Drunk Turtles

Ah, there’s nothing like a Don and Waffles cartoon. Four of them were made by Van Beuren in 1930. They’re all strange, which is what makes them fun. Take, for example, “The Haunted Ship.” How many characters are chased in the sky by a bolt of lightning which grows jagged arms and legs? Or bizarre, scaly sea creatures swimming past the camera? Or skeletons? Okay, they seem to have appeared somewhat regularly in Van Beuren cartoons, even after Don and Waffles became Tom and Jerry.

But what can beat singing turtles? Thanks to animation, not only can they breathe underwater, but they can drain beer at a submerged ship’s bar, then launch into a fine chorus of ‘Sweet Adeline.’ The outlines of their mouths shake when they hold a note in vibrato.



The turtles return at the end of the cartoon to do a final chorus of the song. Then their wrinkly heads stretch right into the camera and fill the frame, as the background goes black. Zooming heads were a Van Beuren specialty. A lovely cartoon ending.




John Foster and Mannie Davis were the animators on this and Gene Rodemich supplies one of his enjoyable scores.

I Got Plenty of Rats

Everyone seems to sexually analyse Frank Tashlin’s “I Got Plenty of Mutton” but I’d prefer to do something else.

There’s a wonderful set of drawings when the hungry wolf sneaks to a pot and attempts to make a weak meat broth, only to have rats gobble it down. There are some great drawings of the wolf shooing away the rats, some of which lunge in perspective past the camera.

Tashlin doesn’t really use a cycle. Some of the drawings repeat in order but not all of them so he avoids a feeling of repetition. Here are a few of them.

You can see outlines of the wolf’s head are used to add a speed effect.






Izzy Ellis gets the animation credit on this cartoon but I wonder if Art Davis did the angular wolf going to the safe just before this scene. Cal Dalton was in the Tashlin unit at this time and George Cannata (Sr.) got an animation credit in “Swooner Crooner,” the next Tashlin cartoon to be released.

Jack Benny’s Jolly Good Show

It seems appropriate that, on July 4, there would be a newspaper column about an American conquering the English. No Revolutionary War story here, though it had been joked the man at the centre of all this had been around since then.

July 4, 1950 is when Broadway columnist Earl Wilson wrote about Jack Benny’s victory on the stage of the Palladium in London. Earl—and it must be nice to have this kind of job—was a first-hand viewer.

British Love Jack Benny
By EARL WILSON
London — Jack Benny stands there on the stage and says, “In Scotland, they think I’m quite a spendthrift. . .”
And the English, some of them well-to-do, some of them in evening clothes, smoking their cigarets and cigars as they sit in the stalls at the Palladium Theatre, go mad with delight, for Jack Benny is as popular in England as American money.
I think he’s even more appreciated than he is at home.
For we take him for granted back home; here they only hear his broadcasts — without commercials, yet! — during the war, and saw him two years ago at the Palladium, so he’s a great, great luxury.
“I’m a collector of rare coins,” he says.
“Of course they weren’t rare when I collected them”.
And they roar again.
The Londoners go to either the “first house” at 6:15, or the “second house,” at 8:45, and they have a drink in the saloon in the back at intermission. And sitting in the audience as the Beautiful Wife and I did, hearing the laughter of that friendly audience, you can begin to feel something new about the greatness of the English language and its power to communicate.
(There, there, Wilson, don’t get serious. You’re a jerk from Ohio remember?)
For they’re hep here. They laugh just at the mention of Fred Allen, and cheer the name of Danny Kaye.
They know about Jolson. Jack — as a gag — said that Jolson got paid $5-000 to work at a N Y. benefit.
“Jolson needs $5,000 like Jane Russell need falsies,” Jack said “They’re both loaded.”
They adore Phil Harris’ singing and bragging, as when he pretends he’s the top man and says superiorly to Benny, “Glad to have you with me.”
And when Rochester says he has no objection to his salary “but I’m the only man who can cash my pay check on a tram,” well they’ve had it — as everybody says here.
How the critics raved! The Daily Express’ John Barber said:
“Oh Good, Mr. Benny. Oh, Very Good!”
And here’s a clue to Benny’s likely greatness on television in this line: “The famous deadpan’s face is never still. Radio audiences miss the best of Benny.”
I think so, too, but only discovered it here. Jack is one of the greatest muggers — yet it’s an underplayed mugging; he’s really a “facial expressionist,” with about the greatest timing to be found today.
At intermission, I went to investigate a great jam in an aisle, thinking it was Ava Gardner’s fans, but they were packed around Cesar Romero and Mary Benny for their autographs, Quel adoration for Romero.
Afterward we went into the bar off the royal box that Val Parnell, owner of the Palladium, fitted up for the King and Queen, then we were off to the “21 Room” for a party where the guests, including the Robert Sherwoods and Sam Goldwyns, cheered Benny when he came in.
Characteristically, Jack, after his triumph, talked about somebody else—about Danny Kaye and Dinah Shore phoning him from Hollywood and the Wiere Brothers from St. Louis.
And he told Bob Sherwood about Barney Dean, a writer for Hope & Crosby on the coast, whom he greatly admires for his wit.
“Somebody asked him how he liked his writing job,” Jack related, “and he said, ‘Fine, except every once in a while when they ask me to write something.’”
“How I know that feeling!” Sherwood said.
Me too. Right now.

