad guys. Rod Scribner's super-rubbery animation alone is worth the price of admission.
In closing, noting that there were at least 500 sleuthing cartoons that could have been included, again, here's Watching The Detectives.
Well, here we are in November 2022 and, lo and behold, another Thanksgiving has just about arrived. Happy and very thankful to still be here and drawing breath? Yes! Feeling big time gratitude? Heck, yeah! Thankful for numerous blessings and lots of dumb luck? Indeed!
Thankful for the spectacle of Thanksgiving Day parades gone wrong, terribly wrong? Er. . . uh. . . that would be stretching it just a tad, although I am ever-thankful for giant Bullwinkle and Rocky balloons.
Do I take some measure of guilty pleasure in the unfortunate impalings of gargantuan and not terribly well thought-out parade inflatables? Absolutely, provided I was definitely NOT there in person to witness the balloon-bursting disasters and get clobbered with flying debris!
Thankful for first responders and others with the task of dealing with the aftermath of parade disasters? YES - more than can be expressed!
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As anyone who reads this blog well knows, we're also thankful for classic and not-so-classic movies and cartoons.
Posted the following MGM cartoon here 10 or 12 years ago.
Like it so much we're bringing it back: Tom Turkey & His Harmonica Humdingers, directed by Hugh Harman and starring a turkey variant on recording artists Borrah Minevitch & His Harmonica Rascals. This cartoon, IMHO, is not without its charms!
Hugh Harman could never quite successfully emulate Disney (although the Harman-Ising produced Silly Symphony Merbabies comes close) or the post-Avery and Tashlin Warner Brothers cartoons, he did make many very interesting and imaginative animated films over his years as an independent producer in the 1930's and then as one of the official MGM cartoon-meisters in 1939-1942. Unfortunately, Hugh's pet projects, an animated version of Gray's Elegy and a live-action/animation version of The Little Prince (collaborating with Orson Welles), were never realized. Ironically, Hugh was succeeded as director of MGM cartoons by . . . Tex Avery.
Yes, Tex Avery, the guy who changed the face of animation practically the moment he arrived in 1935 as the new director at the Leon Schlesinger/Warner Brothers cartoon factory and would be the leader of the Termite Terrace gang that included Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett, as well as the creator of the Bugs Bunny we know and love in A Wild Hare (1940).
Tex also made a delightfully twisted Thanksgiving cartoon for MGM in 1945.
It features a "Droopy" pilgrim and a wisecracking Jimmy Durante turkey.
First posted it in the very first Thanksgiving-themed entry on this blog, back in 2006. 16 years later, it's back for an encore!
As Jerky Turkey fell into the public domain, it very likely remains, along with the public domain Fleischer Popeyes and Supermans, and the epic MGM Happy Harmonies opus TO SPRING, in the most frequently shown cartoons in public screenings of 16mm.
We are also thankful for classic comedy films.
Remain steadfastly and endlessly thankful for the great comedians and comic actors/actresses of silent and early sound era movies.
Here's the 1940 Harry Langdon 2-reeler COLD TURKEY, produced by the Columbia Shorts Department and directed by Del Lord.
While there are difficulties in translating Harry's manchild space cadet character to his middle-aged 1940 incarnation, Harry still periodically summons his blazing comic mojo and felicitously, his perennial onscreen nemesis (and offscreen best friend) Vernon Dent is on hand.
One could never entirely steamroller such outstanding and original silent movie comedians as Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon and Charley Chase, even with the most threadbare of budgets and accelerated shooting schedules.
On February 26, just before the Ides of March, turns out to be the natal anniversary of a bevy of showbiz greats! We'll kick this off with the one, the only Betty Hutton, actress, comedienne and vocalist.
Betty Hutton, star of stage, movies (The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek, Annie Get Your Gun) and television, was born on February 26, 2021.
We love this historic clip of The Great One in 1950 with another comedy great, Bert Wheeler. Apologies for the very subpar video quality, but that's all this blogger has seen of this meeting of two wonderful comics from different generations.
Have we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog watched all 39 filmed episodes of The Honeymooners and all the versions from the live shows Jackie starred on multiple times? Yes.
It is fascinating to see the earliest incarnations of The Honeymooners, from Gleason's days on Cavalcade Of Stars. This one features Pert Kelton as Alice.
Favorite Gleason performance of all-time? With Paul Newman as a Minnesota Fats-style poet laureate of pool in Robert Rossen's The Hustler.
And then there's, speaking of comic geniuses, the blazing comic genius of Tex Avery, the King of Cartoons, born on February 26, 1908.
Tex is the guy who is most responsible for transforming Warner Bros. animation's "scwewy wabbit," Bugs Bunny from geek to sleek.
