Title Cards of 1939 in Review

As with yesterday's post, I present to you a compilation of all the title cards, as seen on this blog (I think). These each last for a second, tho, so you can see them much more clearly than any given image in yesterday's video, wherein each image lasted for about 1/10th of a second.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzIXz4mGBZw

A quick visual review of 1939

Here for your perusal I present screen caps of all the US theatrical shorts as they have appeared on this blog. I tried to remove all the other things, but I notice that I at the very least missed clearing out the Mickey Mouse Nabisco short. Think of it as A Clockwork Orange meets animation history. It'll be real horrorshow.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzIXz4mGBZw

157 The Mad Maestro

Title: The Mad Maestro
Studio: MGM
Date: 12/30/39
Credits:
A
Hugh Harman
Production
Series: -
Running time (of viewed version): 7:38

Synopsis: Misfit orchestra short.
























Comments: Not the last cartoon of the year because of the M I use to identify MGM in my list comes before the W I use to identify Warner Bros. If I'd used S for Schlesinger... this still would not be last. A shadow appears in the title card. Far more cartoony than recent MGM output; the previous cartoon was the dire war film Peace on Earth and the one before that was the arty Blue Danube. This feels like a mix between a Lantz and WB cartoon (possibly because both studios later made more famous (to me at least) conducting cartoons that have some commonality with this (more than Tex Avery's MGM conducting cartoon). I'm not sure if the conductor is a dog man or a bear man (other dog men in the cartoon have more pronounced snouts). I think the hair on the harpist is meant to recall Harpo Marx. A good and generally funny cartoon. For some reason the orchestra is in the orchestra pit. In my experience, an orchestra should be on stage when they are not providing music for some other endeavor (play, opera, silent film, headlining singer, etc.). The character designs are a bit conservative in this (not for Harman's MGM cartoons at the time, but compared to the later orchestra shorts), although the bear shaped conductor here does bear a certain resemblance to Wally Walrus as conductor in the Lantz attempt. There are some smeary inbetweens that seem more advanced for the time period than I would expect. Big man small instrument, small man big instrument. There's a big reddish brown haired dog on a tuba in a group shot who looks like he could be Droopy's dad. There are at least three different tuba players. There's one shot where the conductor is rushing past the players, and they are still paintings. Very flat and bright for backgrounds at the time; odd. And again when the little guy gets blown away.

Publicity photos from the short below:

150 Peace On Earth

Title: Peace on Earth
Studio: MGM
Date: 12/09/39
Credits: A Hugh Harman Production
Series: -
Running time (of viewed version): 8:48

Synopsis: Animals find comfort at Christmas now that all the people are dead.



















Comments: An Academy Award nominee. It's obviously well timed with the outbreak of WWII, but it's not really all that good. It also apparently received a citation from the Nobel Prize jury ( http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/participant.jsp?spid=353984&apid=0 ), which seems more likely than being "nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize", which has been the rumor. And a Parents Magazine medal. Soldiers animated under the title cel. Should the snow actually look yellow with a blue or green with a purple tail tail above it? Or was that unintentional? (Is that an effect from some live action chamber, by the way, or it it actually hand animated? I assume it's an effect.) Mother squirrel seems to simply disappear from behind grampa squirrel in the butt stabbing scene. Shadow scene. Apparently humanity ends when there's a war between vegetarians and meat eaters. Perhaps that seemed less likely to actually happen at the time. The owl when it reads "Thou Shalt Not Kill" he should say it says "I am going to eat you" to the little squirrel. And then he should eat him. The animals do wisely skip past "thou shalt have no other god before me". Lots of cross dissolves in this. This is frankly an unimpressive cartoon, other than its use of some dark imagery. It did not deserve a nomination for the Oscar (but then neither did the Ugly Duckling, The Pointer or Detouring America).

The below image is of the original art for the end title card, kindly provided by Mike Van Eaton of Van Eaton Galleries, where it is (or at the very least was) available for purchase.

135 The Blue Danube

Title: The Blue Danube
Studio: MGM
Date: 10/28/39
Credits: "A Hugh Harman Production"
Series: -
Running time (of viewed version): 6:52

Synopsis: Wait, I need to watch it again, as, having just watched it, I have no idea what happened in it. OK, I'm back. Tiny naked human babies and animals collect blue things and make the Danube blue. There's even a title about it.

























Comments: Stop motion animated sheet music at the beginning (I think), making the title incorporated into the flow of the cartoon's visuals (until it becomes markedly discontinuous after the petal swirl). Followed by a water effect lens, with notes animated as moving with the ripple. Moving water as an inbetween layer of a multiplane shot. Fog and rippling water. It's like the effects are the point. It doesn't look normal until a minute and a half in to the cartoon, when the waterwheel looks more like a normal normal visual for the time. I think the swirling pod is stop motion as well (tho that might be normal time footage). There's a population of what look like naked babies. I suppose they're supposed to be a specific elf or goblin or something, but they just look like humans. No horns, no goat legs, no little blue tail, not even pointed ears, just on a scale that makes them very small. Unleashing the reservoir looks good. One of the natural predecessors to Fantasia, with classical music, non-human fairy tupe things, a silhouetted conductor, etc. This seems like a natural to nominate for the Oscar, but it was not one of the voting on nominees. Perhaps it was too syrupy, ad then there's that nothing happens in it. Tho that's why I think it was a natural to nominate (not that I like that). Lots of naked rears in this; from the translucent fairy to the many naked baby hordes. The flood is somewhat reminiscent of Snuffy Skunk's Party.