Hello again my friends and happy Saturday morning. As always we are going to greet this morning with some classic cartoons. This week however I will be focusing specifically on silent era cartoons. So enjoy.
We will start our look off with one of Walt Disney's great Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons. This one is a delightful gem called The Fox Chase (1928). Walt must have liked the idea of a comedic fox chase cartoon, as he would use it twice more. These cartoons would be the Silly Symphony, The Fox Chase (1931) and the Donald Duck and Goofy cartoon, The Fox Chase (1938). All three of these cartoons end with a similar gag involving a skunk. This cartoon is an excellent fast paced cartoon of the kind us silent cartoon fans should except from the Oswald series. The animators on this film were Ub Iwerks, Rollin "Ham" Hamilton and Hugh Harmon. Hugh Harmon would later direct a Looney Tune entitled Bosko's Fox Hunt (1931), which would also be about a comedic fox hunt and feature Rollin "Ham" Hamilton as an animator.
Next comes a classic Russian stop motion film, directed by one of the all time greats of stop motion, Ladislas Starevich. This is The Cameraman's Revenge (1912). This short is a material farce starring very realistic beetles. There is a reason these animated beetles look real. They are. Starevich used dead beetles for his stop motion animation here. This is an excellent film and in my mind one of the classics of silent animation, so enjoy.
Though Felix is often associated with his bag of tricks and high pitched voice of the 1950's TV cartoons. The character is actually 100 years old and starred in many great silent cartoons, before he ever got his bag of tricks. This cartoons were some of the funniest and most creative cartoons of the silent era. Case in point, Felix Goes West (1924). Though only Pat Sullivan gets credit on this cartoon, Otto Messmer was extremely important to the creation of the character and his cartoons. It is a shame he never received on screen credit for his contribution.
One of the most popular cartoon characters of the silent era not from the U.S. was Jerry the Troublesome Tyke. This British dog's cartoons more often than not, excellent films. One of his best cartoons was his very first one, a self titled cartoon from 1925. This cartoon has the very clever premise, where Jerry tries to apply for a job as a cartoon dog. This meta type of humor was surprisingly to those who know little about silent cartoons, not very unusual at this time. Therefore it is hard to this was ahead of its time, but it certainly holds up excellently today.
We close with one of the Fleischer brothers' excellent Out of the Inkwell films. So enjoy, Modeling (1921).
Thanks for joining me. Come back next week for more classic cartoons.
-Michael J. Ruhland
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