It’s a Wednesday night as I write this, and I’ve just arrived from back from Gobles, a town about 20 minutes west of Kalamazoo, after spending the day helping my friend and project collaborator Chris Buchman. As I was replacing shingles on the side of his house on this beautiful day, we were talking about the Lantz interview he did back in 1981 when he worked for a PBS station in South Bend, Indiana. He noted the Lantz cartoons he had as a child on 8mm film, with one of his favorites being a cut-down b/w silent print of Hollywood Matador. Seeing the film in that form is a different experience than on a big screen in Technicolor, or even on a color TV. This was in the late 40s of course, so it would be some years before one could even dream about seeing the film in color at home otherwise. He remembered preparing the film and syncing it to the William Tell Overture, on a 78. The conversation continued, and as usual, we talked about all sorts of animated things, from Ted Eshbaugh to Bakshi. Chris, of course, loved presenting films throughout his life, so it wasn’t surprising that he ran nights of movies in the speakeasy basement of the Peabody Book Store in the late 60s and early 70s, ran the campus film showings at John Hopkins, and later hosted that PBS show that, in addition to Walter and Gracie, was also visited by Carmine Coppola, Buddy Rogers and other notable guests.
On the two plus hour drive home, I spent some time thinking about what today’s article would be about, and my thoughts turned back to the earlier conversation I had with Chris. The thread that ran through the conversation wasn’t only about the films, but *when and how* each of us had seen this cartoon or that. So, I thought it would be a fun day to open the conversation up about your experiences seeing animated films, including things like who you remembering seeing them with if you wish, where or other details. Since I have the bully pulpit here (!) I’ll share a few of mine first! I’ve mentioned some of this before I’m sure since some of these are pretty burned in memories.
So, here’s some of mine, in no particular order:
Gone Batty (1954), with childhood friends Kevin, Eddie, and Stan:
This isn’t really *seeing* the cartoon, but hearing it! The day before, I took my tape recorder (something I was obsessed with for a little while) and put it up to the speaker of our console TV and taped this particular cartoon. It turned out it was one of the favorites of all my friends when I played the tape at lunch. I think I might have been 8. I think it was the first time I realized that other people were maybe as into some of the cartoons as I was. Kevin could actually recite a lot of the cartoon, without the aid of a cassette tape!
Raggedy Ann and Andy (1977) for the third time or so. The Briarwood mall in Ann Arbor opened in 1973, and in the summers growing up I saw a lot of films there. It wasn’t far from our house, and on Saturdays my Mom liked going to church in the late afternoon, so she would sometimes take us to Briarwood to see a cartoon feature matinee while she shopped at the mall. I was pretty obsessed with this particular film, and saw it multiple times that summer. I specifically remember coming out of the theater, running up to my mom, and asking if she could take me again next week. I’m pretty sure that was the last time I saw it until I was an adult.
Pinocchio (1940) with my Dad after a long day of installing floors
My dad really was a hero to this cartoon-obsessed kid. They had already taken me once to see Pinocchio in 1978, and now, maybe a week or so later, in a rare time without my brother, he was taking me to Pinocchio. It might have been my birthday. Funny enough, that clearly wasn’t’ the important part. I remember looking over at him during the escape from Pleasure Island scene to see him completely asleep, and have thought often of how he must have been exhausted, but wanted me to be able to see the film one more time.
Hysterical High Spots in American History (1941) on channel 50 in Detroit Channel 50 played the Woody Woodpecker package that consisted of mostly 40s through the early 60s cartoons from the studio. There were a handful of films that were especially odd in the package as well as funny jokes or odd moments that especially stuck with me. One of the oddest films was ‘Hysterical High Spots in American History’ with it’s bizarre (to me) character designs and a whole series of references to what was popular culture in the early 40s that was, by the early 70s, a complete mystery. The scene where Edison plays back the recording he’s just made, with the recording saying “that ain’t the way I hear-ed it!” stuck around in my mind as a kid, and became one of those things you say over and over to other kids.
Ok- so there’s a few. Now it’s your turn. Put a few of your memories here of seeing animated films- and feel free of course to respond to other’s memories.
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.
I’ll make it short. It was around 3pm, in Manhattan. Went there by train (lucky to live close) all so I could see Spark a Space Tail which was playing FOR ONE DAY ONLY. Was about 1 minute late, and not talking trailers. Missed a minute. Enjoyed the movie, my intuition was correct after all, about it being a good movie. Met a peculiar person who was in the audience with me, and he said something in the likes of “animation has more originality and imagination than live action these days”. He was…… kind of right?
