Mack Sennett envisioned a gag seen through binoculars for a 1928 feature film. The resulting effort became a legend of a story that saw Walter Lantz getting his first big break as an animator in Hollywood.
You can’t make this stuff up. In 1987, Filmation was actively promoting a new animated series called “Bravo!” about a group of round and furry characters called The Fuzzy Folks.
On Tuesday, we all lost a giant in the preservation of film history: David Shepard. Here is just a little about how this one person’s life helped preserve the work of many filmmakers.
Here’s the opening installment of what I’m calling “Fairy Tale February”! My initial entry looks at Disney’s first serious fairy tale adaptation in an early Silly Symphony.
Take a look at two “studio cast” LP’s from the late 1950’s featuring Walter Lantz Car-Tune songs that filled out their track lists with previously released recordings.
Today we present the roll-call of the honorees, which were mostly presented in alphabetic order. As before, I have prepared some thumbnail bios of each.
Alice is more accurate to Monkey Punch’s art style and raunchiness – which makes this probably the most R-rated column I’ve ever posted.
A story about three con artists, one of which was a very early animation pioneer, who duped the wealthy into investing in an animation studio that was planning on dominating American animation production.
In 1959, Jack Miller claimed that he had drawn at least thirty-five daily newspaper strips featuring the characters from the Crusader Rabbit series. Sadly, they’ve never been found.
Jerry Beck is a writer, animation producer, college professor and author of more than 15 books on animation history. He is a former studio exec with Nickelodeon Movies and Disney, and has written for The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. He has curated cartoons for DVD and Blu-ray compilations and has lent his expertise to dozens of bonus documentaries and audio commentaries on such. Beck is currently on the faculty of CalArts in Valencia, UCLA in Westwood and Woodbury University in Burbank – teaching animation history. More about Jerry Beck [Click Here]
