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!
Who was the man, the Big Kahuna in the field of music for animated cartoons? Well, there were several - Scott Bradley (MGM), Darrell Calker (Walter Lantz Productions/Universal), Leigh Harline at Disney's and the team of Sammy Timberg and Lou Fleischer - but in general, the first name in the "Password" answer is the incomparable Carl W. Stalling (November 10, 1891 - November 29, 1972).
Warner Bros. cartoon-meister elaborates on the greatness of Carl Stalling.
Carl W. Stalling, composer-conductor-arranger extraordinaire with Walt Disney Productions, the Ub Iwerks Studio and Warner Bros. (pre and post Leon Schlesinger), had a way of improving the films' quality wherever he went.
The Skeleton Dance (1929) in particular was innovative and a groundbreaking film by the Disney studio.
Carl Stalling contributed many wonderful scores to the cartoons produced by the studio of ace Disney animator and special effects inventor Ub Iwerks in 1930-1935.
Leon Schlesinger hired Carl to succeed Norman Spencer as the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies music man and the improvement in the cartoons was immediate.
It's a tough call as to which individual Looney Tune or Merrie Melodie features my favorite Carl Stalling soundtrack. In addition to PORKY IN WACKYLAND, PORKY PIG'S FEAT directed by Frank Tashlin and THE GREAT PIGGY BANK ROBBERY directed by Bob Clampett immediately come to mind.
In addition, note that the new Flip The Frog Blu-ray from Thunderbean is officially available. If you don't have it yet, this set is chock full of excellent Carl Stalling scores and animated goodness from the talented likes of Grim Natwick, Berny Wolf, Al Eugster and Shamus Culhane.
We're thrilled and delighted to have lived long enough to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio opening in Hollywood, after an early stretch making Newman's Laugh-O-Grams in Kansas City. We're glad we got to see Leslie Iwerks, Ub's granddaughter and author (with John Kenworthy) of The Hand Behind the Mouse: An Intimate Biography of Ub Iwerks, do a presentation on Ub and Walt many moons ago:
We are saddened that two of the best cartoonologists and Walt Disney Productions historians, Jim Korkis and Russell Merritt, have passed and presumably found the drawing board and screening room in the Happy Hunting Ground. Have a hunch that Russell knows where the pristine 35mm nitrate prints in the next world are!
Today's post pays tribute to the early days of the Disney Brothers studio.
Walt and Roy moved with the Disney family to Kansas City, Missouri in 1911. The first Disney Brothers studio was located at 31st and First Avenue in Kansas City.
This is where Walt began his illustrious career as an animation producer.
The Disney Brothers studio relocated to the West Coast and began making cartoons in Walt and Roy's uncle Robert's garage at 4406 Kingswell Avenue in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles . . . on October 16, 1923.
In the same year in which Buster Keaton's Three Ages, Charlie Chaplin's The Pilgrim, Harold Lloyd's Why Worry and the Otto Messmer cartoon classic Felix in Hollywood were released to movie theaters, the Disney brothers studio, now in Los Feliz, began following Alice's Wonderland with 56 Alice comedies, combining animation with live-action. Alice's Wonderland, the unreleased Newmans Laugh-O-Gram, turned out to be the series pilot.
Alice comedies ran until the Disney studio started making Oswald The Lucky Rabbit cartoons for Universal Pictures in 1927.
Alice Comedies - several very entertaining entries poste don the YouTube Channel of Craig Davison, who has posted numerous animation rarities from the silent era.
Wikipedia elaborates: Kingswell Avenue in Los Feliz was home to the studio from 1923 to 1926. Kansas City, Missouri natives Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney founded Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in Los Angeles in 1923 and got their start producing a series of silent Alice Comedies short films featuring a live-action child actress in an animated world. The Alice Comedies were distributed by Margaret J. Winkler's Winkler Pictures, which later also distributed a second Disney short subject series, the all-animated Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, through Universal Pictures starting in 1927.
Upon relocating to California, the Disney brothers initially started working in their uncle Robert Disney's garage at 4406 Kingswell Avenue, then, in October 1923, formally launched their studio in a small office on the rear side of a real estate agency's office at 4651 Kingswell Avenue. In February 1924, the studio moved next door to office space of its own at 4649 Kingswell Avenue. In 1925, Disney put down a deposit on a new location at 2719 Hyperion Avenue in the nearby Silver Lake neighborhood, which came to be known as the Hyperion Studio to distinguish it from the studio's other locations, and, in January 1926, the studio moved
there and took on the name Walt Disney Studio.