Oh, and the idea of 1 day only showings is horrible and needs to go away.
Quick Question!
Is Spooky Cartoony Halloween still on track for next month (September)?
The first time I saw Disney’s Pinocchio in its entirety (as opposed to clips on television) was at my neighborhood theatre. I was in junior high at the time and I was with my brother and some of our friends. It was on a weekend, but several of my school classmates were in the audience, and there were rude catcalls all through the film. When Pinocchio was shown face down in the surf near the very end, supposedly dead, the audience laughed and applauded. Though disgusted by the behavior of my peers in the audience I was still able to be in the movie enough to appreciate it.
Another time, when I was a young adult, my church held a family movie night, and the movie was Pinocchio, which was shown on an old-time reel-type film projector. I had seen it a couple of other times in the interval, but this was in the days when the Disney films were not readily available as they would become a few years later. The audience this time watched appreciatively and there were no inappropriate outbursts. However, when the film was over, everybody went home and that was that and nobody ever said anything about it, either then or any time afterward. I realized then that what I would need in order for it to be a fulfilling experience would be for someone to provide an introduction at the beginning and then to have some kind of a group discussion after viewing the film. I am not of the mentality that can go forth after a film and say “OK, what’s next?” I need to process what I have just seen and need to discuss it intelligently with others who have had the same experience.
My first viewing of “The Fox and the Hound” was with a girl I was planning to marry. After the film she and I had a nice long discussion of the kind I like, and she declared that Big Mama was her favorite character in the film. That same year she dropped the bombshell that she was getting married–to somebody else, someone she had known for a very short time. This devastated me. One of the first things I did upon being “set free” as it were was to spend some of the money I had been saving for the wedding. One of the things I bought, I don’t know exactly why, was the storyteller album of “The Fox and the Hound.”
Being able to properly appreciate something like animated cartoons seem to require being the right age – junior high sounds like a wrong time for it, where you’re needing to prove yourself grown up to a jury of your peers. You’re both too old and too young.
It always pleases me to see young kids, rumored to have no attention span thanks to their Pokemons and their Lunchables, actually enjoying quality animation. At a multiplex rerelease of ‘Peter Pan’ you could hear lids yelping with delight at the approach of Hook’s crocodile nemesis. When ‘Toy Story’ first came out, at the very last line when Woody and Buzz exchanged anxious grins at the news the household just got a puppy, a kid next to me, maybe four, piped up “That’s because of the dog earlier!” I turned with a smile to see his mother turned as we exchanges smiles, glad to see he clearly ‘got it’.
This is a wonderful post. I’ve been a lurker on this blog since I was a young teen, so I figured I’d add the Gen Z perspective. A lot of these memories are gonna be a little bit of a nightmare for film purists — I myself am mortified how our 16×9 TV would stretch the images of my favorite animated films for years before I learned that aspect ratio wasn’t just about how much black bar was at the top and bottom of the screen — but I think they’re pretty cool in and of themselves.
Gene Deitch’s Where the Wild Things Are (1973, viewed in the mid-2000’s with my mom on VHS)
My mom was very wary about what I watched. For years, guns were off the table in the movies or shows I watched, as were mild insults like “stupid” or “dumb.” And, of course, she was all about media having educational value. The Scholastic Video Collection was a perfect fit for her, and, lucky for her, I loved it too. This was a line of DVD’s released in the early aughts to the late teens that collected various films from the Weston Woods library by theme, and the first, and my favorite, was the Maurice Sendak collection. We’d often check out the VHS from our local library and watch it on rainy nights. This tape had three sections — the 1973 Gene Deitch adaptation of Sendak’s “Wild Things,” overdubbed by Peter Schickele in the mid-80’s, Deitch’s ‘86 adaptation of Sendak’s “in the Night Kitchen,” complete with full frontal child nudity (god what a trip!), and disembodied musical numbers from the 1975 Carole King/Sendak TV special “Really Rosie,” the only version of this special to make it to DVD. Of course, Wild Things was my favorite, and remains my favorite, with its classic Czech trick-film style of animation with double-exposures and paper cutouts. But I would sing the Carole King songs for ages as well. To this day, I can still pretty clearly recite Sendak’s “Pierre.”
