It’s hot as heck here this week, and because of that, I’m likely still improperly dressed for the occasion, but at least at home I can get away with that! Rosalie Waldman told me a story a while back about Jim Tyer showing up at Famous in the usual three-piece, then, upon sitting, taking off everything until he was down to boxers and an undershirt to work at his desk! I can relate. I wonder if the same could be said about the crew working on the Toby the Pup cartoons? I appreciate their sweat, creative or otherwise.
As the weeks go on here, I’m trying to cram as many things into each day as possible. Today I’ve been listening to music from Rainbow Parade cartoons in an attempt to make music-only versions of some, or at least sections, using the ‘stock music’ that was from these cartoons. While things are moving along rapidly on many fronts, It’s still not going fast enough for my own taste, but each day its getting a little less stressful seeing things get accomplished. This week’s goal is to (if possible) free two projects entirely from being here that I’m helping friends with, and sending off all the film I can manage to get scanned this next week to two different places. Sitting down and getting to animate a little is a treat at this point, but I’m getting jealous of seeing other scenes come in for the titles and just want to wrap it up nicely. I’m hoping to take a break and sit down to watch some cartoons at some point this week, on film if I can manage. Maybe some Toby the Pup. Progress continues on the Thunderbean front of course, with news updates on the near horizon about new sets and finished ones.
As I was tumbling through some of the blu-rays to put on my watch list, I really wish Olive Films had released *all* the Betty Boops (including her appearances in the Talkartoons). I also wish they had completed the rest of Betty Boop’s face on the cardboard sleeves for the packages!
It’s amazing that some films of a series are available in beautiful quality while others just aren’t. I’ve been getting Boops scanned here for one of our sets, and just wish *all* of them could be from the negatives, or at least from excellent 35mm prints.
So, this week, I thought it might be fun to have *your* top ten cartoons you’d like to see a beautiful copy of (but are only available in fair or poor ones – or not at all). A few on my list are things I’m working on currently that are waiting to get scanned, so at least some of my own list will come true soon!
Here’s mine – in no particular order:
Balloonland (Iwerks, 1935). The b/w separations exist on this wonderful short, and are on the schedule to be scanned. I’m super excited to see what it looks like- let’s hope the negs are not too curled at one end!
Christmas Comes But Once a Year (Fleischer, 1936). I’ve always wanted to see what this looked like in really good color and sharpness. One of the first prints I bought was an old and very red NTA one, long since traded. While there’s a few better versions out there, I’m sure they still pale compared to what this looked like originally; looking at Popeye Meets Sinbad from the same year indicates that it must be wonderful.
The Lumberchamp (1933) Honestly, seeing the King of Jazz segment in HD recently made me long for some dignity for Lantz’s early and somewhat scruffy shorts. There is only the small smattering included on the DVD sets. This is a favorite of mine among others. They just need someone to care enough.
Goofy Goat (Antics) (Ted Eshbaugh, 1930). As I stare at the 16mm Official Films print sitting here, I continue to hope that, somehow, someday, a color print of this film will show up. It’s really hoping against hope at this point, but you never know.
Sheep Shape (Famous Studios,1946) I’ve never seen a decent color print of this particular short. It’s clearly ‘inspired’ by Avery’s Red and Wold pictures, but odder. Without giving away the ‘gag’, Blackie’s particular brand of cross dressing (and subsequent parading around in his bra after taking half his costume off) is especially strange for any cartoon. The NTA red prints are all we’ve been able to see of this one, but maybe someday Paramount will open its vaults….
Bugs Bunny Show segments, in color. These are high on my holy grail list. Sadly, I don’t think we’ll ever get that lucky. Seeing some reconstructed using color neg and Black and White prints, on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set, was still pretty cool.
Flying Fists (Iwerks, 1930). I know, this is one on the set we’re working on, but there’s quite a few people that have a collective memory of seeing it in color not that long ago- are they imagining or misremembering that??!? As far as I can tell, no color print has surfaced of the second Flip the Frog cartoon, and I’ve carefully gone through *all* the material on this film at UCLA and picked the best material for the set.
On person sent me some color frames from their ‘rare’ print and I was excited; eventually that person had to admit they had faked them. There’s a version on Youtube in faux color, but it’s not real, sadly. Of course, I’d take *any* or all of those easily Flip the Frogs that were shot in color and are missing in color prints now.