Meanwhile, after the first year's worth of Oswalds, Walt Disney attempted to renew his contract with Winkler Pictures, but Charles Mintz, who had taken over Margaret Winkler's business after marrying her,
wanted to force Disney to accept a lower advance payment for each Oswald short. Disney refused and, as Universal owned the rights to Oswald rather than Disney, Mintz set up his own animation studio to produce Oswald cartoons.
Ultimately, the joke would be on Mintz, who was subsequently informed that he didn't actually own the lucky rabbit. Ozzie was actually owned by Universal Pictures and the character would continue well into the sound era, thanks to the Walter Lantz studio.
Walt Disney's pre-Mickey Mouse cartoons from the 1920's are covered in depth in Russell Merritt and J.B. Kaufman's superlative and highly recommended Walt in Wonderland: The Silent Films of Walt Disney book.
As far as that lucky rabbit goes, well, what can the Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog gang say other than we LOVE Ozzie!
The following video of Oswald cartoons feature excellent commentary tracks by Mark Kausler, who knows more about animation history and the technique/practice of animation than anybody.
The Ozzie cartoons, notable for stellar work by such animation legends as Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising, Friz Freleng and Rollin "Ham" Hamilton are both enjoyable and fascinating, with early examples of what would turn up a couple of years later with Disney's Mickey Mouse and the early WB Looney Tunes cartoons.
Am partial to the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit series over the Alice Comedies, partly due to the more advanced animation in the 1927-1928 series. David A. Bossert, J.B. Kaufman (Foreword) and David Gerstein (Archival Support) wrote a terrific book devoted to the Disney Oswalds.
It's still available and a tad pricey, but well worth it for those who love animation history, silent cartoons and the evolution of Disney.
For the Disney Studio, it would be on to the successful Mickey and Silly Symphonies from here. Former Disney animators such as Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising formed their own studios.
94 years ago today, Steamboat Willie, the first Walt Disney Productions sound cartoon and the second starring vehicle for Mickey Mouse, premiered at Universal's Colony Theater in New York City. Walt elaborates, in an appearance on his television show.
Steamboat Willie wasn't the first cartoon with sound - Max Fleischer's studio had already made a bunch of Screen Songs a.k.a. Sound Car-tunes.
Fleischer Studios also produced a documentary about the introduction of sound to movies.
What's new and different about Steamboat Willie is the way sound was synchronized and how the music by Carl W. Stalling and sound effects were as much the star of the show as Mickey. Contemporaneous efforts from other studios just slapped a music track on a silent cartoon. Walt Disney, Ub Iwerks and Carl Stalling asked the questions "what can we do with sound?" and "what can we do that nobody else is doing?"
Who could be attributed with the animation style of Steamboat Willie and its predecessor Plane Crazy? Ub Iwerks!
Charles Mintz had hired away much of the staff from Disney and (at least briefly) took possession of flagship character Oswald The Lucky Rabbit, leaving the extremely talented Ub Iwerks as Walt Disney Productions' top animator.
Steamboat Willie was followed by the first Silly Symphony, The Skeleton Dance, which extends and further develops the creative use of music (Carl W. Stalling!) and sound effects.
Ub and Stalling would leave the Disney Studio in 1930 and then produce the first sound cartoon in color, Flip the Frog in Fiddlesticks.
And the also terrific book by David A. Bossert, J.B. Kaufman (Foreword) and David Gerstein (Archival Support) devoted to the Disney Oswalds. David Gerstein's
In addition, it is highly likely that a search for articles about Walt Disney, the early sound era and Ub Iwerks by such terrific authors and historians as John Canemaker and Jim Korkis will turn up something interesting on these topics.
Returning from a calamitous and illness-filled hiatus, this blogger yearns for good cheer and levity. Thankfully, the 2022 NBA champion Golden State Warriors have brought a heaping helping of the former; extending big time kudos, bravos and huzzahs to the W's on winning four championships in eight years with joy, hard work and style. As far as the latter goes, IT'S SHOWTIME and nothing creates levity like BIG SCREEN FUN!
And, invariably, movie fun accompanied by unhealthy food!
Since SHOWTIME means plenty of quality time spent with classic cartoons, the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog is thrilled to hear that Steve Stanchfield and Thunderbean Animation have been making excellent progress on the upcoming Blu-ray release featuring the Ub Iwerks Studio's rowdy Flip The Frog.
Making his froggy silver screen debut a decade before Tom & Jerry, Flip was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's first entry in the cartoon universe.
