Bob Jaques has a great series of posts on Dave Tendlar’s animation in the Fleischer Popeyes. Here’s one of the earliest cartoons Tendlar defacto-directed in 1933, Betty Boop’s May Party. I actually discovered this gem by accident going through a few hundred cartoons on film I took in not long ago.
If you’ve been reading Bob’s posts, you can easily recognize Tendlar’s earmarks all over this cartoon, both in the drawing style and direction. Lots of action that the animator loved to dabble in, all at some poor creature’s expense. This is the very beginning of Paramount’s association with violent funny animals taking center stage, a sort of art Tendlar helped perfect during animation’s Golden Age.
What’s ironic is that while this cartoon’s whole final act is devoted to gags about things and characters turning rubbery (there’s even Krazy Kat at 5:05), this was around the time the Fleischer studio started ironing out all of that “bouncy shit” in their cartoons. If you’re going to stop using rubberhose animation, use it all up at once, I guess.
I wonder which artist at the Fleischers called this stuff “bouncy shit.” Just curious…
Dave Tendlar’s animation is quite a treat to look at. So much action and excitement in his work. I wish that Famous had kept a little bit of the unique bounciness these earlier cartoons had, instead of streamlining the whole animation style (with the exceptions of Marty Taras, Jim Tyer, and Johnny Gent. Those seem to be the standouts in that era for the most part), which had become very formulaic and even decadent by the mid 50s, especially in the Seymour Kneitel produced cartoons. I’m probably completely wrong here. I haven’t seen a Famous cartoon in a long while, so correct me.