He's a Bat Man, Not Batman

Director Don Patterson found a different way to transition from one scene to the next in Under the Counter Spy, a 1954 Woody Woodpecker cartoon.

The villain of this Dragnet parody, The Bat, jumps over a fence and runs toward the camera, mainly on twos. His black cape envelopes the frame.



After only two frames in darkness, The Bat has turned around and heads toward a new background drawing, one of the outside of Woody’s home.



The scene isn’t really animated. The drawings of The Bat are poses, one after another, with the camera moving closer to them to simulate movement.

Ray Abrams, Ken Southworth and Herman Cohen are the credited animators, and I imagine Patterson did some animation as well.

Bouncy Woodpecker

Arts and Flowers is an unusual cartoon as Woody Woodpecker is animated in ways that weren’t done very often. He’s got a stiff-legged loping walk, multiple heads and cross-eyed expressions in a number of scenes.

One scene has him behave like a tame version of the original Daffy Duck. He does handsprings and leaps as he leaves.



The credited animators are Don Patterson, Robert Bentley and Herman R. Cohen. The cartoon was released in 1956.

Some of the gags you can see coming. Homer Brightman and Frank J. Goldberg got story credits. Goldberg was somewhat infamous in Hollywood, called as a witness in a trial against Confidential magazine for supplying a story with dirt on—gasp!—Sonny Tufts.

Scaring a Woodpecker

A Fine Feathered Frenzy is, in a way, Don Patterson’s version of Tex Avery’s Northwest Hounded Police, made eight years earlier. In that cartoon, the bad guy can’t escape from Droopy, and Tex gives him outrageous takes every time the wolf runs into the dog.

In this cartoon, Woody Woodpecker can’t escape the obese “Gorgeous Gal,” who wants to snare him in her mansion as a husband. Woody reacts with takes that were as outlandish as anyone ever got in the ‘50s at the Walter Lantz studio.

At Hanna-Barbera, Carlo Vinci used to draw a fear take that consisted of two alternating drawings, one with the character in a jagged outline. The same thing happens throughout this short.



Woody looks in a hand mirror and sees Gorgeous Gal behind him.



Woody tries to get away again.



Happy Homer Brightman borrows a gag from Avery’s Red Hot Riding Hood (1943). Tex’s animators use more panache than Patterson’s.



Patterson handled some of the animation himself, with Ray Abrams and Herman Cohen also assigned to his unit. Soon, hed be replaced in the director’s chair by Tex Avery.

Saving Walter's Money

Animating frame-by-frame takes time. That costs money. It’s only, natural, therefore, that studios look at ways of cutting down on animation to keep within a budget.

One way of doing it is by using still drawings. All that’s involved is a click of the camera for as many frames as the drawing is held. You might think of it as a trick for TV animation, but it was used in the Golden Age of theatrical cartoons, too. Think of the drawings of all the villains in Bob Clampett’s The Great Piggy Bank Robbery.

Don Patterson saved Walter Lantz some money in Wrestling Wrecks (1953) with the same technique. Gag drawings were used of various wrestlers appearing on the card (the ring announcer is played by Dal McKennon).

“The Pincher will wrestle The Spider.”



“Hammerhead Harry will try to nail The Vice.”



“And Hatchet Man will chop away at The Octopus.”



“In a tag-team match, Cauliflower McHugh and Muscle Brain team up against Legs O’Houlihan and The Wringer.”

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“Man Mountain will trade dirt with Quicksand Joe.”



“The Phantom will contact The Smog.”



All this takes up 38 seconds of screen time with no animation. Lantz, who constantly complained about how little money he got from theatres to run his cartoons, must have been delighted.

There were animators on this short. La Verne Harding, Ray Abrams and Ken Southworth are credited; I wonder if Harding is responsible for the early footage of Woody Woodpecker pulling on his Great Dane’s tongue.

Art Landy or Ray Jacobs would have been responsible for the still drawings.