Fortunately for us seeking laughs in this difficult time, there are TWO Blu-rays of Avery's incomparable MGM cartoons (and, surprise, a third on the way).
Tex Avery directed theatrical cartoons for two decades, and even his very last theatricals produced by Walter Lantz on a lower budget than the MGMs remain razor-sharp masterpieces of comedy timing. Nobody nails visual humor "theme and variations" in an animated cartoon, with the goal of eliciting belly laughs, quite like Tex Avery.
Ace character actor and co-star of The Odd Couple TV series Tony Randall was born on February 26, 1920.
Here's one of Tony's many appearances on Late Night With David Letterman.
Tony appeared in so many movies and TV shows it is difficult to know where to start.
It has been literally decades since I last saw The 7 Faces Of Dr. Lao, which I originally viewed on the big screen at the matinee during its theatrical release back in 1964. Whether it is okay by 2022 standards, I don't know - would have to watch the film again - but do see it as a fitting companion piece to Buster Keaton's The Playhouse and Lupino Lane's Only Me; in all three cases, countless parts are played by the same actor. Funny, as The Medusa, Tony oddly resembles 1980's pop star Boy George.
Our favorite Tony Randall flick, hands-down, is Frank Tashlin's satiric gem Will Success Spoil Rick Hunter?
Most amazing is Tony's masterful appearance, with Jayne Mansfield also playing a non-prototypical role, on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, which reflects Tony Randall's versatility as an actor. Watch this all the way through!
Another character actor born on February 26 whose lengthy career in show business included appearances in numerous movies, before national fame in roles on series television was William Frawley.
Vaudevillian Bill Frawley was the guy who played the curmudgeonly curmudgeon to end all curmudgeonly curmudgeons, Fred Mertz, in I Love Lucy, as well as Bub O'Casey on My Three Sons.
For more info, check out character actor, cartoon voice artist and comedy film historian Eddie Deezen's terrific article on William Frawley, as well as Archive Of American Television interviews.
Last but not least, we will mention albeit not necessarily go to town on the extraordinary life and career of British stage, screen and radio actress Madeleine Carroll, star of The 39 Steps, Secret Agent, The Prisoner Of Zenda and My Favorite Blonde (among many films), born on February 26, 1906.
The life story of Madeleine Carroll is quite an epic one, and covered in detail by John Pascoe's book Madeleine Carroll: Actress and Humanitarian, from The 39 Steps to the Red Cross. She was a movie star for a few years and a humanitarian exemplifying compassionate public service for a few decades. No doubt at least two or three avid film buffs among the dozens writing classic movie blogs have indeed gone to town on the numerous onscreen and offscreen heroics of Madeleine Carroll.
And Frank Sinatra Jr. waxed the definitive version of the Gumby theme song.
The Brits were most inspired by the English Bing - the gifted and uber-romantic tenor Al Bowlly.
Even Bing may concede that Mr. Bowlly waxed the killer version of "The Very Thought Of You." The April 17, 1941 death of Mr. Bowlly in a airstrike on St. James's, London would be an incalculable loss to the arts and the world - as were the untimely World War II related passings of Carole Lombard and Leslie Howard.
Crooners started appearing in movies practically the moment talkies sent silents into the rear view mirror. The popular crooner and radio star Rudy Vallee was featured in the 1929 Eddie Cantor vehicle Glorifying The American Girl.
Rudy Vallee received the ultimate tribute: to appear in a Max Fleischer Screen Song cartoon starring Betty Boop.
Rudy and Bing Crosby inspired Cartoonland in no uncertain terms!
Taking cues from Bing, Cubby Bear was a singing radio star and one-bear band in the Van Beuren cartoon Croon Crazy!
Der Bingle was such a popular recording artist and movie star in the mid-1930's that Friz Freleng made a series of Merrie Melodies starring preening, narcissistic Bing Crosby roosters preying upon naive backwoods country hens and behaving like cocks (as well as knaves, scoundrels, rapscallions and cheeky bounders). This may have been a response to a mid-1930's trend in poultry-based animated cartoons that Disney's Silly Symphony Cock O'The Walk - an extended Busby Berkeley production number starring a cast of chickens - initiated with considerable style and a musical nod to "La Carioca" from Flying Down To Rio.
Not at all thrilled about these characterizations, Bing, with Paramount Pictures sued to get the Leon Schlesinger studio to stop making cartoons starring rapacious albeit cowardly crooners.
Bing and Paramount didn't win their court case, but the last of the trio of cartoons Friz Freleng and crew produced on the "city slicker seducing a star-struck country hen" theme, A Star Is Hatched, featured a movie director, not a crooner. It was also, due to the additions of music director Carl W. Stalling and voice characterization wiz Mel Blanc to the studio, a much snappier and funnier cartoon.
