Swing Shakespeare: ROMEO IN RHYTHM (1940)

Maintaining a blog such as this one is often a demanding, time-consuming task: one review can comprise as much as eight hours of work, not counting proofreading (I've been known to correct errors in these entries as for as long as four days after they're first posted). With that in mind, it's usually a good idea to have a review or two in reserve--and fortunately, I do.

To whet the appetites of the growing number of readers, I've decided to take a break from the Bosko Trilogy for a short time and post the often-discussed, long-promised ROMEO IN RHYTHM here. This easily qualifies as my all-time favorite example of Hugh and Rudy's work; as with most of the Harman-Ising cartoons I love, it defies expectations as to what a "Harman-Ising" cartoon should be. And for good reason...

As you already know if you've been following along, MGM, figuring they could produce cartoons more cheaply if they did them themselves, set up their own studio in the summer of 1937. In what must be an unwritten rule of animation production, the studio brass installed as head of the new cartoon division a man with no knowledge of, or interst in, cartoons: Fred Quimby. They could just as easily have "installed" a potted plant for all his involvement in the venture--if they had, they might have avoided the disasters of those first few months.

Noting that THE CAPTAIN AND THE KIDS was a popular comic strip, and that Warner Bros. cartoons were beginning to gain notice, Quimby's first move was to announce a slate of animated CAPTAIN AND THE KIDS cartoons. His second move was hire the already-venerable Friz Freleng away from Leon Schlesinger to direct them. Strike one and two.

Freleng hated THE CAPTAIN AND THE KIDS. Hated it. With an all-consuming passion. Calling the main characters of Hans and Fritz "the meanest little bastards in the world," he expressed extreme doubt (to put it politely) that the characters could make the transition from the comic page to the screen. Think a moment. How many comic strips, besides PEANUTS, proved to be as successful in animation as in strip form? I'll wait....

Exactly. While I personally feel the CAPTAIN AND THE KIDS cartoons were a worthy first effort, movie audiences of the time apparently didn't. Freleng ran screaming back to Leon after a little less than two years, making the classic YOU OUGHT TO BE IN PICTURES as his act of contrition.

One has to give credit to Quimby, though, for wanting to buck the current trend in animation--that is, to slavishly imitate Walt Disney. He instead brought in an influx of New York talent, among them Jack Zander*, Bill Littlejohn, and a former bank teller from Brooklyn you probably never heard of named Joe Barbera. And placed strip cartoonist Milt Gross in charge of this New York nuthouse, to create a series of cartoons based on his "Count Screwloose" character.

Strike three.

The "series" of cartoons turned out to be just two: JITTERBUG FOLLIES and WANTED, NO MASTER. While great cartoons (particularly the former) audiences just didn't warm up to the character. Gross' humor translated better to the screen than THE CAPTAIN AND THE KIDS had, but he may have been a little too New York (read: "too Jewish") for most audiences. He lasted less than a year--Quimby, figuring he'd do better with another New York cartoonist, brought in Harry Hirschfeld, who ended up not staying long enough to do anything of note. (Note: I've since learned I got the order wrong here. Hirschfeld came first, but didn't last long enough to make a single cartoon. One wonders what he might have done--an animated version of his "Abie The Agent," perhaps?)

In desperation, Quimby did the only thing he could do--re-hire the most profitable team MGM had to date: Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising. With some important differences.

First, they would be independent no longer, but mere studio employees. Second, they would have to work with this new, somewhat raw, New York crowd of animators.

ROMEO IN RHYTHM, from 1940, shows much of this new influence, combining Hugh and Rudy's already-existing love of jazz with a rougher, urban sensibility. While the cartoon opens in a typical Harman-Ising pastoral setting (a cornfield) this is no bucolic fantasy, but a true MGM musical on par with anything Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, or even Gene Kelly produced. It practically shouts to the world that it's an MGM cartoon, filled with references to the studio's current films (as you will see shortly).

So let's bring the house lights down while I bring you the review/synopsis of ROMEO IN RHYTHM...

Hi Kevin,

Years ago, I would have choked rather than say this about any Harman-Ising cartoon, but ROMEO IN RHYTHM is an absolute joy to watch. Unlike the somewhat overdone raucousness of SWING WEDDING, this is a subdued, one might even say sweet, tribute to black music and culture. A sort of animated CARMEN JONES, if you like. While the principal players being caricatured as crows might bring howls of "racism" now, one can easily forgive such a practice in this cartoon--indeed, it seems perfectly logical. One would expect crows, if they could talk, sing and dance, to put on a show such as this.

Scott Bradley really rose to the challenge here--the score is perhaps the liveliest of any in the Harman-Ising era, and foreshadows the wonderful jazzy, brassy scores of the Tom and Jerry cartoons of the forties. One can sense that a changing of the guard is about to occur. The scene opens at night, in (where else?) a cornfield in moonlight--the crow audience is shown in shadow. The camera trucks toward a scarecrow, under whose rags is concealed a crow-sized stage. Two crows part the curtains to reveal a sign reading: THE BLACK CROW LIGHT OPERA COMPANY PRESENTS...ROMEO AND JULIET.

Like "West Side Story" a couple of decades later, however, this is a contemporary musical retelling of a classic Shakespeare story: the stage set is a back alley showing a ramshackle balcony on an equally ramshackle building, with trash cans sloppily lining the alley below. We see our hero "Romeo" tiptoeing behind a fence to meet his lady love, to a brief snatch of the Sextette from Lucia de Lammermoor on the sound track. The track quickly switches to swing when we get our first full look at our Romeo--he's really gotten into the part, dressed in true Shakespearean fashion in a floppy cavalier hat and ruff, and carrying what looks like a lute.

Our hero says "What light, through yonder window shines! It's Juliet!" We see our "Juliet" behind the windowshade of her apartment, in shadow, preparing for the romantic evening. She's putting powder on her face, and applying perfume. A fly can be seen buzzing around her bedroom, and in a nice little comic bit, she uses the perfume to make short work of the fly.

Continuing to wax poetic, our hero says:

How I'd love to be that powder puff,
That pats her lovely cheek, And to be that 'atonomizer',
That makes her smell so sweet...

(a little editorial note here. I know you heard one word as "economizer", but given that spray perfume bottles like the one described above are called "atomizers", I suspect the Romeo crow malapropized the word a bit, so that it came out "atonomizer.")

As our Juliet plucks her eyebrows, "Romeo" plays a little game of "she loves me, she loves me not" with himself, acting as if she were plucking the petals of a flower. She tugs on one particularly stubborn hair while Romeo says, "She loves---she loves--she loves--she LOVES ME!" Delighted, Romeo says, "L'amour, toujour, l'amour...that's the stuff, buddy!"

Here he starts playing his lute (like a modern guitar) and breaks into song when he calls her. We hear the first bit of rhyming patter between the two of them:

ROMEO: Flat-foot Julie, ain't you comin' down?
JULIET: Who's dat down there, snoopin' round?
ROMEO: It's Romey, honey, I wants to woo...
JULIET: Well, okay, honey, 'cause I does too...

He then breaks into a pretty decent rendition of the Freed/Brown song "You Were Meant For Me," while she swoons, "Ah, good ol' Shakespeare!" and "Swing it, Romey darlin' swing it!" Romeo is really getting into the spirit of the number, banging his feet on the lids of the trash cans in time to the music.

Our Juliet, meanwhile, is reclining on the edge of the balcony sniffing a potted rose, saying, "Ah, what's in a rose!" Unfortunately, she lets loose of the plant, which hits our hero on the head mid-song. He falls amidst the clatter of trash cans and junk, down into the cellar.

Emerging, he's wearing the junk in such a way that he resembles the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz, even carrying his lute over his shoulder like the Tin Man's axe. He of course sings, a bit woozily, "We're Off To See The Wizard," a nice little nod to the then-recent movie. He clatters forward, tripping and running headlong into a telephone pole.

Resuming "You Were Meant For Me," when he gets to the lyrics "I'm content, honey, the an-gels-must-have-sent you..." he shakes his foot to every syllable in an attempt to knock loose the piece of junk still stuck to it.

But before he's finished with his song, he receives another unwelcome distraction in the form of a newspaper hit to the head--delivered by a crow on a bicycle yelling "Morning paper!" His face gets shoved back into the junk, and he ends up with a funnel on his beak. Attempting to resume his number, he tries to sing, but the funnel on his beak causes nothing but a "honking" noise to issue forth. He remarks, "Ain't this a mess?"

He tries yet again to resume the number--only to be interrupted again. This time it's by the milkman, who's warbling "I'm An Old Cowhand..." Romeo waits in frustration as the milkman noisily gathers up the milk bottles and leaves.

As Groucho would say, "Pardon me while I have a strange interlude..." The milkman here looks amazingly like Heckle--or maybe Jeckle--of Terrytoons fame. More than the other crows do, actually, since he's about the same proportions as the Terrytoon characters. He even sounds like the Brooklynese magpie of the pair.

