Here's some excellent news in this year of unrelenting bad news: there are very cool classic movie related events and Blu-ray releases just around the corner.
The wonderful Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum presents an online version of Charlie Chaplin Days on June 26-28. Since 1979, Chaplin Days has been celebrated in the historic district of Niles now part of Fremont, California. Its origin goes back to 1915, when Charlie Chaplin came to town to work for the Essanay Film Company. During his stay he made five films, including his iconic film The Tramp.
While he was here he watched films in the Edison Theater (now home of the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum), and discovered his leading lady, Edna Purviance, who answered an advertisement in a San Francisco newspaper for a job to work in motion pictures.
Although Chaplin only made a fraction of the over 350 films produced by Essanay during its time in town from 1912 to 1916, Chaplin’s name is the most remembered by the general public, and that tradition continues one weekend a year in Niles. The museum shows the films Chaplin made while in Niles a century ago and also stages activities, including a look-alike contest, while merchants display all things Charlie, and a grand time is had by all.
We at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog have LOVED attending this in the past, but, alas, COVID-19 (lethal yet scoffed at, raging, totally ignored - and still frighteningly out-of-control in the United States) has put the kibbosh on going to see our friends at the museum to enjoy this terrific annual event.
Thankfully, the intrepid and creative Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum staff will be going ahead with an online version of Charlie Chaplin Days for 2020 -and raising it with an online Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival on July 24 - 26.
There will be excellent presentations about the silver screen phenomenon that was Charles Spencer Chaplin both on YouTube and via Zoom. Rena Kiehn of the museum discusses the 2020 Charlie Chaplin Days on the Nitrateville Podcast starting at 14 minutes in.
Here are the lineups of Charlie Chaplin Days presentations for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Further good news: the great films of the greatest comedy team. Laurel & Hardy shall at long last get an official release on Blu-ray.
"Two supremely brainless men, totally innocent of heart, and outrageously optimistic -- there is no one as dumb as a dumb guy who thinks he's smart." John McCabe
Laurel & Hardy: The Definitive Restorations, curated and presented by Kit Parker Films and The Sprocket Vault, shall dramatically increase the laugh quotient in this troubled world by its very existence.
All of the material on the four disc Blu-ray edition is also included in the six disc DVD version, in different configurations. These discs will all be region-free. All films - including the interview films, the trailers and the audio interviews -- have optional English subtitles.
The theatrical films (including The Tree in a Test Tube and That’s That) have optional commentaries by Hal Roach Studio and L&H scholars Richard W. Bann (for The Battle of the Century and The Music Box) and by Randy Skretvedt (all others). There are also wonderful interviews conducted by the aforementioned scholars with many who worked with Laurel & Hardy on these films.
The question I get regarding Laurel & Hardy is how they differ from other comedy teams.
My answer is that what significantly differentiates the skinny Englishman and the portly American from other teams, such as The Three Stooges, The Marx Brothers, Wheeler & Woolsey, Clark & McCullough, The Ritz Brothers, Olsen & Johnson and (later) Abbott & Costello, Hope & Crosby, The Bowery Boys and Martin & Lewis is that the duo genuinely care about each other.
There is a bond, a warmth and an affection between Stan & Babe, however extreme the slapstick calamities caused by their own incompetence get. This blogger and classic movie fan doesn't get this sense at all from any of the other comedy teams, as hilarious as they frequently are.
The best example of this is the opening of their 1938 feature Blockheads, in which Ollie visits Stan at the home for disabled World War I soldiers. Ollie is shocked to find that his pal appears to have lost a leg and offers to take Stan home. A bit of a tragicomedy ensues, as Ollie's consideration and love for Stan, punctuated by his chum’s utter cluelessness, ruins his life! At one point he carries Stan in his arms. Little does Ollie know, Stan merely bent his leg in a way that concealed it and can walk just fine - but enjoys being carried! This is a sequence we can't imagine with ANY of the other aforementioned comedy teams, just L&H.
Another area where they differ from the rest is in how the team specifically practices the art of the gag. In Laurel & Hardy comedies, often the big laughs arrive right before and right after the punchline. In their early 1930’s films as HOG WILD, HELPMATES, TOWED IN A HOLE and BUSY BODIES, calamitous destruction, frequently caused by Stanley’s good-hearted but inept efforts to “help,” is invariably followed by Oliver Hardy looking directly at the camera prior in utter frustration and resignation.
