This week’s entry is GI Bill of Rights, originally part of the ‘Few Quick Facts’ series. This is one of two animated shorts/ segments that continued to elude me while gathering materials for both the Private Snafu set and More Cartoons for Victory. It appeared in the Army/Navy Screen Magazine, episode 60 (1946). The story and storyboards were created at the First Motion Picture Unit, with production duties handled by Walt Disney Productions.

At the National Archives, the 16mm reference materials were missing this particular section. The 35mm neg was otherwise unavailable for transfer, so until more recently I was unable to see if the material at the National Archives actually did contain the film. Happily, a reference copy from 35mm shot off a flatbed was available on this last visit, so here it is:

That’s Robert C. Bruce you hear as the narrator. One more known completed ‘Few Quick Facts’ remains elusive. Venereal Disease, also produced by Disney, did not appear as a part of the Army/Navy Screen Magazine, but rather was included as a special ‘bulletin’ to be shown with the weekly film night. Several other animated shorts (including Voting for GIs) were distributed this way. The National Archives does not have a negative or any material on this particular short; perhaps Disney does in some form, and perhaps it will show up at some point in the future as well.

GI Bill of Rights is an interesting little short, though the animation is fairly limited. You can see from some of the rare storyboards included here (below, courtesy of researcher extraordinaire David Gerstein, click thumbnails to enlarge) that the Disney studio didn’t stray far from the original designs and layouts indicated in the boards.

Chip the Wooden Man would fit perfectly in the Marvelous Land of Oz. However, he wasn’t an L. Frank Baum character, but was the creation of Kinex Studios of Hollywood, California. The studio, headed by Elmer and Frank Young, produced a series of stop-motion puppet film between 1927-1930 solely for sale to the home movie market. Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising contributed stories to Kinex, and the films themselves have now garnered a cult following.

Tom Stathes posted this clip online (embed below), to give you a taste:

For more information on Kinex, read the essay by Stuart McKissick enclosed in liner notes booklet of the must-have Thunderbean dvd Stop-Motion Marvels. Animation art dealer Mike Van Eaton came into a cache of rare Kinex publicity photos. I’ve posted the ones from the Chip films below (if you like them, I have more stills from the other two Kinex series Snap, the Gingerbread Man and Daffy Doings in Doodlebugville, to post at another time). These still photos are delightful, and show how much detail and work went into these little films. Click thumbnails to enlarge.

Cartooning team Fujiko Fujio, a joint pseudonym of Hiroshi Fujimoto (1933-1996) and Motoo Abiko (b. 1934), are famous for their children’s comics, having created numerous series throughout their career. Their most famous is arguably Doraemon, which has pretty much taken form as the Japanese Mickey Mouse in terms of merchandising and star power. But before that, their breakout hit was Obake no Q-Taro (“Q-Taro the Ghost”).

The comic strip Obake no Q-Taro debuted in Shonen Sunday in 1964, although it moved around to different magazines published by Shogakukan until it ended in 1973. Q-Taro is a chubby ghost who moved in with a Japanese family after a boy named Shota found his egg in the woods. The egg hatched and out came out Q-Taro, who instantly started talking and befriended him. Q-Taro is probably the least-frightening cartoon ghost ever created. His biggest flaw is that he loves to eat, often emptying out whatever food the family has. In addition, he’s afraid of dogs and always runs away whenever he spots one.

Not that Q-Taro doesn’t have any special ghost powers. He has the ability to turn invisible, which can come in handy when needed. In addition, he has the power to fly; Shota often rides on his back whenever he flies around town. A common story element involves a bad guy or someone wanting to take advantage of Q-Taro’s invisibility in order to get a dirty deed done (usually involving theft). Of course, the plan is always foiled by the end of the story.

Other characters include Shota’s parents and his older brother Shinichi. In addition, Q-Taro has two siblings: P-Ko, his younger sister, and Q-jira, his younger brother. In addition, there’s Dorompa, an American ghost who loves to play mischief, and U-Ko, Q-Taro’s temperamental girlfriend. With all these ghosts around, it’s no wonder that nobody is afraid of them. Maybe Casper should consider moving to Japan.

