Dog, Cat and Canary must have been someone’s favourite, as it was nominated for an Oscar, losing in 1945 to the Tom and Jerry short Mouse Trouble.
There’s some good animation. In this scene, the cat’s eyes become telescopic, checking out the canary and the sleeping guard dog.
Then the rest of the cat’s head comes up to meet the eye pupils. These drawings are animated on twos.
The characters? Eh. Just another cat and bird and dog. They don’t really stand out, not like the Oscar-winning Tom and Jerry who were pretty expressive characters in the mid-‘40s. Despite that, the canary was turned into Flippy (at least according to Boxoffice Barometer of Nov. 17, 1945) and appeared in some forgettable cartoons. The Exhibitor of January 24, 1945 rated the cartoon “fair.”
Howard Swift directed this short, with animation credited to Volus Jones and Jim Armstrong, and the story to Grant Simmons.
The following year, Rippling Romance was Columbia’s Oscar nominee, losing again to Tom and Jerry. It was the final Screen Gems short up for an Academy Award. The studio gave the bird to the animation world and shut down.
Presumably those Columbia cartoons became "Favorites" when all those Warner Bros. cartoons won Blue Ribbons. Famous Studios had a name for its reissues, but I forget what it was: Paramount Something, but of course the Paramount logo was taken off when the cartoons were sold to TV.
ReplyDeleteThe Famous name was Champions. MGM Cartoons also won Gold Medals judging from the name of it’s reissues.
DeleteSome reason they renamed the bird to Flippity in the comics, I don't know why to be honest.
ReplyDeleteBut anyway, these Flippy and Flop cartoons feel more like diet versions of Sylvester and Tweety, which is ironic considering that they replaced them when it comes to the theatrical cat/canary genre by the time the series ended.
This has the pluses and minuses of the late Screen Gems work. Decent to pretty good animation, but weaknesses in story and characterization.
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