Our Romeo tries to sing yet again--he's persistent if nothing else--and is unfortunately interrupted again, by a pair of dogs who run underneath him with cans tied to their tails. This flips our poor Romeo up into the air slightly--the scene switches to a close-up of the dogs as they exit: we discover they have a sign trailing them which reads "Just Married."

Sure now there'll be no more interruptions, our Romeo continues with his number, his Juliet singing along. But just when he gets to the lyrics, "Nature patterned you and when..she..was..done..." the music on the sound track shifts to a jungle theme. We see a group of crows who are inexplicably on safari in this urban background, carrying equipment on their heads like African natives. The lead crow is wearing a pith helmet and a Spencer Tracy mask.

While Romeo stands leaning on his lute in disgust, the Tracy crow asks him, "Pardon me, Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" (Another topical nod to a recent movie, "Stanley and Livingstone.") When it's clear from Romeo's expression that he's NOT Dr. Livingstone, the Tracy crow tips his hat and says, "Oops..sorry, old chap.." and continues onward. A tiny crow brings up the rear, bearing a bundle that's at least ten times as big as he is, and teetering unsteadily with every step. He remarks to Romeo: "I sure wish you was Dr. Livingstone--I'm tired!!"

Our hero has had enough. He kicks his lute in anger (which, in yet another indignity, bounces up and hits him in the head), and goes into what has to be the highlight number of the cartoon, "You Got To Be Alone To Woo..."

If you want to do a little fancy wooin',
If you want to play the part of Romeo,
You has got to have seclusion from intrusion,
You has got to have a lonely place to go..."

As he sings the following,

Now, you can't make love in Coney Island
I say, brother, don't come up here to bill and coo...

...the scene dissolve-wipes from the balcony set to--I'm not sure there's a name for this sort of thing, but you know those poster-board things with a hole at the top to put your head through? They have funny cartoon bodies drawn on them, and people have gag pictures taken in them at Coney Island? Romeo and his Juliet are in one of those things, against what looks like a cardboard beach backdrop, with cartoony people looking on. The crow lovers' heads bounce along to the music as Romeo sings.

As he sings,

And love can't find a l'il ol' goldfish,
Not with all these people peekin' through...

The scene dissolves to a different poster board and backdrop, so that they appear to look like goldfish in a bowl, being gawked at by pet-shop patrons.

When he sings,

And how the subway crowd,
Is gonna laugh real loud,
When a guy tries lovin' his miss...

...the scene changes, appropriately, to a backdrop of a crowded subway, and our pair look like passengers squeezed into the car.

When he continues with,

And the very last row,
In the movie show,
Is the main attraction when you're stealin' a kiss...

..the stage backdrop changes to fit that scene as well. The final scene in the song shows them in what looks like a jalopy against a supposedly secluded outdoor backdrop, as Romeo sings,

When you're parked in your car in the moonlight,
At last you're alone, just you two...oops!

The lights come up to reveal they're really on stage at the Hollywood Bowl!--as Romeo sings,

You're parked in dat hole,
called de Hollywood Bowl,
You got to be alone to woo...

As he finishes his song, the scene dissolves back to the balcony set, where Juliet tells him, "Well, Romeo honey, you IS alone!" Indeed he is--climbing a ladder to the balcony, he exclaims, "Sweeeetheart!" and is just about to kiss his Juliet at last when...

Juliet's alarm rings. Frantically, she stops and says, "I's late for work, honey!" Grabbing a corset from the clothesline, she runs back inside, saying "Forgot my gloves!"

What follows is a flurry of activity seen in silhouette from behind the windowshade: she takes off her "Juliet" costume, puts her corset and a dress on, quickly downs a donut and a cup of coffee, runs into the bedroom to check her hat, then scrambles downstairs.

Waving to the flabbergasted Romeo, she says, "Goodbye, goodbye, 'til we meet tomorrow/partin' is such sweet sorrow!"

She runs off, knocking over Romeo's ladder--with him still on it. He quickly grabs the balcony rails before he falls. Saying frustratedly, "Partin' is such sweet sorrow!" our Romeo holds his nose (do crows have noses? Well, nostrils anyway). and dives down into the pile of junk below. The last thing we see is several tin cans being knocked in the air, while Romeo's hat floats downward. Iris out.

You mentioned Scott Bradley's score at the end, with the fast version of "You Were Meant For Me." That reminded me there was a small snatch of original Bradley music in the scenes in which Juliet is changing clothes, that sounds oddly similar to the one used for the earliest Tom and Jerrys. If you remember the theme used for the opening credits of PUSS GETS THE BOOT, you know which I mean. Until I saw this cartoon, I was unaware that theme had been used for anything but the early Tom and Jerry cartoons.

As I said in the beginning, we get the idea that a changing of the guard is not long in coming, and even the use of that music seems to predict that. Assuming ROMEO IN RHYTHM came out before PUSS GETS THE BOOT, that is--I'd have to look at the Maltin book for the production order. You had also wondered what effect Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera had on Harman and Ising's timing. The answer I originally planned to give was that I suspected Harman and Ising had more of an effect on Hanna and Barbera's timing than vice-versa, at least until Tex Avery came along: after all, Hanna had been timing director on TO SPRING, as you aptly pointed out, and had learned how to time cartoons at the feet of Rudy Ising. Also, PUSS GETS THE BOOT is still planted very firmly in the style of Rudy Ising, though Bill and Joe were the actual directors.

Having taken a good look at the final scenes of this cartoon, I'm no longer certain my glib answer was truly on the mark. Like LONESOME STRANGER and parts of THE OLD HOUSE and CIRCUS DAZE, ROMEO IN RHYTHM has moments in which the tempo gets ramped up rapidly for short stretches. Hanna (not to mention his then-new partner Barbera--R.) might have had an effect on the timing after all--when not forced by the storyline of the cartoon to stick to a more Disneylike pacing, he could have a good sense of comic timing.

My alternate theory, which I've written of before, might also be somewhat true: the influx of New York people during the Milt Gross era might also have sped things up and forced Hugh and Rudy into more contemporary pacing and storylines. Even taking into account such cartoons as CIRCUS DAZE, this cartoon is atypical of Harman and Ising on so many levels.

For one, it's contemporary and topical: sure, they had made topical references in cartoons before, as with the animated Roosevelt in BOSKO'S PICTURE SHOW and the celebrity caricatures of TOYLAND BROADCAST. But those were brief snatches: Hugh and Rudy's cartoons tended to exist in a timeless fantasy universe. Even TOYLAND BROADCAST had fantasy elements, with its toys come to life.

But not ROMEO IN RHYTHM. The music, the characters, and the pacing clearly placed the cartoon into the "here and now." (In 1940, that is). Moreover, this cartoon more than any other announced to the world that this was an MGM film. Very aggressively so, in fact, as much as any Gene Kelly musical. I cannot for the life of me remember such liberal use of music from other MGM films, and references to said films, in any of the other HAPPY HARMONIES.. Their HAPPY HARMONIES before this could well have been the product of any studio--one could not fathom merely by looking at them that they were done under the auspices of the MGM lion, unless one saw the opening titles. This cartoon changed everything, and they would never turn back.

I honestly can't see why anyone would object to this cartoon for any reason. The racial inferences are gentle, and Harman-Ising resorted to their usual trick of casting the principals as animals to both justify and blunt the harshness of the caricature. This is a great cartoon by anyone's standard, and I imagine the music cannot help but win over even the most sensitive. It is second only to COAL BLACK in its use of music to energize the cartoon, and for that reason, deserves not to be forgotten.

*(Correction: Jack Zander, I found to my embarrassment, was a California animator who had worked with Bob McKimson at the aborted Romer Grey studio in 1930, on a character called "Binko The Bear Cub"--yet another Mickey Mouse clone.--R.)

Tags: Romeo+In+Rhythm, Harman-Ising, racial+stereotypes, crows, Shakespeare, swing, orphan+toon

A "Real 'Rabian Carpet" Ride: BOSKO IN BAGHDAD (1938)

I have two reasons to celebrate today:

First amd most important in my financially-strapped life, today's the day I get paid. No more living on pasta covered with cream of mushroom soup. For awhile, anyway.

Second is the completion--finally--of the first "Bosko Trilogy" review. When I say I'll do something, I do it. Just don't ask me when.

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January 1, 1938 didn't herald a new beginning, but the end of an era.

Released that very day, BOSKO IN BAGHDAD came, and went--not just the very last cartoon in the "Bosko Trilogy", but the very last Bosko cartoon ever. Not that anyone noticed, or cared; the industry was too blinded by the bright Technicolor glow of Disney's latest stroke of genius, the animated feature SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS.

Once free of MGM, Harman and Ising simply moved on to other projects, taking what freelance work they could (ironically, even completing a couple of cartoons farmed out to them by Walt Disney). Within a year and a half, they would be back at MGM, but their onetime star character would not. It would take early television--and the generation of budding animation fans who grew up in front of it--to revive interest in him.

