Blackboard Revue

Stick figures dancing on a blackboard are one of the highlights of Teacher’s Pests, a 1932 Water Lantz cartoon. Among the crew was Tex Avery.

Avery included stick figures in Porky’s Preview (1941), but another cartoon was based around them a year earlier.

Blackboard Revue was produced by Ub Iwerks for release by Columbia in 1940. The story itself is an old chestnut. Inanimate characters come to life at night, sing and dance, then when dawn breaks, they rush to become inanimate again.

The school teacher in the cartoon is an imitation of Tizzy Lish, who was a female impersonator on the Al Pearce radio show.



Some of the "students." And a dopey student.



A late student comes in and tells the teacher a tale of being stopped by Indians. Teacher: "Indians?! Were they Blackfeet?" Student: "How should I know? They were wearing shoes."



He jumped into an eagle's next, then tangled with the eagle.



He landed in front of a cave, and out stepped an enormous black bear. Teacher: "A cinammon bear?" Student: "How should I know what flavour?" (The Cinammon Bear was a kids radio show).



The student escapes from the bear by hoisting himself using the chalk numbers and letters on the blackboard.



The teacher believes none of it, and asks what he expects to be when he grows up. Now the cartoon switches gears and the student launches into a song, with the Rhythmettes singing behind Blanc. He wants to be an engineer. A girl student wants to be a movie star. Caricaturist Ben Shenkman gives us another approximation of Clark Gable. A hand-on-hip nancy boy wants to be a fireman.



"Well, shut my mouth!" This chalk drawing taps just like Bojangles Robinson.



The dullard student wants to lead a band. Everybody dances!



A bird on a tree outside sounds reveille. The drawings rush back to where they came from. The camera pulls away from the blackboard and the scene dissolves to outside the schoolhouse, which is how things started.

Ub Iwerks is the only artist credited, with both Eddie Kilfeather (music) and Joe De Nat (musical direction) getting credits. Among the staff at Cartoon Films in 1940 were Ed Benedict, Tom McKimson and Paul Fennell.

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.

Wacky Stripper

Warner Bros. had cartoons titled Wacky Blackouts, Wacky Wild Life and The Wacky Worm, so why not a “wacky” cartoon at Screen Gems?

Wacky Wigwams (1942) has something else in common with Merrie Melodies. Besides being a spot-gag cartoon like Wacky Wild Life by Tex Avery, a variation on Avery’s stripper gag from Cross Country Detours (1940) found its way into the short.

“Back in the days of the covered wagon,” intones the narrator, “the territory which is now called the state of Oklahoma was known as the Cherokee Strip.” The panning camera stops on a helpful sign.



The camera resumes panning. Why look! It’s a stripping Cherokee!



The gag in Cross Country Detours ends with a card over the stripper’s body so we can’t see her naked. In Wacky Wigwams, guess what?



Even a better-looking print can't save this one.

Columbia put out another “wacky” cartoon—Wacky Quacky (1947) which featured a duck resembling Daffy engaging in Warners-type gags with a dumpy, bald hunter.

Cohwumbia Wabbit

Columbia/Screen Gems did pretty obvious knock-offs of Warner Bros. characters. There’s the Columbia version of Daffy Duck (Wacky Quacky), Sylvester (Up ‘n’ Atom) and you might include Tweety (Flippy the canary cartoons).

But that isn’t what we get in Mysto Fox (1946). The fox, cast as a magician in this cartoon, needs a rabbit to pull out of a hat. The crow decides to take the job by disguising himself as a rabbit. And who better to emulate to convince the fox he’s a rabbit than Bugs Bunny.

The door opens and the barely-disguised crow is seen munching a carrot and, in his usual voice, says “Uh, whadda know, Doc?”



He takes another bite out of the carrot.



Crows aren’t known for their appetite for carrots, so after chewing, he looks around to see if he’s being watched, and spits out the carrot off-camera (to the sound of a cowbell).



Publicity stories were already circulating at this time that Mel Blanc “was allergic” to carrots and spit them out at recording sessions. That was made-up. Blanc finally confessed he didn’t like the taste of them.

Of course, Blanc isn’t heard in this cartoon. The fox and crow are portrayed by Frank Graham (who also did voice work at Warners).

Screen Gems shorts can have bizarre endings that make no sense. This one has a bizarre ending that makes sense. The fox uses magic to turn the crow into an actual rabbit, then fires at him with a cannon as he hops into the distance to end the cartoon.



The fox deserves to win once in a while and he does in this cartoon.

The story was by Sid Marcus, who left for Warner Bros. when Columbia closed and wrote for the real Bugs Bunny. Chick Otterstrom and Ben Lloyd are the credited animators for director Bob Wickersham, with the score by Eddie Kilfeather.

The short was originally released Aug. 29, 1946.

A black-and-white print is the only one circulating on the internet. Considering how it was originally made in colour and re-released several years later, you’d think someone has a 35mm Technicolor print.

Newfoundland?

Charlie Dog had a routine where he was “50%” various kinds of dogs and enthusiastically went into cliché gags about different breeds (Often An Orphan, 1949).

There were earlier cartoons which foisted the same doggie puns on theatre audiences. One of them was The Pooch Parade, a 1940 spot-gag short from Columbia.

The puns in this one really make you cringe, and you can probably guess the punch lines before they happen. There’s a Spitz, a watch dog, a Mexican hairless, a bird dog, Doberman Pinchers, everything except the “setter” gag. But there’s one I don’t get.

The film cuts a couple of times to a Newfoundland dog, except he’s not there. The narrator wonders where he could be. A hand pulls down a map of Newfoundland. The map morphs into a barking dog. “Thanks a lot,” responds the narrator.



Someone is going to have to explain this one to me.

Allen Rose was responsible for the story on this one. Harry Love and Lou Lilly are the credited animators, but there’s no director mentioned on screen. Mel Blanc supplies his dullard voice and his falsetto/lady voice. The narrator is Jack Lescoulie-esque, but it’s not him.

Familiar Duck, Familiar Gags

If you want to watch a Warner Bros. cartoon that isn’t a Warner Bros. cartoon, then seek out Columbia/Screen Gems’ 1947 epic Wacky Quacky.



No, that’s not Daffy Duck. It can’t be. This duck is green, with a red ring around its neck. Any resemblance is, um, coincidental. Just like the hunter isn’t Elmer Fudd.

The cartoon is filled with switches on familiar gags. There’s a log gag (without a cliff, like in All This and Rabbit Stew) which segues into brick building gag (kind of like Bugs Bunny Rides Again).

To speed the pace, director Alex Lovy uses multiple Daffys non-Daffys when building the wall.



Fudd The hunter hits the wall so hard, he knocks the mortar away from the bricks.



Cal Howard (formerly of Warner Bros.) provides a story twist. The duck grabs the gun and becomes the hunter.

The character, by the way, wasn’t named Wacky Quacky, if you want to go by a shorts list in Boxoffice magazine in 1947. I don’t know where it got the names. The Sylvester knock-off in several Columbia cartoons is apparently named “Klever Kat.” And the less said about “Mitey Mouse,” the better.

If the score sounds like something from a late-‘40s Woody Woodpecker cartoon, that shouldn’t be surprising as it was composed by Darrell Calker.