The Life and Death of Cancer

In mid-1944, former Disney men Larry Morey and John Sutherland set up Plastic Productions with the idea of creating stop-motion animated shorts. Several were released under the Daffy Ditties label by United Artists.

In November the following year, the company announced it would make industrial and commercial films, the first being Railroading by Radio, then said in April 1946 it was getting out of the “puppet” business. Variety reported on May 3 the company had signed with the American Cancer Society for a “cancer short for for showing to schools and social groups, to make public aware of disease and its diagnosis and cure.” The cost was to be $50,000.

The Traitor Within was not in production long. Variety reported on Aug. 28 it had been finished.

The cartoon took advantage of representational designs, still fairly new in 1946, and limited animation techniques, including drawings dissolving into each other.

A cycle shot of some cells in the human body (wear a cap and overalls) is interrupted by the narrator. “Once in a while, something goes wrong with the normal cells, and cancer originates.” Even in this faded print, you can see black death enveloping the healthy cell.



“It steals food from the normal cell.”



The cancer cell divides.



The narrator goes on to tell us cancer can be cured if it is stopped early. By surgery. By x-ray radiation. By rays emanating from radium.



The cartoon had distribution problems, like other films, because war-time materials for processing still weren't readily available. Variety said on Dec. 9, 1946: "John Sutherland Productions likewise is temporarily stymied in one of its educational shorts, “The Traitor Within,” made for American Cancer Society. With 250 prints ordered from Technicolor, Sutherland has been able to get delivery on only one print, which now is in hands of Society."

The uncluttered visuals and low-key narration still make this an effective film.

Unlike Sutherland cartoons at the end of the ‘40s and into the early ‘50s, The Traitor Within has a card with credits. The director was George Gordon, animation by Pete Burness, Irv Spence and Elmer Swanson, with “art direction” by Bernice Polifka. Norm Wright was responsible for the story and Paul Smith, ex-Disney, the music. Unfortunately, none of the voice actors are identified.

Rhapsody in Cement

Friz Freleng’s Rhapsody in Rivets (1941) was one of a number of cartoons to synchronise Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 to animated action on screen. It was nominated for an Oscar, but the cartoon based on the same music which won the award was the Tom and Jerry short The Cat Concerto (1947).

Mike Maltese (at least he received the rotating story credit) and Freleng must have worked closely to match gags to the timing of the music. I can’t explain it, but the humour is something that would come out a Freleng unit cartoon.

One routine involves a cement mixer acting as a cocktail shaker. After the “drink” is poured out, an arm appears from behind the mixer and plops a garnish on top. I cannot picture Chuck Jones (even with Maltese writing) using this kind of gag.



Correct me I’m wrong, but I believe the first cartoon to employ this piece of music was in 1929 in The Opry House, a Mickey Mouse short. You can also hear it (besides in the aforementioned cartoons) in various lengths in Fire Bugs (Fleischer, 1930), Bars and Stripes (Mintz/Columbia, 1931), The Candy House (Lantz, 1934), A Car-Tune Portrait (Fleischer, 1937), Farmyard Symphony (Disney, 1938), Dipsy Gypsy (George Pal/Paramount, 1941), Rhapsody Rabbit (Warners, 1946), Back Alley Oproar (Warners, 1948), The Magic Fluke (UPA/Columbia, 1949) and Convict Concerto (Lantz, 1954). I must be missing some.

(Yes, I know, The Simpsons, Roger Rabbit. I’m talking about theatrical animated shorts).

It was originally released Dec. 6, 1941; the Warners’ theatre in Fresno screened it that day. Spake an exhibitor to the Motion Picture Herald:

You might call this a partial burlesque of Fantasia. No matter what you call it, it is a very, very clever cartoon showing the building of a skyscraper to the Second Hungarian Rhapsody music. My audience laughed a great deal and praised it afterward.

Gil Turner received the rotating animator credit, chopped off when the cartoon was re-released in 1947. The backgrounds appear to be the work of Leonard Kester.

Jack Benny is a Tattletale Grey Bunny

When sound came into theatres, animated cartoons featured piles of celebrity caricatures and parodies. So did radio shows, too. The early Jack Benny show featured imitations of, or jokes about, Garbo, Ed Wynn, Eddie Cantor, and so. It seems fair, then, that cartoons made fun of Jack Benny, too.