Monsters, Inc. & Finding Nemo (2003, viewed in 2009 with my dad on my first two Fridays at Kindergarten)
Kindergarten for me felt like finally growing up. I felt like I’d turned over a new leaf and was olde enough to watch what had previously disturbed me or made me uncomfortable (I could even watch the afternoon PBS Kids shows where they used the word “stupid!”). So when Friday came around, my Dad convinced me we would have a movie night, and I’d conquer my biggest fear — Computer Generated Animation. Laugh all ya want, I was a six-year-old with undiagnosed Asperger’s, and, up to this point, the idea of cartoons existing in three dimensions was incredibly frightening to me. I’d seen clips of Monsters, Inc. in the optometrist’s office, and was so frightened by what I saw that I avoided looking at the screen entirely when the scenes came on. Dad, however, convinced me on this Friday night that I was big enough, and that the monsters really weren’t that scary. And with that, a tradition was born. To this day, I like reserving Friday and Saturday nights for movie watching. Back in Kindergarten, Dad would put on the voice of a theater announcer, pointing out the “emergency exits” around our living room in case of an emergency that never arose. We’d watch the trailers on the disc and then press play. This was back when we had a box CRT TV, so we’d often pick at random whether we wanted to see the “widescreen” version with black bars, or the re-rendered “Full Frame” version that fit the screen. The choice by this point, was entirely a matter of personal whim. Anyway, Monsters went so well for me that first Friday that I decided next Friday would be the night I conquered my biggest film fear up to that point. At age 3, my parents got a DVD of Finding Nemo and tried to watch it with me one night, but I was absolutely terrified — the Baracuda, the Sharks, Darla, the world’s most terrifying 6-year-old this side of The Shining — it was all too much for me. So, being the mature 6-year-old I was, I told Dad I was ready, and I was. Nemo is probably one of the films I most closely associate with my childhood, not just because it was released the year I was born or because of this specific viewing moment, but because I still see so much in Nemo that was real even for me back then. I was a disabled child who often felt sheltered by my parents, both of whom had their own demons they were dealing with. I see so much of my dad in Marlin, and writing this now just makes me want to give him a big ol’ hug and say it’s gonna be alright.
Gerald McBoing Boing (1950, watched on DVD in 2011-12)
Another library find. In second grade, I was a Dr. Seuss nut, and I came across the Golden Books adaptation of Gerald McBoing Boing at my local library. Because the cover noted it was based on a film, I asked Mom to search the catalogue for it. Roughly 6 years prior, in 2006, Columbia TriStar had released all 4 of their UPA Gerald shorts onto a barebones, single-layer DVD as a tie-in for the Cartoon Network reboot from around that time. Because our library owned several copies, I was able to get my hands on it. Gerald fundamentally altered how I saw film, art, and color, and I have that DVD and the many weekday afternoons and Saturday mornings I spent watching it, to thank for that. For years after, I’d draw characters whose skin tones blended into the background because I found that image so striking.
A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1965, watched on a VHS stretched to 16:9 in the summer of 2016)
Thank god for used book stores. My library had many things when I was young, but it lacked the DVD of this 1969 Peanuts film. My cousin, who was 10+ years my senior, had it on DVD at my aunt and uncle’s house, but I didn’t want to test their good graces when I decided, at the ripe age of 12, to view every single Peanuts special in chronological order. While I was able to watch the film via YouTube upload, I still wanted a physical copy, so, that summer, while at the used bookstore with my mom, I found an early 90’s VHS copy from CBS/Fox. It definitely had some tracking issues, but it worked for movie night, and to this day, I still remember seeing that CBS/Fox logo for the first time, feeling like I was peering into the past.
Monkeydoodle (1930, watched on DVD, stretched to 16:9, during the holidays of 2016) Here’s where you come in, Steve! My Seuss nuttiness led me to those late 40’s Ford commercials you and the Thunderbean team restored more than 20 years ago, and that led me to Coltons, which was on my Christmas list in 2017. I still remember how it felt looking at the booklet and smelling the “new DVD case” smell. Of course, I asked for it for the commercials, but I loved it for everything else. And Monkeydoodle was the most fascinating to me. This insane, spliced, strangely psychosexual film became something that, to this day, lives rent-free in my mind. So thanks for that, like so so much.
Great stories!
Bambi–I was probably about 5 years old, seeing it on its 1957 re-release. My siblings and I went with my mother and grandmother on a Saturday evening at my local theater (the long-gone Ritz on Richmond Avenue on Staten Island). I don’t recall a lot more about this particular viewing, except that I’m pretty sure it’s the first film I ever saw in a theater.
