Ringing in The New Year in Comics, 1905

January 1, 1905 was a Sunday and the Atlanta Constitution published its usual Sunday comics that day. All of them had a new year flavour. Most of them are long forgotten.

Jimmy Swinnerton got the majority of the space. His “Jimmy” took up a full page and had its own masthead. “Katy” was yet another of Swinnerton’s comics.




I would hope the Katzenjammer Kids need no introduction. Remarkably, it is still being drawn today.



Frederick Opper wrote “And Her Name Was Maud!” No, this isn’t a comic starring Bea Arthur. The title character is a donkey. This may be Opper’s least-known comic. He was the creator of “Happy Hooligan” and “Alphonse and Gaston.” You see Happy below.




“Foxy Grandpa” was from the pen of Charles E. Schultze. He used “Bunny” as a pen name, probably to avoid confusion with Charles Schulz, whom he psychically knew would be born 17 years later and become a cartoonist.



Lulu and Leander was drawn by H.M. Howarth.



You can click on any of them to enlarge them.

Happy New Year

One of my favourite Bugs Bunny scenes ever since I was a kid is when he dupes Elmer Fudd into thinking it’s midnight on January 1st in “The Wabbit Who Came to Supper.” The gag comes out of nowhere and the confetti comes out of nowhere. It builds nicely and lasts just long before before Elmer realises it’s July and he’s been conned.






Bugs is beautifully expressive here. Dick Bickenbach gets the only animation credit. Manny Perez, Gerry Chiniquy and (as far as I know) Gil Turner were animators in the Freleng unit at the time.

Show Biz Stars Look Back at the Past Year

No doubt gossip web sites will be filled right about now with a year in review of the bon mots of Hollywood’s salacious train-wrecks. We, of course, prefer to look back to those happier days of Tinseltown, in an era before criminal stars, before infidelity, before scandal, before...

Oh. Right. I haven’t found those days yet.

Well, let’s look back at the years 1949 and 1950 anyway, and bring in the Associated Press’ movie writer of the day.

My favourite is the Tallulah quote.

Quotes of the Year From Hollywood
By BOB THOMAS
HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 23 (AP)—What are the deathless quotes of the year in Hollywood?
Maybe some of these won’t live into the second half-century, but they seemed out of the ordinary to me. Here are some of the bright, pointed or inane sayings that I have collected from the 1949 news:
Robert Mitchum, commenting on his sentence at the county detention farm: “It’s an experience every taxpayer should go through.”
Laurence Olivier, after winning the academy awards: “I always did say Shakespeare was a good script writer.”
Actor Paul Valentine, divorcing strip-teaser Lili St. Cyr: “Everybody in the country could see more of her than I did.”
Fred Allen on the FCC ban on giveaway air shows: “They have taken radio back from the scavengers and given it back to the entertainers.”
Milton Berle, answering an attack on him by Allen: “Allen still has the first penny ever thrown at him.”
James Mason: “Hollywood is filled with frustrations, but not uninhabitable.”
Claudette Colbert, disapproving French bathing suits: “Of the many features of a woman’s anatomy, one of the least attractive is the navel.”
Mae West: “I’m still looking for the right man. My trouble is I find so many right ones it’s hard to decide.”
Clifton Webb: “There’s no use pretending I’m a modest fellow. Some day I shall write a song called ‘I Fascinate Me.’”
David Niven, on the end of his Goldwyn contract: “For the first time since I was 17 years old, I am able to do what I want. During all that time, I either was in the British army or under contract to Goldwyn.”
Bette Davis: “Hollywood tries to combine entertainment for both kids and adults in the same picture. The result is a movie which isn’t suitable for either.”
Shelley Winters, after returning from a blustery location: “I was so cold I almost got married.”
Description of the “shimmy” in Gilda Gray’s suit against the picture, “Gilda”: “A rhythmical shivering and shaking of parts of the body, synchronized and performed in a personalized syncopated musical rhythm and accompanied with appropriate songs.”
Linda Darnell, decrying the “boyish look” in fashions: “Why can’t women look like women and men look like men? That’s what makes life more interesting.”
Jimmy Durante, telling about rubbing elbows with socialites at the opera opening: “I had to rub elbows—nobody would shake hands with me.”
Bob Thomas, to his readers: “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.”

