But What About That Buck, Alex?

What cartoon starred a duck that had to deal with a changing background behind him?

Duck Amuck, you say? Well, that’s one answer. But 25 years before it was released, Walter Lantz’s staff pulled the same thing in Happy Scouts.

In this 1938 short, the little duck is terrified that the forest background has become scribbles and notes.



As for deciphering the background, I will defer to Devon Baxter who has looked into the Lantz studio of that era more than I have. I can only guess at who was painting Lantz’s backgrounds then; Fred Brunish was the vice-president of Royal Revues at the time and I don't know where Edgar Kiechle was working.

At the bottom, “Fred” likely refers to Fred Kopietz, who directed this cartoon. I suspect Alex Lovy designed the characters (Oswald the Rabbit was re-designed for this short). At the top, “Ed” is possibly Ed Benedict. “Forkum” could well be Roy Forkum, who was credited on Lantz’s commercial film Boy Meets Dog (1938). You’ll have to guess the identity of “Edna” and why she was being called (Roy Forkum’s wife was named Eileen). And perhaps an animator can explain the diamond-shaped drawing with numbers around it.

Yes, It Is a Scream Bomb

A “scream bomb” lives up to its name in Tex Avery’s Blitz Wolf.



Note the ghost multiples to make the movement faster.

Animation is by Irv Spence.

Billy Barty

He was the conductor of the Hollywood Baby Orchestra in late 1930 at age six. Newspapers around that time shaved what few years they could off his age, claiming he was 2, 3 or 5.

And even this wasn’t the start of Billy Barty’s show-biz career.

A year earlier Gladys Long, Hollywood correspondent of the Toronto Star Weekly, reviewed his appearance in the two-reel talkie Bow-Wow: “[W]hile we’re not terribly fond of these precocious youngsters out here, we’ve got to admit that this child has talent.” (Side note to animation fans: also in the cast was Pinto Colvig).

Barty’s talent took him a long way in entertainment, though he took some time off. The Los Angeles Daily News profiled him on June 15, 1931.

Billy Barty Is Quaint Child
He Wants to Fly
He Gets Tired of Kisses
By ELEANOR BARNES
HE gets kissed too much to suit him.
He's 32 inches tall.
He's 28 pounds heavy.
And for every inch of height, and every pound of weight, little Billy Barty is animation.
If you saw "Daddy Long Legs" at Carthay Circle, or have seen any of Larry Darmour-Mickey McQuire comedies, you will recall Billy Barty.
He's the tiniest rascal in talkies and he steals every picture in which he plays.
Billy had just returned home from a bathing show contest at Ocean Park yesterday, and was quite proud of his Lord Fontleroy suit, black velvet jacket and white satin blouse. This, Billy says, is the official costume when he directs a child's orchestra.
"I've made 17 public performances in a month," said Billy, as he squirmed on my lap and played with a glass bracelet I had on my left arm.
"I like to appear on the stage to help the men who need work."
Then, taking a pencil and paper, Billy's interest was diverted to writing his own name on a scratch pad, for with help, he can spell it out in full.
AGE MYSTERY
How old is Billy?
He is a little older than one would suspect from seeing him in a cradle in "Daddy Long Legs." In fact, he is shorter than the average 2-year-old, and 10 inches shorter than he should be for his age, which is professionally placed at 3 ½ years.
Billy is precocious. He's smarter than the average child of 8, as he plays trap drums, he can tap dance, he's not camera-shy or bashful, nor has he been spoiled by the attention he gets.
HIS AMBITIONS
A sensitive, shy baby, who claims a great deal to hide his feelings, little Billy Barty is called at home "Lone Eagle," for he never plays with other children. He's fond of Dolores, aged 4 ½ years, his sister, who is a head taller than he is and he adores Evelyn, the 11-year-old Barty girl, who plays the piano like a professional.
"I'm going to be an aviator when I grow up," said Billy who thinks Amelia Earhart's autogyro a great invention. He's going to have one of those, too.
He also wants to be a football player and thinks wedding cakes are the bunk to dream on. Saturday morning Billy was ring-bearer for Betty Norton Burch and John R. Murphy, who were married at Christ the King church.
HATES KISSES
"I get very tired of being kissed," said Billy, "but I've got a girl. She is Betty Jane Graham and she is the best actress in the world." She is 10.
He is the most lovable film child the writer ever met.
And who is Billy's favorite actor?
"It is myself," he said naively.
The wee one has won innumerable prizes for mental tests, in popularity contests and this week is to be presented with the smallest accordian made--if he will learn to play it.
"Sure, I'll learn how," said. Billy "And I'll sing 'Barnacle Bill the Sailor' at the same time."

