Orphan Toon Musings 6: "Beware Of Animated People"

ANIMATED PEOPLE AND THOSE FRISKY PUPS

By Kevin Wollenweber

Upon reading and re-reading Rachel’s addendum(?) to my review from mere memory of Hugh Harmon’s “THE ALLEY CAT” (nice, job, Rachel, and thanks for going through the trouble of pointing out all those quick bits of visual that I had missed!), I was thinking of how else that both the HAPPY HARMONIES series and the cartoons that Hugh and Rudy had done for MGM upon their return had, at times, focused upon gags and visual instead of just making a “video” of a then popular song. While the best of anything done by Harmon and Ising had come from the first Warner Brothers animated series, LOONEY TUNES or MERRIE MELODIES, specifically because the cartoons were great musical fun, there were HAPPY HARMONIES efforts, aside from Hugh Harmon’s BOSKO, that had almost nonstop action sequences that went far beyond the musical element that the series title would suggest. Okay, we’re not talking action of Tex Avery or Robert Clampett proportions, but it is action, nonetheless, and, to my mind, these bits and pieces made their respective cartoons watchable and enjoyable and, yes, even exciting.

How often have I ruminated on how a cartoon like “CIRCUS DAZE” would be still shown today if Ising’s Two Pups (who were never given names) were the stars instead of Bosko? Oh, I’m still as big a fan of the MGM Bosko cartoons--as we’ve both said we are--but there are times when one cannot help but wonder why Hugh took an agreeable character like Bosko and turned him into a black stereotype. He did give li’l ol’ Bosko an appealing kid’s voice for the grand finale, the much beloved Bosko “trilogy” (and we’ll both talk further about the remaining entries in that series within a series soon enough) but it was a perfect addition given to the characterization of Bosko, done too late. It was unfortunately part of Bosko’s swan song!

In each of their cartoons, “TWO LITTLE PUPS”, “PUPS’ PICNIC”, “PUPS’ CHRISTMAS” and “WAYWARD PUPS”, we follow these pups as they are lured away, by their own mischievous curiosities, from their human owner, usually a long-legged woman who also remained nameless and characterless (except that she was a stunning bit of animation to watch) and into some sort of pseudo-adventure. In one of my favorites, the pups, on an outing with the human family, oddly dressed to the nines instead of dressed down to go on a picnic as we’d do today, wander away from the picnic grounds after the female human admonishes one of the pups for sniffing around the food before lunchtime. As she pats the one considered such an angel, the cute little innocent sneaks a whole sandwich in one loud gulp before they both scamper away, only to hear the distant barking of hounds and rushing horses, carrying a band of fox hunters who come crashing through the scene. Forgive my naiveté, but I’m not aware of any picnic area so close to spots were hunting is freely allowed. This family must love to live dangerously!!

The remainder of the cartoon is taken up with the pups getting embroiled in the chase. The hounds chase after the fox, the fox enjoys terrorizing the two pups and the battle of wits is on as some of the dogs clearly don’t like the two pups spoiling their fun. There are nice uses of music throughout this toon here, although I’d need a good music historian to identify some of the more familiar bits of music that appear on occasion throughout this cartoon. While I like the debut cartoon in the TWO PUPS series, the self-titled one created in 1935--in which the thin premise of the cartoon is just following the pups as they decide to stop their tug of war with a sock that they stole from a clothesline long enough to go chasing and scaring the feathers off a hen--I like “PUPS’ PICNIC” because there is more of a nicely padded lead-in to the action, and a nice end gag. One that actually ended up in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, a very early YOGI BEAR in which a picnicking family end up with Yogi riding in the trunk--unbeknownst to the family, whose kid has become attached to the bear playing cowboy and continuously shouting nothing more than “bang bang bang bang bang!”

In “PUPS’ PICNIC”, though, the pups, angrily called to get in the car as the cartoon closes, sit barking at something hanging off the back of the vehicle and, as the camera lets us know, the fox had escaped the bullets and left the hunting and camping grounds for more “civilized” surroundings, lounging on the rear of the car as the family drives off back home.

Another favorite from this series is “WAYWARD PUPS”, perhaps the first cartoon that introduces us to a cat with a scratchy voice similar to that of the protagonist in the cartoon we both reviewed previously. It opens with the pups, playing with a balloon they had found, until they annoy the cat who begins berating the pups: “Hey, what’s goin’ on here?...Little hoodlums!” (NOTE: the rest of this dialogue, where I left the ellipsis, is unfortunately sooo garbled by this squawking voice that I can’t make it out, but the cat is mad!) As the cat says his last bit of dialogue, he backs up too far and into the balloon which bursts, scaring him into leaping into the air and rushing through the rooms of the house, breaking dishes and other valuables and finally crashing in a heap in the middle of the mess. He then hears the voice of his mistress “Hey, what’s going on in here? If there’s anything broken in here, I’ll…” The cat hears this and runs off, but the curious pups start sniffing around the kitchen and, sure enough, the door to the kitchen opens up and guess who Madam finds amid the broken relics?

