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

Sufferin' Cats! Kevin's Review of Hugh Harman's THE ALLEY CAT

Getting "That Ol' Feelin'"?: THE ALLEY CAT (1941)

Review by Kevin Wollenweber

I have always been a cat-lover. Even though I do not presently own one, cats I’ve “met” at others’ homes have neatly gravitated to me and we seem to have an immediate “communication” or rapport. So it is certainly understandable that I’d like the 1941 classic cartoon from MGM directed by Hugh Harman called “THE ALLEY CAT”.

At the time of this cartoon’s regularly being shown in heavy rotation on early morning kids’ TV, a la “THE EARLY BIRD CARTOON SHOW”, a local staple of our ABC-TV affiliate here in New York, just before the all-important morning newscast at approximately 9:00 a.m., our family had a cat, and we were kept awake at times throughout the nights with many a musical offering by amorous alley cats, so I took to this cartoon immediately, even though there is really nothing to like about the cartoon’s title character. You really can’t figure out just why the beautiful and pampered female cat likes him so much. He can’t even seem to carry a tune all that well and he spends most of the cartoon nastily taunting the snarling bulldog or tearing apart the house by accidentally lighting his tail ablaze when getting too close to the fireplace and then getting the fishbowl caught on his rump and leaping to the ceiling trying to shake it off…

…But I’m getting ahead of the story, as Jay Ward would probably tell me if I were narrating this thing.

The cartoon opens inside a spacious townhouse where the only human that we meet is a bored and ver-ry British butler (or should I say, “but-lah”?), carrying in a bowl of food for someone, namely the equally bored and sleek and white kitty cat who, when asked “will there be anything else, M’lady?”, slowly picks herself up to only purr “nooo!” The butler moves to leave the room, but not without showing his hint of anger over having to wait, hand and foot, on a cat by giving out with a disdainful snort before slamming the door behind him. Miss Kitty turns away from that scene as well and goes to check something outside. Can we guess what that is?

It is so obvious as Scott Bradley’s score gets brassier and jazzier and we see our “hero” (dubbed Butch by the animators, although not called at all by that name anywhere in the cartoon) emerge from the alleyway, checking garbage cans for food that the neighbors have tossed out, even bopping around to the music if I remember correctly. He is the most unlikely of heroes, though, because, when he notices the Persian cat glaring out at him from the balcony, he tosses away the fish he was about to devour and yowls, in what has to be the coarsest catcall I’ve ever heard, “Boy oh boy! Hi, baby!” She purrs back her “helloooo” which launches old Butch into his signature song…if you want to call this singing:

“I saw you last night and got that oooool’ feelin’…”

With his female companion singing along on key with “meow meow meow meow”, he continues to garble the words so bad that one needs an original version of this song to actually find the correct lyrics. I would go on record as saying that, perhaps, DONALD DUCK or YACKIE DOODLE could have vocalized this better!! This rouses the butler angrily to the window, just as a covey of the alley cat’s feline buddies begin to harmonize quite nicely, too, and he shoes the lot of them away with yells like “Fssst, I say, you cats, stop making all this noise!” When this fails to startle them, he sends out his secret weapon, the very large bulldog. “Rover…Rover…I say…cats!!” The dog hears these excited monosyllables and it takes time to register, but he tears off after the cats who, en masse, go flying away from the fence and the chase and battle of wits begins. The dogs stops in front of the alley cat and attempts a roaring bark which comes out as mere yelps of a dog you would think is much smaller than this, sending Butch into gails of gravelly laughter “tough guy, eh?” he taunts and swipes his claws at the dog’s head as the dog leaps up trying to snap at the cat.