Some of this subtle approach, in which the slapstick indignity is not nearly as important as the reaction to it, can be seen in the 1920's films of innovative silent movie comedians Lloyd Hamilton and Harry Langdon, but Laurel & Hardy take the mastery of a gag, preceded by anticipation of disaster and followed by a hilarious reaction, to new heights.
The set includes nine hours of exclusive bonus materials -- thousands of stills, many of which are from Oliver Hardy's personal collection; press sheets and other Hal Roach Studios documents; audio interviews with cast and crew members; filmed interviews; original trailers -- and much more.
Film preservation by Richard W. Bann, The UCLA Film & Television Archive, The Library of Congress
Digital restorations produced by Jeff Joseph/SabuCat and performed by Thad Komorowski/Cineaste Restoration.
A.R.T. by Point 360.
Final Conforming and Clean Up by The Finishing Touch.
DVD and Blu-ray element assembly, design and authoring by Tiffany Clayton.
Disc 1
Feature: Sons of the Desert
Short subjects:
The Battle of the Century, presented nearly complete with original amber tint and a new score by Donald Sosin.
Berth Marks, with original 1929 soundtrack and 1936 reissue soundtrack
Photo Galleries:
Sons of the Desert Publicity Portraits • Scene Stills • Deleted and Candids • Posters and Publicity • Early Script • Dialogue Continuity • Contracts and Documents
Battle of the Century (including Press Sheet and publicity material)
Berth Marks including production stills, press sheet articles, music cue sheets, poster and lobby card art.
Portraits in Costume
Early Career: Stan
Early Career: Babe
Extras:
Anita Garvin Interview
Joe Rock Interview
Roy Seawright Interview (all filmed by Randy Skretvedt, October 1981; in color)
Ship’s Reporter interview with Babe Hardy, June 10, 1950
Sons of the Desert trailer (in Spanish)
Disc 2
Short subjects:
Brats, with original 1930 soundtrack and 1937 reissue soundtrack
Hog Wild (from full aperture 1:33 source)
Come Clean
One Good Turn
Me and My Pal
Photo Galleries:
Brats • Hog Wild • Come Clean • One Good Turn • Me and My Pal (all including production stills, press sheet articles, music cue sheets, poster and lobby card art)
Babe Hardy’s Vim Comedies Scrapbook
L&H with Hollywood Friends
Catalina July 1934
Extras:
Audio Interview excerpts 1973-1981 from Randy Skretvedt (accompanied with photo galleries):
Billy Bletcher, actor • Joe Rock, producer • Hal Roach, producer • Anita Garvin Stanley, actress • George Marshall, director • Roy Seawright, special effects designer • Venice Lloyd, widow of cameraman Art Lloyd • Richard Currier, film editor • Bert Jordan, film editor • Walter Woolf King, actor • Lucille Hardy Price, Babe’s widow • Marvin Hatley, musical director (including performances of “Ku-Ku,” “Honolulu Baby,” and “Will You Be My Lovey-Dovey?”)
Disc 3
Shorts:
Helpmates
The Music Box
The Chimp
County Hospital
Scram!
Their First Mistake
The Midnight Patrol
Busy Bodies
Photo Galleries:
Helpmates • The Music Box • The Chimp • County Hospital • Scram! • Their First Mistake • The Midnight Patrol • Busy Bodies (including production and candid stills, press sheet articles, poster and lobby card artwork, call sheets and production reports, music cue sheets)
A Short History of the Hal Roach Studios
Supporting Players
Crew Members
Studio Hijinks
Snapshots from the 1932 UK Vacation
Disc 4
Feature: Way Out West
Short subjects:
Towed in a Hole
Twice Two
That’s That
The Tree in a Test Tube
Photo Galleries:
Way Out West: Portrait Stills • Scene Stills • Candid Stills • Pressbook Articles and Artwork • Poster and Lobby Card Artwork • Original 1913 Sheet Music • Script and Synopsis • Dialogue Continuity, Music Cues, etc.
