Category Archives: saturday morning cartoons

Pioneers of Animation: Bray Productions

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

We’ve talked previously on this blog about the influence of cartoonist/animation pioneer Winsor McCay, but I’m going to mention it again (and again and again and again), as it would be nearly impossible to overstate his importance in promoting animation as a viable artistic medium. Films like Little Nemo (1911) and Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) directly inspired countless young artists and cartoonists to try their hand at making their static pictures “move” onscreen. An entire industry was born off the scaly back of McCay prehistoric creation–an industry that, much to McCay’s chagrin, quickly became a highly commercialized one, one that remains to this day a huge moneymaker, inviting both inventive creations and hasty, ill-conceived attempts to capitalize on children’s short attention spans and rake in the dough.

jr bray

Even in its infancy, animation lured those with dollar signs in their eyes, men who perhaps cared less about making an artistic statement and more about churning out multiple reels of crude entertainment every week. John Randolph Bray, a contemporary of McCay’s, has such a reputation in the annals of animation history. The man who has been referred to as the “Henry Ford of animation” was instrumental in forming the production model that still serves as the basis for the industry today. But for all his undeniably important contributions to the growth of animation as a cinematic form, Bray also demonstrated a famously litigious nature (he was almost Thomas Edison-like in his attempts to corner patents for the animation process) and a sometimes heavy-handed rule of the animation studio that bore his name. The result is a series of conflicting portraits of Bray, ranging from the reverent to the disdainful, depending upon the source.

Like McCay, Bray started out in journalism and eventually created his own weekly comic strip, Little Johnny and His Teddy Bears, which capitalized on the fervor for the stuffed toy in the wake of Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency. The strip debuted in 1907, and several years later, Bray was inspired to try his hand at animating Teddy Bears. He was likely inspired by a similar short, the 1907 Edwin S. Porter release The “Teddy” Bears, which largely used puppetry to portray a satirical animated recreation of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. But Bray, unfamiliar with the process involved in transferring action to the screen, was unhappy with his own results and scrapped the project.

By 1913, in the wake of McCay’s success with Little Nemo and another short, How a Mosquito Operates, Bray was ready to give animation another try. Building off McCay’s model, Bray produced The Artist’s Dream, a live-action/animation combo in which Bray stars with a ravenous animated dachshund.

This relatively simple short led Bray to develop several innovations that would greatly impact the work of future animators. When Bray signed a deal with Pathé to distribute The Artist’s Dream, the company expressed an interest in distributing even more animated shorts. An eager Bray set to work figuring out a way in which he could meet the demand without collapsing from sheer exhaustion. Up until this point in time, animators typically would complete their shorts entirely by hand (sometimes with assistance, sometimes without), drawing and redrawing each individual frame, a process that added up to hundreds upon hundreds of drawings. Bray soon realized that by delegating work to other artists–essentially dividing the production of each cartoon into several different units who could work concurrently on multiple shorts–he could greatly streamline production, saving time and money.

His most important innovation, however, was born out of Bray’s decision to print the backgrounds as opposed to animating them by hand on each frame. Originally, Bray had the backgrounds–which were little more than simple zinc drawings–printed onto many individual sheets of paper with a blank space remaining in which the animated action would then be depicted. This allowed for a certain uniformity from shot to shot as opposed to the sometimes wavy or fuzzy backgrounds in earlier cartoons. In later years, when Bray began working with fellow animator Earl Hurd, the two of them collaborated on the creation of the cel animation process, which took Bray’s initial idea a step further by having the backgrounds reproduced on celluloid, which then allowed images to be layered over the background images, creating a more seamless sense of movement in a solid setting. Bray and Hurd patented their process in 1915, and it remained the standard for hand-drawn animation for decades.