Let’s take a 50-year leap. Barty is as busy as ever, not only in entertainment but engaging in some necessary activism. This is from the Hamilton Spectator, July 27, 1981.

Billy Barty Believes in Little People
By KATHLEEN WERNICK
TORONTO—Billy Barty asks the first question. It's about the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
"We get Canadian football in California. I like it. I'm a sports fan anyway—I'd watch checker games."
Later on, he mentions that, in his younger days, he played football and basketball at Los Angeles City College. But, by that time, nothing surprises about this charming, humorous man who has packed such a large life into his small frame.
Billy Barty is 3 feet 9 inches tall. He has been "in the business”, as he calls it, since he joined his family in vaudeville at the age of three.
His biography says his first movie was Busby Berkeley's Gold Diggers of 1933, but Barty corrects that. "Actually, I was making two-reelers in 1928.”
Now, he has finished a movie that he thinks "is going to change my whole motion picture career." He chuckles as he says it, for he has just used exactly the same words about "The Day of the Locust”, in which his dramatic role as the dwarf brought him special acclaim six years ago.
The new movie is Under the Rainbow, which opens in Hamilton this week and stars Chevy Chase and Carrie Fisher. It's billed as a madcap comedy and, on a publicity tour in Toronto, Billy Barty seems still to be caught up in its spirit.
"I play Otto Kriegling, sent on a mission by Hitler" he says in a heavy German accent. "I'm a bad guy."
"Listen, it was fun," he continues. "It gave me chance to speak out and to speak up, and act mean and nasty. It's not type-casting, you know.”
Billy Barty knows all about type-casting.
"It used to be that you'd see a little person," he explains, everybody would say 'Oh, is there a circus in town?’. ‘Don’t you work in a circus?’”
"Through the organization, the Little People of America, we have changed that image a lot. Only one per cent of the whole organization is in show business, and the others hold regular jobs.”
Barty founded the Little People of America in 1956 and says his motivation was "to get little people together so that they could communicate and find common needs—like medical, vocational, social and educational needs."
"We have developed so many things through the organization. We have books written about how to lower the closets, turn on a light switch, get a drink of water, find work, drive an automobile, make a telephone call.”
"We really try to be a positive-thinking organization, and we try to tell the little people that it's a two-way street. In other words, don't stand on the corner and wait for a hand-out. That's being very blunt, but it's being very honest."
Barty thinks that Under the Rainbow is going to change the image of little people further. There are 150 of them in the movie, which is set in the Culver Hotel in Culver City, California, in 1938.
That was the year The Wizard of Oz was made, and legends live on about the high jinks that the little people who played the Munchkins got up to while staying at the Culver.
Barty says the legends are about 75 per cent true. Things are different now for the actors who play the actors who played the Munchkins.
With week-long national conventions of the Little People of America being held annually since 1956, the exhilaration of being together, of being in a majority for once, is nothing new. There were 650 at last year's convention.
Through the Billy Barty Foundation, Barty helped cast the movie, introducing hundreds of little people to the producers.
"They had a great time doing it,” he says "It's going to show that little people can be entertaining. This is not a circus thing. This is not a side show. It just depicts little people as human beings in all different walks of life."

