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.

Bessie the Animator

Buried in the “Coming and Going” column of Film Daily of July 13, 1936 is this item:

BESSIE MAES, animator connected with the Max Fleischer studios, went to Minneapolis last week to lecture on animated cartoons at the University of Minnesota summer session.

Research is bringing to light the women who animated cartoons in the Golden Age, including at Walt Disney. This post isn’t very scholarly but we’ll pass along a couple of stories from the Minneapolis newspapers of the day about her. Both were published July 8, 1936.

First, a bit of a set-up. It would appear she was seconded away from her drawing board, judging by a column in the Minneapolis Journal of April 1, 1936. It read, in part:

Take the case of Bessie Maes, who for years was on the art staff of Fleischer (Betty Boop) Studios, holding a position never before or since held by a woman . . . animated cartoonist.
The public’s demand for knowledge as to how animated cartoons are made was so great that Paramount decided to feature Bessie Maes in a program and put it on in their theatres. She was billed as a lecturer and staff representative. Some clubs, colleges and other organizations began to ask for the programs. Six months of each year was spent in “animated lecturing” at these places. Out of these busy days, some way or other time was squeezed out to draw the cartoons.

The Journal’s story on July 8:

Betty Boop Having Figure Worries, Says Cartoonist
Mrs. W. A. Hirschy Is Spending Summer at Home in City
Betty Boop's figure is causing her to worry and the poor girl is contemplating a salad-eating and rope-skipping campaign to reduce, according to Mrs. W. A. Hirschy, one of Betty's "bosses," who, with her husband, is spending the summer at the Minneapolis home of the Hirschys at 3510 Twenty-seventh avenue S.
Known professionally as Bessie Maes, Mrs. Hirschy is the only woman animated cartoonist in the world. She works for the Max Fleischer studios in New York City drawing Betty Boop and other cartoon characters for the screen.
Has Reason for Worries
"Betty's reason for worrying about her figure," explained Miss Maes, "is because fourth dimension pictures are fast being developed. Betty Boop has made one of these already. So, with the fourth dimension to think about, Betty has to keep an anxious eye on her calories."
Miss Maes is one of a staff of 230 artists, tracers, cameramen and other employees who work on cartoon comedies. It takes 15,000 separate pictures to make a one-reel cartoon and requires 10 full weeks of the staff's time. Artists draw as high as 350 separate pictures a day.
Pioneering at Cartooning
A diminutive, attractive blond with a small wee voice, Miss Maes is not unlike the Betty Boop she creates. She is a pioneer in animated cartoon work and proud of the fact she is the only woman in the world in this work.
She spoke before an audience of nearly 500 students in the music auditorium of the University of Minnesota yesterday, describing the work of making the cartoon comedies for the screen.

This is the version from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Animated Cartoons Visit City With Woman Creator
Only Feminine Artist in Films, Bessie Maes, Tells How They're Made.
Betty Boop gave her dress an extra saucy fillip in Minneapolis Tuesday under the approving eye of Popeye the Sailorman. Oswald the Rabbit looked on wonderingly, but Mickey Mouse was too busy making eyes at Minnie to pay much attention.
The person who brought about all these strange things was Bessie Maes, who believes she is the only woman animated cartoonist in the world. She gave an illustrated lecture Tuesday afternoon in the music auditorium at the University of Minnesota, but first she told something about how she comes to be in a class by herself.
The mental strain of preparing the hundreds on hundreds of pictures that go to make an animated cartoon has proved too much for most women, she said, adding that it bothers her less perhaps since she was in the animated cartoon business from the start.
She was ready to become a cartoonist just about the time the bright lads got the idea that there was a gold field to be captured by turning the comic strips into celluloid strips. And she's been in the business down through the days that saw Betty Boop develop into one of the major film stars. Popeye become the rage of the day, and Walt Disney take the show houses by storm with his Mickey Mouse creations. She has worked with most of the leading animated cartoonists, including Disney and Walt Lantz, the creator of Oswald the Rabbit.
She doesn't dare to have any favorites, she said, but admitted she has an especially soft spot in her heart for the husky Popeye.
In an average cartoon some 125 persons in a studio begin racing against time as soon as scenarists dump the light story on the producer's desk. Each of the cartoonists is allotted a number of the scenes, drawing the hundreds of pictures that take Mickey Mouse, for instance, through the act of sliding down a rain pipe. Then they are assembled, the necessary re-takes made. Women in the studio generally are used for tracing, washing celluloid and similar jobs.
Miss Maes’ husband, W. A. Hirschy, resides at 5510 Twenty-seventh avenue south.

