"You Can't Beat Pigs with Pigs" - Walt Disney

Today marks the anniversary in 1933 of the original theatrical release of Walt Disney's Silly Symphony about The Three Little Pigs.

This was a seminal moment in Walt's career. He had previously hit it big commercially and critically with Mickey Mouse of course and made huge strides in developing story and animation and even adding color with his Silly Symphony series.

The Pigs, though...really made an impact.

Here was a Silly Symphony which didn't hit you over the head with technical innovations like some had done (though this one had a few too), the Pigs gave us leaps ahead in storytelling and characterization. A simple story which everyone already knew at the time, Walt and his team gave us all rock solid clear cut characters from the get go. We understand who each of the pigs is as well as The Big Bad Wolf.

And then there was that song.

Walt truly hit the big time here, and he didn't even need Elton John to do it. This cartoon became a sensation and this song a true phenomenon right out of the gate. These cartoons were usually released with the intention they would be in theatres for a week or maybe two and then never seen again. This one (at the request of theatre owners everywhere) was asked to be held over.

And over.

And over.

To the point where 6 months later, the short cartoon with it's catchy tune was being billed over whatever transient feature film was being shown.

As always, the weakest part of my blog is when I embed videos from other sources here, especially ones with copyrights held by watchdogs like the Disney Co. (remember my stance...there's a HUGE difference between Walt Disney and the disney co.) so I post these well knowing that they may be taken down without notice.

But for today...enjoy. And just TRY and get that damn song out of your head afterward. Not even with a crowbar people. I also post a few sequels to the cartoon which are solid as can be, but just didn't have the staying power of the original, which prompted Walt to quip as he moved on to other great ideas, "You can't top pigs with pigs."









A timely sidenote veering back to what else is in my head today: Guy Francis over at his blog "So, Cat Tacos?" apparently just bought himself a banjo and has been inspired to draw banjo playing pigs...there I said it. He's thrown the gauntlet down with his buddy Stacy Curtis from "Stacy Draws Stuff" in a banjo playing pig drawing showdown...there, I said it again. They've also called out for anyone else to play along that wants to.

I'm off to draw pigs playing banjos now...I'm getting used to saying it.

See y'all tomorrow.

Leon Schlesinger and the Looney Tunes He Let Happen!

Born May 20, 1884, cartoon producer Leon Schlesinger would be 126 years old today.

Intrigued by the advent of sound film in 1928, businessman Schlesinger began producing short soundies and selling them to Warner Brothers. With the success of Mickey Mouse looming large as a money maker, Leon signed to ex-Disney animators Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising to a contract to produce animation as well, and so were born the Looney Tunes with Harman & Ising's character of Bosko.

When the Harman/Ising team began to grumble for more money for the kind of experimentation Disney was doing, Schlesinger gave them the boot and started from scratch, keeping another ex-Disneyite Friz Freling (whom Leon put in charge of creating the Merrie Melodies series) and hiring young up and comers like Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones and the great Tex Avery, and moving the whole operation right on to a dilapidated and unused part of the Warner lot affectionately dubbed Termite Terrace...and the rest is history.

He even made a few appearances in Warner cartoons...here's a little Thursday cartoon break for ya!



Leon sold the franchise outright to Warner's in 1944.

Schlesinger is not really the kind of guy I usually spotlight in this blog. A pure businessman (which, agreed...is a necessary evil) Leon was not a creator. He had no sense of humor and no talent at storytelling, drawing, music,...any of the things that I deem worthwhile.

But he did a very important thing. He knew that he didn't know anything.

He gave the boys at Termite Terrace the reigns...gave them the directive that they make good cartoons that would make him a profit...then he got the hell out of the way.

In today's world of publicly held companies this isn't done. Need the approval of too many people to do nothing. When Aunt Gladys in Nebraska and the retard mook in Iowa with the 401K he wants to micro manage are the stock holders and in charge, you have too many people in the way.

Sherm Coen over at his great blog Cartoon Snap recently posted a video that shows how companies should be run and the way successful companies actually ARE run. Check it out here it's a must see.

