Some Cartoons For Saturday Morning #138

 Hello my friends and happy Saturday morning. Once again it is time for some classic cartoons.

Today's cartoon selection begins with a true Mickey Mouse classic, Thru the Mirror (1936). Well before the Disney Studios feature length adaption of Alice in Wonderland (1951), this short film adapts Lewis Carrol's Alice Through the Looking Glass. It is a very loose adaption, but it captures the spirit better than most feature length versions of Carrol's Alice books do. I have always loved Disney cartoons that or not afraid to be silly. This is one of the perfect examples of that. One of the highlights is a sequence with Mickey do a Fred Astaire type dance which was animated by Dick Lundy, who specialized in dancing animation. Dick Lundy would later direct some great cartoons for Walter Lantz and MGM. Elements of this movie would play a major role in the video game Epic Mickey.

Motion Picture Herald, 1933

Next we join Sylvester and Tweety in Tweet Zoo (1957). Director Friz Freleng once said about Tweety, "I made him look more like a charming baby, with a bigger head and big blue eyes. He's a canary because we say he's a canary … He doesn't look like a canary. We didn't have time to develop characters. When you see Yosemite Sam, you know he's a villain, when you see Tweety the audience is sympathetic."

Next up comes a masterpiece of a Silly Symphony, The Flying Mouse (1934). This cartoon perfectly shows how advanced the filmmaking from the Disney staff was by this time. While these cartoons are not stylized in the way later UPA cartoons were, the filmmaker how to use bits of stylization to help tell the story. For instance watch how the color of certain scenes changes to fit the mood. These colors are obviously not used for realism but rather to get us involved in the emotion of the story. Here in 1934, they accomplished a feat similar to the ones UPA was praised for in the 1950's but since the filmmaking does not call attention to itself here, it has easily gone unnoticed by many. However this subtlety shows just how sophisticated these cartoons are. It did not hurt that an excellent group of animators worked on this movie. Mickey Mouse specialist, Fred Moore, animated this more realistic mouse in the scenes in which he interacts with the fairy and looks at his reflection in the pond. Ben Sharpsteen (later the supervising director for such features as Pinocchio (1940) and Bambi (1942)) animates the dramatic scene of the mouse escaping from the cave. Ham Luske (the first animator Walt Disney cast for the feature length Snow White) animates the mouse being spanked, seeing the butterfly and the scene with the bats. In 1939-40, there were plans to release shot for shot remakes of earlier Disney shorts including this one, but most of them were abandoned.

Now it is time for a commercial break.

Up next is Magoo's Three Point Landing (1958). Mr. Magoo is a character who has often been overlooked by animation fans, many of who dismiss his films. However when one looks at his filmography, there are some true gems there. This may not be his best short, but it is quite delightful in its own right. I like Magoo best when he is purely a grumpy old man. He is not funny because he can't see, but because he is too stubborn to admit it. That is perfectly the case here. While more limited than the Disney cartoons discussed earlier, the animators bring some fine acting within that limited animation. Maurie Faigin animates the opening scene. Ed Freidman animates a lengthy scene (which is also one of the movie's highlights) were Magoo hitchhikes. Barney Posner also gets some great scenes animating Magoo driving through the airplane garage and arguing with the people therein, as well as the two pilots. Speaking of the two pilots notice that one is named Sully and is known for his "emergency landings." One of them also is voiced by Daws Butler doing a voice that sounds like The Huckleberry Hound Show's Mr. Jinx.

Next is Roland and Ratfink in Robin Goodhood (1970).

Now for one of The Fleischer Studios' silent Out of the Inkwell cartoons, Ko-Ko's Queen (1926). This movie like many others in the series, combines live action and animation. Ko-Ko's live action creator is played by producer Max Fleischer who proved in these shorts to be a fairly good silent comedy actor. This movie is filled with all the imagination and clever gags that fans of the Fleischers have come to except from their cartoons.

Today's cartoon selection ends with an entire episode of TV's Linus the Lionhearted.

Resources Used Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse: The Ultimate History by J.B. Kaufman and David Gerstein Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies: A Companion to the Classic Cartoon Series by Russell Merritt and J.B. Kaufman "I Tawt I Taw A Puddy Tat": Fifty Years of Sylvester and Tweety by Jerry Beck https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/upas-magoos-three-point-landing-1958/