Towed in a Hole • Twice Two • (including production and candid stills, press sheet articles, poster and lobby card artwork, call sheets and production reports, music cue sheets) • That’s That • The Tree in a Test Tube
Portraits out of Costume
Laurel & Hardy and Golf
Special Occasions
Odd Publicity Shots
Stan in Retirement
Extras:
Marvin Hatley music tracks (from Sons of the Desert, Them Thar Hills, Way Out West, Block-Heads, A Chump at Oxford and Saps at Sea)
Original Trailers for Beau Hunks, Pack Up Your Troubles, Babes in Toyland, Way Out West, The Flying Deuces, A Chump at Oxford and Saps at Sea
We thank everybody involved with making this set a reality and also tip our battered brown derbies to the gentlemen in the following photo from the set of BELOW ZERO (1930): Stan and Babe, flanked by director James Parrott and fellow Hal Roach Studio star (and James' brother) Charley Chase.
Thinking of Stan, Babe and the Parrott brothers brings to mind the question, how do you thank someone for a million laughs? Buy the L&H: The Definitive Restorations Blu-ray, which is available for pre-order now and officially released on June 30.
There's only one Father's Day animated cartoon I can think of offhand, and it's A Bear For Punishment, the following Warner Bros. masterpiece by Chuck Jones. It stars the incredibly, staggeringly dysfunctional "3 Bears" family, first seen in Bugs Bunny & The 3 Bears.
Chuck Jones made cartoons that could be simultaneously hilarious and brutal - and this followup to The Bee-Deviled Bruin and Bear Feat is among the most hilariously brutal of them all.
It's a pleasure to see this great classic cartoon with commentary by Michael Barrier, the erudite film historian and author of Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. Mr. Barrier interviewed many of the great animators while one could, back in the early-to-mid 1970's.
The comedy and timing throughout A Bear For Punishment, courtesy of such outstanding Jones crew animators as Ken Harris, is quite brilliant. Big time assists go to story man Mike Maltese and voice actors Billy Bletcher, Stan Freberg and Bea Benaderet.
On his birthday, Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog pays tribute to arguably the single funniest comedian of the 20th century, the great Stan Laurel. Yes, Chaplin was the most graceful and elegant, Langdon (who influenced Stan) the most original and Keaton downright brilliant but nobody could get laughs like Stan.
Born Arthur Stanley Jefferson on June 16, 1890, Stan Laurel was the son of an actor and theater manager. Stan made his show business debut at Pickard’s Museum, Glasgow in 1906, and would later be part of the celebrated Fred Karno theatrical troupe, kings of the music halls known as Fred Karno’s Army. At one point, Stan was the understudy of Charlie Chaplin.
After the Karno tours to America in 1910 and 1913, Laurel toured in vaudeville with his first wife, Mae Dahlberg, and headlined comedy short subjects as early as 1917. The characters Stan plays in the 1917-1924 comedy shorts he appeared in - at times rather aggressive, at other times meek - are far afield from the extremely dunderheaded yet good-hearted and well-meaning “Stanley” from the Laurel & Hardy films.
Stan headlined short films for Bernstein Productions, the Hal Roach Studio, Gilbert M. Anderson (a.k.a. Broncho Billy) and Joe Rock Productions. Among his first appearances in movies would be roles as a supporting player in three breathless comedy short subjects starring ultra-wacky Vitagraph Pictures slapstick-meister Larry Semon (1889-1928), an extremely popular and prolific comic in the teens and early 1920's.
The first response watching these 1918 short subjects is that the extremely goofy supporting player, Stan, is exponentially funnier than the headliner. Oliver Hardy was also a frequent co-star, often serving as the "Eric Campbell" uber-heavy in Larry's Vitagraph series (and later in the notorious 1925 version of The Wizard Of Oz). Stan and Babe, as far as we know, were not supporting players in the same Larry Semon Vitagraph comedy.
Note: Larry Semon, whose gags and routines remind this writer of The Benny Hill Show 55 years later, may be the single most rampantly politically incorrect of all silent movie comics. It's one of several reasons the cartoony comedian, as imaginative as he and his way-out gags and elaborate set pieces could be, remains not as well remembered as his contemporaries. That said, he and Stan work extremely well together in the following 2-reeler, FRAUDS & FRENZIES, and there are very funny gags throughout.
