The Captain and the Kids short Seal Skinners (1939) is no eyesore, thanks to the work of the uncredited MGM animators, but there’s really nothing to it. None of the characters are likeable. Even the voice-work is grating. Mel Blanc’s sort-of-cockney pirate doesn’t work for me and a decision was made to speed up Hans’ voice so he sounds more like Theodore on The Alvin Show.
An interesting bit of animation is when Hans waves his hands anxiously. The animator uses multiple hands, with some inked lighter.
The animation was reused later in the cartoon, as was the scene of a growing number of birds flying and swooping.
Friz Freleng directed the cartoon. His name isn’t on the credits. Friz never had much good to say about this series and he willingly rushed back to the lower budgets of the Leon Schlesinger studio than to continue to put up with weak concepts and strong studio politics at MGM.
I think this was Ray Abrams' animation, Yowp. The seagulls were animated for the most part by Emery Hawkins.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Mark.
DeleteWas there a place Hawkins didn't work?
Well, let's face it, absolutely no one likes the series, although I rather like "MAMA'S NEW HAT" which kept the dialogue at a minimum and the action on high. Yes, there is more of that chip munk chatter that you don't like. I wonder who was the voice of Mama in this short. I guess I have a soft spot for the MGM cartoons, no matter what the period, because these were the first cartoons I'd seen on a grainy black and white TV. If it were announced that there was a mammoth set of the complete output of the animation studio at MGM, including Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising and the HAPPY HARMONIES, I'd buy it in a heartbeat! I remember all kinds of gag content in "A DAY AT THE BEACH" and the first Bill Hanna direction in the series, "BLUE MONDAY" in which the household chores are given to the Captain who aims to show Mama up in that direction but (spoiler alert) ends up trashing the house in the end. But, yes, I remember the MGM cartoons looking so good. I only wish that I'd seen more of them in color...that is, the titles that *WERE* produced in color, not colorizations of the sepiatoned titles, although there were two titles in this series that were produced in color. One, "PETUNIA NATURAL PARK" uses a gag that you'd think was devised by Tex Avery. Gotta love the way sound effects were used throughout the run of MGM cartoons, too, and someone else explained the CAPTAIN AND THE KIDS series as having so much stretch and squash!
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