Back In a Cartoon Barrel

Still Animates Us After All These Years

Ask yourself frankly if there is anyone you have hated for the last fifty years. I mean hated. More of that later. We’ve heard the expression, Get Over Yourself. Time I took it to heart and stop thinking cartoons began with me in pajamas watching them hours at a turn. To better understand reality of six-seven minutes, a cartoon as “Novelty” portion of a balanced show, I called again upon Conrad Lane, who saw animation when it was a novelty, from the mid-thirties, right through the fifties, black-and-white to color, bad shorts to good, good ones to bad. He put me straight to how cartoons were received … perceived … by himself and friends who saw them brand new, a thing few of us here can claim. Bugs Bunny, Popeye, and Donald Duck were made for Conrad ... and we got Wally Gator, or worse. I don’t deserve to breathe his air, let alone know progress of cartoons as he does. We talked at length of what it was like seeing Warner shields zoom forward to full seating. What was the effect? Conrad says cheers, often as not surprise, because ads where he lived did not specify shorts that went with features … it was whatever movie, plus “News and Novelty.” Latter could be anything, a sport reel, the Three Stooges (huge whoops on sight of them, Conrad recalls), or … a cartoon.

 

And yes, it mattered whose cartoon. Disney was tops until Warners went to color, then theirs led. On the other hand, when Popeye took on color, he stopped being funny. Fox cartoons were punk, says Conrad, no one applauding their brand. All shrank in the face of Bugs Bunny, him the character Conrad and crew liked best, and imitated on walks home from a show. Another from WB that lit them up: A Tale Of Two Kitties, with “Babbit and Catstello,” more inspiration for mimicry among kids. I asked Conrad if he or others noticed director names in the credits. He said no. They judged cartoons purely by laugh quotient, with no concern as to who “supervised” them. Hands-down favorite was Bugs. He came with the war and was helping win it, so far as then-crowds were concerned. Every boy, girls too, had their BB impression, some inspired enough by the rabbit to go home and ask Mom for carrots. Conrad could never understand why theatres in his town didn’t promote Bugs to the sky when they had him. Was there not showman awareness of how popular he was? Word-of-mouth spread locally, as in Hey, There’s a New Bugs at the Rivoli! If a cartoon was good enough, Conrad’s bunch would stay and see it twice, ushers not minding because being fans too, they understood.

Here’s oddity he mentioned, re the Disney features. Everyone, but everyone, was over the moon for Snow White, adults included, but by Pinocchio and then Bambi, bloom was off the rose. These were for children, said grown-ups, a sentiment strange to Conrad, for he saw both first-run and found them as magical as Snow White. What had so changed parent impression? He speculated that Gulliver’s Travels, coming between SW and Pinocchio, did damage, being a “very bad” picture and maybe a blight upon notion of seeing more animated features. Conrad noted too the habit of theatres to front-load kid matinees with cartoons served in bunches, a thing to further cheapen them for adults. Remember, these were “Novelties” mature viewership preferred that way. Cartoons fed en masse to television made things worse. Kids watching a dozen or more at a time was unhealthy. Why weren’t they riding bikes or catching tadpoles the way Mom and Dad did? Conrad saw cartoons with his children and remembered many a specific one from theatres long before, but knew the while he was exception to a prevailing rule. Most adults had no such recall, had forgot their once enjoyment of cartoons on paying screens, Bugs Bunny a vague memory that need not be retrieved what with family responsibilities to oversee. Stigma had attached to cartoons. To watch so many was to absorb bad influence. Conrad thinks parents who did occasionally sit for a few from TV were loath to admit it later.

