From the February 17th, 1943 issue of Paramount Sales News.
In this final Cartoon Research column of the year, we will test the theory of evolution, namely, how one classic era cartoon evolved into another, more recognized version. Our test laboratory is Paramount/Famous Studios, and we begin with an obscure Noveltoon (the very first one, in fact). Blackie the Lamb and Wolfie Wolf co-starred in a mere four cartoon shorts, but did they set the table for bigger things?
The story begins on November 26, 1943, with the release of the cartoon short No Mutton Fer Nuttin’, directed by Dan Gordon, with Dave Tendlar as the animation director (and animator). It was the debut of Blackie the Lamb and Wolfie Wolf. Blackie is self-explanatory, although he wore a red sweater in all his appearances. Wolfie is an eponymous cartoon wolf in shabby clothing and a battered top hat.
The characters appear to be the creation of Dave Tendlar, who by 1943 had spent over two decades as an animator and director, dating back to Krazy Kat studios while still a teenager. Tendlar was the animation supervisor of the first cartoon, handling animation duties with Tom Golden (and uncredited work by Morey Reden and Gordon Sheehan).
Dan Gordon directed the short, heavily influenced by Tex Avery’s output at MGM. While there is some similarity to Avery’s gags, the pacing is far slower, and the cartoon more resembles a Screwy Squirrel short, including “fourth wall” and surrealistic gags. Gordon did not direct another Blackie and Wolfie cartoon, but the heavy Avery influence remained in the series. Sheep Shape, the third cartoon, was a weaker play on Avery’s cabaret entries featuring Red.
Blackie disguises himself as a seductive dancing girl in a nightclub (animation courtesy of Tendlar, who used his previous skills in animating Betty Boop). Many Avery gags are repeated here, such as pounding on the table, the wolf turning into a red rocket of desire, and a blatant gag involving spurting liquor bottles. Tendlar served as animation supervisor/animator on all four cartoons. Of course, considering how Paramount cartoons were credited, Tendlar, and not Izzy Sparber (as listed), was the de facto director for nearly the entire series.
The series featured two outstanding voice artists. Blackie’s voice came from Arnold Stang, a character actor featured in Paramount cartoons since his debut in the 1944 Popeye cartoon Anchors Aweigh as Popeye’s pal Shorty. Stang was a diminutive man who, in his movie roles, was cast as characters usually described as a “nebbish” or a milquetoast. Stang, however, had considerable vocal range and could easily play a Brooklyn-ese-wise guy. Stang would later go on to cartoon fame as the voice of Hanna-Barbera’s famous con artist Top Cat, with his spot-on imitation of actor Phil Silvers.
Character actor Sid Raymond began working with Paramount/Famous Studios in 1944, performing the vocal characterization of Wolfie Wolf. Raymond had a knack for voicing slow-witted hick characters; he eventually became the voice of Harveytoon’s calamitous Baby Huey.
“Blackie” and the Wolf were drawn by Walt Kelly for Dell’s ANIMAL COMICS in 1944.
Both voice artists would team up again, however, after Blackie and Wolfie finished their unspectacular four-cartoon run. But not as a sheep and a wolf.
Blackie in drag in these rare animation drawings from the best in the series – “Sheep Shape” (1946)
At the same time, an eponymous black-and-gray cat also began to appear in Noveltoon shorts. His earliest recorded appearance came in the 1949 short Hep Cat Symphony, and a very similar cat appeared in 1947 (after the final Blackie and Wolfie cartoon) opposite Herman, who was an established character by this point. The cat’s speaking voice? None other than Sid Raymond!
The two characters began co-starring in 1950 and featured a redesigned Katnip for the cartoon Mice Meeting You. The two became a pair after two more appearances in 1951 and 1952. Paramount/Famous overseer Seymour Kneitel was apparently the driving force behind the decision to launch a series since Kneitel oversaw cartoon production at Paramount/Famous. The 33 “official” Herman and Katnip series comprised 27 cartoons from 1952 to 1959.