Back in 1942, Barty and his family "quit the business altogether.” He and his father and two sisters had toured in vaudeville through the U.S. and Canada, and Billy himself had played Rooney's kid brother in more than 75 Mickey Maguire comedies.
When they quit, Billy finished high school, majored in journalism at Los Angeles City College, and then became public-relations director of athletics for the college.
"But eventually, show business started to get back in my blood again," he says. "By 1950, I was back in full swing.”
That meant being part of Spike Jones' zany group for eight years, many network children's television shows, including Puff 'n' Stuff, Sigmund and the Sea Monster, and Billy Barty's Big Show, and more recent television credits in The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Little House on the Prairie and Chips.
Since Gold Diggers of 1933, he has appeared in more than 130 films, including W.C. Fields and Me, Foul Play, and Firepower.
"I just keep plugging away," he says, as he gets ready for the next city on the publicity tour. He has two television variety shows he's putting like to together, a movie script he'd do, and another he's writing, "if I ever get the time to work on it."
He has a golf tournament coming up, the ninth annual Little People's Invitational Tournament in California. And this week, he'll be meeting up with his wife and two children at a Little People of America convention in Minneapolis.
"Then it's off again," he says, "to continue the tour for Under the Rainbow. I hope the movie plants in the minds of the powers-that-be that little people can be, and are, entertaining.”

The first time I remember seeing him was on Laugh-In in 1968. Later, he appeared on Redd Foxx’s variety show. He was terrific on Spike Jones’ show in the ‘50s. You may have your own favourite Barty moments. I’m sure there are plenty to pick from.

The Vulture Punch

Vultures on the Mohave Desert think they are going to eat Mighty Mouse in Triple Trouble (1948). Foolish vultures. Haven’t they seen a Mighty Mouse cartoon before? It’s not like anything different happens in them.



The Mouse of Might’s fist grows to emphasize the punch. The background assists by changing into swirls. This is animated on twos.



Mighty Mouse takes off in perspective after a few stretched drawings that can only be the work of Jim Tyer.



Writer John Foster came up with yet another operetta. Eddie Donnelly directed.

The Timeless Pepper Gag

It goes back to Felix and Disney's knock-off version of the cat in the silent film days. The old pepper/sneeze gag (my guess is it was in comic strips before that).

Here is how it unfolds in Warners' Prince Violent (1961). Bugs Bunny is fed up with Viking Sam's elephant shooting boulders into his castle with his snout. The poses below are fun. Well, I like them.



Dave Detiege's story has some other old favourites in the comedy. They all still work.

Here’s an inside gag on the opening title card: the Warners shield. Hawley Pratt had been moved up to co-director at this point; Willie Ito was the layout artist with Tom O’Loughlin painting backgrounds.



And here's a pun that some of you might not get.



Back in the days of network radio and pre-network television, watch companies sponsored time-checks. One was Gruen. Ages ago, E.O. Costello put up a site devoted to explaining dated references in Warners cartoons. It's a little dated itself, but still useful. You can find it by clicking here.

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: McGillicuddy

We mentioned yesterday that Hugh Harman Productions made cartoons for the military during the war. Some of them for the U.S. Navy were similar to the Private Snafu cartoons the Warner Bros. studio animated for the Army. In this case, the bumbling marine was named Private McGillicuddy. The animation jumps from pose to pose in places, much like Hanna-Barbera’s first Ruff and Reddy cartoons, except there is some overlap. You can watch five of them below.

The director was possibly George Gordon, who was mentioned in the trades as directing health and sanitation films for the Navy. The studio’s production designer at the time was Bruce Bushman. The music is likely by Clarence Wheeler, who was signed by Harman in August 1944. I shouldn’t have to tell you who supplies the voices on these. The Hollywood Reporter of May 3, 1945 claimed Jack Benny okayed his hiring after reading the script, which is odd as he was not under exclusive contract to Benny. Then, again, it was claimed for years he was allergic to carrots, which wasn’t true either. Publicity is publicity,



Late note: Devon Baxter says Harman was interviewed about these. Gordon directed and Cal Howard provided stories.

