Oswald Gets Dressed

A bulldog grabs onto Oswald the rabbit, who is trying to grab a roast chicken cooling on a window sill in Weary Willies (1929).



The dog pulls Oswald’s black ink right off him.



Oswald is left in his underwear (with a flap). How embarrassing for a major cartoon star!



A shadow now appears where there had never been one before.



Yeah, the shadow telegraphs the gag. But I like it anyway (Didn't Felix do the same thing once?). Some representative frames.



Exhibitors Herald World, on June 29, 1929, reviewed the short:

"Weary Willie" (Universal Cartoon — One Reel)
THE bright, extremely clever, the unexpected and agreeable, the skillful manipulation of comedy quirks are not very often met with in pictures. Here, though, is a cartoon, one of the Oswalds turned out by the Winkler boys, that has plenty of these rare ingredients that are conducive to laughter. And it contains them in profusion. Ninety-nine out of every one hundred persons should get a laugh out of the rabbit's adventures with a tramp bear. Touched up with sound effects, this one hurdles all obstacles and grabs a laurel wreath labeled : first-rate cartoon comedy. — RAYMOND GANLY.

The cartoon was made during the period Charlie Mintz took control of the Oswald series from Walt Disney, and offered jobs to Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising, Ben Clopton, Ham Hamilton and another ex-Disney staffer who directed this cartoon.



Another animator on staff was Walter Lantz, who happened to be a social friend of Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal, which distributed the Oswald cartoons. On April 9, 1929, Universal announced it was setting up its own cartoon studio. Walter Lantz was put in charge, with Bill Nolan assiating. Farewell to Mintz, Harman, Ising, Freleng and the ex-Disneyites that Mintz enticed to join him. Lantz recalled to Leonard Maltin (quoted in "Of Mice and Magic") his first job was to add sound to six Winkler cartoons that hadn't been released. Presumably, Weary Willies was one, though a low-resolution print with music added by someone is all that's available to view. The cartoon came with sound on film and on disc.

Motion Picture News reported the cartoon was released July 22, 1929. Exhibitors World Herald eventually gave a date of Aug. 5, 1929. The last Winkler cartoon released was Saucy Sausages on Aug. 19, according to Motion Picture News. It was directed by Ben Clopton.

The next cartoon was released on Sept. 2, 1929. Race Riot bore the names of animators Walter Lantz, Bill Nolan and Tom Palmer, with synchronisation and score by Bert Fiske. Rollin C. (Ham) Hamilton replaced Lantz as an animator while David Broekman, the head of Universal's music department, took over from Fiske before the end of the year.

Freleng had been credited on other Oswald shorts for Mintz/Winkler: The Fiery Fireman (Oct. 15, 1928); Homeless Homer (with Rudolf Ising, Jan. 7, 1929); Hen Fruit (with Ising, Feb. 4, 1929); and Wicked West (June 10, 1929).

From the Lantz Clipping File

Walter Lantz had an admirable career, despite what may be considered less-than-entertaining cartoons in the 1970s. He starred in silent films in the 1920s, successfully owned his own cartoon studio for decades, developed a star character in Woody Woodpecker (no doubt with a lot of help from Bugs Hardaway), appeared in some pleasant little vignettes on a syndicated half-hour show that was picked up by Kellogg’s and travelled around the world with his wife, contributing to charity along the way.

He also picked up some talented people for a time, including Tex Avery, Ed Love, Emery Hawkins, Dick Lundy, Bill Garity, Pat Matthews, Freddie Moore, Mike Maltese and a pile of others who needed a new cartoon home.

We’ve written about Lantz in the 1920s several times before here; he was the focus of trade publications and then the popular press when he began to make cartoons in the west. Instead, let’s pass on some odds and ends from 1925. To the right is from Exhibitor's Trade Review, August 25, 1925.

