The opinion of BOXOFFICE magazine in 1957. Includes a little love for Terrytoons – and voted a CinemaScope Farmer AlFalfa cartoon one of the best of the year!
As someone who grew up on countdown shows like American Top 40, I was pleasantly surprised forty years ago to learn that there used to be top-ten lists for Golden Age Cartoons — and in real time. From 1939 to 1971, Several trade magazines for exhibitors – BoxOffice, Showman’s Trade Reviews and particularly Motion Picture Herald — had an annual top-ten lists of “Money-Making” short subjects.
Some of the series making the lists each year were live-action, as in Pete Smith Specialties, but most series were animated. Some writings about Bugs Bunny note that the series Bugs Bunny Specials topped the list each year from 1945 to 1960. I looked over the lists when I was in college thirty years ago, and I noticed that exhibitors expressed preferences for series in ways that seemed detrimental to the theatrical cartoon industry — especially after the decline of the movie industry began in earnest in the 1950s.
Focusing in on Motion Picture Herald, the best year for animation in the list was 1956. Eight of the ten series were animated. Walter Lantz’s Cartunes were in 10th place. Paramount’s Popeye was at #8, Merrie Melodies-Looney Tunes at #6, MGM CinemaScope Cartoons at #5, MGM Cartoons at #4, UPA’s Mister Magoo at #3, Walt Disney Cartoons at #2, and Bugs Bunny topping the list. By then, television had helped to put live-action shorts out of business, thus leaving exhibitors with cartoons by default. Moreover, nearly every studio actively making short cartoons had a series in the list that year. Terrytoons did not, and in fact between 1940 and 1957 it did not make the list at all.
Publicity for “Abner The Baseball”
in BOXOFFICE magazine, 1961
This is where the detriment comes in. In the lists of 1961 and 1962, reissues were popular. That was good news for film distributors but not for active theatrical animation studios. Poor Paramount was still making cartoons, but they were not as popular as the Popeye series it no longer produced.
Former MGM co-directors William Hanna and Joseph Barbera were toiling away at Columbia with Loopy De Loop but competed with themselves via the Tom and Jerry reissues. The lists from these years prove the points of writers saying that distributors closed studios when they learned they could make nearly as much money from reruns as with new cartoons.
United Artists trade advertisement 1972
All in all, the lists are a good resource for anyone looking at the age of theatrical animation from more of a business lens.
Christopher P. Lehman is a professor of ethnic studies at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota. His books include American Animated Cartoons of the Vietnam Era and The Colored Cartoon, and he has been a visiting fellow at Harvard University.
I suppose the decline of the big theatrical animation studios was, in a way, good news for independent producers, whose animated shorts were increasingly recognised by the Academy during this time period. The Oscar winner for 1971, Ted Petok’s “The Crunch Bird”, was the first to be produced in a part of the United States (i.e., Michigan) outside of either greater New York or Southern California. Detroiters may recall Petok’s work from his long-running TV commercials — “Here, Dawg! C’mon, Dawg! Me and Dawg want you to go to Telegraph Road RIGHT NOOOOOOW!” — for two Ford dealerships on that suburban thoroughfare.
But commercial work was the bread-and-butter for most independent studios. Animated shorts for theatrical release, despite the potential prestige that might accrue to them, could only comprise a tiny portion of their output. Making an entire series would have been out of the question.
Do these trade magazines mention how they compiled their Top Ten lists? Did they survey exhibitors for their opinions, or was it purely an editorial decision?
Don’t quite understand how these “money making” top 10 lists worked.
My understanding is that a studio would release a feature, together with a cartoon(s) the studio personally selected.
Theatre managers may request more Bugs Bunny, but that didn’t automatically mean they were going to be sent one.
So a cartoon released with a box office hit would be seen by a wider audience than a cartoon released with a boxoffice flop.
Are they saying that in 1967 e.g. a Merlin The Magic Mouse cartoon (paired with box office hit Bonnie and Clyde), would be a bigger money-maker than a Woody Woodpecker cartoon (paired with the smaller grossing The Kings Pirate)?
While an occasional first run feature, in a premiere release engagement may indeed be paired with a new cartoon from the studio releasing that feature – most cartoons were not tied to any particular film (and in many cases, were not shown with features from the same studio). It was like that in the 1930s and 40s in theaters owned and controlled by the major studios – but even then a Warner cartoon or a Paramount cartoon could play in any theater the studios could muster bookings for that series.
“Series” is the key word here. Exhibitors booked cartoons by series, usually for a year. These polls, especially in the 1960s, are based on what the studios reported to be their earnings by series – not by individual cartoon titles. In other words, these rankings have nothing to do with what individual cartoons earned, nor the feature these short cartoons played with.
Thanks Jerry
I was prompted to revisit the Russell Merritt/J.B.Kaufman book on Silly Symphonies,where they were able to track down many of the full length features they accompanied – many of them releases from another studio. e.g. the Harman/Ising assisted Merbabies was actually released with an MGM feature at Graumans.