Butch doesn’t just let it go at that. Surely, he has to play a couple of really painful tricks on the dog, at one point taking a hot light fixture from one of the poles in front of the house and dropping it on the dog’s head. The explosion sends the dog running for cover back into his house, sending the cat into further hysterics, calling up to his girl on the balcony, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet, baby!!” He goes to a nearby pail and grabs a perfume bottle, filling it with a heavy and pungent dose of ammonia or some such smelly vapor and proceeds to leap onto the doghouse roof, knocking on the roof and calling “Well, does little Rover wanna come out and play?” He pulls the bulldog up by his snout, claws bared…ooh, does that hurt! The dog is now angry again and ready for some sort of attack, but not for long. As the dog rushes up to mere inches in front of the cat, he gets a face full of something so powerful that it nearly knocks him out or makes him reel dizzily, almost dangling in midair before Butch sprays him again and, with his paw, pushes him lightly down on the ground over on his back, fast asleep! “Awww” the alley cat mocks, seeing the dog totally comatose on the lawn.

His attentions are turned back to his kitty love above, who now throatily yowls, in a barely recognizable Mae West impression, “come up and see me sometime”, sounding, instead, more like her aroused boyfriend. She’s definitely in heat!! Butch howls, leaps into the air and, in the space of a few frames and seconds, blasts off through the front door of the house and straight up to the upstairs area where Kitty is waiting with the door opened. Butch sails past and, as the camera moves toward the couch, he is sitting there comfortably smoking an expensive cigar. Wow, this guy wastes *NO* time! “Well”, he says, “what’s cookin’ sister?”

Geez, I wonder which animator’s alter-ego *THIS* is!

He then decides to clumsily entertain his ladylove by dancing to a great Latin rhythm of the usual song, “La Cucaracha”, but he dances too close to the fireplace, setting his tail on fire. This is good for the audio of the cartoon because the action starts up now, even with Bradley’s score percolatin’ as well underneath. Butch yowls and leaps into the air looking for something to put out his flaming behind. He wedges himself into the fishbowl, but is again driven mad trying to release himself from it. He again leaps into the air, this time hanging from the ceiling and ripping it to shreds as he hangs on and tries to shake the bowl loose. While all this is happening, out in the darkness, the bulldog is coming to and hearing the commotion. He groggily makes his way into the house just as Butch rips his way across the ceiling to where the bulldog is unfortunately right under him…and this is where the claws lose their grip on the ceiling and the cat and fishbowl come tumbling down on top of the dog with the fishbowl breaking over the dog’s hard head! I dimly recall the intercutting of inside and outside scenes here as being quite good, climaxing in the afore-mentioned crash as the cat falls from the ceiling.

The chase is on…and forgive me if some of the finer details are forgotten here, but the cat seems to evade the dog’s attacks, sending the dog crashing into a wall or tumbling into a suit of armor that Butch fills with hot coals that send the dog flying up into the air. As this occurs, the butler (geez, I wondered where he was all this time) is now aware of the commotion and is calling for his dog, who crashes down in a heap on top of him. The dog is not done chasing the cat, though, and the beast tries to leap forward, not realizing that he is caught in the butler’s suspenders. Once ripping free, the dog continues the chase, knocking over pictures and vases or whatever is in his way up and down the stairs!

The butler, meanwhile decides to grab his pick ax and get rid of this intruder himself. The chase had gone through the wash cycle in the nearby tub and now escalates through the rooms as the butler enters swinging the ax and trying to hit the cat as the cat and dog go running in circles around where the butler is nervously standing, but can you kids guess what happens next?

Yup, the ol' faithful bulldog gets it in the head, but as is the case with cartoon characters, he is merely stunned for a few seconds and ends up turning on the evil butler with the ax in his hand, snapping angrily at his pants and ripping them to shreds and sending the two crashing through the plate glass window and off down the street as the alley cat continues singing to his ladylove, inviting his pals in for a last chorus as the iris closes. Aw gee!