Small Fry (Fleischer, 1939) Heck, I’d like to see 35mm restorations on all the Color Classics series, but this would be the next highest on my own personal list. I can’t imagine how much better this film looked in Technicolor, especially the ‘scare the kid straight’ scene with a reprise of the title song.
Sliphorn King of Polaroo (1945). Would LOVE to see this on Blu-ray. 16mm prints in color on this one are hard to find, so being able to see a decent print on the DVD was a treat. Still, they all deserve even better. This one is a personal favorite of mine— but wouldn’t it be nice to see all the Lantz shorts in High Definition?
Scrappy’s Art Gallery (1934). There’s a lot of Scrappys I really like, but I really do think this one belongs on on the national registry for its inventiveness. While not a perfect film, its a near-crime that none of these are available from Columbia. Here’s the scan I did years back from my own 16mm print:
That’s all from me for now. So, what are *your* picks? Till next week, Steve
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.
I’d love to see 35mm Technicolor restorations of “Christmas Comes But Once a Year,” “The Cobweb Hotel” and “It’s Tough To Be a Bird.”
Here are two from the Color Classics we’d all like to see better copies of – for sure: The Fresh Vegatable Mystery and The Cobweb Hotel.
A color copy of the Columbia Fox and Crow”Mysto Fox” would also be nice!
Years ago at Eyefilm (Netherlands) I excitedly sat down to screen what was billed as a color print of MYSTO FOX—only to find ten feet of a mangled “Columbia Favorites” MYSTO FOX reissue main title spliced to the body of the Terrytoon cartoon BEAVER TROUBLE…
Well Jerry,
I have heard rumors that The Flip The Frog cartoon Techno -Cracked was originally produced in color, but converted to black and white just before theatrical release. Now this just may be a popular myth. The question in not does the color version still exist, but rather did it EVER exist. Techno Cracked was most likely in b/w from the get go
Tell me what you know
Thanks
I’d agree that the Color Classics are brimming over with titles that deserve to be seen in their 35mm glory. I’ve been privileged to see a few, back in my days as a student at UCLA, when they weren’t so restrictive on the viewing of nitrate film on their moviolas. Among titles I saw was their master 35mm positive of “Christmas Comes But Once a Year” – complete with all original Paramount titling. (My recollection is that the little seal with a picture in it on the title card had a shot of Grampy in his Santa hat). The colors were everything you’d expect, though they actually went for some subdued earthy shades around and inside the orphanage to make things look somewhat bleak and depressing. The brighter hues come when Grampy gets to work on the toys. And the lighting effect on the tree at the ending works so much better when the print is processed at the proper contrast levels. Focus I seem to recall as slightly soft – as it seemed many Fleischer projects of the day were prone to do.
Another which I know to exist at UCLA and really deserves a complete overhaul is “The Cobweb Hotel”. Most 16mm’s I’ve seen from UM&M have to rank as absolutely atrocious on their color and contrast levels, cutting from what appear to be bad to worse negatives so that scenes range from dark and brown to bleached and overexposed. I again screened the 35mm nitrate, which was utterly marvelous. Clarity of image was crisp, and there was some distinct and striking color separation between parts of the Spider’s outfit, as opposed to the present images which show nearly everything in barely-differentiated shades of brown. The blue on the flies was luminous, and one of the most striking effects (lost entirely in the TV prints) was the aspirin bottle used with an atomizer to create a machine gun, The pills inside the bottle were fully animated as they were respectively sucked up the atomizer tune and fired. In order to allow for freedom of animation and still maintain the clarity of the glass bottle, a tinted cell overlay was used painted in transparent paints, through which the animated aspirin were seen on the next layer. The tint was an amazing and unique shade of opaque deep blue tinged with purple, and the effect was fascinating. After UM&M got through with it, the only remnant that’s left just makes the aspirin look a darker shade of gray! Plus, of course, the print has complete Paramount credits, allowing for a direct dissolve, identical in style to “Popeye Meets Sinbad the Sailor”, from the flies kissing while being transported away from the hotel to the Paramount mountain with moving clouds. Even the best efforts to restore these credits by fans necessarily fall short, as several frames of the kisses (soundtrack heard over the generic The End cards of today) are entirely missing from current prints to mask the fade in of the mountain.
