First and foremost, let's plug some cool screenings.
It's no surprise to readers of Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog that we're big fans of Halloween cartoons and Frankenstein (both young and not-so-young).
A Sunday matinee selection of spooky stop-motion madness in GLORIOUS 16mm, Peculiar Puppets vol. VII, shall be the order of the day tomorrow at Roxy Cinema NYC tomorrow afternoon at 3:00 p.m. EST.
The press release elaborates:
Roxy Cinema hereby presents a seventh retrospective screening featuring various peculiar examples of puppet films from the 1930s through the 1950s+.
This particular showcase features spooky subjects in celebration of the Halloween season. Warning: You may find some of the offerings to be rather creepy, possibly unsettling, and even potentially controversial!
Ten days later on October 30, there shall be a Halloween cartoon program at Manhattan's Metrograph on 7 Ludlow Street. Showtime is 5:15pm. NYC aficionados of vintage animation and classic movies, check these Cartoon Carnival shows out!
Also of note: October 20 is National Chicken & Waffles Day.
Not DON & WAFFLES Day, but National Chicken & Waffles Day!
One way to start celebrating National Chicken & Waffles Day is to watch the following cheesy commercial from the even cheesier early 1970's. This one's cheesy enough to be MST-3K worthy.
Since we did not include Jay Ward ads in recent posts featuring a slew of animated TV commercials, here are two excellent ads for Aunt Jemima Frozen Waffles featuring our breakfast pals, Professor Goody and Wallace The Waffle Whiffer.
The best Chicken + Waffles combo this writer/waffle enthusiast has sampled was at a long-gone but incredible restaurant (the name of which utterly escapes me) in Oakland, CA. The food was outstanding!
That said, the famous Chicken & Waffles chain remains Roscoe's in L.A.
Not surprisingly, there are numerous videos on YouTube about how to prepare chicken & waffles.
There are more chicken & waffle recipes on YouTube than one can actually watch or eat in a reasonable time frame.
Our favorite is invariably Alton Brown, here with the chefs of Cutthroat Kitchen.
Cartoon Carnival producer Tommy Stathes elaborates: It's officially the beginning of June with Getting Warmer, a selection of vintage cartoon films that take place during spring and summer. Come enjoy outdoorsy frolics at the beach, shenanigans in the park, dust-ups at the picnic, and other assorted gallavants under the sun.
Spanning the 1920s through the ’40s, this assortment showcases classic characters such as Farmer Al Falfa, Cubby Bear, Van Beuren’s human Tom and Jerry, Molly Moo-Cow, Porky Pig, and others.
The 60 minute film program will be followed by a live Q&A session.
Shall follow this with a generous compendium of classic cartoons and ask whether we can find forgotten cartoons we love but have not posted here before in 1200+ posts. Good question. We'll start with one we definitely have posted, featuring the non-forgotten Betty Boop as a mermaid.
Did a double take after seeing a copy of Ted Eshbaugh's Goofy Goat Antics IN COLOR, both on Archive.org and YouTube. Have a soft spot for Ted's animation due to his very enjoyable cartoons The Wizard Of Oz, Sunshine Makers and Japanese Lanterns
This "color" version of Goofy Goat Antics is a fake but a nice try and appears to be the product of someone scanning the B&W version and running it through color filters in Adobe Premiere Pro or Apple Final Cut Pro.
The following is an example of what a Ted Eshbaugh cartoon that was actually produced in color looks like.
We're also big fans of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, especially the bizarre and weirdly imaginative early talkies produced by Walter Lantz.
We note Tex Avery's name in the credits of the following 1933 Ozzie cartoon.
Then there's Binko The Bear Cub. produced by the short-lived studio of Romer Gray. Supposedly four Binko cartoons were produced before the studio closed in 1931. This one, HOT TOE MOLLIE, is the only Binko opus I've seen. Who worked on Binko for Romer Gray's studio? Among others two of the McKimson brothers, Bob and Tom, both of whom would end up at Warner Brothers animation.
