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

Happy Memorial Day

Like everyone else here in the good old U. S. of A., Kevin and I are taking Memorial Day off. I'll be back tomorrow with another installment of "Toons In Swing Time," this time highlighting Milt Gross and his lunatic JITTERBUG FOLLIES. See you folks then, and I hope you have a wonderful day.

Tags: Memorial+Day

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

Kevin's View: KATNIP KOLLEGE Gets an "A Plus"

by Kevin Wollenweber

This is one of those rare moments where the music speaks for itself, much like the Fleischer films of the earlier ‘30’s had done, almost to the point where the music could be easily the sole inspiration and star of the cartoon and absolutely *NO* story would be needed, but there *IS* one, perhaps so indicative of the times and almost similar to, perhaps, some little-known rock ‘n’ roll movies of a later age that would basically state, to its audience, the same credo, that anything that harkens back to a time earlier is pure “corn”.

It is a cartoon that clearly illustrates what I’ve been saying about Warner Brothers cartoons in general--that, even when, on the surface, they seem cuddly and cute, there is always an edge, a more worldly air about the cartoon that someone like Walt Disney would not dare tackle because he would end up alienating his audience. Yet, this is clearly the kind of cartoon that Hugh Harmon should have been aiming for if he was truly trying to create something more with animation than just cute fuzzy little characters, and Miss Kitty Bright certainly is cute, as I dimly recall her, with full lips and those wide eyes, somewhat reminiscent of Miss Betty Boop of six years ago, only with slightly less vamp and more genuine connection to the music. Makes me wish that I’d actually seen any live action film with Mabel Todd, just to know whether the image of high-heeled Miss Kitty Bright is actually a Todd caricature!

This cartoon could have certainly benefited from the original opening, because the cartoon opens, after its existing blue ribbon print substitute title card, making me think that I’m visiting the snappy music midway through, but that’s a minor gripe I have with the unfortunate loss of many of these original master negatives.

Again and again, I insist that those reading this look up a tremendous Warner Brothers double-CD set called HOLLYWOOD JAZZ which features another version of the opening number about the rise and fall of Christopher Columbus. I’m sorry that I cannot read the long list of credits, but it is highly probable that this afore-mentioned number might also come from this imfamous “OVER THE GOAL” movie, something that should surface on DVD one day, if only as a special feature (hint hint—we sorely *NEED* those lesser-known, jazzier musicals!). Musical cartoons like this should arouse public interest in the music that inspired this, as Rachel neatly points out. There are times when I think that cartoons like these were what introduced some kids like me to swing music of a bygone era, music that I am just now catching up with and one can hear remnants of on a show called “THE BIG BROADCAST”, heard every Sunday night on WFUV-FM or online at wfuv.org, where you can probably download mass quantities of this delicious stuff or the music that preceeded it. The host likes to remain within the framework of the 1930’s and, in so doing, certainly shows us that there was indeed a diversity and vast history to be appreciated there.

Tags: Katnip+Kollege, Kevin+Wollenweber

Toons In Swing Time: Part Two

"As Easy As Rolling Off A Log": Loving KATNIP KOLLEGE (1938)

Katnip Kollege
Release Date: June 11, 1938
Directors: Cal Dalton, Cal Howard
Music: Carl Stalling, Johnnie "Scat" Davis, Mabel Todd
In short: An awkward "square" gets "the rhythm bug"--and the girl

In part two of an ongoing series of swing-themed cartoons, we again prowl the halls of another unusual college, this time courtesy of the boys of Termite Terrace.

Funny thing about good cartoons. Some I love instantly; others stealthily work their way into my heart, wearing down my resistance until I love them in spite of myself.

The Harman-Ising cartoons fall into that rare latter category, as any regular reader of this blog should know. So too does today's cartoon, which took close to three decades to work its charms on me.

As a typical dumb twelve-year-old, I didn't know much about cartoons (yet), but I knew what I liked. Humor, and lots of it, preferably coming at me at a thousand gags a minute. But wide-eyed, happy 1930s cartoon animals staging mini-musicals? Feh. Give me Tex Avery, and save the singing cats, mice, dogs and squirrels for the kids.

Not that I didn't like "old" music--I, as that same dumb twelve-year-old, grew enchanted with ragtime the moment I heard Eubie Blake play Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag." Cartoon music, however, was something I took for granted; something that settled nicely into the background, complementing the flickering images onscreen. It should not--I so smugly believed--be the sole reason for the cartoon, if it was going to keep me from flipping that dial.

So it was with KATNIP KOLLEGE--at first. It carried too much of the taint of "late '30s Merrie Melodie" for my taste, that awkward transitional period before the Warner Bros. cartoons really started to get funny. When music was pervasive and relentless, not melting unnoticed into the subconscious as it "should" have done. The involvement of Cal Dalton, one of my least favorite Warner's directors, certainly didn't earn it any points in my book, either.

It's perhaps the ultimate irony, then, that KATNIP KOLLEGE would eventually become one of my all-time favorite cartoons, as it's practically an allegory of my own experiences (and frustrations) with it over the years. Like the cartoon's little Harold Lloyd-ish protagonist, I didn't "get it" for the longest time, only to be bitten by the "rhythm bug" in the form of the driving beat of Gene Krupa.