It really shouldn't have happened that way. But the Bosko series came to an end just as the character, and the cartoons in which he appeared, seemed at their most promising. Looking at BOSKO IN BAGHDAD, one can't help but wonder why.

A knowledge of the first two cartoons in the series is probably helpful, but I chose to start with this cartoon because of certain little bits of business that set it apart from the other two. What are they? Wait and see...

The cartoon opens, as do all three in the trilogy, with the shot of a black man's hand opening a storybook, on which the cartoon's title is printed. The opening lines of the story dissolve to a shot of a grinning little Bosko (looking all the more cute in freeze-frame, with rounder cheeks and a larger head than in cartoons before the trilogy) who's watching his "mammy" take a batch of fresh-baked cookies from the oven. His mother, like the black maid in the later TOM AND JERRY cartoons, is only seen from the neck down. She even looks a bit like the black maid, right down to the striped stockings. (Dare I suggest that this might be where Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera got the idea for their character?)

Little Bosko holds a paper sack, ready to receive the cookies as they come out.

The mother was a recent addition, taking over Honey's role of setting up the plot--as with the imaginary frogs, she gives Bosko someone to talk to in these solo outings. A shame, since Honey was the ideal companion for him, acting as his conscience (and in such films as THE OLD HOUSE, the voice of the skeptic).."Mmm-mmm! Dose cookies sho' smells presumtuous!" his mother says. "Dey looks presumptuous...why dey IS presumptuous!"

I have to admit I found the dialect and the malapropisms a bit cringe-inducing, considering how minimal it had been in other cartoons, but this is Bosko's cartoon, and the mother plays only a minor part in it.
Next comes the scene I truly love, and have written about before here. Bosko, mischievous little kid he is, sneaks one of the cookies out of the bag as his mother looks away, telling him, "Now you go straight to Grandma's..."

The scene wipes to the exterior of the house, where Bosko is on the front stoop. His mother gives him the inevitable warning, "Now don't let your 'magination go percolatin' off on any wild goose chase!" (Though we know better, don't we?) With a "Yes, mammy!" he's on his way.

The scene takes place at night, and there's a large lantern beside Bosko. Looking at this in still-frame (something I do a great deal, so I can write and come back to the scene when necessary) I noticed the subtle highlights on his shoes and clothes, cast by the yellow lantern light--there are white highlight marks on his pants that look like they were rendered with a dry-brush technique. Hardly an assembly-line 'toon, this...

As in the two previous cartoons in this trilogy, Bosko goes off to his grandma's half-singing what is now his trademark chant...

Straight to grandma's, here I go,
To take de cookies to her front do',
The hen wid de cackle, the cock wid de crow,
Straight to grandma's here I go...

Before he completes his little verse, however, he's interrupted by the croak of a little frog, which--as anyone who's seen the first two cartoons knows--sets his imagination to "percolatin'..."

Now somewhat wary and a bit fearful in the midst of the darkness, he tiptoes along, slowly chanting, "Straight...to..Grandma's..here...I...go..." He could very well encounter another eerie house, for all he knows.

Hearing the hoot of an owl, he glances behind him and says nervously, "Who dat?" His eyes grow wide, and his face seems more caricatured than it did in the opening scenes, like a mild version of a Tex Avery take.

The owl "whooos" again, causing Bosko to remark, "Who dat say 'who dat' when I say 'who dat'?" (A line, oddly enough, that GONE WITH THE WIND actress Butterfly McQueen uttered in one of her films, to her unending embarrassment). For Bosko, a child, it's a bit more forgivable.

Bosko does an even wilder take at another strange sound, jumping up off the ground with his arms in the air--with a great deal of "stretch" at that. As with the take in THE OLD HOUSE (right after Honey yells "Boo!") his reaction looks surprisingly "cartoony" for the normally naturalistic Harman-Ising cartoons of this period. Of course, this is far more apparent when one slows down or freezes the scene. Yes, folks, Harman and Ising could do cartoon exaggeration when they wanted to, and if one cares to take the time to look.

Of course, it's only the little frog again. "Doggone, Mr. Frog!," Bosko says. Turning up the flame on the lantern in front of him on the right of the screen, Bosko remarks, "I wish I had me a real, magic 'Rabian flyin' carpet, so I wouldn't have to walk through these dark, old woods..."

As he says this, the smoke from the lantern flame grows into a tremendous cloud, which coalesces into a gigantic, turbaned, frog genie: the first of the "Jazz Frogs" we encounter in this cartoon. He speaks in a Louis Armstrong voice, saying:

"Yeah yeah yeah! You talk about you want a carpet! You want a magic carpet! You want a flyin' carpet! Well, boy, you got one--NOW!"

As he speaks the scene shifts from a "birds-eye" view of Bosko gaping open-mouthed at the genie, to a "worms-eye" view of the genie looking down at Bosko. We see him as if we were Bosko standing there looking at him.

With a "POOF!" from the genie and a curling wisp of smoke, the magic carpet appears. "Hold on, swing out now!" the genie bellows as Bosko steps on the carpet (stumbling a bit and falling on his backside in the process, cookies in hand). Taking out a trumpet, the frog genie plays a jazzy series of ascending notes and literally "blows" him, Bosko and the carpet through the sky. Bosko continues to look at him in wide-eyed wonder.

The carpet ripples up and down as it moves through a starry night sky, and Bosko has some difficulty maintaining his grip. The stars look literally like solid, shimmering glass or jewels--one sees a large planet (or perhaps a very close view of the moon) in the background in the upper left. The scene is very similar to THE MILKY WAY two years later, and one can't help but wonder if some footage and backgrounds might have been reused. The scene quickly changes to that of minarets poking above the clouds--they're in Baghdad in an instant!

They swoop down into a city of onion-domed buildings that reminded me a bit of the later ABDUL THE BULBUL AMEER, with the exception that these buildings are all white.

They land in a long rectangular pool in front of a palace, the carpet skipping across the water like a flat stone.

"All right! Dere you is! In little ol' Baghdad!" the genie tells Bosko.

Leading Bosko by the hand down a long entryway (flanked by columns that look more Roman than Arabian) into the palace, the genie says, "We're gonna see dat ol' Sultan--he's gonna be mighty glad to see you...heh heh heh! AND DOSE COOKIES, TOO!" Bosko has a little bit of difficulty keeping up as he's dragged along...

Reaching the door, the genie knocks: the scene shifts to a Stepin Fetchit caricature frog, moving slowly (naturally) mumbling "Doggone! Somebody always wantin' to see the sultan! Just when I got the misery in my feet..." (The Fetchit frog is in all the Bosko Trilogy cartoons, and is even the groom in SWING WEDDING).

The genie, though, opens the palace door himself, slamming the Fetchit frog behind it. "Knock knock!" says the genie..."Who dere?" says the Fetchit frog, poking his head through the peephole.

"Never mind that 'who dere'--HE'S GOT COOKIES!" the genie answers. Since we know the Sultan is bound to have a craving for cookies, especially those intended for a certain little kid's grandma, we're not surprised they easily gain entry.

The background is surprisingly detailed..the genie and Bosko pass through an area with what looks like wrought-iron grating, and there are numerous draped archways all around them. "But I'm takin' dese cookies to my grandma!" Bosko vainly protests.

"De Sultan" (we know he is because there's a sign on a pedestal beneath the throne saying this) says, "Well, what do ya know...man comin' down the aisle dere--why, it's ol' Fog Horn the genie! Yeah, I believe it is! Whatcha say there, Fog Horn?" The Sultan is an obvious Fats Waller caricature (with the trademark rolling goggle eyes) who has a piano perched alongside his ornate throne (on second viewing, it looks more as if the piano is built into the arm of the throne. He's playing a jazzy number as he chats away (I'd be interested to know who did the piano score for this). There's a bit of dialogue that sounds something like this (forgive me if it isn't quite accurate--the soundtrack is a bit muddy in spots):

"What d'ya say there, Sul?
""Well, whatcha know there, Sam?"
Well, all right, let's jam! But lemme tell ya somethin' (he learns in closer) "that ol' man's got cookies!"
The Sultan says, "You don't TELL me.." (was this a Waller catchprase also?) "Well, get dose cookies, boy--for the whole palace..."

Bosko, getting an idea what's up (after all, he's been through this for two cartoons already) starts to sneak off stage left, but the genie stops him: "Look here, boy, de Sultan, he say he's gonna give you de WHOLE palace, if you'll only give him, SOME OF DOSE L'IL OL' COOKIES!"

Bosko is standing, by the way, in front yet another piano next to a reddish-purple drapery--this Sultan guy apparently has a thing for pianos...

Hearing "de Sultan's" request, Bosko stammers, "B-b-b-but, dese my grandma's cookies!"

The Sultan says, "Yeah, watch this!" and claps his hands--on cue, a frog servant starts beating on a large drum, alternately tapping on it with his feet and arms, and bouncing on it with his rump. The scene changes to show a spray of water shoot up from an ornate fountain. It can be seen in the lower right of the frame, behind a curved stairway flanked by scrolled columns that look a bit like something out a Maurice Noble background. A harem of frog dancing girls in traditional costume start dancing down the stairway from the right.

