It’ll be a treat to see these in a form other than faded copies of public domain DVDs.
I doubt restoration will make me like any of these cartoons, but the Thunderbeaners have done an excellent job. The animation is very good in Felix the Cat Meets Old King Cole, especially the effects. Here are some frames from Felix the Cat Meets Bold King Cole (1936). Felix is riding a tree branch in a thunderstorm. There’s a zap, the branch gets away from him and Felix is riding a lightning bolt.
I’ll take the silent Felix, thanks. He was a rounded character, ingenious one minute and scheming the next. Van Beuren’s version could easily be played by Mickey Mouse. Molly Moo-Cow could be played by Pluto (now with her blackface scene fully restored), while Parrotville is a place where you wait and wait and wait for something to happen.
RKO thought so little of these shorts that it decided it didn’t need cartoons from a studio it had part interest in and released real Mickey Mouse and Pluto cartoons instead. Van Beuren got out of the cartoon business but still released travelogues for another year.
However, praise should again go to Thunderbean for the hard effort on behalf of those of you who want an improved look at these Technicolor shorts. And, like any good release, there are interesting extras on the disc.
That's one of best things about watching these restorations is how downright EXPENSIVE some of these films look from some of the B studios ("Expensive" and "Van Beuren Studios" together brings me chills).
ReplyDeleteUnlike Paul Terry, I don't think Van Beuren wanted to be cheapskates. They shelled out money for music rights, hired Margie Hines to do voices, and paid for rights for Amos 'n' Andy, which would not have been inexpensive, as well as The Little King, and later on Felix and Toonerville. Burt Gillett, whom they hired at the peak of his reputation, seems to have been given a decent budget. It's just he turned out cartoons that didn't find an audience.
DeleteThe parts were greater than the whole. When you've got Joe Barbera, Bill Littlejohn and Jack Zander (all working on Tom and Jerry at MGM in a few years) plus Dan Gordon, Carlo Vinci and Alex Lovy, you should be able to make funny cartoons. Instead, they gave the world Molly Moo Cow and some boring parrots. Wasn't it Barbera who said "What can you do with a cow?"