john r bray

In 1914, Bray founded and incorporated one of the first full-fledged animation studios in Hollywood, Bray Productions. As the studio grew, Bray stopped animating and took on the responsibilities of running the studio full-time, adeptly managing promotions, marketing, and distribution of his shorts. By some accounts, Bray ruled with the proverbial iron fist, reportedly taking credit for work that his employees actually completed and even attempting to patent ideas that were not his own. [In fact, Bray attempted to patent practically every aspect of the animation process, even techniques that his predecessors like McCay had utilized for years before Bray ever animated his first frame. He sued anyone he thought had violated his patents--including McCay--until the patents expired in 1932.] Bray was largely responsible for animation becoming a formalized industry, and he played the part of big businessman well, separating himself physically and mentally from his employees and creating a stratification that separated the workers from the “front office.” He was, by some accounts, standoffish and cold, with a highly superior demeanor that was rather off-putting to some in his employ.

Bray’s wife, Margaret Till Bray–a successful businesswoman in her own right who also managed her own real-estate company while working alongside her husband–was instrumental in helping Bray run the new studio. She was given the title of production manager, which in actuality meant that she was little more than a glorified babysitter at times, as it was her responsibility to corral the animators on staff and ensure that they were meeting deadlines. She was well-suited to the position; like her husband, Margaret Bray was a no-nonsense type of personality who frowned upon wastefulness. When she realized that the animators would leave the studio on Friday, paychecks in hand, and spend the weekend blowing their money on booze and women before stumbling back to work late the next week, she changed payday to Monday to facilitate more productivity. She was also one of the strictest enforcers of Bray’s animation patents, encouraging him to pursue any perceived violation without delay.

heeza liar

In the studio’s heyday–from the mid-1910s through the early 1920s–Bray Productions released hundreds of animated shorts, and brought a number of popular series to theaters. The first series released under the new Bray Productions banner was Colonel Heeza Liar, who initially debuted in the 1913 cartoon Colonel Heeza Liar in Africa. The Heeza Liar shorts are notable for being the first animated series starring a recurring character, the titular big-game hunter/boastful Teddy Roosevelt caricature. The first cartoon was intended to be a parody of Paul J. Rainey’s African Hunt, a hugely popular 1912 documentary-type film that followed the titular hunter on safari, as he spent time with some native tribes and slaughtered more than his fair share of exotic creatures. The animated short’s success led to a series of nearly five dozen Heeza Liar cartoons, which followed the Colonel’s “daredevil” adventures around the world.

In 1915, Hurd began animating the studio’s second recurring character, a mischievous young boy named Bobby Bumps (some modern-day animation scholars refer to Bobby as the “Bart Simpson” of the 1910s). Young Bobby was not an entirely new creation–he was based, in part, on a character Hurd had created for another comic strip earlier in the decade. The Bobby Bumps shorts were the first to be wholly created using Bray and Hurd’s patented cel process. The series was popular from the start, and remained one of Bray Production’s biggest draws from his debut until 1919, when Hurd left Bray’s employ. Afterwards, Hurd animated only a couple of Bobby’s adventures each year (for other distributors) before the series came to a close in 1925.

When William Randolph Heart’s animation studio, International Film Service (founded the year after Bray’s studio), folded in 1918, its many popular series like Krazy Kat and Jerry on the Job were left virtually homeless. A year later, Hearst allowed Bray to license certain IFS properties to be released under the Bray Productions banner. In the process, Bray inherited Gregory La Cava, who had directed many of the cartoons for Hearst’s company; La Cava, who would later become an influential, Oscar-nominated film director in the 1930s, continued to direct some animated shorts for Bray for a couple of years before leaving animation altogether.

Bray may not have been an ideal boss, but he was singularly proficient in drawing talented artists into his crew. Bray’s studio, at one point or another, hired some of the most famous names in classic animation, many of whom got their start there: Walter Lantz (creator of Woody Woodpecker), Paul Terry (of “Terrytoons” fame), Max and Dave Fleischer (Betty Boop, Popeye, Superman), Grim Natwick (the “father” of Ms. Boop), and early Disney animator Burt Gillett, among others. Some of these artists even created their own indelible characters while under the auspices of Bray Productions–for instance, the Fleischers’ innovative Out of the Inkwell series, which ultimately ran for more than a decade, spent its first two years as a Bray production before the Fleischers opened their own studio, and Terry’s Farmer Al Falfa was created during the brief period in which the animator worked under Bray (Terry, unhappy working for the studio, barely lasted a year before striking off on his own. He and Bray subsequently spent years in court, as Bray alleged that Terry’s own studio, Fables Pictures, regularly violated Bray’s cel patent).

