Bugs Bunny Wins Over JFK

I’m not a fan of web site databases and encyclopaedia where anyone can go on and write whatever they want, such as Walt Disney being born on the planet Wtsrpphg (incidentally, he wasn’t). I’ve yowped in anger at some of the misinformation in animation entries.

One of the readers on my neglected Twitter feed is named IBCF. A tweet came through from that account quoting a Wikipedia entry regarding John Daly, the former CBS news correspondent best known for hosting What’s My Line? who was also the news vice-president and main anchor at ABC. I was stunned at the Wikiquote, which is:

Daly resigned from ABC on November 16, 1960[14] after the network preempted the first hour of 1960 presidential election night coverage to show Bugs Bunny cartoons and The Rifleman from 7:30 to 8:30 pm while CBS and NBC were covering returns from the Kennedy–Nixon presidential election and other major races.

I’ve read a fair chunk on Daly, and I’ve read contemporary reports of his departure from what they used to call “the third network.” All the news stories I’ve read gave the same reason for his resignation. The footnote 14 above refers to a New York Times article of the following day. Allow me to quote it:

Mr. Daly’s resignation was submitted on Monday night after he learned that Mr. Goldenson [the head of the network] had hired Time, Inc., to become co-producer of four one-hour documentary programs for the “Close-up” series sponsored by the Bell & Howell camera company. Heretofore the series had been produced exclusively by Mr. Daly and his staff. Mr. Daly said Mr. Goldenson had violated the “traditional policy” that all news and public affairs programs be prepared entirely by the network and not by outsiders.

Nary a word about Bugs Bunny. (Incidentally “Monday night” was the 14th, not the 16th). Obviously, another made up entry by somebody on Wikipedia, right?

Not so fast.

I leafed through copies of a number of the New York newspapers immediately after the vote on November 8th to see what they wrote about ABC’s coverage. Surely news columnists would wag their finger and chastise a network if it postponed coverage of the story of the year for Yosemite Sam getting blown up on a ship. Remarkably (at least to me), at first glance there was nothing about cartoons. The columnists were falling all over themselves discussing the computers each network used to tabulate the votes. UPI declared ABC had the best screen arrangement for charts.

But there was one columnist who noted something else. Barbara Delatiner of Newsday mentioned on November 10th that Bugs had been on the air at 7:30 p.m. instead of Daly, reporter Don Goddard and tabulator Univac (perhaps it would have been appropriate, given the situation, to have employed Uniblab from The Jetsons, but I digress).

As it turns out, keeping Bugs and Chuck Connors on the schedule was not a last-minute decision. Newspaper TV listings in New York and Chicago for November 8th show ABC cutting away from its coverage of the vote to run the cartoon show, and editors would have needed time to get that information in print. And WABC-TV in New York even bought an ad in the Times promoting The Rifleman.



What of John Daly? Buried in the 11th paragraph of an Associated Press story of November 17th, was a reference to Daly’s annoyance about something other than outside producers infringing on his territory. The Wall Street Journal of the same date wrote its own story and included a quote.

Mr. Daly indicated there were other reasons for his resignation. He said he was unhappy about one aspect of ABC’s election night coverage. He opposed the network’s showing a “Bugs Bunny” film and “Rifleman” between 7:30 and 8:30 EST election night, thereby breaking into the election news, which had begun at 7 that night. “If you begin the coverage, you don’t leave it,” Mr. Daly said.

So, to sum up, is Wikipedia correct? Did veteran and respected newsman John Daly quit a cushy TV network anchor job because of Bugs Bunny? The answer—partly.

Bugs and his sponsors weren’t strong enough to keep him on the air on the West Coast (in Los Angeles, KABC coverage cut away at 4:30 for American Bandstand and Rin Tin Tin), but there was at least one other cartoon show that didn’t get the boot in favour of Kennedy and Nixon (or Huntley and Brinkley). Independent station KTTV in Los Angeles continued with its regular evening programming, meaning anyone not interested in Don Goddard and Univac could switch channels and watch a full half hour of The Huckleberry Hound Show. As Huck might say “Right smart little programming move there.”

Naps and Trains and Jack Benny

Train stations were the bane of Jack Benny’s existence, at least on the radio. He ran into abusive ticket sellers, blubbering cab drivers, announcers calling for passengers on trains on track five that no one wanted to ride and, occasionally, a tout giving him a tip on a magazine or a candy bar. In real life, Jack liked trains, and not just because of all the comedy inspiration they gave his writers.