Wow! Well, I will say I have been enthralled with cartoons ever since my first exposure to them at approximately five years old when I became aware of the television set. It was early morning on our ABC affiliate and it was what has now been called the “Tommy seven“ or “early bird“ cartoon show, and it is obvious why it was called an early bird cartoon show. Every weekday and weekend morning we got these couple of hours of cartoons of various types before the morning newscast. I used to feel that the morning newscast interrupted what was to me a reverie of great animation! I wasn’t even aware of the commercials at that time. The cartoons in question? Episodes of either “courageous cat and Minnie mouse“ or “QT hush“, both TV animation, with classic MGM cartoon sandwich in between each episode. So you could imagine episodes of “QT hush“ with that eerie theme, followed, possibly by TEX Avery‘s MGM favorite “who killed who?“, But what turned out to be the favorite for me of course we’re the happy harmonies cartoons because of their lavish animation.
Some of that stuff could even scare me. I remember seeing“LI’ L old, BOSKO and the pirates“ for the first and only time at the end of one particular Saturday morning, just before the broadcast of “American bandstand“, and I don’t really remember how old I was, but it was kind of scary to see those frogs suddenly becoming insane when by the little bag of cookies that Bosco had to take to his grandma‘s house. It always seemed to eat like BOSKO cartoons started out common enough, like any other happy harmonies, MGM cartoon, and you knew somehow something was going to happen to turn it up, crank up the volume and the speed of the cartoon until you were dizzy yourself! I loved those things for that alone. At that early age, I was not aware of it being somewhat offensive, but I just knew that weird things were going to happen, almost similar to Bob Clampit‘s “wacky land“ before the cartoons finish. Of course I was also introduced to Fred Avery‘s magic at MGM with cartoons like “slaphappy lion“, “the discontented Canary“, oops, that was the first happy harmonies; I meant to say “king size Canary“ which I loved every minute of. No matter how big all the characters got, their heads remain the same size, and they were funny wandering through the urban landscape around them. And I also discovered Warner Brothers cartoons in syndication in the afternoon, especially during the summertime. It was almost fun being home sick sometimes because I knew I would be parking that pillow in front of the television set waiting for all the afternoon cartoons.
I remember my first exposure to anime, with “Astro boy“. I knew it was radically different from anything else I’ve ever seen, not pure movement like the American cartoons, but that didn’t make it bad. It was eerily stylized in black-and-white. Of course I had a black-and-white television set, so I didn’t realize that those films were made in black-and-white until much later when I learned about so much animation, history through books and cartoon festivals.
Oh, and I actually had an 8 mm projector for a while, silent only, and the films I collected were mostly Lance films as well. I had “the legend of rock-a-bye point“ and I played it so much that eventually the film broke! No, unfortunately, I did not know how to take care of film in those days. So I suffered for it. I don’t still have a projector and I don’t still have any films on celluloid of any kind, but those were the days. I could examine them frame by frame, but unfortunately, I realize that I couldn’t do that too much because it would burn holes in the film. I wish I had a movie so I could really pay attention to what cartoons looked like one frame at a time. This also made me wish that they were MGM cartoons. I could take home.
Oh what I would have loved to have watched a BOSKO cartoon like what I described above and freeze the frames that blew my mind at five years old. I wanted a better look at those cartoons. I wanted a better look at the scene where the pirate captain goes so crazy over cookies he screams out“oh damn cookies!“ And takes two of the skinny mates heads and bashes them together rapidly to the beat of the music. Everything bounced to the music beat. That’s what I distinctly remember about those cartoons. Also, what I remember is every character seem to have weight, you know, they look like they could leap off the screen and crash the walls. I think this was because of the shadows and light thing that Hugh Harmon and Rudolph ISING used to use in their MGM cartoons. This was especially so in a cartoon called“ABDUL the BULBUL Amir“ when the characters were in the ring and whirling up a hurricane of action as the people looked on. I couldn’t get the images of that cartoon out of my head when I saw it the last time years and years ago! You could look around a room and imagine those characters whirling around your house. There was something real about them all, something magical about a cartoon called “dance of the weed“.
How I would’ve loved to have had even silent prints of those cartoons if possible, so I could examine them more thoroughly, but that was not to be so. I did actually own some deputy DAWG cartoons as well, some of my favorites and I only wish I could remember the titles, but I never memorize titles of Paul Terry cartoons like I did for Warner Brothers, and for MGM which still remain my favorite Studios even just to listen to the soundtracks. Now that I have no site at all, those soundtrack still mean a lot to me.
