A Bob Clampett Background Trick

There are two ways you can have a very long background pan in a cartoon. One way is to paint a very long background. The other way is what you’ll find in Chicken Jitters, a 1939 Bob Clampett cartoon.

Dick Thomas painted two different backgrounds. The cameraman simply dissolved while panning both backgrounds. Because the pan is quick, you can’t see where one faded in and the other faded out.



Vive Risto and Bobe Cannon are the credited animators. There’s no story man listed. Perhaps Clampett did it himself. If so, he doesn’t seem to have been enthusiastic about this cartoon. The gags aren’t strong. There’s even one scene where the bad-guy fox talks but his mouth doesn’t move, as if Clampett wanted to get the cartoon done and saved time but not putting mouth movements on the exposure sheet.

Stage Hoax

No expert am I when it comes to picking out styles of animators, but it’s interesting to see the changes along the way in the Woody Woodpecker cartoon Stage Hoax (1952).

In one scene, Woody is fairly angular, including his knuckles. with a bent beak.



The hitchhiking scene has a rubberier Woody, with exaggerated hands.



Here’s a comparatively ho-hum take by Wally Walrus. There’s not much exaggeration, either in the drawings or the timing. The drawings are animated on twos.



These fear drawings of Woody after seeing gunman Buzz Buzzard (then being embarrassed after realising it’s a poster) are more entertaining, at least for me. (Usually, if it’s a scene I like, it’s Patterson’s).



Besides Patterson, the credited animators are La Verne Harding, Paul Smith and Ray Abrams.

Jack and Hank

Can you imagine starting a career and still working 60 years later?

The greats of show business don’t seem to have given it a second thought.

60 years after Jack Benny joined up with Cora Salisbury for a musical act in small-town vaudeville, he was still on the road and still performing music, though he was talking a bit in his act now. And he was appearing on a small screen that wasn’t in homes when he started his entertainment career.

Here’s a short tongue-in-cheek story from United Press International dated April 30, 1971. Benny certainly didn’t need the money, and he was quite happy to give it to Mary Livingstone to buy things.

Benny going to London to tape two video shows
By JACK GAVER

NEW YORK (UPI)—Here is this fellow, Jack Benny, passing through town again looking for for television work, a quest that no retirement-aged 39-year-old should have to undertake. But that's the way life is—callous.
Meanwhile, to shore up his shaky financial situation and carry himself through the summer, this waif of Waukegan —that's in Illinois—has indentured himself to a grasping impresario named James Nederlander, who will pay the comedian a mere umpteen thousands of dollars a week for personal appearances at two Eastern theatrical emporiums.
And before that pittance begins to come in, Benny is even now earning coffee-and-cakes money in London by taping two of the "Kraft Music Hall" summer video shows hosted by British entertainer Des O'Connor for NBC-TV.
"I was to have had a theater engagement in London," Benny said before he started across the Atlantic, "but a hitch developed in getting the right theater at the right time, so I'll have to settle for the two television shows and some sightseeing.
"I just might manage to eke out enough to get back home."
Benny had better get back because this Nederlander, a distant descendant of Simon Legree, holds contracts for the comedian's appearance Aug. 2-7 at the Garden State Arts Center in Holmden, N.J., and at the Merriweather Post Pavillion in Columbia, Md., Aug. 9-14.
In both engagements, Benny will be appearing with composer Henry Mancini and his orchestra. Obviously, the Benny violin bit has to figure in the proceedings. "We haven't figured out the routine of the show as yet," Benny said. "Probably, I will open with a monologue, although it could be otherwise."
Part of the Benny stopover here between Hollywood and London involved negotiations for his usual two television specials next season for NBC.
No details yet, but you can bank on it. In the Benny National Bank, of course. The poor fellow needs the interest.

How did the show with Mancini go in Maryland? What did they do? For the answer, let’s turn to the Baltimore Sun of August 13, 1971. As a fan of Jack’s and someone who enjoys Mancini’s compositions and arrangements, it sounds like a good evening. Evidently, an explanation was needed for those not familiar with a certain rock opera.

