Chew-Chew Baby is a cartoon I really want to love more than I do. It has some wonderful bits of characterization in the first three-quarters, something that a lot of Lantz cartoons don’t accomplish. It also has one of the best pieces of smear animation I’ve ever seen.
In the smear, Woody just turns into sets of eyeballs! Hilarious! While smear animation is usually used to imitate the blurring you get when filming live-action motion, here it goes as far away from reality as possible!
Holy fuckballs, that Clampett and Scribner were geniuses! Totally the only ones doing anything worthwhile or original in 1945. Wait, what? They never worked for Walter Lantz? Whoops, pardonnez-moi!
Dick Lundy does a nice finish to his scene, just allowing the rest of Woody’s body to pop back into place with practically no drawings.
There’s also a nice breach of logic in this wonderful scene by Don Williams of Wally Walrus waltzing around his house, where rooms appear and disappear as needed.
Sadly, with a minute or two left to go, the cartoon’s plot becomes curdled, ending in a barrage of inane gags (sloppily animated by Grim Natwick), and that stupid “three woodpeckers” line. Something stinks and what we’ve seen here proves is that it’s not the direction. Cartoons like this support Shamus Culhane’s point in his autobiography that Ben Hardaway was a lame writer. You can see the whole thing for yourself here.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DTDpZnnmnQ&hl=en&fs=1&]
Or better yet, buy the Woody Woodpecker & Friends Vol. 1 DVD if you haven’t by now.
Hardaway shoulda been shot for the lousy ending of this cartoon. It starts out so great, then devolves into fecal matter. Beautifully animated and directed fecal matter, but the smell is still strong.
I love the sequence of Wally frantically bachelor-proofing his home… culminating in the moment where he pulls down his pinup gallery and chucks it in the fireplace. I assume he had the racier stuff hidden away in his dresser drawers…
Why does someone deserve to be shot over an ending of a cartoon? That’s a bit over the top.
It’s like Hardaway was pestering Culhane the entire production of this cartoon to let him go nuts with his writing. Culhane did his best to ignore the obnoxious fellow, working with his animators and Darrel Calker…
Finally, when there were only two minutes left before the film was completed, Culhane had reached his breaking point with Ben’s constant heckling, frustratedly giving in.
“But, please, Ben, old buddy, ol’ pal…Try not to make it TOO lame?”.
“You have my word, James! I’ll only put in thirty puns in thirty seconds!”.
Or maybe I’m just thinking too much. Oh well. Impressive that that awesome smear animation was done by none other than Les Kline!
To be fair to Hardaway, even after Lantz resumed production in 1951, weak endings remained a chronic problem for his cartoons (a problem as Leonard Maltin noted, was heightened by Clarence Wheeler’s decision both not to bridge most of the iris outs to the end titles, and then to have no big finish to the music before the closing. Even with the lamest of Hardaway’s endings in the 40s you still had Calker’s scores to listen to and enjoy).
I actually love this cartoon. The finale is anti-climactic but the main “plot” (such as it is) is too brilliant for it to kill it for me.
I loved your swipe at those who think that Clampett and Scribner were the only ones capable of ever performing anything cartoony in animation (particularly Scribner; you wouldn’t believe how widespread the misnomer that Scribner was apparently the ONLY cartoony and exaggerated animator in the business is). In addition to the cartoonier stuff, I also like the personality scene LaVerne Harding does of Woody’s telephone conversation with Wally introducting “her”self as Clementine.
And, yes, Darrell Calker’s big finishes play a huge part in the enjoyment of these cartoons. His closing wrap-up to this cartoon is one of my favorite pieces of music of his. It [almost] does a good job of disguising the fact that the cartoon ends with an incredibly weak closing line and an aforementioned anti-climax of an ending that is really embarrassing.
I love the split-second camera jolts every time someone crashed into something. Check out the crazy jolting and jumping in “The Loose Nut”!
This was also when Culhane had a stronger background artist. Even before he left Lantz, the background art took a significant dip once DeGuard left.
“I loved your swipe at those who think that Clampett and Scribner were the only ones capable of ever performing anything cartoony in animation (particularly Scribner; you wouldn’t believe how widespread the misnomer that Scribner was apparently the ONLY cartoony and exaggerated animator in the business is).”
Wait a minute! Those of us who are fans of Clampett and Scribner have never claimed they were the ONLY one to do “cartoony” animation. They did it earlier than this Woody cartoon, and they did it the best, though. By 1945 that exaggerated style of animation had reached the rest of the industry, but compare a Lantz cartoon of 1942 to a Warner cartoon from the same year, specifically one directed by Clampett or Jones, and you’ll see the difference.