The English Loved His Drawling Legs

Jack Benny and his writers never wasted a lot of potential material. They managed to wring laughs out of all kinds of things.

One was Jack’s sojourns to the Palladium in London. Afterwards, listeners to his radio show would hear gags about how Jack ridiculously puffed up opinions about his performances. The fact was the English enjoyed Jack as much as American audiences.

He set sail for England after the end of the 1947-48 season, the first time he had appeared there since 1931. The United Press reported he got a ten-minute ovation from a capacity audience on opening night. Beverly Baxter reviewed it for the Evening Standard of July 23, 1948 and took a nationalistic slight at something rather innocuous.

MISSING FROM HOME --the star turns of ENGLAND
On Monday of this week Mr. Jack Benny, of the U.S.A., arrived at the Palladium with his radio colleagues, Mr. Phil Harris, Miss Mary Livingstone and Miss Marilyn Maxwell.
A great crowd assembled to give them welcome, and Mr. Val Parnell was able to congratulate himself again on the great success of his star-spangled season.
Mr. Benny, with his drawling legs, his wistful imperturbability expression, and his pleasant voice, is a considerable artist. Anyone who can reduce the vast spaces of the Palladium to the intimacy of a morning room must be taken seriously. Nor was he content merely to reproduce the personal badinage which a corps of script writers supply for his weekly radio programmes.
It is true we heard about his meanness, and his age, as well as his low opinion of Mr. Fred Allen—all pleasant reminders of his war-time programmes—but he did try to brings us into the picture. I liked particularly his explanation of why he had left Claridges and gone to the Savoy: ”They're so stuffy at Claridges that you've got to be shaved before you can go into the barber shop.”
BRAVO, BENNY
WHEN he asked Miss Livingstone, who, as all Western Civilisation knows, is Mrs. Benny, to sing a kissing duet with Mr. Harris we had a glimpse of his powers as a mime. Utterly effortless, and with the very minimum of movement and expression, he conveyed what might be described as the commercial torment of a producer who has placed his wife in another man's arms. Let there be no mistake about it. The Big Shot in the Benny Show is Jack Benny.
Nevertheless Mr. Harris is a notable American import. He is one of those big, nimble-footed men with enough vitality for a battalion, and possessed of a contagious sense of fun. In fact, a perfect foil to his senior partner.
But now I must mention something creditable yet disturbing in connection with Mr. Harris. He had just completed a number when he leaned over the microphone and said words something like these: "Ladies and gentlemen, last week Jack and I discovered a dancing team of two English boys. We think they're fine and I hope you will think so too. So let's give a big hand to these English boys."
IN OUR TEMPLE
THERE was nothing but generosity in the Harris gesture, but it sounded in my ears like a colonial governor introducing a pair of dancing coolies at his garden party. Here in the Palladium, the shrine and temple of British variety, we are asked to give a hand to two of our own countrymen. Not for them our discrimination or criticism, but just—kindness. After all, Mr. Parnell, who is a most able producer, cannot escape his share of the responsibility. Week after week the headliners arrive from New York or Hollywood, thus proclaiming to the listening world that there are no stars in the English skies. Yet it was in this very theatre that the late George Black put British variety on a pinnacle again after it seemed to have gone into a hopeless decline.
It may be that our music hall artists need a New Look. Certainly the Americans have proved that they do not have to descend to “blue jokes” and embarrassing gestures to draw the crowd. The excuse is made that in the provinces a comic cannot survive unless he gives the people vulgarity, and that possible it is not to have one version for the provinces and another for London.
Let the case of Sid Field be the answer. He was a favourite for years in the provinces before Mr. Black discovered him, and he never trafficked in dirt.
I am sorry that, the pleasantries of Benny and company should have me into this serious vein, but periodically, in politics and the arts, there has to be a campaign to revive a pro-British feeling in Britain. Clearly this such a moment. Perhaps Mr. Phil Harris lit a beacon in Oxford-circus.

