New Category: Cartoon Carnival (#1)

 

I Could Have Grown to Accept Betty's Dog Ears as Half-Moon Earrings Had They Been Tendered as Such

Cartoon Columns Should Be Shorter, So Here Goes ...

Decided to inaugurate a series for animation, and those being best where brief, let points stay nugget-size like candies enjoyed while watching.

Too Few Humans? Betty Boop began as a dog, at least had dog ears. She did not appeal that way, not compared with what she became. Final form Betty was human enough to be a sex symbol. How many more of those emerged in cartoons? Possibly Tinker Bell, Jessica Rabbit, the Tex Avery sirens. Avery women became a sensation as in audiences demanding repeat runs of shorts where they featured. Popeye was human as was Olive and Bluto, all abstract enough to fit best in a cartooned world (live action Popeyes not notably successful). Disney’s prince in Snow White was an awkwardist fit to that feature. His maker admitted as much. A more angular and sharper featured prince in Sleeping Beauty works better, at least for me. Superman is cool for Fleischer but too super to register as human. Live action Supermen had the same issue but for George Reeves, superest of all to my estimate with runner-up Christopher Reeve, ratings which do nothing but expose my age.

The 100 Greatest Looney Tunes. Jerry Beck named his for a book published in 2010. Would he select the same shorts today? The book is compact and beautifully laid out. Beck enlisted modern animators and assorted experts in the field to dwell upon each of his picks. I read selections and go and watch the cartoons on Warner discs which is plenty fun. The book really enhances fresh views. Colorful frames illustrate each of the subjects.

What Did Popeye Meets Sindbad Do to People? Ought it to be “Sindbad” or “Sinbad”? The Popeye special in 1936 had the D, but 1958’s Seventh Voyage did not. AI says the D is closer to correct Arabic spelling. Doesn’t matter I guess. The Fleischer deluxe cartoon sent watchers into orbit, they said. Imagine  adding forty more minutes to sell as a feature. Popeye Meets Sindbad would have beat Snow White’s historic time! Did Max and Paramount consider, discuss it perhaps? As it is, theatres pumped Popeye like it was full-length, did near-much when he was just on for seven minutes. Sindbad got treated like the super-special it was, Popeye at a peak of popularity in 1936. I’ll bet there were lots, and not just kids, who never forgot the experience of seeing it new. Here was when Popeye began eating Mickey Mouse Clubs for lunch, or at least concessions.

Novel Way to Price Gouge. There was a UHF channel operating where I went to college. They ran whatever was got cheap from syndicators. B-westerns, cartoons nobody else in the market wanted. Among those was Betty Boop, 16mm original NTA prints. For collectors these were gold dust, if not turning to dust. I approached the station manager to see if he’d sell. Well OK, he said, and I’ll charge you by the frame, since each of these are an individual work of art and should be priced accordingly. Add all the frames in a shortest cartoon and you get … how many thousands of dollars? Too many to calculate I knew, but he was intractable, in fact proud of how he arrived at such value, our minds as result not meeting. Never forgot this clever means of giving his potential buyer a very close shave.

You Boys Behave, Says Straight Arrow Max to Ribald and Reckless Animating Staff

Bad Boys That Drew. What were early animators really like? Ray Pointer explains in his Art and Inventions of Max Fleischer book. These folks were largely what we’d expect from having watched their cartoons. A randy, boisterous lot. Frat boys who never lasted enough grades to join a fraternity, “young men in their late teens and early twenties with nothing more than a high school education at the most. Some had not even finished high school,” says Pointer. As to pastimes, “wild living, speakeasies, and gambling … consuming bootleg liquor and weekend bridge-playing with prostitutes.” And to think we entrusted cartoon-watching children to these scamps. Could such conduct explain why the shorts are so good?

Max the Inventor.  Again from Ray Pointer’s book. Seems Max Fleischer was a sort to hide himself “downstairs” where charts and compasses and doo-dads inspired him to make cartoons better by revolutionizing the process, which he did by, among other things, creating third-dimensional backdrops to dazzle watchers who never saw Felix or Farmer Alfalfa get up to such speed. Max’s was a lonely pursuit, him bent over calculating tables while the boys upstairs whooped it up and sped through whatever jobs were at hand. His was stern policy of work-first, then family responsibility, grown-up habits and behavior at all times. No wonder he and brother Dave were so often at loggerheads. They should have focused more on the many good qualities each had and brought to the Fleischer table, leave Cain and Abling to brothers not making such cultural contribution as these two did.

Did Kansas City Give Birth to Animation? Jeff Lenburg wrote a fine book on “Great Cartoon Directors” for McFarland. Talent seems to have gathered at an unlikeliest Midwest setting … Walt Disney, Friz Freleng, Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising … the list goes on, plus there was Carl Stallings who began in Kansas City and would make the best music of anyone scoring cartoons. Freleng having lived 88 years survived most all his colleagues and experienced more than most any animation golden ager, Friz the Zelig of his (long) time if I may use a dated reference (soon if not now we’ll have to explain who Woody Allen was). There must be a lengthy and detailed oral history one or more of the fan/historian brigade conducted with Freleng, but I have not come across it.

Is the E.G. Lutz Book Rare? This was the animation how-to that Disney and the rest studied. It was copyrighted 1920 and my copy was published in 1926. Lutz wrote at least four other books on related subjects. I wonder if Disney ever tracked Lutz down so he could tell him how inspiring his work had been. Owning “Animated Cartoons” does not mean I have read it. Some books we get simply to have got. There’s a penciled 25 cents inside my cover. No dust jacket. Did it ever have one? Maybe not at first because this is basically a tech manual, not pretty pictures that would necessarily make us want to draw cartoons. Most readers would have been predisposed to do that and sought out the Lutz volume so they could learn how. I suppose his was the only game in town so early as 1920. Does the Disney Archive have Walt’s personal copy of Lutz’s book?

Would Daffy Duck vs. Huck Hound Even Have Been a Contest? I was a Huckleberry Hound fan right from him being introduced in 1958. Before that if you wanted miserly cheap cartoons for TV, Clutch Cargo was it, or were there others? I liked Huck enough to want a record album we saw at the Charlottetown Mall in December 1959. I played that disc thin. Chuck Jones said cartoons made for TV were no better than listening to radio. He was right because they were basically all talk. There wasn’t a corner Hanna-Barbara did not cut. So how are there still fans for their stuff? I was crazy for The Jetsons and Top Cat but got beyond it. Others did not and have bought Blu-Ray sets from Warner Archive. I mentioned “Daffy vs. Huck” and indeed there was no contest. Did children’s instinct tell them that Huck and friends were cheats? They were there to sell breakfast cereals which were incorporated into opening and closing credits. Then Daffy sank to a same thing on behalf of Tang when ABC gave old Warner cartoons a primetime berth in 1960. To my non-conformist satisfaction, I never went for Tang or Sugar-Frosted Flakes, still have most of my original teeth to prove it, opting to rot same instead with Baby Ruths and Pom-Poms.