Category Archives: animated shorts

Chuck Jones: An Animated Life

Posted on by under animated shorts, animation, classic cartoons, pioneers of animation

It’s been said that artists, like all creative people, draw from what they know in creating their artistic visions. This is particularly true for animator Charles “Chuck” M. Jones, who parlayed his experiences growing up with a quixotic father and an indulgent, supportive mother into a career that is virtually unparalleled for its influence and noteworthy output.

Like many animators who emerged during the “Golden Age” of Hollywood animation, Jones was influenced by the work of pioneering cartoonist Winsor McCay. When McCay’s groundbreaking effort Gertie the Dinosaur premiered, Jones was two years old, soon to move from Washington to Los Angeles with his family as his father sought better business opportunities. As recounted in the documentary Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood (2009), Jones’ father founded–and lost–several businesses during Jones’ childhood, and with each closure, the Jones children were given massive amounts of company letterhead and pencils to use as they pleased. The children drew hundreds upon thousands of pictures over the years, an exercise that greatly prepared Jones for his later career. In the documentary, Jones also gives much credit for his creative development to his mother, a creative woman in her own right whom he says “would never criticize a drawing” and was endlessly encouraging of his abilities.

Jones eventually attended and graduated from Chouinard Art Institute–a school that also saw such notable students as Mary Blair, Ollie Johnston, Bill Melendez, and Hollywood costume designer Edith Head (among many, many others) pass through its doors over the years. His ascent through the ranks of the animation elite started slowly, as he worked his way up from the bottom, one job at a time. After a brief stint as a commercial artist, Jones’ first “real” animation job, in 1931, was as a cel washer for recent Disney escapee Ub Iwerks, and he soon became the assistant animator for Grim Natwick (best known as the creator of Betty Boop for the Fleischer studio).

In 1933, Jones moved on to Leon Schlesinger Productions, which produced cartoons under the Warner Bros. banner. It was the most important step he would take toward cementing his status as an animation pioneer in his own right. In 1935, a brash new arrival to the studio, Frederick “Tex” Avery, convinced Schlesinger to give him a shot as a director. Avery did not have all that much experience, and he was a bit of a renegade, but Schlesinger believed that this was the man who would finally help his studio compete with the big boys (i.e. Disney). He “gave” Avery some animators–Jones, Bob Clampett, Virgil Ross, and Sid Sutherland–and assigned the group to a small, bug-infested building on the Warner Bros. backlot, which the crew affectionately nicknamed “Termite Terrace.”

The Termite Terrace crew in 1935 (from left): Ross, Sutherland, Avery, Jones, Clampett.

Soon, this small band of eager young animators began producing a popular series of shorts for the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies imprints, and in the process, redefined the rules of animation. Avery did not ascribe to the belief that animation should strictly reflect reality; instead, he believed in the zany promises of freedom that animation offered. Though Jones would never fully give himself over to the anarchy that reigned in much of Avery’s work–Jones was a proponent of believability with his animation, if not strict “realism”–he was nonetheless greatly influenced by Avery’s insistence upon the limitless possibilities allowed by the form. As Hugh Kenner explains in Chuck Jones: A Flurry of Drawings (1994): ”What Tex Avery did establish–though for Chuck Jones the lesson took time to stick–was simply the autonomy of the Director’s created world. The world of the transcendent Jones cartoons–think One Froggy Evening or What’s Opera, Doc?–has no firm connections with any world outside itself … It doesn’t seem too much to say that Tex Avery’s presence … underlaid the great period when Warner cartoons … paced the cartoon industry, and also fostered Chuck Jones. Jones needed Avery’s example.”

It’s true that Jones’ best work took time to develop. His cartoons throughout the remainder of the 1930s and the early 40s are not particularly memorable, and not particularly funny. What could be called the Chuck Jones “ethos”–a mixture of energetic action, brilliant animation, and unexpected humor–first emerged in 1942′s The Dover Boys at Pimento University, a rowdy, satirical take on the popular Rover Boys series of children’s books. The unique animation style of this short–which is so vastly different from the typical Warner Bros. output that it reportedly almost got Jones fired–would later influence the artists behind the heavily stylized UPA cartoons (among them Mr. Magoo and Gerald McBoing-Boing) produced in the 1950s and beyond.

