Ape Mouth

There’s not a lot of mountain music in the 1933 Warner Bros. cartoon I Love Mountain Music. There are some western musicians and Will Rogers at the start of the short, and an ice skater twirling around to the title song in the middle. Things then switch to Hawaii, then Switzerland (okay, it has mountains).

The last third of the cartoon involves some crooks robbing a cash register, with the good guys ganging up to catch them.

This is a magazine-covers-come-to-life cartoon, so we get the ringleader chased by “Ping Pong” from the pages of “Screen Play” magazine.

There’s another of those familiar gags when a character comes right at the camera and swallows it, which probably looked better in theatres than on the small screen.

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Friz Freleng and Larry Martin are the credited animators.

The version of this cartoon in circulation has an odd iris-out at the end, followed by an urchin who does not appear in this short exclaiming “So long, folks!” Was this tacked on from another cartoon?

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: McGillicuddy

We mentioned yesterday that Hugh Harman Productions made cartoons for the military during the war. Some of them for the U.S. Navy were similar to the Private Snafu cartoons the Warner Bros. studio animated for the Army. In this case, the bumbling marine was named Private McGillicuddy. The animation jumps from pose to pose in places, much like Hanna-Barbera’s first Ruff and Reddy cartoons, except there is some overlap. You can watch five of them below.

The director was possibly George Gordon, who was mentioned in the trades as directing health and sanitation films for the Navy. The studio’s production designer at the time was Bruce Bushman. The music is likely by Clarence Wheeler, who was signed by Harman in August 1944. I shouldn’t have to tell you who supplies the voices on these. The Hollywood Reporter of May 3, 1945 claimed Jack Benny okayed his hiring after reading the script, which is odd as he was not under exclusive contract to Benny. Then, again, it was claimed for years he was allergic to carrots, which wasn’t true either. Publicity is publicity,



Late note: Devon Baxter says Harman was interviewed about these. Gordon directed and Cal Howard provided stories.

The Incomplete Hugh and Rudy

Ah, Hollywood. Land of Make Believe.

Not just on the screen but in print, too. There were all kinds of movie magazines, with concocted P.R. stories. There were gossip columns with publicity plants. And studio publications designed for in-house readers weren't always forthright, either.

For a brief time, MGM published “Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Short Story,” with reviews and stories about films and people who worked on the company’s shorts. That included cartoons, and the issue of November 1939 profiled the directors Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising.

Don’t expect any real journalism here. Harman and Ising were at MGM—the studio that got rid of them in 1937 and set up their own cartoon operation—because of Fred Quimby’s mismanagement. Having watched as New York and California animators clashed, and having gone through two studio managers, he was forced to re-hire Harman and Ising to produce and direct cartoons, this time on MGM’s payroll.

Animator Jim Pabian recalled to historian Mike Barrier: “Quimby told me he didn't want to have anything to do with Hugh, but he took him because Rudy wouldn't sign without him.” Quimby was honest about it with columnist Hedda Hopper, who quoted him on August 4, 1940 that “They [Harman and Ising] could never work together and both of them are so high in the clouds they haven’t any idea of what money means.” Nice tact and diplomacy, Fred. The two were still working for him when he said this. Indeed, the puff piece in “Short Story” suggests Quimby had to step in to keep them on budget because they over-animated everything.

On top of that, before this piece was even published, there was still politicking going on. Having lost Friz Freleng over the unrest, Quimby put Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera in co-directors’ chairs. Ising told Barrier he got “fed up” with Hanna and Barbera “because of the conniving they were doing with Quimby.”

There is no mention of Hanna or Barbera in the feature story below; though the first Tom and Jerry short, Puss Gets the Boot, was well into production.

