This week is the Columbus Moving Picture Show, a convention-esque gathering of cinema fans and collectors. It follows closely in the footsteps of the long-running Cinevent in Columbus. As is the tradition for many years, I have a table in the dealer’s room with Thunderbean Blu-rays and DVDs. The event is always great in that I get to see a lot of old friends as well as make new ones. Saturday morning always features a great cartoon program, all in 16mm and always some Technicolor prints. There has rarely been a repeat of the same cartoon over the last 25 years or more!
Here’s information about the event.
In Thunderbean news:
The Little King is coming back from replication next week, and we’re preparing the preorders to go as soon as the discs arrive, along with eight special discs that are now completed. There’s great news for the Flip the Frog set as well- it will finally be off to replication at some point in the next week or so after a good inspection by the brain trust. We’ll wait until other titles are close to replication before even mentioning them.
After the Columbus weekend, there there are two sizable Thunderbean scan sessions happening on the east coast and west coast around the same time. These sessions will be wrapping up scans on several official sets as well as quite a few special sets. As things are finished, we’ll be posting about them here as well as postings on the Thunderbean Blu-ray.com thread.
In special set news:
There’s a new special set (BDR) up for pre-order called “Cartoon Stew!”. It’s available at the Thunderbean shop. Thanks to all for supporting these many projects through the years.. we’ve all made these thing happen together.
Over the summer, we almost always start a small animation project, or I take on some freelance animation gigs in addition to the Thunderbean cartoon sets. This year I’m working with some students and freelancers on an animation-history related series of bumpers. We’ll post some of these when they’re further along.
And… onto today’s cartoon: The Three Dogeteers in Courtin’ an’ a’ Snortin’ (1960)
We’ve just finished a special set called ‘Missing Links’ that has a bunch of things on it that are just bizarre, including this masterpiece. This little short was probably a TV pilot that never sold (or was it ever even seen by anyone?). Produced by B.F Zeidman. It’s possible this is the silent film star turned producer, who would have been 63 at that time, but who knows? There’s no other listing of any producer of that name I can find.
Clearly a pilot, it appears this short was shot in 16mm Kodachrome from the edits. If you can actually follow this film and give a summation of what’s going on I’ll send you a free Thunderbean DVD. Who knows who really wrote and directed this odd little short, but this fever dream of a cartoon deserves to at least be seen I think. Then again, there’s an argument to be made that it *shouldn’t* be seen, but animation history has its ups and downs, doesn’t it? It makes so little sense that I think you’ll be happy to see the end title. We owe this viewing to Jeff Missinne, who somehow always finds this sort of entertaining nonsense and blesses or curses me with the ability to scan them. I have a feeling he’s sitting back in his catbird seat while watching this particular short. Only the animated game “Animal Soccer World” beats this in terms of illogical progression of shots and story points.
Watch at your own risk, and 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 like a Sam Singer cartoon, only more headache-inducing..
Oh my goodness! I can’t possibly imagine the visual to this, but I know I will be interested in the remaining titles on this missing links Blu-ray. I believe I pre-ordered this, so I’m prepared. I’m also excited to hear that there is good things going on, and good things to come. I look forward to it all.
thank you for the weird latter-20th century goodness, steve! i think even as someone who lives for this kind of stuff, this was maddening. really is comparable to “animal soccer world.” i gotta say i like the watercolor backgrounds
After finally getting around to viewing this one, I agree the watercolor backgrounds are quite pleasing, being its only redeeming quality. I also admit the character designs are passable.
I have to admit that even with all the flaws going against this short (hack voice acting, awful pacing, and nonsensical plot), the art direction isn’t as terrible and even comes close to decent at times. The backgrounds are pleasant to look at, the character models get some good poses here and there, and the animation, while not great, is almost charming in how stiff it is.
Ultimately it’s the direction that puts this dog of a cartoon down. I’m not sure who else worked on this short, but I have the feeling the people involved tried to emulate the limited animation styles of the time but couldn’t quite grasp how it all worked and fell back on plot cliches that were out of date by 1940.
In any case I wouldn’t dare compare it to “Animal Soccer World” – it’s more like a Soviet or Japanese short that some American producer got the rights to on the cheap butchered up for his ‘kiddy’ audience.
Also, I *was* able to follow the short for some reason or another, and from what I can gather the plot goes something like this:
There are three dogs: Chicho, a terrier with a bad Mexican accent; Clancy, a generic bulldog; and Pet Charm, a sighthound of some kind that speaks in a very long drawl.
Clancy has given Pet Charm some roses in an attempt to woo her, but Pet Charm is secretly in love with Chico. Their tears form two massive puddles, which somehow gain life and kiss one another. However, Pet Charm has cried so much into Clancy’s mouth that he swells up like a water balloon. Chico jumps on him to get the water out, but bumps his head on a tree branch and lands on a prickly pine.
Later, Chico delivers a tamale to Pet Charm, but its wrapper gets stuck around Clancy’s foot and trips him. Chico finds a hula hoop, but is too small to use it. Clancy accepts the challenge, but works up such a sweat that the ground beneath him turns into mud and he sinks in. Chico throws some ice water on him to cool off, and Pet Charm awards Clancy a bone for his hula-hooping feat. Clancy tells Chico to go away and chases him to a train station, where Chico throws tomatoes at him. Chico jumps off a cliff to escape the bulldog and lands in some water, but Clancy jumps after him and is knocked out. Chico revives him and the chase continues.
Eventually the two run through a forested area and encounter a wild boar. The three get into a fight, and the two dogs scare the hog away by biting it on the hocks. The two dogs make up, and Pet Charm gives them a bowl of food to share.
