Asian Avery

A cymbal is kind of the same shape as an Asian conical hat, so Tex Avery tosses that into a gag in Magical Maestro (1952).

I’m certain sure anybody reading here knows the plot of the cartoon. Mysto the magician gets revenge on opera star Poochini (who refused to hire him) by impersonating the singer’s conductor and transforming him into various things. In this case, the cymbal turns him into a jabbering Oriental stereotype.



He dances around and sings in dialect. I don’t know the name of that tune; Bob and Ray included it on one of their NBC radio shows.



Poochini snaps out of it and discards the "hat" and kimono, then carries on with his solo from The Barber of Seville.



Avery had tossed in the same kind of gag in Bad Luck Blackie (1949).

Rich Hogan is the credited story man, with Grant Simmons, Mike Lah and Walt Clinton animating the short, and Johnny Johnsen supplying the backgrounds. Keith Scott has discovered the man singing the Chinese song in this scene is a comedian named Frank Ross.

Preston Blair Speaks

Comparisons of theatrical cartoons and TV cartoons are quite unfair, and I’ve tried to avoid making them on my two animation blogs. It’s indisputable that there was more time and money to make cartoons for theatres. Television also required a lot more content; a half-hour had to be filled, not seven minutes.

That didn’t stop Preston Blair from weighing in.

Blair had a lengthy career in the industry that we’ll get to in a minute. First, here are his comments to the Louisville Courier-Journal of Oct. 8, 1970. By then, Blair had been out of theatrical animation for more than 20 years. His unit at MGM (with Mike Lah) had been disbanded to save some money, and Blair decided to move to Connecticut where he had his own studio, took on work for his brother at Film Graphics (Rodney, 1950), and later worked for former MGM animator Jack Zander on TV commercials (frames below).

Animator Is Critical of Cartoons
By IRENE NOLAN
Courier-Journal Staff Writer
Preston Blair, who is in the business of making cartoons, has some definite ideas about Saturday morning television fare. He thinks it leaves much to be desired.
Blair, an animator who was in Louisville yesterday for the dedication of WKPC-TV's new building, thinks one might compare what happens on Saturday morning television to turning a group of children loose in a supermarket and having a rating service analyze what they chose to eat. The result, he said, would be carbonated beverages, popsicles, ice cream and candy.
What Blair would like to see happen, and what he would like to help happen, is "not give the kids a diet of spinach and celery" but a balanced meal.
A balanced meal, he thinks, would include animated cartoons that are still entertaining, but that have an educational message.
Blair and his long-time friend, Allen Blankenbaker, director of film graphics for WKPC, would like to see the educational television get into the Saturday morning cartoon market and compete with commercial television for the child's attention.
Blair describes himself as "from the enemy camp." He has never done any work for educational television, but concentrated his efforts on commercial ventures.
He is a former feature animator for the Walt Disney Studios, where he worked on sections of "Bambi," "Fantasia," and "Pinocchio." Among his other well-known works are several episodes of "The Flintstones." He now owns a production company in Connecticut, where he lives with his wife and son.
He thinks animating for the "Saturday morning shows" is "wasted talent."
Blankenbaker indicated he has always been interested in educational cartoons for children and now plans to make use of the new equipment and Blair's knowledge of "what the children want to watch."
"This (the station's new building) should be a place that would serve as a springboard to do children's programming that is both entertaining educational. Up to now such things have been done on a local level but now we can do it nationwide."
Blair said that the state of Saturday morning television is "not the fault of in the animators or of the people in the business." He said problem is "just that it is such a large business backed by the toy companies who are afraid to sponsor anything but what the children demand."
Blair, who has a lively face with a twinkle in his eye, feels his most interesting work was the animation of the hippos in "Fantasia."
"The interesting thing about Disney it with live action. For the hippos we photographed heavy ballerinas in action to see what hippos dancing would look like." (At this point Blair advised the writer that she might say that studying the live action of girls was often hazardous for animators. One animator studying a girl in the role of Snow White "succumbed and married her, but no, I didn't marry one of the heavy ballerinas.”)
Blair said that animating cartoons takes more time than most would expect. A half-hour episode of the Flintstones usually took three months to produce and most feature-length cartoons take three or four years.

Blair returned to California, where he died in 1995. The Santa Cruz Sentinel of May 21 had an obituary.