The pups are put out angrily by the woman for the night for doing what she thinks they did, as the cat gleams out the window at them, snickering “Well, tough guys, eh? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!” As if the cat’s smug laughter prompts all things evil in the night, the wind starts blowing and the pups are suddenly aware that they are out in the cold and, while still remaining curious, they also realize how alone they suddenly are, sniffing around the neighborhood to see where they can crawl in for the night. This search brings them to the junkyard and a truly ugly bulldog, mud caked to his jowls and chewing on a bone. Not letting anything stop the curious pups, though, one of them starts a tug of war with the dog and his bone until the bulldog pulls himself up on his four legs, revealing that he’s chained to his house. He suddenly begins roaring with a growl that is actually the roar of the then current MGM lion, and the battle of wits and chase that lasts throughout the rest of the cartoon is underway!! I must say that, in this cartoon, there are some nice moments that show how ominous the night and urban setting must seem to these little creatures.

As the bulldog starts chasing the pups through the streets, doghouse bouncing and bumping along beside them, all go rushing out into oncoming traffic and it really looks as out of control as one might have seen in an older Max Fleischer BETTY BOOP cartoon called “MORE PEP”. Pudgy gets this adrenalin-inducing formula that sends him rushing about and performing more acrobatic tricks per second than any of us could do in a day! The Substance somehow gets away from the safety of its laboratory and wafts out over all of Manhattan, where every living creature throughout the city landscape starts rushing around at top speed!! What Harman and Ising had tried to do at times was lend a sense of realism to their cartoons, occasionally letting their animators run wild despite some or many inconsistencies. But there were always some nice hints of regular cartoon fun amid the impressions of life that seemed alarmingly real, sometimes, as Rachel and I have pointed out in the past, at the expense of what could have been some wilder comedy. Yes, this is one of those Harman/Ising efforts in which the accurate realism is jarringly put in with the more rubbery and strictly toon-oriented; note the running gag in which a clown-like dog-catcher tries to scoop the little pups up with a very small net. The only thing that truly makes him as ominous as the night into which the pups are thrown is his somewhat evil laughter, kind of like these imagined specters that would be scaring the OUR GANG kids just for the fun of it in some of the more outlandish Hal Roach shorts of the early-to-mid 1930’s.

Imagine, for example, if Harman & Ising did use some live action footage to augment the escalating comedy in any of the cartoons that seemed to squeeze as much out of one gag as it could, like “CIRCUS DAZE” in which real stunt folks and comedians could have been featured to show that the fleas perhaps invaded the surrounding community?

This brings me to animated people. Yes, these beings did permeate some live action films between the mid-1930’s through the 1960’s (think of some of the OUR GANG comedies to which I’m always giving honorable mention, or the live action comedies of Frank Tashlin who was said to direct his cartoons like live action and his live action like cartoons). Yet, as I was suddenly made aware of a new or forthcoming series of DVD compilations of old classic TV commercials, I was reminded of how many “animated people” lept about, jumped and rushed through these.

“What”, you may ask, “are animated people?” Well, they are those who are either filmed in stop motion or whose images are air-brushed so that they seem so unreal and cartoon-like. The term was coined from an old GUMBY short by Art Clokey in which Mr. Clokey and, perhaps, a female companion were seen out on a picnic with odd things happening to them as they tried to enjoy their meal, like a lawn mower run amuck and nearly flattening Mr. Clokey…or at least that is how I remember it, with Pokey looking at the audience at the close of the film and warning “beware of animated people.”

But these silly little beings were numerous and, at times, intentionally or unintentionally very, very funny! They were their funniest when in commercials of the early-to-mid 1960’s and even beyond.

Some of my favorites of these “lost” bits of either stop motion animation or “altered photography”, the earliest special effect brought to my attention, utilizing the “talents” of live action people almost coming frighteningly close to imitating the antics of cartoon characters, included an ad for Mazola Corn Oil in which the “point” (ouch) to be made was “what if you, yourself, had to gather up all the good ingredients in this product? You’d be really tired!” We follow one woman as she walks briskly, with the “help” of what was once known as “undercranked” photography down street after street after street, seen mostly from the waist down, as the announcer asks the all-important question posed above. Even the props in this thing are wackily large, like ears of corn neatly standing in rows as if the woman were instead edging her shopping cart down supermarket aisles.

In perfect cartoonish timing, she scoops up the very large stalks and tosses them into her basket and continues, after a gesture that lets us know this was quite an effort, on and on gathering whatever else from the trees and surrounding areas, with the speed and accuracy of a lawn mower buzzing off row after row of overgrown grass. She gets back home, kicks off her high heels and falls in a heep on the living room recliner as if that is all the energy she’ll expend today. So when do we see the product? Well, I think it appeared in the corner of the screen as our shopper is seen finally whiping her brow with that perfectly comical look of exaggerated relief that only a great cartoon character can give to display exhaustion. That was the ad, nonstop rushing here and there at top speed and very little time at all focusing upon the actual product and just what it has that would save this poor woman so much time.

