Happy Holidays with Classic Cartoons

by Gary Scott Beatty, Publisher and Editor, MuskegonOnline.NET

We say happy holidays this month with 1930s cartoons from Ub Iwerks and Fleischer Studios.

Jack Frost (below) helps a bear cub combat Old Man Winter in this 1934 Ub Iwerks ComicColor cartoon.The song "I Don't Have to Worry, I Don't Have to Care" was written by Carol Stalling, who would become best known for his Warner Bros. cartoon orchestra soundtrack work. Note to children: the wringer washer is how people used to wash clothes. http://muskegononline.net/1212/cartoon-1212.html

1936's Christmas Comes But Once a Year (below) comes from Fleischer Studios, with a strangely adult-absent orphanage and Jack Mercer (Fleischer Studios voice of Popeye) as Grampy. Max and Dave Fleischer had decided years prior to tone down Betty Boop to make her more family-friendly, and her invention-creating grandfather was one of the additions. http://muskegononline.net/1212/cartoon-1212.html 

These Works are in Public Domain and not Derivative as specified by U.S. copyright law (title 17 of the U.S. Code). 

Classic Cartoons: Toys

by Gary Scott Beatty, Publisher and Editor, MuskegonOnline.NET

With the toy buying season upon us, we look at classic cartoons starring toys this month.

http://muskegononline.net/1112/cartoon-1112.html

Van Beuren Studio's A Toy Town Tale, produced in 1931, makes more sense than a lot of Van Beuren Studio cartoons from this period. (No, I don't know what the man in the moon has to do with awakening toys, or what happened to the elephant.) This includes the songs Silent Night, Parade of the Tin Soldiers (by Leon Jessel), and the 1911 ragtime hit Oh, You Beautiful Doll (by Seymour Brown and Nat D. Ayer).

Van Beuren Studio's Toy Time (1932) is a cartoon musical featuring mice playing with toys, and the most emaciated cat I think I've ever seen in cartoons.

Are You Ready for Some Football?

by Gary Scott Beatty, Publisher and Editor, MuskegonOnline.NET

http://muskegononline.net/0912/cartoon-0912.html

This month we guy-theme, with Flip the Frog playing real football, 1933 style, and saving the girl in ocean adventure in Stormy Seas.

Ub Iwerks was a two-time Academy Award winning animator who co-created Mickey Mouse with Walt Disney and was Walt Disney's collaborator in the formative years of Disney's studio (Steamboat Willie, Plane Crazy). Iwerks opened his own studio in 1930, under contract with MGM, producing Flip the Frog shorts, the Willie Whopper series and more.

The Goal Rush, 1932. With no shoulder pads and a simple leather helmet, Flip flirts with a flapper, then bites, burrows and mayhems his Nertz team to victory. Flip may seem a little audacious, but so was Mickey Mouse in the early cartoons Iwerks produced with Disney. He is relatively well behaved here, compared to some of his other exploits.

Stormy Seas. Flip does guy stuff, like spitting tobacco, flexing the tattoo on his wrist, punching out a swordfish, and rescuing the girl. Sure it's goofy, that's the charm of early cartoons -- anything can happen for a laugh.

Cartoon Politics

by Gary Scott Beatty, Publisher and Editor, MuskegonOnline.NET

 http://muskegononline.net/0812/cartoon-0812.html

Political parties have long recognized the impact of drawings with their messages. This month we look at Make Mine Freedom (1948) and Hell Bent for Election (1944).

Make Mine Freedom. Produced by John Southerland Productions, Make Mine Freedom (below) was one of a series of media projects by Harding College to persuade against the threat of Soviet and Maoist socialism. Today, the Harding American Studies Institute (ASI) promotes going "back to the fundamental values that made this country great."

This is directed by Joseph Barbera and William Hanna, who formed Hanna-Barbera in 1957, after MGM shut down its animation studio. Hanna-Barbera was one of the first studios to recognize the value of limited animation for television, producing The Flintstones, The Yogi Bear Show, The Jetsons, Jonny Quest, Space Ghost, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? and many others.

See parallels with Occupy Wall Street or the conservative ideology today? What do you think?

Hell Bent for Election. Sponsored by United Auto Workers, Hell Bent for Election (below) is a campaign film designed to win votes for Franklin D. Roosevelt in his re-election campaign against Republican opponent Thomas E. Dewey, a crusader against alleged inefficiencies, corruption and Communist influences in New Deal programs.

This is an early production by Industrial Films, which later became United Productions of America (UPA), the most influential animation studio of the '50s. Hell Bent for Election was made in animator Zack Schwartz's apartment with moonlighters from local Hollywood animation studios, including director Chuck (Road Runner) Jones. Although UPA was overshadowed by Warner and Disney financial successes, its modernist design style in the '50s influenced studios to look beyond realism.

Defeatist hot air? Win the war? What do you think?