There’s some two-strips which I’ve never seen projected which no doubt deserve attention. How about a good copy of “The Kids in the Shoe”? “Musical Memories” reportedly exists in a good print, as it was once publicly screen at a LACMA festival which I unfortunately missed. Then there’s the question of “Time For Love”, most prints of which generally look like they’ve been through the mill – if you can even find a color one. And it’d be nice to figure out how good “The Little Stranger” might have looked originally – present contrast is pretty awful on the dark shots. Two of the two-strips I’ve seen in 35 – and they were quite impressive even in the limited hues – :Little Dutch Mill”, and especially, “Dancing on the Moon” – both of which fortunately have surfaced in prints of quality not so distant from the originals I viewed,
Speaking of two-strip, how about a venture into Warner’s vaults? What in the world happened to “Along Flirtation Walk”? A film whose prints, even on Turner sources, have generally been so bad, one can sometimes hardly tell if the film was made in color at all. And of course, wouldn’t ir be a dream to find a camera negative with all the missing shots the censors threw away on the cutting room floor?
Another couple of lost gems one has to wonder about as to their existence anywhere. Has anyone got any leads on a color version of the Leon Schlesinger animated sequence from Joe E. Brown’s, “When’s Your Birthday?” What about the color sequence or “Romeow and Juliecat” from the Puppetoon sequence of “Variety Girl”? Recent release of said feature only showed the element in black and white. Is it possible the master negatives are lurking somewhere in UCLA’s George Pal collection, and that the heirs and assigns simply didn’t call a truce with Paramount to make the elements available to them for the feature restoration?
Back on the Fleischer front, I’d agree that “Small Fry” would be a find. I’ve seen nitrate on its predecessor, “Educated Fish”, and the colors on Junior were vibrant (though in the earlier effort, Fleischer’s water effects weren’t quite as advanced, and he chose some definitely wrong, much too bright blues for some of the surface shots. “Chicken A La King” has always been a fun one – and guilty of considerable overexposure and paleness in most existing prints. What about “The Fresh Vegetable Mystery” – a film that until only recently looked like everything was painted in the same bland color – and even in the best prints that have to date surfaced has very odd looking greens and oranges that definitely look distorted from what one would expect from Technicolor. Or “Little Lambkins” – horrendously pale and overexposed. Even “Vitamin Hay” would be nice to see in anything other than its current predominant shades of green.
So many more Pippetoons need to be rescued – we can only hope the current Puppetoon movie project will eventually get around to doing so. One I’d love to see again is “Dipsy Gypsy” (the film which provided the black light musical number reused in “The Little Broadcast”). I saw it publicly screened once from the nitrate – fantastic. That early in production order, yet still a legitimate masterpiece. And how about restoring that first Jim Dandy Western? I’ve had it for years as an 8mm b&w silent, and seen a battered and browned sound copy from Jerry’s collection – but never seen its original splendor.
Has anyone a line on the last missing Nicky Nome title filmed by Jam Handy, “Jumping Beans”? I’d settle for a black and white, just for completeness sake.
And why hasn’t anyone yet posted or released a complete color print of Iwerks’ ad film for Boots, “See How They Won”?
In the Scrappy ranks, there’s that lovely newly-struck 35mm they screened at ASIFA of “The Beer Parade”. Wouldn’t a high-def transfer of that be nice to bring home?
And what about question-mark titles that are supposed to have elements in UCLA’s vaults but no projectable prints circulating – such as the early Fleischer “Marriage Wows” and “Accordion Joe”? Or the later Paramounts, “Readin’, Ritn’, and “Rithmeic” or “Cat o’ Nine Ails”?
And will the Warner Popeye project ever reach “Riot in Rhythm”, so we can see if the closing gag with the nephews playing trumpet on stage in front of the Paramount logo still exists on the masters? (I wouldn’t be surprised if picture exists, but no sound.)
Lots of work to do.