Another favorite was the Scope ad of the early 1970’s, or so it seemed, in which a very tired-looking woman is slowly going to her bathroom cabinet to freshen her breath. She opens the bottle of this product, takes a sip to gargle and, WOW!! Her eyes begin to flash, her hair stands up on her head and she’s suddenly transformed for the day…into what? Who cares? The ad made Scope seem like this sudden wonder drug that picks you up as it freshens your breath!! I always thought this was the funniest ad I’ve ever seen, and I’m so sorry that no one in the history of Saturday morning or classic filmmaking would create a series that did a lot of this kind of wild visual stuff.

Oh, there have been films, as I pointed out, from Frank Tashlin, and some of the screwball comedies, that had cartoonish humor. I seem to remember films like “WHO’S MINDING THE STORE” with Jerry Lewis and bits and pieces of “WHAT A WAY TO GO”. I’m sure there were other such titles, but maybe a full-length motion picture is a bit much to use this sort of cartoonishness invading the live action world without the intrusion of that live action world; yes, I’m talking an actual physical live action cartoon! One could attempt to do this more as a series of short subjects. I’m dimly recalling one such short film that was part of a larger program in which two neighbors start a fight, with one trying to stomp the other into the ground—yes, one of the actors really looks as if he is being stomped into the ground until nothing of him is left visible but his head with an astonished look on its middle American face!!

Oh, I know about CGI films like the “UNDERDOG” movie and all that, but I’m looking for surrealism, not necessarily just kid-friendly stuff, and the only place I’d really seen this kind of strange stuff is on commercials. And, yes, I do recall Hanna-Barbera’s “BANANA SPLITS” live segments, but these don’t really count since the “animated people” were just disguised as cartoon characters, not really literally timing their comedy as if they WERE cartoon characters.

Well, the point of this “rant” is that I might pick up those disks with classic commercials. I’d already bought the Thunderbean disk that featured some of the great classic animated commercials, some of these being the Jay Ward variety. I just wanted to point out that there are ads, perhaps done around the same time and even inspired by those animated cartoons or comedies of old that are like live action “comic strips” featuring some of the wildest animated people on earth. I don’t think any of them went on to become celebrities in their own movies or TV series, but the ads will always make their faces and/or legs or any other part of their anatomy memorable to us all.

Tags: orphan+toon+musings, Harman-Ising

Orphan Toon Musings 5: Those Wonderful Local Cartoon Shows

"Skipper" Tom Hatten of KTLA-Los Angeles and friend, who inspired many a young viewer to become interested in animation (like this blog's Humble Toonkeeper, Rachel) --image from LATVLegends.com

The very best of the very worst: Sam Singer's Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse (Image from ToonTracker.com )

(Note to readers: The review of "Landing Stripling" I'd originally intended to post is temporarily grounded, while I recover from an allergy attack brought on by the miserable Wisconsin weather. Kevin, meanwhile, has stepped in with this wonderful look at local cartoon shows of the past--Rachel)

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN…AND CHILDREN OF ALL AGES”: CARTOONS, YOUR BEST ENTERTAINMENT!

By Kevin Wollenweber

Well, apparently, last weekend, there was this lengthy celebration of WPIX-TV, once our local Channel 11 and now a CW super station. I missed most of the hoopla, but I do have my memories of it and a lot of kids’ television back in what I still consider the heyday. If it wasn’t for the short-sightedness of TV executives, thinking that anything cartoon is automatically for the little ones, most of us would probably never have seen most of the cartoons we talk about on our blogs.

What I wouldn’t give, now, to see a program that devotes itself solely to the earliest LOONEY TUNES and Paul Terry cartoons, along with guilty pleasures like “COURAGEOUS CAT & MINUTE MOUSE”, “Q. T. HUSH” and even “SPUNKY & TADPOLE”, perhaps the strangest of these cheaply knocked-off chapter-type adventure cartoons, this time about a boy and his clueless teddy bear who, for some reason, is given the name Tadpole. Of course, that is not the only question mark that one has when watching the series, but hey, one has to have grown up watching local kids’ TV to know how much fun seeing even these strange little cartoons is again.

Checking out the last half hour of the special retrospective on the programming over the years of the former WPIX-TV, I was reminded, even if I didn’t see the representations throughout that finale, that it was on Channel 11 here in New York/Long Island, that I’d seen “THE WOODY WOODPECKER SHOW”, hosted by his creator in the theatrical age, Walter Lantz. The animator must have wanted to have a kind of rapport with kids that the other Uncle Walt had and, so, guided his viewers through the inner workings of an animation studio with dialogue that seemed so over-rehearsed and contrived, but hey, for those of us who had never visited such a place, this was a good way of learning how cartoons were made. I’m sure that this kind of background might have caused the mor artistic among us to start attempting our own drawing style and even creating flip books. I know that I had tried, with limited vision, to create a moving character in the flip book style, but this never worked out. I guess it was easier on see-through cells, but it sure was fun trying.