Elbowing the Sultan, the genie says what sounds like. "Look at dat dere, boy!"

Cut to a close up shot of the harem girls dancing in a spiral in front of the camera, their diaphanous garments swirling---really a beautiful piece of animation.

The genie remarks, "Boy, you ain't saw nothin'.." which the Sultan, still playing completes: ..."yet!!" The Sultan claps his hands again, signaling two harem girls to open a drapery in front of a large entryway, revealing a Bill Robinson stand-in servant frog, dressed in a vest, shirt, long coat, bow tie and turban. He taps over to the Sultan's throne...

Figuring he might try tempting Bosko a little, the genie says, "Watch this, boy! POOF!" and with another swirl of smoke, a pile of fresh fruit appears in front of Bosko, at least three times as big as he is. Bosko whistles, throroughly impressed.

Cut to a shot that's quite visually impressive--we see the reflection of the Bill Robinson frog in the polished floor as he taps along, a very detailed and convincing piece of artwork which must have taken a great deal of time. He grabs an apple and stands, arm out, one leg crossed in front of the other, getting ready to present it to Bosko. He taps over to Bosko with the apple, who dances away, head turned and holding his palm out in a gesture of refusal, with an aloof expression, lower lip jutted out. This action repeats itself as the Bill Robinson frog presents Bosko with an orange (another sneaky Harman-Ising animation shortcut).

Thinking a bit, the Bojangles frog decides to pull out the heavy artillery: he takes a rag and polishes a watermelon as he would a pair of shoes. Taking a lage knife and slitting the watermelon open, he takes half of it and dances over to Bosko, camera right. It's a particularly succulent watermelon, dripping juice all over. Bosko starts to dance away, but...

...stops, for an instant, to sample the luscious watermelon (another un-P.C. moment, I admit, but I have to say that watermelon looked real enough to tempt ME). It probably looked even better when the film was in pristine condition. One can hardly blame poor little Bosko's moment of weakness.

But when he remembers the bag with his grandma's cookies, he regains his resolve: his body stiffens to attention, his chest juts out, his shoulders go back, and he defiantly yells, "NO!" He stamps his foot, looking a bit like Shirley Temple with that gesture, which suggests to me they might have rotoscoped a bit of a Temple film (even though Temple made films for a rival studio, could they have made a deal with Fox to get a short segment? I wonder...) In freeze-frame, the Bill Robinson frog registers wide-eyed, open-mouthed shock.

Throwing the melon up in the air in frustration, the Robinson frog yells "OWWWW!" while the Sultan and the genie join him. The Sultan, of course, adds the trademark Waller line, "WHAT'S DE MATTER WID HIM??" The melon lands and splatters all over the Sultan's head. He gets worked up into a frenzy, and the scene I have freeze-framed at the moment shows some blurred, or perhaps "smear" animation of the Sultan's head right after he erupts in fury. Yet another thing I didn't think Harman and Ising did. The Sultan starts playing the piano wildly, and both he and the genie start up with what has proved to be another recurring bit of theme music in these cartoons:

Sultan: "We can't have no Grandma's cookies today, Ow!
Genie: No Grandma's cookies, so de little man say...
Eenie, meenie, miney, mo..."

The Sultan then plays a strange little game of "eeny meenie miney mo" with the genie ,looking as if he's poking his finger in the genie's mouth and counting his teeth (?) The Sultan resumes his anguished playing, yelling what sounds like "Ooow! Cookies now!!"

The genie stands over Bosko, a little more threatening now. "Now is you, or is you ain't, gonna give us some o' dose l'il ol' cookies?"

Bosko responds with a delightful bit of wordplay (not to mention confusing--I've had to go back to it several times): "if you was my grandma, and he was me, and you was him, and he was you..."

The genie responds, "You mean, if he was you, and you was he, and I was him, and..." He's clearly getting more flustered and confused by the second (as am I trying to write this!) and dissolves into a babbling mess. face cockeyed and eyes crossed.

The Sultan, yowling his "What's de matter wid him?" line again, pulls a large lever to the right of the screen. As Bosko echoes the Sultan's line, he discovers the stairway under him is moving backward, a bit like an escalator or a moving sidewalk. He moves past a long procession of frog attendants beating on large drums. Behind little Bosko is what appears to be a large wooden drawbridge-like door, with spikes piercing through it. The door retreats into the floor, ceiling and walls...

Cut to a shot of a huge conveyer-like mechanism, with a four-foot high bottle of castor oil and an equally large spoon (which looks to be about five times too big for poor Bosko's mouth). Two frog attendants turn a huge crank which tips the huge bottle, pouring the awful glop into the enormous spoon. Bosko, in a mixture of surprise and dread, says, "Oooo!! Castor oil!!" For a second or two, his face turns a sickly green.

Kevin is particularly fond of this scene, by the way, and we've discussed it at length in the past. He compares the conveyer gadget those in a Max Fleischer cartoon, considering it the equal of anything Max ever dreamed up--and I have to agree. Hugh and Rudy obviously did study and learn from their competition, I think.

The genie grabs a three-foot long clothes pin and points it toward Bosko: the scene briefly cuts to a shot of the conveyer belt from below, as the castor oil dribbles a bit from the huge spoon into the machine's gears. (So that's how they lubricate the thing!)

The shot changes again to Bosko, the huge clothespin on his nose, gaping in fear at what's ahead--though still resolutely clutching the bag of cookies. As the huge spoon edges ever-closer to Bosko's mouth..

...we cut to a shot to the genie and the sultan: the genie says, "Give 'im the works, boy!!" The Sultan pulls another large lever, but before he can deliver the nasty dose, Bosko breaks free and tap-dances backward along the conveyer. Cut to another shot of the frog slave-attendants, beating the drums to a jazz rhythm this time. (Another possible Fleischer tribute, by the way--the frog attendants are hooded, much like the secret society members in BIMBO'S INITIATION).

The Sultan, desperately trying to get Bosko and the cookies, pulls the lever forward, then back, and forward, which sends the machine into a frenzy, dials spinning--as Scotty on STAR TREK would say, "she can't take much more o' this, Captain!" Bosko, meanwhile, keeps up with every maneuver, dancing furiously. We see what looks like smoke rising from his feet, though it's unclear whether it's the machinery, or Bosko's "hot dancing", that's the culprit. (Bosko's dancing does indeed set the pirate ship on fire in BOSKO AND THE PIRATES, which I'll discuss later).

A group of frog musicians claps along, clearly captivated. Bosko hops off the conveyer and onto a huge kettledrum which acts as a sort of conductor's platform. Becoming a mini-Cab Calloway right down to the dance moves, little Bosko conducts the orchestra and does his own version of the "Grandma's cookies" song, Calloway style:

You can't have no Grandma's cookies today, no!
No skeebadie bye, de ho de hi, de hey,

One can see the harem girls dancing behind him, casting huge shadows on the wall. I suspect this is reused, rotoscoped footage from the earlier SWING WEDDING. It's rather easy to tell, since they're not dancing in rhythm to the music, but at the same tempo as in the earlier film--the animation wasn't altered to fit the music for this particular cartoon.

The Sultan sings, "Eenie meenie miney mo, if he hollers let him go, cookies, cookies, cookies cookies, OW!" As he does this, he's clearly so agitated he tears his piano to pieces as he plays (another bit of reused footage, from the aforementioned SWING WEDDING).

Of the anarchic jazz sequences, Kevin once wrote that perhaps Hugh and Rudy, being midwesterners, didn't understand what these jazz guys were all about. I wonder about this, as they were from Kansas City, which had a pretty lively jazz scene in its own right. I don't think such wild scenes as the above (pre-dating the likes of Hendrix by decades) were meant to mock--Harman and Ising used references to jazz and jazz figures throughout their career,quite clearly loving the form and the people who made it (in one early Bosko entry, Honey belts out a dead-perfect Bessie Smith imitation). Perhaps they felt that in a cartoon medium, the music should seem even more otherworldly and out-of-control.

After the Sultan pretty much pounds his piano into kindling, the genie joins him, jumping up and down on the wreckage. WIth a "YOW!!" he jumps on top of the genie, who staggers a bit trying to carry him--in doing so, he stumbles near the conveyer himself, and--what else?--both end up trapped on the mechanism, heading dangerously close to the castor oil.

That's where the real fun of the film starts--Harman and Ising resort to the kind of cartoon impossibility they hadn't used since their early, "rubber-hose" days. As the frogs reprise the "Grandma's Cookies" number and struggle to get off the conveyer, they smash into each other, back to back, appearing for a moment to look like a two-headed creature. The Sultan peels free of the genie, only to be ground under a wheel like a log in a sawmill--he literally gets sawed into dust, then the dust reassembles again.

