Some Cartoons For Saturday Morning #21

Hello my friends and welcome back for another Saturday Morning to be filled with classic cartoon-type goodies. 

Let us start with one of the great Bugs Bunny cartoons of the 1940's Bob Clampett's Falling Hare (1943). This cartoon is the famous one where Bugs meets up with a gremlin (who ain't Wendell Willikie). The working title for this film was going to be Bugs Bunny and the Gremlin. This name was dropped because Walt Disney was making an animated feature based on Roald Dahl's book, Gremlin Lore. Because of this the Walt asked other animation studios not to make films about gremlins. Warner Brothers had this cartoon and one more about gremlins too far down the line of production. So they agreed instead to take the word gremlin out of the title for both. The other was originally titled Gremlins From the Kremlin but would be renamed Russian Rhapsody (1944). This is a fast paced highly energic cartoon which features Clampett's group of animators (especially Robert McKimson and Rod Scribner) at their absolute best. 


Next comes a later Warner Brothers cartoon and one that features the strange, but often used in the 1960's pairing of Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales. This is also one of the later Daffy Duck films where the duck has become a full on villain. So enjoy Well Worn Daffy (1965). 

 Now for one of the rare instances of very dark satire in one of Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies, Who Killed Cock Robbin? This film shows cartoon birds at the mercy of an unjust legal system. Satire, dark humor, celebrity caricatures and slapstick abound. The most significant of the celebrity caricatures is Jenny Wren, a caricature of Mae West. Most of her animation here is handled fantastically by Ham Luske and her voice comes from Martha Wentworth who does a really good impression. This character would later appear in the Silly Symphony Toby Tortoise Returns (1936). Two of Walt's future Nine Old Men animate on this film, Eric Larson and Clyde Geronimi. Eric animates the scene where Cock Robbin falls and the cops rushing in. Clyde animates the scenes involving the blackbirds and the cops, Legs Sparrow with the cops and then going into the witness box, and the cops' raiding the area. For the year of 1935 the National Board of Review named this as one of the Ten Best American Films (not just cartoons but films as a whole). According to JB Kaufman and Russell Merrit's excellent book, Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies: A Companion to the Classic Cartoon Series, the idea for making this film had been around the Disney studio as early as October 1933, but work truly began in March, 1934. Wilfred Jackson was originally going to be the cartoon's director, but he was replaced with Ben Sharpsteen, who was replaced with Dave Hand, who actually directed the cartoon. Dave Hand would later be the supervising director for the Disney feature films, Snow White and the Seven Drwafs (1937) and Bambi (1942). My fellow Alfred Hitchcock fans will recognize that a clip from this cartoon was later used in Hitch's classic movie, Sabotage (1936).

     

Ub Iwerks was one of the legends of early Disney cartoons. His animation defined the style of early Disney animation and he co-created Mickey with Walt. However he eventually left Walt, when he was offered to head his own cartoon studios. The cartoons that would be made there are not fondly remembered but they are often so bizarre that they have to be seen to be believed. The first starring character would be Flip the Frog and Funny Face (1932) is perhaps the best of his cartoons.



Now let us close by singing one we all know.

 

Thank you for joining me, come back next week for more cartoon treasures.

-Michael J. Ruhland