I’m really at odds over praising Sid Marcus as an underrated talent of the Golden Age. He wrote and directed a nice assortment of classics at Warners (Bye Bye Bluebeard, A Ham in a Role, The Hole Idea) and Columbia (Mr. Moocher, Swiss Tease, Up n’ Atom), but on the other hand, he was involved in two abominations: he helped helm Scrappy in the 1930s, and his biggest contribution to the Warner legacy was the Tasmanian Devil (I’d consider him less of a human tragedy if he invented a machine that makes IEDs out of aborted fetuses).
Marcus left his mark for his love of the weird and just senseless at the Lantz studio, where he directed about two dozen shorts in 1963-66, teamed with long-time friend Art Davis as his ace animator (who had just jumped ship at the Warner studio after twenty years). Creakiness had taken its toll on the Lantz studio, so by this point, getting a character that doesn’t look soulless in the shorts was beyond a miracle. Greedy Gabby Gator was the first short Marcus directed, and it’s just chock-full of WTF-ness: Woody getting violently ill, the huge finger BG superimposed on Gabby, the needlessly long shot after Gabby bites his tail, the croc the size of a BMW, et. al. Sorry for the crummy copy; I’m sure Universal will put all of these on DVD eventually.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FqyuBO_RUY&hl=en&fs=1]
I have always found this short very noteworthy just for its’ use of bizarreness in and of itself alone. The shot of Gabby pointing in Woody’s face as seen from Woody’s point of view (“YEAH! And you’re my dish!”) is a breathtaking layout (Would you ever see a scene like that come out of Paul J. Smith’s unit at this time?).
One thing I’ve often wondered about; could this have been a short Jack Hannah was going to direct for Lantz but then Sid Marcus eventually wound up as director for since Hannah left Lantz’s studio too early in the short’s production for him to finish? After all, it is the only Gabby Gator short directed by Marcus and the last cartoon to feature the character who was primarily Hannah’s baby. Also interesting to see Milt Schaffer (Ben Hardaway’s co-writer on many 1940’s Lantz shorts, including “The Barber of Seville”, as storyman here).
The gag that got me was Gabby’s realistic hand pointing at Woody.
I’d give Sid Marcus some slack for his Lantz work, because his cartoons were the last Lantz cartoons to show any genuine effort. His best Lantz cartoon was of course, Half-Baked Alaska.
I know it’s Pluto-versus-Goofy unanswerable, but why is a croc SO much bigger than an alligator, its close relative? Never mind.
Even if Universal will put them on DVD, maybe your copy will be “superior” if they’ll ruin them again with DVNR and muddy colors.
Just a few more thoughts…..
One other WTF ingredient of this short….. Woody eluding Gabby by disguising himself as a Native (complete with altering his voice to Daws Butler doing a Native voice, except for one scene where his original Grace Stafford Woody voice slips out by mistake, “And he got funny hairdo, [original voice] Like this, [Daws voice] Uh, uh….. like this?!”).
Never mind how the crocodile is so much larger than Gabby….. why does it keep wanting to EAT Gabby if it’s actually a relative of its’ animal kingdom family? Sort of echoes back to “The Coo-Coo Bird” [Lantz/1947] in which Woody wanted to go quail hunting!
Milt Schaffer must have been a rather versatile gagman since his main contribution to Lantz was as a co-storyman to Ben Hardaway for the 1940’s Lantz cartoons and he also shows up as a Disney storyman quite a few times (for a number of, gulp!, Charles Nichols’ Pluto cartoons but also quite a few of Jack Kinney’s wonderfully funny Goofy cartoons such as “Motor Mania”, “Hold That Pose”, “No Smoking”, and “How to Sleep”). I’ve also seen him credited on one Kinney Popeye cartoon, “Popeye the Lifeguard”, and, of course, Schaffer also wrote the 1950’s Woody short, “Bunco Busters” (“If Woody had gone right to the police…..”).
This cartoon would’ve been just a bit better if Darrell Calker had scored the cartoon instead of Walter Greene (Lantz actually had three composers on his staff during this time; Calker, Greene, and Clarence Wheeler).
The violently ill Woody and Gabby’s “realistic” finger made this a win for me. I wonder if John K. ever saw this short when working on Ren & Stimpy.
Yeah, the guy who created the awful Tasmanian Devil couldn’t be that good. :)
“This cartoon would’ve been just a bit better if Darrell Calker had scored the cartoon instead of Walter Greene (Lantz actually had three composers on his staff during this time; Calker, Greene, and Clarence Wheeler).”
Eugene Poddany did also some music scores in 1960-1961 at Lantz.
Martin,
True but he was gone by 1963 which was at the time this cartoon was released.
Thad, I’ll remember not to send a Taz on Facebook anytime soon.
I’m interested in hearing your comments about such El Sid Columbia cartoons as THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT, THE MAD HATTER, RED RIDING HOOD RIDES AGAIN, that banana striptease scene in POOR ELMER, or Pervis Goat appearances in the Scrappy and Toby The Pup series.
Sometimes I think Sid Marcus include that little “Moe Hican” Indian in every cartoon, no matter what the studio.
Mmtper,
Regarding your comment, you should check out “Tepee for Two” [1963], another Sid Marcus-directed Lantz short, in which Woody “moves in” with an Indian as an annoying houseguest and keeps unintentionally getting on the Indian’s nerves. If the Indian in that cartoon isn’t supposed to be Sid Marcus’ “Moe Hican” character, I’m a Rhode Island Rooster (although he talks in Daws Butler’s Joe Besser impersonation voice rather than the usual stereotypical Native American voice).
Marcus also manned the helm for episodes of the late sixties Spider-man cartoon and Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse. I’ve always been a big Marcus fan, a fascinating career.
Kliph,
Marcus had a wide and varied career. He also worked at DePatie-Freleng as a writer and later a director.
His work in animation went out with a wimper, alas. Among his last contributions for theatrical animation were directing a couple of HOOT KLOOT (“Giddy Up Woe” and “Mesa Trouble”, both 1974) and a weak Pink Panther cartoon “Pinky Doodle”