Thursday 28 May 2020

Now This Commercial Interruption

After a leisurely pan of a Johnny Johnsen background with overlays in the foreground, Tex Avery’s A Feud There Was opens a string of laziness gags.

We eventually get to a scene with some hillbillies sleeping on a back stoop. Out of nowhere, a KFWB microphone descends from the sky.



The hillbillies are lazy no longer. It takes them five frames to get up and whip into a song.



Perhaps as a commentary on commercials interrupting programming, the song abruptly stops as an announcer steps in to read an ad for a loan company. The announcer is an actual KFWB announcer, Gil Warren.

“Call Gladstone 4131,” he urges. That was the real phone number of the Leon Schlesinger studio.



The cartoon Warren steps away and the hillbillies quickly end their brief snooze to resume harmonizing.



Sid Sutherland is the credited animator, with Tubby Millar getting the story credit on the non-Blue Ribbon version.

3 comments:

  1. The characters definitely have an Irv Spence look to them. Late '38 riffs on radio ads interrupting events apparently were popular at Schlesinger's, since Hardaway and Dalton would riff on it a short time later in "Count Me Out", with the fast-talking monotone radio announcer sticking a loan ad into the middle of his fight commentary.

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  2. This scene was Irv's animation, Yowp. It is close in style to the Ub Iwerks cartoons that Spence animated on.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, Mark. I'd like to see someone break down a few of those ComiColor shorts some time.
      Avery sure loved red noses.

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