Betty Boop in “Be Up To Date” (1938)
Today we’ll dig into one of those later Betty Boop cartoons – you know, the ones produced after the Production Code went into effect. No character was more affected than…
Category Archives: Animation History
Disney’s Forgotten “Puppets Cereal” Commercial
Does this image ring any bells? If you were a child in 1966, you might have bought Nabisco’s Puppets Cereal. Crunchy, crappy breakfast food sold in plastic “dolls” in the…
View Masters!
I love the old Viewmaster slides. Not to get nostalgic, but who didn’t grow up with these and cherish them in those innocent days before home video, the internet and…
The Lion’s Roar for MGM Cartoons
From October 1937 until August 1941 MGM published a magazine (MGM Short Story, at left) – exclusively distributed to its exhibitors – devoted to its live action and animated short…
The Strangest Mighty Mouse Comics You’ve Never Seen!
Cartoonist/animator Paul Terry was known for his archaic sense of humor and style of drawing. So when Mighty Mouse achieved commercial success in the 1940s he apparently turned to similarly…
Vocal Geniuses
My friend Bob Bergen is Warner Bros. go-to guy when they need to record Porky Pig – that’s him these days on The Looney Tunes Show, and previously on Duck…
The Last Days of “Looney Tunes”
It was an odd, confusing time for Hollywood studio theatrical cartoon shorts in the 1960s. The world had completely changed and though the traditional animated short (popular with movie goers…
The Life and Death of Looney Tunes Producers: Schlesinger and Selzer
Today, a tribute to the two men who made it happen. No, not Avery or Clampett, Jones or Freleng… Schlesinger and Selzer. Leon Schlesinger was he original man behind Warner…
The 1981 Looney Tunes Character Chart
Back in 1981, when Friz Freleng was again at Warner Bros. finishing up The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie (1981) and starting work on Bugs Bunny’s Third Movie: 1001…
Crispy Critters
Linus the Lionhearted is the most-famous of all the totally forgotten animated Saturday morning cartoons shows of the 1960s. It was the first of a potential onslaught of “half-hour commercials”-…