Sometime in my thirties--I'm not sure precisely when--I first heard an old recording of the Benny Goodman orchestra's "Sing, Sing Sing", a key feature of which is the throbbing rhythm of drummer Krupa. It had life, it had energy, it made me want to move, a feeling I hadn't experienced since the day I heard Eubie Blake so many years earlier. I would be hopelessly enamored of swing, any "big band" music, from then on.

It's only natural my newfound love would force me to re-evaluate the cartoons I had scorned for so long. I had for many years been fascinated by the hallucinatory visuals of the Fleischer cartoons (even if I didn't quite understand them); now I began to notice the music as well, and to my surprise found it far better than I'd remembered. People, animals, even buildings bounced along to the incessant rhythm, giving the cartoons a brightness that belied the gray, smoky backgrounds. Objects would, more often that not, sprout legs and dance along. Even Fleischer's Popeye fell under the influence, often humming the background music as he went.

KATNIP KOLLEGE is the Leon Schlesinger studio's tribute of sorts to those musical Fleischer cartoons of old--perhaps more so than Fleischer's own SALLY SWING. SALLY SWING is energetic in isolated bursts; KATNIP KOLLEGE grabs the viewer from practically the first frame and doesn't loosen its grip until the very end. At the same time it's very much a departure from Fleischer; at times it seems as if they're saying, "You folks in New York did some pretty good stuff in your time, but now it's our turn. Look what we can do!"

The cartoon even seems to poke fun, in a gentle way, at the bygone era of Betty Boop--as when our little hero, when pressed to come up with his "lesson" for the day, responds with every Jazz-Age musical cliche he can muster: "Uh, Charleston....razzmatazz, um, vo-de-o-doh, and boop-boop...a-doop..." Intentional or not, the folks at Termite Terrace were making it known that Fleischer's time in the spotlight was over.

There's a certain sweetness here one doesn't normally see in Warner's cartoons of this era--save for the early directorial output of Chuck Jones--but without being cloying, as was unfortunately the case in some of Jones' first efforts. Sweetness done right makes us care about the characters--by the end, we're cheering for the little guy as he finally becomes the hit of the campus.

How? Well, for the answer to that, you'll need to enroll for a musical refresher course at KATNIP KOLLEGE. Don't be surprised if the "rhythm bug" bites you, too.


"Boy, is that corny!"

We open on a shot of the exterior of the venerable institution, apparently made to feline proportions: it consists of a large wooden barrel, with "columns" made of discarded tin cans. Two cats, supposedly students, arrive in their jalopy. They emerge from it with the car still in motion, rushing inside the building. One of the two cats pauses to hold his hands over his ears to await the inevitable off-screen crash.

I'm working from a "Blue Ribbon" reissue print for this review--my memory of the restored version on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection is spotty, but I believe it originally started with a tracking shot of the students as they drive up to the entrance.

(Dissolve to interior, hallway). The camera tracks down a long corridor past various classrooms, labeled "Psychology," "Biology", and so on. One particularly lively one has loud swing music issuing from it, loud enough to make the door flap open and closed: we've found the "Swing-ology" class. The door flaps in rhythm, as if made of rubber.

(Dissolve to interior of class). The students inside are seated at old-fashioned school desks (made of sardine cans), but there's nothing old fashioned about anything else: the students are clapping along in time to the jazzy music on the sound track. Everyone, that is, except one little fellow with a porkpie hat and Harold Lloyd glasses--he's struggling with the rhythm, consistently off the beat. This, as you might have guessed by now, is our hero.

With the sound of a few notes of "Shave And A Haircut," and a couple rings of a bell, our professor appears--class is in session.

(Cut to front of class). We see a blackboard with a few random musical notes on it and a stick-figure representation of our teacher, among other things. Our "hep" professor, in cap and gown, rises on a platform coming from underneath the floor, like Paul Whiteman. He does a "pecking" move in time to the music as our students respond with a scat-sung greeting:



Good morning to you, dear teacher, <scat>
Good morning to you (we really mean it)
Good morning to you (don't mean your sister)
Cuckoo from nearby clock: I mean you're really in the groove...<book comes from off-camera to hit bird>

During the song, the professor lifts up his robes and dances--even his stick-figure representation on the blackboard joins in. During the "don't mean your sister" line, a book is lowered to reveal it's being sung by two boy cats and a girl, apparently engaged in something other than studying.

The professor, with a voice patterned after Bing Crosby, addresses the students in rhyme: "OK, Mr. Jones, you may/recite your history for today..."

"Mr. Jones" complies, launching into a rendition of "Let That Be A Lesson To You:"

Oh, Columbus was the discoverer of America,
Who set asea in 1492...

As he sings, the scene cuts to several students acting out the song by pretending to be sailors rowing a boat--one is perched atop a desk like a lookout, while several others are "rowing" with rulers.

But the good queen Isabella, found a more attractive fella...