Conflicting accounts of Bray’s life and career indicate that the idea of Bray as the prototypical soulless businessman may or may not have been blown out of proportion over the years. History is subjective, dependent on memory, and Bray is remembered almost equally as a gallant pioneer of a new industry and a tyrant who stifled artistic intent. Still, there is little doubt that Bray began his career as a creative artist in his own right (if his early cartoons are any indication) and came to know his craft well. Nor is there any question that Bray was intent on improving upon the creative process so as to bring animation–and lots of it–to the masses. In many ways, it seems Bray set the stage for Walt Disney’s ascension and eventual stranglehold on the animation business in subsequent decades; at the very least, like Bray, Disney’s personal reputation is a veritable grab bag of both good and bad recollections, told by friends and foes, supporters and detractors alike. In the end, though, perceptions of his behavior and business practices are extraneous–what’s important is that animation, as it exists to this day on screens both big and small, owes an immeasurable debt to the work of John Randolph Bray.

 

Selected sources:
Bachman, Gregg and Thomas J. Slater, eds. American Silent Film: Discovering Marginalized Voices. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002.
Crafton, Donald. Before Mickey: The Animated Film, 1898-1928. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Sito, Tom. Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006.
Stathes, Thomas J. The Bray Animation Project. 1 June 2011. Web.

 

Celebrating 100 Years of Chuck Jones: From A to Z-Z-Z-Z (1953)

Posted on by under animated shorts, animation, brandie's faves, classic cartoons, hahas, kiddie faves, saturday morning cartoons

Ralph Phillips is bored, bored, bored. While his schoolmates mindlessly chant their math lesson (“Two and two is four. Four and four is eight …”), Ralph stares dreamily out the classroom window, imagining himself as a bird, flipping and flying freely through the sky–until his reverie is rudely interrupted by his teacher. She, for some inexplicable reason, expects Ralph to pay attention to his lessons, but how can he concentrate when there’s a whole new world to be explored through his oh-so-vivid daydreams …?

From A to Z-Z-Z-Z was released in 1953, at the height of Chuck Jones’ career with Warner Bros., and introduces a brand-new character to the studio’s animated roster. Ralph Phillips is an amalgamation of practically every child–male or female–to suffer through an endless school day. More than that, he is a childish take on the Walter Mitty archetype: an inconsequential dreamer who escapes reality through his imagination. In many ways, Ralph’s adventures are reminiscent of the adventures of another imaginative, Mitty-esque Ralph–Ralphie Parker, the child at the center of the seminal holiday classic A Christmas Story (1983): both characters engage in daydreaming to escape their boredom in school; both imagine themselves as brave conquerors of that which troubles them; both of them are in danger of “shooting their eyes out” (one from a series of makeshift, though imaginary, weapons; one, of course, from the infamous Red Ryder BB Gun).

The animation is this cartoon is utterly fantastic, as Ralph moves from scenario to scenario in his imagination. He floats through the sky with an impish grin; his chalk outline does battle with the day’s math lesson; an array of colorful arrows fly at him as he races across the desert to deliver a letter for the “Pony Express”; he single-handedly fights a “saber-toothed tiger shark” and raises a sunken Navy sub back to the surface; he enters the “boxing ring” and takes down a man four times his size with nary a bead of sweat. The backgrounds of the imaginative vignettes are beautifully detailed and appropriately exotic for each new scenario, contrasting with the bland, institutional design of the classroom scenes. The underwater scenes are particularly incredible (and strangely familiar–in some ways, they remind me of the backgrounds of the Nickelodeon cartoon Spongebob Squarepants).