Back in the day when I did have one eyes worth of vision, I also recorded onto realtor to real tape and then on audio cassette. I had recorded the first airing of “a Charlie Brown Christmas“ and could not stop playing it back. The same goes for season six “Flintstones“ episodes. Yes, I liked some of those characters that found their way to bedrock, like the great kazoo. I still think the voice work is fantastic and that’s why I recorded so much of it. However, I didn’t get a chance to record any of those class MGM cartoons because by the time I got a real real tape recorder, ABC had taken those MGM cartoons off the air! I was really sorry to see them go, even though they weren’t playing the BOSKO cartoons anymore for obvious reasons, but they did daringly play “uncle Tom’s cabana“ at least one before it was yanked as well. So I would say just about all of the MGM cartoons found their way to our ABC affiliate at least once. Oh, and they were also the “captain and the kids“ cartoon featuring the cats and jammer kids from newspaper strip fame. I never read the comic strip, not even after I enjoyed the cartoons. They were just stunning to look at! So there are at least a few memories of what I watched regularly. There were so much to choose from!
We didn’t have cable TV, of course back in my day, but we had something called variety! If you didn’t sit in front of the TV in real time, you lost it. You missed so much if you missed that one airing of a certain TV show that most people were talking about the very next day, but I was hooked on cartoons. It bothered me that there were no cartoons in the afternoon or in early evening, until “the Flintstones“ premiered and then we got things like “top cat“, “the Jetsons“ and “Johnny quest“, looking nothing like the other animated, cartoon series so beloved by millions. And of course they were the J Ward cartoons like “rock and his friends“ which I was so hooked on that I had to be there to catch each installment. Of course, I never did quite achieve catching each installment until the series was in syndication, along with episodes of “the Bullwinkle show“. The whole series had an opening similar to “the Bullwinkle show“ in syndication, so it was under one banner by the time I was enjoying it each afternoon. Animation was my favorite thing! I collected even into my young adult everything to do with those cartoon characters. That was my favorite moment in life being in front of the TV or at a movie theater where I could see these cartoons. Unfortunately, I never did see the happy harmonies on the big screen before I lost my site in 1976.
Again, I really wanted to so I could see more clearly what was happening on the screen. In somewhat blurry broadcast quality, all cartoons were in black-and-white because we did not have a colored TV until that good stuff was long off the air. Yes I did see an episode of “courageous cat“ in color and I tried to catch as many of them as I could as they were still airing on ABC. What was air in between them? Somehow I can’t quite remember, but it might have included “our gang/little rascals“ comedies.
And there was also a little thing called “BEANY and CECIL, the cartoon version, not the early puppet version. I don’t know how I missed “time for BEANY“ but I did. I’m not sure when that show went off the air, but the animated version, “BEANYNCECIL” premiered in the early 1960s and that’s when I was constantly spending my Saturday morning hours in front of the TV set. Yes I realized I should’ve gone outside more and played with friends, but you couldn’t have a better time than watching the classic cartoons.
Again, so much variety you couldn’t keep up with it all! Even the sugary cereal, commercials, lure you in with the little stories they would tell and the comedy. It all started with “happy harmonies“ and MGM.
I remember when Cartoon Network did the world television premiere of Akira. Prior to that, we thought all animation from japan was mostly limited stuff like Speed Racer. My brother and I watched it on a little tv my grandfather had on his dresser in his bedroom while the adults were in the living room watching sports or something. That tv was practically hand held, but I’m sure if you saw our faces, you’d have thought we were watching some kind of Imax spectacle. Totally blown away by the film and I still regard it as one of the best animated films of all time.
Other than that, I got to see the Inventor in a nearby theater on my birthday. That’s why my family let me pick the movie. Didn’t know of anything I wanted to see and I’d never heard of the movie, but it was great. Both the stop motion and hand drawn segments.
Our family moved around a bit, Dad being in the Army. In 1961 we moved from Rio back to the US, and he used the option of an ocean liner for the trip back (when steamships were common as transportation). My six year old self and my sibs spent a lot of time in the ship’s theater as my parents got some rare grown-up time alone.
I can’t say for sure if I’d seen any Warners cartoons by that point, but they definitely had an impact on me, and it became clear quickly that Bugs and company were bonafide movie stars. many of the titles stuck with me, where I can still remember seeing: A Corny Concerto, Easter Yeggs, Porky Pig’s Feat, Porky in Wackyland, I Got Plenty of Mutton, and What’s Opera, Doc? (genuinely afraid that was the last I’d see of Bugs). There was also a ‘Buddy’ cartoon or two, where we all agreed he was a weenie.
