A Sugar Coated Pill of Wisdom

The Aesop and Son cartoons on The Bullwinkle Show opened with a saying, followed by a fable based on it, followed by a bad pun on the saying.

The theatrical Aesop’s Fables produced by Van Beuren at the dawn of sound films did it differently. There was a fairly ordinary cartoon, followed by a tag at the end with a supposed saying by Aesop followed by a joke on it. The tag didn’t always have anything to do with the preceding cartoon.

Here’s the one from Tuning In (1929). It’s self-explanatory. Running into the distance was not unusual in Van Beuren (and silent Terry) cartoons. The poor image on the left is Aesop and son.



I believe the last Fables cartoon to have a tag was Good Old School Days (released March 7, 1930). Van Beuren changed its openings and closings in 1930, getting rid of this. . .



. . . and changing the opening from a title card like this . . .



. . . to the animated opening with animals making sounds in time to the music. (Thanks to Steve Stanchfield for the restoration).



Speaking of Van Beuren’s sounds, this article is from the Exhibitors Daily Review of Feb. 28, 1930.

137 SOUND DEVICES USED IN AESOP FABLES
To date the Aesop Fable sound department of the Van Beuren Corporation has accumulated one hundred and thirty-seven sound devices, many of which have been manufactured especially for Fables. These gadgets are the queerest looking bunch of what-nots imaginable, made out of every conceivable material including, cowhide, tin, horn, steel, brass, horsehair, and even the hollowed skull of an ox has been util-ized to provide comedy sound effects in "Singing Saps," a current picture. In this collection are twenty-three varieties of wooden instruments, fourteen of which are used in one scene of "Sky Skippers" which is now in the making. Synchronized noise-making is now a specialized brand of American industry.

The sound editor of Tuning In, who I believe was responsible for adding the effects to the score, was Paul F. Maschke. Carl Edouarde provided the music. Pathé provided the rooster.



Whenever Edourde’s name comes up among old-cartoon fans, it’s usually in connection with a recording session for Walt Disney that has been called a disaster. The Film Daily of September 16, 1929 reported:

Carl Edouarde, music director now is in charge of the synchronization for Aesop’s Sound Fables, the Van Beuren Corp., short subjects released by Pathe. The latest Fables synchronized by Edouarde and his orchestra are “A Jungle Fool” and “The Fly’s Bride.”

Edouarde’s tenure was short. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on Jan. 26, 1930 that hometown boy Gene Rodemich had been hired to score Van Beuren cartoons and “his first endeavors along this line have already reached the screen”. Edouarde's last credit was on Sky Skippers, released Feb. 14, 1930. The next Fable, Good Old School Days, released March 7, has Rodemich's name.

We may have discovered one of the voices on these early sound Fables. The Film Daily had this on the front page, Oct. 13, 1929:

Van Beuren Corp. will release a series of six song sketches through Pathe. The first will be “Mandalay,” the Kipling story set to music by Oley Speakes. John Stanley [sic] will be featured. He will also sing in “The Trumpeter,” the second of the series.

His name was actually James Stanley. He was a baritone who sang one of NBC’s top shows in the late ‘20s, The Eveready Hour. Whether he appeared in Van Beuren’s cartoons is unclear. The Billboard of May 24, 1930 said Stanley and contralto Margaret Olsen sang in the Song Sketch Voice of the Sea. while the Louisville Courier-Journal, unbylined, mentioned on March 16, 1930 the James Stanley Quartette, otherwise unidentified, was in the song sketch Love’s Memories.

Finally, an unidentified reader mentioned something in the comments I could have sworn had found its way into one of our posts. I cannot find it, so here it is below. Amedee Van Beuren was on his way to or from his honeymoon in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia when he stopped in at the office. Variety’s brief story appeared June 5, 1929:

VAN BEUREN’S MARRIAGE DAY
Amedee Van Beuren a couple of hours after his marriage Saturday, walked into the Aesop Fables headquarters.
In less than five minutes he deposed Paul Terry, the original of the script, and placed John Foster in charge.

Then, the press reported, it was off for a round of golf.

Terry and his cohort Frank Moser could not be stopped. The Feb. 10, 1930 issue of The Billboard reported the Educational Film Exchange, eager for cartoons with the coming of sound, had just closed a deal with Audio Cinema for a new series of animated shorts called Terry-Toons. By 1936, Terry had jettisoned Moser, then got fat and rich from his cartoons. The same year, Amedee Van Beuren got out of the cartoon business and stuck with travelogues for another year. He died at his country home in Carmel, New York in November 1938, age 58.

More Rainbow Parades

Over at the Cartoon Research website is the very pleasant news that Thunderbean Animation is ready to start sending out copies of its The Rainbow Parades, Volume 2 Blu-ray collection.

It’ll be a treat to see these in a form other than faded copies of public domain DVDs.

I doubt restoration will make me like any of these cartoons, but the Thunderbeaners have done an excellent job. The animation is very good in Felix the Cat Meets Old King Cole, especially the effects. Here are some frames from Felix the Cat Meets Bold King Cole (1936). Felix is riding a tree branch in a thunderstorm. There’s a zap, the branch gets away from him and Felix is riding a lightning bolt.



