I know many of you think like I do: when the rare stuff shows up, even if it’s not top stuff, it’s still really great to see. The long hard-to-see Jerky Journeys cartoons are golden-age oddities that have, up to this point, half shown up. There are four in total in the series. Two of those are available, thanks to collectors Leonard Maltin and Mark Kausler.
Both The Three Minnies (1949) and Bungle in the Jungle (1949) are really interesting in their strangeness – their flavor is familiar and enjoyable to anyone that knows Classic Radio Shows and Warner Brothers cartoons.
Historian-of-great-note Tralfraz did a nice article about these little films and some of their creators a little while back.
As part of that article post, there’s a column from Associated Press (February 1949). Producer Leonard Louie Levinson, a former writer for Lum n’ Abner, Fibber McGee and other shows, is featured, the writer and producer of these films. Here’s a small piece of that article describing the animation process:
“They’re just breaking even,” Levinson says. “I decided to find excuses for not using animation.” An Impossible eight-minute cartoon requires about 400 sketches against 30,000 for a comparable Disney. Romantic Rumbolia, one of four completed “Jerky Journeys”, shows a Latin seaport at the siesta hour. With everybody asleep, no animation is required. The camera mopes into the capitol building and traces the country’s history on the murals. In Bungle In the Jungle, an animated lion swallows the camera, blacking out the screen. The story goes on in still pictures supposedly made with a box camera—more animation saved.
In Bungle in the Jungle, the travelogue and radio influence is clear. Frank Nelson’s gleeful narration keeps things lively, and the rendered art in this particular picture is appealing and funny, even in a black and white print (it was produced in Trucolor originally). Art Heinemann is given credit as the designer.
Of course, these two shorts are full of the sort of stuff you’d expect from the time, especially as they’re focusing on making films that are a lot more raucous than either radio or cartoons were at that time. I’m sure the audiences enjoyed them, even though they look incredible cheap compared to any other theatrical cartoons from that time.
Film history hero Leonard Maltin, who needs no introduction, was very kind to lend his rare print for scanning a few years back. We cleaned it up and included it on Eric Grayson’s excellent blu-ray/DVD compilation set Cinema Gems. The set features all sorts of oddities, including the Monsters of the Moon short, Marx Brothers Stop-Motion pilot and other oddities. It’s been available for a bit, but if you haven’t seen it, check it out. It’s available here or on Amazon.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this short— let’s hope the other two shorts from the series show up sometime soon too.
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.
This is a new one on me, and what a bungle it is. “The Three Minnies” succeeds because it tells an accumulative story, like “The House That Jack Built”, which is well suited to animation on a minuscule budget. Here, however, the occasional bursts of animation only highlight how static the rest of the cartoons is. With only the barest minimum of background music and sound effects, poor Frank Nelson has to carry the whole soundtrack virtually on his own. Is he able to rise above the subpar material? The answer, as always, is “Ye-e-e-ess!”
Penelope Mugglesby looks like Lauren Bacall. At least the Republic brass didn’t insist that the character be modelled after Vera Hruba Ralston, though they might have balked if the studio’s biggest female star were portrayed in a cartoon as a promiscuous jungle slut.
Thanks for a piece of cartoon history I had never known about before. It’s quite creative in its limited use of animation. I can just imagine what the backgrounds would have looked like in full color. And it’s always great to hear from Frank Nelson, whose talent for comedy was considerable. One of the first voices I remember doing an impression of when I was a kid, long before I knew his name or anything about him. By all means let us know if the other entries turn up!
Wow. Bungle in the Jungle feels like a B-grade Tex Avery cartoon as displayed in MAD Magazine. Thanks Steve, I had never seen that before.
Just a note – for those who want to view THE THREE MINNIES, we actually posted that one here eight years ago (it was within one of our Oscar posts – the short was submitted for Academy Award consideration) – Click Here.
I get Jethro Tull vibes when I hear the title… (ala Frank Nelson himself “Wellll..you don;t say!”)
Thanks Steve, its nice to see another one of these. The writing is a big improvement over THREE MINNIES, but the overly limited design, no matter how pretty the static drawings are, must of been an eyesore on theaters. Looks like Paul Julian did a lot of the painting here. I have a photo of ROMANTIC RUMBOLIA on my drive but no idea where I got it
There’s a frame on this webpage: https://sites.google.com/site/3dfilmarchive/roy-rogers-in-trucolor
Strangely, it looks like the “Symphony in Slang” artists copied the “beside myself with grief” pose from this short for the “beside myself with anger” gag. I always thought he looked more sad than angry.