The 1940s brought an important collaboration for Jones, when he teamed up with children’s author Dr. Seuss for a series of animated cartoons featuring a character named Private Snafu (the character itself was dreamed up by Hollywood director Frank Capra). These cartoons were created exclusively for the United States Army, which had quickly discovered that straightforward, live-action educational films were not very adept at holding the soldiers’ attention. The Private Snafu shorts were thereby devised as a way to engage soldiers and humorously educate them about the rules and regulations of service. The partnership between Seuss and Jones would be a prolific one; Jones eventually produced and directed the perennial holiday special How the Grinch Stole Christmas, based on Seuss’ popular book, in 1966.

By the end of the 1940s, Jones had found his footing as an animator and director. Starting with 1948′s Scaredy Cat, featuring Sylvester and Porky, Jones produced an almost unbroken string of hit cartoons, featuring some of the most beloved shorts ever created. His 1949 Pepe Le Pew feature For Scent-imental Reasons was Jones’ first ‘toon to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. That same year, he introduced a newer take on the Daffy Duck character in The Scarlet Pumpernickel; Jones’ Daffy was less loopy and zany, and more fame-hungry, jealous, strident, and insistent, eventually forming a rivalry with the perpetually-popular Bugs Bunny that saw a hilarious trio of hunting-themed cartoons opposite Elmer Fudd in the 1950s (Rabbit Fire, Rabbit Seasoning, and Duck! Rabbit, Duck!).

1949 also saw the debut of one of animation’s most enduring cartoon pairings: that of the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote, in Fast and Furry-ous. The cartoon also featured the debut of one of the most legendary cartoon tropes–the Acme Corporation, which provides all of the gadgets that never seem to work quite right for the constantly-frustrated coyote. In Memories of Childhood, Jones explains that he named the infamous “Acme” company somewhat ironically after a childhood habit: “Whenever we played a game or we had a grocery store or something, we called it the ‘Acme Corporation.’ Why? Because, in the Yellow Pages, if you looked, say, under ‘drug stores,’ you’d find the first one would be Acme Drugs. Why? Because A-C was about as high as you could go. It means the best, the superlative.” In creating the dynamic between the carnivorous coyote and his would-be prey, Jones went so far as to craft a series of inviolate rules to maintain consistency with the characters–a list that included such tenets as preventing the Road Runner from actively harming the coyote and maintaining the setting of the Southwestern deserts.

The 1950s were arguably the most successful decade of Jones’ career, as he directed almost two dozen cartoons during that period. Eight of these cartoons would eventually be voted to the 50 Greatest Cartoons list in 1994; four of them–What’s Opera, Doc; Duck Amuck; Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century; and One Froggy Evening–appear in the top five of that list. Jones is the most-represented animator on the list–with ten total entries, his work comprises a full TWENTY PERCENT of what is considered the “best” animation of all time. No other artist comes close.

Jones was undoubtedly the biggest asset to the Warner Bros. animation empire, and he was locked into an exclusive contract with the studio. But in the early 1960s, Jones collaborated with animators from UPA to produce the feature Gay Purr-ee, which he co-wrote with his wife, Dorothy. Ironically, Warner Bros. won the distribution rights for the film; when Jones’ role in its production was discovered, his now-violated contract with the studio was terminated in 1962. The Warner Bros. animation department was shut down the following year.

Jones subsequently formed his own animation studio, Sib Tower 12 Productions, and rehired his old unit from Warner Bros. (which has been disbanded after Jones was fired). The studio was contracted to create new cartoons for the Tom and Jerry series for MGM; two years later, Jones’ studio was purchased outright by MGM and renamed MGM Animation/Visual Arts. Jones produced nearly three dozen Tom and Jerry shorts throughout the 1960s, and also created the Oscar-winning short The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics in 1965 as well as MGM’s final animated short, 1967′s The Bear That Wasn’t, and the studio’s final animated feature, the 1970 adaptation of Norton Juster’s classic children’s book The Phantom Tollbooth (which mixed animation with live-action). The MGM animation studio was closed soon after that film’s release.

