Category Archives: classic animation

No Mutton fer Nuttin’ is a fairly historic cartoon for numerous reasons. It’s not only the very first entry in the Noveltoon series, the first short featuring Blackie the Lamb (Famous Studios’ first attempt at the wiseguy animal character), but it’s also the first in a long line of “animals being mean to each other” (as one of my more underachieving readers put it) conflict films that became Dave Tendlar and his unit’s trademark. None of these films ever really succeeded in making it an art like Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng did, but they are far more intriguing than they’re given credit for, and create a specifically different vibe. They should not be cast off solely as “interesting failures” (like a lot of Screen Gems and Terrytoons).

There are points of near perfection in this cartoon, with the kinds of gags you wouldn’t see at another studio, like the overlong underwater hotfoot, or my favorite, Blackie using his last smoke to burn down Wolfie’s house. It’s a great scene, because the focus of it is clearly Wolfie’s stupidity, singing and sharpening his knife while his house goes up in smoke and becomes a pile of smoldering ashes (even made more hilarious by the fact that we don’t have any stock “burning building” sound effects on the soundtrack).

I love the animation and drawing style of the films Famous did during WW2. It’s not quite what would become the Famous house-style, because it still has lingering traces of the old, blockier Fleischer drawing style (see the cat in Cheese Burglar for the epitome of this). Like an orphan searching for an identity.

Famous also had some really nice color styling too, something the studio is never given credit for, primarily because nearly all of the copies going around are taken from red/reddening (“menstruavision”) TV prints. Seeing this copy mastered from 35mm was a revelation, and makes me uneasy that few of my copies of other 1940s Famous cartoons look this good.

MUTTON CUM
Uploaded by welsiack. – Check out other Film & TV videos.

(I wonder who among us has made the racial connection that a lamb named “Blackie” is carrying dice…)

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.

Bob posted a clip that Ben Solomon animated from We’re On Our Way to Rio, so I thought I’d post the whole thing. This was one of the last cartoons done at the Miami studio, the key tipoff being Dave Barry voicing Bluto. This is a very well-directed and animated cartoon (save those creepy band members). Solomon’s dance animation of Popeye has real weight to it and is wonderful at showcasing the sailor’s dancing incompetency. Jim Tyer’s animation is hysterical and really captures the ugly insanity that is the Popeye-Olive-Bluto triangle. I bet this was pure eye candy to see in Technicolor, but alas, all we have for now is a faded TV print.

(This version was planned for Cartoon Network’s THE POPEYE SHOW when they found the opening and closing titles’ soundtrack, but was shelved.)

[dailymotion id=x9vk62]

Frank Tashlin’s reign as head of the Screen Gems cartoon studio didn’t even last a year, but his experimentation aura continued on even after he left and Dave Fleischer took over (which occurred, as John Hubley remembers, because “he was so out of it, he was so completely detached, that he was never any problem.”)

On the whole, they are a mixed bag, as with all eras of all things Screen Gems. The Fox and Grapes and Wolf Chases Pigs are masterworks. Dog Meets Dog is better at doing the Disney-style than Disney did themselves. Wacky Wigwams actually makes the Pete Smith “spot-gag” format a joy to watch with practically every scene animated by Emery Hawkins. Pete Pelican brought new lows to cartoon filmmaking with The Tangled Angler and Under the Shedding Chestnut Tree. Old Blackout Joe is one of the most un-racial cartoons ever made starring a black character.

In spite of the vastly underrated Bob Wickersham being the de-facto director of this cartoon, Tashlin’s style is all over this film: the weird cutting, a “montage” of past events (seen in many other Columbia shorts), and the unrelenting antagonist. I can’t think of any cases, other than Walt Disney, where the producer’s point-of-view/style was evident in films he only produced and not direct. (I suppose, arguably, Hubley at UPA would be one; and less arguably the Fleischers in the 1930s.)

For your enjoyment this is the original theatrical version. The home movie version in trading circles clipped a bit of footage at the beginning when they redid the title art.

[dailymotion id=x9swjw]cartoon