What Happened There, Toby?

When cutting from an action shot to a different view of the action shot, the action should look the same.

That doesn’t always happen in an animated cartoon, and it can look pretty jarring.

Here’s an example from Circus Time, a January 1931 cartoon starring Toby the Pup and made by the Dick Huemer-Sid Marcus-Art Davis team at the Charles Mintz studio. These are consecutive drawings. The first one was held for eight frames then cuts to the next one. Joe De Nat’s music plugs away like it should, so it’s not a splice in the film.



Perhaps something was edited before the cartoon was scored.

The Tobys were released by R-K-O until it decided it didn’t need any cartoons other than the ones made at the studio it partially owned, Van Beuren Productions.

I like the Toby cartoons I’ve seen, though they could use stronger gags.

The Felix Arch

Animated cartoons are entertainment and, like any entertainment, a cartoon that appeals to one person might not appeal to another. It’s visceral. That means there may be no explanation as to why someone likes or dislikes animation on a piece of film, any more than someone can explain why they like or dislike eggplant.

Despite this, there is plenty of commentary and analysis of cartoons out there, varying in tone. One book I have seems to have been an exercise of filling it with words no one uses in any kind of conversation. Others treat the subject casually.

Here’s an early attempt to analyse cartoons. It’s in a book written by an Englishman named Huntly Carter and published in 1930 called “THE NEW SPIRIT IN THE CINEMA. An Analysis and Interpretation of the Parallel Paths of the Cinema, which have led to the present Revolutionary Crisis forming a Study of the Cinema as an Instrument of Sociological Humanism.”

Fantasy, which has for so long been accepted as an expression of the whimsical state of mind, is, of course, within the legitimate sphere of the Cinema. On the screen it is seen at its gayest and best in a small line that assumes thousands of fantastic shapes that compose the Cartoon. In the Cartoon, which is one of the most popular and in some respects the best medium of cinema expression, the human atom and its belongings, undergo whimsical changes that cause a continuous stream of images to form in the mind, and that throw an abundance of rich crumbs to the imagination. But the Cartoon never departs from the actual. It consists of an elastic line in evolution. Shapes grow out of it with which we are familiar even though they are distorted and battered by a sort of recurrent earthquake.

In other words, the Cartoon of the Mickey Mouse, the Krazy Kat, the Felix the Cat, the Inkwell, the Adventures of Sammy and Sausage, or the Oswald Sound Cartoon kind, is simply the caricaturist playing with a line that has the elasticity of gas. It shrinks and expands, collapses and recovers, behaves like a spring winding and unwinding, and at the same time assumes the shapes and characteristics of human beings, animals, insects, of animate things, and inanimate ones made animate. These extraordinary puppets of all sorts, that fall to pieces in heaps and reunite, and outdo even an india-rubber ball in diversity of shapes, that speed through space with a velocity that has no parallel outside the Cinema, have a distinct sociological value. They exhibit man in society caught in a network of events undergoing or trying to escape the consequences. They are in fact a comment, a very witty instructive and biting comment on the absurdities of Man and other living things seen in the light of materialism. At the same time they are human, tragic and comic.

According to Mr. W. O. Brigstocke, of the Education Department of the Liverpool University, the Cartoon has a valuable educational side owing to its elasticity. He has suggested that the moving line of a Felix Cartoon can serve to teach architecture. " Felix could illustrate in a film such difficult conceptions as that of thrust in architecture. Suppose the teacher turned two other Felixes into pillars at his side and then constructed a Felix arch. It would be easy and amusing for him to show stresses and how they could be met. You would see the arch sagging at the knees or wherever it would sag. Gothic cathedrals which demonstrated in the sight of all men where they were weak and where they were strong, by bending, writhing, and even falling down promise infinite amusement. In the same way what could not be done with maps? Let Felix be taken up to a great height and let him behold all the kingdoms of the world with their pomps and vanities not to speak of their trade and transport; then drop him a given number of feet, or let him use up one of his nine lives and drop him all the way; in this manner it would be easy literally to see what scale means, both in space and times values. When one thinks of Felix and mathematics — cones sliced in lovely sections, curves developing in a panopoly of perpendiculars, and tangents to illustrate the secrets of growth and motion and form — why, on these lines we could have all the joys of Felix, Professor Einstein and the Zoo simultaneously."[Footnote]1 Einstein in the Zoo? Some persons would say by all means.
1 The Observer, May 8, 1927

Some of you may find this kind of analysis intellectually stimulating. Others may find it a bore. It’s all subjective, the same as the way you feel about cartoons themselves.