Again, Jones went the independent studio route; he formed his own company, Chuck Jones Productions, and continued to produce cartoons for television and film, including the 1979 compilation film The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie, a couple of Raggedy Ann and Andy specials, and several animated adaptations of Rudyard Kipling’s work, including a memorable version of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi narrated by legendary actor Orson Welles. He even delved into comic strip work, creating and maintaining the comic Crawford for two years in the 70s.

Jones was still animating and directing up until his death in 2002; his final project was the self-titled The Chuck Jones Show (2001-2002) for Cartoon Network. He never seemed to tire of creating; quite simply, he loved his job. In Chuck Jones: Conversations, author Maureen Furniss perhaps puts it best: “A dominant narrative heard in … interviews [with Jones] is that, lacking sufficient pay or even a boss that recognized his value as an artist, self-fulfillment and his love of drawing kept him at work. This scenario is a familiar story of the ‘American way’ that only strengthens our admiration for Jones as a cultural icon.”

And an icon he remains: Jones is, without a doubt, the most celebrated animator of all time, outshining even the master of self-promotion, Walt Disney himself (who, let’s face it, wasn’t exactly known for his personal prowess with pen and ink). His influence is virtually unmatched, his talent unparalleled as both a creator and a director. Jones was the ultimate cultural ambassador for animation, promoting the work of talented, young animators and continually educating people about the importance of animation as not only a field of entertainment, but an art form. Over the years, his work was nominated for eight Oscars (three of his cartoons won the award, and he personally won one–for producing The Dot and the Line–as well as an Honorary Award in 1996); he also won the prestigious Winsor McCay Award for lifetime achievement in the animation field in 1974 (along with former boss Avery, fellow Warner Bros. stalwart Friz Freleng, and Disney animator Art Babbitt). All things considered, though, the prizes didn’t matter to Jones; in Memories of Childhood, he even jokes that all it means is that “during that year, you were considered by your peers to be the best of that particular year. But it may be a very bad year. You still accept it!” Still, he adds, though he was “glad” to receive recognition, “The road is better than the end.”

Chuck Jones’ road was one any person would love to travel, and through his cartoons, we get a little glimpse of what that journey must have been like for him. When Jones died ten years ago, he left behind a legacy of laughter and beauty, inventiveness and inspiration, that continues to touch us and, most importantly, to move us to gales of chuckles. And it will always be this way, because thankfully, there will never be a day when a Chuck Jones cartoon is anything less than thoroughly enjoyable.

 

*Want to enter our drawing for two Looney Tunes collections on DVD? Don’t forget to leave a comment on this post!*

“Looney” happenings this week …

Posted on by under animated shorts, animation, announcements, classic cartoons, pioneers of animation

Friday, September 21st marks the 100th birthday of animation pioneer Chuck Jones, and in honor of this memorable natal day, True Classics is dedicating the next week’s worth of posts to the life and career of this cartoon genius.

Several events marking the occasion have been scheduled in California for the upcoming week, but seeing as how we’re clear across the country, we decided to stage our own little celebration of the man here in our humble corner of the blogosphere. So, starting tomorrow, we will delve into Jones’ oeuvre, highlighting some of the most well-known and beloved products of his time at Warner Bros., as well as other career milestones. It’s going to be a lot of fun to revisit these ‘toons, and we hope you’ll join us throughout the week and share memories of your favorite Chuck Jones productions!

But enough about all that … who wants to win a PRIZE???

This week, one lucky reader will win the Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection, Volumes 1 and 2, on DVD! Together, these compilations feature 58 of the best and most entertaining shorts to come out of animation’s Golden Age, starring such popular characters as Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Pepe Le Pew, Sylvester and Tweety, and many more! The sets include a number of Chuck Jones-helmed cartoons–including what many consider the best animated short ever produced, 1957′s What’s Opera, Doc?–among many more memorable classics. These discs are a great way to start or supplement your personal animation library (and I can tell you, my sets get broken out for frequent viewings around here!).

All you have to do to be entered into the drawing for these DVDs is to leave a comment on any of the Chuck Jones pieces that will be posted here at True Classics between tomorrow (Monday, September 17th) and Saturday (September 22nd). And yes, you can increase your odds to win by commenting on multiple entries. The winner will be notified on Sunday, September 23rd, and will have forty-eight hours to respond before another winner is drawn. Note: this contest is for residents of the United States and Canada only (apologies, international readers!).