There are so many elements of this cartoon that smack of Hanna-Barbera intrusion. Didn’t we see an envious butler and his dog in a much later “TOP CAT” episode in which Benny the Ball is mistaken for some rich cat and those alley cats invade the good life for a while? Also, that hormonal howl of the alley cat taking up his lover’s invite sounds mysteriously like those yowls that Joe Barbera is said to have produced as vocalizing for Tom getting pinned on any part of his body by Jerry in their usual battles of wits. Just listen to a cartoon called “THE MILKY WAIF” and you’ll see what I mean. As far as I know, this is the first time we hear this howl in an MGM cartoon, so it is possible that Joe Barbera (or was it Bill Hanna) premiered it here? It has also been a running gag in some Hanna-Barbera cartoons that the lead character is not always what he or she seems. So it might be an H/B-ism for the alley cat to be such a loud-mouthed, gravelly-voiced and almost unappealing boorish young male instead of the usual golden-throated romeo that we’ve come to expect in animated vehicles like this.

My only other comment is that the four-part barber shop quartetting covey of alley cats reminds me of a similar scene in Disney’s much later “LADY AND THE TRAMP” in which a covey of dogs serenades the two lovers (or friends). Maybe, if we get another fantastic Scott Bradley double-CD set of scores similar to the fantastic TOM & JERRY AND TEX AVERY, TOO set, the consultants can find that bit of singing and include it in its entirety. It is fantastic and I’m sorry that the action is taking place while the cats are in good harmonics, here.

What can I say, I love cat cartoons! “Meow meow meow meeeooooow!” Check it out yourselves on YouTube. It is posted there, and let’s hope that a complete HAPPY HARMONIES set comes out real soon.

Tags: Kevin+Wollenweber, The+Alley+Cat, Hugh+Harman, orphan+toon

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

Two Unscheduled Flights of LANDING STRIPLING (1962): Part One--Kevin's Review

Foreword from Rachel

We here at the Home For Orphan Toons can't resist a challenge, and today, Thad Komorowski provided us with one. Any cartoon Thad hates that much is definitely worth a second look.

Kevin and I would be the first to admit that the Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry's are animation's equivalent of the crazy relative the family won't talk about--and it's not hard to see why. The animation is odd, the character designs and sound track even odder: Tom and Jerry on a heavy dose of hallucinogens.

But in a few of those thirteen cartoons, those very qualities are what make them worth watching. Today's spotlight cartoon, Landing Stripling, is one of them.


Despite the title, Kevin's review is less that of Landing Stripling than of the Gene Deitch approach to Tom and Jerry in general, but I will follow tomorrow with my own thoughts on Gene Dietch, and a more comprehensive look at Landing Stripling.

“BOING BOING BOING BOING BOING…” GIVING TOM & JERRY THE BIRD!:
A REVIEW OF “LANDING STRIPLING”

By Kevin Wollenweber

I like cartoons, almost any cartoons, especially all or most of these made during the first golden age, that of the very inventive and sometimes iconoclastic theatrical period, when animators indulged their artistic sense and ran with at while the major studios paid the sometimes exorbitant bills.

They created most of these cartoons, perhaps, in hopes that they’d be seen as legitimate filmmakers--as we all know that they should be truly seen.

There are times when an animator from another studio would “visit” the home of a specific character or animator and take charge of that animator’s work or character’s flagging series and attempt to breathe life into it. I continuously wonder why Gene Deitch took over the TOM & JERRY series. The resulting short-lived reincarnation that happened really wasn’t at all about the series as we had come to know it through the eyes and ears of the duo’s original creators, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.

There were reasons why those who even liked the H/B versions of the 1940’s can grouse about how the series did fall into such a formula, a formula that would be somewhat reworked for the PIXIE & DIXIE series for television’s “HUCKLEBERRY HOUND SHOW”--the only difference being that the characters talked. I am so delighted that the theatrical Tom & Jerry did *NOT* talk. This is what made the cartoons interesting to me as a kid. I’d seen some of the earliest Hanna-Barbera talking animal characters *BEFORE* I had ever seen my first TOM & JERRY cartoon; so what a refreshing change to see the actual characters for the first time in a theater!!

The Hanna-Barbera creations were so fantastic to look at and could even be funny at times and, yes, they did occasionally jump out of formula and come up with a handful of titles that were strange as well as funny, like “PART-TIME PAL”, “SLEEPY-TIME TOM”, “BUSY BUDDIES”, “MOUSE IN MANHATTAN” and even “LONESOME MOUSE” in which they *DO* exchange words for a short portion of the title.

