It’s a short one this week and I scramble to finish several project here. More on that soon.
I was honestly surprised that I never posted this short before — but then again, maybe it would have been better to not post it now either!!
First, in Thunderbean land:
On Saturday, along with film historian John Monahan, I’m doing our annual classic cartoon festival show at the Redford Theatre in Redford, Michigan. I love doing this show since it gives me a chance to screen some of the prints I’ve near seen on the big screen, along with restorations of some of the things we’ve been doing. It’s at 2pm only on Saturday. So, if you’re not too far away come see cartoons on the big screen! About half the show is vintage 35mm Technicolor prints! CLICK HERE for details and tickets.
And — this week’s cartoon—er, sort of:
Dolly Doings (1917) is one of the ‘Motoy’ series, featuring animated children’s dolls moving courtesy of stop motion animation. A title card informs us that dolls come to life daily, for just one moment. The various dolls are introduced: Some are pretty standard, others more kewpie-esque and cartoony dolls.
This little film is more interesting than actually good. The doll animation is pretty uninspired, and I think something is lost in the humor department over the last 108 years or so. Looking at what was being produced around the same time, it’s definitely not in the best category. It looks like around 16 were made in the series. It would be interesting to see some of the others as well. One, Mary and Gretel, seems to be around online.
This short is part of the Technicolor Dreams and Black and White Nightmares blu-ray set… and I think it falls closer to the nightmare catagory. It actually sort of reminds me of Street of Crocodiles short from the Brothers Quay:
Have a good week everyone!
Steve Stanchfield is an animator, educator and film archivist. He runs Thunderbean Animation, an animation studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan and has compiled over a dozen archival animation DVD collections devoted to such subjects at Private Snafu, The Little King and the infamous Cubby Bear. Steve is also a professor at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.
I remember this one from the Technicolor Dreams set. Funny you should post it now of all times, because by coincidence just the other day I found my wife’s 60-year-old Chatty Cathy doll packed away in amongst some of my late mother-in-law’s effects. Cathy no longer chats, and she’s gone a bit moldy, but her eyelids still shut when you lay her supine. At some point while growing up my wife developed a morbid fear of dolls (as well as clown, marionettes, and worst of all, ventriloquist dummies), but she still has a sentimental attachment to this one. So dolls and their doings have been very much on our minds and in our conversations lately.
Perhaps because of this, I’m inclined to take a more charitable view of the animation in “Dolly Doings”. In 1917, the medium was still in its infancy; “King Kong” was nearly twenty years in the future, and Ray Harryhausen hadn’t even been born yet. Besides, even comparatively modern dolls like my wife’s Mildewy Molly had only a limited range of movement; those of the early twentieth century, even less. The animator of “Dolly Doings” — his name was Howard S. Moss, so let’s give credit, or blame, where it’s due — had to deal with the dolls of the time as they were; he wasn’t constructing figures from scratch specifically for the purposes of animation like the Kinex guys. And yet he managed to give those dolls a fair amount of personality purely through posing and body language. Some actions, like the dog biting Billy in the seat of the pants, were evidently beyond Moss’s capabilities, but what of it? One might as well complain that he failed to furnish the dolls with anatomically detailed armatures and realistic facial expressions. The guy was a pioneer. Give him a break.
As for the humour in this film, well, all I can say is, “Ish kabibble!”
For what it’s worth, Howard Moss also produced at least one feature-length film, “The Dream Doll” (1917), a combination of live-action and his doll animation. I stumbled onto this while looking into animated features predating “Snow White.” “The Dream Doll” was released by Essanay, and the live-action performers included Marguerite Clayton and Rod La Rocque, so it was a fully professional production. The AFI Catalog lists another possible Moss feature, “Movie Marionettes” (1918), but with practically no information.
I live Ypsilanti, somewhat near the Redford Theatre which I love (especially the “starry” ceiling with moving “clouds”). I’ve enjoyed many a classic film there and while I won’t be able to make this showing I’ll keep my eyes open for future animation events.
The “Technicolor Dreams-” set looks intriguing…
Loooove the Quay Brothers work, by the way. Time for a revival.
Steve: Even thouigh there’s no way I could be at the classic cartoon show at the Rexford Theatre in Michigan, I clicked on the CLICK HERE sign and what did I see? Artwork from the crappy Hanna-Barbera POPEYE TV series? Hey, if I didn’t know you better, I might think of NOT going, were I in the area! The movie theater should have put up a better image than THAT!
As for the DOLLY DOINGS short for 1917, i think you should cut the short animated film a little more slack. Back then, how much could you really animate a doll? Now, if you had a young Willsi O’Brien (who I believe) was doing experimental animated films at the time for Edison, I think?) figuring out how to use wires, clay and a ball-socket skeleton frame armature for animation at roughly the same time, well, then the short might have had more “moxie” (to use a then current expression). Looking back at the kind of animation I was working on with clay figures, etc. when I was in grade school, I’m probably giving the creators of this short a lot more credit than necessary … but, maybe that’s the best they could do with the time and budget they had to work with.
The thumbnail is not that bad. At least the character designs are appealing. Besides, it could’ve been worst: King Features might’ve asked Filmation to do a new Popeye series.
It reminds me more of Starewitch’s The Mascot than Street of Croccodiles. Pretty good stop motion for its time.