Goofy Gymnastics

I love the Disney cartoon "Goofy Gymnastics". The last minute of this one is about as wild as cartoons from Disney got. I believe Woolie Reitherman animated the bulk of the violence since it looks like his work in other shorts. John Sibley most likely animated most of the shots before the chaos ensues. Both were well-known around the studio for their animation of Goofy. While wild, this has a great bit of subtlety in it, with Goofy realizing his ass is slamming against the ground, so he covers it to soften the blow!

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Mr. Bug Goes to Town

Jon recently sent me a copy of the Fleischer feature, "Mr. Bug Goes to Town" (1941). I had not seen it before, and I was really impressed by it. While some spots are weak, it is still a really fun movie, combining all of the things that make the Fleischer cartoons great, and a vast improvement over "Gulliver's Travels" (1938), which by comparison sums up all of the mistakes Fleischer did with their studio.

Here is one of the highlights from the movie... The "Katy Did, Katy Didn't" song was animated by Frank Endres and the jitterbug electrocution was Al Eugster's work. (Thanks to Bob Jaques for the identifications.)

This movie is no "Pinocchio" or "Dumbo", but it's a lot of fun, and it was nice to see the Fleischers end on a high note.

It's too bad its failure at the box office (which I expect was intentional on Paramount's part) was the excuse Paramount needed to kick the Fleischers out. I'm sure their next feature would've been even better.

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Seen a front porch swing, heard a diamond ring...

If you ask anyone (intelligible that is) in the animation community what Walt Disney's perfect film was, they'll all scream correctly, "DUMBO!!!"

This is probably the "Citizen Kane" of animated features. It's hard to pin-point the best scene in the film, as there isn't a weak spot in this movie, but my favorite scene (natch) is with Ward Kimball's Jim Crow.

Look at the precision in the dance in this scene! Kimball was obviously studying live-action to pull this off, and he did a marvelous job too. Not to mention the wonderfully appealing (and hilarious) drawing skill.

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Kimball Tribute

I just realized that Ward Kimball, possibly Walt Disney's most original animator, would have celebrated his 93rd birthday last week (March 4th). And stupidly, I forgot to post anything then.

I actually rewatched "Cinderella" last year when I made it a priority to have all the Golden Age animated features in recent memory, and I was surprised at how much I was laughing out loud at Kimball's scenes of the cat, Lucifer, and the mice, Jaq and Gus. The drawings and posing here are hilarious and really strong. As I've said ad nauseum, it's ironic I identify with and find more believability in characters like Kimball's than the practically rotoscoped ones in this clip.

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This one just got released (again), but I thought I'd post it anyway because the Indians are so damn hilarious looking. I also hope I'm not the only one who finds John's line about ten seconds in to be horribly ironic.

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(Wondering why the colors here look so much better than your copy on DVD? More on that later.)

Hop and Go

Here's my favorite of the thirteen cartoons Norm McCabe directed at Warners, "Hop and Go" (1943). This cartoon is note-worthy because it contains some of Art Davis' earliest known animation at Warner Bros. (his first picture was "The Daffy Duckaroo"). I believe is just a few [great] shots of the rabbits, Sandy and Andy, namely at 2:18.

For the record, Davis was fired at Screen Gems by Mr. Frank Tashlin. Being fired for being one of the 'old guys' by one of the top directors probably did not help Davis' already unfortunate poor self-image.

Back to McCabe though, a cartoon like this hints at good things to come from this new director, and I wonder what kind of Warner cartoons we would have seen if he had not got his director stint cut short by the draft.

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"Ah love th' java jive and it loves me..."

Continuing my previous post on Norm McCabe, here's the highlight from his cartoon "Robinson Crusoe Jr." (1941). I believe most of this is John Carey's animation. Just try to get this tune out of your head.

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Daffy's Southern Exposure

The snow won't stop around here so I thought this cartoon would be appropriate.

There's always been a Norm McCabe stigma in all the books and message boards that I've never quite understood. There's really not much of a difference between McCabe's black-and-white Looney Tunes and Clampett's that used the same animators. Many of McCabe's shorts seem better by comparison to the crummy ones Clampett was doing in 1940-41.

I think what turns off most from them is the propaganda nature of McCabe's shorts, which I think may have been enforced in some way since the black-and-whites were the 'potboilers' for the studio. If McCabe had not have been drafted, I think he'd be capable of doing some fine color cartoons, at would be as good of a director as at least McKimson.

"Daffy's Southern Exposure" is a fine cartoon and, IMO, one of the earliest 'real' Daffy cartoons.

I love the gag at around 6:48. The wolf's gloves getting knocked off of him from the blow was obviously something added by the animator... Is this Viv Risto? Larry, Greg, or Mike K., do you know?

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