All 38 Flip cartoons will be on the Blu-ray.
No doubt a certain factor we 21st century audiences love about the series - the unabashedly randy pre-Code part of the equation - displeased the MGM brass no end.
In particular, Soda Squirt is not just one of the ruder, nastier Hollywood cartoons of 1933, but the only one to feature both a way over-the-top caricature of way over-the-top character actor Tyrell Davis and a sight gag involving a melting, dripping ice cream cone.
Is there any joke or storyline the Ub Iwerks Studio crew won't do because it's in incredibly bad taste? No - absolutely not.
The completed Flip restorations that have been posted on YouTube thus far look fantastic.
You know you're a diehard classic movie buff when you actually watch YouTube to see original theatrical titles from 1930's movies; not the complete films - the titles.
Since the Flip cartoons were largely seen on 16mm film via prints by Blackhawk Films, Commonwealth Films and Official Films, these original MGM titles are brand new to us in 2022.
Love these cool titles, seen by 21st century classic movie fans for the first time, featuring the fabulous MGM Lion.
Steve and Thunderbean Animation are among the few who love and relish Great Depression-era animated cartoons as much as we at this blog do.
Enjoyed Thunderbean Video's last plunge into the Ub Iwerks Studio catalog, into the series that followed Flip the Frog.
Alas, Willie, the tell-tale tellin' Baron Munchausen kid, would not take the moviegoing public by storm, as Felix and Mickey did.
Nonetheless, Willie Whopper, the kid with the wild and unfettered imagination a la Charley Bowers, is the central figure in a bunch of highly inventive and enjoyable cartoons.
As is the case with Flip, the Willie vehicles are unabashedly wacky, undeniably randy and closer to the cartoon universe of the Fleischer Studio than to Disney, partly due to the wildly imaginative animation of ex-Fleischer (and future Disney) animator Grim Natwick.
The Flip The Frog and Willie Whopper cartoons were lots of fun, but not interested in "cuteness" in any way, shape or form and this may have sunk them with 1930's movie audiences that wanted something at least somewhat cuddly and adorable.
The suits at MGM couldn't have been pleased.
Again, nine decades later, the weird, wacky and surreal qualities of the Willie Whopper and Flip the Frog adventures endear them to animation fans and classic movie buffs. . . as much as the irreverent cartoons became anathema to those at MGM who signed the contract with Ub and Pat Powers.
To a lesser degree, this sensibility would extend to the Iwerks Studio's Comicolor Fairytales series.
The Iwerks studio would hold on for a few more years after the Flip the Frog and Willie Whopper series (and, most importantly, the contract for theatrical distribution by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) ended.
None of the other major studios offered to distribute the Ub Iwerks Studio's ComiColor cartoons, so P.A. Powers' Celebrity Productions marketed the series using the state’s rights system of selling to regional distributors.
The Comicolor Fairytale series would not have the advantage of big studio distribution and, thus, could not be booked into anywhere near as many movie theaters as the Flips and Willies did.
With the lion's share of the Comicolor Fairytale series being in the public domain, animation presenters, film collectors and archivists have frequently featured these cartoons in screenings.
Many in the series possess originality and a fair share of clever and inventive moments.
Some Comicolors, such as Summertime (1935), revisit the Silly Symphony format quite successfully, presenting more a tribute and homage to the 1929 Disney cartoons Iwerks, with music director Carl W. Stalling, did so much to create and develop than an out-and-out imitation (a la the mid-1930's Merrie Melodies and Happy Harmonies, made by Ub's ex-Disney mates, Friz Freleng, Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising).
The following, one of the very best of the Comicolor series, The Brave Tin Soldier, manages to combine a genuine fairytale with a surprisingly adult storyline.
How adult? See 6:40 - 6:42, two seconds which always elicit gasps whenever this cartoon is screened.
The penultimate entry from the Comicolor series would be the otherworldly and dreamlike - no, make that downright nightmarish - BALLOON LAND a.k.a. THE PIN CUSHION MAN.
Even the frequently maligned and overlooked Iwerks Columbia cartoons from late in his studio's ten year run have their charms and in this animation aficionado's opinion rank among the very best of the Columbia Color Rhapsodies.
Yes, they can at times be in pre-1950 style bad taste, but not nearly to the degree that the pre-Code Flip the Frog cartoons are.
An added plus: stellar contributions from Mel Blanc and other ace voice artists.
