Tip Your Head

Egghead politely acknowledges the theatre audience when he enters the picture in Cinderella Meets Fella (1938). He doesn’t just tip his hat.



The cartoon ends the way you’d expect a Tex Avery cartoon to end—Cinderella is in a theatre watching the cartoon she was in, then climbs back into the cartoon before she and Egghead leave it and go into the theatre to watch a newsreel. To think the same studio was inflicting Buddy on people just a couple of years earlier.

Egghead is in his Joe Penner mode here.



Danny Webb is Egghead/Prince; Berneice Hansell squeals as Cinderella and it sounds like Elvia Allman as the fairy godmother. The Duke of Brittingham is the credited story man.

Pop Music 1, Opera 0

Giovanni Jones is angry his high-brow operatic music has been usurped by Bugs Bunny’s “My Gal is a High Born Lady” in Long-Haired Hare (released in 1949).

Not only does Jones switch from rehearsing Rossini’s “Largo Al Factotum” to sing along with Bugs, he happily high-steps to the music. Then he realises what’s happening and stops in a pose you’d expect in the Chuck Jones unit.



Jones (Giovanni) turns in a series of multiples to stalk out the door.



By the way, what is in this painting on Jones’ (Giovanni) wall?



Bob Gribbroek was responsible for the backgrounds in this Jones (Chuck) cartoon. Gribbroek lived part of the time in Taos and painted scenes of the New Mexican desert. Maybe he borrowed from one of his own paintings. It’s a coyote (not Wile E.) holding something with a mandolin and a jug (of wine?) on the ground.

Mike Maltese came up with the perfect story structure where Bugs exacts complete revenge against the opera star with an ending every Warner Bros. cartoon fan must be familiar with. I had the great fortune to see this cartoon in a huge, old theatre. Seated several rows in front of me was Jones (Chuck).

The Glamourous, Unpredictable...

TV sitcoms in the 1950s starred people like Ozzie and Harriet, Robert Young and Ann Sothern. Can you picture that crowd being joined by Tallulah Bankhead?

It never happened, though an NBC producer wanted it to, and Tallulah seriously considered it.

Somehow, I just can’t picture a laugh track-laden show with Tallu burning a roast just before her husband and his boss show up for dinner. I can’t picture her being bothered with cooking at all.

Tallulah was at her best not as a character but, like on radio’s The Big Show, playing herself. Well, a very watered-down version of herself. Her alcohol, drug and sexual exploits could never fly on the screen, small or big. Announcer Ed Herlihy’s introduction of her on The Big Show was the “glamourous, unpredictable Tallulah Bankhead.” Actually, she was very predictable, being fenced in by monologues by Dorothy Parker and a script by Goody Ace with help from Fred Allen. She was exactly what the listener expected her to be—theatrical, catty and filling the air with “dahrling,” like a drag queen version of her.

Then again, her appearance as herself on I Love Lucy in 1957 seems to have been a fiasco off-camera, with writer Madelyn Pugh saying Tallu kept forgetting her lines, appeared to have been boozing, and took off her clothes during a cast and crew meeting that she wasn’t invited to, but breezed in on anyways (Pugh noted, with relief, Bankhead was wearing panties). On camera, she was “magnificent,” as Desi Arnaz put it to Lucy chronologist Bart Andrews, who quoted Bankhead as saying she was dealing with “pneumonia” when rehearsing and filming the show.

The Big Show was a 90-minute radio variety spectacular that was unable to compete against the increasing number of TV stations signing on. It left the air in April 1952. Her autobiography was published that year and in 1953, she appeared, as herself, at the Sands Hotel, a smash hit.

TV Guide decided an article on Bankhead was due. It appeared in the issue of February 12, 1954, complete with photos. Her myna bird got in a witty remark, too.

