After having my head nearly all the time into finishing the Flip the Frog Blu-ray, then nearly all the time on the Van Beuren Tom and Jerry Blu-ray and at the same time heavily on non-Thunderbean (but all cartoon) projects, I’m looking forward to a break from digital things. School starts this coming week, so working with students in my full-time job will be a nice ‘break’ from the full time work over this summer on all these films. It’s been so busy that actually finishing each thing feels impossible as its happening, but it’s all happening.
After spending these past few weeks working with a lot of successive exposure materials (both Fleischer and Iwerks), I’m starting to think about scanning the single color records on some of the Technicolor Rainbow Parades and combining them into the Technicolor prints by splitting those prints back into their separations, then rebuilding adding the fine grain single color record. It’s worth trying to compare results, I think, but something we can’t get stuck on too long since we have to keep getting through these projects. Pretty soon you’ll see a shift here of subject matter as we start working on these next handful of projects.
Since Tom and Jerry is on the cusp of being finished, I thought I’d share the final version of Dough Nuts (1933). As we progressed through the set, I thought we had a pretty good idea of what we had original titles on and what we didn’t. To my great surprise, just as we were finishing the set, Cartoonologist Thad Komorowski mentioned to me he had a 16mm print on this film, so I asked, on a whim, if he could check to see what the titles looked like. To my great surprise, they were the original ones (the only print I’ve seen or heard of that had them). We scanned the film as soon as we could, cleaned it up and combined the best footage from each print; Tommy Stathes’ excellent 16mm print was able to make the final version complete and splice-free.
Here’s the final, restored version we’ve finished for the set as a special sneak preview for everyone here. We’ve featured this cartoon before—it’s one of my favorites of the Tom and Jerrys, and it’s nice to see it as close as possible now to its original version.
This particular project has had a handful of people that played a large roll in being able to get the best materials possible. I’m incredibly grateful and happy it’s finally rounding the final corners!
Have a good week all and more soon!
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.
“D’oh! Nuts!” — Homer Simpson
A beautiful restoration of a great cartoon. I love that smooth mid-‘30s Van Beuren animation!
Early in the cartoon we hear “Down Where the Würzburger Flows”, a turn-of-the-century drinking song by Harry Von Tilzer. It’s not one of his best-remembered songs, but it was a big enough hit that the Anheuser-Busch brewing company commissioned another one from him in the same vein, “Under the Anheuser Bush”.
The scene with the matzoh on the gramophone reminds me of something I heard years ago: that in the 1960s people used to play frozen pizzas on their record players while dropping acid. Does anyone know if there’s any truth to that? It certainly wouldn’t be good for your needle.
Never happened. Really. Maybe a joke someone like Steve Allen made once.
“3.2” refers to beer with 3.2% alcohol. During Prohibition, malt beverages (beer, ale, etc.) could only be 0.5% alcohol. This was raised to 3.2% in 1933 during the runup to ratification of the 21st Amendment repealing Prohibition, so it’s easy to see why it would be so popular in the cartoon.
This might be my favorite of the Van Bueren Tom and Jerry cartoons. Really cool to see it with original titles and in such a clean restoration!
Hi Steve,
How come you only shared about four minutes of “Doughnuts”, when you said the complete restoration was available? Is this the way you sell more Tom and Jerry Blu-Rays? Oy, Yo! Say it’s not so!
Mark
Hi Mark–
It really wasn’t– I had left the youtube uploading at the office and, somehow I either made the quicktime too short or it didn’t load all the way. Either way, I’m sorry for the slight everyone!
Such an excellent restoration! Looking forward to receiving the Tom and Jerry blu!
“I’m starting to think about scanning the single color records on some of the Technicolor Rainbow Parades and combining them into the Technicolor prints by splitting those prints back into their separations, then rebuilding adding the fine grain single color record.” I love it when you talk nerdy! Like combining two differently framed 16mm reductions to yield a more complete frame, this inventive idea sounds like a lot of work that may or may not ultimately pan out, but who, besides Thunderbean, would even attempt it? More power to ya! I hope it works. Regardless, I expect we’ll be seeing these cartoons with the best color yet.
I have faith in the Thunderbean team! If they can combine 16mm prints to make a more complete frame, I’m sure they can use the surviving separation negs of the Technicolor Rainbow Parades to improve the colours that are on the finished 35mm prints! You can do it, Steve!
I’m with Mark. You cut it off right when it was getting good!
The high point of this fragment is when the three judges do their shuffle-dance. The mouths are so well animated, I swear a lip-reader would have no trouble translating it.
As always, Steve, I am so thankful for what you attempt! I am not only looking very much forward to “flip the frog“, but I am looking forward to this as well. These will be the talked about releases of the year! I only hope the Warner archive even strives to do as much as you do to retain and restore classic animated cartoons. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
How will you deal with color correction on partial separation combinations? Let’s say you have one red separation, and a print with all three channels. Color correct the print, then attempt to adjust the curves on the red separation so that they look like the red layer on the print *corrected*?
Might achieve messy results if you’re not careful, but I’m not one to judge.
Excellent work on DOUGH NUTS and other things as always, Steve! Sincerely, Jackson
Yes, sort of- getting a basic balance on the color, the separating the film back into three channels, removing whatever channel we have the neg on, then recombining the channels with the new channel. I’m debating it right now for sure. If one film has two of the three, that might be the best candidate to try as an experiment…