Youth was expected to “grow out” of cartoons. Not all of them did. Rebels were popularly known for donning hippie beads and preaching protest. I say real rebels were those taking cartoons seriously and making pioneer study of them. Think how alone in a who-cares world they were. Patronizing peers who had sat transfixed before home tubes now called them immature. Dedication came with skill to read and write, off-grid youngsters jotting down title and credits every seven minutes as each cartoon filed past them, writing stations to complain of Penguin Parade showing too much, I Love To Singa too little. These insurgents went from hand scrawl to offset, fanzines a route to kindred spirits who had to be out there somewhere. Friend Norman Stuart, later outstanding reviewer of books and video for Film Collector’s World, showed me issues of Funnyworld to which he was a subscriber in the early 70’s, wherein artist/innovators like Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones were interviewed, for a first serious time as it turned out. This was about when I began collecting cartoons, Thunderbird a source for PD legit, darker markets supplying me with Slick Hare, Coal Black, others. Then there were TV stations with hungry enough employees to slip stuff out the back, as who’d miss four or five cartoons where there were hundreds more sitting in racks and ready to show? Seemed unlikely a viewer in 1973 would write a program manager and ask, What the deuce happened to Hollywood Steps Out? Collectors leapt a lot of barriers to get rarities, never imagining a time when virtually all they wanted would be readily available, and at prices far below what they had willingly paid forty to fifty years before.

Growing up, there were only three cartoon makers I knew by sight and name … Walt Disney, Walter Lantz, and Bob Clampett. Lantz sat at his easel and was what folks called “avuncular.” He explained, among other things, what made Woody move. Trouble was, I wasn't so into the Woodpecker once past a dynamic, rat-tat opening. Clampett put his name all over Beany and Cecil, a possessory credit, which no other animator had apart from Disney. Soured was I when Bob took over Matty’s Funday Funnies, Herman/Katnip, Baby Huey shoved off for Beany/Cecil. But Clampett seemed a friendly sort, was himself animated so that each week the Sea Serpent licked his face. I didn’t know until years later that Beany and Cecil began as puppets. In fact, Bob’s career started with puppets. Forward to the 70’s, then: I call 1975 the pivotal year. That’s when 16mm rental houses applied push to their cartoons, even devoting “Parades” to directors like Clampett, Tashlin, Avery. Colleges used them as I meantime unspooled “hot” titles, fewer in number it’s true, but no one complained at endless campus repeats of Bacall To Arms or Coo-Coo Nut Grove. Did my heart good when some cheerleader or football player came up and said, Boy, I’ve always loved these things.

Among initial digs was Film Comment salute (January/February 1975) to “The Hollywood Cartoon,” Chuck Jones interviewed at length, also Michael Maltese and Maurice Noble, contributors too long obscure profiled by Joe Adamson. Latter did a book on Tex Avery that year … a whole book! It remains definitive. Then came Bugs Bunny Superstar, feature-fed Warner cartoons culled from those owned by United Artists, meaning pre-49, but good withal, a thrill on big screens even if quality could not approach what we enjoy today. Word was old cartoons barely existed on 35mm, BBS bringing them back as theatre fare, on-camera Bob Clampett, plus Avery and Friz Freleng, as color commentators. Warners saw success of this and bunched backlog for network specials and feature grab-bags. Thing I didn’t realize then was “old-timers” who made cartoons being not so old. In fact, most were vital, brimmed still with ideas, but had little place to go with them (how many creative people voluntarily step down?). Consider this: Bob Clampett turned 62 in 1975, Chuck Jones 63, Tex Avery 67, Friz 71, Chuck the main one to take balls and run with them, doing fresh specials for TV and helping WB on the feature compilations (his Road Runner having become a top draw among Warner characters). Meanwhile, Avery was anointed “King of Cartoons” (funniest anyway), but Tex wasn’t able or inclined to take fullest advantage of recognition.