It’s also worth mentioning that the majority of the voice work in this cartoon was not done by Warner Bros. stalwart Mel Blanc: the teacher is voiced by Bea Benaderet (the original voice of Granny before June Foray took over in 1955), and Ralph is voiced by Dick Beals. This was Beals’ first role as a cartoon voice-over artist, and his knack for capturing children’s voices (due in large part to a glandular problem) turned into a lucrative career (he would later go on to voice other memorable characters, including Davey in the Davey and Goliath series in the 1960s). Blanc, for his part, voiced the incidental characters in the cartoon, making the noises for the numbers, the Indians (a part of the cartoon, incidentally, that is still sometimes censored in broadcast airings, due to its perceived insensitivity toward Native Americans as well as the violence involved), and Ralph’s “fellow” Navy men.

This cartoon was always one of my favorites as a child, if only for that scene in which a chalk-outlined Ralph attacks the daunting math problem on the blackboard–literally, it turns out, as the problem-solving turns into a physical jousting match with a very determined number “5.” It’s a gentle yet effective poke at the struggle some of us have with math (it was always my worst subject, anyway), and Ralph’s “victory” over his numerical foes is nothing less than satisfying to watch, especially since he uses letters to ultimately conquer them (writer Michael Maltese was obviously a fellow word nerd. Die, numbers, DIE!).

From A to Z-Z-Z-Z was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film; in fact, it was the first nomination for the Warner Bros. studio in four years, since the Chuck Jones-directed For Scent-imental Reasons won the prize in 1949 (still, it lost to the Walt Disney educational cartoon Toot, Whistle, Plunk, and Boom). Jones and Maltese brought Ralph back once more in the 1957 short Boyhood Daze, in which the character again indulges in multiple flights of fancy after being sent to his room as punishment. Additionally, around the same time as that second childhood appearance, a grown-up Ralph starred in two recruitment films that Jones directed for the Army–90 Day Wondering (1956–voiced by Blanc) and Drafty, Isn’t It? (1957–voiced by Daws Butler, the “Mel Blanc” of Hanna-Barbera). And in 1970, Ralph even had a vocal cameo in Jones’ theatrical adaptation of The Phantom Tollbooth (this time around, however, he was voiced by Foray). While Ralph may not be nearly as memorable a creation as many of his Warner Bros. brethren, From A to Z-Z-Z-Z remains an indelible portrait of the power of a young child’s imagination–and a very entertaining one, at that.

 

 

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Celebrating 100 Years of Chuck Jones: The Dot and the Line (1965)

Posted on by under animated shorts, animation, classic cartoons, kiddie faves, lit adaptations, saturday morning cartoons

After Warner Bros. terminated his long-term contract in 1962, Chuck Jones moved on to MGM, producing a series of cartoons featuring that studio’s famed pair, Tom and Jerry. Jones’ time wasn’t completely consumed by the antics of the cat and mouse, however; the animator/director worked on several other projects for the studio, one of which–The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics (1965)–won Jones his only competitive Academy Award as a producer.

The Dot and the Line, as its full title indicates, tells of the romance between a dilettante dot and the straight line that loves her. While the dot is initially enamored of a “wild and unkempt squiggle” (whose wildness is underscored by a clamorous rock-and-roll tune that sounds every time it is onscreen), the “stiff as a board” straight line tries to adapt himself into something else in order to entice the dot back to his side. After struggling a long time, the line finally learns to form himself into an angle, which then allows him to form an unending series of increasingly complex shapes that, in the end, are much more appealing to the dot than the “chaos” presented by the squiggle. The cartoon concludes with the tongue-in-cheek moral: “To the vector belong the spoils.”