When I saw this and realized Leon's birthday was coming up, I saw the connection immediately. When you have Clampett, Avery, Jones, Freleng, Frank Tashlin, Robert McKimson and Art Davis working for you, shouldn't you know to just shut your pie-hole and count your money?

Thanks Leon! For just stepping back and letting it happen!

Bob Clampett - Animation, Television, Comedy Pioneer

Born May 8, 1913, Bob Clampett would be 97 years old today!

One of the young pups who stepped up to directing at Leon Schlesinger's 'Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies" studio after Tex Avery departed, Bob had worked for years as an animator for both Avery and Friz Freleng where he honed his chops.

Clampett's lunacy and pure "cartoon"-ism in his work is truly inspired. Always forsaking the drudgery of storytelling if a good gag could be had, made his cartoons some of the best.

I always felt, that while Avery's zaniness was a natural, Bob's was learned and reached for. Over the years my opinion has changed somewhat and I really love the haphazard style which achieved true cartooning brilliance.

Here's a couple of Bob's great cartoons. Over the last 11 months of doing this blog I'm sometimes frustrated when I embed a video from YouTube and then somewhere down the line it gets removed because of copyright fears by YT or worse, embedding is suddenly denied by the poster. If you ever happen to see a broken link to a video on my blog, please drop me an e-mail and I'll find a replacement for it.

Now for the cartoons...it IS Saturday morning after all!







Somewhere during his time at "Termite Terrace" Bob worked with the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs on nights and weekends, and he was working on a proposed series of theatrical cartoons based on Burroughs' character John Carter, Warlord of Mars.

An ambitious undertaking for sure. Other than a few characters in Disney features (Snow White) and the Fleischer Bros. "Superman" shorts for Paramount, realistic anatomical characters were not really done. A cartoon figure is much easy to animate than one that appears like you or I.

I'm a big fan of the John Carter books and was surprised to learn of these on a "Beany & Cecil" DVD a few years back...these tests look pretty damn good. I would have liked to see them completed.

After leaving Warner Bros., Bob moved his attention to a new medium, television.

Understanding that animation would be too time consuming and cost-prohibitive for a medium that was in it's infancy and cranked out product so quickly (if Bob knew this in 1949...why haven't producer's learned this in 2010?????????) he turned to another love of his, puppetry.

Creating a cast of characters as puppets and assembling voice talents he had worked with in theatrical animation (Daws Butler and Stan Freberg) they set out to do a daily show on Los Angeles station KTLA. Writing over-the-top horrible puns and sometimes adult oriented humor, this kiddie show smash became just as big a hit with the parents.

Albert Einstein once got up from a Harvard staff meeting and announced he had to go..."It's Time for Beany"...

In the 1960's Bob had seen the success that Hanna-Barbera and others had doing limited animation for TV and produced a syndicated cartoon version of the show.

But remember...we only talk about GOOD things on this blog.

Thanks Bob! For being one of the real pioneers, learning the limits of and stretching every medium you dipped your foot into!

Winsor McCay - Animation Milestone

On May 7, 1915, 95 years ago today, a great tragic injustice occurred. 8 miles from shore at just after 2 p.m. a German U-Boat attacked the British civilian ocean liner "Lusitania" as she traveled through heavy fog. Reportedly a single torpedo was fired and 18 minutes later the huge ship had sunk, killing 1,198 of the 1,959 people on board including more than 100 children.

An act of war is what the German's called it, I guess all those women and children going on vacation really put a thorn in Kaiser bill's helmet.

I'm not here to delve in to this horrible tragedy though, I'm not qualified. Please feel free to read more about this important event in 20th century history here...it's fascinating.

This blog doesn't exist to talk about the horrific things that humans are capable of inflicting on each other. This blog is here to celebrate worthwhile people and the worthwhile things they've done.

This event in 1915 helped to spark emotions of the world during what became World War I, and from those emotions also came a great work of art and an advance in a dawning art form.

Animation is an art form that goes back to the dawn of man I assume. Defined it is the process of making "alive" what isn't. To give the static, motion.

The motion picture in itself is animation in it's rawest form. A sequence of still pictures advancing in action, flipped before our eyes at 24 frames per second.