First, a preface. Lantz had begun his Dinky Doodle series in 1924; a publicity article in Exhibitors Trade Review of Aug. 16, 1924 foretold the Bray studios would be releasing a new cartoon series with Dinky Doodle and Weakheart, with the first titled Dinky Doodle and the Wonderful Lamp. The one-reelers were distributed through Selznick Distributing Corporation until creditors filed for bankruptcy in October 1924 and Film Booking Offices took over. Exhibitors Trade Review’s list of films published Nov. 1 says the short was called Magic Lamp and released Sept. 15, 1924, while the same publication reported on Sept. 6 that the cartoon was finished in eight weeks.

The Dinky cartoons, said the trades, were written and directed by Lantz and produced by the Standard Cinema Corporation.

When 1925 rolled around, he took on a second animated series.

Bray Cartoons Acquired
“We Want More” is what exhibitors say to the F. B. O. sales staff when speaking of the famous Bray cartoons, and in response to this universal exhibitor request, Film Booking Offices has made a new contract with J. R. Bray whereby the company will get 26 comedy cartoons from the Bray studios during the next year.
During the past year the Bray studios have furnished F. B. O. with thirteen Dinky Doodle comedies, a series of cartoonized burlesques on well known fairy tales and nursery rhymes, a series originated by Walter Lantz of the Bray staff. (Exhibitors Herald, May 23, 1925)

Bray Studios Will Make 26 Two-Reel Comedies for F. B. O.
THE Bray Studios are taking additional space at 130 West 46th Street, New York, the building in which they are housed, in order to accommodate the increased art staff which has been engaged for the production of twenty six subjects which Bray will make for F. B. O. release for the 1925-26 season.
These twenty six subjects will consist of thirteen Dinky Doodle cartoons, and thirteen comedies which will be known as "Unnatural History" cartoons. The Dinky Doodle cartoons will be burlesques of famous fairy tales and burlesques of the best known feature pictures of the current year. "Don Q" will be the first big production to be burlesqued by Walter Lantz, well known cartoonist. Work on this short subject will commence immediately that Lantz completes the thirteenth of the Dinky Doodle cartoons, a burlesque on the story of Rip Van Winkle.
The "Unnatural History" cartoons will also be burlesques, and the titles of the first four subjects, "Where The Leopard Got His Spots," "How The Elephant Got His Trunk," "Where The Camel Got His Hump" and "Where The Zebra Got His Stripes," are indicative of the laugh-creating possibilities in comedies of this nature. (Moving Picture World, July 25)



Bray Company in Adirondacks
Walter Lantz, director and star of Bray Studios, has taken his staff to the Adirondacks to get exteriors for “Dinky Doodle and the Babes in the Woods,” cartoon. (Exhibitors Herald, Aug. 8)

Fuller on Bray Staff
"Ving" Fuller, the well known sports cartoonist of the New York Daily Graphic has joined the staff of the Bray Studios. He will act as one of the animators associated with Walter Lantz in the production of the new "Unnatural History" Cartoons and the Dinky Doodle series of cartoons which J. R. Bray is making for F. B. O. release. (Moving Picture World, Aug. 15)

“Dinky Doodle and the Babes in the Wood” has been finished for release August 12, and Walter Lantz, the cartoonist, has completed the script for the thirteenth, “Just Spooks.” (Exhibitors Herald, Aug. 15)

The Bray studios are producing 13 Dinky Doodle cartoons and 13 Unnatural History cartoons. “Ving” Fuller is associated with Walter Lantz in the latter. (Exhibitors Herald, Aug. 22)

Bray Studios have added two new men to their production staff. They are Frank Leonard, sport cartoonist, who will assist Walter Lantz in the production of the Dinky Doodle Series and the Unnatural History Series, both released through F. B. O. Ernest Corts, naturalist and photographer, is the other.
Lantz and Charles Walters, child player, will act before the camera in conjunction with the cartoon characters in the first of the Unnatural History series, "How the Elephant Got His Trunk." It is now in production. (Exhibitors Trade Review, Aug. 22)

