Hello my friends and welcome back to another selection of classic cartoons.
As Thanksgiving is over it is officially Christmas season, so for the next few weeks there will be some Christmas cartoons interspersed throughout these cartoon posts. Today's first film will be one of my favorite Christmas cartoons, Toy Tinkers (1949). This film was one of Jack Hannah's great Donald Duck vs. Chip and Dale cartoons. These were fast paced slapstick affairs which are second only to Jack Kinney's Goofy cartoons for the best post-1930's Disney shorts. This in my mind may be the best of these shorts, it is certainly one of the funniest. So enjoy this treat for all Christmas and cartoon lovers.
Home Movies, 1943
The first star of Looney Tunes cartoons was a little black boy named Bosko. While Bosko started out with a stereotypical black voice, that idea would be abandoned for the high-pitched voice many cartoon characters had during the early 1930's (inspired by Mickey Mouse, the most popular cartoon character of the era). From 1930 to 1933, Bosko would be the main star of the Looney Tunes series. However when his creators, Hugh Harmon and Rudolph Ising stopped making cartoons for Warner Brothers, they took Bosko with them. At
MGM the creators made a few cartoons using Bosko. At first these MGM cartoons used the design and voice used in the Looney Tunes, but as time went on the character was changed to a more recognizable (and more stereotypical) little black boy. Up next is the first MGM cartoon with Bosko and the character's first in color, Bosko's Parlor Pranks (1934). This is not an especially original cartoon as it reuses much animation from Bosko's Warner Brothers efforts (such as Bosko's Knight-mare (1933), Battling Bosko (1932), Bosko the Musketeer (1933), and Ride Him Bosko! (1932)) , only now in color. The basic storyline is even quite similar to Bosko's Soda Fountain (1931). By the way I think Wilber stole Mickey Mouse's pants.
Color Classics are in many ways, the Fleischer's version of Disney's Silly Symphonies. They were lavish cartoons that often did not use reoccurring characters and could at times delve into sentimentality (something you would rarely see in one of their Popeye or Betty Boop cartoons). Probably my favorite of these films is Christmas Comes But Once a Year (1936). Unlike many other Color Classics, this one stars a character who appeared in multiple Fleischer cartoons, Grampy from the Betty Boop series. This character is often one of my favorite parts of the later Betty cartoons and in this movie he proves that he is just as good without Betty. Though this film does delve into sentimentality, it does so, surprisingly quite well. This short has become (for me at least) a must watch every Christmas season and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. This was remade as the Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoon, True Boo (1952).
The cartoons continue with The Ant and the Aardvark in From Bed to Worse (1971). This was a remake of the Sylvester and Tweety cartoon, Greedy For Tweety (1957).
As promised here is the next episode of Ruff and Reddy, to find out what happens to our next come back next week.
-Michael J. Ruhland
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