Some Cartoons For Saturday Morning #179

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

Today's cartoon selection begins with Donald Duck in The Hockey Champ (1939). This short film is an early cartoon with Donald Duck's nephews, Huey, Louie and Dewey. They had first appeared on movie screens only a year earlier in Donald's Nephews (1938). Even this early in their cartoon career, the relationship between them and Donald was firmly established and this film could have been released years later and still fit the mold of what these cartoons would still be. A review in The Showman's Trade Review said of this movie "This subject is one of the funniest Disneys we've seen and that's saying a lot." The magazine then went on to tell movie theater owners how to advertise the short, "Display skates and hockey sticks in the lobby. A burlesque story about the hockey game on the sports page would be a good bet. Use a standee of Donald in the lobby." A review in Boxoffice magazine stated, "There's more comic ingenuity in this subject then you'll find in a carload of cartoons. And just about every foot of it is good for gales of laughter." This film would make its TV debut on the Walt Disney Presents episode, Highway to Trouble (1959). It would air again as part of the Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color episode, Kids is Kids (1961). 

Up next comes Slyvester and Tweety in Tom Tom Tomcat (1953). This short film pits the classic rivals up against each other in the old west. The basic plot of this movie is very similar to that of the later Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam short, Horse Hare (1960). Both cartoons were directed by Friz Freleng.  

The most famous film animator/comic strip artist Winsor McCay made is easily Gertie the Dinosaur (1914).  This film was actually a vaudeville act before it was in theaters. The act consisted of Winsor McCay talking to his animated dinosaur Gertie. He would tell her what to do and Gertie would do it (most of the time). This was translated to theaters by having an off screen narrator, who speaks through intertitles (since this was a silent film). This film has often times wrongly been called the first cartoon ever made. While this is not true (It isn't even McCay's first cartoon, it is his third), its place in animation history is still extremely important. The reason for this is Gertie, herself. She is one of the first animated characters that the audience was allowed to see think. Unlike most earlier silent cartoon characters, Gertie does not seem like she is just moving drawings projected on a screen, but instead like a real character that we know and relate to over the course of the film. This was the beginning of character animation, and one of the first successful attempts at it. Like McCay's earlier short  Little Nemo (1911) this film begins in live action. Winsor McCay bets his fellow cartoonists that he can make a dinosaur come to life and boy does he. This cartoon still holds up incredibly well today and received the number 6 spot in Jerry Beck's book, The 50 Greatest Cartoons. 

Another Froggy Evening (1995) is a much belated sequel to one of the most beloved short films of all time, One Froggy Evening (1955). Though it doesn’t live up to the original, the film is quite entertaining in its own right. Like the first cartoon, this film is directed by Chuck Jones. There are cameos here by two of Chuck Jones’ Looney Tunes characters including Pussyfoot the kitten and one whose identity I will not spoil here. 

Now for a commercial break. 

Next we join Colonel Heeza Liar in On the Jump (1917). The Colonel is considered one of the first cartoon character to star in his own series of short films. 

Next comes one of my favorite of Pixar's short films, Knick Knack (1989). I love this film because it is unashamedly a cartoon and resembles very much the type of shorts Chuck Jones was making for Warner Brothers in the 1950's. This cartoon was made before Pixar went to making feature films with Toy Story (1995). Therefore it did not originally play before a Pixar feature film. However the film would later play before Finding Nemo (2003) in theaters. 



 

Next we join The Pink Panther in Star Pink (1978). This film's title is obviously a play on Star Wars, which premiered a year earlier. 

Before Pluto received his own cartoon series he made a couple short films without Mickey that were released as Silly Symphonies. These were Just Dogs (1932) and Mother Pluto (1936). Up next is the first of these, Just Dogs. In this cartoon, the animation of Pluto is mostly split between two animators, Norm Ferguson and Tom Palmer. However Les Clark animates a brief scene were Pluto and the little pup hide in a barrel and Dick Lundy animates them digging up the bone. The pup Pluto costars with did not appear in any other animated cartoons, but Floyd Gottfredson would use him in the Mickey Mouse newspaper comic strip. A song used early on in this film is Guy Massey's The Prisoners' Song. This song was prominently used in the Mickey Mouse cartoon, The Chain Gang (1930), which many people believe is the first appearance of Pluto. A review in Motion Picture Reviews stated, "Amusing for Children but not up to the usual Disney standard." A review in The Film Daily disagreed stating, "Right up to the standard of the Walt Disney shops [sic]" The following are two exhibitor's reviews from The Motion Picture Herald, "JUST DOGS: Silly Symphony—This is a fairly s:ood cartoon comedy but still no better than some of the others. United Artists should produce better cartoons or cut the price of these cartoons. Here's hoping to get better cartoons in the future from United Artists. Running time 9 minutes. -J.J. Medford, Orpheum Theatre, N.C. General Patronage." " JUST DOGS: Silly Symphony—Didn't think that this was any too good. - Mayme P. Musselman, Princess Theatre, Lincoln, Kansas, Small Town Patronage." Working titles for this film were The Dog Pound and The Dog Symphony. 

Thanks for joining me. Come back next week for more animated treasures. Until then may all your tunes be looney and your melodies merry. 

Resources Used

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

https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/The_Disney_Wiki

https://mediahistoryproject.org/