It’s a short one today since I’m trying to finish cleanup on a film tonight, with lots of success. I’m hoping to do a short video to show some film that just came in next week.
First — on the Thunderbean front:
As I write this on a Wednesday night, I’m surrounded by hard drives, with notes all over my computer desktop on this or that, what to fix, what to remember to find, what to finish. Teaching at the college is busy as heck during the school year, but the amazing thing is having the extra time in the summer to tackle the various film and Blu-ray projects. It seems like every summer is busier than the last; What is different this year is that I’ve never had so many projects nearing finish at once— but it seems to happen this way frequently somehow, just usually not as many.
Luke gives the thumbs up
Luke visited the tiny Thunderbean office and did some tweaking on Neptune Nonsense as well as doing some copy for the back of the Blu-ray and package art suggestions. Freelancers Dave and Becky are cranking on several films, Becca just finished another two films for the Bunin set, and Helge cut his teeth on cleanup for ‘Toonerville Picnic’. That one is almost all done as well.
The Bunin Alice in Wonderland set is really getting there, and the Halloween set is also mostly finished. Other projects are getting some attention since scans are coming in, including some more Comi-Colors. Plus, there’s two other sets I’m helping on that are rounding the corner. Some of the new film material I’m looking over right now includes a handful of 35mm Cinecolor Mini-toons produced for Coca-Cola in the 40s. I’ve never seen *any* of these ones, and that’s so exciting to share. I’ll definitely be writing more about these after we scan them. I’m definitely not lacking in being around classic animation most days.
On August 11th, I hope to join our very own Jerry Beck for a screening in New York City at the Film Forum featuring Thunderbean restorations, titled Musical Cartoons Before the Code. It’s a fun show, and always a treat to see classic animation on the big screen. It screens Monday night at 6pm… Click HERE for more info.
And… a cartoon to boot!
I’ve shown some of the Hound For Hire – Sam Basset, Private Eye cartoons in this space before, and seeing as Jerry just presented his annual Worst Cartoons Ever program at the San Diego Comicon, it seems appropriate to show a film from this nearly forgotten series.
I don’t think of the Sam Basset shorts are some of the worst cartoons at all — in fact, I really like them, but it’s an understatement to say they’re pretty strange. This audience, at Cartoon Research, is pretty familiar with oddities though. I know you can take it. I really think the sense of humor from these shorts is right at home with Beany and Cecil and The Rocky Show, and it’s clearly what they’re going for in some ways—just maybe not quite hitting the funny bone in exactly the right way, but trying really hard. You’re often left wondering what the creators of the show thought….
In this outing, The Case of the Nervous Sheriff, a Sheriff in the town of Dismal Seepage, Wyoming is terrorized by Black Bart the outlaw wolf. Sam decides to dress as the Sheriff to prevent the real sheriff from getting shot. I *think* that’s the plot anyway.
My favorite moment in this one is Sam firing his gun for no reason out the door, unintentionally killing a vulture, who crawls into the sheriff’s office and declares “You got me Sam!” Before turning over and dying. Is this cartoon for kids?
This is one of the strangest things ever to come from the Zagreb Studio. Zagreb’s animation style allows for some fun poses along the way. I hope you enjoy this strange one as much as I did today. It was a nice break from a lot of really full animation.
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.
“Come one o’clock, my honey, and maybe I’ll be gone, and then they’ll come to take me to that COR-ral way up yon. I hope, my darling, you will be true to me, true to me. And if he comes at one, my dear, will you be here? Will you be here? Will you be here? Will you be here at one, in case he comes at one, and I am done at one.”
Nice word-painting there, Sondheim. Man, I would love to hear that mournful Western ballad covered by Riders in the Sky, complete with a yodeling break. Okay? Okay!
Also, who exactly is the “honey” Sam is singing to? Is it Chapultepec?
Black Bart bears a striking resemblance to a character that’s not just well-known and beloved among those who were raised in Yugoslavia but also among those raised in other former Soviet Bloc countries, especially in Russia: the character known as Volk (which is basically the Russian word for “wolf”) from the Soyuzmultfilm cartoon series “Nu Pogodi”. In the first short in the series, Volk barely looked anything like the character he would evolve into later in the series. Considering this cartoon was released at the beginning of the 60’s, and that the first “Nu Pogodi” cartoon debuted at the end of the decade, I’m willing to bet creator Felix Kastel had a recollection of viewing this particular Sam Bassett short and took a bit of inspiration from the Black Bart character in redesigning Volk for the second cartoon. By doing so, the new look made Volk a more appealing and charismatic character, especially among the young audience it was aimed for. (This early CR article in an installment of the late Jim Korkis’ Animation Anecdotes goes into more detail about this subject: https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/animation-anecdotes-224/ ). In turn, we could go back further tracing the inspiration of the Black Bart character to the Looney Tunes short “Bye, Bye Bluebeard” (1949), in which the title character is a Russian blue wolf, complete with Russian accent and wearing an overcoat similar to the kind Rasputin wore.
It sounds like this summer has given you a kind of editorial abundance—a gravitational pull where multiple threads in your film and Blu-ray work are finding resolution all at once.
Wait, is this Sheldon Leonard as the voice of Sam Bassett?
This series is growing on me – I feel like I’m starting to get what they were going for as I watch more of them. Making the structure so dialogue-driven allows a cartoon to overcome its cheapness, and even play with it, if it’s done well – as, for instance, Jay Ward did. The style of humour in this series is different from Ward’s (or indeed, from any other creation of humankind), but I think Phil Davis must have had a similar intent here.
Was this the first cartoon series to have a “cold open” before the credits? I can’t recall seeing that elsewhere in animation.
Cold openings seems to have been one of the first bold new steps for animation directors when the 60’s ushered in the Silver Age of Animation. Gene Deitch did it for one particular Tom & Jerry cartoon (“Tall In The Trap”), and Chuck Jones would do the same for a few of his T&J’s when he took over the franchise, just as he did for some of the Road Runner cartoons in his latter years at WB. For live-action films and prime-time TV series’, cold openings were a way of adding edginess and dramatic tension to an unfolding story. But in a cartoon, it’s meant to come off as a setup for a satire on established tropes in motion pictures, particularly in westerns and crime dramas.