Classic Ub Iwerks Cartoons Feature Kids

BY GARY SCOTT BEATTY, PUBLISHER AND EDITOR, MUSKEGONONLINE.NET

Animator Chuck Jones, who once worked for Ub Iwerks' studio, said it best. "Iwerks is Screwy spelled backwards."

Ub Iwerks was a two-time Academy Award winning animator who co-created Mickey Mouse with Walt Disney and was Walt Disney's collaborator in the formative years of Disney's studio (Steamboat Willie, Plane Crazy).

Iwerks opened his own studio in 1930, under contract with MGM, producing Flip the Frog shorts, the Willie Whopper series and more. He later produced the independently distributed ComicColor Cartoons shorts.

Below is a ComiColor from 1934 without a talking animal in sight! This Happy Days cartoon is based on Reg'lar Fellers, a newspaper strip created by Gene Byrnes and syndicated from 1917 to 1949. The strip was a comic book in 1940 and a radio series in 1941.

(See the video on http://muskegononline.net/)

Iwerks Studios' Flip the Frog, below, may seem a little audacious, but so was Mickey Mouse in the early cartoons Iwerks produced with Disney. Flip is well behaved here, compared to some of his other exploits. Flip was funny, but didn't keep Iwerks Studios going. Flip was born in 1930 and over by 1933.

(See the video on http://muskegononline.net/)

Those interested in classic cartoons can visit the The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit museum, library and digital archive dedicated to serving the worldwide animation community. A project of ASIFA-Hollywood, the archive receives support from The Walter Lantz Foundation. Go to http://www.animationarchive.org and prepare to be entertained.

These Works are in Public Domain and not Derivative as specified by U.S. copyright law (title 17 of the U.S. Code).

Editor and Publisher Gary Scott Beatty has been working in printing and publishing for over 35 years, including editing Muskegon's On the Shore magazine and typesetting Muskegon Magazine. In 2008 he won a Xeric Foundation Grant to publish Jazz: Cool Birth, a murder mystery in a 1957 jazz club with illustrations inspired by '50s album cover design. This and his other Aazurn Publishing books can be purchased through Amazon.com. Worldwide, he edits and publishes Indie Comics Magazine, 64 pages of the best story and art from today's independent comic book creators.

Celebrate Spring with Color Classics

BY GARY SCOTT BEATTY, PUBLISHER AND EDITOR, MUSKEGONONLINE.NET

We continue to celebrate spring with Max Fleischer Color Classics featuring ants and vegetables.

These cartoons, Ants in the Plants (1941) and The Fresh Vegetable Mystery (1939), were among the last Color Classics produced before the company moved on to make Technicolor cartoons starring their Gabby character from the full length 1939 feature Gulliver's Travels.

Don't expect the urban, jazz crazy tales of the Fleischer brothers' early years in these Color Classics. Although their Koko the Clown dominated '20s cartoon popularity and Fleischer Studios' Betty Boop was a household name, the enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934 kept Fleischer cartoons from the racey, dark, city-oriented subject matter that made their early cartoons unique.

The Color Classics, obvious nods to Disney's successful Silly Symphonies series, have their own visual charm, aided by the Stereoptical process developed by Fleischer Studios. If many of the backgrounds look real, it's because they are -- drawn animation cells were positioned in front of scale model, three dimensional dioramas, giving an amazing depth to many scenes.

The opening scene to Ants in the Plants is a good example of the Stereoptical process, as the camera pans downhill toward the ant village.

(Video at MuskegonOnline.NET)

Those interested in classic cartoons can visit the The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit museum, library and digital archive dedicated to serving the worldwide animation community. A project of ASIFA-Hollywood, the archive receives support from The Walter Lantz Foundation. Go to http://www.animationarchive.org and prepare to be entertained.

These Works are in Public Domain and not Derivative as specified by U.S. copyright law (title 17 of the U.S. Code).


Editor and Publisher Gary Scott Beatty has been working in printing and publishing for over 35 years, including editing Muskegon's On the Shore magazine and typesetting Muskegon Magazine. In 2008 he won a Xeric Foundation Grant to publish Jazz: Cool Birth, a murder mystery in a 1957 jazz club with illustrations inspired by '50s album cover design. This and his other Aazurn Publishing books can be purchased through Amazon.com. Worldwide, he edits and publishes Indie Comics Magazine, 64 pages of the best story and art from today's independent comic book creators.

Jazz: The Hot and the Cool

In this story, first printed in Indie Comics Magazine in 2011, I try to capture the sense of loss lifetime musicians must have felt seeing their livelihood, and the jazz they devoted their lives and talents to, slipping away with the arrival of a new music. Little did anyone realize cool jazz would soon give way to the rockabilly kids were enjoying in the new suburbs, as explored with considerably more humor in last month's "Jazz: Rockabilly."

Read "Jazz: The Hot and the Cool" on MuskegonOnline.NET here.