My good friend David Gerstein and I often imitate this particular cartoon when we think about the early sound years – and since this was part of the show this week in New York, I thought it would be fun to share it.
But first — the doings of Thunder and Bean:
Jerry and I introduce and explain the films we screened this weekend in New York
(Photo by Kevin Schreck)
I’m just getting back from the trip, and took an extra day to scan a bunch of things. Some of the films we just did are Mini-Toons made for Coca Cola – all in 35mm Super Cinecolor. I’ve never seen any of these particular spots – and looking forward to sharing them when we’re ready to! More on this soon.
After I recover from all the driving on this trip(!) Im excited to get several things completely finished that are ahead of hare’s breath away from being final. Rainbow Parades volume 2 is one of those.
And now — onto our cartoon!
Romeeow (1930) feels the most like an older Felix than the other sound releases that were made specifically for sound release. It’s clever and funny, and the simple execution of gags keeps each new additional gag a surprise until it happens. It’s also well animated throughout. Even though it was made to work with sound, it’s pretty clear that the studio had no idea how to change the production methodology to best utilize music and sound. The track is almost an afterthought, and other than enjoying the strangeness of Felix’s little chirping meows, there’s not much there that makes the film better in any way.
Still, this is one of my favorites of the series. It was really fun seeing an audience enjoy the short on Monday. This is scanned from the original camera negative — one of the very few that exists on the original Felix the Cat shorts. We haven’t cleaned up this short as of yet, but at some point we will. One of the coolest things about seeing the camera neg is that you can see the pencil line work underneath the inking very clearly in some shots. Funny enough, this same short has shown up in other 35mm prints, but note that this print is full silent frame since it’s the camera neg.
One of these days David Gerstein and myself will return to the Felix project along with other collaborators most likely – but definitely after our whole plate is a little less busy. Have a good week all!
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.
As you say, the main drawback to “Romeeow”, in common with the other late Felixes that I’ve seen, is its lacklustre soundtrack. But visually, the cartoon is replete with surreal and unexpected visual gags that rival in bizarreness anything the Fleischer studio was doing that year. I especially like the fencing bird, and the knotted handkerchief on the young duck’s bill turning into a rabbit and hopping away. Sorry, should I have said “Spoiler alert”?
I’d like to know more about Jacques Kopfstein. The man who brought Les Elton’s “Monkey Doodle” into the world must have been quite a character!
Judging by his biographical sketch in the Motion Picture Almanac–I’m looking at the 1941-42 edition–Kopfstein spent most of his career in the movies as a businessman, after briefly working in the creative end as a scriptwriter for Vitagraph and others during the early-mid ‘teens. Given his background, I suspect he only brought the Elton characters into the world in the sense that he picked the cartoons up for distribution. The back of my mind says he was involved in distributing the Boyd La Vero “Marty Monk” cartoons as well, but I haven’t been able to remember where I saw that (if I did.)
Thanks for that info, Richard. I didn’t think Kopfstein had any creative input into “Monkey Doodle”, but he must have seen enough value in Les Elton’s work to want to bring it to the big screen. I also found out that Kopfstein (1891-1957) finished up his career as an executive VP for Associated Artists Productions in the ’50s.
Do you know why the soundtracks for Felix cartoons produced by Copley Pictures were so bad?
In those days, even cartoons produced by small studios like Audio-Cinema had much better musical accompaniment.
We can only guess, but one possibility has to do with the quality of talent responsible for the music. Phil Scheib did the Terrytoons and some other Audio Cinema products, and he was clearly well suited to the job. Scheib’s ad in the 1933 Film Daily Year Book says he was running a “synchronizing service” (musical accompaniment for films) as a sideline, so the man could score 26 Terrytoons a year and still have time to do the same on a freelance basis. John Canemaker says the Felixes were scored by Bernard Altschuler’s Symphonic Recording Orchestra, and who knows anything about them? We don’t even know if Altschuler wrote the scores, or if he was just the leader.
Another factor could be the time involved–Scheib clearly could work fast and cheap, and perhaps the people involved with Felix couldn’t do that, or didn’t care enough to try. Canemaker also sys these cartoon were produced by a “skeleton” crew–perhaps Pat Sullivan wasn’t interested enough to put money into decent soundtracks.
Bernard Altschuler was a cellist who made many recordings with the McKee Trio and the Riviera Trio. He was a fine musician, but the new medium of sound cartoons must have lain outside of his area of expertise, and he can’t be faulted for failing to see its potential. Sullivan himself wouldn’t have provided any guidance as to the kind of soundtrack he wanted, since he didn’t want any soundtrack at all.
The Altschulers were a large musical family containing many distinguished cellists. Bernard’s first cousin, cellist Gregory Aller, changed his surname because he felt that there were already too many cellists named Altschuler. His daughter, Eleanor Aller, was principal cellist in the Warner Bros. studio orchestra for many years beginning in 1939. Of her colleagues she wrote: “I never met such a lousy bunch of people.”
With Halloween fastly approaching, I want some news on the delayed “Spooky Cartoony Halloween” set
Is it ready to ship or what?
An excellent, imaginative cartoon, the film demonstrates the great efforts made by Pat Sullivan and Otto Messmer to preserve the style and creativity of silent films in their cartoons, rather than stupidly following the sound film movement and producing musical cartoons.
Unfortunately, it was also because Sullivan and Messmer wanted to preserve the silent style that producers put pressure on them by cutting off funding so that their cartoons would become musicals like the others, but despite everything, Messmer and Sullivan held firm and continued to produce Felix silent cartoons until Sullivan’s death.
I just wanted to let you know that some of us – maybe a lot of us – are still interested in the Felix set, and pass on my hopes to see it:
I sure hope you and David Gerstein, et al., will be able to get back to the Felix project – sooner rather than later, I hope! I’ve been looking forward to the Felixes from you for about a dozen years now. He’s “tied for third” among my favorite cartoon characters, with Betty Boop.
Received the “Mid Century Modern” Vol. 3 not long ago, and I’m looking forward to the “Rainbow Parade” Vol. 2, Ub Iwerks’s Comicolors, the Bunins, and whatever else you’re working on. Thanx for “Romeeow” – it looks great!
Wow! Great to see a Felix so clean and sharp! I love how the crude sound technique contrasts with the very sophisticated (and relentless!) metamorphosis gags. Terrific stuff!
I saw this in Chicago’s Music Box Theatre a few weeks ago as part of the Fleischer program they had going, and since a lot of Felix is a blindspot for me (only really saw some of the silents + Van Beuren), this was a real delight. Probably one of the favorite Felix cartoons I have seen.
One thing I really love about this is the backgrounds and simplified drawings. Just look at that motorcycle! Artists today would be worried about not getting it right, whereas here it’s two tires and some cylinders. The backgrounds in Otto Messmer’s cartoons have always been so striking in their minimalism, but here the castles off in the background look so stark and modern. I love it. Plus it helps with the weird visual gags that Felix has always been known for. Thanks for sharing the link; I will be rewatching this one quite a bit!