It's Walter Lantz Weekend at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog

This weekend, we pay tribute to pioneering animation producer and director Walter Lantz (1899-1994). Posted a Lantz cartune-filled salute to Walt and Woody back in December 2024, but dang it, that ISN'T ENOUGH!

Do we LOVE Woody (both the woodpecker and San Francisco Giants curveballing LHP Kirk "Woody" Reuter), Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Andy Panda, Buzz Buzzard, Chilly Willy, and the excellent Swing Symphonies and Musical Miniatures series?





Yes, emphatically!





Here's Walter with his wife and ace cartoon voice artist Gracie Stafford Lantz (the voice of Woody Woodpecker after the departure of voiceman/storyman Ben Hardaway).



Walter Lantz began producing cartoons for J.R. Bray back in the silent era, with the Dinky Doodle, Unnatural History and Pete The Pup series. Walter appears in many of his silent era productions!












Over his many decades producing animated cartoons, Mr. Lantz was assisted very aptly by, to name just a few extremely talented collaborators, directors Shamus Culhane, Tex Avery, Dick Lundy, Alex Lovy, Don Patterson, Sid Marcus and Jack Hannah, animators Pat Matthews, Grim Natwick, Emery Hawkins, Manuel Moreno, Bill Nolan, Clyde Geronimi, Ray Abrams, Les Kline, Laverne Harding, Paul Smith, Art Davis, avatars of layout, backgrounds and character designs Philip DeGuard, Art Heinemann, Ray Huffine and Art Landy, storymen Ben "Bugs" Hardaway, Milt Schaffer and Cal Howard, voice artists Dick Nelson, Lionel Stander, Daws Butler, Dallas McKennon and (sometimes, before 1941) Mel Blanc, plus excellent music men Jimmy Dietrich, Frank Marsales and Darrell Calker.



Now, let's bring on the Walter Lantz "Cartunes", starting with WOODY THE GIANT KILLER.













LOVE the terrific Swing Symphonies by the Walter Lantz Studio, especially The Greatest Man In Siam and Abou Ben Boogie!









Indeed, our mission, just a few days short of Walter's 127th birthday on Monday, is to continue deluging you with vintage Walter Lantz "Cartunes", starting with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit.



The gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog remain enthusiastic about the Lantz Ozzies of the early talkie era.



Here's the color segment (preceding the Ted Eshbaugh Studio's Goofy Goat Antics and the Disney Silly Symphony Flowers And Trees) starring Ozzie from the 1930 Universal feature THE KING OF JAZZ.



A caricature of Paul Whiteman, bandleader and star of The King Of Jazz appears in an Oswald The Lucky Rabbit cartoon, My Pal Paul.



Lantz' Oswald cartoons from 1929-1931 are filled with wonderful, cartoony, imaginative, way-out ideas and Bill Nolan's extra rubbery animation.







































We close this too brief homage to the great Walter Lantz with cartoons directed by the equally great Tex Avery during his brief second stint there. That's right, the Tex Avery, whose first act after leaving the employ of Walter Lantz and joining the ragtag Leon Schlesinger Studio, producers of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, was to create "Termite Terrace" and give the middle finger to that other more famous Walt. Avery directed Porky's Duck Hunt (1937) and A Wild Hare (1940), effectively throwing down the gauntlet.



As always, the blazing and ever-inventive comic genius of Tex Avery is quite something to behold. Too bad Tex never met Buster Keaton when they were both working on the MGM lot.

Easter 2026 Means Wascally Wabbits

Here at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, today's holiday means Easter movies, rabbit-laden cartoons and TV show clips.



Kicking off the compendium of rabbit-packed Easter cartoons, here's the Easter egg-filled and downright rabbit-infested Silly Symphony Funny Little Bunnies.

The unequalled gold standard of Easter cartoons, not surprisingly, stars the Oscar-winning rabbit, Bugs Bunny.



That would be Easter Yeggs (1947), one of the very best cartoons ever helmed by director Robert McKimson.


We're delighted that METV has shown the Walter Lantz Studio's contribution to the Easter cartoon genre, Oswald The Lucky Rabbit in The Egg Cracker Suite (1943).

The Egg Cracker Suite is the last of the theatrical Oswald The Lucky Rabbit series.



Ozzy was subsequently purloined, along with all but a couple of the Disney animation staff, by Charles Mintz.





