Porky the Giant Killer Backgrounds

Bugs Hardaway and Cal Dalton aren’t among guys I consider top-flight cartoon directors, but there are beautiful backgrounds and creative layouts in their 1939 cartoon Porky the Giant Killer.

The two of them, or whoever was doing layouts for them, must have been inspired by the angles and perspectives that Frank Tashlin and, to a lesser extent, Tex Avery had in their cartoons at the time.



It’s a real shame the layout and background people weren’t credited on screen for another half dozen-or-so years at Warners. I’d love to know who the artists were responsible for these.

Finding Harry Morton

Imagine how much I Love Lucy would have been different if Bill Frawley had quit the show like he wanted to do after two seasons.

Frawley had been around since the vaudeville days but Lucy gave him unprecedented exposure—and offers with big dollar signs. But the shrewd Desi Arnaz, it seems, had him tied up contractually.

One of the roles dangled at Frawley was one that seemingly nobody wanted, that of next-door-neighbour Harry Morton on The Burns and Allen Show. You think two Darrens on Bewitched was confusing? What about four Harrys? And that’s not including radio.

We’ll get to Harry in just a moment. First, let’s hear from TV’s grouchiest actor. Frawley stayed with Lucy until the show’s end, though he signed a deal while still under contract to move on to My Three Sons. Arnaz apparently wasn’t pleased.

This story appeared in papers around June 21, 1953.

“Landlord’s’ Love For Lucy is Fading
By HAL HUMPHREY
HOLLYWOOD—BILL FRAWLEY wants to quit playing the role of Fred Mertz in the popular "I Love Lucy" show.
Some of his friends claim Bill doesn't mean it, that he is just being typically rambunctious, and point to the fact he just signed for two more years as the Ricardos’ landlord.
But the caustic pugnacious veteran of stage, screen and TV apparently is quite serious, and has built up a pretty strong case for himself.
"Sure, I signed up for another two years, but that doesn't make me happy. I had no choice. I couldn't break the contract, and the options are all their way," Bill glumly states.
His reason for wanting to leave the Nation's top-rated video show is a very fundamental one—money. Bill's salary was hiked with the new contract, but in his own words, "It's only another dollar, comparatively speaking."
This financial wound has been widened further by some much more attractive offers for Bill's services on other TV shows. George Burns made a pass at Frawley recently, asking him to do the Harry Morton role which Fred Clark is vacating next fall.
Freeman Keyes, Red Skelton's mentor, wants Bill for the lead in a new video series he is planning, "Uncle Bill's Doghouse." Keyes has offered Bill twice the money he's getting as Fred Mertz.
There is an outside chance Bill may be able to do both shows, if Keyes and Desi Arnaz can come to an agreement which would allow Desi to produce the "Doghouse" series under the Desilu Production banner. Keyes has offered $20,000 per week for the filming, but Desi is holding out for $23,000.
If this deal goes through, Bill would have to start work right away on the new series and complete most of it before "I Love Lucy" starts up again next fall. "That would be okeh with me. If I worked hard all summer, maybe I'd be sick by fall. That would be one way to duck Fred Mertz," says Bill, devilishly.
In the meantime he is resting up before making the annual Frawley pilgrimage to New York where his baseball cronies (Bill is a rabid Yankees fan) always are waiting to welcome him.
"I've got to have stamina for that trip," he jokingly explains.
"They work me over in shifts back there. A daytime crew meets me at the station and we make the rounds. The night crew takes over after dinner. About 5 A. M. they dump me off at the hotel to be sick by myself.
"After a doctor has jabbed me with a needle a foot long and slipped me some pills, a committee of friends pick me up, take me to the train and say 'Don't come back again, you little heel, until you learn how to take it.'"
The man who has gained more fame as Fred Mertz than he ever did during his long career as Actor Bill Frawley does not deny that there is a lot of satisfaction derived from being associated with the top show on TV.
He knows, too, that these fancy offers being tossed at him now are the result of this association. He recently made an industrial film for Gulf Oil which netted him more in one week of shooting than he makes in four weeks with Desilu.
But when an actor or anyone else finds himself in a spot where his services suddenly double in value, it's only natural to want to cash in while he's hot. If Lucy and Ricky Ricardo are interested in their landlord's happy frame of mind, they'd better kick in to Fred Mertz with a little more rent money.

