One of the things I really love about the internet is how many little discoveries you make if you decide to do a little bit deeper of a dive…
Its a short one today since Jerry, who lays out every article for Cartoon Research, is at the San Diego ComiCon – so I’ll keep it simple since he’s going to be putting this together in a hotel room. Have a great Con, Jerry!
I was out in Los Angeles briefly over last weekend, working on organizing a whole lot of vinegar syndrome film in a little under 7 hours. I’ll be back out again as soon as able, and maybe this time will get to visit more friends. It was nice to visit with Jerry Beck and Mark Kausler though– even though I was pretty sweaty by the time we got some food.
Mark Kausler, Jerry Beck and yours truly, Steve Stanchfield
Back in Thunderbean land, packing continues pre-orders with more special discs just getting finished. There’s a few more special discs available at the Thunderbean shop, and those will likely get to be a more rare occurrence soon.
There’s four projects being worked on at once here, and my brain goes from one to the other to the other. As things get closer to finishing, the priorities become what can get finished fastest! Until this week, I was done with my own work on the Rainbow Parade films and just waiting for one more scan and the other folks to finish the ones they had. As I was waiting, I spent time on Cartoons for Victory and the Lou Bunin set. We have the last film for the Rainbow Parade 2 set now, and it’s now an unofficial race between myself and another freelancer to see whose film will be the last to finish! It won’t be our own Devon Baxter though, who turned in his excellent restoration work on “Bold King Cole”. It’s been a great summer of progress so far.
And — onto this week’s… tags!
A handful of weeks back I found these spots that Lou Bunin did for CBS. This is the sort of thing I absolutely love — basically lost animation that was hidden for many years. These tags, for various CBS shows, have a lot of charm and imagination and keep a ‘theme’ for the season. Bunin’s animation makes these a really unique, forgotten chapter in a broadcast year. They must have been fun to see back then.
I think Bunin’s stop motion animation style is really enjoyable. It has a lot of personality, and is often popping quickly in strange ways into a pose, then slow action before quickly popping into another extreme. His work hasn’t been studied in the same ways as many animation director’s work has been over the years, but if you start to take a little bit more of the dive you’ll find all sorts of fun and creative decisions in both character design and ways of thinking about personality animation. Really interesting to watch frame-by-frame. Each of these tags is pretty creative and simple, and, like most of Bunin’s work, very personal in style.
So, here’s three minutes of fun! These are all separate on Archive.org, but I’ve made an edit of them all together. I hope you enjoy them!
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.
The shows that they’re mentioning can help narrow down when these spots were aired. For instance, I’ve looked up two of them:
Place the Face was on CBS from 2 July 1953 to 11 Dec 1954
The Red Buttons Show was on CBS from 14 October 1952 to 14 June 1954
That means, they were presented no earlier than 2 July 1953 and NLT 14 June 1954. More research would probably narrow it down further.
Coincidentally, both shows wound up moving to NBC after the dates indicated.
A very familiar voice heard in New York-made TV ads of the 50s and 60s. I probably once knew who but I can’t dredge it up at the moment.
I agree. I’m no Keith Scott, but it sounds like Eddie Lawrence – sped up.
Hi Jerry,
I vote for Phil Kramer as the voice of “Mr. Lookit” as he was known in Graphis articles on TV animation design. Phil Kramer did voice work for Clampett at Schlesinger’s too. “As my Father once said, Quote, ‘CUCKOO!!’, UNquote.”
I can hear that, Mark…. Hopefully Mr. Scott will put his ear to this.
Until Keith chimes in, I’m with Mark that it’s Phil Kramer. He’s also the emcee in Tex’s Hamateur Night, the big spider in Culhane’s Painter and the Pointer, and Tommy Tortoise in Famous’ Sleuth But Sure and Mr. Money Gags – so it tracks he would have been in NY for these by this point. A wonderfully distinct delivery.
I know it’s the cartoon nerd in me talking but I can’t help but think of Creepers from Paramount’s Jeepers and Creepers while hearing that voice.
Those were wonderful! That CBS would spend money on little stop-motion animated bits like this to hype their shows is fantastic! Definitely from another era. You won’t catch anything like this today, will you?
PS — They’ll be on the Bunin Set, won’t they?
The poor guy! He gets smashed at the end of each of these…
If the IMDB entry for “Robin Hood-Winked” that lists Phil Kramer as Popeye’s Little John is correct, then I’m also siding with Mark’s guess. The voices sound the same to me, speedup notwithstanding.
So many people mistakenly think television from this era was in the stone age when the reality was it was never smarter, hipper and cooler. Far more so than it is now and this is a perfect example. Absolutely charming. Thank you for going to the trouble of editing this together.