Norton Juster, the author of the book on which the short is based, also wrote the screenplay for the cartoon. The short is narrated by English actor Robert Morley (whom some might best remember as Katharine Hepburn’s ill-fated brother in 1951′s The African Queen), who gives an appropriately lively voice-over performance. It’s somewhat lengthy for a cartoon short–at ten minutes long, it’s about three minutes longer than the typical Jones cartoon–but the cartoon hardly drags, for the animation, marked by a multitude of colors, shapes, and intriguing visuals, is simply too engaging.

The cartoon is somewhat similar to the Walt Disney production Donald in Mathmagic Land (1959) in that it attempts to present mathematics–specifically the art of shapes–in an interesting and entertaining way, and indeed, The Dot and the Line accomplishes this handily (and in much less time than its Disney counterpart–although, granted, Donald’s journey into mathematics is much more detailed than that of the latter cartoon). But The Dot and the Line is also more than a “math cartoon”: it’s also a grand vocabulary lesson. For example, after his success, the narrator tells us, the line becomes “dazzling, clever, mysterious, versatile, erudite, eloquent, profound, enigmatic, complex, and compelling”–and when’s the last time you heard some of those words used in a children’s cartoon?

The language and wordplay in The Dot and the Line owes something of a debt to the playful sing-song rhythms of Dr. Seuss. And there’s no shortage of puns in the cartoon; for instance, when the line becomes despondent at having been ignored by the dot, his friends, worried about “how thin and drawn” he is, try to lighten the mood, proclaiming, “She lacks depth!” This type of math-related humor is far from heavy-handed, however; it’s supplemented by topical humor, particularly one gag that is my favorite moment in the cartoon: the morning after the line has finally discovered the trick to forming into an angle, he’s bent himself in such a fervor of movement that he has the nerd equivalent of a hangover. “Freedom,” the line admits, “is not a license for chaos.”

Though the language and the concepts may be a little “above” younger viewers, The Dot and the Line succeeds in making a sometimes unpopular subject (ugh, math, yuck!) a rather absorbing one. Incidentally, this would not be the only collaboration between Jones and Juster–five years later, Jones adapted Juster’s popular children’s novel, The Phantom Tollbooth, into a live-action/animated film for MGM. That movie would mark the final production of the studio, as MGM shuttered its animation unit soon after. Jones went on to found an independent production company, Chuck Jones Productions, and continued creating for another thirty years until he passed away in 2002. Still, his subsequent work never quite reached the peaks he had ascended during his days with Warner Bros. and MGM. With both of those studios’ animation divisions closed by 1970, it truly marked the end of an era in Hollywood animation.

 

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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.

The Silent-Puff Girls

Posted on by under animation, brandie's faves, saturday morning cartoons, silence = golden

One of the most entertaining cartoons to come out of the 1990s features a trio of sweet little girls named Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup … and despite their cutesy names, they just happen to be some seriously ass-whoopin’ superheroes. Those girls–originally called The Whoopass Girls before being renamed as the more family-friendly Powerpuff Girls–were created by Craig McCracken, a familiar presence behind-the-scenes at Cartoon Network in the 90s as an animator for shows like 2 Stupid Dogs and Dexter’s Laboratory. The show was produced by Cartoon Network (after a brief stint under the Hanna-Barbera banner) and was a monster hit almost immediately out of the gate, spanning seven years, seventy-eight episodes, and a 2002 feature film. The cartoon is much in the same vein as the 90s Dreamworks cartoon Animaniacs in that its humor appeals not only to its target “kid” audience, but also to adults (witness, for instance, the third-season episode “Meet the Beat-Alls,” which is a hilarious tribute to The Beatles featuring dozens of puns centered around Beatles’ song titles–and even a simian character based on Yoko Ono).

PPG has long been a favorite of mine (seriously–my 21st birthday cake was Powerpuff-themed), and because Boomerang shows two episodes back-to-back every evening, I get to catch up on some of the best episodes every now and again. And last night featured one of my very favorites … so what better time than now to shine the spotlight on the girls for our Saturday Morning Cartoons series?

