Other than some of the earliest Mickeys, about the only other Disney shorts I enjoy and will watch over and over star Goofy, all of them directed by Jack Kinney. Motor Mania is a great cartoon and will ring true to viewers so long as there are jerks on the road. And the “how-to” cartoons are good, too.
Tex Avery had some funny stick figures in Porky’s Preview (1941). Kinney employs some in the Goofy cartoon How To Play Golf (1944). A stick-figure version of Goofy appears to show him fix his really bad swing.
The stick-Goofy steps through the maze of stick-golf clubs to go over to provide some instruction.
Not only does the animator give us Goofy multiples and dry-brush, the blue background is treated like paper that the stick-Goody falls through, creating a hole.
This is sure better than some unintelligible duck who needs anger management squawking at some chipmunks.
At least Paul “Woolworth” Terry gave his directors a screen credit in 1944. Mr. Tiffany Disney didn't.
Of course, not all the How To - Goofy cartoons are Kinneys. One of the best of the series Double Dribble is from Jack Hannah. And, for my money, Hannah cranked out some pretty hilarious Disney cartoons late in the day.
ReplyDeleteGood point, Anon. Thanks for mentioning it.
DeleteMy favourite Hannah is "In the Bag." Everything comes together nicely in that one.
Kinney is a master director. there's more violence and chaos in Hockey Homicide than in any Tom and Jerry or Bob Clampett I can remember!
ReplyDeleteI am such a huge Jack Kinney fan. Not only were his Goofy shorts wonderful, but his shorts with Pluto and Donald were some of the best films featuring those characters. I even find when I look at the Disney package features of the 1940's (specially Make Mine Music and Melody Time) it is his sequences that truly stand out to me as the highlights.
ReplyDeleteInspired sequences like the one above seem few and far between in the Jack Kinney canon. Slapstick violence isn't difficult; doing it with humor and style is the trick, otherwise it's just chaos. And Kinney has the bland Magoo feature "1001 Arabian Nights" (which could have used a little more action) to answer for; the cookie-cutter limited animation Popeye TV cartoons at least have the excuse of budget and time constraints.
ReplyDeleteIt's all too true: Disney's artistic achievements are compromised by the studio's blatant self-congratulation, the lack of which is one thing that make, say, the Warner Bros. cartoons (except for some Chuck Joneses) so appealing.
Goofy's the first cartoon character I ever learned to draw well. Hockey Homicide, Motor Mania and How to Play Football still make me "HYUK!" after all these years.
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