Here’s a short newspaper story, from an unidentified syndicate, dated February 18, 1969. In a way, it’s sad. Jack talks about regular medical check-ups. Despite that, doctors didn’t detect his cancer until it was too late.

At 74, Jack Benny Is a Master At Using 'Visual Vocabulary'
By FRANK LANGLEY
NEW YORK—“Why don’t you go inside and take a nap,” the young man said with the paternal air of a doting father. He was answered with a glare of utter disdain, perhaps the most famous facial expression in America.
When Jack Benny glares at you, he is using a visual vocabulary that may be saying, “You must be out of your mind.” Or, “Isn’t that the most ridiculous thing you ever heard?”
In this case, the glare he gave his young agent seemed to say, “Who do you think you’re talking to, a seven-year-old?”
The agent was well aware that he was talking in seven year-old terms to a 74 year-old man. He also knew that despite the glare, his client would retire for a short nap, in the manner of a seven-year-old.
If you watched Jack Benny on his Birthday Special last night you, like everyone else in the audience could easily be convinced that 60 would be a closer age approximation for Jack. It’s no trick of make up.
Jack has a fine baby-like skin that is almost free of lines. His eyes, like his brain, are alert.
Jack keeps a vigorous schedule that he is able to maintain by both taking good care of himself and taking good advice.
“I’m on a very busy schedule right now,” he said. The comedian was in New York for a hectic three days of interviews, business meetings and theater parties. “But I’m well rested and I feel fine. Want to know how I rested myself? I took the train from California instead of flying.
“Of course, not everyone can take a train. Imagine Bob Hope, for instance. The only thing that could get him on a train would be if there were 800 soldiers on board. He'd do a show from coast-to-coast.”
Jack paused, his gaze drifting to the ceiling for a moment. “You know,” he said, “I was just thinking about Bob and our health and how some of us can take care of ourselves and some of us just have to keep going and going. Bob takes good care of himself when he can, but he moves around so much that that has been seldom.
“I talked to him a few days ago and I told him he is crazy if he goes right back to work after having so much trouble with his eyes. Who needs it? Why kill himself?”
The world’s oldest, or perhaps youngest, seven-year-old then leaped forward, crooked a famous finger, palm up, and said, “Anyone can live to a ripe and happy old age if he just gets regular examinations, takes care of and paces himself.”
Then he sat back and stared his famous stare of futile wonderment, saying, “Isn’t it stupid, that so few of us do?”

The (Cartoon) Sky is Falling!

On July 23, 1962, after being on an unpaid leave of absence for several weeks, Chuck Jones signed an agreement ending his career at the Warner Bros. cartoon studio.

If you were wondering where Jones was part of that time, wonder no longer.

Jones took a trip all the way across the country to Cape Cod. Who Jones knew there, if anyone, I don’t know. But I do know he somehow ended up being interviewed by the Boston Globe.

Jones may have been the most quoted director in Warner Bros. cartoon history. He wrote two books, a third was published featuring conversations with him and he was interviewed (quite willingly) by animation historians when that particular breed started surfacing in the late 1960s. Jones also outlived all the other major Warners directors, passing away in 2002.

This Globe piece may be the earliest one-on-one interview he gave. It was published July 14, 1962. The reference to Tom and Jerry is interesting in light of his being hired in August 1963 to direct new Tom and Jerry cartoons for MGM release. The last sentence of the story no doubt is one of Jones’ philosophical musings which the writer didn’t have the space or inclination to examine further. Jones, however, completely misses the reason for the demise of the theatrical cartoon, one Walter Lantz had been pointing out since the 1940s—money. Producers didn’t get make a profit on any cartoons for several years because theatres didn’t make any money showing them, and didn’t need to show them anyway.