THE THEATER’S only living legend, Tallulah Bankhead, greeted us at the door shivering in lounging pajamas and a cigaret, both of which she sported during the whole fantastic day of the interview. Secluded in “Windows,” a beautiful old rambling house 60 miles from New York, at the end of a climbing cow path ten miles from where the macadam ends, overlooking God’s green acres and a swimming pool, lives the woman extraordinaire, who more than anything else in the world, loathes being alone.
No isolationist, politically or socially, she houses three dogs, a cat, a Myna bird, a chauffeur, a cook, her secretary, Edie Smith, any number of neuroses, and on weekends, any variety of high- and low-brows.
The idyllic “Windows” erupts spasmodically, along with Tallulah. She’d stay there forever, never working, “if the wolf and Bureau of Internal Revenue would stay away from my door.”
Southern Ham
Admittedly lazy and a ham, she comes out of hibernation “only for money, dahling,” including the Jimmy Durante show date and U.S. Steel Hour’s “Hedda Gabler.” She has other offers. “I hate to say whose. If I turn anyone down I give the man a black eye and I don’t want to give those dahling Goodson-Todman boys a black eye. But I’m advised that panel shows are on their way out.” Bill Todman, who hasn’t heard the news about panel shows, says, “We have an audience participation show in the works, tailor-made for Tallu.” And he’s convinced she’s convinced.
She’s thinking more seriously about a situation comedy, a Fred Coe offspring. But with the wolf still at a distance, she reads through the night and sleeps through the day. Since she reads prone, with Doloras, a Maltese poodle, slung somehow around the top of her head, like a halo, she can’t abide heavy books. “I’ll wager I’m the only person who ever read ‘Gone With the Wind’ at one session,” she claims. “But it weighed so much, I ripped it in half. Read first one part, then the other—like that,” she tore an imaginary book in two.
Not an outdoor girl, she rarely rises before three, ventures into the open only in summer. “Dahling, I’m so unathletic, I’ve got a 60 foot pool that I’ve never seen the other end of.”
Tallulah is a determined Giant rooter. As a born Confederate, she has a distaste for all things Yankee, from baseball to pot roast.
She rarely remembers names, although she’s remarkably adroit at anything concerning Tallulah. “I haven’t been to the theater in seven years and a movie in 10. At the ball park, I blow my gasket if the Giants win, and I blow it if they lose. Either way I come home dead—a wreck.”
London Belle
For all who weren’t around for Tallulah’s first triumph 30 years ago, she was the belle of London at 21. She was born the second daughter of the great beauty, Adelaide, and the ambitious young lawyer. Will Bankhead, who was to become a Congressman and later, Speaker of the House. When Tallulah returned after her storming of the Isles, she was tagged “a second Marlene Dietrich.”
Back on Broadway, she appeared in a series of dismal flops, mediocre flops, and three or four plays that rated no score at all. She finally hit her stride as the predatory Regina Giddens in Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes,” again as Sabina in Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth,” and came off with the New York film critics award for her portrayal of a newspaper woman in the Hitchcock film, “Lifeboat.”
Glamorous, Unpredictable
By the time she stampeded into radio via NBC’s “The Big Show” she had worked up a reputation for being “fabulous, incredible, tempestuous, a character,” which she resents violently.
She talks endlessly, in paragraphs rather than sentences. She shows a distinct preference for prancing over walking. And she can throw a tantrum at the block of most any whim. This particular talent was perfected at the age of five when Daddy took sister (Eugenia) off on a picnic and left Tallulah home. Tallu flung herself on the floor, “got purple in the face and screamed blue murder.” Grandmother squelched both the tantrum and the young Bankhead with a bucket of cold water.
Her voice is her trademark, and although she sings in a virtual bass, she claims perfect pitch. “The gags about my voice didn’t just happen,” she confided. “I haven’t always sounded like the low end of a foghorn. But by the time I was six, I had the croup, whooping cough, pneumonia, mumps, tonsillitis, measles; everything settled right here in my chest.” She pounded, proving its whereabouts.
“I figured Durante has his nose, Benny has his miserliness, I would have my voice. But Bob Hope clinched it. He introduced me on ‘The Big Show,’ saying that I was going to sing, ‘Give My Regards to Seventh Avenue.’ I corrected him, ‘You mean, Broadway, Bob.’ He told me, ‘Tallulah, you’ll always be a block away.’ ”
During the tour of “Windows,” so named because it has 75 of them, Tallulah pointed out her prized possessions, ranging from her Augustus John portrait, which she values at $100,000, to Precious, the puppet designed for her by Burr Tillstrom.
She displayed her Myna bird, Cleo, and asked it to repeat her name. “Say Tallulah,” said Tallulah. “Birds can’t talk,” said Cleo.
Except Maybe Rosselini
At the door, Tallu charged, “I’ll bet you’re going home to write that I’m utterly mad, just like people expect me to be. It’s that stupid typing.” But though she defies being typed, and a trillion other natural laws, she conceded, “It’s true. If it had been me who ran off with Rosselini, no one would have given it a thought.”
—Katherine Pedell

Tallulah’s final performance was one watched by thousands upon thousands of children. Sources conflict about whether she requested the job, or producers reached out to her, but she portrayed The Black Widow on Batman in episodes that aired March 15 and 16, 1967 on ABC. Denis Brian’s biography “Tallulah, Darling” revealed during shooting she was suffering from emphysema and had problems walking, but she ran around as the script demanded like an old trouper. She died December 12, 1968 at age 66.