Cut to a scene of a large, bully-type cat, who dumps a wire wastebasket on a smaller cat's head. The smaller cat looks a bit as if he's in a cage, so he ends the song in a raspy bass voice, with the line "and Columbus wound up in the juggeroo"...

The professor finishes off the number by banging on a series of pots and pans like drums, remarking, "That's a killer, son, that's a killer." Next, in rhyme, he says, "Next comes Miss Kitty Bright/Let's see if you did your homework right..." and gives her a drum-beat "vamp" as she starts her number.

"Miss Kitty Bright" (Mabel Todd), a feline co-ed with letter sweater and beret, is certainly up to the challenge, belting out the next stanza of the song, hips swaying in time. She's something of a kitty Betty Boop, you might say, making the Fleischer connection even stronger:

Oh, Napoleon was the fightin'-est man you ever saw,
Everybody that he fought with he subdued,
But the king-a and the queen-a,
Sent him off to St. Helena,
Just because they didn't like his attitude...

As she sings, the student in front of her gets up and "trucks" along, puts his hand in his coat and gives us a cross-eyed goofy expression (He looks a bit like the stereotypical "loony" with a Napoleonic complex.) We get a quick cut as she's singing to the professor, so engrossed in the music he doesn't see the tack someone placed on his chair. He sits and yells "OHHHHHH!," which acts as the cue for the chorus as we cut back to the clapping students:

Let that be a lesson to you,
Everybody meets his Waterloo,
He wasn't too big to end up behind the eight ball,
And remember, buddy, there's still a lot of room for you!

On the last two lines the scene cuts to a shy little cat in the corner of the room (not our hero) who timidly trucks along with the music until he's noticed by the professor, who urges him to come forward. His attitude immediately changes, and he immediately dances over to the head of the class.

(Hidden gag alert: on the wall next to the student is a picture of a fellow in bell-bottom pants, but the picture is cut off at the shoulders, indicating it's a guide to what the "in" student wears. Yes, folks, kids wore bell-bottoms long before the '60s).

(Cut to medium shot of classroom, from the back. We see our hero in the center). Addressing our protagonist with the Harold Lloyd glasses, the professor chants:

Now, Johnny, let's hear your sonnets,
And make them sound like Kastelanetz...

(Note: Andre Kastelanetz, incidentally, was a Russian-born musician, composer and bandleader who pioneered "easy listening" music for the radio. He had a regular show on CBS at the time this cartoon was made. Since Kastelanetz was indirectly responsible for such later musical atrocities as Muzak, one would assume our professor would have higher expectations of Johnny).

Johnny, momentarily startled, nervously stands up and goes into the mumbled, outdated routine mentioned in the introduction. His awkwardness is obvious, as we see him looking down at the floor and shifting uncomfortably. Droplets of sweat fall from his forehead to the floor.

Cut to the professor, who shows his disgust with Johnny's "performance" by impatiently tapping his foot and slowly shaking his head. "Boy, is that corny!", he tells the audience. Growling, he yells to Johnny, "COME UP HERE!"

(Note: the song Stalling plays during Johnny's routine is called "You're An Education", a staple of Warner's cartoons of this era, even spawning a Merrie Melodie of the same name).

Growling again, the professor points to a spot off camera as Johnny shuffles off-screen. Johnny goes to a corner with a stool; when he sits down he presses a button, which raises the stool several feet and places Johnny's head underneath a waiting dunce cap. He's apparently done this so many times he knows the drill by now.

Ringing the bell, the still-annoyed professor says, "Class dismissed!" The students make fun of poor Johnny as they file out of class: "Boy, you swing like a rusty gate!" one girl remarks. "You ain't got rhythm!" another student says.

Kitty Bright, presumably Johnny's girl, tells him, "Here's your old frat pin! You can look me up when you learn how to swing!" She then goes into the cartoon's signature number, "Why, it's easy, as rollin' off a log..." as she leaves. Truer words were never spoken, as we'll soon find out.

(Fade to a late-night jam session. The title reads "That Night...") The cats start off their little musical soiree with a kettle-drum beat, which causes the moon to pop up in the sky. This cues their swinging little number, sung by three cat vocalists--one tall, one medium-sized, and one short--in front of a ladle acting as a microphone:

It was on the college campus that the kiddies ("kitties"?) had a session,
All the cats were there, 'twas a swingin' congregation,
Some had took to truckin' while the cats beat out a rhythm,
And others picked on peckin' 'cause the rhythm bug had bit 'em.

We get two quick cuts on the last two lines: first, a long shot of the students clapping along, and then another group lined up as they do a "pecking" move. It's an impressive scene, in which we see their cast shadows on the fence behind them.

They never had a lesson in their lives,
But rhythm's what they're keepin'...

We notice now that the two larger cats have hogged the microphone; the smallest of the three singers follows along off to one side with a disgruntled expression, his hands in his pockets. (This is one of the subtler personality touches that I found charming).

But when it comes to swingin' that thing,
It's as natural to them as sleepin' or eatin'....

We get a tracking shot of the musicians and dancers now--a boy and girl peck alternately back and forth.

