Some Cartoons For Saturday Morning #128

 Happy Saturday morning and welcome back for another selection of classic cartoons. 

Today's selection begins with a Porky Pig short, Notes to You (1941). This cartoon was later remade as Back Alley Uproar (1948), which is considered an all time classic. Back Alley Uproar would replace Porky with Elmer Fudd and the unnamed cat with Sylvester. Yet there are many scenes that when compared to each other are nearly identical in the two versions. This should come as no surprise considering that director Friz Freleng and writer Michael Maltese would work on both shorts. That remake seems to overshadow this film, yet taken on its own terms is very entertaining and a joy to watch. The following is an exhibitor's review from The Motion Picture Herald, "Notes to You: Looney Tunes Cartoons - Here is one of the funniest cartoons for some time. New gags and highly amusing. Running time, 7 minutes. - H. Goldson, Plaza Theatre, Chicago, Ill. General Patronage." 

Next comes another classic black and white Looney Tune, Eatin' on the Cuff or The Moth Who Came to Dinner (1942). This cartoon was included in Jerry Beck's book, The 100 Greatest Looney Tunes and has become a favorite of some cartoon buffs. The oddball nature of this short becomes obvious from the very opening in which a live action piano player begins to tell us the story. The actor used here is silent era veteran Leo White, who will be familiar to a lot of my fellow Charlie Chaplin fans. However the voice we hear is not that of Leo but rather of Mel Blanc, who voiced countless characters in the Looney Tunes shorts. It is easy to see why Looney Tunes fans love this short so much. It is a fast paced and crazy short with a wild anything for a laugh attitude. It should come as no surprise that the film was directed by Bob Clampett, whose work was often wild and energetic even by Looney Tunes standards.  It also features some excellent animation such as Virgil Ross' scene of the bee and the spider's duel and Rod Scribner's animation of the spider's huge nose emerging from her wig (a dirty joke that would have only been attempted in a Clampett cartoon). A reviewer for The Film Daily stated, " This cartoon is interesting chiefly because it veers away from the usual formula for this type of short."

Next we join Pink Panther for Extinct Pink (1969). 

One thing that makes Hanna-Barbera's Abbott and Costello TV cartoons appealing to fans of the movie comedy team is that Bud Abbott was still alive to voice himself. The age can definitely be heard in his voice but he still remains one of comedy's greatest straight men. Unfortunately Lou Costello passed away in 1959, so Stan Irwin voices the character here. The duo met ghosts and monsters multiple times in their movies and they do in the following cartoon, Gone Ghosts (1968). 

Next comes one of Disney's classic Silly Symphonies shorts, Woodland Café (1937). A working title for this cartoon was Bug Cabaret and that describes this film perfectly. There is no real story here, but the filmmakers are able to get plenty of entertainment out of the basic premise of a nightclub for bugs. While Disney cartoons have often be thought of as resembling classical music, this film is a jazz filled experience. Appropriately one of the studio's greatest jazz nuts worked as an animator on this film. That was Ward Kimball, who animated the very jazzy finale of the short. This finale includes animation of a grasshopper who moves like Cab Calloway. Ward Kimball biographer, Todd James Pierce stated that these scenes were possibly based off of Cab's appearance in the Warner Brothers movie, The Singing Kid (1936). Adding to the jazz feeling of this film, the short uses a popular recent jazz song Truckin'. Having made its debut in 1935 this song (written by Ted Koehler and Rube Bloom) had already been recording by a wide variety of great jazz artists including Fats Waller, Duke Ellington and Harry Allen. The use of a recent popular song in a Disney film was certainly unusual as the studio had mostly used either newly written material and old classical music. Some exhibitor's were surprisingly disappointed by this cartoon as is evidenced from the following exhibitor's reviews for the Motion Picture Herald, "WOODLAND CAFE: Silly Symphonies—Probably we are expecting too much from Walt Disney, but from comments this did not seem to come up to par; something lacking. Running time, 8 minutes.—A Gold- son, Gold Coast Theatre, Chicago, Ill. Neighborhood patronage."  "WOODLAND CAFE: Silly Symphonies—Not up to the standard of Silly Symphony.—C. L. Niles, Niles Theatre, Anamosa, Iowa. General patronage." This cartoon would be reissued to theaters in 1948. 


 

Next we join your friend and mine, Scrappy in Scrappy's Party (1933). As you can see from the following cartoon, Scrappy was one of Hollywood's true men about town and anybody who was anyone had to attend his parties. They were the true Hollywood social events of the year. 

Director Jack Kinney's cartoons are the wildest and craziest the Disney studio ever produced and while I know that many cartoon fans will disagree with me, his cartoons make me laugh just as much as those of Tex Avery and Bob Clampett. Once offered a job at MGM (they offered him a higher salary but the Disney studio matched this amount of money to keep Kinney) one wonders what he would of done at the studio where Tex Avery shined his brightest. Though he is best known for his work with Goofy, he also directed some fine cartoons starring the other Disney characters. I especially love his Donald Duck cartoons, including Duck Pimples (1945), which is coming up next. To say that this cartoon is surreal and crazy is a major understatement. Yet not all of this is due to Kinney but also to the film's writers, Virgil “Vip” Partch and Dick Shaw. Partch is best known for his work in magazine cartoons for such magazines as  Collier's, The New Yorker, Playboy, and True, as well as his comic strips Big George and The Captain's Gig. Dick Shaw wrote the Mickey Mouse comic strip from 1942-1943. The two remained close friends their whole lives. Animator Marc Davis was not a fan of this short telling Disney historian Don Peri, “It was pretty bad…it was one of those tongue-in-cheek things. Walt was never tongue-in-cheek, and I think our own development didn’t permit it.” Yet Marc provided some excellent animation here of the book's author talking to our main cast and the crook's confession and attempted getaway. Despite his dislike of this type of cartoons, Marc's animation is pretty darn funny and adds to the humor of these scenes. Other highlights in the animation include Fred Moore's animation of the detective being very affectionate towards Donald, Hal King's animation of Donald being frightened by the radio show, John Sibley's animation of a mysterious man in a raincoat and Milt Kahl's scene of a hot iron salesman. 

Let us end with a song.

Thanks for joining me. Come back next week for another batch of animated treasures. Until then may all your tunes be Looney and your melodies merry.

Resources Used

https://likelylooneymostlymerrie.blogspot.com/2014/08/342-notes-to-you-1941.html

https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/goose-duck-pimples/

https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/who-were-dick-shaw-and-brice-mack/

Silly Symphonies: A Companion to the Classic Cartoon Series by Russell Merritt and J.B. Kaufman.

The Life and Times of Ward Kimball by Todd James Pierce

The 100 Greatest Looney Tunes Cartoons Edited by Jerry Beck