Gene Deitch had approached the cartoons with absolutely *NO* regard for the original and, while such an attitude would normally put me off, I think it is a welcome twist. So Deitch’s attitude is one of “anything goes”!

Hey, he began his short series with a title like “THE TOM & JERRY CARTOON KIT”. This is something that I truly wish that Hanna-Barbera themselves had attempted, but then, I guess that the duo wanted to market the characters to kids and, so, could not make any of the cartoons look as if the series was out to promote violent toys manufactured to its intended audience.

But this is why I like the Deitch title. This cartoon alone must have inspired NATIONAL LAMPOON to come up with a truly grotesque and bloody TOM & JERRY parody of their own called “KIT ‘N’ KABOODLE”, in which the two characters attack each other with dangerous implements of destruction and we actually *SEE* the end result as the anatomically correct characters chop each other to bits amid the panels. While the Gene Deitch cartoons are not as violent and contain as much actual blood-letting as the Hanna-Barbera originals, he and his Czechoslovakian animators almost poke fun at two characters being aimed at kids (with all the violence inherent in the original creations) almost as if to make a statement that theatrical cartoons were not just for kids anyway, even if they seem to be aimed directly at that audience!

So Deitch imagined a world where you would sell the most surrealistically violent toys to kids with all the zeal of the cartoons, like the way Disney created theme parks around his cartoon characters—and we all know how questionable that kind of marketing could be at times!

This essay of sorts is not really aimed at any one of the cartoons in Deitch’s series or version of the characters, but instead, this is my cry or open letter to those at Warner Brothers, who now own the series as part of the classic MGM library, to listen to those of us who want to see a disk collecting *ALL* of the titles created during this period with even some background about the Gene Deitch years, if indeed there is anything worth telling about it. I just think the cartoons are strange enough to stand on their own, and I would go so far as to say that I think that Deitch had meant for them to clash loudly with the originals--even at their final stages, before Hanna-Barbera found themselves without a studio and turned to television for a home.

If you look at those earliest TV efforts, you might see animation nearly as bad at times. Of course, though, Hanna-Barbera still had that impeccable sense of timing when it came to a gag; oh, they would miss the timing on occasion due mostly to the limited budget, but the voice actors would pick up the slack there. Deitch just didn’t care and, so, decided to make cartoons that said that animation needs to take some new chances. The era of Deitch came on as abruptly as that of Tex Avery, but he was saying more that animation should not stay in one place. He did what his own budgets would allow and these things are worth taking a longer look at. Sure, I sometimes wish that Deitch had created some one shot cartoons, just as Chuck Jones would create other cartoons outside of the TOM & JERRY series that *HE* had done, so we could see what he was really capable of.

As Thad Komorowski points out, Deitch did do some quality work at the Paul Terry Studios; we know that he is capable of better, but he never saw his time spent at MGM as being some sort of opportunity, unfortunately. Perhaps, if he had taken the reigns and saw in-roads to do with animation as he always may have wanted at a studio that might have allowed for a bigger budget if the cartoons, themselves, had quality to them, the TOM & JERRY series might have been given its due.

Instead, I like their senselessness and most absurd uses of cartoon license ever to be put to film, predating the Sam Singer “COURAGEOUS CAT” series for TV. Worst cartoons ever? Well, not always, but the Gene Deitch TOM & JERRY series is a jarring parody of the accepted norm.

Tags:

Tom+and+Jerry, Gene+Deitch

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

Lights...Camera....

By Kevin Wollenweber

Warner Brothers celebrates its 90^th birthday this year!!

This is certainly cause to celebrate, most notably because this could mean stunning releases this year. We here at Orphan Toons sure hope this means cartoons, cartoons and *MORE* cartoons!! Oh, of course we know that there will be a LOONEY TUNES GOLDEN COLLECTION SIX, and I ponder, constantly, just what will be on same. Yet, as per usual, even the speculations have been kept under wraps for now. After all, the consultants and coordinators of such a package don’t want to promise titles that, although slated for the set, are never given the green light until even mere months before the physical product reaches shelves.