To answer your question on the Jam Handy Nicky Nome cartoon “Jumping Beans”, I am not aware of any prints. Interestingly, while researching it though the copyright registration indicate that it’s a black & white film with a Color sequences, which makes me wonder if it is Nicky Nome cartoon or if it’s another Jam Handy Chevy DMS documentary style film like “Seeing Green” and “Color Harmony”, a black & white documentary with Color sequences (possibly with some Nicky Nome animation sequences?)
I’ve got a huge list, but here are a few:
The Gabby cartoons, particularly “King for a Day,” “Swing Cleaning,” and “Gabby Goes Fishing.” Colors tend to be washed out in the versions I’ve seen.
The Mighty Mouse operettas–have not seen any of these in years.
The Woody Woodpecker Show in its original format, with the interactions between Woody and Walter Lantz–when the series was rebroadcast on Saturday mornings in the 70’s, the episodes were shorn of all of the Lantz scenes.
We had an old black and white television set when I was growing up, so I didn’t realize until later that many of the old cartoons were originally in color. In my mind, I colored many of them–then when I chanced to see an actual color print in a theatre or at school or at a cartoon trailer (car dealerships on special sale weekends would set up a trailer that offered continuous showings of cartoons throughout the day, so parents could listen to sales pitches distraction-free)–when on one of these occasions, I caught one or two of the cartoons that I had mentally colorized–I decided that my imaginary color print was superior to the real one. (A Warner cartoon about a silver fox comes to mind, as one example.)
The first 3 Caspers most definitely I’d like to see much better copies of. All of them are dupes or faded red. Also The Bugs Bunny Show in color, restored Bullwinkle Show opening and closing titles, The Beagles, Hoppity Hooper, Linus the Lionhearted, and Calvin and the Colonel in color (some fair prints have turned up as of late thank God, but not all of them).
Agreed!! Plus, some other missing DePatie-Freleng, Filmation, Rankin/Bass, Hanna-Barbera and other SatAM studio stuff.
Well, here I go again, but since I’d just like to fill in those blanks at this point in my collecting, I would *LOVE* to hear anything but dupey copies of the first two of the imfamous BOSKO trilogy from MGM’s HAPPY HARMONIES, especially the second title, “BOSKO AND THE CANNIBALS” which borrows a gag or two from the first entry, just to really lean in and listen to the lyrics to the continuously sung “Gramma’s Cookies” song, perhaps the strangest and most infectious in all of animation’s rich history…And, yes, I’m still fascinated and obsessed with any or all of Warner Brothers’ BUDDY cartoons, along with the MERRIE MELODIES titles of that mid-to-late 1930’s period, and I’m always hoping that classic prints will show up, diminishing the blue ribbon mistake forever and ever!!
Attention: private collectors, it is necessary that you make your rare discoveries known so titles can be preserved forever as they are properly supposed to be!…All cartoons from the BETTY BOOP series, especially the pre-Code BOOP titles with all that great music running throughout…More than a few original full half hours of Jay Ward’s “ROCKY AND HIS FRIENDS”, just so we can further understand the original run of the series. There are twice examples throughout the “JET FUEL FORMULA” story arc that began it all where the narrator says, an an episode’s closing, “tune in tomorrow, won’t you…” when it is only technically the first episode of the half hour. My question remains as to whether or not there was a network premier of the first episode, somehow forcing those at Jay Ward Studios to configure the show incorrectly for its entire run that year?
…And, while we’re on the subject of Jay Ward, well, let’s go in and seek out full stories from the original Ward run of “CRUSADER RABBIT” as well, beyond “CRUSADER VS. THE STATE OF TEXAS” or “CRUSADER VS. THE PIRATES”. Did that brand of Jay Ward humor eventually come across as strongly as it did on “ROCKY AND HIS FRIENDS”? All those restorations would make a collector-worthy set of Jay Ward classics, believe me!…Perhaps a top quality print of the Warner Brothers classic of sorts, “FRESH AIRDALE” with all wartime references intact; as I may have said already on other forums, and as Jerry Beck might attest, such a copy was made available on one of those tapes put out as limited edition from Columbia House on the LOONEY TUNES and MERRIE MELODIES.
I am sorry to this day that those volumes were never reissued from the original source on DVD and blu-ray, just so we can have that title and “BUDDY AND TOUSER” and one other BOSKO cartoon whose name I don’t quite recall…Any or all LITTLE LULU cartoons with original Paramount titles. By this time, LITTLE LULU cartoons in good quality must be as hard to find as almost anything above because they have been changed so often from hand to hand, while original sources waste away in vaults!