Bugs Bunny’s Grandpa Fears Cartoons’ Death
By FRANK FALACCI
Even the faint possibility that quality cartoons might be faced with oblivion leaves you pale and shaking, as if you heard that someone was going to tear down the flag and step on it.
Cartoons are a part of America, like crackerjacks, ball games, home and family. Bugs Bunny is Uncle Sam’s nephew and the Roadrunner and Coyotte [sic] are like the neighbors. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are like . . . well if they go it’s like burying real people.
For Charles M. (Chuck) Jones, vacationing in Cotuit, it would be especially painful. He’s the creator of such characters as Pepe Le Pew, the romantic skunk; Roadrunner and the Coyote and has developed familiar fellows like Bugs Bunny, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam and Porky Pig. Bugs, by the way, is 24 years old. It was Jones who ventured the idea that the classic cartoons as we know them now may someday disappear. He is concerned with the current vacuum of new cartoonists.

“There are no good, young animators getting into the business,” Jones said. “I doubt if there are a hundred animators in the country today.
“When Walt Disney first started, there were dozens of young cartoonists, me included, eager to start off too. Of course Disney was the first to succeed and then, one by one we followed along to our varying degrees of success.
“But what happens when there is no longer any Disney nor the other animators who came along with him if there is no new blood to replace them?
“Tom and Jerry are already gone. Who can forget the hit and go of Tom the Cat and Jerry the Mouse?”
Here Jones introduced a second threat to theater cartoons—television. It seems the creators of Tom and Jerry and other first-class animators have decided to forsake the painstaking art of animated cartoons for the easier, simpler Tv funnies.
For instance, by taking short cuts you can turn out 150 times more TV cartoon work than you can the theater type, where there is more depth, more motion, expression and far more action.
Of course, TV Networks also show many re-runs of the dated animated theater cartoons. The better known TV-born characters include the Flintstones, Quick Draw McGraw, Deputy Dawg, Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Mr. Peabody.
“I hope,” Jones added, “that as television matures it will create a bigger demand for the theater animated cartoon. Once it does, I’m sure there will be numerous young fellows jumping into the field.”
Jones jumped into the profession 30 years ago with Warner Bros. as an in-betweener (the beginner who draws in between movements of cartoons characters while the chief cartoonist draws the main action).
He later became a top-flight animator and today produces, writes and directs his own cartoons. His wife, Dorothy, helps in the writing department.
Ten of Chuck’s cartoons have been nominated for Academy Awards, and he has won two Oscars. He worked with Friz Freleng in developing Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck and others. He is presently doing a full-length feature, “Gay Purr-ee,” about French cats.
When we left, Bugs Bunny wasn’t a rabbit, he was a little boy who likes carrots!

Something In The Drink

Celebrity caricatures abound in Flip’s Soda Squirt (1933). One is a queenie stereotype modelled on character actor Tyrell Davis who drinks a chocolate soda made from tacks, ink, insecticide, hair tonic and castor oil. He turns into a monster (as per the 1931 feature Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) that walks toward the audience.



But don’t worry. He’s changed back when, in a thrilling fight scene with Flip, he sprays himself with “Eau de Pansy.”

This was the last Flip cartoon released. One theatre manager told the Motion Picture Herald: “Another good cartoon comedy of Flip as the soda jerker. The grand opening of a drug store in Hollywood and some very good caricatures of the film actors and actresses. Very good and full of good clean entertainment—J.J. Medford, Orpheum Theatre, Oxford, N.C.”

Ring of Fire

Tex Avery and writer Rich Hogan came up with several spot-gag cartoons involving a competition between Droopy and Spike the bulldog. They’re not Avery’s best work but the quick pace makes them funny.

Avery may have been talking about Daredevil Droopy (released in 1951) when he mentioned to historian Joe Adamson that these kinds of cartoons were made when he got stuck on a story and needed to fill his yearly quota. The idea was to put the strongest gag at the end. In this case, Avery’s “strongest gag” was one that had been used several times before in the middle of cartoons (the old “tiiiiimb-(crash)-brr” routine).

There are several “blackened” gags in this cartoon. Two involve explosions. The other involves fire. Droopy zooms a motorcycle through a ring of fire. He’s untouched. Spike does it. Naturally, he’s the bad guy, so something’s going to happen; it’s a matter of waiting to see what Avery and Hogan do. In this case, Spike and his bike become crispy outlines.



Walt Clinton, Grant Simmons and Mike Lah animated this short.

Sheldon Leonard vs TV

For a while, Sheldon Leonard could do no wrong on television. He had given up on a screen career that seemed destined to have him play small time hoods for the new world of television production. He had a success right off the bat with “Make Room For Daddy” starred nightclub comedian Danny Thomas playing nightclub comedian Danny Williams.

