Yes, I do believe there was a bit of referencing going on.
Bob McKimson and Ace Gamer got the animation credits in Dog Daze while Cal Dalton was credited on September in the Rain. These don’t reflect the sole animators; the Schlesinger studio insisted on rotating credits back then. Ken Harris and Phil Monroe were also in the Freleng unit at the time.
And if the thistles look familiar...
They appear in Freleng's Flowers For Madame, a 1936 short animated by Don Williams and Paul J. Smith. The Technicolor is nice, there's a Tedd Pierce inside joke and a couple of J.S. Zamecnik's cues are on soundtrack, including "Traffic" during the fire extinguishing scene. Other than that, if you skip it, you won't be missing much.
The only surprise about reused animation--at least in theatrical cartoons--is that they didn't do it more often. After all, who back then could have foreseen repeated showings well into the next century on TV and home video and streaming and whatever comes along next?
ReplyDeleteJust thinking about Warners cartoons in the Golden Age, I don't think stock cycles would have worked too well. The action was based on the story and was different. Of course, when you're reusing story elements, then it's a different situation (Bacall to Arms comes to mind).
DeleteI keep thinking in the '50s how all the characters in the Modern Madcaps at Paramount seem to have the same stroll. It would have been easy to reuse cycles (in fact, I think they did it with the explosion animation).