I do know, thanks to someone hinting at forthcoming releases on Amazon.com, and a pre-order representation there, that there will be a second BUSBY BERKELEY COLLECTION set: four disks to be precise. The first one is one of those rare sets that I bought for the musicals themselves, as well as the animated cartoons so generously tacked on to a few of the disks. This is nearly a perfect set, and does give the viewer/listener an idea of what inspired so many of those fun little 1930’s cartoons coming out of Warner's around the time of the creation of these musicals. Wikipedia.org has a full list of Busby Berkeley productions, but some are not represented with detailed synopsis and full credits, so I’m not sure of just which ones are Warner Brothers and which are MGM. But I think we can kind of figure it out, since the bio gives details as to which periods in film history Berkeley was connected with Warner Brothers and which with MGM, perhaps the two biggest and most creative periods in the man’s history. Of course, I’m not leaving out his work with 20^th Century Fox, the resulting product of which will be issued as part of THE CARMEN MIRANDA COLLECTION. The musicals are worthwhile even without cartoons, but let’s face it, so many cartoon ideas came from these musicals that it is made twice as nice when the musicals are given some animation as extra feature.

I know, I know, I should dream on. This is about cartoons, though, and so, I hope that MGM and Warner's do celebrate their anniversaries with cartoons galore, especially since Warner Brothers owns the complete video rights to the golden age of both cartoon studios. TOM & JERRY has been well-represented, although not what we rabid fans would call “fully restored”. You can get impressions of what examples of a fully restored set of TOM & JERRY cartoons would look like if you see the titles from the series included in the ACADEMY AWARDS ANIMATION—15 WINNERS, 26 NOMINEES collection issued earlier this year. It all truly made me salivate for more!! There are HAPPY HARMONIES cartoons floating around out there as special features on various movie packs, including the recently released CLASSIC MUSICALS FROM THE DREAM FACTORY, VOL. 3 set, but these are not restored--just included. So the full and complete overhaul of the MGM classic cartoon has a long, long way to go before we can truly say that MGM cartoons are widely available as beautiful restorations with all kinds of background, etc.

It still is, however, the vast Warner Brothers classic cartoons library that I always hope keeps seeing the light of day: both as extras on movies and, most importantly, on the forthcoming sets of LOONEY TUNES cartoons. We animation fans have “won the day"--or have “taken back the night"--regarding these films in many ways, since the GOLDEN COLLECTION volumes are now looking at these films from an adult perspective, with all kinds of extras that show that the animators of these films were not aiming the stuff primarily at kids!!

So Happy Anniversary, Warner Brothers, and wear your badge proudly! I hope that the whole LOONEY TUNES rollout doesn’t reach its end real soon. It is at its high point now, and we’re starting to see the exhausting of all those titles that end up on these collections over and over again. This means that there are going to be titles that may see their first time on any video format--and isn’t that what all this hoopla is all about? I know that I can’t just stick to one decade for favorites, although I do hope that more attention is paid to the 1930’s and the exhaustive search for restorible elements to the titles as we’ve seen these far too many times as “blue ribbon” prints, often meaning that there will unfortunately be times when original title cards cannot even be simulated. As bland as some might think the character of Bosko to be, or Buddy (his successor, after Harman & Ising took Bosko to MGM) they have not really been represented in the main programs of the GOLDEN COLLECTION sets. The history seems to “begin” with the earliest incarnation of PORKY PIG.

That’s fine, but there were some elaborate entries in the BUDDY series that should be given a new lease on life since they were inspired by those afore-mentioned lavish musicals that came from the mind of Busby Berkeley. Although you cannot call them “production numbers” exactly, it seemed as if every BUDDY cartoon had its musical number, and these also spun off into the MERRIE MELODIES series that were almost entirely musicals up to the early 1940’s.