(Hidden gag alert #2: As the camera pans past the musicians and dancers, we see a statue in the background: on the pedestal it reads "Professor Dalton, 1908"--a reference to the cartoon's co-director. One of the students is wrapped around the statue, pretending to dance with it.)

"The rhythm bug bit me! La de ah!"

The camera continues to track past the dancers to the exterior of the school; it moves in closer and the scene dissolves to the "Swing-ology" classroom. Poor Johnny is still there on the stool, alone, the only sounds being the ticking pendulum clock and the faint music from outside.

The clock, which irritates Johnny at first, becomes his salvation as he realizes it ticks in the same rhythm as the music outside. He pats his hands on his thighs as he finally gets the beat. More confident now, he starts "pecking"--by George, I think he's got it! Or as he says, "The rhythm bug bit me--la de ah!"

The ecstatic Johnny jumps off the stool and discards his dunce cap. He "pecks" a bit more as a bit of insurance and rushes out the door at full speed. The camera rejoins him outside as he speeds through the landscape, crashing the other students' party. Skidding into the scene, he hops on a hollow log where Miss Kitty Bright just happens to be sitting. To the absolute stunned silence of everyone present (including Kitty Bright), he pushes his porkpie hat forward on his head and starts to belt out the cartoon's signature number--suddenly, he's a swing virtuoso, with the voice of Johnnie "Scat" Davis:

As easy as rollin' off a log,
I found it easy, baby,
To fall in love with you....

We get a series of reaction shots as students from all over stop their, uh, "extracurricular activities," craning their necks and emerging from trees to see where this new voice is coming from.

For instance, let's cuddle,
I love to cuddle,
Get in a huddle,
It's easy with you....

As Johnny sings this, he does a dance move on the log which I believe is called "the yam"--it's similar to the step that Elmer Fudd would do a few years later in ANY BONDS TODAY. Soon, Kitty Bright herself stands atop the log and joins Johnny in the song as he sways with her (her expression of astonishment at Johnny's newfound ability is priceless, by the way):

I know that it's as easy,
As rollin' off a log,
It's awful easy, baby,
Doin' that the way you do....

It's easy, as rollin' off a log,
It's awful easy, baby, to make me think that,
You make me--you make me--think that it's true...

On the last line, she slips on the log as she sings and scrambles to keep her balance, all without missing a beat. Johnny may be good, but he still has a lot to learn from her. She continues,

'Cause I heard a few things, the things that you say...

Cut to a closeup of Johnny as he responds, "And if I do say/I love you I do, so help me it's true!"

On Kitty Bright's next few lines, "This love stuff has got me in a fog, the boys all say they love me/I wonder why they do..." her head, as if on cue, is shrouded in fog. Johnny sings the concluding line and grabs a trumpet from one of the other cats, giving us one heck of a solo--so energetic at one point Johnny's glasses come off his face and spin around.

The other cats, meanwhile, are really taken with Johnny and begin dancing to his trumpet riffs. He concludes, at a slower tempo:

Now what else could I do,
It's so easy, to fall in love with you!

On the closing strains, both he and Kitty Bright slip off the log. His glasses knocked askew, Kitty Bright smothers the unconscious Johnny in kisses as the cartoon fades out. We can safely assume she'll want his frat pin back.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
The late 1930's were a time of experimentation for the Schlesinger crew, and this cartoon is a perfect example, having one of the most unusual histories of any they'd ever done. KATNIP KOLLEGE had its origins in a live-action Warner's short from 1935 called OVER THE GOAL--a somewhat pedestrian campus musical comedy of the time (or so I've read--the film is next to impossible to find). The musical numbers, to my utter amazement, were taken directly from OVER THE GOAL'S sound track. In essence, then, this cartoon is a "cheater" of sorts, but one of the most clever "cheaters" ever made--certainly above the usual quality of Dalton's work. He proved himself more than capable of picking up the mantle left by Friz Freleng when Freleng moved to MGM. In fact, he may have done a better job than even Freleng could have accomplished, and made a cartoon worthy of comparison to such Freleng masterpieces as RHAPSODY IN RIVETS and RHAPSODY RABBIT.

Kevin likes to refer to this period in animation as "the wide-eyed '30s". Nowhere is that expression more appropriate--literally and figuratively--than in KATNIP KOLLEGE. All the characters have large, expressive, goggle-like eyes in keeping with the fondness for rounded forms common to that era (a style that Frank Tashlin would perfect during this period.) It's an ideal blend of period, Art Deco-like drawing and the popular music of the day, with an optimism comparable to that of Frank Capra films. It seems naive and even--to use the professor's expression--"corny" now, but as with the most blatantly sentimental of the Capra films, we find ourselves rooting for the underdog. Or in this case, "under-cat."

Johnny's professor was wrong. Sometimes "corn" can be a great thing.

