Box Office Magazine Online

Wow, there's a lot of old trade periodicals getting posted on-line. I just came across this through a post on Joe Dante's new blog. Still have yet to piece through all of it but happened across this old Terrytoon ad. Wonder if there's anything else interesting in there?

How about this one? There IS a Santa Claus and he wants to EAT YOUR SOUL!

Pudgy The Watchman Mosaic

Haven't tried this before ... I thought I'd take a crack at a mosaic for the 1938 Betty Boop cartoon Pudgy The Watchman. Fleischer boards differ quite a bit from the storyboards of today, which often need to be designed to be understood six months later by people in another country. Depending on the show some modern boards are practically mini-layouts. Not the case with Fleischer boards. They are more akin to what are today called 'thumbnail boards': a loose gestural description of the cartoon's action which is submitted to the director before adding the detail. At Fleischers, since the director was responsible for laying out the picture and was not only there to answer questions through the length of production (from animators under the same roof) , but also animating on the show itself, I can understand that there was no need for specific detail. Unbelievably the footage sheet still exists for 'Watchman' which solves some mysteries but creates a few others. Sc.25B, for example, is listed as being both by Harold Walker & Tom Johnson. Some scenes were animated as one scene & split up according to the fielding. Sc. 25 for example was split into 25, 25A & 25B though presumably (?) done as a single scene*. Sc.08 is indicated in the board as done by both Feuer (on page 2) & Johnson (page 3). I suspect Sc.8 was done by Feuer as part of Sc.6 but I don't know for sure. Sc.8A is my designation. Etc. There is no indication of who animated the scene of the cat winking (I designated Sc. 12B) - could this have been part of Sc.12A fielded in? If any of you Fleischer experts out there can answer or correct me on any of this speak up! To get an idea of how loose the board is and to see the footage list visit here (you will have to scroll down a bit).

BTW-the crew for Pudgy the Watchman was:

Tom Johnson

Harold Walker

Frank Endres

Otto Feuer

Tony Di Paola

* - a closer inspection indicates Sc.25A was probably done as a separate scene. The BG differs slightly from 25 & 25B indicating it is not just fielded in. 25 & 25B could have been done as one scene and split up however.

Click to enlarge

Film Daily

Blogger was out yesterday but I wanted to post this link to The Film Daily Archive. Animation stuff is a little thin from what I've been able to go through (the last issues dating from 1929-the first year of sound) but there are quite a few Krazy Kat ads (example above) and a few other things worth hunting for and plenty interesting ballyhoo from Hollywood's prime. The 1929 issues favor Columbia, Warners & Fox. So, no Fleischer ads* but a few interesting for Krazy Kat & Columbia shorts. Some nice ads for silent Universal horrors (like 'Cat & The Canary') in there as well. Haven't gone through the earlier issues yet but if I come across something I'll post it.

*at least no renderings of Koko that I've been able to find. Plenty of reviews & interesting articles though which can be found by doing a search inside in the 'search inside' box on the tp right of the screen of each issue. I'll be pouring over these for months to come undoubtedly.