Bosko is still conducting all of this: a trombone slides between his legs, hoisting him in the air. He playfully "duels" with it as he conducts. Grabbing the trombone, he "pumps up" one of the frog musicians, causing the frog to burst like a ballloon--and fragment into ten tiny little frogs playing toy trumpets. Harman and Ising literally pulled out every animation trick in their arsenal--this one dated back to their earliest days on the Oswald films.

Cut to a shot of a frog musician playing four clarinets with his hands and feet, while two others frogs, their trumpets facing each other, alternately inflate and deflate themselves. Their horns balloon up, threatening to burst, only to let out a huge puff of steam.

Cut to a shot of Bosko conducting, doing the chassic "Whiteman pose" that Hugh and Rudy used again and again (looking over his shoulder at the audience). That same bit of business was used in TOYLAND BROADCAST, not to mention several Warner's cartoons that relied on Whiteman caricatures (WAKE UP THE GYPSY IN ME is but one of many).

Meanwhile, the genie makes a mad scramble for the lever to stop the conveyer, He manages to grab it, only to be thrown back and forth several times (causing the conveyer to alternate between "forward" and "reverse.") This of course sends the poor Sultan bouncing back and forth on the conveyer like a rubber ball. He yells "Ooow! Stop this thing!" (Or so it sounds to my less-than-ideal ears).

The genie manages to pull the lever, but gets thrown backward from the momentum, knocking into the Sultan, who's propelled toward Bosko. Sliding to the spot where the drum on which Bosko was standing had been, he yells while Bosko tap-dances on his stomach: "Ooow! Dose cookies!" With a final "POOF!" from the genie, Bosko is transported back home.

"No sir," Bosko says, relieved to be back."Dey can't have my grandma's cookies!" He resumes his little "Straight to Grandma's" chant, It now appears to be almost dawn.

Hearing another "Whooo" from an owl, a terrified Bosko flees toward the waiting light of his grandma's front door. As he screams "Grandma, GRANDMA!!" (in very genuine terror) we fade out--and Bosko fades into animation history. So long, kiddo. You'll be missed.

FINAL THOUGHTS

When I first saw this cartoon more than a year ago, two things immediately came to mind.

First is how much things have changed in the past few decades regarding the safety of small children. Bosko's mother sends him off into the night, without the fear that something might happen to him. Imagine any mother doing that in this paranoid time. (Halloween was just a few nights ago, of course, and the local news programs were filled with reports of measures designed to keep potential sex offenders at bay. It makes my generation's worry about lunatics putting razor blades in apples seem naive).

Second was how difficult the background is to see. Yes, it takes place at night, but one wonders if the background would be more visible in a better print. I imagine something similar to SNOW WHITE, in which the trees grow more menacing the more fearful she becomes, seeming even to sprout eyes and arms.

By the end, Bosko had really blossomed as a personality--the one thing he'd been lacking for much of his short existence. Bosko didn't make things happen--things happened to him. He ended up being little more than an incidental character in his own cartoons, and it didn't take much for another character to steal his spotlight. This--ironically enough--was usually Honey, originally meant for little more than a secondary, Minnie Mouse-like role. Honey drove the plot, was the "brains" of the pair, and acted as Greek chorus to Bosko's stumbling. In CIRCUS DAZE, after chastising Bruno and telling him to "watch his step", Bosko unwittingly stumbles into an elephant's watering tank. "Bosko," Honey asks with a grin, "what's the difference between you and a fish?"

When he says he doesn't know, she tells him, "A fish is all WET, silly!"
"Well, I's all wet," Bosko responds.
"Well, I guess there ain't no difference!" Honey says, laughing.

Even in the early Warner's cartoons, Honey attracted the attention. In the very first Looney Tune, she expresses extreme displeasure at Bosko's saxophone playing. Deciding to drown him out, she dumps the contents of her bathtub into his sax--which causes mellower music to emerge. In BOSKO IN PERSON, she wows the audience with a Bessie Smith-style blues number (see above) while Bosko tries unsuccessfully to master the same tired old time step.

In THE OLD HOUSE, she displays a vast range of emotions, from smugness and childlike mischievousness, to glee, to terror and back again. Bosko, in his misguided attempt to save her, only worsened an already bad situation.

This started to change by BOSKO'S EASTER EGGS--he shows he's not above a little trickery, stealing the eggs from Honey's hen to replace the Easter eggs he smashed. Yet Honey again was the dominant character, acting as his conscience, in a sense.

With one important difference--his actions caused the situation, not those of Honey or some other character. He was coming into his own, and by the Bosko Trilogy, was fully fleshed out, with a vivid imagination and full range of emotions. Honey was gone, but he really didn't need her anymore. (Which of course in no way diminishes Kevin's or my fondness for the character.) One wonders what sort of character he might have developed into had he been around a few more years. We'll never know, but we at least have the films--and the memories.

Tags: Bosko+In+Baghdad, Hugh+Harman, racial+stereotypes, jazz, frogs, Bosko+Trilogy, review-synopsis, orphan+toon

Introducing Alicia: Tex Avery Review

Rachel here. In actuality, the duet between Kevin and me is really more of a trio. I'd like to introduce my co-contributor Alicia Wishart, a talented cartoonist from Canada who has her own wonderful page on Blogger. Take it away, Alicia:


This is my first contribution to the blog so I've put in a conversation I had with Rachel that I think would bring up some good chat. Rachel's responses are in italics.

Alicia

Hi Kevin & Rachel,

The other night I was finally able to start going through the stack of video tapes that are sitting on my end table and start watching them. The fist package of tapes I recieved was the Complete Tex Avery so here's my review of what I've watched so far. Now I warn you that my review is going to be totally half-assed compared to what you guys write but hey, it's something.

I found my filmography of Tex Avery and started watching right from the beginning. I should also note that I dubbed to dvd at the same time and the guide which tells me how to make my edits universal for all players is full of lies, but that's for another time.

The first cartoon was Blitz Wolf which I have seen before but who cares, let's watch it again. While watching Blitz Wolf and even further along and into other cartoons, I have come to the blief that Tex's cartoons were truly made for a adult audience rather than a more universal audience.

If there were any doubt about that, I think the "Red" cartoons Tex was famous for dispelled it completely. RED HOT RIDING HOOD, after all, was banned from TV for years because of a scene in which he (Avery's Wolf, I meant to say--R.) becomes stiff as a board at the sight of Red. Too much of a sexual metaphor for the censors, though I doubt any kids would have caught on.I would have liked to have known that Tex, who pushed the limits of censorship almost as far as his protege Bob Clampett. The man who, when a narrator remarks that a hunting dog is "almost human", shows a dog with a naked human lower body. The aging Tex that Mark Evanier writes about, the one who openly expressed regret at much of the violence and other non-"family friendly" content in his cartoons, seems like an entirely different person.In his prime, though, he was a one-man argument against the notion that American cartoons were "kid stuff." (An argument I've heard more than once from anime snobs). My response is usually, "You've never seen a Tex Avery cartoon, have you?"

Of course, compared to todays cartoons like South Park or Family Guy, these cartoons are tame but it's really refreshing to see cartoons that are capable of hitting to an adult audience without an abundance of sexual or language vulgarity.

While I'm generally against censorship of cartoons, I do admit that it forces animators to be creative. Avery and Clampett knew just what the limits were, and went just far enough for people to know what they were implying without having to come out and say it. Take Clampett's line from A TALE OF TWO KITTIES, when the Abbott cat tells him to "give him the bird." The Costello cat says, "If the Hays Office would only let me, I'd 'give him the bird', all right!" The implication is funnier than it would have been had he actually done it.This is the problem I have with much of John K.'s stuff. While at Nickelodeon, he made some of the funniest cartoons people had seen in years, because he was engaged in a contest with them to see how much he could get away with--and found creative ways of doing it. Once he started making cartoons for Spike, that barrier didn't exist, so he replaced humor with vulgarity.Good grief, did I say that? Now I know I'm getting old...

It seemed almost surreal that the laserdisks would start out with a war cartoon since so many of them are taboo. I know that chonologically it was Tex's first cartoon at MGM so why wouldn't it be the first but maybe that's one way that the laserdisks are in someways slightly superior to dvds. While dvds have the fabulous special features and restorations, you have to respect laserdisks for putting the cartoons on full content without concern and getting it right the first time.

I have to admit I like the special features, but yes, the laserdisks concentrated on the cartoons themselves, showing them as they were meant to be seen--uncut. I doubt if a Tex Avery DVD set came out now that any of the "blackface gags" would emerge unscathed, but one sees them in all their politically-incorrect glory on laserdisk.While what I've been saying may seem contradictory, the difference lies in where the censorship comes from, and the reasons for it. I don't like being told what I should see, and I certainly don't like what amounts to a rewriting of history-- which is why I'm irritated by the fact that Tex can't be seen uncut, or that cartoons like Clampett's COAL BLACK aren't more readily available. The animation greats of the past censored themselves more than any outside agency did--with the advent of DVD, the tables have turned, and the external censors have the final say. We're adults--let us decide for ourselves what's objectionable.