Jack Benny, Henry Mancini Please Fans
By EARL ARNETT
Jack Benny and Henry Mancini combined music and humor into a sophisticated evening of light entertainment Wednesday at Columbia's Merriweather Post Pavilion. Backed by a 40-piece orchestra, Mr. Benny with his classic understated comedy and Mr. Mancini with his successful knack for melody made their 2 1/2 hour performance seem too short.
The concert began with selections from two Mancini-scored movies, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and "Hatari." The composer, dressed in a pinstriped business suit, then sat at the piano to play the theme from another motion picture, "Love Story."
After chatting briefly with the audience and conducting the orchestra in an arrangement of the overture from "Tommy" (an album by The Who), Mr. Mancini then introduced his 39-year-old co-star.
Looking remarkably spry for his age, Mr. Benny sauntered onto the stage with his characteristic walk, remarked about the bad weather, and said: "You know, anybody else would have returned your money."
Just His Voice
From that point, he joked about the local area, retirement, golf, his stinginess, doctors and other assorted tidbits in deceptively rambling fashion. He didn't move much .or rely on props or cavort around the stage as so many modern comedians are wont to do. Using just his voice, trained to conversational perfection from radio days, and his famous timing, Mr. Benny talked about 20 minutes.
One could see why this man has been studied so often by budding performers. Comedy depends at least as much on technique as subject matter. Of course, the technique has to be natural, and that comes with practice and experience. Mr. Benny's technique consists of skillful understatement (buttressed by a very effective deadpan expression), plus the ability to build on a joke and make fun of his real or imagined foibles. It all adds up to amusement and laughter, commodities which have made him a rich and successful man. While perhaps not stingy, the man is certainly economical. I don't imagine that anyone can milk more laughs from a basic joke than Mr. Benny.
Basically Simple
After this brief talk to the audience, the comedian walked off with a promise of more to come and Mr. Mancini went back to his music, which included medleys of Simon and Garfunkel songs and melodies from the rock opera, "Jesus Christ—Superstar."
The popular composer's musical conception seem[s] basically simple, usually built around an appealing melody. Highly skilled in the use of conventional orchestra instruments, he can create pleasant voices around the melody line, as well as rich harmonies.
However, I don't think his music is as interesting or as vibrant as that of Burt Bacharach, whose concert at the Merriweather this summer was a cut above Mr. Mancini's. Both men have learned how to tap the popular imagination, but Mr. Bacharach makes fewer concessions to establish formulas for success.
After 45 more minutes of music by Mr. Mancini, the audience was given a 15-minute break before composer and comedian returned to the stage together, both dressed formally this time for interplay between the orchestra and Mr. Benny's violin.
Ended With Duet
What ensued was a captivating blend of humor, Mr. Benny's admittedly mediocre violin playing and fond stories about his friends George Burns and the late Fred Allen. Needless to say, there was some kidding with the orchestra, including comic feuds with two other violinists, the percussionist and the brass section. The mild-mannered Mr. Mancini kept himself in the background and indeed throughout the entire evening showed admirable deference to all the other musicians. The orchestra, recruited mostly from local talent but augmented by key players with Mr. Mancini, sounded more than adequate for an opening night.
Mr. Benny described it as "the finest first show I've ever had with any orchestra." It all ended with a duet of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" with Benny on his Stradivarius and Mancini on flute. The audience gave them a deserved standing ovation. The amiable Benny-Mancini combination will continue at the pavilion through tomorrow night.

Cartoon Cadborosaurus

For a brief time, UPA was the film critics’ darling.

No uber-cute woodland creatures would be found in its cartoons. Yeah, critics loved singing butterflies at one time, but it was now 1950. It was time for something new, something different looking, something with humour that mirrored real-life adult sensibilities.

UPA did that. The critics cheered. Then they moved on to something else.

In a way, the studio had a split personality. On one hand, it was stuck with the Mr. Magoo series because Columbia Pictures was pretty much bankrolling operations and that’s what it wanted. Magoo turned into formula over time (the blind guy can’t read a sign properly) and the only real amusement was provided by Jim Backus’ funny voice. The non-Magoo cartoons got more and more artsy and self-indulgent. Attempts at being droll or wry resulted in blank stares.

Columbia gave up on the studio after deciding it would put its animation chips on the newly-formed Hanna-Barbera Enterprises. Pretty soon, UPA was sold and company boss Steve Bosustow was forced out.

Bosustow and his animation directors had all kinds of ideas for feature films reported in the trade press. The only one that got made starred Magoo. Bosustow was from Victoria, B.C., and had some British Columbia settings for films that never got made. There was also a proposal for a topic that was contradictory for UPA to say the least. The studio deliberately avoided slapstick violence in its cartoons (ie. the gags in virtually any Bugs Bunny or Woody Woodpecker short), but it considered a feature on slapstick itself.