I was also reminded that WPIX-TV was possibly the home for the direct-to-syndication cartoons like WALLY GATOR, TOUCHE TURTLE and LIPPY THE LION. Gee, whatever happened to the proposed DVD volume that was due to come out earlier this year on those three characters? While I wouldn’t count these three as large a priority as “QUICK DRAW MCGRAW”, I still would have welcomed that set.

Television was wonderful when it was local. I was a choosey TV watcher, although I did spend way too many hours in front of that old black and white box. My day began, as those of you have heard from me too many times now, with “THE EARLY BIRD CARTOON SHOW”, on our local WABC-TV affiliate, the stellar cartoon lineup that featured a hodgepodge of MGM and Van Buren cartoons wedged in between episodes of “COURAGEOUS CAT & MINUTE MOUSE” or “Q. T. HUSH”, TV cartoons created by Sam Singer, one now dubbed the Ed Wood of the cartoon industry for very good reasons. These toons were created with the credo that “kids will believe anything”. Courageous Cat, a kind of “BATMAN” parody, could do anything with his trick gun *EXCEPT* shoot bullets. It’s a hip idea, but it really was an over-the-top use of cartoon license, perhaps to avoid outcries of too much senseless violence in animation due to gunfire and other implements of destruction, but throughout the series, there were many, many incidents of senseless violence without gunfire, as well as all sorts of strange impressions of the world in turmoil, very few of them now deemed politically correct!!

Dal McKennon, the one time voice of young Gumby for Art Clokey Productions, did almost all the voices. I wish I knew who the other voices were as I always enjoyed the voices of the gangster called the Frog and his extremely dopey assistant, Harry (“Duh, I like ba-nan-as”) Ape. I’ve been told that WPIX-TV did pick up “COURAGEOUS CAT” for afternoon broadcasting, but I somehow missed this, thinking that they left WABC-TV for that big cartoon data base in the sky that we’re all waiting to see come back down to earth, someday, in the form of DVD releases. Actually, the entire “COURAGEOUS CAT” series is put on DVD, in four volumes, from A&E Home Entertainment, if anybody cares, but for a rather hefty price…and not even restored. One wonders, though, whether these prints featured on this set make up the only existing source material that remains. Some opening credits look as if they were horribly spliced together from previous stories. Everything about these productions smacks of shortcutting, although I’d sure like to know where they got all the stock music used for this series. Surely, the opening theme should have been found for a CD released years ago called TOON TUNES—50 GREATEST CARTOON THEMES. Play the theme for anyone, and you’ll perk up even the biggest negative critic of the Sam Singer cartoons. It is considered his Citizen Kane.

But the big deal about that “EARLY BIRD CARTOON SHOW” was the inclusion of just about every MGM cartoon ever made, including the MGM version of BOSKO. Yes, they even regularly aired “HALF-PINT PYGMY”, a Tex Avery cartoon in which his GEORGE & JUNIOR characters, inspired by Steinbeck’s George and Lenny from the novel, OF MICE AND MEN, go on a “hunt” for pygmies, seeking out the littlest one. This was back when TV used to air old film, not even videotape or kinnies. I remember the afore-mentioned cartoon breaking right in the middle, and I recall another time when someone accidentally ran a cartoon in reverse. I don’t recall its title, but it was a ROBIN HOOD sendup; might have been a Van Buren?

In the afternoon, for me, I began at the stroke of 12:00, with “POW-WOW THE INDIAN BOY” which I believe was on WPIX, also featuring some post-Code Max Fleischer cartoons featuring BETTY BOOP. I recall having to wait until 3:00 for anything further that I liked. Among these were some shows on our local WNEW-TV, Metromedia channel 5, with creative hosts like Soupy Sales and Sandy Becker, who would go on to voice Mr. Wizard the Lizard for Total Television’s TUTOR (or TOOTER) TURTLE, which was part of the “KING LEONARDO’S SHORT SUBJECTS” cartoon series. Later, we’d gotten some interesting new imports in the form of anime like “ASTRO BOY”, “KIMBA THE WHITE LION”, “GIGANTOR” and “SPEED RACER”. The first appeared on WNEW-TV and the last three all were part of WPIX as far as I can recall!

So, as we celebrate, in our own way, the memories of the existence of WPIX-TV and local TV in general, we should recall the joys we got out of twisting that dial and know that television was such a great place to find old films of all kinds.

Tags: Courageous+Cat, Sam+Singer, WPIX

Orphan Toon Musings 4: Happy Birthday, Mom--I'll Bring The Gravy

Today is my mom's birthday, and in the time-honored birthday tradition handed down through the generations, I'm going to embarrass the hell out of her. (I told her I'd get her one day for having the entire wait staff of that Chili's sing "Happy Birthday" to me, and I meant it). As this blog is devoted to animation, I can think of no better place to tell the world how--incredibly--the Termite Terrace crew brought Mom and me closer together.

My mother hates cartoons--or so she claims.

I think it would be more accurate to say she dislikes most of them, and certainly didn't understand my love of them. Given that like most kids of my generation, I spent my Saturday mornings gaping at such forgettable schlock as Speed Buggy, Goober and the Ghost Chasers and Baggy Pants & The Nitwits, perhaps she had a point.