Leonard brimmed over with self-confidence about his producing abilities, long before a string of consecutive hits in the early ‘60s. Here’s a 1954 article (May 11th) from the Brooklyn Eagle, written during the first season of “Make Room For Daddy,” the first of his huge successes.

TV Keynotes
Sheldon Leonard States His Views on Television
By STEVEN H. SCHEUER
Hollywood, May 11—“The basic trouble with live television,” volunteered Sheldon Leonard, “and I'm a guy who's basically a stage actor, is that you have to submit and print your first draft. With film, we can edit and change and throw out the dead wood.” We were on the set of tonight's Bob Hope Show, in which Leonard appeared as guest-star actor. Sheldon, incidentally, is director of the Danny Thomas Show (filmed). I agreed that film has certain technical advantages over live TV, but, then, why is live TV invariably better than its filmed counterpart?
“That's easy,” Leonard answered. “Conditions have always favored the author who writes for live TV.
Primarily, it's the problem of residual rights. Once the film is made, it's a permanent thing and all rights are relinquished. For live TV the rights are just leased for a particular showing. Naturally, live shows get the best material. It's a big problem and it's being fought over now. When we can solve it, films will probably get better material to work with.

“Everybody gives me advice on how to handle my career. My agency wants me to specialize. But I don’t want to relinquish acting—it's fun. It keeps me fresh and it's good for me as a director. No, I'm not going to specialize. “I don't want to sound egotistical, but nobody can tell me what to do in this business—nobody knows more than I do. The truth is, nobody knows very much. We can't learn anything from anybody, because we're doing it right now. We have to discover how because it hasn’t been done before. We make lots of mistakes, but don’t forget, we’re writing the book.”
Questioned about the Thomas show, Leonard told us it was shot in sequence, before a live audience. “It's like a play, a little cluttered by machinery.”
He's enthusiastic about “Make Room for Daddy,” and its surge to popularity justifies the enthusiasm. “I'm always battling with Danny about how to do some scene. If we don't argue, the show stinks. Sometimes we shoot a scene both ways to see who's right. Oh, we've done a lot of bad shows,” he continued, “but maybe that's because we're over-ambitious. Directing this show is the hardest work I've ever done in my life—but it's the most stimulating.
“I have no tolerance for mediocrity in this business,” he exploded before putting in a strong plug for his network (ABC) and his clients for granting the show relative immunity from interference. “There are too many talented people held back because of the mediocrity already entrenched. Show business is one of the few businesses a person can get into without talent and without aptitude.” (Leonard's opinion, not Scheuer's.)
“I bitterly resent the absence of standards to qualify people for this business. It has too many ramifications, it has too strong an effect on people to be permitted to operate on such a whimsical basis. But, how do you get around that? I don't know," said Sheldon, answering his own question, “I guess that's Utopia.”

Leonard learned the same thing Fred Allen learned 20 years earlier—executives at the networks fancy themselves experts at programming and invent reasons why shows should or shouldn’t work. Leonard saved “The Dick Van Dyke Show” from cancellation by going to the sponsors and directly pitching the show, telling them to give it a chance. It worked. And the show became a success. But that’s only one example of troubles that Leonard endured. Here’s a list, enumerated in an Associated Press column of January 3, 1969.

Sheldon Leonard a Successful Don Quixote of TV and Movies
By BOB THOMAS
HOLLYWOOD (AP) — Television producer Sheldon Leonard pictures himself as a tilter of network windmills, a dreamer of impossible programming dreams. Judging from his past performance, other producers should try the Don Quixote bit.
The latest of the Leonard lances is aimed at the Sunday spot now being vacated by the Phyllis Diller show. Leonard's new series, “My Friend Tony,” will be facing the formidable opposition of “Mission: Impossible” and ABC's Sunday night movie starting Jan. 5.
“I think we can make it,” he says confidently.
Maybe so. After all, Leonard himself made it from playing gangsters in wide lapels and snap-brim hats to being mentor of a long string of television successes. With each show he had to battle the ossified thought patterns of the industry's programmers. He catalogued:

1. The Danny Thomas Show. “I was told that in the heartland of America, viewers would find no identification with a man who told jokes in a night club for a living. I solved that by placing the emphasis on him as a husband and father.”
2. The Andy Griffith Show. “Now I was told the reverse: that a rural comedian would not register in urban America. But I had my research department look up the huge sales of records by Eddy Arnold; a large percentage were sold in cities. That proved to me Andy would go over in the urban areas."
3. The Dick Van Dyke Show. “An inside show about television show couldn't possibly interest a mass audience, they told me. In fact, Jim Aubrey, then head of CBS, tried to convince me to change Dick from a comedy writer to an insurance man.”
4. The Bill Dana Show. “This time they said I couldn't base a comedy show on a dialect comedian. The series failed—because I had tried to present a fantasy character against a realistic background.”
5. Gomer Pyle. “An audience gravely concerned about the draft and the Vietnam war would not watch a show about soldiers, they argued. I solved that by placing Jim Nabors in a military environment that had nothing to do with fighting a war.”
6. I Spy. “No show with foreign locations had ever succeeded, but I was willing to try.” Leonard also pioneered with a Negro co-star, Bill Cosby. The producer's challenge in “My Friend Tony” seems less profound than those which went before, but he claims it is a real challenge: “No series has ever had a foreign-speaking leading man.”
The new star is Enzo Cerusico, a handsome Italian Leonard chose for an "I Spy" segment in Rome.
“I interviewed 50-60 actors for the part, and he was the only one who couldn't speak English,” said Leonard. “I figured he must be good if the casting man would send him to me under those circumstances. And he was good.
“I put him under contract and brought him over here a year ago last June. Now his English is good. So good, in fact, that he is beginning to question why he does this and that in his scenes. I lose an hour or so a day because his English got good.”
James Whitmore also stars in the hour show as a UCLA criminology professor who helps solve crimes by scientific methods.

“My Friend Tony” wasn’t a hit and is remembered by perhaps a handful of people today. By now, Leonard’s track record wasn’t so hot—he lost with “Hey, Landlord,” “Accidental Family” and was on his way to failure with “My World and Welcome To It,” and comedies starring Pat Finley, Shirley MacLaine and Don Rickles before gaining a starring role in a show called “Big Eddie” that never found an audience.

Despite all that Leonard accomplished on television and his image as a gangster on film, he still may be best known for occasional appearances on radio when he said “Hey, bud, c’mere a minute,” to comedian Jack Benny playing comedian Jack Benny.

Rule 1 is Broken

Mike Maltese’s end gag in Going! Going! Gosh! (released in 1952): the Coyote swings at the Roadrunner to skewer him with a javelin. He hear a “beep, beep!” Down he comes. The frames explain what happened next. I love the little trucks floating around the Coyote’s head.



It turns out the roadrunner is driving the truck.



Hey, wait a minute! Chuck Jones insisted Rule 1 of the Roadrunner/Coyote series was “The Roadrunner cannot harm the Coyote except by going ‘Beep-Beep!’” (Chuck Amuck, pg. 225). Oh, right. He made these up long after he stopped making the cartoons. Or, to paraphrase Maltese, “What rules?”

Staircase Cycle

Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera didn’t come up with the idea of cycle animation for their TV cartoons. They used it much earlier. Here’s an example from the second Tom and Jerry cartoon, The Midnight Snack. There are 12 drawings (a half foot) of film to this cycle, which we’ve slowed down.



The character you see descending the staircase is voiced by Lillian Randolph. Contrary to what you may have read, there is no indication the character had a name in the MGM cartoons. Radio historian Chuck Schaden asked her about it in an interview in August 1976:

CS: Did you ever do any voice work for any of the animated cartoons on TV or in the movies?
LR: You know Tom and Jerry?
CS: Yes.
LR: Well, you know, remember the legs, the striped stockings and the big feet of the cook and that was all you could see? That’s my voice.
CS: That was you. The legs made the...
LR: The legs and big feet. (laughs) Oh, listen. The funniest thing. I saw that cartoon in Japan.
CS: You did?
LR: With a Japanese woman doing it. I laughed! I’m telling you, I was sitting in a theatre. It was real funny. And they still show it over there.

Randolph also revealed in the same interview she was “taught Negro dialect by a Caucasian” when she first appeared on a radio show called “Lulu and Leander” a number of years earlier.

Unfortunately, Randolph never received screen credit for this or any other MGM shorts. Roughly six weeks after this cartoon first appeared, Randolph would begin a long-running role as a maid on the radio show The Great Gildersleeve that lasted into the mid-‘50s.