Now in this time (1915) motion picture's did exist, but how do you impart the drama of something like the sinking of The Lusitania when there were no cameras around? How do you artistically depict something on this grand scale, even with the illusions that were at hand?

How does an artist relate what he's feeling through images, when no images exist? And make them move?

Winsor McCay figured that out!

In the days before the industry wide adoption of "cell" animation (where parts of the drawing are put on different layers and foreground items are painted on cellulose sheets to let the background show through) Winsor McCay, single-handedly drew the following animated film. Painstakingly drawing every movement in each frame. This was a way for him to express the horror and tragedy of what had happened and to help other people envision it all.

Granted he used tricks as repeated sequences to flush out the film, but this doesn't take away the sweat that went into this.



Like "Avatar" today, Winsor used animation to show things that couldn't be shown in real life. He brought us what we couldn't see with his own vision. And that was worthwhile!

See y'all tomorrow!

Bud Fisher - Millionaire, Playboy, Cartoonist

Born April 3, 1885, Harry Conway "Bud" Fisher would be 125 years old today!

Bud Fisher is credited with doing the first continuity in comics and being the artist of the first truly daily comic strip. He's also one of the (if not the first) millionaire cartoonist in the newspaper field.

His strip "Mutt & Jeff" began in 1907. A wonderfully written and fleshed out strip with topical and edgy humor which far outlived any life it began with, the last strip appeared in 1982, 28 years after Bud Fisher passed away.

Remembered as being one of the first great strips, it was acknowledged as such back in the day as well, as exampled in this cartoon from around 1913 promoting the comic features in the Hearst stable...Mutt is seen offering up the toast to some other famous comic characters.

And right on into present day when Mutt and Jeff were part of the classic comic strip characters the US Postal Service slapped on stamps.

The strip began in 1907, Bud Fisher had been doing spot cartoons for the San Francisco Chronicle and kept pressing the editor to publish more of his work. The editor of course kept turning him down, it's always been a pissing contest, no matter where you go. Then one day he introduced a secondary character into a strip he was doing about horse racing, Augustus Mutt was born.

A. Mutt could be seen handicapping a horse race that was being run that very day, and the next day seen counting his winnings or (better for comedy purposes) mourning his losses. Suddenly Fisher's strip was in need of daily exposure...the Chronicles readership demanded it. The daily comic strip was born, and daily continuity with it.

Fisher knew well though that the betting on the horses angle wouldn't take him very far. William Randolph Hearst had gotten word of a competing newspaper winning the circulation race with the race track comic strip had come courting. This would mean a large raise in pay for Fisher and national distribution and the jokes about local San Francisco horse races wouldn't have much appeal across the rest of the country. So he had Mutt give up gambling just before he jumped the Chronicles ship and went with Hearst.

You'll note in the above strip (the last for the Chronicle) he did something else very sly. Just as this last strip was turned in, he went down from the editors office to the engraving room, and just as the engraver was about to etch the printing plate, Fisher asked to have it back to make a correction. The correction can be seen in the lower right hand corner. Fisher added a copyright under his own name to the strip.

This would complicate The Chronicle's attempt to keep the "A. Mutt" strip going under other artist after Fisher left and Hearst's lawyers made sure of that. Later as Fisher began to make more and more money and wanted to take leaves of absences from the strip and eventually even leave Hearst, it garnered him more clout there too. So said the Supreme Court, before whom matters of the strips ownership finally came.

As the strip went away from race track betting, Mutt found himself in all manner of locales and situations. In 1908 he was committed to an insane asylum. That's right, these were different times folks, insanity and gambling addiction were still funny. This was pre-Oprah after all.

In the asylum he met a slew of demented characters, one of which thought he was recently retired boxing champion Jim Jeffreys (that's him in the second to last panel below) and so Mutt's partner Jeff was born.

More and more distractions from the vaudeville stage and his own playboying ways afforded by his new salary drew Bud away from the strip...but who can blame him, really.

The strip was also merchandised, to the point of almost ridiculousness, with trinkets of all manner bearing the Mutt and Jeff likenesses, and though Fisher walked away a few times to indulge himself, the strip really was good when he was at it.

Here's a few of the strips from the 1910's for you to enjoy.

