Some Cartoons for Saturday Morning #5

Happy Saturday Morning again my friends. It is time to look at some more classic cartoons.

To start off we have one of Walt Disney's silent Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons. One thing I love about these early silent Disney cartoons. is that they broke rules Walt Disney would later place on his cartoons. While his later animated cartoons would eliminate such ideas as parts of the body coming off and going back on feeling that they cut into the believability of the characters. This cartoon though is full of those type of gags. Hugh Harmon was one of the animators on this film. He would later direct a Looney Tunes cartoon entitled Bosko the Doughboy (1931) that would be quite similar in terms of story and gags. So without further ado here is Great Guns (1927).




Now for two of those great bumpers that played between the main cartoons for The Huckleberry Hound Show (1958-1962).

Next up is a classic Looney Tunes cartoon. You may be familiar with Chuck Jones' great Charlie Dog and Porky Pig cartoons. Well in many ways this Bob Clampett film is the precursor to those. Like in those cartoons here an obnoxious dog is trying to get Porky to adopt him. Though the design and voice are quite different, the personality makes him a clear precursor to Charlie. This film does not feel like a precursor of things to come though instead it is a great film in its own right. Notice how many of the backgrounds are in fact live action photographs. Clampett would later use the same technique in another great black and white Looney Tune, Eatin' on the Cuff or The Moth Who Came to Dinner (1942). Also notice how Porky's apartment is called Termite Terrace. Termite Terrace was the affectionate name for the building where many of the great black and white Looney Tunes were made. So enjoy Porky's Pooch (1941).




Next is a really clever and fun silent Felix the Cat cartoon, All Puzzled (1925). This is one of the shorter Felix cartoons, only running about three minutes. At this time many cartoon shorts were still heavily inspired by comic strips and this one is no exception. It feels like it could have easily been a Sunday comic strip. Like many of the Felix the Cat cartoons of the silent era, I love the pure imagination here. Like all the Felix cartoons of this era, this cartoon was directed by Otto Messmer and produced by Pat Sullivan.



Easily some of the best cartoons of the silent era were the Fleischer Brothers' Out of the Inkwell cartoons. In these films, an animated Koko the clown would enter into a live action world and wreck havoc. One of the most fun parts of these cartoons is to see Koko battle with his live action boss, Max Fleischer. The star of these cartoons, KoKo the clown would continue on into the sound era, as a supporting character to Betty Boop. Like the later Betty cartoons, these Inkwell films were chock full of imagination and the pure amount of great ideas in one cartoon is staggering. Here is one of my favorites in the series, Cartoon Factory (1924).



    Last but not least for the day is the Donald Duck cartoon, Clown of the Jungle (1947). This film finds Donald as a wildlife photographer who tries to get a picture of the wild Aracuan bird. This character is one of the wildest and craziest created for the Disney studios. He first appeared in the feature film, The Three Caballeros (1944), which was already the studio's wildest and cartooniest films. This short is another wild and cartoony film from the Disney studio with laughs galore. Not hurting that is that the cartoon was directed by Jack Hannah, who was handling most of the Donald Duck shorts at this time and proved himself to be a great director of cartoony cartoons. The backgrounds for this cartoon where borrowed from a Donald cartoon from the previous year, Frank Duck Brings 'em Back Alive (1946, also directed by Hannah). The working title for this picture was Feathered Frenzy. I love the cute and charming animation of the humming birds at the beginning (animated by Bill Justice), it fools you into thinking you are going to watch a cute little cartoon, making the craziness that is going to come all the more funny. The humming birds return later in cartoon only to be interrupted by the zaniness of the Aracuan bird (this scene also animated by Bill Justice). The film also contains a gag involving the Aracuan bird drawing a real working, elevator with a pencil (this scene is marvelously animated by Hal King with perfect split-second comic timing) which may remind one of a similar gag in Bob Clampett's classic Looney Tune, Porky in Wackyland (1938). So without further ado here is Clown of the Jungle.



For the section on Clown of the Jungle JB Kaufman's great book, South of the Border With Disney proved to be an incredible resource.


So stay tooned for more classic cartoons next Saturday. Until then peace love and cartoons.

   -Michael J. Ruhland