Giant Runs At Audience

A cartoon character running at the camera and swallowing it isn’t much of a gag, but it must have looked great in theatres.

You’d find it in Disney, Harman-Ising and Ub Iwerks cartoons (the studios were all related in a way, anyway). Here’s an Iwerks version in the 1934 ComiColor short “The Valiant Tailor.”



The ComiColor cartoons were Iwerks’ entry in the “let’s-try-to-be-Walt Disney” sweepstakes. The attitude was better artwork equals better cartoons. But other than Disney, the cartoon artists didn’t realise cartoons were about more than art. They’re entertainment. There has to be a story that engages the audience. “The Valiant Tailor” has overlays, muted backgrounds and nice colours, but there’s little except a basic storyline. It took me a while to figure out what the tailor was eating (who eats honey out of a bowl, anyway?) and he was far from valiant; he was in a tree that dropped the bowl of goop on the giant’s head.

Art Turkisher incorporates Schubert’s “The Bee” into the score during scene with the bees. Grim Natwick and Berny Wolf are the credited animators.

There's Three of Everything

Ub Iwerks loved everything rounded in the backgrounds of his cartoons, even in his supposedly more realistic ComiColor fairy tales. Here are some examples from a washed out print of “The Three Bears” (1935) from one of those public domain DVDs.

The big gag in the first half of this cartoon is there are three of everything in varying sizes. Bugs Hardaway was writing for Iwerks then, wasn’t he?



How can you tell this is an Iwerks short? Radiating lines over someone’s head.



Animators were not credited on the ComiColors. Carl Stalling’s original score gets a mention.

Helpful Milk

A bottle of milk delivered on a window sill is about to fall off to drop to its doom. Fortunately, it grows hands. And so does another bottle, which rescues it The bottles shake hands.



A cute little scene from the Flip the Frog cartoon “The Milk Man.” Well, Variety didn’t think so. It opined: “An insipid and lazily penned cartoon” (July 12, 1932). As usual there are no animator credits.

Watch the Birdie

Big game hunter Flip the Frog tries to shoot a lion like he’s shooting a photograph in “Africa Squeaks” (1931). Flip pulls out a cross-eyed bird and tells the lion to “watch the birdie.” Then he fires. The screen is filled with feathers.



When everything clears, we see the bird has been blown to bits. The Ubiquitous Iwerks Radiating Lines™ show Flip’s emotion.



The credits say the cartoon was drawn by Ub Iwerks.

Ub's Goofy Fish

If a huge corporation won’t restore and release all its cartoons featuring the iconic Bugs Bunny, what chance to do you think the forgotten-by-all-but-diehards Willie Whopper stands?

Actually, a better chance than the wabbit, thanks to Steve Stanchfield, a true historical animation hero.

Steve’s Thunderbean Animation has brought us lovingly refurbished cartoons that, frankly, no one else would bother with. Thanks to the efforts of him and his friends, you can watch great collections of Snafu cartoons and Van Beuren cartoons. Now he’s turning his attention to two of Ub Iwerks’ series, Flip the Frog and Willie Whopper.

Theatre audiences in the 1930s weren’t all that enthusiastic about either character but they’re both worth a look. Some of Flip’s cartoons have funny moments and the animation’s enjoyable in the first few Willie entries. Steve’s documenting his progress at Jerry Beck’s Cartoon History blog every Thursday and you should really stop in and have a peek.

This week, Steve has footage of part of “Davy Jones Locker,” released in January 1934. The basic plot was already a cliché, and I can’t get enthused about Willie himself, but there are some fun sea-character transformations. And it has a gooney looking fish with a hat.



If you think the fish is familiar, you’re right. The same one was featured, with different colours, in Iwerks’ “Tom Thumb” (1936).



Why the fish is swimming around Willie Whopper is, I suppose, Iwerks’ idea of humour.

We’re looking forward to reading about the restoration and word when the DVD/BluRay will be available to buy. It’ll be worth the price.

Of Snake and Bears

The Iwerks cartoon stock company crone with a beehive hairdo gets stuck in a tree and threatened by a rattlesnake in “Phoney Express” (1932). Flip the Frog shoots and misses.



Instead, the bullet shears off the beehive. Down comes the old crone, followed by the beehive landing back on her head. The snake’s expressions are great.



Flips shoots at the snake again. Instead, a bear falls out of the tree. What was it doing up there? Being convenient to the plot, I guess. Look! It’s the ubiquitous radiating lines! (in one Iwerks cartoon, I gave up after counting 30 separate times they were drawn).



The bear chases Flip and the crone. He fires his gun and when the smoke clears, there are two bears. He fires again. Now there are four. And reused animation.



The chase ends inside a cave. We don’t see the fight, just stars and puffs of smoke coming out of the cave’s entrance.



Flip and the crone emerge proudly wearing bearskin coats. Three of the four bears come out, embarrassed they’re in their long underwear. The fourth bear is more, um, bare than that. Enough with the radiating lines!



There are never animation credits on the Flip cartoons. I imagine Grim Natwick’s work is probably seen somewhere here.

Nosey Willie

You can probably pick out at least one fun moment in any black-and-white cartoon made at the Ub Iwerks studio.

Here are 10 consecutive frames from “Spite Flight,” the second Willie Whopper cartoon. Someone had fun making goofy drawings of Willie after the bad guy pulls his nose and lets it snap back.



My thanks to Devon Baxter for passing on this neat cartoon which also features an old angel giving the finger.

The Other Skeleton Dance

In 1929, Ub Iwerks came up with “The Skeleton Dance” for Walt Disney. Three years later, his own studio featured Flip the Frog dancing with a lady skeleton in “Spooks.” She’s a chaste skeleton as she’s covering her breasts.



There are a couple of gags in the scene, like when the two halves of the skeleton separate (but the upper half can move in mid-air on its own). Finally, Flip lands on the skeleton and leaves behind a pile of bones.

Ptui and Ptui Junior

All kinds of stuff comes to life and dances in an Ub Iwerks cartoon, even tobacco juice spat out by Sailor Flip.



Then the juice spits out his own juice, and it starts dancing.



This is from the opening of “Stormy Seas” (1932). The animation of the scene on deck is interesting to watch frame-by-frame. The sailors are dancing to “Life On An Ocean Wave” on ones; the number of cycle drawings for the captain is different than the accordion-playing Flip but both are in time to the music.