Tags: Warner+Bros., swing+music, musical, Katnip+Kollege, Johnnie+Davis

Toons In Swing Time: Part One

Reet! Lookit Little SALLY SWING (1938)

A Betty Boop Cartoon Featuring Sally Swing
Release Date: Oct. 14, 1938
Animators: Willard Bowsky, Gordon Sheehan
In Short: Betty Boop passes the musical torch to a new generation

Animation blogging can be a thankless job--especially if, like Kevin and me, you don't get paid for it.

Yet once in a while comes that unexpected discovery, that priceless artifact that makes it all worthwhile--often in the place we least expect. The find that makes us gape in astonishment as we wonder aloud, "Why hadn't I noticed this before?" I can think of no better way to describe our newest addition, an "orphan toon" in the truest sense.

In the early '30s, no one did cartoon music quite like the Fleischer studio. Rejecting the public-domain tunes, pseudo-classical pieces and merry little jingles common to Disney and other studios of the day, Fleischer cartoons were jazzy, brassy, contemporary, and brimming with sexual energy.

And no single Fleischer character embodied those traits more completely than their greatest original creation, Betty Boop. Sex and vitality were her reasons for being, and jazz was her language. Until, that is, moral crusaders did the one thing her endless lecherous pursuers couldn't--they took her "boop-boop-a-doop" away.

Betty survived the 1934 Hays Office crackdown, but she was never quite the same. Whereas she once sang such risque little numbers as "You'll Be Surprised", she was now relegated to syrupy little ditties like "Be Human", "Little Pal," and "We'll Have A Bushel Of Fun." Creeping Disney-itis had set in--as if Mae West had suddenly been possessed by the soul of a kindergarten teacher.

By 1938, she was clearly marking time, becoming the almost-incidental star of her own pictures. The Fleischers, once at the forefront of the animated-music scene with sound tracks courtesy of Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong and the Mills Brothers, were in danger of losing their position as musical innovators to up-and-comers like Warner's and MGM. Swing was now the music of the day, and needed its own spokesperson. The Fleischers, eager to move with the times, made a valiant attempt to provide one in the person of "Sally Swing."

Yes, I know--"Sally WHO?" Not many people know of Sally, and small wonder: she was to appear in only one cartoon--but what a cartoon. It may have had Betty Boop's name on it, but this was Sally's show from the moment she stepped onscreen. Read on and you'll quickly discover why.

Go To Concluding Thoughts

"You should be cleaning up!"

We open with a patented Fleischer long tracking shot through the ivy-covered halls of a university. It appears to be a rather staid institution, with signs throughout the science hall proclaiming "SCIENCE IS GOLDEN." But once we enter the double doors of the examination room of this center for higher learning, we find this is no typical college, for our own Betty Boop sits behind a desk with two students, deep in thought. Are they pondering how to split the atom? Not exactly....

"Shall we try an acrobat?" Betty asks. The two students murmur "No, no..."

"
"Maybe a dancer??" The students again respond in the negative.

"A song? That's it--let's try a song!" Betty says. The students enthusiastically agree--"I think you got something there, Betty!"--and one of them rushes immediately to a piano in the corner, pounding out a hot swing melody. As Betty moves to the rhythm, the other student joins in with his own brand of "singing," bellowing out "Good Night, Ladies." The sound, however, is closer to that of a moose with a toothache than anything resembling swing.

Betty growls in frustration and pulls a lever, activating a mechanism that can only exist in a Fleischer cartoon (or maybe a "Jetsons" episode): the floor underneath the tone-deaf frat boy starts moving, propelling him toward the exit.

Cut to a shot of a disheveled--but still pretty--cleaning woman, on her knees scrubbing the hallway outside. She's in a black dress with a patched apron, her stringy blonde hair pulled into a bun. Anyone who knows the "Cinderella" story will suspect this is our heroine...but more about her shortly. (Our cleaning lady, not Cinderella...)

As she scrubs, we can hear the muffled complaints of Betty and our ejected frat boy from inside: "You're fired!" "Yeah? Well, I quit!" Bumping into the girl (which sends her head right into a bucket of soapy water) the student goes "Humph!" Before he can stride contemptuously past her, he steps on her bar of soap, sending him skidding off-screen to a deafening crash. (Those were the best sounds he'd produced so far). We don't see his reaction, but we see the girl's: she cringes with her arms over her face as our unlucky student collides with God knows what. The girl chuckles to herself.



"I guess I'll have to audition some more people," Betty says, heading out the door. She goes out into the waiting area, hands on hips: I wonder if I can find some here to lead a swing band..." Little does she know that "someone" is closer than she thinks.

"How about you, can you swing it?" she asks to someone just off camera left.

The fellow, a fat, balding gentleman seated on a bench, points to himself and says, "Who, me??" He produces a duck from his pocket, which quacks "Ya wanna buy a duck?" (Which, as any fan of '30s pop culture should know, was comedian Joe Penner's catchphrase). When Betty turns them down, the duck quacks its displeasure in the manner of a better-known cartoon duck, who shall remain nameless.

The camera pans left to a gawky-looking ventriloquist with a dummy (or maybe that's one large dummy and one smaller one, in this case). "How about you??" Betty asks from off-camera. "My father's a dummy and I'm a chip off the old block," the dummy says as the ventriloquist's adam's apple moves up and down. Yeesh. I knew there was a reason I hate ventriloquist acts...

