Cheese Burglar

First, I hope everyone has noticed I've changed the title of my blog to something a little shorter (admittedly I never thought this thing would actually last longer than a week). David Gerstein suggested the name to me last night. He claims you can read it either as "I.D." or for my "unbridled criticism". Wiseass.

Secondly, today's breakdown is probably a Famous cartoon everybody here has seen before, seeing as it's on millions of public domain compilations. Milton Knight deserves full credit for breaking this down. He says: "Some people confuse Henning's work for Tyer's in this one; I'm attempting to set that record straight."

"Cheese Burglar"

Interestingly enough, all three animators are credited for this short.

- All scenes from opening to cat saying "The mouse was right!" and
jumping up with knife: Ben Solomon

- Cat stalks dog, dog pulls knife, and they attack each other: William Henning

- All scenes from Herman watching to cat falling and hitting head on the radiator: Jim Tyer

- Herman gloating ("The cat's death rattle!"), then walking out of hole: Solomon

- All scenes from Herman walking over "dead" cat and dog to Herman getting roped out of wine bottle: Henning

- Final shot of drunken trio: Solomon

This short is also interesting because it catches the animators at a transitional stage between traditional Fleischer-type models and the more modern Famous design. For the record, the model of the cat also appears in "Chick and Double Chick" (1946) and "The Stupidstitious Cat" (1947).

B-Day: Emery Hawkins

Yes, it's my favorite animator's turn now (get used to it!).

Here's one of my favorite pieces of his animation from "Hurdy Gurdy Hare". Excellent line of action in this scene, and the gorilla's goony expression after being soothed is beautiful.

Popout

My Internet connection has been unbelieveably shitty for the past few days (I can't even get to my email or eBay), so I'll put up some earlier clips (Scrappy, Captain and the Kids) from Hawkins later this week.