I find myself today without one of our regular contributors posts – so that gives me room to note a few things, and plug a few things, all by myself.
AN “OOPS” ADDENDUM
Back in late November/early December our Wednesday “Animation Trails” column by Charles Gardner ran a four part series called “Oops!” which recounted little production boo-boos in many of our classic cartoons. You can read the first one here.
One thing about those boo-boo’s that should be remembered. I’ve said this in previous posts. Back in the 1920s, 30s and 40s (and through the mid-50s), producers of animated cartoons released during that time, never thought anyone would ever watch these cartoons again. They were ephemeral, only meant to be seen the month or two of release – and then no more. They were the screen’s equivalent to newspaper comic strips. The old ones were yesterday’s news.
A little camera mistake, a production boo-boo, a painting error… they could let it go. No one might notice. No one would ever see these again, right?
Then came 16mm and 8mm home movie sales… Blue Ribbon theatrical reissues, repertory theaters, Film Festival retrospectives, Museum showings, sales to television, VHS tapes, laser discs, DVD and blu ray… cable television, 24/7 cartoon channels, streaming services…
… or ‘animation history courses’ at Universities all over the world. That brings me to my own little list of “Oops”. Things I notice, year after year, as I screen shorts in my various classes; a few little teeny-weenie things that may only be noticed after repeated viewings – things that make me wince.
Again – these are nothing. Really not worth noting. But since Mr. Gardner brought the topic up I feel compelled to get these off my chest:
1. FEED THE KITTY (vacuum cord up the dress)
This shot in “Feed The Kitty” from 2:31-2:47.
Chuck Jones’ FEED THE KITTY (1952) is an absolute masterpiece. And I delight in watching it in class on the big screen, year after year. Every pose, every shot – comic perfection. But then I noticed this shot and can’t ‘not see it’ every time. You can rewatch the whole film here – the shot a 2:31-2:47. Why is the vacuum cleaner hose going up the lady’s dress? I’m hoping my students don’t notice it – I have no answer to this mystery.
2. MARVIN DIGS (a Line read)
I enjoy Ralph Bakshi’s films. They aren’t perfect – but it’s the big ideas he was going for – made at a time when the industry itself was falling apart. I show MARVIN DIGS (Paramount 1967) in my class to represent a rare 1960s studio-produced cartoon short that actually reflected the times it was made in. There were only a few such cartoons (DePatie-Freleng’s Roland and Ratfink Hurts And Flowers, was another). By 1967 the studios were aware these cartoon shorts had an afterlife on TV – so topical references were rarely used.
After 25 viewings, THIS line stood out to me as an “Oops”. It’s just bad vocal direction. The line-read steps on the “joke”… writer Eli Bauer made a “funny”, but it’s thrown away. Hippie #3 says that “yesterday we had two “Swing-In’s, three “Walk-In’s”, one “Stand-In”, an “In-In” and an “Out-In” and today (here’s the punchline) …nothin”.
The last word should have been punched to emphasize the word “IN” – “Noth-IN!”. Get it? A Noth-In… No? Hippie humor… I guess you had to be there.
3. SUPERMAN (The bending building)
I love the Fleischer Superman cartoons. I’ve declared the first one to be in my personal top ten. But I still wince at that shot (7:01-7:21 above) of the Daily Planet building bending like butter due to the mad scientists’ Electrothunasia (SP?) ray. The series was as realistic as they could make it – keeping the non-fantasy elements somewhat rooted in the real world. But in the first one (which I think is tremendous) has two elements that they never repeated in the other cartoons: this rubberized building – and the scientist’s pet raven.
Somehow they get away with the raven – even I don’t mind it that much. But you’ll not see such a cartoony character in any of the subsequent films in this series. They were probably inspired by the evil queen in Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, who had an equally nefarious feathered friend.
But that bending building…
Two Quick Plugs I’ve been meaning to mention.