That’s a good synopsis, Byron. You should hold Steve to his promise.
Thanks (I think…) to Steve for posting this cartoon. Some of the random weirdnesses I’d like to point out are the unknown gag writer’s apparent obsession with gags about water (tears, perspiration, ice water, river water) or other liquids (tomato juice, spilled paint,) and the pastel color scheme which seems to have been inspired by a dish of Jordan Almonds. Also, why “Pet Charm”? I guess it makes about as much sense as anything else in this epic.
It may be worth noting that while the title on screen is “Courtin’ an’ a-Snortin’,” the ID written by the lab on the negative and printed into the leaders is “Rivals In Love.” Working title? Again, why not??
Egads, what an interesting oddity this is! These designs feel so woefully unsuited for the limited animation of the early 60s, and moreso for a production with a higher budget allowing for more full animation.
In spite of its flaws, like the Byron chap above me, since I’m the sort of bloke who likes to try to find the good in the bad, there’s indeed some stuff I quite like about this.
The bulldog in particular gets me in how he wouldn’t have been out of place in an old 60s gag-anime – a pal of mine pointed that out elsewhere and I can’t unsee the resemblance. And the scenery is especially attractive – a pity there’s no credits on this print, as I’d love to know who did ’em!!
All-in-all, thanks for posting this bit of weirdness. ‘Tis most interesting whenever obscure pilot films like this that nobody’s brought up anywhere else randomly show up.
We can only strain out brains wondering where in the world the creator of this short thought the “series” would be going after this pilot. After coining a group name for the trio as “The Three Dogeteers”, and using that odd intro where the Chihuahua refers to the others as his “amigos”, you would think they were supposed to be some sort of a team unified against a common foe. Yet the pilot plot portrays exactly the opposite, with everyone seeming to be at cross-purposes to each other. The Chihuahua and bulldog are obviously played as mortal enemies for all but the last sequence of the cartoon, and the girl doesn’t help much by seeming to have her affections hopelessly split between the two of them, thus only encouraging their divisiveness. So how can these characters ever work functionally as a team? It’s not like there’s always going to be a wild boar around to unify the two boys. And what does the girl offer as qualities to help any quest? Is she there just to play referee, while staying entirely out of the scrapes? Or is she just supposed to serve as an “eek” girl to fall into peril every time, with the other dogs fighting like Popeye and Bluto to rescue her? There is simply not a feel of any strong motivational concept to provide any guidance as to where future plots should go. Instead, it plays like a random one-shot, leaving you to never expect to see the characters again (which in reality came true). So why invent a “team” title at all?
Magnifico, I think! “Courtin’ an’ a Snortin'” certainly ranks alongside “Monkey Doodle” and “The Kangeroo [sic] Kid” as one of “the strangest cartoons ever made!” I hope you’ll be able to share additional information on its background if it ever comes to light. I think “Pet Charm” may be short for Petula Charmaine. Anyway, it suits her.
But wait? What’s that photo you’ve posted here without comment? Is it a Mickey Mouse cookie jar with… nipples?
The picture is tagged “pretty photo”, but it sure as heck ain’t…
What’s it about?
About 7:22 too long.
Wow, Steve, you really weren’t kidding! This is an absolutely bizarre, train-of-thought cartoon!
As a bad pun enthusiast, I must say that “Three Dogeteers” is an absolutely painful pun, even by my low standards. Why didn’t they go with “Three Mutteteers,” which is something I literally came up with in seconds? It’s still admittedly not a great pun, but at least it makes phonetic sense. Anyway, their name suggests these characters are supposedly a trio, but two out of three of them end up working against each other for the majority of the cartoon. I’m gonna take a stab and assume this is their origin story.
Thanks for sharing this!
Yeah, I agreel. Saw this last night and thought, “oh, yeah, they’re a team”, but it’s the Popeyee.. trope.. with no girl they fight over, Pet Charm, drawling so slow that she sounds sad.;.and the water/tear thing was strange..SC
Animal Soccer World? It’s 10x worse than this! Sure, movements are limiting, voice acting isn’t perfect, but at least the backgrounds and visual art style are at least a bit charming!
At long last…something even MORE repulsive than a 60s popeye!
Honestly, I thought the ones by Paramount themselves (and one or two of the other studios) were decent. It’s Kinney’s (and Larry Harmon’s) that were the real problem.
I thought this was a situation like the Nutty Squirrels show where the producer bought cartoons made overseas and stuck an English-language soundtrack on it, but there are attempts at animating the mouth movements to the dialogue.
This makes Sam Singer look like Walt Disney. Those who were capable of watching it to the end have my admiration.
I don’t recognise the stock music. I can’t find a reference in the Copyright Catalogue. Variety has no mention of Zeidman at this stage.
Uncle. Uncle! U N C L E ! ! ! !
I’m a sucker for big-eyed lady dogs, so it wasn’t a total waste of time for me. Thanks (unironically) for the post.
I LUV junk from Stanchfield. Sam Bassett is also gloriously stupid, and for me, it’s sort of a guilty pleasure.
I don’t know why, but while I can sincerely enjoy really rotten movies, really bad cartoons just piss me off.
Watching this, I got very pissed off.
The witless writing, the glacial pacing of the “gags,” the weird obsession (as already noted) with jokes involving water, tears and other liquids (the tears dripping in the bulldog’s mouth was just kinda gross), the awful voice acting (why do the voices in really bad cartoons always speak so slowly! most of the time, there was no synch with the mouths anyway!) — all of it just added up to 7+ excrutiating minutes.
Thanks, I guess?
That female dog’s VA was godawful. I stopped watching, my ears threatened mutiny.