Quotes of Year From Hollywood
By Bob Thomas
Hollywood, Dec. 22—(AP)—Every year a lot of wind blows in Hollywood and some of it is worth remembering.
I have collected some of the 1950 quotes that are remarkable for one reason or another. Here they are:
Tallulah Bankhead’s answer to reports that Bette Davis imitated her in a picture: “Hasn’t she always?”
Betty Hutton, announcing that she was giving up night life after a reconciliation with her husband, Ted Briskin: “Contented people don’t go to night clubs.”
Fred Allen: “Television is based on the belief that there are a lot of people with nothing to do, willing to waste their time watching people who can do nothing.”
Betsy Drake, asked after her wedding to Cary Grant about possible plans for children: “I think it would be very depressing for one to know that he was a planned baby. That’s so cold and unromantic.”
Hedy Lamarr, explaining why she couldn’t see the police for two days after losing $250,000 worth of jewels: “You know what it’s like to come home late after a party and be wakened from a sound sleep.”
Director Elia Kazan: “Actors should stay hungry.”
Vivien Leigh, asked if her husband, Laurence Olivier, had plans to film more Shakespeare: “I don’t think he’d say. If he did, Orson Welles might start filming the same thing immediately.”
Dorothy Parker, explaining why she didn't take a honeymoon after her re-marriage to Alan Campbell: “We’re going nowhere. We've been everywhere.”
Red Skelton, hearing about a fire at the preview of one of his pictures: “You can’t blame it on the picture because it’s not so hot.”
Jean Simmons, commenting on yell leaders after seeing her first American football game: “I don’t like those people waving their arms to get people to yell. Goodness knows, we scream our guts out at soccer matches, but not at somebody else’s direction.”
Italian Actress Marina Berti, arguing against divorce: “Men are all alike, so why throw one away and get another just like him? It is better to keep the one you have and profit from the time and trouble you have spent on him.”
Marta Toren, on U. S. males: “The American wolf is really shy and uncertain. He is abrupt in order to hide his shyness.”
Lauren Bacall, on the nature of her profession: “A person has to be unnormal to get into this kind of business. Normal people couldn’t take it.”
Jack Paar, telling about his three-year contract with R.K.O.: “I was never even scheduled for any of the pictures they cancelled!”
Bob Hope: “Vaudeville is dead and television is the box they buried it in.”
Chill Wills, the voice of “Francis:” “Folks have been talking to me about going into politics, but I figure I better stay in a field where a talking mule is a novelty.”
Sir Laurence Olivier, after observing the Los Angeles smog: “Isn’t it ironic that motion pictures came westward for the sunshine and now there isn’t any?”

Lo! The King Approacheth!

A smear drawing by Lloyd Vaughan from one of Chuck Jones’ funniest Bugs Bunny cartoons.



Ken Harris, Phil Monroe and Ben Washam get the other animation credits on ‘Rabbit Hood’ (1949).

Vaughan didn’t return to the studio after it shut down for six months in 1953, but he worked for Jones again in the 1970s.

You Won’t See This Movie Ad Today

An example of how our vocabulary has changed since September 1940, when this ad appeared in print.



The cartoon advertised, “Little Lambkins,” is not about a lamb. It’s about a destructive kid, animated by Nelson Demorest, the pride of Greeley, Colorado, under Dave Tendlar. I don’t find it enjoyable, but you might.

George Pal Jumps to the Big Time

Stop-motion animation didn’t originate with George Pal, but he certainly showcased it to an audience on a regular basis with his Puppetoons through the 1940s. Without Pal, one wonders whether TV viewers would have ever seen the somewhat bizarre Gumby or various quirky Rankin-Bass specials, both with coteries of loyal followers.

Pal was an admirable craftsman and technician, taking Jack Miller’s stories and creating delightful little films.

However, there was only so far one could go in shorts. Walt Disney realised it. Frank Tashlin realised it. And George Pal realised it, too. Because of that, he achieved fame in the science fiction film world.