For now … that’s all, folks!

Animated Naughty Bits, or: This Ain’t Your Kids’ Cartoon

Posted on by under animated shorts, animation, pioneers of animation, rated xxx, saturday morning cartoons

Just a warning: this post is brought to you by the letter “X” and his two friends who are–funnily enough–also named “X.”

(This is my roundabout way of telling you that there may be what we will politely term “delicate content” in this post, and if you are easily offended by pornography, you may want to skip this particular entry. In deference to those who might take offense, the rest of this post can be found behind the cut.)

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Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

Posted on by under animated shorts, animation, classic cartoons, classic disney, saturday morning cartoons

Mary Pickford (as “Alice”) and Mickey Mouse

 

As recounted in Stefan Kanfer’s fantastic history of animation, Serious Business (1997), early in 1933, Walt Disney gave a personal tour of the Disney animation studio to movie star Mary Pickford. Disney was considering making a live-action version of Alice in Wonderland with Pickford in the title role, and in fact shot some test footage of the actress in costume in Technicolor (this footage is now considered to be lost, though a couple of stills remain).

A big fan of Pickford’s, Walt sought to impress her with something new, so in the middle of the tour, he prevailed upon composer Frank Churchill to play the “pig thing” for Mary. Churchill obligingly sat down at the piano and launched into a rendition of his newest song, which he had written for the studio’s in-production adaptation of the classic fairy tale about three little pigs–a production that Walt had been considering shutting down before completion. Accompanied by story department head Ted Sears and voice actor Pinto Colvig (who would later stumble into immortality voicing Goofy), Churchill sang “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” and, at the end, all of the men waited anxiously for Pickford’s reaction.

“If you don’t make this cartoon about the pigs, I’ll never speak to you again,” she replied.

That was all it took–production resumed in earnest, and the cartoon was released in May at Radio City Music Hall in New York.

 

Three Little Pigs is a relatively simple fable about the importance of hard work in keeping the “big bad wolf” away from your door. Fifer Pig and Fiddler Pig would rather build their houses hastily so they can continue to play their instruments (the flute and the fiddle, respectively) all day long. But the Big Bad Wolf has other plans–he blows down Fifer’s straw house, and does the same to Fiddler’s house of sticks. The two seek refuge in the solid brick home of their brother, Practical Pig, whom they had earlier made fun of for spending his day building the house, and the Wolf, unable to blow down the sturdy structure, is ultimately stymied in his attempt to have pork chops for dinner.

Produced in glorious three-strip Technicolor (Disney had a temporary monopoly on the process, which prevented other animation studios from using the full potential of color in their own cartoons), the film was released under the banner of Disney’s Silly Symphony series. Indeed, the success of the film owes a great deal to its musical score; Three Little Pigs became a smash hit in large part due to Churchill’s theme song. “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”–with some encouragement from United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who called the cartoon his “favorite” film–became the unofficial anthem of the Great Depression, a way for people to thumb their noses at the dire state of the economy. When the sheet music for the song was produced, “Big Bad Wolf” became the top-selling song of the year. And as the United States entered World War II in the next decade, “Big Bad Wolf” found new life as a musical “screw you” to Nazi Germany.

Notice the photograph of dear old dad, in his (presumably) final form as a string of sausage links.

 

The importance of Three Little Pigs to the history of animation is in its characterization of the four figures in the cartoon. Though “personality animation” had its roots in Winsor McCay’s Gertie, who had taken her first bow almost two decades before, Pigs had four individual characters with different personalities, interacting together in a way that had yet to be seen in animated features. As legendary animator Chuck Jones later put it: ”Until [Pigs], animated films followed the form of the silent comedies. Small creature, good guy. Big creature, villain. Cute was enough to get you by. Personality animation–characters who may look alike, but who react and move very differently from each other–begins with this little movie.” Whether the Disney animators intended to break new ground or not, Pigs nonetheless set the standard for future cartoons, as strong storytelling and believable, engaging characters became ever more vital to the genre’s success. Beyond the animation of the characters, Pigs also demonstrates the importance of voice casting in bringing the characters to life. Colvig voices Practical Pig as sturdy and no-nonsense, like his beloved brick house, while Practical’s more fanciful brothers are given higher-pitched voices by Mary Moder and Dorothy Compton. And Billy Bletcher’s gruff, booming baritone (used so effectively in crafting the character of Mickey’s nemesis, Pete) is a perfect fit for the blustering Wolf.

