Re-Using Harman-Ising

Reusing animation was not beneath Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising at Warner Bros. No, we don’t mean the same stomp-slide step Bosko and other characters did. Or the same three-quarters view, open-mouth-with-tongue expression found in all kinds of circle-headed characters. We mean whole scenes.

Here’s a good example from We're in the Money, released Aug. 26, 1933. It’s a pretty lacklustre cartoon. The same old toys-come-to-life-and-play-a-Warners-owned-song schtick. One scene has a toy with wheels for feet. He rolls along in a right-to-left pan, stops and twirls. It’s a cycle of eight drawings.

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Why, here it is again from A Great Big Bunch of You, released November 12, 1932.



The end title animation is reused, as the toy shouts “So long, folks!” From the Money ending.



And the Bunch ending.



Like a number of Harman and Ising, there are cycles in Money of cheering, applauding characters. Some cycles were used more than once.

The animation credits on A Great Big Bunch of You went to Ham Hamilton and Tom McKimson. On We're in the Money, the credits go to Friz Freleng and Larry Martin.

Money was the last Merrie Melodies cartoon from the Harman-Ising team. On May 4, 1933, The Film Daily reported Leon Schlesinger had ended his contract with them.

The title song was heard 55 times in a Warners cartoon, more than any other tune owned by the studio (The William Tell Overture was used 88 times and Yankee Doodle in 58 cartoons).

Oswald Gets Dressed

A bulldog grabs onto Oswald the rabbit, who is trying to grab a roast chicken cooling on a window sill in Weary Willies (1929).



The dog pulls Oswald’s black ink right off him.



Oswald is left in his underwear (with a flap). How embarrassing for a major cartoon star!



A shadow now appears where there had never been one before.



Yeah, the shadow telegraphs the gag. But I like it anyway (Didn't Felix do the same thing once?). Some representative frames.



Exhibitors Herald World, on June 29, 1929, reviewed the short:

"Weary Willie" (Universal Cartoon — One Reel)
THE bright, extremely clever, the unexpected and agreeable, the skillful manipulation of comedy quirks are not very often met with in pictures. Here, though, is a cartoon, one of the Oswalds turned out by the Winkler boys, that has plenty of these rare ingredients that are conducive to laughter. And it contains them in profusion. Ninety-nine out of every one hundred persons should get a laugh out of the rabbit's adventures with a tramp bear. Touched up with sound effects, this one hurdles all obstacles and grabs a laurel wreath labeled : first-rate cartoon comedy. — RAYMOND GANLY.

The cartoon was made during the period Charlie Mintz took control of the Oswald series from Walt Disney, and offered jobs to Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising, Ben Clopton, Ham Hamilton and another ex-Disney staffer who directed this cartoon.



Another animator on staff was Walter Lantz, who happened to be a social friend of Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal, which distributed the Oswald cartoons. On April 9, 1929, Universal announced it was setting up its own cartoon studio. Walter Lantz was put in charge, with Bill Nolan assiating. Farewell to Mintz, Harman, Ising, Freleng and the ex-Disneyites that Mintz enticed to join him. Lantz recalled to Leonard Maltin (quoted in "Of Mice and Magic") his first job was to add sound to six Winkler cartoons that hadn't been released. Presumably, Weary Willies was one, though a low-resolution print with music added by someone is all that's available to view. The cartoon came with sound on film and on disc.

Motion Picture News reported the cartoon was released July 22, 1929. Exhibitors World Herald eventually gave a date of Aug. 5, 1929. The last Winkler cartoon released was Saucy Sausages on Aug. 19, according to Motion Picture News. It was directed by Ben Clopton.

The next cartoon was released on Sept. 2, 1929. Race Riot bore the names of animators Walter Lantz, Bill Nolan and Tom Palmer, with synchronisation and score by Bert Fiske. Rollin C. (Ham) Hamilton replaced Lantz as an animator while David Broekman, the head of Universal's music department, took over from Fiske before the end of the year.

Freleng had been credited on other Oswald shorts for Mintz/Winkler: The Fiery Fireman (Oct. 15, 1928); Homeless Homer (with Rudolf Ising, Jan. 7, 1929); Hen Fruit (with Ising, Feb. 4, 1929); and Wicked West (June 10, 1929).

Friz Gets A Director's Chair

Friz Freleng may have turned 121 today (see note below). Readers of this blog are knowledgeable enough that they don’t need me to go through his background.

However, we will give you a bit of a set-up from an interview by Jerry Beck in 1989 and published in that great magazine Animato!. Freleng explained he, Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising and Ham Hamilton did a demo sound film starring Bosko after they were all dumped when Universal decided to take Oswald the rabbit away from their studio in Los Angeles. Freleng went to New York to work for Charlie Mintz on Krazy Kat cartoons.

Then in 1930 Hugh and Rudy sold Leon Schlesinger on a Bosko series. Freleng left Mintz and returned from New York to animate on it.

