Saturday 27 March 2021

Smearing the Vienna Woods

Bugs Bunny wearing a blue bra.

Elmer Fudd with his hands down his pants.

A swan ploughing her face into her own rear end.

Where else would you find such things except in a Bob Clampett cartoon?

They certainly wouldn’t be in a Walt Disney cartoon. But they are in Clampett’s answer to Disney’s Fantasia, A Corny Concerto, released by Warner Bros. on September 25, 1943.

Clampett took two pieces of Johann Strauss’ music and animated two mini-cartoons. Musical director Carl Stalling treats the classical music fairly straight and having the full Warner Bros. orchestra behind him certainly helps set a high-class atmosphere, which juxtaposes very nicely with the un-Disney-like gags Clampett and writer Frank Tashlin came up with. That includes the travesty commentary by Clampett’s stand-in for Disney’s Deems Taylor, Elmer Fudd. The two have little in common. Suffice it to say, Wascawwy Elmer never broadcast in dulcet tones from Carnegie Hall.

The cartoon has something else I doubt is found in the Disney feature—smear animation. It looks like the smears Virgil Ross did in other cartoons for Clampett (and later Friz Freleng).

You’ll find it in the second half of the cartoon, set to the music of Strauss’ “The Blue Danube.” A vulture has absconded with a mother’s little baby swans. Mama Swan lifts a branch over the water to let them pass under it. All that appears are the baby’s shadows. Then she realises something is wrong and goes on a mad hunt.



Here’s where the mother swan has her head up her ... well, almost. Then she realises it.



Back to the hunt.



Clampett told historian Mike Barrier he was not happy with some of the timing. One of the animators—who it was he didn’t say—felt the animation should be timed closer to the accents in the music. Clampett wanted a more balletic approach (the first cartoon ends with Bugs Bunny as a ballerina).

One of the puzzling things about Virgil Ross at this time was his treatment on screen. After Eatin’ On The Cuff was released on August 22, 1942, Ross never got another screen credit in the Clampett unit. Bob McKimson and Rod Scribner alternated, though Ross was animating in the unit. He was bypassed (McKimson is credited in this cartoon). Late in life, Ross admitted that he and Clampett hadn’t gotten along. “I didn’t seem to have what he wanted most of the time,” Ross said.

It’s not clear when he left Clampett, but Ross moved over to the Freleng unit and received his first rotational animator credit on Slightly Daffy, released June 17, 1944 (ironically a remake of a Clampett short, though using Clampett’s 1930s, non-Ross unit).

Clampett also mentioned to Mike Barrier the uncredited background artist was Dick Thomas. Also uncredited is the effects animator, probably Ace Gamer.

References of the times seem to be something found in every Clampett cartoon. The vulture claps his hands like Hugh Herbert and plants a 4F sign on the eventually-heroic baby duck, signifying he is unfit for military service. A war is on, you know.

1943 was an interesting year for Clampett. His Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs and Tin Pan Alley Cats were released before this cartoon, along with Daffy’s burlesque strip act in The Wise Quacking Duck and the suicide-ending Tortoise Wins By a Hare. His next cartoon would be Falling Hare, where Bugs and a gremlin play head games with the audience, and the dog/butt-rubbing An Itch In Time.

And Clampett’s cartoons only got better.

4 comments:

  1. Actually, it was the vulture that placed the 4F sign on the duckling that resembles Daffy when he was taking the baby swans. Just wanted to make a little correction.

    Also, I love how part of the swan's frantic search involves her lifting her feathers like a dress. Very much classic cartoon logic.

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  2. Hans Christian Brando31 March 2021 at 17:49

    I defy the current Warner Bros. Animation staff to give us "Encore Corny Concerto." Do "Slaughter On Tenth Avenue" (yes, Warners has the rights) with all the characters.

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  3. The last projects that Ross animated for Clampett was for the color remake "Tick Tock Tuckered" (1944) and "Russian Rhapsody", released in the same year. It's not quite apparent, but Ross animates the infamous Lew Lehr close-up at the end.

    You can disregard the recent misinformation on Wikipedia that presumes the animators on that short include Arthur Davis and Art Babbit.

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  4. Virgil Ross left Warner Bros. for Hanna-Barbera in 1960 and for DePatie-Freleng in 1963

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