Even early on in his solo series, it was apparent that Stan was a very funny guy.
Most successful among Stan's solo starring vehicles were a series of movie parodies.
The best of Stan's solo comedies would be DR. PYCKLE & MR. PRIDE (1925), a very funny short in which an uber-dastardly Mr. Hyde wreaks a reign of terror with deeds which are definitely not dastardly.
After completing HALF A MAN (1925), the last of the Joe Rock Productions starring series, Stan switched to a behind-the-camera role, writing and directing films in his second stint with the Hal Roach Studio in 1926. Some starred Oliver Hardy and future L&H nemesis Jimmie Finlayson.
Stan would continue as a writer-director-gagman (credited or uncredited) through the team’s 14 years making movies for Hal Roach.
Stan was a fellow who enjoyed the craft of molding comedy for movies, in the editing room and behind the camera.
He even gets "A Stan Laurel Production" credit on their features, Our Relations (1936) and Way Out West (1937).
After Laurel and Hardy signed with Fox, Stan would be treated more as a contract player than comedy creator, much as Buster Keaton was at MGM - and much to his chagrin.
Closing this tribute, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog could not recommend Randy Skredtvedt's tome on L&H more highly. It is outstanding and includes many interviews with the team's collaborators and co-stars.
Can finish this post with some good news; a new release of L&H talkies on Blu-ray and DVD shall be officially released at the end of this month.
After all, we don't have a soup du jour - and not even James Bond looked good wearing a jet pack.
.
Ambitious but conceptually flawed aviation experiments, starting at 2:15, dominate the following compendium of "better luck next time" efforts.
For every ingenious invention that won WW2, there were weapons and countless inventions that failed, including the Mickey Mouse Children's Gas Mask. Still don't know what the following Nazis wearing Mickey Mouse ears were trying to accomplish. Were they incurable Mickey Mouse fans?
In animated cartoons, at least in the 1920's and early 1930's, the viewpoint towards the latest and greatest technological innovations is frequently rosy.
After all, the Fleischer Studio built their animation empire, which preceded the rise of Walt Disney, on cool and innovative inventions.
In other Fleischer cartoons, well-intentioned inventions could go spectacularly awry.
And, speaking of Acme Corporation Products, auteur of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Chuck Jones, often in collaboration with storyman Michael Maltese, made the revolt of recalcitrant machines - and the difficulties in figuring out how to use any modern contraptions - a key and overriding theme driving the comedy, while vexing Wile E. Coyote no end.
Wrote about The Wonder Of Technology In Animated Cartoons back in 2018, and for some reason thoughts since then have gravitated repeatedly to the phenomenon of "the baby conveyor belt." This is a concept that turns up in WB cartoons as early as 1933.
The baby conveyor belt would be the cornerstone of one of the funniest animated cartoons ever made, Baby Bottleneck, directed by the one, the only Bob Clampett. That said, there's a baby conveyor belt Merrie Melodie made in 1935.
Have a sneaking suspicion that Bob was a storyman on this and could well have contributed gags to Shuffle Off To Buffalo as well. One imagines Bob suggesting to Friz Freleng that The Woman In The Shoe resemble Jean Harlow - and immediately getting exiled to Termite Terrace, along with Tex Avery and Chuck Jones.
Back to ridiculous inventions. . .
We finish today's post with a great invention for treatment of harrowing post-overindulgence headbangers, 10% more effective than three slugs of tomato juice + Worcestershire sauce and 27% more effective than two viewings of BridesmaidsandThe Hangover - The Hangover Mask! No doubt it is enshrined in The Museum Of Failure.
Thoroughly engulfed in Writer's Block today, awaiting the June 6 edition of The Norman Bates Memorial Soundtrack Show on KFJC, I looked at the newfangled modern device sitting on the kitchen table and saw "Ask Alexa what you should do today." I did and Alexa's response was to go commit a physically impossible sexual act.
So, in lieu of a post that includes any writing whatsoever, here's a video of an event featuring comedians and comedy historians talking about comedians, Professional Jokers: Jewish Jesters from the Golden Age of American Comedy. Saw this on Mark Evanier's News From Me website and laughed so hard it hurt.