Here’s an Associated Press article from 1950, outlining why Pal made the jump to features. It also refers to a popular commercial for Lucky Strikes.

New Film To Show Collision Of Worlds To Be Produced By George Pal
By BOB THOMAS
HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 23.—(AP)—Not content with having flown to the moon, George Pal is now causing the end of the world.
Pal is no flying saucer pilot or evangelist. He is a miracle worker in another field—motion pictures. Born in Hungary, he studied to be an architect but graduated at a time when there were no jobs. He was fascinated with American cartoon films like Felix and the Cat and went into the cartoon field in Europe.
Soon the ambitious draftsman grew tired of the tedious work of drawing thousands of flat figures. For a novelty, he made a tobacco advertising film that featured marching cigarettes (a forerunner of today’s television ads). He began to make animated films by the use of puppets.
Pal came to America in 1939 to produce puppetoons for Paramount. They achieved success but recently he was forced to abandon them because of rising costs. This year Pal produced a film called “Destination Moon,” a fanciful but seemingly authentic account of what interplanetary flight would be like.
The film was produced for about $600,000 and is expected to bring in $3,000,000 in this country alone. ]t started a cycle of science fiction movies.
This week Pal started filming a new project called “When Worlds Collide.” It will be the ultimate in movie catastrophes, making the “San Francisco” earthquake and “The Last Days of Pompeii” seem minor-league.
“The story starts with the approach of a planet and a star toward the earth,” Pal told me.
“Many people fear that it means the end the the earth, but others do not become alarmed and claim the other worlds will bypass the earth.
“Well, the planet does bypass, although it causes huge tidal waves, earthquakes and volcanoes. After that comes the star and it strikes the earth and destroys it.”
The picture will have a human story about a group of people who believe the worlds will collide and try to make some plans for it. They devise a space ship and select 800 candidates for passengers.
“They are chosen for their mental and physical well-being and because they are best in their fields, such as carpentry, medicine, etc.,” said Pal.
“Would a newspaperman be included?” I asked.
“There might be one among the Et Ceteras,” he added slyly. “Of course there is only room for 40 people aboard, so they are chosen from the 800 by the democratic process of drawing names.”
The survivors will watch the end f the world from their space ship and then zoom on to the nearby planet, which is deemed suitable or human habitation. They carry with them enough animals and needs to start anew.
“When Worlds Collide." has no relation to the recent best seller, “Worlds In Collision,” which attempted to explain Biblical events by planetary phenomena. The Pal story was a piece of science fiction vritten by Philip Wylie and Edwin Palmer in the early 30s’. It was originally planned as a Cecil B. DeMille epic, but he never got around to it.
I asked Pal how he would be able to top “When Worlds Collide.”
“I’m not going to try," he answered. “Next I may do a picture about Tom Thumb.”

The October 1941 edition of Popular Mechanics devoted a page to how the Puppetoons worked. Click on the picture to the right to have a better look.

There are plenty of fans of Pal on the internet. Look HERE for links aplenty.

It seems to me today's computer-generated 3D kids films are attempting to replicate a similar visual effect to the Puppetoons, but without their natural charm. George Pal may not have been a stop-motion pioneer but he was one of a handful of people who was truly adept at using the technique to entertain.

Pretty Darn Long, Isn’t It?

Tex Avery relied on background painter Johnny Johnsen to set up a lot of his cartoons. Even at Warners, Tex would open with a languid left-to-right pan over one of Johnny’s fine drawings, sometimes done in oils.

In ‘Red Hot Rangers’ at MGM, Avery decided to use the opening shot as a gag rather than to set a mood of calm (such as in the 1941 Warners’ cartoon ‘Of Fox and Hounds’). We see scenic Jello-stone National Park and as the camera moves along, the “No Smoking” signs get progressively, and more ridiculously, bigger and dominating. And it just keeps going and going, with Scott Bradley’s peaceful and serene strings and woodwinds in the background. Almost 30 seconds worth.





I’d love to snip together another great background but there’s no clear shot of all of it, so you’re going to only get the two ends instead. There’s a highway in the foreground connecting the two frames below. The snow’s disappeared from the mountains.




Here’s one more. Sure is a change from the flat settings Avery used just a few years later.



