Gagging the Hugh Harman Way

There’s a pleasant bounciness to the Harman-Ising cartoons for Leon Schlesinger. And an awful lot of repetition.

Some of this was forced on the studio by Warner Bros. The Merrie Melodies were required to have a portion of a Warners-owned tune featured in the cartoon as a vehicle to sell sheet music. Almost all these cartoons seemed to feature a song in the first half, then bad guys kidnapping a girl who was rescued by a gang in the second. The 3/4s view, open-mouth facial expressions all look the same. Characters would do the same slide-step dance that Bosko performed in a number of cartoons. Screen-fuls of animals, humans or objects would face the camera and cheer in cycle animation.

Personally, I prefer the early Fleischer Talkartoons, but there’s a cheeriness in the Warners shorts that is appealing. Frank Marsales’ scores are fun, too, as they feature great songs like “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” and others from the Warners musicals of the era.

Lee Shippey’s column in the Los Angeles Times of January 26, 1932 included a report on a trip to the Harman-Ising studio. There’s no mention of Leon Schlesinger because he was the middle man; he contracted with H-I to provide cartoons which he provided to Warners. In 1932, newspaper stories about him dealt with his own productions—western shorts starring John Wayne. The drawings accompanied the article.

It’s a shame none of the artists are identified.

The Screen “Funnies”
Since Mickey Mouse became an international favorite, upsetting the laws of nature by chasing Felix the Cat out of hundreds of theaters, the animated cartoon business has excited a large number of persons in Filmland’s capital. Companies to produce animated cartoons have flared up and flared out. But you can’t go to any theater now without seeing Bosko, Mickey Mouse or some artist’s creation performing the impossible in the matter-of-fact manner.
See What Kansas City Has Done
Oddly enough, the atmosphere of Kansas City, more than that of any other spot, seems to affect artists so that they become screen cartoon animators. Maybe it’s the influence of Harry Wood’s Intellectual Pup, which has been running in the Kansas City Star for twenty years or so. Anyway, Walt Disney, creator of Mickey Mouse, is a Kansas City boy and brought out from Kansas City several other artists who were his chief aides—most of whom now are in business for themselves and employing more Kansas City artists.
Harman-Ising
Yesterday we visited the Harman-Ising studios on Hollywood Boulevard, half-expecting to hear some snappy young men practicing barber-shop chords. As we stepped into the office, though, we realized our mistake. It wasn’t a singing school, but a mad-house. Reassured by that discovery, we decided to stay awhile and see what happened. As we entered, unobserved, one fellow was hopping around on one foot, strumming an imaginary musical instrument and singing:
“Plink - dink, -dink-dink-dink! Plink -ooo-do-do!” Another, who seemed to fancy himself an Indian, was about to do a little scalping, and a couple more were dashing to the rescue: it looked like a swell fight, but abruptly the combatants stopped and sat around a table.
“That’s the way we want the scene,” said one. “Now we want five good gags to go with it. Get busy, gag men.”
It was the story room, in which Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising and their assistants devise stories for Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, and stunts for Bosko, their favorite character, to perform.
“Actors” Are Directed
“The original animated cartoons,” Harman said, “relied on trick stuff and utter impossibility for their laughs. Now we try to build real stories which, though still fairy stories, progress logically. We mix it a good deal as a housewife mixes a cake—one character to delight children and arouse their sympathy, six ludicrous mishaps which all tend to bring about the happy ending, twenty gags to the reel. As we know that twenty-four squares, or scenes, of film go through the projection machine in a second, we can time our music or sound accompaniment to precisely fit the action, especially when actors speak or play. Here we work out and gag a story. Then the head artist, who really is the acting director, confers with the music director and the dancing director. Oh, yes, we direct Bosko just are carefully as Edward Griffith directs Constance Bennett.”

Indians? Scalping? I tried to figure out what cartoon they were working on, and the closest I can think of is Crosby, Columbo and Vallee, released March 19, 1932, though no one was scalped in it.

Harman talks about carefully honed stories in the article above, but this short is anything but coherent. It starts off with an overweight Indian chief complaining about the aforementioned three crooners in the title song written by Al Dubin and Joe Burke, arranged for ukulele and published by Witmark in 1931. Well, the lyrics were changed to fit the scene and attempts to rhyme “troubadours” with “squaws” (the original rhymed “vagabonds” with “blondes”) were really forced.

But he’s not part of the plot. He leaves the cartoon. The scene cuts to an Indian brave and his girl-friend, who are basically Merrie Melodies stand-ins for Bosko and Honey of the Looney Toons series (they even have the same falsetto voices). He has a radio that’s hooked up to a spider web for power (to the melody of “Pagan Moon” by Frederic Knight Logan and Jesse Glick) and we get more of the song from the two, happy, bopping-up-and-down Indians. Animals come into the picture, and there’s a 16-drawing applause cycle. One drawing below.



Next gag: a dog pushes up his fluffy ears to imitate Rudy Vallee’s hairstyle, then grabs a tree stump to use as Vallee’s megaphone and gives out with “This is my Love Song,” another Dubin-Burke tune.



We’re half-way through the short. The evil villain hasn’t come to kidnap the girl yet. Wait! Hugh and his writers have pulled a switch. A fire and its little flame-lets are swaying and dancing to the title song when, suddenly, the flames run amok. In maybe the best gag of the cartoon, they burn the greenery off a tree, revealing its underwear. Embarrassed, it jumps into a lake to hide.



The plot makes a violent turn and is now about birdies trapped in a burning tree by the fire. As Marsales’ orchestra provides a jumpy version of the theme, flies carry a spider web to employ as a net to rescue the baby birds, wherein is inserted the mandatory butt/crotch violence gag.



A lone flame gets its revenge on the birds, and Bosko an Indian brave expectorates to kill the flame. None of this has anything to do with Bing Crosby, Russ Columbo or Rudy Vallee.



Piggy says “so long, folks.”



Ham Hamilton and Max Maxwell received screen credit for animation. The screen grabs are from an aged laser disc as the cartoon never appeared on DVD. Hugh (and Rudy) deserve better.