Columnist Humphrey continued on the Harry Morton beat for the rest of the summer. Burns found a replacement for Fred Clark, someone who had joined the NBC announcing staff from KGW Portland in 1936, and had an interesting idea on how to introduce this latest Harry to viewers.

Burns, Allen Lose Veteran Cast Member
By HAL HUMPHREY
HOLLYWOOD, Aug. 4.—Producers of those TV situation comedies usually are thrown into great consternation when a regular member of the cast drops out for; one reason or another.
They worry about whether the viewers will accept another actor playing a role which has become so thoroughly identified with a certain face.
VETERAN GETS ROLE
George Burns and his producer currently find themselves in this predicament because Fred Clark is not going to play Harry Morton on the Burns and Allen show this fall. The part will be played by Larry Keating, veteran actor-announcer.
George refuses to make a federal case out of losing Clark.
“Why try to kid anybody?” he asked. “Blanche (Bea Benedaret) has to have a new husband, so on the first show we’ll simply introduce him as the new member of the cast.”

CALLED IDEA FOR PLOT
He is even considering making by bringing three or four candidates to Blanche's house and supposedly letting her pick the one she wants for her husband. "It might be a cute, idea, and it takes care of the plot for one show," George said.
George is the guy who once described a TV situation comedy as something which has a little more plot than a movie, but not quite as much as a wrestling match.
PLANS OWN SERIES
Bill Frawley, who is Fred Mertz on the "I Love Lucy" show, may branch out into his own series this fall in addition to his Mertz role.
If the deal is signed, Desi Arnaz’ production company (Desilu) will film it. The tentative title is "Uncle Bill's Doghouse."

So what did Bea Benaderet think about all this? Humphrey got the answer to that.

Trying to figure out when Benaderet first played Blanche is a little tricky. Verna Felton plays her in the broadcast of January 2, 1947. Harry is mentioned but doesn’t appear. Benaderet plays her on the show of January 29, 1948, but the rest of the season, she’s heard in various other roles, including a friend named Clara Bagley. Blanche appears once again as Blanche in November and then only periodically through the following summer, and while she mentions Harry, he is never heard. It doesn’t appear anyone played Harry until Burns and Allen were sponsored by Ammident in the 1949-50 season. Hal March was Harry and, even then, he played other roles. Sources conflict about who filled the role at first and not all broadcasts are available to check.

The article below ignores one of the TV Harrys—long-time radio actor John Brown, who disappeared from television because of the blacklist.

Gracie Allen's Neighbor Lasts 16 Years in Role
By HAL HUMPHREY
HOLLYWOOD, Aug. 30.—Proof that men aren't as steady and reliable as women is more than evident in the plight of Bea Benadaret, who plays Blanche Morton friend, confidante and next-door of neighbor of Gracie Allen.
Surprising as it may be to this TV generation, Bea has done this role with Burns and Allen for 16 years. In that time she also has gone through give “husbands.”
“It’s enough to make a gal just a little self-conscious, you know,” says Bea mischievously.
Last week Bea was introduced to the sixth Harry Morton, when the cameras started rolling on the new Burns and Allen series, the first episode of which will be seen Oct. 5.
REVAMPS OWN ROLL
Each time she is called upon to begin life anew with another Harry Morton, Bea is forced to revamp her own role as the wife, Blanche. The current Harry (Fred Clark) is a slightly oafish real estate salesman with an appetite that would have shamed the late Gargantua.
Larry Keating, who succeeds Clark this fall on your TV screens, will be a certified public accountant with a normal appetite and a higher IQ.
"This calls for Blanche employing a little more restraint. My characterization won’t be as broad as it was with Clark, because if it were, I would come out as a heavy against an actor like Keating,” explains Bea.
HARD TO REPLACE