"Just Spooks" Completed
Walter Lantz has just completed production on the 13th Dinky Doodle subject titled “Just Spooks.” This subject is a departure from previous Dinky Doodle subjects inasmuch as it is not a Burlesque on a Fairy Tale. Playing on the vogue for mystery dramas, the story makes Dinky Doodle and his companion the pup, “Weakheart” decide they will play a joke on the artist and Walter Lantz gets the scare of his life in this subject when the boy and the dog, masquerading as a ghost, cause him to go through a number of thrilling adventures in order to escape the clutching hand of the ever pursuing spook. F. B. O. will release this subject September 15. (Moving Picture World, Sept. 5; photo from Exhibitors Herald, Aug. 29).



Walter Lantz of the Bray Studios, who acts in conjunction with the cartoon characters he creates, has finished two of the 26 cartoons he is scheduled to produce for the distributing company The first of these, a Dinky Doodle cartoon, called “The Bad Man” is a burlesque on the vogue for wild and wooly westerns, while the second is an Unnatural History cartoon called “How the Elephant Got His Trunk.” (Moving Picture World, Sept. 5)

Bray Studios Forms Gag Club
NEW YORK.— A Gag Club has been formed at the Bray studios. The entire staff meets Monday nights with J. R. Bray, president, and threshes out scenario problems brought up by Walter Lantz, department chief. (Exhibitors Herald, Sept. 5)

Hurd with Bray Studios
Earl Hurd, the famous cartoonist, creator of Bobby Bumps and other internationally famous cartoon characters is once again with the Bray Studios. Hurd achieved a tremendous vogue years ago when he drew Bobby Bumps for Bray. The Paramount organization released these pictures. He is now back again and the first subject he will work on is the third of the Unnatural History Comedies titled “The Camel’s Hump.” Walter Lantz will enact the leading role in this subject together with little Frankie Evans the child “find.” Clyde Geronimi will handle the megaphone on this production. This novelty will be released early in November by F. B. O. (Moving Picture World, Oct. 24)

15th Dinky Doodle Concluded
The fifteenth Dinky Doodle subject which F. B. O. is to release early in November has been placed in production at the Bray Studios. Walter Lantz, the artist creator of this character will appear together with Dinky Doodle and the other cartoon character, Weakheart the dog, in this subject which is to be titled, “Dinky Doodle in the Hunt.” (Moving Picture World, Oct. 24)



Above is an ad in the Oct. 10, 1925 edition of Exhibitors Trade Review.

The Lantz cartoons were released in Canada and England as well. The Daily Sketch of London gave us this profile of Lantz, his co-stars, and his boss on April 17, 1925. The word “Universal” is a nice coincidence.