Um, That Kind of Looks Like...

Gremlins pop up to get ready to menace Adolph Hitler in Bob Clampett’s Merrie Melodies short Russian Rhapsody (1944).

How did Clampett get away with this one?



As you have probably read, many of the gremlins are based on the Warners cartoon staff, including a nude Bob Clampett. I like the Christmas tree gremlin. I don't know who it is supposed to be.



Rod Scribner is the credited animator and Lou Lilly is the story man. Hitler is turned into Lew Lehr at the end.

And the Pitch...

Friz Freleng holds the Gashouse Gorillas’ pitcher for some poses during his wind-up in Baseball Bugs (released in 1946).



Here’s the pitch, frame by frame. The first two drawings are held for two frames. You can see how Freleng "slows" the animation just before the throw by having less movement in the pitcher.



Gerry Chiniquy, Virgil Ross, Ken Champin and Manny Perez are the credited animators.

Jack Benny Pays For a Baby

One of the best ways to get people to tune into your radio show week after week is to have a running storyline. Jack Benny’s writers figured that out.

A great one was the “I Can’t Stand Jack Benny” contest, which ran from Nov. 25, 1945 to Feb. 3, 1946. In fact, Jack continued to make references to it into the 1950s.

It was a smash success. The United Press reported there were 277,000 entries. The names of some of the winners were announced on Jan. 27, 1946 and Ronald Colman read the first-place entry the following Sunday. We posted the first-prize winner from Carroll P. Craig, Sr., of Pacific Palisades, California here. We also passed along something about the third-place winner, Joyce O’Hara of Detroit in this post.

We haven’t said anything about the second-place winner, who turns out to have an interesting future connection to Benny. Charles S. “Bud” Doherty, a University of Nevada grad from Las Vegas living at the Hotel Boulton Square, Cleveland 6, was awarded $1500 in Victory Bonds.

Let us jump ahead to April 11, 1964. This syndicated story comes from the Binghamton Press

Her Daddy Hated Jack Benny
Seventeen years ago a baby was born in Cleveland, one of thousands in 1946. But this baby was unique in that her birth and all attendant expenses were paid for by Jack Benny and he didn't even know it.
The occasion was a contest tied in with Jack's then-radio series. It was titled "Why I Hate Jack Benny" and the judge was the late Fred Allen, with whom Jack had a running (in fun) feud.
Winner of the second prize of $1,500 was Charles Doherty, of Cleveland, attending law school on the GI Bill of Rights, whose wife worked as a beauty operator in a department store and for whom money was scarce, to put it mildly. "The $1,500 paid not only for Charla's birth, but we paid six month's rent on our apartment," recalls Doherty.
In 1955 the Doherty moved to southern California, where Charla decided to become an actress.
Several television shows and a movie, (“Take Her, She's Mine”) later, Charla's agent sent her out on another casting call. And it was a dream come true.
It was a part on The Jack Benny Program. And, of course, she got it. No one knew, at the time, that she was the baby for whom Jack's contest had paid. Only when executive producer Irving Fein told her she had the role did she tell them who she was. "And first day on the set, I brought the photostated copy of the check my Daddy had made when he got it," says Charla. "I think Mr. Benny looked sort of nostalgic when he saw it," she giggled.



The story is in correct about “hate.” Jack himself disliked the word when the writers were kicking around the idea of a contest, and settled for the less harsh “can’t stand.” Charla’s story ends sadly. She was 41 when she died of natural causes at her mother’s home in Woodland Hills, California, in May 1988. Her biggest role was on the soap Days of Our Lives; she appeared on the show for 2 ½ years in the early ‘60s. Her father, Charles Squires Doherty, passed away in Los Angeles on April 26, 1980. The family is in the 1950 Census for Montgomery, Ohio, where Charles was a law clerk. He went into the insurance business in Dayton before moving to California.

Out of curiosity, I thought I’d check on the first name of the $100 Victory Bond winners named by Jack. It was Helena Williams of 1809 West Sherman, Phoenix. There’s an article from a 1955 edition of the Arizona Republic about her, you can click on it to the right. She lived with her mother and one of their accomplishments came in 1947 when they constructed their own 16-by-18 foot house. A story in the Republic reported parts of the home were in various shades of pink (the photo in the paper was still in the black-and-white era).

