Anyone reading my weekly Thunderbean Thursdays with any regularity knows that I especially love Scrappy. The first release of the series, Yelp Wanted, really is essential viewing for anyone who loves origins of 30s characters – and, happily, it’s an enjoyable viewing experience, too!
In this short, Scrappy’s having a great day at first, but soon discovers his dog Yippy has fallen ill. To help him out, Scrappy gets a coin from his well—protected bank (stored under his bed) and is soon chasing his coin down the street, through rough house ally. After a series of difficulties, he manages to get his coin back, gets the needed “Dr. Woof’s Dog Tonic”, then faces a series of neighborhood kids, who do everything they can to steal it. After a duck swallows it (and hatches it back out), Scrappy finally gets back to Yippy, smashing the hard-fought bottle to pieces. The good news is Yippy is better now, having delivered a plethora of puppies. Yippy was a her all along.
There’s lots of great things going on in Yelp Wanted; some of the animation and shots are really well-timed, while others seem primitive in execution, especially compared to their films just a year later. My guess is this is the second or third Scrappy cartoon produced (with the first likely being Battle of the Barn). Dick Huemer’s design and direction is a lot of fun, and he’s experimenting a lot with shot design and timing as well as moving camera ideas throughout. This cartoon seems to have a lot of elements of New York cartoons, including wise-guy Scrappy’s urchin-kid voice. The sequence with Scrappy dropping the coin (and the camera following) is especially well-done, and the surrealism of Scrappy’s coin being sympathetic to him is a nice little touch. Scrappy hiding under a woman’s dress, then apologizing (“Par-Don-Me!”) is silly, and hard not to at least smile at– and works well with his personality. His disappointment at dropping the tonic at the end, then collapsing and crying is an especially well-timed piece of animation.
While it’s not as polished as the cartoon series would be soon after, it’s an enjoyable little cartoon. One wishes this sort of care in writing this character with his personality could have followed-through better in other shorts since it’s off to such a good start. It’s one of my favorites of the series. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this one.
This is a recent scan from my 16mm print. Thanks to Thad Komorowski for selling this one to me – I’ve wanted a print again for many years.
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.
It’s unfortunate that the world’s first glimpse of Scrappy begins with a glaring layout error: his hat magically appears on the back of his chair at the same moment when his glass of milk shifts over to one side, less than a full second into the cartoon. But that sort of thing was not at all uncommon in the early days of animation.
Despite its rocky start, “Yelp Wanted” is great fun, full of little surrealistic touches that would not have been out of place in a Toby the Pup or a Bimbo cartoon. For example, when Scrappy first whistles to Yippy, a musical note comes out of his mouth, falls to the ground, and then walks into Yippy’s doghouse. The view of Rough House Alley reminds me of a political campaign ad I once saw, blaming the high violent crime rate on whatever incumbent was being targeted.
Why are the street urchins so keen to steal Scrappy’s bottle of dog tonic? Does it have opium in it?
One of these days some enterprising graduate student is going to write a dissertation on the evolution, development and cultural significance of Scrappy over the course of his cartoon series. I hope you’ll post a link to it here if and when that should ever happen.
Note that Scrappy doesn’t wear his trouser buttons in certain scenes of the cartoon, from the part where he’s chased by the group of children to the scene where he breaks the egg. The same thing happens in “The Little Pest” in the scene where he tries to catch a fish, and the crudeness of his scenes suggests that they were produced before the rest of the cartoon.
I wonder if Scrappy was given a pilot episode before Colombia approved production of the series, as was the case for Oswald with Universal.
“My guess is this is the second or third Scrappy cartoon produced (with the first likely being Battle of the Barn).”
I believe that’s correct. Art Davis’s footage is still mostly distinct from Huemer’s, although he’s already apparently trying to follow Huemer’s style/direction here, while Sid Marcus more or less continues to do his own thing.
Huemer animates the beginning up through 1:46 in the video as well as 6:36 through the end.
What scenes does Art Davis animate?
And when did Sid Marcus change the way he animated Scrappy?
Steve, knowing you and how wonderfully weird this cartoon is, I can understand now why the SCRAPPY series is a favorite of yours!