I’d also like to see a good collection of Hubley cartoons. I don’t think a DVD or disk version has ever been put out beyond the Buena Vista VHS collection released far too many years ago! And that is my list. I keep wishing and hoping, despite the obvious “no, no, no…” disclaimers from those currently holding copyrights or those who don’t even realize that they have the upper hand and *CAN* make these things happen for all of us!! I know; you guys are out there trying to make this happen, and that is why I keep submitting my “want” list. Good luck and thanks, always, for all you do.
I would love to see both 16mm and 35mm prints of about 10 cartoons like –
1. Western Whoopee (1930, Van Beuren)
2. Greedy Humpty Dumpty (1936, Fleischer)
3. Amos and Andy in Rasslin’ Match (1934, Van Beuren)
4. The Cobweb Hotel (1936, Fleischer)
5. No Mutton Fer Nuttin’ (1943, Famous)
6. The Fresh Vegetable Mystery (1939, Fleischer)
7. Sinbad the Sailor (1935, Ub Iwerks)
8. Simple Simon (1935, Ub Iwerks)
9. Happy Days (1936, Ub Iwerks)
10. The Talking Magpies (1946, Terrytoons)
For me, I’d like to see “Merry Mannequins” (Iwerks, Columbia, ca. 1937) in a pristine print. “Midnight Frolics” and “The Herring Murder Mystery” come #2 and #3.
I’d like A restored copy of the first Heckle & Jeckle (The Talking Magpies). I grew up seeing it in ugly public domain VHS prints and it’d be great to see it restored. Because it has Farmer Alfalfa, it may be a great bonus feature for Thunderbean’s Aesop’s Fables set!
Above all, I’d love to see good quality, uncut prints of the early black-and-white Terrytoons, including:
1) Fanny Zilch, “The Banker’s Daughter” (1933). The first of the melodrama spoofs.
2) Farmer Al Falfa, “Farmer Al Falfa’s Ape Girl (1932). One of my favourite pre-Code cartoons.
3) Kiko the Kangaroo, “Skunked Again” (1936). Also:
4) Fleischer Color Specials, “The Raven” (1942). I know this has been restored, but I’ve only seen the NTA print.
5) Fleischer Color Classics, “Somewhere in Dreamland” (1936). The first Color Classic in Technicolor, with wonderful 3D effects.
6) Fleischer Screen Songs, “When Yuba Plays the Rumba on the Tuba” (1933). Surviving prints have cut the Mills Brothers’ performance of the title song.
7) Frenkel Brothers, “Mafish Fayda” (1936). First of the Mish-Mish Effendi cartoons from Egypt.
8) Harman-Ising, Bosko, “Ain’t Nature Grand” (1931).
9) Rainbow SpA, “Magic Bloom” (1999). Original unaired pilot of Winx Club. Only a short clip has been shown to the public.
10) The psychedelic Wyler’s Lemonade commercial from the early ’70s!
Paul, are you saying that they removed the song “When Yuba Plays The Rhumba on the Tuba” is missing the entire song? I watched it on YouTube recently and was disappointed that some alternate version seemed to he playing. It’s unfortunate. It’s a good song.
That’s right, Art. In the animated portion of the film, the Mills Brothers sing (wordlessly) “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and “Loveless Love”, but there’s no trace of “Yuba”. Their two other Screen Songs, “Dinah” and “I Ain’t Got Nobody”, still exist intact, so I hope the lost footage from “Yuba” is still around somewhere. I’d love to hear John Mills’s tuba riffs on that song!
Thanks for the info, Paul.
I remember seeing at least two Bugs Bunny Show segments as a kid in the eighties; one I distinctly recall is the one where Daffy tries his hand at animating by drawing himself over animation of Tweety.
Would definitely love to see new restorations of the MGM cartoons without all that darn ADR damage. I bought the Tex Avery Blu-Ray and the transfers there are just fantastic. Looking forward for more volumes like that (fingers crossed).