Animating  MOTHER NATURE
IF YOU hear of a couple of young men being picked up on Hollywood Boulevard for obstructing traffic while escorting a lowly katydid across a busy corner, it’s an odds-on bet that they will be Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising. And you may be sure that their gallant deed will not be motivated by a maternal attitude toward insects or a desire to preserve entomological specimens. Rather, and admittedly quite selfishly, they will be merely furthering the development of their business interests.
It seems that Mr. Harman and Mr. Ising are two of Hollywood’s leading figures in the serious business of making cartoons for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. And insects, their habits and customs, are good and valuable assets in this peculiar business.
The Messrs. Harman and Ising have been working in this sphere of fantasy for some fifteen years now, and the theories they have developed over this period of years indicates that there is more to the business of making animals imitate humans than appears on the surface (or the screen).
At present, Harman and Ising are working separately on the M-G-M lot. Their films appear on the screen either as a Hugh Harman or Rudolph Ising preduction. Yet, they have to be considered as a team. Each always knows what the other is doing and they constantly exchange advice.
Their personalities are as different as Garbo’s and Judy Garland’s but their minds are like twin motors. Ising is quiet, serious, dark and built like a fighter. Harman is an easy talker, perpetual smiler, and small and wiry.
They make pictures for those folks who like to drink from the fountain of youth which is just about everyone alive. This fact, they state, is why adults like cartoons of animals acting like humans in a world of fantasy. Their reasoning is that, as children we all live in a make-believe world in which we want to believe that everything is possible, even talking animals, fairies and elves. From that world, they point out, we are plucked and set down in a school where we begin to be drilled in realities. Thereafter, everything is brutal fact.
For this reason, fondness for cartoon fantasy is a throwback to childhood. Harman and Ising still have that child psychology and hope they never lose it.
Although they do use human characters occasionally, animals are their popular stand-bys, also for definite reasons. “Through animals, humans can be caricatured more expertly,” they state. “Animated cartoons stress the faults and limitations of persons rather than their strong features. To an audience, it is like looking into a strange world, yet recognizing themselves and their acquaintances.
“The public would rather see animals do human things than human drawings do the same. Every animal, unless played for comedy menace, can be made to look lovable and cute. There is also the advantage of being able to give our animal characters all of the individualities in actions and thought of animals plus the same actions and thoughts of humans. We really have a two-barreled gun to shoot.”
There is still another vital reason for using animals. This is the limitation of reality placed on the actions of any human cartoon character. As they explain it, “We need both elementary things and exaggeration. Animal cartoon characters have the same advantage clowns have over straight actors. If we are to be absolutely human with a real-life character, we cannot stretch, twist or otherwise distort the face or body. The mere unnaturalness would make that character ugly. But the same distortion with an animal looks pleasing. Recall how clowns go to great extremes by painting their faces. They aren’t real, but everyone loves a clown.”



