Hot Spot Backgrounds

Tex Avery had a great influence on the theatrical animation business, but it seems the first thing he did that everyone copied was phoney travelogues. A lot of them, even by Avery himself, weren’t that hot.

Even the war-time Snafu series for the Army-Navy Screen Magazine used the travelogue format once, in “Hot Spots” (1945). The backgrounds look like the work of Paul Julian and, judging by this post at Thad Komorowski’s web site, the layouts are by Hawley Pratt.







Even the final gag owes something to Avery’s “Land of the Midnight Fun” polar bear bit. The gags actually don’t centre around Snafu at all, and maybe that’s why this cartoon isn’t as enjoyable as the others in the series.

If the voice of the Devil isn’t Hal Peary, it’s the best impression of Peary this side of Willard Waterman (and it doesn’t sound like Dick Nelson’s impression of Peary to me).