The first of the three TV series aired August 29, 1965 to June 28, 1967 on TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System) for 96 episodes. It was the second series produced by the then-new Tokyo Movie (TMS Entertainment) studio, and it was their first major hit. Obake no Q-Taro was the first comedy anime to air in Japan (most anime at the time were superhero or drama), with most episodes being split into two segments, which was unheard of in Japan at the time. This is the program that put TMS on the map in the Japanese TV animation industry, leading them to produce numerous other shows and even doing subcontract animation for American studios, most notably Tiny Toon Adventures. The studio is still in business today.

TMS brought the show back in 1971, producing a second show called Shin Obake no Q-Taro (New Q-Taro the Ghost). This show aired on Nippon Television from September 1, 1971 to December 27, 1972 for 70 episodes. This show was produced in color; the 1965-67 show was made in black and white. The second series is regarded as the best of the three shows, even though it’s rarely seen these days. The animation was handled by A Production, which always produced fun but limited animation for television.

A Production split off from Tokyo Movie in the mid-1970s after a shake-up in the studio management. A Production was renamed Shin-Ei Doga (which literally means “New A Production”). Most of their shows consists of TV versions of Fujiko Fujio comics, notably Doraemon, which is still airing today. Thus it’s no surprise that Shin’Ei revived Q-Taro for the 1980s.

The third series aired April 1, 1985 to March 29, 1987, airing on TV Asahi during weekdays. 510 ten-minute episodes were made altogether. This is the version that’s commonly seen today, still airing in reruns on satellite television and having home video release.

Hiroshi Fujimoto and Motoo Abiko broke their partnership in 1987. Fujimoto became known as Fujiko F. Fujio, and Abiko became Fujiko Fujio (A). The copyright for their older comics were split, depending on which of the two was felt to be the true creator. For example, Fujimoto is now officially considered to be the true creator of Doraemon and all the rights went to him, while Abiko credited for creating Kaibutsu-kun. However, this never happened with Q-Taro; to this day, both men are regarded as creators of the character.

Nowadays, Q-Taro is overshadowed by Fujiko Fujio’s later works, but the impact it had cannot be understated. It proved that humorous animation can, indeed, succeed in Japanese television.

Today, a little gallery of art – courtesy of Mike Van Eaton, animation art dealer extraordinaire – of MGM Cartoon title cards, circa 1939-40. Mike calls me over to the gallery whenever something like this comes his way. This group of originals was acquired a few years ago – and I don’t know if he still has any of these left for sale, but I thank him for allowing me to take these images.

Click the thumbnails below to enlarge. Note the two from The Fishing Bear, the first is the original title, the second created for its 1950s reissue.

I said in my first column that the earliest animated cartoon that I can remember seeing was Disney’s Pinocchio, on its first rerelease in October 1945, just before my fifth birthday. My mother, who was 100 years old last September, says that I’m wrong; she took me as a babe in arms to see Bambi with her. I will take her word for it. Bambi was released in August 1942; I was just over 1 ½ years old. I really do not remember it at all.

Even though Pinocchio was the earliest animated theatrical feature that I can remember, there were plenty of other funny animals from my fifth birthday until I entered my adolescence, theatrically and in the comics. Theatrically, there were all the cartoon shorts with the Disney stars; MGM’s Tom & Jerry and Droopy Dog; the Warner Bros. funny animals; Terrytoons’ Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle and Gandy Goose & Sourpuss and Little Roquefort & Percy; Famous’ Herman & Katnip; and Lantz’s Woody Woodpecker and Chilly Willy. I was vaguely aware that other funny animals that I was familiar with in the comic books such as Baby Huey and the Fox & the Crow were supposedly based on popular theatrical cartoon characters, but I do not remember ever seeing them on the big screen.

The newspaper comic strips and comic books offered lots more. I dimly remember Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck fighting Nazi spies and involved with Home Front themes, but most of my memories are of post-war stories. Other comic book funny animals such as Super Rabbit fought the Nazis, too. I read plenty of superhero comics during my preadolescence – Captain Marvel, Superman (I remember what a thrill it was when Superboy #1 appeared) and Batman, the Justice Society of America in All-Star Comics – but my favorites were the funny animal titles: Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories, the Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck one-shots; Dell’s Animal Comics where I first read the works of Walt Kelly, and other licensed characters who appeared in more adventurous plots than in their theatrical cartoons, or weren’t in theatrical cartoons at all (by that time), like Andy Panda & Charlie Chicken, and Oswald Rabbit.