“Acceptable” stereotyping … for 1933

 

Popular as it was (and still is), Pigs is not without its controversy, which has led to latter-day censorship of one particularly insensitive sequence. Walt Disney’s notoriously ingrained antisemitism (yes, the man was antisemitic, whether you want to believe it or not–there are multiple instances of his having made horrible comments about the “Jew studios” in Hollywood over the years) was reflected in a scene in the original cartoon in which the Wolf disguises himself as a stereotypical Jewish peddler, complete with a long beard, bulbous nose, and exaggerated Yiddish accent. The film has undergone several edits over the years to alter this: initially, it was reanimated to portray the Wolf as a Fuller Brush salesman (though the original vocals nonsensically remained), and later the soundtrack was re-dubbed to remove the accent altogether.

The phenomenal success of Three Little Pigs ultimately surprised everyone, especially Walt Disney himself. In the wake of the pigs’ popularity, Disney commissioned three sequels: The Big Bad Wolf (1934), Three Little Wolves (1936), and The Practical Pig (1939). A fourth, unofficial sequel, The Thrifty Pig, was produced in 1941 by the National Film Board of Canada as propaganda for the war effort–it is little more than a shortened re-figuring of the original intended to encourage the purchase of war bonds. None of the sequels matched Three Little Pigs in popularity, and Walt finally retired the trio of oinkers, philosophically concluding, “You can’t top pigs with pigs.” Still, the original remains one of the most well-regarded cartoon shorts of all time: it won the Academy Award for Best Short Subject in 1934 and placed at #11 on the storied list of the 50 Greatest Cartoons. Five years ago, the National Film Registry added Pigs to its preservation roster. Even today, the Pigs and the Wolf haven’t lost their luster: they remain popular Disney characters, popping up around the theme parks and in various films and television shows produced by the company.

Wait ’til you get a view of sweet Betty.

Posted on by under animated shorts, animation, classic cartoons, pioneers of animation

In 1918, Max Fleischer, the innovative mind behind early Walt Disney Studios rival Fleischer Studios, began producing a series of silent cartoon shorts called Out of the Inkwell. Much like earlier efforts by animation pioneers such as Winsor McCay, many entries in this series combined live-action with animation, showing Fleischer drawing the figures that would then come to “life” on the screen (as demonstrated in the 1921 short “Modeling“).

The Inkwell shorts featured two notable recurring characters: Koko the Clown, who was first animated in 1915 as Fleischer developed his revolutionary rotoscope (a device which allowed animators to trace over live-action scenes in order to recreate them in a relatively lifelike manner), and Fitz the dog, introduced as Koko’s sidekick in 1923. When Koko’s popularity waned by the end of the 1920s, the character was temporarily retired, and Fitz was re-envisioned as a leading man (so to speak) and renamed “Bimbo.” Bimbo became the first recurring character for the new sound-synchronized Talkartoons series, which replaced the silent Inkwell shorts in 1929.

After two successful solo cartoons, Bimbo was given a girlfriend in 1930′s Dizzy Dishes. But little did anyone realize that this new character, an anthropomorphic, stocking-wearing chanteuse/poodle who came to be known as Betty Boop, would become a groundbreaking cartoon character in her own right within months.

Thought not officially christened “Betty Boop” until the 1932 short Stopping the Show, the character, a quintessential flapper type, was popular almost from the start. She retained her canine features–low-hanging, floppy ears, a dog-like button nose, and a jaw structure that suggested a muzzle–until 1932, when she was redesigned to be more overtly human. This ultimately signaled the death knell for Bimbo; though Betty maintained a romantic relationship with Bimbo for a short while, he was ditched in 1933, as it was considered unseemly for a human girl to be in love with a dog (a year later, Betty was given a pet puppy named Pudgy, ostensibly to replace Bimbo as her sidekick).

