Special Appearance by Bob Clampett

Weak. Unfunny. Embarrassingly bad. Which of those terms best describes the work of director Jack King at the Leon Schlesinger studio?

Perhaps all of them.

Take his 1935 short ‘A Cartoonist’s Nightmare.’ Is there even a gag in it? It truly stinks. The most interesting thing in the whole cartoon is the cameo appearance by Bob Clampett in animated form.



The rotund chap looks like Tubby Millar, missing his bristle moustache. Don’t know who the big-nose guy is.

There’s also what I suspect is a Clampett influence in a fun background drawing of the ramshackle cartoon studio. The plant on the left could easily fit in Clampett’s Wackyland (as in “Porky in”, made a few years later).



Fortunately, Tex Avery soon arrived to rescue the studio from inanity and it wasn’t too long (and thanks to other talented people, including Clampett) that Warners released the funniest cartoons ever made. King scurried back to Disney where he wasn’t entrusted with directing features.

Don Williams and Paul J. Smith have animation credits in this pointless mess.