Friday, July 23, 2010

Smoky Joe



Title: Smoky Joe
Studio: Terry
Date: 1945
Credits:
Story by
John Foster
Directed by
Connie Rasinski
Music by
Philip A. Scheib
Series: -
Running time (of viewed version): 6:30

Synopsis: An old fire horse is decommissioned, goes into retirement, and then tries to be useful, in some sort of wishy washy moral that horses are better than trucks, as is demonstrated by the continued use of horses instead of trucks in firefighting today.


















Comments: See the entry on The Old Fire Horse for additional background on this 1945 cartoon here:
http://cartoonsof1939.blogspot.com/2010/07/098-old-fire-horse.html
So as we have what may be a remake of the missing cartoon, here's an entry for it.
There's a muddy face gag which is almost a black face gag, but I don't think it ultimately is. The song involves turning the horse into glue. The narrator sounds like Albert Brooks and Alan Young. If this _is_ a remake of an earlier cartoon, the studio was markedly creatively bankrupt. It's not the recycling per se; it's making this lackluster of a cartoon when they didn't have to bother with making new stuff up that is the damning part. The opening shot of the barn does look like the horse is gray; but they couldn't have just painted over the backgrounds, could they? The marching band actually looks like it's taken from earlier than 1939, with its little basic mouse and tiny eyes.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

098 The Old Fire Horse

Title: The Old Fire Horse
Studio: Terry
Date: 7/28/39
Credits: -
Series: -
Running time (of viewed version): -

Synopsis: -

Comments: Here we have a rather enigmatic entry in this blog. I do not have access to this cartoon and therefore am unable to blog regularly about it. In a discussion at
http://forums.goldenagecartoons.com/showthread.php?t=14241
GAC poster Alf suggests the 1945 Terrytoon Smoky Joe may be a remake of the Old Fire Horse. Jerry Beck then presented the images now in this post of a publicity still from a 1941 Terrytoon called Good Old Irish Tunes and screencaps from the 1951 Songs of Erin illustrating the extremely close reuse of material in that cartoon. I think the theory that Smoky Joe could be a remake of The Old Fire Horse has merit. So tomorrow, you;ll get some Smoky Joe. For new, ponder the ellipse. And contact me if you can get me a copy of The Old Fire Horse.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

097 Hollywood Sweepstakes



Title: Hollywood Sweepstakes
Studio: Columbia
Date: 7/28/39
Credits: - (BCDB says directed by Ben Harrison, animated by Manny Gould)
Series: Color Rhapsody
Running time (of viewed version): 7:33

Synopsis: A horse race with a sick favorite, a cheating mudder and a bunch of celebrity caricatures.






























Comments: Narrated. The one small horse is quite pudgy. I can't figure out if I think the dog man is more Disney or more WB. Strange in that there are also regular humans. And star caricatures. Laurel and Hardy, Groucho Marx (in the crowd and as a judge with Chico and Harpo; I guess Gummo and Zeppo were gone by now), Clark Gable, Charles Laughton (poosibly as both the hunchback and Capt. Bligh), Bing Crosby, are obvious, but others less so to me. The woo woo guy is back (who was IDed earlier in the year, but I've forgotten...). Maybe Ned Sparks, and maybe Fred Allen, or maybe not (especially as he was a NYC comedian). There's an obvious gangster, but he doesn't exactly look like Edward G. Robinson (tho more than the other obvious choices). The wolf jockey has crocodile mouth. The cartoon is all over the place, which is good for screenshot variety, but doesn't necessarily make the finest cartoon. The skeletonized whale is interesting. Use of Santa Anita as the racecourse may be another example of California bias.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

BoxOffice, July 22, 1939

Boxoffice July 22, 1939

OK, we come to a stumbling block in the use of BoxOffice. It's no longer on Issuu. So I'm limited to text cache's from Google until it shows up on BoxOffice's own site, which Yowp/Fibber Fox was informed by BoxOffice it shall be doing (BoxOffice.com now has a section called The Vault; based on their estimate of 5 issues being put up a week, they should be done in 2021). I'm limited to searching for terms (the text is too jumbled by OCR to actually just read), and text will be jumbled in order due to pagination to OCR issues. So, sorry for the massive drop in quality that's now occurring. Think of it as better than nothing.

p28D?
"Motion pictures were shown weeks by General Jones Playground Carter Motors. Included in the free show were cartoons, news events and commercial"

p83?

