A bit more on "Piano Mover"

This pretty well inexplicable rotation on-the-spot of the dog from the piano (see my last post on chaw) makes my sides split every time I see it! Why is he doing it? I guess he's somehow showing Krazy his fitness for a moving job which might involve rotating? What would a contemporary director's comments be if presented with such a scene? Furthermore, why do all the characters seem to be squinting through heavy eyelids through the whole thing? Wait-a-minute, don't answer that!

Welcome to the Twilight Zone!

McCay Monday

Chaw - A Love Letter Continued "Dog Juice"

From "Piano Mover", a 1932 Krazy Kat

Piano keys attract chaw spit.

Does it get any better than this?

McCay Monday

I love McCay's freaky martians.

What if?

Speaking of crazy cross-overs, here's something for really sick people! I was recently noticing the similarity (and differences) between two '30's image motifs: The Flip The Frog Coloring Book cover from 1933 and the Scrappy Lynn BLB from 1935. Then I did something too perverted not to share! 

Saffield 1933

Lynn 1935

A sick mind at work!

Cemetery Cat

I don't post much of my own artwork on this blog. The reason is namely I find the whole process kind of self indulgent - like who cares? I'd rather see cool old drawings by old animators and cartoonists than my own junk or some other indie artist's when I'm surfing around myself! That said, I was rooting around in some old files and came across this frame from an incomplete Little Cat story which takes place in a Cemetery.  This drawing is really strange but I kind of still like it.

Turn On the Heat!

I've been reading here and there on the net about cartoon music and how the various composers made use of their respective studio libraries as well as composing original material for the cartoon itself. One cartoon which uses a song from a film which was produced for a different studio is the 1933 Universal cartoon "Hot and Cold". The song, "Turn On The Heat, was written by the song writing team of  Desylva/Brown/Henderson  for the 1929 Fox Musical "Sunny Side Up". 

There's a lot of fun stuff in this cartoon - a shame it was passed over by Universal for the current DVD set 'Woody Woodpecker Vol.2'. 

Here is actress Joyzelle Joyner in a publicity still for the production number "Turn On The Heat" from "Sunny Side Up". To cartoon fans this name means nothing but to fans of Famous Monsters of Filmland she is well known as the Martian Queen from the first ever sound Science Fiction film, 1930's "Just Imagine".  

I'm curious - are these three beauties from "Hot and Cold" three Joyzelle Joyners? It does seem to bear some resemblance to the Fox number.

 

Hubba Hubba!

The year following "Sunny Side Up"  DeSylva, Brown and Henderson wrote the score of Fox's "Just Imagine": a sci-fi musical which would form the basis of the show "Futurama"  and  influence practically every sci-fi futuristic city movie of the past 30 years! I have yet to hear a single EFX artist, or artist from "Futurama",  admit publicly to the influence of "Just Imagine". 

This really insane scene from "Just Imagine" too ended up in a Universal Picture: the Flash Gordon serials which began with  "Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars" in 1938. I wonder ... I guess Fox sold Universal the full rights to both films? Did Fox simply abandon them (both flopped) leaving the struggling Universal to scoop them up? What was the relationship between the two studios?

McCay Monday

A nice McCay drawing to start the week

Great Moments in Chaw Cont'd: Yelp Wanted!

From Scrappy's debut in 1931's 'Yelp Wanted'. I didn't realize what was going on with his teeth until I did the grabs - bizarre! 

I like this cartoon even more!

"Thank ...

...You"

It's funny cause he's blind!

Good News and Bad News

I just happened on this tidbit over at GAC

The Good News: Sony Pictures is including a Scrappy cartoon as a bonus feature on a forthcoming DVD box set of Hammer films. This is, I think, the first Scrappy ever to be legitimately released to DVD. 

The Bad News: It's 'Merry Mutineers', a Color Rhapsody  from 1936.  I know not everyone will agree but I think the Scrappy series was pretty solid for it's first four years. This particular cartoon occurs after the departures of Dick Huemer (creator of the character) and Art Davis (his assistant and director after Huemer left) which left less enthusiastic people to churn out the series until it's sad demise in 1940's 'The Little Theater'.  

details on the set as a whole can be read here:

www.dignews.com/news.php?story_id=29518

Wow, what a weird looking Scrappy!

Yikes!

"Everyone loves Kiko! Kiko the Kangaroo!"

Not really but that's how the theme song went ... ordering audiences to obey. They didn't. Bill Weiss, a business manager from Terrytoons even said the character was "nothing to brag about".  Admittedly it is odd that a cartoon series produced in 1936/37 should have sections of animation that  resemble Van Beuren cartoons from the early 30's! Actually they are pretty hit-and-miss but there's something about a few of them that I can't help but love ... like a sweet retarded cousin!

For example, every time I see 'Red Hot Music' I feel better. The animation is wildly inconsistent but the general pep of the whole thing (thanks in no small part to Philip Scheib's music) raise it (sort of) out of the usual Terry doldrums. 

Of course nothing beats Kiko's first appearance in the 1936 cartoon 'Farmer Alfalfa's Prize Package' where we find out that Farmer Al has a brother named ... Hank?

Only in a Terrytoon would a lead character beat the tar out of a gang of cops ...

and, to top it off, rob them of their watches in time for the iris-out! 

Now that's what I call a moral!

More on Kiko in a future post.

*Correction* The correct lyric is: "All the kids like Kiko...". Evidently kids were not expected to love him and grown-ups were not even expected to like him (which they evidently didn't)!