The Observer of July 25 had these words:

Jack Benny
ON Monday, to the delight of a packed house, the Palladium became a temple for the worship of visiting film stars. Jack Benny, the presiding deity on the stage, disarmed us immediately by remarking that he knew he looked much younger on the screen! Mr Benny is not a red-nosed comedian; he is a charming, polished, comic actor with a deceptively easy style and cumulative effect. He jokes gravely in a deliberate, lazy voice, and—rare feat among funny-men—he listens beautifully. He gives an air of spontaneity to a cunningly-arranged act; this includes Phil Harris, who is so full of himself he quite fills the theatre, and is great fun. But though his associates stand in the limelight, it is Mr. Benny, with deprecating shrug and resigned expression, who always manages to be at the centre of things. He and his company are here for two weeks only; Nota Benny. P.F.

As for the rest of the cast, Dennis Day appears to have taken most of the summer 1948 off; he was heard in the Disney film Melody Time. Don Wilson stayed in Hollywood as his wife headed for Hawaii; she divorced him next year. Eddie Anderson went on the road, including a trip to Canada. We’ll have more on that next weekend.

The Incomplete Hugh and Rudy

Ah, Hollywood. Land of Make Believe.

Not just on the screen but in print, too. There were all kinds of movie magazines, with concocted P.R. stories. There were gossip columns with publicity plants. And studio publications designed for in-house readers weren't always forthright, either.

For a brief time, MGM published “Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Short Story,” with reviews and stories about films and people who worked on the company’s shorts. That included cartoons, and the issue of November 1939 profiled the directors Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising.

Don’t expect any real journalism here. Harman and Ising were at MGM—the studio that got rid of them in 1937 and set up their own cartoon operation—because of Fred Quimby’s mismanagement. Having watched as New York and California animators clashed, and having gone through two studio managers, he was forced to re-hire Harman and Ising to produce and direct cartoons, this time on MGM’s payroll.

Animator Jim Pabian recalled to historian Mike Barrier: “Quimby told me he didn't want to have anything to do with Hugh, but he took him because Rudy wouldn't sign without him.” Quimby was honest about it with columnist Hedda Hopper, who quoted him on August 4, 1940 that “They [Harman and Ising] could never work together and both of them are so high in the clouds they haven’t any idea of what money means.” Nice tact and diplomacy, Fred. The two were still working for him when he said this. Indeed, the puff piece in “Short Story” suggests Quimby had to step in to keep them on budget because they over-animated everything.

On top of that, before this piece was even published, there was still politicking going on. Having lost Friz Freleng over the unrest, Quimby put Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera in co-directors’ chairs. Ising told Barrier he got “fed up” with Hanna and Barbera “because of the conniving they were doing with Quimby.”

There is no mention of Hanna or Barbera in the feature story below; though the first Tom and Jerry short, Puss Gets the Boot, was well into production.

