There would have been good prints available. Today, people like Steve Stanchfield at Thunderbean have to search everywhere for decent remaining elements to restore these cartoons to the best condition they can.
One is Nursery Scandal, an Aesop Fable released August 27, 1932. The versions I’ve seen as of this posting are pretty low-resolution and edited; you can hear a cut in Gene Rodemich’s soundtrack after Mother Goose’s goose and a bird comment about the romance going on—and this is the horrendous scandal—between Mother Goose (who looks like a witch) and a scarecrow.
This short is Van Beuren pretending to be 1929 Walt Disney. There’s a lot of dancing, singing by a male quartet heard in other Aesop Fables, and, well, not much else.
An interesting bit of animation is when the marching horses turn around, with their tails becoming heads and vice versa. Even in these pixilated frames, you can see how the heads wither and change.
What would a Van Beuren cartoon be without happy dancing? You can find scenes like these in The Farmerette and Barnyard Bunk.
The cow jumps over the moon! I love the tongues. And I just noticed the cat is Puss in Boots.
Van Beuren churned out the cartoons in 1932. There were two or three releases every month. Is it any wonder the quality suffered? The same month Nursery Scandal was released, RKO put out Wild Goose Chase, Aug. 13 (Fables) and Jolly Fish, Aug. 19 (Tom and Jerry). Some of the animation (and character designs) in this came from the 1931 Fable Fairyland Follies. Harry Bailey and John Foster get the "by" credit.
The gnome quartet is singing "The Kings Horse's (and the King's Men") by Noel Gay and Harry Graham. Here's a nice little version of it.
“ Van Beuren churned out the cartoons in 1932. They were two or three releases every month. Is it any wonder the quality suffered?”
ReplyDeleteI mean…considering Paul Terry under Van Beuren was churning out one Fable every single week in the 1920s…
The difference is sound.
DeleteThe silent Fables could easily be slashed out.
The sound ones involved writing a score (after buying music rights), arranging it, bringing in musicians and recording. Jack Ward was hired at Van Beuren to work out dance animation. The cartoons were a lot more involved than Terry and Moser dashing out scenes, though it may not look like it at times.
Of course I understand the differences between them. Just wanted to point out the major differences in release schedules between both.
DeleteIn fact, interestingly, most cartoon series around 1932 (from the Warner releases to Fleischer and Disney) also were churning out 2-3 cartoons per year…and the Aesop Fables in sound were previously releasing 2 shorts per year in the years before! Probably due to the short backlog is why they look so crude (in comparison to later years when cartoon studios had a larger backlog).
*per month is what I mean, not per year. Obviously
DeleteThe "Cow Jumps Over the Moon" sequence is Jim Tyer's work, Yowp.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the I.D.
Delete"Scandal" in this context refers to a light musical entertainment with minimal plot, equivalent to "revue," as in George White's Scandals of 1934 and 1935.
ReplyDeleteNoel Gay was in reality a church organist named Reginald Armitage, who wrote popular songs pseudonymously to avoid -- and I'm using the word in its usual sense here -- scandal.
Despite the crude animation, a deceptively sophisticated cartoon for its time.
ReplyDelete