The Betty Boop cartoons–at least, the ones produced before the enforcement of the Production Code in 1934–are not intended for children. There is a darkness to many of the earlier Boop shorts, which reference controversial themes such as rape (1932′s Chess-Nuts), sexual harassment (1933′s Betty Boop’s Big Boss), and even ephebophilia (after all, Betty’s supposedly only sixteen years old!). Tied into these darker themes is an inescapable, pervasive sexuality, marked by innuendo and risqué imagery. This is not to say that these early shorts are not enjoyable; quite the opposite, in fact, and they seem incredibly tame by today’s standards (as one might expect). But the scenarios in which Betty finds herself can be quite disturbing, and the innuendo is sometimes overly heavy-handed.

Whatever problems arise in Betty’s animated life, the girl just can’t help it: to co-opt Jessica Rabbit’s famous catchphrase, she’s not bad–she’s just drawn that way. As Grim Natwick, the animator who crafted the original design of Betty Boop under the auspices of Fleischer, once said, “Although she was never vulgar or obscene, Betty was a suggestion you could spell in three letters: s-e-x.” Indeed, every aspect of the character is designed to entice, from her Kewpie-doll features (inspired by actresses Helen Kane and Clara Bow) to her short, low-cut dresses and garters. And yet there is an innocence to Betty that is encapsulated in her breathy, squeaky, baby-talk voice, brought to life most memorably by voice-over artist Mae Questel (who also provided the voice for Fleischer’s other popular leading lady, Popeye’s paramour Olive Oyl). This makes for a character who is a potent combination of girl and woman, protecting her chastity from wolves and scoundrels while punctuating every song with an alluring wink and a shake of the hips.

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And now, four pre-Code Boop classics with which every self-professed fan of classic animation should be familiar …

 

Boop-Oop-A-Doop (1932)

Like Chess-Nuts, this short employs rape as a central conceit. Betty is the star of the circus, trying to avoid the advances of the smarmy ringmaster who’s determined to take her “boop-oop-a-doop away.” Can Koko’s interference save her from this awful fate? (Spoiler alert: it can, and he does.)

 

Minnie the Moocher (1932)

This one is notable for the vocal and musical contributions of the great Cab Calloway; in fact, the short opens with a great live-action shot of Calloway sliding sinuously across the screen in front of his orchestra as the music swells. There’s not much to the story–Betty doesn’t want to eat her dinner, so she runs away from her “mean” parents (with Bimbo by her side) and soon encounters Calloway’s jazzy ghost and his frightening friends–but it’s nonetheless a visual and musical treat.

 

Snow White (1933)

Betty’s outing as the Fairest of Them All predates Disney’s take on the story by almost four years. Again featuring the vocal stylings of Calloway, this skewed fairy tale is delightful from start to finish. Notably, the entire cartoon was crafted from start to finish by a single animator, Fleischer stalwart Roland Crandall, over the course of six months. Snow White is considered one of the greatest animated shorts ever produced, coming in at #19 on the 1994 list of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of All Time (and the aforementioned Minnie the Moocher is right behind it, at number 20 … as is another 1931 Bimbo-Betty short, Bimbo’s Initiation, at number 37).

 

Betty in Blunderland (1934)

This was one of the last Betty Boop cartoons to be produced and released before the strict enforcement of the Production Code would take effect in July 1934. As a lifelong, inveterate Alice in Wonderland fan, I’d be remiss not to mention this funny little take on Lewis Carroll’s twisted tale.

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For the most part, the shorts produced after 1934 lack bite and verve. The humor is watered down, Betty is covered up, and the naughty appeal of the previous cartoons is lost in a haze of family-friendly blandness. When the series concluded production in 1939, Betty was largely forgotten for a time until the shorts began airing on television in the 1950s. But she has found new life over the years through widespread (some would say “over-saturated”) merchandising, and she even made a brief cameo in 1988′s Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Most of the pre-Code Betty Boop shorts have not found their way to DVD yet, but some of her later, tamer appearances–the ones that have lapsed into the public domain–have been released as part of a number of mass-market, old-school cartoon compilations (though the quality of the transfers is typically lacking). Hopefully, the day will come soon when Betty Boop’s quirky and hilarious filmography will get the DVD/Blu-ray treatment it deserves, so new generations can continue to enjoy her antics!