Williams, who had served with the WACs in the war, died in Phoenix on Jan. 12, 1967 at age 67.

Pigs, Affairs and Candy

In 1950, he was a 58-year-old maintenance worker for a candy company in Los Angeles. That doesn’t sound like the description of a fairly significant name in the world of theatrical animation. But that’s a snapshot of the life of Burt Gillett, director of the Three Little Pigs and Flowers and Trees.

Gillett tends to be a controversial figure, partly because of Shamus Culhane’s experiences with him at the Van Beuren studio. Culhane claimed Gillett was unstable, maybe even mentally ill. Animator/Director Dick Lundy told author Joe Adamson that Gillett spent loads and loads of money and never knew where his pictures were going.

Most of the material you’ll read about Gillett, not surprisingly, involves his work for Walt Disney. But I found a few stories in local papers from his time at Van Beuren, one of them praising the studio’s cartoons.

Gillett was born in Edmeston, New York on October 15, 1891. The 1892 Census has the family in Elmira. He liked art at an early age; the Connellsville, Pa. Daily Courier in 1907 reported he was in high school and won second prize in a weekly magazine’s drawing contest. Census documents reveal in 1910, he was living on West 57th in Manhattan and working as a cashier for a lumber company. He was attending the Art Students League at the time. He was a cartoonist on the Connellsville, Pa. Daily Courier when it reported on its front page of Jan. 25, 1911 he had eloped with the family maid. Louise Clawson had been employed for two weeks and was fired. Gillett married her a week later. “Love at First Sight,” proclaimed the sub-headline. He was 19. The “remarkably pretty girl, graceful of figure and a brunette of fascinating type” was 15.

Two years later, the Newburgh, N.Y. Directory tells us he was a cartoonist with the city’s Daily News. In 1916, Gillett landed a job in the Barre-Bowers cartoon studio. Gillett then opened his own $70,000 studio which took up the entire fifth floor of a building on 42nd Street in New York. The Connellsville Courier of Aug. 7, 1925 stating he had partnered with Ben Harrison, Dick Humor [sic] and Manny Gould, with brother Clyde as business manager of “Associated Animated Studio.” It made Mutt and Jeff cartoons and shorts called “Fun From the Press” for Literary Digest. It had a short life. Animation researcher and restorer Devon Baxter went through Harrison’s personal notes, and Harrison admits he used the company’s gilt-edge, but worthless, stock to plug a hole in his shoe.

In April 1929, Walt Disney visited Pat Sullivan’s studio where still-silent Felix the Cat cartoons were being made. Gillett was animating there and Disney hired him. Jack Cutting, an artist later put in charge of Disney’s foreign department, was hired in August that year, and reminisced in a 1973 newspaper story that there were 19 men on staff and Gillett was the oldest.

Gillett had tremendous success at Disney. Meanwhile, back in New York, Amedee Van Beuren was paying for third-rate cartoons being churned out by his staff. Why not entice the director of the most famous animated short to that time to take over and whip the operation into shape? So it was in early 1934 that Van Beuren hired Burt Gillett. “I was reluctant to leave California as I like the climate and my associates out there very much,” he told the Newburgh Daily News in a story published June 22, 1934. “However, business is business and this looks like a splendid opportunity, so here I am.”

Here’s a story from the Matt Richardson’s ‘Round Town column in the Elmira Star-Gazette, Dec. 3, 1935.

