Patriotic Duck

Daffy Duck in Bob Clampett’s hands is either emotional or hyper-emotional. Take “Draftee Daffy,” for instance.

The little black duck lets his American patriotism fuel his reactions in one of the early scenes. He’s not overly hyper, just enthusiastic. It’s a shame there’s a lamp in the foreground and the shot is so tight because they get in the way of some of Daffy’s histrionics. You can see what I mean in some of these frames when he leaps up and back into his chair then bounces onto the floor.



The scene carries on with some quick morphing. These pairs are consecutive frames. Daffy whips out an American flag from nowhere as he sings “Hurray For the Red, White and Blue.”



He switches to “Yankee Doodle,” and switches patriotic guises at the same time.



For a line of dialogue he turns into Teddy Roosevelt.



And changes back.



Daffy’s patriotism turns out to be the let-the-other-guy-go-into-battle variety. When the man from the draft board shows up, the duck spends the rest of the cartoon in a panic trying to get away from him. He fails.

Rod Scribner gets the only animation credit.

Mail Call!

In “The Great Piggy Bank Robbery,” a wrinkled hand (missing a little finger) of a mailman delivers letters to Daffy Duck. Or does he?



Wait a minute! That letter’s addressed to Rod Scribner, who animated this cartoon (dare I say this is a Scribner scene?).



Who is the letter from? Hard to tell, other than the last name is Fitzpatrick. It could be Willie or Millie or Walter. Anyone know of a Fitzpatrick who worked at Warner Bros.?



Scribner, Manny Gould, Bill Melendez and Izzy Ellis are the credited animators.

A Tweety Question

Can someone explain this? Two cats are fighting over Tweety in a nest atop a pole. The force of the fight causes them to fall to the ground below. Director Bob Clampett (or maybe it was done in layout) changes the perspective of the fall from looking down from the top of the pole.



Suddenly, Tweety appears to yell “Bomb’s away!”



So, since this is shot from the top of the pole, where is Tweety standing? How is he standing?

The cartoon is “A Gruesome Twosome,” animated by Manny Gould, Rod Scribner, Bob McKimson and Basil Davidovich.

Rabbit and Costello

Elmer Fudd quits cartoons in “The Big Snooze” (1946). Bugs begs him to consider. “T’ink what we’ve been to each other. Why, we’ve been like Rabbit and Costello. Damon and Runyon. Stan and Laurel!” Note the crooked fingers in the last drawing. Bugs does that in a number of drawings in this scene.

Who wrote the lines? Beats me. The writer and director aren’t credited. The director is, of course, Bob Clampett. The writer could have been his buddy, Mike Sasanoff, who quit cartoons to go into ad agency work. I do like the play on Damian and Pythias. The credited animators are Manny Gould, Izzy Ellis, Bill Melendez and Rod Scribner.

The Supreme of the World

What’s playing at the local theatre? Cartoons. Looney Tunes, in fact. Check these posters outside the theatre in “The Film Fan” (1939).



“Valley of the Giants” was a 1938 Warner Bros. release. Apparently the theatre couldn’t book “The Wizard of Oz” but was able to get a print of “Ahs of a Wizard.”

This Porky Pig short was from the Bob Clampett unit. Bob Thomas was Clampett’s background artist, so I suspect he was responsible for the settings (the unit was technically part of the Ray Katz studio, which was considered separate from the main Leon Schlesinger studio, certainly for the purpose of union negotiations).

Wackyland

There’s an inside joke in the pan of characters which inhabit Wackyland.



You’ll notice not only a reference to Treg Brown below, but the character in the pot has huge glasses, just like caricatures of animator Bobe Cannon. The creature (voiced by Berneice Hansell) yells “So, Bobo!”



Okay, there’s another inside joke. The character with the steaming funnels has a “W” and a “B” for Warner Bros.



And here are the other creatures.



Norm McCabe and Izzy Ellis appear in the animation credits. It’s unclear who was responsible for the backgrounds. Clampett’s unit was in a separate building from the main cartoon studio. Dick Thomas was eventually his background artist but I don’t know when Thomas arrived.

Gruesome Collision

Bob Clampett’s best cartoons have some outrageous animation that looks every more outrageous if you stop and admire each drawing.

In an incredibly ridiculous premise in “A Gruesome Twosome,” two cats in a suddenly-rubbery old vaudeville horse outfit get wrapped around a tree. Here are just some of the drawings. Note the white in the impact drawing.



There a bunch of drawings in perspective in the scene, with body parts poking near the camera. Another great bit of work is when the “horse” lands on the ground. See how a foot is in perspective. And look at the multiples and the swirls. Just fun stuff to look at.



Manny Gould, Rod Scribner, Bob McKimson and Basil Davidovich are the credited animators.

A Grander Old Nag

Thad Komorowski’s blog has a new post today that should excite all fans of old cartoons.

Republic Pictures decided in 1946 to release cartoon shorts and contracted with former Warners director Bob Clampett to make them. He finished a grand total of one before Republic decided conditions weren’t ripe for animation and the deal was off. We detailed the situation in this post.

Some time ago, the one cartoon—“It’s a Grand Old Nag”—was made available to the world on the internet via Jerry Beck’s now-former web site, with a very interesting commentary by Mark Kausler, a first-rate dissector of cartoons and a kind and gentle man. The copy was pretty ratty and missing footage but it was all that was around.

You can read the full story on Thad’s site but, in summary, a 16 mm. version turned up, and a transfer has been made by Steve Stanchfield, who has been helping to preserve animation history by restoring B-list Golden Age cartoons that, if it weren’t for his painstaking work, are now far more appreciated. And they have, quite generously, uploaded the transfer on the internet.

Want a comparison between the two versions? You could barely see the main title card before. Now, you can view the detail, even though it’s gone through compression posting it on line, it’s not from a 35 mm. print and was printed in an inferior colour process.



And how about the difference here?



It’s a funny thing how you can appreciate the animation more when you can actually see it. And you can get a better idea of how Clampett handled cartoons when he didn’t have animators like Rod Scribner and Manny Gould providing funny and outrageous character takes. This cartoon’s much tamer (despite atypical Clampett gags) but the animation seems far smoother than his work at Warners, and the great Ed Love came up with some fine scenes of the emotional director (voiced by an uncredited Dave Barry). And it’s hard to believe Jeff Alexander never scored a cartoon before this (or after this, for that matter). His work is clever and matches the on-screen action perfectly.

Head to Thad’s blog HERE for the story and the cartoon.

Now if there were only a complete and viewable version of “Wacky Quacky”....