One of the iconic standup comedians on the above panel who we don't hear nearly enough from is the great Robert Klein. Here he is on the outstanding interview show Later with Bob Costas.
Robert Klein gets the gang here thinking not just of Rodney, but of another original, groundbreaking and brilliant standup comedian, Jonathan Winters.
If you just watched Professional Jokers: Jewish Jesters from the Golden Age of American Comedy all the way through and are dying for more showbiz stories about young jokesmiths writing for Morty Gunty, listen to this interview with Alan Zweibel from Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast.
Alan, that most prolific television writer, author, playwright and screenwriter, has a new book out - and, yes, wrote jokes for Monty Gunty.
Follow this interview from Gilbert's podcast with visits to the Archive Of American Television's YouTube channel and to Kliph Nesteroff's interview-laden Classic Television Showbiz page (as well as his appearances found on YouTube - including the following extremely NSFW one from Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast).
And, both finishing up today's post and shifting 20th century pop culture gears entirely, we direct you to Jerry Beck's Cartoon Research website.
Been hitting the comedy hard during these horrid and heartbreaking times, so today's post pays tribute to a guy who consistently got big laughs over six decades: the late, great character actor and comic Fred Willard, who passed on May 16.
Big laughs were Fred Willard's specialty. Here he is on Late Night With David Letterman.
First recall seeing Fred on TV as part of The Ace Trucking Company, an improv group which appeared on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
In the following sketch, after a bit of slapstick, Fred plays straight man to the one, the only Billy "you can call me Ray" Seluga.
A few years later, Fred co-starred with Martin Mull in the satiric, outrageous and wonderfully silly Fernwood 2 Night.
Complete episodes of the series can be found on playlists on YouTube and Daily Motion.
Originated as a summer replacement for the hit series Mary Hartman Mary Hartman and set in the same small midwestern town, Fernwood 2 Night was an inspired sendup of talk shows and local TV productions.
Fred portrayed the astonishingly clueless and moronic, yet rather likable announcer Jerry Hubbard.
The individual favorite episode of Fernwood 2 Night/America 2 Night at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, hands-down, is the one in which Tom Waits ended up performing on the show because his tour van broke down in Fernwood.
In this and the 1978 followup series, America 2-Night, the always upbeat Jerry Hubbard, the dumbest talk show sidekick ever, not even equalled by John Candy's William B. Williams on SCTV, gets many of the biggest laughs.
Fred Willard and Martin Mull returned to television a few years later to satirize 1950's style suburbia hilariously and mercilessly in the comedy specials The History Of White People In America.
Fred would periodically appear in feature films had a short but extremely funny bit in a film loved by both the gang here and none other than the late, great TCM host Robert Osborne. . . This Is Spinal Tap.
Speaking of SCTV, Fred Willard was the guest star on a memorable episode of the comedy series.
Along with SCTV cast members and writers Catherine O' Hara and Eugene Levy, Fred Willard would be among the recurring actors in a quartet of splendid comedy features: Waiting For Guffman, Best In Show, A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration. These movies represent a silver screen comedy gold standard for the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century.
Improvisations based on the essential characters are the modus operandi of these films. Not surprisingly, most of the cast members started with Second City troupes or originated improv groups of their own.
Among the usual suspects on these four hilarious feature films, along with Fred Willard and the aforementioned SCTV alumni: director/writer Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer (from This Is Spinal Tap and The Folksmen), Parker Posey, Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Lynch, Bob Balaban and John Michael Higgins.
This post will finish with some recent Fred Willard appearances. Fred continued working constantly through his late seventies and eighties on such TV series as Everybody Loves Raymond and Modern Family, as well as Adam McCay's Anchorman movies. Comedian and late night host Jimmy Kimmel, who featured Fred frequently on Jimmy Kimmel Live, paid tribute.
Fred Willard was a guest on the talk show hosted by one of the funniest and most original of those current standup comedians who got their start in the late unlamented 20th century (along with Chris Rock and Gilbert Gottfried), Norm MacDonald.
The "coup de gracie" today is the following very funny SF Sketchfest tribute to Fred.
With a Max Linder top hat tip to those super talented individuals who made us laugh, it is not lost on us here at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog that the comedy greats we write about are, for the most part, in the past tense (the Netflix show Schitt's Creek and the aforementioned standup philosophers notwithstanding).
