The cartoon contains silhouette animation, and moody, dark-bluish woods, apparently painted by Mike Sasanoff.
Clampett’s war-era energy is on display, as characters zip around in the frame, sometimes “past the camera.” Rhyming dialogue gives the cartoon some rhythm. There’s rubbery animation aplenty (Rod Scribner gets the revolving animation credit, Virgil Ross once talked about his animation on it). And while Tex Avery had Red strut on stage over at MGM, Clampett has So White waving her butt in the air in this Schlesinger cartoon.
The cartoon ends the way it started, with the same at-the-fireplace animation, and without cutting to the usual rings as the end titles appear.
At least two books quote the late Tom Bradley, the first Black mayor of Los Angeles, as saying this was his favorite cartoon.
ReplyDeleteNo, those books quote a 1979 interview conducted by Reg Hartt in Toronto, in which Bob Clampett said "Coal Black" was Tom Bradley's favourite cartoon, but there's no corroborating evidence that Bradley himself ever said so. Some elements of the story are demonstrably untrue, for example Clampett's assertion that Bradley first saw the cartoon while stationed in Europe during the war; Bradley had a draft exemption because of his work with the Los Angeles Police Department, and he never served in the military.
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