I have to readily confess to not being a fan of the Van Beuren studio’s cartoons of the 1930s. This is strange, as I love all of those cartoon studios we’re told to stay away from (Lantz, Famous, Terrytoons) for the good of our health. But when Steve Stanchfield announced that he would be selling The Complete Animated Adventures of Van Beuren Studio’s Tom and Jerry, I just couldn’t pass it up. And I’m glad I didn’t.
Do not be expecting cartoons with any kind of skillful writing, animation, or draftsmanship. In fact, it’s best to go into this without expecting anything good. What you can expect is some drunken cartoon fun with no redeeming value whatsoever.
The Van Beuren cartoons essentially are clones of the contemporary Terrytoons; both are fairly indistinguishable from each other (at least in my eyes). There’s even a blatant Farmer Alfalfa knockoff in Barnyard Bunk. Like the Terrytoons, these Van Beuren Tom & Jerrys never show any of the ambition commonly found in the Fleischer studio’s cartoons, nor its advanced animation and draftsmanship. Watching these cartoons makes one really appreciates the strides the Fleischer animators were making in all of those fancy filmmaker terms.
A lot of them are also overtly racist, and that is taking into account that the ‘newest’ ones were made in 1933. There’s no playful caricature like you’d see in a Fleischer short; the gag is just that the character is a black, gay, or Jew, made even more offensive by the lame drawing skills.
So why on earth would you buy this?
Some of them are so bizarre they’re actually good. Absolute “Bowl of WTF” contenders are things like The Magic Mummy and ‘Waffles and Don’ Gypped in Egypt, which give Fleischer entries like Swing You Sinners a run for their money in terms of weird for weirdness sake (though certainly not in artistry). Hook & Ladder Hokum is attributed as Frank Tashlin’s directorial debut, and isn’t half-bad, with gags and timing he’d perfect at Warners in Porky the Fireman. Some like Piano Tooners and Pots and Pans are examples of 1930s cartoons at their generically delightful best.
One upside to this collection is that faux-Disney saccharine (Disney Splenda?) is completely absent, an epidemic that contaminated all of the studios of the 1930s, and almost always resulting in sheer 3-Strip eye rape. With cartoons as random in quality as these ones, it’s nice that you can be reassured you won’t be subjected to seven minutes of bunnies getting ready for Easter.
But the main reason to buy this is because Steve Stanchfield is one of the nicest guys around, and did an amazing job putting all of this rare material together. It is very convenient having all of this series’ cartoons in one place, some of them even mastered from great 35mm prints. Steve has put out several other collections of Van Beuren cartoons, but for my money, this is the best one. In this market, we have to hand it to people like Steve, Ray Pointer, and Tom Stathes for continuing to utilize animation’s vast public domain library, while the big studios sit on their asses leaving everything on the shelves to collect dust.
So if you want to see the Van Beuren studio doing what it did, um, best, pick this set up. But think twice before getting those Rainbow Parades…