The episode is called “Silent Treatment,” and the bulk of this cartoon is a fond parody of silent films. While the other children in the city of Townsville attend the latest Hollywood movie at the giganto multiplex, the girls are forced to see a silent picture at a rundown theater across the street with Professor Utonium (their guardian/creator), who wants to teach them about the origins of film. The Professor leaves for a moment, and the girls loudly poke fun at the film, complaining about the lack of color and sound, and protesting the speed of the title cards. The film’s villain and star, Max Von Nitrate (of course), can hear their “commentary” and grows increasingly frustrated. He reveals that he has kidnapped the Professor and intends to steal his melodious voice for his own! The girls must enter the movie and get their Professor back before he finds himself (dun dun DUN) … VOICELESS!

Naturally, inserting the superheroes into the film leads to all sorts of complications–and some delightful cameos from figures representing silent movie stalwarts such as Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd (dangling from a clock a la the great 1923 comedy Safety Last!), and some Keystone-esque coppers. The “silent film” sections of the cartoon are beautifully done–the zany spirit of early comedy shorts is captured pretty well, and the scratches and dings added to the black-and-white film are a nice touch. All in all, “Silent Treatment” really is a delightful short, one that classic movie fans will likely find particularly appealing.

Can the girls save the day and escape the silent film? Will they ever learn to appreciate old movies? To find out, you’ll just have to watch the cartoon for yourself!

Winsor McCay’s animated propaganda: The Sinking of the Lusitania

Posted on by under animation, pioneers of animation, propaganda, saturday morning cartoons

(This post was originally published on the sadly now-defunct site The Cinementals.)

After the phenomenal success of Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), cartoonist Winsor McCay realized that he had found his passion in animation, and he was eager to create even more films. But his animated output was limited at the demand of his employer, publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst. A man known more for his love of the all-American dollar more so than any real respect for artistry, Hearst felt that McCay’s “childish” animated work detracted from the more important business of crafting political cartoons for his newspaper, the New York American.

For McCay, his dealings with the boss left a bitter taste. McCay had left his previous paper, the New York Herald, in a bid for more creative and personal freedom, and instead had become subject to the even stronger iron fist of Hearst Publishing. He reluctantly turned his focus back to drawing editorial cartoons, but his heart was not in the work. And just to twist the knife a bit further, Hearst exerted his influence to try to prevent theater owners from booking McCay’s showings of his animated films like Gertie andHow a Mosquito Operates (1912) in order to keep his prized artist focused on producing print cartoons.

It took a tragedy to bring McCay’s two creative worlds together once again. On May 7, 1915, the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania was torpedoed by a German U-boat and sank into the waters off the southern coast of Ireland. The ship went down quickly–within eighteen minutes–and 1,198 people were killed. The event set off a firestorm of rage around the world and prompted immediate condemnation from the British and from Americans (128 of the dead passengers were US citizens). The British assumed that the sinking would incite the United States to declare war on Germany and enter the fray (World War I itself had been going on for nine months by this point); public opinion in America, however, did not immediately support the idea of joining the conflict.

In the aftermath of the sinking, the Lusitania became a symbol of the war effort–a polarizing rallying cry along the lines of “Remember the Maine!” It was an example of the horrors Germany had inflicted and could still cast upon the world, and Lusitania-related propaganda abounded on both sides, painting the sinking as either a triumph or a travestry. And McCay put in his two cents in 1916, when he began work on another animated film–his first since the release of Gertie.

The Sinking of the Lusitania recreates the final voyage of the doomed vessel in a revolutionary hybrid form of animation and documentary, and as one might imagine, it was a painstaking process. McCay hired an assistant, an artist named John Fitzsimmons, to help him with the daunting task of producing 25,000 drawings for the film. It was McCay’s first experience using “cel” animation, a method that had only been patented the year before. It involved sketching movement on transparent sheets of celluloid (which was highly flammable), which were then laid on top of immovable background scenes, making the process easier–if no less time-consuming.