My memories of movie going in Australia in the 1960’s and 1970s is that only Warner Brothers cartoons accompanied Warner Brothers films, Disney with Disney, DePatie/Freleng with UA etc – the exception being the cartoon carnival programs. Although I recall a past Australian TV movie host recalling it was not unusual for Disney Cartoons to accompany Warner Brothers releases in the 1940’s.
Re your comment on series:
So theoretically it’s possible that a theater (maybe group?) could have a contract with Warner Brothers features for a year, and a separate contract with Universal for its cartoons for that same year –
While another theater (maybe group) could at the same time have a contract with Universal features for a year, and a separate contract with Warner Brothers for its cartoons for that year?
First off, I have no knowledge of how short cartoons were contracted to theaters outside the USA. Things could be different there.
Second, as I mentioned above, block booking (i.e. WB cartoons playing with WB features, etc) was commonplace in the 1930s and 40s – but not strictly so.
Yes.
Yes.
BUT its also possible (and probable) for theaters to have multiple contracts, with multiple studios. When I grew up in the 1960s, one local theater near me ONLY played United Artists shorts (live and animated). Another nearby theater seemed to have a deal with both Universal (ugh! I saw all those awful Woody’s that way) and Fox (60s Terrytoons – more ugh). I never saw a WB, MGM or Paramount cartoon in a theater in the 60s – they just never played at my various neighborhood theaters in Queens, NY.
Sometimes the movie BUSINESS side baffles me.
The 1971 list Chris refers to has Road Runner at No. 1 and Tom and Jerry at No. 4, yet the theatre owners in your neighbourhood resist playing them.
It’s as daft as the NY Disney film festivals, where films only had a limited number of screenings – while each film ran virtually everywhere else for as many weeks as ticket-goers were willing to turn up.
(Maybe a large percentage of New Yorkers simply did not like Disney or cartoons?)
It’s interesting the way the studios divided their shorts series (or not). Bugs Bunny gets his own series, but the rest of the Looney Tunes or Merrie Melodies don’t? (Especially since the two titles were assigned basically at random from the mid-forties onward.) Why are all Walter Lantz cartoons listed under the Cartune title when it hasn’t been in use since 1947 or so? Wasn’t Woody popular enough to be listed as a separate series like Bugs? How much of this was due to audience or theater demand, and how much was subject to the whims of the studio?
Bugs was a breakout star in the color “Merrie Melodies” series between 1940 and 1943. Back then “Looney Tunes” weren’t in color, and Bugs didn’t star in that series. WB made more episodes of Bugs to help boost bookings of “Melodies.” WB switched “Looney Tunes” to color in 1944, making that series indistinguishable from “Melodies.” So, WB grouped “Melodies” and “Tunes” together as one series and made a separate series of “Bugs” to meet exhibitor demand.
Lantz’s “Cartune” label appeared in his films for Universal Pictures. Only briefly in his time at United Artists did he use “cartoon” instead. When Lantz made only new “Woody” episodes in 1951 and 1952, Universal did market the cartoons as the “Woody Woodpecker” series. However, he made only 13 cartoons a year, and perhaps it made more economic sense for Universal to group all the cartoons with all his characters together as “Cartunes.”
Wasn’t there a network “Woody Woodpecker Show” similar to “The Bugs Bunny Show,” with originally animated interstitials and Walter Lantz doing little bits about how cartoons are made? There was also the 1960s “Porky Pig” with new animation done by Hal Seeger (who wasn’t quite able to keep the characters on model), but that might have been done for syndication. As for local cartoons shows (that simply showed the cartoons themselves without any kind of a “host”), that seems to be up to the TV station itself. What was always interesting was how if it was “Bugs Bunny,” that usually meant only the first cartoon would be Bugs, likewise “Tom and Jerry”; but if it was “Popeye,” it would be nothing but Popeye because those were sold to TV separately from the other Fleischer/Famous cartoons. Similarly, for decades Warner Bros. cartoons were divided on TV between pre-1948 (in 1956 Warner Bros. sold its entire pre-1948 film library) and post-1948, until “Looney Tunes On Nickelodeon” brought the eras together in the late ’80s, becoming the first time you could see the first and last Looney Tune on the same show.
The Woody show was in syndication when I was a kid. It was on at 6:30 p.m. Sundays when I watched it. Besides the cartoons, it filled time with an “Around the World With Woody” segment where Woody and Lantz commented over old stock or newsreel footage, as well as the great little segments on how to make cartoons.
The decline of the theatrical short cartoon seems sad, and must have been discouraging for young artists hoping to get into animation with such decreasing opportunity, but it’s the inevitable life cycle. Nothing lasts forever. The luckiest ones were the animators who got into the business in the late ’20s and during the ’30s, working steadily on the now-classic short cartoons (some even got to work on features). When things started slowing down in the ’50s, there were new opportunities on TV: original TV cartoons, commercials, and specials. By the ’70s, of course, the aging artists themselves were slowing down. But what a career they had!
