Tuesday, 24 April 2018

Spinster of the Circus

Ub Iwerks was obsessed with irradiating lines. His cartoons are full of them. If you had a drinking game where you drank every time you saw one, you’d pass out before the end of the cartoon.

You can see them on the old crone in the final scene of Circus (1932).



The storyman came up with a twist ending. A crook robs the crone of her purse. Flip chases him down. But it turns out the crone doesn’t want the purse back. She has the hots for the crook.



Lines even accompany the running feet as they hit the ground. Ub’s film cutter adds a woodblock sound effect.



No artists are credited on this cartoon, though I presume the score is by Carl Stalling.

1 comment:

  1. This scene looks like Grim Natwick's work. Carl Stalling always used Tchaikovsky's "Humoresque" as the old crone's theme in the Flips. Ub Iwerks started the radiating lines in his animation in the 1920s. Walt Disney liked them too and kept them in his cartoons into 1935 or so.

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