Dr Jekyll and Mr Mouse

There’s an awful long set-up before we get to the transformation scenes in the MGM cartoon “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse” (1947). Tom spends over a third of the cartoon trying to keep his milk away from Jerry.

There are plot holes you can drive the proverbial truck through in this cartoon but there are still some fun things. Scott Bradley’s pounding music when the transformed Jerry stomps toward Tom sounds like anything but a Scott Bradley score. There’s a great use of colour (and shadow) in the scene where Tom’s mixing the poison. And there are the transformation drawings.

Ken Muse, Ed Barge, Mike Lah and Al Grandmain get credit on this. One wonders whether Grandmain, who I understand was an effects animator at one time, handled at least some of the transformation drawings. Here are a few after Jerry drinks the milk mixture. The brushwork is admirable.







And here’s the first time he changes back. Some drawings are simply brush lines to indicate Jerry, some are jagged heads, a few are full body drawings. The explosion at the end is interesting. A frame of solid colour (yellow, blue, etc.) is interspersed with an animation drawing.







Why a mouse likes milk in the first place, why the milk mixture didn’t turn the fly that drank it into a musclebound fly and how Jerry knew even the approximate formula recipe are questions you can ask yourself and ignore, because you’ll never get an answer. Enjoy the drawings instead.

Baby Rose Marie

Everyone knows Rose Marie from ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ and fans no doubt have heard that she was at one time “Baby Rose Marie”, the child singer. But they not might realise how long ago that was.

Here’s a really cute Associated Press photo and story from 1930. Rose aspired to be Helen Kane.

NEW YORK, May 14.—(AP)— “Boop oop a doops” fall from the lips of Baby Rose Marie like a grown up.
Just about radio’s youngest hot tunes dispenser, this wee lady, can brag of the fact that in five and a half years she has climbed quite a way. She's a staff artist for NBC and has been starred with no less a broadcast personage than the feminine-adored Rudy Vallee.
But to her Rudy’s just another man. She admits he is likeable, but he doesn't give her the same thrill that she gets listening to Amos ‘n’ Andy.
With an ambition to grow up and be like Bebe Daniels of the movies, Rose Marie is attaining the background. She has been in vaudeville and has made talkie shorts. She opened her radio career nearly a year ago at WPG, Atlantic City.
The first song of her present repertoire of 90 was “Sorry,” which she learned three years ago. She remembers it, too, and can sing it as the composer intended.
Her mother, who is a pianist, teaches her the songs. The mother sings a line, and Rose Marie repeats it until she can do so without aid. The matter of tunes comes natural.
When she is preparing to go on the air, only 15 or 20 minutes are required for rehearsal, according to her dad, who is Frank Mazetti and who was known as Frank Curley when in musical comedies.
Father also says that the young lady always minds. In reciting her early history he declared she walked at ten months and could talk distinctly when only a year old. Her age is not sufficient for school yet, but when she is ready she is to have a private tutor. She has been to kindergarten only, in addition to some professional instruction.
At that her education is considerably further advanced that most girlies of her age. She can write or print her own name, and can spell about 50 simple words.
Appearing before the microphone, she uses the gestures her father taught her for her stage work, and just sings without a thought of the millions credited to the listening audiences. She always sleeps eleven hours a day, and except those few nights when she has a later program is in bed by 9.
You see, she’s a normal kiddie, and her greatest delight is to get out with the children of her New York neighborhood and romp and play. They treat her as one of them and not as an outstanding radio artist, with a microphone salary, a sum far beyond their imagination.
“I just love to sing on the radio,” the tiny miss declared. “I don’t think much of opera, and when I tune in I like to hear songs, you know, about boopa doops.
“And I want to live on a farm some day, for a while any way.”

One Gribbroek Evening

The Warner Bros. cartoons succeeded because of an incredible blend of talents, many of whom get short shrift because they’re overshadowed by others. Bob Gribbroek is one.

While layout man Maurice Noble got all the plaudits from Chuck Jones (who seems to have been mesmerised by either extremely literal or stylised art and little in between), Bob Gribbroek plodded away for him before Noble arrived, and after he left, providing some fine work that deserves more attention.