Leaves Newspaper Grind For the Newer Grind Of Color Cartoons
IT IS A GREAT THRILL for Burt Gillett, when he returns to Elmira periodically for a look around, and to ponder old times. . . These visits are a happiness tonic, too, an aid to longevity. It was 31 years ago that Mr. Gillett started out to make his way in the world and he chose newspaper work—of all things! . . . He landed in Newburgh, and for 10 years wrestled with court reporting for sustenance, while dabbling in art for the love of it. . . Older heads recognized Burt's ability, and advised him to stop trying to beat, his way through life on a typewriter and stick to his sketching. . . It proved good advice. . . The young man thought he liked cartooning, hurried to Hollywood, and tied up with Walt Disney of Mickey Mouse and "Silly Symphony" fame. . . He became a director of these amusing little characters and the artists who produce them. . . It was Gillett, if you please, who directed the "Three Little Pigs," which touched off a national hysteria of laughter. . .
ALL THIS HAPPENED 18 years ago. And now the former Elmiran is back east again, in Manhattan, associated with the VanBuren Studio, specializing in rainbow color movie cartoons. On his staff is a corps of 100 artists constantly turning, out this art that screen lovers have learned so much to admire. . . Burt doesn't draw any more. . . There is greater pecuniary reward in watching others do the actual work and seeing that they do it correctly. . . For a while, out West, Mr. Gillett was able to return to Elmira only twice, these visits being separated by a 10-year interim. . . But now, from New York to Elmira, is an easy "jump," proven by the fact he has made the jaunt three times the past year. . .
THE MOVIE DIRECTOR'S FATHER was Lewis M. Gillett, who for years—until 1904—when the family moved to Pennsylvania, conducted a jewelry store at the corner of West Water and Main Streets—present site of the Les Kelly drug store. . . In there Burt strolled, closed his eyes and tried to look back in retrospect to the days of his boyhood. . . He endeavored to imagine all around him were clocks, silver and pewter instead of ivory sets, porus plasters and pills. . . And was fairly successful—a dream boy for the moment. . . Burt has never been quite weaned from Elmira, you know. . . He sees many old landmarks, far too few old friends, and there comes a fund of reminiscences which he delights to peddle around to those willing to lend an ear and capable of remembering, perhaps.

Animator Izzy Klein was at Van Beuren at the time and said Gillett was constantly firing people not up to his standard. As well, Gillett brought Tom Palmer with him. Palmer was an ex-Disneyite who was picked up by Leon Schlesinger in 1933 and made production manager. Sound department head Bernie Brown told historian Michael Barrier that Palmer was inept at putting together a story, giving vague instructions to “do a funny bit of business here.” At Van Beuren, the two of them came up with the dreadful live action/animation “Toddle Tales,” then invented the unhilarious Molly Moo Cow.

But Van Beuren was going in the right direction, though Tom Sito’s book on animation unions, Drawing the Line points out “big sections of the shorts were thrown out as substandard [by Gillett] and [artists] were forced to work unpaid overtime hours to replace them.” But it’s obvious the studio’s animation improved with people like Carlo Vinci, Bill Littlejohn, Pete Burness and Jack Zander. The studio had licensed Felix the Cat and The Toonerville Trolley characters. Under writers like Joe Barbera and Dan Gordon, they could have been very funny, rollicking cartoons. But RKO, which had a stake in Van Beuren, decided in 1936 it was better simply to kill the studio and release Walt Disney’s shorts instead of putting ersatz Disney “Rainbow Parade” cartoons in theatre. Gillett went on a month-long trip to England, returning in August 1936 and immediately took a job again with Walt Disney, who had said when Gillett left in 1934 “Who needs him?”.

Meanwhile, Gillett lost interest in that “brunette of fascinating type.” The Bergen Evening Record told all in its issue of Jan. 20, 1937. The clipping to the right below is from the Dec. 22, 1936 edition of the Passaic Herald-News. It should be of note to people who doubt Culhane’s story of instability and reports that Gillett was a souse.

Gillett, Aide To Disney, Ordered To Pay Alimony
Edgewater Woman Wins $70 Weekly From Mickey Mouse Cartoonist In Separation Action
Burton F. Gillett, cartoonist for Walt Disney, is under court order today to pay $70 weekly alimony to Mrs. Louise Gillett, 647 Undercliff Avenue, Edgewater, and $750 counsel fees as result of her recent separate maintenance divorce suit decree.
WORKS IN HOLLYWOOD
Gillett, who is working at Disney's Hollywood studios, also was ordered by Advisory Master N. Demarest Campbell in Chancery Court at Hackensack to give his estranged wife half the income from his property. He owns a $15,000 house in Edgewater and a $40,000 home in Los Angeles.
According to the petitioner her husband misconducted himself with Miss Edith [Ethel Vera] Falkenberg, model in his office, in an apartment at 360 Central Park West, New York, on various dates.
Although Gillett earns as much as $325 a week he failed to provide proper support for his wile, she charged at the trial.
Jan. 10, 1936, Mrs. Gillett took part in a raid on her husband's apartment and said she found him partly dressed with Miss Falkenberg. The couple have a child and Gillett wants to marry the girl, his wife testified.
The defendant did not appear in court to contest the accusations but he was represented by Vincent J. Aiken of Fort Lee.
Lawrence A. Cavinato, counsel for Mrs. Gillett, contended the artist failed to support his wife in the manner to which she was accustomed and entitled after he became friendly with Miss Falkenberg.
The couple was married Jan. 25, 1911, at Cumberland, and have one grown son.
Another of Mrs. Gillett's allegations was that her husband drank excessively and on one occasion when she protested said he wanted to stay drunk so he wouldn't have to look at "your homely mug.”
Trial of the case took two days.
Mrs. Gillett declared that her husband threatened to kill himself when she refused to grant him a divorce to permit him to marry the Falkenberg girl. On a vacation cruise to Europe last summer he even threatened to throw her overboard if she declined to divorce him, Mrs. Gillett told the court.