The film opens with live-action scenes detailing the making of the film, which highlight the research that McCay undertook to recreate the ship’s destruction as faithfully as possible (though in recent years, the claim that a second torpedo struck the boat has been called into debate). This quickly segues into the animated sequence of events, interspersed with title cards explaining the action onscreen. The cards use deliberately inflammatory language, calling the actions of the German U-boat “cowardly.” Photographs of some of the more notable victims of the sinking such as philosopher Elbert Hubbard, playwright Charles Klein, and millionaire Alfred G. Vanderbilt are inserted in between shots of the damaged ship, billowing smoke and sinking slowly into the water. As the ship slides backward into the ocean, people are showing jumping from the decks, tumbling into the water below.

The final moments–in which the ship disappears from view, leaving dozens of people helplessly bobbing up and down in the water–effectively demonstrate the terror of the sinking. Its concluding scene, a brief shot of a young mother and her baby sinking helplessly beneath the waves, is a particularly haunting image with which to leave the audience. It is an emotional moment, and combined with the accompanying title card spewing outrage at the “Hun” for causing the disaster, it underscores the heartrending horrors of war. It’s remarkable that, in just the final twenty seconds of this film, McCay can elicit such feelings of righteous fury in the viewer. Ultimately, while The Sinking of the Lusitania may be merely an exercise in using propaganda to manipulate and enhance anti-war sentiment, it is a damn successful one. Even now, almost one hundred years later, watching this film brings a chill and an edge of anger at the indefensible actions of wartime Germany.

The short was finally completed and released in 1918–more than a year after the United States entered the war. But its impact was not lessened by its late arrival in theaters; in fact, it helped keep anti-German sentiment strong on the home front as the war entered its final months. Interestingly enough, McCay’s cinematic vilifying of the ship’s sinking and his virtual call to arms against Germany were in almost direct opposition to the anti-war (and sometimes pro-German) viewpoints of his boss; at one point in 1915, Hearst even signed his name to an editorial that essentially stated that Germany was well within its rights to engage in submarine warfare and claimed that the sinking of the Lusitania was thereby justified.

In 1924, McCay declined renewing his contract with Hearst and returned to the Herald, where he restarted his weekly Little Nemo comic, but the new incarnation of the strip only lasted for a couple of years. He also continued to dabble in producing short animated films, but the results never truly matched the joyful beauty and power of his earlier work. Though he was revered by a new generation of animators who were inspired by his work, McCay became embittered by the growing commercialization of animated cartoons, feeling as though the art form he had long championed was quickly becoming just another way to make money. Still, though there is certainly some element of truth to McCay’s fears about the evils of commercialization, modern animation studios like Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks show that it is possible to produce lyrical, moving, and beautiful animated art, thus keeping the spirit of McCay’s hopes for the medium alive and thriving. His name may not be well-remembered today, but his legacy is undeniable. McCay’s work showed the world that animation could be a viable form of entertainment–that not only could it make us smile and laugh, but it could also make us think, and even inspire us to action. He remains, in the truest sense, the very definition of a pioneer.

Horseathon: The Last Unicorn

Posted on by under animation, blogathon, carrie's faves, saturday morning cartoons, they made movies after 1970?

Considering that lately I’ve been in  a rebellious frame of mind, it’s fitting that my selection for the Horseathon stretches the rules of “horse” as well as “classic film.” Having grown up with horses, there is no other suitable excuse for what I am about to do, except perhaps that I’ve reviewed National Velvet (1944) at least twice and have nothing further to say (other than to reiterate again that if you haven’t seen it, you should). Also, I’ve been looking for a compelling reason to write about this particular film, so a giant THANK YOU for the Horseathon! Regardless, I hope you enjoy my little foray into 1980s animation.

The Unicorn gets vaguely helpful information from an addle-brained butterfly.