My favorites of the other funny animal comic books were most of the DC titles – Animal Antics, Funny Stuff, the later Comic Cavalcade issues, Real Screen Comics with the Fox & the Crow, and especially anything written & drawn by Sheldon Mayer. My earliest comic-book hero, who I wanted to grow up to be just like, when I was five or six years old, was Mayer’s Amster the Hamster, a short con-man who could talk ANYbody (usually bigger characters) into ANYthing! As a five- or six-year-old surrounded by big adults, I thought that this would be a wonderful talent to possess. I later learned that Amster the Hamster was a funny-animal version of W. C. Fields. But all of Mayer’s funny animals were hilariously funny with snappy dialogue: Doodles Duck and his bratty nephew Lemuel, Dizzy Dog, Buttons Bunny, Gus Goose, McSnertle the Turtle, Bo Bunny & Skinny Fox (who were a funny-animal Abbot & Costello), the Three Mousketeers, even the one-shot characters like Ferenc the Fencing Ferret. (I did not know it at the time, but Mayer also wrote but did not draw many of DC’s superhero stories.)

Decades later, when I was writing a special funny-animal theme issue of Amazing Heroes (#129, November 1987), I was thrilled to get the chance to personally interview Sheldon Mayer about his funny animals. I asked which of them had been his favorite? “None of ‘em! I thought the whole idea of funny animals is stupid! They would’ve been better as funny humans like Henry Aldrich or Jerry Lewis, or kids like the Our Gang bunch. Unless the plot required them to be tiny fantasy people, when you could make ‘em human-looking elves or pixies. But DC wanted funny animals and assigned me to draw some, so I did.” Oh.

In addition to DC’s comic books and Dell’s (or Western Printing’s) Disney titles, my favorite funny-animal comics were ACG’s now-forgotten Giggle Comics and Ha Ha Comics. Giggle starred Superkatt, an ordinary housecat who impersonated a costumed hero in his owner’s baby’s bonnet and diaper. Ha Ha featured Robespierre, a black alley cat who was always getting into trouble with his yellow brawny but impulsive pal Tiger. Aside from those series, with Superkatt signed by Dan Gordon and Robespierre by Ken Hultgren, Giggle and Ha Ha were filled with funny but interchangeable funny animal short stories by Gordon and Hultgren, and by Jack Bradbury and Don “Arr” Christiansen and Jim Tyer and others. I found out years later that they were all part of a workshop of moonlighting or ex-animation artists organized by Gordon to provide funny animal comics for publishers without their own in-house artists. Gordon had been with the Fleischer Studio (he has a writer credit on some of Fleischer’s Superman cartoons), and quit when Paramount closed Fleischer’s studio in Miami and moved the animators back to New York. Hultgren’s regular job was with Disney; he was most famous for designing the Id monster that Disney’s Joshua Medor animated for the s-f movie Forbidden Planet.

Nobody seems to know how or why, but there was a single Superkatt animated cartoon; the May 1947 Columbia Phantasy Cartoon Leave Us Chase It. It was definitely based on the Giggle comic book series: a cat is inspired by reading the comic book stories to don a baby bonnet & diaper. A generic housecat-chases-mouse story follows, showing none of the imagination of Gordon’s comic-book series. The cartoon’s story is credited to Cal Howard, who was one of Dan Gordon’s crew of moonlighting animation studio personnel. Maybe Howard pushed the cartoon to try to get an animated series for his pal Gordon’s character. Who knows?

My family got its first television set just in time for the premiere of the first animated TV cartoon, Crusader Rabbit, on KNBH in Los Angeles on August 1, 1950. I was 9 ¾ years old, and I was mesmerized. I watched the five-minute episodes so religiously that I can still sing the adv’t jingle from the dog food commercials regularly shown during it:

Feed him Dr. Ross Dog Food; do him a favor.
It’s got more beef, and it’s got more flavor.
It’s got more flavor ‘cause it tastes the way it should;
Dr. Ross Dog Food is doggone good!
Fido knows best … ARF!
Fido knows best … ARF!

