That Felix is a Character

The silent era Felix the Cat can morph into all kinds of things, and he has a unique evolution in Japanicky (1928).

In his haste to hide from an angry traditional Japanese lord, he grabs a pictogram from a sign and turns himself into a character.

Felix wanders sideways, as a pictogram, to the lord and changes himself back.

There are some very nice settings in this cartoon and a neat literal gag where Felix gets some tea from a tree. The tea is the letter ‘T.’

Like all the Jacques Kopfstein Felixes, when sound was added, Felix indistinguished jabbers through the whole cartoon.

Christmas Comedy in Little Rock

Where was Jack Benny 100 years ago today? On stage, where else?

Radio was the new fad in 1922 but Jack would take another ten years to get there. In the meantime, he was criss-crossing the U.S. and Canada in vaudeville. On the right, you can see the bill for his Christmas stop in Little Rock, Arkansas. He had come from playing a split week in Oklahoma City and Tulsa on the Interstate Circuit. My guess is after the three shows, he had a layoff as he began a two-day performance on January 4th at the Orpheum in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

He seems to have been well-received by the entertainment press of the day, and the Little Rock papers were no exception.

Advance Notices:
Jack Benny is said to prove that there is a sense of humor in the violin in proper hands. Jack is a combination of musician and comedian. He plays a little but very well, springs some “hot ones” a great deal and keeps his audience thoroughly amused. – Arkansas Gazette, Dec. 24, and Little Rock Daily News, Dec. 25.
Jack Benny, “the funny man with the violin,” is said to combine music and mirth in a skit in which he plays the violin and at the same time indulges in a line of clever chatter. – Arkansas Democrat, Dec. 25.
Jack Benny will be remembered by Majestic patrons as the “funny man with the violin.” He blends music and nonsensical chatter. – Arkansas Gazette, Dec. 25.

Reviews:
And then there is another fascinating bit of entertainment provided by Jack Benny, who fools with a violin incidentally and principally passes out a line of subtle clean-cat [sic] humor the like of which only Benny can put across. – Arkansas Democrat, Dec. 26.
Jack Benny, the funny man with a violin, scored a decided hit at yesterday’s performance. Benny plays well and his new comedy is unique and good. – Arkansas Gazette, Dec. 26.
A subtle brand of humor is dispensed by Jack Benny, funny man, who makes his violin incidental to a good line of humor. – Arkansas Democrat, Dec. 27.

While the ad refers to “a Snappy Majestic News Weekly,” the newspaper stories simply refer to it as “Fox News.” Yes, there was such a thing before television. It was a standard newsreel.

By the way, if you smell something phoney about a psychic Cherokee princess, well, researchers discovered her name was actually Loretta May Navarre and she was born in Monroe, Michigan to a pair of Romanian immigrants. She did predict a New York Giants victory in the World Series in 1922, but 50/50 odds are pretty good ones. She died in California in 1968.

I’m not sure who would want to spend Christmas Day in a vaudeville house but a lot of people did as theatres were open across the country. Among the hundreds and hundreds of acts performing Christmas Day 1922 were Nat Burns at the Grand in Atlanta (he later changed his name to “George”), Smith and Dale at the Schubert in Cincinnati, Van and Schenck at Keith’s Orpheum in Brooklyn, Georgie Jessel at the Aldine in Pittsburgh, the four Marx Brothers at the Astoria on Long Island, Swift and Kelly at the Palace in Chicago (Mary Kelly was later Jack Benny’s girl-friend) and everyone’s favourite at the Orpheum in Germantown, Pennsylvania—Fink’s Mules.

The Christmas Gift of Guilt

No, sir, you won’t catch me falling for that Christmas cartoon sentiment. Not me.

I say this every year. And then I watch MGM’s Oscar-nominee The Night Before Christmas. It’s roped me in again.

There are plenty of emotions pantomimed by Tom and Jerry. The settings are elaborately rendered. Scott Bradley score follows the mood of the action. And Joe Barbera came up with a well-structured story with humour and whimsy.

In one sequence, Jerry escapes from Tom by jumping through a mail slot outside into a snow storm. Now, Tom can contentedly relax. But then he becomes worried about the mouse. Hanna cuts to some exterior shots.



The climax of the cartoon follows where the trepidious Tom rescues the frozen Jerry, restores him to health, and the two exchange holiday good wishes.

What’s interesting is both the Showmen’s Trade Review and Motion Picture Herald refer to a gift-exchange scene at the start of the cartoon. Perhaps it was part of the original plot synoposis sent to the trades because the short doesn’t have anything of the sort. The Showmen’s review is to the right. Two trade papers say the release date was to be December 6, 1941 but The Hollywood Reporter blurbed on the 10th the cartoon would open at Grauman’s Chinese and Loew’s State the next day “and elsewhere as master prints have been Clippered to all unoccupied countries.” Trade ads were promoting the cartoon as early as November 13th.

Mark Kausler points out the animators are Jack Zander, George Gordon, Pete Burness, Irv Spence, Cecil Surry and Bill Littlejohn. Keith Scott mentions the opening narration is by Frank Graham.

