Horning in on a Gag

Here’s a stretch in-between drawing from the Little Roquefort cartoon, No Sleep For Percy (1955). The mouse is trying to jar himself loose after Percy the cat rolled up a car window, with Little Roquefort’s head stuck at the top.



The mouse lands on the horn. The sound is pretty weak, at least on versions of the cartoon in circulation. Maybe they didn’t want to drown out Phil Scheib’s atypical score.



The horn is evidently loud enough to wake Percy. Here are random frames of Jim Tyer’s spasmatic animation. Heads that shrink and expand (and do it several times for emphasis), expanded fuzzy fur, eyes that are different sizes, it’s all here.



Percy gets up to chase after the mouse. The cat’s butt is on the ground. Tyer gives him impossible anatomy.



This is just in case theatre audiences mistook this for Tom and Jerry.



This was the final cartoon with Little Roquefort and Percy. Connie Rasinski was the sole director for well over a year and a half and new characters, like Good Deed Daily, were being tried out. Paul Terry hadn’t sold out to CBS yet, but when that happened, Gene Deitch came in to run the creative part of the studio, and another set of new characters arrived.

Jim Tyer is Nuts

Can we all agree on this?

Here is Exhibit A: the third scene from the 1951 Terrytoon The Cat's Tale. He animates the first scene of the cat getting chased by mice. It's got frizzy tails and weird shapes that only Tyer would do.

Then his animation gets crazier as the cat frantically seals the door to his cave home to stop the mice from getting in. Look at the angles. They're insane.



Tyer animates parts of this scene on ones, so there’s no penny-pinching going on.

That’s not all. The next scene features weird pupil shapes as the cat pushes his head toward the camera. And there’s Tyer smear animation.



Tyer wasn't credited on this cartoon. None of the animators were until Paul Terry sold his studio and Gene Deitch was hired in 1956. Good for you, Gene!

A Giant Mouse?!

Mr. Terry! Mr. Terry! I have another great idea for a cartoon.
What’s that, Tommy?
There’s the house cat, you see, and this circus animal comes into his home, and he mistakes it for a giant mouse. And the giant mouse keeps beating him up!
Tommy, that sounds like...
Oh, no, Mr. Terry. The animal isn’t a kangaroo. It’s an elephant.
Well, that’s good. As I always say, “Never steal more than you can carry.”

Okay, the dialogue likely didn’t happen. But it is a fact that Bob McKimson’s giant mouse appeared in Hop, Look and Listen (1948), Hippety Hopper (1949) and Pop 'Im, Pop (1950) on theatre screens before Manny Davis’ The Elephant Mouse (1951), written by Tom Morrison for Terrytoons.

One thing McKimson did not have was Jim Tyer. Now, I’m not any kind of expert at identifying animators, but I feel safe in assuming the animation below is by Tyer. He doesn’t do a simple head turn on the cat. Look at the way the head sweeps.

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Love the Terry Brake Squeal? It’s in this cartoon. Love the imitation Ed Wynn voice that Gandy Goose had? It’s in this cartoon? Like the routine where alley cats, who don’t believe there’s a giant mouse, shove their buddy cat back into the house? That’s here, too. (In fairness, the brake squeal is from a production record. Bob and Ray used it on radio, too).

Evidently, Paul Terry was looking for new stars. He tried Dingbat. Dingbat lasted five cartoons (see note in comment section). This was the second cartoon starring Half Pint (who gets his own title card). It was the last one.

Expressive Pooch

So I’m watching this scene in Squirrel Crazy, a 1951 Terrytoon, and wondering if Jim Tyer animated it. Suddenly...



To borrow from another cartoon studio, "Mmmm...could be!"

It seems the writers also borrowed from a cartoon studio.



I don’t know what’s worse—Lillian Randolph’s Amos-n-Andy style dialect in the Tom and Jerry cartoons or the ridiculous suburban WASP-tinged-with-a-bit-of-the-South voice the unnamed maid has in this one.

This cartoon stars “Nutsy” who, let’s face it, isn’t very nuts compared with a certain MGM squirrel. Tyer animated a pile of scenes with the dog.

The cartoon was part of the “Terrytoon Toppers” re-release series, and returned to the big screen in October 1957.

The Terry Juggling Act

There’s an extended scene in the Heckle and Jeckle cartoon Satisfied Customers (1954) where a grocery store clerk slips into a crate of eggs (courtesy of a banana peel thrown by one of our heroes) and tries to catch them all so they don’t break. He even develops additional hands.



Heckle and Jeckle show their appreciation of the Jim Tyer animation by laughing and applauding as Phil Scheib’s trombones and saxes toot away in a circus-evoking arrangement.

The magpies start throwing all kinds of other stuff at the clerk who manages to save them from falling.



The cartoon opens with another fine walk cycle by Carlo Vinci. There are a couple of Bugs Bunny gags here and one lifted from Tex Avery’s Garden Gopher (did Terry end it with blackface, too?), and the ending is like something from a Max Fleischer Ko-Ko cartoon in the silent days. Fans of the TerrySplash™ will be disappointed by its absence.

Shrink Take

Jim Tyer's distinctive animation at the Terry studio has its devoted fans. He loved changing characters into either jagged or floppy takes. He also did a take where body parts shrank.

This isn't a good example; he was more outrageous in later cartoons. This is 1949's Hula Hula Land, starring Heckle and Jeckle, with frequent appearances of the Terry Splash™.

Dimwit the dog has been tossed ashore by a wave. Cut to his "boss" bulldog who is about to be thrown on top of him.

Dimwit realises what's about to happen. Some rubbery animation.

Now the shrink.

Back to full size as he exits stage left. (Sorry, wrong cartoon series).

Manny Davis directed this cartoon. The animators didn't get screen credit until Gene Deitch showed up in the later '50s.