I wonder if the animated TV commercial was also made by Alex Anderson’s & Jay Ward’s Television Arts Productions?

I liked Crusader Rabbit (the original TAP 1949-51 black-&-white series; I was in college by the time the Cartoon Spots 1957-59 color series was broadcast) so much that when I began to get a reputation for writing articles about Japanese animation, I took some time out to research an article about Crusader Rabbit. (“2 ½ Carrots Tall, Television’s First Animated Cartoon Star. Pt. 1, The Story Behind Crusader Rabbit”, the history of the two series’ production, in Comics Scene #6, November 1982; and “2 ½ Carrots Tall, Television’s First Animated Cartoon Star. Pt. 2, The Stories of Crusader Rabbit”, plot synopses of all the serials, in Comics Scene #7, January 1983.) It was a joy to talk face-to-face or in telephone interviews with most of the voice actors and production people who had made both series. (Jay Ward declined to be interviewed, though.) Everybody loved Alex Anderson and Jay Ward; everybody shut up or had nothing printable to say about Shull Bonsall, who produced the color series; who had the foulest mouth of all and boasted about how he had screwed people. Jerry Fairbanks, the producer who took TAP’s animation & sound tracks and produced them into films for TV broadcasting, was almost 80 years old and said, “That long ago … I just don’t remember much. But I still have my scrapbooks, and you can look through them.” A GOLD MINE! I sure hope that Fairbanks’ scrapbooks went to some archive upon his death instead of being thrown out.

Fairbanks had the original memos, correspondence, and press clippings for everything: Anderson’s & Ward’s business trips from San Francisco to NBC in New York in 1948 to try to sell their proposed three-segment The Comic Strips of Television series; NBC’s liking only the Crusader Rabbit segment (another segment that NBC turned down was Dudley Do-Right, which Ward used later in Rocky and His Friends), but being willing to buy it only if they had Jerry Fairbanks in Los Angeles produce it (NBC and Fairbanks had a sweetheart arrangement); Fairbanks’ efforts all during 1949 to sell Crusader Rabbit, which consisted mostly of exaggerated press releases that implied the whole series of 130 five-minute episodes (65 episodes were added later) was ready for broadcast, while TAP was still churning out the cels and voice dubbings (one fascinating detail was that Fairbanks tried to make the limited animation sound like a cutting-edge new technological advance: “new Teletoon animation process delivers the quality of theatrical animation at a fraction of the cost” (I wonder if anyone in Canada’s and France’s TV industries knows of this prior use of “Teletoon”?); Bob Ganon, who worked on both the black-&-white and the color series, told me, “We just called it ‘cheap animation’; decide for yourself whether this is ‘the quality of theatrical animation’.”); Jay Ward’s business trips from TAP in San Francisco to Fairbanks in L.A. to coordinate the production (Ward’s full, legal name was J Troplong Ward) …

Well, I am running overlength for this column, and I have wandered off-topic which was supposed to be that while some of my favorite funny animals of my youth were in animated cartoons, many were not. It would have been great to see theatrical cartoons of Sheldon Mayer’s characters, of Robespierre, of Superkatt as Dan Gordon had written him, of Fauntleroy Fox & Crawford Crow (yes, I know that they originated in Columbia’s theatrical animated shorts, but I only encountered them in Real Screen Comics), of Dunbar Dodo & Fenimore Frog; of Nutsy Squirrel; of Walt Kelly’s Pogo Possum while the stories were still tremendously witty but still innocent children’s comics, before they turned into adult social satire.

Is it too late? One of the greatest of the he-oughta-be-animated comic book characters of the 1950s was Disney’s Scrooge McDuck, who was finally animated in Disney’s TV cartoons in the late 1980s. Disney seems poised to do new things with 1927’s Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to keep him alive. The rights to Superkatt et al. are presumably available cheap … if it’s not in the public domain by now.

Paramount’s Famous Studios in 1943 was a studio in transition. Paramount ousted the Fleischer brothers and began moving the operation back to New York. Popeye was the prize. The series was so popular, Paramount decided it could make more money with the property without the middlemen (the Fleischers). With the war at its height, and it’s cartoon superstar a natural military man – the series couldn’t be more successful.