You'll note the relationship between Mutt and Jeff was very much like the one Abbott and Costello developed for themselves 30 years later. Mutt the conniving "see-what-he-can-get" con man and Jeff the innocent who causes as much trouble for himself as he does Mutt. But their loyalty to each other runs deep.

As a closing touch, here are a couple of Mutt and Jeff in animated form from the 1920's. Ever the self promoter, Fisher claimed to draw every frame of these silent cartoons himself, and in reality not only was that impossible, but he was probably never even involved with most of them at all. Except to collect the money.

One report says that between 1916 and 1926, no fewer than 277 Mutt and Jeff animated shorts were made.

Yes, they're dated...but I have a real penchant for silent film and the animation of that period as well. Enjoy:

That's just plain good stuff!

Thanks Bud! Without the continuity you added to the comics, I wouldn't enjoy them even one tenth as much...you made a lot of things possible, and I for one am glad you got filthy stinkin' rich doing it!

Springtime Refueling

It's officially spring here in the northern hemisphere...and it couldn't come a moment to soon.

This past couple of weeks, real life has really bitten me on the ass.

Nothing serious, mind you, I should really say it hasn't bitten me, it encroached on my territory and TRIED to bite me.

And even at that it was all nothing really important. Just the money-changers, paper-pushers and spoon-benders out there wanting to waste my time. Wanting me to believe what they do in this world actually matters.

A quick note to all of you bureaucrats, politicians, insurance brokers, municipal "employees", lawyers...in fact, any profession which is just a fancy name for clerical worker. You don't matter. You don't matter because what you DO doesn't matter.

Please remember that. What you do to get to earn money and survive only exists because we are a compassionate society and we have invented those jobs for you.

The world would get along fine without you or the menial tasks you perform. You only exist because the rest of us...you know, the humans?...we've decided that killing all of you just because you have nothing to offer society, would make us feel guilty.

Please attend to your paper filing and policy tending and data entry and other busy work. Keep attending to it until your meaningless lives come to an end.

But STOP BOTHERING ME WITH IT!!!!

Anyhoo. I spent too much time over the last couple of weeks tending to these sheep. I thought I'd be fine, but it has really tapped my energy. Now that I am temporally done entertaining and occupying the minds and desks of countless employees of the State of California (those are my tax dollars paying for their weekend binge on Natural Lite and Nascar, right?) I am feeling a little fatigued.

Bastards!

But, then I remembered that spring has sprung. I feel better. I still need some down-time, but I feel better.

So come share my downtime with me, appreciate some art and watch some springtime cartoons.

Don't worry about that mumbling coming from those grey dismal halls down the road. They're shifting paperwork and mistakenly feeling worthwhile.









Mmmmmmmmm. I feel better already. I hope you do too.

Happy Spring!€

See y'all tomorrow!

Ub Iwerks - Animation Pioneer-Innovator

Born March 24, 1901, Ub Iwerks would be 109 years old today!

Ub Iwerks met Walt Disney in Kansas City in 1919 and there they formed a friendship and business relationship that would last for 47 years. Ub was still working at the Disney studios in 1966 when Walt passed away.

When all of Walt's animators jumped ship in 1927 to take his character of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to Universal, Ub was the only one to remain at his old friends side. Single handedly animating the first 3 Mickey Mouse cartoons ("Plane Crazy", "Gallopin' Gaucho" and "Steamboat Willie"), Ub was clearly the artistic and technical force behind the birth of Walt's empire.

Ub also was instrumental (along with musical director Carl Stalling) in the Silly Symphony series, again single handedly animating the first one, "The Skeleton Dance".

Ub separated from Walt as well in the early 1930's, beginning his own animation shop which supplied cartoons to MGM and Columbia as well as other clients, but by the 1940's he was back home with Disney.

Ub was a technically brilliant man who also invented the multi-plane camera, which he built out of old Chevrolet parts, and brought that innovation back to Disney with him. He became the director of special optical effects or something similarly titled, and designed all the special effects used in Disney's live action films. Everything from the visual magic tricks used from "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" to "The Shaggy Dog", from "The Absent-Minded Professor" to "Mary Poppins" sprang from the mind and hand of this man.

Enough blathering about what so many of you already know, let's watch some cartoons!