Tex's cartoons use the medium of animation to it's fullest extent. The best use of animation to me is where eye's can be left behind once the body runs away, and then run to catch up and then bang on a door to be let in. Proportions can change, inanimate objects can be lifeless one minute and then full of life the next but not in that "Beauty and the Beast" kind of way. Strech and squash are used like never before and the relation to the characters with each other on screen and then their inclusion if the audience add for a truly surreal experience that only animation can truly provide.

This is beautiful. It's the best definition of "animation" I've ever heard, far better than any dictionary could manage. To "animate," as Chuck Jones often said, is to "evoke life," but cartoon animation has the power to go beyond that, to enable creatures to do things never imagined in live action. What made Tex's cartoons funny is simple--they start out mundane, almost Disneyesque, then unexpectedly explode into insanity. Whereas Disney asked, "How much like everyday reality can I make this?", Tex asked, "What would the audience least expect?" As so many animation historians have said, if one doesn't push animation to the fullest extent possible, why use that medium at all?

If only someone could tell the film makers today that the point of animation is to do the things that live action cannot rather than to make them look like live action, then maybe we would have great cartoons again.

To do that, we would have to recreate the sort of atmosphere that existed in the glory days of Termite Terrace and MGM. The sort that allowed creators to create without worrying about what demographic they're marketing to, or what group they're likely to offend. It doesn't seem likely these days, but I hold out hope that some small, outlaw studio will have that sort of attitude, and we'll truly see funny cartoons again.That said, I'm not sure today's cartoon creators even know how to be funny anymore. Pop-culture references, over-the-top vulgarity, and pseudo-hipness rule the day, and are more a replacement for humor than humor itself.

Gotta wrap this up, co-workers getting suspicious. My only complaint about Tex Avery is that the cartoons can be formalatic (is that a word?) and repetative at times. After watching about 15 cartoons I felt that there were maybe about 5 or 6 truly original cartoons. Between the numerous disclaimers and the same Red Hot dance in about 3 cartoons, I began to yearn for something new. I feel hypocritical saying this as a person who loves the Coyote series but hey, that's what I felt.

Tex did reuse gags, but then, so did everyone back then. How many times have you seen the same gag in a Friz Freleng cartoon, for instance? That unfortunately was the result of a system that had to crank out cartoons on a very tight schedule. What made Tex's cartoons special is that they managed to be funny in spite of this.

Well there's my half-assed, 15 minutes for lunch review. Let me know your thoughts so we can chat.

Here's Kevins thoughts:

Alicia and Rachel:

One of you said: Tex did reuse gags, but then, so did everyone back then. How many times have you seen the same gag in a Friz Freleng cartoon, for instance? That unfortunately was the result of a system that had to crank out cartoons on a very tight schedule.

True, but at Warner Brothers, sometimes, one animator would "redo" another animator's cartoon, even reusing footage, but that animator would add his own touch to the original. I won't say how the original animator felt about the process, but I think it would have challenged the original animator to come up with something stronger or more outrageous. Othertimes, animators would indeed redo their own cartoons, sometimes speeding up the pace of the original or perfecting the timing a little. Take a look at "NOTES FOR YOU", coming in LOONEY TUNES GOLDEN COLLECTION 4, and then compare it to "BACK ALLEY OP-ROAR" found on the fantastic finale disk of LOONEY TUNES GOLDEN COLLECTION 2, and you'll see how animation or its timing and gag content had developed over the years. The successor has so much more to add, like that funny operatic cat who,at first, stands there turning the page around in her hands as if not really knowing which way to hold it, and then she gets hit on the head and the look on her face as the soundtrack is altered to represent her suddenly slowly losing consciousness--it even stands as a brilliant piece of audio alone if you've seen the cartoon enough times!! But, remember, we are talking here about Warner Brothers, a studio that, in its heyday, created almost twice as many cartoons as its competitors. Sure, you felt that, if a "cheater" was done at MGM, it was unnecessary since there were only a certain number created within a year's time, and nothing was really added to the cheater, especially where TOM & JERRY were concerned, although they'd come up with a thin premise--Jerry is writing a book or Tom finds Jerry's diary and begins reading about the pursuits taken from other cartoons. The audience feels cheated, although these are interesting to watch once you've got the entire series in front of you.

At Warner Brothers, you've got situations like this; for example, you've got "HECKLING HARE" which is a great hunting dog romp as Bugs outwits the dumb hunting dog with every trick in the book, but then comes "HARE RIBBIN'" which not only gives the dog a new voice but takes nearly the whole cartoon underwater, sometimes re-enacting the same bits (the dog again is fooled into thinking that he actually murdered Bugs), and not only did they make *ONE* version of this remake, they secretly made *TWO* versions!! Even after 10 volumes of GOLDEN AGE, there will still be cartoons left to toy with and add as, perhaps, a package marked "THE REST", with disconnected toon titles and tidbits that didn't really belong in any major category but sure deserve to be seen, merely because they are LOONEY TUNES or MERRY MELODIES!! Unfortunately, you can't quite do that with MGM cartoons; I tried, after pushing hard for an extended MGM CARTOON MAGIC type of collection that would do for that cartoon studio what Jerry Beck and the folks are now doing for the LOONEY TUNES GOLDEN COLLECTION series. Oh, it could be done, but the idea of concepts for each disk would wear thin quicker than with the LOONEY TUNES collections. Even if you ran out of concepts and decided to just issue the cartoons in order of their appearance, regarding LOONEY TUNES, you could still make it all entertaining. Oh, I still say that an ultimate two volumes of MGM cartoons could and should be made, but nothing, absolutely *NOTHING* beats what can be and is being done with LOONEY TUNES.

Perhaps what I'm trying to say here is that, although making toons at all major studios was a chore for all involved, it seemed as if those at Termite Terrace were genuinely having fun, even on the darkest days, because you can see just how many titles were done within the same amount of time that MGM or Lantz or Disney or any of the major studios were also at work, and you can see how creative these folks still remained under the pressure to be so!! Yes, sometimes I feel this sense that even Tex Avery became disillusioned. To us, he still was terrific, all the way through his TV work with RAID ads, but there was something missing--he was perhaps becoming sadly aware that the kind of animation enthusiasm for detail and timing and gag content was slowly moving away, and a new attitude was taking over. Design was taking over where fluid animation once held sway, and the animation staff was soon looking at the art form, as far as theatrical stuff was concerned, as that which preceeds a movie and is obviously ignored, even though awards were now being given out. In that sense, again, I will leave it up to those in the know to give us commentaries on any possible MGM set. If there is a COMPLETE TEX AVERY done for DVD, however, I'd heard that Warner Brothers doesn't do much cross-lisencing anymore and, so, won't do their best to acquire the Lantz cartoons or even Avery toons from other sources. Just think how cross-lisencing would even work to the betterment of the LOONEY TUNES GOLDEN COLLECTION sets. Imagine if we had shades of Chuck Jones at other studios. We know that they can now use MGM examples of the work of Friz Freleng or voice work by Mel Blanc. This means that we could get some terrific cartoons that might not see release elsewhere at all, like Freleng's CAPTAIN & THE KIDS cartoons or Jones' "DOT AND THE LINE" or Mel's inventive voices for some Harmon/Ising films. Yet, all these principles did work for other companies and this work definitely should be seen as well and, since the other studios' works are not being used for anything else, why not use this LOONEY TUNES collection as a means for unearthing some of these great films? So many possibilities!!

Kevin

Tags: Alicia+Wishart, Tex+Avery, review

The Best-Laid Plans....

If there's one thing I should know better than to do, it's commit myself to any specific schedule of posting to this blog. I had promised a review/synopsis of the first of the "Bosko Trilogy" long before this, and instead have taken an entirely unintended vacation. I can only say it's because of my perfectionist nature: I had started, and re-started, the introductory paragraphs at least three times. Nothing goes here that does not reflect my absolute best writing (even this post is a second draft, the first having been discarded yesterday afternoon).

Writing for a blog like this has proved a formidible challenge, since each entry is, in effect, the equivalent of a magazine article. I must say I have a renewed respect for newspaper reporters, who can and do compose lengthy articles daily.

To put it bluntly, it's damned exhausting.

I've devoted my nights to it, at the cost of my health and sanity. So I've spent the last couple of days getting some badly needed sleep. I can only be glad that Kevin is not a taskmaster, and understands when I "disappear" for a few days. I beg that you, and anyone else who comes across this blog, will be equally understanding.

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I am, however, not posting at this ungodly hour of the morning merely to make excuses for my absence.

In yesterday's entry in his Cartoon Brew blog, Jerry Beck writes about a cause near and dear to my heart. (I can only hope the link works--as with blogging, I am very new to HTML code).

Incidentally, I feel obligated to tell you I made a mistake in an earlier post. I posted a link to Jerry's Cartoon Research site, itself an excellent source of animation info, and mistakenly referred to it as the link for his blog. His blog is actually here.