So far do Harman and Ising go in making humans in their stories absolutely normal, that they usually photograph a real person in action. They did this for the character of Goldilocks in “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” But the character that created the biggest sensation was the dancing fairy for “The Blue Danube,” a beautiful interpretation of a musical mood which told the story of how water babies, birds and animals gathered blue for the famous river. A real dancer posed in action. Then artists, being artists with an eye to beauty, drew a fairy with wings but without clothes. Oh, they gave her long Godiva-like hair, but realism went too far in some cases as the hair swayed. The result was considerable erasing later.
As long as cartoons are strictly fantasy, the unreal is valuable, but never possible with human characters. Hence, the two point out, a real character can never be a prolonged cartoon star—eventually all the limitations will be used up and the character will begin repeating his adventures because he can’t do impossible things which animals can do. They realized this when “Goldilocks” was made. The heroine of the fairy tale, for cartoon purposes becomes just a stooge for the bears. Harman is now making more with the Bear Family, treating them as a counterpart of the Hardys. Papa Bear is the main character, patterned after a cross between Edgar Kennedy and Oliver Hardy, with Beery’s voice. He is a “fall guy,” unemotional, suppressed, lazy, slow-moving and continually irritated by events that mount to the unbearable.
The next Bear picture will be “The Bear Family,” in which they again do the unconventional. The subject will open with a hand sketching Papa Bear. Gradually, the public will see how he is made to move and then he goes into his story. Papa Bear will also be treated as an unwilling actor on a stage through the use of a heckler, always brought in merely by his shadow looming from an “audience” and an off-screen voice.
This will be followed by “A Rainy Day” and an untitled fourth now in preparation (it takes eight months from story idea to completed subject). “A Rainy Day” will illustrate one of Harman and Ising’s basic principals—always base fantasy on realism. Papa Bear tries to repair a tiny hole in the roof, eventually wrecking the roof. As a storm comes up, the shingles blow away, fonming themselves into billowing waves, into which the bear plunges and starts swimming.
“Unreal? Sure!” Harman and Ising say. “But, we are creating a realistic storm behind all this and the burlesque touch will be accepted. We always avoid absurd tricks for our animal characters. The day is past when a cartoon cat could convert his tail into an airplane propeller and fly away. It once was funny. Today, the public, even in a world of fantasy won’t go for it. However, in ‘One Mother’s Family,’ a hawk is given all the characteristics of a zooming airplane. That is natural.”
If there is one outstanding prerequisite for a successful animated cartoon producer, what is it? Both Harman and Ising have the same answer—constant observation.
These two chaps are expert observers. They continually find themselves watching leaves blow in the breeze, cloud formations or water flowing to the sea or insects plodding along in their own peculiar fashion always to be able to put this movement in drawings. They are great believers in mood in backgrounds.
But, at the same time, they observe eccentricities in persons and animals and often find themselves staring. That’s because they are continually watching for ways to idealize types and characters.
This observation of animals, birds and insects has made every living creature have serious life to them. All their artists feel the same way and some are so imbued with this feeling that they would never kill even a poisonous spider or snake.
Harman and Ising read omnivorously for ideas, background, social causes and character study, seeking impressions rather than cold facts. For instance, the average man reads of the Palomar telescope to learn amazing details. Ising read of its ability to pierce the Milky Way and immediately got an idea. The result is his story, now in work, of the three little kittens who lost their mittens and were sent to bed without any supper. Hungry, they visualize the Milky Way as actually of milk, cream, butter, ice cream and whipped cream. So up in a balloon they go for adventures among milk products.
The two listen to the radio, mostly to study voices because voices are important in their work. Music occupies a great part of their home-life. To them music is action and color. They can’t play any instrument, but music gives them impressions. The Hungarian Rhapsody represented a perfect sunset to Ising and he drew it. Harman tells of playing one record for hours, trying to capture a pictorial mood. It happens frequently and always the following day his head is dizzy with the tune.
They are constantly striving for something different. Pictorial beauty frequently sweeps them away and they must be brought down to reality again by a guiding hand which happens to be Fred Quimby, the practical member who is in charge of the cartoon department.
Harman and Ising have probably the largest and most frequently-changing cast of cartoon characters in the business. That is because they continually experiment. If a star is created—as in the case of Papa Bear—they make a few more with him.
Having no strict star characters, they don’t have to work a certain one into every cartoon. The cartoon star system also holds the danger of finally killing a character. To keep a cartoon animal in character, he must have type which means he has limitations that eventually will consume every logical situation for him.
Both Harman and Ising agree that the tastes of the public are in a state of constant flux. The development of national and international events, they assert, subconsciously reacts on the majority of people. Producers of motion pictures with human actors are well aware of this and it is only logical, they contend, that cartoon producers must also take it into consideration. An example of this is the present talk of M-G-M)’s cartoon department “Peace on Earth,” which, while remaining in the realm of fantasy, is as timely as a current newsreel. The story concerns itself with a situation in which all humans have been killed in a series of wars, leaving animals as the sole inhabitants of the earth. The film is a sharp satire of a current event which is uppermost in the minds of the public. An old squirrel, a prototype of the late Chic Sale with all his provincial mannerisms, wisdom and homey philosophies, is called upon to create fantasy out of grim reality.
Tom Turkey will be Harman’s next introduction. He’ll be human, all right—a small-town “slicker” in mail order suit and yellow shoes. He’s the peppy fellow everyone knows, the guy who has an answer for everything and never seems to learn a lesson. Surrounding him will be a “stock company” of fowls representing small-town folk. At the same time, Ising is readying a little calf character for introduction in “Home On the Range.” This character will be given the power to reason and the mother-child love will be played up. It will stay away from slapstick and the calf will do no such un-real things as scratching his head.
What of the future of cartoons? Well, both Harman and Ising sincerely believe that animated cartoons eventually will express other emotions than the basic ones now used, but this will depend on technical advancement. They believe pathos, tragedy, love, drama, suspense and many other emotions will someday be as easy to express as comedy and irritation are today.
“After all,” they say, “animated cartoons have come a long way. Why, it was only ten or twelve years ago when pen and ink figures only moved. Today our cartoon characters really are individuals.”
Yes, Harman and Ising are experts in fantasy but they also have common sense; they picked a field in which their actors show very little temperament.