If you happen to be in Los Angeles this week – I’m moderating a panel introducing a screening of UPA cartoons at the Old Town Music Hall in El Segundo, California (next to the Los Angeles Airport – LAX) on Thursday night (January 15th). The panelists will include the legendary Bob Kurtz, animation directors David Silverman, Jorge Gutierrez and Tom Sito, documentary filmmaker Kevin Schreck (of the must-see Richard Williams doc Persistence Of Vision) and Stephen Bosustow’s grand daughter Sylvie. This tribute was originally planned to be in 2025, to celebrate the 75th anniversary Gerald McBoing Boing winning the Oscar (and changing the face of animation), as well as the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the company name, United Productions of America (The company was actually established in 1943 as Industrial Film And Poster Service). Several of the great UPA classics will be screened – the whole shebang begins at 7pm – click this link for details and tickets.
And finally, I don’t do this often, but I’d like to plug (or remind) that I still maintain a very nice little news, reviews and interviews web-blog: Animation Scoop. It mainly covers whats-going-on in current animation – features, shorts and series; reviews, obituaries and events. Occasionally even posts on animation history (but not too often – that’s for Cartoon Research).
Over the last few months we redesigned the website – and we are still working on it to bring even more features. I invite you to take a look – and if anyone still “bookmarks” blogs, I hope you will consider doing so – and checking it out on a regular basis.
Jerry Beck is a writer, animation producer, college professor and author of more than 15 books on animation history. He is a former studio exec with Nickelodeon Movies and Disney, and has written for The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. He has curated cartoons for DVD and Blu-ray compilations and has lent his expertise to dozens of bonus documentaries and audio commentaries on such. Beck is currently on the faculty of CalArts in Valencia, UCLA in Westwood and Woodbury University in Burbank – teaching animation history. More about Jerry Beck [
I have a theory about that scene in “Feed the Kitty”. Perhaps it was originally intended to show the woman holding the wand of the vacuum cleaner in her hands, with the hose coming around from behind and attached to it, but this turned out to be overly complicated and problematic. So it was decided to simplify the shot by having the hose disappear behind the woman and the wand come in diagonally across the upper left corner of the screen with no hands visible. Someone then noticed that the result looked as if the hose was going up the woman’s dress. Everybody though that was funny — this was Termite Terrace, after all — so it was included, with a bit of tweaking, as a little in-joke. Since the nexus is occluded by Marc Anthony for most of the scene, it’s doubtful that any casual viewers would have even noticed it. I never did, having seen this cartoon countless times over the decades, until you pointed it out here today.
As for “Marvin Digs”, I don’t think it was necessary to punctuate “Nothin'” any more than it already is by virtue of coming at the end of the sentence. It’s just as obvious that the title character’s given name is a play on all those neologisms derived from “sit-in”, without anyone having to overemphasise it by pronouncing it “Marv-In”.
If we’re going to tackle the issue of logical lapses in the Superman universe, we’ll be here forever. The bending building never bothered me, as we don’t know the full range of effects that the Electrothanasia-Ray (as the Mad Scientist spells it in his letter to the Daily Planet) might have on the physical properties of matter. The Tacoma Narrows bridge disaster amply demonstrates that large structures can drastically bend and twist when subjected to powerful forces. The bird (which to my eyes resembles some kind of raptor more than a raven) likewise doesn’t seem out of place to me, certainly less cartoony than the “Arctic Giant”. (At least it doesn’t talk with Jack Mercer’s parrot voice; better to “leave well enough alone,” I think.) No, what bothers me most about this cartoon is that Superman can apparently neutralise the Electrothanasia-Ray by… PUNCHING it???
Best wishes for your UPA screening on Thursday. I hope the noise from the airport doesn’t interfere with the show!
Great post! For me the “oops” moment in MARVIN DIGS involves the film’s sound quality. A reverse-echo takes place as George wakes up to see the walls of his home psychedelically painted. The sound of his scream of horror is faint a couple of seconds before the same scream at full volume is repeated and in sync with the animation.
