Tag Archives: j. stuart blackton

Rare animation on TCM: Join the party!

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

Tomorrow evening on TCM, Robert Osborne and animation scholar/historian Jerry Beck will be co-hosting a six-hour block of classic, rare animation in prime-time.

To say this is an extremely welcome night of entertainment is an understatement.

Robert Osborne and Jerry Beck, filming segments for a night of rare animation. Photo via TCM.

Classic animation gets the short shrift nowadays. Sure, you can find hour-long blocks of Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry cartoons weekdays on Cartoon Network (though these ‘toons tend to derive solely from the 1940s through the 1960s). And sure, there’s Boomerang, the cable channel specifically established as an outlet for classic cartoons, whose schedule sadly now includes only a handful of those classics (and usually late at night). But rarely, if ever, do the cartoons being highlighted Sunday night on TCM get even that relatively minuscule amount of attention. That’s why this move on TCM’s part is so very important. As Beck pointed out in a post on his essential animation site, Cartoon Brew, earlier this week:

“The six hour spotlight on classic animation coming this weekend is a test. Will TCM’s traditional viewers respect and understand these are classic films? I’m betting they will. As far as I’m concerned, animated shorts and features – especially those produced for theatrical showing – from 1906 to umm, let’s say 1970 – are ‘classic film.’ They are not ‘old kids fodder’ – which is how they are perceived by their parent companies. They do not get the proper respect they deserve. The TCM broadcast is a rare opportunity for the medium; a great place to expose more people to the art, entertainment and legacy of animation.”

Tomorrow evening’s #TCMParty on Twitter will be devoted to the animated prime-time lineup, and I am excited to have the opportunity to serve as host! I am no Jerry Beck (far from it!), but I have great love for classic animation, and have spent the last couple of years immersing myself in it through the writing of our “Pioneers of Animation” series here at True Classics. I am looking forward to sharing the tidbits that I’ve learned about these features and the legendary, awe-inspiring animators who created them.

Seriously, I’m going to be a giddy fangirl tomorrow night. Brace yourselves.

 

Here’s a brief preview of the “coming attractions” Sunday evening (all times cited are EST):

8PM: Gulliver’s Travels (1939)
9:30PM: Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941)

The night kicks off with the two feature-length animated films that the Fleischer brothers produced for Paramount. You can read a bit more about these films–and how their production eventually spelled the end for the Fleischers’ studio–in our profile of Fleischer animation from last month.

11PM–12AM: A selection of UPA “Jolly Frolics” cartoons

This hour features some of the best-known and most beloved shorts from the inventive animators of United Productions of America. The schedule includes:

Fudget’s Budget (1954): In this (deceptively) simply animated short, a couple faces financial difficulty when they find themselves (quite literally) struggling to stay afloat.

The Unicorn in the Garden (1953): An adaptation of James Thurber’s hilarious short story about a man’s strange hallucination–or is it, really?

Gerald McBoing-Boing (1951): The brainchild of children’s author Dr. Seuss, this Academy Award-winning short is the story of a little boy who speaks only in sound effects.

Rooty Toot Toot (1951): A jazzy retelling of the traditional American pop song “Frankie and Johnny.” Will Frankie beat the murder rap for plugging Johnny “rooty toot toot, right in the snoot?”

The Tell-Tale Heart (1953): Narrated by the incomparable James Mason, this short is a striking adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic short story.

Christopher Crumpet (1953): The fantastical tale of a young boy who, instead of throwing a tantrum when his desires are thwarted, transforms into a chicken instead.

The Ragtime Bear (1949): In this first appearance of the beloved character Mr. Magoo, the severely near-sighted curmudgeon mistakes a banjo-playing bear for his nephew, Waldo.

12AM–1:15AM: A selection of silent film animation from the collection of Tom Stathes

All of these shorts are digitally remastered, and some are accompanied by new or updated musical scores. For more information about the silent film block, check out Stathes’ blog, CartoonsOnFilm, which features a detailed preview of each short on the schedule. [The listings here reflect those on the TCM website, which differ from the order in which Stathes listed them on his blog, so the order of airing may be subject to change.]

Scents and Nonsense (1926): A silent entry in the Krazy Kat cartoon series.

Down on the Phoney Farm (1915): A recently rediscovered cartoon animated by Paul Terry (of Terrytoons fame). featuring his popular “Farmer Al Falfa” character. [Stathes warns that this one is a fragment of the original, but still "may be close to complete."]

Springtime (1923): Another Terry cartoon featuring the antics of Farmer Al.

Out of the Inkwell–Trip to Mars (1924): An episode in Max Fleischer’s imaginative series of the adventures of Koko the Clown. This time, Max (unwillingly) goes on the adventure with his animated pal.

The Artist’s Dream (1913): A live-action/animation short by animator J.R. Bray, founder of Bray Productions, one of the first studios established solely for the production of animated cartoons.

The Farmerette (1932): A parody of the immensely popular Betty Boop, this cartoon was produced as part of the Aesop’s Film Fables series, which had been created in the 1920s by Terry.

Fireman Save My Child (1919): Featuring comic duo Mutt and Jeff.

The Bomb Idea (1920): An adaptation of the popular early twentieth-century comic strip Jerry on the Job. [Stathes notes that this one was "likely animated" by Walter Lantz, later the creator of Woody Woodpecker.]

The Haunted Hotel (1907): A combination live-action/stop-motion short feature, produced by animation pioneer J. Stuart Blackton.

Bobby Bumps Starts for School (1917): One of the many adventures of the mischievous title character, created by legendary animator Earl Hurd, who developed the cel animation process alongside Bray.

Lightning Sketches (1907): The earliest-produced feature on the schedule, this short is one of Blackton’s “chalk talks,” straight out of vaudeville tradition.

1:15AM: The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1927)

The night concludes with German animator/director Lotte Reiniger’s beautiful animated fairy tale feature, which predates Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by more than a decade. Rendered in paper silhouette against lovingly detailed backgrounds, Prince Achmed is nothing less than a treat for the eyes.

 

Tune in at 8PM to watch this fantastic lineup, and join us on Twitter (hashtag #TCMParty) to discuss and share your reactions to these films! And to echo Beck’s and Stathes’ pleas this week: if you long to see more classic animation featured on Turner Classic Movies, PLEASE share your thoughts on the TCM message boards. Here’s hoping that The Powers That Be at the Best Damn Cable Channel in the Known Universe recognize the importance of presenting these animated rarities much more often!

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.