What are some of the clues that suggest an evolution from the Blackie the Sheep cartoons? To begin with, Stang and Raymond provided the voices for both series. Note that the typical go-to male voice actors at Paramount were Jack Mercer and Jackson Beck, but the combo of Stang and Raymond remained for the Herman and Katnip shorts.
In the final Blackie short, Much Ado About Mutton, Blackie has four apparent nephews (voiced by Cecil Roy) who scream for “Uncle Blackie” as Wolfie pursues them. There is a similar scene in Blackie’s first cartoon. The endangered mice in the Herman and Katnip shorts continually plead for “Cousin Herman” when fleeing Katnip.
Of all the Noveltoons, especially after they took on the title Harveytoons, only Herman and Katnip were archetypal “chase cartoons.” No cartoons featuring chases were found in Little Audrey or Casper the Ghost, to give examples. Baby Huey did occasionally face off against predators in some cartoons, but the spirit was entirely different from the mayhem featured in Herman and Katnip…or Blackie and Wolfie.
Finally, one must consider the omnipresence of Dave Tendlar in both series. He was responsible for the finished design of Katnip, which was more straightforward and more suited to Raymond’s dimwitted vocals than Wolfie’s design. Note that some visual elements remain; Wolfie and Katnip both have pageboy haircuts and can suddenly display a complete set of fangs when in the mood.
Herman’s personality is indistinguishable from Blackie’s, and both display the same stern attitude towards their “relatives” or other endangered mice (usually voiced by Gwen Davies). Both are absurdly confident in their abilities to outwit and defeat their enemies. Tendlar had a heavy hand in both series. Also notable: Herman and a version of Katnip begin appearing in other Noveltoons in 1947: the exact year of the final Blackie cartoon.
In the 1957 Casper cartoon, “Ghost Of Honor”, Wolfie makes a final cameo – as do Herman and Katnip!
Herman and Katnip did become stars at Paramount (Tendlar directed about a third of the cartoons and animated many others) despite being the most violent and brutal cartoons ever made, at least until the Happy Tree Friends came along. Simpsons producers Matt Selman and David Silverman admitted that Bart and Lisa’s fave hyper-violent cartoon characters, Itchy and Scratchy, were inspired directly by Herman and Katnip. That’s an honor (?) Blackie and Wolfie will never see.
Happy New Year!
Martin Goodman is a veteran writer specializing in stories about animation. He has written for AWN and Animation Scoop – and lives in Anderson, Indiana.
I’ve long believed that Blackie evolved from Billy the Kid, de facto star of the 1943 Popeye cartoon “The Hungry Goat”. Like Blackie, Billy is a screwball prankster who demolishes the fourth wall (and much else) in a fast-paced series of Averyian gags. (Averyesque? Averyish? Averyific? Averyiculous?) Dan Gordon, who directed the first Blackie cartoon, was the director of “The Hungry Goat”, but as far as I know Dave Tendlar had nothing to do with it.
“Much Ado About Mutton” of 1947 has a scene that’s remarkably similar to one in the 1944 Mighty Mouse cartoon “Wolf! Wolf!” In the earlier short, a wolf disguises himself as a nursery rhyme character (Little Bo Peep) and plays a jazzy rendition of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on the trumpet in order to lure a music-loving lamb into an enclosure. In the later one, a wolf disguises himself as a nursery rhyme character (Little Boy Blue) and plays a jazzy rendition of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on the trumpet in order to lure three music-loving lambs into an enclosure. In both cartoons the trumpet solo ends by ascending chromatically to cadence on a high note (a trick that Louis Armstrong borrowed from opera singers and adapted into his own performances because it was such a crowd-pleaser). Otherwise, the two cartoons have little in common other than the commonplace wolf vs. sheep dynamic; but that one scene suggests that the Famous Studios artists weren’t taking inspiration from Tex Avery alone.
