Hello my friends and welcome back for another selection of classic cartoons.
Today's cartoon selection begins with a Bugs Bunny classic, Falling Hare (1943). This is the infamous cartoon in which Bugs Bunny goes up against a gremlin. At the time Walt Disney was planning on creating an animated feature based off of Roald Dahl's novel, The Gremlins. Walt personally asked the fellow animation studios to not make cartoons featuring gremlins. This cartoon was already well underway. So to compromise, they changed the name of the film from Bugs Bunny and the Gremlin to Falling Hare. The following is a review from The Film Daily, "Literally and figuratively, Bugs Bunny, already a prime favorite among current cartoon characters, gets off to a flying start in the distribution season just started. The buck-toothed, long eared clown meets up with a gremlin and both find themselves aloft in an airplane, with Bugs or what's left of him, being darn glad to get back to earth. There are plenty of laughs throughout. There are plenty of laughs throughout. The tough bunny, if this initial '43 - '44 offering of his producer Leon Schlesinger, is any criterion is in for a a further rise in popularity among fans who like humor. Of course the reel is in Technicolor. It was supervised by Robert Clampett, and animated by Roderick Scribner. Warren Foster wrote the story and Carl W. Stalling handled the musical direction."
Next comes Woody Woodpecker in Everglade Raid (1958).
Next up comes one of the best Betty Boop cartoons, Snow White (1933). This cartoon has all the ingredients for a great Betty cartoon. There is a great amount of surreal humor, pure energy and more imagination than can be found in 10 cartoons of any studio other than the Fleischer could ever produce. If you want to see why I love the Fleischer cartoons, you have no better place to start than this film. What makes this all the more impressive is that this cartoon is believed to be animated entirely by one man, Roland "Doc" Crandall. Earlier Crandell had been offered a job at Disney (an offer that had cost the Fleischer studio many of their best animators) and he turned it down. Fleischer historian Leslie Cabarga has theorized that maybe this cartoon was his reward for staying with the studio. This film also marks one of the three Betty Boop cartoons to feature music by jazz legend Cab Calloway and his band (the other two being The Old Man of the Mountain (1933) and Minnie the Moocher (1932)). Cab not only gives an auditory performance of one of his best songs (St. James Infirmary Blues), but his trademark dancing was rotoscoped for the film. Snow White is placed at 19 in Jerry Beck's book, The 50 Greatest Cartoons. The following is an exhibitor's review from Motion Picture Herald, " SNOW WHITE: Betty Boop, Cab Calloway—One of the very best cartoons we have shown. It deserves billing. Running time, 9 minutes.—A. B. Jefferies New Piedmont Theatre, Piedmont, Mo., Small Town and Rural Patronage."
Next comes a lesser know character from the 1930's, Toby the Pup. While Charles Mintz was producing Krazy Kat cartoons for Columbia , he decided to create a separate series of cartoons for RKO, these starring a character named Toby the Pup. To head this series Mintz handed the duties to Dick Huemer, Art Davis and Sid Marcus. Dick Huemer had been a major contributor to the style of the Fleischer studio earlier and this is probably why these shorts have a Fleischer-type feel to them. Huemer, Davis and Marcus would later be the major creative factors for Columbia's Scrappy cartoons (also produced by Mintz). Today we watch Toby in Circus Time (1931).
The Jack Kinney directed Goofy cartoon remain some of the funniest shorts the Disney studio ever put out. Case in point, Hold That Pose (1950).
During the silent era many animated cartoons were based off of popular comic strips at the time. One of the comic strip characters that found his way into animation was Happy Hooligan, seen here in The Spider and the Fly (1922).
Today's cartoon selection ends with one of the best pairings of Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales, Snow Excuse (1966). Though it may seem like an odd pairing Speedy and Daffy were often pitted against each other in the mid to late 1960's.
Thanks for joining me come back next week for more animated treasures, until then may all your tunes be looney and your melodies merry.
-Michael J. Ruhland.
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