Many Burns and Allen fans may have wondered why it wouldn't be easier and more believable for viewers if both characters were replaced when it was necessary to find a new Harry.
The answer to this lies with Bea's infallible timing and ability to play a semi-flip but true blue woman whose wordly wisdom is confined to a penetrating knowledge of everyday life.
"Comedians have ears like Geiger counters," Bea says. "A line has to be delivered just right. They can detect a wrong emphasis or inflection quicker than Toscanini can spot a flat note in a 30-piece fiddle section.
EVEN SATISFIES GEORGE
Bea herself is too modest to say so, but she has developed her own talent in this line to a point where the meticulous George Burns has no fault to find with Mrs. Harry Morton.
It was in 1932 that Bea first met up with George and Gracie. She did a bit part in a radio broadcast they were doing in San Francisco. In 1937 George wanted a couple to play his and Gracie's neighbors on the show, and Bea was chosen as the wife.
She's been Blanche Morton ever since. Two different husbands were used while the show was on radio, and the second one, Hal March, started with Bea on TV. He was considered two young in appearance to be married to Bea. Even the viewers complained of the disparity in their ages.
FEARS IDENTITY LOSS
"Hal is a marvelous actor. But the role called for someone who looked solid and faithful. Hal looked like a chaser," Bea says.
Fred Clark is leaving Harry Morton behind so that he can be in New York with his wife, Benay Venuta, and also because he felt he was losing his own identity with the public.
Recently when Fred and Benay got into a taxi in Gotham, the cabbie looked knowingly at Fred and cracked, "Where's your wife, Harry?”
As for Bea, she's ready to put in another 16 years as the Burns' neighbor with any ol’ husband.

Keating continued playing Harry Morton until a Burns-minus-Gracie spin-off sitcom went off in 1959. But the Keating-Burns connection continued. Keating was hired as next-door neighbour Roger Addison the Burns-produced Mr. Ed in 1961 and continued on the show until his death in 1963. Producer Burns decided not to try to get a second Roger Addison. Instead, Leon Ames was brought in to play a different character. The next few years weren’t good for some of the other Mortons. Benaderet and Clark both died in 1968, while cancer claimed March less than three weeks into 1970. Loveable old coot Bill Frawley preceded them in 1966.

Faster Than Boop

The Fleischer background artists used fuzziness to emphasize speed and it would appear the animators did it as well.

Note the fuzziness of the subway car pulling into the station as Betty Boop waits in Riding the Rails (1938).



The second car in the train is drawn normally, as the train is slowing down to stop.



Some more examples. You can see in a couple of cases on the far right of the screen where the drawings are normal. It’s because some bit of business is going to happen later in the footage and has to be clear.



The other thing notable about this cartoon is Sammy Timberg, or whoever composed the score, has a couple of scenes where Betty is strolling to what is pretty much the late 1950s Kellogg’s jingle, note for note.

And, for the record, Pudgy the pup is annoying.

Red, Wolf, Doors

There’s an eight-second scene in Little Rural Riding Hood where the country wolf is chasing after country Red creating a series of doors in a room in the process. Director Tex Avery had done multiple-door chases before, but not this quick and elaborate.

Here are some of the frames to show you the order of the instant doorways. Scott Bradley plays a hasty version (with a key change) of “The Bear Went Over the Mountain” during this scene. The horn players probably wanted to kill him afterward.



Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton, Mike Lah and Bobe Cannon are the credited animators, with Rich Hogan and Jack Cosgriff sharing the story credit.

The Purveyor of Peace

For a period of time, Jack Benny had time reserved near the end of his programme for a public service announcement. It would get chopped if the show was running late.

There were some about preventing fires, another about the Big Brothers organisation, but the most interesting ones were pleas for tolerance. If I recall, two similar ones were aired, one read by Jack and another by Don Wilson.

I doubt Jack wrote them—he had professional writers, after all—but I’m the sure the sentiments were his.