Think you've seen all of Disney's FANTASIA? Well, not if you've seen it in the last three decades or so.

The "Pastoral Symphony" sequence (for the uninitiated, the one with the centaurs) originally contained a scene of black centaurette attendants. Due to its controversial nature, that scene has been excised from more recent showings of the film.

The print Jerry writes of in his blog contains footage of the excised scene, in its entirety--a must for the serious toon historian with an extra $1500 in his pocket. Unfortunately, I'm not one of those people.

His post could not be better timed, however, as it gives me an opportunity to "out" myself, as it were. If you've been paying close attention, you may have noticed I have a particular attraction to cartoons rarely seen in these more "enlightened" times, for much the same reason as the edited scene in FANTASIA.

Like Jerry, I feel classic animated films should be seen complete and uncut, objectionable scenes and all. Hence my historical interest in cartoons such as CIRCUS DAZE and THE OLD HOUSE; I should say, though, that my interest in these cartoons goes beyond the merely historical. I honestly feel that these are wonderful films.

While I most certainly do not condone racism in any form, neither do I condone allowing classic animation to rot in a vault merely because of changing attitudes. THE OLD HOUSE, CIRCUS DAZE, the upcoming "Bosko Trilogy" and similar films have much to offer despite images that may be distressing to modern eyes. They're masterpieces of comedic timing and personality animation, whose main characters just happen to be black.

My interest in such cartoons began with an online glimpse at what has to be the Holy Grail for animation collectors, Bob Clampett's indescribably brilliant COAL BLACK AND DE SEBBEN DWARFS. It's been called the best cartoon nobody's ever seen, good enough to merit a Top 10 spot in Jerry's book THE FIFTY GREATEST CARTOONS EVER (if you don't already own a copy, I strongly urge you to go to amazon.com and pick one up). An all black parody of the then-recent SNOW WHITE, it is a feast for the eyes and ears--Looney Tunes on rocket fuel. Even in a grainy, low-bandwidth copy it crackled with energy, an animated exercise in perpetual motion. It succeeds not in spite of the black characters, but because of them: the theme provides an excuse for the liveliest, jazziest music ever heard in a Warner Bros. cartoon, and some of the best black vocal talent of the era (featuring the likes of Ruby and Vivian Dandridge, as well as Zoot Watson as the Prince).

Yet because of those black characters, it has been relegated to cinema oblivion, becoming what I call an "orphan toon." (If you ever wondered where this blog's name came from, now you know). It doesn't deserve this fate, and neither do any of the other cartoons here.

Look at it like this. Any film, any time, anywhere, is bound to contain something irritating and offensive to someone, be it excessive sex, violence, or even ideas one finds abhorrent. Individuals have the right to avoid such films if they wish, and parents have the right to prevent their children from seeing them.

When they treat the rest of us like children, however, by deciding for us what is acceptable to see, that is where I must draw the line.

And in the words of that great philosopher Forrest Gump, "That's all I have to say about that..."

Tags: note+to+readers, censorship

"Dem Cookies, Dem Cookies": The "Bosko Trilogy" (Introduction)

In 1937, Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising's three-year association with MGM was coming to an end. For the moment.

They'd always had a sort of "love-hate" relationship with the studio. On the one hand, MGM considered the "Happy Harmonies" a vast improvement over the output of Ub Iwerks, whose Flip The Frog and Willie Whopper never quite connected with audiences. On the other, they grew increasingly distressed over the ever-rising budgets and increasing running times. Some Harman-Ising cartoons had run as long as nine minutes (Maltin in Of Mice and Magic says eleven, so I'll defer to the master on that point). In 1937, MGM opted not to renew Harman and Ising's contract, deciding instead to open their own studio and produce cartoons at considerably lower cost.

But Harman and Ising still had a few cartoons to go before their contract was up, and filled it by producing three Bosko cartoons which on the surface seemed virtually identical: BOSKO AND THE PIRATES, BOSKO AND THE CANNIBALS and BOSKO IN BAGHDAD. For the sake of convenience I'll refer to them as the "Bosko Trilogy" or the "Jazz Frogs Trilogy" (for those with a particularly cynical bent of mind, one could probably call them the "Contractural Obligation Trilogy.")

ADDITIONAL NOTE: Kevin says this about the "Contractural Obligation" comment:

In actuality, I know so little about the careers of Hugh Harmon and Rudolph Ising that I don't know for sure whether they really had done these last three similar cartoons as a way to get out of their contractual obligation, or whether there really *WAS* a contractual obligation. I just assumed this as well since I know that musicians sign a contract to produce a certain number of albums on the company label.

Well, I admit I was trying to be funny with that comment, Kevin. I made my assumption from what Barrier says in his book, Hollywood Cartoons. He says Harman and Ising's contract with MGM was terminated in mid-1937, and according to Maltin, MGM's own studio under Fred Quimby was established by August of that year. Harman and Ising's Bosko cartoons were the last released before they and MGM parted ways, and appeared well into 1938, long after MGM's own studio had been set up. It seemed only logical, given the seeming rushed nature of the cartoons and the time they were released, that they were done to fulfill the contract. But as Bugs Bunny says, "I could be wrong, y'know..." Rachel.

For these cartoons, Bosko received yet another overhaul: he became younger and more innocent, with a livelier imagination than ever before. This Bosko was a pint-sized Walter Mitty, who imagined himself in fantastic settings despite his "mammy"'s warnings not to "go lackadaisin'." A real child's voice was used to convey this new innocence--no longer just "Bosko", he was now "L'il Ol' Bosko." Honey, and even Bruno, were now gone (poor Honey--we hardly knew ye).

All three of these cartoons have the same basic plot: Bosko's "mammy" sends him off to his grandma's with a bagful of fresh-baked cookies--and a warning not to let his imagination run off with him. It inevitably does, and he inevitably encounters what Kevin and I have dubbed the "Jazz Frogs"--large humanized frogs who turn out to be quite familiar. There's a Bill Robinson caricature frog, a Louis Armstrong caricature, a froggy Cab Calloway, and a Fats Waller caricature (who never misses an opportunity to bellow his trademark line, "What's de matter wid him??") Depending on Bosko's fantasy of the moment, they could be pirates, cannibals, or even Arabs. In whatever guise, they have but one objective: to get "dem cookies."

The frogs had been seen before, in the 1937 SWING WEDDING. One has the sneaking suspicion they were recruited in these cartoons so Harman and Ising could do what they always did with abandon--reuse earlier animation.

To be fair, while the cartoons have the appearance of being "cheaters", each has distinctive highlights, endearing little bits of animation, that make each of them stand on their own. In BOSKO IN BAGHDAD, for instance, Bosko manages to furtively sample one of the delicious cookies while his mother has her back turned--a typically childlike, charming and very real moment. In BOSKO AND THE PIRATES, the "Jazz Frogs" are playing their number in such a frenzy that one frog appears to be "milking" his trumpet--an uncharacteristically screwy bit of business for a Harman-Ising cartoon.

Rather than review these cartoons in release order, I'd like to start with the last, and perhaps best, of the three: BOSKO IN BAGHDAD, from 1938. More, much more, to come...

Tags: Bosko+Trilogy, Hugh+Harman, introduction racial+stereotypes

Mama's Got A Brand-New Blog

...or the blog has a brand-new name, anyway.

When I thought the blog was primarily going to be a private "thing" between Kevin and me, the original name, "Conversations With Kevin", seemed okay. What changed my mind? One word--Google.

I Googled my own name today to see if the blog had made it into the search engine. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Squaddoo.

I Google Kevin's name, and lo and behold, there we be!

Now, it's not an ego thing (not entirely, anyway) but I would like people to know that this is my blog as much as it is Kevin's. As I said in an earlier post, I had misgivings about the original name from day one for the confusion it would create. Well, that shouldn't happen anymore.


So spread the word--and bring your friends. I wanna see comments! It's awfully lonely in here...

Tags: blog, name+change

More Observations on Bosko from Kevin

You know, I'm really beginning to sympathize with the Luddites. Technology bites.

To keep people interested during my search for the elusive "Jazz Frogs" trilogy (which I finally found last night after about a three-hour search) I decided to post my review of ROMEO in RHYTHM here--a Harman-Ising cartoon from 1940, probably the single best musical cartoon they'd ever done. It certainly deserved a nod from the Academy, more than THE MILKY WAY from the same year.

But my ancient wreck of a computer had other ideas. When I had the review in "edit" mode, my computer decided line breaks weren't necessary, so I spent about an hour putting them back in. Before I was even halfway through, my computer decides to crash.

I was so exasperated, I decided to spare myself the aggravation and give up for the day. Hence, no post yesterday.

But Kevin has some insightful observations of the Bosko cartoons (and other matters) that truly deserved a place here. ROMEO IN RHYTHM can wait--and the first of the "Bosko Trilogy" WILL be up tomorrow, should the computer gods look upon me favorably.

