Putting Out the Dog the Van Beuren Way

1933 wasn’t too far removed from the silent film era, so maybe it’s not too surprising some of the cartoons made then didn’t rely on dialogue to put across their gags.

Here’s a sequence from the Cubby Bear cartoon Fresh Ham from the Van Beuren studio. Cubby and his unnamed boy cat cohort run a talent agency and audition acts; this may have been the first cartoon with that setting. The title character is a Shakespearean duck but there’s another act involving an opera-singing lady dachshund. Only she’s a fake. These frames can tell you the gag. She enters the cartoon to what you’ll recognise as the “Return My Love” theme from What’s Opera, Doc?”



Look how the cat’s arm is thicker at the wrist than the shoulder and just hangs off his body. Now that’s the illusion of life!



Cubby and cohort have diamond-shaped eyelids when closed.



Did theatres really use trap doors to get rid of bad acts?

Steve Muffati and Mannie Davis get the “by” credit.