Jack was honoured for his promotion of brotherhood in 1955 at the 18th annual dinner of the Massachusetts Committee of Catholics, Protestants and Jews. His goodwill award described him, in part, as “An admirable and lovable humorist whose humor has always been friendly, kindly and humane, never marred by ridicule of race, creed or class...A generous giver of his resources and talents in the entertainment of our Armed Forces in distant lands and in the promotion of divers good causes in our own land.” The Boston Globe of May 6, 1955 reported “Benny’s witty opening remarks delighted the audience and then he turned serious.”

Among the media covering the event was The Daily Worker. You know, the organ of the subversive people that would bring down America. Anyway, the paper published a larger part of his acceptance speech than I’ve found elsewhere. It gives a nice insight into the beliefs of the off-air Benny. It was published on May 10, 1955.

Jack Benny Pleads for Peace, Brotherhood
BOSTON.—Jack Benny, radio and TV star, received a citation at a brotherhood dinner of the Massachusetts Committee of Catholics, Protestants and Jews the other night at the Hotel Statler in Boston. The dinner was attended by 1,400 religious, educational, business and political leaders of Massachusetts.
In his address to the organization, Benny made a plea for the furtherance of efforts to foster goodwill and brotherhood in this country and abroad.
“While your organization has been pounding away at discrimination since 1936, ironically, your cause was give[n] its greatest impetus during the last war. When men are fighting and dying together, color and creed become relegated to their proper place of importance. A soldier lying on a battlefield does not care whether the hands that lilt him onto the stretcher and carry him to safety are white or black. Nor in the hospital does he ask whether the life-saving blood he is getting came from a Catholic, a Protestant or a Jew. A bullet has no name on it—it merely says, ‘to whom it may concern.’
“These lessons that our millions of servicemen learned during the last war they brought borne with them. And they have become ambassadors in your cause. But I think we and they should redouble our efforts at this time, because there may not he anyone left to profit from the lessons of the next war.
“We are all proud of the great strides that have been made in this direction in this country of ours. Much remains to be done. But the seed is planted, and the tree is growing. And I feel that care and attention will bring it to its ultimate flower.
“Therefore, I would like to suggest that we look beyond the oceans that border our land. We’re living in a world in which tension and the threat of war seem to be the order of the day. And yet we all know that the vast majority of the people in the world do not want this, do not like this, and that they, like us, long for the peaceful pursuit of happiness.
What a day it will be when s brotherhood encompasses the world, when nations look upon each other with a friendship and understanding that we are now attending among our people in this country, when greed, distrust and suspicion are eradicated, when this organization of your is disbanded because it has no further work to do. What a day it will be when people of all nations, as well as colors and creeds, grasp hands and walk forward together in happiness, security and dignity. That day, we are hoping, will come.”

How They Made Gulliver Travel

The Fleischer studio had come a long way from the start of the 1930s, when a cartoon mouse would jump out of an old geezer’s beard and yell “All’s well!”, to the end, when a little cartoon man in a feature film would stroll along a darkened street and yell “All’s well!”

Gulliver’s Travels had its world premiere on December 18, 1939 at the Sheridan Theatre in Miami Beach. The film may have been the crowning achievement in the Fleischer studio’s history, considering the immense amount of work involved, though, to be perfectly honest, I prefer the early ‘30s cartoons instead.

The feature was followed closely in the trade papers and Paramount did what it could to get publicity in the popular press—in fact, it worked out a sponsored broadcast of the premiere carried on 52 CBS stations.

Good Housekeeping magazine ran a feature story on the film in its February 1940 issue, complete with colour pictures. The writer is prone to exclamation marks and repeating complete names, and her telling of the creation of the characters is a little too pat to be credible (every instant brainstorm is a winner). It’s nice to see some of the staff members named in the article, but Dave Fleischer’s name is nowhere to be found. It’s Max all the way.

A Giant Comes to Town
By Mary Hamman
“A GIANT on the beach! There’s a giant on the beach!” It is Gabby, the garrulous Town Crier of Milendo, galloping lickety-split through the sleeping capital of Lilliput. Windows fly open, heads pop out. An old man with a stocking cap draws his shutters and clamps them fast. A lovely lady swoons on her balcony. A wizened crone with an ear trumpet mutters petulantly: “I can’t hear him. What’s he saying? What’s happened?”