I remember loving The Last Unicorn (1982) growing up. We rented it countless times. In college, when I ran into a copy on DVD, I had no choice but to purchase it immediately, full of nostalgic glee. The story depicts the life of a unicorn, who hears that she must be the last of her own kind. She gets vague advice from a poetic, flighty (pun fully intended) butterfly, and leaves her home in search of the other unicorns. On her way, she encounters other perspectives and different forms of magic: humans who have no concept of it, a not-so accomplished magician (who oddly reminds me of Rincewind the Wizard of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld), a harpy (the darker side of her own magic), and the evil Mommy Fortuna, who captures animals and makes them appear to be magical creatures in her travelling novelty show. All of the other unicorns have been forced into the sea by the infamous Red Bull (who doesn’t give you wings, or freedom … I didn’t think it was funny, either) near the castle of King Haggard. King Haggard wanted all of the unicorns for himself, and has kept them prisoner in the sea.

The Unicorn faces the Red Bull. Tell me this image isn’t like LEGEND (1985).

The film is based on the book (with the screenplay) by Peter S. Beagle and features an all-star cast you might not expect: Alan Arkin, Mia Farrow, Christopher Lee, Angela Lansbury, and Rene Auberjonois, just to name a few. The film was actually animated in Japan, where the anime style for film was taking flight (though it originated in the early 1900s–for more information on the history of anime, click here.)  This accounts for the trademark anime elements of the characters, including large eyes, somewhat exaggerated expressions, round mouths, and the unicorn’s not-so-horselike tail.

Now for the horse elements:

Mia Farrow plays “the unicorn” or “Amalthea,” as she is called when Schmedrick the Magician turns her into a human to save her from the Red Bull. As the unicorn travels the land, those unfamiliar with magic mistakenly see her as a beautiful, white mare. She quickly discovers how clueless most people are of unicorn legend.

Molly gives the wizard Schmedrick a verbal lashing for turning the Unicorn into a woman–Amalthea.

This is about par for much of unicorn lore. In most stories about or including unicorns, they are rare creatures at best: pure, powerful, gentle, and in many cases the very holders of the world’s magic. Frequently, the story is that there are as few as one or two remaining in the world (think Legend, which came out a few years later). Unicorns are sometimes considered the landbound relations of the Pegasus, although the Pegasus derives from Greek mythology. The ancient Greeks considered the unicorn to be an actual creature, perhaps from India. The unicorn is referenced throughout ancient history, including Mesopotamia and in the Bible. Its magic and legend is so prevalent that it is often considered synonymous with the fantasy genre (particularly in the debates of fantasy vs. sci-fi, but we’ll leave that for another discussion).

Not just a cartoon character

Our fascination with unicorns resembles our fascination with horses in general, but on a different level. While horses are common–though beloved–tools of civilization, making and breaking societies in both agriculture and war, unicorns are a rare mythology that many storytellers are afraid to approach (vs. the current popularity of vampire lore, however destroyed it may be). Perhaps it is the sacredness of the creature, or the lack of depth (how can the embodiment of purity be a complicated character?), or our current social pessimism (evidenced by the re-popularity of dystopia) that drives us away from it. Regardless, the comparative rarity of unicorns in film reflect the rarity of the creature itself.

… not just for girls, either.

The answer is simply this: “film magic” could not have been created without the horse (please, they’re in so many films, though disproportionately the stars). The truly magical unicorn, however, creates its own magic, making it sometimes unwieldy in the unprepared film. Nevertheless, it reflects our own awe of seeing that rare bit of cinematic perfection that makes us sit in wonder. The Last Unicorn can hardly be regarded as that film. Though entertaining, the story trolls along a bit, and the characters tend to be underdeveloped. That doesn’t even cover the fact that the singing in at least one or two songs is noticeably flat. Still, it’s a cult classic of the 1980s and provides a little of what we all need: one last bit of purity in a corrupt, selfish world. That is, after all, the significance of the unicorn.

 

This post is my entry for the Horseathon, hosted by Page of My Love of Old Hollywood. The horses will run across the blogsophere through tomorrow, so make sure to check out all of the entries. And come back tomorrow for another equine contribution from the crew here at True Classics!