Jones’ “One Froggy Evening” (1955) is championed as one of his masterpieces, but while Jones and writer Mike Maltese get all the credit, nothing is said about Gribbroek’s very effective settings (compare that to “What’s Opera Doc?” which continues to result in hosannas rained upon Noble). Let’s take a look at them, as constructed by Phil DeGuard.










Soon after this cartoon, Gribbroek found himself working for Bob McKimson in what the director described as his “unit of drunks and queers” and remained at the studio until it closed. Jones must have thought highly enough of him because Gribbroek worked for him at M.G.M. until retirement a year or so later.

Wet Blanket Policy Backgrounds

The Oscar-nominated ‘The Woody Woodpecker Song’ made its debut in “Wet Blanket Policy” (1948), and that’s why the cartoon has achieved a level of fame. But the rest of the cartoon is enjoyable; the late ‘40s Lantz shorts benefited from what you could arguably call other studios’ castoffs. Setting aside Bugs Hardaway’s flat delivery as Woody, the voice work is first rate; Buzz Buzzard was never better than when he was supplied with an evil growl by Lionel Stander.

And then there are the distinctive backgrounds of Fred Brunish. They’re far sketchier than you’d find at other studios but they always seem to work. Brunish always exhibits a good grasp of light, highlight and shade as well. Here are a few of his cityscapes from “Wet Blanket Policy.”





Brunish would occasionally work in a cross-promotion for the Lantz comics in his backgrounds. You can see it in the final drawing above. Whether he worked on the comics, I couldn’t tell you—it doesn’t appear he ever drew characters—but it wouldn’t have hurt his relationship with the boss.

The Rochester Riot

Eddie Anderson’s Rochester was arguably the most popular character on Jack Benny’s radio show, next to Jack himself. If you listen to the on-location war-time broadcasts, Anderson gets huge cheers, even more so than the carousing ladies man Phil Harris, the type of man a G-I might aspire to be. But everyone could identify with Rochester, the underpaid working man who still managed to get one up on his boss, time and time again. The underdog with the funny voice.

Rochester’s popularity unintentionally caused a riot, and not with the negative connotations associated with race (unfortunately, the matter of colour continues to swirl up in almost every discussion about Anderson’s character). In reading the stories from May of 1940, it appears collegians were looking for an excuse to be rowdy, a kind of mind-set that produces things like Vancouver’s Stanley Cup riot. Here are a couple of stories about the Rochester prank that went wrong.

Seven Students Arrested; ‘Kidnaped’ Jack Benny Comedian.
Cambridge, Mass., May 1—(AP)—The first riot of spring occurred last night in Harvard Square and seven Harvard students were arrested for disturbing the peace. They were fined $5 each today in district court.
The riot, which embodied all the usual features of Harvard Square spring disturbances, apparently developed from a combination of the warm evening air and the fact that a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology students put one over on the Harvards by “abducting” Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, Negro comedian on the Jack Benny radio program.
Rochester, scheduled to appear at a Harvard smoker, turned up instead at the Delta Kappa Epsilon house at M. I. T., after being persuaded by a group of Dekes to leave his plane at Providence, R. I., and motor to Cambridge.
The comedian thought he was at Harvard until two hours later. The riot, which found some 200 students milling around in the square, followed soon after, giving police quite a workout for about an hour.

Riot Follows M.I.T. Kidnap Of Harvard Smoker Guest
“Rochester” of Jack Benny’s Radio Program Held Till Early Morning; Eight Sons of OI’ John Wind Up in Hoosegow
CAMBRIDGE, May 1. (INS)—Eight Harvard students were arrested today during a riot that followed the kidnaping of “Rochester,” Negro radio and stage comedian with Jack Benny, by Massachusetts Institute of Technology pranksters from a Harvard freshman smoker.
Riot Call
More than 2000 youths from both institutions battled and then set upon 50 Cambridge policemen summoned by a riot call.
Police hats were snatched, occasional blows were struck and water was dropped from dormitory windows as study-weary boys (?) attempted a drive on Radcliffe college, a girls’ Institution.
Police drove a wedge into the milling crowd near Harvard square, dispersed the students and arrested the eight. They were charged with disturbing peace and gave these names, Royce McKinley, 19, John Buchanan, 22, Nicholas Slatterly, 24, Richard N. Brill, 18, Henry Maclog, 18, Wm. Savage, 21 and Charles C. Beaman, 23.
The Negro valet comedian, whose real name is Eddie Anderson, was met at Providence, R. I. airport by Tech students who said they were a Harvard reception committee. Instead of taking him to the Harvard smoker, they took him to the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity house at Tech. There he entertained and was entertained until nearly morning, finally being taken by an automobile caravan to the Harvard smoker at Memorial hall.