On Gabby races, bawling his terrifying message: “There’s a GIANT in Lilliput!”
That giant, of course, is Gulliver, and the scene is from Max Fleischer’s newly completed, full-length animated cartoon, Gulliver’s Travels. Testy, pompous, and enormously funny, Gabby is a born actor, as his first movie venture shows! His fellow Lilliputians, a nation of pick-edition men and women (the guards of the Royal Palace, chosen for their enormous height, proudly boat that not one of them is under six inches tall!), are also singularly gifted.
Although they are creations of ink and paint and celluloid, you can almost hear the hearts beating in their haughty little chests. Almost you’re convinced that real corpuscles scurry through their tiny veins!
If you’ve read Gulliver’s Travels you may remember that Gulliver, a shipwrecked English seaman, swam with the tide to a strange shore and collapsed on the beach. When he awoke, he found himself bound hand and foot with slender ropes. All about him were frightened and wide-eyed groups of tiny men and women. But once he had convinced them that he meant no harm, he stayed in Lilliput for many happy months. He tells us that he was able to hold the Lilliputians’ horses and coaches in the palm of his hand; that he could stand astride their grandest castles, and pluck their noblest warriors from the seas!
When Max Fleischer decided to make an animated cartoon of the famous voyage, he re-read Gulliver. “Humph,” he said to himself, “the fellow’s self-centered, to say the least. I wonder how the poor Lilliputians felt when Gulliver picked them up by the scruff of the neck and dangled them on his thumb?” Right then and there Max Fleischer decided that his movie would present the Lilliputians’ version of Gulliver’s saga.
“Gulliver’s had his say. It’s time for the little men to speak up,” said Mr. Fleischer. “I’ll take a five-inch citizen-of-Lilliput’s view of the adventure!” Now, after a year and a half’s work, the little men speak, and it’s through their eyes that you see Gulliver, the man-mountain, the stupendous giant.
Max Fleischer’s New York studio was not equipped for making long films, so eighteen months ago he moved to a brand-new, one-story, air-conditioned studio in Miami. It winds around a patio shaded by palms and fruit trees. Inside, large, bright rooms are labeled: “Inkers,” “Opaquers,” “In-Betweeners,” and “Animators.” The writers work in adjacent bungalows, and there is a special soundproof room in which the “voices” are segregated. The voices, as you might expect, are a group of noisy and humorous men and women, who earn their bread and butter by speaking for various cartoon characters. In this room they can rehearse, utter shrill bird cries, and otherwise amuse themselves between recordings on the sound stage.
Mr. Fleischer took a staff of two hundred and fifty artists, technicians and writers to Florida with him and engaged about three hundred and fifty artists in Miami. For a year, all six hundred have been working in shifts, night and day, on Gulliver’s Travels.
Both men and women go to the studio wearing slacks, shorts or playsuits. Outside it is furnace hot, especially during the summer months; but inside it’s always pleasantly cool. The New York members of the Fleischer staff have acquired automobiles, suntan, white bungalows laden with vines, and a taste for coconuts. Kitty Pfister, film editor, says it’s so lush and tropical in Florida, she’s afraid to stand still for fear she’ll take root and start blooming. But they’re all grateful to Gulliver for transplanting them!