39 Times 2

On radio, Jack Benny celebrated the same birthday over and over again. In print, Benny columnists celebrated, too. There always seems to have been a Jack Benny column around February 14th of each year.

Incidentally, Jack Benny did not spend all of his life at the age of 39. He didn’t turn 39 on the radio until 1948, some 16 years after he began broadcasting. But the programmes of the late ‘40s may have been the most popular, and certainly the aspects of his personality developed in those years stuck in people’s minds as if they had always been there.

Benny would be dead less than three years after this column appeared in papers on his birthday in 1972.

By the way, I thought the Bennys owned a home in Palm Springs. Perhaps they had one built but sold it by the time this story was published.

Happy 39, Jack Benny
By VERNON SCOTT
UPI Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) — Jack Benny’s done it!
He’s 39 years old again.
Today is his birthday. Valentine’s Day.
And the remarkable comedian has started on his second 39th birthday.
The accomplishment is noteworthy because Benny was stock at age 39 for most of his adult life. It was one of his trademarks. Now he is double that age and going as strong as ever at age 78.
Appears at Benefits
Benny is hale. His blue eyes — ever a favorite topic with him, and always good for a laugh — are clear and filled with mirth. Few men have devoted as long and tireless a lifetime to making people laugh as has Jack Benny. And few have done so much for symphony orchestras. He continues to appear at benefit concerts sawing away on his Stradivarius, an instrument he plays surprisingly well.
He also appears at benefits for organizations raising money to fight diseases, for worthy causes and for friends retiring from show biz.
Retirement is the farthest thing from Benny’s own plans.
He makes regular appearances at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas, starring in his own nightclub show three times a year.
“I have to keep working in Vegas because I like to be paid once in a while," Benny quipped. His phony penury also has been a staple of his comedy routines on radio, television and clubs down through the years.
Plays Lots of Golf
Benny rents a home in Palm Springs and plays golf almost every day when he is in the desert. He occasionally sees Frank Sinatra there.
“Frank really seems to enjoy being retired," Benny said. “But I have no idea of fully retiring myself. I just couldn’t do that.
“Maybe I might limit my appearances to concerts. As long as I’m doing something. But these damned benefits keep me from retiring. I can’t say no to good causes. So I do about one a week all over the country."
Then in the inimitable Benny fashion, accompanied by a sly glance, he concluded, “most of my symphony benefits are for the musicians pension fund.
“I don't like to say it." said musician Benny with the snapper, “but that’s my favorite charity."

A Little Note of Thanks

There’s a link on the side to a blog authored by a young man named Kamden Spies. Every two or three days, he’ll post about things connected with animation that he enjoys ferreting out in old newspapers and other sources.

Kamden put up a Top 15 list of “Best Websites for Animation Lovers,” and he has picked this blog (and our companion blog) as number two. That’s very kind of him.

I certainly wouldn’t rank either blog that high. The Yowp blog, if you read it, has a very, very narrow focus. I happen to like the stock music in the original Hanna-Barbera cartoons and I set out to try to identify it. The blog has expanded from that and, to be honest, has just about run its course. This blog doesn’t even deal with animation all the time; you’ll notice posts about old radio and TV shows and stars from contemporary sources, pretty much of the comedy/variety vein. It started as a place to put up frame grabs (like the one from an Iwerks cartoon on the right). I haven’t done much here all year, to be honest. In January, I banked almost a full year of posts through to Christmas. My personal life isn’t allowing me the spare time to post.

Neither blog is terribly weighty. Other people are better at that kind of thing.

It’s a shame that a number of blogs I used to read have fallen by the wayside. David Gerstein always seems to have found information no one else could about some early cartoons. Andrea Ippoliti posted some fine reviews of old cartoon shorts that I occasionally go back and re-read. That’s just to name two blogs that are no longer active.

Kamden has named Jerry Beck’s Cartoon Research as the number one. I’m really not a list person, but I’d probably rank it there, too. I’m not interested in all the topics on it, but someone else will be, so there’s a nice eclectic mix. And I enjoy any posts involving actual, dig-around-and-find-it, cartoon research where I can learn something about a studio or someone who worked in the industry in the olden days.

This gives me a chance to thank all those people who take the time to post about the animation industry for all to read (for free!) and Kamden for his nice thought.