The Charles Mintz Studio, like it or not, is responsible for Scrappy, the king of forgotten misbegotten cartoons, frequently posted here at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog.
Am I as much a fan of pre-Code Scrappy cartoons, loaded with the rubbery, way-out animation of Dick Huemer, as I was when I first started writing about them a gazillion years ago? Yes.
One of the best of the numerous Charles Mintz Studio/Columbia cartoons in the 1930's to spotlight movie star caricatures is Scrappy's Party.
Preceding Scrappy at Mintz: Krazy Kat.
Animator and historian Milton Knight has posted several very good entries from the series on his YouTube Channel.
Closing today's post: a few classic cartoons by the Van Beuren studio!
Are the New York studio's Aesop's Fables and Tom & Jerry/Dick & Larry/Cubby Bear cartoons crude, primitive, goofy, in bad taste and often hilarious? Yes.
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!
We wish our readers a Happy Halloween that's chock full of inventive animation.
We'll start Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog post #1250 with the trailer to The Corpse Bride, a very good Halloween flick.
Would Halloween be complete without the inimitable Mighty Mouse, who, as part of his superhero duties, must rescue singing rodents enjoying a Halloween party from a witch and her patented Terrytoons cat? Well, not for us, it wouldn't - that's why we've posted this cartoon on this blog several times!
Next up: by far the least scary but most jaunty and tuneful Halloween cartoon of all, SCRAPPY'S GHOST STORY (1935). As always, this blogger's love of Scrappy and Charles Mintz Studio cartoons remains a mystery!
Those who cringe at Mighty Mouse and Scrappy generally go for Fleischer Popeyes, so here's one of the best, Shiver Me Timbers (1934).
The Max Fleischer Screen Songs series included BOO, BOO, THEME SONG, a gratuitously grotesque cartoon about ghosts, ghouls and spiders who run their own radio station, which they use to sell a poisonous drink named DeKayo.
Another poster has uploaded the song segment from BOO BOO THEME SONG featuring The Funnyboners (a great name for a group). Must watch the following on YouTube. The song by The Funnyboners begins at 3:34. If you resample both videos as mp4 files and combine, that's the entire ghoulish cartoon.
Alas, we missed the chance to plug this weekend's fantastic spooky Halloween movie screenings (A Psychotronix Halloween at the Orinda Theatre, Lon Chaney at Niles, Saturday Afternoon Cartoons: A Haunted Halloween in Manhattan at the Metrograph) a few days ago (uh - before they actually happened), but can post a ghost-filled Fleischer "Inkwell Imps" cartoon seen last night as part of the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum's splendid Halloween show.
Sometimes this animation buff believes that the gang at the Van Beuren Studio really, really wanted to produce cartoons every bit as bizarre as Fleischer's. In the otherworldly Gypped In Egypt, starring "Don & Waffles," the bizarreness gets a full court press!
Don & Waffles soon became Tom & Jerry and kicked off their series with a Halloween cartoon, which gives Fleischer's a run for the money in the grotesquerie and bad taste departments.
Another classic Van Beuren cartoon is not specifically a Halloween film, but its storyline about the search for a pot of gold over the rainbow includes demons, apparitions, singing frogs and assorted weird characters, including an odd naked guy carrying around a sack of money while dragging a ball & chain. We love it so much we've posted it two consecutive Halloweens! Wonder if Sally Cruikshank, animator of Quasi At The Quackadero, Face Like A Frog, Make Me Psychic and Quasi's Cabaret, ever saw it. . .
The Ub Iwerks Studio, not wanting to be outdone, made several Flip The Frog cartoons that delved into imaginatively spooky territory. This must be at least the fourth time we have posted The Cuckoo Murder Case, one of the very best Flips and Iwerks cartoons, on this blog! Along with The Wild Goose Chase and Mighty Mouse in The Witch's Cat, The Cuckoo Murder Case was a cornerstone of our Halloween 2010 post!
