I’ve seen layout drawings from three different Avery cartoons at MGM that have had things in the background crossed out. One of them is below.
The Farm of Tomorrow (1954) is a weak sauce effort by Avery and writer Heck Allen, who put together a bunch of hokey “we crossed a X with a Y and got a punny XY” gags that build to nothing. I can’t help but think ol’ Tex needed to come up with something fast to fill up the MGM release schedule, and this was it. These were the kinds of puns Avery used to ridicule during his films, not make them centrepieces.
But Tex still put care into it. Gene Hazelton is the uncredited layout artist. He rendered the “ten-foot pole cat” below. Notice how Avery has crossed out trees so your eyes are strictly focused on the gag character.
Here is the end result in the cartoon.
The swirling purple sky (an interesting choice) is by background artist Joe Montell, who soon moved on to John Sutherland Productions. Tex’s animators are Bob Bentley added to the usual crew of Mike Lah, Grant Simmons and Walt Clinton. Paul Frees and June Foray provide some of the voices.
Every time I see "Farm of Tomorrow" I wonder if Tex had exceeded his allotted budget for that season and was trying to make something as cheaply as he could. As I recall, toward the end of it he stops even bothering with animation and just throws a series of drawings up on screen. The cartoon has a "cost-cutter" feel to it. Tex's equivalent of those "remember the time that" cheaters Bill and Joe used to make every so often with Tom and Jerry.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it reeks of Quimby telling him MGM wanted to save money. At the time the cartoon was finally released, the Avery unit had been eliminated.
ReplyDeleteTex said it was a "cheater" in Joe Adamson's biography of him.
DeleteTV of Tomorrow is actually my favorite Tex Avery cartoon. Farm, not so much.
ReplyDeleteReally? Why?
DeleteI enjoy the subject matter- it's also aged really well because 1) Our lives still revolve around television like they did when TV was brand new, and 2) they're still trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to television.
DeleteAlso the blending of animation and live action was innovative, such as the garbage disposal gag.
More importantly, it just has a lot of funny gags and packs quite a few in. My favorite: A special set for peeping Toms.
"House of Tomorrow" is my personal favorite among the "Of Tomorrows." I find the opening credits music curiously touching as the cartoon itself lampoons the promise of postwar suburban prosperity (in reality, the acme of the middle class standard of living, which you may have noticed has been in sharp decline in recent decades). "Farm of Tomorrow" is too obviously an uninspired quickie.
ReplyDeleteCoincidentally, this day of this post I was ranting about how bad the "of Tommorrow"s were, especially this one.
ReplyDeleteI'll admit. This is still a guilty pleasure.
ReplyDelete