Drag-a-Long Droopy Backgrounds

By 1954, Tex Avery’s long-time background artist, Johnny Johnsen was getting credited in MGM cartoons. Johnsen was called on, both at Warners and MGM, to come up with western motifs. Here are some of his paintings in the great cartoon “Drag-a-Long Droopy.” The best painting is a panorama of the Bare Butte Ranch, which I can’t snip together because part of it is on an overlay panned at a different rate than the background itself. You can see a piece of it below.



Oh, for a BlueRay DVD of this cartoon so everyone can get a better view of the details.

Johnsen painted from layouts by Ed Benedict.

New Year's Eve Killed

“The trophy room,” declares narrator Frank Graham in ‘The House of Tomorrow,’ “contains many exhibits of the hunt.” The camera then pans across a Johnny Johnsen background of some important “kills,” ending with a New Year’s Eve pun (accompanied by a shaky version of “Auld Lang Syne” in the background).



I suspect there were animators who were quite familiar with that last drawing (a somewhat similar white label on the bottle could be found on Walker’s DeLuxe). And the sequence takes up 16 seconds of screen time with no animation, meaning Fred Quimby was probably celebrating the cost-savings.

Here’s hoping your 2015 will be full of Tex Avery-like fun.

A Forest of Eds

Here’s part of a reaaaaaaly long background from Tex Avery’s “Field and Scream” which you’ll have to click on to view. Multiple Eds (named for designer Ed Benedict) are hiding behind the trees and rocks on overlaid cels waiting to bag a deer.



Johnny Johnsen was still painting backgrounds for Avery when this cartoon was made.

She Lives Just Down the Road Apiece Yonder

Little Rural Riding Hood (Colleen Collins) directs us with her toe to her Grandma’s house. The camera pans along Johnny Johnsen’s background. Here’s the drawing. Click to enlarge.



Daws Butler and Pinto Colvig lend voices in an all-star cast in Red’s farewell performance.

Henpecked Hoboes Sky Shot

Johnny Johnsen came up with some wonderfully creative vertical backgrounds for Tex Avery. It’s a shame the characters get in the way sometimes.

There’s a scene in “Henpecked Hoboes” where a rooster is tied onto a rocket which zooms into the sky. The shot cuts to a great aerial perspective. Here’s as much of the background as I can snip together.



Unfortunately, the rooster gets in the way of the best thing about the background. As the camera pans up the drawing, Johnson effortlessly segues from the mountainous scene to a higher set of snowy mountains and, above that, the uppermost Arctic. These frames below give you a bit of the idea.



One the great mysteries to me is who was handling layouts for Avery when this cartoon was designed in the mid-1940s. Ed Benedict hadn’t arrived yet. Avery is almost given credit for everything except drawing his cartoons that others in his unit are kind of shunted aside, including whoever laid out this background setting.

Map of the Wolf

Tex Avery and background artist Johnny Johnsen supply maps to help us follow the wolf's escape from Droopy in “Dumb Hounded” (1943).

Field and Scream Backgrounds

Johnny Johnsen handled the backgrounds in “Field and Scream” (released 1955) from designs by Ed Benedict. Here are some of them. The first one plugs “Herman’s Sporting Goods.” I don’t think animator Herman Cohen was near MGM at this point.

Try a Tex Tux

Occasionally, background artists in old-time animated cartoons would put the names of co-workers in their work; Paul Julian at Warner Bros. may have been the most famous for this. Here’s an example from Tex Avery’s MGM cartoon “Hound Hunters” which refers to Avery himself.

There’s one scene when Junior runs down the street before turning and running toward the audience. Unfortunately, the versions of the cartoon that are out there are fuzzy so you can’t really see all the names of the businesses.



This building features a hotel, Molinari and a shoe store.



Stokes Delicatessen is on the right. Bob Stokes worked at several studios in the ‘30s and ‘40s. I’d love to think “Hanna-Barbera Hardware” is on the building on the left but I can’t read it.



Here we have a cleaner on the left with “Tex Hotel” and “Tex Tux.” Polamari is on the right.



Alas, this one is unreadable.



This one isn’t readable, either.



Hopewell and Goode is next to what looks like the Cheriet Dairy Lunch (note: Dave Mackey solves this one in the comment section. Thanks, David).



And, finally, Crenshaw’s Groceteria, Inc. is the last business as Junior turns the corner.

Although he’s not credited, presumably the backgrounds are by Johnny Johnsen.

Thugs Backgrounds

Some background drawings from the great Warners cartoon “Thugs With Dirty Mugs” (released 1939). I presume they’re by Johnny Johnsen.

The Drinks are on the ...

“The drinks are on the house,” says narrator Frank Graham. “The drinks are on the house,” repeats wolfie Frank Graham. And we see everyone in the Malamute Saloon literally enact the words. The camera pans up to the gag.

Just another of an endless stream of puns you can’t help but like from Tex Avery’s “The Shooting of Dan McGoo.” Heck Allen gets the story credit. Preston Blair, Ed Love and Ray Abrams are the credited animators. Johnny Johnsen handled the backgrounds uncredited.

Smog

Smog jokes were pretty common in the early ‘50s; you’d hear them all the time on network radio shows.

The best-known one in a cartoon is in the Chuck Jones opus “What’s Opera, Doc?” (1957) but Tex Avery and writer Heck Allen pulled off one in a string of sight gags in “Little Johnny Jet” (released 1953). Little Johnny helps his obsolete prop plane father win the big race by zipping past various landmarks. In this cartoon, they go so fast, the smog over Los Angeles is dragged away in their wake.



I’ll bet those orange groves are long gone. The background drawings are by Johnny Johnsen. It’s conjecture on my part that Ed Benedict did the layouts.

Ray Patterson came over from the H-B unit to help animate this one, along with Bob Bentley, Mike Lah, Walt Clinton and Grant Simmons.

Northwest Hounded Backgrounds

Time to check out some of the work of background artist Johnny Johnsen for Tex Avery in “Northwest Hounded Police” (1946).






You want to see more? This blog maintained by Brandon Lyon has saved me the work of snipping together some pans.

Wild and Woolfy

Tex Avery loved westerns. And he loved putting Droopy in westerns. My favourite is “Dragalong Droopy.” But let’s look at his first one, “Wild and Woolfy” (1945), which has a pile of familiar gags. In fact, the ending comes straight out of “Little Red Walking Hood” at Warners.

It also has Johnny Johnsen’s great background work. It opens with a pan over western mountains, with the credits on a mountainous overlay, like Johnsen did with “Wabbit Twouble” before he left Warners for MGM. I’d love to paste together frames from some of the long outdoor drawings but we’ll have to settle for some shots. Avery has three road sign gags in this cartoon; you can see two of them below.







And there’s an inside gag in the background. Claude Smith was Avery’s character layout man in this cartoon. He never got on-screen credit, but his name has found its way onto a store that the wolf and his horse pass seven times.



Smith’s model sheet for the cartoon is dated May 5, 1944, some 18 months before the cartoon was finally released.