Heritage Galleries is currently offering these rare 1943 publicity stills for sale. The bidding is already way over $100., too rich for my blood, so a grabbed the images off their site and hence this post. You’ll note in the fine print that these photographs are to publicize the 1943-44 season when the Popeye cartoons went from black and white to color.

The images themselves were created in black & white and colorized (a common practice for publicity art back then), and look in line with the Dan Gordon designs in his black and white propaganda cartoons like You’re A Sap Mr. Jap and Seein’ Red White and Blue (see below). Odd that in two of these publicity shots, it was decided the gag was more important that seeing Popeye’s face. The hand-written numbers on the lower corners indicate that these are three pictures from a set of five. Would love to see the other two (UPDATE: I found printed images of the other two in my files. See the comments below) . Click the images below to enlarge.

Below is a great 1943 Popeye, directed by Dan Gordon. Gordon was briefly a partner in Famous Studios, but left to pursue much work in comic books – and later became a valued member of Hanna Barbera’s staff when they started doing television cartoons. This cartoon features some great animation by Jim Tyer. Check out the scene from 5:23 to 5:43.

A 1943 stock one sheet for Paramount’s Popeye cartoons:

]]> http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/famous-studios-popeye-1943/feed/ 20 http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/animation-anecdotes-110/ http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/animation-anecdotes-110/#comments Fri, 17 May 2013 07:01:16 +0000 Jim Korkis http://cartoonresearch.com/?p=3184 The Disappearing Jabberwocky. When the Disney Studio was making the animated feature Alice in Wonderland (1951), there was a planned segment about the dreaded Jabberwocky. Voice legend Stan Freberg was...]]>

The Disappearing Jabberwocky. When the Disney Studio was making the animated feature Alice in Wonderland (1951), there was a planned segment about the dreaded Jabberwocky. Voice legend Stan Freberg was called in to do the voice. “I was directed by Walt himself and Ben Sharpsteen,” Freberg remembered. “There was some animation done, but Walt was concerned that the segment would be too scary for kids and it was pulled from the final film. I’ve never seen it but somewhere in the Disney Archives it still exists.” Original 1951 pressbooks for the film credited Freberg’s voice as the Jabberwocky. In 1992, Disney released a small book with concept art (above, probably by Tom Oreb) of the planned sequence.

Want To Know A Secret? Disney’s animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs inspired a hit single almost three decades after its original release. In the film, just before Snow White sings “I’m Wishing”, she says, “Do you want to know a secret? Do you promise not to tell?” Well, those two lines inspired Beatle John Lennon to write one of the Beatles’ first hit singles in 1963. “Do You Want To Know A Secret?” Lennon’s mother would sing the Snow White songs to him when he was a child.

The Nose Knows. According to producer Al Brodax who did the animated feature Yellow Submarine (1968) claimed that the Beatle most interested in the film and the series of television animated cartoons based on the Fab Four was drummer Ringo Starr. “His only complaint was that his nose was not long enough,” claimed Brodax, who also claimed that he was working on a sequel to the animated feature to be entitled “Strawberry Fields Forever”. That sequel was never made.

From Animation to Acting. Many actors have early connections to the world of animation. Actress Beverly D’Angelo, the mother in the National Lampoon Vacation movies, worked at Hanna-Barbera as an artist. Roger Moore, before becoming The Saint and later James Bond, worked in 1943 at the age of sixteen at an animation studio in London called Publicity Picture Productions. His job was “tracing and filling in animation cels”. He was fired for making a mistake on a cel and serving his manager cold tea. Character actor John Dehner worked at Disney Studios in the 1930s because his dad worked there and got him a job. Actor Charlie Martin Smith who starred in “Never Cry Wolf” (1983) is the son of Paul Smith, the director of Woody Woodpecker cartoons. Jack Nicholson at the age of 17 worked as an office boy in the MGM animation department for Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera where he was soon offered work as an animation artist when they saw his drawing skill. He turned down the job to pursue acting.