Toby's Dressed Up

The Milkman is a cartoon with three not-all-together acts. The first part of the short features Toby the Pup delivering milk with his horse and wagon with a series of gags, bottles landing here and there, and the horse deciding to go to sleep.

Next, Toby abandons his horse in a little car conveniently in his wagon, and runs into a storm, with rainfall jokes taking up footage.

Our hero (and a small tree) take up refuge in a house which, somehow, has a huge dance hall, and we get musical jokes to finish off the short.

The Toby shorts, and there were 12 of them made by the Winkler (Charles Mintz) studio for release by RKO, are kind of Fleischer Light. Considering Dick Huemer was involved in them, that’s not much of a surprise, but they don’t have as many unexpected throw-away gags as you’d find in a Bimbo Talkartoon short.

The Milkman does have some enjoyable bits. After the horse blows a steam whistle, Toby throws away his bottles.



He reaches into a hidden pocket to put gloves over his gloves.



Next, he reaches behind himself to pull out some spats, which he wears after putting them on over his head.



Now he pulls something out of his belly button. At first, it looks like a cane, but it’s actually a top hat.



Hidden under his, uh, fur, is a cigar and a cleaver, which he uses to chop off the end of his cigar.



Why Toby decides to put on formal wear isn’t apparent, at least to me.

Harrison’s Reports of the day listed the release date as February 20, 1931 while the Motion Picture Herald gave February 25. Despite that, The Film Daily of July 21, 1930 reported “Animation for ‘The Milkman,’ third of the ‘Toby, the Pup’ cartoons has been completed, according to the report from Mintz. It is now in the recording room.” There is a York Daily News-Times ad for the cartoon on the bill at the York Theatre on October 12, 1930. Toby lasted one season. RKO already owned Van Beuren Productions, which made Aesop’s Fables, and replaced Toby with in-house animated shorts starring the human Tom and Jerry.

Toby

Toby the Pup gets lost in the history of animation. His cartoons were never seen on TV over and over like Bugs Bunny and Popeye. In fact, his cartoons weren’t seen on TV at all.

The Toby series was produced for one year for R-K-O by the Charles Mintz studio, which had the rest of its cartoons released through Columbia. When Columbia took over Mintz some years later, I wonder if anyone in the upper echelon knew the cartoons had even been made. They seem to have been thought of as lost and, in fact, there are some shorts in the series that have not been tracked down.

Recently, though, there’s been some interest in poor Toby. A DVD set of some of his cartoons came out a couple of years ago. They have some imaginative little gags, like a Fleischer cartoon, but they remind me more of some of the Krazy Kats I’ve seen that Columbia was also producing.

The first reference I can find to Toby is in Film Daily of May 5, 1930.

CHAS.MINTZ TO PRODUCE CARTOON SERIES FOR RKO
Charles Mintz, of Winkler Pictures, has contracted to produce a series of 26 cartoons, under the title of “Toby the Tar.”

Where “tar” and the number 26 came from, I don’t know, but the trades had the correct name and number (12) by the end of the month.

Here are the cartoons and their release dates; the first two come from Motion Picture News, the rest from Harrison's Reports.

Toby in the Museum, Aug. 19, 1930
Toby the Fiddler, Sept. 1
Toby the Miner, Oct. 1
Toby the Showman, Nov 22
Toby in the Bughouse, Dec. 7
Toby in the Circus Time, Jan. 25, 1931
Toby the Milkman, Feb. 20
Toby in the Brown Derby, March 22
Toby Down South, April 15
Toby Hallowe'en, May 1
Toby in Aces Up, May 16
Toby the Bull Thrower, June 7

We’ve cautioned before here about taking release dates for shorts as dogmatic. Theatres were able to show films as soon as they got to the exchange. The Museum is a fine example. It was appearing at RKO-Keith’s in Washington D.C. on July 27, 1930, according to a newspaper review.

Some random newspaper ads for shows with Toby on the bill.

