Thursday 14 January 2016

Pass the Pork Sausages

Cartoons of 1930 featured a few gags and a lot of singing and dancing in time to the music on the screen. But Van Beuren cartoons had something extra. Death.

The studio loved characters blowing up and turning into skeletons. In the case of Farm Foolery (1930), something else happened. A large pig is being wooed by a... Well, I’m not sure what it is. A fox? Note the pre-Tex Avery eye-take below. A rabbit slips dynamite under them.



The pig turns into a heap of sausages—which then come to life and starts swaying in time to “Ain’t She Sweet” as the bib-wearing whatever shakes in fright to end the cartoon.



John Foster and Mannie Davis get the “by” credit in this cartoon but animator Milton Knight informs me this scene is by Eddie Donnelly, who later spent years working for Paul Terry. The score is by Gene Rodemich.

4 comments:

  1. This scene is by Mannie Davis. Donnelly had a "cuter" style, Davis was more influenced by his friend John Foster's drawing style.

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  2. Thanks for your expert eye, Charlie.

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  3. Charlie told me that like his younger and more well known brother, Arthur. Emanuel "Mannie" Davis also got an offer by Walt Disney in 1929 to come to work for his company. He declined because he got married, started a family, and just didn't want to Leave N.Y.C. And according to Charlie, He got the information from Mannie's daughter, Susan.

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