Rochester shone even more after the war. The Benny show became more of a sitcom, a comedian’s life-as-comedy, and as the line between the “radio show” and “home life” blurred, Rochester became more and more a part of the on-air proceedings. When television took over, Mary and Harris were gone, Don Wilson was reduced to buffoonery and Dennis Day remained being silly. Rochester became more the voice of reality as well as turning into Jack’s closest friend. And the friend of the audience, too.

NBC Comics, Part 1

So what was the first cartoon series made for television? It depends on what you mean by “cartoon.”

A number of news articles came out in 1957 stating that Hanna-Barbera’s “Ruff and Reddy” was the first made-for-TV series. Of course, that wasn’t quite the case. “Crusader Rabbit” had debuted in syndication in 1950; it first appeared on KNBH in Los Angeles on Tuesday, August 1 that year. But there was another series that gets talked about, though people know very little about it.

Billboard magazine reported in its issue of August 26, 1950:

NBC-TV Slots Four Comics in Spot Across Board
NBC-TV last week slotted a new program, “NBC Comics,” in the 5-5:15 slot across the board following Kate Smith. There will be four separate three-minute cartoons in the show—“Kid Chain,” [sic] “Space Barton,” “Danny March” and “Johnny and Mr. Do Good.” The cartoons do not use live animation but a new “stop-and-go technique.” The program begins September 18.

There isn’t a lot of contemporary information about the show. It seems to have confused some newspapers, as they listed it as “Cartoon Serials.” It was sponsored by Standard Brands through the Ted Bates agency and ran opposite “Lucky Pup” on CBS (for Bristol-Myer). It didn’t last long, and you can blame Lever Brothers. They wanted, and got, the 5 p.m. timeslot on NBC, so the network dumped the comics at the end of March 1951.

I was all set to post bits and pieces of information cobbled together about the cartoons themselves, but found researcher Jerry Beck beat me to it ages ago and discovered a lot more about them than I did. So allow me to purloin what he wrote in his book ‘Animation Art’:

TELECOMICS
Telecomics has to be considered one of the first cartoon series produced for television. However, there was virtually no animation on the show. It is just as its title suggests: a series of comic-strip style drawings filmed sequentially, with an occasional animated effect.
Early Days
Telecomics, Inc. was first formed in 1942 by a pair of Disney animators, Dick Moores and Jack Boyd. In 1945 they filmed a pilot, “Case of the Missing Finger Chapter 4, The Belt of Doom” starring Peril Pinkerton, [copyright July 31]. This led to a syndicated 15-minute television program in 1949, which consisted of four three-minute stories.
The original show contained “Brother Goose” by Cal Howard; “Joey and Jug”, a clown story by Arnold Gillespie; “Rick Rack Secret Agent,” by Miles Pike and Pete Burness, and “Sa-Lah,” an Arabian Knights fantasy drawn by A.J. Metcalf. Jack Kirkwood, Lilien Leigh and Bill Grey provided the voice-over narration. The syndicated series was distributed by Vallee Video, owned by singer Rudy Vallee, but, unfortunately, these early broadcasts have been lost.
Made-for-TV Animation
The NBC network optioned the property in 1950, re-packaging the program and hiring cartoonists Moores and Boyd to produce it. The re-named NBC Comics now earned a place in history as the first made-for-TV network cartoon program.
The NBC cartoon contained serialized of a new group of adventure comic stars. Episodes would begin with the opening of a comic book, the first page showing a silhouette of the lead character and indicating it was either part one, part two or part three of the day’s episodes. The page was then turned to show a full-screen character opening title. Each episode was approximately three-and-a-half minutes long.
“Space Barton” was the most interesting of the lot. Horace “Space” Barton, Jr. is an all-American college football star who enlists in the Army Air Corps and is chosen to test the first U.S. jet plane. He then blasts off to Mars with his brother Jackie as a stowaway a rocket ship build by Professor Dinehart, an astronomer. The adventures have them engaged in a civil war on the red planet, pitted against a faction led by a deranged Earth scientist who had preceded them to Mars.
Colorful Characters
Other Telecomics stars include Danny March and Kid Champion. Danny March was the orphaned son of a Yale man who was raised by his uncle to be one of the toughest kids in Metro City. Danny turned to detective work when he was unable to become a police officer because of his short stature. Building a reputation as a tenacious private eye, he is hired by the mayor as his personal detective to stop crime in Metro City.
“Kid Champion” is the story of Eddie Hale, a musician who was urged by his former boxing-champ father to become a boxer. When Eddie mistakenly believes that he killed killed a gas station attendant during a holdup, he teams up with a hard-luck fight manager, Lucky Skinner, changes his identity to Kid Champion and refuses to talk about his past to anyone. "Johnny and Mr Do-Right" followed the exploits of a young boy and his zany dog. One hundred and sixty-five episodes ran on NBC-TV from 18 September 1950 until 30 March 1951. Voices included Robert C. Bruce, Pat McGeeham [sic], Howard McNear, Lurene Tuttle, Tony Barret and Paul DeVall. The individual adventures were not titled, and after their network run, they again entered syndication as Telecomics.
It left TV screens in the early 1960s, due mainly to the onslaught of the Hanna-Barbera-led color cartoons, and the fact that the Telecomics had been filmed in black and white.