One noteworthy Ub Iwerks Columbia cartoon that is quite striking and imaginative is THE HORSE ON THE MERRY GO ROUND (1938). Again, the aforementioned edge, weirdness and utter lack of cuteness that made these not a hit with 1930's moviegoers ends up a factor in the Iwerks cartoons' favor in the 21st century.
After over a month spent unhappily "adulting" in hospitals and doctors' offices, along with such not-fun experiences as insurance disenrollment, count this blogmeister happy to be back posting, hopefully every week to ten days.
Topic of the next post: a YouTube channel, which appears to be spearheaded by historian and author Jane Fleischer, devoted to the terrific cartoons of the Fleischer Studio.
Alas, the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog has not found a pristine 35mm nitrate negative of Tod Browning's London After Midnight in a cave or basement somewhere, but we will wish all a Happy Halloween nonetheless!
We'll kick today's Halloween-themed post off with a few cartoons.
Here's one of those indescribable Van Beuren Studio entries from the "Aesop's Fables" series. Starts with a fantasy about finding a pot of gold over the rainbow and then veers off into a netherworld, including demons and apparitions among the patented bizarre imagery the Van Beuren and Fleischer animators were so skilled at creating.
Didn't know there was such a thing as horny fossils until seeing this 1932 Betty Boop epic. I don't get it. They're fossils. . . THEY'RE DEAD!
Ace animator Ub Iwerks produced Skeleton Frolic among a series of cartoons his studio sub-contracted to Columbia Pictures from 1936-1940. It is a followup of sorts to the groundbreaking 1929 Walt Disney Silly Symphony cartoon The Skeleton Dance, but realized in the prevalent animation style of the mid-1930's.
Skeleton Frolic is very enjoyably spooky and a fine example of Technicolor cartoonmaking. Love the musical element, presumably provided by Eddie Kilfeather, as well as the super-cool backgrounds throughout. Not sure who animated it; Ub himself, fastest animator in the West and Walt Disney's not-so-secret weapon in the 1920's, did the honors on much of the Silly Symphony cartoon. Could that be Irv Spence's lively, distinctive and imaginative animation on the skeleton orchestra sequence?
It's likely the experts, from Mark Kausler to Devon Baxter, have an answer for that question. IIRC, by the time Skeleton Frolic was produced in late 1936 - early 1937 as the second Iwerks Studio contribution to the Columbia Color Rhapsody series, top animators Grim Natwick, Berny Wolf and Shamus Culhane had long since left to join the Walt Disney Studio.
At this point, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog down a pint of pumpkin spice ale and two or three pumpkin spice double cappucchinos and enjoy the entertainment.
Photo by Christopher Walters
Can't decide between The Bride Of Frankenstein and Young Frankenstein as my Halloween choice.
Will have no choice but to watch both. Again.
Nothing says scary quite like The Paul Lynde Halloween Special (1976), co-starring none other than the great Margaret Hamilton.
We at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog watch it every year without fail!
Now it's time for some trailers from terrible movies!
And, unquestionably, it wouldn't be Halloween without a judicious selection of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and Creature Features TV show openings!
Seems we always finish the annual Happy Halloween post with a slew of references to the 1948 Universal Pictures feature Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein and its various followups. Since the gang here remains resolutely Way Too Lazy To Write A Blog, we'll do it again. . . Happy Halloween!
Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog's first post of 2020 covers one of our favorite topics: "Golden Age" animated cartoons that never got laughs (as Termite Terrace-influenced WB and MGM cartoons did), admiration (Fleischer's Betty Boop, Popeye and Superman) or critical acclaim (Disney, UPA).
Many unloved animated films and Incredibly Strange Cartoons have been covered at length previously here under the headings "Wide World of Crap-tastic Cartoons" and "Toons Around The World."
Neither ultra low-budget TV-toons from a couple of decades later nor undistinguished cartoons from the tail end of the theatricals in the 1960's will be in this post's mix; those who grew up with Saturday morning television's pen-and-ink heroes and remember them fondly as childhood fun love 'em.
Arguably the most maligned of all cartoon series was actually produced by, of all studios, Warner Brothers. The star: Buddy, a.k.a. Mr. Excitement.
Buddy was the first cartoon character created by the Leon Schlesinger Studio, which had been hastily put together in 1933 after the producer and Warner Bros. broke off ties with the former producers of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, the ex-Disney animators Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising.
Leon Schlesinger's daunting task: assemble a new crew for an in-house studio immediately. Schlesinger's first production manager and director, former Disney animator Tom Palmer, started off on two wrong feet by helming the fledgling studio's first two cartoons, Buddy's Day Out and I've Got To Sing A Torch Song. The one link with the glory days of Warner Brothers cartoons is that the assistant to head animator Jack King on these initial Schlesinger Studio releases was a young Bob Clampett.