Veteran cartoonists had been interviewed over the years, if on superficial terms. They were only cartoonists, after all. Bob Clampett sat for a profile wherein he spoke in Bugs Bunny voice, figuring this was expected, chances are he was right. At least Bob knew how to entertain. Pressure was a same as applied to comedians, all assumed to be funny on or off cameras. Jones was more the scholar … droll, bookish, but like the rest, happy to be wanted and an always willing interview subject. Clampett had a 70’s leg up for keeping drawers of sketches, cels, scale-statuary used as guides for he and other animators when Bugs, Porky, others, were first developed, his archive unique for history otherwise thrown to dumps by WB when they closed cartoon shop in 1963. Bob’s memory was steel-trappish, his door open always to young people who had grown up on output from his glory days. Bugs Bunny Superstar let a wider net know what good company he was, so Clampett was invited places, like upstate to UC Davis (twice), his student host telling me how Bob pulled long screening and workshop days, then invited students back to his hotel for “sock hops” that went late into night, his only request of the school that they supply tubs of pistachio ice cream. He doted on ice cream. Bob was most eager to stay current, preferring the society of youth. Cartoons he ran came up in the trunk of Clampett’s car. College kids loved him like the Pied Piper. Appearances were far-flung, one to Toronto for a weekend marathon, GPS correspondent Reg Hartt having described these before. Bob’s was the friendliest face of Classic Era cartooning. He even said nice things about Leon Schlesinger.

Interviewers became needle-nose plier detailed. Seems no scholar paid such close attention as TV-raised cartoon hounds. Lazy former queries would ask who invented Bugs or Daffy --- now it was which and why so-and-so drew the open but not the middle of this or that cartoon. Jones enjoyed the hare-splitting, Clampett more than equal to task of recalling it all. Finally had come fans truly interested in their art and craft. Chuck and Bob were questioned at length (separately to be sure) by Michael Barrier and Milton Gray for Funnyworld in 1969. Fur flew later when Jones accused Clampett of hogging credit where entitled to little, or as Chuck saw it, none. There was long term animus here, but not on Bob’s side. He seemed to like everybody. Chuck in a meantime seethed, as he had since the late 30’s. Did Bob euchre him out of a director’s seat, or delay his getting there, way back when? God forgives, Chuck didn’t. He wrote a mean letter denouncing Bob and pushed Tex Avery to co-sign it (Tex later expressed regret), a sort of Lutherish nailing to church door of bitter truths as Chuck Jones saw them. But he too took passive credit for characters at times, not disputing intros that said Jones invented more cartooning wheels than was fact (though Road Runner and Pepe Le Pew were indisputably his).

So far as scatterbrain scribes figured, if you worked at Warners in the 30/40’s, you were Daddy to Bugs, Porky, Gabby Goat, whatever got drawn in yawning days of the art. These were cartoons, for pity’s sake. Let anyone claim creation of beloved characters, as what difference for purpose of fluff articles did it make? Stakes got higher when postwar youth took their stand for integrity of the historical record, even at risk of opening scabs among cartoonists to whom it suddenly mattered who came first to Bugs or Daffy. Documentary evidence was a help (precious little survived), plus the cartoons themselves. Thanks to digital, they could now be examined frame-by-frame. Jones wrote a book, several in fact, after Clampett was gone (d.1984). Chuck Amuck came out in 1989 and hardly mentioned Bob. Jones stayed to comfortable age 89, linked much of that time with Warners for purpose of reliving, remerchandising, his cartoon past. Bet he got more money in semi-retirement than when he put Pepe, the coyote, and Hubie/Bertie through paces (Chuck had a gallery that sold cels he made up and signed). Of all that drew for Warners, Jones received the most latter-life laurels, including a special Academy Award. To my knowledge, he never relented re Clampett, and I’ve looked (Friz Freleng said that indeed, Jones "hated" Clampett). Also have asked the mirror if there is anyone I begrudge still after a half-century. Offhand can’t think of a one. Not to judge a past generation, as they were but human like us all, accomplishments (would that our own were so great) balanced by contrariness, this the stuff of ongoing fascination so long as we have the cartoons to enjoy.