Going Up?

A stretch in-between and dry-brush help move the “Gildersleeve” clerk who continually gets outsmarted by Bugs Bunny in Hare Conditioned (released in 1945).

Bugs is disguised as an elevator operator and tricks the rabbit-chasing clerk into getting off the lift, who suddenly realises what has happened.



He gets into the elevator again and Bugs shoves him out. Another reaction with multiples and dry-brush as Gildersleeve rushes to take the stairs instead.



Ken Harris, Ben Washam, Basil Davidovich and Lloyd Vaughan are the credited animators for director Chuck Jones.

The official release date was Aug. 11, 1945 but, naturally, it appeared on movie screens earlier. The Varsity in Iowa City showed it July 14 along with Rosalind Russell and Jack Carson in Roughly Speaking. Say! Someone should make a cartoon parodying that title. Are you listening, Mr. Jones?

I Don't Care What You Say

Here we have an eight-frame cycle of a camel chewing on, well, I’m not quite sure. Note the spacing of the drawings. There seems to be barely any movement at one point.



This is the cycle slowed down, which gives you an idea of how the mouth moved.



Yeah, I know. Not the post interesting of posts, unless you are into timing of poses and in-betweens. The director is Friz Freleng, and the cartoon is Hot Spot, a 1945 Snafu short. The gag is an example of how everyone borrowed from Tex Avery. In fact, the short is like an Avery travelogue in places.

In this scene, the narrator (the Devil, played by Hal Peary, complete with Gildersleeve laugh), informs us “Here, the native beast of burden, the camel, is the only one who doesn’t mind the heat.” After chewing a bit, the camel (Mel Blanc) turns to the viewing audience and says “I don’t care what you say, I’m hot,” and resumes chewing.



Say, that gag is familiar, isn’t it? Let’s think back to Avery’s Wacky Wildlife (1940), where a camel is strolling across the desert. Narrator Bob Bruce informs us the camel “plods over scorching desert sands, in terrific heat, never once desiring a cool, refreshing drink of water. The camel (Mel Blanc) turns to the viewing audience and says “I don’t care what you say, I’m thirsty,” and resumes strolling.



Say, that gag is STILL familiar. That’s because Avery used a variation of it earlier in the year in Cross Country Detours. In this one, a polar bear is shown on a chunk of ice. “Mother Nature has provided him with layer upon layer of fat, plus a thick coat of heavy fur, to keep him good and warm,” says the narrator. The camera moves in and the bear (Mel Blanc) tells us “I don’t care what you say, I’m cold.”



Is it any wonder that Avery came up with the idea of footage of real animals with superimposed cartoon mouths that made wisecracks. The idea ended up at Jerry Fairbanks Productions, which made the Speaking of Animals series for Paramount. If the “I don’t care what you say” routine was one of the gags in those shorts, I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

What about the end gag of Hot Spot, you ask? Thanks for reminding me. The short has emphasized how hot it is in Iran, hotter 'n Hades as they used to say. The short finishes with the Devil discovering the camel is now in his office in Hell. The camel turns to him and casually remarks, “I don’t care what you say, I’m cool.” It resumes chewing to end the cartoon.



None of the artists who worked on this are given screen credit.

Where's Bugs?

Bob McKimson’s early Bugs Bunny cartoons as a director baffle me.

There’s potentially good animation that’s lost in the odd staging. Whether McKimson was responsible or layout man Cornett Wood was responsible, I don’t know.

Here are a few examples (and there are more) in A-Lad-in-His-Lamp (1948). In the frame below, the genie, who was on the right half of the screen, has gone back in the lamp.



There’s a take as Bugs sees Caliph Hassen Pheffer coming for him. But the take is off-screen. You can’t see the animation.



McKimson’s cartoons go from huge open mouths to teeny mouths like the drawing below.



Bugs leaps into the air before running away. I really don’t get the point of having Bugs in mid-air when you can’t see the top half of him. It seems like a waste of an animator’s work.



McKimson’s shots can be either too close or too far. Below are consecutive frames. Look at the dead space in the second one. You can’t read the expressions later in the scene.



McKimson liked perspective animation in his earliest cartoons. You’ll see characters running toward the camera and back. Here’s a perspective example from this cartoon.



The genie is a fun character and would have got more laughs in 1948 as he was recognisable to audiences then. His character was lifted from the Alan Young radio show, the upper-crust, East Coast millionaire Hubert Updyke III, complete with catchphrases. This was Jim Backus' first cartoon appearance.

Chuck McKimson, Phil De Lara, Manny Gould and John Carey are the credited animators. Dick Thomas went from forest to caliphate in his backgrounds.