"No, that won't do..." Betty says. The simpleton of a ventriloquist can only respond, "Huh?" She means you stink, idiot...

Above and right: With "competition" like this, how can Sally lose?

Cut to Betty, who thinks for a moment. She asks, "Can you boys lead a band?" The camera cuts again to two vaudevillians in identical derby hats and suits. They identify themselves as "Riley" and "Kelly" before launching into a Russian "kicking dance". They conclude their act with a nasally, "Good evening, friends....

Betty dejectedly shakes her head, hands on hips again. "No, no, no!! I'm sorry, I need someone who can lead a swing band for the dance tonight!" Betty turns and starts to head back to her office. We cut to the interior, as we see her pacing while muttering, "Oh, what a predicament...what can I do for the jitterbugs tonight?...this is their big night and they expect great things...oh, can't I concentrate....isn't there someone I can get to swing??"

As soon as she finishes saying this, we hear the solution to her problem from just outside the door--a girl scat singing. The camera pans to her silhouette in the window--from our perspective, she looks as if she's "conducting" an unseen orchestra. Betty peers over the transom of her office door to discover...yes, it's our mystery cleaning lady, scatting as she dusts the doorframe. Cut back to Betty's office--Betty cries out in astonishment, opens the door and pulls the girl inside.

"Come in here! What have you been doing scrubbing? You should be cleaning up!" Betty exclaims, pulling the stunned girl over to the desk so quickly, she can barely keep up. "Oh, hurry, hurry. come here!" Betty says as she picks up the phone. "Let me speak to the president of the class...hello, Prez? This is Betty--I've got just the girl to lead our swing band at the dance tonight...yes, yes..." While Betty's talking, the girl dances along to some internal melody.

The scene dissolves to the two of them in the ballroom, as Betty continues speaking: "I know you're going to love this little swingster and singer of songs--introducing for your enjoyment, the lovely, delightful and talented Sally Swing!"

Sally Swing before....and after

"Delightful" is just the word--Sally's been transformed. In the transition from office to ballroom, we can see the change unfold--she goes from her former dowdy self, swinging a feather duster in the air, to a raving beauty holding a conductor's baton. She now sports coiffed hair and a new outfit: a small, brimless hat perched on her blonde head, tight blouse, and a skirt that reaches to about mid-thigh, along with the requisite bobby sox and saddle shoes. She's far more realistically rendered than Betty, in every way possible (for one thing, she has a neck). One anonymous poster on this cartoon's YouTube page noted a strong resemblance to the Fleischers' version of Lois Lane--she's a little more cartoony than that, but not by much.

Betty gives her a bit of competition, though--her own seemingly conservative floor-length gown turns out to be translucent. The light shines through to reveal her famous legs. It's a detail I must admit I missed when first viewing this cartoon--she hadn't quite lost her sexiness after all. But the moment, sadly, is all too brief.

"Hit it Sally!" Betty says before exiting to camera left. "Hit it" Sally does, launching into her theme number:

"Ooooh, bring along that jam, and lookit little Sally Swing,
<sax, trombone and trumpet riffs as Sally points to band members in succession>
Oh Sally, Oh Sally, oh swing,
You wanna mosey around with Mozart..."

As she sings, the camera cuts to a medium shot as she moves her hips back and forth in time to the music, "trucking" all the while (moving her finger back and forth in the air in time to the music, for those not "hep to the jive"). She gives a wink to the camera on the words, "He wrote a symphony so hot.." She's a red-hot mama, belting out the number with an energy even Betty in her prime never managed--as Sally says in song, "I want my music and my biscuits hot..."

The camera cuts briefly to a rather sour-looking professor in gown and mortarboard, who looks none too pleased with Miss Sally; we them move to a shot from the audience's POV (and slightly to the back of her) as she continues singing and strutting across the stage:

"When I'm in that groove, I wanna lead a band and sing.." <cut to a drummer who's so enthusiastic, he hits himself in the head with his own sticks>
"Oh dilly, oh dally, oh Sally, oh Sally, oh swing it, swing it..."

Crouching down while raising her arms in the air, she and the musical notes ascend higher simultaneously...she concludes her number to thunderous applause. The camera cuts quickly to Betty cheering her on. Everybody loves little Sally--except, that is, for the sourpuss professor. He sits with arms folded, still scowling.

Cut to Sally again, who reprises her number at a faster tempo...this time, we get three quick "bird's eye view" cuts of the various band members as they accompany her. The Fleischers were at their best when it came to unusual camera angles.



Cut again to a trumpet player, who takes the mortarboard off the head of a marble bust and uses it as a "mute." Then again to a clarinet player whose playing is so "hot" his instrument literally spews flames. (Somewhat reminiscent of little Bosko in BOSKO AND THE PIRATES--his "hot" dancing burns the entire ship). He extinguishes the flaming clarinet in a nearby vase.