A cartoon begins with a script, and a script begins with store conferences. The first weeks in the new studio were devoted to mass meetings in Fleischer’s office. Bill Turner, head of the script department, and twenty or more of his assistants thrashed out every angle of the story with Max.
“Who do you suppose found Gulliver?” Bill Turner asked at the very first meeting. “He’s the hero of our story, I should think!”
Someone reached for the book, but Fleischer stopped him.
“Gulliver doesn’t tell who found him,” he said. “After all, Gulliver didn’t wake up until the Lilliputians had already tied him down. And quite an engineering feat that must have been, too!”
“I know!” said Bill Turner. “The Town Crier found Gulliver!”
“Of course,” Fleischer agreed. “It was a stormy night, and the Town Crier was sleepily making his round—”
“Singing ‘All’s Well,’” someone put in, “and in rather a bored voice, I’ll bet. He was sure nobody’d be about on such a gloomy night, and doubtless he wanted to go home himself—”
“When suddenly,” Bill Turner picked up the story, “he bumped into something. Some huge object was stretched on the beach. The Town Crier raised his lamp—”
“It was a finger,” said Fleischer, “a human finger he’d bumped into, and, lifting his lamp, he saw five giant fingers spread fanwise on the beach, and attached to a human hand about twice the size of a full-grown Lilliputian! Lifting his lamp still higher—”
“He saw the giant! Oh boy!” cried Bill Turner. “What an opening!”
“What’s the Town Crier’s name?” Fleischer asked.
“His name?” Turner considered for a minute, then announced authoritatively: “His name is Gabby, of course! He was born with the gift of gab and knew, and told, every happening in Lilliput back to, and even before, the First Great War with Blefuscu.”
Thus was created Gabby, Town Crier of Milendo, the Capital of Lilliput, and the hero of Fleischer’s cartoon.
At the next story conference it was decided that Gabby had not been stricken dumb with terror on spotting the giant, though many a lesser man might have been, but had run lickety-split though the town, crying: “There’s a giant on the beach! There’s a giant on the beach!” And he successfully roused the whole population.

“Surely he went to tell the king,” said Bill Turner, and everyone agreed that he had indeed made a special trip to King Little’s palace to inform His Majesty that a giant had come to town.
It was also unanimously decided that Gabby had personally organized and directed the binding up of the sleeping giant’s body. Gabby, the ingenious, had suggested that the workmen dig tunnels under Gulliver’s back and carry ropes through those tunnels and hurl them over his monstrous chest by means of the very rock catapults that the Lilliputians customarily used to defend their North Wall from attack by the folk of Blefuscu.
As the story conferences proceeded and the script took shape, it became obvious that Gabby—garrilous, bossy, braggart—was nabbing the lion’s share of the drama for himself, although some other Lilliputians did manage to put up a fight for star billing. King Little of Lilliput and his beautiful daughter Glory; King Bombo of Blefuscu and his son, Prince David; King Bombo’s spies, Snitch, Snoop and Tell; and Twinkletoes, the cross-eyed carrier pigeon, inserted themselves into the script and challenged Gabby’s supremacy. Gulliver, the giant, came to life, too, and was found to be a most benevolent gentleman with his enormous heart definitely in the right place. But in spite of keen competition, Gabby looked to be a modern David who would overcome Goliath and steal the show!
When all the principals were safely down paper, full of life and vigor and loud with words, Seymour Kneitel, chief animator, and his assistants, where asked to make convincing sketches of them.
“Gabby should be short and dumpy,” said Mr. Kneitel, and he began to draw squat circles on his pad. “his feet should be flat and his head large!”
“He has a bulbous nose,” said an assistant.
“His hair is unruly,” added another.
“But his eyes are big and brown,” said Edith Vernick, the only woman animator on the staff. “You can’t be too mean to Gabby!” Miss Vernick has a tender nature, and she cherishes lost causes. She’s in favor of making Popeye prettier, too, and for years she’s been trying to give Olive Oyl a more seductive figgah! “Princess Glory is the glamour girl of Lilliput,” said Seymour Kneitel, “and I wonder what her dimensions should be?”
“Ideally,” said Miss Vernick, “she’d be about three and a half inches tall. That would make her about one and twenty-nine one-hundredths of an inch three the middle, with an ankle—” Miss Vernick bogged down at this fraction.
“We’ll draw it,” Mr. Kneitel said, “but we’d better not try to compute it.”