I like that someone included the Pink Panther’s credit-hogging gag from his eponymous feature debut in that advert.
My favorite late cartoons shorts are the Hubley/Storyboard films. As cartoons settled into TV-style stuff at Lantz and Famous at least he was trying to explore the medium. Only problem was that Hubley obviously wanted you to take his films *as* drawings, which kind of ruin the point of animation, right?
I am probably the only user that loves the Reitherman Disney features.
I love “The Jungle Book”.
“Niagara Fools” being ranked behind a Terrytoons short is an outrageous thing to behold.
This here, with Mr Magoo mentioned, reminds me that once in the late ’60s I recall seeing the entire Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol at a drive-in with my parents; alongside whatever the main feature was. I sorta wonder if anyone else remembers that or knows of it being part of that cartoons history?
And, was the absence of Bugs Bunny in any new cartoons through much of the ’60s and ’70s, any sort of decision to “keep him in reserve” should theatricals rebound?
Yes – UPA released MAGOO’S CHRISTMAS CAROL and another TV Special to theaters – initially as a Saturday Matinee program.
That special was certainly not high-quality enough for theaters. But I guess no one cared at that time.
It is incredible that they are showing so much esteem for Vistavision Visits shorts. I think I have only caught an odd one on a video mix tape over the years. They are… fine. Beautifully shot. Competently edited and narrated, but I wouldn’t rewatch them like I would Niagara Fools.
It’s surprising how long live action shorts persisted — note they account for four of the top six in 1957. Amusing that RKO has a “Wildlife Album” series, seeing as how they originally rejected Disney’s True Life Adventures (by 1957 the True Life Adventures were all features, so they’re off the list. And Disney had parted ways with RKO).
How COULD they measure success? Grosses alone hardly told the story.
At their 30s peak the Disney cartoons could be a more powerful draw than the features they supported, but this wasn’t reflected in their rentals. In fact, “The Disney Version” says Columbia Pictures used them as loss leaders — you had to book Columbia’s less popular product to get Mickey. On the flip side, a studio might tie a so-so series to hotter product, via block booking or more carefully lawyered deals. You want Tyrone Power, you get Gandy Goose with him.
Also, how do you measure the drawing power of cartoons? There was a time when they were featured in newspaper ads, and arguably had a measurable impact on admissions. But as time went on print mention became “PLUS CARTOONS”, with series or character rarely identified. And would it matter? Would the promise of a new Woody Woodpecker shape your decision to see “Tammy Tell Me True”?
I suppose attentive exhibitors knew what audiences liked and disliked, but would they really care about anything shy of standing ovations or mass walkouts?
There is an interesting but forgotten history to the “live-action” short subject during the latter 1950s through ’80s. The more expensive to make one and two reel comedies and musicals were gradually phased out between the years 1948-58, with RKO closing shop on its comedy unit in 1952, MGM ending the Pete Smith Specialties by the 1954-55 season, followed by Warner Brothers with Joe McDoakes in ’56, the same year Columbia made its final Andy Clyde short. The final Three Stooges 2-reeler (last Columbia series) was filmed in late ’57 but a few of those were put on hold until final release in ’59. Universal-International was still making their big band and R&B “Name Band Musicals” as late as ’57 as well.
However sports reels and travelogues were pretty cheap to make and continued through the next decade. In the 1957 press announcement above, Paramount’s Vista-Vision Visits tops the list but that series only lasted two years or so. James FitzPatrick worked on the earliest ones of 1954-55 after ending his MGM Traveltalks contract, but the second wave were mostly produced by Carl Dudley who… in turn… was making RKO Sportscopes, Warner Brothers Scope-Gems and other travelogues, Universal-International Color Parades and even an occasional 20th Century Fox Movietone CinemaScope offering such as THE QUEEN’S GUARD. He also did the feature SOUTH SEAS ADVENTURE in Cinerama, since no screen format was one he wasn’t willing to tackle.
Then there is that whole overlooked realm of 16mm short films made for schools and businesses that grew in the 1930s with such successful companies as Castle Films and Encyclopædia Britannica Films and really exploded in the 1950s when the U.S. government started pumping money into school education post-Sputnik. The late ’50s through early ’80s, before VHS took over, was the Golden Age of 16mm (the last films in that format actually done as late as 1998 or so as “cinema” gradually went digital). This was an era that didn’t just involve Drivers Ed and anti-drug fodder but also many independent projects that won awards at film festivals and were often later distributed by the Hollywood majors as an alternative to advertisements and trailers in theaters. Columbia, in particular, invested heavily in the Learning Corporation of America (before all of their financial problems in 1972-73 and that company had to fly solo as an independent for another decade) and Universal in United World (stretching the ’40s through ’70s), while Paramount also invested in 16mm school films for a time in the ’70s as well. Of course, such films never got mentioned by Box Office or Variety.