These cartoons were deemed so bad the powers that were at Schlesinger's found themselves compelled to beg former Harman-Ising director and head animator Isadore "Friz" Freleng to take a job with the new Merrie Melodies crew, make as many changes to the completed Tom Palmer cartoons as needed - and take over the directorial reins. Watch Buddy's Day Out and see why!
I've Got To Sing A Torch Song was it for Tom Palmer as director at Schlesinger's. At least the Greta Garbo caricature who sings a bit of the theme song got to be the first cartoon character in a Merrie Melodie to say "That's All, Folks" at the end.
After Freleng was given the assignment of attempting to salvage the two aforementioned cartoons and head one of the Leon Schlesinger Studio's production units, Earl Duvall, who worked on the Disney newspaper comics (Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse and, in collaboration with Al Taliaferro, the Silly Symphonies comics), succeeded Tom Palmer as Warner Bros. cartoons director.
The arrival at Schlesinger's of Earl Duvall, layout artist and member of the story department at Disney (and previously a storyman at Harman-Ising) was delayed by the projects he needed to finish at The Mouse Factory. By the time Duvall arrived, Palmer had already been fired. Both have been credited, separately or together, with devising the characters of Buddy and Cookie.
The following cartoon, Buddy's Beer Garden, represents an enormous improvement over its hideously bland predecessor. Perhaps Buddy should have cross-dressed in these cartoons more often!
Earl Duvall's subsequent Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies have their moments as well; all five of his Warner Brothers cartoons possess pre-Code humor and adult themes treasured in the Fleischer Studio's Betty Boop series - and that is most appropriately for cartoons that preceded such feature films as Gold Diggers Of 1933 and Footlight Parade.
Sittin' On A Backyard Fence, the second Merrie Melodie cartoon produced by the Leon Schlesinger Studio, features the musicality to be expected from a series based on songs from Warner Brothers musicals, as well as some clever visual ideas, such as the chase scene along the telephone wires (from 5:49 to 6:04).
Too bad the cartoon promoted in the one sheet for Looney Tunes that opens this post, Buddy & Cookie, apparently never was produced; the main characters are more grownup and thus much better suited to precede a Warner Brothers or First National flick starring Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Blondell, Ann Dvorak or Aline MacMahon!
Earl Duvall's primary claim to fame in Warner Brothers Animation history is from directing Honeymoon Hotel, the first color Merrie Melodie.
This Merrie Melodie possesses some genuine charm not seen frequently between the ever-bouncy Rudy Ising Merrie Melodies from the early 1930's and those cinematic gems Frank Tashlin contributed later in the decade such as Speaking Of The Weather, Have You Got Any Castles? and You're An Education. Alas, Earl Duvall's tenure at Schlesinger's directing Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes was short-lived. He got into a drunken argument with the boss and was fired.
After Freleng and Ben "Bugs" Hardaway directed Buddy cartoons, ranging from pretty darn good (Buddy The Detective) to pretty darn horrible (Buddy Of The Apes, Buddy In Africa), animator Jack King ultimately took over the black & white Looney Tunes. What these Buddy cartoons share is humor that's grotesque and politically incorrect even by 1934 standards, although not as jaw-droppingly so as the live-action and animated versions of the Harry Warren - Al Dubin song from Wonder Bar, Goin' To Heaven On A Mule (arguably the single worst cartoon from the 30 years of post-Harman and Ising WB Merrie Melodies). While Jack King was no Tex Avery or Frank Tashlin - at WB or Disney's - he nonetheless made some decent and entertaining cartoons during his stretch cranking out B&W Looney Tunes in 1934-1936.
The now all-in-color Merrie Melodies, helmed by former Harman and Ising head animator/director and 1920's Disney animator Friz Freleng, continue doing what all the other studios were attempting: to keep up with Disney's Silly Symphonies.
This inevitably proved to be a losing proposition, as Walt constantly was pushing for bigger budgets, better storylines and superior draftsmanship in every cartoon release.
Although the shift from B&W to glorious Technicolor was a tremendous advantage and inspiration for the artists at Disney, what it did to the other studios, compelling all to make their own version of Silly Symphonies was navigate Cartoonland away from the unfettered, uninhibited pre-Code antics and into a serious rut.