It's ironic, then, that so many of the best moments we spent together were spent around the TV, watching Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies.

I don't think Mom could ever bring herself to fully hate the Warner's cartoons--how could any self-respecting Southern lady openly dislike Foghorn Leghorn, after all? My Grandaddy, who loved that rooster with a passion and was so doggedly Southern he bled Confederate gray, would probably have disowned her.

She's always had a wicked, warped sense of humor, which she passed on to my brothers and me. I'd like to think that Bugs, Daffy, Porky--and yes, Foggy, had a hand (or paw, or wing) in shaping it.

Once in a while, she'd do something that never failed to send us three kids into spasmodic fits of laughter: at the slightest provocation, she'd put one finger on her head, stick out her tongue and close one eye. She'd accompany this odd expression with an even odder sound, which I'm sure she stole from a Warner Bros. cartoon: "FREEP!" ("Fearless Freep," after all, was the fellow Yosemite Sam forced Bugs to sub for in High Diving Hare). The finger-to-the head move comes from none other than Friz Freleng's Pigs In A Polka--remember the inane dance the two "frivolous" pigs did constantly? Growing up, my mom and her sister derived a great deal of enjoyment from doing the same dance.

The greatest irony of all, I suppose, would be that some of the fondest memories Mom and I would share would derive from one of the only two cartoons ever to make me feel uneasy. The first, of course, is Finnegan's Flea; the second is a cartoon which these days is almost as obscure: Chuck Jones' Chow Hound.

Chuck's most effective cartoons were parables of greed: it proved the downfall of the nameless construction worker in One Froggy Evening, who sacrifices his job, his life, his savings and his sanity for the sake of a temperamental singing frog. Jones' cartoons could also be profoundly psychologically disturbing--witness the slow, tortuous breakdown of poor Claude Cat at the hands of mice Hubie and Bertie in Mouse Wreckers. (The upside-down room was a stroke of brilliance--never was loss of sanity so funny). Chow Hound is both; a gluttonous dog passes off a poor hapless cat as the pet of several humans (and in one case, the rare "Saber-Toothed Alley Cattus" at the local zoo) and collecting the delicious meat the cat's inevitably lavished with. Though the cat dutifully turns over every single morsel to the dog (it's unclear whether the cat ever eats at all) the only things he gets for his trouble are a smack to the head, and the admonition, "What?? No "gwavy?"

A pretty neat arragement--for the dog. But the big oaf isn't satisfied. "Day in, day out, the same thing--it's too slow! I've gotta get some food!" he whines. Throwing the scam into Phase Two, he pretends to "kidnap" the cat from all its supposed owners, then "rescuing" it, collecting the reward and the praise.

Also a neat arrangement, if it stopped there. But it snowballs when the dog takes his windfall and buys his own meat market--and one doesn't have to see the cartoon to know what happens next.
The sight of the hideously gorged, bloated dog is nauseating enough--but Jones isn't through with him. The cat--and a mouse companion who up to now was also the dog's unfortunate stooge--utter that ominous (and universally known) final line. The terrified dog can only whimper in terror as gallons of gravy get funneled down his gullet--and we're left to ponder the unspeakable consequences at the iris out. A handy moral--signed, sealed and delivered--courtesy of Chuck. And a twist ending worthy of any Twilight Zone.

It's only natural the phrase would enter the lexicon of every middle-class family in the country, particularly mine and animator Eric Goldberg's. As in Goldberg's family, we couldn't have gravy served to us again without Mom intoning the fateful line, "This time we didn't forget the gravy...."

And I can't think of Mom without thinking of this cartoon. With that in mind, it's only appropriate that I, as my birthday present to her, give her the opportunity to see Chow Hound again for the first time in years.

One of these days, Mom, I'll be able to see you again. And when I do, I won't forget the gravy.

Tags:

Warner+Bros., Chow+Hound, Chuck+Jones

(Note: Mom's birthday is actually the 11th, but a Blogger time-stamping glitch put it under the previous day--I assure you, Mom, my memory hasn't deteriorated that much over the years..)

Orphan Toon Musings #3: Jeepers Creepers! It's...Mel??

Foreword from Your Humble Toonkeeper, Rachel Newstead:

Will Rogers said it better than I ever could: "It ain't what we don't know that hurts us--it's what we think we know that ain't so..."

The power of suggestion is an amazing thing--if we're told the same thing long enough, we begin to believe it, no matter how unlikely or implausible it is. And until just a short time ago, I'd have sworn before a Senate subcommittee that Pinto Colvig voiced the practical-joking ghost in the 1939 Bob Clampett Looney Tune JEEPERS CREEPERS. That's common knowledge, isn't it? Isn't it? I mean, who am I to disagree with every film and animation resource in the known universe?

So convinced was I that when Kevin wrote to me at 1:00 this morning suggesting otherwise, I attributed it to sleep deprivation on his part.

But now....I'm not so sure. He could be right.

Or is the power of suggestion merely pulling my mind the other way?