 

This post is our contribution to the Short Animation blogathon currently being hosted by Pussy Goes Grrr. Make sure to check out all of the animated (get it?) entries that have been posted throughout the week!

Pioneers of Animation: J. Stuart Blackton

Posted on by under animated shorts, animation, pioneers of animation, saturday morning cartoons

For the next few weeks, we’re going to dedicate our semi-weekly “Saturday Morning Cartoons” feature to the men who set the stage for the art of animation in American film-making–the largely forgotten pioneers whose innovative work eventually inspired and facilitated the creation of Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, and scores of other classic cartoon figures.

The roots of animation run almost as deeply as the roots of film itself. It began in the waning days of the nineteenth century as fledgling filmmakers began experimenting with the new medium of “moving pictures,” playing with the possibilities of bringing inanimate objects to life. Many of these early animators began their careers, appropriately enough, as artists, before finding themselves in the world of movie-making.

J. Stuart Blackton was one such figure. The British-born Blackton first began his show business career as a vaudevillian “lightning sketch artist” (a type of speed sketching/performance art in which an illustrator draws a series of “lightning-quick” sketches and manipulates them in various ways while telling a related story to an audience). After his act failed, Blackton began working for Joseph Pulitzer’s popular, sensationalist New York Evening World newspaper as a journalist and staff artist.

After one life-changing assignment–meeting and interviewing noted inventor Thomas Edison in 1896–Blackton purchased a Vitascope (Edison’s groundbreaking film projector) and began showing Edison-produced films. In 1897, in the wake of his new-found success, Blackton (along with fellow filmmaker Albert E. Smith) founded the American Vitagraph Company, one of the most successful early film studios, and began producing his own pictures. Not content with merely filming short, live-action sequences, Blackton soon started exploring the possibilities of a crude form of stop-motion animation (a method pioneered by the influential French filmmaker Georges Méliès). A year later, Blackton and Smith created what is now widely recognized as the first stop-motion animated short–1898′s The Humpty Dumpty Circus, in which a toy carnival was brought to flickering life using the technique. Sadly, Circus has since been lost, but thankfully, other early Blackton and Smith collaborations remain.

A surviving example of their early experimentation with stop-motion is The Enchanted Drawing. In it, Blackton is seen in front of a large easel, sketching a man’s face. He then draws a bottle of wine and a glass, “magically” plucks them from the paper, and pours himself a drink. The drawn face morphs into an expression of surprise, then pleasure as Blackton “feeds” the sketched man from the bottle. Blackton adds a hat to the man’s head, then plucks it from the paper, and does the same to the man’s cigar (much to the sketch’s discontent). The short skit ends with Blackton returning all of the removed objects to the paper. Though the film is dated from 1900, the Library of Congress indicates that Drawing was likely three or four years old by the time it was finally released, which means that, in actuality, this short may predate The Humpty Dumpty Circus.

[As an aside, it's worth noting that this film was copyrighted not by Vitagraph, but by Edison's film company. Blackton and Smith, trying to avoid being sued by Edison--who, as the owner of multiple motion picture patents at the turn of the century, spent a great deal of time, money, and lawyers protecting his investments--sold several of their creations to Edison, giving the inventor sole distribution rights over those films. In order to stay viable, Vitagraph eventually joined Edison's Motion Picture Patent Company (MPPC) in 1908. The MPPC was a trust comprised of ten American film companies, giving Edison a veritable stranglehold on the industry. Interestingly, the MPPC was partly responsible for the growth of Hollywood as the premier movie-making destination in the United States, as rival filmmakers essentially fled the New York and New Jersey areas to escape from Edison's litigious reach.]

In 1906, Blackton created Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, which is credited by many scholars as the first truly “animated” film. The film shows several “chalk” drawings (actually simulated largely through the use of cutout animation) coming to life after Blackton’s hand “sketches” and manipulates them on the screen. Some elements of stop-motion, stick puppetry, and live-action were also used to bring the drawings to life.