After a year of Winkler Oswalds, Mintz received the heave-ho from Carl Laemmle and Walter Lantz took over the character and made a gazillion Ozzy toons for Universal Pictures.



Happy Easter to all from Oswald, Bugs Bunny and Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog!

Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog Salutes Woody (not Wilson or Harrelson)

Today on the blog, we're getting LANTZ-ED!



In general, this blogger's all-time favorite Walter Lantz Cartunes were made in the 1940's.

When it comes to the early Woody Woodpecker, we love that cameo appearance (starting at 4:29) in the WW2 themed Swing Symphony cartoon 21 DOLLARS A DAY ONCE A MONTH.



Of the loony bird's adventures, we consider those directed by former Disney and Fleischer animator James "Shamus" Culhane to be tops.










Another former Disney animator, Dick Lundy, also directed a bunch of classic cartoons for Lantz.







We're fans of the Musical Miniatures series.



A talented crew of former Disney artists revisited their days working for the other Walt at the Lantz Studio with the following clever and entertaining Andy Panda cartoon, The Bandmaster, which includes animation by the legendary Fred Moore. It's arguably the best of the Musical Miniatures.



And, speaking of the Walter Lantz Studio's predecessors of Woody Woodpecker, wrote about OSWALD THE LUCKY RABBIT in one of the very first posts on this blog back in 2006. Read about the quite bizarre Ozzie opus THE HASH SHOP but had never seen it then. Now it is up on YouTube.

Since that day five or six 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. NOTE: a Lantz Ozzie playlist is up on YouTube!



Many moons ago, long ago and far away, my favorite way of getting LANTZ-ED was to watch The Woody Woodpecker Show on TV - and see none other than Walter Lantz, a terrific host. Loved those Moment With Walter Lantz segments!



Today, we conclude this salute to the woodpecker and Walter Lantz by tipping the Jimmie Hatlo top hat to the artists who made these excellent cartoons. . . to name just a few, the aforementioned Shamus Culhane and Dick Lundy, Bill Nolan, Tex Avery, Grim Natwick, Emery Hawkins, Manuel Moreno, Les Kline, Pat Matthews, Laverne Harding, Ben "Bugs" Hardaway, Milt Schaffer, Philip DeGuard, Art Heinemann, Alex Lovy, Don Patterson and music man Darrell Calker.

And This Blog Loves Forgotten Cartoons

Attn. NYC animation fans: there will be a Cartoon Carnival matinee, Saturday Afternoon Cartoons: Getting Warmer on June 3 at The Metrograph on 7 Ludlow Street. Showtime is noon.

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.

The Second Hundred Years: Laurel & Hardy in Silent Movies and Animated Cartoons

Today the spotlight's on Laurel & Hardy, in their earliest comedies as featured players for Hal Roach Studios - and in the animated cartoons they inspired.



After all, this blog's post for 2022 National Silent Movie Day featured a favorite Laurel & Hardy film, Putting Pants On Philip, which was a breakthrough in the direction of the teaming - and chronologically followed by The Second Hundred Years.

As those who read this blog well know, Stan & Babe had lengthy movie careers before joining forces onscreen at Hal Roach Studios and actually appeared together, but not as a team, in Reelcraft Pictures "Sun-Lite Comedy", released in 1921, The Lucky Dog, directed and written by Jess Robbins, formerly of Essanay Studios.



The Lucky Dog is so early in their work together, the signature mannerisms we know and love are not quite there - and Stan and Babe are under a ton of make-up.



In such films as 45 Minutes From Hollywood, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy appeared together often in their first year at Hal Roach Studios, but were not yet a comedy team. L&H support Glenn Tryon and former Fox Films star and uber-vamp Theda Bara in their earliest Roach films, which were part of the All-Star series.



Also among the pre-teaming Hal Roach Studio films in which Laurel & Hardy co-starred: Duck Soup and Why Girls Love Sailors. In moments throughout both 2-reelers, an embryonic form of the distinctive mannerisms L&H would soon employ as a comedy team are evident.





What was the first film to officially or unofficially feature Stan & Babe as a team? That would be The Second Hundred Years, which debuted in theatres just 5 years short of 100 years ago, on October 8, 1927.

It's a hilarious prison break comedy in which the boys break out of the big house only to become staggeringly inept painters.

Without further adieu, here are Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy in The Second Hundred Years.



The following frame grab from The Second Hundred Years ended up as a graphic promoting Robert Youngson's feature compilation, Laurel & Hardy's Laughing 20's.