For cartoon fans that don’t know, Jellostone was also featured in the Bob Clampett cartoon ‘Wabbit Twouble’ (1941), with another great opening pan over a Johnny Johnsen background. Johnsen soon left Warners to rejoin Avery at MGM.

Special Appearance by Bob Clampett

Weak. Unfunny. Embarrassingly bad. Which of those terms best describes the work of director Jack King at the Leon Schlesinger studio?

Perhaps all of them.

Take his 1935 short ‘A Cartoonist’s Nightmare.’ Is there even a gag in it? It truly stinks. The most interesting thing in the whole cartoon is the cameo appearance by Bob Clampett in animated form.



The rotund chap looks like Tubby Millar, missing his bristle moustache. Don’t know who the big-nose guy is.

There’s also what I suspect is a Clampett influence in a fun background drawing of the ramshackle cartoon studio. The plant on the left could easily fit in Clampett’s Wackyland (as in “Porky in”, made a few years later).



Fortunately, Tex Avery soon arrived to rescue the studio from inanity and it wasn’t too long (and thanks to other talented people, including Clampett) that Warners released the funniest cartoons ever made. King scurried back to Disney where he wasn’t entrusted with directing features.

Don Williams and Paul J. Smith have animation credits in this pointless mess.

Presents of the Stars, 1963

Mary Livingstone sure had a hard time keeping thieves away from her jewellry. This is at least the third newspaper story where she’s been robbed of it (the first one I found was in 1930).

Let’s see what people in radio and TV got for Christmas in 1963 in this December 25 story from United Press International. Could this be an early sign of Dean Jones’ love for the Love Bug?

JACK BENNY BUYS JEWELRY
What Santa Claus Brought to Movieland
By JOSEPH FINNIGAN
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) – Merry Christmas!
Movieland’s stars were busy this Christmas morning opening gifts of travel tickets to vacation resorts, jewels, art work and glamorous clothes.
Dennis Weaver presented his wife with a painting, “Portrait of a Little Girl.”
June Lockhart, her husband and their two children took a 10-day holiday vacation in Mexico.
Emeralds
Ben Gazzara gave his wife an antique emerald and gold necklace with matching earrings.
They also went to New York for a white Christmas.
Patti Page bought her year-old daughter Kathleen a poodle.
Chuck Connors gifted his wife Kamala Devi with a Dior dress, perfume and a two-week fishing trip to Mexico. She’s not expected to wear the new gown while trolling for fish however.
Edie Adams outfitted her three daughters for the new year. Under their tree the girls found nighties, dresses, robes, coats, sweaters, and jewelry. Edie also gave them books.
Nat (King) Cole’s wife, Maria, received a jade necklace.
David Niven, who has a home in Switzerland, gave his wife Hjordis a mink-lined ski outfit. Mrs. Niven already has broken her leg once while skiing. If she has another accident it’ll be a first-class spill.
Joseph Cotton’s wife surprised him with five 18th century Italian figurines.
Jack Palance presented his wife with a set of Venetian glass stemware and a Venetian glass, hand-finished chess set.
Monty Hall gave his wife an original Grandma Moses painting.
Art Linkletter packed his family off to Hawaii where they’ll spend the holiday on a beach.
Stewarts to Ski
Jimmy Stewart bought his wife, Gloria, and their four children ski outfits. The family will spend Christmas at a ski resort in Aspen, Colo. It’s not certain whether Jimmy will take to the slopes.
Dean Jones bought himself a different kind of a present. It’s a specially-constructed car used for racing over sand dunes.
Bill Dana is the foster parent of a 12-year-old Italian girl. He sent her a wardrobe and cash to spend on presents for her mother and two younger brothers. The family lives in a small town in central Italy.
George Gobel shopped for jewelry this Christmas. His wife Alice was surprised to find a four-carat diamond ring under the tree.
Motor-Bike
Clint Walker gave his wife a motor-bike. Clint already owns one. Now they'll be able to buzz along the road together.
Jack Benny bought jewels for his wife, Mary Livingstone, replacing some stolen recently.

Christmas Sunday Comics Through the Decades

1917


1929


1931

1939


1944

1956