What’s odd about this is Fleischer employed Lillian Friedman as an animator. How could Maes not know her?

Maes was born Elizabeth Mae Kelley on November 10, 1891. 1936 saw the death of her father, Josiah B. Kelley, in Maine. She evidently gave up employment in the Fleischer studio as she is in the Minneapolis directory in 1937. She had no job recorded in the 1940 or 1950 Census for the city.

Maes’ husband, William Amerland Hirschy, passed away in 1980. Maes died in Lake City, Minnesota on Oct. 21, 1981.

(Late Tralfaz bulletin: I mentioned "research" above. I was thinking about Mindy Johnson's efforts to find information about women in animation in the theatrical days. After putting up this post, she sent a note saying she is working on a book with Bessie's story. I look forward to her important research to dispel myths. Find out more at this link).

Don't Don't Don't, You Cartoon Makers

It’s bemusing that old animated cartoons are either not seen, are edired or contain warnings. These very same cartoons already went past the censor’s eye before they were even approved to be shown to audiences.

This was in a time when the film industry was far more prudish than it is today. Sex and religion? Out! Stereotypes? Painful violence? Innocent fun. Mind you, animated cartoons left the theatres and became TV fare (mostly aimed at kids) in the ‘60s and ‘70s and became subjected to different standards.

I don’t propose to get into a huge debate about the subject here. What I’ll do is post a couple of feature stories from the United Press from when these cartoons were created. Our first stop is in Culver City, the home of Bill Hanna, Joe Barbera and Tex Avery. This appeared in newspapers around April 12, 1949.

Cartoon Characters Have Their Troubles With The Censor Too
By ALINE MOSBY
HOLLYWOOD, April 12 (U.P.).—A buxom movie queen lolling in bed isn't the only item that gets axed out of the movies. The long arm of the censors reached out to the love life and hip wiggles in the cartoons, too. The two guys who create Tom and Jerry, the Oscar-winning cat and mouse, sigh they have to worry about slipping gags past the censors just like the big directors do.
"We have to be careful about Jerry kicking Tom in the back-side. Those gags don't get by so much any more," says Joe Barbera, who writes and directs the cat and mouse series at MGM with William Hanna.
Tom and Jerry usually don't wear a stitch of clothes in their movies, unlike Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. But in "Springtime for Thomas" Tom had to crawl into trousers while he yowled his love to a lady cat.
"She had on clothes and it wouldn't look right for Tom not to wear any," Barbera says. "If he's in a scene with a kitten he can go clothesless, though."
Tom wears goatskin pants and Jerry a Robinson Crusoe outfit in their next movie. But Barbera and Hanna undressed them in a hurry so the 125 animators wouldn't have to draw clothes in all the 15,000 "frames" that make one cartoon.
"We had 'em do a subtle strip tease," grins Barbera. "Hope it gets by."
Once the Johnston office turned thumbs down on a scene in a cartoon, not of Tom and Jerry, which showed a dog sniffing at a man disguised as a tree. And in "Red Hot Riding Hood" the censors frowned when Red Riding Hood, a nightclub bump-and-grind queen, got too life-like with the hip wiggles. The part where the wolf drooled over her had to be toned down, too.
The censors didn't blink, though, when Jerry used a brassiere as a parachute in "Yankee Doodle Mouse."
Besides being censored, Tom and Jerry are like live movie stars in other ways, too. They have wardrobe "tests" before the cartoon is drawn, just like Lana Turner. They get stacks of fan letters ("Why does the cat always get beat up?").
Their sound effects department, with records labeled "scratches" and "plops," is as big as those for live movies. And music is furnished by the same big orchestra that saws away for multi-million productions. One future cartoon, "Texas Tom," is scheduled for a big premiere in Dallas. Jerry even danced with Gene Kelly in "Anchors Aweigh." And the cat and mouse have won more Oscars—five—than any other actors, alive or otherwise, plus the grand cartoon prize at a world film festival in Belgium.
"All that, and the cartoon whizzes by the screen in seven minutes," sighs Director Barbera.