An early Silly Symphony by Ub:

One of my favorite Comi-Color cartoons he did. The Pincushion Man villain in "Balloon Land" is an all time favorite of mine:

Finally, for those who want to know more about this man (and you should) here's a documentary all about him called "The Man Behind the Mouse". Part one is posted here and you can just click through the YouTube links at the end to see the entire thing. This is also available on the "Walt Disney Treasures" DVD devoted to Oswald the Rabbit, something that's well worth owning!

Thanks Ub, for all your art and you ability to bring others artistic vision to life!

Ward Kimball - Cartoonist, Animator, Train Fancier, Musician - A Well Rounded Artist!

Born this day in 1914, Ward Kimball one of "Disney's Nine Old Men" would have been 96 years old today!

Ward seen below at his drawing desk at Disney Studios, joined the team in the mid-1930's

He was a deft draftsman, even at this early age, but he really liked to do more cartoony characters and had a real knack for bringing them to life through animation.

During the heyday of Disney features, he was responsible for some of the most endearing characters in the films. Not just comic sidekicks used to lighten moments, but real characters who aided the story and kept things flowing and interesting.

Among his cast of characters - From "Pinocchio" - Jiminy Crickett:

One of the real highlights of "Dumbo" (another being the "Pink Elephants on Parade") are Ward's crows:

The not so comic, but irresistably cute, Falina from "Bambi":

In "Alice and Wonderland" he was responsible for The Cheshire Cat:

...The Mad Hatter:

...and Tweedledum and Tweedledee:

He also animated Bacchus in "Fantasia", Jacque and Gus-Gus the mice and Lucifer the cat in "Cinderella" and was responsible for the musical number in "The Three Caballeros".

Here's Ward, Walt, Frank Thomas and the boys in a staged publicity film working behind the scenes. Great stuff!

He was a hard working guy indeed. See his napping technique below:

Ward was truly a well rounded guy though and his interests were well beyond just animation.

One favorite extra-curricular activity of Ward and a few of his fellow animators, was a love of Dixieland Jazz. To break up their day and work up the creative juices, they would jam around the studio. They eventually formed a formal group called "The Firehouse Five +2".

They played around Disneyland and made a few records and here they are appearing in a couple films. These guys could cook. That's Ward leading the boys and playing the mean trombone.

He was also a train fan, below is a video with his appearance on "The Tomorrow Show" with Tom Snyder in the 1970's. Ward is in full retirement from the Disney studios in this one and like a kid in a toy store right at home. It's in 7 parts, just click the links at the end of each segment to continue...it's a good watch!

When Walt Disney produced his television series "Disneyland" in the 1950's, it was Kimball that was tagged to direct, write and supervise the "Tomorrowland" segments.

It seemed strange for a guy with interests in things of the past, like steam locomotives and dixieland jazz to do a futuristic show, but Walt knew what he was doing, and Ward's natural curiosity and genuine interest in all things human made these some of the most loved and remembered of the series.

The full list of credits for this amiable and multi-talented guys are too numerous for me to get into here...just imdb him and see what I mean.

Thanks Ward! For always having fun and letting us in on it!

My Head Must Be Loose! I Forgot Dr. Seuss!

Born March 2, 1904, Theodore Geisel would be 106 years old today...you know him better as Dr. Seuss.

Geisel was born in Springfield, Mass. and was the son of a German immigrant who had inherited the family brewery...one month before prohibition began. sigh.

He showed an early penchant for cartooning, and as a student at Dartmouth College, he contributed regularly to the college humor magazine "The Jack O Lantern", eventually becoming it's editor-in-chief. One day he was caught in his dorm room with a few friends enjoying that juniper berry flavored ambrosia known to the hoi polloi as gin. Again, this was during prohibition and he was punished by the school by being banned from all extra-curricular activities...including the "Jack O Lantern".

Being a proper German heritage-drunken-cartoonist-rebel (ya gotta love us) he continued his work there under his mothers maiden name. "Seuss". After he graduated, his work that appeared there was properly signed "Dr. Seuss".

The rest is history.