So it is my eternal hope that some of this great stuff, like “BUDDY’S BEER GARDEN”, “BUDDY’S THEATER”, “BUDDY’S BEAR CATS”, “BUDDY’S ADVENTURES”, “BUDDY OF THE APES” or surreal moments like “BUDDY’S BUG HUNT” (an elusive cartoon if ever there was one), or some of the MERRIE MELODIES of the period like “HOW DO I KNOW IT’S SUNDAY?”, “WHY DO I DREAM THESE DREAMS?”, “RHYTHM IN THE BOWL”, “THE GIRL AT THE IRONING BOARD”, “SITTIN’ ON A BACKYARD FENCE” and so many others--notable because of their interesting musical numbers inspired by Warners-owned pop tunes of the age--are finally given the chance to shine, shine, shine in the last real hoorah around the cartoon studio’s terrific run of success!!

Let’s all hope for the best and Warner Brothers Entertainment should be wearing all this stuff proudly to the point where *NONE* of it should any longer be in the public domain. Fully restored, these shorts are far more interesting, because you can see and hear things that were missed upon seeing it through all that dust of age from the prints of some of these that have been circulating out there for too long from other sources.

Tags:

Buddy, Bosko, Kevin Wollenweber, Warner Bros., anniversary

Eyes A-Poppin'

By Kevin Wollenweber

I just read, with glee, the latest post in Thad Komorowski’s THADBLOG, about his locating, in a student library, the first book of complete filmography and individual shorts examinations of LOONEY TUNES and MERRY MELODIES, from Scarecrow Press, called, what else, THE WARNER BROTHERS CARTOONS. In fact, I own both copies of the book, and my hard cover copy is pretty worn out because I had to use a screen-reading device that had to scan the pages and read them back to me. So, I had to push the book flat upon the device unfortunately. But the work it took to read each page was worthwhile, because, yes, that true fan enthusiasm comes out in a book like this. I really wish that Warner Brothers would allow Jerry Beck to be Jerry Beck and let him talk about things like, well, what he originally *THOUGHT* Bosko was saying to the audience when pointing out the villain in “BOSKO’S PICTURE SHOW”. I, personally, don’t doubt that Bosko’s creator, Hugh Harmon, was without this kind of sly humor when it came to cartoons, having said that he would rather do more with the art of animation than make commercials or little stories about fuzzy, cute little characters, not that there’s something entirely wrong with that, mind you. I will always enjoy the HAPPY HARMONIES, primarily because of the curious and amazing amount of detail in films that seemed almost to have a bottomless budget.

Originally, I had always thought that the books, WARNER BROTHERS CARTOONS (from Scarecrow Press) or the one later given the blessing of the studio, LOONEY TUNES AND MERRY MELODIES, were supposed to be critiques of the cartoons and, so, could be as biting as they wanted to be. Although I understand why the viewpoints had to be softened for the second book (and I ultimately applaud this, because now we have Jerry Beck and company creating some of the best DVD compilations of these wonderful cartoons), I miss the sense of humor inherent in books like the Scarecrow Press book which really does show a real sense of wonder and delight in these cartoons. There are times I remember even disagreeing with the overall viewpoint to a cartoon or two since I’m not always quite as cynical at times, but that is the process of criticism, the ability to get one’s point across and even stun the reader. Certainly, that review of “BOSKO’S PICTURE SHOW”, I believe, has made this short a minor classic! Only those who knew Hugh Harmon could tell me whether or not Hugh, himself, would have been appalled to hear that anyone thought that a four-letter expletive was used prominently in a scene in one of his cartoons, but for now, I’m with the writer of that particular plot synopsis as he excitedly wonders just how far the animator was willing to break the common rules to astound his audience into wondering “what did he say?”