Awaiting the Tommy Stathes Cartoon Carnival online program tomorrow and The Silent Comedy Watch Party on Sunday, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog begin the Memorial Day Weekend - after a respectful nod to the doctors, nurses, EMTs, ambulance drivers and other essential workers who have been the brave American heroes through this COVID-19 outbreak - by remembering the pioneering animators of yore, starting with the great Otto Messmer.
To begin whetting our appetites for early animation, Earl Hurd's Bobby Bumps series is always a great place to start.
Earl Hurd (1880-1940) could be considered the first to create, in Bobby Bumps, a character that inspires the approach to personality animation that would be seen decades later with Disney.
The animation of Earl Hurd was quite innovative in its day and the Bobby Bumps series retains its considerable charm and appeal over 100 years after the cartoons were produced.
This history was not lost upon Walt Disney, who devoted an episode of his television series to the years of animation, starting with the zeotrope.
At the turn of the 20th century, Thomas Edison's studio and J. Stuart Blackton produced the first U.S. cartoons.
Filmmaker Émile Cohl was breaking new ground in France in the early 20th century.
Nobody in animation, before or since, was more innovative than the great comics artist/raconteur/animator/filmmaker Winsor McCay.
Returning yet again to the Daily Motion channel of Cartoon Research historian Devon Baxter, as he has posted several prime examples of the Fleischer Studio's terrific and highly imaginative work from the silent era.
Closing today's post: the wild and apocalyptic Ko-Ko's Earth Control, backed by a weirdly incongruous "Movie Wonderland" soundtrack.
We wish all of you reading this a happy Memorial Day Weekend; stay safe and, as the memorable Max Fleischer Color Classic cartoon insists, Play Safe. Kudos, bravos and huzzahs to all who are doing YouTube presentations, watch parties and other types of public service to help their fellow citizens through a stressful time.
Aspiring to a faint hint of cheerfulness during the ongoing and raging dumpster fire that is the year 2020, we at Way Too Lazy To Write A Blog find ourselves, after a lifetime of seeking classic movies, still totally floored to find animation rarities we have never, ever seen!
Here's a hilarious Krazy Kat cartoon, Farm Relief, which looks a lot more like the handiwork of Friz Freleng, Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising than anything those noted in the screen credits, Ben Harrison and Manny Gould, were producing at the time (1929).
It's a hoot, not in the TV package of Mintz studio Krazy Kats distributed by Samba Pictures - and joins the Walt DIsney Silly Symphony The Merry Dwarfs, the Scrappy cartoons Fare Play and The Beer Parade and the Max Fleischer Screen Song Down by The Old Mill Stream in Cartoonland's delirious "booze movies" sub-genre.
Laughs are a must for one's mental health and well-being, so a reliable way to keep the spirits up is to watch classic cartoons.
Fascinated by the history of the art form, this movie buff particularly enjoys seeing classic cartoons featuring commentary tracks. The presence of such authors, film historians and experts as Michael Barrier, Will Friedwald, Jerry Beck and Eric Goldberg mean that even the most dyed-in-the-wool animation aficionado will learn something watching these.
Here, animator Bob Jaques (and co-host with author Thad Komorowski of the informative and entertaining Cartoon Logic podcast) breaks down Too Weak To Work, an all-time favorite cartoon of the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog and arguably one of very best ever produced by the too often disappointing Famous Studios.
Among the very best are those in which Jerry, Greg Ford and Mark Kausler offer their observations and incorporate interviews they conducted with the luminaries who made these films.
Thanks, Greg! Thanks, Mark! While watching these classic cartoons isn't as good as hanging out with you guys in person during these very socially isolated times, it definitely helps. Cheers and thanks for your outstanding work, which is all over the documentaries I've been posting lately (including the following American Masters film about Chuck Jones).
Quarantine means binge-watching documentaries - and in week 8 of this, the topic is animation. We'll kick off today's post with a film about Leon Schlesinger, the executive from Pacific Title who ended up as the producer of Warner Brothers cartoons. By pretty much leaving the Termite Terrace bunch alone to create as they saw fit, Leon, perhaps unwittingly, made it possible for the next wave of animation innovation, classic comedy and comic genius to flourish.