My communications professor in college had a term for this feeling: "cognitive dissonance." Or it could just be the cold medicine I took a few hours ago...

I won't try to make up your mind for you. Read what Kevin has to say and decide for yourself. Just don't blame the cognitive dissonance on me.

He's Not There!

By Kevin Wollenweber

Well, perhaps in the future, we should put up a full review for this cartoon, but there has always been a misconception about the ghost’s voice in the classic LOONEY TUNES cartoon, “JEEPERS CREEPERS”, starring PORKY PIG.

I’d read a post from a while back on a blog called RANDOM SEMICONSCIOUS MUSINGS (a fairly interesting blog, by the way) with all kinds of uncut classic cartoons to enjoy. The blogger, a fellow named Larry, emphatically states that the voice of the ghost in JEEPERS CREEPERS is Pinto Colvig.

While Colvig did do the occasional voice for the studio during this period, the voice of the ghost (especially when singing) is Mel Blanc, stealing Colvig’s thunder for the moment and doing the voice almost spot on.

I will go on record and say that Colvig might have been more entertaining as the voice of this ghost and would have added his own usual muttering inflections, even adding his own sound effects. Yes, you know that Pinto is on when you get that farting car noise when a character is taking off in some sort of rickety vehicle—you can hear this sound in so many of the cartoons that he took part in from his tenures with Disney and MGM as well. You know it is him doing this noise because you can hear him cough as the “voice” of the motor being choked. If you want to hear a tour de force performance by Mr. Colvig, seek out the performance as Old Doc Stork in one of my favorite MGM wartime cartoons, THE STORK’S HOLIDAY. You will hear this noise I’m referring to as well.

That Mel can almost ape a Colvig performance is truly a testament to his voice talents, but, as the saying goes, “close enough but no cigar!” If you’re in doubt, please, sit down sometime with both voices, Mel’s ghost in this cartoon and, perhaps, the voice that Colvig *DID* do for the lead character in that cartoon that featured The Hobo Jugtown Gadget Band or the voice of the lovelorn dog in another Warners toon—I’m sorry; it’s late and I forget its title right now. Only Pinto could neatly do Pinto, and I hate to see him misrepresented.

Don’t get me wrong; JEEPERS CREEPERS is a brilliant cartoon, and I like its often excised (on TV airings, anyway) ending gag as the iris closes. Hopefully, we will see it and other missing Porky cartoons on DVD real soon.

Postscript: So, is Kevin right? Well, I can only say this: I've always been able to tell when Mel does a "dumb" or "goofy" (with a small "g") voice, as it often tends toward the "Barney Rubble"-ish. To my ears, the ghost sounds closer to "Red Hot Ryder" in BUCKAROO BUGS--a classic "dumb" voice that's indisputably Mel's--than Colvig's Goofy. Indeed, as Kevin said, it's especially evident when the ghost is singing.

Judging from the comments on Larry's blog, it appears Kevin isn't the only one who disputes the accepted "facts." That's a great relief to me--I never liked suffering cognitive dissonance alone.

Tags: Jeepers+Creepers, Mel+Blanc, Pinto+Colvig, cartoon+voices

Orphan Toon Musings #2: The Restorations and the Flames

By Kevin Wollenweber

Well, what I’m about to say is opinion and, partially, fact as told to us on “STU’S SHOW”-- from Shokus Internet Radio--with guest animation historian Jerry Beck, who is constantly and delightfully full of mostly good news; as he was regarding the forthcoming *TWO* POPEYE THE SAILOR DVD sets and LOONEY TUNES GOLDEN COLLECTION, VOL. 6, all from Warner Brothers Home Video. Yes, we shall have *ALL* the beautifully restored black and white cartoons from the true golden age of the spinach-eating sailor man by Christmastime, so “Season’s Greetinks to yous all!!” To supplement this release of all or mostly black and white cartoons, for you POPEYE completists, there will be an all-color “POPEYE & SONS” set of the more recent reinvention of the more kid-friendly version of the character, but as usual, I digress…

The LOONEY TUNES GOLDEN COLLECTION 6 set boasts (and I do mean proudly boasts) some amazing goodies, not the least is which that there will be *MORE* cartoons per disk, 19 to be exact!! Oh boy!! And we’re even getting some wartime shorts, including “RUSSIAN RHAPSODY”, but that was the only title that was leaked out at this particular time on this particular broadcast. Just the fact that there will be four packed disks with 19 cartoons on each is leaving me speechless!!

Now, unfortunately, for the bad news leaking from Hollywood around the Universal Studios fire. Up front, of course, we’re sorry to hear of the injured people in this blaze. I’ve no record of the human casualties and all I can say is that I hope they were few and that there were no deaths.

However, we are talking about damage done to the classic vaults here. Outside of what jerry had mentioned, a friend of mine had told me that he heard from a reliable source that the original old master recordings of Bing Crosby were completely destroyed. All Universal has left, now, are the digital transfers that were made of the stuff, and these appeared on a four-CD box set that I’m lucky enough to own. If you are fans of the earliest swooner crooner recordings, you should seek a copy of this box on Ebay. Sadly enough, now, one will never, ever be able to go back into the vaults and do further restoration on the muddier recordings.

