The Blu-Ray release of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! presents the special with radically different colors compared to what we’ve been used to over the years. I would like to give Warner Home Video the benefit of the doubt, as the new colors do match the sericels Chuck Jones/Turner put out years ago; but it still doesn’t make the supposed original colors any less jarring after years of viewing the same faded copy ad nauseam.
Really Grinched
Filed under classic animation
Re: Golden Age of Cartoon Censorship
A user on YouTube is posting various really, really random versions of Tom & Jerry cartoons. Up first is something I hadn’t seen before – the (literally) recolored version of Nit-Witty Kitty that Chuck Jones’s studio handled for television. This is point-for-point identical to the original, except for Mammy being colored white. I’m sure that this is a work-copy, that would later have June Foray’s Irish maid voice dubbed over the original Lillian Randolph soundtrack, but it’s still trippy to watch.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfLnGpQU7EE&hl=en&fs=1&]
Of weirder interest is the TV edit of Mouse Cleaning, where they did new footage of Tom getting out of the coal – this time not imitating Stepin Fetchit. Most likely Tom Ray’s animation there. Old habits never die I see. Take a look at the cel color error of Tom’s chest in the new footage. Always a sure sign of a Jones animator.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnrTx8rgwAo&hl=en&fs=1&]
(Incidentally, the Stepin Fetchit gag is one of the few times I actually laugh at a blackface gag in a cartoon. Hell, what can I say, it works there, and it’s really, really funny.)
Filed under classic animation
Pleased to Eat You
Nothing much here, and that’s the truth. But I know people are out there who, like me, love obscene Famous Studios shorts like Pleased to Eat You just for the sake of it, and it’s worth posting because it’s buy that “soft” director Myron Waldman. He did gratuitously violent cartoons such as Can You Take It, Teacher’s Pest, and Herman the Cat-toonist, or ones that end with characters dying, like this one, Cad and Caddy, Winner by a Hare, and The Oily Bird when he was on a break from directing soft Hunky & Spunky and Casper pictures. (Actually, see There’s Good Boos Tonight for an exception…)
Some of the animation timing/phrasing is truly bizarre in this cartoon; it’s as though Waldman was trying to emulate some of the tricks in the later Tashlin shorts at Warners, though not very successfully. (Similar phrasing tricks are in Teacher’s Pest.) The cleanup here is pretty poor, an unfortunate problem at Famous Studios during this era. Enjoy ?
[dailymotion id=xap1cy]
Filed under classic animation
Julian BGs
Mike Sporn posted scans of the obscenely rare Piccoli children’s book by Paul Julian, a must-see for anyone interested in the phenomenally talented artist.
As somewhat of a companion piece, here’s the Friz Freleng directed sequence from the 1948 Dennis Morgan/Jack Carson feature, Two Guys from Texas. No question that the gorgeous Julian backgrounds are the highlight of it. Julian remarked to Shamus Culhane once that he never did anything at Warners that was in his own “vision,” only Freleng’s. A surprisingly dismissive statement, given that Julian’s are regularly the best of the Warner background paintings of the 1940s. (I guess it was no good because it was all for smartass animals and stupid humor.) Also on display here are some great caricatures by Ben Shenkman (You can see the Carson caricature briefly in Freleng’s Slick Hare as well.) Watchful eyes will notice the rampant animation reuse from Tashlin’s Swooner Crooner.
I included a bit of footage from the actual movie to put it in context. (The squaw harassing Carson is a running gag throughout it.) Clearly you can see why it’s not on DVD: it’s a bad old movie. So it’s chances of release are slim to none.
[dailymotion id=xakuvk]
Filed under classic animation, classic movies