Here’s a story from the Vancouver Sun of February 28, 1953. Incidentally, if you want an excellent overview of UPA, get a copy of When Magoo Flew by Adam Abraham.

B.C.'s Caddy May Break Into Films
It's one of ideas in mind of Victoria-born Steve Bosustow
By BOB WILLETT
(Sun Hollywood Correspondent)
WALT Disney is going to get some competition this year from Canadian cartoon creator Stephen Bosustow. The Victoria-born producer has just completed plans for a feature film combining live actors and cartoon characters, the first full-length, picture of this type to be produced outside the Disney plant.
"Slapstick" will tell the history of this kind of comedy by means of a story about a couple of comedians who are offered work by a cartoon studio. When they learn that the company is interested only in their voices, they are disappointed, but go along with the idea after meeting the many studio workers who will bring the animated characters to life, vocally and visibly. This evolves into a behind the-scenes explanation of animated cartoon production. The two comics, in turn, tell secrets of the ancient art of slapstick.
DOUBLE PURPOSE

Most of Bosustow's movies are double-barreled appealing to both children and adults, and educating as well as entertaining.
He is perhaps most famous for his production of "Gerald McBoing-Boing," a delightful cartoon that, deserved the wide recognition it received in 1950, including a Hollywood Oscar and a London Henrietta. He followed it with "Rooty Toot Toot," a completely sophisticated cartoon based on the old song, "Frankie and Johnny," but bearing little real resemblance to the thoughts contained in its words. It was nominated for an Academy Award in 1951.
Last year, Steve's company, United Productions of America, created the cartoon sequences which tied the different phases of "The Four Poster" together. "When Stanley Kramer began production of this picture, with only Lilli Palmer and Rex Harrison in the cast," Bosustow relates, "he was worried about the audience growing restless of scenes limited to the single bedroom set, as they were in the stage play. When I heard he was thinking of using puppets to illustrate what was happening when the couple was not in the bedroom, I suggested cartoons. I'd always felt that any motion picture problem could be solved through the medium of animation, and Mr. Kramer agreed with me. However, even I was amazed at the acclaim given the cartoon inserts in this film."
USE WATER COLORS
UPA cartoons are all decidedly different, both in story content and method of execution. Among a staff of seventy-five are some of Hollywood's most accomplished artists, including Bosustow himself. For some of their films, they utilize water colors, showing a brush line where necessary, but often having no perceptible lines at all. This is in direct contrast to the well-inked outlines of Disney drawings and the work of other film cartoonists. It can be traced to Steve's childhood in Victoria.
FILM JOB
"When I was eleven, I won a prize in a water color contest sponsored by the Victoria School Board," he told me.
"My ambition then was to become an artist and I studied art after I finished school. The family moved to California and I got my first job with a small animated film company. Later, I went to work for Walt Disney and had quite a bit to do with both 'Bambi' and 'Fantasia.' During the war, we turned out training films for Canadian and U.S. governments and worked out improved techniques. Shortly after it ended, I formed a company to develop some of my own ideas."
To begin with, he took the cartoon off the assembly line and made it more individual. In place of the accepted system of having three different production units handle story, music and animation, he combined these phases of cartoon creation under one director. Rather than applying a routine formula to each and every film, he believes in selecting the art form best suited to the story.
NEW ART FORM
"For adult audiences, I felt that the novelty of cartoons dealing with fairies, animals and children's stories had worn off," he says. "My associates agreed that the time had come for the animated film to absorb new art forms, both classical and contemporary, and go beyond the mere animation of ordinary stories. Gerald McBoing-Boing, the little boy who spoke only in sound effects, proved that we were right."
"Rooty Toot Toot" emerged as a satire on courtroom procedure with great adult appeal. While "Willie the Kid" dealt with children, it showed the world as it appears to an imaginative child. "The Oom-pahs," one of his most experimental efforts, told the story of a family of musical instruments, fighting over the classics as opposed to jazz.
A UPA cartoon called, "The Brotherhood of Man," won the Grand Prize at the 1949 Belgian Film Festival. In 1952, the 41-year-old Bosustow was given an award as the man in the motion picture industry who had done the most to draw the attention of the rest of the world to the American way of life.
While "Gerald McBoing-Boing" was such a hit that a sequel, "The Gerald Symphony" was made, the most popular UPA personality is the near-sighted “Mr. Magoo.” Lovable, amiable and, at the same time, daring and reckless, he is a little man whose quick comments on the world (which he sees as slightly out-of-focus) have made him a widely-quoted wit.
When an informal group of film capital fathers happened to discuss the effect of a new baby on a household, Bosustow's "Family Circus" came into being. "There are any number of directions left for us to take," Steve points out, '"and we never know which one we will follow next. I've been toying with the idea of telling some British Columbia Indian legends with animated actors. If nothing else, they would enable me to shoot the first film of Cadborosaurus or Ogopogo in action."