Regarding other old films and cartoons, well, I’ve no real news except that it is possible that digital recordings, like those found on the first two WOODY WOODPECKER & FRIENDS cartoon collections were indeed destroyed. “So,” you might be saying, “just go back in and find the negatives and do the recording all over again!” That’s easier said than done. While some folks at Universal were generous with their time and effort to get the finest possible prints and even clean up what looked a little rough around the edges, such recording and smoothing out cost big bucks, and such spending, again, to do the same job and make sure that there could be a WOODY WOODPECKER VOL. 3 is just not a high priority. Work had already been done to restore some of the stuff in the vaults, and it is now thought that some or most of that work had been incinerated. Jerry’s overall comments about the damage had its question marks, but he was outlining just how the video arm of Universal could look at projects like this with the cost of restoration of the overall buildings and other working areas and whatever other damage was done staring them in their pocketbooks. It has also been found that Universal has been lax in protecting from such fires. There were very few extinguishers and other problems that I don’t quite recall now, so all we now have are the already available video volumes of very early camp classics and old films that were neatly restored before this tragedy happened.

Let’s hope that Jerry Beck, on his Cartoonbrew.com blog sets me and everyone else in the news media straight on any inaccuracies here, but it is truly a shame that any entertainment company’s highest priorities do *NOT* include the vaults. Jerry had praised the company for being so daring as to let him do whatever he pleased with the WOODY WOODPECKER & FRIENDS sets. He did slyly remark that he wished that Warners’ people had the same attitude about *THEIR* animation vaults, but one thing you *CAN* say about Warners (and that Jerry Beck did indeed say) is that, regardless of how insensitive the films can be from our distant past, Warners protected and nearly restored it all, or they are allowing for restoration at some point, if they can be convinced of its profitability!! Universal is willing to let collectors have what they want, but they don’t really do much in the way of protecting their properties, and the fact of this fire proves my point—and, again, these are my opinions, not necessarily fact!! Those who want the whole story should check out “STU’S SHOW” on www.shokusradio.com. The show itself was enjoyable. I only wish I heard the whole show upon its first live run because I certainly was aching to call in as I listened to the rerun!!

Have a listen, and let’s hope that we can “never say never” regarding a third set and future volumes of WOODY WOODPECKER AND FRIENDS. It’s too soon to stop now!!

Tags: Universal+Studos, fire, Looney+Tunes+Golden+Collection, restoration

Orphan Toon Musings: The Two Harveys

Gazoo image from Topthat.net; Little Dot image

from The Harveyville Fun Times

Korman and Comics: Remembering Two Harveys

by Rachel Newstead

So long, Gazoo....

In reflecting on the recent passing of Harvey Korman, I couldn't help but think how much I took his work for granted--particularly in animation. He was simply there, playing a stock Hanna-Barbera villain (whether comic or serious). Or more notably, The Great Gazoo, the tiny exiled alien from the planet Zatox, charged with "helping" those two Stone Age "dums dums" Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble. And I didn't even appreciate that at first.

In so many of the sitcoms I saw when I was growing up, it seemed the main character continually harbored a Big Secret. Wilbur Post had a horse that could talk, but he couldn't tell anybody. Darrin Stephens was married to a witch, but couldn't tell anybody. Astronaut Tony Nelson had a sexy genie living with him, whom he kept in a bottle in his living room and...well, you get the idea. At times I felt like yelling at the screen, "Just tell them already and get it over with!"

Inevitably, The Flintstones would succumb to that irritating trend: now Fred and Barney were saddled with a Big Secret--and they couldn't tell anyone if they tried. Gazoo, you see, was invisible to everyone but the two "dum dums" he served (and yes, children and pets--but Dino, Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm, conveniently unable to talk, weren't liable to spill the beans either). This of course set up the kind of awkward situation I had a hard time sitting through, whatever the show: something weird would happen that would cause Fred and Barney to hem and haw nervously to the wives, forcing them to improvise a weak and implausible explanation. It happened so often I came to hate it--but I couldn't completely hate Gazoo, thanks in no small measure to Harvey Korman.

As I've come to discover on numerous occasions, the passage of time can do strange things. Not very long ago I viewed the "dreaded" sixth season of The Flintstones for the first time in years, and discovered it was nowhere near as bad as I remembered. Fred, in the earliest episodes of the series, was a malcontent: grouchy often for no discernible reason, seldom learning from his mistakes. Wilma was caustic and nagging, always ready with a put-down--it makes one wonder why two such people would be attracted to each other in the first place. The sixth season changed all that--now, Fred could be as childish and ill-tempered as ever, but usually would come to realize he was wrong.

Gazoo was often instrumental in helping him realize that: in "Boss For A Day," he gives Fred a chance to live life as his boss does--and discovers after an exhausting, humiliating day that it's nowhere near as cushy as he'd dreamed. Gazoo "helped" not by granting every wish, but by making Fred and Barney reaalize what they really want.