The ‘nightmare’ initiation sequence from “Small Fry” (a Willard Bowsky specialty) just cries out for a better color negative, mainly because the available ones are so dark you lose a lot of clarity about what’s going on. Original negs of many of the B&W Betty Boop, Screen Songs and Talkartoons would also be nice, since UM&M pulled the early Warners Blue Ribbon stunt and stripped the animator credits off so many of them.
(With “The Bugs Bunny Show”, you can poke around the Interwebs and find some of the missing color segments unrestored, and dubbed into German. They lack the sharpness of the B&W prints on the Golden Collection, but it does remind you of what the bridging segments looked like in color, when they aired in full on ABC Saturday mornings during the mid-1960, after it started doing color broadcasting.)
I’d like to see all of the Fleischer Color Classics as well as the Gabby cartoons get restored.
I don’t feel like putting out a “top ten” list of upgrades, but the existing material on Milt Gross’s “He Can’t Make It Stick”, from Screen Gems in 1943 is missing half the cartoon. The soundtrack is complete. Maybe the Library of Congress has a nitrate print? Of course UCLA archives is both a help and a hindrance when it comes to copying cartoons from the original materials. We cartoon fans have been waiting years and years to see the cartoons restored, at UCLA’s discretion! Con Permiso!
I’m kinda surprised the Betty Boops haven’t been properly restored since she’s still a relatively well know character. I’m also the one person on earth who’d love a proper selection of Terry Toons restored (especially the Super Mouse cartoons).
The Raven – I know a nice copy of this is supposed to exist, but I wish the owner would allow it to be scanned, so the rest of us could enjoy it.
Next on my list would be a set of the Fleischer/Famous Little Lulu cartoons with their original titles, if possible.
Another vote for Terrytoons, especially Heckle & Jeckle; Columbia. And more Betty Boops (those not released by Olive). I’m also looking for a good print of a rare Dutch cartoon by Marten Toonder titled Moonglow. And I know this has limited appeal but I would love to see a disk of Stereo 3-D cartoons, like: The Owl and the Pussycat, Hypnotic Hick, Melody, Popeye the Ace of Space, Lumber Jack-Rabbit , Marvin the Martian in the Third Dimension.
HYPNOTIC HICK will be released on blu ray in 3D later this year as a bonus feature on the 3-D release of the feature WINGS OF THE HAWK.
I’ve been longing for a good copy of “A Day at The Zoo” (1939, WB) for years. Most of the prints on YouTube are nearly beet red.
Probably all the Terrytoons that CBS stupidly removed not only the credits but 20 sec-to a minute from each short. I don’t get why they did it as commercial time wasn’t as long as it is now.
More on my list:
The Friendly Ghost (Casper)
Sheep Shape (Blackie, Famous Studios)
Land of the Lost (Famous Studios 1948)
Doesn’t anyone else want to see the Li’l Abner cartoons restored?
If that wasn’t meant to be a sarcastic remark… The Columbia L’il Abner cartoons were restored in 1999 for inclusion on the show TOTALLY TOONED IN. Here’s one of them on You Tube – enjoy: https://youtu.be/i0zWndGto-E
I watched that Li’l Abner cartoon, and the first impression was that the voice actors were nothing at all like I imagined the Yokum family in my head. And then I realized what I do hear in my head when I read Li’l Abner is The Beverly Hillbillies. That’s no coincidence of course. Max Baer is absolutely how I imagine Abner, and Irene Ryan and Donna Douglas as Mammy Yokum and Daisy Mae, but I imagine Pappy Yokum as more Walter Brennan than Buddy Ebsen. The second impression is that the animators had no idea what to do with the Yokums, but they had a lot of fun with the pig.
Any and all Mighty Mouses with good looking gals (Gypsy Life, Krakatoa, Sultan’s Daughter et cetera)… 🙂
I thought I was gonna contribute my own fave deep cut but found that “The Cobweb Hotel” was already in demand.
Seems to me that the LIL’ ABNER cartoons only existed – as far as anyone knew- on black-and-white print form. Weren’t they colorized (I mean sloppily re-traced and colored in South Korea) – badly – years ago?