Sally, meanwhile, scats and trucks on over to the piano player, who dances with her on stage. She repeats the opening line of her song a third time as the camera cuts to a bespectacled fellow who accompanies her in "one-man band" fashion: trumpet in one hand, trombone in another, moving the slide with his feet. The scene shifts to a fellow on fiddle and one on tuba...the tuba player's playing is so energetic he blows the toupee off the fiddle player's head. We cut yet again, this time to a short little fellow who's keeping time with his nose...he gets up and plays a riff on flute. As Sally repeats the line "Oh dilly, oh dally, oh Sally, oh Sally, oh swing!" the fellow runs over and plucks on a bass fiddle twice his size.

Sally continues to dance and scat as the scene cuts to a bit of dialogue between an elderly woman and a waiter. "Waiter, my soup is cold!" she says. "I like it HOT!" she adds as she too gets in the groove.

Meanwhile, Sally's dancing is really getting frenetic. Too much so for the old professor, who has clearly had enough. "STOP! Students, do you hear me? Stop--I can't stand it! Stop!!" He prepares to storm the stage, but Sally is unaware of any of this: dancing left, then right, then going into a "pecking" move (moving the head back and forth, like a rooster). Meanwhile, we see the killjoy professor rushing toward the stage, bellowing "Stop--I'm the principal here--stop! This is entirely against my principles!" (The voice sounds like it belongs to Jack Mercer, and this seems like a typical Mercer ad-libbed pun).

"I'm going to have you in jail!" the professor bellows as he climbs on stage. "Listen, young lady..." But Sally isn't listening--she just keeps dancing. "You're going to get yourself in an awful jam...oh jam and jive, jam and jive.." Before long, the professor too is "in the groove." The music and Sally have won him over. He turns to putty as she tickles his chin.

The scenes changes to a low shot of Sally, in silhouette, from behind facing the audience. It looks as if the camera is nearly between Sally's legs. Remember what I said about the Fleischers and camera angles? Cut to our now "with it" professor, who scats "ya-de-a-de-ah, yeah, man!"

The professor joins Sally in her dance, matching her move-for-move in a scene that must have been rotoscoped--unusual for this era, as this technique was used less often by this time. Betty emerges from the left of the screen and dances with them, as the cartoon reaches its rollicking conclusion. A cap and gown fall on Sally from above as we iris out. She's moved to the head of the class.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

This cartoon seems to have come from out of nowhere--it's an anomaly for the Fleischer studio, circa 1938, and definitely an anomaly for a Betty Boop cartoon of the time. We're treated to one last bit of the old--Betty, if only for a moment, reverts to her former sexy self--while being bombarded with the wild, flashy new. The late thirties were a time of transition for the Fleischers--their animation began to lose the "rough edges" that characterized it earlier in the decade, the very thing that had made it so much fun. Here, however, the studio makes that newfound polish work for them, and this can be seen most clearly in the design and animation of Sally. Her movements are fluid, bouncy, caricatured without being overly "cartoony"--an animated dynamo. The animators had learned a bit in learning how to draw--and animate--a female figure, and use their knowledge to full advantage here, making Sally do things Betty could never have done. Betty at her best was still a product of the "rubber hose" era, and by comparison could appear rather stiff. (It's especially evident when one sees the two characters side-by-side in this cartoon). Sally showed just how far the Fleischers had come--and gave a hint of where they were about to go (namely, the SUPERMAN series).

I have to admit my preconceptions of late-thirties Betty Boop cartoons colored my opinion of this at first. I remarked to Kevin in an e-mail how Betty had become "matronly"--indeed, a newspaper article of the time agreed, likening Miss Boop to the "grandma that sits on the end of the sofa during a date." I think the Fleischers knew this, and strove to give the folks a reminder of just what she--and her cartoons--had been. The music and action here are lively enough to fit in well with any entry from six to eight years before.

Sally proved to be a worthy successor, making one wonder what a series of cartoons featuring her would have been like. Possibly much like BETTY CO-ED--the cartoon from 1931 that gave Betty Boop her name--in which she was the red-hot mama that drove the boys crazy. One could easily see Sally picking up where Betty left off. Sadly, the torch had been passed, only to be extinguished.

She's such a charming little character, one can forgive the cornball Cinderella-like storyline (I'd have made her a mousy bookworm, myself). It takes some time for her to make her entrance, but once she does, look out.

The Fleischers clearly hadn't yet lost their touch, either visually or musically. Unlike some Harman-Ising entries, the mayhem created by the "hot" music seems just barely under control. Harman-Ising cartoons dealing with swing usually ended in total destruction, as with SWING WEDDING or BOSKO AND THE PIRATES. The Fleischers knew better, having befriended and worked closely with jazz figures in the past, and knew that world far better than midwesterners Hugh and Rudy.

This, by rights, should have been Betty's swan song. Had the series ended here, it would have gone out on a high note--in more ways than one. However, the studio seemed to have forgotten everything they had done right, for Betty would limp along for another year in such undistinguished fare as MUSICAL MOUNTAINEERS, and her final cartoon, YIP YIP YIPPEE. A cartoon studio, as with anything else, should know to quit when ahead.