Certainly I’d seen plenty of cartoons before that, where at a very young age could make for some real nightmare fuel – Ted Esbaugh’s ‘The Snowman’ was designed for that. Columbia’s ‘Willoughby’s Magic Hat’ also had its effect, with a robot monster that if destroyed could just reassemble into a tank – decades before ‘The Terminator’.
On the evening of Wednesday, June 22nd, 1988, I sat at my kitchen table thoroughly pissed because I had been called in to work at my supermarket job earlier, and thus missed the first screening of Who Framed Roger Rabbit which I had been looking forward to for weeks. My mom suggested I just go to the next showing. Checking the listings, I saw there was one more showtime at 9:45. After hurriedly changing, I made a beeline for Southwest 7 Cinema (no longer exists), and soon the tribulations of the past day evaporated as I sat transfixed by Zemickis and Williams’ “movie magic” (“How did they DO that?” was muttered by me more than a few times).
At almost midnight, I exited the parking lot with my head reeling (mostly because the theater’s sound system was cranked unusually high). I knew i had just witnessed something special, and went back two days later…and again for a third time…and a fourth. Good thing the movie rewards multiple viewings.
Duck! Rabbit! Duck! and Rabbit’s Kin were never as funny as the first time I saw them on YouTube
I grew up in the San Fernando Valley about 20 miles from the Disney Studio and knew it from when we passed by it on the 101 freeway. I’m not sure if it was because of the proximity to the studio or what but when I attended elementary school in the late 60s, early 70s we’d often have Disney educational shorts as part of the curriculum (i.e. the I’m No Fool shorts, I’m A Human Animal, etc.). During the summer of 1970 & 71 the school had a summer day camp which I attended. Once a week they’d show a movie (16mm) in the school auditorium. Usually it would be stuff like “Snow White and the 3 Stooges” or “Santa Claus Vs. The Martians” but once each summer they’d get a Disney film. That’s where I first saw Lady and The Tramp and Peter Pan.
I remember seeing “Niagara Fools” at a drive-in. Woody Woodpecker tries to go over the falls in a barrel; the cop who tries to stop him always ends up going in his place. A running gag was on every drop, the barrel would fall past a crowd of tourists in yellow raincoats who’d shout “Hooray!”
Not knowing about the custom of raincoats as protection from the water, I guessed they were some kind of religious cult applauding likely fatal stunts. One of many things I assumed would make more sense and/or be funnier when I was grown up, like WWII references and caricatures of unfamiliar celebrities like Ned Sparks.
Numerous Disney features and shorts were familiar before I ever saw them in complete form. They’d be excerpted on World of Color, run with generic title cards on the syndicated Mickey Mouse Club, and featured in comics, records, books, etc. Not sure I saw all of “Peter Pan” until I was an adult with a VCR. I was sure I’d seen it at some point as a kid, but large chunks were totally alien.
The two Fleischer features seemed to be on television a lot when I was small, or I just remembered a lot of detail from one or two viewings. Any time I saw the old NTA logo card I got my hopes up.
My vivid memory is, ironically, what I -didn’t- see. Back in 1992 a friend invited me to go see Aladdin in theaters with him. For whatever reason, I declined. Stupidest decision I ever made. I got it when it was released on VHS and watched the heck out of it.
I remember being 5 years old and seeing on Cartoon Network the Tom and Jerry cartoon “Mouse for Sale.” It was already halfway through the cartoon, but something about it just clicked with me and if it wasn’t for that cartoon, I might not be the big animation nerd I am today.
My earliest surviving memory, period: The Wind in the Willows in the balcony of a big, fancy theater. I must have been no older than three, so it was probably in original release. No solid visual memories survive, but the overall enthralled impression has always been with me. First inkling of becoming a lifelong Disneyphile.
As I love animated cartoons and have had lots of memories associated with them for over 60 years on this planet, THIS is a “tall order” for whittling this post down to a few memories. I think the first animated feature film I saw in a theater was THE JUNGLE BOOK and that and the later MARY POPPINS were two absolute favorites of mine. I wanted to know “How did they DO that?” after the films were over and I thought about what I had just seen in the theater.