Noah's Ark

The Mel-O-Toons cartoons were limited animation with camera movement over backgrounds with narration taken from children’s records.

Obviously, this didn’t lend itself for Disney-type “illusion of life” characters. Since this was the 1950s, stylised, sketchy characters sufficed. They don’t really resemble designs you’d see at the major theatrical studios.

Here are some examples from Noah’s Ark.



None of the Mel-O-Toons credit any artists. Even the narrator on this one, Claude Rains, does not get a screen credit. Art Scott was the man behind Mel-O-Toons in between jobs at Disney and Hanna-Barbera. He was the art director for New World Productions which made the cartoons; generally it produced slide films and other industrials. The soundtrack comes from a 1954 children’s record; the cartoon says Capitol, but Billboard magazine of the period says Mercury.

Approaching the Mysterious Planet

When pretty well all of Leon Schlesinger’s directors were treating frames of film like an audience looking at a stage, newcomer Tex Avery used techniques you’d find in feature films, albeit in some cases he was doing it as a parody. You’ll see “shots” at various angles, with the layouts sometimes being overhead or looking up at the action.

He seems to have done it less after getting settled in at MGM, perhaps because he wanted nothing to draw attention away from the gag. But here’s a cinematic effect treated quite straight in The Cat That Hated People (1948).

After the cat’s rocket ship treats the planets as a pinball game, Avery has the camera move up and in on the world where the ship crashes. He fades into three different background drawings by Johnny Johnsen; the only thing animated is a thin stream of smoke.



It’s done very straight. The same thing was done cleverly and as a joke in the 1946 Warner Bros. cartoon The Mouse-Merized Cat (“Hey, Babbitt! The people are here!” says the Costello mouse in what sure seems like a Bob Clampett cartoon, but isn’t.)

Walter Clinton, Louie Schmitt, Grant Simmons and Bill Shull are credited on this cartoon as animators.

Humour of the Future

Is the Bilko show still funny? How about Jack Pearl? Or Van and Schenck? Or Mark Twain? Or Andrew Dice Clay?

I suspect people like Jack Osterman in the vaudeville era never thought a day would come where blunt rudeness and crudeness would be considered comedy. But some comedians of a bygone era—one where Jack Paar was banned from saying “water closet” in a punch line—realised humour was evolving. Basically they were tired of the same types of jokes they had been hearing for 20, 30, 40 years and saw the new comedians, ones who were too young to stand on a vaudeville or burlesque stage, were trying something new.

Television changed things, too. Ernie Kovacs’ sight gag humour couldn’t work anywhere else.

The National Enterprise Association’s entertainment columnist wrote a two-part column on changing humour in America, interviewing a number of comedians. This was published on April 3 and 4, 1956. Some of the hoary old examples, to be honest, are so hokey they’re funny. Perhaps comedy goes in cycles.

Top Comics Detecting New Sense of Humor In America
By DICK KLEINER
NEW YORK (NEA)—Why did the chicken cross the road? If you say the perambulating pullet wanted to get to the other side, you're as out of date as a dinosaur. Humor, like dinosaurs, has evolved into higher forms. And a survey of top comedians and gag-writers highlights this evolution.
Take the road-crossing rooster. Dick Shawn, one of the better young comics, says that used to be pretty good as a laugh-getter. But today?
“Today,” Dick says, “with the way audiences are with their ‘go and show me attitudes’, the same joke would have to be twisted around—given a new strange, weird, sick slant. It would have to go something like this:
"Bill: Hey, man! Why did that crazy chick cross that road there?
"Joe: Boy, that was no chick. That's my father. He's got problems.
The surveyed comedians do not agree that the changing American sense of humor is progress.
"The standards of humorous material have been lowered," the late Fred Allen said in a reply shortly before his death. "In a mass production era the humor in radio, television and motion pictures comes off the assembly line. These media centered in New York, Chicago and Hollywood have eliminated regional humor its writing and performance."