I’ll take the silent Felix, thanks. He was a rounded character, ingenious one minute and scheming the next. Van Beuren’s version could easily be played by Mickey Mouse. Molly Moo-Cow could be played by Pluto (now with her blackface scene fully restored), while Parrotville is a place where you wait and wait and wait for something to happen.

RKO thought so little of these shorts that it decided it didn’t need cartoons from a studio it had part interest in and released real Mickey Mouse and Pluto cartoons instead. Van Beuren got out of the cartoon business but still released travelogues for another year.

However, praise should again go to Thunderbean for the hard effort on behalf of those of you who want an improved look at these Technicolor shorts. And, like any good release, there are interesting extras on the disc.

The Missing Tail

A fight in the ring climaxes The Bully’s End, a 1933 Van Beuren cartoon.

As Gene Rodemich’s musicians play “Tiger Rag” in the background, fists fly. Well, and a tail disappears, thanks to an oversight by the animation checker. Each of these is shot on two frames.



It happens again, this time for one frame.



Notice the line of hat-wearing ducks in the first frame above. At Warners, you'd see in-between animation as Bosko splits into multiple versions of himself. Van Beuren doesn't even try. One frame, there's one duck. The next frame, there's a row of ducks. Then it goes from the line in one frame to one duck in the next.

Van Beuren cartoons never seemed to be big on dialogue. Here, the potential for comedy patter by the ring announcer is wasted by music and sound effects that practically drown him out.

Harry Bailey gets the "by" credit, and there's screen mention of the Rufle Baton and the Bray-Hurd Process.

The frames you see above are courtesy of the restoration efforts of Steve Stanchfield.

Zooming Head of Red

Van Beuren cartoons vary between odd and bizarre. Red Riding Hood (1931) falls in the “bizarre” category.

There’s the scene where grandma pours some “jazz tonic” all over herself to become a black-bottom-dancing flapper who runs off with the wolf to get married. Red puts a stop to it by telling the wolf’s wife, who interrupts the ceremony by marching into the church with a phalanx of kids—all armed with rolling pins.

In the final scene, the stood-up grandma starts crying. Then Red cries. Then the preacher cries. But suddenly, they all stop and happily sing “And that is the story of Little Red Riding Hood.” Being a Van Beuren cartoon, it ends with the three characters’ heads zooming toward the theatre audience.



As a bonus, we get Minnie Mouse as Red. Or, as Disney’s lawyers would say, too close of a reasonable facsimile of her (in the Van Beuren cartoon, she has a really bad falsetto).

Harry Bailey and John Foster are responsible for this cartoon.

Take That, Tire

Cubby Bear notices a tack in the path of his bike in Bubbles and Troubles. No problem. His bike can jump over it.



Because this is a 1933 cartoon made in New York, inanimate things come to life. In this case, the tack is not going to put up with being ignored. It attacks a tire before running out of the scene.



The Fleischers did these kinds of come-to-life-gags the best. Their pace was quicker compared to how director Manny Davis handles the gag here. The tack is bland. Fleischer characters happily sing or shout a line or show some emotion.

Gene Rodemich found plenty of ways to fit “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” into the soundtrack.

The Head's Coming at Us Again

Debate, if you want, that A Toytown Tale (1931) is a Christmas cartoon. Yes, it has “Silent Night” (and “Jingle Bells”), and snow and toys, but there’s no Santa or Christmas tree or presents.

What there is, is a truly disjointed story, the kind only the Van Beuren studio could conjure up. The moon comes out of the sky and hides behind some trees. A toy soldier flirts with a girl (they sing) but are threatened by a toy elephant. Suddenly, the elephant disappears from the plot and a monkey shows up. The soldier gets frightened. A new toy character comes out of nowhere to sock the monkey. Now the girl goes for him.

Meanwhile, a crazy jack-in-the-box shows up off-and-on throughout the cartoon to screech and clap and laugh. He’s clobbered by a toy policeman. Here comes the Van Beuren Head Zoom!



But the jack-in-the-box awakens, smiles, gives us a silly "Yankee Doodle" laugh and then sticks out his tongue to end the cartoon.



Then it’s another round of bootleg hootch for the writers.

John Foster and Mannie Davis get the “by” credit, and the music is supplied by Gene Rodemich.

Cubby and the Code

“Pre-Code” does not mean “Pre-Code.”

The Motion Picture Production Code did not suddenly appear in 1934. There was a code in 1930, and other measures going back to the silent era. It’s just that enforcement was lax until 1934.

One wonders if a gag in The Last Mail, a 1933 Van Beuren cartoon, would have gotten past the Code if it were made a year later. It stars Cubby Bear as a mail deliverer on a sled pulled through the snow by squirrels. The film cuts to a scene of beavers building a snowman. Emotion lines indicate they see something in the distance and they run away. It turns out to be Cubby.



Cubby and his sleigh plough through the snowman.



Here’s where the Code comes in. The snowman comes to life and checks his privates. They’re gone!



The snowman runs into the distance, a standard Terry/Van Beuren scene-ender going back to the silent days.



Somehow, I don’t think the Code would go for a Cubby Castration™.

Mannie Davis is the director of this one.