Some Cartoons For Saturday Morning #31

Hello my friends and welcome to another selection of classic cartoons. 

We start off with a UPA cartoon telling the story of Gerald McCoy better known as Gerald McBoing Boing, the noise making boy. You see he doesn't speak words he goes "Boing-Boing" instead. This story originated with a writer named Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Suess. However the main contribution of this film is to the way animated cartoons would be drawn for then on. Before in the US there was the lavish looking Disney, MGM and Warner Brothers cartoons, and there were the cheaper looking studios. This was one of the films that proved that American animation didn't have to look like either, The backgrounds were spare and abstract and the use of color was for mood rather than to create a more realistic setting. To be sure this cartoon had been pre-dated by the Chuck Jones and John McGrew cartoons for Warners in the 1940's. In fact many of those who worked at UPA would cite those cartoons as an influence on the UPA style. In fact this film's director Robert Cannon had worked as an animator on some of those shorts. However these UPA cartoons took it to a further extreme and that is what popularized this look. For much of the 1950's American cartoons (even some from Disney and Warners) tried to look like UPA cartoons. UPA cartoons also tried to get away from the slapstick violence that was so prevalent in Hollywood cartoons of this era. While this would hurt some of the studio's later work, the UPA output in the 1950's. Film buffs may notice a visual reference to Carol Reed's The Fallen Idol (1948), when Gerald sadly ascends the stairs. So enjoy Gerald McBoing Boing (1951).

Next comes a delightful cartoon staring the first Looney Tunes star Bosko. This cartoon is called Battling Bosko (1932) and stars our hero finding his way into a boxing ring to fight the champion Gas House Harry, a good 14 years before Bugs would go up against the Gas House Gorillas in Baseball Bugs (1946). He gets support from his girlfriend Honey and a fun music score by Frank Marsales, but can he bring down the champ? This may not be in the same league as later Warners boxing cartoons like Rabbit Punch (1948), or Porky and Daffy (1938), but it is still quite fun.

Next comes one of my favorite of the later entries of Walt Disney's silent Alice Comedies. This is Alice's Orphan (1926). At this time mixing a live action Alice with animated characters was become too much of a hassle and Alice was playing a smaller part in these shorts. Instead the starring role was going to her animated cat friend Julius. The story of this cartoon is very similar to a later Bosko cartoon called Big Hearted Bosko (1932) That later cartoon would be directed by one of the animators on this film, Hugh Harman.



   

We end with a delightful black and white Fleischer Brothers Popeye cartoon, titled Never Kick a Woman (1936).



Thanks for joining me come back next week for more classic cartoons. Until then Peace, Love and Cartoons.

-Michael J. Ruhland