Hello my friends and happy Saturday morning. Once again it is time for some classic cartoons.
Today's cartoon selection begins with the first Mickey Mouse cartoon made, Plane Crazy (1928). This was back in the days when Mickey was still a simple country mouse who went around barefoot and didn't wear gloves. These early Mickey cartoons have a genuine rural feel to them (partly because Walt always considered himself a farm boy at heart) that I personally find irresistible and definitely prefer over the later and bland suburban settings featured in his later cartoons. In this film Mickey dreams of being a pilot and makes himself a homemade plane that would make the Our Gang kids jealous. This is because aviation was a popular topic around this time due to the fame of Charles Lindbergh (briefly caricatured here) after his New York to Paris flight of 1927. Walt had already had his earlier star, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in an aviation themed cartoon with The Ocean Hop (1927). This cartoon began production in March, 1928. The production of this cartoon was done in secret due to the fact that Walt was still under contract to make Oswald cartoons for Universal. Animator Ub Iwerks (who animated the film by himself) was separated from the artists working on the Oswald shorts so that he could not be seen by them. Hugh Harman later described this saying, "They curtained off part of the studio with a great black drop, black skim of some kind, so that I and a few others who were leaving couldn't see the great secret that was going on." Ub Iwerks was one of the fastest animators of the time and finished this cartoon in only a matter of weeks. It has been said that he made as many as 700 drawings in one day. This cartoon was originally made as a silent film, yet you will notice the opening title card says "Sound Cartoon." The reason for this is that after the success of Steamboat Willie (1928) with sound, a soundtrack was added to this cartoon.
Next we join our good friend Dinky Duck in Sink or Swim (1952).
Now it is time for a vintage Aesop's Sound Fables cartoon, Hot Tamale (1930). This short film creates a couple mice characters who bare more than a passing resemblance to Mickey and Minnie Mouse. These mice were known as Milton and Rita Mouse. Walt Disney got temporary court injunction against the Van Bueren Studio for these characters. However, as Roy Disney would later state, “We just stopped him. That’s all we were out to do. We didn’t ask any damages. We even let him finish marketing his pictures. We wanted to establish our right. That’s what we were after. To establish a copyright like that is a big thing and that’s an important thing to do.” The characters actually existed before Mickey and Minnie since 1921. However, when Mickey became a major film star, John Foster had redesigned that characters to look more like the famous Disney mice.
If you have trouble reading the page below, click on it and use your touch screen to zoom in.
Exhibitors Herald World, 1929
Next comes one of the best post-golden age Looney Tunes cartoons, Little Go Beep (2000). This short film was released in movie theaters with the feature film, Best in Show (2000). Cartoon buffs should note a picture of Wile E. Coyote's dad with Chuck Jones, the Charles M. Jones Super Genius Award and the Maltese trophy. Chuck Jones directed all of the best short coyote and roadrunner films and Michael Maltese wrote most of them. Of course, the Maltese trophy was also a reference to the Humphry Bogart classic, The Maltese Falcon (1941).
Up next comes the silent Out of the Inkwell film, KoKo Sees Spooks (1925). This film perfectly shows the pure creativity that I love so much about this series.
Now for the Pink Panther in Pink in the Woods (1979). In this short film, The Pink Panther gets a job as a lumberjack. He had previously been a lumberjack in Pink Is a Many Splintered Thing (1968).
Today's cartoon selection ends with The Simpsons in Shell Game (1988). This was one of the Simpsons shorts made for The Tracy Ullman Show before the cartoon family got their own TV series.
Thanks for joining me. Come back next week for another selection of animated treasures. Until then may all your tunes be looney and your melodies merry.
Resources Used
Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse: The Ultimate History by J.B. Kaufman and David Gerstein
Of Mice and Magic: A History of the American Animated Cartoon by Leonard Maltin
https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/animation-anecdotes-232/
https://lantern.mediahist.org/
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