When I was a “Cub Scout” our “Den Mother” had a son who had one of those Kenner “Give-A-Show” projectors (which had a great “throw” where you could easily pick up the darn thing and project the image on any wall of your house. Plus, you hand-cranked it – backwards, forwards, or “freeze-frame” the image without too much fear of burning a hole of the film which you could easily do with a regular movie projector. Seeing a short silent film from the LASSIE TV series where the dog could leap from a small cliff into the water was fascinating to me, when you could run it slow or backwards! Wow! THAT was fun! I wanted that projector SO much! The kid had a cut-down version of (I think) a black-and-white “Looney Tunes” cartoon which I think was PORKY’S RAILROAD and I was fascinated by slowing down the footage and it was as if a light bulb went on in my brain. These were DRAWINGS that were filmed in a sequence of movements and maybe i could someday do something like that!
Another emotional moment was when my animation teacher at Columbia College in Chicago showed a very good color print of SUPERMAN (1941) in 16mm. I had never seen any of the Fleischer-Famous SUPERMAN cartoons in color before and it just “knocked my socks” off! This elderly teacher actually helped to ANIMATE this cartoon? I still remember that feeling of seeing something pretty spectacular on the screen that somebody I kinew had helped create.
Finally, I ran a number of JONNY QUEST cartoons for my son when he was small. When we got to “The Invisible Monster” episode where the invisible energy draining monster is about to attack the dog “Bandit,” my son told me to turn the player off. It was too intense for him. But he wanted to conquer his fear of this show. it wasn’t good enought that I told him that the dog would be okay; he wanted to see it for himself, yet he was afraid of doing so. It took him a few months to see the rest of it, but it was a kind of “right of passage” (if that’s the right phrase) for him and I’m glad he got through it with me!
I had a “Give a Show” Leonard. I just wish I could remember which movies I had.
My first viewing of anything animated was Williams’ RAGGEDY ANN, seen in a theater on its first release. I was three, and so terrified of the Camel’s hallucinations and the Greedy that I demanded to be taken home (and was!).
My parents, diehard Disney junkies from childhood, resolved to introduce me to cartoons one way or another, though. I didn’t seem to want to watch them on TV—but when they brought me to a Mickey Mouse birthday retrospective in early 1979, everything clicked. I’d never seen anything in black and white before PLANE CRAZY, which started the show, and I was electrified both by this new sensation and by the daredevil characterization of Mickey. That was the start of the embarrassing career I’ve been chasing ever since.
In 1984, at ten, I was baited into a video rental store—the first one I’d ever seen—by a screen in the window showing another early Mickey, HAUNTED HOUSE; when the shopowner offered to let me immediately see it again (something I didn’t know was possible), my eyes almost fell out of my head.
At the Museum of Cartoon Art in New York in 1985, I got my first viewing of Columbia Krazy Kat shorts; not yet having seen the Oswald and Fleischer cartoons they were mimicking, I perceived them as far more original than they actually were, and was stunned at the idea that there could be good cartoons that *weren’t* on TV.
A few more cartoons were so special to me in childhood that I had to drop everything and watch when they came on, or beg to rent any VHS tape that included them: Popeye’s GOONLAND and SINBAD, Porky Pig’s PLANE DIPPY, Flip the Frog’s LITTLE ORPHAN WILLIE (the first tape I actually owned), and any Betty Boop short that gave her dog ears—because it guaranteed something both primitive and rude.
Thanks for sparking these memories, Steve.
Growing up with parents who lived through the Depression, going to the movies was a very rare treat. I remember seeing The Jungle Book at a Florida drive-in (then called The Trail and still operating) during its initial release, Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs at a neighborhood theater (no longer showing films) during one of its rereleases around 1970, and seeing Robin Hood with my brother and friends at a long-gone, two-screen mall cinema during its initial release in 1973, where the featured short was The Band Concert.
My first memorable animated feature was definitely “The Jungle Book,” on its first release. My little grade-school self was really too young to follow the story, but I loved the lavish color palette and all the lively action and the vivid character voices— first-rate casting through and through. At this tender age I was also becoming susceptible to jazz (being a Noo Yawk kid), and even though I had no idea who Phil Harris and Louis Prima were, their music really got me where I lived!
I saw it at, of all places, Carnegie Hall. There was a small “boutique” movie theater in the basement back then — I have no idea whether it’s still there, having not been back to dear old Manhattan for more than ten years now. My mother took my sister and myself to a weekend matinee showing on a very rainy day. My sister was so young, barely out of the toddler stage, that in later years she couldn’t remember this experience at all! But I’ve never forgotten it.