Memorial services will be June 4 for award-winning Disney animator Preston Blair, who died April 19 of heart failure at Dominican Hospital. He was 86.
Born in Los Angeles, he and his late brother, Lee, worked on several Disney classics, including "Fantasia."
Mr. Blair went to Pomona College and then studied at the Otis Art Institute and then Chouinard Art Institute, now the California Institute of Arts.
He moved to Soquel in 1992.
Mr. Blair began his animation career by drawing Oswald the Rabbit for Walter Lantz at Universal Studios. He later worked at the Charles Mintz Studio drawing Krazy Kat animated cartoons. In 1937, he joined the Walt Disney Studio.
Mr. Blair's contribution to "Fantasia" included the animation of key scenes in the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" sequence, where Mickey Mouse falls asleep and dreams of directing the ocean waves, and "The Dance of the which featured the tutu-wearing Hyacinth Hippo.
He also worked on Disney's "Pinocchio" and "Bambi."
His brother's wife, the late Mary Blair, was also a Disney artist.
Mr. Blair saved many of his original sketches, which were among 156 of his drawings displayed in a 1981 exhibition on Disney animation at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
During World War II, he moved from Disney to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he worked with legendary animation director Tex Avery. He animated "Red Hot Riding Hood."
Mr. Blair wrote two books, "Cartoon Animation" and "How to Animate Film Cartoons" and they sold more than 1 million copies. A third book compiling the texts of his earlier works, was published last year.
In 1949, he moved to Westport, and produced animated commercials and educational films. As an independent animator, he worked for Hanna-Barbera, creating episodes of "The Flintstones" series.
He returned to California in 1984, settling in Carmel and developing animated systems for teaching reading.
Mr. Blair held five patents on creations in interactive video technology.

The biography isn’t quite correct, according to the late Martha Sigall in her enjoyable book Living Life Inside Between the Lines. Her squib on Blair:

Preston Blair designed the character Red Hot Riding Hood. This character caused quite a sensation. Preston, his wife, and baby lived across the street from where my family and I lived on Fernwood Avenue in Hollywood. Although I worked at Schlesinger’s and he worked at MGM, we would always talk about the cartoon business and what was happening at each of the studios. He was a wonderfully talented animator and a great friend. I felt so bad when the state of California bought his home to make way for the Hollywood Freeway. I was happy to see him again when I was added to the MGM staff. After his leaving MGM, it was many years later, in 1985, that I saw him again upon his being honored by the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists for his fifty years in animation. By the way, Preston got his start in animation at the Romer Grey studio, and he, like Ken Harris, had to pay Romer a weekly sum of money to be able to work in the studio to learn how to animate.

About the dancing scenes in Red Hot Riding Hood, Tex Avery told Joe Adamson in that great book Tex Avery, King of Cartoons:

Preston Blair did the whole thing; he was very clever on anatomy and dances. He wouldn’t let anyone else touch her! He did all the girl sequences. He’d gained a lot of experience on FANTASIA, he did a lot of the dancing of the crocodiles and the elephants. He had a touch for dancing. And he couldn’t dance worth his tail —big, lumbering guy! But, boy, he could really make em dainty.

Blair recalled a "contract dancer" was brought in for the Red follow-up cartoon The Shooting of Dan McGoo. He told historian Mike Barrier he used footage of her for "bits and pieces" of his animation. As for some of his work in the Avery unit, he recalled, "I would use a lot of Claude Smith's [character layouts] just verbatim [as animation drawings]; there was no sense in doing anything [else] with them."

One day, I hope to be able to read Mr. Barrier’s entire interview with Blair (and many others).

Blair did attempt to get a TV cartoon series on the air. Little is known about it, but an animated Honeymooners series was one of the projects of his company. It’s a shame the idea never got picked up. Unlike Blair’s opinion of Saturday morning series, I don’t think this would have been a case of “wasted talent.”

Yes, It Is a Scream Bomb

A “scream bomb” lives up to its name in Tex Avery’s Blitz Wolf.



Note the ghost multiples to make the movement faster.

Animation is by Irv Spence.

The Prude Vs. Tex Avery

Swing Shift Cinderella's fairy godmother waves a wand and TA-DA! Tattered clothes turn into a mink fur.



The Avery wolf flips his lid. See the multiples and brush work.



Avery adds to the take with growing eyes.



Preston Blair, Ed Love and Ray Abrams are the credited animators.

The Exhibitor concluded “This is an attractive entry that draws a few good laughs, and is generally amusing. GOOD.”

