Hello my friends and happy Saturday morning. Once again it is time for some classic cartoons.
Today's cartoon selection begins with Betty Boop in A Hunting We Will Go (1932). This short film is among one of the last of the Talkartoons cartoons, before Betty Boop got her own series of short films. This cartoon is full of all the bizarre and surreal humor that makes me love the Fleischer films of this era.
Next comes Woody Woodpecker in Spook-a-Nanny (1964). This is the only original cartoon made for TV's Woody Woodpecker Show. For the most part the cartoons on this show consisted of the theatrical short films from the Walter Lantz studio. However, this cartoon has become a Halloween tradition for many cartoon fans (including me). The title song is ridiculously catchy.
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 Carthy 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 Carthy Circle on June 10, 1929 alongside F.W. Murnau's feature film, 4 Devils (1929). The Carthy Circle is where later Disney features like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Fantasia (1940) would make their Hollywood premiers.
Next comes our old friend Gandy Goose in The Ghost Town (1944).
Now it is time for a commercial break.
Next comes the Coyote and Roadrunner in Fur of Flying (2010). This short film played in movie theaters before the feature film, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (2010). This is the 2nd of 6 Looney Tunes shorts directed by Matthew O'Callaghan.
Next it is silent movie time with a classic Felix the Cat cartoon, Switches Witches (1927).
Now for our old friend Scrappy in Sandman Tales (1933).
Today's cartoon selection ends with The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror segment, The Raven (1990). This cartoon comes from the first of The Simpsons' many Halloween specials. This still though ranks as one of my favorite Treehouse of Horror segments.
Thanks for joining me. Come back next week for some more animated treasures. Until then, may all your tunes be looney and your melodies merry.
Resources Used
Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons by Leonard Maltin
Silly Symphonies: A Companion to the Classic Cartoon Series by Russell Merritt and J.B. Kaufman
The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney by Michael Barrier
https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/the-spooky-story-of-the-skeleton-dance/
https://mediahistoryproject.org/
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