Sad to say, this was of course the last picture that Walt personally supervised, but he certainly went out on a high note— in fact, quite a few of them!
I was nine or ten years old and the TV was playing Fresh Airdale for the first time (to me, at least). I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on the screen: the pervading bitterness, the non-retribution ending, the absolute lack of justice… When the show ended, I looked out the window only to discover the body of “Comanche” (a black terrier similar to the “number one dog” from the cartoon) lying in the street, run over. No, I’ll never forget you, “Comanche”! Nor will I ever forget Fresh Airdale.
I pretty much watched animation as long as I can remember. My parents had The Disney Channel and would tape Disney stuff on television and even record VHS rips of Disney tapes and at one point, a Tom and Jerry tape.
The first animated film I saw in theaters was the 1993 re-release of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” (1937) which was also me and my little brother’s first movie theater experiences (although, apparently my parent took me to a drive-through of Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman film as a baby). The funny thing was that I was already spoiled watching many excerpts of Snow White both on television and video by that point, I felt like I already saw 95% of the movie!
One most memorable animation viewing on television was the night of Easter Eve in 1997 when my family were at my grandmother’s house and I was surprised to see several Warner owned cartoons airing on Cartoon Network for the first time (with Warner having just merged with Turner late last year). In order, they were “Dog Pounded” (1954), “The Wearing of the Grin” (1951), and “Strangled Eggs” (1961) before we went to bed.
Mike, what I remember most about the “Give-A-Show” projector was that the machine was great in that the Super 8mm reel of film (orobably in a 50 foot reel, I think) snapped into a cartridge contraption, so there was “no muss, no fuss” and the focus was easy to use and ditto for the hand crank mechanism. Perfect for an inquisitive “Cub Scout” kid like me! Boy, I sure wanted one of those! I can’t describe exactly the “Eureka” moment when I ever so slowly cranked the image from (I think) PORKY’S RAILROAD to see the animation drawings begin to move and change. Not long after, I bought pads of paper and tried to do my own animaiton and had a friend shoot the drawings – each using the least amount of film that he could. I had no idea of how or what kind of film camera to use that had a way to shoot a frame of film at a time.
Most of my friends were not into animation the way I was, and since I was too young (for me, anyway) to go out on a date with a girl, or convince family members to go with me, I saw things like FANTASIA on my own. My dad saw the slightly edited “general release” print of the fim when he was a boy in Chicago (most of the introductions were cut, he remembered), so that it was very confusing. My mother – who lived in Connecticut then – must have gotten to see the complete print, because she couldn’t stop telling me about the film – and the nightmares she had ever so often about the brooms carrying too many buckets of water in the episode with Mickey! She remembered the introductions to each story segment.
A favorite ‘small moment” I had with my son was very young and when we – as a family – all watched PINOCCHIO. When the film was over, my son turned to me and said, “Dad! Do again!”
Seeing just okay quality prints of vintage POPEYE cartoons for a special showing at the Chicago Art Institute was great. I had never seen them in a theater and on the big screen with a group of cartoon fans. THAT was fun!
I just found your site, while I was trying to find any information of a cartoon film I have very vague memories of.
I saw it once as a kid, so it would’ve been in the 70s or early 80s. I want to say it’s some version of Sinbad. I can only remember one scene in particular.
It was set at night, and the characters are on a ship and in the distance another old ship appears. Sinbad (? -if it is Sinbad) starts to talk of “ghost ships” and when everyone looks at the ship in the distance, some wispy white forms appear and begin to slowly dance to music on the ship.
I can remember a few of the characters being afraid and hugging one another.
Does this ring a bell to anyone? I’ve been trying to find this cartoon for a while, but have had no success.
My first animations were “A Tale of Two Kitties” at my biological father’s mother’s (my first Gramdma to pass away shortly after my dad, rip), as a very small newborn on Thanksgiving of ’93, and “The Lion King” during it’s original Fall re-release in 1994. (I was 1). My first true VHS was Disney’s Sing-along Songs VHS tapes.
My first cartoon directly from Paramount was some Popeye cartoon on CN, followed by “Old MacDonald Had a Farm”. I also liked “Shortnin’ Bread”as well for Screen Songs.
However that tape somehow broke, and I then rediscovered the Fleischer/Famous ‘toons much later on the Popeye show but more importantly on another PD tape by Burbank VIdeo. That was “A Scout with the Gout” with Little Lulu.
There’s so much i’VE LEFt inbetween, but these will keep YOUR interest for now.