Woody in a Frenzy

There are shock takes galore in the Don Patterson-directed “A Fine Feathered Frenzy,” some by Patterson himself.

Patterson and writer Homer Brightman have purloined the story premise from Tex Avery and his writer Rich Hogan. Avery’s wolf couldn’t hide from Droopy; Droopy was always where he went. Wild take followed. Here, Woody Woodpecker can’t escape from the inappropriately-named Gorgeous Gal in her mansion. Wild takes follow.

Here’s one near the end. First the anticipation drawings.



Now, the take. The eyes are widening at a slower speed than in the actual cartoon.



Patterson is hamstrung a bit by Woody’s size. In “Northwest Hounded Police,” the wolf’s takes fill the screen. In this cartoon, Woody is small so some of the takes are harder to see.

There’s irony here. Patterson’s directorial career was ended when Walter Lantz hired someone and shunted Patterson back into animation. Lantz hired Tex Avery.

Walter Does Walter

By the 1960s, Walter Winchell’s name evoked the past. He had been hired to narrate “The Untouchables,” a TV show set in the 1920s, because his time was of another era. And it wasn’t an era too far past. Television slowly killed off newspapers and forever changed radio, the two media which brought Winchell his fame and power.

Winchell was parodied occasionally in animated cartoons but probably the most directly in the Walter Lantz short “Termites From Mars” (1952). A crazed radio newscaster is a Winchell caricature. Here are some of the expressions as he shouts about Martians.



You’ll notice the “WLP” on the mike for “Walter Lantz Productions.”

Don Patterson was the director of this cartoon. There are some great effects here to bring out an extra dimension of depth, such as background colour changes (to shades in the red spectrum) and shadows around the characters.

Paul J. Smith, La Verne Harding and Ray Abrams are the animators. There’s no story credit.

Convict Concerto Take

There’s no director credit on the Woody Woodpecker cartoon “Convict Concerto” (released 1955) but it’s apparently the last cartoon Don Patterson supervised at the Walter Lantz studio. Patterson, Ray Abrams and Herman Cohen get animation credits. Here’s a realisation take when Woody hears the dumb cop tell him (as if he couldn’t figure it out on his own), the crook inside his piano is a killer.



It’s not as wild as takes in other Patterson cartoons but this one was written by Hugh Harman (misspelled in the credits) who wasn’t exactly enamoured of wild takes. I suspect the story behind Harman’s hiring at the Lantz studio for this one cartoon (Lantz displaced Harman and Rudy Ising on the Oswald series more than 25 years earlier) is far more interesting than anything in this cartoon.

Dog Bites Buzzard

Buzz Buzzard turns into shapes aplenty (jagged and otherwise) when he pockets an angry French poodle in “Belle Boys.” Here are some of the drawings.



Don Patterson directed this Walter Lantz cartoon with animation credited to La Verne Harding, Ray Abrams and Ken Southworth.

Buccaneer Woodpecker

Buzz Buzzard’s panicked escape in “Buccaneer Woodpecker” (1953) reminds me of a scene in “Alley to Bali” the following year. Body parts stretch, and multiples and brush strokes are used to indicate speed. Here’s a good example.



Both this cartoon and “Bali” were directed by Don Patterson with his only credited animators being LaVerne Harding and Ray Abrams. I suspect he was doing some animation as well as directing. His cartoons featured stretchy characters.



And multiple pointed telescopic eyes.



Patterson directed until, for reasons that aren’t known, Lantz farmed out two cartoons to his brother’s studio, Grantray-Lawrence. Then Tex Avery arrived to direct his unit. Patterson never got it back when Avery left and he left Lantz by 1959 without directing another cartoon.

What's Clobberin'

“Inconsistency” describes the Walter Lantz cartoons of the early ‘50s. Even within a cartoon, characters can be rubbery in one scene, drawn with thick ink-lines in the next one and rendered fluidly in the next one. None of them are animated as well as the cartoons before Lantz closed his studio temporarily at the end of the ‘40s and lost great talent like Ed Love, Fred Moore, Pat Matthews and Ken O’Brien.

One somewhat rubbery scene is in “What’s Sweepin’,” directed by Don Patterson, where Woody clobbers a shop owner and Wally Walrus (both voiced by Dal McKennon). Here’s an in-between before Wally’s hit. No speed lines or smears; just Woody stretched a bit to indicate speed and gravity.



Here’s an extreme from a little bit earlier in the scene. Wally’s off-balance and cross-eyed in the background, like something out of a Terrytoon.



The scene’s partly animated on twos. Paul J. Smith, La Verne Harding and Ray Abrams get the animation credits.

Two Long Pigs

The story’s a little ill-conceived in spots, but there’s some nice work in “Alley to Bali,” a 1954 Woody Woodpecker cartoon directed by Don Patterson. Some effective layouts, good use of colour and Clarence Wheeler’s arrangements (or whoever was arranging for him) are highlights. And some of the animation’s pretty good, too. Herman Cohen, Ray Abrams and Ken Southworth aren’t known for being A-listers, but Cohen and Abrams were animating in the ‘30s and Southworth worked at Disney (in 1940, he was an office clerk for a wholesale grocer in Chicago).

There’s a really interesting speed/outline effect in this cartoon. I couldn’t tell you who drew it. Woody and Buzz Buzzard are sailors—deemed edible “long pigs” to some echoing volcano god in Indonesia. They’re lured to the volcano by the god’s female servant (using her femininity as bait).



Buzz rushes over top of Woody to get to the woman, but he consists of mutliple outlines.



Then Woody stretches back and he becomes a multiple outlines as races after Buzz.




The effect is used later when Homer Brightman’s story suddenly, and misguidedly, plays the dramatic climax for laughs. Somehow a frying pan is conjured up, Woody and Buzz land in it, there’s a salt-and-pepper-shaker gag, a temporary-transformation-into-sausage gag, then both become multiple outlines as they make a dash for it.





Yeah, that’s the creative way they get out of their predicament. They just run away. Nice going, Homer.

Patterson got bumped back into animating when producer Walter Lantz hired Tex Avery, then when Avery left, he wasn’t rehired to direct; Lantz brought in Alex Lovy from one of the commercial houses. Nothing against Lovy, but it’s too bad Patterson didn’t get a second shot.

A Camel in Morocco

Camels are funny-looking things, especially in cartoons. Probably the funniest-looking camel in a cartoon not made by Warner Bros. is in the Walter Lantz cartoon ‘Socko in Morocco’ (released in January 1954). It’s one of the shorts Don Patterson handled during his far-too-short tenure as a director.



For reasons known only to Patterson, and perhaps writer Homer Brightman, the camel is partly hollow. Buzz Buzzard rides inside it.



Thad Komorowski tells me that Walter Lantz was so cheap, the directors at his studio had to their own design characters, unlike MGM where they had people like Claude Smith or Ed Benedict to do that sort of thing.

The camel is animated in silhouette and long shot at the beginning of his scene with a flurry of feet on ones. Then we get some medium shots. The animation is by Ken Southworth, Herman Cohen and Ray Abrams. Art Landy is credited with the very nice backgrounds; good design and sunset hues.



This cartoon has dialogue at the beginning and end, and virtually nothing in between. What few words on the soundtrack are handled by Dal McKennon as Buzz and a horse, while Grace Stafford is Woody and giggles for the princess. I’m presuming McKennon is also the French Foreign Legion commander, though he reminds me a lot more of Harry Lang than anyone else. Lang died about five months before this cartoon was released after suffering a lengthy illness.