Tazzy Birthday (Not Quite)

Yes, we're back. But only for a week.

Music expert Daniel Goldmark sent me some information quite a number of months ago. I thought I had turned it into a post, but have discovered I hadn't. I don't want to waste his kindness, so I've come up with something which you'll read here next week. Since I've had a bit of spare time, a full week's worth of posts will appear starting Monday. Then it's back into retirement. (The Yowp blog will have posts monthly through the end of the year but it is essentially done).

Some cartoon fans have pointed out today is the birthday of the Tazmanian Devil. Indeed, Devil May Hare was released on this date in 1954 according to all trade publications of the time.

But hold on thar! It's actually not his birthday.

Cartoon scholar and noted Release-the-Remaining-Warners-Cartoons champion Jerry Beck has pointed out on many occasions that as soon as a cartoon arrived at a film exchange, a local movie theatre could show it. It may have arrived some time before the "official" release date; A Wild Hare is a great example.

So it was with Devil May Hare. To the left is an ad from the Escanaba Daily Press of Saturday, May 29, 1954. It advertises Devil May Hare will be on screens the next day. (You can click on the ad to get a larger view).

This doesn't mean the cartoon debuted in a small town in Michigan. That's just the earliest newspaper ad I can find. I don't know if any records exist of when each theatre showed any cartoon, and some newspapers will simply announce "Bugs Bunny cartoon" or "cartoon" without the short being named. After all, if it says "Bugs Bunny cartoon," do you need to know more?

I am not suggesting people who want to celebrate cartoon "birthdays" stop doing it. I merely point out that "official" cartoon release dates are not necessarily birthdates of characters therein. As a side-note, some years back Turner sent out a press release with "birthdays" of Hanna-Barbera characters. It was flat out wrong for the Kellogg's series and I've spent time on-line trying to correct the dates.

Below is another ad, this one from the Omaha Evening-World Herald. Omahamians (is that what they're called?) got a chance to Dial T for Taz on June 3, 1954.



Incidentally, the Warners featurette Frontier Days had an official release date of June 12, so it was being screened early in Omaha as well. Oh, and there was another Warners short with a June 19 release date, a Vitaphone Varities ten-minute reel named When Sports Were King. Warners was still offering movie houses various shorts, including sports and music reels, something called "Classics of the Screen" that ran 17 to 20 minutes, Technicolor Specials (like Silver Lightning, the story of a salmon) and George O'Hanlon as Joe McDoakes.

Bugs and other McKimson characters were drawn with hooded eyelids. An example is to the right.

Devil May Hare was written by Sid Marcus. Perhaps that's why the character is an original. Other writers for McKimson were content with purloining characters from radio (eg. Frank Fontaine's John L.C. Sivoney was turned into Pete Puma). Motion Picture Exhibitor rated it "fair." I suppose it is compared with other Bugs cartoons that year, such as Bugs and Thugs and Bewitched Bunny, but I quite like the Devil. There wasn't a lot McKimson and his later writers could do with him (see Dr. Devil and Mr. Hare for an example. If you dare) and he was eventually turned into a TV cartoon sitcom character for the kiddies.

Herman Cohen, Rod Scribner, Phil De Lara and Chuck McKimson animated this short, with Bob Givens laying it out. Dick Thomas supplied the stylised forest background art that isn't much more elaborate than his later work at Hanna-Barbera. By the time this was released, they were all unemployed. The McKimson unit was eliminated in March 1953 but, apparently after some debate, reactivated almost a year later.

We have more about the McKimson family and the T. Devil in this post.

There Was a Crooked Hand

Of Fox and Hounds (1940) stars George the fox (behaving like a slick version of Bugs Bunny) and Willoughby the dog in the kind of cartoon Tex Avery never would have made a few years later.

At MGM, Tex loaded up his cartoons with gags and fired them at the audience at a brisk pace. This cartoon for Warners has a slow (but steady) pace and sets up the final, satisfying gag after two similar situations.

There are a number of scenes where George’s fingers are twisted or crooked.



Here are some examples from a creeping cycle. Whether this is Bob McKimson's work, I don't know, but even the in-betweens are solid.



“Draft No. 6102” gets the animation credit (looking at the credit rotation, my guess is it’s Rod Scribner), with the story by “Draft No. 1312” (Rich Hogan, maybe?). Johnny Johnsen provides some lovely scenery.

The short isn’t full of the crazed humour you’d expect in an Avery cartoon. It’s more of a situational involving two characters, with a third interfering only when necessary.