Jerry mentioned the show was originally in syndication in 1949 but I haven’t been able to find a television station that aired it. And calling it the “first television cartoon” goes back to the definition of “cartoon.” ‘Crusader Rabbit’ had limited movement, more so than the shows Hanna-Barbera invented toward the end of the ‘50s, but there was virtually no movement of drawings at all on ‘NBC Comics.’ So, I’d probably side with the school of thought that declares Crusader the first real made-for-TV cartoon.

‘NBC Comics’ wasn’t really missed, even when it was on the air. Walter Ames of the Los Angeles Times seems to have thought mothers would like their kids to see. But another newspaper columnist, and I didn’t note the source, noted in his TV review:

The unkindest cut of the week, the scrapping of the NBC video broadcast of the U.N. General Assembly meeting with “And now it is time for the NBC comics.”

Interestingly, “Peril Pinkerton” wasn’t among the original “Telecomics” or “NBC Comics,” but it still had some life. Billboard reported, on June 9, 1951, after “NBC Comics” had left the air:

Don Dewar, prexy of Telecomics, Inc., left for a sales hop to New York, hoping to peddle TV’s first 15-minute animated five-a-week strip. He will ask for $15,000 per week for national sponsorship of the strip “Peril Pinkerton.”

It could be that Pinkerton was the cartoon Dewar was talking about in a story published by the Associated Press several months after “NBC Comics” went off the air. The old show was already in syndication, but Dewar had Moores and Boyd go back to the drawing board. And with “Crusader Rabbit” now on the air, they seem to have realised they had to up their game. In reading this, you can’t help but realise that Hanna-Barbera’s limited animation, scoffed at by many today, was a real television breakthrough in 1957 compared to what had been made for TV to that point.

Animated Subjects in Making
By Jack Quigg
HOLLYWOOD, June 9. (AP)—A new kind of cartoon—part newspaper comic strip, part animated movie feature—is being developed especially for television. It won’t be as smooth as, say, a Donald Duck film, but it’s the best TV fans can expect in the foreseeable future.
This comes from Don Dewar, former lawyer and film studio executive who now heads Telecomics, Inc., one of the few firms making cartoons for television.
Dewar and two partners, Jack Boyd, formerly with Walt Disney, and Dick Moores, veteran newspaper cartoonist, went into production a little over a year ago. Now they have a staff of 50 and are working full blast.
They found that the field wasn’t crowded. TV cartoons were virtually limited to commercials, a few silent film comedies and the Crusader Rabbit series—not much for a nation of comic book fans.
The partners started with a series for NBC. The 15-minute program was devoted to the adventures of three heroes: Danny March, private eye; Boxer Kid Champion and Rocket Man Space Barton.
It wasn't much different from a funny-paper. Characters and backgrounds were done in watercolor wash. They flashed on the screen like comic strip panels but instead of balloons with printed dialogue the lines were read by actors. Once you got interested in the story you forgot the lack of action—almost.
But the partners considered this too static. Now in a new series being readied, they think they’ve gone about as far as you can go with a TV cartoon, considering time and money limitations.
There'll be action in this one. When a character talks, his lips will move, although the rest of his face may not. He’ll walk or throw things, if necessary. Cars and trains will move. There’ll be motion, but not the continuous flowing motion of a movie cartoon.

