Animation Anecdotes #167
Colorized Oswald. In 1984, Fred Ladd and Entercolor Technologies Corp. did a colorization test on the Walter Lantz Oswald the Rabbit cartoon The Toy Shoppe (1934). Universal rejected it and…
Collecting 8mm
A particularly busy week here at the Thunderbean HQ, full of news. More on SOME of this news next week, as well as some new transfers. But for now, another…
In His Own Words: Jack Hannah Remembers Some Disney Shorts
Jack Hannah joined the Disney Studios in 1933 and spent five years as an animator, another five years in the story department where he was teamed with Carl Barks as…
Casey Kasem’s “Scooby Doo” Records
Casey Kasem, who passed away on Sunday at 82, lives on in hundreds of cartoons, particularly his many Scooby-Doo projects – and yet he only appeared on a few records…
Fleischer Promo Art #3: “Popeye Sez!”
Welcome to week three of Paramount Sales News. Either the first June 1934 issue was missing, or they didn’t print one this week, but we’ve got another fine assortment of…
The Tezuka Pro TV Specials #4: ‘Bremen 4: Angels in Hell’ (1981)
Bremen 4 – Jigoku no Naka no Tenshi-tachi. Bremen Four: Angels in Hell. August 23, 1981. 90 minutes, in the usual 10:00 p.m. to midnight time slot. The credits say:…
The Wind-up… The Pitch…
Remember when every normal, red-blooded American kid wanted to play baseball, and only the real weirdo’s wanted to draw pictures? Major league players like Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris were…
Animation Anecdotes #166
It Pays To Advertise. At the beginning of Wet Blanket Policy (1948) is an advertisment for the DELL comic book New Funnies that featured stories of the Walter Lantz characters….
F.D.R., the Depression – and a few New Deal Cartoons
When enough times goes by, history can seem more like mythology, with the artifacts left behind being the only things left to ‘prove’ things really happened. Time takes with it…
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]