But someone was upset about it, and wrote the Showmen’s Trade Review. The letter was published in the Sept. 1, 1945 edition.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer recently released a cartoon entitled "Swing Shift Cinderella," which most certainly is not suitable for children to see—and I doubt if few adults appreciated it. It is hard to understand how Metro would place the MGM trademark on such a disgusting piece of film.
The story was given over completely to a so-called “wolf” and a strip tease artist wiggling and squirming like a hula dancer. It was anything but entertainment or constructive to the minds of adolescents.
I am a small town operator, managing several central Illinois theatres. We constantly battle whistlers who have been taught by cartoons and features to whistle at a good-looking girl who makes her appearance on the screen. They have been educated by the motion picture industry itself by reason of the fact that often a sequence will show a soldier or possibly a civilian whistling at a girl going down the street, or in a night club, and in various other circumstances. Naturally if the youth sets this on the screen, he feels he has a perfect right to do the same thing because he is "educated" along this line by the pictures.
Often times, in a serious part of the feature, a beautifully dressed girl will make an appearance, and someone will let out a whistle, which kills the effect of the particular scale. We have fought this practice by paying bonuses to ushers who catch a whistler of this type; and of course, he is promptly given a good lecture or, in some cases, asked to leave the theatre. Motion pictures in the making should take these things into consideration; and I am sure that no box-office value would be disturbed by merely leaving out the whistling sequence in any particular picture.
Referring back to the "strip tease" cartoon Metro released—they were and are primarily made and shown for the children, and should in no way be suggestive or downright dirty as was the ease of "Swing Shift Cinderella." Adults, naturally go for cartoons too, but they are not impressed by "cheap dirt" if they have children of their own.
As mentioned above, I am a small town operator and seldom feel the urge for writing suggestions or criticising the efforts of companies who have been very successful and their important executive heads. However, when I look at a cartoon, referred to in this article and when I hear patrons, particularly the bobby-seeks group, whistle and I know that it was promoted by the screen itself, "blow my top" and sit down and write a letter, getting the heated steam out of my system.
Most of my letters are never mailed; and I am not sure I will mail this one. On the other hand. I think I will. Maybe it won't do any good, but at least have the satisfaction of "telling" them a thing or two. "Out of the mouths of babes" sometimes comes a fertile and suggestion.
Samuel T. Traynor
Gm. Mgr.
Bailey Enterprises,
Princeton, Illinois

Mr. Traynor has an unusual definition of the term “strip-tease” as no clothing is even partially removed by Red in this, or any of her cartoons. If the concept of sexual attraction bothered him so much, why did he book the cartoon? It’s not like Red was making her cinematic debut.

Fred Quimby paid no attention to the complaint and Avery made three more films starring Red.

Hot Head

Tex Avery and writer Heck Allen set up a premise and use variations of it throughout Red Hot Rangers (MGM, 1947). George and Junior try to catch a living flame. Junior screws up every attempt. George kicks him in the butt. The little flame then moves across the screen as they look at him.

In one sequence, George’s butt is on fire. Instead of grabbing a pail of water, Junior picks up a bucket of gasoline. George sits in it. The flaming butt causes the only possible result (You can see some frames in this post).

Tex isn’t done yet. George’s hat catches on fire. The frames tell the story as the premise plays out.



Like a Hanna-Barbera TV cartoon, the main violence (Junior bashing George’s head with the shovel) happens off camera. And if Carl Stalling were scoring this, you’d hear “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” as the flame makes his appearance.

Showmen’s Trade Review of April 5, 1947 had this story about the cartoon.

Forestry Service Seeks ‘Red Hot Rangers’ Tieup
The United States Forestry Service has asked MGM for a special preview for its Washington staff and for a national tieup on the Technicolor cartoon. "Red Hot Rangers," Fred Quimby, head of MGM's short subjects department, has announced. The cartoon, produced by Quimby, was directed by Tex Avery and it features George and Junior in a story that concerns the dangers to forests by careless smokers.
Quimby also announced that negotiations have been completed with William C. Erskine, New York merchandising executive, for the development and merchandising of various types of novelties, toys, jewelry, dolls and comic books displaying the MGM cartoon characters, Tom and Jerry, Red Hot Ridinghood, Barney Bear, George and Junior, Skrewy Squirrel and many others. Erskine will handle world-wide distribution of these articles in department stores, news-stands and shops everywhere.

The cartoon was used as a public service message, as the Review reported on Aug. 9 that year. Tex gets “top spot.”

Good Tie-in Bill
Manager James LaRue of Interstate's Kimo Theatre, Albuquerque, N. M., had a ready-made tie-in bill for the observance of Forest Fire Prevention Week. The feature, appropriately enough, was MGM's "Sea of Grass," and the principal short subject was the same company's "Red Hot Rangers," a Technicolor cartoon.
Accordingly, he utilized a show window which advertised both the feature and short subject (with the short getting top spot) and displayed forest fire-fighting equipment plus instructive placards put out by the Forest Ranger service.

Layouts in this cartoon were drawn by Irv Spence (uncredited) while Preston Blair, Ed Love, Ray Abrams and Walt Clinton got animation credits.