Mark Mayerson’s posting of some rarely seen Mickey Mouse footage got me watching a few more of the Mickeys from this period, and I’m really stymied by how slowly everything is timed and moves in the studio’s cartoons even at this early in the game. I only selected The Karnival Kid (below) because that was the last one I watched, and it embodies a lot of the problems. There’s nice fluidity and appeal to the drawings and animation (and a certain amount of showing off perspective at the beginning), but every action and gag feels like it was timed like it had to read for viewers a few hundred yards away from the screen.
It’s not a problem exclusive to any particular era of Disney shorts either. I’ve already pointed out how Carl Barks’s first ever gag for a finished cartoon Modern Inventions reads great as a board and on paper but totally falls flat animated. It’s probably too late in history to find out why molasses timing was so contagious at the Disney studio, but who knows… With all the stuff David Gerstein is coming up with, I’m sure we’ll find some 1934 Maple Syrup Memorandum from the place shortly.
Coincidentally, last night I watched the Barks written Donald’s Ostrich and the thing felt twice as long than the running time. The only gags that really seemed to take off was when the Ostrich started hitting on Donald and then when she swallowed the radio and her actions reflected the programs she kept tuning into.
And speaking of Donald, I saw Donald’s Tire Trouble as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbyFeXva0sE
From to 6:31 to 6:43 was the funniest Disney animation I ever saw in my life. I mean wow.
The frustrating thing about the Disney shorts over the years is that they were the first studio to figure out how to really pace a scene fast (in “The Tortoise and the Hare”), and in some instances would use that knowledge to best effect, but pretty much left the folks at Warners to grasp it’s real potential and use the methods to make their shorts far funnier and cost-effective than what Walt & Co. were turning out (sort of like Xerox not having a clue what to do with their mouse/pointer and on-screen icon system of computer access back in the late 1970s).
THE KARNIVAL KID is the only Mickey Mouse cartoon I really truly like. The cats are inspired–they should have gotten their own series!
Thanks to Leon’s cheapness at WB,almost all the Looney Tunes were limited to six and a half minutes, which as it turns out is the ideal running time for a short. Most Disney shorts suffer from excess padding, and sometimes an animator’s love for making things move, to the point where the movement gets slow and overworked, drags down the pace of the whole cartoon. Iwerks took this problem with him when he started his own series of nicely drawn, but for the most part, dreadfully dull shorts.
The Mad Doctor is my favorite classic Mickey cartoon. I also loved Runaway Brain.
Iwerks had a very strange sense of humor. For example, according to Shamus Culhane, he thought that a car with an excessive amount of cylinders was hilarious.
J. Lee brings up an interesting point: “they were the first studio to figure out how to really pace a scene fast (in “The Tortoise and the Hare”)”– both this short and it’s sequel, Toby Tortoise Returns, seem to be templates for numerous Warner(Bugs)shorts–contemporizing historical fables with a canny sort of swagger on the one hand, and creating the funny-animal-boxing-match-short, on the other.
I should amend my statement, Toby Tortoise Returns clearly didn’t “create” the funny animal boxing short, (as John Vincent’s posting of Terrytoons’ early piece The Champ can attest, and there are probably precedents to it, too) but the aforesaid Disney short certainly moves it toward the direction with which we are familiar at Warner Bros., subsequently.
K. Natch:
Tex Avery admitted in “King of Cartoons” that Bugs was pretty much a rip off of the rabbit in “The Tortise and The Hare”. He said he was surprised that Disney didn’t sue or claim credit for Bugs’ creation.
Yeah, this is a sad truth. Disney’s shorts, for the most part, are missed potential. This is coming from perhaps the biggest Donald Duck fan on the Internet, and a lover of Classic Disney Shorts, but there is no point in denying how the slower pacing really hurt what could have been great cartoons. It hurts since they WERE capable of great timing. Just didn’t care.
Uninteresting storylines and a failure to realize the potential of their characters (unlike their comic book counterparts) hurt the studio a lot from the 40’s and forward. God, the unfilmed projects. DONALD DUCK VS KING KONG gets shelved in favor of Donald spending the whole film in a hammock while animals pester him. That is inexcusable.
I wonder how Warner directors would have handled Disney’s characters…The fanboy in me is typing, but Chuck Jones and Maltese could have created a minor masterpiece if they made a short with Donald, a frustrated individual with an unintelligible voice…
How unintelligible is Donald really?
“I might as well be in a concentration camp!” —Timber
“It didn’t say ‘positively’!” —The Vanishing Private
“Maybe I’m just a duck, but I’m human!” —some other cartoon I’ve forgotten
And the one to beat them all:
“Now, you boys are young. You’ve got the best part of your life ahead of you. If you go to school and study hard, someday you’ll grow up to be a man in a man’s world. It’s the highway or the road; life is no bed of roses. No sir, boys, you might as well realize it. Education is absolutely essential. Crime does not pay!” —Truant Officer Donald
Right up until Carl Barks left the studio, half the humor is in Donald saying eloquent things that his voice would seem to work against.
The moment he’s gone, this is gone.
On average I’d say I only mis-understand Donald 20% of the time when I watch these cartoons.
I think that Disney shorts have the slower pacing of an earlier age. Compare them to Laurel and Hardy shorts, the most popular shorts of the early 30’s, and I think you’ll find them moving fairly quickly in comparison. I think that the people of that era preferred to slower pace.
I don’t think that’s true at all. The Laurel & Hardy shorts teach patience in a way the Disney shorts do not. There’s usually a lot to appreciate in the meantime, and the payoff is always worth the wait with L&H. The Disney payoff is light or nonexistent. I do recall reading Stan Laurel saying that he hated the shorts on TV though because the timing doesn’t work outside of a crowded theater.
“Half the humor is in Donald saying eloquent things that his voice would seem to work against.”
David effin’ nailed it. I have always understood the original dub with Clarence Nash perfectly. Growing up, I watched the old mexican dub…Boy, now THAT’s hard to understand. Still got most of his lines, though, but seeing the first Donald in English was a revelation, it seemed easy to get in comparison…Except for 1 or 2 ocassions xP
Barks’ departure is certainly a motive for the lack of Don’s elaborated dialogue in subsequent shorts…Yet, lack of faith/interest on the character had its consequences as well. Lost potential, I repeat…
Oh, and that cartoon is “Early to Bed”.
Sheesh, there’s some wierd stuff in that cartoon. The cow unfurling the scary-looking party favor right at the audience, the fact that Mickey is selling hot dogs in a universe where sentient pigs exist, the fact that the hotdogs themselves seem to be alive and sentient, but people eat them anyway…
The Laurel and Hardy shorts were previewed with an audience. Reaction shots of Ollie were inserted at the points where the audience was laughing, which would then increase the audience reaction in the final prints. They are meant to be seen with an audience. Stan didn’t like how they worked on TV because they weren’t timed for TV.
The Disney shorts seem to be too slow for modern audiences, but I believe they were very popular with the general audiences during the era they were produced.