Peril was never in peril of poor ratings. That’s because he never got on TV to begin with.

And what happened to the Telecomics? Billboard revealed in a story dated January 9, 1954 that 168 of them had been acquired for distribution by the newly-formed National Telefilms Associates, the guys who slapped an NTA logo on all your favourite Fleischer cartoons (they acquired the distribution rights to the Fleischer Superman cartoons at the same time).

But “Telecomics” wasn’t the only attempt to put cartoons on television in the 1940s. In fact, it wasn’t the only ‘telecomics,’ either. We’ll have more on that in a future post.

The Serenity of Book Revue

Leave it to Bob Clampett to lull the audience into false sense of serenity, only to suddenly splatter them with silliness, pop culture references and outrageous poses. That’s just what he does in “Book Revue.”

The cartoon opens with a shot of a book store in the evening, with a lamp on a separate cell in the foreground. The store looks photographic.



Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ plays peacefully over a pan of books. The one on the right is “The Life and Times of Bugs Bunny.”



The pan fades into the next scene. Then, wham! We’re hit with a drunken cuckoo, staggering and spilling his flask.



And then the cartoon really gets going.

Tom McKimson and Cornett Wood get credit for layouts and backgrounds in one of Clampett’s most acclaimed shorts (released in January 1946).

Woody Loves Marbled Ham

You can’t lose people like Ed Love, Dick Lundy, Lionel Stander and Heck Allen and not have your cartoons suffer. That’s what happened to Walter Lantz.

The Lantz studio turned out some pretty attractive cartoons in the late ‘40s. The only problem was, Lantz wasn’t making any money. A change in distributors from Universal to United Artists didn’t help. So Lantz shut things down, worked out a new deal with Universal, and then opened up again. But he had lost virtually all of his great staff and evidently had less money for each short because the animation and characters suddenly look a lot more streamlined.

The early ‘50s Lantz shorts just aren’t as funny as the ones from the ‘40s. Lantz seems to have gone to the well to bring up old tried and true ideas to fill his cartoons. Lantz had a huge success (especially monetarily) with “The Woody Woodpecker Song.” So, why not try for another hit record cartoon? Woody’s a glutton? Yeah, let’s dredge up that idea again, too. So, we get “The Woody Woodpecker Polka” (speaking of re-using ideas, part of the song sounds like it stopped in Pennsylvania before it arrived at the Lantz studio).

Talk about saving money. There’s no dialogue, just canned vocal effects. There’s reused animation of Woody’s flesh-coloured arm (a bird with an arm?) wearing a gag watch. A good portion of the soundtrack consists of a record being played in the background. The lyrics really have nothing to do with the action on screen and there’s a part of the song where Woody laughs that Lantz didn’t even bother try to reflect with Woody on screen. And the topper gag is something that was used as a throwaway in ‘40s Warners cartoons.

Still, the short’s worthwhile and it has its moments. I like this little take by Woody. The head only moves every two frames but the feet move every frame.





Background artist Fred Brunish was the only artist left over from the ‘40s. He seems to have favoured hams with lots of fat in them. The animators were Ray Abrams, LaVerne Harding, Don Patterson and Paul J. Smith. The speculation is Lantz directed the cartoon himself.

He Didn’t Hate Dogs

W.C. Fields was one of filmdom’s most talented and iconoclastic stars. His movies were little more than short comedy scenes linked together by a pretty bare plot—“It’s a Gift” (1934) is probably my favourite. Fields was a tremendous writer as well. The book W.C. Fields by Himself contains his detailed outlines for a number of his movies, all of them better than what ended up on the screen after tinkering by higher-ups at whichever studio he happened to be working (the book also features his blunt letters to the studio giving his opinion about the tinkering).

Fields is quoted as saying “Anyone who hates dogs and kids can’t be all bad.” Apparently, his dislike was all a put-on. Sure, he poured gin into scene-stealing Baby Leroy’s milk, which unexpectedly stopped production on one of their movies until the youngster stopped staggering around. But that was just for fun. He was, by all stories, kind and friendly to young Freddie Bartholomew when the two made “David Copperfield” (1935).