Give the Gift of Wolf-Pelt

Tex Avery had Christmas scenes in several of his cartoons (A Gander at Mother Goose, Holiday Highlights), and an appearance by Santa Claus in another (Who Killed Who?), but he really only made one Christmas cartoon—One Ham’s Family at MGM (1943).

Being a Christmas cartoon, it was naturally released on August 14 (though it played starting August 12 at Loew’s Harrisburg).

The end gag is familiar animated cartoon material with Avery’s little stamp. The mean widdle pig has had an off-screen fight with the wolf that wants to eat him. In the wind-up, the kid hands his mom a Christmas present. A fur!



A turn reveals the source of the fur—the wolf.



“Why, this coat is just what I need,” says mama pig. The wolf reaches into the scene. “You and me, both, sister!”



The wolf gallops away, the cartoon ending with a typical Avery sign.



I prefer the version in Swing Shift Cinderella (1945) when the stalk of corn pops up.

Rich Hogan is Avery’s gag man here, with animation credited to Preston Blair, Ray Abrams and Ed Love.

The star of the cartoon is Kent Rogers, doing Red Skelton’s jerk kid character, the Gildersleeve wolf (no, Wikipedia, that’s not his name) and the narrator, with Sara Berner as mama pig and Pinto Colvig sounding closer to Andy Devine than Disney’s Practical Pig in this one.

Loads of Christmas Cheer

Three directors at Warner Bros. had a crack at making a cartoon with Cecil Turtle outsmarting Bugs Bunny. They all have a different tone, but they’re all good.

The final one was Rabbit Transit, directed by Friz Freleng. Mike Maltese and/or Tedd Pierce fit in an incongruous Christmas reference. Bugs is racing along when a postman (with Mel Blanc’s Happy Postman voice from the Burns and Allen radio show) pulls up and hands him a letter.



Yes, the turtle has beat him to Chicago. A few emotional drawings of Bugs.

>

Then the Christmas gag.



As Carl Stalling plays “Jingle Bells,” Bugs realises what he can give Cecil as a return present.



Of course, it’s not Christmas at all. Cecil’s just heckling Bugs. Cut to the next scene where Cecil is in Chicago in very un-December-like weather. Because Cecil and Bugs are still supposedly racing, Stalling puts “Time Waits For No One” in the background.



And the present?



Freleng’s 1947 animation crew of Virgil Ross, Ken Champin, Gerry Chiniquy and Manny Perez are credited. The backgrounds don’t look like Paul Julian’s. It’s because they’re not. Phil De Guard was bouncing between the Davis and Freleng units around this time and he painted the settings in this cartoon.

Santa Claus Meets Gene Deitch

Gene Deitch wasn’t very happy with me.

I dislike Deitch’s Tom and Jerry cartoons. The stories meander, the music sounds like it was made in a tunnel, and the layouts are so awkward that you can barely see Jerry sometimes. Then there’s the stiff animation. And the weird sound effects.

For ages, Gene made excuses for how poor they were. Then something happened. Some animation fans, perhaps feeling sorry for them, or out of respect for Mr. Deitch, yapped endlessly on-line about their greatness. After that, Gene started to believe his own press clippings, so to speak, and got defensive about any criticism of the cartoons. Including my criticism. “If they’re so bad, why are they on DVD?” he asked me. Well, Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch is on DVD, too. Release on home video is not quite an acid test of quality.

There are things Gene invented which I like. I enjoy Sidney the Elephant. The Juggler of Our Lady is a fine, serious cartoon. I watched Tom Terrific when I was little; all kids, I’ll bet, loved the almost comatose Manfred the Wonder Dog and Tom turning into all kinds of things.

So allow me to give you the Christmas present of Gene Deitch. Tom Terrific had a prototype, an heroic kid character in a comic strip. Terr’ble Thompson appeared in newspapers in 1955-56. If nothing else, it has Gene’s stylistic stamp. The strip was in serial format (like Tom Terrific), with the “episodes” tied together with a frame or two and some dialogue. Terr’ble was involved in a Christmas adventure, which we post below. The comics start on December 13, 1955 and end on December 28th. We include comics from Sunday colour sections.

Note: After clipping all the comics from a newspaper, correcting the colour balance, uploading them and HTML coding the post, I discovered they are already on-line, minus the United Features Syndicate copyright notice. So, we have substituted these cleaner, web-site versions instead.



Deitch was on the move. Long gone from UPA, by March 1956 he had left John Hubley’s Storyboard, Inc. and accepted a job with Robert Lawrence Productions. The strip came to an end on Sunday, April 15th. In June, Deitch was hired by Terrytoons as its creative supervisor. He admitted a full-time job plus a full-time comic strip was hurting his family life.

50 years after T.T. vanished from newspapers, someone decided a product from the mind of Gene Deitch must be re-examined. In 2006, Fantagraphics reprinted the strips in a book, including the Sunday editions in full colour (digitised in some cases due to the washed-out quality of the Ben-Day dots on newsprint). You can see the book at this site. Gene and his son Kim talk about the strip. Best of all, there’s not a Dicky Moe or Landing Stripling to be found.