Monday, 23 January 2017

Martian Through Georgia

There are places in the Chuck Jones cartoon Martian Through Georgia where the backgrounds look like they came from a UPA cartoon where a mad scientist injected the surroundings with some evil serum and the ornateness of the buildings couldn’t stop growing. Or maybe Maurice Noble and Phil DeGuard were injected with something.



Here, Jones and Noble use colour for effect, not for changing mood.



About the best you can say for this cartoon is it’s different. Well, in a way. The (non?)-hero is a Chuck Jones grinchy green. The facial expressions are pure ‘60s Jones. And the cartoon ends with one of those heart-shapes that Jones and his storyman-du-jour plopped onto the end of some of final Pepe Le Pew cartoons to show that romance is the end result of obsessive unwanted advances.

Posted by at 07:12
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6 comments:

  1. J Lee23 January 2017 at 12:47

    Chuck at least said he made his last handful of one-shot cartoons like this and "I Was a Teenage Thumb" in order to annoy Jack Warner. The story may or may not be true, but the annoyance factor was definitely there on the part of the audience.

    (Also interesting that Abe Levitow get a co-direction credit here, since Abe had decamped to UPA two years earlier and was working -- secretly with Chuck and his wife -- on "Gay Pur-ee" when this cartoon was in production.)

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    Replies
    1. EOCostello23 January 2017 at 15:04

      Last laugh was on Jones, when WB sacked him. Fairly or not.

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    2. Yowp24 January 2017 at 07:54

      I've never really understood the firing part. WB distributed "Gay Purr-ee." Why would Warners have a problem with Jones working on it in his off hours?

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    3. J Lee24 January 2017 at 10:17

      Not quite sure, unless the studio execs were just irked at Chuck not telling them what he was doing, and only finding out when they signed the distribution deal with UPA.

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    4. Pokey24 January 2017 at 19:28

      (to J.Lee's post right above)
      Yeah, and because Chuck got fired in 1962 he--with all due respect----told a "little white lie" about the studio folding in 1962, when it was still doing a number of shorts and the ambitious "Mr.Limpet" film, released in 1964. (Same as the last bacth of pre-DePatie Freleng Warner Bros.cartoons, including Bugs;'s last, "False Hare". All of those had a 1963 copyright.)SC

      PS That "WB closed their cartoon outlet in 1962" myth went on for LONG, didn't it? :)

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  2. rodineisilveira24 January 2017 at 14:22

    This short was produced in 1962.

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