Said Friz:

I stayed with Hugh and Rudy through the start of the Schlesinger era. When we lost the contract with Schlesinger [in 1933], we were doing work for Van Beuren, farm-out work. I stayed with Hugh, but I thought he was going nowhere. Not that I could see the future.
When Leon Schlesigner tempted me away from Hugh and Rudy when they went to MGM, I had a guilt complex about it. Schlesinger sent Ray Katz over to see me, called me every once in a while, and tempted me to come over. He had hired a guy by the name of Tom Palmer, and Jack King, a couple of guys from Disney. Guys who were not making it. . . .
And when I came over they let Tom Palmer go. . . . and I took all the drawings that he had made. Warner would not accept their cartoons, and Leon thought he was going out of business. He said, "I've got everything I've made in my lifetime dumped into this thing." So I took a lot of the drawings, and I retimed them, threw out a lot...

Palmer’s two cartoons were Buddy’s Day Out and I’ve Got to Sing a Torch Song. Freleng isn’t credited on either of them.



His first directorial credit is on Buddy the Gob, released Jan. 13, 1934. It’s not exactly strong on story or gags but, as the studio discovered, there wasn't a whole lot they could do with Buddy; he's a watered-down version of the plucky Mickey Mouse in this cartoon. Freleng and whoever was in the story department tossed in a pop culture reference. The camera pans to the right from two Chinese dancers in a parade ...



I couldn’t tell you who is on the left, but the one on the right is Hot-cha-cha! Jimmy Durante. (Note: Strummer Petersen believes it's a poor drawing of Marie Dressler. Considering she was big at MGM, he's likely correct). We get a close-up of The Schnozz.



The plot involves Buddy jumping off his ship and rescuing a girl who is to be fed to a fire-breathing dragon. Of course, there’s a butt-violation gag.



As Bernie Brown plays Warren and Dubin's "Shanghail Lil" (from the 1933 Warners feature Footlight Parade) Buddy and the girl escape from an angry mob, cutting the ropes holding up a wooden bridge after making it over to the opposite cliff.

One of the mob throws a spear at the heckling Buddy and misses.



The arrow develops a mind of its own. It turns around and, well, if one butt-violation gag is funny, then two are TWICE as funny, right?



And then. Well, nothing. That’s all, folks. Buddy appears just as stunned as the theatre audience that the cartoon just stops.



Before the year was over, Bugs Hardaway and Jack King took over the Looney Tunes with Buddy while Freleng concentrated on the Merrie Melodies. Besides a misbegotten stint at MGM in the late ‘30s, Freleng stuck with the Warners studio until just before it closed in 1963. You know all about a stop at Hanna-Barbera, and a studio with David DePatie and a panther and such, so we’ll skip that.

Buddy died about a year and a half after this cartoon appeared. It's safe to say Friz's directorial career went on slightly longer. And he was responsible for some of the most enjoyable cartoons ever made.



Note: The "Record of Births—Kansas City, Missouri" for August 1, 1904 (page 42) show a boy and a girl (the girl, Fannie Freling, died of septicemia on Sept. 17, 1904, age six months) with nothing later in the month, nor in 1905. The parents' surname was spelled several different ways over the decades. The Kansas City Journal reported the Aug. 1 births in its Aug. 13, 1904 edition. It is possible we are dealing with two different people, but Kansas City Directories indicate there was only one Louis Freleng (of any kind of spelling). Friz' World War Two Draft Card give his birth date as Aug. 21, 1904. The April 25, 1910 U.S. Census records his age as 5, meaning he would be 6 in August. The Jan. 3, 1920 U.S. Census states he was 15, and would turn 16 in August. The April 9, 1930 Census gives his age as 25, so he would turn 26 in August. The April 20, 1940 Census says he was 35, making him 36 in August. The April 1, 1950 Census records his age as 45, meaning he would be 46 in August. All these returns mean he was born in 1904. The U.S. Social Security Death Index says Aug. 21, 1904. The California Death Index says Aug. 21, 1905. His grave marker reads 1906. You be the judge.

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.

Hare-Less Wolf Backgrounds

Boris Gorelick came up with some neat backgrounds in Hare-Less Wolf (1958). It's filled with purple rolling hills and trees in various shades of autumnal red.



Here are some others. Several of these were longer than TV frame, but I can't snip them together without characters getting in the way. You can see cels outside the Charles M. Wolf cave entrance.



Gorelick is credited with only seven cartoons for the Friz Freleng unit, and then he is replaced by Tom O'Loughlin. We wrote about him in this post.

Maybe the best part of Warren Foster's story in this cartoon is naming the forgetful antagonist after Chuck Jones. Many of the gags are reminiscent of ones you've seen in other Bugs Bunny cartoons.

June Foray is here with her Marjorie Main voice as Mrs. Wolf.