Disney Cupcake Bras? Maurice Sendak, the popular children’s book writer and artist was a long time Disney fan but he was not a fan of Disney’s animated feature The Little Mermaid (1989): “Thirty to forty years ago, Disney would have been slapped hard for deviating from Hans Christian Andersen. The tale is about sacrifice. The Little Mermaid has all the risks of sacrifice and no rewards. That’s a hard lesson. This movie is about getting married, having cupcakes for bras and going to live in White Plains somewhere.”

The Bullwinkle Puppet. When articles mention the short lived Bullwinkle hand puppet that appeared to introduce the 1961 NBC prime time “Bullwinkle Show”, they usually mention the time the puppet encouraged young viewers to pull off the knobs from their television sets so that the kids would be sure the TV was tuned to the same station for next week’s episode. Writer Bill Scott voiced the puppet as he did the character in the animated series. Around the same time, NBC introduced its famous colorful peacock as its icon to herald the fact of color programming. One night the Bullwinkle puppet tossed a puppet of the peacock into a pot and cooked it for dinner. NBC was outraged.

What’s In A Name? At one time in the early 1990s, the Disney Company was developing and animated feature entitled “Silly Hillbillies From Mars”. One day, a Disney storyman saw the title of a Disney short, “The Martins and The Coys”. However, he misread the title as “The Martians and The Cows”. When the error was pointed out, it spurred the idea of feuding hillbillies from outer space.

Star Struck. Many animated projects based on real movie and television personalities never get off the drawing board. Animation legend Jack Kinney at one point met with actress Mae West to put together an animated series to be called “Pretty Mae”. Next, he developed a pilot with comedian Bill Dana about Dana’s popular ethnic character, Jose Jimenez. Then, he worked with W.C. Fields’ son on an animated series about that fabled comedian. None of the projects ever got off the ground and sadly, today, I would bet today’s audience is unfamiliar with all three of those once popular personalities.

Chaplin Fan. Walt Disney was a great fan of the work of silent film comedian Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin was also a fan of Disney. When Chaplin’s film “City Lights” was released in 1931, he insisted that it be shown with a Mickey Mouse short.

Cher’s Secret. In 1992, singer Cher on the “Sally Jessy Raphael” talk show revealed, “From the time I was real tiny, I wanted to be an animated character and basically that’s what I do now. I’m kind of an X-rated Cinderella.”

The Colors of Money. According to Ross Bagdasarian Jr. in an interview with popular radio personality Dr. Demento in 1981, the very first Alvin and the Chipmunks album sold so well that Liberty, the releasing company, ran out of labels. That explains why different copies of the album have either, red, blue, green or black labels.

Space Madness. Everyone in animation had to start somewhere. John Kricfalusi, creator of Ren and Stimpy, got his first taste of animation directing while working at Hanna-Barbera. John spent seven months in Taiwan supervising layout for fifteen episodes of the mid-1980s revival of “The Jetsons”. It was during this time that he got his first shot at directing with an episode entitled Hi-Tech Wreck (embed below).

The Jetsons Season2 EP19 – Hi-Tech Wreck by f651311517

]]> http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/animation-anecdotes-110/feed/ 17 http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/technicolor-cartoons/ http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/technicolor-cartoons/#comments Fri, 17 May 2013 01:09:39 +0000 Jerry Beck http://cartoonresearch.com/?p=3168 Saturday afternoon at 4:30pm I’ll be introducing a program of Technicolor 35mm cartoons, projected on the big screen at The Cinefamily (aka Silent Movie Theatre) in Hollywood. If you happen...]]>

Saturday afternoon at 4:30pm I’ll be introducing a program of Technicolor 35mm cartoons, projected on the big screen at The Cinefamily (aka Silent Movie Theatre) in Hollywood. If you happen to find yourself in this neck of the woods on Saturday, we’d love to see you there. I can’t post the titles of what we are showing, cause they are donated from private collections. In fact, private collections are the only places Technicolor exists today.

For those unfamiliar with what Technicolor is and why this is a big deal, here’s a quick refresher. From 1932 till about 1972 a wonderful company named Technicolor created a unique way of photographing and printing color film, using a 3-strip method breaking the color down (Cyan, Yellow and Magenta) that allowed for vibrant permanent (and non-fading) color. The old prints that survive are a record of what these films looked like when they were originally released – and they are just plain gorgeous.