Leon hired Frank Tashlin and Tex Avery, two of the greatest comic minds to ever hit animation and filmmaking. They started turning the cartoon world upside down practically the moment they began directing Looney Tunes.
There is a very enjoyable documentary about stop-motion innovator Charley Bowers.
Never tire of watching the incredibly imaginative and frequently way-out Bowers Comedies.
Wondering if the rest of the following documentary, Looking For Charley Bowers, is on the Lobster Films Blu-ray of Charley Bowers films. Here is an excerpt from it.
Seeing Charley Bowers films and reading his story brings to mind another filmmaking innovator who loved devising gadgetry and was clearly pulled by his love of inventing and fascination with machines into making cartoons, Max Fleischer (1883-1972). The topic of Max' brilliant mind and creative inventions is a book in itself - and Fleischer Studio historian Ray Pointer has penned one, The Art and Inventions of Max Fleischer: American Animation Pioneer, which delves into the technological and filmmaking innovations in depth.
The following documentary covers the Fleischer brothers and their studio, which in this writer's opinion does not receive enough credit, even today, as loved as their work remains among animators, cineastes and classic film enthusiasts.
In the 1930's, the Fleischer Studio started utilizing a 3-D effect known as "The Stereoptical Process," with the camera dedicated to it known as The Setback Camera. Backgrounds were built on a revolving tabletop and, in the cartoons, were often integrated surprisingly seamlessly with the painted backgrounds. The 3-D backgrounds are utilized in all the Fleischer studio's series in 1934-1937. The Stereoptical Process was even spotlighted (starting at 3:50) in the following "Popular Science" short subject.
The Max Fleischer Color Classics series was introduced in 1934 to both compete with Disney's Silly Symphonies and spotlight the 3-D background process. The following Color Classic cartoon, Musical Memories, showcases the Stereoptical Process in a storyline that departs from the animated cartoon norm. It is nostalgic, lyrical and evocative, perhaps drawing upon the Fleischer brothers' reminiscences of growing up in the 1890's and turn of the 20th century, and features a quiet but moving ending.
The dream sequence in Play Safe, one of the best of the Color Classics, involves a spectacular multi-colored train station and presents one of the more psychedelic applications of the Fleischer Studio's 3-D tabletop background technique.
In the Popeye series, among the greatest animated cartoons ever made, the 3-D backgrounds enhance the storylines and the characters.
Note: the following dramatic excerpts from the Popeye Color Features do NOT demonstrate the Rotograph, but are prime showcases for the Stereoptical 3-D Process.
The Rotograph, just one among of many creative inventions developed by Max Fleischer in the early 1920's, was an aerial image photographic process where live-action film was rear projected behind animation cels (producing a backlit silhouette) to create an in-camera matte. Then, the film was rewound to the beginning, and the cels photographed again, top lit against a black card. The result: a first generation composite combining the animation with live-action.
Pondering how the Fleischer brothers got their start back in the teens, I thought of Donald Crafton's book Before Mickey: The Animated Film 1898-1928, a scholarly and painstakingly researched study of animation's early days - and was totally unaware that a documentary had been produced based in part on this book. It's a terrific film. Must thank Darren Nemeth for posting it, and also thank Devon Baxter from the Cartoon Research website for many of the other video clips.
Shifting from silent era animation, we love cartoon voice artists and documentaries about them. Do we love Mel Blanc here at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog? Yes.
Documentaries about cartoon voice artists were welcome extras in the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD sets. In the following, it is a pleasure to see such all-time greats as Stan Freberg and June Foray, along with more recent luminaries of the cartoon voice world such as Keith Scott, Billy West, Nancy Cartwright and Tom Kenny.
As we begin watching Noir Alley on TCM (on Robert Osborne's birthday) and set a reminder to check out today's Silent Comedy Watch Party this afternoon, we hope that all of you reading this are well. Also pay tribute to those individuals staffing the hospitals, ambulances, supermarkets, bodegas and pharmacies; these are the heroes who are keeping the country going through a difficult time. It is fantastic that the citizens of NYC are giving our brave first responders the accolades and rousing round of applause they deserve.