Animating  MOTHER NATURE
IF YOU hear of a couple of young men being picked up on Hollywood Boulevard for obstructing traffic while escorting a lowly katydid across a busy corner, it’s an odds-on bet that they will be Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising. And you may be sure that their gallant deed will not be motivated by a maternal attitude toward insects or a desire to preserve entomological specimens. Rather, and admittedly quite selfishly, they will be merely furthering the development of their business interests.
It seems that Mr. Harman and Mr. Ising are two of Hollywood’s leading figures in the serious business of making cartoons for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. And insects, their habits and customs, are good and valuable assets in this peculiar business.
The Messrs. Harman and Ising have been working in this sphere of fantasy for some fifteen years now, and the theories they have developed over this period of years indicates that there is more to the business of making animals imitate humans than appears on the surface (or the screen).
At present, Harman and Ising are working separately on the M-G-M lot. Their films appear on the screen either as a Hugh Harman or Rudolph Ising preduction. Yet, they have to be considered as a team. Each always knows what the other is doing and they constantly exchange advice.
Their personalities are as different as Garbo’s and Judy Garland’s but their minds are like twin motors. Ising is quiet, serious, dark and built like a fighter. Harman is an easy talker, perpetual smiler, and small and wiry.
They make pictures for those folks who like to drink from the fountain of youth which is just about everyone alive. This fact, they state, is why adults like cartoons of animals acting like humans in a world of fantasy. Their reasoning is that, as children we all live in a make-believe world in which we want to believe that everything is possible, even talking animals, fairies and elves. From that world, they point out, we are plucked and set down in a school where we begin to be drilled in realities. Thereafter, everything is brutal fact.
For this reason, fondness for cartoon fantasy is a throwback to childhood. Harman and Ising still have that child psychology and hope they never lose it.
Although they do use human characters occasionally, animals are their popular stand-bys, also for definite reasons. “Through animals, humans can be caricatured more expertly,” they state. “Animated cartoons stress the faults and limitations of persons rather than their strong features. To an audience, it is like looking into a strange world, yet recognizing themselves and their acquaintances.
“The public would rather see animals do human things than human drawings do the same. Every animal, unless played for comedy menace, can be made to look lovable and cute. There is also the advantage of being able to give our animal characters all of the individualities in actions and thought of animals plus the same actions and thoughts of humans. We really have a two-barreled gun to shoot.”
There is still another vital reason for using animals. This is the limitation of reality placed on the actions of any human cartoon character. As they explain it, “We need both elementary things and exaggeration. Animal cartoon characters have the same advantage clowns have over straight actors. If we are to be absolutely human with a real-life character, we cannot stretch, twist or otherwise distort the face or body. The mere unnaturalness would make that character ugly. But the same distortion with an animal looks pleasing. Recall how clowns go to great extremes by painting their faces. They aren’t real, but everyone loves a clown.”