Jack Paar agrees that all is not well in the humor factories.
"Because of the heavy barrage of comedy via TV, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, cartoons and even the back of cereal boxes," Paar says, "the average American is exposed to humor of some form for the best (or worst) part of the day. This saturation takes its toll and the public soon becomes jaded with contemporary styles of humor. For instance, whatever happened to the Little Audrey stories, the Little Moron jokes and 'Knock, knock, who's there?"
But Edger Bergen takes the view that the change is for the good.
"The public," he says, "demands a faster type of humor with fewer words. The build-up has been cut from 25 minutes to 25 seconds. I believe this reflects the higher intelligence of the American public. As I see it, both music and comedy have undergone changes because of the educational pressures of both radio and television."
Jimmy Durante is another one who looks at things happily. “TV has educated people to humor,” he says. “They know if they've heard it before and you can't tell a bad joke before 40 million viewers.”
They almost all agree that the deep, basic nature of humor is unchanging. But style changes, topics change, the surface humor continually changes. As Robert Q. Lewis puts it, "Basically, the American sense of humor has never changed and never will. Some of the specific topics for jokes have become outmoded. "In an old joke book, I ran across this:
"Zeke: That horse you sold me last week is no good. I can't get him to hold his head up.
"Rube: It's just cause he's ashamed. He’ll hold it up as soon as you finish paying for him.
"This is probably one of the earliest installment-buying jokes on record. With the advent of the automobile, shame was given as the reason for the engine coughing and, when the air age is really with us, it will probably be used as an excuse for the family helicopter being unable to get off the ground."
All any joke needs to bring it up to date is just a little change of props. In the year 2000, with rocket ships and space travel, the old walking-home-from-the-buggy-ride jokes will become parachute jokes; the he-she love-making jokes will still be the same, only instead of gazing at the moon, the boy and girl will smooch beneath an artificial satellite."
This sentiment is echoed by Milt Josefsberg, who for years wrote for Jack Benny and Bob Hope, and is now NBC's executive in charge of developing new comics and comedy shows.
"Jack Benny will today take a script," Josefsberg says, "that was done 10 or 15 years ago, cut out the dead-wood, remove the topical gags and spike it up with a couple of modern bits. This cannot be done with all scripts, of course, but it can, and has, been done with many of them."
Josefsberg's reference to topical gags is important. There is universal agreement among the 14 comics and writers that topical gags must keep topical. Use the same gag, but update the name.
"We used to do gags about glamor girls like Hedy Lamarr and Ann Sheridan, Josefsberg says. "Today these same gags are being done about Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell." "The frames of life change" is the way Lucille Ball puts it. “It isn't possible to get a laugh from the British about its loss of the Colonies, for example. At the time when ‘the sun never set on the British empire,’ they could be kidded about it."
"There is a certain humor that is derived from the headlines," says Mel Tolkin, writer for Sid Caesar. "That, of course, changes daily. What's funny about the gasoline shortage?'
So topics keep changing. Yesterday, it was the gasoline shortage. In some distant tomorrow, it may be rocket fuel."

Humor Can't Step on Toes
(Second of Two Dispatches)
By DICK KLEINER
NEW YORK (NEA) —"There are two American senses of humor," says George Gobel. "America's private, didja-hear-this-one type and America's public, or commercial type.