Jack returned to the air on September 10 and the first-half of the show involved dialogue dealing with the trip. Interestingly, Jack and his writers admitted in the second half that radio was finished. Benny and his troupe are shunted around the CBS building because all the radio studios are now being used for television. Within two months, Benny’s TV show would debut from New York.

What Can You Do With Mickey Mouse?

So much has been written and said about the Disney studio and its resultant empire that there isn’t really much I can add. And that’s all just as well, because I’ve never been as into Disney, or fascinated by the whole aura that built up around what’s now just a brand-name, as many others.

I liked seeing the kindly version of Walt Disney on camera and watching on Sunday nights (what else was on?) only if some funny cartoons were being shown (or Ludwig Von Drake). And, once in a while, I’d tune in the opening of the Mickey Mouse Club to see what happened to Donald Duck and the gong. By that time, the commercials would be over on Channel 12 and I could turn there and watch Bugs, the Fleischer Popeye and the really funny cartoons.

Disney himself has been analysed to death by people expert on the subject so there’s no point in me doing it. Instead, let me pass on this wire service story from 1950. It provides a bit of insight from Walt himself about why he turned away from cartoon shorts and on to other interests.

Yes, Disney Has Trouble With Animal Actors, Too
By Bob Thomas
HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 6 (AP) — Alfred Hitchcock, the director who has called actors anything from children to cattle, once remarked that Walt Disney has the ideal relationship with his stars: He can erase them if they get out of line.
When I told Disney this, he replied: “We have trouble with our actors, too.”
For instance, there is Mickey Mouse. The famed rodent has been brought back more times than Sarah Bernhardt. Several times Mickey has faded and his sentimental creator has revived him in a new vehicle.
“The trouble is,” Disney explained, “that Mickey isn’t funny himself. He has to be surrounded with comic situations. That takes a lot of trouble.”
Minnie Mouse has suffered an eclipse for the same reason. “There’s no action connected with Minnie,” the cartoon man said, "and we have given up the subtle stuff.”
“The duck (Donald) and the dog (Pluto) are funnier characters in themselves, but even they can get out of line. We get so busy with what we’re doing that we lose perspective. We have to stop and see what is happening to the characters.”
Disney has taken on a new set of actors who are even more unmanageable than his film veterans. He has started a series which he calls “true-life adventures,” starring the wild life of North America.
The first of the series was called “Seal Island” and it chronicled the life of seals on an Aleutian island. It won an academy award. The second is “Beaver Valley,” which is currently winning much praise throughout the country. Among the fan letters Disney has received is one from a justice of the U. S. supreme court.
“Beaver Valley,” as you might suspect, stars the Beaver. “He is a fantastic animal,” Walt said. “All he does is eat, sleep and work. He never seems to play at all. The work he does is of utmost importance in conserving the land in the western United States. The government even transports beavers into areas that needed conservation.”
Supporting the dam-builders are a lively bunch of otters, who believe in all play and no work. They are as funny a set of comedians as Disney has ever offered. The rest of the cast includes the villain—a coyote, plus various moose, crickets, frogs, salmon, ducks, bears, etc.
The films run a half-hour and are Disney’s answer to the double-feature. He feels audiences will get more enjoyment out of watching nature’s actors than in sitting through a B picture that accompanies the major film.
“These pictures aren’t cheap to make,” he told me. “They cost at least $100,000. I have to send a cameraman into the wilds for about nine months in order to get what we’re after. I now have a man on the Olympian peninsula in Washington filming the elk. Coming up is what I call ‘Nature’s Half-Acre.’ A study of every living thing on and under an average half-acre of land.”
He is also contemplating a starring vehicle for the otters. I highly recommend it. They’re as funny as Donald Duck.

A Necessary Evil

“Is This Trip Really Necessary?” says the sign. “Sure, it’s necessary,” Woody Woodpecker says to us. Then he pokes his head at the camera. “I’m a necessary evil.” I love the evil expression.



I wish I could tell you who’s responsible for this piece of animation. Bob Bentley gets the animation credit. Animator Emery Hawkins gets his first of two co-direction credits on this one; the studio personnel was in a state of flux and Alex Lovy had left.

The cartoon is ‘Ration Bored’ (1943). It has the good and bad of the early ‘40s Lantz. Woody should be a frantic character like Daffy Duck; instead, a good chunk of the cartoon consists of inflating body-parts sight gags. But I like the design of early Woody, though a transition was afoot. Or a-hand. Woody’s got glove-like white hands.

Warners was experimenting with smear animation about this time. Lantz is still stretching characters in between poses. Here’s one that would be a smear if Virgil Ross or Bobe Cannon were drawing him.