When all the principal characters of Lilliput had passed arduous screen tests—“Make Prince David thinner,” “King Little’s mustache should be longer,” “Give Gabby bigger jowls,” “King Bombo has a fatter tummy,” the staff shouted, as the little people went through their paces day after day until they’d all been okayed—Mr. Fleischer started to hunt for a living Gulliver to act as model for his artists. Sam Parker, announcer of Station WIOD, broadcast for tall, dark, handsome candidates. One day Seymour Kneitel went to the radio station to look at the letters and photographs Mr. Parker had received. And there in the broadcasting studio he found the perfect model for Gulliver—none other than Sam Parker himself!

Mr. Parker was delighted to pose for Gulliver, and thereafter he was called “the modest giant”—the man who didn’t know that he was tall, dark and handsome. Next, voices had to be found for the characters. Jessica Dragonette was chosen to be the voice of Princess Glory, and Lanny Ross became the voice of her lover, Prince David. Sam Parker supplies a deep, resonant, giant voice for Gulliver. Colvig Pinto [sic] was chosen to speak for Gabby, the picture thief. Pinto was the voice of the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz, of Grumpy in Snow White, and is the broken-down Maxwell car you hear wheezing and chugging through Jack Benny’s radio program.
Jack Mercer supplies the voice of King Little. And though his Imperial Majesty of Lilliput might be much upset to hear it, Jack Mercer also provides the voice of Twinkletoes, the cross-eyed pigeon, neighs for a troop of tiny horses, and is the voice of King Bombo’s chief spy. Moreover, he is habitually the voice of that ruffian and cartoon favorite, Popeye, knowledge of which might make even a minuscule king cross!
Then the real work began. Characters and key scenes in the drama had been drawn. Voices had been chosen. The script was complete. But what of the music, the pictorial backgrounds, and the actual animation?
Victor Young locked himself in a room with a piano to compose a symphonic score. Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger started batting out songs. They wrote Gabby’s “All’s Well” song and the national anthems of Lilliput and Blefuscu. In the picture these anthems are responsible for war between the neighboring nations. King Little wants “Faithful” sung at the wedding of his daughter, Princess Glory, to Prince David of Blefuscu, while King Bombo, monarch of that land, wants “Forever,” his own national anthem. Neither King will capitulate, and they decide to fight it out.
Gulliver intervenes, stops the war and the two anthems are blended together to make a song soufflé—and, incidentally, a happy ending.
These events take place in splendid miniature settings. Robert Little, Louis Jambor, and Shane Miller filled sheets and sheet of paper with backgrounds. They drew the Royal Palace and the streets of the metropolis, Milendo; they sketched interiors and exteriors, bight daylight sets, and dreamy moonlight scenes; they sketched the Throne Room and the barbershop, the Princess’ balcony and the Prince’s distant palace. In all, 125,000 background drawings were required for the picture.
Esther Dayton, head of the in-between department, kept hundreds of artists huddled over their drawing boards for months on end. (She reports that during the year twenty thousand headaches were treated in the first-aid room, and that’s not counting her own.) The in-betweeners make the thousands of almost identical drawings that cause the figures to move and live on the screen. Mob scenes are hardest to animate, and Gulliver’s Travels is full of mob scenes. Almost a million drawings were used in the picture, and four tons of color were applied to the black-and-white outline sketches by the artists who work in the opaquing department.
So now Gulliver makes his bow in a feature-length animated cartoon. A giant comes to town, but this time he doesn’t have things all his own way, because the Lilliputians win most of the acting honors—and the major part of your sympathy, besides.

Iwerks' Horseman

There’s an interesting animation effect in The Headless Horseman, a 1934 ComiColor short by Ub Iwerks.

There’s a dissolve to Ichabod Crane sitting at his desk, reading the book about the title character. As the background pans slowly to the left, the animator turns Crane and his desk. You can’t get the full effect through these screen grabs but you can see where the body starts and where it ends up.



The chalkboard is out of focus, adding some depth. The same effect is used elsewhere in the cartoon, though public domain prints are so washed out, you can barely see the nighttime scenes. Iwerks pulled this off using a jury-rigged multiplane camera.

Perhaps these ComiColor shorts will get restored some day, but no amount of restoration can fix the lacklustre story and stiff animation in this cartoon. Carl Stalling gets a credit for the musical score, which is quite good.