We’re having another short one this week since our fearless leader, Jerry Beck, is just back from France, and boy are his arms tired!
In quick Thunderbean news:
The team has been doing an amazing job is getting all sots of things done. This past week, Flip the Frog has been getting looked over with a fine tooth comb, and restorations for the Fleischer’s have been in full force (we’re attempting to turn in nine restored films by the end of week, but I’ll be happy with seven — they’ve been in progress for quite a while!). We’re getting ready for a scanning trip, and the last of the Little King orders should be sent over the weekend.
The Tom and Jerry set is looking really good, but we’re still working on getting all the elements a little more sparkling. Everything is cleaned up at this point, but the newer software often gets things looking just a little better.
We’ll be sending all the things we have finished on the set out to our own Devon Baxter, who will be working to edit together some of the title sequences and doing grading and other restoration work. It’s getting closer to going to master
One of the shorts on the two disc set, Redskin Blues, has the main element cleaned up, but we’ll be scanning an additional print that was sent our way earlier in the year (I haven’t been scanning in a little while..).
Redskin Blues really is what you’d expect, but as with all Van Beuren cartoons, there’s always some fun things to keep things lively. This print is from my friend Jeff Missinne, who holds a special torch for some of the rarest of the Van Beuren cartoons. I’m happy to say the set is coming together very nicely. It will be in replication in July.
Have a good week everyone!
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.
Vell! “Redskin Blues” has long been a favourite of mine for its elaborately detailed cycles and the unpredictable twists and turns of its story. I showed it to my wife a few years ago, and I’ll never forget the look on her face at the end when Tom and Jerry, still tied to their stakes, went pogoing off into the sunset. “This is the craziest cartoon I’ve ever seen!”
Two things occurred to me while watching this beautifully cleaned-up Thunderbean print. Horses in early Van Beuren cartoons tend to be mechanical in construction, with jointed legs and removeable heads. (I assume this was because toy horses were more convenient for the animators to study in their New York studio than living ones.) But the horses in “Redskin Blues” are pure 1932 rubber-hoseyness.
Second, the trope of the Jewish Indian goes back to the Book of Mormon, which posits that the Americas were originally settled by descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. Jewish comedians found this notion hilarious and made the most of it, giving rise to memorable routines like Fanny Brice’s “Whoops! I’m an Indian!” Even as late as the 1960s, the Indians on “F Troop” used an awful lot of Yiddish slang (and were often played by Jewish actors).
Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles posing as an Indian still makes me laugh. But so does the whole movie.
Indeed one of the funniest movies ever made. It’s a shame that it couldn’t be made today, even though it is anti-racist.
Is there any prints out there of REDSKIN BLUES that has the original titles?
Diaz Bros. has one, but the title card is cut
Steve only knows one source that has one frame of the original credits– just one!
I expected dancing girls, and I got ’em.
What I didn’t expect was a swastika on the teepee.
It’s crazy, I tells ya…
Back then it was still mainly a Navajo good luck symbol as well as being used by other tribes. Back then the symbol was used in the shoulder patch of the Oklahoma National Guard’s 45th Infantry Division, being an all American Indian unit. With the rise of Nazi Germany it was replaced with a Thunderbird symbol.
Very nice print, but at the end of Tom and Jerry’s xylophone duet there is a hunk missing. Other than that, and a little bit of an emulsion scratch on the left side, a good experience.
Really nice scan! The oddness of the early Van Beuren shorts is simply charming and wonderful.
This print is in WAY better condition than my print that I sent you, but whatevs.
According to a Washington Post survey several years ago, the word that most came up to describe how Native Americans felt about being referred to as redskins was “proud.”
A couple of things about that Washington Post survey. First, the conclusion it drew was that 90% of Native Americans surveyed didn’t think the name of the Washington Redskins football team was an important issue for them. Nobody said that the epithet made them feel “proud”. Second, other studies conducted with greater scientific rigour and larger sample sizes yielded vastly dissimilar results.
Thanks for providing the – not surprising but definitely helpful – actual facts Paul.