The climax for the animated Benny likely came in the 1959 Warner Bros. short The House That Jack Built, but there were others we detailed in this post. In several, he was depicted as a rabbit named “Jack Bunny.”

One of these was Goofy Groceries, released by Warners in 1941. It was directed by Bob Clampett, who loved tossing pop culture references into his cartoons. Early in this one, “Jack Bunny” introduces himself to us. “Hello again, folks,” he says to us (the real Benny opened his show then with “Jell-O again”), waving a Benny-esque cigar.



The cartoon harkens back to the Harman-Ising days of the early ‘30s, when a villain would grab the heroine in the second half of the cartoon, and the good guys would unite to rescue her. Here, a can-can dancer (yes, she’s a can) is trapped by a huge gorilla.

Bunny sees it and reacts, jumping on a bottle of horse radish. Off-camera, Mel Blanc shouts the name of Benny’s 1940 feature film—“Buck Benny Rides Again.” (The movie’s cast includes Carmichael the bear, voiced on Benny’s show by Blanc, but Blanc doesn’t do Carmichael in the film).



Bunny gets cornered after an axe he is carrying is shrunk by smoke from a Roman candle held by the gorilla.



The gorilla lights another fireworks stick and hands it to Bunny. A blare of trumpets. It's Superguy! He fails to rescue Bunny. Only Clampett would have a super-hero drawn with cross-eyes and buck teeth (it appears Superguy also skipped leg day in the gym).



The gorilla lights another fireworks stick and hands it to Bunny. But the gorilla is stopped by another radio reference. Shouts a female voice from off-camera: “Henry!” “Coming, mother,” shouts the gorilla. You should recognize this from the opening of radio’s The Aldrich Family which filled in for Benny as a summer replacement series in 1939. The mother gorilla is voiced by Sara Berner, who portrayed a number of characters on the Benny radio show.



None of this stops the large firecracker from exploding.



The explosion leaves Bunny blackened into a rabbit version of Jack Benny’s valet. “My, oh, my,” observes the now-Rochester rabbit to the camera, “Tattletale grey!” It’s the same ending Clampett used with a ghost in Jeepers Creepers (1939).



The “tattletale grey” is another pop culture reference.



While Blanc does Bunny-as-Rochester’s voice, Bunny is played by Jack Lescoulie, who hosted The Grouch Club on KFWB radio. In 1939, the show appeared on the Red network's WEAF at 6:30 p.m. Sundays just before Benny. His impersonation doesn’t do anything for me, but I’m in the minority as his version of Benny is heard in several cartoons at more than one studio, and even on the Benny show itself during a programme billed as Jack’s “10th anniversary” on radio.

Benny, his show, and his supporting actors provided plenty of inspiration for writers and directors when cartoons and network radio shared a golden age. You can learn much about this from the ne plus ultra of voice acting experts, Keith Scott, in his two-book set.

UPA: Better Than a Cartoon

Is it possible to say when the UPA cartoon studio peaked?

There were plaudits through the early 1950s, with a handful of films being praised. In 1955, When Magoo Flew won an Oscar and the company signed with CBS to produce a cartoon series for television. Within a few years, there wasn’t much left. The McBoing Boing show didn’t attract young viewers, who seem to have preferred Bugs Bunny and Popeye, Columbia dropped its cartoons from theatrical release, and a number of key employees walked out to set up Format Films.

The story below from the Los Angeles Daily News, Feb. 2, 1953, is atypical. The praise was always the same: a) The cartoons are arty, b) they don’t have talking funny animals. While both are true, the studio’s product is, on the whole, not entertaining to me. Does anyone really want to see The Popcorn Story? Or Georgie and the Dragon? Or Picnics Are Fun?

The Tell-Tale Heart can hardly be called animation. It consists mainly of camera pans over Paul Julian’s backgrounds, augmented with moody music and narration. And Mr. Magoo went from delightfully cantankerous, to an old fuddy-duddy who can’t read signs, to a pitch-man for light bulbs and beer.