Crooners still would permeate music in 1930's movies, TV, radio and cartoons - none more than in I Love To Singa, the jaunty Merrie Melodie cartoon directed by Tex Avery.
With the unprecedented popularity and rise to entertainment superstar of Frank Sinatra just a few years later in the early 1940's, crooners soon were everywhere in cartoons.
EVERYBODY made cartoons inspired by "Frankie" - and this went on for a few years.
Without a doubt, the best of the best spoofs of crooners and the hysteria surrounding them (not at all surprisingly) were made by the comic geniuses at Warner Brothers animation.
As usual, getting the last word on the swooner crooner phenomenon, Tex Avery made a cartoon at MGM that combines a Sinatra spoof with a romantic polecat very much unlike Chuck Jones' over confident Charles Boyer skunk, Pepe LePew. The parody of 1940's bobbysoxers includes a bit with crooner-obsessed bunnies hitting each other over the head with other crooner-obsessed bunnies. Lil' Tinker is also, most uncharacteristically for Mr. Avery, a rather sweet and romantic cartoon, in addition to being ROFL hilarious.
Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog must finish this post by noting that our favorite crooner of all time, hands and microphones down, remains Bill Murray as "Nick the Lounge Singer" performing music from the movies!
Having watched beautifully made, brilliantly executed, sensitively acted, cosmically claustrophobic and mega-dark international noirs at the 18th Noir City Film Festival, this cinephile is now ready for some LAUGHS!
Happy to hear that there shall be, officially released on February 18 and now available for pre-order, a new Blu-ray of comedy gems created by Tex Avery, A.K.A. The King Of Cartoons.
Nobody could deliver belly laughs in mass quantities quite like Tex!
Soon after joining the Warner Brothers cartoon studio in 1935, Tex brought the animated cartoon business out of the post-Production Code of 1934 enforcement (and Disney envy) doldrums.
Tex, previously an animator for Walter Lantz' studio, immediately overturned the paradigm at Leon Schlesinger's studio by introducing a different, fast and imaginative brand of cartoon humor. His crew (Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, Virgil Ross and Sid Sutherland) set up shop a bit away from the main WB animation studio in a place called Termite Terrace and set to work making funny cartoons.
The Looney Tunes made in Termite Terrace gleefully broke the fourth and fifth walls and acknowledged to the moviegoing audience that "this is a cartoon!"
In this new breed of rowdy Looney Tunes, it was not merely okay but a mission to make cartoons that were not just cute like the Silly Symphonies/Happy Harmonies but actually funny.
Avery subsequently created Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny, with enthusiastic contributions from animators Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett.
This new Blu-ray concentrates on the films Tex made after leaving WB and joining the MGM cartoon studio, where he would create a host of original and indelible characters there, led by the phlegmatic Droopy Dog, whose trademark line was "you know what - I'm happy, or "you know what - that makes me MAD!"
Every one of Avery's characters and cartoons utterly baffled MGM cartoon producer Fred Quimby.
Tops, both back in WW2 and now, would be the 1943 Red Hot Riding Hood, still the short subject to earn the most rentals ever, especially to a humor-and-pulchritude starved G.I. audience.
Had Tex a percentage of the profits from the "Red" cartoons, he'd have retired a gazillionaire.
The lineup of cartoons on this Blu-ray is as follows:
Red Hot Riding Hood – 1943
Who Killed Who – 1943
What’s Buzzin’ Buzzard – 1943
Dumb-Hounded – 1943
Batty Baseball – 1944
Screwball Squirrel – 1944
Big Heel-Watha – 1944
The Screwy Truant – 1945
The Hick Chick – 1946
Lonesome Lenny – 1946
Hound Hunters – 1947
Red Hot Rangers – 1947
Bad Luck Blackie – 1949
Wags to Riches – 1949
The Garden Gopher – 1950
The Peachy Cobbler – 1950
The Chump Champ – 1950
Symphony in Slang – 1951
Daredevil Droopy – 1951
Tex Avery's Screwball Classics (volume 1) can be ordered here. We at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog sincerely hope that this collection sells like hotcakes served with rich creamery butter and genuine maple syrup at the MGM commissary and compels Warner Archive to release a volume 2 which will include the aforementioned Swing Shift Cinderella and other hilarious Tex Avery MGM cartoons not on volume 1. Classic comedy fans - you know what to do!
Well, they will more than do for a couple of months until the official release of the Harry Langdon Hal Roach talkies DVD set by Sprocket Vault Classic Films in April.
