Hello my friends and happy Saturday morning. Once again that means it is time to enjoy some classic cartoons.
The first cartoon for the day is a delightfully odd Betty Boop cartoon (because there are so many normal ones), Betty Boop's Up and Downs (1932). This film is a perfect example of why I love the early Betty Boops so much. They are full of the odd innovativeness that made 1930's so special. Of course when it comes to this sheer creativity, no one topped the Fleischer studio and this film shows them at the height of their powers. A review in The Film Daily stated "Max Fleischer has put an extra touch of novelty into this cartoon."
Continuing with the theme of strange but highly entertaining 1930's cartoons, here is one of my favorite Pooch the Pup films, The Lumber Champ (1933). This is a fast paced fun cartoon full of extremely creative gags from start to finish. This is a film that is a cartoon and never ashamed of it. Every cartoony thing that can happen happens and I love it. This film contains some scenes that are visually reminiscent of some of Disney's Silly Symphonies (Flowers and Trees (1932) and Springtime (1929)), yet this is completely a Walter Lantz cartoon through and through. According to an issue of Universal Weekly, this was the first cartoon to feature Pooch the Pup having darker ears. In that issue Walter Lantz stated "The other day, we discovered that Pooch looked better with dark ears. The whole lot was enthusiastic about the new sideboards, and we feel that Pooch's admirers will be greatly amused by Pooch's new ears." You can read the page where this quote is from on a previous post from this blog by clicking here.
Universal Weekly, 1933
Next we jump a couple decades forward for a fun Gandy Goose cartoon, Wide Open Spaces (1950). An exhibitor's review in the Motion Picture Herald described this film perfectly, "This is a shoot-'em-up western and good."
I enjoy the Filmation DC superhero cartoons, not despite how corny they are but because of it.
As a film buff who loves old cartoons, I always have a special fondness for the cartoons, that use a lot of Hollywood caricatures. One of the lesser known but still very enjoyable of these cartoons is The Autograph Hunter (1933) starring Krazy Kat. This is a very fun, see how many you can name cartoon. I especially enjoyed seeing Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery caricatured together. What immediately struck me about this film is how much it reminded me of the Donald Duck cartoon, The Autograph Hound (1939), both with the title and a very similar ending gag. While the endings are handled quite differently, the basic punch line is very similar. I doubt that Disney borrowed from this Columbia, Krazy Kat cartoon, but the similarities to the two films are quite interesting.
Donald's Better Self (1938) is a rather unusual Donald Duck cartoon. In this film Donald is not an adult but rather a child. This is especially interesting considering about a month later Donald's Nephews (1938) would be released and that film would cement Donald as the adult in an ongoing adult vs. child conflict. Donald's Better Self actually began as a Silly Symphony that would not star Donald but rather a little farm boy who would torture farm animals but learn his lesson in the end. That story line was suggested back in 1934. The title for that film was going to be Streubel Peter and was based off of Heinriech Hoffman's Der Struwwelpeter. The idea to adapt that story actually came from Eleanor Roosevelt, who remembered the story fondly from childhood and wrote Walt Disney about making a cartoon about it. Walt replied "I have just finished reading 'Streuble Peter,' and liked it immensely. I believe it could be made into an interesting Mickey Mouse or Silly Symphony subject, and I am now trying to find a way to incorporate the thoughts and ideas of this story into continuity form." However Walt and his staff found it hard to make Peter an appealing character and the idea was dropped. It was revived again in 1937 as a Donald Duck cartoon, called Good and Evil. Writers Tom Armstrong, Harry Reeves and Carl Barks ending up changing so much that the finished film (retitled Donald's Better Self) bared little resemblance to where the idea originated. A review in The Film Daily stated "Raucous Donald Duck reaches a new integrating high in this most recent of his vehicles, which is filmed entirely in Technicolor. Further the reel is one of the best and certainly one of the most amusing, ever made by Walt Disney. It is the type of short that is immensely human and as a consequence will score heavily."
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| Exhibitors Herald World, 1930 |
Thanks for joining me until next week, peace love and cartoons.
-Michael J. Ruhland
Resources Used
Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies: A Companion to the Classic Cartoon Series by J.B. Kaufman and Russell Merritt.
Animation Art edited by Jerry Beck
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