ANIMATED CARTOONS FIND HIGHER PURPOSE
Film cartoonists try to be more than just quaint
By DAVID BONGARD
"Why, that's better than a cartoon."
These were the words of a spectator after her first encounter with United Productions of America's cartoon, "Family Circus," an old effort in that company's increasing by popular derby of short subjects for movie houses.
Such household friends as Walt Disney's Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and Pluto are now up against a still new type of competition. This new adversary in the cartoon field depends upon the latest and most inventive expression in modern art to win public affection and cut production costs. Where the venerable Disney plant employs a horde of artists to supply the wealth of minute detail for Disney's animated subjects, UPA's Steve Bosustow relies on simplified, fixed backgrounds and concentrates on the dramatic movement of his central figure. This character may be an abstraction, a semi-recognizable young man such as Gerald McBoing-Boing, a caricature of such universality as Mr. Magoo, or an impressionistically costumed little sweetheart such as Bemelman's Madeline.
Adult
This form of expression lends itself well to telling sophisticated yarns identifiable with the trials of our own era. Its appeal to the adult is discernable in the reaction of the spectator quoted above.
Its possibilities for communication seem limitless. Adults aren't the only ones impressed. Children also are vastly amused by the antics of "Gerald McBoing-Boing," the youngster who never learned to talk, but expresses himself by making sound effects. Besides a host of international awards, Gerald won for Bosestow [sic] an Academy Award for the best cartoon in 1951.
Contending also for public affection is the irresponsible Mr. Magoo who perpetrates colossal blunders due to a combination of myopia and an amusingly cantankerous view of life in general. In charge of Magoo's onslaughts is Pete Burness, an affable cartoon director who admits Magoo resembles his dad in some respects.
Variety
Variety in repertory is the life blood of UPA. Bosustow, once he approves a story for production, leaves the execution up to his staff of young, imaginative directors who include Burness, Robert (McBoing-Boing) Cannon, Ted ("Tell-Tale Heart") Parmelee and Bill Hurtz. Hurtz directed the fabulously effective CBS radio commercial feature which uses a compelling array of abstract art to prove that radio is far from dead. Hurtz also is working on Thurber's "Unicorn in the Garden," which again should show what can be done with a cartoon.
UPA is hoping to do a full-length feature based on more Thurber humor which they will retail with the title, "Battle of the Sexes." Financing for such a project has yet to be worked out. UPA as yet operates only on its periodic earnings from film distributors. The enterprise, nevertheless, has come a long way from the day a few years ago when the first cartoon was laid out on a dining room table. It now has its own cheerful studios across from the Warner lot in Burbank.
The studio hires nearly 100 people. A UPA cartoon costs from $30,000 to $50,000, which is about $20,000 less than it costs most other cartoon companies to make one. Musical scores are an integral part of each cartoon, and a composer is specifically commissioned for a subject. Musicians are hired for each production as they are needed, and well-known actors are hired to speak the dialog. Jim Backus talks for Magoo.
The company produces training films for the armed services which dip heavily into psychology to make their point. UPA also makes commercial films ballyhooing products.
For entertainment, a new project is Edgar Allan Poe's thriller, "The Tell-Tale Heart," which will be ready in April. The adjoining reproductions of the background are those conceived by artist Paul Julian. It should mark another step in inventive story-telling as inaugurated by UPA's successful version of Frankie and Johnnie, "Rooty Toot-Toot."
The second McBoing-Boing cartoon, which soon will be released, concerns young Gerald's ability to save the day for a radio station when a symphony orchestra fails to show up for a broadcast. He impersonates the sounds of the full orchestra.
With its fresh approach, its unfettered individuality combined with a style designed to limit production costs, UPA is well on the road to revolutionizing the cartoon world.

Whether you want to attribute it to UPA, animated TV commercials through the 1950s featured inventive, simpler designs, both in characters and backgrounds (when there were any). Limited animation was the norm when made-for-TV cartoons began appearing in the ‘50s, but Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera never (as far as I know) mentioned UPA, instead talking about its pose reels at MGM being an inspiration.

Still, UPA created something different from other studios, and deserves credit for trying and, for a while, succeeding.

Banana Bugs

Bugs Bunny makes a 360-degree turn in perspective in Falling Hare (1943) as the gremlin trips him up with banana peels.

These are 17 consecutive drawings.

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Tom McKimson apparently animated this scene. The rotating screen credit for animation went to Rod Scribner.