Take, for example, Puss in Boots (1934). It opens with the hero young man playing the bagpipes, pussywillows turning into meowing cats, and then the scene cuts to kittens playing noughts and crosses. Song time! No one will mistake the lyrics for the Tin Pan Alley stuff in Warner Bros. cartoons.
Just a little game of tic-tac-toe
Makes time fly when the clock goes slow.
Three little crosses in a row,
That’s the game of tic-tac-toe.
The brown kitten is a sore loser and attacks the winning kitty.
Iwerks’ story people (I think Otto Englander was there at the time) decided to turn the tic-tac-toe thing into a running gag. The kittens swirl around in a cage that lands on top the ogre’s head. When they escape, it’s revealed they played the game there.
Disney loved butt attack jokes. Therefore, so did Iwerks. The kittens get into the ogre’s pants. Cut to a scene of Xs and Os on the ogre’s naked obese butt. Fun for the whole family!
Hey, if one butt joke is funny, a second will be twice as funny! The cartoon ends with the hero being attacked by a kitten and showing the handiwork. Everyone laughs just like at the end of a ‘70s Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Rooby rooby roo!
Iwerks’ story people sneak in one Warner Bros.’ type gag. The little princess, turned into a bird, yells at the ogre “You naaasty man!” just like Joe Penner.
Some more of the song lyrics:
Oh, you saved my tots
And I thank you lots!
I’m your friend until the whole world rots.
Here’s a tip (?) to do
Something nice for you
Now we’re going to make a prince of you!
Meow, meow!
The trade papers of the day revealed this was the third ComiColor cartoon put into production. The colour must have looked pretty good when these were first released; the screen shots you see here are from a tired print transferred to one of those budget DVDs of “public domain” cartoons that came out once upon a time. It’ll be nice to eventually see these given a good, cleaned-up video release.
Have animation history questions about the Ub Iwerks studio, where Chuck Jones got his start as a cel washer. One is who contributed the wonderful background art seen in such Ub Iwerks Comicolor Fairytale and Color Rhapsody cartoons as SUMMERTIME, BALLOON LAND, SKELETON FROLIC, THE FOXY PUP and THE HORSE ON THE MERRY-GO-ROUND. Another would be who succeeded Berny Wolf, Grim Natwick and Shamus Culhane as head animators - hear Irv Spence was with Ub before landing at MGM - and who were the gagmen in Iwerks' story department.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure someone reading here has some knowledge of this. I have no idea who was handling backgrounds there. Dick Bickenbach and Jerry Hathcock were on the animation staff.
DeleteHardaway was a gagman for a time and my impression is Tashlin was, too.
What a revelatory ad you ran, Yowp! Ub was going to do ComicColor versions of Cinderella, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, The Snow Queen, The Ugly Duckling, The Golden Goose and The Little Mermaid! Disney ultimately made all of these stories except The Golden Goose as features and Silly Symphonies. Of course, "Frozen" is The Snow Queen. Probably the stories were all public domain.
ReplyDeleteIt makes you wonder how far they got with some of those titles. I can imagine money was pretty tight for Iwerks then, trying to fund colour cartoons by making them available on a state's rights basis.
DeleteEvidently, the last ComiColor in production was an adaptation of "Oliver Twist". That came to a stop after Pat Powers severed his relationship with Iwerks.
Delete