The divorce was granted in December 1937 and Gillett took out a marriage license with his former employee the following March. There was a 20-year age difference between the two.

In September 1938, Gillett was gone from Disney and began writing and directing for Walter Lantz. He lasted about a year; his final cartoon was released March 4, 1940. Lantz explained to Joe Adamson that Gillett never properly laid out his cartoons like other directors meaning he never knew how long they were. “Gillett never knew where he was going; he’d wind up with a nine-hundred-foot picture,” as opposed to the usual 600 feet which meant less animation time, less inking and painting, and less money. Lantz was big on saving money. “After he made a few of those, I said, ‘Burt, you’re going to put me out of business.’”

In 1940 his occupation in the Burbank City Directory is “writer.” His World War Two Draft Card, dated Apr. 25, 1942, states he was employed at McDonnell’s Restaurant. Gillett and his former paramour divorced and he married Theckla Virginia Monberg of Huntingdon Park in 1943. Oddly, he showed up in Connellsville in August 1949, with the Daily Courier reporting he was visiting his ex-wife’s sister. The 1950 Census indicates he and Virginia were separated (she died in 1953).

Gillett had one more last hurrah in animation. In April 1961, the San Francisco Museum of Art screened a number of films, including The Three Little Pigs. Gillett was invited to attend.

With nary an obituary, at least that I can find, Gillett died in Panorama City on December 28, 1971.

What Happened Bugs?

Frank Tashlin didn’t make many Bugs Bunny cartoons, did he?

Actually, he made twice as many as the Art Davis unit. Two. The first was The Unruly Hare, released in 1945 (the last with Tashlin’s name on it) and Hare Remover, which came out the following year.

This cartoon is one of several from the mid-‘40s that has a garish edit in it. Elmer Fudd is yelling “Hurray! Hurray! I twapped him” with Bugs looking like he’s about the knock on Elmer’s derby. This is a pretty butt-ugly in-between.



There’s a quick cut to Elmer and Bugs in completely different positions. Not only that, it sounds like the soundtrack has been sliced. There’s a quick chopping of Elmer’s dialogue and the next scene sounds like it begins in mid-cue. Maybe someone has researched what happened. (There are similar obvious edits in Bob Clampett’s The Big Snooze.



And what’s with the gap-toothed Elmer and Bugs?



Tashlin had left Warners in August 1944 to work for Morey and Sutherland, two months after it bought Leon Schlesinger's cartoon studio.

The credited animators are Dick Bickenbach, Izzy Ellis, Cal Dalton and Art Davis.

The official release date of the cartoon is March 23, 1946. As usual, several theatres screened it earlier.

Flip Arrives

The best news you will read today, cartoon fans, is Thunderbean Animation has finally completed its restoration of all 38 Flip the Frog cartoons and has released them on Blu-ray.

I have never laughed at a Flip cartoon. Not that I recall. I don’t know how many audiences in the early ‘30s laughed at them, either. But ignore that. Buy this set.

Thunderbean takes extremely meticulous care in any of its restoration projects. Everyone who worked on this loves old animation and strives to give cartoon fans the best. An incredible amount of work went into these discs—which took longer to make than the actual cartoon series. Flip could not have been in better hands.

If Thunderbean hadn’t taken on this set, nobody else would have. There simply isn’t the profit and, frankly, I doubt a large corporation would have spent the time hunting down and comparing film elements to pick and choose the best. Thunderbean, time and time again, has taken animation from B-list studios residing on poor prints in the public domain scrap-heap and made them presentable and watchable again. An example on this set: The Cuckoo Murder Case has a fine atmospheric opening that will be a treat to see fully restored.

Steve Stanchfield's team cares enough to provide bonus material as well. Commentary tracks? Yes! J.B. Kaufman liner notes? Yes, again! Or, as Flip would say, “Damn!”

My congratulations and thanks to those who took the time and care to work on this Blu-ray.

Click here for a link to the Thunderbean Shop.

Note: this is an unpaid, unsolicited endorsement. I receive nothing. I am simply a fan of old cartoons and feel this set is worth owning.