Dinky Doodle and Weakheart
YOU will all by meeting these two in a month or so, and I, who have had the privilege already, can vouch for it that these are going to be real new friends.
Such friends, too, as you have not met before.
Suppose Felix, whom you all know so well, were to add one final feat of magic to those he already performs on the screen.
The wonder of Dinky and Weakheart is that they live in two worlds at once. You can never be quite sure whether they are fantastic adventures in company with real men and women or lively wanderers in their own realm of make believe. They share pictorially the magazine gifts of Alice both in and out of Wonderland, and have her easy knack of transferring from one side to the other of the Looking-Glass without effort.
I was watching a picture of Walter Lantz, the kinema cartoonist, at work in his studio.
Under his fingers there grew up on the paper the oldest of big-eyed, spindly-legged urchins, a pigmy so obviously ripe for anything that I just rubbed my eye with a slight sensation at wonder only when he stepped off the paper, sat up and began to play pranks his with artist creator.
Followed another creature of pen-and-ink, whom in politeness I must name a dog. This was Weakheart.
Lantz put down his pencil to pass a merry interlude with the pair of them. He tried a fairy tale on them. Dinky Doodle wouldn't believe in fairies., whereupon from the open page of a big book on the table a Chinese magician walked out, grabbed Dinky and Weakheart together back into the pages and so breathlessly bewildered through the entire adventure of Aladdin. At the finish, the pigmies were flung back into the lap of the artist ready for a fresh journey.
This in actual fact was the birth episode of Dinky Doodle and Weakheart.
Although Walter Lantz is their artistic parent, their godfather is J. R. Bray, who 14 years ago devised the first of the animated cartoons for the screen. Others have adopted similar processes since, but it is in the Bray studios that Lantz produced this crowning achievement of acting himself with the figures sprung from his fancy.
J. R. Bray at rather more than 40 is the head of one of the busiest and most successful organisations in America, but the story of his climb to fame and fortune is a romance of courage and belief in himself when other people thought him simply crazy.
Son of a Methodist parson in a little town of Michigan State, he was training for a musician's career, when he saw a chalk cartoonist at work and ran off to draw cartoons himself for a Detroit newspaper instead.
With the first fifty dollars saved he moved on to New York, took a double chance in getting married and trying to earn a livelihood as a free-lance artist, and made good in both.
The comic strip in the newspapers and the crude motion pictures then showing gave him the germ of an idea for combining the two. "For eighteen months," he says, "I almost lived with a pencil him in my hand I used up acres of paper. At the end of the time I sold my first 'animated cartoon' and received an order for six more."
It would need too technical and complicated description to explain in detail what happens, but, briefly, the animated figures are drawn with opaque ink on transparent celluloid, while the real scenes amid which they are to appear are photographed with a kinema camera in the ordinary way. The tiny strip of film picture is enlarged and the pen and ink figures laid over them one after the other. Then these strips are photographed afresh.
A reel 600 feet long would this seem to need 9,600 separate pictures, but in actual fact the positions are held more than one, and the usual total of drawings is nearer 2,000 or 2,500.
Walter Lantz has been with the Bray studios since they were started, and it was he who conceived the further idea of putting himself into a motion picture as a background for the figures he created.
"We wanted a new character with a universal appeal," he says, in telling how Dinky Doodle was born." Already we had decided to burlesque the most famous of the fairy tales. It seemed that a boy not too old and not two young, but full of the spirit that moves all boys, was what was wanted. Such a boy would naturally have some dumb animal as a companion, and ‘Weakheart’ arrived. Then I walked across the room with an outstretched arm just as though the dog were perched on it. In reality the dog was drawn separately on the celluloid and laid over the moving photograph already made of myself. And so through all the subsequent movements."
This was only last year, and already there are Dinky Doodle adventures with the Pied Piper, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Peter Pan, and several other stories. They will be coming to London shortly.
L. D.

Dinky Doodle lasted through the 1924 and 1925 release seasons. The Exhibitors Herald reported in July 10, 1926 that J.R. Bray would be distributing cartoons by Walter Lantz with “new ideas.” Thus the Hot Dog series starring Pete the Pup was born, and survived a season.

On May 17, 1927, Lantz jumped into his Locomobile, and with the words “To California without a flat or bust,” headed to the west coast. Exhibitors Daily Review claimed it was “primarily for a vacation.” The operative word here is “primarily.” As Joe Adamson recorded in his fine biography of Lantz, the Bray animation studio closed, there was no directorial work for him in New York, so he moved across the country.



Lantz used his shrewdness to land his next big animation job. Producer Charlie Mintz had wrested Oswald the Lucky Rabbit from its creator, Walt Disney. Disney didn’t own his creation; he was a worker for hire. But Mintz didn’t own Disney’s creation, either. It was owned by Universal pictures. The end result was a moment of karma: Universal boss Carl Laemmle dumped Mintz and put his social buddy Lantz in charge of making the Oswald cartoons. (Picture above from Exhibitors Herald, Mar. 26, 1927).

Several of Dinky’s comedies have been restored as best as possible by Tommy Stathes, you can enjoy one below and check out his Cartoon Roots collections of DVDs/BluRays at this site.