So far do Harman and Ising go in making humans in their stories absolutely normal, that they usually photograph a real person in action. They did this for the character of Goldilocks in “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” But the character that created the biggest sensation was the dancing fairy for “The Blue Danube,” a beautiful interpretation of a musical mood which told the story of how water babies, birds and animals gathered blue for the famous river. A real dancer posed in action. Then artists, being artists with an eye to beauty, drew a fairy with wings but without clothes. Oh, they gave her long Godiva-like hair, but realism went too far in some cases as the hair swayed. The result was considerable erasing later.
As long as cartoons are strictly fantasy, the unreal is valuable, but never possible with human characters. Hence, the two point out, a real character can never be a prolonged cartoon star—eventually all the limitations will be used up and the character will begin repeating his adventures because he can’t do impossible things which animals can do. They realized this when “Goldilocks” was made. The heroine of the fairy tale, for cartoon purposes becomes just a stooge for the bears. Harman is now making more with the Bear Family, treating them as a counterpart of the Hardys. Papa Bear is the main character, patterned after a cross between Edgar Kennedy and Oliver Hardy, with Beery’s voice. He is a “fall guy,” unemotional, suppressed, lazy, slow-moving and continually irritated by events that mount to the unbearable.
The next Bear picture will be “The Bear Family,” in which they again do the unconventional. The subject will open with a hand sketching Papa Bear. Gradually, the public will see how he is made to move and then he goes into his story. Papa Bear will also be treated as an unwilling actor on a stage through the use of a heckler, always brought in merely by his shadow looming from an “audience” and an off-screen voice.
This will be followed by “A Rainy Day” and an untitled fourth now in preparation (it takes eight months from story idea to completed subject). “A Rainy Day” will illustrate one of Harman and Ising’s basic principals—always base fantasy on realism. Papa Bear tries to repair a tiny hole in the roof, eventually wrecking the roof. As a storm comes up, the shingles blow away, fonming themselves into billowing waves, into which the bear plunges and starts swimming.
“Unreal? Sure!” Harman and Ising say. “But, we are creating a realistic storm behind all this and the burlesque touch will be accepted. We always avoid absurd tricks for our animal characters. The day is past when a cartoon cat could convert his tail into an airplane propeller and fly away. It once was funny. Today, the public, even in a world of fantasy won’t go for it. However, in ‘One Mother’s Family,’ a hawk is given all the characteristics of a zooming airplane. That is natural.”
If there is one outstanding prerequisite for a successful animated cartoon producer, what is it? Both Harman and Ising have the same answer—constant observation.
These two chaps are expert observers. They continually find themselves watching leaves blow in the breeze, cloud formations or water flowing to the sea or insects plodding along in their own peculiar fashion always to be able to put this movement in drawings. They are great believers in mood in backgrounds.
But, at the same time, they observe eccentricities in persons and animals and often find themselves staring. That’s because they are continually watching for ways to idealize types and characters.
This observation of animals, birds and insects has made every living creature have serious life to them. All their artists feel the same way and some are so imbued with this feeling that they would never kill even a poisonous spider or snake.
Harman and Ising read omnivorously for ideas, background, social causes and character study, seeking impressions rather than cold facts. For instance, the average man reads of the Palomar telescope to learn amazing details. Ising read of its ability to pierce the Milky Way and immediately got an idea. The result is his story, now in work, of the three little kittens who lost their mittens and were sent to bed without any supper. Hungry, they visualize the Milky Way as actually of milk, cream, butter, ice cream and whipped cream. So up in a balloon they go for adventures among milk products.
The two listen to the radio, mostly to study voices because voices are important in their work. Music occupies a great part of their home-life. To them music is action and color. They can’t play any instrument, but music gives them impressions. The Hungarian Rhapsody represented a perfect sunset to Ising and he drew it. Harman tells of playing one record for hours, trying to capture a pictorial mood. It happens frequently and always the following day his head is dizzy with the tune.
They are constantly striving for something different. Pictorial beauty frequently sweeps them away and they must be brought down to reality again by a guiding hand which happens to be Fred Quimby, the practical member who is in charge of the cartoon department.
Harman and Ising have probably the largest and most frequently-changing cast of cartoon characters in the business. That is because they continually experiment. If a star is created—as in the case of Papa Bear—they make a few more with him.
Having no strict star characters, they don’t have to work a certain one into every cartoon. The cartoon star system also holds the danger of finally killing a character. To keep a cartoon animal in character, he must have type which means he has limitations that eventually will consume every logical situation for him.
Both Harman and Ising agree that the tastes of the public are in a state of constant flux. The development of national and international events, they assert, subconsciously reacts on the majority of people. Producers of motion pictures with human actors are well aware of this and it is only logical, they contend, that cartoon producers must also take it into consideration. An example of this is the present talk of M-G-M)’s cartoon department “Peace on Earth,” which, while remaining in the realm of fantasy, is as timely as a current newsreel. The story concerns itself with a situation in which all humans have been killed in a series of wars, leaving animals as the sole inhabitants of the earth. The film is a sharp satire of a current event which is uppermost in the minds of the public. An old squirrel, a prototype of the late Chic Sale with all his provincial mannerisms, wisdom and homey philosophies, is called upon to create fantasy out of grim reality.
Tom Turkey will be Harman’s next introduction. He’ll be human, all right—a small-town “slicker” in mail order suit and yellow shoes. He’s the peppy fellow everyone knows, the guy who has an answer for everything and never seems to learn a lesson. Surrounding him will be a “stock company” of fowls representing small-town folk. At the same time, Ising is readying a little calf character for introduction in “Home On the Range.” This character will be given the power to reason and the mother-child love will be played up. It will stay away from slapstick and the calf will do no such un-real things as scratching his head.
What of the future of cartoons? Well, both Harman and Ising sincerely believe that animated cartoons eventually will express other emotions than the basic ones now used, but this will depend on technical advancement. They believe pathos, tragedy, love, drama, suspense and many other emotions will someday be as easy to express as comedy and irritation are today.
“After all,” they say, “animated cartoons have come a long way. Why, it was only ten or twelve years ago when pen and ink figures only moved. Today our cartoon characters really are individuals.”
Yes, Harman and Ising are experts in fantasy but they also have common sense; they picked a field in which their actors show very little temperament.