Caricatures of Stan & Babe, as well as the Marx Brothers, were all over the animated cartoons of the early 1930's, such as this randy Ub Iwerks Studio opus starring Flip The Frog.



Here are The Boys as "Haurel & Lardy" in the last Looney Tune produced by the Harman-Ising studio for WB and Leon Schlesinger. In addition to the L&H sendup, Bosko's Picture Show is notable for being among the first American animated cartoons to feature a caricature of Adolph Hitler, as well as a very pre-Code bit at 5:51 in which Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising extend an emphatic middle finger to Leon Schlesinger.

The comedy teams, especially L&H and The Marx Brothers, turned up often in Columbia's movie star caricature-centric Scrappy, Krazy Kat and Color Rhapsodies series, produced by the Charles Mintz Studio.













The Walter Lantz Studio featured Laurel & Hardy caricatures in many cartoons, including Oswald The Lucky Rabbit in THE MERRY OLD SOUL (1933).



One of the most memorable Oswald cartoons is the 1934 Christmas season offering TOYLAND PREMIERE.



The Disney staff were definitely enthusiastic Laurel & Hardy fans, if such cartoons as MICKEY'S GALA PREMIER, MICKEY'S POLO TEAM and MOTHER GOOSE GOES HOLLYWOOD are any indication.

In animation, Disney's take on The Boys came the closest to accurately expressing the essence of their unique comedy.


Did anyone make a cartoon actually starring characters based on Laurel & Hardy? Yes - Friz Freleng at Warner Brothers!

Laurel & Hardy even made it into 1960's made-for-TV cartoons, in the era when Cambria Studios made The New 3 Stooges series and Hanna-Barbera produced Abbott & Costello cartoons. Larry Harmon Productions made the L&H cartoon series in 1966.

The dilemma with translating the team to the action-oriented milieu of animation is that the cornerstones of their comedy - the pacing and timing, what happens before and after the joke, the pauses, an extremely frustrated Hardy staring directly into the camera while Laurel does not comprehend the basics about anything - invariably get sacrificed.



For acknowledgements regarding today's post, we extend big time thanks to Laurel & Hardy: The Official Website, Dave Lord Heath's Another Nice Mess and the Laurel & Hardy Project series that The End Of Cinema blog did a few years ago, as well as a bunch of books on classic comedy (and Hal Roach Studios) by film historians Leonard Maltin, Bill Everson, Charles Barr and Steve Massa.

Ringing Out January: Classic Cartoons

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."

Cartoon Carnival Tomorrow and Much Ado About B-Studio Cartoons

Cult Cartoons, Part III: More B-Studios

First and foremost, there's the Van Beuren Studio. Animation fans say "God bless Amadee J. Van Beuren", who was the personification of the absentee producer, off somewhere else while his animators churned out delightfully crude Aesop's Fables, Tom And Jerry, The Little King, Amos N' Andy and Cubby Bear cartoons. His office wasn't even in the same building as the studio!



To this day, many decades later, the Van Beuren cartoons manage to be simultaneously inept, saucy and hilarious.



Here are a few great and indescribably bizarre examples of animated mayhem from the New York "B" cartoon studio that resided just down the block from Fleischer's:

And then there was Columbia Pictures sales executive turned cartoon producer Charles Mintz (1889-1939). . .In the 1920's, businessman Charles Mintz tried to show Walt Disney who was boss by taking his starring character and most of his staff. Could the thoroughly maligned outfit known as the Screen Gems Studio have been God's revenge on Mintz for screwing Walt Disney out of his studio and rights to the beloved Oswald The Lucky Rabbit back in the 20's? Or was the fact that Universal Pictures subsequently won rights to Oswald and sent Mintz packing retribution enough?








In any case, after Universal ate Mintz' lunch, he retreated to a more hands-off approach - so it's very likely that Mintz' disinterest enabled the preponderance of bizarre cartoons that emerged under his watch in the 1930's as head of the Columbia/Screen Gems Studio. Another factor was the presence of the unique, imaginative and royally twisted gag mind of director/storyman/animator Sid Marcus.



At one point, both the looked-down-upon Mintz cartoons and those of Ub Iwerks' struggling studio were released in the Color Rhapsodies series. Both meet all of the criteria for cult cartoons!

Here are some 1931 Krazy Kat and Scrappy cartoons produced by Mintz, 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.