>

Variety reviewed Toby’s first cartoon in its edition of August 6, 1930:

Cartoons have become disposed to follow routines. As a consequence each creation has followed the design of a preceding success until nearly all of them possess much sameness. But this one has a marked quality of novelty that marks it suitable for filler on any type of program.
It is in the setting. Where most of the animal cartoons have resorted to woodland scenes or in general outdoor settings, this “Toby” cartoon takes an indoor setting and with it a comedy dance. It’s the Art Museum where “Toby” works as a sweeper and makes funny antics as he strums on makeshift instrument and statues of Alexander, Napoleon and Caesar dance with him.

But not a lot of attention was given to Toby. He wasn’t the only new cartoon character of 1930—there was Flip the Frog at MGM and Bosko at Warners, in addition to the brand-new Terrytoons shorts. What looks like a short news release appeared in the San Francisco Examiner on February 15, 1931.

Toby the Pup Catches On
Toby the Pup, contrary to predictions of the wise guys, has not gone Hollywood. Nor has he waxed temperamental in any sense.
And this, despite the fact that he is single in a land of beautiful four-footed sirens, and is not restrained by any morality clause.
Toby the Pup, in other words, is just one swell and easy proportion to handle, according to Charles Mintz, producer of the. Toby the Pup cartoon series now being distributed by Radio Picture.

But the end was nigh for Toby, thanks to corporate deal-making. RKO purchased Pathé in January 1931. Pathé had been releasing Van Beuren’s Aesop Fables, so there was no need for a separate deal with Charles Mintz for cartoons. That spelled the end of Toby, who was replaced on RKO’s star roster with the human versions of Tom and Jerry.

In keeping with the season, let’s look at one of the Toby cartoons. Hallowe'en is an odd one. The first half has nothing do with the second. In the first half, Toby’s kissing girls, getting shamed by Patsy in song, then plays the piano (and a goat).



The scene cuts to an interior of a church at night, with the bell separated from building playing that “horse’s ass” tune. It’s time for Hallowe’en fun with a stylised witch, heads floating in the darkness and, my favourite gag, a skeleton drinking punch. Dick Huemer or whoever wrote this milked the gag and we get four skeletons, each of reduced size, doing the same thing.



The cartoon ends with Toby scaring away ghosts by crowing like a rooster, then discovering he’s laid an egg, from which a baby ghost pops out.

I’ve liked the few Tobys I’ve seen and it’s too bad the series didn’t continue, especially considering some of the lame shorts the Mintz studio put out in the late ‘30s. Do a search on-line and see what you think.

Finding a Columbia Favorite

How can I describe the Columbia cartoon studio?

Unique, maybe?

The studio’s output was odd. There were Krazy Kat shorts which bore the name of George Herriman’s character and nothing else. There were Scrappy cartoons, where kids drank, cross-dressed and got beaten unconscious. There were imitation Disneys with loads of colour and not much else. There were shorts full of Hollywood celebrities, taking advantage of the abilities of animator and caricaturist Ben Shenkman. There were several regimes, one which hired Disney picketers and told them to experiment. There was another that wanted carbon copies of Warners and Tex Avery cartoons, so we got a Daffy-like duck and a Sylvester-like cat. And there were all kinds of stories that didn’t make much sense.

Oh, and a fox and crow, neither of whom were sympathetic or likeable. But they made money for Columbia in comic book licensing.

When we talk about the “Columbia” studio, we actually mean the Charles Mintz/Winkler Productions operations. When sound films were becoming inevitable, Mintz signed a deal with Columbia to release his Krazy Kat shorts; they had been distributed by Paramount in the silent days. A deal with signed around July 1, 1929. The first, Ratskin, was released on August 15th. Some of the early sound Krazys by Manny Gould and Ben Harrison are quite fun. In The Apache Kid (1930), Krazy is an apache dancer who rolls his own cigarette—which turns into the shape of a camel!

Mintz got the idea of moving the Krazy Kat studio to the West Coast. That’s what he did in February 1930. His brother-in-law, George Winkler, already had a studio in Los Angeles. It had been making Oswald cartoons until Universal decided in 1929 to get Walter Lantz to do it. The first Scrappy short was released on July 16, 1930. (The studio also made Toby the Pup shorts for release through RKO starting late July 1930).The two studios merged as Screen Gems in December 1931. Scrappy helped launch the phoney-Disney “Color Rhapsodies” series with Holidayland on November 9, 1934.

