The Scoop on Scoop Scandals

In the early 1930s, there were cartoon studios like Harman-Ising, Fleischer, Charles Mintz, Walter Lantz and others that had a regular schedule of animated shorts released by the major motion picture companies.

There were others that tried to take advantage of the popularity of sound cartoons spurred by Walt Disney, but didn’t quite make it.

One of these was Scoop Scandals.

The Film Daily of October 5, 1930 published the advertisement to the right.

The trades had a flurry of blurbs about the new studio. Variety reported on October 10th:

New Producing Firm
Louis B. Mayer’s brother, Rudolph, a production executive at Metro, and Lou Ostrow, formerly studio manager for Tiffany, have formed a company to produce pictures and will begin with a cartoon series to be called “Scoop Scandals.” Offices have been opened at 1047 Fairfax Ave., Hollywood.

The company was already in operation when this story was written. The Daily News of Los Angeles reported on the 3rd:

Joseph P. Medbury, humorist, yesterday was being sued in municipal court by the “Scoop Scandals, Ltd.,” who allege that the writer omitted to return to them a partial payment of $500 on a story refused as unsatisfactory for publication.

I suspect the paper means writer John P. Medbury, who, according to Variety about a month later, countersued.

We learn a bit more from the Nov. 26 issue of Variety.

NEW CARTOON SHORTS
Hollywood, Nov. 25
John Decker, former “Vanity Fair” and “New York World” cartoonist, has been engaged by Rudolph Mayer and Lew Ostrow to turn out a new cartoon shorts series tentatively titled, “Scoop Scandals.”
Reel will caricature international names. Release is not set but will probably be Metro.

Yes, MGM was already releasing Flip the Frog cartoons made by Ub Iwerks’ studio. Metro wasn’t above considering an additional animation series, much like RKO was putting Toby the Pup cartoons (from Mintz) on screens at the same time as the Aesop’s Fables (from Van Beuren Productions).

This raises the question: were any of these cartoons made? The answer is “yes” and one was screened before a theatre audience in Los Angeles. The Hollywood Reporter gave its verdict in the December 18 edition.

Burlesque News Reel Very Funny
A new picture company has come into being called Scoop Scandals, Ltd. It is being sponsored by Rudolph Mayer and Lou Ostrow and they previewed the first of their Cartune News Reels last night. The idea for this burlesque was conceived by John Decker, of the New York World. Leonard Sachter does the photography.
The first showing of this novel short was heartily received by a large preview audience and deservedly so. There has always been a good spot for someone to come along and fill in, with a few reels of kidding, the weekly news output. The caricatures of Al Smith, Cal Coolidge and Mussolini have been very well done. The gags are good and well supported by laugh lines. They take a good crack at Congress through the medium of a Will Rogers cartoon and for fillers-in they picture an endurance flight and a bit of human interest along the lines of “romance.” The only comedy that failed to “click” was a Leon Errol episode which was decidedly weak.
Elmer Young has done a good job as head animator for these cartoons. The only fault of this news reel lies in the synchronization and at times in the talk was not so clear, which may or may not have been the fault of the recording.
No release has been arranged for this series as yet but it is rumored that there is a deal on with MGM.

Elmer Young and his brother Frank had owned a company that made silent, stop-motion films. Read more in this Cartoon Research post.

So what happened? Variety of March 25, 1931 provides the answer:

Cartoon Newsreel Too Complicated, So Folds
Hollywood, March 24.
“Scoop Scandals,” burlesque cartoon newsreel series being produced by Rudolph Mayer and Lew Ostrow for Metro, folded after the first was completed. Mechanical difficulties in production of the cartoons was responsible. Idea was originated by John Decker, cartoonist, who sold it to Mayer and Ostrow.

Does the reel still exist? I won’t speculate. We have readers more knowledgeable about this stuff than I am and rarities have surfaced from time to time since starting this blog.

Who animated this cartoon besides Young? We can thank Harvey Deneroff and his short, but valuable, interviews with cartoon artists at the Animation Guild’s Golden Banquet Awards 40 years ago, which are posted on the Cartoon Research site.

Larry Silverman began working in animation in New York in 1926. He told Harvey he worked for Paul Terry (who would have been just starting a studio with Frank Moser after being bounced from Van Beuren’s Fables operation). Then he went to the West Coast.

“I was working for a studio that was making some kind of a cartoon based on news, which wasn’t going to work, and they didn’t know it. But they closed up after a couple of weeks, too. And then Fergie [Norm Ferguson] got me a job at Disney’s.”

Silverman got screen credit on Harman-Ising’s Wake Up The Gypsy in Me (1933). You can see his name on Famous/Paramount cartoons after he returned to New York (see the internet for his studios and screen credits; I won’t list them here). He was at least partly responsible for a newspaper strip called Jungletown Fables. This one is from November 1933.


The only one person I’ve found associated with the studio is not an animator. This story from Variety of Aug. 25, 1931 seems to have been its last hurrah.

Novelty Newsreel Co. Loses $7,025 Judgment
Los Angeles, Aug. 24
Daniel F. Tattenham has been awarded $7,025 from Scoop Scandals. Ltd., for the balance of a year at $150 a week as producer of animated cartoons. Tattenham claimed wrongful discharge.
Scoop Scandals, organized last fall to make burlesque news reels for Metro, was dropped because of mechanical difficulties.

There we are. A brief story about another footnote of the Golden Age of Animation.