"The jokes we tell, songs we sing and remarks we make at office parties, in locker rooms, during card games, while eating lunch or waiting for babies to be born are pretty much the same free-swinging, any-target comedy as they ever were. But in TV, theater, movies and radio, we have had to narrow the area considerably in order to forestall the indignation of entirely too many groups, many organized and grievously articulate.
"We may not offer jests on topics considered controversial if we are to be successful in today's commercial entertainment field. And today the only thing which appears to escape controversy is the bubonic plague."
Most of 14 comedians and gag-writers surveyed on the changing sense of American humor agree that nowadays humor mustn't step on toes. Perhaps, as Gobel suggests, this has been carried to an extreme, but not all feel that way.
Audiences will no longer tolerate racist humor," say Arnie Rosen and Coleman Jacoby, the men who created Jackie Gleason's famous characters, "or accept caricatures of minority stereotypes."
"If we are to improve ourselves morally, economically and intellectually," says Steve Allen, "our humor will reflect these improvements. Many years ago it was considered in good taste to make jokes about Negroes, Jews, Catholics, etc., which would horrify people of today."
"There are less jokes at the expense of someone's feelings," says Jack Paar. "How often these days do you hear a Pat-and-Mike joke, stories told about people who speak with impediments or have physical handicaps? At one time, this was the main stream of American humor. Behind each laugh was a sharp-edge dagger aimed at racial minorities or unfortunates."
"In the old days," says Jimmy Durante, "there used to be Dutch, Jewish, Negro and Italian comics with racial take-offs. Now you can't do it, because you offend someone. You can't offend people with different afflictions or sicknesses. People resent it."
What's taken the place of this pointed humor? Dick Shawn says audiences "are becoming more sophisticated, more 'hep,' more grown up and definitely more blase." Phil Silvers says "our humor is a bit more violent." Rosen and Jacoby think "today's jokes are for the most part tied up with characterizations."
So sophistication, violence and characterizations are the thing. They've replaced the pointed humor and the puns gags like these, submitted by the polled comics, as examples of yesterday's humor that is now passe:
From George Gobel—"Straight man What's a Greek urn?" “Comedian—About 12 dollars a week." From the late Fred Allen—"Have you heard about the glassblower who suddenly had hiccups and before they could stop him he'd blown 200 percolator tops."
From Milt Josefsberg—"Why can't the locomotive sit down?" "Because it has a tender behind."
From Edgar Bergen—"Why is a kiss like a sewing machine?" "One sews seams nice and the other seems so nice."
From Phil Silvers—"A fine car I've got. You have to put it in second to go over car tracks."
As for the future, the consensus is that changes will keep coming, but basic humor will remain the same. This is how the panel looks ahead:
Edgar Bergen: "Humor will continue to become more intelligent."
Rosen and Jacoby: "It will continue to be refined and sharpened with exercise."

Steve Allen: "Humor is probably becoming a little more cerebral as the old burlesque and vaudeville comics are gradually being replaced by comedians who also have college degrees."
Josefsberg: "Take a good solid gag that played in 1936, and it will get a laugh in 1956 and I'm willing to bet in 1976, too."
The late Fred Allen: "The standards will get lower I'm afraid. Audiences get so much free entertainment they become blase. When people finally know all of the jokes they will stop laughing. Humor may go out of style. People may have to find a substitute for laughter."
George Gobel: "I'm worried about the direction the future will go. I would like to see a television audience which embraces all the peoples of the world, watching programs from every a nation on globe-girdling networks. "The audience will become better educated, more sophisticated and with sufficient understanding to tear down the censor's giant sieve and allow humor to swing wide and free at all targets deserving the attention of skilled, tasteful comedians."
Robert Q. Lewis: "The old jokes, good, bad or indifferent, will always be with us in one form or another."
Jimmy Durante: "The humor of the future will undoubtedly go toward good, clean humor, no offending and virtually no old gags or routines. The people will be sharper."
Dick Shawn: "The answer to that one is worth 10 million dollars."
Phil Silvers: "If I knew the answer, I'd bottle it and make a fortune."
BUT change it will. Change goes on continually. As an example, Sid Caesar's writer, Mel Tolkln, cites a joke he wrote only a few years ago.
"Sid as the German professor of psychology told of a case of an unruly child in a Summer camp who was annoying, disobedient and destructive. The psychoanalyst delved into the child's past, his relationship with his parents and so on. When Sid was asked what neurotic reasons he'd found for the child's condition, he replied: "None—he was just a rotten kid."
"Somehow that sounds dated now. It's too bad, but already psychoanalytical jokes seem dated."

He Kind of Looks Familiar

Hmmm. These Fleischer mice look kind of somebody I’ve seen before.



This is from the Talkatoon Grand Uproar (1930), with Seymour Kneitel and Al Eugster as the credited animators. Here’s an individual Malkey Mouse (or a name something like that).



Van Beuren wasn’t the only New York studio with zooming heads. Malkey (or something like that) thrusts his head toward the camera. We get teeth. We get tongue. In fact, the mouse puts his tongue back in his mouth.



This cartoon also has a running gag about a hippo working his way down the row in front of him with “Pardon me, excuse me,” a bit used in other studios.

The title of this had already been used in a Vitaphone Varieties short in 1927 and was used by Terrytoons in 1933.