It would have been nowhere near as effective if anyone other than the inimitable Harvey Korman had voiced the character. Korman as Gazoo could, in the course of a single sentence, could be alternately peevish (as in the innumerable times he's awakened from his nap by the "dum dums,") silly (there's a slight giggle to his voice when he tells Fred and Barney, "I'm not only unreliable, but I'm a bit of a kook...") and pompous (you could feel the disgust when he's berating Fred especially.) Gazoo could be sympathetic as well, his normal stuffy-English-butler cadence softening when he somehow manages to do a good deed.

Typically self-effacing, Korman never considered himself much of a voice artist, as he says in a 2004 interview for the Archive of American Television (he starts talking about his work for Hanna-Barbera some 18 minutes in) . But the fact he could do so much with one characterization puts him in the same rank as Daws Butler, Mel Blanc, and June Foray--and the world of animation will be much poorer without him.

Wendy, Little Dot and the Gang

The other "Harvey" about which I have fond memories is Harvey Comics, prompted by an innocent e-mail question from Kevin. He asked me if I'd ever read them, and got back far more than he bargained for.

I definitely read them. Voraciously, in fact. At the age of ten, I had a rather extensive collection of them: Little Dot, Little Lotta (a character that could never appear in comics today), Richie Rich, Wendy, even Sad Sack. (Hey, that's what comes of being a military brat).

Strange as it may seem, I've always had a certain fondness for Little Dot. Often dismissed as a "one-note character" for her single-minded obsession with dots, she was quite real to me; I could relate to people with quirky obsessions, as I had (and still have) a few of my own. At age ten, it was typewriters--anything that printed letters, really: label makers, stamp pads, stencils, mimeograph machines, you name it. I loved the smell of typewriters: that subtle mixture of machine oil and ribbon ink. I loved the clacking of the keys, the ratchet noise of the carriage. I'm quite sure I started writing so I'd have an excuse to use one. Thanks to Little Dot, I felt a little less weird about it--if she could love something as silly as dots, why couldn't I love typewriters?

The Harvey comics celebrated "diversity" before the term was coined--a pretty, "good" witch could live with three evil aunts and the variety of supernatural creatures around her; a "friendly" ghost could live with three, shall we say, more "traditional" ones. A kid who's ridiculously rich could have friends who liked him for himself, not his money.

Yet they could still be disturbingly backward: one Little Dot story made me furious when I first read it nearly forty years ago. One of Little Dot's aunts (she had a surprising number of aunts and uncles, enough to warrant their own comic) was apparently quite the intellectual, and it was interfering with her social life--any potential boyfriend was intimidated by her, as he'd no sooner get two words out before she'd start spouting all sorts of arcane information. Dot showed her she had to "play dumb" to get a man: when she started feigning ignorance, guys started to notice her. In the last panel, Dot winks to the readers, saying that was the truly "smart" thing to do.

Even though this story was dated even then--it must have been written in the fifties and reprinted in the early seventies--it angered me. The whole idea of a woman having to "play dumb" to soothe the male ego was abhorrent to me even at age ten. A little girl who loved dots was perfectly acceptable, but not a grown woman with a mind? That's not a great lesson to teach young girls, and even worse, it gives them the idea they have to manipulate males to get what they want.

Such antiquated thinking, however, was the exception and not the rule--in the Harvey world, the "odd" had a home. In another Little Dot "aunt and uncle" story, she goes to visit an uncle who's a Tarzan type--he lives in the woods, wears an animal skin, and swings through the trees. The folks outside the forest think he's some sort of "wild man", a menace; even Dot has her doubts about him. But when Dot visits his treehouse home, she discovers he's actually a writer, who lives as he does because it helps him write adventure stories. In a Harvey comic book, appearances were deceiving.

They could be adventurous, too. While the "Richie Rich" stories fulfilled my childish fantasy of being able to buy whatever I desired, I also found that his money could take him anywhere. He could fly off to distant lands on a moment's notice in his private plane; more often, though, he found excitement closer to home.

In one story I still vividly remember, Richie and his friend Gloria went exploring in the basement of his mansion, and discover a strange, long-forgoten vehicle--something like a mining car, that ran on rails. They soon learn that it can take them to parts of the mansion they'd never seen before--in different parts of the world. In the end, they discover it was all a dream--or was it? In the last panel, as they're remarking how such a thing couldn't really be possible, we see the long-abandoned mining car, covered in cobwebs, off in a corner.

As with the first Harvey discussed here, Harvey Comics is, sadly, no more. Sales began to lag in the seventies--ironically, at about the time I first became interested in them--and issues were quietly dropped. Occasional digest issues would appear through the eighties, only to completely disappear by 1994.

But just as Harvey Korman will live on in countless movies and cartoons--not to mention segments of the unforgettable Carol Burnett Show--so too will the other Harvey: classic Harvey comics stories are available in bound volumes on Amazon.com. May future generations be entertained as much by both Harveys as I was.

Tags:

Harvey+Korman, Gazoo, Little+Dot, Harvey+Comics