Yes, they were colorized (badly) years ago and released on VHS in that form. But for the show TOTALLY TOONED IN, in 1999 (of which I was a producer), we unearthed the original Technicolor negs and restored the cartoons. Here’s one of the restored ones we did, on You Tube – enjoy: https://youtu.be/i0zWndGto-E
Here’s what on my list
– Ted Eshbaugh’s Goofy Goat in color. (I am convinced that this does exist in color, just in storage possibly mislabeled. Through researching the film, which is credited by several sources of the day as being the first color sound cartoon (as Fiddle Sticks was released in color in the UK and not the USA) I get the impression that Eshbaugh was very proud of Goofy Goat. His films like the Snowman, Wizard of Oz, Pastry Town Wedding, Sunshine Makers, were donated to the library of congress, and these didn’t have the same ‘milestone’ status as Goofy Goat. Seeing how trade magazines made note of Ted Eshbaugh producing the first color sound cartoon for the years to follow, I find it had to believe that Goofy Goat wasn’t donated to the Library of Congress and/or that museum where his desk wound up.)
– A complete print of Ted Eshbaugh’s Amateur Fire Brigade
– A fully restored print of Max Fleischer’s Play Safe, with original titles. (I prefer this one over the Cobweb Hotel).
– A complete print of “The ABC of the Diesel Engine” made by Lee Blair’s Film Graphics studio for General Motors
– Complete print (with original Titles) of Kool Penguins
– Some of the other animated films Frank Goldman made for Audio Productions, such as the 1934 Reddy Kilowat cartoon, and the two-color Technicolor stop motion film he did for American Tobacco, to promote the Kool Cigaret brand.
Personally, I’d like to see Tom and Jerry: Golden Collection Vol. 2 to see the light of day. It was originally going to be released by Warner Home Video in 2013. Everything on the set was completed: The cartoons had been restored, the liner notes had been written, and (presumably) the discs had been pressed. Unfortunately, fans were outraged at the fact that “Mouse Cleaning” and “Casanova Cat” were skipped over just like on the Spotlight Collection. The Golden Collection sets were meant to be for collectors, not kids/family audiences. Warner had previously confirmed that “Mouse Cleaning” would be included, and that they were restoring it from the original negative, and the liner notes were written for it. Supposedly Warner wants to release the set with the cartoons (most likely with disclaimers), but there’s a higher-up that refuses to release them while she works there, saying “The company felt that certain content would be exceedingly inappropriate for the intended audience and therefore excluded several shorts.”
Well if TV shows can be included, Linus the Lionhearted for sure.
I’m also surprised we haven’t had a complete Betty Boop release on DVD!
I’d also love to see a complete Bugs Bunny. I would be happy to see a release for Bugs like the Poky Pig 101 release, just to have decent copies of all the cartoons available.
I vote for PLAY SAFE, and GREEDY HUMPTY DUMPTY. Both in their 16mm forms show color matrix shifting, particularly blue. While the 35mm French print from Lobster Films is stunning, it is missing about 20 seconds of footage where the boy climbs up onto the box car.
I’d like to see better prints of the WB cartoons from the fifth volume of The Golden Age Of Looney Tunes. Particularly STREAMLINED GRETA GREEN, THE LYIN’ MOUSE, AT YOUR SERVICE MADAME, and PLENTY OF MONEY AND YOU. The “dubbed versions” that have circulated since the 90s are so faded, I’ve wondered how they looked in Technicolor.
Steve: I don’t know if I’ve ever asked you about these before. Years and years ago, I remember a set of VHS CRUSADER RABBIT cartoons came out through a legitimate label – dang it, I can’t think of the name right now! Suddenly, the tapes were pulled from the market, because of some kind of copyright dispute. I never got the collection – but our mutual pal Mickey Gold did, I”m sure. What is the status of the J. Ward CRUSADER RABBIT series? I’ve heard they were very good – for early TV “limited animation” and fantastic, compared to the later color series, which I vaguely remember seeing as a youngster. When you have a minute – yeah, I know – fill me in!
Rhino put two volumes of CRUSADER RABBIT out on VHS back in the early 1990s (Crusader Rabbit vs. The State of Texas; and Crusader Rabbit vs. The Pirates) thinking they were public domain. They are not. 20th Century Fox owns the characters (and even used them Fox Kids station I.D’s in the 1990s).