And it seems he liked dogs, too. At least, he purported to in this United Press story from 1945.

W. C. Fields Is Just the Man To Reform Drunken Canine
By Virginia MacPherson
HOLLYWOOD, Oct. 26 (UP) — Bulbous-nosed W. C. Fields today offered a congenial home to Pepe, the dog drunk who gets the blind staggers on muscatel, and said he’d “reform” him from a wine to a martini hound.
“I’m a martini man, pure and simple,” drawled the comedian who uses quart jars for cocktail glasses. “And any dog that drinks with me can’t drink wine.”
Fields said he read about Pepe in the newspapers after police picked him up as a confirmed wino who was using alcoholic barks to tip off his human friends that the cops were approaching.
“I understand this dog needs a good home,” the neon-nosed actor added, “Well, I do, too. If this canine will meet me halfway, we can make a deal.”
Friends said he was being .kicked out of his famulous house, which has a billiard-table in the middle of the living room and a portable refrigerator well stocked with liquids. It’s mounted on wheels 30 he always has a drink handy when he gets thirsty.
Pepe and I could hunt .for a home together,” Fields said. Seems my lease on this place has expired—or something.”
His secretary reminded him that Pepe was undergoing scientific treatment of chronic alcoholism.
“I’ll breathe on him,” Fields declared. “That’ll cure the cur.”
Fields said he’d like to go down to the animal shelter, where Pepe was recovering from a hangover, but didn’t have time.
“I’m working on my notes for a temperance lecture I have to give soon,” he wheezed, reaching for the quart jar. “And tonight my writers are coming to work on a radio script.”
As soon as he’s kicked out of his house he’s moving into Las Encinas sanitarium in Pasadena, Calif.
“Going over for a short cure,” Fields grinned. “It’s the only place I can find to live for a while. Pepe might as well come along to keep me company.
The police booked Pepe yesterday when they found him staggering around Los Angeles streets. It wasn't the first time, either.
They picked him up a month ago, lapping wine from an old tomato can and barking an alarm to two-legged friends who were already five or six tomato cans ahead of him.
That time his friends sobered up and bailed him out with a dog license.
When police chased him again yesterday Pepe fell flat on his face in a drunken stupor.
“A condition I understand perfectly,” commented Fields. “This mutt is a dog after my own heart.”
Fields hasn't gone to the dogs, yet, he added. But in the case of Pepe he’s willing to make an exception.

While Fields’ quotes make this a light story, it really was sad. And I don’t mean the story of the alcoholic dog. Fields himself was on the losing end of his battle with the bottle, and the sanitarium mentioned in the story is where Fields went to live until he died 14 months later on Christmas Day, 1946.

Fields left behind some great movies. Audiences couldn’t help but love him. He played a man who just wanted to enjoy life but met with unfairness and stupidity, two things the average viewer can still identify with. It made his triumph (such as at the end of “It’s a Gift”) all that much better.

Like many ex-vaudevillians, Fields made short films before going into features. You can watch three of them cobbled together below.

Daffy Duck Hunt Takes

Bob McKimson is notoriously known for “calming down” his animators once he became a director at Warner Bros. in the ‘40s. McKimson had been handed animators from the Bob Clampett unit, whose drawings were the least calm of any at the studio. After all, McKimson’s kind of animation involved intricate acting and that’s what he wanted out of his animators, though he also seems to have been obsessed with action in perspective just for the sake of it.

Still, the spirit of Clampett occasionally shone through. “Daffy Duck Hunt” (1949) contains a few takes that would be right at home in a Clampett cartoon, even with the absence of Clampett’s most outrageous animator, Rod Scribner.




Manny Gould, John Carey, Chuck McKimson and Phil DeLara were the credited animators here. Gould left the studio after a few more cartoons and the remainder were all immersed in the comic book industry within a few years.

The cartoon also features a couple of scenes of heads poking toward, and filling, the camera, with arms thrashing around. McKimson seemed to love this kind of stuff and had Gould do it in this cartoon, according to copies of studio records in the hands of Thad Komorowski. That phase seems to have lasted as long as McKimson had animators who could handle it.