Harman’s stay at MGM ended on Apr. 5, 1941. He gathered some loyalists and opened his own studio. Fortunately, war work came along to keep it occupied. Ising left on October 5, 1942 to take over the Army Air Force’s animation unit on the West Coast. Neither of them regained the stature in the industry they held in the 1930s at Warners, then MGM.

One of their projects was for television, and this led to a clash with Hanna and Barbera. Los Angeles Daily News columnist Steve Ellingson was watching his wife sew one day, and wondered if the idea of sewing patterns could be adapted to woodworking. So he came up with U-Bild Woodworking Plans. The picture you see to the right (with local NBC TV star Barbara Logan) is from his column of June 5, 1952. Two of the patterns for wooden lawn ornaments are of two little dogs. “They’re television actors and were loaned to us by Harman-Ising, the popular animated cartoon studio,” wrote Ellingson. Their names were Ruff and Reddy. Yes, the same names as Hanna and Barbera’s first TV stars.

Ising didn’t think it was a coincidence. The Hollywood Reporter of June 30, 1958 reports he sued. There is little about the Harman-Ising “two dogs” version, other than listings in the Daily News for KNBH’s Junior Theatre at 6:30 p.m. Wednesdays in July and August 1951 (opposite Bob Clampett’s Time For Beany on KTLA). Three episodes were made, and Broadcasting magazine reported on Jan. 29, 1951 they were being distributed by Sterling Television (and produced by a New York company; there was no mention of Harman or Ising). KOB in Albuquerque promoted 20-minute episodes called “The Treasure” and “The Diamond.”

Other Harman-Ising projects included a live/animation combination series starring Emmett Kelly that CBS was considering in 1956. The Conejo News of July 27 described it this way: “Emmett Kelly never speaks and when he takes an orphan boy [played by eight-year-old Terry Rangno] under his wing the only way he can answer the boy’s many questions about the circus is through his ability to draw cartoons. In each instance the story will evolve from a cartoon drawn for the boy by Emmett Kelly.” The story names the technical staff, but no animator. Rangno was, rather optimistically, signed to a five-year contract.

Harman and Ising’s names appeared in Hedda Hopper’s column on May 20, 1958. A deal had been set up in the U.S. with Toei Motion Picture Co. and Kyoto for production of several pictures. Kyoto was said to be “affiliated with Harman-Ising.”

Harman died on November 25, 1982. Ising passed away on July 18, 1992. They both got recognition in the public press for creating the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies for Warner Bros. Said Clampett about Harman: “He was one of the truly great pioneers of animation. At the time he started there was hardly any animation, just silent films. You might say that some of their MGM films were in every respect equal to Disney. They all started with a very crude medium and with Walt did the most to bring it to greatness.”

Let the Game Begin . . . After a Slight Delay

There’s a problem starting a football game in Bosko the Drawback (1932). The timekeeper’s gun doesn’t have a bullet. It has an egg. The egg drops out of the barrel and hatches.



The problem is a short one. The chick pulls out a whistle and blows it to begin the first half of the game.



This may the only Warners football cartoon which does not include “Frat” or “Freddie the Freshman” in the score.

The animation credits go to maybe the studio’s best draughtsmen at that point, Bob McKimson and Friz Freleng. There are better gags than this I would have posted but the available versions of this cartoon are from VHS copies (and not first generation) that are rife with digital pixilation which makes the frames murky and the action difficult to see.