Since we somehow forgot all about Warner Bros. cartoons, here is one of the spookiest Looney Tunes, an "old dark house" tale directed by the great Frank Tashlin.
Switching for no reason from animation to live-action, Halloween presents as good an excuse as any to post a certain Saturday Night Live bit featuring Tom Hanks as the not all that scary David S. Pumpkins!
A Saturday Night Live Halloween sketch that got this blogger laughing out loud featured Chris Farley's always over-enthusiastic motivational speaker Matt Foley.
Love those Vincent Price's Halloween Special sketches co-starring Bill Hader, Fred Armisen and Kristin Wiig.
How can we close this Halloween post? Well, this way - with the song It's Halloween by The Shaggs. Who were The Shaggs? Three young ladies, the Wiggins sisters from Fremont, New Hampshire whose crazy father wanted more than anything to make a successful rock band out of them. He was so desperate he bought his daughters studio time and recorded an album before they actually learned to play their instruments.
Yes, The Shaggs play out of tune, out of time and out of measurable reality, but there is genuine charm in their utter earnestness, likability, honesty and New Hampshire accents.
The Shaggs try hard and clearly want very much to sing and play their instruments at least reasonably well. Find this admirable.
This blogger is, among many things, an amateur guitarist who got started attempting to play chords on an acoustic guitar around the same time The Shaggs' Philosophy Of The World album was recorded - and totally gets how one sounds - fumbling, stumbling and often failing - when trying to learn to play an instrument. So, while attempting to play a finger-busting Ted Greene guitar chord, we say HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
It's on the nippy side today - even female squirrels are freezing their nuts off - and we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog are pleased to not be residing in the even colder Midwestern United States. How can one warm up? Hot coffee, hotter cocoa and classic cartoons! Leading off: early talkie goodness from the Walter Lantz Studio and ace animator Bill Nolan.
High on the list of all-time favorites: those delightfully weird 6 minute gems from the Van Beuren studio.
We look forward to the next Blu-ray release of the Van Beuren cartoons, which are nearly as indescribably bizarre as the Fleischer studio's Talkartoons. Some entries from Van Beuren's Aesop's Fables, Tom And Jerry, The Little King, Amos N' Andy and Cubby Bear series must be seen to be believed and somehow manage to be simultaneously inept, saucy, hilarious and in very bad taste (even by early 1930's standards). A certain vivid and unfettered imagination often finds its way into these cartoons.
And then, inevitably, it's time for Krazy Kat and Scrappy cartoons, the former by the production crew headed by Manny Gould (yes, the same guy who contributed stellar animation to Bob Clampett and Robert McKimson cartoons at Warner Bros.) and Ben Harrison, the latter by Sid Marcus, Dick Huemer and Art Davis.
Do we at least give a tip of a top hat worn by Milt Gross to the animation greats who inhabited Termite Terrace? Of course, we do! Daffy Duck is always surefire, whether Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng, Frank Tashlin, Art Davis, Robert McKimson or Norm McCabe directed.
We're big fans of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog!
Here's a hilarious 1939 Merrie Melodie in which voice artist par excellence Arthur Q. Bryan doesn't play Elmer Fudd. Tex Avery directed. Brilliant gags abound.
We are quite fond of the WB cartoons directed by the aforementioned Art Davis.
The timing and presentation in the Davis unit's Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes is quirky, funny and just a tad different from what the McKimson, Freleng and Jones crews were coming up with in the late 1940's. Love the wonderfully way-out animation of Emery Hawkins!
Turns out the quite formidable Winter Storm Kenan (wonder how the excellent comedian and comic actor with that first name feels about this) is on its way to our area. So, on this frigid January 28, we say "keep calm, watch cartoons and stay safe, everybody."
When the topic is animated cartoons from 1920-1960, this blog gets exponentially more views, so today's topics, the merry mannequin heads sing harmoniously, will be the return of vintage silent and early sound era animation on glorious 16mm to NYC in the Cartoon Carnival series and, inevitably as death and taxes, B-studio cartoons of 1930-1933.
