Hello, my friends and happy Saturday morning. Once again it is time for some classic cartoons.
Today's cartoon selection begins with Sylvester the cat in Hippety Hopper (1949). This is the second cartoon to feature Hippety Hopper (the kangaroo) and the first one to give him a name. Sylvester and Hippety worked together in a total of 13 classic short films and all of them would follow the same premise of Sylvester mistaking Hippety for a giant mouse.
Now let's join Cubby Bear and take a World Flight (1933). If this film feels more like one of the early Looney Tunes with Bosko than most Cubby Bear cartoons that is due to the fact that the film is directed by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising who made those cartoons. It must be remembered that this movie was made in 1933 well before the horrors that Adolf Hitler would inflict on this world would be fully known to the filmmakers. Seeing Hitler cheer on Cubby is still more than a little uncomfortable today. A review in The Film Daily stated, "Nothing new or particularly clever about this one." The following is a review from The Motion Picture Herald, "When Cubby Bear, the Aesop's Fables animated hero, attempts his world flight, and the plane indulges in those antics that only an animated cartoon artist can conduct, the result is a lightly amusing cartoon, especially enjoyable for the youngsters. Incorporated are caricatures of the Four Marx Brothers, Chevalier and others, cleverly done but no longer new." Notice how the newsboy at the beginning looks more than a little like Bosko. Phileas Fogg would be amazed at just how quickly Cubby can make it around the world.
Next comes a Columbia Color Rhapsody cartoon directed by Howard Swift, Pickled Puss (1948). The basic premise of this cartoon is very similar to that of the Tom and Jerry short, Part Time Pal (1947). This movie is one of the last cartoons from this studio as the studio close in 1949 and Columbia would begin instead distributing UPA's cartoons.
Next comes The Pink Panther in Pink Tuba-Dore (1971).
Now it is time for a commercial break.
The Skelton Dance (1929) was the first of Disney's Silly Symphonies and one of the best. The idea for the series came from musical director Carl Stalling (who would later work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies). The Silly Symphonies were designed to revolve around music. Walt Disney loved the idea and felt that a second series would allow him to experiment more and not be tied down by the formula of a Mickey Mouse cartoon. The idea for the first film also is believed to have come from Stalling. Stalling would tell historian Michael Barrier about the genesis of the movie stating, "He thought I meant illustrated songs, but I didn’t have that in mind at all. The Skeleton Dance goes way back to my kid days. When I was eight or ten years old, I saw an ad in The American Boy magazine of a dancing skeleton, and I got my dad to give me a quarter so I could send for it. It turned out to be a pasteboard cut-out of a loose-jointed skeleton, slung over a six-foot cord under the arm pits. It would ‘dance’ when kids pulled and jerked at each end of the string. Ever since I was a kid, I had wanted to see real skeletons dancing and had always enjoyed seeing skeleton dancing acts in vaudeville.” Though Carl Stalling would use an excerpt from Edvard Grieg’s March of the Dwarfs, most of the music was an original by Stalling. The animation for the movie was completed in six weeks. The majority of the animation was done by Ub Iwerks, the Disney studio's main animator at the time. He animated some of the earliest Mickey films entirety by himself. On this film he was assisted by Wilfred Jackson and Les Clark. It is not known for sure what Les Clark animated as some sources state he animated the opening scene and others (including his own) state he animated one skeleton playing another's ribs as a xylophone. Wilfred Jackson most likely animated the scene where the rooster crowing (which was reused in The Cat's Nightmare (1931)). When Walt tried to sell this film, it did not go as smoothly as he excepted. Walt's daughter, Diane Disney Miller, would later speak about this, “Father wasn’t easily discouraged. He took The Skeleton Dance to a friend who ran the United Artists Theater in Los Angeles and asked him to look at it. ‘We’re looking at some other things this morning,’ the man said, ‘and I’ll have my assistant look at it. You go with him’. Father sat beside the assistant while the film was run. It was just before the first morning show; a few customers had drifted in and it was obvious they liked The Skeleton Dance but the assistant didn’t listen to them. ‘Can’t recommend it,’ he said. ‘Too gruesome’. Father got a hold of another friend and asked him if he could put him in touch with Fred Miller who managed the Carthay Circle, one of the biggest and most important theaters in town. Father’s friend sent him to a salesman on Film Row. ‘Maybe he can get him to look at your skeleton film’. Father found the salesman in a pool hall shooting a little Kelly (a game played on a standard pool table with sixteen pool balls where each player draws one of fifteen numbered markers called peas or pills at random from a shake bottle which assigns to them the correspondingly numbered pool ball, kept secret from their opponents, but which they must pocket in order to win the game). ‘Leave your picture here, Disney,’ the Kelly player said. ‘I’ll look at it. If I like it, I’ll get in touch with you’. It sounded like a stall but he actually did look at the film. When he looked he said, ‘I think Fred will like this. I’ll take it over to him myself’. As a result, Miller showed The Skeleton Dance with a feature picture he was running. It went over big. Father clipped the local press notices and mailed them to Powers with a note: ‘If you can get this to Roxy (the nickname of Broadway showman Samuel L. Rothafel who ran New York’s prestigious Roxy Theater), he’ll go for it the way Miller did. Powers got a print to Roxy and Roxy liked it. He ran it in his huge New York theater.” This movie premiered at the Carthay Circle on June 10, 1929 alongside F.W. Murnau's feature film, 4 Devils (1929). The Carthay Circle is where later Disney features like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Fantasia (1940) would make their Hollywood premiers.
Next comes Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales in Mexican Mousepiece (1966). At this time Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales were being pitted against in each other in quite a few short films. Unlike say Speedy and Sylvester this was not a natural combination and often times the beginning of these cartoons would spend time explaining why Daffy was chasing Speedy instead of cutting right to the chase. Though these films are not always the most popular among cartoon fans, I have always found a soft spot for them. The backgrounds and some of the gags in this movie remind me of a Coyote and Roadrunner cartoon. This cartoon was directed by Robert McKimson, who directed Speedy's film debut, Cat Tails For Two (1953).
Let us close by singing one we all know.
Thanks for joining me. Come back next week for another selection of classic cartoons. Until then may all your tunes be looney and your melodies merry.
Resources Used
https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/the-spooky-story-of-the-skeleton-dance/
The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney by Michael Barrier
Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons by Leonard Maltin
Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies: A Companion Guide to the Classic Cartoon Series by Russell Merritt and J. B. Kaufman.
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