By the end of the decade, as the demands of running a motion picture studio grew, Blackton eventually lost interest in his animation experiments and moved away from film-making altogether in order to handle the day-to-day business of managing Vitagraph. Ironically enough, though, his company’s name would eventually become synonymous with a powerhouse of animation. Vitagraph was sold to Warner Bros. in 1925, where its name was changed to Vitaphone. However, for a short period from 1960-1964, Warner issued a series of their popular Looney Tunes shorts as “Vitagraph releases” in order to utilize the old name and thus protect their ownership of it.

Blackton’s influence on the emerging genre of animation is undeniable. Yes, his animated vignettes are little more than exhibitions of movie trickery. There is no attempt to tell a story; these short films were instead intended to wow the audience with the “magic” of the silver screen. Cartoons as we now know them–that is, animation marked by characterization and narrative–would not begin to emerge until several years after Blackton put down the camera for the last time. Still, these primitive shorts demonstrated the tantalizing possibilities of film and ultimately provided much inspiration for further advancements in the blossoming field of animation. As curious, new filmmakers stepped up to the drawing board, they drew upon some of the techniques used by Blackton and his contemporaries and improved upon them, constructing the foundation for modern animation in the process.

Let’s all go to the lobby …

Posted on by under animated shorts, friends of the blog

My bestie, Lisa, runs a nail polish blog called Shades of Magick. Apparently, there is a pretty large community of nail bloggers on the web—I was unaware of how large until I nudged (okay, pushed) Lisa into starting a blog to show off her absolutely gorgeous, all-natural nails and creative manicures.

Recently, another nail blog, Nail Polish Art Addiction, decided to host a “Good Enough to Eat” nail art contest. I helped Lisa brainstorm ideas so she could participate, and then something clicked during our discussion, and we came up with what I (humbly) think is a marvelous idea.

Here is Lisa’s entry for the contest:

That may be the cutest damn hot dog I've ever seen.

Look familiar? If you’ve ever been to the movie theater and actually watched the commercials before the commercials before the previews before the movie, you may have seen a version of “Let’s All Go to the Lobby,” the 1953 animated short that inspired Lisa’s manicure.

Originally intended to draw business to a theater’s concession stand before the start of a film, “Let’s All Go to the Lobby” evolved over the years into a series of advertisements that played not only at the beginning of the movie, but during intermissions, too. There were versions of the short that were specially tailored for drive-in theaters as well. Still, not every version featured the iconic tune. Nor did every short feature the same serenading foodstuffs. The original items singing the snappy jingle were a box of popcorn, a soda, a candy bar, and a box of some other sort of candy. Subsequent “Lobby” shorts tend to have varying concession items like hot dogs and ice cream, and some have even indulged in product placement, particularly in regards to the brand of soda (Coke or Pepsi … take your pick).

As a pop culture touchstone (it wasn’t selected to the National Film Registry in 2000 for nothing, people), “Let’s All Go to the Lobby” is ripe for parody. Lisa introduced me to a recent AT&T mobile commercial featuring a version of the tune called “Let’s Go Out to the DMV.” This one includes not only the popcorn (which displays disturbing cannibalistic tendencies), candy, and soda of old, but adds in a cup of ice cream and a corn dog with a crutch. The Aqua Teen Hunger Force theatrical film (2007) has a hilarious parody of “Lobby” that begins with harmless innuendo before dissolving into a foulmouthed litany of all the things irritated moviegoers have ever wanted to say to the jerk sitting behind them with the cell phone and the loud mouth. And one of my favorites features Homer Simpson joining in the snack parade in his own inimitable way.

Mmm … hot dogs [insert drool].

Anyway …

I am quite proud of my darling friend and her talent with nail polish (that pride, admittedly, is tinged with the slightest bit of jealousy at the fact that my own fingernails refuse to cooperate and snap off if I dare grow them past the tips of my freaking fingers). So please go vote for her design (she’s entry #41!). It takes all of a minute, I swear. And Lisa worked so hard sketching out the design and then free-handing the entire thing. I want her to win!

“Let’s all go to the lobby,
let’s all go to the lobby,
let’s all go to the lobby,
to get ourselves a treat!”