Bosko was Warners’ first star and his Looney Tunes deserve something better than 40-year-old technology.

A Fishy Camel

Before we get to the lacklustre Beau Bosko, let me grumble about the worse-than-lacklustre copies of many of the Bosko cartoons that circulate on-line.

I know they come from VHS dubs of 1990 cable TV enhancements, but shouldn’t there be decent versions around? They look like sixth-generation dubs recorded on the slowest tape speed. The copy of this cartoon has an end title spliced on.

It is true that Bosko is no Bugs Bunny, or Daffy Duck, or even Pepe Le Pew. But he was Warners’ first animated star and he deserves better treatment than this.

He deserved better treatment than the story of this cartoon. The first half is a bunch of snoring gags, and then a wash basin-in-a-backpack gag. The cartoon is just under seven minutes, and the villain doesn’t appear until the five-minute mark. There’s a gag about flies around a snoring turbaned guy and another with a different Arab stretching up and down as he rides a camel. Those are the gags. Yikes.

Here’s another one that’s cuter. Bosko’s camel drinks water out of a shallow pond in the desert (no mirage gag this time). Unexpectedly, a fish pops up. You can follow the action in the fuzzy frames below.



Ham Hamilton and Norm Blackburn are the credited animators. Frank Marsales' music provides the proper mood; most of it was original.

Who's the Real Monster?

Tex Avery tried a split screen gag in 1939 in Thugs With Dirty Mugs, and did it again the following year in Cross Country Detours.

Narrator Lou Marcelle intones over a tympani roll the next scene is quite gruesome, so the screen will be split with one side for grown-ups and one side for children.



Grown-ups get a “hideous gila monster” snarling and growling. Children get a recitation.

Avery loves violating split screen gags, and he doesn’t disappoint us here.



Avery uses a split-screen again in A Bear’s Tale (1940), Tortoise Beats Hare and Aviation Vacation (both 1941). The “Mary Had a Little Lamb” recitation routine goes back to Harman-Ising’s Bosko in Person and Bosko's Mechanical Man (both 1933). Avery used it in Hamateur Night (1939) and again as late as 1954, when MGM released The Flea Circus.

Rich Hogan is the credited story man on this short, with Paul J. Smith getting the rotating animation credit and Johnny Johnsen getting no credit for backgrounds.

It's Not What You Think

There should be a drinking game where you glug down something every time someone in a Bosko cartoon says “Ain’t that cute?”

In The Tree’s Knees (1931), we get it twice in a little over three minutes.

After the second time, something falls from the sky and lands on our hero.



Cut to the bird above. No, Bosko, it’s not what you think.



I guess it’s tree sap.

Inevitably, Frank Marsales plays Otto Rasbach's Trees in the background, and we get Walkin’ My Baby Back Home, then Joe Burke and Al Dubin’s Dancing With Tears in My Eyes when a waltzing weeping willow is, well, you can guess.

Friz Freleng and Ham Hamilton are the credited animators.

Copies from battered old Sunset Productions prints are better than nothing, but it’s a shame that’s the way we have to see much of Bosko’s Warners career.

Rubber Hose Race

Spaghetti-limbed characters didn’t quite go out with the early 1930s. UPA used them on Gerald McBoing Boing and other cartoon shorts 20 years later.

Here’s an example from Bosko’s Fox Hunt (1931). The middle sausage-shaped horse in this ten-drawing cycle has no joints, just rubber legs and neck.



There is such a sameness about the Harman-Ising cartoons for Warner Bros. There are cycles in this cartoon used over and over (one has 12 frames of dogs running). H-I characters all have the same open mouths at a three-quarters angle. There always seems to be a scene when they run out of the frame at the exact same angle (borrowed from the silent Oswalds). And, in this short, they needed a fox, so they simply used the same design as Foxy in the Merrie Melodies shorts released earlier in the year.

Ham Hamilton and Norm Blackburn received the animation credits on this one.