That brings us to this article from 1939 where the head of production at the studio tells us of the vetting process to get characters on the screen. Despite that, they’re not all that funny. By now, Columbia had taken over the operation of the studio from Mintz and re-named it Screen Gems.

No Limit on Work Hours of Cartoon Stars
HOLLYWOOD, Oct. 8—(AP)— There are movie producers who can slave-drive their juvenile stars without fear of child welfare groups and who can work their four-legged employees to the bone without a whimper from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
James Bronis is one. He's the head of Screen Gems, a Columbia producing organization.
"Our 'stock company'," explains Bronis, "is composed of characters developed in our animated cartoons.
"Our lively juvenile star, Scrappy, often works in 10 or 11 pictures at once, yet the educational authorities never have to reprove us.
Krazy Kat Works Hard
"Krazy Kat may work in half a dozen of the 27 pictures we have in production now without suffering the slightest physical harm, or inciting the anger of any animated animals guild.
"There is no danger of one of our other stars being tied up in another picture or at another studio. But we still have casting problems."
The trouble is, says Bronis, you can never tell how appealing a cartoon character, however quaint or humorous on paper, will be when brought to life.
"We give each new character a 'physical' examination," says Bronis.
Made To Run Gamut
"We try him out in every imaginable acrobatic action, and we put him through dramatic tests— make him run the gamut of pen-and-ink emotions.
"If he passes all these satisfactorily he gets a special test for the part in mind. If he succeeds in the minor role—if he clicks with the public—then we make him the hero of his own cartoon."
The elf-like beings in "The Happy Tots" passed the tests and are in their second color rhapsody. The Blue Birds, a new "family" group, are in their third cartoon. But Bronis favors three newcomers in "The House That Jack Built"—an ostrich, a beaver and a bear. Especially the ostrich.
"There's one actor," he says, "that won't lay an egg."

Mintz died on December 30, 1939.

Columbia decided to make its move. Frank Tashlin was brought in to oversee production. In September 1941, Ben Schwalb was transferred from New York to replace George Winkler as general manager and proceeded to lay off 30 people. Dave Fleischer took charge in April 1942 but was gone by December the following year; musician Paul Worth was his general manager and carried on until January 1945 when he was arrested on a forgery charge. Hugh McCollum was brought in by Columbia in March 1945 and finally Ray Katz was hired in July to manage the studio. By November 1946, it was all over. Columbia closed the studio. The last Screen Gems cartoon was released on June 30, 1949.

The Cohn family wasn’t done with cartoons yet. Much like it had distributed Disney cartoons in the early ‘30s, Columbia did the same with UPA shorts starting in late 1948. Then it bought a percentage of the newly-formed H-B Enterprises in 1957 and began putting Hanna-Barbera cartoons on the big screen from 1959 to 1965. They starred Loopy De Loop and were in limited animation. They were inferior to Quick Draw McGraw and Huckleberry Hound cartoons that kids were watching on their TV.

“Inferior” may be a way of describing the Columbia studio, but it’s a trifle unfair, despite a lot of what strikes me as very tedious and explanation-defying cartoons. They had Art Davis on staff for ten years, Emery Hawkins was put to work on Oscar-nominee The Little Match Girl, Preston Blair animated there for a time, Mel Blanc, Sara Berner, Danny Webb and Frank Graham were among the actors on its shorts, and I can’t help liking the audacity of Cal Howard creating an armed Daffy Duck knock-off with Woody Woodpecker music playing in the background.

Expectorating For Your Convenience

Goats generally eat everything in an animated cartoon, but not in the Toby the Pup short Hallowe’en by the Charles Mintz studio. In this scene, a goat chews on a table, but spits out the wood to form a little footstool it can rest on.



The goat finishes the scene with a little comedy bray (is that what goats do?).



The scene is sandwiched in between animation of Toby playing the piano as various animals sway. Toby’s finger technique is excellent considering this is a 1930 cartoon. It’s actually a fun little short, with a witch pulling the skeleton out of a bird and other things like that. I suspect these frames are from a Thunderbean restoration.

Dick Huemer and Sid Marcus get a “by” credit “in collaboration with Art Davis.”