At least one of the animators (or assistants) on the Lantz staff about this time used thick action lines, with outlines filled in by brush-work. I’ve seen it in a couple of cartoons. There’s a drawing like that here.



Darrell Calker’s score is really good in this one. He uses a kettle drum as Woody’s car rolls between hills to a stop. The start of ‘The Alphabet Song’ is used behind the ration book gag (as the gas station attendant reads the letters in the book). He uses a solo clarinet going up and down part of the scale when lumps of gas move along a hose into Woody’s jug. And I like the cuckoo sound with woodwinds when Woody’s “driving” the cop who has tire tubes around his arms and legs. Woody’s irises and pupils turn into bullet-shapes when he realises what’s at the bottom of a hill (the camera then cuts to it).



Woody dies at the end of the cartoon but, of course, he’s back in a few months in another cartoob.

This was a last cartoon of sorts. It’s the final time Woody’s original design would be used. Art Heinemann brought in a new design for the next cartoon. It was last Woody directed by a make-shift team. Shamus Culhane was hired for the next cartoon. And it was the last cartoon where Kent Rogers voiced Woody. He was off to war duty (he was killed) and Lantz elected to go with Bugs Hardaway as the woodpecker until the studio closed at the end of the ‘40s. Lantz had a pretty polished group of voice actors the rest of the decade (Hardaway’s monotone notwithstanding)—Hans Conried, Jack Mather, Harry E. Lang, Walter Tetley and Lionel Stander among them. Oh, and Lantz’s wife got in a couple lines here and there. We’d hear a lot more of Grace Stafford in the ‘50s. Lantz hired her to be Woody. Just a coincidence, said Lantz. He wouldn’t make up stories, would he?

Hound Hunters

The George and Junior series of cartoons had to be Tex Avery’s weakest at MGM, unless you want to count the “...of Tomorrow” shorts. “Lucky Duck” was a success because it was George and Junior vs a duck. The conflict was focused; there wasn’t even dialogue to get in the way or slow it down. And then the conflict itself became irrelevant for much of the cartoon as Avery interrupted the chase for gag after gag.

In “Hound Hunters” (1947), the conflict between George, Junior and a teeny dog gets muddled when Avery tosses other characters into it and the little dog vanishes. There’s not one but three costume gags. And one gag ends with Junior shivering in George’s arms, which he’s already done in the picture to set up a situation, not as a gag.

Maybe the story’s a little out of whack because the cartoon was originally named “What Price Fleadom.” There is no flea in this story, unless Tex was referring to the dog which is small but not flea-sized. So it could be the story underwent a major overhaul and not all the kinks were worked out of it.

Still, Tex always manages to do something inventive. One thing I did like was in the cat dress-up sequence. George and Junior get inside a lumpy cat costume, one in front, the other in back. Tex pulls off a surprise take, but adds vibrating words on the screen. And when you’ve read the first line and it sinks in, a second one pops up. I think it’s Walt Clinton’s writing.



Naturally, it wouldn’t be a Tex Avery cartoon without big-mouth fear takes. With teeth.





But where’s the little dog in all this? Isn’t the cartoon about catching him? Oh, well.

The designs are by Irv Spence and the animation credits went to Clinton, Preston Blair, Ed Love and Ray Abrams.

Porky Pig Underwater

Chuck Jones started out 1942 with several lacklustre cartoons featuring Conrad the Cat. By year’s end he started making some funny cartoons while layout man John McGrew started fussing around with the look of them.

“The Dover Boys” gets all the plaudits as critics talk about art and animation technique instead of comedy, but I’d rather watch “My Favorite Duck” instead. Daffy’s funny in this and there’s lots going on around the plot. There’s even a benign battle of song going on. Daffy casually sings “Blues in the Night” through the picture while Porky croons “On Moonlight Bay.” Daffy temporarily wins the musical fisticuffs when Porky starts singing his song. What else do we get? Porky AND his camping gear hang in mid-air. An imaginative burn take. ‘Duck Season’ signs, predating a trio of cartoons Mike Maltese wrote for Jones in the ‘50s. Porky says “Fillagadushu.” And Maltese throws in an Avery-esque film-break at the end. In other words, Daffy is fun. Conrad is ... uh, who was Conrad again?

Oh, McGrew’s at work here, too. There are overhead shots and up shots and angular movement and character close-ups. But none of that is my favourite visual from the cartoon. I’ll take a great scene—I’m presuming it’s Bobe Cannon at work—where Porky sets up his campsite under water. Porky doesn’t realise he’s in a lake until a fish swims by. There’s a stare take then four drawings as Porky collects his stuff before going back onto dry land. They’re on ones.







I suspect Ace Gamer or someone else in effects was responsible for the bubbles.

Cannon got credit on “The Dover Boys” so Rudy Larriva gets it here. Jones’ unit also consisted of (if other credits around this time are any indication) Ken Harris, Phil Monroe and Ben Washam.