The status today is that Disney bought 20th Century Fox – so hopefully someday we’ll see Crusader Rabbit in the Main Street Electrical Parade at Disneyland – and new Rags the Tiger merch at the Disney Store. But for now, Crusader Rabbit is locked away in the Disney Vault.
Screen Songs 1929-1935 please!
Anything from the Terry (1921-1929) Aesop’s Fables, please!
Two early Talkartoons: “Swing You Sinners” and “The Herring Murder Case.”
I would love to see the cartoons that featured “The Goody-Goody Monkeys”. I remember enjoying those as a child and I began to wonder if I’d imagined them, since I never hear about them. But, I remember the song they sang, “Speak no evil, hear no evil, see no evil, NO! We’re the goody-goody monkeys everywhere we go/ We’re so very, very good/ wouldn’t be bad if we could/ Speak no evil, hear no evil, see no evil, no” and then one of them gets drunk off a cigar or something. I can’t recall if they’re also in one where the drugstore medicines come to life and the bottle of poison with the skullhead dropper comes to life and cackles “Death stalks the night!” and freaks out the other characters. Those would be fun to see. Do you have any information about those characters?
And I’d love to see the Harman-Ising cartoons all restored and released.
I belive you’re looking for this cartoon, Good Little Monkeys (1935):
https://youtu.be/9nyau-EdRkE
I’d love to be able to see the Screen Song “Mr Gallagher and Mr Sheen.”
I’m with you on SLIPHORN KING OF POLAROO and SMALL FRY. I’d add is Shamus Culhane’s wonderful MY DADDY THE ASTRONAUT. SOMEWHERE IN DREAMLAND, SONG OF THE BIRDS, KOKO THE KOP, A DREAM WALKING, GOONLAND, MORNING, NOON AND NIGHTCLUB, RAGGEDY ANN AND ANDY, THE RAVEN (Fleischer), yes, CHRISTMAS COMES BUT ONCE A YEAR.
Here is a short list of mine
– All the “Little Lulu” cartoons with original titles
– All the “Talkartoon” with original titles (It would be great to see some of the “lost” Talkartoons like “Marriage Wows” and “Accordion Joe” and hopefully a print of “In the Shade of the Old Apple Sauce” comes to light, if it still exist at all).
– The very first Popeye cartoon “Popeye The Sailor” with its original title. I would consider that the crown jewel since the Warner DVD just slapped the logo and called it a day and also the restoration is been zoomed in.
– “Me Musical Nephews” with its original titles since I have never seeing the original ending gag to this cartoon since Warner just fades it out and AAP cut it from TV.
Bill Hume’s MFA Insurance films from the 60s. Do any of these exist? His Fair Play safety film was an award-winner. The stylized art from stills is impressive. I visited Ken in Columbia, Missouri at the MFA headquarters with a fellow aspiring animator in the early 80s when I was in junior high. As I recall, his office was just inside the entrance, with full Oxberry setup, although he hadn’t animated anything for them in years.
My father used to have some 16 mm black and white nitrate cartoons that he brought home when he came back from World War II. In the Navy, he was the projectionists showed all different films and cartoons to the men. It would set up a big white sheet in the backyard and show her films to the kids in the neighborhood.
There were several of the cartoons that I remembered and have been searching for online. I found an mp4 of one of them oh, but the other two I haven’t been able to find. One of them was “Super Mouse”. This was the original Mighty Mouse series in black and white. Three specific cartoon was Pandora’s Box. I found that they made a remake of this in color. The only other difference was they called him Mighty Mouse instead of Super Mouse.
The other cartoon was called Bug Carnival. It was basically a love story about a boy and girl bug and the villain spider for the big mustache, who kidnaps the girl. Craziness ensues and the boy saves the girl. It was nothing spectacular, just a cartoon I saw in my past and would love to see it again and show it to my grandkids.
Also, I’d love to see any other 3D style cartoons, like the animation in Fleischer Studios cartoon “Christmas Comes But Once A Year” and “Gulliver’s Travels”.
This might be an unsual example……..
The Silly Symphony “Moth and The Flame” (1938), while it’s on the (now rare) Disney Treasures “More Silly Symphonies” DVD, the uploads i’ve been able to find aren’t good enough for this gourgous film (could also say about many other films on that set), a good HD-master on Disney+ would be welcome.