Happy Saturday Morning my friends. That's right it time to look at some more classic cartoons.
The idea of cartoons being cinematic art capable of everything live action films are is shown very clearly in the Fleischer and Famous Studios Superman cartoons. These films are unlike any other cartoons to come out of these studios. They have a heavily cinematic quality to them with filmmaking that is in many ways a part of the film noir movement of the era. One of the most clear examples of this is Eleventh Hour (1942). This is also pure world war 2 propaganda making it also a vey interesting look at the time period it was made in, Once again the voices of Superman and Lois are by Bud Collyer and Joan Alexander, who also provided the voices on the Superman Radio show. Both would continue voicing the characters into the 1960's where they were doing them for Filmmation's TV series.
Beaky Buzzard was a character that originally appeared in two classic Bob Clampett cartoons, Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid (1942) and The Bashful Buzzard (1945). At that time he was voiced by Kent Rogers. Rogers died in World War 2. However the character didn't disappear after this and received two more cartoons. This cartoon was the first one to not be directed by Bob Clampett or have Ken Rogers as the voice. Friz Freleng is the director and I believe Mel Blanc is the voice. Also notice in this cartoon, Beaky seems smarter than he had been in previous cartoons, one wonders if Friz had directed more cartoons of this character, if he would have stayed smarter. So enjoy The Lion's Busy (1948).
Next up comes one of Walt Disney's great silent Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons, Ozzie of the Mounted (1928). One of the animators on this cartoon was Hugh Harmon who would later be one of the co-creators (along with Rudolph Ising) of the Looney Tunes cartoon series. Hugh would later direct a Looney Tunes cartoon called Big Man of the North (1931), the big difference between the cartoons is that the Looney Tune being a sound cartoon would feature a musical number. The Walt Disney silent also featured a mechanical horse that does not appear in the Looney Tune. Mechanical animals were a popular theme in the silent Disney cartoons, including in an earlier Oswald cartoon, The Mechanical Cow (1927). Also animating on this cartoon is one of Disney's future Nine Old Men, Les Clark. The cartoon was directed by Walt himself.
Next comes the first Terrytoon to team Gandy Goose and Sourpuss. These two were used as a comedy team for a while by the studio and watching this film it is easy to see why. They are delightful together. This is one of the best and most creative Terrytoons cartoons and I can't recommend it enough. So enjoy The Magic Pencil (1940).
-Michael J. Ruhland
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