Once again we flash back to the 1970s, for a reprint of Howard Beckerman’s great animation column in Filmmakers Newsletter. Animator/educator/historian Beckerman, passed away last June at the age of 94. Today, Howard’s Animation Kit column from October 1973, offers his contemporary view of Bakshi’s second feature – and weighs in on the origin of Casper the Friendly Ghost. Check in regularly to see more of these. – Jerry Beck
In the recent feature-length animated film, Heavy Traffic, there is a satiric bit with a comic strip syndicate head depicted as senile, old, and crumbling, much like the aged industrialist in THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT. The action turns on the hero of the film showing his latest comic strip creation, a way-out version of the Christ story, with dire results for the old syndicate chief.
Ralph Bakshi wrote and directed this film after last year’s box office success with Fritz The Cat, and coincidentally, the hero of Heavy Traffic looks very much like Bakshi.
It reminded me of the time when Ralph and I first met several years ago. He was hoping to sell a comic strip and the syndicate people were giving him a hard time. One of Ralph’s ideas was to do a strip that would portray Brooklyn as he knew it, with all the reality, and not to do it so it would look like the usual “Dennis the Menace” or “Hi and Lois” kind of thing.
In Heavy Traffic, he not only gives the syndicate people their lumps but he makes an attempt at depicting his Brooklyn. To many of us, Brooklyn is a place that recalls Sunday afternoons at Prospect Park or the zoo. Bakshi’s Brooklyn is replete with gangsters, prostitutes, violence and sex, much in the manner of the novel,”The Last Exit To Brooklyn,” written by a contemporary of Bakshi’s.
“The film details the trials and tribulations of a young budding cartoonist who is hemmed in by an uncouth Italian father and an equally uncouth Jewish mother who lights endless candles and proffers tons of food to her growing boy. The son has as little to do with his gross parents as he can; not only is he trying to sell his comic strip but he is actively trying to lose his virginity. He takes up with a black streetwalker, which amazes his father who has already offered him a prodigiously fat friend of his. The script uses all the usual profanity, along with bits of earthy sidewalk philosophy.
Periodicals such as the “New York Times” and “New York-magazine, which are generally both highly critical of films, reviewed Heavy Traffic with acclaim. Since this film is definitely not of the cutesy-pie cartoon genre, complete with bouncing bunny rabbits and cuddly kittens, it must receive credit for telling it like it is. However, I personally felt that the story seemed to wander off the track from time to time and that the excessive use of blood was not only unnecessary but also cancelled out its importance at those “but also cancelled out its importance at those moments when it was needed. The same holds true for four letter words and cartoon genitals, which somehow are not erotic.”
Technically, the film is quite good, I must mention that the picture contains some live action sequences and that the transition from cartoon to reality is well done. The animators most have had a ball with this one because the animation is professional and freewheeling. The use of live action and some delichtful sequences using only “pose” drawings enabled the producers to get this one out in eight months. Anyone inter ested in animation and who can quality to see an X-rated movie should see Heavy Traffic. If you happen to be lrish, Italian, Black, Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, male, female, young or old, don’t be surprised if you’re offended.
THE MASKED PENCIL AWARD
From time to time we deem it a pleasure, no, a necessity, to select someone in the animation field to receive the coveted Masked Pencil Award. This award is given as a result of the tendency in this field for many of the creative people to remain anonymous.
This time the award goes to Joseph Oriolo for his creation of Casper the Friendly Ghost. Joe created the character whie the Fleischer studio (later Famous Studios) was still in Florida, about 1944. He created the character as a device to soothe his little girl’s fear of the dark. Together with Seymour Reit he wrote the original story which elicited the interest of Grosset and Dunlap. However, the studio had requested, as they did from time to time, that the artist submit any new character or story ideas. Oriolo and Reit submitted the Casper character.
The studio accepted it, and for $175.00 and some small print in the contract, the character passed on to Famous Studios.
Casper was to appear in one short story, but as has happened to many other cartoon characters, Casper became a star. He was also nominated for an Academy Award, hardly the usual reception granted the Famous product. Paramount, the parent studio, later sold all of the properties to Harvey Comics magazine, which now releases them to television, Casper included.
Oriolo and Reit have received no further compensation for the character or story. Oriolo later became the producer of Felix the Cat and Hercules TV cartoons and is now developing new properties. Reit has been pursuing his career as a writer including work for the highly acclaimed Bank Street series of texts.
Howard Beckerman was a veteran New York animator who began his career on staff at Paramount’s Famous Studios and UPA in the 1950s, before embarking on a career as an independent animation filmmaker, writer, print cartoonist and college professor (SVA, Parsons). He was a columnist for Backstage and the Animation Editor of Filmmakers Newsletter. He passed away at age 93 this past June, 2024
I originally thought that Robert Crumb had a hand in writing and producing “heavy traffic“ along with Ralph Bakshi, but this is not the case. This is a Bakshi original.
The cartoon itself is an interesting idea. It belonged with the “underground“ cartoons, which is why I probably linked it immediately to Robert Crumb. At any rate, I thought the film was an interesting idea. An animator drifts off into his own private world, wanting to get away from the world. He comes from or inhabits during the day. It is there that it turns to animation! Again, I happen to like the film for what it is, or what I think it is as mentioned here. It made me wonder what a golden age animator might have done with a concept like this if allowed to. It probably would have only been in the days of “forbidden“ Hollywood, before the code, that he or she would’ve been able to get away with this! However, my mind reels.
Imagine if this kind of a film had the kind of beautiful fluid animation like, say, that of the MGM studios in the late 1930s or early 1940s. I like these Howard Beckerman columns. I hope you reprint more of them.
Considering that Crumb was so disgusted with the Fritz the Cat movie that he had Fritz killed off, it doesn’t surprise me that he wanted nothing to do with Bakshi.
Great stuff by the great Howard Beckerman!
But Casper was never nominated for an Academy Award. Maybe Howard just assumed that, since Famous desperately submitted Casper cartoons year after year after year, that one of them MUST have been nominated… right?
Good reprint–and from the month and year I was born! Point of correction: No cartoon from Famous Studios was ever a nominee for Best Cartoon Short Subject by the Academy. Perhaps Mr. Beckerman meant that Famous had considered a “Casper” cartoon good enough to submit to the Academy for consideration as a nominee.
The Casper origin is only marred by Howard Beckerman’s mis-remembering the time frame. If Oriolo first came up with the Casper concept whilst at Fleischer it would have been in 1941 or during the upheaval that saw the closure of Fleischer studios. Once the final contracted Fleischer cartoons were completed in 1942, Famous was already releasing the output by late summer, and the staff began heading back to Manhattan late that year and in early ’43.
Heavy Traffic and Coonskin both deserve to be in the national film registry!