Harman’s stay at MGM ended on Apr. 5, 1941. He gathered some loyalists and opened his own studio. Fortunately, war work came along to keep it occupied. Ising left on October 5, 1942 to take over the Army Air Force’s animation unit on the West Coast. Neither of them regained the stature in the industry they held in the 1930s at Warners, then MGM.

One of their projects was for television, and this led to a clash with Hanna and Barbera. Los Angeles Daily News columnist Steve Ellingson was watching his wife sew one day, and wondered if the idea of sewing patterns could be adapted to woodworking. So he came up with U-Bild Woodworking Plans. The picture you see to the right (with local NBC TV star Barbara Logan) is from his column of June 5, 1952. Two of the patterns for wooden lawn ornaments are of two little dogs. “They’re television actors and were loaned to us by Harman-Ising, the popular animated cartoon studio,” wrote Ellingson. Their names were Ruff and Reddy. Yes, the same names as Hanna and Barbera’s first TV stars.

Ising didn’t think it was a coincidence. The Hollywood Reporter of June 30, 1958 reports he sued. There is little about the Harman-Ising “two dogs” version, other than listings in the Daily News for KNBH’s Junior Theatre at 6:30 p.m. Wednesdays in July and August 1951 (opposite Bob Clampett’s Time For Beany on KTLA). Three episodes were made, and Broadcasting magazine reported on Jan. 29, 1951 they were being distributed by Sterling Television (and produced by a New York company; there was no mention of Harman or Ising). KOB in Albuquerque promoted 20-minute episodes called “The Treasure” and “The Diamond.”

Other Harman-Ising projects included a live/animation combination series starring Emmett Kelly that CBS was considering in 1956. The Conejo News of July 27 described it this way: “Emmett Kelly never speaks and when he takes an orphan boy [played by eight-year-old Terry Rangno] under his wing the only way he can answer the boy’s many questions about the circus is through his ability to draw cartoons. In each instance the story will evolve from a cartoon drawn for the boy by Emmett Kelly.” The story names the technical staff, but no animator. Rangno was, rather optimistically, signed to a five-year contract.

Harman and Ising’s names appeared in Hedda Hopper’s column on May 20, 1958. A deal had been set up in the U.S. with Toei Motion Picture Co. and Kyoto for production of several pictures. Kyoto was said to be “affiliated with Harman-Ising.”

Harman died on November 25, 1982. Ising passed away on July 18, 1992. They both got recognition in the public press for creating the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies for Warner Bros. Said Clampett about Harman: “He was one of the truly great pioneers of animation. At the time he started there was hardly any animation, just silent films. You might say that some of their MGM films were in every respect equal to Disney. They all started with a very crude medium and with Walt did the most to bring it to greatness.”

Fight Club Popeye

Popeye was invincible after eating spinach, so the Fleischer staff found ways to make it backfire.

In Can You Take It (1934), Popeye leaps into a Fleischer version of the fight club and (non-twisker) punches the guy to his right. The fighters are in a circle and fall like dominoes. But the force of the punch is so strong, Popeye gets knocked down, too.



He punches the guy on his left. Same result.



Finally, Popeye hits on a solution by hitting the wooden floor with his fist. Perspective animation follows.



The music in the background is “You’ve Got to Be a Football Hero,” though there are no footballs in sight. Myron Waldman and Tom Johnson get the rotating screen credits. The cartoon was made when Bonnie Poe was playing Olive Oyl.