Rachel:

Thanks for putting a message up on the TERMITE TERRACE list. I'm back up and I'll post something on the list just to hopefully get something going, although I just can't find any bites on those HAPPY HARMONIES. I've tried for years, relating over and over again that there is so much more to the BOSKO cartoons--and your descriptions of "THE OLD HOUSE" have confirmed this for me, because there are so many visual tricks that put these far above any of the other HAPPY HARMONIES titles. Like I've always said, it is a real shame that Hugh Harmon humanized his character, because the gags here are fantastic and the animation, of course, is top notch. Between my memory and your eyes, I'm sure we could go further and point out key moments here that feature what we see as award-winning animation.

Hi,

You know, I really should be thanking you, because it was in giving these cartoons a second look that I realized how wonderful these cartoons really are. I think those of us who can see really take our vision for granted--we look at things, but don't really see them. My initial view of the Harman-Ising cartoons was based on such superficial observation. Looking at them again forced me to notice things that put the cartoons in a new light--the use of color and shadow, the sense of timing, the poses and other subtle little personality quirks. Harman and Ising have been dismissed for decades as mere Disney imitators, but they obviously learned more from their old boss than is generally acknowledged, particularly when it comes to personality animation. I'd already mentioned the haughty pose Honey takes when berating Bosko, and the charming scene of her laughing. Of the two, she is perhaps my favorite character, and the one with the most personality. Babs Bunny was right...

Unknown to me for years, I was only seeing a small fraction of Harman-Ising's actual output. It's rather a shame they saved their wildest stuff for cartoons few people would end up seeing (though I'm sure they never dreamed their cartoons would arouse the controversy they did.

Which raises the question--Harman and Ising had been interviewed numerous times in later years. I'd be interested to know if they had any comment to make on the redesigned, more controversial versions of Bosko and Honey.

Well, I've said to others that, if these were on DVD professionally, I'd really just disappear, having gotten what I wanted; and, to an extent, that is true, although I know there will always be favorites that I would struggle, however I can, to get out on DVD. It is like the overall chore of trying to change the minds of those at the top that animation is just kid stuff or nostalgia for all the wrong reasons. In some cases, yeah, this is true, but what's wrong with trying to make money on this stuff as opposed to letting it gather dust?

Precisely. Personally, I don't care why people choose to see something worthwhile, as long as they see it. It'll be out there--if certain pseudo-sophisticates want to view it as camp and sneer at it, who cares?

By the way, your description of Honey is so perfect. In my alternate universe, I might have wanted to see an episode similar to the "TINY TOON ADVENTURES" in which Babs Bunny is looking for a female role model in classic cartoons. While she glosses over BETTY BOOP and a handful of others, she does happen upon Honey who, when found, looks nothing like her adorable self in this and other MGM cartoons, and I guess you can understand why, but I think I would have run with this and there could have been some points lightly made about aging performers (hmmm, how old would Honey be now if she were a live actress?) and the changing times and even a joke about new configurations as the way we look at old cartoons changes as well.

My version of that Tiny Toons story (in which Babs Bunny "rediscovers" Honey) would probably have been a parody of SUNSET BOULEVARD, with her as a Gloria Swanson-style recluse, and Bosko staying loyally beside her. And patiently putting up with her complaining over how her mid-thirties "makeover" ruined her career. ("I haven't been able to show my face in public for fifty years!")

The aging Honey could have been looking at an imagined photo album (actual stills from the Harmon cartoons, in both black and white and color) and a remark could have been made once the camera flashes for a second on her MGM incarnation with her shaking her head as if to say "that'll never do; too controversial!" I'm thinking of a similar situation found in an episode of BEANY & CECIL in which Dishonest John was giving Cecil a makeover as he prepares to answer a call from a movie studio exec who wants him to star, basically, as himself. Ol' DJ, at one point, splashes red, white and blue paint on Cecil, only to say "No, no, let's not get controversial", referring to not wanting to use the colors of the U.S. flag for fear that it would be misrepresenting the flag.

You know, I think I like your idea better. You hear that, Warner's? Hire this guy!

But "THE SEARCH FOR HONEY" would have to be an "adult" cartoon, perhaps shown in the middle of the night on Cartoon Network, even though the jokes would not be racial but pokes at the fact that such old caricatures are so overly controversial now.

You know, when I talk about such controversies, I think back to a small snippet of an OUR GANG comedy in which the kids were holding an Arbor Day show at their school. In the play, each little kid, familiar to us all, was to recite a line to show their role in making plants and trees grow. Time came for Buckwheat to do his bit and he, like some kids do, forgot what he was supposed to say and looked nervously out into the audience. I believe it was Hattie McDaniel who was playing his mother, and she just did an exasperated take and recited his lines for him to which he smiled and replied "Yeah, that's it!" That moment had almost nothing stereotypical about it in the sense that Ms. McDaniel did not do an exaggerated pose but just told her little one his line in a way most mothers would impatiently prompt their child as you would imagine he must have been coached again and again the night before! It is a cute moment and nothing to be ashamed about!

I noticed the same thing, and aside from some embarrassing moments in the later MGM films (such as the scene of Buckwheat turning white, as Bosko had done, that I made note of in this blog) the Our Gang films pretty much presented Buckwheat as being like any other kid, and we forget that in the Hal Roach version, he was the equal of the rest of the gang. No mention was made of his color--it didn't matter to them.

Moments like this are what I'd like to believe that Hugh Harmon ultimately wanted his MGM Bosko to take on, but the "realism" never quite took that strong a hold at MGM, not even in a series of cartoons that were kind of Disney-like or looked as if they were storybook illustrations come to life. I've always said that antics in "THE OLD HOUSE" were right out of earlier OUR GANG films, with cartoony moments being funny little situations in which Bosko is reading to Bruno from his ghost stories book, only to have Honey sneak up behind and scare him--man, that's right out of one specific story in which Joe Cobb and Chubby decide to try and scare the younger kids while hiding in the brush! A better example could be found in a later OUR GANG comedy called "LITTLE SINNER" in which Spanky and Buckwheat are deciding that they'd rather go fishing than go to Sunday church service. The two are hesitantly ambling through the woods to the fishing spot when they hear noises of the birds in the trees that scare them into running off, and the visuals often exaggerate the takes of both kids, because they are so small and have that gift of body language that makes the double takes so funny; so Hugh Harmon no doubt has seen either of these films and adds this element to this BOSKO cartoon since he now has opportunities to make his key characters into OUR GANG-like kids.

You know, MGM did eventually gain the rights to Our Gang from Roach (I'm afraid I don't know the legal reasons for the changeover) and the films were never quite the same. They became less about the antics of "real" kids and more mini-musicals. In the Roach films, if the kids put on a show, it looked like it was being put on by kids, and they sounded like kids. Roach wanted to avoid using "show children", and that's ultimately what they became.

But I think you're right about that aspect of the Boskos--they're certainly what Hal Roach would have done if he'd been running an animation studio. Harman and Ising's films were a bit schizophrenic that way: painstakingly realistic on one hand, while retaining a level of cartoon impossibility. Which is why it's so jarring to see Bosko endure a fall that would surely kill him--if it were a Tex Avery short, we'd know the character would be in one piece in the next scene. In Harman and Ising's realistic world, we're tricked into one set of expectations, and they throw us a curve. Even having Bruno talk, however briefly, seems a bit out of place.

That contradiction worked better for folks like Tex Avery--characters doing crazy things over Disneyesque backgrounds. He was able to do it because the characters were so surreal to begin with. We don't empathize with Screwy Squirrel or Droopy, but we do with Bosko and Honey.

Even "CIRCUS DAZE" is an OUR GANG scenario. The Roach comedies had actually done a film called "THUNDERING FLEAS" which is almost the same film, only the fleas jump out of the tent and follow the kids and their dog back to an older sister's wedding with wild results. Of course, no one would expect Roach to attempt to show animals and acrobats running amuck at a local circus, right? But there was an actual bit of animation within this silent two-reeler; the image of a local statue suddenly seized with wanting to vigorously scratch once the fleas swarm over him. The fully cartoonized statue leaps up and runs off!!

My memory is fuzzy on this one. Weren't the fleas animated as well?

Even the way you describe the filming of the antics in "THE OLD HOUSE" remind me of something that Roach would have tried if he could have rigged such a set, but hey, Bosko falls through too many loose floorboards and I wouldn't expect a real little kid to endure that sort of timing. Yet, Roach could have looked at more than a few Harold Lloyd comedies, the sections in which Lloyd is suddenly dangling atop a high rise building. There is enough action throughout "THE OLD HOUSE" to suggest this kind of imagined realism, and I always mention those scenes in which we follow Bosko or Honey falling through to another section of the house as if they were sliding through mazes.

The stuff is great. I mean, what more can I say?

Kevin

Great observations in this letter, Kevin. It'll surely tide the folks over until I can get those reviews up. As always, stay tuned...

Tags: The+Old+House, Bosko, Kevin+Wollenweber, letter, response