Rhapsody in Cement

Friz Freleng’s Rhapsody in Rivets (1941) was one of a number of cartoons to synchronise Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 to animated action on screen. It was nominated for an Oscar, but the cartoon based on the same music which won the award was the Tom and Jerry short The Cat Concerto (1947).

Mike Maltese (at least he received the rotating story credit) and Freleng must have worked closely to match gags to the timing of the music. I can’t explain it, but the humour is something that would come out a Freleng unit cartoon.

One routine involves a cement mixer acting as a cocktail shaker. After the “drink” is poured out, an arm appears from behind the mixer and plops a garnish on top. I cannot picture Chuck Jones (even with Maltese writing) using this kind of gag.



Correct me I’m wrong, but I believe the first cartoon to employ this piece of music was in 1929 in The Opry House, a Mickey Mouse short. You can also hear it (besides in the aforementioned cartoons) in various lengths in Fire Bugs (Fleischer, 1930), Bars and Stripes (Mintz/Columbia, 1931), The Candy House (Lantz, 1934), A Car-Tune Portrait (Fleischer, 1937), Farmyard Symphony (Disney, 1938), Dipsy Gypsy (George Pal/Paramount, 1941), Rhapsody Rabbit (Warners, 1946), Back Alley Oproar (Warners, 1948), The Magic Fluke (UPA/Columbia, 1949) and Convict Concerto (Lantz, 1954). I must be missing some.

(Yes, I know, The Simpsons, Roger Rabbit. I’m talking about theatrical animated shorts).

It was originally released Dec. 6, 1941; the Warners’ theatre in Fresno screened it that day. Spake an exhibitor to the Motion Picture Herald:

You might call this a partial burlesque of Fantasia. No matter what you call it, it is a very, very clever cartoon showing the building of a skyscraper to the Second Hungarian Rhapsody music. My audience laughed a great deal and praised it afterward.

Gil Turner received the rotating animator credit, chopped off when the cartoon was re-released in 1947. The backgrounds appear to be the work of Leonard Kester.

Woody Builds a Car

Woody Woodpecker is too busy singing and pointing at people in the theatre watching his cartoon that he crashes his car into a telephone pole.

No matter. Woody splits into multiples of himself, some in outline drawings, and rebuilds his little convertible in about a second of screen time. The frames show how.



I like the earliest, goofy-looking version of Woody, though some of his stories were lacking a bit. This scene is from The Loan Stranger (1942), with voices by Kent Rogers, who throws in a Red Skelton voice ("You bwoke my liddle head!") and the loan-sharking fox doing Jolie ("Mammy!). Woody singing at the outset is unmistakeably Mel Blanc. Direction is by Alex Lovy, story by Bugs Hardaway and Milt Schaffer, and animation is credited to Frank Tipper.

Such Language in a Cartoon

The familiar theme of noise/silence is explored yet again by Tex Avery in his final theatrical cartoon, Sh-h-h-h-h-h (Walter Lantz, 1955).

Unlike Avery’s other cartoons with this plot device, Mr. Twiddle doesn’t run into the distance and make noise. He and other characters hold up little signs instead.

In one scene, Twiddle stubs his toe on a footstool.



Cut to the sign gag and topper.



Notice Twiddle has a red nose like an Avery character at Warners in the late-'30s.

The cartoon is a disappointment to me. The idea of the hotel staff maintaining quiet is completely violated when noise comes from the room next to Twiddle’s. Why aren’t they taking any measures to deal with it? And in the opening scene, Twiddle’s reaction to the noise is weak compared to the emotional reactions of Avery’s wolf in Northwest Hounded Police at MGM ten years earlier.

Avery left Lantz after this cartoon and, after a bit, worked on TV commercials, which he found less stressful.

The picture everyone seems left with is Avery was a sad and broken man when Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera gave him a job near the end of his life, where he had to deal with the restraints of television and the sausage factory attitude of the studio.

As this was Avery’s final cartoon for the big screen, this is our final post as we go on an indefinite hiatus. Thank you for reading.