"Chicago "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" and •The Kid Prom Texas," both M-G-M pictures, are the only family pictui-es listed in the June report of the Better Films Council of Chicago. The adult and young adult classification included "Bulldog Drummond's Secret Police" and "Invitation to Happiness" (Para)
"Ex-Champ" and "Captain Fury" CUA) "The Sun Never Sets" (Univ), and "S.O.S. Tidal Wave" (Rep). The adult group included "Blind Alley" (Col) and "Volga Boatman" lAmkino). A special classification was listed including the Warner Bros.' Porky and Pig cartoon. "Old Glory," and "Only Angels Have Wings" and "Romance of the Redwoods" (Col); "Soviet Cavalcade" lAmkino); "Tarzan Finds a Son" (M-G-M); "Winner Take All" (20th-Pox); and "Wolf Call" (Mono).

p126
"tically simultaneously in England, Prance, America, and Germany, and each of these countries has, on occasion, claimed the honour of 'inventing cinematography.' "Probably the first instrument to hint at the possibilities underlying optical combinations of inanimate drawings was Herschel's Thaumatrope. This toy was followed towards the middle of the 19th century by a variety of devices for animating a succession of drawings, of which perhaps the best known is the Zoetrope, patented by W. G. Horner in 1833, by which a very presentable illusion of motion was produced. In 1838 these forerunners of the modern cartoon were projected on to the screen at the London Polytechnic. "By 1870, Marey of Paris, and Heyl of Philadelphia, had both devised cameras for recording consecutive photographs on glass disks. Marey was primarily interested in analyzing the movements made by animals and birds. Maybridge (of Kingston) in 1872 made similar series. By 1885 Maybridge had over 100,000 photographic plates of moving men, beasts, and birds, some of which in 1887 he reproduced on bands of paper for viewing in the Zoetrope. He may have been the first to combine the illusion of reality given by the photograph with the illusion of movement which results from viewing a rapid suc-"

p129?

relevant sections

"A-Haunting We Will Go

(Walter Lanlz Cartune) Universal 7 Mins.

original form

in this very

It

pleasant one-reeler for any program. Subjects include a sequence which shows how the storks handle their own baby situation in addition to teaching them to fly, an impressive glimpse of Alaska and an amusing peek at monkeys in a cage with a bow to Darwin.

A

most delightful and abundantly displayed
Hello,

Paramount

How Am

(Popeye)

I

7 Mins.

amusing colored cartoon. seems that dusky little Eight Ball just won't be scared by a well-meaning baby ghost. Unable to frighten his

subject,
little apparition takes Eight Ball and whisks him

Quite a bit of fun here as Popeye Is almost stymied by Wimpy. Wimpy overhears Olive Oyl's invitation to Popeye for a hamburger dinner. He then disguises himself as Popeye and confuses Olive Oyl until Popeye reasserts liimself in the usual

where a flock of work on him. manner in which the animators have them do it make for hilarious moments.

to

away

an

old mill

emphatic manner.

veteran

ghosts

go

to

What they do and

the

Yip-Yip-Yippy

Paramount

(Betty Boop)

7

Mins.


Humor content in this cartoon is almost negligible. It introduces Vanilla, a horse, who helps a drug store cowboy vanquish the villain of the piece.



Goldilocks

'-G-M

and

the Three

11

M-G-M

(FitzPatrick Traveltalk)

Bears

(M-G-M

Cartoon)

Mins.

Effective animation aids in making this irtoon Impressive, but the contents are ill for the youngsters. It's the tale of oldilocks who comes to the bear's home nd eats the porridge. Papa Bear smacks ightly of Wallace Beery. A sugary narraon is not much of a help. Should be good

uff for the kids, however.

on strike, Charlie McCarthy Day at Fair, thrilling gas attack staged

Monday, July 19, 2010

096 The Pointer



Title: The Pointer
Studio: Disney
Date: 7/21/39
Credits: None listed on print
Series: Mickey Mouse
Running time (of viewed version): 8:34

Synopsis: Mickey and Pluto go bird and bear hunting, but end up eating beans.


















Comments: The first regular theatrical release of the additionally anthropomorphic Mickey (who, incidentally, appears to be famous within the context of the cartoon, as he tries to get out of trouble using his celebrity). Maybe he started to enter the uncanny valley, which would explain why flesh tone Mickey is significantly more creepy than bloodless Mickey. This initial beige version isn't as bad as it would get later tho. Somehow i think the backgrounds give the impression of more controlled movement than some other Disney cartoons of the year. Mickey's high pitched insults are unpleasant. Reminds me of Dave Chappelle's standup bit using the character (which reflects more on Chappelle's accuracy than anything else). The bear is good looking. Lots of camera movement. Lots of shading on the characters (especially Pluto). I can recall Pluto having to hold still in the face of the quails, and the beans, but I don't really remember the bear bit. Not much happens in the cartoon, but it doesn't really drag. While the painted beans look great, the cel beans have happy lines emanating from the beans. I wonder if the choice between beans and bears was an intentional written pun.