The mid-1930's glut of faux Silly Symphonies cartoons was only relieved by the Fleischer Studio's not at all Disney-like Popeye series - and yet they, too, not wanting to be left out of an industry-wide trend, got into the Silly Symphonies act with the Color Classics series.
The new color Merrie Melodies were less peppy, funny, musical and imaginative than the earlier cartoons cranked out for Vitaphone/Warner Brothers release by former producers Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising just a few years earlier.
Visually and in content, these Merrie Melodies are closest to the Walter Lantz Studio's 1934 Cartune Classics (Jolly Little Elves) and 2-color Oswald The Lucky Rabbit cartoons (The Toy Shoppe and Toyland Premiere).
The 1934-1935 Merrie Melodies are also notable for both being the first WB cartoon series to permanently switch from "So Long Folks" to "That's All Folks" at the end, but also have the immortal sign-off delivered by a character never actually seen starring in any of the cartoons. Let's just call him "the creepy jester."
Who knows why Friz didn't make a cartoon about how this guy never got a laugh, EVER.
This jester was about as funny as a colonoscopy without anesthesia.
Several of these Merrie Melodies are most agreeable viewing and all feature Freleng's genius in the staging of action, but they remain infinitely less provocative and forceful than the studio's brash, rat-a-tat-tat feature films, starring the likes of Jimmy Cagney, Bette Davis, Edward G. Robinson, Warren William, Joan Blondell, etc.
It was not until such 1935 entries as Into Your Dance, Along Flirtation Walk and Little Dutch Plate that Freleng began to incorporate elements of what would be the Warner Brothers cartoon style humor into the proceedings. A trade ad for Merrie Melodies featured the characters from the funniest and most memorable Friz Freleng cartoon from that season, I Haven't Got A Hat, starring new characters soon to be cast in the Looney Tunes series.
Led by the stuttering Porky Pig, voiced at first by stuttering actor Joe Daugherty, the new Looney Tunes stars awarded Buddy a one-way ticket to the Cartoon Character Retirement Home.
The same year, producer Leon Schlesinger hired former Walter Lantz Studio animator Tex Avery to head a new production unit, soon to be known as "Termite Terrace."
The "Termite Terrace" boys in the summer of 1935: (from left) Virgil Ross, Sid Sutherland, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and Bob Clampett
The Merrie Melodies stayed resolutely in the "let's do something sort of like a Silly Symphony" format as the 1930's wore on, but the B&W Looney Tunes, led by the Avery's "no - let's make funny cartoons" credo, pioneered a new, uninhibited and hilarious cartoon humor and provided a viable alternative.
Tex Avery, soon joined at WB by Van Beuren and Iwerks studio animator and comics artist Frank Tashlin, as Fleischer Popeye cartoons did, proved it was indeed possible to produce animation totally unlike Disney's that resonated with movie audiences.
The revamped Looney Tunes of the latter 1930's, thanks to Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Frank Tashlin, Chuck Jones, Carl W. Stalling and many more blazing talents, would be among the most enduringly loved animated cartoons. Our heartfelt and unending thanks go to sound effects wizard Treg Brown for auditioning Mel Blanc, who had previously been turned away approximately 1000 times by Stalling's predecessor as music director, Norman Spencer!
Also located in sunny California, the studio of former Walt Disney Studios ace animator, the fastest pencil in the West and the guy who practically animated Mickey Mouse in Plane Crazy by himself, the legendary Ub Iwerks (1901-1971).
Iwerks started as Walt Disney's friend and collaborator from their earliest professional days as commercial artists in Kansas City, and proved a key creative impetus and right-hand man driving the Alice in Cartoonland, Oswald The Lucky Rabbit, Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies series. Ub's daughter Leslie has produced a documentary, The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story, about his life and career.
First, the Ub Iwerks Studio produced the Flip The Frog series for release by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1930-1933.
Without a doubt, MGM's expectation was that they acquired the "Disney magic" by hiring the studio's top animator, although it soon became clear that Ub preferred a much randier - and not particularly "cute" - approach to the making of animated cartoons than Walt favored (at least after the early Mickeys and Silly Symphonies in 1928-1929).
After the Flip The Frog series ended, the Iwerks studio produced a series for MGM distribution starring a tell-tale tellin' Baron Munchausen kid named Willie Whopper. There was one season of Willie's wild adventures, many featuring the excellent work of Grim Natwick, the animator of Betty Boop for the Fleischer Talkartoons series.
As is also the case with the films of Charley Bowers, the wilder the tall tales, the better the film and some of the most imaginative cartoons produced by the Ub Iwerks Studio are from this series.
