![\"Shamus](\"http:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/TKlein_05Culhane.jpg\")
<\/a>Shamus Culhane<\/p><\/div>There it was, a hidden treasure inside of a cartoon explosion, a desperate few seconds of avant-garde filmmaking that played to millions of post-war moviegoers and then to Baby Boomers who watched The Woody Woodpecker Show<\/em> on television as kids. It\u2019s fascinating that The Loose Nut<\/em> has subversively pulled so many audiences into its Modern Art gallery for just a moment, not quite long enough for them to fully recognize what they\u2019d seen, but long enough for it to register at some level.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Four years ago, when I published a journal article on the films that Shamus Culhane directed for Walter Lantz, I wrote in detail about his escalating use of modernist flourishes. It then turned into quite a wild ride, and I confess that I loved the attention, when this oddball story of what I\u2019d found inside his cartoons became a front-page New York Times<\/em> story (Arts section\/April 11, 2011<\/a>) and erupted into a short-lived media frenzy that resulted in interviews I gave to news outlets around the world.<\/p>\n I was grateful for the overdue credit it gave to Shamus for parts of his work that had been overlooked and which surprisingly he had not discussed in his autobiography Talking Animals and Other People<\/em><\/a>. Culhane in the 1940s certainly saw himself as an artiste and, in addition to wearing a beret on occasion, he increasingly used the Woody Woodpecker cartoons as his personal canvas to try out new things. No example is more vivid than this modern art painting\u2014surely done by Culhane himself\u2014which is featured within a flickering montage sequence.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I absolutely love this abstract painting that I like to call \u201cExploding Saturn\u201d (1945). Unfortunately the original does not survive. However, by grabbing frames of the pan and assembling them, I\u2019m able to reconstruct here what this image looked like. Culhane probably painted it in a hurry during a lunch break using staff artist Terry Lind\u2019s brush and paints. He once described in a letter to me that he would work \u201cin the background dept. over lunch hour because I wanted to avoid a controversy with a conventional background artist.\u201d It was an experiment and in many ways this image can be seen as a product of a vibrant arts scene that took root in Hollywood during World War II.<\/p>\n Because of the huge dislocations of the war, traditional art enclaves like Paris were left behind and Los Angeles suddenly became home to quite a number of avant-garde notables in the early 40s. Americans were moving to L.A. too. There was definitely a westward magnetic pull. Alhough it was largely a cultural backwater relative to New York or Chicago, the good weather and allure of Hollywood apparently outweighed the drawbacks.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n That there were so few cultural offerings in L.A. seems to have only galvanized this group of like-minded artists. Clara Grossman opened her American Contemporary Gallery in early 1943. When she began a weekly screening of films that she arranged on loan from New York\u2019s Museum of Modern Art, she immediately drew an active and interesting crowd every Friday night. William Moritz wrote that \u201cyou might well sit next to D.W. Griffith or Lillian Gish or Man Ray or the Whitney brothers while watching a classic art film.\u201d You were also possibly sitting next to Maya Deren, Oskar Fischinger, Jean Renoir, Slavko Vorkapich, Fritz Lang, Kenneth Anger, Billy Wilder, Jules Engel or Shamus Culhane.<\/p>\n This August 1944 Lantz studio trade advertisement bills sexy “Miss X” as “Miss XTC” – and promotes a Swing Symphony based on “Lili Marlene” (which was never produced).<\/p><\/div>Culhane wrote in Talking Animals<\/em> about how important and invigorating the scene at Grossman\u2019s gallery was to him, surrounded by modern art and watching alternative cinema among such stimulating company. Remember that wartime fuel rationing was in effect, yet these individuals found a way to attend, either taking a trolley line or using their precious gas rations for the trip. I have wondered, was it already d\u00e9class\u00e9 to walk in L.A. in 1943? In any case, the gallery\u2019s location would have been convenient for someone working at the Lantz studio.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Walter Lantz Productions was on 861 Seward Street. The American Contemporary Gallery was on Hollywood Boulevard right near the classic Musso & Frank Grill. That means Culhane only needed to leave work and travel about ten blocks to make it to the evening screening. As shocking as this might sound to a Los Angeleno, he might have sometimes walked there. And from stories I hear, I bet he then had a drink at Musso & Frank’s with probably an interesting mix of Hollywood types and spillover from the gallery crowd. I wish Raymond Chandler had written about that.<\/p>\n These last few years in California have seen a concerted effort by the Getty Museums and Getty Institute to bring attention to the influential output of this art milieu that took root following the events of WWII. There is a beautiful coffee-table book, released in conjunction with Pacific Standard Time museum exhibits, that relates how in Los Angeles \u201cthe avant-garde film scene hovered at the edge of the city\u2019s celebrated film industry.\u201d<\/p>\n For me, I understand more clearly now how all of this connects within a rising Southern California zeitgeist. It is intriguing to look at Culhane\u2019s experimentation as part of a bigger trend, especially in his first year at Lantz starting mid-1943. This was Culhane\u2019s glory year, when he arrived fresh as a new director with huge ambitions and youthful reserves of energy. It\u2019s during this year-long stretch that he did his best work, before the grinding hours needed to fulfill his ambitions started to drain him.<\/p>\n\n\n<\/a>