If this were a late 60s cartoon, they’d take all those ending gags, lard them with dialogue and stretch it out into a full cartoon.
Hardaway must have thought a throw-away gag was “wacky” because it’s “unreal.” He never did really catch on that when someone like Avery made fun of those kinds of jokes when he did them. Hardaway treats them with reverence.
I still don’t understand why Lantz insisted on using the flat, expressionless voice of Hardaway for his studio’s bread-and-butter character, considering he paid good money for top voice talent for actors to do incidentals, people like Sara Berner, Walter Tetley, Lionel Stander, Hans Conried or, in this one, Jack Mather, the voice of the Cisco Kid. Blanc proved a good actor could enliven a sped-up voice like Woody’s.
I’ve always liked Culhane’s quirky camera work on this one. And Calker’s percussion sound effects here couldn’t have been better (the lame explosion sound effect comes from a transcription; it was heard on radio shows through the 30s and 40s).
Is that really Kline pulling off those animated sequences? I was under the impression he was one of Lantz’s weaker animators.
I love the little bit of animation where Wally is answering the phone.
Jim, I already cited Lundy as animating the extended smear scene.
I am the only one who find’s Wally’s Walrus head on a human body hilarous ? The third picture with him I mean.
“Chew-Chew Baby” isn’t a great cartoon by any means – it does start out promising, but then fizzles out once Woody’s identity is revealed. The animation, as per most of the 1940s Lantz product, is great, but I have to go along with the consensus – the ending just falls flat.
Sorry, Thad. I saw Lundy’s name, thought he directed it (that’s how a mind works on one-hour’s sleep), then put the name out of my mind when I saw Culhane’s name because, as we all know, he did this one.
I’m seeing Kline and Harding’s names mentioned. Who was in Culhane’s unit at this point? I thought Matthews and Hawkins were. Or did some people rotate out to work war work with the other unit?
They weren’t ever assigned to a particular unit, as far as I know. The animators when both Lundy and Culhane were directing were: Les Kline, Emery Hawkins, Grim Natwick, Bernie Garbutt, Don Williams, Verne Harding, Pat Matthews, and Paul Smith. Sidney Pillet was primarily an effects animator.
I think Hardaway was a decent writer. Now as a DIRECTOR… meh.
There’s a real art to ending a cartoon. Warners was just better at it than anyone else, and their cartoons have endured the longest. MGM comes in at a close second, but after that, you have to really search through each studio’s output individually to find an exceptional one among the clunkers.
During the late thirties and early forties there were a lot of Disney defectors (some quit, some were laid off, and others lost their jobs due to the strike)that ended up working for Studios like MGM, Warners, Lantz and Famous, improving the over all look of their cartoons (and even SOME of the writing) They were able to do a lot of gags that Mr. Disney frowned upon, like the speed gags that you highlight here, as well as the sex and violence gags that made the wartime cartoons the best damned era for animated short subjects ever.
If one thinks of studios like Warners or MGM or Disney as “major league,” Lantz might be “Triple-A.” You get a lot of guys on the way up (who end up doing their best work at Warners or MGM or Disney), a lot of guys on the way down (who did their best work at Warners or Disney or MGM), and a bunch of guys who may have spent some time at Warners or MGM or Disney but never quite made the “starting lineup.”
The result is a lot of cartoons that are quite enjoyable, funny and well-animated, but which nevertheless just don’t always quite “click” all the way through.
Just like watching Triple-A baseball, you know you’re not going to get the “major league” stuff all the time, but you can still have a good time and frequently be pleasantly surprised.
Judging from all the comments, maybe the best way to enjoy this cartoon is to consider it officially ended after Woody throws Wally into the piano. Imagine an iris out at that point and you’re fine.
As simple-minded a writer as Hardaway was, he was the ideal voice for Woody. Mel Blanc’s Woody voice didn’t rank among his best work and for the most part served as too much of a reminder that Lantz wasn’t on a par with Warners. Woody needed a voice that gave him his own identity. And I love the way Hardaway says “My dime! I lost my dime!” in “Bathing Buddies”.
I’m going to say it, since no one else has yet; Woody looks every bit as good in drag as Bugs Bunny does!
Actually, he does. That dress does bring out Woody’s eyes.
In my opinion, this might have worked better if it was extended a bit. Ben hardaway seemed to try to cram everything into a seven minute cartoon. Even if it was a minute and a half longer, it might have worked better. However, for the mst part, a very satisfying cartoon. Great animation, some good gags, and a great score.