Animation was really no different in those days from the live action films, except that live action pre-Code full-length motion pictures were sometimes trying to tackle taboo subjects that needed to be discussed instead of just feared, about political theories that were shunned merely because folks had sometimes false interpretations of them or false interpretations of the times in which *ALL* people were living, no matter what the race and creed, while cartoons were just being…cartoons, with all the barnyard or outhouse humor that one would think would be there, almost the kind of humor omnipresent in “underground” cartoons of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s that were circulated in alternative publications. That kind of humor was hinted at and sometimes realized in pre-Code cartoons. After all, as far as I know, cartoons were not yet used as kids-only entertainment, even though they did all somehow get ignorantly shunted over to Saturday mornings on television. Most of us got our first glimpse of BETTY BOOP on afternoon TV, if we were able to get to our sets around noontime to catch the half hour of Fleischer cartoons!

But at least some of us can still consult the Scarecrow Press edition of THE WARNER BROTHERS CARTOONS to read all the criticisms therein from folks who watched these cartoons for pleasure.

So what could be wrong with this book that is right with the second attempt, the LOONEY TUNES AND MERRY MELODIES book? Well, the first book is full of many inaccuracies, too numerous for me to mention here and I’ll leave this up to others of you who might respond to this with more detail. Since the second book was done with the blessing and assistance of those at Warner Brothers, yes, the spikier viewpoints had to be excised in favor of friendlier speech so that this would be more a celebration of what the studio has done with the art of animation. Yeah (sigh), we fans know that the Warner Brothers cartoons were done with adults in mind, that Warner Brothers cartoons especially were not fond of doing those cute and cuddly characters and keeping to a cloying formula. They were not Walt Disney and couldn’t conceive of creating theme parks with the LOONEY TUNES characters walking around and greeting customers; and, so, the first book, THE WARNER BROTHERS CARTOONS, was more a celebration of this fact and not trying to denegrade the Warner Brothers trademark for their production. It was a keen and clear-headed overview of each and every title in the library or in those vaults and what they meant to us former kids and what they eventually came to mean as we grew up and re-examined the cartoons years later into our adult lives.

. The animators would have been happy enough becoming acknowledged as bona fied filmmakers of the stature of any one of the major motion picture directors of the day. They truly were pioneers and we, now, realize this far too late, but as I’ve said so many times, the problem here is that you’re battling decades of marketing and manufacturing products with these cute little LOONEY characters all over them. Never will you see T-shirts with that pink “naked” Tweetie Pie on it with that funny, wide-eyed expression on his face as he utters the key line: “Ooh, de poor puddy tat. He faw down, go *BOOM*!”

Even as kids, we liked these cartoons because they were violent, and they weren’t afraid to go over the top with that violence. The unabashed humor of these cartoons were what made it easy for the military to adopt them as “mascots” for the war effort. They were equal opportunity offenders and were not afraid to poke fun at just about anything, including military life. The same goes with the Fleischer Studios and, well, any studio that wasn’t Walt Disney Productions, whose characters seemed so out of place in wartime cartoons, save of course for DONALD DUCK who had some of the best of these shorts. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, among others, humanized animal instincts and were seen as protective of their domains, and isn’t that partially what the American experience is all about? Just about every character showed this genuine impression of Americana and, while doing this, also poked merciless fun at the over-the-top bravado of wartime propaganda, so, people of all ages could embrace what they were about so much easier than those of Disney. Oh, I don’t say that Disney films didn’t grab me and take me to that other place with equal amusement, but Warner Brothers cartoons made it all so funny! Somehow, you would so easily get offended if Disney characters attempted to act, in any way, like those brassier characters at Warner Brothers. Caricatures and stereotypes would really seem insensitive if it came from the kitchi-koo cute characters of a Disney cartoon, but LOONEY TUNES and MERRY MELODIES were always poking light fun at accepted norms and, so, you had to know that there were no boundaries when it came to the gag content in any of these cartoons, not that there weren’t attempts to tell some kind of story or convey a view of life from a creature smaller than adult-sized humans. Yet these were cartoons, and the creators made no bones about telling us this through the bizarre gags of a Tex Avery or Bob Clampett cartoon or those rare Chuck Jones cartoons that took jabs at the art form itself, like “DUCK AMUCK”. It was their job to be funny, and they did so for at least three decades with varying results.

Kevin Wollenweber

Tags:

Kevin+Wollenweber, Kevin's+View