You all of course know the bulk of the good Dr.'s work. The author/illustrator of maybe the most beloved children's books known to man. "The Cat in the Hat", "Green Eggs & Ham", "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish", "Yertle the Turtle", "Horton Hears a Who" and "...Hatches the Egg", "The 500 Hats of "Bartholomew Cubbins" and on and on, including the perennial "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" are amazingly, just a few of the titles under his hat. I thought I'd run down some of his other work, outside the children's book medium.

One area I've just learned about, is his work in the advertising field in the mid-1930's. His most successful being for an insecticide named "Flit".

Apparently his catchphrase "Quick Henry...The Flit!" became quite a national phenom in it's day. More on this as I keep filling my head.

Another foray in the 1930's was his attempt at a newspaper comic strip. Called "Hejji" this strip on ran for a brief time in 1935. It's great to see the few examples I've seen. His work was so often relegated to economic 2 color printing in his children's books, it's nice to see his wonderfully quirky style in glorious 4-color.

Shortly after, he wrote the first of those great books you all know.

"And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street" is really fitting for a first I think. A cannon that eventually took us to so many amazing worlds and lands unlike our own, and the wonder of this book is all the amazing things you can see just outside your own front door. For all his metered rhymes and basic words that taught us all how to read, this kind of stuff is what I most appreciate learning from him.

Amazing things are everywhere!

A book that he produced later taught us all, that life is an adventure. Don't just take what is handed to you as "that's all there is"...those sights on Mulberry Street and more are everywhere that life takes us.

Open your eyes kid. Life is fun. It's not about paperwork.

SIDEBAR: One JO's Opinion:

This is not really about Dr. Seuss, but he reminded me of it. Something that's been sticking in my craw of late. If you don't care to hear it, skip down to the next bunch of blue letters and pick up where I left off.

For all you administrators and bureaucrats and management types out there. For all you drones out there who mindlessly and uncreatively live out your day by filling up the time until you die. To all you people proud of your "in" and "out" boxes filled with e-mails you uselessly printed out.

Listen closely.

Are you listening?

I'm serious, listen up.

Paperwork is NOT im-port-tant.

NOT. It really isn't.

No one is going to know that you signed and stamped and filed that piece of paper.

Ever.

It's' NOT going to matter.

Never.

Not in 100 years. Not in 10 years. Not next week. Not 10 minutes after you're done.

NOT im-port-tant!

It's never going to matter.

Ever.

Please continue existing ("living"'s too strong a word) as I suppose you have the right. Keep watching that clock...you'll be dead soon...don't worry.

But stop trying to convince me that what you do matters, one iota.

It doesn't.

BACK TO DR. SEUSS:

During WWII, Dr. Seuss worked for the war department making propaganda material. The war department commandeered the animators over at Warner Bros. to make some cartoons for the soldiers to warn against such things as rumors, spies and booby traps and lessons on how to protect yourself from things like malaria and VD.

Dr. Seuss was brought in to write the first of these. So he created an "everyman" soldier the boys over there could relate to. Private Snafu (Situation Normal, All Fucked Up) starred in a dozen or so cartoons that were marked classified until sometime in the mid 1990's, now they're available for all to enjoy.

Here's a couple:





Great stuff!

In the 1950's he created a character to be used by UPA studios and distributed by Columbia. Only 4 of these were ever made, but they were wildly popular. Here's the first.

Gerald McBoing Boing:

Dr. Seuss had a wonderfully complex and creative mind. We lost a lot when he passed away, luckily he left us a lot too.

He even wrote a book for us too old to read his books. He called it his "book for obsolete children", and it's titled "You're Only Old Once". Get it. If you're 30 or 50 or 70 years old, this book's for you.

And it's from a Dr., after-all.

Thanks Dr. Seuss! You had a helluva run.

You made our childhoods happy, your cartoons and rhymes were fun!

DR. SEUSS BONUS:

I feel bad that I was a day late with my post for Dr. Seuss, there are a lot of birthdays this week in my head and I guess he got swept under the rug. So here's one of my favorite Dr. Seuss books/animated TV specials, "The Lorax".

If you're hesitant about spending $18 to see "Avatar" in iMax 3D, just watch this...it's the same story.

Except Dr. Seuss did it first. And it rhymes.