Again, these cartoons were not interested in "cuteness" in any way, shape or form - and this may have sunk the Willie Whoppers with movie audiences that wanted something cuddly and adorable.
Thankfully for classic movie buffs, Steve Stanchfield and Thunderbean Animation have been among those who, as this blogger does, loves these cartoons and has been very painstakingly restoring the Ub Iwerks films; enjoyed the 2015 Willie Whopper DVD/Blu-ray release.
Concurrent with the one season of Willie Whopper adventures, the Ub Iwerks Studio also produced the ComiColor cartoons (1933-1936).
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer executives were not at all pleased with the adult pre-Code humor that filled the Flip the Frog and Willie Whopper cartoons and turned down the ComiColor series; MGM would soon contract with the studio led by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising to start a new series, the Happy Harmonies.
None of the other major studios offered to distribute the ComiColor cartoons, so P.A. Powers' Celebrity Productions marketed the series using the state’s rights system of selling to regional distributors. This meant these cartoons could not get into anywhere near as many movie theaters as those distributed by a major studio such as MGM.
Until the next group of Ub Iwerks Studio restorations are available for viewing on Blu-ray, here's the Kino Video compendium of the studio's animation from 1930-1936. The cartoons range from brilliant and visually striking to pedestrian. While characterization and storylines were not the Iwerks studio's strong suits, the consistently excellent draftsmanship and exceptionally rubbery "rubber-hose" character animation by Grim Natwick, Shamus Culhane, Al Eugster, Berny Wolf and others, plus the imaginative layout/color/background designs carry these cartoons and frequently make them quite memorable.
Alas, due to this series never attracting a national distributor or linking with one of the major studios, Celebrity Productions went belly up and the ComiColor series ended.
Subsequently, the Ub Iwerks Studio contracted with Columbia Pictures to produce 15 Color Rhapsody cartoons (1936-1940, with the vividly psychedelic The Horse On The Merry-Go-Round a standout), made four black and white Looney Tunes which also employed Leon Schlesinger studio animators, and three Gran' Pop Monkey cartoons by Cartoon Films, Ltd.
Always tinkering in his shop and testing new inventions, Ub got out of producing cartoons and returned to Disney in 1940 to devise and develop the next wave of innovative special effects technologies.
Not terribly far geographically from where Disney produced incredibly popular, critically acclaimed cartoons and Leon Schlesinger's Studio cranked out Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies was the Charles Mintz Studio, which produced cartoons for Columbia release before and after Walt Disney stopped releasing his Mickey Mouse series through Columbia.
The former New York based animators at Mintz had a much darker sensibility and penchant for gallows humor - sometimes, even darker than Fleischer - in their work than their animation industry counterparts, never, try as they might, quite getting the sunny California ethos.
After working on the Koko The Clown and Inkwell Imps series for Max & Dave Fleischer and before getting an offer he could not refuse to join the Walt Disney Studio, Charles Mintz Studio director and animator Dick Huemer (seen here with co-writer Joe Grant at Disney's) created the likable but obscure RKO Radio Pictures cartoon star Toby The Pup.
After Toby, Dick Huemer and Mintz staff (Sid Marcus, Art Davis) created a character that exemplifies "cartoons nobody loved". . . the most frequently and enthusiastically maligned of the Golden Age characters, Scrappy!
Been writing about the Charles Mintz Studio cartoons starring the not beloved Scrappy and his goofball brother Oopy (a.k.a. Vontzy) for way too many years now.
It would appear that none of those who actually worked on the Scrappy series for Mintz liked them, but, bear in mind, Dick Huemer actually did work on Fantasia and Art Davis both animated and directed Bugs Bunny cartoons.
Still find many Scrappy cartoons, especially those produced in 1931-1933 and directed/animated by Dick Huemor both subversive and hilarious - yes, even though Mintz/Screen Gems cartoons have been noted as the worst ever made so many times by so many animation historians as to make one feel guilty and wrong for liking them. What such cartoons as The Chinatown Mystery, Fare Play and The Beer Parade aren't is cute, cuddly, heartwarming and adorable. Note: one way to achieve full immersion in Scrappyland is to check out this YouTube playlist.
For the last word on Scrappy cartoons, check out the Scrappyland site by journalist and vintage animation expert Harry McCracken.
As previously noted, the same crew that produced the Scrappy cartoons for the Charles Mintz Studio - the highly imaginative Dick Huemer, Sid Marcus and Art Davis - also made the Toby The Pup series for RKO Radio Pictures release.