Cartoon Carnival 98: Scary Town shall hail forth with plenty of Halloween-themed animated goodness at Rubulad in Bushwick, Brooklyn, tomorrow, Sunday 10/24/21, at 3pm and 6pm.
Act quickly, as both shows are close to selling out. Go here for tickets and info.
Wanted to write a post for today titled Much Ado About B-Studio Cartoons and then realized . . . "hey wait a minute, I wrote that post already - it was titled The Cartoons Nobody Loved."
Cartoons by Ub Iwerks, Charles Mintz-Screen Gems /Columbia, Lantz/Universal, Van Beuren/RKO, Terrytoons and Ted Eshbaugh were all represented. Come to think of it, we have posted ALL the Ted Eshbaugh studio cartoons! Didn't get to the comics artist turned independent animator who made the indescribable Simon the Monk in Monkeydoodle and The Hobo Hero, but Steve Stanchfield did in his 2013 article The Genius Of Les Elton, and Charlie Judkins wrote a post about Les Elton for his Early NY Animators blog.
Are there ANY B-studio cartoons of 1930-1933 we haven't posted on Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog before? Well, not many, but here are a few. . .
Wrote about OSWALD THE LUCKY RABBIT - THE HASH SHOP in one of the very first posts on this blog back in 2006. Read about it but had never seen it then. Since that day 15 years and four or five lifetimes ago, somebody posted THE HASH SHOP among a slew of wonderfully weird Ozzie cartoons on YouTube. This is great because THE HASH SHOP is not on the new Walter Lantz Woody Woodpecker Screwball Collection Blu-ray.
Representing our favorite, the Fleischer Studios, is a Talkartoon penned by none other than the great Ted Sears, THE MALE MAN
Van Beuren’s Tom & Jerry have been a staple of Thunderbean Thursdays, with Rabid Hunters and Polar Pals particularly funny posts. Here’s a Van Beuren studio Tom & Jerry opus, JOINT WIPERS, that cracks me up. Lo and behold, it has not been posted on Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog before!
Forgot if the following Sentinel Louey cartoons was ever posted here. Looks like the distinctive work of Jim Tyer!
Sentinel Louey is the stylistic predecessor of Van Beuren's Little King cartoons.
And then there is the Charles Mintz Studio. . .
At the dawn of the sound era, the Mintz Krazy Kat series was already up and running, aided somewhat by the winding down of Otto Messmer's Felix The Cat series as personal problems and years of hard partying overtook Felix producer-marketer Pat Sullivan.
Some titles from that first season of talkie Krazy Kat cartoons are routine and primitive, but others are quite amazing and as good as anything emerging from Disney and Fleischer at that time.
In such cartoons as the gangster flick sendup TAKEN FOR A RIDE, the wildness of ideas and unfettered imagination reign supreme (note: this print is fuzzy and incomplete, but gives a taste of how delirious "rubber hose" animation can be nonetheless).
In 1931, the Dick Huemer, Sid Marcus and Art Davis production unit at the Mintz Studio began the Scrappy series, the closest thing to a West Coast version of Fleischer-style cartooning, and created quite a few very funny and inspired cartoons through 1933.
We are glad that a print exists of the "goodbye and good riddance, Prohibition" epic THE BEER PARADE.
Another great classic cartoon by the Huemer-Marcus-Davis crew on flaunting Prohibition is FARE PLAY, which is also a quintessential example of the "medicine shows gone wrong, very wrong" genre, along with such cartoons as the Fleischer masterpiece BETTY BOOP, M.D.
Enjoy - and if you happen to be at Rubulad tomorrow attending Cartoon Carnival - have a blast! And, to support future Cartoon Carnivals, there is a 16mm Cartoon Carnival Recovery Fund. We close by thanking Jerry Beck of Cartoon Research and Steve Stanchfield for much of the animated goodness on today's post, and keeping the interest in these imaginative films alive.
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. . .