Betty deserved better. And so, for that matter, did Sally.


Labels: Betty Boop, review-synopsis, orphan toon

Tags: Betty+Boop, Max+Fleischer, orphan+toon, swing+music

Size Matters

A MESSAGE FROM YOUR HUMBLE TOONKEEPER, RACHEL

Before YouTube, before MySpace, when the internet was young and Bill Gates had barely made his first billion, there was Cartoon Over-Analyzations.

"Analy-whoozit?" I hear you ask. Then I call the police, because if I can actually hear any of you, it means you've broken into my apartment and are at this moment making off with my "Roger Ramjet" tapes. But I digress.

Have you ever read a ponderous, polysyllabic tome purporting to be an in-depth history of animation, only to discover it's little more than 200 pages of "word salad" on the phallic symbolism of Bugs Bunny's ears? We here at the Home For Orphan Toons have. Well, maybe not about that particular subject (though I did once hear one young lady in a coffee shop espouse that theory--with a perfectly straight face, too) but you get the idea.

And they drive us nuts.

They did one other fellow, too--and Cartoon Over-Analyzations was born. For those would-be "scholars" back in '96 with their own crackpot...I mean, insightful theories about the hidden meanings in our favorite cartoons, it was the place to go. It was all purely tongue-in-cheek, of course--unless you seriously believed "The Smurfs" was a plot to ram Communism down innocent children's throats. (I always figured they were evil, just not for that reason....)

Dear old "CO-A" died abruptly one day in 2002, the victim of a server crash--but toon geeks take heart. It's risen from the ashes in the form of a blog, which can be seen here . Thank you, Cartoon Brew, for once again brightening our day.

But then, we asked ourselves, why should that site have all the fun? Kevin and I are as badly in need of psychological counseling as anyone you're liable to find there. With that in mind, I present to you an essay by our own "Professor" Kevin Wollenweber:


Perhaps the one unnerving thing about some cartoons, primarily those of the accepted characters from Disney Studios during the reign of Uncle Walt, is that the main characters are merely humanoids dressed in animal costumes. If Mickey were really a mouse, he would have been the actual size of a mouse and Pluto would be so much bigger and Mickey, as master, a lot less menacing.

But it was no wonder that, when the theme parks were devised, it was easy enough for humans of various sizes to don costumes to look like the character walking around, perhaps the most surreal aspect of any cartoon theme park. While our favorite classic cartoons are amazing partially because we believe in these carefully fleshed-out characters, we *KNOW* that they are cartoons merely because of all the amazing (and sometimes painful) stretch-and-squash used. We knew they were cartoons, also, by the fact that, when characters were blown up or decapitated or even crushed flat, they easily bounced back with angry snarls on their faces, ready to meet the challenge of the next bit of neatly-designed violence about to occur.

Disney’s theme parks and others like it had solidified in some kids the feeling that these characters really exist in some alternate universe and, of course, That also means that you could walk up to them and tweak tails or do some sort of manic violence, because, hey, they’re cartoon characters and they can obviously snap back, right?

So allowing cartoon characters to actually walk around the place in whatever kind of form was truly the most dangerous thing Disney could have perpetrated upon the planet where television reality constantly clashes with or, more accurately, fuses with the blandest reality we all have to face every day!!

It seemed okay at, say, Warner Brothers or MGM or Fleischer/Famous or Walter Lantz or any of the other minor studios *NOT* connected with their own happy alternate theme park universe because, in many ways, the cartoons that came out of these studios had an adult bent to them. You had the feeling that, to a certain extent, the animators were doing this just for the fun of mocking all that Disney was taking seriously and, so, their cartoons were screaming “hey, we’re not real; don’t try this at home!!” So here’s Disney with his TV show talking about this amazing new world that kids can visit where Mickey and all the cartoon gang walk around and greet you happily, as if we kids were able to actually inhabit that cartoon world! What a strangely warped message!! How many times in my life have I truly wanted to be able to stretch and squash and morph into something other than myself, like a bizarre Fleischer-esque nightmare that could keep any little kid up at night.

We sure never saw an alternate theme park that gave us the opportunity to do that! Of course, some who dabbled in mind-altering drugs might have felt, within the six hours or so trapped within their own entangled subconscious, that they actually *COULD* stretch and squash and morph and all that fun stuff, but the truth is, well, like Boris Badanov had once exclaimed (and I’m paraphrasing, here), when a cartoon safe falls on a cartoon character…it hurts!!

Yet, remember, they lived through it and came out without even a small blemish! ‘Tain’t so in that drab old real world!! Maybe it would take a Tex Avery theme park to prove my point, a merry little place where, around every corner, huge objects from anvils to even the tallest building in the world could drop from the sky and people have to run this way or that to dodge the falling objects. Almost sounds like that terrific NATIONAL LAMPOON recording called “Catch it and you Keep It” where, at the close of the show, there were objects as big as buildings being tossed at the greedy audience!

It’s a small world, after all!! Ouch! Watch out for that tree!!



Kevin Wollenweber


Tags: Cartoon+Overanalyzations, parody, Kevin+Wollenweber