It surely was a challenge for the animators at Fleischer to delve suddenly into more realistic animation after decades of free-form, anything goes antics. I, too, notice a few cartoony elements in the early Superman installments. Either the animators were still finding their footing or they were discovering subtle ways to insert the “house style” into the series. There is also a cartoony-looking young man who appears occasionally and I keep wondering if this was supposed to represent Jimmy Olsen. Also to be noted is that often there is no action or movement at all for a few seconds, possibly reflective of the production costs that went into these cartoons.
In the early days of Superman, he didn’t quite fly but instead would use mighty leaps to get from place to place, and this appears to have carried over into the Fleischer cartoons. Does Superman really fly, or is he leaping? Those of us who are used to seeing him fly probably assume as I did for years that he flies in the cartoons–but a good case could be made for giant leaps. And I agree with Paul that punching at a ray from a ray gun and thus subduing it does seem far-fetched–although of course in a cartoon anything is possible!
It is interesting. In most of the shorts, you could argue that Superman can leap so high that it takes a long time for him to glide back down to Earth and thus it’s sort of a semi-flight allowing him to cover long distances. See ‘The Mechancial Monsters’ where he leaps into the air, hangs just long enough to get a bead on the fleeing robot, and then goes into a power dive to catch it.
In at least one short (I think it is ‘The Arctic Giant’) there comes a sequence where Superman does several leaps in quick succession to either quickly close the distance between himself and the dinosaur or to get enough lift to reach the dino’s head, but the effect was more like Superman was playing leapfrog.
I read in one animation book, (perhaps Leonard Maltin’s?), that the studio soon on asked DC if they could have Superman fly, rather than leap, which would be much easier to draw, and more exciting. DC said yes, and then DC started to let Superman fly outright in their comic books, too. Remember the original opening, “Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.” No mention of flying. (Did the “leap tall buildings” line come from radio shows first, or perhaps the comic? Or did the Fleischers’ studio come up with that whole bit?)
I LOVE the bending building! Especially Superman’s last tug in the opposite direction to damp out the oscillation! (Of course, that’s an example of him pulling braced against nothing, a lot of his flying is pushing braced against nothing.) Normal sway is what, a dozen feet over scores of stories? Just a little exaggeration.
Punching the beam was just any other cartoon character’s fight against lightning, but with cooler lighting effects. If you want to No-Prize it, Superman is just shading the target. The punching motion is just bravado covering the fact that he doesn’t want to hold his hand in the ray for too long!
Just to be timely, one I just caught via the new Tom & Jerry set. In “Salt Water Tabby” one of the crab’s legs disappears in a cel in a closeup scene with Jerry.
And for the same reason I just noticed in another T&J release, “Springtime for Thomas” that Butch has an extra set of hands after falling down when Tom slams his face with the garden statue!
Gee, I wonder if Hanna-Barbera were using early forms of AI animators with all these limb malfunctions 😉
I’m surprised by how I missed that Marvin Digs joke all these years. It’s a film that never fails to amuse me because of how sweet and idealistic it is compared to, say, Heavy Traffic which I jokingly called a spiritual remake of that short. Animation mistakes are always fun to notice.
I’v always wondered if there is a film editing error at 1:10 – 1:12 of “Muscle Tussle” (Warner, 1953): There is a shot change, but part of the line is repeated: And just who..and just who. Here it is on Youtube — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhribF_kInk
I see your point – but it looks (and sounds) intentional to me. It might have worked better if they didn’t have a cut from a wide shot – after the first “And just who…” – to a two-shot with the repeated line.
A destruction of the building would be too much for a pre Bambi audience to handle so let’s “bend’ the rules!
Besides Osama Bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed wouldn’t dare plot people to destroy landmark in a real metropolis as one of their targets 60 years later would they? Would THEY?