The Toby The Pup cartoons, less gritty in design and sensibility than the Scrappy series, and in some sequences resembling Ben Harrison and Manny Gould's Krazy Kat, were so unloved that several in the 12-entry series remain lost. One urban legend goes that producer Charles Mintz was so incensed by the failure of the Toby cartoons to score a boffo Mickey Mouse style mega-hit for RKO Radio Pictures in 1930-1931 that he had all the original 35mm negatives and prints buried!
That seems unlikely. . .
The latest on this series, unseen since 1931, is that Serge Bromberg of Lobster Films has found heretofore lost Toby cartoons with French titles.
The Toby cartoons are Fleischer-like and possess considerable charm.
Unfortunately, seven of the 12 Toby cartoons remain in the lost film Twilight Zone.
And then there was, only slightly less phantasmagorical then Scrappyland, the stellar work of independent producer Ted Eshbaugh, whose surreal little corner of the cartoon universe is a fascinating place.
Ted Eshbaugh, as Iwerks did, actually produced cartoons in color before Disney bought exclusive cartoon producer use of the 3-strip Technicolor process in 1932.
Ted Eshbaugh produced his take on The Wizard Of Oz a few years before Metro-Goldwyn Mayer produced their famous big budget take on Frank L. Baum's stories.
Not surprisingly, after his likable 1933 color cartoon version of The Wizard Of Oz, Ted Eshbaugh would go on to produce the best entries in RKO's Rainbow Parade series.
The person who wrote/researched the Wikipedia entry on Ted Eshbaugh claims that his studio's first film produced in color was actually made for Van Beuren and release by RKO Radio Pictures. Since all surviving prints are in 16mm B&W, with Official Films opening and closing titles, this writer is uncertain that the claim is correct; if a pristine original 35mm nitrate print has been sitting in the back of a cave for 89 years, that will tell the tale. That said, Eshbaugh's Goofy Goat Antics is, like the Scrappy cartoons made at the same time, a wonderfully weird and inventive piece of work.
Meanwhile, back in New York, not far from the Fleischer Studio, the Van Beuren studio was making extremely goofy and hilariously primitive animated cartoons.
The humor in Van Beuren cartoons is a great deal more uninhibited than the comedy in Terrytoons, where much of the studio's staff had worked previously.
The Van Beuren cartoons are arguably closer to the Fleischer sensibility.
The Van Beuren studio's Aesop's Fables, Tom & Jerry, Sentinel Louey and Little King series, while exemplifying that New York style of animation in the early sound era, are substantially goofier than both Terry and Fleischer.
Paul Terry's Terrytoons, because of the Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle series, got a little love from baby boomers due to Saturday morning TV and syndication.
Van Beuren's "Don & Waffles" and "Tom & Jerry," after exposure via late 1940's and 1950's television, made their way into the hearts of animation buffs and film collectors due to Official Films 16mm prints.
The 1933-1934 Sentinel Louey, Little King and Cubby Bear series, many directed and/or animated by king of extremely cartoony motion design Jim Tyer, if anything, increase the weirdness factor!
The Van Beuren cartoon studio, New York based producers of the low-budget but funny and saucy series, wanting to compete with the Disney juggernaut, went as far as to hire the guy who directed Three Little Pigs, Burt Gillett.
This was to little avail, as Burt didn't bring his partners in Mickey Mouse cartoons and Silly Symphonies, directors Wilfred Jackson and David Hand, or for that matter, All-Star animators Fred Moore, Norm Ferguson, Bill Tytla and Ham Luske - and most of all, he couldn't also bring the always driven Walt.
Many of the Van Beuren Studios staffers returned to Terrytoons either after the arrival of Burt Gillett in 1934 or the studio's closure in 1936. The exceptionally goofy and especially the off-color humor seen in Tom & Jerry and The Little King did not follow the Van Beuren gagmen into the Rainbow Parade series or back to Terrytoons. A more slapsticky kind of comedy made its way to Terrytoons more than a decade later, when the Heckle & Jeckle series began in 1946, but in a more formulaic approach than seen in the off-the-wall cartoons from early 1930's Van Beuren.
Again, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog extend a tip of the Max Linder top hat to Steve Stanchfield and Thunderbean Animation for restoring these classic cartoons.
An additional hat tip goes to Devon Baxter, who, as Steve has, provided lots of great work for the Cartoon Research website. The profile of Jack King, Looney Tunes director, came from his Baxter's Breakdowns columns and links in this post originated with Devon's Daily Motion channel. Meanwhile, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog suggest the following for 2020. . .
