Happy Saturday morning my friends. You guessed it, it is time to look at some more classic cartoons.
It has been said often that if Disney cartoons were classical music than Warner Brothers cartoons were jazz. However if I were to pick a classic cartoon studio that really exudes jazz, I would pick the Fleischer studio. In fact some Fleischer cartoons even got famous jazz musicians to lend their singing voices to the cartoons. This cartoon features one of my favorites of that era, Cab Calloway, singing his most popular song, Minnie the Moocher. This cartoon stars Betty Boop and is the first of three Betty cartoons to feature Cab Calloway (The others being Snow White (1933) and The Old Man and the Mountain (1933)). For the dancing of the walrus, Cab's actual dancing was rotoscoped (a Max Fleischer invention where a live action film is traced over). This cartoon received the 20th spot in Jerry Beck's excellent book The 50 Greatest Cartoons. This film is filled with that great bizarre and imaginative imagery that help make so many of the Betty Boop cartoons of the early 1930's so great. So enjoy Minnie the Moocher (1932).
When people talk about Tex Avery, for they most part they are thinking of his MGM cartoons. The reason being that those are some of the funniest cartoons ever made. However his Warner Brothers cartoons certainly deserve another look, as they are great films in their own right. One of his best Warner Brothers cartoons is Hamateur Night (1939). This like many of Tex's color Merrie Melodies is a spot gag cartoon with loose story that simply connects various gags. The film also features a character TEx used often at this time Egghead. Egghead was based on popular radio comedian Joe Penner, and would later morph into Elmer Fudd.
One of the oddest pairings of Looney Tunes characters was Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales. During the mid to late 1960's Warner Brothers made a whole series of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies pitting these two against each other. Unlike the coyote and roadrunner or Sylvester and Tweety cartoons there was no built in reason for these two to be adversaries. As such each cartoon would have a completely different reason to have Daffy chase Speedy. This cartoon has the two as enemy spies. This film was directed by Rudy Larriva, who at this time was mostly directing coyote and roadrunner cartoons. This is one of his better directorial outings for Warner Brothers. So enjoy, The Spy Swatter (1967).
Next up comes the last theatrical cartoon to star Gandy Goose, a character who been a major Terrytoons character since 1938. This is a very good last cartoon for the character. There is some great animation (including some very over the top Jim Tyler animation for you cartoon buffs out there) and I love Gandy's impersonations of celebrities towards the beginning. So enjoy Barnyard Actor (1955).
Last up here is one of the Fleischer Brothers classic silent Out of the Inkwell shorts. This is a very delightful full of the great imagination and clever gags that made this one of the most memorable of the silent era. So enjoy Big Chief KoKo (1925). And yes the man drawing KoKo at the beginning is the one and only Max Flesicher. He has much less to do here than he did in most of these Out of the Inkwell cartoons, where he would often get involved in a battle of wits with KoKo. Still this is an excellent film in its own right.
Stay tooned next week for more classic cartoons. Until then peace love and cartoons.
-Michael J. Ruhland
No comments:
Post a Comment