“Baby Huey did occasionally face off against predators in some cartoons….” That’s quite an understatement, like saying that Wile E. Coyote tried to catch a bird every once in a while. Are you kiddin’? In fact, the hungry albeit nameless fox was the antagonist of nine out of the original twelve Baby Huey theatrical shorts, an overwhelming majority. And as for “facing off” against predators, in his very first cartoon, “Quack-a-Doodle-Doo”, Baby Huey literally rips the fox’s face right off his skull.
In general I prefer Blackie and Wolfie over Herman and Katnip, but I enjoyed watching “Rail-Rodents” again just now. Katnip’s quite a good swimmer for a cat.
This article was, as I posited, an interesting connect-the-dots exercise. The two cartoon series had so many commonalities that a “theory of evolution” was possible. You are quite correct in stating that similar scenes existed in other contemporary cartoons, namely in some of the Terrytoons, but I was trying to stick to the two series I discussed. Thank you so much for your thoughts! I love commiserating with fellow toon fanatics, especially about the more obscure cartoons of the past. BTW: I believe that the voice of “The Hungry Goat” was also that of Arnold Stang, so I guess we’re going back to the Mesozoic Era of Herman and Katnip…!
According to IMDB sources, the voice of the Hungry Goat was not Arnold Stang, but New York-based actor Gilbert Mack. Mack made numerous recordings for Simon and Schuster in the Little Golden Records series, and given my considerable familiarity with such output from my childhood. I’d say there’s a definite voice match between the recordings and the film. Stang may not have appeared in a Paramount cartoon until the first Blackie episode.
Thanks, Doc! I didn’t mean to imply that I thought you had omitted anything of importance, but I couldn’t help being reminded of “Wolf! Wolf!” because, as the only Mighty Mouse cartoon in the public domain, it’s so familiar to me. I look forward to your next column on obscure cartoons — the more obscure, the better!
It’s interesting to note how Herman and Katnip evolved from separate appearances into becoming a paired team, not unlike the evolution of Tweety and Sylvester. I guess when a pairing works, it works. Katnip also appeared in some of the Buzzy the Crow cartoons, as evidenced in “Katnip’s Big Day” which uses clips from earlier cartoons of the various series in which the character was featured. I’d be interested to know how theatre audiences reacted to the Herman and Katnip cartoons, though it must have been favorable for them to have enjoyed such longevity.
The visual reference to Casper above reminds me of the comic book in which the Harvey characters appeared together–“TV Casper and Company,” a giant-sized compilation of Casper, Spooky, Baby Huey, Buzzy, Little Audrey (occasionally), and Herman and Katnip The characters interacted on the magazine cover as well as in the introductory one-page gag story that introduced each book–otherwise they were shown in separate adventures. However, even with this one-page restriction, the book definitely places the characters in the same Harvey universe.
Haven’t thought of Herman and Katnip in decades. The second I heard the theme song, I was transported to my distant youth, watching cartoons after school.
Not a bad way to end the year!
I seldom post replies, but a dedicated, and grateful, reader here!
Dave Tendlar was the unsung genius of Famous Studios, with great gifts in animation and character design. When he hired on at Terrytoons in the late 50’s, their output was immediately bettered.
To me, Arnold Stang’s Top Cat wasn’t a spot in imitation of Phil Silvers. He sounded too far too unhurried and mellow, especially next to Daws Butler’s fast paced rat-a-tat Hokey Wolf voice, also inspired by Bilko.
Shorty made two previous Popeye appearances, voiced by Gilbert Mack, who sounded very much liked Stang.
For the record, Gilbert Mack voiced the title character in the Popeye short The Hungry Goat, doing an Arnold Stang imitation.
Many thanks to you and others who ID’d Gilbert Mack as the Hungry Goat! I certainly appreciate any toonhead that provides me with some education!