Title: The Millionaire Hobo
Studio: Columbia
Date: 11/24/39
Credits:
Story
Allen Rose
Music
Joe De Nat
Animation
Harry Love
Series: Scrappy
Running time (of viewed version): 6:36
Synopsis: Hobo inherits cats instead of money, a fact he misses, and then overspends.
Comments: There's a complicated looking shot of the hobo walking towards the horizon; the ground is animated rolling towards him, tree background elements are moved up, a hill level is moved up at a slower rate, and the very background clouds and sky do not move at all. Mel Blanc is the hobo. Scrappy is barely in the cartoon, to deliver the mail. Old "walk this way" gag. Scrappy trying to point out the bit about the cats actually ruins the joke. It would be funnier to just have him and us not know, over buy, then have it revealed to all of us together at the end.
I haven't seen the cartoon, Ted. Is the opening effect similar to what McKimson used in 'Hillbilly Hare'?
ReplyDeleteFirst, it's the first non title screencap in this post, but it's not actually the opening shot.
ReplyDeleteThe two shots employ similar ideas, and can reasonably said to look similar. But compared to the shot starting at about 2:43 on the LTGC v3 version of Hillbilly Hare, the Millionaire Hobo shot is more complicated. HH seems to have a static painted grass background element, and a moving hills background element behind that. There are a few items animated over the grass element. MH on the other hand has a static background level, two painted background elements moving at different rates and a fully animated rolling road level. (On the other hand, HH involves walking towards the camera, with the need for facial animation of two characters, while MH involves one character walking away from the camera, with no facial animation.)
I also find the revealing of the background in MH to be more interesting than the putting away of the background in HH.