Walter Lantz was interviewed on more than one occasion about being told “You Can’t” by the blue pencil brigade. This one showed up in the press on October 18, 1951. At least one paper showed publicity drawings of Lantz’s version of Tex Avery’s Red; Miss X was animated by Lantz’s version of MGM’s Preston Blair, the great Pat Matthews.

Movie Censors Use Scissors Even On Cartoon Love Scenes
Heroine's Wiggle Is Under Ban
By ALINE MOSBY Hollywood, Oct. 17. (U.P.)— A cartoonist complained today that curves and sex get censored even out of the Woody Woodpecker cartoons these days.
In fact, sighed Walter Lantz, Jane Russell, and Lana Turner can expose more of their famous flesh than the animated cuties do.
The artists who dream up Woody's antics at the Lantz studio have to draw the passionate kisses, cows, and curves with the censors peeking over their shoulders.
Betty Grable Shows More
"Every picture we do is looked over very carefully by the Johnston office," Lantz explained. "They watch us closer than they do the feature pictures.
"In one cartoon, ‘Aboo Ben Boogie,’ we had a sexy girl, looking like a Betty Grable. She had on transparent pantaloons so you could see her legs.
"Well, the censors sent the picture back and we had to put a skirt on her. Betty Grable shows more than our girl did."
In another Woody epic, he said, the blue-pencil boys decided the heroine wiggled her hips too much when she danced. Instead of redrawing the scene, Lantz' crew just re-photographed it—from her waist up.
In the old days of "Felix The Cat" flickers, animators had too much fun with their characters, Lantz said. "So nowadays the censors clamp down if the animator's paintbrush wiggles in the wrong direction.
Censors May Have Point
"We used to always draw old Chic Sales in the back yard, but they're out now," said Lantz. "We can't ever draw all of a cow, either.
"We can't show too much cleavage on a female character. And no horizontal love scenes. Most cartoon characters wear clothes. Woody doesn't, but his feathers are arranged so they look like clothes."
The censors have also cut bank robberies, holdups, and ghosts from cartoons to keep the children happy.
"We have to watch that in the Woody cartoon we're making now, ‘Stage Hoax,’ " said the cartoonist.
"But the censors have a point there. I think there still is too much blood and thunder in some cartoons.
"If you give some animators an inch they might take 10 feet. It's just as well we have restrictions on cartoons because lots of children see them."

Should there be a line? And where to draw it?

There wasn’t an agreement on the answers to those questions in the days of Red and Woody. I don’t suspect there ever will be.

And Away We Go

Of all the people whose fame came from television in the 1950s, Jackie Gleason may have been the one with the biggest influence on theatrical cartoons. And not just from the Honeymooners sketches he turned into a series.

Gleason’s variety show started with a monologue, then called for “a little travelling music.” He moved to a mark near the stage curtain, lifted up his arms and legs, shouted “And away we go!” and dashed off stage in profile.

Cartoon characters were known to do the same thing; maybe a well-known example is Yogi Bear in his first cartoon, Pie-Pirates (1958). But it happened several times in the Walter Lantz cartoon, I'm Cold (1954), starring Chilly Willy. The cartoon was written by Homer Brightman and directed by Tex Avery, who turned his Southern wolf from MGM into a furry guard dog (played again by Daws Butler), commenting on the cartoon in progress in a little more of a low-key way than the wolf did.

Both the dog and Chilly have cycles of Gleason-action, four movements up, three movements down before vanishing out of the scene, leaving behind dry-brush strokes.



The cartoon is full of good gags inside a basic plot, and Clarence Wheeler’s music is suitably comedic, with percussion effects when necessary. Don Patterson, La Verne Harding and long-time Avery collaborator Ray Abrams are credited with the animation.