Watching them projected on a big screen in a theatre IS different than watching them on television or on You Tube. If you saw the print of Mr. Bug Goes To Town that TCM ran last October – and I heard many rave reviews of that broadcast – that was off a Technicolor nitrate print. The cartoon below is transferred from a (16mm) Technicolor print as well. But archivists, collectors and film buffs will tell you the same thing – seeing 35mm Tech projected in a theatre is a special experience.

We will be showing cartoons from the Screen Gems studio, Terrytoons, Universal, Paramount, and other studios from Hollywood’s golden age. We will not be showing this 16mm print Professor Small and Mr. Tall (1943, John Hubley and Paul Sommer), but I found this video on You Tube and I love this guy’s enthusiasm for his Technicolor print. If you come to The Cinefamily on Saturday, you may walk away with the same enthusiasm as well.

]]> http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/technicolor-cartoons/feed/ 3 http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/cheese-burglar-1946/ http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/cheese-burglar-1946/#comments Thu, 16 May 2013 07:01:27 +0000 Jerry Beck http://cartoonresearch.com/?p=3154 There can be no better example of what Steve Stanchfield is trying to accomplish with his series of Thunderbean Archive DVDs than this cartoon Cheese Burglar (1946). This public domain...]]>

There can be no better example of what Steve Stanchfield is trying to accomplish with his series of Thunderbean Archive DVDs than this cartoon Cheese Burglar (1946).

This public domain chestnut – a staple of PD tape compilations for years – always looked like this. The faded 16mm print has now been replaced by Steve’s restoration (below) and it reveals a minor classic. This is a Jim Tyer tour-de-force.

A friendly cat and dog, a clever mouse (Herman), a couple of knives and a bottle of booze. This was produced for the 1945-46 season, perhaps the last year of truly cartoony cartoons before Famous Studios fell into a locked mold of rigid mediocrity. This was the same season that produced the first Casper cartoon, The Blackie Sheep classic Sheep Shape, Tytla’s Popeye Rocket To Mars and several great Little Lulu films.

This print is off Steve’s Noveltoons Original Classics DVD – highly recommended indeed. A perfect way to spend Thunderbean Thursday:

]]> http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/cheese-burglar-1946/feed/ 10 http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/disneys-1963-three-little-pigs-sequel/ http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/disneys-1963-three-little-pigs-sequel/#comments Wed, 15 May 2013 08:07:28 +0000 Jerry Beck http://cartoonresearch.com/?p=3136 You’ve read about or heard about Walt Disney’s animated films aimed at Latin American audiences in the 1940s – but here’s one cartoon sequence that rarely gets any attention. This...]]>

You’ve read about or heard about Walt Disney’s animated films aimed at Latin American audiences in the 1940s – but here’s one cartoon sequence that rarely gets any attention. This is a Disney animated segment from a 1963 South American feature, Cri-Cri el Grillito Cantor (Chi-Chi, the Singing Cricket). In it, the Three Little Pigs sort-of become The Three Caballeros:

Didier Ghez posted about this in 2006 and I first posted about it in 2007.

Rudy Agresta wrote in to tell us:

“This was a Spanish made live action film that the producer (Carlos Amadour, S.A.) made in 1963. The Disney studio was contracted to produce the animated segment. This was left in the capable hands of Bill Justice and X. Atencio. It featured the 3 Little Pigs, their mother and the wolf.”

Darrell Van Citters added this information:

“Those cels were from a project done for Latin America. All I can with certainty is that John Lounsbery animated the opening stuff up to the point where the pigs become the Disney version of the Three Pigs. I saw the scenes in the old morgue (as we called it). The drawings are awesome – I loved them so much I photocopied some of them. There’s even some of the Big Bad Wolf. They were done with lots of blue colored pencil under-drawing and the extremes were tied down quite loosely, along the same lines as John’s drawings of the Colonel in 101 Dalmatians. The sheets indicated that the tracks were in Spanish so I don’t think it was ever shown here. If someone on the inside wants to do more research or get better quality scans, the production number is 5954, Los Tres Cochinitos.”

Here was the original movie poster and lobby card:

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