Still you can find stretches of good animation in some of Hannah’s cartoons. And he tried some Tex Avery style takes in Doc’s Last Stand, a 1961 cartoon featuring all of those named above. Doc, who is supposed to be a rogue and conman but comes off as drab, tries to sell his cohort Champ the bulldog as a squaw to a rich American Indian. After a bit of assistance from perfume and bash on the head, the brave gets all excited about “her.” It looks like Hannah saved money by flipping some drawings.
Hannah would leave Lantz in 1962 but not until he inflicted the Beary Family on unsuspecting cartoon lovers.
Champ sounded a bit like a Frank Fontaine variation (like, at the same studio, the gofy wolf, only with Dal McKennon's voice for Champ, while Daws Butler did his usual own great act for that equally gooney wolf from those Woody cartoons.)
ReplyDeleteDal McKennon as Champ,the dog/:)
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Hannah already had dabbled in Averyesque gags -- if not wild takes -- with the 1955 Donald Duck CinemaScope effort "No Hunting", which in terms of gags was similar to Tex's "Field and Scream", released the same year (Walt's fixation on Disneyland construction during that time period seemed to free up Hannah's unit to do Donald cartoons with less cuteness and more straight gag efforts, with Humphrey and Ranger Woodlore taking over as the main co-stars from Chip & Dale, as Tex and Jack swapped usage of Bill Thompson's Wallace Whimple voice).
ReplyDeleteOf the people Hannah brought into the studio, only Al Coe stayed until the studio’s closing. In fact for a few years he and Les Kline were the studio’s only key animators. Nino Carbe took over layout and backgrounds in 1970 and Homer Brightman was the main writer, with help from others such as Bill Danch, Tedd Pierce and Dale Hale.
ReplyDeleteI'll also add that Champ may be a Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom type. either way,a typical punch drunk punching pooch (though, instead of a bulldog, a boxer would've been even better,perhaps..)
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